thesis-anne/data/articles/all_10.csv

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'a4aa2306030af35c9ebb688a0f3231a3653e5b73'|'Brexit uncertainty prompts shock British construction contraction'|'October 3, 2017 / 11:29 AM / in an hour Brexit uncertainty prompts shock British construction contraction David Milliken 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s construction companies in September reported the sharpest fall in activity since just after June 2016<31>s Brexit vote, as clients put projects on hold due to uncertainty over the economy. Although construction makes up just 6 percent of Britain<69>s economy, the survey suggested it was likely to drag on official third-quarter growth figures, just as the Bank of England gets ready to raise interest rates. The IHS Markit/CIPS construction purchasing managers<72> index (PMI) sank to 48.1 in September from August<73>s reading of 51.1, its lowest since July 2016 and far below all forecasts in a Reuters poll of economists. Anything below 50 is considered a contraction. Sterling weakened by around a quarter of a cent against the dollar and fell to a day<61>s low against the euro after the data. <20>The construction sector is entering its own recession,<2C> Samuel Tombs of Pantheon Macroeconomics said. <20>The government<6E>s shift to a more accommodating stance in Brexit talks has done little to convince builders that clients will sanction delayed projects soon.<2E> IHS Markit said the prospect that the BoE will raise rates next month for the first time in a decade was also a factor behind slower house building. Business investment overall has grown since the Brexit vote, but many business leaders say the government is not making enough progress in Brexit talks with the European Union. The Union Flag and a European Union flag fly near the Elizabeth Tower, housing the Big Ben bell, during the anti-Brexit ''People''s March for Europe'', in Parliament Square in central London, Britain September 9, 2017. REUTERS/Tolga Akmen Construction - which has long lead times for projects, and relies heavily on labour from the EU - has been particularly hurt. Official data last month showed construction orders fell more than 12 percent year-on-year in the three months to June, and the PMI has shown lower orders for the past three months. Expectations for the future were at their second-lowest level since 2013, Tuesday<61>s survey also showed. However, shares in housebuilders have gained in recent days after Britain<69>s ruling Conservative Party announced plans to revive a 10 billion pound ($13.25 billion) house-building subsidy. The manufacturing PMI published on Monday showed a slowdown in growth although it remained solid, and a survey of Britain<69>s huge services industry due on Wednesday will give a clearer idea of third-quarter growth. <20>Following on from a softer manufacturing survey for September, the weak construction survey fuels concern that an already lacklustre UK economy could be faltering,<2C> said Howard Archer, chief economist at consultancy EY ITEM Club. Britain<69>s economy has suffered its weakest growth so far this year since 2012. Consumer demand has borne the brunt of a rise in inflation to its highest in nearly five years, which is largely due to the pound<6E>s tumble after the Brexit vote. The PMI data showed the cost of building supplies rose at its fastest rate in seven months in September. ($1 = 0.7545 pounds) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-economy-pmi/brexit-uncertainty-prompts-shock-british-construction-contraction-idINKCN1C815V'|'2017-10-03T14:24:00.000+03:00'
'47788b3d29e72cf79b49f10ccff75af32a60348f'|'South Africa''s audit regulator says KPMG to cooperate with probe'|'October 3, 2017 / 8:51 AM / Updated 24 minutes ago South Africa''s audit regulator says KPMG to cooperate with probe Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The offices of auditors KMPG are seen in Cape Town, South Africa, September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Global auditor KPMG [KPMG.UL] has given its commitment to cooperate with a South African investigation into work done for business friends of President Jacob Zuma, the nation<6F>s audit regulator<6F>s chief executive told lawmakers on Tuesday. <20>In the beginning we did not always receive the information that we required. It was important that the process isn<73>t delayed,<2C> Independent Regulatory Board of Auditors Chief Executive Bernard Agulhas told parliament<6E>s finance committee, adding that KPMG has since committed to cooperate with the probe. Zuma and his friends, the Gupta family, have denied wrongdoing. Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Editing by James Macharia'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-kpmg-safrica-probe/south-africas-audit-regulator-says-kpmg-to-cooperate-with-probe-idUKKCN1C80QW'|'2017-10-03T11:49:00.000+03:00'
'e7a402aa91afc643f4c807989148c8ef66ff60ba'|'Brazil''s BTG: to buy back up to 15.5 mln share units'|' 26 AM / in 10 minutes Brazil''s BTG: to buy back up to 15.5 mln share units Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SAO PAULO, Oct 2 (Reuters) - ** The board of Banco BTG Pactual SA has approved a new share buyback program for up to 15.5 million share units , according to a securities filing on Monday ** The aim of the buyback program is allow for an efficient use of cash resources, so as to maximize the bank<6E>s capital allocation ** The share buyback deadline expires in up to 18 months, and management has discretion to decide when is the best moment to acquire the shares ** Banco BTG<54>s board also approved cancellation of 16,216,200 common shares and 32,432,400 class A preferred shares, which were bought back in the form of units ** After the cancellation, the bank no longer holds units or shares in treasury at the present date (Reporting by Ana Mano)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brazils-btg-to-buy-back-up-to-155-mln-sh/brazils-btg-to-buy-back-up-to-15-5-mln-share-units-idUSL2N1MD0A2'|'2017-10-02T13:24:00.000+03:00'
'8f30b2d05edd6e4aeff34da5ff54776a30bfebe4'|'Italy''s Enel eyes more Brazil M&A after winning dam'|'SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Italy<6C>s Enel SpA is looking for opportunities to expand in Brazil<69>s power sector through acquisitions after winning a license last week to operate a large hydropower dam, the head of local operations said in an interview.Carlo Zorzoli, who is Enel<65>s senior country officer in Brazil, said the Italian utility is weighing whether to bid for some regional distribution firms owned by state-controlled Centrais El<45>tricas Brasileiras SA, as well as power utility Light SA.Enel was also considering bidding for new wind and solar power project licenses in Brazil this year, Zorzoli said, without elaborating.Reporting by Luciano Costa; Writing by Marcelo Teixeira, Editing by Rosalba O''Brien '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-enel-brazil/italys-enel-eyes-more-brazil-ma-after-winning-dam-idINKCN1C72D5'|'2017-10-02T15:46:00.000+03:00'
'63d8a190564ebb5d658f95e962d0790e760c5a1a'|'JPMorgan<61>s Daniel Pinto to hand over Emea baton'|'All the benefits of Standard Digital, plus: Unlimited access to all content Instant Insights column for comment and analysis as news unfolds FT Confidential Research - in-depth China and Southeast Asia analysis ePaper - the digital replica of the printed newspaper Full access to LEX - our agenda setting daily commentary Exclusive emails, including a weekly email from our Editor, Lionel Barber Full access to EM Squared- news and analysis service on emerging markets Other Subscription options:'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/content/32f148b6-a689-11e7-ab55-27219df83c97'|'2017-10-02T08:00:00.000+03:00'
'b17040d3760f25ca435d773f4dcd10c1d8bc6718'|'Time is running out for Deutsche Bank as investors get twitchy'|'All the benefits of Standard Digital, plus: Unlimited access to all content Instant Insights column for comment and analysis as news unfolds FT Confidential Research - in-depth China and Southeast Asia analysis ePaper - the digital replica of the printed newspaper Full access to LEX - our agenda setting daily commentary Exclusive emails, including a weekly email from our Editor, Lionel Barber Full access to EM Squared- news and analysis service on emerging markets Other Subscription options:'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/content/7dda35d4-a762-11e7-ab55-27219df83c97'|'2017-10-02T16:41:00.000+03:00'
'8e105133d64102a15b0fb97304155f732d0ab3f9'|'Graphic - World stocks set best quarterly run since 1990s'|'Traders laugh as they work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) shortly after the opening bell in New York, NY, U.S. December 13, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/Files LONDON (Reuters) - World stocks have gained for sixth straight quarters to chalk up their best run since 1997, while a 20 percent rebound in oil has turned around one of its worst starts to a year on record.It may just be the looming end of the great global easing experiment, but as this graphic shows tmsnrt.rs/2yaWht3 , investors have spent another quarter piling into risk assets.Emerging market stocks have added almost 7 percent. Wall Street and MSCI<43>s 46-country world share index have both risen 4 percent, with the latter on its longest run of gains since late 1997, when 11 rising quarters came to an end.Debt from some of the world<6C>s most politically strained countries has also rallied.Analysts ascribe this to a mix of higher global growth, cheap and plentiful central bank liquidity, subdued inflation, and until the last few weeks, a weak dollar.<2E>The market moved already considerably in the first half of the year, so it has been a consolidation of the gains,<2C> said ABN Amro chief investment officer Didier Duret.<2E>The last three months were a kind of intermediary zone, between the hopes (for stimulus) generated by the U.S. administration and the confirmation that we have a strong recovery globally.<2E>A standout change since the end of the first half has been in the price of oil.Crude was down 16.5 percent at the end of June, but its 20 percent rebound has hoisted it back into positive territory for the year. It has had its best quarter since the second quarter of 2016, marking its fifth quarterly gain of 20 percent or more in the last decade.Metals have also shone. Industrial bellwether copper has added almost 8 percent and zinc and nickel have jumped 14 and 11 percent respectively.Those commodity gains have been helped by the weak dollar, which is still down for the year against most world currencies. CLICK tmsnrt.rs/2egbfVhThe 2.4 percent quarterly fall in the dollar index has been a relative improvement, though. It has also regained ground against the euro, the yen, China<6E>s yuan and Mexico<63>s peso in recent weeks. The latter remains the world<6C>s second-best performer of 2017.The euro, boosted by European Central Bank talk of winding down its more than 2 trillion-euro stimulus programme, is up more than 3 percent since the start of July and nearly 12 percent year-to-date.Debt in domestic emerging-market currencies has rallied. Average yields - which broadly reflect borrowing costs - measured by a widely tracked JPMorgan index are now less that a percentage point above all-time lows.<2E>The market does seem a bit frothy in some areas,<2C> said State Street Global Advisors<72> Abhishek Kumar.Japan<61>s heavyweight Nikkei stock index has eked out a token 1 percent as the yen has stayed steady.But emerging markets and the so-called FANGs - Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet, or Google - again have made the eye-catching moves.Brazilian stocks have recovered from the country<72>s latest political scandal to jump 20 percent in dollar terms. China is up over 13 percent and Russia has surged more than 14 percent, though it is still down for the year.Netflix is up 20 percent, Facebook 10 percent, Apple 6 percent and Google 4 percent, reflecting not just a global tech addiction but also the cheap money sloshing round markets.Britain may well be stuck in messy negotiations over quitting the European Union and an even messier domestic power struggle, but the pound has scored its third straight quarterly gain against the dollar and squeezed out a miniscule one against the euro.At the bottom of the performance league table again is Greece. Its all-too-familiar worries have taken 14 percent off its stock market, although news in recent days that banks there will be spared another stress test, at least for now, has eased some of the pressure.Reporting by Marc Jones, editin
'709e1112fe33e474a5512e20a27aa85ed0be21f3'|'Irish housebuilder Glenveagh to raise up to 550 mln euros in IPO'|'DUBLIN, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Glenveagh Properties plans to raise up to 550 million euros in one of Ireland<6E>s largest initial public offering since the 2008 financial crisis.Glenveagh, which will combine development land acquired in Ireland by U.S. private equity firm Oaktree with the assets of Irish builder Bridgedale, has approximately 1,700 shovel ready units and plans build at least 1,000 new homes a year by 2020.Conditional trading on the Irish and London Stock Exchange is expected to begin on October 10, it said on Monday.Credit Suisse and Ireland<6E>s Davy have been appointed as joint global coordinators. (Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by Jason Neely) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/glenveagh-ipo/irish-housebuilder-glenveagh-to-raise-up-to-550-mln-euros-in-ipo-idINS8N1ID026'|'2017-10-02T04:40:00.000+03:00'
'89726424b8b3260b412ba7b7bd1668f4563b914a'|'Ready meals firm Bakkavor names new chairman ahead of $2 billion float- source'|'October 2, 2017 / 5:22 PM / Updated 27 minutes ago Ready meals firm Bakkavor names new chairman ahead of $2 billion float- source Ben Martin 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Ready meals supplier Bakkavor plans to name a former boss of toy shop Hamleys as its new chairman in preparation for a London listing that could value it at up to 1.5 billion pounds ($2 billion), a source close to the matter told Reuters. The company, which counts Marks & Spencer ( MKS.L ) and Sainsbury<72>s ( SBRY.L ) as major customers for its sandwiches, salads, dips and ready meals, hired HSBC ( HSBA.L ) and Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ) earlier this year to lead its initial public offering (IPO). Barclays ( BARC.L ), Citigroup ( C.N ), Rabobank and Peel Hunt are also working on the deal. The company<6E>s IPO announcement could come as soon as next week, the source said. Lydur Gudmundsson, one of the two Icelandic brothers that founded the business 31 years ago, intends to step down as chairman ahead of the float and will be replaced by Simon Burke, according to the source. The change of chairman could be disclosed at the same time as the listing plans, the source said, but also warned the timings of the announcements could change. Gudmundsson holds a stake in Bakkavor with his brother Agust, who is chief executive of the company. Gudmundsson will relinquish the chairmanship to ensure that Bakkavor, which is Britain<69>s largest hummus maker, meets the U.K.<2E>s corporate governance code that calls for an independent candidate to hold the role of chairman. Burke is already familiar with Bakkavor, having been appointed to its board as a non-executive director in December. The former accountant was previously the chairman and chief executive of Hamleys, the world<6C>s oldest toy shop which under his leadership was sold to Icelandic firm Baugur in 2003. Baugur later collapsed and Hamleys is currently owned by Chinese retailer C. Banner. Bakkavor generated revenues of almost 1.8 billion pounds and pre-tax profits of 63.1 million pounds last year. It started as a cod roe manufacturer and exporter before the Gudmundsson brothers expanded the business with acquisitions financed with debt, borrowings that meant the company became engulfed in Iceland<6E>s financial crisis. Its founders, dubbed the Bakka brothers in Iceland, saw their stake in the company cut during Bakkavor<6F>s subsequent financial restructuring. But the tycoons partnered with U.S. hedge fund Baupost last year in a deal that saw them retake control. In 2014, Lydur Gudmundsson received a partially suspended prison sentence after he was found to have technically broken Icelandic company law during the 2008 crisis while he was chairman of Exista, an investment firm that held a stake in Kaupthing, the failed bank. He served his sentence by undertaking three weeks of community service. Reporting by Ben Martin. Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Jane Merriman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bakkavor-ipo/ready-meals-firm-bakkavor-names-new-chairman-ahead-of-2-billion-float-source-idUKKCN1C72BK'|'2017-10-02T20:22:00.000+03:00'
'eeccd742463d489a034da0997094d466a1abf2b3'|'Euro wobbles briefly on Spanish vote, China data a boon'|'October 1, 2017 / 10:25 PM / in 2 hours Dollar surges as Fed talk boosts Treasury yields Nigel Stephenson 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A U.S. Dollar note is seen in this June 22, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - The dollar soared as U.S. Treasury yields hit their highest in almost 12 weeks, while Spanish borrowing costs rose and stocks fell as a police crackdown on a unilateral independence vote in Catalonia rattled investors. Firming expectations the U.S. Federal Reserve will raise interest rates for a third time this year, data pointing to steady growth in the world<6C>s largest economy and talk of a potentially more hawkish successor to Fed Chair Janet Yellen combined to push Treasury yields higher. Ten-year yields topped 2.37 percent, their highest since mid-July, pushing the dollar half a percent higher against a basket of currencies. <20>The dollar is stronger on higher Treasuries, and the market is seeming to play the idea that the Fed might become more hawkish when we look at the possible candidates for the board of directors,<2C> said Antje Praefcke, FX strategist at Commerzbank. The euro fell 0.6 percent to $1.1738, though traders said the Catalan referendum had only a limited impact on the single currency. But in Spain, the IBEX stocks index fell 1.3 percent in early trade while the pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.2 percent. Banco de Sabadell and Caixabank, both based in Catalonia, fell 2.6 and 1.9 percent respectively. Spanish 10-year government bond yields rose as much as 7 basis points to 1.69 percent, taking the gap between them and German benchmarks close to its widest in nearly four months. Catalan officials said 90 percent of voters in Sunday<61>s ballot favoured secession, raising the possibility of a unilateral declaration of independence in the wealthy region. <20>Whether independence will actually happen remains unclear. What is clear is that Spain has entered a deep political crisis,<2C> ING<4E>s global head of debt and rates strategy, Padhraic Garvey, said. Asian shares rose after upbeat economic data from China and Japan. MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan added 0.2 percent. Japan<61>s Nikkei closed up 0.2 percent after a survey showed the mood among big manufacturers was its best in a decade. China<6E>s manufacturing activity grew at its fastest pace since 2012 last month. The official Purchasing Managers<72> Index released on Saturday rose to 52.4 from 51.7 in August. Chinese markets were closed for a week-long holiday. The Japanese yen fell half a percent to 113.02 per dollar while sterling fell 0.6 percent to $1.3325. The dollar has been on a roll since Fed chief Yellen said last week it would be <20>imprudent<6E> to keep monetary policy on hold until U.S. inflation picked up to 2 percent. HAWKISH Speculation that President Donald Trump might choose former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh, who is considered more hawkish than Yellen, to replace her as head of the central bank also boosted the dollar. The dollar notched up its best weekly performance of 2017 last week, lifted also by a revival of the <20>Trumpflation<6F> trade on expectations Trump would deliver a stalled tax reform plan. Oil prices fell after a Reuters survey found output from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) rose by 50,000 barrels a day last month. Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell 40 cents a barrel to $56.39. The strong dollar helped drag gold down to its lowest in almost seven weeks. The precious metal fell 0.6 percnet to $1,272 an ounce. For Reuters Live Markets blog on European and UK stock markets see reuters://realtime/verb=Open/url=http://emea1.apps.cp.extranet.thomsonreuters.biz/cms/?pageId=livemarkets Additional reporting by Wayne Cole in Sydney, Jemima Kelly and John Geddie in London; editing by John Stonestreet'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/euro-wobbles-briefly-
'f95c88b061f9f9f1872e41b6c3325ad9671bf53e'|'Bain bid for Japan ad agency Asatsu-DK too low - shareholder Silchester'|' 40 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago Bain bid for Japan ad agency Asatsu-DK too low - shareholder Silchester Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The logo of Bain Capital is displayed on the screen during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital LP<4C>s $1.35 billion (<28>1.02 billion) offer to buy Japan<61>s third-largest advertising agency Asatsu-DK Inc ( 9747.T ) is too low, its second-largest shareholder Silchester International Investors LLP has said. London-based fund Silchester, which owns 17.3 percent of the ad agency, joins largest shareholder WPP PLC ( WPP.L ) in questioning the bid price, with WPP believing the buyout plan significantly undervalues Asatsu-DK, a person familiar with the matter previously told Reuters. <20>The current offer price substantially undervalues ADK, its assets, franchise and future opportunities,<2C> Silchester said in a statement dated Wednesday. It <20>encourages other prospective buyers of ADK to come forward.<2E> Asatsu-DK shares have risen above Bain<69>s 3,660 yen ($32.49) per share offer price, closing at 3,845 yen in Tokyo trading on Thursday, indicating some investors expect Bain will have to improve its bid or that a rival bid is likely. Bain declined to comment on the matter. Asatsu-DK supports Bain<69>s offer, saying private ownership represents the best option to position the ad agency for sustainable growth. It intends to dissolve its longstanding alliance with WPP, the world<6C>s largest advertising group. Bain<69>s latest bid for a Japanese firm comes only days after a consortium led by the Boston-based firm signed an $18 billion deal to buy Toshiba Corp<72>s ( 6502.T ) microchip business. Reporting by Sam Nussey; Editing by Christopher Cushing'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-asatsu-dk-m-a-bain/bain-bid-for-japan-ad-agency-asatsu-dk-too-low-shareholder-silchester-idUKKBN1CA0LX'|'2017-10-05T10:40:00.000+03:00'
'22ffc88a79f40bfeba633624c84d2fda272924b8'|'PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - October 5'|'Oct 5 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.- In a public statement, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson emphasized his support of President Donald Trump and his agenda, despite a recent media report that he had criticized the president. nyti.ms/2xUoHEQ- Alphabet Inc''s Google unveiled new smartphones, smart speakers and other gadgets at a product launch in an attempt to demonstrate the company''s commitment to artificial intelligence. nyti.ms/2yJ7ZYc- The European Commission said it would take Ireland to court for not clawing back billions from Apple Inc, and ordered Luxembourg to recover around $293 million from Amazon . nyti.ms/2ypJoeW- Newsroom employees at the Los Angeles Times are trying to form a union, setting up a potential clash with the newspaper''s parent company, Tronc Inc. nyti.ms/2y2btYu- Three U.S. Army Special Forces troops were killed and two wounded on Wednesday in an ambush in Niger while on a training mission with troops from that nation in northwestern Africa, American military officials said. nyti.ms/2y2eRmrCompiled by Bengaluru newsroom '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/press-digest-nyt/press-digest-new-york-times-business-news-october-5-idINL4N1MG0RX'|'2017-10-05T02:54:00.000+03:00'
'6e5f07ec53e68e78d092db671948ec06c004c794'|'Bain Capital aims to list Toshiba chip unit in Tokyo within a few years'|' 29 AM / Updated 25 minutes ago Bain Capital aims to list Toshiba chip unit in Tokyo within a few years   Bain Capital LP Managing Director Yuji Sugimoto speaks during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital LP said on Thursday that it aims to list Toshiba Corp<72>s ( 6502.T ) chip unit on the Tokyo Stock Exchange within a few years. Bain, which led a consortium that signed an $18 billion deal for Toshiba<62>s prized chip unit last week, also said it hopes to settle legal disputes with Western Digital Corp ( WDC.O ), Toshiba<62>s joint venture partner, at an early stage. Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki and Junko Fujita; Editing by Christopher Cushing'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-toshiba-accounting/bain-capital-aims-to-list-toshiba-chip-unit-in-tokyo-within-a-few-years-idUKKBN1CA0FG'|'2017-10-05T09:28:00.000+03:00'
'a12e489befb6cd8daca47ee1f11579525e84f780'|'MOVES-Credit Suisse, Bank of America, JPMorgan, Calastone, Baillie Gifford, Franklin Templeton'|'(Adds PIMCO, Chubb, BTIG, Lancashire County Council)Oct 2 (Reuters) - The following financial services industry appointments were announced on Monday. To inform us of other job changes, email moves@thomsonreuters.com.CREDIT SUISSE Credit Suisse named Max Mesny and Armando Rubio-Alvarez co-heads of the EMEA financial institutions group, replacing Eric Richard, who will become a vice chairman of the group and focus on strategic client coverage. BANK OF AMERICA Bank of America said on Sunday it had named Katy Knox president of its private bank, U.S. Trust, replacing Keith Banks.JPMORGAN CHASE JPMorgan has appointed Vis Raghavan as chief executive of its Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) business, according to a memo seen by Reuters.CALASTONE LTD Financial technology firm Calastone Ltd, a fund transaction network operator, named Henning Swabey as managing director and head of continental Europe.JPMORGAN CHASE The asset management arm of JPMorgan Chase and Co said it appointed Mark Oldcorn as head of International Insurance Solutions.BAILLIE GIFFORD & CO Asset manager Baillie Gifford & Co said Sarah Whitley, partner and head of the Japanese Equities team, and Stephen Rodger and Ken Barker, both partners within the firm<72>s fixed income area, will step down from the partnership on April 30, 2018.CARDANO Investment adviser Cardano named Cedric Bucher as co-head of Defined Contribution (DC) pensions business.FRANKLIN RESOURCES INC Franklin Templeton, part of investment management firm Franklin Resources Inc, named Lutz Morjan as senior solutions portfolio manager of EMEA, effective Sept. 1.MARKEL INTERNATIONAL London-based specialist insurer Markel International has appointed Trevor McAuley as subsea equipment underwriter and Katie Costello as hull and war underwriter in its marine, energy and property business.MHA MACINTYRE HUDSON UK accountancy firm MHA MacIntyre Hudson named Alicia Crisp as a partner, one of the youngest among the firm<72>s 86 partners.SCHRODERS Asset manager Schroders Adveq said Reto Schwager will succeed Sven Liden as chief executive, effective Jan. 1.PIMCO Pacific Investment Management Company LLC said it appointed Adam Iqbal as executive vice president and portfolio manager and Michael Davidson as senior vice president and portfolio manager.CHUBB LTD Insurer Chubb Ltd CB.N said it appointed Hannah Hosking as head of distribution for independent brokers UK&I and Steve Bear as independent broker team manager for London Corporate. BTIG LLC Financial services firm BTIG LLC appointed Christopher Rollins as managing director and head of U.S. execution services. [LANCASHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL Local Pensions Partnership<69>s co-chief investment officer, Mike Jensen, is set to join Lancashire County Council (LCC) in the new position of director of investments. (Compiled by Sonam Rai) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/financial-moves/moves-credit-suisse-bank-of-america-jpmorgan-calastone-baillie-gifford-franklin-templeton-idUSL4N1MD2R8'|'2017-10-02T13:28:00.000+03:00'
'649ac39db903a6f50f252b7b5f8be738c5a21a29'|'Canada''s Home Capital cuts 10 percent of workforce'|'October 2, 2017 / 6:47 PM / in an hour Canada''s Home Capital cuts 10 percent of workforce Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The entry to the Home Capital Group''s headquarters is seen at an office tower in the financial district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada on May 1, 2017. Picture taken using a wide angle lens. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo (Reuters) - Canada<64>s biggest non-bank mortgage lender Home Capital Group Inc ( HCG.TO ) said on Monday it had reduced its workforce by about 10 percent since the second quarter and reaffirmed its expectation to achieve about C$15 million ($12 million) in future savings. The company, which had initiated a cost-savings program in February, had 816 active employees as of June 30. ( bit.ly/2xbelOF ) Home Capital said it is still facing high costs after investors withdrew more than 90 percent of funds from the mortgage lender<65>s high-interest savings accounts. The withdrawals accelerated when the Ontario Securities Commission accused Home Capital of making misleading statements to investors about its mortgage underwriting business. The company reached a settlement with the commission in June and accepted responsibility for misleading investors. Home Capital said on Monday that it does not expect to record any further significant expenses as part of the program. The lender had previously incurred restructuring costs of about C$9.7 million after tax in the first half of 2017. Reporting by John Benny in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-home-capital-redundancies/canadas-home-capital-cuts-10-percent-of-workforce-idUSKCN1C72GK'|'2017-10-02T21:45:00.000+03:00'
'5d0bc38540c8ac493bd1bd73cac9199f17c5ed52'|'Italy''s investment bank Equita to list by year end: source'|'MILAN (Reuters) - Italian boutique investment bank Equita aims to list on the Milan bourse by the end of the year, a source close to the matter said on Monday.The source added that the company, fully owned by its management, wants to list on Aim Italia - a segment of the Milan stock exchange dedicated to small and medium enterprises - but the final goal is to be listed on the Mta main market.Equita declined to comment.reporting by Elisa Anzolin, editing by Giulia Segreti '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-equita-ipo/italys-investment-bank-equita-to-list-by-year-end-source-idUSKCN1C71XP'|'2017-10-02T23:01:00.000+03:00'
'94856d87b75cd735119d12bce004cf8f4e85d675'|'METALS- Aluminium hits two-week low as investors wait for shutdowns'|' 31 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago METALS- Aluminium hits two-week low as investors wait for shutdowns Reuters Staff * LME/ShFE arb: bit.ly/2wZSAEz (Adds comments, updates prices, changes dateline from MANILA) By Eric Onstad LONDON, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Aluminium touched a two-week low on Monday as investors locked in profits as they waited for evidence that an environmental crackdown in China would slash output. Other metals, however, were supported by data showing that the manufacturing sector in top metals consumer China expanded at the fastest clip in more than five years and after Beijing slashed bank reserve requirements to boost lending. Starting in October, Chinese aluminium smelters are closing some production to meet strict air quality standards for the winter. <20>While there<72>s been talk of the cuts, we really haven<65>t seen them yet. I do think they<65>re still coming, but people are looking for a little bit more evidence,<2C> said Colin Hamilton, director of commodities research at BMO Capital Markets in London. <20>I<EFBFBD>d imagine people are also taking a little bit of profit ahead of Golden Week.<2E> Chinese markets are closed this week for the National Day break. Three-month aluminium on the London Metal Exchange was down 0.7 percent at $2,086.50 a tonne by 1015 GMT after touching $2,082, the lowest since Sept. 18. The metal mainly used in transport and packaging had gained nearly 20 percent in the three months leading to its five-year peak of $2,199 on Sept. 21 and has slipped about 5 percent since then. * LEAD: The metal mainly used for batteries was the top performer on the LME, climbing 1.4 percent to $2,520 a tonne on signs of shortages. * LEAD BACKWARDATION: Cash lead moved to a $7 premium against the three-month contract CMPB0-3, the highest since April. A backwardation, when a nearby contract is higher than a forward one, usually indicates lack of supply. <20>The curve gets into backwardation...in further signs of supply stress on the back of environmental measures and China demand,<2C> Alastair Munro at broker Marex Spectron said in a note. * ZINC: LME zinc rose 0.6 percent to $3,180 after available LME inventories MZNSTX-TOTAL fell by 16,950 tonnes, bringing the decline so far this year to 64 percent. * ZINC TIGHTNESS: The premium of cash zinc over three months was $43.25 a tonne at Friday<61>s close, down from a peak of $66 earlier last week, but still strong compared with a high of $11 during the year until mid-September. * COPPER: LME copper rose 0.2 percent to $6,496.50 a tonne. * COPPER SUPPLY NEWS: Copper prices were pressured by news of further supply coming on the market after news that Indonesia<69>s giant Grasberg mine can continue to export copper concentrate even if permit talks are not resolved this month. Also, Japan<61>s Mitsubishi Materials Corp said it plans to produce 14 percent more refined copper in October-March. Additional reporting by Manolo Serapio Jr. in Manila, editing by Louise Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/global-metals/metals-aluminium-hits-two-week-low-as-investors-wait-for-shutdowns-idUSL4N1MD2IP'|'2017-10-02T13:29:00.000+03:00'
'8afae91cdfde660d28f0197f92240efc5b4befda'|'NEX Group warns on profits at post-trade business'|' 40 AM / in 10 minutes NEX Group warns on profits at post-trade business Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - British financial trading technology company NEX Group Plc ( NXGN.L ) said increased spending at its post-trade and information services operations would dent the division<6F>s profitability, sending its stock lower on Monday. Shares in NEX, which was known as ICAP before it sold its voice broking business to TP ICAP ( TCAPI.L ) in 2016, were down 5.3 percent at 0755 GMT, making them second biggest faller on FTSE Mid-cap .FTMC index. The company said it expects NEX Optimisation<6F>s operating profit margin to come in at 20 percent in the first half, down from the 29 percent in the prior year. The division accounts for around 44 percent of NEX<45>s annual revenue. The company benefited last year from increased market volatility after unexpected outcomes in global politics, such as Donald Trump<6D>s victory in the U.S. presidential election and Britain<69>s decision to leave the European Union. However, the wider sector has long struggled with declining volumes, hit by regulation designed to rein in the riskier trading activities of traditional investment bank clients. NEX, which matches buyers and sellers of bonds, swaps and currencies, said the effect of the increased investment on its profit margin is seen returning to normal in the second half of the year. Revenue for the period rose 7 percent in the first half. <20>We remain committed to the financial aspirations we set out earlier in the year to achieve compound revenue growth of 7-10 percent and divisional operating margin for NEX Optimisation and NEX Markets of more than 40 percent by 2019/2020,<2C> Chief Executive Michael Spencer said. Reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru, editing by Louise Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nex-group-outlook/nex-group-warns-on-profits-at-post-trade-business-idUKKCN1C70SR'|'2017-10-02T11:40:00.000+03:00'
'7095aea425e5a0932af8222781a832ee793cae15'|'UPDATE 1-Hiscox expects $225 mln net claims from hurricanes Harvey, Irma'|'October 2, 2017 / 6:37 AM / Updated an hour ago UPDATE 1-Hiscox expects $225 mln net claims from hurricanes Harvey, Irma Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Adds CEO comment, details, background) Oct 2 (Reuters) - Lloyd<79>s of London underwriter Hiscox Ltd estimated on Monday that it would face net claims totalling about $225 million from Harvey and Irma, as insurers and reinsurers count the cost of the hurricanes. The company said that despite continuing uncertainty around the losses from Harvey and Irma, the estimates were within its modelled range of claims for events of this nature and that it still had <20>depth of cover<65> in its reinsurance business. Hiscox had previously estimated that it would see net claims of about $150 million from Hurricane Harvey. Harvey lashed Texas causing flooding that put it on the scale of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and Irma, one of the most powerful Atlantic storms on record, ravaged several islands in the northern Caribbean, before moving into Florida<64>s Gulf Coast. The Lloyd<79>s of London insurance market has forecast that it expects net losses for the market of $4.5 billion from the two hurricanes. Hiscox Chief Executive Bronek Masojada said the storms meant insurance and reinsurance rates were on an uptrend, impacting rates in affected areas and specific sectors. <20>After a number of years of rate reductions, we are starting to see price corrections, most acutely in affected lines such as large property insurance and catastrophe reinsurance, which we expect to spread to non-affected lines,<2C> he said. Industry experts have said that some big reinsurers could be tipped into the red this year, following Hurricane Maria, the third major hurricane of the past few weeks, which caused an island-wide power outage in Puerto Rico. The outage will mean a surge in insurance claims for lost business income that will increase the already high cost of damage caused by Maria. Last week, rival Lloyd<79>s insurer Beazley said it reckoned that its losses from hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria in the Caribbean and southern United States and a series of earthquakes in Mexico would reduce its 2017 earnings by about $150 million. Hiscox is set to publish its third-quarter interim trading statement on November 7. (Reporting by Esha Vaish in Bengaluru; editing by Carolyn Cohn)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/hiscox-outlook/update-1-hiscox-expects-225-mln-net-claims-from-hurricanes-harvey-irma-idUSL8N1MD0TH'|'2017-10-02T09:37:00.000+03:00'
'7c666b63870a2a11ef2b028f157fa19de625c428'|'A shortage of airline pilots? I wonder why - Brief letters - Business - The Guardian'|'We keep hearing that the Ryanair crisis is due to a shortage of trained pilots ( Opinion , 30 September). According to the CAA, just 6% of British pilots are women; the figure worldwide is 3%. Go figure, guys.Roger Osborne Scarborough, North Yorkshire <20> If you stand by any of the many old pagodas in Mawlamyine (formerly Moulmein) looking eastward, you will have your back to the sea. I had always wondered why Kipling got it so wrong, but, as your article makes clear ( Report , 30 September), he was only in Myanmar for three days and probably never went to Moulmein. Boris should beware of using the poet of empire for geopolitical guidance.Frank Donald Edinburgh <20> Joyce Hawthorn ( Letters , 2 October) was right to complain about the unfairness of nine out of 50 recommendations for Sunday lunches being in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Given the respective populations, England was slightly under-represented in the list.Alison Smart London <20> Excited by Michael Billington<6F>s review of King Lear at Chichester (2 October), I went at once to the theatre website to buy tickets. Every performance, of course, sold out. What is the point of reviewing productions we cannot get to see, and why do theatres allow such a short run?Frank Danes Ely, Cambridgeshire <20> Now that Twitter is trialling doubling the length of tweets to 280 characters ( Report , 26 September, theguardian.com) it is surely time to retaliate and double the space available for readers<72> letters.Keith Flett London <20> Goats<74> and ewes<65> milk (and their derivative yoghurts and cheeses) are at least as good as cows<77> milk in terms of iodine content ( G2 , 2 October), and are less likely to trigger the intolerance reactions sometimes experienced with cows<77> milk.Pam Lunn Kenilworth, Warwickshire <20> Join the debate <20> email guardian.letters@theguardian.com <20> Read more Guardian letters <20> click here to visit gu.com/letters Topics Ryanair Brief letters Airline industry Feminism Women Food & drink Theatre letters'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/ryanair/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/02/a-shortage-of-airline-pilots-i-wonder-why'|'2017-10-03T02:10:00.000+03:00'
'825740dfeda0b51dcbe421c8e335743d64a8cf1c'|'U.S. jury cuts damages in TCS-Epic trade secrets lawsuit'|'Violence erupts as Catalans vote on split from Spain Violence erupts as Catalans vote on split from Spain Violence erupts as Catalans vote on split from Spain Reuters TV United States  19 PM / in 2 hours U.S. jury cuts damages in TCS-Epic trade secrets lawsuit Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PICTURE: Logos of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) are displayed at the venue of the annual general meeting of the software services provider in Mumbai, June 29, 2012. REUTERS/Vivek Prakash MUMBAI (Reuters) - India<69>s top software services exporter Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) said on Sunday a U.S. jury had more than halved to $420 million the damages it has to pay to medical software company Epic Systems in a trade secrets lawsuit. In April 2016, the jury in Wisconsin found TCS guilty of illegally accessing Epic Systems'' data when working for a common client and awarded Epic Systems $940 million in damages. ( reut.rs/2hFQkxc ) TCS, which denied any wrongdoing, said it would continue to contest the order. <20>The company has received legal advice to the effect that the order and the reduced damages awarded are not supported by evidence presented during the trial and a strong appeal can be made to superior court to fully set aside the jury verdict,<2C> TCS said in a statement. The order will not have any impact on the IT services company<6E>s second-quarter results expected later this month, TCS said. Epic Systems was not immediately available for comment. For full statement see: bit.ly/1t187j0   Roy; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-tcs-epic-lawsuit/u-s-jury-cuts-damages-in-tcs-epic-trade-secrets-lawsuit-idUKKCN1C61E4'|'2017-10-01T16:16:00.000+03:00'
'e2d64636697ac7b24c09aae3d69ee0bf6cff5c33'|'Metro Inc to buy Jean Coutu Group in $3.60 billion deal'|'FILE PICTURE: pedestrian walks past a Jean Coutu pharmacy in downtown Montreal, April 28, 2010. REUTERS/Shaun Best (Reuters) - Metro Inc, Canada<64>s third biggest food retailer, said on Monday it would buy pharmacy chain Jean Coutu Group for C$4.5 billion ($3.60 billion).Shares of Jean Coutu rose as much as 2.1 percent to touch a more than two-year high at C$24.81 in afternoon trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.Metro Inc, which had last week said it was in talks to buy Jean Coutu, offered C$24.50 per share for the Varennes, Qu<51>bec-based company.Jean Coutu operates drugstores in Quebec, New Brunswick and Ontario, and it acquired a generic drug maker in 2007. Metro operates more than 600 food stores across Canada.BMO Capital Markets and CIBC World Markets were the financial advisers to Metro and Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP its legal counsel.National Bank Financial Inc was the financial adviser for Jean Coutu and Stikeman Elliott LLP was its legal counsel.Reporting by Anirban Paul in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-jeancoutu-m-a-metroinc/metro-inc-to-buy-jean-coutu-group-in-3-60-billion-deal-idINKCN1C713H'|'2017-10-02T08:39:00.000+03:00'
'32b8dd52369f0486d79d2edf9529e1a4d057d638'|'Chubb expects Hurricane Maria-related third quarter insurance losses of $200 million'|'October 2, 2017 / 12:30 PM / Updated 2 hours ago Chubb expects Hurricane Maria-related third quarter insurance losses of $200 million Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Damaged houses in Canovanas. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins (Reuters) - Property and casualty insurer Chubb Ltd ( CB.N ) on Monday estimated that the maximum net insurance and net reinsurance losses related to Hurricane Maria would be about $200 million after tax for the third quarter. The world<6C>s largest listed property and casualty insurer said it estimated that all other natural catastrophe net insured losses in the quarter, other than those announced for Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, would about $86 million after tax. Reporting by Roopal Verma in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chubb-hurricane-maria/chubb-expects-hurricane-maria-related-third-quarter-insurance-losses-of-200-million-idUSKCN1C71H4'|'2017-10-02T15:30:00.000+03:00'
'4ac0cda804b22dab1846e8401d50a785a9713989'|'U.S. casino stocks fall following mass shooting in Las Vegas'|'October 2, 2017 / 12:40 PM / in 5 hours U.S. casino stocks fall following mass shooting in Las Vegas Reuters Staff 2 Min Read People run outside the Mandalay Bay Hotel after a gunman opened fire on attendees of the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival. TWITTER/ @MORGANDBAMBI via REUTERS (Reuters) - Shares of Las Vegas casino operators fell as much as 5 percent in premarket trading on Monday after a gunman killed at least 50 people and wounded 200 others in a mass shooting on the Las Vegas strip. MGM Resorts International, which owns the Mandalay Bay hotel from where the gunman opened fire, was down 5 percent. Melco Resorts & Entertainment Ltd, Wynn Resorts Ltd and Las Vegas Sands Corp each fell 1 to 2 percent. In a statement on Twitter, MGM Resorts said it had locked down hotels in the vicinity at the request of law enforcement officers. It was unclear if other casinos were also put on lockdown following the incident. <20>Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of last night<68>s tragic events. We<57>re grateful for the immediate actions of our first responders,<2C> MGM Resorts said in the tweet. Las Vegas<61>s casinos, nightclubs and shopping draw some 3.5 million visitors from around the world each year and the area was packed with visitors when the shooting broke out shortly after 10 p.m. local time (0400 GMT). Reporting by Siddharth Cavale and Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lasvegas-casinos-markets/u-s-casino-stocks-fall-following-mass-shooting-in-las-vegas-idUSKCN1C71I1'|'2017-10-02T15:48:00.000+03:00'
'095890777abfa07dacc7656d5fa9838de7b1d5f9'|'Van Dijk receives belated Dutch call-up'|'October 2, 2017 / 2:20 PM / in 21 minutes Van Dijk receives belated Dutch call-up Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Soccer Football - Premier League - Stoke City vs Southampton - bet365 Stadium, Stoke, Britain - September 30, 2017 Southampton''s Virgil van Dijk looks on Action Images via Reuters/Craig Brough AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Defender Virgil van Dijk, who only returned to Southampton<6F>s starting line-up at the weekend, has been called up to the Netherlands squad for their upcoming World Cup qualifiers, the Dutch football association (KNVB) said on Monday. Van Dijk, 26, returns to the national side for the first time this year after injury ruled him out of matches in March and June. A transfer stand off with Southampton saw him miss the start of the new Premier League season and last month<74>s qualifying matches for Russia. He came on as a substitute for the south coast side against Crystal Palace last month and made his first start on Saturday in the away defeat at Stoke City. Van Dijk has 12 caps for the Netherlands, who must beat Belarus away in Borisov on Saturday and Sweden at home next Tuesday to have any chance of reaching the World Cup finals next year. Reporting by Mark Gleeson; Editing by Christian Radnedge'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-soccer-world-ned/van-dijk-receives-belated-dutch-call-up-idUKKCN1C71SH'|'2017-10-02T17:19:00.000+03:00'
'b61c23887b532a9d6854970c045222790abcbf9c'|'European stocks jump into Q4 but Spanish banks sink on Catalan vote'|'LONDON, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Spanish stocks sank on Monday after a violent referendum in Catalonia, underperforming the wider European market as political uncertainty dented bank shares.The pan-European STOXX 600 jumped into the fourth quarter with a 0.3 percent gain, boosted by strong travel stocks and a mining sector supported by better metals prices.But Spain<69>s IBEX fell 1.2 percent after Catalans defied a police crackdown to vote for independence in a referendum the Spanish government said was unconstitutional.Spanish banks opened sharply lower, down between 1.8 and 3.2 percent, leading the IBEX down, with shares in Catalonia-headquartered Banco Sabadell and Caixabank the worst-performing.On the STOXX, ballpoint pen and razor maker BIC sank 10 percent after shaving its 2017 sales forecast due to weaker than expected performance in U.S. and Latin American markets.EasyJet, Ryanair and Lufthansa were among top gainers, up between 2.9 and 5 percent after Monarch Airlines went bust, prompting Britain<69>s biggest-ever peacetime repatriation effort to return thousands of stranded passengers.Reports last week said easyJet and Wizz Air were in talks to take over some of Monarch<63>s short-haul network. Travel and leisure stocks jumped 1.2 percent on the prospect of airlines carving up Monarch<63>s assets.Gjensidige Forsikring shares gained 3.5 percent after DNB raised the insurer to a <20>buy<75>, saying its current discount to peers was unwarranted.Aggreko sank 5.9 percent after Berenberg cut it to a <20>sell<6C>.Reporting by Helen Reid '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/europe-stocks/european-stocks-jump-into-q4-but-spanish-banks-sink-on-catalan-vote-idUSL8N1MD129'|'2017-10-02T10:32:00.000+03:00'
'6f9fc48a77d69d628d1130e4da2950dc436eef28'|'UPDATE 1-MOVES-Katy Knox replacing Keith Banks as U.S. Trust president'|'(Updates to include Banks<6B> new title as vice chairman of global wealth & investment management)Oct 1 (Reuters) - Bank of America said on Sunday that it had named Katy Knox president of its private bank, U.S. Trust, replacing Keith Banks. Banks, who had led U.S. Trust since 2009, was named vice chairman of global wealth & investment management, and will report to Terry Laughlin, head of Bank of America<63>s GWIM business, the company said.Banks will also continue as head of the chief investment office and investment solutions groups, a job he started in November 2016. Knox has led business banking at Bank of America since 2014. Banks and Knox will work together on the leadership transition through the end of the year. (Reporting by Sinead Carew; Editing by Sandra Maler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/bankofamerica-moves-knox/update-1-moves-katy-knox-replacing-keith-banks-as-u-s-trust-president-idUSL2N1MD0WH'|'2017-10-02T17:57:00.000+03:00'
'a02dc7037a24b418049f0096191fcc8ccd1d1872'|'RioCan pipeline can offset planned $1.6 billion property sales: CEO'|'TORONTO (Reuters) - RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust ( REI_u.TO ), Canada<64>s largest property trust, has sufficient development projects in its pipeline to offset its planned C$2 billion ($1.6 billion) sale of shopping malls, its chief executive officer said on Monday.RioCan will sell about 100 Canadian properties over the next two to three years to focus on Canada<64>s largest cities, and will use half of the expected proceeds of C$1.5 billion to buy back shares, the Toronto-based company announced earlier on Monday.It did not identify the properties it intended to sell.RioCan is seeking to boost rental income growth by focusing on key population centers in Canada as store closures and bankruptcies hit mall owners.Six cities, including Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary, will account for 90 percent of annual rental revenue after the sales, up from 75 percent now, RioCan said, adding that the move would boost same property net operating income by 3 percent annually.<2E>The properties we intend to sell are solid, reliable income properties, (but) their annual net operating income growth lags the growth we<77>re able to achieve in our primary market portfolio,<2C> RioCan Chief Executive Edward Sonshine said in a conference call.<2E>At the same time, the current phase of our development program will have sufficient completions over the next few years to more than make up for that which we will be selling.<2E>RioCan will suspend its dividend reinvestment plan from Nov. 1, and continue to invest between C$300 million and $400 million per year into its development pipeline in the six major cities.The company has received interest from potential buyers, including other REITs, private investors and some small pension funds, for the properties it intends to sell, Sonshine said. More than 90 percent of the properties identified for sale are owned by RioCan, he said.RioCan is also a partner in one of Canadian department store operator Hudson<6F>s Bay Co<43>s ( HBC.TO ) real estate joint ventures.Last year, RioCan raised C$1.2 billion by selling 49 retail properties in the United States to focus on its Canadian business.($1 = 1.2486 Canadian dollars)Reporting by Nichola Saminather; Editing by Paul Simao '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-riocan-reit-properties/riocan-pipeline-can-offset-planned-1-6-billion-property-sales-ceo-idINKCN1C72C9'|'2017-10-02T15:30:00.000+03:00'
'd57f93d7fcc4daa050453d53f38153fa908a90d1'|'MOVES-JPMorgan appoints Vis Raghavan as EMEA CEO'|' 45 AM / in 8 minutes MOVES-JPMorgan appoints Vis Raghavan as EMEA CEO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON, Oct 2 (Reuters) - JPMorgan has appointed Vis Raghavan as chief executive of its Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) business, according to a memo seen by Reuters. Raghavan, currently deputy CEO of JPMorgan<61>s EMEA operations, will oversee the co-ordination of the bank<6E>s EMEA business in asset management and private banking as well as the corporate and investment bank. The appointment comes six months after Daniel Pinto, JPMorgan<61>s global head of investment and corporate banking, was handed additional responsibilities including joint global head of technology and operations, following the exit of the bank<6E>s chief operating officer Matt Zames. Raghavan, who has held a number of roles at JPMorgan since joining the bank in 2000 from Lehman Brothers, will report to Pinto and to Mary Erdoes, chief executive of JPMorgan Asset Management. He will also become CEO of JP Morgan Securities plc, the bank said. (Reporting by Anjuli Davies and Carolyn Cohn; Editing by Rachel Armstrong)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/jpmorgan-emea/moves-jpmorgan-appoints-vis-raghavan-as-emea-ceo-idUSL8N1MD0W9'|'2017-10-02T09:45:00.000+03:00'
'8d4970cb9934a08deb3c879e1052f9d508782b38'|'Asian shares edge down, Wall Street records limit losses'|'Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid NEW YORK (Reuters) - World shares extended a run of record highs on Tuesday on signs of strong economic growth, while the dollar was slightly weaker against the euro as investors squared positions after a three-week rally and before several days of heavy U.S. data.MSCI<43>s gauge of world stock performance hit a fresh all-time high, the three major stock indexes on Wall Street closed at record highs and overnight in Tokyo stocks hit two-year highs.The gain in the MSCI benchmark was its 10th record high since late July and extended the year<61>s slew of records to more than 40 with little indication the run is about to end.European shares closed higher at more than three-month highs while Spanish blue chips .IBEX were little changed as the central government and Catalonia appeared to carefully weigh their next move after Sunday''s violence-marred independence vote.Investors want to know if the equity bull market has peaked but with earnings still growing, shares can continue to go up, said Frances Hudson, global thematic strategist at Aberdeen Standard Investments in Edinburgh.<2E>In the case of the market going higher and higher, the flows have been out of the U.S. equities. So if the market is going higher it<69>s another driver, and the other driver is probably earnings,<2C> said Hudson, speaking in New York.In the latest sign of economic growth, Delta Air Lines reported that its <20>cargo ton miles<65> metric rose 9.4 percent in September from a year earlier.While margins deteriorated because of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, cargo revenue was a bright spot for Delta, Cowen & Co. reported. Delta shares closed up 6.6 percent, the sixth-largest contributor to the benchmark S&P 500 index<65>s surge.It was the second consecutive day that the three major indexes on Wall Street closed at record highs.The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 76.28 points, or 0.34 percent, to 22,633.88. The S&P 500 .SPX gained 3.19 points, or 0.13 percent, to 2,532.31 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 7.07 points, or 0.11 percent, to 6,523.79.The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 rose 0.19 percent to close at 1,535.44 and MSCI''s index of stock performance in 47 countries .MIWD PUS gained 0.37 percent.Companies in the S&P 500 paid a record $105.4 billion in dividends in the third quarter and are trending higher in the fourth quarter, S&P Dow Jones Indices said. Dividends for 2017 are on track to post a 7 percent gain, S&P said.<2E>The fact dividends are up is very positive,<2C> said David Joy, chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial Services Inc. <20>The strength of the economy both at home and abroad is producing pretty good corporate earnings,<2C> he said.The dollar rose slightly against the Japanese yen, but slipped against the euro.The dollar index .DXY was up 0.01 percent, with the euro EUR= up 0.15 percent to $1.1748 as the yen weakened 0.11 percent versus the greenback at 112.86 per dollar.Stronger U.S. data, along with the prospect of U.S. tax cuts and the likelihood of a further interest rate hike in December, have boosted the U.S. currency in recent weeks.Oil prices dipped as speculators took profits for a second day after big third-quarter gains, but prospects for reducing the global crude glut lent support.Brent LCOcv1 settled down 12 cents at $56.00 per barrel, while U.S. crude CLcv1 fell 16 cents to settle at $50.42.U.S. Treasury debt yields were slightly lower in volatile trading as market sentiment remained cautious.Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR last rose 3/32 in price to yield 2.3247 percent.U.S. gold futures GCcv1 for December delivery settled down $1.20 at $1,274.60 per ounce.For a graphic on world FX rates in 2017 click tmsnrt.rs/2egbfVhReporting by Herbert Lash; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Chizu Nomiyama '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-globa
'd0afec20ec3a7920ccca6582dd3a4a5bdf675912'|'PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 3'|'Oct 3 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.- General Motors Co said it will add at least 20 electric vehicles to its lineup by 2023. nyti.ms/2xW30pY- Monarch Airlines, a struggling British low-cost carrier and tour operator, collapsed into bankruptcy early Monday, ceasing its flights and forcing the government to step in and bring home more than 100,000 passengers stranded abroad. nyti.ms/2xUqPOa- Veteran rocker and songwriter Tom Petty died on Monday at the age of 66 after suffering a cardiac arrest. nyti.ms/2fFuoOj- A gunman on a high floor of a Las Vegas hotel rained a rapid-fire barrage on an outdoor concert festival on Sunday night, leaving at least 59 people dead and injuring 527 others, in one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history. nyti.ms/2x9D9eU- Federal investigators and officials at Facebook believe that Russian ads on the social media platform during last year''s American presidential election were part of a highly coordinated misinformation campaign linked to the Internet Research Agency, a secretive company in St. Petersburg, Russia. nyti.ms/2g4eVIjCompiled by Bengaluru newsroom '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/press-digest-nyt/press-digest-new-york-times-business-news-oct-3-idINL4N1ME11E'|'2017-10-03T03:04:00.000+03:00'
'44a8e53adb966608a1decb6214edd19a1c5d4b1d'|'Interview - NuGen to secure buyer for UK Moorside nuclear project by early next year'|'October 3, 2017 / 10:26 AM / Updated 27 minutes ago Interview - NuGen to secure buyer for UK Moorside nuclear project by early next year Susanna Twidale 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A company logo is seen outside the office of NuGen in Whitehaven, Britain February 13, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble LONDON (Reuters) - Toshiba<62>s ( 6502.T ) NuGen nuclear project in Britain expects to secure a new investor by early next year, assuring the project<63>s future, NuGen<65>s chief executive officer told Reuters in an interview. NuGen, in Moorside, northwest England, is expected to provide around 7 percent of Britain<69>s electricity when built but was thrown into doubt after developer Toshiba<62>s nuclear arm Westinghouse went bankrupt this year. Toshiba<62>s NuGen joint venture partner Engie ( ENGIE.PA ) subsequently pulled out of the project, leaving the Japanese firm searching for new investors. <20>There are multiple credible bidders and we expect to find a new buyer, and a clear way forward by early next year,<2C> NuGen Chief Executive Tom Samson told Reuters in an interview. South Korea<65>s Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO) ( 015760.KS ) and China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) have both said they are interested in bidding for the project. It was initially hoped electricity generation would begin by 2025 but Samson said a new delivery plan will be set up by the new owners. <20>Clearly there will be a shift in the start date from 2025 to later in the 2020s, but the plant could still be up and running before 2030,<2C> he said. The timing will largely depend on which of the bidders is successful, as KEPCO and CGN are both likely to want to use their own nuclear reactor technology. New reactor designs in Britain must go through a four-year, Generic Design Assessment (GDA) approval process with the country<72>s regulator. KEPCO<43>s reactor design has yet to start the regulatory process, while CGN began the approval process earlier this year as the company also plans to build a new nuclear plant in Bradwell, Essex. Toshiba<62>s Westinghouse was initially expected to provide the reactor technology, and this already has GDA approval. <20>We are not ruling out any technology at this stage,<2C> Samson said. Britain needs to invest in new capacity to replace ageing coal and nuclear plants that are due to close in the 2020s, but large new plants have struggled to get off the ground due to high costs and weak electricity prices. Samson said the company has called on the government for support for the project. <20>We are exploring options for the government to participate in the project but it is just a dialogue at the moment and no policy decisions have been made,<2C> he said. To help spur investment Britain has a contracts for difference (CfD) scheme, providing a guaranteed minimum electricity price for some new projects. Earlier this month a CfD auction for offshore wind projects cleared significantly lower than the contract awarded to investors in the long-delayed Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant, the first to be built in Britain for more than 20 years. <20>We are confident that, just as with offshore wind, with wider deployment the costs of nuclear will come down over time,<2C> Samson said. Reporting by Susanna Twidale, reporting by Louise Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-nuclear-moorside/interview-nugen-to-secure-buyer-for-uk-moorside-nuclear-project-by-early-next-year-idUKKCN1C8105'|'2017-10-03T13:26:00.000+03:00'
'43ac4b38b93e7134b292731cab5f28a8dc09f364'|'Barclays taps Reid Marsh to run banking outside of the Americas'|'All the benefits of Standard Digital, plus: Unlimited access to all content Instant Insights column for comment and analysis as news unfolds FT Confidential Research - in-depth China and Southeast Asia analysis ePaper - the digital replica of the printed newspaper Full access to LEX - our agenda setting daily commentary Exclusive emails, including a weekly email from our Editor, Lionel Barber Full access to EM Squared- news and analysis service on emerging markets Other Subscription options:'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/content/413130a2-7e26-3814-826e-235cb3c1981b'|'2017-10-03T11:59:00.000+03:00'
'ae2c7c5a60946841b50eeac1e53c61561a8c1b0c'|'Goldman''s Blankfein keeps open mind on Bitcoin'|'FILE PHOTO: A Bitcoin (virtual currency) coin is seen in an illustration picture taken at La Maison du Bitcoin in Paris, France, June 23, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/Illustration/File Photo (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ) Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein is keeping an open mind on bitcoins."Still thinking about #Bitcoin. No conclusion - not endorsing/rejecting. Know that folks also were sceptical when paper money displaced gold," Blankfein tweeted on Tuesday. ( bit.ly/2xP543l )His tweet follows a Wall Street Journal report on Monday that the investment bank was exploring a new trading operation dedicated to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in response to client interest. ( on.wsj.com/2xMdWq8 )The plan was in early stages and may not proceed, the report added, citing people familiar with the matter,Blankfein<69>s tweet is in sharp contrast to comments made by JPMorgan<61>s ( JPM.N ) CEO Jamie Dimon, who called bitcoin a <20>fraud<75>.Speaking at a bank investor conference in New York last month, Dimon said, <20>The currency isn<73>t going to work. You can<61>t have a business where people can invent a currency out of thin air and think that people who are buying it are really smart.<2E><>It is worse than tulips bulbs,<2C> Dimon said, referring to a famous market bubble from the 1600s.Goldman''s arch rival Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ) spoke in favour of the currency, calling it "more than just a fad", FT reported last week. ( on.ft.com/2xMStNS )Reporting By Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D''Silva '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/goldman-sachs-bitcoin/goldmans-blankfein-keeps-open-mind-on-bitcoin-idINKCN1C82EV'|'2017-10-03T17:00:00.000+03:00'
'894d499d4c6ef83179b5d214094be6e7cc54c60a'|'Blow for India''s RCom as wireless unit merger with Aircel collapses'|'October 1, 2017 / 1:47 PM / in 19 minutes Blow for India''s RCom as wireless unit merger with Aircel collapses Abhirup Roy , Sankalp Phartiyal 3 Min Read A worker cleans a mobile store of Reliance Communications Ltd, controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, in Kolkata, India, September 10, 2016. Picture taken September 10, 2016. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri MUMBAI (Reuters) - Embattled Indian telecom company Reliance Communications Ltd ( RLCM.NS ) faced another setback on Sunday after a deal to merge its wireless business with smaller rival Aircel was called off, raising fresh doubts about its debt repayment plans. The company, widely known as RCom, said it had agreed with Aircel to call off the proposed deal due to regulatory delays and legal uncertainties. RCom has been trying to reduce its debt by 250 billion rupees by merging its wireless business with Aircel and by selling a stake in its mobile masts arm to a unit of Canada<64>s Brookfield Asset Management ( BAMa.TO ). RCom, controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, had net debt of 443.45 billion rupees ($6.92 billion) at the end of March. The company has earned a temporary reprieve from its lenders, which have agreed to a standstill on its debt obligations as part of a planned loan restructuring. The collapsed deal raises further doubts about the company<6E>s ability to repay debt, the head of an institutional investor in RCom told Reuters, declining to be identified. <20>Will the investors have to take a hit? Will there be any kind of haircut to all the lenders in RCom? Those questions will also come,<2C> the person added. RCom said in a statement it would look to monetize its spectrum through trading and sharing arrangements and continue to implement the monetization of its tower and fiber assets. The company already shares its airwaves with Reliance Jio Infocomm, the network operator backed by Ambani<6E>s older brother and India<69>s richest man, Mukesh. RCom has been hit by free voice and cut-price data plans offered by Reliance Jio - the mobile market<65>s newest entrant. The collapse of the deal with Aircel comes after the local arm of Sweden<65>s Ericsson ( ERICb.ST ) filed a plea with an insolvency court against RCom last month. Ericsson, which signed a seven-year deal in 2014 to operate and manage RCom<6F>s nationwide network, is seeking a total of 11.55 billion rupees from the company and two of its subsidiaries. Worries over the company<6E>s ability to repay debt have led to a series of downgrades by ratings agencies and the company<6E>s stock has plummeted nearly 44 percent so far this year, compared with a nearly 20 percent rise of a broader Mumbai market. Reporting by Abhirup Roy and Sankalp Phartiyal; Additional reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-aircel-m-a-rcom/indias-rcom-calls-off-merger-of-wireless-unit-with-aircel-idUKKCN1C61G1'|'2017-10-01T18:10:00.000+03:00'
'713eacbedb38b3b78672eefa6c9a0753008520cb'|'Saudi market regulator loosens asset management rules'|'RIYADH, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia<69>s markets regulator loosened its rules for licensing asset management and other investment firms on Sunday, according to a presentation by senior officials at the Capital Market Authority (CMA).The revisions will reduce requirements for obtaining a <20>management activity<74> licence, aiming to boost the number of asset managers in the kingdom and increase private equity and venture capital investments, the officials said.Minimum net assets required to be considered an <20>investment company<6E> were reduced to 10 million riyals ($3 million) from 50 million riyals ($13 million), according to a statement handed out during the presentation.The requirement for <20>management activities<65> was reduced to 20 million riyals from 50 million riyals, and two new types of activities permitted: managing non-real estate investment funds and managing the portfolios of small but experienced investors.Work experience and certification requirements to be considered a <20>specialised investor<6F> approved to invest in private equity funds and private placements were also broadened.The CMA has been revising rules to open access to markets for local entities and foreign institutional investors as part of Vision 2030, an ambitious reform plan to diversify the Saudi economy beyond oil.It is planning new listing rules to be announced this fall alongside new M&A rules, with an emphasis on driving debt issuance.$1 = 3.7501 riyals Reporting by Katie Paul; Editing by Mark Potter '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/saudi-markets-regulations/saudi-market-regulator-loosens-asset-management-rules-idINL8N1MC0SU'|'2017-10-01T13:49:00.000+03:00'
'66193f95a313152dd8baae4b42c559ed4c7033ea'|'Asian factories rev up in September ahead of year-end spending spree'|'October 2, 2017 / 4:58 AM / in 16 minutes Asian factories rev up in September ahead of year-end spending spree Shri Navaratnam 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Employees work at a production line inside a factory of Saic GM Wuling, in Liuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China, June 19, 2016. REUTERS/Norihiko Shirouzu/File Photo SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Factories in Asia<69>s largest economies cranked up activity in September as a synchronized upswing in growth globally pointed to solid consumption of manufactured goods heading into the lucrative end-of-year shopping season. However, pockets of weakness in regional economies are likely to keep Asian central banks slanted towards more accommodative monetary policy, even as their Western counterparts move to scale back stimulus. China<6E>s central bank on Saturday cut the amount of cash that some banks must hold as reserves for the first time since February 2016 in a bid to encourage more lending to struggling smaller firms and energise its lacklustre private sector. The world<6C>s second-largest economy has defied expectations for a slowdown this year, growing at a strong clip in the first half thanks to a construction boom. Beijing<6E>s latest easing comes ahead of a key party gathering this month. <20>It<49>s a solid backdrop for manufacturing in the region as we head towards the big shopping season,<2C> said Rob Carnell, Asia<69>s head of research at ING. That sentiment was backed by an official Purchasing Managers<72> Index from China<6E>s vast manufacturing sector, which showed activity last month grew at the fastest clip since 2012 on solid demand. But cost pressures from high raw materials prices and continued underperformance of smaller firms mean some manufacturers are still struggling, which was reflected in a separate private survey of Chinese factories showing growth slowed in September. In Japan, factory activity grew the fastest in four months, thanks to robust exports growth and underpinned improving economic momentum even though inflation remained tepid. Meanwhile, a closely watched Bank of Japan survey showed big manufacturers have more confidence in business conditions than they have had for a decade, thanks to a weaker yen and robust global demand. In South Korea, manufacturing activity expanded at the fastest pace in almost two years. Indonesia, Southeast Asia<69>s biggest economy, also showed an improvement in factory growth but the pace was tepid and production contracted slightly. Indonesia has cut interest rates twice this year in a bid to boost stubbornly weak domestic consumption, while India slashed rates once in August to spur growth and inflation. Those moves, along with the BOJ<4F>s commitment to maintain its ultra-low rates for the foreseeable future, marked a contrast to the West<73>s shift towards tighter policy, although analysts expect the extent of stimulus in Asia to be measured. <20>I would characterise some of the easings (in Asia) as a bit of fine-tuning really and not a major divergence in policy with the West,<2C> ING<4E>s Carnell said. <20>The regional economies continue to grow at a decent pace.<2E> GLOBAL UPSWING Indeed, a synchronized upswing in the global economy has been a boon to manufacturers from China to Britain and the United States, with export-reliant Asia enjoying a spurt in growth led by an upsurge in sales of electronics. A raft of European PMIs scheduled for publication later on Monday are expected to paint a picture of robust manufacturing momentum globally. Shipments from Japan and South Korea - two major exporters - remained robust with the boom helping their economies grow at a decent clip. In Taiwan, another export-bellwether, factories continued to expand at a steady pace on higher global demand. In South Korea, higher memory chip and steel product sales lifted exports by 35 percent year-on-year in the longest stretch of expansion since 2011. Full-year growth in China is widely expected to handily meet the government<6E>s target of 6.5 percent, after strong
'd88e31b142cb9abcf56528b192358d853421be5e'|'UPDATE 1-Bain aims to buy Japan ad agency Asatsu-DK in $1.2 bln deal - source'|'* Bain to launch tender offer soon for Asatsu-DK, says source* Nikkei said earlier Bain to pay about 150 bln Y for Asatsu-DK (Recasts to attribute to source, add detail of plan)TOKYO, Oct 2 (Reuters) - U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital plans to buy Japanese advertising agency Asatsu-DK Inc in a deal that could be worth $1.2 billion or more, a person familiar with the transaction said on Monday.Bain will launch a tender offer soon for as many shares of Asatsu-DK as possible, the person said, asking not to be identified because he is not in a position to speak to media.The Nikkei business daily, which reported the buyout earlier on Monday, said Bain would pay about 150 billion yen ($1.33 billion) for the Japanese company.Asatsu-DK spokeswoman Kaori Nakajima said the report was not something the company had announced.Asatsu-DK closed at 3,180 yen on Monday, which gives the firm a value of 132 billion yen.A consortium led by Bain Capital signed an $18 billion deal last week to buy Toshiba Corp<72>s chip unit. ($1 = 112.8700 yen) (Reporting by Junko Fijita; Additional reporting by Chris Gallagher and Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by William Mallard and Muralikumar Anantharaman) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/asatsu-dk-ma-bain/update-1-bain-aims-to-buy-japan-ad-agency-asatsu-dk-in-1-2-bln-deal-source-idINL4N1MD23S'|'2017-10-02T05:16:00.000+03:00'
'd4c1a23730bac83239261176792ca8cdd5ddd850'|'MOVES-Schroders Adveq says Reto Schwager to join as CEO'|' 26 AM / in 10 minutes MOVES-Schroders Adveq says Reto Schwager to join as CEO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 2 (Reuters) - Asset manager Schroders Adveq said Reto Schwager will succeed Sven Liden as chief executive, effective Jan. 1. Schwager will join from Orix Corp, where he was global head of private equity at Robeco. At Schroder Adveq, he will be based in Zurich and report to Executive Chairman Stephen Mills. Stephen Mills will be CEO until Schwager joins. (Reporting by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D<>Souza)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/schrodersplc-moves-retoschwager/moves-schroders-adveq-says-reto-schwager-to-join-as-ceo-idUSL4N1MD2U7'|'2017-10-02T13:21:00.000+03:00'
'8efa95b334efa74d8b1ced14b9b68521cb257967'|'Takata says $1.6 billion KSS deal to be signed in within two weeks'|'A billboard advertisement of Takata Corp is pictured in Tokyo September 17, 2014. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/Files WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) - Key Safety Systems has agreed to terms on the $1.6 billion purchase of assets of Takata Corp 7312.T, stricken by a recall of its faulty vehicle air bags, and final documents will be signed in less than two weeks, a lawyer for Takata<74>s U.S. unit said on Monday.Takata and its U.S. unit, TK Holdings Inc, filed for bankruptcy in June and the asset sale to Key Safety Systems, or KSS, is the cornerstone of its plan to raise funds to compensate automakers and drivers.Marcia Goldstein, a lawyer for TK Holdings, told a U.S. bankruptcy judge on Monday that a U.S. deal had been reached and was being reviewed by lawyers in Japan, Germany and elsewhere.<2E>The documentation is fully negotiated, subject only to what all the lawyers agree is clean up,<2C> said Goldstein, an attorney with the Weil, Gotshal & Manges law firm.The sale must be approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, as well as regulators.TK Holdings said when it filed for bankruptcy that final papers on sale to KSS, a Michigan-based parts supplier owned by China<6E>s Ningbo Joyson Electronic Corp ( 600699.SS ), would be provided within <20>a few weeks.<2E>Takata in February pleaded in a U.S. federal court to a felony charge as part of a $1 billion settlement that included compensation funds for automakers and victims of its faulty air bag inflators. Under the settlement, the sale to Key Safety Systems must close by Feb. 27.Takata faces tens of billions of dollars in costs and liabilities resulting from almost a decade of recalls and lawsuits. Its air bag inflators have been linked to at least 16 deaths and 180 injuries around the world because they can rupture and send metal fragments flying.KSS plans to take over Takata<74>s viable operations, while the remaining operations will be reorganized to continue churning out millions of replacement inflators, the two firms said.Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Lisa Shumaker '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/takata-bankruptcy-kss/takata-says-1-6-billion-kss-deal-to-be-signed-in-within-two-weeks-idINKCN1C72FT'|'2017-10-02T21:36:00.000+03:00'
'e04eb0e70766f70445e1294dccdf5c8181e583c2'|'MOVES-Katy Knox replacing Keith Banks as U.S. Trust president'|'Oct 1 (Reuters) - Bank of America said on Sunday that it had named Katy Knox president of its private bank, U.S. Trust, replacing Keith Banks. Banks, who had led U.S. Trust since 2009, will continue as head of the chief investment office and investment solutions groups reporting to Terry Laughlin, vice chairman of Bank of America and head of global wealth & investment management the company said. Knox has led business banking since 2014. Banks and Knox will work together on the leadership transition through the end of the year. On top of his role as president, Banks had become head of the newly created chief investment office and investment solutions group in November 2016. (Reporting by Sinead Carew; Editing by Sandra Maler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bankofamerica-moves-knox/moves-katy-knox-replacing-keith-banks-as-u-s-trust-president-idINL2N1MC0IE'|'2017-10-01T16:26:00.000+03:00'
'bf4fb81869586744ddfb3d79fe93006e728c4b72'|'UPDATE 1-Saudi state airline says to start Boeing, Airbus order talks soon'|'(Adds details on aircraft order)By Sylvia WestallDUBAI, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabian Airlines will start talks with Airbus and Boeing about a narrow-body aircraft order before the end of the year, the state carrier<65>s top executive said on Thursday.The requirement for flyadeal, its new low-cost subsidiary airline, will be for <20>probably 30 ... single-aisle aircraft,<2C> Director General Saleh bin Nasser al-Jasser told Reuters in Dubai.The talks aimed at acquiring Boeing 737 or Airbus A320 aircraft will start <20>much sooner<65> than Dec. 31, he said at a meeting between aviation authorities from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.Flyadeal launched domestic flights in September and plans to start operating international routes by mid-2018. It has agreed to lease eight A320s from Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) with the first delivered in August.Al-Jasser had said prior to flyadeal<61>s launch that the airline would operate an entirely leased fleet of between 25 and 50 aircraft by 2020.SHARE LISTING FOR CARGO BUSINESS Earlier al-Jasser told reporters that Saudi Arabian Airlines could list shares in its cargo business next year.Under Saudia<69>s privatisation plan it aims to next float 30 percent of the shares in the cargo subsidiary, a share market listing which <20>could be in 2018,<2C> al-Jasser said .He said after that the airline<6E>s private aviation or medical business could be listed.Reuters reported in May that Saudia had engaged with advisors for the full sale of its medical unit, which is called Saudia Medical Services, based in Jeddah.The airline has also said it plans to list its maintenance and flight academy units, and the airline itself.Saudi Airlines Catering Co raised $347 million with an IPO of 30 percent of its shares in 2012. Saudi Ground Services Co was listed in 2015. (Writing by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Greg Mahlich) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/saudi-airlines-listing/update-1-saudi-state-airline-says-to-start-boeing-airbus-order-talks-soon-idINL8N1MG1XR'|'2017-10-05T08:04:00.000+03:00'
'c25c12b29ed126100936ef4746fbabdcce59f88e'|'South Africa''s Eskom asks McKinsey, Trillian to return $117 million'|'October 5, 2017 / 5:57 PM / in 8 minutes South Africa''s Eskom asks McKinsey, Trillian to return $117 million Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The logo of state power utility Eskom is seen outside Cape Town''s Koeberg nuclear power plant in this picture taken March 20, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa<63>s Eskom has asked consultancy firms McKinsey and Trillian to pay it back 1.6 billion rand ($117 million), saying that an internal inquiry had found that the state power utility<74>s decisions to make the payments were unlawful. <20>The interim findings from Eskom investigations into the circumstances surrounding payments made to both the companies point to certain decisions by Eskom, and resultant payments, as being unlawful,<2C> Eskom said on Thursday. The utility said in a statement it has written to both companies requesting their cooperation in returning the money. McKinsey, the world<6C>s largest management consultancy, had no immediate comment on Thursday, but has previously said it is cooperating with the authorities and has ordered its own investigation into its South African office. Trillian   A third of the money was paid to Trillian, a company at the time connected to the Guptas, a trio of Indian businessmen who South Africa<63>s anti-graft watchdog has alleged used their links with President Jacob Zuma to win government contracts. The Guptas have denied any wrongdoing, saying they are pawns a plot against Zuma, who has also denied any wrongdoing. McKinsey is under parliamentary investigation in South Africa for fraud over a $130 million contract to advise Eskom. A U.S. risk management firm advised Eskom last year to withhold tens of millions of dollars in payments for advice from McKinsey, because the global consultancy<63>s <20>very unusual<61> payment model allowed it to charge fees in excess of market rates. Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-safrica-mckinsey-eskom/south-africas-eskom-asks-mckinsey-trillian-to-return-117-million-idUSKBN1CA2B2'|'2017-10-05T20:56:00.000+03:00'
'6a7e38bd646f6ab716ca56db0e5928a8a2716f60'|'Linde urges investors to exchange shares for Praxair merger'|'October 5, 2017 / 8:45 AM / Updated 6 hours ago Linde urges investors to exchange shares for Praxair merger Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Linde Group headquarters is pictured in Munich, Germany August 15, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/Files (Reuters) - German industrial gases group Linde ( LING.DE ) urged investors to tender their shares in an exchange offer for its planned $80 billion merger with U.S. peer Praxair ( PX.N ) as a deadline approaches to reach 75 percent acceptance. As of Oct. 4, seven weeks after the offer was launched, it had been accepted for 27.7 percent of outstanding Linde shares. The acceptance period ends at midnight on Oct. 24. <20>We have been encouraged by the number of shareholders that have already accepted the offer. Now that we are entering the final phase of the offer period, I would like to address you personally,<2C> Chief Executive Aldo Belloni wrote in a letter to shareholders on Thursday. The planned all-share merger of equals will create a global leader to overtake France<63>s Air Liquide ( AIRP.PA ) with a combined market value of $80 billion, revenue of $28.7 billion and 88,000 staff. Institutional investors who have accepted include Norway<61>s $1 trillion wealth fund Norges, Schroder Investment Management and Union Investment. Deutsche Boerse ( DB1Gn.DE ), at a comparable point about two-thirds of the way through its exchange offer for a planned merger with the London Stock Exchange ( LSE.L ), had about 1 percent acceptance. That deal, which was undermined by Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union, eventually failed after European regulators blocked it over monopoly concerns. Praxair shareholders have already voted in favor of the Linde deal at an extraordinary meeting on Sept. 27. Linde estimates that individual retail investors own about 22 percent of its shares, while 10-13 percent may be held by index-tracker funds, some of which have rules which forbid them from tendering until acceptance reaches a certain level. Chairman Wolfgang Reitzle told Reuters in June that tracking down retail investors would be tough. Reporting by Georgina Prodhan in London; editing by Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-linde-m-a-praxair/linde-urges-investors-to-exchange-shares-for-praxair-merger-idINKBN1CA0RM'|'2017-10-05T06:45:00.000+03:00'
'7b919b254456c537b59f39e17a1b844a354c2aa6'|'Brazil regulator sees Oi CFO exit raising intervention risks'|'SAO PAULO, Oct 3 (Reuters) - The resignation of the chief financial officer at Brazilian wireless carrier Oi SA on Monday evening contributed to the chances of a state intervention, the head of telecommunications regulator Anatel said on Tuesday.Anatel President Juarez Quadros said at an industry event that the exit of CFO Ricardo Martins worsened the outlook for Oi<4F>s in-court restructuring of 65 billion reais ($20.6 billion) worth of debt in Brazil<69>s biggest bankruptcy protection case ever.$1 = 3.16 reais Reporting by Alberto Alerigi Jr.; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/oi-sa-restructuring/brazil-regulator-sees-oi-cfo-exit-raising-intervention-risks-idINE6N1JV017'|'2017-10-03T11:31:00.000+03:00'
'4a970798cb3ee1038e781ce12e74b06bf7f1a121'|'Trump says hopes to improve U.S. trade with Thailand'|'October 2, 2017 / 4:58 PM / in 9 minutes Trump says wants to reduce U.S. trade deficit with Thailand Reuters Staff 2 Min Read U.S. President Donald Trump greets Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-Cha and his wife Naraporn Chan-o-Cha at the White House in Washington, U.S., October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump wants to reduce the U.S. trade deficit with Thailand, he told the country<72>s prime minister on Monday in a meeting that marked another sign of warming ties between Washington and Bangkok. Trump, who has sought to improve U.S. trade ties with a variety of countries since taking office in January, put Thailand in the spotlight when he sat down with Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha in the Oval Office. <20>Our relationship on trade is becoming more important and it<69>s a great country to trade with,<2C> Trump told the Thai official before reporters. <20>I think we<77>re going to try to sell a little bit more to you, if that<61>s possible.<2E> The U.S. Trade Representative<76>s office reported that the U.S. trade deficit with Thailand was $18.9 billion last year, the 11th largest faced by the United States. The meeting was a sign of improved ties between the United States and Thailand after the relationship cooled when the Thai military took power in a 2014 coup. Human rights groups had strongly opposed the meeting, seeing it as a reward for an authoritarian leader who has cracked down on opposition and rolled back democratic freedoms. The Obama administration was deeply critical of the military-led government and refused to extend an invitation to Prayuth to the White House. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Bangkok in August in what was the highest level visit to Thailand by a U.S. official since the military coup. Prayuth and members of his cabinet will also meet with representatives of Thai businesses in the United States during the three-day visit. Thailand is often cited as the oldest U.S. ally in Southeast Asia and Washington has been urging the region to do more to cut funding streams to North Korea over its nuclear program. Reporting By Steve Holland and Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-thailand/trump-says-hopes-to-improve-u-s-trade-with-thailand-idUSKCN1C729U'|'2017-10-02T19:58:00.000+03:00'
'2dd9924ca162bf1cd7286322c815a0e1b6fa6cc5'|'Freeport Indonesia copper exports will not be stopped amid talks - official'|'October 2, 2017 / 6:15 AM / in 7 minutes Freeport Indonesia copper exports will not be stopped amid talks - official Reuters Staff 1 Min Read JAKARTA, Oct 2 (Reuters) - The Indonesian unit of U.S. miner Freeport McMoRan Inc can continue to export copper concentrate even if negotiations over the company<6E>s permit to operate the giant Grasberg mine are not resolved this month, a mining ministry official said. In April, the government awarded Freeport a permit to export 1.1 million tonnes of copper concentrate until February next year, but said shipments could be stopped again in October if negotiations over a new mining permit were not resolved by then. <20>Exports will continue,<2C> Coal and Minerals Director General Bambang Gatot Ariyono told reporters, when asked about the timeline for Freeport talks, adding that as long as Freeport had made progress in the development of a second smelter it would be allowed to continue to export. (Reporting by Wilda Asmarini; Writing by Fergus Jensen; Editing by Christian Schmollinger) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/indonesia-freeport/freeport-indonesia-copper-exports-will-not-be-stopped-amid-talks-official-idUSJ9N19L00T'|'2017-10-02T09:13:00.000+03:00'
'06e27563035c6737a4b377567a8727ca63c63d71'|'BoE tells banks to find 4 billion pounds of bail - in debt by 2022'|'October 2, 2017 / 9:42 AM / Updated 5 hours ago BoE tells banks to find 4 billion pounds of ''bail-in'' debt by 2022 Huw Jones 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A man talks on a mobile phone as people walk past the Bank of England, in London, Britain September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner LONDON (Reuters) - Banks operating in Britain must find a net 4 billion pounds ($5.3 billion) by 2022 to comply with rules aimed at shielding taxpayers if lenders go bust, the Bank of England said on Monday. Ten years after the financial crisis that cost British taxpayers billions of pounds to rescue banks like Royal Bank of Scotland ( RBS.L ) and Lloyds ( LLOY.L ), the BoE said its was putting the finishing touches to a system for dealing with failing banks. This would ensure that even large banks can be wound down and would be no longer <20>too big to fail<69> and hold taxpayers to ransom. BoE Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe said the BoE does not run a <20>zero failure regime<6D>. <20>We don<6F>t want a financial centre that doesn<73>t take risks,<2C> Cunliffe also told reporters. Regulators want to ensure the City of London will remain attractive to big international financial companies as Britain prepares to leave the European Union in March, 2019. The BoE was setting out detailed proposals on so-called mandatory <20>bail-in<69> debt that can be written down to replenish a bank<6E>s burnt-out capital in a crisis. It aims to make sure there is enough of the <20>bail-in<69> debt, known as MREL, in UK subsidiaries of banks based elsewhere and in British banks<6B> standalone retail divisions. Banks are currently 116 billion pounds short of debt that qualifies as <20>MREL<45>, but nearly all of this will be plugged by rebadging existing bank bonds. The net shortfall is 4 billion pounds, a figure the banks are expected to raise via the bond markets without difficulty. The BoE said in any given year, Britain<69>s gross domestic product would be 0.02 percent lower due to MREL requirements, but the bank said the upside was that <20>too big to fail<69> was ended, a bank could continue to function in a crisis, and taxpayers would be protected. With interest rates low, British banks like HSBC ( HSBA.L ) have already been rebadging debt over the past year. UK Finance, which represents British banks, said it would continue to work with regulators to ensure that households and businesses could access banking if a bank fails, with shareholders and creditors bearing the costs, not the taxpayer. LIQUIDITY The BoE also made clear it would be willing to provide liquidity to support temporarily a bank being closed down, but only if the bank<6E>s own resources were exhausted and access to private sector funding was disrupted. Cunliffe said the BoE would publish summaries of resolution plans of major British banks from 2019, but he was still working out what the summaries should contain. The plans set out what would happen to a bank if it crashed. The rules on bail-in debt are based on European Union law and are expected to be copied on to Britain<69>s statute book by Brexit. The Bank has been conducting tests with regulators in the United States and the EU to check that rules on winding down banks can work for cross-border lenders. <20>International co-operating remains a critical component of ensuring banks with cross-border activities can be resolved,<2C> Cunliffe said. ($1 = 0.7515 pounds)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-boe/boe-tells-banks-to-find-4-billion-pounds-of-bail-in-debt-by-2022-idUKKCN1C70Y9'|'2017-10-02T12:47:00.000+03:00'
'932ebaf97bf324b7ab5bba917324f67c15e5c794'|'Americans want required food labels even if they don''t read them: poll'|'October 2, 2017 / 2:57 PM / in 4 hours Americans want required food labels even if they don''t read them: poll Chris Prentice , Chris Kahn 3 Min Read The Nutrition Facts label is seen on a box of Cereal Bars at a store in New York February 27, 2014. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/Files NEW YORK (Reuters) - A majority of Americans want the U.S. government to require nutrition labels on food packaging, including people who do not read them, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released as the Trump administration delays tougher new requirements. The government has delayed the introduction of mandatory labeling of sugars added to packaged food and use of genetically-engineered ingredients, marking a change from the Obama administration and a victory for food companies which lobbied against them as too costly and confusing for consumers. On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration proposed giving manufacturers an extra 1-1/2 years to comply with new nutrition facts label requirements, drawing criticism from nutritionists. The results of the poll, released on Monday, underscore that transparency is key for consumers, a fact that is becoming more apparent to food manufacturers. Eighty-four percent of adults agreed that <20>the government should require nutrition information labels on all packaged food sold in grocery stores<65> and 64 percent wanted similar requirements for restaurants, according to the poll. Most people wanted those labels even though relatively few said they read them. Only 13 percent said they <20>always<79> read the nutrition facts when deciding to buy a product. Marsha Klemundt, a 67-year-old poll respondent, said she had little interest in learning more about nutrition when she shops at grocery stores or eats at restaurants. But she added that it felt good to know the government is requiring them to track what they put into food. <20>We should know what we<77>re buying,<2C> Klemundt said. Poll respondents who were curious about nutrition information were mostly interested in how it could affect their waistlines. Sixty percent or more said they wanted to know about sugar, calories, salt and fat content in packaged food. For some, it<69>s a matter of trying to follow a doctor<6F>s orders, including Republicans who say they understand that other issues are a bigger priority for President Donald Trump. The delay is a concern, said Ronald Lessard, 74, of Louisiana, who noted that he watches his intake of added sugars. <20>If you don<6F>t know it<69>s in there, you can<61>t cut down.<2E> Less than half of those surveyed said they would be willing to pay more for foods that are organic, grass-fed or contain no added sugars or genetically-engineered ingredients. The item the majority of Americans would consider paying more for is locally-grown food, at 57 percent. The poll was conducted online in English throughout the United States from July 8 to July 17. It included responses from 3,024 adults and has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 2 percentage points. Reporting by Chris Prentice and Chris Kahn in New York; Editing by Paul Simao'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-foodlabels-poll/americans-want-required-food-labels-even-if-they-dont-read-them-poll-idINKCN1C71X6'|'2017-10-02T12:57:00.000+03:00'
'75190b1dd19446855230f700690ed1edebf218e3'|'Nikkei inches up on Wall St gains and upbeat data, election caution caps buying'|' 45 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago Nikkei inches up on Wall St gains and upbeat data, election caution caps buying Reuters Staff * Nikkei rises 0.2 pct, stays in range of 25-month peak * Wall St rise, upbeat BOJ tankan and weaker yen supports * Caution towards Oct. 22 general election caps gains * Nissan drops after saying unqualified workers conducted checks * Technology shares lifted by gains in U.S. peers By Shinichi Saoshiro TOKYO, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Nikkei share average rose on Monday, buoyed by Wall Street<65>s increases and upbeat domestic data, although caution towards an upcoming general election limited gains. The Nikkei ended Monday 0.2 percent higher at 20,400.78. The index rose to a 25-month high of 20,481.27 on Sept. 21 as the yen weakened against the dollar following hawkish monetary policy hints from the Federal Reserve. While North Korea concerns have helped capped the index, it has managed to stay close to that peak. Of Tokyo<79>s 33 sub indexes, 15 rose, led by the precision machinery sector<6F>s 0.45 percent gain. The losers were led by sea transport, which fell 0.9 percent. <20>The market drew support from three factors: stronger U.S. stocks, continuing ebb in strong yen concerns and the upbeat tankan,<2C> said Masahiro Ichikawa, senior strategist at Sumitomo Mistui Asset Management. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq advanced to record levels on Friday while the Bank of Japan<61>s <20>tankan<61> survey released on Monday showed the mood among big domestic manufacturers reach a decade high. <20>On the other hand, uncertainty towards how the political situation develops ahead of the election is a negative factor. The equity market will be watching how currencies respond and what kind of policies are brought up as agendas,<2C> Ichikawa said. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last week dissolved the parliament<6E>s lower house and called a snap election for Oct. 22. Abe<62>s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was initially expected to win the election with relative ease. An easy win, however, is looking less assured with popular Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike forging an alliance of opposition parties to challenge the LDP. Shares of Nissan Motor Co dropped as much as 5.3 percent to their lowest since April 28 after the automaker said on Friday that it is unable to sell 60,000 new vehicles made in Japan as checks had been conducted by unqualified inspectors. Technology shares drew a lift from gains by their U.S. counterparts. Electrical equipment maker Yaskawa Electric Corp rose 1.55 percent, factory automation machinery maker Fanuc Corp added 2.15 percent and Hitachi Ltd gained 1.3 percent. Ono Pharmaceutical Co advanced 3.2 percent amid speculation that a researcher that took part in developing Ono<6E>s cancer treating drug Opdivo could win a Nobel prize this week. Bookseller Bunkyodo Group Holdings also received a Nobel-related lift, rising 0.9 percent, on expectations that novelist Haruki Murakami, a perennial favourite for the literature prize, would finally win this year. Godo Steel Ltd rose 8.7 percent after the steel manufacturer revised up its April-September net profit forecast to 2 billion yen ($17.75 million) from 700 million yen. Adastria Co shed 7.4 percent after the clothing retailer revised down its net profit forecast for the year through February 2018 to 11.0 billion yen from 11.9 billion yen following lacklustre sales of summer items. The broader Topix inched down 0.05 percent to 1,673.62. ($1 = 112.7000 yen) Editing by Sam Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/japan-stocks-close/nikkei-inches-up-on-wall-st-gains-and-upbeat-data-election-caution-caps-buying-idUSL4N1MD24X'|'2017-10-02T09:43:00.000+03:00'
'89a106111e194a85bd97a7db14bbb67367bffc99'|'Capitalism is the only way, Hammond says in challenge to Labour'|'October 1, 2017 / 9:25 PM / in 31 minutes Capitalism is the only way, UK finance minister says in challenge to Labour William James 4 Min Read Britain''s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, arrives at the conference centre for the Conservative Party Conference, in Manchester, Britain October 1, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - British finance minister Philip Hammond defended capitalism as the only route to prosperity on Monday in an attempt to counter the opposition Labour Party<74>s increasingly popular vision for a more centrally-controlled economy. Hammond is due to speak at the annual conference of his Conservative Party, seen as a chance for Prime Minister Theresa May<61>s government to try to repair relations with the party<74>s grassroots after a botched election in June. Divided over Brexit and losing public support to a resurgent Labour led by socialist Jeremy Corbyn, May is leading a fragile minority government. Ahead of his speech to party activists, Hammond, finance minister for the center-right party since July 2016, talked up the merits of a free-market economy. <20>It isn<73>t a coincidence that every country in the world, apart from North Korea, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Cuba have adopted the market economy system that we operate here,<2C> Hammond told ITV. <20>It<49>s happened because it is almost universally recognized that this is the way to advance nations, to get people<6C>s living standards up, to create jobs and sustainable progress, to support public services.<2E> That view has been challenged by Labour, who last week at their own party conference fleshed out plans for a widescale nationalization of Britain<69>s infrastructure, higher government spending, and more taxation and control over the banking sector. Hammond<6E>s words echo those of May, who last week issued her own defense of capitalism - a sign of growing concern about the threat Labour poses to the pro-business orthodoxy that has underpinned British economic policy since Margaret Thatcher<65>s reforms in the 1980s. <20>As this model comes under renewed assault, we must not be afraid to defend it,<2C> he will say. <20>Our economy is not broken: it is fundamentally strong.<2E> UNDERMINING CONFIDENCE Seven years of spending cuts by the Conservatives have tested the patience of the British public and failed to erase a deficit or bring down high levels of national debt. Despite casting the Labour Party as Venezuelan Marxists, PM May<61>s government has sought to win over voters with moves to address concerns over high levels of student debt and limits on pay for public sector workers. But with Brexit on the horizon, a slowing economy and the Bank of England hinting that interest rates could rise, May<61>s government has little room for fiscal maneuver. <20>My job is to protect the economy. No one wants to see the economy disrupted by the process we<77>re going through,<2C> Hammond told Sky News. <20>Let<65>s remove this cloud of uncertainty from over our economy.<2E> The British Chambers of Commerce has warned that public rifts within May<61>s cabinet are undermining business confidence. Divisions over Europe helped sink the Conservative premierships of Margaret Thatcher, John Major and David Cameron. <20>Public disagreements between cabinet ministers in recent weeks have only served to undermine business confidence, not just on Brexit negotiations, but also on the many issues where firms need to see clear action from government closer to home,<2C> British Chambers of Commerce Director General Adam Marshall said. Last month rating agency Moody<64>s downgraded Britain<69>s credit rating, saying the government<6E>s plans to bring down its debt load had been knocked off course and Brexit would weigh on the economy. The Conservatives will pledge 400 million pounds ($535 million) of additional road and rail spending, but Labour said the plans did not go far enough. <20>Hammond just wants to continue with the seven years of Tory economic failure that has seen the level of investment in our country f
'8e8c551f772b59a65bc4c0ca1c9f3047dd2bea0a'|'Uber board to consider vote to cut Kalanick influence -Bloomberg'|' 02 AM / in 6 minutes Uber board to consider vote to cut Kalanick influence -Bloomberg Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 2 (Reuters) - Directors at Uber Technologies Inc plan to vote on board reforms and whether to pursue a major stock deal with SoftBank Group Corp on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The moves could potentially reshape the ride-hailing company''s governance, limiting co-founder and former Chief Executive Travis Kalanick''s power as a shareholder and board member and lead to an official kick-starting of the largest private stock sale in history, Bloomberg said. bloom.bg/2hH8BdD On Thursday, Kalanick said he had appointed former Xerox Chief Executive Ursula Burns and former Merrill Lynch Chief Executive John Thain as directors in the face of proposals to dramatically restructure the board. Uber could not be immediately reached for comment outside regular business hours. (Reporting by Philip George; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/uber-board/uber-board-to-consider-vote-to-cut-kalanick-influence-bloomberg-idUSL4N1MD1VV'|'2017-10-02T09:02:00.000+03:00'
'b235ec09f08ab29a624f06c9ae797e1f7151e721'|'Irish housebuilder Glenveagh to raise up to 550 million euros in IPO'|'October 2, 2017 / 7:38 AM / in 13 minutes Irish housebuilder Glenveagh to raise up to 550 million euros in IPO Padraic Halpin 3 Min Read DUBLIN (Reuters) - Glenveagh Properties plans to raise up to 550 million euros (<28>484.4 million) in Ireland<6E>s second largest initial public offering since the 2008 financial crisis to add much needed housing supply to Europe<70>s fastest growing economy. While Ireland was left with a surplus of houses after values were cut in half following the property crash a decade ago, a recovery in the construction sector has badly lagged the general economy, causing house prices and rents to rise sharply again. Glenveagh will become just the second Irish housebuilder to float since the economy began to turn around, following Cairn Homes ( CRN.L ) in 2015. Cairn<72>s share price has almost doubled since then as the value of its portfolio grew sharply. Glenveagh<67>s IPO will also beat the 385 million euros Cairn raised and be the second largest on the Irish stock exchange, behind the 3.4 billion euros raised by Allied Irish Banks ( ALBK.I ) in June. <20>One of the structural weaknesses in the housing market in Ireland is the fragmented nature of the housebuilding sector and its lack of scale,<2C> Glenveagh co-founder and chairman John Mulcahy, a former senior executive at Ireland<6E>s state-run bad bank NAMA, said in a statement. <20>We believe there is an opportunity through publicly quoted companies like Glenveagh.<2E> Glenveagh, which will combine development land acquired in Ireland by U.S. private equity firm Oaktree with the assets of Irish builder Bridgedale, has some 1,700 units ready for construction and plans to build at least 1,000 new homes a year by 2020, with 2,000 more a year to follow on a long-term basis. Glenveagh will focus on building in and around Dublin, where supply is particularly tight, and has committed one-third of the IPO proceeds to 27 sites it has agreed to buy. Economists estimate that 35,000 new homes are needed a year to address the shortage in Ireland and keep up with demand in a country that also has the EU<45>s fastest growing population. However a report by Goodbody Stockbrokers<72> on Monday suggested just over 5,000 houses were completed last year, a third of the official completions data that the government has acknowledged may overstate the true level of homebuilding. Conditional trading on the Irish and London Stock Exchange is expected to begin on October 10. Credit Suisse and Ireland<6E>s Davy have been appointed as joint global coordinators. Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by Jason Neely/Keith Weir'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-glenveagh-ipo/irish-housebuilder-glenveagh-to-raise-up-to-550-million-euros-in-ipo-idUKKCN1C70NK'|'2017-10-02T10:38:00.000+03:00'
'68cdb51e1692f79aa57d0dafaeba83e3a8ef52db'|'Facebook to hire 1,000 people to review ads after Russian buys'|'NEW YORK, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Facebook Inc plans to hire 1,000 more people to review ads and ensure they meet its terms, as part of an effort to deter Russia and other countries from using the social media network to interfere in others<72> elections, it said on Monday.Facebook said last month that it believed people in Russia bought about 3,000 politically divisive ads on its network in the United States in the months before and after the November U.S. presidential election.Since its disclosure, Facebook has faced questions and calls for increased U.S. regulation from U.S. authorities. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has outlined steps that the company plans to take to deter governments from abusing the social media network, the world<6C>s largest.In a statement on Monday, Facebook said it would add more than 1,000 people over the next year and invest more in software to flag and take down ads automatically.<2E>Reviewing ads means assessing not just the content of an ad, but the context in which it was bought and the intended audience - so we<77>re changing our ads review system to pay more attention to these signals,<2C> the company said.Facebook said it had 17,048 employees at the end of 2016, excluding contractors. In May, it said it would hire 3,000 more people over the following year to speed up the removal of videos showing murder, suicide and other violent acts that shocked users.Like other companies that sell advertising space, Facebook publishes policies for what it allows, prohibiting ads that are violent, discriminate based on race or promote the sale of illegal drugs.With more than 5 million paying advertisers, however, Facebook has difficulty enforcing all of its policies.The company said on Monday that it would adjust its policies further <20>to prevent ads that use even more subtle expressions of violence.<2E> It did not elaborate on what kind of material that would cover.Facebook also said it would begin to require more thorough documentation from people who want to run ads about U.S. federal elections, demanding that they confirm their businesses or organizations. (Reporting by David Ingram in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/facebook-advertising/facebook-to-hire-1000-people-to-review-ads-after-russian-buys-idINL2N1MD03F'|'2017-10-02T13:01:00.000+03:00'
'6d820e39003043a489e75decaafb8cdd59df6333'|'Morris Chang, head of world''s biggest foundry chipmaker TSMC, to retire'|'Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) Chairman Morris Chang gestures while answering a question during an investor conference in Taipei, July 16, 2014. REUTERS/Pichi Chuang/Files TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) founder and chairman Morris Chang will retire in June, after having built the Apple Inc supplier into the world<6C>s biggest foundry chipmaker with a market value of about $185 billion.Chang, who is 86 and is known as the father of Taiwan<61>s chip industry, will be succeeded as chairman by Mark Liu who has been co-CEO along with C.C. Wei since 2013, TSMC announced on Monday. Wei will become the sole CEO.The change in leadership comes at a critical time as TSMC, which has thrived on booming demand for chips used in smartphones, now seeks to diversify its customer base and move into emerging industries such as artificial intelligence and autonomous driving.It must also deal with a growing threat from Samsung Electronics, the world<6C>s top memory chipmaker, which plans to triple the market share of its contract chip manufacturing business within the next five years by aggressively adding clients.The succession plan has been in the works for years. Liu and Wei have held complementary posts since 2012 when they were chief operating officers before assuming co-CEO roles in 2013. Previously, they were senior vice presidents - Wei for business development and Liu for operations.Liu studied electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Wei studied electrical engineering in Yale University. Both Liu and Wei have doctorates.Chang, citing personal and family reasons, said that upon his retirement, he would not sit on the board of directors or participate in management activities.He founded TSMC in 1987 with paid-in capital of T$1.4 billion ($45 million) and pioneered contract chip manufacturing for chip design firms which don<6F>t have their own factories. He has been its chairman since then.Chang spent 25 years at Texas Instruments and holds a doctorate from Stanford. Born in China, he went to Taiwan in 1985 after being recruited by the government to head a body promoting industrial and technological development.TSMC has since grown to command 56 percent of the $47 billion market while revenue has climbed to around $30 billion in 2016.The planned leadership succession will not change the company in a fundamental way, analysts said.<2E>I think Liu and Wei will continue TSMC<4D>s current model for some years,<2C> said Mark Li, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. <20>I do see the increasing cost of newer generation technologies as an issue but for now TSMC will still maintain the cadence of R&D development.<2E>But if something new comes up, such as uses of new technology that increases TSMC<4D>s cost, they<65>ll need to change their plan accordingly, Li said.Prior to the announcement, shares of TSMC closed up 1.85 percent. They have risen 22 percent so far this year, making it the most valuable firm in the Thomson Reuters Global Semiconductor Index, ahead of stalwarts such as Intel Corp and NVIDIA Corp.Reporting by Jess Macy Yu; Additional reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Muralikumar Anantharaman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/taiwan-tsmc/morris-chang-head-of-worlds-biggest-foundry-chipmaker-tsmc-to-retire-idINKCN1C70NO'|'2017-10-02T10:44:00.000+03:00'
'61f1b36fb9d4a818d1c5620431f1bbd67a9e11af'|'Russia<69>s central bank says it may merge lenders B&N, Otkritie'|'All the benefits of Standard Digital, plus: Unlimited access to all content Instant Insights column for comment and analysis as news unfolds FT Confidential Research - in-depth China and Southeast Asia analysis ePaper - the digital replica of the printed newspaper Full access to LEX - our agenda setting daily commentary Exclusive emails, including a weekly email from our Editor, Lionel Barber Full access to EM Squared- news and analysis service on emerging markets Other Subscription options:'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/content/f943db55-5d3d-365b-b6a5-a67298433679'|'2017-10-02T15:16:00.000+03:00'
'112ae12a03e7bda380ee9d600d1d2defcabd63d2'|'Seadrill''s debt overhaul faces creditor scrutiny'|'* Seadrill filed for protection from creditors on Sept. 12* Pre-agreed restructuring plan aims to raise $1.1 bln* Unsecured creditors prepare to challenge plan* Billionaire John Fredriksen to remain major shareholder* Company expects to emerge from bankruptcy in Aug 2018By Tom Hals and Nerijus AdomaitisWILMINGTON, Del./OSLO, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Seadrill Ltd<74>s $12.7 billion debt restructuring faces a critical phase as hold-out creditors prepare to challenge the plan put forward by John Fredriksen, its largest shareholder, as soon as a hearing next week.The offshore drilling contractor, once the world<6C>s largest by market capitalisation, filed for U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas on Sept. 12, presenting a plan backed by holders of 97 percent of its loans and 40 percent of its bonds.Norwegian-born shipping billionaire Fredriksen<65>s plan will extend by around five years maturities on billions of dollars in loans, giving the company breathing space until an industry recovery gains steam.The company will also raise $1.06 billion in new equity and debt financing from Fredriksen, through his family<6C>s investment vehicle Hemen, investment firm Centerbridge Credit Partners LP and a group of hedge funds.Holders of unsecured claims were offered 14.3 percent of the stock after dilution in the reorganized Seadrill, and current shareholders will get 1.9 percent, but only if unsecured creditors accept the plan.Unsecured creditors can also receive a right to buy newly issued stock and debt if they vote for the plan.Fredriksen and Centerbridge could end up controlling the company, depending on whether unsecured creditors vote for the plan and exercise their debt and equity rights.U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones has set a hearing on March 26, 2018 to confirm Seadrill<6C>s plan.That process will be much more difficult if Seadrill does not win over the backing of a majority of its unsecured creditors and bondholders, which may mean improving their stake in the reorganized company.<2E>We don<6F>t want to sit in the court for two years, but we want to get a better treatment. We think that there can be a better deal both for bondholders and Fredriksen,<2C> a Nordic holder of Seadrill<6C>s bonds told Reuters.BATTLE LINES DRAWN Hold-out bondholders are gearing up for battle. The group has hired Kristopher Hansen, a well-known restructuring attorney with Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, and Rothschild to fight for better treatment, and they have expanded the amount of debt they represent beyond a previous figure of 28 percent, according to two sources.The official committee of unsecured creditors, appointed on Sept. 22 by the Office of the U.S. Trustee, a government watchdog, will also begin playing an active role.The committee hired veteran bankruptcy attorney Thomas Mayer and his law firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel to represent it.Unsecured creditors in similar situations have challenged such plans as coercive. If unsecured creditors vote down the plan, they would receive an unspecified liquidation value which would almost certainly be less.Unsecured creditors and bondholders will also likely focus on the plan<61>s fairness. The sale of new equity and new secured debt is being conducted through a rights offering, a strategy that has been attacked in other restructurings as unjustly enriching the investors who backed the process.The plan may also be scrutinized for favoring Fredriksen. The banks said they would not support the plan unless he continued to back the company, but unsecured creditors could challenge the amount he is paying for the privilege.Seadrill<6C>s advisers are running a so-called go-shop until Dec. 11, during which time they will seek an investment similar to Fredriksen<65>s but at a higher value, which might include better treatment of unsecured creditors. If a better deal does not materialize Seadrill will be able to argue its proposal is the best possible deal.Unsecured creditors could try to extend the go-shop period, given it took Fredriksen
'ddbba8e307cdc8ff93e907f7246b7339a9a241e0'|'Asian factories rev up in September ahead of year-end spending spree'|'FILE PHOTO: A truck drives past rolls of steel inside the China Steel Corporation factory, in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan August 26, 2016. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Factories in Asia<69>s largest economies cranked up activity in September as a synchronized upswing in growth globally pointed to solid consumption of manufactured goods heading into the lucrative end-of-year shopping season.However, pockets of weakness in regional economies are likely to keep Asian central banks slanted toward more accommodative monetary policy, even as their Western counterparts move to scale back stimulus.China<6E>s central bank on Saturday cut the amount of cash that some banks must hold as reserves for the first time since February 2016 in a bid to encourage more lending to struggling smaller firms and energize its lackluster private sector.The world<6C>s second-largest economy has defied expectations for a slowdown this year, growing at a strong clip in the first half thanks to a construction boom. Beijing<6E>s latest easing comes ahead of a key party gathering this month.<2E>It<49>s a solid backdrop for manufacturing in the region as we head toward the big shopping season,<2C> said Rob Carnell, Asia<69>s head of research at ING.That sentiment was backed by an official Purchasing Managers<72> Index from China<6E>s vast manufacturing sector, which showed activity last month grew at the fastest clip since 2012 on solid demand.But cost pressures from high raw materials prices and continued underperformance of smaller firms mean some manufacturers are still struggling, which was reflected in a separate private survey of Chinese factories showing growth slowed in September.In Japan, factory activity grew the fastest in four months, thanks to robust exports growth and underpinned improving economic momentum even though inflation remained tepid. Meanwhile, a closely watched Bank of Japan survey showed big manufacturers have more confidence in business conditions than they have had for a decade, thanks to a weaker yen and robust global demand.In South Korea, manufacturing activity expanded at the fastest pace in almost two years.Indonesia, Southeast Asia<69>s biggest economy, also showed an improvement in factory growth but the pace was tepid and production contracted slightly. Indonesia has cut interest rates twice this year in a bid to boost stubbornly weak domestic consumption, while India slashed rates once in August to spur growth and inflation.Those moves, along with the BOJ<4F>s commitment to maintain its ultra-low rates for the foreseeable future, marked a contrast to the West<73>s shift toward tighter policy, although analysts expect the extent of stimulus in Asia to be measured.<2E>I would characterize some of the easings (in Asia) as a bit of fine-tuning really and not a major divergence in policy with the West,<2C> ING<4E>s Carnell said.<2E>The regional economies continue to grow at a decent pace.<2E>GLOBAL UPSWING Indeed, a synchronized upswing in the global economy has been a boon to manufacturers from China to Britain and the United States, with export-reliant Asia enjoying a spurt in growth led by an upsurge in sales of electronics.A raft of European PMIs scheduled for publication later on Monday are expected to paint a picture of robust manufacturing momentum globally.Shipments from Japan and South Korea - two major exporters - remained robust with the boom helping their economies grow at a decent clip. In Taiwan, another export-bellwether, factories continued to expand at a steady pace on higher global demand.In South Korea, higher memory chip and steel product sales lifted exports by 35 percent year-on-year in the longest stretch of expansion since 2011.Full-year growth in China is widely expected to handily meet the government<6E>s target of 6.5 percent, after stronger-than-forecast growth of 6.9 percent in the first half, driven by a year-long building boom and solid exports.That augured well for Asia<69>s manufacturers for the rest of the year
'd90a6166a9926f2cb8d4ef907794711760a0149a'|'Disney, Altice reach tentative programming deal'|'LOS ANGELES, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co and cable operator Altice USA reached a programming deal that keeps ESPN and other channels on the air as the two companies finalize details on a new contract, both sides said in a statement on Sunday.<2E>We have reached an agreement in principle and have extended the deadline accordingly to try and finalize the terms,<2C> the statement said. (Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Sandra Maler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/disney-altice/disney-altice-reach-tentative-programming-deal-idINL2N1MC0NL'|'2017-10-01T19:40:00.000+03:00'
'e105f5bd6be09a548045b09d5f35d4151db8c452'|'GM promises more electric vehicles, paid for by SUVs'|'October 2, 2017 / 4:04 PM / Updated 2 hours ago GM promises more electric vehicles, paid for by SUVs Joseph White 5 Min Read The GM logo is seen at the General Motors Assembly Plant in Valencia, April 21, 2017. REUTERS/Marco Bello DETROIT (Reuters) - Detroit automaker General Motors Co( GM.N ) outlined plans on Monday to add 20 new battery electric and fuel cell vehicles to its global product lineup by 2023, financed by robust profits from sales of gasoline-fueled trucks and sport utility vehicles in the United States and China. <20>General Motors believes in an all-electric future,<2C> GM global product development chief Mark Reuss said on Monday during a briefing at the company<6E>s suburban Detroit technical center. Future generations of GM electric vehicles <20>will be profitable,<2C> Reuss said, but added it was not clear when GM could make all its new vehicle offerings zero-emission electric cars. Regulators in China and some European countries have floated proposals to ban internal combustion engines by 2030 or 2040. <20>We will continue to make sure our internal combustion engines will get more and more efficient,<2C> Reuss said. GM shares were up more than 4 percent in midday New York trading on positive comments from Rod Lache, auto analyst at Deutsche Bank. Automakers, including electric vehicle market leader Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ), lose money on electric cars because battery costs are still higher than comparable internal combustion engines. GM funds its forays into new technology using a river of cash generated by old-technology vehicles popular with its core customer base in the United States heartland. In comparison, Tesla has burned through an estimated $10 billion in cash and has yet to show a full year profit. GM earned more than 90 percent of its $12.5 billion in pretax profits last year in North America, amid robust demand for its lineup of large sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks. The company<6E>s profitable operations in China rely on consumer demand for an expanding lineup of gasoline powered SUVs. GM has previously announced plans to make some of its future electric vehicles capable of driving themselves in robot taxi fleets. The company offered sneak peeks of three electric vehicle prototypes: a Buick brand sport utility vehicle, a sporty Cadillac wagon and a futuristic pod car wearing a Bolt badge. GM collaborated with Korean battery maker LG Chem ( 051910.KS ) to build the Bolt battery system. Company officials did not say what companies would supply batteries for the larger fleet of vehicles promised by 2023. Fuel cell vehicles will also play a role in GM<47>s future, the company said. GM showed on Monday a prototype of a rolling, hydrogen fueled platform called <20>SURUS<55> that could be used for multiple purposes. The company plans to offer a fuel cell vehicle to retail customers within five years, it said. Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ), Honda Motor Co ( 7267.T ) and Hyundai Motor Co ( 005380.KS ) already are marketing fuel cell vehicles in low volume. GM Chief Executive Mary Barra said last month the company plans to introduce at least 10 new electric or hybrid vehicles to the Chinese market by 2020, and open a battery plant this year with Chinese partner SAIC Motor Corp Ltd 600104.SS. China has set goals for electric and plug-in hybrid cars to make up at least a fifth of auto sales by 2025. Some of the electric vehicles GM will offer in China are among the 20 Reuss promised by 2023. GM also hinted that it may take new steps to expand the public infrastructure for rapid recharging of electric vehicles, without offering any details. The No. 1 U.S. automaker joins several rivals, including German automakers Daimler AG, Volkswagen AG and BMW AG, that have pledged to accelerate development of electric vehicles, in response to proposals in China and several European countries to ban internal combustion engines by 2030 or 2040. GM<47>s announcement comes just two days before rival Ford Motor Co( F.N ) is scheduled to roll out a n
'be49dae4dce4c22434d96fda50a88008f1abaf93'|'Deals of the day-Mergers and acquisitions'|'Oct 2 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 0930 GMT on Monday:** Snow Park Capital Partners LP has built a stake in retail-focused real estate investment trust Cedar Realty Trust Inc and is urging it to explore strategic options, including a potential sale, according to two people familiar with the matter.** Dynavax Technologies Corp, a biotechnology company focused on drugs that harness the immune system to combat disease, is reviewing strategic options for its hepatitis B vaccine, which could include a potential sale or licensing deal, people familiar with the matter said. {nL2N1M72GW]** Global Logistic Properties, Asia<69>s biggest warehouse operator, agreed to acquire European logistics platform Gazeley for about $2.8 billion, marking its first push into Europe and underscoring consolidation in the buoyant sector.** Noble Group Ltd expects to sell its oil liquids business by the end of December as part of a plan to slim down drastically its core Asian coal trading business after a crisis-wracked two years.** Malaysia<69>s Petronas Chemicals Group Bhd said it plans to sell 50 percent of a polymers unit to Saudi Aramco<63>s wholly owned subsidiary, Aramco Overseas Holdings Co<43>peratief U.A. for $900 million.** Embattled Indian telecom company Reliance Communications Ltd faced another setback on Sunday after a deal to merge its wireless business with smaller rival Aircel was called off, raising fresh doubts about its debt-repayment plans.** French waste and water group Suez said it had finalised its 3.2 billion euros ($3.4 billion) acquisition of GE Water at the end of September, and confirmed its synergy outlook for the deal.** U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital plans to buy Japanese advertising agency Asatsu-DK Inc in a deal that could be worth $1.2 billion or more, a person familiar with the transaction said.** French waste and water group Suez said it had finalised its 3.2 billion euros ($3.4 billion) acquisition of GE Water, and confirmed its synergy outlook for the deal.** Chinese automotive group Geely will increase its stake in Denmark<72>s Saxo Bank to 51.5 percent while Finland<6E>s Sampo Oyj will take a stake of 19.9 percent, Saxo said.Compiled by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/deals-day/deals-of-the-day-mergers-and-acquisitions-idINL4N1MD2C7'|'2017-10-02T07:38:00.000+03:00'
'1f9b17836cfed0c977b827e2bae6cc1f58d2e14c'|'U.S. travel warning sends chill across Cuban tourism industry'|'HAVANA, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Businesses catering to U.S. tourists visiting Cuba have had a rude awakening in the last few months after enjoying a 2-1/2-year boom.First, U.S. President Donald Trump in June ordered tighter restrictions on travel to the Caribbean island. Then the U.S. State Department warned on Friday against going there after a spate of alleged attacks on its diplomats in Havana, stating until the cause was determined, it could not guarantee Americans<6E> safety.The new regulations have not yet been published, and the warning does not mean Americans cannot travel to Cuba. Still, the moves relegate the island back to the realm of <20>forbidden fruit<69> to be enjoyed at one<6E>s peril.<2E>Just as the re-establishment of Cuba-U.S. relations was a positive influence, now this will be very negative,<2C> said Jose Enrique Montoto, who rents an apartment, often to American guests, through the online marketplace Airbnb. <20>They are creating a mood of insecurity for those who want to travel to Cuba.<2E>Montoto, 57, said three U.S. citizens who were set to arrive in Havana on Saturday had canceled their reservation with him at the last minute without an explanation. He worried that more would do the same.To be sure, less than 10 percent of foreign visitors to the island are Americans, even though the number of those travelers tripled to 285,000 last year due to new exemptions to the travel ban in the wake of the 2014 U.S.-Cuban historic detente under former U.S. President Barack Obama.According to Cuban government statistics, that would place local revenues from Americans<6E> sojourns at about $300 million.Cuba has long catered largely to Canadian and European tourists, and some local business owners said recent events under Trump were a harsh reminder not to rely too much on one market.Still, others said Americans were particularly good clients who paid well. They also feared the U.S. travel warning would further tarnish Cuba<62>s image as a safe and idyllic destination after Hurricane Irma wreaked havoc there last month.A dip in tourism this year would be a further blow to Cuba<62>s economy, which already is struggling with a drop in cheap oil shipments from key ally Venezuela, lower exports and a cash crunch.WHAT ABOUT THE BOTTOM LINE? Airbnb, American Airlines, United Airlines and other U.S. companies said on Friday that they would continue their operations on and to Cuba despite the travel warning and the new, tighter regulations.However, business could suffer if fewer Americans visit there.Trump has said he wants to eliminate one of the most popular exemptions to the U.S. travel ban on Cuba, the self-directed <20>people-to-people<6C> category. Confusion remains about what will be allowed.<2E>I<EFBFBD>m concerned about the impact (the warning) will have on our 2018 and 2019 business,<2C> said Andrea Holbrook, owner of Gainesville, Florida-based Holbrook Travel, which runs tours to more than 30 countries.<2E>Cuba certainly has been an emerging destination,<2C> she said on Saturday at a Havana conference organized by the Responsible and Ethical Cuba Travel association (RESPECT), a U.S. group of more than 150 businesses and non-profits bringing Americans to the island.U.S. cruise operators such as Royal Caribbean and Carnival Corp may remain unscathed, experts said, since their guests can stay on board, while the alleged attacks on U.S. diplomats are said to have occurred at their homes and hotels.U.S. tour operators said the alleged attacks had not affected any U.S. tourists and that Cuba remained one of the safest destinations possible.<2E>Our conclusion was this seems to be a political statement, not a warning because they are worried about peoples<65> health,<2C> said RESPECT Co-Coordinator Bob Guild.Cubans in the hospitality sector said that rather than wait for relations to improve under Trump, they should instead look to new markets.<2E>He is trying to close the door to us ever more,<2C> said Aimee Santos, 53, who rents out her flat, <20>but whenever a door closes, others ope
'baa46730ac14320ccbb1b4695f29029bba076132'|'ADM says it''s not bidding for Unilever''s spreads business'|'A worker scans barcodes by a chiller cabinet of Flora margarine at a Sainsbury''s supermarket in London February 6, 2008. Flora is a brand owned by consumer products company Unilever. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. agricultural trader Archer Daniels Midland Co ( ADM.N ) on Monday denied a report that it was bidding on Unilever Plc<6C>s ( ULVR.L ) spreads business, which includes Flora and Stork margarines. British newspaper the Times had reported that ADM was planning to make a move for part of the Unilever unit. ADM said in a statement that it was not submitting a bid. ADM and its rivals have been investing in higher-margin businesses such as food ingredients and natural flavorings to prop up slumping results from core grain trading and processing operations. Strong margins in sweeteners and starches helped prop up ADM<44>s second-quarter earnings. Shares of ADM were up 0.4 percent at $42.67 in midday trading. Reporting by Mark Weinraub; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-unilever-m-a-adm/adm-says-its-not-bidding-for-unilevers-spreads-business-idUSKCN1C725W'|'2017-10-02T19:23:00.000+03:00'
'db2cee18aa7ce239bb7dee472ccdc8a5bc81458c'|'UPDATE 1-Fed''s Yellen says AIG''s threat to stability is reduced after downsizing'|'FILE PHOTO: Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen speaks during a news conference in Washington, U.S., September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American International Group Inc ( AIG.N ) poses less of a threat to financial stability because it shrank its assets by more than $500 billion, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said on Monday in explaining why she voted in favor of releasing the company from stricter oversight.Her comments and others published by regulators on Monday shed light on a process financial firms say is too opaque and unaccountable, indicating big banks and insurers will have to downsize dramatically if they are to shake off the <20>systemically risky<6B> label.The comments also expose ongoing divisions among financial regulators over how to determine if a company is systemically risky a decade since the 2007-2009 global financial crisis began.The U.S. Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) said on Friday that AIG - which received a $182 billion U.S. government bailout during the crisis - is no longer critical to the health of the U.S. financial system.<2E>Since the financial crisis, AIG has largely sold off or wound down its capital markets businesses, and has become a smaller firm that poses less of a threat to financial stability,<2C> Yellen said in the statement.<2E>The possibility of de-designation provides an incentive for designated firms to significantly reduce their systemic footprint,<2C> she added.The FSOC, which comprises the heads of financial regulators across the federal government, requires a two-thirds majority to agree to remove a company<6E>s designation as a <20>systemically important financial institution,<2C> or SIFI.By law, any bank with over $50 billion in assets is automatically considered a SIFI, while the FSOC can apply the label to nonbanks on a case-by-case basis. The panel only once before has removed a SIFI designation, with GE Capital in 2016.With four appointees of former President Barack Obama still holding FSOC seats, Yellen<65>s vote proved decisive on Friday. The remaining three Obama appointees voted against while five Trump appointees voted in favor along with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who chairs the council.Jay Clayton, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, recused himself.The chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Martin Gruenberg, who voted against, argued that AIG had actually increased its life insurance and annuity business exposure in recent years, according to comments released by the Treasury on Monday.The director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Mel Watt, also voted against and even challenged the legality of whether six votes was sufficient under FSOC rules.<2E>In my view, the Council<69>s decision represents a simple majority decision, not the two-thirds required by statute.<2E>Reporting by Michelle Price; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Leslie Adler '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fed-aig/fed-chair-yellen-says-aig-poses-less-of-systemic-threat-after-downsizing-idUSKCN1C801V'|'2017-10-03T04:52:00.000+03:00'
'33124b951c89cf3a93ef7f3478bd31be3de9fcc5'|'Wall Street set to open higher as focus shifts to earnings'|'A trader works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson (Reuters) - The S&P 500, the Dow, Nasdaq and the Russell 2000 indexes all posted record high closes for the second straight day on Tuesday, helped by gains in carmakers after strong September vehicle sales and a jump in airline shares.The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 83.66 points, or 0.37 percent, to 22,641.26, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 5.46 points, or 0.22 percent, to 2,534.58 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 15.00 points, or 0.23 percent, to 6,531.71.Reporting By Sinead Carew; Editing by Nick Zieminski '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-stocks/wall-street-set-to-open-higher-as-focus-shifts-to-earnings-idINKCN1C81IQ'|'2017-10-03T16:26:00.000+03:00'
'4956adfb34690efa0a2964257d7a8c038f09c5ad'|'Ukraine parliament approves pension reform bill'|'KIEV, Oct 3 (Reuters) - The Ukrainian parliament approved pension reforms on Tuesday aimed at easing pressure from a pensions deficit of more than $5 billion while also raising the minimum pension.<2E>We<57>re taking a historic decision to establish a fair pension system,<2C> Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said ahead of the vote.Last week, a senior World Bank official said the bank and the International Monetary Fund were concerned about the hundreds of amendments that have been added to the draft pensions legislation since July, many submitted by populist factions in parliament. (Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; editing by Matthias Williams, Larry King) '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-pensions-vote/ukraine-parliament-approves-pension-reform-bill-idUSS8N1GS01S'|'2017-10-03T23:12:00.000+03:00'
'c526db8aa7b4e5a1a3ba56b4814abbaa251a8ed2'|'Asia cocoa demand to grow by about 3 pct to 4 pct in 2017/18- Cargill executive'|'SINGAPORE, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Asian cocoa demand is likely to grow by about 3 percent to 4 percent during the 2017/18 crop period as compared to global growth of about 2 percent to 3 percent, Harold Poelma, president of Cargill<6C>s cocoa and chocolate division said on Tuesday.Asia<69>s chocolate powder demand is forecast to rise by 5 percent during the year, he said on the sidelines of an industry conference in Singapore.Reporting by Naveen Thukrul; Editing by Christian Schmollinger '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/asia-softs-cocoa/asia-cocoa-demand-to-grow-by-about-3-pct-to-4-pct-in-2017-18-cargill-executive-idINL4N1ME1UK'|'2017-10-03T06:59:00.000+03:00'
'112b25cae809ec8899547fb286e7067702cd6656'|'Canada debt issues set record, helped by maple bonds; M&A drops'|'A Canadian flag flies in front of the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, March 22, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Wattie TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian debt issuance climbed 12 percent to a record in the first nine months of 2017, helped by deals from Canada Housing Trust and a major maple bond from Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ), bucking a weak trend in M&A and equity deals as Canadian companies slowed the pace of their outbound dealmaking.Debt deal volumes rose to C$140.5 billion ($112.4 billion) in the period, while M&A and equity deals dropped more than a fifth, according to Thomson Reuters data released on Tuesday. High valuations and uncertainty surrounding U.S. regulations and trade policies held back Canadian buyers from acquiring overseas assets, bankers said.But the maple bond market, in which foreign companies sell Canadian dollar-denominated debt, attracted a slew of blue-chip companies including AB InBev ( ABI.BR ), McDonald<6C>s ( MCD.N ) and Walt Disney ( DIS.N ).<2E>We expect market forces to remain constructive for further maple issuance, particularly from well-recognized non-financial companies,<2C> said Rob Brown, co-head of Canadian debt capital markets at RBC ( RY.TO ), the top adviser for debt deals.He said the strong investor interest in the recent deals would encourage other companies to consider maple offerings.Foreign companies often issue Canadian dollar denominated debt when they can swap the proceeds into U.S. dollars and achieve a cheaper overall borrowing cost, bankers say. The rush of deals comes after two recent interest rate hikes by the Bank of Canada pushed Canadian bond yields higher, attracting interest from global bond investors.<2E>With Canada<64>s longer-end government bonds still trading 20 to 40 basis points lower than the U.S. curve, issuers can still take advantage of a lower rate environment in Canada,<2C> PenderFund Capital Management portfolio manager Geoff Castle said.CONFIDENCE GAME But during this period, Canadian M&A activity fell 21 percent from a year ago to $202.5 billion, as Canadian buyers<72> appetite for foreign assets dimmed due to stretched valuations. For the third quarter, M&A deal values fell 64 percent to their lowest in 15 quarters.<2E>It<49>s getting harder to find value in many sectors of the market,<2C> said David Rawlings, head of JPMorgan Canada. <20>Even though you can finance things, you<6F>ve got to make sure you<6F>re comfortable with the prices you pay.<2E>JPMorgan ( JPM.N ) took the No. 1 spot in the M&A rankings, followed by Toronto Dominion Bank ( TD.TO ), Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ), RBC and Barclays ( BARC.L ).While U.S. equity markets are trading near record highs, regulatory uncertainty over U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s policies and continuing talks about the North American Free Trade Agreement weigh on investor sentiment.<2E>M&A is a confidence game. People are waiting for the dust to settle with Trump regulations and the NAFTA uncertainty,<2C> said Jeremy Fraiberg, co-chair of law firm Osler<65>s M&A group.Equity issues dropped about 22 percent in the period, mirroring the fall in M&A. Buyers typically part-fund their acquisitions by issuing new equity. RBC topped the equity capital markets rankings for the first nine months of 2017, followed by TD, BMO ( BMO.TO ), CIBC ( CM.TO ) and JPMorgan.However, new listings remained strong, with IPOs raising C$3.8 billion in the period to hit a seven-year high.Reporting by John Tilak and Fergal Smith; Editing by Denny Thomas and Chizu Nomiyama '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-canada-m-a/canada-debt-issues-set-record-helped-by-maple-bonds-ma-drops-idINKCN1C82F3'|'2017-10-03T17:05:00.000+03:00'
'6219b53ea3ee527c088c444fb3d1eaca7ffce888'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX rises with banks, miners; energy stocks weigh'|'* TSX closes up 70.06 points, or 0.45 pct, at 15,705.00* Eight of TSX<53>s 10 main groups move higher* Energy sector weighs as crude prices fall (Adds details, Quote: s, updates to market close)TORONTO/OTTAWA, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index rose modestly on Monday as broad gains supported by the heavyweight financial sector offset the drag of energy stocks<6B> retreat with lower oil prices.Jean Coutu Group rose 1.7 percent to C$24.71 after grocery company Metro Inc said it would buy the pharmacy chain for C$4.5 billion ($3.6 billion) in cash and stock. Metro<72>s stock declined 1.3 percent to C$42.36.The financials group, which accounts for more than a third of the index<65>s weight, added 0.6 percent overall, with Toronto-Dominion Bank up 1.4 percent at C$71.24 and Bank of Nova Scotia adding 0.7 percent to C$79.95.Financials, and the Toronto stock market in general, have benefited from the view that the Bank of Canada will raise interest rates slowly following two back-to-back hikes, said Bryden Teich, portfolio manager at Avenue Investment Management.Since Bank of Canada Deputy Governor Tim Lane last month said the central bank was watching how the economy will respond to the strengthening Canadian dollar, Toronto stocks have risen 3.5 percent.<2E>That was the inflection point for the market and we<77>ve gone basically straight up from there,<2C> Teich said.The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index ended up 70.06 points, or 0.45 percent, at 15,705.00. Of the index<65>s 10 main groups, eight were higher.If economic growth continues to be strong and the Bank of Canada doesn<73>t move too aggressively, stocks could gain another 5 to 6 percent, Teich said.The index is now just 1.5 percent away from the intraday record high it hit in February.Diversified miner Teck Resources Ltd rose 3.2 percent to C$27.10 as copper held steady and lead and zinc prices jumped.The materials group, which includes precious and base metal miners and fertilizer companies, added 1 percent.But a 0.4 percent decline from the energy sector capped gains as oil prices were pressured by signs of higher output. U.S. crude fell $1.10, or 2.1 percent, to $50.57 a barrel.The most influential energy weights included Suncor Energy Inc, which declined 0.8 percent to C$43.38.Smaller producers took larger hits, with MEG Energy Corp down 4.0 percent at C$5.27 and Crew Energy Inc off 3.6 percent to C$4.28. Cenovus Energy fell 1.3 percent to C$12.35. (Reporting by Alastair Sharp in Toronto and Leah Schnurr in Ottawa; Editing by James Dalgleish) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks/canada-stocks-tsx-rises-with-banks-miners-energy-stocks-weigh-idUSL2N1MD1PL'|'2017-10-03T00:07:00.000+03:00'
'0c33676a8b89cd394efdb5c216f9c0810cb51e20'|'Bank of England sees Brexit risks to EU bank lending in UK and clearing'|'Pedestrians walk past the Bank of England in the City of London, Britain, May 15, 2014. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor/Files LONDON (Reuters) - Brexit poses risks to the ability of British companies to borrow from European banks and to some clearing activity which might have to relocate from London once Britain leaves the EU, the Bank of England said on Tuesday.Banks from the bloc and other associated countries accounted for around 10 percent of lending to British companies, the BoE<6F>s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) said in a summary of its most recent meeting held on Sept. 20.Currently, those banks can operate as branches but they might have to upgrade to fully fledged subsidiaries after Brexit, a process that could take many months.<2E>The risk of disruption to wholesale UK banking services appeared to be slightly higher than previously thought, given that a number of EEA (European Economic Area) firms branching into the UK were not sufficiently focused on addressing this issue,<2C> the FPC said in a statement.The BoE<6F>s Prudential Regulation Authority was <20>engaging firms to improve the state of their contingency planning.<2E>PRA Chief Executive Sam Woods told Reuters last week that he expected 130 licence applications from branches.<2E>Firms would need to start seeking authorisations in 2018 Q1,<2C> the FPC said.The FPC also said there was a <20>substantial risk<73> of disruption to cross-border clearing operations in financial services, such as derivatives used by companies to hedge themselves against potential financial market swings.The EU has published a draft law that would require clearing of euro-denominated transactions in some cases to be shifted from London to cities in the bloc after Brexit, a proposal resisted by Britain.The FPC said clearing houses were examining contingency options <20>including the potential to relocate some clearing activity from the UK in order to continue to provide services to EU clients.<2E>But this option was not available in segments of the market <20>where the complexity and cost of any migration was significant<6E>.<2E>In the event of access restrictions to those markets, EU firms would therefore have to move their activity to another CCP (clearing house), which was likely to be difficult to achieve before the point of EU withdrawal,<2C> the FPC said.LCH, a unit of the London Stock Exchange and which dominates clearing in euro-denominated swaps, said it could not comment on any contingency plans.Banks have said it would be costly and cumbersome to shift their derivatives positions to LCH<43>s Paris unit or to another clearer like Eurex in Frankfurt.Reporting by Huw Jones and William Schomberg; Editing by Catherine Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-bank-clearing/bank-of-england-sees-brexit-risks-to-eu-bank-lending-in-uk-and-clearing-idINKCN1C814L'|'2017-10-03T14:09:00.000+03:00'
'd9a7a166313db517514bd4db1609367e8cde20d6'|'MOVES-Charles Fry joins AIG insurance unit as head of reinsurance'|'October 3, 2017 / 1:35 PM / in 5 minutes MOVES-Charles Fry joins AIG insurance unit as head of reinsurance Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 3 (Reuters) - American International Group on Tuesday named Charles Fry as head of reinsurance, general insurance, effective immediately. Fry, who will oversee AIG<49>s global reinsurance, shared services, transformation and administration functions, previously served as chief financial officer at Lloyd<79>s of London insurer Novae Group Plc. Last month, AIG reorganized into three units - general insurance business, a life and retirement unit and a standalone technology unit. It no longer has a separate commercial and consumer business. (Reporting by)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/aig-moves-charlesfry/moves-charles-fry-joins-aig-insurance-unit-as-head-of-reinsurance-idUSL4N1ME2M2'|'2017-10-03T16:34:00.000+03:00'
'57b6373408ab8829f5e0b307b4d54fd42b1cc8c2'|'Bank of England sees Brexit risks to EU bank lending in UK and clearing'|'October 3, 2017 / 11:05 AM / in 6 hours Bank of England sees Brexit risks to EU bank lending in UK and clearing Huw Jones , William Schomberg 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A pedestrian walks past the Bank of England in the City of London, Britain April 19, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Brexit poses risks to the ability of British companies to borrow from European banks and to some clearing activity which might have to relocate from London once Britain leaves the EU, the Bank of England said on Tuesday. Banks from the bloc and other associated countries accounted for around 10 percent of lending to British companies, the BoE<6F>s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) said in a summary of its most recent meeting held on Sept. 20. Currently, those banks can operate as branches but they might have to upgrade to fully fledged subsidiaries after Brexit, a process that could take many months. <20>The risk of disruption to wholesale UK banking services appeared to be slightly higher than previously thought, given that a number of EEA (European Economic Area) firms branching into the UK were not sufficiently focused on addressing this issue,<2C> the FPC said in a statement. The BoE<6F>s Prudential Regulation Authority was <20>engaging firms to improve the state of their contingency planning.<2E> PRA Chief Executive Sam Woods told Reuters last week that he expected 130 license applications from branches. <20>Firms would need to start seeking authorizations in 2018 Q1,<2C> the FPC said. The FPC also said there was a <20>substantial risk<73> of disruption to cross-border clearing operations in financial services, such as derivatives used by companies to hedge themselves against potential financial market swings. The EU has published a draft law that would require clearing of euro-denominated transactions in some cases to be shifted from London to cities in the bloc after Brexit, a proposal resisted by Britain. The FPC said clearing houses were examining contingency options <20>including the potential to relocate some clearing activity from the UK in order to continue to provide services to EU clients.<2E> But this option was not available in segments of the market <20>where the complexity and cost of any migration was significant<6E>. <20>In the event of access restrictions to those markets, EU firms would therefore have to move their activity to another CCP (clearing house), which was likely to be difficult to achieve before the point of EU withdrawal,<2C> the FPC said. LCH, a unit of the London Stock Exchange ( LSE.L ) and which dominates clearing in euro-denominated swaps, said it could not comment on any contingency plans. Banks have said it would be costly and cumbersome to shift their derivatives positions to LCH<43>s Paris unit or to another clearer like Eurex ( DB1Gn.DE ) in Frankfurt. Reporting by Huw Jones and William Schomberg; Editing by Catherine Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-bank-clearing/bank-of-england-sees-brexit-risks-to-eu-bank-lending-in-uk-and-clearing-idUKKCN1C8140'|'2017-10-03T14:04:00.000+03:00'
'765dddef57fa733c7f7aa9d6efc2b038875944dd'|'MIDEAST STOCKS-Saudi underperforms region but car-related shares rise again'|'October 2, 2017 / 1:55 PM / Updated 30 minutes ago MIDEAST STOCKS-Saudi underperforms region but car-related shares rise again Reuters Staff * Atheeb Telecom sinks as shares resume trading * Qatar stabilises as most blue chips rise * Egypt up again but profit-taking cuts gains * Qalaa Holding down on wider H1 net loss By Celine Aswad DUBAI, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Most stock markets in the Middle East made small gains on Monday with Egypt hitting yet another all-time high, while the Saudi Arabian index edged down. The Riyadh index lost 0.1 percent; the banking sector was soft with Banque Saudi Fransi dropping 1.3 percent. Shares of telecommunications operator Atheeb, which had been suspended by the capital markets regulator since Sept. 25, tumbled 3.1 percent. The company on Monday issued a statement saying it was still waiting for authorities to grant it a unified licence, which would enable Atheeb to obtain a loan to build its spectrum and pay its dues to the telecommunications regulator. Shares of car-related companies, however, resumed rising after the government said last week that it would next year lift a ban on women driving. Car rental company United International Transport (Budget Saudi) climbed 3.2 percent and car servicing company Saudi Automotive jumped 4.0 percent in active trade. Banking shares helped take Qatar<61>s index 0.1 percent higher; Masraf Al Rayan rose 1.5 percent. The latest monthly Reuters poll of regional fund managers, published on Thursday, showed sentiment toward Qatar<61>s stock market had on balance turned positive after it plunged in response to sanctions imposed by other Arab states. Valuations have in some cases reached distressed levels and dividend yields are attractive. Masraf Al Rayan, for example, had a dividend yield of 5.5 percent as of Monday<61>s close. In Kuwait, some shares continued to be bid up after rising on Sunday on news that index compiler FTSE was upgrading Kuwait to secondary emerging market status. Warehousing company, Agility, added a further 1.1 percent. The main index finished almost flat. The Dubai index rebounded 0.5 percent as most mid- to large-sized companies rose, including Emaar Properties , which climbed 1.1 percent. It is expected soon to reveal the valuation of its local real estate development arm, in which it plans to offer a stake to the public. In Abu Dhabi, the index added 0.4 percent as three of the top five most valuable shares rose; First Abu Dhabi Bank gained 0.5 percent. Egypt<70>s main index rose 0.2 percent to 14,000 points, a record high, but closed 102 points below its intra-day high, showing substantial profit-taking pressure. The index has gained momentum in the last 10 days as it has started to price in a reversal of tight monetary policy. Egyptian Chemical Industries, which is proceeding with a capital increase, soared almost 10 percent in its heaviest trade ever on Monday. But private equity firm Qalaa Holdings lost 3.8 percent after it reported a wider net loss for the first half of the year. HIGHLIGHTS * The index fell 0.1 percent to 7,224 points. DUBAI * The index added 0.5 percent to 3,561 points. ABU DHABI * The index rose 0.4 percent to 4,427 points. QATAR * The index edged up 0.1 percent to 8,302 points. EGYPT * The index rose 0.2 percent to 14,000 points. KUWAIT * The index added 0.04 percent to 6,675 points. OMAN'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/mideast-stocks/mideast-stocks-saudi-underperforms-region-but-car-related-shares-rise-again-idUSL8N1MD4B9'|'2017-10-02T16:54:00.000+03:00'
'04458ee27ab0d663375c9b5c908736e082158986'|'Italy''s investment bank Equita to list by year end: source'|'October 2, 2017 / 2:59 PM / Updated 2 minutes ago Italy''s investment bank Equita to list by year end: source Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MILAN (Reuters) - Italian boutique investment bank Equita aims to list on the Milan bourse by the end of the year, a source close to the matter said on Monday. The source added that the company, fully owned by its management, wants to list on Aim Italia - a segment of the Milan stock exchange dedicated to small and medium enterprises - but the final goal is to be listed on the Mta main market. Equita declined to comment. '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-equita-ipo/italys-investment-bank-equita-to-list-by-year-end-source-idINKCN1C71XP'|'2017-10-02T12:59:00.000+03:00'
'e45c946749100d1981e507cd280adf79c4c393d5'|'Positioning for Brexit, France asks finance industry where it can simplify rules'|'October 2, 2017 / 2:55 PM / Updated 2 hours ago Positioning for Brexit, France asks finance industry where it can simplify rules Reuters Staff 3 Min Read General view of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau - RC11A8019B30 PARIS (Reuters) - France has launched a public consultation over how financial service regulations can be simplified, the finance ministry said on Monday, stepping up its campaign to lure London bankers after Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union. Paris is playing catch-up with other EU financial hubs, such as Frankfurt and Dublin, that have already secured job commitments from financial institutions based in London. <20>(Finance minister) Bruno Le Maire announced the launch of the public consultations aimed at identifying cases where European regulation on financial services is transposed (into French law) too strictly,<2C> the statement said. The ministry will also work with lobbyists to offer detailed proposals for the EU<45>s Capital Markets Union (CMU). The expected departure from the EU of Britain, the bloc<6F>s biggest financial market, in 2019 is forcing the Commission to rethink the CMU project as an alternative to London. The ministry<72>s statement was issued after Le Maire met bank bosses as well as the heads of the French central bank, market regulator, LCH Clearnet and Euronext, which together make up the Paris financial marketplace committee. Industry figures said the French government was listening to their needs and more policy announcements were anticipated to help boost Paris<69> attractiveness. <20>Our arguments have made their way. We see signals and announcements that have become significant ... Other announcements could come,<2C> Arnaud de Bresson, chief executive of lobbying firm Paris Europlace, told Reuters after the meeting. In a sign Paris<69> charm offensive is gaining traction, Wall Street bank Citigroup said last week it was applying for a license to conduct sales and trading activities in France, while Bank of America is looking to lease more office space in Paris, sources told Reuters. Since the Brexit vote, France has made its tax regime for expatriates more favorable, set up a fast-track license application, while new President Emmanuel Macron has launched an overhaul of the labor market. So far, however, there has been little sign that a single European city will emerge as a new dominant player, as most banks have so far decided to disperse activities across Europe. Bankers cite France<63>s high payroll charges and frequent changes to tax policy as a deterrent to choosing Paris. Reporting by Maya Nikolaeva; Additional reporting by Myriam Rivet; Editing by Richard Lough and Mark Potter '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-france/positioning-for-brexit-france-asks-finance-industry-where-it-can-simplify-rules-idUSKCN1C71WY'|'2017-10-02T17:55:00.000+03:00'
'24746cff2e9fbb46113083f6b1809c726e2ad875'|'Creditors accept restructuring plan for oil services group CGG'|'October 2, 2017 / 5:50 AM / Updated 10 minutes ago Creditors accept restructuring plan for oil services group CGG Reuters Staff 1 Min Read PARIS, Oct 2 (Reuters) - The creditors of debt-ridden oil services group CGG have accepted CGG<47>s chapter 11 bankruptcy plan, CGG said on Monday, in what could form one of the biggest restructurings that France has seen in recent years. CGG has debt in excess of $3 billion, and the restructuring calls for unsecured debt to be converted to equity, maturities on secured debt to be extended and $500 million in new money to be raised. CGG, in which the French state holds around 9 percent of the shares, filed for bankruptcy in France and the United States in June as part of a restructuring to ease its debt burden. The company, which specialises in geo-seismic surveys and is listed in Paris and New York, struggled to keep up with payments on its debt as the big oil groups that use its services proved reluctant to lift exploration spending despite rising oil prices. (Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Richard Pullin)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/cgg-restructuring/creditors-accept-restructuring-plan-for-oil-services-group-cgg-idUSFWN1MD00Q'|'2017-10-02T13:50:00.000+03:00'
'311e2820371abf7a608bec4155b9a6a7cccf8044'|'Bain to buy Japan ad agency Asatsu-DK for $1.3 billion: Nikkei'|'Logo of the Bain Capital is screened at a news conference in Tokyo, Japan September 28, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital aims to buy Japan<61>s third-largest advertising agency, Asatsu-DK Inc ( 9747.T ), for 152 billion yen ($1.35 billion) in one of the largest buyouts in Japan this year, it said on Monday.Bain plans to buy all of Asatsu-DK<44>s shares from existing holders, including top shareholder WPP ( WPP.L ), for 3,660 yen a share, a 15.4 percent premium over Monday<61>s close.The private equity firm said it would launch a tender offer on Tuesday and plans to delist the company. The buyout will be canceled if it fails to buy a stake larger than 50.1 percent.Asatsu-DK supports Bain<69>s offer, saying that a strategic review had found that private ownership represented the best option to position the company for sustainable growth.<2E>In collaboration with Bain Capital, we will set a course towards bold structural reforms and growth strategies that will help us to enhance our competitiveness and to expand our market share, both in Japan and overseas,<2C> said President and Group CEO Shinichi Ueno.<2E>Furthermore, this new partnership will open access to a broader network of strategic partners, enabling ADK to build on its success in markets across Asia and elsewhere in the world.<2E>The bid comes only days after a Bain-led consortium signed an $18 billion deal to buy Toshiba Corp<72>s ( 6502.T ) microchip business.WPP, the world<6C>s largest advertising group, owns 24.96 percent in Asatsu-DK. The companies formed an alliance in 1998 to set up joint ventures and cultivate clients together.Asatsu-DK said it now wants to end the partnership.It said the two groups did not agree on the best strategy to respond to rapid change in the advertising industry.<2E>Looking back over the past two decades, we made a certain achievement at the initial stage,<2C> Asatsu-DK said of the WPP alliance. <20>Since then we failed to find concrete measures that could be beneficial for both of us.<2E>Asatsu-DK said it will sell its holding in WPP, a 2.43 percent stake worth about 65 billion yen, and expects to post a special gain from the sale.Whether WPP will sell its Asatsu-DK stake upon its request is not certain yet, said Shinpei Ishida, department director of the president<6E>s office for Asatsu-DK.A source close to WPP said the buyout plan as outlined by Bain significantly undervalued Asatsu-DK.($1 = 112.7900 yen)Reporting by Junko Fijita; Additional reporting by Chris Gallagher, Chang-Ran Kim and Paul Sandle; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and David Goodman '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-asatsu-dk-m-a-bain/bain-to-buy-japan-ad-agency-asatsu-dk-for-1-3-billion-nikkei-idINKCN1C70HF'|'2017-10-02T04:34:00.000+03:00'
'4669bce4f4f791905ded9fa7dcef9b5a065ec798'|'Ford to cut costs $14 billion, invest in trucks, electric cars - CEO'|'October 3, 2017 / 8:55 PM / Updated 35 minutes ago Ford to cut costs $14 billion, invest in trucks, electric cars: CEO Joseph White , Paul Lienert 4 Min Read The Ford logo is seen on a car in a park lot in Sao Paulo, Brazil June 2, 2017. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker DETROIT (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co plans to slash $14 billion in costs over the next five years, Chief Executive Officer Jim Hackett told investors on Tuesday, adding that the No. 2 U.S. automaker would shift capital investment away from sedans and internal combustion engines to develop more trucks and electric and hybrid cars. Hackett told investors that Ford will be open to more partnerships to spread the costs and risks of simultaneously developing new technology while still churning out profits from its legacy business of selling trucks and sport utility vehicles in North America. He cited a partnership with ride services company Lyft to develop technology to deploy self-driving cars. Hackett, former CEO of office furniture maker Steelcase Inc, took the top post at Ford in May, after his predecessor Mark Fields was pushed out. At the time, Hackett promised investors a statement within 100 days as to how he would improve the <20>fitness<73> of Ford to compete as the auto industry becomes more digital, more electric and less wedded to selling one vehicle at a time to individuals. Ford shares were little changed after hours as Hackett and other executives presented their outlook. Ford shares had risen 2 percent on Tuesday, up with other automotive stocks as the industry reported the highest sales pace in a dozen years. Since taking over, Hackett has signed off on a series of moves, including a plan to shift production of Ford Focus compact cars from Michigan to China. He also hired a company outsider, Jason Luo, to lead Ford<72>s China business in China, the world<6C>s largest car market. Ford is revamping operations there and looking to expand partnerships to get a stronger position in electric vehicles. Some of Hackett<74>s plan indicated that Ford is playing catch up. For instance, Hackett said that by 2019, Ford plans to equip all U.S. models with built-in modems, and install mobile internet connections in 90 percent of global vehicles by 2020 Rival General Motors Co has been installing built-in mobile broadband connections in its U.S. vehicles since 2015 and now has about 7 million 4G LTE connected vehicles on the road today globally, a spokesman said on Tuesday. Of the $14 billion in promised cost reductions at Ford over five years, $10 billion will come from material costs and $4 billion from reduced engineering costs, Hackett said. <20>We have too much cost across our business,<2C> Hackett said. By 2022, Ford plans to cut spending on future internal combustion engines by a third, or about $500 million, putting that money instead into expanded electric and hybrid vehicle development, on top of $4.5 billion previously announced. Ford had already promised 13 new electric or hybrid vehicles within the next five years. By 2030, Ford expects about a third of vehicles to be battery electric, a third hybrids and a third internal combustion. GM on Monday said it planned to launch 20 new all-electric vehicles by 2023. Ford<72>s profit margins fell short of its goal of 8 percent automotive operating margins in part because revenues fell short of expectations, while costs rose faster than expected, Hackett said. Ford<72>s automotive profit margin was 6.7 percent in 2016. He said one way to cut costs will be to offer fewer variations of Ford<72>s models. The slow-selling Ford Fusion midsize sedan can now be ordered in 35,000 combinations of features, colors and powertrain options. The future model will come in just 96 combinations. He said Ford also will cut the time it takes to engineer a new car by 20 percent, and invest in <20>factories of the future<72> that will occupy less space and use more robots. Editing by David Gregorio'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNe
'9473f6a96e73c8263404a504cbe29d3d5443ef82'|'UPDATE 1-Monsanto posts profit on higher sales of corn, soybean seeds'|'October 4, 2017 / 12:40 PM / in 17 minutes UPDATE 1-Monsanto posts profit on higher sales of corn, soybean seeds Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 4 (Reuters) - U.S. seeds and agrochemicals company Monsanto Co, which is being acquired by Germany<6E>s Bayer AG, reported a quarterly profit, compared with a year-ago loss, helped by sales of corn and soybean seeds. The world<6C>s largest seed supplier<65>s shares were up about 1 percent at $120.65 in premarket trading on Wednesday. Monsanto said sales of corn seeds and traits, its biggest segment by revenue, rose nearly 16 percent helped by higher prices in Brazil and Argentina. Soybean seeds sales increased 22 percent, while net sales for the company rose 4.8 percent to $2.68 billion. Net income attributable to Monsanto was $20 million, or 5 cents per share, in the fourth quarter ended Aug. 31, compared with a loss of $191 million, or 44 cents per share, a year earlier. Separately, a unit of Brazil<69>s competition regulator Cade said the $66 billion takeover of Monsanto by Bayer could be detrimental to competition. (Reporting by Karan Nagarkatti in Bengaluru and Karl Plume in Chicago; Editing by Savio D<>Souza and Shounak Dasgupta)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/monsanto-results/update-1-monsanto-posts-profit-on-higher-sales-of-corn-soybean-seeds-idUSL4N1ME364'|'2017-10-04T15:39:00.000+03:00'
'f6015cbef43f3d1e59da23b94229d9e142d998a0'|'''Our economy is not broken,'' says UK finance minister, defending capitalism'|'October 2, 2017 / 3:00 AM / Updated an hour ago Capitalism is the only way, UK finance minister says in challenge to Labour William James 5 Min Read Britain''s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, arrives at the conference centre for the Conservative Party Conference, in Manchester, Britain October 1, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - British finance minister Philip Hammond defended capitalism as the only route to prosperity on Monday, in an attempt to counter the opposition Labour Party<74>s increasingly popular vision for a more centrally-controlled economy. In a speech to the ruling Conservative Party that contained only two new policy announcements, Hammond also said that the government<6E>s immediate task was to deal with the uncertainty for citizens and businesses resulting from Brexit. Prime Minister Theresa May is grappling with deep divisions within her party over how to handle the Brexit talks and serious doubts about her leadership after her botched bet on a June snap election lost the Conservatives their majority in parliament and boosted Labour<75>s hopes of eventually regaining power. Hammond, who was sidelined by May during the election campaign, said last week<65>s Labour Party conference showed it wanted to impose on Britain, the world<6C>s fifth largest economy, the <20>socialist fantasy<73> seen in Cuba, Venezuela or Zimbabwe. <20>We saw Labour in the raw, exposed for what it has sadly become: a party taken hostage by a clique of hard-left extremist infiltrators, people who despise Britain<69>s values and talk down our country,<2C> Hammond told Conservative Party activists. Seeking to put the economy centre-stage in the Conservatives<65> pitch to voters, Hammond said Britain could only hope to experience rising living standards <20>by harnessing the power of the market economy<6D>. Last week Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn set out plans for a much more active role for the state in the economy, including renationalisation of key infrastructure, higher government spending, and more taxation and control of the banking sector. With opinion polls showing Labour gaining support, Hammond aims to convince voters that Corbyn would make them poorer. Labour<75>s leaders, he said, <20>openly proclaim their ambition to demolish our successful modern market economy and replace it with a back-to-the-future socialist fantasy with hundreds of billions of extra debt for the next generation to pay.<2E> <20>OUR ECONOMY IS NOT BROKEN<45> His words echo those of May, who last week issued her own defence of capitalism - a sign of growing concern about the threat Labour poses to the pro-business orthodoxy that has underpinned British economic policy since Margaret Thatcher<65>s reforms in the 1980s. <20>Our economy is not broken: It is fundamentally strong,<2C> Hammond said, while also accepting that a lack of progress in talks on Britain<69>s divorce settlement with the European Union and uncertainty over future ties were weighing on businesses. <20>The process of negotiating our exit from the EU has created uncertainty so investment has slowed as businesses wait for clarity,<2C> Hammond said. Business groups welcomed Hammond<6E>s defence of free markets, but said the government needed to do much more. <20>The speech shows a government strong on diagnosis, but weak on action. Businesses looking for clear vision and urgent delivery have been left with slim pickings,<2C> said Carolyn Fairbairn, head of the Confederation of British Industry. Hammond pledged 400 million pounds ($535 million) of additional road and rail spending and 10 billion pounds of funding to help young Britons get on the property ladder. The government has also announced plans to tackle high levels of student debt and limits on pay for public sector workers. <20>We must never deny or dismiss the underlying concerns that the election articulated: we must listen to them and we must respond,<2C> Hammond said, adding that the government should offer <20>pragmatic solutions<6E> to improve ordinary peop
'a9c4395f69744203b32e30883748eb202a6285e1'|'ADM says it''s not bidding for Unilever''s spreads business'|'CHICAGO, Oct 2 (Reuters) - U.S. agricultural trader Archer Daniels Midland Co on Monday denied a report that it was bidding on Unilever Plc<6C>s spreads business, which includes Flora and Stork margarines.British newspaper the Times had reported that ADM was planning to make a move for part of the Unilever unit. ADM said in a statement that it was not submitting a bid.ADM and its rivals have been investing in higher-margin businesses such as food ingredients and natural flavorings to prop up slumping results from core grain trading and processing operations. Strong margins in sweeteners and starches helped prop up ADM<44>s second-quarter earnings.Shares of ADM were up 0.4 percent at $42.67 in midday trading. (Reporting by Mark Weinraub; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/unilever-ma-adm/adm-says-its-not-bidding-for-unilevers-spreads-business-idINL2N1MD14W'|'2017-10-02T14:16:00.000+03:00'
'eaf6c0ba900df787c53d5e7cacff47e335a3ad0c'|'Fed''s Kaplan says will need to ''look hard'' at December rate hike'|'EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve will need to <20>look hard<72> at whether it should raise rates in December, given the lack of business pricing power and price-slashing technological innovations that are keeping inflation weak, a Fed policymaker said Monday.Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan said he remains <20>open-minded<65> about a December rate hike, which most of his colleagues expect and which markets are betting heavily will happen. But the Fed <20>can afford to be patient<6E> on raising rates, he said, because though tight labour markets are creating inflation pressures, structural factors are creating headwinds.Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-fed-kaplan/feds-kaplan-says-will-need-to-look-hard-at-december-rate-hike-idINKCN1C72IU'|'2017-10-02T17:06:00.000+03:00'
'b0493e100e4d7df02603cf7b9db9e4d6b3c901cc'|'PRESS DIGEST- Financial Times - Oct 2'|'Oct 2 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Financial Times. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.HeadlinesMay''s plan to lure younger voters comes under attack on.ft.com/2xJVi2lRenters pay 54 bln stg to private landlords in buy-to-let boom on.ft.com/2xJBuMkOfcom warns legal action by operators threatens 5G services on.ft.com/2xKcYL6Catalans defy Madrid to register clear vote for independence on.ft.com/2xJHe9eOverviewPrime Minister Theresa May<61>s attempt to showcase a new youth-friendly policy agenda at the Conservative party conference on Sunday was overshadowed by a row over Boris Johnson<6F>s leadership ambitions and criticisms of her flagship housing scheme and tuition fee proposals.Renters paid about 54 billion pounds ($72.30 billion) to buy-to-let investors across the UK over the 12 months to the end of June, more than double the amount of mortgage interest paid to banks by homeowners, according to new figures by the estate agency group Savills.Legal action by BT Group Plc and Three threatens to derail Britain<69>s <20>golden opportunity<74> to take a lead in the race to launch 5G next-generation mobile services, chief executive of UK telecoms regulator Ofcom Sharon White wrote in the Financial Times on Sunday.The Catalan government said more than 2 million people had cast a ballot in a banned referendum to leave Spain on Sunday and 90 percent of them had voted in favour of independence.$1 = 0.7469 pounds Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Sandra Maler '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-press-ft/press-digest-financial-times-oct-2-idINL4N1MD05X'|'2017-10-01T22:50:00.000+03:00'
'8fdc4c0e1bf2de3e25dd4cb5011751b2df2d7b04'|'Tesla deliveries rise in third quarter, but Model 3 faces ''bottlenecks'''|'October 3, 2017 / 4:46 AM / Updated 7 hours ago Tesla deliveries rise in third quarter, but Model 3 faces ''bottlenecks'' Nick Carey 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Tesla Model 3 cars wait for their new owners as they come off the Fremont factory''s production line during an event at the company''s facilities in Fremont, California, U.S., July 28, 2017. REUTERS/Alexandria Sage/File Photo REUTERS - Luxury electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ) said on Monday its deliveries rose 4.5 percent in the third quarter from the prior-year period, but said <20>production bottlenecks<6B> had left the company behind its planned ramp-up for the new Model 3 mass-market sedan. Tesla said it delivered 26,150 vehicles in the third quarter, including 14,065 Model S vehicles and 11,865 Model X cars, up 17.7 percent from the second quarter of this year. The Palo Alto, California-based company delivered just 220 Model 3 sedans and produced 260 during the quarter. In July, it began production of the Model 3, which starts at $35,000 - half the starting price of the Model S. Tesla had said in its second-quarter financial report that it expects <20>to achieve a rate of 5,000 Model 3 vehicles per week by the end of 2017.<2E> The automaker also said it expects at some point in 2018 to further ramp to a rate of <20>10,000 Model 3 vehicles per week,<2C> and an annual production rate in excess of 500,000 vehicles. <20>It is important to emphasize that there are no fundamental issues with the Model 3 production or supply chain,<2C> Tesla said in a statement. <20>We understand what needs to be fixed and we are confident of addressing the manufacturing bottleneck issues in the near term.<2E> Tesla said it was on track to deliver around 100,000 S and X models this year. But Tesla said on Monday that a handful of systems at its Fremont, California, car plant and its battery factory in Reno, Nevada, <20>have taken longer to activate than expected.<2E> The automaker said 4,820 Model S and X vehicles were in transit to customers at the end of the third quarter and would be counted with its fourth-quarter figures. In after-market trading, Tesla shares fell more than 1 percent to $337.84, from the closing price on Nasdaq of $341.53. Reporting by Nick Carey in Detroit, additional reporting by Bangalore newsroom; editing by Leslie Adler and G Crosse'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/tesla-production/tesla-deliveries-rise-in-third-quarter-but-model-3-faces-bottlenecks-idINKCN1C80CA'|'2017-10-03T07:45:00.000+03:00'
'b2a8eb74684c029ebd26482fc3c7ff12cc6468ec'|'Hiscox expects $225 mln net claims from hurricanes Harvey, Irma'|' 20 AM / in 15 minutes Hiscox expects $225 mln net claims from hurricanes Harvey, Irma Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 2 (Reuters) - Lloyd<79>s of London underwriter Hiscox Ltd estimated on Monday that it would face net claims totalling about $225 million from hurricanes Harvey and Irma. The company said that despite continuing uncertainty around the losses from hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the estimates were within its modelled range of claims for events of this nature and that it still had <20>depth of cover<65> in its reinsurance business. Hiscox had previously estimated that it would see net claims of about $150 million from Hurricane Harvey. Insurers and reinsurers are counting the costs of Harvey, which lashed Texas causing flooding that put it on the scale of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and Irma, one of the most powerful Atlantic storms on record, which ravaged several islands in the northern Caribbean, before moving into Florida<64>s Gulf Coast. (Reporting by Esha Vaish in Bengaluru; editing by Carolyn Cohn)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/hiscox-outlook/hiscox-expects-225-mln-net-claims-from-hurricanes-harvey-irma-idUSL4N1MD1ZH'|'2017-10-02T09:18:00.000+03:00'
'9f993fbe6b6abfa5593d9b9a46c9db5aa64558d0'|'Asian factories rev up in September ahead of year-end spending spree'|'October 2, 2017 / 5:21 AM / in 3 minutes Asian factories rev up in September ahead of year-end spending spree Shri Navaratnam 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A truck drives past rolls of steel inside the China Steel Corporation factory, in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan August 26, 2016. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Factories in Asia<69>s largest economies cranked up activity in September as a synchronized upswing in growth globally pointed to solid consumption of manufactured goods heading into the lucrative end-of-year shopping season. However, pockets of weakness in regional economies are likely to keep Asian central banks slanted toward more accommodative monetary policy, even as their Western counterparts move to scale back stimulus. China<6E>s central bank on Saturday cut the amount of cash that some banks must hold as reserves for the first time since February 2016 in a bid to encourage more lending to struggling smaller firms and energize its lackluster private sector. The world<6C>s second-largest economy has defied expectations for a slowdown this year, growing at a strong clip in the first half thanks to a construction boom. Beijing<6E>s latest easing comes ahead of a key party gathering this month. <20>It<49>s a solid backdrop for manufacturing in the region as we head toward the big shopping season,<2C> said Rob Carnell, Asia<69>s head of research at ING. That sentiment was backed by an official Purchasing Managers<72> Index from China<6E>s vast manufacturing sector, which showed activity last month grew at the fastest clip since 2012 on solid demand. But cost pressures from high raw materials prices and continued underperformance of smaller firms mean some manufacturers are still struggling, which was reflected in a separate private survey of Chinese factories showing growth slowed in September. In Japan, factory activity grew the fastest in four months, thanks to robust exports growth and underpinned improving economic momentum even though inflation remained tepid. Meanwhile, a closely watched Bank of Japan survey showed big manufacturers have more confidence in business conditions than they have had for a decade, thanks to a weaker yen and robust global demand. In South Korea, manufacturing activity expanded at the fastest pace in almost two years. Indonesia, Southeast Asia<69>s biggest economy, also showed an improvement in factory growth but the pace was tepid and production contracted slightly. Indonesia has cut interest rates twice this year in a bid to boost stubbornly weak domestic consumption, while India slashed rates once in August to spur growth and inflation. Those moves, along with the BOJ<4F>s commitment to maintain its ultra-low rates for the foreseeable future, marked a contrast to the West<73>s shift toward tighter policy, although analysts expect the extent of stimulus in Asia to be measured. <20>I would characterize some of the easings (in Asia) as a bit of fine-tuning really and not a major divergence in policy with the West,<2C> ING<4E>s Carnell said. <20>The regional economies continue to grow at a decent pace.<2E> GLOBAL UPSWING Indeed, a synchronized upswing in the global economy has been a boon to manufacturers from China to Britain and the United States, with export-reliant Asia enjoying a spurt in growth led by an upsurge in sales of electronics. A raft of European PMIs scheduled for publication later on Monday are expected to paint a picture of robust manufacturing momentum globally. Shipments from Japan and South Korea - two major exporters - remained robust with the boom helping their economies grow at a decent clip. In Taiwan, another export-bellwether, factories continued to expand at a steady pace on higher global demand. In South Korea, higher memory chip and steel product sales lifted exports by 35 percent year-on-year in the longest stretch of expansion since 2011. Full-year growth in China is widely expected to handily meet the government<6E>s target of 6.5 percent, after stronger-than-forecast growth o
'71649d9c7ff89981811be81b7fac39c842d2fef8'|'Wells Fargo CEO should go, says Elizabeth Warren'|'All the benefits of Standard Digital, plus: Unlimited access to all content Instant Insights column for comment and analysis as news unfolds FT Confidential Research - in-depth China and Southeast Asia analysis ePaper - the digital replica of the printed newspaper Full access to LEX - our agenda setting daily commentary Exclusive emails, including a weekly email from our Editor, Lionel Barber Full access to EM Squared- news and analysis service on emerging markets Other Subscription options:'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/content/78dbb0bc-a852-11e7-ab55-27219df83c97'|'2017-10-03T20:55:00.000+03:00'
'd974969d21a2e0fe0bc95f5cf143b92e3206fd5b'|'Brazil''s BRF sees $98 mln gain from tax refinancing, receivables'|'October 2, 2017 / 2:21 PM / in 27 minutes Brazil''s BRF sees $98 mln gain from tax refinancing, receivables Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SAO PAULO, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Brazilian poultry producer BRF SA estimates a one-time pre-tax gain of 310 million reais ($98 million) this quarter as a result of joining a tax refinancing program and the buildup of tax receivables. BRF said in a Monday securities filing it decided to include 455 million reais ($144 million) worth of tax debt in a refinancing program known as PERT. BRF will pay about 20 percent of the total owed through December 2017 and the remainder in 145 monthly installments. The company also said it would book a 640 million-real tax receivable related to an industrial production tax known as IPI. The net effect of both decisions will result in the estimated gain, the filing said. BRF said 220 million reais of the pre-tax gain will be booked in the financial results<74> line. It did not say where it will book the rest. $1 = 3.1675 reais Reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal and Ana Mano; Editing by W Simon'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brf-outlook-tax/brazils-brf-sees-98-mln-gain-from-tax-refinancing-receivables-idUSL2N1MD0JZ'|'2017-10-02T17:20:00.000+03:00'
'7be2ae1785141cfb2635ae58ea6d2c259c8b4a96'|'France to lead investigation into A380 engine explosion'|'PARIS, Oct 3 (Reuters) - France<63>s air accident investigation agency said on Tuesday it would lead the investigation into an engine explosion that led to the emergency landing of an Air France A380 superjumbo in Canada with over 500 people on board on Saturday.The decision to hand control to the BEA ends a three-day hiatus after Reuters reported that Canada, France and the United States were debating who should lead the probe into the accident, which took place over Greenland.The Airbus passenger jet landed safely in Goose Bay in Labrador after declaring mayday and diverting from its scheduled flight path en route to Los Angeles from Paris. (Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Geert De Clercq) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/air-france-canada/france-to-lead-investigation-into-a380-engine-explosion-idINL8N1ME5D3'|'2017-10-03T17:20:00.000+03:00'
'0f372f49f85bf93c4774b26e9b72bdc1f263e4de'|'Caesars cancels webcast after Vegas shooting, bankruptcy exit on track'|'CHICAGO (Reuters) - Caesars Entertainment Corp canceled an investor webcast on Monday following a deadly mass shooting in U.S. casino hub Las Vegas, but a spokesman said its main operating unit<69>s emergence from a near three-year bankruptcy was still on track for this week.Earlier, Caesars said its unit, Caesars Entertainment Operating Co Inc (CEOC), was set to end a long and costly bankruptcy by Oct. 6 after receiving a series of approvals from gaming authorities and shareholders.The Caesars statement came hours after news that a lone gunman had fatally shot dozens of concertgoers in Las Vegas, where Caesars owns Caesars Palace and the Linq Hotel and Casino.Caesars<72> webcast was scheduled to coincide with a major gaming trade show in Las Vegas, G2E, where some 26,000 visitors gather annually for deal-making. G2E said the show would open as planned, though it was keeping a close watch on safety after the <20>horrific events that took place in Las Vegas earlier this morning.<2E>A Caesars spokesman said the company, which owns the Harrah<61>s, Caesars and Horseshoe brands, would postpone its investor presentation until next week or the following week.The Caesars properties are located at the opposite end of the Las Vegas Strip from where a gunman killed at least 58 people and injured more than 400 at a country music festival from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay.<2E>Our hearts are broken for the many victims who were injured or lost their lives tonight in this unconscionable attack,<2C> the company said via Twitter.The Caesars unit<69>s exit from bankruptcy will bring to end one of the most bitter Chapter 11 cases in corporate memory, which pitted aggressive and deep-pocketed creditors against the casino group<75>s private equity sponsors Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital Management LP TPG.UL.Apollo and TPG will retain a minority stake in the new, restructured group.As part of the reorganization plan, Caesars Entertainment - formed from the 2008 buyout of Harrah<61>s - will merge with another subsidiary, Caesars Acquisition Co.Reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by Clive McKeef '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-caesars-bankruptcy/caesars-expects-casino-unit-to-exit-bankruptcy-this-week-idINKCN1C71Z2'|'2017-10-02T13:09:00.000+03:00'
'3167ddaa97b05c7be97e6f8b5a1d1f08931d6ae9'|'BOJ tankan: Japan firms expect CPI to rise 0.7 percent a year from now'|'FILE PHOTO: A woman looks around at a Fast Retailing''s Uniqlo store in Tokyo, Japan, January 24, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese companies<65> inflation expectations eased slightly in September from three months ago in a worrying sign the economy continues to struggle with a deflationary mindset.Companies surveyed by the Bank of Japan expect consumer prices to rise 0.7 percent a year from now, lower than their projection for a 0.8 percent increase three months ago.Firms also expect consumer prices to rise an annual 1.1 percent three years from now, unchanged from the previous survey.Japan<61>s economy has grown at a healthy pace this year, but consumer prices have eked out only small gains, which could hasten calls for the BOJ to either expand monetary easing or overhaul its approach to reflating the economy.<2E>Companies are more optimistic about overseas economies and don<6F>t expect domestic retail prices to rise that much,<2C> said Shuji Tonouchi, senior market economist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.<2E>We won<6F>t see an immediate change in the BOJ<4F>s policy, but this does show that monetary easing will have to remain in place for a long time.<2E>The data come one day after the BOJ<4F>s tankan survey on corporate sentiment showed big manufactures are the most confident in a decade as global demand adds momentum to the economic recovery.The tankan survey also showed companies expect the economy to lose a little momentum in the next three months.Core consumer prices, which include oil products but excludes fresh food prices, rose 0.7 earlier, marking the eighth straight month of gains but still well below the BOJ<4F>s 2 percent inflation target.One BOJ policymaker called for expanding monetary stimulus at a policy meeting in September, raising concerns that the board could become divided.The central bank next meets on Oct. 30-31, where it will update its forecasts for consumer prices. A lowering of the forecasts would put pressure on the central bank to take further steps.The BOJ started the survey on corporate price expectations from the tankan in March 2014 to gather more information on inflation expectations, key to its current stimulus programme.Reporting by Stanley White; Editing by Shri Navaratnam '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/japan-economy-inflation/boj-tankan-japan-firms-expect-cpi-to-rise-0-7-percent-a-year-from-now-idINKCN1C72YI'|'2017-10-02T21:56:00.000+03:00'
'93614ddd356479a36505d5223086ae75297dca87'|'UK drinks maker Britvic to close Norwich plant, cut 242 jobs'|'October 3, 2017 / 6:38 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago Britvic cuts 240 jobs in Norwich closure, Unilever could follow Radhika Rukmangadhan 3   Bottles of soft drinks made by drinks company Britvic sit on a conveyor belt at Britvic''s bottling plant in London March 25, 2009. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor (Reuters) - Britain<69>s Britvic Plc ( BVIC.L ) announced the closure of its Norwich factory on Tuesday, putting 240 jobs at risk and prompting fellow consumer goods producer Unilever to warn it might follow suite with a neighbouring plant. Britvic said it would transfer the production of its Robinsons and Fruit Shoot brands from the Norwich site, which is co-owned with Unilever ( ULVR.L ), to plants in East London, Leeds and Rugby. Unilever, which makes famous English mustard brand Colman<61>s on the same site in Norwich, said it was launching a review of its production at the plant, with options including closure. Britvic cast the decision to close the site as part of a 3-year, 240-million-pound restructuring programme the company began in 2015 to reorganise their British operations. <20>We know this is upsetting news,<2C> chief executive Simon Litherland said. <20>However the changes we are proposing today present significant productivity and efficiency savings in our manufacturing operations.<2E> Consumer demand in Britain has borne the brunt of a rise in inflation to its highest in nearly five years, largely due to the pound<6E>s tumble since last year<61>s vote to leave the European Union. The weaker pound has also pushed up costs for manufacturers who import ingredients, leading some companies to raise prices, sell key businesses or move manufacturing facilities out of Britain. The regular PMI survey of manufacturing sentiment on Monday showed a slowdown in growth that overall has remained solid. Trade union Unite, which expressed <20>concern for the future of Colman<61>s Mustard brand<6E>, said Unilever is expected to conclude its review by the end of November. Britvic said their plant will close by the end of 2019. The company, which also makes J2O and Tango drinks, said the proposed closure would not affect its financial forecast. The job cuts also come at a time when the company and its rivals including A.G.Barr ( BAG.L ) face an impending British government tax on sugar-sweetened fizzy drinks. Additional reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain, editing by Louise Heavens, Jason Neely and Patrick Graham'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britvic-restructuring/uk-drinks-maker-britvic-to-close-norwich-plant-cut-242-jobs-idUKKCN1C80HE'|'2017-10-03T09:37:00.000+03:00'
'a75f8d76ae066163dfb9e328b06586c977b436e5'|'Suez finalizes GE Water deal, confirms synergy targets'|'PARIS (Reuters) - French waste and water group Suez ( SEVI.PA ) said on Monday it had finalised its 3.2 billion euros ($3.4 billion) acquisition of GE Water, and confirmed its synergy outlook for the deal.Chief executive Jean-Louis Chaussade said the new Suez industrial water unit, which will combine the activities of GE Water and the previous Suez industrial water business, will have revenues of between $2.5 billion to $2.6 billion.He added that in the next three to five years, synergies should add another $200 million of revenue, although he did not reiterate his May 10 forecast for some $3 billion of revenues in three to four years.Suez will present its strategy for the new industrial water unit on Dec. 13.Suez also expects 65 million euros of cost synergies from the GE Water deal and Chaussade said that some 80 percent of the synergies should be realized within three years.Chaussade said he could not comment on Suez<65>s earnings guidance so soon before the publication of third-quarter results on Oct. 27, but said there were <20>no particular concerns<6E>.Suez shares, which were flat in early session trading, had dropped sharply on Sept. 20 after Credit Suisse analysts wrote that the market had priced in <20>unrealistic<69> growth expectations for Suez, and that consensus earnings expectations had consistently been too optimistic.Credit Suisse lowered its growth projections for each of Suez<65>s operating segments, taking a more cautious view on the French waste unit and forecasting less international growth.Suez shares remain up 10 percent so far in 2017, underperforming the shares of its bigger peer Veolia ( VIE.PA ), which are up 21 percent this year.Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-suez-outlook/suez-finalizes-ge-water-deal-confirms-synergy-targets-idUSKCN1C70GH'|'2017-10-02T14:25:00.000+03:00'
'333a8073e89b5c4464a4b65fc0a257bd33a850ff'|'Asian shares edge down, Wall Street records limit losses'|'October 3, 2017 / 12:53 AM / in 25 minutes Asian shares shrug off energy blues, dollar firms Lisa Twaronite 5 Min Read People walk past an electronic stock quotation board outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares rose on Tuesday, taking heart from record closes on Wall Street and upbeat economic data that lifted U.S. Treasury yields and the dollar, even as weaker oil prices took their toll on energy stocks. MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS was 0.3 percent higher, clawing back losses from earlier in the Asian day. Japan''s Nikkei stock index .N225 added 0.9 percent as a tailwind from a weaker yen helped it sail to its highest levels since August 2015. Australian shares slipped 0.5 percent, pressured by consumer and energy shares. The energy index .AXEJ skidded 1.2 percent in line with weaker crude prices. As widely expected, the Reserve Bank of Australia kept interest rates on hold at a record low of 1.5 percent. The RBA said a stronger local currency would slow the economy and restrain price pressures. The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six major rivals, added 0.3 percent to 93.856 .DXY, after nudging up to its highest levels since Aug. 17. The euro eased 0.2 percent to $1.1706 EUR= , facing pressure from Spain''s biggest constitutional crisis in decades, after Sunday''s violence-marred independence referendum in Catalonia opened the door for its wealthiest region to move for secession as early as this week. The dollar added 0.3 percent against its Japanese counterpart to 113.13 yen JPY= , within sight of last week''s two-month high of 113.26 yen. Proposed U.S. tax code changes as well as the possibility that U.S. President Donald Trump will appoint a more hawkish Fed Chair also gave the dollar a lift. Crude oil futures extended losses after tumbling on Monday, as a rise in U.S. drilling and higher OPEC output put the brakes on their recent rally and rekindled concerns about oversupply. Brent crude LCOc1 slipped 0.4 percent to $55.88 a barrel, after marking a third-quarter gain of about 20 percent. U.S. crude CLc1 fell 0.3 percent to $50.43. <20>The fourth quarter is not too kind to the price of oil, as we switch from summer demand to expectations of winter demand,<2C> said Jonathan Barratt, chief investment officer at Ayers Alliance in Sydney. On Wall Street on Monday, U.S. stocks started the fourth quarter on a strong note, with all three major indexes closing at record highs after data underscored strength in the economy. [.N] A measure of U.S. manufacturing activity surged to a near 13-1/2-year high in September. Disruptions to the supply chains caused by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma resulted in factories taking longer to deliver goods and boosted raw material prices. The Institute for Supply Management index rose to 60.8 in September, from 58.8 in August, exceeding expectations for a reading of 58. U.S. construction spending also rebounded in August after two straight months of declines, boosted by increases in both private and public outlays. The dollar stood tall, hoisted by rising U.S. Treasury yields. The yield on the benchmark 10-year note US10YT=RR hit its highest since mid-July on Monday after the upbeat data reinforced expectations that the Federal Reserve will increase U.S. interest rates in December for a third time this year. <20>There are strengthening expectations about what the Fed will do for the balance of the year, namely one more rate increase and balance sheet reduction,<2C> said Bill Northey, chief investment officer at U.S. Bank Private Client Group in Helena, Montana. Due to the impact of the recent hurricanes, Northey said, <20>we<77>re going to get some data anomalies over the next few months, but as you step back and take a broader context around trends that exist right now, it is clear the U.S. economy is performing very well, and it will continue to be on an improving path.
'392ff99b0abb0c662ac044aea7eadaaace6ab942'|'FTSE clings to four-week high after Wall Street''s new records'|'October 3, 2017 / 9:02 AM / in 43 minutes Britain''s FTSE gets leg-up from sterling slide Julien Ponthus , Helen Reid 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Pedestrians leave and enter the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s top share index climbed to a near eight-week high on Tuesday, boosted by a slide in the pound after weaker construction sector activity and rumbling uncertainty over Brexit negotiations. The blue-chip FTSE 100 .FTSE index ended the day up 0.4 percent, outperforming European markets. The pound<6E>s tumble to a three-week low drove gains in the index dominated by foreign-earning international firms. Construction sector activity fell in September, and comments from Brexit minister David Davis at the ruling Conservative Party conference added to uncertainty for sterling traders. <20>With the makeup of the eventual Brexit deal still unknown, there has been knock-on volatility in sterling and therefore the FTSE 100 - this makes foreign investors more cautious,<2C> said Edward Park, investment director at Brooks Macdonald. UBS Wealth Management chief economist Dean Turner suggested sterling could stabilise at current levels, removing a key support for the large-cap index. Shrugging aside party conference news and Brexit-related speeches, Turner said: <20>We choose to focus on the macroeconomic picture which for UK equities is seeing the post-Brexit trend of weaker performing pound, stronger performing FTSE 100, come to an end.<2E> Corporate news also supported the index on the day. Heating and plumbing product supplier Ferguson ( FERG.L ) jumped 4 percent to the top of the FTSE after reporting a rise in trading profit and a 500 million pound share buyback plan. Retailers were some of the top gainers, with Sainsbury ( SBRY.L ) up 3.5 percent and Tesco ( TSCO.L ) up 2.1 percent. Berenberg initiated coverage of Sainsbury with a <20>buy<75>, naming the retailer its top pick in a sector it said was facing intensifying competitive and cost pressures. <20>With the stock trading at a 15 to 20-percent discount to peers, improving like-for-like [sales] momentum could drive a re-rating,<2C> Berenberg analysts said. Tesco rose ahead of its interim results on Wednesday. <20>Investors are hopeful it will reinstate dividends [...] although any shareholder returns are likely to be limited,<2C> said Neil Wilson of ETX Capital. Among mid-caps, semiconductor maker Electrocomponents ( ECM.L ) touched a 16-year high after a strong trading update. [nL8N1ME1HN] Advertising giant WPP ( WPP.L ) was among the worst performers, down 2.1 percent after Morgan Stanley sold 22.5 million shares. The agency<63>s shares are down nearly 25 percent since the beginning of the year. [nL8N1ME17I] BAE Systems ( BAES.L ) was also among the biggest losers, retreating 1.7 percent after a downgrade by Berenberg, whose analysts said they expect no organic revenue growth and modest earnings progression in the next two years. Underpinning index gains were oil majors and financials. Reporting by Julien Ponthus and Helen Reid; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Andrew Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-stocks/ftse-clings-to-four-week-high-after-wall-streets-new-records-idUKKCN1C80SB'|'2017-10-03T12:02:00.000+03:00'
'debdeace5a8ccdabd957e296847fce84de34cfcd'|'U.S. FDA moves to smooth path for complex generic drugs'|'October 2, 2017 / 3:01 PM / in 42 minutes U.S. FDA moves to smooth path for complex generic drugs Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A view shows the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland August 14, 2012. REUTERS/Jason Reed WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday announced a series of measures designed to speed to market complex generic drugs such as Mylan NV<4E>s emergency EpiPen in an effort to address the rising cost of pharmaceuticals. The measures, announced in a blog post by Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, stray into an area that has not previously been the FDA<44>s purview: drug prices. The agency has typically made its decisions based on safety and efficacy without regard to cost. Gottlieb said the measures are designed to increase competition in the market by enabling generic competition to complex drugs, something he has long argued for. <20>Drug access is a matter of public health concern,<2C> Gottlieb said. <20>We know that enabling more generic competition, where Congress intended, helps reduce prices, enable more access, and improve public health.<2E> Reporting by Toni Clarke; Editing by Paul Simao '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-generics-fda/u-s-fda-moves-to-smooth-path-for-complex-generic-drugs-idUSKCN1C71XC'|'2017-10-02T17:51:00.000+03:00'
'1a45e801089d2f57373be607c7f0bc77a1afdaf5'|'Sensex rises on oil refiners; all eyes on RBI - Reuters'|'October 4, 2017 / 6:07 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Sensex rises for fourth session; RBI keeps rates steady Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Brokers trade at their computer terminals at a stock brokerage firm in Mumbai January 15, 2015. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade/Files REUTERS - Indian shares ended higher for a fourth straight session on Wednesday after the central bank maintained its policy rate but took steps to release more liquidity into the financial system, and as oil refiners rose due to a tax cut on petrol and diesel. The broader NSE Nifty closed up 0.56 percent at 9,914.90, while the benchmark BSE Sensex ended 0.55 percent higher at 31,671.71. Reporting by Jessica Kuruthukulangara in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-stocks/sensex-rises-on-oil-refiners-all-eyes-on-rbi-idINKCN1C90G4'|'2017-10-04T04:07:00.000+03:00'
'd49c736a1693dd24c3c9dce25504ab303596ea79'|'ECB asks banks to set aside more cash for bad debt amid <20>1tn problem'|'The European Central Bank is attempting to put a lid on the near <20>1tn (<28>886bn) of bad debts stored in eurozone banks by asking lenders to be more prudent about the way they handle new customers falling behind on repayments.The Frankfurt-based institution issued guidance on Wednesday intended to stop a new pile of problem debts being built up inside eurozone banks by setting out how much cash it wanted lenders to set aside for bad debts incurred from January 2018.The measures are not applicable to the existing <20>1tn of bad debts, which are largely a legacy of Europe<70>s financial problems in the aftermath of the 2008 crash and languishing on the balance sheets of banks in countries such as Greece, Cyprus and Italy.Why central banks are not hitting their 2% inflation target - Nouriel Roubini Read moreThe ECB wants lenders to set aside 100% of the value of an unsecured loan within two years and gives lenders seven years to put aside the full amount of a secured loan, such as a mortgage.The aim is to set a formal guideline for how to tackle problem loans <20> known as non-performing loans (NPLs) <20> in contrast to the current situation where there are a variety of approaches across eurozone countries.Policymakers are concerned that bad debts inside banks not only weaken lenders but also make it difficult for them to grant more loans, which in turn can impede economic growth. But they are sensitive to announcing new measures that would make banks more cautious about issuing new loans or push up the cost of borrowing.Sharon Donnery, deputy governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, who presented the latest plan by the ECB to tackle bad debts, said: <20>We want to prevent a build-up of insufficiently covered NPLs in the future.<2E>The new measures are not applicable to the existing stock of bad debts for which lenders have set aside 45% of the value of their problem loans, so if the new rules had been applied it could have led to multibillion-euro provisions for lenders.The ECB announced measures in March intended to tackle the existing bad debts, including requiring lenders to set up dedicated teams to handle troubled customers in so-called work-out units and put the onus on management to sort out the problem.The new proposals will be open for consultation until 8 December and are not binding on the lenders, which will be required to explain if they do not meet the rules.Topics European Central Bank Banking Financial sector Economics Europe Eurozone news'|'theguardian.com'|'https://www.theguardian.com/uk/business'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/04/ecb-banks-bad-debt-eurozone-problem-loans'|'2017-10-04T12:19:00.000+03:00'
'3c732607cc0439d36d2c7d1909fda51074119cb1'|'Trade union Unite to pursue legal action for Monarch workers who lost jobs'|'October 4, 2017 / 11:33 AM / in 4 hours Trade union Unite to pursue legal action for Monarch workers who lost jobs Reuters Staff 3 Min Read Monarch aircraft are seen parked after the airline ceased trading, at Luton airport in Britain, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner LONDON (Reuters) - British trade union Unite said on Wednesday it would launch legal action on behalf of over 1,800 workers who lost their jobs when Monarch Airlines MONA.UL went in to administration earlier in the week. The airline collapsed on Monday and made 90 percent of the staff on Monarch Airlines and Travel Group redundant after falling victim to intense competition for flights and a weaker pound. The union said it would lodge employment tribunal proceedings over the company<6E>s failure to consult the workers on redundancies, and said the employers had not given the necessary notice or statutory pay. <20>Unite is doing everything it can to assist former Monarch workers in securing new jobs, offering free legal advice and launching legal action to secure the compensation they are owed, as well as helping members find jobs with other airlines,<2C> Unite national officer Oliver Richardson said in a statement. <20>The manner in which Monarch went into administration and the way the government allowed it (to) happen means there is a strong claim for compensation by former Monarch workers.<2E> After entering administration, Monarch flights were grounded immediately, in contrast to a similar case in Germany where a government loan kept Air Berlin flying when it too entered administration earlier this year, to give it time to negotiate with potential investors. Britain<69>s Department for Transport said Monarch did not request a bailout before its collapse. <20>Monarch started discussions with us but did not formally make a request before the company went into administration,<2C> a spokesman for the department said. Administrators KPMG are in the process of selling off the airline<6E>s assets, including its slots at airports, prepaid fuel, property, plant and equipment, a spokeswoman said. The Civil Aviation Authority said it had repatriated 23,000 out of 110,000 Monarch customers who were on holiday when the firm went bust. The British Airline Pilots<74> Association (BALPA) also said it would seek compensation on behalf of its members for the <20>shabby<62> treatment of staff. It said Monarch staff were even asked to ring a premium-rate number to hear about their redundancies. A former pilot for Monarch, who declined to be named, said that employees had hoped for a deal with another carrier. <20>We don<6F>t have any information at this stage as to why a deal with another carrier could not be reached or who was ultimately responsible for walking away from the negotiations,<2C> he told Reuters in an email. <20>However I believe Monarch management had the best interest of the employees and company at heart throughout the process.<2E> Reporting by Alistair Smout in London and Victoria Bryan in Berlin; editing by Stephen Addison'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-monarch-airlines-licence-jobs/trade-union-unite-to-pursue-legal-action-for-monarch-workers-who-lost-jobs-idUKKCN1C91J5'|'2017-10-04T14:32:00.000+03:00'
'c424afe0b59a72786c240a5442f1e9b995d12042'|'Global Logistic Properties expands into Europe with $2.8 billion acquisition'|'October 2, 2017 / 12:04 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Global Logistic Properties expands into Europe with $2.8 billion acquisition Reuters Staff 2 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Global Logistic Properties (GLP) ( GLPL.SI ) said on Monday it has agreed to acquire Gazely, a leading European logistics platform, for about $2.8 billion, as part of its expansion into Europe. GLP said in a statement the acquisition included properties across four countries and comprised 32 million square feet (3.0 million square meters) of total gross leasable area. The acquisition portfolio was concentrated in Europe<70>s key logistics markets, with 57 percent in the United Kingdom, 25 percent in Germany, 14 percent in France and the remainder in the Netherlands. <20>We have been looking to expand to Europe and this portfolio presents an attractive entry point given the quality and location of the assets,<2C> Ming Mei, co-founder and CEO of GLP, said, adding that the purchase was part of the company<6E>s long-term strategy to expand its fund management business. Earlier this year, a leading Chinese private equity consortium backed by senior executives from GLP won a bid to acquire GLP for S$16 billion ($11.8 billion), marking Asia<69>s largest private equity buyout in a buoyant sector. Property developer China Vanke Co ( 2202.HK ) ( 2.SZ ) was part of the group. In Monday<61>s statement, the consortium said it supports GLP<4C>s entry into Europe and said it does not expect this to impact the timeline of the proposed privatization. Reporting by Anshuman Daga; Editing by Richard Pullin'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-glp-m-a-gazelle/global-logistic-properties-expands-into-europe-with-2-8-billion-acquisition-idUKKCN1C7001'|'2017-10-02T03:01:00.000+03:00'
'd41010ae9f18867451a771b5e573041ce44eaf2d'|'Britain will lobby U.S., Canada over Bombardier dispute-Hammond'|'October 2, 2017 / 7:53 AM / in 4 hours Britain will lobby U.S., Canada over Bombardier dispute: Hammond Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Britain''s Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond arrives at the Conservative Party''s conference in Manchester, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - Finance minister Philip Hammond said on Monday Britain would continue to lobby the United States over a trade dispute with Canadian planemaker Bombardier ( BBDb.TO ), but said there were limits to what it could achieve. The U.S. slapped a preliminary 220 percent tariff on Bombardier<65>s CSeries jets, whose wings are made at a plant in Belfast, last week following a complaint from Boeing ( BA.N ). <20>We<57>ve lobbied the U.S. government hard on this issue, but in the end this is a quasi-judicial decision where a citizen or a company makes a complaint and a government department adjudicates it.<2E> <20>We will go on talking to the U.S. government and the Canadian government in order to protect the jobs at Bombardier in Belfast.<2E> <20>We have a very, very special relationship with the United States but of course every country, the UK, the U.S., others, all have our own internal domestic processes, our own legal systems and we can<61>t necessarily always ensure that they work in a way that we would like.<2E> Reporting by William James, writing by Kate Holton, editing by Elizabeth Piper'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-bombardier-britain/britain-will-lobby-u-s-canada-over-bombardier-dispute-hammond-idUSKCN1C70OO'|'2017-10-02T10:52:00.000+03:00'
'46c2d4efc37966bc925ef62f43846071be585eab'|'Spanish PM faces crisis after violent secession vote in Catalonia'|'* PM Rajoy to call all-party talks to <20>reflect on future<72>* Catalan leader says region has earned right to independence* Riot police use batons and rubber bullets against voters* Catalan officials say over 800 injured in clashes* 90 pct of voters chose independence - Catalan governmentBy Sam EdwardsBARCELONA, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy faces Spain<69>s biggest constitutional crisis in decades after Sunday<61>s violence-marred independence referendum in Catalonia opened the door for its wealthiest region to move for secession as early as this week.The streets of Barcelona, the Catalan capital, were quiet on Monday, but newspaper editorials said the banned referendum, in which Catalan officials said 90 percent of voters had chosen to leave Spain, had set the stage for a decisive clash between Madrid and the region.<2E>It could all get worse,<2C> the moderate Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia said in an editorial after Spanish police used batons and rubber bullets to disrupt the vote, sparking violence that Catalan officials say injured around 840 people.<2E>We<57>re entering a phase of strikes and street protests ... and with more movement, more repression.<2E>Catalonia is a centre of industry and tourism accounting for a fifth of Spain<69>s economy, a production base for major multi-nationals from Volkswagen to Nestle, and home to Europe<70>s fastest-growing shipping port.Catalonia<69>s regional leader declared late on Sunday that voters had earned the right to independence and said he would present the results to the region<6F>s parliament, which then had the power to move a motion of independence.Carles Puigdemont<6E>s comments fell short of a declaration of independence, but they threw down a challenge to Rajoy, who has the constitutional power to sack the regional government and put Catalonia under central control pending fresh elections.That would raise tensions further in the region of 7.5 million people, a former principality with its own language and culture, and potentially hurt the resurgent Spanish economy.The euro lost a third of a U.S. cent after the vote, though it later recovered ground. Spain<69>s IBEX stock index was down 1.3 percent as it opened on Monday while government debt yields ticked up.Major investment banks expect the crisis eventually to be resolved with an offer from Rajoy of more autonomy.<2E>We believe the risk of larger confrontations in the near-term is rising, involving at the extreme wide disruptions with potential severe economic costs,<2C> Citibank said in a note on Monday, It did not, though, see this as the most likely outcome.Catalan trade unions have called a general strike for Tuesday.ALL-PARTY TALKS? Rajoy offered to call all-party political talks on Sunday to <20>reflect on the future<72> of Catalonia, but maintained his outright rejection of independence as an option.The Madrid government<6E>s attempts to prevent Sunday<61>s referendum through the use of police force brought criticism from fellow members of the European Union, including Britain and Belgium. But there has been silence from the EU itself.At home, the crisis does not appear to have endangered support for Rajoy<6F>s minority national government, with mainstream parties largely backing his opposition to Catalan independence.There was, however, criticism of his handling of the issue.The anti-independence newspaper El Pais wrote in an editorial of Rajoy<6F>s <20>absolute inability to manage the crisis since the very beginning<6E>.The Catalan government said 2.26 million people had cast ballots on Sunday, a turnout of about 42 percent, despite the crackdown. The results were not a surprise, given that many unionists were not expected to turn out. Opinion polls had shown around 40 percent support for independence.In the run-up to the vote, Puigdemont had said he would move to a declaration of independence within 48 hours of a <20>Yes<65> vote. But the disruption to polling could complicate any such move.Puigdemont called on Europe on Sunday to step in to make sure f
'6a49867d94d7420967bf0958eeddd44fe5508eb6'|'Irish manufacturing growth solid in September as orders soar - PMI'|'October 2, 2017 / 5:09 AM / in 24 minutes Irish manufacturing growth solid in September as orders soar - PMI Reuters Staff 2 Min Read DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish manufacturing growth solidly in September as new orders posted their strongest performance since 2015, although some firms pointed to weakening demand from neighbouring Britain, a survey showed on Monday. Irish economic growth for 2017 and 2018 is forecast to be faster than it was a year ago, after the initial, muted impact from Britain<69>s decision to leave the European Union. Business surveys have supported those forecasts. The Investec   index stood at 55.4 in September, down slightly from the two-year high of 56.1 a month earlier but still far above the 50 mark separating growth from contraction. The sub-index measuring new orders rose to a 26-month high of 58.5 from 57.7 but growth in exports, which contracted for the first time in three years ahead of last year<61>s Brexit referendum, slowed slightly. <20>This strong outturn came in spite of slower growth in New Export Orders, which some panellists attributed to the euro<72>s strength against sterling and resultant impact on demand from UK customers,<2C> Investec Ireland chief economist Philip O<>Sullivan said. <20>Notwithstanding the increase in client demand, Irish manufacturing firms also eased the pace of hiring activity last month, with the employment component moderating to its weakest in the current 12 month sequence of expansion.<2E> Detailed PMI data are only available under licence from Markit and customers need to apply to Markit for a licence. To subscribe to the full data, click on the link below: www.markit.com/ ontact-Us For further information, please phone Markit on +44 20 7260 2454 or email economics@markit.com'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ireland-economy-pmi/irish-manufacturing-growth-solid-in-september-as-orders-soar-pmi-idUKKCN1C70CB'|'2017-10-02T08:08:00.000+03:00'
'db7c152975d6083d6d6bb4d69c77f77f6a02fcc1'|'MOVES-BTIG names ex-Goldman executive as head of U.S. execution services'|'October 2, 2017 / 2:16 PM / in 5 minutes MOVES-BTIG names ex-Goldman executive as head of U.S. execution services Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 2 (Reuters) - Financial services firm BTIG LLC appointed Christopher Rollins as managing director and head of U.S. execution services. Rollins will be based in New York and will focus on developing client solutions, the company said. Prior to BTIG, Rollins spent more than 15 years at Goldman Sachs in several leadership roles. He will report to Richard Blank, Jr., managing director and head of global equities, BTIG. (Reporting by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/btig-moves-christopherrollins/moves-btig-names-ex-goldman-executive-as-head-of-u-s-execution-services-idUSL4N1MD3NZ'|'2017-10-02T17:13:00.000+03:00'
'ff4f924184d7b948380d2c70fba9229309c79a7f'|'Disney, Altice reach tentative programming deal'|'October 1, 2017 / 9:52 PM / in 4 hours Disney, Altice reach deal that avoids ESPN blackout Lisa Richwine 3 Min Read The main gate of entertainment giant Walt Disney Co. is pictured in Burbank, California May 5, 2009. Disney is scheduled to report its second-quarter earnings May 5, 2009. REUTERS/Fred Prouser LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co ( DIS.N ) and cable operator Altice USA ( ATUS.N ) reached a tentative programing deal that keeps ESPN and other networks in the homes of millions of New York-area pay TV customers, the companies said in a statement on Sunday. Disney and Altice have been sparring over how much the cable operator would pay to continue carrying ESPN, ABC and other channels on its Optimum cable service. Both sides are under pressure from cord cutting, or dropping of pay TV service, as audiences flock to cheaper streaming services. <20>We have reached an agreement in principle and have extended the deadline accordingly to try and finalize the terms,<2C> a joint statement from the companies said. Related Coverage Disney, Altice shares gain after deal avoids blackout The last-minute deal came Sunday as Disney was preparing to pull its networks from Optimum. That could have deprived customers from seeing Tuesday<61>s baseball playoff game between the Minnesota Twins and New York Yankees as well as <20>Monday Night Football<6C> and other programing. A blackout could have sent customers fleeing to other options. Disney secured fee increases for ESPN, local affiliate WABC and other major networks, according to sources familiar with the talks who requested anonymity because the negotiations were private. The amount of the increases was not disclosed. Altice said in September it had offered to pay higher fees but called Disney<65>s proposal at the time <20>outrageous.<2E> Altice USA is the fourth-largest U.S. cable operator, formed by Netherlands-based Altice NV ( ATCA.AS ) through its acquisitions of Cablevision -- now known as Optimum -- and Suddenlink Communications. Optimum has 3.1 million customers in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. The discussions with Altice were the first among several Disney is scheduled to have with cable operators over the next two years as current programing deals expire. ESPN, Disney<65>s most important network, has been losing subscribers and seeing its ratings fall. That has cut revenue from cable operators, which pay monthly fees for each subscriber, and given Altice ammunition to push back against Disney<65>s demands as excessive. Disney countered that Altice charges the average customer $160 or more per month and <20>the bulk of that money goes into their pocket.<2E> ESPN is the most expensive basic cable network, charging an average of $7.54 per subscriber each month, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence<63>s Kagan research group. The channel also is among the most popular, ranking as the fourth most-watched national cable network in Optimum households over the past year. Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Additional reporting by Anjali Athavaley in New York; Editing by Sandra Maler & Simon Cameron-Moore'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-disney-altice/disney-altice-reach-tentative-programming-deal-idUSKCN1C61VP'|'2017-10-02T00:50:00.000+03:00'
'a0417f22fe9882e9d3560827ab2bbd2731a1fb2f'|'Oil prices edge lower after strong third-quarter'|'October 2, 2017 / 1:32 AM / in an hour Oil falls more than 2 percent on signs of higher output Julia Simon 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: An oil pump jack pumps oil in a field near Calgary, Alberta, Canada July 21, 2014. REUTERS/Todd Korol/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil fell more than $1 a barrel to below $56 on Monday as a rise in U.S. drilling and higher OPEC output put the brakes on a rally that helped prices to register their biggest third-quarter gain in 13 years. Iraq announced its exports rose slightly in September while OPEC overall boosted output, a Reuters survey showed. [OPEC/M] In its report on Friday, General Electric Co<43>s Baker Hughes energy services firm said drillers added six oil rigs in the week to Sept. 29, bringing the total count up to 750. <20>We<57>ve seen them add rigs for the first time in seven weeks, so that changes sentiment as well,<2C> said John Tjornehoj, energy market analyst at CHS Hedging. Brent crude, the global benchmark, was down $1.22 or 2.15 percent at $55.56 a barrel at 11:20 a.m. EDT (1630 GMT). It notched a third-quarter gain of about 20 percent, the biggest third-quarter increase since 2004 and traded as high as $59.49 last week. U.S. crude was down $1.56 or 3 percent at $50.11. The U.S. benchmark posted its strongest quarterly gain since the second quarter of 2016. The rally was driven by mounting signs that a three-year supply glut is easing, helped by a production cut deal among global producers led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. But a Reuters survey on Friday found OPEC oil output rose last month, mostly because of higher supplies from Iraq and also from Libya, an OPEC member exempt from cutting output. However, in a Monday letter the National Oil Company declared force majeure on deliveries from Sharara, the country<72>s largest oilfield. Middle Eastern oil producers are concerned the price rise will only stir U.S. shale producers into more drilling and push prices lower again. Key OPEC producers consider a price above $60 as encouraging too much shale output. In February oil industry sources said Saudi Arabia would like to see oil around that $60 level. Petromatrix strategist Olivier Jakob said Brent<6E>s weekly chart had formed a <20>shooting star<61>, a pattern seen as indicating a market has reached a top. Hedge funds have accumulated a record bullish position in middle distillates such as diesel, heating oil and gasoil, anticipating stocks will be relatively tight this winter. <20>We<57>ve seen a run up in heating oil futures, and I think that particular product has supported the rise of WTI,<2C> said Tjornehoj, while noting that distillate prices fell on Monday. <20>As we reverse here lower we see the recent strong correlation continuing.<2E> Additional reporting by Alex Lawler in London and Aaron Sheldrick; editing by Susan Thomas; Editing by Edmund Blair and David Goodman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil/oil-prices-edge-lower-after-strong-third-quarter-idUSKCN1C7025'|'2017-10-02T04:32:00.000+03:00'
'9e10b794dd8e074668bdc868465ffd9f17b2789a'|'Evolva plans to raise 80 mln Sfr capital, possible debt financing'|'ZURICH, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Evolva aims to raise around 80 million Swiss francs ($82.42 million) in two capital increases this year and may boost debt financing to meet its contractual obligations with partner Cargill, the money-losing sweetener maker said on Monday.As a first step, Swiss asset manager Pictet and British investment firm Cologny would acquire a total of 68 million shares, Evolva said, boosting Pictet<65>s holdings to 10 percent and giving Cologny a 5 percent stake. The increase would total about 27 million Swiss francs ($28 million).In a second step, Evolva plans an extraordinary general shareholder meeting on Oct. 26 to vote on a discounted rights offering aimed at raising the rest of the 80 million francs.The Swiss company, which had already announced plans to cut 43 percent of workers after a 20.3 million franc first-half loss, said it aims to be <20>close to profitability<74> by 2021.It aims to focus initially on the sweetener stevia, health supplement resveratrol and nootkatone, a potential mosquito repellent.Evolva said it will release terms of the possible debt financing related to its Cargill obligations <20>at the relevant time<6D>.Cargill will manufacture Evolva<76>s stevia-based sugar replacement called EverSweet, though the launch has been delayed until 2018.Evolva shares have fallen by 45 percent this year, trimming its market capitalisation to less than 170 million francs.$1 = 0.9707 Swiss francs Reporting by John Miller; editing by Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/evolva-hldg-capital/evolva-plans-to-raise-80-mln-sfr-capital-possible-debt-financing-idUSL8N1MD0LC'|'2017-10-02T09:23:00.000+03:00'
'e916866aeb208803bc73604e6c36a8c49372e158'|'JGB yields follow U.S. peers higher, 10-yr auction draws lukewarm demand'|'TOKYO, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Japanese government bond yields tracked a rise in their U.S. peers and rose on Tuesday, with a 10-year bond auction drawing lukewarm demand as a surge in equities curbed investor interest towards safe-haven debt.The benchmark 10-year JGB yield rose 1 basis point to 0.080 percent, highest since July 26. The 20-year yield edged up half a basis point to 0.595 percent.The bid-to-cover ratio, a gauge of demand, at Tuesday<61>s 2.3 trillion yen ($20.33 billion) 10-year JGB auction rose to 4.08 from 3.95 at the previous sale in September.However, the lowest accepted auction price came in at 100.17 yen, below dealers<72> expectations of 100.22 yen, an indication that investor demand for the new JGBs remains soft.Japanese stocks hit fresh two-year highs on Tuesday, tracking a Wall Street rally as upbeat manufacturing and construction spending data pointed to underlying strength in the U.S. economy.The benchmark Treasury yield climbed to a three-month high on Monday in the wake of the robust economic indicators and Wall Street<65>s surge.$1 = 113.1600 yen Reporting by the Tokyo markets team; Editing by Sam Holmes '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/japan-bonds/jgb-yields-follow-u-s-peers-higher-10-yr-auction-draws-lukewarm-demand-idINL4N1ME143'|'2017-10-03T03:28:00.000+03:00'
'8a7a99175a7dc3cde1459e547b85b77d43be9dbc'|'Euro wobbles briefly on Spanish vote, China data a boon'|'October 1, 2017 / 10:19 PM / Updated an hour ago Dollar, stocks gain on U.S. economic outlook Herbert Lash 4 Min Read A general view shows the trading floor at the stock exchange reflected in a window of the visitors terrace in Frankfurt, Germany October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach NEW YORK (Reuters) - World stock markets climbed on Monday, lifted by optimism over the outlook for corporate earnings and U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s tax reform plan, while the U.S. dollar gained after a manufacturing index rose to its highest level since 2004. Spanish borrowing costs rose and stocks fell as a violent police crackdown on an independence vote in Catalonia rattled investors, but major European bourses gained on travel stocks and a mining sector helped by higher metals prices. U.S. manufacturing surged amid strong gains in new orders and raw material prices, while rebounding construction spending in August bolstered the economic outlook even as Hurricanes Harvey and Irma are expected to dent third-quarter growth. The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said its index of U.S. factory activity rose to a reading of 60.8 last month, the highest reading since May 2004, from 58.8 in August. The dollar was last up 0.64 percent against the euro at $1.1736 EUR= and up 0.20 percent against the yen at 112.70 JPY= . The euro was also hurt after the voting in Catalonia fuelled anxiety over political risk in the euro zone. Many analysts said the uncertainty could slow Spain<69>s economic growth though they expect the crisis to be resolved with an offer of more autonomy. <20>It is clear that risks to government stability are increasing,<2C> said Federico Santi, an analyst at Eurasia Group in London, referring to reports of nearly 900 injured in the clashes with police. The pan-regional FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 of leading European companies rose 0.41 percent to a preliminary close of 1,530.98, and MSCI''s gauge of stock performance in 46 countries .MIWD PUS gained 0.04 percent. FILE PHOTO: U.S. Dollar and Euro notes are seen in this June 22, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo - RC1309B476E0 On Wall Street, the three key stock indexes ground higher to record intraday highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 70.6 points, or 0.32 percent, to 22,475.69. The S&P 500 .SPX gained 4.55 points, or 0.18 percent, to 2,523.91 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 14.73 points, or 0.23 percent, to 6,510.69. <20>Investors are trying to get in front of earnings that are expected to be pretty good and there<72>s still some optimism over corporate tax relief,<2C> Rick Meckler, president of hedge fund LibertyView Capital Management LLC in Jersey City, New Jersey. FILE PHOTO - Pedestrians leave and enter the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall Third-quarter earnings are expected to increase 6.2 percent from a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters research. Excluding energy, earnings growth is estimated at 4.3 percent. Oil fell more than $1 a barrel to below $56 as a rise in U.S. drilling and higher output from the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries halted a rally that helped prices to register their biggest third-quarter gain in 13 years. U.S. energy companies added oil rigs for the first week in seven and Iraq announced its exports rose slightly in September while OPEC overall boosted output, a Reuters survey showed. [OPEC/M] U.S. crude CLcv1 fell $1.42 to $50.25 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $55.70, down $1.09 on the day. Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes US10YT=RR fell 4/32 in price to yield 2.339 percent. U.S. gold futures GCcv1 fell 0.62 percent to $1,276.80 an ounce, while copper CMCU3 rose 0.27 percent to $6,498.50 a tonne. Additional reporting by Wayne Cole in Sydney, Jemima Kelly, John Geddie and Claire Milhench in London; Editing by Bernadette Baum '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reute
'eea4009187c84b74f43004cfa023f11a790fcf41'|'Rio Grande do Sul state gov''t may sell stake in Brazil''s Banrisul'|'SAO PAULO (Reuters) - The government of Brazilian state Rio Grande do Sul may sell a non-controlling stake in state bank Banco do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul SA ( BRSR6.SA ), according to a securities filing on Wednesday.The state government, which owns 56.97 percent of the so-called Banrisul bank, will sell all common shares it does not need to maintain control, as well as an unspecified amount of preferred shares, the filing said. The bank did not say when the transaction could take place.Reporting by Ana Mano '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-banrisul-m-a/rio-grande-do-sul-state-govt-may-sell-stake-in-brazils-banrisul-idUSKBN1C91PH'|'2017-10-04T20:29:00.000+03:00'
'1244c63a8ceac733faa70ec43274579466b1c1fb'|'Saudi Arabia''s SALIC considers Russian grain investment'|'October 5, 2017 / 12:31 PM / Updated 36 minutes ago Saudi Arabia''s SALIC considers Russian grain investment Reuters Staff 2 Min Read MOSCOW, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia<69>s SALIC is considering investing in a Russian grain producer owned by Russian conglomerate Sistema and members of the Louis-Dreyfus family, Sistema said on Thursday. Saudi Arabia began scaling back its domestic wheat-growing programme in 2008, planning to rely completely on imports by 2016 to save water. Russia, one of the world<6C>s top grain exporters, is expected to harvest a record grain crop in 2017. The Saudi Agriculture and Livestock Investment Company (SALIC) was formed in 2011 to secure food supplies for the kingdom mainly through mass production and foreign investments. RZ Agro, a joint venture between Sistema and Louis-Dreyfus family members, was created in 2012. It produces grain and has a land bank of 106,000 hectares in Russia<69>s southern regions. <20>The parties will discuss the structure and parameters of the potential deal after the due diligence of RZ Agro Holding Ltd,<2C> Sistema said in a statement. The memorandum of understanding was one of several signed at the Russian-Saudi Business Investment Forum in Moscow. Saudi Arabia<69>s King Salman is meeting Russia<69>s President Vladimir Putin in the Russian capital on Thursday. (Reporting by Polina Devitt; additional reporting by Maha El Dahan; editing by Alexander Smith)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/grains-russia-saudi/saudi-arabias-salic-considers-russian-grain-investment-idUSL8N1MG32A'|'2017-10-05T15:31:00.000+03:00'
'a2a4d88836c783ca18c93b981d298c0eb612aa54'|'Senator to former Equifax CEO: Don''t repeat Wells Fargo''s mistakes - Oct. 4, 2017'|'Senator to former Equifax CEO: Don''t repeat Wells Fargo''s mistakes by Donna Borak @donnaborak October 4, 2017: 10:54 AM ET Legislators grill former Equifax CEO A top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee warned former Equifax CEO Richard Smith not to hide anything from lawmakers after exposing as many as 145 million Americans'' sensitive data. "Equifax has forfeited its right to corporate secrets," said Senator Sherrod Brown at a hearing. "So please do not make the same mistakes Wells Fargo did -- now is the time to give this committee the whole story." At the outset of the hearing, both Republican and Democratic senators expressed deep concern over a number of key unanswered questions by Equifax, including why it took the free credit reporting service company so long to disclose what happened. Related: Equifax breach impacted 2.5 million more people than originally stated "There is an intrinsic vulnerability in collecting and storing personal financial information, and we need to have a meaningful discussion on how to protect and limit access to it," said Senator Mike Crapo, the committee chairman. Federal agencies, state officials and members of Congress are currently probing Equifax over its data security practices, customer service response and the possibility of insider trading from executives. The breach compromised some of our most sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers, addresses, and driver''s license numbers. "This is not a company that deserves to be trusted with Americans'' personal data," said Brown. The former CEO''s appearance Wednesday marks the second in a series of Equifax hearings in Washington. Smith will also testify later at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on privacy. And on Thursday he will appear before the House Financial Services committee. CNNMoney (Washington) First published October 4, 2017: 10:54 AM ET '|'cnn.com'|'http://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_news_economy.rss'|'http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/04/news/economy/equifax-senate-hearing/index.html'|'2017-10-04T18:54:00.000+03:00'
'817eaeb7a8910b3d42f0647a07a9d446ae48757d'|'UPDATE 1-Ex-Morgan Stanley exec Fleming in venture to set up wealth management firm'|'(Recasts, adds background)By Olivia OranOct 4 (Reuters) - Former Morgan Stanley executive Gregory Fleming will form Rockefeller Capital Management, an independent wealth management and advisory services venture, with Rockefeller Financial Services Inc.It marks a return to Wall Street for Fleming, the former Morgan Stanley Wealth and Asset Management president who was once seen as a successor to Chief Executive James Gorman.The new firm will be owned by Viking investment fund, a trust representing the broader Rockefeller family, and the firm<72>s management.Fleming will be CEO and the board will include Fleming, David Rockefeller Jr, Peter O<>Neill, Reuben Jeffery III, and Brian Kaufmann of Viking, the firm said in a statement on Wednesday.The financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close next year, were not disclosed.Ardea Partners acted as the financial adviser to Rockefeller.Fleming, 54, joined Morgan Stanley in 2010 from Merrill Lynch. Since leaving Morgan Stanley in early 2016, Fleming has taught at Yale Law School and joined the board of Putnam Investments.He also advised former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci on selling his firm SkyBridge Capital to a consortium that includes a Chinese buyer, and represented baseball star Derek Jeter in his bid to acquire the Miami Marlins.Fleming had also been in talks with Blackstone Group LP about a potential role at the private equity firm, Reuters previously reported.Reporting by Olivia Oran in New York and Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr and Susan Thomas '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/rockefeller-moves-fleming/update-1-ex-morgan-stanley-exec-fleming-in-venture-to-set-up-wealth-management-firm-idINL4N1MF2VB'|'2017-10-04T13:52:00.000+03:00'
'46ba427168dcd1a6a0b3cf33ab150979678d085f'|'UK economy stuck in low gear, worries grow as BoE readies rate hike: PMI'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s economy remains stuck in low gear but price pressures are rising again, according to surveys on Wednesday that will probably keep the Bank of England on track to raise interest rates soon.The IHS Markit/CIPS Purchasing Managers<72> Index (PMI) also showed businesses were increasingly worried as Britain<69>s departure from the European Union approaches with little clear sign of its future trading relationships.The PMI showed growth in services activity unexpectedly sped up a little last month, compensating for weaker readings in manufacturing and construction reported earlier in the week. Even so, growth among British companies lagged behind that of their peers in a resurgent euro zone.Taking the three surveys together, Britain<69>s economy probably expanded at a quarterly rate of around 0.3 percent in the third quarter, matching its second-quarter performance, survey compiler IHS Markit said.While economists said they expected the BoE would probably follow through on its rate hike signals in November, many also urged caution.<2E>Given the weakening outlook for growth it may be wise for the (Monetary Policy Committee) to wait until next year before beginning to raise rates, once the future path for UK business becomes clearer,<2C> said Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG UKRatings agency Standard & Poor<6F>s said it was sceptical about the need for a BoE rate hike. It suggested recent comments by the central bank about raising rates were intended to push up sterling and cool inflation.Sterling rose after the services PMI report, gaining about 0.4 percent.Most economists polled by Reuters have said they expect rates to rise in November, even if they consider such a move premature.A worker arrives at his office in the Canary Wharf business district in London February 26, 2014. REUTERS/Eddie Keogh/Files MOOD DARKENS The PMI picked up to 53.6 in September, slightly better than expectations in a Reuters poll of economists for it to hold at August<73>s level of 53.2.But it also contained some discouraging signs: new orders increased at the weakest pace since August of last year, inflation pressures rose at the fastest pace for several months and confidence sagged.An employee is seen walking over a mosaic of pound sterling symbols set in the floor of the front hall of the Bank of England in London, in this March 25, 2008 file photograph. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor/Files Services companies cited Brexit-related uncertainty and worries about the economy as reasons for their darker mood.Britain<69>s economy initially withstood the shock of the June 2016 vote to leave the European Union. But growth began to slow this year as inflation rose following the pound<6E>s post-Brexit vote plunge, which hit the spending power of households.Against that background, the BoE surprised investors last month when it said most of its policymakers believed they were likely to raise rates soon, citing a reduced tolerance for above-target inflation.The PMI report showed the costs of services companies rose at the fastest pace since February, and they raised their own prices at the quickest rate in five months, suggesting inflation could top 3 percent in the coming months.<2E>The rise in price pressures will pour further fuel on expectations that the Bank of England will soon follow up on its increasingly hawkish rhetoric and hike interest rates,<2C> Williamson said.IHS Markit<69>s composite PMI, which combines services, manufacturing and construction, edged down to a seven-month low of 53.6 in September - leaving it some way off levels that would normally be consistent with BoE rate increases.Editing by Larry King '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-economy-pmi/uk-economy-stuck-in-low-gear-worries-grow-as-boe-readies-rate-hike-pmi-idINKBN1C91P1'|'2017-10-04T10:27:00.000+03:00'
'0f3882f1b210d7d0ecac296b3b41ba62999d7f6b'|'UPDATE 1-UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Oct 3'|' 39 AM / in 7 minutes UPDATE 1-UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Oct 3 Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Adds company news items and futures) Oct 3 (Reuters) - Britain<69>s FTSE 100 index is seen opening 3 points higher on Tuesday, according to financial bookmakers, with futures up 0.1 percent ahead of the cash market open. * FERGUSON: Heating and plumbing products supplier Ferguson reported a near 25 percent rise in full-year trading profit from ongoing business, as a strong U.S. performance offset weak British growth. * GREGGS: British baker Greggs said its like-for-like sales rose 5 percent in the 13 weeks to the end of September, keeping it on track to meet expectations for the year despite higher ingredient costs. * ITE GROUP: Exhibition organiser ITE Group Plc said it expects to report higher full-year revenue as the company<6E>s strategy to focus on core market leading events paid off. * BRITVIC: British soft drinks group Britvic Plc said on Tuesday it would close its Norwich manufacturing site, resulting in 242 job cuts. * EU TELECOMS: European Union lawmakers have dashed large telecoms companies<65> hopes for lighter regulation as part of efforts to encourage investment in superfast internet networks. * UNILEVER: U.S. agricultural trader Archer Daniels Midland Co on Monday denied a report that it was bidding on Unilever Plc<6C>s spreads business, which includes Flora and Stork margarines. * SHIRE: Allergan Plc was sued on Monday by Shire Plc for allegedly scheming to block doctors from prescribing its new treatment for dry eye disease. * SHELL: Royal Dutch Shell Plc restarted all but one unit over the weekend at its 227,586 barrel-per-day (bpd) Convent, Louisiana, refinery, sources familiar with plant operations said on Monday. * GOLD: Gold edged down to a 7-week low on Tuesday, as equities and the dollar were buoyed in Asian trade by upbeat economic data and strong U.S. treasury yields. * OIL: Oil prices fell on Tuesday, declining for a second day and sapping more strength from a third-quarter rally, amid signs that a global glut in crude may not be clearing as quickly as some had hoped. * The UK blue chip index closed 0.9 percent higher at 7,438.84 points on Monday as homebuilders rallied thanks to an extension of a government housing scheme, while airlines and miners also gained. * For more on the factors affecting European stocks, please click on: cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarkets TODAY<41>S UK PAPERS > Financial Times > Other business headlines Multimedia versions of Reuters Top News are now available for: * 3000 Xtra : visit topnews.session.rservices.com * For Top News : topnews.reuters.com (Reporting by Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-stocks-factors/update-1-uk-stocks-factors-to-watch-on-oct-3-idUSL4N1ME1CD'|'2017-10-03T09:38:00.000+03:00'
'6213733fe64eccbf63468d81d299995aed0efc47'|'Facebook to hire 1,000 people to review ads after Russian buys'|'October 2, 2017 / 3:06 PM / in 3 hours Facebook to hire 1,000 people to review ads after Russian buys 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Facebook application is seen on a phone screen August 3, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facebook Inc plans to hire 1,000 more people to review ads and ensure they meet its terms, as part of an effort to deter Russia and other countries from using the social media network to interfere in others<72> elections, it said on Monday. Facebook said last month that it believed people in Russia bought about 3,000 politically divisive ads on its network in the United States in the months before and after the November U.S. presidential election. Since its disclosure, Facebook has faced questions and calls for increased U.S. regulation from U.S. authorities. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has outlined steps that the company plans to take to deter governments from abusing the social media network, the world<6C>s largest. In a statement on Monday, Facebook said it would add more than 1,000 people over the next year and invest more in software to flag and take down ads automatically. <20>Reviewing ads means assessing not just the content of an ad, but the context in which it was bought and the intended audience - so we<77>re changing our ads review system to pay more attention to these signals,<2C> the company said. Facebook said it had 17,048 employees at the end of 2016, excluding contractors. In May, it said it would hire 3,000 more people over the following year to speed up the removal of videos showing murder, suicide and other violent acts that shocked users. Like other companies that sell advertising space, Facebook publishes policies for what it allows, prohibiting ads that are violent, discriminate based on race or promote the sale of illegal drugs. With more than 5 million paying advertisers, however, Facebook has difficulty enforcing all of its policies. The company said on Monday that it would adjust its policies further <20>to prevent ads that use even more subtle expressions of violence.<2E> It did not elaborate on what kind of material that would cover. Facebook also said it would begin to require more thorough documentation from people who want to run ads about U.S. federal elections, demanding that they confirm their businesses or organizations. Reporting by David Ingram in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-advertising/facebook-to-hire-1000-people-to-review-ads-after-russian-buys-idUSKCN1C71YM'|'2017-10-02T18:00:00.000+03:00'
'cfc8706696b7d3a5cd99fd493f2f43d31d5b0841'|'Disney, Altice shares gain after deal avoids blackout'|'October 2, 2017 / 2:13 PM / in 2 hours Disney, Altice shares gain after deal avoids blackout Aishwarya Venugopal 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Shares in Walt Disney Co ( DIS.N ) were the biggest gainers on the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI on Monday after the company reached a tentative deal with cable operator Altice USA ( ATUS.N ) that prevented a Disney network programming blackout. Altice USA ( ATUS.N ) and Disney have been at loggerheads over how much the fourth-largest U.S. cable operator would pay to continue carrying ESPN, ABC and other channels on its Optimum cable service. The deal announced on Sunday allows Altice<63>s Optimum cable service to head off the risk of a blackout that would put at risk some of its 3.1 million subscribers in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Analysts said signs that Disney had upped fees for ESPN, and come to a deal at all, bode well for a series of negotiations with other cable providers in the months ahead. <20>(The deal) has to be interpreted as a very bullish sign for Disney,<2C> Moffett Nathanson analyst Michael Nathanson wrote in a note. <20>The Altice renewal is the first deal in the next cycle of ABC/ESPN affiliate agreements and should serve as a template for the next wave of deals.<2E> The logo of Altice Studio is seen during the launch of the new movies and TV series channel Altice Studio in Paris, France August 29, 2017. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes Sources familiar with the talks told Reuters on Sunday that Disney had secured fee increases for ESPN, local affiliate WABC and other major networks. Disputes between cable companies and media groups over the cost of carrying channels are common, but the dispute marks the first time a cable company has pushed back at increased fees for ESPN, the most popular sports network. ESPN, has been losing subscribers and seeing its ratings fall. That has cut revenue from cable operators, which pay monthly fees for each subscriber, giving them ammunition in talks with Disney. <20>Given the upcoming cycle of renewals, investors should now be more confident that FY 2017 will mark the low point of affiliate growth,<2C> Nathanson wrote. Shares of Altice were up 2.2 percent at $27.90 in early trading, easing from a jump of more than 10 percent premarket. Disney<65>s shares rose 1.5 percent to $99.70. Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza and Patrick Graham '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-walt-disney-altice-usa/disney-altice-shares-gain-after-deal-avoids-blackout-idUSKCN1C71RR'|'2017-10-02T17:49:00.000+03:00'
'2b8edb381eb18f8221c620338c713e6ea800155d'|'BRIEF-Metallis Resources says arranged non-brokered private placement with $2.2 mln financing'|' 59 AM / Updated 10 minutes ago BRIEF-Metallis Resources says arranged non-brokered private placement with $2.2 mln financing   Metallis Resources Inc * Metallis Resources says arranged non-brokered private placement with 2176423 Ontario, owned by Eric Sprott raising gross proceeds of up to $2.2 million  '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-metallis-resources-says-arranged-n/brief-metallis-resources-says-arranged-non-brokered-private-placement-with-2-2-mln-financing-idUSFWN1MD0Z0'|'2017-10-03T08:56:00.000+03:00'
'ceccc27c51a1ccfe7bb37e455b013fe86a4ed2a4'|'Centurylink wins U.S. antitrust to buy Level 3 with conditions: court filing'|'WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Telecommunications provider CenturyLink Inc ( CTL.N ) has won U.S. antitrust approval for its purchase of Level 3 Communications Inc ( LVLT.N ) on condition that it sell certain assets, according to a court filing dated on Monday.The companies have said that they expect the deal to close in mid- to late-October.CenturyLink Inc said in October 2016 it would buy Level 3 Communications Inc in a deal valued at about $24 billion to expand its reach in the crowded market that provides communications services to businesses and compete with rivals such as AT&T and Verizon.Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Susan Thomas '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-level3-m-a-centurylink/centurylink-wins-u-s-antitrust-to-buy-level-3-with-conditions-court-filing-idINKCN1C72QU'|'2017-10-02T19:15:00.000+03:00'
'4e2571ac8655a4bbf078533e39076c46a58df8ca'|'UPDATE 2-Algeria to amend energy law by year-end to lure overseas cash - source'|'(Adds background)By Lamine ChikhiALGIERS, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Algeria plans to amend its energy law before the end of the year as the OPEC producer tries to attract more foreign investors, a senior source at state energy firm Sonatrach told Reuters.Algeria, a major gas supplier to Europe, wants to boost oil and gas revenues which were hit by a fall in global prices.But oil companies have mostly stayed away, saying the legal framework is too tough, the bureaucracy stifling and terms leave little profit even in times of high oil prices.The new law is expected to facilitate foreign oil and gas exploration, including untapped shale production and provide more tax incentives, the Sonatrach source said.<2E>The sooner the better, the law will be amended before the end of this year,<2C> the Sonatrach source, who has knowledge of discussions, said.Debate over such reforms in Algeria is often slowed by competing ideas inside a government with a history of state planning and where the ruling old guard remains wary of rapid change after several failed reform campaigns.The new law also will encourage local investors to enter the oil and gas industry, the source said.Reda Kouninef and Ali Haddad, two prominent Algerian businessmen, have expressed interest in investing in the energy market in recent years.<2E>A BEGINNING<4E>Following a fall in global oil prices, Algeria has been looking for ways to improve its energy output and a new hydrocarbons law, which would be a major development for the North African country.Government officials were not immediately available for comment on its plans.The country has already taken a more flexible approach with foreign oil investors by entering into bilateral deals with companies like France<63>s Total.Algeria, which has lost more than half of its energy earnings since 2014, has struggled in the past to increase oil and gas output without major foreign investment.Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said this week it was necessary to amend the energy law, following a suggestion by Sonatrach<63>s CEO Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour. He gave no more details.A windfall tax introduced in 2006 was seen by foreign companies as a major disincentive.<2E>International energy companies will be especially encouraged by changes of the windfall tax and by opportunities to develop Algeria<69>s abundant shale gas reserves,<2C> Geoff Porter, president of North Africa Risk Consulting, said.If approved, the new law will be the fourth in twelve years, but it could face resistance from hardliners who see the law protecting Algeria<69>s natural resources.<2E>Algeria amending its energy law is a positive signal to the international community,<2C> economy analyst and owner of Algerian based consultancy firm Arslan Chikhaoui told Reuters.<2E>This is a beginning.<2E> (Reporting by Lamine Chikhi; Editing by Ulf Laessing and Alexander Smith) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/algeria-energy-law/update-1-algeria-to-amend-energy-law-by-year-end-to-lure-overseas-cash-source-idINL8N1ME4TX'|'2017-10-03T14:24:00.000+03:00'
'273e965974ee2b55ca71ea297e39c89528771d91'|'Nikkei hits 2-year highs, tracks Wall Street gains'|' 47 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago Nikkei hits 2-year highs, tracks Wall Street gains Reuters Staff * Both Nikkei and Topix hit fresh 2-year highs * Nikkei eying 21-year high * Asatsu-DK jumps after Bain say to buy co By Ayai Tomisawa TOKYO, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Japanese stocks rose more than 1 percent to hit two-year highs on Tuesday, tracking Wall Street<65>s rally after new data pointed to underlying strength in the U.S. economy, while a weaker yen also helped overall sentiment. The Nikkei rose 1.1 percent to 20,614.07, the highest closing level since mid August 2015. The broader Topix gained 0.7 percent to 1,684.46, also the highest closing level since mid August 2015. Wall Street stocks rose with all three major indexes posting record-high closes after the Institute for Supply Management<6E>s (ISM) index of U.S. manufacturing activity surged to a near 13-1/2-year high in September. Market participants said investors turned to positive factors in the market such as strength in the U.S. economy, while geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, which roiled the market last month, have receded for now. <20>Since there are no serious moves (from both sides) now, major concerns that worried the market recently have been fading for now,<2C> said Hikaru Sato, a senior technical analyst at Daiwa Securities. <20>The market takes heart from a weakening yen, and is focused on more developments and headlines related to Japan<61>s election.<2E> Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last week dissolved the parliament<6E>s lower house and called a snap election for Oct. 22. Abe called the general election hoping to keep his conservative Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition<6F>s majority in the lower house. However, his bet now looks increasingly shaky, given growing support for a new party formed by the popular governor of Tokyo, which is drawing candidates from other opposition parties. The dollar rose 0.4 percent to 113.15 yen, underpinning overall sentiment, with 32 of Topix<69>s 33 subsectors in positive territory. Both defensive stocks and exporters gained ground, with realtor Mitsui Fudosan Co soaring 3.9 percent, Mitsubishi Estate Co rising 2.5 percent, drugmaker Eisai Co adding 2.6 percent, Honda Motor Co advancing 1.1 percent and Fanuc Ltd surging 1.8 percent. Meanwhile, advertising agency Asatsu-DK Inc jumped 20 percent after Bain Capital disclosed plans to buy it for 152 billion yen ($1.35 billion). (Reporting by Ayai Tomisawa; Editing by Sam Holmes and Eric Meijer)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/japan-stocks-close/nikkei-hits-2-year-highs-tracks-wall-street-gains-idUSL4N1ME1B6'|'2017-10-03T09:45:00.000+03:00'
'8be331a25e663f6cb5c361bbb812a47b2f21cf36'|'PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 3'|'Oct 3 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.- Tesla Inc badly missed its goal of building 1,500 Model 3 cars in the third quarter, the first sign that the production ramp-up for the new sedan isn''t going as smoothly as planned. on.wsj.com/2hHMaor- Facebook Inc on Monday said it estimates 10 million people saw ads it has discovered on its platform paid for by Russian entities, but warned that it may not have uncovered all malicious activity that attempted to interfere in the American political process. on.wsj.com/2hI7r1u- Jeff Immelt, the longtime leader of General Electric Co , is stepping aside as chairman and leaving the board of the industrial giant several months ahead of schedule. on.wsj.com/2hIjVWC- Uber Technologies Inc''s board is bracing for a contentious battle over voting control after two investors, Shervin Pishevar and Steve Russell, threatened legal action ahead of a planned vote Tuesday. on.wsj.com/2hGU8hJ- Sony Corp said the head of its videogame unit, Andrew House who steered PlayStation 4 sales to the top spot globally, will leave the Japanese conglomerate by the end of this year. on.wsj.com/2hJSQm1Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/press-digest-wsj/press-digest-wall-street-journal-oct-3-idINL4N1ME12G'|'2017-10-03T03:08:00.000+03:00'
'f4e1a028db9f3ca522628eb140beeb8908ab3497'|'U.S. business groups say WTO unable to curb many Chinese trade practices'|'October 4, 2017 / 8:27 PM / Updated 6 minutes ago U.S. business groups say WTO unable to curb many Chinese trade practices David Lawder 3 Min Read The headquarters of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are pictured in Geneva, Switzerland, April 12, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. business groups expressed frustration on Wednesday with what they said are China<6E>s efforts to tilt the economic playing field in favor of domestic companies, adding that World Trade Organization rules are insufficient to police all of Beijing<6E>s trade practices. U.S. companies face increasing threats from Chinese investment rules, industrial policies, subsidies to state-owned enterprises, excess manufacturing capacity, cybersecurity regulations and forced technology transfers, the groups told a public hearing held by the U.S. Trade Representative<76>s office. The session will influence an annual report on China<6E>s WTO compliance by the U.S. Trade Representative<76>s office as well as a USTR investigation into China<6E>s intellectual property practices that could lead to imposition of trade sanctions by President Donald Trump. Josh Kallmer, senior vice president of global policy at the Information Technology Industry Council, said China had woven a <20>tapestry<72> of rules and policies that places foreign companies at a disadvantage and incentivizes the transfer of technology. <20>It just in general puts a thumb on the competitive scale in a way that significantly and profoundly affects U.S.-based and foreign companies,<2C> said Kallmer, who was representing a coalition of technology groups from semiconductors to software. The concerns are not new. They were highlighted in the USTR<54>s last report to Congress on China<6E>s WTO compliance issued on Jan, 1, 2017, and raised in subsequent meetings by Trump administration officials. USTR Assistant Secretary Edward Gresser told the hearing that there was a growing recognition that WTO rules did not cover all of China<6E>s practices viewed as unfair. The United States and other WTO members needed <20>to find effective ways to address those Chinese government practices that may violate the spirit of the WTO that nevertheless may not fall squarely within the WTO disciplines,<2C> he said. Jeremie Waterman, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce<63>s vice president for Greater China, said China<6E>s restrictive investment regime and other industrial policies requiring technology transfers in recent years have made China a less attractive place to invest for foreign firms, and not all of these policies can be changed with full WTO compliance This has been made worse by China<6E>s <20>Made in China 2025<32> plan, which aims to supplant foreign products and technologies with domestic ones and new cybersecurity regulations that put foreign information technology products at a disadvantage, Waterman said. <20>The ballast has become less stable in recent years<72> in the U.S.-China economic relationship, he added. Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Steve Orlofsky'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-trade/u-s-business-groups-say-wto-unable-to-curb-many-chinese-trade-practices-idUSKBN1C92UL'|'2017-10-04T23:26:00.000+03:00'
'e7cdbd3d3d630b9a810ea19b71dd1d319ac5a785'|'Unilever could shut Norwich plant after Britvic withdrawal'|'October 3, 2017 / 11:43 AM / Updated an hour ago Unilever could shut Norwich plant after Britvic withdrawal Reuters Staff 1   The company logo for Unilever is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., February 17, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (Reuters) - Unilever ( ULVR.L ) said on Tuesday it was considering options including closing its factory in Norwich after Britvic ( BVIC.L ) announced it would end operations on the same site. The Anglo-Dutch consumer goods maker, which makes Colman<61>s Mustard in Norwich, said it was launching a review of its production at the plant. <20>Although no decisions have been made, we need to recognise that Britvic<69>s proposed withdrawal would have serious implications for Unilever in Norwich,<2C> the company said. <20>The review will ... consider options for the most effective sourcing of the current Norwich product range. One of those options will include the potential closure of our Norwich factory.<2E> Reporting by Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-unilever-restructuring/unilever-could-shut-norwich-plant-after-britvic-withdrawal-idUKKCN1C8186'|'2017-10-03T14:43:00.000+03:00'
'445441323aceddc740d52ba9c29a12601cfaa38a'|'US banks squeeze record ATM fees from customers'|'All the benefits of Standard Digital, plus: Unlimited access to all content Instant Insights column for comment and analysis as news unfolds FT Confidential Research - in-depth China and Southeast Asia analysis ePaper - the digital replica of the printed newspaper Full access to LEX - our agenda setting daily commentary Exclusive emails, including a weekly email from our Editor, Lionel Barber Full access to EM Squared- news and analysis service on emerging markets Other Subscription options:'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/content/82e27d30-a7c0-11e7-ab55-27219df83c97'|'2017-10-03T07:02:00.000+03:00'
'230f619055fcb41405edc4f6d940d3e40cf634a9'|'How the City finally raised its voice over Brexit'|'How the City finally raised its voice over Brexit After a period of discretion, banks are looking abroad and determined to be heard Guests at a ''Paris Meets London'' meeting held in the UK capital in February by Paris Europlace, a lobby group for the French financial sector <20> Bloomberg Play audio for this article Pause This is an experimental feature. Give us your feedback. Thank you for your feedback. What do you think? I<>ll use it in the future I don<6F>t think I<>ll use it Please tell us why (optional) Send Feedback Bankers are not known for their patience. Finance relies on speedy interaction with the markets. Traders are used to reacting to news within seconds. So it is pretty astonishing that the City of London<6F>s financial services industry held its collective tongue for so long. For nigh on a year after the UK voted for Brexit in June 2016, few banks challenged the government<6E>s unofficial request to keep a low profile over the issue. They have made up for lost time over the past few months. Once Standard Chartered, an emerging markets bank with a tiny EU business, announced it would establish a subsidiary operation in Frankfurt, others soon followed with their own announcements of post-Brexit plans involving the set-up of new subsidiaries and job moves from London to other EU financial centres. The reason? Once Britain leaves the EU, it will leave the single market for goods and services. Without some kind of replacement deal, that means the end of the City<74>s role as a hub for doing cross-border business with clients across the EU, through the <20>passporting<6E> of services from a regulated UK entity. According to an analysis in August by S&P Global Market Intelligence, 13 banks have now selected Frankfurt or Berlin as their new EU hub, putting Germany in front in the race for City jobs. Dublin has attracted 12 groups <20> mostly banks but also a clutch of insurers and asset managers. Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands are also set to win business. So far, in this first phase of post- Brexit planning, it is about establishing toeholds, with groups pledging to move a few dozen staff, or a couple of hundred at most, as an insurance policy. Whether they end up transferring thousands will depend on the outcome of Brexit talks between the UK government and the EU. At the extreme, JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank have talked about moving up to 4,000 jobs apiece out of London. Oliver Wyman, the consultancy, estimates in a worst-case scenario 75,000 jobs could go in financial services and related sectors. With the UK and the EU 27 still stuck on the divorce terms <20> principally the exit bill and the residence status of EU nationals <20> the feasibility of any trade deal, let alone a good one for financial services, is up in the air. No one even knows what the UK government will pitch for. <20>The shape of the ask for financial services is not yet clear,<2C> says Chris Bates, a partner at law firm Clifford Chance. <20>It<49>s still a huge open issue.<2E> The UK<55>s Brexit secretary David Davis, left, with Michel Barnier, the European Commission<6F>s chief Brexit negotiator <20> Reuters Hard-Brexit scenarios, with no attempt to replicate the single-market framework that allows business to be passported, would be the most disruptive. Some lawyers believe existing fall-back provisions might be workable, such as <20>equivalence<63> rules that should grant EU market access to any nation with comparable regulatory standards. Most bankers dismiss this idea, however, as too fragile a regime, given that it can be suspended by the EU at short notice. Another idea is to rely not on actively marketing from London into the EU but making use of <20>reverse solicitation<6F> rules, which would allow EU clients to seek contracts from UK entities. This, though, is similarly unpopular. <20>Using reverse solicitation rules wouldn<64>t work,<2C> says one senior US bank executive. <20>We couldn<64>t rely on waiting for clients to come to us. It would be competitive folly.<2E> There is an optimistic City contingent, h
'023798d0b3b0b9f33c99603f24b6830dbaebcc60'|'EU to reform sales tax, end appeal of low-rate states in blow to Amazon'|'European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium June 14, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir STRASBOURG (Reuters) - The European Commission will propose on Wednesday changes to the way sales taxes are levied in the European Union, in an effort to close tax loopholes and eliminate fraud, a draft document said.The new measures on value-added tax would mostly tackle frauds in which companies pocket VAT revenues from cross-border sales instead of paying them to the local government.The move would also end the practice of companies avoiding VAT by basing themselves in countries with low VAT rates. They will now, as a general rule, have to pay the VAT charged by the country where their products are sold.That principle has already been established by temporary regulations. The proposed reform would make that permanent.<2E>This definitive VAT system will be based on the principle of taxation in the member state of destination,<2C> the document, seen by Reuters, said.The proposed changes are expected to permanently end tax advantages for supplier companies that serve the EU market from a low-tax country, like Amazon, which is based in Luxembourg.The EU executive said the changes would reduce the need for a harmonised VAT rate policy. By November it will make new proposals to reform VAT rates, giving states more power to set them.The move is also aimed at reducing scams that deprive EU states of large amounts of VAT revenues. Often such fraud involves companies collecting tax when a product is sold but not paying it to the government of its home country. Collecting the tax in the country where a product is sold would eliminate that fraud.Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio; Editing by Larry King '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-tax-vat/eu-to-reform-sales-tax-end-appeal-of-low-rate-states-in-blow-to-amazon-idUSKCN1C81KE'|'2017-10-03T16:31:00.000+03:00'
'4c8442152e9da6a3f5d5e4392772688669d79cd4'|'Refresco receives new 1.6 billion euro offer from PAI; shares jump'|'AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch juice bottling company Refresco ( RFRG.AS ) has received a new 1.6 billion euro ($1.9 billion) buyout offer from French private equity firm PAI Partners.Refresco said it was considering the offer, which follows a 1.4 billion euro offer from PAI which Refresco rejected in April.After rejecting the PAI offer, Refresco agreed in July to buy the bottling activities of Canada-based Cott Corp ( BCB.TO ) for $1.25 billion.Refresco said PAI<41>s new offer, which it described as <20>unsolicited, indicative and conditional<61> includes the Cott activities acquisition, which is on track to close before the end of 2017, Refresco said.The PAI offer is to acquire all 81.2 million issued shares in Refresco for 19.75 euros per share.Refresco shares jumped more than 8 percent in early trading to 18.80 euros, after closing at 17.34 euros on Monday. The share is up 30 percent year to date after rallying on PAI<41>s April bid.Refresco said its boards would <20>carefully review the proposal.<2E>Refresco, which was founded in 1999 and floated in 2015, makes and bottles fruit juices and soft drinks for retailers and brands in Europe and the United States.The company employs 5,500 people and has production facilities in the Benelux countries, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Britain and the United States.In 2016, it reported a net profit of 81.5 million euros on revenue of 2.1 billion euros.Reporting by Toby Sterling; editing by Jason Neely/Keith Weir '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-refresco-group-m-a-pai/refresco-receives-new-1-6-bln-euro-buyout-offer-from-pai-partners-idINKCN1C80KG'|'2017-10-03T05:17:00.000+03:00'
'64e06ae98b98d49e3feeb8f9fec5737071ff3410'|'CEFC''s Rosneft deal driven by national strategy: chairman'|'FILE PHOTO: A logo of Russian state oil firm Rosneft is seen at its office in Moscow, October 18, 2012. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo BEIJING (Reuters) - CEFC China Energy<67>s $9.1 billion purchase of a stake in Russia<69>s Rosneft Oil ROSM.NN was mainly driven by China<6E>s Belt and Road Initiative and has strong support from the government, Ye Jianming, the company<6E>s founder said.Ye posted his thoughts on Monday in a message to CEFC employees on the company<6E>s Wechat account to explain how the privately-owned company secured the deal with Rosneft instead of China<6E>s state-owned oil majors. Wechat is China<6E>s largest social media application mainly used as a messaging tool.The Rosneft purchase is the culmination of CEFC<46>s growth from a niche oil trader started in Ye<59>s hometown in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian to an energy and financial conglomerate. The company produces oil in West Africa and Abu Dhabi, owns hundreds of fuel stations in Europe, and is planning to buy a stake in a Cezch-Slovak bank.CEFC<46>s investment was 70 percent driven by Beijing<6E>s Belt and Road Initiative as Russia and Central Asia are considered top-priority sources for China, the world<6C>s top energy consumer, to secure its oil and gas needs, he said.<2E>We prepared ourselves earlier and positioned ourselves better...It<49>s not because we are more powerful than the three big oil firms...it<69>s because the Russian side wants a private sector partner,<2C> Ye said, referring to China<6E>s state oil firms China National Petroleum Corp, Sinopec Group and China National Offshore Oil Co.CEFC won preliminary state approval for its 14.16 percent stake in Rosneft about a week after the deal was announced.Rosneft decided to tie up with CEFC as a way to break western economic sanctions imposed on Russia at the same time the country<72>s economy has experienced difficulties since the 2014 oil price drop, said Ye.<2E>This is the most difficult times for Russia...the price for the stake was also hugely reasonable, a price that was unimaginable three years ago,<2C> Ye said.A key area for the alliance with Rosneft will be natural gas, a cleaner fuel for power generation, said Ye, adding that CEFC will step up natural gas investments in Qatar and Africa.Additionally, even though oil will be replaced by electricity to power cars in the future, the fossil fuel remains essential as a feedstock for producing the petrochemicals that China needs, he said.Reporting by Chen Aizhu; Editing by Christian Schmollinger '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-cefc-china-rosneft/cefcs-rosneft-deal-driven-by-national-strategy-chairman-idINKCN1C80ZW'|'2017-10-03T08:23:00.000+03:00'
'b69173ffc890aac8372ee93a690cbe08a985e899'|'Wal-Mart buys delivery logistics startup Parcel'|'FILE PHOTO: The Wal-Mart company logo is seen outside a Wal-Mart Stores Inc company distribution center in Bentonville, Arkansas June 6, 2013. REUTERS/Rick Wilking (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc ( WMT.N ) said on Tuesday, it has acquired Parcel Inc, a New York-based last-mile delivery startup, as the retailer seeks to better compete with e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ).Parcel, a 24/7 operation that delivers packages the same-day, overnight and in scheduled two-hour windows, was bought for an undisclosed amount <20>smaller than previous acquisitions<6E> Wal-Mart made this year, the discount retailer said."We plan to leverage Parcel for last mile delivery to customers in New York City <20> including same-day delivery <20> for both general merchandise as well as fresh and frozen groceries from Walmart and Jet," Wal-Mart said in a blog post. bit.ly/2wv4iV7Wal-Mart said in June it would buy online men<65>s fashion retailer Bonobos Inc for $310 million, on the same day Amazon unveiled a $13.7 billion deal to buy upmarket grocer Whole Foods Market Inc.The company also bought internet retailer Jet.com for about $3 billion last year in the largest-ever deal for an e-commerce startup.A Wal-Mart representative declined to disclose the Parcel deal value. Parcel was not immediately available for comment outside regular business hours.Recode reported citing a source that the acquisition price was less than $10 million.Reporting by Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar WarrierOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-parcel-m-a-walmart/wal-mart-buys-delivery-logistics-startup-parcel-idINKCN1C80DI'|'2017-10-03T03:16:00.000+03:00'
'e1b72f34e7810dfebe65c5bc45d6162d479564ce'|'France''s Worldline raises targets as acquisitions pay off'|'October 3, 2017 / 7:10 AM / in 10 minutes France''s Worldline raises targets as acquisitions pay off Reuters Staff 3   French payments company Worldline SA ( WLN.PA ) has raised its revenue and profitability targets for 2017-2019 thanks to increased business from its acquisitions. The sector has seen a wave of consolidation as payment firms become targets for credit card companies and banks looking to capitalise on a switch from cash to payments by smartphones or other mobile devices and as regulatory changes promise to open up the fragmented market. Recent deals have included company Vantiv<69>s ( VNTV.N ) takeover of Worldpay ( WPG.L ) and Hellman & Friedman<61>s bid for Nets ( NETS.CO ). <20>Worldline intends to pursue its growth by capturing opportunities created by regulation changes like PSD2 and Instant Payments, as well as by large new processing outsourcing opportunities and cross-border acquiring contracts,<2C> Chief Executive Gilles Grapinet said in a statement. Grapinet added that the company intends to <20>actively participate<74> in consolidation in the European payment industry. Worldline, which said in July it bought Digital River World Payments and First Data Baltics, also said on Tuesday it has agreed to buy 100 percent of payment service provider MRL PosNet in India for up to 89 million euros (<28>78.44 million). MRL PosNet, which employs approximately 140 engineers, operates a terminal management platform and currently processes payment transactions on behalf of 18 Indian banks. Worldline, 70 percent owned by French IT services firm Atos SE ( ATOS.PA ) according to Thomson Reuters data, now expects organic revenue growth in the range of 3.5-4 percent in 2017, and rising to 6-8 percent in 2019. The payments firm also forecast operating margin before amortisation and depreciation (OMDA) of more than 22.5 percent in 2019 and free cash flow in the range of 230 million euros to 245 million euros ($269.6-$287.2 million) in 2019. In November last year the company said it expected free cash flow of 210 million euros to 230 million euros in 2019, organic revenue compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 5 and 7 percent for 2017-2019. Reporting by Alan Charlish; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri and Louise Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-worldline-outlook/frances-worldline-raises-targets-as-acquisitions-pay-off-idUKKCN1C80JS'|'2017-10-03T10:11:00.000+03:00'
'eb339d930b33479a19dd55de2f21503d6d350a36'|'Las Vegas rampage could prompt casinos to re-think security - experts'|'NEW YORK/CHICAGO, Oct 2 (Reuters) - A year ago casino magnate Steve Wynn warned that Las Vegas was a <20>target city<74> and disclosed a raft of new security measures, including invisible metal detectors and specially trained guards, designed to prevent a large-scale attack.Whether those measures would have prevented Sunday<61>s rampage on the strip in which 59 people were killed is unknown. The gunman shot concertgoers from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, a hotel complex owned by MGM Resorts International, a rival of Wynn Resorts Ltd.But the shooting, which also injured more than 500 people, could spur casino operators to think more like Wynn, who had been dismissed as <20>obsessed<65> about security before Sunday<61>s massacre, a rival casino executive said.<2E>This could be a turning point,<2C> the executive said, speaking on condition of anonymity because security measures are private. <20>Every management team is going to move this up to the top of the list.<2E>A representative of MGM could not be reached for comment.Hotels already have extensive security for gambling, including dogs that patrol the casinos to sniff for drugs and bombs, and significant security staff that constantly monitors the actions of people, including undercover security.In an interview with Las Vegas<61> KTNV in 2016, Wynn Resorts Chief Executive Steve Wynn said, <20>Las Vegas is a target city. We have hardened the target at the Wynn.<2E>He said his company has metal detectors and devices at every entrance of its building for employees and guests that are nonvisible to the public as well as specially training guards.<2E>There are almost 40 of them at every opening of my building, plain clothes, armed, on the look-out, changing shift and being relieved every two hours so they don<6F>t get bored,<2C> he said.<2E>We have done extraordinary things to make sure that we protect our employees and our guests at the hotel,<2C> Wynn said.His comments were confirmed on Monday by company spokesman Michael Weaver.While other casino operators have contemplated heightened security measures, none have gone to the lengths of Wynn, the rival casino executive said.A.G. Burnett, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, said in a telephone interview on Monday that a task force was set up among regulators and law enforcement officials a few years ago to discuss security issues.<2E>We were always worried about something like this happening on the casino floor, but this was outside the casino,<2C> Burnett said, adding, <20>We will continue our efforts in speaking with Las Vegas casinos on bolstering their security.<2E>David Shepherd, chief executive of consultancy the Readiness Resource Group and former director of security for the Venetian Resort Hotel and Casino, said, <20>You are looking at 40 million tourists coming into Las Vegas. Security has to be effective but not intrusive.<2E><>We<57>ve had one event. Are we are going to change everything after one event?<3F>Police identified Sunday<61>s gunman as Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old retiree armed with multiple assault weapons. Police said they recovered a total of 34 weapons belonging to Paddock, including 16 from the hotel room.Casino security expert Steven Baker said standard M-16 rifles, for example, can be broken down to fit in a suitcase.<2E>If I can take a suitcase to my room I can have that in there. Nowhere do we have the full out screening of baggage like we do in airports. The logistics of doing that are huge,<2C> said Baker.Casino operators typically refrain from disclosing details of their security policies. Both Las Vegas Sands and Caesars Entertainment Corp said they were constantly reviewing their protocols to ensure the safety of customers and working closely with local police.Boyd Gaming Corp, whose casinos in Las Vegas include the Orleans and the Gold Coast, said they were looking at ways to increase security in the wake of the shooting.<2E>We have very robust security measures in place today,<2C> Boyd spokesman David Strow said on Monday. <20>Howe
'8ad6fe26e6e6ebecfca322f14aeadfa36b494b07'|'Deutsche Bank woes, TSB''s IT problem and HSBC leadership changes'|'Save to myFT October 3, 2017 The Financial Times banking team discusses the biggest banking stories of the week, bringing you global insight and commentary on the top issues concerning this sector. Your browser does not support playing this file but you can still download the MP3 file to play locally. Patrick Jenkins and guests discuss Deutsche Bank''s difficulties as chief executive John Cryan comes under pressure from investors, the delay in the TSB''s latest IT project, and who the new HSBC chairman has picked as his CEO. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2017. All rights reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don''t copy articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. Save to myFT'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'2017-10-03T17:24:00.000+03:00'
'ebcfb0bd018e949d393117d6b94efef4b9827bb7'|'BRIEF-Intuit hosts investor day and reaffirms first-quarter and fiscal 2018 guidance'|' 38 PM / in 4 minutes BRIEF-Intuit hosts investor day and reaffirms first-quarter and fiscal 2018 guidance Reuters Staff Oct 3 (Reuters) - Intuit Inc * Intuit hosts investor day: reaffirms first-quarter and fiscal 2018 guidance * Q1 earnings per share view $0.05, revenue view $861.9 million - Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S * Fy2018 earnings per share view $4.95, revenue view $5.69 billion -- Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S Source  '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-intuit-hosts-investor-day-and-reaf/brief-intuit-hosts-investor-day-and-reaffirms-first-quarter-and-fiscal-2018-guidance-idUSASB0BLT3'|'2017-10-03T15:37:00.000+03:00'
'58ae664c7533ffb18310cd98f3b2f02cc097329d'|'BRIEF-Bioptix announces special cash dividend'|' 40 PM / in 2 minutes BRIEF-Bioptix announces special cash dividend Reuters Staff Oct 3 (Reuters) - Bioptix Inc * Bioptix announces special cash dividend * Board of directors has authorized a special dividend of approximately $1.00 per common share in cash * Special dividend is payable on or about October 18, 2017 to shareholders of record as of October 13, 2017 Source  '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-bioptix-announces-special-cash-div/brief-bioptix-announces-special-cash-dividend-idUSASB0BLSU'|'2017-10-03T15:40:00.000+03:00'
'9dad1010e51f10baa6191a9866e0d16228770f3b'|'Walt Disney seeks to raise at least C$750 million in first maple bond issue'|'FILE PHOTO: The water tank of The Walt Disney Co Studios is pictured in Burbank, California February 5, 2014. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo TORONTO (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co ( DIS.N ) is seeking to raise at least C$750 million in its first issue of maple bonds, a term sheet seen by Reuters showed, becoming the latest large U.S. corporation to tap this market in recent months.Guidance for the issue by private placement of senior unsecured notes, which will mature on Oct. 7, 2024, has been set at a spread of 84 basis points plus or minus 3 basis points versus the Government of Canada curve, the term sheet showed.Pricing of the proposed offering, which has been rated A2 by Moody<64>s, is expected on Tuesday, a source familiar with the issue said.The Maple bond market, in which foreign companies sell Canadian dollar-denominated debt, has attracted issuance from a number of high profile names this year, including AB InBev, McDonald<6C>s Corp ( MCD.N ) and Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ).Apple priced a C$2.5 billion deal in seven-year bonds in August, setting a record amount for an issuer in the Maple bond market. The deal also tied as the biggest corporate issue in Canada.Market players say that foreign issuers often issue Canadian dollar denominated debt when they can swap the proceeds into U.S. dollars and achieve a cheaper overall borrowing cost.The deal comes after two interest rate hikes by the Bank of Canada in recent months helped push Canadian bond yields higher, attracting interest from global bond investors.Issuers could also be attracted by a pool of domestic buyers hungry to diversify in a Canadian dollar corporate bond market denominated by large financial issuers.Disney intends to use the net proceeds from the sale of the notes for general corporate purposes.Reporting by Fergal Smith; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Susan Thomas '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-cananda-bonds-walt-disney/walt-disney-seeks-to-raise-at-least-c750-million-in-first-maple-bond-issue-idINKCN1C81PM'|'2017-10-03T12:18:00.000+03:00'
'4c9028440d852d1b783296eb8a390de5024a977a'|'LPC-Bankers pitch <20>3bn-equiv debt deal for PAI<41>s Refresco bid'|'LONDON, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Bankers are pitching debt financings of around <20>3bn-equivalent to back French private equity firm PAI Partners<72> take private offer for Dutch juice bottling company Refresco, banking sources said on Tuesday.Refresco is considering the new <20>1.6bn (US$1.9bn) buyout offer that was announced on Tuesday, and follows PAI<41>s earlier <20>1.4bn offer in April which Refresco rejected.The acquisition is another potential take private transaction as private equity firms come under more pressure to spend their <20>dry powder<65> and follows Bain Capital and Cinven<65>s buyout of German generic drugmaker Stada which closed in September. [After rejecting PAI<41>s initial offer, Refresco agreed to buy the bottling activities of Canada-based Cott Corp for US$1.25bn in July. The acquisition, which was financed with around <20>2bn of leveraged loans, is on track to close before the end of 2017.Banks are aggressively pitching debt financings to fund PAI<41>s latest bid which include the Cott acquisition debt, the sources said. PAI has not mandated any banks as yet, they added.PAI declined to comment and Refresco was not immediately available to comment on the financing.The new <20>3bn debt financing is expected to consist of senior leveraged loans and subordinated high yield bonds, the sources said.The <20>3bn deal will finance Refresco<63>s buyout and repay the <20>2bn-equivalent of leveraged loans that financed the Cott acquisition, the sources said.That <20>2bn-equivalent leveraged loan financing was completed and allocated on September 27. JP Morgan led the deal with bookrunners ABN Amro, BNP Paribas and Rabobank. Commerzbank, HSBC, MUFG, Mizuho and Societe Generale also joined as mandated lead arrangers.As the existing loans do not have a portability clause, any change of control will trigger a repayment, the sources said. It is not clear whether the banks that led the last deal will be involved in the new financing, they added.Refresco, which was founded in 1999, was acquired by 3i in 2003 and sold to an Icelandic investor consortium in 2006, before floating in 2015. It makes and bottles fruit juices and soft drinks for retailers and brands in Europe and the United States.Other recent take private buyouts include Blackstone and CVC Capital Partners<72> acquisition of UK payment processing company Paysafe and US private equity firm Hellman & Friedman<61>s DKr33.1bn (US$5.3bn) takeover offer for payments firm Nets.A kickoff meeting was held in London on Tuesday for the Paysafe deal to discuss a timetable for syndicating the US$2.5-3bn equivalent of leveraged loans backing the purchase.Bankers are expecting to see more delisting deals for companies that were previously owned by private equity firms before they were floated, the sources said.<2E>We can expect to see more public to private deals where companies were previously owned by buyout firms, as it can be argued that they are better off back in private hands,<2C> a senior banker said. (Editing by Tessa Walsh) '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/refresco-loans/lpc-bankers-pitch-3bn-equiv-debt-deal-for-pais-refresco-bid-idUSL8N1ME3SN'|'2017-10-03T22:36:00.000+03:00'
'bfdde158b8837dd18f878e1a05d0f5171cc18881'|'Global investment banking fees at 10-year high'|'LONDON, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Global investment banking fees in the year to date have reached their highest since just before the financial crisis, coming in at $76.1 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data.The global fee pool is up 14 percent to a ten-year high in the first nine months of 2017, compared to the same period last year, driven by a strong rise in fees from capital markets activity.The Americas accounted for around 50 percent of the total at $38 billion, the data showed, up 11.6 percent from a year ago.In Europe, banking fees rose 19 percent to a two-year high of $17.5 billion, while fees from Japan reached their highest level since Thomson Reuters records began in 2000 at $4.1 billion.U.S. banks are in the top five positions in the global investment banking fee rankings with a 27.9 percent share, down from a high of 44.3 percent in 2001.JPMorgan is on track to retain its spot at the top of the fee table in 2017, earning $5.0 billion so far compared to Goldman Sachs in second place with $4.4 billion.Barclays was the best performing European bank, bringing in $2.6 billion.Fees from equity capital markets business rose 42 percent to $16.6 billion over the period, which includes a 91 percent increase in fees from initial public offerings to $5.4 billion.However, uncertainty surrounding the impact of new U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s policies meant mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity fell, causing a 1 percent slip in M&A fees to $20.1 billion.The biggest fall was in the United States, where M&A activity fell 12 percent in the first nine months of the year compared with the same period in 2016.M&A activity for European targets totalled $629.3 billion during the first nine months of 2017, an increase of 29 percent compared to 2016, when Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union subdued dealmaking. (Reporting by Clara Denina. Editing by Jane Merriman) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/investmentbanking-fees/global-investment-banking-fees-at-10-year-high-idINL8N1ME4FI'|'2017-10-03T14:32:00.000+03:00'
'26a909bf82505ad48ce072ed7c8308da72b64273'|'Dutch company TMF to unveil London IPO this week'|'October 4, 2017 / 1:22 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Dutch company TMF to unveil London IPO this week Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - TMF Group, the Dutch operator of trust companies, plans to float its shares on the London Stock Exchange in an initial public offering to be unveiled later this week, a source with knowledge of the deal told Reuters on Wednesday. The source said he could not verify a Sky News report that said the deal would value the company at 1 billion pounds. Goldman Sachs and HSBC are handling the flotation for owners DH Private Equity. Reporting by Dasha Afanasieva in London and Ishita Chigilli Palli in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-tmf-group-ipo/dutch-company-tmf-to-unveil-london-ipo-this-week-idINKBN1C91VQ'|'2017-10-04T11:22:00.000+03:00'
'e3b3174414e33f9c0c48acff8605d94f642d6307'|'UPDATE 2-Brazil agency urges conditions for approving Bayer-Monsanto tie-up'|'FILE PHOTO: Monsanto logo is displayed on a screen where the stock is traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S. on May 9, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo SAO PAULO (Reuters) - A unit of Brazil<69>s competition regulator Cade has said Bayer AG<41>s proposed takeover of Monsanto Co. could be detrimental to competition and urged conditions for Brazilian approval of the corporate tie-up, a document released on the agency<63>s website shows.The Bayer-Monsanto transaction, announced in September 2016, would create the world<6C>s largest integrated pesticides and seeds company.The Cade unit said that anticipated merger-related efficiencies were insufficient to mitigate its competition concerns, according to the document dated Oct. 3.It recommended what it termed as <20>structural solutions<6E> as a condition for final approval the deal, which will be in the hands of Cade<64>s seven-member tribunal.Cade has 330 days to make a final decision since it began its review of the deal on April 24, a spokesman for the agency said. However, he added it may announce a ruling as early as Dec. 20.The Cade unit said solutions included creating or strengthening another player to compete in the markets for soy and cotton seeds and in the sphere of biotech development.But the unit has not engaged in an in-depth discussion with Bayer and Monsanto related to its suggested <20>remedies,<2C> the document said.In an emailed statement to Reuters, Bayer said the unit<69>s opinion is non-binding and does not mean the transaction will be blocked.Hugh Grant, Monsanto<74>s chief executive officer, said concerns expressed by Brazil<69>s regulator are a normal step in the review process.Brazil is Monsanto<74>s biggest market outside of the United States.In its second-quarter results, Bayer said sales of its crop science division tumbled more than 15 percent primarily because of its business in Brazil, an indication of the country<72>s weight as a market for seed technology, insecticides and herbicides.Deal opponents have asked Cade to block it or force divestments including Monsanto<74>s Intacta RR2 IPRO soy seed technology and Bayer<65>s glufosinate ammonium herbicides.Last week, Monsanto<74>s chief executive officer for South America, Rodrigo Santos, told Reuters the company was set on keeping rights to Intacta.Cotton farmers against the transaction assert the merged company would control 14 out of 15 genetically modified cotton seed technologies available in Brazil.If Cade orders asset disposals from the companies, authorities must see to it that the buyer is a relevant player in the biotech, seed production and crop defense segments, said attorney Rachel Mendon<6F>a, a partner at Mendon<6F>a e Nogueira Advogados.Her law firm is representing three industry groups opposing the deal.Reporting by Ana Mano; editing by Alexander Smith and W Simon '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-monsanto-m-a-bayer-brazil/brazil-agency-defers-bayer-monsanto-decision-cites-anti-trust-concerns-idUSKCN1C91BU'|'2017-10-04T15:28:00.000+03:00'
'be68688d2e87166af7f35c900803f3652720113c'|'Airbus to recoup some engine nacelle work from suppliers'|'PARIS, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Airbus told European governments on Wednesday that it has made a strategic decision to bring the design of some nacelles or aircraft engine casings inside the company, rather than leaving it with suppliers, according to a presentation on its website.It also said the troubled A400M military plane project will continue to <20>weigh significantly<6C> on cashflow in 2017 and 2018 in particular, according to the presentation prepared on Oct. 4 and presented on Wednesday to governments that own shares in the European planemaker: France, Germany and Spain.An Airbus spokesman confirmed the in-sourcing decision in the case of nacelles made by United Technologies for engines supplied by the same company to power the A320neo jetliner. (Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Leigh Thomas) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/airbus-shareholders/airbus-to-recoup-some-engine-nacelle-work-from-suppliers-idINL8N1MF5UO'|'2017-10-04T17:09:00.000+03:00'
'89fc2cd29b05118bca2800380adf035de473027b'|'Bain Capital says to meet media on Thursday to discuss Toshiba chip deal'|'October 4, 2017 / 9:12 AM / Updated 5 hours ago Bain Capital says to meet media on Thursday to discuss Toshiba chip deal Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Logo of the Bain Capital is screened at a news conference in Tokyo, Japan September 28, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. buyout firm Bain Capital, which leads a consortium that last week signed an $18 billion deal with Toshiba Corp ( 6502.T ) to buy its chip unit, said it will hold a news conference at 3 pm JST (0600 GMT) on Thursday to discuss the deal. Bain Capital last week called a news conference to talk about the deal but canceled the event at the last minute, saying the consortium led by Bain could not form a consensus on whether to brief the media. Bain Capital<61>s managing director Yuji Sugimoto will meet journalists, Bain said in a statement. Reporting by Junko Fujita; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-bain/bain-capital-says-to-meet-media-on-thursday-to-discuss-toshiba-chip-deal-idINKCN1C910C'|'2017-10-04T07:12:00.000+03:00'
'6c4145f4bde3009ed3082b389a1aedeb76a74bdd'|'UK minister urges Boeing to hold talks to end Bombardier dispute'|'October 1, 2017 / 3:34 PM / in 26 minutes Caught in the crossfire, Britain says will fight Boeing-Bombardier row Kate Holton , Elizabeth Piper 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Liam Fox, Britain''s Secretary of State for International Trade, arrives at a cabinet meeting in Downing Street, London September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah Mckay MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - Britain, caught in the crossfire of a damaging trade dispute between planemakers Boeing ( BA.N ) and Bombardier ( BBDb.TO ), said on Sunday it would fight its corner to protect thousands of jobs put at risk in Northern Ireland. Trade minister Liam Fox said Britain was working to find a resolution after the United States last week responded to a complaint by Boeing by imposing a 220-percent preliminary duty on Bombardier<65>s CSeries jets, whose wings are made in Belfast. <20>We<57>ve said that we will fight our corner,<2C> Fox told the annual Conservative Party conference. <20>We<57>ve been caught in the crossfire of a much larger dispute.<2E> <20>It worries me that we<77>re seeing a rise in protectionist behaviour ... the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) itself has pointed out protectionism always ends badly. If we can get them to have a resolution, which is what we are trying to do quietly, so much the better.<2E> The tariff, which will take effect only if the U.S. International Trade Commission backs Boeing in a final decision expected in 2018, has dealt a major blow to the Canadian company<6E>s flagship project. It has also cast a huge shadow over Northern Ireland, where Bombardier is by far the most important manufacturer and a pillar of Belfast<73>s economy, employing 4,200 people and supporting thousands more in the supply chain. And it also undermines the assurances by Brexit campaigners such as Fox that free trade and London<6F>s close ties with Washington will drive Britain<69>s prosperity and global influence after it leaves the European Union in 2019. James Brokenshire, the British minister for Northern Ireland, echoed Prime Minister Theresa May in saying that Boeing was not behaving in a way the British government would expect a long-term defence partner to behave. May and other senior ministers have been highly critical of Boeing, suggesting it could miss out on future defence contracts, after the row put into jeopardy the local economy in Northern Ireland, home to a small party that May relies on to govern in Westminster. <20>I say to Boeing this case is unjustified and unwarranted. This action is not what is expected of a long-term partner to the UK. They need to get round the table and secure a negotiated outcome to this dispute quickly,<2C> Brokenshire said. May has warned that Boeing was undermining its commercial relationship with Britain and has spoken to   on the issue. However, May is unlikely to retaliate against Boeing, which says the firm and its suppliers account for more than 18,700 jobs in the UK. Fox implied the government was working behind the scenes to find a resolution. Northern Ireland is the poorest of the United Kingdom<6F>s four parts and is mired in political difficulties after emerging from decades of armed sectarian conflict. Boeing, the world<6C>s largest aerospace company, says it is upholding trade rules and not trying to damage the CSeries. It accuses Canada and Britain of unfairly subsidising Bombardier and says Bombardier has illegally dumped its products in the U.S. single-aisle airplane market out of desperation. <20>The support that the UK provided to the Bombardier operation in Belfast was and remains compliant with international requirements,<2C> Brokenshire said. Editing by Elizabeth Piper and Dale Hudson'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-boeing-bombardier-brokenshire/uk-minister-calls-on-boeing-to-hold-talks-to-end-bombardier-dispute-idUKKCN1C61KN'|'2017-10-01T20:26:00.000+03:00'
'58e316677c668143ac5b28f7d37ef30f45275c19'|'Euro zone unemployment rate unchanged at 9.1 percent in August'|'FILE PHOTO: The famous skyline with its banking district is pictured in early evening next to the Main River in Frankfurt, Germany, January 19, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The number of unemployed in the euro zone eased by 42,000 to 14.751 million in August against July, but the jobless rate remained at 9.1 percent, data from the European Union<6F>s statistics office Eurostat showed.Economists polled by Reuters had expected the unemployment rate to ease to 9.0 percent from 9.1 percent in July.The unemployment rate eased in the euro zone<6E>s biggest economy Germany to 3.6 percent in August from 3.7 percent in July. It also eased by 0.1 point in Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands. It rose by 0.1 point in France and 0.2 points in Austria.Reporting By Jan Strupczewski; editing by Philip Blenkinsop '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/eurozone-unemployment/euro-zone-unemployment-rate-unchanged-at-9-1-percent-in-august-idINKCN1C70VA'|'2017-10-02T12:12:00.000+03:00'
'3d63a6200c47fd1867f87336428231b8d42fc6f5'|'Gold miner Avocet revenue halves on lower output'|'October 2, 2017 / 7:26 AM / Updated 14 minutes ago Gold miner Avocet revenue halves on lower output Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Gold miner Avocet Mining Plc ( AVM.L ) reported a 49 percent drop in first-half revenue as the West Africa-focused company<6E>s gold production declined. Total gold sold halved to 21,377 ounces in the six months ended June 30 from a year earlier, with an average price of $1,235 an ounce, compared with $1,213 last year, the company said. Restructuring discussion with the creditors of Avocet Mining<6E>s unit that operates the Inata gold mine in Burkina Faso led to a halt in the mine<6E>s production, the company said. The subsidiary is struggling to keep the mine operational after former workers seized a shipment of gold last year, and is facing possible insolvency after the expiry of a freeze on loan repayments. Avocet said it was reviewing security measures at the Inata mine, which produced 72,485 ounces of gold in 2016, after unknown attackers killed two paramilitary police officers and wounded two others in an assault on a convoy carrying fuel last week. Avocet reported a pretax loss of $5.5 million for the first half, compared with a profit of $3.9 million, a year ago. Revenue fell to $26.4 million in the period from $51.8 million. Reporting by Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-avocet-mining-results/gold-miner-avocet-revenue-halves-on-lower-output-idUKKCN1C70ME'|'2017-10-02T10:24:00.000+03:00'
'f92d6fa44cd811e0fe6bc0478e36166c69c89a00'|'Toshiba says sued by another group of foreign investors'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp ( 6502.T ) said on Thursday it has been sued by another group of foreign investors, for 21.8 billion yen ($194 million), over its massive accounting scandal uncovered two years ago.The Japanese company has now been sued for total damages of 139 billion yen since it first admitted to reporting inflated profits going back to 2008.Reporting by Chris Gallagher; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-lawsuit/toshiba-says-sued-by-another-group-of-foreign-investors-idUSKBN1CA0V5'|'2017-10-05T17:39:00.000+03:00'
'a18027b7cb19c87d3b672c5b4d4ba810f7e4bcbd'|'GM promises more electric vehicles, paid for by SUVs'|'October 2, 2017 / 4:02 PM / in 27 minutes GM promises more electric vehicles, paid for by SUVs Joseph White 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The GM logo is seen at the General Motors Assembly Plant in Valencia, Venezuela April 21, 2017. REUTERS/Marco Bello DETROIT (Reuters) - Detroit automaker General Motors Co outlined plans on Monday to add 20 new battery electric and fuel cell vehicles to its global lineup by 2023, financed by robust profits from sales of gasoline-fueled trucks and sport utility vehicles in the United States and China. <20>General Motors believes in an all-electric future,<2C> GM global product development chief Mark Reuss said during a briefing at the company<6E>s suburban Detroit technical centre. Future generations of GM electric vehicles <20>will be profitable,<2C> Reuss said, but added it was not clear when GM could make all its new vehicle offerings zero-emission electric cars. GM shares closed on Monday at $42.15, the highest level since the company<6E>s 2010 post-bankruptcy initial public offering. Investors pushed up GM shares ahead of the electric vehicle announcement on a Deutsche Bank comment that the automaker plans to deploy autonomous vehicles in ride services by 2020. GM indicated last month it is nearly ready to begin mass production of autonomous Chevrolet Bolt vehicles. Regulators in China and some European countries have floated proposals to ban internal combustion engines by 2030 or 2040. <20>We will continue to make sure our internal combustion engines will get more and more efficient,<2C> Reuss said. Automakers, including electric vehicle market leader Tesla Inc, lose money on electric cars because battery costs are still higher than comparable internal combustion engines. GM funds its forays into new technology using cash generated by old-technology vehicles popular with its core customer base in the U.S. heartland. In comparison, Tesla has burned through an estimated $10 billion in cash and has yet to show a full-year profit. A Chevrolet Bolt EV test pilot autonomous vehicle is seen outside GM''s Orion Assembly plant in Orion, Michigan, U.S., June13, 2017. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook GM earned more than 90 percent of its $12.5 billion (9.42 billion pounds) in pretax profits last year in North America, amid robust demand for its lineup of large sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks. The company<6E>s profitable operations in China rely on consumer demand for an expanding lineup of gasoline-powered SUVs. GM has previously announced plans to make some of its future electric vehicles capable of driving themselves in robot taxi fleets. The company offered sneak peeks of three electric vehicle prototypes: a Buick brand sport utility vehicle, a sporty Cadillac wagon and a futuristic pod car wearing a Bolt badge. GM collaborated with Korean battery maker LG Chem to build the Bolt battery system. Company officials did not say what companies would supply batteries for the larger fleet of vehicles promised by 2023. Fuel cell vehicles will also play a role in GM<47>s future, the company said. GM showed on Monday a prototype of a rolling, hydrogen-fueled platform called SURUS that could be used for multiple purposes. The company plans to offer a fuel cell vehicle to retail customers within five years, it said. Toyota Motor Corp, Honda Motor Co and Hyundai Motor Co already are marketing fuel cell vehicles in low volume. GM Chief Executive Mary Barra said last month the company plans to introduce at least 10 new electric or hybrid vehicles to the Chinese market by 2020, and open a battery plant this year with Chinese partner SAIC Motor Corp Ltd. China has set goals for electric and plug-in hybrid cars to make up at least a fifth of auto sales by 2025. Some of the electric vehicles GM will offer in China are among the 20 Reuss promised by 2023. GM also hinted that it may take new steps to expand the public infrastructure for rapid recharging of electric vehicles, without offering any details. The No. 1 U.S. automaker joins several rivals
'a824f47a6045e99fab6ce753907ac8d9c6731132'|'India''s Apollo Tyres launches share sale to raise up to $229 million'|'October 3, 2017 / 2:29 PM / Updated 3 hours ago India''s Apollo Tyres launches share sale to raise up to $229 million Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MUMBAI (Reuters) - India<69>s Apollo Tyres Ltd has launched a share sale to institutions to raise up to 15 billion rupees ($229 million), according to a filing on Tuesday. The company is selling shares at 238 rupees apiece, a 2.5 percent discount to the closing share market price on Tuesday of 244.15 rupees, according to a separate deal termsheet seen by Reuters. The base deal size is 12 billion rupees with an upsize option of 3 billion rupees. JM Financial, Kotak and UBS are the banks managing the share sale. ($1 = 65.5250 Indian rupees) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/apollo-tyres-sharesale/indias-apollo-tyres-launches-share-sale-to-raise-up-to-229-million-idINKCN1C81Q0'|'2017-10-03T12:29:00.000+03:00'
'b95da1fc93b28a3d2403b111f5a6d80dc62921f1'|'ECB reliance on bankers'' feedback raises capture risk - activist group'|'October 2, 2017 / 10:02 PM / in 7 hours ECB reliance on bankers'' feedback raises capture risk - activist group Francesco Canepa 3 Min Read A commuter train passes over a bridge next to the headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, Germany, October 1, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank turns almost exclusively to bankers for advice and feedback on financial issues, exposing it to the risk of becoming too close to a sector it is meant to supervise, an activist group said on Tuesday. Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), which monitors lobbying at European institutions, said in a report that 508 of 517 seats available on the ECB<43>s advisory groups are taken by financial sector representatives. Banks under ECB supervision hold the majority of seats in the 22 advisory groups, which the ECB uses to gather intelligence on subjects ranging from economic and market developments to financial infrastructure and payments, CEO said. Clearing house Euroclear was the most represented, followed by Germany<6E>s Deutsche Bank and France<63>s BNP Paribas and Societe Generale -- three top European banks that are directly supervised by the ECB -- while academics were absent, according to CEO<45>s findings. <20>The makeup of the ECB<43>s advisory groups opens the door to the risk (of) the regulatory process being captured by lobbyists,<2C> CEO said in its report. Of the nine seats not taken by the financial sector, seven have gone to non-financial companies such as German industrial giant Siemens and just two to consumer groups, according to the CEO report. The ECB<43>s interaction with the financial industry is already under scrutiny from the European Union<6F>s watchdog after a previous CEO complaint about the involvement of ECB President Mario Draghi and other top officials in the Group of 30, which includes bankers and fund managers. Besides its role as bank supervisor, the ECB has been the single most important driver of European financial markets over the past few years through its 2 trillion euro bond-buying programme, which is now preparing to scale back. An ECB spokesman declined to give immediate comment, referring to <20>extensive information<6F> about contact groups on the ECB<43>s website. The ECB publishes the agenda and summary of the groups<70> meetings, as well as participant lists for all but one of the groups. Reuters reported in 2015 that three of the traders accused of manipulating euro money market Euribor rates were part of the ECB<43>s Money Market Contact Group. CEO said in the report that banks involved in a separate forex manipulation scandal which emerged in 2013 have been heavily represented on the ECB<43>s Foreign Exchange Contact Group, although it did not suggest that any individual members of the group had been involved in forex rigging. Reporting by Francesco Canepa; Editing by Catherine Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ecb-banks-ethics/ecb-reliance-on-bankers-feedback-raises-capture-risk-activist-group-idUKKCN1C72T0'|'2017-10-03T01:02:00.000+03:00'
'1a9251c0b91181ec683ab41f2053f2c01357dcfa'|'UBS chairman joins in bitcoin bashing by bankers'|'October 4, 2017 / 2:41 PM / Updated 6 hours ago UBS chairman joins in bitcoin bashing by bankers Joshua Franklin 2 Min Read The logo of Swiss bank UBS is seen at a branch office in Basel, Switzerland March 29, 2017. Picture taken on March 29, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann ZURICH (Reuters) - UBS Chairman and former Bundesbank President Axel Weber said on Wednesday bitcoin does not fulfil some of the most important functions of currency, the latest senior banker to express scepticism about the cryptocurrency. <20>I get often asked why I<>m so skeptical about bitcoin, it probably comes from my background as a central banker,<2C> Weber said at a conference organized by the Swiss Finance Institute. <20>The important function of a currency is, it<69>s a means of payment, it has to be generally accepted, it has to be a store of value and it<69>s a transaction currency. Bitcoin is only a transaction currency.<2E> Weber<65>s comments follow JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM.N ) Chief Executive Jamie Dimon last month saying bitcoin <20>is a fraud<75> and will blow up. Bitcoin is a digital currency that enables individuals to transfer value to each other and pay for goods and services bypassing banks and the mainstream financial system. While banks have largely steered clear of bitcoin since it emerged following the financial crisis, the virtual currency has a range of supporters, including technology enthusiasts, libertarians skeptical of government monetary policy and speculators attracted by its price swings. Weber was more upbeat about blockchain, which was first developed to power bitcoin and is a shared ledger of data that is maintained by computers rather than a central authority, and said over time the idea of a digital ledger would be widely accepted. Earlier on Wednesday, Commerzbank AG, Bank of Montreal, Erste Group Bank AG and CaixaBank SA said they had joined an initiative launched by UBS and IBM Corp aimed at building blockchain-based technology to support trade finance transactions. Reporting by Joshua Franklin; Editing by Mark Potter '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ubs-group-chairman-tech/ubs-chairman-joins-in-bitcoin-bashing-by-bankers-idUSKBN1C91ZX'|'2017-10-04T17:40:00.000+03:00'
'9c79af6ca0ff451187d3d68f179fb777abf0a716'|'METALS-Nickel, zinc lead base metals higher amid China supply fears'|'SYDNEY, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Nickel and zinc led most base metals higher on Wednesday, building on overnight gains amid mounting supply concerns in China.Commodities traders said the market was still digesting the impact of China<6E>s environmental crackdown on ageing metals and mining operations on its future imports.<2E>The more China reduces what it can produce at home, the more it will need to import, simple as that,<2C> a trader in Perth said.FUNDAMENTALS * NICKEL UP: Three-month nickel on the London Metal Exchange rose 1 percent to $10,725 a tonne by 0140 GMT, extending a 2.2 percent gain from the previous session. ANZ in a report said nickel was finding support via a <20>widening shortfall<6C> in the metal used in making stainless steel and batteries.* SHFE CLOSED: Shanghai Futures Exchange is closed this week to observe national holidays in China.* ZINC BUILDS: Three-month zinc gained 0.7 percent to $3,288 a tonne, close to its 10-year high of $3,292 reached in intraday trading on Tuesday.* ZINC DISPUTE: Striking workers at North America<63>s second-largest zinc processing plant, owned by the Noranda Income Fund, have rejected a wage and pension offer from the company, Noranda and the union representing workers said on Tuesday.* GLENCORE DEAL: Miner and commodities trader Glencore has agreed to buy a further stake worth at least $531 million in Peru<72>s largest zinc miner, Volcan Compa<70>ia Minera, the company said on Tuesday.* ALUMINIUM RISES: Three-month aluminium gained 0.5 percent to $2,142 a tonne after rising 1.25 percent overnight. China<6E>s crackdown on pollution has helped boost prices in aluminium by 27 percent this year on expectations of widespread capacity shutdowns during winter.* COPPER STEADY: Three-month copper was steady at $6,521 a tonne, heading for a third-straight day of gains.* INDONESIA TAX: Miners operating in Indonesia will have to pay a share of their after-tax profits to both the central and local governments under new tax rules under consideration for next year, according to documents outlining the proposal reviewed by Reuters.* For the top stories in metals and other news, click orMARKETS NEWS * Japanese shares climbed on Wednesday led by auto stocks as U.S. demand for cars ballooned following damage from recent hurricanes, while the dollar traded cautiously amid speculation over the next head of the Federal Reserve.DATA AHEAD (GMT) 0750 France Markit services PMI Sep 0755 Germany Markit services PMI Sep 0800 Euro zone Markit services PMI final Sep 0900 Euro zone Retail sales Aug 1215 U.S. ADP national employment Sep 1400 U.S. ISM non-manufacturing PMI Sep 1915 Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen gives brief welcome remarks at banking event in St. LouisPRICES Three month LME copperMost active ShFE copperThree month LME aluminiumMost active ShFE aluminiumThree month LME zincMost active ShFE zincThree month LME leadMost active ShFE leadThree month LME nickelMost active ShFE nickelThree month LME tinMost active ShFE tinARBS Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Sonali Paul '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-metals/metals-nickel-zinc-lead-base-metals-higher-amid-china-supply-fears-idINL4N1MF0DG'|'2017-10-04T00:02:00.000+03:00'
'74a154bffb22c5ca63b69b21124af7581b62aaf6'|'Goldman to add office space in Frankfurt with new lease'|'A Goldman Sachs sign is displayed inside the company''s post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc has agreed to lease office space at a new building in Frankfurt as it prepares for Britain<69>s departure from the European Union.Britain is currently home to most of the Wall Street bank<6E>s European operations where it has around 6,000 employees, but the firm needs to ensure it will still be able to service clients in the EU once Britain leaves the bloc and may have limited access to the EU<45>s single market.In September, Wolfgang Fink, co-chief of Goldman in Germany, said the bank might triple or quadruple its presence in Frankfurt, where it currently employs around 200 staff.Goldman has agreed to lease space on the upper floors of the Marienturm tower, currently being built in the German city<74>s financial district, a spokesman for the bank in London told Reuters on Wednesday.<2E>This expanded office space will allow us to grow our operations in Germany to continue serving our clients, as well as provide us with the space to execute on our Brexit contingency plan as needed,<2C> the spokesman said.Goldman will rent about 10,000 square meters (107,639 square feet) of office space which would accommodate up to 700 seats, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.News of Goldman agreeing to lease office space in Frankfurt was earlier reported by Bloomberg.Reporting by Anjuli Davies in London, additional reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Mark Potter '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-goldman-sachs/goldman-to-add-office-space-in-frankfurt-with-new-lease-idUSKBN1C92P2'|'2017-10-05T03:03:00.000+03:00'
'af1de3b8e8e2405c304cb5503594daf9d697c095'|'Vietnam''s LienVietPostBank plans selling 25 percent to foreigner investors: media'|'HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam<61>s Lien Viet Post Joint Stock Commercial Bank (LienVietPostBank) is in talks to sell a 25 percent stake to foreign investors, local news outlet Vietnamnet said on Wednesday, citing a bank official.LienVietPostBank will list its shares on Hanoi Stock Exchange<67>s Unlisted Public Company Market (UPCoM) .HNO on Thursday at 14,800 dong ($0.65) per share, putting the bank<6E>s value at around $421 million, the bank<6E>s filing showed.Chief Executive Pham Doan Son told investors the bank plans to sell 25 percent of its shares, worth around $105 million at market value, to foreign investors, Vietnamnet reported.<2E>We are negotiating,<2C> Son told Reuters. He did not clarify.($1 = 22,728 dong)Reporting by Mi Nguyen; editing by Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-lienvietpostbank-sale/vietnams-lienvietpostbank-plans-selling-25-percent-to-foreigner-investors-media-idINKCN1C91NP'|'2017-10-04T10:07:00.000+03:00'
'12662326600d62e5e5f4d988fa1f890783c50469'|'Monsanto posts fourth-quarter profit on demand for corn, soybean seeds'|'October 4, 2017 / 12:22 PM / Updated 5 hours ago Monsanto fourth-quarter profit up as corn, soy seed sales jump Karl Plume 3 Min Read Monsanto logo is displayed on a screen where the stock is traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S. on May 9, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/Files CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. seeds and agrochemicals company Monsanto Co, which is being acquired by Bayer AG, reported a quarterly profit on Wednesday, compared with a year-ago loss, as seed licensing deals in the typically low-revenue fourth quarter lifted sales. Monsanto shares were up slightly at $119.88 after earlier touching a more-than-two-year high. Sales of corn seeds and traits, Monsanto<74>s biggest segment by revenue, rose nearly 16 percent while soybean seeds and traits sales climbed 22 percent in the quarter ended Aug. 31. Overall net sales for the company were up 4.8 percent at $2.68 billion, above estimates for $2.53 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Net income attributable to Monsanto was $20 million, or 5 cents per share, in the fourth quarter ended Aug. 31, compared with a net loss of $191 million, or 44 cents per share, a year earlier. Monsanto typically books the majority of its annual sales during the second and third quarters when farmers in North and South America, which account for more than three-fourths of total sales, purchase seeds and other crop inputs. <20>Usually this is a quarter that falls between planting seasons and because of that you typically you see a small loss. But they were able to get some nice licensing deals across the table,<2C> said Matt Arnold, analyst with Edward Jones. The higher sales came despite continued belt-tightening by farmers amid slumping commodity prices and a global oversupply of grain following four years of bumper crops. Investors remain focused on the $128-per-share Bayer deal that is expected to close in early 2018. The deal, if final regulatory approvals are won, would create a company commanding more than a quarter of the world market for seeds and pesticides. The companies have made all key regulatory filings and secured approval from a third of those regulators, said Chief Executive Hugh Grant. A unit of Brazil<69>s competition regulator Cade said the takeover could affect competition and recommended <20>structural solutions<6E> as a condition for final approval. Grant called it a <20>normal step<65> in the review process. The company is also facing a barrage of lawsuits over the launch of dicamba-tolerant soybean seeds, known as Xtend soybeans. Dicamba herbicide has been blamed for moving off target and damaging crops that are unable to tolerate it, prompting calls for tighter restrictions on its use. Monsanto expects U.S. plantings of Xtend soybeans to double next year to 40 million acres. Additional reporting by Karan Nagarkatti in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza, Shounak Dasgupta and Jonathan Oatis '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/monsanto-results/monsanto-posts-fourth-quarter-profit-on-demand-for-corn-soybean-seeds-idINKBN1C91OX'|'2017-10-04T10:22:00.000+03:00'
'fb5a9a790379c13ccb89d4357491dadd6a47a04c'|'CORRECTED-PRESS DIGEST- British Business - Oct 4'|'(Corrects company name in first item to <20>Tesco Plc<6C> from <20>Tesco Corp<72>)Oct 4 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.The Times- Two Tesco Plc employees resigned amid concerns about accounting practices at the retailer. The resignations were disclosed on the third day of the trial of Christopher Bush, John Scouler and Carl Rogberg, each of whom is facing one charge of fraud and one of false accounting. bit.ly/2wvyVK7-Britvic Plc said it planned to close its Robinsons squash factory, putting 242 jobs under threat, while Unilever Plc, which co-owns the site, said the move could spell the end of its own operations at a location where it employs 113 workers. bit.ly/2wvVQF6The Guardian-Ryanair Holdings Plc pilots are facing tax investigations by HM Revenue & Customs related to complex employment structures imposed on them by the no-frills airline. bit.ly/2wwGss5-Royal Mail Plc''s postal workers are on the verge of a strike in a dispute over pensions, pay and conditions. The Communication Workers Union announced that a majority of its 111,000 members in Royal Mail had voted for industrial action, the first since the company was privatised four years ago. bit.ly/2wvGhNTThe Telegraph-The European Commission will hit Amazon.com Inc with a bill for hundreds of millions of euros of back taxes in the latest example of the European Union''s crackdown on tax avoidance by multinational companies. bit.ly/2wvLPrq-Transport for London has said it will take Uber Technologies Inc several weeks to win back its trust after a "constructive" meeting between the company''s new chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, and senior officials. bit.ly/2wvSMsxSky News-Former Labour minister Lord Hutton is being lined up to head the energy industry''s biggest lobbying group, Energy UK, amid growing pressure on Prime Minister Theresa May to impose an industry-wide price cap on gas and electricity companies. bit.ly/2wxez34-A London Underground strike that had threatened to bring "substantial disruption" across the capital on Thursday has been called off. bit.ly/2wvDzrHThe IndependentThe chief executive of Monarch Airlines, Andrew Swaffield, reportedly pocketed a six-figure salary and set up a new company just days before the airline collapsed into administration. ind.pn/2wxfosG-UK drivers could be paid to own an electric car under a new partnership between Ovo Energy and Nissan Motor Company Ltd . The companies hope the offer will speed up the adoption of greener vehicles. ind.pn/2wwAeIS (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-press-business/press-digest-british-business-oct-4-idINL2N1MF003'|'2017-10-03T22:11:00.000+03:00'
'b9908d62753e52adcf5743db07d939fa4039f124'|'Dubai<61>s GEMS Education planning over $1 bln loan ahead of IPO -sources'|'DUBAI, Oct 1 (Reuters) - GEMS Education, an international education firm headquartered in Dubai, plans to raise a loan of over $1 billion to refinance some existing debt before a planned initial public offer of shares in London, sources familiar with the matter said.The company, backed by Dubai-based Fajr Capital, Bahraini state investment fund Mumtalakat and private equity giant Blackstone, is expected to issue a request for proposals to banks by the end of this month, said one of the sources, adding that the loan could go up to $1.2 billion in size.A spokesman for GEMS declined to comment.The private education provider will reshuffle some of its existing borrowings in preparation for its foreign IPO. <20>They<65>re streamlining their corporate structure,<2C> one banker said.GEMS, which operates more than 250 schools across 14 countries, could obtain a valuation of around $4 billion, some bankers estimate.Among its borrowings, the company raised a $250 million, three-year loan in 2016 and borrowed 3 billion dirhams ($817 million) in 2015.The new debt facility is expected to be split into conventional and Islamic tranches, and will most likely be led by UAE banks, said one of the sources. (Editing by Andrew Torchia)Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/gems-loan/dubais-gems-education-planning-over-1-bln-loan-ahead-of-ipo-sources-idINL8N1MC0HI'|'2017-10-01T10:54:00.000+03:00'
'bfdf1daccf88860515b2e11d54be3244d2b094e5'|'Government to hand over HBOS papers ahead of trial'|'All the benefits of Standard Digital, plus: Unlimited access to all content Instant Insights column for comment and analysis as news unfolds FT Confidential Research - in-depth China and Southeast Asia analysis ePaper - the digital replica of the printed newspaper Full access to LEX - our agenda setting daily commentary Exclusive emails, including a weekly email from our Editor, Lionel Barber Full access to EM Squared- news and analysis service on emerging markets Other Subscription options:'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/content/679ebde0-a45a-11e7-9e4f-7f5e6a7c98a2'|'2017-10-01T18:57:00.000+03:00'
'f48fe25ba6cf9e58cc509aa156bee51830e64678'|'Japanese companies struggle to hire, retain staff as labour shortage worsens'|'October 2, 2017 / 11:46 PM / Updated an hour ago Japanese companies struggle to hire, retain staff as labour shortage worsens Sam Nussey 7 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A man uses a mobile phone in front of a McDonald''s restaurant in Tokyo February 5, 2015. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Companies in Japan<61>s service industries are struggling to hire and retain staff as the labour market becomes the tightest in decades, and are increasingly taking unorthodox steps to alleviate the shortage. That can include looking to housewives and the retired to come into or rejoin the labour force. In some cases it means offering better working conditions for some staff, even if this requires raising prices. In others, companies are reducing the services they offer, perhaps by cutting opening hours, or delaying expansion plans. Japan<61>s jobless rate stood at a 23-year low of 2.8 percent in August, reflecting a strengthening economy and shrinking working-age population in a rapidly ageing society. And on Monday, the Bank of Japan<61>s <20>tankan<61> quarterly survey showed that the ratio of companies complaining of labour shortages, rather than excess staff, was at its highest level since 1992. The labour squeeze can reduce the speed of economic development, and even curb some economic activity altogether, hurting Japan<61>s chances of a period of sustainable growth. For example, at Sun Mall in Chiba, east of Tokyo, labour shortages have led some tenants to abandon plans to take up space at the site, and others to shut up shop when key workers could not be replaced, according to Seth Sulkin, president and CEO of the mall<6C>s owner Pacifica Capital K.K. He also said a new spa due to open there in a few months has been forced to push back the opening date due to staff shortages. <20>The pool of people seeking part-time jobs is shrinking rapidly, particularly outside of central Tokyo,<2C> Sulkin said. <20>We<57>ve recommended that the tenants convert some of the positions to full time and raise wages but they tell us they can<61>t do that and still make money,<2C> he said. <20>In Tokyo it<69>s easier to hire people but it<69>s not as easy as it used to be,<2C> he said. By contrast, <20>in our Chiba mall I think the location is the big issue, there<72>s just not enough people.<2E> FROM HOUSEWIVES TO RETIREES With the economy at near full-employment, companies are being forced to try to find new sources of labour. Fast food chain McDonald<6C>s Holdings Co Japan Ltd ( 2702.T ), following in the footsteps of convenience store operator FamilyMart UNY Holdings ( 8028.T ), says it will try to expand its core workforce beyond young people by targeting housewives for part-time positions. More than half of housewives with children would like to work but are not able to find a suitable job, a survey of more than 4,000 married mothers by the Jobs Research Centre found. They were particularly concerned about long working days that don<6F>t fit with their responsibilities at home. Signs of companies moving to improve working conditions to retain and attract staff include Doutor Nichires Holdings Co Ltd ( 3087.T ), which has introduced severance pay for some temporary employees at its Doutor Coffee chain. That is an unusual move in a country where there is a large gap in pay and working conditions between temporary and permanent employees. Some restaurant operators, including Royal Holdings Co Ltd ( 8179.T ) and McDonald<6C>s Japan, have begun moving away from 24-hour operations, but that is far from the preferred option for companies in an industry that prides itself on offering convenience and service at all hours of the day. More than 80% of companies surveyed in a Reuters poll in June reported that they expected labour shortages would force them to restrict the number of services they can offer over the next several years. FILE PHOTO: A cyclist rides past branches of Starbucks and McDonald''s in the Jimbocho district of Tokyo March 15, 2007. REUTERS/Kevin Coombs/File Photo Some eff
'ff86a05e03672e454810614e5e8c3a4ebd27d6f2'|'Indonesia may require miners to pay share of after-tax profit under proposed rules'|'FILE PHOTO: Trucks operate in the open-pit mine of PT Freeport''s Grasberg copper and gold mine complex near Timika, in the eastern region of Papua, Indonesia on September 19, 2015 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. REUTERS/Muhammad Adimaja/Antara Foto/File Photo JAKARTA (Reuters) - Miners operating in Indonesia will have to pay a share of their after-tax profits to both the central and local governments under new tax rules under consideration for next year, according to documents outlining the proposal reviewed by Reuters.Indonesia is revamping its tax code for metal miners as part of a broader shift to a system of special mining permits, which will replace existing mining contracts.The most high-profile company involved in the transition to the new permit system is the local unit of Freeport McMoRan Inc, which operates the Grasberg mine in the eastern province of Papua, the world<6C>s second-biggest copper mine.Freeport agreed in August to divest a 51 percent stake in Grasberg in exchange for a 10-year extension of its operations from 2021 with potential control kept through 2041.Under the new rules, special mining permit holders would need to pay a levy on their after-tax profits of 4 percent to the Indonesian central government and 6 percent to the regional governments where they operate, the document said.The proposed plan would set an income tax rate of 25 percent, alongside a value-added tax on financial transactions and a land tax.Most companies currently pay a 25 percent rate or less if they are publicly listed.However, Freeport<72>s current contract, signed in 1991, sets an income rate of 35 percent, which was fixed higher in exchange for certainty that the government would not change the rate for the duration of the contract, which expires in 2021.Freeport and other miners currently do not pay a share of profits to central or regional governments.On Tuesday, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati declined to confirm the details in the draft, but said the government <20>is preparing new rules that will regulate companies that need fiscal and non-fiscal certainty<74> and that the tax and royalty rates they pay will follow prevailing rules.Indrawati also declined to comment on a Freeport letter addressed to her ministry and reviewed by Reuters, reflecting persistent and deep divisions between Freeport and the government over the valuation of the shares it must divest.Reporting by Jakarta bureau; Writing by Gayatri Suroyo and Fergus Jensen; Editing by Christian Schmollinger '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-taxation-mining/indonesia-may-require-miners-to-pay-share-of-after-tax-profit-under-proposed-rules-idUSKCN1C819I'|'2017-10-03T14:52:00.000+03:00'
'47e0c6471ece90056a3f93a97e12966755af89a5'|'RCom shares drop 7.8 percent to record low after Aircel merger deal collapses'|'A worker cleans a mobile store of Reliance Communications Ltd, controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, in Kolkata, India, September 10, 2016. Picture taken September 10, 2016. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri/Files MUMBAI (Reuters) - Reliance Communications is reworking a planned $1.7 billion stake sale in its tower assets after scrapping a proposed merger of its wireless arm with smaller rival Aircel, as its shares tumbled to an all-time low.RCom, as the company is known, said it is in talks with Canada<64>s Brookfield to sell all of its tower arm, instead of a 51 percent stake sale agreed previously, Business Standard and Hindu Business Line newspapers reported, citing Punit Garg, an executive director at the Indian telecoms carrier.Brookfield, which was to pay 110 billion rupees ($1.7 billion) for the majority stake in RCom<6F>s tower arm, will revalue the assets after the Aircel deal was scrapped, Garg was Quote: d as saying by the newspapers.RCom, controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, said on Sunday it is reassessing debt repayment options after calling off the merger deal citing regulatory delays and legal uncertainties.The embattled company was banking on the tower stake sale as well as the merger of its mobile services business to cut its debt load by 60 percent, or 250 billion rupees.Brookfield declined to comment on the status of its tower deal with RCom.With $6.8 billion of debt, RCom is the most leveraged among listed Indian telcos. The company earlier this year won a temporary reprieve from creditor banks on its debt-servicing obligations citing the deals in the works.Shares in RCom were trading at 17.95 rupees, down 6.5 percent, at 0400 GMT, after dropping to a low of 17.70 rupees. Indian markets were closed on Monday for a public holiday.($1 = 65.5575 Indian rupees)Reporting by Swati Bhat and Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Muralikumar AnantharamanOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/rcom-debt/rcom-shares-drop-7-8-percent-to-record-low-after-aircel-merger-deal-collapses-idINKCN1C80BM'|'2017-10-03T07:31:00.000+03:00'
'e1b94b5d7e0f7bc9edbd3c4edf5d538efcc486d7'|'Bank of England says reliance on Libor poses risk to stability'|'October 3, 2017 / 11:24 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Bank of England says reliance on Libor poses risk to stability Huw Jones 3 Min Read People walk past the Bank of England in the City of London, Britain, August 23, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay LONDON (Reuters) - Reliance on the Libor interest rate benchmark in setting mortgages, credit card loans and other contracts across the world poses a risk to the financial system, the Bank of England said on Tuesday. In minutes published on Tuesday of its Sept. 20 Financial Policy Committee meeting, officials gave their bluntest warning yet about concerns over the continued use of Libor to underpin $350 trillion in contracts, despite reforms to make it safer. A rigging scandal over the rate, which is used to settle contracts globally, erupted in 2012 when Barclays became the first of many banks to be penalized for manipulating it, chalking up fines that cumulatively ran into billions of pounds. Members of the FPC reached their conclusion about Libor at their March meeting - but were so concerned about how this could affect markets that they delayed publication of it until Tuesday. While acknowledging that steps were being taken to mitigate the risk, the FPC concluded that <20>market reliance on the Libor benchmark created a financial stability risk,<2C> the record the September meeting showed. Since the rigging scandal, controls over Libor calculations have been tightened and handed to an independent third party, ICE Benchmark Administration ( ICE.N ), which had no immediate comment on Tuesday. The FPC said publication of its concerns in March was not considered in the public interest as it <20>could precipitate the risks that the action under way was seeking to avoid<69>. The action included Financial Conduct Authority Chief Executive Andrew Bailey saying he wanted an alternative to Libor in place after 2021. Dealers have also agreed that the BoE<6F>s own <20>Sonia<69> or overnight rate was the best alternative to Libor, and industry bodies are looking at ways to make migration to Sonia as smooth as possible. The benchmark<72>s medium-term future was in doubt due to a scarcity of transactions that underpin it, the FPC said. This raised the possibility of the benchmark suddenly disappearing. The FCA wants banks to voluntarily continue submitting quotes for compiling the daily Libor benchmark until the end of 2021 to ensure a smooth migration to the alternative rate. The FPC said the response has been positive from most of the banks involved, but no final agreement has been reached yet. In the meantime the FCA was taking steps to compel banks to continue submitting quotes, if required, the FPC said. The European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, and central banks in Japan and Switzerland are also working on <20>risk free<65> alternatives to Libor in their home markets. Reporting by Huw Jones'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-boe-libor-markets/bank-of-england-says-reliance-on-libor-poses-risk-to-stability-idUKKCN1C815T'|'2017-10-03T14:19:00.000+03:00'
'd795b8fee7941a4038fc80bdcc059771e13701b6'|'U.S. judge dismisses ex-sleuths'' lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline'|'October 2, 2017 / 8:28 PM / Updated 42 minutes ago U.S. judge dismisses ex-sleuths'' lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline Nate Raymond 3 Min Read A GlaxoSmithKline logo is seen outside one of its buildings in west London, February 6, 2008. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo (Reuters) - A U.S. judge has dismissed a lawsuit by two former corporate investigators who accused GlaxoSmithKline Plc ( GSK.L ) (GSK) of misleading them into investigating a whistleblower in China, leading to their arrest amid a bribery scandal involving the drugmaker. U.S. District Judge Nitza Quinones Alejandro in Philadelphia on Friday threw out the case by British investigator Peter Humphrey and his American wife, Yu Yingzeng, who were arrested in 2013 in China after GSK hired them to look into a former employee. The judge said a U.S. Supreme Court ruling barred lawsuits filed under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) over injuries that occur entirely outside the United States such as this one involving incidents in China. <20>For this reason, Plaintiffs lack standing to assert civil RICO claims, and these claims are dismissed,<2C> Quinones Alejandro wrote. A lawyer for Humphrey and Yingzeng declined to comment on Monday. GSK said it was pleased with the ruling. The lawsuit was filed in November 2016 by Humphrey and Yingzeng, the co-founders of ChinaWhy, a company that according to court papers helped U.S. and European businesses address compliance issues related to anti-bribery regulations. The lawsuit said GSK hired them in 2013 to investigate an ex-employee in China who Humphrey and Yingzeng were told was fired for expense fraud and was suspected of trying to smear it by sending false emails about bribery to Chinese officials. Humphrey and Yingzeng claimed they were led to believe the former employee was a disgruntled ex-worker motivated to make false accusations. Their lawsuit claimed that GSK officials knew the allegations of corruption and bribery were not false. After a GSK unit<69>s offices in China were raided by the Chinese police in June 2013, GSK asked Humphrey to investigate various Chinese government entities to determine who was conducting the probe, according to the lawsuit. Chinese police subsequently arrested Humphrey and Yingzeng, who were later convicted of illegally obtaining private records of Chinese citizens and sentenced to prison terms of 2-1/2 years and two years, respectively. GSK in 2014 was fined a record 3 billion yuan (340 million pounds at the time) for paying bribes to doctors to use its drugs. In September 2016 it agreed to pay $20 million to resolve a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into claims it bribed Chinese officials to boost sales. Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Susan Thomas'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-gsk-china-lawsuit/u-s-judge-dismisses-ex-sleuths-lawsuit-against-glaxosmithkline-idUKKCN1C72ON'|'2017-10-02T23:27:00.000+03:00'
'bd6ddd58bdab2118c97f83f680713a8e4e11d150'|'GE''s chairman Jeff Immelt retires earlier-than-expected'|'October 2, 2017 / 9:02 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Flannery takes GE chairman role as Immelt retires early Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: General Electric Co. Chief Executive Jeff Immelt delivers a speech during the opening of a new tower of the Global Operations Center in San Pedro Garza Garcia, neighbouring Monterrey, Mexico May 12, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - General Electric Co ( GE.N ) named John Flannery chairman of the board on Monday, three months ahead of schedule, after former CEO Jeff Immelt retired earlier than expected from the chairmanship. The maker of aircraft engines, locomotives, power plants and other industrial equipment also named Lorenzo Simonelli chairman of Baker Hughes GE, succeeding Immelt. Simonelli is CEO of that business, which GE acquired in July. Immelt<6C>s early departure will free him to go after opportunities outside GE, said a source familiar with the situation. Immelt last month took himself out of the running for the CEO job at ride-hailing company Uber Technologies Inc[UBER.UL]. GE said Immelt had decided that the handover of his CEO job to Flannery had already <20>proceeded smoothly<6C> and that Flannery was ready to take on the additional duties of chairman. Immelt handed over the GE CEO role to Flannery on Aug. 1, capping 16 years leading the 125-year-old company. As CEO, he transformed GE<47>s portfolio, focusing it on major industrial products and mapping a strategy to develop a platform for industrial-related software and services. In the last two years, Immelt came under overt pressure from activist investor Nelson Peltz<74>s Trian Fund Management, which was among investors who thought GE<47>s financial and stock performance needed to improve. GE also named W. Geoffrey Beattie as lead independent director at Baker Hughes. Beattie was CEO of the Woodbridge Co, the Thomson family company that controls news and financial information provider Thomson Reuters Corp ( TRI.TO ). Reporting by Alwyn Scott in New York and Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; editing by Clive McKeef '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/ge-chairman/ges-chairman-jeff-immelt-retires-earlier-than-expected-idINKCN1C72Q4'|'2017-10-03T00:01:00.000+03:00'
'dcb24ec9bdf73b232f2a79ab418ab0e8c38e0c36'|'Philippines'' AirAsia seeks to raise $250 million via IPO in mid-2018'|'October 3, 2017 / 4:49 AM / in 13 minutes Philippines'' AirAsia seeks to raise $250 million via IPO in mid-2018 Neil Jerome Morales 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Passengers open a door of an AirAsia ticketing office at Soekarno-Hatta Airport in Jakarta, July 8, 2015. REUTERS/Beawiharta MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines unit of AirAsia Bhd ( AIRA.KL ) is seeking to raise up to $250 million (<28>188.61 million) via an initial public offering (IPO) in mid-2018 to fund its expansion programme, its chief executive said on Tuesday. Asia<69>s biggest low-cost airline, which has nine units in the region, is beefing up its fleet in the Philippines amid an expected long-term boom in budget air travel. AirAsia first raised the prospect of listing its Philippines unit in 2015, planning at that point to take the airline public as early as 2017. <20>We are working on the IPO, hopefully in the middle part of next year,<2C> Philippines AirAsia CEO Dexter Comendador told Reuters. Philippines AirAsia had initially aimed to raise $200 million but raised its target to fund purchases of more aircraft and to expand its route network, Comendador said. The airline, which started Philippine operations in 2012, hired BDO Capital and Investment Corp as its underwriter. Its fleet will reach 70 aircraft in the next 10-15 years from the current 17, Comendador said. AirAsia is one of the largest customers of the Airbus A320-family of jets. The airline has a 10 percent share of the air travel market in the Philippines, one of the world<6C>s fastest growing economies. The local market is dominated by Cebu Pacific ( CEB.PS ), followed by flag carrier Philippine Airlines ( PAL.PS ), both owned by local tycoons. AirAsia has also said it is considering a potential IPO of its Indonesian arm. Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Martin Petty and Stephen Coates'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-airasia-ipo-philippines/philippines-airasia-seeks-to-raise-250-million-via-ipo-in-mid-2018-idUKKCN1C80CE'|'2017-10-03T07:49:00.000+03:00'
'2dfbc87de62a69683676ed051d7726c65f362792'|'Brazil regulator sees Oi CFO exit raising intervention risks'|'October 3, 2017 / 1:33 PM / in 7 minutes Brazil regulator sees Oi CFO exit raising intervention risks Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SAO PAULO, Oct 3 (Reuters) - The resignation of the chief financial officer at Brazilian wireless carrier Oi SA on Monday evening contributed to the chances of a state intervention, the head of telecommunications regulator Anatel said on Tuesday. Anatel President Juarez Quadros said at an industry event that the exit of CFO Ricardo Martins worsened the outlook for Oi<4F>s in-court restructuring of 65 billion reais ($20.6 billion) worth of debt in Brazil<69>s biggest bankruptcy protection case ever. $1 = 3.16 reais Reporting by Alberto Alerigi Jr.; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/oi-sa-restructuring/brazil-regulator-sees-oi-cfo-exit-raising-intervention-risks-idUSE6N1JV017'|'2017-10-03T16:32:00.000+03:00'
'4925970c8886984a87958fb46863e1b1830dbcf5'|'METALS-LME copper, zinc ease as profit-takers swoop'|'SYDNEY, Oct 3 (Reuters) - London copper and zinc prices eased on Tuesday after starting the week firmer, with investors taking profits in holiday-thinned trading in Asia.Commodities traders said the week-long absence of trading on the Shanghai Futures Exchange due to China<6E>s National Day break could drag on less actively traded London Metal Exchange contracts in Asian time zones.<2E>We saw some profit-taking early on in copper and zinc, which had a strong run on Monday (when zinc hit its highest price in more than 10 years),<2C> said a Perth-based trader.FUNDAMENTALS * COPPER SLIPS: Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange had declined 0.4 percent to $$6,463.50 a tonne by 0125 GMT, more than reversing a modest overnight gain.* ZINC CONTRACTION: LME three-month zinc eased by 0.2 percent to $3,230 a tonne. Zinc was the top performer on the LME on Monday, touching its strongest since August 2007 at $3,248 a tonne.* COPPER EXPORTS: The Indonesian unit of U.S. miner Freeport McMoRan Inc can continue to export copper concentrate even if negotiations over the company<6E>s permit to operate the giant Grasberg mine are not resolved this month, a mining ministry official said.* MITSUBISHI MATERIALS: Japan<61>s Mitsubishi Materials Corp said on Monday it plans to produce 181,830 tonnes of refined copper during October-March, up 14 percent from the same period last year as it boosts its smelting capacity.* ZINC STOCKS: Available LME zinc inventories MZNSTX-TOTAL fell by 16,950 tonnes on Monday, bringing the decline so far this year to 64 percent. One party controlled 50-80 percent of those stocks <0#LME-WHL>, LME data showed.* NICKEL, ALUMINIUM: LME nickel turned around overnight losses to trade 0.7-percent higher at $10,467.50 a tonne, while aluminium was little changed at $2,104.75 a tonne* For the top stories in metals and other news, click orMARKETS NEWS * Asian shares tiptoed lower on Tuesday, pressured by weaker oil prices but supported by records on Wall Street and upbeat economic data that lifted U.S. Treasury yields and the dollar.DATA/EVENTS 0900 Euro zone Producer prices Aug 1345 U.S. ISM-New York index SepPRICES Three month LME copperMost active ShFE copperThree month LME aluminiumMost active ShFE aluminiumThree month LME zincMost active ShFE zincThree month LME leadMost active ShFE leadThree month LME nickelMost active ShFE nickelThree month LME tinMost active ShFE tinARBS Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Joseph Radford '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/global-metals/metals-lme-copper-zinc-ease-as-profit-takers-swoop-idUSL4N1ME0CG'|'2017-10-03T04:46:00.000+03:00'
'9495a846ed6dd39d1be8f9196e6eae15898325f9'|'Leading in a disruptive world: ''it can be tough to get people on side'' - Guardian Small Business Network'|'A leader is important in any business, but disruptive businesses are arguably even more the product of their leader<65>s vision. When you<6F>re turning a sector on its head, you<6F>ve got to lead from the front and convince the naysayers <20> sometimes even within your own team <20> that it<69>s the way forward.David Ciccarelli, founder of Voices.com, an online marketplace for voiceovers, believes leaders of disruptive businesses need stamina, creativity and tenacity: <20>Most entrepreneurs start their disruptive businesses because they have a vision for a better world [but] transforming an industry can take a decade or more. For many small businesses, the odds are already stacked against you. This is especially true when you<6F>re leading a disruptive business.<2E> Have the vision for how you and your team will have a positive impact on the world, and act on it togetherDavid Ciccarelli Helen Caton Hughes, managing director of the Forton Group, which specialises in leadership development , coaching and mentoring, says leaders need to develop skills in four areas <20> thinking, involving, inspiring and doing <20> regardless of the type of business they<65>re running. Those skills can prove challenging for disruptive types, who are often outsiders that feel the need to break the mould. While they may once have relished being the rebel among their peers, this can prove incompatible with leading a company in a coherent direction. By their nature, small firms have loyal employees <20> a recent study by Paymentsense found almost half of employees in micro businesses (firms of 10 or less people) work unpaid overtime because they want the business to do well . The question is how to use that loyalty to the best effect. <20>A disruptive leader needs to be ruthless with their time <20> to deliver the best value to their business by focusing on what<61>s truly important and a priority,<2C> Caton Hughes says. <20>One challenge that many disruptive leaders face is the desire for instant results. That drive that got them to set up the business in the first place can spiral into frustration if things don<6F>t happen immediately.<2E>But for employees, a disruptive leader can be great to work for, she adds. <20>This is a great opportunity for people working in disruptive economies <20> because they can really use their skills and talents to the full. So often, in traditional businesses, people get a reputation for one skill and others go ignored. Disruptive businesses demand every ounce of talent from everyone.<2E>Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jas Bagniewski, founder of Eve Sleep. Photograph: null Ciccarelli agrees: <20>As a leader, you can either have a competitive mindset or a creative mindset. Instead of viewing the world as your opponent <20> which can be a natural inclination, and often the mindset of traditional businesses <20> consider seeing others as potential collaborators. This is one of the best qualities of a leader; to have the vision for how you and your team will have a positive impact on the world, and to act on it together.<2E>While this way of leading doesn<73>t necessarily guarantee a flat hierarchy, it undoubtedly brings a less hierarchical structure, says Jas Bagniewski, founder and CEO of mattress startup Eve Sleep. <20>If someone has a great idea, I don<6F>t care if they<65>ve got two months or 10 years of experience. If it makes sense, then we do it. A meritocracy can be a very rewarding place to be, and it leaves much less room for ego,<2C> he says.<2E>It<49>s a democratic way of leading,<2C> he adds. <20>Looking for new ways of doing things and not just accepting the status quo means you<6F>re much more likely to have an environment that<61>s a meritocracy. We have people at Eve Sleep who started with us just two years ago as interns, who are now managing our expansion into new countries, because they<65>ve proved that they<65>re smart, innovative and hungry for a challenge.<2E>Getting rid of the boss can create innovation ... or confusion Read more A disruptive startup, which is oft
'3c34eeacd318ba5398a8316bb56d9d2c0f46f4d3'|'UPDATE 1-Creditors approached Puerto Rico with offers after Maria -official'|'(Adds background, information from governor<6F>s liaison Sobrino)By Stephanie KellyNEW YORK, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Creditors approached Puerto Rico<63>s government with offers surrounding the U.S. territory<72>s bankruptcy after Hurricane Maria tore through the island last month, but federal aid remains the top priority, a Puerto Rico official said on Monday.<2E>Any offer we<77>ll review it, and we<77>ll discuss it with the oversight board and their advisers,<2C> said Christian Sobrino, Governor Ricardo Rossello<6C>s official liaison to the federally appointed Financial Oversight and Management Board.The board is charged with helping Puerto Rico craft and follow a blueprint for the financial recovery from its massive debt crisis.No offers by creditors have been put in place and the government has not met with creditor groups on the proposals, Sobrino said, adding that communications remain a challenge on the island.Creditors of Puerto Rico<63>s bankrupt power utility PREPA already offered a $1 billion loan and a discount on existing debt last week after Maria knocked out power to Puerto Rico<63>s 3.4 million residents, but the government shut down the proposal, calling it a <20>publicity stunt.<2E>Puerto Rico, which declared bankruptcy in May, is weighed down by nearly $72 billion in debt.Last month Puerto Rico<63>s government requested a four-week extension to meet key deadlines in its bankruptcy case after Maria. Sobrino said there are hearings regarding the bankruptcy scheduled for late October and November.Puerto Rico is in danger of running out of cash in a matter of weeks because the economy has come to a halt in the hurricane<6E>s aftermath, Rossello told local newspaper El Nuevo Dia in an interview published on Monday.<2E>There is no cash on hand. We have made a huge effort to get $2 billion in cash,<2C> Rossello said. <20>But let me tell you what $2 billion means when you have zero collection: it<69>s basically a month government<6E>s payroll, a little bit more.<2E>BOARD<52>S REASSESSMENT OF FISCAL PLANEarlier on Monday, oversight board member Andrew Biggs told Reuters that the board will assess how damage from Maria will alter the U.S. territory<72>s <20>economic picture.<2E>Puerto Rico<63>s certified fiscal plan continues to be in place without changes, Sobrino said. The hurricane<6E>s impact on the island - including the amount of funds the government must expend, in addition to revenue collections - still needs to be determined before decisions can be made, he said.<2E>What we are working on and paying a lot of attention to is the liquidity of the government, especially considering you have a change in how revenue is being collected, how businesses are operating,<2C> he said. <20>In that, we<77>re keeping close attention to how we manage liquidity in the upcoming weeks.<2E> (Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; Editing by Daniel Bases and Leslie Adler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-puertorico-board/update-1-creditors-approached-puerto-rico-with-offers-after-maria-official-idINL2N1MD23D'|'2017-10-02T19:22:00.000+03:00'
'a30c2d56d7613b9e59ad03333b5573a57558b13f'|'Centurylink wins U.S. antitrust to buy Level 3 with conditions: court filing'|'WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Telecommunications provider CenturyLink Inc ( CTL.N ) has won U.S. antitrust approval for its purchase of Level 3 Communications Inc ( LVLT.N ) on condition that it sell certain assets, according to a court filing dated on Monday.CenturyLink agreed to buy Level 3 last year in a deal valued at about $24 billion. It is seeking to expand its reach in the business communications market and compete with rivals such as AT&T ( T.N ) and Verizon ( VZ.N ).Louisiana-based CenturyLink provides broadband and landline phone services, mainly in rural areas, as well as backhaul, considered the backbone of the internet.The deal was approved on condition that the companies sell Level 3<>s telecommunications networks in Albuquerque, Boise, and Tucson. It must also offer long-term leases called indefeasible rights of use for unused fiber optic cable, also called dark fiber, along 30 intercity routes.The deal, which the companies expected to close in mid- to late-October, is awaiting approval by the Federal Communications Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission, CenturyLink said in a statement.<2E>We are pleased that the Department of Justice has conditionally cleared CenturyLink<6E>s acquisition of Level 3. It is an important milestone in our overall approval process,<2C> said CenturyLink Senior Vice President for Public Policy and Government Relations John Jones in a statement.Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Susan Thomas and Rosalba O''BrienOur '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-level3-m-a-centurylink/centurylink-wins-u-s-antitrust-to-buy-level-3-with-conditions-court-filing-idUSKCN1C72QU'|'2017-10-03T05:16:00.000+03:00'
'8e5a1238cf46b9500b85f1ac26a7a0c9f36e36ff'|'Suez finalizes GE Water deal, confirms synergy targets'|'PARIS (Reuters) - French waste and water group Suez ( SEVI.PA ) said on Monday it had finalised its 3.2 billion euros ($3.4 billion) acquisition of GE Water at the end of September, and confirmed its synergy outlook for the deal.The company is working on the 2018-2020 strategy for its new industrial water unit, which it will present to investors on Dec. 13.Suez expects 65 million euros of cost synergies from the GE Water deal, of which 80 percent will be realized by the third year, and a 200 million euro synergy impact on revenue.Chief executive Jean-Louis Chaussade said he could not comment on the company<6E>s earnings guidance so soon before the publication of third-quarter results, but said there were <20>no particular concerns<6E>.Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-suez-outlook/suez-finalizes-ge-water-deal-confirms-synergy-targets-idINKCN1C70GH'|'2017-10-02T04:24:00.000+03:00'
'805973e13b7baf152115849b7bf4cc7ff452c477'|'Smartphones made in India? Manufacturing ambition hits hurdles'|'* India only able to assemble phones* Industry execs cite lack of engineers, labour unrest* Sparse supplier network another hurdle, they say* High profile tax disputes, GE contract also notedBy Sankalp PhartiyalNEW DELHI, Oct 2 (Reuters) - India<69>s ambitions to become a smartphone-making powerhouse are foundering over a lack of skilled labour and part suppliers along with a complex tax regime, industry executives say.Prime Minister Narendra Modi has championed a manufacturing drive, under the slogan <20>Make in India<69>, to boost the sluggish economy and create millions of jobs. Among the headline-grabbing details was a plan to eventually make Apple iPhones in India.Three years on, as executives and bureaucrats crowded into a Delhi convention centre for an inaugural mobile congress last week, India has managed only to assemble phones from imported components.While contract manufacturers such as iPhone-maker Foxconn Technology Co and Flextronics Corp have set up base in India, one of the world<6C>s fastest-growing smartphone markets, almost none of the higher value chip sets, cameras and other high-end components are made domestically.Plans for Taiwan-based Foxconn to build an electronics plant in the state of Maharashtra, which local officials said in 2015 could employ some 50,000 people, have gone quiet.According to tech research firm Counterpoint, while phones are assembled domestically because of taxes on imported phones, locally made content in those phones is usually restricted to headphones and chargers - about 5 percent of a device<63>s cost.<2E>Rather than feeling that India is a place where I should be making mobile phones, it<69>s more like this is the place I need to (assemble) phones because there is lower duty if I import components and assemble here,<2C> a senior executive with a Chinese smartphone maker said.He declined to be named for fear of harming business.TAX DISPUTES Others listed the lack of skilled engineers and a sparse network of local component makers. They also cited high-profile tax disputes between India and foreign companies such as Nokia . Nokia eventually suspended mobile handset production at its southern India facility.<2E>The Nokia escapade is in people<6C>s memory when they try to come here,<2C> a second industry source told Reuters at the first Indian Mobile Congress in capital New Delhi, which ended on Friday.India<69>s nationwide sales tax (GST), which kicked in this year to replace a string of different levies, is also fraught with its own challenges, such as a lengthy tax-refund process that delays payments to suppliers, the source added.Last week, India rattled investors after publicly musing about possible changes in a $2.6 billion 2015 diesel locomotive contract with General Electric. The government has since said it would not take any hasty decisions.<2E>We needed some push from the government to start manufacturing,<2C> said Neeraj Sharma, the India head of Chinese chipmaker Spreadtrum. <20>It was required, because without that nothing was happening.<2E>But India now needs more sophisticated technology - such as surface-mounting technology, which places components directly on top of a printed board - to build a supply chain, he said.Otherwise, firms will not do research in India, Sharma said. <20>For design to happen, we need strong local players.<2E>PHASED PROGRAMME The government says it has a phased programme to manufacture phones, aiming to step up value added locally every year.<2E>While we have made a start with getting in mobile assembling, we want to move up the value chain,<2C> India<69>s telecoms secretary Aruna Sundarajan told reporters. <20>A lot of investors have shown very significant interest in this area.<2E>The Phased Manufacturing Programme began in 2016 with the manufacture of phone chargers and batteries and envisages the production of higher-end components by 2020.Sundarajan said the government was also trying to give investors <20>a reasonable degree of certainty<74>, while also dealing with constant disruption to th
'f6b237ec09ffe9391c868f5e4fec8d49bfd2516b'|'UPDATE 1-Britain to impose price caps on domestic energy prices -PM May'|'* Centrica shares near 14-year low* SSE down 4 pct* Cap would apply to most common tariffs* Cap to be kept under review (Updates throughout with company share prices, company comment, reaction)By Kate Holton and William JamesMANCHESTER, England, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday she would impose a price cap on the energy market to help millions of households, sending stocks in the country<72>s largest energy provider, Centrica to a 14-year low.May had proposed a price cap on the sector earlier this year, the biggest market intervention since it was privatised almost 30 years ago, but the plan was thrown into doubt after her ruling Conservative Party lost their parliamentary majority in an election in June.Needing to win back voters who are struggling with rising prices, she returned to the theme on Wednesday.Energy bills have doubled in Britain over the past decade to an average of about 1,200 pounds ($1,500) a year, putting the biggest providers in the sights of politicians.<2E>While we are in favour of free markets we will always take action to fix them when they are broken, we will always take on monopolies and vested interests when they are holding people back,<2C> May told the Conservative Party<74>s annual conference.<2E>One of the greatest examples in Britain today is the broken energy market,<2C> she said, adding that a price cap would help end <20>rip-off energy prices<65>.Britain<69>s energy market is dominated by the so-called big six providers -- Centrica<63>s British Gas, SSE, Iberdrola<6C>s Scottish Power, Innogy<67>s npower, E.ON and EDF Energy, which account for about 85 percent of the retail electricity market.SHARES SUFFER The announcement wiped more than 900 million pounds off the value of the two British listed companies Centrica and SSE alone.Shares in Centrica hit a near 14 year low of 177.8 pence per share. Shares in SSE, Britain<69>s second largest supplier, fell around 4 percent.SSE said it would look carefully at the proposals.<2E>SSE believes in competition not caps, so if there is to be any intervention it should be simple to administer, time-limited, and maintain the principles of a competitive energy market to best serve customers<72> interests,<2C> the company said.No one from Centrica was immediately available to comment.May<61>s office said the cap would apply to so-called standard variable tariffs (SVTs) which are basic rates that energy suppliers charge if a customer does not opt for a specific plan.Around 70 percent of households are on SVTs and data published by energy regulator Ofgem in December showed 91 percent of SSE<53>s customers were on a SVT, along with 74 percent of Centrica<63>s British Gas customers.Ofgem said SVTs offered by the big six in August were on average almost 320 pounds ($424) per year more expensive than their cheapest tariffs.Earlier this year the government ordered Ofgem to act on the issue of high bills and the regulator is in the process on consulting on a measure which would impose a price cap for the most vulnerable households.Prime Minister May<61>s office said Ofgem would be responsible for setting the new cap which would be a temporary measure kept under review.British business groups critized the cap, with blue-chip lobby group the CBI calling it <20>an example of state intervention that misses the mark.<2E>However the challenger small energy firm OVO Energy, which has around 800,000 customers, welcomed the decision.<2E>This intervention will stimulate innovation and promote efficiency that will benefit millions of customers,<2C> said Stephen Fitzpatrick, OVO chief executive. (Additional reporting by Susanna Twidale and Alistair Smout in LONDON; Editing by Keith Weir) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-politics-energy/update-1-britain-to-impose-price-caps-on-domestic-energy-prices-pm-may-idINL8N1MF36V'|'2017-10-04T10:02:00.000+03:00'
'03ca5ab57dec578869b69aa8f69b6a5dfdb201df'|'Tesco whistleblower tells of mounting anxieties over accounts gap'|'Reuters TV United States October 4, 2017 / 4:48 PM / a few seconds ago Tesco whistleblower tells of mounting anxieties over accounts gap Reuters Staff 3 Min Read Former Tesco UK Managing Director Christopher Bush (R) arrives at Southwark Crown Court where he faces charges of fraud and false accounting in London, Britain, October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner LONDON (Reuters) - A senior accountant at Tesco described mounting pressures on managers as the food business under-performed against targets in 2014, telling a London court that his attempts to have the targets revised down had fallen on deaf ears. Amit Soni was giving evidence at the trial of three former senior Tesco executives who are accused of fraud and false accounting in the run-up to a statement by the retail giant in September 2014 that had over-stated its profit forecast by 250 million pounds. Christopher Bush, who was managing director of Tesco UK, Carl Rogberg, who was UK finance director, and John Scouler, who was UK food commercial director, have all pleaded not guilty. Soni, who is described as a whistleblower by the prosecution, told Southwark Crown Court that his team had produced a series of reports as the financial year 2014/15 unfolded showing a growing gap between actual performance and what the leadership team had budgeted for. The projected gap had widened to 240 million pounds by August, he said. Accounting teams had been instructed to <20>pull forward<72> future income from suppliers by booking it in advance, a practice which one of his reports noted would not pass muster with auditors. The effect was to mask the growing accounting gap in the short-term, but his view was that it would cause problems further down the line. Former Tesco UK Finance Director Carl Rogberg arrives at Southwark Crown Court where he faces charges of fraud and false accounting in London, Britain October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner Soni told the court that one of his senior colleagues had told him during a private conversation that this had been going on for too long and he <20>did not want to go to jail for this<69>. That colleague is due to give evidence later in the trial. Soni said Tesco was under intense pressure at the time from competing retailers, especially discounters, and morale was low. He described <20>constant reviews and innumerable discussions on how Tesco had to do better<65>. Slideshow (3 Images) Soni said an announcement by the company in July that Chief Executive Phil Clarke would be replaced by Dave Lewis had given him hope that the situation might improve. <20>For me it was a relief because I felt personally that the pressures in the business were in part due to Philip Clarke<6B>s strategy and that with him leaving the business hopefully the pressure would come off,<2C> he said. <20>A new chief executive would probably look at the pressures in the business in a new light.<2E> Soni is due to continue giving evidence for several days. Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; editing by Stephen Addison'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-tesco-fraud/tesco-whistleblower-tells-of-mounting-anxieties-over-accounts-gap-idUKKBN1C92FL'|'2017-10-04T19:46:00.000+03:00'
'a0184a50c1bd733af1ba3f1c92828e66f04864c9'|'U.S. business groups say WTO unable to curb many Chinese trade practices'|'Reuters TV United States October 4, 2017 / 8:29 PM / in a minute U.S. business groups say WTO unable to curb many Chinese trade practices David Lawder 3 Min Read The headquarters of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are pictured in Geneva, Switzerland, April 12, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. business groups expressed frustration on Wednesday with what they said are China<6E>s efforts to tilt the economic playing field in favor of domestic companies, adding that World Trade Organization rules are insufficient to police all of Beijing<6E>s trade practices. U.S. companies face increasing threats from Chinese investment rules, industrial policies, subsidies to state-owned enterprises, excess manufacturing capacity, cybersecurity regulations and forced technology transfers, the groups told a public hearing held by the U.S. Trade Representative<76>s office. The session will influence an annual report on China<6E>s WTO compliance by the U.S. Trade Representative<76>s office as well as a USTR investigation into China<6E>s intellectual property practices that could lead to imposition of trade sanctions by President Donald Trump. Josh Kallmer, senior vice president of global policy at the Information Technology Industry Council, said China had woven a <20>tapestry<72> of rules and policies that places foreign companies at a disadvantage and incentivizes the transfer of technology. <20>It just in general puts a thumb on the competitive scale in a way that significantly and profoundly affects U.S.-based and foreign companies,<2C> said Kallmer, who was representing a coalition of technology groups from semiconductors to software. The concerns are not new. They were highlighted in the USTR<54>s last report to Congress on China<6E>s WTO compliance issued on Jan, 1, 2017, and raised in subsequent meetings by Trump administration officials. USTR Assistant Secretary Edward Gresser told the hearing that there was a growing recognition that WTO rules did not cover all of China<6E>s practices viewed as unfair. The United States and other WTO members needed <20>to find effective ways to address those Chinese government practices that may violate the spirit of the WTO that nevertheless may not fall squarely within the WTO disciplines,<2C> he said. Jeremie Waterman, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce<63>s vice president for Greater China, said China<6E>s restrictive investment regime and other industrial policies requiring technology transfers in recent years have made China a less attractive place to invest for foreign firms, and not all of these policies can be changed with full WTO compliance This has been made worse by China<6E>s <20>Made in China 2025<32> plan, which aims to supplant foreign products and technologies with domestic ones and new cybersecurity regulations that put foreign information technology products at a disadvantage, Waterman said. <20>The ballast has become less stable in recent years<72> in the U.S.-China economic relationship, he added. Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Steve Orlofsky'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-trade/u-s-business-groups-say-wto-unable-to-curb-many-chinese-trade-practices-idUKKBN1C92UL'|'2017-10-04T23:25:00.000+03:00'
'0da090f13bd688d5b34d2fbc0824c2eac1b952a3'|'UPDATE 1-Irish housebuilder Glenveagh to raise up to 550 mln euros in IPO'|'October 2, 2017 / 7:34 AM / Updated 13 hours ago UPDATE 1-Irish housebuilder Glenveagh to raise up to 550 mln euros in IPO Reuters Staff * Second Irish housebuilder to float since economic crash * Glenveagh to buy development land acquired by Oaktree * Ireland struggling with chronic shortage of housing (Adds details, quotes) By Padraic Halpin DUBLIN, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Glenveagh Properties plans to raise up to 550 million euros ($646 million) in Ireland<6E>s second largest initial public offering since the 2008 financial crisis to add much needed housing supply to Europe<70>s fastest growing economy. While Ireland was left with a surplus of houses after values were cut in half following the property crash a decade ago, a recovery in the construction sector has badly lagged the general economy, causing house prices and rents to rise sharply again. Glenveagh will become just the second Irish housebuilder to float since the economy began to turn around, following Cairn Homes in 2015. Cairn<72>s share price has almost doubled since then as the value of its portfolio grew sharply. Glenveagh<67>s IPO will also beat the 385 million euros Cairn raised and be the second largest on the Irish stock exchange, behind the 3.4 billion euros raised by Allied Irish Banks in June. <20>One of the structural weaknesses in the housing market in Ireland is the fragmented nature of the housebuilding sector and its lack of scale,<2C> Glenveagh co-founder and chairman John Mulcahy, a former senior executive at Ireland<6E>s state-run bad bank NAMA, said in a statement. <20>We believe there is an opportunity through publicly quoted companies like Glenveagh.<2E> Glenveagh, which will combine development land acquired in Ireland by U.S. private equity firm Oaktree with the assets of Irish builder Bridgedale, has some 1,700 units ready for construction and plans to build at least 1,000 new homes a year by 2020, with 2,000 more a year to follow on a long-term basis. Glenveagh will focus on building in and around Dublin, where supply is particularly tight, and has committed one-third of the IPO proceeds to 27 sites it has agreed to buy. Economists estimate that 35,000 new homes are needed a year to address the shortage in Ireland and keep up with demand in a country that also has the EU<45>s fastest growing population. However a report by Goodbody Stockbrokers<72> on Monday suggested just over 5,000 houses were completed last year, a third of the official completions data that the government has acknowledged may overstate the true level of homebuilding. Conditional trading on the Irish and London Stock Exchange is expected to begin on October 10. Credit Suisse and Ireland<6E>s Davy have been appointed as joint global coordinators. ($1 = 0.8513 euros) (Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by Jason Neely/Keith Weir)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/glenveagh-ipo/update-1-irish-housebuilder-glenveagh-to-raise-up-to-550-mln-euros-in-ipo-idUSL8N1MD0Y7'|'2017-10-02T10:33:00.000+03:00'
'a81c5f145f7318d7c7e0e37ab426c3b90a53bc40'|'U.S. Supreme Court back to work with major employment dispute'|'* Employment agreements squelching class actions at issue* Trump administration reversed Obama stance backing NLRBBy Lawrence Hurley and Robert IafollaWASHINGTON, Oct 1(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court kicks off its new nine-month term on Monday with a major employment case that could deprive workers of the ability to join together to file lawsuits when taking on companies over a wide range of labor disputes.The Trump administration will argue alongside companies that agreements requiring workers to arbitrate disputes with their employers individually, rather than bringing class-action lawsuits collectively with their co-workers, are valid.Class-action litigation can result in large damages awards by juries and is harder for businesses to fight than cases brought by individual plaintiffs.In an unusual twist, the administration will face off against an independent agency of the federal government, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).Republican President Donald Trump<6D>s Justice Department in June reversed the government<6E>s stance in the case taken under Democratic former President Barack and said it would not defend the NLRB<52>s position that employment agreements requiring workers to waive their rights to bring class action claims are invalid.The NLRB argues that those agreements violate federal labor law and let companies evade their responsibilities under workplace statutes.The three consolidated cases coming before the justices involve professional services firm Ernst & Young LLP, gas station operator Murphy Oil USA Inc and healthcare software company Epic Systems Corporation.It is one of the biggest cases that the Supreme Court, with a 5-4 conservative majority since Trump<6D>s appointee Neil Gorsuch was confirmed by the Senate in April, will tackle during a term that runs until the end of June. Other major cases involve voting rights, religious liberty and union funding.At stake is the future of so-called class-action waivers, which employers have increasingly required employees to sign as part of their arbitration agreements to guard against a rising tide of worker lawsuits seeking unpaid wages.The case against Murphy Oil arose in 2010 when Sheila Hobson -- who had worked for the prior two years at a facility in Calera, Alabama -- and three other employees, complained that they were not being paid for overtime and other work-related activities, including driving to competitors<72> fuel stations to check their prices and signage.<2E>It just hit me. This is not right. I<>m working off the clock,<2C> Hobson said.Her lawyer, former NLRB member Craig Becker, said people like Hobson might not file individual claims because of the fear of retaliation from their bosses.<2E>QUICK AND FAIR<49>Many attorneys representing businesses say that resolving workplace disputes through arbitration with individual employees is a speedy and cost-effective alternative to class-action litigation.<2E>Unlike class actions, which can drag on forever, an individual worker in a properly constructed arbitration program can get a quick and fair resolution to their case, and most employers will pick up almost all of the cost,<2C> said Steven Suflas, a lawyer who has represented companies in similar cases.About one in four private-sector non-union employees -- nearly 25 million workers -- have signed arbitration agreements with class-action waivers, according to a study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute think tank.Workers have fought back against the waivers, arguing that the cost of pursuing their cases individually in arbitration is prohibitively expensive. The prospect of winning a large damages award in a class action can be the only way for workers to find lawyers to take their cases, they argue.The NLRB has invalidated dozens of class-action waivers for violating workers<72> legal right to band together to improve the workplace.Regional federal appeals courts, however, have split on the issue. Three have ruled that class-action waivers in workers<72> 
'7d8f038ef1fb0a49d106ac313add54f533f630c9'|'Euro ministers to mull developing bailout fund into Europe''s Monetary Fund'|'October 4, 2017 / 6:30 PM / in 2 hours Euro ministers to mull developing bailout fund into Europe''s Monetary Fund Jan Strupczewski 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: European Stability Mechanism Managing Director Klaus Regling attends a conference in Nicosia, Cyprus November 1, 2016. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou/File Photo BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Euro zone finance ministers will discuss on Monday ideas for a European Monetary Fund that would eliminate the need to involve the International Monetary Fund or the European Central Bank in future euro zone crises. The discussion will revolve around expanding the role of the euro zone bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), an idea clearly backed by Germany, France and the European Commission. The talks in Luxembourg will be part of a broader discussion among finance ministers from the 19 countries sharing the euro on how to better organise the single currency area and integrate it more deeply after Britain leaves the European Union in 2019. Other ideas include setting up a euro zone budget, appointing a euro zone finance minister and creating a euro zone subgroup in the European Parliament. <20>So far, the IMF has always contributed to the ESM rescue programmes in Europe, but a consensus is now growing that it will not play that same role again in a future crisis,<2C> Klaus Regling, the head of the ESM, said in a speech in September. <20>The ESM could take over that role, as well as other tasks.<2E> Euro zone officials involved in managing the debt crisis of 2010-2012 said the ECB, which took part in teams overseeing reforms in bailed-out countries, would rather not do that again. <20>The outcome of this can only be that we vamp up the existing ESM framework, maybe with new tools, and adapt it to a situation where ECB and IMF are no longer on board,<2C> said one euro zone official, who asked not to be named. That would leave the ESM and the European Commission to handle whatever new trouble might occur in euro zone economies. Some officials speculate that, were an EMF to be created, its financial aid could be made conditional on a country observing EU budget rules. Ignoring those helped trigger the debt crisis. But the division of labour between a future EMF and the European Commission would be tricky. The policy monitoring and economic surveillance the IMF does for its members is clearly assigned to the Commission in EU treaties. Also, the Commission employs thousands of experts - energy, trade, fiscal policy, pensions, the labour market - needed to design reforms that would be demanded in exchange for loans. Duplicating that expertise would not make sense, officials said. Other functions that the ESM, and, by extension, the EMF, could take on, are the financial backstop for the euro zone<6E>s Single Resolution Fund for banks and the yet-to-be-agreed European Deposit Insurance Scheme. The Eurogroup discussion will be the first of several leading to a summit of EU leaders in December and probably throughout the first half of 2018. Reporting By Jan Strupczewski, editing by Larry King'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-esm-future/euro-ministers-to-mull-developing-bailout-fund-into-europes-monetary-fund-idUKKBN1C92MF'|'2017-10-04T21:29:00.000+03:00'
'da54c5ba5f76bf347641c8bb4bfc88aece7b7b80'|'Share fall punctures Pirelli''s market comeback'|'October 4, 2017 / 7:51 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Share price fall deflates Pirelli''s market comeback Elisa Anzolin , Agnieszka Flak 4 Min Read Pirelli Chief Executive Marco Tronchetti Provera speaks during a ceremony at the Milan Stock Exchange, in Milan, Italy, October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Massimo Pinca MILAN (Reuters) - Shares in Italy<6C>s Pirelli ( PIRC.MI ) fell on Wednesday on the tiremaker<65>s return to the Milan stock exchange two years after it was taken over by China National Chemical Corp (ChemChina) and a group of Italian investors. The stock was down 2.2 percent at 6.36 euros per share by 1018 GMT, with a trader saying that while the IPO price had been cut it was still considered to be over-valuing the company. <20>So people are selling,<2C> he said. The maker of tires for Formula One racing teams and premium vehicle makers such as BMW ( BMWG.DE ) and Mercedes ( DAIGn.DE ) sold shares in the offer at 6.5 euros per share, valuing the company at 6.5 billion euros ($7.65 billion). That was well below the 8.3 euros per share that marked the top of the original offer price range. Despite being one of Italy<6C>s best-known corporate names, prospective investors had raised concerns over Pirelli<6C>s debt pile, complex governance structure and the risk that one of the existing minority shareholders could sell once a lock-up expires. The relisting will test demand for a streamlined firm that focuses on high-end consumer tires after its less profitable truck and industrial tire business was folded into part of ChemChina. The shares will join Milan''s blue-chip FTSE MIB index .FTMIB index from December, the head of the bourse said. Chief Executive Marco Tronchetti Provera sought to play down any disappointment over the share price performance on Wednesday. <20>Let<65>s see in a few months. We know the company is solid and will bring results ... there<72>s always volatility during the first days,<2C> he said after ringing the opening bell. The owners of the world<6C>s fifth-largest tiremaker have sold up to 40 percent of their shares in the IPO, raising up to 2.6 billion euros, depending on whether the investment banks underwriting the share offer exercise a greenshoe option to sell more shares. Pirelli Chief Executive Marco Tronchetti Provera speaks with media after a ceremony at the Milan Stock Exchange, in Milan, Italy, October 4 , 2017. REUTERS/Massimo Pinca COOPERATIVE APPROACH Pirelli had traded on the Milan stock exchange since 1922 but was de-listed in 2015 after ChemChina took a 65 percent stake in the holding company controlling the tiremaker. With the IPO sale the Chinese have reduced their stake to 45 percent plus 1 share. Slideshow (3 Images) Tronchetti Provera and banks UniCredit ( CRDI.MI ) and Intesa Sanpaolo ( ISP.MI ) retain around 10 percent of Pirelli after the sale, while investment fund LTI, linked to Russia<69>s Rosneft ( ROSN.MM ), keeps 5 percent. Those shareholdings could still change slightly depending on whether the banks exercise the greenshoe option. Pirelli is more profitable than France<63>s Michelin ( MICP.PA ) and Germany<6E>s Continental ( CONG.DE ), but its core profit margin of around 20 percent lags that of high-end Finnish rival Nokian ( NRE1V.HE ), which stands at nearly 30 percent. Some analysts have raised concern about the management succession, with Tronchetti Provera set to retire after 2020. A question mark also remains over the role the Chinese will play in running the company following the share sale, although Pirelli has repeatedly said ChemChina has taken a passive approach to its management. <20>Pirelli is a historic brand ... and with today<61>s share drop it<69>s more aligned with the rest of the market,<2C> said Lorenzo Batacchi, portfolio manager at BPER Banca. <20>At 6.3 euros per share it<69>s again becoming an interesting stock.<2E> Additional reporting by Giancarlo Navach; Editing by Keith Weir, Greg Mahlich '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-pirelli-ipo/share-fall-punctures-pirel
'be997a3bb75fde4cec753229eb61eb2f2e53131c'|'MOVES-Chubb names new management for global life, general insurance ops'|'Oct 3 (Reuters) - Property and casualty insurer Chubb Ltd on Tuesday appointed Cunqiang Li as chief operating officer of Chubb Life, the company<6E>s international life insurance division.Chris Martin has been appointed COO of the company<6E>s combined insurance business, while Jeff Hager has been named COO of the Pacific region, Chubb said.Li is currently chairman and chief executive of Huatai Life, a joint venture between Chubb and the Huatai Insurance Group in China. Martin is currently president of Chubb<62>s workplace benefits unit.Hager is currently regional president, Far East, Chubb said.Reporting by Munsif Vengattil '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/chubb-ltd-ch-moves-cunqiangli/moves-chubb-names-new-management-for-global-life-general-insurance-ops-idINL4N1ME3KZ'|'2017-10-03T19:16:00.000+03:00'
'4aaa112f71f1f36b1aac22373a3ae3e9f5313c28'|'Deals of the day-Mergers and acquisitions'|'Oct 5 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 1000 GMT on Thursday:** German industrial gases group Linde urged investors to tender their shares in an exchange offer for its planned $80 billion merger with U.S. peer Praxair as a deadline approaches to reach 75 percent acceptance.** Germany<6E>s Dialog Semiconductor is to acquire California-based Silego Technology Inc for up to $306 million, helping to strengthen its position in the market for the so-called Internet of Things.** Polish anti-monopoly office said Poland<6E>s biggest power firm PGE can take over the local assets of France<63>s EDF on condition that it sells most of the electricity generated by the Rybnik coal-fuelled power plant via the power exchange.** U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital LP<4C>s $1.35 billion offer to buy Japan<61>s third-largest advertising agency Asatsu-DK Inc is too low, its second-largest shareholder Silchester International Investors LLP has said.** Japan<61>s biggest private-sector life insurer, Nippon Life Insurance Co, is in talks to buy a majority stake in U.S.-based MassMutual Financial Group<75>s Japan unit, two people with knowledge of the negotiations said.** UK-based theme park operator Merlin Entertainments Plc has approached marine park operator SeaWorld Entertainment Inc about a potential deal, according to a person familiar with the matter. (Compiled by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/deals-day/deals-of-the-day-mergers-and-acquisitions-idINL4N1MG1JX'|'2017-10-05T08:05:00.000+03:00'
'6b1e580797adf04f49b2e9a311a222c5b2cfc082'|'Dutch firm TMF Group aims to raise 340 million euro in London IPO'|'October 5, 2017 / 6:41 AM / Updated 22 minutes ago Dutch firm TMF Group aims to raise 340 million euro in London IPO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Business services firm TMF Group said it plans to raise gross proceeds of 340 million euros (<28>301.83 million) from a London listing in November, as the Dutch company tries to reduce its debt burden. TMF, which provides compliance and administration services, said it aims to float at least 25 percent of the company next month. TMF, which is currently owned by DH Private Equity, posted revenue of 283 million euros in the first half of 2017, up from 256 million euros a year earlier. The company<6E>s adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose 9.5 percent to 69 million euros. Goldman Sachs and HSBC Bank plc are acting as joint global co-ordinators and sponsors on the deal. Reporting by Rachel Armstrong; editing by Carolyn Cohn'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tmf-group-ipo/dutch-firm-tmf-group-aims-to-raise-340-million-euro-in-london-ipo-idUKKBN1CA0G5'|'2017-10-05T09:41:00.000+03:00'
'e4db29a338fd605efdbdcb2bb9ed50dfab8c4b4c'|'Bank of England''s McCafferty backs market bet on "late 2017" rate rise'|' 21 PM / in 18 minutes Bank of England''s McCafferty backs market bet on ''late 2017'' rate rise David Milliken 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Ian McCafferty, Monetary Policy Committee member of the Bank of England speaks during a Reuters interview at the Bank of England in London February 24, 2014. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett LONDON (Reuters) - Financial markets are less at risk of <20>an unpleasant surprise<73> from the Bank of England, now that they expect an interest rate rise later this year, rather than in mid-2019, BoE policymaker Ian McCafferty said on Thursday. McCafferty, who has voted for a rate rise since June, said financial markets had wrongly regarded the BoE<6F>s hands as being tied by Brexit uncertainty, until the BoE said in September that most policymakers expected rates to rise in the coming months. <20>This has had the effect of bringing forward expectations of the first rise in Bank Rate from mid-2019 to late 2017, reducing the risks of an unwelcome surprise,<2C> he said in a speech to a business audience in London. The BoE last raised interest rates in 2007, and cut them to a record-low 0.25 percent in August 2016 after the economy appeared to be slowing sharply following June 2016<31>s vote to leave the European Union. Most economists now expect the BoE to reverse this move in November, and raise rates again in 2018. Brexit is likely to slow growth in Britons<6E> incomes and weaken the rate at which the economy can sustainably expand, problems the BoE can do little about, McCafferty said. But policymakers would keep a close watch on shorter-term signs of Brexit uncertainty hurting businesses and households. McCafferty said interest rates would need to rise <20>several times<65> before the BoE considered starting to sell its 435 billion pounds ($571 billion) of quantitative easing gilt purchases, and that the effect of such sales might be limited. McCafferty<74>s term on the BoE<6F>s Monetary Policy Committee expires at the end of August 2018, and he said he did not expect reversing QE to be much of an issue during this time. The BoE has previously said it would not consider selling QE assets until rates had risen some way. McCafferty said QE sales were not identical in their economic effect to rate rises, and instead affected the relative costs of different lengths of borrowing, rather than the outright cost itself. Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by William Schomberg'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-boe-mccafferty/boes-mccafferty-welcomes-market-shift-to-late-2017-rate-rise-idUKKBN1CA22V'|'2017-10-05T19:39:00.000+03:00'
'00d990a981ea02762731bfad7b3f0c28cbb484a8'|'RPT-Nikkei ends flat, hovers around 2-year highs as caution sets in'|'(Repeats closing report)* Insurers underperform, Aeon gains on earnings* Tepco surges after receiving initial safety approval from NRABy Lisa Twaronite and Ayai TomisawaTOKYO, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Nikkei share average ended little changed on Thursday after hitting a two-year high in the previous session, as investors grew cautious ahead of major economic data such as the U.S. jobs report later this week.The Nikkei ended up 1.9 points, or 0.01 percent, at 20,628.56. On Wednesday, the index climbed to as high as 20,689.08, its loftiest level since August 2015.<2E>After a run-up to such high levels, and ahead of such major data as the U.S. monthly jobs figures, it is not surprising at all that some investors would take profits,<2C> said Yutaka Miura, a senior technical analyst at Mizuho Securities.<2E>But on the other hand, with U.S. shares hitting fresh record highs, there are no compelling reasons to aggressively sell Japanese stocks, either, so the overall market is flat,<2C> he said.On Wednesday, U.S. stocks edged up to extend their run of record closing highs as data on the services sector added to signs of strength in the economy and underpinned earnings prospects.Respondents to Reuters<72> latest Japanese equities poll were mostly optimistic that the Nikkei will scale a 21-year peak by year-end, boosted by a weaker yen and market expectations that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will prevail in a snap election he called for Oct. 22.Weekly fund flow data showed that foreign investors turned to net buying of Japanese shares in the week through Sept. 30, purchasing a net 953.3 billion yen worth of shares.Still, some were cautious against a backdrop of continuing tensions on the Korean peninsula.Last Friday, Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera expressed concerns about more possible provocation from North Korea on Oct. 10, when Japan commences its lower house election campaigns, a date that coincides with one of the North<74>s main anniversaries.The day<61>s losers included financial stocks, with Dai-ichi Life Holdings falling 1.3 percent. The insurance sub-index sagged 1 percent.Tech shares and electric parts makers also languished, with Advantest Corp dropping 1.2 percent and Murata Manufacturing Co shedding 0.9 percent, while TDK Corp declined 0.5 percent.Bucking the weakness, Aeon Co surged 2.1 percent after Japan<61>s largest retailer by sales said it plans further price cuts, as restructuring at its struggling general merchandising stores helped drive first half profits to an 11-year high.Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) added 0.9 percent after the company received an initial safety approval from Japan<61>s Nuclear Regulation Authority to restart two reactors at the world<6C>s biggest nuclear power plant.The JPX-Nikkei Index 400 shed 0.2 percent to 14,860.37 while the Topix ended down 0.1 percent at 1,682.49 . (Reporting by Ayai Tomisawa and Lisa Twaronite; Editing by Sam Holmes and Kim Coghill) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/japan-stocks-close/rpt-nikkei-ends-flat-hovers-around-2-year-highs-as-caution-sets-in-idUSL4N1MG18T'|'2017-10-05T10:09:00.000+03:00'
'8456708869d8561729e8a2856d22b1e9d5a70acb'|'Boeing to buy aircraft technologies provider Aurora Flight Sciences'|'October 5, 2017 / 1:31 PM / Updated 6 minutes ago Boeing to buy autonomous and electric flight firm Aurora Alwyn Scott 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Visitors look at models of Boeing aircrafts at the Aviation Expo China 2015, in Beijing, China, in this September 16, 2015 file photo. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - Boeing Co ( BA.N ) said on Thursday it would buy Aurora Flight Sciences Corp to advance its ability to develop autonomous, electric-powered and long-flight-duration aircraft for its commercial and military businesses. The acquisition could help Boeing with a number of projects, including drones produced by its Insitu unit, a new mid-market aircraft that Boeing is considering and efforts to fly prototype pilotless technology next year. <20>The aerospace industry is going to be changing<6E> and the acquisition positions Boeing strategically <20>for whatever that future may be,<2C> Boeing Chief Technology Officer Greg Hyslop said on a conference call with reporters. The deal could face regulatory obstacles, but the company hopes to complete the purchase this year, Hyslop said. Boeing<6E>s move could help Zunum Aero, a Seattle-area company aiming to bring a hybrid-electric regional airliner to market in 2022. Boeing and JetBlue Airways Corp ( JBLU.O ) have both made venture capital investments in Zunum. Boeing will maintain Manassas, Virginia-based Aurora as a separate unit reporting through Boeing<6E>s engineering, test and technology division, which is headed by Hyslop. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Last year, Aurora won a contract for more than $89 million for the vertical take off and landing X-plane. Aurora has designed, produced and flown more than 30 unmanned air vehicles since its inception and has collaborated with Boeing on the rapid prototyping of innovative aircraft and structural assemblies for both military and commercial applications during the last decade. Additional reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr and Bill Rigby'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aurora-m-a-boeing/boeing-to-buy-aircraft-technologies-provider-aurora-flight-sciences-idUSKBN1CA1KU'|'2017-10-05T16:24:00.000+03:00'
'f8cf7461eec545bef96b0ee6960a9948bbfea5d3'|'Smartphones made in India? Manufacturing ambition hits hurdles'|'  7 minutes ago Smartphones made in India? Manufacturing ambition hits hurdles Sankalp Phartiyal 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: India''s Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks during the inauguration ceremony of the ''Make In India'' week in Mumbai, India, February 13, 2016. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/File photo NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India<69>s ambitions to become a smartphone-making powerhouse are foundering over a lack of skilled labour and part suppliers along with a complex tax regime, industry executives say. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has championed a manufacturing drive, under the slogan <20>Make in India<69>, to boost the sluggish economy and create millions of jobs. Among the headline-grabbing details was a plan to eventually make Apple APPL.O iPhones in India. Three years on, as executives and bureaucrats crowded into a Delhi convention centre for an inaugural mobile congress last week, India has managed only to assemble phones from imported components. While contract manufacturers such as iPhone-maker Foxconn Technology Co ( 2354.TW ) and Flextronics Corp have set up base in India, one of the world<6C>s fastest-growing smartphone markets, almost none of the higher value chip sets, cameras and other high-end components are made domestically. Plans for Taiwan-based Foxconn to build an electronics plant in the state of Maharashtra, which local officials said in 2015 could employ some 50,000 people, have gone quiet. According to tech research firm Counterpoint, while phones are assembled domestically because of taxes on imported phones, locally made content in those phones is usually restricted to headphones and chargers - about 5 percent of a device<63>s cost. <20>Rather than feeling that India is a place where I should be making mobile phones, it<69>s more like this is the place I need to(assemble) phones because there is lower duty if I import components and assemble here,<2C> a senior executive with a Chinese smartphone maker said. He declined to be named for fear of harming business. TAX DISPUTES Others listed the lack of skilled engineers and a sparse network of local component makers. They also cited high-profile tax disputes between India and foreign companies such as Nokia ( NOKIA.HE ). Nokia eventually suspended mobile handset production at its southern India facility. <20>The Nokia escapade is in people<6C>s memory when they try to come here,<2C> a second industry source told Reuters at the first Indian Mobile Congress in capital New Delhi, which ended on Friday. India<69>s nationwide sales tax (GST), which kicked in this year to replace a string of different levies, is also fraught with its own challenges, such as a lengthy tax-refund process that delays payments to suppliers, the source added. FILE PHOTO: Commuters watch videos on their mobile phones as they travel in a suburban train in Mumbai, India, April 2, 2016. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade/File photo Last week, India rattled investors after publicly musing about possible changes in a $2.6 billion 2015 diesel locomotive contract with General Electric ( GE.N ). The government has since said it would not take any hasty decisions. <20>We needed some push from the government to start manufacturing,<2C> said Neeraj Sharma, the India head of Chinese chipmaker Spreadtrum. <20>It was required, because without that nothing was happening.<2E> But India now needs more sophisticated technology - such as surface-mounting technology, which places components directly on top of a printed board - to build a supply chain, he said. Otherwise, firms will not do research in India, Sharma said. <20>For design to happen, we need strong local players.<2E> PHASED PROGRAMME The government says it has a phased programme to manufacture phones, aiming to step up value added locally every year. <20>While we have made a start with getting in mobile assembling, we want to move up the value chain,<2C> India<69>s telecoms secretary Aruna Sundarajan told reporters. <20>A lot of investors have shown very significant interest in this area.<2E> The Phased Man
'935c21f3dd11dc4f9f01b13fa68797197c8b54ea'|'Fed<65>s QE unwind threatens to unleash US bank competition'|'All the benefits of Standard Digital, plus: Unlimited access to all content Instant Insights column for comment and analysis as news unfolds FT Confidential Research - in-depth China and Southeast Asia analysis ePaper - the digital replica of the printed newspaper Full access to LEX - our agenda setting daily commentary Exclusive emails, including a weekly email from our Editor, Lionel Barber Full access to EM Squared- news and analysis service on emerging markets Other Subscription options:'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/content/4c5bee74-a48a-11e7-b797-b61809486fe2'|'2017-10-02T15:30:00.000+03:00'
'51d68b3a3d65157f20d38318617691a2fd7f2fc8'|'MIDEAST STOCKS - Factors to watch - October 2'|'DUBAI, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Here are some factors that may affect Middle East stock markets on Monday. Reuters has not verified the press reports and does not vouch for their accuracy.INTERNATIONAL/REGIONAL * GLOBAL MARKETS-Euro ruffled by Spanish vote; Asia data encourages equities* MIDEAST STOCKS-FTSE decisions hurt Saudi, boost Kuwait blue chips* Oil prices edge lower after strong third-quarter* PRECIOUS-Gold drops to lowest in nearly 7 weeks; stronger dollar, equities weigh* Port in Libya<79>s Benghazi reopens after 3-year closure due to clashes* One eve of Gaza reconciliation, Hamas frees Fatah men* Turkey no longer needs EU membership but won<6F>t quit talks - Erdogan* Match North Korea overture with Iran offer, Germany tells U.S.* Hezbollah says Israel pushing region to war* Yemen Houthis say have shot down U.S. surveillance drone - state news agency* Turkey<65>s September exports up 8.9 percent - exporters<72> assembly* Syrian Observatory: Islamic State captures town from governmentEGYPT * Egypt<70>s Hasm militants claim attack targeting Myanmar embassy* Yields rise on Egypt<70>s three and nine-month T-bills* Egypt to finish unloading held Romanian wheat cargo by Tuesday - official source* BRIEF-Cleopatra Hospital says EGM approves authorised capital increase* BRIEF-El Bader Plastic board appoints Muhammad Sayed Mahmoud Mostafa as CFO* BRIEF-Kafr El Zayat Pesticides shareholders approve capital increaseSAUDI ARABIA * Saudi market regulator loosens asset management rules* Saudi stock index falls on FSTE<54>s six-month delay of Riyadh upgrade* BRIEF-Saudi<64>s Almarai seeks shareholders approval for capital increase* BRIEF-Saudi Re gets SAMA approval to buy stake in Probitas HoldingsUNITED ARAB EMIRATES * BRIEF-Dp World to develop infrastructure, logistics blueprint for Mali* Dubai<61>s Mashreq to cut branches as it shifts towards digital banking - CEO* Dubai<61>s GEMS Education planning over $1 bln loan ahead of IPO -sources* BRIEF-United Arab Bank says Anthony Murphy resigns as CFO* BRIEF-UAE<41>s Aldar Properties awards contract for bridges on Reem Island* TABLE-UAE August inflation lowest this year on housing costs* UAE<41>s ADNOC sets November oil allocations in line with global deal* BRIEF-Dp world says construction of Port Du Futur in Senegal to start before 2018 end* BRIEF-Gulf General Investment signs debt restructuring with creditorsQATAR * Qatar growth sinks as oil sector stalls, sanctions cause minor damage* TABLE-Qatar Q2 GDP rises 0.6 pct y/y as oil output dropsKUWAIT * BRIEF-Sultan Center Food Products updates on co<63>s plan to divest non-core assets* BRIEF-Kuwait<69>s Wethaq Takaful Insurance says Majid Yousuf Al-Ali resigns as CEOOMAN * BRIEF-Port Services Corp says Ministry not to renew port concession agreement (Compiled by Dubai newsroom) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mideast-factors/mideast-stocks-factors-to-watch-october-2-idINL8N1MC0Y8'|'2017-10-02T01:20:00.000+03:00'
'cbaba66f03329c70ee47085bfaf1595980ad0ab7'|'Exclusive - Uber''s UK boss quits as firm battles to keep London licence - email'|'October 2, 2017 / 11:43 AM / in 33 minutes Exclusive - Uber''s UK boss quits as firm battles to keep London licence: email Costas Pitas 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Uber<65>s top boss in Britain will quit the taxi hailing app, according to an email seen by Reuters on Monday, as the company prepares to meet the London transport regulator in a bid to keep operating in one of its most important foreign markets. Transport for London (TfL) shocked the San Francisco-based app last month by deeming it unfit to run a taxi service and deciding not to renew its licence to operate, citing the firm<72>s approach to reporting serious criminal offences and background checks on drivers. Uber<65>s licence expired on Sep. 30 but its roughly 40,000 drivers will be able to take passengers for the Silicon Valley company until an appeals process has been exhausted, which could take several months. The firm<72>s new global chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi will meet the TfL commissioner on Tuesday in London in a move backed by the city<74>s mayor, who has criticised the app<70>s management in the Britain but welcomed Khosrowshahi<68>s apologetic tone and promise of change. Uber<65>s Northern European Manager Jo Bertram will leave the firm in the next few weeks, according to an email sent to staff seen by Reuters. She said the firm, valued at around $70 billion (52.73 billion pounds), needed a replacement in the region to tackle the issues it faces. <20>Given some of our current challenges, I<>m also convinced that now is the right time to have a change of face, and to hand over to someone who will be here for the long haul and take us into the next phase,<2C> she said. <20>While I would like to have announced my move in smoother circumstances, I<>m proud of the team we<77>ve built here and am very confident in their abilities to lead the business into the next chapter.<2E> FILE PHOTO: A photo illustration a London taxi passing as the Uber app logo is displayed on a mobile telephone, as it is held up for a posed photograph in central London September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo Bertram, who will take up an undisclosed new role elsewhere, will be replaced in her UK role by Uber<65>s London boss Tom Elvidge on an interim basis. On Tuesday, Khosrowshahi - who has apologised to Londoners for the firm<72>s mistakes- will meet TfL<66>s Commissioner Mike Brown in a bid to repair a fraught relationship between the regulator and the taxi app, which has prompted strong opposition from unions and traditional taxi drivers over working rights. Uber has until Oct. 13 to submit its appeal, which will be reviewed by a judge. But TfL<66>s Chairman is Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, a Labour politician who has been critical of the app. Last week he singled out Uber<65>s management in Britain for criticism. <20>The global CEO... seems to recognise some of the issues raised by the decision from TfL,<2C> Khan told Channel 4 news. <20>I just wish that Uber in the UK would rather than hire an army of PR experts and an army of lawyers, would address some of the issues raised by the TfL decision,<2C> he said. Reporting by Costas Pitas; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Louise Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-uber-britain-exclusive/exclusive-ubers-uk-boss-quits-as-firm-battles-to-keep-london-licence-email-idUKKCN1C71CW'|'2017-10-02T14:44:00.000+03:00'
'7c955be6a523c9948bd3377d76e7e322f2bd9ead'|'UPDATE 2-Caught in the crossfire, Britain says will fight Boeing- row'|'(Adds comments from British trade minister)By Kate Holton and Elizabeth PiperMANCHESTER, England, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Britain, caught in the crossfire of a damaging trade dispute between planemakers Boeing and Bombardier, said on Sunday it would fight its corner to protect thousands of jobs put at risk in Northern Ireland.Trade minister Liam Fox said Britain was working to find a resolution after the United States last week responded to a complaint by Boeing by imposing a 220-percent preliminary duty on Bombardier<65>s CSeries jets, whose wings are made in Belfast.<2E>We<57>ve said that we will fight our corner,<2C> Fox told the annual Conservative Party conference. <20>We<57>ve been caught in the crossfire of a much larger dispute.<2E><>It worries me that we<77>re seeing a rise in protectionist behaviour ... the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) itself has pointed out protectionism always ends badly. If we can get them to have a resolution, which is what we are trying to do quietly, so much the better.<2E>The tariff, which will take effect only if the U.S. International Trade Commission backs Boeing in a final decision expected in 2018, has dealt a major blow to the Canadian company<6E>s flagship project.It has also cast a huge shadow over Northern Ireland, where Bombardier is by far the most important manufacturer and a pillar of Belfast<73>s economy, employing 4,200 people and supporting thousands more in the supply chain.And it also undermines the assurances by Brexit campaigners such as Fox that free trade and London<6F>s close ties with Washington will drive Britain<69>s prosperity and global influence after it leaves the European Union in 2019.James Brokenshire, the British minister for Northern Ireland, echoed Prime Minister Theresa May in saying that Boeing was not behaving in a way the British government would expect a long-term defence partner to behave.May and other senior ministers have been highly critical of Boeing, suggesting it could miss out on future defence contracts, after the row put into jeopardy the local economy in Northern Ireland, home to a small party that May relies on to govern in Westminster.<2E>I say to Boeing this case is unjustified and unwarranted. This action is not what is expected of a long-term partner to the UK. They need to get round the table and secure a negotiated outcome to this dispute quickly,<2C> Brokenshire said.May has warned that Boeing was undermining its commercial relationship with Britain and has spoken to U.S. President Donald Trump on the issue.However, May is unlikely to retaliate against Boeing, which says the firm and its suppliers account for more than 18,700 jobs in the UK. Fox implied the government was working behind the scenes to find a resolution.Northern Ireland is the poorest of the United Kingdom<6F>s four parts and is mired in political difficulties after emerging from decades of armed sectarian conflict.Boeing, the world<6C>s largest aerospace company, says it is upholding trade rules and not trying to damage the CSeries. It accuses Canada and Britain of unfairly subsidising Bombardier and says Bombardier has illegally dumped its products in the U.S. single-aisle airplane market out of desperation.<2E>The support that the UK provided to the Bombardier operation in Belfast was and remains compliant with international requirements,<2C> Brokenshire said.Editing by Elizabeth Piper and Dale Hudson '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/boeing-bombardier-brokenshire/update-1-uk-minister-urges-boeing-to-hold-talks-to-end-bombardier-dispute-idINL8N1MC0UK'|'2017-10-01T15:19:00.000+03:00'
'8e40874bd26ebc61ce63e6ff9e3e4c702796ed8b'|'PRESS DIGEST- Financial Times - Oct 3'|'Oct 3 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Financial Times. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.HeadlinesUK launches ''biggest ever peacetime repatriation'' after Monarch collapse on.ft.com/2xNfxfIDrive to make investment fees more transparent ''falls short'' on.ft.com/2xMlkSySpending watchdog to probe Learndirect funding on.ft.com/2xMAnM4Jury told former Tesco executive lied to chairman on.ft.com/2xM4cwrOverviewThe failure of Britain<69>s Monarch Airlines on Monday left more than 100,000 tourists stranded abroad, prompting the government to start flying them back in what was billed as the country<72>s biggest peacetime repatriation effort.The Standards Board for Alternative Investments on Tuesday set out its plans for a new tool to help investors and managers compare costs across investments after an effort to improve fee transparency by alternative investments <20> including hedge funds, private equity, infrastructure and derivatives <20> fell short.The UK<55>s National Audit Office launched an investigation into government money given to Learndirect, in a move that turns up the pressure on the country<72>s largest adult training and apprenticeships business.Three former senior Tesco Plc executives carried on <20>conniving and manipulating<6E> after a hole in the retailer<65>s accounts began <20>spiralling out of control<6F> during the first half of 2014, a court heard on Monday. (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Sandra Maler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-press-ft/press-digest-financial-times-oct-3-idINL4N1ME015'|'2017-10-02T22:18:00.000+03:00'
'8429275dc1f578060fadada204eefa1ee31e34a9'|'Exclusive: One Ford, two systems - U.S. carmaker revamps China strategy amid EV push'|'FILE PHOTO: An employee uses a laptop next to a car body at an assembly line at a Ford manufacturing plant in Chongqing municipality April 20, 2012. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo BEIJING/DETROIT (Reuters) - U.S. automaker Ford Motor Co ( F.N ) is overhauling its China plans as its global <20>One Ford<72> strategy is holding it back in the world<6C>s biggest auto market, two high-ranking company insiders told Reuters.The review of its China operations, part of a broader strategy re-think under new CEO Jim Hackett, will likely see Ford focus on electric commercial vans, which China is encouraging in its polluted and congested city centers, as well as electric cars.A shift to e-vans and e-trucks in China would also fit with Ford<72>s reckoning that a best play globally for electrification and autonomous driving might be in commercial and delivery vehicles - a part of the market where it is already strong in the United States and Europe.The <20>One Ford<72> strategy - which helped the automaker<65>s turnaround under former CEO Alan Mulally - doesn<73>t fit all situations, the two insiders said, particularly in China and India, two crucial markets where Ford<72>s sales have slowed.<2E>That<61>s why nobody internally talks about <20>One Ford<72> (in those markets) anymore,<2C> said one of the insiders, who are familiar with Ford<72>s Chinese strategy. Neither wanted to be named as they are not authorized to speak with reporters.In a sign that Ford is turning away from what is essentially a global push of its Ford and Lincoln brands, the Dearborn, Michigan automaker wants to drive its truck-making China partner Jiangling Motors Corp (JMC) ( 000550.SZ ) more toward electric commercial vans.Such a move is <20>potentially lucrative<76> as China<6E>s big cities effectively ban gas and diesel trucks and vans, and <20>none of the foreign automakers has made any major investment or strategic move in this emerging electric commercial vehicle segment,<2C> said Yale Zhang, head of Shanghai-based consultancy Automotive Foresight.Sherif Marakby, Ford<72>s vice president of autonomous vehicles and electrification, told Reuters he couldn<64>t comment on specific partnerships that haven<65>t been announced. <20>But we are absolutely open to (EV) partnerships in different markets, and we continue to talk to other companies and Tier One suppliers. Don<6F>t be surprised to see more partnerships in electric vehicles in different markets,<2C> he said.Hackett was scheduled to give a presentation to analysts in New York later on Tuesday.In India, Ford and local automaker Mahindra and Mahindra ( MAHM.NS ) said last month they will launch a strategic alliance in a market shifting to vehicle electrification.CHINA-SPECIFIC In August, Ford said it was considering a joint venture with Anhui Zotye Automobile Co ( 000980.SZ ) to build electric vehicles in China under a new brand, tapping Zotye<79>s low-cost electric-vehicle (EV) technology. One of the insiders said Ford was seeking Chinese regulatory approval for this.It has also brought in Jason Luo, a Chinese-born American, from U.S.-based air bag maker Key Safety Systems to run its China operations. He has been tasked, one of the insiders said, with building closer ties with local partners including JMC and Changan Automobile Co ( 000625.SZ ), working more effectively with regulators, and responding faster to changing consumer tastes.<2E>One big issue at Ford China is our decision-making process is too slow,<2C> one of the knowledgeable insiders said. <20>We try to manage everything, all aspects of the business under <20>One Ford<72>,<2C> and that hobbled the company<6E>s ability to move quickly, costing market share.Ford<72>s China sales are forecast to decline 4.6 percent this year, according to LMC Automotive, a far cry from double-digit growth just five years ago.SLOW LANE Ford has no affordable electric plug-in cars for the Chinese market, despite it being little secret that Beijing planned new quotas for all-electric battery cars and heavily electrified plug-in hybrid vehic
'8f9c5e7281a11c80f43adda08230d9bb115e4e6d'|'Smartphones made in India? Manufacturing ambition hits hurdles'|'FILE PHOTO: An iPhone is seen on display at a kiosk at an Apple reseller store in Mumbai, India, January 12, 2017. Picture taken January 12, 2017. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade/File photo NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India<69>s ambitions to become a smartphone-making powerhouse are foundering over a lack of skilled labour and part suppliers along with a complex tax regime, industry executives say.Prime Minister Narendra Modi has championed a manufacturing drive, under the slogan <20>Make in India<69>, to boost the sluggish economy and create millions of jobs. Among the headline-grabbing details was a plan to eventually make Apple iPhones in India.Three years on, as executives and bureaucrats crowded into a Delhi convention centre for an inaugural mobile congress last week, India has managed only to assemble phones from imported components.While contract manufacturers such as iPhone-maker Foxconn Technology Co and Flextronics Corp have set up base in India, one of the world<6C>s fastest-growing smartphone markets, almost none of the higher value chip sets, cameras and other high-end components are made domestically.Plans for Taiwan-based Foxconn to build an electronics plant in the state of Maharashtra, which local officials said in 2015 could employ some 50,000 people, have gone quiet.According to tech research firm Counterpoint, while phones are assembled domestically because of taxes on imported phones, locally made content in those phones is usually restricted to headphones and chargers - about 5 percent of a device<63>s cost.<2E>Rather than feeling that India is a place where I should be making mobile phones, it<69>s more like this is the place I need to(assemble) phones because there is lower duty if I import components and assemble here,<2C> a senior executive with a Chinese smartphone maker said. He declined to be named for fear of harming business.TAX DISPUTES Others listed the lack of skilled engineers and a sparse network of local component makers. They also cited high-profile tax disputes between India and foreign companies such as Nokia. Nokia eventually suspended mobile handset production at its southern India facility.<2E>The Nokia escapade is in people<6C>s memory when they try to come here,<2C> a second industry source told Reuters at the first Indian Mobile Congress in capital New Delhi, which ended on Friday.India<69>s nationwide sales tax (GST), which kicked in this year to replace a string of different levies, is also fraught with its own challenges, such as a lengthy tax-refund process that delays payments to suppliers, the source added.Last week, India rattled investors after publicly musing about possible changes in a $2.6 billion 2015 diesel locomotive contract with General Electric. The government has since said it would not take any hasty decisions.<2E>We needed some push from the government to start manufacturing,<2C> said Neeraj Sharma, the India head of Chinese chipmaker Spreadtrum. <20>It was required, because without that nothing was happening.<2E>But India now needs more sophisticated technology - such as surface-mounting technology, which places components directly on top of a printed board - to build a supply chain, he said. Otherwise, firms will not do research in India, Sharma said.<2E>For design to happen, we need strong local players.<2E>PHASED PROGRAMME The government says it has a phased programme to manufacture phones, aiming to step up value added locally every year.<2E>While we have made a start with getting in mobile assembling, we want to move up the value chain,<2C> India<69>s telecoms secretary Aruna Sundarajan told reporters. <20>A lot of investors have shown very significant interest in this area.<2E>The Phased Manufacturing Programme began in 2016 with the manufacture of phone chargers and batteries and envisages the production of higher-end components by 2020.Sundarajan said the government was also trying to give investors <20>a reasonable degree of certainty<74>, while also dealing with constant disruption to the industry.But for smartphone makers
'be4e775c7b2deb47142efac72da316f6865b876f'|'Drugs firm AstraZeneca wants three-year Brexit transition'|'October 2, 2017 / 10:02 AM / Updated 4 hours ago Drugs firm AstraZeneca wants three-year Brexit transition Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of AstraZeneca is seen on medication packages in a pharmacy in London, Britain April 28, 2014. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth /File Photo STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - British pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca ( AZN.L ) wants a transition period of at least three years when Britain leaves the European Union in 2019 and more clarity on what will happen in the longer term, its chairman said on Monday. Uncertainty about what Britain<69>s relations with the EU will look like after March 2019 are hurting investment in the world<6C>s fifth largest economy. Businesses most fear a situation where there is no deal at all. AstraZeneca Chairman Leif Johansson said the firm wanted <20>at least three years<72> as a transition period, <20>and very early in that period, we need to know what to expect in years four, five and six,<2C> he said told the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter. British Finance Minister Philip Hammond, speaking during the ruling Conservative Party<74>s annual conference, told BBC radio on Monday that uncertainty was hurting business confidence but said the government<6E>s proposal for a two-year transition would help. [nS8N1JA01C] Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has said the transition period must not last more than two years. Johansson said AstraZeneca, created from a merger between Sweden<65>s Astra and Britain<69>s Zeneca in 1999, did not expect a <20>cliff-edge<67> exit without a deal but said it remained a risk. <20>There is a logic among the political leadership that you just don<6F>t back down until the last minute.<2E> he said. <20>Then, finally, after pulling an all-nighter, you get to a result.<2E> AstraZeneca was preparing for a situation where there was no deal but did not yet have concrete plans, Johansson said. Reporting by Simon Johnson; Editing by Edmund Blair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-euastrazeneca/drugs-firm-astrazeneca-wants-three-year-brexit-transition-idUSKCN1C70ZZ'|'2017-10-02T13:01:00.000+03:00'
'f442b18e92b67151e230261b0850a6c19d5549ba'|'U.S. top court rejects New Zealand-based internet mogul''s appeal'|'Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom talks to members of the media as he leaves the High Court in Auckland February 29, 2012. REUTERS/Simon Watts/Files WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected New Zealand-based internet mogul Kim Dotcom<6F>s challenge to the U.S. government<6E>s bid to seize assets held by him and others involved in the now-defunct streaming website Megaupload.The justices left in place a lower court<72>s ruling that the U.S. government could seize up to $40 million in assets held outside the United States as part of a civil forfeiture action being pursued in parallel to criminal charges for alleged copyright violations and money laundering. Dotcom and several other defendants have contested U.S. attempts to extradite them from New Zealand.Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-court-dotcom/u-s-top-court-rejects-new-zealand-based-internet-moguls-appeal-idINKCN1C71OH'|'2017-10-02T16:39:00.000+03:00'
'0f7e59729d17756c2b87bb98f4c2d4800eb3a520'|'U.S. construction spending rebounds after two straight monthly declines'|'Workers construct mini-bikes at motorcycle and go-kart maker Monster Moto in Ruston, Louisiana January 25, 2017. Picture taken January 25, 2017. REUTERS/Nick Carey WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A measure of U.S. manufacturing activity surged to a near 13-1/2-year high in September as disruptions to the supply chains caused by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma resulted in factories taking longer to deliver goods and boosted raw material prices. Still, details of the Institute for Supply Management<6E>s (ISM) survey on Monday underscored the economy<6D>s underlying momentum, with factories reporting stronger order growth last month. A measure of factory employment hit its highest level since 2011. <20>Much of the gain is presumably linked to the aftereffects of the hurricanes. Nonetheless, manufacturing growth is strong,<2C> said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York. ISM said its index of national factory activity surged to a reading of 60.8 last month, the highest reading since May 2004, from 58.8 in August. A reading above 50 in the ISM index indicates an expansion in manufacturing, which accounts for about 12 percent of the U.S. economy. The ISM said Harvey and Irma had caused supply chain and pricing issues in the chemical products sector. There were also concerns about the disruptive impact of the storms on the food, beverage and tobacco products industries. Manufacturers of nonmetallic mineral products said while the storms were boosting sales, they were also causing significant price increases on input raw materials. As a result, the ISM<53>s supplier deliveries sub-index soared 7.3 points to 64.4 last month. A lengthening in suppliers<72> delivery time is normally associated with increased activity, which is a positive contribution to the ISM index. Related Coverage Morgan Stanley raises U.S. third quarter GDP growth view to 2.8 percent The survey<65>s prices paid sub-index vaulted 9.5 points to 71.5, the highest reading since May 2011. Discounting the hurricanes<65> impact, the outlook for manufacturing remains bullish. Seventeen out of the 18 manufacturing industries reported growth last month. The ISM survey<65>s production sub-index rose 1.2 points to a reading of 62.2 in September and a gauge of new orders jumped to 64.6 in September from 60.3 in August. Single family homes being built by KB Homes are shown under construction in San Diego, California, U.S., April 17, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake LOW INVENTORIES Factories also reported that customers<72> inventories remained at levels considered <20>too low<6F> last month. The ISM said this was an indication that <20>downstream customers continue to operate at a high level of demand that production cannot fully satisfy.<2E> The ISM said its measure of factory employment increased 0.4 point to 60.3, the highest since June 2011. U.S. financial markets viewed the data as supportive of an interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve in December. The U.S. central bank has increased borrowing costs twice this year. The dollar firmed against a basket of currencies, while prices for U.S. Treasuries were largely unchanged. Stocks on Wall Street hovered near record highs. <20>While this is survey sentiment data rather than harder manufacturing production data, it does indicate the economic expansion is very much intact despite the short-term disruptions due to the hurricanes,<2C> said Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West in San Francisco. Harvey and Irma are expected to chop off as much as six-tenths of a percentage point from gross domestic product growth in the third quarter. Harvey, which pummeled Texas at the end of August, has undercut consumer spending and weighed on industrial production, homebuilding and home sales. Further weakness is likely after Irma struck Florida in early September, causing widespread power cuts. The economy grew at a 3.1 percent annualized rate in the second quarter. In separate report on Monday, the Commerce Department said construction spending rose 0.
'bfeedf0d0fe91b98bea9d5973492c8cd01d3942d'|'Walt Disney seeks to raise at least C$750 million in first maple bond issue'|'October 3, 2017 / 2:18 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago Walt Disney aims to raise at least C$750 million in first maple bond issue Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The water tank of The Walt Disney Co Studios is pictured in Burbank, California February 5, 2014. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo TORONTO (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co ( DIS.N ) is seeking to raise at least C$750 million in its first issue of maple bonds, a term sheet seen by Reuters showed, becoming the latest large U.S. corporation to tap this market in recent months. Guidance for the issue by private placement of senior unsecured notes, which will mature on Oct. 7, 2024, has been set at a spread of 84 basis points plus or minus 3 basis points versus the Government of Canada curve, the term sheet showed. Pricing of the proposed offering, which has been rated A2 by Moody<64>s, is expected on Tuesday, a source familiar with the issue said. The Maple bond market, in which foreign companies sell Canadian dollar-denominated debt, has attracted issuance from a number of high profile names this year, including AB InBev, McDonald<6C>s Corp ( MCD.N ) and Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ). Apple priced a C$2.5 billion deal in seven-year bonds in August, setting a record amount for an issuer in the Maple bond market. The deal also tied as the biggest corporate issue in Canada. Market players say that foreign issuers often issue Canadian dollar denominated debt when they can swap the proceeds into U.S. dollars and achieve a cheaper overall borrowing cost. The deal comes after two interest rate hikes by the Bank of Canada in recent months helped push Canadian bond yields higher, attracting interest from global bond investors. Issuers could also be attracted by a pool of domestic buyers hungry to diversify in a Canadian dollar corporate bond market denominated by large financial issuers. Disney intends to use the net proceeds from the sale of the notes for general corporate purposes. Reporting by Fergal Smith; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Susan Thomas '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cananda-bonds-walt-disney/walt-disney-seeks-to-raise-at-least-c750-million-in-first-maple-bond-issue-idUSKCN1C81PM'|'2017-10-03T22:18:00.000+03:00'
'ca8cb68b9f413f4eb2b73ed5486709fe6ee40173'|'PRECIOUS-Gold slips to near 7-week low as dollar firms'|'Oct 3 (Reuters) - Gold edged down to mark a near 7-week low early on Tuesday, as the dollar remained buoyed by upbeat economic data and strong U.S. treasury yields. FUNDAMENTALS * Spot gold was down 0.1 percent at $1,269.50 an ounce by 0101 GMT, after earlier touching its lowest since mid- August at $1,268.60. * U.S. gold futures for December delivery shed 0.3 percent to $1,272.50 per ounce. * The dollar on Tuesday gained 0.3 percent against a basket of major currencies and was up 0.2 percent versus the yen . * A measure of U.S. manufacturing activity surged to a near 13-1/2-year high in September as disruptions to the supply chains caused by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma resulted in factories taking longer to deliver goods and boosted raw material prices. * The White House on Monday ruled out talks with North Korea except to discuss the fate of Americans held there, again appearing to rebuke Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who said Washington was directly communicating with Pyongyang on its nuclear and missile programmes. * The Federal Reserve will need to "look hard" at whether it should raise rates in December, but there is no need to wait for inflation to actually get to, or even begin to rise back to, the Fed''s 2-percent target before doing so, Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan said Monday. * The Fed''s own actions, not transitory factors, are responsible for weak inflation, a Fed policymaker argued on Monday, and the U.S. central bank should wait to raise rates again until inflation hits its 2-percent goal. * Relatively calm market conditions could encourage the European Central Bank to extend its asset purchase scheme for a longer period but with reduced monthly spending, ECB chief economist Peter Praet said on Monday. * Factories across the euro zone enjoyed their most productive month since early 2011 in September, and the momentum looks set to continue into October as new order growth accelerated, a survey showed on Monday. * British manufacturing growth cooled last month as cost pressures lurched higher, according to a survey that could put the Bank of England a step closer to raising interest rates, despite a murky outlook ahead of Brexit. * China''s proven gold reserves reached 12,100 tonnes at the end of 2016, the state news agency Xinhua reported on Monday. * Gold miner Avocet Mining Plc reported a 49 percent drop in first-half revenue as the West Africa-focused company''s gold production declined. DATA/EVENT AHEAD (GMT) 0900 Euro zone Producer prices Aug 1345 U.S. ISM-New York index Sep (Reporting by Apeksha Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Joseph Radford) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/global-precious/precious-gold-slips-to-near-7-week-low-as-dollar-firms-idUSL4N1ME09X'|'2017-10-03T04:21:00.000+03:00'
'eedaee07a47c04a8d3a1c000e5d2128c9bc15cc1'|'Greece targets faster growth, bigger primary surplus in 2018 draft budget'|'An one Euro coin is displayed on Greek Drachma banknote in this picture illustration taken in Istanbul June 14, 2012. REUTERS/Murad Sezer/Files ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece expects economic recovery to gain pace next year when it aims to exit its bailout, the government<6E>s draft budget showed on Monday, projecting that stronger growth will help it attain a bigger primary surplus and reduce unemployment.Greece has only recently begun to emerge from a multi-year recession that wiped out about a quarter of its economy and drove unemployment to nearly 28 percent.<2E>This is the last budget under bailouts,<2C> said Deputy Finance Minister George Chouliarakis as he handed the draft budget to the speaker of the parliament.The country<72>s leftist-led government sees the economy growing by 2.4 percent next year, picking up from a projected 1.8 percent expansion in 2017, according to the draft budget.Unemployment is seen easing to 19 percent from 21.1 percent in the second quarter, but still double the euro zone<6E>s current average of 9.1 percent.On the fiscal front, Athens aims for an ambitious primary budget surplus of 3.57 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), excluding debt servicing outlays, slightly above what it has agreed with its official creditors.Based on the budget, the government expects to outperform this year<61>s 1.75-percent-of-GDP primary surplus target, projecting that it will close the year with a 2.2 percent surplus.Athens signed up to an international bailout in mid-2015 - its third since 2010. The government aims to have fully regained access to bond markets by next August, when the programme ends.The draft budget, which will be scrutinised by Greece<63>s official lenders later this month when they are due to begin a bailout review, sees public debt reaching 175.6 percent of GDP, edging up from 176.8 percent this year.Greece plans new bond issues in 2018, including an exchange of bonds issued under a previous debt writedown in 2012 with new ones.Debt relief measures expected to be specified in the coming period would be crucial to making the country<72>s debt burden manageable, according to the budget draft, which was prepared by Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos.<2E>These measures primarily aim at mitigating the present interest rate risk with optimal forecasts of future servicing costs, to enable the continuation of issues on international markets,<2C> it said.Additional reporting by Michele Kambas and Renee Maltezou; Editing by Susan Fenton '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/eurozone-greece-budget/greece-targets-faster-growth-bigger-primary-surplus-in-2018-draft-budget-idINKCN1C71SV'|'2017-10-02T12:26:00.000+03:00'
'6c1bc7c8e7803b1797d080b54b93def10f03ca90'|'OMERS buys landmark Berlin property Sony Center for 1.1 bln eur'|'FRANKFURT, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Canadian pension fund OMERS and U.S. buyout group Madison are acquiring Berlin<69>s landmark property Sony Center from Korea<65>s national pension fund NPS for 1.1 billion euros ($1.3 billion), the companies said on Monday.The eight buildings at Berlin<69>s central square Potsdamer Platz include BahnTower, the headquarters of national railway company Deutsche Bahn, as well as office and retail space used by tenants such as Sony, Sanofi, Facebook and WeWork. They also house cinemas and residential units.NPS had bought the property for $767 million from Morgan Stanley in 2010.Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) will acquire the property through its Oxford Properties unit, which recently invested in Paris<69> La Defense district and after the Berlin deal will have 2.3 billion in continental European investments. Most of its other assets are located in London.The acquisition is set to be completed in the fourth quarter. ($1 = 0.8516 euros) (Reporting by Arno Schuetze; Editing by Ludwig Burger) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/omers-sony/brief-omers-unit-madison-intl-buy-sony-center-berlin-for-1-1-bln-euros-idINL8N1MD17S'|'2017-10-02T05:10:00.000+03:00'
'e725a2142abe1026c068fd0d07c9fca3dc170a01'|'Uber<65>s path to win back London - data, fines and fees'|'October 2, 2017 / 5:04 AM / Updated 7 hours ago Uber<65>s path to win back London - data, fines and fees Paresh Dave 6 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A photo illustration shows the Uber app on a mobile telephone, as it is held up for a posed photograph in central London, Britain September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville (Reuters) - If history is a guide, Uber Technologies new Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi is likely to dangle data sharing and a promise to pay fines and fees when he sits down with London officials to negotiate the ride service<63>s future in one of its most important markets. From the Philippines to Portland, Oregon, the strategy has worked time and time again for the San Francisco company. London transportation officials last month deemed Uber [UBER.UL] unfit to operate because of lax corporate responsibility. The move threatens an Uber stronghold at a time when Khosrowshahi is trying to salvage the company<6E>s reputation after a series of scandals. Police have complained that Uber was not disclosing or taking too long to report serious crimes tied to its rides, and London mayor Sadiq Khan backed the decision to pull Uber<65>s licence. Khosrowshahi already offered a contrite public response, which is unusual for Uber, in an open-letter apology to Londoners <20>for the mistakes we<77>ve made.<2E> He<48>s also armed with local support: more than 840,000 Londoners have signed an Uber petition urging city to reconsider its decision. Khosrowshahi is scheduled to meet on Tuesday with Transport for London Commissioner Mike Brown. A deal would be a big victory for the new Uber leader, and securing a surcharge or new data on drivers could be a win for Khan, Uber<65>s highest profile critic and chair of the regulator. Uber has been willing to pay fines and institute fees in local disputes around the world. But when pressed, it has also shut down in several markets to protest measures that it says slow the service for customers or hinder driver recruitment. As recently as last week, Uber said it would pull out of Quebec rather than agree to 35 hours of training for drivers. Uber declined to comment on London bargaining tactics. It has said it wants to work with the city <20>to make things right.<2E> There is no certainty of a deal, and neither side has portrayed the Tuesday meeting as a negotiations. But with the stake so high <20> 3.5 million customers won over by price and convenience have made it Uber<65>s biggest European market <20> a deal for both sides makes sense. <20>The mayor just wants to get something to show constituents upset with Uber some action,<2C> said Bruce Shaller, a former New York City transport official who has authored a book on ride-hailing apps. <20>Transport for London would look unreasonable to let Uber walk away.<2E> DATA DEALS Uber is often described as a <20>big data<74> company that thrives because it can match customer needs to driver availability, predicting where cars will be needed and dynamically tailoring fares based on expected demand. Though it has been loathe to share information for privacy and business reasons, awarding limited data access to cities has solved several standoffs. When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to limit the number of Uber cars in the city to clear up traffic, the company released data that helped show congestion would persist and agreed to give the city ongoing data such as the location and time of pickups. Uber also launched a personal and public campaign in New York against the mayor, similar to the London petition but with criticism aimed directly at de Blasio. De Blasio dropped the proposal. Portland, Oregon let Uber back into the city in 2015 after a similar promise of trip data - and a fee of 50 cents per ride to pay for oversight. The information helps the city check compliance with requirements such as 24-hour, citywide service. <20>We<57>ve been able to use data from the company and the resources from the rides<65> fees to create a regulatory scheme that is robust,<2C> said Brendan Finn, chief of staff to Port
'4d742061cfca2921caedafb23f614c9bc2ac9572'|'Laredo to sell Permian pipeline unit stake for $825 million'|'(Reuters) - Oil and gas producer Laredo Petroleum ( LPI.N ) said on Monday it would sell its stake in a Permian pipeline unit for $825 million, lower than some industry estimates and prodding the company<6E>s shares down nearly 8 percent.Laredo and private equity firm Energy & Minerals Group said they would sell the unit, Medallion Gathering & Processing LLC, for $1.83 billion to infrastructure fund Global Infrastructure Partners.Williams Capital Group analyst Gabriele Sorbara said Laredo<64>s estimated net proceeds of $825 million missed the brokerage<67>s expectation of $892 million and Wall Street<65>s expectations of as much as $1.25 billion.Medallion Gathering is the largest privately-held crude oil transportation systems in the Midland basin, located in the east of the oil-rich Permian basin in West Texas, and has more than 800 miles of pipelines.Laredo had said in July it was planning to sell the unit, in which it has a 49 percent stake, with Energy & Minerals Group owning the rest.Pipeline companies such as Plains All American Pipeline LP ( PAA.N ) and Kinder Morgan Inc ( KMI.N ) have also signed deals for assets in the Permian as oil producers make a beeline for the biggest shale play in the United States.Laredo, which made it first investment in the unit in late 2013, said the $825 million proceeds is more than three times its invested capital and equivalent to an internal rate of return of more than 65 percent. ( bit.ly/2fCsC0k )The company said it expects the deal will not impact its cost structure. It plans to use the proceeds to mainly pay down debt and estimated the interest savings to help it become cash-flow neutral by the end of 2019.Medallion had Jefferies LLC and Wells Fargo Securities LLC as financial advisers and Locke Lord LLP as its legal counsel.Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP is Laredo<64>s legal counsel and Global Infrastructure Partners was advised by White & Case LLP.Reporting by John Benny in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Savio D''Souza '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-laredo-petroleum-divestiture/laredo-and-energy-minerals-to-sell-pipeline-unit-for-1-83-billion-idINKCN1C71GW'|'2017-10-02T10:30:00.000+03:00'
'32d27361047c169be062b8e7e996ad75c15c61b2'|'Saudi''s Savola Group in talks to buy confectionery maker for $300 mln-sources'|'DUBAI, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Savola Group,, Saudi Arabia<69>s largest food products company, is in talks to buy sweets and confectionery maker Sanabel Al-Salam in a deal worth $300 million, sources told Reuters.Savola, which owns supermarket chain Panda, is keen to increase the quality and variety of its sweets offering, said the sources, who declined to be named as the matter was not public.Talks between Savola and Sanabel Al-Salam<61>s shareholders could still falter and there<72>s no certainty a deal will be reached, the sources said.<2E>Adding Sanabel Al-Salam to Savola<6C>s portfolio signals the company is hoping to expand, and improve its retail portfolio, and will also help eliminate some competition with its Panda bakery unit,<2C> said one source.Savola and Sanabel Al-Salam were not available for immediate comment.The confectioner has 104 branches across the kingdom and a catering unit. It is owned jointly by Dubai-based NBK Capital Partners, the private equity arm of National Bank of Kuwait , and Dr. Saleh Bin Nasser AlFarhan, who founded the company in 1995.Saudi retailers have been hit by lower consumer spending because of low oil prices and government austerity policies.Savola reported a 96 percent drop in first quarter profit. Second quarter declined 9.5 percent even after a one off gain of 62 million riyals from the sale of a panda store in Dubai.Savola sold two percent of its shareholding in dairy producer Almarai in a deal worth 1.12 billion riyals last month. The transaction will produce 694 million riyals of profit for the company.Editing by Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/sanabel-al-salam-ma-savola/saudis-savola-group-in-talks-to-buy-confectionery-maker-for-300-mln-sources-idINL8N1MC0S3'|'2017-10-02T07:38:00.000+03:00'
'257f5663cbb9c37df2a31399052ab967be8e1e9e'|'Oil prices lower after strong third quarter as September OPEC output rises'|'October 2, 2017 / 1:35 AM / in 22 minutes Oil prices lower after strong third quarter as Sept. OPEC output rises Aaron Sheldrick 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: An oil pump jack pumps oil in a field near Calgary, Alberta, Canada July 21, 2014. REUTERS/Todd Korol/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Oil prices fell on Monday, pausing for breath after posting gains of as much as 20 percent in the third quarter, after a survey pointed to a slight increase in OPEC production in September. U.S. crude CLc1 was down 13 cents, or 0.3 percent, at $51.54 a barrel at 0346 GMT. The U.S. benchmark on Friday posted its strongest quarterly gain since the second quarter of 2016 and the longest streak of weekly gains since January. Global benchmark Brent crude for December delivery LCOc1 was down 22 cents, or 0.4 percent, at $56.57 a barrel. On Friday, Brent for November delivery closed 13 cents higher at $57.54 a barrel, notching up a third-quarter gain of around 20 percent, the biggest gain in five quarters. It was the biggest third-quarter increase since 2004. The contract reached its highest in more than two years early last week, and posted its fifth consecutive weekly gain. It was Brent<6E>s longest weekly bull run since June 2016. The price gains have been supported by anticipated demand from U.S. refiners resuming operations after shutdowns due to Hurricane Harvey, but a quick resumption of shale production could put a dampener on prices. <20>U.S. production should be soft over August and September, due to Hurricane-related shut-ins but should rebound<6E> in the fourth quarter, Barclays Research said in a note. Oil output from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) also rose last month, gaining by 50,000 barrels per day (bpd), a Reuters survey found. Iraqi exports increased and production edged higher in Libya, one of the OPEC producers exempt from a deal to curb output and support prices. Middle Eastern oil producers are concerned the recent price rise will only stir U.S. shale producers into more drilling and push prices lower again. U.S. energy companies added oil rigs for the first week in seven after a 14-month drilling recovery stalled in August, energy services firm Baker Hughes said on Friday. Drillers added six oil rigs in the week to Sept. 29, bringing the total count up to 750. Hedge funds and other money managers raised their net long positions in U.S. crude futures and options in the week to Sept. 26, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) reported on Friday. Managed money net long positions rose by 43,496 contracts to 251,788 contracts, the most since the week of Aug. 22, the CFTC said. Reporting by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Richard Pullin and Christian Schmollinger'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil/oil-prices-edge-lower-after-strong-third-quarter-idUKKCN1C7025'|'2017-10-02T07:22:00.000+03:00'
'179c5a5e999b27a24541f94861be15f846ae612c'|'Oil prices edge lower after strong third-quarter'|'October 2, 2017 / 1:34 AM / Updated an hour ago Oil prices edge lower after strong third-quarter Reuters Staff 2   An oil pump jack pumps oil in a field near Calgary, Alberta, Canada July 21, 2014. REUTERS/Todd Korol/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Oil prices edged lower on Monday in early Asian trading, pausing for breath after posting gains of as much as 20 percent in the third quarter, after a survey pointed to a slight increase in OPEC production in September. U.S. crude CLc1 was down 2 cents at $51.65 a barrel at 0057 GMT. The U.S. benchmark on Friday posted its strongest quarterly gain since the second quarter of 2016 and the longest streak of weekly gains since January. Global benchmark, Brent crude for December delivery, LCOc1 was down 6 cents at $56.73 a barrel. On Friday, Brent for November delivery closed 13 cents higher at $57.54 a barrel, notching up a third-quarter gain of around 20 percent, the biggest gain in five quarters. It was the biggest third-quarter increase since 2004. The contract reached its highest in more than two years early last week, and posted   weekly gain. It was Brent<6E>s longest weekly bull run since June 2016. The price gains have been supported by anticipated demand from U.S. refiners resuming operations after shutdowns due to Hurricane Harvey. But oil output from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) rose last month by 50,000 barrels per day (bpd), a Reuters survey found, as Iraqi exports increased and production edged higher in Libya, one of the producers exempt from a deal to curb output and support prices. Middle Eastern oil producers are concerned the recent price rise will only stir U.S. shale producers into more drilling and push prices lower again. U.S. energy companies added oil rigs for the first week in seven after a 14-month drilling recovery stalled in August, energy services firm Baker Hughes said on Friday. Drillers added six oil rigs in the week to Sept. 29, bringing the total count up to 750. Reporting by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Richard Pullin'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-oil/oil-prices-edge-lower-after-strong-third-quarter-idUKKCN1C7029'|'2017-10-02T04:35:00.000+03:00'
'06869e729931858a7ce94d2b8eedbe0a5039d99e'|'Russia''s Gazprom aims for 10 percent of China gas market after 2025'|'The logo of Russian gas giant Gazprom is seen on a board at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2017 (SPIEF 2017) in St. Petersburg, Russia, June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Russia<69>s biggest natural gas producer Gazprom aims to take a 10 percent share of the Chinese gas market after 2025, a company executive told an energy conference on Wednesday.Gazprom said earlier this year it planned to begin supplying gas to China through Siberia on Dec. 20, 2019.Reporting by Oksana Kobzeva; Writing by Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-russia-gazprom-china/russias-gazprom-aims-for-10-percent-of-china-gas-market-after-2025-idINKCN1C90NI'|'2017-10-04T05:26:00.000+03:00'
'45f9cdc0327eea8f4f7313d3d7aa5bde85a4160f'|'Monarch Alternative Capital sees 30 percent upside for Toshiba shares'|'October 3, 2017 / 10:03 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Monarch Alternative Capital sees 30 percent upside for Toshiba shares Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A logo of Toshiba Corp is seen outside an electronics retail store in Tokyo, Japan, February 14, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Monarch Alternative Capital recommended buying Japan<61>s Toshiba Corp ( 6502.T ), saying the company<6E>s shares have at least a 30 percent upside. Andrew Herenstein, Monarch<63>s chief investment officer, said on Tuesday the market is overestimating the risk of Toshiba being delisted next year, creating an overhang for the stock, which is trading at 310 yen. Investors are also incorrectly assessing the liabilities of Toshiba<62>s Westinghouse Electric nuclear energy business, Herenstein said at the Sohn Conference in Tel Aviv. Reporting by Steven Scheer '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-funds-sohn-monarch/monarch-alternative-capital-sees-30-percent-upside-for-toshiba-shares-idINKCN1C80XD'|'2017-10-03T08:03:00.000+03:00'
'e7ecd665df047d66a1fa384a809d488d65f4c149'|'Monarch boss absolutely devastated after airline''s sudden collapse'|'LONDON, Oct 3 (Reuters) - The boss of Monarch Airlines said he was <20>absolutely devastated<65> by the failure of Britain<69>s fifth largest carrier which wrecked the holiday plans of hundreds of thousands of tourists and left most of its staff out of work.The collapse of the airline was a result of higher competition and lower prices in Spain and Portugal due to security concerns in other holiday destinations, Chief Executive Andrew Swaffield told BBC radio in an interview.<2E>Yesterday was a heartbreaking day. 2,000 people lost their jobs, and we<77>re all absolutely devastated for the customers and for all of us. It<49>s been a great family in Monarch,<2C> he said.In operation since 1968, the airline was owned by investment group Greybull Capital which had kept it going with a 165 million pound ($219 million) injection last October.Around 90 percent of the staff from Monarch Airlines and Monarch Travel Group were made redundant. Maintenance repair wing Monarch Aircraft Engineering is not in administration and was unaffected.The decision to cease trading was taken late on Saturday night, Swaffield said. While rivals such as Air Berlin and Alitalia have continued to operate after going into administration, this was not an option for the British carrier.<2E>The UK<55>s insolvency framework doesn<73>t allow airlines to continue flying, unlike in Germany or Italy,<2C> he said.He said the decision was taken as the airline was projected to lose <20>well over 100 million pounds<64> over the next year.<2E>We couldn<64>t figure out a way of reducing those losses significantly, either by selling the short haul airline or by improving it,<2C> Swaffield said, adding that he was working to help staff find jobs elsewhere.The abrupt failure of the carrier left 110,000 passengers abroad with no Monarch flights to take them home.Britain<69>s Civil Aviation Authority said that on Monday it operated around 60 flights to bring back nearly 12,000 customers, with a similar number of passengers due to be brought back on Tuesday.A further 750,000 future bookings with Monarch were cancelled, and now planes that were meant to be used by Monarch will need to find new destinations.Asia<69>s second-biggest aircraft lessor, BOC Aviation Ltd , said on Tuesday it was working to find new homes for 13 Boeing Co 737 MAX 8 aircraft it had planned to lease to the collapsed British carrier. ($1 = 0.7546 pounds) (Reporting by Alistair Smout; Additional reporting by Jamie Freed in Singapore; Editing by Keith Weir) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/monarch-airlines-licence/monarch-boss-absolutely-devastated-after-airlines-sudden-collapse-idINL8N1ME1FG'|'2017-10-03T07:08:00.000+03:00'
'60d9d79cdf8e0bd19753b776c89bf448972306c7'|'MessageBird in biggest early-stage funding for European software firm'|'October 3, 2017 / 2:06 PM / Updated 4 hours ago MessageBird in biggest early-stage funding for European software firm Toby Sterling , Eric Auchard 3 Min Read Robert Vis, founder and chief executive of messaging application software maker MessageBird, is pictured at the company''s headquarters in Amsterdam, Netherlands September 29, 2017. MessageBird/Handout/via REUTERS AMSTERDAM/LONDON (Reuters) - Dutch start-up messaging company MessageBird has landed $60 million in first-round funding, the largest ever early-stage venture capital investment into a European software company. MessageBird helps 15,000 organizations send messages or communicate with customers via chat, voice or video. Clients range from companies such as Uber, SAP and Heineken, to governments and semi-public organizations that use it for emergency messages and medical appointment notifications. The Amsterdam-based firm competes in the fast-growing cloud-based messaging market with more than a dozen firms, including Twilio, Blackberry, Nexmo and Urban Airship. The unusually large first round fundraising is due to the company having had almost no outside investment since it was founded in 2011, which forced it to be profitable from the start. It expects to generate revenue of $100 million in 2017. <20>We have been growing about 100 percent a year for a couple of years now,<2C> Robert Vis, MessageBird<72>s 33-year-old founder and chief executive, said in an interview. <20>We are always looking at how to sustain that<61>. The so-called <20>Series A<> funding round of $60 million was led by Accel Partners of Silicon Valley and joined by Atomico, a top European venture firm, along with seed stage investor Y-Combinator. COMPETITION Robert Vis, founder and chief executive of messaging application software maker MessageBird, is pictured at the company''s headquarters in Amsterdam, Netherlands September 29, 2017. MessageBird/Handout/via REUTERS Messaging software makers face mounting competition including from broad-based cloud services providers such as Microsoft, Cisco, and Amazon, which earlier this year introduced its Connect embedded telephone services at prices one analyst estimated at about 40 percent lower than Twilio<69>s. What sets MessageBird apart is that it has forged deals and built interfaces with 220 telecom carriers worldwide, making it the only similar platform running on telecoms carrier-grade infrastructure rather than over the internet. This allows it to speed delivery and guarantee quality of messages at lower costs. <20>Until MessageBird, no one in the space had successfully built the relationships and technology at scale to directly (connect into) telecommunications carriers around the world,<2C> said Atomico Partner Hiro Tamura, who will join the company<6E>s board. Robert Vis, founder and chief executive of messaging application software maker MessageBird, is pictured in the company''s headquarters in Amsterdam, Netherlands September 29, 2017. MessageBird/Handout/via REUTERS Its services can reach billions of mobile phones, it said. MessageBird said it planned to use the funding to accelerate hiring and target new customers and small acquisitions in the United States, Europe and Asia. With 75 employees, up from 25 in 2015, MessageBird generates more than $1 million in revenue per employee, <20>something of a magic number for us,<2C> Vis said. Vis said the funding would also raise its profile and bolster its balance sheet, both of which will reassure high-value potential customers such as banks of its staying power. Despite having many of the business and financial metrics that have led rivals such as Twilio to stock market flotations, Vis said he has no intention to seek an IPO <20>for years to come.<2E> Reporting by Eric Auchard and Toby Sterling; Editing by Mark Potter '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-europe-venturecapital-messagebird/messagebird-in-biggest-early-stage-funding-for-european-software-firm-idINKCN
'f9a6e689b2b962871c83a2704b364a4cbab569ee'|'China<6E>s emissions trading scheme puts Australian companies on notice - Guardian Sustainable Business - The Guardian'|'F or a brief and shining moment in 2012, Australia was at the global forefront of climate change action, as one of the first countries to implement a carbon pricing mechanism. It lasted only two years, and was repealed amid much fanfare by the Abbott government in July 2014.During its time, Australian companies and industries exposed to the carbon pricing mechanism took a long hard look at the emissions liabilities embedded within their supply chains and worked to reduce them.Barely three years later, Australia is in danger of being the kid that gets picked last for the soccer team. With China set to launch its national emissions trading scheme (ETS) before the end of the year, and several other Asia-Pacific nations either doing the same or already in the game, so-called <20>carbon clubs<62> are forming and Australia isn<73>t invited.So what will it mean for Australian companies when our biggest trading partner <20> China <20> introduces their ETS?<3F>Our energy-intensive exports sit directly in the supply chain of the world<6C>s largest carbon market, where their customers are going to have a liability around the carbon price,<2C> says Peter Castellas, chief executive of the Carbon Market Institute. <20>That will send a market signal of real significance.<2E>No wonder the government tries to hide its emissions reports. They stink - Greg Jericho Read more Supply chain emissions <20> known as Scope 3 emissions under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol <20> refers to those generated outside the direct control of a business. These could be from the extraction and production of products purchased by the business, third-party transport and distribution, and the end use of its products . For many companies, these Scope 3 emissions are likely to be the largest part of their carbon emissions , compared to those generated by the company itself. For example, US company Kraft Foods found its Scope 3 emissions represented more than 90% of its total emissions (pdf).Supply chain emissions are already being targeted by many multinationals around the world; US retail giant Walmart recently asked its suppliers to help it achieve their goal of removing one gigatonne of carbon dioxide from its Scope 3 supply chain sources by 2030 . Chinese companies operating under an ETS may well undertake similar initiatives to reduce their carbon footprint, which could put Australian companies in that supply chain under pressure.The recent announcement has added a few more details to the scope of the scheme. Chinese government adviser Zhang Xiliang from Tsinghua University told the AFR that it will begin with power generators and expand to encompass eight key sectors by 2020, including steel making and aluminium.How Australia bungled climate policy to create a decade of disappointment - Mark Butler Read more The national scheme was first announced by Chinese president Xi Jinping in September 2015, during a visit by then-US president Barack Obama. At that time, China had been testing the waters since 2013 with pilot schemes in seven cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and Shenzen .Incorporating power generation into the scheme is another step in China<6E>s ongoing shift to a low carbon energy mix. It also raises further questions over the future of Australia<69>s coal exports to China, worth $4.2bn in 2015 .<2E>Anyone exporting coal to China needs to be worried; they should simply expect that China will not import coal,<2C> says Prof Frank Jotzo, director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at the Australian National University.However Tom Luckock, partner in law firm Norton Rose Fulbright<68>s Beijing office, says China has been moving away from coal-fired power long before the national ETS was announced.<2E>China has and uses a number of tools to control emissions and it has done so very successfully for a number of years, and in many cases they will have a much larger impact than a carbon market,<2C> Luckock says.<2E>If you combine an ET
'4bec1701b1eba515fb277f70779b6f2f03b2a1d4'|'MOVES-Chubb names new management for global life, general insurance ops'|'October 3, 2017 / 9:19 PM / in 4 hours MOVES-Chubb names new management for global life, general insurance ops Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 3 (Reuters) - Property and casualty insurer Chubb Ltd on Tuesday appointed Cunqiang Li as chief operating officer of Chubb Life, the company<6E>s international life insurance division. Chris Martin has been appointed COO of the company<6E>s combined insurance business, while Jeff Hager has been named COO of the Pacific region, Chubb said. Li is currently chairman and chief executive of Huatai Life, a joint venture between Chubb and the Huatai Insurance Group in China. Martin is currently president of Chubb<62>s workplace benefits unit. Hager is currently regional president, Far East, Chubb said. Reporting by Munsif Vengattil '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/chubb-ltd-ch-moves-cunqiangli/moves-chubb-names-new-management-for-global-life-general-insurance-ops-idUSL4N1ME3KZ'|'2017-10-04T00:16:00.000+03:00'
'edc00d407806d52eb3d3515577bcb751e9299ac3'|'UPDATE 1-Mexico''s Pemex gains two new partners for onshore tie-ups'|'(Recasts with auction winners, Quote: s, details on areas)By David Alire GarciaMEXICO CITY, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Two foreign oil companies on Wednesday won the rights to partner with Mexico<63>s oil company Pemex on two onshore blocks, a first since landmark energy reform, while a third offshore area received no bids.The auction was run by the National Hydrocarbons Commission, the industry regulator, and marks only the second time partnership rights for Pemex projects have been made available.Egypt<70>s Cheiron Holdings Limited and Germany<6E>s DEA Deutsche Erdoel won the rights to partner with Petr<74>leos Mexicanos, commonly known as Pemex, on its Cardenas-Mora and Ogarrio blocks, respectively, which officials touted as a way to quickly boost production via new investment.<2E>This underscores the beauty of the energy reform,<2C> said Pemex Chief Executive Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya shortly after the auction.<2E>Before, we would have to invest everything and now we only have to pay half and we receive a payment to be able to meet those costs,<2C> he said.Mexico<63>s 2013 constitutional reform ended Pemex<65>s decades-long production monopoly. It also allowed the company to enter into joint ventures with equity partners for the first time in a bid to help reverse more than a dozen years of declining output.The onshore Cardenas-Mora area, a 65-square-mile (168 sq km) block in southern Tabasco state is believed to contain some 93 million barrels of mostly light crude. Pemex will receive a $125 million payment from Cheiron reflecting the company<6E>s past investments in the area, Pemex said in a statement.Cheiron also agreed to pay Pemex another $41 million on top of the 13 percent additional royalty it bid for the partnerships rights, Pemex said.The Cardenas-Mora project is seen requiring a total of $1.1 billion to successfully develop over the life of the contract, while the Ogarrio project is seen requiring some $490 million, according to Pemex estimates.<2E>We<57>re extremely happy, and we<77>re looking forward to this opportunity,<2C> said Shady Kabel, Cheiron<6F>s country manager for Mexico.In the case of the Ogarrio area, a 60-square mile (156 sq km) field also in Tabasco estimated to contain 54 million barrels in mostly light crude, Pemex will receive $190 million from DEA Deutsche, Pemex said in a statement.The German company also offered to pay a record-setting $213.9 million for the partnership rights on top of the 13 percent additional royalty, a sum that will be divided between Pemex and the government<6E>s petroleum fund, said Martin Alvarez, an official at the National Hydrocarbons Commission.A third joint venture for the shallow water Ayin-Batsil block received no bids, which Gonzalez Anaya attributed to the complexity of the project.He also said Pemex would review the $250 million that Pemex calculated as its past investment in the area, a figure a potential partner would have had to reimburse and might have curtailed interest in the project.Both Cheiron and DEA Deutsche will operate the projects under license contracts with a 50 percent stake while Pemex will retain the remaining half.Pemex<65>s chief executive said he expected Ogarrio<69>s oil output to reach as much as 14,000 barrels per day (bpd) from about 10,000 bpd currently over the next year, while Cardenas-Mora<72>s production should increase to 14,000 bpd by 2020 from about 10,000 bpd.Late last year, Pemex<65>s first joint venture partnership was won by Australia<69>s BHP Billiton, which took a 60 percent operating interest in the deepwater Trion project, a development seen requiring some $11 billion over the life of the contract. (Reporting by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Dave Graham and Grant McCool) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mexico-oil/update-1-mexicos-pemex-gains-two-new-partners-for-onshore-tie-ups-idINL2N1MF1UA'|'2017-10-04T20:53:00.000+03:00'
'6228c83f46fd48a82ebc73ed266f31b17404454b'|'Factbox - Impact on banks from Britain''s vote to leave the EU'|'October 5, 2017 / 11:23 AM / in 6 hours Factbox - Impact on banks from Britain''s vote to leave the EU Reuters Staff 13 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A security camera is seen near a Barclay bank office at Canary Wharf in London, Britain May 19, 2015. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett (Reuters) - Global banks have said they could move thousands of jobs out of Britain to prepare for the country<72>s planned exit from the European Union. Financial service companies need a regulated subsidiary in an EU country to offer products across the bloc, which could prompt some to move some operations out of Britain if it loses access to the European single market. Around 10,000 finance jobs will be shifted out of Britain or created overseas in the next few years if the UK is denied access to the single market, a Reuters survey of firms employing the bulk of workers in international finance shows. Following are related stories about top banks (in alphabetical order): ASSOCIATION OF FOREIGN BANKS IN GERMANY The association expects 3,000 to 5,000 new jobs in Frankfurt over the next two years as a result of Brexit, its head Stefan Winter, of UBS, told Welt am Sonntag in June. He said he expected 12 to 14 major banks to expand their Frankfurt sites significantly or build new ones. BANK OF AMERICA CORP Bank of America ( BAC.N ) named former CFO Bruce Thompson as the new leader of its European global banking and markets operations to be based in Dublin, according to a company memo from Chief Operating Officer Tom Montag. Bank of America is looking to lease more office space in Paris as the bank prepares to expand its operations in the French capital to cope with the impact of Brexit, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The bank has already said it has picked Dublin as the new legal headquarters for its EU operations. Bank of America said in August that its businesses and results could be adversely affected and it may have to incur additional costs if Brexit limited the ability of its UK entities to conduct business in the EU. BARCLAYS Barclays ( BARC.L ) has signed a lease agreement for more office space in Dublin as it prepares to expand its operations there to cope with the impact of Brexit. It said in July that it was talking with Irish regulators about extending its activities in Dublin. Chief Executive Jes Staley has said that Barclays will keep the bulk of its activities in Britain and any changes to how the bank operates would be small and manageable. BNP PARIBAS BNP Paribas ( BNPP.PA ) may move up to 300 London investment bank staff because of Brexit, depending how clients adapt and the French bank<6E>s efforts to win new UK business, a source said. The company had 3,123 staff in its corporate and institutional bank in Britain at end-2016, down from 3,294 a year earlier, internal documents seen by Reuters showed. CITIGROUP Citigroup ( C.N ) is applying for a licence to conduct sales and trading activities in France, James Cowles, Citi<74>s chief executive for Europe, the Middle East & Africa (EMEA) told a French newspaper. Citigroup has said it may need to create 150 new jobs in the EU and confirmed it would headquarter its EU trading operations in Frankfurt. The U.S. bank is also at an advanced stage in plans to move part of its private banking unit from London to Madrid, a source familiar with the matter said. CREDIT AGRICOLE Credit Agricole ( CAGR.PA ), France<63>s third-biggest listed bank, could relocate about 100 employees from its London hub to France out of 1,000 based there in the case of a <20>hard<72> Brexit, its chief executive said. Credit Agricole is to move its European government bonds trading platform from London to Paris in September 2017, a spokeswoman told Reuters. CREDIT SUISSE Credit Suisse<73>s ( CSGN.S ) Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam said in September that his bank is relatively well placed to deal with Brexit and that only 15-20 percent of volumes in the investment bank would be affected. DAIWA SECURITIES GROUP Japan<61>s No
'fc7cd12f77a12c57a8e16cf72de0c4f7bbfcc542'|'European airline failures play into hands of richer rivals'|'October 2, 2017 / 4:56 PM / in 2 hours European airline failures play into hands of richer rivals Victoria Bryan 6 Min Read Monarch aircraft are seen parked after the airline ceased trading, at Luton airport in Britain, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner BERLIN (Reuters) - First Alitalia, then Air Berlin and now Monarch Airlines: Europe<70>s struggling carriers are falling like dominoes and the region<6F>s biggest airlines are set to chalk up bigger profits. The collapse of airlines gives rivals a chance to snap up planes, prized airport slots and much-needed pilots. It takes airplane seats out of the market, allowing airlines still flying to nudge prices higher and lift some of the pressure on yields that has plagued the industry for several years. The shake-out this year is also seen as the start of more far-reaching industry consolidation that is expected to whittle the number of European airlines down to numbers more on a par with North America - putting the survivors in a position to boost profitability to levels seen across the Atlantic. <20>The rationalization of financially inefficient capacity is good for the industry as a whole,<2C> Liberum analyst Gerald Khoo said. Expectations that the challenging environment for large, traditional European airlines is starting to ease has helped their shares outperform rivals and other sectors. So far in 2017, shares in Germany<6E>s Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) shares are up 98 percent, Air France-KLM ( AIRF.PA ) has surged 163 percent and British Airways parent IAG ( ICAG.L ) is 38 percent higher. Those airlines have started to talk about a turnaround in ticket price trends as fewer seats are added to the market, and the collapse of a third carrier this year is likely to help even more. HSBC analyst Andrew Lobbenberg said the European short-haul market would grow just 3.2 percent this winter after stripping out Monarch [MONA.UL], Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ), Alitalia [CAITLA.UL] and Ryanair<69>s ( RYA.I ) canceled flights. Previously, growth had been expected to be 7.3 percent. <20>The present circumstances will be trying for Monarch staff, management and passengers, let alone former shareholders. Yet its exit will be supportive for industry unit revenues,<2C> Lobbenberg wrote in a note. MARKET SHARE Despite efforts by Brussels to liberalize Europe<70>s airline industry 25 years ago it has lagged North America in terms of consolidation, where nine major airlines became five in the decade to 2015. While Lufthansa and IAG have driven some consolidation, the top four airlines in Europe only account for 49 percent of the short-haul market whereas the top four in North America control 70 percent. The different market dynamic is reflected in profitability. North American carriers are expected to post a net profit margin of 7.2 percent this year compared with 3.7 percent in Europe, industry body IATA said in June. FILE PHOTO: An aircraft operated by German carrier Air Berlin lands in Berlin''s Tegel airport, Germany, August 23, 2017. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch/File Photo European rules restricting non-EU investors to owning less than 50 percent of carriers have limited the pool of investors willing to take part in consolidation. Lower oil prices since the collapse in crude in 2014 have also helped shield some financially weaker airlines in Europe. Still, Ryanair CEO Michael O<>Leary predicts there will only be only four or five airline groups in Europe in five years - Ryanair, Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, IAG, and possibly easyJet ( EZJ.L ). <20>Europe will consolidate in the same way as the North American market has. That<61>s partly what the whole Air Berlin thing is,<2C> he told Reuters after the German carrier filed for insolvency in August. Even before Monarch collapsed, ratings agency Moody<64>s predicted that the removal of Air Berlin and Alitalia would be positive for the credit of Europe<70>s five largest airlines - Lufthansa, IAG, Air France-KLM, Ryanair and easyJet. Europe<70>s traditional carriers have also been given some re
'0527eff12ce1f489cc1ffa741d87989d7496fa62'|'China steps up battle against runaway property prices'|'All the benefits of Standard Digital, plus: Unlimited access to all content Instant Insights column for comment and analysis as news unfolds FT Confidential Research - in-depth China and Southeast Asia analysis ePaper - the digital replica of the printed newspaper Full access to LEX - our agenda setting daily commentary Exclusive emails, including a weekly email from our Editor, Lionel Barber Full access to EM Squared- news and analysis service on emerging markets Other Subscription options:'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/content/c309a7aa-a4cb-11e7-9e4f-7f5e6a7c98a2'|'2017-10-02T00:13:00.000+03:00'
'f67d0467b6ed5f7c966d095444cb5cd9017f218b'|'GLOBAL MARKETS-Dollar surges as Fed talk boosts Treasury yields'|'* Soaring Treasury yields, Fed talk boost dollar* Catalonia referendum rattles Spanish stocks, bonds* Other European shares rise after modest Asian gains* Oil down as OPEC output rises in September* Graphic: World FX rates in 2017 tmsnrt.rs/2egbfVhBy Nigel StephensonLONDON, Oct 2 (Reuters) - The dollar soared as U.S. Treasury yields hit their highest in almost 12 weeks, while Spanish borrowing costs rose and stocks fell as a police crackdown on a unilateral independence vote in Catalonia rattled investors.Firming expectations the U.S. Federal Reserve will raise interest rates for a third time this year, data pointing to steady growth in the world<6C>s largest economy and talk of a potentially more hawkish successor to Fed Chair Janet Yellen combined to push Treasury yields higher.Ten-year yields topped 2.37 percent, their highest since mid-July, pushing the dollar half a percent higher against a basket of currencies.<2E>The dollar is stronger on higher Treasuries, and the market is seeming to play the idea that the Fed might become more hawkish when we look at the possible candidates for the board of directors,<2C> said Antje Praefcke, FX strategist at Commerzbank.The euro fell 0.6 percent to $1.1738, though traders said the Catalan referendum had only a limited impact on the single currency.But in Spain, the IBEX stocks index fell 1.3 percent in early trade while the pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.2 percent.Banco de Sabadell and Caixabank, both based in Catalonia, fell 2.6 and 1.9 percent respectively.Spanish 10-year government bond yields rose as much as 7 basis points to 1.69 percent, taking the gap between them and German benchmarks close to its widest in nearly four months.Catalan officials said 90 percent of voters in Sunday<61>s ballot favoured secession, raising the possibility of a unilateral declaration of independence in the wealthy region.<2E>Whether independence will actually happen remains unclear. What is clear is that Spain has entered a deep political crisis,<2C> ING<4E>s global head of debt and rates strategy, Padhraic Garvey, said.Asian shares rose after upbeat economic data from China and Japan. MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan added 0.2 percent.Japan<61>s Nikkei closed up 0.2 percent after a survey showed the mood among big manufacturers was its best in a decade.China<6E>s manufacturing activity grew at its fastest pace since 2012 last month. The official Purchasing Managers<72> Index released on Saturday rose to 52.4 from 51.7 in August.Chinese markets were closed for a week-long holiday.The Japanese yen fell half a percent to 113.02 per dollar while sterling fell 0.6 percent to $1.3325.The dollar has been on a roll since Fed chief Yellen said last week it would be <20>imprudent<6E> to keep monetary policy on hold until U.S. inflation picked up to 2 percent.HAWKISH Speculation that President Donald Trump might choose former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh, who is considered more hawkish than Yellen, to replace her as head of the central bank also boosted the dollar.The dollar notched up its best weekly performance of 2017 last week, lifted also by a revival of the <20>Trumpflation<6F> trade on expectations Trump would deliver a stalled tax reform plan.Oil prices fell after a Reuters survey found output from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) rose by 50,000 barrels a day last month.Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell 40 cents a barrel to $56.39.The strong dollar helped drag gold down to its lowest in almost seven weeks. The precious metal fell 0.6 percnet to $1,272 an ounce.For Reuters Live Markets blog on European and UK stock markets see reuters://realtime/verb=Open/url=http://emea1.apps.cp.extranet.thomsonreuters.biz/cms/?pageId=livemarketsAdditional reporting by Wayne Cole in Sydney, Jemima Kelly and John Geddie in London; editing by John Stonestreet '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-markets/global-markets-doll
'b6baac251fa0e50899d965c12c69a0823f97d474'|'Fiat Chrysler will press on with Magneti Marelli separation next year - CEO'|'October 2, 2017 / 1:06 PM / in 18 minutes Fiat Chrysler CEO says spin-off his preferred option for Magneti Marelli Reuters Staff 3 Min Read A Chrysler logo is seen at the 2017 New York International Auto Show in New York City, U.S. April 13, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson MILAN (Reuters) - A spin-off is the option favored by Fiat Chrysler (FCA) ( FCHA.MI ) Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne to unlock value from components maker Magneti Marelli, he said on Monday. Marchionne said in July that FCA ( FCAU.N ) was working on a plan to streamline its portfolio and that components businesses, including Magneti Marelli, would be taken out. Any separation of Magneti Marelli - which makes components for lighting, engines, electronics, suspension and exhausts - would also help boost FCA<43>s finances at a time when it is aiming to become cash-positive by the end of 2018. Marchionne said Magneti Marelli could follow the example of luxury sportscar maker Ferrari ( RACE.N ) ( RACE.MI ), which first listed a small stake on the market and was later spun off, with the remaining shares distributed to FCA<43>s existing shareholders. <20>Or I could just spin it (off)<29> and distribute Magneti Marelli<6C>s shares to FCA investors, Marchionne told journalists on the sidelines of an event in Rovereto, northern Italy. <20>We will press ahead with (a separation) in 2018, it will be part of the business plan we will present next year,<2C> he added. Marchionne reiterated it was premature to spin off FCA<43>s Alfa Romeo and Maserati brands, adding that may not even happen during the next business plan to 2022. FCA has been the subject of takeover speculation in recent weeks. Its share price jumped to record highs in August after reports of interest from China, while other reports mentioned possible interest from South Korea<65>s Hyundai ( 005380.KS ). Marchionne reiterated he was not working on any big deal, and added he had no contacts with Hyundai. His focus remains on FCA<43>s current business plan to 2018, preparing the next strategy and finding a successor, he said. He also said FCA did not plan to raise 2017 targets when it releases third-quarter results. <20>Given the way the euro is moving, we<77>re going to do nothing,<2C> he said, while adding the business was doing fine. Speaking after being awarded an honorary degree by the University of Trento, the 65-year-old said the auto industry was being too slow to adapt to new challenges and had failed to embrace newcomers such as technology firms. <20>The biggest fear that I see is that we will be left behind,<2C> he said. He also warned against focusing too narrowly on electrification to solve the industry<72>s emissions challenges, saying a combination of technologies needed to be considered. <20>It<49>s too early to assume that by itself electrification will solve the problem. It won<6F>t.<2E> Reporting by Agnieszka Flak; Editing by Mark Potter '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fiatchrysler-m-a/fiat-chrysler-will-press-on-with-magneti-marelli-separation-next-year-ceo-idUSKCN1C71KB'|'2017-10-02T15:59:00.000+03:00'
'3fe96fcd96d261f24489e0747723a8e87d2fbb0f'|'EU e-bike makers make complaint against Chinese imports'|'October 1, 2017 / 10:02 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago EU e-bike makers make complaint against Chinese imports Reuters Staff 3 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European producers of electronic bikes (e-bikes) have filed a complaint with the European Commission against cheap Chinese e-bike imports, saying that they are sold in the bloc at excessively low prices with the help of unfair subsidies. The European Bicycle Manufacturers Association (EBMA) lodged the complaint alleging dumping of e-bikes by Chinese companies which they say are flooding the market at prices sometimes below the cost of production. The Commission has until late October to determine whether to start an investigation. The EBMA is also preparing a related complaint alleging illegal subsidies and asking for registration of Chinese e-bike imports, which could allow eventual duties to be backdated. Such an investigation would be the latest in a string of probes into Chinese exports ranging from solar panels to steel and could raise trade tensions with Beijing, particularly with a subsidy inquiry into the support provided by the Chinese state. Bicycles have already been a flashpoint. The EU blamed China last December for scuppering a global environmental trade deal by insisting that bicycles be included as a tariff-free green product. Chinese conventional bicycles have been subject to EU anti-dumping duties since 1993. The EBMA says more than 430,000 Chinese e-bikes were sold in European Union in 2016, a 40 percent increase on the previous year, and forecasts the figure will rise to around 800,000 in 2017. EBMA secretary-general Moreno Fioravanti said Europeans buy some 20 million bicycles per year, of which about 10 percent are now e-bikes, with the potential to rise to a quarter within five years. European companies had pioneered the pedal-assist technology that e-bikes use and had invested about 1 billion euros (896.86 million pounds) last year, he said, but was risking losing its industry to China. <20>Today the European bikes are the best in the world and we have to invest every year to renew the range. The Chinese are getting the money from the government and the subsidies have an impact of 30, 40, even 50 percent of the price of the product,<2C> Fioravanti said. <20>You have subsidies, which generate overcapacity, which generate dumping,<2C> he said. Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop. Editing by Jane Merriman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-china-bicycles/eu-e-bike-makers-make-complaint-against-chinese-imports-idUKKCN1C61WJ'|'2017-10-02T01:03:00.000+03:00'
'348745665dbd265801572feef06392c0cf7804c4'|'Deutsche Post DHL to double StreetScooter e-minivan production'|' 03 AM / in 43 minutes Deutsche Post DHL to double StreetScooter e-minivan production Reuters Staff 2   Juergen Gerdes, executive of eCommerce and Parcel of German postal and logistics group Deutsche Post DHL looks out of a new StreetScooter Work XL electric van based on a Ford Transit transporter in Cologne, Germany August 16, 2017. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German logistics firm Deutsche Post DHL ( DPWGn.DE ) is building a second StreetScooter electric minivan factory in Dueren near Cologne as it doubles capacity to sell vehicles to third parties, it said on Monday. The new plant will employ 250 people and will be capable of producing 10,000 electric vehicles per year, with further expansion possible if it switches to two- or three-shift operations. It is due to start production in the second quarter of 2018. <20>We are now beginning the next phase of development at StreetScooter,<2C> said Juergen Gerdes, head of Deutsche Post<73>s post, ecommerce and parcel businesses. <20>Our goal is and remains market leadership in green logistics.<2E> Deutsche Post initially developed the StreetScooter for its own operations to avoid inner-city emissions after growth in online shopping resulted in increased parcel deliveries. But in April it took on carmakers by unveiling plans to step up production and sell to other delivery firms. Deutsche Post said it was now producing a high-performance version of its current model, with a range of 200 kilometres (124 miles) instead of 80 kilometres, and top speed of 120 kilometres per hour, up from 85. It is also testing StreetScooters with fuel-cell drives, which could travel over 500 kilometres, it said. Screetscooter has begun developing vehicles for specific industries, starting with the Bakery Vehicle One (BV1), an electric 3.5 tonne van developed together with bakers. Deutsche Post said it had received more than 100 advance orders for the BV1, with prices from 42,950 euros (<28>37,874). It was also talking to energy providers, waste disposal companies, municipalities, airports, facility-management companies and caterers about customising e-vans for their industries. Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Douglas Busvine'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-deutsche-post-streetscooter/deutsche-post-dhl-to-double-streetscooter-e-minivan-production-idUKKCN1C70U3'|'2017-10-02T12:02:00.000+03:00'
'f37be6a9ea8d2c5b82fd01fdf016db0910bc80ad'|'Senvest Management shorting drug stocks Insys, Akorn, Fresenius'|'TEL AVIV, Oct 3 (Reuters) - New York-based Senvest Management is shorting three drug stocks, Insys Therapeutics Inc , Akorn Inc and Fresenius SE, its chief executive Richard Mashaal said on Tuesday,Speaking at the Sohn Conference in Tel Aviv, Mashaal said he sees more downside for Insys whose drug Subsys has become the focus of several U.S. federal and state investigations amid a national opioid epidemic.Insys<79>s founder John Kapoor is also chairman of generic drugmaker Akorn, which German healthcare group Fresenius agreed to buy in April for $4.75 billion. (Reporting by Tova Cohen; Editing by Steven Scheer) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/funds-sohn-senvest/senvest-management-shorting-drug-stocks-insys-akorn-fresenius-idINL2N1ME08R'|'2017-10-03T07:19:00.000+03:00'
'5fdf2fbfc4127bb8cd287c8ed54c1aade43ef975'|'Adecco buys career transition firm Mullin'|'October 3, 2017 / 5:26 AM / in 23 minutes Adecco buys career transition firm Mullin Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The new logo of Swiss Adecco Group is seen at its headquarters in Glattbrugg, Switzerland, January 31, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann ZURICH (Reuters) - Adecco ( ADEN.S ), the world<6C>s biggest staffing group, has acquired privately held outplacement firm Mullin International, the Swiss company said on Tuesday, providing no financial terms. It said New York-based Mullin would be folded into Adecco subsidiary Lee Hecht Harrison, strengthening its position as global market leader. Reporting by Michael Shields'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-adecco-m-a-mullin/adecco-buys-career-transition-firm-mullin-idUKKCN1C80EC'|'2017-10-03T08:25:00.000+03:00'
'e95e4c6caca25bbd96476c930b67f60a815e2091'|'Asahi in talks to sell stakes in beverage business to Indonesian partner'|'October 3, 2017 / 2:34 AM / in 3 hours Asahi in talks to sell stakes in beverage business to Indonesian partner Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the logo of Asahi Group Holdings at the company''s headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, May 17, 2016. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo JAKARTA (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Asahi Group Holdings Ltd ( 2502.T ) said it is in talks to sell its stakes in two unlisted Indonesian beverage companies to its joint venture partner, PT Indofood CBP Sukses Makmur Tbk ( ICBP.JK ), as part of a portfolio restructuring. Potential terms of the deal were not disclosed. Asahi said in a statement on Monday it holds 51 percent of PT Asahi Indofood Beverage Makmur and 49 percent of PT Indofood Asahi Sukses Beverage. Indofood CBP Sukses, which makes instant noodles, snacks and milk products, owns the remaining shares. ( bit.ly/2xcPzT4 ) Indofood CBP Sukses said it is considering accepting Asahi<68>s offer. <20>We believe that the future prospect of the non-alcoholic beverage business in Indonesia is still promising, in line with the growing middle-income segment and the rising income per capita,<2C> it said. Reporting by Eveline Danubrata; Editing by Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-asahi-group-indofood-cbp/asahi-in-talks-to-sell-stakes-in-beverage-business-to-indonesian-partner-idUKKCN1C807B'|'2017-10-03T05:32:00.000+03:00'
'aafe6ce3370fa484da83858a51df80c990202da4'|'National Bank of Greece plots new bond in latest sign of country<72>s rebound'|'All the benefits of Standard Digital, plus: Unlimited access to all content Instant Insights column for comment and analysis as news unfolds FT Confidential Research - in-depth China and Southeast Asia analysis ePaper - the digital replica of the printed newspaper Full access to LEX - our agenda setting daily commentary Exclusive emails, including a weekly email from our Editor, Lionel Barber Full access to EM Squared- news and analysis service on emerging markets Other Subscription options:'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/content/75a8c3d2-e1f9-30f4-bb18-54363b452a79'|'2017-10-03T13:23:00.000+03:00'
'f56d45177212ca140dd212b3f4b6033922c05228'|'Brazil Oi''s creditors reaffirm commitment to alternative plan'|'The headquarters of the Brazil''s largest fixed-line telecoms group Oi, is pictured in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 22, 2016. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilian wireless carrier Oi SA<53>s ( OIBR3.SA ) two biggest creditor groups on Monday reaffirmed their commitment to an alternative debt-restructuring plan, about a month after pushing back against a proposal from the company<6E>s management.In a statement, the International Bondholder Committee and the Ad-Hoc Group of Oi bondholders, along with a group of export credit agencies (ECAs), said their plan would have the company invest 6.5 billion reais (1.55 billion pounds) per year, a 30 percent increase from current levels.Both groups and the ECAs are owed a combined 22.6 billion reais, or more than one-third of Oi<4F>s 65 billion reais in debt being restructured in court as part of Brazil<69>s biggest bankruptcy protection case ever.Their insistence on an alternative to Oi<4F>s proposal highlights the conflict between Oi management, shareholders and creditors at Brazil<69>s No. 4 wireless carrier.Oi<4F>s Chief Financial Officer Ricardo Malavazi Martins resigned on Monday, the company said in a securities filing, without specifying a reason. Current head of investor relations Carlos Brand<6E>o will take on his duties on an interim basis.The creditor groups had said in August they would agree to swap 26.1 billion reais worth of their Oi bond holdings for 88 percent of the company<6E>s equity.They also endorsed injecting 3 billion reais of fresh capital into Oi, revamping governance practices, repaying regulatory debts and equal treatment for Oi<4F>s unsecured creditors.Their proposal contrasts with the management plan to inject 8 billion reais worth of capital into Oi through a sale of new stock and a debt-for-equity swap. Oi executives suggested last week they could increase the size of the capital hike to 9 billion reais, but creditors did not vote on the change.Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Tom Brown '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-oi-sa-restructuring/brazil-ois-creditors-reaffirm-commitment-to-alternative-plan-idINKCN1C72TT'|'2017-10-02T20:16:00.000+03:00'
'55c1e7f5df218a405cc7dc9c9111df3530881217'|'Reuters Summit: Bank watchdogs in final reform effort as fatigue sets in'|'October 1, 2017 / 5:10 PM / Updated 2 hours ago Reuters Summit: Bank watchdogs in final reform effort as fatigue sets in Huw Jones , Elzio Barreto 5 Min Read LONDON/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Reforms aimed at preventing a repeat of the financial crisis a decade ago face a critical test this week when global regulators try to put the finishing touches to one of their main pillars. Watchdogs from the world<6C>s leading financial centres have been trying for more than a year to finalise Basel III, their central response to the 2007-09 crisis that forced taxpayers into multi-billion dollar bailouts of undercapitalised banks. Amid signs that the appetite for global rulemaking is waning after one of the most intensive bouts of banking reform in history, the Basel Committee of banking supervisors meet next week in an attempt to complete the Basel III capital accord. Speakers at last week<65>s Reuters Financial Regulation Summit emphasised the urgent need to agree a deal, as failure to do so would call into question their global coordination. <20>If somehow we can<61>t agree amongst ourselves, that will send a very bad signal,<2C> BoE Deputy Governor Sam Woods said. The United States and Europe are split over one arcane but crucial remaining element of the package, the extent to which banks can rely on their own internal risk models. <20>Whether or not we can get that deal agreed will be a very important signal about whether we can continue to develop and maintain international standards,<2C> Woods told the Summit. Banks have been lobbying for a loosening of the regulatory noose and called for a break to new rules due to the rising costs involved and the impact it has on their profitability. Regulators at the Reuters Financial Regulation Summit stressed they were now moving on to reviewing and tweaking what has been agreed, rather than cooking up major new reforms. <20>There<72>s an over reliance on regulation solving the problems of the capital markets and it can only go so far,<2C> Paul Winkelmann, chief executive of Hong Kong<6E>s Financial Reporting Council, an accounting watchdog, said. But Andrea Enria, chair of the European Banking Authority, which writes banking rules, insisted regulators were not running out of steam, but making sure reform programmes are completed. <20>I don<6F>t think we need to always launch new regulatory initiatives,<2C> Enria said. ENTER TRUMP European and Asian regulators are watching the United States, where president Donald Trump has told U.S. regulators to ease up on rule-making to encourage more bank lending. Trump<6D>s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has recommended delaying new global bank trading book rules, a step Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore are also taking - and the European Union is resisting, potentially fragmenting standards for a period. <20>My sense is the mood has changed in the U.S., you can see very clearly in the Mnuchin report a desire to move the pendulum back a little bit,<2C> Woods said. <20>I would say they have been pretty robust on bank capital in a way that I think is good, so if they tack back a little bit it<69>s not obvious that would present a problem for us.<2E> This is the moving backdrop against which the Basel Committee of banking supervisors meets next week in Switzerland a bid to complete Basel III. <20>I am confident that we will reach an agreement before the end of the year,<2C> said Enria, who sits on Basel<65>s oversight body, whose endorsement of a deal will be needed. Woods was <20>cautiously optimistic<69> though gave no timeline, while sceptical banks call for regulatory clarity. <20>It<49>s 50:50 for a deal this year,<2C> Frederic Oudea, chief executive of French bank Societe Generale ( SOGN.PA ), told a banking event in Brussels last week. OVER INSURED? Insurance regulators are having an even tougher time trying to nail down a deal on global capital rules, with Europe and the United States wanting different calculation methods. <20>We will continue to work with our international colleagues to make sure that we will
'edc02846f78ea2ac782e29d46f020f3e9b0aba05'|'India''s RCom calls off merger of wireless unit with Aircel'|' 43 PM / in an hour India''s RCom calls off merger of wireless unit with Aircel Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A worker cleans a mobile store of Reliance Communications Ltd, controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, in Kolkata, India, September 10, 2016. Picture taken September 10, 2016. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian telecoms company Reliance Communications Ltd ( RLCM.NS ) said on Sunday it had mutually agreed with smaller rival Aircel to call off a proposed merger of its wireless business, citing delays due to regulatory and legal uncertainties and interventions by various parties. The company, widely known as RCom, had been trying to reduce its heavy debt by 250 billion rupees by merging its wireless business with rival Aircel and by selling a stake in its mobile masts arm to a unit of Canada<64>s Brookfield Asset Management ( BAMa.TO ). RCom<6F>s net debt stood at 443.45 billion rupees (5.17 billion pounds) at the end of March.   Roy'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-aircel-m-a-rcom/indias-rcom-calls-off-merger-of-wireless-unit-with-aircel-idUKKCN1C61FY'|'2017-10-01T16:43:00.000+03:00'
'6d14e10dcbc66c1f175517909182b093be3f7089'|'Former head of Russian gas company Itera buys stake in New Stream'|'MOSCOW (Reuters) - Igor Makarov, the former head of Russian gas company Itera, is wrapping up a deal to buy 50 percent of New Stream, the energy group said on Monday.Russia<69>s largest oil producer Rosneft ( ROSN.MM ) fully acquired Itera, Russia<69>s top gas exporter in the 1990s, around four years ago.Makarov, the head of the Areti group of companies, will be appointed as chairman of New Stream Holding, whose main asset is the Antipinsky oil refinery in the West Siberian city of Tyumen.The deal could help New Stream cut its $2.5 billion debt, Kommersant business daily reported, citing unnamed industry sources.New Stream<61>s president Dmitry Mazurov will retain 50 percent in the company.New Stream will also take over the Afipsky refinery with an annual capacity of 6 million tonnes, located in the region of Krasnodar near the Black Sea. It did not disclose the details of the deal.Reporting by Natalia Chumakova; writing by Vladimir Soldatkin; editing by Louise Heavens; editing by Louise Heavens '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-russia-newstream-deals/former-head-of-russian-gas-company-itera-buys-stake-in-new-stream-idINKCN1C71QP'|'2017-10-02T11:59:00.000+03:00'
'c03875ca5c939eea54e0871f61cb2df5e6577829'|'Equifax data breach to cost insurers $125 mln- Property Claim Services'|'October 2, 2017 / 2:56 PM / in 34 minutes Equifax data breach to cost insurers $125 mln- Property Claim Services Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 2 (Reuters) - Property Claim Services (PCS), a Verisk Analytics company, estimated an insured loss of $125 million from a massive data breach disclosed last month by Equifax Inc , that has plunged the credit-monitoring company into crisis. Equifax, a provider of consumer credit scores, said last month that personal details of as many as 143 million U.S. consumers were accessed by hackers between mid-May and July. PCS also said in an email statement on Monday that economic losses of the cyber attack, among the largest ever recorded, were expected to be larger than the insured losses. Policy conditions are reviewed prior to finalising the settlement, PCS said, adding that these coverage issues that are yet be resolved may reduce the likelihood of the loss reaching the estimated figure. According to sources and analysts, Lloyd<79>s of London insurer Beazley leads the cyber policy for the breach. Beazley declined to comment when contacted by Reuters. (Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; editing by Carolyn Cohn)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/equifax-breach-insurance/equifax-data-breach-to-cost-insurers-125-mln-property-claim-services-idUSL8N1MD4ZK'|'2017-10-02T17:56:00.000+03:00'
'6b27cc5b17d094ae54f23d9f78c6c623c96a25bc'|'UPDATE 1-Irish housebuilder Glenveagh to raise up to 550 mln euros in IPO'|'* Second Irish housebuilder to float since economic crash* Glenveagh to buy development land acquired by Oaktree* Ireland struggling with chronic shortage of housing (Adds details, Quote: s)By Padraic HalpinDUBLIN, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Glenveagh Properties plans to raise up to 550 million euros ($646 million) in Ireland<6E>s second largest initial public offering since the 2008 financial crisis to add much needed housing supply to Europe<70>s fastest growing economy.While Ireland was left with a surplus of houses after values were cut in half following the property crash a decade ago, a recovery in the construction sector has badly lagged the general economy, causing house prices and rents to rise sharply again.Glenveagh will become just the second Irish housebuilder to float since the economy began to turn around, following Cairn Homes in 2015. Cairn<72>s share price has almost doubled since then as the value of its portfolio grew sharply.Glenveagh<67>s IPO will also beat the 385 million euros Cairn raised and be the second largest on the Irish stock exchange, behind the 3.4 billion euros raised by Allied Irish Banks in June.<2E>One of the structural weaknesses in the housing market in Ireland is the fragmented nature of the housebuilding sector and its lack of scale,<2C> Glenveagh co-founder and chairman John Mulcahy, a former senior executive at Ireland<6E>s state-run bad bank NAMA, said in a statement.<2E>We believe there is an opportunity through publicly Quote: d companies like Glenveagh.<2E>Glenveagh, which will combine development land acquired in Ireland by U.S. private equity firm Oaktree with the assets of Irish builder Bridgedale, has some 1,700 units ready for construction and plans to build at least 1,000 new homes a year by 2020, with 2,000 more a year to follow on a long-term basis.Glenveagh will focus on building in and around Dublin, where supply is particularly tight, and has committed one-third of the IPO proceeds to 27 sites it has agreed to buy.Economists estimate that 35,000 new homes are needed a year to address the shortage in Ireland and keep up with demand in a country that also has the EU<45>s fastest growing population.However a report by Goodbody Stockbrokers<72> on Monday suggested just over 5,000 houses were completed last year, a third of the official completions data that the government has acknowledged may overstate the true level of homebuilding.Conditional trading on the Irish and London Stock Exchange is expected to begin on October 10.Credit Suisse and Ireland<6E>s Davy have been appointed as joint global coordinators. ($1 = 0.8513 euros) (Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by Jason Neely/Keith Weir) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/glenveagh-ipo/update-1-irish-housebuilder-glenveagh-to-raise-up-to-550-mln-euros-in-ipo-idINL8N1MD0Y7'|'2017-10-02T05:34:00.000+03:00'
'8eb6f2448352c65798c600bd778cc0c456bb2b7b'|'Nissan shares fall 5 percent after safety inspection failures'|'October 2, 2017 / 2:52 AM / in an hour Nissan to recall 1.2 million cars in Japan over unauthorised checks Maki Shiraki 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO : A man walks in the Nissan showroom at the carmaker''s headquarters in Yokohama, Japan May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo YOKOHAMA (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co Ltd ( 7201.T ) plans to recall 1.2 million cars in Japan after it discovered final vehicle inspections were not performed by authorised technicians, it said on Monday. Japan<61>s second-biggest automaker said the recall would cost it around 25 billion yen (166.60 million pounds)to re-inspect cars produced for the domestic market between October 2014 and September 2017, which include top sellers the Serena minivan and the Note compact hatchback. <20>We must take the registration framework and procedures seriously, regardless of how busy we may be or how short-staffed we may be,<2C> CEO Hiroto Saikawa told reporters at a media conference. Related Coverage Nissan to recall 1.21 million cars in Japan over improper checks <20>We apologise for the inconvenience caused to our customers.<2E> Saikawa added the company was investigating how and why the inspections took place, a process expected to take around a month. A third party will participate in an internal investigation into the matter, he said. FILE PHOTO - The logo of Nissan Motor Co is pictured at a showroom at the carmaker''s headquarters in Yokohama, Japan May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai The announcement is the latest by a Japanese automaker over improper conduct, and comes a year and a half after Mitsubishi Motors Corp ( 7211.T ) admitted it had falsified the fuel economy for some of its domestic market models, which resulted in Nissan taking a controlling stake in its smaller rival. It expands the scope of a problem reported last week, when Nissan initially said it would suspend the registration of 60,000 vehicles over unauthorised inspections. The automaker''s shares fell as much as 5.3 percent to their lowest since April before closing down 2.7 percent. The benchmark Nikkei average stock price index .N225 ended up 0.2 percent. Nissan made 386,000 vehicles for the domestic market in 2016. Automakers must register all such vehicles with Japan<61>s government before sale, with owners renewing the registrations of passenger vehicles every three years. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said on Friday it has asked Nissan to report measures to prevent a recurrence of the issue by the end of October. Additional reporting by Tom Wilson and Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nissan-safety-checks/nissan-shares-fall-5-percent-after-safety-inspection-failures-idUKKCN1C705I'|'2017-10-02T05:51:00.000+03:00'
'06739cef4c867b4779558109816d029c645d0b73'|'METALS-London copper edges higher in holiday-thinned trading'|'MANILA, Oct 2 (Reuters) - London copper futures rose nearly 1 percent on Monday in slow trading, with market participants in top metals consumer China away this week for the National Day break.Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange was up 0.8 percent at $6,534 a tonne by 0439 GMT. The metal ended July-September with a 9.2 percent gain, marking its fifth quarterly increase.Other metals from aluminium to zinc and nickel were slightly higher.FUNDAMENTALS * CHINA DATA: China<6E>s manufacturing activity grew at the fastest pace since 2012 in September as factories cranked up output to take advantage of strong demand and high prices, easing worries of a slowdown before a key political meeting next month, data released on Saturday showed.* CHINA STEEL: An official gauge of China<6E>s steel industry declined in September but stayed in solid expansion territory, as the industry faces upcoming production restrictions aimed at reducing choking air pollution over the winter.* DOLLAR: The U.S. dollar was firmer, underpinned by higher U.S. yields, while the euro came under pressure as investors monitored the aftermath of an independence vote in Spain<69>s Catalonia.* CATALONIA: Catalonia<69>s regional leader opened the door to a unilateral declaration of independence from Spain on Sunday after voters defied a violent police crackdown and, according to regional officials, voted 90 percent in favour of breaking away.* JAPAN TANKAN: Big manufacturers have more confidence in Japan<61>s business conditions than they have had for a decade as a weak yen and robust global demand add momentum to the economic recovery, a closely watched central bank survey showed.* CHINA WINTER CUTS: Chinese steelmakers and aluminium smelters are closing some production starting next month to meet strict air quality standards for the winter.* FREEPORT: Freeport-McMoRan Inc, the world<6C>s second-largest publicly traded copper company, strongly disagrees with a proposed divestment plan by the government of Indonesia, according to a company letter reviewed by Reuters.* MITSUBISHI COPPER: Japan<61>s Mitsubishi Materials Corp said it plans to produce 181,830 tonnes of refined copper during October-March, up 14 percent from the same period last year as it boosts its smelting capacity.PRICES Three month LME copperMost active ShFE copperThree month LME aluminiumMost active ShFE aluminiumThree month LME zincMost active ShFE zincThree month LME leadMost active ShFE leadThree month LME nickelMost active ShFE nickelThree month LME tinMost active ShFE tinARBS (Reporting by Manolo Serapio Jr.; Editing by Richard Pullin) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/global-metals/metals-london-copper-edges-higher-in-holiday-thinned-trading-idUSL4N1MD1Q5'|'2017-10-02T07:49:00.000+03:00'
'81a96c345d19ebc1bc68f5c217f2a8d4fc76eb17'|'Exclusive: Volkswagen seeks to curb competition from Skoda - sources'|'October 4, 2017 / 11:06 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Exclusive: Volkswagen seeks to curb competition from Skoda - sources Andreas Cremer 7 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Skoda Vision E is pictured during opening of the Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt, Germany September 11, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo BERLIN (Reuters) - Volkswagen managers and unions are seeking to curb competition from lower-cost stablemate Skoda, move some of its production to Germany and make the Czech brand pay more for shared technology, company sources told Reuters. As VW struggles to cut jobs and spending at German factories and turn the page on dieselgate, Skoda<64>s superior car reviews and profitability have intensified the brands<64> rivalry within the Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ) empire. VW now wants to reduce what it sees as Skoda<64>s unfair advantages - combining German technology with cheaper labour - and reaffirm the top-selling brand<6E>s primacy ahead of a wave of new electric car launches, the sources said. The tussle between VW and Skoda is reviving tensions at the heart of the Volkswagen group between profits and jobs, and between central control and autonomy for its 12 vehicle brands. <20>Instead of devoting our efforts to beating Tesla ( TSLA.O ), we may just be setting up a futile internal conflict,<2C> said one manager. Once the butt of jokes, Skoda has blossomed under 26 years of VW group ownership into a successful mid-market carmaker, steadily winning business from rivals - including VW - and surpassing even Audi<64>s operating profit margin last year. At the same time, VW is facing thousands of job cuts as management moves to trim excess capacity at German factories. Its powerful domestic unions see Skoda<64>s success as both a threat and a potential lifeline. VW workers<72> representatives are now demanding the transfer of some Skoda production to their underused German plants, a source close to the supervisory board told Reuters. The proposal aims to offset declining output of the VW Passat and ageing Golf that could otherwise threaten more jobs. They are also making the case that Skoda should pay higher royalties to use VW<56>s main common vehicle platform. The so-called MQB architecture also underpins mid-sized models from the group<75>s Audi and SEAT brands. Responding to the news, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said he would meet Skoda management and unions to ask for clarification. The government will seek to ensure that VW investment plans are followed through and that <20>production is not moved outside the country<72>, a statement released by Sobotka<6B>s office said. Skoda<64>s main union warned that a production shift could cost as many as 2,000 jobs. VW<56>s works council declined to comment. VW brand Chief Executive Herbert Diess is leading a parallel management effort to shield future VW models from direct competition with cheaper Skodas. At a recent group executive committee meeting, Diess called for greater differentiation between VW and Skoda target markets and clientele, particularly for future electric models, three managers with knowledge of the matter said. <20>The future positioning of brands is being looked at, but discussions are still ongoing,<2C> a VW group spokesman said, declining further comment. Tension is expected to rise ahead of a Nov. 17 supervisory board session due to approve annual investment budgets across the world<6C>s biggest carmaker. LABOUR ADVANTAGE Skoda<64>s operating profit more than doubled over three years to 1.2 billion euros (1.06 billion pounds) FILE PHOTO: A Skoda Vision E is pictured during the opening of the Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt, Germany September 11, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo in 2016, lifting its profit margin to 8.7 percent - second only to Porsche within the Volkswagen stable. The VW brand, whose margin dipped to 1.8 percent after earnings fell by a third, still outsells Skoda globally but is growing more slowly in Europe. Skoda<64>s healthy profits partly reflect the sh
'add1d2792b76b9aba8fc56946c1e48eca982d55d'|'UK minister calls on Boeing to hold talks to end Bombardier dispute'|'Violence erupts as Catalans vote on split from Spain Violence erupts as Catalans vote on split from Spain Violence erupts as Catalans vote on split from Spain Reuters TV United States October 1, 2017 / 3:40 PM / Updated 2 hours ago UK minister calls on Boeing to hold talks to end Bombardier dispute Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A combination photo of a Boeing 737 MAX Before the opening of the 52nd Paris Air Show at Le Bourget airport near Paris, France, June 16, 2017, and shareholders line up to view Bombardier''s CS300 aircraft following their annual general meeting in Mirabel, Quebec, Canada April 29, 2016. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol/Christinne Muschi/File Photo MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - Boeing ( BA.N ) needs to get around the table with Bombardier ( BBDb.TO ) and find a solution to its trade dispute that has put more than 4,200 jobs at risk in Northern Ireland, a senior British minister said on Sunday. James Brokenshire, Britain<69>s minister for Northern Ireland, told his Conservative Party<74>s annual conference that Boeing<6E>s role in getting the U.S. government to slap a 220 percent tariff on Bombardier<65>s CSeries jets, whose wings are made at a plant in Belfast, was unjust. The U.S. planemaker accuses Canada and Britain of unfairly subsidizing Bombardier, a charge that Bombardier denies. <20>The support that the UK provided to the Bombardier operation in Belfast was and remains compliant with international requirements,<2C> Brokenshire said. <20>I say to Boeing this case is unjustified and unwarranted. This action is not what is expected of a long-term partner to the UK. They need to get round the table and secure a negotiated outcome to this dispute quickly.<2E> Reporting by Kate Holton, editing by Elizabeth Piper'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-bombardier-brokenshire/uk-minister-calls-on-boeing-to-hold-talks-to-end-bombardier-dispute-idUKKCN1C61L4'|'2017-10-01T18:34:00.000+03:00'
'44d39435c1173fe9f80a28ecd506c6993b4f3f0f'|'MIDEAST STOCKS - Factors to watch - October 1'|'DUBAI, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Here are some factors that may affect Middle East stock markets on Sunday. Reuters has not verified the press reports and does not vouch for their accuracy.INTERNATIONAL/REGIONAL * GLOBAL MARKETS-Big week for dollar, records on Wall St as quarter ends* MIDEAST STOCKS-Egypt strong, Saudi bolstered by $12.5 bln sovereign bond issue* Bullish oil streak means strongest 3rd qtr Brent price gain in 13 years* PRECIOUS-Gold dips after U.S. inflation data, set for quarterly gain* Hezbollah says Kurdish vote a step towards wider Mideast partition* Iraqi PM presses case for Baghdad to receive Kurdistan oil revenue* Turkey opens military base in Mogadishu to train Somali soldiers* Turkey<65>s Erdogan says Iraqi Kurdish authorities <20>will pay price<63> for vote* Iranian, Iraqi government forces to hold joint border drills* Macron<6F>s invitation to visit France not related to Kurdish referendum - Iraqi PM* Last flight departs as Iraq imposes ban for Kurdish independence vote* U.S. will admit up to 45,000 refugees next year -Trump* U.S. does not recognize Kurdish independence vote in Iraq -Tillerson* Iraq plans to take control of Kurdistan region<6F>s border <20>in coordination<6F> with Iran, Turkey* U.N. establishes panel to probe Yemen war crimes* France wants compromise on U.N. Yemen inquiry as Saudi pressure mounts* Yemen cholera cases could hit 1 million by year-end - Red Cross* Yemen Houthis say U.S. citizen kidnapped by unknown gunmen* OPEC oil output edges higher in Sept as Iraq, Libya pump more* Middle East oil producers turn to crude trading to boost incomes* Mideast OPEC producers fret oil price rally may burn out* Iran bans oil refinery products traffic with Iraqi Kurdistan - report* Iraq<61>s top Shi<68>ite cleric Sistani opposes secession of Kurdish region* UN offers to help resolve Baghdad, Kurdistan region crisis -Iraq foreign ministry* Iran may drop nuclear deal if US withdraws, foreign minister tells al Jazeera* INSIGHT-Aramco listing reshapes Saudi Arabia<69>s OPEC oil policy* Mideast funds more cautious toward equities, positive on QatarEGYPT * Egypt<70>s foreign debt up 42 pct to $79 bln in 2016-17 -central bank* Egypt launches 4G wireless frequencies - state news agency* Egypt<70>s GASC says seeking soyoil and sunflower oil in tender* Egypt central bank keeps main interest rates on hold* Yields mixed at Egyptian T-bill sale* Egypt<70>s M2 money supply up 40.1 pct year-on year in August- c.bank* Egypt <20>hunting down<77> gays, conducting forced anal exams* Only a third of Romanian wheat cargo in Egypt discharged - sourceSAUDI ARABIA * Saudi Arabia back in recession as oil, state sectors struggle in Q2* Saudi authorities pursue Twitter user over women<65>s driving threat* Saudi Arabia to widen foreign investment access again in 2017 -CMA chairman* Saudi entertainment authority says hit by cyber attack* Saudi man arrested after threatening women drivers* Saudi women to be allowed to drive from age 18, same as men* Saudi August foreign reserves at lowest since early 2011* TABLE-Saudi money supply increase in August* TABLE-Saudi July imports rise on year for first time in over a year* Saudi Arabia<69>s SAGO seeks 540,000 tonnes of barley in tender* Saudi minister says adding women drivers will reduce car crashes* Saudi Arabia picks BNP Paribas for $7.2 bln desalination plant sale - sourceUNITED ARAB EMIRATES * INTERVIEW-Fujairah National Shipping targets trade growth despite Gulf tensions* Etihad Airways hires British defence buyer as new CEO* IPIC half-year sales from cont ops at 67.27 bln AED* Abu Dhabi state fund Mubadala swings to profit, assets growQATAR * Qatar Airways expects Meridiana to be Italy<6C>s <20>real<61> national carrier* Qatar Airways expands airline investments with Italy<6C>s MeridianaKUWAIT * Equate board appoints Ramesh Ramachandran as CEO* INTERVIEW-Kuwait expects to seal new deals to supply oil to Chinese buyers (Compiled by Dubai newsroom)Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance
'636a88e4810418f92acaca950bf9b12c73f21544'|'Bank watchdogs in final reform effort as fatigue sets in'|'October 1, 2017 / 5:02 PM / in 5 minutes Bank watchdogs in final reform effort as fatigue sets in Huw Jones , Elzio Barreto 5 Min Read Britain''s Deputy Governor for Prudential Regulation and Chief Executive Officer of the Prudential Regulation Authority Sam Woods speaks during the Bank of England''s financial stability report at the Bank of England in the City of London, Britain June 27, 2017. REUTERS/ Jonathan Brady/Pool LONDON/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Reforms aimed at preventing a repeat of the financial crisis a decade ago face a critical test this week when global regulators try to put the finishing touches to one of their main pillars. Watchdogs from the world<6C>s leading financial centres have been trying for more than a year to finalise Basel III, their central response to the 2007-09 crisis that forced taxpayers into multi-billion dollar bailouts of undercapitalised banks. Amid signs that the appetite for global rulemaking is waning after one of the most intensive bouts of banking reform in history, the Basel Committee of banking supervisors meet next week in an attempt to complete the Basel III capital accord. Speakers at last week<65>s Reuters Financial Regulation Summit emphasised the urgent need to agree a deal, as failure to do so would call into question their global coordination. <20>If somehow we can<61>t agree amongst ourselves, that will send a very bad signal,<2C> BoE Deputy Governor Sam Woods said. The United States and Europe are split over one arcane but crucial remaining element of the package, the extent to which banks can rely on their own internal risk models. <20>Whether or not we can get that deal agreed will be a very important signal about whether we can continue to develop and maintain international standards,<2C> Woods told the Summit. Banks have been lobbying for a loosening of the regulatory noose and called for a break to new rules due to the rising costs involved and the impact it has on their profitability. Regulators at the Reuters Financial Regulation Summit stressed they were now moving on to reviewing and tweaking what has been agreed, rather than cooking up major new reforms. <20>There<72>s an over reliance on regulation solving the problems of the capital markets and it can only go so far,<2C> Paul Winkelmann, chief executive of Hong Kong<6E>s Financial Reporting Council, an accounting watchdog, said. But Andrea Enria, chair of the European Banking Authority, which writes banking rules, insisted regulators were not running out of steam, but making sure reform programmes are completed. <20>I don<6F>t think we need to always launch new regulatory initiatives,<2C> Enria said. ENTER TRUMP European and Asian regulators are watching the United States, where president Donald Trump has told U.S. regulators to ease up on rule-making to encourage more bank lending. Trump<6D>s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has recommended delaying new global bank trading book rules, a step Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore are also taking - and the European Union is resisting, potentially fragmenting standards for a period. <20>My sense is the mood has changed in the U.S., you can see very clearly in the Mnuchin report a desire to move the pendulum back a little bit,<2C> Woods said. <20>I would say they have been pretty robust on bank capital in a way that I think is good, so if they tack back a little bit it<69>s not obvious that would present a problem for us.<2E> This is the moving backdrop against which the Basel Committee of banking supervisors meets next week in Switzerland a bid to complete Basel III. <20>I am confident that we will reach an agreement before the end of the year,<2C> said Enria, who sits on Basel<65>s oversight body, whose endorsement of a deal will be needed. Woods was <20>cautiously optimistic<69> though gave no timeline, while sceptical banks call for regulatory clarity. <20>It<49>s 50:50 for a deal this year,<2C> Frederic Oudea, chief executive of French bank Societe Generale ( SOGN.PA ), told a banking event in Brussels last week. OVER INSURED? Insurance 
'c2cb26dd1da434808b8b7952180c63de886ac6c3'|'Comic Relief and Fairtrade back ethical gold mining in east Africa - Business'|'Comic Relief and Fairtrade back ethical gold mining in east Africa Hazardous and environmentally damaging small-scale mines produce 20% of world<6C>s gold Panning for gold in South Sudan. Comic Relief, Fairtrade and the Dutch government hope a new scheme will protect the workers and their environment. Photograph: Adriane Ohanesian/Reuters Comic Relief and Fairtrade back ethical gold mining in east Africa Hazardous and environmentally damaging small-scale mines produce 20% of world<6C>s gold View more sharing options Sunday 1 October 2017 20.07 BST First published on Sunday 1 October 2017 16.30 BST Comic Relief and Fairtrade have joined forces with the Dutch government to back a $15m (<28>11m) scheme to support ethical gold mining in east Africa after a successful pilot project in Uganda. About a fifth of the world<6C>s gold produced every year comes from small-scale mines where millions of people work in hazardous conditions without access to modern technology. They resort to extracting and crushing ore by hand before using water and then highly toxic mercury or cyanide to separate the gold. The ad hoc process is not only harmful for the individuals involved, some of whom are children , but pollutes their local environment. It is also highly inefficient, on average extracting only 40% of the available gold. US interest rate rise to deepen debt crisis in developing world Read more Fairtrade is working with specialist mining consultancy the Dragonfly Initiative in trying to raise up to $4m in investment by 2020 from specialist environmental and social investors, government bodies and big business to help small-scale artisanal mines. Half of the funds will be loans to support investment in better technology and the other half grants to support building the organisational change necessary. <20>We are trying to generate a proof of concept which has the possibility to bring economic benefits to thousands of families. We also hope over time to increase supply of Fairtrade gold,<2C> said David Finlay of Fairtrade. At present only about 400kg of the ethical precious metal is produced ever year. <20>Miners want to improve standards but it is a real struggle. They want access to finance to acquire equipment and reduce reliance on mercury and enhance the recovery of gold. There will be both an economic and environmental benefit,<2C> Finlay said. Using a centrifuge device, which costs about $5,000, increased the extraction rate for gold to 70% in the Uganda trial. But introducing the machinery is only part of the answer alongside supporting miners to work in a more organised and safe way. Comic Relief has already committed $90,000 to help provide seed finance for a trial project at about four mines over the last few years and devise the funding scheme. It is hoped that as many as 60 small mines could be helped by 2020 using the new money raised. That could increase the supply of Fairtrade gold, most of which currently comes from Peru. The first shipment from Uganda resulting from the trial investment project will be made next month. Meanwhile the Dragonfly Initiative is aiming to raise $10m or more to support communities surrounding large commercial mines. That part of the scheme does not involve Fairtrade. Its aim is to help local people move away from unsafe informal digging for minerals towards more sustainable, environmentally friendly and safer businesses such as agriculture. Assheton Stewart Carter from Dragonfly said similar schemes had already been tried in South America where mining areas had been reforested with trees producing fruit local people could harvest and sell. He said international mining companies and an increasing number of electronics and automotive manufacturers who used precious metals were becoming interested in ensuring that their resources were not contributing to environmental or social problems. <20>A few years ago companies wanted to know that no bad stuff was happening at their mine. Now they want to show 
'469947bef21838629d0ff9fcde5bb3de71907f9f'|'Apple faces down Qualcomm, Ericsson over EU patent fees'|'October 2, 2017 / 11:59 AM / in 3 minutes Apple faces down Qualcomm, Ericsson over EU patent fees Foo Yun Chee 5 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is drawing up guidelines on how much patent holders should charge for their technologies, a thorny issue that pits Apple and other users against Qualcomm and Ericsson. Trillions of dollars in sales are at stake as regulators ponder whether a fridge maker should pay a different rate for crucial patents than a carmaker, or whether a flat, fixed rate would be fairer. The patent fee model used by world No. 1 smartphone chip designer Qualcomm predominates in the tech industry and is based on how much value a technology adds to a product, but is opposed by Apple and others in Silicon Valley. Other models are in use and the EU aims to set a uniform one for Europe, opening a new front in a global dispute that has already seen multiple lawsuits between Apple and Qualcomm. Antti Peltomaki, deputy director general at the European Commission, told a conference last week that the EU hopes to finalise its guidelines by the end of the year. They will not be legally binding but could provide a basis if the EU executive decides to enact rules in future. The move is part of the bloc<6F>s broader push to set new rules of the road for internet-connected devices beyond just computers and smartphones to cover cars, home automation and energy devices, aiming to ensure job creation and other economic benefits in the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) era. Qualcomm<6D>s patent fee model is based on the widely used so-called <20>fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory<72> (FRAND) licensing model. The European Commission, however, has yet to make a final decision on which technology patent fee model it favours. Silicon Valley tech giants have sided with Apple, as have big Asian electronics makers who work for Apple, including Foxconn Technology Group. Qualcomm, which holds what many experts see as the world''s most lucrative smartphone patent portfolio, is backed by major mobile phone and network patent holders Ericsson and Nokia. ( reut.rs/2yzqvCc ) Apple, the automotive industry and product makers say a fairer approach is to link royalties to the cost of the smallest saleable unit. <20>It is not reasonable to charge more for use of the very same component in a Mercedes versus a Hyundai or a car versus a bicycle. This is discriminatory based on price of the end product, both within and outside of a particular product category,<2C> Apple said of Qualcomm<6D>s model in a May submission to the European Commission. Apple and Qualcomm declined to comment for this story. Industry estimates show IoT systems could represent a market of more than $11 trillion per year by 2025. <20>There<72>s a lot of potential value at stake,<2C> said Matthew Hunt, competition attorney with the law firm Bristows in London. BALANCING ACT Qualcomm<6D>s royalty approach, known as use-based or value-based, is an important source of profits for other mobile pioneers such as Ericsson and Nokia. Ericsson, once the world<6C>s biggest mobile phone and network equipment maker, has fallen on hard times in the past decade in the face of stiff global competition. Still, with more than 42,000 patents giving it the largest number of mobile technology patents, it stands by the value-based licensing model. <20>We need to be able to be flexible to differentiate the price. Flexibility is absolutely necessary,<2C> Patrick Hofkens, Ericsson<6F>s director of intellectual property rights policy, said. Hofkens said that charging high royalty rates discourages product makers from adopting new innovations, while setting royalty rates too low undermines new technology developers from licensing their patents to industry standards bodies, which enable mass markets to take off. <20>Price differentiation allows for lower prices for applications that do not use the patented technology as intensively as others,<2C> the Ericsson executive said. The European Commission has a tough balancing act, 
'38d6f3cbafef51c95c8cc323a75a0f77db361aea'|'UPDATE 2-British PM May orders energy price cap, sending shares tumbling'|'Britain''s Prime Minister Theresa May addresses the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May said she would impose a price cap on the energy market to help millions of households struggling with rising prices, hitting shares in the leading providers hard.May had proposed a price cap on the sector earlier this year, the biggest market intervention since privatization almost 30 years ago, but the plan was thrown into doubt after her ruling Conservatives lost their parliamentary majority in an election in June.Energy bills have doubled in Britain over the past decade to an average of about 1,200 pounds ($1,500) a year, putting the biggest providers in the sights of politicians.<2E>While we are in favor of free markets we will always take action to fix them when they are broken, we will always take on monopolies and vested interests when they are holding people back,<2C> May told the Conservative Party<74>s annual conference.<2E>One of the greatest examples in Britain today is the broken energy market,<2C> she said, adding that a price cap would help end <20>rip-off energy prices<65>.Britain<69>s energy market is dominated by the so-called big six providers -- Centrica<63>s British Gas, SSE, Iberdrola<6C>s Scottish Power, Innogy<67>s npower, E.ON and EDF Energy, which account for about 85 percent of the retail electricity market.SHARES SUFFER The announcement wiped more than 900 million pounds off the value of the two British listed companies Centrica and SSE alone.Shares in Centrica hit a near 14 year low of 177.8 pence per share and were down 6 percent at 179.3 pence at 1510 GMT. Shares in SSE, Britain<69>s second largest supplier, fell by as much as 4 percent.E.ON was the worst performer in Germany<6E>s DAX index of 30 leading stocks, shedding 3.4 percent in afternoon trading in Frankfurt, while competitor Innogy fell by 2.1 percent.Shares in EDF and Iberdrola were little changed.SSE said it would look carefully at the proposals.<2E>SSE believes in competition not caps, so if there is to be any intervention it should be simple to administer, time-limited, and maintain the principles of a competitive energy market to best serve customers<72> interests,<2C> the company said.May<61>s office said the cap would apply to so-called standard variable tariffs (SVTs) which are basic rates that energy suppliers charge if a customer does not opt for a specific plan.Around 70 percent of households are on SVTs and data published by energy regulator Ofgem in December showed 91 percent of SSE<53>s customers were on a SVT, along with 74 percent of Centrica<63>s British Gas customers.E.ON and Scottish Power, which have fewer customers on SVT<56>s both called on the government to scrap them.Analysts at Bernstein said the level at which the cap is set would determine its ultimate impact on the companies.A price cap of 1,100 pounds a year would still allow efficient firms to make a margin but a 1,000 pound per year cap would <20>push the industry into a loss of 700 pounds million,<2C> the analysts said.Ofgem said SVTs offered by the big six in August were on average almost 320 pounds ($424) per year more expensive than their cheapest tariffs.MIXED RECEPTION Earlier this year the government ordered Ofgem to act on the issue of high bills and the regulator is in the process of consulting on a measure which would impose a price cap for the most vulnerable households.May<61>s office said Ofgem would be responsible for setting the new cap which would be a temporary measure kept under review, while Ofgem said it will work with the government <20>to better protect consumers on poor value deals.<2E>British business groups criticized the cap, with blue-chip lobby group the CBI calling it <20>an example of state intervention that misses the mark.<2E>However the challenger small energy firm OVO Energy, which has around 800,000 customers, welcomed the decision.<2E>This intervention will stimulate innovation and promote ef
'9374766c05ad066c8dde58e45bc712cb4cdc1a77'|'Oil dips over doubts recent rally will last through fourth quarter'|'October 4, 2017 / 12:52 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago Oil dips over doubts recent rally will last through fourth quarter 3 Min Read A pump jack is seen at sunrise near Bakersfield, California October 14, 2014. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices eased on Wednesday over caution that a price rally that lasted for most of the third quarter would not extend through the last three months of the year. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures CLc1 were trading at $50.05 per barrel at 0032 GMT, down 37 cents, or 0.7 percent, from their last close. Brent crude futures LCOc1, the international benchmark for oil prices, were down 35 cents, or 0.6 percent, at $55.65 a barrel. Traders said the drops came over concerns that a third-quarter market rally that had lifted Brent to mid-2015 highs by late September had been overdone. <20>Fundamentals may not yet be strong enough to support a continued rally, especially in growth-dependent commodities such as oil,<2C> said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Denmark<72>s Saxo Bank in a quarterly outlook to investors. Analysts say that a so-called market rebalancing is now well underway, meaning that demand is no longer undershooting available supply. The re-balancing is a result of strong consumption and also due to efforts led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to cut output by around 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2017 and the first quarter of next year. <20>Compliance with the OPEC production cuts was over 100 percent in August (meaning members produced less than their quotas, on average) and U.S. oil inventories have been declining for several months now,<2C> said William O<>Loughlin, investment analyst at Australia<69>s Rivkin Securities. Preventing prices from climbing further, however, has been rising production in the United States, which is not participating in the deal to cut output. U.S. production C-OUT-T-EIA hit 9.55 million bpd in late September, its highest level since July 2017 and not far off its 9.61 million bpd record from June 2015. (For a graphic on ''U.S. oil production, inventories'' click reut.rs/2ynVcOL ) <20>The number of active drilling rigs in the U.S. increased last week, highlighting the fact that higher oil prices will inevitably lead to more production from U.S. shale. These factors have kept WTI oil in a relatively tight trading range for several months now,<2C> O<>Loughlin wrote in a note to clients. Drillers added six oil rigs looking for new production in the week to Sept. 29, bringing the total count up to 750, according to energy services firm Baker Hughes. RIG-OL-USA-BHI Due largely to rising U.S. output, Saxo Bank<6E>s Hansen said that <20>an extension of output curbs beyond March (2018) will be needed to ensure continued support for the oil market<65>. Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Joseph Radford'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-oil/oil-dips-over-doubts-recent-rally-will-last-through-fourth-quarter-idUKKCN1C902F'|'2017-10-04T03:52:00.000+03:00'
'ec953ceedf1c93464c9eb1dc66a151e471815a3c'|'Uber board votes in favour of SoftBank deal, governance changes'|'October 3, 2017 / 8:45 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Divided Uber board reaches peace with SoftBank, governance deal Paresh Dave 5 Min Read SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc<6E>s [UBER.UL] fractured board declared peace on Tuesday, attempting to put months of strife behind it by unanimously passing a series of measures to shore up corporate governance, bring in major investor SoftBank and diminish the power of former Chief Executive Travis Kalanick. The agreement could shore up Uber<65>s reputation after a series of scandals and a legal battle between Kalanick and an Uber investor group led by Silicon Valley<65>s Benchmark Capital. The deal could be subject to a lawsuit and is contingent on the multi-billion dollar investment by Japan<61>s SoftBank Group Corp ( 9984.T ) closing in the coming weeks. The terms preserve Uber<65>s $69-billion valuation, highest among the world<6C>s venture-backed startups, as SoftBank ( 9984.T ) and others invest about $10 billion. <20>SoftBank<6E>s interest is an incredible vote of confidence in Uber<65>s business and long-term potential,<2C> the board said in statement. Benchmark General Partner Bill Gurley, who was replaced by a colleague on Uber<65>s board in June, said by email, <20>It was a good day for Uber, a good day for Uber<65>s employees, and good day for Uber<65>s new CEO.<2E> Kalanick described Tuesday<61>s actions as <20>a major step forward in Uber<65>s journey to becoming a world class public company.<2E> He added that the governance changes should serve Uber well under Dara Khosrowshahi, who is a month into the chief executive officer job since leaving the same post at Expedia Inc ( EXPE.O ). Related Coverage Uber says board approves governance changes, SoftBank investment Governance policies adopted by the board would make it difficult for Kalanick to return as CEO. He resigned in June under pressure from the Benchmark-led investor group over employee sexual harassment investigations, a trade-secrets misappropriation lawsuit by Waymo and efforts to interfere with government probes. A two-thirds majority vote of the board would be required to hire a replacement for Khosrowshahi before the San Francisco start-up holds an initial public offering, according to a person familiar with the matter. The board set a deadline for an IPO of autumn 2019, the sources said. Uber<65>s board will expand from 11 directors, including a pair of Kalanick appointees seated on Monday, to 17 directors, the person and another source said. The Uber logo is seen on mobile telephone in London, Britain, September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay The increase would include four new independent directors for a total of seven. Five board seats would go to company insiders or co-founders, and five would be representatives of investors. The chairperson would be one of the independent directors. Two of the six new seats would go to SoftBank, the sources said. The other four would be selected by a nominating committee of the board. Kalanick and other early shareholders also are sacrificing voting power, as Uber adopts a one vote per share policy, the sources said. FILE PHOTO: Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi poses for a portrait during the 2010 Reuters Travel and Leisure Summit in New York February 22, 2010. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo THREAT OF LAWSUIT Early Uber investors Shervin Pishevar and Steve Russell said in a statement after Tuesday<61>s vote that they would sue to block the change, which cuts the super-voting rights that give them 10 votes per share. If successful, such a lawsuit could threaten the other terms of the boardroom compromise. <20>Today<61>s action by the board was the culmination of a blatant bait and switch, essentially robbing loyal employees, including the more than 200 early founding Uber employees and advisors, of their hard earned shareholder rights,<2C> Pishevar and Russell said. For Kalanick, agreeing to drop his voting power could enable him to resolve his dispute with Benchmark. The changes decided Tuesday would prompt Benchmark
'01a3292ab0e195f07c9493dd49eeaac615f90f27'|'EU takes Ireland to court for not claiming Apple tax windfall'|'October 4, 2017 / 9:32 AM / in 4 hours EU takes Ireland to court for not claiming Apple tax windfall Philip Blenkinsop 3 Min Read A 3D printed Apple logo is seen in front of a displayed European Union flag in this illustration taken September 2, 2016. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission said on Wednesday it was taking Ireland to the European Court of Justice for its failure to recover up to 13 billion euros ($15.3 billion) of tax due from Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ), a move labeled as <20>regrettable<6C> by Dublin. The Commission ordered the U.S. tech giant in August 2016 to pay the unpaid taxes as it ruled the firm had received illegal state aid, one of a number of deals the EU has targeted between multinationals and usually smaller EU states. <20>More than one year after the Commission adopted this decision, Ireland has still not recovered the money,<2C> EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said, adding that Dublin had not even sought a portion of the sum. <20>We of course understand that recovery in certain cases may be more complex than in others, and we are always ready to assist. But member states need to make sufficient progress to restore competition,<2C> she added. The Commission said the deadline for Ireland to implement its decision had been Jan. 3 this year and that, until the aid was recovered, the company continued to benefit from an illegal advantage. Apple is appealing the case. Vestager, who was also announcing a demand for Amazon ( AMZN.O ) to pay about 250 million euros in taxes to Luxembourg, declined to comment on possible penalties on Ireland if it were not to comply with an eventual ECJ ruling against it. Ireland<6E>s finance ministry said it had never accepted the Commission<6F>s analysis in the Apple state aid decision, but was committed to collecting the money due pending Dublin<69>s own appeal of the ruling. Ireland, it said, had been in constant contact with the Commission and Apple for more than a year and was close to setting up an escrow account. This would include the hiring of at least one investment manager to handle the fund. <20>It is extremely regrettable that the Commission has taken this action, especially in relation to a case with such a large scale recovery amount,<2C> the ministry said in a statement. Vestager told a news conference that in other cases of illegal tax advantages, such as Fiat ( FCHA.MI ) in Luxembourg, Starbucks ( SBUX.O ) in the Netherlands and a Belgian scheme for 35 companies, the money was recovered even before appeals were exhausted. However, the amounts involved were far smaller. The Commission said that Ireland had made progress on calculating the exact amount due, but was only planning to conclude the work by March 2018 at the earliest. Ireland, like the Benelux countries, faces criticism from bigger EU states that they are siphoning off tax revenues and the bloc<6F>s governments are negotiating reforms ($1 = 0.8507 euros)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-apple-taxavoidance-court/eu-takes-ireland-to-eu-court-over-13-billion-euro-apple-tax-bill-idUKKCN1C913I'|'2017-10-04T17:38:00.000+03:00'
'0db9e334ad6199fafc182765bd0e6d2faca5db2f'|'Britain will fight its corner in Boeing-Bombardier standoff - minister'|'MANCHESTER, England, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Britain will fight its corner in the damaging dispute between U.S. planemaker Boeing and Canadian rival Bombardier, its trade minister said on Sunday, adding that <20>protectionism always ends badly<6C>.The U.S. Department of Commerce last week imposed a 220-percent duty on Bombardier<65>s CSeries jets, whose wings are made at a plant in Belfast, following a complaint by Boeing, which accuses Canada of unfairly subsidising Bombardier.The trade minister, Liam Fox, told the Conservative Party<74>s annual conference that the two companies must find a resolution.Reporting by Elizabeth Piper; writing by Kate Holton; Editing by Dale Hudson '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/boeing-bombardier-britain-fox/britain-will-fight-its-corner-in-boeing-bombardier-standoff-minister-idINL9N1JJ018'|'2017-10-01T15:38:00.000+03:00'
'dc1296ae60ac538d6e964e5784f1a7dc1ed5112d'|'Air France says flight AF 066 suffered serious engine damage'|'BERLIN, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Air France said an engine on flight AF066 from Paris to Los Angeles had suffered <20>serious damage<67>, forcing it to divert to Canada.<2E>Air France confirms that the crew of flight AF 066 operated by A380 from Paris-CDG to Los Angeles decided to divert to Goose Bay airport (Canada) following serious damage to one of its four engines,<2C> it said in a statement on Saturday.The plane landed safely at 1542 GMT, it added. (Reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Hugh Lawson) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/air-france-canada/air-france-says-flight-af-066-suffered-serious-engine-damage-idUSFWN1MA0VM'|'2017-09-30T21:27:00.000+03:00'
'38fede5065f1d92c26b2b2756651140a1205ffb0'|'SCR-Sibelco considers acquiring Fairmount Santrol - BBG'|'Oct 3 (Reuters) - Belgian mining firm SCR-Sibelco NV is considering an acquisition of U.S. frac sand miner Fairmount Santrol Holdings Inc, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.SCR-Sibelco would consider reverse listing its U.S. division, Unimin Corp, in to Ohio-based Fairmount, Bloomberg said. ( bloom.bg/2ymZJAP )SCR-Sibelco and Fairmount were not immediately available for comment.Fairmount<6E>s shares rose as much as 11.5 percent to $5.10 on Tuesday, valuing the company at $1.16 billion. (Reporting by Akshara P in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D<>Couto) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/fairmount-santrol-ma-scr-sibelco/scr-sibelco-considers-acquiring-fairmount-santrol-bbg-idINL4N1ME34Q'|'2017-10-03T16:06:00.000+03:00'
'9b5a80d739c915b4320058177380bf41b299794c'|'Creditors approached Puerto Rico with offers after Maria -official'|'NEW YORK, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Creditors approached Puerto Rico<63>s government with offers surrounding the U.S. territory<72>s bankruptcy after Hurricane Maria tore through the island last month, but federal aid remains the top priority, a Puerto Rico official said on Monday.<2E>Any offer we<77>ll review it, and we<77>ll discuss it with the oversight board and their advisors,<2C> said Christian Sobrino, Governor Ricardo Rossello<6C>s official liaison to the federally appointed Financial Oversight and Management Board. The board is charged with helping Puerto Rico craft and follow a blueprint for the financial recovery from its massive debt crisis. (Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; editing by Grant McCool) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-puertorico-board/creditors-approached-puerto-rico-with-offers-after-maria-official-idINL2N1MD1ZW'|'2017-10-02T19:10:00.000+03:00'
'015d31196f3a0e3f67cb7ffdcd334cd0d88454bb'|'Lessor BOC Aviation looks for new homes for 13 aircraft after Monarch collapse'|'October 3, 2017 / 1:51 AM / in 3 hours Lessor BOC Aviation looks for new homes for 13 aircraft after Monarch collapse Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Monarch aircraft are seen parked after the airline ceased trading, at Luton airport in Britain, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Asia<69>s second-biggest aircraft lessor, BOC Aviation Ltd ( 2588.HK ), said on Tuesday it was working to find new homes for 13 Boeing Co ( BA.N ) 737 MAX 8 aircraft it had planned to lease to collapsed British carrier Monarch Airlines. BOC, which is based in Singapore but majority owned by Bank of China ( 601988.SS ), had agreed to the long-term lease arrangement in June. The Boeing aircraft were due to be delivered from mid 2018 to 2020, BOC Head of Investor Relations Timothy Ross said. <20>The aircraft are in-demand, new technology narrow bodies in a standard specification and, as is usual, we<77>re holding security deposits under the leases,<2C> Ross said. <20>We<57>re already working on potential new homes for the aircraft but these are still too early to identify and we<77>ll provide updates in due course.<2E> Analysts at Goodbody said low-cost carrier Ryanair Holdings PLC ( RYA.I ) might be interested in the Boeing jets. Monarch had 32 unfilled orders for 737 MAX 8 aircraft with Boeing on top of the 13 from BOC. A Boeing spokeswoman said the manufacturer was aware Monarch had entered administration but declined to comment further on discussions about the status of the aircraft. (This version of the story adds dropped word in headline) Reporting by Jamie Freed; additional reporting by Tim Hepher in PARIS; Editing by Stephen Coates'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-monarch-airlines-bankruptcy-boc/lessor-boc-aviation-looks-for-new-homes-13-aircraft-after-monarch-collapse-idUKKCN1C804Y'|'2017-10-03T05:16:00.000+03:00'
'353fc6edd1f227f40881465af860e51acd06e34a'|'REFILE-Lessor BOC Aviation looks for new homes for 13 aircraft after Monarch collapse'|'(Adds dropped word in headline)SINGAPORE, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Asia<69>s second-biggest aircraft lessor, BOC Aviation Ltd, said on Tuesday it was working to find new homes for 13 Boeing Co 737 MAX 8 aircraft it had planned to lease to collapsed British carrier Monarch Airlines.BOC, which is based in Singapore but majority owned by Bank of China, had agreed to the long-term lease arrangement in June.The Boeing aircraft were due to be delivered from mid 2018 to 2020, BOC Head of Investor Relations Timothy Ross said.<2E>The aircraft are in-demand, new technology narrow bodies in a standard specification and, as is usual, we<77>re holding security deposits under the leases,<2C> Ross said.<2E>We<57>re already working on potential new homes for the aircraft but these are still too early to identify and we<77>ll provide updates in due course.<2E>Analysts at Goodbody said low-cost carrier Ryanair Holdings PLC might be interested in the Boeing jets.Monarch had 32 unfilled orders for 737 MAX 8 aircraft with Boeing on top of the 13 from BOC. A Boeing spokeswoman said the manufacturer was aware Monarch had entered administration but declined to comment further on discussions about the status of the aircraft. (Reporting by Jamie Freed; additional reporting by Tim Hepher in PARIS; Editing by Stephen Coates) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/monarch-airlines-bankruptcy-boc/lessor-boc-aviation-looks-for-new-homes-13-aircraft-after-monarch-collapse-idUSL4N1ME053'|'2017-10-03T05:07:00.000+03:00'
'91cca91033f0180bcb937bedb72ac9832ed8927d'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX edges up with help from resource, financial shares'|'October 3, 2017 / 1:40 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago CANADA STOCKS-TSX edges up with help from resource, financial shares Reuters Staff 1 Min Read OTTAWA, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index opened slightly higher on Tuesday as gains in the resource and financial sectors offset a decline in shares of TMX Group after Scotia Capital and Alberta Investment Management said they would cut their stake in the company. Shortly after the opening bell, the Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index was up 16.38 points, or 0.1 percent, at 15,721.38. (Reporting by Leah Schnurr)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks-open/canada-stocks-tsx-edges-up-with-help-from-resource-financial-shares-idUSL2N1ME0MP'|'2017-10-03T16:40:00.000+03:00'
'e76bbb0c7e14e18c1f92c87a32ac11aafcc7cb15'|'Asahi in talks to sell stakes in beverage business to Indonesian partner'|'October 3, 2017 / 2:35 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Asahi in talks to sell stakes in beverage business to Indonesian partner Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the logo of Asahi Group Holdings at the company''s headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, May 17, 2016. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo JAKARTA (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Asahi Group Holdings Ltd ( 2502.T ) said it is in talks to sell its stakes in two unlisted Indonesian beverage companies to its joint venture partner, PT Indofood CBP Sukses Makmur Tbk ( ICBP.JK ), as part of a portfolio restructuring. Potential terms of the deal were not disclosed. Asahi said in a statement on Monday it holds 51 percent of PT Asahi Indofood Beverage Makmur and 49 percent of PT Indofood Asahi Sukses Beverage. Indofood CBP Sukses, which makes instant noodles, snacks and milk products, owns the remaining shares. ( bit.ly/2xcPzT4 ) Indofood CBP Sukses said it is considering accepting Asahi<68>s offer. <20>We believe that the future prospect of the non-alcoholic beverage business in Indonesia is still promising, in line with the growing middle-income segment and the rising income per capita,<2C> it said. Reporting by Eveline Danubrata; Editing by Edwina Gibbs '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-asahi-group-indofood-cbp/asahi-in-talks-to-sell-stakes-in-beverage-business-to-indonesian-partner-idINKCN1C807B'|'2017-10-03T00:35:00.000+03:00'
'd66b1f444607ebce41dfa16618fb5ed3d04f6945'|'UK factory growth slows, price pressures rocket again - Markit PMI'|'October 2, 2017 / 11:22 AM / Updated 8 hours ago UK factory growth slows, price pressures rocket again: Markit PMI Andy Bruce 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Workers assemble cars at the plant for the Mini range of cars in Cowley, near Oxford, Britain June 20, 2016. REUTERS/Leon Neal/Pool/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - British manufacturing growth cooled last month as cost pressures lurched higher, according to a survey that could put the Bank of England a step closer to raising interest rates, despite a murky outlook ahead of Brexit. Monday<61>s IHS Markit/CIPS UK Manufacturing Purchasing Managers<72> Index (PMI) fell to 55.9 from a downwardly revised 56.7 in August, undershooting the consensus of 56.4 in a Reuters poll of economists. By contrast, euro zone factories had their best month since early 2011. While the PMI survey signaled solid expansion at British factories, helped by robust exports, softer growth in new orders and a slowdown among producers of investment goods raised concern about the months ahead. Britain<69>s economy initially withstood the shock of the June 2016 vote to leave the European Union. But growth began to slow sharply this year as inflation rose following the pound<6E>s post-Brexit vote plunge, hitting households. Against that background, the BoE surprised investors last month when its officials said they were likely to raise interest rates soon, citing a reduced tolerance for above-target inflation. Analysts said Monday<61>s survey - which showed a resurgence of price pressures - would do little to alter this judgment. <20>While the weaker economic backdrop is unlikely to deter the Bank from hiking in November, it does mean that the chances of a series of rate hikes after that are low,<2C> said James Smith, economist at ING. Costs paid by factories for goods shot up at the fastest pace since March, the PMI showed, spurred in part by an increase in commodity prices and capacity constraints in the supply chain. <20>Emerging problems in the supply chain, signaled by lengthening lead times, are likely related to the subdued investment performance of the past few quarters,<2C> said Lee Hopley, economist at manufacturing association EEF. IHS Markit, which compiles the survey, said this would probably exert further upward pressure on prices, dent profitability and potentially disrupt production schedules in coming months - boosting the case for higher rates. The PMI<4D>s gauge of British manufacturing export orders slowed for a second month. While still much stronger than its historical average, it lagged the euro zone<6E>s by some distance. A majority of economists polled by Reuters last week expect the BoE will raise interest rates in November, although most also thought it would be a mistake to hike now. Official economic growth figures published last week showed manufacturing output contracted 0.3 percent in the second quarter compared with the first quarter. PMIs for the construction industry and all-important service sector are due to be published on Tuesday and Wednesday. Editing by Janet Lawrence'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-economy-pmi/uk-factory-growth-slows-price-pressures-rocket-again-markit-pmi-idUKKCN1C7198'|'2017-10-02T14:15:00.000+03:00'
'014054498aaab8ffe34007126bce455a1104309f'|'GLOBAL ECONOMY-Asian factories rev up in Sept ahead of year-end spending spree'|'October 2, 2017 / 4:47 AM / Updated 31 minutes ago GLOBAL ECONOMY-Asian factories rev up in Sept ahead of year-end spending spree Shri Navaratnam 5 Min Read SINGAPORE, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Factories in Asia<69>s largest economies cranked up activity in September as a synchronized upswing in growth globally pointed to solid consumption of manufactured goods heading into the lucrative end-of-year shopping season. However, pockets of weakness in regional economies are likely to keep Asian central banks slanted toward more accommodative monetary policy, even as their Western counterparts move to scale back stimulus. China<6E>s central bank on Saturday cut the amount of cash that some banks must hold as reserves for the first time since February 2016 in a bid to encourage more lending to struggling smaller firms and energize its lacklustre private sector. The world<6C>s second-largest economy has defied expectations for a slowdown this year, growing at a strong clip in the first half thanks to a construction boom. Beijing<6E>s latest easing comes ahead of a key party gathering this month. <20>It<49>s a solid backdrop for manufacturing in the region as we head toward the big shopping season,<2C> said Rob Carnell, Asia<69>s head of research at ING. That sentiment was backed by an official Purchasing Managers<72> Index from China<6E>s vast manufacturing sector, which showed activity last month grew at the fastest clip since 2012 on solid demand. But cost pressures from high raw materials prices and continued underperformance of smaller firms mean some manufacturers are still struggling, which was reflected in a separate private survey of Chinese factories showing growth slowed in September. In Japan, factory activity grew the fastest in four months, thanks to robust exports growth and underpinned improving economic momentum even though inflation remained tepid. Meanwhile, a closely watched Bank of Japan survey showed big manufacturers have more confidence in business conditions than they have had for a decade, thanks to a weaker yen and robust global demand. In South Korea, manufacturing activity expanded at the fastest pace in almost two years. Indonesia, Southeast Asia<69>s biggest economy, also showed an improvement in factory growth but the pace was tepid and production contracted slightly. Indonesia has cut interest rates twice this year in a bid to boost stubbornly weak domestic consumption, while India slashed rates once in August to spur growth and inflation. Those moves, along with the BOJ<4F>s commitment to maintain its ultra-low rates for the foreseeable future, marked a contrast to the West<73>s shift toward tighter policy, although analysts expect the extent of stimulus in Asia to be measured. <20>I would characterise some of the easings (in Asia) as a bit of fine-tuning really and not a major divergence in policy with the West,<2C> ING<4E>s Carnell said. <20>The regional economies continue to grow at a decent pace.<2E> GLOBAL UPSWING Indeed, a synchronized upswing in the global economy has been a boon to manufacturers from China to Britain and the United States, with export-reliant Asia enjoying a spurt in growth led by an upsurge in sales of electronics. A raft of European PMIs scheduled for publication later on Monday are expected to paint a picture of robust manufacturing momentum globally. Shipments from Japan and South Korea - two major exporters - remained robust with the boom helping their economies grow at a decent clip. In Taiwan, another export-bellwether, factories continued to expand at a steady pace on higher global demand. In South Korea, higher memory chip and steel product sales lifted exports by 35 percent year-on-year in the longest stretch of expansion since 2011. Full-year growth in China is widely expected to handily meet the government<6E>s target of 6.5 percent, after stronger-than-forecast growth of 6.9 percent in the first half, driven by a year-long building boom and solid exports. That augured well for Asia<69>s manufacturers 
'fbcde2414a92dba7e83fb5c1bcd75dcab24648ed'|'Post-election, critics hope Germany''s hate speech law can be revised'|'October 2, 2017 / 6:38 PM / in an hour Post-election, critics hope Germany''s hate speech law can be revised Andrea Shalal 3 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Critics of a new hate speech law in Germany are upbeat that it can be revised after its Social Democratic sponsors vowed to drop out of the ruling coalition following last month<74>s national election and go into opposition. The German parliament in June approved legislation that will allow authorities to fine social media networks up to 50 million euros if they fail to remove hateful postings promptly, despite warnings that the law could limit free expression. Chancellor Angela Merkel<65>s conservatives will start talks in coming weeks on forming a new coalition with the environmental Greens, who abstained from voting for the law, and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), who opposed it outright. Germany has some of the world<6C>s toughest laws covering defamation, public incitement to commit crimes and threats of violence, with prison sentences for Holocaust denial or inciting hatred against minorities. But few online cases are prosecuted. The new law, which came into effect on Oct. 1, gives social media networks 24 hours to delete or block obviously criminal content and seven days to deal with less clear-cut cases, with an obligation to report back to the person who filed the complaint about how they handled the case. Failure to comply could see a company fined up to 50 million euros, and the company<6E>s chief representative in Germany fined up to 5 million euros. Opponents argue the law could damage free speech because the threat of fines will prompt social media companies to censor more content than really necessary. Facebook and Twitter and other social media platforms are scrambling to adapt to its requirements and avoid hefty fines that the law forsees in the event of violation. The departure from government of Justice Minister Heiko Maas, an SPD member and main driver behind the new hate speech law, offers critics a new chance to get the law overturned or at least revised, according to politicians and industry groups. Nicola Beer, secretary general of the FDP, vowed in a Tweet to make the law <20>the shortest-ever in force.<2E> Konstantin von Notz, digital spokesman for the Greens, told Reuters his party would press for <20>a new start<72> in many policy areas, including the hate speech law and cyber security. Bernhard Rohleder, head of the IT industry association, told the Handelsblatt newspaper on Monday that if it succeeded in forming a government, the new coalition should <20>correct the mistake and eliminate the law without replacement.<2E> Marie-Teresa Weber, who heads the group<75>s consumer law and media policy department, said the legal experts considered the law unconstitutional. <20>The new coalition should rescind it before the courts do so,<2C> she said. Parliamentary experts said it might be tough to overturn the law completely, but it would likely to be tweaked in coming years once authorities begin to implement it. Affected individuals or companies could also challenge it as unconstitutional, they said. Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Richard Balmforth '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-hatecrime/post-election-critics-hope-germanys-hate-speech-law-can-be-revised-idUSKCN1C72FX'|'2017-10-02T21:26:00.000+03:00'
'38ec9d3a42537e96bccd734405e9e0954246d9e4'|'RPT-Las Vegas rampage could prompt casinos to re-think security - experts'|'(Repeats for wider distribution story published on Oct. 2, no change to headline or text)By Nathan Layne and Tracy RucinskiNEW YORK/CHICAGO, Oct 2 (Reuters) - A year ago casino magnate Steve Wynn warned that Las Vegas was a <20>target city<74> and disclosed a raft of new security measures, including invisible metal detectors and specially trained guards, designed to prevent a large-scale attack.Whether those measures would have prevented Sunday<61>s rampage on the strip in which 59 people were killed is unknown. The gunman shot concertgoers from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, a hotel complex owned by MGM Resorts International, a rival of Wynn Resorts Ltd.But the shooting, which also injured more than 500 people, could spur casino operators to think more like Wynn, who had been dismissed as <20>obsessed<65> about security before Sunday<61>s massacre, a rival casino executive said.<2E>This could be a turning point,<2C> the executive said, speaking on condition of anonymity because security measures are private. <20>Every management team is going to move this up to the top of the list.<2E>A representative of MGM could not be reached for comment.Hotels already have extensive security for gambling, including dogs that patrol the casinos to sniff for drugs and bombs, and significant security staff that constantly monitors the actions of people, including undercover security.In an interview with Las Vegas<61> KTNV in 2016, Wynn Resorts Chief Executive Steve Wynn said, <20>Las Vegas is a target city. We have hardened the target at the Wynn.<2E>He said his company has metal detectors and devices at every entrance of its building for employees and guests that are nonvisible to the public as well as specially trained guards.<2E>There are almost 40 of them at every opening of my building, plain clothes, armed, on the look-out, changing shift and being relieved every two hours so they don<6F>t get bored,<2C> he said.<2E>We have done extraordinary things to make sure that we protect our employees and our guests at the hotel,<2C> Wynn said.His comments were confirmed on Monday by company spokesman Michael Weaver.While other casino operators have contemplated heightened security measures, none have gone to the lengths of Wynn, the rival casino executive said.A.G. Burnett, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, said in a telephone interview on Monday that a task force was set up among regulators and law enforcement officials a few years ago to discuss security issues.<2E>We were always worried about something like this happening on the casino floor, but this was outside the casino,<2C> Burnett said, adding, <20>We will continue our efforts in speaking with Las Vegas casinos on bolstering their security.<2E>David Shepherd, chief executive of consultancy the Readiness Resource Group and former director of security for the Venetian Resort Hotel and Casino, said, <20>You are looking at 40 million tourists coming into Las Vegas. Security has to be effective but not intrusive.<2E><>We<57>ve had one event. Are we are going to change everything after one event?<3F>Police identified Sunday<61>s gunman as Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old retiree armed with multiple assault weapons. Police said they recovered a total of 34 weapons belonging to Paddock, including 16 from the hotel room.Casino security expert Steven Baker said standard M-16 rifles, for example, can be broken down to fit in a suitcase.<2E>If I can take a suitcase to my room I can have that in there. Nowhere do we have the full out screening of baggage like we do in airports. The logistics of doing that are huge,<2C> said Baker.Casino operators typically refrain from disclosing details of their security policies. Both Las Vegas Sands and Caesars Entertainment Corp said they were constantly reviewing their protocols to ensure the safety of customers and working closely with local police.Boyd Gaming Corp, whose casinos in Las Vegas include the Orleans and the Gold Coast, said they were looking at ways to increase security in the
'4927d63e0c54b3bfd9ae913fce82df4d9320e6e4'|'Uber''s UK boss quits as worldwide chief flies in for London licence talks - Technology'|'Uber''s UK boss quits as worldwide chief flies in for London licence talks Jo Bertram announces departure as CEO Dara Khosrowshahi arrives to meet Transport for London over licence loss Uber said Jo Bertram<61>s resignation was not related to the firm losing its licence to operate in London. Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian Uber''s UK boss quits as worldwide chief flies in for London licence talks Jo Bertram announces departure as CEO Dara Khosrowshahi arrives to meet Transport for London over licence loss View more sharing options Monday 2 October 2017 19.15 BST First published on Monday 2 October 2017 13.37 BST The Uber executive responsible for the UK has quit, as the company<6E>s worldwide boss prepares to meet the head of the London transport authority in an attempt to get the firm<72>s licence reinstated. Uber said the resignation of Jo Bertram, the head of the company in northern Europe, was not related to the decision last month by Transport for London to strip it of its licence to operate in the city. In a letter to colleagues, Bertram said she had <20>decided to move on to something new and exciting<6E> after four years with the company, during which time its network of UK drivers expanded from a few hundred to about 50,000. Londoners support Sadiq Khan over Uber ban and handling of Grenfell Read more <20>Given some of our current challenges, I<>m also convinced that now is the right time to have a change of face, and to hand over to someone who will be here for the long haul and take us into the next phase,<2C> she said. <20>While I would like to have announced my move in smoother circumstances, I<>m proud of the team we<77>ve built here and am very confident in their abilities to lead the business into the next chapter.<2E> Despite Bertram<61>s reference to <20>current challenges<65>, sources close to the company said her departure had been planned for some time and was not related to Uber<65>s efforts to avoid losing its London licence. In an effort to address TfL<66>s misgivings, Uber<65>s chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi , has flown to London for talks with the transport authority due to take place on Tuesday, after admitting that the firm <20>got things wrong<6E> . He will sit down with the TfL commissioner, Mike Brown, in a private meeting, with the pair expected to discuss commitments Uber can make if it wants to continue operating. Sources familiar with the contact between Uber and TfL said the meeting was not likely to yield any immediate results, with talks likely to continue over months. Uber has lodged a legal appeal against the revocation of its licence, which TfL said was down to concerns about whether the firm was a <20>fit and proper<65> company to run a taxi service. Uber clashes with regulators in cities around the world Read more TfL cited concerns about Uber<65>s conduct and approach in areas including checks on drivers and reporting criminal offences. Meanwhile, the chief executive of Uber rival Kabbee, a booking and price comparison service for minicabs, said Uber should also be investigated over its tax payments and market dominance. In a letter to the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who chairs TfL, Justin Peters said: <20>Uber London must clear up ongoing concerns around any failure to pay HMRC the same levels of VAT and corporation tax paid by other UK-based minicab fleet. I am guessing this would reflect the desired outcome of the government.<2E> Uber is the subject of a crowdfunded legal case from a leading tax lawyer who alleges it should be paying UK VAT on fares, something the company denies on the basis that it is only connecting users with drivers. Peters said that if Uber was not paying its fair share of VAT then <20>the UK taxpayer has been subsidising 5% of the value of Uber rides, which is a contentious and unfair advantage [...].<2E> He said Uber should also be subject to a cap on its overall percentage of minicab supply, pointing out that London has just over 116,000 private hire drivers and about 40,000 of th
'ad72749b4e875dab539a5f2b469610508de78212'|'FCA criticised for <20>serious error<6F> in Libor cases'|'All the benefits of Standard Digital, plus: Unlimited access to all content Instant Insights column for comment and analysis as news unfolds FT Confidential Research - in-depth China and Southeast Asia analysis ePaper - the digital replica of the printed newspaper Full access to LEX - our agenda setting daily commentary Exclusive emails, including a weekly email from our Editor, Lionel Barber Full access to EM Squared- news and analysis service on emerging markets Other Subscription options:'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/content/d0e4c33a-e251-34d9-9108-493e3225d7b6'|'2017-10-02T16:15:00.000+03:00'
'bfd6623620d4579471818de9f1dfca89e4b0e8e0'|'Saudi Aramco plans expansion in India with new unit - sources'|'FILE PHOTO: Logo of Saudi Aramco is seen at the 20th Middle East Oil & Gas Show and Conference (MOES 2017) in Manama, Bahrain, March 7, 2017. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/File Photo NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Oil giant Saudi Aramco will open an Indian subsidiary next week, three sources said, as the top global oil exporter looks to tap rising demand and invest in the world<6C>s third-biggest consumer.The company is investing in refineries in major markets to lock in customers ahead of its initial public offering next year, and the India unit, on top of sales, will look for opportunities to take stakes in refining and petrochemical projects in the country.Saudi Arabia is competing with Iraq to be India<69>s top oil supplier, with Iraq displacing it for a fifth month in a row in August, data compiled by Reuters showed.Aramco Chief Executive Amin Nasser will inaugurate Aramco Asia India during a visit to New Delhi next week to attend the IHS-CERA conference, which starts on Sunday and which will also be attended by OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo.Nasser will also meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday as part of an industry delegation to discuss investment in the oil and gas sector, one of the sources said.Neither Aramco nor the prime minister<65>s office was available to comment.Mohammed Al-Mughirah, a company veteran handling crude sales, will head Aramco Asia India, two of the sources said. He also worked as deputy managing director at Aramco Asia Korea, according to his LinkedIn profile.Major oil producers that have lost market share due to the rise in U.S. shale oil production are tapping rising fuel demand in Asia.Earlier this year Saudi Arabia pledged billions of dollars of investment in projects in Indonesia and Malaysia to ensure long-term oil supply deals.The Kingdom wants to mirror that strategy in India, after missing out to Russia<69>s Rosneft in an opportunity to buy a majority stake in private refiner Essar.Saudi Arabia<69>s Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih has said that India was a prime target as Aramco looked for collaboration opportunities across Asia.The International Energy Agency estimates India<69>s refining capacity will lag fuel demand going forward, requiring investment in new plants.Aramco representatives have met officials of provincial governments including West Bengal and southern Andhra Pradesh to scout for investment opportunities, sources said.Indian oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said earlier this year that Aramco wants to have exclusive talks for a stake in a planned 1.2 million barrel per day refinery on India<69>s west coast.Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Susan Fenton '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-aramco/saudi-aramco-plans-expansion-in-india-with-new-unit-sources-idINKBN1C92GZ'|'2017-10-04T20:08:00.000+03:00'
'19eaf67aa9f392ff59d3bfe73b16e08d1c4b9ab8'|'UPDATE 1-Independence in days pledge pushes Spain''s borrowing costs to March high'|'(Adds Quote: , detail)By John GeddieLONDON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Spain<69>s government borrowing costs rose to their highest since March on Wednesday, stretching the gap over German peers to the widest in five months, after Catalonia<69>s secessionist leader said the region will declare independence in <20>a matter of days<79>.Charles Puigdemont<6E>s comments to British broadcaster BBC come in the wake of a weekend referendum which was declared illegal by Spain<69>s central government and marred by a violent police crackdown.The vote has thrown the euro zone<6E>s fourth-largest economy into its worst constitutional crisis in decades. Thousands took to the streets to protest against Sunday<61>s violence that injured 900 people and, in a rare intervention, Spain<69>s king accused Catalan leaders of shattering democratic principles.Investors worry the uncertainty could have repercussions for the economy and political stability in a country led by the minority government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, a conservative who has taken a hard-line stance on the issue.<2E>Uncertainty on the next steps remains the key theme,<2C> said Richard McGuire, head of rates strategy at Rabobank in London.Spain<69>s 10-year bond yield rose 5 basis points to 1.77 percent in early trades, according to Reuters data, the highest since mid-March.That stretched the spread over German equivalents, which fell 3 basis points to a one-week low of 0.43 percent , to 134 basis points - the widest since early May.Rabobank said the <20>odds are tilted to further widening towards 150 basis points<74>, which would be close to this year<61>s peak.The cost of insuring exposure to Spanish debt via credit default swaps held at a four-month high, according to IHS Markit.Spain<69>s benchmark IBEX equity index shed 0.9 percent, having fallen 1.2 percent on Monday in their biggest one-day fall in almost two months.Banco de Sabadell and Caixabank, both based in Catalonia, fell 3.2 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively.While the Spanish turmoil upped demand for German bonds, seen as less risky by investors, analysts also attributed the fall in German yields to uncertainty over the likely successor to U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, whose term ends in February.Fed Governor Jerome Powell, viewed as dovish, has joined the race for the job alongside his predecessor Kevin Warsh.At the auctions, Germany is scheduled to sell 3 billion euros of 10-year bonds on Wednesday.For Reuters Live Markets blog on European and UK stock markets see reuters://realtime/verb=Open/url=http://emea1.apps.cp.extranet.thomsonreuters.biz/cms/?pageId=livemarkets (Reporting by John Geddie, editing by Louise Heavens) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/eurozone-bonds/update-1-independence-in-days-pledge-pushes-spains-borrowing-costs-to-march-high-idINL8N1MF1B3'|'2017-10-04T06:17:00.000+03:00'
'8b6943b67dbfe3df1865c952660282f3e1f1427f'|'U.S. SEC chair floats potential delay to fund data rules following hack'|'October 4, 2017 / 4:36 PM / in 32 minutes SEC chair floats potential delay to fund data rules following hack Michelle Price 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Jay Clayton, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, testifies at a Senate Banking hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has floated a possible delay to new investment fund data gathering rules following a hack that has raised questions over the regulator<6F>s cyber security controls. Chairman Jay Clayton told the U.S. House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday the SEC was reviewing whether it can adequately protect data it would require funds to report on their monthly performance, since this information could be market sensitive. <20>That<61>s exactly the type of question we<77>re asking: can we protect it ... and if we can<61>t, do we delay?<3F> he told the committee of the SEC<45>s review process. The rules are due to start to go into effect next year. Clayton last month disclosed that hackers may have profited by illegally trading on information stolen from the SEC<45>s EDGAR system, which houses millions of corporate filings. On Monday, Clayton said that additional forensic analysis had found that the Social Security numbers, dates of birth and names of two individuals were made available to the hackers after they breached the system. Last month, the Investment Company Institute trade group called for a delay to the rules until the SEC had cleared up concerns over its cyber defenses. Other market participants have also called on the SEC to delay a regulatory project to gather vast quantities of data that would provide an audit trail of daily market trades. Clayton told lawmakers the SEC was also reviewing whether it was safe to gather this trade and other key data such as social security numbers. He also said that he plans to hire a chief risk officer to oversee the SEC<45>s cyber security programs. Reporting by Michelle Price; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Meredith Mazzilli'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-sec-house/u-s-sec-chair-floats-potential-delay-to-fund-data-rules-following-hack-idUSKBN1C92E6'|'2017-10-04T19:35:00.000+03:00'
'd307058cd91432798e1f2754867f047257bc172b'|'Tesco''s first dividend since 2014 crisis cements recovery'|'FILE PHOTO: A company logo is pictured outside a Tesco supermarket in Altrincham northern England, April 16, 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s biggest retailer Tesco said it would pay a dividend for the first time in three years, signalling further progress in its recovery from crisis under Chief Executive Dave Lewis.The supermarket group also reported on Wednesday a 27 percent rise in first half profit and a seventh straight quarter of underlying sales growth in its home market as it successfully navigated an inflationary environment.However, after an initial rise Tesco<63>s shares were flat by mid-morning and are down 8 percent so far this year reflecting lingering concerns over the merits of its 3.7 billion pound ($4.90 billion) agreed bid for wholesaler Booker and a need to increase contributions to cut its pension deficit.The stock was trading at 230 pence when Lewis joined in Sept. 2014 and closed on Tuesday at 190 pence.Lewis has been leading the fightback after Tesco<63>s sales and profit were hammered by changing shopping habits, the rise of the German discounters Aldi and Lidl and a 2014 accounting scandal which plunged the firm into its worst crisis in its near 100-year history.Lewis, who joined just before the scandal was uncovered, said paying the 1 pence interim dividend was a key moment.<2E>It<49>s a significant milestone in the recovery of the business and one which demonstrates the confidence we and the board have in our plans,<2C> he told reporters.Fund manager Ed Meier at Old Mutual Global Investors, a top-40 investor, according to Thomson Reuters data, said he expected a 3 pence dividend for the full year.<2E>While we anticipated this return to the dividend list, we still consider this a strong indication from the company that it is indeed on track for a full recovery.<2E>GROWTH Lewis first stabilised Tesco then got it growing again with a focus on more competative prices, new and streamlined product ranges, better customer service and improved supplier relationships.Tesco remains the largest of Britain<69>s supermarket groups by a clear margin, having a market share of almost 28 percent according to the latest industry figures.By purchasing a tighter range of goods and working more closely with its suppliers, Tesco is able to exploit its huge buying scale.It made operating profit before one off items of 759 million pounds ($1.01 billion) for the six months to Aug. 26 - ahead of analysts<74> forecasts and 596 million pounds in the same period last year. Sales increased 3.3 percent to 25.2 billion pounds.UK like-for-like sales rose 2.1 percent in the second quarter, reflecting strong fresh food volume growth. That was, however, a slight slowdown from growth of 2.3 percent in the first quarter.Cost savings helped to push up the group operating margin to 2.7 percent from 2.2 percent last year, enabling Tesco to reiterate its target for a 3.5 to 4.0 percent margin by 2019-20.<2E>Sales are up, profits are up, cash generation continues to strengthen and net debt levels are less than half what they were when we started our turnaround three years ago,<2C> Lewis said.Net debt was down 25 percent year-on-year to 3.3 billion pounds.Tesco said its pension deficit had reduced to 2.4 billion pounds but it would still increase annual contributions by 15 million pounds to 285 million pounds from April 2018.Despite its progress, the discounters remain a major threat to Tesco and its traditional rivals. Aldi said last week it was pressing on with its aggressive expansion in Britain despite a third straight year of falling profits.($1 = 0.7546 pounds)Additional reporting by Simon Jessop; Editing by Alistair Smout and Keith Weir '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/tesco-results/tescos-first-dividend-since-2014-crisis-cements-recovery-idINKCN1C915K'|'2017-10-04T07:57:00.000+03:00'
'e9f7740c4251651c7ee2a8fed5ece6321a6bbc12'|'German carmakers relying on volume to confront Tesla'|'October 4, 2017 / 2:31 PM / Updated 5 hours ago German carmakers relying on volume to confront Tesla 8 Min Read A Tesla charging station is seen in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S. September 28, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson FRANKFURT (Reuters) - BMW ( BMWG.DE ) and Mercedes ( DAIGn.DE ) are betting they can mass produce new electric cars based on conventional vehicles, defying sceptics who say they will need more radical designs to head off the threat from Tesla and other start-up carmakers. There are two ways to make battery-driven vehicles: use a clean-sheet design like Tesla ( TSLA.O ), or a traditional vehicle platform that can use all types of motor: combustion, electric or a hybrid of the two. Electric motors are smaller than petrol or diesel engines, so electric vehicles designed from scratch can benefit from better interior packaging which allows a bigger passenger space. The problem: their unique design requires a dedicated production line and expensive new factories. BMW learned this the hard way after pouring billions into bespoke carbon-fibre based electric cars, the i3 and i8, which failed to sell in large numbers. <20>It is easy to build an electric car. It is difficult to earn money with it,<2C> said BMW research and development chief Klaus Froehlich. Since BMW started selling the i3 in 2013, vehicle battery performance has improved by 40 percent, allowing carmakers to make electric cars with the same heavy underpinnings used by petrol cars and still get a range of 500 km from one charge. This, they believe, gives them an advantage over makers of custom built electric vehicles. As Tesla enters the mainstream with its cheaper Model 3, BMW has made a strategy u-turn to produce electric cars in large numbers, pledging to offer battery-powered variants of regular models. Froehlich said vehicle designs dedicated to only one powertrain were no longer required. BMW is preparing to launch an all-electric version of its popular X3 offroader by 2020, and Mercedes-Benz will launch the electric EQ in 2019, based on its best-selling SUV, the GLC. A new electric BMW, the i Vision Concept, will use the same underpinnings as future versions of the BMW 3-Series. Electric and petrol versions will be built on the same production lines, allowing a flexible response to demand for electric vehicles. To prolong the life of its i3, BMW has given it a fresh design and a new battery. But the company<6E>s strategic bet is on overhauling volume production lines to rapidly scale up production if needed. Demand for electric cars remains weak due to their high purchase price and limited charging infrastructure. But this may change if battery prices keep falling. <20>Battery costs are coming down. We believe that we can bring economies of scale to bear beyond just the battery and drivetrain. I think we will be in a good competitive position from that perspective,<2C> Daimler Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche, whose company owns Mercedes-Benz, told Reuters. Mercedes is also working on a platform just for electric and autonomous cars, to be introduced after its initial wave of electric vehicles hit the road. Germany<6E>s three big premium carmakers - Mercedes, BMW and VW Group<75>s Audi ( NSUG.DE ) - have most to lose if Tesla<6C>s volume assault on the premium car market succeeds. Loss-making Tesla, which made 83,922 cars last year, is already far ahead of the German luxury brands in electric car sales. BMW sold 25,528 electric i3<69>s last year and Mercedes won<6F>t disclose sales figures for its electric B-Class. Overall, Mercedes and BMW sold more than 2 million cars apiece last year. The Germans long resisted mass electrification, saying no competitor could make electric cars at a profit because the batteries were too expensive. Battery prices have slumped but a 500-km battery still costs $14,000, while a combustion engine is less than $5,000, analysts at Bernstein Research calculate. <20>FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED<45> FILE PHOTO: A BMW logo is pictured before the annual news conference
'8b77e1cac8377d9e5cf76b6eb5b9b6e8d74f1a63'|'Bank Hapoalim says U.S. tax settlement may be higher than thought'|'October 3, 2017 / 6:50 AM / in 3 hours Bank Hapoalim says U.S. tax settlement may be higher than thought Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The logo of Bank Hapoalim, Israel''s biggest bank, is seen at their main branch in Tel Aviv, Israel July 18, 2016. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel<65>s Bank Hapoalim said on Tuesday the amount it may have to pay in a future settlement with U.S. authorities in a tax evasion probe could be <20>significantly higher<65> than previously thought and the provision for it may have to be raised. Hapoalim has set aside close to $200 million to cover potential fines as U.S. authorities pursue an investigation to find whether Israel<65>s largest lender helped American clients evade U.S. taxes at its Swiss unit. In a report to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, the bank also said it had stopped its Swiss unit<69>s activity in September. Reporting by Maayan Lubell, Editing by Ari Rabinovitch '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bank-hapoalim-probe/bank-hapoalim-says-u-s-tax-settlement-may-be-higher-than-thought-idUSKCN1C80I5'|'2017-10-03T09:35:00.000+03:00'
'7a797f5cfff212ded3d41f6112ea6a567fd023fc'|'Polish cut in retirement age comes into force, bucking European trend'|'October 1, 2017 / 5:12 AM / in 9 hours Polish cut in retirement age comes into force, bucking European trend Marcin Goettig 3 Min Read A worker cleans the window of a high rise office building in Gdynia, Poland, December 7, 2015. REUTERS/Radu Sigheti WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland lowers its retirement age on Sunday, a costly election promise by the ruling conservatives which goes against a European trend of gradually increasing the pension age as people live longer and stay more healthy. Lowering the age to 60 for women and 65 for men is popular in particular among supporters of the governing right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, and reverses an increase to 67 approved in 2012 by the former centrist government. It is seen as having a limited immediate impact on the economy, which is booming, but might put pressure on state budgets in the future. The move comes at a time when unemployment in Poland has fallen to its lowest level since the transition from communism in the early 1990s, and could increase the pressure on wages which are already growing at their fastest pace in five years. <20>The Polish labour market faces increasingly limited access to workers,<2C> said Rafal Benecki, a Warsaw-based economist covering central Europe at the ING Bank. Poland<6E>s population of 38 million is among the most rapidly ageing in the European Union. <20>The government is throwing away the most effective tool to increase the labour market participation rate,<2C> Benecki said. The state pension agency ZUS has estimated that 331,000 people could decide to take advantage of the option to retire earlier, which would amount to 2.0 percent of Poland<6E>s 16.3 million workers. LABOUR FROM UKRAINE Economists and central bankers say the rising flow into Poland of hundreds of thousands of workers from Ukraine could reduce the pressure on wages. Labour ministry figures show that Polish employers requested over 900,000 short-term permits for Ukrainian workers in the first half of 2017, compared to 1.26 million in the whole of the previous year. <20>With the inflow of workers from Ukraine, so far the problem that some have foreseen - labour shortages, pressure on the labour market - is diminishing,<2C> central bank Governor Adam Glapinski said in early September. The PiS government has estimated the cost of the retirement age reduction at about 10 billion zlotys ($2.74 billion) in 2018, roughly 0.5 percent of GDP. Since coming to power in 2015, the current government has sharply increased public spending to meet campaign pledges to help families and distribute the fruits of economic growth more evenly. Despite the increase in spending, the state budget posted the first surplus for the January-August period in more than two decades, mainly due to a government crackdown on tax evasion and because a new child benefit has fuelled consumption. Economic growth reached 3.9 percent in the second quarter, but economists warn that the higher cost of pensions could cause problems if the economy slows. <20>I<EFBFBD>m worrying what will happen when the economic cycle turns,<2C> said Marcin Mrowiec, chief economist at Bank Pekao. <20>We might wake up with wages above levels that firms can cope with and ... permanently higher budget spending on pensions.<2E> Editing by Andrew Bolton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-poland-pension/polish-cut-in-retirement-age-comes-into-force-bucking-european-trend-idUKKCN1C60ZD'|'2017-10-01T08:11:00.000+03:00'
'e1be293de10054c63e6cc7b8fbca4d5260f17a6c'|'Britain to spend 2 bln stg more on affordable housing - PM May'|'MANCHESTER, England, Oct 4 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday the government would spend an additional two billion pounds ($2.7 billion) to create a new generation of affordable housing and help fix what she said was a broken market.<2E>We will encourage councils as well as housing associations to bid for this money and provide certainty over future rent levels,<2C> she will tell the Conservative Party<74>s annual conference, according to a copy of her speech.<2E>A new generation of council houses to help fix our broken housing market,<2C> she will say. ($1 = 0.7528 pounds) (Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and William James; writing by Kate Holton; editing by Guy Faulconbridge) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-politics-housing/britain-to-spend-2-bln-stg-more-on-affordable-housing-pm-may-idINL8N1MF2US'|'2017-10-04T09:07:00.000+03:00'
'e897fcb51463e3fb48929e9057b74bcb56da4a05'|'Ahead of proxy vote, P&G pushes hard to keep Peltz off board'|'October 3, 2017 / 10:44 PM / in 7 hours Ahead of proxy vote, P&G pushes hard to keep Peltz off board Siddharth Cavale 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Nelson Peltz founding partner of Trian Fund Management LP. speak at the WSJD Live conference in Laguna Beach, California, U.S. on October 25, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble Co<43>s ( PG.N ) Chief Executive David Taylor urged investors to back its turnaround plan and vote against activist investor Nelson Peltz<74>s addition to the board, just days ahead of the largest proxy vote in corporate history. <20>We strongly recommend you give us this opportunity to finish this transformation,<2C> Taylor said during a question and answer session with investors. <20>We are executing and need to stay the course.<2E> The Q&A session was also attended by P&G<>s chief financial officer, Jon Moeller, and board member Meg Whitman, the CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise ( HPE.N ). Peltz, who has amassed a $3.5 billion stake in the Tide detergent maker through his Trian Fund Management firm, is locked in a public battle with the company since June over its future and is pushing for a seat on P&G<>s 11-member board. The activist investor has criticized P&G, saying that the company<6E>s transformation is being hindered by its <20>suffocating bureaucracy<63> and has proposed shrinking P&G<>s businesses into three largely autonomous units. He has also said the board, which is largely composed of chairmen and CEOs of other companies, is disengaged with the company<6E>s day-to-day affairs. The logo of Dow Jones Industrial Average stock market index listed company Procter & Gamble (PG) is seen on a tube of toothpaste in Los Angeles, California, United States, April 25, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson On the call with shareholders, Whitman, Taylor and Moeller rejected Peltz<74>s allegations that P&G had an insular culture, stressing that the company<6E>s streamlining had reduced complexities. They also said board members were regularly in touch with the management to help it best respond to changing consumer preferences. The tussle between P&G and Peltz intensified last month as both parties try to swing the votes in their favor at the annual shareholder meeting on Oct. 10. The stakes are high as P&G, with a market capitalization of $235 billion, is the biggest listed U.S. company to face a proxy fight. <20>After extensive due diligence we do not think the choice to add Mr. Peltz to this board is the right one,<2C> CEO Taylor said. Whitman said the board wasn<73>t against activists, but adding Peltz at this juncture wasn<73>t right as P&G was already deep into its transformation journey. <20>It<49>s about the right board member at the right time,<2C> Whitman said. Reporting by Siddharth Cavale in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D''Silva '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-procterandgamble-trian/ahead-of-proxy-vote-pg-pushes-hard-to-keep-peltz-off-board-idUSKCN1C82UH'|'2017-10-04T01:44:00.000+03:00'
'2005405f142200a90378566af83132f01fca7fe3'|'UPDATE 1-Dutch company TMF to unveil London IPO this week'|'(Adds background, details)Oct 4 (Reuters) - Dutch business services firm TMF Group plans to float its shares on the London Stock Exchange in an initial public offering to be unveiled later this week, a source with knowledge of the deal told Reuters on Wednesday.The source said he could not verify a Sky News report that said the deal would raise 200 million pounds ($265 million) from institutional investors and value the company at 1 billion pounds.The source said that TMF group, which offers a range of tax, administration and legal services, was seen as having a huge and growing market for services which are essential to companies regardless of how they are performing.In the first half of 2017, TMF posted revenue of 283 million euros ($333 million), up from 256 million euros a year earlier. The company<6E>s adjusted EBITDA rose 9.5 percent to 69 million euros.Proceeds from European initial public offerings (IPO) reached $7.7 billion in the three months ending September, up 45 percent compared with last year and the highest since 2014.British offerings by contrast have grown far more slowly, with bankers citing a slowing of economic growth and the uncertainty generated by the country<72>s planned Brexit from the European Union in 2019.Goldman Sachs and HSBC are handling the flotation for owners DH Private Equity.Goldman Sachs and HSBC made no immediate comment on the deal when contacted by Reuters. ($1 = 0.7535 pounds) ($1 = 0.8498 euros) (Reporting by Dasha Afanasieva in London and Ishita Chigilli Palli in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/tmf-group-ipo/update-1-dutch-company-tmf-to-unveil-london-ipo-this-week-idINL4N1MF2P3'|'2017-10-04T12:12:00.000+03:00'
'c9fd3645da7ebccd79723be5247e7e2333b0de68'|'Japan transport ministry says raided 2 Nissan plants over improper checks'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s transport ministry said on Wednesday it had carried out spot inspections at two plants producing Nissan Motor Co Ltd ( 7201.T ) vehicles as part of a probe into final checks, days after irregularities forced the automaker to recall 1.2 million cars sold in Japan.The two inspections on Tuesday followed inspections at four more factories last week, the ministry said. The initial four found the automaker had conducted unauthorized final vehicle checks for most domestic models which had not yet been sold, prompting Nissan to suspend new vehicle registrations with the government.By Monday, Japan<61>s second-biggest automaker had discovered problematic checks of more vehicles, and said it would recall all new passenger cars sold in Japan over the past three years.This is the second major instance of misconduct involving a Japanese automaker in under two years, after Mitsubishi Motors Corp ( 7211.T ) said it tampered with fuel economy tests for some domestic-market models. While the recall is unlikely to have a significant impact on profitability, it is a blow to Nissan<61>s reputation just as it enjoys strong domestic sales, analysts said.In inspecting Nissan<61>s factories, the ministry found names of certified technicians used on documents to sign off final vehicle checks conducted by non-certified technicians, two people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.FILE PHOTO: Logo of the Nissan Motor Co. is displayed at the 44th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan, November 2, 2015. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo It was possible the practice occurred at most or all of the six plants, said the people, who declined to be identified as they were not authorized to speak with media on the matter.Vehicles sold in Japan must be registered with the government. As part of this process, during final checks, vehicles must undergo an additional procedure performed by plant technicians who can be certified by the automakers.Nissan confirmed the latest two ministry inspections were at its Tochigi plant and at the Auto Works Kyoto plant owned by an affiliate.<2E>We are currently conducting an investigation into the nature of this vehicle inspection issue at our plants,<2C> spokesman Nick Maxfield said in an emailed statement. A third-party is also involved in its probe.Nissan<61>s recall includes all of the 386,000 new passenger vehicles it sold in Japan in 2016, roughly 10 percent of its global sales. It excludes Nissan-branded mini-vehicles produced by Mitsubishi Motors, which comprise roughly one-third of Nissan<61>s annual domestic sales.Nissan shares have fallen more than 2 percent since Friday. They closed down 1.2 percent on Wednesday at 1,089.5 yen.Reporting by Maki Shiraki and Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Christopher Cushing '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nissan-recall/japan-transport-ministry-says-raided-2-nissan-plants-over-improper-checks-idUSKCN1C9044'|'2017-10-04T04:32:00.000+03:00'
'e864891304580c38a13d6026de810cb103fea141'|'Thyssenkrupp creates new business unit for forging activities'|'FRANKFURT, Oct 4 (Reuters) - German engineering and steel group Thyssenkrupp has created a new unit for its global forging activities in a bid to cater to new industries and cut reliance on combustion engine parts, which still account for a large part of its business.The unit, forged technologies, was formed Oct. 1, the start of Thyssenkrupp<70>s fiscal year, and has about 7,000 employees and sales of more than 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion), with 18 production sites and distribution in more than 70 countries.It is attached to Thyssenkrupp<70>s components business division and will be managed from the group<75>s headquarters in Essen.<2E>Central management of our worldwide production network will enable us to use our facilities more efficiently and align them even more closely to customer requirements,<2C> said Karsten Kroos, head of Thyssenkrupp<70>s components business.<2E>In the future we want to reduce our dependency on previous applications such as the traditional internal combustion engine, for which we still produce a large part of our forged components,<2C> Kroos said.The car industry accounts for a quarter of Thyssenkrupp<70>s sales, making it the group<75>s biggest customer group, but a shift towards battery-powered engines means some parts supplied by Thyssenkrupp may not be needed in the future.The new unit is a combination of two previously independent units: Brazil-based forging & machining, which makes crankshafts; and undercarriages, which is based in Italy, the group said, adding both had been restructured in recent months.Thyssenkrupp, which last month announced plans to merge its European steel unit with Tata Steel<65>s, now wants to expand its product portfolio, singling out raw materials mining, energy generation and mobility as potential target sectors.Its European steel business, which supplies half of its annual production, or about 6 million tonnes, to the auto industry and its supply chain, expects a boost from the auto industry<72>s shift toward electric vehicles. ($1 = 0.8509 euros) (Reporting by Christoph Steitz, editing by David Evans) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/thyssenkrupp-forging-restructuring/thyssenkrupp-creates-new-business-unit-for-forging-activities-idINL8N1MF0ZM'|'2017-10-04T06:02:00.000+03:00'
'f41df17ea8c66561f080f0878dbce88c6e107521'|'Airlines swoop on fallen Monarch for experienced pilots'|'LONDON, Oct 2 (Reuters) - The sudden collapse of Britain<69>s Monarch Airlines on Monday has sparked a rush among airlines to hire pilots from the stricken carrier, as rivals seek to add more experienced staff.Britain<69>s Monarch Airlines collapsed on Monday, causing the cancellation of hundreds of thousands of holidays, after falling victim to intense competition for flights and a weaker pound.<2E>There is growth in many UK airlines, and we<77>ll be working with them to see if we can ensure the skill and experience of Monarch isn<73>t lost,<2C> Brian Strutton, General Secretary at the British Airline Pilots Association, saying the union had been approached by Thomson, Wizz Air, BA CityFlyer , Virgin Atlantic, Aer Lingus and Flybe .Transport Minister Chris Grayling said he had spoken to airlines who were looking to hire some of Monarch<63>s <20>first rate team of people<6C>.Monarch<63>s collapse happened at a time when the availability of experienced pilots has been in focus, especially at low cost carriers, after Ryanair cancelled hundreds of thousands of flights due to issues with the rostering of pilots.A spokeswoman for Virgin Atlantic said the airline had launched a fast-track application scheme with around 80 vacancies, about half of which it hoped to offer to Monarch first officers.<2E>We<57>re looking for pilots to join our Airbus and 747 fleets, with a minimum experience of 2,500 hours total flying time and 500 hours on an Airbus or Boeing type,<2C> she said. (Reporting by Alistair Smout, editing by David Evans) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/monarch-airlines-licence-pilots/airlines-swoop-on-fallen-monarch-for-experienced-pilots-idINL8N1MD52Q'|'2017-10-02T13:44:00.000+03:00'
'c9c2a0d770098b79c9002cf44ee84663336789e3'|'Slowdown in UK manufacturing as weak pound raises costs'|'Britain<69>s manufacturers are showing signs of a slowdown in growth, as the boost to exporters from the weak pound is offset by rising production costs and fears over Brexit .Sterling<6E>s depreciation was widely expected to benefit manufacturers as their goods become more competitively priced for foreign buyers. However the cost of imported materials used in the production process has also risen, hitting a six-month high last month, according to a closely watched barometer of factory sentiment.The Markit/Cips UK manufacturing PMI index showed activity fell to 55.9 last month from 56.7 in August, as firms were hit by the rising cost of commodities. There was also a shortage of some materials such as plastics and steel.Weak pound could boost manufacturing, if manufacturing itself wasn<73>t so weak Read moreAlthough the reading was below City expectations, the figure is still above the 50 mark that separates expansion from contraction. But the survey of purchasing executives in more than 600 industrial companies points to weaker growth in the UK economy.Rob Dobson, the director at IHS Markit, which compiles the survey, said: <20>Although it looks as if the sector made solid progress through the third quarter as a whole, the growth slowdown in September is a further sign that momentum is being lost across the broader UK economy.<2E>While the report showed gains in new orders to be slower than in the prior month, companies reported that demand remained solid in both domestic and overseas markets. But the rising cost of commodities, and the weak pound pushing up the price of other raw materials, damaged optimism in the industrial sector.Scotiabank<6E>s Alan Clarke said the figures were disappointing but far from a weak reading on the UK economy. <20>In the big scheme of things, this is reasonably in keeping with what we have seen over the past year,<2C> he said.Similar to other increasingly globalised economies, the UK manufacturing sector has expanded its use of materials sourced overseas in recent years. While this can help reduce production costs, it exposes factories to risks arising from movements in sterling. Sterling remains 10% below its level before the Brexit vote.Official data on Friday showed the UK economy grew at a slower pace than first thought in July, putting Britain at the bottom of the G7 growth table just as the Bank of England looks ready to raise the cost of borrowing for the first time in a decade.The weak reading from the manufacturing sector may discourage the Bank from hiking the cost of borrowing. Threadneedle Street will be looking at other data over the coming month before its monetary policy committee makes a decision on interest rates in November.The state of the Brexit negotiations, where progress has been slow , has been putting businesses off investing in their UK operations. Recent readings on economic growth showed investment by companies to be flat in the second quarter.However, some are putting money into the UK economy, as the weak pound makes British products more competitive on the global market. The automotive supplier Brose, which employs about 1,000 people at two factories in Coventry, is opening a new <20>10m paint plant with the creation of about 30 new jobs.The German-owned company<6E>s plant will be able to paint about 3.5m seats a year for UK customers, including those of Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan and Toyota. <20>Brose is committed to growing our UK operation,<2C> said Juergen Zahl, the managing director of its UK arm.Philip Hammond, the chancellor, could use his forthcoming budget to boost business investment, according to Lee Hopley, the chief economist at EEF, the manufacturers<72> organisation. <20>Government action in the forthcoming budget to spur companies to commit to investment in the UK will be a priority,<2C> she said.Meanwhile, the eurozone is leaping ahead. IHS Markit<69>s manufacturing PMI for the single currency bloc hit a record high for September, as conditions strengthened to the greatest extent in over s
'5790912178cfbd00dfcb6909e68cc8a317cda645'|'UPDATE 1-Plastics company A Schulman exploring sale - WSJ'|'(Adds background)Oct 4 (Reuters) - Plastics company A Schulman Inc is exploring a sale, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.Shares of the company, which has a market value of about $1 billion, were up 4.6 percent at $37.49 in late morning trading.The company is working with Citigroup Inc on the sale process, which is in its early stages, the WSJ reported. ( on.wsj.com/2xf6lRT )The company - which supplies plastic compounds and resins used in packaging, construction and electronics - had $880.4 million in debt as of May 31, according to its latest SEC filing.A Schulman lowered its forecast for full-year adjusted earnings in July, citing margin pressure in its European business due to higher raw materials costs.The Akron, Ohio-based company was not immediately available for comment. (Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Anil D<>Silva) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/a-schulman-us-ma/update-1-plastics-company-a-schulman-exploring-sale-wsj-idINL4N1MF2YM'|'2017-10-04T13:33:00.000+03:00'
'7320a54baa224c11bdd014799d79d0d751685490'|'BOJ''s Nakaso says central bank may incur red ink when ending easy policy - Asahi'|'October 3, 2017 / 11:09 PM / in 12 minutes BOJ''s Nakaso says revenues could slip when it ends easy policy - paper Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Hiroshi Nakaso speaks during an interview with Reuters at the BOJ headquarters in Tokyo April 9, 2015. REUTERS/Yuya Shino TOKYO (Reuters) - Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Hiroshi Nakaso said the central bank may incur revenue losses when it exits ultra-easy monetary policy but that won<6F>t affect policy-making, the Asahi newspaper reported on Wednesday. The BOJ could smoothly withdraw its massive stimulus and learn from the experience of the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is already tapering its asset purchases, Nakaso was quoted as saying in an interview. <20>We can<61>t rule out the chance the BOJ may incur red ink ... but short-term fluctuations in the BOJ<4F>s revenues won<6F>t disrupt our policy-making,<2C> he said. In a bid to accelerate inflation to its ambitious 2 percent target, the BOJ floods markets with cash by buying huge amounts of government bonds. The central bank also charges 0.1 percent interest on a portion of excess reserves financial institutions park with the BOJ to encourage them to lend it out instead. Critics of the radical monetary policy warn the BOJ may incur losses on its huge bond holdings when it withdraws monetary stimulus, as that would trigger a rise in long-term interest rates that hurts bond prices. To mop up surplus cash from markets the BOJ would also need to pay higher interest on excess reserves financial institutions deposit at the central bank, which would also hurt its profits. Nakaso defended the BOJ<4F>s 2 percent inflation target, saying that setting its price goal at levels equivalent to other major central banks would stabilise currency moves in the long run. He also called on the government to take a <20>balanced<65> approach on fiscal policy, when asked about criticism by some analysts that the BOJ<4F>s ultra-easy policy was allowing lawmakers to drag their feet in fixing Japan<61>s tattered finances by keeping borrowing costs essentially at zero. <20>It<49>s important to create a sustainable fiscal framework in Japan,<2C> he said. Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Paul Tait and Eric Meijer'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-economy-boj/bojs-nakaso-says-central-bank-may-incur-red-ink-when-ending-easy-policy-asahi-idUKKCN1C82VU'|'2017-10-04T02:08:00.000+03:00'
'98db926e976f8b1206ebdbcbbb2e0d3b9f23b9ae'|'Facebook brings British profits onshore after tax rule change'|'October 4, 2017 / 5:33 PM / in 2 hours Facebook brings British profits onshore after tax rule change Reuters Staff 3 Min Read A Facebook logo is pictured at the Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt, Germany September 16, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski LONDON (Reuters) - Facebook ( FB.O ) reported profits in Britain in 2016 of 58.4 million pounds ($77 million) after the introduction of anti-profit shifting measures but a modest rise in its tax bill shows the challenge Europe faces in working out how to tax technology giants. Facebook said in filings with Britain<69>s corporate register that the turnaround followed four years of losses totaling almost 100 million pounds. Facebook UK Ltd. had revenues in Britain of 842 million pounds in 2016, up from 202 million pounds in 2015, after it switched to booking sales to larger UK clients in Britain. In 2015, turnover was booked through Facebook<6F>s European headquarters in Dublin and the British subsidiary<72>s revenue represented payments from the Dublin unit. Facebook UK Ltd. reported a current tax charge for 2016 of 5.1 million pounds, compared to 4.2 million pounds for 2015. The modest change in Facebook<6F>s tax bill reflects the fact that the tax authority had already calculated Facebook had taxable profits, although these never generated actual cash tax obligations because of generous offsets related to share awards. The 2016 tax charge was also reduced by <20>additional expenses deductible for tax purposes<65> which the firm declined to outline. Facebook still books some sales to smaller clients via Dublin. European Union members are keen to stop technology giants like Google and Apple from operating almost tax free in the bloc. The companies, which all say they follow tax rules, typically channel sales via countries like Ireland and Luxembourg whose light touch approach to taxation allows the companies to shift profits on to zero tax jurisdictions. This means they usually do not report profits in the countries where their salespeople and customers are based, making it impossible for hosts to tax them. The EU<45>s executive arm, the European Commission, has outlined options to tackle this including a tax on the companies<65> turnover, a levy on online ads and withholding taxes. If other EU countries could prompt tech companies to report more profit in their jurisdictions, they could reap greater tax revenues than Britain has achieved because they have a less generous approach to deductions than Britain. ($1 = 0.7536 pounds)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-britain-tax/facebook-brings-british-profits-onshore-after-tax-rule-change-idUKKBN1C92IH'|'2017-10-04T20:28:00.000+03:00'
'3e5cd892fac134098d6167c456fefd80a47f94ac'|'Russia to work with Saudi on implementing global oil cut deal - Lavrov quoted'|'October 4, 2017 / 5:33 AM / in an hour Russia to work with Saudi on implementing global oil cut deal - Lavrov quoted Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Russia''s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov delivers remarks at a news conference at the 72nd United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York City, U.S. September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith DUBAI (Reuters) - Moscow wants to continue working with Riyadh on the implemention of an agreement to cut global oil output, Russia<69>s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat in an interview published on Wednesday. Speaking ahead of a visit of Saudi Arabia<69>s King Salman to Russia, Lavrov praised cooperation between the two countries in helping to secure a deal between OPEC and other oil producers to cut output until the end of March 2018. <20>Riyadh and Moscow are taking part in the implementation of the <20>OPEC-plus<75> agreements to reduce global oil production. We consider it extremely important to continue to coordinate efforts with partners in Saudi Arabia in this regard,<2C> Lavrov said, according to an Arabic transcipt of the interview. The leaders of Saudi Arabia and Russia are expected to discuss cooperation on oil production and differences over Syria and Iran on Thursday during the first visit to Moscow by a reigning Saudi monarch. Reporting by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Andrew Torchia'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-saudi-russia-oil/russia-to-work-with-saudi-on-implementing-global-oil-cut-deal-lavrov-quoted-idUKKCN1C90DK'|'2017-10-04T08:33:00.000+03:00'
'28a153c589e1406cc5e6f75d8903c21f6e58b3f0'|'Deals of the day-Mergers and acquisitions'|'(Adds Russian Direct Investment Fund, Bayer SA, Prudential, CEZ, Abraaj Group, Panasonic, Gas Natural, Banco do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul SA, Italia, Petr<74>leo Brasileiro, Ullink)Oct 4 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 1300 GMT on Wednesday:** The state-backed Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) is discussing a possible investment in conglomerate Sistema<6D>s agriculture business, the fund<6E>s chief executive said.** A unit of Brazil<69>s competition regulator Cade said the $66 billion takeover of Monsanto Co. by German life sciences firm Bayer AG could be detrimental to competition, a document released on the agency<63>s website shows.** Prudential Plc has kicked off the sale of its Vietnam consumer finance unit, which could fetch up to $150 million, as the UK firm sharpens focus on its core insurance business in the Southeast Asian nation, people familiar with the process said.** CEZ strategy director Pavel Cyrani tells Reuters energy services unit ESCO aims to complete an acquisition in Poland by year-end or early 2018.** Dubai-based private equity firm Abraaj Group said it made an investment in Pakistan<61>s top cinema operator, Cinepax, to drive expansion over the next four years.** Executives at Panasonic were surprised when Russell Ellwanger, CEO of Israeli chipmaker TowerJazz, asked to partner in three of their factories without putting any cash on the table.** Spain<69>s Gas Natural has approved the sale of its Italian retail business to EDF unit Edison while the company<6E>s Italian distribution network will go to 2i Rete Gas, two sources said.** The government of Brazilian state Rio Grande do Sul may sell a non-controlling stake in state bank Banco do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul SA, according to a securities filing on Wednesday.** Telecom Italia on Wednesday kicked off the process to sell its majority stake in broadcasting services group Persidera, valued between 350-400 million euros, a source close to the matter told Reuters.** Brazilian state-controlled oil company Petr<74>leo Brasileiro SA has sent additional information on several shallow water oil fields to interested parties as it kickstarts the non-binding stage of the asset-sale process, according to a securities filing on Wednesday.** Bankers are working on debt financings totalling <20>380m to back a potential buyout of French trading software provider Ullink, banking sources said.** Brazil<69>s state-controlled oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA said on Tuesday it had started the binding stage for a proposed stake sale in the Maromba field, located in the Campos basin, according to a securities filing.** ESR Pte Ltd, a unit of Asian logistics firm ESR Cayman Ltd, said it had taken an 18 percent stake in Propertylink Group, buying 60.2 million shares via off-market purchases.** Royal Dutch Shell said it had cancelled the sale of gas field stakes in Thailand to Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company (KUFPEC).** Hong Kong developer Chinese Estates Holdings said it holds a 6 percent stake in rival property group China Evergrande, having bought HK$11.1 billion ($1.42 billion) of shares between April and October 3.** Mexico will offer the rights to partner with state oil company Pemex on three major projects on Wednesday, one in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico and two more onshore, the latest step in opening country<72>s oil and gas industry.** Australian fund manager QIC has reached a deal to buy out 10 regional malls in the United States from its joint venture partner Forest City Realty Trust Inc on behalf of a client which it did not identify.** Malaysian state energy firm Petroliam Nasional Berhad, or Petronas, is looking to sell some oil and gas assets owned by its Canadian unit Progress Energy, its adviser BMO Capital Markets said.** Norway<61>s Statoil is taking its first step into the solar sector, partnering up with Oslo-listed renewable energy firm Scatec Solar in a joint venture aiming to build several large-scale solar pl
'c76ae141b8a1df7833391a02c229649630557ba1'|'Japan transport ministry says raided two Nissan plants over improper checks'|'October 4, 2017 / 1:41 AM / in 34 minutes Japan transport ministry raids two Nissan plants over improper checks Maki Shiraki , Naomi Tajitsu 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Logo of the Nissan Motor Co. is displayed at the 44th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan, November 2, 2015. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s transport ministry said on Wednesday it had carried out spot inspections at two plants producing Nissan Motor Co Ltd ( 7201.T ) vehicles as part of a probe into final checks, days after irregularities forced the automaker to recall 1.2 million cars sold in Japan. The two inspections on Tuesday followed inspections at four more factories last week, the ministry said. The initial four found the automaker had conducted unauthorised final vehicle checks for most domestic models which had not yet been sold, prompting Nissan to suspend new vehicle registrations with the government. By Monday, Japan<61>s second-biggest automaker had discovered problematic checks of more vehicles, and said it would recall all new passenger cars sold in Japan over the past three years. This is the second major instance of misconduct involving a Japanese automaker in under two years, after Mitsubishi Motors Corp ( 7211.T ) said it tampered with fuel economy tests for some domestic-market models. While the recall is unlikely to have a significant impact on profitability, it is a blow to Nissan<61>s reputation just as it enjoys strong domestic sales, analysts said. In inspecting Nissan<61>s factories, the ministry found names of certified technicians used on documents to sign off final vehicle checks conducted by non-certified technicians, two people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. It was possible the practise occurred at most or all of the six plants, said the people, who declined to be identified as they were not authorised to speak with media on the matter. Vehicles sold in Japan must be registered with the government. As part of this process, during final checks, vehicles must undergo an additional procedure performed by plant technicians who can be certified by the automakers. Nissan confirmed the latest two ministry inspections were at its Tochigi plant and at the Auto Works Kyoto plant owned by an affiliate. <20>We are currently conducting an investigation into the nature of this vehicle inspection issue at our plants,<2C> spokesman Nick Maxfield said in an emailed statement. A third-party is also involved in its probe. Nissan<61>s recall includes all of the 386,000 new passenger vehicles it sold in Japan in 2016, roughly 10 percent of its global sales. It excludes Nissan-branded mini-vehicles produced by Mitsubishi Motors, which comprise roughly one-third of Nissan<61>s annual domestic sales. Nissan shares have fallen more than 2 percent since Friday. They closed down 1.2 percent on Wednesday at 1,089.5 yen. Reporting by Maki Shiraki and Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Christopher Cushing'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nissan-recall/japan-transport-ministry-says-raided-two-nissan-plants-over-improper-checks-idUKKCN1C904K'|'2017-10-04T04:41:00.000+03:00'
'c2f8834c7483c565163d6b6cbaf823576c2728d6'|'Natixis buys majority stake in Australia''s Investors Mutual'|'The logo of French bank Natixis is seen outside of one of their offices in Paris, France, January 24, 2017. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen PARIS (Reuters) - French bank Natixis ( CNAT.PA ) has agreed to buy a majority stake in Australian fund management company Investors Mutual Limited for around A$155 million ($121 million), as part of its plans to expand in the Asian region.Natixis Global Asset Management will buy all the shares in Investors Mutual Limited (IML) held by Pacific Current Group ( PAC.AX ), along with a portion of the shares in IML held by its founder Anton Tagliaferro, for up to AS$155m in cash.Natixis will end up with a 51.9 percent stake in IML, which has A$9.1 billion in assets under management, and Natixis added that it expects to close the deal this month.<2E>We have previously stated that it is our intention to pursue new growth in the Asia Pacific market, and this marks the first acquisition as part of those plans,<2C> said Natixis Global Asset Management Chief Executive Jean Raby in a statement.Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, editing by Louise Heavens '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-natixis-australia/natixis-buys-majority-stake-in-australias-investors-mutual-idINKCN1C80I9'|'2017-10-03T04:52:00.000+03:00'
'38a18f5fa2f1918a00d2387ac43c0051dc3841b6'|'UK''s Ferguson profit rise 25 percent, to buy back shares'|'October 3, 2017 / 6:39 AM / in 28 minutes Ferguson profit rise 25 percent, to buy back shares Reuters Staff 2   Heating and plumbing products supplier Ferguson ( FERG.L ) reported a near 25 percent rise in full-year trading profit from ongoing business, as a strong U.S. performance offset weak British growth. The group, which changed its name from Wolseley this year, said trading profit from ongoing business rose to 1.03 billion pounds in the year to July 31, from 827 million pounds a year earlier. The company said it would buy back shares worth 500 million pounds over the next 12 months. Revenue from ongoing business grew 18.3 percent to 14.87 billion pounds, up 6 percent on a like-for-like basis. The company has increasingly banked on growth in its U.S. business to drive results, against challenging market conditions in the UK and parts of Europe, which has prompted a planned exit from the Nordic region. It made about 89 percent of its trading profit in the U.S. market. Trading profit in its UK division rose 2.7 percent for the year to 76 million pounds, the company said. Wolseley, which started life in 1887 manufacturing machine tools and cars before moving into distribution in 1979, has faced tough competition and a weak market for its core repair, maintenance and property improvement services in the UK and Europe. ($1 = 0.7548 pounds)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ferguson-results/uks-ferguson-profit-rise-25-percent-to-buy-back-shares-idUKKCN1C80HK'|'2017-10-03T09:38:00.000+03:00'
'815cdce73e5429379f4567ba72db61f562439b03'|'RPT-COLUMN-Oil drillers, not forecasters, are responsible for WTI weakness: Kemp'|'(Repeats with no changes. John Kemp is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own)* Chartbook: tmsnrt.rs/2yiw1gqBy John KempLONDON, Oct 2 (Reuters) - The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is distorting oil prices by being far too optimistic in its forecasts for U.S. production, according to Harold Hamm, the chief executive of Continental Resources .Hamm, who also chairs the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance (DEPA), a lobbying group, blames EIA for both the outright decline in U.S. oil prices and their underperformance compared with Brent since June.Hamm faults EIA for being too optimistic about U.S. production, creating an impression there will be surplus of crude and depressing futures prices for West Texas Intermediate (WTI).EIA currently forecasts U.S. crude production will climb to 9.69 million barrels per day (bpd) by December while DEPA predicts output will total no more than 9.35 million bpd ( tmsnrt.rs/2yiw1gq ).<2E>They need to get it right. If they don<6F>t we see distortion happen. And we are seeing distortion happen right now,<2C> Hamm said in an interview with Argus (<28>Continental CEO says EIA forecast caps WTI<54>, Sept. 27).<2E>The Brent-WTI spread is a good example. Here we are, within two months or three suddenly down to Brent by $6 per barrel ... Certainly the two ought to be within a dollar or two,<2C> he complained.<2E>Right here I see just if this correction is made and if the market realizes where we really are in America, I think there is a 20 percent adjustment (in prices) due right now.<2E>Hamm reiterated his view that prices below $50 are not sustainable and producers would need prices closer to $60 to meet rapidly growing global demand.WTI-BRENT DISCOUNT So is Hamm right to blame EIA for the decline in WTI prices and the big discount to Brent which emerged in the third quarter of 2017?The relationship between front-month WTI and Brent prices was fairly stable between January and June, with WTI trading at a discount of around $2. As recently as June 30, WTI was trading at a discount of just $1.88.Since then, however, the discount has widened consistently to reach $6.80. On Sept. 25, U.S. producers were receiving just $52.22 for benchmark crude while their counterparts in the North Sea were realising $59.The gap hurts for U.S. shale firms, many of which are under intense pressure from shareholders to improve their profitability.But it is not obvious that the market has reacted to EIA forecasts or that the agency should be blamed for the weakness of WTI.There has been little change in EIA forecasts since June. In fact, EIA has recently trimmed its predictions for output in both 2017 and 2018.ONSHORE OUTPUT Hamm<6D>s critique relates changes in drilling and completion rates to the whole of U.S. crude output, which he predicts will reach no more than 9.35 million bpd by the end of 2017 from 9.24 million bpd in July.But drilling rates really only affect the onshore component of production rather than the more specialised and technically complex production from Alaska and offshore.EIA forecasts production from the Lower 48 states excluding the Gulf of Mexico will average 7.08 million bpd in 2017.The agency predicts Lower 48 output will reach 7.45 million bpd in December, which does not seem unreasonable given output was 7.05 million in July and had already climbed from 6.5 million at end-2016.The rest of U.S. output comes from Alaska and the federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico, which produced 423,000 bpd and 1.8 million bpd in July respectively.Both areas experienced production outages during the second quarter, which lowered output by 63,000 bpd and 123,000 bpd respectively between March and June.But EIA is predicting both will boost output by December by 40,000 bpd and 100,000 bpd, which should ensure total U.S. output continues rising through the end of the year.DRILLING SLOWDOWN Hamm blames the agency for being slow to react to the slowdown in drilling and well completion
'1e3252a7ac185beaa396ae085722dd8d9c3898e0'|'LATAM Airlines says Brazil watchdog approves JBA with American'|'October 3, 2017 / 1:09 PM / Updated 5 hours ago LATAM Airlines says Brazil watchdog approves deal with American Antonio De la Jara 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: LATAM Airlines planes are seen at Santiago International Airport, Chile March 30, 2017. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado/File Photo SANTIAGO (Reuters) - LATAM Airlines LTM.SNLFL.N, Latin America<63>s largest carrier, said on Tuesday that Brazil<69>s antitrust authority Cade had approved its joint business agreement (JBA) with American Airlines Group Inc ( AAL.O ) without restrictions. LATAM said its agreement with American Airlines, and a similar accord with British Airways parent IAG ( ICAG.L ), had now been approved by authorities in Uruguay, Colombia and Brazil. The agreement seeks to help the airlines coordinate schedules and prices for flights, and would allow American and IAG to grow in South America by offering more connections and lower fares. <20>The approval by Brazil is a major step forward in the process of the implementation of the JBAs of LATAM with American Airlines and IAG,<2C> LATAM said in a statement. <20>It ratifies the positive vision that Brazilian authorities have of these kinds of agreement and the connectivity they generate for passengers and for the country.<2E> However, Chile, which has previously raised competition concerns, has yet to give its approval. The deal also still requires approval by the U.S. Department of Transportation and that will only happen when an Open Skies treaty between the United States and Brazil goes into effect, according to a source familiar with the situation. That agreement ending limits on the number of flights between the two countries was signed in 2011 but has not yet been approved by Brazil<69>s Congress where it is in a list of legislation to be discussed but faces opposition, the source said. Reporting by Antonio de la Jara; Writing by Felipe Iturrieta; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Rosalba O''Brien '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-latam-airlines-brazil/latam-airlines-says-brazil-watchdog-approves-jba-with-american-idUSKCN1C81H7'|'2017-10-03T16:01:00.000+03:00'
'51abae5897e4b87a5c57b860bf888d233ac2674f'|'Bank of England sees Brexit risks to EU bank lending in UK and clearing'|'October 3, 2017 / 8:36 AM / Updated an hour ago Bank of England sees Brexit risks to EU bank lending in UK and clearing Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A man speaks on his phone outside the Bank of England in the City of London, Britain, August 23, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay LONDON(Reuters) - Brexit poses risks to the ability of British companies to borrow from European banks and to some clearing activity which might have to relocate from London once Britain leaves the EU, the Bank of England said on Tuesday. Banks from the bloc and other associated countries accounted for around 10 percent of lending to British companies, the BoE<6F>s Financial Policy Committee said in a summary of its most recent meeting held on Sept. 20. Currently, those banks can operate as branches but they might have to upgrade to fully fledge subsidiaries after Brexit, a process that could take many months. <20>The risk of disruption to wholesale UK banking services appeared to be slightly higher than previously thought, given that a number of EEA (European Economic Area) firms branching into the UK were not sufficiently focused on addressing this issue,<2C> the FPC said in a statement. The BoE<6F>s Prudential Regulation Authority was <20>engaging firms to improve the state of their contingency planning.<2E> The FPC also said there was a <20>substantial risk<73> of disruption to cross-border clearing operations in financial services, such as derivatives used by companies to hedge themselves against potential financial market swings. The EU has previously said clearing of euro-denominated transactions should in some cases be shifted from London to cities in the bloc after Brexit, a proposal resisted by Britain. The FPC said clearing houses were examining contingency options <20>including the potential to relocate some clearing activity from the UK in order to continue to provide services to EU clients.<2E> But this option was not available in segments of the market <20>where the complexity and cost of any migration was significant.<2E> In its minutes published on Tuesday, the FPC said its members had felt in March this year that reliance on the now discredited Libor interest rate benchmark <20>created a financial stability risk,<2C> although since then regulators have said a replacement for Libor will be in place after 2021. The FPC had not previously reported the views of its members on the risks implied by reliance on Libor. Banks have been fined billions of pounds for manipulating the rate which is used to settle contracts around the world. Reporting by Huw Jones and William Schomberg; uk.economics@reuters.com; +44 20 7542 5109 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-bank-fpc/bank-of-england-sees-brexit-risks-to-eu-bank-lending-in-uk-and-clearing-idUKKCN1C80PC'|'2017-10-03T11:36:00.000+03:00'
'583c0676018dd7366669c3ea7091d890c2421663'|'Technology could help UBS cut workforce by 30 pct - CEO in magazine'|'October 3, 2017 / 9:00 AM / Updated 14 minutes ago Technology could help UBS cut workforce by 30 pct - CEO in magazine Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - CEO Sergio Ermotti of Swiss bank UBS awaits the annual shareholder meeting in Basel, Switzerland May 4, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss bank UBS ( UBSG.S ) could shed almost 30,000 workers in the years ahead due to technological advances in the banking industry, Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti said in a magazine interview. Ermotti told Bloomberg Markets that <20>process-oriented<65> companies see scope to cut workforces in half through new technology but he believed the true number for banks was around half that. <20>If you look at UBS, we employ a meaningful amount of people<6C> almost 95,000, including contractors,<2C> Ermotti said. <20>You can have 30 percent less, but the jobs are going to be much more interesting jobs, where the human content is crucial to the delivery of the service.<2E> Ermotti said the coming decade would be heavily influenced by technology, as the previous one was marked by regulation. <20>It<49>s not the Big Bang; it<69>s going to be very gradual,<2C> he said. <20>But you<6F>re going to be faster <20> much more efficient, proficient. Instead of serving 50 clients, you<6F>ll be able to serve 100 and in a more sophisticated way.<2E> Consultancy Accenture ( ACN.N ) said in May that three quarters of bankers surveyed believed artificial intelligence (AI) will become the primary way banks interact with their customers within the next three years. AI -- the technology behind driverless cars, drones and voice-recognition software -- is seen by the financial world as a key technology which, along with other innovations such as blockchain, will change banking. Reporting by Joshua Franklin'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ubs-group-tech-workers/technology-could-help-ubs-cut-workforce-by-30-pct-ceo-in-magazine-idUKKCN1C80RZ'|'2017-10-03T11:59:00.000+03:00'
'a86ed864c2403868724a94afe06ea2580c9c7e60'|'European shares stay near highs as Spanish sell-off eases'|'October 3, 2017 / 7:43 AM / Updated 17 minutes ago European shares stay near highs as Spanish sell-off eases Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote MILAN (Reuters) - European shares hovered around 3-month highs in early deals on Tuesday as a sell-off in Spanish stocks eased and financials gained following another record-breaking session at Wall Street. The pan-European STOXX 600 index was up 0.1 percent by 0714 GMT, while Madrid''s blue chip IBEX .IBEX also gained 0.1 percent, recovering from a 1.2 percent fall on Monday as Madrid seeks ways to respond to Catalonia secessionist crisis. Catalonia-based banks Sabadell ( SABE.MC ) and Caixa ( CABK.MC ) also inched up, having been severely hit by worries surrounding Spain<69>s worst constitutional crisis in decades. But Spanish utility Iberdrola ( IBE.MC ) fell 1.1 percent after JP Morgan downgraded the stock to neutral saying political uncertainty added to a list of headwinds. Financials and materials stocks provided the biggest boost to the STOXX, offsetting weaker consumer and healthcare stocks. Top gainer on the pan-European benchmark was Ferguson ( FERG.L ), up 3 percent after the company reported a rise in trading profit and announced a share buy back plan. While Germany was closed for holiday, UK''s FTSE .FTSE was down 0.1 percent led lower by a fall of more than 2 percent in Bae Systems ( BAES.L ) following a downgrade to hold at Berernberg. Reporting by Danilo Masoni, editing by Julien Ponthus'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-stocks/european-shares-stay-near-highs-as-spanish-sell-off-eases-idUKKCN1C80LW'|'2017-10-03T10:45:00.000+03:00'
'f1cc6e691397fa58884c7f992d58689c26d8f9b5'|'ITE sees higher full-year revenue'|' 32 AM / in 19 minutes ITE sees higher full-year revenue   (Reuters) - Exhibition organiser ITE Group Plc ( ITE.L ) said it expects to report higher full-year revenue as the company<6E>s strategy to focus on core market leading events paid off. Revenues for 2017 are expected to be about 151 million pounds, about 13 percent higher than last year, ITE said. The company announced a three-year turnaround strategy in May to focus on core market leading events as it tries to offset the cancellation of smaller, non-core, low-yielding events. ITE said it expects revenue, on a like-for-like basis, to be about 3 percent ahead of last year. The company, which said its fourth quarter traded in line with management<6E>s expectations, also added that it has booked revenue of about 79 million pounds for 2018. Reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ite-group-outlook/ite-sees-higher-full-year-revenue-idUKKCN1C80GX'|'2017-10-03T09:30:00.000+03:00'
'8a26dced1fda0dff07a6030a8405c58634988135'|'PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 4'|'Oct 4 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.- Pressed by lawmakers, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reiterated his view that the Iran accord is working, a contradiction to the claims of President Donald Trump. nyti.ms/2ga5Ldi- Republican leaders are backing away from a proposal to fully repeal an expensive tax break used by more than 40 million tax filers to deduct state and local taxes amid pushback from fellow lawmakers whose residents rely on the popular provision. nyti.ms/2xXuniV- Ride-hailing service Uber Technologies Inc''s board voted for corporate governance changes and a potential stock sale to the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp . nyti.ms/2yHvhxk- The Equifax data breach, which exposed the sensitive personal information of nearly 146 million Americans, happened because of a mistake by a single employee, the credit reporting company''s former chief executive Richard Smith told members of Congress on Tuesday. nyti.ms/2xPD7sf- Wells Fargo Chief Executive Timothy Sloan on Tuesday faced attacks from Republican and Democratic senators, who voiced frustration with his response to a series of scandals that have rocked the bank. nyti.ms/2g8sLtiCompiled by Bengaluru newsroom '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/press-digest-nyt/press-digest-new-york-times-business-news-oct-4-idINL4N1MF0ZT'|'2017-10-04T03:02:00.000+03:00'
'a9c24d337c41097cf4d8bfa5b85eb8eb7d97b27c'|'Telecom Italia kicks off sale of Persidera broadcasting unit - source'|'Telecom Italia new logo is seen at the headquarter in Rozzano neighbourhood of Milan, Italy, May 25, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini/File Photo MILAN (Reuters) - Telecom Italia ( TLIT.MI ) on Wednesday kicked off the process to sell its majority stake in broadcasting services group Persidera, valued between 350-400 million euros, a source close to the matter told Reuters.<2E>The pre-marketing is taking place today and tomorrow... and Persidera is expected to be valued between 350-400 million euros,<2C> the source said.The source added that Barclays, Credit Suisse and Lazard had been chosen as advisors for the sale, confirming news that was first reported by Bloomberg.None of the companies were immediately available for comments.French media group Vivendi ( VIV.PA ), which is Telecom Italia<69>s biggest shareholder, won EU antitrust approval in May for its plan to gain control of the Italian phone incumbent after pledging to sell Persidera.Reporting by Giulia Segreti '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-telecom-it-m-a-persidera/telecom-italia-kicks-off-sale-of-persidera-broadcasting-unit-source-idINKBN1C91R9'|'2017-10-04T10:42:00.000+03:00'
'4b54e90ba7acf8315e299049efbad45bc22d5c44'|'Currency impact on North American companies'' second quarter results up vs first quarter: report'|'U.S. Dollar and Euro notes are seen in this June 22, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration NEW YORK (Reuters) - The negative effect of currency fluctuations on North American companies<65> results in the second quarter rose slightly from the first quarter, but was down from a year ago, currency risk consulting firm FIREapps said on Wednesday. For the second quarter of this year, the negative impact of currency fluctuations on North American companies - including the United States, Canada and Mexico - that quantified an exchange rate effect was $6.71 billion, FIREapps said in a report. That was up from $6.47 billion in the first quarter of 2017 and down from $6.9 billion in the year-ago quarter. The British pound GBP= and the euro EUR= were the most mentioned currencies in earnings calls by North American companies, the data showed. The foreign currency earnings of U.S. multinational companies are worth less in dollars when the dollar is stronger. A firmer U.S. currency also makes American-made goods and services more expensive overseas. A U.S. dollar index .DXY, which measures the greenback against six major currencies, declined 4.7 percent in the second quarter and 2.7 percent in the third quarter of this year. Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; editing by Susan Thomas '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-currency-results/currency-impact-on-north-american-companies-second-quarter-results-up-vs-first-quarter-report-idUSKBN1C92HJ'|'2017-10-04T20:14:00.000+03:00'
'a9c437d9f62f520963c26e71da6d7068c0a382e4'|'Energy stocks weigh on Britain''s FTSE as May attacks ''rip-off'' prices'|'October 4, 2017 / 8:57 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Energy stocks weigh on Britain''s FTSE as May attacks ''rip-off'' prices Helen Reid 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Pedestrians leave and enter the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON (Reuters) - Energy providers Centrica and SSE dragged on Britain<69>s main share index on Wednesday after Prime Minister Theresa May announced plans to cap energy prices. The FTSE 100 .FTSE steadied as British Gas owner Centrica ( CNA.L ) sank 4 percent, closely followed by SSE ( SSE.L ). Both energy providers had been falling earlier in the session as traders anticipated an energy policy announcement, and May<61>s criticism of <20>rip-off<66> energy prices sent Centrica down to hit a near 14-year low. <20>Any move to cap prices would be a massive hit to the industry,<2C> said Neil Wilson, senior market analyst at ETX Capital. <20>It might cost Centrica something like 200 million pounds and make it much tougher for the firm to reintroduce the progressive dividend policy,<2C> he added. May<61>s pledge of 2 billion pounds towards affordable housing failed to move housebuilders<72> stocks, which had already rallied strongly in the past week after she unveiled an extra cash injection into a scheme to help first-time homebuyers. <20>The housebuilders did very well when the prime minister announced additional funding for <20>Help to Buy<75>, because that<61>s a key tailwind the housebuilders have enjoyed and will continue to enjoy for some time,<2C> said Laith Kalaf, market analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. The money pledged on Wednesday would be aimed at local councils and housing associations rather than directly incentivising housebuilders. Food retailers were also among top fallers, with Tesco ( TSCO.L ) leading losses, down 2.1 percent and closely followed by Sainsbury ( SBRY.L ) and Morrisons ( MRW.L ). Tesco, Britain<69>s biggest retailer, had opened higher before reversing into negative territory after saying it would resume paying a dividend for the first time in three years, also announcing that first-half profit had risen 27 percent. Tesco<63>s shares had risen sharply in the previous session as investors anticipated a return to payouts, and its strong beat over earnings expectations had been expected, Berenberg consumer goods analysts said. <20>Whilst the dividend was reinstated, again this was expected and came in lower than expected at 1p (our risk arbitrage team was expecting 1.36p),<2C> they added. Oil majors Royal Dutch Shell ( RDSa.L ) and BP ( BP.L ) dipped, in line with a Europe-wide drop in energy stocks, as crude prices slipped on doubts that a recent rally would last through the last three months of the year. Standard Life Aberdeen ( SLA.L ) shares fell 2.1 percent after the asset manager said it planned a subordinated debt issue. Reporting by Helen Reid; Editing by Kevin Liffey'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-stocks/ftse-stalls-as-tesco-slips-mays-speech-awaited-idUKKCN1C90YG'|'2017-10-04T16:09:00.000+03:00'
'6736baabc667482cda09f7cad166ad3ec75f7813'|'India''s infrastructure output grows 4.9 percent in August: government'|'Labourers work at the construction site of a metro rail station in Kolkata, August 31, 2016. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri/Files NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India<69>s annual infrastructure output grew at its fastest pace in five months in August, driven by higher coal and electricity production, government data showed on Tuesday.The output grew 4.9 percent in August compared with a revised 2.6 percent year-on-year growth in July.During April-August, the annual output growth was 3.0 percent, data showed.Eight infrastructure sectors include coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, electricity, steel, cement, and fertiliser, accounting for about 40 percent weight in index of industrial production.Electricity production grew 10.3 percent in August from a year ago, while coal output grew 15.3 percent.Reporting by Manoj Kumar; Editing by Malini Menon '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-infrastructure-output/indias-infrastructure-output-grows-4-9-percent-in-august-govt-idINKCN1C818W'|'2017-10-03T14:49:00.000+03:00'
'5befa9b3b4aa7509e5c4896d8544f79781341ae9'|'Crackdown on Muslim-run leather units dents exports, hits jobs'|'NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A government crackdown on Muslim-dominated abattoirs and the trade of cattle dragged down India<69>s exports of leather shoes by more than 13 percent in June, as leading global brands turned to China, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan to secure supplies.The drop in exports of shoes and leather garments comes as a setback for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has sought to create millions of jobs by more than doubling the leather industry<72>s revenues to $27 billion by 2020.Emboldened by the victory of Modi<64>s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 general election, Hindu hard-liners, who consider cows sacred, became more assertive in their calls for a clamp-down on both the meat and leather industries, run by Muslims, who make up 14 percent of India<69>s 1.3 billion people.<2E>The writing was already on the wall,<2C> Nazir Ahmed, CEO of shoemaker Park Exports, told Reuters by phone from Agra, a shoe-making hub and home to the Taj Mahal. <20>We have killed the goose that laid the golden egg.<2E>India, the world<6C>s second-biggest supplier of shoes and leather garments, exports nearly half its leather goods, with overseas sales estimated at $5.7 billion in the 2016/17 fiscal year to March, down 3.2 percent from a year earlier. Footwear exports fell more than 4 percent in April-June, to $674 million.INFORMAL SECTOR In March, after being appointed chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India<69>s most populous state and a major leather exporter, Yogi Adityanath, a firebrand Hindu monk, ordered a closure of abattoirs operating without licenses.Slaughterhouse owners complain that much of India<69>s meat and leather trade takes place in the informal sector, and it<69>s hard to get licences, especially for smaller units.In May, citing cruelty to animals, the federal government banned the trade of cattle for slaughter, and restricted livestock sales only for agricultural purposes such as ploughing and dairy production.But the country<72>s top court overturned that order, citing the hardship the ban had caused.That has not brought relief as repeated attacks on trucks carrying cattle still rankle the leather trade.<2E>The supreme court has allowed the resumption of trade for cattle, but the ground reality is that cow vigilante groups continue to be active and no one wants to risk his life by transporting cattle,<2C> Ahmed said.Deterred by a clutch of measures that squeezed the supply of leather, a key raw material, brands like H&M, Inditex-owned Zara and Clarks, cut back their orders to India, said M. Rafeeque Ahmed, a leading shoe exporter from the southern city of Chennai and former president of the Federation of Indian Export Organisations.<2E>We lost orders because our buyers were sceptical of our ability to meet their requirements. Instead, most buyers moved to rival suppliers in Asia and southeast Asia,<2C> he said.A spokesman for India<69>s trade ministry declined to comment.Earlier this year, a finance ministry report said India should sign more free trade agreements and make tax and labour reforms to drive leather exports, which offer <20>tremendous opportunities for (the) creation of jobs.<2E>The industry is also grappling with a Goods and Services Tax, introduced in July, which has pushed up production costs by 6-7 percent, exporters said.NOWHERE TO HIDE The crackdown also hurt day-workers employed at shoe and garment making units and hit leather supplies, forcing manufacturers to import hides from the United States, Australia, and some European nations, raising the cost of production and squeezing margins.Many tanneries, as a result, have run out of leather.<2E>My business has come to a standstill because I don<6F>t have any inventory at all. Most large shoemakers are importing hides now,<2C> said a tannery owner, who asked not to be named so as to avoid retaliation from cow vigilante groups.Nearly a third of the roughly 3 million-strong workforce, mostly lowly-paid casual workers employed in the leather sector, have lost their jobs in the past six months, 
'e4d78bb27fd5dd0ab5bebbc3cf4617c8b9c4d158'|'Nissan to recall all new cars sold in Japan in last three years'|'Reuters TV United States October 2, 2017 / 11:06 AM / Updated 10 minutes ago Nissan to recall all new cars sold in Japan in last 3 years Maki Shiraki , Naomi Tajitsu 4 Min Read YOKOHAMA (Reuters) - (This October 2 story has been refiled to corrects paragraph 15 to say dealers, not automakers, register vehicles with the government before delivery, not sale.) Nissan Motor Co Ltd ( 7201.T ) will recall all 1.2 million new passenger cars it sold in Japan over the past three years after discovering final vehicle inspections were not performed by authorized technicians, it said on Monday. The recall is the second major misconduct incident involving a Japanese automaker in as many years, after Mitsubishi Motors Corp ( 7211.T ) admitted in April 2016 it had falsified the fuel economy for some of its domestic market models. Nissan, Japan<61>s second-biggest carmaker, said it would recall 1.21 million passenger vehicles produced for the domestic market between October 2014 and September 2017, including top sellers the Serena minivan and the Note compact hatchback. It added all recalled vehicles would undergo re-inspections for final checks on issues including steering radius and braking and acceleration capabilities, at a cost of around 25 billion yen ($222 million). <20>We must take the registration framework and procedures seriously, regardless of how busy we may be or how short-staffed we may be,<2C> CEO Hiroto Saikawa told reporters at a media conference. <20>We apologize for the inconvenience caused to our customers.<2E> Saikawa added the company was investigating how and why the inspections took place, a process expected to take around a month. A third party will participate in an internal investigation into the matter, he said. The logo of Nissan Motor Co is pictured at a showroom at the carmaker''s headquarters in Yokohama, Japan May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai The recall includes all of the 386,000 passenger vehicles Nissan sold in Japan in 2016. It excludes Nissan-branded mini-vehicles, which are produced by Mitsubishi Motors. Passenger car sales in Japan account for roughly 10 percent of Nissan<61>s global sales. The announcement expands the scope of a problem reported last week, when Nissan initially said it would suspend the registration of 60,000 vehicles over unauthorized inspections. <20>This could turn out to be a serious issue depending on whether the misconduct was intentional or a simple oversight,<2C> said Takeshi Miyao, managing director of consultancy Carnorama. <20>At the very least it could have a big impact on Nissan<61>s brand image, given that it prides itself for selling quality products.<2E> Nissan exported around 560,000 vehicles produced in Japan last year to North America, Europe and other markets. Spokesman Nick Maxfield said there was no difference in quality between cars made in Japan for the domestic market and those made for export. Nissan''s shares fell as much as 5.3 percent to hit their lowest since April before closing down 2.7 percent. The benchmark Nikkei average stock price index .N225 ended up 0.2 percent. Auto dealers must register all such vehicles with Japan<61>s government before delivery, with owners renewing the registrations of passenger vehicles every three years. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said on Friday it has asked Nissan to report measures to prevent a recurrence of the issue by the end of October.   Tom Wilson; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-nissan-safety-checks/nissan-to-recall-1-2-million-cars-in-japan-over-unauthorized-checks-idUKKCN1C716O'|'2017-10-03T12:19:00.000+03:00'
'a17bb97ef446d78d7317f297a79256805cf38b58'|'Uber promises to make things right in London after ''constructive'' licence meeting'|'October 2, 2017 / 11:05 PM / in 6 minutes Uber promises to make things right in London after ''constructive'' licence meeting Costas Pitas 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Uber [UBER.UL] promised to make things right in London after its new global boss had a <20>constructive<76> meeting with the city<74>s transport regulator to try to hold on to the app<70>s operating licence in one of its main foreign markets. Transport for London (TfL), which runs and regulates the British capital<61>s transport system, shocked Uber last month by deeming it unfit to run a taxi service and refusing to renew its licence. It cited the firm<72>s approach to reporting serious criminal offences and background checks on drivers. Both TfL and Uber described Tuesday<61>s meeting between the Silicon Valley firm<72>s new Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi and TfL Commissioner Mike Brown as <20>constructive,<2C> with the dialogue set to continue. <20>We hope to have further discussions over the coming weeks as we are determined to make things right in London,<2C> an Uber spokesman said. <20>Today<61>s constructive meeting centred on what needs to happen to ensure a thriving taxi and private hire market in London where everyone operates to the same high standards,<2C> TfL said in a statement. Uber<65>s licence expired on Sept. 30 but its roughly 40,000 drivers are still able to take passengers until an appeals process is exhausted, which could take several months. Reuters reported on Monday that Uber<65>s top boss in Britain, Jo Bertram, would be quitting in the next few weeks to take up an undisclosed new role outside the company. Uber<65>s British management has been criticised by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who is also chairman of TfL. Khan said the firm needed to spend less time hiring <20>an army of PR experts and an army of lawyers<72> and instead address issues raised by TfL. Khan, a centre-left politician from Britain<69>s opposition Labour Party, approved Tuesday<61>s meeting between Khosrowshahi and Brown, who is in charge of TfL<66>s day-to-day operations. FILE PHOTO: A photo illustration shows the Uber app on a mobile telephone, as it is held up for a posed photograph in central London, Britain September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo BOARD MEETING Khosrowshahi was appointed Uber chief executive in August, replacing co-founder and former boss Travis Kalanick and has promised change at the $70-billion dollar firm. He is battling to steer a new course for the app, which has faced regulatory crackdowns, court cases, bans and protests around the world, as well as several boardroom controversies. FILE PHOTO: Dara Khosrowshahi attends the Allen & Co Media Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho July 13, 2012. Reuters/Jim Urquhart In a sign of broader problems facing Uber, Khosrowshahi is also expected to call into a contentious board meeting in San Francisco on Tuesday which will look at cutting the influence of Kalanick, sources familiar with the matter said. The meeting will consider proposals to strip early investors of super-voting power and secure a multibillion-dollar investment. Kalanick, ousted by investors in June, contends that fellow Uber board members are moving too fast on a dramatic restructuring, the sources said. Trying to repair relations with the authorities in London, Khosrowshahi last week struck a more conciliatory tone in an open letter to Londoners, marking a new approach for a firm that has adopted a combative style to break into closed markets around the world. <20>It<49>s ... true that we<77>ve got things wrong along the way. On behalf of everyone at Uber globally, I apologise for the mistakes we<77>ve made,<2C> he wrote in the open letter. Uber<65>s fate in London will be decided by a judge who will rule on the appeal after it is submitted by Oct. 13. Uber<65>s competitors are already trying to take its business. London<6F>s second-biggest private hire firm Addison Lee said last week it was planning to increase its driver numbers in London by up to a quarter. Additional reporting b
'8292dc0d7c71c3307b5c95d120bd0e3d03821cc6'|'London''s financial district wants Brexit transition deal by year-end'|'October 3, 2017 / 11:03 PM / in an hour London''s financial district wants Brexit transition deal by year-end Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A clock is seen in London''s Financial centre at Canary Wharf In London, Britain, May 25, 2017. REUTERS/Russell Boyce/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - The City of London needs a watertight Brexit transition deal by the year-end for banks to plan ahead and avoid a <20>cliff edge<67> hurting the economy, the financial district<63>s mayor will say. Lord Mayor of London Andrew Parmley will tell the annual City Banquet on Wednesday evening that government backing for a transition deal of about two years between leaving the European Union and the start of new trading terms <20>will be our bridge to the future<72>. <20>But the idea must become reality, translated into a legal agreement before the end of the year,<2C> Parmley will say in remarks released in advance to the media. <20>The longer this is left, the more it damages all our futures <20> not only in the UK, but the economy right across the EU.<2E> Parmley, who holds the ceremonial post of mayor of the municipal authority that oversees London<6F>s financial district, will say the financial sector needs to know more about the <20>final state<74> or future trading terms with the EU. <20>How can the UK<55>s most profitable industry be expected to programme its satnav without knowing the destination?<3F> Banks in London are already announcing they will move some staff and activities to the EU before Britain<69>s departure from the EU in March 2019 to be sure of serving European customers. Parmley criticised <20>economically illiterate calls<6C> of those who want to put up cross-border barriers - Britain opposes plans by Brussels that could force the clearing of euro-denominated trades to move from London to the EU after Brexit. The banquet in the <20>Square Mile<6C> will also hear speeches from the heads of the Financial Conduct Authority, and the Bank of England<6E>s Prudential Regulation Authority. Parmley will say there is a need to maintain existing financial rules, remarks that will take a swipe at those who have suggested Brexit could be an opportunity to ditch some EU-originated regulation to improve competitiveness. Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Edmund Blair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-banks/londons-financial-district-wants-brexit-transition-deal-by-year-end-idUKKCN1C82VD'|'2017-10-04T02:03:00.000+03:00'
'5b4ca0a4be26d071da8af2281a62b23c343250c2'|'Japanese shares scale two year peak on auto rally; dollar slips'|'October 4, 2017 / 1:26 AM / Updated 36 minutes ago Japanese shares scale two year peak on auto rally; dollar slips Swati Pandey 4 Min Read People walk past an electronic board showing exchange rate between Japanese Yen and U.S. Dollar outside a brokerage at a business district in Tokyo, Japan August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon SYDNEY (Reuters) - Japanese shares climbed on Wednesday led by auto stocks as U.S. demand for cars ballooned following damage from recent hurricanes, while the dollar traded cautiously amid speculation over the next head of the Federal Reserve. Across Asia this week, trade has been generally subdued and volumes thin with China and South Korea closed for week-long holidays and analysts cautioning against reading too much into index moves. Japan''s Nikkei .N225 climbed to the highest since August 2015 to 20,669.86 points, aided by strong gains in Toyota Motor ( 7203.T ) and Mazda Motor Corp ( 7271.T ). The rise follows buoyant U.S. shares, with the three major stock indices on Wall Street closing at record highs on Tuesday, driven by expectations of strong global growth. Car sales in the world<6C>s biggest economy surged at the fastest rate in 12 years with the annual rate for all light vehicles at 18.57 million units in September, up from 16.14 million the previous month. Replacing cars in hurricane-hit parts of Texas and Florida will boost new and used auto sales through at least November, according to industry consultants. That will hoist retail sales, adding to the country<72>s gross domestic product and more than offsetting the drag from damage done by the hurricanes, analysts said. General Motors ( GM.N ) leapt to the highest on record while Ford ( F.N ) rose to a more than six month peak. Since Hurricane Harvey made landfall, GM stock has risen 24 percent and Ford is up 16 percent. MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS was steady following three consecutive days of gains. Australian shares skidded as a drop in oil prices dented energy-related stocks. The S&P/ASX 200 index was down 33.242 points, or 0.6 percent, to 5,668.2 by 0043 GMT. The foreign exchange market is at a crossroad with uncertainty over the likely successor of Fed Chair Janet Yellen whose term ends in February. Fed Governor Jerome Powell has joined the race for the job alongside his predecessor Kevin Warsh. <20>The market is still seeing Warsh as a favorite but the odds for Powell have improved. Powell is perceived as being a relatively dovish choice compared to Warsh,<2C> said Ray Attrill, Sydney-based global co-head of forex strategy at NAB. As a result, Treasury yields headed lower to 2.3320 percent from a three-month peak of 2.3710. The dollar eased 0.2 percent on the yen JPY= to 111.61. The dollar index .DXY, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, slipped 0.15 percent to 93.429. Elsewhere, investors remained cautious over Catalonia<69>s vote to separate from Spain with the region<6F>s secessionist leader saying he would declare independence <20>in a matter of days<79>. <20>This was a risk that we highlighted on Monday,<2C> analysts at Citi wrote in a note. <20>The Constitutional Court is likely to challenge and rule against such a motion. If the Catalan government ignores the ruling, then Madrid is likely to trigger article 155 of the Constitution to strip out Catalonia<69>s autonomy and to call for regional elections.<2E> Catalans had come out in hordes to vote for independence on Sunday in a referendum that was declared illegal by Spain<69>s central government. The move has thrown Spain into its worst constitutional crisis in decades and raised fears of street violence as a test of will between Madrid and Barcelona plays out. In commodities, U.S. crude CLc1 dipped 0.73 percent at $50.05 a barrel. Brent crude LCOc1 fell to $55.65 per barrel. Gold was slightly higher with spot gold XAU= at $1274.17 per ounce. Reporting by Swati Pandey; Editing by Sam Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.re
'e732dc01a929b0aac8eeac57f81bdbefe7a71a7b'|'Honda CEO to hold news conference at 0630 GMT'|'October 4, 2017 / 2:35 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago Honda CEO to hold news conference at 0630 GMT Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Honda Chief Executive Officer Takahiro Hachigo attends a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, February 7, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Honda Motor Co ( 7267.T ) said Chief Executive Takahiro Hachigo would hold a news conference at 3:30 p.m. (0630 GMT / 0730 British time) on Wednesday at the company<6E>s headquarters. The subject of the news conference was not immediately known. Reporting by Chris Gallagher'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-honda-strategy-ceo/honda-ceo-to-hold-news-conference-at-0630-gmt-idUKKCN1C906C'|'2017-10-04T05:36:00.000+03:00'
'1056f8537ba0347636def9ab266b128254d0fe67'|'EU, Britain agree to seek same WTO quotas after Brexit - sources'|'October 3, 2017 / 9:00 PM / Updated 35 minutes ago EU, Britain agree to seek same WTO quotas after Brexit - sources Reuters Staff 3 Min Read A European Union flag flies in front of Union Jack flags in London, Britain, September 13, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain and its European Union partners have agreed to ask the other members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to maintain the current level of quotas for farm produce after Brexit, EU sources said on Tuesday. Since negotiations began in June between London and Brussels on how to extract Britain from the bloc in March 2019, the two sides have been working to establish a common approach to dividing up their relationship with other members of the WTO, as at present all 28 EU states are represented as a single bloc. The sources said that the other 27 EU members would discuss this week what was described as a <20>very preliminary<72> agreement with Britain. The British economy accounts for about 16 percent of the EU economy but its share of EU imports from other WTO countries at preferential tariffs varies according to products. It remains to be seen what those other WTO members will say to the European proposals. Even before Brexit, some were looking at possible changes in their trading terms with the EU as the Union has added new members since some such deals were struck. <20>We have to see if other WTO states agree,<2C> one EU diplomat said, adding that it would take time to reach agreement at the WTO. No official comment was immediately available from the European Commission or the British government. Neither the remaining EU states nor Britain want to have to accept greater quantities of low- or zero-duty farm imports from the rest of the world to avoid increasing competition for their own producers. But determining where such goods currently end up being consumed inside the EU customs union is problematic. TRANSITION PERIOD Britain will leave the EU in 18 months but Prime Minister Theresa May asked last month for a transition period of about two years to help smooth its departure, during which it would remain in the EU single market and customs union. That may give more time to reach final agreements with other WTO countries. May also wants a close free trade agreement with the EU, though the bloc is holding off starting negotiations until London agrees basic divorce terms. Discussions on the WTO quotas are not technically part of direct Brexit negotiations. The Financial Times, which first reported the deal, quoted a letter from EU and British negotiators to the other 27 EU governments as saying: <20>The EU and the UK intend to maintain the existing levels of market access available to other WTO members. <20>Both the UK and the EU would look to reassure our WTO partners that we will strive to minimise disruption.<2E> Reporting by Francesco Guarascio and Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Gareth Jones'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-wto/eu-britain-agree-to-seek-same-wto-quotas-after-brexit-sources-idUKKCN1C82O5'|'2017-10-04T00:00:00.000+03:00'
'a7b31194650308e0b5c83f534fbe7cb446b2c2cb'|'Royal Mail looks set to deliver a long and bitter dispute - Nils Pratley - Business - The Guardian'|'S ir Vince Cable, business secretary in the coalition government, was right about Royal Mail being a risky investment at privatisation in 2013. The biggest risk <20> industrial action <20> is now arriving and looks serious.Members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) have voted overwhelmingly to strike over the company<6E>s proposal to cut pension benefits . The City had anticipated the outcome and the shares closed on Tuesday at 384p, down 17% this year and not far above the float price of 330p. The heady post-flotation days of 600p feel like another age.The alarming part of this dispute is that Royal Mail<69>s room for manoeuvre looks to be limited. While the state guaranteed the pre-privatisation pension liabilities, the cost of the post-privatisation defined-benefit scheme has been deemed unaffordable after next March. That assessment looks correct, sadly. Royal Mail estimates its annual contributions would more than double from the current <20>400m to as much as <20>1bn. At a business generating <20>420m of free cash flow, something has to give.Royal Mail workers vote for industrial action Read more The dispute, then, is about what replaces the current arrangements. Royal Mail has made three offers with the aim of keeping contributions at about <20>400m. All have been rejected. The last proposal involves offering the 88,000 members of the defined-benefit scheme either a <20>cash balance scheme<6D> that pays a guaranteed lump sum on retirement or the opportunity to join a conventional contribution scheme.Yet it is also hard to see how CWU<57>s alternative idea (which also covers defined-contribution members) can be spun into a form Royal Mail<69>s management could accept. First, the annual cash cost would be about <20>500m, according to analysts at Jefferies. Second, the structure looks too risky from the point of the view of the sponsor: it too closely resembles a defined-benefit scheme with a heavy exposure to shares and thus volatility.A negotiating gap of <20>100m a year <20> plus a disagreement over structure <20> is enormous, as are the stakes on both sides. The proposed cuts in retirement income for workers would be substantial in many cases <20> up to a third, says the CWU. Yet Royal Mail management, with pressures on revenue from all sides, can<61>t stray far from its definition of a <20>manageable<6C> pension cost. Royal Mail has not had a strike since 2009 and the postal climate is different these days. Amazon delivers one in 10 parcels in the UK and the gig economy, where they don<6F>t do pensions like Royal Mail<69>s, creeps closer. In the meantime, letters volumes continue to fall.An optimist might say a settlement is bound to emerge precisely because the stakes are so high. Well, yes, in time <20> but a thumping 89% majority in Tuesday<61>s CWU ballot on a big turnout, and talk of renationalisation in the air, makes the plot difficult to predict.The first skirmish will be over the timing of any strike, with the company desperate to avoid Christmas. It says the CWU, under an agreement from 2013, is obliged to go to external mediation, which could take until <20>close to Christmas to be completed, and may be longer.<2E> This dispute could become very long and bitter. Royal Mail has fallen out of the FTSE 100 index. Prospects for a quick return are poor.Fidelity should spell out how it will pay for performance Now that the giant BlackRock is driving its passively-managed juggernaut across the investment landscape, active fund managers are obliged to contemplate their role in life.Some, like Aberdeen and Standard Life, are combining in search of cost savings and smarter technology to combat the appeal of cheap tracker funds. Here<72>s a different solution from Fidelity, the <20>233bn investment house: it will charge investors less when its funds underperform their benchmarks, and charge more when they do.It<49>s not an original idea since it is borrowed from the land of hedge funds. But, for a mainstream manager with a big retail following, it<69>
'e26df1bead0430dfd22ad9ec1845c6d9855dd8c4'|'Glencore to raise stake in Peruvian zinc miner Volcan'|'The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company''s headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann (Reuters) - Miner and commodities trader Glencore ( GLEN.L ) has agreed to buy a further stake worth at least $531 million in Peru<72>s largest zinc miner, Volcan Compa<70>ia Minera SAA ( VOL_pb.LM ), the company said on Tuesday.Glencore, which has been a shareholder in Volcan since 2004 and holds a 7.68 economic interest, said it was buying at least 26.73 percent of the voting shares.The price of zinc CMZN3 hit 10-year highs for a second day on Tuesday as worries over production outages in China pushed up prices.The Lima stock exchange suspended trade in Volcan<61>s shares following the deal. Glencore<72>s London-listed shares closed up 0.8 percent at 354.15 pence.<2E>Volcan<61>s operations are located in the richest polymetallic production area in Peru, producing some of the highest quality zinc concentrates,<2C> Glencore said in a statement.<2E>The transaction will provide an increase and extension of Glencore<72>s zinc production profile and the opportunity for synergies with Glencore<72>s existing Peruvian zinc operations.<2E>Following the purchase, which will be implemented under Peruvian law via a tender offer for up to 48.19 percent of Volcan<61>s class A common shares, Glencore will have an economic interest in Volcan of between 18.98 percent and 28.07 percent, the company said.The total consideration payable by Glencore would be between $531 million and $956 million, depending on the level of acceptances. It would be paid out of existing cash resources and should be completed this year.Glencore has said it is focusing on strategic acquisitions, especially near existing resources, which will create synergies.Although the mining industry has recovered from the commodity price crash of 2015-16 the mood remains cautious and Glencore said its deal-making would limit its levels of debt to ensure an investment grade credit rating.<2E>Glencore clearly sees opportunities for value add from the reasonably-sized operation, which is running at a circa 250,000 ton per annum rate,<2C> Hunter Hillcoat, analyst at Investec, said of Tuesday<61>s zinc deal.Earlier this year Glencore entered a bidding war to buy Rio Tinto<74>s ( RIO.L ) ( RIO.AX ) coal interests in Hunter Valley, Australia, next to its own operations but ended up buying a 49 percent stake in the business after Rio agreed to sell to China<6E>s Yancoal ( YAL.AX ) instead.Additional reporting by Zandi Shabalala in Lonndon; Editing by Greg Mahlich '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-volcan-minera-stake-sale-glencore/glencore-to-buy-more-shares-in-peruvian-zinc-miner-volcan-idINKCN1C81ZP'|'2017-10-03T13:53:00.000+03:00'
'66ae9b0d866d8b967fadc5f8e38c0bc1de344244'|'UPDATE 1-France''s Worldline raises targets as acquisitions pay off'|'(Reuters) - French payments company Worldline SA ( WLN.PA ) has raised its revenue and profitability targets for 2017-2019 thanks to increased business from its acquisitions.The sector has seen a wave of consolidation as payment firms become targets for credit card companies and banks looking to capitalize on a switch from cash to payments by smartphones or other mobile devices and as regulatory changes promise to open up the fragmented market.Recent deals have included company Vantiv<69>s ( VNTV.N ) takeover of Worldpay ( WPG.L ) and Hellman & Friedman<61>s bid for Nets ( NETS.CO ).<2E>Worldline intends to pursue its growth by capturing opportunities created by regulation changes like PSD2 and Instant Payments, as well as by large new processing outsourcing opportunities and cross-border acquiring contracts,<2C> Chief Executive Gilles Grapinet said in a statement.Grapinet added that the company intends to <20>actively participate<74> in consolidation in the European payment industry.Worldline, which said in July it bought Digital River World Payments and First Data Baltics, also said on Tuesday it has agreed to buy 100 percent of payment service provider MRL PosNet in India for up to 89 million euros ($104.1 million).MRL PosNet, which employs approximately 140 engineers, operates a terminal management platform and currently processes payment transactions on behalf of 18 Indian banks.Worldline, 70 percent owned by French IT services firm Atos SE ( ATOS.PA ) according to Thomson Reuters data, now expects organic revenue growth in the range of 3.5-4 percent in 2017, and rising to 6-8 percent in 2019.The payments firm also forecast operating margin before amortization and depreciation (OMDA) of more than 22.5 percent in 2019 and free cash flow in the range of 230 million euros to 245 million euros ($269.6-$287.2 million) in 2019.In November last year the company said it expected free cash flow of 210 million euros to 230 million euros in 2019, organic revenue compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 5 and 7 percent for 2017-2019.Reporting by Alan Charlish; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri and Louise Heavens '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-worldline-outlook/frances-worldline-raises-targets-as-acquisitions-pay-off-idUSKCN1C80K6'|'2017-10-03T10:03:00.000+03:00'
'7950dd22af7b7f6b5a9471512cff5da2500180de'|'MOVES-Morgan Stanley banker Antakly leaves to join PJT Partners'|'LONDON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Boutique investment bank PJT Partners Inc has added another former Morgan Stanley managing director, Michel Antakly, to its growing stable of senior advisors in London, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.French-Lebanese Antakly spent 28 years at Morgan Stanley, where he was a managing director in the M&A (mergers and acquisitions) division, handling commodities trading giant Glencore<72>s $45.8 billion merger with miner Xstrata in 2012, the largest M&A transaction that year.PJT, which was spun off from private equity firm Blackstone Group LP in September 2015, was founded by another former Morgan Stanley M&A executive, Paul Taubman. It now employs 12 partners who joined from Morgan Stanley, making up 20 percent of the total.Boutique firms, usually founded by senior dealmakers from large investment banks, have stolen market share from their bulge bracket rivals in recent years, with clients valuing their niche expertise and independent advice.PJT listed on the New York stock market in 2015 and was one of the advisors for the $21 billion merger of packaging companies Rock-Tenn Co and MeadWestvaco Corp and telecoms group Altice NV<4E>s $18 billion acquisition of Cablevision Systems Corp, among others.PJT was not immediately available to comment.News of the hire was first reported by the Financial Times. (Reporting by Clara Denina; Editing by Rachel Armstrong) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/morgan-stanley-moves/moves-morgan-stanley-banker-antakly-leaves-to-join-pjt-partners-idINL8N1MF227'|'2017-10-04T07:57:00.000+03:00'
'c1e3c65c3ba1cce609fa75c5b7d3d2508bd75b54'|'Ford to cut costs $14 billion, invest in trucks, electric cars - CEO'|'The Ford logo is seen on a car in a park lot in Sao Paulo, Brazil June 2, 2017. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker DETROIT (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co ( F.N ) plans to slash $14 billion in costs over the next five years, Chief Executive Officer Jim Hackett told investors on Tuesday, adding that the No. 2 U.S. automaker would shift capital investment away from sedans and internal combustion engines to develop more trucks and electric and hybrid cars.Most of those savings will not show up on Ford<72>s bottom line until 2019 and 2020, Hackett and other Ford executives said, reflecting the industry<72>s long product engineering lead times.Ford will be open to more partnerships to spread the costs and risks of simultaneously developing new technology and services while churning out profit from selling trucks and sport utility vehicles in North America, Hackett said during a nearly two-hour presentation. He cited a partnership with ride services company Lyft to deploy future Ford self-driving cars, an alliance with Indian automaker Mahindra ( MAHM.NS ) and a potential alliance with Chinese electric vehicle maker Zotye.The automaker reaffirmed a goal of achieving 8 percent automotive operating margins and generating returns that exceed the cost of capital. Ford will provide a financial forecast for 2018 in January. Ford Chief Financial Officer Bob Shanks said it could take until 2020 or later to achieve the 8 percent margin goal.Other automakers have warned that shifting to all-electric vehicles could undercut profit margins. <20>I don<6F>t think we should walk off a ledge where we destroy the earnings power of the company,<2C> Hackett said, saying Ford is planning for a third of vehicles to still have internal combustion engines by 2030 - the year some European governments have proposed banning petroleum fuelled cars.Hackett, former CEO of office furniture maker Steelcase Inc ( SCS.N ), took the top post at Ford in May after his predecessor Mark Fields was pushed out. At the time, Hackett promised to tell investors after 100 days how he would improve the <20>fitness<73> of Ford to compete as the auto industry becomes more digital, more electric and less wedded to selling one vehicle at a time to individuals.Ford shares were little changed after hours as Hackett and other executives presented their outlook. Ford shares had risen 2.1 percent on Tuesday, up with other automotive stocks as the industry reported the highest sales pace in a dozen years. However, the company<6E>s share price is down 30 percent since July 2014.Hackett has signed off on a series of moves, including a plan to shift production of Ford Focus compact cars from Michigan to China. He also hired a company outsider, Jason Luo, to lead Ford<72>s business in China, the world<6C>s largest car market, where Ford is revamping operations and looking to expand partnerships in electric vehicles.Ford is playing catch up in some areas. By 2019, Ford plans to equip all U.S. models with built-in modems and to install mobile internet connections in 90 percent of global vehicles by 2020, Hackett said.Rival General Motors Co( GM.N ) has been installing built-in mobile broadband connections in its U.S. vehicles since 2015 and now has about 7 million 4G LTE connected vehicles on the road globally, a spokesman said on Tuesday.Of Ford<72>s $14 billion in promised cost reductions over five years, $10 billion will come from material costs and $4 billion from reduced engineering costs, Hackett said.<2E>We have too much cost across our business,<2C> Hackett said.By 2022, Ford plans to cut spending on future internal combustion engines by a third, or about $500 million, putting that money instead into expanded electric and hybrid vehicle development, on top of $4.5 billion previously announced. Ford had already promised 13 new electric or hybrid vehicles within the next five years.Ford is <20>looking to build sustainably profitable BEV (battery electric vehicle) business<73> in segments where <20>we have a strong revenue presence,
'5b76d849d85934e59fc6c2a9896851ea926ea21d'|'World Bank raises 2017, 2018 East Asia growth forecasts, sees geopolitical risks'|'October 4, 2017 / 2:08 AM / in 17 minutes World Bank raises 2017, 2018 East Asia growth forecasts, sees geopolitical risks Reuters Staff 4 Min Read File photo: World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim delivers a speech during the Indonesia Infrastructure Finance Forum in Jakarta, Indonesia, July 25, 2017. REUTERS/Beawiharta SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The World Bank raised its economic growth forecasts for developing East Asia and Pacific for this year and 2018, but added the generally positive outlook was clouded by risks such as rising trade protectionism and geopolitical tensions. The Washington-based lender now expects the developing East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region, which includes China, to grow 6.4 percent in 2017 and 6.2 percent in 2018. Its previous forecast in April was for 6.2 percent growth in 2017 and 6.1 percent growth in 2018. <20>The economic outlook for the region remains positive and will benefit from an improved external environment as well as strong domestic demand,<2C> the World Bank said in its latest East Asia and Pacific Economic Update report on Wednesday. The outlook, however, faces risks from rising trade protectionism and economic nationalism, which could dampen global trade, as well as the possible escalation of geopolitical tensions in the region, the bank said. Increasingly hostile statements by U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in recent weeks have raised fears of a miscalculation that could lead to war, particularly since Pyongyang conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3. <20>Because of the region<6F>s central role in global shipping and manufacturing supply chains, escalation of these tensions could disrupt global trade flows and economic activity,<2C> the World Bank said. That could be accompanied by financial market volatility that would likely hamper economic growth in the region, and there could also be a <20>flight to safety<74> that spurs capital outflows, the bank said. The World Bank said it now expects China<6E>s economy to grow 6.7 percent in 2017 and 6.4 percent in 2018. Its previous forecasts were for China to grow 6.5 percent in 2017 and 6.3 percent next year. China<6E>s economic growth is projected to moderate in 2018-2019 as the economy rebalances away from investment and external demand towards domestic consumption, the bank said. The World Bank cut growth forecasts for several countries in Southeast Asia including Myanmar and the Philippines, while raising forecasts for Malaysia and Thailand. <20>Businesses in Myanmar appear to have delayed investments as they wait for the government<6E>s economic agenda to become clearer,<2C> said the bank. It cut Myanmar<61>s growth forecasts by 0.5 percentage points for both 2017 and 2018, to 6.4 percent and 6.7 percent, respectively. <20>These projections do not factor in any longer-term impact of the ongoing insecurity in Rakhine State, which if it persists could have significant adverse effects by slowing foreign investment.<2E> More than half a million Rohingya have fled from a Myanmar military crackdown in Rakhine State launched in late August that has been denounced by the United Nations as <20>ethnic cleansing<6E>. In the Philippines, a delay in a planned government infrastructure programme has softened the economic growth prospects, the World Bank said. It added that Malaysia<69>s growth is gaining a lift from higher investment and a recovery in global trade, while Thailand<6E>s growth forecasts have been revised higher due to a stronger recovery in exports and tourism. Reporting by Masayuki Kitano; Editing by Kim Coghill'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-worldbank-asia/world-bank-raises-2017-2018-east-asia-growth-forecasts-sees-geopolitical-risks-idUKKCN1C905P'|'2017-10-04T05:07:00.000+03:00'
'92f10fc8fbb92e574eeeef45acd422a450aa5037'|'EU sets new trade rules to limit cheap Chinese imports - Reuters'|'A protestor waves an EU flag as he walks past the Houses of Parliament in central London, Britain September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville STRASBOURG (Reuters) - The European Union agreed new rules on Tuesday to guard against excessively cheap Chinese imports, ending 18 months of wrangling over trade ties with Beijing.The European Union and many of China<6E>s other trading partners have debated whether to treat China as a <20>market economy<6D>, which Beijing says was its right at the end of 2016, some 15 years after it joined the World Trade Organization.The EU kicked off discussions early in 2016 and held public consultations, gathering over 5,000 opinions on how to handle trade complaints against China.The European Commission, member states and EU lawmakers finally overcame their differences on Tuesday after a number of failed attempts, representatives of all three told a news conference.In determining whether to impose import tariffs, the EU will now treat all WTO members the same. Their businesses will only be dumping if their export prices are below domestic prices.But the EU will make exceptions for cases of <20>significant market distortions<6E>, such as excessive state intervention, an exception expected to cover many Chinese firms.Until now, China has been treated as a special <20>non-market<65> case, meaning EU investigators decide that its exports are artificially cheap if the prices are below those of a third country, such as the United States.China last year launched a complaint at the WTO against Europe and the United States over their trade defence practices.The European Commission, supported by the EU<45>s 28 member states, believed the rules for China needed to be changed. That meant finding a balance between adhering to WTO rules and protecting EU companies threatened by dumping.<2E>I am convinced we have met these two targets,<2C> Bernd Lange, head of the EU Parliament<6E>s trade committee, said after the deal. He also hailed the new possibility of investigations into social and environmental dumping.Critics, including many in the European Parliament, said the new rules shifted the burden of proof from Chinese to EU producers, making it much harder to impose measures.The Commission said that burden would not shift because it will issue reports on countries to determine whether their markets are distorted.EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said the Commission had already started work on reports for <20>some major countries where we suspect distortions<6E> which would hopefully be ready by the time the new laws come into force at the end of the year.EU steelmakers association Eurofer, which has brought a series of trade complaints against Chinese imports, said the agreement was important, but wanted to see how it worked in practice.Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Robin Emmott and Catherine Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/eu-china-trade/eu-sets-new-trade-rules-to-limit-cheap-chinese-imports-idINKCN1C822G'|'2017-10-03T14:15:00.000+03:00'
'984d4f7f07d69ba8448e5f2c753ac87a963316b4'|'UPDATE 1-Brazil''s Funcef to exercise tag-along rights in Eldorado stake sale'|'(Adds details of transaction in 2nd, 4th paragraphs)SAO PAULO, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Brazilian pension fund Funcef decided to exercise tag-along rights and sell its 8.53 percent stake in wood pulpmaker Eldorado Brasil Celulose SA to Netherlands-based Paper Excellence BV, according to a statement on Wednesday.Eldorado controlling shareholder J&F Investimentos SA agreed in September to sell the pulpmaker to Paper Excellence, controlled by the owners of Indonesia<69>s Asia Pulp & Paper Co Ltd, for 15 billion reais ($4.8 billion).The stake held by Funcef, the pension fund representing employees at state bank Caixa Econ<6F>mica Federal, is valued at around 650 million reais, a person with knowledge of the transaction said.Funcef owns the stake indirectly through investment vehicle FIP Florestal, which is also partly owned by Petros, the pension fund of oil workers at Petroleo Brasileiro SA.Petros has yet to announce whether it will sell its own 8.53 percent stake in the investment vehicle. ($1 = 3.1277 Brazilian reais) (Reporting by Aluisio Alves; Writing by Bruno Federowski; Editing by G Crosse and Lisa Shumaker) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/eldorado-brasil-divestiture-funcef/update-1-brazils-funcef-to-exercise-tag-along-rights-in-eldorado-stake-sale-idINL2N1MF1I1'|'2017-10-04T16:32:00.000+03:00'
'52939be02bb807443c5c10db9035f0aa80b33d40'|'Australian fund in $3.1 billion deal to buy 10 U.S. malls from Forest City'|'(In this October 3 story corrects deal value to $1.6 billion, not $3.1 billion in headline and text)By Paulina DuranSYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian fund manager QIC has reached a deal to buy out 10 regional malls in the United States from its joint venture partner Forest City Realty Trust Inc ( FCEa.N ) on behalf of a client which it did not identify.Forest City said the deal values the total portfolio at $3.1 billion and its stake at $1.6 billion.Four years ago, the A$82 billion Australian fund, which manages assets for institutional investors, formed a partnership with the New York listed Forest City.<2E>We are encouraged by the broader economic conditions in the U.S. and the resilience of the consumer as demonstrated by continuing strength in the underlying fundamentals for the portfolio,<2C> said Steve Leigh, Managing Director of Global Real Estate for QIC.<2E>We understand the importance of regional malls to their local communities and have the capability and the capital to evolve these assets into multi-faceted destinations.<2E>The transaction will be completed in two stages, with the first involving the acquisition of six malls in the states of Colorado, New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania, for net proceeds of $180 million, and the second stage consisting of an option over four more malls in California, Nevada, and Virginia, the fund said in a statement.Reporting by Paulina Duran; editing by Grant McCool '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-forest-city-m-a-qic/australian-fund-in-3-1-billion-deal-to-buy-10-u-s-malls-from-forest-city-idINKCN1C82U7'|'2017-10-03T20:41:00.000+03:00'
'bee0d3945169ba9dd896dee171faa4b5d0df4d8a'|'UPDATE 2-Qatar c.bank: government has enough reserves to support Qatari banks'|'October 4, 2017 / 8:41 AM / Updated 4 minutes ago Government has enough reserves to support Qatari banks: Qatar central bank Hadeel Al Sayegh , Aziz El Yaakoubi 4 Min Read File photo: Qatar''s central bank governor Sheikh Abdullah bin Saud al-Thani claps during the 58th Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Central Bank Governors'' annual meeting in Manama September 18, 2013. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed DUBAI (Reuters) - Qatar<61>s government has enough reserves to support its banks in the face of sanctions imposed by other Arab states and reports of its banking system being under strain are false, its central bank governor said on Wednesday. <20>The government and the central bank are able to support banks with the holdings of the large sovereign wealth fund and the large state reserves,<2C> Qatar<61>s Lusail news service quoted Sheikh Abdullah bin Saud al-Thani as saying. The central bank posted excerpts from the report on its website. However, Sheikh Abdullah warned that banks should only consider the government and the central bank suppliers of funds in the last resort, implying that they must first seek other sources of financing. <20>The bank will not intervene in the management of the private liquidity of banks as long as they obey prudential requirements,<2C> Lusail quoted him as saying. As the sanctions have cut off many of Qatari banks<6B> funding sources in the Gulf, some banks are turning to Asia and Europe to compensate; last month Qatar National Bank QNBK.QA completed a US$630 million Formosa bond issue in Taiwan. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut diplomatic and transport ties with Qatar on June 5, disrupting its foreign trade and prompting banks and investors from the four Arab states to pull deposits from Qatari banks. The central bank is several weeks late in releasing its monthly monetary statistics for July and August, and has not explained the delay or said when the data will be published. This has left investors guessing about how much the sanctions are reducing liquidity in the banking system and depleting the central bank<6E>s foreign reserves. But Sheikh Abdullah said on Wednesday that domestic liquidity was up 8.3 percent at the end of July while the monetary base had grown 1.7 percent. He did not specify whether those growth rates were year-on-year or month-on-month. Statistics for June, released on July 30, showed the central bank<6E>s net international reserves plunged by $10.4 billion from the previous month to $24.4 billion. M2 money supply grew 7.7 percent from a year earlier. Qatar<61>s sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, has responded to the crisis by pumping billions of dollars into local banks to shore up their deposits. Banking sector data suggests such injections totaled about $8 billion in August alone. Pressure on deposits may now ease as the Arab states no longer have as much money left in Qatar to withdraw. The QIA is believed to have had about $300 billion of assets before the crisis, so most analysts believe it can easily continue defending the banks and replenish the central bank<6E>s reserves. Nevertheless, the diplomatic crisis has raised funding costs for banks and hurt their foreign business. Credit rating agency Moody<64>s cut the outlook for Qatar<61>s banking sector to negative from stable in August. <20>Qatari banks<6B> reliance on confidence-sensitive external funding has increased in recent years due to a significant decline in oil-related revenues. This leaves them vulnerable to shifts in investor sentiment,<2C> said Nitish Bhojnagarwala, a vice president at Moody<64>s. Additional reporting by Sylvia Westall and Sami Aboudi; Writing by Andrew Torchia; Editing by Toby Chopra'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-qatar-cenbank-banks/government-has-enough-reserves-to-support-qatari-banks-qatar-central-bank-idUSKCN1C90P4'|'2017-10-04T16:00:00.000+03:00'
'c81cb8405154a1b748474526eda9f5f9c07e4b49'|'Global Logistic Properties expands into Europe with $2.8 bln acquisition'|'SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Asia<69>s biggest warehouse operator, Global Logistic Properties (GLP) ( GLPL.SI ), agreed to acquire European logistics platform Gazeley for about $2.8 billion, marking its first push into Europe and underscoring consolidation in the buoyant sector.In a statement on Monday, GLP said the properties, owned by funds affiliated with Brookfield Asset Management Inc ( BAMa.TO ), were spread across four countries and comprised 32 million square feet (3.0 million square metres) of total gross leasable area.Singapore-listed GLP, which has a $42 billion portfolio of assets across China, Japan, Brazil and the United States, is benefiting from rising demand for logistics facilities driven by a boom in e-commerce from clients such as Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ) and JD.com Inc ( JD.O ).<2E>We have been looking to expand to Europe and this portfolio presents an attractive entry point given the quality and location of the assets,<2C> Ming Mei, co-founder and CEO of GLP, said, adding that the purchase was part of the company<6E>s long-term strategy to expand its fund management business.The acquisition portfolio was concentrated in Europe<70>s key logistics markets, with 57 percent in the United Kingdom, 25 percent in Germany, 14 percent in France and the remainder in the Netherlands, GLP said.In June, private equity group Blackstone ( BX.N ) agreed to sell European warehouse firm Logicor to China Investment Corp (CIC) for 12.25 billion euros ($14.4 billion) in the biggest private equity real estate deal in Europe on record,.GLP is in the process of being taken over for S$16 billion ($11.8 billion) by a leading Chinese private equity consortium backed by senior executives from GLP, marking Asia<69>s largest private equity buyout. Property developer China Vanke Co ( 2202.HK ) ( 2.SZ ) is part of the group.GLP said the transaction is expected to be funded by about $1.6 billion of equity and $1.2 billion of long-term, low-cost debt.<2E>GLP will fund its equity commitment with cash on hand, existing credit facilities and new indebtedness. The company does not need to issue additional equity to fund this acquisition,<2C> it said.The logistics firm said it intends to inject the Gazeley portfolio into its fund management platform.<2E>Investor demand to partner with GLP in the European logistics market is strong and the company is already in negotiations with interested capital partners.<2E>In Monday<61>s statement, the consortium taking over GLP said it supports GLP<4C>s entry into Europe. It did not expect the move to affect the timeline for taking the company private.($1 = 1.3574 Singapore dollars)($1 = 0.8490 euros)Reporting by Anshuman Daga; Editing by Richard Pullin '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-glp-m-a-gazelle/global-logistic-properties-expands-into-europe-with-2-8-billion-acquisition-idUSKCN1C7001'|'2017-10-02T02:58:00.000+03:00'
'5801a06f283fa09af9d1d5dbeb367b0773b9e338'|'Jetcraft predicts upward trend for business jets over 10 years'|'(Reuters) - Pre-owned aircraft broker Jetcraft on Wednesday forecast an increase in business jet deliveries over the next 10 years, as corporate America spends more money and the rich get wealthier and open their wallets, especially in Asia.Jetcraft forecast deliveries of 8,349 aircraft worth about $252 billion based on 2017 prices, with North America having the greatest market share at 62 percent. Europe and Asia follow with 17 percent and 12 percent, respectively.Jetcraft predicts demand will keep moving towards widebody jets at the expense of narrowbodied ones, with the large jet category constituting 31 percent of the total unit delivery forecast, and accounting for more than 63 percent of revenue.Jetcraft<66>s forecast comes as business jet shipments have struggled to recover after the financial crisis, having been cut in half from their peak of 1,317 in 2008 to 661 in 2016, according to General Aviation Manufacturers Association.Business jet deliveries fell in 2016, as billionaires in key markets like China, Brazil and Russia tightened their purse strings as economies faltered, companies slashed budgets and oil tycoons retrenched with record low oil prices.<2E>Our forecast indicates we are finally exiting the post-2008 recession period, entering several years of steadier, healthier growth and expanding revenues. This new business cycle should shape our industry for years to come,<2C> Jetcraft<66>s Chairman Jahid Fazal-Karim said.Canada<64>s Bombardier Inc ( BBDb.TO ) will be the world<6C>s leading business jet maker by revenue over the next 10 years, with a revenue share of about 29.2 percent of the $252 billion predicted, followed by General Dynamics Corp ( GD.N ) at 27.8 percent and France<63>s Dassault Aviation SA ( AVMD.PA ) at 15.2 percent, Jetcraft said.In terms of unit sales, Textron Inc<6E>s ( TXT.N ) Cessna aircraft will hold the top spot - cornering about 27.3 percent of the 8,349 business jet deliveries by year 2026, followed by Bombardier at 20.9 percent and Brazil<69>s Embraer SA ( EMBR3.SA ) at 17.2 percent.Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aerospace-business-jets-jetcraft-fore/jetcraft-predicts-upward-trend-for-business-jets-over-10-years-idUSKBN1C91U8'|'2017-10-04T16:00:00.000+03:00'
'06f3d85dcddb817ad8adadcb7e27f0920dd8db28'|'Greece names new CEO to lead privatisation agency'|'October 3, 2017 / 7:56 PM / in an hour Greece names new CEO to lead privatisation agency Reuters Staff 1 Min Read ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece has appointed Riccardo Lambiris as the new chief executive of its privatisation agency, which is trying to sell assets to comply with the terms of the country<72>s bailouts. Lambiris, 42, will take up the role on Oct. 16, the Hellenic Corporation of Assets and Participations (HCAP) said in a statement. His appointment follows the resignation of Antonios Leousis, who is stepping down for personal reasons. Privatisations have been required under Greece<63>s international bailouts since 2010, but so far they have reaped only 4.4 billion euros (3.90 billion pounds) as a result mainly of political resistance and red tape. Lambiris has long experience in business and investment banking, HCAP said, adding that he has worked at Rockwell Gold and has served as the head of the department of Mergers and Acquisitions of HSBC Bank for Greece and Cyprus. Reporting by Renee Maltezou; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-greece-privatisations/greece-names-new-ceo-to-lead-privatisation-agency-idUKKCN1C82K2'|'2017-10-03T22:56:00.000+03:00'
'eec493ce190b01fcf6f3067a38859606f022fb6e'|'Kazakh Karachaganak field produces 9.3 mln T of oil in Jan-Sept'|' 25 AM / in 12 minutes Kazakh Karachaganak field produces 9.3 mln T of oil in Jan-Sept Reuters Staff 1 Min Read ALMATY, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Kazakhstan<61>s Karachaganak field produced 9.3 million tonnes of oil in January-September and will produce 12.0 million tonnes in total this year, Deputy Energy Minister Makhambet Dosmukhambetov said on Wednesday. Eni and Shell each own 29.25 percent of the Karachaganak project in northwest Kazakhstan, which they jointly operate. Kazakhstan<61>s KazMunayGaz owns 10 percent, Chevron Corp has 18 percent and Lukoil owns 13.5 percent. (Reporting by Mariya Gordeyeva; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/kazakhstan-karachaganak/kazakh-karachaganak-field-produces-9-3-mln-t-of-oil-in-jan-sept-idUSL8N1MF0QB'|'2017-10-04T09:21:00.000+03:00'
'479fbd8014d77972ab896bcf26134c2d00316bcf'|'Technology could help UBS cut workforce by 30 percent: CEO in magazine'|'October 3, 2017 / 9:00 AM / in 4 hours Technology could help UBS cut workforce by 30 percent: CEO in magazine Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: CEO Sergio Ermotti of Swiss bank UBS awaits the annual shareholder meeting in Basel, Switzerland May 4, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss bank UBS ( UBSG.S ) could shed almost 30,000 workers in the years ahead due to technological advances in the banking industry, Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti said in a magazine interview. Ermotti told Bloomberg Markets that <20>process-oriented<65> companies see scope to cut workforces in half through new technology but he believed the true number for banks was around half that. <20>If you look at UBS, we employ a meaningful amount of people<6C> almost 95,000, including contractors,<2C> Ermotti said. <20>You can have 30 percent less, but the jobs are going to be much more interesting jobs, where the human content is crucial to the delivery of the service.<2E> Ermotti said the coming decade would be heavily influenced by technology, as the previous one was marked by regulation. <20>It<49>s not the Big Bang; it<69>s going to be very gradual,<2C> he said. <20>But you<6F>re going to be faster <20> much more efficient, proficient. Instead of serving 50 clients, you<6F>ll be able to serve 100 and in a more sophisticated way.<2E> Consultancy Accenture ( ACN.N ) said in May that three quarters of bankers surveyed believed artificial intelligence (AI) will become the primary way banks interact with their customers within the next three years. AI -- the technology behind driverless cars, drones and voice-recognition software -- is seen by the financial world as a key technology which, along with other innovations such as blockchain, will change banking. Reporting by Joshua Franklin '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ubs-group-tech-workers/technology-could-help-ubs-cut-workforce-by-30-percent-ceo-in-magazine-idUSKCN1C80RO'|'2017-10-03T11:57:00.000+03:00'
'611b16f4dadf9e0c2e4b0c815002040b74d1942f'|'PRECIOUS-Gold slips to near 7-week low as dollar firms'|'Oct 3 (Reuters) - Gold edged down to mark a near 7-week low early on Tuesday, as the dollar remained buoyed by upbeat economic data and strong U.S. treasury yields. FUNDAMENTALS * Spot gold was down 0.1 percent at $1,269.50 an ounce by 0101 GMT, after earlier touching its lowest since mid- August at $1,268.60. * U.S. gold futures for December delivery shed 0.3 percent to $1,272.50 per ounce. * The dollar on Tuesday gained 0.3 percent against a basket of major currencies and was up 0.2 percent versus the yen . * A near 13-1/2-year high in September as disruptions to the supply chains caused by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma resulted in factories taking longer to deliver goods and boosted raw material prices. * The White House on Monday ruled out talks with North Korea except to discuss the fate of Americans held there, again appearing to rebuke Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who said Washington was directly communicating with Pyongyang on its nuclear and missile programmes. * The Federal Reserve will need to "look hard" at whether it should raise rates in December, but there is no need to wait for inflation to actually get to, or even begin to rise back to, the Fed''s 2-percent target before doing so, Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan said Monday. * The Fed''s own actions, not transitory factors, are responsible for weak inflation, a Fed policymaker argued on Monday, and the U.S. central bank should wait to raise rates again until inflation hits its 2-percent goal. * Relatively calm market conditions could encourage the European Central Bank to extend its asset purchase scheme for a longer period but with reduced monthly spending, ECB chief economist Peter Praet said on Monday. * Factories across the euro zone enjoyed their most productive month since early 2011 in September, and the momentum looks set to continue into October as new order growth accelerated, a survey showed on Monday. * British manufacturing growth cooled last month as cost pressures lurched higher, according to a survey that could put the Bank of England a step closer to raising interest rates, despite a murky outlook ahead of Brexit. * China''s proven gold reserves reached 12,100 tonnes at the end of 2016, the state news agency Xinhua reported on Monday. * Gold miner Avocet Mining Plc reported a 49 percent drop in first-half revenue as the West Africa-focused company''s gold production declined. DATA/EVENT AHEAD (GMT) 0900 Euro zone Producer prices Aug 1345 U.S. ISM-New York index Sep (Reporting by Apeksha Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Joseph Radford) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-precious/precious-gold-slips-to-near-7-week-low-as-dollar-firms-idINL4N1ME09X'|'2017-10-02T23:21:00.000+03:00'
'243facd78ff858ce5903eb1713de29bc4cb7a370'|'U.S. backs 300 percent in duties on Bombardier after Boeing complaint'|'EU braces for Brexit talks collapse as May falters EU braces for Brexit talks collapse as May falters EU braces for Brexit talks collapse as May falters Reuters TV United States October 6, 2017 / 5:18 PM / Updated 3 hours ago U.S. backs 300 percent in duties on Bombardier after Boeing complaint Alwyn Scott 4 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Commerce Department has notched up proposed trade duties on Bombardier Inc CSeries jets to nearly 300 percent, affirming Boeing Co<43>s complaint that the Canadian company received illegal subsidies and dumped the planes at <20>absurdly low<6F> prices. The decision underscored the defensive trade policy of U.S. President Donald Trump, and could effectively halt sales of Bombardier<65>s innovative new plane to U.S. airlines by quadrupling the cost of the jets imported to the United States. The Commerce Department proposed a 79.82 percent antidumping duty on Friday, on top of a 219.63 percent duty for subsidies announced last week. The new duty follows a preliminary finding that Bombardier sold 75 CSeries jets below cost to Delta Air Lines Inc in 2016. The total was well above the 80 percent Boeing sought in its complaint. The proposed duties would not take effect unless affirmed by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) early next year. The duties are expected to heighten trade tensions between the United States, Canada and Britain, where CSeries wings are made. The United States, Canada and Mexico also are negotiating to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement. After the first duty was announced on Sept. 26, Canada and Britain threatened to avoid buying Boeing military equipment, saying duties on the CSeries would reduce U.S. sales and put thousands of Bombardier jobs in their countries at risk. Related Coverage Factbox: Bombardier aero tied to 22,700 U.S. jobs, $2.4 billion in spending <20>This is a disappointing statement but hardly surprising given last week<65>s preliminary ruling sided with Boeing,<2C> a British government spokesman said on Saturday. <20>We continue to make all efforts alongside the Canadian government to get Boeing to the table to resolve the case.<2E> Bombardier shares were last up 0.5 percent to C$2.20. Some analysts said the muted response reflected a view that the penalties might not actually be applied. Boeing, the world<6C>s largest plane maker, hailed the decision and hinted at an alternative for Bombardier. FILE PHOTO: A Bombardier CS100 aircraft sits in their hangar after a news conference announcing a contract with Delta Air Lines, in Mirabel, Quebec, Canada April 28, 2016. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi/File Photo <20>These duties are the consequence of a conscious decision by Bombardier to violate trade law and dump their CSeries aircraft to secure a sale,<2C> Chicago-based Boeing said in a statement. <20>Bombardier always has the option of coming into full compliance with trade laws,<2C> Boeing added. Canada<64>s foreign ministry said Boeing was <20>manipulating the U.S. trade remedy system<65> to keep the CSeries out of the country. Canada is in <20>complete disagreement<6E> with the decision and would keep raising concerns with the United States and Boeing, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a statement. Slideshow (2 Images) To win its case before the ITC, Boeing must prove it was harmed by Bombardier<65>s sales, despite not using one of its own jets to compete for the Delta order. Bombardier said it was confident that the ITC would find Boeing was not harmed, calling the Commerce Department decision a case of <20>egregious overreach.<2E> Delta said the decision was preliminary and it was confident the ITC <20>will conclude that no U.S. manufacturer is at risk<73> from Bombardier<65>s plane. Boeing has said the dispute was about <20>maintaining a level playing field<6C> and was not an attack on Canada or Britain. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the decision affirmed Trump<6D>s <20>America First<73> policy. <20>We will ... do everything in our power to stand up for American companies and 
'3568613e829037b438fff711f9472e2e4dc23547'|'Activists seek to unlock value in Canadian real estate sector'|'FILE PHOTO: Panelists (L-R) Richard Brand, Partner at Cadwalader, Zach Oleksiuk, Head of Americas Investment Stewardship at BlackRock, Paul Hilal, founder and CEO of Mantle Ridge LP and Jeffrey Ubben, Founder & CEO at ValueAct Capital, speak during the Reuters Newsmaker event "The Future of Shareholder Activism" in Manhattan, New York, U.S. on February 22, 2017. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo TORONTO (Reuters) - Activist investors are stepping up campaigns to drive change in Canada<64>s C$67 billion ($53.3 billion) real estate investment trust sector as they see attractive prices and opportunities to unlock value, investment managers and advisers said.Activists are also looking to tackle perceived corporate governance issues such as high management and board compensation, as well as to tap frustrations from institutional investors about underperforming stocks.Some activists have been emboldened by the recent success enjoyed by FrontFour Capital and Sandpiper Group with Granite REIT ( GRT_u.TO ). Sandpiper is also seeking change at Agellan Commercial REIT ( ACR_u.TO ).Canadian REIT activism has been on the rise in recent years, according to figures from Activist Insight, even as activism in the broader Canadian market has dropped after peaking in 2015.Activists identify their targets by spotting REITs that trade at a discount to their net asset value, among other factors, and find ways to narrow that gap by suggesting options including asset sales to boost returns.<2E>The level of activism we<77>re starting to see in the Canadian REIT sector is unprecedented,<2C> said Wes Hall, executive chairman of proxy and M&A services firm Kingsdale Advisors, adding that REIT investors have been frustrated for a long time.<2E>They<65>ve been watching these companies underperform. When someone shows up at the door and identifies issues with a company, institutional investors are receptive.<2E>The Canadian REIT index .GSPTTRE is down 7 percent from a life high in August 2016, compared with a 9 percent gain in the broader TSX index .GSPTSE . The Canadian REIT sector is trading on average at a 6 percent discount to net asset value, according to BMO analyst Heather Kirk.In some instances, institutional investors have managed to join forces without a traditional activist. When Milestone Apartments REIT received a takeover offer from Starwood, several institutional investors demanded a higher price and eventually got it.Investors are also closely following Canadian retailer Hudson<6F>s Bay Co ( HBC.TO ), target of Land and Buildings, whose head Jonathan Litt is calling for a monetization of the company<6E>s real estate assets..<2E>Canada is the most shareholder activist-friendly jurisdiction in the Western world,<2C> said Walied Soliman, chair of law firm Norton Rose Fulbright Canada.Canadian law allows shareholders with a 5 percent stake in a company to call for a special meeting, compared with 10 percent in the United States, giving activists the ability to launch campaigns without locking in too much capital.Sandpiper CEO Samir Manji said institutional investors were more open to activist interventions. <20>The experience we<77>ve seen in 2017 suggests that times have changed,<2C> he said.Sandpiper and FrontFour, the activists that succeeded at making board changes at Granite REIT, remain at the forefront of REIT activism in Canada.<2E>We<57>re in a paradigm shift when it comes to real estate activism,<2C> said Jonathan Feldman, a partner at law firm Goodmans who advises on shareholder activism situations.While REITs have recovered slightly after taking a hit last year over concerns about higher interest rates, they remain vulnerable, advisers said.<2E>Real estate-focused activists have started to get traction in the United States, so it<69>s a natural progression for campaigns to start trickling north into Canada,<2C> said Lawrence Elbaum, a leader in Vinson & Elkins LLP<4C>s shareholder activism practice.Reporting by John Tilak; Editing by Denny Thomas and Matthew Lewis '|'reuters.com'|'htt
'15bff6d34052139d86b9455fcb6dcf097a274c0f'|'UK Trade minister: Unacceptable for trading nations to "pull up drawbridges"'|'October 3, 2017 / 1:29 PM / in 42 minutes UK Trade minister: Unacceptable for trading nations to "pull up drawbridges" Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Britain''s Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox addresses the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, Britain October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - British trade minister Liam Fox said on Tuesday it was unacceptable for trading nations to turn their back on free trade having previously reaped the benefits of such a system. <20>Those who have benefited most from free-trade in the past cannot pull up the drawbridges behind them. It is completely unacceptable,<2C> Fox said at his Conservative Party<74>s annual conference in Manchester. Reporting by William James; editing by Kate Holton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-politics-trade/uk-trade-minister-unacceptable-for-trading-nations-to-pull-up-drawbridges-idUKKCN1C81J7'|'2017-10-03T16:29:00.000+03:00'
'f27d6155cfd9feefcc7359f1169c860fe0123df7'|'French finmin convinced Siemens-Alstom to absorb Bombardier, Spanish group'|'October 4, 2017 / 3:35 PM / in 3 minutes French finmin convinced Siemens-Alstom to absorb Bombardier, Spanish group Reuters Staff 1 Min Read PARIS, Oct 4 (Reuters) - The merged Siemens-Alstom rail company will eventually absorb Canadian rival Bombardier and a Spanish competitor in the face of emerging Chinese giants, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Wednesday. <20>I am convinced that this merger will integrate in due time Bombardier and the Spanish manufacturer,<2C> Le Maire told lawmakers grilling him about the cross-border merger of French TGV-maker Alstom and its German rival. (Reporting by Michel Rose; Editing by Leigh Thomas)'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/france-politics-industry/french-finmin-convinced-siemens-alstom-to-absorb-bombardier-spanish-group-idUSL8N1MF4XD'|'2017-10-04T23:35:00.000+03:00'
'a68d76b961101d778fe27bca35c55788a27df5f9'|'Irish services sector expands faster in September on growing optimism - PMI'|'October 4, 2017 / 5:23 AM / in an hour Irish services sector expands faster in September on growing optimism - PMI Reuters Staff 2 Min Read DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland<6E>s services sector expanded at the fastest rate in four months in September as confidence about the future surged to its highest level this year, a survey showed on Wednesday. The Investec Services Purchasing Managers<72> Index (PMI) rose to 58.7 in September from 58.4 in August. It has remained comfortably above the 50 mark that separates growth from contraction since August 2012, when Ireland was halfway through a three-year bailout. Like the wider economy, services firms have so far proved resilient to neighbouring Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union. The business expectations index, which gauges expectations for the sector in 12 months<68> time, improved to 77.3 from 70.1 in August, its highest level since December last year. The index <20>paints a very optimistic picture<72> of the sector, Investec Ireland chief economist Philip O<>Sullivan said. Close to 60 percent of panelists are expecting to see a rise in activity over the coming year, while a low single-digit percentage anticipate a decline, he said. The new export business subindex also demonstrated substantial growth, in part due to higher demand from the United Kingdom. Growth in overseas demand quickened to its fastest pace since February. Detailed PMI data are only available under licence from Markit and customers need to apply to Markit for a licence. To subscribe to the full data, click on the link below: www.markit.com/Contact-Us For further information, please phone Markit on +44 20 7260 2454 or email economics@markit.com Reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Hugh Lawson; conor.humphries@thomsonreuters.com; +35315001518; Reuters; Messaging: conor.humphries.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ireland-economy-pmi/irish-services-sector-expands-faster-in-september-on-growing-optimism-pmi-idUKKCN1C90D7'|'2017-10-04T08:23:00.000+03:00'
'590ca90887b86342ca5b41d5aa3d6d0cc43f2a06'|'Linklater''s war veteran comedy speaks to modern America, says star'|'* <20>Last Flag Flying<6E> screens at London Film Festival* Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell, Laurence Fishburne star* Already spoken of as possible Oscar contenderBy Robin Pomeroy and Edward BaranLONDON, Oct 8 (Reuters) - <20>Last Flag Flying<6E>, a comedy-drama about Vietnam war veterans, will resonate with Trump<6D>s America, despite, or perhaps because of, its period setting, actor Bryan Cranston said on Sunday after a screening at the London Film Festival.Set in the United States in December 2003 <20> when U.S. forces in Iraq were dragging Saddam Hussein out of a <20>spider hole<6C> - it is the story of three ageing former servicemen who reunite to bury the son of one of them who has been killed in action.With President Donald Trump saying he could <20>totally destroy<6F> North Korea and characterising a dinner with military commanders as <20>the calm before the storm<72>, Cranston said <20>Last Flag Flying<6E> was a timely reminder of the effect on normal Americans of ill-advised military campaigns.<2E>I think it has a lot of relevance today in the sense that (today) it<69>s not clear cut as far as the (what are the) intentions of the government or military,<2C> Cranston, acclaimed for his lead role in the TV drama <20>Breaking Bad<61>, told Reuters.<2E>In World War Two, it was the <20>good war<61>, it was clear and present danger, we had to stop this mad man. Since then, with Vietnam and Iraq, (there are) a lot of questions ... among the troops and the citizens as to if we are doing the right thing and what is the purpose of our being there.<2E><>Last Flag Flying<6E> was produced by Amazon Studios and directed and co-written by Richard Linklater, whose greatest critical acclaim has been for the naturalistic <20>Before Sunset<65> trilogy and the 2014 <20>Boyhood<6F> which won a slew of Oscar nominations.Linklater also made comedies including <20>School of Rock<63> and <20>Everybody Wants Some!!<21>, about skirt-chasing undergraduates. <20>Last Flag Flying<6E> falls somewhere between the two genres.The drama and comedy stem from the chemistry between the three leads, each played by a big Hollywood name.Steve Carell is the awkward shy one who, we assume, was quiet and withdrawn even before the loss of his son. Cranston plays a foul-mouthed, hard-drinking bar owner who is his own best customer, and Laurence Fishburne, is a man who has found God and become an evangelical preacher, preferring to forget the sex and drugs they all indulged in back in <20>Nam.Vanity Fair<69>s Richard Lawson said the film<6C>s ability to honour the footsoldiers while being critical of the wars they are sent to fight, could hit <20>an Academy sweet spot, satisfying both the more conservative oldsters and the younger, leftier types.<2E>Other critics said <20>Last Flag Flying<6E> lacked the light touch of Linklater<65>s best work. The Guardian<61>s Benjamin Lee called it <20>a half-baked TV movie masquerading as Oscarbait, a curious misstep for the Oscar-nominated indie auteur<75>. (Writing by Robin Pomeroy, editing by David Evans) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/filmfestival-london-lastflagflying/linklaters-war-veteran-comedy-speaks-to-modern-america-says-star-idINL8N1MJ0QR'|'2017-10-08T17:44:00.000+03:00'
'3a4cfd3d900a2c8a07d035adc259c4632445fee8'|'Delta shares soar on September, post-hurricane operating results'|'October 3, 2017 / 8:51 PM / in 4 hours Delta shares soar on September, post-hurricane operating results Alana Wise 2 Min Read A Delta Airlines jet takes off from Washington National Airport in Washington, U.S., August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts NEW YORK (Reuters) - Airline shares were up overall on Tuesday and Delta Air Lines Inc ( DAL.N ) by as much as 6.62 percent on its monthly traffic results, as the Atlanta-based carrier reported a softer-than-expected impact from powerful and disruptive hurricanes last month. Delta<74>s shares soared 6.62 percent in afternoon trading after the carrier reported its September operational performance. In its report, Delta lowered its third quarter operating margin guidance to between 15.5 percent and 16.5 percent, from between 16.5 and 17.5 percent. Wall Street had been expecting airlines to take a bigger hit from the storms, which disrupted air travel for several weeks, according CFRA Research analyst Jim Corridore. The deadly hurricanes Irma and Maria resulted in thousands of canceled flights in the United States and the Caribbean, as damaged ports and flooded roads made it difficult and dangerous to attempt flights in some places. Hurricane Irma negatively affected Delta<74>s results by about $120 million, or about 1 point margin, the company said. <20>Absent Delta<74>s estimated storm impact, 3Q (revenue per available seat mile) would have otherwise emerged within the range of its initial quarterly guide,<2C> JP Morgan analyst Jamie Baker said in a search note. Shares of rivals American Airlines ( AAL.O ) and United Airlines ( UAL.N ) were also up, as investors expected similarly minimal impacts to the carriers<72> financials in the wake of the storms. Reporting by Alana Wise; editing by Grant McCool '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-delta-air-stocks/delta-shares-soar-on-september-post-hurricane-operating-results-idUSKCN1C82NF'|'2017-10-03T23:50:00.000+03:00'
'1e4405d04f95e6a7c0e38395db9d6abc8e0c214a'|'Bombardier dispute risks Northern Irish peace, Ireland to tell U.S.'|'October 3, 2017 / 11:06 PM / Updated 9 hours ago Bombardier dispute risks Northern Irish peace, Ireland to tell U.S. Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Ireland''s Minister of Foreign Affairs Simon Carbery Coveney attends informal meeting of European Union Ministers of Foreign Affairs in Tallinn, Estonia September 7, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins/File Photo DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland<6E>s foreign minister will raise Dublin<69>s concerns over the impact a trade dispute between the United States and Canada<64>s Bombardier could have on Northern Ireland<6E>s peace process when he meets Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross this week. The U.S. government last week slapped a preliminary 220 percent tariff on the planemaker<65>s CSeries jets, which are partly made in Northern Ireland, potentially risking 4,200 jobs in the British province. Bombardier is Northern Ireland<6E>s largest manufacturing employer and its political leaders have warned Washington that the security of the economy in Britain<69>s poorest region plays a crucial role in efforts to maintain peace. Three decades of bloodshed between Catholic Irish nationalists, who want the province to unite with Ireland, and Protestant unionists, who want to remain part of the United Kingdom, left 3,600 dead before peace was reached 20 years ago. Washington played a key role in helping to strike the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement, and the Irish foreign minister<65>s intervention will add to pressure from Belfast and London, where Prime Minister Theresa May<61>s minority government relies on the support of Northern Ireland<6E>s largest unionist party to govern. <20>I will be outlining to him (Ross) the Irish government<6E>s concern as to the potentially serious implications of a negative ruling for the Bombardier workforce in Belfast and for wider economic stability in Northern Ireland which is an essential support to the peace process,<2C>Simon Coveney said in a statement ahead of his two-day trip to Washington. Reporting by Padraic Halpin '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-bombardier-ireland/bombardier-dispute-risks-northern-irish-peace-ireland-to-tell-u-s-idUSKCN1C82VN'|'2017-10-04T02:07:00.000+03:00'
'ece9e64d07e3e78d902a0909bbab4861d54177e2'|'EU orders Amazon to repay $295 million in Luxembourg back taxes'|'October 4, 2017 / 9:38 AM / Updated 2 hours ago EU orders Amazon to repay $295 million in Luxembourg back taxes Robert-Jan Bartunek 5 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Amazon was told on Wednesday to pay about 250 million euros (221.44 million pounds) in back taxes to Luxembourg, the latest U.S. tech company to be caught up in a European Union crackdown on unfair tax deals. The fine was much lower than some sources close to the case had expected and is only a fraction of the 13 billion euros that Apple Inc was ordered to pay to Ireland last year. EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who has other big U.S. tech companies in her sights, has taken a tough line on multinational companies<65> approach to tax. <20>Luxembourg gave illegal tax benefits to Amazon. As a result, almost three quarters of Amazon<6F>s profits were not taxed,<2C> Vestager said. Amazon said it was considering an appeal. <20>We believe that Amazon did not receive any special treatment from Luxembourg and that we paid tax in full accordance with both Luxembourg and international tax law,<2C> Amazon said in a statement after the announcement. Amazon shares were little changed in early Wednesday trading. Though the EU has taken on several U.S. tech companies, both in antitrust and in tax avoidance cases, Vestager said that her approach was not biased against foreign companies <20>This is about competition in Europe, no matter your flag, no matter you ownership,<2C> Vestager said. She also welcomed the debate kicked off by French President Emmanuel Macron who called for more integrated corporate tax regimes in Europe, aiming to close the loopholes used to reduce tax bills. RAZOR THIN MARGINS While the exact amount Amazon needs to repay is yet to be calculated, the 250 million euros is significantly less than the 400 million euros which sources close to the matter told Reuters a year ago was under consideration by Vestager. The logo of the web service Amazon is pictured in this June 8, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/Illustration The bill suggests the Commission believes Amazon shielded around 900 million euros in EU profits from tax, calculations by Reuters show. For most of its existence, Amazon has worked on razor thin profit margins to fuel its global expansion, making only $2.4 billion profit on global revenues of $136 billion in 2016. The Commission said Luxembourg allowed Amazon to channel a significant portion of its profits to a holding company without paying tax. The holding company was allowed to do this because it held certain intellectual property rights. Tax advisers say an important way for companies to shift profits out of the United States is to sell intellectual property, like brands or patents, to a subsidiary in a country where such profits are not taxed and have that unit license the intellectual property to other overseas affiliates. Amazon<6F>s corporate set up with subsidies in Luxembourg was also subject of a $1.5 billion court case with U.S. tax authorities, which Amazon won in March. Amazon, which employs 1,500 in the grand duchy, is one of the biggest employers in the country of half a million people. It has a Europe-wide staff of some 50,000. Luxembourg, whose tiny economy has benefited from providing a European base for multinational companies, rejected the finding and said it was looking at its legal options. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was prime minister of Luxembourg for almost two decades until 2013 and has been criticised for his role in enabling the many tax deals that are now being unravelled. He denies doing anything wrong and says the Commission is committed to ensuring fair taxation. In 2014, Luxembourg made international headlines in the wake of the publication of <20>LuxLeaks<6B>, documents that showed how large accounting firms helped multinational companies channel proceeds through the country while paying little or no tax. Luxembourg is also under EU scrutiny over tax deals with fast food chain M
'2b42128477e8075bbcdae047c422ea74c3db5392'|'Swiss Amicus and Brazil''s EMS bid for Serbian drugmaker Galenika'|'BELGRADE (Reuters) - Swiss-based drugs company Amicus SRB and Brazilian pharma group EMS SA have both made binding bids for a 93 percent stake in Serbian drugmaker Galenika, Serbia<69>s Economy Ministry said.Belgrade wants to sell Galenika as part of an effort to privatize, shut or trim unprofitable state firms under a 1.2 billion euro ($1.4 billion) deal with the International Monetary Fund, but the drugmaker<65>s debts have so far put off investors.The Economy Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that the envelopes with financial offers will be opened after the bids have been verified.Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-serbia-galenika-sale/swiss-amicus-and-brazils-ems-bid-for-serbian-drugmaker-galenika-idINKBN1C9252'|'2017-10-04T13:08:00.000+03:00'
'8355c202c56d4f9253e45be58639c5d7b55010bf'|'UPDATE 1-Boeing reports 7.4 pct rise in Q3 plane deliveries'|'(Adds details)Oct 5 (Reuters) - Boeing Co said on Thursday its deliveries rose 7.4 percent in the third quarter, helped by higher demand for its single-aisle 737 jetliners.Total number of planes delivered in the quarter rose to 202 from 188 a year earlier, the world<6C>s biggest planemaker said in a statement.Boeing delivered 145 of its 737s in the quarter, up from 120 a year earlier.However, deliveries of 787 Dreamliners fell to 35 from 36, while deliveries of 777 planes fell to 16 from 22.The company said it delivered a total of 554 planes since the beginning of the year and expects to deliver 760 to 765 for the year.Boeing also said it had 127 new orders for the third quarter. (Reporting by Ankit Ajmera and Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Anil d<>Silva) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/boeing-deliveries/update-1-boeing-reports-7-4-pct-rise-in-q3-plane-deliveries-idINL4N1MG2LJ'|'2017-10-05T13:35:00.000+03:00'
'fd2c2fd7d6bcb257a5c54e0bf7caa9cb7fde14a2'|'Bain Capital aims to list Toshiba chip unit in three years'|'Bain Capital LP Managing Director Yuji Sugimoto speaks during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital LP on Thursday said it aims to list Toshiba Corp<72>s ( 6502.T ) chip unit on the Tokyo Stock Exchange within three years, to cash in its investment after leading an $18 billion acquisition of the business.Bain, whose consortium signed the purchase deal last week, also said it hopes to settle legal disputes over the transaction at an early stage with Western Digital Corp ( WDC.O ), Toshiba<62>s joint venture partner.Toshiba aims to complete the sale by the end of its fiscal year in March. It plans to use the proceeds to plug a hole in its balance sheet caused by the bankruptcy of its U.S. nuclear power subsidiary, and save itself from potential delisting.With the clock ticking, Bain filed for antitrust approval in China the day after signing, a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.Related Coverage Toshiba says sued by another group of foreign investorsSeveral other sources told Reuters that the strategic nature of the chip industry for China and political complications - including currently tense relations with South Korea, and the presence of South Korea<65>s SK Hynix Inc ( 000660.KS ) in the consortium - could see a lengthy process drawn out even further.In the first news conference since the signing, Yuji Sugimoto, head of Bain Capital in Japan, told reporters on Thursday that Bain hopes to maintain stability at the chip unit through contracts with Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ), a major client and member of the buyout consortium.Bain Capital LP Managing Director Yuji Sugimoto speaks during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon <20>We have already made (antitrust) filings for regulatory approvals globally. We are making utmost efforts to close the deal by the end of March,<2C> Sugimoto told reporters.The sale, however, faces legal challenges from Western Digital, which offered a rival bid and is seeking an injunction to block any deal that does not have its consent.Western Digital paid some $16 billion last year to acquire SanDisk, Toshiba<62>s chip joint venture partner since 2000. It sees chips as a pillar of growth and so is keen to keep the business out of the hands of rival chipmakers.<2E>Western Digital remains an important JV partner,<2C> Sugimoto said. Bain <20>will help solve the legal disputes (between Toshiba and Western Digital) and help them grow together.<2E>But he said Bain aims to close the deal even if the disputes are not resolved beforehand.Toshiba has said the joint venture is a tiny portion of the chip unit and that it can sell the business without the joint venture. Western Digital disagrees.For Bain, the deal is part of an aggressive expansion strategy in Japan. Only days after the Toshiba deal, Bain announced a $1.4 billion bid for Japan<61>s third-largest advertising agency, Asatsu-DK Inc ( 9747.T ), in one of the largest buy-outs in the country this year.Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki and Junko Fujita; Writing by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Christopher Cushing '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting/bain-capital-aims-to-list-toshiba-chip-unit-in-tokyo-within-a-few-years-idINKBN1CA0EK'|'2017-10-05T04:28:00.000+03:00'
'c496a914095923858994f7e084bce75b4c1dfea7'|'Viacom, CBS owner Shari Redstone says media companies need scale'|'October 3, 2017 / 7:55 PM / in an hour Viacom, CBS owner Shari Redstone says media companies need scale Jessica Toonkel 3 Min Read Shari Redstone arrives for Variety''s Power of Women luncheon in New York City, U.S., April 21, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (Reuters) - Media content companies must get bigger to compete in the quickly changing media landscape, Shari Redstone, whose family controls Viacom Inc ( VIAB.O ) and CBS ( CBS.N ), told attendees of a luncheon on Tuesday at the Paley Centre for Media in New York City. <20>Scale matters now and is going to continue to matter in the future,<2C> said Redstone, when asked about whether she thinks CBS and Viacom should be combined. <20>Obviously it<69>s never that simple.<2E> As competition for viewers increases in a shrinking pay TV market and AT&T Inc ( T.N ) is in the midst of buying Time Warner Inc ( TWX.N ), content companies are wrestling with ways to grow their business. Redstone<6E>s remarks come almost a year after she and her father, 94-year old-Sumner Redstone, pushed to merge Viacom and CBS. They ultimately pulled the plan after negotiations between the two companies failed.. For now, the two companies are being run separately. Scale could also come in the form of a merger or partnership with a telecommunications company, Redstone said, when asked about potential deals of that nature. <20>We are only going to succeed if we have the content where consumers want to watch it,<2C> she said. <20>I think this is a critical piece of our business going forward, both for CBS and Viacom and for all media companies.<2E> One audience member asked if Viacom needed to acquire content, such as sports, to be part of the many bundles of online streaming channels. Redstone, who also is on the board of Viacom and CBS, answered that Viacom could find partners, and an acquisition was not necessary. CEO Bob Bakish is working to turn around Viacom, after years of declining ratings and ad revenue. Under his leadership the media company is developing a short form content unit, which will create programming for various delivery methods, including direct to consumer via the internet, Redstone said. <20>The media companies have an advantage when it comes to storytelling because we can figure out how do we want to tell our story among all these different platforms,<2C> she said. Reporting By Jessica Toonkel; Editing by David Gregorio'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-viacom-redstone/viacom-cbs-owner-shari-redstone-says-media-companies-need-scale-idUKKCN1C82JW'|'2017-10-03T22:55:00.000+03:00'
'4eabe58582d308121857e06cebd5f1fc97a88735'|'Software maker FogHorn raises $30 million in latest funding round'|'(Reuters) - FogHorn Systems, whose software aims to save companies<65> money by streamlining data processing, said it has raised $30 million from investors led by Intel Capital and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures.Including the latest funding round, the company has so far raised $47.5 million, Chief Executive David King told Reuters in an interview on Monday.He declined to disclose the company<6E>s current valuation.Founded in 2014, FogHorn is one of the first companies to make software in the little-known area of fog or edge computing that locally analyzes data collected from sensors deployed in industrial equipment to increase speed and save costs.Edge computing eliminates the need for sending the data to the cloud, instead processing the information where it was generated, in milliseconds.Many industrial companies are deploying sensors or so-called Industrial Internet of Things, which enables machines to talk to each other and detect problems before they occur.California-based FogHorn said Honeywell Ventures also took part in the latest funding round, joining existing investors March Capital, GE, Dell Technologies Capital, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Yokogawa and Darling Ventures.FogHorn<72>s computing engine can run big data analytics and machine learning on devices that have lower processing power.The company has forged partnerships with Intel, Dell, GE and other technology companies to get its technology integrated in their products.FogHorn, which has dozens of customers including Saudi Aramco, GE ( GE.N ), Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise ( HPE.N ), is in the early revenue generation stage, King said.Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee and Sonam Rai in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-foghorn-funding/software-maker-foghorn-raises-30-million-in-latest-funding-round-idINKBN1C92CH'|'2017-10-04T14:22:00.000+03:00'
'7c2397ce565124a68eb23e9f37a89d64b5440259'|'RPT-CORRECTED-Australian fund in $1.6 bln deal to buy 10 U.S. malls from Forest City'|'(Repeats to fix technical glitch)By Paulina DuranSYDNEY, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Australian fund manager QIC has reached a deal to buy out 10 regional malls in the United States from its joint venture partner Forest City Realty Trust Inc on behalf of a client which it did not identify.Forest City said the deal values the total portfolio at $3.1 billion and its stake at $1.6 billion.Four years ago, the A$82 billion Australian fund, which manages assets for institutional investors, formed a partnership with the New York listed Forest City.<2E>We are encouraged by the broader economic conditions in the U.S. and the resilience of the consumer as demonstrated by continuing strength in the underlying fundamentals for the portfolio,<2C> said Steve Leigh, Managing Director of Global Real Estate for QIC.<2E>We understand the importance of regional malls to their local communities and have the capability and the capital to evolve these assets into multi-faceted destinations.<2E>The transaction will be completed in two stages, with the first involving the acquisition of six malls in the states of Colorado, New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania, for net proceeds of $180 million, and the second stage consisting of an option over four more malls in California, Nevada, and Virginia, the fund said in a statement. (Reporting by Paulina Duran; editing by Grant McCool) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/forest-city-ma-qic/rpt-corrected-australian-fund-in-1-6-bln-deal-to-buy-10-u-s-malls-from-forest-city-idINL4N1MF195'|'2017-10-04T04:21:00.000+03:00'
'c908220f32d38acd24977879a8ddeb29f72732bc'|'Airbus to recoup some engine nacelle work from suppliers'|'Reuters TV United States October 4, 2017 / 7:19 PM / Updated 22 minutes ago Airbus to recoup some engine nacelle work from suppliers Tim Hepher 3 Min Read The logo of Airbus Group is seen on the company''s headquarters building in Toulouse, Southwestern France, April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus told European governments on Wednesday that it has made a strategic decision to bring the design of some nacelles or aircraft engine casings inside the company, rather than leaving it with suppliers, according to a presentation on its website. It also said the troubled A400M military plane project will continue to <20>weigh significantly<6C> on cashflow in 2017 and 2018 in particular, according to the presentation prepared on Oct. 4 and presented on Wednesday to governments that own shares in the European planemaker: France, Germany and Spain. An Airbus spokesman said the decision had already been taken to recoup nacelle work carried out by United Technologies for engines supplied by the same company to power the A320neo jet. United Technologies engine subsidiary Pratt & Whitney was not immediately available for comment. The A320neo is offered with nacelles from United Technologies ( UTX.N ) whenever it is mounted with engines made by Pratt & Whitney, or France<63>s Safran ( SAF.PA ) for engines made by Safran<61>s CFM joint venture with General Electric ( GE.N ). Airbus<75> decision to take control of some nacelles reflects a <20>strategic decision for competitiveness,<2C> according to the presentation, part of a series of investor briefings. Safran was not immediately available for comment. A person close to the company said talks are under way with Airbus but stressed no decision had been taken. <20>Bringing nacelle capability in-house allows Airbus to further improve nacelle aerodynamics to offer extra efficiency and better performance,<2C> the Airbus spokesman said. The move comes amid growing concern among planemakers about the economic power of some major suppliers and an effort by planemakers to pull back more work to boost margins. It comes weeks after United Technologies agreed to buy Rockwell Collins in a $23 billion deal. Airbus has urged United Tech not to let the merger draw its attention away from fixing industrial problems with the A320neo<65>s Pratt & Whitney engines. Under the project, industry sources say Airbus will redesign a number of key parts including the Pratt & Whitney engine<6E>s thrust reverser. It will also be responsible for integrating the engine housing and the pylon which attaches it to the wing. One of the main goals is to reduce recurring costs to allow the recently introduced A320neo to be made more cheaply. Until recently, the trend has been towards asking suppliers to take responsibility for piecing together large sub-systems. Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Leigh Thomas'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-airbus-shareholders/airbus-to-recoup-some-engine-nacelle-work-from-suppliers-idUKKBN1C92PU'|'2017-10-04T22:41:00.000+03:00'
'f8e9ac1bd15e301de0230b5d66fac83eba81a9d1'|'Uber says board approves governance changes, SoftBank investment'|'October 3, 2017 / 10:34 PM / Updated 23 minutes ago Uber says board approves governance changes, SoftBank investment Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The Uber logo is seen on mobile telephone in London, Britain, September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc on Tuesday said the board of directors had voted to move forward on governance proposals and an investment by Japan<61>s SoftBank Group Corp( 9984.T ), which it called a vote of confidence in the ride services company. Uber in a statement said that the governance changes would <20>strengthen its independence and ensure equality among all shareholders.<2E> It did not give further detail. Reporting By Peter Henderson; Editing by Phil Berlowitz'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-uber-board-vote/uber-says-board-approves-governance-changes-softbank-investment-idUKKCN1C82TN'|'2017-10-04T01:33:00.000+03:00'
'507f5b3af9299f2b4d34200d9afb34826c3b42bd'|'Vectura asthma inhaler makes "positive" regulatory progress in Europe'|'October 4, 2017 / 4:25 PM / Updated 2 hours ago Vectura asthma inhaler makes "positive" regulatory progress in Europe Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Vectura CEO James Ward-Lilley poses for a photograph in London, Britain, November 1, 2016. REUTERS/Ben Hirschler (Reuters) - British drugmaker Vectura said its asthma inhaler Flutiform had made favourable regulatory progress in Europe, and it can now apply for approvals through its partner. Vectura said its partner Mundipharma confirmed a <20>successful outcome<6D> for the inhaler, when first assessed by the UK medicines and healthcare products regulatory agency -- which covers 18 countries across Europe. <20>This positive DCP outcome is an important step in the regulatory process and Mundipharma can now begin to apply for national approvals and reimbursement in the European countries covered by this procedure<72>, Chief Executive Officer James Ward-Lilley said in a statement on Wednesday. Last month Vectura<72>s shares tumbled after it reported a doubling of first-half losses and warned full-year revenues would be hit by customers running down stocks of the asthma inhaler. Reporting by Justin George Varghese in Bengaluru; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-vectura-grp-outlook/vectura-asthma-inhaler-makes-positive-regulatory-progress-in-europe-idUKKBN1C92D4'|'2017-10-04T19:25:00.000+03:00'
'b6f456c958da3b89487057cfc15e7b33fdb48257'|'South African regulator to fast-track KPMG investigation'|'FILE PHOTO: The offices of auditors KPMG are seen in Cape Town, South Africa, September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings/File photo CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - South Africa<63>s audit regulator will fast-track an investigation into global auditor KPMG over work done for business friends of President Jacob Zuma, the regulator<6F>s chief executive told lawmakers on Tuesday.The Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors<72> inquiry into KPMG follows an internal investigation in which the firm found work it did for companies owned by the Gupta family <20>fell considerably short<72> of the firm<72>s standards.The Guptas, a trio of businessmen accused by a watchdog of improperly influencing the award of government contracts, has denied wrongdoing, as has Zuma.But KPMG last month cleared out its South African leadership as several companies considered dropping KPMG and after the finance minister asked government departments to review their work with the firm.<2E>We will fast-track the investigation, but we have to respect the prescribed process of the auditing profession act and disciplinary rules,<2C> Independent Regulatory Board of Auditors CEO Bernard Agulhas told parliament<6E>s finance committee.<2E>In the beginning we did not always receive the information that we required. It was important that the process isn<73>t delayed,<2C> Agulhas said, adding that KPMG has since committed to cooperate with the probe.Nearly a dozen of South Africa<63>s blue-chip companies use KPMG<4D>s services, including three of the nation<6F>s four largest banks.The central bank has told top lenders they cannot fire KPMG because it might undermine financial stability, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.Writing by TJ Strydom; reporting by Wendell Roelf; editing by Joe Brock and Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kpmg-safrica/south-african-regulator-to-fast-track-kpmg-investigation-idUSKCN1C80YQ'|'2017-10-03T13:11:00.000+03:00'
'a3ec208249d0d89c349ff97761dee3713f292da7'|'Google launches new phones, speakers in hardware push'|'October 4, 2017 / 7:43 PM / in 21 minutes Google launches new phones, speakers in hardware push Paresh Dave 5 Min Read Google Inc CEO Sundar Pichai speaks about the company''s predictive parking programming during a launch event in San Francisco, California, U.S. October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc<6E>s Google ( GOOGL.O ) on Wednesday unveiled the second generation of its Pixel smartphone along with new voice-enabled home speakers, redoubling its commitment to the hardware business as it competes with a surge of devices from Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) and Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ). The new devices, which include a Pixelbook laptop, wireless earbuds and a small GoPro-like camera, showcase Google-developed operating systems and services, notably the voice assistant. That means usage of those devices should stoke the company<6E>s core ad sales business as buyers of the hardware use Google services like search and maps. The Pixel 2 smartphone comes in two sizes, with comparable features, including aluminium bodies and no traditional jacks for headphones. Prices for the base model start at $649, while the high-end version starts at $849. The phones will be available Oct. 19. Pixelbook, priced at $999, is the first laptop powered by Google Assistant and will support Snap Inc<6E>s ( SNAP.N ) Snapchat, the company said. It will be available in stores from Oct. 31. Google Home Mini, the new speaker, is priced at $49 in the United States and would rival Amazon.com Inc<6E>s ( AMZN.O ) popular Echo Dot. It will be available by the end of the year. The Pixel debuted a year ago, with analysts estimating sales of more than 2 million, pushing Google to record amounts of non-advertising revenue. Google<6C>s <20>other<65> revenue category, which includes both hardware and sales of online storage services, accounted for about 12 percent of overall sales in its most recent quarter. Last month, Google expanded its hardware development capabilities by picking up a 2,000-person smartphone engineering team at HTC ( 2498.TW ) for $1.1 billion. <20>It<49>s pretty clear Google is serious about hardware,<2C> said Avi Greengart, research director at consumer data firm GlobalData. <20>Given that there is a Pixel 2, and given the financial investment, there must be a longer-term strategic intent.<2E> HARDWARE CHIEF HAS SECOND GO Five years ago, Google moved into smartphones with the $12.5-billion purchase of Motorola Mobility. But Motorola<6C>s hardware team under Rick Osterloh and Google<6C>s Android mobile operating system division remained independent. Google avoided giving a special advantage to Motorola to protect its relationships with Samsung, LG and other distributors of Android. The company later sold the Motorola smartphone business but kept its patents. This time around, Osterloh moved to bring in-house the HTC team that Google had been contracting to design the Pixel. He also enjoys a strong relationship with Hiroshi Lockheimer, the Android division head. The pair have been friends since working together for several years at Good Technology in the early 2000s. Protecting relationships with others in the Android ecosystem is now less of a concern. Samsung ratched down the rivalary with Google after the firms agreed to a major patent licensing deal in early 2014. Other vendors have seen their market share dip. Google<6C>s eye is on Apple, whose iPhone has become the iconic smartphone. The first Pixel debuted a year ago with a significant marketing push: during the last three months of the year, Google spent an estimated $110 million to air 12 Pixel-related commercials, according to data from advertising measurement firm iSpot.tv. Apple spent $147 million during the same span, iSpot.tv said. But Apple has sustained its TV time throughout the last year, while Google<6C>s efforts have tapered off. The expanded speaker selection now includes the $399, dual-woofer Home Max and as well as the $49 Home Mini. The new Pixelbook features a 12.3-inch LCD touchscreen,
'bf4d6537742c70a6e5419bc7c25f12c1fa979296'|'Putin says oil cut deal with OPEC could last to end of 2018'|'October 4, 2017 / 11:29 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Putin says oil cuts with OPEC could last to end of 2018 Vladimir Soldatkin , Katya Golubkova , Jack Stubbs 4 Min Read Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech at the Russian Energy Week 2017 forum in Moscow, Russia October 4, 2017. Sputnik/Kremlin via REUTERS MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday a deal between OPEC and rival oil producers to reduce production could be extended to the end of 2018, a longer timeframe than others have suggested, in a bid to curb a supply glut. The pact between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other producers on cutting output by about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) is now due to expire in March. <20>Everyone is interested in a stable market. What we did with OPEC, I believe, is beneficial for all the global economy,<2C> Putin told an energy forum in Moscow attended by several OPEC oil ministers. <20>When we decide on whether to extend or not, we will decide on the timeframe. But on the whole, if speaking about a possible extension, this should be at least until the end of 2018.<2E> The Russian president<6E>s comments raise the prospect of a longer extension than others have mentioned. Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih and other OPEC ministers have suggested prolonging the deal by months but not until the end of 2018. The participants in the output deal are showing more confidence that the supply cuts, which began in January, are starting to erode a glut. With help also from rising demand, oil last week reached almost $60 a barrel, its highest in more than two years. Putin said he expected the world oil market soon to be balanced. Oil, which began to slide from more than $100 in mid-2014 due to excess supply, was trading just below $56 on Wednesday. A flag with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) logo is seen during a meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC producing countries in Vienna, Austria September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/Files Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said the possibility of extending the pact to the end of 2018 had been discussed at his meetings in Moscow on Wednesday with fellow energy ministers. He met ministers from Venezuela, Qatar and Iran. <20>They are also ready, in the case of necessity, to secure an extension of the deal,<2C> Novak told reporters. OPEC ministers attending the Moscow event said they were considering extending the deal or making a deeper cut. The accord has already been extended once at OPEC<45>s last meeting in May, but producers have so far balked at a larger cut. <20>It depends on a collective decision and consensus within OPEC, but I think there is no objection against this proposal,<2C> Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh told Reuters when asked whether there were talks on deepening or extending the cut. Asked to specify whether he meant no objection to deeper cuts, he replied: <20>Yes. I<>m discussing.<2E> Venezuela<6C>s oil minister, Eulogio del Pino, also said there were discussions on whether to cut further or extend the deal. Any move would also require the support of OPEC<45>s de facto leader Saudi Arabia. Falih said in July that an extension of the agreement would most likely be needed into the second quarter of 2018 as a minimum. OPEC has been urging other producers to join the supply pact but has yet to secure pledges to do so. Del Pino said an extra 10 to 12 producing countries in South America and Africa had been invited to participate. Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin, Katya Golubkova and Jack Stubbs; Additional reporting by Olesya Astakhova and Darya Korsunskaya; Writing by Alex Lawler; Editing by Dale Hudson, Edmund Blair and Jane Merriman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/oil-opec-iran-extension/opec-looking-at-deepening-extending-oil-supply-cut-idINKCN1C91IN'|'2017-10-04T15:44:00.000+03:00'
'a0b18228e7ab7bb874fd7cf36f5eff262acbab49'|'Two Wall Street giants criticise Trump tax plan'|'October 3, 2017 / 5:39 PM / Updated 2 hours ago Two Wall Street giants criticize Trump tax plan David Morgan 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett waits to play table tennis during the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting weekend in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. May 7, 2017. REUTERS/Rick Wilking WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump<6D>s tax reform plan came under new criticism on Tuesday from two towering Wall Street figures, including billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who called into question a Republican drive to slash the U.S. corporate rate. With the White House and top Republicans in Congress already on the defensive over claims the plan would not cut taxes for many middle-class Americans, Buffett and BlackRock Inc ( BLK.N ) Chief Executive Larry Fink suggested in separate interviews that the corporate rate may not have to be cut as deeply as proposed. <20>We have a lot of businesses... I don<6F>t think any of them are non-competitive in the world because of the corporate tax rate,<2C> Buffett, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc ( BRKa.N ), told CNBC. Fink said a corporate rate as high as 27 percent could satisfy U.S. businesses<65> need for tax relief, while avoiding an increase in the federal deficit. <20>What is being proposed is a pretty large expansion of our deficits,<2C> Fink told Bloomberg TV. The Republican tax plan unveiled last month calls for slashing the corporate income tax rate to 20 percent from the current level of 35 percent, which many multinationals already avoid paying by taking advantage of abundant tax loopholes. Related Coverage Buffett says success of Trump tax plan may affect stock investments The plan contains up to $6 trillion in tax cuts, according to independent analysts, which Trump and top Republicans say they would offset by eliminating loopholes, deductions and tax breaks and boosting annual economic growth. Republicans also insist that cutting the corporate tax rate to 20 percent will help workers by increasing jobs and raising salaries, though this claim is disputed by Democrats. Senator Ron Wyden, the top Senate Democrat on tax policy, accused the Trump administration on Tuesday of removing a research paper from the U.S. Treasury<72>s website that showed workers would benefit only marginally from a corporate rate cut. FILE PHOTO - Larry Fink, Chief Executive Officer of BlackRock, takes part in the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit in New York, U.S., February 8, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson <20>Apparently that mainstream economic analysis had to be purged because it basically didn<64>t jibe with the Trump team<61>s patter,<2C> Wyden said at a Senate Finance Committee hearing. A Treasury spokeswoman said the document was a dated analysis from the Obama administration that <20>does not represent our current thinking and analysis.<2E> An analyst who testified at the Senate hearing said only about 20 percent of the benefits of a corporate tax cut would directly help workers. FILE PHOTO - U.S. President Donald Trump arrives to deliver a statement on the mass shooting in Las Vegas from the Diplomatic Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts Buffett and Fink also criticized other Republican tax initiatives. Buffett said a proposal to repeal the estate tax would be <20>a terrible mistake<6B> that would benefit the wealthiest Americans unnecessarily. Fink predicted tax legislation would not pass if it includes a proposal to eliminate a popular deduction for state and local tax payments. <20>I don<6F>t believe we<77>re going to get tax reform if there is the elimination of deductibility of state and local taxes,<2C> he said. Eliminating the state and local tax deduction would raise about one-quarter of the $4 trillion in revenues that some Republicans say they need to prevent tax cuts from creating a massive increase in the federal budget deficit. But eliminating that deduction is already opposed by Republican lawmakers from high-tax states such as New York and California, who s
'a7db1184dfa75cb705d6cf28f131247cd762e31d'|'MIDEAST STOCKS-Gulf mostly lower, Kuwait''s Zain up on Omantel rumour'|'October 5, 2017 / 2:10 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago MIDEAST STOCKS-Gulf mostly lower, Kuwait''s Zain up on Omantel rumour Reuters Staff * Saudi<64>s Metlife up but far off high after regulatory news * Merger talks fails to boost Arabian Cement * PetroRabigh down on facility closure for maintenance * Rumour says Omantel could increase Zain stake * Qatar falls to another five-year low By Celine Aswad DUBAI, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Most Gulf stock markets fell on Thursday, with Qatar falling for a third straight session to a new five-year low, but shares in Kuwaiti telecommunications operator Zain jumped on a rumour that Oman Telecommunications might expand its stake in the firm. The Saudi index lost 0.4 percent, with the banking sector, which had been relatively robust this week, falling back. National Commercial Bank lost 1.2 percent. Saudi-based insurer Metlife AIG ANB Cooperative Insurance rose 1.1 percent to 20.04 riyals in its heaviest trade since May 2016, but closed well below its intra-day high of 21.80 riyals. The company announced that the industry regulator had approved the opening of three new outlets in Riyadh, Jeddah and Khobar. Metlife said the positive financial impact would be reflected in its fourth-quarter results. Arabian Cement rose in early trade after announcing that it is in initial talks with privately held Safwa Cement for a potential merger, but it closed 0.1 percent lower. This would be the first merger in the sector in Saudi Arabia, according to NCB Capital. The sector has been hit by a demand slowdown and a slump in profits over the last two years. Arabian Cement has an annual production capacity of 5.4 million tonnes while Safwa produces 3.35 million tonnes. <20>The combined capacity of both players would make the potential new entity the second-largest player in the market by overall installed capacity after Southern Cement,<2C> said NCB Capital in a note. Rabigh Refining and Petrochemical, a joint venture between state-owned Saudi Aramco and Japan<61>s Sumitomo, lost 0.9 percent after saying it had shut its vacuum gas oil unit for 32 days as part of scheduled maintenance. In Kuwait, Zain surged 3.4 percent while Omantel rose 1.1 percent. Regional television network Al Arabiya quoted a securities analyst as saying there were rumours that Omantel was in talks with Kuwait<69>s Al Kharafi Group to buy a further 12 percent stake in Zain. In August, Omantel bought 9.84 percent of the company. The companies made no statement. Qatar<61>s index, which closed at a five-year low on Wednesday, fell a further 0.3 percent. Banking and commodity-linked shares were again the main drags. Commercial Bank lost 0.6 percent and Gulf International Services fell 1.5 percent. The Dubai index gave up gains made earlier in the day to close 0.2 percent down. Deyaar Development, which had jumped 3.1 percent the previous day, lost 1.6 percent. In Abu Dhabi, the index dropped 0.4 percent as First Abu Dhabi Bank lost 1.5 percent. Egypt<70>s market was closed for a public holiday. HIGHLIGHTS * The index fell 0.4 percent to 7,259 points. DUBAI * The index edged down 0.2 percent to 3,591 points. ABU DHABI * The index fell 0.4 percent to 4,414 points. QATAR * The index declined 0.3 percent to 8,132 points. KUWAIT * The index lost 0.5 percent to 6,662 points. BAHRAIN * The index was flat at 1,274 points. OMAN'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/mideast-stocks/mideast-stocks-gulf-mostly-lower-kuwaits-zain-up-on-omantel-rumour-idUSL8N1MG35D'|'2017-10-05T17:10:00.000+03:00'
'8166a21dcedb0855c1e372e30675cbde420a8683'|'Doubts growing whether Clariant can seal Huntsman deal'|'The logo of Swiss specialty chemicals company Clariant is seen at the company''s headquarters in Pratteln, Switzerland August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann FRANKFURT/LONDON (Reuters) - Doubts are growing among Clariant ( CLN.S ) investors whether the Swiss chemicals maker will be able to drive through a $20 billion merger with Huntsman Corp ( HUN.N ) in the face of opposition from an activist investor.White Tale Holdings became the largest shareholder in Clariant last month with a 15.2 percent stake, and a source close to the investor told Reuters it was likely to buy more stock ahead of a shareholder vote on the deal.Both sides are gearing up for a fight.White Tale representatives are in Switzerland this week to try to drum up support among other Clariant shareholders, people familiar with the matter said.Clariant, for its part, is preparing a media campaign to try to rally retail investors behind the tie-up once a date has been set for the shareholder meeting later this year or early next, a person close to the company said.In the meantime, even fans of the merger are questioning whether the deal will go through, with Clariant needing two-thirds support in the shareholder vote to prevail.<2E>We are supportive of the Clariant-Huntsman merger,<2C> said Alex Roepers, CEO of the $1.3 billion Atlantic Investment Management, saying the stock could be worth 32 Swiss francs after integration versus 24 francs for Clariant alone.<2E>But though we<77>re maintaining a position in Clariant, we<77>ve sold some of the stock, because (White Tale) have a 15 percent stake and are trying to block the deal and they<65>ve not presented a convincing alternative.<2E>Atlantic has a 1.8 percent stake in Huntsman, according to Reuters<72> Eikon data, and 0.72 percent in Clariant, according to a spokeswoman.IN THE BALANCE After years of mutual approaches, Clariant and Huntsman struck a deal in May to create a speciality chemicals firm that would be 52 percent owned by Clariant shareholders and target around $400 million in annual cost synergies.But White Tale, a vehicle created by investor Keith Meister<65>s Corvex hedge fund and New York<72>s 40 North, came out against the deal in July, saying it would not deliver enough benefits and would expose Clariant to Huntsman<61>s debt as well as its volatile commodity chemicals business.<2E>I<EFBFBD>m not a friend of the Huntsman transaction in its current form,<2C> said Martin Lehmann, who manages the 3V Invest Swiss Small & Mid Cap fund. The fund has a 0.05 percent stake in Clariant, according to Eikon data.<2E>I don<6F>t expect the deal to go through at the proposed terms. Clariant will hardly win the necessary two thirds of shareholder votes,<2C> he told Reuters.It is unclear how many other Clariant investors also oppose the tie-up, although shares in Huntsman - whose investors are widely viewed as getting the better deal in the merger agreement and are expected to wave it through - have dropped 2.1 percent since White Tale lifted its Clariant stake above 15 percent.Clariant shares have gained 0.7 percent over the same period, reflecting the belief among some investors that the stock will benefit if the merger is struck down.<2E>We see no erosion of support and both Huntsman and Clariant are fully committed to the success of the merger,<2C> a Clariant spokesman said.A source familiar with Clariant<6E>s thinking said the group<75>s management was bracing for While Tale to raise its stake further. White Tale declined to comment.Among supporters of the merger, Barclays analyst Alex Stewart said in a Sept. 28 note that if it delivered the $400 million in targeted synergies Clariant shares could be worth 29 francs, up from current levels of about 23 francs.<2E>Without more concrete information about how White Tale intends to release value, the best outcome for shareholders appears to be a merger, according to our preliminary analysis. However, news that White Tale has raised its stake to 15 percent increases the risk of derailment,<2C> he added.<2E>The worst-case outcome for C
'2b3f1316462c319d9f5cff5d163b9669278a4cfc'|'Russia''s En+, Deripaska to use bulk of IPO proceeds to reduce debt'|'MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia<69>s En+ Group, which launched its initial public offering on Thursday, and its shareholder Oleg Deripaska plan to use the bulk of the proceeds received from the IPO to reduce the company<6E>s debt, Chief Executive Maxim Sokov told reporters.En+ aims to sell new and existing shares worth $1.5 billion, of which $1 billion is expected to be new capital. The London listing is expected to take place in November.Reporting by Anastasia Lyrchikova; writing by Katya Golubkova; editing by Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-en-ipo-debt/russias-en-deripaska-to-use-bulk-of-ipo-proceeds-to-reduce-debt-idUSKBN1CA1AS'|'2017-10-05T20:01:00.000+03:00'
'f6ef5981e63e876b1abee843ce460395203ad210'|'Merlin Entertainments bids for part of SeaWorld - Bloomberg'|'October 4, 2017 / 10:00 PM / in 7 hours Merlin Entertainments bids for part of SeaWorld - source 1 Min Read SeaWorld unveils its new Orca Encounter show in San Diego, California, U.S., May 31, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake (Reuters) - UK-based theme park operator Merlin Entertainments Plc ( MERL.L ) has approached marine park operator SeaWorld Entertainment Inc ( SEAS.N ) about a potential deal, according to a person familiar with the matter. Merlin, which runs Legoland parks worldwide and owns Madame Tussauds, has made a bid for part of SeaWorld, but SeaWorld<6C>s preference is to sell itself whole, the source said. SeaWorld has also received indications of interest from other parties, the source said. <20>We do not comment on speculation or rumours<72>, SeaWorld said. Merlin could not be reached for a comment outside business hours. Merlin<69>s approach for SeaWorld was first reported by Bloomberg earlier on Wednesday. Shares of Orlando-based SeaWorld were trading up nearly 5 percent after the bell on Wednesday. Reporting by Vibhuti Sharma and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-seaworld-entrnmt-m-a-merlin-ent/merlin-entertainments-bids-for-part-of-seaworld-bloomberg-idUKKBN1C930C'|'2017-10-05T01:09:00.000+03:00'
'1d94dd2d332f5b6a102c33236d663ac4f51e5f04'|'Ash Grove gets higher offer of $3.7 billion-$3.8 billion from third party'|'DUBLIN/LONDON (Reuters) - Summit Materials, a U.S. construction firm set up by former CRH ( CRH.I ) executives, has made a rival offer for Ash Grove Cement ( ASHG.PK ), which CRH has agreed to pay $3.5 billion for, a source said.Ash Grove said on Friday it had received a bid valued at $3.7-$3.8 billion which it expects to result in a better offer to the deal struck last month with CRH, the world<6C>s third-largest building materials supplier.A source familiar with the matter said the unnamed bidder was Summit, which could not be reached for comment, and it had submitted its bid on Thursday. The offer is being considered by Ash Grove<76>s board, the source added.Ireland<6E>s CRH said that its proposal remains in place, subject to approval from Ash Grove shareholders.Ash Grove has set a meeting on Nov. 1 for shareholders to vote on the agreement with CRH, which its board unanimously approved last month, but has extended its go-shop period during which it can look for other potential buyers to Oct. 20, the cement company said in a statement.Prior to setting up fast-growing Summit in 2009, the Denver materials group<75>s chief executive Thomas Hill headed up CRH<52>s North American arm and went on to poach a number of other senior U.S.-based CRH executives.Summit<69>s bid would surpass its own value of $3.65 billion. CRH, which has a market capitalization of $26.3 billion and said last month that it had around 5 billion euros available to spend on acquisitions over the next 18-24 months, made an all-cash bid.CRH is also Ash Grove<76>s largest customer and would be owed a $131 million termination fee if the Kansas-based company sells to another party.<2E>Summit Materials opportunistic offer of an Ash Grove merger will likely see investors decide between a cash offer at a 60 percent premium or a merger that gives no certainty to a cash exit price for large Ash Grove investors,<2C> said Darren McKinley, analyst at Dublin-based Merrion Stockbrokers.<2E>Given CRH<52>s position as Ash Grove<76>s largest customer, they are well placed to determine whether a higher offer makes sense or whether to let Ash Grove shareholders decide whether they want cash in hand now or to merge with a company that currently doesn<73>t pay a dividend.<2E>Shares in CRH were down 1.7 percent on the news at 30.96 euros at 1115 GMT.Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh and Conor Humphries; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri/Keith Weir/Alexander Smith '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-ash-grove-cement-m-a-crh/ash-grove-gets-higher-offer-of-3-7-billion-3-8billion-from-third-party-idINKBN1CB06C'|'2017-10-06T00:26:00.000+03:00'
'e1936b2e94b085b006f5173f155b1974b9720cc6'|'BP shutting all U.S. Gulf production ahead of Tropical Storm Nate'|'October 5, 2017 / 9:04 PM / in 9 minutes BP shutting all U.S. Gulf production ahead of Tropical Storm Nate Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BP logo is seen at a fuel station of British oil company BP in St. Petersburg, October 18, 2012. REUTERS/Alexander Demianchuk/Files HOUSTON (Reuters) - BP Plc ( BP.L ) said on Thursday it was shutting-in all oil and natural gas production from its U.S. Gulf of Mexico platforms ahead of Tropical Storm Nate. The company is also evacuating all personnel from its four platforms in the region. Nate is forecast to enter the Gulf and strengthen into a hurricane before making landfall early on Sunday in Louisiana, near several major refineries. Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; editing by Diane Craft'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-storm-nate-bp/bp-shutting-all-u-s-gulf-production-ahead-of-tropical-storm-nate-idUKKBN1CA2PE'|'2017-10-06T00:04:00.000+03:00'
'578e58d52809f16b117ff745d47061fe30ecf26f'|'Publicis shares rise on CapGemini comments on advertising M&A: traders'|'PARIS (Reuters) - Shares in advertising group Publicis ( PUBP.PA ) rose to the top of France''s benchmark CAC-40 index .FCHI on Wednesday, lifted by comments about consolidation in the industry made by the head of CapGemini ( CAPP.PA ), traders said.Paul Hermelin, the head of software and consultancy group CapGemini, told French newspaper Le Figaro that CapGemini could be pushed towards a deal in the advertising sector if its rival Accenture ( ACN.N ) made a takeover in that industry.<2E>We are working on a lot of fronts, such as cyber security, big data, clouds and artificial intelligence, which are at the heart of our business,<2C> Hermelin told the paper in an interview.<2E>But if Accenture bought a major global advertising company, the pressure put on us by the market and our shareholders would be big. In that situation, we would have to think of how to move into the advertising industry,<2C> he added.Publicis shares were up 0.9 percent in early trading, outperforming a 0.1 percent dip on the CAC-40.Officials at Publicis could not be immediately reached for comment on the matter.The advertising sector has witnessed several takeover deals of late, with Vivendi ( VIV.PA ) acquiring Havas ( HAVA.PA ) and Bain Capital aiming to buy Japan<61>s Asatsu-DK Inc ( 9747.T ).Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Blandine Henault and Matthieu Protard; Editing by Louise Heavens '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-publicis-groupe-capgemini-stocks/publicis-shares-rise-on-capgemini-comments-on-advertising-ma-traders-idINKCN1C90R3'|'2017-10-04T05:52:00.000+03:00'
'75347aa520f83299de1de963d64f735d9f16cb53'|'UPDATE 1-France''s Worldline raises targets as acquisitions pay off'|'(Adds CEO comment, context)Oct 3 (Reuters) - French payments company Worldline SA has raised its revenue and profitability targets for 2017-2019 thanks to increased business from its acquisitions.The sector has seen a wave of consolidation as payment firms become targets for credit card companies and banks looking to capitalise on a switch from cash to payments by smartphones or other mobile devices and as regulatory changes promise to open up the fragmented market.Recent deals have included company Vantiv<69>s takeover of Worldpay and Hellman & Friedman<61>s bid for Nets.<2E>Worldline intends to pursue its growth by capturing opportunities created by regulation changes like PSD2 and Instant Payments, as well as by large new processing outsourcing opportunities and cross-border acquiring contracts,<2C> Chief Executive Gilles Grapinet said in a statement.Grapinet added that the company intends to <20>actively participate<74> in consolidation in the European payment industry.Worldline, which said in July it bought Digital River World Payments and First Data Baltics, also said on Tuesday it has agreed to buy 100 percent of payment service provider MRL PosNet in India for up to 89 million euros ($104.1 million).MRL PosNet, which employs approximately 140 engineers, operates a terminal management platform and currently processes payment transactions on behalf of 18 Indian banks.Worldline, 70 percent owned by French IT services firm Atos SE according to Thomson Reuters data, now expects organic revenue growth in the range of 3.5-4 percent in 2017, and rising to 6-8 percent in 2019.The payments firm also forecast operating margin before amortization and depreciation (OMDA) of more than 22.5 percent in 2019 and free cash flow in the range of 230 million euros to 245 million euros ($269.6-$287.2 million) in 2019.In November last year the company said it expected free cash flow of 210 million euros to 230 million euros in 2019, organic revenue compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 5 and 7 percent for 2017-2019. ($1 = 0.8547 euros) ($1 = 6.3509 Danish crowns) ($1 = 0.7542 pounds) (Reporting by Alan Charlish; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri and Louise Heavens) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/worldline-outlook/update-1-frances-worldline-raises-targets-as-acquisitions-pay-off-idINL8N1ME0JB'|'2017-10-03T05:04:00.000+03:00'
'12877cd458bac852ad684a932356a8996ec7eb31'|'UK construction PMI unexpectedly tumbles to 14-month low - IHS Markit'|'October 3, 2017 / 8:39 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Brexit uncertainty prompts shock British construction contraction David Milliken 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s construction companies in September reported the sharpest fall in activity since just after June 2016<31>s Brexit vote, as clients put projects on hold due to uncertainty over the economy. Although construction makes up just 6 percent of Britain<69>s economy, the survey suggested it was likely to drag on official third-quarter growth figures, just as the Bank of England gets ready to raise interest rates. The IHS Markit/CIPS construction purchasing managers<72> index (PMI) sank to 48.1 in September from August<73>s reading of 51.1, its lowest since July 2016 and far below all forecasts in a Reuters poll of economists. Anything below 50 is considered a contraction. Sterling weakened by around a quarter of a cent against the dollar GBP= and fell to a day''s low against the euro after the data EURGBP=. <20>The construction sector is entering its own recession,<2C> Samuel Tombs of Pantheon Macroeconomics said. <20>The government<6E>s shift to a more accommodating stance in Brexit talks has done little to convince builders that clients will sanction delayed projects soon.<2E> IHS Markit said the prospect that the BoE will raise rates next month for the first time in a decade was also a factor behind slower house building. Business investment overall has grown since the Brexit vote, but many business leaders say the government is not making enough progress in Brexit talks with the European Union. Construction cranes are seen on a building site in central London, Britain, July 31, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay Construction - which has long lead times for projects, and relies heavily on labour from the EU - has been particularly hurt. Official data last month showed construction orders fell more than 12 percent year-on-year in the three months to June, and the PMI has shown lower orders for the past three months. Expectations for the future were at their second-lowest level since 2013, Tuesday<61>s survey also showed. However, shares in housebuilders have gained in recent days after Britain<69>s ruling Conservative Party announced plans to revive a 10 billion pound ($13.25 billion) house-building subsidy. The manufacturing PMI published on Monday showed a slowdown in growth although it remained solid, and a survey of Britain<69>s huge services industry due on Wednesday will give a clearer idea of third-quarter growth. <20>Following on from a softer manufacturing survey for September, the weak construction survey fuels concern that an already lacklustre UK economy could be faltering,<2C> said Howard Archer, chief economist at consultancy EY ITEM Club. Britain<69>s economy has suffered its weakest growth so far this year since 2012. Consumer demand has borne the brunt of a rise in inflation to its highest in nearly five years, which is largely due to the pound<6E>s tumble after the Brexit vote. The PMI data showed the cost of building supplies rose at its fastest rate in seven months in September. (This version of the story has been refiled to fix the error of the spelling of September in the first paragraph.) Reporting by David Milliken Editing by Jeremy Gaunt'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-pmi/uk-construction-pmi-unexpectedly-tumbles-to-14-month-low-ihs-markit-idUKKCN1C80PJ'|'2017-10-03T11:51:00.000+03:00'
'ef1ffde9bdb9113b4661949965087f65af8d48fe'|'Monarch Airlines goes into administration'|'JUST before dawn on October 2nd, passengers booked to fly on Monarch Airlines began to receive texts informing them that their flights had been cancelled. This was the first news that Britain<69>s fifth-biggest airline had ceased trading and is now in administration.It is the country<72>s biggest airline ever to collapse. Monarch had been in last-ditch talks with the Civil Aviation Authority, a regulator, to renew its licence to sell package holidays, but failed to reach a deal. About 110,000 passengers have been left stranded , although the government has hired over 30 planes, in effect creating another airline, to bring holiday-makers back over the next two weeks. Chris Grayling, the transport secretary, is calling it the <20>biggest ever peacetime repatriation<6F>. A further 860,000 have lost future bookings, and with it weddings, vacations and more, although many should be able to reclaim some of their costs. Monarch also employs about 2,100 people, all now looking for new jobs. 4 Monarch was a quintessentially British brand. It was created in 1967 by the owners of the Cosmos, a travel agency, specifically to cater to the new and rapidly expanding package-holiday market. Monarch<63>s first charter flight took off the following year from Luton airport, where the company was headquartered, for Spain. And that was the story for the next three very successful decades<65>flying sun-seeking Britons to Mediterranean resorts for cheap, all-inclusive holidays.However, that business model came under severe strain in the early 2000s with the arrival of the internet. Punters could now choose and book their own holidays much more easily. And the rise of low-cost airlines such as easyJet, founded in 1995 and also based at Luton, gave travellers new alternatives to charter flights. Passenger numbers on non-scheduled (charter) flights operated by British airlines fell by two-thirds from 2001 to 2016, even as the overall number of flights increased dramatically, according to the CAPA Centre for Aviation . Low-cost airlines were the main beneficiaries.As profits declined, so Monarch took the decision to get out of the charter market and concentrate on short-haul flights. But, as Robyn Byde, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, points out, the European market is fiercely competitive and increasingly dominated by just four big players: Ryanair, easyJet, the Lufthansa group and IAG (a group which includes British Airways, Aer Lingus and Iberia). Monarch airlines was not big enough, and thus did not have the purchasing power, to survive in this market argues Mr Byde. The same is true of Air Berlin and Alitalia which also went bankrupt this year. This over-capacity in the European market will probably lead to yet more consolidation in the years to come.Andrew Swaffield, the boss of Monarch, also blamed terrorism and Brexit. Monarch had a healthy business flying to Egypt and Tunisia, but these markets fell away after attacks on other airlines and tourist resorts. The number of passengers flying from Britain to North Africa in August declined from 177,000 in 2016 to 95,000 this year. Moreover, the fall in the value of the pound, provoked by Brexit, compounded the airline<6E>s woes, as many of its costs, such as aviation fuel, were priced in dollars. To escape its predicament, the airline recently made a bid to <20>pivot<6F> out of the loss-making short-haul market into long-haul, announcing an order for 15 more Boeing 737 MAX 8s, worth $1.7bn in June. But by then it was too late and the company could not find a buyer for its short-haul operation. A wretched end on the company<6E>s 50th anniversary.Previous Concerns over charges for checked bags in America miss the point Next Ukraine<6E>s aviation sector is holding the country back'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/10/sovereign-no-more?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-03T02:18:00.000+03:00'
'466a7ad7e87ae5b9fb92ef9d903edd670fb83dfd'|'Berkshire Hathaway invests in truck stop operator Pilot Flying J'|'FILE PHOTO - Berkshire Hathaway shareholders walk by a video screen at the company''s annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. on May 4, 2013. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo (Reuters) - Warren Buffett<74>s Berkshire Hathaway Inc ( BRKa.N ) on Tuesday deepened its commitment to the American economy, saying it bought a major stake in Pilot Flying J, the largest U.S. truck stop operator, and will become majority owner in six years.Pilot Flying J, whose formal name is Pilot Travel Centers LLC, has more than 750 locations in 44 U.S. states and Canada selling gas, diesel fuel, and convenience goods, and offering trucks more than 70,000 parking spaces and 5,000 diesel lanes.It employs more than more than 27,000 people and is the 15th-largest private company in the United States, with annual sales of about $19.6 billion, Forbes magazine said.Berkshire acquired a 38.6-percent stake of Pilot Flying J for an undisclosed price, and plans to boost its stake in the Knoxville, Tennessee-based company to 80 percent in 2023.The Haslam family led by billionaire Jimmy Haslam, who also controls the Cleveland Browns football team, will keep a 50.1 percent stake and the Maggelet family<6C>s FJ Management Inc will retain 11.3 percent ownership until then.Pilot Flying J<>s management team, led by Jimmy Haslam, will also remain in place.<2E>Jimmy Haslam and his team have created an industry leader and a key enabler of the nation<6F>s economy,<2C> Buffett said in a statement. <20>The company has a smart growth strategy in place and we look forward to a partnership that supports the trucking industry for years to come.<2E>The purchase may help Buffett deploy a sizable chunk of Berkshire<72>s $100-billion cash hoard, after his efforts this year to buy the Oncor utility in Texas and help finance a Kraft Heinz Co ( KHC.O ) takeover of Unilever Plc ( ULVR.L ) fell apart.It also boosts his bet on U.S. economic growth.Berkshire owns the BNSF railroad, as well as several companies that make industrial parts, including Precision Castparts and Marmon.The Omaha, Nebraska-based conglomerate owns more than 90 businesses including Geico insurance, Dairy Queen ice cream, and several utilities.Pilot Flying J has faced scrutiny in recent years after authorities accused employees of withholding diesel fuel rebates from customers.It paid a $92-million fine in 2014 to settle a U.S. criminal probe, and several executives were later criminally charged.Jimmy Haslam, whose brother Bill is Tennessee<65>s governor, told CNBC the transaction with Buffett came together after mutual friend Byron Trott, who runs BDT Capital Partners LLC, introduced them in May. BDT is exiting its investment in Pilot Flying J.Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-pilotflyingj-m-a-berkshirehathaway/berkshire-hathaway-invests-in-truck-stop-operator-pilot-flying-j-idINKCN1C81C0'|'2017-10-03T10:16:00.000+03:00'
'93302ca4923b68ae5da73d159c0d815687f0c5f5'|'OPEC, others may take some extraordinary measures in 2018 to rebalance oil market: Barkindo'|'October 8, 2017 / 1:23 PM / in 2 hours Extraordinary steps may be needed in 2018 to rebalance oil market: OPEC''s Barkindo Nidhi Verma , Promit Mukherjee 3 Min Read The logo of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is pictured at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger   OPEC and other oil producers may need to take <20>some extraordinary measures<65> next year to rebalance the oil market, the OPEC secretary-general said on Sunday. <20>There is a growing consensus that ... a rebalancing process is under way. We are gradually but steadily achieving our common and noble objectives,<2C> Mohammad Barkindo told reporters at the India Energy Forum organised by CERAWeek in New Delhi. <20>To sustain this into next year, some extraordinary measures may have to be taken in order to restore this stability on a sustainable basis going forward,<2C> he said, without elaborating. Saudi Arabia and Russia helped secure a deal between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and 10 rival producers to cut output by about 1.8   until the end of March 2018 in an effort to reduce a glut. Barkindo said consultations were under way for the extension of the OPEC-led pact beyond March 2018 and that more oil producing nations may join the supply pact, possibly at the next meeting of OPEC in Vienna on Nov. 30. He also said that Nigeria and Libya, who are exempted from the pact, <20>are making progress towards full recovery<72> of production, after which they could join the OPEC-led agreement. Oil futures fell more than 2 percent on Friday, ending Brent crude<64>s longest multi-week rally in 16 months as oversupply concerns reappeared as producers have started hedging future drilling. [O/R] But Barkindo said he was not worried about the rise in U.S. shale oil and gas output. <20>It is a big market and demand is very strong. Between the first half and second half this year, demand growth is almost about 2 million barrels (per day), which is very robust,<2C> he said. <20>So everybody has a role to play.<2E> On Friday, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said he hoped to reach a consensus with Russia and other major oil producers on the future of the deal before November<65>s meeting. Falih was speaking in Moscow two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin said it was possible that the supply reduction deal could run to the end of next year, although Russia has not made any commitment. Reporting by Nidhi Verma and Promit Mukherjee; Writing by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Alison Williams'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/opec-india/opec-others-may-take-some-extraordinary-measures-in-2018-to-rebalance-oil-market-barkindo-idINKBN1CD0HS'|'2017-10-08T16:22:00.000+03:00'
'ccbb45c79dbc194c0b4e8f9069e678cbe9feef41'|'Spain''s Abertis board to discuss moving head office from Catalonia on Monday-source'|'MADRID, Oct 8 (Reuters) - The board of Spanish infrastructure firm Abertis will meet on Monday to discuss moving its head office out of Catalonia as the region<6F>s parliament considers unilaterally declaring independence from Spain, a source familiar with the matter said.Several big Catalan companies have announced plans to move their registered office to other cities in Spain after Catalonia went ahead with an independence referendum last week which was banned by a Spanish court.There was no immediate comment from Abertis, which builds, maintains and operates highways in Spain, France and the Americas.Italy<6C>s Atlantia bid 16.3 billion euros ($19 billion) for Abertis in May to create the world<6C>s biggest toll road operator. ($1 = 0.8523 euros) (Reporting by Adrian Croft; Editing by Raquel Castillo)Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/spain-politics-catalonia-abertis/spains-abertis-board-to-discuss-moving-head-office-from-catalonia-on-monday-source-idINL9N1GD02F'|'2017-10-08T13:33:00.000+03:00'
'123927ad0904a5df8013b5a05b1bbfceed1768bd'|'U.S. court reverses ban on sales of Sanofi, Regeneron drug Praluent'|'October 5, 2017 / 2:15 PM / Updated 43 minutes ago U.S. court reverses ban on sale of Regeneron, Sanofi cholesterol drug Brendan Pierson 4 Min Read French multinational pharmaceutical company SANOFI logo is seen at the headquarters in Paris, France, March 8, 2016. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer/File Photo (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Thursday threw out a ban on the sale of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc and Sanofi SA<53>s cholesterol-lowering drug Praluent, and ordered a new trial after finding a jury was given improper instructions. The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington was a setback for Amgen Inc, which claimed Praluent infringed patents on its rival drug, Repatha, and had won the sales ban after a jury trial. Amgen, which brought its lawsuit in 2014, said in a statement it was disappointed by the court<72>s action. <20>We firmly believe in the validity of our patents and we look forward to reasserting our rights in court.<2E> Regeneron shares jumped 4.4 percent to $475.95 on the Nasdaq, while Sanofi shares in Paris rose 0.8 percent. Amgen shares were off 1.5 percent at $185.76 on the Nasdaq. Praluent and Repatha are injectable biotech medicines created from manmade antibodies that dramatically lower levels of <20>bad<61> LDL cholesterol in the blood by blocking a protein called PCSK9. Amgen claimed its patents covered a broad range of antibodies that bind to PCSK9, while Sanofi and Regeneron argued such broad patents were invalid. In Thursday<61>s decision, the Federal Circuit said jurors were given instructions that could have wrongly led them to believe that describing a protein like PCSK9 was enough to patent a broad class of possible antibodies. The appeals court also found that the judge in the case improperly excluded some evidence that Regeneron and Sanofi wanted to use at the trial. FILE PHOTO: An Amgen sign is seen at the company''s office in South San Francisco, California October 21, 2013. <20>We are pleased with the Federal Circuit<69>s decision to remand for a new trial that allows us to present our complete evidence to the jury,<2C> Sanofi General Counsel Karen Linehan said. In a joint statement, Regeneron and Sanofi said a new trial has not yet been scheduled and they do not expect proceedings to start this year. Mizuho Securities analyst Salim Sayed said he expects the ruling will keep Praluent on the market for at least another year. A jury had found Amgen<65>s patents valid last March. Sanofi and Regeneron did not dispute that if the patents were valid, Praluent infringed them. In January, U.S. District Judge Sue Robinson in Delaware took the unusual step of blocking sales of Praluent. She found that, although having both drugs on the market would be in the public interest, Amgen<65>s patent rights outweighed that concern. Praluent sales were allowed to continue during the appeals process. Zachary Silbersher, a New York-based patent lawyer not connected with the case, said the court<72>s ruling will make it more difficult for Amgen to win if it goes to trial again, which could push the company to settle. Praluent and Repatha won U.S. approval to reduce LDL cholesterol in 2015. The drugs are far more costly than other cholesterol drugs, with a list price topping $14,000 annually. Hurdles to patient access by health insurers and pharmacy benefit managers have led to disappointingly low sales so far. But Amgen<65>s drug has steadily gained market share since the court ruling, which threatened to remove Praluent from the market, rising to nearly 65 percent. Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York, additional reporting by Bill Berkrot in New York; editing by Bernadette Baum and Jonathan Oatis '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amgen-regeneron-pharms-court/u-s-court-reverses-ban-on-sales-of-sanofi-regeneron-drug-praluent-idUSKBN1CA1PG'|'2017-10-05T17:09:00.000+03:00'
'db2aeb256d1a7b2bb6f3f7f525c02aed836062b1'|'KPMG South Africa CEO ''greatly disappointed'' by Gupta work'|'October 5, 2017 / 8:25 AM / Updated an hour ago Scandal-hit KPMG South Africa vows reforms, loses another client Wendell Roelf , Tiisetso Motsoeneng 4 Min Read CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - South African waste management company Interwaste ( IWEJ.J ) fired KPMG as its auditor on Thursday, dealing another blow to the accounting firm ensnared in a scandal involving business friends of President Jacob Zuma. Interwaste joins at least seven other clients including fund manager Sygnia ( SYGJ.J ) and broker Sasfin ( SFNJ.J ) to break ties with KPMG. It comes after KPMG<4D>s own investigation found flaws in work it did for the national tax agency and the Gupta family, accused of using links with Zuma to win government contracts. <20>The change in audit firm, which is effective immediately, was initiated by the company following the concerns recently raised regarding KPMG,<2C> Interwaste said in a statement. Interwaste, a Johannesburg-based company involved in the disposal and recycling of waste from mines and residential homes, has appointed Deloitte as its new auditor. The decision came hours after KPMG South Africa<63>s chief executive told lawmakers the company would make sweeping changes to ensure the firm did not repeat <20>greatly disappointing<6E> work it did for the three Gupta brothers. Nhlamu Dlomu, who took up the top job in South Africa after most of the local board was sacked last month, said an announcement would be made in the coming days about an independent inquiry into its work at firms owned by the Guptas - Indian-born businessmen with close ties to Zuma. <20>I have personally been greatly disappointed by how far we have fallen short of the standards we set ourselves,<2C> Dlomu told parliament<6E>s committee of public accounts. FILE PHOTO: The offices of auditors KPMG are seen in Cape Town, South Africa, September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings/File photo <20>I am determined that these mistakes do not happen again, which is why we have already made a number of changes. I am leading other reforms,<2C> she added. HELD TO ACCOUNT Dlomu said any person found by the investigation to have failed to do their job would be held accountable. She said the changes would also strengthen governance and ensure decision-making was more centralized. KPMG is at risk of losing some its major financial clients with Barclays Africa ( BGAJ.J ), Old Mutual( OML.L ), Investec( INLJ.J ), Standard Bank ( SBKJ.J ) and Nedbank ( NEDJ.J ) considering whether to drop it. KPMG, whose local unit traces its roots to Johannesburg<72>s gold rush days in the late 19th century, is under investigation by South Africa<63>s Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors. Dlomu said it was cooperating with the probe and has handed over requested documents. Other clients to drop KPMG over the scandal are the African unit of German reinsurer Munich Re, energy investment firm Hulisani( HULJ.J ), the University of Witwatersrand, parliament and lobby group the Institute of Directors. Several other global firms have faced problems due to their work for the Guptas including business consultancy McKinsey and public relations agency Bell Pottinger. The Guptas and Zuma deny wrongdoing and say they are victims of a politically motivated witch-hunt. The Guptas and their companies have not been charged with any crime. Editing by Anna Willard and Keith Weir '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kpmg-safrica/kpmg-south-africa-ceo-greatly-disappointed-by-gupta-work-idUSKBN1CA0PA'|'2017-10-05T11:25:00.000+03:00'
'9569bd79341fd9f079adbb7c09bd3575d72af250'|'Trump tax plan expends recession-fighting U.S. business tax break'|'October 4, 2017 / 8:42 PM / in 41 minutes Trump tax plan expends recession-fighting U.S. business tax break Kevin Drawbaugh 6 Min Read U.S. President Donald Trump poses for a photo with motorcycle police officers before departing aboard Air Force One to return to Washington from Indianapolis International Airport in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S. September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump<6D>s tax plan would let U.S. companies take bigger, faster deductions on capital investments, a step some experts said would deplete Washington<6F>s policy arsenal by using up a tax break normally reserved for fighting recessions. By putting a five-year <20>immediate expensing<6E> provision in his plan, Trump handed a win to some businesses, especially capital-intensive ones such as oil drillers, that could gain from it through savings on new plant and equipment purchases. <20>These changes are something I would 100 percent support ... It would be a huge positive,<2C> said Paul Mosvold, president of privately held Scandrill Inc, which drills oil wells for Anadarko Petroleum Corp ( APC.N ) and others. While some industrial sectors might get a short-term boost from the tax break, critics said its wider business impact was unclear, as was whether it is needed with the economy slowly but steadily growing and investment capital abundant. Moreover, some said, a five-year immediate expensing policy could set up a capital investment hangover in late 2022 or 2023 by shifting private-sector plant and equipment purchases into the five years covered and out of later years. One outcome would be sure, they said: putting immediate expensing in place for the next five years would make it unavailable until 2022 to combat a possible future recession. <20>It<49>s hard to see how moving to full expensing, except at the margin, would produce the growth that they<65>re looking for from this provision,<2C> said corporate tax analyst Robert Willens, formerly an executive at KPMG and Lehman Brothers. <20>It<49>s also true that, once you go to full expensing, there<72>s nothing more you can do, particularly during a later downturn when you might really need to provide a jolt to the economy.<2E> Immediate expensing lets companies take a tax deduction for the full value of new plant and equipment upon purchase, rather than stringing out deductions over several years under accelerated or normal depreciation schedules. FIVE YEARS Immediate expensing has been tried before, but not for as long and at the maximum level proposed by Trump, his advisers and congressional Republicans. Their plan faces months of debate in Congress before it could become law. It calls for immediate expensing <20>for at least five years<72> at <20>an unprecedented level<65> and urges Congress to work out the details, with a focus on helping small businesses. <20>That will be something that people have never seen before and it will be truly great,<2C> Trump said on Friday at a National Association of Manufacturers event where his remarks were applauded by a roomful of business executives. Federal tax revenues would be slashed under Trump<6D>s plan. An estimate of immediate expensing<6E>s revenue impact earlier this year was for a loss of $2.2 trillion over a 10-year window, according to the Tax Foundation, a business-focused group that supports making immediate expensing permanent, not temporary. Scott Hodge, president of the foundation, said permanent expensing is needed if Trump wants to meaningfully boost economic growth. <20>The only way to get there is by having permanent immediate expensing for all capital investments, not a short-term policy that robs investment from the future. <20>Only then do you get the long-term increase in investments that boost productivity, wages and GDP,<2C> Hodge said. PART OF THE PLAN Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy told reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday that <20>full expensing could be quite effective for economic growth. I<>m favorably disposed. But I<>d like to see it 
'1df3f23a136707519ee57f50c4c2f952bb06446d'|'Ryanair chief operating officer to resign in wake of rostering mess-up'|'May vows to stay as party plotters try to topple her May vows to stay as party plotters try to topple her May vows to stay as party plotters try to topple her Reuters TV United States  18 PM / Updated 32 minutes ago Ryanair chief operating officer to resign in wake of rostering mess-up Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Passengers board a Ryanair flight in Gdansk, Poland September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Coombs DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ryanair ( RYA.I ) chief operations officer Michael Hickey will resign from the end of the month, the under-fire airline said on Friday, becoming the first executive to leave since a rostering mess-up led to the cancellation of thousands of flights. Hickey was responsible for rosters when the disruptions began but that function was taken over by Ryanair<69>s Chief People Officer, Edward Wilson, on Sept. 27 when the Irish airline announced its second wave of cancellations. <20>Over the past 30 years Mick Hickey has made an enormous contribution to Ryanair, especially the quality and safety of our engineering and operations functions. He will be a hard act to replace,<2C> Ryanair chief executive Michael O<>Leary said in a statement. Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Catherine Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ryanair-cancellation/ryanair-chief-operating-officer-to-resign-in-wake-of-rostering-mess-up-idUKKBN1CB2M1'|'2017-10-06T23:16:00.000+03:00'
'85234e00ae17b32f04b58bf1cca09961f24d6554'|'Bain Capital says to meet media on Thursday to discuss Toshiba chip deal'|'October 4, 2017 / 9:15 AM / in 4 hours Bain Capital says to meet media on Thursday to discuss Toshiba chip deal Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Logo of the Bain Capital is screened at a news conference in Tokyo, Japan September 28, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. buyout firm Bain Capital, which leads a consortium that last week signed an $18 billion deal with Toshiba Corp ( 6502.T ) to buy its chip unit, said it will hold a news conference at 3 pm JST (0600 GMT) on Thursday to discuss the deal. Bain Capital last week called a news conference to talk about the deal but cancelled the event at the last minute, saying the consortium led by Bain could not form a consensus on whether to brief the media. [nL4N1M92T7] Bain Capital<61>s managing director Yuji Sugimoto will meet journalists, Bain said in a statement. Reporting by Junko Fujita; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-toshiba-accounting-bain/bain-capital-says-to-meet-media-on-thursday-to-discuss-toshiba-chip-deal-idUKKCN1C910Q'|'2017-10-04T12:14:00.000+03:00'
'c33b4a070a6772bfc56806e31542f5f061c60d80'|'U.S. Senate panel to hold hearing on Yahoo, Equifax breaches'|'WASHINGTON, Oct 3 (Reuters) - The chairman of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee said on Tuesday he plans to hold a hearing later this month over massive data breaches at Equifax Inc and Yahoo, which is now owned by Verizon Communications Inc.Senator John Thune said he will ask witnesses from the two firms whether <20>new information has revealed steps they should have taken earlier, and whether there is potentially more bad news to come.<2E>Yahoo disclosed late Tuesday that a 2013 data breach impacted all 3 billion of its accounts, compared with an estimate of more than 1 billion disclosed in December. Equifax said on Monday that a data breach impacted as many as 145.5 million U.S. consumers, 2.5 million more than announced earlier this month. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Phil Berlowitz) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/yahoo-cyber-senate/u-s-senate-panel-to-hold-hearing-on-yahoo-equifax-breaches-idINL2N1ME26P'|'2017-10-03T20:46:00.000+03:00'
'0ac45e11201e141a8cabdf5edced1a5c05d7c190'|'Air Berlin extends maintenance business bid deadline again'|'BERLIN, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Air Berlin has extended the bid deadline for its maintenance division to allow potential buyers to adapt their offers depending on the outcome of talks for its other assets.The airline filed for insolvency in August and is in talks with Lufthansa and easyJet over a carve-up of assets such as aircraft, take-off and landing slots and crew.Those talks are due to run until Oct. 12 and bids for the maintenance unit Air Berlin Technik will now be taken in the week beginning Oct 16, a spokesman for Air Berlin said. Bids for the maintenance business had been due in on Friday.<2E>This gives the bidders a better chance to see how the process develops for Air Berlin and to adapt their offers for Air Berlin Technik accordingly,<2C> he said.The maintenance unit employs around 1,500 people at 11 locations in Germany and elsewhere.Germany family-owned logistics firm Zeitfracht has expressed interest in the unit. (Reporting by Klaus Lauer; Writing by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Alexander Smith) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/air-berlin-lufthansa-maintenance/air-berlin-extends-maintenance-business-bid-deadline-again-idINL8N1MH1SQ'|'2017-10-06T07:41:00.000+03:00'
'4a0ff4d23b3788627bd9310ce102d4fbe2b4f4b6'|'Russia''s En+ launches IPO in London and Moscow'|'MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia<69>s En+ Group will launch an initial public share offering in London and Moscow, it said on Thursday, testing investors<72> appetite for Russian assets three years after Western countries imposed sanctions on Moscow over its role in the Ukraine crisis.The listing of En+, which manages Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska<6B>s aluminum and hydropower businesses, will be the first major IPO of a Russian company in London since 2014, when Russia annexed Ukraine<6E>s Crimea region.It will provide a boost to London<6F>s IPO pipeline, which has slowed following Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union.En+ aims for the sale of new and existing shares to fetch $1.5 billion, of which $1 billion is expected to be new capital, it said in a statement on Thursday.The London listing is expected to take place in November, and En+ plans to use the proceeds from the offering to repay a portion of its debt.En+ owns assets in metals and energy, including a 48 percent stake in Hong Kong-listed Russian aluminum producer Rusal ( 0486.HK ), which is a big consumer of hydroelectricity produced by companies owned by En+.<2E>We are pioneering the renewable energy and clean metals model, and a successful IPO would deleverage the group and provide an opportunity to enhance our platform,<2C> Maxim Sokov, En+ chief executive, said in the statement.En+ is offering its shares three months after Russia<69>s largest gold producer, Polyus ( PLZL.MM ) raised more than $800 million in a secondary public offering in London and Moscow.The London Stock Exchange was the international listing venue of choice for Russian companies between 2005 and 2014 when they raised tens of billions of dollars there.However, Russian listings largely dried up after Russia annexed Crimea and backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, prompting the Western sanctions.Russian executives blamed, among other factors, a combination of weak interest in Russian assets from London investors and a Kremlin-inspired drive for Russian business to be more self-sufficient.Deripaska, the owner of En+, is ranked Russia<69>s 23rd richest man, worth $5.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine.The industrial assets that form the core of his fortune were acquired during the chaotic sell-off of state assets in the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Deripaska later waged battles with rivals, including businessman Michael Cherney, to maintain control over his businesses.In 2010 Rusal undertook an IPO in Hong Kong and Paris, a deal that demonstrated the growing stature of Russian companies on the international stage and Deripaska<6B>s interest in China, the world<6C>s top consumer of aluminum.Ahead of the EN+ offering, Singapore<72>s AnAn Group, a strategic partner of China<6E>s CEFC, agreed to purchase global depository receipts (GDRs) during the IPO for $500 million, En+ said in its statement.The IPO comes as prices for aluminum, mainly used in transport and packaging, have risen 27 percent on the London Metal Exchange CMAL3 so far this year.Rusal<61>s share price is up 87 percent since the start of 2017, and En+<2B>s 48-percent stake in the company currently has a market value of $5.8 billion, according to Reuters data.As of May En+ had around $5 billion of net debt, amassed during the last decade when it was consolidating power assets in Siberia.En+<2B>s first-half revenues rose 23 percent from a year ago to $5.8 billion due to higher aluminum prices, while its adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose 44 percent to $1.5 billion, it said in the statement.It said it would at least twice a year pay dividends equal to the sum of dividends received from Rusal and 75 percent of the free cash flow of En+ Power, subject to a minimum of $250 million per year.Reporting by Polina Devitt; editing by Christian Lowe and Greg Mahlich '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-russia-en-ipo/russias-en-launches-ipo-in-london-and-moscow-idINKBN1C
'fa4cbb2438551c36a45a6c3a29e0450e512ad7ba'|'UPDATE 1-Gerdau to sell Chilean unit to Matco, I&I for $154 mln'|'(Adds share performance, background)SAO PAULO, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Gerdau SA has agreed to sell a Chilean long steel unit to local firms Matco SA and Ingenier<65>a & Inversiones SA for about $154 million, in a move aimed at helping the largest steelmaker in the Americas cut debt and boost profitability.In a securities filing on Wednesday, Gerdau said the unit has installed capacity of 520,000 tonnes. The transaction is pending on antitrust approval in Chile, the filing said.Gerdau, controlled by Brazil<69>s Gerdau Johanpeter family, has been focusing on higher-return steel operations since undertaking a corporate reorganization over the past year. The company also offered on Wednesday to buy back about $500 million worth of bonds due in 2020, 2021 and 2024.Preferred shares, the company<6E>s most widely traded class of stock, fell 0.3 percent to 11.30 reais on Wednesday. The stock is up about 44 percent this year. (Reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal; editing by Diane Craft and Susan Thomas) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/gerdau-br-ma-chile/update-1-gerdau-to-sell-chilean-unit-to-matco-ii-for-154-mln-idUSL2N1MF1YG'|'2017-10-05T00:00:00.000+03:00'
'd355e8ce6829b11021f57dbef409626d59d12cde'|'U.S. regulator eases part of new mortgage servicing rules'|'WASHINGTON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. regulator for mortgage servicers on Wednesday loosened the timing requirements for communicating with struggling borrowers under new rules that take effect later this month to help prevent wrongful home foreclosures.The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said last year it would begin requiring servicers, the conduits for mortgage payments, to grant certain foreclosure protections to struggling borrowers more than once over the lives of their loans and to give borrowers in bankruptcy information on possible interventions.But servicers were confused about the frequency of sending intervention notices to customers who had requested under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act that companies limit contacting them, raising concerns about how they could follow different federal rules that had conflicting requirements.The CFPB extended the timing for sending notices to those customers once the rules go into effect on Oct. 19, the CFPB said.The CFPB said it was also looking into giving servicers greater certainty about providing periodic statements in connection with a borrower<65>s bankruptcy case, after realizing the timing requirements there could be subject to different legal interpretations.When mortgage defaults spiked during the 2007-09 financial crisis, servicers came under intense scrutiny for missing paperwork, incomplete documentation and <20>robosigning,<2C> where employees signed off on foreclosures without review.The CFPB, created after the crisis to protect individuals from predatory lending, has sought over the past five years to strengthen oversight of servicers. In April, it sued Ocwen Financial Corp for alleged misconduct that included foreclosure abuses. (Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Peter Cooney) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-consumers-mortgages/u-s-regulator-eases-part-of-new-mortgage-servicing-rules-idINL2N1MF218'|'2017-10-04T19:54:00.000+03:00'
'7117de8cdb4a236f05be64dbf4f531720dafc5e0'|'IEnova ups stake in major Mexican natural gas pipeline'|'MEXICO CITY, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Mexico<63>s Infraestructura Energetica Nova (IEnova) said Friday it had acquired state oil firm Pemex<65>s stake in the joint venture Ductos y Energeticos del Norte, increasing its participation in the second phase of a key natural gas pipeline.As a result of the transaction, IEnova<76>s indirect stake in the project known as Ramones II North, will increase to 50 percent from 25 percent, said IEnova, a unit of U.S.-based Sempra Energy. The value of the operation is approximately $520 million, the company said. (Reporting by Julia Love and Veronica Gomez) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/ienova-ramones/ienova-ups-stake-in-major-mexican-natural-gas-pipeline-idINE1N1LA00P'|'2017-10-06T14:44:00.000+03:00'
'176385290560977d0a0697086ea5e5175b18c433'|'Ireland to boost budget package to one billion euros - Irish Times'|'October 7, 2017 / 11:26 AM / in 14 minutes Ireland to boost budget package to one billion euros - Irish Times Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Irish Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe speaks during an interview with Reuters at the Ministry of Finance in Dublin, Ireland September 22, 2016. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland is set to almost triple the amount available to cut taxes and increase spending in next week<65>s budget through a series of additional revenue raising measures, the Irish Times reported on Saturday. Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe has just 350 million euros (314.37 million pounds) in spare resources - far less than the expansionary budgets of the last two years - but the Irish Times said it understood the final package would be between 900 million and 1 billion euros. A spokeswoman for the finance ministry said she could not comment on the budget ahead of its presentation on Tuesday. Governments usually give themselves some additional wriggle room on budget day through small hikes in excise duties on tobacco and alcohol and ministers have said they are examining revenue raising measures. However generating up to 650 million euros would go far further than recent years. The Irish Times said a substantial increase in stamp duty on commercial property from the current rate of 2 percent was expected to be included. When laying out the options for possible policy changes in July, the finance ministry said such a measure warranted consideration and that each one percentage point increase would yield around 100 million euros. Boosting the package to 1 billion euros would likely allow the government to meet its goals of increasing the relatively low threshold at which people hit the higher rate of income tax and trimming the amount they actually pay while also sticking to the agreed 2:1 ratio of spending increase to tax cuts. Reporting by Padraic Halpin Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ireland-budget/ireland-to-boost-budget-package-to-one-billion-euros-irish-times-idUKKBN1CC0C6'|'2017-10-07T14:26:00.000+03:00'
'4a507656343eea01042b2642155ec33aeb1472b0'|'Exclusive - Big HNA stake was held in trust as a favour, company''s dealmaker says'|'October 4, 2017 / 4:31 AM / a few seconds ago Exclusive: Big HNA stake was held in trust as a favor, company''s dealmaker says Koh Gui Qing , Matthew Miller 5 Min Read Bharat Bhise, Chief Executive Officer of Bravia Capital, speaks during an interview at his office in Hong Kong, China September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip HONG KONG/NEW YORK (Reuters) - An Indian-American dealmaker for HNA Group, who recently held a big stake in the Chinese conglomerate, said he kept the shares for a decade as an <20>accommodation<6F> to the company and received no compensation for doing so. HNA shook up its ownership structure in July by transferring a near 30 percent stake, comprising shares formerly held by the dealmaker, Bharat Bhise, and a Chinese man identified as Guan Jun, to a newly-formed charity in New York. Bhise said HNA<4E>s senior executives asked him to hold the stock ahead of forming the charity. The reason was that he is not a Chinese citizen and would not need Beijing<6E>s approval to hold shares outside of China, he said in his first interview since HNA announced the shareholding shakeup. <20>I<EFBFBD>ve been put in the press as some sort of mysterious person,<2C> Bhise, 63, said at his office in Hong Kong on Friday. <20>They were never my shares. I was holding them in trust.<2E> Bhise, who managed George Soros<6F>s 1995 investment in Hainan Airlines ( 600221.SS ), HNA<4E>s flagship asset, and sat on the aviation company<6E>s board until 2000, emerged in the last decade as a top dealmaker for HNA. He is a board member of five HNA-invested companies, including Avolon Holdings, an aircraft leasing firm, and Ingram Micro, a U.S. electronics distributor. Bhise, as chairman of Bravia Capital, a Hong Kong-based boutique investment firm, also co-invested with HNA in a series of offshore investments, including in SeaCo, a marine container company, MyCargo Airlines and Africa World Airlines. Headquartered in the southern Chinese island of Hainan, the privately-owned HNA has fielded many questions about its shareholding structure this year after Guo Wengui, a fugitive Chinese billionaire, alleged that <20>officials in China<6E>s Communist Party and their relatives were undisclosed shareholders<72> in the group. He also alleged that HNA had allowed Chinese government officials and their relatives to use its aircraft <20>for purely personal reasons.<2E> FUNDRAISING ABILITY HURT The attention on the company<6E>s ownership has had a <20>terrible<6C> impact on the group by impeding its ability to raise funds and has brought him great stress, Bhise said. Banks he has long worked with have called him to say they needed to respond to questions from U.S. regulators about who he is, he added. <20>I have had a very, very stressful year,<2C> he said. Bharat Bhise, Chief Executive Officer of Bravia Capital, poses at his office in Hong Kong, China September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip HNA, which owns airlines, hotels, real estate and a near 10 percent stake in Germany<6E>s Deutsche Bank ( DBKGn.DE ), has denied Guo<75>s allegations and has sued for defamation. It declined to comment for this story. Little is known about Guan, the other holder of shares that were transferred, and Bhise said he has not met him. Reuters was unable to track down Guan to seek comment, and when asked HNA did not provide a phone number or email address for him. <20>Is the Chinese government a shareholder, somehow mysteriously cloaked behind me and Guan Jun and other people? I can tell you unequivocally that I don<6F>t believe that to be the case,<2C> Bhise said. After HNA<4E>s restructuring, the New York-based foundation and a China-based charity collectively hold 52.25 percent of HNA shares. A dozen founding and senior executives hold 47.5 percent in the group, led by HNA<4E>s founding chairmen, Chen Feng and Wang Jian. Bharat Bhise, Chief Executive Officer of Bravia Capital, poses at his office in Hong Kong, China September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip Bhise said he held the shares from about 2004 and his understanding from the
'c7e98da341c15ff5d2d3d629bae95276c1ac2918'|'UPDATE 1-Russia''s B&N Bank to write off some junior debt owned by shareholders'|'(Adds detail, analyst comment, background)MOSCOW, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Russia<69>s B&N Bank, which is being rescued by the central bank, said on Wednesday it will write off subordinated debt worth $226.56 million owed to its shareholders.B&N - the second bank to be rescued by the central bank in less than a month after Otkritie - does not have publicly traded subordinated debt in issue, unlike Otkritie where some of the junior debt will be written off during the bail out.The write-off announcement had no immediate impact on the market as B&N, which was Russia<69>s 12th biggest lender by assets before the central bank said it would bail it out, has no subordinated bonds in circulation.The write-off, however, is yet another reminder that Russian banks, private ones in particular, are under close scrutiny as in less than a month the central bank has taken over two such lenders, Otkritie, once Russia<69>s largest private bank, and B&N.<2E>Right now there is a bit of fear within the sector for private banks,<2C> said Nish Popat, senior portfolio manager at investment management firm Neuberger Berman.<2E>If there is a squeeze on liquidity you could see a shift where stronger banks get stronger. Private banks may pay you a higher coupon but in the present circumstances people may feel safer with the big state-owned ones,<2C> Popat said.<2E>But we need to put this into context. Otkritie and B&N Bank are 4-5 percent of the Russian banking sector,<2C> he said.In early September the price of subordinated bonds issued by Otkritie hit all-time lows after a central bank deputy governor told Reuters some holders of this debt stood to lose their money in a bailout of the private lender.Subordinated debt is unsecured and stands last in the queue to be repaid in the event of a liquidation. Some other private Russian banks recently decided to buy out some of their subordinated debt from the market.Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina said last week Russia<69>s banks carried bad loans of 5.3 trillion roubles ($92 billion), which accounted for less than 10 percent of outstanding loans.She said around 70 percent of bad loans were covered by provisions and posed no concerns for the banking system in general.In the case of B&N the write-off procedure was initiated by a drop in B&N Bank<6E>s base capital adequacy ratio, the lender said in a statement on Wednesday.This ratio stood below 5.125 percent of assets for more than six days, which triggered the writing off of subordinated debt that the bank had and which was provided by the bank<6E>s own shareholders, B&N said.According to the central bank, B&N suffered the decline in the capital ratio between Sept. 19 and Sept. 24. (Reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya and Yelena Orekhova in Moscow and Sujata Rao in London; Writing by Andrey Ostroukh; Editing by Greg Mahlich) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/russia-bn-writeoff/update-1-russias-bn-bank-to-write-off-some-junior-debt-owned-by-shareholders-idINL8N1MF329'|'2017-10-04T12:38:00.000+03:00'
'6cbb51cf0e5af0f9cba2c174a2ba1ba2db5280fc'|'BRIEF-Touchstone says Stanley Smith appointed to board'|' 08  Touchstone says Stanley Smith appointed to board Reuters Staff Oct 5 (Reuters) - Touchstone Exploration Inc * Touchstone announces appointment of independent director * Says Stanley Smith appointed to the board * Smith will serve as chair of board<72>s audit committee and on board<72>s compensation committee.  '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-touchstone-says-stanley-smith-appo/brief-touchstone-says-stanley-smith-appointed-to-board-idUSASB0BM2D'|'2017-10-05T09:06:00.000+03:00'
'a8047afb5bf9d0b595c2ceed34b5e2d8f6e882ab'|'After Las Vegas massacre, ''bump stock'' is hot item at U.S. gun shops'|'October 4, 2017 / 9:00 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago After Las Vegas massacre, ''bump stock'' is hot item at U.S. gun shops Joseph Ax , Gina Cherelus 4 Min Read Oct 4 (Reuters) - For more than a year, the Georgia Gun Store in Gainesville, Georgia, had no requests for a <20>bump stock<63> <20> an accessory that transforms a semi-automatic rifle into a weapon capable of firing hundreds of rounds a minute. But following Sunday<61>s mass shooting in Las Vegas, the shop fielded several calls from customers asking about the product, apparently out of concern that lawmakers may outlaw it. The store<72>s owner, Kellie Weeks, said several distributors were out of stock when she called them seeking supplies. <20>Anybody that wants to get them is probably just worried that they<65>re going to be banned,<2C> said Weeks. Authorities say the shooter, Stephen Paddock, had 12 rifles outfitted with bump stocks among the arsenal of weapons in his hotel room, and audio of the attack suggested he used weapons with rapid-fire capabilities. The increased interest in bump stocks echoed the spike in gun sales that often follows a high-profile mass shooting, as gun owners become concerned about stiffer gun control laws. Gun company stocks rose in market trading following Sunday<61>s attack. Democratic U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced a bill on Wednesday that would outlaw bump stocks and other devices that, as she put it, <20>easily and cheaply modify legal weapons into what are essentially machine guns.<2E> Several Republicans, who typically oppose gun restrictions, signaled openness to the idea. The No. 2 Republican in the Senate, John Cornyn of Texas, called for a hearing on bump stocks. In a likely effort to avoid controversy, Wal-Mart Stores Inc and the sporting goods store Cabela<6C>s both appeared to pull bump stocks from their websites on Wednesday. Calls to the companies seeking comment were not returned. Fully automatic weapons like machine guns, which fire continuously with a single trigger pull, have been largely banned since 1986. By contrast, semi-automatic rifles fire a single bullet each time the trigger is engaged and are widely available for sale. When attached to a semi-automatic rifle, a bump stock uses the gun<75>s recoil energy to <20>bump<6D> the trigger into the finger, causing it to fire far more quickly than possible if using one<6E>s hand manually. The device is frequently advertised as simulating a machine gun. One online video shows a shooter unloading 100 rounds in seven seconds. The product is legal because the trigger is still technically pressed for each round. On Wednesday, comments on the Facebook page for Slide Fire, a leading bump stock manufacturer, were split between critics who blamed the company for the massacre and customers who said they planned to buy more bump stocks. <20>Keep the faith, love your product,<2C> a woman named Ashley Foote wrote. <20>How about Stephen Paddock? I betcha he left a great review, 5 stars!<21> retorted Paul Scott. The owner of Slide Fire, Jeremiah Cottle, did not respond to numerous messages seeking comment. In an interview with the website Ammoland last year, Cottle said his product was intended for people who <20>love full auto.<2E> The device is more of a novelty item than a popular seller, according to several gun dealers, in part because it sacrifices accuracy and uses so much costly ammunition. <20>They do sell a little bit, but it<69>s very minimal,<2C> said C.J. Calesa, an employee at Birmingham Pistol Wholesale in Trustville, Alabama. <20>We usually sell 10 or so a year.<2E> Calesa said the store began receiving calls from customers about bump stocks on Tuesday. <20>I have no idea why, but anytime an unfortunate situation happens and they start talking about getting rid of stuff, we get those phone calls,<2C> he said. (Reporting by Joseph Ax and Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/lasvegas-shooting-guns/after-las-vegas-m
'3b6282f70412ca2fa59cf54cec898737582206fd'|'UPDATE 1-Sears Canada lenders seek liquidation despite extended protection'|'(Updates with liquidation deadline, context throughout)By Nichola SaminatherTORONTO, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Sears Canada on Wednesday won court approval to extend credit protection by a month to Nov. 7, but its creditors set a deadline of this week to liquidate the retailers<72> assets, leaving the company with mere days to decide its fate.While the extension of creditor protection will keep its lenders at bay a bit longer, the new liquidation deadline means a deal with Executive Chairman Brandon Stranzl that would allow it to remain in business would still need to be reached by Saturday, Oct. 7.Stranzl, who stepped away from Sears Canada<64>s day-to-day operations to keep the 65-year-old company running, made a revised bid on Tuesday, his legal team said, after the court-appointed monitor FTI Consulting said his earlier offer presented <20>significant closing risk and uncertain recovery.<2E>FTI Consulting is examining Stranzl<7A>s revised bid, the monitor<6F>s lawyers said on Wednesday.Reuters was not immediately able to reach Stranzl for comment.A lawyer for Sears Canada and a company spokesman both declined to comment.The lenders are pushing for an early liquidation as the assets would fetch more from potential buyers who would be able to operate the stores during the busy holiday season, according to people familiar with the court proceedings but who were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.FTI Consulting earlier this week said Sears Canada would be better off liquidating its assets than pursuing Stranzl<7A>s earlier bid. Under that proposal, unsecured creditors would get less than they would from individual sales of its assets, it said.Sears Canada, which in 2012 was spun off from U.S. retailer Sears Holdings Corp, filed for creditor protection in June and laid out a restructuring plan that included cutting 2,900 jobs and closing roughly a quarter of its stores.The company has steadily lost market share and struggled to remain relevant to shoppers who have switched to stores that keep up with fast-changing fashion trends. Sears Canada<64>s sales have fallen every quarter since it was spun off from Sears Holdings in 2012.Along with extending the company<6E>s credit protection, which had been set to end on Wednesday, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice also approved the closure of 11 stores as well as the sale of some of its businesses.Sears Canada is required by its creditors to enter into agreements to liquidate the rest of its assets by Oct. 7 to receive payments to ease its growing liquidity crunch, according to the latest amendment to an agreement between the company and creditors.Liquidation is a court-based procedure under which the assets of a company are sold and the funds distributed to the company<6E>s creditors.The company must receive court approval of the liquidation agreements by Oct. 13 and begin the sale process by Oct. 19 according to the amendment posted on the website late Tuesday. The deadline for the sales can be extended to Oct. 26, the document said. (Reporting by Nichola Saminather; editing by Diane Craft, G Crosse) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/sears-canada-hearing/update-1-sears-canada-lenders-seek-liquidation-despite-extended-protection-idINL2N1MF22C'|'2017-10-04T20:23:00.000+03:00'
'39a05da48b7fdb3a412c79bc00a7b8ebb5f4cd2b'|'DFS Furniture''s profit falls 13 percent in ''very challenging'' UK market'|'October 5, 2017 / 6:50 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago DFS Furniture''s profit falls 13 percent in ''very challenging'' UK market Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British retailer DFS Furniture DFS.L on Thursday reported a 13 percent fall in full-year core profits, blaming a <20>very challenging<6E> market in its second half. The firm had warned on profits in June, highlighting a dip in demand amidst the UK<55>s uncertain economic and political outlook. British consumers<72> spending power has been dented by a rise in inflation, caused in large part by the fall in the value of the pound since last year<61>s vote to leave the European Union, and by a slowdown in wages growth. Sofas are seen as a discretionary <20>big ticket<65> purchase. DFS<46>s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation fell to 82.4 million pounds in the year to July 29, down from 94.4 million pounds in the previous year and at the lower end of the company<6E>s forecast in June. Gross sales rose 1.1 percent to 990.8 million pounds. <20>Our financial performance reflects the current challenges of the UK furniture market,<2C> said Chief Executive Ian Filby. <20>Our recent strategic investments and operating efficiency programme support our confidence in our ability to deliver modest profit growth and cash returns in the current (2017-18)financial year.<2E> Shares in DFS, down 14 percent over the last year, closed on Tuesday at 225 pence, valuing the business at 476 million pounds. The firm is paying a total ordinary dividend of 11.2 pence for the year, up 1.8 percent. It has also paid a special dividend of 9.5 pence in the year. Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-dfs-furniture-results/dfs-furnitures-profit-falls-13-percent-in-very-challenging-uk-market-idUKKBN1CA0H4'|'2017-10-05T09:50:00.000+03:00'
'34182a084cecfd16e0b1c5f8f2f5504c106f2480'|'Crisis may have damaged trust in finance for good -BoE''s Haldane'|'October 6, 2017 / 3:54 PM / a few seconds ago Crisis may have damaged trust in finance for good: BoE''s Haldane Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A man talks on a mobile phone as people walk past the Bank of England, in London, Britain September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner LONDON (Reuters) - The global financial crisis may have eroded trust in the financial system and its institutions for good, Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane said on Friday. The 2007-09 crisis had been <20>hugely trust-busting<6E>, dragging banking and public institutions into disrepute, Haldane told a London audience at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA). <20>Even as the scars of the crisis heal, this trust deficit might not repair itself naturally ... (and) may be not cyclical, not temporary, but permanent,<2C> he said. <20>If that<61>s true, it strikes me as plausible, then those of us in financial services - including central banks - will really have to go some to repair that deficit,<2C> he added. A report by public relations firm Edelman this year showed Britain ranked near the bottom for public trust in institutions. A recent Bank of England survey of the public conducted by TNS showed it had a net satisfaction rating of 24 percent for its handling of interest rates - the lowest in almost four years and a far cry from its pre-recession average of 43 percent. Reporting by Andy Bruce and William Schomberg; editing by Andrew Roche'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-boe-haldane/crisis-may-have-damaged-trust-in-finance-for-good-boes-haldane-idUKKBN1CB21F'|'2017-10-06T18:51:00.000+03:00'
'0f9af72e66fe8ff73ec89bc3ca113333535fa4ac'|'Dara Khosrowshahi is off to a strong start but there are miles to go'|'HERE<52>S the job spec. Unite a deeply divided board. Keep a strong-willed founder under control. Immediately recruit a new chief financial officer. Negotiate with angry local regulators intent on closing down the business in their city. Convince courts that the company does not have to provide its contract workers with the benefits due to full-time employees. Change a cut-throat culture without curbing employees<65> drive. On top of all this, deal not only with an intellectual-property (IP) lawsuit that could cost the firm nearly $2bn, but also cope with a criminal investigation by the FBI that could see some managers end up in prison.No one sane, you would think, would even apply for such misery. But after some hesitation Dara Khosrowshahi (pronounced cause-ro-SHAH-hee), until recently the chief executive of Expedia, an online travel agency, returned the headhunter<65>s call. Now he is boss of Uber, which, at $68bn, is the world<6C>s most highly valued privately-held company. Can he turn the firm, which in many ways has been a caricature of a disruptive Silicon Valley startup, into a more benign force<63>and take it public by late 2019? Three weeks into the job, Mr Khosrowshahi has already made meaningful progress. On October 3rd he paid a hastily-arranged visit to Transport for London (TfL), the regulator that recently ruled that Uber was not <20>fit and proper<65> to hold an operating licence in the British capital. Both sides described the talks as <20>constructive<76> and announced further discussions. Later that day, Uber<65>s new boss attended<65>via video link<6E>a crucial board meeting that ended in a promising truce. It not only limits the power of Travis Kalanick, the firm<72>s co-founder and former chief executive, but creates the conditions for a $10bn investment by a consortium led by SoftBank, a Japanese tech firm run by Masayoshi Son.One of Mr Son<6F>s main conditions was that power be shifted to more recent investors. Early Uber backers, including Mr Kalanick, will have to give up their <20>super-voting<6E> rights. Mr Khosrowshahi<68>s concession was that Mr Kalanick now has at least a theoretical chance to become chief executive again (rules proposed earlier would have made that all but impossible). Benchmark, a venture-capital firm and an early investor in Uber, agreed to drop a lawsuit against Mr Kalanick.All could still unravel. The governance compromise is contingent on the SoftBank investment, which has two stages, going through. It may seem a done deal that SoftBank and its partners would invest a first round of $1bn-1.25bn at Uber<65>s present valuation of $68bn. That way the new capital injection is not considered a <20>down-round<6E>, ie, one that produces a lower valuation. But much about the second round is still unknown. The stake could be anywhere between 14% and 17% of Uber, for example, at a valuation of as low as $50bn.Before Mr Khosrowshahi made it to London he had placed a full-page ad in the Evening Standard , a local newspaper, apologising <20>for the mistakes we<77>ve made<64> and acknowledging that <20>we must change<67>. This was meant to signal to regulators all over the world that Uber<65>s swashbuckling culture is a thing of the past. But he must show that this is not just a change in style, but substance.He will not lack for opportunities to do so. A big question will be to what extent Uber will still insist on being a technology, rather than a transport, firm<72>a question which is on the agenda of the European Court of Justice. London, where Uber has appealed the regulator<6F>s decision, is likely to be the test case. TfL<66>s complaints about the firm, for instance that it did not properly vet its drivers, suggest that the regulator wants to treat it exactly like any other taxi operator. Yet Uber<65>s willingness to make concessions may be limited. On September 26th it said it would pull out of the province of Quebec rather than accept new regulations.Another unknown is the extent to which Uber will change how it deals with its drivers. It is stil
'869b9f6d00ebeac59c720ac0c027015e9427b322'|'Lilly wins Alimta patent dispute in US'|'Oct 5 (Reuters) - The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled in favor of Eli Lilly and Co in a patent dispute over its cancer drug Alimta with Neptune Generics LLC and Sandoz Inc.Alimta, Lilly<6C>s top-selling oncology treatment, generated sales of $2.3 billion last year. (Reporting by Tamara Mathias in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D<>Silva) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/lilly-patent/lilly-wins-alimta-patent-dispute-in-us-idUSL4N1MG3AF'|'2017-10-05T23:43:00.000+03:00'
'b791c12352fc168f75f3ecff624f04c7b7a31258'|'Sawiris says Brazil''s Oi woes have put his interest ''on hold'''|'CAPRI, Italy, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris said on Thursday he has put his interest in investing in Oi SA on hold because of infighting and a lack of decision-making at the debt-laden Brazilian mobile carrier.Sawiris would consider an investment via Orascom TMT Holdings SAE, the carrier he controls, should creditors and shareholders of Rio de Janeiro-based Oi settle their disputes, he told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Capri, Italy.Oi, which filed last year for Brazil<69>s biggest ever bankruptcy protection to restructure 65 billion reais ($20 billion) of debt, has delayed putting a creditor plan to a vote several times this year.In December, Orascom had offered an debt-for-equity swap and a capital injection of up to $1.25 billion into Brazil<69>s No. 4 wireless carrier, conditioned to an agreement with creditors.This week, Ricardo Malavazi stepped down as Oi<4F>s chief financial officer following disagreements over a recovery plan among some of the carrier<65>s shareholders. That had contributed to the chances of a state intervention, said the head of Brazil<69>s telecommunications industry watchdog Anatel.<2E>I am not happy with the situation, I have put my interest on hold,<2C> Sawiris said.<2E>If there is anything to be done in a reasonable way I will look at it, but right now I am disappointed by all the parties involved in this matter.<2E>A spokeswoman for Oi declined to comment. The carrier<65>s management has repeatedly said it is seeking to create a restructuring plan that ensures the company<6E>s survival, meets customer needs and satisfies all parties involved.Common shares in Oi were down 1.2 percent to 4.86 reais on Thursday.Oi<4F>s largest creditor groups reaffirmed their commitment to an alternative debt-restructuring plan this week, after pushing back against a proposal from the company<6E>s management that called for a 8 billion-real capital injection and debt-for-equity exchange.<2E>In the mobile business, it<69>s about speed and speedy decisions,<2C> Sawiris said. <20>Companies that don<6F>t see the technology advancements and don<6F>t do the investments at the right time, they go bust.<2E>$1 = 3.1335 reais Reporting by Agnieszka Flak, Writing and additional reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal in Sao Paulo, Editing by Rosalba O''Brien '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/oi-sa-restructuring-otmt/sawiris-says-brazils-oi-woes-have-put-his-interest-on-hold-idINL8N1MG4OS'|'2017-10-05T16:46:00.000+03:00'
'ad17cfc0c8ac4877e03594926f69c6085f47bc8b'|'Stock market party settles down for central bank reflection'|'The trading floor is pictured at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, December 8, 2016. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/Files NEW YORK (Reuters) - World stock markets hit fresh highs on Thursday amid investor optimism over U.S. tax reforms and global economic growth, while the dollar gained as data pointed to solid U.S. growth.The U.S. trade deficit fell in August as exports of goods and services rose to the highest level in more than 2-1/2 years. Separately, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week.Gold dipped on news of the data as it bolstered the notion U.S. interest rates would be hiked in December. Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Patrick Harker said he was still penciling in one more rate hike this year and three in 2018.The dollar index, tracking the greenback against a basket of key currencies, held under seven-week highs as investors awaited Friday<61>s U.S. jobless report for September to assess the impact of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. The storms proved a drag on robust business spending that was seen in the trade data.MSCI<43>s all-country world stock index edged higher to set a new intraday peak, while the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all set fresh highs.The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 41.22 points, or 0.18 percent, to 22,702.86. The S&P 500 gained 5.99 points, or 0.24 percent, to 2,543.73 and the Nasdaq Composite added 15.08 points, or 0.23 percent, to 6,549.71.European bourses also gained, with the pan-regional FTSEurofirst 300 index rising 0.16 percent to 1,535.03.A Reuters poll showed global stocks will continue to climb over the coming year on rising optimism about growth worldwide. However, a slim majority of equity strategists also expect the current eight-year bull run to end in 2018. [nL4N1MF2Q6]U.S. investors have begun to warm to the notion that reform of U.S. fiscal policy will occur by the first quarter, said Phil Orlando, chief equity strategist at Federated Investors in New York.Most investors felt that nothing would come of President Donald Trump<6D>s tax reform effort until last week, he said.<2E>Only 30 percent of us were comfortable that something might happen. That could take up 2019 estimates for GDP growth and earnings per share, which could drive the S&P 500 above our 3,000 target,<2C> Orlando said.Oil prices rose as signs Saudi Arabia and Russia would limit production through next year outweighed record U.S. exports and the return of production at a major Libyan oilfield.Brent rose $1.19 to $56.99 per barrel, while U.S. crude rose 96 cents to $50.94 per barrel.The dollar index rose 0.44 percent, with the euro down 0.41 percent to $1.1711. The Japanese yen strengthened 0.07 percent versus the greenback at 112.70.Reporting by Herbert Lash; Editing by Bernadette Baum '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-markets/stock-market-party-settles-down-for-central-bank-reflection-idINKBN1CA0TM'|'2017-10-05T12:11:00.000+03:00'
'cff213c340cb6f8d0cab3f99f36b7e40af1a0cb0'|'MOVES-Stifel hires new senior VP of investments'|'Oct 2 (Reuters) - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co Inc, a unit of financial services company Stifel Financial Corp, appointed David Safarian as senior vice president/investments.Safarian, who has more than 17 years of investment industry experience, previously worked at Wells Fargo Advisors.He will be based out of Frontenac, Missouri.Reporting by Tamara Mathias '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/stifel-nicolaus-co-moves-david-safarian/moves-stifel-hires-new-senior-vp-of-investments-idUSL4N1MD4MM'|'2017-10-03T00:03:00.000+03:00'
'e38d63427fba5b58104b25779fe9c18517026459'|'Alibaba denies Tsai in deal talks with NBA''s Brooklyn Nets'|'October 6, 2017 / 5:13 AM / in 2 hours Alibaba denies Tsai in deal talks with NBA''s Brooklyn Nets Jessica Toonkel , Olivia Oran 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: People ride a double bicycle past the Alibaba Group logo, at the company''s headquarters, on the outskirts of Hangzhou, China November 10, 2014. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo REUTERS - Chinese internet conglomerate Alibaba Group Holding Ltd denied on Thursday that its vice chairman, Joseph Tsai, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in the Brooklyn Nets of the National Basketball Association. <20>This is false,<2C> Alibaba spokeswoman Jennifer Kuperman said. <20>Joe Tsai has never talked to the seller and he is not purchasing any stake in the Brooklyn Nets.<2E> Two sources told Reuters earlier on Thursday that Tsai was in talks to buy a stake in the Brooklyn Nets, valuing the U.S. basketball team at around $2.2 billion, and that a deal could be finalized in the next few weeks. They added it was possible that negotiations could collapse at the last minute. The sources declined to speak for attribution because they are not permitted to speak to the press. The exact size of Tsai<61>s possible stake could not immediately be learned. The Brooklyn Nets could not be reached for comment. A deal would make the Brooklyn Nets the second NBA team to be worth more than $2 billion, demonstrating the increasing value of these teams as TV networks and advertisers continue to pour money into live sports. As more viewers choose to watch their favorite shows <20>on demand,<2C> live sports still drive people to watch the games in real time - which is valued by advertisers who have time-sensitive promotions. Last month, American casino mogul Tilman Fertitta bought the Houston Rockets for $2.2 billion, the highest price ever paid for an NBA team, according to media reports. Reporting by Jessica Toonkel and Olivia Oran in New York; Additional reporing by Liana B. Baker in San Francisco; Editing by Matthew Lewis '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/basketball-brooklynnets-tsai/alibaba-denies-tsai-in-deal-talks-with-nbas-brooklyn-nets-idINKBN1CB0B3'|'2017-10-06T08:09:00.000+03:00'
'96f0ce0a19218e287aacffa4c49a0ac15edc58f2'|'Net shorts on U.S. longer-dated bonds hit record high -JPMorgan'|'October 3, 2017 / 1:40 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago Net shorts on U.S. longer-dated bonds hit record high -JPMorgan Reuters Staff 3 Min Read NEW YORK, Oct 3 (Reuters) - The margin of investors who said they had fewer longer-dated Treasuries than their benchmarks over those who held more longer-dated bonds than their benchmarks rose to a record high, JPMorgan Chase & Co''s latest client survey showed on Tuesday. Investors have reduced their bond holdings in recent days after Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said last week the U.S. central bank remains on its gradual rate hike path even as inflation has been stuck below its 2-percent goal, analysts said. U.S. President Donald Trump''s introduction of his tax plan also raised speculation whether it will increase the government''s deficit and its borrowing to finance it, they said. The share of investors who said they were "short" longer-dated Treasuries rose to 44 percent from 30 percent a week earlier. The share of them who said they were "long" fell to 5 percent from 11 percent. The net shorts grew to a record peak of 39 percent from 19 percent the previous week, JP Morgan said. Among active clients which include market makers and hedge funds, a record 70 percent of them said they were short longer-dated U.S. bonds, while none of them said they were long. A week ago, 30 percent of them were short and 20 percent were long. At 9:10 a.m. (1310 GMT), the 10-year yield was up 1.5 basis points at 2.352 percent, which was below 2.371 percent, its highest in about 12 weeks reached on Monday. A week ago, the 10-year yield was 2.229 percent. JPMorgan surveyed clients including bond fund managers, central banks and sovereign wealth funds, as well as market makers and hedge funds. The chart below displays the latest survey results of JPMorgan''s Treasury clients: All clients Long Neutral Shorts Net Position Oct. 2 5 51 44 -39 Sept. 25 11 59 30 -19 Sept. 18 16 61 23 -7 Sept. 11 9 64 27 -18 Sept. 5 7 66 27 -20 Aug. 28 7 75 18 -11 Aug. 21 7 70 23 -16 Active clients Oct. 2 0 30 70 -70 Sept. 25 20 50 30 -10 Sept. 18 10 70 20 -10 Sept. 11 0 90 10 -10 Sept. 5 0 80 20 -20 Aug. 28 0 90 10 -10 Aug. 21 0 90 10 -10 * NOTE: Positive value denotes net long, negative value denotes net short (Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/treasuries-jpmorgan/net-shorts-on-u-s-longer-dated-bonds-hit-record-high-jpmorgan-idUSL2N1ME0K3'|'2017-10-03T16:40:00.000+03:00'
'b6b2c6b0a803672b169568d7a295c1584ede2df5'|'Swiss Amicus and Brazil''s EMS bid for Serbian drugmaker Galenika'|'BELGRADE (Reuters) - Swiss-based drugs company Amicus SRB and Brazilian pharma group EMS SA have both made binding bids for a 93 percent stake in Serbian drugmaker Galenika, Serbia<69>s Economy Ministry said.Belgrade wants to sell Galenika as part of an effort to privatize, shut or trim unprofitable state firms under a 1.2 billion euro ($1.4 billion) deal with the International Monetary Fund, but the drugmaker<65>s debts have so far put off investors.The Economy Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that the envelopes with financial offers will be opened after the bids have been verified.Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-serbia-galenika-sale/swiss-amicus-and-brazils-ems-bid-for-serbian-drugmaker-galenika-idUSKBN1C9252'|'2017-10-04T23:10:00.000+03:00'
'77f2e5a8284e920b3b12618c1e5d9d51c6ebf228'|'LPC: US lenders draw line on aggressive high-quality loan repricings'|'October 4, 2017 / 5:50 PM / in 10 minutes LPC: US lenders draw line on aggressive high-quality loan repricings Andrew Berlin 6 Min Read NEW YORK, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Fixed satellite services operator Telesat Canada is the second company to withdraw an opportunistic repricing from the US leveraged loan market after running into resistance from investors, which also promped auto parts maker Allison Transmission to abandon a similar repricing attempt in September. Higher quality leveraged loan issuers have been seeking to cut spreads to as low as 175bp over Libor, but investors are starting to draw a line in a bid to stop the downward spiral in pricing. The investor push back parallels an episode in June, when opposition from lenders forced Berry Plastics and Virgin Media to abandon efforts to reprice loans in the 200bp-250bp range. The resistance comes as the market remains constrained by supply and volume is dominated by a disproportionate amount of refinancing and repricing activity relative to new money deals. <20>Pulled repricings are the first sign of the market slowing down,<2C> a senior leveraged finance banker said. <20>But we<77>re not at that point yet. Not enough deals have failed.<2E> The pulled repricings better reflect limitations of certain investment vehicles, such as Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs), and inferior relative value, rather than waning demand, sources said. Telesat asked to cut pricing on its US$2.4bn term loan due in 2023 to 225bp over Libor with a 75bp floor. The debt currently pays 300bp over Libor with a 75bp floor, after a repricing in January, according to Thomson Reuters data. <20>Nobody cared at that level,<2C> an investor said. <20>Nobody wanted a B1-rated issuer at 225bp.<2E> Telesat Canada is rated BB-/B1. The facility is rated BB-/Ba3. <20>The Telesat exercise would have priced it well inside its comps,<2C> another investor said. <20>The BofA BB cable/satellite loan index yield was around 4.25% at the time. Telesat was looking to price 60bps inside that.<2E> Allison Transmission pushed to cut the coupon on its US$1.2bn term loan B due in September 2022 to 175bp over Libor with a 0% floor, from 200bp over Libor with a 0% floor. The spread reduction was proposed in conjunction with a US$200m pay down on the loan. Allison is higher rated at BB/Ba2 corporate and BB+/Ba1 secured. <20>200bp is a red line on spread [at that rating],<2C> the investor said. <20>If Allison had gotten done, it would have led to more issuers trying to do the same.<2E> <20>At those levels, it stops being accretive to CLOs,<2C> another investor said. CLOs seek to capture the arbitrage between the interest received on underlying loans and the interest paid on debt that funds them. The arbitrage evaporates the tighter pricing at each rating level goes. <20>The market is still quite hot, but it<69>s hard to price much lower considering the cost of outstanding CLO liabilities won<6F>t support deals going materially below 200bp spread,<2C> the second investor said. In 3Q17, spreads on first-lien term loans averaged 2.63% for double-B rated issuers and 4% for single-B rated issuers, according to Thomson Reuters LPC. US provider of semiconductor chemicals Versum Materials Inc is seeking to reprice its US$571m term loan due in 2023. Pricing on the deal is guided at 200bp over Libor with a 25bp leverage-based step-down and 0% floor. The loan currently pays 250bp over Libor with a 75bp floor. Versum is rated BB/Ba2 while the loan is rated BB+/Ba1. <20>A step down is different, unless it<69>s imminent,<2C> a debt capital markets head said. In May, pet food maker Blue Buffalo placed a US$400m term loan to refinance existing debt with a spread at 200bp over Libor, with a 25bp step-down tied to leverage and ratings upgrades, and a 0% floor. The company tried for even tighter pricing but lenders resisted, sources said at the time. The company is rated BB-/Ba2 and the loan is rated BB+/Ba2. SHORT-DATED BENEFIT Despite the clear message from investors on pricing, some credits have been ab
'bbfa3f1ea0a84973032f2efece6b17e83152ee2f'|'Plastics company A Schulman exploring sale - WSJ'|'Oct 4 (Reuters) - Plastics maker A Schulman Inc is exploring a sale, Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.The company is working with Citigroup Inc on the process of sale, which is in its early stages, the report said. ( on.wsj.com/2xf6lRT )The company<6E>s market value was $1.06 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data. Its shares were up 4.9 percent at $37.60.The company was not immediately available for comment. (Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/a-schulman-us-ma/plastics-company-a-schulman-exploring-sale-wsj-idINL4N1MF2XM'|'2017-10-04T12:53:00.000+03:00'
'7056a990d78870146a0cbd13848920d1d124ac39'|'Asia up on economic optimism before U.S. jobs report, dollar buoyant'|'October 6, 2017 / 1:02 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago Dollar, debt yields rise as jobs data points to rate hike 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: U.S. dollar notes are seen in this November 7, 2016 picture illustration. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar and government debt yields jumped on Friday after strong gains in hourly wages unveiled in the U.S. government<6E>s jobs report for September boosted the likelihood the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates by year<61>s end. U.S. employment fell in September for the first time in seven years as Hurricanes Harvey and Irma temporarily displaced workers and delayed hiring, the latest sign the storms undercut economic activity in the third quarter. Average hourly earnings increased 12 cents, or 0.5 percent, in September after rising 0.2 percent a month earlier. The gains came as nonfarm payrolls fell by 33,000 jobs last month against expectations of a jobs gain of 90,0000. The yield on two-year U.S. Treasury notes soared to their highest in nine years, while the dollar hit an almost three-month high against the Japanese yen and almost a two-month high against the euro. The jump in average hourly earnings surprised investors who were aware the headline employment number would be distorted by the hurricanes, said Win Thin, head of emerging markets currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman in New York. <20>This is the missing piece in the Fed<65>s puzzle,<2C> he said. <20>The dollar rally is back on track and should continue next week.<2E> The dollar index .DXY, tracking the greenback against a basket of key currencies, fell 0.11 percent, with the euro EUR= up 0.18 percent to $1.1731. The Japanese yen weakened 0.07 percent versus the greenback at 112.90 per dollar. Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR fell 7/32 in price to yield 2.3733 percent, paring losses that earlier had sent yields above 2.4 percent. The jobs report tempered equity markets that had rallied all week with MSCI<43>s world stock index and the three major U.S. gauges on Wall Street setting four successive record closing highs. A trader works inside a stall on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid However, the report should be taken with a large grain of salt as the jump in wages is likely to show near equal weakness in October, said Russell Price, senior economist at Ameriprise Financial Services Inc in Troy, Michigan. <20>If wages are starting to increase more prominently, that will give the FOMC the justification that they<65>ll need to hike rates in December,<2C> Price acknowledged, referring to the Fed<65>s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. Still, Price urged caution against over-interpreting these numbers. The gain in average hourly earnings is not surprising as there was a drop of 105,000 jobs in the restaurant and food service category, said Heidi Learner, chief economist In New York for Savills Studley, a unit of Savills Plc. The sector has registered an average monthly employment gain of 24,000 over the past year, Learner said. The drop in low-paying jobs skewered hourly earnings. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 27.57 points, or 0.12 percent, to 22,747.82. The S&P 500 .SPX lost 6.85 points, or 0.27 percent, to 2,545.22 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 9.68 points, or 0.15 percent, to 6,575.67. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 lost 0.43 percent and MSCI''s gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD PUS shed 0.24 percent. Spot gold XAU= added 0.3 percent to $1,271.60 an ounce. Oil prices fell around 2 percent and were set to end Brent<6E>s longest multi-week rally in 16 months following profit taking and the return of oversupply concerns. Brent LCOcv1 was last at $55.21 per barrel, down 3.14 percent on the day, while U.S. crude CLcv1 fell 3.27 percent to $49.13. Reporting by Herbert Lash; Editing by Bernadette Baum'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xm
'977b1f74b07f81301b76d41d6d60fe5a6bab5523'|'U.S. judge dismisses criminal charge in Toyota sudden acceleration case'|'A logo of Toyota Motor Corp is seen at the company''s showroom in Tokyo, Japan June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Thursday dismissed a criminal charge against Toyota Motor Corp after the Japanese automaker completed three years of monitoring under a $1.2 billion settlement in which it admitted to misleading the public about sudden unintended acceleration in its vehicles.U.S. District Judge William Pauley in New York agreed to a U.S. Justice Department request to end the case stemming from Toyota<74>s admission that it misled U.S. consumers by concealing and making deceptive statements about the extent of sudden acceleration problems in 2009 and 2010.Toyota had agreed to three years of oversight by an independent monitor that ended in August.In bringing charges in March 2014, the Justice Department said that Toyota minimized problems, misled regulators and provided inaccurate information to Congress in the scandal linked to at least five deaths.The $1.2 billion settlement was the largest penalty levied by the United States on an auto company until Volkswagen AG ( VOWG_p.DE ) admitted to diesel emissions fraud earlier this year and paid $4.3 billion in fines.Toyota spokesman Scott Vazin said on Thursday the company was pleased the court accepted the recommendation. <20>Over the past three years, we have worked hard in the spirit of continuous improvement to make Toyota a stronger company that serves its customers better,<2C> he said.Pauley said in 2014 the case represented a <20>reprehensible picture of corporate misconduct,<2C> and expressed hope the government would ultimately hold the responsible decision-makers at Toyota accountable.In his order on Thursday, Pauley said: <20>Regrettably, the payment of a $1.2 billion fine and the appointment of a monitor appear to have concluded the government<6E>s investigation into this tragic episode.<2E>Toyota made significant changes to its safety practices after the recall crisis that briefly forced it to halt sales of nearly half of its vehicles in 2010 and led to the company president, Akio Toyoda, appearing before Congress to apologize.Toyota settled other related suits, including an agreement covering as many as 22 million current and former Toyota owners over sudden acceleration claims valued at as much as $1.63 billion. There are still individual civil claims pending in California.Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Peter Cooney '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-toyota/u-s-judge-dismisses-criminal-charge-in-toyota-sudden-acceleration-case-idUSKBN1CA2R2'|'2017-10-06T00:24:00.000+03:00'
'8421e7dcc97492f6b7844e9b30638d1cc95d67a0'|'Caesars bankruptcy ends amid Asia market shift, Vegas shooting'|'The marquee sign at Caesars Palace hotel is seen on the strip in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. February 16, 2011. REUTERS/Steve Marcus/File Photo CHICAGO (Reuters) - Caesars Entertainment Corp has an eye on expanding its Caesars, Harrah<61>s and Horseshoe brands in the United States and abroad after its casino operating unit emerges from nearly three years of bankruptcy as soon as Friday with $10 billion less in debt.Industry analysts said it may be too late to catch up with rivals like MGM Resorts International, Wynn Resorts Ltd and Las Vegas Sands Corp that have spent years investing in high-growth Asian markets like Macau as U.S. gambling has cooled.<2E>Twenty-five years ago Caesars was the premiere name internationally but they dropped the ball,<2C> said Greg Bousquette of investment banking firm G.C. Andersen Partners, which advised unsecured creditors during the Caesars bankruptcy.Caesars has spent years struggling to manage more than $25 billion in debt, much of it taken on in 2008 when Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital led a leveraged buyout of the company. The operating unit filed for bankruptcy in early 2015.Caesars emerges from Chapter 11 with a simplified structure by merging with Caesars Acquisition Corp and other affiliates, and former creditors will hold a majority of the stock.The U.S.-focused company may be more vulnerable than its peers if any downturn follows this week<65>s mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip, where Caesars owns some of its most valuable resorts and casinos and derives most of its revenue.Las Vegas resort operators like Caesars may have to cut hotel rates and spend more on security and marketing to draw customers back, analysts said, though they expect business to bounce back over the longer term.Related Coverage Factbox: A new Caesars Entertainment to emerge from bankruptcyCaesars declined to comment on any potential decline in its business stemming from the shooting, which resulted in 59 deaths.The company<6E>s stock fell in early trading on Monday, but soon recovered and market sentiment toward Caesars had been largely positive. Its shares, which had lagged rivals through much of the bankruptcy proceedings, have risen 74 percent from a year ago, and investors last week snapped up its first bond offering since 2014.<2E>We<57>re primed for growth,<2C> Caesars Chief Executive Mark Frissora told investors in September, pointing to a leaner post-bankruptcy structure, $2 billion of cash and plans for branding and licensing agreements, and M&A. [L2N1MG19E]The company in July hired two executives to oversee new projects and expansion in the United States and abroad.Target markets include Brazil and Japan, which are considering opening up gaming and resorts licenses. Caesars has already received preliminary approval for a foreigners-only destination in South Korea.But while Caesars spent years struggling under the debt from the leveraged buyout, its rivals were planting their flags in Macau and Singapore. Macau, a Chinese territory about an hour from Hong Kong, long ago surpassed Las Vegas in terms of gaming revenue.Companies that already have experience operating in Asia are frontrunners to receive licenses to run Japanese casino resorts, according to analysts.THE PERKS OF TOTAL REWARDS Caesars may have an edge in a tight U.S. market thanks to its Total Rewards loyalty program, the biggest in the industry with over 50 million members, analysts said.At Caesars<72> Horseshoe Hammond outside Chicago, one retired couple said the rewards program is what draws them to the casino twice a week to try their luck at the slot machines and gaming tables.<2E>The more we spend, the more points we get for food and other perks,<2C> said Mrs. Johnson of Crete, Illinois. She declined to give her first name.Caesars has shown it can plug a hotel or casino into Total Rewards and immediately boost returns. In a Sept. 14 presentation, Caesars said underlying operating profit at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas rose 232
'60017afeeb933bd71d530e79f516c08af94cc300'|'Acquisition vehicle J2 raises $1.25 billion in London listing'|'LONDON (Reuters) - British Virgin Islands firm J2 Acquisition has raised $1.25 billion from an initial public offering in London, the firm said on Thursday.The IPO will enable the firm to make an acquisition, it said in a statement, without saying what it would be.<2E>There is no specific expected target value for the acquisition,<2C> it said, adding that any funds not used for the current acquisition could be used for future deals instead.The offering consists of $1.21 billion in ordinary shares at $10 a share and a further $40 million through founder preferred shares, J2 said.J2 expects to start trading on the London Stock Exchange on Oct 10, it added.Reporting by Carolyn Cohn; Editing by Rachel Armstrong '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-j2-acquisition-ipo/acquisition-vehicle-j2-raises-1-25-billion-in-london-listing-idINKBN1CA0HA'|'2017-10-05T04:53:00.000+03:00'
'f17cdcec3fdee8d7942a682efdfa398e9807e976'|'''Overwhelming'' view is Qualcomm will up offer for NXP: Morgan Stanley'|'October 9, 2017 / 11:03 AM / Updated 4 hours ago ''Overwhelming'' view is Qualcomm will up offer for NXP: Morgan Stanley Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A Qualcomm sign is pictured at one of its many campus buildings in San Diego, California, U.S. April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake (Reuters) - There is a <20>strong case<73> for expecting chipmaker Qualcomm Inc to raise its offer for NXP Semiconductors NV, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote on Monday, saying investors they spoke to last week believed the price would rise. The U.S. smartphone chipmaker has offered concessions in an attempt to allay EU antitrust concerns over its $38-billion bid for NXP, the largest ever in the semiconductor industry. Morgan Stanley<65>s analysts said discussions at a symposium with a group of 40 investors last week showed sentiment <20>overwhelmingly<6C> leaning toward the camp that believed that Qualcomm would raise its offer price. The brokerage has a price target of $117.5 on NXP stock, above the $110 per share offer Qualcomm made for the company last year. Hedge fund Elliott Management Corp, which then had a 6 percent stake in NXP, indicated in August it was pushing for a higher price tag in NXP<58>s pending sale to Qualcomm. Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nxp-semicondtrs-m-a-qualcomm/overwhelming-view-is-qualcomm-will-up-offer-for-nxp-morgan-stanley-idUSKBN1CE15D'|'2017-10-09T19:03:00.000+03:00'
'ecdf3d1718eea98c43b3dceea2292cdfc90e5982'|'LPC: Banks offer Excelitas bidders more than US$1bn in buyout debt'|'NEW YORK, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Private equity firms preparing bids for US electronics and optical sensor component maker Excelitas Technologies Corp are being offered debt financing from banks between roughly US$1bn and US$1.1bn, two sources close to the matter said.Investment bank Goldman Sachs, which is running the sale as part of a dual-track process that includes a possible initial public offering, is circulating a financing proposal to potential buyers on the high end of the range, at 6.5 times debt-to-Ebitda, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, the sources said.Goldman declined to comment.This is the second attempt current owner Veritas Capital has made to unload Excelitas. The private equity firm tried to sell the company in 2014, but no deal was reached, Reuters reported at the time.Other banks are extending packages closer to US$1bn in debt, or six times debt-to-Ebitda, the sources said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private and negotiations are ongoing.Among the additional banks looking at financing the deal are Citigroup, RBC, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and UBS, one of the sources said.The banks declined to comment.The debt is likely to be structured as a secured loan with a first priority claim and a secured loan with a second priority claim, according to the same source.Excelitas is asking for final bids next week.Remaining bidders include buyout shops AEA Investors and Cornell Capital, the sources said. AEA had partnered up with Bain Capital earlier in the process to potentially advance an offer, they said.Cornell declined to comment. AEA and a representative for Bain did not respond to requests for comment.Bankers advising bidders said they expect Excelitas to sell at around nine times the company<6E>s roughly US$165m of marketed Ebitda for an enterprise value of about US$1.5bn.The company may still opt for an initial public offering if a listing commands a higher valuation.Reuters previously reported the deal could fetch as much as US$2bn, which would translate to an Ebitda multiple of around 12 times.Excelitas makes products such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and flash lamps, which are used in applications ranging from medical lighting to aerospace and defense equipment.Veritas formed Excelitas in 2010 through the roughly US$500m acquisition of scientific instruments maker PerkinElmer Inc<6E>s illumination and detection solutions business.The company went on to make acquisitions, including Kaiser Systems Inc, a manufacturer of high-voltage power systems, and Qioptiq, a maker of specialized optical components and lenses. (Reporting by Andrew Berlin; Editing By Michelle Sierra, Lynn Adler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/excelitas-buyout-loans/lpc-banks-offer-excelitas-bidders-more-than-us1bn-in-buyout-debt-idINL2N1MH0RM'|'2017-10-06T13:58:00.000+03:00'
'7a0031805d2d0355f9b40975ae22c7a71aa2565e'|'Hedge fund Marcato recommends overhaul to double Deckers stock'|'BOSTON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Hedge fund Marcato Capital Management, which owns nearly 6 percent of Deckers Outdoor Corp , said shares in the maker of UGG boots could more than double by 2020 if it sells off pieces of its footwear business, buys back shares and overhauls executive compensation.The shares could trade somewhere between $135 and $158 per share by 2020, according to a presentation by Marcato<74>s founder Mick McGuire for the Sohn San Francisco Conference which was seen by Reuters.The stock price closed at $69.22 on Wednesday.Marcato, which unveiled its investment in Deckers in February has been stepping up pressure on management and plans to replace all 10 directors at the company<6E>s Dec. 14 annual meeting, arguing that management has moved too slowly and secretively for its taste in exploring options to sell itself.Marking the first time McGuire has laid out his hopes for Deckers<72> future in public, he also said the company should focus on the UGG brand, including its popular sheepskin boots, and sell off non-core brands like its Sanuk sandals and Hoka One One running shoes among others.If the company follows Marcato<74>s suggestions, the hedge fund manager said that return on invested capital could rise 82 percent by fiscal year 2021 and that earnings per share could climb from $3.82 in fiscal year 2017 to $12.68 in fiscal year 2021.Marcato is also proposing that the company<6E>s outstanding shares should be cut by more than half. (Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Edwina Gibbs) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/deckers-outdoor-marcato/hedge-fund-marcato-recommends-overhaul-to-double-deckers-stock-idINL2N1MG03K'|'2017-10-05T00:49:00.000+03:00'
'f3f3ad7727c8ac5cd32f6ea42b05962eeed86fc2'|'Russia''s Sibur, Saudi Aramco agree to explore possible cooperation'|'October 5, 2017 / 12:50 PM / in 17 minutes Russia''s Sibur, Saudi Aramco agree to explore possible cooperation Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MOSCOW, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Sibur, Russia<69>s largest producer of petrochemicals, and Russian state investment fund RDIF on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding with energy company Saudi Aramco to exploit possible cooperation in Russia and Saudi Arabia. The companies plan to evaluate the potential of the petrochemical markets of both countries and consider the possibility of expanding cooperation, Sibur said in a statement. <20>The partnership with one of Saudi Arabia<69>s biggest petrochemical companies will allow Sibur to develop its expertise and sales areas and to study ...the Middle East market,<2C> Sibur Chairman Dmitry Konov said. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak was quoted as saying on Wednesday that Sibur would sign a $1.1 billion agreement to build a gas chemical plant in Saudi Arabia. Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; writing by Dmitry Solovyov and Maria Kiselyova; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/russia-saudi-sibur-aramco/russias-sibur-saudi-aramco-agree-to-explore-possible-cooperation-idUSR4N1ME013'|'2017-10-05T15:50:00.000+03:00'
'14a505b3dc563db7dd617b502facfcdc4ad0c269'|'Watchdog approves PGE''s purchase of EDF''s Polish assets, sets conditions'|'WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish anti-monopoly office said that Poland<6E>s biggest power firm PGE PGE.WA can take over the local assets of France<63>s EDF ( EDF.PA ) on condition that it sells most of the electricity generated by the Rybnik coal-fueled power plant via the power exchange.State-run PGE agreed to buy EDF<44>s local power and heating plants for 4.51 billion zlotys ($1.23 billion) in May in a move to increase its market share and give the state more control over the country<72>s utilities.EDF<44>s assets include eight combined heat and power plants and a 1.8 gigawatt (GW) coal-fired power plant in Rybnik in southern Poland.The deal, which has been supported by Poland<6E>s energy ministry, was unexpectedly questioned in September by the anti-monopoly office UOKiK, which said that the transaction could undermine competition in the energy market.After buying EDF assets PGE<47>s share of the country<72>s power generation capacity would rise to 45 from 36 percent, the energy minister said.<2E>UOKiK issued an approval for PGE<47>s takeover of EDF Polska,<2C> the office said in a statement on Thursday, adding that its condition is that in 2018-2021 PGE will have to sell all the power generated in Rybnik via the power exchange.<2E>The boost of PGE<47>s market position will be reduced. All the electricity which has been up to date generated by EDF Polska and sold to wholesale clients, will be directed to the exchange. None of the entrepreneurs interested in buying the electricity will be discriminated against,<2C> the head of UOKiK said in a statement.PGE, which plans to conclude the deal by the end of 2017, said it will not impact power prices for customers.<2E>In our view this will have a positive impact on the market. We do not expect any electricity price movements related with this transaction,<2C> PGE Chief Executive Henryk Baranowski told a news conference on Thursday.He added that PGE will not require a loan to finance the deal.Shares in PGE were up 1 percent at 0801 GMT on a flat market.Reporting by Anna Koper; writing by Agnieszka Barteczko; editing by Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-edf-m-a-pge-polska/watchdog-approves-pges-purchase-of-edfs-polish-assets-sets-conditions-idUSKBN1CA0PW'|'2017-10-05T16:31:00.000+03:00'
'442e4dd448212020dc4acfcdcd69fa58124f2011'|'Brazil rules out listing Eletrobras in Novo Mercado segment'|'October 5, 2017 / 1:32 PM / in 15 minutes Brazil rules out listing Eletrobras in Novo Mercado segment Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BRAS<41>LIA, Oct 5 (Reuters) - The Brazilian government will not propose a transition of state-controlled utility Centrais El<45>tricas Brasileiras SA to the Novo Mercado segment of the S<>o Paulo Stock Exchange, Deputy Energy Minister Paulo Pedrosa said on Thursday. Companies listed in the Novo Mercado segment observe stricter corporate governance rules. Taking Eletrobras, as the company is known, to the segment could compromise its privatization schedule, Pedrosa said. (Reporting by Leonardo Goy; Writing by Ana Mano; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/eletrobras-privatization-novo-mercado/brazil-rules-out-listing-eletrobras-in-novo-mercado-segment-idUSE6N1JV01L'|'2017-10-05T16:31:00.000+03:00'
'39a39e7fa1ecd1ecaaa81d3f34410a9e8bd77815'|'Brexit worries to keep FTSE in limbo - Reuters poll'|'October 5, 2017 / 5:18 AM / in an hour Brexit worries to keep FTSE in limbo - Reuters poll Kit Rees , Helen Reid 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A worker shelters from the rain under a Union Flag umbrella as he passes the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain, October 1, 2008. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s blue chip FTSE 100 index will move little for the rest of the year and only drift higher in 2018, lagging Europe as uncertainties over Brexit negotiations bite investor sentiment, a Reuters poll showed on Thursday. While Britain''s FTSE .FTSE has enjoyed a modest rise so far this year, a jump in sterling to its highest level since the June 2016 referendum on European membership has put the brakes on further gains for its mostly big, dollar-earning constituent companies. Throw into the mix this year<61>s underperformance of the heavyweight oil sector, which accounts for nearly a fifth of the FTSE 100<30>s market cap, and it<69>s no surprise the FTSE has been the worst-performing major market in Europe so far in 2017. Market participants see the FTSE moving little in the coming three months, finishing 2017 at 7,456 points according to a Reuters poll of 33 market watchers. It closed at 7,468 on Tuesday. This would give the index a 4.4 percent gain over the year, around half the 9 percent rise predicted for the broader European STOXX 600 market. [EPOLL/FRDE] The lacklustre pattern is set to continue - respondents saw the FTSE gaining just 7 percent from end-2016 to end-2018, while they predicted a 16 percent gain for the STOXX over the same period. Since last June<6E>s vote for Brexit, the FTSE has enjoyed the translation boost of a weak sterling which helps profits of international blue-chips that dominate the index. But this has not been enough to inspire confidence in investors, many of whom prefer the non-UK European market, which trades at a similar premium to its average valuations. <20>Regardless of theoretical benefits from softer sterling for foreign currency-earning FTSE multinationals, the real-term impact of volatile inflation and a murky horizon on growth will keep pressuring the UK investment case,<2C> said Ken Odeluga, market analyst at City Index. Global funds have been reducing UK equities while increasing their exposure to the euro zone, HSBC analysts said last week. Reflecting a stalling market, the range of forecasts for end-2017 was tighter than in a June poll, with 7,900 the highest level while the lowest was 7,000. The FTSE is expected to climb to new records next year, hitting 7,630 points by the end of 2018. This forecast was lower than that in a June poll, indicating fading enthusiasm among investors in the market. Uncertainty over Brexit negotiations, unattractive valuations and a softening in earnings revisions were most-commonly cited for caution on the UK stock market. Investors have been frustrated with a lack of clarity and progress in the Brexit negotiations, with a much-anticipated speech from Prime Minister Theresa May in Florence disappointing market participants with its lack of concrete details. Analysts<74> earnings revisions on the index turned negative as third-quarter reporting season approached, and one respondent said investors would focus on underlying quality of earnings rather than headline figures. Reporting by Helen Reid and Kit Rees Polling by Indradip Ghosh and Sujith Pai in Bengaluru Editing by Jeremy Gaunt'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-stocks-poll/brexit-worries-to-keep-ftse-in-limbo-idUKKBN1CA0A5'|'2017-10-05T08:20:00.000+03:00'
'9095ee7b94d34ae82a554533073f3ff4ef70ffce'|'US STOCKS SNAPSHOT-Futures extend losses after weak jobs report'|'October 6, 2017 / 12:37 PM / Updated 32 minutes ago US STOCKS SNAPSHOT-Futures extend losses after weak jobs report Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 6 (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures extended losses on Friday after a Labor Department report showed September nonfarm payrolls fell by 33,000 as Hurricanes Harvey and Irma left displaced workers temporarily unemployed and delayed hiring. . At 8:31 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 21 points, or 0.09 percent, with 13,133 contracts changing hands. S&P 500 e-minis were down 3 points, or 0.12 percent, with 116,187 contracts traded. Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 7 points, or 0.12 percent, on volume of 23,104 contracts. (Reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-stocks/us-stocks-snapshot-futures-extend-losses-after-weak-jobs-report-idUSL4N1MH2DA'|'2017-10-06T15:34:00.000+03:00'
'43f30af4ce8af67701d69e0d3f2d4a89df4036cd'|'As Ford pushes into electric vehicles, U.S. union aims to save jobs'|' 45 PM / in 13 minutes As Ford pushes into electric vehicles, U.S. union aims to save jobs 3 Min Read An airplane flies above a Ford logo in Colma, California, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam DETROIT (Reuters) - The United Auto Workers is talking with Ford Motor Co ( F.N ) about ways to avoid layoffs as the No. 2 U.S. automaker builds more electric vehicles, a senior union official told Reuters on Thursday. Ford told investors Tuesday it planned to slash $14 billion in costs over the next five years and shift investments away from internal combustion engines and sedans to develop more trucks, plus electric and hybrid cars. <20>We<57>ve been doing our due diligence to find out how much it (electrification) means to us,<2C> UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles, head of the union<6F>s Ford department said in a telephone interview. <20>We put them on notice early on that we want to be part of this process.<2E> <20>Up to this point they (Ford) have been agreeable that it<69>s in the best interest of the company and also our members for us to be part of the process,<2C> he added. Ford<72>s push into electric comes after Detroit rival General Motors Co ( GM.N ) unveiled plans to add 20 new battery electric and fuel cell vehicles to its global lineup by 2023. Ford<72>s presentation to investors this week under new chief executive Jim Hackett, included a slide touting a 30 percent reduction in <20>hours per unit<69> to build electric vehicles. Fewer hours mean fewer workers. German automaker Daimler AG ( DAIGn.DE ) warned last month that electric Mercedes models would initially be just half as profitable as conventional alternatives - forcing the group to find savings by outsourcing more component manufacturing, which may in turn threaten German jobs. The UAW<41>s Settles said he had met one-on-one with Hackett, a former CEO of office furniture maker Steelcase Inc ( SCS.N ) and in a meeting with union leaders in recent weeks. He said Hackett<74>s message had been that he wants to find new opportunities for UAW workers as electrification evolves. <20>The assembly may be different, but he<68>s not looking to eliminate any jobs,<2C> Settles said of Hackett. <20>He<48>s been consistent in what he<68>s saying and I<>m optimistic he means it.<2E> The UAW vice president said the union and automaker had assembled teams to discuss future jobs, including for production workers and skilled trades workers, Settles said. Settles said Ford<72>s announcement in March that it would invest $200 million on a new data centre in Michigan could create new union-represented, technology-related jobs. <20>We need further communications on what it means in terms of jobs,<2C> he said. Ford has completed 85 percent of its 2015 union contract target of creating or retaining 8,500 union jobs by 2019 and could hit 100 percent by the end of 2017, Settles said. A Ford spokeswoman said the company and the UAW are in <20>constant communications about the business.<2E> Reporting by Nick Carey; Editing by Andrew Hay'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-autos-ford-motor-union/as-ford-pushes-into-electric-vehicles-u-s-union-aims-to-save-jobs-idUKKBN1CA2F1'|'2017-10-05T21:44:00.000+03:00'
'31854b0b5646c3ddb63c13723c902cabe3d021cc'|'Oil markets cautious as another tropical storm heads for Gulf of Mexico'|'October 6, 2017 / 12:37 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago Oil markets cautious as another tropical storm heads for Gulf of Mexico 3 Min Read A worker at an oil field owned by Bashneft, Bashkortostan, Russia, January 28, 2015. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin/File Photo SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil markets opened cautiously in Asia on Friday as traders monitored a tropical storm heading for the Gulf of Mexico and as China remained closed for a week-long public holiday. But the prospect of extended oil production cuts led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) helped support prices. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were trading at $50.73 per barrel at 0016 GMT, down 6 cents from their last close. Brent crude futures LCOc1, the international benchmark for oil prices, were down 6 cents at $56.94 a barrel. Oil market activity was subdued on Friday, due to the ongoing Golden Week holiday in China and because traders were monitoring tropical storm Nate, which is threatening to disrupt the oil industry in the Gulf of Mexico just weeks after several hurricanes pummelled the region, knocking out many oil producing and processing facilities. The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP), one of the country<72>s most important fuel handling facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, said early on Friday that it had suspended operations until the weather improves. Nate is currently off the coast of Nicaragua and heading northwest into a region of the Gulf of Mexico populated by offshore oil platforms which pump more than 1.6 million barrels of crude per day (bpd), about 17 percent of U.S. output, according to government data. BP ( BP.L ) and Chevron ( CVX.N ) were shutting production at all Gulf platforms, while Royal Dutch Shell ( RDSa.L ) and Anadarko Petroleum ( APC.N ) suspended some production and drilling activity in the Gulf. Exxon Mobil ( XOM.N ), Statoil ( STL.OL ) and other producers have withdrawn personnel from their platforms. Despite this, markets were not far off their closing levels from the previous day, when prices rose by around 2 percent on the prospect of an extended production cut deal lead by OPEC and Russia. King Salman of Saudi Arabia, OPEC<45>s de-facto leaders, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday to discuss, among other things, oil policy. Saudi Arabia made no firm pledge to extend a deal between OPEC, Russia and other producers on cutting supplies but said it was <20>flexible<6C> regarding Moscow<6F>s suggestion to prolong the pact until the end of 2018. <20>The visit raised the possibility of the current production cut agreement being extended if the crude oil inventories remain stubbornly high,<2C> ANZ bank said. A deal to cut around 1.8 million bpd in production has been in place since January and is currently due to expire at the end of March 2018. Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Joseph Radford'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-oil/oil-markets-cautious-as-another-tropical-storm-heads-for-gulf-of-mexico-idUKKBN1CB02K'|'2017-10-06T03:37:00.000+03:00'
'b6c25680805f11b90228703c0045bd782875d02b'|'Thyssenkrupp unions fear loss of rights in Tata deal structure'|'October 5, 2017 / 7:09 PM / Updated an hour ago Thyssenkrupp unions fear loss of rights in Tata deal structure Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A man wears a helmet with glasses attached during a Thyssenkrupp steel workers protest rally in Bochum, Germany, September 22, 2017, against the planned combination of the group''s European steel operations with those of Tata Steel. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay BERLIN (Reuters) - Labor bosses at Germany<6E>s Thyssenkrupp ( TKAG.DE ) said workers<72> legal say in strategic decisions at the corporate level could be diluted in the planned holding structure for the new venture with India<69>s Tata Steel ( TISC.NS ). The two firms agreed last month to merge their European steel operations to create the continent<6E>s second-biggest steelmaker after ArcelorMittal ( MT.AS ) with combined sales of about 15 billion euros ($17.55 billion). The venture would be based in Amsterdam. Unions at Thyssenkrupp have opposed the deal and are concerned more steel jobs may go in the long term in addition to as many as 4,000 job losses already announced as part of the merger. In a statement published late on Thursday, the German group<75>s works council welcomed a pledge by chief executive Heinrich Hiesinger to stand by workers<72> so-called co-determination rights but were skeptical about how this would play out under the joint venture<72>s future holding structure. Co-determination in the coal and steel industries gives equal numbers of labor and capital representatives on company supervisory boards and is seen as key to winning over workers. <20>What worries us is that through the planned move of the holding (company) of a potential joint venture to the Netherlands, existing co-determination structures in the group will be undermined,<2C> labor leaders said. <20>The strategic decisions that are taken in such a holding (company) would in this case be largely removed from the legitimate exertion of influence by labor representatives, staff leaders and unions,<2C> they said, adding that preserving co-determination in a future venture with Tata would be their <20>fervent wish.<2E> Reporting by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Edmund Blair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-thyssenkrupp-tata-steel-workers/thyssenkrupp-unions-fear-loss-of-rights-in-tata-deal-structure-idUKKBN1CA2HD'|'2017-10-05T22:06:00.000+03:00'
'de1a9f2e2570feac9e4c56ea505d789ff7566a36'|'Zika vaccine shows promise in early human trial'|'October 4, 2017 / 9:00 PM / in 10 minutes Zika vaccine shows promise in early human trial Julie Steenhuysen 3 Min Read CHICAGO, Oct 4 (Reuters) - A DNA-based Zika vaccine from Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc and South Korea<65>s GeneOne Life Science Inc induced anti-Zika immune responses in an early stage human trial, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday. Unlike conventional vaccines, which often use inactivated or killed versions of a virus, the Inovio-GeneOne shot is a synthetic vaccine made by reproducing sections of the Zika virus genome in a lab, and then loading them onto a ring of genetic material called a plasmid. This vaccine is then injected beneath the skin and followed up with a device that generates electrical impulses, creating small pores in cells that allow the DNA to pass into cells. After three doses of the Zika vaccine known as GLS-5700, all 40 healthy volunteers in the study developed Zika-specific antibodies. <20>Everybody made antibodies,<2C> said Dr. Pablo Tebas, an infectious disease expert at the University of Pennsylvania who led the study. To see if these antibodies could be protective against the virus, blood from immunized study participants was injected into mice who were then exposed to Zika. Animals that had received the Zika-specific antibodies were protected. <20>When we gave mice serum from the same people before they got the vaccine, they were not protected. The mice died,<2C> Tebas said in a telephone interview. Tebas said the study shows how nimble synthetic DNA vaccines can be, noting that it took just seven months from the time the vaccine was first designed until the start of the clinical trial. <20>This technique of making DNA vaccines is very fast,<2C> he said. More testing will be needed to show the vaccine is effective at protecting people from Zika, and that could prove challenging given that the once explosive epidemic has slowed and there are few large populations now at risk for Zika infection. Zika caused thousands of cases of the birth defect known as microcephaly in Brazil in 2015, prompting the World Health Organization to declare Zika a public health emergency in February 2016. Last November, the WHO dropped the emergency designation, but stressed that the virus, found in at least 60 countries, will keep spreading where mosquitoes that carry the virus are present. Last month, Sanofi SA ended development efforts on its Zika vaccine, based on an inactivated or killed Zika virus. Takeda Pharmaceutical Co is still working on a Zika vaccine using this approach. (Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Marguerita Choy)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/health-zika-vaccine/zika-vaccine-shows-promise-in-early-human-trial-idUSL2N1MF1JD'|'2017-10-05T00:00:00.000+03:00'
'1b6be903a15397f643c98e538a89978ef9d1b795'|'UPDATE 2-Most U.S. Gulf oil output offline ahead of Tropical Storm Nate'|'A massive drilling derrick is pictured on BP''s Thunder Horse Oil Platform in the Gulf of Mexico, 150 miles from the Louisiana coast, May 11, 2017. Picture taken May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jessica Resnick-Ault HOUSTON (Reuters) - Nearly three-quarters of U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil production was offline ahead of Tropical Storm Nate, and more oil companies were halting operations late Friday, bracing for the second major storm in as many months to menace the region.Nate was about 80 miles east of Cozumel Mexico and moving at 21 miles per hour late Friday afternoon. It was expected to strike the U.S. Gulf Coast Saturday with hurricane force winds and rain, according to the National Hurricane Center.Its path takes it right through the most-active oil-producing region of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Nate has shuttered nearly three times as much Gulf crude production as Hurricane Harvey did in August. At its height, Harvey shut-in only about 25 percent of the region<6F>s oil production.Anadarko Petroleum ( APC.N ) late Friday said it shut in five more offshore facilities and was removing all their workers. BHP Billiton ( BHP.AX )BHP.L also said it evacuated two platforms.BP ( BP.L ), Exxon Mobil ( XOM.N ), Chevron ( CVX.N ) and ConocoPhillips ( COP.N ) also withdrew staff and curtailed output. Government data showed oil companies evacuated 66 platforms and took 1.24 million barrels of oil per day offline since Thursday.Nate was expected to cut U.S. exports of crude oil and boost refining margins given low stockpiles of gasoline and other refined products, brokerage Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ) said in a note to clients.Oil prices CLc1 dropped nearly 3 percent on Friday despite the storm, on concerns about global oversupply and profit taking.[O/R]ConocoPhillips began evacuating non-essential personnel from its Magnolia oil platform, Exxon evacuated staff at its Mobile Bay and Lena platforms.Chevron shut its 4,100-mile (6,598 km) pipeline subsidiary, saying it would not accept or deliver crude until after Nate subsided.Matt Rogers, meteorologist at Commodity Weather Group, said the rapid speed of the storm could keep it from becoming more than a Category 1 hurricane, producing up to 80 mile per hour winds.<2E>In our view it is not going to be strong enough to do damage<67> to offshore production facilities, he said. <20>Usually when storms move this quickly they have troubles developing,<2C> he said.The U.S. Coast Guard declared condition <20>X-Ray<61> at the port of New Orleans ahead of Nate, which means gale force winds could come within 48 hours. Commercial vessels and large barges must report to the Coast Guard to decide whether to depart or remain.Parts of the Mississippi River, which flows past New Orleans and is a major transit hub for oil and other commodities, have been closed to inbound deep draft vessels.The region<6F>s oil refineries are still recovering from Harvey, which shut production at some plants for weeks. Producers also curtailed some production but quickly resumed output.Royal Dutch Shell Plc ( RDSa.L ) decided against cutting operations at its 225,800 barrel-per-day (bpd) Norco, Louisiana, refinery, reversing an earlier decision.Shell did, though, close production at three oil-producing hubs in the eastern Gulf.Phillips 66 ( PSX.N ) was shutting down its 247,000 bpd Alliance, Louisiana, refinery, 25 miles (40 km) south of New Orleans, as a precaution. [nL2N1MH01Y]Commodity Weather forecast Nate to bring moderate rainfall when it makes landfall somewhere west of Mobile Bay, Alabama, and east of New Orleans, Louisiana. It expects between 4 inches and 6 inches of rain to fall in the path of the storm.The U.S. Gulf of Mexico is home to about 17 percent of U.S. crude output and 5 percent of dry natural gas output, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. More than 45 percent of U.S. refining capacity is along the Gulf Coast.Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Additional reporting by Marianna Parraga, Gary McWilliams and Erwi
'bf8ddbf4559ac1bb01c361e610031202c70129e3'|'Warsh seen breaking from current Fed policy stance - Nomura'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Federal Reserve led by Kevin Warsh would move the U.S. central bank away from its gradual approach towards raising interest rates and reducing its $4.5 trillion balance sheet, George Goncalves, head U.S. rates strategy at Nomura Securities International, said on Friday.The former Fed governor is seen by traders as the current frontrunner to succeed Janet Yellen as head of the Fed, whose term expires in early February.<2E>We believe that a Warsh Fed would be the most interesting and a clear shift from the way the Fed is currently run,<2C> Goncalves wrote in a research note.Nomura<72>s economists assigned a 40 percent chance President Donald Trump would pick Warsh as the next Fed chief; that was followed by current Fed governor Jerome Powell at 20 percent. Powell was believed likely not to stray far from the Fed<65>s current policy stance.Meanwhile, they placed a 20 percent chance on Yellen being reappointed, a 10 percent chance for National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, and 10 percent for other candidates.Among areas Warsh may deviate from Yellen was that he would unlikely <20>waver as much<63> if the stock market corrects from their record high levels. This compares with Yellen and her predecessor Ben Bernanke who have been sensitive to gyrations in financial conditions, according to Goncalves.A Warsh tenure as Fed chief also leaves open the possibility for a faster pace of shrinking the Fed<65>s balance sheet, especially with the reduction of its holdings of mortgage-backed securities, he said.Moreover, Warsh, whom some traders speculated resigned in 2011 as Fed governor in protest of the central bank<6E>s second round of bond purchases, would be less likely to expand the Fed<65>s balance sheet through quantitative easing (QE) again in the future, Goncalves said.That said, long-term risk premia in the bond market would not fall as much because Warsh would be less prone to embark on QE to combat a recession or a financial crisis.<2E>With Warsh, that pricing should drop and result in higher term premia as the hurdle for more QE gets hiked,<2C> Goncalves said.Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Bernadette Baum '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-fed-chair-nomura/warsh-seen-breaking-from-current-fed-policy-stance-nomura-idINKBN1CB2FC'|'2017-10-06T16:32:00.000+03:00'
'0ad516df8488b4fbbaebd4123aff1fd2f344776a'|'Awaiting better days, multinationals keep Venezuela units alive - barely'|'The corporate logo of Ford is seen on a billboard at the facilities of the company in Valencia, Venezuela, August 30, 2017. REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares VALENCIA, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan auto worker Celso Nunez spends his days moonlighting as a mover and trading salvaged building materials in his worn-out red pick-up.His employer, Ford Motor Co ( F.N ), does not mind.In fact, it is paying him to stay off the job.With Venezuela<6C>s economy in shambles, Ford has furloughed Nunez and 1200 colleagues at its moribund plant here in Valencia, Venezuela<6C>s third-largest city. The company said it wants to call them back when times are better.Nunez hasn<73>t reported for work in ten months, save for a few days in September to work on a prototype for a new cargo truck. But he still collects a quarter of his weekly salary of 50,000 bolivars, the equivalent of just $1.70 at the widely used black-market exchange rate.The father of two teenagers counts himself lucky.<2E>Ford has given me stability ... to help my family,<2C> said Nunez, proudly wearing his blue factory shirt after a recent meeting at the plant about the new prototype.<2E>We know it<69>s not their fault, it<69>s the national situation.<2E>Ford is among roughly 150 multinationals still hanging on in Venezuela. The once-prosperous OPEC nation is now in the fourth year of a recession caused by a fall in oil prices and, economists say, failed policies of its socialist government.A dearth of raw materials and plummeting demand has led many to halt or vastly scale back production, furloughing many employees in a country where labor laws ban mass layoffs.A handful of companies, including Clorox ( CLX.N ), Kimberly-Clark ( KMB.N ), General Mills ( GIS.N ), General Motors ( GM.N ) and Harvest Natural Resources HNR.N, have given up entirely, abandoning assets or selling them cheap.Most multinationals, however, say they want to keep at least a minimum presence to be ready for a future upturn in Venezuela, home to the world<6C>s largest proven oil reserves.In Valencia, retrenchment by multinationals including Fiat Chrysler ( FCHA.MI ), Colgate Palmolive ( CL.N ), Johnson & Johnson ( JNJ.N ) and Nestle SA ( NESN.S ) have rendered the city a near ghost town.Last week, Nestle suspended operations at a baby food plant there, blaming a lack of supplies. In a statement, Nestle said it continues to pay the plant<6E>s 80 workers and remains committed to Venezuela and about 3200 employees at other factories there.DUST ON SEMI-ASSEMBLED CARS At Ford, the company said its Valencia factory had assembled about 400 cars through August of this year, compared with 17,000 units in 2012. Still, the No. 2 U.S. automaker said in an e-mail it <20>has no plans to leave the country.<2E>The drastically reduced work schedules, it added, is a way to <20>adapt to the local market<65>s needs.<2E>Ford began selling cars in dollars in 2015 so it could buy parts without requesting hard currency via government exchange controls. Other automakers followed suit, but have not been able to sell many cars because few Venezuelans can afford them.Venezuela<6C>s car assembly output slumped to 2,849 units in 2016 from a record 172,418 units in 2007, according to auto industry group Cavenez. Sales, including imports, plunged to 3,008 last year from 491,899 in 2007.At dealerships including Ford, Chrysler and Toyota, Venezuelan-made luxury vehicles sit without buyers, priced as much as $20,000 more than in other countries. Costs are inflated by imported parts and few economies of scale, analysts said.To stay afloat in such conditions, Ford and other multinationals have shortened shifts, reduced payrolls and focused on cheaper products, according to unions and company officials.The cutbacks make for scenes like that at the Fiat Chrysler plant in Valencia, where dust gathers on semi-assembled 2016 Jeep Cherokees, still missing windshields and mirrors.On a recent day, about 20 employees stood at the entrance to the plant, which sold more than 25,
'779ec3c70eab3ef18c5ab78a123a3568a66bea56'|'Vinci''s acquisitive energy arm hunts more targets in Europe'|'FILE PHOTO: The logo of Vinci is pictured during the company''s 2011 annual results presentation in Paris February 8, 2012. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - French energy infrastructure and automation company Vinci Energies<65> apparently insatiable appetite for takeovers remains undiminished as it strives for leadership of the highly fragmented outsourcing industry.Vinci Energies, part of construction and transport concessions giant Vinci ( SGEF.PA ), has completed 250 takeovers since 2000, more than tripling its turnover to 10.2 billion euros ($11.9 billion).<2E>We can very well continue on this trend,<2C> Chief Executive Yves Meignie told Reuters.In the first eight months of this year the company snapped up 17 smaller businesses with combined turnover of 450 million euros and has its eye on more as it expands in outsourcing and digital services.<2E>In our business, the scope for consolidation is very, very big; there is no lack of opportunities,<2C> said Meignie, adding that the main constraint is the company<6E>s ability to integrate all its acquisitions.Vinci Energies is one of those businesses that is everywhere without most people ever having heard of it. From Paris street lamps to sophisticated building-management systems, it provides the glue that keeps infrastructure running.It operates heating and cooling systems in office blocks and hospitals, automates factories and oil platforms, runs cloud-computing systems and builds transport infrastructure. It also builds power grids and solar and wind farms for utilities.SPENDING SPREE Its biggest deal was the 1.2 billion euro takeover of electrical engineering group Cegelec in 2010, which added about 3 billion euros of revenue and made the Qatar Investment Authority a large minority shareholder in parent company Vinci.Other notable acquisitions include Dutch company Imtech<63>s IT operation, Brazilian energy and transport specialist Orteng and the energy services business of Swiss Alpiq ( ALPH.S ), which made Vinci Energies the biggest player in energy infrastructure in Germany behind French rival Spie ( SPIE.PA ).It has also gobbled up a string of start-ups and small-cap companies that often continue to operate under their own brands, putting Vinci Energies at the center of a network of some 1,600 businesses.But Vinci Energies, which employs 64,500 people, does not simply swallow companies it buys. <20>We integrate them in a highly decentralized network,<2C> Meignie said.Though further deals in a home market that generates 5 billion euros of annual turnover may raise antitrust concerns, most of the industries in which Vinci Energies operates are so vast and fragmented that its wider market share is rarely bigger than 1 percent.Outside of France, the company has European turnover of 4 billion euros, half of which comes from Germany, plus a further 1 billion euros from outside Europe, largely in Southeast Asia.CHASING SCALE Main rivals include Germany<6E>s Siemens ( SIEGn.DE ), Hochtief ( HOTG.DE ) and Bilfinger ( GBFG.DE ). EDF<44>s ( EDF.PA ) energy services group Dalkia is another, as is Engie<69>s ( ENGIE.PA ) Cofely, which bought the facilities management arm of Britain<69>s Balfour Beatty in 2014.All these provide outsourced engineering, maintenance and facilities-management services to cities and companies, winning clients with their know-how and then adding packages of related services that they often subcontract.M&A activity in that industry has intensified as large national players buy companies abroad to build European scale.Three quarters of growth at Vinci Energies comes from acquisitions, Meignie said, adding that the typical 2-3 percent operating margin of those acquired businesses is then boosted to Vinci Energies<65> average of 5.7 percent by ditching the least-profitable contracts.Vinci Energies accounts for nearly a quarter of its parent company<6E>s revenue and is in the same league as its competitors and CAC40 index members Cap Gemini ( CAPP.PA ) and Atos ( ATOS.PA )
'4bf502a8997b4ba8c855eaf3558006093dfb1d09'|'UPDATE 1-Spanish bank studies moving HQ from Catalonia as business alarm over crisis deepens'|'October 5, 2017 / 12:31 PM / in 13 minutes UPDATE 3-Spain to make it easier for firms to move base from Catalonia as business alarm deepens Reuters Staff * Government to make it easier for firms to move legal bases * Board of Caixabank to meet on Friday to discuss moving base * Banco Sabadell moves base from Catalonia to Alicante * Uncertainty paralysing investment in Catalonia: economy minister (Recasts with government decree, Sabadell decision, Caixabank board meeting) By Carlos Ruano and Andr<64>s Gonz<6E>lez MADRID, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Spain<69>s government will issue a decree on Friday making it easier for firms to transfer their legal base out of Catalonia, two sources said, in a move that could deal a serious blow to the region<6F>s finances as it considers declaring independence. The decree is tailor-made for Spanish lender Caixabank , sources familiar with the matter said, as it would make it possible for the bank to transfer its legal and tax base to another location without having to hold a shareholders<72> meeting as stated in its statutes. <20>The government is working on changing the law so that it<69>s no longer need to have a shareholders<72> meeting, which would delay a change of the legal base in a case of emergency,<2C> one of the sources said. The government and Caixabank declined to comment. The board of Caixabank will meet on Friday to study a possible transfer of its legal base away from Catalonia due to the political uncertainty in the region, a source familiar with the situation said. Caixabank is Catalonia<69>s biggest company by market value and accounts for around 50 percent of the region<6F>s banking sector. Another Catalonia-based bank, Sabadell, Spain<69>s fifth-biggest lender, decided on Thursday to move its base from Catalonia to Alicante, on Spain<69>s eastern coast. Catalonia<69>s parliament was planning to declare independence on Monday, after a banned referendum marred by violence last weekend. That plan was cast into doubt on Thursday when Spain<69>s Constitutional Court ordered that Monday<61>s session of the Catalan parliament be suspended. The political crisis was <20>generating uncertainty that is paralysing all investment projects in Catalonia,<2C> Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos told Reuters on Thursday. <20>I<EFBFBD>m convinced that, right now, not one international or national investor will take part in a new investment project until this is cleared up,<2C> he said. Shares in Sabadell and Caixabank have been pummelled this week. Reports they might move caused the stocks to surge on Thursday - Sabadell rose 6 percent and Caixabank 5 percent. NO IMPACT ON ECONOMY Government plans to sell a stake in state-run lender Bankia have also been put off because of the uncertainty, de Guindos said. Madrid will look at the placement again once the Catalan situation had been resolved, he said. However, Catalonia<69>s planned unilateral declaration of independence has not had any impact on Spain<69>s overall economic output, de Guindos said, reiterating that he expected growth of more than 3 percent this year. Financial markets have been shaken this week by fears that secession would undermine the euro zone<6E>s fourth-biggest economy, dealing a heavy blow to Spain<69>s finances and sending the Catalan economy into a tailspin. Catalonia is a centre of industry and tourism that accounts for a fifth of Spain<69>s economy, a production base for major multinationals from Volkswagen to Nestle, and home to Europe<70>s fastest-growing sea port. News earlier this week that two small listed Catalan companies, Eurona Wireless Telecom and Oryzon Genomics , had decided to shift their head offices improved their share price. Both declined to say whether they were responding to Sunday<61>s vote. Spain<69>s bond and stock markets both staged a recovery on Thursday after the Constitutional Court<72>s decision and a Bloomberg report that Catalan separatists were looking at putting off a declaration of independence to create room for a negotiated settlemen
'5038a4ebfb268bdb49485b8bbd47c7c3659097f0'|'Police raid Vivendi HQ in Paris: spokesman'|'October 5, 2017 / 10:54 AM / in an hour Police raid Vivendi, Natixis in Mediaset market abuse inquiry Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Vivendi logo at the company''s headquarters in Paris, France, March 10, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - Police raided the headquarters of French media giant Vivendi on Thursday as part of an investigation into alleged market abuse involving its purchase of a stake in Italian TV group Mediaset, Vivendi said. The offices of French bank Natixis in Paris were also being searched, an Italian source with direct knowledge of the matter said. A Natixis spokeswoman declined to comment. Vivendi said Thursday<61>s raid was the result of an <20>unfounded and unjust complaint<6E> by former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose holding company Fininvest lodged a criminal complaint last December alleging market manipulation against Vivendi. Berlusconi and his family are the biggest shareholders in Mediaset through Fininvest, with a 39.5 percent stake and 41.1 percent of the voting rights, according to Mediaset. Vivendi comes second with a 28.8 percent stake and 29.9 percent of voting rights. <20>Vivendi<64>s management reaffirms that it acquired its stake in Mediaset totally legally and transparently and remains absolutely confident in the conclusion of this disagreement,<2C> the group said in a statement that confirmed the raid of its offices on Thursday. The police raids follow a formal request sent by Milan prosecutors to French authorities several months ago. Vivendi, led by tycoon Vincent Bollore, became Mediaset<65>s second largest shareholder in late 2016 when it bought a 20 percent stake in the Italian broadcaster. Last December, when Vivendi acquired an 800 million-euro ($938 million) stake in Mediaset, two sources said Natixis was one of two banks mandated by the French group to carry out the purchase. Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain and Maya Nikolaeva in Paris and Manuela D''Alesssandro in Milan; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Alexander Smith, Greg Mahlich '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-vivendi-raid/police-raid-vivendi-hq-in-paris-spokesman-idINKBN1CA14G'|'2017-10-05T08:54:00.000+03:00'
'ad5a9b3dd644d5f4373c2ab8872e1d1f5c79aa19'|'Centrica, SSE pull out of slump as FTSE edges higher'|' 46 AM / in 24 minutes Centrica, SSE pull out of slump as FTSE edges higher Helen Reid 4   woman walks past the London Stock Exchange building in the City of London, Britain, January 16 , 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s main share index outperformed European peers on Thursday as a weaker pound and strong basic resources stocks underpinned gains, and Centrica and SSE recovered from a slump after Prime Minister Theresa May announced a cap on energy prices. Sterling dropped half a percent against the dollar in early deals, helping support the internationally-focused FTSE up 0.2 percent against slightly weaker European benchmarks. Britain<69>s biggest energy provider Centrica ( CNA.L ) and peer SSE ( SSE.L ) both recovered from sharp losses in the previous session after May announced a cap on energy prices in her speech to party activists. SSE was up 2 percent and British Gas owner Centrica gained 1.2 percent, rising from the near 14-year lows hit on Wednesday. Centrica<63>s CEO urged the government to rethink its plan to put caps on energy prices. Tesco ( TSCO.L ) shares also recovered from Wednesday<61>s losses, up 2 percent and boosted by UBS raising its price target on the stock. South African private healthcare firm Mediclinic ( MDCM.L ) rose 1.7 percent after Goldman Sachs raised it to <20>neutral<61>, arguing the shares<65> recent decline took them to a level which better reflected a challenging economic environment in South Africa. In other company movers, Merlin ( MERL.L ) shares were up 1.4 percent in early deals, after a source said the Madame Tussauds owner submitted an offer for parts of Seaworld ( SEAS.N ). <20>Historically the group has demonstrated good discipline around M&A,<2C> said analysts at Barclays, adding too little was known about any potential transaction to judge it at the moment. Miners Glencore ( GLEN.L ), Rio Tinto ( RIO.L ), Anglo American ( AAL.L ), and Antofagasta ( ANTO.L ) were the biggest contributors to index gains, up 1.3 to 1.6 percent as metals prices held near multi-year highs. [MET/L] Shares in small-cap DFS ( DFSD.L ) fell 4.2 percent after the furniture retailer reported a 13 percent fall in full-year core profits, blaming a <20>very challenging<6E> UK market. <20>While market conditions are currently challenging, we believe DFS is in a strong position to gain market share against a tough backdrop,<2C> said Berenberg consumer discretionaries analyst Victoria Maigrot. Overall investors saw the FTSE hardly budging in the last quarter of the year as concerns over Brexit negotiations and a softening in earnings expectations keep the benchmark from gaining further ground, a Reuters poll found. <20>The economic backdrop for the UK continues to look concerning with negative real wage growth, low household savings, high consumer debt and falling consumer confidence,<2C> said Edward Park, investment director at Brooks Macdonald. However, he added: <20>The fact the market is positioned for a tough domestic backdrop stops us from becoming outright bearish as a lot of the potential risk is priced in.<2E> Reporting by Helen Reid; Editing by Toby Chopra'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-stocks/centrica-sse-pull-out-of-slump-as-ftse-edges-higher-idUKKBN1CA0RS'|'2017-10-05T11:46:00.000+03:00'
'cca7af99601058fabf2313c36a28ec2789619c18'|'Germany''s Dialog to buy Silego in Internet-of-Things play'|' 34 AM / in 31 minutes Germany''s Dialog to buy Silego in Internet-of-Things play Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Dialog semiconductor logo is pictured at a company building in Germering near Munich, Germany August 15, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany<6E>s Dialog Semiconductor said on Thursday it would acquire privately held California-based Silego Technology Inc for up to $306 million, helping to strengthen its position in the market for the so-called Internet of Things. Silego is a leading maker of Configurable Mixed-signal Integrated Circuits, or CMICs, that integrate multiple functions into a single chip that can be configured and customised to perform different functions. Dialog, in a statement, said it would pay $276 million in cash plus an additional contingent consideration of up to $30.4 million for Silego, which is headquartered in Santa Clara, California and has around 235 employees. The deal would expand the addressable market of Dialog by more than $1.4 billion, and the company said it expected the transaction to be accretive to its earnings per share in 2018 and accretive to gross margins. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year and will be funded with cash, said Dialog. The company<6E>s product range comprises integrated power management, AC/DC power conversion, charging and low-power connectivity technology. Reporting by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Ludwig Burger'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-silego-m-a-dialog/germanys-dialog-to-buy-silego-in-internet-of-things-play-idUKKBN1CA0L6'|'2017-10-05T10:34:00.000+03:00'
'93f1979ae61868c7138dbc158bbece447ee83f05'|'Mexican telecom regulator asks America Movil to modify separation plan'|'October 5, 2017 / 1:05 PM / in 9 minutes Mexican telecom regulator asks America Movil to modify separation plan Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MEXICO CITY, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Mexico<63>s telecommunications regulator IFT on Thursday asked billionaire Carlos Slim<69>s company America Movil to modify a proposal to separate out its fixed-line services, the regulator said in a statement. (Reporting by David Alire Garcia)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/mexico-telecom/mexican-telecom-regulator-asks-america-movil-to-modify-separation-plan-idUSL2N1MG0MO'|'2017-10-05T16:03:00.000+03:00'
'33776d35359c0091986ded2256e1054795abe483'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Brazil stocks hit all-time high on economic optimism'|'October 5, 2017 / 4:46 PM / Updated 8 minutes ago EMERGING MARKETS-Brazil stocks hit all-time high on economic optimism Reuters Staff 4 Min Read By Bruno Federowski SAO PAULO, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Brazil''s benchmark stock index on Thursday broke above the 78,000-point level for the first time ever, boosted by the outlook for an accelerating economic recovery and low interest rates. The Bovespa rose as much as 1.9 percent to 78,024, a new all-time high, extending the index''s gains so far this month to 5 percent. Signs that Latin America''s largest economy is emerging faster than expected from the deepest recession in a century have boosted demand for Brazilian assets. Low inflation has also allowed Brazil''s central bank to slash interest rates, with traders all but convinced they will fall to record lows this year, heightening the allure of stocks. Economists at Ita<74> Unibanco on Thursday revised their estimates for gross domestic product growth in 2018 to 3 percent from 2.7 percent, saying the benchmark Selic interest rate is likely to fall to 6.5 percent. Shares whose performance is closely tied to economic growth, such as financials and utilities, led the rally. State-controlled oil company Petr<74>leo Brasileiro SA also rose as expectations that major producers could cut output next year lifted crude prices. The Brazilian real, however, was nearly flat as traders avoided big bets ahead of the release of key U.S. jobs data on Friday. Other Latin American currencies, such as the Mexican and Chilean pesos, also seesawed. New U.S. employment figures could help traders adjust their bets over the pace of Federal Reserve interest rate increases in the coming months. The U.S. central bank has signaled it will hike rates in December, potentially reducing demand for higher-yielding assets, but many investors expect it to take its time going forward as inflation remains stubbornly below its 2 percent target. Key Latin American stock indexes and currencies at 1625 GMT: Stock indexes Latest Daily YTD pct pct change change MSCI Emerging Markets 1,104.21 0.22 27.78 MSCI LatAm 3,021.60 0.78 28.1 Brazil Bovespa 77,608.81 1.33 28.86 Mexico S&P/BVM IPC 50,826.03 0.52 11.36 Chile IPSA 5,442.11 -0.15 31.09 Chile IGPA 27,227.96 -0.07 31.32 Argentina MerVal 26,820.01 1.3 58.53 Colombia IGBC 11,102.47 0.2 9.62 Currencies Latest Daily YTD pct pct change change Brazil real 3.1329 -0.07 3.71 Mexico peso 18.3040 -0.22 13.33 Chile peso 627.95 0.60 6.81 Colombia peso 2,923.71 0.32 2.66 Peru sol 3.254 0.15 4.92 Argentina peso (interbank) 17.3300 0.17 -8.40 Argentina peso (parallel) 17.75 0.39 -5.24 (Reporting by Bruno Federowski, editing by G Crosse)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/emerging-markets-latam/emerging-markets-brazil-stocks-hit-all-time-high-on-economic-optimism-idUSL2N1MG1CA'|'2017-10-05T19:46:00.000+03:00'
'95ace02864a679761bbf7538fe0dca8b56f0d519'|'MOVES-Colliers appoints Rob Faulkner as director of investment property'|'October 5, 2017 / 11:55 AM / in 21 minutes MOVES-Colliers appoints Rob Faulkner as director of investment property Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 5 (Reuters) - Real estate services firm Colliers International Group Inc said it appointed Rob Faulkner as a director to its investment property management team. Faulkner formerly worked as account director at Lambert Smith Hampton. (Reporting by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/colliersinternationalgroup-moves-robfaul/moves-colliers-appoints-rob-faulkner-as-director-of-investment-property-idUSL4N1MG209'|'2017-10-05T14:51:00.000+03:00'
'5835864fd805a8adec7d12f1fed7c97a3c7e6c64'|'Merlin Entertainments bids for part of SeaWorld: Bloomberg'|'October 4, 2017 / 10:03 PM / in 6 hours Merlin Entertainments bids for part of SeaWorld: source Ben Martin 1 Min Read Stuffed Orca whale toys are displayed for sale as SeaWorld unveils its new Orca Encounter show in San Diego, California, U.S., May 31, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake (Reuters) - UK-based theme park operator Merlin Entertainments Plc ( MERL.L ) has approached marine park operator SeaWorld Entertainment Inc ( SEAS.N ) about a potential deal, according to a person familiar with the matter. Merlin, which runs Legoland parks worldwide and owns Madame Tussauds, has made a bid for part of SeaWorld, but SeaWorld<6C>s preference is to sell itself whole, the source said. SeaWorld has also received indications of interest from other parties, the source said. <20>We do not comment on speculation or rumors<72>, SeaWorld said. Merlin could not be reached for a comment outside business hours. Merlin<69>s approach for SeaWorld was first reported by Bloomberg earlier on Wednesday. Shares of Orlando-based SeaWorld were trading up nearly 5 percent after the bell on Wednesday. Reporting by Vibhuti Sharma and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-seaworld-entrnmt-m-a-merlin-ent/merlin-entertainments-bids-for-part-of-seaworld-bloomberg-idINKBN1C930N'|'2017-10-04T20:03:00.000+03:00'
'c3f3ff9b590a2c8ec2f36528a2efebe670d685e1'|'Tesco whistleblower commissioned report on scale of profit hole, court hears - UK news'|'UK news Tesco whistleblower commissioned report on scale of profit hole, court hears Amit Soni tells fraud trial he asked his team to draft report on how <20>200m profit undershoot had occurred, aiming to pass it to grocer<65>s most senior chiefs Amit Soni arrives at Southwark crown court to testify in the trial of three former financial directors of Tesco on charges of fraud and false accounting. Photograph: Mary Turner/Reuters UK news Tesco whistleblower commissioned report on scale of profit hole, court hears Amit Soni tells fraud trial he asked his team to draft report on how <20>200m profit undershoot had occurred, aiming to pass it to grocer<65>s most senior chiefs View more sharing options Thursday 5 October 2017 15.57 BST Last modified on Thursday 5 October 2017 18.51 BST The whistleblower at the centre of the Tesco accounting scandal has told a court that he personally commissioned a detailed analysis of the scale of alleged profits manipulation at the retailer and that his team were <20>falling apart<72> in an aggressive environment where his bosses refused to downgrade targets. Amit Soni, a senior accountant, alerted the grocer<65>s most senior management to a <20>250m profits misstatement in 2014. His warning prompted the company to make a statement to the London Stock Exchange that wiped <20>2bn from the value of the business. Soni is giving evidence for the prosecution at Southwark crown court in the case against Carl Rogberg, the former finance director of Tesco UK; John Scouler, the former commercial director for food; and Christopher Bush, the former managing director of Tesco UK. The three men have all been charged with one count of fraud by abuse of position and one count of false accounting. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) launched a criminal investigation into accounting practices at Tesco in October 2014. The three men deny any wrongdoing and have pleaded not guilty. Soni said he had asked his team to put together a detailed report on the scale of the profit hole at Tesco after he pressed Scouler to ask for <20>200m in <20>relief<65> to be knocked off the second half target in 2014 but got only a <20>small number<65>. He said he could see his team were <20>falling apart<72> under the pressure. <20>I could clearly see that parts of my team were beginning to give up, if not the entire team. They all work very, very hard. <20>They were all very intelligent people, but it was getting to the point that even they could see that the future was not looking any better, it was not going to get better from what it was today. They were seeing me one on one, they were talking to me in groups and I could see them falling apart. <20>They were citing examples of how aggressive the entire environment was, they were citing examples of aggression with the suppliers as well,<2C> he said. He said he personally gave up trying to persuade his immediate bosses to accept that profits were way off target via the usual course of business. In late August Soni asked his junior colleagues to prepare a special document, called the <20>legacy paper<65>. He said he wanted to get <20>even more clarity<74> on how a <20>200m profit undershoot had happened and make it clear <20>in one sheet<65> so that he could pass that on to Bush. His group spoke to Tesco buyers in all the grocery departments, including fresh produce, dairy, and healthcare, to lay out <20>line by line<6E> how income had been <20>pulled forward<72> . The process of pulling forward involves booking future income early, which inflates current income. He said the document had been prepared without Scouler, Rogberg or Bush asking him to do so and he thought Rogberg might have seen it as a <20>waste of time<6D>. The case continues. '|'theguardian.com'|'https://www.theguardian.com/uk/business'|'https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/05/tesco-whistleblower-commissioned-report-on-scale-of-profit-hole-court-hears'|'2017-10-05T17:57:00.000+03:00'
'34ac110a69eafc274cbb3c879126fa0d0385302d'|'MIDEAST STOCKS - Factors to watch - October 5'|'DUBAI, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Here are some factors that may affect Middle East stock markets on Thursday. Reuters has not verified the press reports and does not vouch for their accuracy.INTERNATIONAL/REGIONAL * GLOBAL MARKETS-Asian shares edge up slightly after strong U.S. data* MIDEAST STOCKS-Qatar sinks to 5-year low, Egypt banks hurt by reserve ratio rise* Oil dips on record U.S. exports, but OPEC-led supply cuts lend support* PRECIOUS-Gold steady ahead of U.S. jobs data* Middle East Crude-Stronger OSPs buoy Dec outlook* Chemical weapons watchdog found sarin used in March Syria attack -sources* Sudan expects U.S. to lift sanctions, conditions met - state minister* Putin says oil cuts with OPEC could last to end of 2018* Khamenei says Iran, Turkey must take measures against Kurdish secession - TV* Global air freight demand rose 12 pct in August - IATA* Iraq eases financial restrictions on Kurdistan region, in first sign of de-escalation* Iraqi forces in final assault to take Hawija from Islamic State* Libya<79>s Sharara oilfield reopens after two-day shutdown -NOCEGYPT * Egypt<70>s bank reserve hike may be precursor of benchmark rate cut* Average yields rise on Egypt<70>s six-month, one-year T-bills* Suez Canal 9 months revenues rise to $3.86 bln - statementSAUDI ARABIA * Saudi Arabia arrests 46 for stirring divisions - state media* Saudi Aramco plans expansion in India with new unit -sources* Russia says to sign deals with Saudi worth over $3 bln* Saudi<64>s Petrorabigh shuts vacuum gas oil unit for one month* Saudi central bank paints rosy picture of economy* Saudi Arabia raises November light crude prices to Asia* Saudi Arabia expects to cut barley imports to 8 mln t this season - SAGO* Saudi processing three applications for banking licences* Saudis consolidate control of state funds in drive for growthUNITED ARAB EMIRATES * UAE court postpones judgment at Dana Gas sukuk hearing - source* Dubai PE firm Abraaj invests in Pakistani cinema operator Cinepax* TABLE-UAE<41>s Fujairah oil inventory data for week ended Oct. 2QATAR * Qatar c.bank: government has enough reserves to support Qatari banks* Qatar raises Sept Marine, Land crude prices -documentKUWAIT * Shell cancels sale of Thai gas field stakes to Kuwait<69>s KUFPEC (Compiled by Dubai newsroom) '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/mideast-factors/mideast-stocks-factors-to-watch-october-5-idUSL8N1MG04L'|'2017-10-05T10:36:00.000+03:00'
'91b04284dbda2fb0dba4616f7de598e75d81cc69'|'MOVES-BNP Paribas Asset Management appoints senior sales manager for funds team'|'October 5, 2017 / 2:15 PM / Updated 6 minutes ago MOVES-BNP Paribas Asset Management appoints senior sales manager for funds team Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 5 (Reuters) - BNP Paribas Asset Management, the investment management arm of BNP Paribas, appointed Chris Hofmann as senior sales manager for German-speaking clients in ETF and indexed fund teams. Hofmann will be based in Munich and report to Claus Hecher, head of development in Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland. Formerly, Hofmann worked at UniCredit Wealth Management as head of ETF allocation advisory. (Reporting by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/bnpparibasassetmanagement-moves-chrishof/moves-bnp-paribas-asset-management-appoints-senior-sales-manager-for-funds-team-idUSL4N1MG2E6'|'2017-10-05T17:11:00.000+03:00'
'bb02df169a926927de950f9fb6f713d6f8f0d240'|'Nippon Life in talks to buy majority of MassMutual Japan unit: sources'|'October 5, 2017 / 5:14 AM / in 5 hours Nippon Life in talks to buy MassMutual Japan unit in bancassurance push: sources Taiga Uranaka 3 Min Read A man walks past a logo of Japanese life insurer Nippon Life at the company''s headquarters in Tokyo April 21, 2011. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao/File Photo GLOBAL BUSINESS WEEK AHEAD PACKAGE - SEARCH ''BUSINESS WEEK AHEAD 21 NOV'' FOR ALL IMAGES - S1AEUOAWHUAA TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s biggest private-sector life insurer, Nippon Life Insurance Co [NPNLI.UL], is in talks to buy a majority stake in the domestic unit of U.S.-based MassMutual Financial Group in an attempt to boost its bancassurance sales, two sources said. Bancassurance, in which insurers use partner banks<6B> branch networks for distribution, has a minor presence in Japan, the world<6C>s second-largest life insurance market, where policies have been mostly sold through an army of saleswomen who visit customers<72> workplaces and houses to build rapport. But a growing number of the younger generation, pressed for time, prefer to buy their policies that are recommended by specialists at bank branches where they go to do other transactions. MassMutual has well-established relationships with banks in Japan that Nippon is seeking to tap, with the deal. The Nikkei business daily, which first reported the talks, said Nippon Life was likely to pay 100 billion yen to 200 billion yen ($887 million to $1.77 billion) for the stake in MassMutual Life Insurance Co. It was not immediately clear how much stake exactly Nippon wants to buy in MassMutual<61>s unit. Nippon Life and MassMutual Life Insurance Co declined to comment. The two people, who had knowledge of the negotiations, declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to media. MassMutual<61>s Japan unit has about $25 billion in assets and had premium revenue of $2.86 billion for the year ended in March. The mid-sized insurer is known for its foreign currency-denominated products sold at bank branches. Japanese insurers are already taking steps to embrace bancassurance. Nippon Life completed a $2.5 billion acquisition of smaller domestic rival Mitsui Life Insurance Co last year to partly bolster sales through bank branch networks. And rival Dai-ichi Life Holdings Inc ( 8750.T ) has been building distribution channels in addition to traditional door-to-door sales, setting up new insurance companies focused on selling products at bank branches and third-party insurance brokers. The MassMutual unit is not the only target that Nippon Life is eyeing. Last week, Reuters reported the company was in talks to buy into U.S. investment company TCW Group. Japanese insurers have been hit by diminishing returns from investments in Japanese government bonds and other securities amid the Bank of Japan<61>s massive stimulus measures, prompting them to seek riskier but higher-yield assets. In an interview earlier this year, Nippon Life President Yoshinobu Tsutsui said his company was looking for acquisition opportunities for overseas asset management companies and life insurers. In October last year Nippon Life completed the acquisition of an 80 percent stake in National Australia Bank Ltd<74>s ( NAB.AX ) life insurance unit for A$2.2 billion ($1.72 billion). Reporting by Taiga Uranaka; Additional reporting by Makiko Yamazaki and Sam Nussey; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-massmutual-jp-m-a-nippon-life-ins/nippon-life-in-talks-to-buy-majority-of-massmutual-japan-unit-sources-idINKBN1CA09U'|'2017-10-05T03:14:00.000+03:00'
'99918b95aba28dd637eae313e65a9b9dbc1fe892'|'Spanish bank studies moving HQ from Catalonia as business alarm over crisis deepens'|'Sabadell bank''s headquarters is seen in Barcelona, Spain, October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Yves Herman MADRID (Reuters) - Spain<69>s government will issue a decree on Friday making it easier for firms to transfer their legal base out of Catalonia, two sources said, in a move that could deal a serious blow to the region<6F>s finances as it considers declaring independence.The decree is tailor-made for Spanish lender Caixabank ( CABK.MC ), sources familiar with the matter said, as it would make it possible for the bank to transfer its legal and tax base to another location without having to hold a shareholders<72> meeting as stated in its statutes.<2E>The government is working on changing the law so that it<69>s no longer need to have a shareholders<72> meeting, which would delay a change of the legal base in a case of emergency,<2C> one of the sources said.The government and Caixabank declined to comment.The board of Caixabank will meet on Friday to study a possible transfer of its legal base away from Catalonia due to the political uncertainty in the region, a source familiar with the situation said.Caixabank is Catalonia<69>s biggest company by market value and accounts for around 50 percent of the region<6F>s banking sector.Another Catalonia-based bank, Sabadell ( SABE.MC ), Spain<69>s fifth-biggest lender, decided on Thursday to move its base from Catalonia to Alicante, on Spain<69>s eastern coast.Catalonia<69>s parliament was planning to declare independence on Monday, after a banned referendum marred by violence last weekend. That plan was cast into doubt on Thursday when Spain<69>s Constitutional Court ordered that Monday<61>s session of the Catalan parliament be suspended.The political crisis was <20>generating uncertainty that is paralysing all investment projects in Catalonia,<2C> Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos told Reuters on Thursday.<2E>I<EFBFBD>m convinced that, right now, not one international or national investor will take part in a new investment project until this is cleared up,<2C> he said.Shares in Sabadell and Caixabank have been pummelled this week. Reports they might move caused the stocks to surge on Thursday - Sabadell rose 6 percent and Caixabank 5 percent.NO IMPACT ON ECONOMY Government plans to sell a stake in state-run lender Bankia ( BKIA.MC ) have also been put off because of the uncertainty, de Guindos said. Madrid will look at the placement again once the Catalan situation had been resolved, he said.However, Catalonia<69>s planned unilateral declaration of independence has not had any impact on Spain<69>s overall economic output, de Guindos said, reiterating that he expected growth of more than 3 percent this year.Financial markets have been shaken this week by fears that secession would undermine the euro zone<6E>s fourth-biggest economy, dealing a heavy blow to Spain<69>s finances and sending the Catalan economy into a tailspin.Catalonia is a centre of industry and tourism that accounts for a fifth of Spain<69>s economy, a production base for major multinationals from Volkswagen to Nestle, and home to Europe<70>s fastest-growing sea port.News earlier this week that two small listed Catalan companies, Eurona Wireless Telecom ( EUWT.MC ) and Oryzon Genomics ( ORY.MC ), had decided to shift their head offices improved their share price. Both declined to say whether they were responding to Sunday<61>s vote.Spain<69>s bond and stock markets both staged a recovery on Thursday after the Constitutional Court<72>s decision and a Bloomberg report that Catalan separatists were looking at putting off a declaration of independence to create room for a negotiated settlement with Spain.The nation<6F>s borrowing costs hit a seven-month high on Thursday, though investors showed solid interest in a government bond auction.<2E>WORRIED AND SCARED<45>Many Spanish business leaders and foreign companies with operations in Catalonia have expressed concern this week.<2E>As a businessman, as a Spaniard and as a person, I am very worried and I am scared by what<61>s going on (in Cata
'1da55dac1cb9813f0f6e1f0cc7e2539b6014025e'|'UPDATE 1-LPC-Private credit market set to reach US$1trn by 2020'|'(Updates Wednesday<61>s story to add details of report co-author in para 2)By David BrookeLONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) - The global private credit market is set to reach US$1trn by 2020, according to a report from the Alternative Credit Council (ACC), an affiliate of the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) that was published on Wednesday.Assets under management in the industry stand at US$605.5bn, which is split between dry powder and committed capital and is set to reach US$1trn mark by 2020, according to the report titled <20>Financing the Economy 2017<31>, which was co-authored by law firm Dechert LLP.This expansion will come as funds sitting on record amounts of available capital expand their scope beyond the middle market and target larger scale transitions.<2E>Where once the core of private credit activity was in the SME market, private credit managers are now participating in large scale transactions - historically the preserve of traditional bank lending or the public bond markets,<2C> the report said.The popularity of private credit in the US has fuelled interest in the product across Europe and Asia Pacific as managers look for growth opportunities.As the sector continues to attract more investment, the amount of dry powder decreased as a proportion of the total assets in the industry to 36% in 2017, from 38.8% in 2016, the report said.Larger borrowers that have more than US$75m EBITDA make up 18.4% of the market, and a fifth of managers are targeting loans in excess of US$100m.The managers surveyed by the ACC cited their ability to provide quick decisions on loans, underwrite complex transactions and flexibility on terms as the reason for their growing popularity with borrowers.Managers are not only targeting larger transactions but are also starting to mirror other features of Europe<70>s syndicated loan and bond markets.Both covenant and coupon terms have shifted more favourably towards the borrower. Nearly half of private credit managers said that covenants had become less onerous in the past three years.Some managers are even seeing demand for covenant-lite structures, which were previously reserved for larger companies.Managers are also seeing more demand for longer dated loans, and almost a quarter have a target term of six years or more, compared to 8% in 2015.However, fund managers are remaining disciplined and nearly half of all managers are not using leverage to boost their returns.While the majority of activity comes from private equity-driven transactions, sponsorless transactions are increasing and accounted for 44.9% of all loans made by private debt funds this year, up from 37.5% in 2016, according to the report.Jack Inglis, chief executive of AIMA, said: <20>Private credit has become a permanent feature of the lending landscape. Performance across the industry continues to be strong relative to many other asset classes.<2E><>This has attracted fundraising. The industry continues to deliver flexible deals suited to borrowers<72> needs and the success of the sector to date is fuelling its expansion into new markets,<2C> he added. (Editing by Claire Ruckin and Tessa Walsh) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/acc-loans/update-1-lpc-private-credit-market-set-to-reach-us1trn-by-2020-idINL8N1MG28A'|'2017-10-05T07:59:00.000+03:00'
'3735cacf490b42ce900f4ff7c307794c7b9b7e2c'|'Chevron preparing to shut two facilities ahead of Gulf storm'|'Oct 4 (Reuters) - Chevron Corp said it is preparing to shut its Petronius and Blind Faith facilities ahead of Tropical Depression 16 now at the of the Gulf of Mexico.It added that from Thursday morning, it will begin evacuating all personnel from the facilities. (Reporting by Sangameswaran S in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/storm-atlantic-gulf-chevron/chevron-preparing-to-shut-two-facilities-ahead-of-gulf-storm-idINL4N1MG02R'|'2017-10-04T22:29:00.000+03:00'
'093c5e2b9731a33a89f44ee7ba27facde9a54c48'|'PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 6'|'Oct 6 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.- U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to overrule his top national security advisers and decline to certify the Iran nuclear agreement, according to people who have been briefed on the matter. nyti.ms/2yKvRe1- Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has flown on military aircraft seven times since March at a cost of more than $800,000, including a $15,000 round-trip flight to New York to meet with President Trump at Trump Tower, according to the Treasury Department''s Office of Inspector General. nyti.ms/2koJc9r- In the latest case of an insider removing sensitive data from America''s largest intelligence agency, Russian hackers obtained classified documents that a National Security Agency employee had taken and stored on his home computer. nyti.ms/2y4ER08- The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday imposed tough new restrictions on so-called payday lending, dealing a potentially crushing blow to an industry that churns out billions of dollars a year in high-interest loans to working-class and poor Americans. nyti.ms/2gftuZz- Russian energy and aluminum company En+ Group said on Thursday that it planned to raise $1.5 billion in an initial public offering in London and Moscow. nyti.ms/2y3KiMMCompiled by Bengaluru newsroom '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/press-digest-nyt/press-digest-new-york-times-business-news-oct-6-idINL4N1MH10Z'|'2017-10-06T03:07:00.000+03:00'
'3ed6df011e1e35e8da54f09d81a72476b094ab47'|'Quest: Are Theresa May''s days in charge numbered? 6,'|'Quest: Are Theresa May''s days in charge numbered? by Richard Quest @richardquest October 6, 2017: 12:10 AM ET Brexit trouble for Theresa May Quest''s Profitable Moment I wonder if we will look back on this week as the turning point when it became obvious Theresa May''s prime ministership is over. Her keynote speech to the Tory conference was by every conclusion a mishap-filled disaster. Firstly, a prankster managed to get on the stage and handed her a P45 -- the form used in the U.K. for dismissal. Then May got a coughing fit and had to be handed a throat lozenge by the chancellor. Finally, some of the letters on the screen behind her fell off while she was finishing up. At the moment, the only reason to keep Theresa May is the alternatives are grim, if not worse. The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, is a brilliant man suffused by his own ambition. Everyone else is either dull, dangerous or deluded. So, Mrs. May continues. It would be a grave mistake for the European Union to engage in schadenfreude, rubbing their hands in glee at this confusion. Some clearly hope the British confusion will enable the EU to "get one over" on the U.K., punishing them for leaving and sending a warning to other upstarts. That would be disaster. A failed negotiation may hurt the Brits more than the rest, but in the long run everyone will suffer. Theresa May''s days as prime minister are numbered. What comes after may be worse. The Brexit negotiations are stuck in phase one and time is running out. Politics as normal must not be the way forward on either side if we are to avert disaster of the worst kind. Spain is being forced to contemplate the unthinkable: losing 20% of its economy . That''s what would happen if Catalonia carried out its threat to declare independence from Spain after Madrid interfered with its referendum. An unsanctioned separation would plunge Spain into chaos in a situation even more serious and messy than Brexit. More likely, Spain and Catalonia will reach a truce to repair their frayed relations. In the meantime, Spain''s stock market is retreating and two of its biggest banks are considering quitting Barcelona . -- Matt Egan EU wants more taxes from Amazon Europe says Luxembourg gave a tax break to the mighty Amazon -- and now the EU wants the Jeff Bezos-run company to pay <20>250 million ($293 million) for the "illegal aid." Luxembourg says it did nothing wrong. But the EU has stepped up efforts to crack down on what it views as multinationals taking advantage of tax loopholes. Ireland is refusing to collect <20>13 billion ($15.3 billion) in unpaid taxes from Apple. The EU is taking Ireland to court over the issue . -- Paul R. La Monica In an interview with Fox on Tuesday, President Trump raised the prospect of canceling hurricane-stricken Puerto Rico''s massive debt burden (which totals $72 billion). "You can wave goodbye to that," he said. Despite the rhetoric, it''s unlikely Puerto Rico will really get a clean slate. White House budget director Mick Mulvaney walked Trump''s comments back on Wednesday. Puerto Ricans say they have more pressing concerns . And Trump doesn''t have the legal authority to erase the territory''s debt anyway. -- Julia Horowitz Las Vegas in mourning Tourism is a big business for Las Vegas. And there are now questions about whether people will continue to flock to Sin City following the massacre at a country music festival -- the worst mass shooting in modern American history. Casino stocks, including Mandalay Bay owner MGM , fell. But gun stocks rose as investors bet sales will surge -- as they often do following mass shootings. Concert organizers around the U.S. have already pledged to step up security . -- Paul R. La Monica '|'cnn.com'|'http://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_news_economy.rss'|'http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/06/investing/quest-brexit-theresa-may/index.html'|'2017-10-06T08:10:00.000+03:00'
'3a90ceea60a67f43d9efa55bc0847e17d0d4a3f2'|'Ford has a clear plan to fix its present failings'|'LIKE any mechanic with a misfiring car, Ford<72>s new boss has had his head under the bonnet working out what needs attention. Jim Hackett emerged on October 3rd with a checklist of repairs to present to investors, who have been awaiting his diagnosis since he took over in May. The list is short but the engineering is complicated: restore Ford<72>s competitiveness while preparing for a future of electric vehicles (EVs), self-driving cars and transport services. But those expecting a radical overhaul were probably disappointed.Mr Hackett<74>s predecessor, Mark Fields, was shown the door by Bill Ford, the firm<72>s chairman, for failing to make a persuasive case that he was reinventing Ford as a mobility firm at the forefront of automotive technology. Despite acknowledging to investors that he and Mr Ford agreed that his new job was <20>about the future not the past<73>, Mr Hackett was clearest about how to make Ford fit for the present.  Ford has struggled in recent years. It has underperformed even amid the lowly stockmarket valuations of carmakers challenged by tech firms with bolder ideas about transport in the future. Mr Hackett admitted to investors that, despite record profits of late, Ford had fallen short on margins, depriving them of billions of dollars. He hopes to put that right chiefly by using old-fashioned means<6E>cutting costs.Reducing complexity by pruning the huge variety of different specifications available for each vehicle (in the case of the Focus, from 35,000 to 96) and sharing parts across more cars will help to lower costs, which have risen almost as fast as revenues since 2010. Bringing better technology to the industrial process should also cut the time it takes to develop new vehicles, by up to a fifth. This will all bring savings of $14bn over the next five years, according to Mr Hackett. Plans are also afoot to make more of the sort of cars that people want to buy. Buyers are turning against saloon cars and are demanding SUVs and trucks, so Ford will make more of them. But altering the line-up of products is hardly a step-change.These are sensible fixes. But it is unlikely that Mr Hackett<74>s measured tone will reassure investors that Ford is taking a lead in the new technologies that will determine success in the longer term. Neither does it help that its rival in Detroit, General Motors (GM), is doing a much better job. It launched a long-range EV, the Chevrolet Bolt, last year, and on October 2nd said that it planned 20 electric models by 2023. Despite announcing that it would reduce spending on internal combustion engines by a third by 2022 and divert that cash to electric powertrains, Ford will not launch a similar vehicle until 2020. Ford insists that it is only interested in profitable EVs. But withstanding losses while learning how to make and market battery-powered cars may give GM and other carmakers a long-term advantage.Ford also aims to become the world<6C>s most trusted mobility company. Much like all bosses of carmakers faced with the puzzle of finding business models around ride-hailing and autonomous cars, Mr Hackett was vague about how Ford might provide services profitably. He did at least signal that it would find partners for self-driving technology, abandoning Mr Fields<64>s riskier strategy of doing everything internally.Striking the right balance between <20>thinking and doing<6E> is important, according to Mr Hackett, who wants to <20>bend the arc towards doing<6E>. That is certainly what catching up with GM will require. Deutsche Bank recently suggested that Ford<72>s rival may have commercial driverless cars on the road within the next couple of years, well ahead of any competitors.Ford has plenty of ground to regain. As Barclays, a bank, points out, it went from being the <20>darling<6E> of the industry a few years ago to a firm that investors now treat with <20>indifference, disinterest [and] apathy<68>. Mr Hackett has announced more than mild tinkering. Investors will doubtless welcome the attack on costs but he has no rev
'879417974224d2a3863d5e24c7b6b4a5b64e7b13'|'French group Orange eyes growth from cybersecurity businesses'|' 42 PM / in 16 minutes French group Orange eyes growth from cybersecurity businesses Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The logo of French telecoms group Orange is seen at the entrance of the Cyberdefense division headquarters at Nanterre, France, October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau PARIS (Reuters) - Orange ( ORAN.PA ) expects growth from cybersecurity services and aims to recruit 1,000 staff in this area by 2020, France<63>s biggest telecoms group said on Thursday. Michel Van Den Berghe, head of the Orange Cyberdefense division, told reporters that Orange aimed to generate 350 million euros (<28>312.25 million) from cybersecurity services by 2020, up from 250 million euros at present. Governments and corporations around the world are looking at ways to better protect themselves against computer hackers amid concerns over electoral campaigns, the day-to-day running of businesses and risks posed to national security. In June, a cyber attack wreaked havoc around the globe, crippling thousands of computers, disrupting operations at ports from Mumbai to Los Angeles and halting production at a chocolate factory in Australia. Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-orange-cyber/french-group-orange-eyes-growth-from-cybersecurity-businesses-idUKKBN1CA0PC'|'2017-10-05T21:39:00.000+03:00'
'eb3434a83352944c7e4fc540f91fc751ee3604af'|'INSIGHT-Awaiting better days, multinationals keep Venezuela units alive - barely'|' 00 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago INSIGHT-Awaiting better days, multinationals keep Venezuela units alive - barely Eyanir Chinea , Corina Pons 9 Min Read VALENCIA, Venezuela, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Venezuelan auto worker Celso Nunez spends his days moonlighting as a mover and trading salvaged building materials in his worn-out red pick-up. His employer, Ford Motor Co, does not mind. In fact, it is paying him to stay off the job. With Venezuela<6C>s economy in shambles, Ford has furloughed Nunez and 1200 colleagues at its moribund plant here in Valencia, Venezuela<6C>s third-largest city. The company said it wants to call them back when times are better. Nunez hasn<73>t reported for work in ten months, save for a few days in September to work on a prototype for a new cargo truck. But he still collects a quarter of his weekly salary of 50,000 bolivars, the equivalent of just $1.70 at the widely used black-market exchange rate. The father of two teenagers counts himself lucky. <20>Ford has given me stability ... to help my family,<2C> said Nunez, proudly wearing his blue factory shirt after a recent meeting at the plant about the new prototype. <20>We know it<69>s not their fault, it<69>s the national situation.<2E> Ford is among roughly 150 multinationals still hanging on in Venezuela. The once-prosperous OPEC nation is now in the fourth year of a recession caused by a fall in oil prices and, economists say, failed policies of its socialist government. A dearth of raw materials and plummeting demand has led many to halt or vastly scale back production, furloughing many employees in a country where labor laws ban mass layoffs. A handful of companies, including Clorox, Kimberly-Clark, General Mills, General Motors and Harvest Natural Resources, have given up entirely, abandoning assets or selling them cheap. Most multinationals, however, say they want to keep at least a minimum presence to be ready for a future upturn in Venezuela, home to the world<6C>s largest proven oil reserves. In Valencia, retrenchment by multinationals including Fiat Chrysler, Colgate Palmolive, Johnson & Johnson and Nestle SA have rendered the city a near ghost town. Last week, Nestle suspended operations at a baby food plant there, blaming a lack of supplies. In a statement, Nestle said it continues to pay the plant<6E>s 80 workers and remains committed to Venezuela and about 3200 employees at other factories there. DUST ON SEMI-ASSEMBLED CARS At Ford, the company said its Valencia factory had assembled about 400 cars through August of this year, compared with 17,000 units in 2012. Still, the No. 2 U.S. automaker said in an e-mail it <20>has no plans to leave the country.<2E> The drastically reduced work schedules, it added, is a way to <20>adapt to the local market<65>s needs.<2E> Ford began selling cars in dollars in 2015 so it could buy parts without requesting hard currency via government exchange controls. Other automakers followed suit, but have not been able to sell many cars because few Venezuelans can afford them. Venezuela<6C>s car assembly output slumped to 2,849 units in 2016 from a record 172,418 units in 2007, according to auto industry group Cavenez. Sales, including imports, plunged to 3,008 last year from 491,899 in 2007. At dealerships including Ford, Chrysler and Toyota, Venezuelan-made luxury vehicles sit without buyers, priced as much as $20,000 more than in other countries. Costs are inflated by imported parts and few economies of scale, analysts said. To stay afloat in such conditions, Ford and other multinationals have shortened shifts, reduced payrolls and focused on cheaper products, according to unions and company officials. The cutbacks make for scenes like that at the Fiat Chrysler plant in Valencia, where dust gathers on semi-assembled 2016 Jeep Cherokees, still missing windshields and mirrors. On a recent day, about 20 employees stood at the entrance to the plant, which sold more than 25,000 units in 2007 but only about 150 this year. About 60 percent
'8dca16fe1d8a65c332e16d63f079bf325f105e19'|'Irish consumer sentiment improves modestly in September'|'October 5, 2017 / 11:07 PM / Updated 24 minutes ago Irish consumer sentiment improves modestly in September Reuters Staff 2 Min Read DUBLIN (Reuters) - A modest improvement in Irish consumer sentiment last month thanks to a brighter outlook for household finances was enough to return the index to its highest level since early last year, a survey showed on Friday. Ireland<6E>s economy has posted the fastest growth in Europe for the past three years and unemployment has fallen rapidly, but that has failed to buoy many consumers, some of whom are experiencing an uneven recovery and rising living costs. The KBC Bank Ireland/ESRI Consumer Sentiment Index rose to 105.8 in September from 102.9 in August, its highest level since February last year but shy of a 15-year high of 108.6 in January 2016 before Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union. While the broad picture was still one of limited gains in incomes, the survey suggested consumers are now more attuned to the possibility of positive surprises, KBC chief economist Austin Hughes said. <20>The September survey suggests that Irish consumers now see the economic glass as half full. It does not imply they see themselves at a party where the punchbowl is overflowing,<2C> Hughes said. <20>From the perspective of the average consumer, the sentiment survey suggests that the Irish economy is clearly improving but it still feels undercooked rather than overheating.<2E> He added that the improving if choppy sentiment data this year indicated a gradual unwinding of the nervousness that followed Britain<69>s decision to leave the EU as a feared sharp and speedy deterioration in the economy failed to materialise. With close trading links to Britain and a shared land border, Ireland is widely considered the EU member most at risk when its neighbour leaves the bloc. Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editinmg by Andrew Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ireland-economy-consumersentiment/irish-consumer-sentiment-improves-modestly-in-september-idUKKBN1CA2X5'|'2017-10-06T02:06:00.000+03:00'
'cc71f7b4b4c743bf62894be397f268a5fe635e3d'|'CalSTRS says it supports Nelson Peltz nomination to P&G board'|'Nelson Peltz founding partner of Trian Fund Management LP. speak at the WSJD Live conference in Laguna Beach, California October 25, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake (Reuters) - The California State Teachers<72> Retirement System (CalSTRS) said on Thursday it would support the nomination of Nelson Peltz, chief executive of Trian Fund Management, to the board of directors at Procter & Gamble Co ( PG.N ).<2E>CalSTRS believes the addition of Peltz to the board is best for P&G, the CalSTRS fund and ultimately, the teachers of California,<2C> CalSTRS Director of Corporate Governance Anne Sheehan said in a statement.The U.S. public pension fund holds close to 5.6 million shares of P&G stock valued at about $508 million, and has been an investor with Trian since April 2011, the fund said in a statement.P&G could not be immediately reached for comment outside regular business hours.Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Richard Chang '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-procter-gamble-trian-calstrs/calstrs-says-it-supports-nelson-peltz-nomination-to-pg-board-idUSKBN1CA2ZF'|'2017-10-06T02:32:00.000+03:00'
'7868e6a16cccc654f05bf63689ec56f988e47581'|'Ash Grove gets higher offer of $3.7 bln-$3.8 bln from third party'|'October 6, 2017 / 2:26 AM / Updated 41 minutes ago Summit Materials makes $3.8 billion rival bid for Ash Grove Cement: source Padraic Halpin , Pamela Barbaglia 3 Min Read Tom Hill (3rd L), CEO of cement maker Summit Materials Inc., claps before the company''s IPO on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange March 12, 2015. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson DUBLIN/LONDON (Reuters) - Summit Materials, a U.S. construction firm set up by former CRH ( CRH.I ) executives, has made a rival offer for Ash Grove Cement ( ASHG.PK ), which CRH has agreed to pay $3.5 billion for, a source said. Ash Grove said on Friday it had received a bid valued at $3.7-$3.8 billion which it expects to result in a better offer to the deal struck last month with CRH, the world<6C>s third-largest building materials supplier. A source familiar with the matter said the unnamed bidder was Summit and it had submitted its bid on Thursday. The offer is being considered by Ash Grove<76>s board, the source added. Summit said it does not comment on market rumors or speculation. Ireland<6E>s CRH said that its proposal remains in place, subject to approval from Ash Grove shareholders. Shares in CRH were down 2.1 percent at 30.85 euros at 1500 GMT while Summit was 2.0 percent lower at $32.00. Ash Grove has set a meeting on Nov. 1 for shareholders to vote on the agreement with CRH, which its board unanimously approved last month, but has extended the period during which it can look for other potential buyers to Oct. 20, the cement company said in a statement. Prior to setting up fast-growing Summit in 2009, the Denver materials group<75>s chief executive Thomas Hill headed up CRH<52>s North American arm and went on to poach a number of other senior U.S.-based CRH executives. Summit<69>s bid would surpass its own value of $3.65 billion. CRH, which has a market capitalization of $26.3 billion and said last month that it had around 5 billion euros available to spend on acquisitions over the next 18-24 months, made an all-cash bid. CRH is also Ash Grove<76>s largest customer and would be owed a $131 million termination fee if the Kansas-based company sells to another party. <20>Summit Materials<6C> opportunistic offer of an Ash Grove merger will likely see investors decide between a cash offer at a 60 percent premium or a merger that gives no certainty to a cash exit price for large Ash Grove investors,<2C> said Darren McKinley, analyst at Dublin-based Merrion Stockbrokers. <20>Given CRH<52>s position as Ash Grove<76>s largest customer, they are well placed to determine whether a higher offer makes sense or whether to let Ash Grove shareholders decide whether they want cash in hand now or to merge with a company that currently doesn<73>t pay a dividend.<2E> Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh and Conor Humphries; Editing by Alexander Smith and Elaine Hardcastle '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ash-grove-cement-m-a-crh/ash-grove-gets-higher-offer-of-3-7-billion-3-8billion-from-third-party-idUSKBN1CB06C'|'2017-10-06T05:23:00.000+03:00'
'2775dddfd2dee37f070185a16302abce6115d477'|'India: What happened to Modi''s promise of an economic boom? - Oct. 4, 2017'|'India''s economy in ''downward spiral.'' What did Modi get wrong? by Rishi Iyengar @Iyengarish October 4, 2017: 12:47 PM ET India''s poor struggle amid cash crisis India''s economy, once hailed as a global bright spot, is down in the dumps. Growth in the South Asian nation fell during the first six months of 2017 from 7% to 5.7% , its slowest pace in three years, and analysts say the road to recovery is steep. "We''re on a downward spiral," said Mohan Guruswamy, head of the Center for Policy Alternatives in Delhi, and a former official at India''s finance ministry. Prime Minister Narendra Modi swept into power in 2014, promising to take India''s economy to new heights. But many reforms have yet to materialize and some changes that have been enacted are hurting growth. Modi defended his performance in a speech Wednesday, claiming his government had helped several industries. "It is true that there has been a reduction in growth, but it is also true that the government is fully committed to reversing this trend," he said. "Our fundamentals are strong." A double whammy India is still reeling from two shocks within 12 months -- Modi''s sudden ban last November of 86% of the country''s cash, and a sweeping overhaul of the tax system aimed at turning the country''s 29 states into a single market. The cash ban "was a massive blow, just when the economy looked at a point of inflection last year and the decline had started leveling off," Guruswamy said. Modi''s signature reform -- a national goods and services tax implemented in July -- has been widely hailed as a positive step because it should simplify business in the long run. But the implementation caused major disruption. "My fear was that if people didn''t understand how to do the tax system, then they would stop doing business with one another," said Shailesh Kumar, South Asia analyst at the Eurasia Group. "You did see some of that...as companies didn''t really know what to do." The government has said it expected a growth slowdown, but appears to have been blindsided by the sharp drop. Top financial institutions are worried that the economy will struggle to regain its momentum in the near term. The central bank has just slashed its growth forecast for the current fiscal year to 6.7% from 7.3%. "The implementation of the [tax reform] appears to have rendered short-term prospects uncertain," Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel told reporters. The State Bank of India, which is owned by the government, was more blunt. The slowdown, it said in a report last month, is "not short term in nature or even transient." Modi''s not delivering Analysts, business leaders and even members of Modi''s own party are now questioning his stewardship of the economy, not just because of the upheaval his changes have caused but also over reforms that aren''t happening. "High on the list of priorities is pushing through measures to ease land acquisition laws and liberalize the labor market," analysts at Capital Economics wrote in a recent note. "But there is no clear indication yet that Prime Minister Modi actually has the conviction to push ahead with necessary but unpopular reforms." There have also been calls for an overhaul of the banking system. About 12% of total loans have gone bad, according to official data. Yashwant Sinha, a former finance minister and senior member of Modi''s party, wrote an opinion article slamming the "mess" that the Indian economy is in. "A hard landing appears inevitable," Sinha said. Beef and beer bans Rising Hindu nationalism , stoked by Modi''s right-wing party, is also hurting some parts of the economy. In May, the government banned the sale of cows -- an animal considered sacred by the country''s Hindu majority -- for slaughter, sending the meat industry into a frenzy. While the ban was suspended by India''s Supreme Court in July, the policy confusion has had a chilling effect. India exports vast quantities of buffalo meat. Those ex
'855a9aa23323f32231a876a800bbbbcad0c08449'|'RBI panel urges tougher line to get banks to pass on rate cuts'|'A man walks past the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) head office in Mumbai, June 7, 2016. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/Files MUMBAI (Reuters) - A panel created by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said lenders are not sticking to rules that determine how much they can charge for loans, and the sector must be compelled to re-assess lending rates.The five-member panel, set up by the RBI to look into why lenders were not passing on central bank rate cuts, said in a report on Wednesday that banks <20>deviated in an ad hoc manner from the specified methodologies<65> for calculating the lending rates in order to avoid passing on the RBI rate cuts.It suggested closer monitoring of how banks set their lending rates, while also suggesting a slew of technical changes intended to simplify the process of how banks go about determining how much to charge for loans.Banks <20>could be advised to re-calculate the base rate immediately by removing/readjusting arbitrary and entirely discretionary components added to the formula,<2C> the RBI panel recommended.If the RBI adopts the full proposals, it could mark a tougher line against banks that fail to pass on its rate cuts, though much would depend on how tough the central bank is willing to be in enforcing the rules.The RBI last year unveiled the so-called marginal cost of funds-based lending rates (MCLR), which sought to remove much of the discretion the country<72>s commercial banks have to set lending rates and force them to base borrowing costs on prevailing money market rates.Banks were instructed to follow a specific formula in setting lending rates.But to the frustration of RBI officials, banks have used the leeway provided by the RBI to lower lending rates by only about 120 basis points (bps) even though the RBI has cut its policy rate by 200 bps from January 2015 to August 2017.The RBI solicited responses to the proposals presented by the panel by Oct. 25.Reporting by Rafael Nam; Editing by Mark Potter '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-cenbank-lenders/rbi-panel-urges-tougher-line-to-get-banks-to-pass-on-rate-cuts-idINKBN1C92GU'|'2017-10-04T20:07:00.000+03:00'
'6987544581b997d19338aae090d764af5dc2f53d'|'UPDATE 1-UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Oct 4'|' 24 AM / in 12 minutes UPDATE 1-UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Oct 4 Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Adds company news item and futures) Oct 4 (Reuters) - Britain<69>s FTSE 100 index is seen opening 7 points lower on Wednesday, according to financial bookmakers, with futures down 0.2 percent ahead of the cash market open. * TESCO: Britain<69>s biggest retailer Tesco said on Wednesday it would pay a dividend for the first time since the 2014-15 year when it was mired in crisis, signalling it has reached the next stage of its recovery. * TESCO: Two members of Tesco<63>s financial team resigned in 2014 because they were concerned that their professional integrity was being compromised by what they were being asked to do by their bosses, a court heard on Tuesday. * GLENCORE: Miner and commodities trader Glencore has agreed to buy a further stake worth at least $531 million in Peru<72>s largest zinc miner, Volcan Compania Minera SAA, the company said on Tuesday. * BOMBARDIER: Ireland<6E>s foreign minister will raise Dublin<69>s concerns over the impact a trade dispute between the United States and Canada<64>s Bombardier could have on Northern Ireland<6E>s peace process when he meets Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross this week. * SHELL: Royal Dutch Shell said on Wednesday it has cancelled a $900 million deal to sell its gas field stakes in Thailand to Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company (KUFPEC). * GOLD: Gold prices rose on Wednesday after hitting a 7-week low in the previous session, buoyed as the dollar pulled back from a 1-1/2-month high against a basket of currencies. * OIL: Oil prices eased on Wednesday, with U.S. crude dipping below $50 per barrel, pulled down by caution that a rally that lasted for most of the third quarter would not extend through the last three months of the year. * The UK blue chip index closed 0.4 percent higher at 7,468.11 points on Tuesday, boosted by a slide in the pound after weaker construction sector activity and rumbling uncertainty over Brexit negotiations. * For more on the factors affecting European stocks, please click on: cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarkets TODAY<41>S UK PAPERS > Financial Times > Other business headlines Multimedia versions of Reuters Top News are now available for: * 3000 Xtra : visit topnews.session.rservices.com * For Top News : topnews.reuters.com (Reporting by Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-stocks-factors/update-1-uk-stocks-factors-to-watch-on-oct-4-idUSL4N1MF199'|'2017-10-04T09:24:00.000+03:00'
'd66d96ac5d421acbe57307fe0927f11f2f60e389'|'Italy could block sale of Piaggio Aerospace''s jet business to China: source'|'MILAN (Reuters) - Italy is considering blocking the proposed sale of Piaggio Aerospace<63>s executive-jet business to a Chinese state-backed consortium, amid concerns over the transfer of sensitive technology and potential loss of jobs, a source familiar with the matter said.Last week Reuters reported that the owner of Piaggio Aerospace, Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, planned to sell the executive jet division to a Chinese state-backed consortium, and that the deal was being scrutinized by Rome.The business produces the P180 turbojet which shares design and technology features with surveillance drones made by Piaggio Aerospace<63>s defense and security arm.<2E>I don<6F>t know if the sale will be allowed. There are some concerns about the sale of the P180 to the Chinese, because their offer is backed by government entities and we see the risk of a know-how transfer to China,<2C> the source said, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.<2E>The P180 technology has several overlaps between the civil and military sectors,<2C> the source said.The source did not disclose the identity of the Chinese buyers, nor the value of the proposed deal. Piaggio Aerospace and Mubadala declined to comment.A second source said Mubadala had heard that the Italian government was concerned about the planned sale but had received no formal notification. Talks with the Chinese buyers were still ongoing, this source said.The Rome government is also worried that Mubadala<6C>s planned break-up of Piaggio Aerospace would leave the company in a weaker position and make it more vulnerable to competition, according to the first source. Mubadala is also seeking to sell the firm<72>s engine and maintenance businesses.<2E>The risk is to be left with an emptied company and with a jobs problem, as we doubt that the military business would be viable on its own,<2C> the source said, adding the government was likely to take a decision <20>in a matter of weeks<6B>.Rome can veto asset sales and takeovers in the strategic defense sector, even if the asset being sold is not a defense business but uses dual-use technology.A new meeting of a government committee that reviews changes of ownerships in strategic sectors is scheduled for Thursday.The planned sale of Piaggio Aerospace<63>s executive-jet business comes at a sensitive time for Chinese investments in the European Union, with the head of the European Commission recently proposing to limit state-backed foreign takeovers in hi-tech manufacturing, among other industries.additional reporting by Stanley Carvalho in Abu Dhabi; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-piaggio-m-a-government/italy-could-block-sale-of-piaggio-aerospaces-jet-business-to-china-source-idINKBN1C925E'|'2017-10-04T13:17:00.000+03:00'
'b29a9ea4bd9aa28a2ba5396f89cfb3358d147af2'|'GE names Trian co-founder Ed Garden to board'|'Oct 9 (Reuters) - U.S. industrial conglomerate General Electric Co said on Monday it had elected Ed Garden, the founding partner and chief investment officer of activist investment firm Trian Fund Management, to its board of directors.Garden will replace Robert Lane, who is retiring due to health reasons, GE said in a statement.Nelson Peltz-led Trian, which has a stake of about 1 percent in GE, according to Thomson Reuters data, has been putting pressure on the company to improve its profit performance.GE in March, after discussions with Trian, set a $2 billion cost-reduction target and linked the bonuses of its senior management to meeting profit-related goals.<2E>Like other GE shareholders, I am disappointed by the recent performance of GE<47>s stock. But I continue to believe that GE represents an attractive long-term investment opportunity with significant upside,<2C> Garden said in a statement.Garden is also a director at Bank of New York Mellon Corp and Pentair Plc. (Reporting by Rachit Vats in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D<>Souza)Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/ge-board/ge-names-trian-co-founder-ed-garden-to-board-idINL4N1MK2CF'|'2017-10-09T09:40:00.000+03:00'
'5b1fbf00b3e187c4c4e470cf35dc7050faddaaa8'|'Cora Gold lists in London to fund exploration in Mali'|'LONDON (Reuters) - West African-focused Cora Gold Limited on Monday lists on London<6F>s AIM market for small companies to raise 3.45 million pounds ($4.5 million) to fund exploration at its flagship Sanankoro project in Mali.The company, whose shares start trading at 0700 GMT, is the latest in a string of junior miners to launch on the London market this year as the sector slowly recovers from the commodity price crash of 2015-16.CEO Jon Forster said Cora Gold would stand out as an African small-cap exploration and development company.<2E>We will occupy a niche in the London market,<2C> he said in an interview. <20>There are very few peer comparisons, very few junior explorers and this is the sector that has the greatest chance of making multiples for investors.<2E>It also offers some of the highest risk and junior miners have struggled to attract investment this year even as the major companies have rallied, led by Glencore, which has embarked on a series of deals as it moves from recovery to growth.Forster said Cora Gold was still relatively low-risk as historic exploration work has established the presence of gold and his team has a track record of finding resources.His aim over the next 9 months is to demonstrate the value of a 14 kilometer stretch of gold territory.<2E>We believe we have very good potential to increase the scale of the discovery to 1 million ounces of in-situ gold and create a standalone mine,<2C> he said.Other miners that have listed in London this year are Rainbow Rare Earths, active in Burundi, Jangada Mines, which is exploring for gold and platinum in Brazil, Phoenix Global Mining, developing a U.S. copper mine, Russian gold miner Polyus,, and Altus Strategies, which describes itself as a <20>project generator<6F>.With the exception of Polyus, listed on the main market, new small-cap listings have tended to struggle.One issue is concerns about political risk as the sector disputes South Africa<63>s proposed mining law and Tanzania<69>s president has introduced a series of measures to increase greatly the nation<6F>s share of profits from mining.Forster said he was confident the Malian government would remain friendly.<2E>Mali is very pragmatic. It understands the advantage of having a thriving mining sector,<2C> he said.Editing by Louise Heavens '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-coragold-ipo/cora-gold-lists-in-london-to-fund-exploration-in-mali-idINKBN1CE0DA'|'2017-10-09T04:27:00.000+03:00'
'1b5ab08655cb18b950419a3d73b5f5e572837f2d'|'Australia''s Select Harvests receives $334.4 million takeover offer from UAE sovereign wealth fund'|'(Reuters) - Australian almond producer Select Harvests Ltd ( SHV.AX ) said on Monday it has rejected a A$430.6-million ($334 million) takeover proposal from United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company PJSC.Shares in Select Harvests were up 25.5 percent at A$5.27 after the announcement.The company said the Mubadala Investment Company offer <20>undervalued<65> the company at A$5.85 per share and was also <20>highly conditional<61>. The offer was 39 percent above the company<6E>s closing share price last Wednesday, ahead of a halt in trading.Select Harvest board said the offer was <20>significantly undervalued<65> - without offering its own valuation - and also cited regulatory risks, transaction costs and <20>potentially disruptive<76> due diligence as other reasons for rejecting the offer.Mubadala did not say anything particular about the deal, but added it was enthusiastic about the potential of Australia as a market and agriculture as a sector.<2E>As always, we are continuously assessing promising investment opportunities that align with our portfolio and mandate of diversification,<2C> according to an email from the state fund.One of the key conditions of the deal also included not paying any further dividends, Select Harvests said.The company said in a statement that one of the reasons for rejecting the offer was <20>the requirements to maintain Select Harvests in stasis with no distributions to shareholders or changes in capital structure over an extended period<6F>.Select Harvests did not rule out the possibility of a revised offer by Mubadala.In a separate announcement Select Harvests said it would raise A$65 million with a A$45 million share placing at A$4.20 a share and a non-undwerwritten retail share sale plan capped at $20 million.Proceeds of the share issue would be used to reduce debt following the $26.4 million acquisition of Jubilee Orchards in southern Australia earlier this year, the company said.Reporting by Rushil Dutta in Bangalore; Additional reporting by Stanley Carvalho in Abu Dhabi; Editing by Greg MahlichOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-select-harvests-m-a/australias-select-harvests-receives-358-million-takeover-offer-from-uae-sovereign-wealth-fund-idINKBN1CE082'|'2017-10-09T02:47:00.000+03:00'
'10b9a53098d707bd9136394e6bff1f3d8253e5ff'|'Exclusive - Airbus defence unit freezes capex, may miss cash goals - memo'|'October 5, 2017 / 8:44 AM / Updated 5 hours ago Exclusive - Airbus defence unit freezes capex, may miss cash goals - memo Tim Hepher 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - An aerial view of an Airbus A400M aircraft during the 52nd Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport near Paris, France, June 21, 2017. Picture taken June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus Defence and Space has frozen capital spending and urged its 34,000 staff to take <20>drastic measures<65> to save cash as it faces the prospect of missing 2017 cash targets by hundreds of millions of euros, according to a memo seen by Reuters. <20>With the risk of missing our full-year cash targets by hundreds of millions, we need to do something extraordinary together,<2C> divisional finance chief Julian Whitehead told an internal forum, according to a summary distributed to staff. Airbus ( AIR.PA ) has said it expects 2017 group-wide free cashflow to be similar to 2016, before mergers and acquisitions and customer financing. It does not publish cash targets for divisions. Due to the bumpy patterns of cashflows in aerospace, it often faces a dash to meet targets in the fourth quarter. Airbus Defence & Space, which has warned of continued cash pressures from the troubled A400M military aircraft programme, plans to set up a <20>Cash Crisis<69> team to improve the situation by end-year, with all its programmes expected to participate. Until those plans become clear, all capital expenditure is being frozen with immediate effect across all the division<6F>s activities and across all its subsidiaries, the memo said. Airbus shares stumbled from record highs and fell as much as 1.6 percent. They were down 1.3 percent by 0945 GMT, making the stock the worst performer on France''s benchmark CAC-40 .FCHI equity index. Airbus<75> stock price remains up around 30 percent since the start of 2017 on buoyant demand for passenger jets, although rival Boeing<6E>s ( BA.N ) shares are up 64 percent. Asked to comment on the memo, an Airbus spokesman said: <20>We are currently in the traditional year-end race in the commercial and government business.<2E> FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A400M aircraft flies during a display on the first day of the 52nd Paris Air Show at Le Bourget airport near Paris, France, June 19, 2017. Picture taken June 19, 2017. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol/File Photo He added: <20>It is key to remind our troops at this important time of a business year on the importance of meeting our cash objectives. That<61>s the current ongoing effort at Airbus and it is rather standard procedure to achieve our quarterly and yearly divisional targets at Airbus Defence and Space without deviation.<2E> ALSO FACING PRESSURE FROM A400M DELAYS Another person close to the group said the language used in the memo was typical of the purely internal battle cry used by managers at this time of year to focus on reaching targets. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Airbus Group is seen on the company''s headquarters building in Toulouse, Southwestern France, April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo On Wednesday, however, Airbus reminded European governments that the delayed A400M would continue to <20>weigh significantly<6C> on cashflow in 2017 and 2018, especially. It has been squeezed as Germany withholds some 15 percent in cash owed for the transport plane because of what it regards as systems failing to do what Airbus had promised. The company earlier this year entered talks with buyer nations to try to ease the penalties and get a new agreement on schedules. At a group level, cash and profits have further been hampered by delays in delivering A320neo jetliners because of delays in receiving engines from U.S. supplier Pratt & Whitney. Late deliveries delay payments from airlines and prevent workers learning through experience as quickly as planned, which drives up cost and eats up cash for inventory on assembly lines. Airbus as a whole had 7.9 billion euros of net cash at end-June, down from 11.1 billion at the en
'4a2734118eb89168755329e5360bb1c5237492a4'|'Dirt-cheap mobile data is a thrill for Indian consumers'|'THE security guards at the foot of Antilia, a 27-floor private residence in Mumbai, while away the days just as all bored Indians have been doing in recent months<68>watching movies on their phone. Using a mobile network to stream endless Bollywood epics would until recently have been an unthinkable luxury, even in the rich world. In India it now costs less than a cup of street-side chai.Thank the tycoon lording it in the skyscraper<65>s upper reaches. As boss of Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani, India<69>s richest man, has spent more than $25bn on building Jio, a state-of-the-art mobile-telecoms network. The delight of the guards at Antilia, and of the roughly 130m Indians who have signed up to the service since it launched in September 2016, is matched only by the misery of Mr Ambani<6E>s rivals. Jio<69>s rise is nothing short of spectacular. It took less than a year for it to be delivering more data than any other mobile network in the world<6C>one billion billion bytes a month, it claims, or over half the data delivered by all American carriers put together. Less so when it comes to revenue: after giving away its services for seven months, it went on to charge customers a third of what other Indian operators do.Nobody thinks Mr Ambani is about to relent after winning a mere 11% or so of the market, a figure that is creeping up by around half a percentage point each month. Perhaps to terrify the competition further, he has spoken of wanting half the market to himself by 2021. To that end, the general public this week got their hands on the JioPhone, the latest plank in the company<6E>s growth push.A crossover between an antique Nokia-style feature phone (these still make up most new handsets sold in India) and a smartphone, the device is bound to appeal to Antilia<69>s security guards. It is free: you only pay a 1,500 rupee ($23) deposit, refundable after three years. Then, for a mere 153 rupees a month, customers can consume unlimited calls and data. Though the screen is small and popular apps such as Facebook are not (yet) available, analysts at CLSA, a brokerage, expect around 100m JioPhones to be sold in the next 18 months.Jio<69>s gatecrashing of what was an orderly market has plunged its rivals into crisis. Some moan that regulators have bent over backwards to help Reliance, known for its ability to run rings around officials. Many operators are in precarious financial positions, having bet that rapid user growth would offset the high fixed costs of acquiring spectrum and building networks. Now that Jio has snagged 84% of the 153m net mobile-phone additions in the year to July (see chart), others must fight for the scraps. A key metric, average revenue per user, has cratered across the industry. What profits remain are insufficient to service large debt piles. Analysts at Credit Suisse, a bank, calculate that over half of around $40bn in loans to the industry sits with operators whose earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation cannot meet interest payments.The government might get hit, too. Most lending to struggling telecom firms was by state-owned banks, whose long-overdue recapitalisation from public coffers will have to be bigger as a result. And the government itself is a creditor to telecoms companies, having agreed to spectrum bills being paid slowly over time. Against that, Mr Ambani<6E>s bet is uniquely in sync with the current government<6E>s ambitions. Jio launched its service with newspaper ads featuring a full-page portrait of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, dedicating its investment to his digital vision. And other services that need widespread internet adoption are clearly benefiting, from media-streaming to e-commerce.Consolidation seems the order of the day for the rest of the industry. Having written <20>6.3bn ($6.9bn) off the value of its local subsidiary and shelved a likely share listing, Vodafone, the British-owned second-biggest player, is merging with Idea Cellular, the third-biggest. Reliance Commun
'653aeae9c0cee697a9093f2bb1c71449dd23fe9d'|'Oil markets cautious as another tropical storm heads for Gulf of Mexico'|'FILE PHOTO: An oil pump jack pumps oil in a field near Calgary, Alberta, Canada on July 21, 2014. REUTERS/Todd Korol/File Photo AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Oil prices fell around two percent on Friday, and were set to end Brent<6E>s longest multi-week rally in 16 months following profit taking and the return of oversupply concerns.Benchmark Brent crude futures LCOc1 were down $1.03 at $55.97 a barrel at 1320 GMT, set for a 1.8 percent loss on the week and snapping a five-week winning streak that was the longest since June 2016.U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 was at$49.49, down $1.30 or 2.6 percent on the day. It was set to close the week down more than 4 percent, the biggest weekly loss in four months.Russia on Friday clarified remarks made by President Vladimir Putin about the oil market earlier this week, saying he did not propose extending a global oil output cut deal but said he recognized it was a possibility.The prospect of extended oil production cuts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producers led by Russia had supported prices in recent sessions.Saudi Arabia<69>s energy minister said on Thursday he was <20>flexible<6C> about prolonging the production-curbing pact until the end of 2018.However, concerns linger about growing U.S. crude exports, incentivised by a hefty WTI discount to Brent prices.<2E>We have a couple of bearish factors like a new record for U.S. crude exports, the reopening of Libya<79>s biggest oilfield, a new year high in U.S. crude production and the recent strength of the U.S. dollar,<2C> said Frank Schallenberger, head of commodity research at LBBW in Stuttgart.A stronger dollar also led to further losses in the oil market on Friday. The dollar hit a 10-week high after data showing the largest gain in U.S. wages since December 2016 bolstered bets on an interest rate hike by year-end.<2E>I expect Brent to drop below $55 a barrel and WTI below $50 in the next couple of days,<2C> Schallenberger said.U.S. government data showed this week that crude exports had risen to a record of nearly 2 million barrels per day.Investors were also wary of tropical storm Nate shutting down some oil production in the Gulf of Mexico ahead of its expected arrival in the area as a hurricane on Sunday.<2E>The biggest impact (from Nate) could be on gasoline prices, depending on how many refineries are forced to shut down. But I don<6F>t think we will see another bull run,<2C> Schallenberger said.In the Gulf of Mexico, BP and Chevron were shutting production at all platforms, while Royal Dutch Shell and Anadarko Petroleum suspended some activity. Exxon Mobil, Statoil and other producers have withdrawn personnel.Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Dale Hudson and Susan Fenton '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil/oil-markets-cautious-as-another-tropical-storm-heads-for-gulf-of-mexico-idUSKBN1CB02D'|'2017-10-06T03:33:00.000+03:00'
'f3260ed7eecaa032e2e646bf68eeca849b8068f4'|'Caesars bankruptcy ends amid Asia market shift, Vegas shooting'|'October 5, 2017 / 9:34 PM / in 6 minutes Caesars bankruptcy ends amid Asia market shift, Vegas shooting Tracy Rucinski 5 Min Read The marquee sign at Caesars Palace hotel is seen on the strip in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. February 16, 2011. REUTERS/Steve Marcus/File Photo CHICAGO (Reuters) - Caesars Entertainment Corp has an eye on expanding its Caesars, Harrah<61>s and Horseshoe brands in the United States and abroad after its casino operating unit emerges from nearly three years of bankruptcy as soon as Friday with $10 billion (7.62 billion pounds) less in debt. Industry analysts said it may be too late to catch up with rivals like MGM Resorts International, Wynn Resorts Ltd and Las Vegas Sands Corp that have spent years investing in high-growth Asian markets like Macau as U.S. gambling has cooled. <20>Twenty-five years ago Caesars was the premiere name internationally but they dropped the ball,<2C> said Greg Bousquette of investment banking firm G.C. Andersen Partners, which advised unsecured creditors during the Caesars bankruptcy. Caesars has spent years struggling to manage more than $25 billion in debt, much of it taken on in 2008 when Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital led a leveraged buyout of the company. The operating unit filed for bankruptcy in early 2015. Caesars emerges from Chapter 11 with a simplified structure by merging with Caesars Acquisition Corp and other affiliates, and former creditors will hold a majority of the stock. The U.S.-focused company may be more vulnerable than its peers if any downturn follows this week<65>s mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip, where Caesars owns some of its most valuable resorts and casinos and derives most of its revenue. Las Vegas resort operators like Caesars may have to cut hotel rates and spend more on security and marketing to draw customers back, analysts said, though they expect business to bounce back over the longer term. Caesars declined to comment on any potential decline in its business stemming from the shooting, which resulted in 59 deaths. The company<6E>s stock fell in early trading on Monday, but soon recovered and market sentiment towards Caesars had been largely positive. Its shares, which had lagged rivals through much of the bankruptcy proceedings, have risen 74 percent from a year ago, and investors last week snapped up its first bond offering since 2014. <20>We<57>re primed for growth,<2C> Caesars Chief Executive Mark Frissora told investors in September, pointing to a leaner post-bankruptcy structure, $2 billion of cash and plans for branding and licensing agreements, and M&A. [L2N1MG19E] The company in July hired two executives to oversee new projects and expansion in the United States and abroad. Target markets include Brazil and Japan, which are considering opening up gaming and resorts licenses. Caesars has already received preliminary approval for a foreigners-only destination in South Korea. But while Caesars spent years struggling under the debt from the leveraged buyout, its rivals were planting their flags in Macau and Singapore. Macau, a Chinese territory about an hour from Hong Kong, long ago surpassed Las Vegas in terms of gaming revenue. Companies that already have experience operating in Asia are frontrunners to receive licenses to run Japanese casino resorts, according to analysts. THE PERKS OF TOTAL REWARDS Caesars may have an edge in a tight U.S. market thanks to its Total Rewards loyalty program, the biggest in the industry with over 50 million members, analysts said. At Caesars<72> Horseshoe Hammond outside Chicago, one retired couple said the rewards program is what draws them to the casino twice a week to try their luck at the slot machines and gaming tables. <20>The more we spend, the more points we get for food and other perks,<2C> said Mrs. Johnson of Crete, Illinois. She declined to give her first name. Caesars has shown it can plug a hotel or casino into Total Rewards and immediately boost returns. In a Sept. 14 presentation, Caesars sai
'628c98128bf8ad8be08d69e1ddd7aa6994490d06'|'Japan ad agency Dentsu fined for making employees do too much overtime - media'|'October 6, 2017 / 6:29 AM / Updated 19 minutes ago Japan ad agency Dentsu fined for making employees do too much overtime - media Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A man speaks on his mobile phone near a logo of Dentsu Co. at the entrance of the company headquarters in Tokyo July 12, 2012. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese advertising giant Dentsu Inc ( 4324.T ) has been slapped with a fine of some 500,000 yen (<28>3,387) after a Tokyo court ruled that it had made employees work overtime beyond legal limits, local media reported. Dentsu<73>s labour practices came under scrutiny after a young employee committed suicide in 2015. She had worked 105 hours of overtime in the October of that year after which she fell into depression. Japan<61>s labour ministry ruled her death <20>karoshi<68> - literally <20>death by overwork<72>. Reporting by Taiga Uranaka; Editing by Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-dentsu-overwork/japan-ad-agency-dentsu-fined-for-making-employees-do-too-much-overtime-media-idUKKBN1CB0JR'|'2017-10-06T09:29:00.000+03:00'
'dabc425b3e1661c3621bcfb9d7ac1bf227f8c41a'|'Saudi hopes for consensus on future of global oil deal before November OPEC meet'|' 04 PM / in 6 minutes Saudi hopes for consensus on future of global oil deal before November OPEC meet Vladimir Soldatkin , Katya Golubkova 3 Min Read Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih attends a meeting of the 4th OPEC-Non-OPEC Ministerial Monitoring Committee in St. Petersburg, Russia July 24, 2017. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov MOSCOW (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia hopes to reach a consensus with Russia and other major oil producers on the future of a global deal to cut oil output before an OPEC meeting in November, Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Friday. Falih was speaking in Moscow two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin said it was possible that the supply reduction deal, which is due to expire in March, could run to the end of next year, although Russia has not made any commitment. Saudi Arabia has made no firm pledge to extend the deal, but Falih said on Thursday his country was <20>flexible<6C> regarding Moscow<6F>s suggestion. <20>I am looking forward to reaching a consensus, working with you in the next few weeks before we have the Nov. 30 meeting,<2C> Falih told his Russian counterpart Alexander Novak. <20>As satisfied as we are with the progress made, I think you agree that our job is not done and there are still uncertainties and headwinds on global oil markets,<2C> he said. <20>We have to keep our eyes clearly on the road and our hands on the wheel.<2E> Saudi Arabia and Russia helped secure a deal between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and 10 rival suppliers to cut output from January this year until the end of March 2018 in an effort to reduce a supply glut on world markets and prop up prices. When asked if there would be a decision to extend the deal in November, Falih said he didn<64>t know. Novak said Russia had no disagreements with Saudi Arabia regarding oil markets but needed to discuss the issue further and there was every possibility for joint action between the two countries. Russia this week hosted Saudi Arabia<69>s King Salman and a raft of Saudi officials and dignitaries, cementing a relationship that is pivotal for world oil prices and could decide the outcome of the conflict in Syria. Salman is the first sitting Saudi monarch to ever travel to Russia and his visit has been accompanied by a slew of deals worth several billion dollars. Falih said the current warm ties between Moscow and Riyadh were a sign of things to come. <20>Relations between Russia and Saudi Arabia have been stably improving,<2C> he said. <20>(They) clearly went to a quite new level after the visit by the King.<2E> Additional reporting by Polina Devitt; Writing by Jack Stubbs; Editing by Susan Fenton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-russia-saudi-energy-cooperation-opec/saudi-hopes-for-consensus-on-future-of-global-oil-deal-before-november-opec-meet-idUKKBN1CB2D8'|'2017-10-06T21:04:00.000+03:00'
'65b483cc71f51b7a6f245721366f600441f5b357'|'UPDATE 1-EU sets dumping duties on steel from Brazil, Russia'|'A steelworker operates machinery at the Ilich iron and steel plant in the southern coastal town of Mariupol, September 2, 2014. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union has decided to set duties on hot-rolled steel from Brazil, Iran, Russia and Ukraine after a complaint by EU manufacturers that the product used for construction and machinery was being sold at excessively low prices.The EU will levy anti-dumping tariffs of between 17.6 and 96.5 euros ($20.6-112.8) per ton from Saturday, its official journal said.The European Commission had initially proposed setting a minimum price - of 472.27 euros per ton - but revised its proposal after failing to secure backing from EU member states.European steel association Eurofer, which brought the complaint, said it was happy the minimum price proposal had been dropped, but expressed disappointment that the Commission had opted for fixed-price rather than normal percentage tariffs.Given the current price of steel, the fixed-price amounts were lower than the equivalent percentage tariffs the Commission had set out in its reasoning.<2E>This outcome is not in line with normal EU anti-dumping procedures and the objective to tackle unfair imports,<2C> said Axel Eggert, Eurofer<65>s director general.He also said it was not right that the Commission had ended its investigation into Serbian steel imports without proposing measures. The country, he said, was home to a large state-owned, state-run Chinese steel producer.Chinese hot-rolled steel is already subject to duties.Among companies newly facing tariffs were the Brazil arms of ArcelorMittal and Aperam, both of which also produce in Europe, Companhia Siderugica Nacional, Usinas Siderugicas de Minas Gerais and Gerdau - at rates between 53.4 and 63.0 euros per ton.Iranian steel would be subject to a duty of 57.5 euros per ton and Ukraine<6E>s Metinvest Group [METIV.UL] 60.5 euros.Rates for Russian producers varied from 17.6 euros for Severstal, 53.3 euros for NLMK to 96.5 euros per ton for MMK.BCS investment bank said there would be no major impact on Russian steel companies, which had already redirected volumes from the European markets to other markets.MMK said it would redirect part of its hot-rolled steel to Asian and other markets due to the imposed duties, with the Russian domestic market remaining its priority.Severstal said it would continue to ship to Europe because of its low tariff rate, giving it a competitive advantage over other suppliers.NLMK said it expected its European plants, including La Louviere which produces hot-rolled steel in Belgium, to benefit.Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels; Additional reporting by Polina Devitt and Diana Asonova in Moscow; Editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek and Dale Hudson '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-steel-tariffs/eu-sets-dumping-duties-on-steel-from-four-countries-idUSKBN1CB0L7'|'2017-10-06T10:04:00.000+03:00'
'a324503dd5588171f3d81538301506d44acbea90'|'BP shutting all U.S. Gulf production ahead of Tropical Storm Nate'|'BP logo is seen at a fuel station of British oil company BP in St. Petersburg, October 18, 2012. REUTERS/Alexander Demianchuk/Files HOUSTON (Reuters) - BP Plc ( BP.L ) said on Thursday it was shutting-in all oil and natural gas production from its U.S. Gulf of Mexico platforms ahead of Tropical Storm Nate.The company is also evacuating all personnel from its four platforms in the region. Nate is forecast to enter the Gulf and strengthen into a hurricane before making landfall early on Sunday in Louisiana, near several major refineries.Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; editing by Diane Craft '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-storm-nate-bp/bp-shutting-all-u-s-gulf-production-ahead-of-tropical-storm-nate-idUSKBN1CA2P7'|'2017-10-06T00:06:00.000+03:00'
'3927f7ccb1edfae5d657b227daa10d1fa88b8582'|'Glencore to buy Chevron South Africa stake, Chevron Botswana'|'The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company''s headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann LONDON (Reuters) - Commodities trader and miner Glencore has swooped in to replace China<6E>s Sinopec as the buyer of Chevron<6F>s South African and Botswana assets after reaching a deal with local investors.In its statement on Friday, Glencore said it had agreed to buy Chevron<6F>s 75 percent stake in its South African subsidiary and its Botswana interests for a combined $973 million. The remaining 25 percent stake will stay with a consortium of Black Economic Empowerment shareholders and an employee trust.An industry source familiar with Glencore<72>s mergers and acquisitions activities said the company was looking to bring in a partner into the asset. Chevron and Sinopec did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The assets include a 100,000 barrel-per-day oil refinery in Cape Town, a lubricants plant in Durban as well as 820 petrol stations and other oil storage facilities. It also includes 220 convenience stores across South Africa and Botswana.Glencore stepped in after local shareholders exercised pre-emption rights following delays to the Sinopec deal.In March, Chevron announced that it had agreed the sale of its assets to China<6E>s largest refiner Sinopec, for nearly $1 billion. As of May, the deal had been under review by South Africa<63>s Economic Development ministry.Glencore was among the bidders for the stake last year along with oil major Total and rival trading house Gunvor.END OF ERA The stake was of keen interest to many oil traders as the retail network is one of the biggest in South Africa and it provides access to strategic storage in Saldanha Bay on the southwestern coast.Chevron along with other oil majors have announced a flurry of downstream sales in the last few years to trim costs after global oil prices slumped in 2014.Chevron, which has had a presence in South Africa for more than a century, announced the sale in January 2016.Nimbler oil trading firms have snapped up the unwanted oil refineries and retail stations particularly in industrializing nations such as South Africa where young populations and a fast-growing middle class are expected to boost fuel demand.Glencore has shifted in the last year from shedding interests to stay afloat during the broader 2015-2016 commodities downturn to asset-buying since the rebound in prices.The deal, which will include Glencore retaining Chevron<6F>s local management team and workforce, will be funded using existing cash resources and is expected to close in mid-2018.<2E>Glencore intends to manage its overall oil asset portfolio to ensure that, including this transaction, net additional capital investment is limited to less than $500 million over the next 12 months,<2C> it said.If the deal closes, this would be Glencore<72>s first refining asset. It began expanding into downstream oil in May after setting up a retail franchise in Mexico.Additional reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru and Dmitry Zdhannikov in London; editing by John Stonestreet and Keith Weir '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-chevronsouth-africa-m-a-glencore/glencore-to-buy-chevron-south-africa-stake-chevron-botswana-idINKBN1CB139'|'2017-10-06T07:55:00.000+03:00'
'3c26aa2b48b79ed9715df44be7111e33b314fcda'|'Tech giants are building their own undersea fibre-optic networks'|'WHEN Cyrus Field, an American businessman, laid the first trans-Atlantic cable in 1858, it was hailed as one of the great technological achievements of its time and celebrated with bonfires, fireworks and 100-gun salutes. Alas, the reason for the festivities soon went away. Within weeks the cable failed.On September 21st the completion of another trans-Atlantic cable was welcomed with much less ado. But it is remarkable nevertheless: dubbed Marea , Spanish for <20>tide<64>, the 6,600km bundle of eight fibre-optic threads, roughly the size of a garden hose, is the highest-capacity connection across the ocean. Stretching from Virginia Beach, Virginia, to Bilbao, Spain, it is capable of transferring 160 terabits of data every second, the equivalent of more than 5,000 high-resolution movies. It is jointly owned by Facebook and Microsoft. Such ultra-fast fibre networks are needed to keep up with the torrent of data flowing around the world. In 2016 traffic reached 3,544 terabits per second, roughly double the figure in 2014, according to TeleGeography, a market-research firm. And demand for international bandwidth is growing by 45% annually. Much traffic still comes from internet users, but a large and growing share is generated by big internet and cloud-computing companies syncing data across their networks of data centres around the world.These firms used to lease all of their bandwidth from carriers such as BT and Level 3. But now they need so much network capacity that it makes more sense to lay their own dedicated pipes, particularly on long routes between their data centres. The Submarine Telecoms Forum, an industry body, reckons that 100,000km of submarine cable was laid in 2016, up from just 16,000km in 2015. TeleGeography predicts that a total of $9.2bn will be spent on such cable projects between 2016 and 2018, five times as much as in the previous three years.Owning a private subsea fibre-optic network has several advantages, including more bandwidth, lower costs, and reduced delay, or <20>latency<63>. Having access to multiple cables on different routes also provides redundancy. If a cable is severed<65>by fishing nets, sharks, or an earthquake, among other things<67>traffic can be rerouted to another line. Most important, however, owning cables gives companies greater say over how their data traffic is managed and how equipment is upgraded. <20>The motivation is not so much saving money. It<49>s more about control,<2C> says Julian Rawle, a submarine cable-industry expert.Some people worry that owning the pipes that carry their customers<72> data will give big tech firms even more power than they already have, likening the situation to Amazon<6F>s owning the roads on which its packages are delivered and the lorries that carry them. Others fret that conventional network operators may struggle to adapt their business models, as companies such as Facebook are moving onto their turf. <20>Within the next 20 years,<2C> predicts Mr Rawle, <20>the whole concept of the telecom carrier as the provider of the network is going to disappear.<2E> "Pipe dreams"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/news/business/21730057-google-facebook-and-microsoft-want-more-control-over-internets-basic-infrastructure-tech?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-05T22:54:00.000+03:00'
'f529cddd1ea7aabdc0100ba71fcabdb5d85c78b3'|'Germany sees 1.9 percent growth in 2017, 2 percent in 2018 - newspaper'|' 01 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago Germany sees 1.9 percent growth in 2017, 2 percent in 2018 - newspaper Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - People walk through the Mall of Berlin shopping centre during its opening night in Berlin, September 24, 2014. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File photo BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government has raised its forecast for economic growth in 2017 to 1.9 percent from an earlier forecast of 1.5 percent, and could yet lift it to 2 percent, the Handelsblatt newspaper reported on Friday, citing unnamed government sources. The newspaper said a decision on whether to adopt the 2-percent forecast would be made on Monday at a meeting led by the Economy Ministry. Handelsblatt said the government had raised its forecast for 2018 growth in gross domestic product to 2 percent from an earlier forecast of 1.6 percent. The changes mirrored revised forecasts released by leading German institutes last week. The German economy last year grew by 1.9 percent, which was the strongest rate in half a decade. Handelsblatt said the German economy was benefiting from better-than-expected global developments and higher domestic investments. The revised forecast would form the basis for a new tax revenue estimate due in early November that is also expected to be revised up significantly, the newspaper said. Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Catherine Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-economy/germany-sees-1-9-percent-growth-in-2017-2-percent-in-2018-newspaper-idUKKBN1CB2D0'|'2017-10-06T21:01:00.000+03:00'
'3a28cafa6d91f37cada28d993cfe099a6e54f182'|'Peltz says P&G proxy fight dumb, will go down to wire'|'Oct 6 (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble should simply not have bothered resisting activist investor Nelson Peltz<74>s push for a board seat, he said on Friday, promising to keep his shares in the consumer goods company even if he lost next week<65>s vote.Peltz said that the company had wasted more than $100 million to keep him off the board, despite him having no intention of replacing any board member or Chief Executive David Taylor, and that the vote would be close.<2E>This proxy fight is probably the dumbest thing I<>ve ever been involved in,<2C> Peltz told CNBC on Friday.One of the best known activist investors in corporate America, Peltz has amassed a $3.5 billion stake in P&G through his firm Trian Fund Management.He says he wants the company to improve shareholder returns by speeding up a transformation begun in 2014 and further streamlining its operations, moves he hopes he can push with a board seat.He has also repeatedly said that the company has a <20>suffocating bureaucracy<63> that is stalling progress and that reorganizing the company into three global business units would reduce complexity.<2E>P&G has lost its soul,<2C> Peltz said.With a $235 billion market capitalization, the Oct. 10 vote makes Procter & Gamble the biggest ever firm to face a proxy fight - where two competing groups battle for the shareholder votes needed to control and change companies.P&G in a statement on Friday reiterated its stance that Peltz wasn<73>t a right fit for the board, particularly at this time as the company was in the final stages of its transformation.<2E>Peltz<74>s timing is late to P&G&rsquo;s turnaround,<2C> the company said in the statement. (Reporting by Siddharth Cavale in Bengaluru) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/procterandgamble-trian/peltz-says-pg-proxy-fight-dumb-will-go-down-to-wire-idINL4N1MH2P8'|'2017-10-06T12:25:00.000+03:00'
'e32d715c36acd3889f7def911f6b8296efbdff6b'|'Deals of the day-Mergers and acquisitions'|'October 4, 2017 / 9:42 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago Deals of the day-Mergers and acquisitions Reuters Staff 5 Min Read (Adds Russian Direct Investment Fund, Bayer SA, Prudential, CEZ, Abraaj Group, Panasonic, Gas Natural, Banco do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul SA, Italia, Petr<74>leo Brasileiro, Ullink) Oct 4 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 1300 GMT on Wednesday: ** The state-backed Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) is discussing a possible investment in conglomerate Sistema<6D>s agriculture business, the fund<6E>s chief executive said. ** A unit of Brazil<69>s competition regulator Cade said the $66 billion takeover of Monsanto Co. by German life sciences firm Bayer AG could be detrimental to competition, a document released on the agency<63>s website shows. ** Prudential Plc has kicked off the sale of its Vietnam consumer finance unit, which could fetch up to $150 million, as the UK firm sharpens focus on its core insurance business in the Southeast Asian nation, people familiar with the process said. ** CEZ strategy director Pavel Cyrani tells Reuters energy services unit ESCO aims to complete an acquisition in Poland by year-end or early 2018. ** Dubai-based private equity firm Abraaj Group said it made an investment in Pakistan<61>s top cinema operator, Cinepax, to drive expansion over the next four years. ** Executives at Panasonic were surprised when Russell Ellwanger, CEO of Israeli chipmaker TowerJazz, asked to partner in three of their factories without putting any cash on the table. ** Spain<69>s Gas Natural has approved the sale of its Italian retail business to EDF unit Edison while the company<6E>s Italian distribution network will go to 2i Rete Gas, two sources said. ** The government of Brazilian state Rio Grande do Sul may sell a non-controlling stake in state bank Banco do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul SA, according to a securities filing on Wednesday. ** Telecom Italia on Wednesday kicked off the process to sell its majority stake in broadcasting services group Persidera, valued between 350-400 million euros, a source close to the matter told Reuters. ** Brazilian state-controlled oil company Petr<74>leo Brasileiro SA has sent additional information on several shallow water oil fields to interested parties as it kickstarts the non-binding stage of the asset-sale process, according to a securities filing on Wednesday. ** Bankers are working on debt financings totalling <20>380m to back a potential buyout of French trading software provider Ullink, banking sources said. ** Brazil<69>s state-controlled oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA said on Tuesday it had started the binding stage for a proposed stake sale in the Maromba field, located in the Campos basin, according to a securities filing. ** ESR Pte Ltd, a unit of Asian logistics firm ESR Cayman Ltd, said it had taken an 18 percent stake in Propertylink Group, buying 60.2 million shares via off-market purchases. ** Royal Dutch Shell said it had cancelled the sale of gas field stakes in Thailand to Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company (KUFPEC). ** Hong Kong developer Chinese Estates Holdings said it holds a 6 percent stake in rival property group China Evergrande, having bought HK$11.1 billion ($1.42 billion) of shares between April and October 3. ** Mexico will offer the rights to partner with state oil company Pemex on three major projects on Wednesday, one in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico and two more onshore, the latest step in opening country<72>s oil and gas industry. ** Australian fund manager QIC has reached a deal to buy out 10 regional malls in the United States from its joint venture partner Forest City Realty Trust Inc on behalf of a client which it did not identify. ** Malaysian state energy firm Petroliam Nasional Berhad, or Petronas, is looking to sell some oil and gas assets owned by its Canadian unit Progress Energy, its adviser BMO Capital Markets said. ** Norway<61>s Statoil is taking its first step into the solar
'3fe99734cb001d2fd0d7284dc947af25bedc527a'|'Hong Kong, Japanese stocks boost Asia on optimism over global growth'|'October 4, 2017 / 1:25 AM / in 11 minutes Global stocks hit fresh highs, dollar slips despite data Herbert Lash 5 Min Read Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid NEW YORK (Reuters) - A gauge of global stocks and Wall Street rallied to fresh highs on Wednesday on encouraging growth worldwide, while the dollar fell even as data revealed an accelerating U.S. service sector that could lead to higher interest rates in December. The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all set new closing highs for the third consecutive session, while MSCI<43>s index of stock performance in 47 countries also hit a new high. U.S. Treasury debt yields rose on the Institute for Supply Management<6E>s index of non-manufacturing activity, which rose in September at its fastest clip in 12 years. Oil prices were mixed on caution that rising U.S. crude output could scupper a crude rally that lasted for most of the third quarter. The potential for U.S. tax reform has been driving the recent rally on Wall Street as geo-political tensions have ebbed and economic data remains strong, said Michael Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors in Boston. <20>If the earnings season comes in as expected, you continue to see progress made on tax reform and you see diminished concerns about the geopolitical situation, the market wants to move higher,<2C> he said. MSCI''s all-country world stock index .MIWD PUS gained 0.10 percent while the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 of leading regional shares closed down 0.13 percent at 1,533.43. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 19.97 points, or 0.09 percent, to 22,661.64. The S&P 500 .SPX gained 3.16 points, or 0.12 percent, to 2,537.74 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 2.91 points, or 0.04 percent, to 6,534.63. European shares fell as the impact of the crisis in Catalonia spread from Madrid and Spanish banks to the wider industry and euro zone region, particularly Italy. Spain''s IBEX .IBEX posted its worst single-day loss in 15 months with a 2.85 percent decline. Spanish government borrowing costs rose to their highest since March, stretching the gap over German benchmarks to the widest in over five months after Catalonia<69>s secessionist leader said the region will declare independence in <20>days.<2E> Catalonia will move next week to declare independence from Spain, a regional government source said, as a violence-marred vote on Sunday threatens the country<72>s foundations and has unnerved financial markets. Spain<69>s 10-year bond yield rose as much as 7 basis points to 1.795 percent ES10YT=RR in early trades, according to Reuters data, the highest since mid-March. Data from major economies showed solid growth worldwide. A trader works inside a stall on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid In Europe, business across the euro zone grew rapidly in September as firms struggled to keep up with demand, a survey showed, with October looking likely to be lively as well. IHS Markit<69>s final composite Purchasing Managers<72> Index for the euro zone bounced to 56.7 last month from August<73>s 55.7, in line with an earlier flash estimate and comfortably above the 50-mark that separates growth from contraction. Japan<61>s services sector expanded in September at the slowest rate in 11 months as the pace of new orders eased, but a raft of other data suggest the economic recovery remains intact even as momentum may have ebbed slightly in the third quarter. U.S. private employers added 135,000 jobs in September, topping economists<74> expectations by 10,000, even as Hurricane Harvey and Irma <20>significantly impacted smaller retailers,<2C> a report by a payrolls processor showed. FILE PHOTO: A worker shelters from the rain under a Union Flag umbrella as he passes the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain, October 1, 2008. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo The increase for
'ff9b2c14ceca5efeb356398c3a45b0d7461f4d47'|'Tesco says it will keep Willow Farms brand despite chicken scandal - Business - The Guardian'|'Tesco has pledged to continue with its <20>exclusive<76> Willow Farms poultry brand despite a hygiene scandal at the factory supplying the product and identical chicken being sold more cheaply by rival Lidl.The supermarket chain<69>s chief executive, Dave Lewis, said he had been as <20>shocked as anybody<64> after a joint undercover investigation by the Guardian and ITV News found evidence of food safety records being altered at the West Bromwich processing plant of 2 Sisters Food Group, which supplies Willow Farms chicken.The investigation also highlighted footage of chicken drumsticks, already packed for discount rival Lidl, being reopened and repacked for Willow Farms, which is badged as <20>exclusively for Tesco<63>.2 Sisters admits ''other areas of concern'' at West Bromwich chicken plant Read more Lewis said: <20>We don<6F>t see [the Willow Farms exclusive tag] at all as dishonest. The Willow Farms brand is only available inside Tesco<63>.He added that he believed the hygiene problems identified in the investigation were contained to the West Bromwich processing plant, which 2 Sisters temporarily shut down at the weekend in order to retrain staff . <20>We don<6F>t think our inspectors had the wool pulled over their eyes, but we will learn from the investigation,<2C> Lewis said.On Thursday last week the Guardian and ITV released undercover footage showing an instance of 2 Sisters workers altering the source and slaughter date of poultry being processed in the Site D plant in West Bromwich.Experts said altering <20>kill dates<65> could artificially stretch the commercial life of the meat and dupe consumers into buying chicken past its use-by date. It is illegal to place incorrect use-by dates on food, which are set for safety reasons and differ from <20>best before<72> dates. The company told investors on Tuesday there was <20>no evidence of any such breach in that regard<72>.Other sections of the footage, which was filmed in August, showed chicken being picked off the floor and thrown back on to the production line, and older poultry being mixed with fresher birds.Lewis said: <20>What we found out through Thursday is a source of serious concern for us <20> What did we do? We announced an immediate investigation, as did the Food Standards Agency. Neither the Food Standards Agency nor our own [investigation] found a problem in that factory. That being said, the investigation carries on.<2E>Tesco share price shows turnaround packaging nice but contents same Read more His comments came as Tesco said it would pay a dividend for the first time since in three years, bringing to an end to the hiatus triggered by the 2014 accounting scandal. The retailer said the decision to pay an interim dividend of 1p reflected <20>improved performance and board confidence<63>.Pretax profits at the retailer rebounded to <20>562m on sales of <20>25.2bn for the six months to the end of August. On an underlying basis, profits rose 23.7% to <20>759m, which was ahead of analyst forecasts of about <20>700m.But despite the return of dividends and improving levels of profitability, investors remained uneasy <20> the shares finished the day down 3.2% at 184p. Analysts said the jury was still out on Tesco<63>s <20>3.7bn deal to buy the cash and carry group Booker, which is the subject of a competition investigation , and the rate of progress being made turning around the UK chain.Since taking charge in 2014, Lewis has focused on cutting prices and improving customer service in Tesco supermarkets. He has also embarked on an aggressive cost-cutting programme to save <20>1.5bn, most recently pushing through a fresh round of redundancies at head office and announcing the closure of its Cardiff call centre. The UK chain has now clocked up seven of quarters of growth, with like-for-like sales up 2.1% in the second quarter. Lewis said the retailer was attempting to shield shoppers from grocery price rises triggered by the Brexit hit to sterling. The retailer also announced a modest <20>15m increase in its contribut
'e955a20067407ea72449ec757e9de01014b9cdc5'|'About 1,400 Air Berlin staff threatened with dismissal - unions'|'May vows to stay as party plotters try to topple her May vows to stay as party plotters try to topple her May vows to stay as party plotters try to topple her Reuters TV United States October 6, 2017 / 7:13 PM / in an hour About 1,400 Air Berlin staff threatened with dismissal: unions Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Employees of insolvent German airline Air Berlin protest before an Air Berlin news conference in Berlin, Germany September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Stefanie Loos BERLIN (Reuters) - About 1,400 employees at Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ) are threatened by dismissal, union documents showed on Friday, with the insolvent carrier<65>s entire ground staff due to get their notices of termination by the end of October. Employees needed to maintain flight operations would be given notice by the end of February 2018, according to staff information seen by Reuters. Other employees will probably be released from their duties, the information showed, without giving specific details. The dismissals also affect administrative staff. Air Berlin declined to comment. Earlier on Friday, the airline said it had extended the bid deadline for its maintenance division to allow potential buyers to adapt their offers depending on the outcome of talks for its other assets. The carrier is in talks with Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) and easyJet ( EZJ.L ) on a carve-up of its assets such as aircraft, take-off and landing slots and crew. These talks are due to run until Oct. 12. Air Berlin, which has around 8,000 employees, filed for insolvency in August after major shareholder Etihad said it would stop providing funding. Reporting by Klaus Lauer; Writing by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Andrew Roche'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-jobs/about-1400-air-berlin-staff-threatened-with-dismissal-unions-idUKKBN1CB2H6'|'2017-10-06T22:09:00.000+03:00'
'5a242ab0bed0abb6dd102f1d86367324b18ca4cd'|'Bank of England''s Carney to stay on as FSB chair for an extra year'|'October 6, 2017 / 5:04 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago Bank of England''s Carney to stay on as FSB chair for an extra year Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, speaks at the Bank of England conference ''Independence 20 Years On'' at the Fishmonger''s Hall in London, Britain September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde LONDON (Reuters) - Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has agreed to stay on as chair of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) for an extra year, the Swiss-based coordinator of global financial regulation said on Friday. <20>FSB members asked the FSB Chair, whose second term would come to an end on 4 November 2017, to serve for a further period until 1 December 2018,<2C> the FSB said in a statement. Carney has chaired the FSB since 2011. He is due to step down as Bank of England chief in June 2019. Reporting by Andy Bruce; Editing by Catherine Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-boe-carney-fsb/bank-of-englands-carney-to-stay-on-as-fsb-chair-for-an-extra-year-idUKKBN1CB286'|'2017-10-06T20:00:00.000+03:00'
'6dec008d83f1d2c2b83356b2cbff432c5d3f274a'|'FTSE scales two-month peak'|'October 6, 2017 / 9:07 AM / in 25 minutes FTSE at two-month peak as sterling falters Kit Rees , Julien Ponthus 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A man shelters under an umbrella as he walks past the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain August 24, 2015. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett/File Photo - RC125F2CFE80 LONDON (Reuters) - British shares edged higher on Friday and held to their highest level in two months as political uncertainties linked to Theresa<73>s May<61>s premiership pushed the pound lower, giving a boost to dollar-earning groups such as pharma stocks. The FTSE 100 index .FTSE closed 0.2 percent up at 7,522.87 points, with Britain''s pound on track for its worst week in a year as the Prime Minister hit back at a plot to topple her, saying she would provide "calm leadership" to the country. <20>The talk of a leadership plot against the Prime Minister is eroding the pound<6E>s value and propping up the FTSE 100,<2C> CMC Markets analyst David Madden wrote in a note to clients. Last month sterling strength helped the FTSE 100 to post a slight decline for September, but the currency has since been losing steam and the index has posted its biggest one-week gain since December last year. Health stocks, which source a sizeable chunk of their revenue from the United States, were among the biggest gainers. Heavyweights GlaxoSmithKline ( GSK.L ) and AstraZeneca ( AZN.L ) rose by about 0.3 percent and 1 percent respectively. British American Tobacco ( BATS.L ) was up 1.6 percent and Imperial Brands ( IMB.L ) advanced by 0.2 percent. Shares in budget airline easyJet ( EZJ.L ) dropped by 1.6 percent, the biggest FTSE 100 faller, after a price target cut from broker Credit Suisse. The airline also posted a mixed pre-close update, with analysts pointing to pricing pressures despite easyJet reporting a record summer and saying that it expects to reach the higher end of its profit range. <20>Revenue trends are improving, but pricing remains under pressure,<2C> Liberum analysts said in a note. Credit Suisse analysts saw some supportive factors, however. <20>With Monarch<63>s failure, Air Berlin<69>s break-up, Alitalia<69>s administration and Ryanair capacity cuts, we expect this confluence of positives must help EZJ (easyJet) pricing,<2C> they said in a note. Shares in building materials company CRH ( CRH.L ) fell by 1.3 percent after its offer for U.S. Ash Grove Cement Co ( ASHG.PK ) was surpassed. Reporting by Kit Rees and Julien Ponthus; Editing by Keith Weir and David Goodman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-stocks/ftse-scales-two-month-peak-idUKKBN1CB0XV'|'2017-10-06T12:06:00.000+03:00'
'6ec19651e039a9fef866893f69c717afbdb1db03'|'Exclusive: Russia''s Rosneft aims for big boost in oil exports to China - sources'|'October 6, 2017 / 12:48 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Exclusive: Russia''s Rosneft aims for big boost in oil exports to China - sources Vladimir Soldatkin , Gleb Gorodyankin 4 Min Read The logo of Russian state oil company Rosneft is pictured behind a pipe at the Samotlor oil field outside the of Nizhnevartovsk, Russia, January 26, 2016. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin/Files MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia<69>s largest oil producer Rosneft wants to boost its supplies of oil to China through Kazakhstan to as much as 18 million tonnes (36,000 bpd) per year from around 10 million tonnes in 2017, three industry sources said on Friday. Such a big increase may significantly drain flows of Urals blend to Europe at a time when Russian oil output has been reduced as part of a global pact to support prices. <20>(Rosneft<66>s head Igor) Sechin would like to boost oil supplies to China to 13 million tonnes per year with a possibility of further increase to 18 million tonnes,<2C> a source familiar with Rosneft<66>s plans said, adding that there has been no decision yet at government level. He didn<64>t specify when the increase was likely to happen. <20>This would mean significant oil supplies cuts to Europe,<2C> the source added. Two other oil industry sources confirmed the plans. Russian oil production has been steady, at around 10.9 million bpd due to a global pact to reduce total production by around 1.8 million bpd to support weak oil prices. Rosneft did not respond to a request for comments. MAIN SUPPLIER TO CHINA The shadow of a worker is seen next to a logo of Russia''s Rosneft oil company at the central processing facility of the Rosneft-owned Priobskoye oil field outside the West Siberian city of Nefteyugansk, Russia, August 4, 2016. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin/Files Russia has steadily increased oil supplies to China over the past years to become the main supplier of oil to the country. This year, Rosneft<66>s total oil supplies to China are set to reach a record high of 40 million tonnes (800,000 bpd). Rosneft<66>s influential head Igor Sechin has in the past said his ambition is for the company<6E>s exports to China to reach as much as 1 million bpd. The bulk of oil supplies to China by Rosneft go via the Pacific port of Kozmino at the end of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline, some via the pipeline<6E>s special spur to China and the remains via Kazakhstan and railway. Rosneft Chief Executive Igor Sechin speaks during a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia, June 2, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin/Files In August, Russia beat Saudi Arabia to become China<6E>s top crude oil supplier for a sixth month, as independent refiners ramped up purchases and as state-owned refiners bought seaborne shipments from the Russian Far East port of Kozmino. China<6E>s crude oil imports from Russia last month were 4.426 million tonnes, or about 1.04 million barrels per day (bpd), down 4.5 percent over the same month last year. Rosneft and China<6E>s CNPC agreed in January on an increase of oil supplies via Kazakhstan through to 2023 with total supplies of 91 million tones over a 10-year period. Kazakhstan<61>s energy ministry said Rosneft has not officially applied for an increase in transit volumes to China. Currently, the supplies are made through Atasu - Alashankou pipeline, the capacity of which has already been upgraded to 20 million tonnes, according to the ministry, while between 2 and 3 million tonnes are used for Kazakstan<61>s own exports to China. <20>The necessity of further pipeline expansion would also depend on the level of volumes as well as the time frame of guaranteed supplies, oil transportation tariff, etc,<2C> the ministry said. The Kremlin-controlled company has boosted ties with China after privately-run conglomerate CEFC China Energy bought a 14.2 percent stake in Rosneft for $9.1 billion. Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Gleb Gorodyankin; additional reporting by Mariya Gordeyeva in ALMATY; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle '|'r
'92d109e78d2c064e71098b2d46c2914047eb9c96'|'BTG to buy Roxwood Medical for up to $80 million'|'October 5, 2017 / 7:22 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago BTG to buy Roxwood Medical for up to $80 million   (Reuters) - British drugs company BTG Plc ( BTG.L ) said on Thursday it will buy U.S.-based cardiovascular catheter maker Roxwood Medical for up to $80 million (<28>60.60 million). The deal, which is expected to be accretive to adjusted profit from the second full year of ownership, comprises $65 million paid on closing and up to $15 million in potential milestones. Roxwood<6F>s portfolio of anchoring catheters and microcatheters for treatment of complex cardiovascular lesions should leverage BTG<54>s existing successful EKOS (endovascular system) sales and marketing operation, Deutsche Bank analysts said in a note. Separately, BTG stuck to its double-digit product sales growth forecast, adding that licensing revenue in the first half has benefited from back royalties on Lemtrada, Sanofi<66>s ( SASY.PA ) multiple sclerosis treatment. BTG said licensing revenue is expected to decline over the full year by low double digits at constant currency, compared to a previous forecast of a high-teens decline. Reporting by Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-roxwood-m-a-btg/btg-to-buy-roxwood-medical-for-up-to-80-million-idUKKBN1CA0K5'|'2017-10-05T10:22:00.000+03:00'
'4984cf7fcd082e9282e5e5a6ebe618cb54db9941'|'Hit by Catalonia crisis, Spanish bonds brace for auction test'|' 16 AM / in 12 minutes Hit by Catalonia crisis, Spanish bonds brace for auction test Reuters Staff * Spain to auction up to 5.25 bln euros of bonds * Test of investor sentiment after Catalan independence push * Spanish bond yields up more than 15 bps this week * Euro zone periphery govt bond yields tmsnrt.rs/2ii2Bqr By Dhara Ranasinghe LONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Spanish borrowing costs rose to their highest level since March on Thursday ahead of an auction that is shaping up as a test of investor appetite towards Spanish assets as Catalonia moves towards declaring independence from Spain. Spain will auction up to 5.25 billion euros of bonds, including a new five-year bond, an inflation-linked bond due in 2024 and a bond due in 2029. The auction is expected to test appetite for Spanish government debt amid a crisis sparked by a banned independence referendum in the wealthy region of Catalonia last weekend. <20>I expect the auction results to be weak given the conflict over Catalonia,<2C> said DZ Bank strategist Sebastian Fellechner. <20>Catalonia concerns are likely to take centre stage.<2E> Ratings agency S&P late on Wednesday put Catalonia<69>s ratings on <20>credit watch negative<76> on an escalation of the political conflict. S&P<>s long-term rating for Catalonia is B+, four notches below investment grade. Catalan President Carles Puigdemont said on Wednesday he favoured mediation to find a way out of the crisis but that Spain<69>s central government had rejected this. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy<6F>s government responded by calling on Catalonia to <20>return to the path of law<61> first before any negotiations. Catalonia will move on Monday to declare independence from Spain. The crisis in the euro zone<6E>s fourth biggest economy has sparked a sharp selloff in both Spanish bond and stock markets. On Wednesday, Spain<69>s IBEX stocks index posted its biggest one-day fall since the Britain<69>s Brexit referendum in June 2016 sparked turmoil in financial markets. Spain<69>s 10-year bond yield has risen around 19 basis points so far this week, putting it on track for its biggest weekly rise since March. It rose 3 basis point to 1.807 in early Thursday trade, its highest level since March. The premium investors demand for holding Spanish bonds over top-rated German peers was at 134 bps, having stretched to around 136 bps the previous session -- its widest since late April. <20>Even though our base case assumption remains that Catalan independence (even if unilaterally declared) will not happen, we suspect things might still get worse before they get better, and target a return of the 10-year Spain/Germany (yield spread)to back above 140 bps,<2C> analysts at ING said in a note. Germany<6E>s 10-year bond yield rose 1 basis point to 0.46 percent, rising in line with most other euro zone bond yields. Focus was expected to turn to the minutes of the last meeting of the European Central Bank, due out later in the day. That comes as investors try to assess the likely timing and scale of an unwinding of the ECB<43>s massive stimulus scheme. Reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe; Editing by Toby Chopra'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/eurozone-bonds/hit-by-catalonia-crisis-spanish-bonds-brace-for-auction-test-idUSL8N1MG0IB'|'2017-10-05T10:15:00.000+03:00'
'e365fc9e21d0092a937395b5ec48c0b5cd39fa94'|'Constellation Brands reports 40 pct profit rise'|'FILE PHOTO: Bottles of Corona beer, the flagship brand of Group Modelo, are pictured at a restaurant in Mexico City, Mexico January 27, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero/File Photo (Reuters) - Constellation Brands Inc ( STZ.N ) posted a quarterly profit that beat Wall Street estimates for a ninth straight time and raised its profit outlook, as margins rose on the sale of more premium beers and breweries ran at peak levels in the summer.Shares of the company are up 4 percent at $209 in early trade, hovering near an all-time high.To take advantage of consumer tastes shifting to more unique beer flavors, Constellation has been building its premium beer business with acquisitions of independent craft brewers, such as Ballast Point Brewing & Spirits in 2015 and Florida-based Funky Buddha this past August.Its premium Corona and Modelo beers are also seeing increased demand due to a rising Hispanic population in the United States, analysts have said.On Thursday, the company said beer sales rose 12.8 percent in the second quarter on strong demand for premium beers between the fourth of July and Labor day. Operating margins in its beer business rose 4.2 percentage points to 41.1 percent.Constellation holds the license to distribute Corona and Modelo beers in the U.S. and brews most of its beers in Mexico.The company, which also makes Robert Mondavi wines and SVEDKA vodka, lifted its full-year profit forecast to $8.25 to $8.40 per share, from a previous range of $7.90 to $8.10.The company, however, kept its forecast for sales growth of 4 percent to 6 percent, excluding the impact of divestitures.Net income attributable to the company rose to $500 million, or $2.48 per Class A share for the quarter ended Aug. 31, from $358.9 million, or $1.75 per Class A share, a year earlier.Excluding items, the company earned $2.47 per share, while net sales rose nearly 3 percent to $2.08 billion.Analysts on average expected a profit of $2.16 per share and revenue of $2.06 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham, Bernard Orr '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-constellation-brands-inc-results/constellation-brands-reports-40-percent-profit-rise-idUSKBN1CA1AD'|'2017-10-05T14:53:00.000+03:00'
'4f4d78dcb8001b7f0e2fd9a1e35e58c0ad9f9cd0'|'Luxembourg asks Amazon to set aside EU-imposed tax repayment'|'October 5, 2017 / 1:40 PM / Updated 4 hours ago Luxembourg asks Amazon to set aside EU-imposed tax repayment Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of the web service Amazon is pictured in Mexico City, Mexico on June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/Illustration/File Photo LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - Luxembourg will ask online retailer Amazon to set aside the 250 million euros ($293 million) the European Commission has ordered the company to repay in taxes while the parties consider whether or not to appeal. On Wednesday, the Commission took Ireland to court over its failure to recover up to 13 billion euros of tax due from Apple Inc. <20>It is clear that Amazon will have to make the payment as required. The money will be kept in a separate account until the outcome of the procedure,<2C> a spokesman for the Luxembourg Finance Ministry said. In other cases of illegal tax advantages, such as Fiat in Luxembourg, Starbucks in the Netherlands and a Belgian scheme for 35 companies, the money was also recovered even before appeals were exhausted, the European Commission said. Reporting by Michele Sinner in Luxembourg, writing by Robert-Jan Bartunek '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-amazon-taxavoidance-luxembourg/luxembourg-asks-amazon-to-set-aside-eu-imposed-tax-repayment-idUSKBN1CA1MM'|'2017-10-05T16:35:00.000+03:00'
'ec5e34aee2582759b05c164a01305d7834cfcf4f'|'Dubai PE firm Abraaj invests in Pakistani cinema operator Cinepax'|'KARACHI, Pakistan, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Dubai-based private equity firm Abraaj Group said on Wednesday it made an investment in Pakistan<61>s top cinema operator, Cinepax, to drive expansion over the next four years.Abraaj will help Cinepax in developing 80 new screens across multiple locations, the private equity firm said in a statement.Cinepax will also develop other entertainment-related ventures, the statement said, but did not reveal the value of the investment.Cinepax, which launched its first multiplex in 2007, has since established itself as the market leader in the country, boasting 29 screens in 12 locations.Pakistan<61>s current low ratio of cinema screens of 0.5 per million people and the possibility of revitalising the local film industry presents a compelling investment opportunity, Abraaj said.The investment will help build confidence among international investors about the Pakistan film industry, Nadeem Mandviwalla, head of a private Pakistani film distribution company and owner of multiple cinema screens told Reuters.Cinepax marks Abraaj<61>s ninth investment in Pakistan spanning a number of sectors including healthcare, power distribution, renewable energy and industrials.Abraaj, which bought a majority stake in 2009 in power utility K-Electric, agreed in October 2016 to divest the 66.4 percent shareholding to the Shanghai Electric Power Co Ltd for $1.77 billion. (Reporting by Syed Raza Hassan; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/abraajgroup-cinepax/dubai-pe-firm-abraaj-invests-in-pakistani-cinema-operator-cinepax-idINL4N1MF20R'|'2017-10-04T09:02:00.000+03:00'
'f09cc35a80b2d70e86e189169cd60e18c4a4bf5c'|'Hedge funds boost loans to companies as banks shy away'|'* Private equity, hedge funds lend more* $600 billion raised for private direct lending* Industry experts say interest rates appeal to investorsBy John O<>Donnell and Dasha AfanasievaFRANKFURT/LONDON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Private equity firms and hedge funds raised $600 billion globally last year to lend to companies, a survey said on Wednesday, as they step into the shoes of traditional lenders.The trend highlights a shift away from banks as a source of finance after the financial crisis, as bad loans given in the past continue to linger.It also shows how central bank money printing since the crash has helped to bolster private equity funds.That has created an industry known as private credit, where alternative providers lend at higher interest rates to companies, which may otherwise struggle to get money from a bank.The survey by the Alternative Credit Council, part of a trade group, found that this industry has grown 14-fold since 2000, raising more than $600 billion in funds last year, putting it on track to reach around $1 trillion by 2020.The survey also said Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Canada had the biggest potential for this type of financing in the next three years.<2E>The pull back by banks has created a vacuum which non banks have filled,<2C> said Chris Redmond, a debt expert at Willis Towers Watson, which advises pension funds.Private equity firms, which traditionally invest in management buyouts of companies, are looking at this business partly because of an increase in the prices of the companies they seek to buy.Hedge funds, which seek to make money betting on the fortunes of a company, currency or an economy, have struggled to generate stable profits and are eager to diversify.With more players entering the market, some are turning to Europe.<2E>Whilst the US private credit market is the most established global private credit market, Europe is closing the gap quickly, having witnessed huge growth in the sector since the financial crisis,<2C> the report<72>s authors wrote.The interest rates charged by these providers can go as high as 8.5 percent annually, according to industry experts.<2E>It is high levels of interest,<2C> said Redmond, who said that this had attracted investors, struggling to find returns elsewhere.<2E>We are concerned about some things going on in credit markets but private debt, as it stands, remains interesting and safe,<2C> he said.The survey also found that nearly half of lenders surveyed said loan terms had become less demanding in the past three years.Allan Nielsen, Managing Director at Ares, an asset manager which took part in the survey, said: <20>We definitely see diligence standards dropping ... (but) I think the private debt community will be better at handling a downturn.<2E>The Alternative Credit Council is part of the Alternative Investment Management Association, whose members are chiefly hedge funds. Researchers contacted 60 managers involved in the sector. (Editing by Jane Merriman) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/europe-lending-survey/hedge-funds-boost-loans-to-companies-as-banks-shy-away-idINL8N1MF3TD'|'2017-10-04T12:37:00.000+03:00'
'9e6dc5c89311c8c8093d025d8d24f9efd56f0647'|'India''s state-run GIC Re sets price range for up to $1.7 billion IPO'|'MUMBAI (Reuters) - State-run reinsurer General Insurance Corp of India (GIC Re) has set a price range of 855-912 rupees a share for its initial public offering that will run Oct 11-13, according to a public notice on Wednesday.At the upper end of the price range, the IPO would raise 113.7 billion rupees ($1.7 billion).Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Edwina Gibbs '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-gen-ins-india-ipo/indias-state-run-gic-re-sets-price-range-for-up-to-1-7-billion-ipo-idINKCN1C9053'|'2017-10-03T23:56:00.000+03:00'
'3f9cdce488b7983c03b7ae675b1b2240b057e003'|'EU competition chief to speak on two state aid cases'|'October 4, 2017 / 7:40 AM / Updated 7 hours ago EU competition chief to speak on two state aid cases Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager holds a news conference at the EU Commission''s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, June 27, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager will hold a news conference at 11:30 a.m. (0930 GMT) in Brussels on Wednesday on two cases of state aid, the European Commission said in a statement. EU regulators are expected to order Amazon ( AMZN.O ) to pay Luxembourg millions of euros in back taxes, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. It would be the latest global company to be hit by an EU crackdown on unfair tax breaks. Among previous cases, Apple Inc. ( AAPL.O ) has been ordered to pay up to 13 billion euros (<28>11.54 billion) in back taxes to Ireland, although Dublin has yet to claim the money. The Commission has declined comment on reports that it may launch a case against Ireland for failing to take Apple<6C>s money. Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Alastair Macdonald'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-taxavoidance-vestager/eu-competition-chief-to-speak-on-two-state-aid-cases-idUKKCN1C90P0'|'2017-10-04T10:39:00.000+03:00'
'85c517221a7cf8bbaf3de5fd61e467b28b2b8a37'|'Short sellers ''clamouring'' to borrow Roku shares - S3 Partners'|'October 3, 2017 / 6:29 PM / Updated 2 hours ago Short sellers ''clamoring'' to borrow Roku shares: S3 Partners Noel Randewich 2 Min Read A video sign displays the logo for Roku Inc, a Fox-backed video streaming firm, in Times Square after the company''s IPO at the Nasdaq Market in New York, U.S., September 28, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Traders on Tuesday were <20>clamoring<6E> to borrow shares of Roku ( ROKU.O ) in order to sell them short following the video-streaming company<6E>s initial public offer last week, according to S3 Partners. Shares of the Los Gatos, California company dropped 10.5 percent to $21.08 on Tuesday, bringing their decline to 20 percent in the past two sessions. <20>With short sellers clamoring for short locates, stock borrow rates have increased from the 20-percent fee level to over 65-percent fee for some trades we<77>ve seen done today,<2C> Ihor Dusaniwsky, S3 Partners<72> head of research, said in an email. So far, about 2 million shares of Roku have been sold short, according to the financial analytics firm. Riding a wave of consumers abandoning cable TV and switching to online content while facing competition from larger rivals, Roku remained up 51 percent from the $14 price set in its initial public offer on Wednesday. Based on its 2016 growth rate, Roku<6B>s annual revenue could reach $623 million in 2018, putting its current stock price at about 3.2 times revenue, a level that appears expensive compared to other Silicon Valley consumer electronics makers. Roku<6B>s shareholders include Menlo Ventures, Fidelity and Rupert Murdoch<63>s Twenty-First Century Fox ( FOXA.O ). Reporting by Noel Randewich; Editing by James Dalgleish'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-roku-stocks/short-sellers-clamoring-to-borrow-roku-shares-s3-partners-idUKKCN1C82CQ'|'2017-10-03T21:58:00.000+03:00'
'394c7c861adbe3827be6f971bfda9c7daea5ab26'|'Google to create 300 more jobs in France by end 2018 - Les Echos'|'October 10, 2017 / 5:09 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago Google to create 300 more jobs in France by end 2018: Les Echos Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The Google logo is pictured atop an office building in Irvine, California, U.S. August 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Picture PARIS (Reuters) - Google France plans to increase its staff from 700 to 1,000 in 2018 and to double its office space in the country, its head told French news daily Les Echos in an interview. <20>By the end of next year, we will increase staff from 700 to 1,000, mainly engineers and we will double the size of our offices from 10,000 to 20,000 square meters,<2C> Sebastien Missoffe, head of Google France said in an interview. Reporting by Maya Nikolaeva; editing by John Irish'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-google-jobs/google-to-create-300-more-jobs-in-france-by-end-2018-les-echos-idUSKBN1CF2FG'|'2017-10-10T20:05:00.000+03:00'
'2b6854e9d686a8533fa6e1eae7745429ce3d5ffb'|'Sears Canada seeks court approval to liquidate all assets'|'October 10, 2017 / 4:50 PM / Updated 21 minutes ago Sears Canada seeks court approval to liquidate all assets Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 10 (Reuters) - Bankrupt Sears Canada, along with some of its units, said on Tuesday it is seeking court approval to liquidate all of its remaining stores and assets. The retailer said it will apply to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice and expects a hearing on Oct. 13. Last month, Sears Canada had asked a court to extend creditor protection by another month so it can finish negotiating a deal to sell its assets, while still operating in the country. (Reporting by Ahmed Farhatha in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/sears-canada-hearing/sears-canada-seeks-court-approval-to-liquidate-all-assets-idUSL4N1ML4R4'|'2017-10-10T19:50:00.000+03:00'
'f94f8145cc6436b21eeffb57a9e261ae0caff587'|'Fed''s George says further U.S. rate hikes are needed'|'AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve will need to raise U.S. interest rates further to keep the economy on track to full employment and the Fed<65>s 2-percent inflation goal, Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Esther George said on Thursday.<2E>At this stage of the expansion, it is appropriate to move cautiously,<2C> said George, who has typically supported a faster programme of rate hikes than most of her colleagues.But waiting too long for another rate hike may force the Fed to raise rates aggressively later, sending the economy into recession, or could foster financial imbalances if investors respond to low rates by placing even riskier bets, she said.<2E>Moving interest rates at a gradual pace towards a level consistent with longer-run growth is the best step to help promote a continuation of the economic expansion,<2C> she said.<2E>Further gradual rate adjustments will be needed.<2E>The Fed last month left rates unchanged but most signalled that another rate hike would be needed in December, with more to come next year.Since that meeting, several policymakers, including Fed Chair Janet Yellen, have said they do not fully understand why inflation has fallen this year despite a decline in the unemployment rate to 4.4 percent. Nevertheless, they continue to expect inflation will head back up as the labour market tightens, underscoring the need for further, gradual rate hikes.George barely addressed the issue of inflation, saying only that raising rates provides the <20>most likely course, in my view, to meet our long-run goals of maximum employment and price stability.<2E>Reporting by Ann Saphir; editing by Diane CraftOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-fed-george/feds-george-says-further-u-s-rate-hikes-are-needed-idINKBN1CA2MQ'|'2017-10-05T18:35:00.000+03:00'
'046e965e26c46402fb87e68c334610f17e5d3c3e'|'Ford has a clear plan to fix its present failings'|'LIKE any mechanic with a misfiring car, Ford<72>s new boss has had his head under the bonnet working out what needs attention. Jim Hackett emerged on October 3rd with a checklist of repairs to present to investors, who have been awaiting his diagnosis since he took over in May. The list is short but the engineering is complicated: restore Ford<72>s competitiveness while preparing for a future of electric vehicles (EVs), self-driving cars and transport services. But those expecting a radical overhaul were probably disappointed.Mr Hackett<74>s predecessor, Mark Fields, was shown the door by Bill Ford, the firm<72>s chairman, for failing to make a persuasive case that he was reinventing Ford as a mobility firm at the forefront of automotive technology. Despite acknowledging to investors that he and Mr Ford agreed that his new job was <20>about the future not the past<73>, Mr Hackett was clearest about how to make Ford fit for the present.Latest updates How <20>Oslo<6C> turned diplomatic negotiation into compelling theatre Prospero 28 minutes ago This 2 hours ago Flyers See all updates Ford has struggled in recent years. It has underperformed even amid the lowly stockmarket valuations of carmakers challenged by tech firms with bolder ideas about transport in the future. Mr Hackett admitted to investors that, despite record profits of late, Ford had fallen short on margins, depriving them of billions of dollars. He hopes to put that right chiefly by using old-fashioned means<6E>cutting costs.Reducing complexity by pruning the huge variety of different specifications available for each vehicle (in the case of the Focus, from 35,000 to 96) and sharing parts across more cars will help to lower costs, which have risen almost as fast as revenues since 2010. Bringing better technology to the industrial process should also cut the time it takes to develop new vehicles, by up to a fifth. This will all bring savings of $14bn over the next five years, according to Mr Hackett. Plans are also afoot to make more of the sort of cars that people want to buy. Buyers are turning against saloon cars and are demanding SUVs and trucks, so Ford will make more of them. But altering the line-up of products is hardly a step-change.These are sensible fixes. But it is unlikely that Mr Hackett<74>s measured tone will reassure investors that Ford is taking a lead in the new technologies that will determine success in the longer term. Neither does it help that its rival in Detroit, General Motors (GM), is doing a much better job. It launched a long-range EV, the Chevrolet Bolt, last year, and on October 2nd said that it planned 20 electric models by 2023. Despite announcing that it would reduce spending on internal combustion engines by a third by 2022 and divert that cash to electric powertrains, Ford will not launch a similar vehicle until 2020. Ford insists that it is only interested in profitable EVs. But withstanding losses while learning how to make and market battery-powered cars may give GM and other carmakers a long-term advantage.Ford also aims to become the world<6C>s most trusted mobility company. Much like all bosses of carmakers faced with the puzzle of finding business models around ride-hailing and autonomous cars, Mr Hackett was vague about how Ford might provide services profitably. He did at least signal that it would find partners for self-driving technology, abandoning Mr Fields<64>s riskier strategy of doing everything internally.Striking the right balance between <20>thinking and doing<6E> is important, according to Mr Hackett, who wants to <20>bend the arc towards doing<6E>. That is certainly what catching up with GM will require. Deutsche Bank recently suggested that Ford<72>s rival may have commercial driverless cars on the road within the next couple of years, well ahead of any competitors.Ford has plenty of ground to regain. As Barclays, a bank, points out, it went from being the <20>darling<6E> of the industry a few years ago to a firm that investors now treat with <20>indifference, disint
'595440af9acd18fb60084fd4101bc8e222d63797'|'PRESS DIGEST- British Business - Oct 6'|'Oct 6 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.The Times-Amsterdam-based financial services company TMF Group is to list on the London stock market and move its headquarters to Britain in a 1 billion pound ($1.31 billion) flotation that marks a big boost for the City. bit.ly/2wAJfk6-Sky Plc faces a potentially bruising annual meeting next week after shareholders were urged to vote against the reappointment of James Murdoch as chairman and "excessive<76> rewards for executives. bit.ly/2wzW4uQThe Guardian-Goldman Sachs has begun to make plans for Brexit by leasing space in a new Frankfurt tower block that could hold up to 1,000 staff. bit.ly/2wzXO7D-The whistleblower at the centre of the Tesco Plc accounting scandal told a court that he personally commissioned a detailed analysis of the scale of alleged profits manipulation at the retailer and that his team was "falling apart" in an aggressive environment where his bosses refused to downgrade targets. bit.ly/2wAlXe4The Telegraph-Royal Mail Plc workers are to strike for 48 hours later this month after talks failed to resolve a dispute linked to pensions, pay and jobs, as bosses from the company threaten unions with legal action. bit.ly/2wBfkbr-Ryanair Holdings Plc boss Michael O''Leary has apologised to pilots, and offered them pay increases and improved job security to remain at the airline. bit.ly/2wzZqOJSky News-In a move by social media company to curb fake news, Facebook Inc is testing a new "context" button that would allow users to get more information about who is supplying a news story. bit.ly/2wzSX6b-The founders of JD Sports Fashion Plc are marching back onto the London stock market with plans to float Footasylum, a chain of premium fashion stores. bit.ly/2wAXipWThe Independent-Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond is expecting to unveil a significantly worse outlook for the public finances in November''s budget, Treasury sources indicated. ind.pn/2wAN9cK$1 = 0.7624 pounds Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-press-business/press-digest-british-business-oct-6-idUSL4N1MG3QN'|'2017-10-06T03:15:00.000+03:00'
'4e112bccb8bfdd822c5dde5b236c5deba8aa6f87'|'Indonesia president urges action on Freeport mine deal'|'October 6, 2017 / 12:30 PM / Updated 4 hours ago Indonesia president urges action on Freeport mine deal Fergus Jensen 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Trucks operate in the open-pit mine of PT Freeport''s Grasberg copper and gold mine complex near Timika, in the eastern region of Papua, Indonesia on September 19, 2015 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. REUTERS/Muhammad Adimaja/Antara Foto/File Photo JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian President Joko Widodo called for faster progress to wrap up a deal with Freeport-McMoRan Inc ( FCX.N ) on rights to the giant Grasberg copper mine, which the U.S. firm owns, officials said on Friday. The chief executive of the world<6C>s biggest publicly traded copper company -- which under a framework deal agreed in August to divest 51 percent of the mine -- held talks with officials in Jakarta earlier in the day. The deal is intended to replace an existing contract with a <20>special mining permit<69> and give Jakarta greater control over its mineral resources. But significant differences remain including on how Grasberg, the world<6C>s second-largest copper mine, will be valued and on the timing and structure of the required divestment, leading some analysts to raise doubts about the future of the agreement. Hadi Mustofa Djuraid, an aide to Mining Minister Ignasius Jonan, said Freeport CEO Richard Adkerson had met Jonan and other company and government officials in Jakarta on Friday morning after the president said <20>the sooner the better<65> referring to an end to the talks. <20>In principle, Freeport is still committed in accordance with the agreement,<2C> Djuraid told reporters, noting that issues over divestment and state revenues from Grasberg had not been resolved yet by the finance ministry. Under Widodo<64>s direction, Jonan will <20>help the negotiation process<73> with Freeport alongside Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati and State Owned Enterprise Minister Rini Soemarno, <20>so this problem is resolved immediately,<2C> Djuraid said. <20>In negotiations there<72>s always a bargaining process,<2C> he added, declining to provide detail on the talks. A spokesman for Freeport<72>s Indonesian unit declined to comment. The government is seeking a <20>win-win<69> solution as quickly as possible, Widodo said late on Thursday, according to an official transcript of remarks the president made to reporters in Banten province west of the capital Jakatra. <20>It<49>s already been three years of heated arguing, but this is almost finalised,<2C> Widodo added. Adding pressure to end the dispute, Indonesia<69>s Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) told parliament this week that between 2009 and 2015, Freeport Indonesia<69>s royalty and levy payments were $445.96 million lower than they would have been if the miner had taken up a new mining permit during that period. <20>The risk of the dispute escalating and ultimately going to arbitration has increased,<2C> Jefferies analyst Christopher LaFemina said in a research note this week, referring to the divestment issues, and cutting Freeport<72>s target share price to $19 from $23. <20>We are increasingly concerned that a resolution will not be reached,<2C> LaFemina added. Jefferies estimates the value of the Freeport Grasberg stake to be divested at $6.7 billion. Reporting by Wilda Asmarini and Gayatri Suroyo in JAKARTA; Additional reporting by Susan Taylor in TORONTO and Nicole Mordant in VANCOUVER; Writing by Fergus Jensen and Ed Davies; editing by John Stonestreet '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-freeport/indonesia-president-urges-action-on-freeport-mine-deal-idINKBN1CB1KK'|'2017-10-06T10:30:00.000+03:00'
'96ac4796526cb5cefee67cbf5a874001cc895af8'|'Tech giants are building their own undersea fibre-optic networks'|'WHEN Cyrus Field, an American businessman, laid the first trans-Atlantic cable in 1858, it was hailed as one of the great technological achievements of its time and celebrated with bonfires, fireworks and 100-gun salutes. Alas, the reason for the festivities soon went away. Within weeks the cable failed.On September 21st the completion of another trans-Atlantic cable was welcomed with much less ado. But it is remarkable nevertheless: dubbed Marea , Spanish for <20>tide<64>, the 6,600km bundle of eight fibre-optic threads, roughly the size of a garden hose, is the highest-capacity connection across the ocean. Stretching from Virginia Beach, Virginia, to Bilbao, Spain, it is capable of transferring 160 terabits of data every second, the equivalent of more than 5,000 high-resolution movies. It is jointly owned by Facebook and Microsoft.Latest updates See all updates Such ultra-fast fibre networks are needed to keep up with the torrent of data flowing around the world. In 2016 traffic reached 3,544 terabits per second, roughly double the figure in 2014, according to TeleGeography, a market-research firm. And demand for international bandwidth is growing by 45% annually. Much traffic still comes from internet users, but a large and growing share is generated by big internet and cloud-computing companies syncing data across their networks of data centres around the world.These firms used to lease all of their bandwidth from carriers such as BT and Level 3. But now they need so much network capacity that it makes more sense to lay their own dedicated pipes, particularly on long routes between their data centres. The Submarine Telecoms Forum, an industry body, reckons that 100,000km of submarine cable was laid in 2016, up from just 16,000km in 2015. TeleGeography predicts that a total of $9.2bn will be spent on such cable projects between 2016 and 2018, five times as much as in the previous three years.Owning a private subsea fibre-optic network has several advantages, including more bandwidth, lower costs, and reduced delay, or <20>latency<63>. Having access to multiple cables on different routes also provides redundancy. If a cable is severed<65>by fishing nets, sharks, or an earthquake, among other things<67>traffic can be rerouted to another line. Most important, however, owning cables gives companies greater say over how their data traffic is managed and how equipment is upgraded. <20>The motivation is not so much saving money. It<49>s more about control,<2C> says Julian Rawle, a submarine cable-industry expert.Some people worry that owning the pipes that carry their customers<72> data will give big tech firms even more power than they already have, likening the situation to Amazon<6F>s owning the roads on which its packages are delivered and the lorries that carry them. Others fret that conventional network operators may struggle to adapt their business models, as companies such as Facebook are moving onto their turf. <20>Within the next 20 years,<2C> predicts Mr Rawle, <20>the whole concept of the telecom carrier as the provider of the network is going to disappear.<2E>This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline "Pipe dreams"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/rss/business_rss.xml'|'https://www.economist.com/news/business/21730057-google-facebook-and-microsoft-want-more-control-over-internets-basic-infrastructure-tech?fsrc=rss%7Cbus'|'2017-10-05T22:54:00.000+03:00'
'd6d5fb527c1ae69b23dabebcfadbfc2af8f6b3c2'|'BOJ''s Nakaso says central bank may incur red ink when ending easy policy - Asahi'|'People walk past the Bank of Japan building in Tokyo, Japan June 16, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Hiroshi Nakaso said the central bank may incur revenue losses when it exits ultra-easy monetary policy but that won<6F>t affect policy-making, the Asahi newspaper reported on Wednesday.The BOJ could smoothly withdraw its massive stimulus and learn from the experience of the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is already tapering its asset purchases, Nakaso was Quote: d as saying in an interview.<2E>We can<61>t rule out the chance the BOJ may incur red ink ... but short-term fluctuations in the BOJ<4F>s revenues won<6F>t disrupt our policy-making,<2C> he said.In a bid to accelerate inflation to its ambitious 2 percent target, the BOJ floods markets with cash by buying huge amounts of government bonds.The central bank also charges 0.1 percent interest on a portion of excess reserves financial institutions park with the BOJ to encourage them to lend it out instead.Critics of the radical monetary policy warn the BOJ may incur losses on its huge bond holdings when it withdraws monetary stimulus, as that would trigger a rise in long-term interest rates that hurts bond prices.To mop up surplus cash from markets the BOJ would also need to pay higher interest on excess reserves financial institutions deposit at the central bank, which would also hurt its profits.Nakaso defended the BOJ<4F>s 2 percent inflation target, saying that setting its price goal at levels equivalent to other major central banks would stabilise currency moves in the long run.He also called on the government to take a <20>balanced<65> approach on fiscal policy, when asked about criticism by some analysts that the BOJ<4F>s ultra-easy policy was allowing lawmakers to drag their feet in fixing Japan<61>s tattered finances by keeping borrowing costs essentially at zero.<2E>It<49>s important to create a sustainable fiscal framework in Japan,<2C> he said.Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Paul Tait and Eric Meijer '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/japan-economy-boj/bojs-nakaso-says-central-bank-may-incur-red-ink-when-ending-easy-policy-asahi-idINKCN1C82W7'|'2017-10-03T21:16:00.000+03:00'
'422ab1d9e1f95928482bc9aea0b1db05c1784a58'|'Trade union Unite to pursue legal action for Monarch workers who lost jobs'|'LONDON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - British trade union Unite said on Wednesday it would launch legal action on behalf of over 1,800 workers who lost their jobs when Monarch Airlines went in to administration earlier in the week.The airline collapsed on Monday and made 90 percent of the staff on Monarch Airlines and Travel Group redundant, after falling victim to intense competition for flights and a weaker pound.The union said it would lodge employment tribunal proceedings over the company<6E>s failure to consult the workers on redundancies, and said the employers had not given the necessary notice or statutory pay.<2E>Unite is doing everything it can to assist former Monarch workers in securing new jobs, offering free legal advice and launching legal action to secure the compensation they are owed, as well as helping members find jobs with other airlines,<2C> Unite national officer Oliver Richardson said in a statement.<2E>The manner in which Monarch went into administration and the way the government allowed it happen means there is a strong claim for compensation by former Monarch workers.<2E> (Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by Stephen Addison) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/monarch-airlines-licence-jobs/trade-union-unite-to-pursue-legal-action-for-monarch-workers-who-lost-jobs-idINL9N1IW00M'|'2017-10-04T09:22:00.000+03:00'
'6129c4a17ac124e8a7df2ac9f28a07dd28ed6967'|'Fewer Japan households expect price rises ahead - BOJ survey'|'October 6, 2017 / 5:15 AM / Updated an hour ago Fewer Japan households expect price rises ahead - BOJ survey Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: People walk past the Bank of Japan building in Tokyo, Japan June 16, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Fewer Japanese households expect prices to rise a year from now, a quarterly Bank of Japan survey showed on Friday, boding ill for the central bank<6E>s efforts to achieve its elusive 2 percent inflation target. The BOJ survey, conducted across 4,000 households over the month to Sept. 5, showed 70.4 percent of them thought prices will rise a year from now, down from 75.4 percent in the previous survey in June. It also showed that 81.4 percent expect prices to rise five years from now, down from 82.3 percent in June. Despite more than four years of aggressive money printing, the BOJ has failed to accelerate inflation to its 2 percent target, as companies remain wary of raising prices for fear of scaring away cost-sensitive consumers. Subdued inflation has forced the BOJ to push back the timing for achieving its price target six times since deploying a massive stimulus programme in 2013. Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Sam Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-economy-boj/fewer-japan-households-expect-price-rises-ahead-boj-survey-idUKKBN1CB0DQ'|'2017-10-06T08:13:00.000+03:00'
'46bcd7439e4f7c886bfbd66d390a04ae7bba1ca1'|'World Bank''s Kim says most members ''on board'' with capital hike'|'October 5, 2017 / 10:02 PM / Updated 6 hours ago World Bank''s Kim says most members ''on board'' with capital hike David Lawder 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: World Bank President Jim Yong Kim speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 1, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the <20>vast majority<74> of the bank<6E>s 189 member countries support a capital increase for the institution<6F>s main lending arm and he hoped to soon set a deadline for a final decision. Kim told a media conference call that members would discuss the issue at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings next week, where he will also roll out a new initiative to encourage more investment in human capital and education. <20>We are moving in a direction and the vast majority of countries now, we think, are on board and it<69>s just a question of when the capital increase will actually happen,<2C> Kim said. He views a capital increase for the World Bank Group<75>s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development as critical to his strategy of trying to mobilize more private capital for development by <20>de-risking<6E> projects with World Bank backing and issuing more debt on capital markets. <20>We definitely are focused on crowding in more private capital, but there is no way to do that without us having more capital ourselves,<2C> Kim said. <20>I think now everybody on the board understands that.<2E> He said the bank has made the case for raising additional capital by showing the extent of demand for its lending and assistance and the outcome is now <20>a question of timing.<2E> However, Kim has one major obstacle to increasing the bank<6E>s capital base: a reluctant Trump administration, which as the World Bank<6E>s largest shareholder, effectively holds veto power over its decisions. <20>Everybody<64>s willing to do this except for the United States at this point,<2C> said Scott Morris, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank. <20>We have to convince a new administration on the basic case. I think all the evidence is that they<65>re not there yet.<2E> Morris, a former U.S. Treasury official who oversaw U.S. membership in the World Bank and IMF Fund during the Obama administration, said the administration likely has some objections to the World Bank<6E>s continued lending to China and some other large emerging market countries. A Treasury spokesman did not immediately respond to Reuters<72> request for comment on the matter. The World Bank in 2015 initially had set a goal of agreeing on a capital boost by the end of 2017, with a deal finalised at this year<61>s annual meetings. Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by David Gregorio '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/worldbank-capital/world-banks-kim-says-most-members-on-board-with-capital-hike-idINKBN1CA2TH'|'2017-10-06T01:02:00.000+03:00'
'5325a81cdbf705f6d6e5eb0aab7d920de2384b48'|'Japanese workers'' wages rise in a positive sign for consumer spending'|'October 6, 2017 / 12:02 AM / in 18 minutes Japanese workers'' wages rise in a positive sign for consumer spending Reuters Staff 2 Min Read People walk at a business district in central Tokyo, Japan September 29, 2017. Picture taken September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai TOKYO (Reuters) - Wages of Japanese workers rose in August from a year earlier, reversing from the previous month<74>s decline, in a sign of a gradual pick-up in workers<72> income amid a tightening labour market. Wages rose in both nominal and inflation-adjusted real terms, labour ministry data showed on Friday. The data is likely to ease some worry over the sustainability of a recent improvement in consumer spending. Still, wage growth may not be strong enough to dispel questions over the central bank<6E>s assertions that a tightening labour market will eventually lead to higher wages, which will boost economic activity and inflation. Wage earners<72> nominal cash earnings rose an annual 0.9 percent in the year to August, reversing from the prior month<74>s revised 0.6 percent decline and the fastest gain since July 2016, the data showed. Reflecting a 0.8 percent rise in consumer prices, however, inflation-adjusted real wages rose a meagre 0.1 percent, up for the first time in eight months. Many Japanese companies remain hesitant to spend their record cash piles on raising wages, in part because they are unable to pass on costs to their customers who are accustomed to nearly two decades of mostly falling prices. Special payments -- which include summer bonuses -- jumped 6.1 percent in August from a year ago, the biggest gain since March 2016. Regular pay, which determines base wages, rose 0.4 percent in the year to August, rising for a fifth straight month. Overtime pay, a barometer of strength in corporate activity, rose 1.5 percent year-on-year in August, up two months in a row. Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Kim Coghill'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-economy-wages/japanese-workers-wages-rise-in-a-positive-sign-for-consumer-spending-idUKKBN1CB003'|'2017-10-06T03:02:00.000+03:00'
'd70e509757b686aa7c15f53170633d383459c3dc'|'EU mergers and takeovers (Oct 6)'|'BRUSSELS, Oct 6 (Reuters) - The following are mergers under review by the European Commission and a brief guide to the EU merger process:APPROVALS AND WITHDRAWALS -- Japanese healthcare company Konica Minolta to acquire U.S. diagnostics company Ambry Genetics (approved Oct. 6)-- Bermuda-headquartered reinsurer Axis Capital Holdings Ltd to acquire UK insurer Novae (approved Oct. 6)-- Australian investment firm IFM Investors Pty Ltd and Singapore shipping terminal operator PSA International Pte Ltd to jointly acquire Turkish terminal operator Mersin (approved Sept. 29)NEW LISTINGS NoneEXTENSIONS AND OTHER CHANGES NoneFIRST-STAGE REVIEWS BY DEADLINE OCT 11 -- French banks Societe Generale and BNP Paribas to acquire joint control of German office building owner Horizon Development GmbH (notified Sept. 6/deadline Oct. 11/simplified)OCT 12 -- Dutch property developer Unibail Rodamco and German real estate fund Commerz Real Investmentgeseelschaft to jointly acquire Czech shopping centre owner CGI Metropole (notified Sept. 7/deadline Oct. 12/simplified)OCT 13 -- Mirova Core Infrastructure, COMSA and Dutch fund manager PGGM to acquire joint control of Mircom Concesiones de Infraestructuras (notified Sept. 8/deadline Oct. 13/simplified)-- Italian infrastructure group Atlantia to acquire Spanish rival Abertis (notified Sept. 8/deadline Oct. 13)-- Anglo-Dutch oil group Royal Dutch Shell to acquire indirect joint control of natural gas producer Crestwood Permian Basin LLC which is now solely controlled by Crestwood Permian Basin Holdings (notified Sept. 8/deadline Oct. 13/simplified)OCT 16 -- Swiss food company Nestle to acquire sole control of Beverage Partners Worldwide, a joint venture between Nestle and the Coca-Cola Co (notified Oct. 11/deadline Oct. 16)OCT 17 -- U.S. specialty material company Celanese and private equity firm Blackstone to combine their cellulose acetate tow units under a new joint venture (notified Sept. 9/deadline Oct. 17)-- Private equity firm Advent to acquire communications services company Williams Lea (notified Sept. 12/deadline Oct. 17/simplified)OCT 18 -- U.S. medical equipment supplier Becton Dickinson and Co to acquire U.S. peer C R Bard Inc (notified Aug. 30/deadline extended to Oct.18 after commitments submitted on Sept. 27)-- Bermuda-headquartered reinsurer Axis Capital Holdings Ltd to acquire UK insurer Novae (notified Sept. 13/deadline Oct. 18/simplified)-- German insurer Allianz to acquire UK financial services group Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society Ltd<74>s general insurance businesses (notified Sept. 13/deadline Oct. 18/simplified)OCT 20 -- U.S. life sciences company Avantor to acquire U.S. lab supplies company VWR (notified Sept. 15/deadline Oct. 20)-- U.S. fashion group Michael Kors to acquire British shoemaker Jimmy Choo (notified Sept. 15/deadline Oct. 20/simplified)-- U.S. company AES Corp and German conglomerate Siemens to acquire joint control of a joint venture (notified Sept. 15/deadline Oct. 20/simplified)OCT 23 -- French carmaker Renault to acquire a 29 percent stake in electric car smart charging services provider Jedlix, which is now jointly controlled by Dutch renewable energy company Eneco Groep (notified Sept. 18/deadline Oct. 23/simplified)-- Dutch warehouse owner Borealis European Holdings B.V., Ontario Teachers<72> Pension Plan Board and SSE to acquire joint control of UK energy meter company Maple (notified Sept. 18/deadline Oct. 23/simplified)-- French carmaker Renault to acquire a 25 percent stake in electric car charging services Jedlix (notified Sept. 18/deadline Oct. 23/simplified)OCT 24 -- U.S. company Platinum Equity Group to acquire UK aerospace distributor Pattonair Holdings Ltd (notified Sept. 19/deadline Oct. 24/simplified)-- UK energy company Greenergy to acquire fuel supplier Inver Energy Ltd (notified Sept. 19/deadline Oct. 24)OCT 25 -- Jacobs Engineering Group to acquire technical consulting services provider CH2M Hill Companies (notified Sept. 20/deadline Oct. 25/simplified)-- Priv
'c1b553176c0ffa8b2a53306840bde364316c3c5b'|'Switch Inc''s IPO prices at $17 per share'|'October 5, 2017 / 11:24 PM / Updated 5 hours ago Switch Inc''s IPO prices at $17 per share Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Switch Inc ( SWCH.N ) raised about $531.3 million from its initial public offering which was priced at $17 per share, making the data-center operator the second-largest U.S. technology listing this year. The 31.3 million Class A share offering was priced above the proposed $14 to $16 per share range, giving it a market value of as much as $4.2 billion. Switch Inc, which was incorporated in June for the purpose of issuing the Class A shares in this offering, intends to use the proceeds to buy out investors in Switch Ltd and take control of it as a holding company. Las Vegas-based Switch Inc, whose major customers include Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ), eBay ( EBAY.O ) and PayPal Inc ( PYPL.O ), helps enterprises manage data by renting out its cloud service infrastructures on a contractual basis. The company, which also operates data centers in Michigan and Reno, Nevada, posted net income of $35.3 million for the six months ended June 30, flat compared with the year-ago period. Goldman Sachs & Co, J.P.Morgan, BMO Capital Markets, Wells Fargo Securities were among top underwriters to the offering. Reporting by Nikhil Subba and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; editing by Diane Craft '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-switch-ipo-pricing/switch-incs-ipo-prices-at-17-per-share-idINKBN1CA2YR'|'2017-10-05T21:24:00.000+03:00'
'70d905c4f735b8a9db73d6b3c8043139ca93dfc4'|'Ryanair promises pilots significant improvements in pay, conditions'|'Reuters TV United States  26 PM / a few seconds ago Ryanair promises pilots significant improvements in pay, conditions   FILE PHOTO: A Ryanair plane prepares to land at Manchester Airport in Manchester, Britain, March 31, 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ryanair ( RYA.I ) on Thursday promised its pilots significant improvements in pay and conditions, saying it would exceed rates paid by rivals and improve job security, according to a letter to pilots seen by Reuters. The Irish airline, the largest in Europe by passenger numbers, has in recent weeks announced the cancellation of thousands of flights, saying it did not have enough standby pilots to ensure the smooth operation of its schedule. Ryanair will deliver <20>significant improvements to your rosters, your pay, your basing, your contracts and your career progression over the next 12 months,<2C> chief executive Michael O<>Leary said in the letter addressed <20>to all Ryanair pilots<74>. The letter said Ryanair would exceed the pay and job security offered by rivals like Jet2 and Norwegian Air Shuttle ( NWC.OL ) and that it would negotiate on any differences in conditions between Ryanair<69>s Irish contracts and those offered by local laws at European bases. Reporting by Conor Humphries; editing by Andrew Roche'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ryanair-hldgs-cancellations/ryanair-promises-pilots-significant-improvements-in-pay-conditions-idUKKBN1CA2MG'|'2017-10-05T23:25:00.000+03:00'
'a4a9c6179983c13f61bfb83a4cfca9055ba9c0a9'|'PRESS DIGEST- British Business - Oct 6'|'Oct 6 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.The Times-Amsterdam-based financial services company TMF Group is to list on the London stock market and move its headquarters to Britain in a 1 billion pound ($1.31 billion) flotation that marks a big boost for the City. bit.ly/2wAJfk6-Sky Plc faces a potentially bruising annual meeting next week after shareholders were urged to vote against the reappointment of James Murdoch as chairman and "excessive<76> rewards for executives. bit.ly/2wzW4uQThe Guardian-Goldman Sachs has begun to make plans for Brexit by leasing space in a new Frankfurt tower block that could hold up to 1,000 staff. bit.ly/2wzXO7D-The whistleblower at the centre of the Tesco Plc accounting scandal told a court that he personally commissioned a detailed analysis of the scale of alleged profits manipulation at the retailer and that his team was "falling apart" in an aggressive environment where his bosses refused to downgrade targets. bit.ly/2wAlXe4The Telegraph-Royal Mail Plc workers are to strike for 48 hours later this month after talks failed to resolve a dispute linked to pensions, pay and jobs, as bosses from the company threaten unions with legal action. bit.ly/2wBfkbr-Ryanair Holdings Plc boss Michael O''Leary has apologised to pilots, and offered them pay increases and improved job security to remain at the airline. bit.ly/2wzZqOJSky News-In a move by social media company to curb fake news, Facebook Inc is testing a new "context" button that would allow users to get more information about who is supplying a news story. bit.ly/2wzSX6b-The founders of JD Sports Fashion Plc are marching back onto the London stock market with plans to float Footasylum, a chain of premium fashion stores. bit.ly/2wAXipWThe Independent-Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond is expecting to unveil a significantly worse outlook for the public finances in November''s budget, Treasury sources indicated. ind.pn/2wAN9cK$1 = 0.7624 pounds Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-press-business/press-digest-british-business-oct-6-idINL4N1MG3QN'|'2017-10-05T22:16:00.000+03:00'
'346b2ba9654a8f056b287f391d55d4450a4fc45e'|'Bankrupt U.S. retailers begin to catch a break'|'October 6, 2017 / 5:12 AM / in 4 hours Bankrupt U.S. retailers begin to catch a break Jessica DiNapoli , Tracy Rucinski 7 Min Read (Reuters) - An unexpected helping hand from creditors, landlords and vendors is allowing more U.S. retailers to stay in business following bankruptcy with most of their stores and employees in the fold. The new approach marks a turning point for the beleaguered sector, which has seen at least 19 brick-and-mortar retail chains shut down the bulk of their operations since 2014. Until this year, most bankrupt retailers, including American Apparel, Sports Authority and The Limited, were dismantled during their bankruptcy process. Investors and companies acquired their intellectual property and other assets, but refused to take on their business as a going concern because they saw little value in assuming costly store leases. Instead, they often opted to revamp some of the battered brands online. For a graphic, click tmsnrt.rs/2yWXSjs However, several creditors, landlords and vendors now see more value left in some retailers, and are seizing on an opportunity to minimize their own losses in the retail rout. This could spell a slowdown in the decline in brick-and-mortar retail jobs, which fell by more than 100,000 this year, as more than 6,000 stores shuttered under increasing pressure from competition among traditional retailers as well as e-commerce firms such as Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ). <20>We<57>re seeing a set of situations come together in which the constituencies have more interest in the retailer surviving than not,<2C> said Holly Etlin, a managing director at AlixPartners LLP, a consulting firm that worked on the bankruptcy of Gymboree. Jeans company True Religion Apparel Inc and perfume wholesaler and retailer Perfumania Holdings Inc PERF.O are set to emerge from bankruptcy with at least some of their stores in operation, according to interviews with bankruptcy attorneys and a Reuters review of financial information of more than 15 retailers shared with bankruptcy courts. These chains will follow a path blazed by Payless ShoeSource, which in August emerged from bankruptcy while keeping more than 3,400 out of its 4,200 stores worldwide, and preserving 19,000 of its 22,000 employees. Last month, teen clothing shop rue21 Inc and children<65>s apparel chain Gymboree Corp came out of bankruptcy in similar fashion, preserving much of their store footprints and employee headcount. Most of these retailers were owned by private equity firms, which saddled them with debt in a risky bid to juice returns. But in bankruptcy talks, the chains are arguing successfully that they can generate enough cash to withstand the sector<6F>s woes if their debt mountains are slashed and payment obligations eased. Creditors, landlords and vendors are more receptive to this approach, because their own financial projections show that liquidations would result in a limited recovery of what they are owed, according to interviews with debt investors and bankruptcy court filings. Had rue21 liquidated, for example, many loan holders would have seen almost the entire value of their investment wiped out by the end of its five-month bankruptcy process, according to bankruptcy court filings and people familiar with the matter. This new reality offers grounds for optimism for Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us Inc, which last month became the largest retail bankruptcy in 13 years. The biggest U.S. specialty toy retailer plans to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy with many of its about 1,600 stores, employing 64,000 people, remaining open. FILE PHOTO: An American Apparel store logo is pictured on a building along the Lincoln Road Mall in Miami Beach, Florida, U.S. on March 17, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us plans to argue that its annual cash flow of roughly $800 million would make it viable if its $5.2 billion in debt is significantly reduced, according to court papers and people familiar with the matter. CREDITOR SUPPORT KEY If a retailer<65>s brand is 
'f50f9616dbe787dca702cc566c12cd6c8496ef1a'|'Indian PM Modi, facing flak on economy, to ease burden on small firms'|'October 6, 2017 / 6:18 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago Indian PM Modi, facing flak on economy, to ease burden on small firms Rupam Jain , Tommy Wilkes 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: India''s Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks during the inauguration ceremony of the ''Make In India'' week in Mumbai, India, February 13, 2016. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/File photo NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi<64>s government is set to cut red tape for small and medium-sized companies on Friday, as it rushes to address growing criticism of its stewardship of Asia<69>s third-largest economy. Modi, in a rare acknowledgment that economic sentiment had turned negative, this week defended his handling of the economy, which in the June quarter grew at an annual 5.7 percent, its slowest rate in three years. Small and medium-sized enterprises, crucial to Modi<64>s plans to create millions of more jobs, have been hurt by a massive tax overhaul launched in July that added layers of extra bureaucracy for firms and hit exports. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will on Friday chair a meeting of the council for the Goods and Services Tax (GST), a landmark reform which turned India<69>s 29 states into a single customs union for the first time. Officials with knowledge of the meeting and industry bodies said they expected the government to simplify the filing of tax returns under GST to ease the burden on smaller businesses. Many companies also want the government to increase the size of turnover imposed before they must start filing returns. <20>We are not in a denial mode that there is a problem in the SME (small and medium enterprises) sector,<2C> said a senior lawmaker who has been working with Modi<64>s office to combat the economic slowdown. Ajay Sahai, head of the Federation of Indian Export Organisation, said he expected the government to allow its 25,000 small and medium-sized members to file tax returns quarterly. <20>The drill to file returns every month is exhausting,<2C> he said. While a mountain of bad loans has crimped bank lending to India<69>s bigger companies, smaller firms have been hurt by a government move last November to stamp out <20>black money<65> - untaxed cash that oils many industries - and by GST, whose complex structure has baffled companies down the supply chain. <20>Informal sources of working capital (for smaller firms) has dried up,<2C> said Anil Bhardwaj at the Federation of Indian Micro and Small and Medium Enterprises. He predicted that it would be another year before GST began to have a positive impact on smaller companies. Jaitley has promised steps to boost economic growth back above 7 percent and towards the levels economists say India requires to generate employment for the one million entering the workforce every month. Modi built a reputation as an economic reformer capable of delivering jobs and wealth for an increasingly aspirational population, but slowing growth will be near the top of voter concerns in upcoming state elections. Investment remains low. The government has hiked spending on infrastructure, but private investment has remained muted. <20>It is not easy because our banking system is in deep trouble and private investment is not picking up,<2C> the lawmaker said. <20>The government will have to recast all policies that will activate the public sector.<2E> Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Kim Coghill'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-india-economy/indian-pm-modi-facing-flak-on-economy-to-ease-burden-on-small-firms-idUKKBN1CB0HV'|'2017-10-06T09:18:00.000+03:00'
'f91c707ac95d93f5aff3cbf2df77c480bce01a25'|'''The future is exciting. Ready?'' asks Vodafone in new ad push'|'October 4, 2017 / 11:09 PM / in 14 minutes ''The future is exciting. Ready?'' asks Vodafone in new ad push Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A branded sign is displayed on a Vodafone store in London, Britain May 16, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON (Reuters) - <20>The future is exciting. Ready?<3F>, Vodafone ( VOD.L ) is asking in a new campaign it hopes will capture a sense of optimism about technology, an association mobile operators have to some extent lost in recent years to the likes of Facebook, Google and Apple. The slogan, which replaces <20>Power to You<6F>, in use since 2009, will be deployed in all of the company<6E>s 36 markets from Friday in the biggest ad campaign in its 33-year history, Vodafone said. <20>Technology can be complex, can be overwhelming and can sometimes alienate people,<2C> said Serpil Timuray, Vodafone<6E>s chief commercial operations and strategy officer. <20>But at the same time we know that digital innovations have significant benefits for individuals and for societies. <20>In order to express this point of view, we will be repositioning the Vodafone brand on the theme of future optimism.<2E> The new strapline has echoes of <20>The future<72>s bright. The future<72>s Orange<67> - a slogan that helped Orange establish itself as a new rival to Vodafone when it launched in 1994. Vodafone, the world<6C>s second largest mobile operator, declined to say how much it was spending on the brand overhaul, which also includes a new visual identity based on its <20>speech mark<72> logo. Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-vodafone-branding/the-future-is-exciting-ready-asks-vodafone-in-new-ad-push-idUKKBN1C933Q'|'2017-10-05T02:09:00.000+03:00'
'01e5194a2802af9ff5a2973ca32311eecd113b77'|'COLUMN-LNG''s Asian price rally may become victim of its own success: Russell'|'October 5, 2017 / 12:00 PM / Updated 3 hours ago COLUMN-LNG''s Asian price rally may become victim of its own success: Russell Reuters Staff 6 Min Read (Repeats with no changes to text. The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.) * Graphic of China LNG imports vs. Asia spot price: * reut.rs/2yZ7utQ By Clyde Russell LAUNCESTON, Australia, Oct 5 (Reuters) - The spot price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Asia is enjoying its traditional surge ahead of peak winter demand, and the near 40 percent rally over the past six weeks probably has further to go. While exporters of the super-chilled fuel will no doubt be trying to maximise the number of spot cargoes they offer, of more interest to them may be how steep the post-winter drop is likely to be. Much of the current boost to prices is due to stronger-than-expected Chinese demand, as Beijing expands use of the cleaner-burning fuel in place of coal for winter heating. The government is spending huge amounts to build out its natural gas infrastructure to change some 4 million homes from coal to natural gas heating, with consultants Wood Mackenzie estimating that China<6E>s natural gas demand could be boosted by 10 billion cubic metres this winter, equivalent to about 5 percent of last year<61>s total consumption. China<6E>s LNG imports for the first eight months of the year are up a massive 44.3 percent to 22.1 million tonnes, according to customs data, increasing every month since May. China still ranks third behind Japan and South Korea in global LNG imports, although it is the country with the fastest growth, and the most potential for steadily rising demand. Spot LNG prices LNG-AS have responded to the increased demand from China, jumping 39 percent to end at $8.40 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) for the week to Sept. 29, up from a recent low of $6.05 for the week ended Aug. 25. By way of comparison, the spot priced surged 86 percent between September last year and the winter peak of $9.75 per mmBtu, reached in the first week of January this year. There was no winter-led spike in 2015-16 as the market grappled with oversupply and a mild winter, but in 2014-15 the price rose by 43 percent in the run-up to the cold season peak. History suggests this year<61>s pre-winter rally may still have further to go, but the problem for LNG is that it may end up being a victim of its own success. One of the costs for Chinese authorities is that in expanding the natural gas network they are likely to have to spend more money subsidising the fuel. While LNG is well below its spot peak of $20.50 per mmBtu, it is also still more expensive than coal, even though the dirtier fuel has also enjoyed strong gains in recent months, with the benchmark weekly price at Australia<69>s Newcastle port jumping 41 percent between mid-May and late August. If LNG costs continue to rise, it may cause China to slow down the rapid deployment of natural gas infrastructure, even though Beijing has made combating air pollution a top priority. It may end up being simpler to force industries that are heavy coal users to curb their output during the winter months, a quicker and cheaper fix than switching to natural gas. Though the rally in spot Asian LNG prices has been largely demand-driven, it<69>s also worth looking at the supply side. SUPPLY TIGHTNESS TO EASE While the United States is not a major player in Asia, its exports were crimped in recent weeks by Hurricane Harvey, which struck along the Gulf of Mexico coast, where the only operating U.S. LNG export terminal is located. U.S. shipments of LNG were 0.92 million tonnes in August, weakest since March, according to vessel-tracking and port data compiled by Thomson Reuters Supply Chain and Commodity Forecasts. No cargoes left the U.S. between Aug. 24 and Sept. 8, according to the data, although September shipments still managed to reach 1.12 million tonnes, the second best month so far this year. The loss of a
'e91d93e6a201477316b49ddc858b0a2ad60f8e54'|'Brazil regulator exempts GPA from paying Via Varejo minority holders'|'October 5, 2017 / 12:42 PM / Updated 25 minutes ago Brazil regulator exempts GPA from paying Via Varejo minority holders Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SAO PAULO, Oct 5 (Reuters) - A body of the Brazilian securities watchdog granted an appeal exempting retailer GPA SA from paying claims to minority shareholders of its appliance arm Via Varejo SA, according to a securities filing on Thursday. The ruling effectively ends the case at the CVM regulator, the filing said. GPA is owned by France<63>s Casino Guichard Perrachon SA. (Reporting by Ana Mano)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/gpa-ruling-via-varejo/brazil-regulator-exempts-gpa-from-paying-via-varejo-minority-holders-idUSE6N1JV01J'|'2017-10-05T15:41:00.000+03:00'
'd23f264eb634279dd774b435a85f2728b97fe25b'|'Belgium eyes British, U.S. jets; French offer under legal scrutiny'|'October 5, 2017 / 1:00 PM / Updated 8 minutes ago Belgium eyes British, U.S. jets; French offer under legal scrutiny Reuters Staff * Belgium considering British, U.S. fighter jet proposals * French proposal not part of tender process * Belgium says checking legality of French offer * Tender decision due next year BRUSSELS, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Belgium has received proposals from Britain and the United States to replace its ageing fleet of fighter jets, while a French proposal that was not part of the tender process will be looked at separately, Belgium<75>s defence minister said. Belgium invited government-led proposals in March for the replacement of its fleet of Lockheed Martin F-16 planes with 34 new fighters, in a deal that could be worth more than 3.5 billion euros ($4.2 billion). Last month, France proposed a wide-ranging military deal with Belgium instead of responding to the tender. The deal goes beyond the terms of the tender whilst including the sale of Rafale fighter jets. While the French offer would be discussed by the government, it could open Belgium to criticism that it was not treating candidates equally, Vandeput said. <20>To be very clear, the French offer is not part of the contest,<2C> minister Steven Vandeput told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday. Offers from the U.S. for Lockheed F-35 Lightning II planes and British offers for the Eurofighter Typhoon did meet the tender rules, the minister added. A spokeswoman for the defence ministry said the French proposal was being checked by its legal services and forwarded to the government which would decide at a later stage whether or not to respond. The Rafales are made by France<63>s Dassault Aviation which declined to comment on Thursday. Boeing pulled out of the race last spring. The French government said that its proposal was in line with Belgium<75>s request. <20>We have made an extended proposal which is legally relevant and we are waiting for a proposal by the Belgian government,<2C> a spokeswoman for the French defence ministry said. Belgium will make a decision on which jet fighter to pick next year. The 34 jets are to be delivered from 2023, at a rate of 4-5 aircraft a year. $1 = 0.8498 euros Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek and Cyril Altmeyer; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/belgium-military/belgium-eyes-british-u-s-jets-french-offer-under-legal-scutiny-idUSL8N1MG216'|'2017-10-05T16:06:00.000+03:00'
'849a825f6ec37346c834f0500705702bc82d9bde'|'Nissan''s premium brand Infiniti global sales up 8 percent in Sept'|'BEIJING, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co<43>s premium brand Infiniti sold 21,523 vehicles globally in September, up 8 percent from a year earlier and pushing the brand<6E>s worldwide sales in the first nine months of this year to 182,884 vehicles, up 11 percent.Infiniti<74>s global chief executive Roland Krueger said in a statement growth over the past couple of months was fuelled by strong sales of SUVs, as well as the significantly redesigned Q50 sedan. The Q50 hit the U.S. market in July and is being now launched around the world.Infiniti<74>s chief spokesman Trevor Hale said the Hong Kong-headquartered brand plans to build on that momentum by launching two additional redesigned models <20> both SUVs <20> over the next three to four months. He declined to elaborate.In the United States, Infiniti sold 12,745 vehicles in September, up 12 percent from a year earlier. U.S. sales in the January-September period were 113,714 vehicles, up 18 percent.Infiniti<74>s China sales, meanwhile, totalled 4,479 vehicles last month, up 19 percent from a year earlier. Its volume in China during the first nine months of this year rose 16 percent from a year earlier to 33,804 vehicles.In addition to redesigned SUV models, Hale said Infiniti plans to launch a long-wheel version of the Q50 sports sedan, called the Q50L, in China in the coming months. The car will be first shown at the Guangzhou auto show in November. (Reporting By Norihiko Shirouzu, editing by David Evans) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/autos-nissan-infiniti/nissans-premium-brand-infiniti-global-sales-up-8-percent-in-sept-idINL4N1MG1W4'|'2017-10-05T09:50:00.000+03:00'
'8841bacaee48525a6a160f8c22d5a7a804df4084'|'Bank of England contracts suppliers for next 20-pound banknote'|'October 5, 2017 / 7:44 AM / Updated 20 minutes ago Bank of England contracts suppliers for next 20-pound banknote Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A man talks on a mobile phone as people walk past the Bank of England, in London, Britain September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England said on Thursday it had contracted CCL Secure Ltd and De La Rue Plc ( DLAR.L ) to supply the next 20-pound bank note, to be issued in 2020. Supply of the polymer will commence in 2018, the BoE said in a statement. CCL Secure already produce polymer for the BoE<6F>s current five- and 10-pound banknotes, while De La Rue prints BoE notes at its facility in Debden, south east England. Reporting by Andy Bruce, editing by Estelle Shirbon'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-boe-banknotes/bank-of-england-contracts-suppliers-for-next-20-pound-banknote-idUKKBN1CA0M1'|'2017-10-05T10:43:00.000+03:00'
'd6327a010929d130b413a08bff544962af6e5642'|'Exclusive: Airbus defense unit freezes capex, may miss cash goals - memo'|'October 5, 2017 / 8:51 AM / in 3 hours Exclusive: Airbus defense unit freezes capex, may miss cash goals - memo Tim Hepher 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - An aerial view of an Airbus A400M aircraft during the 52nd Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport near Paris, France, June 21, 2017. Picture taken June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus Defence and Space has frozen capital spending and urged its 34,000 staff to take <20>drastic measures<65> to save cash as it faces the prospect of missing 2017 cash targets by hundreds of millions of euros, according to a memo seen by Reuters. <20>With the risk of missing our full-year cash targets by hundreds of millions, we need to do something extraordinary together,<2C> divisional finance chief Julian Whitehead told an internal forum, according to a summary distributed to staff. Airbus ( AIR.PA ) has said it expects 2017 group-wide free cashflow to be similar to 2016, before mergers and acquisitions and customer financing. It does not publish cash targets for divisions. Due to the bumpy patterns of cashflows in aerospace, it often faces a dash to meet targets in the fourth quarter. Airbus Defence & Space, which has warned of continued cash pressures from the troubled A400M military aircraft program, plans to set up a <20>Cash Crisis<69> team to improve the situation by end-year, with all its programs expected to participate. Until those plans become clear, all capital expenditure is being frozen with immediate effect across all the division<6F>s activities and across all its subsidiaries, the memo said. Airbus shares stumbled from record highs and fell as much as 1.6 percent. They were down 1.3 percent by 0945 GMT, making the stock the worst performer on France''s benchmark CAC-40 .FCHI equity index. Airbus<75> stock price remains up around 30 percent since the start of 2017 on buoyant demand for passenger jets, although rival Boeing<6E>s ( BA.N ) shares are up 64 percent. Asked to comment on the memo, an Airbus spokesman said: <20>We are currently in the traditional year-end race in the commercial and government business.<2E> FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A400M aircraft flies during a display on the first day of the 52nd Paris Air Show at Le Bourget airport near Paris, France, June 19, 2017. Picture taken June 19, 2017. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol/File Photo He added: <20>It is key to remind our troops at this important time of a business year on the importance of meeting our cash objectives. That<61>s the current ongoing effort at Airbus and it is rather standard procedure to achieve our quarterly and yearly divisional targets at Airbus Defence and Space without deviation.<2E> ALSO FACING PRESSURE FROM A400M DELAYS Another person close to the group said the language used in the memo was typical of the purely internal battle cry used by managers at this time of year to focus on reaching targets. On Wednesday, however, Airbus reminded European governments that the delayed A400M would continue to <20>weigh significantly<6C> on cashflow in 2017 and 2018, especially. It has been squeezed as Germany withholds some 15 percent in cash owed for the transport plane because of what it regards as systems failing to do what Airbus had promised. The company earlier this year entered talks with buyer nations to try to ease the penalties and get a new agreement on schedules. At a group level, cash and profits have further been hampered by delays in delivering A320neo jetliners because of delays in receiving engines from U.S. supplier Pratt & Whitney. Late deliveries delay payments from airlines and prevent workers learning through experience as quickly as planned, which drives up cost and eats up cash for inventory on assembly lines. Airbus as a whole had 7.9 billion euros of net cash at end-June, down from 11.1 billion at the end of 2016. While freezing spending, Airbus Defence & Space is also in the midst of a strategy overhaul that has involved selling its electronics activity and now puts faith in the grow
'11bc3ac445922ba975697c4c1bf59fd4aec1112a'|'Thousands protest across Australia against giant Adani coal mine'|'A protester holds a sign as he participates in a national Day of Action against the Indian mining company Adani''s planned coal mine project in north-east Australia, at Sydney''s Bondi Beach in Australia, October 7, 2017. REUTERS/David Gray SYDNEY (Reuters) - Large protests were held across Australia on Saturday against Indian mining giant Adani Enterprises<65> proposed Carmichael coal mine, which would be the country<72>s largest coal mine but has been delayed for years over environmental and financing issues.Environment groups say the mine in Queensland state would contribute to global warming and damage the Great Barrier Reef.The <20>Stop Adani<6E> movement organized 45 protests.On the sands of Sydney<65>s Bondi Beach more than 1,000 people formed a human sign saying ''#STOP ADANI<4E>, said organizer Blair Palese from activist group 350.<2E>I think there<72>s a very real national concern that goes beyond Queensland about the idea of giving this mine a billion-dollar taxpayer-funded loan,<2C> she said.The national rallies come as new polling shows more than half of Australians oppose the mine, reported local media.Surf lifesavers can be seen behind protesters participating in a national Day of Action against the Indian mining company Adani''s planned coal mine project in north-east Australia, at Sydney''s Bondi Beach in Australia, October 7, 2017. REUTERS/David Gray Analysts have raised doubts about whether Adani can fund the mine, at an initial cost of $4 billion, given a global backlash to investment in fossil fuels.Adani says the project would pay billions of dollars in royalties and taxes, create jobs and export coal to India help bring electricity to rural regions.Slideshow (4 Images) Adani has been counting on a A$900 million ($704 million) loan from the Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) for a rail link to the proposed mine.The company<6E>s chief executive officer Jeyakumar Janakaraj, however, has said Adani may not have to borrow from NAIF. <20>If the commercial banks take off all the debt then we will not have any need for NAIF as there will be no gap.<2E>The Australian Conservation Fund president Geoff Cousins, one of the country<72>s top businessmen, said it was unlikely Adani could proceed without the NAIF loan.<2E>They<65>ve tried hard to secure commercial funding, but no bank will touch them,<2C> he said.<2E>Stop Adani is an issues-based campaign, and the rest of the world sees the madness of building one of the world<6C>s largest coal mines particularly when Australia has signed the Paris Agreement (on climate change).<2E>Reporting by Benjamin Cooper; Editing by Michael Perry '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-adani-ent-australia-protests/thousands-protest-across-australia-against-giant-adani-coal-mine-idINKBN1CC04S'|'2017-10-07T06:21:00.000+03:00'
'93908d5fe547d3fd104f225bccacabdd69748ed2'|'Activist investors increase Clariant stake: Finanz und Wirtschaft'|'October 6, 2017 / 3:08 PM / Updated 5 hours ago White Tale activists increase Clariant stake: Finanz und Wirtschaft Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The logo of Swiss specialty chemicals company Clariant is seen at the company''s headquarters in Pratteln, Switzerland August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann ZURICH (Reuters) - Activist investors seeking to block specialty chemical maker Clariant<6E>s $20 billion merger with Huntsman Corp own <20>significantly more<72> than 15 percent of Clariant shares and want to increase their stake, they told a Swiss newspaper. <20>We already own more than 15 percent and we<77>re not done buying,<2C> White Tale investors David Millstone and David Winter told Finanz und Wirtschaft in a joint interview released on Friday. The next disclosure threshold would be 20 percent. They had previously reported a stake of just over 15 percent. Calling themselves <20>long-term oriented investors<72> who are <20>here to stay<61>, Millstone and Winter reiterated their opposition to the planned merger that would give Clariant 52 percent of the combined entity should shareholders approve. <20>We want Clariant to become a better and stronger company, and we don<6F>t see that happening with Huntsman.<2E> The proposed deal, they said, significantly undervalued Clariant and overvalued Huntsman. The Swiss chemical manufacturer should instead sell its plastics and coatings business, they said, and reinvest the proceeds into acquisitions within the higher-margin specialty chemicals businesses. Reporting by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi; Editing by Michael Shields '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-clariant-huntsman/activist-investors-increase-clariant-stake-finanz-und-wirtschaft-idUSKBN1CB1X1'|'2017-10-06T23:08:00.000+03:00'
'83a36663c6689c1ceeef91c7904d134484eee4d1'|'Nikkei hits two-year high, posts 4th week of gains'|'October 6, 2017 / 6:37 AM / in 11 minutes Nikkei hits two-year high, posts 4th week of gains Reuters Staff * Investors wary ahead of U.S. jobs data later on Friday * MS&AD Insurance rises after it takes stake in UK insurer TOKYO, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Nikkei share average scaled a fresh two-year peak on Friday and posted its fourth straight weekly gain, buoyed by the impact of a weaker currency as well as record highs on Wall Street. The Nikkei ended 0.3 percent higher at 20,690.71 points, after probing its highest levels since August 2015. For the week, it added 1.6 percent. On Thursday, the S&P 500 posted its sixth straight record high close on Thursday, its longest run since 1997, as investors cheered increased prospects for a tax overhaul with Congress moving closer to agreement on a budget resolution. A weaker currency also gave Japanese shares a lift. The dollar edged up 0.1 percent on Friday to 112.98. <20>The Nikkei is getting a lift from U.S. stocks gains, and hopes that tax reform will be implemented, though it remains to be seen whether the U.S. momentum can continue,<2C> said Norihiro Fujito, a senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities. <20>On the domestic side, there is Japan<61>s election this month, and there is not yet a consensus on a likely outcome and the market impact,<2C> he said. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last week called a snap election for Oct. 22, in a bid to maintain his conservative Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition<6F>s majority in the lower house. But support is growing for a new party formed by Tokyo<79>s popular governor, Yuriko Koike. Investors were also wary ahead of key U.S. employment data later in the global session, as well as continuing tensions surrounding North Korea. A week ago, Japan<61>s defense minister expressed concerns about a possible provocation from North Korea on Oct. 10, when Japan begins campaigns for its upcoming lower house election - a date that will coincide with one of Pyongyang<6E>s main anniversaries. Shares of Japan<61>s MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings were up 1.6 percent, after it said on Friday it had agreed with Swiss Re AG to invest 800 million pounds ($1.05 billion) to take a stake of up to 15 percent in UK-based ReAssure Jersey One Ltd. Toshiba Corp shares rose 1.0 percent. U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital LP on Thursday said it aims to list Toshiba<62>s chip unit on the Tokyo Stock Exchange within three years, to cash in its investment after leading an $18 billion acquisition of the business. Toshiba aims to complete the sale by the end of its fiscal year in March. The broader Topix gained 0.3 percent to 1,687.16, while the JPX-Nikkei Index 400 rose 0.2 percent to 14,891.99. (Reporting by Lisa Twaronite and Ayai Tomisawa; Editing by Kim Coghill)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/japan-stocks-close/nikkei-hits-two-year-high-posts-4th-week-of-gains-idUSL4N1MH1BF'|'2017-10-06T09:36:00.000+03:00'
'78c6f5b1a012aeb4a77e76177377484e02063fdb'|'PRESS DIGEST- Canada - Oct 6'|'Oct 6 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories from selected Canadian newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.THE GLOBE AND MAIL ** The court ordered the Vancouver-based mining giant Teck Resources Ltd to pay a C$1.425 million ($1.13 million) fine to the Environmental Damages Fund after pleading guilty in a B.C. Provincial Court Thursday to three counts of violating the Fisheries Act. ( tgam.ca/2fNuIuo )** TransCanada Corp killed its controversial C$15.7 billion Energy East pipeline proposal on Thursday, provoking a bitter regional battle over the Liberal government''s energy and environment policies. ( tgam.ca/2fOP5Yh )** Ontario is rolling its proposed changes to event-ticket legislation into a larger consumer protection bill that will attempt to widen the opportunities to enforce its new ticket rules. These rules will include a ban on ticket scalping "bot" software and a maximum 50 percent markup on resold tickets. ( tgam.ca/2fQBzna )NATIONAL POST ** The federal government is hanging up 80,000 traditional landlines in favor of using the internet to make voice calls. Shared Services Canada inked a C$176 million, seven-year deal with Telus Corp to provide Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), instant messaging and desktop videoconferencing services for Shared Services Canada, Ottawa announced Thursday. ( bit.ly/2fPa8Km )** The U.S. Department of Commerce says it is delaying its announcement on preliminary anti-dumping duties against Bombardier Inc until Friday. The company is expected to face additional export duties on its CSeries commercial jet. ( bit.ly/2fPutiQ )** Toronto city council voted 24-11 against renaming the stadium at Centennial Park after former mayor Rob Ford, who died in March 2016 at the age of 46 after being diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer. ( bit.ly/2fPbzZg ) ($1 = C$1.26) (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/press-digest-canada/press-digest-canada-oct-6-idINL4N1MH264'|'2017-10-06T08:42:00.000+03:00'
'208b7642b2ab964b9b58e3c0aacf93de632be4aa'|'Tesco to pay first dividend since 2014-15 crisis'|'October 4, 2017 / 6:15 AM / in 2 hours Tesco to pay first dividend since 2014-15 crisis, profit up 27 percent James Davey , Kate Holton 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A woman walks past a Tesco supermarket in central London, December 9, 2014. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Tesco ( TSCO.L ) said it would resume paying a dividend for the first time in three years, with strong demand for fresh food and cost savings helping Britain<69>s biggest retailer to lift first-half profit by 27 percent. Tesco, which has been battling to recover from a 2014 downturn when it lost the edge to rivals and uncovered an accounting scandal, reported a seventh straight quarter of underlying sales growth in its home market, having successfully navigated inflationary pressures. Cost savings helped to push up the operating margin, to 2.7 percent from 2.2 percent last year, enabling it to reiterate its medium target for a 3.5 to 4.0 percent margin. <20>Sales are up, profits are up, cash generation continues to strengthen and net debt levels are less than half what they were when we started our turnaround three years ago,<2C> Chief Executive Dave Lewis said. Tesco made operating profit before one off items of 759 million pounds for the six months to Aug. 26. That compares with 596 million pounds in the same period last year and analyst forecasts of about 700 million pounds. Tesco, which in January agreed to buy wholesaler Booker ( BOK.L ) for 3.7 billion pounds, said UK like-for-like sales rose 2.1 percent in the second quarter. An interim dividend of 1 pence will be paid which <20>reflects improved performance and board confidence.<2E> <20>Today<61>s announcement that we are resuming our dividend reflects our confidence that we can build on our strong performance to date and in doing so, create long-term, sustainable value for all of our stakeholders,<2C> Lewis said. Tesco shares traded 1.8 percent higher at 193.5 pence at 0715 GMT. They remain below the 230 pence price when Lewis joined in September 2014, reflecting concerns over the merits of the Booker deal as well as Tesco<63>s pension deficit and debt levels. The resumption of the dividend is the strongest sign yet that the British high street giant has returned to a stronger footing, after changing shopping habits, the rise of German discounters Aldi and Lidl and a 2014 accounting scandal all combined to hammer the business and its share price. After stabilising the company, Lewis has got it growing again with a focus on more competitive prices, new and streamlined product ranges, better customer service and improved supplier relationships. Tesco remains the largest of Britain<69>s supermarket groups by a clear margin, having a market share of almost 28 percent according to the latest industry figures. The group said on Wednesday it had concluded a triennial pension review and that its annual contributions would increase by 15 million pounds to 285 million pounds from April 2018. Net debt was down 25 percent to 3.3 billion pounds. Editing by Alistair Smout and Keith Weir '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tesco-results/tesco-to-pay-first-dividend-since-2014-15-crisis-idUKKCN1C90GS'|'2017-10-04T09:16:00.000+03:00'
'691ed9e1133fc3ad0d155e6242404becd517bc1a'|'Yahoo says all 3 billion accounts hacked in 2013 data theft'|'October 3, 2017 / 8:56 PM / in 3 hours Yahoo says all 3 billion accounts hacked in 2013 data theft Jonathan Stempel , Jim Finkle 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A photo illustration shows a Yahoo logo on a smartphone in front of a displayed cyber code and keyboard on December 15, 2016. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Illustration (Reuters) - Yahoo on Tuesday said that all 3 billion of its accounts were hacked in a 2013 data theft, tripling its earlier estimate of the size of the largest breach in history, in a disclosure that attorneys said sharply increased the legal exposure of its new owner, Verizon Communications Inc ( VZ.N ). The news expands the likely number and claims of class action lawsuits by shareholders and Yahoo account holders, they said. Yahoo, the early face of the internet for many in the world, already faced at least 41 consumer class-action lawsuits in U.S. federal and state courts, according to company securities filing in May. John Yanchunis, a lawyer representing some of the affected Yahoo users, said a federal judge who allowed the case to go forward still had asked for more information to justify his clients<74> claims. <20>I think we have those facts now,<2C> he said. <20>It<49>s really mind-numbing when you think about it.<2E> Yahoo said last December that data from more than 1 billion accounts was compromised in 2013, the largest of a series of thefts that forced Yahoo to cut the price of its assets in a sale to Verizon. Yahoo on Tuesday said <20>recently obtained new intelligence<63> showed all user accounts had been affected. The company said the investigation indicated that the stolen information did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information. But the information was protected with outdated, easy-to-crack encryption, according to academic experts. It also included security questions and backup email addresses, which could make it easier to break into other accounts held by the users. Many Yahoo users have multiple accounts, so far fewer than 3 billion were affected, but the theft ranks as the largest to date, and a costly one for the internet pioneer. Verizon in February lowered its original offer by $350 million for Yahoo assets in the wake of two massive cyber attacks at the internet company. Some lawyers asked whether Verizon would look for a new opportunity to address the price. <20>This is a bombshell,<2C> said Mark Molumphy, lead counsel in a shareholder derivative lawsuit against Yahoo<6F>s former leaders over disclosures about the hacks. FILE PHOTO: A photo illustration shows a man in front of a Yahoo logo seen through a magnifying glass in front of a displayed cyber code on December 16, 2016. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Verizon did not respond to a request for comment about any possible lawsuit over the deal. Verizon, the likely main target of legal actions, also could be challenged as it launches a new brand, Oath, to link its Yahoo, AOL and Huffington Post internet properties. In August in the separate lawsuit brought by Yahoo<6F>s users, U.S. Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, ruled Yahoo must face nationwide litigation brought on behalf of owners accounts who said their personal information was compromised in the three breaches. Yanchunis, the lawyer for the users, said his team planned to use the new information later this month to expanding its allegations. Also on Tuesday, Senator John Thune, chairman of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, said he plans to hold a hearing later this month over massive data breaches at Equifax Inc ( EFX.N ) and Yahoo. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission already had been probing Yahoo over the hacks. The closing of the Verizon deal, which was first announced in July, had been delayed as the companies assessed the fallout from two data breaches that Yahoo disclosed last year. The company paid $4.48 billion for Yahoo<6F>s core business. A Yahoo official emphasized Tuesday that the 3 billion figure included many accounts that wer
'29ef318e2ae3e3fa669465a998fec445780640af'|'European airline failures play into hands of richer rivals'|'A man walks past a Monarch airlines poster after the airline ceased trading, at Manchester airport in Britain, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Andrew Yates BERLIN (Reuters) - First Alitalia, then Air Berlin and now Monarch Airlines: Europe<70>s struggling carriers are falling like dominoes and the region<6F>s biggest airlines are set to chalk up bigger profits.The collapse of airlines gives rivals a chance to snap up planes, prized airport slots and much-needed pilots. It takes airplane seats out of the market, allowing airlines still flying to nudge prices higher and lift some of the pressure on yields that has plagued the industry for several years.The shake-out this year is also seen as the start of more far-reaching industry consolidation that is expected to whittle the number of European airlines down to numbers more on a par with North America - putting the survivors in a position to boost profitability to levels seen across the Atlantic.<2E>The rationalisation of financially inefficient capacity is good for the industry as a whole,<2C> Liberum analyst Gerald Khoo said.Expectations that the challenging environment for large, traditional European airlines is starting to ease has helped their shares outperform rivals and other sectors.So far in 2017, shares in Germany<6E>s Lufthansa shares are up 98 percent, Air France-KLM has surged 163 percent and British Airways parent IAG is 38 percent higher.Those airlines have started to talk about a turnaround in ticket price trends as fewer seats are added to the market, and the collapse of a third carrier this year is likely to help even more.HSBC analyst Andrew Lobbenberg said the European short-haul market would grow just 3.2 percent this winter after stripping out Monarch, Air Berlin, Alitalia and Ryanair<69>s cancelled flights. Previously, growth had been expected to be 7.3 percent.<2E>The present circumstances will be trying for Monarch staff, management and passengers, let alone former shareholders. Yet its exit will be supportive for industry unit revenues,<2C> Lobbenberg wrote in a note.MARKET SHARE Despite efforts by Brussels to liberalise Europe<70>s airline industry 25 years ago it has lagged North America in terms of consolidation, where nine major airlines became five in the decade to 2015.While Lufthansa and IAG have driven some consolidation, the top four airlines in Europe only account for 49 percent of the short-haul market whereas the top four in North America control 70 percent.The different market dynamic is reflected in profitability. North American carriers are expected to post a net profit margin of 7.2 percent this year compared with 3.7 percent in Europe, industry body IATA said in June.Passengers sit outside a Monarch airlines customer service office after the airline ceased trading, at Manchester airport in Britain, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Andrew Yates European rules restricting non-EU investors to owning less than 50 percent of carriers have limited the pool of investors willing to take part in consolidation. Lower oil prices since the collapse in crude in 2014 have also helped shield some financially weaker airlines in Europe.Still, Ryanair CEO Michael O<>Leary predicts there will only be only four or five airline groups in Europe in five years - Ryanair, Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, IAG, and possibly easyJet.<2E>Europe will consolidate in the same way as the North American market has. That<61>s partly what the whole Air Berlin thing is,<2C> he told Reuters after the German carrier filed for insolvency in August.Even before Monarch collapsed, ratings agency Moody<64>s predicted that the removal of Air Berlin and Alitalia would be positive for the credit of Europe<70>s five largest airlines - Lufthansa, IAG, Air France-KLM, Ryanair and easyJet.Europe<70>s traditional carriers have also been given some relief by problems at long-haul rivals in the Gulf, where Emirates and Etihad are grappling with lower demand at home because of low oil prices.Etihad<61>s new CEO also faces the task of deciding what 
'af80120eecbf53f2d6a92eaceb940af5059d1796'|'CORRECTED-Costco''s quarterly comp sales beat estimates'|'(Corrects headline and first paragraph to say comp sales beat, not miss, estimates; also removes reference to fewer customer visits to outlets in first paragraph)Oct 5(Reuters) - Warehouse club retailer Costco Wholesale Corp reported higher-than-expected quarterly comp sales on Thursday.Sales at established stores open at least a year rose 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter, excluding the impact of changes in gasoline prices and foreign exchange, the company said.Analysts on average were expecting same-store sales to rise 5.1 percent, according to research firm Consensus Metrix.Net income attributable to Costco rose to $919 million, or $2.08 per share, in the 17-week quarter ended Sept. 3, from $779 million, or $1.77 per share, a year earlier.Reporting by Karina Dsouza and Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/costco-wholesale-results/costcos-quarterly-comp-sales-miss-estimates-idINL4N1MG39F'|'2017-10-05T18:25:00.000+03:00'
'776ecb5a70af1bd612ae81a33edb912cd2b8b2d5'|'Bombardier spends $2.4 billion a year on aerospace in U.S. - document'|'October 5, 2017 / 8:42 PM / Updated 4 hours ago Bombardier spends $2.4 billion a year on aerospace in U.S. - document 3 Min Read The Bombardier factory is seen in Belfast, Northern Ireland September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bombardier Inc<6E>s ( BBDb.TO ) aerospace business spent $2.4 billion in the United States last year, tapping more than 800 suppliers in all but three U.S. states, according to a confidential Bombardier report seen by Reuters on Thursday. The report shows the potential impact on the U.S. economy and companies if the Canadian company<6E>s new CSeries jetliner is effectively kept out of the U.S. market by a trade row initiated by Boeing Co ( BA.N ) earlier this year. Boeing has accused Bombardier of receiving taxpayer subsidies that allowed it to sell the CSeries in the United States at prices below cost. Last week, the U.S. Department of Commerce proposed a duty of nearly 220 percent to compensate for the subsidies, and the agency is due to issue a decision on potential additional duties for dumping later on Thursday. The imposition of additional duties would effectively keep Bombardier out of the United States because it would make its planes too expensive to be competitive The report said more than half of the materials Bombardier buys for the new CSeries plane come from U.S. suppliers, with the most spending in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa and Kansas, the report said. The duties, which would affect an order for 75 planes by Delta Air Lines ( DAL.N ), would not take effect unless approved by the U.S. International Trade Commission early next year. Bombardier has already said that its spending supports 22,700 jobs in the United States, and it has identified major CSeries suppliers such as Connecticut-based engine maker Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp ( UTX.N ), and Iowa-based avionics maker Rockwell Collins Inc ( COL.N ). United Technologies is in the process of acquiring Rockwell Collins. The report identifies the 10 largest CSeries suppliers, including French interiors supplier Zodiac Aerospace SA ( ZODC.PA ), through its operations in California; Honeywell International Inc ( HON.N ), which makes auxiliary power units in Arizona; Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc ( SPR.N ) in Kansas; and Parker Aerospace, a unit of Parker-Hannifin Corp ( PH.N ) which has operations in Utah, California and Michigan. Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Leslie Adler '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/boeing-bombardier-us-impact/bombardier-spends-2-4-billion-a-year-on-aerospace-in-u-s-document-idINKBN1CA2NG'|'2017-10-05T23:38:00.000+03:00'
'b2c85ec753c8ff79fb181adeb37e4b96be4235f7'|'EM fund managers move to more exotic currencies as dollar hits lows'|'FILE PHOTO: A businessman looks at a screen displaying a photo of U.S. 100 dollar bank notes in Tokyo April 8, 2013. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - Some of 2017<31>s top-performing emerging market fund managers are reshuffling their currency holdings, paring back bets on some of the asset class<73> big names and shifting to more exotic currencies like the Czech koruna, Uruguayan peso and the Egyptian pound.The dollar<61>s bounceback in September, including its best week of the year to close the month, has not changed managers<72> underlying bearishness on the currency. The shift represents a sense that the greenback<63>s remarkable slide against rivals like the Mexican peso and Brazilian real may stall - the dollar bounced to a three-month high versus the peso on Thursday - while other currencies are due for a rally.Fund managers<72> embrace of these lesser known and less liquid currencies is a sign that even within emerging markets, long considered an exotic and volatile area to begin with, investors are pushing out their risk profile. That could represent either a savvy wager or irrational exuberance.( tmsnrt.rs/2z031Hb )Data from research firm eVestment shows that local currency bond and outright currency exposure to Uruguay more than doubled from the second quarter of 2016 to the second quarter of 2017, long positions in the Czech Republic<69>s local currency bonds have surged to 44.9 percent from 11.4 percent during that period and the proportion of investors with currency exposure to the Czech koruna has soared to 68.0 percent from 12.7 percent.Investors with currency exposure to Egypt have grown from 2.53 percent in the second quarter of 2016 to 45.3 percent in the same quarter this year.EVestment tracks the number of investors in its emerging markets local currency universe who report they own the bonds or have long exposure to the currency of the specified country.Fund managers who spoke to Reuters described a range of investment instruments including currency forwards, local currency bonds and some government T-bills.Leah Traub, partner and portfolio manager at Lord Abbett, said her emerging market funds have recently entered positions, <20>into some off-market names<65> or currencies outside the JP Morgan emerging market diversified global bond index that she uses as a benchmark, including Uruguay, Egypt and India.Her funds have rotated some exposure out of currencies correlated to the euro in emerging Europe, such as Hungary and Poland, and Traub said she is looking for emerging market currencies with lower levels of correlation to developed market currencies.<2E>If there was any theme to it it<69>s just that the much better global backdrop allows some of these more idiosyncratic stories to really unfold,<2C> she said in a phone interview last week.Andy Keirle, who manages T Rowe Price<63>s EM local currency bond fund, has also added positions in Egypt as well as the Sri Lankan rupee. At the same time, he reduced a long position in the Mexican peso he took ahead of the U.S. election.Egypt has been favoured by investors following the country<72>s decision to float its currency, adopt a value-added tax and cut energy subsidies as part of a loan package from the International Monetary Fund. The IMF has called Egypt<70>s reforms <20>bold<6C> and said the North African nation is <20>gathering strength<74> as the fund prepares to issue a $12 billion loan, its third tranche in the package.Jean-Dominique B<>tikofer, Voya Investment Management<6E>s head of emerging markets fixed income, said he is now looking for relative value trades, such as taking long positions on the Turkish lira against the South African rand.<2E>When it comes to the market cycle, we don<6F>t expect the market to sell off, but we have peaked,<2C> B<>tikofer said. <20>You can stay at a high level and you can plateau for a long time. The beauty of fixed income, including local currency and local rates, is you have a decent coupon. So going defensive too early might cost you a lot of mone
'3d028d6586428cd7e0fb60a1de1201b137bf174b'|'Indonesia''s Garuda estimates $200 million from GMF AeroAsia stake sale: CEO'|'CEO of PT Garuda Indonesia Pahala N Mansury gestures during an interview in Jakarta, Indonesia, May 10, 2017. REUTERS/Beawiharta JAKARTA (Reuters) - Flag carrier PT Garuda Indonesia Tbk estimated its unit PT Garuda Maintenance Facility AeroAsia could raise $200 million from selling a 20 percent stake to a strategic buyer, chief executive Pahala Mansyuri said.A conditional sale and purchase agreement could be signed in early December, Mansyuri told reporters on Tuesday.Reporting by Cindy Silviana '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-gmf-aeroasia/indonesias-garuda-estimates-200-million-from-gmf-aeroasia-stake-sale-ceo-idINKBN1CF07J'|'2017-10-10T00:57:00.000+03:00'
'd559a352bfbfd03eb798285ab1204f1cbeb82899'|'Toshiba says sued by another group of foreign investors'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp ( 6502.T ) said on Thursday it has been sued by another group of foreign investors, for 21.8 billion yen ($194 million), over its massive accounting scandal uncovered two years ago.The Japanese company has now been sued for total damages of 139 billion yen since it first admitted to reporting inflated profits going back to 2008.Reporting by Chris Gallagher; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-lawsuit/toshiba-says-sued-by-another-group-of-foreign-investors-idINKBN1CA0V5'|'2017-10-05T07:38:00.000+03:00'
'3f566d366071f7f84fc008483143d69b5341c99e'|'Exclusive - EBRD to shut 5 of 7 Russian offices in early 2018'|'October 3, 2017 / 2:17 PM / Updated 28 minutes ago Exclusive - EBRD to shut 5 of 7 Russian offices in early 2018 Marc Jones 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Russian national flag flutters in front of a general view of a bridge over the Golden Horn bay in the Russian far-eastern city of Vladivostok September 10, 2012. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is to shut five of its seven offices in Russia next year, as the bank pursues a freeze on lending there since the 2014 Ukraine crisis. The axe will fall on all but its Moscow and St Petersburg branches, highlighting the extent to which Western-led sanctions have shifted the development bank away from what was, for many years, its largest and most profitable markets. Sources within the London-based EBRD told Reuters that the cuts had been on the cards for some time. A bank spokesman confirmed on Tuesday that a decision had now been made. <20>We will be closing 5 small regional offices in Yekaterinburg, Krasnoyarsk, Rostov-on-Don, Vladivostok and Samara at the end of first quarter 2018,<2C> the EBRD<52>s managing director for communications Jonathan Charles said. While the move is likely to underscore the poor state of relations between the West and Russia - the EBRD<52>s biggest shareholders are U.S., European and other G7 governments - the closures are likely to affect only a handful of EBRD staff. The bank had around 160 personnel in its seven offices before the 2014 Ukraine crisis. Back then it had around 10 billion euros in projects in Russia, from Volkswagen car plants to a long list of equity stakes in companies and banks. Since then work has been reduced to tending to the bank<6E>s legacy Russia portfolio or to limited projects where Russian companies invest in other countries alongside the EBRD. As a result roughly half of those staff have either moved elsewhere in the bank or left it altogether. <20>I deeply regret that the EBRD lost Russia, it<69>s largest and most profitable market,<2C> Russia<69>s representative at the EBRD in London, Denis Morozov, told Reuters. <20>It<49>s also very sad that the Bank cannot any more deliver on its mandate and help to change Russia to a better place,<2C> adding that it had also lost experience and contacts built up over two decades of work in the country. Russia<69>s economy ministry also confirmed it had been informed of the closure plans. The EBRD was created as the Cold War came to end in 1991, specifically to invest in former Soviet-bloc states and help them make the transition to market-based economies. At the start of 2017 some EBRD officials had privately talked about the possibility of restarting some work with the private sector in Russia. But these prospects evaporated shortly thereafter when the scandal over contact between members of U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s team and Russian officials during last year<61>s election campaign soured the international mood towards Moscow further. Moscow then accused the EBRD of becoming a <20>tool<6F> of western foreign policy in May this year after the governors of the lender to former communist Europe rejected its call to restart lending to Russia. The EBRD still has a 3 billion euro portfolio of Russian investments but this continues to steadily shrink as firms there pay back their EBRD loans and the bank itself continues the normal process of selling down its equity stakes. <20>Should our operational requirements in Russia change, we would be ready to re-examine our infrastructure and staffing requirements,<2C> EBRD spokesman Charles said. Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Cynthia Osterman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-russia-ebrd-offices-exclusive/exclusive-ebrd-to-shut-five-out-of-seven-russian-offices-next-year-idUKKCN1C81PG'|'2017-10-04T00:17:00.000+03:00'
'614febbac5a7b839326574a2638a955e9f0c8709'|'UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Oct 6'|'October 6, 2017 / 5:30 AM / in 11 minutes UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Oct 6 Reuters Staff 4 Min Read Oct 6 (Reuters) - Britain''s FTSE 100 index is seen opening 9 points higher on Friday, according to financial bookmakers. * UNILEVER: Anglo-Dutch consumer group Unilever has invited private equity bidders to submit tentative offers for its $8 billion margarine and spreads business by a deadline of Oct. 19, two sources close to the matter told Reuters. * ROYAL MAIL: Britain''s Royal Mail will use all legal options at its disposal to halt a strike by postal workers this month, it said on Thursday after the industry union announced the action over a pensions dispute. * BANK OF ENGLAND: Financial markets are less at risk of "an unpleasant surprise" from the Bank of England, now that they expect an interest rate rise later this year, rather than in mid-2019, BoE policymaker Ian McCafferty said on Thursday. * BP: BP Plc said on Thursday it was shutting-in all oil and natural gas production from its U.S. Gulf of Mexico platforms ahead of Tropical Storm Nate. * SHELL: Royal Dutch Shell is shutting in production from some of its subsea fields and suspending some drilling activity at its assets in eastern Gulf of Mexico ahead of Tropical Storm Nate, it said on Thursday. * UK RETAIL: British shops enjoyed their biggest jump in sales in more than three years in September, a survey of the retail sector showed, suggesting consumers are finding ways to cope with the squeeze on their incomes. * UK JOBS: Growth in the number of workers hired in Britain via recruitment agencies slowed last month and fell in London for the first time in nearly a year as Brexit makes it harder for companies to find staff, a survey showed on Friday. * IRISH CONSUMER SENTIMENT: A modest improvement in Irish consumer sentiment last month thanks to a brighter outlook for household finances was enough to return the index to its highest level since early last year, a survey showed on Friday. * GOLD: Gold was steady on Friday ahead of key U.S. jobs data later in the day, with prices curbed as the dollar stood firm near a seven-week high. * OIL: Oil markets were cautious on Friday as traders monitored a tropical storm heading for the Gulf of Mexico and as China remained closed for a week-long public holiday. * The UK blue chip index closed 0.5 percent higher at 7,502.79 points on Thursday as a sharp fall in sterling boosted the index, with basic resources and oil and gas stocks contributing most to the upswing. * For more on the factors affecting European stocks, please click on: cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarkets * UK CORPORATE DIARY: easyJet plc Pre-Close Trading Statement Release TODAY''S UK PAPERS > Financial Times > Other business headlines Multimedia versions of Reuters Top News are now available for: * 3000 Xtra : visit topnews.session.rservices.com * For Top News : topnews.reuters.com (Reporting by Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-stocks-factors/uk-stocks-factors-to-watch-on-oct-6-idUSL4N1MH12Z'|'2017-10-06T08:29:00.000+03:00'
'06f98d169a00b5a03f206b36bf2a4c510c936a4d'|'Sears Canada wins court nod to extend credit protection to Nov 7'|'TORONTO, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Sears Canada won court approval to extend creditor protection until Nov. 7, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday.The ruling gives the 65 year-old retail chain more time to consider whether to liquidate all its assets or pursue a deal to stay in business.The company, which in 2012 was spun off from U.S. retailer Sears Holdings Corp, filed for creditor protection in June and laid out a restructuring plan that included cutting 2,900 jobs and closing roughly a quarter of its stores. . (Reporting By Nichola Saminather; editing by Diane Craft) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/searscanada-hearing/sears-canada-wins-court-nod-to-extend-credit-protection-to-nov-7-idINL2N1MF1T5'|'2017-10-04T18:18:00.000+03:00'
'b9e3affd4575f6484ca0bf0822a818847cc394c2'|'Yahoo says all 3 billion accounts affected in 2013 hack'|'October 3, 2017 / 8:56 PM / Updated 19 minutes ago Yahoo says all 3 billion accounts affected in 2013 hack Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A photo illustration shows a Yahoo logo on a smartphone in front of a displayed cyber code and keyboard on December 15, 2016. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration (Reuters) - Yahoo, now part of Verizon Communications Inc ( VZ.N ), said on Tuesday that all of its 3 billion user accounts were affected in the August 2013 data theft, following an investigation involving forensic experts. However, the company said the investigation indicated the information that was stolen did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information. Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D''Silva'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-cyber/yahoo-says-all-3-billion-accounts-affected-in-2013-hack-idUKKCN1C82O1'|'2017-10-03T23:56:00.000+03:00'
'5d225308554219a51032cbe656071d341ab9bc5c'|'Egypt''s Cheiron wins tie-up with Pemex for Mexican onshore oil field'|'MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Egypt<70>s Cheiron Holdings Limited won the rights to partner with Mexican national oil company Pemex on its onshore Cardenas-Mora project, the industry regulator said on Wednesday.The tie-up marks only the second joint venture between the Pemex and a equity partner since an energy opening finalized in 2014 ended the company<6E>s decades-long monopoly and allowed it to develop projects with private and foreign oil companies.Cardenas-Mora is a 65-square-mile (168 sq km) field located in Tabasco state believed to contain 93 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) in proven, probable and possible reserves.Reporting by David Alire Garcia '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-oil-cardenas/egypts-cheiron-wins-tie-up-with-pemex-for-mexican-onshore-oil-field-idINKBN1C92EU'|'2017-10-04T14:43:00.000+03:00'
'9c6b8b6bc97fda2e2b307d2a1040358085290c1e'|'Vietnam''s LienVietPostBank plans selling 25 percent to foreigner investors: media'|'HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam<61>s Lien Viet Post Joint Stock Commercial Bank (LienVietPostBank) is in talks to sell a 25 percent stake to foreign investors, local news outlet Vietnamnet said on Wednesday, citing a bank official.LienVietPostBank will list its shares on Hanoi Stock Exchange<67>s Unlisted Public Company Market (UPCoM) .HNO on Thursday at 14,800 dong ($0.65) per share, putting the bank<6E>s value at around $421 million, the bank<6E>s filing showed.Chief Executive Pham Doan Son told investors the bank plans to sell 25 percent of its shares, worth around $105 million at market value, to foreign investors, Vietnamnet reported.<2E>We are negotiating,<2C> Son told Reuters. He did not clarify.($1 = 22,728 dong)Reporting by Mi Nguyen; editing by Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lienvietpostbank-sale/vietnams-lienvietpostbank-plans-selling-25-percent-to-foreigner-investors-media-idUSKCN1C91NP'|'2017-10-04T20:09:00.000+03:00'
'527d5e27cbbae0666b9659873891059b5e536325'|'Russia, Saudi Arabia to set up $1 bln technology fund'|'LONDON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Russia and Saudi Arabia plan to set up a $1 billion fund to invest in technology, the chief executive of a sovereign Russian wealth fund said on Wednesday.The joint venture is the latest in a series of deals expected to be signed during a visit to Russia by King Salman this week, the first to Moscow by a reigning Saudi monarch.Other deals include a $1 billion fund to invest in energy projects and Saudi investment in Russian toll roads, including a new one in Moscow to relieve congestion.Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said on a press call that the two countries would seek areas of synergy between Russia and Saudi Arabia and aim to exploit their <20>unique technologies<65>.He cited desalination technologies and energy efficiency for air conditioning, and also highlighted Russia<69>s largest tech company Yandex, which specialises in internet-related services and products.<2E>Yandex is an interesting company for us because it is already present in the Middle East and Turkey and it has a search engine that beats Google in the Russian market by a large margin,<2C> Dmitriev said.The fund will also look at relevant investments outside Russia and Saudi, he added.Saudi Arabia<69>s main sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund has already invested in the SoftBank Vision Fund, a technology-focused private equity fund established with the Japanese company and other big investors.Meanwhile, the RDIF has invested in Hyperloop One, which is developing an advanced transport system. (Reporting by Claire Milhench; Editing by Gareth Jones) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/russia-swf-tech/russia-saudi-arabia-to-set-up-1-bln-technology-fund-idINL8N1MF2WN'|'2017-10-04T10:28:00.000+03:00'
'57eacb319d9c73ce5721f6af628a397a07a98331'|'Mexico seeks partners for three new Pemex oil tie-ups'|'MEXICO CITY, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Mexico will offer the rights to partner with state oil company Pemex on three major projects on Wednesday, one in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico and two more onshore, the latest step in opening country<72>s oil and gas industry.The three joint ventures, or farm-outs, aim to help Pemex, formally known as Petroleos Mexicanos, develop areas with private capital and expertise.In each case, Pemex would retain a 50 percent stake in the project but will cede operational control.The auction run by industry regulator, National Hydrocarbons Commission, is only the second time partnership rights for a Pemex project have been made available.The first joint venture auctioned last December was won by Australia<69>s BHP Billiton, which took a 60 percent operating interest in Pemex<65>s deepwater Trion project, a development seen requiring some $11 billion over the life of the contract.BHP is not bidding for any of the projects on the block on Wednesday, but speaks highly of its minority partner.<2E>We have been very pleasantly surprised with (Pemex<65>s) quality, both technically, commercially and from an understanding of how to do work in Mexico,<2C> said Steve Pastor, BHP<48>s Houston-based president of petroleum.Ten bidders have pre-qualified for the auction.Six are aiming to operate as Pemex<65>s sole partner, including China Offshore Oil Corporation, Colombia<69>s national producer Ecopetrol and Germany<6E>s DEA Deutsche Erdoel. Four others have pre-qualified in consortia, including a tie-up between U.S.-based Murphy Oil and Mexican independent Sierra Oil & Gas.The projects on offer include a production-sharing contract for the shallow water Ayin-Batsil area, and license contracts for the onshore blocks, Ogarrio and Cardenas-Mora.Ayin-Batsil is a 423 square mile (1,096 sq km) mostly heavy oil field along the southern edge of the Gulf of Mexico believed to contain 359 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) in proven, probable and possible reserves.The Ayin-Batsil tie-up will be awarded based on which bidder offers the government the largest share of operating profits, with a minimum set at 18.2 percent and a maximum of 25 percent.The onshore contracts will be awarded based on which bidder offers the government the largest additional royalty, with a minimum set at 1 percent and a maximum of 13 percent. In the case of a tie, the bidder offering the largest cash bond wins. (Reporting by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Dave Graham and Grant McCool) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mexico-oil/mexico-seeks-partners-for-three-new-pemex-oil-tie-ups-idINL2N1ME28Q'|'2017-10-04T04:02:00.000+03:00'
'9a558c8ef7bc5a4d0f8ecf678c123d6c3ffea986'|'Time to shine: Solar power is fastest-growing source of new energy - Environment'|'Solar power was the fastest-growing source of new energy worldwide last year, outstripping the growth in all other forms of power generation for the first time and leading experts to hail a <20>new era<72>.Renewable energy accounted for two-thirds of new power added to the world<6C>s grids in 2016, the International Energy Agency said, but the group found solar was the technology that shone brightest.New solar capacity even overtook the net growth in coal, previously the biggest new source of power generation. The shift was driven by falling prices and government policies, particularly in China , which accounted for almost half the solar panels installed.This summer was greenest ever for energy, says National Grid Read more The Paris-based IEA predicted that solar would dominate future growth, with global capacity in five years<72> time expected to be greater than the current combined total power capacity of India and Japan.Dr Fatih Birol, the executive director of the IEA, said: <20>What we are witnessing is the birth of a new era in solar photovoltaics [PV]. We expect that solar PV capacity growth will be higher than any other renewable technology up to 2022.<2E>The authority, which is funded by 28 member governments, admitted it had previously underestimated the speed at which green energy was growing.The amount of renewable energy capacity forecast globally in 2022 has been revised upwards on last year<61>s forecast, driven by the IEA expecting a third more solar in China and India.Facebook Twitter Pinterest Wind turbines and solar panels in Yancheng, Jiangsu province of China. The China is the world<6C>s fastest-growing market for renewables. Photograph: VCG via Getty Images While China dominates the expansion of renewables, the US is still the second fastest-growing market despite Donald Trump<6D>s pledge to revive coal and the uncertainties he has brought at a federal level.Paolo Frankl, head of the renewable energy division at the IEA, said that solar and wind subsidies and other fundamentals meant the president<6E>s impact would probably be limited. However, that could change if there were reforms that retrospectively hit the subsidies or if the US International Trade Commission imposes tariffs on imports of Chinese solar panels. <20>There is a risk, but at the moment our forecast remains strong,<2C> said Frankl.India is set for a solar boom over the next five years, as bottlenecks such as integrating solar farms with the grid are overcome. The country<72>s renewable energy capacity is forecast to double by 2022, overtaking the EU on growth.The picture for the UK is a <20>mixed message,<2C> said Frankl. The IEA has revised downward its forecast for the amount of green energy to be built in the UK between 2017 and 2022, with offshore windfarms expected to account for most of the growth. Wind power is now cheaper than nuclear <20> the energy revolution is happening - John Sauven Read more Despite the recent opening of the UK<55>s first subsidy-free solar farm , the prospects for British solar are fairly gloomy: the amount of solar forecast to be installed by 2022 is a fifth of the amount installed over the last five years.The report found that renewables are becoming increasingly comparable to fossil fuels on price, with wind and solar projects setting record low prices in government auctions. <20>Renewables may well become even cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives [over the next five years]. However, be careful because this does not automatically mean they are competitive and investment will flow. That depends on the risk of investment and whether remuneration flows make a project bankable or not,<2C> said Frankl.The growth in renewable power will be twice as large as gas and coal combined over the next five years, the IEA said. While that will take renewables<65> share of electricity generation from 24% last year to 30% in 2022, coal will still be the biggest source of power.The increasing scale of wind and solar power, and their intermittent n
'9f2efc2323878cd85cd6642ed5996a1684038f66'|'PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 4'|'October 4, 2017 / 5:04 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 4 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 4 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - Pressed by lawmakers, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reiterated his view that the Iran accord is working, a contradiction to the claims of President Donald Trump. nyti.ms/2ga5Ldi - Republican leaders are backing away from a proposal to fully repeal an expensive tax break used by more than 40 million tax filers to deduct state and local taxes amid pushback from fellow lawmakers whose residents rely on the popular provision. nyti.ms/2xXuniV - Ride-hailing service Uber Technologies Inc''s board voted for corporate governance changes and a potential stock sale to the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp . nyti.ms/2yHvhxk - The Equifax data breach, which exposed the sensitive personal information of nearly 146 million Americans, happened because of a mistake by a single employee, the credit reporting company''s former chief executive Richard Smith told members of Congress on Tuesday. nyti.ms/2xPD7sf - Wells Fargo Chief Executive Timothy Sloan on Tuesday faced attacks from Republican and Democratic senators, who voiced frustration with his response to a series of scandals that have rocked the bank. nyti.ms/2g8sLti Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-nyt/press-digest-new-york-times-business-news-oct-4-idUSL4N1MF0ZT'|'2017-10-04T08:01:00.000+03:00'
'5c63058f355c2dfbd01228f6ad6503a37486c42e'|'UPDATE 1-Airbus says it has capacity to raise A350 production above targeted levels'|'* Capacity to go above targeted level -spokesman* Boeing also planning to up 787 production levels (Adds detail and background)By Tim HepherPARIS, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Airbus said on Wednesday it had the capacity to push the production of its A350 planes above its targeted level of 10 aircraft a month, as its main rival Boeing also prepares to step up some of its own production output.<2E>We are sticking by our target to increase A350 production to 10 per month by the end of 2018 and we have the industrial capacity to go higher,<2C> said an Airbus spokesman.He was speaking after aerospace publication Leeham News said Airbus was preparing to push up the output of its new wide-body jet to 13 a month, perhaps by as early as 2019.The spokesman for Airbus declined to comment on when, or by how much, Airbus could increase the production.Airbus has said that it has delivered 50 A350 aircraft so far this year.The European company<6E>s planemaking chief Fabrice Bregier was Quote: d last month as saying it was on track to increase deliveries by 50 percent in 2017, with 49 deliveries made in 2016.Also in September, Boeing said it would raise production of competing 787 Dreamliner jets to 14 a month in 2019, from the current 12 a month, pressing ahead with plans that had been placed on hold amid concerns over demand for wide-body jets. (Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Jason Neely/Keith Weir) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/airbus-production/update-1-airbus-says-it-has-capacity-to-raise-a350-production-above-targeted-levels-idINL8N1MF1O1'|'2017-10-04T06:42:00.000+03:00'
'2defafdddab043e2afd715b2a9438a21ebd0a3e6'|'RPT-CORRECTED-Australian fund in $1.6 bln deal to buy 10 U.S. malls from Forest City'|'October 4, 2017 / 6:19 AM / Updated 3 hours ago RPT-CORRECTED-Australian fund in $1.6 bln deal to buy 10 U.S. malls from Forest City Reuters Staff (Repeats to fix technical glitch) By Paulina Duran SYDNEY, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Australian fund manager QIC has reached a deal to buy out 10 regional malls in the United States from its joint venture partner Forest City Realty Trust Inc on behalf of a client which it did not identify. Forest City said the deal values the total portfolio at $3.1 billion and its stake at $1.6 billion. Four years ago, the A$82 billion Australian fund, which manages assets for institutional investors, formed a partnership with the New York listed Forest City. <20>We are encouraged by the broader economic conditions in the U.S. and the resilience of the consumer as demonstrated by continuing strength in the underlying fundamentals for the portfolio,<2C> said Steve Leigh, Managing Director of Global Real Estate for QIC. <20>We understand the importance of regional malls to their local communities and have the capability and the capital to evolve these assets into multi-faceted destinations.<2E> The transaction will be completed in two stages, with the first involving the acquisition of six malls in the states of Colorado, New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania, for net proceeds of $180 million, and the second stage consisting of an option over four more malls in California, Nevada, and Virginia, the fund said in a statement. (Reporting by Paulina Duran; editing by Grant McCool) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/forest-city-ma-qic/rpt-corrected-australian-fund-in-1-6-bln-deal-to-buy-10-u-s-malls-from-forest-city-idUSL4N1MF195'|'2017-10-04T09:18:00.000+03:00'
'3772347402d107804f838fb9b9d179be741d26ab'|'French retailer Leclerc approached by Amazon over logistics partnership'|'October 4, 2017 / 12:56 PM / Updated 5 hours ago French retailer Leclerc approached by Amazon over logistics partnership Pascale Denis 2 Min Read A view of the Amazon fulfillment logo in Mexico City, Mexico, September 12, 2017. Picture taken September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido PARIS (Reuters) - Privately-held French supermarket operator Leclerc has been approached by U.S. technology group Amazon ( AMZN.O ) over possible logistics partnerships, as speculation intensifies over Amazon<6F>s intentions in the supermarket sector. <20>Yes, we have been approached by Amazon,<2C> Michel-Edouard Leclerc, who heads the company, told Reuters on Wednesday. <20>Amazon could - why not? - be our logistics partner,<2C> he added. Leclerc<72>s comments come after French newspaper Le Monde reported this week that Amazon had approached various French supermarket operators - including Casino ( CASP.PA ) - about setting up distribution deals or making an acquisition in the country. Traders had also cited market speculation last month that Amazon could be interested in bidding for French supermarket operator Carrefour ( CARR.PA ). Both Casino and Carrefour said they do not comment on market rumors. Amazon bought Whole Foods Market this year for $13.7 billion in a deal that marked a dramatic change in strategy for a company that had offered food delivery through its Fresh service for a decade but had not previously made any major dents in the $700 billion grocery market. Writing by Sudip Kar-Gupta, editing by Louise Heavens '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-france/french-retailer-leclerc-approached-by-amazon-over-logistics-partnership-idUSKBN1C91SW'|'2017-10-04T15:56:00.000+03:00'
'84d778bd0bc8933496083d0cd17314c6ef728d4c'|'Murdoch''s UK paper arm admits computer hacking, fuelling criticism of Sky takeover'|'October 6, 2017 / 4:35 PM / Updated 9 hours ago Murdoch''s UK paper arm admits computer hacking, fuelling criticism of Sky takeover Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Tennis - US Open - Mens Final - New York, U.S. - September 10, 2017 - Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of Fox News Channel stands before Rafael Nadal of Spain plays against Kevin Anderson of South Africa. REUTERS/Mike Segar LONDON (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch<63>s British newspaper group said on Friday one of its titles had hacked the computer of a former intelligence officer, an admission which critics said showed why his takeover of European broadcaster Sky ( SKYB.L ) should be blocked. In a hearing at London<6F>s High Court, Murdoch<63>s News Group Newspapers ( NWSA.O ) admitted <20>vicarious liability<74> for the hacking of computers belonging to Ian Hurst, who worked for British military intelligence. The case comes a month after Britain<69>s media minister said regulators should scrutinise Murdoch<63>s planned $15 billion takeover of Sky over concerns about broadcasting standards and its impact on media plurality. Hurst<73>s lawyer Jeremy Reed said in a court statement the Irish edition of the News of the World newspaper had hired a private investigator to intercept his client<6E>s emails in 2006. Hurst had served in Northern Ireland and later wrote a book about his experiences, including details of Britain<69>s top spy in the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Alfredo Scappaticci, known by the codename <20>Stakeknife<66>. Reed said it was likely he was targeted because an employee of the newspaper wanted to trace Scappaticci. <20>I confirm that News Group Newspapers ... accepts vicarious liability for the wrongful acts of computer interception,<2C> said Anthony Hudson, the lawyer for the newspaper group, adding it had paid <20>substantial<61> damages to Hurst and his family. <20>News Group Newspapers accepts that such activity happened, accepts that it should never have happened, and has undertaken to the court that it will never happen again.<2E> Opponents of Murdoch<63>s takeover said the case was evidence the deal should not be allowed to go through and they would send a dossier to the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) which is examining the proposed deal. <20>It<49>s vital that the CMA is able to take this new evidence of criminality and corporate failure into account as it assesses the Murdochs<68> bid to take over Sky,<2C> said Tom Watson, deputy leader of Britain<69>s opposition Labour Party. Murdoch shut the News of the World in 2011 after its journalists were found to have been involved in widespread phone-hacking. His original attempt to buy full control of Sky was ditched in the wake of the scandal. Since then the company has been split in two, separating the newspapers from entertainment assets to help to smooth the deal<61>s passage. Last month Murdoch<63>s son James said he was confident regulators would assess the deal on its merits and not be swayed by those with grievances against his father<65>s newspapers, saying the company had dealt effectively with past problems. Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Andrew Roche'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-sky-m-a-fox-hack/murdochs-uk-paper-arm-admits-computer-hacking-fuelling-criticism-of-sky-takeover-idUKKBN1CB24V'|'2017-10-07T05:13:00.000+03:00'
'3e1736248170592f671bdf0e7092e6bd8f3f35dc'|'World Bank''s Kim says most members ''on board'' with capital hike'|'October 5, 2017 / 9:59 PM / in 18 minutes World Bank''s Kim says most members ''on board'' with capital hike David Lawder 3 Min Read World Bank President Jim Yong Kim speaks at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York City, U.S., September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid WASHINGTON (Reuters) - World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the <20>vast majority<74> of the bank<6E>s 189 member countries support a capital increase for the institution<6F>s main lending arm and he hoped to soon set a deadline for a final decision. Kim told a media conference call that members would discuss the issue at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings next week, where he will also roll out a new initiative to encourage more investment in human capital and education. <20>We are moving in a direction and the vast majority of countries now, we think, are on board and it<69>s just a question of when the capital increase will actually happen,<2C> Kim said. He views a capital increase for the World Bank Group<75>s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development as critical to his strategy of trying to mobilise more private capital for development by <20>de-risking<6E> projects with World Bank backing and issuing more debt on capital markets. <20>We definitely are focused on crowding in more private capital, but there is no way to do that without us having more capital ourselves,<2C> Kim said. <20>I think now everybody on the board understands that.<2E> He said the bank has made the case for raising additional capital by showing the extent of demand for its lending and assistance and the outcome is now <20>a question of timing.<2E> However, Kim has one major obstacle to increasing the bank<6E>s capital base: a reluctant Trump administration, which as the World Bank<6E>s largest shareholder, effectively holds veto power over its decisions. <20>Everybody<64>s willing to do this except for the United States at this point,<2C> said Scott Morris, a senior fellow at the Centre for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank. <20>We have to convince a new administration on the basic case. I think all the evidence is that they<65>re not there yet.<2E> Morris, a former U.S. Treasury official who oversaw U.S. membership in the World Bank and IMF Fund during the Obama administration, said the administration likely has some objections to the World Bank<6E>s continued lending to China and some other large emerging market countries. A Treasury spokesman did not immediately respond to Reuters<72> request for comment on the matter. The World Bank in 2015 initially had set a goal of agreeing on a capital boost by the end of 2017, with a deal finalised at this year<61>s annual meetings. Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by David Gregorio'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-worldbank-capital/world-banks-kim-says-most-members-on-board-with-capital-hike-idUKKBN1CA2TE'|'2017-10-06T00:59:00.000+03:00'
'cb4291ab8053cc60daff124cefe8ab4ecae94c8a'|'Asia stocks up after tax reform optimism lifts Wall Street, dollar buoyant'|'October 6, 2017 / 1:00 AM / in 13 minutes U.S. dollar, debt yields fall on North Korea missile test report 5 Min Read Dollar banknotes are seen in this picture illustration taken June 13, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar tumbled and debt yields pared sharp gains on Friday on a report that North Korea is preparing to test a long-range missile, reversing earlier gains after U.S. jobs data for September raised the likelihood of an interest rate hike in December. A Russian lawmaker just returned from a visit to Pyongyang was quoted by Russia<69>s RIA news agency as saying that North Korea believes the missile can reach the U.S. West Coast. <20>The market is getting more nervous about the prospect of some kind of a conflict,<2C> said Boris Schlossberg, managing director of FX strategy at BK Asset Management in New York. <20>If they do something over the weekend, even if it<69>s a mild test, I<>m sure we<77>re going to open up a with little bit of risk aversion on Monday.<2E> The dollar index .DXY fell 0.15 percent. The euro EUR= rebounded 0.16 percent to $1.1729, while the Japanese yen reversed course to strengthened 0.11 percent at 112.71 per dollar. The dollar and government debt yields had jumped earlier on strong gains in average hourly wages, which suggested the pace of inflation could quicken closer to the Federal Reserve<76>s target of 2 percent. U.S. employment fell in September for the first time in seven years as Hurricanes Harvey and Irma temporarily displaced workers and delayed hiring, the latest sign the storms undercut economic activity in the third quarter. Average hourly earnings increased 12 cents, or 0.5 percent, after rising 0.2 percent in August. The gains came as nonfarm payrolls fell by 33,000 jobs last month against expectations of a 90,0000 gain. The yield on two-year U.S. Treasury notes soared to their highest in nine years, while the dollar hit an almost three-month high against the Japanese yen and almost a two-month high against the euro. The jump in average hourly earnings surprised investors who were aware the headline employment number would be distorted by the hurricanes, said Win Thin, head of emerging markets currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman in New York. FILE PHOTO - Pedestrians leave and enter the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall <20>This is the missing piece in the Fed<65>s puzzle,<2C> he said. <20>The dollar rally is back on track and should continue next week.<2E> Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR fell 5/32 in price to yield 2.3697 percent, paring losses that earlier had sent yields above 2.4 percent. The jobs report tempered equity markets that had rallied all week with MSCI<43>s world stock index and the three major U.S. gauges on Wall Street setting four successive record closing highs. However, the report should be taken with a large grain of salt as the jump in wages is likely to show near equal weakness in October, said Russell Price, senior economist at Ameriprise Financial Services Inc in Troy, Michigan. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 11.1 points, or 0.05 percent, to 22,764.29. he S&P 500 .SPX lost 4.79 points, or 0.19 percent, to 2,547.28 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 2.39 points, or 0.04 percent, to 6,582.96. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 lost 0.37 percent to close at 1,530.83, while MSCI''s gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD PUS shed 0.59 percent. U.S. December gold futures GCv1 settled up 0.1 percent at $1,274.90. Oil prices fell more than 2 percent and ended Brent<6E>s longest multi-week rally in 16 months following profit taking and the return of oversupply concerns. Brent LCOcv1 settled at $55.62 per barrel, down $1.38 on the day, while U.S. crude CLcv1 fell $1.50 to settle at $49.29. (For a graphic on ''U.S. jobs report'' click reut.rs/2ysC81N ) (For a graphic on ''World FX rates in 2017'' click tmsnrt.rs/2egbfVh ) (For a graphic on ''Global assets in 2017'' cl
'ceea9d05be4096fa43e2f5e7028aa0ca3c236b87'|'UPDATE 1-Peltz says P&G proxy fight dumb, will go down to wire'|'(Adds Breakingviews link)By Siddharth CavaleOct 6 (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble should not have bothered resisting activist investor Nelson Peltz<74>s push for a board seat, he said on Friday, promising to keep his shares in the consumer goods company even if he lost next week<65>s vote.Peltz said the company had wasted more than $100 million to keep him off the board, despite him having no intention of replacing any board member or Chief Executive David Taylor, and that the vote would be close.<2E>This proxy fight is probably the dumbest thing I<>ve ever been involved in,<2C> Peltz told CNBC on Friday.One of the best known activist investors in corporate America, Peltz has amassed a $3.5 billion stake in P&G through his firm Trian Fund Management.He has said he wants the company to improve shareholder returns by speeding up a transformation begun in 2014 and further streamlining its operations, moves he hopes he can push with a board seat.He has also repeatedly said that P&G has a <20>suffocating bureaucracy<63> that is stalling progress and that reorganizing the company into three global business units would reduce complexity.<2E>P&G has lost its soul,<2C> Peltz said.With a $235 billion market capitalization, the Oct. 10 vote makes P&G the biggest company to ever face a proxy fight, in which competing groups battle for the shareholder votes needed to gain control.P&G in a statement on Friday reiterated its stance that Peltz was not a right fit for the board, particularly at a time when the company was in the final stages of its transformation.<2E>Peltz<74>s timing is late to P&G&rsquo;s turnaround,<2C> the company said in the statement.Reporting by Siddharth Cavale in Bengaluru '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/procterandgamble-trian/update-1-peltz-says-pg-proxy-fight-dumb-will-go-down-to-wire-idINL4N1MH3B0'|'2017-10-06T17:10:00.000+03:00'
'5bf65b7f1aa02b5fbba149559cfa438385ddd9f0'|'Run-up in global stocks still has some momentum left - Reuters poll'|' 27 AM / in 40 minutes Run-up in global stocks still has some momentum left - Reuters poll Rahul Karunakar 5 Min Read BENGALURU (Reuters) - Global stocks will rise even more over the coming year as optimism about the global economy grows, but a slim majority of equity strategists polled by Reuters also said the current eight-year bull run will end in 2018. World shares hit their latest in a run of new highs on Wednesday, with MSCI<43>s 47-country <20>All-World<6C> index .MIWD PUS extending the blizzard of records that started in February to around 40. That has resulted in stretched share prices, with valuations for a majority of stock indexes already trading above their five-year averages. But corporate earnings have yet to catch up to justify that surge. More than 250 equity strategists and brokers around the world polled by Reuters nevertheless expect all but one of 20 indexes to rise further through to the end of next year. But predictions for over a third of those indexes were tempered in the latest poll, taken Sept 21-Oct 4, compared with a previous survey just three months ago. The recent surge in equity markets is also based on a view that the world economy is at last in a synchronous upturn, with most major central banks looking to move away from ultra-easy monetary policies. About 55 percent of more than 100 equity strategists who answered an extra question said the current bull run in world stocks will end within a year, however. The remaining 45 percent of the strategists were split between two years or more. The run-up since 2009 in U.S. stocks is expected to extend into 2018, provided profits pick up to prevent shares from getting too expensive. <20>The (U.S.) economy and earnings are pretty good, and they<65>re the building blocks,<2C> said Robert Doll, chief equity strategist at Nuveen Asset Management in Princeton, New Jersey. <20>That<61>s what<61>s given us the good year-to-date (gains) and could continue to cause those of us who think stocks are OK but not great to be too cautious.<2E> While economic momentum this year has been prominent, inflation has not risen to central banks<6B> targets and shows no signs of surging any time soon. Despite that, several major central banks have shifted their bias towards policy tightening. Subdued inflation will keep a check on sovereign bond yield rises over the coming year, according to a separate Reuters poll of bond strategists and analysts published last week. [US/INT] The European Central Bank<6E>s expected move to cut its massive stimulus starting next year is likely to slow the pace of rises in European shares, the latest poll showed. [EPOLL/FRDE] <20>The synchronized upswing in the euro zone will sustain the current bull market until the end of the first quarter of 2018,<2C> said Warin Buntrock, deputy chief investment officer at BFT IM in Paris. They are currently overweight euro zone equities. <20>Starting from the second quarter of 2018, investors will gradually shift their focus on the coming inflexion of central bank policies. Equities will become more volatile and stagnate until the end of 2018 as valuations are rich,<2C> he added. Ajay Bagga, executive chairman at OPC Asset Solutions in Mumbai, agrees that a shift in mood is likely next year. <20>Global macro ... will keep the current rally going for another four to five quarters before the Fed balance sheet reduction and ECB QE taper start impacting global liquidity and lead to a slowdown and eventual market correction,<2C> he noted. While Britain''s FTSE .FTSE has risen modestly this year, uncertainty over Brexit negotiations is already denting investor sentiment towards sterling assets. Emerging economies<65> stock markets are expected to outperform developed ones, despite concerns about a coming rise in protectionism and still-weak world trade volumes compared with recent peaks. East Asian stock markets are expected to keep rising through the rest of this year and next, driven by optimism about strong economic growth and better company ear
'de2cf21d57b1f9a1726dcfca5e174a43fe60162a'|'COLUMN-LNG''s Asian price rally may become victim of its own success: Russell'|'October 5, 2017 / 6:59 AM / in 16 minutes COLUMN-LNG''s Asian price rally may become victim of its own success: Russell Reuters Staff (The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.) * Graphic of China LNG imports vs. Asia spot price: * reut.rs/2yZ7utQ By Clyde Russell LAUNCESTON, Australia, Oct 5 (Reuters) - The spot price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Asia is enjoying its traditional surge ahead of peak winter demand, and the near 40 percent rally over the past six weeks probably has further to go. While exporters of the super-chilled fuel will no doubt be trying to maximise the number of spot cargoes they offer, of more interest to them may be how steep the post-winter drop is likely to be. Much of the current boost to prices is due to stronger-than-expected Chinese demand, as Beijing expands use of the cleaner-burning fuel in place of coal for winter heating. The government is spending huge amounts to build out its natural gas infrastructure to change some 4 million homes from coal to natural gas heating, with consultants Wood Mackenzie estimating that China<6E>s natural gas demand could be boosted by 10 billion cubic metres this winter, equivalent to about 5 percent of last year<61>s total consumption. China<6E>s LNG imports for the first eight months of the year are up a massive 44.3 percent to 22.1 million tonnes, according to customs data, increasing every month since May. China still ranks third behind Japan and South Korea in global LNG imports, although it is the country with the fastest growth, and the most potential for steadily rising demand. Spot LNG prices LNG-AS have responded to the increased demand from China, jumping 39 percent to end at $8.40 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) for the week to Sept. 29, up from a recent low of $6.05 for the week ended Aug. 25. By way of comparison, the spot priced surged 86 percent between September last year and the winter peak of $9.75 per mmBtu, reached in the first week of January this year. There was no winter-led spike in 2015-16 as the market grappled with oversupply and a mild winter, but in 2014-15 the price rose by 43 percent in the run-up to the cold season peak. History suggests this year<61>s pre-winter rally may still have further to go, but the problem for LNG is that it may end up being a victim of its own success. One of the costs for Chinese authorities is that in expanding the natural gas network they are likely to have to spend more money subsidising the fuel. While LNG is well below its spot peak of $20.50 per mmBtu, it is also still more expensive than coal, even though the dirtier fuel has also enjoyed strong gains in recent months, with the benchmark weekly price at Australia<69>s Newcastle port jumping 41 percent between mid-May and late August. If LNG costs continue to rise, it may cause China to slow down the rapid deployment of natural gas infrastructure, even though Beijing has made combating air pollution a top priority. It may end up being simpler to force industries that are heavy coal users to curb their output during the winter months, a quicker and cheaper fix than switching to natural gas. Though the rally in spot Asian LNG prices has been largely demand-driven, it<69>s also worth looking at the supply side. SUPPLY TIGHTNESS TO EASE While the United States is not a major player in Asia, its exports were crimped in recent weeks by Hurricane Harvey, which struck along the Gulf of Mexico coast, where the only operating U.S. LNG export terminal is located. U.S. shipments of LNG were 0.92 million tonnes in August, weakest since March, according to vessel-tracking and port data compiled by Thomson Reuters Supply Chain and Commodity Forecasts. No cargoes left the U.S. between Aug. 24 and Sept. 8, according to the data, although September shipments still managed to reach 1.12 million tonnes, the second best month so far this year. The loss of a small number of U.S. cargoes may have contributed 
'4d44507b917d84a7d7e33ab91818df8f78457050'|'PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - October 5'|'October 5, 2017 / 4:53 AM / in 8 hours PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - October 5 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 5 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - In a public statement, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson emphasized his support of President Donald Trump and his agenda, despite a recent media report that he had criticized the president. nyti.ms/2xUoHEQ - Alphabet Inc''s Google unveiled new smartphones, smart speakers and other gadgets at a product launch in an attempt to demonstrate the company''s commitment to artificial intelligence. nyti.ms/2yJ7ZYc - The European Commission said it would take Ireland to court for not clawing back billions from Apple Inc, and ordered Luxembourg to recover around $293 million from Amazon . nyti.ms/2ypJoeW - Newsroom employees at the Los Angeles Times are trying to form a union, setting up a potential clash with the newspaper''s parent company, Tronc Inc. nyti.ms/2y2btYu - Three U.S. Army Special Forces troops were killed and two wounded on Wednesday in an ambush in Niger while on a training mission with troops from that nation in northwestern Africa, American military officials said. nyti.ms/2y2eRmr Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-nyt/press-digest-new-york-times-business-news-october-5-idUSL4N1MG0RX'|'2017-10-05T07:52:00.000+03:00'
'f7ec674ccd2e1817f07b4fd0bb937e9af926c005'|'Boeing-backed, electric-hybrid airliner set to hit market in 2022'|'NEW YORK, Oct 5 (Reuters) - A Seattle-area startup backed by the venture arms of Boeing Co and JetBlue Airways Corp plans to bring a small hybrid-electric airliner to market by 2022 that can dramatically reduce the travel time and cost of trips under 1,000 miles (1,600 km), it said on Thursday.The first of several aircraft planned by Zunum Aero would seat up to 12 passengers and be powered by two electric motors.Electric-vehicle batteries, such as those made by Tesla Inc and Panasonic Corp, would power the motor. A supplemental gas engine and electrical generator would be used to give the plane a range of 700 miles, Matt Knapp, co-founder and chief aeronautic engineer of the Kirkland, Washington-based company, said in an interview.Zunum has no commitment to Tesla or Panasonic.A larger plane seating up to 50 passengers would follow at the end of the next decade, and the range of both would increase to about 1,000 miles as battery technology improves, Knapp said.The planes eventually would fly solely on battery power, and are being designed to fly with one pilot and to eventually be remotely piloted, he added.Several companies, including Uber Technologies Inc and European planemaker Airbus, are working on intra-urban electric-powered self-flying cars.Zunum does not expect to be the first to certify an electric-powered aircraft with regulators. It is aiming to fill a market for regional travel for airlines, where private jets and commercial jetliners are too costly for many to use.<2E>Airlines are very keen to know how to fly a shorter distance and make money on it,<2C> Knapp said.Recent advances in electric-vehicle and autonomous technology, along with lightweight electric motors and carbon composite airframes would reduce the cost of flying Zunum<75>s aircraft to about 8 cents per seat-mile, about one-fifth that of a small jet or turboprop plane, Knapp said.<2E>We<57>re getting airline pricing down on a small plane and doing it for short distances,<2C> Knapp said. <20>That kind of aircraft doesn<73>t currently exist.<2E>Zunum announced plans for electric-hybrid aircraft in April, and revealed that Boeing HorizonX and JetBlue Technology Ventures had invested in its initial round of venture funding. On Thursday it disclosed specifications and a timetable for the vehicle entering service.Zunum says the plane would cruise at about 340 miles an hour and at altitudes of about 25,000 feet (7,600 meters) - slower and lower than jets.The plane would cut travel time by allowing passengers to fly from thousands of regional airports, avoiding big hubs used by major airlines and airport security required for larger planes. About 96 percent of U.S. air traffic travels through 1 percent of its airports, Zunum said.Current battery technology can only power the plane for about 100 miles so a gas-powered engine is used to generate electricity to power the motors for additional range. (Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Susan Thomas) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/aerospace-hybrid/boeing-backed-electric-hybrid-airliner-set-to-hit-market-in-2022-idINL2N1ME1H7'|'2017-10-05T09:00:00.000+03:00'
'38e5c42dc6c571a0a07126393ca37ede9a114a82'|'Rising U.S. exports to depress oil prices - Vitol CEO'|'October 5, 2017 / 6:24 PM / Updated 4 minutes ago Rising U.S. exports to depress oil prices - Vitol CEO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Rising U.S. oil exports will put oil prices under renewed pressure in 2018 but they could recover towards $60-$65 a barrel in the next two to three years, the head of Vitol, the world<6C>s largest oil trader, said on Thursday. Ian Taylor, the chief executive of Vitol which is one of the largest lifters of oil from Iraq<61>s Kurdistan, also said he was concerned by the independence referendum that the semi-autonomous Iraqi region held last month. <20>I hope they don<6F>t go independent. All they ever said they wanted was to sit down with Baghdad,<2C> Taylor said. Reporting by Julia Payne; Writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Edmund Blair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-vitol-oil/rising-u-s-exports-to-depress-oil-prices-vitol-ceo-idUKKBN1CA2DK'|'2017-10-05T21:24:00.000+03:00'
'a998fe32c49d237233b926ffaa0a8b440e1d9e32'|'Asian shares edge up slightly after strong U.S. data'|'October 5, 2017 / 1:02 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago Stocks at fresh peaks, dollar gains amid economic optimism Herbert Lash 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A U.S. Dollar note is seen in this June 22, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - World stock markets hit fresh highs on Thursday amid investor optimism over U.S. tax reforms and global economic growth, while the dollar gained as data pointed to solid U.S. growth. The U.S. trade deficit fell in August as exports of goods and services rose to the highest level in more than 2-1/2 years. Separately, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week. Gold dipped on news of the data as it bolstered the notion U.S. interest rates would be hiked in December. Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Patrick Harker said he was still penciling in one more rate hike this year and three in 2018. The dollar index, tracking the greenback against a basket of key currencies, held under seven-week highs as investors awaited Friday<61>s U.S. jobless report for September to assess the impact of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. The storms proved a drag on robust business spending that was seen in the trade data. MSCI<43>s all-country world stock index .MIWD PUS edged higher to set a new intraday peak, while the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all set fresh highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 41.22 points, or 0.18 percent, to 22,702.86. The S&P 500 .SPX gained 5.99 points, or 0.24 percent, to 2,543.73 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 15.08 points, or 0.23 percent, to 6,549.71. European bourses also gained, with the pan-regional FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 rising 0.16 percent to 1,535.03. FILE PHOTO: Pedestrians leave and enter the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall A Reuters poll showed global stocks will continue to climb over the coming year on rising optimism about growth worldwide. However, a slim majority of equity strategists also expect the current eight-year bull run to end in 2018. U.S. investors have begun to warm to the notion that reform of U.S. fiscal policy will occur by the first quarter, said Phil Orlando, chief equity strategist at Federated Investors in New York. Most investors felt that nothing would come of President Donald Trump<6D>s tax reform effort until last week, he said. <20>Only 30 percent of us were comfortable that something might happen. That could take up 2019 estimates for GDP growth and earnings per share, which could drive the S&P 500 above our 3,000 target,<2C> Orlando said. Oil prices rose as signs Saudi Arabia and Russia would limit production through next year outweighed record U.S. exports and the return of production at a major Libyan oilfield. Brent LCOcv1 rose $1.19 to $56.99 per barrel, while U.S. crude CLcv1 rose 96 cents to $50.94 per barrel. The dollar index .DXY rose 0.44 percent, with the euro EUR= down 0.41 percent to $1.1711. The Japanese yen strengthened 0.07 percent versus the greenback at 112.70. Reporting by Herbert Lash; Editing by Bernadette Baum'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asian-shares-edge-up-slightly-after-strong-u-s-data-idUSKBN1CA02Y'|'2017-10-05T04:00:00.000+03:00'
'88e51f1077f08f1d0b0dc5d4bfbc61cc4588224b'|'L''Oreal, cosmetics rivals to appeal Greek anti-trust fines'|'October 5, 2017 / 5:15 PM / in a few seconds L''Oreal, cosmetics rivals to appeal Greek anti-trust fines Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The logo of French cosmetics group L''Oreal is seen in front of the Arc de Triomphe during a public event in Paris, France, October 1, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau PARIS (Reuters) - L<>Oreal ( OREP.PA ) said on Thursday it would appeal a 2.6 million euro ($3 million) fine imposed by Greece<63>s competition authority, which ruled that the French cosmetics company and several of its rivals were fixing prices. The local beauty products business of France<63>s Christian Dior - part of luxury goods group LVMH ( LVMH.PA ) - was also fined just under 1.8 million euros, while U.S.-based Estee Lauder ( EL.N ) got the biggest fine, at 5.4 million euros. Greece<63>s anti-trust commission fined six cosmetics companies a total of 18.7 million euros after investigating allegations that luxury cosmetics wholesalers were agreeing on the discounts to be applied to their products when resold in shops and indirectly fixing prices as a result. Three Greek companies were included in the six. <20>L<EFBFBD>Oreal Hellas denies any accusations of unlawful competition,<2C> the company said. L<>Oreal, which owns brands such as Lancome and Kiehl<68>s, is the world<6C>s biggest cosmetics and beauty products company. Christian Dior could not immediately be reached for comment. Estee Lauder said in a statement it was <20>reviewing the authority<74>s decision with the intention to appeal.<2E> Greece<63>s Sarantis ( SRSr.AT ), which was slapped with a 1.9 million-euro fine, had also said on Wednesday that it would appeal the ruling and disputed the size of the fine. <20>There had never been any kind of agreement between the distributors of luxury cosmetics in Greece with the aim to set cosmetics sale prices,<2C> Sarantis said in a statement. Sarantis also has a 49 percent stake in a joint venture with Estee Lauder in Greece. Reporting by Pascale Denis and Sarah White. Editing by Jane Merriman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-greece-antitrust-cosmetics/loreal-cosmetics-rivals-to-appeal-greek-anti-trust-fines-idUSKBN1CA27W'|'2017-10-05T20:09:00.000+03:00'
'5e847e551a453e41a64ce9e1c0f934250e2c8f63'|'White Tale activists increase Clariant stake: Finanz und Wirtschaft'|'The logo of Swiss specialty chemicals company Clariant is seen at the company''s headquarters in Pratteln, Switzerland August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann ZURICH (Reuters) - Activist investors seeking to block specialty chemical maker Clariant<6E>s $20 billion merger with Huntsman Corp own <20>significantly more<72> than 15 percent of Clariant shares and want to increase their stake, they told a Swiss newspaper.<2E>We already own more than 15 percent and we<77>re not done buying,<2C> White Tale investors David Millstone and David Winter told Finanz und Wirtschaft in a joint interview released on Friday.The next disclosure threshold would be 20 percent. They had previously reported a stake of just over 15 percent.Calling themselves <20>long-term oriented investors<72> who are <20>here to stay<61>, Millstone and Winter reiterated their opposition to the planned merger that would give Clariant 52 percent of the combined entity should shareholders approve.<2E>We want Clariant to become a better and stronger company, and we don<6F>t see that happening with Huntsman.<2E>The proposed deal, they said, significantly undervalued Clariant and overvalued Huntsman.The Swiss chemical manufacturer should instead sell its plastics and coatings business, they said, and reinvest the proceeds into acquisitions within the higher-margin specialty chemicals businesses.Reporting by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi; Editing by Michael Shields '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-clariant-huntsman/activist-investors-increase-clariant-stake-finanz-und-wirtschaft-idINKBN1CB1X1'|'2017-10-06T13:10:00.000+03:00'
'c260b65cebb0949c804e5eda8452ca4111ccfcb8'|'EU antitrust conducted inspections over limits to bank accounts'' access'|'October 6, 2017 / 6:53 PM / in 7 minutes EU conducts inspections over limits to bank account access Reuters Staff 2 Min Read European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium June 14, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission said on Friday it had conducted inspections in some EU states into banks<6B> alleged anti-competitive practices in limiting rival financial firms from gaining legitimate online access to their customers<72> data. The Commission said in a statement it had <20>concerns<6E> that the companies involved <20>may have engaged in anti-competitive practices in breach of EU antitrust rules<65>. It did not name any company. It said that banks could have prevented non-bank competitors from gaining online access to account information of their customers to provide financial services, in spite of having obtained prior authorisation from the customers. The unannounced inspections were carried out on Oct. 3, the commission said. Antitrust inspections are preliminary steps into suspected practices that may not result in formal accusations. Financial technology, or <20>fintech<63> companies had complained of banks limiting their access to customers. Fintech firms provide payment, lending and other services. Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio; editing by Andrew Roche'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-antitrust-banks-accounts/eu-antitrust-conducted-inspections-over-limits-to-bank-accounts-access-idUKKBN1CB2GM'|'2017-10-06T21:53:00.000+03:00'
'ceb8d87b2e8e3b0db0a5882e7ba69e2e29d1ea46'|'U.S. backs 300 percent in duties on Bombardier after Boeing complaint'|'October 6, 2017 / 5:14 PM / Updated 3 minutes ago U.S. backs 300 percent in duties on Bombardier after Boeing complaint Alwyn Scott 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A plane flies over a Bombardier plant in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on January 21, 2014. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Commerce Department on Friday moved to impose trade duties of nearly 300 percent on sales of Bombardier Inc ( BBDb.TO ) CSeries jets in the United States, prompted by Boeing Co<43>s ( BA.N ) complaint that the Canadian company received illegal subsidies and dumped the planes at <20>absurdly low<6F> prices. The Commerce Department proposed a 79.82 percent antidumping duty after a preliminary finding that the jets were sold below cost to Delta Air Lines Inc ( DAL.N ) in 2016, adding to the 219.63 percent duty for subsidies announced last week. The new proposed penalty, which would not take effect unless affirmed by the U.S. International Trade Commission early next year, is nevertheless expected to heighten trade tensions between the United States, Canada and Britain, where wings for the Bombardier jetliner are made. The total duty was well above the 80 percent Boeing sought in its complaint. After the first duty was announced on Sept. 26, Canada and Britain threatened to avoid buying Boeing military equipment, saying duties on the CSeries would reduce U.S. sales and put thousands of Bombardier jobs in their countries at risk. Related Coverage The duty would apply to the cost of CSeries planes imported to the United States, effectively keeping it out of the market. Bombardier shares were last down 0.5 percent to C$2.18. Boeing, the world<6C>s largest plane maker, hailed the decision. <20>These duties are the consequence of a conscious decision by Bombardier to violate trade law and dump their CSeries aircraft to secure a sale,<2C> Chicago-based Boeing said in a statement. Canada<64>s government said it was in <20>complete disagreement<6E> with the decision and would keep raising concerns with the United States and Boeing. Bombardier did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Echoing remarks from its statement last week, Delta noted the decision was preliminary and said it was confident regulators <20>will conclude that no U.S. manufacturer is at risk<73> from Bombardier<65>s plane. Boeing has said the dispute is about <20>maintaining a level playing field and ensuring that aerospace companies abide by trade agreements<74> and is not an attack on Canada or Britain. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the decision would help protect U.S. jobs, in line with President Donald Trump<6D>s <20>America First<73> policy. <20>We will ... do everything in our power to stand up for American companies and their workers,<2C> Ross said in a statement. More than half of the purchased content of each CSeries aircraft comes from U.S. suppliers, Bombardier has said. The plane supports an estimated 22,700 jobs and Bombardier<65>s aerospace division spent $2.14 billion in the United States last year, according to the company and documents seen by Reuters. Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa, Tim Ahmann in Washington and Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-boeing-bombardier-commerce/u-s-hits-bombardier-with-anti-dumping-duty-after-boeing-complaint-idUKKBN1CB2A1'|'2017-10-06T21:15:00.000+03:00'
'529c8e5e82f146e801b7441cbfdc43ab53141666'|'Wells Fargo executives, board must face lawsuit over fake accounts'|'A Wells Fargo branch is seen in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, U.S. February 10, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo REUTERS - A federal judge said current and former Wells Fargo & Co officers and directors, including Chief Executive Officer Tim Sloan, must face nearly all of a lawsuit by shareholders seeking to hold them personally liable for sales abuses and the creations of millions of unauthorized accounts.U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco said shareholders may pursue claims that Wells Fargo officials looked the other way as employees facing <20>unrelenting<6E> pressure to meet sales quotas unlawfully opened accounts, and misled the public about fraudulent practices at the nation<6F>s third-largest bank.<2E>Where, as here, plaintiffs<66> claims arise from a pervasive and undisputed fraud going to the core of the company<6E>s business, it is reasonable to infer senior executives knew about, or at least recklessly turned a blind eye to, the stream of red flags,<2C> Tigar wrote in a decision dated Wednesday.The judge also said that in the <20>unlikely<6C> event Sloan did not know about the suspect practices before 2013, when he was chief financial officer, he was <20>certainly aware of these issues<65> by December 2013 when he told the Los Angeles Times: <20>I<EFBFBD>m not aware of any overbearing sales culture.<2E>Wells Fargo spokesman Peter Gilchrist said in an email that the bank was taking <20>decisive steps<70> to rebuild trust, including from employees and shareholders. <20>We will continue to advocate strongly for our positions before the courts,<2C> he added.Lawyers for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The shareholder derivative lawsuit seeks to force officers and directors - or their insurers - to reimburse Wells Fargo for losses caused by their alleged poor oversight and misleading statements, as well as governance changes.Wells Fargo has been rocked since September 2016 by a series of scandals, including the San Francisco-based bank<6E>s creation of as many as 3.5 million unauthorized accounts.Many lawsuits have been filed, including on behalf of customers, and several top officials including onetime Chief Executive John Stumpf and retail banking chief Carrie Tolstedt have left the bank.Stumpf and Tolstedt are defendants in the derivative lawsuit.Sloan testified on Tuesday before the Senate Banking Committee about Wells Fargo<67>s response to the scandals, and faced attacks from Republican and Democratic senators.Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, called for Sloan to be fired.The case is In re: Wells Fargo & Co Shareholder Derivative Litigation, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 16-05541.Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Marguerita Choy '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/wells-fargo-accounts-decision/wells-fargo-executives-board-must-face-lawsuit-over-fake-accounts-idINKBN1CA22Q'|'2017-10-05T19:18:00.000+03:00'
'703587613680b3ddc58117568edab9a5169f289a'|'MIDEAST STOCKS - Factors to watch - October 5'|'DUBAI, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Here are some factors that may affect Middle East stock markets on Thursday. Reuters has not verified the press reports and does not vouch for their accuracy.INTERNATIONAL/REGIONAL * GLOBAL MARKETS-Asian shares edge up slightly after strong U.S. data* MIDEAST STOCKS-Qatar sinks to 5-year low, Egypt banks hurt by reserve ratio rise* Oil dips on record U.S. exports, but OPEC-led supply cuts lend support* PRECIOUS-Gold steady ahead of U.S. jobs data* Middle East Crude-Stronger OSPs buoy Dec outlook* Chemical weapons watchdog found sarin used in March Syria attack -sources* Sudan expects U.S. to lift sanctions, conditions met - state minister* Putin says oil cuts with OPEC could last to end of 2018* Khamenei says Iran, Turkey must take measures against Kurdish secession - TV* Global air freight demand rose 12 pct in August - IATA* Iraq eases financial restrictions on Kurdistan region, in first sign of de-escalation* Iraqi forces in final assault to take Hawija from Islamic State* Libya<79>s Sharara oilfield reopens after two-day shutdown -NOCEGYPT * Egypt<70>s bank reserve hike may be precursor of benchmark rate cut* Average yields rise on Egypt<70>s six-month, one-year T-bills* Suez Canal 9 months revenues rise to $3.86 bln - statementSAUDI ARABIA * Saudi Arabia arrests 46 for stirring divisions - state media* Saudi Aramco plans expansion in India with new unit -sources* Russia says to sign deals with Saudi worth over $3 bln* Saudi<64>s Petrorabigh shuts vacuum gas oil unit for one month* Saudi central bank paints rosy picture of economy* Saudi Arabia raises November light crude prices to Asia* Saudi Arabia expects to cut barley imports to 8 mln t this season - SAGO* Saudi processing three applications for banking licences* Saudis consolidate control of state funds in drive for growthUNITED ARAB EMIRATES * UAE court postpones judgment at Dana Gas sukuk hearing - source* Dubai PE firm Abraaj invests in Pakistani cinema operator Cinepax* TABLE-UAE<41>s Fujairah oil inventory data for week ended Oct. 2QATAR * Qatar c.bank: government has enough reserves to support Qatari banks* Qatar raises Sept Marine, Land crude prices -documentKUWAIT * Shell cancels sale of Thai gas field stakes to Kuwait<69>s KUFPEC (Compiled by Dubai newsroom) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mideast-factors/mideast-stocks-factors-to-watch-october-5-idINL8N1MG04L'|'2017-10-05T00:39:00.000+03:00'
'2999925dfa05a39372d9a54325e3b20e584d9802'|'Uber board to consider vote to cut Kalanick influence - Bloomberg'|'October 2, 2017 / 6:14 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Uber board to consider vote to cut Kalanick influence: Bloomberg Reuters Staff 1   Uber CEO Travis Kalanick attends the summer World Economic Forum in Tianjin, China on June 26, 2016. REUTERS/Shu Zhang/File Photo (Reuters) - Directors at Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] plan to vote on board reforms and whether to pursue a major stock deal with SoftBank Group Corp on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The moves could potentially reshape the ride-hailing company''s governance, limiting co-founder and former Chief Executive Travis Kalanick''s power as a shareholder and board member and lead to an official kick-starting of the largest private stock sale in history, Bloomberg said. bloom.bg/2hH8BdD On Friday, Kalanick said he had appointed former Xerox Chief Executive Ursula Burns and former Merrill Lynch Chief Executive John Thain as directors in the face of proposals to dramatically restructure the board. Uber could not be immediately reached for comment outside regular business hours. (The story corrects day in paragraph 3 to Friday, from Thursday) Reporting by Philip George; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-uber-board/uber-board-to-consider-vote-to-cut-kalanick-influence-bloomberg-idUKKCN1C70G7'|'2017-10-02T09:06:00.000+03:00'
'1eef9747b2c9384c2eee854a00daf53eb011b31b'|'Model railway sets maker Hornby appoints new CEO'|'October 3, 2017 / 10:29 AM / in 10 minutes Model railway sets maker Hornby appoints new CEO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Hornby Plc ( HRN.L ) appointed Lyndon Charles Davies as its chief executive, the maker of Thomas & Friends model train sets said on Tuesday. Steve Cooke, who stepped down as chief executive last month, will quit the board with immediate effect, Hornby said. Cooke stepped down last month, shortly after the company warned that trading for the financial year to date had been lagging its expectations. Cooke remained as CEO for a transitional period. Davies is the chairman of Oxford Diecast, a supplier of diecast model vehicles. He is the majority shareholder of LCD Enterprises, Oxford Diecast<73>s owner. Hornby said it would explore the opportunity to invest in LCD Enterprises. Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hornby-ceo/model-railway-sets-maker-hornby-appoints-new-ceo-idUKKCN1C810D'|'2017-10-03T13:28:00.000+03:00'
'd285d693d0af28079ef922dacd6e2591cfe95faf'|'SBI Life shares rise on trading debut after $1.3 billion IPO'|'A specially made cake is seen on the stage during the Listing Ceremony of State Bank of India (SBI) Life Insurance Company Ltd. at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in Mumbai, India October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade MUMBAI (Reuters) - SBI Life Insurance Co Ltd made just modest gains in its trading debut on Tuesday after its IPO - India<69>s biggest in seven years - raised $1.3 billion at valuations widely viewed as steep.Although India could notch up a record-setting year for IPOs with almost $6 billion in deals done so far in 2017, concerns about high valuations have started to emerge with the stock market starting to pull back after a string of record highs.Shares in India<69>s biggest private sector life insurer, majority-owned by State Bank of India, were 3.6 percent higher than their IPO price of 700 rupees on the National Stock Exchange in afternoon trade. At one stage they rose as much as 5.7 percent.Some debuts earlier this year have been much stronger, with Avenue Supermarts, for example, doubling in price on its first day of trade. SBI Life<66>s gains were, however, in line with ICICI Lombard General Insurance<63>s performance last week when it ended its maiden day of trade 3 percent higher.State Bank of India (SBI) chairwoman Arundhati Bhattacharya speaks during the Listing Ceremony of SBI Life Insurance Company Ltd. at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in Mumbai, India October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade SBI Life<66>s IPO, which raised funds for its two main shareholders, saw its valuation jump to 700 billion rupees from an estimate 460 billion rupees in December when it sold a small stake to investors including KKR & Co and Temasek.Vrinda Aditya, an analyst at Asit C. Mehta Investment Interrmediates Ltd, said although the debut had not been particularly strong, she believed SBI Life was an attractive stock to hold long-term given rosy prospects for India<69>s insurance industry.<2E>Overall for the insurance industry, it is growing much faster compared to its global peers, so lots to look forward to. But pricing and valuation will remain key in deciding the fate of upcoming IPOs,<2C> she saidInsurers are expected to benefit from rising income levels in the world<6C>s second-most populous nation, where comparatively few people currently take out insurance.IIFL Investment Managers has estimated India<69>s gross direct premium income, a key metric for insurers, was only 0.77 percent of gross domestic product last year, compared to the global average of 2.81 percent.Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy and Swati Bhat; Editing by Edwina Gibbs '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/sbi-life-listing/sbi-life-shares-rise-on-trading-debut-after-1-3-billion-ipo-idINKCN1C80C3'|'2017-10-03T07:41:00.000+03:00'
'4f06c187244b3030b8584351c6fbcfa8ca237657'|'Amazon looking at French distribution deals: report'|'October 3, 2017 / 11:53 AM / Updated 6 hours ago Amazon looking at French distribution deals: report Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of the web service Amazon is pictured in Mexico City, Mexico on June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/Illustration/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - Amazon ( AMZN.O ) has approached various French supermarket operators - including Casino ( CASP.PA ) - about setting up distribution deals or making an acquisition in the country, newspaper Le Monde reported, citing its own sources. Le Monde said Amazon had contacted Casino over Casino<6E>s Monoprix division, but Casino had declined to pursue the matter. <20>Casino does not intend to sell Monoprix,<2C> Le Monde reported, citing sources within Casino. Casino declined to comment while officials at Amazon could not immediately be reached for comment. Le Monde added Amazon had also contacted supermarket companies Intermarche and Systeme U. Officials at Intermarche and Systeme U could not be reached for comment. Earlier this month, traders cited market speculation that Amazon could be interested in bidding for French supermarket operator Carrefour ( CARR.PA ). Carrefour said it did not comment on market rumors. Amazon bought Whole Foods Market this year for $13.7 billion, in a deal that marked a dramatic change in strategy for a company that had offered food delivery through its Fresh service for a decade but had not previously made any major dents in the $700 billion grocery market. Reporting by Pascale Denis; Writing by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Mark Potter '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-france/amazon-looking-at-french-distribution-deals-report-idINKCN1C8195'|'2017-10-03T09:53:00.000+03:00'
'ca5b4f9e8fa1f07224af3629bb32cca14cf71def'|'Citigroup considering onshore cash equities business in China'|'Reuters TV United States October 6, 2017 / 6:57 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago Citigroup considering onshore cash equities business in China Sumeet Chatterjee 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Reflections are seen on the glass facade of a Citibank branch in Beijing, China, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon HONG KONG (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc ( C.N ) is considering setting up an onshore cash equities business in China and expanding research coverage of Chinese stocks, to boost its share of the business in Asia, said the head of its regional equities unit. The U.S.-headquartered bank is also looking to add at least 10 people to the unit, including bankers and technology staff, mainly at its Hong Kong and Singapore hubs, Richard Heyes told Reuters. Citi<74>s sharpened focus on its Asia equities business, which includes stock trading and research, is part of its global effort to bolster trading technology, hire senior bankers and boost financing to hedge funds. <20>It<49>s an interesting opportunity, one we are looking very closely at,<2C> Heyes said, referring to setting up an onshore cash equities business in China, which he said was in its early stages. He declined to give details. <20>At the moment we don<6F>t feel we have a competitive disadvantage doing it from Hong Kong in the way the majority of people do. But over time, do I think we should strongly think about on-ground presence? Yes.<2E> Analysts said China-listed shares<65> inclusion in the U.S. index publisher MSCI<43>s emerging-markets benchmark this year, a milestone for global investing, would lead to a jump in demand for brokerage and research services. That came on top of the introduction of programs allowing two-way trading between stock markets in Hong Kong and Shanghai and Shenzhen, as part of Beijing<6E>s efforts to open up capital markets. China<6E>s brokerage revenue pool touched $41 billion in 2015, showed a report last year by Quinlan & Associates. Assuming institutional broking revenue is 10 to 15 percent of the total, a 1 percent market share would bring $40 million to $60 million in annual revenue to an equities house in the world<6C>s second-largest economy, the consultancy said. To tap into an expected demand surge, Citi, which provides research on 175 China-listed firms, plans to increase coverage to 200 by year-end and 250 in the longer term, Heyes said. <20>We have seen very clearly, as one of the biggest players in (the Hong Kong stock) connect, a very significant ramp up in the opening of accounts. It<49>s very clear that many people are getting prepared for future activity in the China market.<2E> Citi is also looking to bolster financing support for hedge funds, to help win more trading business and boost its Asia equities market share. <20>We have had very meaningful success with some very important, large global hedge funds in the U.S. We are now expecting or have commitments from many of them to on-board us in Asia either by end of this year or early next year.<2E> Reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee; Editing by Christopher Cushing'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-citigroup-china/citigroup-considering-onshore-cash-equities-business-in-china-idUKKBN1CB0LZ'|'2017-10-06T09:53:00.000+03:00'
'5183217febf561ad928f69077dab5a31a5a92a45'|'BoE''s McCafferty welcomes market shift to "late 2017" rate rise'|'October 5, 2017 / 4:21 PM / a few seconds ago BoE''s McCafferty welcomes market shift to ''late 2017'' rate rise Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Ian McCafferty, Monetary Policy Committee member of the Bank of England speaks during a Reuters interview at the Bank of England in London February 24, 2014. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett LONDON (Reuters) - The change of view by investors who now expect a Bank of England interest rate rise later this year, rather than in mid-2019, has reduced the risk of <20>an unpleasant surprise<73>, BoE policymaker Ian McCafferty said on Thursday. McCafferty, who has voted for a rate rise since June, said financial markets had wrongly regarded the BoE<6F>s hands as being tied by Brexit uncertainty until the BoE said in September that most policymakers expected rates to rise in the coming months. <20>This has had the effect of bringing forward expectations of the first rise in Bank Rate from mid-2019 to late 2017, reducing the risks of an unwelcome surprise,<2C> he said in a speech to a business audience in London. McCafferty said interest rates would need to rise <20>several times<65> before the start of the sale by the BoE of its 435 billion pounds ($571 billion) of gilt purchases became an issue, and that the effect of such sales might be limited. <20>The transmission channels and the multipliers on the way out are unlikely to be equal and opposite to those on the way in, given that financial markets are less dysfunctional and the signalling channel present at the onset of QE,<2C> he added. Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by William Schomberg'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/britain-boe-mccafferty/boes-mccafferty-welcomes-market-shift-to-late-2017-rate-rise-idUKKBN1CA22V'|'2017-10-05T19:05:00.000+03:00'
'385acafd093c4a424401d4fac7583a093a61f835'|'UK must act to stop energy companies overcharging loyal customers - minister'|'October 5, 2017 / 6:56 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago UK must act to stop energy companies overcharging loyal customers - minister Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) - The British government has a duty to act to stop energy companies taking advantage of their loyal customers by overcharging them, business minister Greg Clark said on Thursday. He was speaking after the government announced an energy price cap policy that was strongly criticised by energy firms whose share prices fell on the news. <20>A lot of people see themselves as loyal customers and because the companies know that they<65>re loyal ... they are overcharging them,<2C> Clark told Sky News. <20>Faced with that evidence, I think you<6F>ve got a duty to act. (Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; editing by Kate Holton)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-politics-energy-clark/uk-must-act-to-stop-energy-companies-overcharging-loyal-customers-minister-idUSL9N1GF07D'|'2017-10-05T09:55:00.000+03:00'
'52460a6c62ef3b7426fdadc267e89948d27d7b5f'|'Deals of the day-Mergers and acquisitions'|'(Adds Atlantia, GM; Updates Omantel, Select Harvests, City Developments)Oct 9 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 1330 GMT on Monday:** Honeywell International Inc plans to spin off non-core assets and create at least two new publicly listed companies, as the U.S. industrial conglomerate seeks to streamline its business, according to people familiar with the matter.** Singapore<72>s City Developments has made an offer to buy the remaining shares of Millennium & Copthorne Hotels it does not own, in a deal that values the hotels group at about 1.8 billion pounds ($2.4 billion).** Advisers to China<6E>s Sinopec have offered its oil assets in Argentina to about a dozen potential suitors, three sources familiar with the matter said, as losses and labour headaches prompt Asia<69>s largest refiner to pull out.** The subprime lender OneMain Holdings Inc has put itself up for sale and is running an auction to solicit takeover bids, according to a person familiar with the matter.** France<63>s Accor SA has bid A$1.18 billion ($920 million) for Mantra Group Ltd - a deal that would combine the two biggest hotel owners in Australia and seek to capitalise on surging tourism in the country.** Bpost, Belgium<75>s national postal deliverer, said it has agreed to buy U.S.-based e-commerce service provider Radial for $820 million including debt.** Australia<69>s AMP Capital has bought U.S. logistics group ITS ConGlobal from Carlyle Infrastructure Partners, marking the Australian fund manager<65>s largest-ever North American deal.** Australian almond producer Select Harvests Ltd said it has rejected a A$430.6-million ($334 million) takeover proposal from United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company PJSC.** Australian engineering firm WorleyParsons Ltd said it would buy the former upstream oil and gas assets of Britain<69>s Amec Foster Wheeler Plc for 228 million pounds ($298 million), marking its entry into the UK North Sea market.** Credit Agricole<6C>s chief, Philippe Brassac, has expressed interest in Commerzbank if the German lender were to be up for sale, according to an interview with the Handelsblatt newspaper.** Oman Telecommunications (Omantel) plans to buy a 12 percent stake in Kuwaiti telecoms company Zain in a deal that would more than double its stake as part of its expansion strategy.** State-run oil giant Saudi Aramco ( IPO-ARMO.SE ) is in talks with several Indian refiners and hopes to land a joint venture deal by next year, the company<6E>s chief executive told Reuters on Sunday.** Spain<69>s market watchdog approved Italian infrastructure group Atlantia<69>s proposed takeover of Spanish rival Abertis, clearing one of the hurdles to the creation of the world<6C>s biggest toll-roads operator.** German investors<72> association DSW recommended that shareholders in industrial gases group Linde not tender their shares in an exchange offer for its planned $80 billion merger with U.S. peer Praxair.** General Motors Co said it would buy Strobe Inc, which uses LIDAR technology to help self-driving cars identify objects at a distance, to boost its push into the market for self-driving vehicles. (Compiled by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/deals-day/deals-of-the-day-mergers-and-acquisitions-idINL4N1MK22E'|'2017-10-09T08:17:00.000+03:00'
'a2dce0db38c0c483cb79d221c2f22ba451ae70d5'|'Ford to cut costs $14 billion, invest in trucks, electric cars - CEO'|'October 3, 2017 / 8:55 PM / in 22 minutes Ford to cut costs $14 billion, invest in trucks, electric cars - CEO Joseph White , Paul Lienert 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The Ford logo is pictured at the Ford Motor Co plant in Genk,Belgium December 17, 2014. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir/File Photo DETROIT (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co plans to slash $14 billion (10.57 billion pounds) in costs over the next five years, Chief Executive Officer Jim Hackett told investors on Tuesday, adding that the No. 2 U.S. automaker would shift capital investment away from sedans and internal combustion engines to develop more trucks and electric and hybrid cars. Hackett told investors that Ford will be open to more partnerships to spread the costs and risks of simultaneously developing new technology while still churning out profits from its legacy business of selling trucks and sport utility vehicles in North America. He cited a partnership with ride services company Lyft to develop technology to deploy self-driving cars. Hackett, former CEO of office furniture maker Steelcase Inc, ( SCS.N ) took the top post at Ford in May, after his predecessor Mark Fields was pushed out. At the time, Hackett promised investors a statement within 100 days as to how he would improve the <20>fitness<73> of Ford to compete as the auto industry becomes more digital, more electric and less wedded to selling one vehicle at a time to individuals. Since taking over, Hackett has signed off on a series of moves, including a plan to shift production of Ford Focus compact cars from Michigan to China. He also hired a company outsider, Jason Luo, to lead Ford<72>s China business. Ford is revamping operations in China, and looking to expand partnerships to get a stronger position in electric vehicles for the world<6C>s largest car market. Some of Hackett<74>s plan indicated that Ford is playing catch up. For instance, Hackett said that by 2019, Ford plans to equip all U.S. models with built-in modems, and install mobile internet connections in 90 percent of global vehicles by 2020. Rival General Motors Co( GM.N ) has been installing built-in mobile broadband connections in its U.S. vehicles since 2015. Of the $14 billion in promised cost reductions over five years, $10 billion will come from material costs and $4 billion from reduced engineering costs, Hackett said. <20>We have too much cost across our business,<2C> Hackett said. By 2022, Ford plans to cut spending on future internal combustion engines by a third, or about $500 million, putting that money instead into expanded electric and hybrid vehicle development, on top of $4.5 billion previously announced. Ford had already promised 13 new electric or hybrid vehicles within the next five years. GM on Monday said it planned to launch 20 new all-electric vehicles by 2023. Editing by David Gregorio'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ford-motor-ceo/ford-to-cut-costs-14-billion-invest-in-trucks-electric-cars-ceo-idUKKCN1C82NN'|'2017-10-03T23:55:00.000+03:00'
'ae639467ff3a9f7eed69a60b5bfadad9e7bfe609'|'South Africa''s Exxaro sets price for Tronox share sale'|'October 5, 2017 / 7:09 AM / in 3 hours South Africa''s Exxaro sets price for Tronox share sale Reuters Staff 2 Min Read JOHANNESBURG, Oct 5 (Reuters) - South African miner Exxaro Resources will now sell at least 19.5 million shares in U.S. titanium products company Tronox at a 7.4 percent discount to Wednesday<61>s closing price as the firm looks to focus on its core mining activities, it said on Thursday. On Tuesday the firm had said it would sell 16 million shares in Tronox in a public offering and 2.4 million additional shares to underwriters, amounting to a 31.3 percent stake. Exxaro said in statement it would now sell 19.5 million shares at $22 each, which compared with the $23.75 at which the stock last traded on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday. Underwriters, J.P. Morgan, Barclays and Morgan Stanley, will have a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 2.9 million shares, it said. The expected net proceeds to Exxaro will be approximately$412 million or about $474 million if the underwriters exercise in full their option to purchase additional shares, the company said. The firm, which now mainly produces coal, is selling its Tronox stake in order to focus on its core activities, provide funding for its future capital commitments, repay debt and return capital to its shareholders. Exxaro currently owns approximately 51 million Tronox shares, amounting to a 42.7 percent voting stake in the company. If the offering is completed Exxaro said its voting stake in Tronox would be reduced to approximately 29.4 percent, assuming no exercise of the underwriters<72> option to purchase additional shares. (Reporting by Nqobile Dludla; Editing by Greg Mahlich) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/exxaro-resources-divestiture-tronox-ltd/south-africas-exxaro-sets-price-for-tronox-share-sale-idUSL8N1MG0XI'|'2017-10-05T10:07:00.000+03:00'
'630ce0d631fd9e3b8b2f763f7f61ee341981e8d7'|'Tesco finance team ''falling apart'' in 2014, court told'|'October 5, 2017 / 6:04 PM / in 23 minutes Tesco finance team ''falling apart'' in 2014, court told Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A company logo is pictured outside a Tesco supermarket in Altrincham northern England, April 16, 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - A senior accountant at Tesco ( TSCO.L ) said his team was falling apart in 2014 when Britain<69>s biggest retailer ended a tough first half trading period but bosses refused to reduce targets for the second half, a London court heard on Thursday. Amit Soni was giving evidence for a second day at the trial of three former senior Tesco executives who are accused of fraud and false accounting in 2014. Christopher Bush, 51, who was managing director of Tesco UK, Carl Rogberg, 50, who was UK finance director, and John Scouler,49, who was UK food commercial director, all deny any wrongdoing and have pleaded not guilty. The case follows Tesco<63>s announcement in September 2014 thatits profit forecast had been overstated by 250 million pounds ($328.03 million) mainly due to booking commercial deals with suppliers too early. Tesco<63>s shares tumbled following the disclosure and plunged the company into the worst crisis in its near 100-year history. Soni, who is described as a whistleblower by the prosecution, has told Southwark Crown Court that the accounting teams had been instructed to <20>pull forward<72> future income from suppliers by booking it in advance to mask a growing accounting gap. Lead prosecutor Sasha Wass asked Soni during the court hearing how he felt after Tesco<63>s UK commercial directors failed to get their targets cut by Bush at an Aug. 21 meeting. <20>I got more worried than I was before the meeting,<2C> he told the court. <20>All of us had seen how difficult half one had been.<2E> Soni said his team was feeling the pressure. <20>I could clearly see part of my team was beginning to give up, if not the entire team,<2C> he told the court. <20>It was getting to the point that they could see the future was not looking any better ... I could see them falling apart.<2E> Soni told the court two of his team resigned and he was worried more would follow. The court had heard from Wass on Tuesday that two members of Tesco<63>s financial team resigned in 2014 because they were concerned their professional integrity was being compromised by what they were being asked to do by their bosses. Soni told the court that after the Aug. 21 meeting he commissioned a detailed report, <20>the legacy paper<65>, which made it clear around 250 million pounds had incorrectly been included in figures Tesco had presented to the stock market. <20>It was my idea to put the paper together,<2C> he told the court. He also said neither Bush or Scouler were involved in its commissioning. The court has heard that the paper eventually came to the attention of Tesco<63>s new chief executive Dave Lewis, which prompted a corrective statement to the stock exchange. Wass asked Soni why he did not tell the company<6E>s auditors PwC about his concerns.<2E>I did think long and hard about it but in the end decided it was for Carl (Rogberg) to bring up with PwC,<2C> he told the court. The trial is expected to last until Christmas. Reporting by James Davey. Editing by Jane Merriman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-tesco-fraud/tesco-finance-team-falling-apart-in-2014-court-told-idUKKBN1CA2BW'|'2017-10-05T21:05:00.000+03:00'
'1c2d3f8f2976ff518d9950449806c86badda2f6f'|'FRC closes probe into PwC over Barclays audits'|'October 5, 2017 / 6:37 AM / in 27 minutes FRC closes probe into PwC over Barclays audits Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The logo of accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is seen on a board at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2017 (SPIEF 2017) in St. Petersburg, Russia, June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin LONDON (Reuters) - The Financial Reporting Council has closed its investigation into audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) LLP over its audits of Barclays ( BARC.L ) in the years during and after the global financial crisis, the accounting watchdog said on Thursday. <20>The Executive Counsel to the FRC has concluded that there is not a realistic prospect that a tribunal would make an adverse finding against PwC LLP in respect of the matters within the scope of the investigation,<2C> it said in a statement. The FRC had been investigating PwC<77>s role in reporting on Barclays<79> compliance with the regulator the Financial Services Authority<74>s client asset rules for the years ended Dec 31 2007 to Dec 31 2011. Reporting by Carolyn Cohn; Editing by Rachel Armstrong'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-barclays-pwc-investigation/frc-closes-probe-into-pwc-over-barclays-audits-idUKKBN1CA0FZ'|'2017-10-05T09:37:00.000+03:00'
'1da93e22784cc40b47ead795e3ea92340afe88ea'|'Dara Khosrowshahi is off to a strong start but there are miles to go'|'HERE<52>S the job spec. Unite a deeply divided board. Keep a strong-willed founder under control. Immediately recruit a new chief financial officer. Negotiate with angry local regulators intent on closing down the business in their city. Convince courts that the company does not have to provide its contract workers with the benefits due to full-time employees. Change a cut-throat culture without curbing employees<65> drive. On top of all this, deal not only with an intellectual-property (IP) lawsuit that could cost the firm nearly $2bn, but also cope with a criminal investigation by the FBI that could see some managers end up in prison.No one sane, you would think, would even apply for such misery. But after some hesitation Dara Khosrowshahi (pronounced cause-ro-SHAH-hee), until recently the chief executive of Expedia, an online travel agency, returned the headhunter<65>s call. Now he is boss of Uber, which, at $68bn, is the world<6C>s most highly valued privately-held company. Can he turn the firm, which in many ways has been a caricature of a disruptive Silicon Valley startup, into a more benign force<63>and take it public by late 2019?  Three weeks into the job, Mr Khosrowshahi has already made meaningful progress. On October 3rd he paid a hastily-arranged visit to Transport for London (TfL), the regulator that recently ruled that Uber was not <20>fit and proper<65> to hold an operating licence in the British capital. Both sides described the talks as <20>constructive<76> and announced further discussions. Later that day, Uber<65>s new boss attended<65>via video link<6E>a crucial board meeting that ended in a promising truce. It not only limits the power of Travis Kalanick, the firm<72>s co-founder and former chief executive, but creates the conditions for a $10bn investment by a consortium led by SoftBank, a Japanese tech firm run by Masayoshi Son.One of Mr Son<6F>s main conditions was that power be shifted to more recent investors. Early Uber backers, including Mr Kalanick, will have to give up their <20>super-voting<6E> rights. Mr Khosrowshahi<68>s concession was that Mr Kalanick now has at least a theoretical chance to become chief executive again (rules proposed earlier would have made that all but impossible). Benchmark, a venture-capital firm and an early investor in Uber, agreed to drop a lawsuit against Mr Kalanick.All could still unravel. The governance compromise is contingent on the SoftBank investment, which has two stages, going through. It may seem a done deal that SoftBank and its partners would invest a first round of $1bn-1.25bn at Uber<65>s present valuation of $68bn. That way the new capital injection is not considered a <20>down-round<6E>, ie, one that produces a lower valuation. But much about the second round is still unknown. The stake could be anywhere between 14% and 17% of Uber, for example, at a valuation of as low as $50bn.Before Mr Khosrowshahi made it to London he had placed a full-page ad in the Evening Standard , a local newspaper, apologising <20>for the mistakes we<77>ve made<64> and acknowledging that <20>we must change<67>. This was meant to signal to regulators all over the world that Uber<65>s swashbuckling culture is a thing of the past. But he must show that this is not just a change in style, but substance.He will not lack for opportunities to do so. A big question will be to what extent Uber will still insist on being a technology, rather than a transport, firm<72>a question which is on the agenda of the European Court of Justice. London, where Uber has appealed the regulator<6F>s decision, is likely to be the test case. TfL<66>s complaints about the firm, for instance that it did not properly vet its drivers, suggest that the regulator wants to treat it exactly like any other taxi operator. Yet Uber<65>s willingness to make concessions may be limited. On September 26th it said it would pull out of the province of Quebec rather than accept new regulations.Another unknown is the extent to which Uber will change how it deals with its drivers. It is sti
'24f4f2f78ff1c579311bdfd3e12fb999f7b54391'|'Bombardier eyes Asian markets amid U.S. trade spat with Boeing'|'October 5, 2017 / 1:05 PM / in 9 minutes Bombardier eyes Asian markets amid U.S. trade spat with Boeing Aditi Shah 4 Min Read NEW DELHI, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Bombardier Inc is betting on fast-growing markets like India to boost sales of its Q400 and CSeries narrow-body jets, a senior executive said on Thursday, at a time when the Canadian planemaker faces a trade row over sales to the United States. <20>The company is very focused on expanding into Asia, as we see Asia, and India for sure, as the growth engines of the sector,<2C> said Francois Cognard, head of Asia Pacific sales at Bombardier, adding this would be its focus region irrespective of how a heated trade spat with larger rival Boeing Co pans out. Cognard said he saw India<69>s regional connectivity scheme as <20>well designed<65> and likely to boost demand for its aircraft in the country. India is one of the world<6C>s fastest growing aviation markets and the government<6E>s launch of the regional connectivity scheme last year to boost air connectivity to smaller towns and cities, is seen as a boon for small planemakers such as Bombardier and its European rival ATR. Bombardier last week finalised a deal to sell up to 50 Q400 planes to India<69>s SpiceJet valued at $1.7 billion by list prices, its largest single order to date for the turboprop plane which will boost its presence in the country. Rival ATR, the market leader in turboprops, has also secured a provisional order for 50 ATR 72-600 aircraft, worth over $1.3 billion at list price, from Indigo, India<69>s biggest airline by market share. In turboprops, Bombardier still trails ATR, which controls about 75 percent of the market and is co-owned by Airbus SE and Leonardo SpA. Brazilian rival Embraer SA has also said it would consider returning to the prop market. <20>There are still a lot of markets where you can<61>t beat a turbo in terms of economics,<2C> said Cognard, adding Bombardier<65>s move to increase the number of seats on the Q400 gave the plane a cost edge in the category. BOEING SPAT The focus on Asia comes at a time when Bombardier is locked in an acrimonious trade spat with U.S. rival Boeing. The U.S. Commerce Department last week slapped preliminary anti-subsidy duties of 220 percent on Bombardier<65>s new jets, after a complaint from Boeing, which could effectively triple the price of the aircraft and shut it out of the U.S. market if upheld. <20>We see this as an abuse of trade laws by Boeing to attempt to block us from penetrating the U.S. market,<2C> Cognard said. The U.S. jetmaker alleges the CSeries would not exist without hundreds of millions of dollars in launch aid from the governments of Canada and Britain, or a $2.5 billion equity infusion from the province of Quebec and its largest pension fund in 2015. The Commerce Department<6E>s penalty against Bombardier will only take effect if the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) rules in Boeing<6E>s favour. <20>We expect the final ruling on this early next year,<2C> said Cognard, adding that its customers were not concerned about the spat and more focused on the economics of the jet, which boasts impressive fuel efficiency. (Reporting by Aditi Shah; Writing by Euan Rocha, editing by David Evans)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/bombardier-india/bombardier-eyes-asian-markets-amid-u-s-trade-spat-with-boeing-idUSL4N1MF2E6'|'2017-10-05T16:03:00.000+03:00'
'bf53244804053ed7f60b497ac2902b96c13b6f49'|'Spain to make it easier for firms to move base from Catalonia as business alarm deepens'|'October 5, 2017 / 12:35 PM / Updated 7 minutes ago Spain to make it easier for firms to move base from Catalonia as business alarm deepens Carlos Ruano , Andr<64>s Gonz<6E>lez 6 Min Read A man carrying a suitcase goes into a CaixaBank branch in Barcelona, Spain, October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Susana Vera MADRID (Reuters) - Spain<69>s government will issue a decree on Friday making it easier for firms to transfer their legal base out of Catalonia, two sources said, in a move that could deal a serious blow to the region<6F>s finances as it considers declaring independence. The decree is tailor-made for Spanish lender Caixabank ( CABK.MC ), sources familiar with the matter said, as it would make it possible for the bank to transfer its legal and tax base to another location without having to hold a shareholders<72> meeting as stated in its statutes. <20>The government is working on changing the law so that it<69>s no longer need to have a shareholders<72> meeting, which would delay a change of the legal base in a case of emergency,<2C> one of the sources said. The government and Caixabank declined to comment. The board of Caixabank will meet on Friday to study a possible transfer of its legal base away from Catalonia due to the political uncertainty in the region, a source familiar with the situation said. Caixabank is Catalonia<69>s biggest company by market value and accounts for around 50 percent of the region<6F>s banking sector. Another Catalonia-based bank, Sabadell ( SABE.MC ), Spain<69>s fifth-biggest lender, decided on Thursday to move its base from Catalonia to Alicante, on Spain<69>s eastern coast. Catalonia<69>s parliament was planning to declare independence on Monday, after a banned referendum marred by violence last weekend. That plan was cast into doubt on Thursday when Spain<69>s Constitutional Court ordered that Monday<61>s session of the Catalan parliament be suspended. The political crisis was <20>generating uncertainty that is paralysing all investment projects in Catalonia,<2C> Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos told Reuters on Thursday. <20>I<EFBFBD>m convinced that, right now, not one international or national investor will take part in a new investment project until this is cleared up,<2C> he said. Shares in Sabadell and Caixabank have been pummelled this week. Reports they might move caused the stocks to surge on Thursday - Sabadell rose 6 percent and Caixabank 5 percent. NO IMPACT ON ECONOMY Government plans to sell a stake in state-run lender Bankia ( BKIA.MC ) have also been put off because of the uncertainty, de Guindos said. Madrid will look at the placement again once the Catalan situation had been resolved, he said. However, Catalonia<69>s planned unilateral declaration of independence has not had any impact on Spain<69>s overall economic output, de Guindos said, reiterating that he expected growth of more than 3 percent this year. Financial markets have been shaken this week by fears that secession would undermine the euro zone<6E>s fourth-biggest economy, dealing a heavy blow to Spain<69>s finances and sending the Catalan economy into a tailspin. Catalonia is a centre of industry and tourism that accounts for a fifth of Spain<69>s economy, a production base for major multinationals from Volkswagen to Nestle, and home to Europe<70>s fastest-growing sea port. News earlier this week that two small listed Catalan companies, Eurona Wireless Telecom ( EUWT.MC ) and Oryzon Genomics ( ORY.MC ), had decided to shift their head offices improved their share price. Both declined to say whether they were responding to Sunday<61>s vote. Spain<69>s bond and stock markets both staged a recovery on Thursday after the Constitutional Court<72>s decision and a Bloomberg report that Catalan separatists were looking at putting off a declaration of independence to create room for a negotiated settlement with Spain. The nation<6F>s borrowing costs hit a seven-month high on Thursday, though investors showed solid interest in a government bond auction. <20>WORRIED AND SCARED<45> Many
'7e66683334723a27544c62cbf29a0d0c34967c84'|'Centrica boss urges UK to rethink price cap plan'|'October 5, 2017 / 6:56 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago Centrica boss urges UK to rethink price cap plan Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Centrica, Britain<69>s biggest energy provider, urged the government on Thursday to be more imaginative in its approach to restructuring the market, saying plans to cap prices lead to less competition and less choice. Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday she would impose a price cap on standard variable tariffs (SVT) to help millions of households and tackle what she described as <20>rip-off prices<65>. But Centrica boss Iain Conn said price caps rarely work and the government should instead scrap SVTs, the basic rates that energy suppliers charge if a customer does not opt for a specific plan. <20>The main problem with the market is the standard variable tariff, and rather than cap them ... we believe the standard variable tariff should come to an end, for good,<2C> he told BBC Radio 4. (Reporting by Kate Holton, editing by Estelle Shirbon)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-politics-energy/centrica-boss-urges-uk-to-rethink-price-cap-plan-idUSL9N1JJ01M'|'2017-10-05T09:55:00.000+03:00'
'77960be18c668af8accdaca95f11d34271069413'|'Wall Street moves to Frankfurt as Brexit doubts grow'|'October 5, 2017 / 11:46 AM / Updated 18 minutes ago Wall Street moves to Frankfurt as Brexit doubts grow Anjuli Davies , Arno Schuetze , John O''Donnell 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The skyline, with its characteristic banking towers, is reflected in river Main in Frankfurt, Germany, October 1, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach LONDON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Some of the globe<62>s biggest banks have decided to rent more office space in Frankfurt, bolstering Germany<6E>s financial hub after months of divorce talks between Britain and the EU have left London<6F>s future more uncertain than ever. Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ) has agreed to lease 10,000 square metres of office space at the new Marienturm building in Frankfurt, making it one of the city<74>s biggest wins since Brexit. It will take the eight top floors of a new 37-storey tower now being built, giving it space for up to 1,000 staff, according to a person familiar with the matter. That would be five times the current staff of 200 and see the Wall Street giant bolstering activities including trading, investment banking and asset management. A spokesman said it gave <20>space to execute on our Brexit contingency plan<61>. Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ) has also signed a lease for offices in a tower, the Omniturm, that is also now being built. It has 200 staff in Frankfurt and expects to double that number, said one person familiar with the plans. The bank declined to comment. JP Morgan ( JPM.N ) is also considering renting two additional floors on top of the five it now occupies at a high-rise tower in the centre of town, said a person familiar with the plans. The bank, which currently has 450 staff in Frankfurt, declined to comment. Citi ( C.N ) has said it will build its Frankfurt operations by adding 150 staff. It plans to expand inside its current building dubbed Welle, near Frankfurt<72>s opera house. FILE PHOTO - A sign is displayed in the reception of the Sydney offices of Goldman Sachs in Australia, May 18, 2016. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo The expansion is the result of growing nervousness about the future of London<6F>s financial centre amid slow and acrimonious negotiations between Britain<69>s Brexit minister David Davis and his opposite number at the European Commission, Michel Barnier. Underscoring the confusion, British Prime Minister Theresa May made a calamitous keynote speech on Wednesday, interrupted by coughing fits, a prankster and letters of a slogan falling off her stage backdrop. Although some politicians in Britain are sceptical banks will follow through by moving large numbers of jobs, bankers in the City of London financial hub see an urgent need to act. The stakes are high. Financial services are Britain<69>s biggest tax and export generator. Once Britain leaves the EU - planned for March 2019 - banks in London could find it harder to do business within the bloc, prompting many to seek a foothold such as Frankfurt. The British government has said it would like a transition deal to smooth the way for business, but a top Bank of England official said on Wednesday that would probably need to be agreed by Christmas to prevent jobs from seeping abroad. Top German politicians have courted banks ever since the Brexit vote, persuading many to move there because Europe<70>s biggest economy proved unshakeable during the financial crash. A recent study commissioned by Frankfurt<72>s chief promoter predicted there would be 10,000 new bankers in the city within four years and that their arrival could create tens of thousands of additional jobs, from estate agents to building workers. The migration is already buoying interest in a city, known for <20>Frankfurter<65> sausages and cider. The prices of new luxury flats in the city jumped by 25 percent within a year, according to data released in August. Writing by John O''Donnell; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-frankfurt/wall-street-moves-to-frankfurt-as-br
'4614f161fb86c03bda9c7c1a966b7ba1a6a6b091'|'Asian shares edge up slightly after strong U.S. data'|'October 5, 2017 / 1:04 AM / in 5 minutes Stocks at fresh peaks, dollar gains amid economic optimism Herbert Lash 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A U.S. Dollar note is seen in this June 22, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - World stock markets hit fresh highs on Thursday amid investor optimism over U.S. tax reforms and global economic growth, while the dollar gained as data pointed to solid U.S. growth. The U.S. trade deficit fell in August as exports of goods and services rose to the highest level in more than 2-1/2 years. Separately, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week. Gold dipped on news of the data as it bolstered the notion U.S. interest rates would be hiked in December. Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Patrick Harker said he was still penciling in one more rate hike this year and three in 2018. The dollar index, tracking the greenback against a basket of key currencies, held under seven-week highs as investors awaited Friday<61>s U.S. jobless report for September to assess the impact of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. The storms proved a drag on robust business spending that was seen in the trade data. MSCI<43>s all-country world stock index .MIWD PUS edged higher to set a new intraday peak, while the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all set fresh highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 41.22 points, or 0.18 percent, to 22,702.86. The S&P 500 .SPX gained 5.99 points, or 0.24 percent, to 2,543.73 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 15.08 points, or 0.23 percent, to 6,549.71. European bourses also gained, with the pan-regional FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 rising 0.16 percent to 1,535.03. FILE PHOTO: Pedestrians leave and enter the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall A Reuters poll showed global stocks will continue to climb over the coming year on rising optimism about growth worldwide. However, a slim majority of equity strategists also expect the current eight-year bull run to end in 2018. U.S. investors have begun to warm to the notion that reform of U.S. fiscal policy will occur by the first quarter, said Phil Orlando, chief equity strategist at Federated Investors in New York. Most investors felt that nothing would come of President Donald Trump<6D>s tax reform effort until last week, he said. <20>Only 30 percent of us were comfortable that something might happen. That could take up 2019 estimates for GDP growth and earnings per share, which could drive the S&P 500 above our 3,000 target,<2C> Orlando said. Oil prices rose as signs Saudi Arabia and Russia would limit production through next year outweighed record U.S. exports and the return of production at a major Libyan oilfield. Brent LCOcv1 rose $1.19 to $56.99 per barrel, while U.S. crude CLcv1 rose 96 cents to $50.94 per barrel. The dollar index .DXY rose 0.44 percent, with the euro EUR= down 0.41 percent to $1.1711. The Japanese yen strengthened 0.07 percent versus the greenback at 112.70. Reporting by Herbert Lash; Editing by Bernadette Baum'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asian-shares-edge-up-slightly-after-strong-u-s-data-idUKKBN1CA02Y'|'2017-10-05T04:03:00.000+03:00'
'1ea799206cb9f7d3c8bb1cd63284964bc650f3ed'|'Bain Capital aims to list Toshiba chip unit in three years'|'October 5, 2017 / 6:24 AM / Updated 20 minutes ago Bain Capital aims to list Toshiba chip unit in three years Makiko Yamazaki , Junko Fujita 3 Min Read Bain Capital LP Managing Director Yuji Sugimoto speaks during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital LP on Thursday said it aims to list Toshiba Corp<72>s chip unit on the Tokyo Stock Exchange within three years, to cash in its investment after leading an $18 billion acquisition of the business. Bain, whose consortium signed the purchase deal last week, also said it hopes to settle legal disputes over the transaction at an early stage with Western Digital Corp, Toshiba<62>s joint venture partner. Toshiba aims to complete the sale by the end of its fiscal year in March. It plans to use the proceeds to plug a hole in its balance sheet caused by the bankruptcy of its U.S. nuclear power subsidiary, and save itself from potential delisting. With the clock ticking, Bain filed for antitrust approval in China the day after signing, a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. Several other sources told Reuters that the strategic nature of the chip industry for China and political complications - including currently tense relations with South Korea, and the presence of South Korea<65>s SK Hynix Inc in the consortium - could see a lengthy process drawn out even further. In the first news conference since the signing, Yuji Sugimoto, head of Bain Capital in Japan, told reporters on Thursday that Bain hopes to maintain stability at the chip unit through contracts with Apple Inc, a major client and member of the buyout consortium. Bain Capital LP Managing Director Yuji Sugimoto speaks during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon <20>We have already made (antitrust) filings for regulatory approvals globally. We are making utmost efforts to close the deal by the end of March,<2C> Sugimoto told reporters. The sale, however, faces legal challenges from Western Digital, which offered a rival bid and is seeking an injunction to block any deal that does not have its consent. Western Digital paid some $16 billion last year to acquire SanDisk, Toshiba<62>s chip joint venture partner since 2000. It sees chips as a pillar of growth and so is keen to keep the business out of the hands of rival chipmakers. <20>Western Digital remains an important JV partner,<2C> Sugimoto said. Bain <20>will help solve the legal disputes (between Toshiba and Western Digital) and help them grow together.<2E> But he said Bain aims to close the deal even if the disputes are not resolved beforehand. Toshiba has said the joint venture is a tiny portion of the chip unit and that it can sell the business without the joint venture. Western Digital disagrees. For Bain, the deal is part of an aggressive expansion strategy in Japan. Only days after the Toshiba deal, Bain announced a $1.4 billion bid for Japan<61>s third-largest advertising agency, Asatsu-DK Inc, in one of the largest buy-outs in the country this year. Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki and Junko Fujita; Writing by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Christopher Cushing'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting/bain-capital-aims-to-list-toshiba-chip-unit-in-tokyo-within-a-few-years-idUKKBN1CA0EK'|'2017-10-05T10:07:00.000+03:00'
'ff619a28f7f7a6511ee9948eae7e8205a074a0c6'|'Bank-backed R3 launches new version of its blockchain'|'October 3, 2017 / 8:03 AM / in 2 hours Bank-backed R3 launches new version of its blockchain Anna Irrera 3 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - R3 CEV, a New York-based company that runs a consortium of banks, has released a new version of its blockchain platform that it hopes will make it easier for financial firms to use the nascent technology. The new version of the company<6E>s platform called Corda includes a feature that will make it easier for computer developers building applications with the technology to incorporate future upgrades and updates, R3 said on Tuesday. Blockchain, which first emerged as the system underpinning cryptocurrency bitcoin, is a shared record of transactions updated by computers rather than a centralized authority. Banks and other financial institutions have been investing in the technology for the past few years in the hope that it can be used to automate some of their back office processes such as securities settlement and regulatory reporting. To accelerate development many have joined consortia or collaborative efforts. Launched in 2015, R3 is the largest financial consortium focused on blockchain globally. Its members include more than 100 banks, regulators, trade associations and professional services firms. In May it raised $107 million in May from companies including Bank of America Corp, SBI Holdings Inc, HSBC Holdings Plc, Intel Corp and Temasek Holdings. R3 has been helping members develop prototypes and run experiments to test blockchain. Most recently it announced that it had partnered with the UK<55>s Financial Conduct Authority, the Royal Bank of Scotland and another global bank to develop an application using Corda to improve the regulatory reporting of mortgage transactions. The new version of Corda, which is open-source, is expected to make it easier for developers to handle upgrades helping accelerate its adoption, said Richard Gendal Brown, chief technology officer of R3. <20>There are a number of people who are building on this or have done live transactions,<2C> Gendal Brown said in an interview. <20>What they get is certainty as they finalize their applications and move them into large scale production that they won<6F>t have disruptions<6E> While Wall Street<65>s enthusiasm around blockchain remains high, some are warning that the technology is still young and its potential may be hyped. As it is in its infancy, blockchain has yet to bee used to run any large scale process in finance. Reporting by Anna Irrera; Editing by Cynthia Osterman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-r3-blockchain/bank-backed-r3-launches-new-version-of-its-blockchain-idUSKCN1C80MS'|'2017-10-03T11:00:00.000+03:00'
'563d477e758ffb7661c52c536d03b25b83d935f8'|'Australian ''daigou'' retailer''s shares more than double in trading debut'|'(Reuters) - Shares of China-focused <20>daigou<6F> retailer AuMake International Ltd ( AU8.AX ) more than doubled in their trading debut on Thursday as investors expect growing demand for Australian products from Chinese overseas shoppers.AuMake<6B>s shares rose as high as A$0.185, compared with the offer price of A$0.08 per share.Daigou is a channel of commerce where an entity outside China purchases products for customers in mainland China in a bid to avoid high import duties.AuMake, which aims to connect Australian suppliers directly with daigou and Chinese tourists, had offered 50 million shares to raise A$4 million ($3.15 million) with the option to raise up to a further A$2 million.The company raised A$6 million as capital for its debut and intends to expand its Chinese tourist retail network, as well as acquire brands which it believes are popular in China, it said in a statement.Several manufacturers in Australia and New Zealand use daigou as jumping point into the Chinese market, seeing it as a cheaper method than exporting their goods directly.New Zealand<6E>s a2 Milk Co Ltd ( ATM.NZ ), which places informal daigou agents at the heart of its distribution strategy, is one such example. The company logged a record profit in 2017 on soaring demand for its products in China.Reporting by Ambar Warrick in Bengaluru; Editing by Stephen Coates and Edwina Gibbs '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-aumake-international-ipo/australian-daigou-retailer-aumake-surges-in-trading-debut-idINKBN1CA024'|'2017-10-04T22:44:00.000+03:00'
'e3fc278a41778ceee9765a940151a060984c449f'|'UK accounting watchdog closes probe into PwC over Barclays audits'|'October 5, 2017 / 7:07 AM / in 4 hours UK accounting watchdog closes probe into PwC over Barclays audits Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is seen on a board at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2017 (SPIEF 2017) in St. Petersburg, Russia, June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin LONDON (Reuters) - The Financial Reporting Council has closed its investigation into audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) LLP over its audits of Barclays ( BARC.L ) in the years during and after the global financial crisis, the accounting watchdog said on Thursday. <20>The Executive Counsel to the FRC has concluded that there is not a realistic prospect that a tribunal would make an adverse finding against PwC LLP in respect of the matters within the scope of the investigation,<2C> it said in a statement. The FRC had been investigating PwC<77>s role in reporting on Barclays<79> compliance with the regulator the Financial Services Authority<74>s client asset rules for the years ended Dec 31 2007 to Dec 31 2011. Reporting by Carolyn Cohn; Editing by Rachel Armstrong '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-barclays-pwc-investigation/uk-accounting-watchdog-closes-probe-into-pwc-over-barclays-audits-idUSKBN1CA0GQ'|'2017-10-05T10:06:00.000+03:00'
'c4ff6c0c7a0c2272c04bce6dda64a24868023be3'|'Exclusive: Brookfield Property Partners explores options for office assets - sources'|'October 5, 2017 / 4:01 AM / Updated 5 hours ago Exclusive: Brookfield Property Partners explores options for office assets - sources Carl O''Donnell 3 Min Read REUTERS - Brookfield Property Partners LP is considering options for its office properties in the Northeastern United States that include the potential sale of a stake that could value the portfolio at as much as $10 billion, people familiar with the matter said. Brookfield Property, one of the world<6C>s largest commercial real estate companies, has been looking for ways to boost its underperforming stock price and reallocate capital from mature, stable assets into higher-returning investments. The sale, which could attract interest from investment firms and sovereign wealth funds, would allow Brookfield Property to capitalize on the value of its high-end office assets, many of which are in major U.S. cities such as New York and Washington, the sources said this week. It would also allow Brookfield Property to pay down a substantial amount of debt, setting up the portfolio for a possible separation into an independent publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) down the line, the sources added. Brookfield Property is still working on carving out the Northeastern U.S. office properties from its $66 billion real estate portfolio, which spans the office, retail, multifamily housing and industrial sectors, according to the sources. The company has not yet launched a process to sell the stake, and no deal is certain, said the sources, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are confidential. A Brookfield Property spokesman declined to comment on the possible stake sale in the company<6E>s Northeastern U.S. office portfolio, and would say only that Brookfield Property is not planning to create a public REIT for the assets in this region. Brookfield Property shares jumped as much as 5 percent on the news and closed 2.5 percent higher at $23.75 on Wednesday, giving the company a market capitalization of $16.7 billion. The shares had previously risen 7.8 percent year-to-date, versus a 13.3 percent rise in the S&P 500 Index. Brookfield Property was created in 2013 when it was spun off by its parent company Brookfield Asset Management Inc, a Toronto-based money manager with around $250 billion in assets. Brookfield Asset Management remains the largest shareholder in Brookfield Property Partners. In 2014, Brookfield Property took full ownership of Brookfield Office Properties, spending around $5 billion in cash and equity to consolidate its existing 51 percent stake in that company. Reporting by Carl O''Donnell in New York; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Matthew Lewis '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/brookfld-prpty-spinoff/exclusive-brookfield-property-partners-explores-options-for-office-assets-sources-idINKBN1CA074'|'2017-10-05T06:57:00.000+03:00'
'7b1046585b076f4c7e870c845fcc315357d4c1a6'|'Vivendi says Milan prosecutor probe is a routine matter of course'|'MILAN (Reuters) - The investigation by Milan prosecutors of Vivendi ( VIV.PA ) managers stems from a complaint filed by the main shareholder of Italian broadcaster Mediaset ( MS.MI ) and is a due matter of course, the French group said on Thursday.Earlier on Thursday police raided the headquarters of Vivendi in Paris in connection with a probe into alleged market abuse relating to its acquisition of a stake in Mediaset.<2E>It is the result of the unfounded and unjust complaint presented by Berlusconi against Vivendi after its entry into Mediaset capital,<2C> Vivendi said in a statement.The family of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is the biggest shareholder of Mediaset.The French media group said the probe in no way indicated accusations against anyone.<2E>The investigation is routine,<2C> it said.Reporting by Stephen Jewkes; editing by Francesca Landini '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-vivendi-raid-probe/vivendi-says-milan-prosecutor-probe-is-a-routine-matter-of-course-idUSKBN1CA19A'|'2017-10-05T19:41:00.000+03:00'
'22c54e5b10384febec18f953060781883d2d91d3'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Mexico peso hits 4-month low ahead of NAFTA talks'|'(Updates prices) By Bruno Federowski SAO PAULO, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Mexico''s peso slipped on Monday to its weakest in more than four months, mirroring a fall in other Latin American currencies, ahead of the latest round of talks over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The peso fell 0.7 percent to 18.675 to the dollar, roughly in line with losses on the Brazilian and Colombian currencies. Demand for high-yielding assets has waned since Friday, when data showing rising U.S. wages fueled bets that the Federal Reserve will increase interest rates faster than expected in coming months. Fears of increased U.S. protectionism have hit the Mexican peso particularly hard as the United States purchases over three-quarters of Mexico''s exports. Trade officials from Mexico, the United States and Canada meet on Wednesday in the Washington area for a fourth round of talks on renegotiating NAFTA amid signs of increasing tension over the accord between Mexico and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump''s "America First" policy has raised questions about his government''s desire to maintain NAFTA. Mexican officials said last week that Trump risks sparking a "protectionist war" with his demands. Brazil''s benchmark Bovespa stock index slipped 0.7 percent, weighed down by a decline in shares of miner Vale SA on the heels of falling iron ore futures. Still, shares in sewage and water utility Cia de Saneamento B<>sico do Estado de S<>o Paulo SA rose more than 2 percent after regulators sanctioned a 7.8888 percent tariff hike. Chilean markets were closed for the Columbus Day holiday. Key Latin American stock indexes and currencies at 20:04 GMT: Stock indexes daily % YTD % change change Latest MSCI Emerging Markets 1100.50 -0.24 27.93 MSCI LatAm 2920.82 -1.11 26.19 Brazil Bovespa 75530.83 -0.69 25.41 Mexico IPC 50099.00 -0.41 9.76 Chile IPSA 0.00 0 -100.00 Chile IGPA 0.00 0 -100.00 Argentina MerVal 26773.17 -0.09 58.25 Colombia IGBC 11048.70 -0.64 9.09 Venezuela IBC 527.67 -99.9 -98.34 Currencies daily % YTD % change change Latest Brazil real 3.1842 0.03 2.04 Mexico peso 18.6750 -0.71 11.08 Chile peso 633.3 0.00 5.91 Colombia peso 2947.3 -0.40 1.84 Peru sol 3.271 -0.06 4.37 Argentina peso (interbank) 17.4300 0.11 -8.92 Argentina peso (parallel) 17.82 -0.22 -5.61 (Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by W Simon and David Gregorio) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/emerging-markets-latam/emerging-markets-mexico-peso-hits-4-month-low-ahead-of-nafta-talks-idUSL2N1MK136'|'2017-10-09T23:46:00.000+03:00'
'e6a99200e989adca28944fc248b783584017d8e9'|'Exclusive: SEC''s corporate filing system vulnerable to denial of service attacks - memo'|'October 6, 2017 / 4:17 AM / Updated 11 hours ago Exclusive: SEC''s corporate filing system vulnerable to denial of service attacks - memo Sarah N. Lynch , Jim Finkle 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The seal of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission hangs on the wall at SEC headquarters in Washington, DC, U.S. on June 24, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Wall Street<65>s top regulator, has discovered a vulnerability in its corporate filing database that could cause the system to collapse, according to an internal document seen by Reuters. The SEC<45>s September 22 memo reveals that its EDGAR database, containing financial reports from U.S. public companies and mutual funds, could be at risk of <20>denial of service<63> attacks, a type of cyber intrusion that floods a network, overwhelming it and forcing it to close. The discovery came when the SEC was testing EDGAR<41>s ability to absorb monthly and annual financial filings that will be required under new rules adopted last year for the $18 trillion mutual fund industry. The memo shows that even an unintentional error by a company, and not just hackers with malicious intentions, could bring the system down. Even the submission of a large <20>invalid<69> form could overwhelm the system<65>s memory. The defect comes after the SEC<45>s admission last month that hackers breached the EDGAR database in 2016. The discovery will likely add to concerns about the vulnerability of the SEC<45>s network and whether the agency has been adequately addressing cyber threats. The mutual fund industry has long had concerns that market-sensitive data required in the new rules could be exploited if it got into the wrong hands. The industry has since redoubled its calls for SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to delay the data-reporting rules, set to go into effect in June next year, until it is reassured the information will be secure. <20>Clearly, the SEC should postpone implementation of its data reporting rule until the security of those systems is thoroughly tested and assessed by independent third parties,<2C> said Mike McNamee, chief public communications officer of The Investment Company Institute (ICI), whose members manage $20 trillion worth of assets in the United States. <20>We are confident Chairman Clayton will live up to his pledge that the SEC will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure the security of its systems and the data it collects.<2E> An SEC spokesman declined to comment. The rules adopted last year requiring asset managers to file monthly and annual reports about their portfolio holdings were designed to protect them in the event of a market crisis by showing the SEC and investors that they have enough liquidity to cover a rush of redemptions. During a Congressional hearing on Wednesday, Clayton testified that the agency was considering whether to delay the rules in light of the cyber concerns. He did not, however, mention anything about the denial of service attack vulnerability. VIRTUAL VOMIT EDGAR is the repository for corporate America, housing millions of filings ranging from quarterly earnings to statements on acquisitions. It is a virtual treasure trove for cyber criminals who could trade on any information gleaned before it is publicly released. In the hack disclosed last month involving EDGAR, the SEC has said it now believes the criminals may have stolen non-public data for illicit trading. The vulnerability revealed in the September memo shows that even an invalid form could jam up EDGAR. The system did not immediately reject the form, the memo says. Rather, <20>it was being validated for hours before failing due to an invalid form type.<2E> That conclusion could spell trouble for the SEC<45>s EDGAR database because it means that if hackers wanted to, they could <20>basically take down the whole EDGAR system<65> by submitting a malicious data file, said one cyber security expert with experience securing networks of finan
'b2e2b81afc235311b41bf5d4d6081adc2992d85c'|'Amazon eyeing prescription drug business -CNBC'|'October 6, 2017 / 7:12 PM / in an hour Amazon eyeing prescription drug business -CNBC Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of the web service Amazon is pictured in Mexico City, Mexico on June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/Illustration/File Photo (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is in the final stages of deciding a strategy to get into the prescription drug market, CNBC reported on Friday, citing an email from the company and a source familiar with the matter. Amazon will decide before Thanksgiving whether to move into selling prescription drugs online, CNBC reported. Shares of drug retailers including Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc, CVS Health Corp and Rite Aid Corp tumbled on the news. cnb.cx/2hTIxvL Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D''Silva'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-amazon-com-retail/amazon-eyeing-prescription-drug-business-cnbc-idUKKBN1CB2HA'|'2017-10-06T22:11:00.000+03:00'
'0cdb9b97381b7933e875136e6741dc19dde0e71f'|'CEE MARKETS-Bond yields jump as U.S. data boost Fed rate hike odds'|'* Polish 10-year bond yield trades at 6-and-1/2-month high * Romanian bonds lead jump on strong U.S. wage data * Romanian liquidity squeeze may remain, central bank watched * Zloty, forint ease on selling due to dollar gains (Recasts with impact of U.S. figures) By Sandor Peto and Luiza Ilie BUDAPEST/BUCHAREST, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Central European debt yields rose further on Friday after U.S. data showing a strong rise in wages boosted expectations for a Federal Reserve rate hike in December. Higher U.S. interest rates make debt yields in the European Union''s emerging markets relatively less attractive. "Core market yields rose a bit, while emerging market yields kind of exploded," one Budapest-based fixed income trader said. The data also strengthened the dollar, and capital flows into the greenback have tended to weaken the zloty and the forint, Central Europe''s most liquid currencies, in the past weeks. The zloty eased 0.2 percent against the euro to 4.3115 by 1330 GMT. The forint shed 0.1 percent to 312.31. The crown, buoyed by expectations that the Czech central bank will further increase interest rates, was almost steady, just like the leu which has been supported this week by a liquidity squeeze in Romanian interbank markets. Romanian government bond yields, however, led the regionwide rise. Romania''s government on Thursday rejected all bids at a bond tender for the first time since March, unwilling to tolerate a yield rise amid low demand. But expectations for a jump in the budget deficit late this year and a rise in inflation have weighed on Romania''s debt market. Yields on the country''s 2018- and 2019-expiry bonds, which rose by 5-7 basis points in the morning, surged by further 10 basis points after the U.S. data, to 1.74 and 1.98 percent, respectively. The 10-year bond yield, which was steady in early trade, rose 7 basis points to 4.10 percent. Poland''s corresponding yield jumped 12 basis points to 3.50 percent, while Hungary''s 10-year yield was up 9 basis points at 2.75 percent. Romania''s three-month interbank rate was set at 1.78 percent, remaining near three-year highs, even though the central bank injected 9.4 billion lei into the market through a repo tender on Tuesday. The usual wage and other payments around Oct. 10 may not ease the liquidity shortage because dividend payments by state-owned companies and improved tax collection have pumped lei out of markets. A seasonal jump in government spending late in the year may increase liquidity, but may also weigh on the leu, which traded a touch off seven-week highs against the euro. Concern over a rise in the deficit may prompt Standard & Poor''s to revise the outlook for its rating for Romania to negative in a review late on Friday, Raiffeisen said in a note. Czech bond yields rose by 4-6 basis points, with 10-year bonds bid at 1.736 percent. CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1530 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.830 25.833 +0.01 4.56% 0 5 % Hungary 312.31 311.94 -0.12% -1.12% forint 00 00 Polish zloty 4.3115 4.3023 -0.21% 2.14% Romanian leu 4.5750 4.5742 -0.02% -0.87% Croatian 7.5000 7.5060 +0.08 0.73% kuna % Serbian 119.09 119.09 +0.00 3.58% dinar 00 00 % Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1060.5 1057.3 +0.30 +15.0 9 9 % 8% Budapest 37945. 37876. +0.18 +18.5 80 47 % 7% Warsaw 2470.0 2463.4 +0.27 +26.8 5 5 % 0% Bucharest 7970.3 7904.6 +0.83 +12.4 2 2 % 9% Ljubljana 799.73 801.09 -0.17% +11.4 5% Zagreb 1812.8 1800.9 +0.66 -9.12% 7 8 % Belgrade 726.08 722.11 +0.55 +1.21 % % Sofia 676.88 672.93 +0.59 +15.4 % 2% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs change Bund in Czech spread Republic 2-year 0.37 0.035 +105b +2bps ps 5-year 0.447 0.056 +068b +3bps ps 10-year 1.376 0.034 +088b -1bps ps Poland 2-year 1.746 0.024 +242b +1bps ps 5-year 2.793 0.087 +303b +6bps ps 10-year 3.503 0.11 +301b +7bps ps FORWAR
'36a88ca9fcc203821c8e25d94654da0b32996825'|'MOVES-AllianzGI Global COO George McKay to retire in April 2018'|'October 5, 2017 / 12:35 PM / in 3 hours MOVES-AllianzGI Global COO George McKay to retire in April 2018 Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 5 (Reuters) - Investment manager Allianz Global Investors said on Thursday Global Chief Operating Officer and Co-Head George McKay will step down from executive roles in April next year. McKay who has been with AllianzGI, a unit of Germany-based Allianz SE, since 2006, will take on non-executive vice chair role. Karen Prooth, who joins on Nov. 1 from investment management firm Blackrock, will replace McKay. At Blackrock, Karen worked as global platform head for exchange traded funds and index investments. (Reporting by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/allianzglobalinvestors-moves-georgemckay/moves-allianzgi-global-coo-george-mckay-to-retire-in-april-2018-idUSL4N1MG23X'|'2017-10-05T15:34:00.000+03:00'
'c13ed1bcea5ad144386aa75c2ebf80ea84f3b905'|'Brexit divorce plan to be sent to WTO next week'|'October 5, 2017 / 5:51 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago Brexit divorce plan to be sent to WTO next week Tom Miles 3 Min Read An umbrella with EU and British flags attached to it is held ahead of a speech by Britain''s Prime Minister Theresa May in Florence, Italy September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Max Rossi GENEVA (Reuters) - Britain and the European Union plan to send a letter to the rest of the World Trade Organization<6F>s 164 members next week, setting out Brexit plans that have already been rejected by seven key agricultural exporters, trade officials said on Thursday. Britain is a member of the WTO in its own right but it has to establish its own distinct membership terms as part of its withdrawal from the European Union. Reuters reported in July that Britain and the EU would put forward a joint proposal by October, explaining how they planned to disentangle the United Kingdom from the EU. <20>In leaving the EU, we will need to update the terms of our WTO membership where, at present, our commitments are applied through the EU as a whole,<2C> a spokeswoman for Britain<69>s Trade Ministry said. <20>The UK wants to ensure a smooth transition which minimises the disruption to our trading relationships with other WTO members.<2E> There are three main issues: the division of agricultural import quotas and of farm subsidy rights and - for Britain - continued membership of the WTO<54>s government procurement agreement, which it is not a member of in its own right. The thorniest is the planned sharing-out of import quotas, which has already been rejected by the United States, Argentina, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada, Thailand and Uruguay. In a letter first published by the Financial Times, their representatives at the WTO said they would not accept the plan to split those quotas on the basis of historical averages. They want to keep the flexibility they enjoy now, suggesting Britain should duplicate the EU import quotas, doubling their potential exports into the region. A British official called their letter a negotiating tactic and an attempt to put a shot across the bows of the British-EU offer before it went to the wider WTO membership. With the Brexit clock counting down to a divorce in March 2019, British officials say they have a year to sort out the WTO negotiation before submitting Britain<69>s new membership terms. The British-EU proposal is expected to be debated during the WTO<54>s week of agricultural talks later this month and at the WTO ministerial conference in Buenos Aires in December. Editing by Andrew Roche'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-wto/brexit-divorce-plan-to-be-sent-to-wto-next-week-idUKKBN1CA2AK'|'2017-10-05T20:50:00.000+03:00'
'94c95871f4838705cdcf4286a056faeaa1503183'|'Italy high court upholds 4-yr sentence on veteran banker Geronzi'|'ROME, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Italy<6C>s highest court on Friday upheld a four-year jail sentence on the former chairman of Generali Cesare Geronzi for his role in the 2003 bankruptcy of food company Cirio.The decision, by the Rome-based Court of Cassation, is final and cannot be appealed. However, three of the four years will be wiped out under a national amnesty and Geronzi, a symbol of old-style Italian capitalism, will not actually serve any jail time because of his age, 82.In April 2015 an appeals court had handed Geronzi a four- year prison sentence for bankruptcy, confirming the previous sentence in a long court battle that started in 2003.Geronzi<7A>s lawyers over the years have argued that he had no specific powers over Cirio at the time of its bankruptcy, when he was at the helm of lender Capitalia, and that he had acted correctly.The Rome Court of Cassation also ordered on Friday a new trial for Cirio<69>s ex-chief, Sergio Cragnotti, who was handed a sentence of eight years and eight months in 2015. (writing by Giulia Segreti; Editing by Richard Balmforth) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/italy-cirio-trial-geronzi/italy-high-court-upholds-4-yr-sentence-on-veteran-banker-geronzi-idINL8N1MH4PL'|'2017-10-06T16:12:00.000+03:00'
'1c932a644abdc085dea8fc6b71c99c00cf25c6b3'|'Drug chains tumble on reports Amazon eyeing their pie'|'October 6, 2017 / 8:26 PM / Updated 28 minutes ago Drug chains tumble on reports Amazon eyeing their pie Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Amazon boxes are seen stacked for delivery in the Manhattan borough of New York City, January 29, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo (Reuters) - Shares of drug retailers Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc, CVS Health Corp and Rite Aid Corp tumbled on Friday after reports that Amazon.com Inc was looking to make a move into selling drugs online. Amazon is reported to be in discussions with mid-market pharmacy benefit managers and has been hiring talent to assess the drug retailing market for its entry, brokerage firm Leerink analyst Ana Gupte wrote in a note to clients. <20>We are convinced that AMZN will almost certainly enter the drug distribution value chain within 2 years, evolving into a more disruptive offering over time,<2C> Gupte said. Amazon<6F>s entry into pharmaceuticals has been long rumored in the media. On Friday, CNBC reported that the e-commerce giant would decide before Thanksgiving whether to move into selling prescription drugs online, citing a company email and a source familiar with the matter. ( cnb.cx/2hTIxvL ) Amazon does not comment on rumors or speculation, a company spokeswoman said. Shares of drug retailers Walgreens closed down 5.8 percent, Rite Aid 4.9 percent and CVS Health 4.9 percent. Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D''Silva'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-retail/drug-chains-tumble-on-reports-amazon-eyeing-their-pie-idUSKBN1CB2ML'|'2017-10-06T23:24:00.000+03:00'
'71dd59fd3cf343c20cd984f36de2aa372dff24a7'|'UK productivity fall leaves it well behind world''s big economies'|'The productivity of UK workers fell in the three months to June, piling pressure on the chancellor, Philip Hammond , before his budget next month.Despite increasing numbers of hours put in by workers, labour productivity as measured by output per hour fell by 0.1% in the three months to June, according to the Office for National Statistics . That continues a fall started earlier this year, albeit at a slower pace, from the 0.5% drop recorded in the three months to March. The figures will prove troubling for the chancellor, as weak productivity stands to erode the public finances by signalling weaker economic growth. The figures also rank Britain among the weakest of the G7 economies for labour productivity, although the gap with rival nations narrowed to 15.4% last year from 16.1% in 2015. Labour has a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and the Tories know it - Larry Elliott Read more Philip Wales of the ONS said: <20>UK labour productivity continued to lag behind our international partners in 2016 ... analysis suggests that this lower level of productivity was evident across all industries, although the size of the gap varies considerably.<2E>Some industries are more productive than others. Manufacturing firms are among the most efficient <20> such as mining, quarrying and pharmaceuticals <20> because workers put in a relatively small share of total hours worked across the wider economy. The UK<55>s largest sector, services, accounts for a larger share of hours worked, at below average productivity. Firms that attract investment from overseas are also about 74% more productive than domestic firms. The UK ranks fifth out of the top seven advanced global economies, with Canada and Japan having weaker levels of productivity. Germany is the most productive nation per hour, while the US is top for output per worker. The UK has been in a prolonged period of weak productivity since the financial crisis. Brexit could be exacerbating the problem, as businesses turn back from investing in more efficient equipment owing to fears over the strength of the economy. Meanwhile, unemployment is at its lowest level since the mid-1970s - indicating that companies are preferring to invest in people rather than technology. Howard Archer, the chief economic adviser to the EY Item Club, a forecasting group, said: <20>Given the uncertain economic and political outlook, it may be that several companies are trying to meet extra work by taking on labour rather than commit to investment.<2E>The weakness could be attributed to the creation of low-skilled, low-paid jobs in the economy, in which productivity - is limited. Despite the low jobless rate, wage growth is failing to keep pace with the rising cost of living. Some economists also suggest there could be a link between weak productivity and low interest rates, as unproductive companies are able to continue operating by borrowing cheaply from banks and the financial markets. That could change as the Bank of England prepares to raise interest rates for the first time in a decade from as early as November . UK productivity Next week the Office for Budget Responsibility is expected to admit that its forecasts for improving productivity growth have proved to be consistently optimistic. The government<6E>s independent forecaster will say that the trend for lower productivity growth since the 2008 crash is likely to persist for several more years, warranting a downgrade from its March forecast.Without an improvement in productivity, the UK economy is expected to miss out on expected increases in wages and living standards, putting further pressure on the welfare system and depressing tax receipts.Treasury officials are known to believe that the downgrade will wipe out about two-thirds of the government<6E>s <20>26bn war chest, which the chancellor set aside in the last budget to spend in the event of a slowdown following a disorderly and damaging exit from the EU.Hammond was expected to use some of the money in the autu
'1871f5d09f2ef3ec6b8ac91e5ed777fe898ec9bf'|'After a bite of Apple, Margrethe Vestager targets another tech giant'|'MARGRETHE VESTAGER<45>S assault on technology firms she deems to have improperly massaged down their tax bills continued this week with a tilt at Amazon. The internet retailer faces a bill of <20>250m ($293m) for back taxes over what the European Union<6F>s competition commissioner considers to have been an illegal sweetheart deal with Luxembourg.The order requiring the Grand Duchy to recover the money follows a well-publicised three-year investigation. It is the latest in a series of tax-avoidance cases brought by the European Commission against multinationals, most of them American. Last year, Ireland was ordered to recover <20>13bn from Apple<6C>smashing all past records for EU corporate-tax cases. As with Apple, the commission concluded that Amazon received illegal state aid<69>in the retailer<65>s case between 2006 and 2014<31>through a tax-cutting arrangement that was unavailable to its rivals. This came in the form of a ruling from Luxembourg<72>s tax authority, known as a <20>comfort letter<65>.Amazon accordingly moved intellectual property of various types into a Luxembourg partnership that served as an intermediary between Amazon<6F>s European operations<6E>whose headquarters was a separate Luxembourg entity<74>and its American parent. As a partnership, the go-between was not subject to tax under Luxembourg law (the statutory corporate rate is 29.22%). The European operating company was.The operating company was required to pay to the partnership substantial royalties for, among other things, the right to use the Amazon name, thereby shifting lots of profit to the untaxed entity. The commission argues that the level of royalty payments was inflated and did not reflect economic reality. It says the arrangement allowed Amazon to avoid tax on three-quarters of all profits on its sales in the EU (which the company does not disclose).Both Luxembourg and Amazon deny wrongdoing. Luxembourg<72>s authorities have said before that Amazon chose to put its main European operations in the tiny landlocked country for a variety of reasons, tax not being the main one. They have also pointed out that its operations in Luxembourg are hardly empty shell companies: the company employs over 1,500 people there (though the IP-holding partnership, which no longer exists, had no employees or offices). Amazon says it did not receive special treatment and is considering an appeal.This week<65>s order could stoke transatlantic tensions. After the Apple ruling last year, American politicians queued up to echo the sentiments of Tim Cook, the firm<72>s boss, who derided Ms Vestager<65>s action as <20>total political crap<61>. Many of them saw Brussels<6C>s tax probes as being driven by tech-envy, not sound economics. Washington hinted at retaliation, though nothing specific has been tabled.The commission<6F>s critics have a point. The details of the case are complex, and tax experts will disagree about the legality of the arrangements under the spotlight, just as they did with Apple. Few would deny that the frayed patchwork of international corporate-tax rules need reforming; one proposal, espoused by President Emmanuel Macron of France and supported by several other EU countries, would see multinationals taxed on revenues in particular territories instead of on profits. However, punishing a company for a 14-year-old ruling from a national government, happily accepted by both sides at the time, looks harsh. The uncertainty it stokes may also dampen foreign investors<72> interest in Europe.Ms Vestager<65>s ruling will add to the discomfort felt by Jean-Claude Juncker, the commission<6F>s president, who was prime minister of Luxembourg when the tax arrangement in question was hammered out. Mr Juncker has been widely pilloried for having run a government that sucked tax revenue from neighbouring countries through behind-closed-doors deals with big companies. He has been on the back foot since the <20>LuxLeaks<6B> revelations in 2014, which exposed hundreds of cushy deals with multinationals. In the wake of tha
'05b714d174447c8426ecadc8a60f32c7901b6969'|'Brazil agency defers Bayer-Monsanto decision, cites anti-trust concerns'|'FILE PHOTO: Monsanto logo is displayed on a screen where the stock is traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S. on May 9, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo SAO PAULO (Reuters) - A unit of Brazil<69>s competition regulator Cade has said Bayer AG<41>s proposed takeover of Monsanto Co. could be detrimental to competition and urged conditions for Brazilian approval of the corporate tie-up, a document released on the agency<63>s website shows.The Bayer-Monsanto transaction, announced in September 2016, would create the world<6C>s largest integrated pesticides and seeds company.The Cade unit said that anticipated merger-related efficiencies were insufficient to mitigate its competition concerns, according to the document dated Oct. 3.It recommended what it termed as <20>structural solutions<6E> as a condition for final approval the deal, which will be in the hands of Cade<64>s seven-member tribunal.Cade has 330 days to make a final decision since it began its review of the deal on April 24, a spokesman for the agency said. However, he added it may announce a ruling as early as Dec. 20.The Cade unit said solutions included creating or strengthening another player to compete in the markets for soy and cotton seeds and in the sphere of biotech development.But the unit has not engaged in an in-depth discussion with Bayer and Monsanto related to its suggested <20>remedies,<2C> the document said.In an emailed statement to Reuters, Bayer said the unit<69>s opinion is non-binding and does not mean the transaction will be blocked.Hugh Grant, Monsanto<74>s chief executive officer, said concerns expressed by Brazil<69>s regulator are a normal step in the review process.Brazil is Monsanto<74>s biggest market outside of the United States.In its second-quarter results, Bayer said sales of its crop science division tumbled more than 15 percent primarily because of its business in Brazil, an indication of the country<72>s weight as a market for seed technology, insecticides and herbicides.Deal opponents have asked Cade to block it or force divestments including Monsanto<74>s Intacta RR2 IPRO soy seed technology and Bayer<65>s glufosinate ammonium herbicides.Last week, Monsanto<74>s chief executive officer for South America, Rodrigo Santos, told Reuters the company was set on keeping rights to Intacta.Cotton farmers against the transaction assert the merged company would control 14 out of 15 genetically modified cotton seed technologies available in Brazil.If Cade orders asset disposals from the companies, authorities must see to it that the buyer is a relevant player in the biotech, seed production and crop defense segments, said attorney Rachel Mendon<6F>a, a partner at Mendon<6F>a e Nogueira Advogados.Her law firm is representing three industry groups opposing the deal.Reporting by Ana Mano; editing by Alexander Smith and W Simon '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-monsanto-m-a-bayer-brazil/brazil-agency-defers-bayer-monsanto-decision-cites-anti-trust-concerns-idINKCN1C91BU'|'2017-10-04T08:42:00.000+03:00'
'708a41b830f21592e7e4eb741616d7984bdc445a'|'EU to reform sales tax, prepares changes to rates'|'October 3, 2017 / 1:38 PM / in 26 minutes EU to reform sales tax, prepares changes to rates 2 Min Read European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium June 14, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir STRASBOURG (Reuters) - The European Commission will propose on Wednesday changes to the way sales taxes are levied in the European Union, in an effort to close tax loopholes and eliminate fraud, a draft document said. The new measures on value-added tax would mostly tackle frauds in which companies pocket VAT revenues from cross-border sales instead of paying them to the local government. The move would also end the practice of companies avoiding VAT by basing themselves in countries with low VAT rates. They will now, as a general rule, have to pay the VAT charged by the country where their products are sold. That principle has already been established by temporary regulations. The proposed reform would make that permanent. <20>This definitive VAT system will be based on the principle of taxation in the member state of destination,<2C> the document, seen by Reuters, said. The proposed changes are expected to permanently end tax advantages for supplier companies that serve the EU market from a low-tax country, like Amazon, which is based in Luxembourg. The EU executive said the changes would reduce the need for a harmonised VAT rate policy. By November it will make new proposals to reform VAT rates, giving states more power to set them. The move is also aimed at reducing scams that deprive EU states of large amounts of VAT revenues. Often such fraud involves companies collecting tax when a product is sold but not paying it to the government of its home country. Collecting the tax in the country where a product is sold would eliminate that fraud. Reporting by Francesco Guarascio'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-tax-vat/eu-to-reform-sales-tax-end-appeal-of-low-rate-states-in-blow-to-amazon-idUKKCN1C81K9'|'2017-10-03T22:13:00.000+03:00'
'baebe563e44c05fdbcb9a263754c0dbfcab2f97d'|'Yahoo says all 3 billion accounts affected in 2013 hack'|'October 3, 2017 / 8:57 PM / in 17 hours Yahoo says all three billion accounts hacked in 2013 data theft Jonathan Stempel , Jim Finkle 5 Min Read A photo illustration shows a Yahoo logo on a smartphone in front of a displayed cyber code and keyboard on December 15, 2016. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration (Reuters) - Yahoo on Tuesday said that all 3 billion of its accounts were hacked in a 2013 data theft, tripling its earlier estimate of the size of the largest breach in history, in a disclosure that attorneys said sharply increased the legal exposure of its new owner, Verizon Communications Inc ( VZ.N ). The news expands the likely number and claims of class action lawsuits by shareholders and Yahoo account holders, they said. Yahoo, the early face of the internet for many in the world, already faced at least 41 consumer class-action lawsuits in U.S. federal and state courts, according to company securities filing in May. John Yanchunis, a lawyer representing some of the affected Yahoo users, said a federal judge who allowed the case to go forward still had asked for more information to justify his clients<74> claims. <20>I think we have those facts now,<2C> he said. <20>It<49>s really mind-numbing when you think about it.<2E> Yahoo said last December that data from more than 1 billion accounts was compromised in 2013, the largest of a series of thefts that forced Yahoo to cut the price of its assets in a sale to Verizon. Yahoo on Tuesday said <20>recently obtained new intelligence<63> showed all user accounts had been affected. The company said the investigation indicated that the stolen information did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information. But the information was protected with outdated, easy-to-crack encryption, according to academic experts. It also included security questions and backup email addresses, which could make it easier to break into other accounts held by the users. Related Coverage Senate panel to hold hearing on Yahoo, Equifax breaches Many Yahoo users have multiple accounts, so far fewer than 3 billion were affected, but the theft ranks as the largest to date, and a costly one for the internet pioneer. Verizon in February lowered its original offer by $350 million for Yahoo assets in the wake of two massive cyber attacks at the internet company. Some lawyers asked whether Verizon would look for a new opportunity to address the price. <20>This is a bombshell,<2C> said Mark Molumphy, lead counsel in a shareholder derivative lawsuit against Yahoo<6F>s former leaders over disclosures about the hacks. FILE PHOTO: A photo illustration shows a man in front of a Yahoo logo seen through a magnifying glass in front of a displayed cyber code on December 16, 2016. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Verizon did not respond to a request for comment about any possible lawsuit over the deal. Verizon, the likely main target of legal actions, also could be challenged as it launches a new brand, Oath, to link its Yahoo, AOL and Huffington Post internet properties. In August in the separate lawsuit brought by Yahoo<6F>s users, U.S. Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, ruled Yahoo must face nationwide litigation brought on behalf of owners accounts who said their personal information was compromised in the three breaches. Yanchunis, the lawyer for the users, said his team planned to use the new information later this month to expanding its allegations. Also on Tuesday, Senator John Thune, chairman of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, said he plans to hold a hearing later this month over massive data breaches at Equifax Inc ( EFX.N ) and Yahoo. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission already had been probing Yahoo over the hacks. The closing of the Verizon deal, which was first announced in July, had been delayed as the companies assessed the fallout from two data breaches that Yahoo disclosed last year. The company paid $4.48 billion for Yahoo<6F>s core business. A Yahoo official emphasized Tuesday 
'3cca99a0575ba2f95bcea4f988dd749780535edf'|'Cautious BoE in no rush to restrict algorithmic trading'|'October 6, 2017 / 9:53 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Cautious BoE in no rush to restrict algorithmic trading Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A man talks on a mobile phone as people walk past the Bank of England, in London, Britain September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner LONDON (Reuters) - The spread of ultra-fast trading in stock, bond and currency markets and accompanying <20>flash crashes<65> do not call for immediate action from regulators, a senior Bank of England official said on Friday. But there was a risk that similar disruptive episodes in the future could cause longer-lasting damage to the financial system, its executive director for markets Chris Salmon said. Wild share price fluctuations linked to algorithmic trades during a single U.S. session in 2010 triggered alarm among regulators, as did a similar episode in the U.S. bond market four years later. Salmon said there was much evidence that ultra high-speed automated trading by computer algorithms had made markets more efficient, despite the phenomenon of flash crashes it had given rise to. Algorithmic traders, who other parts of the market accuse of having a destabilizing impact on price movements, account for increasing proportions of volumes on exchanges as banks have pulled back from markets. Regulators have already taken some action to rein traders who dart in and out of markets at fast speeds, such as by allowing <20>speed bumps<70> and banning some trading practices. But Salmon said the BoE<6F>s <20>headline conclusion<6F> that no further action was required now should be tempered as future <20>flash episodes<65> could ripple further. <20>Specifically, in my view, we are not yet in a position to rule out that future flash episodes might interact with aspects of financial market infrastructure in a way that gives rise to longer-lasting disruption,<2C> he told a conference. A future flash episode could coincide with benchmark fixings in foreign exchange markets, or a margin call related to equity or derivative markets. <20>The resulting impact on the recorded values of a range of assets might risk mechanically prompting further sales and price falls.<2E> However, no risk is <20>flashing red that requires an immediate response<73>, he said. Reporting by Huw Jones; editing by John Stonestreet'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-boe-markets-regulations/cautious-boe-in-no-rush-to-restrict-algorithmic-trading-idUKKBN1CB132'|'2017-10-06T12:51:00.000+03:00'
'94ff5bba174a0ebdd349c83a048a62902818ec53'|'CEE MARKETS-Bond yields rise before U.S. jobs data released'|'* Polish 10-year bond yield trades at five-month high * Upcoming U.S. jobs report weighs on CEE bond prices, currencies * Romanian liquidity squeeze may remain, central bank watched * Czech bonds buck easing, analyst poll sees further crown gains By Sandor Peto and Luiza Ilie BUDAPEST/BUCHAREST, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Central European debt yields rose on Friday before a U.S. jobs report that might increase the chances the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates later this year. Regional currencies mostly eased because a good jobs report would strengthen the U.S. dollar. Romania''s government on Thursday rejected all bids at a bond tender for the first time since March, unwilling to tolerate a yield rise amid low demand. Romanian bonds mostly tracked a global rise in yields on Friday, with the yield on 2018 and 2019 expiries rising 5 to 7 basis points to 1.64 and 1.89 percent, respectively, one trader said. Poland''s 10-year yield reached a five-month high, rising 6 basis points to 3.439 percent. Hungary''s yield rose 5 basis points to 2.71 percent. Romania''s three-month interbank rate was set at 1.78 percent, remaining near three-year highs, even though the central bank injected 9.4 billion lei into the market through a repo tender on Tuesday. The usual wage and other payments around Oct. 10 may not ease the liquidity shortage because dividend payments by state-owned companies and improved tax collection have pumped lei out of markets. A seasonal jump in government spending late in the year may increase liquidity, but may also weigh on the leu, which traded a touch off seven-week highs against the euro. Concern over a rise in the deficit may prompt Standard & Poor''s to revise the outlook for its rating for Romania to negative in a review late on Friday, Raiffeisen said in a note. Elsewhere, Czech bonds were mostly steady. Foreigners holding long positions in the Czech crown have not rushed to take profit, even though the currency has gained 4.5 percent so far this year, fuelled by expectations for rate hikes by the central bank. The crown traded slightly weaker at 25.84 against the euro but still near its strongest levels since the CNB removed a cap on its value in April, which had kept it weaker than 27 to the euro for years. A Reuters poll of analysts on Friday forecast that the crown would gain a further 1.3 percent in the next 12 months. CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1127 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.840 25.833 -0.03% 4.52% 0 5 Hungary 311.78 311.94 +0.05 -0.95% forint 00 00 % Polish zloty 4.3048 4.3023 -0.06% 2.30% Romanian leu 4.5760 4.5742 -0.04% -0.90% Croatian 7.5040 7.5060 +0.03 0.68% kuna % Serbian 119.08 119.09 +0.01 3.59% dinar 00 00 % Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1059.5 1057.3 +0.21 +14.9 9 9 % 7% Budapest 37993. 37876. +0.31 +18.7 37 47 % 2% Warsaw 2484.1 2463.4 +0.84 +27.5 4 5 % 3% Bucharest 7953.1 7904.6 +0.61 +12.2 0 2 % 5% Ljubljana 800.44 801.09 -0.08% +11.5 5% Zagreb 1810.9 1800.9 +0.55 -9.22% 6 8 % Belgrade 722.51 722.11 +0.06 +0.72 % % Sofia 677.06 672.93 +0.61 +15.4 % 5% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs change Bund in Czech spread Republic 2-year 0.335 0 +102b -1bps ps 5-year 0.447 0.056 +069b +4bps ps 10-year 1.336 -0.006 +086b -3bps ps Poland 2-year 1.727 0.012 +241b +0bps ps 5-year 2.74 0.028 +299b +1bps ps 10-year 3.447 0.036 +297b +1bps ps FORWARD RATE AGREEMENT 3x6 6x9 9x12 3M interb ank Czech Rep <PR 0.76 0.91 1.05 0 IBOR=> Hungary <BU 0.085 0.115 0.17 0.03 BOR=> Poland <WI 1.771 1.818 1.91 1.73 BOR=> Note: FRA are for ask Quote: s prices'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/easteurope-markets/cee-markets-bond-yields-rise-before-u-s-jobs-data-released-idINL8N1MH25T'|'2017-10-06T09:17:00.000+03:00'
'459070d386a6f87e131235e6f079af6d04a49bda'|'PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 6'|'Oct 6 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.- Honeywell International Inc is pursuing an acquisition of water-filtration company Evoqua Water Technologies, which is laying the groundwork for an initial public offering. on.wsj.com/2z3empU- Netflix Inc is raising prices for its streaming-video services in the U.S., betting that subscribers will tolerate higher monthly fees and help fuel the company''s big investments in TV and movie programming. on.wsj.com/2z2w5hh- Facebook Inc cut references to Russia from a public report in April about manipulation of its platform around the presidential election because of concerns among the company''s lawyers and members of its policy team, according to people familiar with the matter. on.wsj.com/2z2ygl1- Boeing Co on Thursday said it plans to acquire Aurora Flight Sciences Corp, a maker of aerial drones and pilotless flying systems in a move the company said could pave the way for fleets of small flying taxis. on.wsj.com/2z2yhp5- Firearm and ammunition maker Vista Outdoor Inc tapped the former head of recreational-vehicle company Arctic Cat Inc, Christopher Metz, to be its next CEO. on.wsj.com/2z1zRaI (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/press-digest-wsj/press-digest-wall-street-journal-oct-6-idINL4N1MH109'|'2017-10-06T03:02:00.000+03:00'
'5c135197e04e43cf6562f9fca034b4c14a2c0a4e'|'RPT-INSIGHT-Awaiting better days, multinationals keep Venezuela units alive - barely'|'VALENCIA, Venezuela, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Venezuelan auto worker Celso Nunez spends his days moonlighting as a mover and trading salvaged building materials in his worn-out red pick-up.His employer, Ford Motor Co, does not mind.In fact, it is paying him to stay off the job.With Venezuela<6C>s economy in shambles, Ford has furloughed Nunez and 1200 colleagues at its moribund plant here in Valencia, Venezuela<6C>s third-largest city. The company said it wants to call them back when times are better.Nunez hasn<73>t reported for work in ten months, save for a few days in September to work on a prototype for a new cargo truck. But he still collects a quarter of his weekly salary of 50,000 bolivars, the equivalent of just $1.70 at the widely used black-market exchange rate.The father of two teenagers counts himself lucky.<2E>Ford has given me stability ... to help my family,<2C> said Nunez, proudly wearing his blue factory shirt after a recent meeting at the plant about the new prototype.<2E>We know it<69>s not their fault, it<69>s the national situation.<2E>Ford is among roughly 150 multinationals still hanging on in Venezuela. The once-prosperous OPEC nation is now in the fourth year of a recession caused by a fall in oil prices and, economists say, failed policies of its socialist government.A dearth of raw materials and plummeting demand has led many to halt or vastly scale back production, furloughing many employees in a country where labor laws ban mass layoffs.A handful of companies, including Clorox, Kimberly-Clark, General Mills, General Motors and Harvest Natural Resources, have given up entirely, abandoning assets or selling them cheap.Most multinationals, however, say they want to keep at least a minimum presence to be ready for a future upturn in Venezuela, home to the world<6C>s largest proven oil reserves.In Valencia, retrenchment by multinationals including Fiat Chrysler, Colgate Palmolive, Johnson & Johnson and Nestle SA have rendered the city a near ghost town.Last week, Nestle suspended operations at a baby food plant there, blaming a lack of supplies. In a statement, Nestle said it continues to pay the plant<6E>s 80 workers and remains committed to Venezuela and about 3200 employees at other factories there.DUST ON SEMI-ASSEMBLED CARS At Ford, the company said its Valencia factory had assembled about 400 cars through August of this year, compared with 17,000 units in 2012. Still, the No. 2 U.S. automaker said in an e-mail it <20>has no plans to leave the country.<2E>The drastically reduced work schedules, it added, is a way to <20>adapt to the local market<65>s needs.<2E>Ford began selling cars in dollars in 2015 so it could buy parts without requesting hard currency via government exchange controls. Other automakers followed suit, but have not been able to sell many cars because few Venezuelans can afford them.Venezuela<6C>s car assembly output slumped to 2,849 units in 2016 from a record 172,418 units in 2007, according to auto industry group Cavenez. Sales, including imports, plunged to 3,008 last year from 491,899 in 2007.At dealerships including Ford, Chrysler and Toyota, Venezuelan-made luxury vehicles sit without buyers, priced as much as $20,000 more than in other countries. Costs are inflated by imported parts and few economies of scale, analysts said.To stay afloat in such conditions, Ford and other multinationals have shortened shifts, reduced payrolls and focused on cheaper products, according to unions and company officials.The cutbacks make for scenes like that at the Fiat Chrysler plant in Valencia, where dust gathers on semi-assembled 2016 Jeep Cherokees, still missing windshields and mirrors.On a recent day, about 20 employees stood at the entrance to the plant, which sold more than 25,000 units in 2007 but only about 150 this year.About 60 percent of workers stay home, earning a fraction of their salaries. The rest come in but are confined to maintenance and administrative activities, employees and union leaders 
'8892194e9be7a071eb00680bcd2d524cb5844a39'|'Exclusive - U.S. SEC''s corporate filing system vulnerable to denial of service attacks: memo'|'Reuters TV United States October 6, 2017 / 4:17 AM / in a minute Exclusive: SEC''s corporate filing system vulnerable to denial of service attacks - memo Sarah N. Lynch , Jim Finkle 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The seal of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission hangs on the wall at SEC headquarters in Washington, DC, U.S. on June 24, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Wall Street<65>s top regulator, has discovered a vulnerability in its corporate filing database that could cause the system to collapse, according to an internal document seen by Reuters. The SEC<45>s September 22 memo reveals that its EDGAR database, containing financial reports from U.S. public companies and mutual funds, could be at risk of <20>denial of service<63> attacks, a type of cyber intrusion that floods a network, overwhelming it and forcing it to close. The discovery came when the SEC was testing EDGAR<41>s ability to absorb monthly and annual financial filings that will be required under new rules adopted last year for the $18 trillion mutual fund industry. The memo shows that even an unintentional error by a company, and not just hackers with malicious intentions, could bring the system down. Even the submission of a large <20>invalid<69> form could overwhelm the system<65>s memory. The defect comes after the SEC<45>s admission last month that hackers breached the EDGAR database in 2016. The discovery will likely add to concerns about the vulnerability of the SEC<45>s network and whether the agency has been adequately addressing cyber threats. The mutual fund industry has long had concerns that market-sensitive data required in the new rules could be exploited if it got into the wrong hands. The industry has since redoubled its calls for SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to delay the data-reporting rules, set to go into effect in June next year, until it is reassured the information will be secure. <20>Clearly, the SEC should postpone implementation of its data reporting rule until the security of those systems is thoroughly tested and assessed by independent third parties,<2C> said Mike McNamee, chief public communications officer of The Investment Company Institute (ICI), whose members manage $20 trillion worth of assets in the United States. <20>We are confident Chairman Clayton will live up to his pledge that the SEC will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure the security of its systems and the data it collects.<2E> An SEC spokesman declined to comment. The rules adopted last year requiring asset managers to file monthly and annual reports about their portfolio holdings were designed to protect them in the event of a market crisis by showing the SEC and investors that they have enough liquidity to cover a rush of redemptions. During a Congressional hearing on Wednesday, Clayton testified that the agency was considering whether to delay the rules in light of the cyber concerns. He did not, however, mention anything about the denial of service attack vulnerability. VIRTUAL VOMIT EDGAR is the repository for corporate America, housing millions of filings ranging from quarterly earnings to statements on acquisitions. It is a virtual treasure trove for cyber criminals who could trade on any information gleaned before it is publicly released. In the hack disclosed last month involving EDGAR, the SEC has said it now believes the criminals may have stolen non-public data for illicit trading. The vulnerability revealed in the September memo shows that even an invalid form could jam up EDGAR. The system did not immediately reject the form, the memo says. Rather, <20>it was being validated for hours before failing due to an invalid form type.<2E> That conclusion could spell trouble for the SEC<45>s EDGAR database because it means that if hackers wanted to, they could <20>basically take down the whole EDGAR system<65> by submitting a malicious data file, said one cyber security expert with experience secur
'968ce2973476d665bc445a21a455a30cde3d0200'|'Japan transport minister says unauthorised technicians certified cars at five Nissan plants'|'Reuters TV United States October 6, 2017 / 2:47 AM / a few seconds ago Japan transport minister says unauthorized technicians certified cars at five Nissan plants   Logo of the Nissan Motor Co. is displayed at the 44th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan, November 2, 2015. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Transport Minister Keiichi Ishii said on Friday that unauthorized technicians had been found certifying vehicles at five Nissan Motor Co ( 7201.T ) plants that the ministry has been inspecting. The unauthorized technicians included contract workers, Ishii told a news conference. Nissan has decided to recall all 1.2 million new passenger cars it sold in Japan over the past three years after discovering final vehicle inspections were not performed by authorized technicians. Reporting by Maki Shiraki; Editing by Michael Perry'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-nissan-recall-minister/japan-transport-minister-says-unauthorized-technicians-certified-cars-at-five-nissan-plants-idUKKBN1CB06W'|'2017-10-06T05:43:00.000+03:00'
'e9d7fbe3343c342062e84199318c6ea0333b2a75'|'Japan Display seeks $900 million for new OLED production method, shares soar'|'October 4, 2017 / 1:08 AM / Updated 5 hours ago Japan Display seeks $900 million for new OLED production method, shares soar Makiko Yamazaki 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO : Japan Display Inc''s logo is pictured at its headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, August 9, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japan Display Inc ( 6740.T ) group firm aims to raise $900 million (678.63 million pounds) to mass produce OLED panels using new technology that will slash costs, a source familiar with the matter said - plans that sent shares in the Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) supplier surging 24 percent. Display makers are looking at mass producing organic light-emitting diode screens with a lower-cost printing process and if Japan Display was first, that could help it catch up with South Korean rivals after long being a laggard in OLED technology. Its affiliate, JOLED, which is majority owned by a state-backed fund, has been working towards using the technology to start mass production of medium-sized screens for medical equipment monitors in late 2018 or early 2019. JOLED has now approached dozens of investors including Sony Corp ( 6758.T ) and Canon Inc ( 7751.T ) for funds, the Nikkei business daily reported on Wednesday. Japan Display said in a statement the reported details were not something it had announced, but added that it was considering ways to utilise its domestic factories to mass produce OLED panels. The source, who was not authorised to speak on the matter, declined to be identified. OLED screens are gaining in popularity as they are generally thinner, more flexible and offer richer colours than liquid crystal display (LCD) panels. Apple has adopted an OLED screen for its new iPhone X. But high production costs are still keeping OLED screens from being used widely. FILE PHOTO - Japan Display Inc''s high resolution panel for mobile is displayed at its headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, August 9, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon Bigger rivals Samsung Electronics Co Ltd ( 005930.KS ) and LG Display Co Ltd ( 034220.KS ) are also working on the new production technology but it is not clear who is in the lead. Hiroshi Hayase, senior director at research firm IHS, said the printing method should result in products 30 to 40 percent cheaper than those made by the current evaporation method. If it could be used to make large panels such as TV screens, that would be a major breakthrough for the industry as it could eliminate the colour filters that are currently necessary. <20>JOLED has taken a key step forward,<2C> said Hayase. <20>It now seems a matter of investment,<2C> he added. For large panels, JOLED said it plans to licence the printing technology to electronics makers willing to launch a production line. Shares in Japan Display rocketed higher on the news it was seeking funds, which was first reported by the Nikkei, and they closed up 24 percent to give the firm a market value of $1.5 billion. Japan Display also has separate plans to use the evaporation method to mass-produce smaller screens for smartphones from 2019 and is considering tapping new investors to fund that move. Japan Display currently holds 15 percent of JOLED, but plans to take a majority stake. Sony Corp ( 6758.T ) and Panasonic Corp ( 6752.T ) each own 5 percent. Reporting by Makiko Yamzaki; Additional reporting by Chang-Ran Kim and Miyoung Kim; Editing by Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-display-oled/japan-display-shares-soar-on-report-it-will-mass-produce-oled-panels-idUKKCN1C9037'|'2017-10-04T12:57:00.000+03:00'
'01688f720daf17f7ea0bfa49fc3eee18a1aecc4a'|'General Cable receives bids from European rivals Prysmian, Nexans and NKT - sources'|'October 6, 2017 / 7:27 PM / in 5 minutes General Cable receives bids from European rivals Prysmian, Nexans and NKT: sources Pamela Barbaglia 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. cable manufacturer General Cable Corp ( BGC.N ) has received tentative bids from European rivals Prysmian ( PRY.MI ), Nexans ( NEXS.PA ) and NKT ( NKT.CO ), two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as part of its efforts to find a new owner. The three European cable firms are vying with a handful of U.S. rivals, one of the sources said, adding first-round bids came in earlier this week. Kentucky-based General Cable has a market value of almost $1 billion and specialises in aluminium, copper and fibre optic wire and cable products. In July it hired JPMorgan to kick off a strategic review and identify a possible merger partner in a bid to boost growth and maximize shareholder value. At least five companies have taken part in the sales process, the sources said, and the bidders are now waiting to find out if they have been admitted to the second stage of the auction. General Cable shares in New York jumped more than 8 percent to $21.65 after Reuters broke news of the bids. U.S. wire maker Southwire Co, which snapped up some assets from General Cable in past years, could be part of the bidding field, one of the sources said, adding however that it would face fierce competition from Milan-based Prysmian, the world<6C>s largest cable maker. Prysmian and Nexans declined to comment while General Cable, NKT and Southwire were not immediately available for comment. Prysmian boss Valerio Battista said in July that the possible sale of General Cable could accelerate sector consolidation and the Italian firm was hoping to be part of the game while trying not to overpay. Prysmian, whose revenues rose 2.8 percent to 7.57 billion euros in 2016, has long been working on an overseas acquisition as it wants to maintain supremacy over its arch-rival Nexans, the sources said, adding that North America is a strategic market for growth. Prysmian and Nexans engaged in a bidding war back in 2010 as they both sought to take over Dutch firm Draka, a key target to create the world<6C>s largest supplier of cables for anything from telecoms to lifts. Prysmian, which eventually clinched control of Draka in a $1.15 billion euro deal, has been buying small and medium-sized companies in recent years in a bid to gain scale in a fragmented market. Additional reporting by Francesca Landini and Massimo Gaia in Milan and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen in Copenhagen; Editing by Susan Fenton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-general-cable-m-a-prysmian-nexans-nkt/general-cable-receives-bids-from-european-rivals-prysmian-nexans-and-nkt-sources-idUKKBN1CB2IC'|'2017-10-06T23:44:00.000+03:00'
'bcd7b8f09ba908b1355eb81babc126beb7b53e10'|'Penn National, Pinnacle Entertainment consider merger: WSJ'|'(Reuters) - U.S. casino operator Penn National Gaming Inc ( PENN.O ) has been in merger discussions with rival Pinnacle Entertainment Inc ( PNK.O ), the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.The companies have engaged in on and off discussions about a deal, but have been unable to agree on terms, the Journal said. However, Wyomissing, Pennsylvania-based Penn National is still interested in buying Las Vegas-based Pinnacle, according to the report. ( on.wsj.com/2y3kGQp )Penn National and Pinnacle<6C>s shares touched record highs on Thursday, with Penn National rising as much as 8 percent to $24.74 and Pinnacle surging 14.1 percent to $24.94 in late-afternoon trading.Penn National had a market capitalization of about $2.09 billion as of Wednesday<61>s close, while Pinnacle was valued at $1.26 billion. The combined companies have an enterprise value of about $10.69 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data.Penn National operates 27 facilities in the United States and Canada, including the Tropicana Las Vegas and the Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races.Pinnacle owns and operates 16 gaming properties, including the Meadows Casino in Washington, Pennsylvania, and Boomtown Casino Hotel in New Orleans.Pinnacle declined to comment, while Penn National did not respond to a request for comment.Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-pinnacl-ent-m-a-penn-natl-gaming/penn-national-pinnacle-entertainment-consider-merger-wsj-idINKBN1CA2KU'|'2017-10-05T18:04:00.000+03:00'
'db9b1e15578d3d550f1e194336fcabb2583cdea1'|'UPDATE 2-Shrinking margins cloud Costco''s profit beat, shares fall'|'(Adds share move; Comments from conf call, analyst; Background on Amazon-Whole Foods deal)Oct 5(Reuters) - Costco Wholesale Corp<72>s quarterly profit scraped past estimates, helped by a hike in membership fees, but a fall in gross margins fueled concerns of an intensifying grocer price war, sending shares down 3.6 percent in after-market trading.Investors are wary that Costco<63>s business model, which mainly generates revenue through a niche membership club, faces increased competition from online giant Amazon.com Inc, which has begun to shake up the grocery space with its acquisition of Whole Foods.Gross margins in the fourth quarter were lower year-over-year by 15 basis points, as the retailer spends to drive sales and member loyalty, Costco said on a post-earnings conference call on Thursday.<2E>We believe near-term sentiment and fear of the long-term impact of Amazon on Costco<63>s business could continue to create an overhang on COST shares and limit valuation upside,<2C> BMO Capital Markets analysts said in a pre-earnings client note.Costco<63>s shares have fallen 7.2 percent since the Amazon-Whole Foods deal was announced in June.MEMBERSHIP FEE HIKE Costco implemented its annual membership fee increase by $5-$60 for Goldstar and business members, and by $10-$120 for executive memberships in the quarter.Membership fees, which accounted for about 72 percent of Costco<63>s operating income in 2016, rose 13 percent in the 17-week fourth quarter ended Sept. 3.Excluding the impact of fuel and currency fluctuations, total comp sales rose 5.7 percent, while analysts at research firm Consensus Metrix expected an increase of 5.1 percent.Costco<63>s U.S. comp sales rose 5.8 percent in the quarter.Net income attributable to Costco rose to $919 million, or $2.08 per share, from $779 million, or $1.77 per share.Total revenue rose 15.7 percent to $42.30 billion.Analysts on average had estimated earnings of $2.02 per share and revenue of $41.55 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Reporting by Karina Dsouza and Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/costco-wholesale-results/update-1-costcos-quarterly-profit-sales-beat-estimates-idINL4N1MG3B8'|'2017-10-05T18:57:00.000+03:00'
'9eb46c08a84f70745d13eae6472f0c8f89a07136'|'MIDEAST STOCKS-FTSE decisions hurt Saudi, boost Kuwait blue chips'|'* Saudi blue chips down on FTSE decision to delay upgrade* Upgrade decision likely next March* Kuwait to enter emerging market index in September 2018* Egypt<70>s index hits record high* Qatar falls again but poll finds regional funds turn positiveBy Celine AswadDUBAI, Oct 1 (Reuters) - The Saudi stock index fell on Sunday after news that index compiler FTSE had decided to delay including Riyadh in its secondary emerging market index, while Kuwaiti blue chips were strong after FTSE included Kuwait.In its annual country classification review on Friday, FTSE praised Riyadh<64>s market reforms but said it would need more time to evaluate their practical impact.It will therefore assess Saudi Arabia again next March: <20>It is anticipated that Saudi Arabia will meet the requirements for inclusion as a Secondary Emerging market from early 2018.<2E>Khalid al Hussan, chief executive of the Saudi exchange, told Al Arabiya television that Riyadh could still enter the index as soon as in September 2018, attracting between $2.5 billion and $3 billion of passive funds when it did so.<2E>There are new measures taking place to allow foreign shares, companies to list on Tadawul in the coming year,<2C> he added.The Saudi index had dropped 0.6 percent last week amid rumours that FTSE<53>s decision would be negative. On Sunday it lost a further 0.7 percent and blue chips that would probably be part of the emerging market index bore the brunt of selling; Saudi Basic Industries dropped 1.0 percent and Samba Financial Group lost 1.3 percent.FTSE decided that Kuwait would enter its emerging market index in September 2018. Though the news had been expected by many investors, confirmation of the upgrade boosted stocks such as the region<6F>s largest warehousing company Agility, which climbed 1.2 percent, and National Bank of Kuwait , which jumped 3.3 percent.Kuwait<69>s index of the top 15 most valuable shares added 1.9 percent, but the main index fell 0.1 percent.It is not clear that FTSE index inclusion will bring much money to Kuwait, however. Before the decision, some analysts were talking of passive fund inflows of several hundred million dollars, but in a report on Saturday, Arqaam Capital calculated Kuwaiti stocks might have a combined weighting of only 0.11 percent, resulting in $151.5 million of inflows.Elsewhere, Qatar<61>s index declined 0.2 percent in its third straight session of losses as most large-caps fell; lender Masraf Al Rayan lost 1.3 percent.However, the latest Reuters poll of regional fund managers, published on Thursday, showed their sentiment toward Qatar<61>s stock market had on balance turned positive after it plunged in response to sanctions imposed by other Arab states. Valuations have in some cases reached distressed levels.Egypt<70>s main index added 0.6 percent, rising above the July peak to an all-time high. The index gained momentum last week as it started to price in a reversal of tight monetary policy.<2E>The market is trading with greater confidence ... and the vote of confidence is evident in the trading volumes. September<65>s volumes were the highest since January,<2C> said a Cairo-based broker.Abu Dhabi<62>s index rose 0.3 percent on the back of blue chips; First Abu Dhabi Bank added 0.5 percent.The Dubai index fell 0.5 percent as theme park operator DXB Entertainments lost 2.9 percent. But Gulf General Investment rose 2.2 percent after saying it had completed a 2.1 billion dirham ($572 million) debt restructuring that would give it until 2023 to dispose of non-core assets. It did not give details.HIGHLIGHTS SAUDI ARABIA * The index fell 0.7 percent to 7,234 points.DUBAI * The index declined 0.5 percent to 3,545 points.ABU DHABI * The index added 0.3 percent to 4,411 points.QATAR * The index edged down 0.2 percent to 8,292 points.EGYPT * The index rose 0.6 percent to 13,977 points.KUWAIT * The index dipped 0.1 percent to 6,672 points.OMAN * The index rose 0.4 percent to 5,156 points. (Editing by Andrew Torchia and Dale Hudson) '|'reuters.com
'f6cb25bb097b6a1351b586080f84f00c32c102cc'|'More fuel on way to Puerto Ricans, power still down for most'|'October 2, 2017 / 2:21 PM / in 36 minutes More fuel on way to Puerto Ricans, power still down for most 6 Min Read A man stands inside of a destroyed supermarket by Hurricane Maria in Salinas, Puerto Rico. REUTERS/Alvin Baez SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello reported progress in getting fuel supplies to the island<6E>s 3.4 million inhabitants on Monday as they faced a 13th day largely without power after the U.S. territory was devastated by Hurricane Maria. U.S. President Donald Trump, who has faced criticism for his administration<6F>s response to the disaster, is scheduled to visit Puerto Rico on Tuesday, as food and drinking water remain in short supply. Nearly two weeks after the fiercest hurricane to hit the island in 90 years, some residents got cell phone service back on Sunday. Others gathered at bars for drinking and dancing after a dry law was lifted this weekend. The ramping up of fuel supplies should allow more Puerto Ricans to operate generators and travel more freely where the state of the roads allows. <20>We<57>ve been increasing the number of gas stations that are open,<2C> Rossello said at a news briefing, with more than 720 of the island<6E>s 1,100 gas stations now up and running. Puerto Rico relies on fuel supplies shipped from the mainland United States and distribution has been disrupted by the bad state of roads. <20>We will be receiving more fuel supplies in the coming days,<2C> said Rossello, who is expecting some 300,000 barrels of diesel on Wednesday and 100,000 barrels of gasoline. Within the next couple of days, he expects 500,000 barrels of diesel and close to 1 million of gasoline to arrive on the island. One of the territory<72>s main oil ports, Yabucoa, received its first tanker on Monday after resuming restricted operations during the weekend while Ponce, another large port, resumed work, according to the U.S. Department of Energy and Thomson Reuters vessel tracking data. The island<6E>s largest port, San Juan, fully reopened on Thursday. Related Coverage Puerto Rico oversight board to assess damage effects on economy: member <20>The flow is coming, gasoline is getting here,<2C> Rossello said. <20>We have been able to reduce the time that it takes to get gasoline and diesel at different stations.<2E> He said 8,800 people now were housed in 140 shelters. There were as many as 500 shelters in operation 10 days ago. He said 47 percent of water and sewer service is up but there is variation across the island. Federal and local authorities were working together to keep 50 hospitals operational and Rossello said the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort would arrive in Puerto Rico between Tuesday and Wednesday. At least 5.4 percent of customers in Puerto Rico had their power restored by mid-morning on Monday, according to the U.S. Energy Department, with San Juan<61>s airport and marine terminal and several hospitals back on the power grid. It said the head of Puerto Rico<63>s power utility expects 15 percent of electricity customers to have power restored within the next two weeks. FINANCIAL WOES As it tries to get back on its feet, Puerto Rico is in danger of running out of cash in a matter of weeks because the economy has come to a halt in the hurricane<6E>s aftermath, Rossello told the local El Nuevo Dia newspaper in an interview published on Monday. After filing for the largest U.S. local government bankruptcy on record in May, Puerto Rico owes about $72 billion to creditors and another $45 billion or so in pension benefits to retired workers before it even accounts for the extra expense of recovery. <20>There is no cash on hand. We have made a huge effort to get $2 billion in cash,<2C> Rossello said in the interview. <20>But let me tell you what $2 billion means when you have zero collection: it<69>s basically a month government<6E>s payroll, a little bit more.<2E> It is not yet clear how the United States will help finance Puerto Rico<63>s recovery, which likely will cost more than $30 billion. Rossello said last week hi
'6f9b9cc5020b6bec669dc80bb65bcf6ff91f1cd7'|'US paper maker Appvion files for bankruptcy'|'Oct 2 (Reuters) - Paper maker Appvion Inc and some of its subsidiaries filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday, the company said.Appvion listed assets in the range of $100 million-$500 million and liabilities in the range of $500 million-$1 billion, the Delaware bankruptcy court filing showed.The company said it has obtained a commitment for $85 million in new debtor-in-possession financing from a group of its first lien lenders. (Reporting by Kanishka Singh; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/appvion-bankruptcy/us-paper-maker-appvion-files-for-bankruptcy-idUSL4N1MD1OC'|'2017-10-02T12:22:00.000+03:00'
'02e73f6bf73fada31504b0d4c1f0378bd907c8d6'|'Saudi Aramco IPO on track for 2018 - officials'|'October 5, 2017 / 8:55 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Saudi Aramco IPO on track for 2018: officials Olesya Astakhova , Katya Golubkova 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Saudi Aramco employee sits in the area of its stand at the Middle East Petrotech 2016, an exhibition and conference for the refining and petrochemical industries, in Manama, Bahrain, September 27, 2016. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed /File Photo MOSCOW (Reuters) - A plan to list Saudi Aramco in 2018 is on track, senior Saudi officials said in Moscow on Thursday, as Saudi Arabia gears up to sign a string of investment agreements with Russia. The plan to float around 5 percent of Aramco in an initial public offering (IPO) is a centerpiece of Vision 2030, a wide-ranging reform plan to diversify the Saudi economy beyond oil which is being championed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. <20>Work is ongoing to list Saudi Aramco in 2018,<2C> Aramco<63>s Chief Executive Amin Nasser said at an energy forum in Moscow. <20>We will be looking at (evaluating) investors as we continue to make progress related to timing and location.<2E> Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih, who is also Aramco<63>s chairman, said on Thursday that the IPO would happen in the second half of 2018, adding that the listing would be used as a <20>catalyst<73> for the opening up of the Saudi economy. The announcement about the company<6E>s IPO will be made <20>in due course<73>, he said while taking part in a panel discussion of an energy forum in Moscow. Prince Mohammad has said the IPO, which could be the world<6C>s biggest, will value Aramco at a minimum of $2 trillion and could raise as much as $100 billion. Money raised from the sale will be used to develop other sectors and industries in the country. Aramco<63>s listing is planned on Saudi Arabia<69>s local stock market plus at least one overseas exchange. New York, London and Hong Kong are the main contenders. Nasser said the Saudi government would decide on the listing venue and that there were no current talks with Russian companies on them taking part in the IPO. INVESTMENT DEALS Both Falih and Nasser are part of an official Saudi visit to Moscow. Saudi King Salman is in Russia on a state visit, the first to Moscow by a reigning Saudi monarch. Several investment agreements will be signed during King Salman<61>s trip and plans for a $1-billion fund to invest in energy projects are likely to be finalised. These are part of efforts by two of the world<6C>s biggest oil producers to increase cooperation. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Wednesday Russia and Saudi Arabia would sign joint investment agreements worth more than $3 billion during the visit. One of those was a memorandum of understanding signed on Thursday between Aramco and Russia<69>s oil trading company Litasco. Other similar agreements with Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, and Sibur will also be signed. Nasser said Aramco was discussing several investment opportunities with Russian firms. <20>LNG (liquefied natural gas) is one of the area where we are looking to collaborate with Russian partners,<2C> he said, giving an example of the MoUs that will be signed with Gazprom and Gazprom Neft. The Russian Direct Investment Fund on Thursday will also sign an MoU with Aramco and Saudi<64>s Public Investment Fund for investments in energy services and manufacturing. Reporting by Olesya Astakhova, Katya Golubkova, Jack Stubbs and Vladimir Soldatkin; Writing by Rania El Gamal and Christian Lowe; Editing by Andrey Ostroukh and Jane Merriman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-oil-opec-russia-saudi-aramco/saudi-oil-minister-says-saudi-aramco-ipo-plan-firmly-on-track-idUKKBN1CA0SI'|'2017-10-05T13:41:00.000+03:00'
'ddf6ab2fa10e063db8d63003d36815f17524b2d6'|'Anadarko shutting production at two U.S. Gulf platforms ahead of Nate'|'HOUSTON, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Anadarko Petroleum Corp said on Thursday it is shutting in production at two U.S. Gulf of Mexico platforms ahead of Tropical Storm Nate.The company said it has removed all staff and shut oil and natural gas production at the Horn Mountain platform and would do the same at the Marlin platform on Friday. Non-essential personnel are being removed from the company<6E>s Constitution, Holstein, Lucius and Marco Polo platforms as well.Nate is forecast to enter the Gulf and strengthen into a hurricane before making landfall early on Sunday around Louisiana, near several major refineries. (Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; editing by Grant McCool) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/storm-nate-anadarko-petrol/anadarko-shutting-production-at-two-u-s-gulf-platforms-ahead-of-nate-idUSL2N1MG2AB'|'2017-10-06T00:47:00.000+03:00'
'0437a42a76a6a1ab6ae63864533aee659c305422'|'The bosses of two famous French firms struggle to keep customers'|'ALEXANDRE RICARD wants to talk boxing. He runs Pernod Ricard, a firm that sells Chivas whisky and Absolut vodka, among other drinks. Formed by his grandfather in 1975, with roots in a Pernod distiller set up in 1805, it is the world<6C>s second-largest seller of wine and spirits, with a market capitalisation of <20>32bn ($37bn). He brags that Floyd Mayweather, an American pugilist with 19m Instagram followers, recently endorsed one of the company<6E>s tequila brands. Such a <20>key influencer<65> on a digital channel <20>gives us speed and scale<6C>, says Mr Ricard.Celebrity endorsements are an old ploy: French singers, actors and racing drivers used to push Pernod Ricard<72>s liquor. But with 90% of sales in markets outside of France, punchier efforts are needed. Two years ago the firm commissioned a global study of boozing habits, which totted up all <20>moments of consumption<6F> for drinkers, identifying 20 important ones in America, the biggest market. Teams of marketers are now told to push a brand for each such experience: the firm<72>s tequila when American friends gather to watch sport; its cognac at Chinese weddings; gin for Spaniards sharing an aperitif. The firm must respond somehow, because drinkers, especially millennials (the generation which roughly includes those born between 1980 and 1996), are no longer loyal, says Mr Ricard. <20>Back in the day, you had a one-brand consumer,<2C> who took a favoured tipple on almost any occasion. <20>Now it depends who you are with, where you are, the time of day. A consumer might have six brands,<2C> he says.Across Paris, Emmanuel Faber, the head of another large French consumer-goods firm, Danone, is facing a similar challenge as consumers of yogurt and bottled water prove fickle too. His style<6C>ascetic and almost monkish, as an acquaintance puts it<69>differs sharply from that of his compatriot. But the two bosses are responding to the same phenomenon: a lack of growth in food-and-drinks sales at big firms. <20>People are walking out of brands that they<65>ve been consuming for decades,<2C> says Mr Faber. To stop feeling disconnected from the origin of food, he says, they are switching to small, local firms that might produce organic foods, for example.Of the two firms, Danone faces the biggest and most immediate shift in consumer tastes. Although he heads a global food firm with a market value of <20>46bn, Mr Faber warns that time may be up for standardisation in food-making. The food industry <20>is going nowhere<72>, he adds, because short-sighted companies see only a <20>transactional relationship<69>, not a deeper one based on values, with their customers.These days people have little faith in the makers of their food and drink. Mr Faber talks at length about disenchantment shown by voters and consumers alike towards elites. Surveys show the public barely trusts CEOs such as himself when they speak about their companies, he says. Consumers <20>care about the sovereignty of their food, taking control back<63>.Danone<6E>s response, like that of Pernod Ricard, is partly about niftier marketing<6E>it runs an ad campaign called <20>One Planet. One Health<74>. But the company is also changing some basics. Two decades ago Danone sold <20>beer, wine, chocolates and candies<65>, he points out. It has switched entirely to healthier products, betting that long-term growth lies there. The firm aims to be entirely carbon-neutral.Most striking, Danone wants to get certified as a B-Corp<72>a for-profit firm that shows high social and environmental standards. It would be the largest company globally to do so. In America that requires registration as a <20>public benefit<69> firm, letting board directors legally promote the interests of staff, customers and others, along with those of shareholders.Markets are not entirely convinced by Danone<6E>s strategy, however. An American activist investor, Corvex, has taken a small stake, worth $400m, in the company, and is agitating for its operations to be improved and growth lifted.Yet investors have drunk in the simpler story at Pe
'c74dfa17af1b4b62cd6703b2cc837dab6fcd07ea'|'Downplaying job losses, Fed officials eye December rate hike'|'October 6, 2017 / 7:59 PM / Updated 5 minutes ago Downplaying job losses, Fed officials eye December rate hike Ann Saphir , Jonathan Spicer 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: William C. Dudley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York speaks during a panel discussion at The Bank of England in London, Britain, March 21, 2017. REUTERS/Kirsty Wigglesworth/Pool/File Photo AUSTIN, Texas/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Chocking up employment losses last month to the temporary hit of a severe hurricane season and reiterating expectations that inflation will strengthen, Federal Reserve policymakers on Friday signaled they continue to see gradual U.S. interest-rate hikes ahead. <20>Even though inflation is currently somewhat below our longer-run objective, I judge that it is still appropriate to continue to remove monetary policy accommodation gradually,<2C> said New York Fed President William Dudley, whose regular meetings with Fed Chair Janet Yellen and constant contact with Wall Street banks bolster his influence among Fed policymakers. While other policymakers largely agreed, they also said they were keeping a close eye on the data, particularly on inflation. And one offered a strong rebuttal, saying the central bank risked a <20>policy mistake<6B> if it continues raising rates despite inflation data that remains stalled. <20>If we go too far in our zeal to normalize (rates) we might push inflation expectations down further and that might hinder our ability to hit our target,<2C> said St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, who called the September jobs number <20>startling<6E> even given the hurricane. <20>The December meeting is going to be too early to make a determination on whether inflation is coming back.<2E> Others were more on board with the December increase, though they also offered some skepticism about inflation. Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic, the newest of the 12 Fed presidents, told Reuters in an interview that he continues to believe the U.S. central bank should raise interest rates again by the end of the year, though he is <20>not wedded<65> to that position and continues to track data closely. And Robert Kaplan, chief of the Dallas Fed, told reporters that inflation is <20>likely building<6E> given the low unemployment rate, which would make the case for further rate hikes. Though the number of jobs fell in September for the first time in seven years, the unemployment rate fell to 4.2 percent and hourly wages rose more than expected. Striking a somewhat less eager tone than his colleagues though, Kaplan said, <20>I<EFBFBD>m going to watch a little bit here. We have the benefit of having a little time and I plan to take it.<2E> Last month, the Fed left rates unchanged and announced the well-telegraphed start to a gradual shrinking of its $4.5 trillion balance sheet, which was swollen by massive purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities in the aftermath of the 2007-2009 financial crisis and recession. President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Raphael W. Bostic seen in this handout photo obtained by Reuters October 6, 2017. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta/Handout via REUTERS But market expectations are high that the Fed will hike rates again in December, especially after Fed Chair Janet Yellen outlined why she is fairly confident that inflation, now at 1.4 percent by the Fed<65>s preferred measure, will rise toward the Fed<65>s 2-percent target over the medium term. It would be imprudent, she said in late September, to wait until inflation actually reached that target to raise rates. Investors are more skeptical of the Fed<65>s forecasts of roughly three more hikes next year. Three of the policymakers suggested they would be open-minded about the economic data, and especially inflation readings, for the next several months due to temporary factors weighing on prices and also the hurricanes that struck the United States over the last 40 days. U.S. President Donald Trump recently interviewed at least three candidates who cou
'fbba7c151554086cf373f6d45e7df10051ca868f'|'Glencore-led Australian coal port eyes $3 billion debt rejig - sources'|'October 6, 2017 / 6:12 AM / Updated 14 minutes ago Glencore-led Australian coal port eyes $3 billion debt rejig - sources Paulina Duran , James Regan 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company''s headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann SYDNEY (Reuters) - Mining giant Glencore ( GLEN.L ) and its partners are proposing to repay part of $3 billion owed on the world<6C>s most expensive coal terminal, two lenders familiar with the matter said, in a bid to stave off a rapidly approaching deadline for full repayment. If the refinancing fails to go ahead by next September, loan terms require Glencore and four remaining partners in Wiggins Island Coal Export Terminal (WICET) on Australia<69>s east coast to pay off the full amount over the following decade. WICET first proposed the restructuring to the lenders<72> representative, McGrathNicol, last week, according to the people, who have knowledge of the financing talks but declined to be identified because negotiations were confidential. Regular meetings will continue until a deal can be struck, they said. A specific target of sustainable and tax-effective debt has yet to be decided, the lenders said. However, the proposal does not involve a haircut on the senior debt, nor would it release the coal miners from the port<72>s expensive handling charge and cost recovery commitments. <20>There<72>s a level of debt that this type of asset can sustain,<2C> one of the lenders told Reuters. <20>So the idea is to repay it to a tax-effective level and then refinance the rest on commercial terms.<2E> WICET was a boom-time port plan agreed in 2009 and completed late last year at Gladstone to service a consortium of eight Bowen Basin coal producers. But three out of the eight original partners have folded over the past two years, hit by a prolonged slump in coal prices worsened by the burden of paying <20>take-or-pay<61> port fees for anticipated volumes that they were never able to produce. Under the WICET agreement, the remaining five partners - Glencore, Wesfarmers ( WES.AX ), New Hope Corp ( NHC.AX ) and China<6E>s Yancoal ( YAL.AX ) and Baosteel ( 600019.SS ) arm Aquila Resources - have to shoulder all of the port<72>s debt and port fees for 27 million tonnes a year. That means they are now paying about $25 per tonne of coal, including financing charges - about five times the $5 per tonne port fee at the adjacent RG Tanna coal terminal. If the restructuring fails, that cost will increase, as the miners are then bound to repay their debt over the next 10 years. The WICET group and Glencore declined to comment. Complicating matters, Glencore has appointed law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler to explore ways to cut its ties to the project and hired Bank of America Merrill Lynch to find a buyer for its Rolleston mine, WICET<45>s largest contracted user. [nL4N1LE2ES] Arnold Bloch Leibler declined to comment. Meanwhile Wesfarmers has also said it is open to selling its Curragh coal mine, another partner of the port. [nL4N1I727D] ($1 = 1.2806 Australian dollars)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-glencore-coal-australia/glencore-led-australian-coal-port-eyes-3-billion-debt-rejig-sources-idUKKBN1CB0H9'|'2017-10-06T09:12:00.000+03:00'
'cfa338a45b502f441be59690b81f952b5a56f570'|'Dirt-cheap mobile data is a thrill for Indian consumers'|'THE security guards at the foot of Antilia, a 27-floor private residence in Mumbai, while away the days just as all bored Indians have been doing in recent months<68>watching movies on their phone. Using a mobile network to stream endless Bollywood epics would until recently have been an unthinkable luxury, even in the rich world. In India it now costs less than a cup of street-side chai.Thank the tycoon lording it in the skyscraper<65>s upper reaches. As boss of Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani, India<69>s richest man, has spent more than $25bn on building Jio, a state-of-the-art mobile-telecoms network. The delight of the guards at Antilia, and of the roughly 130m Indians who have signed up to the service since it launched in September 2016, is matched only by the misery of Mr Ambani<6E>s rivals.  Jio<69>s rise is nothing short of spectacular. It took less than a year for it to be delivering more data than any other mobile network in the world<6C>one billion billion bytes a month, it claims, or over half the data delivered by all American carriers put together. Less so when it comes to revenue: after giving away its services for seven months, it went on to charge customers a third of what other Indian operators do.Nobody thinks Mr Ambani is about to relent after winning a mere 11% or so of the market, a figure that is creeping up by around half a percentage point each month. Perhaps to terrify the competition further, he has spoken of wanting half the market to himself by 2021. To that end, the general public this week got their hands on the JioPhone, the latest plank in the company<6E>s growth push.A crossover between an antique Nokia-style feature phone (these still make up most new handsets sold in India) and a smartphone, the device is bound to appeal to Antilia<69>s security guards. It is free: you only pay a 1,500 rupee ($23) deposit, refundable after three years. Then, for a mere 153 rupees a month, customers can consume unlimited calls and data. Though the screen is small and popular apps such as Facebook are not (yet) available, analysts at CLSA, a brokerage, expect around 100m JioPhones to be sold in the next 18 months.Jio<69>s gatecrashing of what was an orderly market has plunged its rivals into crisis. Some moan that regulators have bent over backwards to help Reliance, known for its ability to run rings around officials. Many operators are in precarious financial positions, having bet that rapid user growth would offset the high fixed costs of acquiring spectrum and building networks. Now that Jio has snagged 84% of the 153m net mobile-phone additions in the year to July (see chart), others must fight for the scraps. A key metric, average revenue per user, has cratered across the industry. What profits remain are insufficient to service large debt piles. Analysts at Credit Suisse, a bank, calculate that over half of around $40bn in loans to the industry sits with operators whose earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation cannot meet interest payments.The government might get hit, too. Most lending to struggling telecom firms was by state-owned banks, whose long-overdue recapitalisation from public coffers will have to be bigger as a result. And the government itself is a creditor to telecoms companies, having agreed to spectrum bills being paid slowly over time. Against that, Mr Ambani<6E>s bet is uniquely in sync with the current government<6E>s ambitions. Jio launched its service with newspaper ads featuring a full-page portrait of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, dedicating its investment to his digital vision. And other services that need widespread internet adoption are clearly benefiting, from media-streaming to e-commerce.Consolidation seems the order of the day for the rest of the industry. Having written <20>6.3bn ($6.9bn) off the value of its local subsidiary and shelved a likely share listing, Vodafone, the British-owned second-biggest player, is merging with Idea Cellular, the third-biggest. Reliance Commu
'45d72db51785a49507848cfe4b070a459118f767'|'Porsche seeks 200 million euro damages from Audi over dieselgate: Bild'|'October 6, 2017 / 3:14 PM / in an hour Porsche seeks 200 million euro damages from Audi over dieselgate: Bild Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of Audi is pictured at the Auto China 2016 auto show in Beijing, April 25, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo BERLIN (Reuters) - Volkswagen<65>s ( VOWG_p.DE ) Porsche brand is seeking 200 million euros ($234 million) in damages from its luxury stablemate Audi over costs related to manipulated diesel engines, Bild newspaper reported on Friday. Porsche<68>s management delivered the claim in written form to counterparts at Audi, the newspaper said without citing its source. Audi ( NSUG.DE ) admitted in November 2015 that its 3.0 liter V6 diesel engines used in about 80,000 VW, Audi and Porsche models were fitted with an auxiliary device deemed illegal in the United States. The German government earlier this year ordered a recall of Porsche<68>s Cayenne sport-utility vehicle (SUV) and prohibited registrations of the model<65>s diesel version. Porsche wants compensation from Audi for the costs of the retrofits, legal counseling and customer measures, Bild said. A spokesman for Porsche said VW group-internal issues were not meant for public discussion, without elaborating. Audi declined comment and referred inquiries to Porsche. Reporting by Andreas Cremer and Jan Schwartz; Editing by Douglas Busvine and John Stonestreet'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-audi-porsche/porsche-seeks-200-million-euro-damages-from-audi-over-dieselgate-bild-idUSKBN1CB1XI'|'2017-10-06T18:14:00.000+03:00'
'877126af3f2a078d70868431fd53860b0a53e5fd'|'Elliott''s Gigamon bid stalls amid price disagreements: sources'|'October 6, 2017 / 12:19 AM / Updated 4 hours ago Elliott''s Gigamon bid stalls amid price disagreements: sources Liana B. Baker 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Hedge fund Elliott Management Corp<72>s attempt to acquire U.S. networking software maker Gigamon Inc has ground to a halt over price disagreements, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. The development is a setback for Elliott<74>s private equity arm, Evergreen Coast Capital Partners, as it seeks to become a credible buyer of public companies. Elliott has participated in buyouts of smaller private companies such as Dell<6C>s software group but it is best known as an activist shareholder. Gigamon rejected Elliott<74>s latest offer in the past few weeks after it came in below the company<6E>s share price, one of the sources said. Gigamon shares ended trading on Thursday at $43.55, giving the company a market capitalization of $1.6 billion. Negotiations could resume in the future with Elliott, or Gigamon could receive an offer from another party, the sources said. The sources asked not to be identified because the matter is confidential. Elliott and Gigamon declined to comment. Santa Clara, California-based Gigamon makes software used in large data centers to boost the flow of traffic and prevent bottlenecks. Elliott is one of Gigamon<6F>s largest shareholders, having disclosed a 15.3 percent stake in the company in May. Gigamon shares have risen about 24 percent since then. Founded by billionaire Paul Singer, Elliott is known for pushing many technology companies to sell themselves in recent years, including Mentor Graphics, LifeLock Inc and Qlik Technologies. But it has branched into private equity investing through its Evergreen unit, which was set up in 2015 and announced its first deal last year. A leveraged buyout of Gigamon would mark the first takeover of a public company to be led by Elliott. Elliott<74>s Evergreen participated in the auction for LifeLock, but the company was ultimately sold to Symantec Corp for $2.3 billion. Reporting by Liana B. Baker in San Francisco; Editing by Cynthia Osterman '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-gigamon-m-a-elliott/elliotts-gigamon-bid-stalls-amid-price-disagreements-sources-idINKBN1CB01I'|'2017-10-05T22:19:00.000+03:00'
'86ef744bf1bb27217b57be8779e276fe7ae99be3'|'No decision yet on whether to go ahead with Monday''s Catalan parliament session-Speaker'|'October 5, 2017 / 5:08 PM / in 19 minutes No decision yet on whether to go ahead with Monday''s Catalan parliament session-Speaker Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 5 (Reuters) - A Spanish Constitutional Court ruling suspending a session of the Catalan parliament that planned to declare Catalonia<69>s independence from Spain damages freedom of expression, the speaker of the region<6F>s parliament said on Thursday. But Carme Forcadell said the parliament had taken no decision yet on whether Monday<61>s session would go ahead. The court<72>s decision to suspend Monday<61>s session before it had been formally convened <20>harms freedom of expression and the right of initiative of members of this parliament and shows once more how the courts are being used to solve political problems,<2C> she told reporters. (Reporting by Emma Pinedo; Editing by Adrian Croft)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/spain-politics-catalonia-speaker/no-decision-yet-on-whether-to-go-ahead-with-mondays-catalan-parliament-session-speaker-idUSL9N1GD02B'|'2017-10-05T20:07:00.000+03:00'
'0e5d0a7ccdb9fabaf4f7b598fee3b324172dec22'|'GMexico Transportes plans IPO on October 31: filing'|'MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - GMexico Transportes, the rail unit of miner and builder Grupo Mexico ( GMEXICOB.MX ), plans to price an initial public offering on Oct. 31, according to a prospectus posted on the Mexican stock exchange website on Wednesday.Its GMexico Transportes transportation division, previously called Infraestructura y Transportes Mexico (ITM), includes subsidiaries Ferrocarril Mexicano (Ferromex), Ferrosur, Intermodal Mexico and Texas Pacifico.The filing did not provide any guidance on the price range.Grupo Mexico in 2016 scrapped plans for the IPO of 15 percent of ITM<54>S stock, arguing that market conditions were not optimal. At that time, it had hoped to raise between 13.7 billion pesos and 16.0 billion pesos ($750 million to $876 million).Grupo Mexico struck a $2.1 billion deal in March to take over Florida East Coast Railway, allowing it to expand its exposure to U.S. rail freight, increase dollar earnings and diversify revenue sources.Reporting by Michael O''Boyle; editing by Diane Craft '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-grupomexico-ipo/gmexico-transportes-plans-ipo-on-october-31-filing-idINKBN1C934H'|'2017-10-04T21:33:00.000+03:00'
'c8b66392a05e3871d776dbe8c750957cb62bcfc6'|'Peugeot bets on utility cars, premium SUVs to boost Brazil sales'|'October 4, 2017 / 11:35 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Peugeot bets on utility cars, premium SUVs to boost Brazil sales Alberto Alerigi 3 Min Read Raindrops cover the logo of French car manufacturer Peugeot on a automobile seen in Nantes, France, July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe SAO PAULO (Reuters) - French car maker Peugeot SA ( PEUP.PA ) on Wednesday said it was focusing on utility vehicles to lift its market share in Brazil and would offer a similar set of models as it sells in Europe. The plan is part of the company<6E>s strategy to improve consumer perception of its products and, as a result, its performance in the Brazilian market. It follows Peugeot<6F>s 207 project, in which the company adapted a small, older European model for the Brazil market to lure customers with a cheaper car, but saw disappointing results. Brazil is seen by Peugeot, a Groupe PSA company, as one of five priority markets in the world, said Chief Executive Jean-Philippe Imparato to reporters in Sao Paulo on Wednesday. <20>Sales volumes are not our outright target. I prefer to boost our brand image,<2C> he said. <20>We are not going to fall again in the temptation of developing a small car specifically for Brazil, we are not going to sell at any price,<2C> he added, detailing the plan for the Brazilian market to converge to the same set of models Peugeot offers in Europe in five years<72> time. France, Iran and China are currently the largest markets for Peugeot. He declined to cite a target for Brazil or Latin America, but said the fact the firm has defined the country as a priority underscores the potential it sees for future brand development. According to Brazilian car dealers association Fenabrave, Peugeot sold 19,128 vehicles in the country this year, accounting for a market share of 1.22 percent. Its French rival Renault has 7.79 percent share while the leader General Motors, 17.9 percent. Peugeot is also looking to offer high-end models such as premium SUVs. In June it launched its 3008 model in Brazil and said there was a four-month wait for interested buyers to get the car. Imparato said the situation was a problem, due to higher than expected demand, but also an opportunity. The company will next year sell the 5008 version of the car in Brazil. Reporting by Alberto Alerigi; Writing by Marcelo Teixeira; Editing by Andrew Hay '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-peugeot-brazil/peugeot-bets-on-utility-cars-premium-suvs-to-boost-brazil-sales-idUSKBN1C934X'|'2017-10-05T02:34:00.000+03:00'
'c51546f3c2d32268668b59b24b92f141af86bfd0'|'BRIEF-Brookfield is said to discuss buying Abengoa''s Altantica stake- Bloomberg'|' 51 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago BRIEF-Brookfield is said to discuss buying Abengoa''s Altantica stake- Bloomberg Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 5 (Reuters) - * Brookfield is said to discuss buying Abengoa Sa''s 41.5 percent stake in its U.S.-traded unit Atlantica Yield Plc- Bloomberg,citing sources Source bloom.bg/2fUSgS0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-brookfield-is-said-to-discuss-buyi/brief-brookfield-is-said-to-discuss-buying-abengoas-altantica-stake-bloomberg-idUSFWN1MG0DD'|'2017-10-05T20:47:00.000+03:00'
'db4c7a702bfc23ecb9eb2b11d811b652a141faf7'|'New York-area hedge fund manager charged with Ponzi fraud'|'NEW YORK, Oct 5 (Reuters) - A suburban New York hedge fund manager who once worked at Morgan Stanley and was accused of losing or spending all but about $27,000 of the $21.8 million he told investors he had was criminally charged on Thursday with running a Ponzi scheme.Prosecutors said Michael Scronic, 46, of Pound Ridge, New York, stole more than $19 million from 45 investors he had lured since April 2010 to his Scronic Macro Fund by lying about his track record.Scronic, who has degrees from Stanford University and the University of Chicago, allegedly suffered losses in 28 of 29 calendar quarters, even as he reported largely positive returns on falsified account statements.Prosecutors said he also spent $2.9 million on himself over 5-1/2 years, including $180,000 annually on credit cards, fees for beach and country club memberships, and mortgage payments for a vacation home near Stratton Mountain in Vermont.A lawyer for Scronic could not immediately be identified. The defendant worked for Morgan Stanley from 1998 to 2005, including on an equities trading desk, court papers show. Morgan Stanley was not accused of wrongdoing.Scronic was criminally charged with one count each of securities fraud and wire fraud. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed related civil charges.Authorities said Scronic used some new money to repay earlier investors, but as cash became tight this summer refused to honor some investors<72> redemption requests.According to court papers, Scronic had emailed one of those investors in November 2015 that <20>what<61>s cool about my fund is that i<>m only in publicly traded options and cash so any redemptions are met within 2 business days so if you do need to withdraw for your business needs it will be quick and painless.<2E>Authorities said it proved otherwise.They said Scronic blamed a vacation, a relative<76>s medical condition, email issues, and a new quarterly redemption policy for refusing the investor<6F>s Aug. 8 redemption request.As of Monday, that investor was still waiting for his money, court papers showed. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Tom Brown) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/new-york-ponzi-scronic/new-york-area-hedge-fund-manager-charged-with-ponzi-fraud-idINL2N1MG1GD'|'2017-10-05T15:36:00.000+03:00'
'914f8a6999e9eac73cae2c0398e653749d38b51c'|'South Korea says after U.S. talks recognises need to amend trade pact'|'October 4, 2017 / 10:31 PM / Updated 22 minutes ago South Korea says after U.S. talks recognises need to amend trade pact Reuters Staff 1 Min Read U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer addresses the media to close the second round of NAFTA talks involving the United States, Mexico and Canada at Secretary of Economy headquarters in Mexico City, Mexico, September 5, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido WASHINGTON (Reuters) - South Korea indicated on Wednesday it was open to amending a free trade pact with the United States after initial differences over how to revise the 2012 agreement, which U.S. President Donald Trump called <20>a horrible deal.<2E> After a day of talks in Washington, South Korea<65>s trade ministry said in a statement <20>the two sides recognised the need to amend the FTA to enhance mutual benefits of the KORUS FTA.<2E> The U.S. trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, said the United States looked forward to stepped-up talks <20>to resolve outstanding implementation issues as well as to engage soon on amendments that will lead to fair, reciprocal trade.<2E> Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Jonathan Oatis'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-southkorea-trade/south-korea-says-after-u-s-talks-recognises-need-to-amend-trade-pact-idUKKBN1C932B'|'2017-10-05T01:31:00.000+03:00'
'c53dbc8997741469e753141020ba21408ee94f05'|'Mylan surges, Teva slumps after FDA approves Copaxone copy'|'October 5, 2017 / 4:31 AM / Updated 9 hours ago Mylan surges, Teva slumps after FDA approves Copaxone copy Michael Erman , Divya Grover 4 Min Read REUTERS - Mylan NV<4E>s long-awaited U.S. approval for its generic version of rival Teva<76>s blockbuster multiple sclerosis treatment Copaxone drove Mylan<61>s shares up around 18 percent on Wednesday while Teva shares plunged. The approval late on Tuesday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration came earlier than both companies had expected. It was issued a day after the health regulator said it would introduce measures to speed to market generic versions of complex drugs like Copaxone to help address the rising cost of pharmaceuticals. Copaxone is the leading MS therapy worldwide as well as Teva<76>s best-selling drug, generating more than $4 billion in revenue for the Israeli drugmaker last year. On Wednesday, Teva<76>s U.S.-listed shares sank 14 percent to $16.17, while Mylan<61>s shares rose $5.96 to $38.48. Teva said that Mylan was launching the drug before resolving various patent appeals, meaning that Mylan may risk having to pay damages if Teva prevails. The FDA approved two different doses of Mylan<61>s version of the drug, 20 mg and 40 mg. The 40 mg dosage accounted for more than 85 percent of Copaxone prescriptions in the second quarter. Analysts called the approval a big win for Mylan and said it would help 2017 and 2018 earnings. Mylan filed its first application for a version of Copaxone in 2009. Wells Fargo analyst David Maris said that optimistically the drug could add 13 cents a share to Mylan<61>s quarterly earnings going forward. That assumes Mylan captures a 40 percent share of the 40 mg dosage market at a 40 percent discount to Teva<76>s pricing. Mylan had lowered its 2017 and 2018 earnings forecast in August, due in part to delays getting FDA approvals for key generics like its versions of Copaxone and asthma treatment Advair. At the time it said it did not expect any major product launches until 2018. After the approval Mylan said it expected to start shipping its generic drug very soon. The FDA approval letter also said the company might be eligible for 180 days exclusivity on the drug, Mylan reported. Momenta Pharmaceuticals and the Sandoz unit of Novartis already sell a generic version of 20 mg Copaxone and are developing a version of the 40 mg dosage. But their difficulties in getting the higher-dose version approved had dampened expectations for Mylan before Tuesday. Momenta said the companies would still be able to launch during any exclusivity period if they receive approval. JPMorgan analysts said Teva now faces full generic competition for Copaxone nine to 12 months earlier than expected. Teva has already been hurting due to weak generics prices in the United States and high debt. Last month, Teva said it was looking to team up with other drugmakers to fund some of its development pipeline as it struggles with debt and expiring patents. The drugmaker<65>s specialty business has been losing ground since Copaxone ran out of patents. In August, a U.S. House of Representatives committee contacted Teva, Novartis and five other makers of multiple sclerosis drugs as part of a drug pricing investigation, saying that some of the dozen drugs used to treat the progressive neurological disease appeared to have lockstep price increases. The 2017 price for the 40 mg version of Copaxone is $80,000 per year and the 20 mg version is more than $90,000 after having been launched in 1996 at just over $8,000, the House committee said. Shares of Biogen Inc, another maker of MS drugs, fell 1.4 percent to $315.99. Momenta shares fell 15 percent, or $2.65, to $14.85. Reporting by Michael Erman in New York, Divya Grover in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Caroline Humer in New York; Editing by Frances Kerry and Leslie Adler'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mylan-nl-stocks-teva-pharm-ind/mylan-surges-teva-slumps-after-fda-approves
'46210924365515660c0eb42206b907ea18d6d599'|'U.S. Gulf oil producers start evacuating staff ahead of Tropical Storm Nate'|'October 5, 2017 / 5:16 PM / Updated 4 minutes ago U.S. Gulf oil producers start evacuating staff ahead of Tropical Storm Nate Ernest Scheyder , Marianna Parraga 4 Min Read HOUSTON (Reuters) - Oil and natural gas producers began evacuating staff at U.S. Gulf of Mexico platforms on Thursday ahead of Tropical Storm Nate, the second storm in as many months to threaten Gulf Coast oil and refining facilities. Nate, which has already killed three people in Costa Rica, according to local authorities, is forecast to scrape past Honduras and Mexico, enter the Gulf and strengthen into a hurricane before making landfall early on Sunday in Louisiana, near several major refineries. That path takes it through an area populated by offshore oil and natural gas platforms, which pumps more than 1.6 million barrels of crude per day, about 17 percent of U.S. output, according to government data. Forecasts for Nate have shifted in the past 24 hours. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) had forecast on Wednesday that the storm would make landfall in the Florida panhandle. Chevron Corp, Exxon Mobil Corp, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and others have begun withdrawing personnel from Gulf platforms. Marathon Oil Corp and ConocoPhillips said they were monitoring Nate<74>s path but have taken no action yet. Nate, the 14th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, comes less than two months after Hurricane Harvey tore through the Gulf, denting more than a quarter of oil production there, according to government data. Several Texas ports have been unable to allow large tankers to return after Harvey as they wait for dredging of channels. Some large tankers have been re-routed to Louisiana ports, some of which are now in Nate<74>s projected path. The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP), an offshore gathering hub for production platforms and crude imports from tankers, has not suspended operations and vessel activity around it continues as normal, officials said. All Louisiana ports were open and fully working on Thursday as authorities and the U.S. Coast Guard monitor the storm, according to the Port Association of Louisiana. <20>We are used to these type of things, so we have a hurricane plan we have put in place as we continue to monitor the storm,<2C> said Bill Rase, director of the Lake Charles port, which operated with restrictions after Harvey until Tuesday. Refiners in Louisiana also have been scrambling ahead of Nate. At least three Louisiana refineries were preparing to continue operation through Nate, sources familiar with plant operations said on Thursday. PBF Energy<67>s Chalmette, Louisiana, refinery and Shell<6C>s refineries in Convent and Norco, Louisiana, were preparing for the storm, but planned to remain in operation, the sources said. A PBF spokesman declined to discuss operations at the Chalmette refinery. A Shell spokesman was not available to comment. Chevron said its Pascagoula, Mississippi, refinery was monitoring the storm<72>s progress. Exxon said the same about its refinery and chemical plant in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A Marathon Petroleum Corp spokesman declined to discuss operations at the company<6E>s Garyville, Louisiana, refinery. Reporting by Ernest Scheyder and Marianna Parraga; Additional reporting by Erwin Seba and Bryan Sims in Houston and Enrique Andres Pretel in San Jose, Costa Rica; Editing by Susan Thomas'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-storm-nate-oil/u-s-gulf-oil-producers-start-evacuating-staff-ahead-of-tropical-storm-nate-idUSKBN1CA26Z'|'2017-10-05T20:07:00.000+03:00'
'bfc46e1a4f105d527476a48752b57a4561225be4'|'Vivendi says Milan prosecutor probe is a routine matter of course'|'MILAN (Reuters) - The investigation by Milan prosecutors of Vivendi ( VIV.PA ) managers stems from a complaint filed by the main shareholder of Italian broadcaster Mediaset ( MS.MI ) and is a due matter of course, the French group said on Thursday.Earlier on Thursday police raided the headquarters of Vivendi in Paris in connection with a probe into alleged market abuse relating to its acquisition of a stake in Mediaset.<2E>It is the result of the unfounded and unjust complaint presented by Berlusconi against Vivendi after its entry into Mediaset capital,<2C> Vivendi said in a statement.The family of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is the biggest shareholder of Mediaset.The French media group said the probe in no way indicated accusations against anyone.<2E>The investigation is routine,<2C> it said.Reporting by Stephen Jewkes; editing by Francesca Landini '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-vivendi-raid-probe/vivendi-says-milan-prosecutor-probe-is-a-routine-matter-of-course-idINKBN1CA19A'|'2017-10-05T09:40:00.000+03:00'
'aeb469e0e0d41385f7e88c321d757a36db21334a'|'Peugeot bets on utility cars, premium SUVs to boost Brazil sales'|'October 4, 2017 / 11:47 PM / Updated 7 minutes ago Peugeot bets on utility cars, premium SUVs to boost Brazil sales Alberto Alerigi 3 Min Read Raindrops cover the logo of French car manufacturer Peugeot on a automobile seen in Nantes, France, July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe SAO PAULO (Reuters) - French car maker Peugeot SA ( PEUP.PA ) on Wednesday said it was focusing on utility vehicles to lift its market share in Brazil and would offer a similar set of models as it sells in Europe. The plan is part of the company<6E>s strategy to improve consumer perception of its products and, as a result, its performance in the Brazilian market. It follows Peugeot<6F>s 207 project, in which the company adapted a small, older European model for the Brazil market to lure customers with a cheaper car, but saw disappointing results. Brazil is seen by Peugeot, a Groupe PSA company, as one of five priority markets in the world, said Chief Executive Jean-Philippe Imparato to reporters in Sao Paulo on Wednesday. <20>Sales volumes are not our outright target. I prefer to boost our brand image,<2C> he said. <20>We are not going to fall again in the temptation of developing a small car specifically for Brazil, we are not going to sell at any price,<2C> he added, detailing the plan for the Brazilian market to converge to the same set of models Peugeot offers in Europe in five years<72> time. France, Iran and China are currently the largest markets for Peugeot. He declined to cite a target for Brazil or Latin America, but said the fact the firm has defined the country as a priority underscores the potential it sees for future brand development. According to Brazilian car dealers association Fenabrave, Peugeot sold 19,128 vehicles in the country this year, accounting for a market share of 1.22 percent. Its French rival Renault has 7.79 percent share while the leader General Motors, 17.9 percent. Peugeot is also looking to offer high-end models such as premium SUVs. In June it launched its 3008 model in Brazil and said there was a four-month wait for interested buyers to get the car. Imparato said the situation was a problem, due to higher than expected demand, but also an opportunity. The company will next year sell the 5008 version of the car in Brazil. Reporting by Alberto Alerigi; Writing by Marcelo Teixeira; Editing by Andrew Hay'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-peugeot-brazil/peugeot-bets-on-utility-cars-premium-suvs-to-boost-brazil-sales-idUKKBN1C935S'|'2017-10-05T02:47:00.000+03:00'
'647b7041ac1511c21497776c36c71e4cc22bedca'|'Luxembourg asks Amazon to set aside EU-imposed tax repayment'|'October 5, 2017 / 1:40 PM / in a minute Luxembourg asks Amazon to set aside EU-imposed tax repayment Reuters Staff 1   The logo of the web service Amazon is pictured in Mexico City, Mexico on June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/Illustration/File Photo LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - Luxembourg will ask online retailer Amazon to set aside the 250 million euros ($293 million) the European Commission has ordered the company to repay in taxes while the parties consider whether or not to appeal. On Wednesday, the Commission took Ireland to court over its failure to recover up to 13 billion euros of tax due from Apple Inc. <20>It is clear that Amazon will have to make the payment as required. The money will be kept in a separate account until the outcome of the procedure,<2C> a spokesman for the Luxembourg Finance Ministry said. In other cases of illegal tax advantages, such as Fiat in Luxembourg, Starbucks in the Netherlands and a Belgian scheme for 35 companies, the money was also recovered even before appeals were exhausted, the European Commission said. Reporting by Michele Sinner in Luxembourg, writing by Robert-Jan Bartunek'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-amazon-taxavoidance-luxembourg/luxembourg-asks-amazon-to-set-aside-eu-imposed-tax-repayment-idUKKBN1CA1MM'|'2017-10-05T16:39:00.000+03:00'
'faf912288cee81850fdd5eb4c27f54b8166606c9'|'Hilton to add 29 hotels to its chain in Africa over five years'|'October 5, 2017 / 10:38 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Hilton to add 100 hotels to its chain in Africa over five years Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The logo of Hilton hotel is seen in Batumi, Georgia, May 2, 2016. REUTERS/David Mdzinarishvili/File Photo NAIROBI (Reuters) - Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. ( HLT.N ) plans to spend $50 million over the next five years to add 100 hotels to its chain in Africa, it said on Thursday, joining other chains keen to tap growing business and international travel on the continent. One property will open in the Kenyan capital Nairobi by the end of this year and another in the Rwandan capital Kigali in 2018, it said in a statement. There was 11 percent growth in Sub-Saharan African tourism in the past year, according to data from the U.N. World Tourism Organisation. Hilton said the remaining additions to its 39 existing African properties would be operational within the next five years. <20>The model of converting existing hotels into Hilton branded properties has proved highly successful in a variety of markets and we expect to see great opportunities to convert hotels to Hilton brands through this initiative,<2C> said Patrick Fitzgibbon, Hilton<6F>s senior vice president for development in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Earlier this week, Hyatt Hotels & Resorts said it would open six new hotels on the continent by 2020. (This version of the story has been refiled to add full name of company in first paragraph) Reporting by George Obulutsa; Editing by Mark Potter '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-africa-hilton/hilton-to-add-29-hotels-to-its-chain-in-africa-over-five-years-idUSKBN1CA12S'|'2017-10-05T13:38:00.000+03:00'
'e006ec9dbb3b7ab8fa338372673b61390546fb6b'|'Saudi Aramco to boost turnkey drilling contracts'|'October 5, 2017 / 2:05 PM / in 15 minutes Saudi Aramco to boost turnkey drilling contracts Reuters Staff 2 Min Read KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Saudi Aramco plans to increase turnkey drilling contracts as part of a strategy to boost collaboration with major oilfield service providers, four industry sources said. Aramco floated two tenders to renew work at the South Ghawar field; work that used to be conducted by Halliburton and in Udhailiyah for gas, work that was performed by Schlumberger . A third tender for a lump-sump turnkey contract (LSTK) is expected to be floated later for work at Abu Hadriya, Fadhili and Khursaniyah fields. <20>This is the new way of doing business, increasing LSTK, for operational excellence and having more control on the expenditure and at the same time the service companies will have more opportunities to drive optimisation,<2C> said a source who declined to be identified. Halliburton won the contract in 2009 to provide Aramco with <20>turnkey<65> services, which means the wells will be built so that no additional work will be required by Aramco. Saudi Aramco said it declined to comment on rumour or speculation. Schlumberger declined to comment, citing confidentiality agreements covering operations and contracts. Halliburton declined comment. When Halliburton won the five-year contract it said the project was expected to use three to four rigs to develop between 153 and 185 oil production, water injection and evaluation wells. <20>Aramco has about 25 LSTK rigs now<6F>, a second source said <20>with the plan to go up to 32.<2E> Aramco has not yet finalised its rig count plans for next year; the sources said. Under the new LSTK, oilfield service companies will have to take out poor performing rigs. Reporting by Reem Shamseddine; additional reporting by Gary Williams in Houston, editing by David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/aramco-contracts-oilfield/saudi-aramco-to-boost-turnkey-drilling-contracts-idUSL8N1MF0Z2'|'2017-10-05T17:02:00.000+03:00'
'27f396dbd1844125d4fae97ee2ac4f96a834eab3'|'BRIEF-Esperion Therapeutics - Phase 3 results for bempedoic acid expected in Q2, Q3 2018'|'Oct 2 (Reuters) - Esperion Therapeutics Inc* Esperion Therapeutics- bempedoic acid top-line results from studies 1, 3 and 4 are expected in Q2 2018, results from study 2 expected in Q3 2018* Esperion Therapeutics Inc - NDA submission for LDL-C lowering indication for bempedoic acid planned by Q1 2019* Esperion - pivotal Phase 3 program for bempedoic acid/ezetimibe combination pill on track to initiate this quarter, top-line results expected by Q4 2018 Source text for Eikon:Our '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-esperion-therapeutics-phase-3-resu/brief-esperion-therapeutics-phase-3-results-for-bempedoic-acid-expected-in-q2-q3-2018-idUSFWN1MD0R9'|'2017-10-02T23:47:00.000+03:00'
'3552ac459673f7e6936100427367577ed4eaccc9'|'Concerns over charges for checked bags in America miss the point'|'FEES for checked luggage are working exactly as intended. That is the main thrust of a new report from America<63>s Government Accountability Office (GAO) on the recent rise of charges for checking a bag onto a plane when flying. But not everyone is interpreting the study in such a positive light.Critics are crying foul because these fees cost some passengers more money. Bill Nelson, a Democratic senator who requested the study and sits on the committee that oversees the airline industry, has described the charges as a <20>last-minute shakedown<77>. William McGee of Consumer Reports, a non-profit organisation that reviews products, told USA Today that <20>consumers should be able to shop for airline seats without being nickel-and-dimed.<2E> 4 Media outlets are also making the same point. When the Associated Press reported on the study , it noted that <20>travelers who check at least one bag when flying domestically are paying more overall to fly than they did before airlines began unbundling fares in 2008.<2E> TravelMole, a travel-news site, echoed these sentiments .The critics are, of course, correct. As the GAO makes clear in the report:Customers who paid for checked bags paid more on average for the combined airfare and bag fee than when the airfare and bag fee were bundled together. Conversely, passengers who did not check bags paid less overall. But that is precisely the point of unbundling. Those with checked bags have to pay slightly more and those without luggage have to pay slightly less. This is not like the introduction of basic-economy fares , when airlines kept the lowest-cost fares the same and charged extra for the privilege of carrying on a bag or pre-selecting seats. As long as airlines are transparent and display checked-baggage fees clearly, unbundling works as intended.However, checked-baggage fees do create some unfortunate incentives. Some travellers go to highly unpleasant lengths to save that $50, as anyone who has stuffed shoes into their pockets and thrown on extra layers in a check-in queue will attest. (Gulliver himself would know nothing about such things, of course.) And when security lines grew at American airports in the spring and summer, lawmakers fretted that checked-luggage fees were exacerbating the problem by making flyers carry on more bags.Moreover, the payouts from such levies make it easy to demonise airlines. The GAO report noted that American airlines made $7bn in baggage and cancellation fees last year. A separate study from IdeaWorksCompany, a research group, found that in 2016 the world<6C>s biggest carriers made an eye-popping $45bn from passenger fees, such as baggage charges and in-flight entertainment, and commissions for shepherding passengers to hotels and car-rental companies. Such lucrative revenue streams also makes it hard for airlines to oppose charges airports wish to impose. This is a hypocrisy that airport executives have been quick to point out .But in the case of checked-baggage fees, Gulliver finds himself in rare agreement with Airlines for America, a trade group. It warns against government action to undo the charges, saying in a press release that <20>our passengers are more than able to navigate the wide menu of choices that airlines offer without interference from Washington.<2E>Next Monarch Airlines goes into administration'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/10/fair-fees?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-03T19:32:00.000+03:00'
'a23e510c82c61fd3a4a8d315762e500ecf5998aa'|'US STOCKS-Wall Street set to open lower on weak jobs data'|'October 6, 2017 / 11:23 AM / Updated 4 minutes ago S&P 500 breaks record run on jobs data, drug chain drop Caroline Valetkevitch 3 Min Read Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 eased on Friday, ending a six-day run of record highs as the first monthly decline in U.S. nonfarm jobs in seven years dampened sentiment and pharmacy shares fell on Amazon competition fears. The Nasdaq ended up for a ninth straight day, however, and set its sixth straight record high close, its longest such streak since seven records in February. Walgreens Boots Alliance ( WBA.O ) and CVS Health ( CVS.N ) fell and were among the biggest drags on the S&P 500 after a CNBC report that Amazon ( AMZN.O ) was close to a decision on selling prescription drugs. Walgreens shares dropped 4.9 percent and CVS was down 4.9 percent, while Amazon shares rose 0.9 percent. The Labor Department<6E>s closely watched jobs report showed nonfarm payrolls fell by 33,000 in September as hurricanes Harvey and Irma left displaced workers temporarily unemployed and delayed hiring. A bright spot was a better-than-expected rise in average wages. <20>It<49>s been amazing how resilient our U.S. stock market has been, going up on no news or bad news, so there<72>s no surprise on a day where most people feel it was a mixed jobs report at best that the market actually is reacting in a way that makes sense,<2C> said Jake Dollarhide, chief executive officer of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma. <20>It<49>s a logical move for this illogical stock market.<2E> The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 1.72 points, or 0.01 percent, to end at 22,773.67, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 2.74 points, or 0.11 percent, to 2,549.33 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 4.82 points, or 0.07 percent, to 6,590.18. The benchmark<72>s slight decline follow a six-day run of record closing highs, its longest since 1997. The CBOE Volatility index .VIX, Wall Street<65>s fear gauge, bounced sharply after setting a record low close in the previous session. For the week, the S&P 500 rose 1.2 percent, the Dow added 1.6 percent and the Nasdaq gained 1.5 percent. Adding to the day<61>s worries was a report that North Korea is preparing to test a long-range missile. S&P energy index .SPNY declined 0.8 percent as oil prices CLc1 LCOc1 fell amid a bout of profit taking and the return of oversupply worries. Shares of Costco ( COST.O ) dropped 6 percent after the warehouse club retailer reported a fall in gross margins. The stock was the biggest drag on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq. Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.74-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.11-to-1 ratio favored decliners. About 5.7 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges. That compares with the 6.2 billion daily average for the past 20 trading days, according to Thomson Reuters data. Additional reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan and Gayathree Ganesan in Bengaluru; Editing by Nick Zieminski and James Dalgleish'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/futures-little-changed-in-lull-before-jobs-report-idUSKBN1CB1CZ'|'2017-10-06T15:50:00.000+03:00'
'9af1c8f5b283012e2de4245bddfd25eaf617e222'|'PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 4'|'October 4, 2017 / 5:39 AM / in 4 hours PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 4 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 4 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - A massive data breach at Yahoo in 2013 was far more extensive than previously disclosed, affecting all of its 3 billion user accounts, new parent company Verizon Communications Inc said on Tuesday. on.wsj.com/2yWGtXQ - Uber Technologies Inc''s board unanimously approved a series of corporate changes along with a multibillion-dollar investment from SoftBank Group. on.wsj.com/2yYBdDg - Warren Buffett''s Berkshire Hathaway Inc made a bet on American truckers with a deal on Tuesday to acquire nearly 40 percent of the operator of Pilot and Flying J travel centers. on.wsj.com/2yWxrKw - Ford Motor Co will shift about $7 billion toward the development of more trucks and sport-utility vehicles while "attacking" costs, part of new Chief Executive Jim Hackett''s strategic plan for the No. 2 U.S. auto maker. on.wsj.com/2yWHq2A - Tim Leissner, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc senior banker linked to alleged financial fraud involving Malaysian state fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd was barred from the U.S. securities industry for failing to cooperate with a regulator''s investigation. on.wsj.com/2yWK3kY (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-wsj/press-digest-wall-street-journal-oct-4-idUSL4N1MF14I'|'2017-10-04T08:36:00.000+03:00'
'2b4b928251843576a9280b69cc1cf19b0de313f8'|'Chinese Estates buys 6 percent stake in China Evergrande'|'October 4, 2017 / 4:53 AM / in 2 hours Chinese Estates buys 6 percent stake in China Evergrande Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A logo of China Evergrande Group is displayed at a news conference on the property developer''s annual results in Hong Kong, China March 28, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong developer Chinese Estates Holdings ( 0127.HK ) said on Wednesday it holds a 6 percent stake in rival property group China Evergrande ( 3333.HK ), having bought HK$11.1 billion (<28>1.07 billion) of shares between April and October 3. The news sent shares in Evergrande, one of China''s most indebted companies, up as much as 3.9 pct to HK$30.80 by midday trade, a record high. Shares of Chinese Estates rose 4.3 percent, outperforming a 0.8 percent rise in the benchmark index .HSI . Chinese Estates said it was optimistic about Evergrande<64>s prospects, but did not provide further detail on the purchase. Evergrande, which has developed thousands of middle class homes in China and owns the country<72>s top football team, was one of the most heavily shorted Hong Kong stocks earlier this year. Analysts said Evergrande was also benefiting from an increased average selling price, according to its September sales, published late on Tuesday. <20>In the year to date, the company has achieved decent sales growth, mainly supported by rising (prices) as Evergrande strived to move to higher tier cities,<2C> said Chuanyi Zhou, Credit Analyst at independent research firm Lucror Analytics. China<6E>s home prices have surged since late 2015 and the housing rally has been one of the main drivers of China<6E>s stronger-than-expected economic growth so far this year, though successive waves of cooling measures are expected to temper construction activity and investment in coming months. Reporting by Farah Master, Donny Kwok and Umesh Desai; Editing by Clara Ferreira Marques and Gopakumar Warrier'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-evergrande-stake-chinese-estate/chinese-estates-buys-6-percent-stake-in-china-evergrande-idUKKCN1C90B1'|'2017-10-04T07:53:00.000+03:00'
'c7829a0a1d4257be9c966f1833c2abcbf712ad2e'|'Goldman to add office space in Frankfurt with new lease'|'October 4, 2017 / 7:14 PM / Updated an hour ago Goldman to add office space in Frankfurt with new lease Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A Goldman Sachs sign is displayed inside the company''s post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( GS.N ) has agreed to lease office space at a new building in Frankfurt as it prepares for Britain<69>s departure from the European Union. Britain is currently home to most of the Wall Street bank<6E>s European operations where it has around 6,000 employees, but the firm needs to ensure it will still be able to service clients in the EU once Britain leaves the bloc and may have limited access to the EU<45>s single market. In September, Wolfgang Fink, co-chief of Goldman in Germany, said the bank might triple or quadruple its presence in Frankfurt, where it currently employs around 200 staff. Goldman has agreed to lease space on the upper floors of the Marienturm tower, currently being built in the German city<74>s financial district, a spokesman for the bank in London told Reuters on Wednesday. <20>This expanded office space will allow us to grow our operations in Germany to continue serving our clients, as well as provide us with the space to execute on our Brexit contingency plan as needed,<2C> the spokesman said. Goldman will rent about 10,000 square meters (107,639 square feet) of office space which would accommodate up to 700 seats, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. News of Goldman agreeing to lease office space in Frankfurt was earlier reported by Bloomberg. Reporting by Anjuli Davies in London, additional reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-goldman-sachs/goldman-to-add-office-space-in-frankfurt-with-new-lease-idUKKBN1C92PA'|'2017-10-04T22:14:00.000+03:00'
'b57577cd5f5e4c8a54fe5d44423330e742e7710f'|'Tesco''s UK boss told ''word by word'' of hole in accounts, court hears'|'October 6, 2017 / 1:53 PM / in 4 hours Tesco''s UK boss told ''word by word'' of hole in accounts, court hears Reuters Staff 3 Min Read Former Tesco UK Managing Director Christopher Bush (R) arrives at Southwark Crown Court where he faces charges of fraud and false accounting in London, Britain, October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner LONDON (Reuters) - The head of Tesco<63>s ( TSCO.L ) UK business was read out <20>almost word by word<72> a report detailing a 250 million pounds ($327 million) hole in the supermarket<65>s accounts in 2014 a week before the stock market was informed, a court heard on Friday. Amit Soni, a senior accountant at Tesco, was giving evidence for a third day at the trial of three former senior executives of Britain<69>s biggest retailer who are accused of fraud and false accounting in 2014. Christopher Bush, 51, who was managing director of Tesco UK, Carl Rogberg, 50, who was UK finance director, and John Scouler,49, who was UK food commercial director, all deny any wrongdoing and have pleaded not guilty. The case follows Tesco<63>s announcement in September 2014 that its profit forecast had been overstated mainly due to booking commercial deals with suppliers too early. Tesco<63>s disclosure saw its shares tumble and plunged the company into the worst crisis in its near 100-year history. The court had previously heard that Soni commissioned a detailed report, <20>the legacy paper<65>, which showed how around 250 million pounds of income had illegitimately been <20>pulled forward<72> in Tesco<63>s accounts. Soni told the court on Friday that he attended a Sept. 16 2014 meeting with Scouler and group commercial director Kevin Grace, with Bush also present via conference call. He said Scouler read out the paper. It was a <20>very detailed reading out...almost word by word,<2C> he said. Former Tesco executive Carl Rogberg arrives at Southwark Crown Court in London, Britain September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay Lead prosecutor Sasha Wass asked Soni what Bush<73>s reaction was. <20>He (Bush) said to the effect that the legacy number read out will have to be discussed with Dave Lewis, the new CEO of the company. Equally there is a responsibility, a corporate responsibility, for everybody to hit the numbers and hit the budget,<2C> Soni told the court. Lewis had replaced Philip Clarke as CEO on Sept. 1. Slideshow (2 Images) Soni said he had expected to be informed when discussions would take place with Lewis but did not hear anything on either Sept. 17 or 18. The court has previously heard that later on Sept. 18 Soni visited Kay Majid of Tesco<63>s legal team and presented the report to her. Lewis then became aware of the report and he dealt with it as an emergency. After two board meetings on Sept. 21 a corrective statement was issued to the stock market on Sept. 22. Neither Lewis, Clarke or Grace face any charges. The trial is expected to last until Christmas. ($1 = 0.7649 pounds)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-tesco-fraud/tescos-uk-boss-told-word-by-word-of-hole-in-accounts-court-hears-idUSKBN1CB1QC'|'2017-10-06T16:53:00.000+03:00'
'72379d0f3f08e43d08936317002658aef9a8c149'|'Metals recycler Befesa to list on Frankfurt stock exchange this year'|'FRANKFURT/BERLIN, Oct 6 (Reuters) - German metals recycling group Befesa is planning to list on the Frankfurt stock market this year, the company said in a statement on Friday.Befesa, which controls almost half of Europe<70>s steel dust recycling market, is expected to be valued at 1.3-1.6 billion euros ($1.5-1.9 billion) excluding debt in a late-October float, people close to the matter said.<2E>The planned offering will consist exclusively of existing shares from current shareholder Triton and will allow for sufficient free float,<2C> Befesa said.Citigroup, Goldman Sachs International and J.P. Morgan are acting as joint global coordinators and bookrunners on the Offering. Berenberg, Commerzbank, Santander and Stifel are acting as additional joint bookrunners. (Reporting by Arno Schuezte and Victoria Bryan; editing by Michael Shields) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/befesa-ipo/metals-recycler-befesa-to-list-on-frankfurt-stock-exchange-this-year-idINASO0001Q9'|'2017-10-06T03:51:00.000+03:00'
'd4e5fbbf99c17eebf957e3a5dddb03ca7cd98cdc'|'Metals recycler Befesa to list in Frankfurt this year'|'FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German metals recycling group Befesa is planning to list on the Frankfurt stock market this year, the company said in a statement on Friday.Befesa, which controls almost half of Europe<70>s steel dust recycling market, is expected to be valued at 1.3-1.6 billion euros ($1.5-1.9 billion) excluding debt in a late-October float, people close to the matter said.<2E>The planned offering will consist exclusively of existing shares from current shareholder Triton and will allow for sufficient free float,<2C> Befesa said, adding that Triton will remain <20>significantly invested<65> after the IPO.Befesa, which did not give details of the planned size of the offering, plans to pay out 40-50 percent of net earnings to investors after the planned IPO.Befesa collects steel dust from so-called mini-mills that melt scrap to produce new steel.While it gets fees for accepting the hazardous waste, it generates up to 90 percent of sales at its steel unit by selling zinc it extracts from the steel dust to companies like Glencore ( GLEN.L ), Nyrstar ( NYR.BR ) or Korea Zinc ( 010130.KS ).Triton earlier this year had also launched a parallel sales process for Befesa that attracted bids from private equity groups such as CVC [CVC.UL], but opted to market the group to potential IPO investors in hope for a higher valuation.In the twelve months to end June, Befesa posted group adjusted earnings before interest, tax (EBIT) of 133 million euros on sales of 685 million euros.It had net debt of 465 million euros as of end-June and is hoping to reap a valuation including debt similar to that of peers.Companies with comparable activities -- including Waste Connections ( WCN.TO ), Stericycle ( SRCL.O ), US Ecology ( ECOL.O ), Umicore ( UMI.BR ) and Ecolab ( ECL.N ) -- trade at 10-14 times their expected core earnings.Befesa was listed in Spain from 1998 to 2011. Spain<69>s Abengoa bought a controlling stake in 2000 and later squeezed out minorities. It sold the company on to Triton in 2013 for 850 million euros in cash, or 1.1 billion euros including debt.Citigroup, Goldman Sachs International and J.P. Morgan are acting as joint global coordinators and bookrunners on the Offering. Berenberg, Commerzbank, Santander and Stifel are acting as additional joint bookrunners.Reporting by Arno Schuezte; Additional reporting by Claire Ruckin; Writing by Victoria Bryan; editing by Michael Shields and Alexander Smith '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-befesa-ipo/metals-recycler-befesa-to-list-in-frankfurt-this-year-idINKBN1CB0IA'|'2017-10-06T04:20:00.000+03:00'
'0d86d541c547bc408725d09cec9f46dfbd7bc83b'|'EU sets dumping duties on steel from four countries'|'October 6, 2017 / 6:50 AM / in 7 minutes EU sets dumping duties on steel from Brazil, Russia Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union has decided to set duties on hot-rolled steel from Brazil, Iran, Russia and Ukraine after a complaint by EU manufacturers that the product used for construction and machinery was being sold at excessively low prices. The European Union will levy anti-dumping tariffs of between 17.6 and 96.5 euros (<28>15.7 - <20>86.4) per tonne from Saturday, the European Union<6F>s official journal said on Friday. The European Commission had initially proposed setting a minimum price - of 472.27 euros per tonne - but revised its proposal after failing to secure backing from EU member states. Among the companies subject to tariffs were the Brazil arms of ArcelorMittal ( MT.AS ) and Aperam ( APAM.AS ), both of which also produce in Europe, Companhia Siderugica Nacional ( CSNA3.SA ), Usinas Siderugicas de Minas Gerais ( USIM5.SA ) and Gerdau ( GGBR4.SA ) - at rates between 53.4 and 63.0 euros per tonne. Iranian steel would be subject to a duty of 57.5 euros per tonne and Ukraine<6E>s Metinvest Group [METIV.UL] 60.5 euros. Rates for Russia producers varied from 17.6 euros for PAO Severstal ( CHMF.MM ), 53.3 euros for Novolipetsk Steel ( NLMK.MM ) to 96.5 euros per tonne for MMK ( MAGN.MM ). The Commission also ended its investigation into Serbian steel imports without proposing measures. Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-steel-tariffs/eu-sets-dumping-duties-on-steel-from-four-countries-idUKKBN1CB0L9'|'2017-10-06T09:49:00.000+03:00'
'a75affef6920382d99b12995025d939d2f85c8b9'|'Exclusive: Alibaba''s Tsai in talks to buy stake in NBA''s Brooklyn Nets - sources'|' 11 PM / in 15 minutes Exclusive: Alibaba''s Tsai in talks to buy stake in NBA''s Brooklyn Nets - sources Reuters Staff 1 Min Read File photo: Joseph Tsai attends a group interview at the company''s headquarters in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province November 11, 2014. REUTERS/Aly Song (Reuters) - Joseph Tsai, the vice chairman of Chinese internet conglomerate Alibaba Group Holding Ltd ( BABA.N ), is in advanced talks to buy a stake in the Brooklyn Nets, valuing the U.S. basketball team at around $2.2 billion, people familiar with the matter said. The deal could be finalised in the next few weeks, two sources said, cautioning that it was always possible negotiations collapse at the last minute. The exact size of Tsai<61>s possible stake could not immediately be learned. Neither the Brooklyn Nets of the National Basketball Association nor Tsai could immediately be reached for comment. Reporting by Jessica Toonkel and Olivia Oran in New York and Liana B. Baker in San Francisco; Editing by Matthew Lewis'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-basketball-brooklynnets-tsai/exclusive-alibabas-tsai-in-talks-to-buy-stake-in-nbas-brooklyn-nets-sources-idUKKBN1CA2HT'|'2017-10-05T22:11:00.000+03:00'
'95ed068eff5d4584605ce937717054a666bc448e'|'Bombardier dispute risks Northern Irish peace, Ireland to tell U.S.'|'Reuters TV United States October 3, 2017 / 11:07 PM / Updated an hour ago Bombardier dispute risks Northern Irish peace, Ireland to tell U.S. Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Ireland''s Minister of Foreign Affairs Simon Carbery Coveney attends informal meeting of European Union Ministers of Foreign Affairs in Tallinn, Estonia September 7, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins/File Photo DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland<6E>s foreign minister will raise Dublin<69>s concerns over the impact a trade dispute between the United States and Canada<64>s Bombardier could have on Northern Ireland<6E>s peace process when he meets Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross this week. The U.S. government last week slapped a preliminary 220 percent tariff on the planemaker<65>s CSeries jets, which are partly made in Northern Ireland, potentially risking 4,200 jobs in the British province. Bombardier is Northern Ireland<6E>s largest manufacturing employer and its political leaders have warned Washington that the security of the economy in Britain<69>s poorest region plays a crucial role in efforts to maintain peace. Three decades of bloodshed between Catholic Irish nationalists, who want the province to unite with Ireland, and Protestant unionists, who want to remain part of the United Kingdom, left 3,600 dead before peace was reached 20 years ago. Washington played a key role in helping to strike the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement, and the Irish foreign minister<65>s intervention will add to pressure from Belfast and London, where Prime Minister Theresa May<61>s minority government relies on the support of Northern Ireland<6E>s largest unionist party to govern. <20>I will be outlining to him (Ross) the Irish government<6E>s concern as to the potentially serious implications of a negative ruling for the Bombardier workforce in Belfast and for wider economic stability in Northern Ireland which is an essential support to the peace process,<2C> Simon Coveney said in a statement ahead of his two-day trip to Washington. Reporting by Padraic Halpin'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-bombardier-ireland/bombardier-dispute-risks-northern-irish-peace-ireland-to-tell-u-s-idUKKCN1C82VN'|'2017-10-04T02:06:00.000+03:00'
'0c479a43bdb4594df293cf70e871065ffa2b8ab4'|'JGBs gain as investors cover short positions'|'TOKYO, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Japanese government bond prices gained on Wednesday as investors bought back bonds sold after the previous session<6F>s disappointing 10-year sale.The 10-year cash JGB yield fell 1.5 basis points to 0.055 percent, moving away from the previous session<6F>s high of 0.080 percent, which was its highest level since July 26.The 10-year JGB futures contract finished up 0.25 point at 150.48.<2E>It<49>s mostly a short-covering rally, but it might have a bit more legs on which to run,<2C> said Tadashi Matsukawa, head of fixed income investment at PineBridge Investments in Tokyo.<2E>Banks are apparently buying again in the beginning of the new Japanese fiscal half<6C> which began this month, he added.Some investors also likely bought on dips after the previous session<6F>s tepid 10-year sale, at which the lowest accepted price came in below dealers<72> expectations.In the superlong zone, the 20-year JGB yield shed 1.5 basis points to 0.580 percent, while the 30-year JGB yield gave up 1 basis point to 0.870 percent.The Bank of Japan<61>s regular buying operations underpinned market sentiment on Wednesday as the central bank continued to buy bonds at the same volume as previous operations.It offered to buy 280 billion yen ($2.49 billion) of one- to three-year JGBs, 300 billion yen of three- to five-year JGBs and 410 billion yen of five- to 10-year JGBs, in line with its previous level of buying in those maturities.$1 = 112.5100 yen Reporting by Tokyo markets team; Editing by Eric Meijer '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/japan-bonds/jgbs-gain-as-investors-cover-short-positions-idINL4N1MF1CZ'|'2017-10-04T05:06:00.000+03:00'
'3971f9a5194011b8e3eb697090199e1f75dc8a16'|'Saudi oil minister - U.S. shale oil coming to market in 2018 ''doesn''t bother me'''|'October 5, 2017 / 8:13 AM / in 14 minutes Saudi''s Falih says oil agreements with Russia helping market stability Reuters Staff 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih attends a meeting of the 4th OPEC-Non-OPEC Ministerial Monitoring Committee in St. Petersburg, Russia July 24, 2017. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov MOSCOW (Reuters) - Agreements reached between Russia and Saudi Arabia on global oil supply have helped oil markets to stabilise, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Thursday. The two countries, the world<6C>s biggest producers of crude, helped secure a deal between OPEC and rivals including Russia to cut supplies until the end of March 2018 in an effort to reduce a price-sapping glut. Falih, whose country is the de facto leader of the 14-member Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, also said he welcomed the contribution of U.S. shale oil supplies as global demand for crude was on the rise. <20>Shale coming in and happening again in 2018 doesn<73>t bother me at all. The market can absorb it,<2C> Falih said, speaking alongside Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak as part of a panel discussion at an energy forum in Moscow. The comments came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin said the supply-cutting deal could be extended to the end of 2018, a longer timeframe than others have suggested. Novak said Moscow would support the possible participation of additional countries in the output deal, and that he was satisfied with current oil prices. Oil LCOc1 steadied around $56 a barrel on Thursday on expectations that Saudi Arabia and Russia would extend production cuts. Falih said Saudi Arabia wants to develop ties with Russia further, particularly in the private sector. <20>I see huge opportunities in front of our countries and for the business sector in both nations,<2C> Falih said. The visit of Saudi Arabia<69>s King Salman to Russia this week shows the high degree of mutual trust between Russia and Saudi Arabia, Falih said. King Salman is in Russia as part of a state visit, the first to Moscow by a reigning Saudi monarch. A slew of investment agreements are due to be signed during King Salman<61>s trip and plans for a $1 billion fund to invest in energy projects are likely to be finalised, as part of efforts to expand cooperation. <20>This historic visit will witness the signing of memoranda of understanding (MoUs) in several fields that are important to both countries,<2C> Falih said. He said MoUs would be signed with Russia<69>s state nuclear agency Rosatom for the peaceful use of nuclear energy as well as other agreements for military industries and marine development. State oil giant Saudi Aramco will sign several non-binding MoUs on Thursday with Russian companies Gazprom ( GAZP.MM ), Gazprom Neft ( SIBN.MM ), Sibur and Litasco. The Russian Direct Investment Fund will also sign an MoU with Aramco and Saudi<64>s Public Investment Fund for investments in energy services and manufacturing. Saudi Aramco [IPO-ARMO.SE] is discussing several investment opportunities with Russian firms, Aramco Chief Executive Amin Nasser told reporters earlier on Thursday in Moscow. Nasser told the Arabiya television channel in Moscow that he sees the oil market stabilising as demand growth continues and global oil inventories decline. Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin, Katya Golubkova, Jack Stubbs and Olesya Astakhova; Writing by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Dale Hudson'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-oil-opec-russia-saudi/saudi-oil-minister-u-s-shale-oil-coming-to-market-in-2018-doesnt-bother-me-idUKKBN1CA0OC'|'2017-10-05T11:13:00.000+03:00'
'7cefd4bf90b526f1b1737f3ec6f22994d56c1e16'|'Thomas Cook pilots end strike action over pay dispute'|'October 5, 2017 / 10:10 AM / Updated 6 hours ago Thomas Cook pilots end strike action over pay dispute Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Pilots at British tour operator Thomas Cook ( TCG.L ) have called off eight days of planned strike action, the pilots<74> union said on Thursday, after entering into a binding arbitration to end a dispute over pay. The pilots had previously held one 12-hour and one 24-hour strike in the standoff over pay. Thomas Cook said that all passengers were able to fly during the industrial action. A strike planned for last Friday was called off last week following talks. <20>Our members voted to end this dispute by binding arbitration, which Thomas Cook has now agreed to,<2C> BALPA General Secretary Brian Strutton said. <20>I am pleased that we have been able to find a peaceful way of resolving the pilots<74> pay dispute without further disruption to passengers.<2E> The resolution of the dispute means that industrial action planned for this Friday, as well as a three-day strike from October 12 and four-day strike from October 18, have all been called off. <20>Following the decision by BALPA members and Thomas Cook to go to arbitration, all future strike dates have been cancelled,<2C> a spokesman for Thomas Cook Airlines said in a statement. <20>We remain keen to resolve this dispute in the interests of all involved and we will now focus on proceeding with the arbitration process.<2E> Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by Kate Holton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-thomas-cook-grp-airlines-strike/thomas-cook-pilots-end-strike-action-over-pay-dispute-idUKKBN1CA109'|'2017-10-05T13:10:00.000+03:00'
'48da4752452ebb35a3dbfc38206a864b453016c5'|'La Caixa foundation to move headquarters from Catalonia to Mallorca'|'October 7, 2017 / 9:47 AM / Updated 2 hours ago La Caixa foundation to move headquarters from Catalonia to Mallorca Reuters Staff 1 Min Read CaixaBank and LaCaixa''s logos are seen at the company''s headquarters in Barcelona, Spain, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Albert Gea MADRID (Reuters) - La Caixa Banking Foundation, which manages the holding company which controls Caixabank ( CABK.MC ), said on Saturday it will move its headquarters to Palma de Mallorca for as long as political upheaval in Catalonia continues. Caixbank said on Friday it has decided to move its registered office to Valencia in light of the situation in Catalonia, which is set to claim independence from the rest of Spain following a disputed independence referendum. Reporting by Paul Day; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-spain-politics-catalonia-caixa/la-caixa-foundation-to-move-headquarters-from-catalonia-to-mallorca-idUKKBN1CC09L'|'2017-10-07T12:47:00.000+03:00'
'45dd496e0a4b9159eb8b396c888ccc6f52448e36'|'UPDATE 1-GM more than doubles self-driving car test fleet in California - Reuters'|'(Recasts with size of General Motors self-driving car test fleet in California)By David ShepardsonWASHINGTON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - General Motors Co<43>s self-driving unit, Cruise Automation, has more than doubled the size of its test fleet of robot cars in California during the past three months, a GM spokesman said on Wednesday.As the company increases the size of its test fleet, it has also reported more run-ins between its self-driving cars and human-operated vehicles and bicycles, telling California regulators its vehicles were involved in six minor crashes in the state in September.<2E>All our incidents this year were caused by the other vehicle,<2C> said Rebecca Mark, spokeswoman for GM Cruise.In the past three months, the Cruise unit has increased the number of vehicles registered for testing on California streets to 100 from the previous 30 to 40, GM spokesman Ray Wert said.Cruise is testing vehicles in San Francisco as part of its effort to develop software capable of navigating congested and often chaotic urban environments.Investors are watching GM<47>s progress closely, and the automaker<65>s shares have risen 17 percent during the past month as some analysts have said the company could deploy robot taxis within the next year or two.A U.S. Senate panel approved legislation on Wednesday that would allow automakers to greatly expand testing of self-driving cars. Some safety groups have objected to the proposal, saying it gives too much latitude to automakers.As Cruise, and rivals, put more self-driving vehicles on the road to gather data to train their artificial intelligence systems, they are more frequently encountering human drivers who are not programmed to obey all traffic laws.In filings to California regulators, Cruise said the six accidents in the state last month involved other cars and a bicyclist hitting its test cars.The accidents did not result in injuries or serious damage, according to the GM reports. In total, GM Cruise vehicles have been involved in 13 collisions reported to California regulators in 2017, while Alphabet Inc<6E>s Waymo vehicles have been involved in three crashes.California state law requires that all crashes involving self-driving vehicles be reported, regardless of severity.Most of the crashes involved drivers of other vehicles striking the GM cars that were slowing for stop signs, pedestrians or other issues. In one crash, a driver of a Ford Ranger was on his cellphone when he rear-ended a Chevrolet Bolt stopped at a red light.In another instance, the driver of a Chevrolet Bolt noticed an intoxicated cyclist in San Francisco going the wrong direction toward the Bolt. The human driver stopped the Bolt and the cyclist hit the bumper and fell over. The bicyclist pulled on a sensor attached to the vehicle causing minor damage.<2E>While we look forward to the day when autonomous vehicles are commonplace, the streets we drive on today are not so simple, and we will continue to learn how humans drive and improve how we share the road together,<2C> GM said in a statement on Wednesday.Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Additional reporting by Joseph White in Detroit; Editing by Sandra Maler and Peter CooneyOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/autos-selfdriving-crashes/update-1-gm-more-than-doubles-self-driving-car-test-fleet-in-california-idINL2N1MG01F'|'2017-10-04T23:49:00.000+03:00'
'5e1e28a02c9ea87f80b388f2cae2e3b898674740'|'UK energy companies left in dark over price cap plan'|'October 5, 2017 / 11:10 AM / Updated 7 hours ago UK energy companies left in dark over price cap plan Nina Chestney 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A British Gas sign is seen at its offices in Staines in southern England, July 31, 2014. REUTERS/Toby Melville LONDON (Reuters) - A British government plan to cap prices has wiped hundreds of millions of pounds off the value of household energy suppliers but details are scant and doubts remain about its implementation. Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday that a cap would be imposed on standard variable tariffs (SVT), the basic rates that suppliers charge if a customer does not opt for a specific payment plan for gas and electricity. Under the proposals, energy market regulator Ofgem would be responsible for setting the new cap which would be a temporary measure kept under review. In July, Ofgem had said it would consider a safeguard tariff for vulnerable customers but stopped short of committing to a wider price cap. May<61>s announcement sent shares in the biggest energy supplier Centrica ( CNA.L ), the owner of British Gas, to a near 14-year low and shares in SSE ( SSE.L ), the second biggest, fell by 3 percent. Shares have since recovered slightly and Wednesday<61>s reaction was seen as a knee-jerk response to the confirmation of intervention in the energy market. There are still doubts about whether the plan will be implemented following calls from Centrica as well as rivals Scottish Power and E.ON for SVTs to be scrapped. Questions about May<61>s political tenure further cloud the picture. Centrica boss Iain Conn said the industry should be forced to work harder to win new customers through competition. <20>We do agree the market needs further structural changes,<2C> he told BBC Radio. FILE PHOTO - The logo of Spanish power company Iberdrola is seen at night on the wall of one of its buildings in Madrid, May 8, 2013. Picture taken with a zoom burst, May 8, 2013. REUTERS/ Rocio Pelaez <20>We just don<6F>t support price caps. There is clear evidence that they don<6F>t work, in New Zealand, in Spain, in California, in Ontario. They tend to limit choice, reduce competition and prices tend to bunch around the cap.<2E> DETAILS MISSING Energy bills have doubled in Britain over the past decade to an average of about 1,200 pounds ($1,500) a year, putting the biggest providers in the sights of politicians. Britain''s Prime Minister Theresa May holds up a cough sweet after suffering a coughing fit whilst addressing the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble The market is dominated by the so-called big six providers -- Centrica<63>s British Gas, SSE, Iberdrola<6C>s ( IBE.MC ) Scottish Power, Innogy<67>s npower ( IGY.DE ), E.ON ( EONGn.DE ) and EDF Energy ( EDF.PA ). Due to the lack of substance, it is difficult to predict the ultimate impact on energy companies<65> bottom line. The full impact of a price cap will depend on the depth of the price cuts and how long they remain in place. <20>We don<6F>t know how it would be introduced, what market it will cover or what the legislation will look like,<2C> said Ahmed Farman, equity analyst at investment bank Jefferies. <20>If a price cap were introduced along the lines of the pre-payment price caps and covered the whole of the SVT market, it would have a significant impact on SSE and Centrica,<2C> he added. Energy market regulator Ofgem is already in consultation on a measure which would impose a price cap on prepayment meters for the most vulnerable households, which could form the basis for a wider cap, analysts say. <20>(For Centrica), the operating profit impact could be as much as 110 million pounds <20> some 7 percent of operating profit <20> but legislation will take time to be enacted and Centrica management has said that it will take mitigating action to offset reduced revenues,<2C> HSBC analysts said. A price cap of 1,100 pounds a year would still allow efficient firms to make a margin but a 1,000 pound per year cap would <20>push the industry into a loss
'86f023b6d835a678fbbbfe190c6bae2795059dcc'|'RPT-UPDATE 4-U.S. backs 300 percent in duties on Bombardier after Boeing complaint'|'(Repeats to additional subscribers, no change to text)By Alwyn ScottWASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. Commerce Department on Friday notched up proposed trade duties on Bombardier Inc CSeries jets to nearly 300 percent, affirming Boeing Co<43>s complaint that the Canadian company received illegal subsidies and dumped the planes at <20>absurdly low<6F> prices.The decision underscored the defensive trade policy of U.S. President Donald Trump, and could effectively halt sales of Bombardier<65>s innovative new plane to U.S. airlines by quadrupling the cost of the jets imported to the United States.The Commerce Department proposed a 79.82 percent antidumping duty on Friday, on top of a 219.63 percent duty for subsidies announced last week.The new duty follows a preliminary finding that Bombardier sold 75 CSeries jets below cost to Delta Air Lines Inc in 2016. The total was well above the 80 percent Boeing sought in its complaint.The proposed duties would not take effect unless affirmed by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) early next year.The duties are expected to heighten trade tensions between the United States, Canada and Britain, where CSeries wings are made. The United States, Canada and Mexico also are negotiating to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement.After the first duty was announced on Sept. 26, Canada and Britain threatened to avoid buying Boeing military equipment, saying duties on the CSeries would reduce U.S. sales and put thousands of Bombardier jobs in their countries at risk.Bombardier shares were last up 0.5 percent to C$2.20. Some analysts said the muted response reflected a view that the penalties might not actually be applied.Boeing, the world<6C>s largest plane maker, hailed the decision and hinted at an alternative for Bombardier.<2E>These duties are the consequence of a conscious decision by Bombardier to violate trade law and dump their CSeries aircraft to secure a sale,<2C> Chicago-based Boeing said in a statement.<2E>Bombardier always has the option of coming into full compliance with trade laws,<2C> Boeing added.Canada<64>s foreign ministry said Boeing was <20>manipulating the U.S. trade remedy system<65> to keep the CSeries out of the country.Canada is in <20>complete disagreement<6E> with the decision and would keep raising concerns with the United States and Boeing, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a statement.To win its case before the ITC, Boeing must prove it was harmed by Bombardier<65>s sales, despite not using one of its own jets to compete for the Delta order.Bombardier said it was confident that the ITC would find Boeing was not harmed, calling the Commerce Department decision a case of <20>egregious overreach.<2E>Delta said the decision was preliminary and it was confident the ITC <20>will conclude that no U.S. manufacturer is at risk<73> from Bombardier<65>s plane.Boeing has said the dispute was about <20>maintaining a level playing field<6C> and was not an attack on Canada or Britain.U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the decision affirmed Trump<6D>s <20>America First<73> policy.<2E>We will ... do everything in our power to stand up for American companies and their workers,<2C> Ross said in a statement.But the industry is not so simple. More than half of the purchased content of each CSeries aircraft comes from U.S. suppliers, Bombardier has said. The plane supports an estimated 22,700 jobs and Bombardier<65>s aerospace division spent $2.14 billion in the United States last year, according to the company and documents seen by Reuters.Boeing has said the CSeries would not exist without hundreds of millions of dollars in launch aid from the governments of Canada and Britain and a $2.5 billion equity infusion from the province of Quebec and its largest pension fund in 2015.Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa, Tim Ahmann in Washington and Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/boei
'ca8f3a80c4724157bd1952d255c4bdd155a7dadf'|'Goldman Sags'|'BY TRADITION, Goldman Sachs makes risky financial wagers and stays icy cool under pressure. A bad trade on Treasury bonds in 1986 almost killed it, but was eventually cauterised. The firm<72>s <20>big short<72> in early 2007, when it bet that subprime securities would tumble, helped it to book profits of $14bn in 2008-09 and to perform relatively well during the worst financial crisis for 80 years. Goldman also values candour, at least inside the firm. In this spirit it is time to acknowledge that the bank<6E>s strategic direction is beginning to feel like a bum trade. Its defence is that it is no worse than its group of peers, but being average on Wall Street is a mug<75>s game and the antithesis of the Goldman way.While outsiders think that Goldman<61>s alumni run the world, on Wall Street the firm<72>s aura has dimmed. Rival banks view it with indifference, not awe. After shining in the years after the crisis, since 2012 its total return (share price gain plus dividends) has lagged behind the average of its four big American rivals by 36%. Other banks have caught up and Goldman<61>s trading arm, which executes deals for clients, is misfiring, with its market share dropping. It has struggled to adapt to placid markets and a clampdown on proprietary trading (trading for your own profit).  Inevitably that gives rise to doubts about the firm<72>s strategy, which is to slash costs and sit tight, hoping the industry<72>s nuclear winter ends. So while lower bonuses mean the pay bill is down by 42% since 2007, there has been no wholesale retreat from the main businesses<65>advising and lending to companies, trading securities and asset management. Meanwhile, the bank is grappling with three problems: mediocre profitability, unconvincing capital allocation and a tricky management succession.Back when it was a partnership, Goldman was more profitable than Facebook is now. Its return on equity was 38% in 1998, before it went public. In 2007 its ROE was 29%, but it fell to 9% in the most recent quarter. Two-thirds of this drop reflects tougher capital rules. Its level of ROE matches the average of JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Bank of America. Investors expect a mild recovery, but do not expect Goldman to be exceptional, so its shares do not trade on a notably superior multiple of book value, as they usually did in the glory years between 2006 and 2013.Another gauge is profits relative to risk-weighted assets, a measure that regulators use to calibrate banks<6B> risk and size. For every $100 of such assets Goldman made $1.9 of pre-tax profits in 2016, less than the peer group<75>s average of $2.0. Each bank has a different mix of businesses, but you can compare Goldman to a best-in-class <20>clone<6E> made up of JPMorgan<61>s investment banking and asset-management divisions. The clone made $2.2. (Goldman says that this comparison is too crude.)Mediocre profitability reflects unwieldy asset allocation. Goldman has toiled to cut its balance-sheet, particularly in bond-trading. But it has been hit especially hard by new <20>Basel 3<> rules which determine how its risk-weighted-assets are calculated. As a result Goldman<61>s have risen by 35% since 2012. The trading arm ties up two-thirds of this, especially its derivatives book. Its lending operation has grown, with exposures to higher-risk firms<6D>those with a credit rating of BBB or less<73>rising 151% to $129bn.Goldman does not reveal the ROEs of these operating segments but they can be imputed. In 2016 the trading unit appears to have had an ROE of 7% and its lending unit 5%. Most firms would have wielded the knife deeper. The bank has new projects, such as its small online consumer bank. It has returned cash to shareholders. But its core strategy is to wait for trading to recover. This may happen. Volatility may pick up, European competitors might quit the game, or emerging economies could boom.It is less clear how any of these events would lift the trading division<6F>s returns to a punchy level. There have been highs and lows since the crisis, but its average ROE has 
'c158392fc3f84d44a672a73752440a753099c728'|'Downplaying job losses, Fed officials eye December rate hike'|'October 6, 2017 / 7:59 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago Downplaying job losses, Fed officials eye December rate hike Ann Saphir , Jonathan Spicer 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: William C. Dudley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York speaks during a panel discussion at The Bank of England in London, Britain, March 21, 2017. REUTERS/Kirsty Wigglesworth/Pool/File Photo AUSTIN, Texas/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Chocking up employment losses last month to the temporary hit of a severe hurricane season and reiterating expectations that inflation will strengthen, Federal Reserve policymakers on Friday signaled they continue to see gradual U.S. interest-rate hikes ahead. <20>Even though inflation is currently somewhat below our longer-run objective, I judge that it is still appropriate to continue to remove monetary policy accommodation gradually,<2C> said New York Fed President William Dudley, whose regular meetings with Fed Chair Janet Yellen and constant contact with Wall Street banks bolster his influence among Fed policymakers. While other policymakers largely agreed, they also said they were keeping a close eye on the data, particularly on inflation. And one offered a strong rebuttal, saying the central bank risked a <20>policy mistake<6B> if it continues raising rates despite inflation data that remains stalled. <20>If we go too far in our zeal to normalize (rates) we might push inflation expectations down further and that might hinder our ability to hit our target,<2C> said St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, who called the September jobs number <20>startling<6E> even given the hurricane. <20>The December meeting is going to be too early to make a determination on whether inflation is coming back.<2E> Others were more on board with the December increase, though they also offered some skepticism about inflation. Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic, the newest of the 12 Fed presidents, told Reuters in an interview that he continues to believe the U.S. central bank should raise interest rates again by the end of the year, though he is <20>not wedded<65> to that position and continues to track data closely. And Robert Kaplan, chief of the Dallas Fed, told reporters that inflation is <20>likely building<6E> given the low unemployment rate, which would make the case for further rate hikes. Though the number of jobs fell in September for the first time in seven years, the unemployment rate fell to 4.2 percent and hourly wages rose more than expected. Striking a somewhat less eager tone than his colleagues though, Kaplan said, <20>I<EFBFBD>m going to watch a little bit here. We have the benefit of having a little time and I plan to take it.<2E> Last month, the Fed left rates unchanged and announced the well-telegraphed start to a gradual shrinking of its $4.5 trillion balance sheet, which was swollen by massive purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities in the aftermath of the 2007-2009 financial crisis and recession. President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Raphael W. Bostic seen in this handout photo obtained by Reuters October 6, 2017. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta/Handout via REUTERS But market expectations are high that the Fed will hike rates again in December, especially after Fed Chair Janet Yellen outlined why she is fairly confident that inflation, now at 1.4 percent by the Fed<65>s preferred measure, will rise toward the Fed<65>s 2-percent target over the medium term. It would be imprudent, she said in late September, to wait until inflation actually reached that target to raise rates. Investors are more skeptical of the Fed<65>s forecasts of roughly three more hikes next year. Three of the policymakers suggested they would be open-minded about the economic data, and especially inflation readings, for the next several months due to temporary factors weighing on prices and also the hurricanes that struck the United States over the last 40 days. U.S. President Donald Trump recently interviewed at least three candidates who co
'97dedc023843bf44d07d8e9b1a294c774f3f6eaf'|'Teva''s Copaxone faces more generic competition in Europe'|'October 5, 2017 / 4:56 PM / Updated 4 minutes ago Teva''s Copaxone faces generic competition in Europe after U.S. hit Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A building belonging to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, the world''s biggest generic drugmaker and Israel''s largest company, is seen in Jerusalem February 8, 2017. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun LONDON (Reuters) - Teva<76>s blockbuster multiple sclerosis treatment Copaxone will face additional generic competition in Europe, just two days after Mylan NV won U.S. approval to sell cheaper versions of the medicine in the world<6C>s largest market. Mylan<61>s European partner, Synthon, and Alvogen said on Thursday they had received decentralized European approval for a 40 milligram dose of glatiramer acetate, as Copaxone is known generically. The two privately held companies, which work as partners in selling the product, already market a 20 mg version in Europe. However, the 40 mg dose accounts for more than 85 percent of U.S. prescriptions written and more than 75 percent of European prescriptions. Nearly 20 percent of total sales for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries comes from branded Copaxone. The widely used injectable MS treatment generated more than $4 billion in revenue for the Israeli drugmaker last year. Teva<76>s shares were hit hard following U.S. approval of both 20 mg and 40 mg generics for Mylan late on Tuesday. Mylan shares rose about 18 percent the next day. Mylan Chief Executive Heather Bresch, in a statement, said the company looks forward to <20>leading the marketing and selling of this important product in our European markets.<2E> Alvogen said Europe accounted for more than 505 million euros ($591 million) of Copaxone sales in 2016, based on IMS Midas data. Generic competition to Copaxone adds to problems at Teva, which hired a new chief executive last month as it struggles with huge debts and a squeeze on margins for its own vast portfolio of generic medicines. Reporting by Ben Hirschler in London and Bill Berkrot in New York; Editing by Jane Merriman and James Dalgleish'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-teva-pharm-ind-copaxone-europe/tevas-copaxone-faces-more-generic-competition-in-europe-idUSKBN1CA25B'|'2017-10-05T19:45:00.000+03:00'
'6a7370704de66a5fc0c7e7df77b2f810f4f09cc5'|'Boeing to buy aircraft technologies provider Aurora Flight Sciences'|'FILE PHOTO: Visitors look at models of Boeing aircrafts at the Aviation Expo China 2015, in Beijing, China, in this September 16, 2015 file photo. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - Boeing Co ( BA.N ) said on Thursday it would buy Aurora Flight Sciences Corp to advance its ability to develop autonomous, electric-powered and long-flight-duration aircraft for its commercial and military businesses.The acquisition could help Boeing with a number of projects, including drones produced by its Insitu unit, a new mid-market aircraft that Boeing is considering and efforts to fly prototype pilotless technology next year.<2E>The aerospace industry is going to be changing<6E> and the acquisition positions Boeing strategically <20>for whatever that future may be,<2C> Boeing Chief Technology Officer Greg Hyslop said on a conference call with reporters.The deal could face regulatory obstacles, but the company hopes to complete the purchase this year, Hyslop said.Boeing<6E>s move could help Zunum Aero, a Seattle-area company aiming to bring a hybrid-electric regional airliner to market in 2022. Boeing and JetBlue Airways Corp ( JBLU.O ) have both made venture capital investments in Zunum.Boeing will maintain Manassas, Virginia-based Aurora as a separate unit reporting through Boeing<6E>s engineering, test and technology division, which is headed by Hyslop.Terms of the deal were not disclosed.Last year, Aurora won a contract for more than $89 million for the vertical take off and landing X-plane.Aurora has designed, produced and flown more than 30 unmanned air vehicles since its inception and has collaborated with Boeing on the rapid prototyping of innovative aircraft and structural assemblies for both military and commercial applications during the last decade.Additional reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr and Bill Rigby '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-aurora-m-a-boeing/boeing-to-buy-aircraft-technologies-provider-aurora-flight-sciences-idINKBN1CA1KU'|'2017-10-05T11:30:00.000+03:00'
'48fee4d15ee61e17ed07117c57547243ca6e5b52'|'Carige warns of resolution risk if capital plan fails'|'October 4, 2017 / 9:35 PM / Updated 4 minutes ago Carige warns of resolution risk if capital plan fails Reuters Staff 2 Min Read MILAN (Reuters) - Troubled Italian lender Banca Carige ( CRGI.MI ) warned on Wednesday it could be wound down by European supervisors if its capital strengthening plan fails. In a document detailing a debt swap offer that is part of its planned capital-boosting measures, the Genoa-based lender said there was no certainty that such measures would be completed successfully and that the lender could restore its financial health. Should the plan fail, leaving the bank unable to meet capital requirements, European regulators could adopt resolution measures in line with new rules for dealing with bank crises, Carige said. The bank has approved a new share issue for up to 560 million euros ($660 million) which it must complete by the end of the year. It has also launched a debt swap offer and asset sale programme which it hopes will raise around 400 million euros. Carige is the last large Italian bank still in trouble after the government this year rescued bigger rival Monte dei Paschi di Siena ( BMPS.MI ) and liquidated two failing regional banks. Reporting by Silvia Aloisi'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-banks-italy-carige/carige-warns-of-resolution-risk-if-capital-plan-fails-idUKKBN1C92Z7'|'2017-10-05T00:34:00.000+03:00'
'14b870437b5a491db8ec4e64880faf3225c5408d'|'Private equity readies debt to buy Akzo''s Specialty Chemicals: sources'|'October 5, 2017 / 11:10 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Private equity readies debt to buy Akzo''s Specialty Chemicals: sources Arno Schuetze , Claire Ruckin 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Akzo Nobel''s logo is seen in Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 16, 2012. REUTERS/Robin van Lonkhuijsen/United Photos/File Photo FRANKFURT/LONDON (Reuters) - Private equity firms looking to bid for Akzo Nobel<65>s ( AKZO.AS ) Specialty Chemicals business, which could be valued at up to 9 billion euros, will be offered debt financing of up to 6 billion euros ($7 billion), people close to the situation said. Bankers said leveraged loans and high yield bonds in euros and dollars are all being considered in advance of the Dutch paint maker kicking off the expected sale of the business this month. The divestment is part of a strategy it committed to in order to thwart a takeover by U.S. rival PPG Industries ( PPG.N ). Akzo, which may still opt for an initial public offering of the unit if a listing commands a higher valuation, wants to receive first-round bids by the end of the year with the aim of finalizing a deal by March 2018. Buyout group CVC has teamed up with rival KKR to make an offer and they will compete with a consortium comprising Advent and Bain, while Carlyle, Apollo and Blackstone may all put forward bids on their own, the sources said. <20>Carlyle may have a slight advantage in this process as it had discussed an asset swap of (former portfolio company) Axalta with Akzo before the Axalta IPO,<2C> one of the sources said. All the prospective bidders declined to comment while Akzo Nobel spokesman Leslie McGibbon said that the <20>dual track sales process is going ahead<61> but declined to give further details. Bankers advising potential buyers said they expect Specialty Chemicals to sell at an enterprise value of 8-9 times the unit<69>s expected earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). Specialty Chemicals reported EBITDA of 953 million euros in2016 and its recently appointed CEO Theirry Vanlancker has forecast EBITDA increases of around 50 million euros per year through 2022. Last month Akzo warned it would miss a 2017 target for the group as a whole of a 100 million euro operating profit increase due to worsening business conditions. It did not alter its forecast for Specialty Chemicals, which accounts for about a third of Akzo<7A>s sales and profits. Shareholders, many of whom were angered by Akzo<7A>s rejection of PPG<50>s 26.3 billion euro offer, largely support the sale of the chemicals division. The company plans to call a extraordinary shareholder meeting before the end of the year to update investors. Writing by Toby Sterling; editing by Alexander Smith '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-akzo-nobel-specialty-chemicals-loans/private-equity-readies-debt-to-buy-akzos-specialty-chemicals-sources-idINKBN1CA15Q'|'2017-10-05T09:10:00.000+03:00'
'038a589a5ae72d2a21d808e9487b1e7635237315'|'Dirt-cheap mobile data is a thrill for Indian consumers'|'THE security guards at the foot of Antilia, a 27-floor private residence in Mumbai, while away the days just as all bored Indians have been doing in recent months<68>watching movies on their phone. Using a mobile network to stream endless Bollywood epics would until recently have been an unthinkable luxury, even in the rich world. In India it now costs less than a cup of street-side chai.Thank the tycoon lording it in the skyscraper<65>s upper reaches. As boss of Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani, India<69>s richest man, has spent more than $25bn on building Jio, a state-of-the-art mobile-telecoms network. The delight of the guards at Antilia, and of the roughly 130m Indians who have signed up to the service since it launched in September 2016, is matched only by the misery of Mr Ambani<6E>s rivals.Latest updates How <20>Oslo<6C> turned diplomatic negotiation into compelling theatre Prospero 30 minutes ago This 2 hours ago Flyers See all updates Jio<69>s rise is nothing short of spectacular. It took less than a year for it to be delivering more data than any other mobile network in the world<6C>one billion billion bytes a month, it claims, or over half the data delivered by all American carriers put together. Less so when it comes to revenue: after giving away its services for seven months, it went on to charge customers a third of what other Indian operators do.Nobody thinks Mr Ambani is about to relent after winning a mere 11% or so of the market, a figure that is creeping up by around half a percentage point each month. Perhaps to terrify the competition further, he has spoken of wanting half the market to himself by 2021. To that end, the general public this week got their hands on the JioPhone, the latest plank in the company<6E>s growth push.A crossover between an antique Nokia-style feature phone (these still make up most new handsets sold in India) and a smartphone, the device is bound to appeal to Antilia<69>s security guards. It is free: you only pay a 1,500 rupee ($23) deposit, refundable after three years. Then, for a mere 153 rupees a month, customers can consume unlimited calls and data. Though the screen is small and popular apps such as Facebook are not (yet) available, analysts at CLSA, a brokerage, expect around 100m JioPhones to be sold in the next 18 months.Jio<69>s gatecrashing of what was an orderly market has plunged its rivals into crisis. Some moan that regulators have bent over backwards to help Reliance, known for its ability to run rings around officials. Many operators are in precarious financial positions, having bet that rapid user growth would offset the high fixed costs of acquiring spectrum and building networks. Now that Jio has snagged 84% of the 153m net mobile-phone additions in the year to July (see chart), others must fight for the scraps. A key metric, average revenue per user, has cratered across the industry. What profits remain are insufficient to service large debt piles. Analysts at Credit Suisse, a bank, calculate that over half of around $40bn in loans to the industry sits with operators whose earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation cannot meet interest payments.The government might get hit, too. Most lending to struggling telecom firms was by state-owned banks, whose long-overdue recapitalisation from public coffers will have to be bigger as a result. And the government itself is a creditor to telecoms companies, having agreed to spectrum bills being paid slowly over time. Against that, Mr Ambani<6E>s bet is uniquely in sync with the current government<6E>s ambitions. Jio launched its service with newspaper ads featuring a full-page portrait of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, dedicating its investment to his digital vision. And other services that need widespread internet adoption are clearly benefiting, from media-streaming to e-commerce.Consolidation seems the order of the day for the rest of the industry. Having written <20>6.3bn ($6.9bn) off the value of its local subsidiary and shelv
'239b2d8e8084a1cc9fb218d5be5c6235259e6bfd'|'Japan''s MS&AD to invest $1 billion in UK''s ReAssure Jersey'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings Inc ( 8725.T ) said on Friday it had agreed with Swiss Re AG ( SRENH.S ) to invest 800 million pounds ($1.05 billion) to take a stake of up to 15 percent in UK-based ReAssure Jersey One Ltd.MS&AD and rival Japanese property and casualty insurers have been aggressively acquiring and investing in overseas assets as they seek to diversity their risk portfolio.ReAssure is the latest deal for MS&AD, which announced two overseas transactions in August, including the $1.6 billion acquisition of Singapore<72>s First Capital Insurance.MS&AD said that by taking a stake in unlisted ReAssure it aimed to build know-how of the closed-book life business, where firms buy policy portfolios from other firms instead of underwriting new ones.It expected a rise in policy portfolios up for sale as the global insurance industry faced stricter capital regulation and diminishing investment returns due to low interest rates.While the closed-book life insurance business has little presence in Japan, Dai-ichi Life Holdings Inc ( 8750.T ) is also trying to expand in the category after its $5.6 billion acquisition of Protective Life of the United States in 2015.MS&AD said it would initially buy 5.0 percent of ReAssure from Swiss Re for 175 million pounds in cash, aiming to close the transaction in the first quarter of 2018, pending regulatory approval.The remainder of the 800 million pound investment, in the form of new shares, would be completed within three years from the closing of the initial purchase.MS&AD&rsquo;s latest deal shows it is still hungry for acquisitions even after it agreed to pay $5.3 billion for Amlin PLC, an underwriter in the Lloyd<79>s of London specialist insurance market, in 2015.Shares of MS&AD were up 1.5 percent in early trade, while Tokyo''s benchmark Nikkei average .N225 was up about 0.2 percent.Additional reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Stephen Coates '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-ms-ad-insurance-britain-reassure/japans-msad-to-invest-1-billion-in-uks-reassure-jersey-idINKBN1CB01A'|'2017-10-05T22:14:00.000+03:00'
'491790352ad343a19acf16bcf4f9e2c9ae68adb3'|'Unilever spreads whets private equity appetite as deadline nears - sources'|' 47 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago Unilever spreads whets private equity appetite as deadline nears - sources Pamela Barbaglia , Dasha Afanasieva , Clara Denina 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The company logo for Unilever is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., February 17, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Anglo-Dutch consumer group Unilever ( ULVR.L ) has invited private equity bidders to submit tentative offers for its $8 billion (6.10 billion pounds) margarine and spreads business by a deadline of Oct. 19, two sources close to the matter told Reuters. The sale of the business, which makes Flora and Stork margarines, officially kicked off in late September with Unilever<65>s banks sending out confidential information to a series of heavyweight buyout funds which have been working on this deal since the start of the summer, the sources said. The auction has been dominated by private equity firms which have been lured by the unit<69>s strong profit margins. But the valuation might prove difficult, as Western consumers cut back on bread and margarine, the sources said. International investors have teamed up in three rival consortiums consisting of Bain Capital and Clayton Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) as part of one group, Blackstone ( BX.N ) and CVC Capital Partners [CVC.UL] as part of a rival group, and KKR joining forces with Singapore<72>s sovereign wealth fund GIC. U.S. investment fund Apollo was instead looking to bid alone, the sources said. Industry players including U.S. agricultural trader Archer Daniels Midland Co ( ADM.N ) have decided against bidding, the sources added. Blackstone, CD&R, Bain, CVC, KKR and Apollo declined to comment, while Unilever and GIC were not immediately available for comment. The sale, which is led by Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, could fetch as much as 6 billion pounds ($7.87 billion) and was expected to wrap up towards the end of 2017, the sources said. In its bid to exit from the shrinking margarine business, Unilever agreed last month to exchange its spreads unit in South Africa for Remgro<72>s ( REMJ.J ) 26 percent stake in Unilever<65>s South African subsidiary, a deal worth $900 million. The consumer giant has been working hard to boost its margins and performance after rebuffing a surprise $143 billion takeover bid from Kraft Heinz ( KHC.O ) this year. Unilever<65>s underlying operating margin improved 180 basis points to 17.8 percent in the last six months, helped by an acceleration of cost-savings programmes, and a 130 basis point drop in brand and marketing spending. On Sept. 25, Unilever made a 2.27 billion euro swoop on fast-growing cosmetics company Carver Korea in a bid to build a global beauty business. Writing by Pamela Barbaglia; Editing by Edmund Blair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-unilever-m-a-spreads/unilever-spreads-whets-private-equity-appetite-as-deadline-nears-sources-idUKKBN1CA2FL'|'2017-10-05T21:47:00.000+03:00'
'794b77fc8d4b3c1cd82c409ad12ca32bab52703d'|'UK house prices rising at fastest rate for eight months, says Halifax - Money'|'UK house prices rising at fastest rate for eight months, says Halifax Mortgage lender<65>s survey bucks trend of other recent reports suggesting housing market is weakening House prices rose by 0.8% in September to an average of <20>225,109, the highest on record, Halifax said. Photograph: Tim Goode/PA UK house prices rising at fastest rate for eight months, says Halifax Mortgage lender<65>s survey bucks trend of other recent reports suggesting housing market is weakening View more sharing options Friday 6 October 2017 10.42 BST Last modified on Friday 6 October 2017 14.06 BST UK house prices rose at their fastest rate for eight months in September as buyers shrugged off Brexit uncertainty and fears of a slowdown in consumer spending, according to one of Britain<69>s biggest mortgage lenders. The latest Halifax house price survey showed a 4% price rise in the three months to September compared with the same period last year, up from a 2.6% annual rise in August and the highest figure since February. This bucked the trend of other recent reports which suggested a weakening housing market, especially in London. Over the month, house prices rose by 0.8% in September to an average of <20>225,109, the highest on record. Although this was down on the 1.5% increase seen the previous month, it was far better than the 0.1% rise that had been expected by analysts. Millions wiped off value of properties in UK''s wealthiest streets Read more Halifax said a squeeze on spending and rising prices could stifle future demand, but it believed that the housing market was unlikely to be badly affected by any future interest rise by the Bank of England. Russell Galley, the managing director of Halifax Community Bank, said: <20>While the quarterly and annual rates of house price growth have improved, they are lower than at the start of the year. <20>UK house prices continue to be supported by an ongoing shortage of properties for sale and solid growth in full-time employment. However, increasing pressure on spending power and continuing affordability concerns may well dampen buyer demand. There has been recent speculation on the possibility of a rise in the Bank of England base rate. We do not anticipate this will have a significant effect on transaction volumes.<2E> house prices graphic The economist Samuel Tombs of Pantheon Macroeconomics said the Halifax survey was out of line with other reports: <20>The sudden surge in Halifax<61>s measure of house prices <20> is impossible to reconcile with all the other housing market evidence. Halifax<61>s measure is the most volatile of all the indices we track; the standard deviation of month-to-month changes over the last four years has been two and three times higher than for the official and Nationwide indices, respectively. <20>Other surveys show that the pipeline of demand is soft; Rics [the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors] has reported that new buyer inquiries have fallen in six of the last seven months. Real wages still have further to fall over the next six months and mortgage rates will rise soon in response to the increase in banks<6B> funding costs.<2E> Photograph: Halifax Falling house prices in London were helping to fuel growth in other parts of the country, said Jonathan Hopper, managing director of Garrington Property Finders. <20>Momentum remains patchy and what growth there is is wavering rather than sustained, and prices remain under intense pressure in several key regions,<2C> he said. <20>In London, prices have been sliding in many of the areas that saw the frothiest rates of growth during the boom. <20>On the flipside, the flight of equity from the capital is fuelling activity in several regional markets where affordability and perceived value for money is now enticing higher volumes of buyers.<2E> Photograph: Pantheon Macroeconomics Other housing market experts warned that the market could weaken in the coming months. Lucy Pendleton, founder director of the independent estate agents James Pendleton, said:
'c2d4d60dc2826d243294bc34966056e7e4f38bfe'|'German industrial orders jump on vibrant demand from abroad'|'October 6, 2017 / 7:03 AM / in 9 minutes German industrial orders jump on vibrant demand from abroad Michael Nienaber 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Workers assemble a large Diesel engine at the MAN Diesel & Turbo factory in Augsburg March 6, 2013. REUTERS/Michael Dalder/File Photo BERLIN (Reuters) - German industrial orders bounced back in August, rising more than expected on strong foreign demand, data showed on Friday, suggesting that factories will contribute to overall growth in Europe<70>s largest economy in coming months. Industrial companies registered a 3.6 percent increase in orders after contracts for <20>Made in Germany<6E> goods fell by an upwardly revised 0.4 percent in July, data from the Economy Ministry showed. The reading for August was the strongest monthly increase since December. It easily beat the Reuters forecast for a 0.7 percent rise, surpassing even the most optimistic estimate. A data breakdown showed domestic demand rose 2.7 percent while foreign orders jumped 4.3 percent, propelled by a 7.7 percent increase from customers outside the euro zone - despite the recent appreciation of the single currency. <20>Orders activity further picked up recently from an already high level,<2C> the ministry said, adding that the positive trend was backed by good business morale and strong output figures. <20>The solid upturn in the manufacturing sector should therefore continue,<2C> it added. <20>SUMMER EXPLOSION<4F> ING Bank chief economist Carsten Brzeski said the <20>summer explosion in new orders<72> was likely the result of some bulk orders. Nevertheless, the strong August figure all of sudden made 2017 a strong year for new orders, Brzeski said. <20>Combined with strong business surveys, showing production expectations as well as orders books close to record highs, the German industry looks all set to end the year at maximum speed.<2E> Bankhaus Lampe economist Alexander Krueger was a bit more cautious, saying he doubted that the German economy could shift into an even higher gear after already strong growth rates in the first two quarters of the year. The German economy grew 0.7 percent on the quarter in the first three months of the year and 0.6 percent from April to June, driven by increased household and state spending as well as higher investment in buildings and machinery. Leading economic institutes last week raised their growth forecast for the German economy to 1.9 percent in 2017 and 2.0 percent in 2018. This would translate into calendar-adjusted GDP rates of 2.2 percent and 2.1 percent respectively. The German government will present its updated projections for GDP growth, employment and inflation on Wednesday. Reporting by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Paul Carrel and Toby Chopra'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-economy-orders/german-industrial-orders-jump-on-vibrant-demand-from-abroad-idUKKBN1CB0MN'|'2017-10-06T10:03:00.000+03:00'
'125bc345428cc8b411ca86100c9547b788a67c42'|'Tesla in ''production hell'' to meet Model 3 deadline - Elon Musk'|'October 6, 2017 / 8:43 PM / in 18 minutes Tesla delays big rig truck debut; Model 3 in ''production hell'' Munsif Vengattil 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Tesla Model 3 cars wait for their new owners as they come off the Fremont factory''s production line during an event at the company''s facilities in Fremont, California, U.S., July 28, 2017. REUTERS/Alexandria Sage/File Photo (Reuters) - Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ) Chief Executive Elon Musk on Friday pushed back the unveiling of the company<6E>s big rig truck until mid-November, tweeting that the electric vehicle maker was diverting resources to fix production bottlenecks of its new Model 3 sedan and to help Puerto Rico. Musk said Tesla<6C>s Model 3 was <20>deep in production hell<6C> echoing his own comments in July, when he showed off some of the first cars of that model. The Model 3 could help Tesla approach its goal of becoming more of a mass market producer. Recent comments have tempered expectations about the speed of the increase in production, though. Musk<73>s comments came after the close of stock trading on Friday. The company<6E>s shares fell 0.8 percent in extended trading. The Palo Alto, California-based company delivered just 220 Model 3 sedans and produced 260 in the third quarter. It had planned to produce more than 1,500. Musk also tweeted the company was diverting resources to increasing battery production to help hurricane-hit Puerto Rico, where most residents remain without electricity. Earlier this week Tesla reported that <20>production bottlenecks<6B> had left it behind the planned ramp-up for the Model 3. In response to a Tesla customer asking if he would get his car delivered this year, Musk tweeted, <20>December will be a big month, so probably, but it is impossible to be certain right now.<2E> A Wall Street Journal report said parts of Model 3 were being made by hand as recently as early September, adding to production delays. ( on.wsj.com/2kt5E17 ) Musk also said Tesla would reschedule the unveiling of its semi-truck to Nov. 16 as it focuses on fixing production issues tied to Model 3 and increases battery production for Puerto Rico. The unveiling of the truck, called Tesla Semi, has been delayed for the second time this year. Musk had initially said the truck would be unveiled in September, but he later rescheduled it to late October. <20>Semi specs are better than anything I<>ve seen reported so far. Semi eng/design team work is aces, but other needs are greater right now,<2C> Elon replied to a twitter user who asked him about the specifications of the semi-truck. Reuters in August reported that the truck would have a working range of 200-300 miles. Earlier in the day, Musk said the company will send more battery installers to Puerto Rico to help restore power after Hurricane Maria knocked out power on the island over two weeks ago. Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Henderson and Anil D''Silva and David Gregorio'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-truck/tesla-reschedules-unveiling-of-semi-truck-to-november-16-idUKKBN1CB2NQ'|'2017-10-07T01:47:00.000+03:00'
'35f2b04b4e4d97e7863c5c4a6e35ab3aeaf80e94'|'Yum China same-store sales beat, CEO to step down'|'(Reuters) - Yum China Holdings Inc<6E>s ( YUMC.N ) quarterly same-store sales beat analysts<74> estimates as its KFC restaurants served up strong results, and the company said its Chief Executive Micky Pant would step down.Joey Wat, currently the company<6E>s chief operating officer, will take over as CEO, Yum China said.Pant, who has led the company since its spin off from Yum Brands Inc ( YUM.N ) late last year, will become vice chairman of the board and senior adviser to Yum China.Shares of the company, which also operates Pizza Hut and Taco Bell chains, rose 3.6 percent to $41.40 after the bell on Thursday.The company<6E>s same-store sales rose 6 percent in the third quarter ended Aug. 31. Analysts had expected a rise of 2.9 percent, according to research firm Consensus Metrix.KFC<46>s same-store sales jumped 7 percent, while Pizza Hut<75>s were flat.The fast food chain said net income rose about 10 percent to $211 million, while earnings per share were flat at 53 cents.Excluding items, it earned 52 cents per share, while revenue rose 8.2 percent to $2.04 billion.Analysts on average had expected the company to report a profit of 56 cents per share and revenue of $1.98 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Reporting by Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto and Anil D''Silva '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yum-china-holdings-inc-results/yum-china-same-store-sales-beat-ceo-to-step-down-idUSKBN1CA2NW'|'2017-10-05T23:44:00.000+03:00'
'951e84c605e99635689a50362eb4c81223aa6492'|'Japan ministry says unauthorised staff certified cars at five Nissan plants'|'October 6, 2017 / 2:33 AM / Updated an hour ago Japan ministry says unauthorised staff certified cars at five Nissan plants Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Nissan logo is seen at a car dealership in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico May 30, 2017. Picture taken May 30, 2017. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Transport Minister Keiichi Ishii said on Friday that unauthorised technicians had been found certifying vehicles at five Nissan Motor Co ( 7201.T ) plants that the ministry has been inspecting. The unauthorised technicians included contract workers, Ishii told a news conference. <20>It<49>s extremely regrettable, causing anxiety for users and shaking the foundation of the certification system,<2C> he said. The ministry said it has carried out spot inspections at all of Nissan<61>s six assembly plants in Japan and found stamps of certified technicians were used at five plants on documents to sign off final vehicle checks conducted by non-certified technicians. Nissan has decided to recall all 1.2 million new passenger cars it sold in Japan over the past three years after discovering final vehicle inspections were not performed by authorised technicians. Ishii said Nissan was expected to file the recall with the ministry on Friday afternoon. Reporting by Maki Shiraki; Editing by Michael Perry'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nissan-recall/japan-transport-minister-says-unauthorised-technicians-certified-cars-at-five-nissan-plants-idUKKBN1CB06O'|'2017-10-06T06:32:00.000+03:00'
'447fa1c64046f903b0db112446f100e9f3284314'|'Airbus lags Boeing on January-September orders, deliveries'|'October 6, 2017 / 8:40 PM / Updated 5 minutes ago Airbus lags Boeing on January-September orders, deliveries Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A logo of Airbus is pictured on their booth during the European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (EBACE) in Geneva, Switzerland, May 22, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus sold 56 aircraft and delivered 55 in September to remain in second place behind U.S. rival Boeing ( BA.N ) in the first nine months of the year, monthly data published by the firm on Friday showed. September deliveries included 13 of its upgraded A320neo family, hit recently by delays in receiving engines from U.S. supplier Pratt & Whitney. But tarmac at its factories remains choked with undelivered planes waiting for their engines. Over the first nine months, Airbus delivered 89 of the same fuel-saving model, leaving it with more than 100 to deliver in the final quarter to reach an annual target of 200. Over the same period, it also delivered 50 A350 aircraft. Planemaking chief Fabrice Bregier indicated last month that it planned to deliver around 75 A350s for the year as a whole. Between January and September, Airbus sold 319 aircraft, or 271 after cancellations and conversions, and delivered 454. It has a published target of 700 deliveries in 2017, but has told analysts verbally it will deliver 720. Boeing took orders for 565 aircraft in the first nine months, or 498 after cancellations. It delivered a nine-month total of 554 aircraft after a busy third quarter. September<65>s orders at Airbus included two A330-900neo jets to an undisclosed buyer. Airbus is preparing the first flight of the upgraded version of its widely sold A330 jet within the next couple of weeks. Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Catherine Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbus-orders/airbus-lags-boeing-on-january-september-orders-deliveries-idUSKBN1CB2NC'|'2017-10-06T23:40:00.000+03:00'
'743bbdb42cda6f7735d0bb833b95eb83a5c3d8b3'|'European shares inch lower as Germany''s DAX slips from record; IBEX bounces'|' 33 AM / Updated 32 minutes ago European shares inch lower as Germany''s DAX slips from record; IBEX bounces Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote MILAN (Reuters) - European shares inched lower in early deals on Thursday with Germany<6E>s benchmark index pulling back from a fresh record high and Spanish stocks rebounding from the heavy losses caused in the previous session by escalating Catalan tensions. The pan-European STOXX 600 index index and Germany''s DAX .GDAXI were both down around 0.15 percent by 0724 GMT, while Spain''s IBEX .IBEX was up 0.6 percent. Top fallers on the STOXX were shares in Assa Abloy ( ASSAb.ST ), down 4.9 percent, after news that CEO Johan Molin was considering stepping down next year after more than a decade at the helm of the Swedish lockmaker. Osram Licht ( OSRn.DE ) declined 3.8 percent after Siemens sold its remaining 17 percent stake in the lighting group for 1.2 billion euros, severing links with its former unit. While banks .SX7P.SX7E fell for a second day on worries over political tensions in Spain and news that the ECB will ask them to set aside more cash to cover newly classified bad loans, utilities .SX6P led sectoral gainers. The sector was led higher by French power company EDF ( EDF.PA ), which gained 3.3 percent, underpinned by an upgrade to buy from hold at Jefferies. Telecom Italia ( TLIT.MI ) rose 1 percent after its chairman said he had no <20>preconception<6F> about any possible spin off of the phone group<75>s fixed line network. Reporting by Danilo Masoni, Editing by Helen Reid'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-stocks/european-shares-inch-lower-as-germanys-dax-slips-from-record-ibex-bounces-idUKKBN1CA0LB'|'2017-10-05T10:32:00.000+03:00'
'd7ff616831838f5458c47b804c42bfa3dc01a44e'|'PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 5'|'October 5, 2017 / 5:11 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 5 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 5 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - Apple Inc issued a software update Wednesday that it said addresses some cellular-connectivity issues that have affected its newest smartwatch, the Apple Watch Series 3. on.wsj.com/2hOcJZ4 - Verizon Communications Inc said its top media executive, Marni Walden, is leaving in February and her responsibilities will be split among existing executives at the telecom giant. on.wsj.com/2hNapBQ - Airbnb Inc''s marketing chief Jonathan Mildenhall is departing the online home-rental company where he was known for promoting diversity in advertising and guiding the brand through controversies that attended its rapid growth. on.wsj.com/2hOFHs0 - AT&T Inc Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said the telecommunications giant isn''t looking to bring a "telephone company culture" to Time Warner Inc and "really screw it up" after it closes its pending $85 billion acquisition of the media company. on.wsj.com/2hQYjI0 - Continued adoption of Monsanto Co''s latest soybean, cotton and corn products drove quarterly revenue for the seed giant in what it called a challenging agricultural environment. on.wsj.com/2hNjLxf (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-wsj/press-digest-wall-street-journal-oct-5-idUSL4N1MG0TG'|'2017-10-05T08:11:00.000+03:00'
'6538141158a766883864698792322d55b9d5be38'|'Australian retailers hit by worst sales decline in 4-1/2 years'|'FILE PHOTO: Members of the public sit in a shopping mall after buying their lunch from fast-food restaurants in central Sydney, Australia, September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Steven Saphore/File Photo SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian retailers suffered their worst decline in sales since early 2013 as debt-laden consumers tightened their purse strings, slashing spending on food, furniture and clothing, an outcome that bodes poorly for third-quarter economic growth.Thursday<61>s data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed retail sales dropped 0.6 percent in August, confounding expectations for a 0.3 percent increase. July was also revised down to show a 0.2 percent fall.The 0.8 percent slump in July and August is the biggest back-to-back fall since October 2010.In response, the Australian dollar skidded 0.4 percent to $0.7829, down from a one-week high of $0.7875 set on Wednesday.Australia<69>s retail sector had shown some signs of life earlier in the year, but that recovery was short-lived as sluggish wages and household incomes sapped spending power.The data casts a shadow on the Reserve Bank of Australia<69>s (RBA) forecasts for the A$1.7 trillion economy to accelerate at 3 percent over the next two years.The RBA has long feared ballooning debt in Australia<69>s red-hot property sector was limiting consumers<72> ability to spend elsewhere in the economy, one reason it has held rates at an all-time low 1.50 percent since August 2016.<2E>On the face of it, this is not good news for third quarter GDP growth,<2C> said Michael Workman, a senior economist at CBA.<2E>Though, it should be noted that a fall in sales this broad is very strange,<2C> he added. <20>We aren<65>t hearing anything like this sort of weakness from our clients, and people are still spending on cars and services. It<49>s just very odd.<2E>The ABS figures showed falls across every single state, a rare occurrence, with food, eating out and household goods leading the losses. Department stores did gain 0.7 percent, but that followed a sharp drop of 2.6 percent in July.Indeed, Australia<69>s biggest department store operator Myer this month posted its lowest annual profit since listing with sales down 2.7 percent in the year to July 29.ONLINE BOOST Not all is doom and gloom. The ABS<42>s experimental estimates of online retail turnover jumped 6.3 percent in August from the previous month and were rapidly catching up to last year<61>s Christmas sales.The online numbers are not yet part of the headline retail series and are not seasonally adjusted. The ABS estimates the sector is worth around A$13 billion a year, compared to A$300 billion in traditional sales.Online activity is, however, expanding much more rapidly.Analysts at NAB estimate annual growth in online turnover actually accelerated last month to around 10 percent, from 8.5 percent in July, and worth more like A$23 billion over the 12 months to August.A separate ABS survey of household spending this week showed Australians are shelling out more money on holidays, health insurance and school fees - none of which are reflected in the retail sales numbers.There was slightly better news on the country<72>s trade surplus which widened to $989 million in August, topping market forecasts of $875 million.Yet the weakness in retail was mirrored in the numbers with imports of consumer goods dropping 4 percent in the month.Reporting by Swati Pandey and Wayne Cole; Editing by Eric Meijer & Shri Navaratnam '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/australia-economy/australian-retailers-hit-by-worst-sales-decline-in-4-1-2-years-idINKBN1CA0T4'|'2017-10-05T12:00:00.000+03:00'
'9c6e0d9a4a2772ecd7a7bb1f1ff58d9534f3f7d3'|'Drugs firm AstraZeneca wants three-year Brexit transition'|'October 2, 2017 / 10:02 AM / in 25 minutes Drugs firm AstraZeneca wants three-year Brexit transition Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A man walks past a sign at an AstraZeneca site in Macclesfield, central England May 19, 2014. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - British pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca ( AZN.L ) wants a transition period of at least three years when Britain leaves the European Union in 2019 and more clarity on what will happen in the longer term, its chairman said on Monday. Uncertainty about what Britain<69>s relations with the EU will look like after March 2019 are hurting investment in the world<6C>s fifth largest economy. Businesses most fear a situation where there is no deal at all. AstraZeneca Chairman Leif Johansson said the firm wanted <20>at least three years<72> as a transition period, <20>and very early in that period, we need to know what to expect in years four, five and six,<2C> he said told the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter. British Finance Minister Philip Hammond, speaking during the ruling Conservative Party<74>s annual conference, told BBC radio on Monday that uncertainty was hurting business confidence but said the government<6E>s proposal for a two-year transition would help. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has said the transition period must not last more than two years. Johansson said AstraZeneca, created from a merger between Sweden<65>s Astra and Britain<69>s Zeneca in 1999, did not expect a <20>cliff-edge<67> exit without a deal but said it remained a risk. <20>There is a logic among the political leadership that you just don<6F>t back down until the last minute.<2E> he said. <20>Then, finally, after pulling an all-nighter, you get to a result.<2E> AstraZeneca was preparing for a situation where there was no deal but did not yet have concrete plans, Johansson said. Reporting by Simon Johnson; Editing by Edmund Blair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-euastrazeneca/drugs-firm-astrazeneca-wants-three-year-brexit-transition-idUKKCN1C70ZX'|'2017-10-02T13:02:00.000+03:00'
'9af876cb89cf894b5315262385aac74687877431'|'UK factory growth slows, price pressures rocket again - PMI'|'October 2, 2017 / 8:33 AM / in 24 minutes UK factory growth slows, price pressures rocket again - PMI Andy Bruce 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Workers assemble cars at the plant for the Mini range of cars in Cowley, near Oxford, Britain June 20, 2016. REUTERS/Leon Neal/Pool/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Growth across British factories cooled last month as cost pressures lurched higher, according to a survey on Monday that painted a mixed picture for Bank of England officials who see interest rates rising soon. The IHS Markit/CIPS UK Manufacturing Purchasing Managers<72> Index (PMI) fell to 55.9 from a downwardly revised 56.7 in August, undershooting the consensus of 56.4 in a Reuters poll of economists. While the survey still signalled a fairly solid pace of expansion, softer growth in new orders and a slowdown among producers of investment goods were unpromising pointers for the months ahead. <20>The growth slowdown in September is a further sign that momentum is being lost across the broader UK economy,<2C> said Rob Dobson, director at IHS Markit, which compiles the survey. There were also signs more inflation could be in the pipeline, arguably complicating matters for BoE rate-setters who must balance a sluggish economy against rising prices caused in part by sterling<6E>s plunge following last year<61>s Brexit vote. Costs paid by factories for goods shot up at the fastest pace since March, the PMI showed, spurred in part by an increase in commodity prices and capacity constraints in the supply chain. <20>This will likely exert further upward pressure on prices, dent profitability and potentially disrupt production schedules in coming months,<2C> Dobson said. It will add to expectations the BoE will hike interest rates from their record low 0.25 percent soon, Dobson added. A majority of economists polled by Reuters last week expect the BoE will raise interest rates in November, although most also thought it would be a mistake to hike right now. Official economic growth figures published last week showed manufacturing output contracted 0.3 percent in the second quarter compared with the first quarter. PMIs for the construction industry and all-important service sector are due to be published on Tuesday and Wednesday. - Detailed PMI data are only available under licence from IHS Markit and customers need to apply to IHS Markit for a licence. To subscribe to the full data, click on the link below: www.markit.com/Contact-Us Reporting by Andy Bruce; Editing by Catherine Evans; andy.bruce@thomsonreuters.com; +442075423484; Reuters; Messaging: andy.bruce.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-pmi/uk-factory-growth-slows-price-pressures-rocket-again-pmi-idUKKCN1C70S9'|'2017-10-02T11:34:00.000+03:00'
'3508ef7e7ae990f393d033de4456da5dbd522e5f'|'Shell says cancels sale of Thailand gas field stakes to Kuwait''s KUFPEC'|'October 4, 2017 / 4:18 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Shell says cancels sale of Thai gas field stakes to Kuwait''s KUFPEC Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Staff members work at the booth of Royal Dutch Shell at Gastech, the world''s biggest expo for the gas industry, in Chiba, Japan, April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell ( RDSa.L ) said on Wednesday it has cancelled a $900 million deal to sell its gas field stakes in Thailand to Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company (KUFPEC). Shell and KUFPEC announced the deal in January, and it was due to be completed in the first quarter of 2017. The sale was part of efforts by the Anglo-Dutch company to reduce debt after buying smaller rival BG Group for $70 billion. <20>To date, the company has more than $25 billion in completed, announced or in progress divestments, on track to meet its target of $30 billion of divestments between 2016 and 2018,<2C> Shell said in a statement. Shell did not say why the deal with KUFPEC had been cancelled. The deal had called for Shell divest its shares in two subsidiaries - Shell Integrated Gas Thailand Pte Ltd (SIGT) and Thai Energy Co Ltd (TEC) - to KUFPEC<45>s unit in Thailand. SIGT and TEC together hold a 22.222 percent equity stake in the Bongkot natural gas field and adjoining acreages offshore Thailand consisting of blocks 15, 16, 17 and G12/48. PTT Exploration and Production PCL ( PTTEP.BK ) operates the offshore Bongkot field with a 44.445-percent equity. France<63>s Total ( TOTF.PA ) has a 33.333 percent stake. Besides continuing to support operations and development at Bongkot, SIGT also intends to participate in the forthcoming licensing round for the extension of the Bongkot concession, Shell said. Reporting by Florence Tan; Editing by Tom Hogue'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-thailand-gas-shell/shell-says-cancels-sale-of-thailand-gas-field-stakes-to-kuwaits-kufpec-idUKKCN1C909N'|'2017-10-04T07:17:00.000+03:00'
'5c0a930c86ba69a8291178409284ff8e5fbb2efc'|'RPT-Saudi king heads to Russia, with oil, investment and Syria on agenda'|'October 4, 2017 / 6:05 AM / Updated 24 minutes ago RPT-Saudi king heads to Russia, with oil, investment and Syria on agenda Reuters Staff (Repeats story with no changes to text) * Visit to Moscow is first by a reigning Saudi monarch * Riyadh and Moscow backed deal on oil production cut * But they support opposing sides in Syria<69>s war * Energy, infrastructure, agriculture investments likely By Stephen Kalin and Andrew Osborn RIYADH/MOSCOW, Oct 3 (Reuters) - The leaders of Saudi Arabia and Russia, the world<6C>s biggest oil exporters, are expected to discuss cooperation on oil production and differences over Syria and Iran on Thursday during the first visit to Moscow by a reigning Saudi Monarch. A slew of investment deals, including on a liquefied natural gas project and petrochemical plants, could also be signed during King Salman<61>s trip and plans for a $1-billion fund to invest in energy projects are likely to be finalised. The visit, including talks in the Kremlin with President Vladimir Putin, reflects a rapid deepening of ties between Russia and Saudi Arabia, driven by a mutual need to stem a drop in global oil prices. The two countries helped secure a deal between OPEC and other producers to cut output until the end of March 2018, but back competing sides in Syria<69>s civil war. Riyadh supports rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad<61>s forces while Russian troops and Iranian militias have sided with Assad. This leaves Moscow aligned with Saudi Arabia<69>s arch-rival Iran, whose influence Riyadh fears is growing in the region. <20>The Saudis want help on Iran, and Russia wants trade and investment,<2C> said Mark N. Katz, an expert on Russia-Middle East relations at George Mason University. <20>In the Saudi mind, they<65>re definitely linked and the Russians are going to try to separate these.<2E> Billboards have been erected on the road from the airport to central Moscow welcoming King Salman in Arabic and Russian. His son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, visited in May just before his elevation to crown prince, and in 2015 the countries<65> sovereign wealth funds agreed to $10 billion in investments. A business forum will include speeches by top ministers and the heads of state-owned energy giants Saudi Aramco and Gazprom as well as a presentation of Saudi<64>s Vision 2030 reform programme, which aims to end the kingdom<6F>s dependence on oil. SYRIA AND IRAN Moscow sees the trip as a payoff for its two-year-old intervention in Syria and recognition of its growing Middle East clout. <20>Even 12 months ago, Riyadh was highly critical of Russia<69>s involvement in Syria and the relationship looked as frozen as ever,<2C> said Chris Weafer, senior partner at economic and political consultancy Macro-Advisory Ltd. <20>Today that has changed 180 degrees. Both countries now see political and economic advantages from a closer, albeit pragmatic, relationship. This visit is intended to make sure it stays on track.<2E> Discussion of Syria is likely to focus on what the country will look like once Islamic State is defeated, Assad<61>s future, what peace talks between Saudi-backed opposition activists and Damascus can achieve and the creation of new de-escalation zones. The king may also seek assurances that Iran will not have a permanent role in Syria. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow hoped the king<6E>s trip would breathe life into a relationship with huge potential and was interested in maintaining dialogue with Riyadh <20>about the Middle East and Syria in particular.<2E> Any discussion of the oil market and the efficacy of moves to prop up prices by cutting supply will be closely watched. The oil price fall in the last three years has overstretched both producers<72> budgets, making an extension of joint cuts beyond March 2018 more likely. Moscow said last month it had discussed with Riyadh extending the deal but no specific decisions had been made ahead of a Nov. 30 producers<72> meeting in Vienna. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said in an interview broa
'65bfb4bb3f41086911f94dabb4a020d94653792f'|'UPDATE 1-Apple praises French iPhone work before talking tax with Macron'|'* French firm developed facial recognition technology* Macron wants to overhaul tax rules governing tech giants* France has proposed a tax on revenues (Adds presidential adviser on Macron-Cook meeting)By Mathieu RosemainPARIS, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Apple boss Tim Cook went out of his way on Monday to single out a small French firm behind innovative features in the latest iPhones ahead of meeting with President Emmanuel Macron, who has called for a tougher line on technology company taxes.The Apple chief executive paid a surprise visit to Eldim, a Normandy-based firm that develops optical technology used in the facial recognition system inside new top-of-the-range iPhone X smartphones due out next month. Prices start at $999.Face ID, as the iPhone X feature is known, will replace the fingerprint sensor for unlocking the phone and features in Apple<6C>s campaign to distinguish the phone from rival devices.<2E>Bravo for your work!<21>, Cook said on his official Twitter account in French. A picture of him chatting with Eldim employees was also posted.Cook later met Macron, who has called for Apple and other tech companies such as Amazon.com to pay more in taxes in Europe.<2E>Bravo to Europe for acting with determination to get tax rules and justice respected,<2C> Macron said in a tweet last week praising European Union officials for taking member-state Ireland to court to reclaim 13 billion euros ($15.3 billion) in back taxes from Apple.CONSTRUCTIVE TALKS A French presidency official said Macron and Cook did not rake over the past and described the talks about regulating digital platforms and tax policy as constructive and forward-looking.Asked if they had discussed France<63>s proposal to tax the revenue of big tech companies and not profit, the Macron adviser said: <20>They didn<64>t go into specifics.<2E><>The tone was very open. This wasn<73>t a posturing competition.<2E>Eldim, located outside Caen, near the northern coast of France, had worked with Apple on research projects for nearly a decade before gaining recognition for its optical work on behalf of Apple, the world<6C>s most highly valued company.<2E>They (Eldim) certainly have a top-notch technology,<2C> said industry analyst Thomas Husson of Forrester Research. <20>Facial recognition is one of iPhone X<>s differentiating features.<2E>Apple is normally highly secretive about the suppliers it uses to develop new phones, computers and other devices.A spokeswoman for Apple declined to comment.Franco-Italian chipmaker STMicroelectronics, one of Europe<70>s larger technology companies, is widely understood to be a supplier of sensors for the Apple iPhone 7 and forthcoming iPhone devices, but is barred by Apple from saying so.$1 = 0.8520 euros Additional reporting by Michel Rose in Paris and Eric Auchard in London; editing by Richard Lough and David Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/apple-france/update-1-apple-praises-french-iphone-work-before-talking-tax-with-macron-idINL8N1MK59T'|'2017-10-09T16:22:00.000+03:00'
'cfdd7a0eab4f111f867d0e03cb427013e95ba5f8'|'Google to use balloons to provide Puerto Rico cell service'|'WASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said late on Friday it had approved Alphabet Inc<6E>s application to provide emergency cellular service to Puerto Rico through its Project Loon balloons.In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico has struggled to regain communications services. The FCC said on Friday that 83 percent of cell sites remain out of service, while wireless communications company are deploying temporary sites.Alphabet, which announced the test project in 2013 to use solar-powered, high-altitude balloons to provide internet service in remote regions, said in an FCC filing it was working to <20>support licensed mobile carriers<72> restoration of limited communications capability<74> in Puerto Rico. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Sandra Maler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-puertorico-cellular/google-to-use-balloons-to-provide-puerto-rico-cell-service-idUSL2N1MI01C'|'2017-10-07T04:38:00.000+03:00'
'c7285e0fd4e4a3a0b7a9aabc25cd5acdfa47862e'|'U.S. financial regulator must beef up cyber security -inspector'|'October 4, 2017 / 9:01 PM / Updated 16 hours ago U.S. financial regulator must beef up cyber security: inspector Lisa Lambert 3 Min Read A man poses inside a server room at an IT company in this June 19, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha/Illustration WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), one of Wall Street<65>s top regulators, must strengthen its protections against hacking, according to a report the agency<63>s internal inspector released on Wednesday as the financial sector reels from recent revelations of two major data breaches. The former head of the Equifax ( EFX.N ) credit bureau is testifying before Congress this week about the company<6E>s disclosure that personal information for millions of individuals had been stolen from its systems. At the same time, the Securities and Exchange Commission - the country<72>s lead securities regulator - is facing lawmakers<72> questions about information stolen last year from its filing system that may have been used for illicit trades. Related Coverage U.S. regulator eases part of new mortgage servicing rules The CFPB, which gathers sensitive information on individuals, banks, credit card companies and other financial firms as the government<6E>s consumer finance watchdog, could suffer similar intrusions that might undermine public trust or limit its ability to carry out its mission, its inspector general said in a report dated Sept. 27 and released on Wednesday. The agency <20>has not fully implemented processes, such as data loss prevention technologies, within its internal network that would enable the agency to detect and better protect against unauthorized access to and disclosure of its sensitive information,<2C> the report said. It also needs to run automated feeds through security checks and move away from manually tracking system security by putting alerts and continuous monitoring tools in place, the inspector general found. In the five years since it was established, the CFPB has had to quickly erect sound information systems that can repel cyber attacks. All federal agencies are struggling to keep up with a steady rise in the number and sophistication of attempted intrusions, as criminal demand for stolen Social Security numbers and other personally identifiable information swells. The inspector general also said the CFPB will soon implement a job succession plan to try to close possible staffing and skill gaps, hopefully clarifying what the future holds after Richard Cordray, the CFPB<50>s first director, leaves the agency. Cordray, whose term expires in July, was appointed by President Barack Obama after the agency was created under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Many expect him to depart earlier, however, and there is no precedent for replacing him. President Donald Trump will likely appoint a successor who cuts back on the agency<63>s reach, raising questions about the direction of open CFPB investigations and rulemakings. Reporting by Lisa Lambert, editing by G Crosse '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-consumers-cyber/u-s-financial-regulator-must-beef-up-cyber-security-inspector-idUSKBN1C92X5'|'2017-10-04T23:57:00.000+03:00'
'3a8ba284f0716032c4b8c1a175a5a94dc83a0d75'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX stumbles as oil price slump hit energy stocks'|'(Adds investor comment, new details on Bombardier, closing stock prices)* TSX down 47.98 points, or 0.3 percent, to 15,728.32* Half of the TSX<53>s 10 main groups were downTORONTO, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index retreated on Friday after touching a seven-month high in the previous session, as energy stocks, hurt by 3 percent drop in oil prices, drove the weaker finish.The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index fell 47.98 points, or 0.3 percent, to finish at 15,728.32. Half of the index<65>s 10 key sectors ceded ground.The TSX closed at 15,776.30 on Thursday, its highest finish since Feb. 23, and added about 0.6 percent on the week, extending a monthlong rally that has helped bring the index back into positive territory for the year.<2E>The first eight months were pretty disappointing for the Canadian market compared to the U.S. September<65>s been very good, so it<69>s starting to catch up here,<2C> said John Kinsey, portfolio manager at Caldwell Securities.Suncor Energy and Canadian Natural Resources were the most influential decliners on the index. Suncor fell 1.2 percent to C$43.5, while Canadian Natural Resources declined 2.1 percent to C$41.12. Cenovus Energy dropped 3.1 percent to C$12.05.Oil and gas companies slumped 1.9 percent on oil prices that fell on profit-taking as well as renewed jitters about excess supply. Crude prices snapped a multiweek bull run, with U.S. crude settling at $49.29 a barrel, down 2.95 percent.The heavily weighted financial sector slipped 0.2 percent, while industrials fell 0.4 percent.Bombardier Inc rose 0.9 percent to C$2.21 even as the U.S. Commerce Department notched up proposed trade duties on the Canadian plane maker<65>s CSeries jets to nearly 300 percent, affirming Boeing Co<43>s complaint that Bombardier received illegal subsidies and dumped the planes at <20>absurdly low<6F> prices.The materials group, home to mining and other resource companies, added 0.2 percent as gold miners rebounded. Kirkland Lake Gold rallied 5.7 percent to C$17.46.Element Fleet Management was the most influential gainer on the positive side. The stock surged 10.4 percent to end at C$9.98 on market talk of activist investors agitating for change. A company representative could not be immediately reached for comment.Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the TSX by 138 to 107, for a 1.29-to-1 ratio on the downside.Nine issues on the index posted a new 52-week high, while two posted new 52-week lows. (Reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks/canada-stocks-tsx-stumbles-as-oil-price-slump-hit-energy-stocks-idUSL2N1MH1WC'|'2017-10-06T23:45:00.000+03:00'
'2bb8e59a1f6c742211b3c48a9600e3cc140309c3'|'Conservative plotters told to get behind UK''s May amid Brexit fears - Reuters'|'LONDON, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Lawmakers in British Prime Minister Theresa May<61>s Conservative Party who are trying to oust her as leader have been told to <20>put up, shut up<75> by the party<74>s chief in Scotland.Others in the party warned that the uncertainty over May was damaging Brexit negotiations with the European Union.May on Friday said she would remain as leader after a former Conservative chairman said he had garnered the support of 30 lawmakers who wanted her to quit.It followed a disastrous speech at the party<74>s conference and a snap election in June in which May lost her party<74>s majority in parliament.Senior figures have rallied round May, but the open rebellion comes as Britain embarks on crucial talks just 18 months before Britain is due to leave the European Union.One newspaper reported on Saturday EU negotiators were stepping up talks with the opposition Labour Party amid concerns the government will collapse.Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, who is considered a possible successor should May be forced out, told the BBC the prime minister<65>s critics should <20>put up, shut up and get off the stage<67>.<2E>I would tell my party to get its house in order, get together, knuckle down, and make sure that our first commitment, last commitment and only commitment is to the country,<2C> she said.Her message came after former party chairman Grant Shapps toured media studios calling for a leadership election. Shapps said 30 Conservative lawmakers backed his view, well short of the 48 needed to trigger a contest.NO OBVIOUS REPLACEMENT Commentators said a lack of an obvious replacement and deep divisions in the party over the direction of Brexit meant the rebellion had lost momentum despite disquiet over May<61>s performance as leader.One Conservative lawmaker, Nigel Evans, said the <20>botched plot<6F> appeared to have fizzled out within 24 hours but said it would play into the hands of EU<45>s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and EU Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker<65>The sniping from people like Grant Shapps is ... going to be used by people like Michel Barnier and Juncker to say there<72>s divisions within the government, maybe we can offer them a worse deal or drag things out,<2C> Evans told BBC TV.<2E>He<48>s done us absolutely no favours whatsoever.<2E>The Daily Telegraph reported EU negotiators had increased private talks with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the party<74>s Brexit spokesman as they feared May<61>s government would fall before the a divorce deal was agreed ahead of Britain<69>s exit in March 2019.The paper, citing unnamed sources said there had been a <20>significant change in tone<6E> towards Labour and Corbyn had held meetings with Barnier.In a sign of the challenges facing May over Brexit, the Financial Times reported on Saturday that Germany and France had dashed hopes of fast-tracking talks a two-year transition deal after Brexit in 2019, and instead wanted details of the divorce settlement resolved first.As May tries to reassert her authority, the Guardian newspaper said she would be urged by her lawmakers to sack Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson who used media article and interviews ahead of this week<65>s party conference to put forward his own view of Brexit.While he professed loyalty to May, his interventions were seen as undermining her and causing unnecessary unrest.<2E>There<72>s a general feeling that there<72>s support for her there, but I do think she needs to do a major reshuffle, and if she doesn<73>t act to sack Boris and to bring some new people on board, she has a problem,<2C> one unnamed Conservative lawmaker told the paper. (Reporting by Michael Holden Editing by Jeremy Gaunt) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-politics-may/conservative-plotters-told-to-get-behind-uks-may-amid-brexit-fears-idINL8N1MI05L'|'2017-10-07T06:56:00.000+03:00'
'b1ac5e118fdaf61881de4f0392a4b38d90cb87de'|'Thyssenkrupp to protect labor representation in Tata deal - Bild'|'October 3, 2017 / 10:04 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Thyssenkrupp to protect labor representation in Tata deal - Bild Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Thyssenkrupp''s logo is seen close to the elevator test tower in Rottweil, Germany, September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Thyssenkrupp ( TKAG.DE ) will guarantee that workers will be equally represented following the planned merger of its European steel operations with Tata Steel<65>s ( TISC.NS ), its chief executive told a German newspaper. <20>German steelworkers will keep their co-determination just the way it is today,<2C> Heinrich Hiesinger told Bild. Thyssenkrupp and India<69>s Tata Steel last month agreed to merge their European steel operations, creating the continent<6E>s No.2 steelmaker with revenues of 15 billion euros (13.30 billion pounds). Co-determination in the coal and steel industries ensures equal numbers of labor and capital representatives on a company<6E>s supervisory boards and is seen as key to win over workers that fiercely oppose the deal. Hiesinger confirmed that job cuts in Germany would not exceed 2,000 if the joint venture goes ahead, but could not rule out further job reductions, saying it was unclear what would happen <20>in five or ten years<72>. Reporting by Christoph Steitz; Editing by Ken Ferris'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tata-steel-m-a-thyssenkrupp/thyssenkrupp-to-protect-labor-representation-in-tata-deal-bild-idUKKCN1C82S1'|'2017-10-04T01:04:00.000+03:00'
'7376c363b17bcce69aed68c86592936e1fa46d88'|'Ford has a clear plan to fix its present failings'|'LIKE any mechanic with a misfiring car, Ford<72>s new boss has had his head under the bonnet working out what needs attention. Jim Hackett emerged on October 3rd with a checklist of repairs to present to investors, who have been awaiting his diagnosis since he took over in May. The list is short but the engineering is complicated: restore Ford<72>s competitiveness while preparing for a future of electric vehicles (EVs), self-driving cars and transport services. But those expecting a radical overhaul were probably disappointed.Mr Hackett<74>s predecessor, Mark Fields, was shown the door by Bill Ford, the firm<72>s chairman, for failing to make a persuasive case that he was reinventing Ford as a mobility firm at the forefront of automotive technology. Despite acknowledging to investors that he and Mr Ford agreed that his new job was <20>about the future not the past<73>, Mr Hackett was clearest about how to make Ford fit for the present. Ford has struggled in recent years. It has underperformed even amid the lowly stockmarket valuations of carmakers challenged by tech firms with bolder ideas about transport in the future. Mr Hackett admitted to investors that, despite record profits of late, Ford had fallen short on margins, depriving them of billions of dollars. He hopes to put that right chiefly by using old-fashioned means<6E>cutting costs.Reducing complexity by pruning the huge variety of different specifications available for each vehicle (in the case of the Focus, from 35,000 to 96) and sharing parts across more cars will help to lower costs, which have risen almost as fast as revenues since 2010. Bringing better technology to the industrial process should also cut the time it takes to develop new vehicles, by up to a fifth. This will all bring savings of $14bn over the next five years, according to Mr Hackett. Plans are also afoot to make more of the sort of cars that people want to buy. Buyers are turning against saloon cars and are demanding SUVs and trucks, so Ford will make more of them. But altering the line-up of products is hardly a step-change.These are sensible fixes. But it is unlikely that Mr Hackett<74>s measured tone will reassure investors that Ford is taking a lead in the new technologies that will determine success in the longer term. Neither does it help that its rival in Detroit, General Motors (GM), is doing a much better job. It launched a long-range EV, the Chevrolet Bolt, last year, and on October 2nd said that it planned 20 electric models by 2023. Despite announcing that it would reduce spending on internal combustion engines by a third by 2022 and divert that cash to electric powertrains, Ford will not launch a similar vehicle until 2020. Ford insists that it is only interested in profitable EVs. But withstanding losses while learning how to make and market battery-powered cars may give GM and other carmakers a long-term advantage.Ford also aims to become the world<6C>s most trusted mobility company. Much like all bosses of carmakers faced with the puzzle of finding business models around ride-hailing and autonomous cars, Mr Hackett was vague about how Ford might provide services profitably. He did at least signal that it would find partners for self-driving technology, abandoning Mr Fields<64>s riskier strategy of doing everything internally.Striking the right balance between <20>thinking and doing<6E> is important, according to Mr Hackett, who wants to <20>bend the arc towards doing<6E>. That is certainly what catching up with GM will require. Deutsche Bank recently suggested that Ford<72>s rival may have commercial driverless cars on the road within the next couple of years, well ahead of any competitors.Ford has plenty of ground to regain. As Barclays, a bank, points out, it went from being the <20>darling<6E> of the industry a few years ago to a firm that investors now treat with <20>indifference, disinterest [and] apathy<68>. Mr Hackett has announced more than mild tinkering. Investors will doubtless welcome the attack on costs but he has no revo
'b351a3200097d38c047273415a973d4f3fb295af'|'Car parts maker Magna to create 1,000 jobs in Slovenia -minister'|'LJUBLJANA, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Canadian car parts maker Magna will create at least 1,000 jobs in Slovenia in the next five years in an investment worth at least 100 million euros ($117 million), Slovenian Economy Minister Zdravko Pocivalsek told reporters on Friday.Slovenia granted Magna a construction permit for a paint factory in northeastern Slovenia on Thursday and expects construction to start this month and be completed in a year.However, Magna told Reuters that it can confirm only the creation of 400 jobs in the initial phase of the project.<2E>Future phases depend on the first one, on whether we are competitive, whether the customers are satisfied, and only then are we in the position to realise a new phase,<2C> Magna spokesman Rej Husetovic said.<2E>We would like to stress that, according to our worldwide experience, one working place in Magna creates two to three additional jobs in the region,<2C> he said.According to the government, which has granted Magna a subsidy of 18.6 million euros, Magna had submitted a plan to potentially invest up to 1.24 billion euros in the country in four investment phases and create up to 6,000 jobs.If all phases are completed Magna would establish a car plant in Slovenia with capacity of 100,000 to 200,000 cars per year, the government had said.France<63>s Renault already has a factory in Slovenia. A number of Slovenian companies produce products for a range of global car makers.$1 = 0.8543 euros Reporting by Marja Novak; editing by Jason NeelyOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/car-parts-maker-magna-to-create-1000-job/car-parts-maker-magna-to-create-1000-jobs-in-slovenia-minister-idINL8N1MH2VW'|'2017-10-06T10:18:00.000+03:00'
'ed27a1139a28136baa74bd021e431722dba2f22a'|'SEBI categorises mutual fund schemes to help investors'|'October 6, 2017 / 1:18 PM / Updated 7 hours ago SEBI categorises mutual fund schemes to help investors Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The logo of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is pictured on the premises of its headquarters in Mumbai, March 1, 2017. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade/Files MUMBAI (Reuters) - India<69>s market regulator has classified mutual fund investments into five broad categories and said it would allow only one scheme per category with some exceptions, in an effort to help retail investors take decisions easily. The categories are equity, debt, hybrid, solution-oriented and others, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) said in a circular on Friday. Fund houses often face criticism for offering too many schemes, thus raising confusion among retail investors. The regulator said mutual funds must now submit proposals within two months to merge, wind up or change the attribute of schemes to align with the categories. Reporting by Abhirup Roy; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-sebi-mutual-funds/sebi-categorises-mutual-fund-schemes-to-help-investors-idINKBN1CB1NX'|'2017-10-06T16:18:00.000+03:00'
'ceb45cc2ae36184491d0eb113e8c371240419d62'|'Japan''s MS&AD to invest $1 billion in UK''s ReAssure Jersey'|'October 6, 2017 / 12:15 AM / in 16 minutes Japan''s MS&AD to invest $1 billion in UK''s ReAssure Jersey Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings Inc ( 8725.T ) said on Friday it had agreed with Swiss Re AG ( SRENH.S ) to invest 800 million pounds ($1.05 billion) to take a stake of up to 15 percent in UK-based ReAssure Jersey One Ltd. MS&AD said it would initially buy 5.0 percent of ReAssure from Swiss Re for 175 million pounds in cash, aiming to close the transaction in the first quarter of 2018, pending regulatory approval. The remainder of the 800 million pound investment, in the form of new shares, would be completed within three years from the closing of the initial purchase, it said in a statement. Shares of MS&AD were up 1.1 percent in early trade, while Tokyo''s benchmark Nikkei average .N225 was up about 0.4 percent. Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Stephen Coates'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ms-ad-insurance-britain-reassure/japans-msad-to-invest-1-billion-in-uks-reassure-jersey-idUKKBN1CB018'|'2017-10-06T03:14:00.000+03:00'
'b5b947d767402e8bcfc05005a190658e671ef6fa'|'U.S. hits Bombardier with anti-dumping duty after Boeing complaint'|' 12 PM / Updated 3 hours ago U.S. hits Bombardier with anti-dumping duty after Boeing complaint Reuters Staff 1 Min Read WASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. Commerce Department on Friday moved to impose additional trade duties on the sale of Bombardier Inc CSeries jets in the United States, prompted by Boeing Co<43>s accusation that the Canadian plane and train maker had dumped the planes at <20>absurdly low<6F> prices. The Commerce Department proposed a 79.82 percent antidumping duty after a preliminary finding that the jets were sold below cost to Delta Air Lines in 2016. (Reporting by Tim Ahmann; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/boeing-bombardier-commerce/u-s-hits-bombardier-with-anti-dumping-duty-after-boeing-complaint-idUSW1N1JQ05B'|'2017-10-06T20:11:00.000+03:00'
'654540efcb17a2db4d5ae65da62ce6bd4356e2e0'|'Renault targets 44 percent sales increase by 2022'|'Carlos Ghosn, Chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, unveils Renault next mid-term strategic plan during a news conference in Paris, France, October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau PARIS (Reuters) - French carmaker Renault ( RENA.PA ) expects a first-mover advantage in electric cars and a wider range of vehicles for emerging markets to help it deliver a 44 percent sales increase by 2022.Electric cars are <20>turning into a significant contributor to our performance while other automakers are just starting the journey<65>, Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said on Friday.Renault<6C>s mid-term plan shows it growing faster than alliance partner Nissan ( 7201.T ), which it trails in China, due to recent investments in Iran and India and a Russian rebound.While taking a lead in electric vehicles had come at the expense of profitability, Ghosn expects to turn this around with the launch of eight new battery-powered models and 12 hybrids.<2E>Our vision now is a profitable core business,<2C> he said. Renault and Daimler<65>s ( DAIGn.DE ) Smart are likely to extend their small-car cooperation into electric models, he added.Renault plans to increase annual sales to 5 million vehicles by 2022 from 3.47 million last year while also aiming for a 7 percent operating profit margin and 70 billion euros ($82 billion) in revenue, goals that were announced in February.Renault said on Friday that its margin would remain above 5 percent in the intervening years, as it pursues 4.2 billion euros in cumulative productivity gains and invests 18 billion euros in research and development.The company also outlined a new dividend policy, promising to increase shareholder payouts to 15 percent of earnings by 2022, from 7 percent last year.In addition, it will continue to pass through its own Nissan and Daimler dividends to Renault shareholders. Renault owns 43.4 percent of its Japanese alliance partner and 3.1 percent of the Mercedes-Benz maker.Carlos Ghosn, Chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance (L) and Groupe Renault chief competitive officer Thierry Bollore (R) attend a news conference to unveil Renault next mid-term strategic plan in Paris, France, October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau Renault<6C>s share price was up 1.5 percent at 86.86 euros at 1100 GMT and the price might be supported in the coming weeks by <20>management<6E>s increased confidence<63> over its mid-term goals, Evercore ISI analyst Arndt Ellinghorst said.<2E>This is good news in a world where most people fear earnings, cash flow and profitability will fall due to disruption,<2C> Ellinghorst said.LOW-COST RANGE Carlos Ghosn, Chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, unveils Renault next mid-term strategic plan during a news conference in Paris, France, October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau The market in China, where Renault only began manufacturing last year, is expected to account for half a million sales by 2022.Renault<6C>s budget car line-up, starting with the Dacia Logan in 2004, has underpinned the push into emerging markets and spawned a second car platform underpinning the Kwid mini-SUV, which has more than doubled the group<75>s sales in India.Combined sales of the <20>Global Access<73> low-cost cars are seen expanding 54 percent to reach 2 million vehicles, or 40 percent of the group total. An expanded utility van range is also expected to contribute to the emerging-markets surge.Europe<70>s share of Renault vehicle deliveries would shrink to 36 percent from 52 percent under the plan, with sales in the home region remaining broadly flat.Pure electric cars may rise to about 5 percent of global sales, Ghosn said, adding that the forecast was <20>probably conservative<76> and almost certainly wrong.Renault has been transformed since 2005 when he took over from a carmaker dependent on French sales of Megane compacts into a <20>resilient, multi-polar global company<6E>, Ghosn said.Ghosn, who also heads the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, has not yet indicated whether he will seek to renew his contract as Renau
'1890f1ae214a431f419704399ae09b269ea577ee'|'Tesla reschedules unveiling of semi-truck to November 16'|'October 6, 2017 / 8:51 PM / in 9 hours Tesla delays big rig truck debut; Model 3 in ''production hell'' Munsif Vengattil 3 Min Read Elon Musk, founder, CEO and lead designer at SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla, speaks at the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition II in Hawthorne, California, U.S., August 27, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake (Reuters) - Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ) Chief Executive Elon Musk on Friday pushed back the unveiling of the company<6E>s big rig truck until mid-November, tweeting that the electric vehicle maker was diverting resources to fix production bottlenecks of its new Model 3 sedan and to help Puerto Rico. Musk said Tesla<6C>s Model 3 was <20>deep in production hell<6C> echoing his own comments in July, when he showed off some of the first cars of that model. The Model 3 could help Tesla approach its goal of becoming more of a mass market producer. Recent comments have tempered expectations about the speed of the increase in production, though. Musk<73>s comments came after the close of stock trading on Friday. The company<6E>s shares fell 0.8 percent in extended trading. The Palo Alto, California-based company delivered just 220 Model 3 sedans and produced 260 in the third quarter. It had planned to produce more than 1,500. Musk also tweeted the company was diverting resources to increasing battery production to help hurricane-hit Puerto Rico, where most residents remain without electricity. Earlier this week Tesla reported that <20>production bottlenecks<6B> had left it behind the planned ramp-up for the Model 3. The logo of Tesla is seen in Taipei, Taiwan August 11, 2017. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu In response to a Tesla customer asking if he would get his car delivered this year, Musk tweeted, <20>December will be a big month, so probably, but it is impossible to be certain right now.<2E> A Wall Street Journal report said parts of Model 3 were being made by hand as recently as early September, adding to production delays. ( on.wsj.com/2kt5E17 ) Musk also said Tesla would reschedule the unveiling of its semi-truck to Nov. 16 as it focuses on fixing production issues tied to Model 3 and increases battery production for Puerto Rico. The unveiling of the truck, called Tesla Semi, has been delayed for the second time this year. Musk had initially said the truck would be unveiled in September, but he later rescheduled it to late October. <20>Semi specs are better than anything I<>ve seen reported so far. Semi eng/design team work is aces, but other needs are greater right now,<2C> Elon replied to a twitter user who asked him about the specifications of the semi-truck. Reuters in August reported that the truck would have a working range of 200-300 miles. Earlier in the day, Musk said the company will send more battery installers to Puerto Rico to help restore power after Hurricane Maria knocked out power on the island over two weeks ago. Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Henderson and Anil D''Silva and David Gregorio'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tesla-truck/tesla-reschedules-unveiling-of-semi-truck-to-november-16-idUKKBN1CB2OL'|'2017-10-06T23:51:00.000+03:00'
'a63dd2fe197708ae76392ba939b9490bfb9ee8cb'|'Paying too much in council tax? It<49>s never been easier to check - Money'|'T he tech whiz-kid Joshua Browder shot to fame two years ago with DoNotPay, an online <20>robot lawyer<65> designed to fight unfair parking tickets. It has gone on to successfully challenge more than 450,000 tickets <20> and now it<69>s time for local authority council tax departments to watch out. That<61>s because Browder, 20, has now created an online service to help households challenge their council tax banding.<2E>I<EFBFBD>ve developed technology which looks at your council tax band, your neighbours<72> council tax bands and historical house price data, and tells you whether you might get your band lowered. You can complete the process in 10 seconds,<2C> says Browder, who has moved from London to study computer science at Stanford University.Browder says the service, likely to be available via his DoNotPay site , should be up and running any day now, though you don<6F>t have to wait until it launches <20> it<69>s already possible to find out whether you may be overpaying. And whether it takes 10 seconds or a little bit longer than that, challenging your banding can be time well spent. MoneySavingExpert.com estimates that up to 400,000 households are paying too much.Reading says <20>no<6E> to council tax discount on a house we can<61>t live in Read more <20>The good news is that you can check and challenge your council tax banding in 10 minutes at no cost <20> and, if you<6F>re successful, not only could you slash what you pay now, you could even get a backdated rebate stretching back more than 20 years,<2C> says Steve Nowottny, news and features editor at MoneySavingExpert. You could cut your annual bill by perhaps <20>100-<2D>400 going forward, plus pocket a refund of as much as <20>5,000-plus.Last year 10,670 people in England and Wales who asked for their council tax band to be reassessed saw their bills reduced, and potentially could receive a rebate for tax they overpaid.However, figures from the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) show a further 31,550 households saw their challenge rejected, while 30 saw their bills increase <20> illustrating that there is a chance that your challenge could badly backfire. A further 10,300 council tax accounts were amended due to properties being demolished, merged or split.How is your bill calculated? Your council tax bill depends on three factors: your tax band, local council tax rates and any discounts you might be entitled to. Properties are banded from A to H (I in Wales). Properties in band A have the lowest council tax bills and H (or I) the highest.Not only could you slash what you pay, you could get a rebate stretching back more than 20 yearsSteve Nowottny In England and Scotland the bands are based on property valuations made in April 1991, while in Wales they are based on valuations from April 2003. Northern Ireland uses a different system based on rental values. However, many properties were put in the wrong band on day one, seeing their occupiers overpay ever since.Should you challenge? Experts suggest carrying out two checks before you challenge your council tax band: which band your neighbours are in and the value of your house in 1991.You stand the best chance of success if your home is in a higher band than neighbours who live in similar-sized properties. But don<6F>t worry <20> you don<6F>t have to pop next door and ask them about their council tax bill. All the information about England and Wales is online , and on the Scottish Assessors website if you live in Scotland.So check your band and then neighbouring properties similar to yours in size and value. If you live in a block of flats, check the other flats that have the same number of bedrooms as your property. If your neighbours are in a lower band than yours, you may have a viable claim.At this stage it is wise to carry out a 1991 valuation check, which will confirm whether it<69>s you or your neighbours who are in the wrong band. You don<6F>t want to make a challenge that results in your neighbours being moved into a higher band <20> you wouldn<64>t be popular.<2E>Use free house price
'a8a90818977b6568e137a915c3dc24b4f217b3c4'|'NSW moves to crack down on ticket scalping - Money - The Guardian'|'Ticket prices NSW moves to crack down on ticket scalping Consumer group Choice welcomes the step but says reseller Viagogo could remain untouched because it is based overseas The NSW government has moved to prevent anyone reselling a ticket to an event for more than the original sale price. Photograph: Mark Horsburgh Ticket prices NSW moves to crack down on ticket scalping Consumer group Choice welcomes the step but says reseller Viagogo could remain untouched because it is based overseas View more sharing options Australian Associated Press Sunday 8 October 2017 08.27 BST Proposed ticket-scalping reforms in New South Wales will help stamp out price gouging in the live entertainment industry, the state government says. The provisions would stop anyone reselling a ticket to a NSW event for more than the original sale price and cap transaction costs at 10%, the minister for better regulation, Matthew Kean, said in a statement on Sunday. Viagogo: ACCC launches legal action against ''misleading'' ticket reseller Read more <20>I<EFBFBD>m sick and tired of consumers being taken for a ride by shonky operators looking to make a quick buck at the expense of ordinary fans,<2C> he said. Other proposed changes to the Fair Trading Act include the outlawing of <20>bots<74> that allow scalpers to buy tickets in large quantities and a crackdown on advertising for tickets that breach resale laws. Consumer group Choice said the reforms were only the first step in cleaning up the <20>utter shambles<65> in the resale industry and called on ticketing companies to do more. Choice spokesman Tom Godfrey said one of the <20>dodgiest<73> resellers, Viagogo, could remain untouched because it was based overseas. <20>The primary ticketing market needs to step up and invest in innovations to reduce fraud within the industry,<2C> he said in a statement. Godfrey suggested allowing name changes on tickets or developing better ticketing systems would be a <20>strong first step<65>. Topics '|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/oct/08/nsw-moves-to-crack-down-on-ticket-scalping'|'2017-10-08T15:27:00.000+03:00'
'd097c538661d790bca36dfaadeccaac343104a9a'|'UK firms finding it harder to get staff after Brexit - survey'|'Reuters TV United States October 6, 2017 / 12:12 AM / in a few seconds UK firms finding it harder to get staff after Brexit: survey Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Workers cross London Bridge with the Shard skyscraper seen behind during the morning rush hour in London, Britain, June 13, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Growth in the number of workers hired in Britain via recruitment agencies slowed last month and fell in London for the first time in nearly a year as Brexit makes it harder for companies to find staff, a survey showed on Friday. The IHS Markit/Recruitment and Employment Confederation said permanent roles filled by recruitment firms rose at the weakest pace in five months. The fall in placements in London reflected recruitment problems facing the financial sector in particular, REC<45>s monthly Report on Jobs showed. A slowdown in the number European Union nationals coming to work in Britain had exacerbated a shortage of staff, REC said. <20>Low-skill roles are also hard to fill in areas like food processing, warehouses and catering <20> sectors that employ a higher proportion of people from the EU than others across the economy,<2C> REC chief executive Kevin Green said. Last month the Bank of England said most of its policymakers believed that interest rates would probably need to rise from a record low in the coming months, if the economy and price pressures keep growing. The central bank believes Brexit will reduce the number of migrants coming to Britain, pushing up pay and adding to inflation pressure. The REC survey showed the sharpest fall in candidates for permanent jobs in four months while growth in starting salaries for permanent staff eased only slightly in September from August<73>s 22-month high. Recent economic figures have painted a mixed picture of Britain<69>s economy. New car registrations are on track for their first annual fall since 2011, while business surveys have shown falling confidence in the economic outlook after a slow first half of the year. Earlier on Friday, accountancy firm BDO said overall like-for-like store sales rose by an annual 2.9 percent - the biggest rise in more than three years and adding to a smaller rise in August. However, the increase was distorted by weak sales in September 2016, suggesting underlying growth remained slow. Reporting by Andy Bruce; Editing by William Schomberg'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-economy-jobs/uk-firms-finding-it-harder-to-get-staff-after-brexit-survey-idUKKBN1CB00U'|'2017-10-06T03:07:00.000+03:00'
'6b40cb27a99703181e797fa3299021d18ad15bba'|'This week in sports: E-sports grapples with rapid growth - Reuters'|'Chicago Blackhawks left wing Ryan Hartman (38) and Pittsburgh Penguins right wing Phil Kessel (81) fight during the third period at the United Center. Chicago won 10-1. Mandatory Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports Listen to this week<65>s Keeping Score podcast:A wrap-up of the week in sports news:It ain<69>t your grandpa<70>s Nintendo: As e-sports become increasingly popular , the high-tech tournaments are grappling with some age-old problems: match-fixing and doping.Penguins hope to glide toward a three-peat: The National Hockey League kicked off a new season this week, with the Pittsburgh Penguins hoping for a rare three-peat as Stanley Cup Champions . Of course, they lost their first two games <20> including a Thursday night 10-1 drubbing at the hands of the Chicago Blackhawks <20> so they<65>ll need to waddle those losses off first.Extreme sports across the pond, over a river: Travis Pastrana performed a backflip motorcycle jump over a 75-foot gap between two barges floating on the river Thames in London on Thursday.Action sports performer Travis Pastrana somersaults on his motorbike as he jumps between two barges on the River Thames with the O2 Arena sports venue seen behind, in London, Britain, October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville Click here for more of the week<65>s best sports photography.And finally, sports business expert Rick Horrow sat down with Christina Alejandre, vice president of esports at Turner Sports, to discuss the growing video game competition space. Watch the video here:&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true"> '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-weekinsports-06oct2017/this-week-in-sports-e-sports-grapples-with-rapid-growth-idUSKBN1CB2W9'|'2017-10-07T07:09:00.000+03:00'
'56367d505f88cabf7233c49d91ff812d6832df02'|'Swiss stocks - Factors to watch on Oct 9'|'ZURICH, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Here are some of the main factors that may affect Swiss stocks on Monday:LAFARGEHOLCIM The world<6C>s biggest cement maker swapped out its chief financial officer, naming Geraldine Picaud in place of Ron Wirahadiraksa after he served less than two years on the job.For more clickZURICH The Swiss insurer will have cut costs by $700 million by the end of the year, nearly halfway to its goal to save $1.5 billion by 2019, Chief Executive Mario Greco said in an interview published on Saturday.For more clickCLARIANT Activist investors seeking to block specialty chemical maker Clariant<6E>s $20 billion merger with Huntsman Corp own <20>significantly more<72> than 15 percent of Clariant shares and want to increase their stake, they told a Swiss newspaper.For more clickCOMPANY STATEMENTS * Dufry said it plans to issue 500 million euros ($586.80 million) in senior notes, to be used with cash on hand to redeem outstanding senior notes due in 2022.* Swiss-listed motorcycle maker KTM Chairman and Chief Executive Di Stefan Pierer expects electric motorcycles to establish themselves on the market within a decade, he told Austrian newspaper der Standard in an interview published on Sunday.* Roche said on Friday it knows of one confirmed case of PML in a multiple sclerosis patient treated with its drug Ocrevus, in response to questions about whether additional cases of the typically fatal viral infection had emerged. Earlier this year, the treating doctor said the PML infection in a German MS patient who had started Ocrevus treatment was a carry-over from previous treatment with Biogen<65>s medicine Tysabri.ECONOMY SNB sight deposits due at 0800 GMT$1 = 0.8521 euros Reporting by Zurich newsroom '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/markets-swiss-stocks/swiss-stocks-factors-to-watch-on-oct-9-idINL8N1MH4AL'|'2017-10-09T02:41:00.000+03:00'
'1193717183160910e39c50abcff297242dbf946f'|'Turkish markets tumble on U.S. dispute, central bank says monitoring closely'|'October 9, 2017 / 11:45 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago Turkish markets tumble on U.S. dispute, central bank says monitoring closely 4 Min Read Turkish lira banknotes are seen in this photo illustration shot January 7, 2014. REUTERS/Murad Sezer/Illustration/Files ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey<65>s lira, stocks and bonds all tumbled on Monday as the United States and Turkey cut back visa services, signalling a sharp deterioration in relations between the NATO allies, and the central bank said it was following developments closely. Deputy governor Murat Uysal told Reuters the bank did not see forex liquidity problems, while Turkey<65>s main business group warned economic relations would suffer from the disagreements. <20>The step taken by the United States has had a psychological impact and led to the pricing of political risk in a real sense,<2C> said Is Invest equity research manager Bulent Sengonul. The lira dropped 2.4 percent and stood at 3.7030 against the dollar, retreating from 3.6160 at Friday<61>s close. It was quoted as having touched a level of 3.9223 overnight. The main BIST 100 stock index fell as much as 4.7 percent and was down 3.6 percent at 100,400 points at 0840 GMT. Last week, a U.S. consulate employee was arrested in Turkey on charges of links to U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, blamed by Ankara for last year<61>s failed military coup. Washington condemned the arrest as baseless. The U.S. mission in Turkey then suspended all non-immigrant visa services at U.S. diplomatic facilities in the country. The Turkish embassy in Washington followed suit. The dispute with the United States coincides with deep strains in Turkey<65>s relations with another key ally Germany and with Turkish military activity at the Syrian and Iraqi borders, though the market impact of these has so far been limited. EYES ON CENTRAL BANK <20>This looks like a really serious situation,<2C> said Blue Bay Asset Management strategist Timothy Ash. <20>The (Turkish central bank) CBRT will need to move very quickly to calm market sentiment. If the lira continues to see selling pressure, the CBRT will have to move quickly to hike policy rates in defence of the lira,<2C> he said. However there could be political pressure against such a move, given President Tayyip Erdogan<61>s dislike of high interest rates. Erdogan had been expected to hold a news conference on Monday morning before departing on an official visit to Ukraine, but did not do so. He was set to speak in Kiev later in the day. Deputy central bank governor Uysal said banks<6B> foreign exchange accounts were at their highest levels in recent times, and that the lira was already weak and at a competitive level in real effective exchange terms. He also said some investors who favoured lira positions in swap markets were readjusting them over geopolitical concerns. Ash added that the development came at a difficult time in terms of Turkish markets, given the wide current account deficit and a marked deterioration in the financing of the deficit this year. The benchmark 10-year bond yield rose 25 basis points to 11.34 percent. Prices on Turkish dollar bonds maturing in 2030 and 2036 tumbled 0.8 and 1.0 cent respectively to the lowest since mid-July, according to Tradeweb data. Among shares hit was flag carrier Turkish Airlines, which dropped 8 percent. TEB Investment said in a research note that the United States accounted for around 10 percent of Turkish Airlines<65> sales. Pegasus Airlines fell 6.5 percent. Shares in Halkbank, a former head of which has been charged with evading U.S. sanctions against Iran, fell 5.7 percent. Halkbank has said all its transactions have fully complied with national and international regulations. Additional reporting by Can Sezer; Editing by Dominic Evans and Gareth Jones'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/turkey-markets/turkish-markets-tumble-on-u-s-dispute-central-bank-says-monitoring-closely-idINKBN1CE1AC'|'2017-10-09T09:45
'9a761d1fa687b6d4ee9716eebb7389408c58c518'|'Sensex edges up, consumer stocks lead'|'October 9, 2017 / 6:56 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Sensex edges higher; finance stocks lead Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A broker reacts while trading at his computer terminal at a stock brokerage firm in Mumbai, India, February 26, 2016. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade/Files REUTERS - Indian shares closed slightly higher on Monday, led by finance and consumer stocks amid caution ahead of the corporate results season that starts later this week. The broader NSE Nifty ended up 0.09 percent at 9,988.75, while the benchmark BSE Sensex closed 0.1 percent higher at 31,846.89. Both indexes posted two-week closing highs. The NSE bank index was up 0.26 percent, with IndusInd Bank rising 1.16 percent. Reporting by Samantha Kareen Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-sensex-nifty-stocks/sensex-edges-up-consumer-stocks-lead-idINKBN1CE0FQ'|'2017-10-09T09:56:00.000+03:00'
'39e7ffd61d1a9e91e6852c1c0b2e737457b60fc5'|'EU parliament head raps Draghi over bad loan guidelines'|'October 10, 2017 / 6:22 AM / a minute ago EU parliament head raps Draghi over bad loan guidelines Reuters Staff 2 Min Read European Parliament President Antonio Tajani speaks at the EU summit in Brussels, Belgium, June 22, 2017. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes MILAN (Reuters) - The European Central Bank must involve the European Parliament in the decision-making process about new guidelines for bank bad loans, the head of the parliament told ECB President Mario Draghi in a letter published by the Italian press on Tuesday. The ECB last week issued new proposals that will force banks from 2018 to set aside more cash against newly classified bad loans and, early next year, could revise recent guidelines for the reduction of the soured debt stock. Italy - whose banks hold nearly 30 percent of the bloc<6F>s 915 billion euro bad loans - has reacted angrily to the proposals, asking the ECB to soften them following a public consultation that runs until Dec. 8. European Parliament president Antonio Tajani, an Italian national, told Draghi he was <20>deeply concerned<65> about how the new bad loan initiative was being undertaken. <20>I seriously wonder whether specific additional obligations...can be imposed on supervised entities without appropriately involving the co-legislators in the decision-making process,<2C> Tajani was quoted as saying in the letter. <20>I would urge you to take all steps in order to ensure that parliament<6E>s prerogatives as co-legislator are duly respected, so as to avoid an inter-institutional dispute about this issue.<2E> Reporting by Silvia Aloisi'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eurozone-banks-loans-dispute/eu-parliament-head-raps-draghi-over-bad-loan-guidelines-idUKKBN1CF0I5'|'2017-10-10T09:10:00.000+03:00'
'd17a85e85890b241547718f7b053a2505e847930'|'BRIEF-Telenor and Cisco to launch cloud solutions platform for mobile operators'|' 14  Telenor and Cisco to launch cloud solutions platform for mobile operators Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 5 (Reuters) - Telenor ASA * Telenor Group and Cisco announces their support to launch <20>WorkingGroupTwo<77> (wg2), a new business entity that will offer mobile operators a cloud solutions platform designed to increase product innovation * Using platform, mobile operators will be able to quickly launch new services across IoT and other industry verticals  '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-telenor-and-cisco-to-launch-cloud/brief-telenor-and-cisco-to-launch-cloud-solutions-platform-for-mobile-operators-idUSFWN1MG031'|'2017-10-05T09:14:00.000+03:00'
'd05fdc1554230ddcb5b66c4d95ac884f7f172f71'|'Skoda unions threaten overtime cuts if VW considers production move'|'A Volkswagen (VW) logo is pictured next to a logo of Skoda during the second media day of the 86th International Motor Show in Geneva, Switzerland, March 2, 2016. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse PRAGUE (Reuters) - Unions at Volkswagen<65>s ( VOWG_p.DE ) Skoda Auto said on Thursday they would cut back on overtime work if the group considers shifting any production from the Czech carmaker to Germany.Volkswagen managers and unions in Germany are seeking to curb competition from lower-cost Skoda by moving some of its production to Germany and making the Czech brand pay more for shared technology, Reuters reported.Wednesday<61>s report, which cited company sources, has raised concerns of job losses within the Czech Republic<69>s biggest exporter, which has seen its business grow strongly in recent years with annual sales surpassing 1.1 million vehicles.But while it has steadily won business from rivals, this has included from Skoda<64>s sister brand VW and the Czech carmaker even beat Audi<64>s operating profit margin last year.In a letter to Skoda employees reacting to the Reuters report, Skoda<64>s main union chief, Jaroslav Povsik, objected to statements that Skoda had an unfair advantage.<2E>Such news is in essence aimed against Skoda Auto, its employees who are admonished for their success, flexibility, production quality and their business results,<2C> he said.<2E>Behind this, though, is an enormous deployment of all employees (and) work on weekends at the expense of family life.<2E>Povsik said if <20>this situation will continue and not come to a quick correction, unions... will no longer support flexible work and other necessities for growth of the company<6E>.Tension between VW<56>s brands is expected to rise ahead of a Nov. 17 supervisory board meeting which is due to approve annual investment budgets for the world<6C>s biggest carmaker.The Czech union has warned any production shift could result into as many as 2,000 lost jobs at Skoda, which employed 28,000 at the end of 2016, excluding temporary staff.The prospect of production moves has also prompted Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka to say he wants to meet Skoda<64>s leadership and unions to discuss any shift.Union representatives were not immediately available for further comment and Skoda Auto had no immediate comment.Reporting by Petra Vodstrcilova; Writing by Jason Hovet; Editing by Alexander Smith '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-skoda-unions/skoda-unions-threaten-overtime-cuts-if-vw-considers-production-move-idUSKBN1CA1T5'|'2017-10-05T17:40:00.000+03:00'
'1ba9e2f347ce8c8de92a3fb27f948e725cc132c2'|'Bombardier eyes Asian markets amid U.S. trade spat with Boeing'|'October 5, 2017 / 1:22 PM / Updated 2 hours ago Bombardier eyes Asian markets amid U.S. trade spat with Boeing Aditi Shah 4 Min Read Bombardier<65>s C-series aircraft is pictured at an airport during its static demo event in New Delhi, India October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Bombardier Inc ( BBDb.TO ) is betting on fast-growing markets like India to boost sales of its Q400 and CSeries narrow-body planes, a senior executive said on Thursday, at a time when the Canadian planemaker faces a trade row over sales to the United States. <20>The company is very focused on expanding into Asia, as we see Asia, and India for sure, as the growth engines of the sector,<2C> said Francois Cognard, head of Asia Pacific sales at Bombardier, adding this would be its focus region irrespective of how a heated trade spat with larger rival Boeing Co ( BA.N ) pans out. Cognard said he saw India<69>s regional connectivity scheme as <20>well designed<65> and likely to boost demand for its aircraft in the country. India is one of the world<6C>s fastest growing aviation markets and the government<6E>s launch of the regional connectivity scheme last year to boost air connectivity to smaller towns and cities, is seen as a boon for small planemakers such as Bombardier and its European rival ATR. Bombardier last week finalised a deal to sell up to 50 Q400 planes to India<69>s SpiceJet ( SPJT.BO ) valued at $1.7 billion by list prices, its largest single order to date for the turboprop plane which will boost its presence in the country. Rival ATR, the market leader in turboprops, has also secured a provisional order for 50 ATR 72-600 aircraft, worth over $1.3 billion at list price, from Indigo, India<69>s biggest airline by market share. In turboprops, Bombardier still trails ATR, which controls about 75 percent of the market and is co-owned by Airbus SE ( AIR.PA ) and Leonardo SpA ( LDOF.MI ). Brazilian rival Embraer SA ( EMBR3.SA ) has also said it would consider returning to the prop market. <20>There are still a lot of markets where you can<61>t beat a turbo in terms of economics,<2C> said Cognard, adding Bombardier<65>s move to increase the number of seats on the Q400 gave the plane a cost edge in the category. Bombardier crew members pose for a picture outside the company''s C-series aircraft during its static demo event in New Delhi, India October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi BOEING SPAT The focus on Asia comes at a time when Bombardier is locked in an acrimonious trade spat with U.S. rival Boeing. Bombardier<65>s Vice President of Sales for Asia Pacific, Francois Cognard, talks to media inside company<6E>s C-series aircraft during its static demo event at an airport in New Delhi, India October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi The U.S. Commerce Department last week slapped preliminary anti-subsidy duties of 220 percent on Bombardier<65>s new jets, after a complaint from Boeing, which could effectively triple the price of the aircraft and shut it out of the U.S. market if upheld. <20>We see this as an abuse of trade laws by Boeing to attempt to block us from penetrating the U.S. market,<2C> Cognard said. The U.S. jetmaker alleges the CSeries would not exist without hundreds of millions of dollars in launch aid from the governments of Canada and Britain, or a $2.5 billion equity infusion from the province of Quebec and its largest pension fund in 2015. The Commerce Department<6E>s penalty against Bombardier will only take effect if the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) rules in Boeing<6E>s favor. <20>We expect the final ruling on this early next year,<2C> said Cognard, adding that its customers were not concerned about the spat and more focused on the economics of the jet, which boasts impressive fuel efficiency. (This story corrects to planes from jets in paragraph 1) Reporting by Aditi Shah; Writing by Euan Rocha, editing by David Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bombardier-india/bombardier-eyes
'6c47524db90641296553529c86958d922e6c80aa'|'British PM May says to meet business leaders on Monday in Downing Street'|'LONDON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May will meet business leaders next week to discuss Britain<69>s departure from the European Union, her office said on Friday, after a former party chairman said there was a plot to topple her.A quarterly meeting with businesses including HSBC, Morgan Stanley, Vodafone and WPP to discuss Brexit will go ahead on Monday as usual, a spokeswoman for May<61>s office said.<2E>The Business Advisory Council is an important part of our preparations for leaving the EU <20> allowing us to seek the views of experienced business leaders and to share with them the government<6E>s vision for a successful Brexit,<2C> May said in an emailed statement. (Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-politics-business/british-pm-may-says-to-meet-business-leaders-on-monday-in-downing-street-idINL9N1KV00I'|'2017-10-06T09:07:00.000+03:00'
'05d0b9b1c001b6ac795c386c15d3f05937f07d38'|'Data-center provider Switch surges in debut'|'(Reuters) - Shares of Switch Inc, which provides data center services to Amazon, eBay and JP Morgan among others, rose 34 percent in their market debut on Friday, giving the company a market capitalization of $5.63 billion.Switch<63>s IPO was priced at $17 per share, above the previously outlined $14-$16 range, and raised $531.3 million, making it the second-biggest U.S. technology listing this year after Snapchat-owner Snap Inc.Snap raised $3.4 billion in March, according to Thomson Reuters data.Switch<63>s IPO comes at a time when demand for data centers is increasing due to higher adoption of cloud-based storage.Switch Inc, which was incorporated in June for the purpose of issuing the Class A shares in the offering, intends to use the proceeds to buy out investors in Switch Ltd and take control of it as a holding company. ( bit.ly/2xvcGFs )Switch<63>s Founder and Chief Executive Rob Roy, who calls himself an <20>inventrepreneur<75>, will have nearly 68 percent of voting power, the company said.Switch, which has data centers in Las Vegas and Tahoe Reno in Nevada and Grand Rapids in Michigan, reported net income of $35.3 million in the six months ended June 30, marginally up from $35.2 million a year earlier.The company, which holds more than 350 patents and competes with larger rival Equinix Inc, CoreSite Realty and CyrusOne, had reported a 17.1 percent jump in revenue to $181.3 million in the same period.Reporting by Roopal Verma in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Sriraj Kalluvila '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-switch-ipo/data-center-provider-switch-surges-in-debut-idINKBN1CB1TH'|'2017-10-06T12:27:00.000+03:00'
'c5f102f148f1ea1c28674254b9a6b276a6857081'|'Disney, Altice finalise new programming agreement'|'October 5, 2017 / 10:26 PM / in 5 minutes Disney, Altice finalise new programming agreement Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The entrance gate to The Walt Disney Co is pictured in Burbank, California February 5, 2014. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co ( DIS.N ) and cable operator Altice USA ( ATUS.N ) have finalised a new multiyear programming agreement that keeps ESPN and other networks in millions of New York-area households, the companies said on Thursday. The two sides reached a preliminary deal on Sunday after contentious negotiations. Disney threatened to pull its networks from Altice<63>s Optimum cable service, while Altice argued that Disney was seeking <20>outrageous<75> increases in fees for the rights to carry the channels. In a statement on Thursday, the companies said Optimum would continue to carry the Disney Channel, Disney Junior, WABC, Freeform, and several ESPN channels. Optimum will add ESPN<50>s SEC Network in late 2018. In August 2019, it will start carrying the ACC Network and drop one of the other ESPN channels, the statement said. Financial terms were not disclosed, but sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday that Disney had secured fee increases for ESPN, WABC and other major networks. The sources requested anonymity because the negotiations were private. Optimum has 3.1 million customers in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Andrew Hay'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-walt-disney-altice-usa/disney-altice-finalise-new-programming-agreement-idUKKBN1CA2UQ'|'2017-10-06T01:25:00.000+03:00'
'a26c794c867df5cd7131c5ba65725999d334ddb1'|'May says to meet business leaders on Monday in Downing Street'|'October 6, 2017 / 11:23 AM / in 7 hours May says to meet business leaders on Monday in Downing Street Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The door of 10 Downing Street is seen, in central London, Britain June 15, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May will meet business leaders next week to discuss Britain<69>s departure from the European Union, her office said on Friday, after a former party chairman said there was a plot to topple her. A quarterly meeting with businesses including HSBC ( HSBA.L ), Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ), Vodafone ( VOD.L ) and WPP ( WPP.L ) to discuss Brexit will go ahead on Monday as usual, a spokeswoman for May<61>s office said. <20>The Business Advisory Council is an important part of our preparations for leaving the EU <20> allowing us to seek the views of experienced business leaders and to share with them the government<6E>s vision for a successful Brexit,<2C> May said in an emailed statement. Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-politics-business/may-says-to-meet-business-leaders-on-monday-in-downing-street-idUKKBN1CB1CR'|'2017-10-06T14:23:00.000+03:00'
'23528fe362ff9f53a98de65eea91894284f8ae36'|'Peltz says P&G proxy fight ''dumb'', will go down to wire'|'FILE PHOTO: Nelson Peltz founding partner of Trian Fund Management LP. speak at the WSJD Live conference in Laguna Beach, California, U.S. on October 25, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble ( PG.N ) should simply not have bothered resisting activist investor Nelson Peltz<74>s push for a board seat, he said on Friday, promising to keep his shares in the consumer goods company even if he lost next week<65>s vote. Peltz said that the company had wasted more than $100 million to keep him off the board, despite him having no intention of replacing any board member or Chief Executive David Taylor, and that the vote would be close. <20>This proxy fight is probably the dumbest thing I<>ve ever been involved in,<2C> Peltz told CNBC on Friday. One of the best known activist investors in corporate America, Peltz has amassed a $3.5 billion stake in P&G through his firm Trian Fund Management. He says he wants the company to improve shareholder returns by speeding up a transformation begun in 2014 and further streamlining its operations, moves he hopes he can push with a board seat. He has also repeatedly said that the company has a <20>suffocating bureaucracy<63> that is stalling progress and that reorganizing the company into three global business units would reduce complexity. <20>P&G has lost its soul,<2C> Peltz said. With a $235 billion market capitalization, the Oct. 10 vote makes Procter & Gamble the biggest ever firm to face a proxy fight - where two competing groups battle for the shareholder votes needed to control and change companies. P&G in a statement on Friday reiterated its stance that Peltz wasn<73>t a right fit for the board, particularly at this time as the company was in the final stages of its transformation. <20>Peltz<74>s timing is late to P&G&rsquo;s turnaround,<2C> the company said in the statement. Reporting by Siddharth Cavale in Bengaluru '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-procterandgamble-trian/peltz-says-pg-proxy-fight-dumb-will-go-down-to-wire-idUSKBN1CB1TN'|'2017-10-06T17:30:00.000+03:00'
'11177a3e99558353e6750acc3628b31dd1be2bea'|'Pope tells web companies: use profits to protect children'|'October 6, 2017 / 12:48 PM / Updated 13 minutes ago Pope tells web companies: use profits to protect children Reuters Staff * Acknowledges church sex scandals, wants to share lessons * Says filters and algorithms not enough * Condemns porn, bullying, dark web By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Pope Francis told executives of leading internet companies on Friday to use <20>their great profits<74> to defend children from sexual exploitation and other dangers lurking online. The pontiff, speaking at a conference in Rome, said the Catholic Church needed to accept responsibility <20>before God, victims and public opinion<6F> for its own sex abuse scandals, but wanted to share the lessons it had learned. Speaking to participants including representatives from Facebook and Microsoft, he said social media businesses had to do more than set up filters and algorithms to block harmful content. The 80-year-old pope spoke out against the spread of extreme pornography, the dangers of so-called <20>sexting<6E> between young people and between adults and children, and cyber bullying, calling it <20>a true form of moral and physical attack<63>. He said <20>heinous, illicit activities<65> such as the commissioning and live viewing of rape and violence against minors via the so-called Dark Web had to be stopped. The Church-organised conference - called Child Dignity in the Digital World - was held two months after a monsignor was recalled from the Vatican<61>s Washington embassy in August after the U.S. State Department said he may have violated child pornography laws. Church officials have been caught up in a series of scandals around the world - two years ago, the Vatican put its former ambassador to the Dominican Republic, an archbishop, on trial for child sex offences. He died before a verdict was reached. <20>IMPRESSIONABLE MINDS<44> The conference, held at a pontifical university in Rome, brought together experts from digital companies, law enforcement, medicine and academia to discuss online bullying, pornography and the preying on children by paedophiles. The pope said social media businesses had to invest <20>a fair portion of their great profits<74> to protect <20>impressionable minds<64>. He said it would be a mistake to think that <20>automatic technical solutions, filters devised by ever more refined algorithms in order to identify and block the spread of abusive and harmful images, are sufficient to deal with these problems<6D>. Businesses also had to address the broader ethical concerns associated with the growth of technology, rejecting the concept of <20>an ideological and mythical vision of the net as a realm of unlimited freedom<6F>. He said that while the digital revolution had enormous advantages, <20>we rightly wonder if we are capable of guiding the processes we ourselves have set in motion, whether they might be escaping our grasp<73>. The pope acknowledged the Church<63>s <20>own failures in providing for the protection of children: extremely grave facts have come to light, for which we have to accept our responsibility before God, before the victims and before public opinion<6F>. Because of <20>skills gained in the process of conversion and purification,<2C> he said the Church felt <20>especially bound to work strenuously and with foresight for the protection of minors and their dignity<74>. Since the Church<63>s scandals exploded around the world about 20 years ago, it has strived to put in to place so-called best practices to protect children. It has defrocked priests, worked with local police and the pope has declared a <20>zero tolerance<63> where clerics could not appeal a conviction on technical grounds. But victim<69>s groups say the Vatican and the pope have not gone far enough, particularly in making bishops accountable for covering up or mishandling cases of child abuse. A commission Francis set up in 2014 to advise him on how to root out sexual abuse has been hit by defections by two key members who lamented lack of progress and cooperation from Vatican officials. The Rome conference<63>
'5814f73bb72bcb26b255ad6812c6f19d7473915f'|'Renault expects electric cars and emerging markets to boost sales'|'October 6, 2017 / 6:27 AM / in an hour Renault expects electric cars and emerging markets to boost sales Laurence Frost 4 Min Read Carlos Ghosn, Chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance (L) and Groupe Renault chief competitive officer Thierry Bollore (R) attend a news conference to unveil Renault next mid-term strategic plan in Paris, France, October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau PARIS (Reuters) - French carmaker Renault ( RENA.PA ) expects a first-mover advantage in electric cars and a wider range of vehicles for emerging markets to help it deliver a 44 percent sales increase by 2022. Electric cars are <20>turning into a significant contributor to our performance while other automakers are just starting the journey<65>, Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said on Friday. Renault<6C>s mid-term plan shows it growing faster than alliance partner Nissan ( 7201.T ), which it trails in China, due to recent investments in Iran and India and a Russian rebound. While taking a lead in electric vehicles had come at the expense of profitability, Ghosn expects to turn this around with the launch of eight new battery-powered models and 12 hybrids. <20>Our vision now is a profitable core business,<2C> he said. Renault and Daimler<65>s ( DAIGn.DE ) Smart are likely to extend their small-car cooperation into electric models, he added. Renault plans to increase annual sales to 5 million vehicles by 2022 from 3.47 million last year while also aiming for a 7 percent operating profit margin and 70 billion euros (62.72 billion pounds)in revenue, goals that were announced in February. Renault said on Friday that its margin would remain above 5 percent in the intervening years, as it pursues 4.2 billion euros in cumulative productivity gains and invests 18 billion euros in research and development. The company also outlined a new dividend policy, promising to increase shareholder payouts to 15 percent of earnings by 2022, from 7 percent last year. In addition, it will continue to pass through its own Nissan and Daimler dividends to Renault shareholders. Renault owns 43.4 percent of its Japanese alliance partner and 3.1 percent of the Mercedes-Benz maker. Renault<6C>s share price was up 1.5 percent at 86.86 euros at 1100 GMT and the price might be supported in the coming weeks by <20>management<6E>s increased confidence<63> over its mid-term goals, Evercore ISI analyst Arndt Ellinghorst said. Carlos Ghosn, Chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, unveils Renault next mid-term strategic plan during a news conference in Paris, France, October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau <20>This is good news in a world where most people fear earnings, cash flow and profitability will fall due to disruption,<2C> Ellinghorst said. LOW-COST RANGE The market in China, where Renault only began manufacturing last year, is expected to account for half a million sales by 2022. Slideshow (2 Images) Renault<6C>s budget car line-up, starting with the Dacia Logan in 2004, has underpinned the push into emerging markets and spawned a second car platform underpinning the Kwid mini-SUV, which has more than doubled the group<75>s sales in India. Combined sales of the <20>Global Access<73> low-cost cars are seen expanding 54 percent to reach 2 million vehicles, or 40 percent of the group total. An expanded utility van range is also expected to contribute to the emerging-markets surge. Europe<70>s share of Renault vehicle deliveries would shrink to 36 percent from 52 percent under the plan, with sales in the home region remaining broadly flat. Pure electric cars may rise to about 5 percent of global sales, Ghosn said, adding that the forecast was <20>probably conservative<76> and almost certainly wrong. Renault has been transformed since 2005 when he took over from a carmaker dependent on French sales of Megane compacts into a <20>resilient, multi-polar global company<6E>, Ghosn said. Ghosn, who also heads the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, has not yet indicated whether he will seek to renew his contract as Rena
'fe789b46b97457a091473eb631e760d03b7cac82'|'UPDATE 1-EU sets dumping duties on steel from Brazil, Russia'|'* Commission drops idea of having a minimum price* EU steel body not happy with fixed price duties (Adds comment from Eurofer, Russian producers)By Philip BlenkinsopBRUSSELS, Oct 6 (Reuters) - The European Union has decided to set duties on hot-rolled steel from Brazil, Iran, Russia and Ukraine after a complaint by EU manufacturers that the product used for construction and machinery was being sold at excessively low prices.The EU will levy anti-dumping tariffs of between 17.6 and 96.5 euros ($20.6-112.8) per tonne from Saturday, its official journal said.The European Commission had initially proposed setting a minimum price - of 472.27 euros per tonne - but revised its proposal after failing to secure backing from EU member states.European steel association Eurofer, which brought the complaint, said it was happy the minimum price proposal had been dropped, but expressed disappointment that the Commission had opted for fixed-price rather than normal percentage tariffs.Given the current price of steel, the fixed-price amounts were lower than the equivalent percentage tariffs the Commission had set out in its reasoning.<2E>This outcome is not in line with normal EU anti-dumping procedures and the objective to tackle unfair imports,<2C> said Axel Eggert, Eurofer<65>s director general.He also said it was not right that the Commission had ended its investigation into Serbian steel imports without proposing measures. The country, he said, was home to a large state-owned, state-run Chinese steel producer.Chinese hot-rolled steel is already subject to duties.Among companies newly facing tariffs were the Brazil arms of ArcelorMittal and Aperam, both of which also produce in Europe, Companhia Siderugica Nacional, Usinas Siderugicas de Minas Gerais and Gerdau - at rates between 53.4 and 63.0 euros per tonne.Iranian steel would be subject to a duty of 57.5 euros per tonne and Ukraine<6E>s Metinvest Group 60.5 euros.Rates for Russian producers varied from 17.6 euros for Severstal, 53.3 euros for NLMK to 96.5 euros per tonne for MMK.BCS investment bank said there would be no major impact on Russian steel companies, which had already redirected volumes from the European markets to other markets.MMK said it would redirect part of its hot-rolled steel to Asian and other markets due to the imposed duties, with the Russian domestic market remaining its priority.Severstal said it would continue to ship to Europe because of its low tariff rate, giving it a competitive advantage over other suppliers.NLMK said it expected its European plants, including La Louviere which produces hot-rolled steel in Belgium, to benefit. ($1 = 0.8553 euros) (Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels; Additional reporting by Polina Devitt and Diana Asonova in Moscow; Editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek and Dale Hudson)Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/eu-steel-tariffs/update-1-eu-sets-dumping-duties-on-steel-from-brazil-russia-idINL8N1MH0V1'|'2017-10-06T05:06:00.000+03:00'
'f32a5ee36ec9b95636d416fea1082723f41a1fae'|'PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 9'|'October 9, 2017 / 4:27 AM / Updated 39 minutes ago PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 9 Reuters Staff 3 Min Read Oct 9 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - Over 20 nations have curbed North Korean diplomatic activities, more than a year after the U.S. State Department began a quiet global campaign to pressure Pyongyang. on.wsj.com/2wGy9Kn - The White House sent Congress an expansive set of principles that would increase immigration enforcement at the border and inside the U.S. and would limit new legal arrival. on.wsj.com/2wI6fhb - Weinstein Co''s board of directors fired co-chairman Harvey Weinstein from the independent movie and television studio on Sunday, citing allegations of sexual misconduct by one of the highest-profile producers in Hollywood. on.wsj.com/2wHTjrL - German Chancellor Angela Merkel''s conservative bloc agreed to limit the number of refugees allowed to enter the country annually, in an attempt to bridge its differences on migration and form a much-needed united front in upcoming coalition talks. on.wsj.com/2wHoiE6 - Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan has told associates he wanted nothing to do with Chinese conglomerate HNA, the bank''s largest shareholder. The iciness has irked Chairman Paul Achleitner, who helped woo HNA. on.wsj.com/2wGt8l9 - The Pentagon has taken over an effort to cut the cost of the F-35 combat jet, after rejecting plans proposed by Lockheed Martin and its partners, as it tries to make a program estimated to cost $400 billion more affordable. on.wsj.com/2wHOsGE - Walt Disney''s Marvel Entertainment dropped a planned joint venture with Northrop Grumman Corp on Saturday after fans of its superheroes attacked the company via social media for its potential ties with the defense contractor. on.wsj.com/2wHa8mo (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-wsj/press-digest-wall-street-journal-oct-9-idUSL4N1MK0TZ'|'2017-10-09T07:28:00.000+03:00'
'd73c176256a014558c240f1a5f444628c71a4daf'|'Exclusive: U.S. SEC''s corporate filing system vulnerable to denial of service attacks - memo'|'October 6, 2017 / 4:12   Exclusive: U.S. SEC''s corporate filing system vulnerable to denial of service attacks - memo Sarah N. Lynch , Jim Finkle 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The seal of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission hangs on the wall at SEC headquarters in Washington, DC, U.S. on June 24, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo REUTERS - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Wall Street<65>s top regulator, has discovered a vulnerability in its corporate filing database that could cause the system to collapse, according to an internal document seen by Reuters. The SEC<45>s September 22 memo reveals that its EDGAR database, containing financial reports from U.S. public companies and mutual funds, could be at risk of <20>denial of service<63> attacks, a type of cyber intrusion that floods a network, overwhelming it and forcing it to close. The discovery came when the SEC was testing EDGAR<41>s ability to absorb monthly and annual financial filings that will be required under new rules adopted last year for the $18 trillion mutual fund industry. The memo shows that even an unintentional error by a company, and not just hackers with malicious intentions, could bring the system down. Even the submission of a large <20>invalid<69> form could overwhelm the system<65>s memory. The defect comes after the SEC<45>s admission last month that hackers breached the EDGAR database in 2016. The discovery will likely add to concerns about the vulnerability of the SEC<45>s network and whether the agency has been adequately addressing cyber threats. The mutual fund industry has long had concerns that market-sensitive data required in the new rules could be exploited if it got into the wrong hands. The industry has since redoubled its calls for SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to delay the data-reporting rules, set to go into effect in June next year, until it is reassured the information will be secure. <20>Clearly, the SEC should postpone implementation of its data reporting rule until the security of those systems is thoroughly tested and assessed by independent third parties,<2C> said Mike McNamee, chief public communications officer of The Investment Company Institute (ICI), whose members manage $20 trillion worth of assets in the United States. <20>We are confident Chairman Clayton will live up to his pledge that the SEC will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure the security of its systems and the data it collects.<2E> An SEC spokesman declined to comment. The rules adopted last year requiring asset managers to file monthly and annual reports about their portfolio holdings were designed to protect them in the event of a market crisis by showing the SEC and investors that they have enough liquidity to cover a rush of redemptions. During a Congressional hearing on Wednesday, Clayton testified that the agency was considering whether to delay the rules in light of the cyber concerns. He did not, however, mention anything about the denial of service attack vulnerability. VIRTUAL VOMIT EDGAR is the repository for corporate America, housing millions of filings ranging from quarterly earnings to statements on acquisitions. It is a virtual treasure trove for cyber criminals who could trade on any information gleaned before it is publicly released. In the hack disclosed last month involving EDGAR, the SEC has said it now believes the criminals may have stolen non-public data for illicit trading. The vulnerability revealed in the September memo shows that even an invalid form could jam up EDGAR. The system did not immediately reject the form, the memo says. Rather, <20>it was being validated for hours before failing due to an invalid form type.<2E> That conclusion could spell trouble for the SEC<45>s EDGAR database because it means that if hackers wanted to, they could <20>basically take down the whole EDGAR system<65> by submitting a malicious data file, said one cyber security expert with experience securing networks of financial regulators 
'cde9ade7123cf37f98345678b68f8a4993bd460c'|'Ryanair promises pilots significant improvements in pay, conditions'|'October 5, 2017 / 8:25 PM / in 2 hours Ryanair promises pilots significant improvements in pay, conditions Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: People walk to board a Ryanair flight at Stansted Airport, northeast of London, Britain, September 7, 2017. Picture taken September 7, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Coombs/File Photo DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ryanair on Thursday promised its pilots significant improvements in pay and conditions, saying it would exceed rates paid by rivals and improve job security, according to a letter to pilots seen by Reuters. The Irish airline, the largest in Europe by passenger numbers, has in recent weeks announced the cancellation of thousands of flights, saying it did not have enough standby pilots to ensure the smooth operation of its schedule. Ryanair will deliver <20>significant improvements to your rosters, your pay, your basing, your contracts and your career progression over the next 12 months,<2C> chief executive Michael O<>Leary said in the letter addressed <20>to all Ryanair pilots<74>. The letter said Ryanair would exceed the pay and job security offered by rivals like Jet2 and Norwegian Air Shuttle and that it would negotiate on any differences in conditions between Ryanair<69>s Irish contracts and those offered by local laws at European bases. Reporting by Conor Humphries; editing by Andrew Roche'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ryanair-hldgs-cancellations/ryanair-promises-pilots-significant-improvements-in-pay-conditions-idUKKBN1CA2ME'|'2017-10-06T05:36:00.000+03:00'
'0c72e4a92bace57c0b2b88e3dbad5e6968655fea'|'HSBC picks retail head John Flint as next CEO - newspaper'|'October 8, 2017 / 9:22 AM / in 11 hours HSBC picks retail head John Flint as next CEO: newspaper Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: HSBC headquarters is seen at the financial Central district in Hong Kong, China September 6, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC ( HSBA.L ) wants to appoint company insider John Flint as its next chief executive and has approached regulators seeking their approval, Britain<69>s Sunday Times newspaper said. Europe<70>s biggest bank has told the Bank of England it wants approval for Flint, who currently runs the lender<65>s retail and wealth management businesses, to take over from Stuart Gulliver, the paper said, citing unnamed sources. HSBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Gulliver has said he plans to step down next year and the appointment of his replacement is the first major decision facing the bank<6E>s new chairman, Mark Tucker, who took up his post on Oct 1. John Flint, no relation to outgoing chairman Douglas Flint, joined HSBC in 1989 and has worked in both the investment banking and retail banking sides of the bank, spending 14 years in Asia at the start of his HSBC career. Reporting by Rachel Armstrong and Anjuli Davies; Editing by Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-ceo/hsbc-picks-retail-head-john-flint-as-next-ceo-newspaper-idUKKBN1CD0BI'|'2017-10-08T12:11:00.000+03:00'
'21db2111b76dfeac55512a2ae79399b1259bc6f4'|'Switch IPO the latest to limit investor voting rights'|'SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When data center operator Switch Inc goes public on Friday it will be the latest tech firm using special shares to limit the rights of minority investors, making it ineligible for inclusion in the S&P 500 under new rules meant to deter such practices.The Las Vegas company, run by enigmatic founder and Chief Executive Officer Rob Roy, plans to sell 31.3 million shares in an initial public offer late on Thursday for between $14 and $16 a piece, which would raise nearly $500 million and make it the largest technology listing this year after Snap Inc .Underwriters closed their order book late on Wednesday and the deal was oversubscribed, according to a source close to the IPO.Roy, who describes himself as an <20>inventrepreneur<75> and <20>tech futurist,<2C> will have 68 percent of voting power following the IPO, thanks to a special share class providing 10 votes per share.That will keep Switch out of the S&P 500 and other related indexes under new rules instituted by S&P Dow Jones in July after Snap sold shares without any voting rights in its $3.4 billion IPO earlier this year.Rule changes enacted last month for FTSE Russell indexes, also in reaction to Snap, require new constituents of its indexes to have at least 5 percent of their voting rights in the hands of public shareholders.The shares being sold in Switch<63>s IPO will include 4.9 percent of the company<6E>s voting rights, or 5.6 percent if underwriters exercise an option to buy additional shares.In its IPO filing and a profile of Roy on the company website, Switch gives no details about what he did before founding the company in 2000 or his academic qualifications. The profile describes him as <20>a recognized expert in advanced end-to-end solutions for mission-critical facilities.<2E>A company spokesman declined to provide additional information about Roy, and he does not appear in a 38-minute video marketing the IPO.The IPO could value Switch, which operates three data centers in Michigan and Nevada, at almost $4 billion.Snap co-founder Evan Spiegel was well known to Wall Street ahead of the Snapchat-owner<65>s February share offer, with many investors essentially betting on his talent. With Roy less known, investors may be taking a greater risk on a company in which they will have little say.<2E>Investors do look at voting control as well as the price you pay. If you put so much stock in the CEO, normally he<68>s going to part of the sales pitch for the company,<2C> said Ken Bertsch, Executive Director of the Council of Institutional Investors, which represents top U.S. pension funds.As many of 15 percent of U.S. IPOs in recent years have used dual share classes meant to give insiders outsized voting rights, according to the Council of Institutional Investors.Inclusion in a stock index can be an important milestone for young companies, bringing their shares into many passive funds and others that closely follow indexes like the S&P 500, a guide for trillions of dollars of capital worldwide.Other companies excluded from major indexes under their new rules include video-streaming company Roku Inc , whose IPO last week kept 97 percent of voting power with insiders. Software seller Mulesoft Inc<6E>s IPO in February included a share class with 10 votes per share, as did Blue Apron Holdings Inc in its June debut.Suggesting that the tide may be turning toward sharing power with minority investors, privately-held ride-hailing company Uber on Tuesday said it would abandon a dual share class system that favored insiders including former Chief Executive Travis Kalanick.Responding to a shareholder lawsuit, Facebook Inc in September gave up plans for a new class of stock that was meant to be a way for Mark Zuckerberg to retain control over the company he founded while fulfilling a pledge to give away his wealth.Reporting by Noel Randewich, additional reporting Stephen Nellis and Dan Levine in San Francisco, and Ross Kerber in Boston; Editing by Tom Brown '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reute
'04d7365f265131faac1927496716a2fe5cd47111'|'European stocks to face central bank test after strong 2017 - Reuters poll'|'October 5, 2017 / 5:34 AM / Updated 31 minutes ago European stocks to face central bank test after strong 2017: Reuters poll Danilo Masoni , Julien Ponthus 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote MILAN/LONDON (Reuters) - European shares are set to end 2017 with close to double-digit gains, supported by a recovery in economic growth and corporate earnings, but the pace is likely to slow as the European Central Bank moves to cut its massive stimulus. A Reuters poll of brokers, fund managers and analysts taken over the past week forecasts top euro zone blue chips .STOXX50E rising nearly 11 percent this year with gains halving to around 5.5 percent in 2018. It is predicted to close this year at 3,649 and 2018 at 3,850. Spanish stocks .IBEX , hit over the last few weeks by worries over a severe constitutional crisis, are expected to end this year up nearly 14 percent, a sharp cut compared with the 20 percent rise expected in the previous Reuters poll. The broader pan-European STOXX 600 index is seen rising 9.3 percent in 2017 and around 7 percent in 2018, leaving behind UK equities which instead are expected to suffer from worries related to the country<72>s exit from the European Union. End-2017 forecast was 395 and end-2018 was 420. <20>The synchronized upswing in the euro zone will sustain the current bull market until the end of the first quarter of 2018,<2C> said Warin Buntrock, deputy chief investment officer at BFT IM, which is overweight euro zone equities. <20>Starting from the second quarter of 2018, investors will gradually shift their focus on the coming inflexion of central bank policies. Equities will become more volatile and stagnate until the end of 2018 as valuations are rich,<2C> he added. The ECB is expected to start winding down its massive stimulus early next year in a move likely to be announced at central bank<6E>s next meeting on October 26. While monetary tightening is likely to support the banking sector through higher interest rates, it could also hurt dividend paying and heavily-indebted sectors such as utilities and telecoms. After peaking at two-year highs in May as political worries evaporated after Emmanuel Macron<6F>s decisive victory in the French presidential election, European shares suffered from an unexpected rise of the euro this summer. Even though the Euro STOXX 50 has recovered from the summer sell-off, the Reuters poll suggests it would remain below the May peak throughout the rest of this year. The index would only exceed that level and possibly climb back to pre-crisis levels during the course of 2018. <20>I<EFBFBD>m constructive, but expect more sector rotation than strong upside,<2C> said Angelo Meda, head of equities at BANOR SIM. Besides the focus on the ECB, investors will also have to deal with a resurgence of political worries with Spain facing its deepest constitutional crisis in decades and Italy holding a general election in 2018, while the German vote last month delivered a fourth but possibly weakened term for Chancellor Angela Merkel. Poll medians predict Germany''s DAX .GDAXI rising 13 percent this year to a fresh record high of 13,000 and surge another 5 percent in 2018, while France''s CAC 40 .FCHI is seen up 11 percent and 7 percent in 2017 and 2018 respectively. Italy''s FTSE MIB .FTMIB is the front-runner to end 2017 as the best performing country index with an expected surge of almost 20 percent. Its gains in 2018 however are seen slowing to 4 percent. Writing by Danilo Masoni; Polling by Helen Reid, Kit Rees and Julien Ponthus in London, Elisa Anzolin and Danilo Masoni in Milan and Indradip Ghosh and Sujith Pai in Bengaluru'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-europe-stocks-poll/european-stocks-to-face-central-bank-test-after-strong-2017-reuters-poll-idUKKBN1CA0AS'|'2017-10-05T08:25:00.000
'c779814d32e0e7983f2108d349158ed8dbeae7cb'|'Russian and Saudi state funds in $100 mln infrastructure deal'|'October 5, 2017 / 2:27 PM / in 30 minutes Russian and Saudi state funds in $100 mln infrastructure deal Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MOSCOW, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Russian sovereign wealth fund RDIF and Saudi Arabia<69>s Public Investment Fund signed an agreement on Thursday to invest up to $100 million in transport projects in Russia. The funds would become shareholders in United Transport Concession Holding set up to carry out investment projects in building and operating roads and railways in Russia, RDIF said in a statement after the signing. RDIF said Abu Dhabi<62>s state-owned Mubadala fund would also co-invest in the holding company. The three partners are studying participation in three projects in Moscow and St Petersburg. They expect to invest a total of 13 billion roubles ($226 million), RDIF said. The agreement is part of a large package of deals signed between Russia and Saudi Arabia during King Salman<61>s visit to Moscow this week. $1 = 57.4951 roubles Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Edmund Blair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/russia-saudi-infrastructure/russian-and-saudi-state-funds-in-100-mln-infrastructure-deal-idUSL8N1MG43B'|'2017-10-05T17:26:00.000+03:00'
'8743ffccd322e78a2991dc2aec0b38a7803e0626'|'Wall Street moves to Frankfurt as Brexit doubts grow'|'FILE PHOTO - The skyline, with its characteristic banking towers, is reflected in river Main in Frankfurt, Germany, October 1, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach LONDON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Some of the globe<62>s biggest banks have decided to rent more office space in Frankfurt, bolstering Germany<6E>s financial hub after months of divorce talks between Britain and the EU have left London<6F>s future more uncertain than ever.Goldman Sachs has agreed to lease 10,000 square metres of office space at the new Marienturm building in Frankfurt, making it one of the city<74>s biggest wins since Brexit.It will take the eight top floors of a new 37-storey tower now being built, giving it space for up to 1,000 staff, according to a person familiar with the matter.That would be five times the current staff of 200 and see the Wall Street giant bolstering activities including trading, investment banking and asset management. A spokesman said it gave <20>space to execute on our Brexit contingency plan<61>.Morgan Stanley has also signed a lease for offices in a tower, the Omniturm, that is also now being built. It has 200 staff in Frankfurt and expects to double that number, said one person familiar with the plans. The bank declined to comment.JP Morgan is also considering renting two additional floors on top of the five it now occupies at a high-rise tower in the centre of town, said a person familiar with the plans.The bank, which currently has 450 staff in Frankfurt, declined to comment.Citi has said it will build its Frankfurt operations by adding 150 staff. It plans to expand inside its current building dubbed Welle, near Frankfurt<72>s opera house.The expansion is the result of growing nervousness about the future of London<6F>s financial centre amid slow and acrimonious negotiations between Britain<69>s Brexit minister David Davis and his opposite number at the European Commission, Michel Barnier.Underscoring the confusion, British Prime Minister Theresa May made a calamitous keynote speech on Wednesday, interrupted by coughing fits, a prankster and letters of a slogan falling off her stage backdrop.Although some politicians in Britain are sceptical banks will follow through by moving large numbers of jobs, bankers in the City of London financial hub see an urgent need to act.The stakes are high. Financial services are Britain<69>s biggest tax and export generator.Once Britain leaves the EU - planned for March 2019 - banks in London could find it harder to do business within the bloc, prompting many to seek a foothold such as Frankfurt.The British government has said it would like a transition deal to smooth the way for business, but a top Bank of England official said on Wednesday that would probably need to be agreed by Christmas to prevent jobs from seeping abroad.Top German politicians have courted banks ever since the Brexit vote, persuading many to move there because Europe<70>s biggest economy proved unshakeable during the financial crash.A recent study commissioned by Frankfurt<72>s chief promoter predicted there would be 10,000 new bankers in the city within four years and that their arrival could create tens of thousands of additional jobs, from estate agents to building workers.The migration is already buoying interest in a city, known for <20>Frankfurter<65> sausages and cider. The prices of new luxury flats in the city jumped by 25 percent within a year, according to data released in August.Writing by John O''Donnell; Editing by Mark Potter '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-eu-frankfurt/wall-street-moves-to-frankfurt-as-brexit-doubts-grow-idINKBN1CA1NY'|'2017-10-05T16:54:00.000+03:00'
'6a585333aacdf2be3736c1564208deb1f6f781cb'|'UK transport minister discussing Monarch compensation with credit and debit card firms'|'LONDON, Oct 9 (Reuters) - British transport minister Chris Grayling said on Monday costs of the repatriation of 110,000 customers of collapsed airline Monarch were being discussed with credit and debit card companies.<2E>We<57>ve entered into discussions with several third parties with the aim of recovering costs of the operation,<2C> Grayling said in a statement to parliament.<2E>We<57>re also currently engaged in constructive discussions with the relevant credit and debit card providers so we recoup from them some of the costs to taxpayers of these repatriation flights. We<57>re also having similar discussions with other travel providers.<2E>Monarch Airlines collapsed last week amid intense competition over passengers and a weaker pound following the Brexit vote decimated company profits. (nL4N1MD1KC)Reporting by Polina Ivanova '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/monarch-airlines-licence-minister/uk-transport-minister-discussing-monarch-compensation-with-credit-and-debit-card-firms-idINL8N1MK4J6'|'2017-10-09T13:21:00.000+03:00'
'fd8090c511e8a601eeaf66ada6d5ce420fbe9790'|'RPT-BAE Systems to cut more than 1,000 manufacturing jobs - Sky News'|'(Repeats to additional clients, no change to text)LONDON, Oct 9 (Reuters) - British defence company BAE Systems will announce more than 1,000 job cuts this week, mainly affecting its Warton plant in Lancashire, north England, where it assembles the Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jet, Sky News said on Monday.BAE Systems was not immediately available to comment. (Reporting by Paul Sandle; editing by Kate Holton) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bae-systems-jobs/rpt-bae-systems-to-cut-more-than-1000-manufacturing-jobs-sky-news-idINL8N1MK25F'|'2017-10-09T07:42:00.000+03:00'
'f8c4360fcdec7d416df364c3dcf9a599bc0d4a6d'|'India RBI chief - growth important, but not at cost of inflation: newspaper'|'October 9, 2017 / 5:32 AM / in 7 minutes India RBI chief - growth important, but not at cost of inflation: newspaper Reuters Staff 3 Min Read The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Urjit Patel attends a news conference after the bi-monthly monetary policy review in Mumbai, India, October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade MUMBAI (Reuters) - Fostering monetary conditions conducive to economic growth were a constant consideration for Indian policymakers, but would not take priority over achieving the central bank<6E>s inflation target, Governor Urjit Patel told a newspaper on Monday. Patel told the Mint newspaper that the economy was recovering, after growth slowed to a three-year low of 5.7 percent in the April-June quarter. The slowdown had sparked some calls for lower interest rates, but with inflation rising the RBI left rates unchanged at a review by the monetary policy committee (MPC) last week. <20>Growth is always there in the MPC<50>s scheme of things; we don<6F>t lose sight of that, but not at the cost of inflation,<2C> Patel was quoted as saying in the interview. <20>However, we have to be careful <20> we should aim at achieving the inflation target without losing sight of supporting economic growth.<2E> Consumer inflation accelerated to 3.36 percent in August. India<69>s central bank has a medium-term target for annual inflation of 4 percent with the flexibility of plus/minus 2 percent on either side to make room for food price volatility. The (MPC) will strive to achieve its 4 percent inflation target on a <20>durable basis<69>, Patel said. Last week, the RBI kept its repo rate unchanged at 6.00 percent as expected last week, and raised inflation projections, cooling hopes for future rate cuts. However, Patel said growth was already starting to recover. The RBI last week cut its projection for gross value added - an indicator of growth it prefers to 6.7 percent from 7.3 percent for the year ending in March - higher than some analyst forecasts. <20>Our projections based on high frequency real economy indicators suggest that growth will pick up in the third and fourth quarters (of the current fiscal year) to above 7 percent,<2C> he told Mint. <20>We have started seeing the upturn.<2E> Patel has given only a handful of interviews since taking over as RBI Governor late last year. For the full Mint interview, see: ( bit.ly/2yytqPn ) Reporting by Suvashree Dey Choudhury'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-india-cenbank-patel/india-rbi-chief-growth-important-but-not-at-cost-of-inflation-newspaper-idUKKBN1CE0A7'|'2017-10-09T08:31:00.000+03:00'
'969ec2c429d4d47aac187afa082393e05edcceac'|'Auf Wiedersehen Air Berlin: flights to cease this month'|'October 9, 2017 / 11:23 AM / Updated 40 minutes ago Auf Wiedersehen Air Berlin: flights to cease this month Reuters Staff 3   An Airbus A330-223 aircraft of German carrier AirBerlin takes off towards New York, U.S., from Duesseldorf airport, Germany, September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay BERLIN (Reuters) - Flights operated by insolvent German carrier Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ) will end by Oct. 28 at the latest, it said on Monday, urging staff to seek jobs elsewhere while it works towards a carve-up of its assets. Air Berlin filed for insolvency in August and a government loan is keeping its planes in the air to give it time to negotiate with investors for parts of the business. Talks with Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) and easyJet ( EZJ.L ) are due to run until Thursday and once a deal for parts of its business has been agreed Air Berlin will have to wind down the rest of the operation. <20>After purchase contracts have been agreed, the company must end its own operations step by step,<2C> Air Berlin said in a statement. Between the signing of a deal and obtaining competition approval, which could take several months, the Air Berlin business will operate under wet leases, whereby the carrier will rent out crewed planes. Air Berlin<69>s Niki, which flies to tourist destinations, and regional airline LG Walter are not insolvent and those will continue to run, the company said. Most Air Berlin long-haul flights have already been cancelled and the remainder will end on Oct. 15. Lufthansa is interested in Air Berlin operations with about 81 planes, including Niki and LG Walter, while easyJet is in talks for parts of the business with about 27-30 planes, Air Berlin administrators have said. Those operations also include access to take-off and landing slots at Air Berlin<69>s hubs in Tegel and Duesseldorf. Air Berlin leases its planes, so any bidder will have to fund the aircraft separately. Lufthansa said last month that its board had freed up 1 billion euros (892.91 million pounds) to invest in new planes for Eurowings, which it said were likely to come from Air Berlin. However, a newspaper reported on Monday that talks with easyJet may not result in a deal after the British carrier reduced its offer. Analysts and industry experts have said that easyJet could be interested in slots made available at London Gatwick after the collapse of British holiday airline Monarch, which was grounded last week. EasyJet has already encouraged cabin crew and pilots made redundant by Monarch last week to apply for positions at the budget carrier. On Monday Air Berlin said its staff would not all find jobs with the potential buyers of its assets and they should start looking for jobs. Eurowings has already opened up vacancies for 1,000-plus pilots, cabin crew and ground staff and said on Friday that it had received more than 2,500 applications from around the world, about half of which were from pilots. Reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by David Goodman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-air-berlin-lufthansa/air-berlin-flights-to-cease-by-oct-28-idUKKBN1CE18N'|'2017-10-09T15:33:00.000+03:00'
'1c3cae96e809101bed5df184692ded927239ba8d'|'Oil prices dip on record U.S. crude exports, but OPEC-led supply cuts support'|'October 5, 2017 / 12:35 AM / in 14 minutes Oil prices dip on record U.S. crude exports, but OPEC-led supply cuts support 3 Min Read A worker at an oil field owned by Bashneft, Bashkortostan, Russia, January 28, 2015. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin/File Photo SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices dipped on Thursday after the United States reported record crude exports, although traders said that efforts led by OPEC and Russia to cut production meant markets remained well supported overall. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures CLc1 were trading at $49.90 per barrel at 0015 GMT, down 8 cents, or 0.16 percent, from their last close. Brent crude futures LCOc1, the international benchmark for oil prices, were down 5 cents, or 0.1 percent, at $55.75 a barrel. The declines came after the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said late on Wednesday that U.S. crude oil exports jumped to 1.98 million barrels per day (bpd) last week, surpassing the 1.5 million bpd record set the previous week. The increase has been triggered by the wide spread between U.S. WTI and international Brent crude prices, which makes U.S. oil exports attractive. Some traders said this was also an indicator that markets remained amply supplied despite efforts led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia to cut output to tighten the market and prop up prices. Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Denmark<72>s Saxo Bank said it was <20>still too early<6C> for oil markets to expect crude prices to see a sustained period above $60 per barrel. But analysts said that oil prices were unlikely to fall much further. <20>Oil prices remain supported by ongoing supply restrictions from the OPEC and Russia, with the agreement likely to be extended ... Any weakness in oil prices are thus likely to be short-lived,<2C> said Fawad Razaqzada, market analyst at futures brokerage Forex.com. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday during an industry event in Moscow that the pledge between OPEC and other producers including Russia to cut oil output could be extended to the end of 2018, instead of expiring in March 2018. The pact between OPEC and other producers, which excludes the United States, on cutting output by about 1.8 million bpd took effect in January this year. Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Joseph Radford'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-oil/oil-prices-dip-on-record-u-s-crude-exports-but-opec-led-supply-cuts-support-idUKKBN1CA01Y'|'2017-10-05T03:34:00.000+03:00'
'08049729d3ad9d40b8fe66698dab7a0cc41d784e'|'EU conducts inspections over limits to bank account access'|'May vows to stay as party plotters try to topple her May vows to stay as party plotters try to topple her May vows to stay as party plotters try to topple her Reuters TV United States October 6, 2017 / 6:53 PM / in an hour EU conducts inspections over limits to bank account access Reuters Staff 2 Min Read European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium June 14, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission said on Friday it had conducted inspections in some EU states into banks<6B> alleged anti-competitive practices in limiting rival financial firms from gaining legitimate online access to their customers<72> data. The Commission said in a statement it had <20>concerns<6E> that the companies involved <20>may have engaged in anti-competitive practices in breach of EU antitrust rules<65>. It did not name any company. It said that banks could have prevented non-bank competitors from gaining online access to account information of their customers to provide financial services, in spite of having obtained prior authorisation from the customers. The unannounced inspections were carried out on Oct. 3, the commission said. Antitrust inspections are preliminary steps into suspected practices that may not result in formal accusations. Financial technology, or <20>fintech<63> companies had complained of banks limiting their access to customers. Fintech firms provide payment, lending and other services. Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio; editing by Andrew Roche'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-antitrust-banks-accounts/eu-antitrust-conducted-inspections-over-limits-to-bank-accounts-access-idUKKBN1CB2GK'|'2017-10-06T22:13:00.000+03:00'
'98e5351295690a6edcb2d224e723f9df6b6f6dc2'|'Chevron returns staff to Gulf platforms; no timeline on operations'|'October 9, 2017 / 8:37 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago Chevron returns staff to Gulf platforms; no timeline on operations Reuters Staff 1 Min Read HOUSTON, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Chevron Corp said on Monday it has sent staff back to U.S. Gulf of Mexico platforms that were shuttered ahead of Hurricane Nate, but would not speculate on when operations would return to normal. The shutdowns ahead of the storm took more than 120,000 barrels of oil per day of Chevron<6F>s production offline. Chevron also said its pipeline subsidiary, Chevron Pipe Line Co, has re-opened its Whitecap pipeline and Fourchon and Empire terminals to receive and ship crude. (Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Marguerita Choy)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/storm-nate-chevron/chevron-returns-staff-to-gulf-platforms-no-timeline-on-operations-idUSL2N1MK168'|'2017-10-09T23:36:00.000+03:00'
'2e41e6d8ac8ade546430c13afe091f14ffd053f8'|'Oil up on lower U.S. rig count, expectation of ongoing Saudi output restraint'|'October 9, 2017 / 12:34 AM / in 13 minutes Oil up on lower U.S. rig count, expectation of ongoing Saudi output restraint Henning Gloystein 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A pump jack is seen at sunrise near Bakersfield, California October 14, 2014. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices edged up on Monday, after a 2 percent slide on Friday, as the number of rigs drilling for new oil in the United States dipped and on expectations that Saudi Arabia would continue to restrain its output to support the market. Meanwhile, oil ports, producers and refiners in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama - which shut facilities ahead of Hurricane Nate - were planning to reopen on Monday as the storm moved inland, away from most energy infrastructure on the U.S. Gulf Coast. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) front-month crude futures CLc1 were trading at $49.44 per barrel at 0634 GMT, up 15 cents, or 0.3 percent, from their last close. Brent crude futures LCOc1, the international benchmark for oil prices, were up 17 cents, or 0.3 percent, at $55.79 a barrel. Oil tumbled by around 2 percent on Friday, with WTI dipping back below $50 per barrel, as concerns of overproduction re-surfaced. Traders said a reported cut in the number of U.S. oil rigs drilling for new production had halted the price fall. The U.S. rig count fell by two to 748 in the week to Oct 6, General Electric Co<43>s ( GE.N ) Baker Hughes energy services firm said in its closely followed report on Friday. RIG-OL-USA-BHI Trading activity was low on Monday due to the Columbus Day holiday in the United States, although markets there are open. As a sign of more positive sentiment in the market, hedge funds and money managers raised their bullish bets on U.S. crude futures for the third week in a row, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission reported on Friday. The institutional investors raised their combined futures and options position in WTI on the NYMEX and ICE markets by 3,211 contracts to 288,766 in the week to Oct. 3, its highest since mid-August, the data showed. Analysts also said a Saudi Arabian commitment to support the market by restraining output would likely prevent crude from falling further. <20>We remain fairly confident that the Saudi<64>s will look to continue to support the oil market, especially until the sale of Aramco,<2C> said Shane Channel, equity and derivatives adviser at ASR Wealth Advisers. State-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco is planning to float around 5 percent of the firm in an initial public offering next year. Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Neil Fullick and Christian Schmollinger'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-oil/oil-up-on-expectation-of-saudi-production-restraint-lower-u-s-rig-count-idUKKBN1CE010'|'2017-10-09T09:42:00.000+03:00'
'64e9d81dbcd5f3c63b9f1f75108660381b612b52'|'Deutsche Boerse steps up clearing fight with London ahead of Brexit'|'October 9, 2017 / 7:10 AM / in 17 minutes Deutsche Boerse steps up clearing fight with London ahead of Brexit Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A notebook with the logo of Deutsche Boerse Group (German stock exchange) is pictured before their New Year''s reception at the headquarters in Eschborn, outside Frankfurt, Germany, January 25, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach LONDON (Reuters) - Deutsche Boerse has introduced a profit-sharing scheme to wrest volumes from the London Stock Exchange as banks face uncertainty over cross-border markets ahead of Britain<69>s departure from the European Union. The German exchange<67>s clearing unit, Eurex Clearing, said it will launch a partnership program in November to attract more volume in clearing interest rate swaps or IRS. An IRS is a popular derivatives contract used by companies to insure themselves against adverse moves in borrowing costs. The clearing of IRS in Europe is dominated by the LSE<53>s LCH unit. Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Rachel Armstrong'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-deutsche-boerse-markets-clearing/deutsche-boerse-steps-up-clearing-fight-with-london-ahead-of-brexit-idUKKBN1CE0H9'|'2017-10-09T10:07:00.000+03:00'
'09ba2019151062e1ea1dc518c4a2442564bd9c4f'|'Ericsson picks former Atlas Copco CEO as new chairman'|' 38 AM / in 17 minutes Ericsson picks former Atlas Copco CEO as new chairman Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Ericsson''s flag is seen at the company''s headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden March 11, 2015. TT News Agency/Jonas Ekstromer/via REUTERS/File Photo STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Ericsson ( ERICb.ST ) has picked Ronnie Leten, the former boss of mining gear maker Atlas Copco ( ATCOa.ST ), as its new chairman, as the mobile equipment company battles to revive its fortunes. Leten will, pending shareholder approval, take over from Leif Johansson, who said in July he would step down. Ericsson has been hit hard by competition from China<6E>s Huawei and Finland<6E>s Nokia as well as weak emerging markets and falling spending by telecoms operators, with demand for next-generation 5G technology still years away. Its shares have almost halved in value in the past two years. Leten, a 60-year old Belgian, stepped down as CEO of Sweden<65>s Atlas Copco earlier this year. Under his leadership, Atlas Copco shares rose 326 percent, twice as much as the European industrial sector index, with investors applauding its nimble cost structure and strong aftermarket sales that drove high margins and a robust cashflow. Leten is also leaving his position as chairman at Electrolux ( ELUXb.ST ), the home appliance maker said in a separate statement on Monday. <20>Mr Leten is a very skilled businessman, technically savvy and strategically versatile,<2C> Johan Forssell, chairman of Ericsson<6F>s nomination committee, said in a statement. At 0720 GMT, Ericsson shares were up 2 percent at 47.66 Swedish crowns. Ericsson drafted in new a CEO, Borje Ekholm, earlier this year, but corporate activist investor Cevian Capital, which has bought a more than 5-percent stake, has been pushing for further change. Reporting by Helena Soderpalm and Olof Swahnberg; Editing by Anna Ringstrom and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ericsson-chairman/ericsson-picks-former-atlas-copco-ceo-as-new-chairman-idUKKBN1CE0JO'|'2017-10-09T10:38:00.000+03:00'
'f8dfbbe71abe9513df99280ad191d561ae2fd685'|'ECB policy hawk calls for winding down asset buys'|'The headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) are illuminated with a giant euro sign at the start of the "Luminale, light and building" event in Frankfurt, Germany, March 12, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/Files STUTTGART (Reuters) - The European Central Bank should reduce its asset buys from next year with the aim of ending them altogether, ECB Executive Board member Sabine Lautenschlaeger said on Monday, just weeks before policymakers decide whether to curb stimulus.Advocating one of the most hawkish positions among rate setters, Lautenschlaeger argued that the factors holding down inflation are temporary so even if patience and stimulus were still needed, swelling the ECB<43>s balance sheet any further is not needed.<2E>I think we should begin reducing our bond purchases next year,<2C> Lautenschlaeger, who has frequently opposed past stimulus measures, said in Stuttgart. <20>This should be done gradually, until we are no longer purchasing additional bonds.<2E><>From my point of view, it is important that we really move towards the exit <20> step by step, but steadily and in a clear direction,<2C> she said.The ECB is due to decide on Oct. 26 whether to continue bond purchases next year. Signals coming from policymakers suggest that they will opt for lower volumes but also an extension of the scheme, possibly by six or nine months.But some policymakers are wary of signalling the programme<6D>s end as inflation will undershoot the ECB<43>s target of almost 2 percent year years to come.Still, Lautenschlaeger argued for transparency, warning that unclear signals could lead to unwanted market volatility and turbulence, undoing some of the bank<6E>s work.She also noted that, given cheap borrowing costs and steady growth, it was only a matter of time before inflation rose back to target, so the ECB could already start planning for an end to unconventional measures.<2E>As of today, it is clear which sequence the exit will follow. Bond purchases will come to an end, while interest rates will remain low, well past the horizon of net asset purchases. But we still need to decide on a time frame.<2E>Reporting by Frank Siebelt; Writing by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Francesco Canepa/Mark HeinrichOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/ecb-policy-bonds/ecb-policy-hawk-calls-for-winding-down-asset-buys-idINKBN1CE22F'|'2017-10-09T20:07:00.000+03:00'
'f4d5201eb10b1b9fd850f4989d6f35366224a969'|'UK transport minister discussing Monarch compensation with credit and debit card firms'|'October 9, 2017 / 3:29 PM / in 2 hours UK discussing Monarch compensation with credit, debit card firms Reuters Staff 3 Min Read Monarch aircraft are seen parked after the airline ceased trading, at Luton airport in Britain, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s transport minister said on Monday the costs of bringing home 110,000 customers of airline Monarch, which collapsed last week, were being discussed with credit and debit card companies. Monarch MONA.UL went bust last week amid intense competition over passengers and a weaker pound following the Brexit vote decimated company profits. It is the largest British airline to collapse and its demise left thousands of customers stranded abroad. That led the government to ask the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to charter aircraft to bring them home - Britain<69>s biggest peacetime repatriation operation. <20>I am also aware of the duty this government has to the taxpayer and ... we<77>ve entered into discussions with several third parties with the aim of recovering costs of the operation,<2C> transport minister Chris Grayling told parliament. <20>We<57>re currently engaged in constructive discussions with the relevant credit and debit card providers so we recoup from them some of the costs to taxpayers of these repatriation flights,<2C> he said in a statement. <20>We<57>re also having similar discussions with other travel providers through which passengers may have booked a Monarch holiday.<2E> Administrators at KPMG are currently in the process of selling off Monarch<63>s assets, a spokeswoman said, including airport slots, prepaid fuel, property and equipment. Three-quarters of Monarch passengers who were abroad when the company folded have now been brought home, Grayling said, with the operation requiring up to 35 planes at any one time, borrowed from 27 different airlines. Monarch<63>s demise also left over 1,800 workers redundant but Grayling said the airline<6E>s experienced former employees were in high demand from rivals. <20>Virgin Atlantic are offering a fast track recruitment process for cabin crew and pilots, and easyJet have invited applications for 500 cabin crew vacancies,<2C> Grayling said. The British Airline Pilots<74> Association and the trade union Unite have both separately criticized Monarch for its handling of staff redundancies last week and said they would take action to secure compensation for them. Reporting by Polina Ivanova; editing by Mark Heinrich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-monarch-airlines-licence-minister/uk-transport-minister-discussing-monarch-compensation-with-credit-and-debit-card-firms-idUSKBN1CE1TL'|'2017-10-09T18:28:00.000+03:00'
'2751b640f59dc09b5f1365c85e9e7dd3b702804f'|'IKEA plans full-range town-centre showrooms, ''open-source'' design'|'October 9, 2017 / 1:19 PM / Updated 17 minutes ago IKEA plans full-range town-centre showrooms, ''open-source'' design Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A woman is seen in an Ikea shop in a mall in Rome, Italy, May 19, 2017. REUTERS/Max Rossi/File Photo STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - IKEA plans to test <20>open-source<63> design and full-range town-centre showrooms as part of the furniture retailer<65>s efforts to adapt to rapidly changing consumer shopping habits. The budget furniture retailer<65>s strategy will still be based on its out-of-town warehouse stores, where shoppers pick up their purchases, but it also wants to become more accessible, physically and digitally. It has launched trial store formats such as smaller city centre stores, order and pickup-points and - the latest test format - a kitchen showroom in Stockholm<6C>s financial district. Torbjorn Loof, chief executive at franchiser Inter IKEA, said the group would try more things in different markets. <20>Our customers will see new initiatives, both physical and digital,<2C> he told Reuters. Loof was speaking after Inter IKEA said stores worldwide reported total sales of 38.3 billion euros (34.2 billion pounds) in the fiscal year through August, up from 36.4 billion a year earlier. The web of companies that make up IKEA has focused ownership of retail operations, which also include shopping centres and food retail, on IKEA Group. Supply chain management and design has transferred to brand owner and franchiser Inter IKEA. With IKEA Group focusing fully on retail, the hope is that it will be better placed to defend its market-leading position and maintain growth as competition and consumer expectations shift towards online shopping and home delivery. Loof said IKEA was fine-tuning its city-centre store concept, developing a format to display its entire range but in a smaller space with the help of new digital tools such as virtual reality. The new stores would also not need parking lots or large inventories thanks to expanded home delivery services. <20>This (format) will come within the next few years,<2C> he said in the interview. The group is also planning a digital platform next year that mimics the IT sector<6F>s <20>open-source<63> software development, Loof said. This will allow customers to take part in the development as well as testing of new products. <20>We are launching <20>Co-Create IKEA<45>, a digital platform where customers will have the possibility to develop and test new products ... a bit like the open-source development within IT,<2C> Loof said. IKEA had 403 stores in 49 markets at the end of its fiscal year. <20>In (fiscal) FY18, 22 new IKEA stores are planned, which includes new markets in India and Latvia, as well as continued roll out of new formats and expanded e-commerce activities,<2C> Inter IKEA said in a statement. It also said in the long term the group is looking at potential new markets and plans to enter South America within the next five years. The IKEA stores are owned by 11 franchisees, of which IKEA Group is the biggest with 355 stores. IKEA Group is due to report annual sales on Tuesday. In June, Loof said IKEA planned to test selling its products on websites other than its own from next year in another strategy shift to reach more customers. Reporting by Anna Ringstrom; Editing by Mark Potter and Jane Merriman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ikea-sales/ikea-stores-full-year-sales-up-5-percent-to-38-billion-euros-idUKKBN1CE1HM'|'2017-10-09T22:46:00.000+03:00'
'4334c50703d0783b4d3ddadbd8d8327da99f7b44'|'Talks on sale of Air Berlin planes to easyJet at risk of collapse - report'|'October 8, 2017 / 9:11 PM / Updated 30 minutes ago Talks on sale of Air Berlin planes to easyJet at risk of collapse - report Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - An Air Berlin sign is seen at an Air Berlin storage hall in Berlin, Germany, August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt/File Photo BERLIN (Reuters) - Talks between the insolvent carrier Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ) and easyJet ( EZJ.L ) over the sale of up to 30 planes are at risk of falling apart, according to a report in Germany<6E>s B.Z. newspaper on Monday. The report, citing unnamed Air Berlin sources, said easyJet had reduced its offer of around 50 million euros (44.82 million pounds) for the planes. Further complicating matters, there is disagreement over landing rights in Duesseldorf and Berlin<69>s Tegel airport with Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ), which is bidding for other parts of Air Berlin, the report said. Air Berlin and easyJet declined to comment. If negotiations between the German and British carriers end with no deal, a new deal with alternative partners must be reached by the end of October because Air Berlin<69>s funding will dry up, the report said. Air Berlin, which has around 8,000 employees, filed for insolvency in August after major shareholder Etihad said it would stop providing funding. The carrier has been in talks with Lufthansa and easyJet on a carve-up of its assets such as aircraft, take-off and landing slots and crew. These talks are due to run until Oct. 12. Reporting by Victoria Bryan and Klaus Lauer; Writing by Tom Sims, editing by David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-air-berlin-easyjet/talks-on-sale-of-air-berlin-planes-to-easyjet-at-risk-of-collapse-report-idUKKBN1CD0YY'|'2017-10-09T00:11:00.000+03:00'
'0f4a0a86c9b08ef53b432da20e61602598d25d3a'|'French fashion group SMCP to price IPO at 20-25 euros/share'|'The logo of ready-to-wear Maje brand is seen on a fashion shop storefront in Paris, France, March 29, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau PARIS (Reuters) - SMCP, the French fashion group behind labels Sandro, Maje and Claudie Pierlot, said on Monday it would price its looming flotation at between 20 to 25 euros per share, giving the company an enterprise value of up to 2.2 billion euros.SMCP, majority owned by China<6E>s Shandong Ruyi, said the initial public offering would raise about 121 million euros ($142 million) in net proceeds from issuing new shares.The group will also issue existing shares, raising between 390 million and 479 million euros in gross proceeds, excluding any options to sell more stock if demand is strong.Investors in SMCP also include including private equity firm KKR ( KKR.N ), with about 10 percent, while the company<6E>s founders and managers also hold around 8 percent.Formal trading of SMCP<43>s shares is due to begin on Oct. 24, and Shandong Ruyi will keep a stake of around 51 percent following the IPO. KKR will exit its previous holding.<2E>This IPO marks an important milestone in the development of SMCP,<2C> said SMCP chief executive Daniel Lalonde in a statement.Sandro, Maje and Claudie Pierlot operate in what is described as the accessible luxury market, their dresses typically priced at around 200 euros in France. Buoyant demand among fast-growing middle classes in countries such as China has boosted this segment.Financial advisors involved in SMCP<43>s flotation include JP Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, KKR Capital Markets, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Societe Generale, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and Mizuho International.Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Laurence Frost/Sarah White '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-smcp-ipo/french-fashion-group-smcp-prices-ipo-at-20-25-euros-share-idINKBN1CE0BI'|'2017-10-09T04:00:00.000+03:00'
'359d8d80c247e00a4af82379b0fe347caf429fe6'|'Shaky NAFTA deal threatens Navistar''s Mexico-made exports to world'|'Employees work at the assembly line of International brand commercial trucks, owned by Navistar, at the manufacturing plant in Escobedo, on the outskirts of Monterrey, Mexico, June 29, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril/Files MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - Less than half the trucks exported from Navistar<61>s mammoth Escobedo plant in Mexico are sold in North America but the factory<72>s success remains tightly tied to the uncertain future of the region<6F>s NAFTA free trade deal.Navistar<61>s Mexican factory, now the U.S. company<6E>s largest worldwide, exports to around 30 countries and sells less to the United States than competitors such as Daimler AG, one of the top three truck-makers in Mexico, which sends three-quarters of its Mexican-made commercial vehicles north.But Navistar<61>s reliance on tariff-free imported parts shows why even Mexico manufacturers that have diversified their customer base away from the United States still fear U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s threats to scrap NAFTA.<2E>To lose this treaty would be to go backwards 40 years,<2C> said Oscar Ruiz, operations director at the plant, fearing a return to an era when barriers made foreign investment and trade expensive between the two neighbors.Trade negotiators from the United States, Mexico and Canada will meet this week in Washington for a fourth round of talks on reworking NAFTA amid growing signs of an impasse between the Trump administration and the other two signatories of the pact.Mexican officials warn that Trump is leading the region towards a protectionist trade war with his <20>America First<73> policy, flirting with major curbs on commerce.Nowadays, over half the original parts for the vehicles made at Navistar<61>s 250 acre (100 hectare) site in the northern state of Nuevo Leon arrive duty-free from the United States and Canada in hundreds of trailers every day, Ruiz said.Higher tariffs on imports or reduced trade flows would raise the cost of production and of exporting to the United States. That would make trucks more expensive for all Navistar<61>s customers, experts consulted by Reuters said.Navistar, for example, uses Alabama-made Cummins engines in its International Prostar and LT heavy tractors. Without NAFTA, importing the engines would likely cost 10 percent more, based on World Trade Organization tariffs, according to Manuel Nieblas, a manufacturing consultant at Deloitte Mexico.With engines representing up to 45 percent of the $130,000 cost of a Prostar truck, that tariff alone could add around $5,800 to the final price.Prices would also rise for most of the up-to 12,000 parts used in a Navistar truck, both due to the tariffs and slower border-customs checks if trade were to be more regulated.A <20>LOGISTIC SPRINGBOARD<52>Aside from higher prices for imported parts, ending NAFTA would likely impose a 4 percent tariff on top of the total value of the Class 8 truck 18-wheeler for export to the United States.Still, that might be slight enough for U.S. consumers to absorb, or for the company to shave off its margins.And Navistar<61>s strategy of using Mexico<63>s low costs and multiple free trade deals to export to markets from Saudi Arabia to Australia could soften the blow of any tougher export rules for the United States, Mexican Chief Executive Carlos Pardo said.Employees work at the assembly line of International brand commercial trucks, owned by Navistar, at the manufacturing plant in Escobedo, on the outskirts of Monterrey, Mexico, June 29, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril/Files <20>More than ever I believe Mexico is a logistic springboard, where on top of a qualified work force and reasonable production costs, logistically it has created the connections to supply any part of the world,<2C> Pardo said in Navistar<61>s Mexico City headquarters.While 98 percent of trucks exported from Mexico go to the United States or Canada, U.S. truckmaker Kenworth, China<6E>s Giant and Korean automaker Kia all have a similar strategy of building in Mexico to export to countries other than the 
'43a18b37e132017c433fa96e17f54e19b5ced1bf'|'All-you-can-fly membership models are slowly catching on'|'LONDON<4F>s Luton airport is not renowned for its quick boarding. But now it is possible to show up there and in 15 minutes be on a plane bound for Zurich. That is thanks to the recent expansion of Surf Air, a small carrier. Though its name may be unfamiliar, its business model is, in fits and starts, catching on.Surf Air claims to be the world<6C>s first all-you-can-fly airline. For a monthly fee, members can travel on as many flights as they want among the airline<6E>s growing list of destinations. The airline was founded in 2013 in California, where it serves 12 cities. This summer it launched a service in Europe, where it flies from London, Cannes, Ibiza and Zurich. Milan, Munich, and Luxembourg are scheduled to join the roster later this year. '|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/10/surf-s-up?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-10T19:01:00.000+03:00'
'a1faf7d343d4289108b50910415889042c0944ae'|'Asian shares shrug off Wall Street gloom, dollar steadies'|'October 10, 2017 / 12:55 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Catalonia uncertainty hits bond yields, U.S. stocks outpace Europe Sinead Carew 3 Min Read The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks around the world rose on Tuesday, helped by record highs on Wall street although Europe traded cautiously and U.S. Treasury yields fell as investors braced for a possible move by Catalonia to unilaterally declare independence from Spain. While oil futures traded higher the dollar lost ground as the euro climbed to its highest point in a week after Germany<6E>s trade data beat forecasts and on expectations the European Central Bank may consider scaling back asset purchases. Madrid<69>s IBEX stocks index was 1 percent lower due to Spain<69>s biggest political crisis since an attempted military coup in 1981. The FTSEurofirst 300 index of European stocks was down 0.2 percent. Catalonia<69>s secessionist leader Carles Puigdemont was due to address the region<6F>s parliament in Barcelona later on Tuesday and could ask the assembly to vote on a unilateral declaration of independence from Madrid. If Catalonia splits from Spain <20>that is going to create economic disruption, and that<61>s bad for the Spanish economy and the euro zone as a whole,<2C> said Mary Ann Hurley, vice president in fixed income trading at D.A. Davidson in Seattle. The three major Wall Street indexes scaled new records, helped by gains in energy stocks and in Wal-Mart on the back of the company<6E>s $20 billion share buyback plan. [.N] The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 31.44 points, or 0.14 percent, to 22,792.51, the S&P 500 gained 2.95 points, or 0.12 percent, to 2,547.69 and the Nasdaq added 1.20 points, or 0.02 percent, to 6,580.93 MSCI<43>s gauge of stocks across the globe gained 0.41 percent, also hitting a record high. The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of major currencies, fell for the third day in a row. The dollar index fell 0.46 percent, with the euro up 0.55 percent to $1.1803. On top of strong German export data, traders were also upbeat after one of the European Central Bank<6E>s German policymakers called for an end to its stimulus. Benchmark 10-year notes last rose 9 in price to yield 2.3356, from 2.368 percent late on Monday. The 30-year bond last rose 24 in price to yield 2.8673 percent, from 2.906 percent late on Monday. In commodities, Brent oil prices pushed above $56 a barrel after top producer Saudi Arabia signaled it would trim its exports and as OPEC flagged ongoing efforts to try to restore the longer-term <20>balance<63> of the market. [O/R] U.S. crude rose 2.46 percent to $50.80 per barrel and Brent was last at $56.69, up 1.61 percent on the day. Gold prices also hit their highest in more than a week against the backdrop of a weaker dollar although expectations for another U.S. interest rate hike capped gains. Spot gold added 0.6 to $1,291.12 an ounce. [GOL/] Additional reporting by Marc Jones and Helen Reid in London, Lisa Twaronite in Tokyo,; Editing by Ed Osmond and Andrea Ricci'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asian-shares-shrug-off-wall-street-gloom-dollar-steadies-idUSKBN1CF039'|'2017-10-10T03:54:00.000+03:00'
'5d548256a418e3b70b5a35ac8efcc6c0f35439ae'|'European shares falter, LVMH helps luxury sector shine'|'October 10, 2017 / 8:38 AM / Updated 2 hours ago European shares falter, LVMH helps luxury sector shine Helen Reid 3 Min Read The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote LONDON (Reuters) - European shares dipped on Tuesday following a slightly weaker session on Wall Street as stocks tired from a streak of record highs. Strong results from luxury group LVMH, however, helped support stocks across the consumer goods sector. The STOXX 600 slipped 0.1 percent but held near three-month highs, after MSCI<43>s global stock index touched a fresh all-time high in early deals. Spain<69>s IBEX lagged European peers, down 0.5 percent as investors awaited an address by Catalan independence leader Carles Puigdemont to the regional parliament at 1600 GMT, after the market close. UBS strategists said they expected <20>limited<65> underperformance of Spanish equities, adding the IBEX<45>s sharp drop last week was largely due to its strong weighting towards financials, telecoms and utilities which are especially sensitive to domestic issues. <20>The sharp fall of the Spanish market last week is unjustified, in our view, ignoring the fact that 70 percent of MSCI Spain<69>s total revenues are generated outside Spain,<2C> they added in a note. LVMH fired the starting gun on third-quarter results season, driving stocks across the luxury and consumer sectors higher after robust results. Shares in the world<6C> biggest luxury group rose 1.8 percent after it beat sales and revenue forecasts in its third quarter, setting a high hurdle for European luxury peers to beat. Luxury brands Christian Dior, Gucci owner Kering and Moncler also gained, rising 1.6 to 1.8 percent on the strong performance from the group Bernstein luxury analyst Mario Ortelli said is a <20>bellwether<65> for the industry. <20>The strength and resilience of the core LV brand, and the number of brands ramping up on the development curve (i.e. Bulgari, Sephora, Fendi), mean it is well positioned to take action on potential acquisitions and/or buybacks,<2C> Ortelli added. Swiss fragrance and flavours maker Givaudan jumped 3.7 percent to a record high after the firm stuck to its 2020 targets and reported third-quarter sales up 5.7 percent, beating analysts<74> estimates. <20>The strong Q3 growth gives Givaudan<61>s investment case a further positive sentiment boost, which comes after worries on the negative impact of natural raw material price increases (vanilla, citrus, onions) on profitability,<2C> said Baader Helvea analysts. Dassault Aviation shares fell 4.5 percent, with traders citing comments from the CEO over delays to its Falcon 5X business jet. Goldman Sachs<68> upgrade to <20>buy<75> boosted shares in Spanish wind turbine maker Siemens Gamesa up 3.6 percent. Analysts at the bank said the firm was the best positioned to benefit from strong growth in wind power capacity. Reporting by Helen Reid; Editing by Georgina Prodhan/Jeremy Gaunt '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/europe-stocks/european-shares-falter-lvmh-helps-luxury-sector-shine-idINKBN1CF0UT'|'2017-10-10T06:38:00.000+03:00'
'a167755cecb122db81502dc5ee092b426547f55a'|'Pfizer mulling sale of consumer healthcare business'|'FILE PHOTO: The Pfizer logo is seen at their world headquarters in New York, U.S. April 28, 2014. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo (Reuters) - Pfizer said on Tuesday it was considering the sale or spin-off of its consumer healthcare business, shaking up the industry and potentially putting a headache pill to lip balm operation worth some $15 billion up for grabs. The move comes as Germany<6E>s Merck KGaA is also looking to divest its non-prescription products, including brands such as Seven Seas vitamins, which could be worth around $4.5 billion. As aging populations and health-conscious consumers drive demand for self-medication, the fragmented consumer health sector has proved a fertile ground for deal-making in recent years. Although consumer remedies sold over the counter have lower margins than prescription drugs, they are typically very long-lasting brands with loyal customers. Pfizer<65>s consumer healthcare business, whose brands include painkiller Advil and lip balm Chapstick, had revenue of about $3.4 billion in 2016. Industry experts said it could fetch some four times sales, implying a potential value of just under $14 billion, although two healthcare sector bankers said Pfizer was aiming for at least $15 billion. People familiar with the matter said Swiss food giant Nestle could be among those interested, along with existing manufacturers of over-the-counter (OTC) treatments and private equity firms. Pfizer, whose shares were little changed on Tuesday, said it would decide on the future of its consumer unit during 2018. Reuters first reported last November that a divestment of the business was under consideration. Established consumer health companies that may be interested in the Pfizer assets include Reckitt Benckiser, Procter & Gamble, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson and Abbott. They could be joined by Nestle, which is exploring the boundaries between food and healthcare. Nestle<6C>s new CEO Mark Schneider told investors last month it would keep identifying new opportunities and that 10 percent of group sales could be ripe for portfolio adjustment. A second person familiar with the matter said Pfizer expected a <20>broadening<6E> of buyer interest to include Nestle. Bayer and Sanofi may be less likely to bid, despite their consumer health presence, given they are busy absorbing Monsanto and Boehringer Ingelheim<69>s consumer business respectively. In explaining the thinking behind the review, Pfizer Chief Executive Ian Read said consumer healthcare was connected but not integral to its core prescription drug business. <20>Although there is a strong connection between consumer healthcare and elements of our core biopharmaceutical businesses, it is also distinct enough from our core business that there is potential for its value to be more fully realized outside the company,<2C> he said. Options to be considered include a full or partial separation through a spin-off, sale or other transaction. Pfizer may also ultimately decide to keep the business. The Pfizer business includes two of the 10 top-selling consumer healthcare brands globally in Advil and the multivitamin line Centrum. It also has 10 brands that each exceeded $100 million in 2016 sales. <20>IRRELEVANT<4E> TO POTENTIAL BRISTOL BID A Pfizer exit from the consumer health business would be one of its biggest corporate moves since abandoning a $160 billion deal to buy Allergan last year. It also tried and failed to buy AstraZeneca in 2014. Since then there has been persistent speculation that Pfizer is scouting for another major deal, with a bid for cancer specialist Bristol-Myers Squibb widely tipped as an option. However, the first source said the consumer healthcare review and the amount of cash it would raise was <20>irrelevant<6E> to a possible takeover of Bristol-Myers, which has a market value of $105 billion. Pfizer has hired Centerview Partners, Guggenheim Securities and Morgan Stanley as financial advisers for the review, Germany<6E>s Merck KGaA had hired JP Morgan to sell its c
'22596a1c41932d2dbdfc5380c897df1a4b84bfe2'|'BRIEF-MongoDB sees IPO of class A 8 mln shares priced at $18-$20 per share - SEC filing'|'Oct 6 (Reuters) -* MongoDB Inc sees IPO of 8 million shares of its class A common stock priced between $18.00 and $20.00 per share - SEC filing* MongoDB - outstanding shares of co''s class B common stock will represent about 98 percent of voting power of co''s outstanding capital stock immediately following offering Source text: ( bit.ly/2kqzMdE ) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/brief-mongodb-sees-ipo-of-class-a-8-mln/brief-mongodb-sees-ipo-of-class-a-8-mln-shares-priced-at-18-20-per-share-sec-filing-idINFWN1MH0B9'|'2017-10-06T08:42:00.000+03:00'
'b49b0e2a75924b1df85bbb78b5d285df13d3bbaa'|'Gas Natural picks Edison, 2i Rete Gas for Italy assets: sources'|'FILE PHOTO: The logo of Gas Natural is seen inside its headquarters in Madrid, Spain, May 11, 2016. REUTERS/Sergio Perez/File photo MADRID/MILAN (Reuters) - Spain<69>s Gas Natural ( GAS.MC ) has approved the sale of its Italian retail business to EDF ( EDF.PA ) unit Edison and its distribution network to 2i Rete Gas, two sources said on Wednesday.The deal is expected to raise around 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) overall for the Spanish energy group, the sources said. The sale had been reported by Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore.A final agreement is expected to be reached in the next two or three weeks, one of the sources said.Edison and infrastructure fund F2i, which controls Italy<6C>s second-biggest gas distributor 2i Rete Gas, declined to comment.Gas Natural, which has been in Italy since 2002, runs more than 7,000 km of regulated gas distribution pipelines, mainly in the south, alongside a retail business that sells gas and power to more than 420,000 families and 17,000 companies.But its Italian business generates just over 1 percent of its core earnings. Earlier this year it hired Rothschild to carry out a strategic review of its businesses in the country.Sources had previously said Italy<6C>s biggest gas distributor, Italgas IT.MI, was also in the race for the Italian grid assets, which could be worth 500-550 million euros.Italy<6C>s gas distribution industry is highly fragmented but new rules cutting concession areas are set to streamline the sector to make it more efficient.($1 = 0.8490 euros)Reporting by Jose Elias Rodriguez and Stephen Jewkes, editing by Steve Scherer and Louise Heavens '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gasnatural-m-a-italy/gas-natural-picks-edison-2i-rete-gas-for-italy-assets-sources-idUSKBN1C91VI'|'2017-10-04T21:20:00.000+03:00'
'1d5bf0684a7aab5004a086202147972fd19928b0'|'S&P says Bank of England is talking up sterling to fight inflation'|'October 4, 2017 / 10:27 AM / in 7 hours S&P says Bank of England is talking up sterling to fight inflation William Schomberg 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A screen shows the Standard and Poor''s (S&P) Index before the close of trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., November 22, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid LONDON (Reuters) - Ratings agency Standard & Poor<6F>s says it is <20>a bit sceptical<61> about Britain<69>s need for an interest rate hike soon, and that recent Bank of England comments that one may be in the offing seem designed to push up sterling and cool inflation. <20>Overall, we believe the Bank and Mark Carney<65>s recent statements are primarily aimed at propping up sterling to reduce imported inflation pressures,<2C> S&P analysts said in a report released on Wednesday. <20>This strategy may include an actual 25 basis point hike in November, thus bringing the policy rate back to where it was before the Brexit referendum. Additional moves in 2018 do not appear warranted on the back of a slowing economy,<2C> it said. The BoE surprised investors last month when it said most of its rate-setters thought it was likely that borrowing costs would need to rise <20>in the coming months<68>, as it saw growing upward pressure on inflation which already exceeds the central bank<6E>s 2 percent target and is likely to hit 3 percent soon. S&P noted how incomes, when adjusted for inflation, were falling and that it expected another weak third quarter for the economy, based on recent data. A spokesman for the BoE declined to comment on the S&P report, which was based on a quarterly meeting of the ratings agency<63>s credit conditions committees. S&P stripped Britain of its triple-A rating after the Brexit vote last year, downgrading it by two notches to AA and assigning a negative outlook. S&P also said on Wednesday it saw signs of a slowdown in investment by companies in Britain as a result of uncertainties over Brexit. <20>We believe that adjustments to longer-term UK business plans, including capital and foreign direct investment, could start to have a more tangible economic impact as we move into next year,<2C> it said. S&P welcomed Prime Minister Theresa May<61>s comments that Britain would seek a roughly two-year transition period for leaving the European Union but said <20>the extended delay implies a longer period of uncertainty until both parties can agree on the shape of their future relationship<69>. Reporting by William Schomberg. Editing by Jeremy Gaunt'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-boe-s-p/bank-of-england-talking-up-sterling-to-fight-inflation-sp-idUKKCN1C91AJ'|'2017-10-04T15:19:00.000+03:00'
'fc9f5f8b1adef536ba25f40617c2266f2b4bd155'|'Airbus sales boss Leahy sets end-year retirement date: sources'|'October 11, 2017 / 1:23 PM / a minute ago Leahy to bow out from Airbus at year-end after final sales push Tim Hepher 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Airbus Chief Operating Officer-Customers John Leahy attends the 52nd Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport near Paris, France, June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - John Leahy, who has sold planes worth over a trillion dollars during more than two decades as sales chief at Europe<70>s Airbus, is finally calling it a day at the end of the year after one last push to level the score with Boeing, executives said. The 67-year-old New Yorker, who hinted earlier this year he would retire in the autumn to make way for his deputy Kiran Rao, is once again in battle mode as Airbus( AIR.PA ) faces an aggressive new sales drive from its U.S. rival. That comes as Airbus is trying to end a hiatus in sales of its A380 <20>superjumbo<62> by seeking more orders from Emirates and other deals at the Dubai Airshow, which Leahy is now expected to attend after earlier saying he would not be going. He has agreed to stay on until the end of the year, the executives said. Chief Executive Tom Enders disclosed the timing of Leahy<68>s departure during a recent internal sales meeting, but has not publicly confirmed details of the transition. Leahy, who has run sales at Airbus since 1994, could not be reached for comment on his plans on Wednesday, while Airbus declined comment. A tireless <20>deal closer<65> known for snatching deals at the last moment, Leahy sold small Piper aircraft before joining Airbus to help break open the U.S. market in the 1980s. Aides say he has overseen sales of more than 15,500 aircraft worth $1.7 trillion at list prices. But after a prolonged boom, Airbus has slipped behind Boeing ( BA.N ) in the order race this year with just 35 percent of net orders. WOOING EMIRATES After suffering a rare defeat at the Paris Airshow in June, Leahy seems determined to end his career on a high and has set his sights on new sales for the A380, without which the plane could struggle to survive, industry sources said. Emirates president Tim Clark, the biggest A380 operator who has negotiated with Leahy for decades, declined to say whether he would write more cheques for jets at the Dubai Airshow but confirmed he was being courted to expand his superjumbo fleet. <20>He<48>s anxious that we should order a squillion A380s before he goes, so that he<68>ll go out with a fanfare of trumpets or whatever,<2C> Clark joked in an interview with Reuters in Asia. <20>But he<68>s been telling me for the last four years that he<68>ll retire in the next year, so I<>ll believe it when I see it.<2E> The veteran CEO paid tribute to Leahy<68>s record, which leaves Airbus with a record backlog but questions over short-term jet demand, and declined to comment on his own retirement plans. <20>He<48>s been very good at what he is doing. He<48>s certainly a character who has been a big contributor to the industry.<2E> With more than 200 sales needed to close the gap with Boeing in a market already bursting with jets, some market sources said Leahy<68>s looming departure may put pressure on prices. <20>Now is the time to strike. Airlines know the last thing Leahy will want is to lose his last annual order competition against Boeing,<2C> said a senior aircraft financing source. Leahy, however, has said Airbus does not expect 2017 to be a marquee year for orders as the industry slows. Reporting by Tim Hepher; Additional reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Alexander Smith 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbus-leahy/airbus-sales-boss-leahy-sets-end-year-retirement-date-sources-idUSKBN1CG1QE'|'2017-10-11T16:22:00.000+03:00'
'816680926870c1bad7a470cab21f68b209333bbd'|'UPDATE 2-Emirates willing to cooperate with rival UAE airline Etihad'|'* Procurement could be one area of cooperation: Emirates* Full merger unlikely but up to owners: Emirates<65> Clark* Unsure if will place aircraft orders at Dubai Airshow: Clark (Adds comments on aircraft orders)By Jamie FreedSINGAPORE, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Emirates is open to cooperation with rival Etihad Airways on areas including procurement, its president Tim Clark said on Wednesday, adding a full merger between the pair was unlikely but up to the owners.Based in the United Arab Emirates, Emirates and Etihad have been competing fiercely to build global networks around their respective hubs in Dubai and Abu Dhabi rather than working together, even as they battled overcapacity, security concerns and a fall in regional business travel.<2E>I think there is value to be had working more closely with them,<2C> Clark told Reuters by phone, adding there might be concerns from regulators in some foreign markets.<2E>There are many areas that the airlines could work together on like procurement. But we have to go the first jump first to understand what it is we could do and I<>m simply the manager of one of the businesses,<2C> he said.<2E>It is my superiors who have to make that call, not me.<2E>When asked if the pair could pursue a merger along the lines of Europe<70>s Air France and KLM, Clark said: <20>I don<6F>t think that will be the case but it is not my call really. It is whatever (the shareholders) may do in the future.<2E>Emirates is owned by the Dubai government while Etihad is owned by the Abu Dhabi government.Etihad, which has been hit hard by loss-making investments in European carriers Air Berlin and Alitalia, last month said it would appoint Britain<69>s top defence buyer, Tony Douglas, as its new CEO from January as the airline rethinks its aggressive global expansion strategy.Etihad could not immediately comment on possible cooperation with Emirates.EMIRATES ORDER PLANS Emirates, a bigger airline than Etihad, is the largest customer for the Airbus SE A380 that has had its production rate cut due to a lack of sales.Clark said an order for more of the superjumbo aircraft was under consideration, adding that any A380 order would help replace 25 A380s due to be retired in the middle 2020s.He did not give any details on the order volume or whether a deal would be signed at the Dubai Airshow next month.<2E>Airbus would love us to do that but we<77>ve got a few things to sort out first so I<>m not sure that we<77>ll get there for the airshow,<2C> he said.The airline is separately looking at the Airbus A350 and the Boeing Co 787 to meet its needs in the 250-300 seat market, Clark said, after having told Aviation Week only last month that a planned order was <20>off the table for now<6F>.In 2014, Emirates cancelled an order for 70 A350s.Clark said the Emirates procurement and operational groups were engaging with both manufacturers about a potential order.<2E>I don<6F>t want to focus on the Dubai Airshow,<2C> he said of the timing. <20>The important thing is to get the right deal for the company at the time that suits us, not driven by a guillotine of the middle of November.<2E> (Reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by Himani Sarkar)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/emirates-airline/update-1-emirates-says-open-to-cooperation-with-rival-uae-airline-etihad-idINL4N1MM2PU'|'2017-10-11T05:26:00.000+03:00'
'a2887092d35cc2993f487eccc4cab1bb30e0d9de'|'UPDATE 2-Taiwan Sept exports surge at best pace in 7 yrs, showing solid tech demand'|'October 11, 2017 / 9:01 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago UPDATE 2-Taiwan Sept exports surge at best pace in 7 yrs, showing solid tech demand Reuters Staff * Sept exports rise 28.1 pct y/y, compared with Aug<75>s 12.7 pct * Exports to China +29.6 pct y/y in Sept, to US +20.6 pct * Electronics exports a <20>historical milestone<6E> - ministry By Jess Macy Yu and Jeanny Kao TAIPEI, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Taiwan<61>s already-buoyant exports surged much more than expected in September, growing at the fastest on-year pace in more than seven years, thanks to strong global demand for electronic gadgets at the start of the year-end shopping season. Exports in September rose 28.1 percent from a year earlier, the finance ministry said on Wednesday. That was the fastest growth pace since July 2010, when shipments shot up 38 percent, and more than double the 12.50 percent forecast in a Reuters poll. In the three months prior to September, Taiwan<61>s exports increased between 12 and 13 percent. The September export total was $28.9 billion, which the ministry called a <20>new historical high<67>. Electronic components accounted for $10.18 billion, a level the ministry also described as <20>historical<61>. The ministry said a series of global developments, including quicker economic growth and <20>mobile device innovation upgrades<65>, benefitted the island<6E>s export momentum. Taiwan<61>s robust performance indicates continued strength for Asia exports this year, lifted by improving global demand and electronics. For September, South Korea reported record exports of $55.1 billion, 35 percent above a year earlier. Cheng Yu-liu, an analyst at First Capital Management, said he is raising his forecast for Taiwan<61>s full-year 2017 export growth to 15-17 percent from 10 percent. He also said the <20>highest peak<61> for exports should be in November when there are shipments for the iPhone X, which Apple Corp will start selling that month. Growth in Taiwan<61>s exports to China in September was 29.6 percent from a year earlier, double the August gain, and shipments to the United States rose 20.6 percent on-year, compared with the previous month<74>s 7.1 percent pace. Taiwan<61>s upbeat performance will shore up confidence the island can achieve its upwardly revised economic growth forecast of 2.11 percent this year. Imports rose 22.2 percent from a year earlier, compared with August<73>s 6.9 percent. The September trade surplus was $6.69 billion, a record high. The exports picture follows on a private September PMI survey that indicated that Taiwan<61>s manufacturing sector had robust growth momentum at the end of the third quarter, with strong demand and new orders. Earlier, Taiwan reported export orders for September grew 7.5 percent from a year earlier, weaker than a poll<6C>s median forecast of 8.5 percent. (Additional reporting by Jeanny Kao and Roger Tung; Editing by Richard Borsuk) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/taiwan-economy-trade/update-1-taiwans-september-exports-soar-showing-strong-global-tech-demand-idUSL4N1MH21F'|'2017-10-11T13:03:00.000+03:00'
'cc4eca15b1eaa9d76429cd2344ff8d8fcab8bf1f'|'Helix Energy explores strategic alternatives, including sale: WSJ'|'(Reuters) - Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc is exploring strategic alternatives, including a potential sale, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.The Houston-based offshore services company is in early talks with bankers regarding a sale, WSJ reported, adding that the discussion may not necessarily result in a deal. ( on.wsj.com/2ycdu49 )Helix Energy<67>s shares rose as much as 11.2 percent to $7.37 on Monday, giving the company a market cap of about $1.09 billion.In 2012, the company said it would sell its oil and gas unit for at least $610 million to focus on providing well intervention and robotics services.Helix Energy, like other oilfield services providers has been hit hard by the oil price slump in the past two years. The company has posted losses since the fourth quarter of 2016.Helix Energy was not immediately available for comment.The company shares were up 10.3 percent in afternoon trading, they had fallen nearly 25 percent this year.Reporting by Taenaz Shakir in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-helix-energy-sol-strategic-alternativ/helix-energy-explores-strategic-alternatives-including-sale-wsj-idINKBN1CE292'|'2017-10-09T16:36:00.000+03:00'
'fd30c7c556c17792c94df9a49a3118bde4d5b4bd'|'Uber suspends unlicensed service in Norway in change of tack'|'October 9, 2017 / 6:04 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Uber suspends unlicensed service in Norway in change of tack Julia Fioretti 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Uber said on Monday it would suspend its unlicensed service UberPOP in Oslo until Norway introduces new rules, as the U.S. ride-hailing app adopts a more conciliatory tone with national authorities. The move follows a similar one-year suspension in Finland in July to allow a new taxi law to come into effect, however there is no set date for when UberPOP will be reintroduced in Norway. The U.S. ride-hailing company has come under fierce pressure from traditional taxi drivers and regulators across Europe who accuse it of unfair competition and skirting traditional licensing rules. UberPOP has already been suspended in several European capitals, including Paris and Brussels, and Uber was recently humbled when it lost its license to operate in London. <20>We<57>ve learned the hard way that we must change as a company in order to serve the millions of riders and drivers who rely on us. With our new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi onboard, it<69>s a new era for Uber,<2C> the company said in a statement. <20>That<61>s why it<69>s now time to pause UberPOP in Norway, in order to relaunch under new regulations.<2E> UberPOP will be suspended on Oct. 30, while Uber<65>s licensed services UberBLACK and UberXXL will continue to operate as normal. The Uber logo is seen on mobile telephone in London, Britain, September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay The Norwegian transport minister said Uber was being treated as any other market participant would be. <20>All actors offering taxi services must conform to rules and regulation at any time,<2C> Ketil Solvik-Olsen told Reuters. The suspension of UberPOP in Norway comes as the non-EU country must answer by Oct. 27 a query on its transport regulations by the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA), the body that ensures EU regulations are enforced in countries that have access to the European common market. Uber will suspend UberPOP three days after that deadline. In February, ESA said Norway was setting <20>disproportionately high barriers to enter the taxi market<65> that led to inefficient use of resources and higher prices for consumers. Khosrowshahi took the helm of Uber in August, replacing co-founder and former boss Travis Kalanick and has promised change at the $70 billion dollar firm. The company said it was encouraged by developments in Norway such as the government<6E>s sharing economy committee which recommended repealing certain provisions related to taxis and an opinion from the EFTA surveillance authority which said Norway<61>s restrictions on taxi licenses were illegal. <20>Norway deserves modernized laws that encourage innovation and competition without sacrificing what makes the Norwegian model special,<2C> Uber said. <20>We hope the government will implement these recommendations soon, so that we can relaunch a new and improved version of the product loved by so many.<2E> UberPOP had around 280,000 users in Oslo and hundreds of drivers. Reporting by Julia Fioretti in Brussels and Camilla Knudsen in Oslo, editing by David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-norway/uber-suspends-unlicensed-service-in-norway-in-change-of-tack-idUSKBN1CE0BO'|'2017-10-09T09:03:00.000+03:00'
'833f767a81a8b7beab2823ee54d5b7648997e772'|'Bombardier''s new Global 7000 makes trade show debut'|'An aerial view of Bombardier''s new Global 7000 business jet is seen during the National Business Aviation Association conference and expo at the Henderson Executive Airport in Henderson, Nevada, U.S., October 8, 2017. REUTERS/David Becker MONTREAL (Reuters) - Bombardier Inc<6E>s ( BBDb.TO ) largest business jet is making its debut on Sunday in Las Vegas, giving a glimpse of the ultra long-range plane the Canadian company is counting on for growth at a time of sluggish industry sales and as it fights a trade battle over a separate jet.The new Global 7000, the industry<72>s largest jet designed for private or corporate use, will be on display at the National Business Aviation Association<6F>s flagship industry trade show on Oct. 10-12.When it enters service next year, the Global 7000, with a list price of almost $73 million, will play a key role in the five-year turnaround plan of Bombardier, which also makes trains, after a near-brush with bankruptcy in 2015.A separate Bombardier plane, the CSeries, has been caught up in a trade dispute, with the U.S. Commerce department slapping a preliminary 300 percent duty on sales of the commercial jets after Boeing complained its Canadian rival received illegal subsidies and dumped the aircraft at <20>absurdly low<6F> prices.With eight customer jets in production and about 900 hours logged in its flight test program, the Global 7000 is on track for deliveries in late 2018, Bombardier said in a statement.<2E>We have a healthy order book for the Global 7000 and can confirm that the aircraft is sold out until 2021,<2C> said Bombardier Business Aircraft President David Coleal by email.The cockpit of a mock-up Bombardier Global 7000 business jet is seen during the National Business Aviation Association conference and expo at the Henderson Executive Airport in Henderson, Nevada, U.S., October 8, 2017. REUTERS/David Becker Analysts expect the aircraft will add $300 million to operating profit and contribute nearly one-third of Bombardier<65>s targeted $10 billion in business jet revenues in 2020.<2E>High-end business jets have always been the most important and most profitable part of the company,<2C> said Teal Group aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia by email. <20>Even with the CSeries ramping up, much of the company<6E>s fortunes still depend on Global deliveries.<2E>Slideshow (12 Images) Coleal would not disclose orders for the jet, which can fly eight passengers non-stop from London to Singapore or Dubai to New York City with a maximum operating speed of Mach 0.925 (709.7 miles or 1,142 km per hour).The Global 7000 faces competition from France<63>s Dassault Aviation SA ( AVMD.PA ) and General Dynamics Corp<72>s ( GD.N ) Gulfstream. Aboulafia said Gulfstream was threatening to overtake Bombardier as the market leader in revenue from overall business jet deliveries.Pre-owned aircraft broker Jetcraft is forecasting deliveries of 8,349 aircraft over 10 years worth about $252 billion based on 2017 prices.Still, business jet deliveries are struggling to recover after the financial crisis, having been cut in half from their peak of 1,317 in 2008 to 661 in 2016, according to General Aviation Manufacturers Association.Aboulafia of Teal Group expects <20>modest, single-digit growth through 2019.<2E>Reporting by Allison Lampert; Editing by Denny Thomas and Richard Chang '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bombardier-jet/bombardiers-new-global-7000-makes-trade-show-debut-idUSKBN1CD0ZU'|'2017-10-09T01:00:00.000+03:00'
'9f38d85c64e3ef86f3d5b5f91d42ff578eadd06c'|'After a bite of Apple, Margrethe Vestager targets another tech giant'|'MARGRETHE VESTAGER<45>S assault on technology firms she deems to have improperly massaged down their tax bills continued this week with a tilt at Amazon. The internet retailer faces a bill of <20>250m ($293m) for back taxes over what the European Union<6F>s competition commissioner considers to have been an illegal sweetheart deal with Luxembourg.The order requiring the Grand Duchy to recover the money follows a well-publicised three-year investigation. It is the latest in a series of tax-avoidance cases brought by the European Commission against multinationals, most of them American. Last year, Ireland was ordered to recover <20>13bn from Apple<6C>smashing all past records for EU corporate-tax cases.Latest updates How <20>Oslo<6C> turned diplomatic negotiation into compelling theatre Prospero 31 minutes ago This 2 hours ago Flyers See all updates As with Apple, the commission concluded that Amazon received illegal state aid<69>in the retailer<65>s case between 2006 and 2014<31>through a tax-cutting arrangement unavailable to its rivals. It came in the form of a ruling from Luxembourg<72>s tax authority, known as a <20>comfort letter<65>. Amazon accordingly moved intellectual property of various types into a Luxembourg partnership that served as an intermediary between Amazon<6F>s European operations<6E>whose headquarters were a separate Luxembourg entity<74>and its American parent. As a partnership, the go-between was not subject to tax under Luxembourg law (the statutory corporate rate is 29.22%). The European operating firm was.The operating company was required to pay to the partnership substantial royalties for, among other things, the right to use the Amazon name, thereby shifting lots of profit to the untaxed entity. The commission argues that the level of royalty payments was inflated and did not reflect economic reality. It says the arrangement allowed Amazon to avoid tax on three-quarters of all profits on its sales in the EU (which the company does not disclose).Both Luxembourg and Amazon deny wrongdoing. Luxembourg<72>s authorities have said before that Amazon chose to put its main European operations in the tiny landlocked country for a variety of reasons, tax not being the main one. They have also pointed out that its operations in Luxembourg are hardly empty shell companies: the company employs over 1,500 people there (though the IP-holding partnership, which no longer exists, had no employees or offices). Amazon says it did not receive special treatment and is considering an appeal.This week<65>s order could stoke transatlantic tensions. After the Apple ruling last year, American politicians queued up to echo the sentiments of Tim Cook, the firm<72>s boss, who derided Ms Vestager<65>s action as <20>total political crap<61>. Many of them saw Brussels<6C> tax probes as being driven by tech-envy, not sound economics. Washington hinted at retaliation, though nothing specific has been suggested.The commission<6F>s critics have a point. The details of the case are complex, and tax experts will disagree about the legality of the arrangements under the spotlight, just as they did with Apple. Few would deny that the frayed patchwork of international corporate-tax rules need reforming; one proposal, espoused by President Emmanuel Macron of France and supported by several other EU countries, would see multinationals taxed on revenues in particular territories instead of on profits. But punishing a firm for a 14-year-old ruling from a national government, happily accepted by both sides at the time, looks harsh. The uncertainty it stokes may also dampen foreign investors<72> interest in Europe. Ms Vestager<65>s ruling will add to the discomfort felt by Jean-Claude Juncker, the commission<6F>s president, who was prime minister of Luxembourg when the tax arrangement in question was hammered out. American firms should brace for further scrutiny of past tax deals. The commission is also looking into McDonald<6C>s and Fiat Chrysler<65>s arrangements in Luxembourg, and those of Starbucks in the 
'81517129abd6cb9b459a98e53e1b23cf61d8e468'|'UK PM May tells business chiefs: two-year Brexit transition is assured - source'|'October 9, 2017 / 4:29 PM / Updated 32 minutes ago UK PM May tells business chiefs: two-year Brexit transition is assured - source Costas Pitas 4 Min Read Britain''s Prime Minister, Theresa May, arrives at 10 Downing Street in central London, Britain October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May told business leaders that they should treat a two-year transition period after Brexit as assured as she tries to ease company concerns that Britain could crash out of the EU without a deal, a source told Reuters. May met business chiefs from GlaxoSmithKline ( GSK.L ), Vodafone ( VOD.L ) and HSBC ( HSBA.L ) and other major companies on Monday to hear what they want from talks on Britain<69>s relationship with the EU after Brexit. Businesses have become increasingly alarmed by the slow progress of negotiations and the prospect that the country could leave the trading bloc without a new trading arrangement in place in 2019. <20>From her point of view, the transitional agreement is non-negotiable ... business should think of the two-year period as assured. It will happen,<2C> the source said when asked what May had said during discussions on Monday. A spokeswoman from May<61>s office said she restated her position <20>that the government<6E>s goal is for a smooth, orderly exit in which there is only one set of changes for businesses and people<6C>. Almost all business leaders expressed concern about access to talent after Brexit and several told May that the investment cycle means there are decisions coming at the end of 2017 and the start of 2018, the source said. Last week, two sources told Reuters that Japanese carmaker Toyota ( 7203.T ) intended to build the next version of its Auris car at its British car plant on the assumption that the government secures a transitional Brexit deal in a decision due by the end of the year. Britain''s Prime Minister, Theresa May, arrives at 10 Downing Street in central London, Britain October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville Both May and her finance minister, Philip Hammond, acknowledged during Monday<61>s meeting that businesses needed a better sense of Britain<69>s post-Brexit relationship with the European Union. <20>May said business needs clarity,<2C> the source said. <20>The chancellor (finance minister) said clarity is more important than perfection.<2E> Business chiefs have previously complained that their voice has been drowned out by disagreement and division in the government, and they have not heard anything to give them the certainty they need to plan and invest in their businesses. May<61>s office said she stressed the importance of engaging with the business community to design the proposed implementation arrangements, and promised to have continued meetings with a wide variety of business voices. May was joined by Hammond, business minister Greg Clark, minister for exiting the EU David Davis and trade minister Liam Fox at the council. Companies attending also included Balfour Beatty ( BALF.L ), WPP ( WPP.L ), Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ), Aston Martin and AB Foods ( ABF.L ), the government said. The meeting came after May<61>s authority was further undermined last week. She had to fend off a challenge from up to 30 of her lawmakers who had been pushing for her to quit following a disastrous snap election in June which saw the ruling Conservatives lose their parliamentary majority. Additional reporting by Paul Sandle and William James; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Alison Williams '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-business/uk-pm-may-tells-business-chiefs-two-year-brexit-transition-is-assured-source-idUSKBN1CE1Z0'|'2017-10-09T20:54:00.000+03:00'
'7ce4207d51ba40e92823e3882bcb6f55cc3802b3'|'Buyers eye Sinopec''s Argentina oil assets in sale worth up to $1 billion: sources'|'October 9, 2017 / 5:12 AM / Updated an hour ago Buyers eye Sinopec''s Argentina oil assets in sale worth up to $1 billion: sources Julie Zhu , Guillermo Parra-Bernal 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The Sinopec logo is seen at one of its gas stations in Hong Kong April 26, 2010. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo HONG KONG/SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Advisers to China<6E>s Sinopec have offered its oil assets in Argentina to about a dozen potential suitors, three sources familiar with the matter said, as losses and labor headaches prompt Asia<69>s largest refiner to pull out. The Argentine oil and gas assets, mainly in the southern province of Santa Cruz, could be worth $750 million to $1 billion, one of the sources said. That would be less than half the $2.45 billion Sinopec paid in 2010 to buy the Argentine assets from U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum Corp, marking an aggressive drive to diversify its oil sources at the time. ( reut.rs/2xtWaYi ) Prospective buyers for the assets - mainly large energy firms from the United States, Europe, Africa and Latin America -include Angola<6C>s state oil company Sonangol and two Russian energy giants, including Rosneft, said two of the sources. Mexico<63>s Vista Oil & Gas has also expressed an interest, according to a separate source. Meanwhile, Compania General de Combustibles (CGC), the energy arm of Argentine holding company Corporacion America, would also be studying some of the assets in Santa Cruz, Corporacion America spokeswoman Carolina Barros said. One of the sources said there could be more than 15 prospective suitors. Sinopec is being advised by Scotia Waterous, a unit of Canada<64>s Bank of Nova Scotia, which focuses on energy deals, two of the sources said. All the sources declined to be named as the sale plans are confidential. Sinopec and Sonangol did not respond to requests for comment. Asked about the sale and its interest, Rosneft said it was not able to confirm the information. Vista, Scotia Waterous and Argentina<6E>s energy ministry declined to comment. BOOM, BUST In 2010, when Sinopec bought the Argentine assets, China - the world<6C>s No.2 oil consumer - was scouting for natural resources to feed its surging economy. Worsening economic conditions and social unrest in Argentina, however, have <20>weighed<65> on the operation since then, Sinopec said in September last year. Argentina<6E>s president, Mauricio Macri, has made attracting energy investment a priority since he took office in 2015. His government said last month it had brokered a deal to calm labor conflicts in Santa Cruz and lower costs. But two sources said the Sinopec assets would be a tough sell regardless, given labor woes and declining oil output. Sinopec had already considered divesting the investment in 2015, sources told Reuters last year. <20>It doesn<73>t have to be (fast), unless Sinopec is willing to lose a huge amount of money,<2C> said one source, referring to Sinopec<65>s willingness to accept low bids. Based on a $60 per barrel crude price, Sinopec suffered losses of $2.5 billion on oil projects in Argentina by the end of 2015, Chinese publication Caixin reported last year, citing an internal audit report. <20>Golfo San Jorge, around where the Sinopec assets are located, is an old area,<2C> said a different source familiar with the process. <20>The (Santa Cruz) province recently auctioned off four areas, and three were won by locals - ENAP, CGC and YPF. It<49>s a tough sell, and soon there will be another offshore auction that might further reduce the attractiveness of Sinopec<65>s wells.<2E> Reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal, Julie Zhu and Eliana; Raszewski; Additional reporting by Caroline Stauffer, Juliana Castilla, Kane Wu, Nicolas Misculin, Aizhu Chen and Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Clara Ferreira Marques and Himani sarkar '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-sinopec-corp-m-a-argentina/buyers-eye-sinopecs-argentina-oil-assets-in-sale-worth-up-to-1-billion-sources-idINKBN1CE09
'2ad0c22f9a2b70c68ffe1f2ea8bee0be80708730'|'Subprime lender OneMain putting itself up for sale: source'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - The subprime lender OneMain Holdings Inc ( OMF.N ) has put itself up for sale and is running an auction to solicit takeover bids, according to a person familiar with the matter.The consumer credit firm, which makes car loans and other personal loans, was a unit of a Citigroup Inc subsidiary until SpringLeaf Holdings Inc bought it for more than $4 billion in 2015.The Wall Street Journal first reported the talks on Sunday, citing anonymous sources and saying there are a number of interested parties, including rival lenders and private-equity firms.Representatives for OneMain did not immediately reply to a request for comment.Citigroup<75>s former consumer lending arm, CitiFinancial, renamed itself OneMain in 2011 in the wake of the financial crisis.OneMain has provided loans and other credit products to more than 10 million customers in 44 states, its website says.Reporting by Gregory Roumeliotis; Writing by Hilary Russ; Editing by Peter CooneyOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-onemain-holdings-sale/subprime-lender-onemain-putting-itself-up-for-sale-source-idINKBN1CD0ZM'|'2017-10-08T19:31:00.000+03:00'
'0379eaa1bf4133485cf5709be2d7f46e673b50da'|'UPDATE 1-UK PM May tells business chiefs: two-year Brexit transition is assured- source'|'(Adds details, Quote: s from source)By Costas PitasLONDON, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May told business leaders that they should treat a two-year transition period after Brexit as assured as she tries to ease company concerns that Britain could crash out of the EU without a deal, a source told Reuters.May meet business chiefs from GlaxoSmithKline, Vodafone and HSBC and other major companies on Monday to hear what they want from talks on Britain<69>s relationship with the EU after Brexit.Businesses have become increasingly alarmed by the slow progress of negotiations and the prospect that the country could leave the trading bloc without a new trading arrangement in place in 2019.<2E>From her point of view, the transitional agreement is non-negotiable... business should think of the two-year period as assured. It will happen,<2C> the source said when asked what May had said during discussions on Monday.A spokeswoman at May<61>s office declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.Almost all business leaders expressed concern about access to talent after Brexit and several told May that the investment cycle means there are decisions coming at the end of 2017 and the start of 2018, the source said.Last week, two sources told Reuters that Japanese carmaker Toyota intends to build the next version of its Auris car at its British car plant on the assumption that the government secures a transitional Brexit deal in a decision due by the end of the year.Both May and her finance minister, Philip Hammond, acknowledged during Monday<61>s meeting that businesses need a better sense of Britain<69>s post-Brexit relationship with the European Union.<2E>May said business needs clarity,<2C> the source said. <20>The chancellor (finance minister) said clarity is more important than perfection.<2E>Business chiefs have previously complained that their voice has been drowned out by disagreement and division in the government, and they have not heard anything to give them the certainty they need to plan and invest in their businesses.May was joined by Hammond, business minister Greg Clark, minister for exiting the EU David Davis and trade minister Liam Fox at the council.Companies attending also included Balfour Beatty, WPP, Morgan Stanley, Aston Martin and AB Foods , the government said.The meeting came after May<61>s authority was further undermined last week.She had to fend off a challenge from up to 30 of her lawmakers who had been pushing for her to quit following a disastrous snap election in June which saw the ruling Conservatives lose their parliamentary majority. (Additional reporting by Paul Sandle; editing by Guy Faulconbridge) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-eu-business/update-1-uk-pm-may-tells-business-chiefs-two-year-brexit-transition-is-assured-source-idINL8N1MK48Y'|'2017-10-09T14:49:00.000+03:00'
'd630f46fd2c1b68823b800111be1a259cd858cde'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Turkish selloff leads broader emerging market weakness'|'LONDON, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Turkish stocks and bonds fell on Monday and the lira tumbled 2.5 percent after a visa spat erupted with the United States, while broader emerging assets too felt the heat from Treasury yields near five-month highs.Friday<61>s U.S. data showing an acceleration in wage growth cemented expectations of a December rate rise, lifting the dollar and U.S. yields, and making an impact across emerging markets.MSCI<43>s equity index slipped 0.2 percent, snapping a five-day winning streak, while average local currency emerging bond yields were at 6.05 percent, a six-week high.The main focus was however on Turkey after the United States and Ankara mutually scaled back visa services in a fresh sign of deteriorating relations between the NATO allies.Dollar bonds fell across the curve while Turkey<65>s portion of the sovereign dollar bond index widened 9 bps to its highest premium over Treasuries since end-September. The lira shed 2 percent to the dollar.The Istanbul stock market tumbled 3.6 percent, led by Turkish Airlines and airports operator.Nomura economist Inan Demir noted that Turkey was already more vulnerable than other emerging markets to higher U.S. yields because of a big current account deficit and also high inflation, which reduced its real yield advantage.Turkish one-year yields are now over 12 percent but core inflation is running at almost 11 percent. That contrasts with most big emerging economies which are seeing inflation fall.<2E>Turkey already stood apart from its peers .... If coupled with high political risks, its isolation would be further amplified,<2C> Demir said. <20>We need to see either a lowering of the risk premium by defusing the tensions or an increase in the risk premium offered by the lira by raising interest rates.<2E>While authorities could be forced to raise rates if the lira selloff continues, <20>the bar for central bank action will be high,<2C> Demir said, noting President Tayyip Erdogan<61>s strident opposition to higher interest rates.The South African rand fell 0.6 percent, staying near six-month lows hit on Friday against the dollar, while the rouble slipped 0.3 percent to a 10-day low. Latin American and Asian currencies have also lost ground in recent daysHSBC called currencies the <20>weak link<6E> of emerging markets.<2E>On the surface they<65>ve done well, but only having borrowed their entire lustre from a weakening dollar,<2C> they told clients.<2E>That they haven<65>t been able to post trade-weighted gains amidst such a strong unicycle is a warning not to expect much alpha from this source on the secular horizon.<2E>For GRAPHIC on emerging market FX performance 2017, see tmsnrt.rs/2e7eoml For GRAPHIC on MSCI emerging index performance 2017, see tmsnrt.rs/2dZbdP5For CENTRAL EUROPE market report, seeFor TURKISH market report, seeFor RUSSIAN market report, see) Emerging Markets Prices from Reuters Equities Latest Net Chg % Chg % Chgon yearMorgan Stanley Emrg Mkt Indx 1100.62 -2.50 -0.23 +27.64Czech Rep 1059.41 +1.35 +0.13 +14.95Poland 2486.59 +7.13 +0.29 +27.65Hungary 38013.99 +72.17 +0.19 +18.78Romania 7993.61 +9.29 +0.12 +12.82Greece 747.86 +2.31 +0.31 +16.19Russia 1127.99 -6.31 -0.56 -2.11South Africa 51276.41 +266.03 +0.52 +16.80Turkey 00412.99 -3724.49 -3.58 +28.51China 3374.87 +25.93 +0.77 +8.74India 31873.49 +59.27 +0.19 +19.71Currencies Latest Prev Local Localclose currency currency% change % changein 2017Czech Rep 25.88 25.89 +0.06 +4.36Poland 4.31 4.31 -0.00 +2.18Hungary 312.30 311.89 -0.13 -1.11Romania 4.58 4.57 -0.02 -0.89Serbia 119.12 119.12 +0.00 +3.55Russia 58.35 58.16 -0.34 +4.99Kazakhstan 341.42 343.42 +0.59 -2.28Ukraine 26.58 26.75 +0.64 +1.58South Africa 13.80 13.77 -0.23 -0.49Kenya 103.26 103.10 -0.15 -0.86Israel 3.51 3.52 +0.18 +9.64Turkey 3.71 3.61 -2.57 -4.92China 6.62 6.65 +0.45 +4.82India 65.40 65.39 -0.01 +3.90Brazil 3.16 3.16 +0.00 +3.09Mexico 18.62 18.55 -0.40 +11.25Debt Index Strip Spd Chg %Rtn IndexSov<6F>gn Debt EMBIG 304 1 .01 8 03.46 1All data taken from Reuters at 09
'7a1203e7bb24a8673e2996a790d10202e86f722b'|'Surge in German factory output points to strong GDP growth in third quarter'|'October 9, 2017 / 6:12 AM / in 8 minutes Surge in German factory output points to strong GDP growth in third quarter Michael Nienaber 4   steel-worker is pictured at a furnace at the plant of German steel company Salzgitter AG in Salzgitter, Lower Saxony, Germany on March 21, 2012. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer/File Photo BERLIN (Reuters) - German industrial output posted its biggest monthly rise in more than six years in August, data showed on Monday. It suggested the economy is firing on all cylinders again and set for solid growth in the third quarter, although a question about the make up of the new government could add uncertainty. The combined production of manufacturing, construction and energy increased by 2.6 percent on the month after edging down by 0.1 percent in July, data from the Economy Ministry showed. That was the strongest monthly gain since July 2011 and easily beat expectations in a Reuters poll for a 0.7 percent rise, surpassing even the most optimistic estimate. <20>These figures are very good,<2C> Commerzbank economist Ralph Solveen said. He pointed to special factors such as plant holidays falling in July in some regions this year, meaning output was likely to come in weaker next month. <20>Overall, we expect solid (GDP) growth in the third quarter. Our estimate is roughly 0.6 percent on the quarter,<2C> Solveen said. Manufacturing output rose by 3.2 percent, its biggest rise since March 2010, as factories churned out more intermediate goods, capital goods and consumer goods in August. Energy output also rose while construction activity fell. Manufacturers of cars and other vehicles were the main driver behind the overall surge, the ministry said, also pointing to earlier plant holidays. The ministry said industrial production had gained momentum since the start of the year. SOLID UPSWING FILE PHOTO: A steel-worker is pictured at a furnace at the plant of German steel company Salzgitter AG in Salzgitter, Lower Saxony, Germany March 17, 2015. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer/File Photo <20>The good business morale and the   in industrial orders point to a continuation of the solid industrial upswing,<2C> it said. Data published on Friday showed that strong foreign demand, especially from clients outside the euro zone, drove a bigger-than-expected jump in industrial orders in August. ING Bank chief economist Carsten Brzeski said the strong production data provided further evidence that the economy had left its summer lull behind and returned to maximum speed. <20>With the expected investment programme of the new government, the current cycle should be extended by another couple of years,<2C> Brzeski added. FILE PHOTO: An employee inspects rolls of steel at the plant of German steel company Salzgitter AG in Salzgitter, Lower Saxony, Germany on March 21, 2012. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer/File Photo The German economy grew 0.7 percent on the quarter in the first three months of the year and 0.6 percent from April to June, driven by increased household and state spending as well as higher investment in buildings and machinery. Leading economic institutes have raised their growth forecast for the German economy to 1.9 percent in 2017 and 2.0 percent in 2018. The German government will present its updated projections for GDP growth, employment and inflation on Wednesday. <20>The outlook further ahead is positive too, with domestic demand supported by low unemployment and still loose monetary policy and the global environment supportive,<2C> Capital Economics analyst Jennifer McKeown said. The economy might even benefit from a small post-election fiscal boost, McKeown said, adding she expected German GDP to rise by an even stronger rate of 2.3 percent this year. The biggest risks to Germany<6E>s upswing come from the outside, Brzeski said, pointing to geopolitical risks, the stronger euro and a possible slowdown of the U.S. economy as a result of further absence of tax relief or investment programs. Other risks include a slowdown of the Briti
'f6b35c7061111db91ff048bb506b26f14992ef1a'|'UPDATE 1-UK discussing Monarch compensation with credit, debit card firms'|'(Adds further Quote: s, background)LONDON, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Britain<69>s transport minister said on Monday the costs of bringing home 110,000 customers of airline Monarch, which collapsed last week, were being discussed with credit and debit card companies.Monarch went bust last week amid intense competition over passengers and a weaker pound following the Brexit vote decimated company profits.It is the largest British airline to collapse and its demise left thousands of customers stranded abroad. That led the government to ask the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to charter aircraft to bring them home - Britain<69>s biggest peacetime repatriation operation.<2E>I am also aware of the duty this government has to the taxpayer and ... we<77>ve entered into discussions with several third parties with the aim of recovering costs of the operation,<2C> transport minister Chris Grayling told parliament.<2E>We<57>re currently engaged in constructive discussions with the relevant credit and debit card providers so we recoup from them some of the costs to taxpayers of these repatriation flights,<2C> he said in a statement.<2E>We<57>re also having similar discussions with other travel providers through which passengers may have booked a Monarch holiday.<2E>Administrators at KPMG are currently in the process of selling off Monarch<63>s assets, a spokeswoman said, including airport slots, prepaid fuel, property and equipment.Three-quarters of Monarch passengers who were abroad when the company folded have now been brought home, Grayling said, with the operation requiring up to 35 planes at any one time, borrowed from 27 different airlines.Monarch<63>s demise also left over 1,800 workers redundant but Grayling said the airline<6E>s experienced former employees were in high demand from rivals.<2E>Virgin Atlantic are offering a fast track recruitment process for cabin crew and pilots, and easyJet have invited applications for 500 cabin crew vacancies,<2C> Grayling said.The British Airline Pilots<74> Association and the trade union Unite have both separately criticised Monarch for its handling of staff redundancies last week and said they would take action to secure compensation for them. (Reporting by Polina Ivanova; editing by Mark Heinrich) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/monarch-airlines-licence-minister/update-1-uk-discussing-monarch-compensation-with-credit-debit-card-firms-idINL8N1MK4KV'|'2017-10-09T14:07:00.000+03:00'
'eb15b8bbeea7efad006d66da65a87434e1a4177c'|'UPDATE 1-Spain''s 10-year bond yield hits 1-week low as Catalonia fears ebb'|'October 9, 2017 / 10:42 AM / in 13 minutes UPDATE 2-Spain''s 10-year bond yield hits 1-week low as Catalonia fears ebb Reuters Staff * Spain<69>s 10-year bond yield falls * Catalonia pressured to step back from independence pledge * Spain<69>s IBEX stock index rebounds * Euro zone periphery govt bond yields tmsnrt.rs/2ii2Bqr (Updates prices) By Dhara Ranasinghe LONDON, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Spanish borrowing costs fell to a one-week low on Monday, narrowing the gap over top-rated Germany on hopes that Catalonia would this week take a step back from a unilateral declaration of independence from Spain. Bigger-than-expected demonstrations in Barcelona on Sunday called for Catalonia to remain part of Spain, raising pressure on the regional government to back away from a declaration it had been expected to make as early as Tuesday. Moves by local companies to re-locate their headquarters and expressions of support from euro zone heavyweights France and Germany for Spanish unity were also increased pressure on the region<6F>s pro-independence leader Carles Puigdemont to back down. Puigdemont will address the Catalan parliament at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT) on Tuesday on <20>the current political situation<6F> amid speculation he could ask the assembly to declare independence. The Catalan region<6F>s head of foreign affairs, Raul Romeva, told the BBC on Friday that the Catalan parliament intended to make a decision on independence, without specifying when. Madrid on Friday meanwhile apologised for the first time for police use of violence in trying to hinder a weekend referendum it had declared illegal, soothing financial market jitters. <20>Some of the uncertainty has been reduced -- the tone from Puigdemont has become more conciliatory and (Spain<69>s Prime Minister Mariano) Rajoy has also stepped back,<2C> said Peter Chatwell, head of euro rates strategy at Mizuho. <20>It is expected that Puigdemont will on Tuesday say an independence bid in the future will be considered, which is a dramatic step back from expectations last week that a declaration of independence is imminent.<2E> Spain<69>s 10-year bond yield fell as much as 8 basis points to a 1-week low of 1.64 percent, before edging back up slightly to 1.68 percent. But that is still 13 bps below the more than six-month highs hit last week. The gap between Spain and Germany<6E>s 10-year bond yield shrank to around 118 basis points -- having stretched out to 136 bps last week at the height of worries about a conflict between Catalonia and the central government in Madrid. Spanish stocks rebounded 0.5 percent on Monday, out-performing broader European share markets, while the euro was a tad firmer. There was also some relief after DBRS ratings agency late on Friday confirmed Spain<69>s rating at A (low), following concerns that the tensions in Catalonia could hurt Spain<69>s ratings outlook. <20>DBRS<52>s central scenario is that Spain remains united. This reflects legal and institutional safeguards that make a unilateral secession highly unlikely,<2C> the agency said in a note. <20>However, uncertainty over Catalonia will continue in the near to medium term. A period of prolonged and elevated tension in Catalonia or political uncertainty in Spain at large could weigh negatively on the economy and public finances.<2E> The fall in Spanish bond yields dragged Portuguese and Italian yields 3-4 bps lower on the day as well, while benchmark German equivalents were 2 bps lower at 0.45 percent. For Reuters Live Markets blog on European and UK stock markets see reuters://realtime/verb=Open/url=http://emea1.apps.cp.extranet.thomsonreuters.biz/cms/?pageId=livemarkets Reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe; Editing by Gareth Jones'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/eurozone-bonds/update-1-spains-10-year-bond-yield-hits-1-week-low-as-catalonia-fears-ebb-idUSL8N1MK26G'|'2017-10-09T13:39:00.000+03:00'
'd0016f72eb5aeabe6dbd0d5472686ead5286fde8'|'Japanese workers'' wages rise in a positive sign for consumer spending'|'FILE PHOTO: Workers are seen at the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market in Tokyo, Japan, September 27, 2016. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Wages of Japanese workers rose in August from a year earlier, reversing from the previous month<74>s decline, in a sign of a gradual pick-up in workers<72> income amid a tightening labour market.Wages rose in both nominal and inflation-adjusted real terms, labour ministry data showed on Friday.The data is likely to ease some worry over the sustainability of a recent improvement in consumer spending.Still, wage growth may not be strong enough to dispel questions over the central bank<6E>s assertions that a tightening labour market will eventually lead to higher wages, which will boost economic activity and inflation.Wage earners<72> nominal cash earnings rose an annual 0.9 percent in the year to August, reversing from the prior month<74>s revised 0.6 percent decline and the fastest gain since July 2016, the data showed.Reflecting a 0.8 percent rise in consumer prices, however, inflation-adjusted real wages rose a meagre 0.1 percent, up for the first time in eight months.Many Japanese companies remain hesitant to spend their record cash piles on raising wages, in part because they are unable to pass on costs to their customers who are accustomed to nearly two decades of mostly falling prices.Special payments -- which include summer bonuses -- jumped 6.1 percent in August from a year ago, the biggest gain since March 2016.Regular pay, which determines base wages, rose 0.4 percent in the year to August, rising for a fifth straight month.Overtime pay, a barometer of strength in corporate activity, rose 1.5 percent year-on-year in August, up two months in a row.The ministry defines <20>workers<72> as 1) those who are employed for more than one month at a firm that employs more than five people, or 2) those who are employed on a daily basis or have less than a one-month contract but had worked more than 18 days during the two months before the survey was conducted at a firm that employs more than five people.To view the full tables, see the labour ministry''s website: hereReporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Kim Coghill '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/japan-economy-wages/japanese-workers-wages-rise-in-a-positive-sign-for-consumer-spending-idINKBN1CB00N'|'2017-10-05T22:11:00.000+03:00'
'55447067cb3e95c4d12c20ce5084b210eacd5852'|'Deutsche Telekom unit T-Systems names Adel Al-Saleh as new head'|' 24 AM / in 31 minutes Deutsche Telekom unit T-Systems names Adel Al-Saleh as new head Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A logo of Germany''s telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom AG is seen before the company''s annual news conference in Bonn, Germany, March 2, 2017. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo DUESSELDORF (Reuters) - Deutsche Telekom ( DTEGn.DE ) unit T-Systems named Adel Al-Saleh as its new head, a spokesman for the unit said, with the American joining at a time when the business is grappling with a slide in earnings. Al-Saleh will also take up a position on the Deutsche Telekom management board when he joins at the start of 2018. He replaces Reinhard Clemens, who will leave the company at the start of 2018 after almost 10 years. The appointment was first reported by German paper Handelsblatt. T-Systems, Deutsche Telekom<6F>s technical and communications consulting business, posted a 5.2 percent decline in revenue and a 16 percent drop in order intake in the first half of the year amid sustained industry pricing pressure. Core profit fell by nearly a quarter in the first half, after a 21 percent drop in the full-year 2016. Al-Saleh joins from British service provider Northgate Information Solutions. Reporting by Matthias Inverardi; Writing by Victoria Bryan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-deutsche-telekom-moves/deutsche-telekom-unit-t-systems-names-adel-al-saleh-as-new-head-idUKKBN1CE0IL'|'2017-10-09T10:24:00.000+03:00'
'f1d08dbaf5a05f602c833cecd08c61f6a664a1a4'|'Australia''s WorleyParsons to buy AFW''s former oil & gas assets for $298 million'|' 13 PM / Updated 20 minutes ago Australia''s WorleyParsons to buy AFW''s former oil & gas assets for $298 million Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Australian engineering firm WorleyParsons Ltd ( WOR.AX ) said on Monday it would buy the former upstream oil and gas assets of Britain<69>s Amec Foster Wheeler Plc ( AMFW.L ) for 228 million pounds ($298.22 million), marking its entry into the UK North Sea market. WorleyParsons expects to tap Amec<65>s maintenance, modifications and operations capabilities through the deal, which is to be funded by a 1 for 10 entitlement offer of approximately A$322 million ($250.36 million) and existing WorleyParsons debt facilities at A$13 per new share. The enterprise value will be A$303 million before adjustments for surplus working capital and cash in the AFW UK business, the statement said. The deal is expected to reduce net debt and be accretive to WorleyParsons<6E> earnings per share in the first year of ownership, and is expected to be completed by the end of October. The sale is an attempt by Amec to get regulatory approval for its merger with John Wood Group ( WG.L ). Britain<69>s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said in August the merger could lead to competition concerns in the supply of engineering and construction services and operation and maintenance services on the UK continental shelf. The CMA said later that month that divesting almost all of Amec<65>s upstream offshore oil and gas servicing assets may be adequate for regulatory approval for the merger. Reporting by Susan Mathew in Bengaluru; Editing by Byron Kaye and Paul Tait'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-amec-foster-m-a-worleyparsons/australias-worleyparsons-to-buy-afws-former-oil-gas-assets-for-298-million-idUKKBN1CD10U'|'2017-10-09T02:36:00.000+03:00'
'7b522075d8308765b10f3bfc6ee1e7f710a54af7'|'Britain''s Domino''s Pizza UK trading improves'|'October 10, 2017 / 6:52 AM / Updated an hour ago Pick up in UK trading boosts Domino''s Pizza shares Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Balloons are seen on the front of a newly opened Domino''s Pizza franchise in London, Britain, early morning March 14, 2017. REUTERS/Russell Boyce (Reuters) - Shares in Domino<6E>s Pizza ( DOM.L ) jumped more than 10 percent on Tuesday after Britain<69>s biggest pizza delivery firm reported a pick up in third-quarter sales, driven by online orders. The company, a master franchisee of U.S. group Domino<6E>s Pizza Inc ( DPZ.N ), said it expected full-year underlying profit before tax to meet market forecasts. Group system sales in the 13 weeks to Sept 24 jumped 20.8 percent to 286.4 million pounds, with sales at UK stores open for more than a year rising 8.1 percent. Online sales in its main UK market leapt 17.4 percent. At 0720 GMT, Domino<6E>s shares were up 10 percent at 333.7 pence, after touching 343.9 pence, their highest since March. The third-quarter performance marked an improvement from the first half of the year when total sales rose 10.5 percent. The company said it would open 90 stores in Britain this year, citing strong demand for delivered food despite an uncertain consumer environment. Reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru, Editing by Louise Heavens and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-dominos-piza-grp-results/britains-dominos-pizza-uk-trading-improves-idUKKBN1CF0K7'|'2017-10-10T09:52:00.000+03:00'
'1932c093e54089c0ea05c296845df78ac795dcd2'|'UAE hopeful of extension to oil output cut deal'|'October 8, 2017 / 10:34 AM / in 4 hours UAE hopeful of extension to oil output cut deal Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Suhail bin Mohammed al-Mazroui speaks to journalists in Singapore, July 21, 2017. REUTERS/Darren Whiteside ABU DHABI (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Suhail bin Mohammed al-Mazroui said on Sunday he was hopeful producers will reach a consensus on extending an oil output cut next month. <20>We are hopeful that the meeting in November will be a good meeting, that it will not be so difficult to reach consensus,<2C> Mazroui told reporters in Abu Dhabi when he was asked about the prospect for an agreement on extending the oil output cut deal. He said he expected the oil market to recover in the second half of the year. Asked whether any new members would join the output cuts this time he said: <20>all is on the table: the roll over on how many months...I<>m hopeful.<2E> Related Coverage'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-oil-opec-emirates/uae-hopeful-of-extension-to-oil-output-cut-deal-idUKKBN1CD0DI'|'2017-10-08T14:27:00.000+03:00'
'ceb9dc992d2610821fed9bb3f172aef59a92eccf'|'Diamonds - the new gold for rich investors?'|'October 9, 2017 / 11:14 PM / Updated an hour ago Diamonds - the new gold for rich investors? Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A worker inspects a 5.46 carat diamond before certification at the HRD Antwerp Institute of Gemmology, December 3, 2012. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir LONDON (Reuters) - Diamonds can at last be an investor<6F>s best friend, the Singapore Diamond Investment Exchange (SDIX) said on Tuesday, as it launched a new standardised form of the precious stones to rival gold ingots as a safe-haven alternative to cash. The industry says diamonds are the world<6C>s most concentrated form of wealth, but investors have long viewed them as less useful as a store of value than gold because each stone is different, making its value subjective and trading difficult. Alain Vandenborre, chairman and founder of SDIX, says technology has solved that problem and diamonds can now become <20>the new gold<6C>. Diamond Bullion, produced by the Singapore Diamond Mint, is a collection of investment grade diamonds whose value can be quickly checked. Denominations will initially range between $100,000 and $200,000 (<28>75,926 and <20>151,852), with higher and lower values possible in future. The diamonds are stored in a credit card-sized device containing a chip that allows immediate valuation based on exchange trading and instant authentication, which is crucial as synthetic diamonds have no resale value. A mark on the Diamond Bullion developed by the International Institute of Diamond Grading and Research (IIDGR), which is part of Anglo American<61>s ( AAL.L ) De Beers Group, provides a further guarantee. De Beers, the world<6C>s biggest diamond producer by value and a leader in equipment that grades and authenticates diamonds, traditionally sold its gems to a limited group of trusted individuals called sightholders. Diamond trading has gradually become more open. In 2008, De Beers began selling rough diamonds through online auctions and in June this year began auctioning polished stones too. SDIX, launched in 2016, says it is the world<6C>s first and only electronic exchange for trading investment-grade diamonds. Diamond miners in principle welcomed Diamond Bullion. <20>Anything that can bring transparency to the diamond price is a good thing,<2C> said Karl Smithson, CEO of Stellar Diamonds ( STELD.L ), which has a diamond-mining project in Sierra Leone. Reporting by Barbara Lewis in London and Yiming Woo in Singapore; Editing by Mark Potter '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-diamonds-investment/diamonds-the-new-gold-for-rich-investors-idUKKBN1CE2N9'|'2017-10-10T02:14:00.000+03:00'
'2dfa7ae6df580ad04d4dac8d7615acbfb0f0dcfa'|'Kobe Steel shares set to plunge after data falsification'|'The Kobe Steel logo is seen in this illustration photo taken October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s government sought on Tuesday to contain the fallout from the disclosure by the nation<6F>s third-biggest steel maker, Kobe Steel Ltd, that it had fabricated data on components used in cars, aircraft and space rockets, sending shock waves through the Japanese manufacturing sector.Faced with the latest in a series of missteps that have undermined Japan<61>s reputation for high-quality production, the industry ministry instructed Kobe Steel to assess the safety impact from the scandal.The company said products used by about 200 companies were certified with falsified data. They included Toyota Motor Corp, Central Japan Railway, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Mazda Motor Corp and Subaru Corp, the companies confirmed.Analysts say the announcement further tarnishes the reputation of Japan<61>s globe-trotting manufacturers, long celebrated for their high-quality products. It could also undermine confidence in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe<62>s moves to improve corporate governance as part of his programme of Abenomics.The admission from the steel and aluminium maker follows scandals involving falsified data at household names such as Nissan Motor, Mitsubishi Motors and Takata Corp., which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.Toshiba Corp is still battling the fallout of a scandal involving reporting inflated profits.<2E>Looking back over several years, foreign investors have bought Japanese stocks on expectations for Abenomics, but among the <20>three arrows,<2C> the growth strategy isn<73>t functioning,<2C> said, Makoto Kikuchi, CEO of Myojo Asset Management.<2E>While they say they<65>re strengthening corporate governance, improprieties focused on manufacturing have been popping up. Going forward, this will be a body blow to Japanese shares.<2E>Toyota called the revelations a <20>grave issue,<2C> and said it was making checks on where the components were used and what effect they have on products using them.Kobe Steel shares closed at the limit low after being untraded for the whole session, diving 22 percent to 1068 yen.IMPACT ON KOBE CUSTOMERS UNCLEAR In a statement on Sunday Kobe Steel said some aluminium and copper products shipped from September 2016 to August 2017 were falsely labelled.Kobe Steel said the misconduct involved dozens of staff and possibly stretched back 10 years. It apologised and said it had appointed lawyers to investigate.Aluminium castings, forgings and flat-rolled items, along with copper strips and tubes were among the products affected, the company said in a statement.<2E>These are improper actions that could shake the foundation of fair trade,<2C> Yasuji Komiyama, director of the industry ministry<72>s metal industries division, told reporters at a briefing on the revelations.<2E>We want Kobe Steel to make the utmost effort to restore trust from society<74>, he said.A Kobe spokesman told Reuters the firm is working with customers to check for any issues. <20>To our knowledge it has not affected any customer<65>s products at this stage,<2C> he said.Boeing said in a statement it was working <20>with our suppliers since being notified of the issue.<2E><>Nothing in our review to date leads us to conclude that this issue presents a safety concern,<2C> it said. Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) supply parts to Boeing including for its 777 Dreamliner.MHI said Kobe Steel products were used on its Mitsubishi Regional Jet and rockets, including a H-2A rocket launched on Tuesday to put a navigation satellite into orbit. There were no technical problems with the components, MHI said.Industry ministry officials said Kobe Steel materials were used in some defense equipment made by Kawasaki Heavy, MHI, IHI Corp and Subaru and checks were being made for any safety issues.EARNINGS FALLOUT? Kobe Steel has said the impact of the data falsification on its earnings is still unknown.<2E>The impact on financials is unclear, but could 
'47ea040ab378a13a97b94ca86bfa96cccb5a3da5'|'Mediaset up 5 percent on report of Vivendi mulling 1 billion euros offer to settle pay-TV dispute'|'October 10, 2017 / 3:07 PM / Updated 2 hours ago Mediaset up 5 percent on report of Vivendi mulling 1 billion euros offer to settle pay-TV dispute Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A woman walks walk past the main entrance of the entertainment-to-telecoms conglomerate Vivendi''s headquarters in Paris, France, April 8, 2015. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo MILAN (Reuters) - Shares in Mediaset ( MS.MI ) rose more than 5 percent on Tuesday after a Bloomberg report said French media group Vivendi ( VIV.PA ) was considering making a cash and stock offer to settle its pay-TV dispute with the Italian broadcaster. Bloomberg said in a source-based report that Vivendi was considering giving Mediaset a compensation package that may be valued around 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion). The report also added that Mediaset<65>s Premium pay-TV unit could become part of a joint venture that is being set up between Vivendi<64>s own pay-TV arm Canal+ and Italian phone group Telecom Italia ( TLIT.MI ). Vivendi is the biggest shareholder in Telecom Italia with a 24 percent stake. Mediaset shares were up 3 percent by 1455 GMT, while Telecom Italia stock was down 1.3 percent. Reporting by Valentina Za, writing by Agnieszka Flak '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-mediaset-vivendi/mediaset-up-5-percent-on-report-of-vivendi-mulling-1-billion-euros-offer-to-settle-pay-tv-dispute-idINKBN1CF235'|'2017-10-10T13:07:00.000+03:00'
'702b12593e8a560d4022468733f319240db5de0d'|'Dara Khosrowshahi is off to a strong start but there are miles to go'|'HERE<52>S the job spec. Unite a deeply divided board. Keep a strong-willed founder under control. Immediately recruit a new chief financial officer. Negotiate with angry local regulators intent on closing down the business in their city. Convince courts that the company does not have to provide its contract workers with the benefits due to full-time employees. Change a cut-throat culture without curbing employees<65> drive. On top of all this, deal not only with an intellectual-property (IP) lawsuit that could cost the firm nearly $2bn, but also cope with a criminal investigation by the FBI that could see some managers end up in prison.No one sane, you would think, would even apply for such misery. But after some hesitation Dara Khosrowshahi (pronounced cause-ro-SHAH-hee), until recently the chief executive of Expedia, an online travel agency, returned the headhunter<65>s call. Now he is boss of Uber, which, at $68bn, is the world<6C>s most highly valued privately-held company. Can he turn the firm, which in many ways has been a caricature of a disruptive Silicon Valley startup, into a more benign force<63>and take it public by late 2019?Latest updates How <20>Oslo<6C> turned diplomatic negotiation into compelling theatre Prospero 31 minutes ago This 2 hours ago Flyers See all updates Three weeks into the job, Mr Khosrowshahi has already made meaningful progress. On October 3rd he paid a hastily-arranged visit to Transport for London (TfL), the regulator that recently ruled that Uber was not <20>fit and proper<65> to hold an operating licence in the British capital. Both sides described the talks as <20>constructive<76> and announced further discussions. Later that day, Uber<65>s new boss attended<65>via video link<6E>a crucial board meeting that ended in a promising truce. It not only limits the power of Travis Kalanick, the firm<72>s co-founder and former chief executive, but creates the conditions for a $10bn investment by a consortium led by SoftBank, a Japanese tech firm run by Masayoshi Son.One of Mr Son<6F>s main conditions was that power be shifted to more recent investors. Early Uber backers, including Mr Kalanick, will have to give up their <20>super-voting<6E> rights. Mr Khosrowshahi<68>s concession was that Mr Kalanick now has at least a theoretical chance to become chief executive again (rules proposed earlier would have made that all but impossible). Benchmark, a venture-capital firm and an early investor in Uber, agreed to drop a lawsuit against Mr Kalanick.All could still unravel. The governance compromise is contingent on the SoftBank investment, which has two stages, going through. It may seem a done deal that SoftBank and its partners would invest a first round of $1bn-1.25bn at Uber<65>s present valuation of $68bn. That way the new capital injection is not considered a <20>down-round<6E>, ie, one that produces a lower valuation. But much about the second round is still unknown. The stake could be anywhere between 14% and 17% of Uber, for example, at a valuation of as low as $50bn.Before Mr Khosrowshahi made it to London he had placed a full-page ad in the Evening Standard , a local newspaper, apologising <20>for the mistakes we<77>ve made<64> and acknowledging that <20>we must change<67>. This was meant to signal to regulators all over the world that Uber<65>s swashbuckling culture is a thing of the past. But he must show that this is not just a change in style, but substance.He will not lack for opportunities to do so. A big question will be to what extent Uber will still insist on being a technology, rather than a transport, firm<72>a question which is on the agenda of the European Court of Justice. London, where Uber has appealed the regulator<6F>s decision, is likely to be the test case. TfL<66>s complaints about the firm, for instance that it did not properly vet its drivers, suggest that the regulator wants to treat it exactly like any other taxi operator. Yet Uber<65>s willingness to make concessions may be limited. On September 26th it said it would pull out of the province
'c42b7af04f423f0e987f8fe1726f42f83a043d95'|'The bosses of two famous French firms struggle to keep customers'|'ALEXANDRE RICARD wants to talk boxing. He runs Pernod Ricard, a firm that sells Chivas whisky and Absolut vodka, among other drinks. Formed by his grandfather in 1975, with roots in a Pernod distiller set up in 1805, it is the world<6C>s second-largest seller of wine and spirits, with a market capitalisation of <20>32bn ($37bn). He brags that Floyd Mayweather, an American pugilist with 19m Instagram followers, recently endorsed one of the company<6E>s tequila brands. Such a <20>key influencer<65> on a digital channel <20>gives us speed and scale<6C>, says Mr Ricard.Celebrity endorsements are an old ploy: French singers, actors and racing drivers used to push Pernod Ricard<72>s liquor. But with 90% of sales in markets outside of France, punchier efforts are needed. Two years ago the firm commissioned a global study of boozing habits, which totted up all <20>moments of consumption<6F> for drinkers, identifying 20 important ones in America, the biggest market. Teams of marketers are now told to push a brand for each such experience: the firm<72>s tequila when American friends gather to watch sport; its cognac at Chinese weddings; gin for Spaniards sharing an aperitif.  The firm must respond somehow, because drinkers, especially millennials (the generation which roughly includes those born between 1980 and 1996), are no longer loyal, says Mr Ricard. <20>Back in the day, you had a one-brand consumer,<2C> who took a favoured tipple on almost any occasion. <20>Now it depends who you are with, where you are, the time of day. A consumer might have six brands,<2C> he says.Across Paris, Emmanuel Faber, the head of another large French consumer-goods firm, Danone, is facing a similar challenge as consumers of yogurt and bottled water prove fickle too. His style<6C>ascetic and almost monkish, as an acquaintance puts it<69>differs sharply from that of his compatriot. But the two bosses are responding to the same phenomenon: a lack of growth in food-and-drinks sales at big firms. <20>People are walking out of brands that they<65>ve been consuming for decades,<2C> says Mr Faber. To stop feeling disconnected from the origin of food, he says, they are switching to small, local firms that might produce organic foods, for example.Of the two firms, Danone faces the biggest and most immediate shift in consumer tastes. Although he heads a global food firm with a market value of <20>46bn, Mr Faber warns that time may be up for standardisation in food-making. The food industry <20>is going nowhere<72>, he adds, because short-sighted companies see only a <20>transactional relationship<69>, not a deeper one based on values, with their customers.These days people have little faith in the makers of their food and drink. Mr Faber talks at length about disenchantment shown by voters and consumers alike towards elites. Surveys show the public barely trusts CEOs such as himself when they speak about their companies, he says. Consumers <20>care about the sovereignty of their food, taking control back<63>.Danone<6E>s response, like that of Pernod Ricard, is partly about niftier marketing<6E>it runs an ad campaign called <20>One Planet. One Health<74>. But the company is also changing some basics. Two decades ago Danone sold <20>beer, wine, chocolates and candies<65>, he points out. It has switched entirely to healthier products, betting that long-term growth lies there. The firm aims to be entirely carbon-neutral.Most striking, Danone wants to get certified as a B-Corp<72>a for-profit firm that shows high social and environmental standards. It would be the largest company globally to do so. In America that requires registration as a <20>public benefit<69> firm, letting board directors legally promote the interests of staff, customers and others, along with those of shareholders.Markets are not entirely convinced by Danone<6E>s strategy, however. An American activist investor, Corvex, has taken a small stake, worth $400m, in the company, and is agitating for its operations to be improved and growth lifted.Yet investors have drunk in the simpler story at P
'b818187dfe0ac99c5fe5e0f3af5b69db8c402ec8'|'Goldman Sags'|'BY TRADITION, Goldman Sachs makes risky financial wagers and stays icy cool under pressure. A bad trade on Treasury bonds in 1986 almost killed it, but was eventually cauterised. The firm<72>s <20>big short<72> in early 2007, when it bet that subprime securities would tumble, helped it to book profits of $14bn in 2008-09 and to perform relatively well during the worst financial crisis for 80 years. Goldman also values candour, at least inside the firm. In this spirit it is time to acknowledge that the bank<6E>s strategic direction is beginning to feel like a bum trade. Its defence is that it is no worse than its group of peers, but being average on Wall Street is a mug<75>s game and the antithesis of the Goldman way.While outsiders think that Goldman<61>s alumni run the world, on Wall Street the firm<72>s aura has dimmed. Rival banks view it with indifference, not awe. After shining in the years after the crisis, since 2012 its total return (share price gain plus dividends) has lagged behind the average of its four big American rivals by 36%. Other banks have caught up and Goldman<61>s trading arm, which executes deals for clients, is misfiring, with its market share dropping. It has struggled to adapt to placid markets and a clampdown on proprietary trading (trading for your own profit).Latest updates How <20>Oslo<6C> turned diplomatic negotiation into compelling theatre Prospero 30 minutes ago This 2 hours ago Flyers See all updates Inevitably that gives rise to doubts about the firm<72>s strategy, which is to slash costs and sit tight, hoping the industry<72>s nuclear winter ends. So while lower bonuses mean the pay bill is down by 42% since 2007, there has been no wholesale retreat from the main businesses<65>advising and lending to companies, trading securities and asset management. Meanwhile, the bank is grappling with three problems: mediocre profitability, unconvincing capital allocation and a tricky management succession.Back when it was a partnership, Goldman was more profitable than Facebook is now. Its return on equity was 38% in 1998, before it went public. In 2007 its ROE was 29%, but it fell to 9% in the most recent quarter. Two-thirds of this drop reflects tougher capital rules. Its level of ROE matches the average of JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Bank of America. Investors expect a mild recovery, but do not expect Goldman to be exceptional, so its shares do not trade on a notably superior multiple of book value, as they usually did in the glory years between 2006 and 2013.Another gauge is profits relative to risk-weighted assets, a measure that regulators use to calibrate banks<6B> risk and size. For every $100 of such assets Goldman made $1.9 of pre-tax profits in 2016, less than the peer group<75>s average of $2.0. Each bank has a different mix of businesses, but you can compare Goldman to a best-in-class <20>clone<6E> made up of JPMorgan<61>s investment banking and asset-management divisions. The clone made $2.2. (Goldman says that this comparison is too crude.)Mediocre profitability reflects unwieldy asset allocation. Goldman has toiled to cut its balance-sheet, particularly in bond-trading. But it has been hit especially hard by new <20>Basel 3<> rules which determine how its risk-weighted-assets are calculated. As a result Goldman<61>s have risen by 35% since 2012. The trading arm ties up two-thirds of this, especially its derivatives book. Its lending operation has grown, with exposures to higher-risk firms<6D>those with a credit rating of BBB or less<73>rising 151% to $129bn.Goldman does not reveal the ROEs of these operating segments but they can be imputed. In 2016 the trading unit appears to have had an ROE of 7% and its lending unit 5%. Most firms would have wielded the knife deeper. The bank has new projects, such as its small online consumer bank. It has returned cash to shareholders. But its core strategy is to wait for trading to recover. This may happen. Volatility may pick up, European competitors might quit the game, or emerging economies could boom.It is less clear how any of these
'1f7760fa7a1c5efc2d4f543141a4b0b260d07162'|'General Cable receives bids from European rivals Prysmian, Nexans and NKT: sources'|'LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. cable manufacturer General Cable Corp ( BGC.N ) has received tentative bids from European rivals Prysmian ( PRY.MI ), Nexans ( NEXS.PA ) and NKT ( NKT.CO ), two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as part of its efforts to find a new owner.The three European cable firms are vying with a handful of U.S. rivals, one of the sources said, adding first round bids came in earlier this week.Kentucky-based General Cable has a market value of almost $1 billion and specializes in aluminum, copper and fiber optic wire and cable products.In July it hired JPMorgan to kick off a strategic review and identify a possible merger partner in a bid to boost growth and maximize shareholder value.At least five companies have taken part in the sales process, the sources said, and the bidders are now waiting to find out if they<65>ve been admitted to the second stage of the auction.U.S. wire maker Southwire Co, which snapped up some assets from General Cable in past years, could be part of the bidding field, one of the sources said, adding however that it would face fierce competition from Milan-based Prysmian, the world<6C>s largest cable maker.Prysmian declined to comment while General Cable, Nexans, NKT and Southwire were not immediately available for comment.Prysmian boss Valerio Battista said in July that the possible sale of General Cable could accelerate sector consolidation and the Italian firm was hoping to be part of the game while trying not to overpay.Prysmian, whose revenues rose 2.8 percent to 7.57 billion euros in 2016, has long been working on an overseas acquisition as it wants to maintain supremacy over its arch-rival Nexans, the sources said, adding that North America is a strategic market for growth.Prysmian and Nexans engaged in a bidding war back in 2010 as they both sought to take over Dutch firm Draka, a key target to create the world<6C>s largest supplier of cables for anything from telecoms to lifts.Prysmian, which eventually clinched control of Draka in a $1.15 billion euro deal, has been buying small and medium-sized companies in recent years in a bid to gain scale in a fragmented market.Additional reporting by Francesca Landini and Massimo Gaia in Milan and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen in Copenhagen; Editing by Susan Fenton '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-general-cable-m-a-prysmian-nexans-nkt/general-cable-receives-bids-from-european-rivals-prysmian-nexans-and-nkt-sources-idINKBN1CB2IC'|'2017-10-06T17:27:00.000+03:00'
'ac8c16e84115ac1ef243786b12999523e6399cd5'|'Canadian car parts maker Magna wins Slovenia construction permit'|'LJUBLJANA, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Slovenia has granted Canadian car parts maker Magna International a construction permit to build a paint factory in northeastern Slovenia, the Environment Ministry and Magna said on Thursday.The factory will create about 400 jobs initially and is the first stage of Magna<6E>s planned 1.2 billion euro ($1.4 billion)investment in Slovenia, which it says will create a total of 6,000 jobs.<2E>We have received the building permission today and the construction is planned to begin soon,<2C> said Magna spokesman Rej Husetovic.Magna had said it would consider building a paint factory in Hungary if it did not receive a construction permit in Slovenia.The plant will represent one of the largest foreign investments in Slovenia. France<63>s Renault also has a factory there while a number of Slovenian companies produce metal and textiles products for a range of global carmakers.$1 = 0.8545 euros Reporting By Marja Novak; Editing by David Goodman '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/slovenia-magna/canadian-car-parts-maker-magna-wins-slovenia-construction-permit-idINL8N1MG4YJ'|'2017-10-05T14:15:00.000+03:00'
'50e73ee6d61eb331a4cfa627a8d21e2dce6d784e'|'Watchdog approves PGE''s purchase of EDF''s Polish assets, sets conditions'|'WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish anti-monopoly office said that Poland<6E>s biggest power firm PGE ( PGE.WA ) can take over the local assets of France<63>s EDF ( EDF.PA ) on condition that it sells most of the electricity generated by the Rybnik coal-fueled power plant via the power exchange.State-run PGE agreed to buy EDF<44>s local power and heating plants for 4.51 billion zlotys ($1.23 billion) in May in a move to increase its market share and give the state more control over the country<72>s utilities.EDF<44>s assets include eight combined heat and power plants and a 1.8 gigawatt (GW) coal-fired power plant in Rybnik in southern Poland.The deal, which has been supported by Poland<6E>s energy ministry, was unexpectedly questioned in September by the anti-monopoly office UOKiK, which said that the transaction could undermine competition in the energy market.After buying EDF assets PGE<47>s share of the country<72>s power generation capacity would rise to 45 from 36 percent, the energy minister said.<2E>UOKiK issued an approval for PGE<47>s takeover of EDF Polska,<2C> the office said in a statement on Thursday, adding that its condition is that in 2018-2021 PGE will have to sell all the power generated in Rybnik via the power exchange.<2E>The boost of PGE<47>s market position will be reduced. All the electricity which has been up to date generated by EDF Polska and sold to wholesale clients, will be directed to the exchange. None of the entrepreneurs interested in buying the electricity will be discriminated against,<2C> the head of UOKiK said in a statement.PGE, which plans to conclude the deal by the end of 2017, said it will not impact power prices for customers.<2E>In our view this will have a positive impact on the market. We do not expect any electricity price movements related with this transaction,<2C> PGE Chief Executive Henryk Baranowski told a news conference on Thursday.He added that PGE will not require a loan to finance the deal.Shares in PGE were up 1 percent at 0801 GMT on a flat market.Reporting by Anna Koper; writing by Agnieszka Barteczko; editing by Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-edf-m-a-pge-polska/watchdog-approves-pges-purchase-of-edfs-polish-assets-sets-conditions-idINKBN1CA0PW'|'2017-10-05T06:28:00.000+03:00'
'dc77d84355150e753ac04a84c72a9b73c365cd1f'|'Private-equity firm invests $15 million into oilfield tools venture'|'HOUSTON (Reuters) - EV Private Equity said on Thursday it had invested $15 million in Ashmin, the first private-equity investment in the Texas-based developer of drilling motors and well completion tools for oil companies.The funds will help expand Ashmin<69>s management and sales efforts and its Workover Solutions business unit, which rents tools to drillers and oil services companies, said EV Investment Director Espen Strom. The Norwegian-U.S. private equity firm will take seats on the company<6E>s board.Reporting by Gary McWilliams; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-ashmin-m-a-ev/private-equity-firm-invests-15-million-into-oilfield-tools-venture-idINKBN1CA23D'|'2017-10-05T14:25:00.000+03:00'
'5ef56bb0df51f0b71b6eb1ec40b442d1030a5633'|'New commercial property loans in Britain fall 24 percent - survey'|'October 10, 2017 / 11:06 PM / in 32 minutes New commercial property loans in Britain fall 24 percent - survey Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: An estate agent board is displayed outside a property in London, Britain July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - New loans by banks and insurers to commercial property in Britain totalled 17.6 billion pounds ($23.25 billion) in the first half of 2017, down 24 percent compared with the second half of 2016, according to a survey published on Wednesday. Commercial property lending also fell by 18 percent compared with the first half of 2016, the survey from De Montfort University showed. Investors have been concerned about the health of Britain<69>s commercial property market since the country<72>s Brexit vote in June last year. Commercial property funds totalling around 18 billion pounds stopped trading for several weeks after the vote when retail investors who feared property prices would collapse demanded their money back. The survey found that fewer commercial properties are being financed by debt, and lenders are concerned about the economic situation in Britain. <20>North American banks were the most concerned about the market situation, considering all aspects from property market fundamentals, Brexit and a potential interest rate rise,<2C> it said. The Bank of England is widely expected to raise interest rates next month. Lending by U.S. banks dropped 28 percent and insurance companies cut lending by 39 percent, the survey showed. Non-bank lenders, such as asset managers, increased lending by 9 percent from end-2016. A total of 42 percent of new loans were to properties in central London. <20>The research is consistent with anecdotal reports of a market that is quiet in terms of transactions but mostly functioning,<2C> Peter Cosmetatos, chief executive of Commercial Real Estate Finance Council Europe, said. Total outstanding property debt was 211 billion pounds at end-June, the survey said. De Montfort surveyed 78 lenders, of which 43 were banks and building societies, 11 insurers and 24 other non-bank lenders. Reporting by Carolyn Cohn. Editing by Jane Merriman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-property-survey/new-commercial-property-loans-in-britain-fall-24-percent-survey-idUKKBN1CF359'|'2017-10-11T02:06:00.000+03:00'
'6e21948ed3fbafec5e6ccd42bd05e9284c9bceed'|'UK homewares retailer Dunelm sales boosted by favourable weather'|'October 11, 2017 / 6:22 AM / Updated 22 minutes ago UK homewares retailer Dunelm sales boosted by favourable weather Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - British retailer Dunelm Group ( DNLM.L ) said first-quarter revenue rose nearly 25 percent as favourable weather drew more customers to its stores. Dunelm, which sells cushions, bedding and kitchen equipment, said revenue for the 13 weeks to Sept. 30 rose 24.8 percent to 247.9 million pounds ($327.15 million). Sales at its stores open for over a year rose 9.3 percent. The company had said in September that trading had been encouraging in the first two months of its latest financial year that began in August and still continued to outperform the homewares market. Comparable online sales rose 46.2 percent to 19.9 million pounds with overall sales from online channels contributing about 16 percent to total sales in the quarter. Reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-dunelm-group-results/uk-homewares-retailer-dunelm-sales-boosted-by-favourable-weather-idUKKBN1CG0K4'|'2017-10-11T09:46:00.000+03:00'
'924f1ea28d4cc7a96190007b68bd22bca09a05fc'|'No startup is an island: entrepreneurship relies on collaboration - Guardian Small Business Network'|'T here was a time when the lone-genius business founder was revered <20> the Howard Hughes type who operated in secret, acting only on intuition. That time has passed and now instead of looking within ourselves to find inspiration, entrepreneurs are looking outward and coming together to support each other, collaborate, test and exchange ideas.Business Made Simple events: Bristol Read moreAt a Guardian Business Made Simple panel discussion in Edinburgh last month, I debated with other entrepreneurs whether incubators (which support startups at the early stages) or accelerators (which aim to drive the growth of companies with a business model in place) are the holy grail for startups. What we all agreed on, was that being part of any programme can never be an end in itself, and should only ever be viewed as an instrument for building a successful company.Facebook Twitter Pinterest Steven Drost (centre) and panellists at the Guardian<61>s Business Made Simple event supported by Vodafone. Photograph: Ross SneddonIf you want to build a successful business, the best option in my view is working together with a network of your peers, or what I call <20>clustering<6E>. There are many benefits of joining these clusters. You meet likeminded people who are as driven as you. You can find (friendly) rivalries, possible co-founders, partners, advisers, investors and employees much more easily than you could if you were building your company in isolation.Startup culture can be rife with bravado, but I<>ve found new hope Read moreThe incubator I work at was founded on this clustering concept. Being part of an incubator is a great way to build a network. Other options include enrolling on an accelerator programme if you<6F>re sure that it is worth selling equity to; or joining a supportive co-working space.Forming a network also allows you to stay on top of the most recent business thinking and gives you people to bounce ideas off and compare notes with. A good community of peers can help protect you from bad advisers, which is crucial if you are a fledgling startup. It is more difficult for bad behaviour to thrive <20> such as inexperienced investors offering predatory investment terms <20> if discussions around best practice flow between entrepreneurs helping to effectively police your community.Discussions with peers around funding can also be helpful. There are many different options open to startups, from angel and venture capital investment to crowdsourcing . And there is no one solution <20> it often depends on what stage you<6F>re at.Got a great idea for a business? Before you go any further, read this Read moreBefore trying to change the world by building a startup, make sure you are informed, especially before you become part of an incubator or accelerator <20> do your research to join the right one for you. You have a better chance of success if you have the right environment to work in. And that environment isn<73>t about ping pong and free beer <20> it<69>s about good people.Steven Drost is the chief strategy officer of tech incubator CodeBaseSign up to become a member of the Guardian Small Business Network here for more advice, insight and best practice direct to your inbox.Topics Guardian Small Business Network Business Made Simple Entrepreneurs Small business Technology startups comment'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2017/oct/11/startup-business-success-entrepreneurship-collaboration'|'2017-10-11T15:30:00.000+03:00'
'7e7a3f683bbc177ec1a4fadaf6f9fe893ecc4d36'|'ECB''s Praet makes case for longer stimulus extension'|'October 11, 2017 / 8:47 PM / in a minute ECB''s Praet makes case for longer stimulus extension Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Peter Praet, speaks during a conference in Sofia, Bulgaria May 24, 2017. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov NEW YORK (Reuters) - A longer extension of the European Central Bank<6E>s asset purchase program may be more beneficial when markets are calm, ECB Chief Economist Peter Praet said on Wednesday, just weeks before the ECB is due to decide whether to extend stimulus. <20>In more normal market conditions... investors may become <20>more patient<6E>, or, in other words, better able to evaluate the stimulus that can be expected to come from a purchase plan that is to be executed over a more extended time interval,<2C> Praet said in a speech that closely resembled his latest comments. Arguing for the need to continue stimulus, Praet added that the ECB remained <20>some distance<63> away from lifting inflation back to its target. <20>While the euro area recovery remains solid, broad-based and resilient, the economy has yet to make sufficient progress towards a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation to levels that are consistent with the Governing Council<69>s aim,<2C> he added. Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Francesco Canepa 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-policy-praet/ecbs-praet-makes-case-for-longer-stimulus-extension-idUKKBN1CG2U6'|'2017-10-11T23:42:00.000+03:00'
'83597d82818f22c2975a5757fadcbb23e0482734'|'GE stock hits four-year low as analysts debate possibility of dividend cut'|'Reuters TV United States October 12, 2017 / 12:57 AM / in an hour GE stock hits 4-year low as analysts debate possibility of dividend cut Alwyn Scott 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of General Electric Co. is pictured at the Global Operations Center in San Pedro Garza Garcia, neighbouring Monterrey, Mexico, on May 12, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril NEW YORK (Reuters) - Concern among investors that General Electric Co ( GE.N ) may not generate enough cash this year to fully cover its dividend and other promised spending sent its stock to its lowest level in more than four years on Wednesday. The shares fell 1.2 percent to $23.07 after JPMorgan said a dividend cut was <20>increasingly likely<6C> and lowered its price target on the stock to $20 from $22. <20>Despite the recent CEO change, by the numbers we see a core operating performance that is below (GE<47>s) plan,<2C> JPMorgan analyst Stephen Tusa wrote in a note on Wednesday, referring to GE<47>s full year forecast. Tusa was not available to comment beyond the note. Chief Executive John Flannery, who took over the position on August 1, is doing a comprehensive review of the company and is due to set new targets for earnings and capital allocation, which includes dividends, on Nov. 13. GE has affirmed its commitment to the dividend, which gives GE stock the second-highest dividend yield in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and ranks it 30th among the S&P 500. <20>Dividends remain a top priority,<2C> GE spokeswoman Jennifer Erickson said on Wednesday, declining to answer further questions as the company is in a quiet period ahead of its third-quarter results due next week. The dividend due to be paid Oct. 25 is not subject to being cut. GE<47>s stock has fallen 5.4 percent since Friday, including falling 1.24 percent to $23.07 on Wednesday, its lowest close since Sept. 3, 2013. The stock is down 27 percent this year, the worst Dow performer. On Friday GE said that its long-time Chief Financial Officer Jeff Bornstein would retire and be replaced by Jamie Miller, who has been the head of its transportation unit. A Reuters analysis of a GE presentation released in July and executives<65> comments showed that GE could generate $6 billion less cash this year than it planned to spend on dividends, share buybacks and other items. Its plan called for spending up to $25.8 billion, including about $8 billion on dividends, while generating about $20 billion in cash from operations and asset sales. GE has the capacity to pay the dividend. The company has more than $14 billion in cash on its balance sheet and $327 billion in orders for power plants, jet engines, locomotives, oil and gas equipment and healthcare devices. It could trim other spending instead, such as buying back fewer shares than the $11 billion to $13 billion it has targeted for this year. The 125-year-old company has cut its dividend six times in the last 34 years, including a 68 percent cut in 2009 during the financial crisis. It is operating against a far more favorable economic backdrop now. <20>A dividend cut could crush the stock as retail investors flee, but maintaining it gives GE little or no excess cash to grow,<2C> Jeffrey Sprague, an analyst at Vertical Research Partners, said in a note after the Bornstein announcement on Friday. <20>GE has continued to shrink the company but it has not proportionally shrunk the dividend.<2E> Some analysts saw a dividend cut as unlikely. <20>Cutting the dividend would be a last resort,<2C> Moody<64>s Investors Service credit analyst Rene Lipsch told Reuters on Wednesday. But, he said, GE<47>s options would narrow next year when it no longer receives billions from asset sales at GE Capital. Long term, he said, the dividend <20>depends on Flannery<72>s ability to increase cash flow from the businesses.<2E> Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Toni Reinhold 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ge-stock/ge-stock-hits-4-year-low-as-analysts-debate-possi
'6130d6029fcbd2f62aac5d10ff44228b29f1dba5'|'Allianz, Shapoorji Pallonji partner to set up $500 million India fund'|'October 12, 2017 / 9:52 AM / in 10 hours Allianz, Shapoorji Pallonji partner to set up $500 million India fund Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The logo of insurer Allianz SE is seen on the company tower at La Defense business and financial district in Courbevoie near Paris, France, March 2, 2016. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen/Files REUTERS - German insurer Allianz SE said it had partnered with Indian conglomerate Shapoorji Pallonji Group to set up a $500 million real-estate fund aimed at the office market in India. Allianz will own 50 percent of the rupee-denominated closed-ended fund, SPREF II, while long-term institutional investors will hold the rest, it said on Thursday. The deal forms part of Allianz<6E>s plan to allocate about 5 percent of its global real-estate portfolio to the Asia-Pacific region, Allianz said. The venture, which will be supported locally by Shapoorji Pallonji Investment Advisors team, aims at building long-term, cash flow producing office portfolio by buying a mix of assets in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and Delhi. Reporting by Krishna V Kurup in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/allianz-india-fund/allianz-shapoorji-pallonji-partner-to-set-up-500-million-india-fund-idINKBN1CH190'|'2017-10-12T12:51:00.000+03:00'
'2841b279a652d40fa23a5f5c413925aac5f06558'|'LafargeHolcim names new CFO in latest executive shake-up'|' 33 AM / in 22 minutes LafargeHolcim names new CFO in latest executive shake-up John Miller 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of LafargeHolcim is seen at its headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, March 2, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo ZURICH (Reuters) - LafargeHolcim ( LHN.S ) on Monday named Geraldine Picaud from French optics maker Essilor International ( ESSI.PA ) to replace Chief Financial Officer Ron Wirahadiraksa next year, the latest executive shakeup at the world<6C>s biggest cement maker. Picaud will take over on Feb. 1, 2018. Wirahadiraksa, who joined LafargeHolcim from Philips ( PHG.AS ) in December 2015, is leaving to pursue opportunities outside the group, LafargeHolcim said, adding his exit is not linked to recent complaints over his disclosures to investors. In April, LafargeHolcim Chief Executive Eric Olsen stepped down after the cement maker admitted it paid armed groups in Syria to keep a plant operating. His replacement, former Sika ( SIK.S ) CEO Jan Jenisch, said Picaud<75>s hiring will install a restructuring expert with experience in complex global businesses. <20>She is the ideal person to join our executive team and drive the next phase of growth in the company,<2C> Jenisch said in a statement. In late September, Wirahadiraksa made a financial presentation that prompted some analysts to raise concerns about his <20>bearish<73> tone as well as the lack of visibility on any potential change to strategic goals. A LafargeHolcim spokesman in Zurich said Wirahadiraksa<73>s exit was not linked to the sell-side conference or analyst criticism of the company<6E>s disclosures to investors. Wirahadiraksa will help present third-quarter results on Oct. 27, LafargeHolcim said, declining to give a reason for his departure from the French-Swiss company created by a 2015 merger. Picaud, 47, is leaving Essilor as the French company grapples with EU antitrust regulators<72> concerns over its planned merger with Italy<6C>s Luxottica ( LUX.MI ). She has been Essilor<6F>s group CFO and member of the executive committee since 2011. She also sits on the board of French trainmaker Alstom ( ALSO.PA ), which is merging its operations with Siemens<6E> ( SIEGn.DE ) rail unit. Trained as an auditor, Picaud is familiar with Switzerland, having worked at the Winterthur offices of commodity trading house ED&F Man. Reporting by John Miller; Editing by Victoria Bryan and Louise Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lafargeholcim-moves-cfo/lafargeholcim-names-new-cfo-in-latest-executive-shake-up-idUKKBN1CE0J8'|'2017-10-09T10:32:00.000+03:00'
'c38207d6e370d721610ea8ff50a61e5850baad6f'|'Google uncovered Russia-backed ads on YouTube, Gmail, source says'|'October 9, 2017 / 11:26 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago Google uncovered Russia-backed ads on YouTube, Gmail, source says Dustin Volz 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The Google logo is pictured atop an office building in Irvine, California, U.S. August 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Picture WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Google has discovered Russian operatives spent tens of thousands of dollars on ads on its YouTube, Gmail and Google Search products in an effort to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a person briefed on the company<6E>s probe told Reuters on Monday. The ads do not appear to be from the same Kremlin-affiliated entity that bought ads on Facebook Inc ( FB.O ), but may indicate a broader Russian online disinformation effort, according to the source, who was not authorized to discuss details of Google<6C>s confidential investigation. The revelation is likely to fuel further scrutiny of the role that Silicon Valley technology giants may have unwittingly played during last year<61>s election. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow<6F>s goal was to help elect Donald Trump. Google has uncovered less than $100,000 in ad spending potentially linked to Russian actors, the source said. Both Twitter Inc ( TWTR.N ) and Facebook recently detected and disclosed that suspected Russian operatives, working for a content farm known as the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, Russia, used their platforms to purchase ads and post content that was politically divisive in a bid to influence Americans before and after the November 2016 presidential election. The Internet Research Agency employ hundreds of so-called <20>trolls<6C> who post pro-Kremlin content, much of it fake or discredited, under the guise of phony social media accounts that posed as American or European, according to lawmakers and researchers. Facebook announced last month it had unearthed $100,000 in spending by the Internet Research Agency and, under pressure from lawmakers, has pledged to be more transparent about how its ads are purchased and targeted. Google<6C>s review had been more robust than ones undertaken so far by Facebook or Twitter, the source said. Russia<69>s ad purchases on Google were first reported by the Washington Post. Google, owned by Alphabet Inc ( GOOGL.O ), did not deny the story, and in a statement pointed to its existing ad policies that limit political ad targeting and prohibit targeting based on race or religion. <20>We are taking a deeper look to investigate attempts to abuse our systems, working with researchers and other companies, and will provide assistance to ongoing inquiries,<2C> a Google spokeswoman said on Monday. <20>DESTROY OUR DEMOCRACY<43> Google, which runs the world<6C>s largest online advertising business, had largely evaded public or congressional scrutiny until now. On Sunday, the Daily Beast news website reported that the Kremlin recruited at least two black video bloggers to post clips on YouTube during the campaign. They posed as Black Lives Matter sympathizers who were sharply critical of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Though the videos were only viewed hundreds of times, they demonstrated for the first time that Russia allegedly deployed real people, not just fake online accounts or bots, to further spread propaganda. Congressional committees have launched multiple investigations into Russian interference, but concern about Silicon Valley<65>s role has surged over the past month against the backdrop of a cascade of revelations about how Russia appears to have leveraged their platforms to spread propaganda. A study published on Monday by researchers with the Oxford Internet Institute, which is affiliated with the British university, found that current U.S. military personnel and veterans were targeted by disinformation campaigns on Twitter and Facebook over the past year by a nexus of pro-Kremlin, Russian-oriented sites, along with conspiracy theorists and European right-wing ideologues. Both Republican a
'14518a10e56cd27705b0ce38002a83d13b259de8'|'Honeywell to disclose results of portfolio review on Tuesday'|'Oct 9 (Reuters) - U.S. industrial conglomerate Honeywell International Inc said on Monday it would disclose the results of its portfolio review before markets open on Tuesday.Honeywell is resisting pressure from activist hedge fund Third Point LLC, which has urged the company to spin off its entire aerospace division, a move Third Point believes could create $20 billion in shareholder value.Reuters reported on Sunday that Honeywell was planning to spin off certain non-core assets and create at least two new publicly listed companies.Honeywell is considering placing its turbochargers business, which produces components that improve the performance and efficiency of cars and trucks, into one of the newly created companies, the sources said.Honeywell currently lists turbochargers as part of its aerospace business. The sources did not disclose which other assets Honeywell was looking to spin off.The aerospace business, Honeywell<6C>s biggest, makes auxiliary power units and engines for aircraft made by Bombardier Inc , Textron Inc and General Dynamics Corp, among other products.Honeywell<6C>s other businesses include energy efficient products and solutions for homes, specialty chemicals, electronic and advanced materials, and sensing, safety and security technologies for buildings, homes and industries.The company said it will hold a conference call with investors at 8.00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday. (Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/honeywell-spinoff/honeywell-to-disclose-results-of-portfolio-review-on-tuesday-idINL4N1MK398'|'2017-10-09T19:33:00.000+03:00'
'7635773af246ceca82334e154aed5421adfda2b3'|'Air Berlin flights to cease by Oct. 28'|'October 9, 2017 / 11:27 AM / in 3 minutes Air Berlin flights to cease by October 28 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Employees of insolvent German airline Air Berlin protest before an Air Berlin news conference in Berlin, Germany September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Stefanie Loos BERLIN (Reuters) - Flights operated by insolvent German carrier Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ) will end by Oct. 28 at the latest, the carrier said on Monday as it works toward a carve-up of its assets. Air Berlin filed for insolvency in August and a government loan is currently keeping its planes in the air to give it time to negotiate with investors for parts of its business and it is currently in talks with Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) and easyJet ( EZJ.L ). Talks are due to run until Oct. 12 and once a deal for parts of its operations has been agreed, Air Berlin will need to wait for approval from competition authorities, which could take several months. <20>After purchase contracts have been agreed, the company must end its own operations step by step,<2C> Air Berlin said in a statement. That means that Air Berlin will fly for the successful bidders under wet leases, whereby the bidder rents the planes and crews for use on its own routes. Holiday airline Niki and regional airline LG Walter are not insolvent and those operations will continue to run, Air Berlin said. Reporting by Victoria Bryan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-lufthansa/air-berlin-flights-to-cease-by-october-28-idUKKBN1CE198'|'2017-10-09T14:23:00.000+03:00'
'5f7724ba224af8011809853463d950b4703bf5f4'|'UK transport minister discussing Monarch compensation with credit and debit card firms'|'Trump''s popularity is slipping in rural America, poll shows Spain Catalan leader under pressure to drop independence Britain and EU clash over next Brexit move Reuters TV United States October 9, 2017 / 3:29 PM / Updated 17 minutes ago UK transport minister discussing Monarch compensation with credit and debit card firms Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Monarch aircraft are seen parked after the airline ceased trading, at Luton airport in Britain, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner LONDON (Reuters) - British transport minister Chris Grayling said on Monday costs of the repatriation of 110,000 customers of collapsed airline Monarch were being discussed with credit and debit card companies. <20>We<57>ve entered into discussions with several third parties with the aim of recovering costs of the operation,<2C> Grayling said in a statement to parliament. <20>We<57>re also currently engaged in constructive discussions with the relevant credit and debit card providers so we recoup from them some of the costs to taxpayers of these repatriation flights. We<57>re also having similar discussions with other travel providers.<2E> Monarch Airlines MONA.UL collapsed last week amid intense competition over passengers and a weaker pound following the Brexit vote decimated company profits. Reporting by Polina Ivanova'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-monarch-airlines-licence-minister/uk-transport-minister-discussing-monarch-compensation-with-credit-and-debit-card-firms-idUKKBN1CE1TL'|'2017-10-09T18:25:00.000+03:00'
'5724ef24ea430f1cd578e236c10395cc7972c625'|'Petra says likely to breach key bank loan condition'|'October 9, 2017 / 7:09 AM / in 16 minutes Petra says likely to breach key bank loan condition Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Petra Diamonds Ltd ( PDL.L ) said on Monday it was likely to breach a key condition of its banking agreements due to labour disruption at is South African operations and uncertainty around sales volumes in Tanzania. The company said it had told lenders it was likely to breach a core earnings ratio this financial year that is part of its banking arrangements. Petra has been hit by labour disputes at three of its units in South Africa and tighter regulations by the Tanzanian government around exports out of the country. The company said it was unsure about the final volume of sales for the Williamson mine in Tanzania for the first half of 2018. Reporting by Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-petra-debt/petra-says-likely-to-breach-key-bank-loan-condition-idUKKBN1CE0HL'|'2017-10-09T10:10:00.000+03:00'
'4bfa577657d3c4cd94d08833e38dd0a7c1eee535'|'Total, Eni, Statoil seek buyers for North Sea Teesside terminal: sources'|'FILE PHOTO: A view shows the Total Tower, French oil giant Total headquarters, at La Defense business and financial district in Courbevoie near Paris, France, February 25, 2016. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Total ( TOTF.PA ), Eni ( ENI.MI ) and Statoil ( STL.OL ) are seeking buyers for their stake in the Teesside oil terminal in northern England, which receives crude from the Norwegian Ekofisk fields, part of the global Brent benchmark, banking sources said.The sale is run jointly by investment bank Rothschild and may fetch as much as $400 million, according to the sources.Total holds a 32.9 percent stake in the terminal, Statoil a 27.3 percent stake and Eni a 10.3 percent stake. Paris Orleans holds the remaining 0.2 percent stake but it was unclear if they are taking part in the sale process.Total, Eni and Statoil declined to comment.ConocoPhillips ( COP.N ) is the operator of the terminal with a 29.3 percent stake but is not selling out, according to the sources.Conoco also declined to comment.The Teesside terminal, completed in 1975, receives, processes and stores crude oil and natural gas liquids from the Greater Ekofisk and Valhall field clusters in Norway as well as the Judy Platform in the British North Sea, according to Conoco<63>s website.Additional reporting by Stephen Jewkes in Milan, Bate Felix in Paris and Nerijus Adomaitis in Oslo, editing by Louise Heavens '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-teesside-sale/total-eni-statoil-seek-buyers-for-north-sea-teesside-terminal-sources-idINKBN1CE1A5'|'2017-10-09T09:42:00.000+03:00'
'8e5d888dc2337f2dce1c0cfe83297646bb599e84'|'Asia shares inch ahead, Turkish lira takes a dive'|'October 8, 2017 / 11:53 PM / in 4 minutes Global stocks ease after setting fresh peaks; oil gains Herbert Lash 5 Min Read Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid NEW YORK (Reuters) - World shares edged lower on Monday after key German and U.S. indexes hit fresh record peaks, while oil prices rose slightly on comments by OPEC<45>s secretary general that indicated further possible cuts in crude production. The dollar slipped on Monday from a 10-week peak against a basket of currencies as the euro strengthened and stocks on Wall Street faded from their initial highs. The U.S. dollar rose against the Japanese yen but was lower against the euro and a basket of key currencies after hovering near a 10-week high. German stocks and the euro were buoyed by data showing Germany<6E>s industrial output posted its biggest monthly increase in more than six years in August. Comments from European Central Bank Executive Board member Sabine Lautenschlaeger calling for the ECB to roll back asset purchases in 2018 also boosted the single currency. Germany''s DAX .GDAXI index closed at an all-time high while Chinese stocks .CSI300 hit 21-month highs after a week-long break in a delayed reaction to a targeted easing by China''s central bank announced on Sept. 30. Equity markets around the world have been marching higher in a wave of optimism over global growth. In Europe, Spain<69>s blue-cap IBEX rose to its highest in a week on hopes that Catalonia would take a step back this week from a unilateral declaration of independence from Spain. Catalonia<69>s secessionist leader faced increased pressure to abandon plans to declare the region independent from Spain, with France and Germany expressing support for the country<72>s unity. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 rose 0.20 percent to close at 1,533.82, while the DAX rose 0.16 percent. MSCI<43>s gauge of stock indexes in 47 markets around the globe .MIWD PUS was slightly lower after coming within a whisker of an intraday high. Stocks on Wall Street fell, though the Dow and Nasdaq earlier set intraday highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 12.6 points, or 0.06 percent, to 22,761.07. The S&P 500 .SPX lost 4.6 points, or 0.18 percent, to 2,544.73 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 10.45 points, or 0.16 percent, to 6,579.73. The three main Wall Street indexes, along with the MSCI global benchmark, hit closing highs every day last week except for Friday. The upcoming earnings season will justify the lofty valuations for U.S. stocks, analysts said. The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote <20>The relatively high valuation, where the market is trading 17 to 18 times earnings, is merited by a very low interest rate environment,<2C> said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh. <20>We are not in danger yet if you keep your eye on rates.<2E> Earnings at S&P 500 companies are expected to have gained 4.9 percent in the third quarter, according to Thomson Reuters data, down from double-digit growth in the first two quarters of this year but still healthy. Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said on Sunday that talks were ongoing to extend a production agreement beyond March 2018 and that more oil-producing nations may join the pact. Brent LCOcv1 rose 17 cents to settle at $55.79 per barrel, while U.S. crude CLcv1 settled at $49.58, up 29 cents on the day. The dollar index - which measures the greenback against a basket of six other major currencies - on Friday hit 94.267 .DXY, its highest since July 20 following stronger-than-expected average hourly earnings last month. The dollar index .DXY fell 0.14 percent, with the euro EUR= up 0.14 percent to $1.1749. The Japanese yen strengthened 0.04 percent versus the greenback at 112.60 per dollar. The 
'91b7a1259f5099e8dfc8d5bef4032b6a8eda0b44'|'Mediaset, Vivendi lawyers in talks over pay-TV dispute, deal seen difficult: source'|'FILE PHOTO: A woman walks walk past the main entrance of the entertainment-to-telecoms conglomerate Vivendi''s headquarters in Paris, France, April 8, 2015. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo MILAN (Reuters) - Lawyers representing Italian broadcaster Mediaset and French media group Vivendi are holding talks over a possible solution to a legal dispute between the two companies, an Italian source close to the matter said on Monday.The source said it will be difficult to reach an agreement.The two companies have been at loggerheads since Vivendi backtracked last year on a deal to buy Mediaset<65>s pay-TV unit.Il Sole 24 Ore said on Saturday the two sides were negotiating a possible solution ahead of a court hearing scheduled for Dec. 19, adding that a planned joint-venture between Telecom Italia and Vivendi<64>s pay-TV arm Canal + could be extended to Mediaset as part of a potential deal.Mediaset shares rose 5 percent in early trading with brokers saying reports of contacts between the two companies were a positive development for the broadcaster.Reporting by Giancarlo Navach, editing by Paola Arosio '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-mediaset-vivendi-paytv/mediaset-vivendi-lawyers-in-talks-over-pay-tv-dispute-deal-seen-difficult-source-idINKBN1CE0PA'|'2017-10-09T06:37:00.000+03:00'
'8af1eea42a766787aca452d37e4301fdba600068'|'German industrial output posts biggest surge since July 2011'|'October 9, 2017 / 6:14 AM / in an hour German industrial output posts biggest surge since July 2011 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A steel-worker is pictured at a furnace at the plant of German steel company Salzgitter AG in Salzgitter, Lower Saxony, Germany on March 21, 2012. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer/File Photo BERLIN (Reuters) - German industrial production jumped more than expected in August, posting its biggest monthly increase in more than six years, data showed on Monday, in a further sign that Europe<70>s biggest economy is set for solid growth in the third quarter. Industrial output increased by 2.6 on the month in August after edging down by 0.1 percent in July, data from the Economy Ministry showed. That was the strongest monthly gain since July 2011 and easily beat expectations in a Reuters poll for a 0.7 percent rise, surpassing even the most optimistic estimate. A breakdown of the data showed factories churned out more intermediate goods, capital goods and consumer goods in August. Energy output also rose while construction activity fell. The ministry said industrial production had gained momentum since the start of the year. <20>The good business morale and the positive development in industrial orders point to a continuation of the solid industrial upswing,<2C> it said. Data published on Friday showed that strong foreign demand, especially from clients outside the euro zone, drove a bigger-than-expected jump in industrial orders in August. Reporting by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Michelle Martin'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-germany-economy-output/german-industrial-output-posts-biggest-surge-since-july-2011-idUKKBN1CE0C9'|'2017-10-09T09:16:00.000+03:00'
'e232a9b8349d94fe1b61ffcdbcf809eb3055a929'|'Ford taps Silicon Valley startup to build transportation software'|'Oct 9 (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co has begun to develop new transportation service applications using a software platform developed by Autonomic Inc, a small Silicon Valley startup.One of the first such businesses is a <20>microtransit<69> service called Non-Emergency Medical Transport, launched this summer by Ford and Michigan-based Beaumont Hospital. Patients can schedule pickups and appointments from a mobile app that was built on the Autonomic software platform, said Sundeep Madra, Autonomic<69>s chief executive officer and co-founder.Vehicle manufacturers are exploring a wide array of digital services to supplement their existing businesses, including ride-hailing, car-sharing and delivery of food and goods. However, when it comes to developing consumer-facing smartphone apps and the data systems behind them, automakers have lagged Silicon Valley rivals.Ford in the past month has announced partnerships with Domino<6E>s and Lyft, using self-driving vehicles developed by Ford and its Argo affiliate. The Dearborn, Michigan automaker is also experimenting with a service called Chariot that offers access to van rides.Ford CEO Jim Hackett mentioned the automaker<65>s investment in Autonomic during a presentation to investors last week. The 15-month-old company is developing <20>an open platform for transportation<6F> on which Ford plans to build new in-vehicle and mobility-related services with a variety of partners, Hackett said.If Ford elects to build its own ride-hailing or fleet management businesses, the Autonomic software platform could enable digital payment processing and customer identification, as well as directing the flow of data between the vehicle and the customer, according to a source familiar with the automaker<65>s plans.Using the Autonomic software platform as a base, along with data from the vehicles, Ford and its partners then could build and charge consumers for products and services, said Marcy Klevorn, Ford president of mobility.Klevorn cited FordPass as an earlier example of a software platform that has enabled Ford to provide digital services to subscribers, from parking to payments.In an investor briefing on Tuesday, Jim Farley, Ford president of global markets, said the most important part of the company<6E>s strategy in self-driving vehicles <20>is a diverse group of revenue streams . . . not just one revenue stream like ride- hailing, but multiple revenue streams,<2C> including providing digital content to vehicle occupants.Reporting by Paul Lienert in Detroit; Editing by Lisa Shumaker '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/ford-motor-digital/ford-taps-silicon-valley-startup-to-build-transportation-software-idINL2N1MF1VB'|'2017-10-09T13:12:00.000+03:00'
'3073f6c40a0041f50ffc8c417da5c791006e18f6'|'Singapore''s City Development offers to buy M&C for $2.35 billion'|'(Reuters) - Singapore<72>s City Developments ( CTDM.SI ) (CDL) has made an offer to buy the remaining shares of Millennium & Copthorne Hotels ( MLC.L ) (M&C) it does not own, in a deal that values the hotels group at about 1.8 billion pounds ($2.4 billion).The move, which amounts to purchasing a 34.8 percent stake for 624.3 million pounds, would bring the operator of the Millennium, Grand Millennium, Copthorne and Kingsgate hotels back into the fold of Singaporean billionaire Kwek Leng Beng<6E>s property empire.London-listed M&C&rsquo;s shares shot up 21.5 percent on news of the deal, after CDL said M&C shareholders would get 545 pence per share in cash and be paid a special dividend of 7.5 pence per share.The entire offer represented a premium of about 21.4 percent to M&C&rsquo;s closing share price on Friday.M&C independent directors said in a joint statement that they considered the financial terms of the deal to be fair and reasonable, although they still need to officially approve the sale.M&C has 130 hotels around the world, and has focused on building its footprint in major cities such as London, New York and Singapore. CDL said it would maintain M&C&rsquo;s business model and did not intend to sell any of M&C&rsquo;s hotels in London or New York.The pound''s slide GBP= since Britain voted last year to leave the European Union has made some British companies more attractive to overseas suitors, including in the property sector. Chinese buyers have been the most active purchasers in the sector with C C Land ( 1224.HK ), LKK Health and R&F Properties ( 2777.HK ) picking up trophy assets.CDL is part of Kwek Leng Beng<6E>s Hong Leong Group and indirectly held shares representing a 65.2 percent stake in M&C as of Oct. 9.CDL reduced its stake and listed M&C on the London Stock Exchange in 1996. In the first half of this year, the hotel group accounted for 49 percent of CDL<44>s revenue.<2E>As such, the offer helps to mitigate some of the discount for M&C imputed in CDL<44>s share price,<2C> Jefferies analyst Krishna Guha said in a note, adding that CDL<44>s management will be able to improve operating metrics as trading conditions improve.Higher costs, a string of attacks across Europe and competition from the likes of Airbnb have challenged trading at European hoteliers, including M&C.The company has in response stalled certain projects and in August reported stronger demand at its hotels in London and Singapore.Deutsche Bank and HSBC Bank acted as financial advisers to CDL, while Credit Suisse acted on behalf of M&C&rsquo;s independent directors.It was the second large deal announced by CDL in as many weeks. Last week, CDL and its joint venture partner said they will buy a freehold residential site on Singapore<72>s east coast for S$906.7 million ($667 million), adding to a property deal frenzy in the city state this year.Reporting by Esha Vaish in Bengaluru and Aradhana Aravindan in Singapore; Editing by Louise Heavens and Susan Fenton '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-mill-cop-hotels-m-a-city-development/singapores-city-development-offers-to-buy-mc-for-2-35-billion-idINKBN1CE0FA'|'2017-10-09T04:52:00.000+03:00'
'e5076ea35b34d302d13efc895d9c18839a13425d'|'UPDATE 1-LPC-Belron launches <20>1.5bn-equiv leveraged loan'|'(Adds banks and further details on UoP)By Claire RuckinLONDON, Oct 10 (Reuters) - UK vehicle glass repair and replacement group Belron has launched a <20>1.5bn-equivalent leveraged loan financing to repay existing debt and fund a dividend to shareholders, banking sources said.Belron, which is 94.85% owned by Belgium automobile distribution firm D<>Ieteren, operates in over 30 countries under various brands, including Autoglass in the UK.Bank of America Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan are leading the financing on the dollars and the euros, respectively, alongside Barclays, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs and ING, the sources said.The loan will be used to fund a <20>450m dividend to shareholders, refinance existing bank debt and take out a US private placement, including early redemption costs.A bank meeting will take place on October 12 in New York and October 13 in London to show the deal to investors, the sources said.The financing comprises a <20>1.3bn seven-year covenant lite term loan B -- two-thirds of which will de denominated in dollars with the rest in euros -- as well as a <20>200m six-year revolving credit facility, the sources said.Pricing is set to emerge at the bank meetings, they added.Founded in 1897, Belron employs over 26,000 people across five continents and had a turnover of <20>3.3bn in 2016m, according to its website. (Editing by Christopher Mangham) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/belron-loans/update-1-lpc-belron-launches-1-5bn-equiv-leveraged-loan-idINL8N1ML3AU'|'2017-10-10T09:34:00.000+03:00'
'07ab0bc8b60ceede69e50201fe84daceb5640b25'|'US STOCKS-Futures gain ahead of big bank earnings'|'October 9, 2017 / 11:35 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago Wall Street recedes from highs as quarterly reports loom Noel Randewich 4 Min Read Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (Reuters) - Wall Street fell from record levels on Monday as gains in Microsoft and other technology stocks failed to offset a drop in General Electric and a slide in healthcare stocks. The S&P healthcare index .SPXHC moved 0.67 percent lower, weighed by a 3.61-percent slide in Medtronic ( MDT.N ) after the medical device maker warned that its quarterly profit would be impacted after Hurricane Maria hit its operations in Puerto Rico. The S&P 500 has rallied 14 percent in 2017 and last week hit record highs, buoyed by strong company earnings and enthusiasm that President Donald Trump will cut corporate taxes. JPMorgan Chase ( JPM.N ) and Citigroup ( C.N ) will report profits on Thursday, kicking third-quarter corporate reporting season into high gear as investors look for strong growth to justify pricey valuations. <20>Unlike the restaurant chains, movie chains and homebuilders and some of the discretionary stocks hurt by the hurricanes, I don<6F>t expect the banks to be affected by the non-recurring blips during the quarter,<2C> said Jake Dollarhide, chief executive officer of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Overall, earnings at S&P 500 companies are expected to have increased 4.8 percent last quarter, according to Thomson Reuters data, down from the double-digit growth recorded in the first two quarters of this year. GE shares ( GE.N ) sank 3.94 percent after the conglomerate named a new CFO and said it gave activist investment firm Trian Fund Management a board seat. Nvidia ( NVDA.O ) rose 2.26 percent and the S&P 500 information technology index .SPLRCT added 0.24 percent, bringing its gain in 2017 to 28 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI declined 0.06 percent to end at 22,761.07, while the S&P 500 .SPX lost 0.18 percent to 2,544.73. The Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 0.16 percent to 6,579.73. The CBOE Volatility index .VIX - Wall Street<65>s fear gauge - rose 0.77 point to 10.42, its highest in two weeks. Shares of cinema stocks AMC Entertainment Holdings ( AMC.N ) and Regal Entertainment ( RGC.N ) fell more than 4 percent after domestic opening weekend ticket sales for science fiction sequel <20>Blade Runner 2049<34> fell short of expectations. Also weighing on the healthcare sector, Express Scripts ( ESRX.O ) lost 5 percent after Raymond James downgraded the stock to <20>underperform<72> from <20>market perform<72>. Tesla ( TSLA.O ) fell 3.91 percent after pushing back the unveiling of its big rig truck to mid-November. Viacom ( VIAB.O ) slipped 6.37 percent after Citigroup downgraded the stock to <20>sell<6C>, citing risks that pay-TV firms would stop carrying its channels. Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.21-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.49-to-1 ratio favored decliners. About 4.4 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, well below the 6.1 billion daily average for the past 20 trading days, according to Thomson Reuters data. Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar   James Dalgleish'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/futures-gain-ahead-of-big-bank-earnings-idUSKBN1CE19E'|'2017-10-09T14:30:00.000+03:00'
'ea54bc8dcc9e5b3a9920f77d6ed2159273d21a8f'|'Take Five: World markets themes for the week ahead'|'LONDON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Following are five big themes likely to dominate thinking of investors and traders in the coming week and the Reuters stories related to them.1/ NEVER ENDING STORY Another week, another record high for stocks and another record low for volatility. This week, Germany<6E>s DAX hit a record high, the S&P 500 hit its 42nd record high of the year and the MSCI World index its 47th record peak of the year. Market volatility, meanwhile, simply refuses to rise - the VIX <20>fear index<65> has opened what is historically the most perilous month for stocks within a whisker of its lowest level on record. What gives? Market expectations of another Fed rate hike by the end of the year soared to 90 percent this week, Spain is in political crisis, U.S.-North Korea tensions are ratcheting up, and yet ... markets don<6F>t care one jot. If history is any guide though, research by Renaissance Capital shows that nine of the top 20 daily percentage declines in the Dow Jones since 1896 have come in October. That<61>s by some distance more than any other month (the next is September, with three).* S&P 500 sets 6th record high close on tax overhaul optimism* Reuters poll on global stock markets: end-2017, 20182/ POUND MAY BE TESTED British Prime Minister Theresa May<61>s vow to stay on in the face of plots to unseat her gave a brief lift to sterling, which nonetheless remained on track for its worst week against the dollar in a year and on a trade-weighted basis. Political uncertainty has also cast a shadow over a much telegraphed interest rate increase by the Bank of England. Speculation rates would go up pushed six-month interest rate swaps to their highest since last June<6E>s Brexit vote on the view that a stronger pound would combat rising inflation. Political jitters couldn<64>t have come at a worse time for hedge funds who had finally turned positive on sterling in the last quarter of 2017. If the uncertainty grows, sterling may test the 2017 lows below $1.20 in the coming days.* Sterling bounces as PM May says will provide <20>calm leadership<69>* British PM May vows to stay as party plotters attempt to topple her3/ STRAIN IN SPAIN Is Spain<69>s worst political crisis easing? After Spain apologised on Friday for a violent crackdown on Catalonia<69>s independence referendum, a Catalan parliament spokesman said the region<6F>s pro-independence leader would address lawmakers on Tuesday on the <20>political situation<6F>. This appeared to be at odds with a earlier plan to move an independence motion on Monday. The change of tone led to a narrowing of Spain<69>s bond yield premium over German benchmarks and Spanish stocks pared losses. The stakes here remain high. Even some sort of compromise with Madrid, possibly a devolution of tax powers, would blow a hole in the central government<6E>s budget. Other concerns are the impact the uncertainty could have on Catalonia<69>s finances and inward investment. Spain<69>s government is planning to make it easier for firms to transfer their legal base out of Catalonia, as some Catalan banks have already intimated they will do. The violence that marred the vote could also come back to bite Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who leads a minority government. Some analysts are already predicting opposition parties may try to use the turmoil to push for new elections in the euro zone<6E>s fourth biggest economy.* Spain bonds slide again as Catalonia strikes defiant note* Spain apologises, tone softens in Catalonia independence crisis4/ RISKY VOTE? Japan<61>s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had possibly thought his call on Sept. 25 for a snap parliamentary election would be a slam dunk vindication of his rising approval ratings. Instead, the emergence of the Party of Hope led by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike has fragmented the opposition, upset the ruling Liberal Democratic Party<74>s calculations, and raised the possibility that the Japanese election could shock investors just as much as other major political events in the past year or so, such as the UK<55>s Brexit
'da053a5356dbf180e891726cdce503894b0fc58f'|'Ready meals firm Bakkavor prepares $2 billion London listing'|'October 10, 2017 / 9:29 AM / Updated an hour ago Ready meals firm Bakkavor prepares $2 billion London listing Reuters Staff 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Ready meals supplier Bakkavor plans to list at least a quarter of its shares on the London Stock Exchange in early November, in a deal that sources say could value it at up to 1.5 billion pounds ($2 billion). The company, which counts Marks & Spencer ( MKS.L ), Waitrose and Tesco ( TSCO.L ) as major customers, said on Tuesday it aimed to raise around 100 million pounds from issuing new shares and would also sell part of the stakes held by U.S. hedge fund Baupost and Icelandic founders Agust and Lydur Gudmundsson. London is seeing a pick up in listings, with this year<61>s total already far outpacing 2016 when volatility caused by Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union caused a number of initial public offerings (IPO) to be postponed or canceled. Over the past week, half a dozen companies have announced plans to list on London<6F>s main market, between them aiming to raise as much as $3.7 billion, compared with around $4 billion in the third quarter. These include Dutch business services firm TMF Group and Russia<69>s En+ Group, which is launching an IPO in London and Moscow, testing investors<72> appetite for Russian assets three years after Western countries imposed sanctions on Moscow over its role in the Ukraine crisis. [nASM000ER2] [nL8N1MG0Q3] Bakkavor, which is using the IPO to reduce its leverage and make more investments, generated revenues of almost 1.8 billion pounds and pretax profits of 63.1 million pounds last year. It started as a cod roe manufacturer and exporter before the Gudmundsson brothers expanded the business with acquisitions financed with debt, borrowings that meant the company was swept up in Iceland<6E>s financial crisis before it eventually restructured and attracted new investors. [nL8N1MD5FR] The company has also appointed Simon Burke as its independent non-executive chairman, replacing Lydur Gudmundsson, who co-founded the business 31 years ago and will remain a non-executive director. Burke, a former accountant, was previously the chairman and chief executive of Hamleys, the world<6C>s oldest toy shop which under his leadership was sold to Icelandic firm Baugur in 2003. Baugur later collapsed and Hamleys is currently owned by Chinese retailer C. Banner. HSBC ( HSBA.L ) and Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ) are leading the IPO process. Barclays ( BARC.L ), Citigroup ( C.N ), Rabobank and Peel Hunt are also working on the deal. ($1 = 0.7594 pounds) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-bakkavor-group-ipo/ready-meals-firm-bakkavor-prepares-2-billion-london-listing-idINKBN1CF0ZL'|'2017-10-10T07:29:00.000+03:00'
'9855e223f5de066e08c62135777dba023dee4bac'|'Honeywell spins off units worth $7.5 billion, keeps aerospace'|'October 10, 2017 / 10:47 AM / in 6 hours Honeywell spins off units worth $7.5 billion in sales, keeps aerospace Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A logo of Honeywell is pictured on their booth during the European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (EBACE) in Geneva, Switzerland, May 22, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo (Reuters) - U.S. manufacturer Honeywell International Inc will spin off its home and ADI global distribution business and transportation systems into two independent, publicly-traded companies by the end of 2018, the company said on Tuesday. Honeywell said the two businesses were together worth $7.5 billion in annualized sales. The changes defy calls by one of its shareholders, activist hedge fund Third Point LLC, to spin off its aerospace division. (This story corrects headline and second paragraph to show value referred to annualized sales.) Reporting by Ankit Ajmera and Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-honeywell-spinoff/honeywell-spins-off-units-worth-7-5-billion-keeps-aerospace-idUSKBN1CF17L'|'2017-10-10T13:46:00.000+03:00'
'c4e03ee16b3623820add542be7b361fae842dce2'|'UPDATE 1-BAE Systems set to announce up to 2,000 job cuts in Britain'|'* Cuts come as Typhoon jet orders slow* Will mainly impact plants in Lancashire, northern England* Union says cuts will damage Britain<69>s defence capabilities (Adds union reaction, background)LONDON, Oct 10 (Reuters) - British defence company BAE Systems is set to announce up to 2,000 job cuts later on Tuesday, mainly affecting two of its plants in Lancashire, northern England, which are involved in making the Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jet.BAE Systems, which employs 34,600 people in Britain, has already slowed Typhoon production as orders have dried up.Its Warton and Samlesbury plants, where around 5,000 people work on the Typhoon programme, will suffer the brunt of the losses.The Typhoon has won fewer orders this year than the rival Rafale built by France<63>s Dassault Aviation, although Qatar agreed to buy 24 Typhoons in September.But a major order expected from Saudi Arabia has not materialised.BAE is expected to announce the job cuts later on Tuesday.It said on Monday: <20>BAE Systems continually reviews its operations to make sure we are performing as effectively and efficiently as possible, delivering our commitments to existing customers and ensuring we are best placed to secure future business.<2E><>If and when there are any changes proposed we are committed to communicating with our employees and their representatives first.<2E>Britain<69>s biggest defence contractor will also cut jobs at its dockyard in Portsmouth, southern England, according to the Financial Times.The Unite Union said the job cuts would significantly undermine Britain<69>s sovereign defence capability.Assistant General Secretary Steve Turner said: <20>The UK government can end the uncertainty surrounding the future of thousands of British BAE defence jobs at a stroke by committing to building the next generation fighter jets here in the UK.<2E>BAE must also come clean on its plans.<2E>BAE said in August that any new orders were unlikely to impact production delivery rates positively for at least 24 months, and production would be under constant review.<2E>We obviously have to review our (Typhoon) production demand very carefully,<2C> Chief Executive Charles Woodburn said.However, he said he remained confident about future orders for the aircraft, which is a joint project between BAE, France<63>s Airbus and Italy<6C>s Finmeccanica. (Reporting by Paul Sandle; editing by Guy Faulconbridge) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bae-systems-jobs/update-1-bae-systems-set-to-announce-up-to-2000-job-cuts-in-britain-idINL8N1ML11R'|'2017-10-10T05:10:00.000+03:00'
'3097c0c3dad32dc383f46305fe7e94d51734a808'|'MIDEAST STOCKS-Sudan-linked shares jump on sanctions end, DSI boosts Dubai'|'* Sudatel, Al Salam Bank Sudan soar in UAE* Petchems pull back, weigh on Saudi* But NADEC surges on possible merger with Danone partner* Qatar index rebounds sharply from near 8,000 points* Arab Cotton Ginning leaps in EgyptBy Andrew TorchiaDUBAI, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Shares of Sudanese companies listed in the United Arab Emirates soared on Sunday after the United States said it was lifting sanctions on Sudan, while construction firm Drake & Scull led Dubai higher.In Abu Dhabi, Sudatel Telecom rose by its 15 percent daily limit to 0.69 dirham, its highest level since April, in heavy trade. A Dubai-listed Sudanese bank, Al Salam Bank Sudan, also gained 15 percent but in much smaller trading volume.Citing progress on counter-terrorism and improvement in human rights, Washington lifted 20-year-old sanctions against Sudan that had effectively cut the country off from much of the global financial system, raising costs and risks for Sudanese firms.The Dubai index rose 0.6 percent as Drake & Scull , the most heavily traded stock, surged 4.7 percent. The stock has been rising sharply since last Wednesday after it completed a capital restructuring that involved Tabarak Investment receiving 500 million new shares.Investment bank Shuaa Capital jumped 5.6 percent, also in unusually heavy trade. It had been hovering near its lowest levels for this year.Saudi Arabia<69>s index fell 0.9 percent as petrochemical shares weakened after a drop in global oil prices at the end of last week; Saudi Basic Industries lost 1.1 percent.But National Agriculture Development Co climbed 3.8 percent after saying it had signed a memorandum of understanding with dairy firm Al Safi Danone Co, a partner of France<63>s Danone, to examine the possibility of NADEC acquiring Al Safi in a deal which would leave current Al Safi shareholders owning 38.75 percent of NADEC.Top Saudi dairy producer Almarai, which could eventually be hurt by stiffer competition from the merged company, dropped 2.0 percent.Qatar<61>s index, which had tumbled as much as 1.6 percent during the day to just above 8,000 points, rebounded sharply towards the close and finished 0.1 percent higher. But the most heavily traded stock, Vodafone Qatar, lost 3.4 percent.The index has sunk to five-year lows in recent days because of sanctions imposed on Qatar by other Arab states. Partly because of the sanctions, data last week showed Qatar<61>s economy grew in the second quarter at its slowest rate since the global financial crisis.On Saturday the government announced measures to help private sector businesses, such as rent reductions in Qatar<61>s logistics zones, but it was not clear that this would do much to revive weak business sentiment.Egypt<70>s index gained 0.8 percent on the back of a 10 percent leap by Arab Cotton Ginning.HIGHLIGHTS SAUDI ARABIA * The index fell 0.9 percent to 7,194 points.DUBAI * The index rose 0.6 percent to 3,611 points.ABU DHABI * The index climbed 0.4 percent to 4,430 points.QATAR * The index edged up 0.1 percent to 8,138 points.EGYPT * The index gained 0.8 percent to 13,998 points.KUWAIT * The index edged down 0.02 percent to 6,661 points.BAHRAIN * The index rose 0.4 percent to 1,279 points.OMAN * The index dropped 0.9 percent to 5,168 points. (Reporting by Andrew Torchia; Editing by Keith Weir) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mideast-stocks/mideast-stocks-sudan-linked-shares-jump-on-sanctions-end-dsi-boosts-dubai-idINL8N1MJ0AV'|'2017-10-08T11:11:00.000+03:00'
'da7410d3fa134ad8c3bec89d185a146a2d1d2e97'|'Saudi''s Falih says oil agreements with Russia helping market stability'|'October 5, 2017 / 8:45 AM / in 2 minutes Saudi''s Falih says oil agreements with Russia helping market stability Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih attends a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia, June 2, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin MOSCOW (Reuters) - Agreements reached between Russia and Saudi Arabia on global oil supply have helped oil markets to stabilize, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Thursday. The two countries, the world<6C>s biggest producers of crude, helped secure a deal between OPEC and rivals including Russia to cut supplies until the end of March 2018 in an effort to reduce a price-sapping glut. Falih, whose country is the de facto leader of the 14-member Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, also said he welcomed the contribution of U.S. shale oil supplies as global demand for crude was on the rise. <20>Shale coming in and happening again in 2018 doesn<73>t bother me at all. The market can absorb it,<2C> Falih said, speaking alongside Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak as part of a panel discussion at an energy forum in Moscow. The comments came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin said the supply-cutting deal could be extended to the end of 2018, a longer timeframe than others have suggested. Novak said Moscow would support the possible participation of additional countries in the output deal, and that he was satisfied with current oil prices. Related Coverage Oil steadied around $56 a barrel on Thursday on expectations that Saudi Arabia and Russia would extend production cuts. Falih said Saudi Arabia wants to develop ties with Russia further, particularly in the private sector. <20>I see huge opportunities in front of our countries and for the business sector in both nations,<2C> Falih said. The visit of Saudi Arabia<69>s King Salman to Russia this week shows the high degree of mutual trust between Russia and Saudi Arabia, Falih said. King Salman is in Russia as part of a state visit, the first to Moscow by a reigning Saudi monarch. A slew of investment agreements are due to be signed during King Salman<61>s trip and plans for a $1 billion fund to invest in energy projects are likely to be finalised, as part of efforts to expand cooperation. <20>This historic visit will witness the signing of memoranda of understanding (MoUs) in several fields that are important to both countries,<2C> Falih said. He said MoUs would be signed with Russia<69>s state nuclear agency Rosatom for the peaceful use of nuclear energy as well as other agreements for military industries and marine development. State oil giant Saudi Aramco will sign several non-binding MoUs on Thursday with Russian companies Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, Sibur and Litasco. The Russian Direct Investment Fund will also sign an MoU with Aramco and Saudi<64>s Public Investment Fund for investments in energy services and manufacturing. Saudi Aramco [IPO-ARMO.SE] is discussing several investment opportunities with Russian firms, Aramco Chief Executive Amin Nasser told reporters earlier on Thursday in Moscow. Nasser told the Arabiya television channel in Moscow that he sees the oil market stabilizing as demand growth continues and global oil inventories decline. Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin, Katya Golubkova, Jack Stubbs and Olesya Astakhova; Writing by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Dale Hudson'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-russia-energy/saudis-falih-says-oil-agreements-with-russia-helping-market-stability-idUKKBN1CA0R3'|'2017-10-05T11:40:00.000+03:00'
'e847933542fa96f6991c2a2d88d2d1b09d464f0d'|'Telecom Italia chairman says no preconceived ideas about future strategic moves'|' 30 AM / in 34 minutes Telecom Italia chairman says no preconceived ideas about future strategic moves Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Telecom Italia tower is pictured in Rome, Italy, March 22, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini/File Photo CAPRI, Italy (Reuters) - Telecom Italia<69>s (TIM) ( TLIT.MI ) Chairman Arnaud de Puyfontaine has no preconceived ideas about future moves at the phone group, including a potential separation of its fixed line network, as long as they are beneficial for the company, he said on Thursday. <20>I have no preconception on anything as regards to TIM or what we will do and how we will build the success of the company,<2C> he told journalists on the sidelines of a conference on the island of Capri. <20>I am very pragmatic ... I just want to make TIM as an incumbent a company that is going to make the success and the pride of Italy, its government and its customers.<2E> De Puyfontaine, who also serves as the chief executive of TIM<49>s biggest shareholder Vivendi ( VIV.PA ), said he and TIM<49>s newly appointed CEO Amos Genish were preparing a new strategic plan for the company. <20>We will be able to be more precise soon,<2C> he said. Reporting by Agnieszka Flak; editing by Francesca Landini'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-telecomitalia-vivendi/telecom-italia-chairman-says-no-preconceived-ideas-about-future-strategic-moves-idUKKBN1CA0KX'|'2017-10-05T10:30:00.000+03:00'
'028c2e8227b789e475c3ab5bc87c8c8ccfdf00f9'|'Kobe Steel admits falsifying data on 20,000 tonnes of metal'|'THE port city of Kobe, on the southern side of Japan<61>s main island, is known for luxury beef from pampered cattle, fine sake and precision engineering. Its reputation for the last of those products took a blow on October 8th when one of its oldest industrial firms, Kobe Steel, admitted that that it had falsified data on many of its aluminium, copper and steel products. By October 11th, the company<6E>s shares had fallen by a third, reducing its market value by <20>180bn ($1.6bn).Kobe Steel has admitted to falsification over the past year relating to large quantities of four types of material; 19,300 tonnes of aluminium sheets and poles; 19,400 aluminium components; 2,200 tonnes of copper products and an unspecified amount of iron powder that was supplied to over 200 customers. These items were certified as having properties<65>such as a level of tensile strength, meaning stiffness<73>that they did not in fact possess. No deaths or accidents have yet resulted, but the firm<72>s products are used by a long list of household names in Japan and overseas. Companies ranging from Boeing, Ford and GM of America to Hitachi, Nissan, Toyota and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan are rushing to examine their products<74> safety. Mitsubishi has already said that affected steel was used in an H-2A rocket that safely launched a global-positioning satellite into orbit on October 10th.Replacing the faulty metal sold may initially cost Kobe Steel just <20>15bn, according to J.P. Morgan, a bank. Yet taking into account the need to idle and repair any affected cars and planes, the overall cost could soar. More revelations may be on the way, for Kobe Steel admits that its current problems stretch back at least a decade.The news has come at the worst possible moment. Like the rest of its industry in the rich world, Kobe Steel has been hit by a flood of cheap aluminium and steel imports. In 2016 it lost <20>23bn. In order to compete, mills will have to produce the sort of high-tech steel for cars, planes and trains that still commands premium prices, says Wolfgang Eder of Voestalpine, one of the few steel firms in Europe that is still profitable. Kobe Steel has lately switched its focus to higher-tech metals, but if it cannot guarantee their quality it will be in trouble.The firm<72>s stumble is the latest in a long list of scandals for Japan<61>s once-bright corporate stars. Earlier this month Nissan was obliged to recall 1.2m cars after finding that unqualified inspectors had been conducting safety checks. In June, Takata, a maker of faulty airbags linked to 18 deaths worldwide, declared bankruptcy after being hit by a whirlwind of lawsuits. Last year, the bosses of Suzuki and Mitsubishi, two Japanese carmakers, resigned after their firms were found to have falsified fuel-consumption data on their vehicles. And between 2009 and 2011, Toyota, another carmaker, recalled 9m cars equipped with dangerous accelerator pedals.Such scandals are not unique to Japan. Volkswagen, a German carmaker, has been caught falsifying emissions data. Reckitt Benckiser, a British firm, sold cleaning products linked to the deaths of over 90 people in South Korea from 2011 onwards. But it is obvious that Japanese firms have not learned the lessons from recent scandals, says Toshiaki Oguchi of Governance for Owners Japan, a corporate-governance lobby group. A recurring theme is a lack of transparent leadership and a tendency to paper over problems. Japanese workers are ethical, he says, but tend to hide wrongdoing rather than confront management. Kobe Steel ignored at least one whistleblower who sounded the alarm over its substandard metal. Its president and chief executive, Hiroya Kawasaki, has promised to lead an internal probe.His company<6E>s woes add urgency to efforts to improve corporate governance in Japan. Shinzo Abe, the prime minister (who worked at the steel group before going into politics) has introduced a new stewardship code but <20>has not really had the stomach for a more serio
'752776d361a587e58cd94728b4a76d3c7878e2d4'|'Lufthansa CEO says to sign Air Berlin deal today'|'October 12, 2017 / 7:28 AM / Updated 25 minutes ago Lufthansa spreads wings by snapping up parts of failed Air Berlin Maria Sheahan , Klaus Lauer 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: German carrier Air Berlin aircraft are pictured at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt/File Photo FRANKFURT/BERLIN (Reuters) - Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) reinforced its position as Germany<6E>s largest airline on Thursday by signing a 210 million euro (188.38 million pounds) deal to buy large parts of insolvent Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ). Lufthansa plans to use the Air Berlin assets to quickly expand its Eurowings budget business. News of the deal pushed Lufthansa shares up more than 3 percent to their highest level in nearly 17 years. Air Berlin, which has struggled to turn a profit over the last decade, filed for insolvency on Aug. 15, and a government loan has kept its planes aloft while its administrator negotiated with prospective buyers for parts of the business. Lufthansa has agreed to acquire Air Berlin<69>s Austrian leisure travel airline Niki, its LG Walter regional airline and 20 additional aircraft, Air Berlin said in a statement. <20>This contract provides new opportunities for jobs for a large part of our workforce. But we can only really breathe again when the EU Commission approves the deal,<2C> Air Berlin Chief Executive Thomas Winkelmann said. Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said earlier he expected the European Union to approve the transaction by the end of 2017. Related Coverage Air Berlin says talks with easyJet continue Talks to sell some of Air Berlin<69>s remaining assets to Britain<69>s easyJet ( EZJ.L ) and other bidders are continuing, Air Berlin said, without providing details. EasyJet, which has a base at Berlin<69>s Schoenefeld airport, has been discussing acquiring 27 to 30 planes. Air Berlin previously said others, such as Thomas Cook<6F>s ( TCG.L ) Condor, could pick up some parts of the business. EasyJet declined to comment on the progress of talks on Thursday. Lufthansa Chief Executive Officer Carsten Spohr delivers his speech in Berlin, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer BIG INVESTMENTS Lufthansa CEO Spohr told a German paper earlier that his airline would be investing around 1.5 billion euros in total as a result of the Air Berlin deal. That sum includes investment in new planes, for which the board freed up 1 billion euros of funds last month, the purchase price and the costs of taking on new staff. Slideshow (4 Images) Air Berlin, Germany<6E>s second largest carrier, will cease operating flights this month, capping a turbulent summer for European carriers. Italy<6C>s national airline Alitalia is in administration and seeking investors too, British leisure airline Monarch collapsed at the start of this month. Lufthansa<73>s Spohr said on Thursday while he was not interested in the Italian carrier in its current shape he would be interested in talks to create a new Alitalia. Shares in Lufthansa were up 3.3 percent at 25.38 euros, the top gainer in Germany<6E>s DAX market index <0#.GDAXI> by 1340 GMT. Analysts at Bernstein Research raised their rating on Lufthansa<73>s shares to <20>outperform<72> from <20>market-perform<72>, saying they expected a deal with Air Berlin to add around 70 to 90 million euros to annual operating profits at Lufthansa<73>s budget unit Eurowings in the medium term. HSBC analysts lifted their target share price to 29 euros from 25 euros, citing the imminent agreement with Air Berlin, a new multi-year labour deal with pilots announced this week and a positive trading performance this year. Additional reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Greg Mahlich and Keith Weir 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-air-berlin-lufthansa/lufthansa-ceo-says-to-sign-air-berlin-deal-today-idUKKBN1CH0T2'|'2017-10-12T10:28:00.000+03:00'
'b508634028f290cda92e9951045f287dbdee2156'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX retreats on drop in energy, Kirkland Lake shares'|'October 12, 2017 / 3:02 PM / Updated 6 minutes ago CANADA STOCKS-TSX retreats on drop in energy, Kirkland Lake shares Reuters Staff (Updates trading, adds sector and stock moves) * TSX down 28.18 points, or 0.18 percent, to 15,772.22 * Seven of the TSX<53>s 10 main groups fell TORONTO, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index retreated on Thursday, with declines driven by energy companies that were squeezed by cooling oil prices, as well as a drop in shares of Kirkland Lake Gold. Suncor Energy was the biggest drag on the index, falling 1.5 percent to C$42.34. It was followed by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd, which declined 1.4 percent to C$40.93. The overall sector retreated 1.3 percent, as oil prices fell amid higher U.S. fuel inventories. U.S. crude prices were down 1.8 percent to $50.38 a barrel, while Brent crude lost 1.3 percent to $56.22. Other influential decliners included Shaw Communications Inc , which slid 3.2 percent to C$27.63, and Kirkland Lake Gold, which slumped 6.1 percent to C$17.37. Desjardins cut its rating on Kirkland Lake to <20>hold<6C> from <20>buy<75> after the company released quarterly and production results. The overall materials sector, where miners and other resource companies reside, lost 0.2 percent. At 10:27 a.m. ET (1427 GMT), the Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index fell 28.18 points, or 0.18 percent, to 15,772.22. Of the index<65>s 10 main groups, seven were in negative territory. Financial services stocks slipped 0.2 percent. On the positive side, Alimentation Couche-Tard rose 2.4 percent to C$60.37. The company is buying back 4.4 million of its shares that were held by Metro Inc and Eight Capital upgraded the company to a <20>buy<75> from <20>neutral,<2C> citing positive trends. The overall consumer staples sector added 0.7 percent. Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the TSX by 144 to 94, for a 1.53-to-1 ratio on the downside. (Reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by Bernadette Baum) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks/canada-stocks-tsx-retreats-on-drop-in-energy-kirkland-lake-shares-idUSL2N1MN0WN'|'2017-10-12T18:02:00.000+03:00'
'e454d38e6189f10c42766b5b60ad017ea5d881b9'|'Looking for an Uber? Book it through Snapchat''s ''context cards'''|'October 10, 2017 / 4:59 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Looking for an Uber? Book it through Snapchat''s ''context cards'' Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A woman stands in front of the logo of Snap Inc. on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) while waiting for Snap Inc. to post their IPO, in New York City, New York, U.S. on March 2, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo (Reuters) - Snap Inc<6E>s Snapchat on Tuesday introduced <20>context cards<64>, a new feature that will allow users to book an Uber ride or reserve a seat at a restaurant without leaving the messaging app. The new feature is aimed at increasing the time a user spends on the app by providing contextual location-based search, potentially helping the company to get more advertising dollars. Snapchat, popular with young people for applying bunny faces or other filters to their pictures, competes for ad dollars with the likes of Facebook Inc<6E>s Instagram. The new cards allow users viewing stories to swipe up and get relevant information about a business such as reviews, directions or contact information, the company said in a blog post. Similarly to Yelp, which allows users to search nearby businesses, Snap may be able to charge businesses to feature on cards, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said. Initial partners include TripAdvisor, Foursquare, Michelin, OpenTable and Bookatable but the company has not disclosed how it plans to make money from the new feature. Reporting by Arjun Panchadar and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-snap-feature-search/looking-for-an-uber-book-it-through-snapchats-context-cards-idUKKBN1CF2EO'|'2017-10-10T21:32:00.000+03:00'
'9abc91b88434d5a6bba35a6b33df7d36dce7ddaf'|'Most U.S. oil executives see prices below $60/barrel through 2018'|' 06 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago Most U.S. oil executives see prices below $60/barrel through 2018 Ernest Scheyder 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A pump jack used to help lift crude oil from a well in South Texas<61> Eagle Ford Shale formation stands idle in Dewitt County, Texas, U.S. on January 13, 2016. REUTERS/Anna Driver/File Photo HOUSTON (Reuters) - Nearly two-thirds of U.S. oil executives see crude oil prices remaining below $60 per barrel through 2018 and not hitting $70 until at least the next decade, according to a survey published on Wednesday by consultancy Deloitte Services LP [DLTE.UL]. The survey, based on a poll of 250 executives at companies that produce, transport and refine oil and natural gas, reflects a shift from last year when many respondents forecast commodity prices would rise and capital spending budgets grow. U.S. oil prices CLc1 fell slightly on Wednesday to $50.79 per barrel. This year<61>s more dour view, especially among shale industry managers, comes as executives are focusing on cost controls and returns and have largely stopped looking for a rise in commodity prices. This new paradigm is encouraging shale producers to base executive compensation on the best uses of capital, a strategy designed to keep costs low. <20>The bottom line is that companies should focus on cost discipline and operational efficiency,<2C> said Andrew Slaughter, head of Deloitte<74>s Center for Energy Solutions. <20>The new reality seems to have set in; waiting for a significant price recovery may be a long haul.<2E> Half of executives polled said they expect capital spending to drop next year, and nearly 60 percent said they expect a decline in the number of drilling rigs active across the United States. Production in the shale industry requires constant investment to keep up with well decline rates. Those polled said they expect to maintain or increase current production levels into 2018, though a drop in spending could prevent any sizable increase in U.S. output, helping to resolve a global supply and demand imbalance. That would fit well into a plan by the 14-member Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which on Wednesday forecast higher demand for its oil in 2018 and a worldwide supply deficit. In a wary sign for oilfield service providers, including Halliburton Co ( HAL.N ) and Baker Hughes, ( BHGE.N ), roughly half of those surveyed by Deloitte expect service costs to slip next year. Greater well efficiency and new technologies - long touted by industry executives as a cure-all for low prices - were seen as having less of an impact on costs. The mood among executives was less pessimistic for natural gas prices NGc1, with those polled saying they expect prices to rise above $3 per million British thermal units into next year. Natural gas futures NGc1 rose 1.5 percent on Wednesday to $2.93 per mmBtu. Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Chris Reese 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-oil-forecast/most-u-s-oil-executives-see-prices-below-60-barrel-through-2018-idUSKBN1CG28A'|'2017-10-11T19:02:00.000+03:00'
'fe6ce8a6df19fa12b8e1f4c33fefea61fbbf7058'|'VW to develop electric trucks in $1.7 billion technology drive'|'October 11, 2017 / 2:04 PM / Updated 24 minutes ago VW to develop electric trucks in $1.7 billion technology drive Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A Volkswagen logo is seen at Serramonte Volkswagen in Colma, California, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam HAMBURG (Reuters) - Volkswagen AG ( VOWG_p.DE ) will invest 1.4 billion euros ($1.7 billion) in new technologies including electric trucks and buses by 2022, VW<56>s trucks chief Andreas Renschler said. The money will go toward electric drives, autonomous vehicles and cloud-based systems, he said on the sidelines of a company event on Wednesday. He also said a spin-off of VW<56>s trucks business remained an option. Commercial truck makers are investing in electrification as regulators and policy makers step up pressure to curtail or eliminate pollution in big cities. Navistar International Corp ( NAV.N ) and Volkswagen Truck & Bus announced plans last month to collaborate on electric vehicles, saying they would launch an electric medium-duty truck in North America by late 2019. VW<56>s German rival Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ) last month delivered the first of a smaller range of electric delivery trucks to customers in New York. Renschler earlier told news agency Bloomberg he expected electric trucks for local deliveries to exceed a 5 percent market share by 2025. Reporting by Jan Schwartz; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-trucks-volkswagen-electric/vw-to-develop-electric-trucks-in-1-7-billion-technology-drive-idUSKBN1CG1VF'|'2017-10-11T17:04:00.000+03:00'
'952290aa9d3d0a2d033676578a0df0da1c78f417'|'Fiat Chrysler pushes back on consolidation with China''s Great Wall'|'FILE PHOTO: Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne answers questions from the media during the FCA Investors Day at the Chrysler World Headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan, U.S., on May 6, 2014. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - Fiat Chrysler Automobiles ( FCHA.MI ) Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne said on Monday he was not sure consolidation with China<6E>s Great Wall Motor Co Ltd was the answer, pushing back against the Chinese automaker<65>s earlier expressed interest in his company.Speaking to reporters, Marchionne said there were <20>sensitive issues associated with trans-national mergers,<2C> and he did not believe those issues had been thoroughly thought through between the two automakers.In August, Great Wall made a direct overture to FCA to acquire part of the Italian-American auto company, with a special interest in FCA<43>s Jeep brand.While Marchionne has said in the past that he wants to find a partner or buyer for the world<6C>s seventh-largest automaker as costs rise, he said aggregation with Great Wall would be difficult as the two companies do not overlap in terms of market or products.Asked whether FCA would sell Jeep as a separate unit, Marchionne said that option was not being considered.Reporting by Alana Wise; Editing by Bernadette Baum '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fiat-chrysler-great-wall-motor-marchi/fiat-chrysler-pushes-back-on-consolidation-with-chinas-great-wall-idUSKBN1CE1P3'|'2017-10-09T17:41:00.000+03:00'
'1d57e2102a760eb3f79f401f355eb69a98bb392a'|'Britain''s Trinity Mirror sees better ad market, third quarter revenue falls 8 percent'|'October 9, 2017 / 6:20 AM / in 40 minutes Britain''s Trinity Mirror sees better ad market, third quarter revenue falls 8 percent Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Trinity Mirror ( TNI.L ), publisher of the Daily Mirror tabloid, said on Monday it was seeing signs of stronger demand for advertising in its national titles as a decline in like-for-like revenue improved slightly in the last quarter. The company, which is in talks to buy rival titles from Northern & Shell, said group like-for-like revenue fell 8 percent in the third quarter, an improvement on the 9 percent decline in the first half. <20>We are experiencing improving trends in nationally sourced print advertising revenues, though local advertising, particularly classified remain challenging and volatile,<2C> the company said. Reporting by Paul Sandle; editing by Kate Holton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-trinity-mirror-outlook/britains-trinity-mirror-sees-better-ad-market-third-quarter-revenue-falls-8-percent-idUKKBN1CE0CY'|'2017-10-09T09:20:00.000+03:00'
'6a011b674e33d39e528d0426c076b3e36db5dba4'|'Mediaset, Vivendi lawyers in talks over pay-TV dispute, deal seen difficult - source'|'October 9, 2017 / 8:37 AM / in 18 minutes Mediaset, Vivendi lawyers in talks over pay-TV dispute, deal seen difficult: source Reuters Staff 1   woman walks walk past the main entrance of the entertainment-to-telecoms conglomerate Vivendi''s headquarters in Paris, France, April 8, 2015. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo MILAN (Reuters) - Lawyers representing Italian broadcaster Mediaset and French media group Vivendi are holding talks over a possible solution to a legal dispute between the two companies, an Italian source close to the matter said on Monday. The source said it will be difficult to reach an agreement. The two companies have been at loggerheads since Vivendi backtracked last year on a deal to buy Mediaset<65>s pay-TV unit. Il Sole 24 Ore said on Saturday the two sides were negotiating a possible solution ahead of a court hearing scheduled for Dec. 19, adding that a planned joint-venture between Telecom Italia and Vivendi<64>s pay-TV arm Canal + could be extended to Mediaset as part of a potential deal. Mediaset shares rose 5 percent in early trading with brokers saying reports of contacts between the two companies were a   for the broadcaster. Reporting by Giancarlo Navach, editing by Paola Arosio'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-mediaset-vivendi-paytv/mediaset-vivendi-lawyers-in-talks-over-pay-tv-dispute-deal-seen-difficult-source-idUKKBN1CE0PA'|'2017-10-09T11:36:00.000+03:00'
'9267ec80d8123bf9051ea527d9ffd60b465f6190'|'Exclusive: Honeywell prepares to spin off businesses -sources'|'A view of the corporate sign outside the Honeywell International Automation and Control Solutions manufacturing plant in Golden Valley, Minnesota, January 28, 2010. REUTERS/Eric Miller (Reuters) - Honeywell International Inc ( HON.N ) plans to spin off non-core assets and create at least two new publicly listed companies, as the U.S. industrial conglomerate seeks to streamline its business, according to people familiar with the matter.The move would represent the first major shakeup at the Morris Plains, New Jersey-based company since Darius Adamczyk succeeded David Cote as chief executive in April. It comes after Honeywell said in September it would raise its annual dividend by 12 percent.The sources said on Sunday that while Honeywell would defy calls by one of its shareholders, activist hedge fund Third Point LLC, to spin off its aerospace division, it would still seek to carve out assets worth several billions of dollars.Honeywell is considering placing its turbochargers business, which produces components that improve the performance and efficiency of cars and trucks, into one of the newly created companies, the sources said. Honeywell lists turbochargers as part of its aerospace business.The sources did not disclose which other assets Honeywell was looking to spin off and asked not to be identified because the deliberations were confidential.Honeywell is hoping to unveil the spinoff plan as early as this week, though the announcement could be delayed, the sources added.Honeywell, which has a market capitalization of $109 billion, declined to comment.Honeywell<6C>s businesses include energy efficient products and solutions for homes, specialty chemicals, electronic and advanced materials, and sensing, safety and security technologies for buildings, homes and industries.Third Point has argued that Honeywell is undervalued compared to peers in industrial automation, and that spinning off the entire aerospace business would create $20 billion in shareholder value.Honeywell<6C>s aerospace business, its biggest, also makes auxiliary power units and engines for aircraft manufactured by companies such as Bombardier Inc ( BBDb.TO ), Textron Inc ( TXT.N ) and General Dynamics Corp ( GD.N ).Last year, Honeywell approached peer United Technologies Corp ( UTX.N ) to discuss a potential combination but was rebuffed. Last month, United Technologies struck a $30 billion agreement to buy avionics and interiors maker Rockwell Collins Inc ( COL.N ). Analysts have said this deal positions United Technologies to also spin off assets down the line, though no such deal has been announced.Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Additional reporting by Alwyn Scott in New York; Editing by Richard Chang '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-honeywell-spinoff-exclusive/exclusive-honeywell-prepares-to-spin-off-businesses-sources-idINKBN1CD0WR'|'2017-10-08T17:34:00.000+03:00'
'd8e1c21e640ac2dd37fbd7aea8572d000cb775e9'|'U.S. Gulf refiners, ports assess facilities after Nate'|'HOUSTON, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Oil ports and some refineries in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were assessing their facilities on Sunday to decide when they could reopen after Hurricane Nate made landfall on Saturday night near the mouth of the Mississippi river.The storm, which weakened on Sunday to a tropical depression and was moving inland toward the Tennessee Valley and Central Appalachian Mountains, killed 30 people in Central America before speeding across the central U.S. Gulf of Mexico, where more than 90 percent of oil output remained shut on Saturday.Phillips 66<36>s 247,000-barrel-per day Alliance refinery and Valero<72>s 125,000 bpd Meraux refinery, both in Louisiana, were reported undamaged after the passage of Nate, according to sources familiar with their operations.Alliance may restart some units on Sunday but may not resume production until midweek because of the limited availability of crude oil at the U.S. Gulf, the sources said.A Phillips 66 spokesman said the firm had no update on the status of the refinery on Sunday morning. Valero did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Nate forced the closure of more than triple the volume of Gulf offshore crude production than Hurricane Harvey did from late August to early September, according to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. More than 1.6 million bpd of oil and 2.48 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas output remained shut on Saturday after more than 300 offshore platforms were evacuated.The status of PBF Energy Inc<6E>s Chalmette refinery in Louisiana and Chevron Corp<72>s Pascagoula refinery in Mississippi is unclear. The companies did not respond to requests for comment on their operations.As of Sunday morning, the ports of New Orleans in Louisiana and Mobile in Alabama remained closed to inbound and outbound vessel traffic, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.<2E>Post-storm assessments are planned for today to decide further action,<2C> a Coast Guard spokeswoman said.About 18 oil tankers were sheltered along the Mississippi River near New Orleans, half of them loaded with crude or refined products, as port authorities established a safety zone until Sunday night to protect vessels from hazards from severe weather, according to Reuters vessel tracking data.In Mobile, Alabama, two tankers were near the port, according to the Reuters data. (Reporting by Marianna Parraga and Erwin Seba; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/storm-nate-oil/u-s-gulf-refiners-ports-assess-facilities-after-nate-idINL2N1MJ08W'|'2017-10-08T14:33:00.000+03:00'
'080ee52263939977320fe754f25901a81dd70ad1'|'UK statisticians say made error in labour data watched by BoE'|'October 9, 2017 / 7:52 AM / in 5 minutes UK statisticians say made error in labour data watched by BoE Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A man speaks on his phone outside the Bank of England in the City of London, Britain, August 23, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s statistics office said it made an error in its measure of growth in costs in the labour market, one of the pieces of data that the Bank of England is looking at closely as it considers whether to raise interest rates next month. The Office for National Statistics said it would correct the data later on Monday. The ONS said on Friday that annual growth in unit labour costs - the cost to employers to produce a given amount of output - was its slowest in over a year at 1.6 percent in the second quarter, and down from 2.4 percent in the first. The Times newspaper said the ONS was expected to raise the second-quarter estimate to about 2.4 percent, stronger than the BoE<6F>s forecasts. Writing by William Schomberg; editing by John Stonestreet '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy/uk-statisticians-say-made-error-in-labour-data-watched-by-boe-idUKKBN1CE0L9'|'2017-10-09T11:13:00.000+03:00'
'5339945a2d196cefec9546e43b8d57deb639f697'|'BAE Systems ''planning 1,000 job cuts'' - Business'|'BAE Systems ''planning 1,000 job cuts'' Reports link job losses at Warton factory in Preston to slowdown in production of Eurofighter Typhoon The Eurofighter Typhoon production line at BAE Systems<6D> Warton plant. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters BAE Systems ''planning 1,000 job cuts'' Reports link job losses at Warton factory in Preston to slowdown in production of Eurofighter Typhoon View more sharing options Monday 9 October 2017 18.14 BST First published on Monday 9 October 2017 12.15 BST Britain<69>s biggest defence contractor, BAE Systems , is reportedly planning to cut more than 1,000 manufacturing jobs. Many of the cuts will affect BAE<41>s Warton factory in Preston, Lancashire, but there will also be job losses at other locations, Sky News reported . BAE is expected to make an announcement later by Tuesday, when it is due to release an update on trading. The company, which makes the Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft and Britain<69>s nuclear submarines, employs 34,600 people in the UK, out of 83,100 worldwide. US escalates trade dispute with UK and Canada over Bombardier Read more The defence firm did not confirm the job cuts but said in a statement: <20>BAE Systems continually reviews its operations to make sure we are performing as effectively and efficiently as possible, delivering our commitments to existing customers and ensuring we are best placed to secure future business. If and when there are any changes proposed we are committed to communicating with our employees and their representatives first.<2E> Britain<69>s largest union, Unite, called on the UK government to end the uncertainty for thousands of BAE workers by committing to build the next-generation fighter jet in the UK. Unite is demanding and urgent meeting with BAE and that it <20>comes clean over its plans<6E>. The union estimates that by 2020, a quarter of the UK<55>s defence spend will be benefiting American companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin.The Unite assistant general secretary. Steve Turner, said: <20>If these job cuts materialise it will significantly undermine our nation<6F>s sovereign defence capability and leave us reliant on foreign powers and foreign companies for the successor to the Typhoon and the defence of the nation. <20>Ministers should be under no illusion. Once these jobs are gone, they are gone for a generation and with them the skills and ability to control our own defence and manufacture the next generation of fighter jets and other defence equipment in the UK ... At a time of Brexit, these are precisely the kind of jobs that the UK government should be protecting.<2E> BAE<41>s decision does not appear to be related to the Brexit vote , although it is likely to feature in discussions between the prime minister, Theresa May, and UK business leaders on Monday. The job cuts are reportedly linked to a slowdown in production of the Typhoon, amid uncertainty about the timing of a large order from Saudi Arabia . It is the first major move by the BAE chief executive, Charles Woodburn , who took over from Ian King on 1 July. According to Sky, Woodburn said in August: <20>We obviously have to review our [Typhoon] production demand very carefully. We are confident that we will win further Typhoon orders, what we can<61>t be confident around is the timing.<2E> In August BAE reported an 11% rise in half-year underlying profits to <20>945m and said it was on track to meet its full-year target. It is the third-biggest defence manufacturer in the world, with key markets in the US, Australia and Saudi Arabia. Topics '|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/09/bae-systems-is-planning-1000-job-cuts'|'2017-10-09T19:18:00.000+03:00'
'5a666a1037db179dc137b483c4b31ac72157773a'|'PRESS DIGEST- Financial Times - Oct 10'|'Oct 10 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Financial Times. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.Headlines* Kwek Leng Beng to take Millennium & Copthorne private on.ft.com/2ycd6Dd* BAE lines up 1,000 UK job cuts on.ft.com/2yc19xo* Royal Mail to file injunction to stop nationwide strike on.ft.com/2yc3NmA* UK business leaders tell May Brexit transition essential on.ft.com/2yca1D1Overview- Singapore<72>s City Developments on Monday offered 552.5p a share to buy 35 percent of Millennium & Copthorne Hotels Plc it does not already own.- BAE Systems is expected to cut more than 1,000 jobs. The move will hit the company<6E>s centre of air combat expertise at Warton in Lancashire.- Royal Mail is to lodge an application with the High Court for an injunction in a bid to stop the first nationwide strike hitting the UK postal service since it was privatised.- Britain Prime Minister Theresa May was told by a group of 10 business leaders, who met her on Monday, that a transition period after Brexit was absolutely essential. (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-press-ft/press-digest-financial-times-oct-10-idUSL8N1MK5Z3'|'2017-10-10T02:37:00.000+03:00'
'208a6f48184ecb7fd9924193a736726ad3def247'|'Anadarko to invest $200 million in Peruvian oil area -Peru''s president'|'LIMA (Reuters) - U.S.-based Anadarko Petroleum will invest some $200 million to develop an offshore oil area near Peru<72>s northern coast, Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said on Monday.Kuczynski and company executives signed three exploration and drilling agreements with state oil agency Perupetro in blocks Z-61, Z-62 and Z-63 in the Pacific Ocean adjacent to the Lambayeque and La Libertad regions.<2E>It<49>s important that Anadarko has chosen to come to Peru, to an area as vigorous as the northern region,<2C> Kuczynski said. <20>These are deep waters of 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) where it is very difficult to work,<2C> Kuczynski said in a speech after signing the contracts.Peru is trying to increase oil output, which has fallen to about 40,000 barrels of crude a day, about a third of what it produced in the 1970s, as investment lagged.In May, the government said state-run China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) would invest some $2 billion in an oil and natural gas block in a jungle region in southern Peru.Reporting by Marco Aquino; Writing by Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Peter Cooney '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-anadarko-petrol-peru/anadarko-to-invest-200-million-in-peruvian-oil-area-perus-president-idUSKBN1CE2NB'|'2017-10-10T02:09:00.000+03:00'
'1048d1b70c2d2090730f14dfa7011d77ad1b3821'|'Boeing helped finance bailout of Monarch Airlines in 2016- FT'|'Oct 8 (Reuters) - Boeing Co had pumped in more than 100 million pounds ($130 million) into Britain<69>s now defunct Monarch Airlines, the Financial Times reported.The capital infusion, through Monarch<63>s offshore holding company Petrol Jersey, was carried out in several tranches between October 2016 and March this year, the FT said.The airline<6E>s owner Greybull refused to comment on the details of the financing, saying that they were <20>commercially confidential<61>, FT added. It denied that there had been anything secretive about the transaction.<2E>As a regulated body, all financing arrangements provided to Monarch were reviewed and approved by relevant authorities,<2C> Greybull told the newspaper.The FT said Boeing had refused to comment.Reuters could not immediately reach Greybull Capital and Boeing for comment outside regular business hours.Last year, Monarch secured a 165 million pound lifeline from Greybull, enabling the airline to renew a key operating licence and fund new aircraft.The equity investment had been agreed only hours before its operating licence was due to expire, allowing the airline, which sells flights and package holidays to tourist destinations, to keep flying.The 48-year-old airline had said that the investment would fund the replacement of its Airbus jets with more fuel-efficient Boeing 737 MAX-8 aircraft between 2018 and 2021.The low-cost carrier, which collapsed last week, is the largest British airline to go bust affecting nearly 900,000 passengers in total.$1 = 0.7643 pounds Reporting by Sangameswaran S in Bengaluru, editing by David Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/monarch-airlines-boeing-bailout/boeing-helped-finance-bailout-of-monarch-airlines-in-2016-ft-idINL4N1MJ0FU'|'2017-10-08T18:19:00.000+03:00'
'99eb5c5f72acfc699e9aeb25dede1e4cee522b04'|'CSX resumes rail operations to U.S. Gulf Coast areas following Nate'|'October 9, 2017 / 3:39 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago CSX resumes rail operations to U.S. Gulf Coast areas following Nate Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 9 (Reuters) - CSX Corp said on Monday it has fully resumed operations into New Orleans, Louisiana and other U.S. Gulf Coast areas following the landfall of Hurricane Nate over the weekend. The No. 3 U.S. railroad said Nate, the fourth major storm to hit the United States in less than two months, caused <20>minimal impact<63> to its rail network. Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/storm-nate-csx/csx-resumes-rail-operations-to-u-s-gulf-coast-areas-following-nate-idUSL2N1MK0MF'|'2017-10-09T18:39:00.000+03:00'
'edf266ebe47eb7de7ca634b51480ff9471963efa'|'Australia''s AMP pays $500 million-plus for Carlyle''s ITS ConGlobal: source - Reuters'|'SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia<69>s AMP Capital has bought U.S. logistics group ITS ConGlobal from Carlyle Infrastructure Partners, marking the Australian fund manager<65>s largest-ever North American deal.AMP did not provide a deal value in its statement on Monday, but a source familiar with the transaction told Reuters the acquisition was worth more than $500 million.The price for ITS ConGlobal was about 10.5 times the EBITDA of the freight, terminal and transport firm, said the source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.AMP, which last year raised $2.4 billion for infrastructure investments, will look at further mid-sized acquisitions in the sector, according to the statement.<2E>Sectors that we are continuing to focus on in North America include transportation, energy and communications where there is an exciting pipeline of deals,<2C> AMP Capital<61>s head of Americas Infrastructure Equity, Dylan Foo, said in the statement.A Carlyle spokesperson was not immediately available for comment. The private equity firm had acquired ITS Technologies & Logistics LLC in 2008.Reporting by Paulina Duran in Sydney; Editing by Himani Sarkar '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-its-conglobal-m-a-amp/australias-amp-pays-500-million-plus-for-carlyles-its-conglobal-source-idINKBN1CE033'|'2017-10-09T00:10:00.000+03:00'
'3d04c2efb9b8e53a358b540d6e426e67915f582c'|'Qatar discussing idea of dollar bond with market, no decision'|'October 9, 2017 / 9:27 AM / Updated 39 minutes ago Qatar discussing idea of dollar bond with market, no decision Davide Barbuscia 3 Min Read DUBAI, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Qatar has been discussing with banks the idea of issuing an international bond this year, but no decision has been made yet, a Qatari finance ministry official told Reuters on Monday. Regional and international commercial bankers confirmed that the Qatari government had been asking banks how a potential dollar bond issue might be received by the market. They said discussions were in the nature of regular contacts which many governments maintain with the market to gauge their fund-raising options, rather than preparatory talks for an issue. Qatar issued a $9 billion bond in June last year with maturities of five, 10 and 30 years. The bonds were yielding 2.9 percent, 3.5 percent and 4.4 percent respectively on Monday, Thomson Reuters data showed. But the country<72>s access to the international bond market has been complicated by the decision of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt to cut diplomatic and transport ties with Qatar in June this year. The four states accused Doha of supporting terrorism, which Doha denies. <20>Logic would dictate that the government would have to pay some premium<75> for the current political uncertainty, said a debt capital markets banker at a Qatari bank. <20>The investor base that they had in 2016 would not be the same - some accounts would not be there for sure, but global demand for Middle East is high,<2C> he added. Qatar<61>s potential deal would follow Saudi Arabia<69>s $12.5 billion bond in September and Abu Dhabi<62>s $10 billion bond earlier this month. Both the deals were heavily oversubscribed, receiving a combined demand of around $70 billion. Given the high level of global demand, Qatar might only pay a premium of as much as 10 basis points over its last issue, a banker at an international bank said. Qatar<61>s international reserves and foreign currency liquidity fell sharply after the sanctions were imposed, but partially rebounded in August, official data showed last week. Bankers said this may have been the result of a liquidity injection into the reserves by Qatar<61>s sovereign wealth fund, which has enough money to support the balance of payments for years. (Additional reporting by Tom Arnold in Dubai and Sudip Roy in London; Editing by Andrew Torchia/Jeremy Gaunt)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/qatar-bond/qatar-discussing-idea-of-dollar-bond-with-market-no-decision-idUSL8N1MK1ED'|'2017-10-09T12:26:00.000+03:00'
'206e7c40b688f7799a6047409594cacfbbeb1479'|'Spanish regulator authorizes Atlantia bid for Abertis'|'FILE PHOTO: The Abertis''s logo is seen during a news conference in Barcelona, Spain, April 12, 2016. REUTERS/Albert Gea/File Photo MADRID/MILAN (Reuters) - Spain<69>s market watchdog approved Italian infrastructure group Atlantia<69>s ( ATL.MI ) proposed takeover of Spanish rival Abertis ( ABE.MC ) on Monday, clearing one of the hurdles to the creation of the world<6C>s biggest toll-roads operator.Approval comes nearly five months after Atlantia announced it was offering 16.3 billion euros ($19 billion) in cash and shares to buy Abertis.Spanish regulator CNMV said in a market filing the offer was conditional on shareholders representing at least 10.1 percent of Abertis share capital accepting payment in Atlantia shares.In addition the offer must be accepted by shareholders representing at least 50 percent plus one share of the Spanish company.Atlantia is offering to pay 16.5 euros for each Abertis share, a level that CNMV said was equitable.Abertis shareholders will have 15 calendar days to accept the bid starting from the first trading day following the formal publication of the offer<65>s prospectus, the watchdog said.One source with knowledge of the matter said this was expected to happen in the next few days.Though the offer was described as <20>friendly<6C> by Atlantia, Abertis<69>s shareholders have not expressed a view on the bid and potential counter-bids could still emerge.The board of the Spanish company must publish its assessment of the bid within 10 days after the start of the acceptance period, Atlantia said.The top shareholder in Abertis is Criteria Caixa, the financial arm of a politically connected and powerful banking foundation that controls Catalonia<69>s largest lender Caixabank ( CABK.MC ).Several potential rivals for acquiring Abertis have been named in media reports in recent months, but only Spanish builder ACS ( ACS.MC ), which is headed by Real Madrid soccer club Chairman Florentino Perez, has said it is looking at making a possible counter-offer.ACS is expected to decide this month whether to make an offer.In the prospectus published on the website of Spain<69>s CNMV, the Italian group said it was leaving the door open to changing the bid to an all-cash offer.Atlantia, controlled by Italy<6C>s Benetton family, also said in the document it would sell a portion of Abertis<69>s 34 percent shareholding in telecom masts company Cellnex ( CLNX.MC ) to avoid having to make a full bid for Cellnex.It also repeated it was ready to sell Abertis<69>s satellites business Hispasat if requested by the Spanish government.writing by Isla Binnie, Francesca Landini; Editing by Greg MahlichOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-abertis-m-a-atlantia-approval/spanish-regulator-authorizes-atlantia-bid-for-abertis-idINKBN1CE0YW'|'2017-10-09T08:12:00.000+03:00'
'4e8b392b3adcd6e55162ce95d5ad9f1a2e18e367'|'Philadelphia-area refiners urge Trump to reform biofuels program'|'October 9, 2017 / 8:17 PM / a minute ago Philadelphia-area refiners urge Trump to reform biofuels program Jarrett Renshaw 3 Min Read TRAINER, Pa (Reuters) - Oil refinery workers, executives and local politicians gathered near Philadelphia on Monday to urge the White House revamp the nation<6F>s renewable fuels program, arguing the future of their plants are at stake. The U.S. renewable fuel program requires higher levels of ethanol and other biofuels to be blended into the nation<6F>s fuel pool, a requirement pitting the oil industry against the powerful farm lobby. President Donald Trump has promised corn growers he would protect the program, while also signaling that he sympathizes with U.S. refiners who bear its costs. The speakers told a crowd of about 100 that the tradable credits at the center of the renewable fuel program have been exploited by banks and trading firms, threatening the viability of merchant refiners like Monroe Energy and PBF Energy. <20>Big oil companies and Wall Street investment firms are earning windfall profits and putting all this burden on the small, independent refiners,<2C> Jeff Warmann, chief executive of Monroe Energy, a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines Inc and operator of 185,000 barrel-per-day refinery outside of Philadelphia. Warmann said speculators have driven up the price of the credits to the point his company spends $500,000 each day to comply with the program. Ethanol supporters dispute the program is a problem, noting that the region<6F>s refineries were shuttering when credits traded at a pennies a piece. <20>Big Oil needs to stop scapegoating the RFS and get about the business of providing consumers with lower cost,<2C> Renewable Fuels Association CEO Bob Dinneen said on Monday in a statement. The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS, requires U.S. refiners and importers blend ethanol into their fuels or purchase credits from companies that do. The credits cost pennies apiece in 2013 but have spent most of the past three years above 50 cents. The mostly widely traded credit was priced at 75 cents on Monday, traders said. The higher cost will drive some of the region<6F>s five oil refineries out of business, speakers said, noting recent hurricanes underscored the importance of Philadelphia-area plants to the nation. <20>Take the refineries on the East Coast off the grid, and we<77>re all reliant on Texas to keep American energy secure,<2C> said U.S. Republican Representative Patrick Meehan, whose district includes the Delta refinery. The credits fell to a year-to-date low of 34 cents in March amid optimism that Trump would revamp RFS and shift some costs to retailers and others, but it now appears he will not make that change. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has angered the biofuels industry by calling for less biofuel blending. It also wants to allow exported ethanol to earn credits, increasing the pool of credits and driving down prices. <20>This is manufacturing,<2C> Meehan said of the refineries threaten by higher costs. <20>You don<6F>t have to bring it back. It<49>s here today. We just have to keep it.<2E> Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Marguerita Choy'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-refineries-biofuels/philadelphia-area-refiners-urge-trump-to-reform-biofuels-program-idUSKBN1CE2DG'|'2017-10-09T23:12:00.000+03:00'
'29918395614735cf4e1d8c7de495f4adc40a7a5f'|'Message from the IMF bridge: full speed ahead, mind the inequality'|'October 6, 2017 / 12:13 PM / Updated 11 hours ago Message from the IMF bridge: full speed ahead, mind the inequality Jeremy Gaunt 4 Min Read Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, speaks at the Bank of England conference ''Independence 20 Years On'' at the Fishmonger''s Hall in London, Britain September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde LONDON (Reuters) - When Christine Lagarde, the International Monetary Fund<6E>s no-nonsense boss, spoke to Harvard University this past week, she had some good news: nearly 75 percent of the world is experiencing an economic upswing. Why, then, was her speech given the somewhat bearish title <20>A Time to Repair the Roof<6F>? One reason is that the IMF has to worry about everyone, not just those who are doing well. If nearly 75 percent of world economies are growing, more than 25 percent are not. Some of the strugglers - not for the first time - can be found in Africa, where the two biggest economies, Nigeria and South Africa have only just crawled out of recession and could still be teetering. The IMF<4D>s last outlook for the sub-Sahara region suggests 2017 growth of 2.6 percent - around a full percentage below that for the world as a whole and less than half the 1999-2008 average of 5.6 percent. <20>The recovery is not complete,<2C> Lagarde told the Harvard audience. <20>Some countries are growing too slowly, and last year 47 countries experienced negative GDP growth per capita.<2E> This brings up a second reason for Lagarde<64>s tempered celebration of recovery - inequality. There is no question that the gap between countries has been narrowing, as Lagarde told the Harvard glitterati. China, Brazil and India, for example, are now major economic players. But within economies themselves there are many left behind. Most of these are the <20>bottom billion<6F> described by economist Paul Collier in his 2007 book of the same name - people completely untethered to the global economy and any wealth it might bring. But others in advanced economies - though relatively less poor - are now railing against being left behind. They range from Britain<69>s public servants to primary school teachers in the Netherlands and nurses in parts of Australia. The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union, and the rise -- albeit modest -- of the far right in Germany are all widely viewed as reflecting disaffection brought on by the unequal share of the global economy<6D>s spoils. Hence, Lagarde<64>s focus on what needs to be done right now: rich countries should spend more, central banks should communicate more clearly and public debt needs to be brought under control. It also explains the title of her address, a riff on John F. Kennedy<64>s comment: <20>Pleasant as it may be to bask in the warmth of recovery... the time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.<2E> EUROPE<50>S PROBLEM It is not unrelated that the euro zone - barreling along a surprisingly smooth growth path - finds itself facing two potentially destructive threats. The first is the possibility in the coming week that Catalonian separatists will declare unilateral independence from Spain. Setting aside the politics, such a move could strip nearly 20 percent off Spanish GDP - a bit like California and Florida together cutting loose from the United States. How the European Union would handle such a things would simply add to its Brexit headache. Rump Spain would retain its place in the top four of euro zone economies, but much diminished. The second hit would come if eurosceptics - some of who want to leave the euro zone -- gain power in Italy at an election that must take place next year. Germany<6E>s economy is steaming ahead - latest data: industrial orders soaring in August - and in France, the official statistics agency has raised its 2017 growth outlook to the highest since 2011. But they cannot carry the load alone, one reason, perhaps for the European Central Bank<6E>s softly-slowly approach to pullin
'2046268dd0c8976b55c08e06ecd5815ee85d5358'|'India wants foreign investors for $300 bln worth of energy projects'|'October 10, 2017 / 12:03 PM / Updated 5 hours ago India wants foreign investors for $300 billion worth of energy projects Reuters Staff 2 Min Read India''s Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan speaks on phone during an interview with Reuters in New Delhi, India, May 5, 2016. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/File Photo NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India wants to attract foreign investors to $300 billion worth of energy projects planned for the next decade, its oil minister said, as the world<6C>s third biggest oil consumer aims to cut imports. India ships in about 80 percent of its oil needs, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to reduce to 67 percent by 2020. The planned projects will include increasing the country<72>s refining capacity, oil and gas block exploration, and developing gas infrastructure, including for transporting LNG and regasification. <20>In the next 10 years, India will offer projects worth $300 billion<6F> to foreign companies keen to invest in the country, Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan told an energy conference in New Delhi on Tuesday. India<69>s oil and gas output has been stagnant for years while its fuel demand has risen with economic expansion, hitting federal finances with an import bill worth billions of dollars. Modi<64>s government has been taking steps to unlock the country<72>s vast energy reserves and boost foreign investment in the sector and has relaxed rules, including on pricing and marketing. Encouraged by the reforms, BP and Reliance Industries this month announced a plan to invest $6 billion to revive a deepwater gas field off the country<72>s east coast. Reporting by Promit Mukherjee and Neha Dasgupta; Writing by Mayank Bhardwaj; Editing by Malini Menon and Susan Fenton '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-oil-minister-investment/india-wants-foreign-investors-for-300-bln-worth-of-energy-projects-idINKBN1CF1H6'|'2017-10-10T15:03:00.000+03:00'
'9093cf996f8e876cb9b4fe6ad435ad5814fd03a3'|'UK tech firm Micro Focus to curb code reviews by ''high risk'' governments'|'October 9, 2017 / 10:48 PM / Updated 5 hours ago UK tech firm Micro Focus to curb code reviews by ''high risk'' governments Joel Schectman , Dustin Volz 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A sign stands outside the offices of Micro Focus after they and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co announced that Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co will spin off and merge its non-core software assets with Britain''s Micro Focus International in a deal worth $8.8 billion, in Newbury, Britain, September 8, 2016. REUTERS/Eddie Keogh WASHINGTON (Reuters) - British tech firm Micro Focus International Plc ( MCRO.L ), the new owner of ArcSight security software, said it would restrict reviews of the core operating instructions in its products by <20>high-risk<73> governments, after Reuters reported that the application had been scrutinized by Russia. Micro Focus did not respond to questions seeking to clarify whether the countries included Russia or how it would determine which reviews were likely to be shared with governments. But a company spokeswoman said future reviews would require approval from Micro Focus<75>s chief executive. And a Micro Focus blog posted on Monday by ArcSight head Jason Schmitt defended the reviews of core software operating instructions, known as source code, as common. He said <20>that dozens of brand-name products have undergone the same type of certification testing.<2E> <20>Micro Focus will not allow any source code reviews if we reasonably believe the governments of high risk countries will have access to that review,<2C> the Micro Focus spokeswoman said in an email to Reuters. Micro Focus purchased the ArcSight product line from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co ( HPE.N ) in a sale completed last month. Reuters reported last week that HPE allowed a Moscow defense agency to review the inner workings of ArcSight, a cyber defense software used by the Pentagon to guard its computer networks. Cyber security experts, former U.S. intelligence officials and former ArcSight employees said the practice could help Moscow discover weaknesses in the software, potentially helping attackers to blind the U.S. military to a cyber attack. Russia<69>s evaluation of ArcSight concluded last year, at a time when Washington was accusing Moscow of an increasing number of cyber attacks against American companies, U.S. politicians and government agencies, including the Pentagon. Russia has repeatedly denied the allegations. Russia in recent years has stepped up demands for source code reviews as a requirement for doing business in the country, Reuters reported in June, and many companies have complied. ArcSight, and other HPE security products, were sold to Micro Focus in a transaction completed in September. Micro Focus also said it would notify the U.S. government and seek feedback before allowing source code reviews <20>where applicable.<2E> The company spokeswoman did not respond to questions requesting clarification of when such notifications would apply. Some companies have decided to stop allowing source code reviews as a condition to do business in a foreign market. For example, Symantec decided in 2016 that they would no longer allow such reviews because of security concerns. HPE did not alert the Defense Information Systems Agency, which purchases ArcSight for the military, that it had allowed the Russian review, a DISA spokeswoman told Reuters. The DISA spokeswoman said the agency has no immediate plans to pullback on its use of ArcSight or reconsider its procurement rules in light of the Reuters report. The Pentagon continually evaluates software for security risks, the DISA spokeswoman said. According to Russian regulatory records and interviews with people with direct knowledge of the issue, the review of ArcSight<68>s code was conducted by Echelon, a company with close ties to the Russian military. The review was done on behalf of Russia<69>s Federal Service for Technical and Export Control (FSTEC), a defense agency that counters cyber espionage. HPE said code 
'2d923b8dec845b2c2c0bbb50b153764c5173faad'|'China services sector growth falls to 21-month low in September - Caixin PMI'|'October 9, 2017 / 1:54 AM / in 6 minutes China services sector growth falls to 21-month low in September: Caixin PMI Reuters Staff 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A basket vendor walks past red lanterns serving as decorations to celebrate the new year outside a shopping mall in Kunming, Yunnan province January 6, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer BEIJING, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Business activity in China<6E>s services sector grew at its slowest pace in 21 months in September as the pace of new business cooled, a private survey showed. The survey was in sharp contrast to an official gauge of the non-manufacturing sector that showed the services sector expanded at the fastest clip since 2014 in September, blurring the picture on how a key part of the economy is performing. The Caixin/Markit services purchasing managers<72> index (PMI) fell to 50.6 in September, the lowest reading since December 2012 and one of the weakest since the survey began in 2005. A reading above 50 indicates growth, and any lower than that signals contraction. The index had hit a three month high of 52.7 in August. New business in September grew at a slower pace than in the previous month but was still relatively solid with a reading a 52.0, while backlogs of work declined for the first time in five months and hiring slowed. The survey also showed the services sector continued to see much less inflation than the manufacturing industry, in line with the view that price pressures in China are concentrated in upstream raw materials industries and are not yet percolating through to the consumer level. Input price inflation for services firms picked up slightly from August but was just barely in expansion territory, while prices charged also rose only marginally after falling in August. China is counting on growth in services, particularly high value-added services in finance and technology, to reduce the economy<6D>s traditional reliance on heavy industry and investment. A separate Caixin/Markit survey last week also showed growth in the manufacturing sector slowed in September, but factory activity still grew faster than services. Caixin<69>s composite manufacturing and services PMI, also released on Monday, fell to 51.4 in September from 52.4 in August and was the lowest since June. <20>The Chinese economy generally held up well in the third quarter,<2C> Zhengsheng Zhong, director of macroeconomic analysis at CEBM Group, said in a note accompanying the data release. <20>However, the expansion in both manufacturing and services cooled in September, suggesting downward pressure on economic growth may re-emerge in the fourth quarter.<2E> Official measures on both the manufacturing and services industries for September showed growth in both sectors at multi-year highs. The private survey covers fewer companies and focuses more on small and medium-sized firms which have struggled more than their larger, state-owned peers that enjoy easier access to cheap credit. China<6E>s central bank said on Sept. 30 it cut the amount of cash that some banks must hold as reserves for the first time since February 2016 in a bid to encourage more lending to smaller firms and energize the lackluster private sector. Economic data to be released over the next few weeks is expected to show economic growth remains robust and resilient despite tighter monetary policy, welcome news for leadership ahead of a twice-a-decade party congress that kicks off on Oct. 18. China<6E>s economy grew by a stronger-than-forecast 6.9 percent in the first half of the year and is expected to easily beat the government<6E>s full-year target of around 6.5 percent, even if growth fades a bit in coming months. Reporting by Elias Glenn; Editing by Kim Coghill'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-pmi-services-caixin/china-services-sector-growth-falls-to-21-month-low-in-september-caixin-pmi-idUKKBN1CE02R'|'2017-10-09T04:52:00.000+03:00'
'4463de3a2b99f08739aa431796c8669b705eb029'|'Britain''s transport minister to make statement on Monarch collapse'|'October 9, 2017 / 10:47 AM / Updated 18 minutes ago UK discussing Monarch compensation with credit, debit card firms Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Britain''s Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling speaks at the Conservative Party''s conference in Manchester, Britain October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay - LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s transport minister said on Monday the costs of bringing home 110,000 customers of airline Monarch, which collapsed last week, were being discussed with credit and debit card companies. Monarch MONA.UL went bust last week amid intense competition over passengers and a weaker pound following the Brexit vote decimated company profits. It is the largest British airline to collapse and its demise left thousands of customers stranded abroad. That led the government to ask the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to charter aircraft to bring them home - Britain<69>s biggest peacetime repatriation operation. <20>I am also aware of the duty this government has to the taxpayer and ... we<77>ve entered into discussions with several third parties with the aim of recovering costs of the operation,<2C> transport minister Chris Grayling told parliament. <20>We<57>re currently engaged in constructive discussions with the relevant credit and debit card providers so we recoup from them some of the costs to taxpayers of these repatriation flights,<2C> he said in a statement. <20>We<57>re also having similar discussions with other travel providers through which passengers may have booked a Monarch holiday.<2E> Administrators at KPMG are currently in the process of selling off Monarch<63>s assets, a spokeswoman said, including airport slots, prepaid fuel, property and equipment. Three-quarters of Monarch passengers who were abroad when the company folded have now been brought home, Grayling said, with the operation requiring up to 35 planes at any one time, borrowed from 27 different airlines. Monarch<63>s demise also left over 1,800 workers redundant but Grayling said the airline<6E>s experienced former employees were in high demand from rivals. <20>Virgin Atlantic are offering a fast track recruitment process for cabin crew and pilots, and easyJet have invited applications for 500 cabin crew vacancies,<2C> Grayling said. The British Airline Pilots<74> Association and the trade union Unite have both separately criticised Monarch for its handling of staff redundancies last week and said they would take action to secure compensation for them. Reporting by Polina Ivanova; editing by Mark Heinrich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-monarch-airlines-licence-government/britains-transport-minister-to-make-statement-on-monarch-collapse-idUKKBN1CE12V'|'2017-10-09T13:46:00.000+03:00'
'0a96fc87bc1d2768d077a95dcb33cc31865f6d36'|'CEE MARKETS-Currencies rebound, still under pressure from Fed expectations'|'* Serbian central bank repeats rate cut surprise, dinar eases * Robust Czech data fail to lift crown significantly * Hungary cbank seen keeping markets awash in money * Romania holds bond tender, after scrapping a sale last week (Adds Serbian rate cut, analyst comment on Romanian auction) By Sandor Peto BUDAPEST, Oct 9 (Reuters) - The Serbian dinar eased on Monday after the country''s central bank cut interest rates, in its second surprise reduction in two months, while robust Czech economic data boosted expectations for a central bank rate hike there. The dinar shed 0.1 percent against the euro, to trade at 119.33 at 1019 GMT, after the bank lowered its benchmark rate by 25 basis points to 3.5 percent after a slowing in Serbian inflation. Across the region, monetary policy is diverging. Hungary''s central bank cut one of its rates and announced measures to boost liquidity in forint markets, while in August the Czech central bank became the first in the European Union since 2012 to raise rates. The Czech economic data failed to lift the crown, but some of the region''s other currencies and government bonds rose, recovering from a fall triggered by U.S. jobs data which has strengthened expectations for a December interest rate hike in the world''s biggest economy. Czech figures released on Monday showed a fall in unemployment to a record low in September and a higher-than-expected 5.8 percent annual rise in industrial output in August. Annual inflation rose to 2.7 percent in September, the highest in five years. The figures bolstered expectations that the Czech central bank (CNB) will increase interest rates further next month. The crown eased a little further to 25.89 against the euro, after its sharp retreat on Friday following the U.S. jobs data. Last week, at 25.789 it touched its highest levels since the CNB removed a cap that had kept the crown weaker than 27 versus the euro for more than three years. The forint and the zloty recovered from Friday''s lows, and government bond yields in the region mostly fell after a jump on Friday. The forint, trading at 312.10 against the euro, was off the 5-month low hit on Friday at 312.58, but near it. The Hungarian central bank (NBH) is expected to keep liquidity in forint interbank markets abundant, using Monday''s weekly fx swap tender, dealers said. "In the technical sense, the forint should strengthen, but it will not," one Budapest-based trader said, adding that the NBH was likely to keep the forint weak with its dovish policies. With the European Central Bank not rushing to follow the example of the Fed''s tightening, Central European rate-setters have been split. The Czechs, having the lowest inflation target in the region, have started to lift interest rates. Hungary has been easing monetary policy and the Fed rate hike expectations did not deter Serbia to cut rates further as inflation had headed lower. In Romania, where the central bank is facing a liquidity squeeze in leu markets, the government is due to hold a tender of seven-week bonds. Last week Romania rejected all bids at a tender of 2019-expiry bonds. After a surge in Romanian bond yields, the government may cancel the auction or reject the bids, ING analysts said in a note. CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1219 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.890 25.875 -0.06% 4.31% 0 0 Hungary 312.10 312.53 +0.14 -1.05% forint 00 00 % Polish zloty 4.3101 4.3109 +0.02 2.18% % Romanian leu 4.5780 4.5773 -0.02% -0.94% Croatian 7.4990 7.5073 +0.11 0.75% kuna % Serbian 119.33 119.22 -0.09% 3.37% dinar 00 00 Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1058.4 1058.0 +0.03 +14.8 2 6 % 4% Budapest 37946. 37941. +0.01 +18.5 86 82 % 7% Warsaw 2484.2 2479.4 +0.19 +27.5 8 6 % 4% Bucharest 7999.9 7984.3 +0.20 +12.9 5 2 % 1% Ljubljana 808.75 799.73 +1.13 +12.7 % 0% Zagreb 1813.5 1813.2 +0.01 -
'5051d5659927413e4de8a86a8fdb2c0a12c717e2'|'Exclusive - No respite for Indian banks as bad loans hit record $146 billion'|'October 10, 2017 / 1:04 PM / Updated 5 hours ago Exclusive: No respite for Indian banks as bad loans hit record $146 billion Devidutta Tripathy , Suvashree Choudhury 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Commuters walk past a bank sign along a road in New Delhi, India, November 25, 2015. REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee/File Photo MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian banks<6B> sour loans hit a record 9.5 trillion rupees ($145.56 billion) at the end of June, unpublished data shows, suggesting Asia<69>s third-largest economy is no nearer to bringing its bad debt problems under control. A review of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data obtained through right-to-information requests shows banks<6B> total stressed loans - including non-performing and restructured or rolled over loans - rose 4.5 percent in the six months to end-June. In the previous six months they had risen 5.8 percent. While banks remain the main source of funding for India<69>s companies, the stubborn bad debt problem has eaten into bank profits and choked off new lending, especially to smaller firms, at a time when an economy that depends on them is stalling. India grew at its slowest pace in three years in April-June - a concern for the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who faces elections in 2019 and has pledged to create millions of new jobs before then. Banks are having to take higher provisions to account for more defaulters being pushed into bankruptcy. And margins are likely to be squeezed further by proposed new rules to encourage commercial banks to pass on central bank interest rate cuts. To be sure, the bulk of India<69>s sour loans are in the state banks and stem from lending to large conglomerates, especially in steel and infrastructure. But analysts say the rise in bad loans among small firms, and even retail borrowing, is worrying and will do little to encourage new loans to help fuel growth. <20>On the corporate side, we think it<69>s a recognition cycle which is nearing an end,<2C> said Alka Anbarasu, senior analyst at Moody<64>s Investor Service, referring to more bad loans being recognized as such, as banks come under pressure from the RBI and other regulators. <20>But it<69>s really those data points beyond corporate that are causing some worry.<2E> Anbarasu forecast weak quarters ahead for banks before profitability picks up, and several senior bankers from public sector lenders - which account for more than two-thirds of Indian banking assets - agreed the months ahead would be strained. Stressed loans as a percentage of total loans reached 12.6 percent at end-June, according to the RBI data, the highest level in at least 15 years. HIGHER PROVISIONS, WEAKER LOANS Part of the issue for banks and the government is a strict provisioning regime: the RBI wants banks to provide for at least 50 percent of the secured loans to companies taken to bankruptcy proceedings, and 100 percent for the unsecured part. A dozen of the biggest such cases account for nearly 1.78 trillion rupees, or a quarter of total non-performing assets. For those companies, banks will need to provide 180 billion rupees on top of existing provisions, according to July estimates from India Ratings and Research, the local affiliate of Fitch Ratings. More than 20 other sizeable companies are at risk of being taken to bankruptcy court. Bankers say these and other pressures - including rising government bond yields that forced banks to post mark-to-market losses - have added to the squeeze, and hit new loans. According to RBI data, new loans grew at just about 5 percent in the year to March, the lowest growth rate in more than six decades. Several banks have already cut back their loan books to conserve capital. <20>What are they (RBI) thinking while they<65>re taking these steps all at the same time?<3F> said a treasurer at a state-run bank, who didn<64>t want to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue. <20>Do they want banks to wind up their businesses, or do they want to save the banks?<3F> Treasury income accounted for 22.7 
'bbd32d4ce06a6b14602bbec2634c78af8495bbd8'|'A festering scandal saps public trust in Lloyds'|'A festering scandal saps public trust in Lloyds The bank has been too slow to accept responsibility for fraud at HBOS Play audio for this article Pause This is an experimental feature. Give us your feedback. Thank you for your feedback. What do you think? I<>ll use it in the future I don<6F>t think I<>ll use it Please tell us why (optional) Send Feedback A decade on from the global financial crisis, almost no one has been held accountable for the excesses that led to the crash. True, it has been hard to single out culprits when so many were complicit <20> with lenders, borrowers, investors and regulators wilfully blind to the risks they were running. But then there are the cases where criminality was so clear cut, and the victims so severely affected, that they cannot be ignored. The fraud perpetrated on corporate customers of the UK lender HBOS at its Reading branch between 2003 and 2007, as exposed in all its shocking detail in an FT investigation , falls squarely into this category. The scam was run by Lynden Scourfield, a banker dealing with <20>higher-risk<73> customers, and David Mills, who ran a turnround consultancy called Quayside Corporate Services. Mr Scourfield referred struggling small businesses to QCS as a condition of receiving further credit; they were charged huge fees for the supposed service and in some cases were loaded with unmanageable debt before being taken over and asset stripped. One victim, a mother of five, lost her business, home and marriage. Another couple spent years living on benefits and fighting eviction orders. There are scores of similar cases. The fraudsters spent the money they had siphoned off on expensive gifts, luxury holidays and sex. One internal report estimates the total cost of the fraud, including the loans that were written off and the likely compensation, at up to <20>1bn. Many of these details became public at the start of this year in a trial that resulted in jail sentences for six people. But bank executives, regulators and MPs saw evidence of wrongdoing much earlier. HBOS executives assessed the Reading losses in the spring of 2008 and were anxious to avoid having to disclose them to investors. When the bank was taken over later that year by Lloyds <20> in one of the most ill-fated UK bank mergers in memory <20> its new owner neglected to go further, preoccupied as it was with managing its own post-crash crisis and then with finding a way out from under state control after the taxpayer took a stake. Lloyds maintained its own investigations did not prove criminal behaviour and the bank persisted in treating the victims as failed business owners. By 2009, evidence collected by victims was emerging, leading to pressure from the Financial Services Authority and a debate in parliament. But it still took a six-year police investigation <20> which Lloyds did little to expedite <20> before the case could be brought to court. Only since the trial has Lloyds offered any compensation and even now <20> inexcusably <20> just a handful of the affected have had their claims settled. There are serious questions over the independence of the process for determining payouts and of an inquiry the bank has commissioned into its conduct of the affair. The Reading fraud is one of the clearest illustrations of the human cost of bankers<72> delinquent behaviour in the run-up to the crisis. If even now those running the biggest institutions are unwilling to take responsibility for the damage done in those years, and if the authorities fail to hold them to account, it should be no surprise that people feel the system is stacked against them and see talk from the sector of learning <20>lessons<6E> as hot air. This was a life-destroying scam. Although Ant<6E>nio Horta-Os<4F>rio did not preside over it, he was Lloyds chief executive when the bank responded with indifference. Credibility cannot be restored by slamming shareholders with fines. Management is responsible for this kind of malfeasance; it must bear the consequences of its failures. Copyright
'8b9c15b1134a451bdce295e9254a0966f92db79a'|'Statoil drills two dry UK wells, makes one discovery'|'October 9, 2017 / 7:00 AM / in 7 hours Statoil says two UK exploration wells disappoint, makes one discovery Reuters Staff 2 Min Read   of Statoil is seen during a company results presentation in London, Britain February 6, 2015. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo OSLO (Reuters) - Statoil<69>s exploration campaign off Britain yielded one discovery, one dry well and one non-commercial discovery this year, the company said on Monday. Results of the Mariner Segment 9 and Jock Scott wells were disappointing, while the third, a sidetrack to Statoil<69>s Verbier well in the outer Moray Firth, proved at least 25 million barrels of oil. <20>Whilst the results of the other two exploration wells were disappointing, we are convinced of the remaining, high-value potential on the UK continental shelf,<2C> Jenny Morris, Statoil<69>s vice president for UK exploration,   <20>The Verbier result certainly gives us the confidence and determination to continue our exploration efforts,<2C> she added. The preliminary results suggest that the Verbier discovery could hold from 25 million to 130 million barrels, but more drilling will be needed to refine the range and potential for commercial development, Statoil said. Statoil holds 70 percent in the license, Jersey Oil and Gas ( JOG.L ) 18 percent and CIECO Exploration and Production (UK) 12 percent. At the Mariner well, where non-commercial quantities of hydrocarbons were found, Statoil<69>s partners were JX Nippon, Siccar Point Energy and Dyas, while the dry Jock Scott well was a partnership with BP ( BP.L ). (This version of the story corrects to say third well was non-commercial, not dry.) Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis; editing by Terje Solsvik'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-statoil-exploration-britain/statoil-drills-two-dry-uk-wells-makes-one-discovery-idUKKBN1CE0GK'|'2017-10-09T10:00:00.000+03:00'
'0d6376a48dc3063d143def9df4810a580513d92c'|'GE names Trian co-founder Ed Garden to board'|'October 9, 2017 / 11:45 AM / Updated 2 hours ago GE names hedge fund Trian executive Ed Garden to board Svea Herbst-Bayliss , Rachit Vats 3 Min Read (Reuters) - U.S. industrial conglomerate General Electric Co, which major shareholder Trian Fund Management has been pressuring to conduct a more thorough restructuring, appointed the hedge fund<6E>s chief investment officer to its board on Monday. Edward Garden will replace Robert Lane, who is retiring due to health reasons after a dozen years as a director, GE said in a statement. The surprise move comes one day before shareholders at consumer products company Procter & Gamble Co will decide whether to elect Trian Chief Executive Nelson Peltz to its board. Trian, which invests $14 billion in assets for pension funds, endowments and wealthy investors, has owned a roughly 1 percent stake in GE since 2015. Four months ago, GE said longtime CEO Jeff Immelt would step down and that John Flannery, a 30-year company veteran who had run its healthcare business, would succeed him. The company<6E>s lackluster stock performance was seen to have prompted Immelt<6C>s departure, which came months before analysts had expected, but the shares have continued to fall. They were down 3 percent in Monday morning trading. FILE PHOTO - The ticker and logo for General Electric Co. is displayed on a screen at the post where it''s traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S. on June 30, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo <20>Like other GE shareholders, I am disappointed by the recent performance of GE<47>s stock,<2C> Garden said in a statement. <20>But I continue to believe that GE represents an attractive long-term investment opportunity with significant upside.<2E> The most recent wave of executive departures was announced last week and includes Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Bornstein. Jamie Miller, CEO of GE Transportation, will become CFO next month. Although Trian is an activist investor that demands change at companies, it is also known for working behind the scenes with management to improve performance. It rarely pushes out a CEO the way some other activists do, and it often sticks around, often for years, as transformations occur. After discussions with Trian, GE in March set a $2 billion cost-reduction target and linked the bonuses of its senior management to meeting profit-related goals. As a board member at Bank of New York Mellon Corp, Garden most recently helped hire former Visa Inc CEO Charles Scharf to replace Gerald Hassell, who is retiring. Garden is also a board member of Pentair Plc. Since its 2005 inception, Trian has returned an average 8 percent a year to investors, according to data from HSBC Holdings Plc<6C>s hedge fund investment arm. Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Rachit Vats   Savio D''Souza and Lisa Von Ahn'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ge-board/ge-names-trian-co-founder-ed-garden-to-board-idUSKBN1CE1AG'|'2017-10-09T14:45:00.000+03:00'
'76040c3785ca8e35bc2eaf735047c75ca46bc448'|'FRC closes probe into PwC over Barclays audits'|'Reuters TV United States October 5, 2017 / 7:10 AM / Updated 7 hours ago UK accounting watchdog closes probe into PwC over Barclays audits Reuters Staff 1   The logo of accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is seen on a board at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2017 (SPIEF 2017) in St. Petersburg, Russia, June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin LONDON (Reuters) - The Financial Reporting Council has closed its investigation into audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) LLP over its audits of Barclays ( BARC.L ) in the years during and after the global financial crisis, the accounting watchdog said on Thursday. <20>The Executive Counsel to the FRC has concluded that there is not a realistic prospect that a tribunal would make an adverse finding against PwC LLP in respect of the matters within the scope of the investigation,<2C> it said in a statement. The FRC had been investigating PwC<77>s role in reporting on Barclays<79> compliance with the regulator the Financial Services Authority<74>s client asset rules for the years ended Dec 31 2007 to Dec 31 2011. Reporting by Carolyn Cohn; Editing by Rachel Armstrong'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-barclays-pwc-investigation/uk-accounting-watchdog-closes-probe-into-pwc-over-barclays-audits-idUKKBN1CA0GQ'|'2017-10-05T09:37:00.000+03:00'
'354b6fa45d9d12a1859f69cac4c6ffe4ece0b9a8'|'France''s Engie to look closely at Brazil Eletrobras assets'|'FILE PHOTO: The logo of French gas and power group Engie is seen at the CRIGEN, the Engie Group research and operational expertise center, in Saint-Denis near Paris, France, Saint-Denis, France, February 29, 2016. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen/File Photo SAO PAULO (Reuters) - French energy conglomerate Engie SA ( ENGIE.PA ) has appetite for more Brazil acquisitions, and will evaluate assets being sold by Eletrobras, despite spending more than $1 billion in a licensing auction last week, Engie<69>s local unit head told Reuters on Wednesday.Brazil<69>s state-controlled utility Eletrobras, or Centrais El<45>tricas Brasileiras SA ( ELET5.SA ), said on Monday it will soon kick-start its divestiture plan which includes stakes in dozens of projects, mostly wind parks and power transmission ventures.<2E>We are open to opportunities, but always conservatively and with financial discipline,<2C> Mauricio Bahr, Engie Brasil<69>s chief executive, said in an interview in Sao Paulo. <20>But our debt in Brazil is low so we have some room.<2E><>We would have to look asset by asset,<2C> Bahr said, adding transmission lines could be of interest.Brazil<69>s power sector is going through a process of consolidation, with many local players putting assets up for sale to cut debt as credit is tight. Brazil<69>s government has tried to attract foreign capital to help boost the economy by selling operating licenses for several projects.Engie spent 3.53 billion reais ($1.13 billion) last week in a government-sponsored auction to win licenses to operate two large hydroelectric power plants in Brazil.The assets will boost local operations which already contribute 18 percent to the company<6E>s global results.Engie and Eletrobras are partners in several projects, including the massive Jirau hydroelectric dam, a plant built in the middle of the Amazon jungle with capacity to generate 3,750 megawatts.Eletrobras has hinted it could sell stakes in its large Amazon plants. Besides Jirau, it is a shareholder in Belo Monte and Santo Antonio dams.<2E>I don<6F>t know if they (Eletrobras) will want to sell Jirau, it depends on their appetites. But eventually it will be natural for the partners, who have the right of first refusal, to end up exercising it,<2C> Bahr said.Writing by Marcelo Teixeira; Editing by Matthew Lewis '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-engie-brazil-eletrobras-divestiture/frances-engie-to-look-closely-at-brazil-eletrobras-assets-idINKBN1C933P'|'2017-10-04T21:08:00.000+03:00'
'7b076a3b675a91bf8ede6f29e811979874c753da'|'Alibaba launches $15 bln overseas R&D drive'|'BEIJING, Oct 11 (Reuters) - China<6E>s top e-commerce firm, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, is launching a $15 billion drive to build overseas research hubs as the deep-pocketed firm looks to compete with global leaders in e-commerce, logistics and cloud technology.The Alibaba <20>Damo<6D> academy would launch eight research bases in China, Israel, the United States, Russia and Singapore and was hiring 100 researchers to work on artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing and fintech, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.<2E>The Alibaba DAMO Academy will be at the forefront of developing next-generation technology that will spur the growth of Alibaba and our partners<72>, Chief Technology Officer Jeff Zhang said.The Chinese giant and its affiliates have undergone a rapid expansion in the past year, bringing it into direct competition with U.S. e-retailer Amazon.com Inc, as well as global payments, cloud and logitics firms.Since last year Alibaba has invested roughly $2 billion to acquire a majority stake in Singapore-based retailer Lazada.com, creating a network of e-commerce hubs across Southeast Asia in partnership with payment affiliate Ant Financial.It has also pursued a 1.2 billion bid for U.S. money transfer service MoneyGram, in a pending deal that has come under scrutiny from critics who say it poses a national security threat.Along with an existing data science research lab in California, Alibaba has opened new data centers in Europe, the United States, the Middle East, Australia, Japan, India and Indonesia since 2016, in a bid to boost its cloud business.The investment also comes as Beijing prioritises state funding in quantum computing, AI and big data, urging provincial governments, universities, the military and private firms to play a bigger role in developing advanced technology in areas where China trails developed countries.Alibaba currently has 25,000 engineers on staff, it says, and says the new research infrastructure will help them meet a goal of two billion customers within two decades.Reporting by Cate Cadell; Editing by Stephen Coates'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/china-alibaba-rd/alibaba-launches-15-bln-overseas-rd-drive-idINL4N1MM25R'|'2017-10-11T03:46:00.000+03:00'
'b3d19c1ea82066a1abd61efcabeef6e2a8b1700f'|'MIDEAST STOCKS - Factors to watch - October 8'|'DUBAI, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Here are some factors that may affect Middle East stock markets on Sunday. Reuters has not verified the press reports and does not vouch for their accuracy.INTERNATIONAL/REGIONAL * GLOBAL MARKETS-US dollar, debt yields fall on N. Korea missile test report* MIDEAST STOCKS-Gulf mostly lower, Kuwait<69>s Zain up on Omantel rumour* Oil down 2 pct, breaks five-week rally as oversupply fears resurface* PRECIOUS-Gold rebounds above 2-month low on North Korean concerns* Turkey backs Syrian rebels for <20>serious operation<6F> in Idlib* Armed faction takes over protection of Libyan oil and gas complex, fresh concern over migrants* Iranian president defends nuclear deal, says Trump can not undermine it* U.S. lifts Sudan sanctions, wins commitment against arms deals with N.Korea* Trump to unveil new responses to Iranian <20>bad behavior<6F> -White House* Armed force claims victory in Libyan migrant smuggling hub* Europe rights watchdog says Turkey<65>s emergency laws go too far* Turkey to close Iraq border, air space, will open new gate with Baghdad* Keeping the competition out: Iran startups thrive despite sanctions* Investors from Japan, M.East show interest in Baltic LNG-Gazprom* U.S. military says <20>opting out<75> of some exercises following Gulf rift* Islamic State driven out of last stronghold in northern Iraq* Hamas picks new deputy chief whom Israel blames for helping spark Gaza war* Algeria says will not change foreign ownership limit in new energy law* Algeria plans to increase budget spending by 25 pct in 2018* Iraqi PM meets with CEOs of Total and Thales during visit to ParisEGYPT * Egypt orders sieving of halted French wheat shipment - prosecutor<6F>s document* BRIEF-Eni CEO confirms Egypt<70>s Zohr field will start up in DecSAUDI ARABIA * Gunman attacks Saudi security forces at gate of Jeddah royal palace* U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia cautions citizens after unconfirmed reports of foiled attack in Jeddah* U.S. approves possible $15 bln sale of THAAD missiles to Saudi Arabia* BRIEF-S&P affirms ratings on Saudi Arabia at <20>A-/A-2<>, maintains stable outlook* Saudi Arabia says U.N. report on Yemen <20>inaccurate and misleading<6E>* Saudi hopes for consensus on future of global oil deal before Nov OPEC meet* Russia, Saudi Arabia to sign road map on energy cooperation* Kremlin says Russian-Saudi military cooperation not aimed at anyone* Saudi Arabia says it dismantles Islamic State cell in Riyadh* Russia, Saudi Arabia cement new friendship with king<6E>s visit* Saudi Arabia agrees to buy Russian S-400 air defence system - Arabiya TV* Russian and Saudi state funds in $100 mln infrastructure deal* Moscow, Riyadh work together to unite Syria<69>s opposition -Saudi minister* Saudi Aramco to boost turnkey drilling contracts* Saudi says <20>flexible<6C> on Russian idea to extend oil cuts to end-2018* Russia<69>s Sibur, Saudi Aramco agree to explore possible cooperation* Russia and Saudi Arabia set up $1 bln joint investment fund* Saudi Arabia<69>s SALIC considers Russian grain investment* Saudi Aramco IPO on track for 2018 - officials* Saudi state airline says to start Boeing, Airbus order talks soon* Saudi Arabian Airlines says could list cargo unit<69>s shares next year* Russia<69>s Litasco oil trader to explore areas of cooperation with Saudi AramcoUNITED ARAB EMIRATES * MEDIA-Uber in talks with Dubai to set up a new low cost transport service-The NationalQATAR * Qatar orders aid to private sector as sanctions hurt economy* TABLE-Qatar bank lending growth accelerates in August* Qatar c.bank<6E>s foreign reserves, liquidity rebound from sanctions hit* Australia closing in on Qatar as world<6C>s top LNG exporterKUWAIT * BUZZ-Kuwait<69>s Zain rises on rumour Omantel may boost stakeBAHRAIN * Lawyers accuse UK-backed Bahrain watchdogs over torture inquiryOMAN * BRIEF-Bank Dhofar approves issue price of proposed rights issue at 185 baizas/shr (Compiled by Dubai newsroom) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mideast-factors/mideast-stoc
'271fee7827849f45a828c221a7c9ba066915af67'|'Bill Gross of Janus blames Fed for ''fake markets'''|'October 9, 2017 / 8:48 PM / in 16 hours Bill Gross of Janus blames Fed for ''fake markets'' Jennifer Ablan 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Bill Gross, Portfolio Manager, Janus Capital Group, listens during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 3, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson NEW YORK (Reuters) - Influential bond investor Bill Gross of Janus Henderson Investors said on Monday that financial markets are artificially compressed and capitalism distorted because of the U.S. Federal Reserve<76>s loose monetary policy. <20>I think we have fake markets,<2C> Gross said at a Janus Henderson event. Investors should brace for higher Treasury bond yields as the Fed begins to unwind its quantitative easing program but yields will edge up <20>only gradually,<2C> he said. Gross, who oversees the $2.1 billion Janus Henderson Global Unconstrained Bond Fund, said the Fed<65>s loose monetary policy had resulted in investors chasing yield and thus producing tight corporate spreads everywhere around the globe. <20>Even China and South Korea - perfect examples of the risk trade - are at very narrow (corporate spread) levels. There is no real advantage in the global marketplace. Everything is so tight, it is hard to pick a winner from a group that is fake.<2E> Gross reiterated his warning that Fed Chair Janet Yellen and other global policy makers should not rely on historical models such as the Taylor Rule and the Phillips curve <20>in an era of extraordinary monetary policy.<2E> Economists John Taylor and A.W. Phillips devised models for guiding interest-rate policy based, respectively, on inflation and the unemployment rate. Those models disregard the importance of private credit in the economy, according to Gross. Reporting by Jennifer Ablan; Editing by Andrew Hay and Tom Brown'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-funds-janushenderson/bill-gross-of-janus-blames-fed-for-fake-markets-idUSKBN1CE2FG'|'2017-10-09T23:48:00.000+03:00'
'd245a930bdd965f9db170655eb230b83bbb6834d'|'Ready meals firm Bakkavor prepares for London listing'|'October 10, 2017 / 6:49 AM / in 30 minutes Ready meals firm Bakkavor prepares $2 billion London listing Reuters Staff 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Ready meals supplier Bakkavor plans to list at least a quarter of its shares on the London Stock Exchange in early November, in a deal that sources say could value it at up to 1.5 billion pounds ($2 billion). The company, which counts Marks & Spencer ( MKS.L ), Waitrose and Tesco ( TSCO.L ) as major customers, said on Tuesday it aimed to raise around 100 million pounds from issuing new shares and would also sell part of the stakes held by U.S. hedge fund Baupost and Icelandic founders Agust and Lydur Gudmundsson. London is seeing a pick up in listings, with this year<61>s total already far outpacing 2016 when volatility caused by Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union caused a number of initial public offerings (IPO) to be postponed or canceled. Over the past week, half a dozen companies have announced plans to list on London<6F>s main market, between them aiming to raise as much as $3.7 billion, compared with around $4 billion in the third quarter. These include Dutch business services firm TMF Group and Russia<69>s En+ Group, which is launching an IPO in London and Moscow, testing investors<72> appetite for Russian assets three years after Western countries imposed sanctions on Moscow over its role in the Ukraine crisis. Bakkavor, which is using the IPO to reduce its leverage and make more investments, generated revenues of almost 1.8 billion pounds and pretax profits of 63.1 million pounds last year. It started as a cod roe manufacturer and exporter before the Gudmundsson brothers expanded the business with acquisitions financed with debt, borrowings that meant the company was swept up in Iceland<6E>s financial crisis before it eventually restructured and attracted new investors. The company has also appointed Simon Burke as its independent non-executive chairman, replacing Lydur Gudmundsson, who co-founded the business 31 years ago and will remain a non-executive director. Burke, a former accountant, was previously the chairman and chief executive of Hamleys, the world<6C>s oldest toy shop which under his leadership was sold to Icelandic firm Baugur in 2003. Baugur later collapsed and Hamleys is currently owned by Chinese retailer C. Banner. HSBC ( HSBA.L ) and Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ) are leading the IPO process. Barclays ( BARC.L ), Citigroup ( C.N ), Rabobank and Peel Hunt are also working on the deal. Reporting by Clara Denina; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bakkavor-group-ipo/ready-meals-firm-bakkavor-prepares-for-london-listing-idUKKBN1CF0JZ'|'2017-10-10T09:49:00.000+03:00'
'8311d75c93a089c65f69666a35fcc1b1a977dfe0'|'UPDATE 1-Brazil auto industry sees 2018 sales, output growth over 10 pct'|'(Adds details, context, investment news)By Alberto Alerigi Jr.SAO PAULO, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Auto industry leaders projected sales and output growth of more than 10 percent in Brazil next year at an industry event on Monday, underscoring hopes for a rebounding market as Mercedes-Benz announced new investments in bus and truck plants.Antonio Megale, the head of industry group Anfavea, said global automakers in Brazil would likely produce some 3 million vehicles next year, up from an estimated 2.7 million this year but well below the 3.7 million made at the market<65>s 2013 peak.Vehicle sales should also pick up from 7.3 percent growth forecast this year to double-digit growth next year, he said at the Congresso Autodata Perspectivas 2018 event in Sao Paulo, adding to hopes for a market that shrank 40 percent in the last three years.<2E>We<57>re past the trickiest part of the crisis,<2C> he said. <20>Healthy sales growth along with strong exports mean we will have better production numbers.<2E>Adding to enthusiasm, the Mercedes-Benz unit of Daimler AG announced plans to invest 2.4 billion reais ($750 million) from 2018 to 2022 in Brazilian plants making bus and truck chassis.Mercedes-Benz executives said in a statement that the upgrades to factories would prepare the company for a rebound in commercial vehicle sales, led by a surging farm sector and signs of recovery in mining, fuel distribution and meat processing.The top executive for General Motors Co in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, Carlos Zarlenga, said at the event that his company was also planning to invest more in the region.<2E>We<57>re not done with the investment announcements and we<77>ll have more soon,<2C> he told the audience. ($1 = 3.18 reais) (Reporting by Alberto Alerigi Jr.; Additional reporting by Natalia Scalzaretto; Writing by Brad Haynes; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brazil-autos/update-1-brazil-auto-industry-sees-2018-sales-output-growth-over-10-pct-idUSL2N1MK159'|'2017-10-10T00:42:00.000+03:00'
'5d6e78c48eec3c8dc72819c09b33480501dfa6ca'|'BOJ Governor Kuroda pledges to stick with quantitative easing'|' 31 AM / in 29 minutes BOJ Governor Kuroda pledges to stick with quantitative easing Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda attends a news conference at the BOJ headquarters   21,   Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda on Tuesday reiterated the central bank<6E>s resolve to maintain its massive stimulus programme until inflation moved stably above its 2 percent price target. He also said inflation was likely to gradually accelerate towards 2 percent due to improvements in the output gap and inflation expectations. <20>Japan<61>s economy is expected to continue expanding moderately in the future,<2C> Kuroda said in a speech at a quarterly meeting of the central bank<6E>s regional branch managers. After three years of heavy asset buying failed to drive up inflation, the BOJ revamped its policy framework last year to one capping long-term interest rates from that targeting the pace of money printing. Reporting by Stanley White; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-economy-kuroda/boj-governor-kuroda-pledges-to-stick-with-quantitative-easing-idUKKBN1CF022'|'2017-10-10T03:31:00.000+03:00'
'2d52eca8c765cb7f4d84ad9ee6e8a2257f329ed0'|'European shares falter, LVMH results help luxury sector shine'|'October 10, 2017 / 7:33 AM / Updated an hour ago European shares falter, LVMH results help luxury sector shine Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON, Oct 10 (Reuters) - European shares dipped on Tuesday following a slightly weaker session on Wall Street as stocks tired from a streak of record highs, but strong results from luxury group LVMH helped support stocks across the consumer goods sector. The STOXX 600 slipped 0.1 percent but held near three-month highs, after MSCI<43>s global stock index touched a fresh all-time high in early deals. Spain<69>s IBEX lagged European peers, down 0.5 percent as investors awaited an address by Catalan independence leader Carles Puigdemont to the regional parliament at 1600 GMT. Though the address, which investors fear may result in a declaration of independence, would be after the close, nerves hit shares in Caixabank and Banco Sabadell, the banks most exposed to Catalonia, which fell 0.7 to 1.1 percent. Third-quarter results began trickling in, with a strong beat from LVMH driving stocks across the luxury and consumer sectors higher. Shares in the world<6C> biggest luxury group rose 1.8 percent after it beat sales and revenue forecasts in its third quarter, setting a high hurdle for European luxury peers to beat. Luxury brands Christian Dior, Gucci owner Kering and Moncler also gained, rising 1.6 to 1.8 percent after the robust performance from the group Bernstein luxury analyst Mario Ortelli said is a <20>bellwether<65> for the industry. Swiss fragrance and flavours maker Givaudan gained 3.2 percent after the firm stuck to its 2020 targets and reported third-quarter sales up 5.7 percent, beating analysts<74> estimates. Dassault Aviation shares fell 3.3 percent, with traders citing comments from the CEO over delays to its Falcon 5X business jet. Reporting by Helen Reid; Editing by Georgina Prodhan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/europe-stocks/european-shares-falter-lvmh-results-help-luxury-sector-shine-idUSL8N1ML11X'|'2017-10-10T10:33:00.000+03:00'
'934c00a8dc4fa175ce140e4ab10d0ee0ddb0ef04'|'Uber says giving UK drivers worker rights would cost tens of millions of pounds'|'October 10, 2017 / 10:31 AM / Updated an hour ago Uber says UK National Insurance contributions would cost tens of millions of pounds Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A photo illustration a London taxi passing as the Uber app logo is displayed on a mobile telephone, as it is held up for a posed photograph in central London September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Uber said on Tuesday that paying National Insurance contributions for its British drivers would add tens of millions of pounds to the taxi app<70>s costs were they to be deemed employees. Uber currently classifies its around 50,000 drivers in Britain as self-employed, affording them only basic entitlements, whilst employees also receive rights such as sick pay and the minimum wage. Asked about how much it would cost in National Insurance payments if self-employed drivers were directly employed, the firm<72>s UK Head of Policy Andrew Byrne told parliament<6E>s business committee: <20>I don<6F>t have the precise figures ... but I<>m certain it would be the tens of millions certainly.<2E> Related Coverage Uber says hopefully it can address London''s concerns and keep operating licence Also appearing before lawmakers, Deliveroo<6F>s UK and Ireland Managing Director Dan Warne said additional costs including National Insurance contributions, would add around 1 pound ($1.32) to the cost of each hour. National Insurance is collected by the government and helps pay for the state health service, pensions and certain other benefits. FILE PHOTO - A police officer keeps an eye on a protest against Uber and in favour of labour rights in central London, Britain, September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner Firms operating in the so-called gig economy - whereby people tend to work for different companies without a fixed contract - have been criticised by unions and some lawmakers for what they call exploitative practices. Uber and Deliveroo both say their drivers enjoy the flexibility they offer but last year two drivers won a tribunal hearing against Uber and were granted worker rights, in a decision which the Silicon Valley firm appealed last month. Uber<65>s Byrne said on Tuesday he expected the judge to make a ruling by around Christmas. Uber is also battling to overturn a decision by London<6F>s transport regulator to strip the smartphone app of its licence in the British capital. It has until Friday to lodge an appeal. Byrne said he could hopefully see a way to address concerns by London<6F>s transport regulator, which cited the firm<72>s approach to reporting serious criminal offences and background checks on drivers. <20>Hopefully we can see a path forward now with TfL (Transport for London) where we can address their concerns and continue to operate,<2C> he said. Reporting by Costas Pitas; additional reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-uber-britain-workers/uber-says-giving-uk-drivers-worker-rights-would-cost-tens-of-millions-of-pounds-idUKKBN1CF15U'|'2017-10-10T13:31:00.000+03:00'
'e9f8aeae44f6b92d502f19fba740cd691643daa0'|'Richard Thaler wins the Nobel prize for economic sciences'|'THE credit-card bill arrives. You have enough money in a savings account to pay it off<66>the sensible thing to do, arithmetically speaking, since the interest rate on the credit-card balance far exceeds that earned on the savings. Yet you leave the savings untouched, and pay only as much of the bill as your current-account balance allows. What looks a daft choice to most economists made perfect sense to Richard Thaler, who on October 9th was awarded the Nobel prize for economics for his work in behavioural economics. Mr Thaler helped demonstrate how human reasoning diverges from that of the perfectly rational homo economicus used in most economic modelling. The world, and the field of economics, is better for his contributions.Economists mostly recognise that normal people<6C>their friends and family<6C>fall short of omniscience and perfect rationality in making day-to-day decisions. Economic modelling requires simplification, however, and economists generally suppose that theories assuming people are well-informed and rational offer the best available description of economic activity. Over time, however, scholars have built up an imposing list of the ways in which humans systematically refuse to behave as the models predict. Economists such as Herb Simon (who won the Nobel in 1978), Daniel Kahneman (2002) and Robert Shiller (2013) are celebrated for their contributions to this effort. But perhaps more than any other scholar, Mr Thaler lifted behavioural economics to prominence, and helped put its lessons into practice.  3  '|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'https://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21730109-economist-who-recognises-human-behaviour-not-always-strictly?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-10T08:00:00.000+03:00'
'a142c36966830dd3a0b123b5c3e9ff8a874397b5'|'Chinese Airbnb rival Tujia raises $300 million, now valued at over $1.5 billion'|'SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Tujia.com, China<6E>s biggest short-term property rental firm, said on Tuesday it had raised $300 million from investors, valuing it at more than $1.5 billion as it looks to tap growing demand from Chinese tourists for independent travel.The investment round was led by Chinese travel agent Ctrip.com International Ltd and All-Stars Investment, while China Renaissance<63>s New Economy Fund, Glade Brook Capital, and G Street Capital also participated.Tujia<69>s main rival in China is Airbnb, which is beefing up its presence and looking to lure in the country<72>s young millennials. Airbnb was valued at $30 billion last year.Tujia<69>s founder Luo Jun said in a statement the funds would be used to help improve and standardize the firm<72>s accommodation, and that it would <20>further invest in the domestic high-end real estate market and in foreign markets.<2E>The Chinese firm, which launched in 2011, raised $300 million in 2015 from All-Stars Investment and others, then valuing the company at $1 billion. It has over 650,000 online listings in China and overseas.China Renaissance served as financial advisor to Tujia.Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Edwina GibbsOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-tujia-fundraising/chinese-airbnb-rival-tujia-raises-300-million-now-valued-at-over-1-5-billion-idINKBN1CF078'|'2017-10-10T00:53:00.000+03:00'
'1257cf25f44cf58b221357ff7ca71e410385b7d9'|'Illinois keeps BBB-minus S&P rating for $6 bln bond sale'|'CHICAGO, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Illinois on Monday maintained a BBB-minus rating and stable outlook from S&P Global Ratings for the state<74>s upcoming $6 billion bond sale aimed at shrinking a huge unpaid bill backlog.While the credit rating agency affirmed the lowest investment grade rating, it cautioned that the nation<6F>s fifth-largest state still faces fiscal challenges that could push the rating into junk.Bond proceeds will be used to pay off some of the nearly $16 billion of bills from vendors and service providers the state accrued during its unprecedented two-year budget impasse, which ended in July with the enactment of a fiscal 2018 spending plan.S&P said while the new budget eased concerns over a liquidity crisis for the state and reduced the odds for a rating downgrade, it includes some <20>doubtful<75> savings and nonrecurring revenue.<2E>If the bonding plan is not paired with additional fiscal adjustments, the state could be left with a higher tax-supported debt burden and - once again - an escalating backlog of unpaid bills,<2C> S&P said in a statement.That in turn could undermine Illinois<69> ability to deal with its $130 billion unfunded pension liability, it added.The state will offer $1.5 billion of tax-exempt general obligation bonds for competitive bidding on Oct. 17 in three series maturing in 2018, 2019 and 2029. During the week of Oct. 23, a team of senior underwriting firms will price another $4.5 billion of GO bonds.The Democratic-controlled state legislature<72>s enactment of a budget and an income tax rate increase over Republican Governor Bruce Rauner<65>s vetoes allowed Illinois, the lowest-rated U.S. state, to avoid downgrades to junk.The new bonds will also be rated by Moody<64>s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings, according to the bond prospectus.Reporting by Karen Pierog; Editing by Matthew Lewis '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/illinois-bonds/illinois-keeps-bbb-minus-sp-rating-for-6-bln-bond-sale-idINL2N1MK0U7'|'2017-10-09T19:09:00.000+03:00'
'1ec107841e060711c19c485aec6fa5cd9c4a6ab7'|'Chinese firms rush to hedge as yuan swings begin to sting'|' 17 AM / Updated 25 minutes ago Chinese firms rush to hedge as yuan swings begin to sting Samuel Shen , John Ruwitch 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A China yuan note is seen in this illustration photo May 31, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Hobbled by the yuan<61>s unexpected surge this year, more Chinese companies are trading currency derivatives to hedge risks, although many mainland firms remain exposed to swings in China<6E>s increasingly volatile currency. Companies in China have for years been accustomed to a stable yuan that moved in one direction for long periods of time. Yuan hedging markets are still in their infancy, stymied by the central bank<6E>s stringent requirements for hedging and the limited participation of speculators and large state-owned firms, which could make markets more liquid. But that is changing. Volatility has risen steadily since 2015 after the People<6C>s Bank of China decided to let market forces have a bigger sway in the yuan<61>s direction, clamped down on capital flows and, more recently, introduced more opacity in the way it sets the currency<63>s value. The yuan slumped 6.5 percent against the U.S. dollar in 2016, but has unexpectedly reversed course this year, surging 5.3 percent so far. More than 70 China-listed companies have announced plans this year to use derivatives for risk-hedging, according to Reuters<72> calculations based on exchange filings. Among them, 27 firms are trading yuan forwards, swaps or options for the first time. <20>Last year, when the yuan was falling, there was no need to hedge, because depreciation was on our side,<2C> Jiang Tao, an investor relations official at Shenzhen Yuto Packaging Technology Co ( 002831.SZ ), told Reuters. The Chinese exporter of gift boxes and stickers is one of the 70 companies reviewed and generates over 60 percent of its revenue overseas. In the first half of this year, it posted a 47.5 million yuan currency loss due to a stronger yuan. It says the less predictable currency trends have prompted it to use derivatives this year to hedge risks. Although Reuters<72> calculations are not exhaustive, with some companies not disclosing their use of derivatives, it nonetheless shows a rising interest in hedging currency risks. Between 2012 and 2014, only about 30 companies each year announced hedging plans, but that number jumped to 68 last year. <20>It<49>s more about mentality, than about competence,<2C> said Oliver Rui, Professor of Finance and Accounting at business school CEIBS. FILE PHOTO: U.S. Dollar and China Yuan notes are seen in this picture illustration June 2, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo Rui, who sits on the boards of several Chinese companies as an independent director, said most firms are not used to hedging because the yuan has only become more volatile in recent years. Corporate China<6E>s still evolving risk-management culture, however, poses a dilemma for Beijing, which has been under international pressure to liberalise the yuan while also seeking to prevent destabilising currency swings. EXPORTER COMPLACENCY China has seen a rise in foreign exchange transaction volumes between banks and clients, a barometer of companies<65> hedging activities, which has tracked increasing volatility in the yuan over the past six months. But that monthly turnover of around $500 million is tiny for the world<6C>s second biggest economy, which has an annual trade turnover of $3.7 trillion yuan, as well as increasing offshore financing and investment activities. Several local companies have turned to overseas derivatives market, such as Hong Kong<6E>s yuan futures, or non-deliverable forwards (NDFs). A lack of participation by China<6E>s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the derivatives market has also kept volumes low. Many such firms were barred from being too active in the onshore yuan market after incurring losses in overseas derivatives during the 2007-08 global financial crisis. For export-oriented manufacturers such as Shenz
'563c4d4d19bafe0960521b8c36bf05b3a28ef2c9'|'Whitbread to take full ownership of south China Costa operations'|'October 10, 2017 / 7:12 AM / in an hour Whitbread to take full ownership of south China Costa operations Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Cappuccino stands on a table at a branch of Costa Coffee, a Whitbread brand, in Manchester, Britain, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo (Reuters) - Whitbread<61>s ( WTB.L ) Costa coffee chain is buying the 49 percent of a joint venture in south China held by Yueda Group to bolster its presence in the country, the British firm said on Tuesday. Whitbread said it would pay 35 million pounds for the stake. Costa currently owns 51 percent of the joint venture which operates 252 stores in southern China, along with 93 stores in Shanghai. The business will continue to be consolidated in Costa<74>s and Whitbread<61>s financial accounts, the company said. The deal comes at a time when Whitbread, which also runs Premier Inn hotels, is battling a tough retail environment in its home market of Britain. Reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru; Editing by Jason Neely and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-whitbread-china/whitbread-to-take-full-ownership-of-south-china-costa-operations-idUKKBN1CF0MN'|'2017-10-10T10:12:00.000+03:00'
'4bfcb9e944c82373529c95e0926186b8860b3c15'|'Britain could join NAFTA if it fails to get Brexit trade deal - Telegraph newspaper'|'Reuters TV United States  58 AM / a minute ago Britain could join NAFTA if it fails to get Brexit trade deal: Telegraph newspaper Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A pro-EU demonstrator walks past a woman reading a book on the seafront during the Labour party Conference in Brighton, Britain, September 24, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville LONDON (Reuters) - Britain could join the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) if it doesn<73>t get a post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Tuesday. The newspaper said ministers were looking at the idea as part of planning for the possibility of Britain not managing to negotiate a trade deal with the EU as part of its Brexit divorce. Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Stephen Addison'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-nafta/britain-could-join-nafta-if-it-fails-to-get-brexit-trade-deal-telegraph-newspaper-idUKKBN1CF18K'|'2017-10-10T13:50:00.000+03:00'
'a503271c70ebbbde1b1eb33201373457043c44ee'|'Incoming Dutch government plans to scrap dividend tax - NOS News'|'October 9, 2017 / 5:54 AM / in an hour Incoming Dutch government plans to scrap dividend tax - NOS News Reuters Staff 1 Min Read AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The incoming Dutch government plans to scrap the country<72>s 15 percent withholding tax on dividends, a move intended primarily to attract foreign businesses, national broadcaster NOS reported on Monday. The parliamentary factions of the four parties in Prime Minister Mark Rutte<74>s presumptive new coalition are gathering on Monday to review a new governing pact after more than six months of negotiations. On Thursday, local media reported the government was also planning to cut the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 25 percent. Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Christian Schmollinger'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-netherlands-taxation/incoming-dutch-government-plans-to-scrap-dividend-tax-nos-news-idUKKBN1CE0BE'|'2017-10-09T08:54:00.000+03:00'
'98905ec13f1d1a8f6e6ce10a7a51bc734fcfdb91'|'BoE''s Cunliffe says controls will dampen ''exuberance'' in lending'|'May signals foreign minister Johnson could be sacked May signals foreign minister Johnson could be sacked May signals foreign minister Johnson could be sacked Reuters TV United States October 8, 2017 / 3:08 PM / a minute ago BoE''s Cunliffe says controls will dampen ''exuberance'' in lending Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Deputy Governor of the Bank of England Jon Cunliffe speaks during the Bank of England''s financial stability report at the Bank of England in the City of London, Britain June 27, 2017. REUTERS/ Jonathan Brady/Pool LONDON (Reuters) - Jon Cunliffe, deputy governor of the Bank of England, said he hoped a new requirement for lenders to hold more capital would dampen signs of a <20>bit of exuberance<63> in credit card and personal lending to British consumers. The Bank of England said last month that lenders had underestimated the risks from a surge in consumer borrowing, and they needed to hold an extra 10 billion pounds of capital to guard against future dangers. Cunliffe said on Sunday that banks were being over-optimistic in estimating the likely losses from credit card and personal loan debt because they were confusing good economic conditions with the credit quality of the actual borrowers. <20>People were letting standards slip,<2C> he said in an interview in the Mail on Sunday. <20>You<6F>re starting to see it maybe a little bit more in mortgage terms. I think and hope this will slow this market down. But if it doesn<73>t we may have to do more.<2E> Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Pravin Char'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-boe-cunliffe/boes-cunliffe-says-controls-will-dampen-exuberance-in-lending-idUKKBN1CD0MU'|'2017-10-08T17:57:00.000+03:00'
'f368ee822860c57a101d2b5176ec56711adae6c8'|'HSBC picks retail head John Flint as next CEO - newspaper - Reuters'|'LONDON, Oct 8 (Reuters) - HSBC wants to appoint company insider John Flint as its next chief executive and has approached regulators seeking their approval, Britain<69>s Sunday Times newspaper said.Europe<70>s biggest bank has told the Bank of England it wants approval for Flint, who currently runs the lender<65>s retail and wealth management businesses, to take over from Stuart Gulliver, the paper said, citing unnamed sources.HSBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Gulliver has said he plans to step down next year and the appointment of his replacement is the first major decision facing the bank<6E>s new chairman, Mark Tucker, who took up his post on Oct 1.John Flint, no relation to outgoing chairman Douglas Flint, joined HSBC in 1989 and has worked in both the investment banking and retail banking sides of the bank, spending 14 years in Asia at the start of his HSBC career. (Reporting by Rachel Armstrong and Anjuli Davies; Editing by Greg Mahlich) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/hsbc-ceo/hsbc-picks-retail-head-john-flint-as-next-ceo-newspaper-idINL8N1MJ08N'|'2017-10-08T07:08:00.000+03:00'
'12972dad9e8cc94b2fd052c19f76cb218d116168'|'Chief of Credit Agricole expresses interest in Commerzbank - report'|'October 8, 2017 / 4:19 PM / in 30 minutes Chief of Credit Agricole expresses interest in Commerzbank - report Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Philippe Brassac, Chief Executive Officer of Credit Agricole S.A., speaks during a press conference in Paris, France, March 8, 2016. Picture taken March 8, 2016. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Credit Agricole<6C>s ( CAGR.PA ) chief, Philippe Brassac, has expressed interest in Commerzbank ( CBKG.DE ) if the German lender were to be up for sale, according to an interview with the Handelsblatt newspaper. Brassac was quoted as saying that he would like the French bank to be better positioned in Germany, as it is in Italy. Credit Agricole<6C>s strategy plan states that it will focus on organic growth until 2019. <20>But this doesn<73>t mean that we wouldn<64>t take a look at interesting possibilities,<2C> Brassac said in the interview published on Sunday. <20>If such a big institute like Commerzbank were really to be on the market, we would surely have to analyse it as one of the significant institutes in the euro zone,<2C> he said. There has been speculation that the German government could sell its roughly 15 percent stake in Commerzbank, making the lender a takeover target. Italy<6C>s UniCredit ( CRDI.MI ) has told Berlin it was interested in eventually merging with Commerzbank, two people familiar with the matter said last month, a combination that would create one of Europe<70>s biggest banks. The German government has denied a report that it favoured a merger of Commerzbank with France<63>s BNP Paribas ( BNPP.PA ). Reporting by Tom Sims; Editing by Alison Williams'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-banks-m-a/chief-of-credit-agricole-expresses-interest-in-commerzbank-report-idUKKBN1CD0PG'|'2017-10-08T19:20:00.000+03:00'
'59c753df9b6a792e783ce4a79c3b5b6342531a9f'|'Exclusive: Honeywell prepares to spin off businesses -sources'|'A view of the corporate sign outside the Honeywell International Automation and Control Solutions manufacturing plant in Golden Valley, Minnesota, January 28, 2010. REUTERS/Eric Miller (Reuters) - Honeywell International Inc ( HON.N ) plans to spin off non-core assets and create at least two new publicly listed companies, as the U.S. industrial conglomerate seeks to streamline its business, according to people familiar with the matter. The move would represent the first major shakeup at the Morris Plains, New Jersey-based company since Darius Adamczyk succeeded David Cote as chief executive in April. It comes after Honeywell said in September it would raise its annual dividend by 12 percent. The sources said on Sunday that while Honeywell would defy calls by one of its shareholders, activist hedge fund Third Point LLC, to spin off its aerospace division, it would still seek to carve out assets worth several billions of dollars. Honeywell is considering placing its turbochargers business, which produces components that improve the performance and efficiency of cars and trucks, into one of the newly created companies, the sources said. Honeywell lists turbochargers as part of its aerospace business. The sources did not disclose which other assets Honeywell was looking to spin off and asked not to be identified because the deliberations were confidential. Honeywell is hoping to unveil the spinoff plan as early as this week, though the announcement could be delayed, the sources added. Honeywell, which has a market capitalization of $109 billion, declined to comment. Honeywell<6C>s businesses include energy efficient products and solutions for homes, specialty chemicals, electronic and advanced materials, and sensing, safety and security technologies for buildings, homes and industries. Third Point has argued that Honeywell is undervalued compared to peers in industrial automation, and that spinning off the entire aerospace business would create $20 billion in shareholder value. Honeywell<6C>s aerospace business, its biggest, also makes auxiliary power units and engines for aircraft manufactured by companies such as Bombardier Inc ( BBDb.TO ), Textron Inc ( TXT.N ) and General Dynamics Corp ( GD.N ). Last year, Honeywell approached peer United Technologies Corp ( UTX.N ) to discuss a potential combination but was rebuffed. Last month, United Technologies struck a $30 billion agreement to buy avionics and interiors maker Rockwell Collins Inc ( COL.N ). Analysts have said this deal positions United Technologies to also spin off assets down the line, though no such deal has been announced. Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Additional reporting by Alwyn Scott in New York; Editing by Richard Chang '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-honeywell-spinoff-exclusive/exclusive-honeywell-prepares-to-spin-off-businesses-sources-idUSKBN1CD0WR'|'2017-10-08T22:33:00.000+03:00'
'2bd28346b75c00813cafa1d2b5ef66d77ca593cf'|'Dove faces PR disaster over ad that showed black woman turning white'|'October 9, 2017 / 11:20 AM / in 6 hours Dove faces PR disaster over ad that showed black woman turning white Estelle Shirbon 3 Min Read Two bottles of Dove''s Deep Moisture body wash are displayed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 8, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Helgren LONDON (Reuters) - A social media outcry over an advertisement for Dove body wash which showed a black woman removing her top to reveal a white woman has escalated into a public relations disaster for the Unilever brand. UNLVR.L The 3-second video clip, posted on Dove<76>s U.S. Facebook page on Friday, reminded some social media users of racist soap adverts from the 19th century or early 20th century that showed black people scrubbing their skin to become white. Dove removed the clip and apologized, saying on Twitter that the post had <20>missed the mark in representing women of color thoughtfully<6C>. But the apology failed to stem a torrent of online criticism, with some social media users calling for a boycott of Dove products, while conventional media outlets in the United States and Europe were also seizing on the story. In Britain, the controversy featured prominently in Monday<61>s television breakfast shows, with guests debating how the ad got through the company<6E>s approval process and whether it was indicative of a broader problem with racism in marketing. On Twitter, posts including the hashtag #BoycottDove, which started over the weekend among U.S. users, were appearing in multiple European languages.   for Unilever is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., February 17, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo <20>In short, racism is back in fashion and brands are looking to benefit,<2C> wrote user @Beatrix B. in French. In the full clip, the black woman removed her t-shirt to reveal the white woman, who then lifted her own top to reveal an Asian woman. <20>The short video was intended to convey that Dove body wash is for every woman and be a celebration of diversity, but we got it wrong,<2C> Dove   The black-to-white transition was reminiscent in the eyes of some viewers of infamous soap ads from history, some of which were posted on social media. In one example from the 1880s, a black child is pictured bathing in a tub while a white child offers him a bar of soap. After using the soap, the black child looks delighted to see that his skin has turned white. Dove declined to say how the ad was produced and approved. It said it was <20>re-evaluating our internal processes for creating and approving content<6E>. A previous Dove ad, which showed three women side by side in front of a before-and-after image of cracked and smooth skin, caused an uproar in 2011 because the woman positioned on the <20>before<72> side was black while the <20>after<65> woman was white. Dove said at the time all three were supposed to <20>demonstrate the <20>after<65> product benefit<69>. Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Peter Graff'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-unilever-dove-advert/dove-faces-pr-disaster-over-ad-that-showed-black-woman-turning-white-idUKKBN1CE17M'|'2017-10-09T14:17:00.000+03:00'
'bac8226f7aa5b517d65e39ab0e0a1364abcc55c5'|'IKEA stores'' full-year sales up 5 percent to 38 billion euros'|'October 9, 2017 / 1:18 PM / Updated an hour ago IKEA plans full-range town-center showrooms, ''open-source'' design Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A woman is seen in an Ikea shop in a mall in Rome, Italy, May 19, 2017. REUTERS/Max Rossi/File Photo STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - IKEA plans to test <20>open-source<63> design and full-range town-center showrooms as part of the furniture retailer<65>s efforts to adapt to rapidly changing consumer shopping habits. The budget furniture retailer<65>s strategy will still be based on its out-of-town warehouse stores, where shoppers pick up their purchases, but it also wants to become more accessible, physically and digitally. It has launched trial store formats such as smaller city center stores, order and pickup-points and - the latest test format - a kitchen showroom in Stockholm<6C>s financial district. Torbjorn Loof, chief executive at franchiser Inter IKEA, said the group would try more things in different markets. <20>Our customers will see new initiatives, both physical and digital,<2C> he told Reuters. Loof was speaking after Inter IKEA said stores worldwide reported total sales of 38.3 billion euros ($44.9 billion) in the fiscal year through August, up from 36.4 billion a year earlier. The web of companies that make up IKEA has focused ownership of retail operations, which also include shopping centers and food retail, on IKEA Group. Supply chain management and design has transferred to brand owner and franchiser Inter IKEA. With IKEA Group focusing fully on retail, the hope is that it will be better placed to defend its market-leading position and maintain growth as competition and consumer expectations shift towards online shopping and home delivery. Loof said IKEA was fine-tuning its city-center store concept, developing a format to display its entire range but in a smaller space with the help of new digital tools such as virtual reality. The new stores would also not need parking lots or large inventories thanks to expanded home delivery services. <20>This (format) will come within the next few years,<2C> he said in the interview. The group is also planning a digital platform next year that mimics the IT sector<6F>s <20>open-source<63> software development, Loof said. This will allow customers to take part in the development as well as testing of new products. <20>We are launching <20>Co-Create IKEA<45>, a digital platform where customers will have the possibility to develop and test new products ... a bit like the open-source development within IT,<2C> Loof said. IKEA had 403 stores in 49 markets at the end of its fiscal year. <20>In (fiscal) FY18, 22 new IKEA stores are planned, which includes new markets in India and Latvia, as well as continued roll out of new formats and expanded e-commerce activities,<2C> Inter IKEA said in a statement. It also said in the long term the group is looking at potential new markets and plans to enter South America within the next five years. The IKEA stores are owned by 11 franchisees, of which IKEA Group is the biggest with 355 stores. IKEA Group is due to report annual sales on Tuesday. In June, Loof said IKEA planned to test selling its products on websites other than its own from next year in another strategy shift to reach more customers. Reporting by Anna Ringstrom; Editing by Mark Potter and Jane Merriman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ikea-sales/ikea-stores-full-year-sales-up-5-percent-to-38-billion-euros-idUSKBN1CE1HK'|'2017-10-09T16:17:00.000+03:00'
'7782403d88276ad7a96357f5bfc6bc9bb6967690'|'UPDATE 1-UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Oct 6'|'October 6, 2017 / 6:46 AM / Updated an hour ago UPDATE 1-UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Oct 6 Reuters Staff 4 Min Read (Adds company news items and futures) Oct 6 (Reuters) - Britain<69>s FTSE 100 index is seen opening 9 points higher on Friday, according to financial bookmakers with futures up 0.2 percent ahead of the cash market open. * EasyJet: A record number of summer passengers has put easyJet on course to reach the upper end of its profit forecast this year, the British budget airline said on Friday. * Lonmin: Platinum miner Lonmin Plc said on Friday it expects full-year sales to be slightly above its prior forecast. * UNILEVER: Anglo-Dutch consumer group Unilever has invited private equity bidders to submit tentative offers for its $8 billion margarine and spreads business by a deadline of Oct. 19, two sources close to the matter told Reuters. * ROYAL MAIL: Britain<69>s Royal Mail will use all legal options at its disposal to halt a strike by postal workers this month, it said on Thursday after the industry union announced the action over a pensions dispute. * BANK OF ENGLAND: Financial markets are less at risk of <20>an unpleasant surprise<73> from the Bank of England, now that they expect an interest rate rise later this year, rather than in mid-2019, BoE policymaker Ian McCafferty said on Thursday. * RYANAIR: Ryanair on Thursday promised its pilots significant improvements in pay and conditions, saying it would exceed rates paid by rivals and improve job security, according to a letter to pilots seen by Reuters. * BP: BP Plc said on Thursday it was shutting-in all oil and natural gas production from its U.S. Gulf of Mexico platforms ahead of Tropical Storm Nate. * SHELL: Royal Dutch Shell is shutting in production from some of its subsea fields and suspending some drilling activity at its assets in eastern Gulf of Mexico ahead of Tropical Storm Nate, it said on Thursday. * UK RETAIL: British shops enjoyed their biggest jump in sales in more than three years in September, a survey of the retail sector showed, suggesting consumers are finding ways to cope with the squeeze on their incomes. * UK JOBS: Growth in the number of workers hired in Britain via recruitment agencies slowed last month and fell in London for the first time in nearly a year as Brexit makes it harder for companies to find staff, a survey showed on Friday. * IRISH CONSUMER SENTIMENT: A modest improvement in Irish consumer sentiment last month thanks to a brighter outlook for household finances was enough to return the index to its highest level since early last year, a survey showed on Friday. * GOLD: Gold was steady on Friday ahead of key U.S. jobs data later in the day, with prices curbed as the dollar stood firm near a seven-week high. * OIL: Oil markets were cautious on Friday as traders monitored a tropical storm heading for the Gulf of Mexico and as China remained closed for a week-long public holiday. * The UK blue chip index closed 0.5 percent higher at 7,502.79 points on Thursday as a sharp fall in sterling boosted the index, with basic resources and oil and gas stocks contributing most to the upswing. * For more on the factors affecting European stocks, please click on: cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarkets TODAY<41>S UK PAPERS > Financial Times > Other business headlines Multimedia versions of Reuters Top News are now available for: * 3000 Xtra : visit topnews.session.rservices.com * For Top News : topnews.reuters.com (Reporting by Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-stocks-factors/update-1-uk-stocks-factors-to-watch-on-oct-6-idUSL4N1MH1C9'|'2017-10-06T09:43:00.000+03:00'
'07b16cf4d56202237985aa55b44207e08ea0dc80'|'Trade solutions beyond EU single market hard to find - Scotland''s Sturgeon'|'October 5, 2017 / 7:01 PM / Updated 2 hours ago Trade solutions beyond EU single market hard to find - Scotland''s Sturgeon Reuters Staff 3 Min Read First Minister Nicola Sturgeon speaks on the 20th anniversary of Scotland voting to establish its own Parliament, in Edinburgh, Britain, September 11, 2017. REUTERS/Russell Cheyne DUBLIN/EDINBURGH (Reuters) - The difficulty Britain faces of finding economic and trade solutions outside the European Union<6F>s single market is becoming more and more clear as it tries to navigate Brexit, Scotland<6E>s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told an Irish business dinner on Thursday. Sturgeon, who heads Scotland<6E>s devolved government, said she would continue to argue forcefully for continued single market and customs union membership, and, like EU member Ireland, for open borders after Britain leaves the EU. <20>(Keeping single market membership) is the obvious compromise solution. It<49>s democratically justified <20> the vote to leave was a very narrow one across the UK, and two of the four nations of the UK chose to remain,<2C> she told Dublin<69>s Chambers of Commerce. <20>Like you, we didn<64>t want Brexit. Like you, we support single market and customs union membership. And like you, we know that Ireland<6E>s circumstances require particular attention, and we will argue strongly for an open border,<2C> she said, according to an embargoed copy of her speech. <20>In addition, the difficulty of attempting to find solutions outside the single market is becoming clearer by the month,<2C> she added. The ties between the United Kingdom<6F>s four nations have been under strain from the Brexit vote, because the overall result included two nations -- Northern Ireland and Scotland -- that voted to keep EU membership while the other two opted to leave. The border between the Irish Republic and the British province of Northern Ireland is currently open to free flow of goods, being an internal EU frontier. But if Britain leaves the EU<45>s customs union, it will become subject to customs regulation and as such, is a major issue in negotiations for Britain to leave the EU. A new physical border could revive security concerns, almost 20 years after a peace deal involving Dublin that ended a long civil conflict in Northern Ireland and led to the end of army and police checkpoints. Sturgeon was also due to meet Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Dublin. Writing by Elisabeth O''Leary; Editing by Richard Balmforth'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-ireland-scotland/trade-solutions-beyond-eu-single-market-hard-to-find-scotlands-sturgeon-idUKKBN1CA2GZ'|'2017-10-05T22:14:00.000+03:00'
'0bc84a44489e67ef6d240000b4e3536b5ae44f06'|'New Volkswagen Brazil head sees market growing 40 pct in 4 years'|'October 9, 2017 / 6:39 PM / Updated an hour ago New Volkswagen Brazil head sees market growing 40 pct in 4 years Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SAO PAULO, Oct 9 (Reuters) - The Brazilian auto market should grow 40 percent in the next four years as Latin America<63>s largest economy emerges from its deepest recession in a century, the new head of Volkswagen AG in Brazil said on Monday. <20>The economy will continue to grow by the end of this year and in the next,<2C> Volkswagen Brazil head Pablo Di Si said at industry event Congresso Autodata Perspectivas 2018. (Reporting by Alberto Alerigi; Writing by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brazil-autos-volkswagen/new-volkswagen-brazil-head-sees-market-growing-40-pct-in-4-years-idUSE6N1M3003'|'2017-10-09T21:39:00.000+03:00'
'2586009f6a1a7de4585c773bc59292eb26850c8b'|'MOVES- Nomura, UniCredit, Pacific Asset Management'|'October 9, 2017 / 10:53 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago MOVES- Nomura, UniCredit, Exotix Capital Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Adds Exotox Capital, Lombard Odier, British Empire Trust and Delta Partners) Oct 9 (Reuters) - The following financial services industry appointments were announced on Monday. To inform us of other job changes, email moves@thomsonreuters.com. NOMURA HOLDINGS INC The investment bank has appointed Mark Yassin as executive chairman for the Middle East and North Africa region, tasked with expanding its business there, Reuters IFR reported. UNICREDIT The Italian bank has appointed Bryan Ho as deputy head of financial institutions and global transaction banking for the Asia-Pacific region, Reuters IFR reported. PACIFIC ASSET MANAGEMENT The asset management arm of Pacific Investments Group said it appointed Paul McLernon as its chief operating officer and Ben Sears as head of UK adviser strategy. FUND PARTNERS The authorized corporate director services provider hired Chris Spencer as managing director for its London office. EXOTIX CAPITAL The specialist emerging markets investment bank named Christopher Dielmann senior economist, effective immediately, expanding its research, analytics and data unit. LOMBARD ODIER INVESTMENT MANAGERS The asset management arm of Swiss private bank Lombard Odier Group said Eric Roeleven rejoined the company as head of institutional sales, Zurich, as of Oct. 1. BRITISH EMPIRE TRUST PLC The investment trust said Susan Noble would become the investment trust<73>s chairman after its annual general meeting in December. DELTA PARTNERS The advisory and investment firm specializing in the telecoms, media and digital space, appointed Mark Fleming as a partner, based in its New York office. (Compiled by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/financial-moves/moves-nomura-unicredit-pacific-asset-management-idUSL4N1MK26H'|'2017-10-09T13:53:00.000+03:00'
'b9cee735b321beef3a9dc438fb32fcefaefdbac8'|'Total, Eni, Statoil seek buyers for North Sea Teesside terminal - sources'|'October 9, 2017 / 11:46 AM / in 10 minutes Total, Eni, Statoil seek buyers for North Sea Teesside terminal - sources Ron Bousso 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Norwegian oil company''s Statoil logo is seen at their headquarters in Fornebu, Norway, June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins LONDON (Reuters) - Total ( TOTF.PA ), Eni ( ENI.MI ) and Statoil ( STL.OL ) are seeking buyers for their stake in the Teesside oil terminal in northern England, which receives crude from the Norwegian Ekofisk fields, part of the global Brent benchmark, banking sources said. The sale is run jointly by investment bank Rothschild and may fetch as much as $400 million (304.69 million pounds), according to the sources. Total holds a 32.9 percent stake in the terminal, Statoil a 27.3 percent stake and Eni a 10.3 percent stake. Paris Orleans holds the remaining 0.2 percent stake but it was unclear if they are taking part in the sale process. Total, Eni and Statoil declined to comment. ConocoPhillips ( COP.N ) is the operator of the terminal with a 29.3 percent stake but is not selling out, according to the sources. Conoco also declined to comment. The Teesside terminal, completed in 1975, receives, processes and stores crude oil and natural gas liquids from the Greater Ekofisk and Valhall field clusters in Norway as well as the Judy Platform in the British North Sea, according to Conoco<63>s website. Additional reporting by Stephen Jewkes in Milan, Bate Felix in Paris and Nerijus Adomaitis in Oslo, editing by Louise Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-teesside-sale/total-eni-statoil-seek-buyers-for-north-sea-teesside-terminal-sources-idUKKBN1CE1A8'|'2017-10-09T14:46:00.000+03:00'
'1d126cf3e123b94fca658c91329c0be381da3e4d'|'Indonesia says investigating StanChart $1.4 billion transfer to Singapore'|'October 9, 2017 / 9:27 AM / Updated 4 hours ago Indonesia investigates StanChart over $1.4 billion transfer Cindy Silviana , Hidayat Setiaji 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Standard Chartered sign is seen outside of a building, with a branch of the bank, in Jakarta, Indonesia September 28, 2016. REUTERS/Darren Whiteside/File Photo JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia is investigating reports that $1.4 billion held by Standard Chartered Plc ( STAN.L ) in Guernsey, mainly on behalf of Indonesian clients, was transferred to Singapore just before the island moved to new tax transparency rules, tax and regulatory officials said. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Guernsey<65>s Financial Services Commission were looking into that movement of assets in late 2015 - months before the Channel Island adopted a global framework for the exchange of tax data. Under those rules, countries automatically share annual reports on accounts belonging to people subject to taxes in each country. Britain, Guernsey and Singapore have all signed up, but Guernsey implemented the rules ahead of Singapore. The investigation was first reported by Bloomberg, which cited anonymous sources saying that Standard Chartered reported the matter itself to the regulators. It said the sources said regulators were looking into Standard Chartered<65>s processes, but had not suggested the bank colluded with clients to evade tax. Standard Chartered said last year that it was to close its trust operations in Guernsey and centralize that part of its business in Singapore. Standard Chartered declined to comment. A MAS spokesperson said in a statement: <20>As our supervisory probe is still ongoing, we are unable to provide more information at this juncture.<2E> Indonesian and other regulators have not identified the customers or given information about concerns about the funds. <20>We are now checking their annual tax reports, as well as their report of assets, for those who participated in the (Indonesian) tax amnesty,<2C> Hestu Yoga Saksama, a spokesman for Indonesia<69>s tax office, said. <20>If those assets are reported in annual reports or declared during the tax amnesty, it surely means there are no problems. But if they were not, we are going to follow up under the prevailing regulations.<2E> Ken Dwijugiasteadi, the head of the tax office, later told a news conference on Monday that 81 clients were involved in the transfer, including 62 who were tax amnesty participants, and none were government officials, law enforcement officers or in the military. <20>We will look for possible tax crimes, but any other criminal probe is not my business,<2C> he said, adding that his office hoped to finish the investigation this month. Heru Kristiyana, the deputy commissioner for banking at Indonesia<69>s financial regulator (OJK), told Reuters by text message on Monday that a supervisor was investigating the issue. He said the regulator was co-ordinating with the director general of taxation and the anti-money laundering agency, the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPTAK). A spokesman at PPTAK had no immediate comment, while the anti-corruption agency did not immediately respond. Singapore and Indonesia said in July they were ready to share financial data automatically for tax purposes. Both countries could start exchanging financial information from next year if they introduce the necessary legislation, Indonesia<69>s Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati has said. The Indonesian government launched a tax amnesty scheme last year to improve compliance and to encourage tax payers to bring back billions of dollars stashed abroad. Most of the offshore assets declared by taxpayers during the amnesty program were kept in Singapore. Additional reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costa and Kanupriya Kapoor and Anshuman Daga; Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Clara Ferreira-Marques, Neil Fullick and Jane Merriman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reute
'e654454f5088fdcdf1ab977fdbf90aac5fec29d5'|'UK energy price cap legislation to be published on Thursday - May''s spokesman'|'October 9, 2017 / 10:42 AM / Updated an hour ago UK energy price cap legislation to be published on Thursday - May''s spokesman Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Draft legislation on the British government<6E>s plans to cap energy prices will be published on Thursday, a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday. Last week, May said she would impose a price cap on the energy market to help millions of households struggling with rising prices, hitting shares in the leading providers hard. Reporting by William James, editing by Elizabeth Piper'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-politics-energy/uk-energy-price-cap-legislation-to-be-published-on-thursday-mays-spokesman-idUKKBN1CE12C'|'2017-10-09T13:44:00.000+03:00'
'8742ac4005182cf743b23fdf10b67bdb6bd6b3b8'|'Russian shoe retailer Obuv Rossii plans to raise up to $136 mln in IPO'|'MOSCOW, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Russian shoe retailer Obuv Rossii on Monday said it planned to raise up to 7.9 billion roubles, or nearly $136 million, in an initial public offering in Moscow.Obuv Rossii said it had set a price range for the IPO at between 140 roubles and 170 roubles ($2.41-$2.92) per share.The IPO would be worth between 6.5 billion roubles and 7.9 billion roubles, given the announced IPO range, <20>including the over-allotment shares to fund stabilisation activities,<2C> the company said in a statement.The IPO is a further sign of recovery in Russia<69>s new issues market. A growing number of Russian companies are looking to raise funds via share sales as the country<72>s economy recovers and foreign investors make a cautious return to Russian assets despite Western sanctions over the Ukraine conflict.After the IPO, the company<6E>s post-offering share capital would be between 15.8 billion roubles and 19.2 billion roubles, said Obuv Rossii, which in Russian stands for <20>Shoes of Russia<69>.The company, which has more than 500 stores across Russia, said it expected its free float to reach around 41 percent of the increased share capital, assuming the maximum size of the offering.Obuv Rossii said it plans to use the IPO proceeds for expansion of its <20>retail network and for the development of its distribution and supply chain, partial repayment of its existing indebtedness, as well as for other general corporate purposes<65>.BCS Global Markets, Citigroup, Renaissance Capital and Sberbank CIB are acting as joint global coordinators and joint bookrunners, Obuv Rossii said in the statement. ($1 = 58.1321 roubles) (Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; Editing by Himani Sarkar) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/russia-obuvrossii-ipo/russian-shoe-retailer-obuv-rossii-plans-to-raise-up-to-136-mln-in-ipo-idINL8N1MK0GC'|'2017-10-09T04:00:00.000+03:00'
'ae2e168588b45dedfe4ba16f1c4333df2efbb4f3'|'Flyers rarely complain even when they should'|'BUSINESS travellers are hardy souls. It goes with the territory. Theirs is a life of jet lag, cramped seating and reheated meals, all washed down with weak cups of coffee. Small wonder, then, that a recent study by Clarabridge, a technology firm, suggests that few travellers ever actually lodge complaints about their flights. It surveyed almost 2,500 passengers in Britain and America and found that about two-thirds of respondents have never aired a grievance, even when they had good reason to do so. This is despite the fact that complaints are on the rise overall, as Gulliver has previously reported .Why are so many reluctant to complain? One reason is that passengers think airlines will ignore them. This explanation was given by about a third of those who have never complained, according to Clarabridge<67>s study. This should worry airlines. Being ignored leaves customers even more frustrated and can dent future revenue. An analysis by Twitter and Applied Marketing Science, a research group, examined the preferences of passengers who used the social-media platform to complain about a carrier. Not only did receiving a response boost customer satisfaction, but faster replies made it more likely that passengers would fork out for more expensive tickets from that airline in the future.A less-concerning explanation of passenger<65>s willingness to suffer in silence is that service has never been so good. In the decades since deregulation in the 1970s, flights have become more punctual, more frequent and more convenient. Advances in technology have made it easier to buy tickets, board a plane and enjoy movies while flying.Moreover, flying is now cheaper. Data from Airlines for America, a trade group, show that the average cost of air travel per mile halved between 1979 and 2012. And it has tumbled even further in the past few years thanks largely to lower oil prices. That will please the one-third of travellers who, according to Clarabridge, choose their flights solely on the basis of price. And for the rest? Well, nothing suppresses the urge to complain quite like getting a good deal.Next Concerns over charges for checked bags in America miss the point'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/10/airing-grievances?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-06T18:15:00.000+03:00'
'88fbedbf8ff76027c8428d3dd9719f6e290dd84f'|'Fitch says Syngenta risks rating downgrade due to corn lawsuits'|'October 11, 2017 / 5:10 PM / Updated 14 minutes ago Fitch says Syngenta risks rating downgrade due to corn lawsuits P.J. Huffstutter 3 Min Read CHICAGO, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Fitch Ratings on Wednesday became the second major ratings agency to put Syngenta AG on notice for a potential downgrade, over uncertainties surrounding the Swiss-based company<6E>s genetically modified corn lawsuit liabilities. Fitch said it has put the world<6C>s largest crop chemical company on <20>rating watch negative,<2C> flagging concerns about how Syngenta will pay to settle the lawsuits and whether the Chinese government will support litigation liabilities. Fitch rates Syngenta at BBB, two notches above junk. <20>While the amount of the settlement is currently unknown, it may threaten the pace of the company<6E>s future deleveraging absent a financial intervention by ChemChina,<2C> Fitch said in a statement. Syngenta officials could not be immediately reached for comment. The company<6E>s low investment-grade rating, linked in part to its expected ability to reduce leverage as well as ChemChina providing financial support, is not consistent with its financial profile, Fitch said. Syngenta has agreed to be acquired by ChemChina for $44 billion. S&P Global Ratings last week placed Syngenta<74>s rating on credit watch with negative implications. It downgraded Syngenta to BBB-minus in May, putting it a notch above junk. The agrochemical industry is in a consolidation race as the sector wrestles with a global grain glut that has stretched into its fourth year. In late September, Syngenta pulled a $7 billion bond after struggling to drum up interest in the face a raft of lawsuits related to its genetically modified corn. The bond was intended to help finance ChemChina<6E>s acquisition of split-rated Syngenta, which also carries a Ba2 and BBB rating from Moody<64>s and Fitch. Syngenta announced a day later it would settle U.S. farmer lawsuits stemming from its decision to commercialize a GMO corn strain before China approved importing it. A person familiar with the matter said the payment would be close to $1.5 billion. Xiao Yaqing, chairman of China<6E>s state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, recently told a media outlet the government would not give ChemChina financial help. (Additional reporting by Eleanor Duncan in New York; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/syngenta-fitch/fitch-says-syngenta-risks-rating-downgrade-due-to-corn-lawsuits-idUSL2N1MM19E'|'2017-10-11T20:11:00.000+03:00'
'9fcb43fde6e26bfc33322e2da0dbf98e30ce1fb5'|'Chicago City Council approves new debt structure'|'CHICAGO, Oct 11 (Reuters) - A plan aimed at lowering Chicago<67>s borrowing costs with a new debt structure that protects investors from the city<74>s financial problems won final city council approval on Wednesday.The 43-5 vote clears the way for the city to refinance up to $3 billion of existing debt using the new structure, with the first issuance expected as soon as next month.Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to refund all $700 million of the city<74>s sales tax revenue bonds and about $2.3 billion of its $9.8 billion of general obligation (GO) bonds through a new corporation. That entity will be assigned all of the city<74>s sale tax revenue collected by the state of Illinois, which totaled $661 million in fiscal 2016, and will pledge that money to pay off the bonds. Revenue not needed for debt service will eventually flow back into city coffers.City aldermen who voted against the proposal cited the lack of third-party vetting of the plan, distrust of the bond market, and concerns over extending maturities on existing debt for their opposition.Supporters contended the move will help the city save money for its budget by lowering interest rates on its debt.<2E>This takes us from a situation where we have difficulty selling our bonds to the point where people will be lining up to get them,<2C> said Alderman Patrick O<>Connor.A chronic structural budget deficit and a huge unfunded pension liability that totaled $35.76 billion at the end of 2016 have led to low credit ratings and increased borrowing costs for the nation<6F>s third-largest city.The debt structure, which was authorized for home-rule Illinois governments like Chicago by the state legislature in July and used in a few other major cities, gives bond investors a statutory lien to shield debt from municipal bankruptcy, which is currently not allowed under state law.Carole Brown, Chicago<67>s chief financial officer, said last week the city could sell as much as $700 million of bonds in late November in the first of four issues using the new structure. She also said the debt should fetch higher ratings and could lower borrowing costs by 2 percentage points.Reporting by Karen Pierog; Editing by Matthew Lewis'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/chicago-bonds/chicago-city-council-approves-new-debt-structure-idINL2N1MM1SL'|'2017-10-11T17:44:00.000+03:00'
'12657f4d64ed3770bcabcd207548a72341ca161f'|'Deloitte cyber attack affected up to 350 clients - Guardian'|'October 10, 2017 / 10:47 PM / in 14 minutes Deloitte cyber attack affected up to 350 clients - Guardian Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Deloitte Company logo is seen on a commercial tower at Gurgaon, on the outskirts of New Delhi August 9, 2012. REUTERS/Parivartan Sharma/File Photo (Reuters) - A hack at global accounting firm Deloitte [DLTE.UL] disclosed in September compromised a server with emails of some 350 clients, including U.S. government agencies and large corporations, the Guardian reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources. Deloitte disputed the story, saying <20>very few<65> clients were affected<65> in a statement emailed to Reuters. <20>We take any attack on our systems very seriously,<2C> the statement said. <20>We are confident that we know what information was targeted and what the hacker actually did.<2E> Reporting by Jim Finkle   Susan Thomas and James Dalgleish 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-deloitte-cyber/deloitte-cyber-attack-affected-up-to-350-clients-guardian-idUKKBN1CF29S'|'2017-10-11T01:53:00.000+03:00'
'74a67965eb862d525b458cc54126c63ffe1a48e9'|'The bosses of two famous French firms struggle to keep customers'|'ALEXANDRE RICARD wants to talk boxing. He runs Pernod Ricard, a firm that sells Chivas whisky and Absolut vodka, among other drinks. Formed by his grandfather in 1975, with roots in a Pernod distiller set up in 1805, it is the world<6C>s second-largest seller of wine and spirits, with a market capitalisation of <20>32bn ($37bn). He brags that Floyd Mayweather, an American pugilist with 19m Instagram followers, recently endorsed one of the company<6E>s tequila brands. Such a <20>key influencer<65> on a digital channel <20>gives us speed and scale<6C>, says Mr Ricard.Celebrity endorsements are an old ploy: French singers, actors and racing drivers used to push Pernod Ricard<72>s liquor. But with 90% of sales in markets outside of France, punchier efforts are needed. Two years ago the firm commissioned a global study of boozing habits, which totted up all <20>moments of consumption<6F> for drinkers, identifying 20 important ones in America, the biggest market. Teams of marketers are now told to push a brand for each such experience: the firm<72>s tequila when American friends gather to watch sport; its cognac at Chinese weddings; gin for Spaniards sharing an aperitif.Latest updates How <20>Oslo<6C> turned diplomatic negotiation into compelling theatre Prospero 31 minutes ago This 2 hours ago Flyers See all updates The firm must respond somehow, because drinkers, especially millennials (the generation which roughly includes those born between 1980 and 1996), are no longer loyal, says Mr Ricard. <20>Back in the day, you had a one-brand consumer,<2C> who took a favoured tipple on almost any occasion. <20>Now it depends who you are with, where you are, the time of day. A consumer might have six brands,<2C> he says.Across Paris, Emmanuel Faber, the head of another large French consumer-goods firm, Danone, is facing a similar challenge as consumers of yogurt and bottled water prove fickle too. His style<6C>ascetic and almost monkish, as an acquaintance puts it<69>differs sharply from that of his compatriot. But the two bosses are responding to the same phenomenon: a lack of growth in food-and-drinks sales at big firms. <20>People are walking out of brands that they<65>ve been consuming for decades,<2C> says Mr Faber. To stop feeling disconnected from the origin of food, he says, they are switching to small, local firms that might produce organic foods, for example.Of the two firms, Danone faces the biggest and most immediate shift in consumer tastes. Although he heads a global food firm with a market value of <20>46bn, Mr Faber warns that time may be up for standardisation in food-making. The food industry <20>is going nowhere<72>, he adds, because short-sighted companies see only a <20>transactional relationship<69>, not a deeper one based on values, with their customers.These days people have little faith in the makers of their food and drink. Mr Faber talks at length about disenchantment shown by voters and consumers alike towards elites. Surveys show the public barely trusts CEOs such as himself when they speak about their companies, he says. Consumers <20>care about the sovereignty of their food, taking control back<63>.Danone<6E>s response, like that of Pernod Ricard, is partly about niftier marketing<6E>it runs an ad campaign called <20>One Planet. One Health<74>. But the company is also changing some basics. Two decades ago Danone sold <20>beer, wine, chocolates and candies<65>, he points out. It has switched entirely to healthier products, betting that long-term growth lies there. The firm aims to be entirely carbon-neutral.Most striking, Danone wants to get certified as a B-Corp<72>a for-profit firm that shows high social and environmental standards. It would be the largest company globally to do so. In America that requires registration as a <20>public benefit<69> firm, letting board directors legally promote the interests of staff, customers and others, along with those of shareholders.Markets are not entirely convinced by Danone<6E>s strategy, however. An American activist investor, Corvex, has taken a small stake, worth 
'2124097c37de770461d27fb5403ca9ebff4c921c'|'Hurricanes will hit jobs numbers hard - Oct. 5, 2017'|'Hurricanes will hit jobs numbers hard by Chris Isidore @CNNMoney October 5, 2017: 3:09 PM ET 2017 hurricanes could cost over $200 billion Brace yourself for some bad jobs numbers. But don''t panic. The number of jobs created in September is expected to dip sharply, primarily because of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. And the impact on jobs is likely to be short-lived.The storms could even boost in hiring in the upcoming months,as victims of the storms rebuild and and replace things like cars that were damaged in the storm. Still, Friday''s report is likely to show employers added only about 90,000 jobs in the month, according economists surveyed by CNNMoney. That''s about half of jobs that would have been reported without the storms. So far this year employers have added an average of 175,000 jobs a month. About a quarter of the economists say the temporary job losses might push the unemployment rate to 4.5%, while the rest believe it will remain at 4.4%. Related: Irma and Harvey together will be as expensive as Hurricane Katrina Even if that rate does tick higher, it will still be near what economists generally consider to be full employment. And the overall economy is well-positioned to bounce back quickly from any impact from the storms. "Hurricanes Harvey and Irma hurt the job market in September," said Mark Zandi, chief economist with with Moody''s Analytics. "Looking through the storms the job market remains sturdy and strong." The government''s monthly jobs report is a snapshot of what the Labor Department finds when it contacts businesses across the nation, which is does in the middle of each month. But many businesses in both the Houston area and across Florida were closed because of the storm when the Labor Department was collecting its September data. If the Labor Department wasn''t able to contact an employer, it has to assume there was no one employed there at that time. Related: Hurricanes will probably hurt the economy, but not for long The storms will have a big impact on the jobs report in large part because they hit densely populated areas in Texas and Florida. There are about 11 million people working in the counties designed as disaster areas, according to the Labor Department. Hurricane Harvey hit Texas on Aug. 25, which was too late to affect the August jobs report. But because many businesses and individuals in the region were still struggling to reopen and recover from damage wrought by the storm weeks later in mid-September, it will impact this report. Hurricane Irma hit the Florida Keys on Sunday, Sept. 10, then moved up the state in the following days, shutting down many businesses during the week that employment is measured. Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, won''t affect this report. That storm hit after the week that the Labor Department surveys businesses. Second, the widely reported national jobs numbers do not include those islands, even though the Labor Department does track hiring and job losses on those islands. CNNMoney (New York) First published October 5, 2017: 3:08 PM ET '|'cnn.com'|'http://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_news_economy.rss'|'http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/05/news/economy/jobs-hurricane-impact/index.html'|'2017-10-05T23:09:00.000+03:00'
'4c31e83b28df25812c5b00031ca57a4631c3fc11'|'EU antitrust conducted inspections over limits to bank accounts'' access'|'October 6, 2017 / 6:51 PM / in an hour EU conducts inspections over limits to bank account access Reuters Staff 2 Min Read European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium June 14, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission said on Friday it had conducted inspections in some EU states into banks<6B> alleged anti-competitive practices in limiting rival financial firms from gaining legitimate online access to their customers<72> data. The Commission said in a statement it had <20>concerns<6E> that the companies involved <20>may have engaged in anti-competitive practices in breach of EU antitrust rules<65>. It did not name any company. It said that banks could have prevented non-bank competitors from gaining online access to account information of their customers to provide financial services, in spite of having obtained prior authorisation from the customers. The unannounced inspections were carried out on Oct. 3, the commission said. Antitrust inspections are preliminary steps into suspected practices that may not result in formal accusations. Financial technology, or <20>fintech<63> companies had complained of banks limiting their access to customers. Fintech firms provide payment, lending and other services. Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio; editing by Andrew Roche '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-antitrust-banks-accounts/eu-antitrust-conducted-inspections-over-limits-to-bank-accounts-access-idUSKBN1CB2GK'|'2017-10-06T21:51:00.000+03:00'
'69df1431a52fbd0f2bfaf55be6d7724415f27358'|'Renault targets 44 percent sales increase by 2022'|'Reuters TV United States October 6, 2017 / 6:31 AM / in an hour Renault targets 44 percent sales increase by 2022 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Renault logo covered with mud and dust is seen on a car in Paris, France, March 15, 2017. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes PARIS (Reuters) - French carmaker Renault ( RENA.PA ) pledged to deliver a 44 percent sales increase by 2022 as it expands its car lineup for emerging markets and extends its low-cost edge into hybrid and electric cars. Renault is expected to grow faster than Nissan ( 7201.T ), according to the mid-term plan unveiled on Friday, as it chases its alliance partner<65>s lead in China and benefits from recent investments in Iran, India and a rebounding Russian market. The plan calls for Renault to increase sales to 5 million vehicles in 2022 from 3.47 million last year, while also pursuing a 7 percent operating margin and 70 billion euros ($82 billion) in revenue, goals that were both announced in February. Renault pledged on Friday that its margin would stay above 5 percent over the intervening year, as it pursues 4.2 billion euros in cumulative productivity gains and invests 18 billion euros in research and development. The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance last month announced a sales goal of 14 million vehicles for 2022, to which the two Japanese carmakers would contribute a 9 million deliveries - an increase of about 37 percent on their combined total last year. Reporting by Laurence Frost; Editing by Maya Nikolaeva'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-renault-plan/renault-targets-44-percent-sales-increase-by-2022-idUKKBN1CB0JF'|'2017-10-06T09:27:00.000+03:00'
'3b7409dbe4b429656149d6f1fd42d0726a028f04'|'UPDATE 1-UK PM May tells business chiefs: two-year Brexit transition is assured- source'|'October 9, 2017 / 4:49 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago UPDATE 2-UK PM May tells business chiefs: two-year Brexit transition is assured- source Reuters Staff (Adds comment from May<61>s office) By Costas Pitas LONDON, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May told business leaders that they should treat a two-year transition period after Brexit as assured as she tries to ease company concerns that Britain could crash out of the EU without a deal, a source told Reuters. May met business chiefs from GlaxoSmithKline, Vodafone and HSBC and other major companies on Monday to hear what they want from talks on Britain<69>s relationship with the EU after Brexit. Businesses have become increasingly alarmed by the slow progress of negotiations and the prospect that the country could leave the trading bloc without a new trading arrangement in place in 2019. <20>From her point of view, the transitional agreement is non-negotiable ... business should think of the two-year period as assured. It will happen,<2C> the source said when asked what May had said during discussions on Monday. A spokeswoman from May<61>s office said she restated her position <20>that the government<6E>s goal is for a smooth, orderly exit in which there is only one set of changes for businesses and people<6C>. Almost all business leaders expressed concern about access to talent after Brexit and several told May that the investment cycle means there are decisions coming at the end of 2017 and the start of 2018, the source said. Last week, two sources told Reuters that Japanese carmaker Toyota intended to build the next version of its Auris car at its British car plant on the assumption that the government secures a transitional Brexit deal in a decision due by the end of the year. Both May and her finance minister, Philip Hammond, acknowledged during Monday<61>s meeting that businesses needed a better sense of Britain<69>s post-Brexit relationship with the European Union. <20>May said business needs clarity,<2C> the source said. <20>The chancellor (finance minister) said clarity is more important than perfection.<2E> Business chiefs have previously complained that their voice has been drowned out by disagreement and division in the government, and they have not heard anything to give them the certainty they need to plan and invest in their businesses. May<61>s office said she stressed the importance of engaging with the business community to design the proposed implementation arrangements, and promised to have continued meetings with a wide variety of business voices. May was joined by Hammond, business minister Greg Clark, minister for exiting the EU David Davis and trade minister Liam Fox at the council. Companies attending also included Balfour Beatty, WPP, Morgan Stanley, Aston Martin and AB Foods , the government said. The meeting came after May<61>s authority was further undermined last week. She had to fend off a challenge from up to 30 of her lawmakers who had been pushing for her to quit following a disastrous snap election in June which saw the ruling Conservatives lose their parliamentary majority. (Additional reporting by Paul Sandle and William James; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Alison Williams)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-eu-business/update-1-uk-pm-may-tells-business-chiefs-two-year-brexit-transition-is-assured-source-idUSL8N1MK48Y'|'2017-10-09T19:49:00.000+03:00'
'6afe0e7374c9530c9eb5830539d14e8209751ae7'|'Qualcomm offers EU concessions over $38 billion NXP takeover bid'|'October 9, 2017 / 9:20 AM / Updated 5 hours ago Qualcomm offers EU concessions over $38 billion NXP takeover bid Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Qualcomm''s logo is seen during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 28, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard/File Photo BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. smartphone chipmaker Qualcomm has offered concessions in an attempt to allay EU antitrust concerns over its $38-billion bid for NXP Semiconductors, the largest ever in the semiconductor industry. Qualcomm, which supplies chips to Android smartphone makers and Apple, submitted its proposal on Oct. 5, a filing on the European Commission site showed on Monday, without providing details. The EU competition enforcer, which suspended the deadline for its decision on Aug. 17 for a second time while waiting for information data from Qualcomm, said it would set a new deadline once the company has complied with its request. The Commission is expected to seek feedback from rivals and customers in the coming days. It is concerned the combined company may use incentives to squeeze out rivals and raise prices, as well change NXP<58>s intellectual property licensing model. Related Coverage'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-nxp-m-a-qualcomm-eu/qualcomm-offers-eu-concessions-over-38-billion-nxp-takeover-bid-idINKBN1CE0SW'|'2017-10-09T07:20:00.000+03:00'
'b43c455919f854f16788952462e50e96dcb57cf1'|'UPDATE 1-Speculators cut bearish bets on dollar from 5-year high, remain short - CFTC, Reuters'|'October 6, 2017 / 8:23 PM / in 11 minutes UPDATE 1-Speculators cut bearish bets on dollar from 5-year high, remain short - CFTC, Reuters Reuters Staff 5 Min Read (Adds data, quote, table) By Dion Rabouin Oct 6 (Reuters) - Speculators cut their bearish bets on the U.S. dollar from the previous week, which showed the highest level in net-short contracts in five years, but held their negative bias for the U.S. currency. The value of the dollar''s net short position was $16.83 billion in the week ended Oct. 3, leaving investors net short on the greenback for the 12th straight week, according to data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission released Friday. Net short bets on the dollar had grown to $17.36 billion for the week ended Sept. 26, the highest since late September 2012. In a wider measure of dollar positioning that includes net contracts on the New Zealand dollar, Mexican peso, Brazilian real and Russian ruble, the U.S. dollar posted a net short position valued at $21.01 billion, down slightly from $21.13 billion a week earlier. The dollar had its best week of the year against a gauge of six rival currencies last week after more hawkish signals from the Federal Reserve during its monetary policy meeting, which raised prospects for an increase of U.S. interest rates by year-end. A larger move could come next week in Europe as Spain wrestles with an independence vote from Catalonia. Carles Puigdemont, Catalonia<69>s separatist leader, is set to appear before lawmakers on Tuesday. "Although it<69>s calmed down in the past day or two, the big event that<61>s going on right now is put on hold until debate (next week)," said Joseph Trevisani, chief market strategist at WorldWide Markets in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. "The currency markets are telling you that they<65>re not going to (secede). If everyone was convinced they were going to do it, euro would be at $1.12." The euro closed Tuesday at $1.1742 and was last at $1.1731 on Friday. The Reuters calculation for the aggregate U.S. dollar position is derived from net positions of International Monetary speculators in the yen, euro, British pound, Swiss franc and Canadian and Australian dollars. Japanese Yen (Contracts of 12,500,000 yen) $7.947 billion 03 Oct 2017 Prior week week Long 58,770 42,963 Short 143,413 114,310 Net -84,643 -71,347 EURO (Contracts of 125,000 euros) $-12.995 billion 03 Oct 2017 Prior week week Long 187,053 183,679 Short 96,220 95,512 Net 90,833 88,167 POUND STERLING (Contracts of 62,500 pounds sterling) $-0.425 billion 03 Oct 2017 Prior week week Long 80,325 80,145 Short 60,376 75,091 Net 19,949 5,054 SWISS FRANC (Contracts of 125,000 Swiss francs) $0.24 billion 03 Oct 2017 Prior week week Long 17,614 14,926 Short 20,907 16,788 Net -3,293 -1,862 CANADIAN DOLLAR (Contracts of 100,000 Canadian dollars) $-6.043 billion 03 Oct 2017 Prior week week Long 97,204 102,688 Short 22,076 28,083 Net 75,128 74,605 AUSTRALIAN DOLLAR (Contracts of 100,000 Aussie dollars) $-6.088 billion 03 Oct 2017 Prior week week Long 98,499 103,507 Short 26,687 26,313 Net 71,812 77,194 MEXICAN PESO (Contracts of 500,000 pesos) $-2.332 billion 03 Oct 2017 Prior week week Long 117,452 134,621 Short 28,336 50,894 Net 89,116 83,727 NEW ZEALAND DOLLAR (Contracts of 100,000 New Zealand dollars) $-0.58 billion 03 Oct 2017 Prior week week Long 20,928 22,369 Short 12,810 14,316 Net 8,118 8,053 (Reporting by Dion Rabouin in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/cftc-forex/update-1-speculators-cut-bearish-bets-on-dollar-from-5-year-high-remain-short-cftc-reuters-idUSL2N1MH1R4'|'2017-10-06T23:23:00.000+03:00'
'8105e1277b2d010d7aa5e1e8b68e00adfb5819c5'|'OPEC Secretary General urges U.S. shale oil producers to help cap global supply'|'October 10, 2017 / 4:51 AM / in 37 minutes OPEC Secretary General urges U.S. shale oil producers to help cap global supply Reuters Staff 2 Min Read OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo speaks to the media during his visit in Abuja, Nigeria Febuary 27, 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde NEW DELHI (Reuters) - OPEC<45>s Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo on Tuesday called on U.S. shale oil producers to help curtail global oil supply, warning extraordinary measures might be needed next year to sustain the rebalanced market in the medium to long term. <20>We urge our friends, in the shale basins of North America to take this shared responsibility with all seriousness it deserves, as one of the key lessons learnt from the current unique supply-driven cycle,<2C> said Barkindo. The comments by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries official came during a speech delivered at a conference in New Delhi. Related Coverage OPEC says to reconvene meeting with U.S. on deal to cut oil output While OPEC and some other producers, including Russia have cut supplies this year in order to prop up prices, U.S. production has soared by almost 10 percent this year, driven largely by shale drillers. Barkindo said he hoped that new producers, not just U.S. shale drillers, would join production cuts. On Monday, Saudi Arabia cut crude oil allocations for November by 560,000 barrels per day (bpd), in line with the kingdom<6F>s commitment to the OPEC-led supply reduction pact. Still, the top oil exporter plans to ship slightly above 7 million bpd next month, up from low levels during summer when domestic demand was at its peak. On Sunday, Barkindo said OPEC and other oil producers might need to take <20>some extraordinary measures<65> next year to rebalance the oil market. Looking ahead, the official said by 2040, oil and other fossil fuels would account for 70 percent of the global energy basket. Barkindo<64>s bullish forecast runs counter to the views of most analysts, who see the share of fossil fuel below 70 percent by 2040, as renewable energy sources and electric vehicles spread. Reporting by Nidhi Verma, Promit Mukherjee and Neha Dasgupta; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-india-energy/opec-secretary-general-urges-u-s-shale-oil-producers-to-help-cap-global-supply-idUKKBN1CF0C4'|'2017-10-10T08:47:00.000+03:00'
'3ac76ad64309072df7905af50b7f1227d4723e0f'|'UK business minister to make statement on Bombardier after 1130 GMT'|'Reuters TV United States October 10, 2017 / 9:56 AM / in 9 minutes Britain hopes U.S. review of Bombardier decision will not be influenced by politics Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Bombardier''s new Global 7000 business jet (rear) is seen parked next to a Learjet 75 during the National Business Aviation Association conference and expo at the Henderson Executive Airport in Henderson, Nevada, U.S., October 8, 2017. REUTERS/David Becker LONDON (Reuters) - Britain hopes a provisional U.S. ruling imposing tariffs on Canadian aerospace manufacturer Bombardier ( BBDb.TO ) will not be politically influenced when new evidence is considered, UK Business Secretary Greg Clarke said on Tuesday. Clark said he was confident in the British government<6E>s case as it fights the suit, which was brought by Boeing ( BA.N ) and could cost jobs in Northern Ireland, and said Britain would discuss the ruling with the United States, Canada and the two companies in the coming days. Reporting by Alistair Smout and Michael Holden; Editing by Stephen Addison'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-bombardier-britain/uk-business-minister-to-make-statement-on-bombardier-after-1130-gmt-idUKKBN1CF122'|'2017-10-10T12:52:00.000+03:00'
'dad67b2b283cac0967e86598b4ff251088756a93'|'Vivendi offers compensation to settle dispute with Mediaset: sources'|'FILE PHOTO: The Vivendi logo at the company''s headquarters in Paris, France, March 10, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo MILAN/PARIS (Reuters) - French media group Vivendi has offered to pay compensation to Mediaset to settle a dispute with the Italian broadcaster over a soured pay-TV deal, three sources close to the matter said on Tuesday.The two companies have been at loggerheads since July last year when Vivendi, in an unexpected U-turn, pulled out of a 800 million euro ($945 million) contract that would have given it full control of Mediaset<65>s pay-TV arm Premium, saying the unit<69>s business plan was unrealistic.One of the sources said Vivendi would pay a first tranche of 250 million euros as part of a wider tentative agreement. The person said more money would be paid at a later stage, but did not quantify the amounts.One of the other two sources said Mediaset could join a joint venture being set up between Vivendi<64>s own pay-TV arm Canal+ and Italian phone group Telecom Italia.Vivendi is the biggest shareholder in Telecom Italia with a 24 percent stake.This source said it was too early to say whether the two sides would eventually reach a compromise.<2E>There is a long list of problems to solve,<2C> the person said.Mediaset, Vivendi and Telecom Italia declined to comment.Bloomberg reported earlier on Tuesday that Vivendi was considering making a cash and stock offer to settle the dispute as part of a compensation package that may be valued around 1 billion euros, pushing Mediaset shares up more than 5 percent. The stock closed up 1.8 percent.The sources refused to comment on the size of an eventual settlement. Mediaset and top shareholder Fininvest, the holding company of the family of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, have asked for damages totaling 3 billion euros.Since the dispute first broke out, the two companies have been trading blows, launching legal action and raising alarm bells in Rome, where politicians have already been growing increasingly wary of French influence over corporate Italy.Mediaset said in April it would have broken even last year had it not been for the failed sale of its pay-TV arm.The spat was aggravated in December when Vivendi bought shares to become the second largest shareholder in the Milan-based TV group after Berlusconi<6E>s family. The French company has repeatedly said the move was not hostile but a sign of long-term interest.Reporting Gwenaelle Barzic in Paris, Sophie Sassard in London, writing by Agnieszka Flak; editing by Silvia Aloisi and David Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-mediaset-vivendi/vivendi-offers-compensation-to-settle-dispute-with-mediaset-sources-idINKBN1CF2AV'|'2017-10-10T14:20:00.000+03:00'
'f5c876fa57fc963503dcdbd596f225daa3c2684f'|'Wal-Mart launches $20 billion buyback plan'|'October 10, 2017 / 1:42 PM / Updated an hour ago Wal-Mart sees 40 percent online sales growth next year, shares jump Sruthi Ramakrishnan , Sayantani Ghosh 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Souvenir t-shirts are seen for sale at the Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market in Bentonville, Arkansas, U.S. on June 4, 2015. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc ( WMT.N ) on Tuesday forecast that its U.S. online sales would soar about 40 percent in the fiscal year ending January 2019, sending its stock up 4.7 percent to the highest in more than two years. The company also forecast overall net sales to rise by at least 3 percent in the same period and said it would buy back $20 billion of its shares over the next two years. The retailing behemoth reiterated its focus on its e-commerce business at its annual investor meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas. It has started offering free two-day shipping and plans to roughly double the locations for shipping online grocery orders and slash the number of physical stores. Wal-Mart, locked in a battle for market share with ecommerce group Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ), has been doubling down on its online business and leveraging its 4,700-plus stores trying to create a more hassle-free experience for online shoppers. <20>We are going to lean into places like technology, e-commerce, international stores ... we feel like we are going in the right direction with that,<2C> said Wal-Mart Chief Financial Officer Brett Biggs. The company did not break out U.S. e-commerce sales last year, but reported growth of about 62 percent for the first half of this year. With a steady rise in people buying online, Wal-Mart<72>s e-commerce sales growth has been outstripping brick-and-mortar. Wal-Mart plans to open fewer than 15 supercenters and less than 10 neighborhood markets in the United States in the fiscal year ending January 2019. That<61>s half the stores it intends to open in fiscal 2018. Last year, Wal-Mart opened 230 supercenters and neighborhood markets. <20>Digital has been a recent highlight for WMT and it expects this momentum to carry into FY <20>19,<2C> UBS analysts said in a research note. <20>Faster growth in (e-commerce) should lead to earnings pressure though, as this operation is likely still several years away from profitability,<2C> the analysts said. In August, the company warned that current-quarter profit could miss Wall Street estimates as margins are being hurt by price-cutting and heavy spending on e-commerce. Total revenue increased 2.1 percent to $123.4 billion in the latest quarter. Wal-Mart did not break out total online sales. Like other retailers, Wal-Mart has been investing aggressively. The company said on Tuesday it expects capital expenditures to be about $11 billion for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. It started offering free two-day shipping and discounts for picking up online purchases at stores, and has acquired several start-ups, including Jet.com for $3.3 billion last year. Grocery competition has increased since Amazon bought Whole Foods and started to cut prices at the upmarket grocer in August. Wal-Mart forecast fiscal 2019 profit would increase about 5 percent over the expected adjusted earnings of $4.30 to $4.40 per share for the year ending January 2018. The new buyback replaces the existing $20 billion program announced in October 2015. In the seven quarters since, Wal-Mart had bought back $15.10 billion worth of shares. It was not immediately clear how much of the remaining $4.9 billion under the old plan it had used in the current quarter. Wal-Mart stock rose $3.82 to $84.35, the highest since February 2015. Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru and Sayantani Ghosh in New York; Additional reporting by Dan Burns in New York; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Jeffrey Benkoe '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-walmart-outlook/wal-mart-launches-20-billion-buyback-plan-idINKBN1CF1E7'|'2017-10-10T11:42:00.000+03:00'
'aafaf98506533f0acbb9bdaac7d470babbb7857e'|'Starbucks'' Schultz still not running for president, launches Amazon series'|'Reuters TV United States October 10, 2017 / 1:10 AM / Updated 4 minutes ago Starbucks'' Schultz still not running for president, launches Amazon series Lisa Baertlein 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz delivers remarks at the Starbucks 2016 Investor Day in Manhattan, New York, U.S. December 7, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Starbucks Corp ( SBUX.O ) Chairman Howard Schultz on Tuesday will debut the second season of the coffee chain<69>s inspirational video series <20>Upstanders<72> on Amazon Prime, and the outspoken executive said he would not run for president, despite persistent speculation. <20>I have no plans to run for office. I am very consistent on that,<2C> said Schultz, who in April fueled talk he was preparing for a presidential run by resigning as Starbucks<6B> chief executive. Despite his repeated denials, the New York Times recently included Schultz in an opinion piece titled <20>Who Can Beat Trump in 2020?<3F> Schultz, a Democrat who has taken national stands on immigration, gun control and other controversial topics, said <20>Upstanders<72> was part of an effort to redefine the roles and responsibilities of public companies in U.S. society. <20>One of those roles and responsibilities is to remind and reinforce the values of the country, and what better way to do that than to allow the American people to tell their story,<2C> Schultz said in a phone interview on Monday. The new season of <20>Upstanders<72> chronicles the journeys of everyday people who, among other things, have successfully reached across ideological divides to find consensus on divisive issues such as refugee resettlement, climate change to needle-exchange programs. Upstanders launched last year on the Starbucks app, which has 19 million active users, and the chain<69>s in-store wireless network. In addition to Amazon.com<6F>s ( AMZN.O ) Prime video streaming service, Upstanders Season 2 will be available on Facebook<6F>s ( FB.O ) new Watch video platform and as a free audio book on Amazon<6F>s Audible.com. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Starbucks<6B> executive producer on the project, said the mission behind <20>Upstanders<72> is simple. <20>If these stories can lead people in other communities to say, <20>Hey, I can do that too,<2C> that will be mission accomplished for us,<2C> Chandrasekaran, a former editor at the Washington Post, said during the interview. Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Andrew Hay'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-starbucks-politics-upstanders/starbucks-schultz-still-not-running-for-president-launches-amazon-series-idUKKBN1CF03W'|'2017-10-10T04:05:00.000+03:00'
'ae0f056579b3bff600d8722ec804a17e3db4bd94'|'Bombardier''s new Global 7000 makes trade show debut'|'MONTREAL, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Bombardier Inc<6E>s largest business jet is making its debut on Sunday in Las Vegas, giving a glimpse of the ultra long-range plane the Canadian company is counting on for growth at a time of sluggish industry sales and as it fights a trade battle over a separate jet.The new Global 7000, the industry<72>s largest jet designed for private or corporate use, will be on display at the National Business Aviation Association<6F>s flagship industry trade show on Oct. 10-12.When it enters service next year, the Global 7000, with a list price of almost $73 million, will play a key role in the five-year turnaround plan of Bombardier, which also makes trains, after a near-brush with bankruptcy in 2015.A separate Bombardier plane, the CSeries, has been caught up in a trade dispute, with the U.S. Commerce department slapping a preliminary 300 percent duty on sales of the commercial jets after Boeing complained its Canadian rival received illegal subsidies and dumped the aircraft at <20>absurdly low<6F> prices.With eight customer jets in production and about 900 hours logged in its flight test program, the Global 7000 is on track for deliveries in late 2018, Bombardier said in a statement.<2E>We have a healthy order book for the Global 7000 and can confirm that the aircraft is sold out until 2021,<2C> said Bombardier Business Aircraft President David Coleal by email.Analysts expect the aircraft will add $300 million to operating profit and contribute nearly one-third of Bombardier<65>s targeted $10 billion in business jet revenues in 2020.<2E>High-end business jets have always been the most important and most profitable part of the company,<2C> said Teal Group aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia by email. <20>Even with the CSeries ramping up, much of the company<6E>s fortunes still depend on Global deliveries.<2E>Coleal would not disclose orders for the jet, which can fly eight passengers non-stop from London to Singapore or Dubai to New York City with a maximum operating speed of Mach 0.925 (709.7 miles or 1,142 km per hour).The Global 7000 faces competition from France<63>s Dassault Aviation SA and General Dynamics Corp<72>s Gulfstream. Aboulafia said Gulfstream was threatening to overtake Bombardier as the market leader in revenue from overall business jet deliveries.Pre-owned aircraft broker Jetcraft is forecasting deliveries of 8,349 aircraft over 10 years worth about $252 billion based on 2017 prices.Still, business jet deliveries are struggling to recover after the financial crisis, having been cut in half from their peak of 1,317 in 2008 to 661 in 2016, according to General Aviation Manufacturers Association.Aboulafia of Teal Group expects <20>modest, single-digit growth through 2019.<2E> (Reporting by Allison Lampert; Editing by Denny Thomas and Richard Chang) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bombardier-jet/bombardiers-new-global-7000-makes-trade-show-debut-idINL2N1MI0GL'|'2017-10-08T20:01:00.000+03:00'
'2b70437a819922cdaf72cc9bc7d90f05cf884b31'|'RPT-New Wall Street candidates emerge to test Trump-era appeal'|'(Repeats story that ran earlier with no change to headline or text)By Olivia Oran and Lawrence DelevingneOct 9 (Reuters) - With a businessman turned politician now in the Oval Office, a small but growing number of bankers and Wall Street financiers across the United States have set their sights on politics.In New Jersey, Connecticut and California, former bankers, hedge fund managers and private equity executives have either announced bids for legislative and gubernatorial seats, or associates have told Reuters they are considering running.Meanwhile, industry trade groups including the American Bankers Association are launching formal programs to teach members in various states how to campaign successfully.It is not the first time well-heeled candidates have entered American politics, and there are not a great number of them. But historians, political scientists and bankers say the atmosphere has changed abruptly under President Donald Trump.<2E>It<49>s certainly raised the visibility of folks who in the past may have said <20>I<EFBFBD>m not a politician,<2C> said Richard Baier, president of the Nebraska Bankers Association, which is launching a training school for potential legislative candidates. <20>We<57>ve shown that you don<6F>t really need that background.<2E>The Oklahoma Bankers Association is also planning to launch its own candidate school, a spokesman said.Foreclosures, job losses and growing income inequality after the 2007-2009 financial crisis made anyone with Wall Street ties into a political pariah. But Trump, a self-described billionaire who made a fortune in New York real estate and entertainment, has stocked his cabinet with Wall Street bankers and industry tycoons.His presidency has inspired others in the financial community to pursue civic duty, according to people who have studied campaigns or are involved with current election efforts.Trump<6D>s ascendance shows that candidates<65> backgrounds matter less than whether they can connect with voters, said Joshua Sandman, a political science professor at the University of New Haven.<2E>Trump running has encouraged more people in financial services to test the waters,<2C> he said, <20>but the water could be murky for them unless they have a real set of positive experiences within business and are reflective of creating jobs and helping people.<2E>It is hard to say quantitatively whether more candidates with finance backgrounds are pursuing political office now compared with prior election cycles. But Paul Herrnson, a political science professor at the University of Connecticut who has researched candidates<65> backgrounds, says he is skeptical about how successful the new crop of candidates will be.<2E>Sure, the mood is better than it was when the market collapsed, but I don<6F>t think people say, <20>Wall Street financier <20> that<61>s someone I can vote for,<2C> he said.Phil Murphy, the Democratic candidate for New Jersey governor in 2017, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc executive who spent 23 years at the firm, is perhaps the most prominent moneyed candidate.His campaign has focused on bolstering the middle class with proposals to create a millionaire<72>s tax and launch other initiatives to help low-income residents.Murphy has won support from labor unions, environmental groups and consumer rights activists, as well as bold-faced names in the Democratic party like former Vice Presidents Joe Biden and Al Gore, who have both endorsed him.An Oct. 3 Monmouth University Poll has him leading his Republican rival, Kim Guadagno by 14 points, and over 60 percent of New Jersey voters said Murphy<68>s ties to Goldman do not matter in a recent Quinnipiac Poll.<2E>Obviously Goldman was his career,<2C> said Tony Bianchini, spokesman for the Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters, which is backing Murphy. <20>Everyone has a career.<2E>In Connecticut, former UBS Group AG executive Robert Stefanowski is running for governor, according to a public filing, and hedge fund manager David Stemerman recently said he may do the same.The two Republi
'2568c450d2468d5586f74b0b61cf427bc480bdac'|'Microsoft looks at whether Russians bought U.S. ads on search engine'|' 48 PM / Updated 14 minutes ago Microsoft looks at whether Russians bought U.S. ads on search engine Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Monday it was looking into whether Russians bought U.S. election ads on its Bing search engine or on other Microsoft-owned products and platforms, after rival Google said it had discovered such ads on its products. A spokeswoman for Microsoft said in a statement in response to questions from Reuters that the company did not yet have any other information to share. (Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by David Gregorio)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-trump-russia-microsoft/microsoft-looks-at-whether-russians-bought-u-s-ads-on-search-engine-idUSL2N1MK1AZ'|'2017-10-10T00:45:00.000+03:00'
'20dd7915164c4774f8490ba8dd8eb7a125bcd173'|'MIDEAST STOCKS-Qatari stock market rebounds, Zain pulls back in Kuwait'|'October 9, 2017 / 3:00 PM / in 11 minutes MIDEAST STOCKS-Qatari stock market rebounds, Zain pulls back in Kuwait Reuters Staff * Technical rebound may be starting in Qatar * Index rises from five-year low * Zain drops despite Omantel interest in stake * Drake & Scull rises again in Dubai, GFH sinks * Owners of Iraqi mobile firms fall on Kurdistan tensions By Aziz El Yaakoubi DUBAI, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Banking shares boosted Qatar<61>s stock market on Monday as it rebounded from a five-year low, while Kuwaiti telecommunications firm Zain fell despite a plan by Oman Telecommunications to become a strategic investor in it. Qatar<61>s index, which had tumbled as much as 1.6 percent on Sunday but finished 0.1 percent higher, gained 0.9 percent on Monday. That suggested a technical rebound might be starting to erase some of the steep losses since June 5, when four Arab states imposed sanctions on Doha. Banking and telecommunications sectors attracted most of the interest in heavy trade: Commercial Bank of Qatar climbed 1.8 percent while Ooredoo rose 1.2 percent. Ooredoo has a unit in Iraq called Asiacell. Shares in two Kuwaiti companies with telecommunications affiliates in Iraq fell, however, after the Iraqi government said it would seek to impose control over Kurdistan-based mobile phone operators and move their headquarters to the capital Baghdad following last month<74>s referendum on Kurdish independence. Logistics firm Agility, a major investor in Erbil-based Korek, fell 1.9 percent and Zain, parent of Zain Iraq, sank 3.5 percent. Confirming market rumours, Omantel said it had signed a non-binding letter of intent with a vehicle of Kuwait<69>s Al Kharafi family to buy a further 12 percent of Zain. That would make Omantel, which bought 9.84 percent of Zain in August, a strategic investor in the company and the second biggest shareholder after Kuwait Investment Authority. But Omantel did not reveal a price for its planned purchase and Zaion, which had jumped 3.4 percent on Thursday in response to the rumours, fell back. Omantel rose 1.8 percent. Saudi Arabia<69>s index fell 1.1 percent with telecommunications shares particularly weak; Mobily lost 4.1 percent. Insurer Malath slid 7.6 percent. Retailer Jarir Marketing closed 0.7 percent lower after initially rising when it reported that third-quarter net profit rose 13 percent from a year earlier. United Arab Emirates-listed shares of Sudanese companies lost steam after soaring 15 percent on Sunday in response to the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Sudan. Abu Dhabi-listed Sudatel Telecom fell back 1.5 percent after heavy trade and Al Salam Bank Sudan retreated 4.6 percent. The Dubai index was flat although builder Drake & Scull, the most heavily-traded stock, surged 6.2 percent. The stock has been rising sharply since last Wednesday after it completed a capital restructuring that involved Tabarak Investment receiving 500 million new shares. However, GFH Financial Group, the second most active stock, fell 3.5 percent. Egypt<70>s index fell 0.2 percent on the back of a drop in the banking sector, with Commercial International Bank down 1.9 percent. HIGHLIGHTS * The index fell 1.1 percent to 7,114 points. DUBAI * The index was flat at 3,611 points. ABU DHABI * The index climbed 0.5 percent to 4,451 points. QATAR * The index rebounded 0.9 percent to 8,213 points. EGYPT * The index fell 0.2 percent to 13,969 points. KUWAIT * The index edged down 0.2 percent to 6,649 points. BAHRAIN * The index fell 0.5 percent to 1,273 points. OMAN * The index edged down 0.03 percent to 5,167 points. (Reporting By Aziz El Yaakoubi,; Editing by Andrew Torchia amd Ed Osmond)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/mideast-stocks/mideast-stocks-qatari-stock-market-rebounds-zain-pulls-back-in-kuwait-idUSL8N1MK3YY'|'2017-10-09T17:59:00.000+03:00'
'c699f8377ca774e8ca76b293d45ecb7c10f9b600'|'Saudi balances recession, deficit in tough decision on energy reform'|'October 9, 2017 / 3:04 PM / Updated 7 minutes ago Saudi balances recession, deficit in tough decision on energy reform Reuters Staff * Saudi aimed to hike energy prices around mid-2017 * But economic growth has been slower than expected * Decision on timing expected by end-October * Some reforms may be delayed into 2018 * Riyadh still preparing household payments to ease impact By Reem Shamseddine and Andrew Torchia KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia/DUBAI, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia is expected to decide by the end of this month on the timing of domestic fuel and electricity price hikes that could risk pushing the economy further into recession, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The dilemma over energy prices shows economic reforms, designed to eliminate a huge state budget deficit caused by low oil prices while weaning the economy off dependence on oil exports, are running into a difficult phase. Austerity steps so far, including an initial round of energy price hikes announced in December 2015, have begun to reduce the deficit. But this has come at a high cost to the economy: data last week showed Saudi Arabia in recession during the second quarter, and unemployment among Saudis at 12.8 percent. That means further austerity will be hard to introduce without risking a sharp economic slowdown which would deter the private investment that the reforms aim to attract. A prolonged recession could turn public sentiment against reforms. A government official said Riyadh was delaying a decision on energy prices until it had finished designing a system of cash payments to lower- and middle-income households, which would partially compensate citizens for the pain of austerity. <20>There are still some discussions over who is going to be compensated and who is not,<2C> he said. <20>The government has to consider the implications of higher taxes and ways to mitigate risks for both gross domestic product growth and the budget.<2E> DELAY At the end of 2016, officials indicated rises in heavily subsidised energy prices would occur around mid-2017. Along with water price reforms, the changes would save the government 29 billion riyals ($7.7 billion) in 2017, according to a long-term fiscal plan which Riyadh released in December. But since then, the economy has slowed more than expected. The non-oil sector expanded only 0.6 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, casting doubt on the International Monetary Fund<6E>s forecast of 1.7 percent non-oil growth this year. The economy<6D>s weakness has already caused Riyadh to partially reverse one austerity step: this year it restored financial allowances for civil servants that it had abolished last year, although it is now disbursing allowances much less generously than previously. The timing of energy price increases may be another casualty of the recession. Although some sources said they still expected hikes to occur this year, others said they could be delayed into 2018. One thing which could force a delay is the government<6E>s plan to introduce a 5 percent value-added tax in January. The tax will hit domestic demand; if it is closely preceded by fuel price hikes, the impact could be severe. Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih implied last week that the hikes were still on the cards for 2017, telling a Moscow conference: <20>We in Saudi Arabia are putting a lot of emphasis on energy efficiency. We will be reforming our energy prices in due course this year...<2E> Major Saudi newspaper Okaz, quoting anonymous sources, reported last month that gasoline prices would rise 80 percent by end-November, with 95 octane climbing to 43 U.S. cents a litre. Even then, Saudi prices would remain among the lowest in the world. Sources said that hike was not set in stone, however. The IMF has been urging Riyadh to delay fuel price rises to protect the economy; it said last week that Saudi officials were not yet convinced, but were reconsidering the speed of austerity steps. <20>The authorities indicated that they w
'4fc875ac1e56ca0a219a04148d885be426703a30'|'RPT-UPDATE 2-GE names hedge fund Trian executive Ed Garden to board'|'October 9, 2017 / 6:39 PM / in an hour RPT-UPDATE 2-GE names hedge fund Trian executive Ed Garden to board Reuters Staff (Repeats to widen distribution and show pictures availability) By Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Rachit Vats Oct 9 (Reuters) - U.S. industrial conglomerate General Electric Co, which major shareholder Trian Fund Management has been pressuring to conduct a more thorough restructuring, appointed the hedge fund<6E>s chief investment officer to its board on Monday. Edward Garden will replace Robert Lane, who is retiring due to health reasons after a dozen years as a director, GE said in a statement. The surprise move comes one day before shareholders at consumer products company Procter & Gamble Co will decide whether to elect Trian Chief Executive Nelson Peltz to its board. Trian, which invests $14 billion in assets for pension funds, endowments and wealthy investors, has owned a roughly 1 percent stake in GE since 2015. Four months ago, GE said longtime CEO Jeff Immelt would step down and that John Flannery, a 30-year company veteran who had run its healthcare business, would succeed him. The company<6E>s lackluster stock performance was seen to have prompted Immelt<6C>s departure, which came months before analysts had expected, but the shares have continued to fall. They were down 3 percent in Monday morning trading. <20>Like other GE shareholders, I am disappointed by the recent performance of GE<47>s stock,<2C> Garden said in a statement. <20>But I continue to believe that GE represents an attractive long-term investment opportunity with significant upside.<2E> The most recent wave of executive departures was announced last week and includes Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Bornstein. Jamie Miller, CEO of GE Transportation, will become CFO next month. Although Trian is an activist investor that demands change at companies, it is also known for working behind the scenes with management to improve performance. It rarely pushes out a CEO the way some other activists do, and it often sticks around, often for years, as transformations occur. After discussions with Trian, GE in March set a $2 billion cost-reduction target and linked the bonuses of its senior management to meeting profit-related goals. As a board member at Bank of New York Mellon Corp, Garden most recently helped hire former Visa Inc CEO Charles Scharf to replace Gerald Hassell, who is retiring. Garden is also a board member of Pentair Plc. Since its 2005 inception, Trian has returned an average 8 percent a year to investors, according to data from HSBC Holdings Plc<6C>s hedge fund investment arm. Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Rachit Vats in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza and Lisa Von Ahn '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/ge-board/rpt-update-2-ge-names-hedge-fund-trian-executive-ed-garden-to-board-idUSL2N1MK0WQ'|'2017-10-09T21:39:00.000+03:00'
'b5df81eddb77bd30140b0f915200ed197f6f8e4b'|'UK statisticians say made error in labour data watched by BoE'|' 55 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago UK statisticians say made error in labor data watched by BoE Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s statistics office said it made an error in its measure of growth in costs in the labor market, one of the pieces of data that the Bank of England is looking at closely as it considers whether to raise interest rates next month. The Office for National Statistics said it would correct the data later on Monday. The ONS said on Friday that annual growth in unit labor costs - the cost to employers to produce a given amount of output - was its slowest in over a year at 1.6 percent in the second quarter, and down from 2.4 percent in the first. The Times newspaper said the ONS was expected to raise the second-quarter estimate to about 2.4 percent, stronger than the BoE<6F>s forecasts. Writing by William Schomberg; editing by John Stonestreet'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-economy/uk-statisticians-say-made-error-in-labor-data-watched-by-boe-idUKKBN1CE0L7'|'2017-10-09T10:51:00.000+03:00'
'cba6f829f21030077e5a2c56ed50e9b1cbfd21ba'|'Oil up on expectation of Saudi production restraint, lower U.S. rig count'|'October 9, 2017 / 12:43 AM / in 5 minutes Oil stable on lower U.S. rig count, expectation of ongoing Saudi output restraint Henning Gloystein 3 Min Read Pump jacks pump oil at an oil field on the shores of the Caspian Sea in Baku, Azerbaijan, October 5, 2017. Picture taken October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Grigory Dukor SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices stabilized on Monday, after a 2 percent slide on Friday, as the number of rigs drilling for new oil in the United States dipped and on expectations that Saudi Arabia would continue to restrain its output to support the market. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were trading at $49.38 per barrel at 0702 GMT, up 9 cents from their last close. Brent crude futures were flat from their last close, at $55.62 a barrel. Trading activity was low on Monday due to the Columbus Day holiday in the United States, although markets there are open. Oil tumbled by 2 percent on Friday, with WTI dipping back below $50 per barrel, as concerns of overproduction re-surfaced. But traders said a reported cut in the number of U.S. oil rigs drilling for new production had halted the price fall. The U.S. rig count fell by two to 748 last week, General Electric Co<43>s Baker Hughes energy services firm said on Friday. As a sign of stronger market sentiment, money managers raised their bullish bets on U.S. crude futures for the third week in a row, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission reported on Friday. The investors raised combined futures and options position in WTI on the NYMEX and ICE markets by 3,211 contracts to 288,766 in the week to Oct. 3, its highest since mid-August, the data showed. Meanwhile, oil ports, producers and refiners in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama - which shut facilities ahead of Hurricane Nate - were planning to reopen on Monday as the storm moved inland, away from most energy infrastructure on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Traders said that Nate<74>s impact had been lower than that of hurricanes hitting the region in the past month. <20>I don<6F>t think this one (Nate) will have much of an impact on production...What will be impacted though is the refining sector,<2C> said Matt Stanley, a fuel broker with Freight Investor Services (FIS) in Dubai. <20>With U.S. crude exports surging and U.S. demand falling seasonally we could see the refining margins start to fall sooner rather than later.<2E> Outside the United States, analysts said a Saudi Arabian commitment to support the market by restraining output would likely prevent crude from falling further. <20>We remain fairly confident that the Saudi<64>s will look to continue to support the oil market, especially until the sale of Aramco,<2C> said Shane Channel, equity and derivatives adviser at ASR Wealth Advisers. State-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco is planning to float around 5 percent of the firm in an initial public offering next year. Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Neil Fullick and Christian Schmollinger'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil/oil-up-on-expectation-of-saudi-production-restraint-lower-u-s-rig-count-idUKKBN1CE011'|'2017-10-09T03:34:00.000+03:00'
'b8d652c477f8085becc85e59763dec1dd2e5882a'|'PM Modi targets more energy reforms after meeting oil chiefs'|'India''s Prime Minister Narendra Modi gestures as he addresses a gathering during the groundbreaking ceremony for a high-speed rail project in Ahmedabad, India, September 14, 2017. REUTERS/Amit Dave NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Prime Minister Narendra Modi sees scope for further reform of the country<72>s energy sector and has received <20>focused suggestions<6E> from some of the world<6C>s leading energy companies, the office of the premier said on Monday.Under Modi, the world''s third-biggest oil consumer is trying to use its market size to strike better deals with oil exporters and attract investment into India''s exploration and refining industries. ( reut.rs/2kxQxUi )Executives from companies including Rosneft, BP, Exxon Mobil, Reliance Industries, Saudi Aramco, Royal Dutch Shell, Vedanta, Schlumberger and Halliburton met Modi as the industry gathered in New Delhi for the three-day India Energy Forum, which finishes on Tuesday.<2E>Participants appreciated the pace and drive with which Prime Minister Modi has brought about reform in the energy sector,<2C> Modi<64>s office said in a statement after the meeting.<2E>Subjects such as the need for a unified energy policy, contract frameworks and arrangements, requirement of seismic data sets, encouragement for biofuels, improving gas supply, setting up of a gas hub and regulatory issues came up for discussion.<2E>The statement said that many suggestions at the last meeting in 2016 have helped guide Indian policy-making and that Modi said he appreciated the <20>focused suggestions<6E> made this year and that <20>scope for reform in many areas still exists<74>.Modi was Quote: d as saying he looked forward to <20>various opportunities<65> for cooperation between India and Saudi Arabia, the second biggest oil exporter to the country behind Iraq.State-run Saudi Aramco, which on Sunday launched a new office near New Delhi, is in talks with several Indian refiners for a possible joint venture by next year.Its Chief Executive Amin Nasser told the conference after the Modi meeting that India<69>s oil demand would double by 2040 to about 10 million barrels per day, making it the world<6C>s largest market for the fuel and a priority for the company.In the meeting, Modi thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin and Rosneft for their support to India<69>s energy sector. The two leaders were instrumental in helping to seal Rosneft<66>s $12.9 billion acquisition of India<69>s debt-laden Essar Oil, strengthening ties between the world<6C>s largest oil producer and the fastest-growing fuel consumer.In another vote of confidence for India<69>s energy sector, BP and Reliance have previously said they would jointly invest $6 billion to boost India<69>s gas output. A BP executive said on Monday that the company was <20>excited about gas, upstream and digital innovation in India<69>.Alay Patel, a senior analyst with consultancy Wood Mackenzie, the global president of which also met Modi, said that India<69>s domestic energy production outlook was positive thanks to steps such as a simplified licensing regime and clarity on contracts.<2E>But more is needed,<2C> said Patel. <20>Allowing marketing and pricing freedom for all gas production, regardless of shore status and contract vintage, would incentivise companies to develop gas in the less explored basins.<2E>Reporting by Nidhi Verma, Neha Dasgupta and Promit Mukherjee; Writing by Krishna N. Das; Editing by David GoodmanOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-energy-modi/pm-modi-targets-more-energy-reforms-after-meeting-oil-chiefs-idINKBN1CE1B9'|'2017-10-09T14:50:00.000+03:00'
'676567794120f098d6dd3246691b211a1b4bd410'|'Supreme Court bans firecracker sales in Delhi ahead of peak pollution season'|'FILE PHOTO: A worker removes paper rolls after filling them with gunpowder mixture to make firecrackers at a factory on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Amit Dave/File photo NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily banned the sale of firecrackers in and around the capital ahead of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, as it looks to prevent a repeat of severe air pollution that forced school closures last year.New Delhi''s air quality has hit "very unhealthy" levels, U.S. Embassy data shows. This is often blamed on burning of unwanted vegetation on farms in neighbouring states, usual at this time of year, worsened by fumes from fireworks. ( bit.ly/2eZOb9H )The ban takes effect immediately and will run until Nov. 1, said a panel of Supreme Court judges headed by Justice Arjan Kumar Sikri, adding its impact on the region<6F>s air quality would have to be examined after the festival.<2E>All temporary licenses to sell firecrackers stand cancelled,<2C> said Haripriya Padmanabhan, a lawyer representing the group that sought the ban.<2E>People who had already purchased crackers will be able to burst them. Hopefully they won<6F>t do that,<2C> she told Asian News International, a partner of Reuters Television.Diwali, traditionally ushered in with the setting off of firecrackers mainly by India<69>s majority Hindu community, falls on Oct. 19 this year.The government welcomed the move, with Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan requesting people to abide by the order.FILE PHOTO: Commuters make their way through heavy smog in New Delhi, India, October 31, 2016. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/File photo But others, including Priti Gandhi, a leader from Prime Minister Narendra Modi<64>s Hindu nationalist party, saw it as an attack on tradition and Hindu culture.<2E>We Indians will protest and burn crackers,<2C> wrote one Twitter user, Ishkaran Bhandari. <20>We will uphold our culture, traditions and celebrate Diwali.<2E>Slideshow (4 Images) Last November, about a million children were forced to stay home from school, thousands of workers reported sick and queues formed outside shops selling face masks as New Delhi struggled with its worst pollution for nearly 20 years.Vehicle emissions and dust from construction sites were the factors blamed for that spike, besides firecrackers and farm burnings.India and China together account for more than half of the 4.2 million deaths attributable to air pollution worldwide in 2015, a study by the U.S.-based Health Effects Institute (HEI) showed.Global environmental group Greenpeace said the court ban on crackers was only a small relief for the <20>episodic air pollution levels in October<65>.<2E>The pollution levels in north India are multiple times higher than the national standards throughout the winter months, hence we also need to look at a stricter, comprehensive and time-bound action plan to address all sources of air pollution across India,<2C> a Greenpeace India spokeswoman said.Reporting by Suchitra Mohanty and Krishna N. Das; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Janet Lawrence '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-pollution/supreme-court-bans-firecracker-sales-in-delhi-ahead-of-peak-pollution-season-idINKBN1CE0SY'|'2017-10-09T12:28:00.000+03:00'
'91d9f8ebe4591fb63514bcaa4d7afa866a452202'|'Euro zone debates bailout fund future, sees backstop, crisis prevention role'|'October 9, 2017 / 4:57 PM / in 27 minutes Euro zone debates bailout fund future, sees backstop, crisis prevention role Francesco Guarascio , Robert-Jan Bartunek 4 Min Read Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos and European Economic and Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici chat with Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem before the start of an euro zone finance ministers meeting in Luxembourg, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Vidal LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - Euro zone finance ministers discussed on Monday the role of their bailout fund in euro zone integration, with support for the fund to stay owned by governments, play a role in crisis prevention and become a backstop for a bank resolution fund. The ministers are the governors of the fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which was created at the height of the sovereign debt crisis as a lender of last resort to governments. It has a lending capacity of 500 billion euros. <20>Everyone agreed that the ESM has a very strong role to play not only the crisis management but also in the prevention of future crises,<2C> the chairman of the talks Jeroen Dijsselbloem told a news conference. A crisis prevention role for the ESM, an intergovernmental institution, could lead to a clash with the European Commission, which under European Union law now has the sole power to monitor government policies and issue recommendations. But a German paper prepared for the meeting said that fiscal responsibilities and fiscal control belonged together and called for a bigger role for the ESM in ensuring EU budget rules, the Stability and Growth Pact, are observed. The rules have become too complex and less predictable now, the paper argued and proposed also introducing a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism, to be managed by the ESM, as a way to bring back more discipline to government policy-making. <20>The ESM could gradually be given a stronger, neutral role with regard to the monitoring of the Stability and Growth Pact,<2C> it said, adding this could be done by amending intergovernmental treaties such as the Fiscal Compact and the ESM treaty. FUTURE CRISES German Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schauble, Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Spain''s Finance Minister Luis de Guindos, Italian Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan and European Economic and Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici attend an euro zone finance ministers meeting in Luxembourg, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Vidal While no decisions were taken on Monday, Dijsselbloem said that the ministers broadly supported using the ESM as a backstop for the EU<45>s Single Resolution Fund (SRF) for banks. The SRF was created for the resolution of failing euro zone banks and is financed from annual bank contributions. It has so far accumulated 17 billion euros and is due to reach full capacity of around 55 billion euros in 2023. Slideshow (4 Images) Should it find before then that it needs more money than it has received from banks, it will need a backstop - and ministers are likely to agree the ESM should play that role. Some officials would like to see the ESM provide a similar underpinning for the yet-to-be-created European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS), which will insure deposits in all euro zone countries up to 100,000 euros if opposition from Germany can be overcome. In the paper for the meeting, Berlin again rejected it, saying it <20>would put much too great a strain on the ESM and go against its core purpose of bailing-out countries in severe trouble<6C>. Germany would like to see the ESM turned into a European Monetary Fund, a move that would eliminate the need to involve the International Monetary Fund or the European Central Bank in future euro zone crises like the one that was triggered by Greece and engulfed also Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus. The talks in Luxembourg are part of a broader discussion among finance ministers from the 19 euro zone countries on how to better organise the singl
'e716473cf1da3cdd4e12acb962fa627c07178521'|'India''s August tea output rises 6 percent - Board'|'October 9, 2017 / 1:36 PM / Updated 2 hours ago India''s August tea output rises 6 percent - Board Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Tea garden workers wearing Japi hats made out of bamboo and palm leaves pluck tea leaves inside Durgabari Tea Estate on the outskirts of Agartala, India May 25, 2017. REUTERS/Jayanta Dey/Files MUMBAI (Reuters) - India<69>s tea production in August rose 5.9 percent from a year ago to 167.98 million kg as plucking activity picked up in the top producing north-eastern state of Assam, the state-run Tea Board said. Assam produced 98.79 million kg in August, up 10.9 percent from a year ago, the Board said in a statement. The country<72>s exports in January to August rose 4 percent from a year ago to 143.28 million kg, it added. India, the world<6C>s second-biggest tea producer, exports CTC (crush-tear-curl) grade mainly to Egypt, Pakistan and the UK, and the orthodox variety to Iraq, Iran and Russia. Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-tea-output/indias-august-tea-output-rises-6-percent-board-idINKBN1CE1JA'|'2017-10-09T16:35:00.000+03:00'
'3245908cb8a2c22008a7a9689ff2a51acb7a9fa9'|'Emerging market tech stock boom gives fund managers a headache'|'October 9, 2017 / 10:00 AM / in 22 minutes Emerging market tech stock boom gives fund managers a headache Reuters Staff * Emerging markets index returns get more concentrated * Tech sector drives lion<6F>s share of performance * Alibaba, Tencent valuations balloon as ETF inflows increase * Active manager stock picks move closer to the index By Helen Reid LONDON, Oct 9 (Reuters) - The boom in emerging market technology stocks is becoming a problem for fund managers of all stripes. The soaring market capitalisation of a handful of companies such as China<6E>s Alibaba and Tencent is steadily lifting their weighting in the MSCI emerging equities index. This means investors in funds that track indexes (exchange traded funds or ETFs) - who want exposure to a range of companies for a lower fund management fee - are finding themselves increasingly exposed to a single sector. Meanwhile, active fund managers, who justify charging higher fees for their individual stock-picking expertise, are under pressure to buy those tech stocks to ensure their funds keep up with the index<65>s gains. And with both sets of investor chasing the same thing, the risk of dramatic outflows increases if the sector falters. <20>It<49>s the opposite of what you are trying to do with an ETF - you want cheap diversified exposure but you end up being concentrated in basically 10 stocks,<2C> said Rory McPherson, head of investment strategy at Psigma, who holds active EM funds. The biggest five emerging market companies in the index are tech firms Alibaba, Tencent, Samsung, Naspers and Taiwan Semiconductor. They comprise almost 19 percent of the index<65>s market capitalization. That is a bigger chunk than the S&P 500 where the top five firms - Alphabet , Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon - make up 13 percent. The increasing use of ETFs has helped boost valuations further because they must follow the index weighting. And the index<65>s concentration has intensified as valuations rose - the five companies<65> share was 13.9 percent in January. DISCOMFORT The shift towards passive investing, evident across most asset classes, has come into focus in emerging equities, which have enjoyed a sparkling 60 percent rally since early-2016. But the sector may also illustrate the concentration risks that exchange-traded funds can bring to portfolios. Emerging equity funds have received some $56 billion so far this year, Lipper data shows. Of this, $23 billion went into ETFs. Investors are keen on tech companies which are making profits by disrupting the status quo in sectors from media and advertising to retail and industrials. But the dependence on technology for returns is causing some discomfort among investors who prefer shares in emerging market car or beverage makers for instance for exposure to consumer demand in the developing world. Ed Kerschner, chief portfolio strategist at Columbia Threadneedle, says the tech companies<65> performance mostly reflects that of their U.S. peers rather than providing exposure to developing countries. <20>The question is are you buying emerging markets or are you buying technology?<3F> Kerschner said. <20>The risk of buying EM benchmarks is that you are not diversifying away from the S&P.<2E> As a result of the tech rally, the conventional market-cap weighted emerging equity index, with bigger weightings in companies with the largest market caps, has begun strongly outperforming the index where all companies are assigned the same weighting. The success can also be reversed. Any faltering by the tech leaders would have a proportionally weighty effect on ETFs, potentially spurring big outflows. Scott Snyder, co-portfolio manager of the ICON emerging markets fund, estimates that the four biggest tech firms have accounted for a third of 2017<31>s emerging equity returns. <20>A lot of people that might just be piling into passive strategies in EM could be overly exposed to technology right now,<2C> ICON<4F>s Snyder said. THE <20>WRONG<4E> REASON There are also signs that many activ
'9c340a3734f55929d5739301729faca00057021c'|'UPDATE 1-Australia''s AMP buys U.S. logistics group from Carlyle'|'* AMP buys ITS ConGlobal for more than $500 million -source* AMP says will look at more mid-sized acquisitions in the sector (Recasts, adds AMP statement)By Paulina DuranSYDNEY, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Australia<69>s AMP Capital has bought U.S. logistics group ITS ConGlobal from Carlyle Infrastructure Partners, marking the Australian fund manager<65>s largest-ever North American deal.AMP did not provide a deal value in its statement on Monday, but a source familiar with the transaction told Reuters the acquisition was worth more than $500 million.The price for ITS ConGlobal was about 10.5 times the EBITDA of the freight, terminal and transport firm, said the source, who was not authorised to speak publicly about the matter.AMP, which last year raised $2.4 billion for infrastructure investments, will look at further mid-sized acquisitions in the sector, according to the statement.<2E>Sectors that we are continuing to focus on in North America include transportation, energy and communications where there is an exciting pipeline of deals,<2C> AMP Capital<61>s head of Americas Infrastructure Equity, Dylan Foo, said in the statement.A Carlyle spokesperson was not immediately available for comment. The private equity firm had acquired ITS Technologies & Logistics LLC in 2008. (Reporting by Paulina Duran in Sydney; Editing by Himani Sarkar) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/its-conglobal-ma-amp/update-1-australias-amp-buys-u-s-logistics-group-from-carlyle-idINL4N1MK0JC'|'2017-10-09T01:51:00.000+03:00'
'8d7e73fb761ef3d1287dcbe754d467fa63848849'|'Former F-Squared CEO found liable in SEC fraud case'|'FILE PHOTO: Former F-Squared Investments Inc CEO Howard Present (C), arrives at the federal court in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. September 7, 2017. REUTERS/Nate Raymond/File Photo BOSTON (Reuters) - A U.S. jury on Friday found that the former chief executive of F-Squared Investments Inc, once the largest U.S. money manager creating portfolios out of exchange-traded funds, violated federal securities laws.The federal jury in Boston sided with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in finding that former F-Squared CEO Howard Present intended to defraud investors or was reckless in how he touted the history of his company<6E>s flagship investment product.The verdict came after lawyers for both sides delivered closing arguments following a four-week trial. The verdict will allow the SEC to ask a federal judge to impose an injunction and order Present to forfeit earnings and pay penalties.Present, the co-founder of Wellesley, Massachusetts-based F-Squared, denied wrongdoing. His lawyer declined to comment.The SEC sued Present in 2014 on the same day it announced F-Squared had agreed to pay $35 million and admit wrongdoing to resolve claims it misled investors by falsely advertising the performance of an investment product called AlphaSector.At its height, F-Squared was one of the largest U.S. firms of its kind, with more than $28 billion invested with it, the SEC said. It filed for bankruptcy in 2015.According to the SEC, beginning in September 2008, Present began marketing AlphaSector as having a successful record dating back to 2001 that was based on a multibillion-dollar wealth manager<65>s strategy.<2E>But really, it was all made up,<2C> SEC lawyer Rachel Hershfang told jurors on Friday.In truth, the data F-Squared used to market AlphaSector was based on an algorithm developed by a college student at a nearby firm and was applied to historical market data, resulting in a hypothetical performance, the SEC said.The SEC also said an F-Squared analyst who calculated the hypothetical numbers made a mistake in the process that substantially inflated the investment performance that appeared in marketing materials Present wrote.Despite learning about the error, Present did not tell the analyst to correct it and continued using the inflated performance figures, the SEC said.Present<6E>s lawyer, Anthony Fuller, told jurors in his closing argument that his client honestly believed that the strategy AlphaSector was based on had actually been used with real client funds when he licensed it from another firm.<2E>He reasonably believed in what he was saying,<2C> Fuller said.The case is Securities and Exchange Commission v. Present, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, No. 14-cv-14692.Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Andrew Hay and Jonathan Oatis '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fsquared-lawsuit/former-f-squared-ceo-found-liable-in-sec-fraud-case-idUSKBN1CB2PD'|'2017-10-07T00:03:00.000+03:00'
'34ebca19e04acd5e104d1316789d892f06a0a274'|'Hurricane Nate threatens U.S. Gulf Coast energy sites spared by Harvey - Reuters'|'HOUSTON, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Hurricane Nate was heading on Saturday toward refineries, offshore oil platforms and other energy facilities in the central U.S. Gulf Coast that largely were spared by Hurricane Harvey<65>s wrath nearly six weeks ago.The fast-moving storm has already curtailed production at more than 71 percent of U.S. Gulf of Mexico offshore platforms, nearly three times the number affected by Harvey, which packed more of a punch when it hit the Texas coast.Nate could become a Category 2 storm, the second weakest on a five-category scale used by meteorologists, with winds of up to 110 miles per hour (177 km per hour) before landfall later on Saturday, the National Hurricane Center said.Its track takes it closer to offshore production unlike Harvey, whose impact was greatest on refining centers.Colby Goatley, a meteorologist at Weather Decision Technologies Inc, said his firm is helping about 10 drilling rig operators chart a course away from Nate, which is producing up to 30-foot (9.1-meter) waves near its center, he said.<2E>Rigs on the eastern side (of Nate) are racing westward to get on that more favorable side,<2C> he said. A few rig operators are heading further east to avoid winds that are strongest to the east of the storm<72>s eye.Weather Decision is expecting tropical storm-force winds to last about 12 hours, Goatley said, a relatively short period that will help offshore producers return to full operations quickly and rigs return to their drilling sites.Nate is converging on refineries that remained in operation during Harvey, with Phillips 66<36>s Alliance plant, Valero Energy Corp<72>s Meraux facility, and PBF Energy<67>s Chalmette refinery closest to its current track. Chevron Corp<72>s Pascagoula, Miss., plant also is within the impact zone.Phillips 66 confirmed that it shut its 247,000-barrel-per-day Alliance refinery on Saturday. Alliance, which is 25 miles (40 km) south of New Orleans, is close to the path Nate is forecast to take over southeastern Louisiana.Valero and PBF Energy were planning to keep running during Nate<74>s passage, according to sources familiar with those operations. Those two plants and Alliance account for about 3 percent of U.S. refining capacity.Chevron said it has made preliminary preparations for the storm, including securing loose equipment and positioning standby generators. A spokesman declined to comment further on the operation. The Pascagoula plant accounts for about 2 percent of U.S. refining capacity.Harvey, which brought intense rains that flooded the Texas Gulf Coast, shut nearly a quarter of U.S. oil refining capacity. (Reporting by Erwin Seba and Gary McWilliams; Editing by Paul Simao)Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/storm-nate-energy/hurricane-nate-threatens-u-s-gulf-coast-energy-sites-spared-by-harvey-idINL2N1MI0A3'|'2017-10-07T15:39:00.000+03:00'
'e25b7b8d1cde55b071612aad258effb930fde4d5'|'U.S. defers China aluminium foil dumping decision'|'October 5, 2017 / 11:42 PM / in 7 minutes U.S. defers China aluminium foil dumping decision Reuters Staff 2 Min Read An employee checks aluminium ingots for export at the Qingdao Port, Shandong province March 14, 2010. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo WASHINGTON(Reuters) - The U.S. Commerce Department said on Thursday it would defer issuing its preliminary determination in an anti-dumping duty probe into imports of aluminium foil from China. The department said in a statement the delay would allow it <20>to fully analyse information pertaining to China<6E>s status as a non-market economy (NME) country.<2E> U.S. aluminium foil producers have filed petitions with the U.S. government accusing Chinese manufacturers of dumping the product in the United States. In 2016, imports of aluminium foil from China were valued at an estimated $389 million, department figures show. In August, Commerce imposed preliminary anti-subsidy duties of about 17 percent to 81 percent on aluminium foil imported from China. When it opened the probe in late March, the Commerce Department said it was also launching a review of whether China should be treated as a market economy country, a designation that would effectively limit the calculation of anti-dumping duties on Chinese-made goods.. The terms of China<6E>s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 allowed other WTO members to use a third country<72>s prices to assess whether Chinese goods were being sold below cost or fair market value. That clause expired last December and China has called on the United States and the European Union to drop their use of such surrogate pricing, which has led to higher U.S. anti-dumping duties on imported Chinese goods. <20>In all cases, the Department conducts a full and fair assessment of the facts,<2C> Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement. <20>This extension will ensure that the highest standards are followed in this case as we seek to guarantee fair treatment for U.S. workers and businesses.<2E> Commerce said it would issue its preliminary determination in the aluminium foil case - along with a decision on China<6E>s non-market economy status - by Nov. 30. A final duty determination is expected 75 days later. Reporting by Eric Walsh and David Lawder; Editing by Sandra Maler and Peter Cooney'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-china-aluminum/u-s-defers-china-aluminium-foil-dumping-decision-idUKKBN1CA2ZZ'|'2017-10-06T02:42:00.000+03:00'
'56856ecf093fb5e512c7eed82c3e652aa11180b4'|'VW plan could herald spin-off for car parts: analysts'|'October 11, 2017 / 4:48 PM / Updated 31 minutes ago VW plan could herald spin-off for car parts: analysts Reuters Staff 4 Min Read A Volkswagen logo is seen at Serramonte Volkswagen in Colma, California, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam BERLIN (Reuters) - Volkswagen<65>s ( VOWG_p.DE ) plan to cut costs by creating a new car parts business could unlock funds for its move to electric vehicles and herald an eventual spin-off that could transform its profitability, analysts said on Wednesday. Shackled by its powerful labor unions, VW makes more parts, such as transmissions, in-house at high German labor costs than most rivals like BMW ( BMWG.DE ) and Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ), weighing down the core brand<6E>s profitability. Europe<70>s largest automaker said on Wednesday it plans to bring together the manufacturing of parts, including engines and transmissions at 56 plants on five continents with a total of 80,000 staff. Wolfsburg-based VW has been reviewing its assets and brands since announcing its electric-car plans in June 2016, and put up non-automotive assets for sale earlier this year, including motorcycle brand Ducati. <20>The (components) realignment shows that structural change is happening at last,<2C> said Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, head of the Centre of Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen. The plan, outlined by VW last year, was confirmed by the company to have won the approval of its top executive board this summer, after a report by German business daily Handelsblatt. VW said it wants to integrate its components operations under a unified structure. The new entity <20>will bundle these activities, organize them even more efficiently, strengthen in-house competences in specific areas, and drive forward the transition to electric cars throughout the group,<2C> the carmaker said in its statement. One source at VW said the group may also reassign responsibilities in components manufacturing as part of the changes, but ruled out any capacity cuts. At present, car brands Audi ( NSUG.DE ), Porsche and Skoda all make engines and chassis parts at their own sites. <20>This could be the first meaningful step toward clarifying the profitability of VW<56>s supplier activities as well as a spin-off of the business,<2C> said Dudenhoeffer. <20>It could be a boon to VW<56>s profitability though details remain to be seen,<2C> he said. Carmakers in general are under pressure from investors to be more transparent about profitability and the growth prospects of specific operations as conventional auto manufacturers venture into new mobility services and electric cars. Bringing together the tasks of components plants such as Salzgitter and Kassel would also affect the carmaker<65>s zero-emissions push as VW plans to build electric engines at the two German sites. Exposing the financial performance of these plants would enable VW to streamline resources internally to help meet the growing funding needs tied to its electric-car program, London-based J.P. Morgan analyst Jose Asumendi said in a note published on Wednesday. <20>We believe this is a key game changer for the VW equity story,<2C> Asumendi said, adding the move entails a growing likelihood that VW will spin off or streamline component businesses in the medium term. VW declined comment while a second source at the carmaker denied any plans to spin off or sell components activities. Reporting by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-components/vw-plan-could-herald-spin-off-for-car-parts-analysts-idUSKBN1CG2CF'|'2017-10-11T19:47:00.000+03:00'
'44f2bd9f43415ccd0843c0367d6da33429914c33'|'Recruiter Robert Walters raises full-year profit forecast again'|' 27 AM / in 17 minutes Recruiter Robert Walters raises full-year profit forecast again Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - British recruiter Robert Walters ( RWA.L ) raised its full-year profit forecast for a second time, after it reported a 22 percent jump in quarterly net fee income to a record high. The company, which places people in finance, engineering, legal and marketing jobs, said on Tuesday that annual pretax profit would be ahead of market expectations, citing strong growth for temporary and permanent jobs. Robert Walters<72> net fee income grew to 90.7 million pounds in the three months to Sept. 30 from 74.4 million a year earlier. Larger UK recruiters PageGroup ( PAGE.L ) and Hays ( HAYS.L ) are scheduled to issue trading updates this week. Reporting by Esha Vaish in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-robert-walters-outlook/recruiter-robert-walters-raises-full-year-profit-forecast-again-idUKKBN1CF0IP'|'2017-10-10T09:27:00.000+03:00'
'9c4808b93cac8d9aeba2991274979079ed62661f'|'Chief of Credit Agricole expresses interest in Commerzbank: Report'|'Philippe Brassac, Chief Executive Officer of Credit Agricole S.A., poses prior to a press conference in Paris, France, March 8, 2016. Picture taken March 8, 2016. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Credit Agricole<6C>s ( CAGR.PA ) chief, Philippe Brassac, has expressed interest in Commerzbank ( CBKG.DE ) if the German lender were to be up for sale, according to an interview with the Handelsblatt newspaper.Brassac was Quote: d as saying that he would like the French bank to be better positioned in Germany, as it is in Italy.Credit Agricole<6C>s strategy plan states that it will focus on organic growth until 2019. <20>But this doesn<73>t mean that we wouldn<64>t take a look at interesting possibilities,<2C> Brassac said in the interview published on Sunday.<2E>If such a big institute like Commerzbank were really to be on the market, we would surely have to analyse it as one of the significant institutes in the euro zone,<2C> he said.There has been speculation that the German government could sell its roughly 15 percent stake in Commerzbank, making the lender a takeover target.Italy<6C>s UniCredit ( CRDI.MI ) has told Berlin it was interested in eventually merging with Commerzbank, two people familiar with the matter said last month, a combination that would create one of Europe<70>s biggest banks.The German government has denied a report that it favoured a merger of Commerzbank with France<63>s BNP Paribas ( BNPP.PA ).Reporting by Tom Sims; Editing by Alison Williams '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-banks-m-a/chief-of-credit-agricole-expresses-interest-in-commerzbank-report-idUSKBN1CD0P5'|'2017-10-08T19:12:00.000+03:00'
'9771edcd8bc6eca99ddc614db1f0bc380309321a'|'AIG sees third-quarter catastrophe losses of about $3 billion'|'October 9, 2017 / 10:57 PM / Updated 2 hours ago AIG sees third-quarter catastrophe losses of about $3 billion Ahmed Farhatha 2 Min Read The AIG logo is seen at its building in New York''s financial district March 19, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo (Reuters) - American International Group Inc ( AIG.N ) said on Monday it expected to book pre-tax catastrophe losses of about $3 billion in the third quarter mainly related to hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. AIG<49>s shares were down about 1.7 percent at $60.75 in extended trading. The company estimated pre-tax losses of about $1 billion each from Harvey and Irma, up to $700 million from Maria and additional catastrophe losses, including earthquakes in Mexico, of about $150 million. Morgan Stanley analysts said the losses were slightly above their estimate of $2.5 billion, but were manageable as it equated to about 2.6 percent of book value. The analysts, who have an <20>overweight<68> rating on the stock, also highlighted the company<6E>s more than $3.5 billion in cash and short-term investments, saying it should help tackle capital concerns from losses in the third quarter. Insurers and reinsurers are counting the costs of the hurricanes that tore into parts of the United States, while ravaging several islands in the northern Caribbean. Chubb Ltd ( CB.N ), the world<6C>s largest listed property and casualty insurer, has estimated after-tax losses of up to $1.28 billion from hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Germany<6E>s Munich Re ( MUVGn.DE ) warned it could miss its profit target this year, the first major reinsurer to flag a hit to earnings from damage caused by the storms. Hurricane season in the Atlantic is still in full swing and Morgan Stanley said it expects overall insured losses from this year<61>s catastrophes to approach $100 billion. Reporting by Ahmed Farhatha in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D''Silva '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/aig-outlook/aig-sees-third-quarter-catastrophe-losses-of-about-3-billion-idINKBN1CE2MN'|'2017-10-10T01:55:00.000+03:00'
'789171107b0448318e07bb6262e4875d30de9793'|'OPEC Secretary General urges U.S. shale oil producers to help cap global supply'|'OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo speaks with the media during his visit to Abuja, Nigeria Febuary 27, 2017.REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde/Files NEW DELHI (Reuters) - OPEC<45>s Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo on Tuesday called on U.S. shale oil producers to help curtail global oil supply, warning extraordinary measures might be needed next year to sustain the rebalanced market in the medium to long term.<2E>We urge our friends, in the shale basins of North America to take this shared responsibility with all seriousness it deserves, as one of the key lessons learnt from the current unique supply-driven cycle,<2C> said Barkindo.The comments by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries official came during a speech delivered at a conference in New Delhi.While OPEC and some other producers, including Russia have cut supplies this year in order to prop up prices, U.S. production has soared by almost 10 percent this year, driven largely by shale drillers. Barkindo said he hoped that new producers, not just U.S. shale drillers, would join production cuts.On Monday, Saudi Arabia cut crude oil allocations for November by 560,000 barrels per day (bpd), in line with the kingdom<6F>s commitment to the OPEC-led supply reduction pact.Still, the top oil exporter plans to ship slightly above 7 million bpd next month, up from low levels during summer when domestic demand was at its peak.On Sunday, Barkindo said OPEC and other oil producers might need to take <20>some extraordinary measures<65> next year to rebalance the oil market.Looking ahead, the official said by 2040, oil and other fossil fuels would account for 70 percent of the global energy basket.Barkindo<64>s bullish forecast runs counter to the views of most analysts, who see the share of fossil fuel below 70 percent by 2040, as renewable energy sources and electric vehicles spread.Reporting by Nidhi Verma, Promit Mukherjee and Neha Dasgupta; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-energy/opec-secretary-general-urges-u-s-shale-oil-producers-to-help-cap-global-supply-idINKBN1CF0DH'|'2017-10-10T03:27:00.000+03:00'
'a6cb21af27aae5b7712624a5e4cd1b51a64cbbfe'|'OPEC secretary general sees clear signs of oil rebalancing, upbeat on demand - Reuters'|'OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo attends a meeting of the 4th OPEC-Non-OPEC Ministerial Monitoring Committee in St. Petersburg, Russia July 24, 2017. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov LONDON (Reuters) - The oil market is rebalancing fast and has almost entirely erased the glut of refined products as OPEC sticks to its supply pact, OPEC<45>s secretary general said on Monday.OPEC<45>s Mohammad Barkindo also said growth in U.S. shale oil output had slowed compared to the first half of 2017 and growth in global demand may show further upward revisions, giving the supply cut effort tailwind.The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other non-member producers are cutting output by about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) until next March to get rid of a price-sapping supply glut.The aim of the OPEC-led cut is to trim the level of oil in OECD industrialized countries to the five-year average. OPEC and its allies agreed the deal last year after prices collapsed due to oversupply, hurting the income of producing countries.<2E>There is clear evidence that the market is rebalancing,<2C> Barkindo said in a recorded speech provided for the Reuters Global Commodities Summit taking place this week.<2E>The process of global destocking continues, both onshore and offshore with positive developments in recent months showing not only a quickening of the process but a massive drainage of oil tanks across all regions.<2E>Oil LCOc1 prices have gained support and in late September reached almost $60 a barrel, the highest in more than two years. But Brent crude, trading at $55 on Monday, is still half its level of mid-2014.OPEC has said that OECD oil stocks, as of August, had fallen to 170 million barrels above the five-year average, down from 340 million barrels in January.Barkindo said in the speech that 145 million barrels of the remaining 170 million-barrel surplus was crude, but inventories of refined products were approaching the desired level.<2E>Just a mere 25 million barrels are products, almost converging with the five year average,<2C> he said.BRENT BACKWARDATION HELPS Barkindo said oil volumes in floating storage were also falling and Brent<6E>s move into backwardation, a market structure in which oil for prompt delivery costs more than future supply, made storing crude uneconomic.<2E>Crude in floating storage is down by an estimated 40 million barrels since the start of the year with help of a narrowing contango since June and then Brent flipping into a clear backwardation from the second week of September,<2C> he said.<2E>This trend will obviously make it unprofitable to continue to store crude.<2E>Oil demand has surprised forecasters to the upside. OPEC in its last monthly report raised its projections for oil consumption this year and next, and this development could have further to run. <OPEC/M><3E>These upward demand revisions are most likely to be an ongoing trend,<2C> Barkindo said.OPEC is also seeing a decline in growth in U.S. shale oil output, whose increasing volumes helped bring about the slide in prices three years ago.<2E>We have recently seen a deceleration in U.S. tight oil growth compared to the first half of the year, evidenced recently by falling productivity of wells particularly in the Permian basin as well as growing concerns from the investment community,<2C> Barkindo said.OPEC and its allies are considering extending the supply cutting deal beyond its March expiry. They hold their next policy-setting meeting on Nov. 30 in Vienna.Follow Reuters Summits on Twitter @Reuters_SummitsEditing by David EvansOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/summits'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-commodities-summit-opec/opec-secretary-general-sees-clear-signs-of-oil-rebalancing-upbeat-on-demand-idUSKBN1CE1H4'|'2017-10-09T21:15:00.000+03:00'
'0c2bdb82bdad226cb0b6e08619f3b0d46fdf11ba'|'Belgium''s Bpost to buy U.S. e-commerce firm Radial for $820 million'|'October 9, 2017 / 6:25 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Belgium''s Bpost buys U.S. e-commerce firm Radial for $820 million Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Bpost , Belgium<75>s national postal deliverer, said on Monday it has agreed to buy U.S.-based e-commerce service provider Radial for $820 million including debt. The move is intended to give Bpost a major boost in its speed and reach in delivering packages ordered online, the major growth area in the postal industry. Bpost said that the acquisition would also bring know-how in e-commerce services, including payment, tax and fraud protection and custom care for brands and retailers. Bpost already has an international division known as Landmark Global, helping online sellers reach more customers internationally with hubs from Auckland to Seattle. Radial, owned by Sterling Partners and based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, was created by merging eBay<61>s former operations services division with U.S. firm Innotrac in 2016. Bpost said Radial expects revenue of around $1 billion in 2017 and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of at least $65 million. Bpost said it will use bridged financing to fund its acquisition, which is expected to close before the end of the year and have a positive impact on earnings per share from 2020. KBC Securities said the deal fit Bpost<73>s strategy of strengthening itself abroad and pushing beyond just delivering parcels and into e-commerce services, adding that it could easily finance the deal through cash and debt. Bpost shares were down 1.9 percent at 24.33 euros at 0800 GMT, although after a three-month rally were still 15 percent higher than their level in early June. JP Morgan Securities LLC was financial advisor to Radial. Reporting by Toby Sterling and Philip Blenkinsop; editing by Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-radial-commerce-m-a-bpost/belgiums-bpost-to-buy-u-s-e-commerce-firm-radial-for-820-million-idINKBN1CE0D4'|'2017-10-09T04:25:00.000+03:00'
'9816fa2272545b94b1528f5673bd8fd70e5793fa'|'Uber suspends unlicensed service in Norway in change of tack'|'October 9, 2017 / 6:03 AM / in 5 hours Uber suspends unlicensed service in Norway in change of tack 3 Min Read The Uber logo is seen on mobile telephone in London, Britain, September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay (Reuters) - Uber said on Monday it would suspend its unlicensed service UberPOP in Oslo until Norway introduces new rules, as the U.S. ride-hailing app adopts a more conciliatory tone with national authorities. The move follows a similar one-year suspension in Finland in July to allow a new taxi law to come into effect, however there is no set date for when UberPOP will be reintroduced in Norway. The U.S. ride-hailing company has come under fierce pressure from traditional taxi drivers and regulators across Europe who accuse it of unfair competition and skirting traditional licensing rules. UberPOP has already been suspended in several European capitals, including Paris and Brussels, and Uber was recently humbled when it lost its license to operate in London. <20>We<57>ve learned the hard way that we must change as a company in order to serve the millions of riders and drivers who rely on us. With our new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi onboard, it<69>s a new era for Uber,<2C> the company said in a statement. <20>That<61>s why it<69>s now time to pause UberPOP in Norway, in order to relaunch under new regulations.<2E> UberPOP will be paused on Oct. 30, while Uber<65>s licensed services UberBLACK and UberXXL will continue to operate as normal. Khosrowshahi took the helm of the company in August, replacing co-founder and former boss Travis Kalanick and has promised change at the $70-billion dollar firm. The company said it was encouraged by developments in Norway such as the government<6E>s sharing economy committee which recommended repealing certain provisions related to taxis and an opinion from the EFTA surveillance authority which said Norway<61>s restrictions on taxi licenses were illegal. <20>Norway deserves modernized laws that encourage innovation and competition without sacrificing what makes the Norwegian model special,<2C> Uber said. <20>We hope the government will implement these recommendations soon, so that we can relaunch a new and improved version of the product loved by so many.<2E> UberPOP had around 280,000 users in Oslo and hundreds of drivers. Reporting by Julia Fioretti, editing by David Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-uber-norway/uber-suspends-unlicensed-service-in-norway-in-change-of-tack-idUKKBN1CE0BO'|'2017-10-09T09:01:00.000+03:00'
'c53ba7a5a5488a79ecda03a892dee5d6a03993a8'|'GE names hedge fund Trian executive Ed Garden to board'|'(Reuters) - U.S. industrial conglomerate General Electric Co, which major shareholder Trian Fund Management has been pressuring to conduct a more thorough restructuring, appointed the hedge fund<6E>s chief investment officer to its board on Monday.Edward Garden will replace Robert Lane, who is retiring due to health reasons after a dozen years as a director, GE said in a statement.The surprise move comes one day before shareholders at consumer products company Procter & Gamble Co will decide whether to elect Trian Chief Executive Nelson Peltz to its board.Trian, which invests $14 billion in assets for pension funds, endowments and wealthy investors, has owned a roughly 1 percent stake in GE since 2015.Four months ago, GE said longtime CEO Jeff Immelt would step down and that John Flannery, a 30-year company veteran who had run its healthcare business, would succeed him.The company<6E>s lackluster stock performance was seen to have prompted Immelt<6C>s departure, which came months before analysts had expected, but the shares have continued to fall. They were down 3 percent in Monday morning trading.The logo of General Electric Co. is pictured at the Global Operations Center in San Pedro Garza Garcia, neighbouring Monterrey, Mexico, on May 12, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril/Files <20>Like other GE shareholders, I am disappointed by the recent performance of GE<47>s stock,<2C> Garden said in a statement. <20>But I continue to believe that GE represents an attractive long-term investment opportunity with significant upside.<2E>The most recent wave of executive departures was announced last week and includes Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Bornstein. Jamie Miller, CEO of GE Transportation, will become CFO next month.Although Trian is an activist investor that demands change at companies, it is also known for working behind the scenes with management to improve performance. It rarely pushes out a CEO the way some other activists do, and it often sticks around, often for years, as transformations occur.After discussions with Trian, GE in March set a $2 billion cost-reduction target and linked the bonuses of its senior management to meeting profit-related goals.As a board member at Bank of New York Mellon Corp, Garden most recently helped hire former Visa Inc CEO Charles Scharf to replace Gerald Hassell, who is retiring. Garden is also a board member of Pentair Plc.Since its 2005 inception, Trian has returned an average 8 percent a year to investors, according to data from HSBC Holdings Plc<6C>s hedge fund investment arm.Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Rachit Vats in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza and Lisa Von Ahn '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/ge-board/ge-names-hedge-fund-trian-executive-ed-garden-to-board-idINKBN1CE1NV'|'2017-10-09T17:24:00.000+03:00'
'6506589b3d65f86e414e9c4c175ecb17f431aa05'|'Italy vows ''battle'' over ECB proposals for bad loans crackdown'|'October 9, 2017 / 4:26 PM / a minute ago Italy vows ''battle'' over ECB proposals for bad loans crackdown Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Italian Industry Minister Carlo Calenda poses during an interview with Reuters in his office in Rome, Italy November 25, 2016. REUTERS/Tony Gentile/File Photo ROME (Reuters) - Italian Industry Minister Carlo Calenda said on Monday Italy would fight new proposals by the European Central Bank to force banks in the euro zone to set aside more cash to cover bad loans. <20>We will fight this in the European Union, it<69>s a political, not a technical matter,<2C> Calenda said in a television interview to be broadcast later on Monday. Calenda is the latest of several Italian politicians to react angrily to the ECB<43>s proposals last week to force banks from 2018 to set aside more cash against newly classified bad loans. Italian banks have been hit by concerns the ECB may extend the new rules also to the bloc<6F>s huge stock of bad debts, of which they hold nearly 30 percent. ECB<43>s Executive Board Member Yves Mersch said on Monday a solution had to be found to deal with existing bad loans now that an accord had been reached over how to treat new ones. Calenda said if the ECB<43>s proposals were adopted Italy would risk a credit crunch that would hurt its small and medium sized companies particularly hard. Reporting by Giuseppe Fonte, writing by Gavin Jones, editing by Valentina Za'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eurozone-italy-npls-minister/italy-vows-battle-over-ecb-proposals-for-bad-loans-crackdown-idUKKBN1CE1XR'|'2017-10-09T19:22:00.000+03:00'
'02efb915155505c18fe76313615d13137f0afcce'|'A truly free market exploits the weak and defenceless - the big issue'|'The big issue: a truly free market exploits the weak and defenceless Only the few benefit from unrestrained capitalism View more sharing options Close Sunday 8 October 2017 00.05 BST I found the collection of comments on capitalism last Sunday fascinating ( <20>Is capitalism at a crossroads?<3F> , In Focus). The contribution by Ruth Lea represents the sort of thing we are likely to hear from the Conservatives at the next election. It<49>s so full of unsupported statements (<28>sound management of the public finances<65>? Oh, please) it would be difficult to know where to start, but, shouted loudly enough, it will certainly resonate with many people on the right. However, there are a few simple, commonsense truths we should keep in mind. First, Labour is not planning to abolish capitalism. Attempts to do that in the last century were disastrous failures and North Korea and Venezuela continue to provide stark warnings. But capitalism is a necessary answer for the efficient production of wealth, not a sufficient one. Unrestrained (<28>free<65>) capitalism has no more morals than a tsunami. Its main thrust derives from individual ambition and competition: put together, they relentlessly search out ways of increasing wealth. Unfortunately, they also search for ways by which individuals and organisations can plunder society<74>s resources and exploit the weak and defenceless. This is not because capitalism is wrong, it<69>s just the way it works. The only way to prevent this is for the state to act as referee and it<69>s the balance of power between referee and players that defines the health of a capitalist society. This balance works by the state being in alliance with those players who accept the need for moral limits against those who don<6F>t: broadly acceptable businesses such as John Lewis protected against the likes of Sports Direct; <20>good<6F> landlords against the slum landlords described elsewhere in the Observer ( <20>Overcrowding, rats and roaches<65><73> , News). Jeremy Cushing Exeter Supporters of the free market, such as Ruth Lea, should seriously consider whether there has ever been any such thing as a genuinely <20>free<65> market. Freedom in any form of social interaction is dependent on equality between all participants. In the marketplace, national or global, there is no such equality. The terms of the market are largely determined by a few very powerful people, whether they are selling us goods and services or buying our labour. Those few do enjoy almost unfettered freedom, but the rest of us need a strong, democratic state that can redress the balance and exercise firm control over capitalism<73>s very un-free market <20> <20>for the many, not the few<65>. John Marais Cambridge There is nothing new about capitalism v socialism or the right balance between private and public finance. We need an entire overhaul of our economic model. The huge and pressing questions to be addressed are how the economy can best be managed in order to minimise environmental destruction on the one hand and to create economic justice on the other. Naomi Klein has given a clear and detailed account of how capitalism is responsible for climate change in her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate . Yet the only reference to the environment among the economists chosen to contribute to your feature is Mariana Mazzucato<74>s hope that economic growth will be <20>increasingly <20>green<65><6E>. But Mazzucato states: <20>We all want growth.<2E> No, we don<6F>t. Tim Jackson, in his book Prosperity Without Growth , has set out a realistic and coherent vision for building an economy that provides for real human needs and does so within the limitations imposed by the biophysical world. Teresa Belton '|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/oct/07/truly-free-market-exploits-weak-and-defenceless'|'2017-10-08T02:05:00.000+03:00'
'94ef70584e4b729853c37b571ba71c08ad8cefa5'|'Boeing helped finance bailout of Monarch Airlines in 2016: FT'|'Monarch aircraft are seen parked after the airline ceased trading, at Luton airport in Britain, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner (Reuters) - Boeing Co ( BA.N ) had pumped in more than 100 million pounds ($130 million) into Britain<69>s now defunct Monarch Airlines [MONA.UL], the Financial Times reported. The capital infusion, through Monarch<63>s offshore holding company Petrol Jersey, was carried out in several tranches between October 2016 and March this year, the FT said. The airline<6E>s owner Greybull refused to comment on the details of the financing, saying that they were <20>commercially confidential<61>, FT added. It denied that there had been anything secretive about the transaction. <20>As a regulated body, all financing arrangements provided to Monarch were reviewed and approved by relevant authorities,<2C> Greybull told the newspaper. The FT said Boeing had refused to comment. Reuters could not immediately reach Greybull Capital and Boeing for comment outside regular business hours. Last year, Monarch secured a 165 million pound lifeline from Greybull, enabling the airline to renew a key operating license and fund new aircraft. The equity investment had been agreed only hours before its operating license was due to expire, allowing the airline, which sells flights and package holidays to tourist destinations, to keep flying. The 48-year-old airline had said that the investment would fund the replacement of its Airbus jets with more fuel-efficient Boeing 737 MAX-8 aircraft between 2018 and 2021. The low-cost carrier, which collapsed last week, is the largest British airline to go bust affecting nearly 900,000 passengers in total. Reporting by Sangameswaran S in Bengaluru, editing by David Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-monarch-airlines-boeing-bailout/boeing-helped-finance-bailout-of-monarch-airlines-in-2016-ft-idUSKBN1CD0XS'|'2017-10-08T23:25:00.000+03:00'
'c44f697a4fec0d57cfd35066d681967a8bb72c51'|'UK''s May signals plan to demote Foreign Minister Johnson, newspaper says'|'October 7, 2017 / 9:47 PM / Updated 4 hours ago UK''s May signals foreign minister Johnson could be sacked Paul Sandle 4 Min Read British Prime Minister Theresa May sits in front of British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson during a meeting to discuss the current situation in Libya during the 72nd United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May has signaled that she could sack Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, a Sunday newspaper said, as she tries to reassert her authority after a series of political disasters. The Sunday Times said it asked May about her plans for Johnson, who has professed loyalty but is accused by some of the prime minister<65>s allies of undermining her by putting forward his own vision for Britain<69>s exit from the European Union. <20>It has never been my style to hide from a challenge and I<>m not going to start now,<2C> it quoted May as replying, in what it called a signal that she was prepared to bring in new ministers to her cabinet and axe those who had caused her problems. <20>I<EFBFBD>m the PM, and part of my job is to make sure I always have the best people in my cabinet, to make the most of the wealth of talent available to me in the party.<2E> May has seen her authority over her Conservative Party erode since she called a snap election in June in which she lost her majority in parliament. Johnson, seen as a potential successor to May, said that Conservative lawmakers pushing to unseat her were <20>nutters<72>, adding that a change would lead to demands for another election that could bring a resurgent Labour party back to power. <20>Are we really going to be stampeded myopically over the edge of the gorge, with an election that no one wants?<3F> he said in the Sunday Telegraph. Related Coverage May''s party suspends two EU lawmakers over Brexit vote Johnson wrote a newspaper article last month outlining his vision of Brexit just days before May made a major speech on the subject. While professing loyalty, his interventions have been seen as undermining May and causing unnecessary unrest ahead of the party<74>s conference last week that culminated in a disastrous speech by the prime minister, marred by a coughing fit and letters falling off the slogan on the set behind her. Johnson made a plea for loyalty with a typical rhetorical flourish on Sunday. <20><>Quo quo scelesti ruitis?'', as Horace put it at the beginning of a fresh bout of Rome<6D>s ghastly civil wars, and which roughly translates as: <20>What do you think you are doing you nutters?<3F> GONE BY CHRISTMAS? On Friday, former Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps said he had garnered the support of 30 lawmakers who wanted to remove May from the party leadership, short of the number needed to launch a formal challenge. Former Prime Minister John Major said he was increasingly dismayed by the plotting in the party by those driven by their own personal agenda. <20>The country has had enough of the self-absorbed and, frankly, disloyal behavior we have witnessed over recent weeks,<2C> he said in the Mail on Sunday. The speculation about May<61>s position comes ahead of crucial Brexit talks between Britain and the EU, and the political uncertainty has led to growing concern that no deal would be agreed by March 2019 when Britain leaves the bloc. Britain<69>s Sunday newspapers were brimming with briefings from unnamed Conservative figures suggesting May<61>s days in Downing Street were numbered. The Sunday Times said three cabinet ministers had discussed the need to replace May. <20>It<49>s a <20>when<65> question now,<2C> one of the unnamed ministers told the paper. <20>It feels to me that this is over before Christmas.<2E> A fourth minister was quoted as saying there needed to be an orderly transition to a new leader and there was no prospect of May being in charge for the next election due in 2022. The Observer newspaper said unnamed senior Conservative figures said while May had no lo
'edba49d277c2bd2a153ba4522cf044caf0cfd875'|'Meal box firm HelloFresh puts $1.8 billion flotation on menu'|'October 10, 2017 / 8:37 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Meal box firm HelloFresh puts $1.8 billion flotation on menu Christoph Steitz , Arno Schuetze 3 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German meal kit delivery group HelloFresh, a competitor to U.S. firm Blue Apron, announced plans to list on Tuesday in a flotation that could value the company launched by Rocket Internet at up to 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion). HelloFresh<73>s biggest market is the United States where it has been spending heavily on discount offers and TV and radio advertising to compete with rivals such as Blue Apron and Plated. Blue Apron joined the stock market in New York in June but its valuation has halved due to rising costs, declining customer numbers and the threat of competition from Amazon. The HelloFresh announcement is a boost for German ecommerce investor Rocket Internet, which owns a 53 percent stake. Rocket also invested in takeaway firm Delivery Hero, which has seen its shares rise by a quarter since it listed in Frankfurt in June. Rocket Internet shares were up 0.9 percent at 0810 GMT, having hit their highest level in almost five months. Rocket pledged in 2015 to list two companies in the following 18 months. HelloFresh is planning to sell new shares worth up to 300 million euros, which would give the new investors a 20 percent stake in the company, according to a person close to the deal, implying a valuation of up to 1.5 billion euros for the company. That is below the 2 billion euro valuation put on the company last December when it raised funds from asset manager Baillie Gifford and Qatar<61>s sovereign wealth fund. HelloFresh, which increased its number of active customers to 1.3 million in the second quarter, said it would use the proceeds to fund growth as it seeks to make its service more personalized and add more choice, like wine and desserts. INTO THE BLACK While not a direct competitor of HelloFresh, ready meals supplier Bakkavor also announced plans on Tuesday to list at least a quarter of its shares in London in early November, in a deal that sources say could value it at up to 1.5 billion pounds ($2 billion). HelloFresh, which delivers meal ingredients and recipes in 10 countries, said it expected to break even on an operating level (EBITDA) by early 2019. Its net loss stood at 56.7 million euros in the first half of 2017. <20>The public listing marks the next logical step to further expand our business, to secure our position as the leading global player and to pursue our long-term growth strategy,<2C> Dominik Richter, co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. Sources told Reuters in May that a flotation could come as early as autumn, after it pulled a previous attempt for a listing in 2015. HelloFresh reported a 53 percent year-on-year rise in second-quarter revenue to 230.1 million euros, accelerating from a 45 percent increase in the previous quarter. Berenberg, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are acting as joint global coordinators for the listing. Additional reporting by Emma Thomasson; Editing by Keith Weir '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-hellofresh-ipo/meal-box-firm-hellofresh-puts-1-8-billion-flotation-on-menu-idINKBN1CF0UK'|'2017-10-10T06:37:00.000+03:00'
'ffaf549a85805914632645d1500fe4b639f625cf'|'The old pound coin must not die unmourned <20> let<65>s see it off in style - Opinion'|'A t midnight on Sunday, everything changes for ever. The pound coin <20> the old, round, squat pound coin, as British as a blue passport or a bag of liver <20> will cease to become legal tender. The trusty pound coin, unlocker of vending machines, locker of lockers, will simply transform into scrap metal in your hands, replaced by a bimetallic interloper that looks as if it was designed by Fisher-Price for a bet. You<6F>re right to be brokenhearted about it.Except you<6F>re not brokenhearted about it. Nobody is. In an age where the slightest alteration to anything must contractually be met by oceans of fizzingly disproportionate outrage, the old pound coin is preparing to die unmourned. Not even the old mainstays have managed to kick up much of a fuss about its passing. Piers Morgan hasn<73>t wanged on about it on Twitter. Nigel Farage hasn<73>t hand-delivered a letter of complaint to the Royal Mint. Katie Hopkins hasn<73>t even found a way to sputter and fart about how its replacement somehow represents a state-mandated victory for Isis, even though that<61>s what she does for a living now.Vegans aren<65>t on the warpath because, unlike polymer banknotes, nobody thought to splice cow DNA into the new coins. Men<65>s rights activists aren<65>t narked off because, unlike the new polymer tenners, the new coins haven<65>t just suddenly discovered that women exist. The only sliver of anger I have seen towards the new coins came a year ago from a Twitter user with 92 followers who wrote: <20>New pound coin can fuck off looks like a 2 pound coin and a 20p made a shit child.<2E> That<61>s it.Even shops don<6F>t seem to mind that much. The Federation of Small Businesses, Poundland and Tesco are all planning to carry on accepting the old pound coins after Sunday<61>s deadline has passed . They won<6F>t be legal tender any more, but what the hell. Hand them over anyway and they<65>ll take them. Heck, if you haven<65>t got any old pound coins, they<65>ll take euros. Or bottle caps. Or buttons. It<49>s not like any of us will have much use for traditional currency after Donald Trump nukes us all into orbit next week anyway.Shops to ignore pound coin deadline Read more Perhaps the lack of fury over the change is because the pound coin is a relatively recent invention. It only came into being in the 80s. I<>m three years older than the pound coin, for instance, and I<>m still young enough to just about carry off a trendy pair of jeans, provided they<65>ve been gusseted properly. When I was born (recently enough for me to still be able to derive enjoyment from solid food and some forms of music, remember) the pound coin must have seemed unthinkably futuristic. It must have been a threat to everyone<6E>s way of life. Back then, people had been taught to pay for everything with endless furls of phlegm-coloured wallpaper, and so a small metal disc of commensurate value must have seemed like a dispatch from Skynet.Or maybe this is just how life is now. First, our 10p coins shrank, then our 5p coins and our 50p coins. We have had 20 years to get used to bimetallic coins at this point, so we won<6F>t all spend months fruitlessly trying to pop the middle bit out like we did when the <20>2 coin was introduced. Our banknotes won<6F>t biodegrade any more, no matter how angrily we try to compost them. Perhaps we have suffered through so many changes in such a comparatively short amount of time that we<77>re all just labouring through a moderate case of outrage fatigue.Well, enough is enough. The old pound coin isn<73>t dead yet <20> it is thought that we still have 500m of them stored away at home, despite the looming deadline <20> so it<69>s time to give it the sendoff it deserves. We may be cowering in an age of austerity, but we finally have an excuse to be frivolous. It<49>s time to spend these coins as if they<65>re going out of style.The passing of the old pound coin is an opportunity for you to be the truest version of yourself possible. If you<6F>re in any way philanthropic, you can donate your stock of coins to any of
'cde1324098f6fc584e9c3f37e70fb9f6f8e2f6a9'|'Dassault Aviation shares fall after CEO warns of Falcon 5X delay'|'October 10, 2017 / 7:53 AM / Updated 20 minutes ago Dassault Aviation shares fall after CEO warns of Falcon 5X delay Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The logo of French airplanes maker Dassault Aviation is seen on the Dassault Aviation factory in Merignac near Bordeaux, southwestern France, January 10, 2014. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - Shares in Dassault Aviation ( AVMD.PA ) were down 3.5 percent in early trade on Tuesday after the company<6E>s chief executive told a U.S conference the Falcon 5X business jet<65>s entry into service would be delayed. Dassault Aviation shares were down 3.5 percent in early session trading, the worst performer on France''s SBF-120 .SBF120 index. CEO Eric Trappier said aerospace group Safran ( SAF.PA ) had informed Dassault of certain manufacturing issues regarding a high pressure compressor. He made the comments on Oct. 9 at an aviation industry conference in Las Vegas, and a copy of his speech was provided by Dassault Aviation. Safran shares were down 0.7 percent. <20>Safran just informed us that the ongoing tests have revealed some performance issues with the high pressure compressor. We haven<65>t yet analysed all the consequences, but we already know that the 5X entry into service, which had been rescheduled in 2020 in accordance with the latest engine development plan, will have to be postponed again,<2C> said Trappier. Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Benoit Van Overstraeten and Blandine Henault; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-dassault-avi-falcon/dassault-aviation-shares-fall-after-ceo-warns-of-falcon-5x-delay-idUKKBN1CF0QJ'|'2017-10-10T10:53:00.000+03:00'
'57e2f40b16d4613e4e3ac68859323db9373b7388'|'The multimillionaires making a packet out of Britain''s gamblers - UK news - The Guardian'|'W ithin days, the government will announce the result of a gambling review examining, among other things, whether the maximum stake on fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) should be cut.The machines, which allow punters to stake up to <20>100 every 20 seconds, have become the pantomime villain of the industry, rarely appearing without their almost mandatory soubriquet <20> the <20>crack cocaine of gambling<6E>.The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which is leading the review, has played its cards close to its chest regarding its forthcoming recommendation, prompting forecasts so wide as to be almost useless. Maximum stakes will either stay the same, fall to <20>30, <20>20 or <20>2, according to various leaks.<2E>He<48>s sweating and rubbing his nose. Within minutes, he<68>s lost <20>400 on the machines<65> Read more The <20>2 option, which appears increasingly plausible in the light of a stream of negative publicity about FOBTs , is the Armageddon scenario for bookmakers.Analysts reckon it would cut their revenues by up to <20>150m, while the Association of British Bookmakers predicts thousands of shop closures and job losses if their fattest cash cow is slaughtered.Whatever the outcome of the review, the businessmen behind the machines have made a packet out of Britain<69>s gamblers, who have been known to lose up to <20>14,000 in a day .A Lorne Weil, an American multimillionaire virtually unknown in the UK, is one such entrepreneur. He has been one of the biggest beneficiaries from the UK<55>s 35,000 FOBTs, thanks to a conveyor belt of cash that starts in high street betting shops.It was he who built the Las-Vegas-based gambling technology giant Scientific Gaming, partly through the 2006 acquisition of the Global Draw, a large supplier of FOBTs.While the machines can sell for about <20>4,000 each, one former employee of a FOBT maker told the Guardian that some big clients often get them for free.There<72>s a relatively constant need for the machines, due in part to their growing numbers in recent years, but also because of the frequency with which they need to be replaced after being smashed to pieces by angry gamblers .Manufacturers can get paid up to 9p out of every <20>1 that drops through the coin slot, a cut worth more than <20>150m last year when FOBT users lost <20>1.8bn .A stupid gamble on evil machines - Victoria Coren Mitchell Read more Filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reveal Weil was paid about $56m (<28>42m) for his final five years as chief executive of Scientific Gaming after helping transform the firm from a relative minnow with revenues of $48m into a giant pulling in $1.7bn annually.Weil<69>s next move made perfect sense. Having built the empire behind thousands of the UK<55>s FOBTs, he used some of the personal wealth he had amassed in the process to buy thousands more.He set up an acquisition vehicle, roped in fellow investors and led the <20>200m takeover of Scientific Gaming<6E>s main UK rival, the Burton-on-Trent-based Inspired Gaming.Its parent company, Inspired Entertainment Inc, is eyeing major growth, telling investors recently that it expects to increase operating profits from $34m in 2015 to $62m in 2018.''He haemorrhaged money'': the bereaved parents taking on the gambling industry Read more It promises to do this by expanding in the UK and further afield, capitalising on gamblers<72> appetite for the machines<65> hypnotic graphics and the promise of easy wins.Such growth would spell more big returns for Weil, who owns 11.9% of the company.SEC filings show that his children, through a family trust, also have plenty to gain despite already enjoying a lifestyle a world away from many of those who feed the machines.One of his children, B Luke Weil, appeared in the 2003 film Born Rich: Children of the Insanely Wealthy , a documentary about the heirs of multimillionaires that also featured Ivanka Trump.In one scene, Weil Jr refers to the power that his father<65>s money afforded him at university: <20>
'd4dac88c5f6d53737ece168151327a9fb9d55a31'|'Irish housebuilder Glenveagh says IPO set to raise 550 million euros'|'October 10, 2017 / 6:35 AM / Updated 26 minutes ago Irish housebuilder Glenveagh says IPO set to raise 550 million euros Reuters Staff 2 Min Read DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish homebuilder Glenveagh Properties GLV.I on Friday said it was set to raise 550 million euros (<28>491.44 million) in Ireland<6E>s second-largest initial public offering since the 2008 financial crisis amid a housing crisis in Europe<70>s fastest growing economy. Glenveagh said it had raised 500 million euros and expected to raise another 50 million assuming the full exercise of an over-allotment option. Its shares will commence trading on the Dublin and London stock exchange this morning. Glenveagh is just the second Irish housebuilder to float since the economy began to turn around, following Cairn Homes ( CRN.L ) in 2015. Cairn<72>s share price has almost doubled since then as the value of its portfolio grew sharply. While Ireland was left with a surplus of houses after values were cut in half following the property crash a decade ago, a recovery in the construction sector has badly lagged the general economy, causing house prices and rents to rise sharply again. Reporting by Conor Humphries, editing by Louise Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-glenveagh-propts-ipo/irish-housebuilder-glenveagh-says-ipo-set-to-raise-550-million-euros-idUKKBN1CF0J7'|'2017-10-10T09:35:00.000+03:00'
'f3df3ea0d2cd5f158094a38d174d5429dc71b6ae'|'PRESS DIGEST-Canada - Oct 9'|'October 9, 2017 / 10:57 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago PRESS DIGEST-Canada - Oct 9 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 9 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories from selected Canadian newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. THE GLOBE AND MAIL ** The Canada Revenue Agency has indicated that employee discounts will now be taxed. The CRA issued a recent tax "folio" indicating that employee discounts are to be considered taxable benefits, and part of their income. tgam.ca/2y4lZPw ** The Liberal government is attempting to move past the divisive debate on pipelines by forging a national energy strategy that promotes the transition to a low carbon economy while supporting oil and gas development. tgam.ca/2y4dIuR ** The flow of Canadian lumber into the United States should be embraced and not feared by Americans, Canada has told the United States International Trade Commission. The Canadian government is leading efforts to persuade the ITC to reverse January''s pro-U.S. decision in the cross-border trade dispute after the ITC issued a preliminary ruling in January, saying Canadian softwood is harming the United States lumber sector. tgam.ca/2y3cj7Q NATIONAL POST ** Tim Hortons franchisees who created an association to address their grievances with parent company Restaurant Brands International Inc have filed a C$850 million ($678 million) class action lawsuit against the company, alleging the fast food operator is trying to intimidate its restaurant owners and force the franchisees who formed the group out of their restaurants. bit.ly/2y3WnlK ** A 37 year old woman and her young twins died following an early morning fire in Quebec''s Gaspe Peninsula on Sunday. Police spokeswoman Helene Nepton said there was a brief evacuation involving a dozen neighbours and none were injured. bit.ly/2y2Jg4b Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-canada/press-digest-canada-oct-9-idUSL4N1MK26B'|'2017-10-09T13:56:00.000+03:00'
'dbc2103a0ad41390226d644f33ca772380fa7779'|'ONGC Videsh expects Sudan to clear $400 million dues as U.S. lifts sanctions - executive'|'October 9, 2017 / 7:51 AM / Updated 4 hours ago ONGC Videsh expects Sudan to clear $400 million dues as U.S. lifts sanctions - executive Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A technician is pictured inside a desalter plant of Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India, September 30, 2016. REUTERS/Amit Dave/File Photo NEW DELHI (Reuters) - ONGC Videsh expects Sudan to clear about $400 million owed to the state-run energy company after the lifting of the U.S. sanctions, its managing director N.K. Verma said on Monday. The past dues were relating to building of pipeline and crude sales, Verma told Reuters at the India Energy Forum by Ceraweek in New Delhi. <20>Earlier they were facing problems and now it will be easy for them (Sudan) to raise funds,<2C> he said. The United States lifted long-standing sanctions against Sudan last Friday, saying Sudan had made progress fighting terrorism and easing humanitarian distress. Oil production from ONGC Videsh<73>s three blocks in Sudan has declined to about 25,000 barrels per day from 48,000 bpd since last November after the Sudanese government failed to renew contract for Block 2B, Verma said. Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Malini Menon'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-energy-ongc/ongc-videsh-expects-sudan-to-clear-400-million-dues-as-u-s-lifts-sanctions-executive-idINKBN1CE0LA'|'2017-10-09T10:51:00.000+03:00'
'5759ac45c18fa6d94b2092053b2d9d3770c4d4af'|'PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 9'|'October 9, 2017 / 5:11 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 9 Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 9 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - The Weinstein Company fired its co-founder Harvey Weinstein on Sunday, after an investigation uncovered allegations that he had engaged in rampant sexual harassment. nyti.ms/2hZR9kN - The expensive science-fiction sequel "Blade Runner 2049" collapsed at the North American box office over the weekend, taking in $31.5 million, or roughly 30 percent less than analysts had expected, as younger audiences and women failed to materialize in sizable numbers. nyti.ms/2hXB8LQ - Dove dropped a Facebook ad for Dove body wash in which a black woman removes her brown shirt and underneath is a white woman in a light shirt. nyti.ms/2hZUpN3 (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-nyt/press-digest-new-york-times-business-news-oct-9-idUSL4N1MK0XU'|'2017-10-09T08:09:00.000+03:00'
'b693ae4129b47b37575caee7095353faab03b366'|'UK energy price cap legislation to be published on Thursday- PM''s spokesman'|'October 9, 2017 / 10:40 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago UK energy price cap legislation to be published on Thursday- PM''s spokesman Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Draft legislation on the British government<6E>s plans to cap energy prices will be published on Thursday, a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday. Last week, May said she would impose a price cap on the energy market to help millions of households struggling with rising prices, hitting shares in the leading providers hard. (Reporting by William James, editing by Elizabeth Piper)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-politics-energy/uk-energy-price-cap-legislation-to-be-published-on-thursday-pms-spokesman-idUSS8N1KA00B'|'2017-10-09T13:40:00.000+03:00'
'e2f92b78affde8800c153de2776045fc94f3caf7'|'Nokia plans to cut up to 310 jobs, halt VR camera development'|'October 10, 2017 / 7:01 AM / in 11 minutes Nokia plans to cut up to 310 jobs, halt VR camera development Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A Nokia logo is seen at the company''s headquarters in Espoo, Finland, May 5, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia ( NOKIA.HE ) plans to reduce up to 310 jobs from its Nokia Technologies unit and halt development of its virtual reality camera <20>OZO<5A> and hardware, the Finnish company said on Tuesday. The unit has about 1,090 employees and the potential cuts are expected to affect staff in Finland, the United States and Britain. Nokia employed about 102,000 employees as of end-June. The unit will continue to focus on digital health and patent and brand licensing business, Nokia said. <20>The slower-than-expected development of the VR market means that Nokia Technologies plans to reduce investments and focus more on technology licensing opportunities,<2C> it said in a statement. Nokia, whose main business is now telecoms network equipment, launched the camera last year as the first device for its digital media business, one of its new hopes for future growth. It was designed for making 3D movies and games that can be watched and played with virtual reality headsets. Nokia cut the price of the camera by 25 percent to $45,000 (<28>34,172) later last year. Reporting by Jussi Rosendahl; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nokia-redundancies/nokia-plans-to-cut-up-to-310-jobs-halt-vr-camera-development-idUKKBN1CF0KZ'|'2017-10-10T10:01:00.000+03:00'
'e8f82ec08d8d8c84f9b8df8fee62adda61362380'|'PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 6'|'October 6, 2017 / 5:02 AM / in 2 hours PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 6 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 6 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - Honeywell International Inc is pursuing an acquisition of water-filtration company Evoqua Water Technologies, which is laying the groundwork for an initial public offering. on.wsj.com/2z3empU - Netflix Inc is raising prices for its streaming-video services in the U.S., betting that subscribers will tolerate higher monthly fees and help fuel the company''s big investments in TV and movie programming. on.wsj.com/2z2w5hh - Facebook Inc cut references to Russia from a public report in April about manipulation of its platform around the presidential election because of concerns among the company''s lawyers and members of its policy team, according to people familiar with the matter. on.wsj.com/2z2ygl1 - Boeing Co on Thursday said it plans to acquire Aurora Flight Sciences Corp, a maker of aerial drones and pilotless flying systems in a move the company said could pave the way for fleets of small flying taxis. on.wsj.com/2z2yhp5 - Firearm and ammunition maker Vista Outdoor Inc tapped the former head of recreational-vehicle company Arctic Cat Inc, Christopher Metz, to be its next CEO. on.wsj.com/2z1zRaI (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-wsj/press-digest-wall-street-journal-oct-6-idUSL4N1MH109'|'2017-10-06T08:01:00.000+03:00'
'34beadbc602603f98f8e0762c896081a21f9b46b'|'China approves HP''s $1.1 billion buy of Samsung''s printer business with curbs'|'October 6, 2017 / 3:51 AM / Updated 4 minutes ago China approves HP''s $1.1 billion buy of Samsung''s printer business with curbs Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Hewlett-Packard (HP) logo is seen as part of a display at the Microsoft Ignite technology conference in Chicago, Illinois, May 4, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Thursday it has approved HP Inc<6E>s ( HPQ.N ) $1.1 billion purchase of Samsung Electronics<63> ( 005930.KS ) printer business with certain restrictions, citing concerns about the U.S. firm<72>s dominance of the domestic laser printer market. HP announced the deal in September 2016, hoping to disrupt the $55 billion copier market by focusing on multifunction printers and more deeply embedding mobile and cloud printing technologies to its product solutions. It hoped at the time to close the transaction within 12 months, pending regulatory review. In a statement issued late on Thursday, the Ministry of Commerce said sale of A4 format laser printers by HP in China should be done on <20>fair and reasonable<6C> terms and the firm must report every six months on their prices and related data to the ministry. HP must not buy any stakes in other A4 printer manufacturers in China even if they are a minority equity investment, it said. It must not adapt its printers to restrict compatibility with third-parties or claim in advertising that its printers are not compatible with other suppliers, the ministry said. HP expects to close the acquisition in the fourth quarter which ends on Dec. 31, a spokeswoman said in an email. She declined to comment on the regulatory process. Samsung was not immediately available for comment. Under the deal, HP would add an intellectual property portfolio of more than 6,500 printing patents and nearly 1,300 researchers and engineers with expertise in laser printer technology, imaging electronics and printer supplies. Reporting by Josephine Mason and Stella Qiu; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-hp-printer-china/china-approves-hps-1-1-billion-buy-of-samsungs-printer-business-with-curbs-idUKKBN1CB09N'|'2017-10-06T06:43:00.000+03:00'
'5997409cde001f0088b8c908672cd8bd93dda666'|'Bombardier spends $2.4 billion a year on aerospace in U.S.: document'|'October 5, 2017 / 8:36 PM / Updated a day ago Bombardier spends $2.4 billion a year on aerospace in U.S.: document Alwyn Scott 3 Min Read A logo of jet manufacturer Bombardier is pictured on their booth during the European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (EBACE) in Geneva, Switzerland, May 22, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bombardier Inc<6E>s aerospace business spent $2.4 billion in the United States last year, tapping more than 800 suppliers in all but three U.S. states, according to a confidential Bombardier report seen by Reuters on Thursday. The report shows the potential impact on the U.S. economy and companies if the Canadian company<6E>s new CSeries jetliner is effectively kept out of the U.S. market by a trade row initiated by Boeing Co earlier this year. Boeing has accused Bombardier of receiving taxpayer subsidies that allowed it to sell the CSeries in the United States at prices below cost. Last week, the U.S. Department of Commerce proposed a duty of nearly 220 percent to compensate for the subsidies, and the agency is due to issue a decision on potential additional duties for dumping later on Thursday. The imposition of additional duties would effectively keep Bombardier out of the United States because it would make its planes too expensive to be competitive The report said more than half of the materials Bombardier buys for the new CSeries plane come from U.S. suppliers, with the most spending in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa and Kansas, the report said. The duties, which would affect an order for 75 planes by Delta Air Lines, would not take effect unless approved by the U.S. International Trade Commission early next year. Bombardier has already said that its spending supports 22,700 jobs in the United States, and it has identified major CSeries suppliers such as Connecticut-based engine maker Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp, and Iowa-based avionics maker Rockwell Collins Inc. United Technologies is in the process of acquiring Rockwell Collins. The report identifies the 10 largest CSeries suppliers, including French interiors supplier Zodiac Aerospace SA, through its operations in California; Honeywell International Inc, which makes auxiliary power units in Arizona; Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc in Kansas; and Parker Aerospace, a unit of Parker-Hannifin Corp which has operations in Utah, California and Michigan. Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Leslie Adler'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-bombardier-us-impact/bombardier-spends-2-4-billion-a-year-on-aerospace-in-u-s-document-idUSKBN1CA2N6'|'2017-10-05T23:36:00.000+03:00'
'623e7c65a09a6eed75b9ada5e70db656d6a47ce4'|'Looser rules unlikely to boost U.S. company listings - FTSE Russell CEO'|'WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. policy proposals to cut red tape for public companies are unlikely to boost listings while borrowing rates continue to be low and could increase risks for investors, the chief executive of FTSE Russell, the world<6C>s largest index firm, said on Tuesday.On Friday, the U.S. Treasury published a 232-page report proposing sweeping reforms to the country<72>s capital markets, as it looks to implement Republican President Donald Trump<6D>s agenda to promote economic growth by slashing regulation.The report included measures to reduce the disclosure and compliance burden for listed companies and companies seeking listings in a bid to reverse a near 50 percent decline in the number of public companies in the United States over the past 20 years.Speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Washington, FTSE Russell CEO Mark Makepeace said the proposals were unlikely to prove effective while central bank-led monetary easing continues to allow companies to access private capital cheaply.<2E>I don<6F>t think this is the best approach. Money is cheap, private equity firms are awash with cash and the stock market is competing with this. With so much cheap cash, companies don<6F>t have to go through the rigors of a public listing but the cheap cash won<6F>t be there forever and the trend of companies not listing will right itself,<2C> Makepeace told Reuters in an interview.<2E>Removing unnecessary levels of bureaucracy is a good thing but removing the need for good corporate governance practices will only increase risks for investors. It<49>s important to make a distinction between the two,<2C> Makepeace added.With around $15 trillion in assets under management tracking its indexes, FTSE Russell, owned by the London Stock Exchange Group Plc ( LSE.L ), is increasingly becoming a guardian of corporate governance standards as exchanges globally have raced to relax rules amid ever-fiercer competition for listings.In July, the company said it would exclude Snap Inc ( SNAP.N ) from its widely tracked benchmarks because the owner of the Snapchat messaging app has an unusual share structure that denies voting rights to investors.Makepeace said <20>long-only<6C> asset owners such as pension fund investors were failing to influence the policymaking process as effectively as companies and banks, which in contrast stand to gain from looser listing rules.<2E>The long-only investors aren<65>t getting their voice across. The buy side is not as organised and nowhere near as well funded as the corporate groups.<2E>Reporting by Michelle Price; Editing by Lisa Shumaker'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-regulation-lse/looser-rules-unlikely-to-boost-u-s-company-listings-ftse-russell-ceo-idINKBN1CF34T'|'2017-10-10T20:54:00.000+03:00'
'a208045ee1da5d86cdbb34d390e62d70c6b86432'|'Kobe Steel shares plunge as data fabrication concerns deepen'|'October 11, 2017 / 2:05 AM / in 2 hours Kobe Steel crisis deepens on new revelations of data fabrications, shares dive Reuters Staff 5 Min Read The logo of Kobe Steel is seen at the group''s Tokyo headquarters building in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ) plunged deeper into crisis on Wednesday as fresh revelations showed data fabrication at the steelmaker was more widespread than initially thought, heightening a safety scare along the global supply chain. Investors, worried about the potential legal ramifications and the financial impact for Kobe, dumped the stock for a second day, wiping out nearly two-fifths of the market value of Japan<61>s third-biggest steelmaker. Earlier on Wednesday, Kobe Steel said it may have fabricated data on iron powder products used in components such as automotive gears and was investigating the issue after media reported the abuses. It has also launched an investigation into Kobelco Research Institute Inc, which tests products for the company, the steelmaker said. The Nikkei newspaper reported the unit had shipped materials used for making semiconductors to customers without inspecting them. The new revelations came after the steelmaker admitted over the weekend it had falsified data about the quality of aluminium and copper products used in cars, aircraft, space rockets and defence equipment in a fresh blow to Japanese manufacturers<72> s vaunted reputation for quality production. Kobe Steel has said it was examining other possible data falsifications going back 10 years. The company faces potential costs from any recalls, replacements and any legal action, including class-action suits in the U.S. where it has over-the-counter traded American Depositary Receipts, Yuji Matsumoto, an analyst at Nomura Securities, said in a report. The revelations about data tampering in its aluminium unit could also hit its plans to expand the business as carmakers increasingly use the material, which is lighter than steel, to meet tighter environmental rules. <20>Aluminium is one of the key focus areas in the medium term as part of its strategy to help lighten vehicles (and) this will certainly have a negative impact on the expansion,<2C> Matsumoto said in the report. Multinationals, including automakers like Toyota Motor ( 7203.T ) and Ford Motor ( F.N ), and aircraft manufacturers Boeing ( BA.N ) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries ( 7011.T ), have said they are investigating. SHARES DIVE The market impact on Kobe Steel has been unforgiving, with its stock tumbling 18 percent to 878 yen after dropping 22 percent on Tuesday, wiping about $1.6 billion off its market value over two days. The deepening scandal has forced the government to push the company to speedily resolve the crisis. <20>This inappropriate behaviour shakes the foundation of fair trading,<2C> Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Kotaro Nogami told a regular news conference on Tuesday. <20>We ask Kobe Steel to thoroughly look into the causes ... and take steps to prevent a recurrence as well as to make utmost efforts to restore the trust of not only its customers but of society as a whole.<2E> The misconduct at Kobe Steel follows scandals involving falsified data at household names such as Nissan Motor ( 7201.T ), Mitsubishi Motors ( 7211.T ) and Takata Corp., which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Toshiba Corp ( 6502.T ) is still battling the fallout of a scandal involving reporting inflated profits. The corrosive business practices have raised broader questions over corporate governance in Japan and cast doubts about the integrity of nation<6F>s once-admired manufacturing industry. EARLIER MISCONDUCT The revelations of tampered data and specifications aren<65>t the first for Kobe Steel. The company said in June 2016 that an affiliate, Shinko Wire Stainless Co, had falsified data on tests for tensile strength of some stainless steel wire for springs over a period of more than nine years. In 2006, K
'cbe48d8d06f426ed587297fa24e7a8040b181772'|'Britain''s Booker sees Tesco deal closing in early 2018'|'October 12, 2017 / 6:58 AM / Updated 12 hours ago Britain''s Booker sees Tesco deal closing in early 2018 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A branded sign is displayed outside of a Booker Wholesale store in London, Britain January 27, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON (Reuters) - British wholesaler Booker said on Thursday it expected its 3.7 billion pound ($4.9 billion) takeover by Tesco to complete early next year, as it reported a 9 percent rise in first-half profit. The agreed deal is currently being investigated by regulator the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and provisional findings are expected by the end of the month, ahead of a final report by the end of the year. <20>It is expected that the merger will complete in early 2018, subject to, amongst other things, the necessary shareholder approvals,<2C> Booker said. The group supplies the Budgens, Londis, Happy Shopper and Premier convenience chains, catering firms such as Wagamama and Carluccio<69>s, and also operates cash and carry business Makro. Booker said it made a pretax profit of 88 million pounds in the 24 weeks to Sept. 8, up from 81 million pounds in the same period last year. Total sales rose 2.5 percent to 2.6 billion pounds with progress in both the catering and retail sides of the business. It said non-tobacco revenue in the first four weeks of its new financial year is ahead of last year. Booker said it will not be making forward looking statements for the duration of the Tesco offer period. Shares in Booker, up 21 percent over the last year, closed at 205.3 pence on Wednesday, valuing the business at 3.66 billion pounds. For each Booker share Tesco is offering 0.861 new Tesco shares and 42.6 pence in cash. Reporting by James Davey; editing by Jason Neely and Kate Holton 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-booker-group-results/britains-booker-sees-tesco-deal-closing-in-early-2018-idINKBN1CH0Q4'|'2017-10-12T04:58:00.000+03:00'
'b55eec939437972bd1f2b2c5030ff2bec24f9f83'|'Allianz, Shapoorji Pallonji partner to set up $500 mln India fund'|'Oct 12 (Reuters) - German insurer Allianz SE said it had partnered with Indian conglomerate Shapoorji Pallonji Group to set up a $500 million real-estate fund aimed at the office market in India.Allianz will own 50 percent of the rupee-denominated closed-ended fund, SPREF II, while long-term institutional investors will hold the rest, it said on Thursday.The deal forms part of Allianz<6E>s plan to allocate about 5 percent of its global real-estate portfolio to the Asia-Pacific region, Allianz said.The venture, which will be supported locally by Shapoorji Pallonji Investment Advisors team, aims at building long-term, cash flow producing office portfolio by buying a mix of assets in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and Delhi. (Reporting by Krishna V Kurup in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/allianz-india-fund/allianz-shapoorji-pallonji-partner-to-set-up-500-mln-india-fund-idINL4N1MN36G'|'2017-10-12T07:07:00.000+03:00'
'fea6ed5ec858dcfa4fdfd0c46bc491b02dc26266'|'Irish housebuilder Glenveagh says IPO set to raise 550 mln euros'|'DUBLIN, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Irish homebuilder Glenveagh Properties on Friday said it was set to raise 550 million euros ($647.30 million) in Ireland<6E>s second-largest initial public offering since the 2008 financial crisis amid a housing crisis in Europe<70>s fastest growing economy.Glenveagh said it had raised 500 million euros and expected to raise another 50 million assuming the full exercise of an over-allotment option. Its shares will commence trading on the Dublin and London stock exchange this morning.Glenveagh is just the second Irish housebuilder to float since the economy began to turn around, following Cairn Homes in 2015. Cairn<72>s share price has almost doubled since then as the value of its portfolio grew sharply.While Ireland was left with a surplus of houses after values were cut in half following the property crash a decade ago, a recovery in the construction sector has badly lagged the general economy, causing house prices and rents to rise sharply again. ($1 = 0.8497 euros) (Reporting by Conor Humphries, editing by Louise Heavens) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/glenveagh-propts-ipo/irish-housebuilder-glenveagh-says-ipo-set-to-raise-550-mln-euros-idINL8N1ML0NU'|'2017-10-10T04:24:00.000+03:00'
'1eb2844f2c0e9f3c569365988564e92221134c3d'|'Las Vegas hotel weighs fate of notorious 32nd floor suite'|'FILE PHOTO: Workers board up a broken window at the Mandalay Bay hotel, where shooter Stephen Paddock conducted his mass shooting along the Las Vegas Strip, in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Wattie/File Photo LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - What will become of the now-notorious Las Vegas hotel suite that a 64-year-old retiree used to stage the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history?That is the difficult decision facing the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino a week after Stephen Paddock opened fire on a crowd at an outdoor concert from room 135 on the hotel<65>s 32nd floor, killing 58 and injuring more than 500.The suite<74>s shattered gold-tinted windows are now discreetly covered over. The resort, owned by MGM Resorts International ( MGM.N ), has yet to say what it will do with the space.The challenge is particularly difficult for a hotel in Las Vegas, a place where visitors go to escape everyday lives and real-world problems.<2E>How do they navigate the fact that this happened in their hotel?<3F> said Andrea Trapani, managing partner at Identity, a Detroit-area public relations firm that provides crisis communications for hospitality brands. <20>A lot of challenging tough questions and decisions are going to be made.<2E>The hotel might want to consider sealing up Room 32-135, or even the entire floor, to avoid becoming a destination site for gawkers fascinated by its macabre history, some experts have suggested.Officials facing similar decisions at the schools, churches and other places where mass shootings have taken place in recent years have gone in a variety of directions.Some of the venues have been dismantled completely. Others, like the San Bernardino, California community center where a husband and wife killed 14 people in December 2015, have reopened, with officials saying that getting back to work helping people was integral to healing.The Orlando, Florida nightclub where a gunman killed 49 people in June 2016, remains closed, and the owner plans to turn it into a memorial.Connecticut<75>s Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 children and six adults were killed in 2012, was demolished and rebuilt four years later.A spokesman for Mandalay Bay declined to comment on its plans.But it appeared highly unlikely the suite would simply reopen as if nothing had happened there on Oct. 1.<2E>I wouldn<64>t want to stay in that room,<2C> said North Carolina tourist Randy Dockery, at a makeshift memorial for the victims in a narrow patch of grass along the Las Vegas Strip.Some experts suggested Mandalay Bay should erect a memorial somewhere in the hotel, either permanent or temporary, and throw a fundraiser for the victims and their families.<2E>The hotel was absolutely a victim as well, and by transforming some space into something that honors the victims, they could hopefully promote healing and actually some good,<2C> said Kim Miller, president of Florida-based Ink Link Marketing, whose work includes advising companies on crisis management.For Dockery, the choice was obvious.<2E>The memorial should be over there,<2C> he said, pointing at the hotel. <20>But probably they don<6F>t want the publicity.<2E>Additional reporting By Gina Cherelus; Editing by Frank McGurty and Andrew Hay '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lasvegas-shooting-hotelroom/las-vegas-hotel-weighs-fate-of-notorious-32nd-floor-suite-idUSKBN1CE2NY'|'2017-10-10T02:50:00.000+03:00'
'8aa18d66789615085e1f354af1cac1ef74878e7c'|'Poland''s ruling party tightens grip on big state firms'|'* Ruling conservatives tighten grip on big state firms* PiS says its policy is in Polish national interests* Critics say PiS uses state firms for own political ends* PiS at odds with European Commission over court reformsBy Marcin GoclowskiWARSAW, Oct 10 (Reuters) - When presidential aide Malgorzata Sadurska joined the board of Poland<6E>s biggest and oldest insurance company this summer, her lack of business experience was no obstacle.Her main qualification to help run state-owned Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen (PZU) was something else -- loyalty to the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.What PZU needs is <20>a person who knows the PiS programme and is a guarantee that it will be implemented,<2C> parliamentary deputy Marek Suski told radio RMF FM as the conservative PiS took to the airwaves to explain her appointment in June.Her task, he said, was <20>to implement the programme of the government, which is to repair Poland.<2E>Sadurska, 41, is one of hundreds of loyalists brought in to state companies by PiS to tighten its grip on big business and help it implement its conservative, nationalist-minded policies since it returned to power in 2015 after an eight-year absence.The aim is not only to ensure loyalty in major companies and give PiS a say in their personnel, investment and policy decisions.It has also enabled PiS to use such firms as vehicles to buy out foreign interests in the banking and energy sectors, with a U.S.-owned news channel, TVN24, seen by some business leaders as a likely next target because it is critical of the government.Opponents fear public procurement and financing rules are being blurred, giving PiS access to large advertising budgets which can be used to fund publicity campaigns or events that promote the party<74>s agenda.This, they fear, will deepen the concerns of Poland<6E>s European Union partners about what they see as an assault on the rule of law and democracy since PiS set its sights on asserting its power over the economy, the judiciary and the media.Aleksander Laszek, chief economist at the Civil Development Forum (FOR), a Warsaw-based economic policy think tank known for its liberal view on the economy, said the PiS moves to assert control of big business were <20>exceptionally strong and brazen.<2E><>A VERY GOOD PROFESSIONAL<41>Sadurska<6B>s responsibilities at PZU include real estate, strategic partnership programmes and bancassurance, under which an insurance company can sell its products to a bank<6E>s client base, PZU said.PZU officials gave no further details of what she has done since joining the board.Before her appointment, she had no experience in insurance, finance or business beyond an MBA in business management from her native Lublin region in eastern Poland.But she had won a reputation for dedication to the PiS cause since first being elected to the lower house of parliament in 2005. She has served as secretary of state responsible for labour and social policy and was chief of President Andrzej Duda<64>s chancellery for almost two years from August 2015.Contacted by phone, Sadurska directed Reuters to the PZU press office, which declined to answer emailed questions about her appointment or PZU business policy.Suski also declined to give any details to Reuters. Asked whether Sadurska had been appointed to PZU to implement PiS policy, he said: <20>She is a very good professional<61>.PZU has not said how much Sadurska is paid. Her predecessor, according to PZU financial records, received the equivalent of just over 22,000 euros ($25,850) a month.After a series of personnel changes in the past two years that appear to reward political loyalty, the government now has greater control of the more than 200-year-old firm than at any time since four decades of communist rule ended in 1989.PZU<5A>s chief executive officer, Pawel Surowka, is among the recent appointees. An experienced manager who also worked at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, he was named CEO in April and had been brought in to head PZU<5A>s life insurance arm in 
'55f784ed1e87f4b1d8b35e9ed191d8a58a5f9336'|'PRESS DIGEST- British Business - Oct 10'|'Oct 10 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.The TimesThe average rental price for new tenancies rose to 927 pounds ($1,218) a month in September, compared with 908 pounds in the same month last year, suggesting that rents have not yet reached the peak of affordability, despite rising inflation, sluggish wage growth and economic uncertainty. bit.ly/2fWTDMhStatoil ASA has highlighted its continued appetite for investing in the North Sea after finding an oil deposit that could contain up to 130 million barrels. bit.ly/2ySVWYkThe GuardianFormer British prime minister David Cameron has taken a job with the electronic payments firm First Data Corp, his first major private sector job since leaving office. bit.ly/2zaiyV6Britain''s switch to greener energy will take another significant step forward this week with the opening of an industrial-scale battery site in Sheffield. bit.ly/2fVtT2MThe TelegraphThe UK government is under scrutiny by European competition authorities over allegations of providing illegal state aid to BT Group Plc via the business rates regime, amid plans to boost investment in Britain''s broadband infrastructure with new tax breaks. bit.ly/2yc4KedThe majority owner of Millennium & Copthorne Hotels Plc has moved to take the company private with a bid that values the UK-listed business at 1.8 billion pounds. bit.ly/2yBCPpzSky NewsIn an interview for Sky News, eBay Inc''s UK Vice President Rob Hattrell said that Brexit was "an opportunity" for the companies that used eBay''s trading platform. bit.ly/2g7EETABAE Systems Plc, Britain''s biggest defence contractor, is to axe more than 1,000 jobs this week in a bitter blow for Britain''s manufacturing industry. bit.ly/2y74bAQThe IndependentRoyal Mail Plc has said that it will lodge an application with the High Court for an injunction to prevent a 48-hour strike from happening, in a dispute over pensions and pay. ind.pn/2gottTwTens of thousands of airline passengers have been told their flights have been cancelled by the latest French air traffic control strikes. The main air-traffic controllers'' unions are stopping work as part of a national strike against the labour reform policies of President Emmanuel Macron. ind.pn/2g6JhgB$1 = 0.7612 pounds Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-press-business/press-digest-british-business-oct-10-idINL4N1MK3LF'|'2017-10-09T22:07:00.000+03:00'
'6c46623a475898effed81a38bb11f4597c8988d9'|'BAE Systems set to announce up to 2,000 job cuts in Britain'|'October 10, 2017 / 6:59 AM / Updated an hour ago BAE to cut 2,000 jobs as Typhoon fighter orders stall Paul Sandle 5 Min Read A BAE systems sign is seen outside the company''s Warton site near Preston, Britain October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble LONDON (Reuters) - BAE Systems<6D> new boss will cut around 2,000 jobs at Britain<69>s biggest defence contractor to tackle dwindling orders for the Typhoon fighter jet and the loss of revenue from Cold-War era aircraft nearing retirement. The Eurofighter Typhoon has won fewer orders this year than rivals such as the Rafale built by France<63>s Dassault Aviation, and BAE is slowing production while it waits for Qatar to confirm its intention to buy 24 of the jets. A bigger order expected from Saudi Arabia has not materialised. The aircraft is the most important in BAE<41>s portfolio, accounting for nearly a third of its air unit<69>s sales last year. Chief Executive Charles Woodburn, who took the top job in July after 15 months as chief operating officer, said BAE had to align its workforce capacity more closely with near-term demand and become more competitive to secure new business. <20>Those actions are necessary and the right thing to do for our company, but unfortunately include proposed redundancies at a number of operations,<2C> he said on Tuesday. The looming loss of skilled manufacturing jobs and the potential ripple effect on the regions affected caused concern among politicians and unions. Business minister Claire Perry said she would work with BAE to keep compulsory redundancies to a minimum. <20>The company assures us that reductions can be managed on a voluntary basis as far as possible,<2C> she told lawmakers. She said BAE was cutting the jobs to improve the efficiency of its operations. Related Coverage <20>This is not related to any UK defence spending decisions,<2C> she said, adding that the government had spent 4 billion pounds ($5.3 billion) on BAE<41>s products and services in the last year. DOUBLE SQUEEZE UK-based defence analyst Francis Tusa said BAE was facing a double squeeze from confirmed orders for Typhoons drying up and Cold War Tornado jets, for which BAE has lucrative support contracts, nearing retirement. BAE said that based on current orders for the Typhoon it needed to reduce the workforce at its sites in Warton and Samlesbury, northern England, where it makes parts for the aircraft, by 750. Another 400 jobs will go in Brough, north east England, where the company makes the Hawk training jet, it said. Qatar said last month it intended to buy six Hawks in addition to the Typhoons. It is also winding down support for Britain<69>s Tornados, which will be taken out of services in 2019, resulting in 245 job cuts at two RAF sites. FILE PHOTO: A worker crosses the floor of the Eurofighter Typhoon production line at BAE systems Warton plant near Preston, northern England September 7, 2012. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo Britain<69>s Unite union vowed to fight the <20>devastatingly short sighted<65> job losses that it said would undermine the sovereign defence capability of one of the European Union<6F>s top two military powers. BAE, which in previous guises has been the backbone of Britain<69>s defence industry for decades, employs 34,600 people in the country out of its global workforce of 83,100. BAE, which designs Britain<69>s new Dreadnought class of nuclear submarine, said it will also cut around 340 jobs at its maritime operations in Portsmouth and Solent, southern England. And 150 jobs will go at its Applied Intelligence unit that helps companies and governments fight cyber-warfare. THINNING OUT LAYERS A BAE systems sign is seen outside the company''s Warton site near Preston, Britain October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble Defence analyst Howard Wheeldon said the cuts were essentially due to a gap in orders emerging in key programmes. <20>It is the stamp of a new CEO who has looked across the group and decided where it needs to be heading,<2C> he said. <20>It takes out a management layer and lays out a new stru
'351e7050febb0e4bdb121ef1f2a12affe8b33bff'|'Spain''s Abertis board to discuss moving head office from Catalonia on Monday - source'|'October 8, 2017 / 3:40 PM / Updated 17 minutes ago Spain''s Abertis board to discuss moving head office from Catalonia on Monday - source Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MADRID (Reuters) - The board of Spanish infrastructure firm Abertis will meet on Monday to discuss moving its head office out of Catalonia as the region<6F>s parliament considers unilaterally declaring independence from Spain, a source familiar with the matter said. Several big Catalan companies have announced plans to move their registered office to other cities in Spain after Catalonia went ahead with an independence referendum last week which was banned by a Spanish court. There was no immediate comment from Abertis, which builds, maintains and operates highways in Spain, France and the Americas. Italy<6C>s Atlantia bid 16.3 billion euros (14.64 billion pounds) for Abertis in May to create the world<6C>s biggest toll road operator. Reporting by Adrian Croft; Editing by Raquel Castillo'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-spain-politics-catalonia-abertis/spains-abertis-board-to-discuss-moving-head-office-from-catalonia-on-monday-source-idUKKBN1CD0O2'|'2017-10-08T18:42:00.000+03:00'
'a363af2484513184af980d5319159f50fa414df0'|'Bill Gross of Janus says ''I think we have fake markets'''|'October 9, 2017 / 8:14 PM / in 7 minutes Bill Gross of Janus says ''I think we have fake markets'' Reuters Staff 1 Min Read NEW YORK, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Influential bond investor Bill Gross of Janus Henderson Investors said Monday that financial markets are artificially compressed and capitalism distorted because of the U.S. Federal Reserve. <20>I think we have fake markets,<2C> Gross said at a Janus Henderson event. Investors should brace for higher Treasury bond yields as the Fed begins to unwind its quantitative easing program but that yields will edge up <20>only gradually,<2C> Gross said. (Reporting by Jennifer Ablan; Editing by Andrew Hay)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/funds-janushenderson/bill-gross-of-janus-says-i-think-we-have-fake-markets-idUSL2N1MK11Y'|'2017-10-09T23:14:00.000+03:00'
'63a3eb506ef55f69f7d95cba8dfc38eda5e1b33e'|'ECB says euro zone banks well prepared for rate shocks'|'October 9, 2017 / 7:49 AM / Updated an hour ago Fifty-one euro zone banks vulnerable to rate shocks, ECB says Balazs Koranyi , Francesco Canepa 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: European Union flags flutter outside the headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, Germany, April 21, 2016. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Fifty-one large euro zone banks are leaving themselves exposed to a sudden change in interest rates and may need to aside more capital against that risk, the European Central Bank said on Monday. The ECB is preparing to start dialling back its monetary stimulus after years of ultra-low interest rates and massive bond purchases, paving the ground for rate hikes further down the line. After simulating scenarios ranging from a sudden monetary tightening to the kind of lending freeze that followed Lehman Brothers<72> collapse, the ECB found that most of the 111 euro zone banks it tested are well prepared for interest rates shocks. But it cautioned it needed <20>intense discussions<6E> with 51 of them after finding they may be making themselves vulnerable via large bets on derivative instruments and overly aggressive models for calculating risk. A hike in interest rates could mean the banks suddenly need more capital. Related Coverage ECB still concerned about existing stock of bank bad loans - Mersch <20>What we need to do is have intense discussions and check with the banks if they<65>re aware of the... risk and if they have enough capital if things go wrong,<2C> Korbinian Ibel, a senior supervisor at the ECB, said. Results of the test, which started in February, are incorporated into the ECB<43>s guidance on how much capital each lender on its watch should hold. Ibel said the 51 banks may, in principle, see their capital demands rise by up to 25 basis points, although any decision would depend on the individual circumstances of each firm. Similarly, the remaining 60 banks could see their guidance reduced by the same amount. The ECB<43>s supervisory arm, which oversees the euro zone<6E>s largest banks and carried out the exercise, is formally separated from its monetary policy function. INCOME AND DEPOSITS On aggregate, the ECB found that an increase of 200 basis points in interest rates would lead to a rise in net interest income of 4.1 percent in 2017 and of 10.5 percent by 2019 for the banks tested. But when rates move, the net value of assets and liabilities of a bank also change. The economic value of the banks<6B> equity would, however, decrease on aggregate by 2.7 percent, the ECB said. Banks, particularly in richer countries such as Germany, have long complained that the ECB<43>s ultra-low interest rates have squeezed the margins they make on loans. Indeed, the ECB found that, should interest rates stay at their end-2016 level and absent any credit growth, the aggregate net interest income would decrease by 7.5 percent. Finally, the ECB warned that banks may be taking much of their customer deposits for granted based on recent years and failed to account for the rise of online banks and higher rates. <20>One could assume that if interest rates rise, the share of stable deposits decreases, but this is not done by most of the banks,<2C> Ibel said. Reporting by Balazs Koranyi and Francesco Canepa Editing by Jeremy Gaunt'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-banks-ecb/ecb-says-euro-zone-banks-well-prepared-for-rate-shocks-idUKKBN1CE0KS'|'2017-10-09T10:49:00.000+03:00'
'd1907a47b778b5b4360b7ff44d62395986b06b6b'|'UPDATE 1-German meal box firm HelloFresh plans to list'|'* Aims for proceeds of 250-300 million euros* Aims for break-even on EBITDA level in next 15 months* Listing will consist of new shares (Adds details on listing, context)FRANKFURT, Oct 10 (Reuters) - German meal kit delivery group HelloFresh, a competitor to U.S. firm Blue Apron, announced plans on Tuesday for an initial public offering (IPO), aiming for 250 million to 300 million euros ($294-353 million) in proceeds to fund growth.HelloFresh, which delivers meal ingredients and recipes and is controlled by Rocket Internet, holder of a 53 percent stake, also said it expected to break even on an operating level (EBITDA) by early 2019.<2E>The public listing marks the next logical step to further expand our business, to secure our position as the leading global player and to pursue our long-term growth strategy,<2C> Dominik Richter, co-founder and CEO, said in a statement.Sources told Reuters in May that a flotation could come as early as autumn, following an unsuccessful previous attempt for a listing in 2015.Blue Apron, which competes with HelloFresh in North America, went public in June but has seen its stock tumble as it faces stiff competition and has struggled to fulfill orders at its East Coast facility.The HelloFresh offering will consist of newly issued ordinary shares. Berenberg, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are acting as joint global coordinators.HelloFresh, which increased its number of active customers to 1.3 million from 1.2 million in the second quarter, is keen to make its service ever more personalised and add more options for delivery, like wine and desserts. ($1 = 0.8499 euros) (Reporting by Christoph Steitz, editing by Emma Thomasson) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/hellofresh-ipo/update-1-german-meal-box-firm-hellofresh-plans-to-list-idINL8N1ML0U8'|'2017-10-10T04:45:00.000+03:00'
'ce98821bf4810b1ea09b2717873a88c91d93feb3'|'China says will have no problem meeting 2017 growth target, may beat it'|'October 10, 2017 / 4:47 AM / in 13 minutes China says will have no problem meeting 2017 growth target, may beat it Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China will have no problem meeting its economic growth target of around 6.5 percent this year, and may even beat it, the head of the Statistics Bureau said on Tuesday, confirming widespread market expectations. A flurry of government measures to rein in the overheated property market have also been effective and will remain in place, Ning Jizhe told reporters in a briefing in Beijing. Analysts have expected full-year growth would meet or exceed the government<6E>s target after the world<6C>s second-largest economy expanded by a stronger-than-expected 6.9 percent in the first half, fueled by heavy government infrastructure spending and a property boom. That could see China<6E>s economic growth accelerate for the first time in seven years, after it slowed to a 26-year low of 6.7 percent last year. While the robust momentum is expected to fade in coming months due to higher borrowing costs and property cooling measures, most China watchers believe the slowdown will be moderate. The World Bank last week raised its economic growth forecast for China for 2017 to 6.7 percent from 6.5 percent. Ning added that China<6E>s survey-based unemployment rate in major cities came in at 4.83 percent in September, the lowest since 2012. Many analysts, however, say official job figures are an unreliable indicator of nationwide employment conditions. Reporting by Elias Glenn and Yawen Chen; Editing by Kim Coghill'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/china-economy-unemployment/china-says-will-have-no-problem-meeting-2017-growth-target-may-beat-it-idINKBN1CF0BW'|'2017-10-10T07:44:00.000+03:00'
'a49e74d35957059aebf748b2b871824b9615e813'|'Elliott tours BHP investors in renewed push for radical shake-up - sources'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Activist investor Elliott has embarked on an international tour of BHP Billiton<6F>s biggest shareholders as it presses ahead with its campaign to force a radical shake-up of the FTSE 100 mining giant, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.Representatives from Elliott have in the last month met with major BHP investors based in London, South Africa and Australia to lay out the activist fund<6E>s arguments for an overhaul of the miner, the two sources said.In the meetings, Elliott has reiterated its view that BHP should scrap its dual listing structure by abolishing its British company, the people said.BHP and Elliott declined to comment.The meetings come as the miner prepares to hold its London annual general meeting (AGM) on Oct. 19 and its Sydney AGM on Nov. 16.While Elliott has met with other investors regularly since it launched its BHP campaign earlier this year, this is the first time it has visited South Africa since it began agitating for change at the company, according to one of the sources.South Africa-based Public Investment Corporation, which manages South African government employee retirement funds, is the fourth biggest shareholder in BHP<48>s London-listed stock, according to Thomson Reuters data.Elliott<74>s latest tour of investors also included revisiting shareholders it met with earlier in its campaign.It comes after Elliott increased its stake in the Anglo-Australian miner to 5 percent in August, in a sign the hedge fund was ramping up its campaign at the resources company.Pressure has been building on BHP and its Chief Executive Andrew Mackenzie since April, when the activist first went public with its criticisms of the miner<65>s strategy and revealed it had built a 4.1 percent stake.In June, Elliott said that a number of BHP investors including Schroders Investment Management and Tribeca backed its calls for a change of strategy at the resources company.Since then, BHP has bowed to shareholder pressure for a shake-up by announcing it will sell its loss-making U.S. shale oil and gas business. It is also considering offloading a stake in its Canadian potash project, an underdevelopment mine that has been criticised by Elliott.However, these moves have fallen short of meeting Elliott<74>s more far-reaching demands. These include dropping BHP<48>s dual listing company structure in the UK and Australia, which the activist has called <20>value-restrictive and obsolete<74>, and revamping the way the miner allocates capital.Still, the activist has welcomed the appointment of Ken MacKenzie, who became BHP<48>s chairman last month and whose selection the hedge fund has described as a <20>constructive step<65>.MacKenzie said in BHP<48>s recent annual report that he was <20>bringing a fresh perspective to management<6E>s ongoing process of reviewing the portfolio<69>.Reporting by Ben Martin; Editing by Susan Fenton '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bhp-activist/elliott-tours-bhp-investors-in-renewed-push-for-radical-shake-up-sources-idINKBN1CF0AG'|'2017-10-10T07:03:00.000+03:00'
'83e6d15af5209051fe88690a20c441094004f002'|'MOVES-BlackRock hires former Obama climate adviser -memo'|'October 10, 2017 / 5:02 PM / in 17 minutes MOVES-BlackRock hires former Obama climate adviser -memo Trevor Hunnicutt 3 Min Read NEW YORK, Oct 10 (Reuters) - The world<6C>s largest asset manager, BlackRock Inc, on Tuesday hired the Obama administration<6F>s one-time adviser on climate change to lead an effort to appeal to people who want to invest in a way that helps society. BlackRock is bringing in Brian Deese to run its recently-renamed Sustainable Investing group, according to a company memo seen by Reuters. Deese helped negotiate the Paris agreement on climate change, from which Obama<6D>s successor, U.S. President Donald Trump, has said he wants to withdraw. Wall Street is increasingly championing environmental, social and corporate-governance (ESG) standards to attract younger investors and institutions like universities and religious organizations that want to align their portfolios with their values. BlackRock has previously said investors should factor climate change into their decision-making and that doing so would not mean having to accept inferior returns. Yet its ESG growth has been muted. BlackRock<63>s sustainable unit manages $195 billion, spokesman Ed Sweeney said. That is down from more than $225 billion in February 2015, when BlackRock announced plans to coordinate its efforts in the space. At the time BlackRock tapped former anti-poverty campaigner Deborah Winshel to oversee the initiative, known previously as BlackRock Impact, and to lead its philanthropic program. Winshel will now focus full-time on philanthropy, the memo said. She could not be reached for comment. Growth in products that pursue social goals and investments in companies with strong ESG track records have partially offset a decline in assets in investments that screen out certain stocks or bonds, said Sweeney. Deese will enlist specialists in climate and use of natural resources and add a chief investment officer for sustainable investing to work with the company<6E>s portfolio managers, according to the memo, which was signed by BlackRock Global Head of Multi-Asset Strategies Richard Kushel. Deese was also previously involved in developing the Obama administration<6F>s bailout of the U.S. auto industry, budget deals with Congress and an unsuccessful effort to nominate Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court. He declined to comment. (Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Editing by Rosalba O<>Brien)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/blackrock-moves-brian-deese/moves-blackrock-hires-former-obama-climate-adviser-memo-idUSL2N1MK163'|'2017-10-10T20:00:00.000+03:00'
'a781b8092ef9576d8ef6acc51aee4c6404a43167'|'UPDATE 1-AIG sees 3rd-quarter catastrophe losses of about $3 bln'|'(adds details)Oct 9 (Reuters) - American International Group Inc said on Monday it expected to book pre-tax catastrophe losses of about $3 billion in the third quarter mainly related to hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.The company estimated pre-tax losses of about $1 billion each from Harvey and Irma and up to $700 million from Maria. Losses from earthquakes in Mexico is expected to be about $150 million, AIG said in a statement.Insurers and reinsurers are counting the costs of the hurricanes that tore into parts of the United States, while ravaging several islands in the northern Caribbean.Chubb Ltd, the world<6C>s largest listed property and casualty insurer, has estimated after-tax losses of up to $1.28 billion from hurricanes Harvey and Irma.Germany<6E>s Munich Re warned it could miss its profit target this year, the first major reinsurer to flag a hit to earnings from damage caused by the storms.Hurricane season in the Atlantic is still in full swing and Morgan Stanley said it expects overall insured losses from this year<61>s catastrophes to approach $100 billion.Shares of AIG were down about 1 percent at $61.22 in extended trading.Reporting by Ahmed Farhatha in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D''Silva '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/aig-outlook/update-1-aig-sees-3rd-quarter-catastrophe-losses-of-about-3-bln-idINL4N1MK37B'|'2017-10-09T19:17:00.000+03:00'
'14acd6514e46bf39d57dc5b8d1901150b249bd2a'|'Global markets: Asian shares shrug off Wall Street gloom, dollar steadies'|'October 10, 2017 / 12:58 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Spanish separation angst keeps Europe''s stocks cautious Marc Jones 5 Min Read The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote LONDON (Reuters) - World shares ground out a fresh record high on Tuesday, making it almost 50 for the year, although Europe traded cautiously as markets waited to see whether Spain<69>s Catalonia region would push for independence later in the day. Japan and South Korea returned from extended breaks to give Asia a lift, but the Catalan uncertainty meant the euro zone<6E>s main bourses [.EU] and Spanish bond markets spent the morning in the red. [GVD/EUR] Catalonia<69>s secessionist leader Carles Puigdemont is due to address the region<6F>s parliament in Barcelona around 1600 GMT and could ask the assembly to vote on a unilateral declaration of independence from Madrid. It had turned into Spain<69>s biggest political crisis since an attempted military coup in 1981. Madrid<69>s IBEX stocks index dropped 0.7 percent by midday and is now down almost 9 percent since May, though a sharp rise in the euro has also taken a toll. [/FRX] <20>We have not witnessed any relevant statement or signal by the separatists that would hint at a change of strategy ahead of today<61>s discussion in the Catalonian parliament,<2C> economists at Barclays wrote. <20>Consequently, at this point, it seems likely that Catalan President Carles Puigdemont remains on track to announce a unilateral declaration of independence as early as today.<2E> The euro remained resilient. It hopped to a one-week high as data showed German exports surged in August. Traders were also still upbeat on the currency after one of the European Central Bank<6E>s German policymakers called for an end to its stimulus. There was also help from a weaker dollar which was down for a third straight day. The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against six major rivals, dropped 0.2 percent to 93.533 and away from Friday<61>s almost 3-month peak. [/FRX] It gave the Turkish lira a breather after it had been sent sprawling to a nine-month low on Monday after the United States and Turkey scaled back visa services. [EMRG/FRX] Mexico<63>s peso hovered at its weakest in more than four months too, ahead of the latest round of talks over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Wednesday. <20>Mexican asset prices have been very well supported this year so we think there needs to be a little bit of caution,<2C> said UBP<42>s EM macro and FX strategist Koon Chow. <20>There is not much of a cushion for bad news now and NAFTA talks are unlikely to bring any good news.<2E> KOREA PATH Futures markets pointed to Wall Street breaking a two-day run of falls with the third quarter earning season now gathering steam. Bond markets were waiting to see if 10-year Treasuries would get above 2.4 percent ahead of another Fed rate hike. [.N] Overnight, MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan had climbed 0.6 percent, boosted by a 1.6 percent jump in Korea as shares of firms such as Samsung which have been closed for the past week, caught up with some of the global rally. Japan<61>s Nikkei brushed off a weak start to finish 0.6 percent higher too, though China stocks dipped as investors cashed in some of the gains that took them to a 21-month high in the previous session. [.SS] China<6E>s Statistics Bureau on Tuesday said the country would have no problem meeting its economic growth target of around 6.5 percent this year, and might even beat it. Such an outcome had been widely expected after a robust start to the year. The offshore Chinese yuan rate surged to its strongest level in more than two weeks. The central bank had also set a firmer-than-expected official rate, suggesting authorities are keen to keep the currency in check ahead of next week<65>s key national leadership meeting. [CNY/] The stocks gains came in spite of tensions on the Korean peninsula. Russian 
'9230cd589a4e3495cf8585df5d453aec8c4ba785'|'Bids close on Lebanon offshore energy blocks'|' 29 PM / a minute ago Bids close on Lebanon offshore energy blocks Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Lebanon''s Energy and Water Minister Cesar Abou Khalil speaks during a news conference in Beirut, Lebanon April 26, 2017. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon<6F>s energy minister Cesar Abi Khalil on Thursday said a tender had closed on a first round of offshore energy blocks, without saying how many companies had bid. It will take years for revenue from any of the blocks to start flowing to the country, he said in a televised news conference. <20>The first licensing round for oil exploration closed,<2C> he said. The country<72>s petroleum authority and the cabinet will evaluate the bids, he added. Lebanon relaunched the licensing round for five offshore blocks (1,4,8,9 and 10) in January after a three-year delay due to political paralysis. It extended the bid deadline in September. Lebanon sits on the Levant Basin in the eastern Mediterranean along with Cyprus, Egypt, Israel and Syria. A number of gas fields have been discovered there since 2009, such as the Leviathan and Tamar fields. A total of 52 companies qualified earlier in the year to bid in this round. When the process was first launched in 2013, 46 companies qualified to take part in bidding, 12 of them as operators, including Chevron Corp, Total and Exxon Mobil Corp. Reporting by Angus McDowall and Lisa Barrington, editing by David Evans 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-energy/bids-close-on-lebanon-offshore-energy-blocks-idUSKBN1CH2P8'|'2017-10-12T21:13:00.000+03:00'
'7af00a9a21d2fb499ffb36c296122663538249ad'|'Two Russian tycoons selling 3 percent of aluminum producer Rusal'|'October 10, 2017 / 11:43 AM / Updated 6 hours ago Two Russian tycoons selling 3 percent of aluminum producer Rusal Reuters Staff 2 Min Read MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian tycoons Mikhail Prokhorov and Viktor Vekselberg are selling a 3-percent stake in Russian aluminum giant Rusal via accelerated bookbuilding (ABB), one of their bookrunners said on Tuesday. The announcement of the ABB deal, which usually takes only a few days, comes less than a week after Russia<69>s En+ Group, which owns a 48 percent stake in Rusal, said it would launch an initial public share offering in London and Moscow. Prokhorov is offering 0.7 percent in Hong Kong-listed Rusal and Vekselberg is offering 2.3 percent, the bookrunner said. The market value of the 3 percent stake is $341 million, based on the closing price of Rusal<61>s share of HK$5.84 on Tuesday. Its shares fell 2.8 percent in Hong Kong during the day, but are still up more than 70 percent since the start of 2017. Rusal and Onexim Group, which manages Prokhorov<6F>s assets, declined to comment. Renova Group, which manages Vekselberg<72>s assets, and En+ Group, which manages Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska<6B>s aluminum and hydropower businesses, did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. <20>Prokhorov has indicated previously that he was willing to sell his stake in Rusal, while Vekselberg might be willing to benefit from Rusal<61>s share growth this year,<2C> said Oleg Petropavlovskiy, an analyst at BCS investment bank. The deal could increase the liquidity of Rusal<61>s shares in Moscow and make it easier for Rusal to get into the prestigious MSCI Russia Index, he said. Rusal<61>s Moscow-listed shares were down 4.8 percent after the announcement, on track for their worst day since March. The planned listing of En+ will be the first major IPO of a Russian company in London since 2014, when Russia annexed Ukraine<6E>s Crimea region. En+ aims to raise $1.5 billion, of which $1 billion is expected to be new capital. Reporting by Polina Devitt; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rusal-stake/two-russian-tycoons-selling-3-percent-of-aluminum-producer-rusal-idUSKBN1CF1ED'|'2017-10-10T19:43:00.000+03:00'
'92e148cc13a1abc270a8bd05aec640246917338f'|'OBR finally forced to admit UK''s productivity hasn''t bounced back - Phillip Inman - Business - The Guardian'|'There is a moment when gamblers realise that betting on the same horse after a string of losses is hopeless.That moment has arrived at the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) after officials at the government<6E>s economic forecaster finally gave up betting that Britain<69>s labour productivity was about to race to the head of the international pack.After seven years of predictions that it would bounce back from virtually zero to nearer the 2.1% average seen in the pre-crisis period, the OBR has thrown in the towel.UK productivity estimates must be ''significantly'' lowered, admits OBR Read moreFew would consider the OBR as a home for speculators and cardsharps, ready to bet their futures, and the country<72>s, on a rebound over the next five years in the output of the average worker.Yet the turnaround reveals a huge amount of wishful thinking. Officials now say that the productive capacity of the economy <20> as measured by the output of the average worker per hour worked <20> will be closer to the 0.2% seen this year than the 1.6% it predicted. As for a reversion to the 2.1% growth seen before the 2008 crash, that is for the birds.The impact is likely to be devastating for the chancellor, who must now make his calculations for spending based on much lower forecasts for tax income.When most of the government<6E>s revenue comes from the two giants of income tax and national insurance, and wages growth is linked to improving levels of productivity, it is not hard to join the dots and see that tax receipts will grow at a slower pace than previously expected.Philip Hammond thought he could deploy about <20>26bn over the next five years to help him through a difficult Brexit transition with some left over for investment. It looks like about <20>18bn of that will fail to materialise.The OBR explains the permanent damage to productivity is mainly the result of weak business investment.Even after a 40% rise from the post-crisis low, business investment today is just 5% above its pre-crisis peak almost a decade ago. This contrasts with the decades that followed the 1980s and 1990s recessions, when investment was 63% and 30% higher than the pre-recession peaks respectively.<2E>If business investment remains weak then this factor should continue to reduce productivity growth relative to the pre-crisis period,<2C> the OBR says in its report.Unfortunately, business investment is a key factor in the improving fortunes of the country that the OBR has also overestimated. Like productivity, it was always supposed to bounce back, but didn<64>t. Shockingly, if the productivity growth seen in the pre-crisis era had continued, the level would be 21% higher today.Should this mea culpa damage our view of the OBR and its ability to tell us the likely path of the economy? The answer must be yes, when there was plenty of evidence, both theoretical and from the real economy, that showed the financial crisis was the spark for an extraordinary recession, unlike those of the recent past. And for that reason, the recovery would be long and slow, and not the rapid return to form as the OBR said.Austerity was always going to have a bigger impact on business and household sentiment about the health of the nation than the OBR was prepared to acknowledge.With austerity a feature of the government<6E>s financial planning until at least 2025, it is only right that those who gambled on a return to old ways were trounced by the realists.Topics Office for Budget Responsibility Economics Philip Hammond Economic policy Brexit comment'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/10/obr-uk-productivity-philip-hammond-brexit-transition'|'2017-10-10T20:41:00.000+03:00'
'd18c9d3208d7c7dd6e04294b7d6e1c86f2418aaa'|'Brazil prosecutors to investigate if J&F violated leniency deal'|'BRASILIA (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors in the Brazilian capital have opened an investigation into whether holding company J&F Investimentos SA violated the terms of a leniency deal, press representatives for the prosecutors office said on Monday.J&F Investimentos, which manages the fortune of the Batista family, including a controlling stake in JBS SA ( JBSS3.SA ), the world<6C>s largest meatpacker, agreed in May to pay a record fine of 10.3 billion reais ($3.2 billion) for its involvement in corruption.Reporting by Ricardo Brito; Writing by Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Jonathan Oatis '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-corruption-jbs/brazil-prosecutors-to-investigate-if-jf-violated-leniency-deal-idUSKBN1CE2JS'|'2017-10-10T00:46:00.000+03:00'
'3f04517cf91f479acf339d8bbac4707271706cb9'|'WorleyParsons to buy AFW''s former oil & gas assets for $298'|'October 8, 2017 / 11:15 PM / in 2 hours Australia''s WorleyParsons to buy AFW''s former oil & gas assets for $298 million Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Australian engineering firm WorleyParsons Ltd ( WOR.AX ) said on Monday it would buy the former upstream oil and gas assets of Britain<69>s Amec Foster Wheeler Plc ( AMFW.L ) for 228 million pounds ($298.22 million), marking its entry into the UK North Sea market. WorleyParsons expects to tap Amec<65>s maintenance, modifications and operations capabilities through the deal, which is to be funded by a 1 for 10 entitlement offer of approximately A$322 million ($250.36 million) and existing WorleyParsons debt facilities at A$13 per new share. The enterprise value will be A$303 million before adjustments for surplus working capital and cash in the AFW UK business, the statement said. The deal is expected to reduce net debt and be accretive to WorleyParsons<6E> earnings per share in the first year of ownership, and is expected to be completed by the end of October. The sale is an attempt by Amec to get regulatory approval for its merger with John Wood Group ( WG.L ). Britain<69>s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said in August the merger could lead to competition concerns in the supply of engineering and construction services and operation and maintenance services on the UK continental shelf. The CMA said later that month that divesting almost all of Amec<65>s upstream offshore oil and gas servicing assets may be adequate for regulatory approval for the merger. Reporting by Susan Mathew in Bengaluru; Editing by Byron Kaye and Paul Tait '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-amec-foster-m-a-worleyparsons/australias-worleyparsons-to-buy-afws-former-oil-gas-assets-for-298-million-idINKBN1CD10U'|'2017-10-08T21:15:00.000+03:00'
'531aa91ec1c957e68585305ed7d507d61e2a85ff'|'Richard Thaler wins the Nobel prize for economic sciences'|'THE credit-card bill arrives. You have enough money in a savings account to pay it off<66>the sensible thing to do, arithmetically speaking, since the interest rate on the credit-card balance far exceeds that earned on the savings. Yet you leave the savings untouched, and pay only as much of the bill as your current-account balance allows. What looks a daft choice to most economists made perfect sense to Richard Thaler, who on October 9th was awarded the Nobel prize for economics for his work in behavioural economics. Mr Thaler helped demonstrate how human reasoning diverges from that of the perfectly rational homo economicus used in most economic modelling. The world, and the field of economics, is better for his contributions.Economists mostly recognise that normal people<6C>their friends and family<6C>fall short of omniscience and perfect rationality in making day-to-day decisions. Economic modelling requires simplification, however, and economists generally suppose that theories assuming people are well-informed and rational offer the best available description of economic activity. Over time, however, scholars have built up an imposing list of the ways in which humans systematically refuse to behave as the models predict. Economists such as Herb Simon (who won the Nobel in 1978), Daniel Kahneman (2002) and Robert Shiller (2013) are celebrated for their contributions to this effort. But perhaps more than any other scholar, Mr Thaler lifted behavioural economics to prominence, and helped put its lessons into practice. '|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21730109-economist-who-recognises-human-behaviour-not-always-strictly?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-10T08:00:00.000+03:00'
'8bfeb6473becd0ec374975b5ee3352438c66bbf2'|'AIG sees third-quarter catastrophe losses of about $3 billion'|'The AIG logo is seen at its building in New York''s financial district March 19, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo (Reuters) - American International Group Inc ( AIG.N ) said on Monday it expected to book pre-tax catastrophe losses of about $3 billion in the third quarter mainly related to hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.AIG<49>s shares were down about 1.7 percent at $60.75 in extended trading.The company estimated pre-tax losses of about $1 billion each from Harvey and Irma, up to $700 million from Maria and additional catastrophe losses, including earthquakes in Mexico, of about $150 million.Morgan Stanley analysts said the losses were slightly above their estimate of $2.5 billion, but were manageable as it equated to about 2.6 percent of book value.The analysts, who have an <20>overweight<68> rating on the stock, also highlighted the company<6E>s more than $3.5 billion in cash and short-term investments, saying it should help tackle capital concerns from losses in the third quarter.Insurers and reinsurers are counting the costs of the hurricanes that tore into parts of the United States, while ravaging several islands in the northern Caribbean.Chubb Ltd ( CB.N ), the world<6C>s largest listed property and casualty insurer, has estimated after-tax losses of up to $1.28 billion from hurricanes Harvey and Irma.Germany<6E>s Munich Re ( MUVGn.DE ) warned it could miss its profit target this year, the first major reinsurer to flag a hit to earnings from damage caused by the storms.Hurricane season in the Atlantic is still in full swing and Morgan Stanley said it expects overall insured losses from this year<61>s catastrophes to approach $100 billion.Reporting by Ahmed Farhatha in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D''SilvaOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/aig-outlook/aig-sees-third-quarter-catastrophe-losses-of-about-3-billion-idINKBN1CF0A8'|'2017-10-10T01:57:00.000+03:00'
'ddb51173c502fd772310bf05e81bb35e68d5f03a'|'Dassault CEO not yet considering alternative engine suppliers'|'Reuters TV United States October 11, 2017 / 7:09 PM / in 5 minutes Dassault CEO not yet considering alternative engine suppliers Allison Lampert 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Eric Trappier, Dassault Aviation CEO, poses for pictures in front of an Dassault Rafale C fighter during the 51st Paris Air Show at Le Bourget airport near Paris, June 15, 2015. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Dassault Aviation ( AVMD.PA ) Chief Executive Eric Trappier said he wants to hear how aerospace group Safran SA ( SAF.PA ) will tackle engine development issues that have delayed the French planemaker<65>s latest business jet before considering alternative suppliers. <20>For the moment we are waiting to see whether Safran are able to tell us how they will try to minimize the impact,<2C> he told Reuters. Dassault is keeping its options open for the new long-range Falcon 5X business jet, Trappier said on the sidelines of a company event in Las Vegas during the National Business Aviation Association<6F>s (NBAA) flagship gathering this week. Safran was not immediately available for comment. Earlier this week, Trappier said that the business jet, which had already been delayed to 2020, would have to be postponed again, after Safran informed Dassault of performance issues with the high-pressure compressor. Trappier said Dassault has an execution contract with Safran over the new Silvercrest engine used to power the long-range jets, but he declined to say whether the French planemaker would receive compensation for the delays because such talks are confidential. Trappier also said he viewed the possibility of selling Dassault<6C>s Rafale fighter jets to the Canadian government as an opportunity for <20>strong cooperation<6F> between Canada and France. The Rafale could be partly built in Canada, he said. Earlier this year, Canada froze talks on the planned purchase of 18 F-18 Super Hornet jets from Boeing Co ( BA.N ) for more than $5 billion, after the company launched a trade challenge accusing Montreal-based Bombardier Inc ( BBDb.TO ) of dumping its new CSeries airliners into the U.S. market. Canada needs the 18 jets to act as a stopgap measure until it is able run an open competition to replace its veteran CF-18 fighters, a process that could take five years. The CF-18 is the Canadian version of the F-18 Hornet, a design that is 40 years old. Reporting by Allison Lampert in Las Vegas; editing by Cynthia Osterman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-dassaultavi-falcon/dassault-ceo-not-yet-considering-alternative-engine-suppliers-idUKKBN1CG2NH'|'2017-10-11T22:17:00.000+03:00'
'245a2f062b1f0a3c890f82973417db34dfb9e81d'|'Wal-Mart sees 40 percent growth in U.S. online sales for fiscal 2019'|'October 10, 2017 / 11:41 AM / a minute ago Wal-Mart sees 40 percent online sales growth next year, shares jump Sruthi Ramakrishnan , Sayantani Ghosh 4 Min Read (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc ( WMT.N ) on Tuesday forecast that its U.S. online sales would soar about 40 percent in the fiscal year ending January 2019, sending its stock up 4.7 percent to the highest in more than two years. The company also forecast overall net sales to rise by at least 3 percent in the same period and said it would buy back $20 billion of its shares over the next two years. The retailing behemoth reiterated its focus on its e-commerce business at its annual investor meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas. It has started offering free two-day shipping and plans to roughly double the locations for shipping online grocery orders and slash the number of physical stores. Wal-Mart, locked in a battle for market share with ecommerce group Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ), has been doubling down on its online business and leveraging its 4,700-plus stores trying to create a more hassle-free experience for online shoppers. <20>We are going to lean into places like technology, e-commerce, international stores ... we feel like we are going in the right direction with that,<2C> said Wal-Mart Chief Financial Officer Brett Biggs. The company did not break out U.S. e-commerce sales last year, but reported growth of about 62 percent for the first half of this year. With a steady rise in people buying online, Wal-Mart<72>s e-commerce sales growth has been outstripping brick-and-mortar. Wal-Mart plans to open fewer than 15 supercenters and less than 10 neighborhood markets in the United States in the fiscal year ending January 2019. That<61>s half the stores it intends to open in fiscal 2018. Last year, Wal-Mart opened 230 supercenters and neighborhood markets. <20>Digital has been a recent highlight for WMT and it expects this momentum to carry into FY <20>19,<2C> UBS analysts said in a research note. FILE PHOTO - Souvenir t-shirts are seen for sale at the Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market in Bentonville, Arkansas, U.S. on June 4, 2015. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo <20>Faster growth in (e-commerce) should lead to earnings pressure though, as this operation is likely still several years away from profitability,<2C> the analysts said. In August, the company warned that current-quarter profit could miss Wall Street estimates as margins are being hurt by price-cutting and heavy spending on e-commerce. Total revenue increased 2.1 percent to $123.4 billion in the latest quarter. Wal-Mart did not break out total online sales. Like other retailers, Wal-Mart has been investing aggressively. The company said on Tuesday it expects capital expenditures to be about $11 billion for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. It started offering free two-day shipping and discounts for picking up online purchases at stores, and has acquired several start-ups, including Jet.com for $3.3 billion last year. Grocery competition has increased since Amazon bought Whole Foods and started to cut prices at the upmarket grocer in August. Wal-Mart forecast fiscal 2019 profit would increase about 5 percent over the expected adjusted earnings of $4.30 to $4.40 per share for the year ending January 2018. The new buyback replaces the existing $20 billion program announced in October 2015. In the seven quarters since, Wal-Mart had bought back $15.10 billion worth of shares. It was not immediately clear how much of the remaining $4.9 billion under the old plan it had used in the current quarter. Wal-Mart stock rose $3.82 to $84.35, the highest since February 2015. Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru and Sayantani Ghosh in New York; Additional reporting by Dan Burns in New York; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Jeffrey Benkoe '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-walmart-outlook/wal-mart-sees-40-percent-growth-in-u-s-online-sales-for-fiscal-2019-idUS
'0d3e95765244f2cb12832843557df6cf9f3c1e56'|'Netflix fends off criticism over Canada investment'|'October 10, 2017 / 10:57 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Netflix fends off criticism over Canada investment Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Netflix logo is pictured on a television in this illustration photograph taken in Encinitas, California, U.S., on January 18, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo (Reuters) - Netflix Inc ( NFLX.O ) said on Tuesday it had received formal approval to start a C$500 million production unit in Canada and sought to quell talk that it had asked for special tax benefits for investing in its first such unit outside the United States. The maker of Emmy-winning shows such as The Crown and Black Mirror said last month it was in talks with the Canadian government for an investment over a minimum of five years. That decision was part of a broad review under Canadian Heritage Minister Melanie Joly, which included plans to modernize funding programs and review copyright, broadcasting and telecommunications legislation. The government did not tax Netflix as some had proposed, opening the streaming service provider to criticism in Canada. ( bit.ly/2wLo4Ma ) Netflix said on Tuesday its Canadian investment was approved under the Investment Canada Act, and that no tax deals were part of the approval to launch its new Canadian presence. But is also said it was not paying sales tax in line with existing Canadian laws. "Netflix follows tax laws everywhere we operate. Under Canadian law, foreign online services like Netflix aren''t required to collect and remit sales tax," said Corie Wright, Netflix''s director of global public policy. ( nflx.it/2yBTf11 ) The company also said it would spend an additional C$25 million ($20 million) over five years toward <20>market development<6E> in the country, hosting recruitment drives and cultural events to boost the local production community. Reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee; editing by Patrick Graham and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netflix-canada/netflix-fends-off-criticism-over-canada-investment-idUSKBN1CF18Z'|'2017-10-10T13:56:00.000+03:00'
'5bf486ef699c62c4f6a93107a01dff6f470d1afe'|'UK retailer N Brown''s revenue rises as sales grow in key brands'|' 37 AM / Updated 12 minutes ago UK retailer N Brown''s revenue rises as sales grow in key brands   British clothing retailer N Brown Group Plc ( BWNG.L ) reported a 5.6 percent rise in half-year revenue on strong growth in plus-sized apparel sales. The company also said it would partner with Amazon Fashion, Middle Eastern online clothing retailer Namshi and Britain<69>s Debenhams Plc ( DEB.L ) to expand its online business. N Brown, whose brands target women aged 30 and above, and those of a larger frame, said total group revenue rose to 453.4 million pounds in the first half ended Sept. 2, from 429.4 million pounds a year earlier. Sales at its three key brands, JD Williams, Jacomo and Simply Be, rose 14.3 percent. Reporting by Rahul B   Amrutha Gayathri 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-n-brown-results/uk-retailer-n-browns-revenue-rises-as-sales-grow-in-key-brands-idUKKBN1CH0NY'|'2017-10-12T09:37:00.000+03:00'
'951cdc90ed9e7eed4489b725d013e0cf490045b8'|'PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 12'|'October 12, 2017 / 4:49 AM / Updated 18 minutes ago PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 12 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 12 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - Goldman Sachs Group Inc has set up a small team in what''s known internally as the Innovation Lab, to cook up supposedly clever ideas for big clients. nyti.ms/2g3qZcF - Interviews and internal company records at The Weinstein Company show that the company has been grappling with Harvey Weinstein''s behavior for at least two years. nyti.ms/2g3SDWY - Leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said on Wednesday that they planned to make public the thousands of Facebook Inc ads linked to Russia that appeared during the 2016 presidential election campaign, the first indication that the ads would be released. nyti.ms/2g3g3eL - The persistence of slow inflation was the dominant topic at the Federal Reserve''s most recent policy-making meeting in September, but most officials were still inclined to raise the Fed''s benchmark interest rate later this year. nyti.ms/2g2Ll5w (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-nyt/press-digest-new-york-times-business-news-oct-12-idUSL4N1MN1YG'|'2017-10-12T07:49:00.000+03:00'
'fb55b3bfbea763b4ae8e6532386a96e8c6674242'|'BRIEF-Polish KGHM says accident in smelter to result in lower copper output'|' 48 PM / Updated 13 minutes ago BRIEF-Polish KGHM says accident in smelter to result in lower copper output Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 13 (Reuters) - KGHM: * Poland<6E>s KGHM, which is one of the world<6C>s biggest copper and silver producers said on Friday that an accident at its Polish smelter will result in copper output fall by 14,000 tonnes. * KGHM also said that it plans to resume production at the smelter on October 27. * KGHM said in March that it saw its 2017 copper output at 549,000 tonnes. (Reporting By Agnieszka Barteczko; Editing by Marcin Goclowski) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-polish-kghm-says-accident-in-smelt/brief-polish-kghm-says-accident-in-smelter-to-result-in-lower-copper-output-idUSFWN1MO0KK'|'2017-10-13T15:46:00.000+03:00'
'963d0340036dbe25b99a2e3256ef8076ffc2639d'|'Samsung Electronics shares jump on expected record third-quarter memory chip profit'|'October 10, 2017 / 12:28 AM / Updated 10 hours ago Samsung Electronics shares jump on expected record third-quarter memory chip profit Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at its office building in Seoul, South Korea, August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo SEOUL (Reuters) - Shares in Samsung Electronics Co Ltd ( 005930.KS ) rose 4.5 percent after the market opened in Seoul on Tuesday, as analysts expected the tech giant to announce record profits in memory chips for the July-September quarter. Samsung shares marked their biggest intraday percentage gain since October 2016 as of 0009 GMT. Shares in SK Hynix Inc ( 000660.KS ), the world<6C>s second-largest memory chip maker after Samsung Electronics, also jumped as much as 4.3 percent, their biggest intraday percentage gain since Aug. 14. Reporting by Joyce Lee and Dahee Kim; Editing by Sam Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/samsung-elec-stocks-sk-hynix/samsung-electronics-shares-jump-on-expected-record-third-quarter-memory-chip-profit-idINKBN1CF01O'|'2017-10-10T03:28:00.000+03:00'
'3a2d5c2cfff75338140bae85dda3eb332718dab3'|'CEE MARKETS-Leu misses firming on CPI jump, Warsaw stocks test multi-year high'|'* Continuing dollar slide fuels forint, zloty, stocks firming * Sept CPI surge, politics keep lid on Romanian assets * Romanian central bank seen narrowing interest rate corridor (Adds rise in Polish stocks, new comments on Romanian interest rates) By Sandor Peto and Luiza Ilie BUDAPEST/BUCHAREST, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Romania bucked a rise in Central European assets on Wednesday due to worries over a bigger-than-expected jump in its inflation rate and tension over a planned government reshuffle. The region''s most liquid currencies, the zloty and the forint, firmed 0.3 percent against the euro, extending this week''s gains fuelled by money flowing out of the weakening dollar. Warsaw shares rose one percent. The index hit a 5-week high, a touch from its highest since mid-2015. The stocks are buoyed by technical factors and expectations for strong economic growth in the rest of the year, 4.4 percent in annual terms according to a recent Reuters poll. Plans for a power market law would help finance the construction of power stations and boost energy stocks, traders said. If expectations for Federal Reserve interest rate hikes push the dollar into an uptrend later this year, that "may worsen the investment climate on the Polish stock market and other emerging markets," BZ WBK brokerage trader Pawel Kubiak said. The leu, after a rise earlier this month amid a liquidity squeeze in Romanian markets, has missed the rise elsewhere in the region, just like Romanian stocks and government bonds. Prime Minister Mihai Tudose announced on Monday that he was considering a cabinet reshuffle due to corruption allegations against three ministers, a move that could sow tension within the ruling Social Democrat party. September figures released early on Wednesday showed a continuing rise in Romanian annual inflation to a higher-than expected 1.8 percent from 1.2 percent in August. "No place to hide from a (central bank interest rate) hike," Bucharest-based Erste Group economist Horia Braun-Erdei said in a note. "We pencil in two policy rate hikes at the beginning of 2018, on top of the likely narrowing of the interest rate corridor in November." An expected rise in government spending later this year could help ease the liquidity squeeze, for which the government has criticized the NBR, but could increase worries about a rise in inflation pressure and the budget deficit. "A tightening of the fiscal stance would be desirable, as it would reduce the need for rate hikes that may prove costly...," Braun-Erdei said. The bank, fearing speculative capital flows, has said signals from the European Central Bank and the Polish central bank (NBP) could influence local decisions. While the ECB hesitates, the NBP is unlikely to lift rates any time soon, though a surge in forward rate agreements this month priced in a start of rate hikes within 12 months. Most analysts have projected a later rise. CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1523 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.885 25.869 -0.06% 4.33% 0 5 Hungary 309.79 310.65 +0.28 -0.31% forint 00 00 % Polish zloty 4.2802 4.2926 +0.29 2.89% % Romanian leu 4.5865 4.5860 -0.01% -1.12% Croatian 7.5100 7.5025 -0.10% 0.60% kuna Serbian 119.45 119.43 -0.02% 3.26% dinar 00 00 Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1050.5 1050.0 +0.05 +13.9 6 6 % 9% Budapest 38237. 38031. +0.54 +19.4 03 67 % 8% Warsaw 2540.5 2516.4 +0.95 +30.4 2 9 % 2% Bucharest 7995.0 8022.5 -0.34% +12.8 8 1 4% Ljubljana 814.90 812.39 +0.31 +13.5 % 6% Zagreb 1845.8 1820.6 +1.38 -7.47% 7 6 % Belgrade 726.96 727.23 -0.04% +1.34 % Sofia 672.37 676.26 -0.58% +14.6 5% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs change Bund in Czech spread Republic 2-year 0.057 0.119 +075b +12bp ps s 5-year 0.52 0.027 +078b +2bps ps 10-year 1.367 0.025 +091b +1bps ps Poland 2-year 1.732 -0.024 +242b -3bps ps 5-year 2.71 -
'd10359d2bbec9ed63405f7e090169853c644a4d2'|'NAFTA talks hit contentious phase as Canadian PM fights for trade pact'|'October 11, 2017 / 5:05 AM / Updated 6 hours ago NAFTA talks hit contentious phase as Canadian PM fights for trade pact David Lawder 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau walk from the Oval Office to the Residence of the White House in Washington, DC, U.S. on February 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Contentious new U.S. demands are set to hit NAFTA negotiating tables on Wednesday, threatening to push modernization talks toward collapse as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau again tries to remind U.S. President Donald Trump of the trade pact<63>s merits. Trudeau will meet with Trump and trade-focused U.S. lawmakers on the North American Free Trade Agreement while hundreds of negotiators, government officials and lobbyists from Canada, Mexico and the United States descend on a hotel in Arlington, Virginia for a fourth round of talks. The Canadian leader<65>s visit comes amid increasing acrimony over NAFTA renegotiations, with Trump making fresh threats to terminate the 23-year-old agreement and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday accusing Trump<6D>s administration of trying to sabotage the talks with <20>poison pill proposals.<2E> Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray warned that an end to NAFTA would mark a breaking point in U.S.-Mexican relations and affect bilateral cooperation in non-trade areas. The NAFTA talks are likely to stall in the face of aggressive U.S. demands to sharply increase content requirements for autos and auto parts, trade experts say. The Washington round promises to be difficult, with Mexican sources saying the talks are expected to be extended by two days to Oct 17. People briefed on the U.S. proposals said that the North American content threshold for automotive would rise to 85 percent from the current 62.5 percent, with a 50 percent U.S.-specific content requirement. <20>These will be met with widespread opposition from Canada and Mexico. I think it<69>s just a bridge too far,<2C> said Wendy Cutler, the Asia Society<74>s Washington policy director and former chief U.S. negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal canceled by Trump. Other contentious U.S. proposals opposed by Canada, Mexico and U.S. business interests include a five-year sunset provision, radical changes to NAFTA<54>s dispute arbitration systems, changes to intellectual property provisions and new protections for U.S. seasonal produce growers. In his meeting with Trump, Trudeau is expected to remind the president that Canada is the United States<65> biggest export customer, with largely balanced two-way goods and services trade, and is not the cause of U.S. manufacturing jobs lost under NAFTA, Canadian officials said. Mexico has that distinction, with far lower wages that have lured U.S. auto plants and other manufacturers across its northern border, resulting in a $64 billion trade surplus with the United States last year that Trump administration officials have vowed to slash. Trudeau in April urged Trump not to withdraw from NAFTA due to the pain it would cause on both sides of the border. Reporting by David Lawder; Additional reporting by David Ljunggren, Ana Isabel Martinez; Editing by Lisa Shumaker 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-trade-nafta/nafta-talks-hit-contentious-phase-as-canadian-pm-fights-for-trade-pact-idUKKBN1CG0DV'|'2017-10-11T08:17:00.000+03:00'
'bc814052f39b0906cd4ccd8b16e36db9e5116a78'|'EMERGING MARKETS-LatAm currencies up on doubts over Trump tax plan'|'October 11, 2017 / 4:39 PM / Updated 6 minutes ago EMERGING MARKETS-LatAm currencies up on doubts over Trump tax plan Reuters Staff 4 Min Read By Bruno Federowski SAO PAULO, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Latin American currencies strengthened on Wednesday as doubts that President Donald Trump would push through his planned tax reforms fueled bets that U.S. interest rates will rise more slowly than expected. Trump''s public feud with Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, an influential fellow Republican, raised concern among investors that his push for a tax-code overhaul could be harmed. Many investors say the tax changes could boost the U.S. economy and generate inflationary pressures, potentially driving the Federal Reserve to accelerate rate-hiking. That would likely reduce the allure of high-yielding assets, weighing on the value of emerging market currencies. Investors will look for further clues over the future path of U.S. monetary policy in the minutes of the Fed''s latest policy meeting set for release on Wednesday. "The document will likely reinforce the arguments of the last policy statement, corroborating bets on a December hike," economists at SulAm<41>rica Investimentos wrote in a report. The currencies of Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Colombia firmed between 0.1 and 0.6 percent. Brazil''s benchmark Bovespa stock index slipped 0.5 percent as investors booked profits from the previous day''s gains, when it hit an all-time high. Shares of for-profit college operator Kroton Educacional SA led the decline after reporting a 1 percent decline in the number of students in its undergraduate programs. Analysts at Banco BTG Pactual highlighted "worrying signs" of increasing dropouts. "2018 is expected to feature a higher level of graduating students, which combined with the worrying retention dynamics seen in 2017 could result in downward revisions to student base forecasts," they wrote. Key Latin American stock indexes and currencies at 1625 GMT: Stock indexes daily % YTD % Latest change change MSCI Emerging Markets 1117.33 0.43 29.02 MSCI LatAm 2952.46 -0.44 26.69 Brazil Bovespa 76508.61 -0.51 27.03 Mexico S&P/BVM IPC 50121.96 0.28 9.81 Chile IPSA 5475.46 -0.03 31.89 Chile IGPA 27392.36 -0.03 32.11 Argentina MerVal 27297.96 0.74 61.36 Colombia IGBC 11060.39 -0.05 9.21 Venezuela IBC 532.30 0.22 -98.32 Currencies daily % YTD % change change Latest Brazil real 3.1669 0.52 2.60 Mexico peso 18.7220 0.60 10.80 Chile peso 626.5 0.40 7.06 Colombia peso 2954.19 0.10 1.60 Peru sol 3.258 0.18 4.79 Argentina peso (interbank) 17.4225 0.01 -8.88 Argentina peso (parallel) 17.8 0.34 -5.51 (Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by James Dalgleish) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/emerging-markets-latam/emerging-markets-latam-currencies-up-on-doubts-over-trump-tax-plan-idUSL2N1MM1BR'|'2017-10-11T19:39:00.000+03:00'
'2db1916a00af79cbabefdb2c30ee4c6a2c8706a7'|'VW''s Skoda Auto committed to Czech Republic, plans to add jobs: Skoda CEO'|'October 11, 2017 / 6:57 AM / Updated 9 hours ago VW''s Skoda committed to Czech Republic, plans to add jobs Reuters Staff 3 Min Read The logo of Skoda is seen during the 87th International Motor Show at Palexpo in Geneva, Switzerland March 8, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann PRAGUE (Reuters) - Volkswagen<65>s Czech carmaker Skoda Auto underscored its commitment to its home country on Wednesday, saying it was planning to add jobs there amid worries the business could lose some production to Germany. Skoda has become Volkswagen<65>s (VW) second most profitable brand in terms of operating margin and is on target for record sales in 2017. But capacity is hitting a limit and its success is causing tensions inside the German car group. Reuters reported last week that VW managers and unions were seeking to curb competition from lower-cost Skoda and move some of its production to Germany, raising worries among Czech workers. Skoda Chief Executive Bernhard Maier told reporters on Wednesday the Czech Republic would remain Skoda<64>s home and that it was adding jobs locally to meet capacity demands. <20>Skoda is running at the edge of its capacity, which is evidence that our strategy is working,<2C> he said. <20>At the moment, concerning global demand, we are not able to cover it from the Czech Republic, (and) for this reason we are looking around at other production capacities.<2E> Maier added Skoda had taken on 3,000 workers in recent months and was planning to hire more <20>to be able to cover rising demand.<2E> He said Skoda was in talks with unions about this. Skoda sold a record 1.13 million vehicles last year. Skoda and other industry players met on Wednesday with government officials. At a news conference, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said Skoda had assured him it would do the maximum not to jeopardize jobs. Skoda<64>s Czech union has warned any production shift could result in as many as 2,000 lost jobs at Skoda, which employed 28,000 at the end of 2016, excluding temporary staff. Tensions between VW<56>s various carmaking brands are expected to rise ahead of a Nov. 17 supervisory board meeting due to approve annual investment budgets across the group. Maier told staff, in a letter seen by Reuters last week, that the Czech unit would only make use of VW<56>s wider manufacturing network to cope with peaks in demand. <20>As a matter of principle, our Czech factories are and will remain first choice,<2C> Maier said in the letter. The Reuters report also cited sources as saying VW wanted the Czech brand to pay more for shared technology. Asked about this on Wednesday, Maier said he saw no reason for any change. Reporting by Robert Muller; Writing by Jason Hovet; Editing by Jason Neely and Mark Potter 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-skoda/vws-skoda-auto-committed-to-czech-republic-plans-to-add-jobs-skoda-ceo-idUSKBN1CG0MT'|'2017-10-11T09:55:00.000+03:00'
'1bbb86a1e4bbab9c11c0a64e106fd0945c43b274'|'Uber says hopefully it can address London''s concerns and keep operating licence'|'LONDON, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Uber said on Tuesday it could hopefully see a way to address concerns by London<6F>s transport regulator, which stripped the taxi app of its licence last month, so it can continue to operate in the British capital.<2E>Hopefully we can see a path forward now with TfL (Transport for London) where we can address their concerns and continue to operate,<2C> UK Head of Policy Andrew Byrne told parliament<6E>s business committee. (Reporting by Costas Pitas; editing by Stephen Addison) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/uber-britain-appeal/uber-says-hopefully-it-can-address-londons-concerns-and-keep-operating-licence-idINL9N1JD015'|'2017-10-10T09:36:00.000+03:00'
'06b688323e0903f89d23c3634a6e2aca8175d081'|'Capita appoints former Amec Foster Wheeler boss Lewis as CEO'|'October 10, 2017 / 7:03 AM / Updated 18 minutes ago Capita names former Amec boss as CEO to lead turnaround Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Reuters) - British outsourcing firm Capita ( CPI.L ) on Tuesday named Jonathan Lewis, the former boss of oil services company Amec Foster Wheeler, as its chief executive officer, with a remit to revamp the group after a string of profit warnings. Capita offers IT-based services to public and private sector companies so they can cut costs, but has been suffering from delays in spending decisions after Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union and struggling to manage an increasingly diverse spread of activities. <20>The appointment of Jonathan Lewis as CEO should be welcomed for two reasons, firstly because he can begin on Dec. 1 and secondly because despite a brief tenure at Amec Foster Wheeler he seemingly has strong operational turnaround credentials,<2C> Jefferies analysts said. While he held the top job at Amec, the company<6E>s shares more than doubled. Amec was bought out by larger oilfield services company John Wood Group ( WG.L ) in a 2.2 billion pound deal announced in March. Lewis, who headed Amec for more than a year, has also served as senior vice president at U.S.-based oilfield services provider Halliburton Co ( HAL.N ). Capita shares were up 3.5 percent in early trading, among the top gainers on the UK midcap index. Former boss Andy Parker resigned in March after Capita reported a bigger-than-expected drop in profit and said it would take until 2018 before it could return to growth. Since then, Finance Director Nick Greatorex has served as interim CEO and will continue to do so until December. Capita reported a 3 percent fall in first-half underlying revenue, but its major contract win rate was one in two, up from one in three in 2016. Investors and analysts say the new CEO will be tasked with streamlining Capita and sustaining a dividend which is still potentially vulnerable. The new boss may also look at selling more business units following the disposal of its asset management arm in June for almost 888 million pounds. Capita employs over 70,000 people in more than a dozen business sectors from health and retail to transport with services spanning call centres, TV licence management for the BBC, recruitment and technical certification. Half of its more than 4 billion pounds in annual revenue comes from Britain<69>s public sector. But the leaden pace of business and political decision-making while the shape of Brexit is settled has shaken Capita as well as peers such as Mitie ( MTO.L ), G4S ( GFS.L ) and Serco ( SRP.L ). Reporting by Elisabeth O''Leary, and Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru; Editing by Jason Neely and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-capita-ceo/capita-appoints-former-amec-foster-wheeler-boss-lewis-as-ceo-idUKKBN1CF0M0'|'2017-10-10T10:05:00.000+03:00'
'12f8b930ead7fe655ff17cd6e036c6da39c49a66'|'China services sector growth falls to 21-month low in September - Caixin PMI'|'October 9, 2017 / 1:53 AM / Updated 26 minutes ago China services sector growth falls to 21-month low in September - Caixin PMI Reuters Staff 4 Min Read A basket vendor walks past red lanterns serving as decorations to celebrate the new year outside a shopping mall in Kunming, Yunnan province January 6, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer BEIJING (Reuters) - Business activity in China<6E>s services sector grew at its slowest pace in 21 months in September as the pace of new business cooled, a private survey showed. The survey was in sharp contrast to an official gauge of the non-manufacturing sector that showed the services sector expanded at the fastest clip since 2014 in September, blurring the picture on how a key part of the economy is performing. The Caixin/Markit services purchasing managers<72> index (PMI) fell to 50.6 in September, the lowest reading since December 2015 and one of the weakest since the survey began in 2005. A reading above 50 indicates growth, and any lower than that signals contraction. The index had hit a three month high of 52.7 in August. New business in September grew at a slower pace than in the previous month but was still relatively solid with a reading a 52.0, while backlogs of work declined for the first time in five months and hiring slowed. The survey also showed the services sector continued to see much less inflation than the manufacturing industry, in line with the view that price pressures in China are concentrated in upstream raw materials industries and are not yet percolating through to the consumer level. Input price inflation for services firms picked up slightly from August but was just barely in expansion territory, while prices charged also rose only marginally after falling in August. China is counting on growth in services, particularly high value-added services in finance and technology, to reduce the economy<6D>s traditional reliance on heavy industry and investment. A separate Caixin/Markit survey last week also showed growth in the manufacturing sector slowed in September, but factory activity still grew faster than services. Caixin<69>s composite manufacturing and services PMI, also released on Monday, fell to 51.4 in September from 52.4 in August and was the lowest since June. <20>The Chinese economy generally held up well in the third quarter,<2C> Zhengsheng Zhong, director of macroeconomic analysis at CEBM Group, said in a note accompanying the data release. <20>However, the expansion in both manufacturing and services cooled in September, suggesting downward pressure on economic growth may re-emerge in the fourth quarter.<2E> Official measures on both the manufacturing and services industries for September showed growth in both sectors at multi-year highs. The private survey covers fewer companies and focuses more on small and medium-sized firms which have struggled more than their larger, state-owned peers that enjoy easier access to cheap credit. China<6E>s central bank said on Sept. 30 it cut the amount of cash that some banks must hold as reserves for the first time since February 2016 in a bid to encourage more lending to smaller firms and energise the lacklustre private sector. Economic data to be released over the next few weeks is expected to show economic growth remains robust and resilient despite tighter monetary policy, welcome news for leadership ahead of a twice-a-decade party congress that kicks off on Oct. 18. China<6E>s economy grew by a stronger-than-forecast 6.9 percent in the first half of the year and is expected to easily beat the government<6E>s full-year target of around 6.5 percent, even if growth fades a bit in coming months. (This version of the story corrects milestone to Dec 2015 in paragraph 3, not Dec 2012) Reporting by Elias Glenn; Editing by Kim Coghill; Elias.Glenn@thomsonreuters.com; +86 138 1600 5903; Reuters Messaging: elias.glenn@thomsonreuters.com'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-
'b5176451a71d1b3e8c436649c77b2f35c494113a'|'U.S. signals tougher stance with tech companies on encryption'|'October 10, 2017 / 9:25 PM / in a few seconds U.S. signals tougher stance with tech companies on encryption Dustin Volz 3 Min Read U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein speaks during a news conference on the dangers law enforcement and first responders face when encountering fentanyl at DEA Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., June 6, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Tuesday sharply criticised technology companies that have built strongly encrypted products, suggesting Silicon Valley is more willing to comply with foreign government demands for data than those made by their home country. While echoing many arguments made by previous senior U.S. law enforcement officials, Rosenstein struck a harder line than his predecessors who led the Obama Justice Department, dismissing attempts to negotiate with the tech sector as a waste of time and accusing companies of putting sales over stopping crime. <20>Company leaders may be willing to meet, but often they respond by criticizing the government and promising stronger encryption,<2C> Rosenstein said during a speech at the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland, according to a copy of his remarks. <20>Of course they do. They are in the business of selling products and making money. ... We are in the business of preventing crime and saving lives.<2E> Rosenstein<69>s first lengthy comments on encryption signalled a desire for Congress to write legislation mandating that companies provide access to encrypted products when a law enforcement agency obtains a court order. Tech companies and many cyber security experts say requiring law enforcement access to encrypted products will broadly weaken cyber security for everyone. U.S. officials have countered that default encryption settings hinder their ability to collect evidence needed to pursue criminals. Previous officials have urged such an approach, but Rosenstein more directly criticized Silicon Valley. He cited a series of media reports to suggest U.S.-based companies are more willing to accede to demands for data from foreign governments than they are from the United States. The remarks were quickly denounced by supporters of strong encryption. <20>Despite his attempts at rebranding, a government backdoor by another name will still make it easier for criminals, predators and foreign hackers to break into our phones and computers,<2C> Democratic Senator Ron Wyden said in a statement. The decades-old feud over encryption reignited last year when the Justice Department attempted to force Apple Inc to break into an iPhone used by a gunman during a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. The clash subsided when an unidentified third party outside the government came forward with a way to crack the phone. Some U.S. lawmakers expressed interest in legislation that would require companies to help law enforcement access encrypted data. The effort crumbled due to a lack of political support and a decision by the Obama administration to not endorse it. Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Jonathan Oatis 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-cyber-encryption/u-s-signals-tougher-stance-with-tech-companies-on-encryption-idUKKBN1CF30D'|'2017-10-11T00:25:00.000+03:00'
'61e05c42ecd24aa7fb369004f8b93cf9ee070038'|'Early 2018 is crunch time for banks'' Brexit decisions - UK official'|' 41 AM / Updated 24 minutes ago Early 2018 is crunch time for banks'' Brexit decisions - UK official Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Many international banks and financial services firms based in Britain will decide in the first quarter of next year whether to move operations away from Britain ahead of Brexit, a senior official at Britain<69>s finance ministry said on Wednesday. Katharine Braddick, the ministry<72>s director general for financial services, said banks using Britain to serve clients in the European Union were showing the most urgency in considering relocation plans. <20>Those plans, if you like, harden, become more firm, at the point at which they start to alter contractual paperwork. For most of the firms that we talk to that will fall at some point in the first quarter of next year,<2C> Braddick told lawmakers. (Reporting by David Milliken and Andy Bruce; Writing by William Schomberg; editing by John Stonestreet) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-eu-banks/early-2018-is-crunch-time-for-banks-brexit-decisions-uk-official-idUSL9N1KV00O'|'2017-10-11T12:41:00.000+03:00'
'11f068f280e106e617863576a5be83209d729261'|'Vedanta reports 42 percent rise in mined metal production at Zinc India'|'October 10, 2017 / 6:42 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Vedanta''s zinc business lifted by China steel production Reuters Staff 2 Min Read REUTERS - Mining company Vedanta Resources said mined metal production at its Indian zinc unit rose 42 percent in the first half of the year, lifted by strong demand in China for the metal used in steel production. Zinc demand in China, the world<6C>s top steel producer, has been strong as steel makers in China ramped up production ahead of government curbs this winter. Benchmark London zinc has risen about 23 percent in the year to Sept. 30. <20>We are continuing to ... benefit from a supportive market environment,<2C> CEO Kuldip Kaura said in a statement on Tuesday. Demand for the metal, which is used to galvanise steel, is expected to slow in the fourth quarter as Chinese regulators crack down on steel mills that fail to comply with environmental rules. China has been pushing to clean up its inefficient manufacturing sectors for years as part of its war on smog and supply-side reform. The Rampura Agucha open pit-mine operator said Zinc India<69>s mined metal production was 452,000 tonnes for the first half ended Sept. 30. The company, which mines zinc in Rajasthan state, said integrated zinc production rose 54 percent to 386,000 tonnes and integrated silver rose 30 percent to 8.2 million ounces during the period. Vedanta<74>s shares were down 0.4 percent at 901 pence by 0735 GMT. Reporting by Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru, editing by Louise Heavens '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/vedanta-zincindia/vedanta-reports-42-percent-rise-in-mined-metal-production-at-zinc-india-idINKBN1CF0J1'|'2017-10-10T09:42:00.000+03:00'
'f4a77e810867e4724b0793db03cce55aad73efb7'|'Asian shares shrug off Wall St. gloom, dollar steadies'|'October 10, 2017 / 12:55 AM / in 3 hours Europe cautious ahead of Catalonia independence call Marc Jones 5 Min Read The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote LONDON (Reuters) - World shares ground out a fresh record high on Tuesday, making it almost 50 for the year, although Europe tread cautiously as markets waited to see whether Spain<69>s Catalonia region would push for independence later in the day. Japan and South Korea returned from extended breaks to give Asia a lift, but the Catalan uncertainty meant it was a lower start for the euro zone<6E>s main bourses and for Spanish bond markets. Catalonia<69>s secessionist leader Carles Puigdemont is due to address the region<6F>s parliament in Barcelona. He could ask the assembly to vote on a unilateral declaration of independence from Madrid. It is Spain<69>s biggest political crisis since an attempted military coup in 1981. Madrid<69>s IBEX stocks index drooped 0.5 percent early on and it is now down almost 9 percent since May, though a sharp rise in the euro has also taken a toll. <20>We have not witnessed any relevant statement or signal by the separatists that would hint at a change of strategy ahead of today<61>s discussion in the Catalonian parliament,<2C> economists at Barclays wrote. <20>Consequently, at this point, it seems likely that Catalan President Carles Puigdemont remains on track to announce a unilateral declaration of independence as early as today.<2E> The euro remained resilient. It hopped to a one-week high as data showed German exports had surged in August. Traders were also still upbeat on the currency after one of the European Central Bank<6E>s German policymakers called for an end to its stimulus. There was also help from a weaker dollar which was down for a third straight day. The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against six major rivals, dropped 0.2 percent to 93.533 and away from Friday<61>s almost 3-month peak. It gave the Turkish lira a breather having been sent sprawling to a nine-month low on Monday after the United States and Turkey scaled back visa services. Mexico<63>s peso hovered at its weakest in more than four months too, ahead of the latest round of talks over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Wednesday. KOREA BOOST In Asia, MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan climbed 0.6 percent overnight, boosted by a 1.6 percent jump in Korea as shares like Samsung caught up with some of recent world gains. Japan<61>s Nikkei reversed early losses to finish 0.6 percent higher too, though China stocks staged a small retreat as investors cashed in on some of the gains that had taken them to a 21-month high in the previous session. China<6E>s Statistics Bureau on Tuesday said the country will have no problem meeting its economic growth target of around 6.5 percent this year, and may even beat it. Such an outcome had been widely expected after a robust start to the year. The offshore Chinese yuan rate surged to its strongest levels in more than two-weeks. The central bank had also set a firmer-than-expected official rate, suggesting authorities are keen to keep the currency in check ahead of next week<65>s key national leadership meeting. The stocks gains came in spite of tensions on the Korean peninsula. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a phone call on Monday that an escalation was unacceptable. That came after China had also called for restraint after U.S. President Donald Trump warned over the weekend that <20>only one thing will work<72> in dealing with Pyongyang, hinting that military action was on his mind. In commodities, Crude oil prices edged slightly higher, underpinned by OPEC comments signaling the possibility of continued action to restore market balance in the long-term. But gains were seen as limited as oil production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico started returning to service after the latest U.S. hurri
'1f20b12cdc6b5cc3fd9ed477d6391dc7cdcf3e1c'|'MOVES-Harvest Global appoints Regis Dale as CEO'|'October 11, 2017 / 2:49 PM / in 13 minutes MOVES-Harvest Global appoints Regis Dale as CEO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 11 (Reuters) - Harvest Global Investments USA, the Asian and Chinese markets specialist asset manager, appointed Regis Dale chief executive and Angela Wang vice president of business development in its New York office. Dale<6C>s experience includes opening JPMorgan Chase & Co<43>s Chase Manhattan<61>s Shanghai office and leading UBS Group AG<41>s China institutional sales business in the United States. Wang has worked at Harvest Global Investments in London and Bank of America Corp<72>s Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong. (Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/harvest-global-moves-regisdale/moves-harvest-global-appoints-regis-dale-as-ceo-idUSL4N1MM4NL'|'2017-10-11T17:46:00.000+03:00'
'ed4a8f199df29565840463d275e227560eca49b5'|'Fed split on inflation intensified at September policy meeting - minutes'|'October 11, 2017 / 6:06   Fed split on inflation intensified at September policy meeting - minutes Lindsay Dunsmuir , Howard Schneider 4 Min Read The seal for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is displayed in Washington, U.S., June 14, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve policymakers had a prolonged debate about the prospects of a pickup in inflation and the path of future interest rate rises if it did not, according to the minutes of the U.S. central bank<6E>s last policy meeting on Sept. 19-20 released on Wednesday. The readout of the meeting, at which the Fed announced it would begin this month to reduce its large bond portfolio mostly amassed following the financial crisis and unanimously voted to hold rates steady, also showed that officials remained mostly sanguine about the economic impact of recent hurricanes. <20>Many participants expressed concern that the low inflation readings this year might reflect... the influence of developments that could prove more persistent, and it was noted that some patience in removing policy accommodation while assessing trends in inflation was warranted,<2C> the Fed said in the minutes. As such several said that they would focus on incoming inflation data over the next few months when deciding on future interest rate moves. Nevertheless, many policymakers still felt that another rate increase this year <20>was likely to be warranted,<2C> the Fed said. Fed Chair Janet Yellen has repeatedly acknowledged since the meeting that there is rising uncertainty on the path of inflation, which has been retreating from the Fed<65>s 2 percent target rate over the past few months. However, Yellen and a number of other key policymakers have made plain they expect to continue to gradually raise interest rates given the strength of the overall economy and continued tightening of the labour market. In the minutes, several Fed officials also noted that the interpretation of inflation readings over the next few months would likely be complicated by a temporary increase in energy costs and prices of other items affected by storm-related disruptions. The central bank has increased interest rates four times in its tightening cycle which began in late 2015. The Fed currently predicts one more rate rise this year and three the next. Fed officials have also largely shrugged off a weak jobs report for September that came out last week, pinning the decline in employment on Hurricanes Harvey and Irma temporarily displacing workers. Policymakers anticipated a weak reading, according to the minutes, but felt the recent storms would not knock the economy over the medium term. Underlying detail in the monthly payrolls snapshot pointed to tight labour markets boosting wages. Annual wage growth accelerated to 2.9 percent while the unemployment rate fell to a more than 16-1/2-year low of 4.2 percent. The annual increase in wages in September was the largest since December 2016 and the unemployment rate is now below the Fed<65>s median average forecast for the fourth quarter. That could give heart to policymakers who had mainly forecast that the tight labour market would soon boost wages. <20>Most participants expected wage increases to pick up over time as the labour market strengthened further,<2C> the minutes read, <20>A couple... cautioned that a broader acceleration in wages may already have begun.<2E> The Fed has two more scheduled interest-rate-setting meetings before the end of the year. It next meets on Oct. 31-Nov. 1. Investors currently see the Fed raising interest rates again in December. Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Andrea Ricci 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-fed-minutes/fed-split-on-inflation-intensified-at-september-policy-meeting-minutes-idUKKBN1CG2II'|'2017-10-11T21:07:00.000+03:00'
'2dca16dd208ebd06d3d72fae0749d84523ef57ae'|'Deals of the day-Mergers and acquisitions'|'October 11, 2017 / 10:08 AM / in 10 minutes Deals of the day-Mergers and acquisitions Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Adds Total, Novartis, Altus Strategies, Lufthansa , Updates Kroger, Qatar National Bank) Oct 11 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 2000 GMT on Wednesday: ** French oil company Total and energy group Erg are in exclusive talks to try and sell their Italian petrol station network, sources said, after some investors grew jittery over the move to electric cars. ** Novartis has decided not to sell its roughly $14 billion, 33 percent voting stake in Roche following a review, Chairman Joerg Reinhardt said in an interview published on Wednesday in Swiss newspaper HandelsZeitung. ** Kroger Co said on Wednesday it is exploring the sale of its nearly 800 convenience stores as the No. 1 U.S. supermarket operator strengthens its Web business in a market share war that has intensified after Amazon.com Inc<6E>s purchase of Whole Foods. ** British explorer Altus Strategies on Wednesday signed an outline 3.4 million pound ($4.5 million) deal to buy Legend Gold Corp and said it was aiming to make the most of a subdued market to grow the newly-listed company further. ** Lufthansa is poised to agree a deal to buy assets from insolvent Air Berlin, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters, ahead of a deadline on Thursday. ** A group of six Chinese independent oil refiners set up a 33 billion yuan ($5 billion) joint venture to compete with state-owned giants and the rise of private chemical giants, a senior executive at one of the partners said. ** South African miner Exxaro Resources said it had completed its sale of 22.4 million shares in U.S. titanium products company Tronox with net proceeds of $474 million. ** Brazilian energy conglomerate Cosan SA Industria e Com<6F>rcio agreed to pay its partner Royal Dutch Shell Plc 1.16 billion reais ($365 million) for a 16.8 percent stake in gas distribution company Companhia de G<>s de S<>o Paulo, or Comg<6D>s. ** Russian tycoons Mikhail Prokhorov and Viktor Vekselberg have sold a 3 percent stake in Russian aluminum giant Rusal via an accelerated bookbuilding (ABB) for $315 million, one of their bookrunners said. ** Buyout group BC Partners has agreed to buy German industrial ceramics group Ceramtec from peer investor Cinven , the groups said. ** KKR & Co LP has raised its offer price for Hitachi Kokusai Electric Inc to 2,900 yen a share from 2,503 yen, the Japanese firm said, after a U.S. hedge fund put pressure on the private equity firm to revise terms. ** Bharti Airtel Ltd, India<69>s top telecom operator, said it had partnered with handset maker Karbonn Mobiles to introduce a 4G-enabled smartphone at the price of a feature phone. ** Qatar National Bank<6E>s said on Wednesday its stake in United Arab Emirates-based Commercial Bank International is not for sale. (Compiled by Arunima Banerjee and Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/deals-day/deals-of-the-day-mergers-and-acquisitions-idUSL4N1MM3NW'|'2017-10-11T13:07:00.000+03:00'
'e1d1cc8137e82eb5d3b550325912268ae0f003cb'|'Swiss stocks - Factors to watch on Oct 12'|'October 12, 2017 / 4:59 AM / Updated 2 minutes ago Swiss stocks - Factors to watch on Oct 12 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read ZURICH, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Here are some of the main factors that may affect Swiss stocks on Thursday. NOVARTIS The Swiss pharmaceuticals giant has decided not to sell its roughly $14 billion, 33 percent voting stake in Roche following a review, Chairman Joerg Reinhardt said in an interview published on Wednesday in Swiss newspaper HandelsZeitung. For more news, click UBS The Swiss banking group will hire fewer trainees in 2018 but spend two to three times more on teaching them to be financial advisers, a senior executive said, in the latest sign of industry efforts to satisfy wealthier clients and grapple with an aging workforce. For more news, click SYNGENTA Fitch Ratings on Wednesday became the second major ratings agency to put Syngenta on notice for a potential downgrade, over uncertainties surrounding the Swiss-based company<6E>s genetically modified corn lawsuit liabilities. For more news, click COMPANY STATEMENTS * Evolva Holding announced the price of its private placing of shares to Pictet Asset Management and Cologny Advisors, saying the shares will be sold at 0.31 francs each to raise gross proceeds of roughly 21.1 million Swiss francs ($21.71 million). * Molecular Partners gave an update on a clinical study of its oncology asset MP0274, saying the first patient was dosed in the phase 1 clinical study of the drug. * WISekey Semiconductors said it has delivered a tamper resistant chip to a leading European manufacturer of portable data storage solutions. * Kudelski said it has signed an agreement with Roku to collaborate on technology and cross license patents. ECONOMY $1 = 0.9719 Swiss francs Reporting by Zurich newsroom 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/markets-swiss-stocks/swiss-stocks-factors-to-watch-on-oct-12-idUSL8N1MM5EF'|'2017-10-12T08:16:00.000+03:00'
'1f5dfa36cc6dd9b40438e5985c1bd054f514a89b'|'Amazon steps up UK expansion drive with new distribution centre'|'October 13, 2017 / 8:51 AM / Updated 7 hours ago Amazon steps up UK expansion drive with new distribution centre Reuters Staff 3 Min Read The logo of the web service Amazon is pictured in this June 8, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/Illustration LONDON (Reuters) - Amazon said on Friday it would open a new distribution centre in Bolton, northwest England, in 2018, stepping up its expansion drive in its third-largest market outside North America. Amazon has 16 distribution centres in Britain and the new centre will be supported by advanced robotics technology to help lift and move products around the plant. It will also employ 1,200 new, full-time permanent people, the company said. The new jobs mean the online retailer will have created 3,500 jobs in the region, including Bolton and two other centres, one in Manchester set up in 2016 and another in Warrington, which opened this year. It said that, including operating costs, it had invested 6.4 billion pounds (6.40 billion pounds)in Britain since 2010 in logistics, order filling, research and development and head office functions. Following criticism from politicians about weak worker protection, the company has been increasingly employing its warehouse staff directly, rather than indirectly via contract firms which offer little employment security. On Friday it set out the levels of pay, stock options, pensions and training that would be available for any new employee. Salaries start at 7.65 pounds per hour, but also include a variety of management, engineering and support roles. Northwest England received a blow on Tuesday when major employer BAE Systems announced the cut of 750 highly skilled jobs at two aircraft manufacturing plants in Lancashire. The Bolton centre will ship easily sortable items to customers that lend themselves to current robotics technology, including books, toys and kitchenware. The online retailer has expanded rapidly in Britain in recent years, and is looking for the new distribution plants to expand its product selection and enable more small and medium enterprises to sell their own wares through Amazon Marketplace. Half of all units stocked in British centres are from outside firms. Separately this week, Booths, a high-end supermarket chain located in the north of England, said it would begin offering a range of its products online through AmazonFresh for home delivery to consumers in London and southeastern England. Reporting by Kate Holton and Eric Auchard; Editing by Paul Sandle and Adrian Croft 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-amazon-jobs/amazon-to-open-new-distribution-centre-in-north-west-england-idUKKBN1CI0YR'|'2017-10-13T16:09:00.000+03:00'
'71c1060af9725621ca3d6a467c4f71270ba5cd49'|'Amazon Studios chief Roy Price suspended following harassment allegation'|'October 13, 2017 / 1:35 AM / Updated 10 hours ago Amazon Studios chief Roy Price suspended following harassment allegation Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Roy Price, Director of Amazon Studios, poses during Amazon''s premiere screening of the TV series "Transparent" at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, California September 15, 2014. REUTERS/Kevork Djansezian SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon Studios chief Roy Price was put on an immediate leave of absence Thursday, the company said, following allegations that he harassed a producer and ignored an actress<73>s claim of a sexual assault by producer Harvey Weinstein. The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday reported an allegation by Isa Hackett, a producer on one of Amazon.com Inc<6E>s shows, that Price had lewdly propositioned her in 2015. Amazon said in a statement: <20>Roy Price is on leave of absence effective immediately. We are reviewing our options for the projects we have with The Weinstein Co.<2E> Hackett did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reuters could not independently confirm the allegation. Price could not immediately be reached independently by Reuters and he declined to comment to the Hollywood Reporter. Price<63>s removal creates uncertainty about the studio<69>s direction when Amazon is investing more on video content than ever before - some $4.5 billion this year. The studio<69>s Chief Operating Officer Albert Cheng will step in as the interim chief, Amazon said. Hackett is the daughter of famed science fiction author Philip K. Dick, whose book <20>The Man in the High Castle<6C> served as the basis for Amazon<6F>s eponymous show. Also on Thursday, actress Rose McGowan said on Twitter that she had told Price that she had been assaulted by Weinstein, who was forced out of his company this week following reports in the New Yorker and the New York Times that he had harassed and assaulted numerous women over the years. In tweets directed at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, she criticized the company for doing business with the Weinstein Co. A spokeswoman for Harvey Weinstein said: <20>Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein.<2E> Price has been integral to Amazon<6F>s movie business, helping steer it through an attempt to crowd-source television scripts and garnering Hollywood awards for shows such as <20>Transparent.<2E> Amazon hopes original movies and TV shows will draw new people to join its streaming and shopping club Prime, and in turn buy more goods from the online retailer. The studio picked up three Oscars this year under Price<63>s helm, though its failure to show at the Emmy Awards last month was seen by many in Hollywood as a setback. Reporting by Jonathan Weber and Jeffrey Dastin; Additional reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy in Los Angeles; Editing by Lisa Shumaker 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-roy-price/amazon-studios-chief-roy-price-suspended-following-harassment-allegation-idUSKBN1CI03X'|'2017-10-13T04:29:00.000+03:00'
'45dcff9766472e69c49131e3a84e45f192b9e44d'|'Microsoft, Apple among companies urging U.S. Supreme Court to weigh gay workers'' rights'|'October 11, 2017 / 4:21 PM / in 27 minutes Microsoft, Apple among companies urging U.S. Supreme Court to weigh gay workers'' rights Daniel Wiessner 3 Min Read Oct 11 (Reuters) - Dozens of companies including Alphabet Inc<6E>s Google, Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp , and Viacom Inc have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to address whether a law banning sex discrimination in the workplace provides protections to gay employees. A group of 76 companies submitted a brief to the court saying a split among lower courts on that question had created uncertainty for employers and gay workers. The companies asked the Supreme Court to take up the case of Jameka Evans, a former security guard at a Georgia hospital who says she was harassed and forced to quit her job because she is gay. The companies said the lack of a federal law clearly prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation has hindered recruitment in the 27 states that have not adopted their own such laws. And <20>the uncertainty and vulnerability LGBT workers face results in diminished employee health, productivity, job engagement, and satisfaction,<2C> wrote the companies<65> lawyers at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. A federal appeals court in Atlanta in March dismissed Evans<6E> case, saying her claims were foreclosed by prior decisions that said discrimination against gay employees is not a form of unlawful sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Supreme Court will likely decide by the end of the year whether it will take Evans<6E> case. In April, a different appeals court in Chicago became the first to rule in favor of a gay worker under Title VII. And in June, about 50 of the same companies involved in Wednesday<61>s brief asked an appeals court in Manhattan to do the same. In that case, the U.S. Department of Justice urged the court to rule that Title VII does not protect gay employees. That was a reversal of the Justice Department<6E>s stance under the Obama administration. Gay rights is the latest issue to cause a rift between the business community and the Trump administration. Some companies and executives in August resigned from White House business councils and repudiated President Donald Trump<6D>s comments about a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. And business groups have clashed with the president over issues including immigration, and, this week, the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Trump administration says Congress did not intend for Title VII to apply to LGBT workers, and courts do not have the power to change the meaning of the law. (Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by David Gregorio) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-lgbt/microsoft-apple-among-companies-urging-u-s-supreme-court-to-weigh-gay-workers-rights-idUSL2N1MM0WM'|'2017-10-11T19:20:00.000+03:00'
'b631c24f216383304f27019c9ea9cbc41882f5f3'|'Global central banks can copy Canada as bubbles inflate'|'October 11, 2017 / 8:22 PM / Updated 5 minutes ago Global central banks can copy Canada as bubbles inflate Fergal Smith 4 Min Read A sign is pictured outside the Bank of Canada building in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, May 23, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Wattie TORONTO (Reuters) - Global central banks, which fret about high asset prices, could take a page from the Bank of Canada which is helping cool an overheated housing market by raising interest rates even as inflation undershoots its 2 percent target. Like Canada, major central banks such as the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of Japan set monetary policy based on an inflation target. But too rigid a focus on inflation can lead to bubbles in financial and housing markets, jeopardizing hard-won recovery in countries where central banks have kept interest rates at historically low levels. For Canada, record household debt, which could leave the economy vulnerable to shocks, had to be balanced against too low inflation. The bank pulled the trigger with two rate increases since July, trusting its projections and betting that stronger growth will help push inflation to its target by the middle of next year. In contrast, the Fed has dithered on whether to hike U.S. rates again this year. The Canadian rate hikes, the first in seven years, helped calm the red-hot housing market along with measures taken by Ontario<69>s provincial government. Earlier this year, house prices in Toronto, Canada<64>s largest city, spiked by more than 30 percent. <20>That is an important example of a responsible central bank acting on concerns of financial stability,<2C> said Stephen Roach, a senior fellow at Yale University<74>s Jackson Institute of Global Affairs and Morgan Stanley<65>s former chief economist. <20>Central banks that keep policy at crisis settings just because inflation remains below target are asking for trouble.<2E> Blame for financial instability flows to central banks because cheap money enables borrowers to bid up asset prices beyond their true worth. The BoC had been criticized for fueling the housing bubble after it cut already low interest rates in 2015. That move came amid tumbling prices of oil, one of Canada<64>s major exports. It remains too early to say whether rate hikes will successfully defuse a housing bubble. But a record high for Canadian financial stocks signals that some investors have bet on a soft landing. OTHER CENTRAL BANKS RESIST TIGHTENING Growth has picked up in other countries as well. But central banks, such as the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank, have persisted with asset buying programs aimed ultimately at getting low inflation to their desired target, while the Reserve Bank of Australia has held rates at a record low despite household indebtedness even higher than Canada<64>s. Global central bankers say macro prudential measures, such as raising capital requirements, are more appropriate than the blunt tool of interest rates to tackle financial stability risks. They view additional stimulus as needed due to inflation running below targets. <20>Pushing hard on monetary policy to try and turn 1.5 percent (inflation) into 2 percent is dangerous and irresponsible,<2C> said James Athey, senior investment manager at Aberdeen Standard Investments, in London. <20>It was a narrow focus on inflation when setting monetary policy which contributed enormously to the build-up of imbalances and excess debt which led to the global financial crisis.<2E> Fed policymakers had a prolonged debate about the prospects of a pickup in inflation and the path of future interest rate rises, according to the minutes of the central bank<6E>s last policy meeting in September, released on Wednesday. <20>It should go ahead and bite the bullet,<2C> said investor Jim Rogers, who founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros four decades ago. <20>It is absurd they (interest rates) stayed so low. We are all going to pay a high price.<2E> Reporting by Fergal Smith; Editing by David Gregorio 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://fe
'b586654875060efd955fbd3dafaea853373ad9f4'|'Workers call on UK PM May to be more visible in Bombardier dispute'|'October 11, 2017 / 10:50 AM / Updated 7 hours ago Workers call on UK PM May to be more visible in Bombardier dispute Polina Ivanova 3 Min Read Member of Britain''s Unite trade union presents a t-shirt with slogans during a protest outside the Houses of Parliament in support of Bombardier workers in London, Britain, October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls LONDON (Reuters) - Workers at Bombardier<65>s Northern Irish plant called on British Prime Minister Theresa May to be more visible in her attempts to save their jobs after the United States imposed tariffs on planes made by the Canadian aerospace firm. The United States has backed a complaint brought by Boeing ( BA.N ) that Bombardier ( BBDb.TO ) received illegal subsidies and dumped planes at <20>absurdly low<6F> prices, imposing duties of nearly 300 percent on its C-series aircraft. Britain is confident that it can successfully fight the ruling, which jeopardizes some 4,200 jobs in Northern Ireland, where it is the biggest manufacturing employer. <20>We do feel that the levies that are put on are unfair and will be detrimental to jobs in Northern Ireland,<2C> Ron McDowell, 42, who has been an aerospace fitter for 25 years, told Reuters outside parliament in London, where workers had gathered for a protest. <20>What we want is for Theresa May to come out publicly rather than speaking behind closed doors.<2E> McDowell was one of around 20 protesters who stood behind a sign saying <20>Back Bombardier: Defend our jobs, skills and communities.<2E> Members of Britain''s Unite trade union protest outside the Houses of Parliament in support of Bombardier workers in London, Britain, October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls May and U.S. President Donald Trump discussed Bombardier in a call on Tuesday, after business secretary Greg Clark outlined to lawmakers the government<6E>s case against the suit. Britain and the trade union Unite argue that Boeing<6E>s case is without merit because it does not make a plane comparable to Bombardier<65>s C-series. Slideshow (3 Images) May has emphasized the strength of Britain<69>s alliance with the United States since Trump came to power as it prepares to leave the European Union, its biggest trading partner. However, Jimmy Kelly of the Unite union said the dispute emphasized how Trump<6D>s protectionist policies might undermine May<61>s hopes for a good trading relationship. <20>I just don<6F>t fall for Theresa May saying <20>well I<>ve contacted Donald Trump<6D> and <20>I<EFBFBD>ve phoned Donald Trump<6D>. He<48>s parroting <20>USA, USA, USA<53>. And post-Brexit, why would he be changing his tune?<3F> he said. <20>So I think it<69>s dismal days for UK workers if this is the indicator.<2E> Reporting by Polina Ivanova; Writing by Alistair Smout; editing by Stephen Addison 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-bombardier-britain-protest/workers-call-on-uk-pm-may-to-be-more-visible-in-bombardier-dispute-idUSKBN1CG19P'|'2017-10-11T13:50:00.000+03:00'
'feeb9b4b166f1e5ccdf5570e987c246871f3ee98'|'China independent oil refiners set up $5 billion joint venture: executive'|'BEIJING (Reuters) - A group of six Chinese independent oil refiners set up a 33 billion yuan ($5 billion) joint venture to compete with state-owned giants and the rise of private chemical giants, a senior executive at one of the partners said.The new alliance, called Shandong Refining & Chemical Group, gathers six independent oil processors and a provincial government-backed fund as investors, and was registered in late September, said Zhang Liucheng, a vice president of Shandong Dongming Petrochemical Group.Dongming, China<6E>s largest independent refiner, is the venture<72>s biggest stakeholder with 22.63 percent. The number of investors, though, is much smaller than the around 20 independent, or <20>teapot<6F>, refiners expected earlier by the two initiators Shandong Dongming and the Shandong Qingyuan Group.The other four refiners are Shandong Tianhong Chemical, Shandong Shouguang Luqing Petrochemical, Wudi Xinyue Fuel and Chemical, and Shandong Shengxing Chemical. Jiangsu Xinhai Petrochemical, a Dongming subsidiary, also owns a stake.A fund managed by Shandong province-backed Shandong Marine Group owns 22.59 percent and is the second-largest shareholder, said Zhang.Members of the alliance are expected to coordinate their production, marketing, crude oil imports and investments.The seven oil plants owned by the six partners have government approved crude oil quotas totaling 23 million tonnes a year, or about 460,000 barrels per day (bpd).The group as a whole has a refining capacity of 32.6 million tonnes a year or 661,000 bpd.The group plans to pool funds and resources to produce fuels and chemicals more efficiently as they battle stiff competition in an increasingly saturated market and under tightened environmental and tax scrutiny.The alliance is planned as an upgrade on a crude buying federation set up by a larger group of independent plants in early 2016. That effort has had little success.Reporting by Meng Meng and Chen Aizhu; Editing by Tom Hogue'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-china-oil-independents/china-independent-oil-refiners-set-up-5-billion-joint-venture-executive-idINKBN1CG13Q'|'2017-10-11T07:52:00.000+03:00'
'5aaee3d627db7701c3fbc8a22c098ea0e9a658af'|'Delta refuses to pay tariffs on Bombardier CSeries jets'|'Reuters TV United States October 11, 2017 / 2:51 PM / Updated 5 minutes ago Delta refuses to pay tariffs on Bombardier CSeries jets Alana Wise 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Delta Airlines jet takes off from Washington National Airport in Washington, U.S., August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - Delta Air Lines Inc on Wednesday said the carrier would not foot the bill of a 300 percent tariff that the U.S. Commerce Department wants to impose on Canadian-built Bombardier CSeries, leaving the future of the planemaker<65>s jets in limbo. <20>We<57>re not going to be forced to pay tariffs or anything of the ilk,<2C> Delta Chief Executive Ed Bastian said on the carrier<65>s third-quarter earnings call. Bastian called the U.S. Commerce Department ruling <20>nonsensical<61> but said that the carrier still expects to take the jets. The proposed duties would not take effect unless affirmed by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) early next year. How the extra costs of the planes would be covered remained unclear. Both Delta and the plane<6E>s maker, Canada<64>s Bombardier, have said they would not pick up the tab of the trade duties. The spat, sparked by rival planemaker Boeing Co, stems from a claim that Bombardier used subsidies from the Canadian government to bankroll the sale of 75 new jets to Delta and dump them at <20>absurdly low<6F> prices. The dispute has spiraled into a broader discussion of trade agreements between the United States and Canada, as U.S. President Donald Trump has warned he would terminate the tri-national North American Free Trade Agreement unless changes were made to address deficits within the trade pact. Reporting by Alana Wise; Editing by David Gregorio 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-delta-air-bombardier-tariffs/delta-says-company-will-not-pay-tariffs-on-bombardier-cseries-jets-idUKKBN1CG20F'|'2017-10-11T18:33:00.000+03:00'
'd42814c1bb29def91c61f9f624622ca09bcbc7cd'|'Brazil may extend Oi debt maturity as Temer joins talks - paper'|'October 10, 2017 / 1:04 PM / in 14 minutes Brazil may extend Oi debt maturity as Temer joins talks - paper Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BRASILIA, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Brazil may extend the maturities of debt owed by Oi SA to public institutions, newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported on Tuesday, a day after President Michel Temer joined talks to accelerate the wireless carrier<65>s emergence from bankruptcy protection. The government may introduce legislation allowing companies to extend the maturity of debt with government agencies for up to 20 years, from the current five, Folha said, without specifying how it obtained the information. Oi is renegotiating 65 billion reais ($20.5 billion) worth of debt, over 10 billion reais of which it owes to telecommunications regulator Anatel. Oi could also be allowed to deduct some investments from the fines it owes to Anatel, the newspaper said, but many government officials are skeptical that it would be able to meet capital spending goals. Oi and government representatives were not immediately available for comment. Temer met with government officials and executives from state-owned banks on Monday to discuss solutions to Oi<4F>s debt reorganization, in Brazil<69>s biggest-ever bankruptcy protection case, two government sources told Reuters. The officials set up a working group led by Attorney General Grace Mendon<6F>a to mediate talks between the government and the wireless carrier, the people said. Oi must file a restructuring plan by Wednesday after repeatedly clashing with creditors over the terms of the deal. The company is expected to propose a capital hike of 9 billion reais comprised of a debt-for-equity swap worth 6 billion reais and a 3 billion real share sale. $1 = 3.17 reais Reporting by Leonardo Goy and Lisandra Paraguassu; Writing by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Susan Thomas'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/oi-sa-restructuring/brazil-may-extend-oi-debt-maturity-as-temer-joins-talks-paper-idUSL2N1ML0I5'|'2017-10-10T16:03:00.000+03:00'
'1e14cf584357d7bf03ce3471197ffcf7ec5c0511'|'Goldman creates ''brain trust'' in effort to boost deals business'|'October 11, 2017 / 6:44 PM / Updated 20 minutes ago Goldman creates ''brain trust'' in effort to boost deals business Olivia Oran 4 Min Read A Goldman Sachs sign is displayed inside the company''s post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( GS.N ) is betting it can get its money-making mojo back by pitching creative deals to big, complex clients, marking a return to its investment banking roots as trading revenue slows. The Wall Street bank is forming a group, known internally as the Innovation Lab, focused on generating compelling deal ideas for companies like Warren Buffett<74>s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway Inc ( BRKa.N ) or Japan<61>s SoftBank Group Corp<72>s ( 9984.T ) $93 billion investment fund, people familiar with the matter said. The new <20>brain trust,<2C> as one insider called it, is aimed at supercharging investment banking revenue as trading, for many years Goldman<61>s profit engine, has faltered amid regulations and market trends that hurt the bank more than rivals. From 2009-2016, Goldman<61>s annual trading revenue fell by more than $18 billion, or 32 percent, while investment banking revenue rose by $1.3 billion, or 26 percent. That trend has accelerated this year. Analysts expect Goldman to reveal more trading pain when it reports third-quarter results on Tuesday, building on two consecutive quarters of declines. After facing angry questions from shareholders, Goldman last month unveiled a plan to boost annual revenue by $5 billion. Management has emphasized Goldman<61>s roots as a strategic adviser to corporations, wealthy families and investment funds, and has also expanded into areas like consumer lending. But while fees from those services can be more reliable than trading, analysts say Goldman will not replace the income from its stock and bond market heyday any time soon. <20>Many investors still view it as a <20>show me<6D> story because the initiatives are in businesses that are highly competitive,<2C> said Steven Chubak, a banking analyst with Instinet. A Goldman spokeswoman declined to comment on the new group. Led by Goldman dealmakers Brian DeCenzo and James Morris, the group will perform a different role than traditional bankers focused broadly on pitching mergers and acquisitions to big companies, the people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because they are not authorized to speak to the media. The group is expected to come up with out-of-the box ideas and focus on clients who want to acquire or make big investments in businesses across industries, and do not fit neatly into individual categories, like technology or industrials, that sector bankers already cover. Berkshire owns more than 90 businesses across aerospace, energy industrials, financials, transportation, consumer products and food. Meanwhile, SoftBank<6E>s Vision Fund has invested in companies ranging from satellite startup OneWeb to asset manager Fortress Investment Group LLC ( FIG.N ). On top of spotting deal opportunities, the new team will analyse broad trends like the impact of oil prices across various sectors. DeCenzo and Morris were previously part of Goldman<61>s financial sponsors group, which scouts deals for private equity firms. The group is the latest change under new management of the investment bank, which earlier this year elevated Gregg Lemkau and Marc Nachmann as co-heads alongside John Waldron. Under their leadership, the business has added bankers to cities like Atlanta and Dallas to serve local clients more closely, and hired dealmakers at the partner level from Wall Street rivals. They have also installed programmers alongside dealmakers to increase productivity and give clients better advice. For graphic click: here %20SACHS-M-A/0100518D2SB/index.html Reporting by Olivia Oran in New York; Editing by Lauren Tara LaCapra and Meredith Mazzilli 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusi
'35390873813869dc036fc1610b3db3c236f58c9a'|'VW''s Skoda committed to Czech Republic, plans to add jobs'|'October 11, 2017 / 8:06 AM / in 26 minutes VW''s Skoda committed to Czech Republic, plans to add jobs Reuters Staff 3 Min Read The logo of Skoda is seen during the 87th International Motor Show at Palexpo in Geneva, Switzerland March 8, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann PRAGUE (Reuters) - Volkswagen<65>s ( VOWG_p.DE ) Czech carmaker Skoda Auto underscored its commitment to its home country on Wednesday, saying it was planning to add jobs there amid worries the business could lose some production to Germany. Skoda has become Volkswagen<65>s (VW) second most profitable brand in terms of operating margin and is on target for record sales in 2017. But capacity is hitting a limit and its success is causing tensions inside the German car group. Reuters reported last week that VW managers and unions were seeking to curb competition from lower-cost Skoda and move some of its production to Germany, raising worries among Czech workers. Skoda Chief Executive Bernhard Maier told reporters on Wednesday the Czech Republic would remain Skoda<64>s home and that it was adding jobs locally to meet capacity demands. <20>Skoda is running at the edge of its capacity, which is evidence that our strategy is working,<2C> he said. <20>At the moment, concerning global demand, we are not able to cover it from the Czech Republic, (and) for this reason we are looking around at other production capacities.<2E> Maier added Skoda had taken on 3,000 workers in recent months and was planning to hire more <20>to be able to cover rising demand.<2E> He said Skoda was in talks with unions about this. Skoda sold a record 1.13 million vehicles last year. Skoda and other industry players met on Wednesday with government officials. At a news conference, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said Skoda had assured him it would do the maximum not to jeopardise jobs. Skoda<64>s Czech union has warned any production shift could result in as many as 2,000 lost jobs at Skoda, which employed 28,000 at the end of 2016, excluding temporary staff. Tensions between VW<56>s various carmaking brands are expected to rise ahead of a Nov. 17 supervisory board meeting due to approve annual investment budgets across the group. Maier told staff, in a letter seen by Reuters last week, that the Czech unit would only make use of VW<56>s wider manufacturing network to cope with peaks in demand. <20>As a matter of principle, our Czech factories are and will remain first choice,<2C> Maier said in the letter. The Reuters report also cited sources as saying VW wanted the Czech brand to pay more for shared technology. Asked about this on Wednesday, Maier said he saw no reason for any change. Reporting by Robert Muller; Writing by Jason Hovet; Editing by Jason Neely and Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-volkswagen-skoda/vws-skoda-committed-to-czech-republic-plans-to-add-jobs-idUKKBN1CG0TM'|'2017-10-11T11:06:00.000+03:00'
'519fcdc49d772a8f0769d93c375360cd4aea5be6'|'Japan August core machinery orders rise in signs of pick-up in capex'|'October 11, 2017 / 1:31 AM / Updated 12 hours ago Japan August core machinery orders rise in signs of pick-up in capex Tetsushi Kajimoto 4 Min Read Heavy machineries are seen next to a subway train at a construction site in Tokyo, Japan, March 13, 2016. REUTERS/Yuya Shino TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s core machinery orders rose for a second straight month in August, handily beating market expectations, signaling a pickup in capital expenditure that should encourage Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ahead of a general election this month. The premier hopes to convince voters in the Oct.22 elections that his <20>Abenomics<63> recipe of aggressive monetary stimulus, fiscal spending and reform plans has improved the economy enough to stoke a sustainable recovery. Cabinet Office data showed on Wednesday that core orders, a highly volatile data series regarded as an indicator of capital spending in the coming six to nine months, rose 3.4 percent on-month in August. That beat the median estimate of a 1.1 percent increase seen in a Reuters poll of economists, following an 8.0 percent gain in July. The value of core orders, which exclude those of ships and utilities<65> electrical power equipment, stood at 882.4 billion yen ($7.86 billion), the highest since July 2016. <20>There are uncertainties such as the outlook for U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s trade policy, North Korea, and Japan<61>s political risks, but conditions surrounding capital spending remain basically favorable,<2C> said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute.<2E>Capital expenditure will perform well in the coming one to two years.<2E> Analysts expect capital expenditure to pick up gradually, backed by refurbishing demand, infrastructure investment for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, and spending on labor-saving equipment, as well as spending encouraged by low borrowing costs enabled by the Bank of Japan<61>s negative interest rate policy. <20>The current level of orders remains consistent with a further increase in capital spending last quarter,<2C> Marcel Thieliant, senior Japan economist at Capital Economics noted in a report. <20>The continued recovery in capital goods shipments excluding transport equipment also suggests that the expansion in investment spending remains intact.<2E> Orders from manufacturers jumped 16.1 percent month-on-month in August, driven by general-purpose production machinery such as machine tools, while service-sector orders grew 3.1 percent, led by orders for boilers and turbines. The Cabinet Office raised its assessment of machinery orders from stalling to showing <20>signs of pick-up<75>. Overseas orders, which are not counted as core orders, grew 11.5 percent in August, due to some big-ticket orders including power generators and aircraft. The BOJ<4F>s closely-watched quarterly tankan survey showed last week that big firms plan to increase capital spending by 7.7 percent in the current fiscal year ending in March 2018, underscoring the view business expenditure is on a firm footing. A sustained recovery in business expenditure should support the central bank<6E>s view that a virtuous circle of private sector-led growth will take hold in the economy. Still, wage growth and inflation remain stubbornly low despite recent signs of rebounding private consumption, keeping the BOJ under pressure to maintain its massive monetary stimulus. Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Eric Meijer 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-orders/japan-august-core-machinery-orders-rise-in-signs-of-pick-up-in-capex-idINKBN1CG045'|'2017-10-11T03:46:00.000+03:00'
'4519b1edae006e9fa0f4cde3c0eef852c22c0c6a'|'UPDATE 2-Spanish bonds and stocks soar as Catalonia split fears recede'|'* Catalonia eschews formal independence declaration* Madrid stock index up 1.3 pct, leads European gains* Spanish/German bond yield gap 9 bps tighter (Updates prices)By Abhinav RamnarayanLONDON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Spain<69>s stocks and government bonds were in demand on Wednesday after Catalonia<69>s leader stopped short of making a formal declaration of independence, taking the edge off a political crisis in the euro zone<6E>s fourth biggest economy.Carles Puigdemont instead made only a symbolic declaration late on Tuesday, claiming a mandate to launch secession but suspending formal steps to that end.<2E>There was a chance Puigdemont would have made a decisive declaration, so now yields are dropping because there is room for negotiation left,<2C> said DZ Bank strategist Christian Lenk.<2E>Now the haggling continues and the ball is in the hands of Madrid.<2E>Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Wednesday, however, took the first step towards activating article 155 of the Spanish constitution, a so-called nuclear option that would allow him to suspend Catalonia<69>s political autonomy and take over the region.Spain<69>s benchmark IBEX closed 1.3 percent higher, outperforming the pan-European STOXX 600 index, which was unchanged on the day.Shares in Spanish banks Sabadell and CaixaBank , which have moved their legal bases from Catalonia to other parts of Spain since an Oct. 1 independence referendum, rose 1.2 percent and 0.3 percent respectively.The rally in Spanish stocks pushed the main global stocks index, MSCI<43>s 47-country All-Country World Index , to a fresh record high of 493.63 points.Spain<69>s 10-year government bond yield - which moves inversely to the price - dropped 6 basis points to 1.64 percent, according to Tradeweb data.The gap between Spanish and German 10-year government bond yields narrowed to 117 bps . It had widened to 136 bps last week.Spanish government bond yields had risen sharply over the past week and a half after Catalans voted overwhelmingly, albeit on a low turnout of 43 percent, for independence in the referendum banned by authorities in Madrid.While the Spanish government does not recognise the referendum or Catalonia<69>s right to break away, Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis said early on Wednesday that there was room for talks within the framework of Spain<69>s existing constitution.Though Spain was the outperformer on the day, other Southern European government debt was also in demand: Italian and Portuguese 10-year yields dropped 3 and 7 bps, respectively.Portugal<61>s 10-year bond yield hit its lowest level since December 2015 after strong auction results.Higher-rated European government bond yields rose against a backdrop of strong supply, with Germany<6E>s 10-year government bond yield 3 bps higher at 0.47 percent.Germany sold 2.395 billion euros of five-year bonds and the Netherlands was set to sell 5-7 billion euros of seven-year bonds.For Reuters Live Markets blog on European and UK stock markets see reuters://realtime/verb=Open/url=http://emea1.apps.cp.extranet.thomsonreuters.biz/cms/?pageId=livemarketsReporting by Abhinav Ramnarayan; Editing by Alison Williams'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/eurozone-bonds-spain/update-1-spanish-bond-yields-drop-as-catalonia-eschews-formal-independence-declaration-idINL8N1MM0XV'|'2017-10-11T04:53:00.000+03:00'
'94e77b869d3c44c024050caa96cbc64a9494db9b'|'MOVES-Lloyds Banking makes two appointments in commercial banking unit'|'October 11, 2017 / 10:48 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago MOVES-Lloyds Banking makes two appointments in commercial banking unit Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 11 (Reuters) - Lloyds Banking Group Plc said it made two appointments in its commercial banking division, including naming a new managing director of global transaction banking. The bank said Ed Thurman would be managing director of global transaction banking, replacing Adrian Walker, who was named investment management director in the group transformation division. Lloyds said Thurman<61>s old post, that of managing director of the division<6F>s financial institutions business, will be assumed by Robina Bennett, currently audit director for commercial banking. The bank said all appointments are effective Nov. 1. (Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/lloyds-bank-uk-moves-edthurman/moves-lloyds-banking-makes-two-appointments-in-commercial-banking-unit-idUSL4N1MM3UO'|'2017-10-11T13:49:00.000+03:00'
'0200c66d5601792faeaa6ecf452170bd38d33398'|'UK''s economy under a cloud of Brexit uncertainty - Hammond'|'October 11, 2017 / 9:07 AM / in 2 hours UK''s economy under a cloud of Brexit uncertainty - Hammond Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Britain''s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, leaves Downing Street in central London, Britain October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville LONDON (Reuters) - Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond said on Wednesday that a <20>cloud of uncertainty<74> about Brexit was hanging over the country<72>s economy and needed to be cleared as quickly as possible. <20>My general view of our economy is that it is fundamentally robust. We have some very strong things going for us, a strong outlook for the future,<2C> Hammond told lawmakers. <20>But the cloud of uncertainty is a temporary damper and we need to remove it as soon as possible by making progress with the (Brexit) negotiation process,<2C> he said. The International Monetary Fund kept its growth forecasts for Britain on hold on Tuesday even as it raised its projections for growth in many other economies around the world. Related Coverage'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-hammond/uks-economy-under-a-cloud-of-brexit-uncertainty-hammond-idUKKBN1CG0ZB'|'2017-10-11T12:09:00.000+03:00'
'83e5f323adb27939aeae97c722a06bed8cc0237f'|'Equifax says 15.2 million UK records exposed in cyber breach'|'October 10, 2017 / 5:56 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Equifax says 15.2 million UK records exposed in cyber breach John McCrank 3 Min Read Credit cards, a chain and an open padlock is seen in front of displayed Equifax logo in this illustration taken September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illutration (Reuters) - Credit reporting agency Equifax Inc ( EFX.N ) said on Tuesday that 15.2 million client records in Britain were compromised in the massive cyber attack it disclosed last month, including sensitive information affecting nearly 700,000 consumers. The U.S.-based company said 14.5 million of the records breached, which dated from 2011 to 2016, did not contain information that put British consumers at risk. Overall, around 145.5 million people, mostly in the United States, had their information compromised, including Social Security numbers, birth dates and addresses. The hack also exposed the driver<65>s license numbers of around 10.9 million Americans, the Wall Street Journal reported. Equifax said it would notify the 693,665 affected UK consumers by post and offer them several of its own and third-party risk-mitigation products for free to help minimize the risk of possible criminal activity. Equifax has faced seething criticism from consumers, regulators and lawmakers over its handling of the breach, which occurred between mid-May and late July and was not disclosed until Sept. 7. Since then, the company has parted ways with its chief executive officer, chief information officer and chief security officer. FILE PHOTO: Credit reporting company Equifax Inc. corporate offices are pictured in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Tami Chappell/File Photo <20>Once again, I would like to extend my most sincere apologies to anyone who has been concerned about or impacted by this criminal act,<2C> said Patricio Remon, Equifax<61>s president for Europe. <20>Let me take this opportunity to emphasise that protecting the data of our consumers and clients is always our top priority.<2E> The company was alerted in March that a software security vulnerability existed in one or more of its systems, but it failed to fix the problem because of <20>both human error and technology failures,<2C> former CEO Richard Smith told a U.S. congressional committee. As a credit reporting agency, Equifax keeps vast amounts of consumer data for banks and other creditors to use to determine the chances of their customers<72> defaulting. The breach has prompted investigations by multiple federal and state agencies, including a criminal probe by the U.S. Department of Justice. Equifax said earlier this month that it had determined some 8,000 Canadian consumers were also impacted by the breach, far fewer than the 100,000 it had previously warned were at risk. It said the initial estimate <20>was preliminary and did not materialise<73> and that the company planned to mail notifications to those affected with information about free credit monitoring and identity theft protection services. Reporting by John McCrank in New York, additional reporting by Alastair Sharp in Toronto; Editing by Tom Brown and Matthew Lewis 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-equifax-cyber/equifax-says-15-2-million-uk-records-accessed-in-cyber-breach-idUKKBN1CF2IK'|'2017-10-11T01:53:00.000+03:00'
'8aab46000126502da627dfcefb95d300aa629832'|'UPDATE 1-France''s Areva to cut Niger uranium production on price drop'|'October 11, 2017 / 4:17 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago UPDATE 1-France''s Areva to cut Niger uranium production on price drop Reuters Staff * Most uranium prices unprofitable at current low prices * Areva says output and job cuts matter of survival (Adds Areva comment) NIAMEY/PARIS, Oct 11 (Reuters) - French uranium mining and nuclear fuel group Areva NewCo will slash output and reduce staffing levels at its Niger mines in response to low uranium prices, the company and its unions said. A spokeswoman for Areva<76>s open-pit Somair mine close to Arlit said the mine will reduce its annual production of uranium concentrate to 1,700 tonnes in 2018 from 2,100 tonnes this year. <20>Market conditions are very difficult ... Somair has to adapt its industrial organization and its workforce accordingly. It is a question of survival,<2C> she said. An official for the Niger-based Synamimes union told Reuters that Somair<69>s managing director had told staff that 190 jobs would be eliminated there and a freeze would be placed on contracts for 500 contractors. Areva confirmed that there would be <20>a reorganization and adjustment of the workforce of Somair and sub-contractors<72> but declined further comment. Areva said it was also continuing to study various scenarios for its underground Cominak mine. Areva NewCo holds a 63.6 percent stake in Somair and is the largest stakeholder in nearby Cominak, with 34 percent. <20>The managing director (of Cominak) told us there would be severe restrictions, without giving details,<2C> Amadou Miou, the head of the Arlit section of the Synamines union, told Reuters. He said the union would study the companies<65> decisions. Before the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, uranium traded above $70 per pound but the reactor fuel has been on a downward trend ever since and now trades at around $20, well below the level at which most mines can operate profitably. Other uranium mining companies such as Canada<64>s Cameco are also slashing production and cutting jobs. Areva NewCo was split off from state-owned integrated nuclear group Areva this year after its parent company<6E>s equity was wiped out following years of losses. The French state recapitalised NewCo with a 2.5 billion euro capital increase in July, while Japan<61>s MHI and JNFL also plan to put in 500 million euros. The company plans to change its name early next year. (Reporting by Boureima Balima in Niamey and Geert De Clercq in Paris; Writing by Joe Bavier and Geert De Clercq; Editing by Alexander Smith) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/areva-niger/update-1-frances-areva-to-cut-niger-uranium-production-on-price-drop-idUSL8N1MM4ZU'|'2017-10-11T19:17:00.000+03:00'
'5c3ff844b5db90230d92059c0dd96de605e965b5'|'Leahy to bow out from Airbus at year-end after final sales push'|'Reuters TV United States October 11, 2017 / 1:23 PM / Updated 20 minutes ago Leahy to bow out from Airbus at year-end after final sales push Tim Hepher 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Airbus Chief Operating Officer-Customers John Leahy attends the 52nd Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport near Paris, France, June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - John Leahy, who has sold planes worth over a trillion dollars during more than two decades as sales chief at Europe<70>s Airbus, is finally calling it a day at the end of the year after one last push to level the score with Boeing, executives said. The 67-year-old New Yorker, who hinted earlier this year he would retire in the autumn to make way for his deputy Kiran Rao, is once again in battle mode as Airbus( AIR.PA ) faces an aggressive new sales drive from its U.S. rival. That comes as Airbus is trying to end a hiatus in sales of its A380 <20>superjumbo<62> by seeking more orders from Emirates and other deals at the Dubai Airshow, which Leahy is now expected to attend after earlier saying he would not be going. He has agreed to stay on until the end of the year, the executives said. Chief Executive Tom Enders disclosed the timing of Leahy<68>s departure during a recent internal sales meeting, but has not publicly confirmed details of the transition. Leahy, who has run sales at Airbus since 1994, could not be reached for comment on his plans on Wednesday, while Airbus declined comment. A tireless <20>deal closer<65> known for snatching deals at the last moment, Leahy sold small Piper aircraft before joining Airbus to help break open the U.S. market in the 1980s. Aides say he has overseen sales of more than 15,500 aircraft worth $1.7 trillion at list prices. But after a prolonged boom, Airbus has slipped behind Boeing ( BA.N ) in the order race this year with just 35 percent of net orders. WOOING EMIRATES After suffering a rare defeat at the Paris Airshow in June, Leahy seems determined to end his career on a high and has set his sights on new sales for the A380, without which the plane could struggle to survive, industry sources said. Emirates president Tim Clark, the biggest A380 operator who has negotiated with Leahy for decades, declined to say whether he would write more cheques for jets at the Dubai Airshow but confirmed he was being courted to expand his superjumbo fleet. <20>He<48>s anxious that we should order a squillion A380s before he goes, so that he<68>ll go out with a fanfare of trumpets or whatever,<2C> Clark joked in an interview with Reuters in Asia. <20>But he<68>s been telling me for the last four years that he<68>ll retire in the next year, so I<>ll believe it when I see it.<2E> The veteran CEO paid tribute to Leahy<68>s record, which leaves Airbus with a record backlog but questions over short-term jet demand, and declined to comment on his own retirement plans. <20>He<48>s been very good at what he is doing. He<48>s certainly a character who has been a big contributor to the industry.<2E> With more than 200 sales needed to close the gap with Boeing in a market already bursting with jets, some market sources said Leahy<68>s looming departure may put pressure on prices. <20>Now is the time to strike. Airlines know the last thing Leahy will want is to lose his last annual order competition against Boeing,<2C> said a senior aircraft financing source. Leahy, however, has said Airbus does not expect 2017 to be a marquee year for orders as the industry slows. Reporting by Tim Hepher; Additional reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Alexander Smith 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-airbus-leahy/airbus-sales-boss-leahy-sets-end-year-retirement-date-sources-idUKKBN1CG1QE'|'2017-10-11T22:22:00.000+03:00'
'c13cf01f28f73a1544d8d943de40ea232bb36700'|'Novartis decides not to sell Roche stake chairman tells newspaper'|'FILE PHOTO - The logo of Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche is seen outside their headquarters in Basel, January 30, 2014. To match special report USA-FDA/CASES REUTERS/Ruben Sprich/File Photo ZURICH (Reuters) - Novartis ( NOVN.S ) has decided not to sell its roughly $14 billion (10.61 billion pounds), 33 percent voting stake in Roche ( ROG.S ) following a review, Chairman Joerg Reinhardt said in an interview published on Wednesday in Swiss newspaper HandelsZeitung.<2E>We said we would review whether it makes sense to sell the stake,<2C> Reinhardt told the newspaper.<2E>We came to the conclusion that that<61>s not the case. We have made no decision to actively move ahead with the sale.<2E>In May 2016, Chief Executive Officer Joe Jimenez said he was ready to sell the Roche stake without demanding a premium and that Novartis has been discussing options with banks.Novartis amassed the Roche holding, which produced $464 million in income for Novartis in 2016, under former Chairman Daniel Vasella more than a decade ago, part of unrequited advances for a merger of the Basel drug giants.Reinhardt, who re-joined Novartis as chairman in 2013 after a stint at Germany<6E>s Bayer, also said in the interview that sales are now recovering at the Swiss drugmaker<65>s troubled Alcon eye care unit.Although Novartis has said all options are on the table for Alcon, Reinhardt said intense interest over a final decision on a review of the business is disproportionately high, especially given it now makes up little more than 10 percent of Novartis<69> $48 billion annual sales.Jimenez has suggested Alcon could be worth $25-35 billion.Despite U.S. price pressure on generics unit Sandoz, Reinhardt said he believes synergies between its difficult-to-make generic drugs and the division<6F>s growing portfolio of biosimilar copies of name-brand biological drugs like Roche<68>s Mabthera have not yet been exhausted.<2E>When you take that into consideration, Sandoz belongs to our core business,<2C> Reinhardt told the newspaper.Reporting by John Miller; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-novartis-roche-stake/novartis-decides-not-to-sell-roche-stake-chairman-tells-newspaper-idINKBN1CG2D0'|'2017-10-11T14:54:00.000+03:00'
'cce3184be09ede59dc71b392ccd053066f1b09b5'|'Global markets: Asia stocks near decade-high on global equity surge, dollar sags'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar snapped a losing streak on Thursday in the wake of solid U.S. economic data but U.S. Treasury yields dipped and Wall Street stock indexes were largely unchanged as earnings season kicked off with a whimper.While investors cheered a 0.4 percent increase in the U.S. producer price index for final demand last month, inflation concerns were still in focus as U.S. central bankers showed they were taking a more guarded view.Bond traders were waiting on consumer price data due out on Friday for further indications whether inflation is picking up.<2E>PPI was a little bit better, but that doesn<73>t really translate well to CPI,<2C> said Gennadiy Goldberg, an interest rate strategist at TD Securities in New York. <20>I think for the most part, markets are still waiting for the CPI report tomorrow.<2E>Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR last rose 2/32 in price to yield 2.3374 percent, from 2.345 percent late on Wednesday.The 30-year bond US30YT=RR last /32 in price to yield 2.8761 percent, from 2.876 percent late on Wednesday.MSCI<43>s gauge of stock markets across the globe .MIWD PUS gained 0.06 percent, buoyed gains in Asian markets. The index reached a record high, as it has for seven of the past eight trading days.After two days of hitting records, the U.S. benchmark S&P index took a breather as investors were less than impressed with quarterly reports from two major banks, JPMorgan ( JPM.N ) and Citigroup ( C.N ).Scott Clemons, chief investment strategist for Brown Brothers Harriman in New York said that <20>after a long stretch of consecutive highs in the market, with earnings, even if they are slightly disappointing<6E> that is an excuse to sell off.The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 7.32 points, or 0.03 percent, to 22,865.57, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 1.8 points, or 0.07 percent, to 2,553.44 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 0.69 points, or 0.01 percent, to 6,604.24.FILE PHOTO: Sheets of former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on the five-dollar bill currency are inspected through a magnifying glass at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington March 26, 2015. REUTERS/Gary Cameron/File Photo After four straight days of declines, the dollar index, tracking the greenback against a basket of major currencies .DXY, rose 0.15 percent.The euro EUR= was down 0.16 percent to $1.1838, snapping four straight days of gains after rising to its highest since Sept. 25 earlier in the session.The Mexican peso lost 0.30 percent versus the U.S. dollar at 18.76 amid concerns the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) talks could run aground.The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote Bitcoin smashed through the $5,000 barrier for the first time ever BTC=BTSP , and was last up 8.6 percent on the day.Meanwhile, sterling slipped to a three-day low against the greenback after the European Union<6F>s chief negotiator said Brexit talks were at an <20>impasse,<2C> ramping up political risks for the currency which is down about 12 percent since last year<61>s EU vote.In Asia, MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS reached its highest point since late 2007, ending up 0.7 percent on the day.Japan''s Nikkei .N225 rose 0.4 percent, hitting its highest since late 1996. South Korea''s KOSPI .KS11 added 0.55 percent to reach a record high.In commodities, oil prices fell as U.S. fuel inventories rose despite efforts by OPEC to cut production [O/R].U.S. crude CLcv1 fell 1.72 percent to $50.42 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $56.00, down 1.65 percent on the day.Spot gold XAU= added 0.1 percent to $1,292.50 an ounce.Reporting by John Geddie and Dhara Ranasinghe in London and Shinichi Saoshiro in Tokyo; Editing by Bernadette Baum'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asia-stocks-near-decade-high-on-global-equity-su
'dfd11a2f8a98d070a06fd1e6e8bff98edebd727d'|'Viacom launches TV ads in dispute with Charter'|'October 12, 2017 / 5:29 PM / Updated 5 minutes ago Viacom launches TV ads in dispute with Charter Jessica Toonkel 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A woman exits the Viacom Inc. headquarters in New York, U.S. on April 30, 2013. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo (Reuters) - Viacom Inc ( VIAB.O ), parent of networks including MTV and Nickelodeon, launched TV ads this week urging its viewers to call customer service at cable company Spectrum ahead of a deadline that may result in a costly blackout for 16.6 million customers. The current deal between Spectrum parent Charter Communications Inc ( CHTR.O ) and Viacom, expires Oct. 15. The looming deadline prompted Viacom to issue a statement on Wednesday warning of a possible disruption because distribution talks between the two companies had stalled.. The warning spooked investors, who pushed shares of Viacom down 3 percent to $24.45 in midday trading. The negotiations with Charter come at a delicate time for Viacom, which is in the midst of a turnaround plan to improve ratings and ad revenue under CEO Bob Bakish, who took on his role last year. Like its peers, Viacom is struggling to keep viewers as more people watch shows on smartphones and tablets. Six of the largest U.S pay TV providers posted a total of 723,000 subscriber losses during the past quarter. Of that total, Charter reported 90,000 subscriber losses. Viacom could lose $760 million, or 16 percent, of its annual affiliate revenue, if Charter drops all 23 of its channels, said Brett Harriss, an analyst at Gabelli & Co, the second largest owner of voting shares of Viacom after Sumner Redstone. On Wednesday night, Viacom started running ads on Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central and BET, featuring talent for each network warning viewers of the possible disruption in service and urging them to call Spectrum. The New York-based media company has also launched a site, <20>keepviacom.com.<2E> Tens of thousands of viewers have called Spectrum to complain, Viacom said. A Charter spokesman declined to comment. Despite the high stakes for Viacom, investors seem optimistic that Charter and Viacom will reach a deal. <20>Viacom has 15-20 percent of all cable viewership,<2C> said Sal Muoio, whose firm is the 10th largest owner of controlling shares of Viacom. <20>You would think Charter would want them.<2E> Still, the dispute points to the need for Viacom to gain scale. Perhaps Viacom should revisit a merger with CBS Corp ( CBS.N ), which the two explored last year, said Harriss. In remarks last week, controlling shareholder Shari Redstone alluded to the importance of scale when asked about merging CBS and Viacom. Additional reporting by Anjali Athavaley; Editing by Anna Driver and Frances Kerry 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-viacom-charter-commns/viacom-launches-tv-ads-in-dispute-with-charter-idUSKBN1CH2KO'|'2017-10-12T20:28:00.000+03:00'
'5203e4f57685ec56f92b29b96dca47c8f192a332'|'Deals of the day-Mergers and acquisitions'|'(Adds Koerber AG, Goldman Sachs, Hyperion, ACS; Updates Royal Dutch Shell)Oct 12 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 2000 GMT on Thursday:** Goldman Sachs Group Inc has agreed to buy private mortgage lender Genesis Capital LLC as the Wall Street bank looks to new businesses for growth while trading revenue remains sluggish.** Germany<6E>s industrial holding Koerber AG is considering a sale or stock market listing of its machine tools business worth roughly 700 million euros ($829 million), people close to the matter said.** British insurer Hyperion has hired Morgan Stanley to sound out financial investors for a minority stake sale, sources told Reuters, in a deal that could value the London-based firm at more than 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion).** Spanish builder ACS will launch next week a cash-and-paper offer for toll road operator Abertis, sources said, complicating a rival bid by Italy<6C>s Atlantia .** A group of investors including buyout firm Apollo and pension fund Canada Pension Plan (CPP) is bidding for coal assets put up for sale by mining giant Rio Tinto, which could fetch $2 billion, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.** Canada<64>s Metro Inc said it would sell a major portion of its stake in Alimentation Couche Tard Inc to fund its C$4.5 billion acquisition of pharmacy chain Jean Coutu Group.** Mantra Group Ltd agreed to a A$1.18 billion ($920 million) buyout from French hotel company Accor SA , a deal which will create the biggest hotel group in Australia where tourism is rising sharply.** Chinese firms including high-end equipment maker Jiangsu Hagong Intelligent Robot Co plan to bid for German industrial company FFT, likely to be valued at up to $712 million, two people familiar with the matter said.** Lufthansa agreed to buy parts of insolvent German airline Air Berlin for around 210 million euros ($248.72 million), Air Berlin said.** Lloyds Banking Group has agreed to buy Zurich Insurance<63>s UK workplace pensions and savings business as it expands its retirement business, the bank said.** U.S. hedge fund Elliott Management Corp has raised its stake in Japan<61>s Hitachi Kokusai Electric to 8.59 percent from 7.11 percent, a regulatory filing showed, one of several such hikes since it first disclosed a stake in the firm last month.** South Korea<65>s embattled Lotte Group said several firms have expressed interest in acquiring its Lotte Mart stores in China and that is aiming for a sale by the end of this year.** Japan<61>s Asahi Group Holdings said it is considering selling all or part of its 19.99 percent stake in Tsingtao Brewery Co Ltd, its latest divestment from China<6E>s beer industry as it seeks growth in Europe and other Asian markets.** Finnish financial holding group Sampo has bought a 7.6 percent stake in Swedish lender Nordax, a regulatory disclosure by Sweden<65>s financial watchdog showed.** WPP, the world<6C>s biggest advertising agency, stepped up its efforts to stop U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital from buying Japan<61>s Asatsu-DK Inc, saying the offer significantly undervalued its stake in the firm.** Buyout fund CVC Capital Partners<72> strategic opportunities platform and the L<>Oreal family<6C>s Tethys Invest have entered exclusive talks to acquire a majority stake in France<63>s Sebia, the companies said.** Britain<69>s Carillion Plc confirmed that it had received proposals from more than one counterparty for the possible acquisition of its UK healthcare business.** Alteri Investors has agreed to buy Dutch toy store chain Intertoys from Blokker Holding for an undisclosed sum, the Dutch company said.** Bharti Airtel Ltd is acquiring the Tata conglomerate<74>s consumer mobile business, the two companies said, in a deal that gives India<69>s top wireless player a major subscriber base boost for virtually free, while stemming the bleed for Tata from a loss making venture.** Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to buy Dutch-based NewMotion, the owner of one of Europe<70>s largest electric vehic
'7fb15834d8b452b07afde417e9f7e9e94179864f'|'Industrial gases firms eye Linde-Praxair parts: Frankfurter Allgemeine'|'The Praxair logo is seen during a news conference with Linde in Munich, Germany, June 2, 2017. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle BERLIN (Reuters) - Industrial gases firms Air Products and Air Liquide may bid for parts of peers Linde ( LING.DE ) and Praxair ( PX.N ) that the two groups may be forced to divest in the event of a merger, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Friday.Linde and Praxair need to obtain anti-trust approval for their merger in 25 countries, for which they have said they were prepared to make divestments up to a <20>pain threshold<6C> of $3.7 billion in sales beyond which the deal may no longer make sense.Praxair<69>s finance chief said in late July there has been a <20>significant<6E> amount of unsolicited interest in assets the firm could put up for sale.Air Products ( APD.N ) would evaluate any assets that Linde and Praxair would seek to divest as part of a merger, while France<63>s Air Liquide ( AIRP.PA ) said it would study the opportunities that could arise from the merger, the newspaper reported, citing responses from the two firms.German peer Messer has already held talks with banks including UBS ( UBSG.S ) and possible partners, Frankfurter Allgemeine said, adding that Messer would probably team up with CVC [CVC.UL].The planned all-share merger of equals will create a global leader to overtake Air Liquide with a combined market value of $80 billion, revenue of $28.7 billion and 88,000 staff.Reporting by Andreas Cremer, editing by David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-linde-praxair/industrial-gases-firms-eye-linde-praxair-parts-frankfurter-allgemeine-idINKBN1CI25X'|'2017-10-13T13:55:00.000+03:00'
'7398f9447b9e90f204d014d50a144ee4362e34a3'|'OPEC Secretary General urges U.S. shale oil producers to help cap global supply'|'OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo speaks to the media during his visit in Abuja, Nigeria Febuary 27, 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde NEW DELHI (Reuters) - OPEC<45>s Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo on Tuesday called on U.S. shale oil producers to help curtail global oil supply, warning extraordinary measures might be needed next year to sustain the rebalanced market in the medium to long term. <20>We urge our friends, in the shale basins of North America to take this shared responsibility with all seriousness it deserves, as one of the key lessons learnt from the current unique supply-driven cycle,<2C> said Barkindo. The comments by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries official came during a speech delivered at the India Energy Forum organized by CERAWeek in New Delhi. <20>At the moment we (OPEC and independent U.S. producers) both agreed that we have a shared responsibility in maintaining stability because they are also not insulated from the impact of this downturn,<2C> Barkindo said, referring to a slide in oil prices that spurred OPEC to agree production cuts late last year. Related Coverage OPEC says to reconvene meeting with U.S. on deal to cut oil output <20>The call by independents themselves (is) that we need to continue this interaction,<2C> he said. While OPEC and some other producers, including Russia have cut supplies this year in order to prop up prices, U.S. production has soared by almost 10 percent this year, driven largely by shale drillers. Barkindo said he hoped that new producers, not just U.S. shale drillers, would join production cuts. On Monday, Saudi Arabia cut crude oil allocations for November by 560,000 barrels per day (bpd), in line with the kingdom<6F>s commitment to the supply reduction pact. <20>Demand-supply is returning to rebalance through massive destocking that we have been witnessing of stocks in OECD across regions in a very massive way,<2C> Barkindo said later, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the conference. <20>In the past four months alone, we have seen destocking to the tune of 130 million bpd,<2C> he said. The aim of the OPEC-led cut is to trim the level of oil in OECD industrialized countries compared with the five-year supply average. Barkindo said the stock overhang to the five-year average stood at 171 million barrels in August, against 338 million at the start of the year. <20>The speed and pace (of destocking) has accelerated as a result of anticipated and projected demand growth in the second half of 2017 to the tune of 2 million bpd. We are witnessing a fast return to a balanced market,<2C> Barkindo said. Still, on Sunday Barkindo said OPEC and other oil producers might need to take <20>some extraordinary measures<65> next year to rebalance the oil market. World oil demand growth in 2017 is expected at 1.45 million barrels per day (BPD) and it should stay around 1.4 million bpd in 2018, Barkindo said. He said India<69>s share of global oil demand is expected to rise to over 9 percent by 2040, up from 4 percent now. Reporting by Nidhi Verma, Promit Mukherjee and Neha Dasgupta; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-energy/opec-secretary-general-urges-u-s-shale-oil-producers-to-help-cap-global-supply-idUSKBN1CF0C4'|'2017-10-10T07:51:00.000+03:00'
'0e7b04145ea049c9addf600797652a06d0e4c1d8'|'Express Scripts to buy eviCore healthcare for $3.6 billion'|'(Reuters) - Express Scripts Holding Co ( ESRX.O ) said on Tuesday it would buy privately held specialty healthcare benefits manager eviCore healthcare for $3.6 billion to bolster its medical benefits management business amid the threat of losing a major client.The deal comes as a pre-emptive move with Express Scripts exposed to more competition and the possibility of the pharmacy benefit manager losing Anthem Inc ( ANTM.N ) and rumored entry of Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ) into the prescription drug market.<2E>The deal signals Express Scripts<74> desire to remain independent even with the likely Anthem loss,<2C> said Baird analyst Eric Coldwell, adding that the decision may disappoint some who hoped the company would pursue strategic options.Medical benefits management spending is estimated to be roughly $300 billion annually, Express Scripts said. The acquisition of eviCore would plant the company firmly in the growing market, Leerink analyst David Larsen wrote in a client note.Express Scripts has a minor presence in medical benefit management, the company<6E>s spokesman Brian Henry told Reuters, and the deal would expand it to get into the market in a <20>bigger way.<2E>Bluffton, South Carolina-based eviCore provides healthcare benefits management and administrative services on behalf of clients consisting mainly of commercial health insurers and other third-party payers, including Medicaid and Medicare Advantage plans.Reuters reported in May that eviCore was exploring a sale or an initial public offering.The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year, Express Scripts said, adding that eviCore would operate as a standalone business unit.Shares of Express Scripts<74>, which expects the deal to add to its adjusted earnings in the first full year, were down 1.6 percent at $58.28 in afternoon trading.In April, Express Scripts said it might lose its top client health insurer Anthem, which added about 19 percent of the company<6E>s total consolidated revenue in the latest quarter.Anthem had sued Express Scripts last year over claims of being overcharged.Lazard and TripleTree LLC are Express Scripts<74> financial advisers in the deal, while its legal adviser is Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Morgan Stanley & Co LLC advised eviCore and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP is its legal adviser.Reporting by Manas Mishra and Divya Grover in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza and Bernard Orr '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-evicore-healthcare-m-a-express-script/express-scripts-to-buy-evicore-healthcare-for-3-6-billion-idINKBN1CF1Q3'|'2017-10-10T11:20:00.000+03:00'
'9922b4cc8e5f86f9f945131eeb3bf7884fb1d7d2'|'BlackRock''s Fink warns of risk of inverted bond yield curve'|'October 11, 2017 / 12:24 PM / in 14 minutes BlackRock''s Fink warns of risk of inverted bond yield curve Reuters Staff 1 Min Read NEW YORK, Oct 11 (Reuters) - BlackRock Inc Chief Executive Larry Fink on Wednesday warned that strong demand for investments such as long-dated government bonds could push their relative yields to a risky point for markets. The head of the world<6C>s largest asset manager said the strong demand could lead to an inverted yield curve, a point when the long-dated yield falls below the short-dated yield, which is often considered a precursor to recession. U.S. President Donald Trump has promised a decision this month on who he plans to appoint as chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, which influences rates. Of the potential candidates, Fink told Reuters <20>all of the publicized names are very qualified for that role.<2E> (Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/blackrock-results-ceo/blackrocks-fink-warns-of-risk-of-inverted-bond-yield-curve-idUSL2N1MM0L2'|'2017-10-11T15:23:00.000+03:00'
'db24933a254636f48b9bd4dc14d1ebf5b7ae06b6'|'Frontera fails to win new contract for Peru oil block -Petroperu'|'October 11, 2017 / 3:23 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago Frontera fails to win new contract for Peru oil block -Petroperu Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LIMA, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Canadian oil firm Frontera Energy Corp did not secure a new contract for operating Peru<72>s biggest oil block because of a lack of <20>adequate conditions,<2C> state-owned energy company Petroperu announced on Wednesday. In a statement, Petroperu did not specify how conditions were inadequate but said it would summon other private companies to discuss a potential partnership for Block 192 when the time was right. Frontera has operated Block 192 in the Amazonian region of Loreto for the past two years but control of the oilfield will revert to Petroperu once its contract ends in 2019. Petroperu, which mainly transports and commercializes oil products, can develop productive oil blocks only with a private partner. Frontera<72>s operations in Block 192 have been plagued by repeated ruptures in Petroperu<72>s pipeline and indigenous protesters who have seized oil wells to demand the government commit to environmental cleanups and social development plans. Frontera has not produced any oil from Block 192 since the start of the latest round of protests in mid-September. The oilfield once produced about 12,000 barrels of oil per day. Petroperu and Frontera did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Reporting by Mitra Taj; Editing by Matthew Lewis 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/peru-oil-frontera-energy/frontera-fails-to-win-new-contract-for-peru-oil-block-petroperu-idUSL2N1MM112'|'2017-10-11T18:22:00.000+03:00'
'd7831050611c37813854fc143ac70a60014170a3'|'DHL to test self-driving delivery trucks in 2018 11,'|'DHL to test self-driving delivery trucks in 2018 by Matt McFarland @mattmcfarland October 11, 2017: 10:26 AM ET Domino''s tests self-driving cars In the future, the trucks from mail delivery giant Deutsche Post DHL may autonomously follow its delivery persons as they walk down streets to make deliveries. The company, which employees more than 500,000 across 220 countries, said it will begin testing self-driving delivery trucks in the second half of 2018. To get a fleet up and running, DHL said it will equip some of its existing electric delivery trucks with new self-driving equipment from tech company NVIDIA and the automotive supplier ZF. Deutsche PostDHL hasn''t revealed how many vehicles will be used -- or where the tests will take place -- but said the move is expected to make its delivery service more efficient. The experiment will feature self-driving delivery trucks that follow a delivery person en route to deliver packages. The person wouldn''t need to get back into the truck between dropping off packages; they''d need to remove packages from the rear of the truck. The company has not revealed how the truck will identify and accurately follow its delivery people. Perhaps one option could include a delivery person carrying a sensor in their pocket that transmits their location to the vehicle. Another potential option: training a vehicle''s cameras to identify a delivery person''s appearance and follow them. Deutsche Post DHL will also test whether autonomous vehicles can be used to exchange containers in parcel centers. The announcement is the latest reminder of the intense interest surrounding the autonomous vehicles industry. Intel has forecasted self-driving technology will trigger a $7 trillion market by 2050. The rapid gains in computing power is fueling the market. For example, Deutsche Post DHL partner NVIDIA now has a new and more advanced supercomputer that runs a self-driving software program for autonomous vehicles.The brand''s technology is widely used among companies developing self-driving services. Amid concern that autonomous technology replacing human drivers, DHL said there will be be roles for its workforce. Related: How free self-driving car rides could change everything Many competitors are circling 2020 as a year to broadly deploy these technologies to the public. But experts say it may be a decade before such technology is mainstream. But companies already have a head start: Uber is offering self-driving rides in Pittsburgh and Waymo, the self-driving arm of Google''s parent company, has a current ride service in Phoenix. In addition to self-driving technology, DHL rival UPS has also tested drone delivery from atop some of its trucks. Meanwhile, Amazon has spent years developing a drone delivery program and completed its first delivery in Britain last year . CNNMoney (Washington)   11, 2017: 10:26 AM ET'|'cnn.com'|'http://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_technology.rss'|'http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/11/technology/future/dhl-autonomous-delivery-truck/index.html'|'2017-10-11T18:26:00.000+03:00'
'223fbb89d47e4b6d12052a58bf173907eb2984c4'|'Early 2018 is crunch time for banks'' Brexit decisions - UK official'|'October 11, 2017 / 9:52 AM / Updated 8 hours ago Early 2018 is crunch time for banks'' Brexit decisions - UK official Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The Union Flag and a European Union flag fly near the Elizabeth Tower, housing the Big Ben bell, during the anti-Brexit ''People''s March for Europe'', in Parliament Square in central London, Britain September 9, 2017. REUTERS/Tolga Akmen LONDON (Reuters) - Many international banks and financial services firms based in Britain will decide in the first quarter of next year whether to move operations away from Britain ahead of Brexit, a senior official at Britain<69>s finance ministry said on Wednesday. Katharine Braddick, the ministry<72>s director general for financial services, said banks using Britain to serve clients in the European Union were showing the most urgency in considering relocation plans. <20>Those plans, if you like, harden, become more firm, at the point at which they start to alter contractual paperwork. For most of the firms that we talk to that will fall at some point in the first quarter of next year,<2C> Braddick told lawmakers. Reporting by David Milliken and Andy Bruce; Writing by William Schomberg; editing by John Stonestreet 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-banks/early-2018-is-crunch-time-for-banks-brexit-decisions-uk-official-idUKKBN1CG145'|'2017-10-11T12:52:00.000+03:00'
'de7a4ff6888e4f5675cf2c9b0fd81d327dd83025'|'Facebook to launch new virtual reality headset, ''Oculus Go'''|'October 11, 2017 / 5:32 PM / in 5 minutes Facebook to launch new virtual reality headset, ''Oculus Go'' 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Facebook application is seen on a phone screen August 3, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/File Photo SAN JOSE, Calif. (Reuters) - Facebook Inc ( FB.O ) plans to release a new virtual reality headset that does not require a separate computer to operate, allowing more mobile uses than the company<6E>s existing Oculus Rift product, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. Zuckerberg, speaking at a conference for virtual reality developers, said the <20>Oculus Go<47> device would cost $199 and ship early next year, too late for this year<61>s holiday shopping season but likely ahead of rivals. Facebook has invested heavily in virtual reality hardware in hopes the technology, which offers a 360-degree panoramic view of faraway or imaginary spaces, will move from a niche interest to a widely used platform for gaming, communication and business applications. In 2014, Facebook paid $3 billion to acquire Oculus and retain its employees. The new standalone headset will differentiate itself from the rival Vive system made by HTC Corp ( 2498.TW ) and the Google Daydream headset, made by Alphabet Inc ( GOOGL.O ), because it will not require a smartphone to operate. Consumers could be attracted to the Oculus Go if it had enough interesting material, such as games and movies, said Stephanie Llamas, vice president of research at Super Data, a research firm. <20>The Oculus Go has potential to be a huge driver of growth, but only if its up to consumer standards,<2C> she said in an email. Facebook will permanently cut the price of the Oculus Rift system to $399 from $499, the company said. Facebook is expected to ship about 213,000 Rift systems this year, while HTC is expected to ship about 305,000 Vive systems, according to Super Data research. Beyond price cuts and new products, Facebook is trying a variety of ways to attract more people to the virtual-reality medium. The company has been developing software known as Facebook Spaces that allows friends to meet in virtual rooms, and it said it will soon integrate live video. On Wednesday, the company said it was releasing new technology to create better, customized facial images, or avatars, and would soon add the ability to use playing cards in Facebook Spaces, in addition to the dice it already has. Reporting by David Ingram, editing by David Gregorio and Andrew Hay 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-tech-virtualreality/facebook-to-launch-new-virtual-reality-headset-oculus-go-idUSKBN1CG2FP'|'2017-10-11T20:28:00.000+03:00'
'0810989d9e2f3355655577f10da2fa9816f14efc'|'Lufthansa poised to buy parts of Air Berlin - source'|'October 11, 2017 / 1:58 PM / in 17 minutes Lufthansa poised to buy parts of Air Berlin - source Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Planes of the Lufthansa airline stand on the tarmac in Frankfurt airport, Germany, March 17, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) is poised to agree a deal to buy assets of Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ), a person familiar with the matter told Reuters ahead of a Thursday deadline for talks to carve up the insolvent German airline. <20>The deal with Lufthansa is done, there is agreement,<2C> the person said on Wednesday, adding that talks with easyJet ( EZJ.L ) were not yet completed. Air Berlin, which has struggled to turn a profit over the last decade, filed for insolvency on Aug. 15 and a government loan has kept its planes in the air while it negotiates with potential buyers over parts of its business. It said late last month that negotiations with Lufthansa and Britain<69>s easyJet ( EZJ.L ) would continue until Oct. 12. The person familiar with the matter said Lufthansa was set to buy Air Berlin<69>s Niki leisure unit, its LG Walter regional airline and some additional aircraft. Lufthansa declined to comment on the matter but said it was confident it would meet the deadline for negotiations. EasyJet had no immediate comment. Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Emma Thomasson 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-air-berlin-lufthansa/lufthansa-poised-to-buy-parts-of-air-berlin-source-idUKKBN1CG1UV'|'2017-10-11T16:58:00.000+03:00'
'82f0693db93d74692a515684b62471b507ba330d'|'Emirates says open to cooperation with rival UAE airline Etihad'|'SINGAPORE, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Dubai-based airline Emirates is open to cooperation with rival Etihad Airways on areas that could include procurement, Emirates President Tim Clark said, adding a full merger between the pair was unlikely but up to the owners.<2E>I think there is value to be had working more closely with them,<2C> Clark told Reuters in a phone interview on Wednesday, although he said there might be concerns from regulators in some foreign markets. (Reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by Himani Sarkar)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/emirates-airline/emirates-says-open-to-cooperation-with-rival-uae-airline-etihad-idINS9N1CA017'|'2017-10-11T05:11:00.000+03:00'
'1d4328de2225003cdb1844f4816fc9bdba5efe2f'|'BMW eyes China joint venture with Great Wall - source'|'October 11, 2017 / 5:27 AM / Updated 43 minutes ago BMW eyes China joint venture with Great Wall - source Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Great Wall Motors Haval HB-02 concept vehicle is presented during the Auto China 2016 auto show in Beijing, China, April 29, 2016. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) - German luxury automaker BMW ( BMWG.DE ) is looking to form a joint venture with Great Wall Motor ( 2333.HK ), a source familiar with the matter said, sending shares in the Chinese automaker up by nearly a fifth on Wednesday. The automakers are considering the possibility of opening an assembly plant in the eastern Chinese city of Changshu, a BMW executive said, while declining to say what type of vehicles would be put together there. A venture with Great Wall would be BMW<4D>s second in China, the world<6C>s largest auto market. It has a joint venture with local carmaker Brilliance China Automotive Holdings ( 1114.HK ). Foreign carmakers have to operate in the market with local partners. <20>We are in discussions with Great Wall about setting up a JV to produce cars in Changshu,<2C> said the executive, who was not authorised to speak on the matter and declined to be identified. <20>I don<6F>t know how far along we have gone nailing this deal,<2C> or whether the two companies have official central government approval for the venture, the person said. A BMW spokesman in China did not provide an immediate comment when contacted by Reuters. A Great Wall official declined to comment. Foreign automakers have recently announced a raft of investments and tie-ups in China, especially in electric vehicles. FILE PHOTO: A Great Wall Motors Haval hybrid vehicle is presented during the Auto China 2016 auto show in Beijing, China, April 29, 2016. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo China wants electric and hybrid cars to make up at least a fifth of the country<72>s auto sales by 2025 and plans to loosen joint-venture regulations in the market. Tesla ( TSLA.O ), Ford Motor Co ( F.N ), Daimler AG ( DAIGn.DE ), and General Motors ( GM.N ) are among firms that have already announced plans for making electric vehicles in China. Great Wall, which in August expressed an interest in the Jeep brand of Italian-American automaker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV<4E>s ( FCHA.MI ), is one of China<6E>s largest car makers. Last month it struck a deal to secure supplies of lithium, a mineral key for developing electric vehicles. The firm<72>s Hong Kong-listed shares soared as much as 19.2 percent to their highest level in over two years, before paring some gains to stand up 14 percent in afternoon trade. Its Shanghai-listed shares ( 601633.SS ) were suspended from trading, pending an announcement. Brilliance China Automotive<76>s shares were down 2.76 percent. The BMW and Great Wall plans were first reported by Shanghai-based www.iautodaily.com earlier on Wednesday. Reporting by Adam Jourdan in SHANGHAI and Norihiko Shirouzu in BEIJING; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Neil Fullick 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-great-wall-bmw/chinas-great-wall-motor-shares-jump-after-report-on-bmw-tie-up-idUKKBN1CG0FR'|'2017-10-11T10:50:00.000+03:00'
'c62947d61c9a802a73b267327696271af5fb7270'|'Some U.S. businesses urge caution in China intellectual property trade push'|'October 10, 2017 / 7:07 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago Some U.S. businesses urge caution in China intellectual property trade push Reuters Staff 4 Min Read Flags of U.S. and China are placed for a meeting between Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and China''s Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu at the Ministry of Agriculture in Beijing, China June 30, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. businesses and trade groups are split over how forcefully to crack down on China over intellectual property theft, with some arguing the country is making progress on its own in enforcing protections and urging the Trump administration to use negotiation instead of punishment. Testimony at an International Trade Commission hearing on Tuesday showed the complexity of an issue that some groups say has cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars in technology and millions of jobs lost to China, something the administration of President Donald Trump has said it will challenge. They charge that Chinese firms have stolen ideas and software or forced firms to turn over intellectual property as part of the price of doing business with the world<6C>s fastest- growing major economy. The Trump administration has launched a so-called Section 301 investigation into China<6E>s alleged misappropriation of intellectual property, and the president could impose tariffs or import restrictions to protect U.S. firms from what the administration deems unfair trade practices. China <20>cheats across the board,<2C> said Richard Ellings, testifying on behalf of the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, a private group set up five years ago to monitor China<6E>s handling of trademarks, patents and other forms of intellectual property. <20>Just agreeing to manufacture in the country opens yourself<6C> to theft or forced technology transfer, Ellings said, noting that a former U.S. official called Chinese cyber theft of intellectual property <20>the greatest transfer of wealth in history.<2E> Ellings said it requires a U.S. response based on <20>strength and leverage.<2E> However, Erin Ennis, senior vice president of the U.S. China Business Council, a trade group of 200 companies that do business in China, said that surveys of its members found that just a third had been asked to transfer technology and that there was <20>a minority ... who are forced to transfer technology and are not compensated.<2E> <20>The administration has the opportunity to lead like-minded countries,<2C> to encourage China to address remaining problems rather than taking unilateral steps that could risk growing trade between the countries, she said. Others noted the recent creation on a pilot basis of three special intellectual property courts in China as a sign of progress. <20>That<61>s a positive step,<2C> said Scott Partridge, head of the American Bar Association<6F>s intellectual property section. Representatives of several Chinese commercial groups said at the hearing that the country should be given credit for the steady progress it has made in building an IP enforcement system from scratch as it joined the world economy. Section 301 investigations are broad in scope, and have not been used much in recent years. The panel conducting the probe will submit a recommendation to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Allegations that Chinese firms routinely ignore patent and copyright protections have been widespread, and have been amplified in recent years by the country<72>s plans to compete in the manufacture of semiconductors, the largest commercial aircraft, and other sophisticated goods where the United States holds an advantage. (In 6th paragraph, corrects attribution for <20>the greatest transfer of wealth in history<72> to <20>a former U.S. official,<2C> not Richard Ellings) Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by David Chance and Andrea Ricci 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trade-china/some-u-s-b
'12cb70b05f1ef2b09f90453bfef1a8af150cc0fb'|'Brazil''s Bradesco to choose new CEO among internal candidates, CEO Trabuco says'|'October 11, 2017 / 3:37 PM / in 15 minutes Brazil''s Bradesco to choose new CEO among internal candidates, CEO Trabuco says Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SAO PAULO, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Brazil<69>s Banco Bradesco SA will probably choose a new Chief Executive Officer from internal candidates, CEO Luiz Carlos Trabuco told reporters on Wednesday. Trabuco will temporarily hold the CEO and chairman posts at Brazil<69>s second-largest private lender, following the resignation of former chairman L<>zaro Brand<6E>o on Tuesday. The bank is choosing a new CEO and the name will be announced 30 days before the bank<6E>s shareholder assembly in March, Trabuco said. (Reporting by Aluisio Alves; Writing by Tatiana Bautzer) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/banco-bradesco-ceo/brazils-bradesco-to-choose-new-ceo-among-internal-candidates-ceo-trabuco-says-idUSL2N1MM0ZP'|'2017-10-11T18:36:00.000+03:00'
'43c8024097e0613e7ab67973537cb8ce3e19ebb0'|'PRESS DIGEST-Canada - Oct 11'|' 32 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago PRESS DIGEST-Canada - Oct 11 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 11 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories from selected Canadian newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. THE GLOBE AND MAIL ** Sears Canada Inc said it plans to liquidate its remaining 131 stores and put 12,000 employees out of work, after an attempt by its executive chairman to save the department store retailer failed. tgam.ca/2guGsTs ** Canadian auto-parts giant Magna International Inc has joined a consortium led by BMW AG that is developing a self-driving vehicle platform that can be used by multiple auto makers. tgam.ca/2gujPPa NATIONAL POST ** Starlight Investments, one of the largest privately held apartment landlords in Canada, is creating a $1.3 billion partnership with two of the largest pension funds in the country to look for multi-family assets in south United States, a region largely free of rent control. bit.ly/2guMZ0j ** Sabrina Geremia is taking over as director of Google''s Canadian Operations, the company said Tuesday, after filling in as interim leader since Sam Sebastian left for Pelmorex Media Inc in July. bit.ly/2guaYwQ (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-canada/press-digest-canada-oct-11-idUSL4N1MM3SI'|'2017-10-11T13:32:00.000+03:00'
'6e82ddc89f6c8c7b1c5bf620ff52552ab5c4639d'|'BRIEF-Triumph- Agreement with MD Helicopters extends support for MD 530F Cayuse Warrior'|' 27 PM / Updated 13 minutes ago BRIEF-Triumph- Agreement with MD Helicopters extends support for MD 530F Cayuse Warrior Reuters Staff Oct 9 (Reuters) - Triumph Group Inc * Triumph agreement with MD Helicopters extends support for the MD 530F Cayuse Warrior * Triumph Group-Triumph<70>s integrated systems - geared solutions to extend deliveries of main rotor gearbox,tail rotor gearbox through 2022  '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-triumph-agreement-with-md-helicopt/brief-triumph-agreement-with-md-helicopters-extends-support-for-md-530f-cayuse-warrior-idUSFWN1MK0P7'|'2017-10-09T23:27:00.000+03:00'
'ca5f959a7bdc5b92d386e03f3f8944751a65784d'|'Oil prices stable as OPEC says market is rebalancing'|'October 10, 2017 / 1:13 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Oil prices rise as OPEC says market is rebalancing Henning Gloystein 4 Min Read An employee holds a gas pump at a petrol station in Sao Paulo, Brazil, November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices edged up on Tuesday as OPEC said there were clear signs the market was rebalancing and as U.S. production remained offline following Hurricane Nate. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were trading at $49.65 per barrel at 0648 GMT, up 7 cents, or 0.1 percent, from their last close. Brent crude futures LCOc1, the international benchmark for oil prices, were up 12 cents, or 0.2 percent, at $55.91 a barrel. Traders said prices were supported as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said oil markets were rebalancing fast after years of oversupply. <20>There is clear evidence that the market is rebalancing,<2C> OPEC<45>s secretary general Mohammad Barkindo told Reuters on Monday, repeating the message again in India on Tuesday. <20>The process of global destocking continues, both onshore and offshore, with positive developments in recent months showing not only a quickening of the process but a massive drainage of oil tanks across all regions,<2C> he said. OPEC has led an effort to cut output to end years of overproduction that created a huge supply overhang. Tighter market conditions are reflected in the shape of the Brent crude forward curve <0#LCO:>, which has flipped from contango - when future deliveries are priced higher than those for immediate sale - into backwardation, when it is more profitable to sell oil promptly than storing it for sale later. STRONG ENOUGH DEMAND? The OPEC-led production cuts started in January and are set to expire at the end of March 2018. There have been talks about extending the curbs, but no formal agreement has been reached. JP Morgan said that previous <20>concerns that OPEC compliance would fade into the fourth quarter now appear unfounded<65>, and that <20>stronger than assumed economic growth offers the potential for tight market conditions to continue if OPEC extends the current deal for another nine months<68>. Short-term price support was also coming from the United States, where 85 percent of U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil production, or 1.49 million barrels a day, was offline following Hurricane Nate, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior<6F>s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement late on Monday. Oil companies evacuated staff from Gulf platforms and curtailed output ahead of the storm, which hit the region last weekend. Traders said they did not expect the disruptions to last long. <20>Units that were shut down as a precautionary measure in the advent of Tropical storm Nate have commenced restarting of operations. Not much damage appears to have been done,<2C> said Sukrit Vijayakar, managing director of consultancy Trifecta. Since the start of the year, U.S. oil production has risen by 10 percent to over 9.5 million barrels per day (bpd), potentially undermining OPEC<45>s efforts to re-balance the market. <20>OPEC ... cannot afford to let up, because more oil is coming and the question is: <20>Is the demand increase big enough to absorb that?'',<2C> Torbjorn Tornqvist, chief executive of trading house Gunvor told Reuters on Tuesday. Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Joseph Radford and Tom Hogue'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-oil/oil-prices-stable-as-opec-says-market-is-rebalancing-idUKKBN1CF044'|'2017-10-10T04:13:00.000+03:00'
'efb3c69d22781bd7d72dd3e79b16d34e57b609c9'|'Honeywell to disclose results of portfolio review on Tuesday'|'A logo of Honeywell is pictured on their booth during the European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (EBACE) in Geneva, Switzerland, May 22, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse (Reuters) - U.S. industrial conglomerate Honeywell International Inc ( HON.N ) said on Monday it would disclose the results of its portfolio review before markets open on Tuesday.Honeywell is resisting pressure from activist hedge fund Third Point LLC, which has urged the company to spin off its entire aerospace division, a move Third Point believes could create $20 billion in shareholder value.Reuters reported on Sunday that Honeywell was planning to spin off certain non-core assets and create at least two new publicly listed companies.Honeywell is considering placing its turbochargers business, which produces components that improve the performance and efficiency of cars and trucks, into one of the newly created companies, the sources said.Honeywell currently lists turbochargers as part of its aerospace business. The sources did not disclose which other assets Honeywell was looking to spin off.The aerospace business, Honeywell<6C>s biggest, makes auxiliary power units and engines for aircraft made by Bombardier Inc ( BBDb.TO ), Textron Inc ( TXT.N ) and General Dynamics Corp ( GD.N ), among other products.Honeywell<6C>s other businesses include energy efficient products and solutions for homes, specialty chemicals, electronic and advanced materials, and sensing, safety and security technologies for buildings, homes and industries.The company said it will hold a conference call with investors at 8.00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday.Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-honeywell-spinoff/honeywell-to-disclose-results-of-portfolio-review-on-tuesday-idUSKBN1CE2II'|'2017-10-10T00:37:00.000+03:00'
'33acaa699df9ad3139519a0bf12114a9df7c3d94'|'UK proposes internet firm levy with web safety plan'|'October 10, 2017 / 11:14 PM / Updated 8 hours ago UK proposes internet firm levy with web safety plan Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Karen Bradley, Britain''s Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, leaves a cabinet meeting in Downing Street, London September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah Mckay LONDON (Reuters) - Britain published proposals on Wednesday for a levy on social media firms and internet providers to help fund its online safety strategy, designed to tackle bullying, abuse and other risks for children and vulnerable users. Prime Minister Theresa May and her ministers have been critical of firms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google, repeatedly calling on them to do more to stop the spread of extremist content online and help victims of abuse. May first promised a levy on <20>social media companies and communication service providers<72> in her 2017 election manifesto. On Wednesday, digital minister Karen Bradley published proposals for an Internet Safety Strategy including the levy, a code of practice on removing intimidating or humiliating content from social media, and online safety classes in schools. <20>The internet has been an amazing force for good, but it has caused undeniable suffering and can be an especially harmful place for children and vulnerable people,<2C> Bradley said in a statement. <20>We need an approach to the internet that protects everyone without restricting growth and innovation in the digital economy.<2E> The government proposal, which invites views from the industry before being formulated into legislation, said the levy would initially be sought on a voluntary basis. <20>We may then seek to underpin this levy in legislation, to ensure the continued and reliable operation of the levy,<2C> the document said. <20>The levy will not be a new tax on social media.<2E> It likened the proposed levy to an existing one paid on a voluntary basis by the gambling sector to fund charitable work. Social media firms have typically been exempt from regulatory fees that can apply to communication services. Recently-passed laws in Germany give social media networks 24 hours to delete or block obviously criminal content and seven days to deal with less clear-cut cases. Reporting by William James; editing by Stephen Addison 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-internet-strategy/uk-proposes-internet-firm-levy-with-web-safety-plan-idUSKBN1CF35M'|'2017-10-11T02:01:00.000+03:00'
'8f16cff89883a2ea5f7fcf88d1bffa9511d41c4f'|'UPDATE 1-Banco Bradesco chairman steps down, CEO takes role'|'October 10, 2017 / 10:57 PM / Updated 24 minutes ago UPDATE 1-Banco Bradesco chairman steps down, CEO takes role Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Adds details of succession) SAO PAULO, Oct 10 (Reuters) - The chairman of Banco Bradesco SA, 91-year-old L<>zaro de Mello Brand<6E>o, is stepping down after running its board for nearly three decades, accelerating the succession process for Brazil<69>s second-largest private lender. Chief Executive Officer Luiz Carlos Trabuco will replace Brand<6E>o as chairman immediately and stay on as CEO for six months. A new CEO will be chosen at the shareholders assembly in March, Bradesco said in a securities filing late on Tuesday. Brand<6E>o has worked at Bradesco for 75 years, since the bank was founded. He worked alongside founder Amador Aguiar and kept a tight grip on management in recent decades. He has been chairman since 1990 and served as CEO from 1981 to 1999. The choice of a new CEO was delayed two years ago when a top candidate for the job, insurance executive Marco Antonio Rossi, died in a plane crash. Vice presidents including Mauricio Minas, Alexandre Gluher, Josu<73> Pancini and Octavio Lazari are seen within the bank as possible CEO candidates, according to sources with knowledge of the matter. (Reporting by Brad Haynes and Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Leslie Adler) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/banco-bradesco-board/update-1-banco-bradesco-chairman-steps-down-ceo-takes-role-idUSL2N1ML1ZZ'|'2017-10-11T01:55:00.000+03:00'
'807dc736a34a1308195cc4811a0df0ce85178320'|'Mexican mogul Slim donates $105 mln to earthquake recovery efforts'|' 19 PM / Updated 8 minutes ago Mexican mogul Slim donates $105 mln to earthquake recovery efforts Reuters Staff 2 Min Read MEXICO CITY, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Mexican mogul Carlos Slim<69>s foundation will donate more than $105 million (1.978 billion pesos) to help the country recover from two large earthquakes in September, Slim announced on Tuesday. The Carlos Slim Foundation also collected more than $21 million dollars (395.6 million pesos) from outside donors, raising the total contribution to more than $126 million (2.373 billion pesos). More than 217,000 donors participated in the effort, Slim said. The gift comes from the foundation<6F>s endowment, Slim added. On Sept. 19, central Mexico was struck by an earthquake that measured 7.1 on the U.S. Geological Survey scale, level ling dozens of buildings and killing at least 369 people, making it the deadliest temblor in a generation. The earthquake came less than two weeks after an 8.1 quake struck southern Mexico, killing at least 98 people. Estimates of the cost of rebuilding range from about $2 billion, according to the government, to as much as $4 billion, a calculation by investment bank Nomura. Speaking at a press conference in Mexico City on Tuesday, Slim said the group will focus its efforts on rebuilding schools, reinforcing historic buildings and assisting hospitals. He voiced optimism about the effects the reconstruction efforts could have for the Mexican economy. <20>I think it will be a very good factor, a big factor of employment in all of the affected zones,<2C> he said. America Movil, Latin America<63>s largest telecommunications firm by number of subscribers, is the crown jewel of Slim<69>s empire, which also includes retailer Grupo Sanborns and commercial banking company Grupo Inbursa. ($1 = 18.8030 Mexican pesos) (Reporting by Julia Love) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/mexico-slim/mexican-mogul-slim-donates-105-mln-to-earthquake-recovery-efforts-idUSL2N1ML243'|'2017-10-11T02:18:00.000+03:00'
'cd52362e866cd54b71eba6a18b10b25bcf0d9448'|'Altus Strategies explorer joins the Mali gold rush'|'October 11, 2017 / 2:14 PM / in 8 minutes Altus Strategies explorer joins the Mali gold rush Reuters Staff * Malian gold attracts flurry of activity * Junior companies struggling to emerge from price crash * Deal represents premium but market is subdued By Barbara Lewis LONDON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - British explorer Altus Strategies on Wednesday signed an outline 3.4 million pound ($4.5 million) deal to buy Legend Gold Corp and said it was aiming to make the most of a subdued market to grow the newly-listed company further. The smallcap mining sector is taking longer to recover from the commodity price crash of 2015-16 than the majors. But the juniors have been increasingly active in Mali, regarded as a relatively stable jurisdiction, where Legend has a portfolio of gold projects and licences covering nearly 400 square kilometres. Altus Strategies, which has signed a letter of intent to buy Toronto-listed Legend Gold, valuing it at 3.4 million pounds, said it was offering a 130 percent premium to Legend<6E>s market close on Tuesday, but given low levels of liquidity for small miners that could still be cheap. <20>Hopefully our timing is good. Some companies can go up 25 percent in a day in a highly illiquid market where price is not necessarily the same as value,<2C> Steven Poulton, CEO of Altus Strategies, said in an interview. The letter of intent should be followed by a firm all-equity deal by the end of the month. Nervousness about Africa risk revived by an upsurge in resource nationalism, especially in Tanzania, has rattled the sector, but Mali<6C>s gold is viewed as a relatively safe haven. On Monday, another small miner Cora Gold listed on London<6F>s AIM to raise cash to fund its mining project in Mali. Altus Strategies listed in August to raise funds for its vocation as an African-focused project generator, which aspires to sell on its assets once they are established or find venture partners to develop them. It has projects in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Morocco and Liberia, covering a range of commodities, in addition to its anticipated purchases in Mali. Poulton said until now Altus had been <20>underweight gold<6C> and was still in acquisition mode. <20>We<57>re restless in the sense we want to create value. Once this transaction is done, we will have grown the business, but we are constantly on the look out for accretive opportunities,<2C> he said. Michael Winn, CEO of Legend who will join the Altus board as a non-executive director, said in a statement the deal would be <20>positive and transformative<76> for Legend shareholders. $1 = 0.7583 pounds Editing by David Evans 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/altus-legend-mining/altus-strategies-explorer-joins-the-mali-gold-rush-idUSL8N1MM4D6'|'2017-10-11T17:13:00.000+03:00'
'5e1ad32b290c79b3d3fb2c98c3af58c5e0d7ad08'|'Hitachi Kokusai says KKR raised offer price to 2,900 yen a share'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - KKR & Co LP ( KKR.N ) has raised its offer price for Hitachi Kokusai Electric Inc ( 6756.T ) to 2,900 yen a share from 2,503 yen, the Japanese firm said on Wednesday, after a U.S. hedge fund put pressure on the private equity firm to revise terms.A KKR representative in Tokyo declined to comment on the revised offer.KKR agreed in April to buy the chip-making machinery and communications and video equipment business from Hitachi Ltd ( 6501.T ). But the deal was put on hold in August when KKR said it would continue discussions with Hitachi Kokusai after a third-party committee reporting to the Japanese firm<72>s board said it did not support the terms.KKR<4B>s improved bid also comes after U.S. hedge fund Elliott Management said last month it owned 5.01 percent of Hitachi Kokusai.Elliott, known for buying stakes in firms in the middle of takeovers or acquisitions and seeking better deals for shareholders, then raised its stake in Hitachi Kokusai to 7.11 percent, according to a filing dated Sept. 28.Since Elliott<74>s first disclosure of its stakeholding on Sept. 11 Hitachi Kokusai<61>s share price has risen 12.5 percent and is now trading 24 percent above KKR<4B>s original offer.Trading in Hitachi Kokusai<61>s shares closed on Wednesday at 3,115 yen.KKR plans to spend 144 billion yen to buy up to 48.33 percent of Hitachi Kokusai at 2,900 yen a share through the tender offer, which opens on Thursday, according to a statement from Hitachi Kokusai.As part of the same deal, Hitachi Kokusai plans to buy back a 51.67 percent stake from Hitachi for 1,870 yen a share - up from an initial price of 1,710 yen - and cancel those shares.After completion, KKR plans to spin off Hitachi Kokusai<61>s chip-making equipment division, retaining 100 percent ownership.KKR will sell to Hitachi and investment fund Japan Industrial Partners Inc (JIP) 40 percent of the remaining business.Last week, U.S. buyout firm Bain Capital LP<4C>s offer price for Japan<61>s Asatsu-DK Inc ( 9747.T ) was similarly labeled too low, by the advertising agency<63>s second-largest shareholder.Reporting by Junko Fujita; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-hitachi-kokusai-m-a-kkr/hitachi-kokusai-says-kkr-raised-offer-price-to-2900-yen-a-share-idINKBN1CG18C'|'2017-10-11T08:33:00.000+03:00'
'07b3a5adae39ab7c32a0adb20ede72fb2f95c182'|'Harvey, Irma, Maria seen dragging on U.S. corporate results'|'October 11, 2017 / 7:46 PM / Updated 19 minutes ago Harvey, Irma, Maria seen dragging on U.S. corporate results Caroline Valetkevitch 4 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - A trio of hurricanes likely hurt results of insurers and other U.S. companies in the third quarter, but a stronger economy may have helped to offset the damage. Third-quarter results from S&P 500 companies over the next several weeks are expected to show slower profit growth than in the past two earnings seasons, the slowest in a year, partly because in the same 2016 period U.S. earnings reversed a year-long profit decline. Yet results also will reflect a hit from storms in the southern United States and Puerto Rico in a broad range of industries including energy, transportation, chemicals manufacturing and retail. <20>For both macro data and earnings, (the hurricanes) create more uncertainty,<2C> said Bob Doll, chief equity strategist at Nuveen Asset Management in Princeton, New Jersey. Analysts expect S&P 500 earnings rose just 4.3 percent in the third quarter, with sales growth of 4.4 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data. Earnings grew 15.3 percent in the first quarter of 2017 and 12.3 percent in the second. While other companies could eventually benefit from rebuilding of homes, businesses and infrastructure following the storms, the near-term effect on results is negative, strategists said. Jonathan Golub, chief U.S. equity strategist at Credit Suisse Group in New York, said his S&P growth estimate takes into account a 2-percentage point hit from the hurricanes, though he said it was difficult to gauge the exact impact. At the same time, investors are likely to look past the earnings impact, since the storms are a non-recurring event, he said. American International Group ( AIG.N ) this week said it expected to book pre-tax catastrophe losses of $2.9 billion to $3.1 billion. Analysts now expect S&P 500 insurance companies<65> earnings dropped about 45 percent from a year ago, while overall financials fell an estimated 9.1 percent, the weakest forecast among S&P sectors, according to Thomson Reuters data. Medtronic ( MDT.N ), Eaton Corp ( ETN.N ), Sherwin-Williams Co ( SHW.N ), Darden Restaurants Inc ( DRI.N ), FedEx Corp ( FDX.N ) and JetBlue Airways ( JBLU.O ) have all cited storm impact ahead of earnings. U.S. companies had some factors working in their favour in the quarter, though, including surprisingly strong economic data, including readings on the manufacturing and services sectors. The stronger economic data and the recent tax reform proposal by the Donald Trump administration have helped stocks set a string of record highs heading into earnings season. Many investors will want to see evidence that earnings can justify high multiples, with the S&P 500 .SPX now trading at about 18 times expected earnings, above its long-term average of 15. The U.S. dollar index .DXY, whose average in the third quarter was down 2.6 percent versus a year ago, also should benefit results. <20>Tech derives the biggest percentage of any sector of revenues overseas, so all else being equal, that<61>s a big boost,<2C> said David Joy, chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial. While energy is expected to have the biggest year-over-year profit gain because of the oil price recovery, technology forecasts have shown the biggest improvement since July 1, the data showed. Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Nick Zieminski 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-results-outlook/harvey-irma-maria-seen-dragging-on-u-s-corporate-results-idINKBN1CG2Q3'|'2017-10-11T17:46:00.000+03:00'
'551a494371a359da91939a54432ded600015643f'|'Indirect bidders buy most U.S. 10-year notes since January'|'NEW YORK, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Indirect bidders which include fund managers and foreign central banks on Wednesday purchased their biggest share of U.S. benchmark 10-year Treasury notes at an auction in nine months, according to U.S. Treasury Department data.The Treasury awarded 69.10 percent of the $20 billion of 10-year notes offered, above the 55.28 percent awarded at the 10-year auction last month and the highest percentage since January<72>s 70.52 percent. (Reporting by Richard Leong, editing by G Crosse)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-treasury-auction/indirect-bidders-buy-most-u-s-10-year-notes-since-january-idINL2N1MM1EP'|'2017-10-11T15:22:00.000+03:00'
'1a6f42d8b6ad7fe8f34129266c2da422dc375d9e'|'Why McKinsey is under attack in South Africa'|'MCKINSEY, a global management consultancy known for its discreet profile and rarefied air, is unused to the sort of tub-thumping popular revolt it is experiencing in South Africa. Such is public outrage over the Guptas, an Indian-born business dynasty accused of growing rich off their relationship with President Jacob Zuma, that a few professional-services firms linked to the family, including McKinsey<65>as well as SAP, a German software giant<6E>have become targets of Twitter storms and protest banners.Anti-corruption groups and the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) have drawn blood in the case of Bell Pottinger, a British public-relations firm accused of orchestrating a racially divisive public-relations campaign on behalf of the Guptas. A complaint by the DA to a British PR industry association set in motion Bell Pottinger<65>s swift implosion in September. At KPMG, a global audit firm, eight senior executives in South Africa left in the same month because of the firm<72>s work for the Guptas. Such victories have fuelled the mood. On October 5th civil-society groups picketed McKinsey<65>s Johannesburg offices.  At the heart of the affair are allegations of <20>state capture<72> by the Guptas, who moved from India to South Africa in the 1990s and turned a computer parts business into a conglomerate with properties in media, mining and professional services. One of Mr Zuma<6D>s sons, Duduzane, has worked for the family. A report in 2016 by South Africa<63>s public protector, an independent ombudsman, detailed allegations that the Guptas had meddled in cabinet appointments and used their connections to scoop lucrative government contracts (they and Mr Zuma have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing).McKinsey did highly-paid work for Eskom, a state-owned electricity monopoly at the centre of several of the <20>state capture<72> allegations. Documents show that McKinsey worked with Trillian Capital, a local consultancy that until recently was owned by Salim Essa, a Gupta associate, as part of winning contracts from the utility.As an international firm requiring a local partner, McKinsey had previously worked with a related company called Regiments. The consulting firm says that after Trillian emerged from Regiments in late 2015, it carried out a due diligence review and cut its ties with Trillian a few months later. McKinsey says it never entered into a formal contract with Trillian or made payments to the company, and there are letters to show that McKinsey warned Eskom about the risks of doing business with Trillian.But that has not put a stop to questions about the relationship. A former executive of Trillian, Bianca Goodson, has alleged that Trillian acted as a gatekeeper, using Mr Essa<73>s connections to land contracts and then passing the work over to <20>internationally recognised companies<65> including McKinsey. The firm stands behind its work for Eskom, says Steve John, global director of communications at McKinsey. Neither the Gupta family nor any company publicly linked to the Guptas has ever been a client of the firm, he notes. It has hired a law firm, Norton Rose Fulbright, to carry out a detailed internal investigation.It is an embarrassing situation for a group that prides itself on operating as <20>One Firm<72> across its local offices, says Tom Rodenhauser of ALM Intelligence, a market-research firm that monitors the consulting industry. McKinsey has weathered damage to its reputation before; in 2010 one of its consultants pleaded guilty to passing inside information to a New York-based hedge fund, Galleon Group. McKinsey<65>s close links with Enron also meant that its reputation was tarnished by the energy company<6E>s collapse in 2001.Politicians<6E> scrutiny may drag on. The DA party says it will push for the firm<72>s executives to appear before a parliamentary inquiry into Eskom this month. The party has also gone to the police to file a complaint of fraud and racketeering against McKinsey, and written to America<63>s Securities and Exchange Commission and Britain<69>s Seriou
'11e8f15c50be9efb83e31f9b5c76cfbd3181e41d'|'METALS-Nickel leads metal prices higher as China party meeting looms'|'October 13, 2017 / 2:02 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago METALS-Nickel leads metal prices higher as China party meeting looms Reuters Staff 4 Min Read SYDNEY, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Nickel led across-the-board gains in Shanghai metals futures on Friday on bets China<6E>s Communist Party congress next week will result in stronger demand for imports. The potential by China to accelerate or broaden moves to eliminate environmentally inefficient mines and metals plants to better meet international industrial standards following the meeting is seen as a potential boost for imports. China, the most important trading partner of more than 130 countries, is the world<6C>s biggest greenhouse gas emitter. A weakened U.S. dollar and growing arbitrage opportunities, particularly in copper, were also fuelling gains, according to commodities traders, as premiums for copper held in China bonded zones have climbed by $9 this week to $74, the highest in more than two months. CU-BMPBW-SHMET <20>Nickel once again led the sector higher, as an ongoing curb on Chinese output continues to support prices,<2C> ANZ said in a note. <20>However demand also remains strong, particularly from the alloys industries.<2E> FUNDAMENTALS * LONDON NICKEL: Three-month nickel on the London Metal Exchange was up 0.2 percent at $11,420 a tonne by 0100 GMT, extending a 2.3-percent rise from the previous session. * SHANGHAI NICKEL: The most-traded nickel contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange were 2.7 percent higher at 91,820 yuan ($13,942.75) a tonne. * PARTY MEETING OUTCOME: Many metals market participants are awaiting the outcome of China<6E>s Communist Party congress next week, Capital Economics analyst Caroline Bain said, for an indication of broader policy initiatives and their implications for metals demand. * COPPER PRICES: Three-month LME copper was flat at $6,887 a tonne, after hitting an intraday one-month peak of $6,903 overnight. ShFE copper climbed more than 1 percent at the open. * COPPER STOCKS: Stocks of copper in LME warehouses MCU-STOCKS fell by another 1,025 tonnes, exchange data showed on Thursday. They are now down 9 percent from mid-September<65>s two-month peak. * CHINA COAL MINES SHUT: China<6E>s Hebei province has ordered two big coal producers to shut a total of 59 mines during a key Communist Party gathering in Beijing later this month, state-run China Coal News reported on Thursday. * MACQUARIE: Australia<69>s Macquarie Group, a rising commodities bank powerhouse due to its turn towards the energy sector, is paring back its aggressive lending against metals, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. * WEAK DOLLAR STEADIES: The dollar steadied in early Asian trading on Friday, on track for weekly losses as investors awaited U.S. inflation data to gauge the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will stick to its plan to raise interest rates again this year. * Asian stocks held firm near a 10-year high on Friday thanks to expectations of brisk global growth, although investors held off chasing the shares higher ahead of U.S. and Chinese economic data as well as the Chinese Communist Party congress next week. For the top stories in metals and other news, click or MARKETS NEWS * DATA AHEAD (GMT) * China Trade balance Sep 1230 U.S. Consumer prices Sep 1230 U.S. Retail sales Sep 1400 U.S. Business inventories Aug 1400 U.S. Univ of Michigan sentiment index Oct *No fixed timing PRICES'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/global-metals/metals-nickel-leads-metal-prices-higher-as-china-party-meeting-looms-idUSL4N1MO195'|'2017-10-13T04:59:00.000+03:00'
'6a46a266a5183687034862be6da0065d1a86c7f4'|'China says trade likely to grow at double-digit rate this year if trend continues'|'October 13, 2017 / 2:44 AM / Updated 2 hours ago China says trade likely to grow at double-digit rate this year if trend continues Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Containers are seen unloaded from the Maersk''s Triple-E giant container ship Maersk Majestic, one of the world''s largest container ships, at the Yangshan Deep Water Port, part of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, in Shanghai, China, September 24, 2016. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s foreign trade will likely to grow at a double-digit rate this year if current conditions continue, the customs bureau said on Friday as it began releasing September data. China<6E>s exports denominated in yuan rose 9.0 percent in September, while yuan-denominated imports jumped 19.5 percent. Trade improved in the first nine months of the year due to a better international environment and as stronger global demand boosted exports, a spokesman for the General Administration of Customs told a briefing. Higher commodity prices boosted import and export values, though high base effects led to a slowdown in year-on-year trade growth in the third quarter, customs said. Reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk; Editing by Kim Coghill 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-economy-trade-2017/china-says-trade-likely-to-grow-at-double-digit-rate-this-year-if-trend-continues-idUKKBN1CI073'|'2017-10-13T05:44:00.000+03:00'
'a836a329fde7f4692413d1403afd575b867f768f'|'Morning News Call - India, October 13'|'To access the newsletter, click on the link: here If you would like to receive this newsletter via email, please register at: here FACTORS TO WATCH 10:00 am: DIPP Director Sushil Satpute and ITC India Tobacco Divisional Chief Executive Sandip Kaul at FICCI event in New Delhi. 10:00 am: Lloyd''s India CEO Shankar Garigiparthy and SBI Life Insurance Executive Vice President N.R.V. Roopkumar at NIA Insurance Summit in Mumbai. 10:00 am: Chemicals and Fertilizers Minister Ananth Kumar at ASSOCHAM conference on Generic Drugs in Bengaluru. 10:30 am: Department of Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar at National Atal Pension Yojana conference in New Delhi. 5:00 pm: General Insurance Corp. IPO closes today in Mumbai. 5:00 pm: RBI to release weekly foreign exchange data in Mumbai. 5:30 pm: Reliance Industries Joint CFO Srikanth Venkatachari to brief media post results in Mumbai. LIVECHAT- QUIZ EAST The first of our Friday quizzes focuses on Asia and the week''s top news. Tests your wits and googling speed at 11:00 am IST. To join the conversation, click on the link: here INDIA TOP NEWS <20> Retail inflation remains steady in September, hopes for rate cut bleak India''s annual consumer price inflation remained steady in September from the previous month, but hopes of a rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India remain bleak as it expects higher inflation in coming months. <20> Bharti Airtel to acquire Tata''s money-losing mobile unit for nothing Bharti Airtel Ltd is acquiring the Tata conglomerate''s consumer mobile business virtually free of charge in a deal that gives India''s top wireless player a major subscriber base boost, while stemming the bleed for Tata from a money-losing venture. <20> TCS positive on retail business turnaround, cautious on financial services India''s top IT services firm Tata Consultancy Services Ltd said it expected an uptick in the retail business segment in the coming quarters but remained cautious about the banking and financial services segments that form the bulk of its revenues. <20> IndusInd Bank Q2 profit rises 25 percent IndusInd Bank Ltd posted a 25 percent rise in its second-quarter net profit, helped by higher interest income. <20> Reliance Nippon Life AMC IPO seeks to raise up to $237 million Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management Ltd''s initial public offering, the first by an Indian mutual fund manager, seeks to raise up to 15.42 billion rupees with the company on Thursday setting a price range of 247-252 rupees per share. <20> Motilal Oswal, MMTC-PAMP launch digital gold service A subsidiary of Indian brokerage Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd and MMTC-PAMP India, the biggest refiner in the country, launched a service on Thursday allowing customers to buy gold on the brokerage''s digital platform. <20> Allianz, Shapoorji Pallonji partner to set up $500 million India fund German insurer Allianz SE said it had partnered with Indian conglomerate Shapoorji Pallonji Group to set up a $500 million real-estate fund aimed at the office market in India. GLOBAL TOP NEWS <20>Samsung Electronics CEO Kwon Oh-hyun to step down from management Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said its CEO and Vice Chairman Kwon Oh-hyun had decided to step down from management, as it forecast record third-quarter profits on the back of soaring memory chip prices. <20> Kuroda says BOJ to keep easy policy, tread different path from Fed, ECB Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda on Thursday stressed the central bank''s resolve to maintain its ultra-loose monetary policy, even as its U.S. and European counterparts begin to dial back their massive, crisis-mode monetary stimulus. <20> Frustrated by Congress, Trump signs order to weaken Obamacare President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an order to make it easier for Americans to buy bare-bones health insurance plans, using his presidential powers to undermine Obamacare after fellow Republicans in Congress failed to repeal the 2010 law. LOCAL MARKETS OUTLOOK (As reported by NewsRise) <20> The SGX Nifty Futures were at 10,110.00
'857df318c042392ee32044f7b4a21653161e5ed7'|'UPDATE 1-Airbus says has not found suppliers affected by Kobe scandal'|' 23 AM / in 9 minutes UPDATE 1-Airbus says has not found suppliers affected by Kobe scandal Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Adds Kobe-affiliated company supplying parts for A350) PARIS, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Europe<70>s Airbus does not buy products directly from Japan<61>s Kobe Steel but is investigating whether any of its suppliers have been affected by a cheating scandal at the Japanese group, an Airbus spokesman said. <20>So far we have not identified any suppliers that procure materials from Kobe Steel for parts fitted on our aircraft,<2C> he said by email. In July last year, however, Kobe Steel said it had begun mass production of titanium forged parts for A350 landing gear. The parts would be supplied to France<63>s Safran, which manufactures the gear for Airbus<75>s newest long-haul jet. Safran had no immediate comment. Announcing the contract jointly with Safran in 2014, Kobe said the parts for A350 landing gear would be manufactured by Kobe Steel and its affiliate Japan Aeroforge in Kurashiki. Japan Aeroforge is a venture controlled by Kobe Steel and Hitachi Metals. A Kobe Steel spokesman said that Japan Aeroforge is still making parts for Safran Landing Systems. The venture<72>s products are <20>not at this point<6E> included in the probe, he added. The A350 entered service in 2015. It was not immediately clear whether any Kobe-supplied parts had yet entered the fleet. Asked about the status of the Kobe contract with Safran, an Airbus spokeswoman said its investigation was continuing. The Nikkei newspaper reported earlier that more than 30 non-Japanese customers including Airbus had been affected by data fabrication discovered at the Japanese firm. (Reporting by Tim Hepher, Tim Kelly; Editing by Sarah White and Adrian Croft) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/kobe-steel-scandal-airbus/update-1-airbus-says-has-not-found-suppliers-affected-by-kobe-scandal-idUSL8N1MO1H9'|'2017-10-13T12:20:00.000+03:00'
'7bd76476414077b0376f0f4a0f9918d0c44bbc36'|'Mercedes-Benz recalls 14,842 Sprinter cars in Russia: standards agency'|'October 13, 2017 / 10:20 AM / in 8 hours Mercedes-Benz recalls 14,842 Sprinter cars in Russia: standards agency Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The logo of Mercedes-Benz is pictured at the 38th Bangkok International Motor Show in Bangkok, Thailand March 28, 2017. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia<69>s technical safety watchdog Rosstandart said on Friday it had been informed about the recall of 14,842 Mercedes-Benz ( DAIGn.DE ) Sprinter Classic 909 cars sold between March 2014 and December 2016, due to a combination of technical faults. Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Maria Kiselyova 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-autos-recall/mercedes-benz-recalls-14842-sprinter-cars-in-russia-standards-agency-idUSKBN1CI18G'|'2017-10-13T13:18:00.000+03:00'
'd292cbf7d87fffcc1075532d71538475f5c7ef4c'|'Bunge shares jump after WSJ reports Glencore standstill agreement'|' 23 PM / Updated 18 minutes ago Bunge shares jump after WSJ reports Glencore standstill agreement Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 13 (Reuters) - Shares of U.S. commodities trader Bunge Ltd surged on Friday after the Wall Street Journal reported that Glencore PLC had a standstill agreement that temporarily prevents the Swiss company from making a hostile bid for Bunge. Bunge had rebuffed a takeover approach by Glencore in May. Speculation has swirled for months that Glencore would make another takeover approach. The standstill agreement suggests it is still interested in a deal and may be only biding its time, the newspaper said. The standstill agreement, in which Glencore agreed with Bunge not to buy any more Bunge shares or make an unsolicited takeover approach, expires early next year, it said, citing sources. Glencore declined to comment on the story. Bunge did not immediately reply to a request for comment. A string of poor results by large multinational grain trading companies has whetted investors<72> appetite for an industry consolidation. Large grain traders have struggled in recent years as a global oversupply and thin trading margins have squeezed their core commodity trading operations, including those of Bunge and rivals Archer Daniels Midland Co, Cargill Inc and Louis Dreyfus Co. The companies, known as the ABCD quartet of grain trading giants, have also been facing stiff competition from rivals like Glencore that are seeking to expand agriculture units and gain a greater foothold in the key production areas such as the United States and South America. Bunge shares were up 6.7 percent at $72.36 on Friday afternoon. Glencore shares rose 2.4 percent to 376.68 pence. (Reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago, additional reporting by Barbara Lewis in London; Editing by Andrew Hay) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/bunge-ma-glencore-standstill/bunge-shares-jump-after-wsj-reports-glencore-standstill-agreement-idUSL2N1MO1GB'|'2017-10-13T21:19:00.000+03:00'
'5da8611e0e8781d328c7137c1500923726dc708e'|'UPDATE 1-Italy passes decree to ward off foreign takeovers'|'(Adds details, minister Quote: )By Giselda VagnoniROME, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Italy<6C>s cabinet on Friday passed a decree to force investors that build up minority stakes of at least 10 percent in Italian listed companies to disclose what their intentions are on final ownership.The change, aimed at warding off hostile foreign takeovers, comes as French media company Vivendi is under scrutiny in Italy for its stake-building in Telecom Italia and in broadcaster Mediaset.The new rules on takeovers signals protectionist sentiment is on the rise in Italy after years of relatively open approach to foreign acquisitions which French companies, in particular, have taken advantage of.The decree also extends the government<6E>s so-called <20>golden powers<72> to block takeovers by non-EU companies to high-technology sectors, the cabinet said in a statement.<2E>Italy is a country that is open to international investments but it demands that investors respect the rules and we safeguard our national interests like all the world<6C>s large economies,<2C> Industry Minister Carlo Calenda said after the cabinet meeting.The decree, which takes effect immediately and must be approved by parliament within 60 days, obliges investors who take <20>a significant stake<6B> in listed companies to <20>clarify the goals they are pursuing with the operation,<2C> the statement said.The new rules will not affect Vivendi<64>s investments in Italian groups as they cannot be applied retroactively. Vivendi, which has built stakes of around 29 percent in broadcaster Mediaset and 24 percent in Telecom Italia has denied it is seeking a hostile takeover.The extension of the government<6E>s golden powers to high-tech sectors aims to increase Italy<6C>s security regarding areas such as data management, dual use technology and infrastructures, the cabinet said.It follows a call last month by European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker to limit China<6E>s ability to buy up European companies in infrastructure, hi-tech manufacturing and energy.Recent deals by foreign companies in Italy have included ChemChina<6E>s 7.1 billion euro ($7.6 billion) acquisition of tyre maker Pirelli in 2015 and French asset manager Amundi<64>s 3.5 billion euro purchase of Italian rival Pioneer late last year.In September, Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri took effective control of STX France under a shared ownership agreement ending a dispute that had soured bilateral ties.Under French disclosure rules for listed companies, the threshold for triggering a compulsory public filing, including a <20>statement of intent<6E> is set at 10 percent, the same level as Italy set on Friday. (Additional reporting by Gavin Jones. Editing by Jane Merriman)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/italy-ma-decree/update-1-italy-passes-decree-to-ward-off-foreign-takeovers-idINL8N1MO59I'|'2017-10-13T16:30:00.000+03:00'
'74df8c7c47a872f32008b51cc9fb025b27a33e38'|'U.S. SEC moves to simplify corporate compliance paperwork'|'October 11, 2017 / 4:04 PM / Updated 29 minutes ago U.S. SEC moves to simplify corporate compliance paperwork Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The seal of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission hangs on the wall at SEC headquarters in Washington, DC, U.S. on June 24, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed rules on Wednesday to simplify the disclosures that publicly traded companies must file with the agency when communicating with investors. Republican U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed that his administration will cut red tape for businesses and SEC Chairman Jay Clayton endorsed the proposed rules at his first open meeting on Wednesday. Under the new rules, aimed at lightening the compliance burden, companies may omit some references to risk factors and incorporate online references like hyperlinks that could reduce paperwork. The new rules were conceived under the presidency of Barack Obama, a Democrat, and have broad support. <20>I am supportive of today<61>s proposal because it would make some modest and marginal changes to our disclosure framework,<2C> said Commissioner Kara Stein, the only Democrat on the three-person SEC panel. The public has 60 days to comment on the proposal. In a statement, the SEC said the changes are <20>intended to improve the readability and navigability of disclosure documents and discourage repetition and disclosure of immaterial information.<2E> Reporting By Patrick Rucker; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-sec-disclosure/u-s-sec-moves-to-simplify-corporate-compliance-paperwork-idUSKBN1CG282'|'2017-10-11T19:03:00.000+03:00'
'156042dcb7ef6e0fe5b51b3177c20498f11fbf0a'|'Soccer-Ronaldo and Messi make it safely to World Cup but no U.S.'|'October 11, 2017 / 12:36 PM / Updated 18 minutes ago Ronaldo and Messi make it safely to World Cup but no U.S. Brian Homewood 5 Min Read Soccer Football - 2018 World Cup Qualifications - Europe - Portugal vs Switzerland - Estadio da Luz, Lisbon, Portugal - October 10, 2017 Portugal''s Cristiano Ronaldo and Danilo Pereira celebrate qualifying for the 2018 World Cup after the match REUTERS/Jon Nazca ZURICH (Reuters) - The possibility of a World Cup without Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi turned out to be a false alarm, yet next year<61>s tournament will still have a major absentee after the United States<65> extraordinary failure to qualify on Tuesday. Panama, meanwhile, showed it is perfectly possible for small nations to qualify without expanding the finals to 48 teams, which is planned for the 2026 edition, as they joined Iceland in reaching the tournament for the first time. South American champions Chile, like African counterparts Cameroon, missed out on a ticket to Russia -- and, bizarrely, their elimination was the result of a successful protest made to FIFA about opponents fielding an ineligible player. Twenty-three of the 32 finalists have now been decided while the remainder will be settled in November with four European playoffs, two intercontinental playoffs and the final round of African qualifiers, where three groups are still open. Brazil, who will be making their 21st World Cup appearance, remain the only ever-present side at the finals and had qualified long before Tuesday<61>s drama. Ronaldo and Messi, who have won FIFA<46>s World Player of the Year award between them since 2008, went into the final group matches uncertain of whether they would take part next year. Those fears were allayed as Messi<73>s hat-trick led Argentina to a 3-1 win at high altitude in Ecuador to ensure their place and Portugal made it with a 2-0 win over Switzerland. The U.S., one of FIFA<46>s most important members in commercial terms, were not so lucky as a shock 2-1 defeat in Trinidad and Tobago, combined with wins for Panama and Honduras, ended their run of seven successive finals appearances. The Netherlands, semi-finalists in 2014 and runners-up in 2010, will also miss out while four-times champions Italy, who last failed to qualify in 1958, face a two-leg playoff in November. The impact of the U.S.<2E>s absence will be felt at broadcasters Fox, who take over coverage of the World Cup from ESPN starting with the 2018 tournament and a host of sponsors, such as Nike, who had been hoping for plenty of World Cup exposure. Football Soccer - 2018 World Cup Qualifiers - Panama v Costa Rica - Panama City, Panama - October 10, 2017. Panama''s Roman Torres celebrates with team mates after scoring a goal against Costa Rica. REUTERS/Carlos Lemos SMALLER NATIONS Panama<6D>s first-ever qualification for the finals prompted President Juan Carlos Varela to declare a national holiday, describing it on Twitter as an <20>historic day for the country<72>. But their 2-1 win over Costa Rica also highlighted global soccer body FIFA<46>s surprising decision not to use goal-line technology in the qualifiers, as the ball did not appear to fully cross the line for their first goal. Panama<6D>s success also strengthened the hand of those who argue that the expansion of the World Cup to 48 teams is not necessary to allow more smaller countries to take part. Slideshow (3 Images) On Monday, Iceland, with a population of less than 350,000, became the smallest nation ever to qualify for the finals while Cape Verde, with a population of 550,000, are still in contention for one of the African places. A bigger World Cup may also devalue the qualifying competition, particularly in South America where two points separated five teams battling for two direct places and a playoff spot before Tuesday<61>s enthralling finale. An evening of unremitting tension ended with Uruguay, Argentina and Colombia joining Brazil in Russia, while Peru<72>s 1-1 draw was enough to land them in fifth place - the
'fd6a17f34312b2bd024f941037c525ab6292aca0'|'Swedish court rules Bombardier employee not guilty of bribery'|'October 11, 2017 / 9:22 AM / Updated 9 hours ago Swedish court rules Bombardier employee not guilty of bribery Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A logo of jet manufacturer Bombardier is pictured on their booth during the European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (EBACE) in Geneva, Switzerland on May 22, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - An employee at Canadian aircraft and train maker Bombardier ( BBDb.TO ) was innocent of bribery, a Swedish court ruled on Wednesday. <20>The prosecutors have not proved that the charged person has promised or offered an inappropriate benefit,<2C> a Stockholm district court said in a statement. The 37-year-old Russian man was arrested in March on suspicion that he together with several others at Bombardier had bribed an Azerbaijani official to secure a contract worth around $340 million. He was released from custody last week as there were <20>no grounds for keeping him arrested<65>, a court document showed. <20>This is what we were hoping for all along, as we didn<64>t think the prosecutor had enough proof to argue this, especially when it comes to our client,<2C> defense lawyer Cristina Bergner told Reuters. Bergner has previously said the Russian man was too junior within the company to collude with Azerbaijani officials about winning the contract. Prosecutor Thomas Forsberg was not immediately available for comment. He told Reuters last week that a preliminary investigation into higher-ranking employees at Bombardier was going ahead, but declined further comment until the verdict had been announced. Reporting by Olof Swahnberg and Helena Soderpalm, Editing by Louise Heavens 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bombardier-sweden/swedish-court-rules-bombardier-employee-not-guilty-of-bribery-idUSKBN1CG118'|'2017-10-11T12:21:00.000+03:00'
'77796ee1e6109e551e27b1119167667a2b008487'|'Hammond won''t budget now for a ''no-deal'' Brexit - Times'|'October 10, 2017 / 10:26 PM / Updated 5 hours ago Hammond won''t budget now for a ''no-deal'' Brexit - Times Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Britain''s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, leaves Downing Street in central London, Britain October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville (Reuters) - Chancellor Philip Hammond believes it would be irresponsible to spend taxpayers<72> money now in preparation for a <20>no-deal<61> exit from the European Union, the Times reported. Hammond will not commit billions of pounds in next month<74>s budget to plan for a hard Brexit, the newspaper said. He supports contingency planning in case talks collapse. However, with the government trying to secure a negotiated EU exit and with money tight, he is reluctant to approve spending unless the danger is imminent, Times said. Responding to claims that he is pessimistic in his outlook, the chancellor said he has a duty to be <20>realistic<69>. Hammond said in the Times that he needs <20>to ensure that we are prepared for all outcomes, including a no-deal scenario<69>. <20>The government and the Treasury are prepared. We are planning for every outcome and we will find any necessary funding and we will only spend it when it<69>s responsible to do so<73>, he added. Reporting by Sangameswaran S in Bengaluru 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-hammond-brexit-budget/hammond-wont-budget-now-for-a-no-deal-brexit-times-idUKKBN1CF33N'|'2017-10-11T01:26:00.000+03:00'
'b5aafb2b1e794e418e266f97a738d3570b5db322'|'Why McKinsey is under attack in South Africa'|'MCKINSEY, a global management consultancy known for its discreet profile and rarefied air, is unused to the sort of tub-thumping popular revolt it is experiencing in South Africa. Such is public outrage over the Guptas, an Indian-born business dynasty accused of growing rich off their relationship with President Jacob Zuma, that a few professional-services firms linked to the family, including McKinsey<65>as well as SAP, a German software giant<6E>have become targets of Twitter storms and protest banners.Anti-corruption groups and the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) have drawn blood in the case of Bell Pottinger, a British public-relations firm accused of orchestrating a racially divisive public-relations campaign on behalf of the Guptas. A complaint by the DA to a British PR industry association set in motion Bell Pottinger<65>s swift implosion in September. At KPMG, a global audit firm, eight senior executives in South Africa left in the same month because of the firm<72>s work for the Guptas. Such victories have fuelled the mood. On October 5th civil-society groups picketed McKinsey<65>s Johannesburg offices.Latest updates Taxing the rich Buttonwood<6F>s notebook 37 minutes ago The   4   See all updates At the heart of the affair are allegations of <20>state capture<72> by the Guptas, who moved from India to South Africa in the 1990s and turned a computer parts business into a conglomerate with properties in media, mining and professional services. One of Mr Zuma<6D>s sons, Duduzane, has worked for the family. A report in 2016 by South Africa<63>s public protector, an independent ombudsman, detailed allegations that the Guptas had meddled in cabinet appointments and used their connections to scoop lucrative government contracts (they and Mr Zuma have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing).McKinsey did highly-paid work for Eskom, a state-owned electricity monopoly at the centre of several of the <20>state capture<72> allegations. Documents show that McKinsey worked with Trillian Capital, a local consultancy that until recently was owned by Salim Essa, a Gupta associate, as part of winning contracts from the utility.As an international firm requiring a local partner, McKinsey had previously worked with a related company called Regiments. The consulting firm says that after Trillian emerged from Regiments in late 2015, it carried out a due diligence review and cut its ties with Trillian a few months later. McKinsey says it never entered into a formal contract with Trillian or made payments to the company, and there are letters to show that McKinsey warned Eskom about the risks of doing business with Trillian.But that has not put a stop to questions about the relationship. A former executive of Trillian, Bianca Goodson, has alleged that Trillian acted as a gatekeeper, using Mr Essa<73>s connections to land contracts and then passing the work over to <20>internationally recognised companies<65> including McKinsey. The firm stands behind its work for Eskom, says Steve John, global director of communications at McKinsey. Neither the Gupta family nor any company publicly linked to the Guptas has ever been a client of the firm, he notes. It has hired a law firm, Norton Rose Fulbright, to carry out a detailed internal investigation.It is an embarrassing situation for a group that prides itself on operating as <20>One Firm<72> across its local offices, says Tom Rodenhauser of ALM Intelligence, a market-research firm that monitors the consulting industry. McKinsey has weathered damage to its reputation before; in 2010 one of its consultants pleaded guilty to passing inside information to a New York-based hedge fund, Galleon Group. McKinsey<65>s close links with Enron also meant that its reputation was tarnished by the energy company<6E>s collapse in 2001.Politicians<6E> scrutiny may drag on. The DA party says it will push for the firm<72>s executives to appear before a parliamentary inquiry into Eskom this month. The party has also gone to the police to file a complaint of fraud and racketeering agains
'c0d4333cc45b3d888df0ddeadaed474adbb5d578'|'UK lenders plan biggest curb on availability of consumer loans since late 2008 - Bank of England'|'October 12, 2017 / 8:33 AM / Updated 6 hours ago UK lenders plan biggest consumer lending curb since late 2008 -BoE Andy Bruce , Huw Jones 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The Bank of England is seen in the City of London, Britain, August 23, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay LONDON (Reuters) - British lenders are planning the biggest cutback in consumer loans in nearly 10 years, the Bank of England said on Thursday, after it warned repeatedly about the strong pace of lending to households. The BoE<6F>s quarterly net balance of lenders<72> expectations for the availability of unsecured lending over the next three months fell to -28.6 from -16.2. That signalled the steepest contraction since the fourth quarter of 2008, when the economy was in the depths of its worst post-war recession. The BoE has said there is no overall debt bubble in Britain but it has expressed concern about consumer debt, which had been growing at about 10 percent a year. The BoE has signalled it is likely to raise interest rates for the first time in more than a decade soon, so long as the economy and inflation continue to grow. Most economists polled by Reuters think it will hike rates in November, although a majority reckon it would also be a mistake given the uncertain outlook ahead of Britain<69>s divorce from the European Union. Related Coverage Factbox - Impact on banks from Britain''s vote to leave the EU Thursday<61>s survey figures showed Britain<69>s consumer economy is running out of steam, said Joanna Davies, economist at Fathom Consulting, the only forecaster in recent Reuters polls to predict a recession. [ECILT/GB] <20>We<57>re quite concerned about the consumer squeeze,<2C> Davies said, citing falling wages in inflation adjusted terms and historically low household savings. <20>If you add tightening credit conditions onto that, it doesn<73>t bode well.<2E> Lenders expected the availability of mortgages and loans to businesses to remain broadly steady over the next three months. But they also expected demand for loans for capital investment in businesses to fall at the fastest rate since the third quarter of 2011. The BoE has raised concerns about heady growth rates in consumer credit, and the Financial Conduct Authority, which regulates consumer credit firms, is looking at whether changes are needed as thousands of people struggle with debt. Earlier this year the BoE warned lenders may be dicing with a <20>spiral of complacency<63>, with car loans a particular area of worry. The FCA faces some political pressure to cap high interest rates, but David Geale, director of policy at the watchdog, said on Thursday there is no single fix. <20>I don<6F>t think there is a one-size-fits-all solution,<2C> Geale told the Westminster Business Forum. Consumer credit, including unarranged overdrafts, were a lifeline for some people, he said. <20>Price caps are something that shouldn<64>t be used in haste ... There is a combination of factors that we need to consider, and not just a price cap,<2C> Geale said. Rising costs for households in an era of weak wage growth -- whether from loans, housing or energy -- have shot to the top of Britain<69>s political agenda over the past few years. Earlier on Thursday, Britain published a draft law that would cap consumer gas and electricity prices for millions of households, taking action to try and fix a market it says punishes loyal customers. Editing by Catherine Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-boe-lending/uk-lenders-plan-biggest-curb-on-availability-of-consumer-loans-since-late-2008-bank-of-england-idUKKBN1CH0ZE'|'2017-10-12T11:35:00.000+03:00'
'29b9a96423ccf43201ea58f7a4bebafba1076399'|'ExxonMobil opens 3rd cogeneration power plant in Singapore'|'FILE PHOTO: Logos of ExxonMobil are seen in its booth at Gastech, the world''s biggest expo for the gas industry, in Chiba, Japan April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. oil major ExxonMobil officially opened its third cogeneration power plant in Singapore on Thursday on the site of its Jurong refinery, increasing its total cogeneration capacity in the city-state by nearly a quarter.The new 84 megawatt cogeneration plant - which produces both electricity and steam - will increase the energy efficiency of the refinery, the company said. Together with its two other plants, the Jurong site has combined power capacity of 440 megawatts.The start of the facility comes ahead of a proposed carbon tax to be introduced from 2019 on direct emitters which will include the three refineries in Singapore, including ExxonMobil<69>s Jurong site.Countries around the world have been under increasing pressure to crack down on carbon emissions, with Singapore part of the historic Paris climate accord that went into force late last year.Steam production from the new Jurong facility will allow the company to shut down two older, less efficient boilers and in turn reduce emissions and reduce 265 kilotonnes per year of carbon dioxide emissions - equivalent to taking more than 90,000 cars off the roads of Singapore, it said.(This version of the story corrects combined capacity to 440 MW in second paragraph, and numbers for emissions cuts and cars in fifth paragraph)Reporting by Jessica Jaganathan; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-exxon-plant/exxonmobil-opens-third-cogeneration-power-plant-in-singapore-idUSKBN1CH07O'|'2017-10-12T05:06:00.000+03:00'
'929d95a0655e4c18736025bdce4bc6b28c9b3983'|'Citi''s private bank to set up Luxembourg unit to cope with Brexit'|'October 12, 2017 / 8:28 AM / Updated 8 hours ago Citi''s private bank to set up Luxembourg unit to cope with Brexit Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Citigroup said its private bank is to set up a booking centre in Luxembourg to ensure it can continue to serve European Union clients after Britain leaves the bloc in 2019. Citi currently operates its European private banking operations out of London, but UK finance firms may lose their ability to sell their services to EU clients unless the British government manages to strike a deal with the bloc. <20>The decision is based on what is best for our clients and what will allow us to continue to service our clients without any disruption,<2C> a spokeswoman for Citi said in a statement on Thursday. The U.S. bank has already said it will headquarter its EU trading operations in Frankfurt after Brexit, and has also applied for a licence for its markets business in France. Reporting by Rachel Armstrong; editing by Carolyn Cohn 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-eu-citigroup-luxembourg/citis-private-bank-to-set-up-luxembourg-unit-to-cope-with-brexit-idUSL8N1MN1QJ'|'2017-10-12T11:27:00.000+03:00'
'f3f0acc76da05988b13bfd22dd03354e5b7df6c8'|'GM warns Canadian union it could wind down striking SUV plant'|'October 12, 2017 / 3:24 AM / Updated 13 hours ago GM warns Canadian union it could wind down striking SUV plant Joseph White 3 Min Read The General Motors CAMI car assembly plant, where the GMC Terrain and Chevrolet Equinox are built, is seen in Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada, January 27, 2017. REUTERS/Geoff Robins DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Co on Wednesday warned leaders of Canada<64>s Unifor labor union that it will start to wind down production of its popular Chevrolet Equinox sport utility vehicle at an Ontario factory unless workers there call off a month-long strike. The strike has been fueled by union opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Unifor leader Jerry Dias told Reuters on Wednesday that GM officials said they would ramp up production of the vehicle at two plants in Mexico that build the Equinox and a similar model, the GMC Terrain if the walkout is not called off. <20>GM just told us today that they are going to ramp up production in Mexico,<2C> Unifor President Jerry Dias said by phone from Washington. <20>They have declared war on Canada.<2E> GM has plants in the United States that are under-utilized, but retooling them to build the Equinox would be expensive. GM plans to study how quickly key suppliers to the Ontario Equinox plant could move their operations to accommodate a shift in the vehicle<6C>s production, a person familiar with the discussions said on Wednesday. GM<47>s decision to build the Equinox and Terrain in Mexico is a major issue in the contract dispute between the automaker and the Canadian union. Dias said he would not call off the strike. <20>This is the big issue,<2C> Dias said of the strike. <20>Once we solve this, everything else will fall into place.<2E> About 2,500 workers at a factory in Ingersoll, Ontario, walked off the job on Sept. 18 after GM rejected Unifor<6F>s call for the automaker to designate the factory, known as CAMI, as the lead production site for the Equinox in North America. The automaker invested $800 million to retool the plant for the new model. The union also objected to GM<47>s decision to lay off 600 CAMI workers as it phased out production of the last-generation GMC Terrain SUV, and launched production of new generation Terrain models along with the Equinox in Mexico. The CAMI plant was projected to build about 210,000 vehicles in 2018, while two plants in Mexico together were projected to build about 150,000 vehicles next year, according to AutoForecast Solutions, a forecasting firm. Unifor<6F>s Dias has blamed NAFTA for the job losses, complicating Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau<61>s effort to promote the benefits of open trade in response to U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s criticism of the deal. U.S., Canadian and Mexican negotiators began another round of talks this week to modernize the agreement. The Equinox was the second best-selling model in the United States Chevrolet lineup in September, and GM had just 41 days worth of the vehicle in stock at the end of last month, according to Automotive News. id by phone from Washington. <20>They have declared war on Canada.<2E> Reporting By Allison Lampert and Joseph White; Editing by Kim Coghill 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gm-canada/gm-warns-canadian-union-it-could-wind-down-striking-suv-plant-idUSKBN1CH0B6'|'2017-10-12T06:23:00.000+03:00'
'0cf1d5793511ebe557cd010e30c1300071a6347d'|'Exclusive: Despite sanctions, Russian organisations acquire Microsoft software'|'October 11, 2017 / 7:25 AM / Updated 17 minutes ago Exclusive: Despite sanctions, Russian organisations acquire Microsoft software Gleb Stolyarov , Anastasia Teterevleva , Anastasia Lyrchikova 6 Min Read A Microsoft logo is seen a day after Microsoft Corp''s $26.2 billion purchase of LinkedIn Corp, in Los Angeles, California, U.S. June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/Files MOSCOW (Reuters)   state organizations and firms in Russia and Crimea despite sanctions barring U.S-based companies from doing business with them, official documents show. The acquisitions, registered on the Russian state procurement database, show the limitations in the way foreign governments and firms enforce the U.S. sanctions, imposed on Russia over its annexation of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. Some of the users gave Microsoft fictitious data about their identity, people involved in the transactions told Reuters, exploiting a gap in the U.S. company<6E>s ability to keep its products out of their hands.     entities hit by the sanctions. <20>Microsoft has a strong commitment to complying with legal requirements and we have been looking into this matter in recent weeks,<2C> a Microsoft representative said in an emailed response to questions from Reuters. <20>We have robust trade compliance processes around the world to help ensure that our partners comply with all conditions including immediate halting of suspected improper sales by partners, and strong measures to try to prevent banned customers from accessing and using our products and services.<2E> All state organisations and state firms are obliged to disclose purchases they make on the procurement database. People involved in five of the transactions confirmed to Reuters the software had been acquired. The Reuters review of the database found state   have acquired more than 5,000 Microsoft products worth about 60 million roubles ($1.03 million). The sum is relatively small but such software is vital for many firms and organisations in Russia and Crimea to operate. The database also does not include private companies, so the scale of the problem could be much bigger. Related Coverage   Among entities hit by sanctions that acquired Microsoft products was Almaz-Antey, manufacturer of   a BUK missile brought down a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet over east Ukraine in July 2014, though Russia denies its forces shot down the plane. Other Microsoft buyers, the database shows, include Glavgosexpertiza, a state design agency involved in work on a new bridge from Russia to Crimea and the <20>Krym<79>health spa in Crimea owned by Russia<69>s defence ministry. The arms manufacturer, Almaz-Antey, did not respond to a request for comment. The defence ministry<72>s health spa in Crimea declined to comment. Glavgosexpertiza said <20>the company operates within the Russian legal framework<72>. COMPLIANCE CRACKDOWN One set of U.S. sanctions prohibits the export by a U.S. entity of any goods, services or technology to Crimea. Other sanctions bar U.S firms from carrying out transactions with companies or individuals on a list of <20>specially designated nationals<6C> deemed by Washington to be linked to the Russian government and its activities in Ukraine. Microsoft did not directly respond to detailed questions about specific users of its products and the compliance procedures it has in place. The products acquired by organisations hit by sanctions include <20>Open License Program<61> services, where the user must provide Microsoft with the company<6E>s full name and address. Almaz-Antey, Glavgosexpertiza and the defence ministry spa acquired <20>Open License Program<61> products, the database showed. After the sanctions were introduced, Microsoft took steps to prevent entities hit by sanctions acquiring its products, according to five sources involved in the software re-selling trade and a former Microsoft employee in Russia. But people involved in transactions say ways can be found to circumvent obstacles. The <20>Morye<79> shipy
'd57634eb71af77ebfbf676c3cdcf04ed062583c4'|'TREASURIES-Prices firmer before Federal Reserve minutes, supply'|'* Minutes from Fed''s September meeting in focus * Treasury to sell three-year, 10-year supply By Karen Brettell NEW YORK, Oct 11 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury prices were slightly higher on Wednesday ahead of the scheduled release of minutes from the Federal Reserve''s September policy meeting and the Treasury Department''s auctions of three-year and 10-year notes. The U.S. central bank''s policy statement last month was seen as hawkish, boosting expectations it would raise interest rates in December. That view gained further credence in the wake of strong U.S. economic data and Fed officials'' comments. "Speakers have been out in force recently and I think they''ve been pretty clear that a December rate hike is certainly on the table," said Thomas Simons, a money market economist at Jefferies in New York. Investors will be watching to see if the minutes show Fed officials expressing concerns about low inflation, though any comments may appear dated as inflation expectations have also risen since their meeting. "There is a little bit more optimism on the inflation outlook now than there was three weeks ago, so if there is trepidation in the minutes its kind of questionable exactly how much value that has," Simons said. Benchmark 10-year notes were last up 2/32 in price to yield 2.339 percent, down from 2.345 percent on Tuesday. The 10-year yields jumped to 2.402 percent on Friday, the highest level since May 11, after the government<6E>s employment report for September showed a rise in wages that boosted expectations inflation is increasing. Producer price data on Thursday and consumer price data on Friday will both be scrutinized for confirmation of higher prices, though many analysts have said that Friday''s data was likely to be influenced by recent hurricanes. The Treasury will sell $56 billion in new coupon-bearing supply this week, including $24 billion in three-year notes and $20 billion in 10-year notes on Wednesday, and $12 billion in 30-year bonds on Thursday. (Editing by Paul Simao) )'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-bonds/treasuries-prices-firmer-before-federal-reserve-minutes-supply-idINL2N1MM0QQ'|'2017-10-11T11:28:00.000+03:00'
'a70ef26f1de38c8d33e9998780b00e608aa58cb7'|'Wall Street treads water; financials drop ahead of reports'|'October 11, 2017 / 1:35 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago Wall Street ends at record highs; eyes on Fed, earnings   A street sign for Wall Street is seen outside the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., December 28, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - Major U.S. stock indexes edged up to record closing highs on Wednesday with sector moves in the S&P 500 showing preference towards so-called defensive stocks, while Wall Street reacted mutedly to the minutes of the most recent Federal Reserve policy meeting. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 42.21 points, or 0.18 percent, to 22,872.89, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 4.6 points, or 0.18 percent, to 2,555.24 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 16.30 points, or 0.25 percent, to 6,603.55. Stocks ended near session highs after Politico reported that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was pushing president Donald Trump to name Jerome Powell, seen as a safe pick for financial markets, as the next Federal Reserve chairman. Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Nick Zieminski 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-stocks/wall-street-sluggish-at-the-open-as-earnings-kick-off-idINKBN1CG1S9'|'2017-10-11T17:24:00.000+03:00'
'd4f350760392903c457052142e8b81936b913b6c'|'Glencore says global demand robust enough to soak up U.S. oil'|'October 11, 2017 / 3:58 PM / in an hour Glencore sees record oil trading volumes as margins shrink Julia Payne , Libby George 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company''s headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann LONDON (Reuters) - Glencore ( GLEN.L ) looks set to cement its position as the world<6C>s second-largest oil trader as it tries to offset low volatility and tight margins with record volumes this year, its global head of oil, Alex Beard, told Reuters. The London-listed commodities trader and miner will shift around 6 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude and refined product this year, up 25 percent from last year. The figure represents around 6 percent of global supply and only rival Vitol trades more oil, at some 7 million bpd. Most merchants are being forced to ramp up volumes to protect profits in an environment of low volatility. <20>We don<6F>t set targets in terms of volumes,<2C> Beard told the annual Reuters Global Commodities Summit. <20>Our ultimate objective is to make more money and if you can do that with smaller margins and bigger volumes or smaller volumes and bigger margins - we are indifferent to that.<2E> Beard said trading conditions had become difficult this year due to low oil price volatility and a reversal in the oil price curve, which has stopped encouraging oil storage after backdated prices flipped from a premium to a discount to prompt prices. <20>Margins are tight ... whenever the market moves from contango to backwardation, that<61>s a slightly distorting effect,<2C> Beard said. <20>It<49>s a mixed bag in 2017 ... 2018 looks good for demand growth. In terms of structure, rather than a flat structure, we would like to see a stronger backwardation.<2E> Backwardation describes a market condition in which it is more attractive to sell oil immediately rather than storing it for later sale. It is seen as an indicator of a tight market, as opposed to the condition known as contango, in which it is more profitable to store oil for sale in the future. The market has been in a backwardated structure since early September after being in relatively persistent contango since 2014. Beard said he expected oil prices to remain rangebound near their current levels, as OPEC producers curtail output to reduce the global oil glut while recovering oil prices encourage new production from the United States. <20>It is an extremely complex equation and towards the end of this year we will trend towards $60 a barrel,<2C> Beard said. SOUTH AFRICAN SYNERGIES Beard said trading houses such as Glencore would still see plenty of growth opportunities even if oil demand flattened in coming years. Those opportunities would come in high-growth markets and thanks to constantly changing global oil flows. In oil, Glencore mainly focuses on trading and upstream but last week it acquired a major refining asset when it outbid China<6E>s Sinopec to buy Chevron<6F>s South African and Botswana businesses for just under $1 billion. The deal gave Glencore control of a major refinery in Cape Town, retail stations and access to a key storage hub in South Africa<63>s Saldanha Bay. <20>We look at those assets as attractive for synergy with our mining assets down there but also to trade around, to supply the refinery and to have a refined products position in southern Africa,<2C> Beard said. In South Africa, Glencore mines coal, vanadium, platinum and chrome. It also has smelting and warehousing interests. <20>In terms of synergy, we will be supplying our mines with fuel, diesel and lubricants to run machinery.<2E> Beard said Glencore could bring in a partner in the South African project to share the cost burden on top of the existing local shareholders that hold the remaining 25 percent. Follow Reuters Summits on Twitter @Reuters_Summits Additional reporting by Amanda Cooper; Editing by Dale Hudson and David Evans 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'http
'7cbe82c8ce09759c857f389432ebc118f9b0f104'|'Insider trading suspect out of U.S. jail as judge weighs ''Jekyll & Hyde'' risk'|'October 12, 2017 / 7:12 PM / in 13 minutes Insider trading suspect out of U.S. jail as judge weighs ''Jekyll & Hyde'' risk Nate Raymond 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Former Akebia Therapeutics Inc employee Schultz Chan enters the federal courthouse in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. on July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Nate Raymond/File Photo BOSTON (Reuters) - A former Akebia Therapeutics Inc employee accused of insider trading was released from jail on Thursday despite a judge<67>s concern that the man<61>s <20>Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde<64> tendencies could lead him to violate his bail conditions. U.S. Magistrate Judge Donald Cabell, who ordered Schultz Chan arrested on Sept. 22 after he failed to consistently report to his probation officer, ruled after asking Chan whether he would <20>make a fool out of me<6D> and ignore court orders again. <20>I remain concerned that this kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde part of Mr. Chan may have us at some point in a situation where all of a sudden his behavior is just going in the opposite direction,<2C> Cabell said in Boston federal court, referencing Robert Louis Stevenson<6F>s famed fictional character. Cabell released Chan pending trial under previously imposed bail conditions. <20>Mr. Chan, I<>m taking a chance,<2C> Cabell said. Chan, the former director of biostatistics at the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biopharmaceutical company Akebia, told Cabell he would not make the same mistake twice. <20>Prison is not a fun place to be in,<2C> he said. Chan was arrested after he violated a bail condition Cabell imposed following hearings that were first prompted by prosecutors saying Chan<61>s wife had booked airline tickets for herself, Chan and their daughter to fly to China. At a hearing in July, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Frank said Chan was becoming <20>increasingly unhinged<65> and was threatening prosecutors. On Thursday, Frank objected to Chan<61>s release and said he could flee the country. But Cabell said a mental evaluation of Chan did not show him to be a danger to anyone. Cabell said he believed that bail conditions could be set that would mitigate his risk of flight. Prosecutors have said that from 2013 to 2015 Chan engaged in an insider trading scheme with a friend, Songjiang Wang, at rival drug company Merrimack Pharmaceuticals Inc. Prosecutors said Wang tipped Chan ahead of announcements by Merrimack about clinical drug trial results, and Chan gave Wang information ahead of news of positive clinical study results for an Akebia drug. An indictment said Chan also used inside information to trade in Akebia stock in 2015. Both men have pleaded not guilty. The case is U.S. v. Chan, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, No. 16-cr-10268. Reporting by Nate Raymond; Editing by Scott Malone 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-insidertrading-akebia/insider-trading-suspect-out-of-u-s-jail-as-judge-weighs-jekyll-hyde-risk-idUSKBN1CH2SD'|'2017-10-12T22:03:00.000+03:00'
'7973790b8097160d736a3de029fa16563509d399'|'Argentina sells $2.1 bln in Treasury notes, peso bonds'|'BUENOS AIRES, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Argentina sold $800 million in Treasury notes and 22.54 billion pesos ($1.30 billion) in five-year, peso-denominated bonds, in part to refinance maturing debt, the Finance Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.The government sold $400 million in 210-day Treasury notes and $400 million in 364-day Treasury notes, for which it received $1.969 billion and $1 billion in orders, respectively. Those sales served in part to refinance $750 million in maturing notes.The ministry said it received 32.3 billion pesos in orders for the five-year bonds, which was sold at a variable interest rate of 200 basis points above the Badlar interest rate for deposits at private banks. The Badlar rate was 22 percent on Wednesday, according to Argentina<6E>s central bank.Those sales served in part to refinance 10 billion pesos in maturing bonds at a rate of 300 points above Badlar.The ministry said it declared an attempted sale of 2023 Treasury bonds at a fixed interest rate of 16 percent void after receiving just 3.7 billion pesos in orders, <20>reflecting in this case a greater preference from depositors for the instrument offered at a variable rate.<2E>Inflation in Argentina is seen hitting 22 percent in 2017 and 15.8 percent in 2018. ($1 = 17.4000 Argentine pesos) (Reporting by Maximiliano Rizzi, writing by Luc Cohen, editing by G Crosse)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/argentina-debt/argentina-sells-2-1-bln-in-treasury-notes-peso-bonds-idINL2N1MM2KR'|'2017-10-11T22:17:00.000+03:00'
'e621406b7c825dfba0d77cda76f3564ebbee0578'|'UPDATE 1-Norwegian Air CEO interested in collapsed Monarch''s airport slots'|'October 12, 2017 / 5:18 PM / Updated 14 minutes ago UPDATE 1-Norwegian Air CEO interested in collapsed Monarch''s airport slots Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Adds comments on Monarch, Argentina) LONDON, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Budget carrier Norwegian Air Shuttle is interested in slots made available by the collapse of British holiday airline Monarch, its chief executive told Reuters, but said the process is unclear. Monarch collapsed earlier this month, stranding thousands of people, and sparking speculation about what will happen to the take-off and landing slots it occupied at airports such as London Gatwick and Luton. <20>We could very well use the slots, but it<69>s not that easy to actually transfer slots,<2C> Norwegian Air CEO Bjorn Kjos told Reuters on the sidelines of the CAPA Global Summit. Monarch administrators KPMG are hoping they can raise funds from the sale of the slots and have said they believe they have the right to sell them. <20>It depends on the price. It<49>s always depending on the price. But normally, it<69>s not that easy to sell slots,<2C> Kjos said. Norwegian has expanded rapidly in recent years and is shaking up the transatlantic market by offering low-cost long-haul flights. It last month agreed a partnership deal with easyJet that it hopes will boost ticket sales on long-haul routes. Norwegian is also looking to expand in Argentina and has applied to operate routes, but seems unlikely to get approval to start flights this year, as planned. <20>We are optimistic about the concession. I think they are in the process of approving them,<2C> Kjos said, saying it expected it would take weeks, rather than months or years to get approval. He said Norwegian might able to start some flights at the end of the summer season in the southern hemisphere, which is just starting now. He added though it might be more prudent to wait until the start of next summer to ramp up, because that is when demand would be higher. (Reporting by Alistair Smout and Victoria Bryan; Editing by Christoph Steitz and David Evans) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/airlines-europe-norweg-air-shut/update-1-norwegian-air-ceo-interested-in-collapsed-monarchs-airport-slots-idUSL8N1MN5Z3'|'2017-10-12T20:19:00.000+03:00'
'566a389e3a24ad0689b1443f0918eaf72e37e836'|'In a sea of uncertainty, one company sets its Brexit course'|'October 12, 2017 / 2:21 PM / in an hour In a sea of uncertainty, one company sets its Brexit course Kate Holton 7 Min Read Managing Director for Grace Foods UK Adam Reader poses at their distribution centre in Welwyn Garden City, Britain September 25, 2017. Picture taken September 25, 2017. To match Insight BRITAIN-EU/COMPANIES REUTERS/Darren Staples WELWYN GARDEN CITY, England (Reuters) - As the head of a British company that imports, exports and manufactures food, Adam Reader is at the centre of the Brexit storm, facing threats at every turn. But unlike the majority of company bosses who are reluctant to make concrete plans when a future trade deal with Europe has not yet been decided, Reader is not going to wait. Instead, he<68>s charging ahead with investments that will split his operations between Britain and Europe, a strategy he is confident will contain any damage from changes to currency, regulations and tariffs as he ships his products globally. <20>We<57>re lucky. We have a clear path. We<57>re very advanced now in terms of planning,<2C> said Reader, the 47-year-old manager of Grace Foods UK. <20>A lot of the businesses I<>m talking to are not really clear about what they<65>re going to do come the date of Brexit,<2C> he told Reuters at his plant north of London, where Grace<63>s Caribbean, Mexican and Chinese products are stored. Britain<69>s 2016 vote to leave the European Union stunned many businesses, with the prospect that border delays and tariffs could fracture intricate supply chains built up across the continent over the last 40 years. The plunge in the pound has already forced importers to cut costs and sparked concerns about consumer spending. Those who voted in favour of Brexit argue that although the economy could be hit in the short term, Britain will ultimately prosper because it will be able to strike trade deals with other nations quickly instead of being clamped to a failed German-dominated experiment in European integration. For the moment many companies are in limbo, however, as Prime Minister Theresa May<61>s party wrangles over terms of the departure, due in March 2019. The EU says future trade cannot be discussed until the terms of the divorce have been agreed, meaning a final settlement may not be unveiled until late in the day. Only 11 percent of companies have started to implement contingency plans, a survey by the Institute of Directors said in July, meaning many may not be ready when the time comes. Britain<69>s Food and Drink Federation (FDF), which speaks for an industry employing 400,000 people, says companies should be preparing for all scenarios. <20>The time between now and the end of March 2019 is so short that you have to plan for the worst,<2C> FDF Director General Ian Wright told Reuters. <20>People need to be prepared for what could be a series of very difficult months ahead.<2E> HIGH STAKES For Grace Foods UK, a subsidiary of Jamaica<63>s Grace Kennedy, the stakes are high. Based in an industrial park in Welwyn Garden City, the company imports drinks, sauces, snacks and spices from around the world, then distributes them to supermarkets, restaurants and independent retailers in Europe, Africa and around Britain. A manufacturing plant in Wales produces sauces. Reader fears Brexit will hit his company on several fronts: increased bureaucracy, costs and delays at borders, volatile currency shifts and a slow-burn divergence between Britain and Europe over food standards and labelling. To respond, he has taken an embryonic plan he came up with before the Brexit vote to build a presence in Europe to meet strong demand there and transformed it into a strategy to insulate his company against the expected disruption ahead. A worker moves coconut milk at Grace Foods UK distribution centre in Welwyn Garden City, Britain September 25, 2017. Picture taken September 25, 2017. To match Insight BRITAIN-EU/COMPANIES REUTERS/Darren Staples <20>Brexit accelerated it and made it a <20>must do<64> now, rather than a <20>nice to have<76>,<2C> said Reader f
'3688c3a98af8213947c92d7e56df66eb5152093e'|'Trump-Corker spat complicates drive for tax reform in U.S. Senate - Reuters'|'Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) speaks with reporters after announcing his retirement at the conclusion of his term on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A public feud between President Donald Trump and influential fellow Republican Bob Corker could narrow the path for a tax overhaul in the U.S. Senate, where a Republican go-it-alone effort is already showing signs of disunity.Days after the Republican-controlled Congress took important steps towards advancing tax legislation, Trump<6D>s Twitter attacks on Senator Corker over the weekend threatened to further alienate the president from other key Republicans such as Senator John McCain, whose <20>No<4E> vote was pivotal in the party<74>s failure to repeal Obamacare in July.Although a foreign policy specialist, Corker is also a key player in the tax debate.He helped the Senate move closer to legislation by agreeing to a budget resolution that would allow tax reforms to reduce government revenue by up to $1.5 trillion over a decade, but he wants savings elsewhere and has vowed not to vote for a tax package that adds to the federal deficit.Republicans hope Corker will ultimately vote for tax reform in hopes of boosting economic growth. But Trump<6D>s tweets do not help, especially now that Corker has decided against seeking re-election next year and is free to vote whichever way he wants without having to face voters again.Republicans are desperate to push through tax reform, seeing it as their last good chance to get a major legislative victory in the first year since 2006 that the party has controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress.Trump and top Republican lawmakers have unveiled a plan to slash taxes for businesses and individuals, the first comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. tax code since 1986. They hope to get it done by January.The tax push has been dogged by delays and distractions such as Trump<6D>s criticisms of his own party<74>s leaders, including Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan.The latest incident erupted on Sunday when Trump lashed out at Corker in a series of derisive tweets saying the lawmaker had <20>begged<65> him for his endorsement ahead of the midterm election next year and announced his retirement after being turned down.Corker replied by describing the White House as an adult day care centre, and told the New York Times that Trump risks setting the country on the path to <20>World War Three<65>.The spat complicates things for Republicans as they try to move tax legislation through the Senate, which they control by a slim 52-48 margin. Most Democrats oppose the plan, and Republicans cannot pass it if they lose support from more than two lawmakers of their own party.<2E>This is a delicate balance,<2C> said Stephen Moore, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who helped write Trump<6D>s campaign tax plan. <20>It all comes down to whether you can get 50 votes in the Senate. Right now, by my count, they<65>re at about 48. A few votes short.<2E>Divisions have emerged over proposals to repeal the federal inheritance tax and a popular deduction for state and local taxes. Senate Republican Rand Paul has expressed unhappiness over reports that Trump<6D>s tax plan could raise taxes on some middle-class Americans.Republicans need to keep Corker on board and prevent him from becoming a maverick like McCain, known for his sharply independent streak.<2E>Bob Corker, at this point, is as free as John McCain is to do what he thinks is right,<2C> said William Galston, who was a domestic policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton.Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist with close ties to Congress and the White House, said he thinks most Republican senators will get in line despite their concerns over Trump<6D>s treatment of their colleagues.<2E>While it may really bother other Senate Republicans and it<69>s unnerving that one of their own is being attacked, most are
'0a750d228b0cc7f62ca2792414a746cdaebdc2f3'|'Ireland finds extra cash for ''modest'' budget boost'|'October 10, 2017 / 2:11 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago Ireland finds extra cash for ''modest'' budget boost Padraic Halpin , Conor Humphries 3 Min Read Ireland''s Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe displays a copy of the budget on the steps of Government Buildings in Dublin, Ireland October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland<6E>s finance minister sought to raise over 800 million euros (714.89 million pounds)in extra revenue in a budget on Tuesday to give taxpayers a <20>modest<73> break and help tackle a housing crisis. He also sought to balance the state<74>s books for the first time in a decade. Ireland started reversing years of savage spending cuts and tax hikes in 2014 - about the time its economy began to rebound sharply from a deep financial crisis. But hemmed in by European Union borrowing rules, Paschal Donohoe initially had far fewer resources this year than in those expansionary budgets. In the event, he boosted the budget package to 1.2 billion euros from the mere 350 million available chiefly through a 4 percentage point increase in stamp duty on commercial property, ensuring income tax cuts will not go into one pocket and come out the other. <20>On this budget day we build on progress that would have looked impossible only a few short years ago,<2C> Donohoe told parliament in his first budget speech as finance minister. While Ireland<6E>s economy has posted the fastest growth in Europe for the past three years, sluggish sentiment surveys suggest many consumers are seeing few benefits amid increasing living costs, particularly in rents and rising house prices. By increasing the relatively low threshold at which people hit the higher rate of income tax and trimming the amount they actually pay, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said an average family would be a <20>modest<73> 500 to 600 euros better off a year. Varadkar knows that with the agreement with their main rivals to back the minority administration set to expire in just over a year<61>s time, the small boosts will likely be the last to filter through to voters<72> pay packets before the next election. The government stuck to its ratio of over 2:1 in favour of spending increase over tax cuts, increasing current spending in line with the 3.5 percent growth in the economy as services try to keep pace with a population that is also the fastest growing in the EU. But Donohoe focussed much of his speech on housing as the government scrambles to boost a chronic under-supply across the country, including a significant increase in a planned levy on vacant sites that owners fail to build on. He will also siphon off 750 million euros from the state<74>s sovereign wealth fund, the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, to start a new body that will offer debt finance to builders and be staffed by executives from the state<74>s <20>bad bank<6E>, NAMA. After last year<61>s <20>Brexit proof<6F> budget was criticised by business for not doing enough to shield it from key trade partner Britain<69>s departure from the EU, a new 300 million euro Brexit loan scheme was introduced to help small and medium businesses with short-term working capital. The government has said previously that it can only consider major interventions such as asking for specific EU assistance when the shape of Brexit becomes clearer. Reporting by Padraic Halpin Editing by Jeremy Gaunt'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ireland-budget/ireland-finds-extra-cash-for-modest-budget-boost-idUKKBN1CF1WO'|'2017-10-10T17:11:00.000+03:00'
'fea2a829fcebc40cb00519c3a1401b423de6371b'|'When investors get stuck in the past'|'THE award of the Nobel economics prize to Richard Thaler is a reminder that economics has been struggling, in the past 30 years, to adapt its models to the real-life decision-making processes of actual humans. The problem applies as much in investment as anywhere else.One of the biggest problems is the tendency to assume that the future will resemble the past. Despite all the warnings inserted by regulators, investors often believe that fund management performance will persist, but the evidence is against it . Another issue is the assumption that overall market returns will persist. This may be one of the factors explaining the big deficits at state and local pension funds in America . Those funds are allowed to make their own calculations at the expected rate of return on their assets; the higher the assumption the less taxpayers and employees are required to stump up.  3  '|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'https://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2017/10/behavioural-finance-and-investment?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-10T21:46:00.000+03:00'
'5e02cf30d5128a133eb0e3066762c85f59dd916f'|'BlackBerry signs license deal with Florida''s BLU, ends patent dispute'|'October 12, 2017 / 10:57 AM / in 4 hours BlackBerry details patent deal with Android maker BLU Alastair Sharp , Jan Wolfe 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A man holds the new BlackBerry Key One during his presentation event before the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain February 25, 2017. REUTERS/Albert Gea/File Photo TORONTO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - BlackBerry Ltd ( BB.TO ) said a licensing deal it signed with low-end Android handset maker BLU Products Inc will bring it recurring revenue, ending a legal dispute over patents that rival Google has asked the U.S. government to revoke. BlackBerry did not disclose financial terms and its shares were little changed after the news, rising 0.5 percent in late Thursday morning Nasdaq trade ( BBRY.O ). BlackBerry filed two lawsuits against Miami-based BLU in June 2016, part of an effort by the Canadian company to generate revenue from its trove of technology patents. Alphabet Inc<6E>s ( GOOGL.O ) Google responded to lawsuits against a maker of phones running its Android operating system by challenging six of the patents at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. In late August and early September, a patent office appeal board said that Google had a <20>reasonable likelihood<6F> of winning the invalidation of four patents in a full review. The deal between BlackBerry and BLU was likely secured prior to a July 19 memorandum of understanding filed with the court hearing their patent dispute. The two firms have declined to disclose financial terms of that agreement. BlackBerry Chief Executive Officer John Chen said on a Sept. 28 earnings call that his company had received revenue from BLU, but did not elaborate. It was not clear if that payment was included in that quarter<65>s earnings, which beat analysts<74> forecast on a jump in licensing fees that includes patent payouts and royalties on BlackBerry-branded devices and software sold by others. Patent licensing deals are typically structured with an upfront payment to cover past sales and ongoing royalty payments tied to future sales. Market intelligence company IDC estimates that BLU accounts for less than 1 percent of global smartphone market share. BlackBerry said in its statement on Thursday that the completion of the BLU deal allows it to focus on other licensing targets in the mobile communications industry. <20>Anytime you have royalty-bearing licenses, you are setting a market rate,<2C> said David Pridham, chief executive of Dallas-based patent consulting firm Dominion Harbor Group, which recently analyzed BlackBerry<72>s patent portfolio on behalf of a group of handset manufacturers. <20>Doing so with a smaller player will be helpful as BlackBerry turns its attention to larger market incumbents,<2C> he said. BlackBerry is also waging two other patent lawsuits, one involving Nokia Oyj<79>s ( NOKIA.HE ) mobile networking technology filed in February and another broadly targeting Avaya products that was filed in July 2016. Additional reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee; Editing by Jim Finkle and Sriraj Kalluvila; Editing by Jonathan Oatis 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blackberry-patents/blackberry-signs-license-deal-with-floridas-blu-ends-patent-dispute-idUSKBN1CH1GE'|'2017-10-12T13:56:00.000+03:00'
'e7016577248f3b40472fa73d7c0236218bf27b98'|'Dutch retail chain Intertoys sold to Alteri Investors'|' 28 AM / in 14 minutes Dutch retail chain Intertoys sold to Alteri Investors Reuters Staff 1 Min Read AMSTERDAM, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Alteri Investors has agreed to buy Dutch toy store chain Intertoys from Blokker Holding for an undisclosed sum, the Dutch company said on Thursday. Intertoys operates around 500 stores in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Luxemburg and has more than 4,000 employees. Blokker in May said it would sell Intertoys, as well as other chain stores such as Asian goods importer Xenos and furniture outlet Leen Bakker, as it tries to stem losses. Alteri Investors was launched in 2014 as a joint venture between Alteri<72>s management and funds managed by affiliates of investment manager Apollo Global Management. Blokker Holding posted a net loss of 180 million euros on sales of 2 billion euros in 2016. (Reporting by Bart Meijer; editing by Anthony Deutsch and Jason Neely) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/intertoys-ma-alteri/dutch-retail-chain-intertoys-sold-to-alteri-investors-idUSL8N1MN1LZ'|'2017-10-12T11:28:00.000+03:00'
'2ffc47d2da9b9bd302afc2c0ac51363fda9f6d1a'|'Bombardier says AirBaltic resumes CSeries CS300 flights'|'Reuters TV United States October 12, 2017 / 7:57 PM / Updated 3 minutes ago Bombardier says AirBaltic resumes CSeries CS300 flights Reuters Staff 1 Min Read First Bombardier CS300 commercial aircraft for the Latvia national carrier airBaltic is presented in Riga, Latvia December 1, 2016. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins TORONTO (Reuters) - Bombardier Inc ( BBDb.TO ) said on Thursday AirBaltic had resumed flights of CSeries CS300 jets after a temporary halt to inspect engine accessory. Aerospace industry publication FlightGlobal reported earlier that Latvian carrier AirBaltic had temporarily grounded its fleet of Bombardier CSeries jets. <20>There was a question around the inspection of an engine accessory ...,<2C> a Bombardier spokeswoman said in an email statement to Reuters, adding that AirBaltic had confirmed to the Canadian company that commercial flights had resumed. AirBaltic was the first airline to operate the larger variant of Bombardier<65>s CSeries jet. Reporting by Allison Lampert; Writing by Denny Thomas; Editing by Susan Thomas 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-bombardier-airbaltic/bombardier-says-airbaltic-resumes-cseries-cs300-flights-idUKKBN1CH2VV'|'2017-10-12T22:41:00.000+03:00'
'867c512afd437f2d3da2ae72d81a14858bdaf97f'|'Lufthansa CEO says interested in talks to create new Alitalia'|'BERLIN, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Lufthansa would be interested if there was an opportunity to create a new Alitalia , the German flagship carrier<65>s Chief Executive Carsten Spohr said on Thursday.The group<75>s finance chief Ulrik Svensson had said in August that Lufthansa was interested in helping to shape the Italian aviation market but was not willing to take over the struggling national carrier in its current shape.<2E>Alitalia as it exists today is not up for debate,<2C> Spohr said on Thursday. <20>But if there was an opportunity to create a new Alitalia, then Lufthansa as the No. 1 in Europe would be interested in talks,<2C> he said.Bids for Alitalia are due by Oct 16.Reporting by Klaus Lauer; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Victoria Bryan'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/air-berlin-lufthansa-alitalia/lufthansa-ceo-says-interested-in-talks-to-create-new-alitalia-idINF9N1LL019'|'2017-10-12T06:43:00.000+03:00'
'c0fcfed18a3827619c95795c4374e76f633eddb0'|'Toyota plans to halve Japan car models by 2025 - source'|'October 12, 2017 / 1:02 AM / in 6 minutes Toyota plans to halve Japan car models by 2025 - source Maki Shiraki 2 Min Read A man walks past a Toyota Motor Corp logo at the company''s showroom in Tokyo, Japan June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Toru Hanai TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ) is planning to halve the number of cars it sells in Japan to about 30 by 2025 to focus on more popular models in a shrinking market, a person briefed on the matter told Reuters on Thursday. The automaker currently offers about 62 car models in Japan, including the Prius gasoline hybrid and the Aqua compact hatchback, along with less popular ones including the Premio sedan. Auto sales in Japan have been falling as the population rapidly ages, while young people are losing interest in car ownership. The plans will allow Toyota to make better use of its resources, the person said, who was not authorised to comment on the matter and declined to be identified. Toyota spokeswoman Akiko Kita said the company was pursuing a number of strategies to maintain sales at least 1.5 million vehicles annually in a shrinking market. It currently sells around 1.6 million a year. Toyota and other global carmakers are concentrating their efforts on developing lower emissions vehicles, including electric cars while also focusing on expanding market share in emerging markets. Reporting by Maki Shiraki and Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Stephen Coates and Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-toyota-strategy/toyota-plans-to-halve-japan-car-models-by-2025-source-idUKKBN1CH03W'|'2017-10-12T04:02:00.000+03:00'
'32c735eb47d902a27d2eb6152d50d2683dfc82b1'|'Airbus board carried out management review amid compliance row -sources'|'October 12, 2017 / 9:41 AM / Updated 6 hours ago Airbus board backs CEO after reviewing top management Tim Hepher 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Airbus Group Chief Executive Tom Enders listens during a news conference on the aerospace group''s annual results, in London, Britain February 24, 2016. REUTERS/Hannah McKay PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus directors publicly backed Chief Executive Tom Enders on Thursday in the face of European investigations into the use of middlemen in airplane sales and a $2 billion fighter deal. But in a sign of the disquiet within the aerospace group, the board only declared its support for Enders after its own review of senior management, two people familiar with the matter said. The investigations by Britain<69>s Serious Fraud Office and later its French counterpart were triggered by Airbus in 2016 when it reported itself to UK authorities after uncovering flawed documents over the use of intermediaries in airplane sales. Enders and legal counsel John Harrison have come under fire from within Airbus and in the French media for opening the floodgates to widening investigations and for overseeing what several insiders have called an internal witch-hunt. The Airbus board defended the decision to alert UK authorities to its initial findings. <20>These decisions were made with the board<72>s unanimous approval and actions were all directed by Tom Enders, the company<6E>s CEO,<2C> it said in a statement. <20>The Board has full trust and confidence in Tom and depends on his leadership to continue the transformation of the company and in particular our compliance program alongside our General Counsel, John Harrison,<2C> it added. A logo of Airbus is pictured on their booth during the European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (EBACE) in Geneva, Switzerland, May 22, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse The board<72>s own assessment of the group<75>s top executives was carried out over the summer and was commissioned to evaluate whether senior managers played any role that created risks for the company. No such evidence was discovered, the people said. Enders has been placed under separate investigation in Vienna over a 2003 Eurofighter sale to Austria, but has denied any wrongdoing and says the probe is politically charged. The board<72>s decision to examine its own top management highlights efforts being taken to restore stability after months of tension as the corruption row deepens. Airbus Chairman Denis Ranque continues to support Enders, but people familiar with the discussions say he is choosing his words carefully pending the outcome of the probe. <20>There is certainly some alarm at board level,<2C> a person familiar with the discussions said. Enders has promised to drive through sweeping changes in the company<6E>s culture as legal experts say Airbus is preparing the ground for what it hopes could be a deal with UK prosecutors. He told staff in a letter disclosed to Reuters last week to prepare for turbulence and that he and Harrison had the board<72>s unanimous backing to lead Airbus out of the legal crisis. Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Alexander Smith 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbus-board/airbus-board-carried-out-management-review-amid-compliance-row-sources-idUSKBN1CH180'|'2017-10-12T12:36:00.000+03:00'
'8b07c22b0214e13239c98f4d04f5cb72c66f6c2c'|'Ohio extends ban on Wells Fargo business by six months'|'October 12, 2017 / 8:05 PM / in an hour Ohio extends ban on Wells Fargo business by six months Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Wells Fargo bank sign is pictured in downtown Los Angeles, California, U.S. August 10, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ohio will extend its ban on doing business with Wells Fargo & Co because the bank has not done enough to help consumers and clean up its culture, the state<74>s governor said on Thursday. <20>This bank has not yet regained the public<69>s confidence,<2C> Governor John Kasich said in a statement. <20>Wells Fargo still has work to do.<2E> Ohio cut ties with Wells Fargo last October, in the wake of a sales scandal that began after the bank was found to have created as many as 2.1 million fake accounts to boost sales targets. The number was later revised to 3.5 million, and problems with other products, including auto insurance, life insurance and mortgages have surfaced over the past year. At the time, Kasich said Ohio would not turn to the bank for help on debt offerings or financial services for one year. On Thursday, he extended that ban through April. <20>I<EFBFBD>m willing to revisit this situation in six months,<2C> Kasich said in a statement. Other cities and states have enacted similar bans, including New York City, Chicago, Massachusetts, Illinois and California. It could not be immediately determined if all of those bans are still in place. Reporting by Steve Holland and Patrick Rucker in Washington; Additional reporting by Dan Freed in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wells-fargo-accounts-ohio/ohio-extends-ban-on-wells-fargo-business-by-six-months-idUSKBN1CH2WF'|'2017-10-12T23:04:00.000+03:00'
'11e9dfcbe0c694e108f581e608ea1c4aa00de05d'|'UPDATE 1-Kenyan shares drop after opposition leader pulls out of election'|'October 11, 2017 / 12:19 PM / in 8 minutes UPDATE 2-Kenyan assets tumble after opposition leader pulls out of election Reuters Staff (Updates with dollar bonds, second trader) By Duncan Miriri NAIROBI, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Kenyan stocks and bonds fell on Wednesday after opposition leader Raila Odinga pulled out of a repeat presidential election set for Oct. 26. The all-share index dropped 0.67 percent and the blue-chip index 1.41 percent, while Kenya<79>s dollar-denominated 2024 sovereign bond fell as much as 1.2 cents, according to Reuters data, as political uncertainty deepened. Odinga, who successfully challenged the Aug. 8 re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta last month, said the repeat poll should be canceled and a fresh election held after the election board has carried out reforms. <20>There was cautious optimism, but now political risk has risen considerably overnight driven by the opposition candidate<74>s withdrawal,<2C> said Ken Minjire, the head of securities at Genghis Capital in Nairobi. The all-share index has lost 5.5 percent and the blue chip index is down 10 percent since the August election was annulled. The Kenyan shilling, which fell 0.5 percent after the election was annulled on Sept. 1, was stable against the dollar on Wednesday. Traders attributed that to the central bank<6E>s credibility, which is bolstered by healthy foreign-exchange reserves. It was unclear after Odinga<67>s withdrawal whether repeat elections would be held on Oct. 26. A court ruling on Wednesday said other candidates, none of whom polled more than one percent, could also be on the ballot, possibly giving Kenyatta someone to run against other than Odinga. The opposition leader has been leading regular protests against the electoral board, and hundreds of his supporters marched through the streets of the capital, Nairobi, on Wednesday. Concern over the prolonged political uncertainty have hit economic growth, with businesses and households feeling the pinch. The government has already cut this year<61>s economic growth forecast to 5.5 percent from the initial 5.9 percent. But Aly Khan Satchu, an independent trader and analyst, said he expected the election to go ahead after the court ruled in favour of the minority candidate, ushering in a relief rally afterwards. <20>I expect the Oct. 26 election to take place ... We should start to see a recovery at the bourse,<2C> Satchu said. Additional reporting by Karin Strohecker in London; Editing by 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/kenya-election-stocks/update-1-kenyan-shares-drop-after-opposition-leader-pulls-out-of-election-idUSL8N1MM3L8'|'2017-10-11T15:18:00.000+03:00'
'3ba6fb588164a63341ed5a469dad93481ce7ebb2'|'NYPA wants U.S. government to modernize Puerto Rico power grid - Reuters'|'President and Chief Executive Officer of the New York Power Authority (NYPA) Gil Quiniones speaks during an interview at Reuters headquarters in New York City, U.S., October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz (Reuters) - The New York Power Authority (NYPA) wants the U.S. government to harden and modernize Puerto Rico<63>s electric grid after restoring service to the island<6E>s 3.4 million residents left in the dark by Hurricane Maria, NYPA<50>s chief executive said at the Reuters Global Commodities Summit on Tuesday.<2E>We<57>re hoping the federal government will step up. It<49>s a good investment to harden and modernize the grid in Puerto Rico so that we don<6F>t redo this again when the next storm comes,<2C> NYPA President and CEO Gil Quiniones said at the Summit, held at the Reuters office in New York.NYPA, the largest U.S. state-owned power company, was one of the first to send crews to help restore service in Puerto Rico after Maria struck the island as a dangerous Category 4 hurricane on Sept. 20, knocking out all electricity on the island.Since then, the territory<72>s power company, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the lead agency overseeing the rebuilding of the grid, have restored power to about 15 percent of the island<6E>s 1.5 million customers.Power restoration has been slow in part because people and equipment needed to rebuild the grid must be sent by ship or aircraft and PREPA<50>s grid was already degraded by years of underinvestment before the storm hit, according to the utility<74>s own reports. PREPA declared bankruptcy in July.President and Chief Executive Officer of the New York Power Authority (NYPA) Gil Quiniones attends an interview at Reuters headquarters in New York City, U.S., October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello has said the goal is to restore power to about 25 percent of customers by the end of October.Quiniones said he planned to travel to Puerto Rico on Saturday to check in with the 15 NYPA workers still on the island and coordinate with the leadership of PREPA and the Army Corps.President and Chief Executive Officer of the New York Power Authority (NYPA) Gil Quiniones attends an interview at Reuters headquarters in New York City, U.S., October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz Quiniones said he was open to sending more people to Puerto Rico if needed, but the Army Corps was already pulling in contractors and utility crews from the U.S. mainland to rebuild PREPA<50>s transmission and distribution systems.<2E>Our workers are assessing their substations - PREPA has about 333 substations - we<77>re close to half way through and our goal is to finish the substation assessments around Oct. 18,<2C> Quiniones said.In New York, Quiniones said NYPA was evaluating over 100 renewable projects to the company<6E>s request for proposals to meet a state mandate to get 50 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.He said NYPA expected to make decisions on the renewable projects in the first or second quarter of 2018.Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by David Gregorio'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/summits'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-commodities-summit-nypa/nypa-wants-u-s-government-to-modernize-puerto-rico-power-grid-idUSKBN1CF31L'|'2017-10-11T05:46:00.000+03:00'
'3554861ea13c4055029d4652baa6967b75e3a890'|'New Nobel Prize economist Thaler stumped by record markets'|'October 10, 2017 / 8:09 PM / Updated an hour ago New Nobel Prize economist Thaler stumped by record markets Ross Kerber 3 Min Read U.S. economist Richard Thaler, of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, smiles during a news conference after winning the 2017 Nobel Economics Prize in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Kamil Krzaczynski BOSTON (Reuters) - University of Chicago professor Richard Thaler may have won the Nobel Economics Prize on Monday for his work on behavioural economics, but the behaviour of investors has him stumped. Thaler said on Tuesday he is puzzled by the steady rise of global stock markets in recent years, even as many countries are gripped by political and social drama. <20>It<49>s a mystery to me. That, and the unbelievably low volatility in a time of massive global uncertainty seems mysterious to me,<2C> Thaler said in a phone interview from his Chicago apartment. Thaler also said his field could do more to research how human psychology affects things like inflation or interest rates. <20>Behavioural economists have not invested as much in macro as I would like,<2C> he said. Thaler spoke as U.S. stocks flirted with new record highs on Tuesday. The S&P 500 index is up roughly 14 percent for the year amid optimism about the economy and corporate profits. Thaler<65>s humble tone stood in contrast to the wide acclaim he received Monday when the 72-year-old was awarded the 9 million Swedish crown ($1.1 million) prize for his work on how human nature affects supposedly rational markets. U.S. economist Richard Thaler, of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, smiles upon arrival at his office after winning the 2017 Nobel Economics Prize in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Kamil Krzaczynski His research showed how traits such as lack of self-control and fear of loss can prompt decisions that have bad long-term outcomes. Thaler<65>s work has been applied in many areas such as auto-enrolling workers into retirement savings plans and adjusting their investments according to their age. Slideshow (3 Images) Thaler also has done well outside of the academic world, as part-owner of an $8 billion investment management firm in California, Fuller & Thaler Asset Management. It aims to practice financial theory such as looking for cases where other investors over-reacted and sold off too much of a stock based on bad news. The firm often focuses on small-cap companies, with market values of $3 billion or less, because there are fewer competing investors and thus more opportunities for gains, he said. Thaler made a short appearance in the Academy Award-winning 2015 film <20>The Big Short<72>, explaining the so-called <20>hot-hand fallacy<63> in which past success is expected to also warrant success in the future, with pop star Selena Gomez. Thaler said he rejected an early version of the script, wanting to be sure he spoke accurately for film audiences. <20>If I was going to make a fool of myself in a movie at least I<>d get the economics right,<2C> Thaler said. Reporting by Ross Kerber; Editing by Lisa Shumaker 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nobel-prize-economics-investors/new-nobel-prize-economist-thaler-stumped-by-record-markets-idUKKBN1CF2T2'|'2017-10-10T23:45:00.000+03:00'
'368cf0e0695aa895eb2f18ebf9cebff2a7f59385'|'JetBlue says hurricanes hurt third, fourth quarter revenue'|'Reuters TV United States October 11, 2017 / 1:42 PM / a few seconds ago JetBlue says hurricanes hurt third, fourth quarter revenue Reuters Staff 2 Min Read JetBlue Airways aircrafts are pictured at departure gates at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York June 15, 2013. REUTERS/Fred Prouser/File Photo (Reuters) - U.S. carrier JetBlue Airways Corp ( JBLU.O ) warned on Wednesday that revenue and operating income for the third and fourth quarters would be hurt by the recent historic hurricanes, which led to thousands of canceled flights across the United States. The airline said on a preliminary basis third-quarter revenue would be cut by $44 million and operating income would be reduced by about 6 cents to 7 cents per share. The New York-based carrier expects revenue in the fourth quarter to be hurt by about $70 million to $90 million based on current passenger bookings. Operating income will be chopped by 10 cents to 13 cents per share. JetBlue is expected to report third-quarter results and a fourth-quarter forecast on Oct 24. The company did say third-quarter unit revenue, a key metric that compares sales to flight capacity, would rise by 0.9 percent. Last month, the airline forecast unit revenue between a decline of 1 percent and a rise of 1 percent, excluding Irma. JetBlue expects unit revenue growth to be hurt by 1 to 2 percentage points in the fourth quarter due to Hurricanes Irma and Maria. For the full year, JetBlue expects revenue to be impacted by $114 million to $134 million and operating income to be reduced by 16 cents to 20 cents per share. Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jetblue-airways-outlook/jetblue-says-hurricanes-hurt-third-fourth-quarter-revenue-idUSKBN1CG1ST'|'2017-10-11T16:31:00.000+03:00'
'367eb3614a50dfff365e6dd5acac152bca5708ec'|'Pension Insurance Corp agrees 600 million pound buy-in deal with Wolseley UK'|'October 9, 2017 / 8:18 AM / in 21 minutes Pension Insurance Corp agrees 600 million pound buy-in deal with Wolseley UK Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Pension Insurance Corporation said on Monday it had agreed a pension insurance deal with the trustees of the Wolseley Group Retirement Benefits Plan for a premium of around 600 million pounds. The deal, structured as a <20>buy-in<69>, covers all of the pensioner liabilities associated with the scheme, PIC said in a statement. Wolseley UK is the operating subsidiary of Ferguson ( FERG.L ). <20>Over the past couple of years we have matched an increasing amount of our assets and liabilities and this strategy has now allowed us to take advantage of market conditions and fully insure these liabilities,<2C> David Illingworth, chairman of trustees of the pension scheme, said. Reporting by Simon Jessop; editing by Carolyn Cohn'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-pension-insurance-corporation-ferguso/pension-insurance-corp-agrees-600-million-pound-buy-in-deal-with-wolseley-uk-idUKKBN1CE0NN'|'2017-10-09T11:18:00.000+03:00'
'2b906b7d45ada173115b4c4c3eb1bfda5615ca6e'|'Elliott again ups Hitachi Kokusai stake after KKR raises offer price'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. hedge fund Elliott Management Corp has raised its stake in Japan<61>s Hitachi Kokusai Electric to 8.59 percent from 7.11 percent, a regulatory filing showed, one of several such hikes since it first disclosed a stake in the firm last month.The filing on Thursday comes a day after KKR & Co LP increased its offer price for the Hitachi Ltd unit to 2,900 yen ($25.80) a share from 2,503 yen, improving the bid after a third-party committee reporting to Hitachi Kokusai said it did not support the initial terms.Elliott, known for buying stakes in firms in the middle of takeovers and seeking better deals for shareholders, has become Hitachi Kokusai<61>s No.2 shareholder after Hitachi Ltd, which has a little over 50 percent.Since Elliott<74>s first disclosure of its stakeholding on Sept. 11, Hitachi Kokusai<61>s share price has risen 5 percent and is now about 20 percent above KKR<4B>s original offer.Elliott gradually amassed more shares each day over the past two weeks, the filing shows, bumping up its purchase on Wednesday when the Nikkei business daily reported KKR<4B>s plan for a higher offer.Shares in Hitachi Kokusai fell 3 percent on Thursday to close at 3,020 yen, versus a 0.4 percent gain in the wider market.Elliott has said the purpose of owning Hitachi Kokusai shares was <20>investment<6E>, but it has also noted it would <20>discuss matters such as important proposals depending on situations<6E>.Hitachi Kokusai on Wednesday raised its full-year profit forecast by nearly 40 percent as the chip-making equipment maker is seeing strong capital investment by client semiconductor manufacturers.Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim and Taiga Uranaka; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Stephen Coates'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-hitachi-kokusai-m-a-elliott/elliott-again-ups-hitachi-kokusai-stake-after-kkr-raises-offer-price-idINKBN1CH08M'|'2017-10-12T00:28:00.000+03:00'
'a773351f1be3f7f3c95a99ceaeffe431aa19cb29'|'GE stock hits 4-year low as analysts debate possibility of dividend cut'|'FILE PHOTO: The logo of General Electric Co. is pictured at the Global Operations Center in San Pedro Garza Garcia, neighbouring Monterrey, Mexico, on May 12, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril NEW YORK (Reuters) - Concern among investors that General Electric Co ( GE.N ) may not generate enough cash this year to fully cover its dividend and other promised spending sent its stock to its lowest level in more than four years on Wednesday.The shares fell 1.2 percent to $23.07 after JPMorgan said a dividend cut was <20>increasingly likely<6C> and lowered its price target on the stock to $20 from $22.<2E>Despite the recent CEO change, by the numbers we see a core operating performance that is below (GE<47>s) plan,<2C> JPMorgan analyst Stephen Tusa wrote in a note on Wednesday, referring to GE<47>s full year forecast. Tusa was not available to comment beyond the note.Chief Executive John Flannery, who took over the position on August 1, is doing a comprehensive review of the company and is due to set new targets for earnings and capital allocation, which includes dividends, on Nov. 13.GE has affirmed its commitment to the dividend, which gives GE stock the second-highest dividend yield in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and ranks it 30th among the S&P 500.<2E>Dividends remain a top priority,<2C> GE spokeswoman Jennifer Erickson said on Wednesday, declining to answer further questions as the company is in a quiet period ahead of its third-quarter results due next week. The dividend due to be paid Oct. 25 is not subject to being cut.GE<47>s stock has fallen 5.4 percent since Friday, including falling 1.24 percent to $23.07 on Wednesday, its lowest close since Sept. 3, 2013. The stock is down 27 percent this year, the worst Dow performer.On Friday GE said that its long-time Chief Financial Officer Jeff Bornstein would retire and be replaced by Jamie Miller, who has been the head of its transportation unit.A Reuters analysis of a GE presentation released in July and executives<65> comments showed that GE could generate $6 billion less cash this year than it planned to spend on dividends, share buybacks and other items. Its plan called for spending up to $25.8 billion, including about $8 billion on dividends, while generating about $20 billion in cash from operations and asset sales.GE has the capacity to pay the dividend. The company has more than $14 billion in cash on its balance sheet and $327 billion in orders for power plants, jet engines, locomotives, oil and gas equipment and healthcare devices.It could trim other spending instead, such as buying back fewer shares than the $11 billion to $13 billion it has targeted for this year.The 125-year-old company has cut its dividend six times in the last 34 years, including a 68 percent cut in 2009 during the financial crisis. It is operating against a far more favorable economic backdrop now.<2E>A dividend cut could crush the stock as retail investors flee, but maintaining it gives GE little or no excess cash to grow,<2C> Jeffrey Sprague, an analyst at Vertical Research Partners, said in a note after the Bornstein announcement on Friday.<2E>GE has continued to shrink the company but it has not proportionally shrunk the dividend.<2E>Some analysts saw a dividend cut as unlikely.<2E>Cutting the dividend would be a last resort,<2C> Moody<64>s Investors Service credit analyst Rene Lipsch told Reuters on Wednesday. But, he said, GE<47>s options would narrow next year when it no longer receives billions from asset sales at GE Capital.Long term, he said, the dividend <20>depends on Flannery<72>s ability to increase cash flow from the businesses.<2E>Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Toni Reinhold'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ge-stock/ge-stock-hits-4-year-low-as-analysts-debate-possibility-of-dividend-cut-idUSKBN1CH03D'|'2017-10-12T03:56:00.000+03:00'
'c48e31a228e1e2bedb2f24cd7bc7462ad44c8a14'|'Why McKinsey is under attack in South Africa'|'MCKINSEY, a global management consultancy known for its discreet profile and rarefied air, is unused to the sort of tub-thumping popular revolt it is experiencing in South Africa. Such is public outrage over the Guptas, an Indian-born business dynasty accused of growing rich off their relationship with President Jacob Zuma, that a few professional-services firms linked to the family, including McKinsey<65>as well as SAP, a German software giant<6E>have become targets of Twitter storms and protest banners.Anti-corruption groups and the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) have drawn blood in the case of Bell Pottinger, a British public-relations firm accused of orchestrating a racially divisive public-relations campaign on behalf of the Guptas. A complaint by the DA to a British PR industry association set in motion Bell Pottinger<65>s swift implosion in September. At KPMG, a global audit firm, eight senior executives in South Africa left in the same month because of the firm<72>s work for the Guptas. Such victories have fuelled the mood. On October 5th civil-society groups picketed McKinsey<65>s Johannesburg offices. At the heart of the affair are allegations of <20>state capture<72> by the Guptas, who moved from India to South Africa in the 1990s and turned a computer parts business into a conglomerate with properties in media, mining and professional services. One of Mr Zuma<6D>s sons, Duduzane, has worked for the family. A report in 2016 by South Africa<63>s public protector, an independent ombudsman, detailed allegations that the Guptas had meddled in cabinet appointments and used their connections to scoop lucrative government contracts (they and Mr Zuma have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing).McKinsey did highly-paid work for Eskom, a state-owned electricity monopoly at the centre of several of the <20>state capture<72> allegations. Documents show that McKinsey worked with Trillian Capital, a local consultancy that until recently was owned by Salim Essa, a Gupta associate, as part of winning contracts from the utility.As an international firm requiring a local partner, McKinsey had previously worked with a related company called Regiments. The consulting firm says that after Trillian emerged from Regiments in late 2015, it carried out a due diligence review and cut its ties with Trillian a few months later. McKinsey says it never entered into a formal contract with Trillian or made payments to the company, and there are letters to show that McKinsey warned Eskom about the risks of doing business with Trillian.But that has not put a stop to questions about the relationship. A former executive of Trillian, Bianca Goodson, has alleged that Trillian acted as a gatekeeper, using Mr Essa<73>s connections to land contracts and then passing the work over to <20>internationally recognised companies<65> including McKinsey. The firm stands behind its work for Eskom, says Steve John, global director of communications at McKinsey. Neither the Gupta family nor any company publicly linked to the Guptas has ever been a client of the firm, he notes. It has hired a law firm, Norton Rose Fulbright, to carry out a detailed internal investigation.It is an embarrassing situation for a group that prides itself on operating as <20>One Firm<72> across its local offices, says Tom Rodenhauser of ALM Intelligence, a market-research firm that monitors the consulting industry. McKinsey has weathered damage to its reputation before; in 2010 one of its consultants pleaded guilty to passing inside information to a New York-based hedge fund, Galleon Group. McKinsey<65>s close links with Enron also meant that its reputation was tarnished by the energy company<6E>s collapse in 2001.Politicians<6E> scrutiny may drag on. The DA party says it will push for the firm<72>s executives to appear before a parliamentary inquiry into Eskom this month. The party has also gone to the police to file a complaint of fraud and racketeering against McKinsey, and written to America<63>s Securities and Exchange Commission and Britain<69>s Serious
'111d53352a2001e7ea51e18132a336e6dacf3628'|'Emirates to quit some New Zealand flights as part of new Qantas pact'|'October 11, 2017 / 2:03 AM / in 3 hours Emirates to quit some New Zealand flights as part of new Qantas pact Jamie Freed 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Qantas Airways and an Emirates Airlines Airbus A380 fly in formation during a flyover at an altitude of around 450m (1500 ft) above Sydney March 31, 2013. REUTERS/Daniel Munoz/File Photo SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Emirates plans to end most of its flights between Australia and New Zealand as part of a renegotiated joint venture with Qantas Airways Ltd ( QAN.AX ) that will also see the Australian carrier quit flying to Dubai, the airlines said on Wednesday. Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said the changes would allow the airlines to each leverage their network strengths; Emirates with its Dubai hub and Qantas with its dominant position in Australia. <20>You can assume it is a win-win,<2C> he told Reuters in a telephone interview while declining to provide financial details of the arrangement. <20>We wouldn<64>t be extending for another five years if we weren<65>t getting a win out of it and Emirates certainly wouldn<64>t be.<2E> Unlike their original pact was signed five years ago, Qantas is now in a relatively stronger financial position than Emirates, with the Australian carrier in August reporting its second best-ever profit after cost-cutting helped turn around the business. Emirates in May reported its first annual profit drop in five years due to overcapacity, security concerns and a fall in regional business travel. <20>Increasingly it is Qantas driving the Emirates partnership,<2C> the CAPA Centre for Aviation wrote in a research note in August. <20>For Emirates this is not ideal but there are still very cogent reasons for the partnership and it would prefer a weaker partnership to none <20> or, worse, the prospect of Qantas working with one of Emirates<65> competitors.<2E> The airlines said in August Qantas would stop flying to London via Emirates<65> Dubai hub when the alliance was renewed. Qantas<61> Sydney-London flight will instead stop in Singapore. Emirates will keep a daily Sydney-Christchurch flight but quit the others between Australia and New Zealand from March, it said in a statement. Qantas said it would add more flights from Melbourne and Brisbane to Auckland to partially make up for the loss of capacity. The Middle Eastern carrier said it would also evaluate potential new direct services between Dubai and New Zealand. Reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-emirates-airline-qantas/emirates-to-quit-some-new-zealand-flights-as-part-of-new-qantas-pact-idUKKBN1CG06I'|'2017-10-11T05:03:00.000+03:00'
'aeeb67890e688b5102051d9b71cc17e8608635f0'|'MOVES-Venbrook appoints Lee Exton as managing director'|' 44 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago MOVES-Venbrook appoints Lee Exton as managing director Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 11 (Reuters) - Venbrook Group LLC, an independent insurance brokerage and services firm, said it appointed Lee Exton as managing director of employee benefits and total rewards. Exton was most recently the principal at Mercer and has previously worked with Keenan and Associates and Willis Towers Watson Plc. (Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/venbrook-moves-leeexton/moves-venbrook-appoints-lee-exton-as-managing-director-idUSL4N1MM4I3'|'2017-10-11T16:41:00.000+03:00'
'6098f013df51b1b1bb98356387bcde4b548ef836'|'PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 11'|'October 11, 2017 / 4:53 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 11 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 11 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - Apple Inc is digging into the more than $1 billion it has set aside for original programming to create its first known television project: a revival of a Steven Spielberg series from the 1980s. nyti.ms/2gurOMc - After a failed effort to find a solution to save the company, Sears Canada Inc said on Tuesday that it would shut down operations, leaving about 12,000 employees out of work. nyti.ms/2gvhCTJ - American technology and manufacturing company Honeywell International Inc said on Tuesday that it planned to spin off parts of its business but would retain its aerospace technology operations, against the recommendations of an activist investor. nyti.ms/2guqOYh - Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc said it had begun a strategic review of its consumer health care unit that could result in the business, whose products include Advil, Centrum supplements and ChapStick, being spun off or sold. nyti.ms/2i2QDT1 -'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-nyt/press-digest-new-york-times-business-news-oct-11-idUSL4N1MM1ZY'|'2017-10-11T12:53:00.000+03:00'
'982644c7b8787e9d1c0e4fe9397128c55fa3f2d9'|'Greece sells 813 mln euros of 13-week T-bills, yield drops to 1.85 pct'|'ATHENS, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Greece sold 813 million euros ($960.8 million) of three-month T-bills on Wednesday to refinance maturing issues, the country<72>s debt agency PDMA said.The three-month paper was sold at a yield of 1.85 percent, down six basis points from 1.91 percent in a previous sale last month. The amount raised included 187.5 million euros in non-competitive bids.The sale<6C>s bid-to-cover ratio was 1.64, up from 1.36 in the Sept. 13 sale.In a rollover T-bill holders renew their positions instead of getting paid on the maturing paper they hold. The settlement date of the new bills is October 13. ($1 = 0.8461 euros) (Reporting by George Georgiopoulos)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/greece-treasuries/greece-sells-813-mln-euros-of-13-week-t-bills-yield-drops-to-1-85-pct-idINZYN284S00'|'2017-10-11T07:33:00.000+03:00'
'6890a074d056f2fc32a61f72844a239b6cd0c86d'|'U.S. stock funds attract most cash since late August -Lipper'|'NEW YORK, Oct 12 (Reuters) - U.S. fund investors waded back into equities during the latest week, channeling the most cash into the stock market since late August, Lipper data showed on Thursday.Stock mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in the United States pulled in $2.9 billion in the week ended Oct. 11, according to the research service. (Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by James Dalgleish)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/investment-mutualfunds-lipper/u-s-stock-funds-attract-most-cash-since-late-august-lipper-idINN9N1F900N'|'2017-10-12T19:10:00.000+03:00'
'050fc3cb748655d27cbc2a0ce6f047bca7df6df0'|'Remortgage now to grab a cheap fixed-rate deal <20> before they<65>re gone - Money'|'Remortgaging Remortgage now to grab a cheap fixed-rate deal <20> before they<65>re gone An expected interest rate rise means lenders are pulling their cheapest deals. We survey the best left on the market Get your fix <20> homeowners have been advised to find a new remortgage deal. Photograph: Eddie Keogh/Reuters Remortgaging Remortgage now to grab a cheap fixed-rate deal <20> before they<65>re gone An expected interest rate rise means lenders are pulling their cheapest deals. We survey the best left on the market View more sharing options Rupert Jones Friday 13 October 2017 07.01 BST It<49>s crunch time for anyone thinking about switching to a new mortgage, after a string of lenders hiked the cost of their fixed-rate home loans. During the past few days, lenders have been frantically pulling their lowest-priced deals or repricing them upwards as they prepare for an interest rate rise that could come as early as next month . UK interest rates stay at 0.25% but Bank of England hints rise is looming Read more NatWest has whacked up the cost of its five-year fixes by up to 0.9% (equivalent to almost four quarter-point base rate rises), while HSBC and Barclays have pushed up rates by up to 0.2%. Meanwhile, Yorkshire building society had indicated its trailblazing two-year fix at just 0.99% and its table-topping five-year fix at 1.55% would be around for a while <20> but on Thursday it announced they were being pulled. With time seemingly running out to lock into a bargain-basement deal, those thinking about remortgaging had better get a move on <20> and Sainsbury<72>s (see panel) is currently offering the best deals. The <20>buy now while stocks last<73> cliche really does apply here <20> although many people will argue that every warning in the past decade about an imminent rate rise has turned out to be false. The good news is that at the time of writing there were still a fair few competitively priced home loans on the market, with two-year fixes available at little more than 1%, and five-year fixes starting at around 1.59%. But don<6F>t bank on them being around for long. Hints from the Bank of England that the first increase in the cost of borrowing for a decade could be weeks away have started to push up funding costs for lenders. On Monday, the financial data provider Moneyfacts revealed that 21 lenders had upped at least some of their rates since 12 September. That list will be a fair bit longer by now. The rises have typically been in the order of 0.2%-0.25%, but the rate increases announced by NatWest range from 0.02%-0.9%, with five-year deals aimed at remortgagers seemingly taking the brunt of the changes. The rate on one NatWest five-year deal rose from 2.38% to 3.28%, another from 2.1% to 2.88%. The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, could raise rates on 2 November. Photograph: Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters Meanwhile, Barclays has increased the cost of its new two-year fixes by up to 0.2%. That means its cheapest two-year fix now has a rate of 1.29% when just a few days ago it was 1.09%. HSBC upped its 1.14% two-year fix to 1.34% on Friday, while its 1.59% five-year fix has risen to 1.79%. On Thursday night, Yorkshire withdrew two of the most eye-catching fixes on the market: a two-year deal priced at 0.99% and a five-year deal at a super-low 1.55%. It is likely to announce new deals next week, but you can bet they won<6F>t be as good. David Hollingworth at broker London & Country Mortgages says: <20>This is more than a few tweaks here and there <20> there<72>s a definite trend. As you get more [lenders] doing it, that only increases the pressure on those who remain.<2E> His message to those who have been thinking about locking into a low fixed rate but have yet to act is: <20>I wouldn<64>t leave it much longer.<2E> Mark Harris of SPF Private Clients, said on Tuesday: <20>HSBC hopes to hold rates for another week at least, and Santander for another two <20><> but both had indicated that, should service levels begin to suffer <20>they may be forced to move 
'bcbec90f0c0e19c8658a3ea414f97bf01f64d3ba'|'JGBs little changed as bullish stocks weigh but strong auction supports'|'TOKYO, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Japanese government bond prices were little changed on Friday, as investor interest was largely centered on Japanese equities, but strong liquidity-enhancing auction results lent support.The benchmark 10-year JGB yield and the 30-year yields were flat at 0.060 percent and 0.865 percent, respectively. The five-year yield edged up half a basis point to minus 0.085 percent.JGBs were weighed down as Tokyo<79>s Nikkei joined a rally in global stocks, and touched its highest in 21 years.The bond market was supported, however, as Friday<61>s auction conducted regularly by the finance ministry to enhance market liquidity attracted strong demand.The bid-to-cover ratio, a gauge of demand, at the 550 billion yen ($4.90 billion) auction rose to 3.64 from 2.82 at the previous sale.$1 = 112.1400 yen Reporting by the Tokyo markets team; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/japan-bonds/jgbs-little-changed-as-bullish-stocks-weigh-but-strong-auction-supports-idINL4N1MO29V'|'2017-10-13T02:59:00.000+03:00'
'ab8b976de48a5d5f5d4935230ee73c40e7820d57'|'UK''s Aldermore in talks over $1.3 billion takeover by FirstRand'|'October 13, 2017 / 11:43 AM / Updated 22 minutes ago UK''s Aldermore in talks over $1.3 billion takeover by FirstRand Noor Zainab Hussain 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Aldermore Group ( ALD.L ) is in talks over a possible 1 billion pound takeover by South African lender FirstRand ( FSRJ.J ), the latest of Britain<69>s co-called <20>challenger<65> banks to consider selling up in a tough market. Aldermore, founded in 2009 by a former Barclays executive with backing from private equity firm AnaCap, said on Friday it had received an <20>indicative proposal<61> from South Africa<63>s biggest lender by value of 313 pence per share in cash. <20>(The) Board of Aldermore has indicated to FirstRand that it is likely to recommend a firm offer at this (313 pence) level,<2C> it said in a statement. Britain<69>s challenger banks emerged after the financial crisis to fill a gap in small business lending and capitalise on problems at big banks such as Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds. However, they have been seen as ripe for takeovers recently as a prolonged period of low interest rates and sluggish UK economic growth have squeezed earnings, while the pound<6E>s fall has made them cheaper for foreign buyers. FirstRand said Aldermore would help build a deposit base to fund and diversify its UK business. At 1225 GMT, Aldermore<72>s shares were up 18.6 percent at 303.7 pence, their best day since listing in 2015. The proposed offer is a 22.2 percent premium to Thursday<61>s closing price. FirstRand<6E>s shares were down 0.7 percent at 53.98 rands. FirstRand has been looking to return to developed markets in recent months following a strategy revamp prompted by slowing growth and rising risks elsewhere in Africa, which was once at the heart of its expansion plans. African markets have been depressed by a slump in oil and other commodity prices - export mainstays of many economies - leading companies from insurer MMI Holdings ( MMIJ.J ) to food maker Tiger Brands ( TBSJ.J ) to scale back operations. Aldermore has been one of the better performing UK challenger banks, reporting a 32 percent rise in profit for the first half of the year, helped by strong demand from small- and medium-sized businesses, homeowners and landlords. Rival Shawbrook was bought by private equity groups earlier this year, while the likes of CYBG Plc ( CYBGC.L ) and its Clydesdale business have come under pressure.Shares in challenger banks Virgin Money ( VM.L ) and OneSavings ( OSBO.L ) jumped over 5 percent after the news of Aldermore<72>s proposed deal. Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru, Pamela Barbaglia in London and Tiisetso Motsoeneng in Johannesburg; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-aldermore-group-m-a-firstrand/british-bank-aldermore-in-deal-talks-with-south-africas-firstrand-idUKKBN1CI1IP'|'2017-10-13T16:15:00.000+03:00'
'e7c02434b065eb3d5dd391d6de1c4a548596735c'|'EU regulator wants Gazprom to sweeten antitrust concessions'|'October 13, 2017 / 2:13 PM / in 26 minutes EU regulator wants Gazprom to sweeten antitrust concessions Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BRUSSELS, Oct 13 (Reuters) - EU antitrust regulators want Russian state-controlled gas giant Gazprom to offer more concessons to end a six-year long investigation, the European Commission said on Friday. The comments by the EU competition authority came after Gazprom deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev met EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager to discuss the case. <20>Our exchanges with Gazprom continue and, on this basis, Gazprom will first have to submit an improved commitments proposal. So, there is still some work ahead,<2C> a Commission spokesman said in an email. Gazprom, which supplies a third of the EU<45>s gas, is seeking to settle the case with concessions and stave off a possible fine of as much as 10 percent of its global turnover. (Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Alissa de Carbonnel) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/russia-gazprom-eu-antitrust/eu-regulator-wants-gazprom-to-sweeten-antitrust-concessions-idUSL8N1MO440'|'2017-10-13T17:11:00.000+03:00'
'f5ff24660a74b73c7a75e434096838eccc646eda'|'Nikkei edges closer to 21-year high; Kobe Steel stumbles 20 pct again'|'* Both Nikkei and Topix hit fresh 2-year highs* Kobe Steel plunges 20 pct to near 1-year low* Food, railway stocks bought while automakers soldBy Ayai TomisawaTOKYO, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Nikkei share average rose on Wednesday in choppy trade, edging closer to a 21-year high supported by buying in defensive stocks, while Kobe Steel extended its losses after confirming a media report that it fabricated data in iron power products.Kobe Steel Ltd on Wednesday confirmed a media report that there may have been data fabrication in iron powder products.The company<6E>s shares stumbled 20 percent to near one-year low of 856 yen, after plunging 22 percent on Tuesday.The Yomiuri newspaper reported Japan<61>s third-biggest steelmaker may have fabricated data on iron powder products used typically in components such as automotive gears.The company is currently investigating the issue, a spokesman said.The Nikkei rose 0.3 percent to 20,878.07 in midmorning trade after opening a tad lower. Trading was choppy, but the index later climbed to a fresh two-year high of 20,889.05, the highest level since August 2015 and moving closer to a 21-year high.A move above the 20,952.71 level hit in June 2015 would mark its highest level since 1996.The broader Topix rose 0.1 percent to 1,697.13, also a fresh two-year high.On Wednesday, defensive stocks such as food companies and railway stocks attracted buyers, while exporters such as automakers languished after a weak yen trend has paused.<2E>The Nikkei seems to be on track to move closer to 21,000 supported by strong corporate profit hopes,<2C> said Takuya Takahashi, a strategist at Daiwa Securities.But he added that profit-taking in some sectors is possible, while geopolitical concerns related to North Korea worry investors.The dollar was up 0.1 percent at 112.60 yen after slipping to as low as 111.990 overnight amid speculation that President Donald Trump<6D>s tax overhaul plan would stall.The greenback had risen to a three-month high of 113.440 on Friday but had pulled back after a flare up in North Korea worries.Toyota Motor Corp dropped 0.7 percent, Mitsubishi Motors Corp shed 1.7 percent and Mazda Motor Corp declined 1.9 percent.Insurance stocks, which fell on the previous day, rebounded. MS&AD Insurance gained 1.2 percent, while Sompo Holdings advanced 1.0 percent.Meat processing company NH Foods rose 1.9 percent, flour products maker Nisshin Seifun Group advanced 1.1 percent, East Japan Railway gained 0.8 percent and West Japan Railway added 0.4 percent. (Editing by Sam Holmes)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/japan-stocks-midday/nikkei-edges-closer-to-21-year-high-kobe-steel-stumbles-20-pct-again-idUSL4N1MM1JE'|'2017-10-11T05:54:00.000+03:00'
'e953eee572b6d7c649d9bc6b4046333afc0bfc21'|'U.S. 3-year note sold at highest yield since 2010'|'NEW YORK, Oct 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday sold $24 billion of three-year government notes at a yield of 1.657 percent, the highest at an auction of this debt maturity since April 2010 when it was 1.776 percent, Treasury data showed.The ratio of bids to the amount of three-year notes offered was 2.83, up from 2.70 at the prior auction in September. (Reporting by Richard Leong)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-auction-3year/u-s-3-year-note-sold-at-highest-yield-since-2010-idINL2N1MM164'|'2017-10-11T13:42:00.000+03:00'
'adb5742ffb5bc2060abdc760847c3c06f6b4cad6'|'South Sudan oil conference fails to draw biggest energy firms'|'JUBA, Oct 11 (Reuters) - South Sudan<61>s president was a no-show for the nation<6F>s first international oil conference, a gathering that also failed to attract prospective investors from the biggest global energy companies.The turnout shows only smaller companies are risking bets on the oil sector of the world<6C>s youngest country. South Sudan has 3.5 billion barrels of oil and 3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in proven reserves, and is seen by companies as one of the last frontiers in energy exploration in sub-Saharan Africa.But a civil war that broke out in late 2013 dashed the hopes of oil major Exxon Mobil, which has ditched exploration plans. Its rival Total has put such plans on hold. Four million people have fled the conflict.Oil production has fallen to about a third of the peak it reached before the war.The government says Total is still interested in developing two of its biggest oil blocks. The company did not immediately comment when asked by Reuters why it did not send a representative to South Sudan for the conference.<2E>The elephant in the room is still the crisis,<2C> said NJ Ayuk, chief executive of Centurion Law Group, an African energy-focused firm. He spoke wistfully of 2011, when the country gained independence from Sudan.<2E>Everybody was in love with South Sudan, everybody was hopeful and wanted to help,<2C> he said of prospective investors. <20>The challenge is bringing the country back to where it was in 2011, where most people could really see a dream.<2E>Britain<69>s Tullow Oil, a leading exploration firm on the continent that the government says has expressed interest in an untapped block, was represented by its Africa vice-president.But at coffee breaks conference attendees said they worried that political obstacles, more than technical ones, would plague any possible investment.A fragile peace deal broke down last year amid gun battles between soldiers and rebels in Juba. International efforts to bring warring sides to new talks have not succeeded.There was brief applause when second vice-president James Wani Igga, standing in for President Salva Kiir, said South Sudan <20>is emerging as a powerful nation with a world-class oil industry<72>.A British drilling company executive called arrival at Juba<62>s airport <20>enlightening<6E>. The airport is housed in tents amid renovations of the original terminal. Passports are stamped by officials without computers in a trailer provided by the United Nations.Petroleum minister Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth said the government would assert itself in talks with potential investors.<2E>I<EFBFBD>m not threatening anybody, but if you don<6F>t meet our terms, we will say <20>bye bye<79> and then somebody else will come in immediately,<2C> Gatkuoth said.He said state-owned Nilepet would take a greater role in partnerships. <20>You will team up with Nilepet,<2C> he told the conference, with a caveat: <20>I<EFBFBD>m not encouraging you to leave - immediately.<2E>This is not a reassuring message, said Andrew Firth of Secure, a regional private security and risk management firm.<2E>The quickest way to drive the petroleum sector forward is by allowing the market to drive development, not for the government to drive (it).<2E>Luke Patey, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies who studies East Africa<63>s oil industry, said of the turnout: <20>I think it<69>s a combination of the real risk that exists ... and that the global oil price has been quite low compared to when South Sudan became independent.<2E>Gatkuoth, the minister, said the president had delegated his deputy to open the conference on his behalf. <20>He is very committed to inviting investors and open this conference but he had other national engagements,<2C> Gatkuoth said of Kiir.The minister said of Total: <20>They were invited to attend but I do not know why they did not come.<2E> (Additional reporting by Jason Patinkin in Kampala and Bate Felix in Paris; Editing by Dale Hudson)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/southsudan-oil/south
'eaf36313d91a4dd884ee04c0495c88e4a553ce50'|'Lufthansa poised to buy parts of Air Berlin: source'|'FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A330-223 aircraft of German carrier AirBerlin takes off towards New York, U.S., from Duesseldorf airport, Germany, September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo FRANKFURT/BERLIN (Reuters) - Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) is poised to agree a deal to buy assets from insolvent Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ), a person familiar with the matter told Reuters, ahead of a deadline on Thursday.Germany<6E>s largest airline is set to buy Air Berlin<69>s Niki leisure unit, its LG Walter regional airline and some additional short-haul aircraft, the source said on Wednesday.<2E>The deal with Lufthansa is done, there is agreement,<2C> the person said, adding that no contract had been signed yet.Lufthansa declined to say whether it was set to sign a deal, saying only it was confident it would meet the deadline for negotiations.Air Berlin, which has struggled to turn a profit over the last decade, filed for insolvency on Aug. 15, and a government loan has kept its planes in the air while it negotiates with potential buyers over parts of its business.It said late last month that negotiations with Lufthansa and Britain<69>s easyJet ( EZJ.L ) would continue until Oct. 12.FILE PHOTO: Planes of the Lufthansa airline stand on the tarmac in Frankfurt airport, Germany, March 17, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo The operations up for grabs also include access to take-off and landing slots at Air Berlin<69>s hubs in Tegel in the German capital and Duesseldorf.EasyJet, which has a base at Berlin<69>s Schoenefeld airport, has been discussing acquiring 27 to 30 planes, though a media report earlier this week said talks could fail.EasyJet said it would not comment on ongoing discussions and would provide a further update in due course if necessary.Meanwhile German family-owned logistics firm Zeitfracht said it had made a new offer for Air Berlin<69>s cargo marketing platform and its maintenance business with a partner.It declined to provide further details. A person familiar with the matter said that Zeitfracht<68>s new bid was made jointly with maintenance group Nayak and its owners.Air Berlin, Germany<6E>s second largest carrier, will cease operating flights this month, capping a turbulent summer for European carriers.Italian flag carrier Alitalia is in administration and seeking investors too, British leisure airline Monarch collapsed at the start of this month, stranding thousands abroad, and low cost Ryanair has canceled thousands of flights after a pilot rostering mess-up.Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach and Klaus Lauer; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Emma Thomasson/Keith Weir'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-lufthansa/lufthansa-poised-to-buy-parts-of-air-berlin-source-idINKBN1CG1UR'|'2017-10-11T11:57:00.000+03:00'
'8661d35f9decb952e3e5b81bbe5e14a838508e0f'|'Elliott not pushing for GEA break-up, wants dialogue: source'|'October 11, 2017 / 8:47 AM / Updated 6 hours ago Fund manager Elliott sees scope for cost cuts at GEA: source Arno Schuetze 4 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Activist investor Elliott sees scope for cost cuts at food processing machinery maker GEA ( G1AG.DE ) and thinks its current restructuring plan is not good enough, a person close to the fund manager said on Wednesday. Elliott Management isn<73>t planning on ousting the current leadership of GEA or pushing for a break-up, the source added, after the fund manager revealed a 3.01 percent stake in the German firm which sent GEA<45>s shares up nearly 7 percent. <20>A break-up of GEA is not part of Elliott<74>s investment thesis,<2C> the person said, adding that the investor saw no need for the company to accelerate its international expansion. <20>It is about internal housekeeping. There is tremendous potential for margin improvements,<2C> the person said, adding that Elliott is aiming for a constructive dialogue with the current management. Elliott, which owns stakes in European companies such as Akzo Nobel, BHP Billiton and AC Milan, declined to comment. Another activist investor Albert Frere took a 3 percent stake in GEA in August. GEA, which has grown through a number of acquisitions in recent years, is in the midst of a restructuring program, which Elliott views as poorly executed and communicated, the source said. A spokesman for GEA, which has issued two profit warnings over the last twelve months, said that the company has been in contact with Elliott as part of its normal investor relations. PLANT CLOSURES While large job cuts are not part of Elliott<74>s plans for now, it does see scope in GEA shutting some of its 65 sites, eking out savings in procurement and investing in more profitable parts of the business, the source said. It also sees capacity for GEA to return cash to shareholders by expanding its share buy-back program to more than 500 million euros annually, the source said. Analysts at Barclays pointed out that Elliott<74>s investment came after four quarters of disappointments, which has seen GEA<45>s stock decline by 21 percent over the last year, while the sector index .SXNP rose by the same amount. <20>GEA is the most-shorted stock among our European capital goods names,<2C> Barclays said in a note to clients. With tailwinds from surging demand for capital goods and increasing dairy prices - dairy products machinery is a main GEA product line - the company is seen having the potential to get back on track, according to analysts. <20>The underlying business quality is still excellent in our view and should enable GEA to considerably expand margins again in the coming years,<2C> analysts at Hauck & Aufhaeuser said. Elliott sees potential for GEA to increase its EBIT margin by 4 percentage points and achieve its medium-term margin guidance of 13 to 16 percent, the source familiar with the matter said. In Elliott<74>s view, the closure of sites, improvement at GEA<45>s services business and cheaper procurement could help achieve that goal, the source added. GEA<45>s operating EBIT margin stood at 8.9 percent in the second quarter of 2017. While Elliott is not pushing to oust current executives, it is seeking clarity on succession planning, the person added. GEA Chief Executive Juerg Oleas<61> mandate runs until December 2019. Reporting by Arno Schuetze; Additional reporting by Tom Kaeckenhoff; Editing by Victoria Bryan and Elaine Hardcastle 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-gea-group-elliott/elliott-not-pushing-for-gea-break-up-wants-dialogue-source-idINKBN1CG0XE'|'2017-10-11T06:47:00.000+03:00'
'0506ab13e8eb6e3f1dcb35a121d5be09eb6955e3'|'China says new EU trade rules against Chinese imports lack awareness of WTO rules'|'October 12, 2017 / 3:18 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago China says new EU trade rules against Chinese imports lack awareness of WTO rules Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s commerce ministry said on Thursday that the European Union<6F>s new trade rules against Chinese imports lacked awareness of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, urging the EU to abide by the requirements. Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Gao Feng made the remarks at a regular briefing in Beijing. The European Union agreed new rules last week to guard against excessively cheap Chinese imports, ending 18 months of wrangling over trade ties with Beijing. Reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk; Writing by Yawen Chen; Editing by Kim Coghill 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-eu-trade/china-says-new-eu-trade-rules-against-chinese-imports-lack-awareness-of-wto-rules-idUKKBN1CH0AX'|'2017-10-12T06:17:00.000+03:00'
'3ff860b6dff123f588cbb236f6cbcd00362bc202'|'An epic but inconsequential proxy vote at Procter & Gamble'|'SHAREHOLDER meetings in Ohio are not usually the stuff of high drama, but a recent gathering was a nail-biter. Nelson Peltz of Trian Fund Management, an activist hedge fund, sought a seat on the board of Procter & Gamble (P&G), the world<6C>s largest consumer-goods company, in a proxy vote on October 10th. It was the biggest such battle ever. In the weeks leading up to P&G<>s shareholder meeting, the fight resembled a political contest, complete with carefully crafted videos, lengthy white papers, mass mailings and tens of thousands of phone calls urging shareholders to vote blue (P&G) or white (Trian).As The Economist went to press, P&G said it had won and Mr Peltz was contesting the tally. <20>Everybody but [P&G<>s] current employees voted for us,<2C> he said after P&G declared victory. <20>Maybe that<61>s why they keep so much overhead.<2E> So the brawl is not over. Yet the outcome may not matter much. Mr Peltz will push P&G for change regardless of whether he wins a board seat, and it is unclear that he will have much effect, be he on the board or off. It is not that Mr Peltz lacks heft. He has taken on consumer firms including Heinz and Wendy<64>s in the past. Martin Lipton, a lawyer who has long defended companies from such activists, has noted his <20>impressive record of success with consumer products companies<65>. Even when Trian technically loses a fight, it often wins. It lost a proxy battle against DuPont, a chemical company, in 2015, but the company went on to make many changes that Mr Peltz had sought. Trian recently won a separate victory, securing a seat on the board of General Electric on October 9th.At P&G, new thinking is sorely needed. The 180-year-old company sells products in nearly 200 countries and territories. It has America<63>s bestselling razors (Gillette), toothpaste (Crest), detergent (Tide) and toilet paper (Charmin), to name but a few of its products, but has lost share in more than a dozen of its top categories. Total shareholder return in the five years to February 13th 2017, the last trading day before Trian<61>s stake (of 1.5%) was announced, lagged the median of its peers by 55 percentage points and the S&P 500 Consumer Staples Index by 27 percentage points.P&G has taken steps to become more streamlined. In the past three years it has culled its brands from 170 to 65 and reduced the number of employees by 35,000. But Mr Peltz maintains that the firm remains too insular and slow to adapt to a fast-moving market. His frustrations are shared by many institutional investors. Those recently surveyed by Sanford C. Bernstein, a research firm, were particularly critical of the board, which is packed with other bosses, including Terry Lundgren, the chairman of Macy<63>s, a department store, and Meg Whitman, boss of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, an IT firm.Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), an influential proxy-advisory firm, recently noted that the board had presided over bureaucratic tangles and botched acquisitions. Both it and Glass Lewis, another proxy adviser, backed Mr Peltz<74>s appointment. Many small investors, who own about 40% of P&G<>s shares, appear to have disagreed. Employees may have feared bigger layoffs to come. Mr Peltz says he will continue to push P&G even if he fails to prevail in the proxy<78>s certified vote count.But his powers may be limited. He is not seeking to sack David Taylor, who became chief executive in 2015 and is thought to be moving P&G in the right direction (albeit too slowly for investors<72> taste). Nor is he trying to split up P&G. Mr Peltz<74>s most substantive change would be to reorganise its ten business units into three, overseen by a lean holding company, to make the firm nimbler. Reorganisation<6F>if the board supports it<69>could take years to yield results.Mr Peltz is also urging P&G to acquire more small and local brands. Yet given the mismanagement of prior deals, it is unclear that it would find suitable targets or sustain their growth. Many of the world<6C>s largest consumer firms are str
'b798200bc27f510cb97d9cf7f60aef77cfd36bfc'|'UPDATE 1-AT&T says hurricanes, earthquakes hurt third-quarter results'|'(Adds details, shares))Oct 11 (Reuters) - AT&T Inc said on Wednesday that its third-quarter results took a hit from a string of hurricanes that tore into parts of the United states and earthquakes in Mexico.The No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier said third-quarter consolidated revenue was hurt by about $90 million and pre-tax earnings by about $210 million, or 2 cents per share. ( bit.ly/2ydgmfm )AT&T also said it lost about 90,000 U.S. video subscribers in the quarter due to intense competition in traditional pay TV markets as well as the impact of the recent hurricanes.<2E>Several devastating hurricanes, as well as earthquakes in Mexico, significantly impacted certain regions of our service area during the third quarter,<2C> the company said.<2E>We expect further reductions in the fourth quarter as we continue to assess damage to our network and fully restore service,<2C> it added.However, the company reiterated its full-year forecast of mid-single digit growth in adjusted earnings and capital expenditures in the $22 billion range.The company<6E>s shares fell marginally in extended trading on Wednesday. (Reporting by Laharee Chatterjee; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/att-outlook/update-1-att-says-hurricanes-earthquakes-hurt-third-quarter-results-idINL4N1MM5PY'|'2017-10-11T20:38:00.000+03:00'
'8508ff3039bf4f0e857f3630495e51d571ab06e6'|'Crafty app developers are ripping off big-name brands'|'THE new app for an upmarket British department store certainly looks the part. Released on Google Play, a shop for Android software, on September 5th, it has the right logo, the correct vibrant colour and offers fashionable clothes and accessories. But the app is not authorised by the brand, is littered with pop-up ads and is painfully slow (furious users gave it one-star ratings). Its developer, Style Apps, has also launched apps for other clothing brands that are household names in America.Such fake apps are designed by crafty developers to trick inattentive users. Google and Apple police their app stores but many impostors get through. In third-party app stores, unofficial platforms run by someone other than the two tech giants, the problem is even worse. Users are tricked in two ways. Some apps fill a gap in the market. Selfridges, a chain of British fashion stores, for instance, has a legitimate app for Apple devices but not for Android ones. RadioShack, an American electronics retailer that filed for bankruptcy in February 2015, has a website but not an official app. Three imitation apps have by now sprouted under the shop<6F>s name. Other developers simply copy an existing app and hope users will fail to notice. The Economist found that half of the 50 top-selling apps in Google Play had fakes. These included ones with tweaked names (<28>MyGoogleTranslate<74> rather than <20>Google Translate<74>) and a bogus Netflix app that uses a weird Halloween-themed font for the logo. Google says it is reviewing these apps and will take action where necessary.Fake apps are often stuffed with malicious code. Academics from a research group, SerVal, at the University of Luxembourg, estimate that around a fifth of all Android app-based malware is hidden in fake apps. The malware facilitates various money-making schemes. The most egregious are designed to steal the passwords that unlock users<72> bank accounts. But it is more common for scams to profit from ordinary advertising, particularly on Android devices, says Eliran Sapir of Apptopia, a tech firm. Adverts in the smartphone<6E>s web browser get quietly replaced by similar ones chosen by the fake-app developer.Another money-spinner is to mine cryptocurrencies. Analysts at Trend Micro, a cybersecurity firm, in 2014 discovered that copies of Football Manager Handheld, a smartphone game, and TuneIn Radio, an audio app, contained malicious software that mined cryptocurrencies, the proceeds of which were probably funneled to the developers. This still goes on. It does not harm users directly, but researchers warn that such <20>vampire<72> apps drain phone batteries.Developers can make much more money with fake apps than through legitimate means, reckons Mr Sapir. On dark-web forums, hackers and small-time digital advertisers offer developers around $1 per user per year to inject their apps with malicious code. In theory, a single app with 15,000 users (about a tenth of all apps have this many) could bring in roughly $1,250 per month. Most legitimate apps make about $1,000 per month, according to a survey from InMobi, a mobile-advertising company.Fake-app developers are also quick to catch onto the latest trends. When Pok<6F>mon Go, a smartphone app based on a video game, became popular in July 2016, developers released a walk-through guide to the game which flooded smartphones with advertising. The guide was downloaded over 500,000 times. But the pickings are richest in retail, and especially in the autumn when fake-app developers are gearing up for spending binges during sales around Thanksgiving and Christmas, says Chris Mason of Branding Brand, a tech firm. Shoppers, beware. "Mind the app"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/news/business/21730242-legitimate-app-developers-they-make-money-selling-adverts-crafty-app-developers-are?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-12T22:50:00.000+03:00'
'8e117090784fe45485866028198bf3471a80a572'|'Asahi considering selling stake in Tsingtao Brewery'|'FILE PHOTO: A pint of Asahi lager beer is seen in a bar in Singapore June 17, 2017. Picture taken June 17, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Asahi Group Holdings said on Thursday it is considering selling all or part of its 19.99 percent stake in Tsingtao Brewery Co Ltd, its latest divestment from China<6E>s beer industry as it seeks growth in Europe and other Asian markets.Asahi<68>s decision to sell the stake, which it acquired in 2009 for around $666.50 million, follows its announcement in June to sell its 20 percent stake in Chinese brewer Tingyi-Asahi Beverages Holding Co Ltd for $612 million.Tsingtao said Asahi holds 270.1 million of its Hong Kong listed H-shares. At Thursday<61>s closing price, the stake would be valued at nearly HK$8.5 billion ($1.09 billion).The maker of Japan<61>s best-selling beer, Asahi Super Dry, has been intensifying its focus on Europe, scooping up a group of eastern European beer brands from Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI.BR) for 7.3 billion euros late last year.That move gave the company around 9 percent of the European beer market, excluding Russia.<2E>We are engaging in efforts to <20>restructure our business portfolio with a focus on asset efficiency,<2C> to assess whether each business contributes to sustainable enhancement of corporate value,<2C> Asahi said in a statement.The company has said that it would restructure its operations in Southeast Asia and China, regions which are facing increased competition as the market consolidates just as growth slows.It did not identify a potential buyer or selling price for the stake.Tsingtao<61>s shares in Hong Kong ended down 2.3 percent before the announcement, and have struggled for traction over the past 12 months.China is the world<6C>s largest beer market by sales, but profits have been harder to come by amid fierce competition between local brewers and global beer giants AB InBev, Heineken NV and Carlsberg.Reporting by Chris Gallagher; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Kim Coghill'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-asahi-group-tsingtao-brewery/asahi-considering-selling-stake-in-tsingtao-brewery-idINKBN1CH0ZR'|'2017-10-12T06:38:00.000+03:00'
'6d09d6128d1b27ff0c6a314baf76f8db2d2753b2'|'UK productivity estimates must be ''significantly'' lowered, admits OBR - Business - The Guardian'|'Office for Budget Responsibility UK productivity estimates must be ''significantly'' lowered, admits OBR Government<6E>s independent forecaster says average 0.2% growth in productivity over past five years is more accurate than 1.6% The OBR<42>s revisions will be a headache for Philip Hammond ahead of the budget next month. Photograph: Rupert Hartley/Rex/Shutterstock Office for Budget Responsibility UK productivity estimates must be ''significantly'' lowered, admits OBR Government<6E>s independent forecaster says average 0.2% growth in productivity over past five years is more accurate than 1.6% View more sharing options   17.39 BST First published   11.56 BST The government<6E>s independent economic forecaster has admitted it will need to <20>significantly<6C> lower its estimates for the productivity of UK workers after a decade of stagnant growth since the financial crisis. In an assessment of its record of predicting the path of the economy, the Office for Budget Responsibility said the average rate of productivity growth of 0.2% over the past five years was a better guide for 2017 than its forecast of 1.6% in March. The OBR was expected to revise the productivity figures, which will be a headache for Philip Hammond as he prepares for his autumn budget on 22 November. OBR finally forced to admit UK''s productivity hasn''t bounced back - Phillip Inman Read more Treasury officials believe the downgrade will wipe out about two-thirds of the government<6E>s <20>26bn budget surplus from 2017 to 2021. The stockpile, seen as a war chest for a potential slowdown after a disorderly and harmful EU exit , was set aside by the chancellor in the previous budget in March . UK productivity Hammond is under pressure to increase spending, despite weaker economic readings. The Conservatives pledged to raise it at the party conference in Manchester last week, putting an additional <20>10bn into its help-to-buy scheme for first-time housebuyers and raising the repayment threshold on student loans. In its seven-year history, the OBR has been forced to heavily revise several assumptions about the economy. Last year, it revised down a forecast for the growth of household debt for the rest of the decade, in response to years of lacklustre increases in mortgage borrowing. The forecaster has also revised down the level of corporate borrowing after companies shied away from using bank loans to make large-scale investments. Critics of the OBR accused it of being overly optimistic in sticking with forecasts that corporate and household borrowing would spur a dramatic revival in the UK<55>s economic fortunes. Neither materialised and growth from 2014 to 2016 was mainly the result of an increase in real incomes following a slump in inflation. The OBR said its March forecast assumed that trend productivity growth would rise slowly to reach 1.8% in 2021. However, that jars with recent readings, as the rate of labour productivity as measured by output per hour fell by 0.1% in the three months to June, according to the Office for National Statistics. Robert Chote, the OBR chairman, refused to give details about how much his team of analysts, which includes former Bank of England governor Charlie Bean, would cut the forecast for productivity growth, saying that it would be published at the time of the budget. He said: <20>Our assumption that productivity growth would return to a more normal rate within a few years reflected a judgement that whatever factors were depressing it in the wake of the financial crisis would fade as it receded further into the past. <20>But as the period of weak performance gets longer, the explanations that people pointed to immediately after the crisis [for an upturn] look less convincing and others seem more plausible.<2E> Low business investment was cited by the OBR as one of the main reasons for persistently low levels of productivity. And while investment could rebound in the wake of the divorce with the European Unio
'ac813ca95e995451b69b7e0ef6883c18cffd3c1c'|'MOVES-Prudential''s QMA names Adam Broder head of global distribution'|'October 9, 2017 / 2:57 PM / Updated 13 minutes ago MOVES-Prudential''s QMA names Adam Broder head of global distribution Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 9 (Reuters) - Quantitative Management Associates LLC (QMA), a unit of Prudential Financial Inc, said Adam Broder would join the as head of global distribution, effective Oct. 16. Broder, who will be based in Newark, New Jersey, has previously worked with Goldman Sachs & Co and Och-Ziff Capital Management. QMA, which had more than $1 trillion in assets under management as of June 30, is the quantitative equities and asset allocation business of PGIM, the investment management business of Prudential Financial. (Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D<>Souza)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/qma-moves-adam-broder/moves-prudentials-qma-names-adam-broder-head-of-global-distribution-idUSL4N1MK2TD'|'2017-10-09T17:56:00.000+03:00'
'5b4b1d94a8214c3a6aad1a52729844ea8eb05fe3'|'Credit monitor TransUnion hires new Washington lobbyists'|'October 9, 2017 / 8:19 PM / in 2 minutes Credit monitor TransUnion hires new Washington lobbyists Ginger Gibson 2 Min Read WASHINGTON, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Credit monitoring firm TransUnion added to its lobbying roster in Washington in early October after news of a hack at its competitor Equifax brought more government scrutiny to the industry. TransUnion, which already had three lobbying shops under contract, added CGCN Group, a Republican firm that lobbies on a myriad of topics, according to disclosures filed with the U.S. Congress. Congress has begun to look more closely at rules governing credit monitoring agencies after Equifax acknowledged in early September that it had been hacked in the spring, with the information of an estimated 145.5 million people breeched. Companies like Equifax, TransUnion and Experian keep a trove of consumer data for banks and other creditors who want to know whether a customer is likely to default. CGCN will lobby on topics including, <20>issues affecting data security, privacy and cyber-security,<2C> according to the disclosure. The three other firms employed by TransUnion also lobby on issue regarding cybersecurity and data safety, according to disclosures. TransUnion spent about $128,000 on lobbying in the first six months of the year. Experian already maintained a large team of lobbyists, spending $690,000 in lobbying for the first six months of the year, according to disclosures. (Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by David Gregorio)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/equifax-cyber-transunion/credit-monitor-transunion-hires-new-washington-lobbyists-idUSL2N1MK14S'|'2017-10-09T23:19:00.000+03:00'
'62cbf29e2cc09c51c5340b1c913110ecc8ea1827'|'Qantas raising A$350 million in loan, allows switching aircraft types used as collateral'|'Reuters TV United States October 10, 2017 / 4:45 AM / a few seconds ago Qantas raising A$350 million in loan, allows switching aircraft types used as collateral Anshuman Daga 3 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Qantas Airways is raising A$350 million ($272 million) from a loan that allows it to switch the types of aircraft used as collateral, in what bankers and analysts said is the world<6C>s first aviation financing of this type. The loan is the first of a series under a loan facility program set up by the Australian airline, which reported near-record profits in the year to June. The security for each loan includes a pool of Qantas planes that have not been pledged as collateral, including Airbus SE A320 family and Boeing Co 737 narrowbodies as well as A330 and 787 widebodies, a term sheet of the deal reviewed by Reuters shows. <20>It also gives us more flexibility in terms of what aircraft are encumbered, allowing us to change the aircraft depending on possible fleet changes or future plans,<2C> a Qantas spokesman said in response to a query from Reuters. BNP Paribas is the sole structuring bank and, with National Australia Bank, is the joint mandated lead arranger and bookrunner. The eight-year loan will help Qantas refinance part of A$442 million in secured aircraft and other amortizing debt that matures in the financial year ended June 30, 2018, the Qantas spokesman said. <20>Qantas is trying to use this rather clever structured financing tool to monetize all its assets. Whenever aircraft is added or removed from the pool, it could result in pricing adjustments beneficial to the airline,<2C> said Shukor Yusof, founder of aviation consulting firm Endau Analytics. In May, Moody<64>s Investors Service upgraded the carrier<65>s credit rating by one notch to Baa2. Qantas had regained its investment-grade status from Moody<64>s in 2016 and from Standard & Poor<6F>s in 2015 after slipping into junk territory in 2013. Aviation finance is seen as attractive to banks, insurers and pension funds for providing long-term dollar-denominated returns above those of some other asset classes, on investments backed by assets that can be moved easily. The loan facility was sold down to 10 other financial institutions and was about twice oversubscribed, according to the term sheet and sources. <20>The facility appealed to both specialised aviation banks as well as traditional corporate lenders, looking to take credit exposure on longer maturity terms,<2C> the term sheet said. The loan has no amortization meaning that the principal is due at the end of eight years. Analysts and bankers said this type of loan made more sense for mature airlines because typically airlines in growth mode had younger fleets that tended to be pledged as collateral already. Both BNP and NAB confirmed their role in the loan. Reporting by Anshuman Daga in SINGAPORE; Additional reporting by Jamie Freed in SINGAPORE and Prakash Chakravarti in HONG KONG; Editing by Neil Fullick'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-qantas-fundraising/qantas-raising-a350-million-in-loan-allows-switching-aircraft-types-used-as-collateral-idUKKBN1CF0BY'|'2017-10-10T07:26:00.000+03:00'
'bc0b9b97ac729af26b8313b23e5bb1085ee30e44'|'Germany to raise economic growth forecast for 2017 to 2 percent - source'|'FILE PHOTO: A worker controls a tapping of a blast furnace at Europe''s largest steel factory of Germany''s industrial conglomerate ThyssenKrupp AG in the western German city of Duisburg, Germany, December 6, 2012. REUTERS/Ina Fassbender/File Photo BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government will raise its 2017 growth forecast for to 2.0 percent, a sharp increase from its earlier estimate of 1.5 percent and the strongest rate since 2011, a source told Reuters on Tuesday.Berlin also plans to lift its 2018 forecast for gross domestic product (GDP) to expand 1.9 percent, up from its earlier forecast of 1.6 percent, the person familiar with the projections said.Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries will present the government<6E>s updated forecasts on Wednesday. 1.9 percent in 2016, the strongest rate in five years, propelled by private consumption households and authorities are benefiting from record-high employment and ultra-low borrowing costs.The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday raised its growth forecast for the German economy to a calendar-adjusted 2.0 percent in 2017 and 1.8 percent in 2018.The government<6E>s growth forecast figures are not adjusted for workdays. Due to the unusually strong calendar effect in 2017, the forecast would translate into an adjusted growth rate of 2.3 percent this year.Reporting by Gernot Heller; Writing by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Michelle Martin and Matthew Mpoke Bigg '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/germany-economy-growth/germany-to-raise-economic-growth-forecast-for-2017-to-2-percent-source-idINKBN1CF1ZJ'|'2017-10-10T12:33:00.000+03:00'
'2586e0f3e1706c1f3c572fa0ebd05721b14742c2'|'Trump vows tax plan to boost economy; poll cites views on wealthy'|'October 12, 2017 / 10:10 AM / Updated 12 minutes ago Trump vows tax plan to boost economy; poll cites views on wealthy 6 Min Read U.S. President Donald Trump speaks about tax reform in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts HARRISBURG, Pa./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday told workers that they would win under his tax plan, saying it would help the middle class and boost the economy, though critics say it would mainly benefit corporations and the rich. Speaking in an airplane hangar at a Pennsylvania Air National Guard base in Harrisburg with a trailer truck behind him, Trump reiterated the basic points of the nine-page tax cut <20>framework<72> he unveiled two weeks ago. <20>It<49>s a middle-class bill. That<61>s what we<77>re thinking of. That<61>s what I want,<2C> Trump said. <20>I<EFBFBD>ve had rich friends of mine come up to me, and say, <20>Donald, you<6F>re doing this tax plan -- we don<6F>t want anything. ... Don<6F>t give it to us. Give it to the middle class.<2E> And that<61>s what we<77>re trying so hard to do,<2C> he said. His remarks came as new Reuters/Ipsos polling showed that more than three-quarters of Americans say the wealthiest Americans should pay more in taxes. The poll found 53 percent of adults <20>strongly agree<65> and 23 percent <20>somewhat agree<65> that the wealthiest Americans should pay higher tax rates. The Sept. 29-Oct. 5 poll of 1,504 people has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of plus or minus 6 percentage points. Financial markets have rallied strongly since Trump<6D>s November 2016 election victory, driven partly by expectations that he would cut taxes for businesses, although policy analysts have been sceptical that he would do so. Trump on Wednesday boasted about the rally in markets. <20>The stock market is soaring to record levels, boosting pensions and retirement accounts for hard-working Americans. Their values are going up every single day,<2C> he said. Earlier on Wednesday, San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President John Williams said he was a <20>little bit discouraged<65> about the prospects for federal tax reform. Given the difficulties Congress has had in passing laws this year, Williams, in comments following a speech in Salt Lake City, said he is <20>losing confidence<63> that any tax reform will be passed in the next six months or so. DEMOCRATS DISPUTE <20>PAY RAISE<53> Trump said his plan for cutting corporate taxes could boost wage growth and mean a $4,000 pay raise for the average household, citing research from a White House economic council. Democrats, who oppose Trump<6D>s plan, dispute such claims. <20>I have not seen any evidence that even comes remotely close to that,<2C> Richard Neal, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, said of the $4,000 calculation at a forum on Wednesday in Washington. Independent analysts have said Trump<6D>s blueprint would provide uneven tax relief, add significantly to the federal budget deficit, and in some cases, benefit the very wealthy. For instance, taxpayers in the highest 1 percent of incomes, making more than $730,000 annually, would get about half of the total benefit from Trump<6D>s plan, with after-tax incomes rising an average of 8.5 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington-based nonprofit tax think tank. Trump on Wednesday said his framework would provide a $500 tax credit to <20>those who care for an adult dependent or elderly loved one<6E> and that it would substantially increase the child tax credit. No details on those items have been made public. Congressional tax writers in the House and Senate are working to fill in the details of Trump<6D>s framework. Republican leaders hope to pass a bill by January, delivering what would be Trump<6D>s first legislative victory a year into his presidency. Before that can happen, the Senate and House must open a procedural path for tax legislation by passing a budget resolution. Lawmakers have hoped to do that this month. CORPORATE, PASS-THROUGH CUTS The tax fram
'cd3e6b631418833947acc3d1ea0e6a06a31ba1a1'|'In a sea of uncertainty, one company sets its Brexit course'|'Managing Director for Grace Foods UK Adam Reader poses at their distribution centre in Welwyn Garden City, Britain September 25, 2017. Picture taken September 25, 2017. To match Insight BRITAIN-EU/COMPANIES REUTERS/Darren Staples WELWYN GARDEN CITY, England (Reuters) - As the head of a British company that imports, exports and manufactures food, Adam Reader is at the centre of the Brexit storm, facing threats at every turn.But unlike the majority of company bosses who are reluctant to make concrete plans when a future trade deal with Europe has not yet been decided, Reader is not going to wait.Instead, he<68>s charging ahead with investments that will split his operations between Britain and Europe, a strategy he is confident will contain any damage from changes to currency, regulations and tariffs as he ships his products globally.<2E>We<57>re lucky. We have a clear path. We<57>re very advanced now in terms of planning,<2C> said Reader, the 47-year-old manager of Grace Foods UK.<2E>A lot of the businesses I<>m talking to are not really clear about what they<65>re going to do come the date of Brexit,<2C> he told Reuters at his plant north of London, where Grace<63>s Caribbean, Mexican and Chinese products are stored.Britain<69>s 2016 vote to leave the European Union stunned many businesses, with the prospect that border delays and tariffs could fracture intricate supply chains built up across the continent over the last 40 years.The plunge in the pound has already forced importers to cut costs and sparked concerns about consumer spending.Those who voted in favour of Brexit argue that although the economy could be hit in the short term, Britain will ultimately prosper because it will be able to strike trade deals with other nations quickly instead of being clamped to a failed German-dominated experiment in European integration.For the moment many companies are in limbo, however, as Prime Minister Theresa May<61>s party wrangles over terms of the departure, due in March 2019. The EU says future trade cannot be discussed until the terms of the divorce have been agreed, meaning a final settlement may not be unveiled until late in the day.Only 11 percent of companies have started to implement contingency plans, a survey by the Institute of Directors said in July, meaning many may not be ready when the time comes.Britain<69>s Food and Drink Federation (FDF), which speaks for an industry employing 400,000 people, says companies should be preparing for all scenarios.<2E>The time between now and the end of March 2019 is so short that you have to plan for the worst,<2C> FDF Director General Ian Wright told Reuters. <20>People need to be prepared for what could be a series of very difficult months ahead.<2E>HIGH STAKES For Grace Foods UK, a subsidiary of Jamaica<63>s Grace Kennedy, the stakes are high.Based in an industrial park in Welwyn Garden City, the company imports drinks, sauces, snacks and spices from around the world, then distributes them to supermarkets, restaurants and independent retailers in Europe, Africa and around Britain. A manufacturing plant in Wales produces sauces.Reader fears Brexit will hit his company on several fronts: increased bureaucracy, costs and delays at borders, volatile currency shifts and a slow-burn divergence between Britain and Europe over food standards and labelling.To respond, he has taken an embryonic plan he came up with before the Brexit vote to build a presence in Europe to meet strong demand there and transformed it into a strategy to insulate his company against the expected disruption ahead.A worker moves coconut milk at Grace Foods UK distribution centre in Welwyn Garden City, Britain September 25, 2017. Picture taken September 25, 2017. To match Insight BRITAIN-EU/COMPANIES REUTERS/Darren Staples <20>Brexit accelerated it and made it a <20>must do<64> now, rather than a <20>nice to have<76>,<2C> said Reader from a corner office near the 11,000-sq-m chilled distribution centre piled high with boxes of colourful goods, from its branded Grace <20>Coco
'7c487b7b64a144d0729d1264e9ef8f83bda0aa0b'|'UPDATE 2-Australia hotel giant Mantra rolls out the carpet for Accor $920 mln bid'|'A sign bearing the logo of the Mantra Group Ltd is displayed on the wall of a hotel in central Sydney, Australia, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/David Gray SYDNEY (Reuters) - Mantra Group Ltd ( MTR.AX ) on Thursday agreed to a A$1.18 billion ($920 million) buyout from French hotel company Accor SA ( ACCP.PA ), a deal which will create the biggest hotel group in Australia where tourism is rising sharply.AccorHotels has been on an acquisition spree that, in part, aims to support chief executive Sebastien Bazin<69>s goal of adding businesses that can complement its core hotel operations and offer more control of hotel distribution.This latest deal would give the combined group about 50,000 rooms - roughly 11 percent of Australia<69>s hotel market, according to IBISWorld statistics.Accor is offering A$3.96 per share, a 23 percent premium to Mantra<72>s last trade before the bid was initially announced on Monday. The offer price is more than double Mantra<72>s A$1.80 issue price when it listed in 2014.Bazin said in a statement that the takeover would <20>underpin our long-term growth in the Asia-Pacific region<6F>.Accor, the world<6C>s fifth largest hotel group with more than 540,000 rooms worldwide, has made expansion in the Asia Pacific region among its priorities, and it also wants to focus on building and acquiring luxury, lifestyle and resort hotels.Last year, it expanded by 80,000 rooms, around half through acquisition and half through organic growth.Shares in Sydney-listed Mantra rose 0.3 percent to around A$3.88, showing investor support for the deal but also some uncertainty about the possibility it may meet regulatory hurdles.<2E>It<49>s within the bounds of fairness, given what the shares have done recently,<2C> said Noel Webster, a portfolio manager at BT Investment Management, Mantra<72>s largest shareholder.<2E>Our first reaction would be not to block it.<2E>The merger needed clearance from the Foreign Investment Review Board and antitrust regulator the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Mantra said.The ACCC expected the companies to file a <20>detailed submission<6F> about the deal shortly, a spokesman said. The regulator previously said it would review any deal to decide whether to open a formal investigation.ACCOR<4F>S RESTRUCTURING PLANSThe transaction would be the second-biggest in Australia<69>s hotel sector, and the largest buyout of an Australian entity by French interests, according to Thomson Reuters data.Deutsche Bank, which has a <20>buy<75> rating on Accor, said the deal fitted Accor<6F>s general strategy and increased the likelihood of Accor concluding a sale of its so-called <20>Booster<65> group of non-core assets, which is set to bring in around 4 billion euros.<2E>Australia is one of the largest markets for Accor outside Europe,<2C> Deutsche said in a research note. <20>This deal would be in line with the Accor strategy to consolidate market share in markets where the company benefits or may benefit from scale.<2E>Gregoire Laverne, fund manager at Paris-based Roche Brune Asset Management, said the Mantra deal would strengthen Accor<6F>s presence in Australia.Laverne also said he had sold off Accor shares in March due to a <20>lack of visibility<74> over Accor<6F>s restructuring plans. Accor shares were down 0.6 percent in mid-session trading.The number of visitors to Australia surged 9 percent in the past financial year to hit a record 7.9 million while spending by international visitors climbed to $40.6 billion - also a record.Mantra Chairman Peter Bush said in a statement the company<6E>s board was recommending the deal to shareholders, having concluded that the <20>sale of the company at a significant premium to market is an attractive outcome<6D>.If approved, the merger could put pressure on Australia<69>s third-largest hotel company, Marriott International ( MAR.O ). Marriott Australia and New Zealand Vice President Sean Hunt declined to comment.Reporting by Shashwat Pradhan in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Ambar Warrick, Luke Baker and Sudip K
'7fe7556a1290d3c209cfca122662f520046417df'|'UPDATE 1-China monthly vehicle sales rise again; may miss annual target -industry body'|'October 12, 2017 / 6:28 AM / Updated 8 hours ago China monthly vehicle sales rise again; may miss annual target: industry body Reuters Staff 3 Min Read New cars are seen at a parking lot in Shenyang, Liaoning province, China, January 16, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s vehicles sales rose in September for a fourth straight month, an industry body said on Thursday, but added that the market may struggle to hit a forecast for 5 percent annual growth set earlier in the year. The world<6C>s largest auto market may not hit growth levels estimated by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers in January, <20>but 4 percent and above should be pretty much a sure thing<6E>, said Shi Jianhua, CAAM<41>s deputy secretary general. Vehicle sales in China have rebounded since June, but CAAM<41>s caution on full-year growth underlines challenges in the market, which saw a slow start to the year due to tax incentives on smaller-engined cars being phased out. China vehicle sales touched 2.71 million units in September, up 5.7 percent from a year ago, CAAM data showed. That took year-to-date sales to 20.2 million vehicles, up 4.5 percent against the same period in 2016. Vehicle sales in the country rose 13.7 percent last year. Recent sales have been relatively strong - growing 5.3 percent in August, 6.2 percent in July and 4.5 percent in June - underpinned by stronger overall economic growth and increased incentives for buyers, market watchers said. Most global carmakers are seeing positive sales in China: Japan<61>s Toyota Motor Corp, Honda Motor Co, Nissan Motor Co Ltd and U.S. carmaker General Motors posted higher growth this week. Ford Motor Co, set to report September sales later this week, has lagged its global peers in China this year. CAAM data showed sales of new energy vehicles (NEV) shot up 79.1 percent in September amid a government push to support the sector and shift away from traditional petrol engine cars in the long term. NEV sales so far this year have totaled 398,000, up 37.7 percent against 2016. China is expected to meet a sales target of 700,000 NEV units this year, CAAM official Chen Shihua said at a briefing in Beijing, referring to all-electric battery vehicles as well as plug-in petrol-electric hybrids. The country has set strict quotas for NEVs which carmakers must meet by 2019, a move that is prompting a flurry of electric car deals and new launches of electric and hybrid models as firms look to ensure they do not fall short. Reporting By Norihiko Shirouzu and Cheng Fang, Writing by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Himani Sarkar 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-autos-sales/china-vehicle-sales-rise-for-fourth-straight-month-industry-body-idUSKBN1CH0M8'|'2017-10-12T10:58:00.000+03:00'
'708cef57dfd2afa7ae9e4efcb8fca8c4847c5777'|'Microsoft, Apple among companies urging U.S. Supreme Court to weigh gay workers'' rights'|'October 11, 2017 / 4:26 PM / Updated 4 hours ago Microsoft, Apple among companies urging U.S. Supreme Court to weigh gay workers'' rights Daniel Wiessner 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Microsoft logo is shown on the Microsoft Theatre at the E3 2017 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, U.S. June 13, 2017. REUTERS/ Mike Blake/File Photo (Reuters) - Dozens of companies including Alphabet Inc<6E>s Google, Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp, and Viacom Inc have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to address whether a law banning sex discrimination in the workplace provides protections to gay employees. A group of 76 companies submitted a brief to the court saying a split among lower courts on that question had created uncertainty for employers and gay workers. The companies asked the Supreme Court to take up the case of Jameka Evans, a former security guard at a Georgia hospital who says she was harassed and forced to quit her job because she is gay. The companies said the lack of a federal law clearly prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation has hindered recruitment in the 27 states that have not adopted their own such laws. And <20>the uncertainty and vulnerability LGBT workers face results in diminished employee health, productivity, job engagement, and satisfaction,<2C> wrote the companies<65> lawyers at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. The Apple logo is seen on the facade of the new Apple Store in Paris, France, January 5, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau A federal appeals court in Atlanta in March dismissed Evans<6E> case, saying her claims were foreclosed by prior decisions that said discrimination against gay employees is not a form of unlawful sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Supreme Court will likely decide by the end of the year whether it will take Evans<6E> case. In April, a different appeals court in Chicago became the first to rule in favor of a gay worker under Title VII. And in June, about 50 of the same companies involved in Wednesday<61>s brief asked an appeals court in Manhattan to do the same. In that case, the U.S. Department of Justice urged the court to rule that Title VII does not protect gay employees. That was a reversal of the Justice Department<6E>s stance under the Obama administration. Gay rights is the latest issue to cause a rift between the business community and the Trump administration. Some companies and executives in August resigned from White House business councils and repudiated President Donald Trump<6D>s comments about a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. And business groups have clashed with the president over issues including immigration, and, this week, the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Trump administration says Congress did not intend for Title VII to apply to LGBT workers, and courts do not have the power to change the meaning of the law. Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by David Gregorio 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt/microsoft-apple-among-companies-urging-u-s-supreme-court-to-weigh-gay-workers-rights-idUSKBN1CG2A4'|'2017-10-11T19:28:00.000+03:00'
'607896c62fd2da6ba52584e59968e52c538d2914'|'Delta says company will not pay tariffs on Bombardier CSeries jets'|'October 11, 2017 / 2:52 PM / in 2 minutes Delta refuses to pay tariffs on Bombardier CSeries jets Alana Wise 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Delta Airlines jet takes off from Washington National Airport in Washington, U.S., August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - Delta Air Lines Inc on Wednesday said it would refuse to pay a 300 percent U.S. tariff on Canadian-built Bombardier CSeries jets, raising doubts about its purchase of 75 of the new aircraft at a list price of more than $5 billion. <20>We<57>re not going to be forced to pay tariffs or anything of the ilk,<2C> Delta Chief Executive Ed Bastian said on the company<6E>s third-quarter earnings call. Delta is the only major U.S. carrier to buy the CSeries so far, and Bastian called the U.S. Commerce Department<6E>s decision to impose anti-dumping duties on the jets <20>nonsensical.<2E> He said Delta still expects to take delivery of the CSeries order, however. The U.S. tariff decision, sparked by rival planemaker Boeing Co, stems from a claim that Bombardier used Canadian government subsidies to bankroll the CSeries sale to Delta and dump the planes at <20>absurdly low<6F> prices. The proposed duties would not take effect unless affirmed by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) early next year. Shares of Bombardier, which is based in Canada, were up 3.78 percent at $2.34 in afternoon trading. Delta shares were up slightly, 0.85 percent at $53.15, on the airline<6E>s stronger-than-expected third-quarter results. Responding to Bastian<61>s remarks, Bombardier said it was <20>confident the ITC will reach the right conclusion given that Boeing did not compete for the Delta order.<2E> <20>Delta has been supporting Bombardier throughout the process and its CEO, Ed Bastian, reaffirmed the airline<6E>s intention to take possession of its CSeries aircraft. This is the message that we should get out of this,<2C> spokesman Simon Letendre said. How the extra costs of the planes would be covered remained unclear. Bombardier has also said it would not pick up the tab for the trade duties. [nL8N1M75O0] The CSeries dispute has spiraled into a broader discussion of trade agreements between the United States and Canada, as U.S. President Donald Trump has warned he would terminate the tri-national North American Free Trade Agreement unless changes were made to address deficits within the trade pact. Reporting by Alana Wise; editing by David Gregorio and Tom Brown 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-delta-air-bombardier-tariffs/delta-says-company-will-not-pay-tariffs-on-bombardier-cseries-jets-idUSKBN1CG20F'|'2017-10-11T17:58:00.000+03:00'
'a3de483045a9274ca62d3801f52987b8c52ded7d'|'Coach to rename itself Tapestry Inc'|'October 11, 2017 / 1:31 PM / in 7 minutes Loyalists unhappy as Coach becomes Tapestry Inc 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A view of a Coach store in Pasadena, California, January 26, 2015. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni (Reuters) - Iconic luxury handbag maker Coach Inc risked Wall Street and social media ire on Wednesday by announcing a change of its corporate name to Tapestry Inc, as it evolves into a multi-brand upscale retailer. The company<6E>s shares fell as much as 3 percent in early trading, which analysts attributed to strong results from rival LVMH on Tuesday, and to a broader selloff in the consumer discretionary space on Wednesday. Still, social media reacted harshly to the 76-year old company changing its well-known corporate identity with many Twitter users criticizing the decision that calls for Tapestry being the holding entity that houses the Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman brands. <20>This is bizarre & a strategy departure. Dying to know the logic,<2C> Andrea Wasserman, a former Nordstrom and Hudson<6F>s Bay executive, wrote on Twitter following the news. The derision kept coming as people questioned and even mocked the move. <20>$COH changing its name to <20>Tapestry<72> is a horrible branding idea. Fire the executive who proposed the change,<2C> J Christian Bernabe, a nonprofit digital content director, tweeted. Chief Executive Victor Luis, however, downplayed the social media backlash. <20>At the end of the day some of the social media reaction is misplaced because people think we are changing the name of the Coach brand, which we are not doing,<2C> Luis told Reuters. <20>It<49>s really about creating a new corporate identity for Coach as a house of brands.<2E> Luis added that the management had been thinking about changing the company<6E>s corporate name for a while, but made the decision to change it after the acquisition of Kate Spade. Founded in a loft in Manhattan in 1941, Coach has grown into a multi-billion dollar company, building its business on the success of its Coach handbags that for many years were widely coveted by wealthy women shoppers around the world. Coach, however, lost some shine in recent years in part due to the financial recession and increased online shopping. The company is trying to regain its former glory buy buying new brands, keeping a tight lid on discounting and pulling back from department stores. Coach bought smaller rival Kate Spade for $2.4 billion earlier this year and shoemaker Stuart Weitzman in 2015, broadening its portfolio and transforming into an upscale fashion house rather than just a pricey handbag retailer. The company said on Wednesday the name change goes into effect on Oct. 31 and will start trading under the ticker symbol <20>TPR<50> on the New York Stock Exchange. Coach<63>s shares were down 2.8 percent at $38.87 in afternoon trading. Reporting by Siddharth Cavale, Uday Sampath Kumar and Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Bernard Orr 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-coach-strategy/coach-to-rename-itself-tapestry-inc-idUSKBN1CG1RT'|'2017-10-11T16:25:00.000+03:00'
'725768dc217f1fbea603e381c82f173533b538f8'|'China''s CEFC set to raise $5.1 billion from VTB for Rosneft deal: sources'|'FILE PHOTO: A logo of Russian state oil firm Rosneft is seen at its office in Moscow, October 18, 2012. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) - CEFC China Energy is set to raise $5.1 billion in short-term loans from VTB, Russia<69>s second-biggest lender, to part finance its $9.1 billion purchase of a stake in Rosneft Oil, three people with knowledge of the matter said.CEFC last month said it will buy a 14.16 percent stake in the Russian oil major from a consortium of Glencore and the Qatar Investment Authority, strengthening energy ties between Moscow and Beijing.It received preliminary Chinese approval to buy the stake about a week after the deal was announced.The $5.1 billion loan agreement would help the privately run Chinese conglomerate to close the Rosneft deal. The sources said the details of the loan were being finalised.CEFC will use its own cash for the remaining $4 billion of the purchase price, the sources said. CEFC is also in separate talks with China Development Bank (CDB), a policy bank, to refinance the short-term credit from VTB, they said.<2E>CDB is very actively engaged in discussions for the follow-up loans, ready to shoulder 70 percent or more of the value,<2C> said one source involved in the talks. Other Chinese banks could also provide refinancing, the source said.CEFC, CDB and VTB did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.The deal is set to win final approval from the Chinese government, including the State Council, or Cabinet, by the end of 2017, as it is seen as an investment that fits into Beijing<6E>s Belt and Road initiative, said two of the sources.CEFC has grown in recent years from a niche oil trader into a sprawling energy conglomerate and the Rosneft stake will allow China, the world<6C>s second-largest energy consumer, to boost co-operation with the world<6C>s top oil producer.Rosneft is run by Igor Sechin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.CDB has long supported CEFC and is its biggest lender, but some Chinese lenders said that they were cautious about taking part in a loan due to western economic sanctions imposed on Russia.<2E>We are still considering and trying to learn more about CEFC and will be very careful given the sanctions,<2C> said a Beijing-based loan banker involved in talks for a CDB-led refinancing group.Reporting by Chen Aizhu and Carol Zhong; Additional reporting by Kane Wu and Yan Jiang; Editing by Neil Fullick'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-cefc-rosneft-oil-loans/chinas-cefc-set-to-raise-5-1-billion-from-vtb-for-rosneft-deal-sources-idINKBN1CH0XU'|'2017-10-12T06:20:00.000+03:00'
'a13adcc3679f165983578efab72225b948c50002'|'Sensex inches up; Sun Pharma rises'|'October 12, 2017 / 5:58 AM / in 3 hours Sensex rises ahead of key corporate results Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A broker reacts while trading at his computer terminal at a stock brokerage firm in Mumbai, India, June 29, 2015. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/Files REUTERS - Indian shares extended gains on Thursday with the NSE index clocking its biggest percentage gain since May 25 as excitement builds up ahead of some key quarterly results including that from Tata Consultancy Services. The broader NSE Nifty ended up 1.12 percent at 10,096.40 while the benchmark BSE Sensex closed 1.09 percent higher at 32,182.22. Both indexes ended at their highest since Sept. 21. Tata Consultancy Services gained about 2 percent while Reliance Industries Ltd, which is slated to post results on Friday, climbed over 4 percent and contributed to most of the gains on the indexes. Reporting by Samantha Kareen Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-stocks/sensex-inches-up-sun-pharma-rises-idINKBN1CH0JT'|'2017-10-12T08:58:00.000+03:00'
'683a748adcc756c01c2a3e40604f150056a8a680'|'Kobe Steel admits falsifying data on 20,000 tonnes of metal'|'THE port city of Kobe, on the southern side of Japan<61>s main island, is known for luxury beef from pampered cattle, fine sake and precision engineering. Its reputation for the last of those products took a blow on October 8th when one of its oldest industrial firms, Kobe Steel, admitted that that it had falsified data on many of its aluminium, copper and steel products. By October 11th, the company<6E>s shares had fallen by a third, reducing its market value by <20>180bn ($1.6bn).Kobe Steel has admitted to falsification over the past year relating to large quantities of four types of material; 19,300 tonnes of aluminium sheets and poles; 19,400 aluminium components; 2,200 tonnes of copper products and an unspecified amount of iron powder that was supplied to over 200 customers. These items were certified as having properties<65>such as a level of tensile strength, meaning stiffness<73>that they did not in fact possess. 13 No deaths or accidents have yet resulted, but the firm<72>s products are used by a long list of household names in Japan and overseas. Companies ranging from Boeing, Ford and GM of America to Hitachi, Nissan, Toyota and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan are rushing to examine their products<74> safety. Mitsubishi has already said that affected steel was used in an H-2A rocket that safely launched a global-positioning satellite into orbit on October 10th.Replacing the faulty metal sold may initially cost Kobe Steel just <20>15bn, according to J.P. Morgan, a bank. Yet taking into account the need to idle and repair any affected cars and planes, the overall cost could soar. More revelations may be on the way, for Kobe Steel admits that its current problems stretch back at least a decade.The news has come at the worst possible moment. Like the rest of its industry in the rich world, Kobe Steel has been hit by a flood of cheap aluminium and steel imports. In 2016 it lost <20>23bn. In order to compete, mills will have to produce the sort of high-tech steel for cars, planes and trains that still commands premium prices, says Wolfgang Eder of Voestalpine, one of the few steel firms in Europe that is still profitable. Kobe Steel has lately switched its focus to higher-tech metals, but if it cannot guarantee their quality it will be in trouble.The firm<72>s stumble is the latest in a long list of scandals for Japan<61>s once-bright corporate stars. Earlier this month Nissan was obliged to recall 1.2m cars after finding that unqualified inspectors had been conducting safety checks. In June, Takata, a maker of faulty airbags linked to 18 deaths worldwide, declared bankruptcy after being hit by a whirlwind of lawsuits. Last year, the bosses of Suzuki and Mitsubishi, two Japanese carmakers, resigned after their firms were found to have falsified fuel-consumption data on their vehicles. And between 2009 and 2011, Toyota, another carmaker, recalled 9m cars equipped with dangerous accelerator pedals.Such scandals are not unique to Japan. Volkswagen, a German carmaker, has been caught falsifying emissions data. Reckitt Benckiser, a British firm, sold cleaning products linked to the deaths of over 90 people in South Korea from 2011 onwards. But it is obvious that Japanese firms have not learned the lessons from recent scandals, says Toshiaki Oguchi of Governance for Owners Japan, a corporate-governance lobby group. A recurring theme is a lack of transparent leadership and a tendency to paper over problems. Japanese workers are ethical, he says, but tend to hide wrongdoing rather than confront management. Kobe Steel ignored at least one whistleblower who sounded the alarm over its substandard metal. Its president and chief executive, Hiroya Kawasaki, has promised to lead an internal probe.His company<6E>s woes add urgency to efforts to improve corporate governance in Japan. Shinzo Abe, the prime minister (who worked at the steel group before going into politics) has introduced a new stewardship code but <20>has not really had the stomach for a more se
'b472b0d642434f7a4c4d5db41286f673e3c510f8'|'COLUMN-Choosing "champions" in a protectionist world: McGeever'|'(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters)By Jamie McGeeverLONDON, Oct 12 (Reuters) - If the 40-year wave of globalization is now giving way to a rising tide of protectionism, the outlook for national and regional champions is brightening.These companies are most likely to be in sectors that enjoy explicit if not implicit government backing, and are those best positioned to increase domestic market share in a world where barriers to trade and markets are going up, not coming down.Early signs of these trends may already be starting to emerge as the de-globalization drift deepens, with the Trump administration<6F>s <20>America First<73> world view sowing doubt over how global trade will evolve in the years and decades ahead.It<49>s almost a year since Donald Trump<6D>s shock U.S. election win. In that time he has withdrawn the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), threatened to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and chided Germany for its huge trade surplus.And at a micro level a trade dispute between Boeing and Bombardier threatens thousands of jobs at the Canadian planemaker<65> s plant in Northern Ireland. UK prime minister Theresa May has spoken to Trump about the issue.With Trump turning up the protectionist rhetoric, French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to make it more difficult for foreign takeovers in strategic European industries, warning European Union governments to guard against <20>naivety<74> in global trade.Last month Paris and Rome said they will explore the creation of a Franco-Italian naval defence group, merging French military shipyards company Naval Group with Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri.Germany<6E>s Siemens and France<63>s Alstom also announced last month they would merge their rail businesses, creating a European champion to help counter the rise of China<6E>s state-owned CRRC.Merger and acquisition data from Thomson Reuters show the value of intra- and inter-EU deals in the nine months to September jumped 68 percent to $344 billion, the highest since 2008.The value of inward M&A into Europe from overseas also rose Jan-Sept, but nowhere near as much. It edged up 1 percent to $178 billion, only the highest since 2015, and inbound flows excluding Chinese acquisitions rose 4 percent to $153 billion, also just a two-year high.The picture in the United States is a little less clear cut, but still points to a general trend of home-grown deal-making.The value of U.S. domestic M&A rose 6 percent in the first nine months of 2017 to $690 billion, again the highest in just two years. But the number of domestically-focused deals jumped 21.8 percent to 7,846, the most since 1998 and the second highest ever.PEAK GLOBALIZATION? Michael O<>Sullivan, Chief Investment Officer at Credit Suisse<73>s International Wealth Management division, with 702 billion francs ($722 billion) of assets under management, recommends investors switch their attention away from globalized companies toward market champions as globalization slows.<2E>These are the firms that will see a rise in domestic market share and enjoy possible government support,<2C> he said. <20>M&A is likely to be more intra-regional, especially in Europe. Until recently, Europe was a collection of countries. But people now, including EU policymakers, see a more pan-Europe.<2E>O<EFBFBD>Sullivan expects cross-border ventures in European technology and rail to spread. Banking, he said, is ripe for consolidation over the next five years, particularly among the big European banks with strong balance sheets.Deutsche Bank analysts argue that last year marked the <20>the peak, and likely unwind of globalization<6F> that has driven and shaped the world economy since World War Two. There is <20>compelling evidence<63> that the freedom of movement of goods, people and capital across the globe are all being reversed.The shift towards unilateralism is most prevalent in places that have been the biggest drivers of globalization.Global Trade Alert,
'136f06f618c2ac4a99c84797b88b51ee6badec8e'|'Ryanair to refer Air Berlin/Lufthansa deal to EU Commission'|'DUBLIN, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Ryanair will refer rival Lufthansa<73>s 210 million euro ($249 million) deal to buy large parts of insolvent Air Berlin - a process it has previously described as <20>a stitch-up<75> - to European Union competition authorities.<2E>We will be referring the matter to the EU competition authority in due course,<2C> a Ryanair spokesman said in an emailed statement after the deal was announced, declining further comment. (Reporting by Padraic Halpin and Conor Humphries, editing by David Evans)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/air-berlin-lufthansa-ryanair/ryanair-to-refer-air-berlin-lufthansa-deal-to-eu-commission-idINS8N1ID02K'|'2017-10-12T12:54:00.000+03:00'
'25bbd8a9337bdcd2ecdc0cfbeca3b98a9c63ffe4'|'Q&A-Trump''s not-so-quick fix to undo Obamacare - Reuters'|'NEW YORK, Oct 12 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Thursday prescribed a quick fix to undo Obamacare through executive order after Republicans in the U.S. Congress failed to repeal and replace the healthcare law as promised, but industry experts said there are many steps involved that will slow it down.Trump<6D>s plan rests on one main pillar, the creation of associations in which multiple employers can band together to buy health plans under the same law that large employers do. That law rests outside of many of the mandates of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, dubbed Obamacare.Here are some questions and answers about these plans.WHO CAN BUY THESE PLANS? Potentially, small business employees and maybe even more people would be able to buy such plans. The executive order envisions that associations will form to offer these new health plans for small businesses that want to join together. It is not clear from the order whether freelance workers or other individuals interested in buying health insurance outside of Obamacare would be able to access these association plans through other routes. That may be decided in the federal rule-making process, which takes months.WHO WILL FORM THESE NEW ASSOCIATIONS? There currently are some associations that have united to buy health insurance, but the order imagines the creation of many new associations around the country. By allowing small businesses to join forces to create a larger pool of employees when buying insurance, these associations can decrease the risk of having a higher proportion of members with costly illnesses that can drive up coverage costs for small employers.It is not clear who would create these groups, but there are some employer trade groups, like the National Restaurant Association, that have advocated this year to allow restaurants to band together to buy healthcare.WHAT<41>S THE NEXT STEP?Groups first need to create an association, register it with the U.S. Labor Department, design the benefit plans, sign up medical providers or hire a third-party company that establishes networks of doctors, and then advertise and sell those plans to employees, insurance experts said.Signing up providers such as doctors and hospitals could be challenging, especially across state lines, said Dave Dillon, a fellow and actuary at the Society of Actuaries. Doctors and hospitals charge higher prices when they are uncertain about how many patients they might have, even when they are dealing with known entities like the large health insurers.In addition, Americans next month are due to start buying their plans for next year during open enrollment, whether that is through an employer or on their own.That means 2018 would be off the table for the executive order<65>s provisions.2019 AT THE EARLIEST? <20>To get ready for 2019, you would have to be fairly up and running by the spring or early summer, and you would have to have things in place for the employers who would want to sell coverage for a 1/1 date,<2C> Dillon said, referring to Jan. 1, 2019.By the time April rolls around, health insurers like Aetna Inc and UnitedHealth Group Inc and benefit design brokers like Aon PLC and Mercer, part of Marsh & McLennan Cos., are shopping around plans for 2019 with the goal to sign contracts by the summer. That gives them time to create the advertisements and documents that go to employees in time for sign-up.The 2019 plans would go on sale in November 2018.WHAT ELSE COULD MESS THIS UP? Legal challenges from Democratic state attorneys general who have fought some of Trump<6D>s initiatives could further delay associations from forming, or employers from deciding to move employees from current small group plans or to offer a plan to employees currently being served by the individual market.Reporting by Caroline Humer; Editing by Will Dunham'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-healthcare-provisions/qa-trumps-not-so-quick-fix-to-undo-obamacare-idINL2N1MN0J2
'58bf35dc692be9728c6c246ad7d7ad981a2deb50'|'Volkswagen to make brands more distinct to boost efficiency'|'October 12, 2017 / 5:32 PM / in an hour Volkswagen to make brands more distinct to boost efficiency Andreas Cremer 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A man uses phone under a Volkswagen logo at the Shanghai Auto Show, in Shanghai, China April 20, 2017. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo BERLIN (Reuters) - Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ) will make its three mass-market brands more distinct to reduce overlaps and defuse tensions within the carmaking group, its chief executive said on Thursday. The German company is striving to make savings and become more efficient to help fund a costly shift to electric vehicles in the wake of its diesel emissions scandal. CEO Matthias Mueller said the automaker<65>s executive board had set out a new focus for its mass-market VW, Skoda and Seat brands based on 14 customer groups in its core European market. <20>The key challenge is (to achieve) a perfect market coverage with clear territories for the brands,<2C> he told a strategy meeting of about 400 managers in Wolfsburg. <20>We must now be able to better use the synergies that our unique alliance of brands offer than we have done to date.<2E> The move may help to smooth relations between the brands. VW sources told Reuters last week that managers and unions were seeking to curb competition from lower-cost stablemate Skoda, move some of its production to Germany and make the Czech brand pay more for shared technology. That sparked at backlash at Skoda. Concerned about the possibility of losing work to Germany, the Czech brand<6E>s main union threatened to cut back on overtime work. Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka also demanded talks on the issue with Skoda<64>s leadership. The positioning of the brands is <20>an emotional theme that recently made waves,<2C> Mueller said. <20>Of course, it is an extreme challenge sometimes to steer this tanker and to balance the (different) interests,<2C> he added. In a next step, Volkswagen will pursue greater differentiation between its premium brands and expand the strategy to other regions, Mueller said, without being more specific. Separately, Mueller said the group expected to make major savings in development costs at premium brands Audi ( NSUG.DE ) and Porsche through their new shared PPE production platform for electric cars. <20>On balance we expect 30 percent less workload<61> compared with the current MLB and MSB platforms operated separately by Audi and Porsche, the CEO said, without being more specific. Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-strategy/volkswagen-to-make-brands-more-distinct-to-boost-efficiency-idUSKBN1CH2KW'|'2017-10-12T20:32:00.000+03:00'
'7ffa5bf127c7fb1a6c66c5db7b6ee080e1ffba9e'|'HK regulator drops case against StanChart, UBS over 2009 IPO-sources'|'October 13, 2017 / 2:35 PM / in 5 minutes HK regulator drops lawsuit against StanChart, UBS over 2009 IPO - sources Sumeet Chatterjee , Elzio Barreto 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A man walks on a footbridge connected to the Standard Chartered headquarters in Hong Kong August 7, 2012. REUTERS/Bobby Yip HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong<6E>s securities regulator has dropped a lawsuit against Standard Chartered Plc ( STAN.L ) and UBS Group AG ( UBSG.S ) over their roles in the 2009 IPO of timber company China Forestry Holdings Co Ltd, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) suit filed in January this year sought unspecified damages for <20>market misconduct<63> over the IPO of China Forestry filed in November 2009, according to the court documents at that time. UBS and StanChart were joint sponsors, as investment banks and securities firms that underwrite listings in Hong Kong are called, for the initial public offering (IPO). China Forestry raised $216 million (162.56 million pounds) in the offering, but its shares have been suspended since January 2011, after its auditor said it had found possible accounting irregularities. The company is now in liquidation and has been delisted from the Hong Kong exchange. The regulator<6F>s latest move comes despite the fact it is widening its probe into cases of alleged market manipulation and corporate fraud that risk tarnishing former British colony<6E>s reputation as a global financial centre. The SFC is probing <20>substandard work<72> by 15 firms in their roles as sponsors for IPOs that have caused billions of dollars in investment losses, a senior regulatory official said on Wednesday. <20>The SFC issued the protective writ on s213 action with a view to achieving maximum benefit for investors who have suffered harm from alleged misconduct,<2C> the SFC said in a statement on Friday in response to Reuters request for comment. S213 refers to section 213 of the Securities and Futures Ordinance to combat market misconduct. After considering its legal position, the SFC determined its action against <20>certain parties was probably time barred<65>, the regulator said, without elaborating and naming any of the banks in its emailed statement. Standard Chartered and UBS declined to comment. The sources declined to be named as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the subject. The Wall Street Journal first reported the development. The SFC<46>s charges in the lawsuit against the two banks also related to China Forestry<72>s 2009 annual report, its 2009 annual results and the results for the first six months of 2010, as per the documents it had filed with Hong Kong<6E>s High Court. The regulator had also sued China Forestry itself, as well as the company<6E>s two co-founders and its auditor KPMG, the court documents showed. It was not immediately clear if the SFC would pursue its lawsuit against those entities. Standard Chartered and UBS separately disclosed late last year that the SFC was probing their role as sponsors of unidentified IPOs and that the regulator<6F>s actions could result in financial consequences. One of the people with knowledge of the matter said that despite withdrawal of the lawsuit, the SFC<46>s own investigation into the 2009 IPO would continue, which could result in some action against the banks. Standard Chartered no longer has an IPO sponsorship licence in Hong Kong, but UBS still does. With Hong Kong the world<6C>s hottest market for IPOs, scrutiny of listings is key to retaining its attractiveness to investors. Under SFC rules, banks can face fines and sanctions if their clients<74> IPO documents mislead investors. Reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee and Elzio Barreto; Editing by Jane Merriman and Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hongkong-regulator-banks/hk-regulator-drops-case-against-stanchart-ubs-over-2009-ipo-sources-idUKKBN1CI1YA'|'2017-10-13T17:35:00.000+03:00
'ec75261a768f96796246c223097fc12e9d5ee9f0'|'Asia stocks near decade-high on global equity surge, dollar sags'|'October 12, 2017 / 12:50 AM / Updated 20 minutes ago Dollar rises with bond yields; stocks lackluster 4 Min Read A U.S. five dollar note is seen in this illustration photo June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar snapped a losing streak on Thursday in the wake of solid U.S. economic data but U.S. Treasury yields dipped and Wall Street stock indexes were largely unchanged as earnings season kicked off with a whimper. While investors cheered a 0.4 percent increase in the U.S. producer price index for final demand last month, inflation concerns were still in focus as U.S. central bankers showed they were taking a more guarded view. Bond traders were waiting on consumer price data due out on Friday for further indications whether inflation is picking up. <20>PPI was a little bit better, but that doesn<73>t really translate well to CPI,<2C> said Gennadiy Goldberg, an interest rate strategist at TD Securities in New York. <20>I think for the most part, markets are still waiting for the CPI report tomorrow.<2E> Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR last rose 2/32 in price to yield 2.3374 percent, from 2.345 percent late on Wednesday. The 30-year bond US30YT=RR last /32 in price to yield 2.8761 percent, from 2.876 percent late on Wednesday. MSCI<43>s gauge of stock markets across the globe .MIWD PUS gained 0.06 percent, buoyed gains in Asian markets. The index reached a record high, as it has for seven of the past eight trading days. After two days of hitting records, the U.S. benchmark S&P index took a breather as investors were less than impressed with quarterly reports from two major banks, JPMorgan ( JPM.N ) and Citigroup ( C.N ). Scott Clemons, chief investment strategist for Brown Brothers Harriman in New York said that <20>after a long stretch of consecutive highs in the market, with earnings, even if they are slightly disappointing<6E> that is an excuse to sell off. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 7.32 points, or 0.03 percent, to 22,865.57, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 1.8 points, or 0.07 percent, to 2,553.44 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 0.69 points, or 0.01 percent, to 6,604.24. After four straight days of declines, the dollar index, tracking the greenback against a basket of major currencies .DXY, rose 0.15 percent. The euro EUR= was down 0.16 percent to $1.1838, snapping four straight days of gains after rising to its highest since Sept. 25 earlier in the session. The Mexican peso lost 0.30 percent versus the U.S. dollar at 18.76 amid concerns the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) talks could run aground. Bitcoin smashed through the $5,000 barrier for the first time ever BTC=BTSP , and was last up 8.6 percent on the day. Meanwhile, sterling slipped to a three-day low against the greenback after the European Union<6F>s chief negotiator said Brexit talks were at an <20>impasse,<2C> ramping up political risks for the currency which is down about 12 percent since last year<61>s EU vote. In Asia, MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS reached its highest point since late 2007, ending up 0.7 percent on the day. Japan''s Nikkei .N225 rose 0.4 percent, hitting its highest since late 1996. South Korea''s KOSPI .KS11 added 0.55 percent to reach a record high. In commodities, oil prices fell as U.S. fuel inventories rose despite efforts by OPEC to cut production [O/R]. U.S. crude CLcv1 fell 1.72 percent to $50.42 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $56.00, down 1.65 percent on the day. Spot gold XAU= added 0.1 percent to $1,292.50 an ounce. Reporting by John Geddie and Dhara Ranasinghe in London and Shinichi Saoshiro in Tokyo; Editing by Bernadette Baum 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-markets/asia-stocks-near-decade-high-on-global-equity-surge-dollar-sags-idUKKBN1CH02Z'|'2017-10-12T03:51:00.000+03:00'
'b94f3c69fdde7fa384bd79b8a9c6a0b4e993bbca'|'Goldman Sachs to buy mortgage lender Genesis Capital'|'FILE PHOTO: The logo of Dow Jones Industrial Average stock market index listed company Goldman Sachs (GS) is seen on the clothing of a trader working at the Goldman Sachs stall on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, United States April 16, 2012. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( GS.N ) has agreed to buy private mortgage lender Genesis Capital LLC as the Wall Street bank looks to new businesses for growth while trading revenue remains sluggish.Los Angeles-based Genesis, which had been backed by private equity firm Oaktree Capital Management LP, provides financing for real estate developers looking to buy, renovate and sell single-family homes.Terms of the deal, announced by Genesis on Thursday, were not disclosed.Goldman is grappling with ways to boost revenue as trading, its traditional profit engine, has slowed amid post-financial crisis regulations.Pushing more deeply into lending to both large corporations and consumers, Goldman purchased $17 billion worth of online retail deposits last year from GE Capital Bank.It also launched Marcus, its first major foray into consumer lending, and in July announced a new digital platform where customers of other wealth management firms can apply for loans.Lending to house-flippers is another way in which Goldman can put its deposits to work.Genesis, which was founded in 2007, lent $1 billion during 2016.Genesis was advised by Wells Fargo Securities.Goldman Sachs was advised by Goldman Sachs & Co LLC and legal counsel was provided by Davis Polk & Wardwell and Mayer Brown LLP.Reporting by Olivia Oran in New York and Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Tom Brown'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-goldman-sachs-m-a-genesis-capital/goldman-sachs-to-buy-mortgage-lender-genesis-capital-idINKBN1CH2J4'|'2017-10-12T15:04:00.000+03:00'
'a8c2b8d39dfbbbdba2ce718c64e28b740cea8f28'|'Time running out for airlines as Brexit talks hit impasse'|'October 12, 2017 / 3:14 PM / a minute ago Time running out for airlines as Brexit talks hit impasse Reuters Staff 3 Min Read A passenger plane, with a full Harvest moon seen behind, makes its final landing approach towards Heathrow Airport in London, Britain, October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville LONDON (Reuters) - Airlines are still seeking answers from Britain as to future flying rights, with less than a year to go until they start selling tickets in a post-Brexit world, industry executives said on Thursday. British and EU negotiators hit a dead-end over money in four days of talks, the European Union<6F>s Michel Barnier said on Thursday as he ruled out discussions on future trade being launched by EU leaders next week. Britain will leave the European Union in March 2019, and while it has highlighted aviation as a sector which needs to be prioritized in Brexit talks, the slow progress of talks raises the prospect of airlines having to put tickets on sale without a guarantee of an agreement that will allow flights to happen. <20>Airlines sell tickets 300 days out, so they are about 6-8 months away from needing some certainty,<2C> Michael Whitaker, principal of Whitaker Airspace and former deputy administrator at the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, told the CAPA Global Summit in London. Flying rights to, from and within the European Union, plus between the United States and Britain are currently covered by EU-wide Open Skies agreements. For the aviation sector, there is no default <20>fallback<63> option in the event of a <20>no deal<61>, unlike with trade, where Britain would revert to WTO rules. On Wednesday, British Chancellor Philip Hammond said it was <20>theoretically conceivable<6C> that in a no-deal scenario air traffic between Britain and the European Union could be grounded. One option could be to return to the old bilateral agreements that used to govern air traffic rights between Britain and other countries, but those often date back to the 1940s and 1950s and are very restrictive. Christine Ourmi<6D>res-Widener, CEO of British regional airline Flybe ( FLYB.L ), said the airline planned to release its schedules with the regular 12-18 months<68> notice. Flybe has prepared for various risks but needs answers from the government, she said. <20>We can deal with any scenario but the question is which scenario we will have to use depending on the decision,<2C> she told Reuters. Craig Kreeger, CEO of Virgin Atlantic, expects a bilateral deal between Britain and the United States, the most crucial aspect for the transatlantic carrier, will be agreed before Britain leaves the EU. <20>Sanguine might be a teeny bit strong, but I<>m still generally confident that from a Virgin Atlantic perspective, things will be OK,<2C> Kreeger told Reuters. Reporting by Alistair Smout and Victoria Bryan; Editing by Adrian Croft 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-airlines/time-running-out-for-airlines-as-brexit-talks-hit-impasse-idUSKBN1CH292'|'2017-10-12T17:55:00.000+03:00'
'b69070594e89a9fcc5aed9542762d0b84bc12ee0'|'Lotte Group aims to sell Lotte Mart stores in China by year-end - executive'|'October 12, 2017 / 2:04 AM / Updated 37 minutes ago Lotte aims to sell China Lotte Mart stores by year-end, has several suitors 2 Min Read A Lotte Mart is seen closed in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, China September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Adam Jourdan SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea<65>s Lotte Group aims to sell its Lotte Mart stores in China by the end of this year, a company executive said on Thursday, adding that several firms have expressed interest in the troubled unit. The country<72>s No.5 conglomerate decided to bow out of the business after most of its hypermarkets and supermarkets in China were shut down amid political tensions between the two countries. <20>We are in detailed talks with some of those companies,<2C> Lim Byung-yun, an executive vice president at Lotte Corp, the group<75>s newly launched holding company, said at a news conference. The size of the deal is expected to be small at a couple hundred million dollars, a banking source said, declining to be identified as the talks were confidential. Lotte has been particularly hard hit by the political friction after it agreed to hand over land in southern South Korea for a U.S.-made missile defence system - a plan that has angered Beijing which argues that the radar can penetrate far into its territory. Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ) has been picked to managed the sale. Lotte Corp executive Lee Bong-chul said it would take time to list the group<75>s Hotel Lotte unit, as political tensions with China have resulted in declines in the number of Chinese tourists visiting South Korea, hurting sales of both its hotel and its duty free businesses. The offering, expected to be worth around $4.5 billion, was delayed following a corruption scandal involving Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin. He is on trial after prosecutors indicted him and other executives on embezzlement and other charges. Shin has denied the charges. Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Additional reporting by Kane Wu; Editing by Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lottemart-china-sale/lotte-group-aims-to-sell-lotte-mart-stores-in-china-by-year-end-executive-idUKKBN1CH06M'|'2017-10-12T05:03:00.000+03:00'
'c92afe96f9d2b1d1a197477bab3b9a992104d739'|'This week in sports: Stunning upset for U.S. men<65>s soccer - Reuters'|'United States'' Christian Pulisic and Trinidad''s Kevan George and Shahdon Winchester in action. REUTERS/Andrea de Silva Listen to this week<65>s Keeping Score podcast:Fox brushes off World Cup woes: The surprise failure of the United States men<65>s soccer team to qualify for next year<61>s World Cup will not affect Fox Sports'' plans to televise the tournament, according to the network, which shelled out $200 million for the rights.NFL to host anthem talks: The NFL players<72> union Executive Director DeMaurice Smith will attend meetings next week with team owners to discuss player protests during the national anthem. Speaking of which, Trump upped his war of words over NFL players<72> silent protests against racial injustice, saying the league shouldn<64>t receive tax breaks. Reuters examined whether Trump can follow through on this threat .Serena back on the court?: Serena Williams, formerly the world''s top women''s tennis player, may return to defend her Australian Open title next year , tournament director Craig Tiley said. Williams, who gave birth to a daughter September 1, would have just three months to get ready.The New York Yankees celebrates after defeating the Cleveland Indians during game five of the 2017 ALDS playoff baseball series at Progressive Field. Mandatory Credit: Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports Click here to see more of Reuters top sports photography .'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-weekinsports-06oct2017/this-week-in-sports-stunning-upset-for-u-s-mens-soccer-idUSKBN1CH2WQ'|'2017-10-13T04:08:00.000+03:00'
'a1b62c40c6d202b589d06396a2626befba3e5634'|'Allergan settles with one of four companies contesting Restasis patent'|'October 12, 2017 / 9:41 PM / in 13 minutes Allergan settles with one of four companies contesting Restasis patent Michael Erman 2 Min Read Oct 12 (Reuters) - Allergan Plc said on Thursday it reached a settlement with InnoPharma Inc, one of the four generic drugmakers challenging the patents for its dry eye medication Restasis in federal court. Mylan NV, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and Akorn Inc are still contesting those patents in U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas. The three companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the announcement. As part of the settlement, Allergan said InnoPharma could begin selling a generic version of Restasis on Feb. 24, 2024, or possibly earlier, about six months ahead of the scheduled expirations of the patents. The company also said it may allow InnoPharma to sell an authorized generic version of the drug supplied by Allergan beginning Aug. 28, 2024. Last month, Allergan struck a controversial deal with a Native American tribe in order to shield a separate review of the Restasis patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Allergan transferred the patents to New York<72>s Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe, which agreed to exclusively license them back to the company in exchange for ongoing payments. The tribe and Allergan argue that the patents are not subject to the trademark office<63>s review because of the tribe<62>s sovereign immunity. U.S. lawmakers from both parties have criticized the maneuver. Democratic U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill drafted a bill in response to the move and a U.S. House of Representatives committee is investigating the deal. (Reporting by Michael Erman; editing by Grant McCool) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/allergan-patents/allergan-settles-with-one-of-four-companies-contesting-restasis-patent-idUSL2N1MN26L'|'2017-10-13T00:41:00.000+03:00'
'1aba3398288775a7bd47fdedbb1200964b25d572'|'T-Mobile, Sprint deal likely opposed by Justice Dept staff: sources'|'FILE PHOTO: Smartphones with the logos of T-Mobile and Sprint are seen in this illustration taken September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When Sprint and T-Mobile bring their expected merger plans to the U.S. Department of Justice for antitrust review, the career staff who do the bulk of the probe into whether the deal will hurt customers will likely recommend that it be stopped, three people familiar with their thinking told Reuters.The deal between the U.S. third- and fourth-largest U.S. wireless carriers, likely to be announced later this month, is set to test how antitrust enforcers will approach big deals under the administration of President Donald Trump, who is seen as pro-business but also ran a populist campaign aimed at the worries of ordinary Americans.The Justice Department<6E>s main concern is how the deal would affect competition in the U.S. mobile sector. Antitrust staff will want to let T-Mobile continue as it has done, aggressively wooing customers away from market leaders Verizon Communications Inc ( VZ.N ) and AT&T Inc ( T.N ), the people said.T-Mobile touts itself as the fastest-growing U.S. wireless company, and its annual report lists enticements to attract customers like paying termination fees for new customers who leave their old company.If combined, T-Mobile U.S. Inc ( TMUS.O ) and Sprint Corp ( S.N ) would have more than half the market for pre-paid plans, favored by people with little or poor credit, which will likely figure in competition considerations.<2E>Losing that head-to-head competition could drive up prices for those on a more limited income,<2C> said Gene Kimmelman, president of Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group.Sprint and T-Mobile agreed on tentative terms on a plan to merge in late September, sources said.But it is not clear the deal will be any more successful than three years ago, when Japan<61>s SoftBank Group Corp ( 9984.T ), which controls Sprint, abandoned talks to acquire T-Mobile for Sprint in the face of opposition from U.S. antitrust regulators.An informal poll of seven antitrust experts contacted by Reuters found them split between predicting that the deal would be stopped and saying they did not know if it would be allowed. A tiny fraction of deals are blocked.As influential as the career staff is, the final decision will lie with Trump<6D>s antitrust enforcer at the Justice Department, Makan Delrahim, and the Federal Communications Commission.Deutsche Bank analysts said in a research note this week they were <20>very bearish on the prospects for deal approval,<2C> citing not only regulatory risk, but also political opposition from Democrats to deals that could threaten U.S. consumers.If the agencies decide to try to stop the merger, they have ammunition.The U.S. wireless market is dominated by Verizon with about 146 million wireless customers and AT&T with nearly 135 million. T-Mobile is third with 71.5 million and Sprint is No. 4 with 58.5 million, according to Fierce Wireless, which collects and analyzes wireless market data. Together, the four have 98.8 percent of the U.S. wireless market.T-Mobile dominates the prepaid market. Combining with Sprint would give it 56 percent of the market to provide wireless to people who tend to be poorer or have no or bad credit, according to John Fletcher, an analyst with S&P Global.One point in the deal<61>s favor is that the mobile market is competitive. Between August 2016 and August 2017, wireless telephone services prices fell a stunning 13.2 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.<2E>Chances are better now, meaningfully better,<2C> that the deal will win approval, said Daniel Bitton, an antitrust attorney with Axinn, Veltrop and Harkrider.Reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington; Editing by Bill Rigby'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-sprint-corp-m-a-t-mobile/t-mobile-sprint-deal-likely-opposed-by-justice-dept-staff-s
'0a4cbef895437a57f2fd133c9f7661942fde417c'|'Ireland signals tourism VAT rate rise if sector weathers Brexit'|'October 11, 2017 / 11:21 AM / Updated 6 hours ago Ireland signals tourism VAT rate rise if sector weathers Brexit Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Irish Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe speaks during an interview with Reuters at the Ministry of Finance in Dublin, Ireland September 22, 2016. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne/File Photo DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland has shown its willingness to reverse tax incentives aimed at boosting activity and will decide the fate of a lower VAT for tourism when a clearer picture of the impact of Brexit emerges, finance minister Paschal Donohoe said on Wednesday. A cut in sales tax for hotels, restaurants and other tourist businesses to 9 percent from 13.5 percent in 2011 has succeeded in lifting a sector that was reeling from Ireland<6E>s financial crisis. It is now benefitting from record visitor growth and higher prices, particularly in Dublin. While the number of tourists are up 2.5 percent so far this year, the weakening of the pound following Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union cut visitors from Ireland<6E>s nearest neighbour by 7 percent, bringing an end to the overall double-digit growth of recent years. That prompted Donohoe to retain the lower rate in Tuesday<61>s budget for 2018 but he pointed to a sharp hike in the rate of stamp duty on commercial property - another area that rebounded following a rate cut - as a signal of his future intentions. <20>Because of the decision that I<>ve made in relation to stamp duty, I think I<>ve shown my willingness to be able to undo tax rates that I believe are unsustainable in the long run,<2C> Donohoe told national broadcaster RTE, referring to the VAT rate. <20>I would rather make a further decision relating to the VAT rate when I<>m clear on what<61>s going to happen to the British tourism sector,<2C> Donohoe said, describing the decision to keep the rate as a <20>very fine judgement call<6C>. Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Richard Balmforth 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ireland-budget-tourism/ireland-signals-tourism-vat-rate-rise-if-sector-weathers-brexit-idUKKBN1CG1DK'|'2017-10-11T14:21:00.000+03:00'
'eea375242b0140e40bc50b7948d8aad6eba4772d'|'GLOBAL MARKETS-Asian shares hit decade highs, dollar struggles at two-week trough'|'October 11, 2017 / 12:50 AM / in 2 hours GLOBAL MARKETS-Asian shares hit decade highs, dollar struggles at two-week trough Reuters Staff * MSCI ex-Japan at highest since December 2007 * Japan<61>s Nikkei at 21-month top, KOSPI at record highs * Dollar steadies around two-week lows, euro holds gains * Oil prices tick up on signs of tighter near-term supply By Swati Pandey SYDNEY, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Asian shares jumped to the highest in a decade on Wednesday as Wall Street scaled all-time highs, while the dollar loitered around two-week lows on worries President Donald Trump<6D>s tax plan could stall. Japan<61>s Nikkei closed at the highest level since 1996, even as scandal-hit Kobe Steel extended losses. Futures pointed to a steady start for European shares already at all-time peaks with e-mini futures almost unchanged in Asian trading. The MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan climbed 0.4 percent to a level not seen since December 2007. South Korea<65>s KOSPI surged 0.9 percent to its highest level ever, tracking the global rally. Sentiment was boosted after the International Monetary Fund upgraded its global economic growth forecast for 2017 and 2018, driven by a pickup in trade, investment, and consumer confidence. <20>A risk-on mood has set in and money is flowing out of bond funds into equities funds,<2C> said Hugh Dive, chief investment officer at Atlas Funds Management. <20>One of the biggest drivers of global equities is the United States and some of the macro data coming out from there has been quite positive. There is also this view that China is travelling much better than many people had expected.<2E> The three major Wall Street indices set record highs on Tuesday, with Dow up 0.3 percent, the S&P 500 adding 0.2 percent and the Nasdaq inching 0.1 percent higher. In currency markets, the dollar held around a two-week trough as U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s escalating war of words with Senator Bob Corker raised concerns about the administration<6F>s ability to pass promised reforms. The dollar index steadied at 93.314 against a basket of currencies, around the lowest level since Sept. 29. FED MINUTES The greenback was also under pressure amid ongoing uncertainty over the next Federal Reserve Chairman, with the predictions market site, PredictIt, favouring Fed governor Jerome Powell as the most likely candidate. While Powell is regarded as more hawkish than incumbent Janet Yellen, whose term expires in February, analysts say he might be less aggressive in winding back stimulus than Kevin Warsh, another possible candidate for the role. Investors will keep an eye on the minutes of the Fed<65>s September meeting due later in the day, which might help bolster views of a December rate hike. But Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Robert Kaplan, who votes this year on Fed policy, said earlier in the day he wants to see more signs of upward inflation before raising interest rates again. The euro held around $1.1818, not far from Tuesday<61>s high of $1.1825, after Catalonian President Carles Puigdemont suspended plans to leave Spain and called for talks with Madrid to discuss the region<6F>s future. The gesture tempered fears of immediate unrest in a major euro zone economy and cheered investors. Madrid<69>s IBEX 35 Index futures added 1.75 percent, after the cash IBEX stock index closed down 0.9 percent on Tuesday. In commodities, U.S. crude rose 19 cents to $51.11 per barrel and Brent added 13 cents to $56.74 on signs of tighter near-term supply. Gold prices hovered around their highest in two weeks, with spot gold at $1,289.06 an ounce. Reporting by Swati Pandey; Editing by Sam Holmes 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/global-markets/global-markets-asian-shares-gain-as-wall-st-hits-record-catalan-fears-ease-idUSL4N1MM02Y'|'2017-10-11T09:32:00.000+03:00'
'5f8a31a97082ee740f561412c4dacb4c30a0f8cb'|'Net shorts on U.S. longer-dated bonds fall from record high -JPMorgan'|'October 11, 2017 / 1:49 PM / in 9 minutes Net shorts on U.S. longer-dated bonds fall from record high -JPMorgan Reuters Staff 3 Min Read NEW YORK, Oct 11 (Reuters) - The margin of investors who said they had fewer longer-dated Treasuries than their benchmarks over those who held more longer-dated bonds than their benchmarks retreated from a record peak, JPMorgan Chase & Co.''s latest client survey showed on Wednesday. Investors reloaded their bond holdings following a mixed September payrolls reports and on renewed concerns about the tension between the United States and North Korea over the latter''s nuclear weapons program, analysts said. A spat between U.S. President Donald Trump and a top Republican senator has raised worries whether a tax plan Trump introduced would be enacted, possibly removing a key stimulus that would promote faster economic growth. The share of investors who said they were "short" longer-dated Treasuries fell to 42 percent from 44 percent on Oct 2. The share of them who said they were "long" jumped to 15 percent from 5 percent last week. The net shorts declined to 27 percent from a record peak in the prior week, JP Morgan said. Among active clients which include market makers and hedge funds, 50 percent of them said they were short longer-dated U.S. bonds, down from a record 70 percent last week, while 10 percent of them said they were long, up from none a week earlier. At 9:32 a.m. (1310 GMT), the 10-year yield was down 1.1 basis points at 2.334 percent, which was below 2.402 percent, its highest in about five months set last Friday. A week ago, the 10-year yield closed at 2.332 percent. JPMorgan surveyed clients including bond fund managers, central banks and sovereign wealth funds, as well as market makers and hedge funds. The chart below displays the latest survey results of JPMorgan''s Treasury clients: All clients Long Neutral Shorts Net Position Oct. 10 15 43 42 -27 Oct. 2 5 51 44 -39 Sept. 25 11 59 30 -19 Sept. 18 16 61 23 -7 Sept. 11 9 64 27 -18 Sept. 5 7 66 27 -20 Aug. 28 7 75 18 -11 Active clients Oct. 11 10 40 50 -40 Oct. 2 0 30 70 -70 Sept. 25 20 50 30 -10 Sept. 18 10 70 20 -10 Sept. 11 0 90 10 -10 Sept. 5 0 80 20 -20 Aug. 28 0 90 10 -10 * NOTE: Positive value denotes net long, negative value denotes net short (Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Andrea Ricci) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/treasuries-jpmorgan/net-shorts-on-u-s-longer-dated-bonds-fall-from-record-high-jpmorgan-idUSL2N1MM0S5'|'2017-10-11T16:49:00.000+03:00'
'b6e8f378579e777b001e346ccde2346ef817988e'|'Recruiter PageGroup reports rise in third quarter gross profit'|'October 11, 2017 / 6:37 AM / in 9 hours British recruiter PageGroup bemoans Brexit uncertainty Esha Vaish 3 Min Read (Reuters) - International companies are cutting back on hiring and senior staff are reluctant to switch jobs because of uncertainty over Brexit, British recruitment company PageGroup ( PAGE.L ) said on Wednesday. Companies in Britain were filling vacant positions and roles created by restructuring, but were holding back on creating new jobs or setting aside budgets for expansion, Chief Executive Steve Ingham said. <20>The reality is uncertainty does not breed confidence to move your career from one company to another or commit to hiring people when you<6F>re running a business,<2C> he told Reuters. Hiring for technical roles in engineering, supply chain, logistics, property and construction were doing better than for areas such as human resources and legal. PageGroup, which mainly finds candidates to fill permanent positions, reported a 7.6 percent fall in domestic gross profit to 34.9 million pounds for the three months to Sept. 30. That was a sharper fall than the 4.5 percent slide it reported a quarter earlier and worse than RBC<42>s forecast of a 2 percent fall. PageGroup, which generates about a fifth of its gross profit in Britain, said in July that weakness in Britain could last two years. The British group said it remained on course to meet full-year expectations for operating profit which it pegged at about 113 million pounds. It had reported operating profit of 101 million pounds in 2016. But analysts said the outlook was disappointing after fellow recruiter Robert Walters ( RWA.L ) raised its full-year pretax profit forecast for a second time on Tuesday. PageGroup shares were down 5.5 percent to 496.6 pence by 0835 GMT, making it the second top loser on London''s midcap index .FTMC . OVERSEAS BOOST Most British staffing companies are relying on their overseas business to drive growth as uncertainty following Britain<69>s June 2016 vote to leave the European Union curbs domestic demand. PageGroup reported a 11.8 percent rise in third-quarter group gross profit to 177.3 million pounds, highlighting the United States, China and Germany as standout performers. Many financial companies have said they will move some British jobs to continental Europe to keep serving clients in the single market. However, PageGroup said it had not yet received requests to make large-scale hires in Europe. <20>When I go to Paris and Frankfurt,... I do ask the consultants so are you getting more jobs on the back of London going through Brexit and they shake their heads and say <20>At the moment, no, we<77>re not<6F>. Hays ( HAYS.L ), Britain<69>s largest recruiter for finance, will publish a quarterly trading update on Thursday. Reporting by Esha Vaish in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely/Keith Weir 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-pagegroup-outlook/recruiter-pagegroup-reports-rise-in-third-quarter-gross-profit-idUKKBN1CG0L0'|'2017-10-11T10:01:00.000+03:00'
'b8664fd7f3bd4b9a704073e90d344b12fbd03d7b'|'Goldman creates ''brain trust'' in effort to boost deals business'|'October 11, 2017 / 11:07 AM / in 14 minutes Goldman creates ''brain trust'' in effort to boost deals business Olivia Oran 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A view of the Goldman Sachs stall on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, U.S. on July 16, 2013. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( GS.N ) is betting it can get its money-making mojo back by pitching creative deals to big, complex clients, marking a return to its investment banking roots as trading revenue slows. The Wall Street bank is forming a group, known internally as the Innovation Lab, focused on generating compelling deal ideas for companies like Warren Buffett<74>s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway Inc ( BRKa.N ) or Japan<61>s SoftBank Group Corp<72>s ( 9984.T ) $93 billion investment fund, people familiar with the matter said. The new <20>brain trust,<2C> as one insider called it, is aimed at supercharging investment banking revenue as trading, for many years Goldman<61>s profit engine, has faltered amid regulations and market trends that hurt the bank more than rivals. From 2009-2016, Goldman<61>s annual trading revenue fell by more than $18 billion, or 32 percent, while investment banking revenue rose by $1.3 billion, or 26 percent. That trend has accelerated this year. Analysts expect Goldman to reveal more trading pain when it reports third-quarter results on Tuesday, building on two consecutive quarters of declines. After facing angry questions from shareholders, Goldman last month unveiled a plan to boost annual revenue by $5 billion. Management has emphasized Goldman<61>s roots as a strategic adviser to corporations, wealthy families and investment funds, and has also expanded into areas like consumer lending. But while fees from those services can be more reliable than trading, analysts say Goldman will not replace the income from its stock and bond market heyday any time soon. <20>Many investors still view it as a <20>show me<6D> story because the initiatives are in businesses that are highly competitive,<2C> said Steven Chubak, a banking analyst with Instinet. A Goldman spokeswoman declined to comment on the new group. Led by Goldman dealmakers Brian DeCenzo and James Morris, the group will perform a different role than traditional bankers focused broadly on pitching mergers and acquisitions to big companies, the people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because they are not authorized to speak to the media. The group is expected to come up with out-of-the box ideas and focus on clients who want to acquire or make big investments in businesses across industries, and do not fit neatly into individual categories, like technology or industrials, that sector bankers already cover. Berkshire owns more than 90 businesses across aerospace, energy industrials, financials, transportation, consumer products and food. Meanwhile, SoftBank<6E>s Vision Fund has invested in companies ranging from satellite startup OneWeb to asset manager Fortress Investment Group LLC ( FIG.N ). On top of spotting deal opportunities, the new team will analyze broad trends like the impact of oil prices across various sectors. DeCenzo and Morris were previously part of Goldman<61>s financial sponsors group, which scouts deals for private equity firms. The group is the latest change under new management of the investment bank, which earlier this year elevated Gregg Lemkau and Marc Nachmann as co-heads alongside John Waldron. Under their leadership, the business has added bankers to cities like Atlanta and Dallas to serve local clients more closely, and hired dealmakers at the partner level from Wall Street rivals. They have also installed programmers alongside dealmakers to increase productivity and give clients better advice. For graphic click: here %20SACHS-M-A/0100518D2SB/index.html Reporting by Olivia Oran in New York; Editing by Lauren Tara LaCapra and Meredith Mazzilli 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuter
'1dca9c938361d108dd2b3c65f3280aee9c029779'|'CORRECTED-OFFICIAL-Kroger exploring sale of convenience stores, shares rise'|'An isle of a Ralphs grocery store, which is owned by Kroger Co, is pictured ahead of company results in Altadena, California U.S., December 1, 2016. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni (Reuters) - Kroger Co said on Wednesday it is exploring the sale of its nearly 800 convenience stores as the No. 1 U.S. supermarket operator strengthens its Web business in a market share war that has intensified after Amazon.com Inc<6E>s purchase of Whole Foods.Kroger shares jumped as much as 7.3 percent.Kroger has 784 KwikShop, Tom Thumb and QuickStop convenience stores in 18 states. Kroger said that the business generates $4 billion in annual sales.The company, with nearly 2,800 U.S. supermarkets, has been lowering prices and exploring new ways to sell food as it battles rivals such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc, discounters Lidl and Aldi, and the newly merged Amazon.com Inc and Whole Foods Market."This is the result of a review of assets that are potentially of more value outside of the company than as part of Kroger," the company said in a statement ahead of its investor meeting in New York. ( bit.ly/2g173qv )Kroger hired Goldman Sachs to assist with the strategic review.Kroger reiterated its 2017 net earnings forecast of $1.74 to $1.79 per diluted share. It also said it expects 2018 identical supermarket sales to be stronger than in 2017, when it expects adjusted earnings per share of $2.00 to $2.05.Cincinnati, Ohio-based Kroger rattled investors in September when it said it would stop providing long-term growth forecasts. It said on Wednesday <20>it doesn<73>t see anything in the environment that would cause 2018 earnings per diluted share to be below $1.80.<2E>Kroger shares, which hit a 2017 high of $36.44 before the Amazon-Whole Foods announcement in June, have since tumbled roughly 40 percent. Investors are worried the online retail behemoth<74>s increased interest in grocery sales could upend the business as it did with books and electronics.Kroger, for years a leader in using customer data to tailor store offerings and advertising, is responding by testing delivery via Uber, courier service Shyp and its own drivers at more than 150 stores.It is investing in digital sales through ClickList, an online ordering and curbside pickup service, that is expected to be in more than 1,000 stores by the end of the year.And it is selling Prep+Pared meal kits at more than 50 stores and tapping customer data to generate personalized recipe suggestions on Kroger.com.The stock was up 2.5 percent to $21.04 in morning trade.Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru and Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Savio D''Souza and Jeffrey Benkoe'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/kroger-investors/kroger-exploring-sale-of-convenience-stores-shares-rise-idINKBN1CG1Y6'|'2017-10-11T18:50:00.000+03:00'
'd1eed987fac995aee9a8b431496d306afe4a3c26'|'Germany''s Innogy issues $1 billion bond to fund wind farms'|'FILE PHOTO: Innogy logo in Essen, Germany, March 14, 2017. Reuters/Thilo Schmuelgen FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Innogy, Germany<6E>s largest energy group, on Thursday issued a 850 million euros ($1.01 billion) corporate green bond to refinance wind power projects in Europe, it said.Proceeds of the bond, which has a 10-year maturity, will be used to refinance four offshore wind farms in Britain and Germany as well as an onshore wind farm in the Netherlands that is either under construction or already operating.The bond was met with <20>strong interest from investors and was oversubscribed several times<65>, Innogy said.Innogy, in which utility RWE holds a 76.8 percent stake, on Wednesday said it bought the rest of British offshore wind project Triton Knoll from Norway<61>s Statkraft [STATKF.UL].Reporting by Christoph Steitz. Editing by Jane Merriman'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-innogy-bonds/germanys-innogy-issues-1-billion-bond-to-fund-wind-farms-idINKBN1CH2H4'|'2017-10-12T14:49:00.000+03:00'
'cc5e0bd7701145baafd2288b86d5eb3ebbd473cb'|'Sports car maker Aston Martin counts on an SUV to drive its future'|'October 12, 2017 / 12:02 PM / Updated 9 hours ago Sports car maker Aston Martin counts on an SUV to drive its future Joseph White 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd. CEO Andrew Palmer addresses media during the first press day ahead of the 85th International Motor Show in Geneva March 3, 2015. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo DETROIT (Reuters) - The arrival of Aston Martin<69>s DBX sport utility vehicle in 2019 could help more than double sales of the British sports car maker by early next decade, its chief executive told Reuters. The company<6E>s entry into the fast-growing super-premium SUV market <20>absolutely changes the business,<2C> Andy Palmer said in an interview in the United States. It could boost sales to as many as 12,000 vehicles a year by early in the next decade, more than double the roughly 5,000 sports cars the company expects to sell globally this year, he forecast. Aston Martin<69>s previous peak sales year was 2007, when it sold 7,300 cars just before the financial crisis. Palmer said U.S. sales could reach about 1,300 cars this year, propelled by the new DB11 model. <20>I am not claiming success,<2C> he said. Aston<6F>s goal is to get over 2,000 cars a year in the United States. The DBX will be a four-door SUV designed to compete with models such as Volkswagen AG<41>s Bentley Bentayga, a $229,000-and-up vehicle billed by its maker as <20>the fastest SUV ever built<6C>. The DBX<42>s design <20>is complete<74>, Palmer said, and the factory should be building prototypes by the end of 2018. Aston Martin, the preferred drive of fictional British spy James Bond, is late to join the SUV mania gripping the global luxury car business. The financial incentives are clear. In the United States, SUVs accounted for nearly 40 percent of total U.S. vehicle sales in 2016, up from 32.6 percent in 2014, and super-premium models are one of the fastest growing segments. BREXIT Privately-owned Aston Martin reported 94.6 million pounds ($125.1 million) of cash from operations during the first half of 2017, after years of losses. Under Palmer, a former Nissan Motor Co executive, Aston Martin has restructured and issued 550 million pounds in debt securities that are due in 2022. That year is also near the end of Palmer<65>s restructuring plan. By then, Aston Martin - with the DBX SUV and the relaunch of the Lagonda brand - will have a profile similar to Ferrari, Palmer said, adding: <20>Ferrari is a $15 billion company.<2E> Decisions about a public offering or a sale of the company are up to the Kuwaiti and Italian investors who control it, Palmer said. <20>One assumes they will want an exit.<2E> Britain<69>s departure from the European Union could make Aston Martin<69>s road tougher if the two sides fail to maintain favorable trade rules, Palmer said. Non-tariff barriers that could slow deliveries in Europe <20>are my first concern,<2C> he said. <20>Our brand is largely rooted in the UK so it<69>s a tough call<6C> to consider factories elsewhere, he added. A weaker British pound and the ability of Aston<6F>s client base to absorb the costs of tariffs could offset Brexit costs, he said. In the meantime, Aston Martin faces the same pressures to develop cleaner petroleum fueled engines and electric cars as better funded rivals. Aston will eventually offer hybrid options on all its models, and will build a limited run of 155 RapidE electric cars in 2019 that will serve as a test fleet for developing a future generation of electric cars, Palmer said. <20>The idea that every vehicle on the road will be electric in 2040 isn<73>t going to happen,<2C> he said. Aston<6F>s more valuable play in the electric vehicle field could be as a consultant for electric car startups that don<6F>t know how to build lightweight vehicles such as Aston<6F>s aluminum- bodied sports cars. The company recently established an engineering consulting arm. <20>It<49>s starting to get its first contracts,<2C> Palmer said. Reporting by Joe White; Editing by Mark Potter 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?fo
'8cfc5fcf4094d54d0f9fa30f95288b4534391618'|'Why McKinsey is under attack in South Africa'|'MCKINSEY, a global management consultancy known for its discreet profile and rarefied air, is unused to the sort of tub-thumping popular revolt it is experiencing in South Africa. Such is public outrage over the Guptas, an Indian-born business dynasty accused of growing rich off their relationship with President Jacob Zuma, that a few professional-services firms linked to the family, including McKinsey<65>as well as SAP, a German software giant<6E>have become targets of Twitter storms and protest banners.Anti-corruption groups and the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) have drawn blood in the case of Bell Pottinger, a British public-relations firm accused of orchestrating a racially divisive public-relations campaign on behalf of the Guptas. A complaint by the DA to a British PR industry association set in motion Bell Pottinger<65>s swift implosion in September. At KPMG, a global audit firm, eight senior executives in South Africa left in the same month because of the firm<72>s work for the Guptas. Such victories have fuelled the mood. On October 5th civil-society groups picketed McKinsey<65>s Johannesburg offices. 13 At the heart of the affair are allegations of <20>state capture<72> by the Guptas, who moved from India to South Africa in the 1990s and turned a computer parts business into a conglomerate with properties in media, mining and professional services. One of Mr Zuma<6D>s sons, Duduzane, has worked for the family. A report in 2016 by South Africa<63>s public protector, an independent ombudsman, detailed allegations that the Guptas had meddled in cabinet appointments and used their connections to scoop lucrative government contracts (they and Mr Zuma have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing).McKinsey did highly-paid work for Eskom, a state-owned electricity monopoly at the centre of several of the <20>state capture<72> allegations. Documents show that McKinsey worked with Trillian Capital, a local consultancy that until recently was owned by Salim Essa, a Gupta associate, as part of winning contracts from the utility.As an international firm requiring a local partner, McKinsey had previously worked with a related company called Regiments. The consulting firm says that after Trillian emerged from Regiments in late 2015, it carried out a due diligence review and cut its ties with Trillian a few months later. McKinsey says it never entered into a formal contract with Trillian or made payments to the company, and there are letters to show that McKinsey warned Eskom about the risks of doing business with Trillian.But that has not put a stop to questions about the relationship. A former executive of Trillian, Bianca Goodson, has alleged that Trillian acted as a gatekeeper, using Mr Essa<73>s connections to land contracts and then passing the work over to <20>internationally recognised companies<65> including McKinsey. The firm stands behind its work for Eskom, says Steve John, global director of communications at McKinsey. Neither the Gupta family nor any company publicly linked to the Guptas has ever been a client of the firm, he notes. It has hired a law firm, Norton Rose Fulbright, to carry out a detailed internal investigation.It is an embarrassing situation for a group that prides itself on operating as <20>One Firm<72> across its local offices, says Tom Rodenhauser of ALM Intelligence, a market-research firm that monitors the consulting industry. McKinsey has weathered damage to its reputation before; in 2010 one of its consultants pleaded guilty to passing inside information to a New York-based hedge fund, Galleon Group. McKinsey<65>s close links with Enron also meant that its reputation was tarnished by the energy company<6E>s collapse in 2001.Politicians<6E> scrutiny may drag on. The DA party says it will push for the firm<72>s executives to appear before a parliamentary inquiry into Eskom this month. The party has also gone to the police to file a complaint of fraud and racketeering against McKinsey, and written to America<63>s Securities and Exchange Commission and Britain<69>s Seri
'8615a8c19b6e70f0cfc51039b52657569a57e010'|'China''s Great Wall Motor shares jump after report on BMW tie-up'|'SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) - German luxury automaker BMW ( BMWG.DE ) is looking to form a joint venture with Great Wall Motor ( 2333.HK ), a source familiar with the matter said, sending shares in the Chinese automaker up by nearly a fifth on Wednesday.The automakers are considering the possibility of opening an assembly plant in the eastern Chinese city of Changshu, a BMW executive said, while declining to say what type of vehicles would be put together there.A venture with Great Wall would be BMW<4D>s second in China, the world<6C>s largest auto market. It has a joint venture with local carmaker Brilliance China Automotive Holdings ( 1114.HK ). Foreign carmakers have to operate in the market with local partners.<2E>We are in discussions with Great Wall about setting up a JV to produce cars in Changshu,<2C> said the executive, who was not authorized to speak on the matter and declined to be identified.<2E>I don<6F>t know how far along we have gone nailing this deal,<2C> or whether the two companies have official central government approval for the venture, the person said.A BMW spokesman said the company <20>won<6F>t comment on speculation.<2E>Our business development with the joint venture BMW Brilliance Automotive will continue as planned, and we will carry on to invest and develop our joint venture.<2E>A Great Wall official declined to comment.BMW<4D>s China sales grew 11.3 percent last year and it is the country<72>s second-largest premium brand after Volkswagen AG<41>s ( VOWG_p.DE ) Audi AG. BMW is trying to stay ahead of third-place Daimler<65>s ( DAIGn.DE ) Mercedes-Benz, which recorded 26.6 percent growth in China sales in 2016 thanks to a fresher model lineup.FILE PHOTO: A Great Wall Motors Haval hybrid vehicle is presented during the Auto China 2016 auto show in Beijing, China, April 29, 2016. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo Foreign automakers have recently announced a raft of investments and tie-ups in China, especially in electric vehicles.China wants electric and hybrid cars to make up at least a fifth of the country<72>s auto sales by 2025 and plans to loosen joint-venture regulations in the market.Tesla ( TSLA.O ), Ford Motor Co ( F.N ), Daimler AG ( DAIGn.DE ), and General Motors ( GM.N ) are among firms that have already announced plans for making electric vehicles in China.Slideshow (3 Images) Great Wall, which in August expressed an interest in the Jeep brand of Italian-American automaker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV<4E>s ( FCHA.MI ), is one of China<6E>s largest car makers.Last month it struck a deal to secure supplies of lithium, a mineral key for developing electric vehicles.The firm<72>s Hong Kong-listed shares soared as much as 19.2 percent to their highest level in over two years, before paring some gains to stand up 14 percent in afternoon trade. Its Shanghai-listed shares ( 601633.SS ) were suspended from trading, pending an announcement.Brilliance China Automotive<76>s shares were down 2.76 percent.Brokerage Jefferies said in a note that it was <20>understandable that BMW needs a new partner to defend its market share in a more competitive market<65>, and that the move would hit current partner Brilliance. <20>As BMW steps out to find new partners, we believe Brilliance will ultimately be squeezed.<2E>The BMW and Great Wall plans were first reported by Shanghai-based www.iautodaily.com earlier on Wednesday.Reporting by Adam Jourdan in SHANGHAI and Norihiko Shirouzu in BEIJING; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Neil Fullick'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-great-wall-bmw/chinas-great-wall-motor-shares-jump-after-report-on-bmw-tie-up-idINKBN1CG0FZ'|'2017-10-11T03:36:00.000+03:00'
'1468feb45cea51a65247a9b31932fd29f4a46599'|'PRESS DIGEST- British Business - Oct 11'|'Oct 11 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.The TimesRoyal Bank of Scotland Plc''s 425 million pound ($561.43 million) "challenger" fund''s grant policy has come under attack from new lenders and politicians because one of its chief beneficiaries could be Banco Santander SA. bit.ly/2fZVzUbBritain will miss out on the best global economic conditions since 2011 as the post-Brexit outlook holds the country back next year, the International Monetary Fund has warned. bit.ly/2kF7NXyThe GuardianNetwork Rail is set to be granted an enhanced budget, likely to be more than 40 billion STG, to run Britain''s railway. bit.ly/2yaEpf3Workers from Bombardier Inc''s Belfast plant on Wednesday will unfurl a banner outside the Houses of Parliament in London demanding that Theresa May and her ministers do more to safeguard their jobs. bit.ly/2i2Zd4dThe TelegraphEquifax Inc on Tuesday said it is contacting nearly 700,000 customers in the UK to alert them that their data had been stolen in the attack. The company had earlier estimated that the number of people affected in the UK was "fewer than 400,000." bit.ly/2yXIaU3Convenience chain Nisa has recommended its 1,190 shopkeeper members to agree to a 143 million STG takeover from The Co-operative Group after four months of stop-start talks. bit.ly/2wLMkxPSky NewsThe asset management firm Old Mutual Global Investors is in talks to take a stake in payments app TransferWise. bit.ly/2yXzjloUnilever Plc is shifting approximately 140 UK-based jobs to the Netherlands as part of a plan to create a new global headquarters for brands such as PG Tips and Magnum ice cream. bit.ly/2ybULnPThe IndependentLord Myners, the former City minister and now Labour peer, has called for an inquiry to be held into Monarch Airlines as the after shocks from the airline''s collapse continue. ind.pn/2yE3sdxThe Office for Budget Responsibility of UK on Tuesday said it anticipates significantly reducing the assumption for potential productivity growth over the next five years. ind.pn/2yEQEUk$1 = 0.7570 pounds Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Peter Cooney'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-press-business/press-digest-british-business-oct-11-idINL2N1MM009'|'2017-10-10T22:17:00.000+03:00'
'021dc35f1c216baca0bae9511b1cdcc98125a3b2'|'Spain-Catalonia relief nudges world stocks to fresh high'|'October 11, 2017 / 11:56 AM / in 36 minutes U.S. Treasuries, Wall St. stocks steady after Fed minutes Sinead Carew 4 Min Read Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury prices and stocks worldwide were little changed on Wednesday after minutes from the Federal Reserve<76>s September policy meeting were in line with expectations, while the euro was higher after Catalonia held off on moving to independence. The euro move helped push the dollar index down for the fourth day in row. The dollar briefly extended its drop after Fed minutes showed that policymakers had a prolonged debate about the prospects of a pickup in inflation and the path of future interest rate rises if it did not. Wall Street<65>s major stock indexes clung to small gains as a jump in shares of defensive sectors such as utilities was offset by declines in sectors such as financials a day before the start of the quarterly corporate reporting season. <20>Third-quarter results of large banks are expected to be tepid,<2C> said Stephen Biggar, an analyst at Argus Research. <20>Trading revenue (will be) down due to low volatility and loan growth remaining flat to slightly negative.<2E> The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was up 22.61 points, or 0.1 percent, to 22,853.29, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 2.01 points, or 0.08 percent, to 2,552.65 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 8.79 points, or 0.13 percent, to 6,596.04. The euro reached a roughly two-week high after Catalonia<69>s leader, Carles Puigdemont, declined to make a formal independence declaration on Tuesday to allow for talks with Madrid. That disappointed many pro-independence supporters but pleased financial markets. A 1.3-percent jump in Spain''s IBEX .IBEX more than reversed the previous session''s fall while the broader equities market showed a lacklustre performance. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 lost 0.01 percent and MSCI''s gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD PUS gained 0.16 percent. Meanwhile, the dollar index .DXY fell 0.33 percent, with the euro EUR= up 0.4 percent to $1.1853. FILE PHOTO - The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote It was also affected by U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s spat with Tennessee Senator Bob Corker - an influential fellow Republican - which raised concerns that Trump<6D>s tax reform push may be in jeopardy. U.S. Treasuries were little changed after the Fed minutes and after the Treasury Department saw solid demand for three-year and 10-year note supply. Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR were virtually unchanged in price to yield 2.3445 percent, from 2.345 percent late on Tuesday. The 30-year bond US30YT=RR was last up 3/32 in price to yield 2.8768 percent, from 2.881 percent late on Tuesday. Oil prices were virtually unchanged on Wednesday as Saudi Arabia said it pumped more in September than in August, even as OPEC forecast higher demand for 2018. U.S. crude CLcv1 rose 0.73 percent to $51.29 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $56.88, up 0.48 percent. Gold prices were barely up after declining in the previous session. Spot gold XAU= added 0.2 percent to $1,289.80 an ounce. (For a graphic on ''MSCI and Nikkei chart'' click reut.rs/2sSBRiD ) (For a graphic on ''World GDP'' click reut.rs/2xvTxGV ) (For a graphic on ''World FX rates in 2017'' click tmsnrt.rs/2egbfVh ) Additional reporting by Karen Brettell and Richard Leong in New York, Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru, Marc Jones, Abhinav Ramnarayan in London and Swati Pandey in Sydney; Editing by Nick Zieminski and James Dalgleish 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-markets/spain-catalonia-relief-nudges-world-stocks-to-fresh-high-idUKKBN1CG1HB'|'2017-10-11T14:56:00.000+03:00'
'670fcc4c02a3373eb71587eb39954a7f8af2ab98'|'Kensington v Ebbw Vale: floor space price study highlights property divide'|'It now costs nearly <20>19,500 to buy enough residential floorspace for a decent-sized coffee table in London<6F>s priciest borough <20> but only <20>777 to accommodate the same small piece of furniture in a living room in south Wales, according to official statistics that highlight a widening north-south divide.According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the average cost of one square metre of residential floor space in England and Wales last year was <20>2,395.However, this disguised large variations in price. The figure for London was <20>6,639, with the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea topping the table at <20>19,439. Just 15 miles across the capital, in the borough of Barking and Dagenham, homes cost <20>3,994 per sq metre.Explore property prices per sq m across England and Wales Source: ONS The cheapest area was the Welsh county borough of Blaenau Gwent, which includes the town of Ebbw Vale, where a buyer would pay <20>777 per sq metre, followed by the Lancashire town of Burnley (<28>838) and Merthyr Tydfil, also in south Wales (<28>917).Elmbridge in Surrey <20> which includes upmarket commuter belt towns such as Weybridge and Esher <20> was the costliest area outside London, while York was the most expensive area in the north of England.The ONS said the data showed <20>a clear north-south divide, both in levels but also in growth terms<6D>. Between 2004 and 2016, price per metre in London nearly doubled (98%), with the east of England and the south-east both increasing by around 55% over the period. At the other end of the scale, price per metre in the north-east was up by less than 19% over the same period and by 35% in the north-west.<2E>Unsurprisingly, 19 of the top 20 most expensive local authority areas are in London, with Kensington and Chelsea, the City of London, Westminster and Camden topping the list,<2C> said the ONS.In the new report , the country<72>s top statisticians also said they had found that new flats in England and Wales had got 18% bigger in the last three years, while new houses had stayed about the same size.Average size of homes in EU countries and the US The data showed that the average house sold in England and Wales last year had a floor area of 104 sq metres, which the ONS said was about 40% of the size of a tennis court. Flats averaged 49 sq metres, which they calculate is just over four times bigger than a typical car parking space <20> though this excludes bathrooms, corridors, hallways and landings.Taking flats and houses together, the typical property sold in 2016 was 90 sq metres, which the ONS said was <20>a little smaller<65> than the EU average.In Germany, France and Italy, the average home is 94 sq metres, and in Scotland it is 96 sq metres, said the statisticians.Residents of Luxembourg and Cyprus have much more living space: typical homes there are 131 and 141 sq metres respectively, but Romanians have to cram into homes that average only 45 sq metres.Extension value calculator Source: ONS American homebuyers, however, can generally expect something far grander <20> the average new home in the US is 245 sq metres.The UK housing market''s perfect storm, and five steps to avoid it - Larry Elliott Read moreIn the UK there has been concern about a new wave of <20>micro-homes<65> <20> tiny flats, often in converted office buildings, that are sometimes only the size of a typical bedroom.However, the ONS said: <20>New properties are a lot bigger than existing ones: in 2016, the average new house sold was 13% bigger than the average existing house, while the average new flat was 17% bigger than the average existing flat.<2E>The 10 most expensive areas in England and Wales, per sq metre floor space Kensington and Chelsea <20>19,439City of London <20>17,371City of Westminster <20>16,246Camden <20>12,671Hammersmith and Fulham <20>10,718Islington <20>9,730Wandsworth <20>9,661Southwark <20>8,782Hackney <20>8,564Tower Hamlets <20>8,545The 10 least expensive areas in England and Wales per sq metre floor space Blaenau Gwent <20>777Burnley <20>838Merthyr Tydfil <20>917Hy
'0d2f01d304f43edf12f2035d6689bf08bc69c7eb'|'Argentina ''most likely'' to sell euro-denominated bonds - minister'|'Oct 11 (Reuters) - Argentine officials expect to issue $2.6 billion in bonds, <20>most likely<6C> denominated in euros, by late October or early November, Finance Minister Luis Caputo said on Wednesday.Caputo said last month Argentina would come to market with two more bond issues this year.The country has already sold nearly $10 billion in dollar-denominated bonds so far this year, including a surprise hundred-year bond in June. It also raised 400 million Swiss francs through a March bond sale. (Reporting by Dion Rabouin; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/argentina-bonds/argentina-most-likely-to-sell-euro-denominated-bonds-minister-idINE6N1IY02G'|'2017-10-11T20:54:00.000+03:00'
'6ba2d1ab6c90ce1e437a42f29b437dc2031b1d96'|'Bullard: Fed "should defend" inflation target or risk losing credibility'|'St. Louis Fed President James Bullard speaks about the U.S. economy during an interview in New York February 26, 2015. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/Files WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Fed needs to mount a clear defence of its 2 percent inflation target and stop raising rates until the pace of price increases strengthens, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said on Thursday.The central bank risks losing credibility, and perhaps triggering a recession, if it continues to insist on <20>normalization<6F> and higher interest rates without better evidence that prices are firming, he said in an interview with Reuters.<2E>If you are going to have an inflation target you should defend it. If you say you are going to hit the inflation target then you should try to hit it and maintain credibility,<2C> Bullard said.Persistent weakness this year in the Fed<65>s preferred measure of inflation means <20>we more or less lost all the progress that we made the last two years<72> towards the 2 percent goal, Bullard said. Continuing to raise interest rates in that environment <20>can send a signal to markets that the inflation target is not that important.<2E>The Fed<65>s preferred measure of inflation slipped from 1.7 percent in April to 1.4 percent in June, July and August.Bullard, a non-voter on policy until 2019, said colleagues who blame the decline on large, one-off price moves for some goods and services were too <20>finely chopping<6E> their analysis, and overlooking the fact technology or some other force is restraining prices. The argument that recent weak inflation is driven by temporary factors is perhaps the dominant view at the Fed, with culprits including major changes in cell phone pricing and the impact of slower-rising Medicaid costs.<2E>This idea of throwing out the unpleasant number and finely chopping the price index, you get down to a set of prices that barely can be considered representative and I think that is inappropriate,<2C> Bullard said. <20>Maybe this is temporary, maybe this will bounce back. What I say to that is you want to see evidence...This is going in the wrong direction. And it is not consistent with the stories that the committee has been telling,<2C> of inflation reaching the Fed<65>s target in the <20>medium term.<2E><>If the committee continues to raise rates that could turn into a policy mistake...I think inflation could drift lower instead of higher. I think a misperception about where rates need to be in this environment could possibly trigger recession if it was carried to an extreme.<2E>INFLATION DEBATE INTENSIFIES Bullard<72>s comments are a pointed intervention in a debate that is preoccupying policymakers worldwide, and forcing research into and a possible rethink of the way prices are set in the post-crisis world. Bullard himself completely reversed his assessment of inflation more than a year ago, flipping from among the committee<65>s hawks to now its most dovish.The discussion has been joined at a time when the Trump administration is considering whether to reappoint or replace Fed chair Janet Yellen, whose term expires in early February. The short list has included three non-economists -- current Fed Governor Jerome Powell, former governor Kevin Warsh, and National Economic Council chair Gary Cohn -- whose professional background have centred around law and investment banking.Bullard said the flux over how central banks think about inflation means <20>whoever comes into this job is going to face this smack the first day. This is where the debate is and it is no small matter as to how we should proceed.<2E>You are going to need pretty strong intellectual leadership on core issues in monetary policy to have a stable system moving forward...If it is not going to be an economist it is going to be incumbent on the economists on the (Federal Open Market Committee) and on the staff to carry that debate forward.<2E>Minutes of the Fed<65>s September meeting and officials<6C> recent public comments show them involved in a broad debate, arrayed on a scale from those w
'667f0984e02eb73d74b80ce537452728f41640ae'|'UK to publish draft energy price cap laws, seeking to fix ''broken'' market'|'October 11, 2017 / 11:09 PM / Updated 5 hours ago UK ask regulator to set price cap to mend "broken energy market" 4 Min Read Electricity pylons are seen in London, Britain August 1, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON (Reuters) - The British government put some flesh on its plans to cap consumer gas and electricity prices for millions of households, ordering the industry regulator on Thursday to come up with curbs that will initially last until 2020. Prime Minister Theresa May first proposed a price cap on the energy sector earlier this year, the biggest market intervention since its privatisation almost 30 years ago. She said her centre-right government was trying to fix a market that punishes customers for their loyalty to a supplier. Her announcement last week that the plan would go ahead initially wiped more than 900 million pounds off the value of the two British listed companies Centrica ( CNA.L ) and SSE ( SSE.L ) alone. <20>I have been clear that our broken energy market has to change <20> it has to offer fairer prices for millions of loyal customers who have been paying hundreds of pounds too much,<2C> May said on Thursday. The draft bill published on Thursday said the price cap would initially last until 2020, with the potential to be extended by up to three years if needed. But, it gave no precise detail for businesses keen to see how much it would cost them, other than to say it would be an absolute price cap, as opposed to a relative one based on the difference between the cheapest and most expensive tariff. Ofgem will set the terms. Related Coverage UK energy price cap should allow ''headroom'' to protect competition - minister Britain<69>s energy market is dominated by the so-called big six providers -- Centrica<63>s British Gas, SSE, Iberdrola<6C>s ( IBE.MC ) Scottish Power, Innogy<67>s npower ( IGY.DE ), E.ON ( EONGn.DE ) and EDF Energy ( EDF.PA ), which account for about 85 percent of the retail electricity market. Shares in SSE added 1.5 percent by 1215 GMT on Thursday, while Centrica was up by 0.4 percent. RISING COSTS An electricity meter is seen in London, Britain August 1, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall Energy bills have doubled in Britain over the past decade to an average of about 1,200 pounds ($1,500) a year, putting the biggest providers in the sights of politicians. More than 18 million customer accounts in Britain are currently on a standard variable tariff (SVT) or other default tariffs. Many of these offer poor value to customers because they are priced higher than the fixed-rate deals available to consumers who actively seek them out. <20>This draft bill ... requires Ofgem to modify the standard licence conditions for gas and electricity suppliers, so as to include conditions that impose a price cap for standard variable tariffs and default tariffs offered to domestic customers,<2C> explanatory notes accompanying the legislation said. It set out exceptions covering tariffs already benefiting from protection and tariffs with environmental benefits. <20>Ofgem will work alongside Government to provide price protection to all standard tariff customers as soon as possible, if legislation is passed,<2C> an Ofgem spokeswoman said. The cap is seen as a way to appeal to those voters who, after seven years of public spending cuts, are struggling with rising inflation and weak wage growth. The leftist opposition Labour Party, which has long advocated intervention in energy markets, performed better than expected at a June snap election, depriving May of an outright majority in parliament. The government said it wanted to go further that plans announced on Wednesday by Ofgem to extend an existing price cap which applies only to vulnerable consumers. Ofgem said on Wednesday that whatever was contained in the upcoming legislation, the government<6E>s price cap would not come into effect for the upcoming winter. Additional reporting by Susanna Twidale; Editing by Keith Weir 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/
'c98cd84b5f6fcd617301a81c87fdaedd18d7a318'|'May to consult business leaders on Brexit'|'Protest in Barcelona against Catalan independence Protest in Barcelona against Catalan independence Protest in Barcelona against Catalan independence Reuters TV United States October 8, 2017 / 11:19 PM / in a few seconds Britain''s May to consult business leaders on Brexit Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Britain''s Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip leave church in her constituency near Reading, Britain October 8, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s Prime Minister Theresa May will meet GlaxoSmithKline ( GSK.L ), Vodafone ( VOD.L ) and HSBC ( HSBA.L ) and other major companies on Monday to hear what they want from talks on Britain<69>s relationship with the EU after Brexit. Businesses have become increasingly alarmed by the slow progress of negotiations and the prospect that the country could crash out of the trading bloc without a deal in 2019. They have also complained that their voice has been drowned out by disagreement and division in the government, and they have not heard anything to give them the certainty they need to plan and invest in their businesses. The government sought to reset its relationship with employers by setting up a business advisory council in June, shortly after May lost her majority in a bungled election. She will meet the leaders on Monday with her authority further diminished by a disastrous party conference and an attempt to topple her by a group of her lawmakers. However, she will set out a confident pitch, based on her goal to achieve a transitional period so that companies could benefit from a smooth, orderly exit. <20>Last month in Florence I set out my vision for a bold and unique new economic partnership with the EU,<2C> she said ahead of Monday<61>s meeting. <20>We are working hard to achieve this and are optimistic about our future as a global, free-trading nation.<2E> May will be joined by finance minister Philip Hammond, business minister Greg Clark, minister for exiting the EU David Davis and trade minister Liam Fox at the council. Companies attending will also include Balfour Beatty ( BALF.L ), WPP ( WPP.L ), Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ) and AB Foods ( ABF.L ), the government said. Reporting by Paul Sandle, editing by David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-business/britains-may-to-consult-business-leaders-on-brexit-idUKKBN1CD10Q'|'2017-10-09T02:10:00.000+03:00'
'b1fa31b426ce48e17d68cef257ca24df0ecb36e0'|'Looking for an Uber? Book it through Snapchat''s "context cards"'|'October 10, 2017 / 5:04 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Looking for an Uber? Book it through Snapchat''s ''context cards'' Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of messaging app Snapchat is seen at a booth at TechFair LA, a technology job fair, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., January 26, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo (Reuters) - Snap Inc<6E>s Snapchat on Tuesday introduced <20>context cards<64>, a new feature that will allow users to book an Uber ride or reserve a seat at a restaurant without leaving the messaging app. The new feature is aimed at increasing the time a user spends on the app by providing contextual location-based search, potentially helping the company to get more advertising dollars. Snapchat, popular with young people for applying bunny faces or other filters to their pictures, competes for ad dollars with the likes of Facebook Inc<6E>s Instagram. The new cards allow users viewing stories to swipe up and get relevant information about a business such as reviews, directions or contact information, the company said in a blog post. ( bit.ly/2dhendY ) Similarly to Yelp, which allows users to search nearby businesses, Snap may be able to charge businesses to feature on cards, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said. Initial partners include TripAdvisor, Foursquare, Michelin, OpenTable and Bookatable but the company has not disclosed how it plans to make money from the new feature. Reporting by Arjun Panchadar and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-snap-feature-search/looking-for-an-uber-book-it-through-snapchats-context-cards-idUSKBN1CF2EW'|'2017-10-10T19:57:00.000+03:00'
'25b26d9ebed4d0fa98af04ce52e93dc0cb0d1efe'|'Richard Thaler is a controversial Nobel prize winner <20> but a deserving one'|'Wednesday 11 October 2017 11.56 BST Last modified on Wednesday 11 October 2017 12.13 BST The winner of this year<61>s Nobel prize in economics, Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago , is a controversial choice. Thaler is known for his lifelong pursuit of behavioural economics (and its subfield, behavioural finance), which is the study of economics (and finance) from a psychological perspective. For some in the profession, the idea that psychological research should even be part of economics has generated hostility for years. Not from me. I find it wonderful that the Nobel Foundation chose Thaler. The economics Nobel has already been awarded to a number of people who can be classified as behavioural economists, including George Akerlof , Robert Fogel, Daniel Kahneman, Elinor Ostrom , and me. With the addition of Thaler, we now account for approximately 6% of all Nobel economics prizes ever awarded. But many in economics and finance still believe that the best way to describe human behaviour is to eschew psychology and instead model human behaviour as mathematical optimisation by separate and relentlessly selfish individuals, subject to budget constraints. Of course, not all economists, or even a majority, are wedded to this view, as evidenced by the fact that both Thaler and I have been elected president, in successive years, of the American Economic Association , the main professional body for economists in the United States. But many of our colleagues unquestionably are. What is behavioural economics? Read more I first met Thaler in 1982, when he was a professor at Cornell University. I was visiting Cornell briefly, and he and I took a long walk across the campus together, discovering along the way that we had similar ideas and research goals. For 25 years, starting in 1991, he and I co-organized a series of academic conferences on behavioural economics, under the auspices of the US National Bureau of Economic Research. Over all those years, however, there has been antagonism <20> and even what appeared to be real animus <20> toward our research agenda. Thaler once told me that Merton Miller, who won the economics Nobel in 1990 (he died in 2000), would not even make eye contact when passing him in the hallway at the University of Chicago. Miller explained his reasoning (if not his behaviour) in a widely cited 1986 article called <20> Behavioral Rationality in Finance. <20> Miller conceded that sometimes people are victims of psychology, but he insisted that stories about such mistakes are <20>almost totally irrelevant<6E> to finance. The concluding sentence of his review is widely quoted by his admirers: <20>That we abstract from all these stories in building our models is not because the stories are uninteresting but because they may be too interesting and thereby distract us from the pervasive market forces that should be our principal concern.<2E> Play Video 0:58 ''Unlike Dylan, I plan to go to Stockholm'' says Nobel prize winner <20> video Stephen Ross of MIT, another finance theorist who was a likely future Nobel laureate until he died unexpectedly in March, argued along similar lines. In his 2005 book Neoclassical Finance , he, too, eschewed psychology, preferring to build a <20>methodology of finance as the implication of the absence of arbitrage<67>. In other words, we can learn a lot about people<6C>s behaviour just from the observation that there are no $10 bills lying around on public sidewalks. However psychologically bent some people are, one can bet that they will pick up the money as soon as they spot it. Both Miller and Ross made wonderful contributions to financial theory. But their results are not the only descriptions of economic and financial forces that should interest us, and Thaler has been a major contributor to a behavioural research programme that has demonstrated this. For example, in 1981, Thaler and Santa Clara University<74>s Hersh Shefrin advanced an <20> economic theory of self-control <20> that describes econ
'd067c2b7076fb6429e7c7e3e4577d9745b6d729a'|'EU parliament head challenges ECB over bad loan guidelines'|'October 10, 2017 / 6:11 AM / Updated an hour ago EU parliament head challenges ECB over bad loan guidelines Silvia Aloisi 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi waits to address the European Parliament''s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee in Brussels, Belgium September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir MILAN (Reuters) - The head of the European parliament has challenged the European Central Bank over how new guidelines for bank bad loans are being set, escalating a row between Italy and the ECB over the proposed measures. The ECB last week issued new proposals that will force banks from 2018 to set aside more cash against newly classified bad loans and said it may also present additional measures to tackle the sector<6F>s huge stock of bad debts. Italy - whose banks hold nearly 30 percent of the bloc<6F>s 915 billion euros (<28>817 billion) in bad loans - has reacted angrily to the proposals, asking the ECB to soften them following a public consultation that runs until Dec. 8. Italian bank shares fell for a fifth straight day on Tuesday following a string of analyst reports warning the country<72>s lenders would be hit by the new measures. EU parliament speaker Antonio Tajani, an Italian national, said in a letter to ECB President Mario Draghi, also Italian, that he was <20>deeply concerned<65> about how the new policies were being set. Tajani urged Draghi to involve the European parliament in the process to avert an institutional clash. <20>I seriously wonder whether specific additional obligations... can be imposed on supervised entities without appropriately involving the co-legislators in the decision-making process,<2C> Tajani said in the letter, seen by Reuters and reprinted in the Italian press. <20>I would urge you to take all steps in order to ensure that parliament<6E>s prerogatives as co-legislator are duly respected, so as to avoid an inter-institutional dispute about this issue.<2E> The ECB declined to comment. The letter is an unusual challenge to the ECB by a mainstream European lawmaker such as Tajani, an ally of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi who was elected president of the European parliament in January. The European parliament does not have a role in banking supervision decisions, although it can ask the ECB for information. The ECB<43>s banking supervisory functions are legally separated from monetary policy and are carried out by the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), chaired by Daniele Nouy. Draghi, who like Nouy often appears before the European Parliament, regularly invokes the separation principle when asked about SSM matters. Draghi tends to reply to letters from European lawmakers within days and his responses are published by the ECB. Reporting by Silvia Aloisi Additional reporting by Francesco Canepa in Frankfurt, Stefano Bernabei in Rome Editing by Jeremy Gaunt'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-banks-loans-dispute/eu-parliament-head-raps-draghi-over-bad-loan-guidelines-idUKKBN1CF0H8'|'2017-10-10T12:09:00.000+03:00'
'af76b9217f12a44b0fa9fecea0fddd24b2e56d68'|'Honeywell puts more of its chips on aerospace'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - Honeywell International Inc said Tuesday it will pare its focus to four business lines, including aerospace, and spin off two businesses with $7.5 billion in revenue to help fund acquisitions.The reorganization, which reduces revenue by about 18 percent, will simplify Honeywell<6C>s broad portfolio, boost growth and give shareholders a tax-free benefit from the new companies, Honeywell Chief Executive Officer Darius Adamczyk said on a conference call on Tuesday.It also gives the diversified manufacturer scope to change its remaining portfolio along the lines sought by hedge fund Third Point Capital, which agitated for a spin-off of aerospace. Third Point said on Tuesday it was pleased with the changes and backed Adamczyk<79>s leadership, though it wants him to keep improving the portfolio.Adamczyk hinted at more to come, saying the two new businesses <20>can grow at an accelerated rate.<2E>The remaining businesses - aerospace, commercial building products, performance materials and safety products - are candidates for more acquisitions, he added.<2E>I<EFBFBD>m very excited about M&A in all four of our businesses. And I think these two spins ... give me a lot of different levers to invest our M&A dollars.<2E>Analysts praised the moves, but said Honeywell had more changes to make, and warned that aerospace, with products ranging from jet engines to airplane WiFi systems, may need to merge to gain the size to compete with larger rivals.A spin-off or merger with General Electric Co<43>s aerospace unit would make Honeywell a stronger competitor to United Technologies and a <20>more powerful supplier to Boeing Co and Airbus SE,<2C> Scott Davis, analyst at Melius Research, wrote in a note. <20>That<61>s a deal worth thinking about.<2E>Adamczyk played down such speculation in a later interview with Reuters. <20>The way we compete in aerospace is not through scale,<2C> he said. <20>We are going to compete through technology differentiation.<2E>Though his comments pointed away from a big deal, Honeywell sought to gain size last year with a $90.7-billion bid for United Technologies Corp under prior CEO David Cote. Industry experts say Honeywell<6C>s poor record on aerospace parts quality and delivery could hamper its ability to win new orders.Honeywell shares ended the day down 0.2 percent in New York trading, after falling 2.3 percent initially.A worker is seen building an aircraft engine at Honeywell Aerospace in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. on September 6, 2016. Picture taken on September 6, 2016. REUTERS/Alwyn Scott REVAMPED PORTFOLIO Adamczyk, like his peers at other industrial conglomerates, has been under pressure to reorder a portfolio of disparate businesses that includes automotive turbo chargers, burglar alarms and Xtratuf boots popular in Alaska<6B>s fishing industry.Third Point had argued since April that a spin-off of aerospace, which accounted for about 38 percent of revenue in 2016, could generate $20 billion in shareholder value.Slideshow (4 Images) But Adamczyk took a different route, splitting off the home and ADI global distribution businesses, wholesale distributors of security, fire and environmental systems for homes and commercial buildings, into a public company that will absorb some of $554 million in environmental liabilities.Honeywell will also spin off a transportation business that makes automotive turbo chargers into a second company that will absorb some of $1.54 billion in old asbestos liabilities. The amounts will be determined later, Adamczyk said.The auto parts move follows other companies, including auto supplier Delphi Automotive Plc, that are shedding technology tied to the internal combustion engine as regulators around the world crack down on emissions and talk of mandating a switch to battery-electric vehicles over the next two decades.With about $16 billion in debt, or 2.5 times operating earnings, Honeywell has limited scope for additional borrowing, said Dave Berge, analyst at Moody<64>s Investors Service.Honeywell expects to receive about $3 b
'c048449aa00da9f850005a5d4c894e41db78eb00'|'Qualcomm files lawsuits in China to ban iPhones'|'October 13, 2017 / 5:11 PM / in 16 minutes Qualcomm files lawsuits in China to ban iPhones Reuters Staff 2 Min Read One of many Qualcomm buildings is shown in San Diego, California November 3, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Blake (Reuters) - Qualcomm Inc ( QCOM.O ) confirmed an earlier report that the chipmaker had filed lawsuits in China, seeking to halt the manufacture and sale of Apple Inc<6E>s ( AAPL.O ) iPhones in the country. Qualcomm filed the suits in a Beijing intellectual property court, claiming patent infringement and is seeking injunctive relief, a company spokeswoman confirmed on Friday, but did not provide further details. Bloomberg had earlier reported about the lawsuits in China. ( bloom.bg/2z6qMwu ) Apple<6C>s shares were marginally up, while Qualcomm shares were marginally down in late-afternoon trading. The iPhone maker has always been willing to pay fair and reasonable rates for the patents it uses, Apple told Reuters in an email. <20>In many years of ongoing negotiations with Qualcomm, these patents have never been discussed and in fact were only granted in the last few months,<2C> Apple said. Apple is waging a global legal battle on Qualcomm<6D>s long-held practice of charging a percentage of the total price of iPhones and other Apple devices as a licensing fee for its patents. Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal and Laharee Chatterjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto and Shounak Dasgupta 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-apple-qualcomm-china/qualcomm-files-lawsuits-in-china-to-ban-iphones-bloomberg-idUKKBN1CI2EB'|'2017-10-13T22:49:00.000+03:00'
'67692b028cc40de70fcd4a8580fe4cba33d3fa93'|'Japan''s Tepco, Chubu Elec get regulatory nod to merge fossil power plants'|'A worker puts up new logo of TEPCO Holdings and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Group on the wall ahead of the transition to a holding company system through a company split at the TEPCO headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, March 31, 2016. REUTERS/Masayuki Terazawa/Pool/File Photo (Reuters) - The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) has approved plans by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco) and Chubu Electric Power Co to integrate their fossil fuel power plants under their JERA Co joint venture, an official with the anti-monopoly regulator said on Friday.The JFTC gave the green light in late September after determining that the deal, involving Japan<61>s biggest and third-biggest regional power utilities, would not have an impact on fair competition in the industry, the official said.The pair had agreed in March to combine the businesses in April-September 2019, forming a company that will oversee 68 gigawatts (GW) of domestic power capacity, nearly half the country<72>s power generation.Tepco and Chubu Electric set up JERA in 2015. It now handles all of Tepco<63>s and Chubu<62>s upstream energy and fuel procurement business and is the world<6C>s biggest liquefied natural gas (LNG) buyer with annual intake of around 35 million tonnes.The integration of fossil fuel plants is the last of a three-step plan for JERA, which also handles fuel transportation/trading, upstream energy assets and overseas power generation.With nearly 8 GW worth of overseas power capacity, the integration of the JERA parents<74> domestic plants would propel it to become one of the world<6C>s major power utilities by installed capacity.Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-power-m-a/japans-tepco-chubu-elec-get-regulatory-nod-to-merge-fossil-power-plants-idUSKBN1CI0CT'|'2017-10-13T12:37:00.000+03:00'
'4cf1bc8957589fe2f126257fda627f5d52898559'|'Deals of the day-Mergers and acquisitions'|'(Adds Great Wall Motor, RWE, Abertis, Aldermore; Updates BASF)Oct 13 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 1330 GMT on Friday:** Germany<6E>s RWE is likely to buy Uniper assets that Fortum sells after the Finnish firm<72>s planned 8.05 billion euro ($9.5 billion) takeover rather than launch a counterbid, investors and M&A sources said.** BASF has agreed to buy seed and herbicide businesses from Bayer for 5.9 billion euros ($7 billion) in cash, as Bayer tries to convince competition authorities to approve its planned acquisition of Monsanto .** Aldermore Group is in talks over a possible 1 billion pound ($1.3 billion) takeover by South African lender FirstRand, the latest of Britain<69>s co-called <20>challenger<65> banks to consider selling up in a tough market.** Atlantia<69>s 17-billion-euro ($20 billion) bid for fellow toll road operator Abertis won unconditional EU antitrust clearance as Spanish builder ACS looked to prepare a rival bid.** Toshiba Corp said it is discussing joint investment in a new chip production line with Western Digital Corp - its estranged business partner after the Japanese firm chose a different suitor to buy its $18 billion semiconductor business.** British insurer Aviva said its decision to sell its 49 percent stake in a Taiwan joint venture to its partner First Financial Holding fits into its strategy of withdrawing from less profitable markets.** Thai Beverage Public Co has acquired a combined 75 percent stake in two Myanmar distilleries in a deal worth $742 million, hoping to tap into growth in the country<72>s nascent spirits market.** Spanish builder ACS will launch next week a cash-and-share offer for toll road operator Abertis, sources said, complicating a rival bid by Italy<6C>s Atlantia .** The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) has approved plans by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco) and Chubu Electric Power Co to integrate their fossil fuel power plants under their JERA Co joint venture, an official with the anti-monopoly regulator said.** Luxury German carmaker BMW is in talks to produce its Mini models in China in partnership with Great Wall Motor Co. , the Chinese carmaker said.** EU antitrust enforcers approved Valeo<65>s 819.3-million-euro ($968.8 million) bid for German clutch manufacturer FTE Automotive after the French car parts supplier agreed to sell a unit to an Italian rival.Compiled by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/deals-day/deals-of-the-day-mergers-and-acquisitions-idINL4N1MO3RV'|'2017-10-13T08:04:00.000+03:00'
'002d197ec0df2e5c835846949946b58ddcdeee98'|'Latest NCAA scandal shows why student athletes need to be paid: Vaccaro - Reuters'|'The NCAA logo is seen on the side of a hotel in Dallas, Texas, March 30, 2013. REUTERS/Jim Young Former Nike marketing star Sonny Vaccaro discusses the fraud charges filed in late September against college basketball assistant coaches. Vaccaro, who signed Michael Jordan among others, explains why paying athletes could minimize these issues. He also discusses the role of the NCAA and how he helped develop the marketing plan to grow Nike<6B>s basketball business. Plus, how Las Vegas<61>s newest professional sports team is getting off to a solid start.Rick Horrow is the CEO of Horrow Sports. As an attorney and consultant, he has been the architect of 100+ deals worth more than $20 billion in sports, performing arts, and other urban infrastructure projects. Horrow pioneered the public/private partnership and infrastructure branding concepts that, to date, have enticed more than $4 billion in corporate funding to cities and development projects. The opinions expressed here and in videos and podcasts hosted by Rick are his alone and do not represent the views of Reuters'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-keepingscore-10oct17/latest-ncaa-scandal-shows-why-student-athletes-need-to-be-paid-vaccaro-idUSKBN1CF2ZI'|'2017-10-11T05:15:00.000+03:00'
'1345c7ca22a839018db2d9de4c65dbb89bd80693'|'Asian shares gain as Wall Street hits record, Catalan fears ease'|'October 11, 2017 / 12:54 AM / Updated 19 minutes ago Asian shares gain as Wall Street hits record, Catalan fears ease Swati Pandey 4 Min Read People walk past an electronic board showing Japan''s Nikkei average outside a brokerage at a business district in Tokyo, Japan August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian shares rose on Wednesday, tracking Wall Street<65>s rally to all-time highs, while the euro hovered near a 10-day peak after Catalonia<69>s leader talked down immediate plans to secede from Spain, easing near-term concerns about euro zone instability. MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS nudged 0.24 percent higher to test a recent decade peak of 545.56. Australian stocks jumped 0.6 percent to one-month highs and New Zealand''s index .NZ50 climbed to a record. South Korea''s KOSPI .KS11 added 0.3 percent to a 2-1/2 month peak. Sentiment was boosted after the International Monetary Fund upgraded its global economic growth forecast for 2017 and 2018, driven by a pickup in trade, investment, and consumer confidence. The three major Wall Street indices scaled record highs again, with Dow .DJI up 0.3 percent, the S&P 500 .SPX adding 0.2 percent and the Nasdaq .IXIC inching 0.1 percent higher. Japan''s Nikkei .N225 was a touch softer at 20,807.39. In currency markets, the euro EUR= held gains around $1.1816, not far from Tuesday''s high of $1.1825, after Catalonian President Carles Puigdemont called for talks with Madrid to discuss the region''s future. The gesture tempered fears of immediate unrest in a major euro zone economy and cheered investors. Madrid''s IBEX 35 Index futures MFXIc1 added 1.1 percent, after the cash IBEX stock index .IBEX closed down 0.9 percent on Tuesday. <20>Markets were on edge, and no doubt so was he,<2C> said David Plank, head of Australian economics at ANZ Banking Group, referring to Puigdemont<6E>s address at Catalonia<69>s parliament. <20>But the declaration for independence did not come, at least not explicitly,<2C> Plank said. <20>This issue remains extremely fluid. But one thing is clear <20> this is not going to go away quickly or quietly.<2E> The dollar continued to lose ground with U.S.   escalating war of words with Senator Bob Corker raising concerns about the administration<6F>s ability to pass promised reforms. The dollar index .DXY fell to 93.22, against a basket of currencies, to the lowest level since Sept.29. The greenback was also under pressure amid ongoing uncertainty over the next Federal Reserve Chairman, with the predictions market site, PredictIt, favoring Fed governor Jerome Powell as the most likely candidate. While Powell is more hawkish than incumbent Janet Yellen whose term expires in February, he might be less aggressive in winding back stimulus compared to rival contestant Kevin Warsh, analysts said. Investors will keep an eye on the minutes of the Fed<65>s September meeting due later in the day, which might help bolster views of a December rate hike. U.S. Treasuries pared gains on news out of Spain as a risk-on mood kicked in. Treasury futures TYc1 were down 4 ticks in early Asian trade. In commodities, U.S. crude CLcv1 was last off 2 cents at $50.90 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 eased 8 cents to $56.53 after rising on Tuesday following export cuts by Saudi Arabia. Gold prices hovered near their highest in two weeks against the backdrop of a weaker dollar, with spot gold XAU= up 0.18 percent at $1,289.61 an ounce. Reporting by Swati Pandey; Editing by Sam Holmes 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asian-shares-gain-as-wall-street-hits-record-catalan-fears-ease-idUKKBN1CG02F'|'2017-10-11T03:53:00.000+03:00'
'109482d4131be64ea417b4868946fbd5d8fb6696'|'ECB defends proposal to tackle soured bank loans'|'October 13, 2017 / 6:20 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago ECB defends proposal to tackle soured bank loans Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: European Union flags flutter outside the headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, Germany, April 21, 2016. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo GLOBAL BUSINESS WEEK AHEAD SEARCH GLOBAL BUSINESS 9 OCT FOR ALL IMAGES - RC19389BB510 (Reuters) - European Central Bank supervisory chief Daniele Nouy defended on Friday a proposal to tackle soured bank debt, arguing that it is both necessary and within the bank<6E>s its mandate. <20>The draft Addendum does not establish additional obligations on banks and therefore does not go beyond the existing regulatory framework,<2C> Nouy said in a letter to Antonio Tajani, the president of the European Parliament. <20>The draft Addendum falls within the supervisory mandate and powers of the ECB,<2C> Nouy told Tajani after he criticised the proposal. <20>In fact, it is an obligation of the ECB, in line with its supervisory mandate, to address this key vulnerability in the European banking system.<2E> Reporting by Balazs Koranyi Editing by Jeremy Gaunt 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-banks-ecb/ecb-defends-proposal-to-tackle-soured-bank-loans-idUKKBN1CI2NY'|'2017-10-13T21:19:00.000+03:00'
'4ef7c6b4b8337fa780beec19180ed5a3f3417921'|'Fourth train complete at Cheniere''s Sabine Pass LNG plant'|'Oct 13 (Reuters) - Cheniere Energy Partners LP said Friday that the fourth train at its Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas plant was substantially complete, boosting output from the first LNG export terminal in the United States by a third.LNG plants are made up of trains, which are liquefaction facilities used to supercool natural gas for transport on ships.Offtake from the train, which has a 4.5 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) nameplate capacity, is contracted to GAIL (India) Ltd for a 20-year period, with shipments to commence in March 2018.Until then, LNG produced from the train will be sold by Cheniere into the market, spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder said.A fifth train is under construction at the facility, which will further boost capacity at the export terminal from 18 Mtpa to 22.5 Mtpa by the second half of 2019.At least five other export terminals are set to come online on the east coast of the United States over the next few years, including Cheniere<72>s own Corpus Christi facility in Texas. (Reporting by Julie Gordon in Vancouver)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/cheniere-eng-lng-sabinepass/fourth-train-complete-at-chenieres-sabine-pass-lng-plant-idINL2N1MO1I2'|'2017-10-13T17:35:00.000+03:00'
'b9d71e892463877737b6c79db96280186cd406d3'|'Bitcoin price soars above $5,000 to all-time high - Technology - The Guardian'|'The price of bitcoin has smashed through $5,000 to an all-time high.The cryptocurrency rose by more than 8% to $5,243 having started the year at $966. Bitcoin has soared by more than 750% in the past year and is worth four times as much as an ounce of gold.But the price has been volatile. The digital currency plunged below $3,000 in mid-September after the Chinese authorities announced a crackdown. Beijing ordered cryptocurrency exchanges to stop trading and block new registrations, due to fears that increasing numbers of consumers piling into the bitcoin market could prompt wider financial problems.Price of bitcoin Jordan Hiscott, the chief trader at Ayondo Markets, said: <20>The returns are truly remarkable, especially given the recent ban on bitcoin trading in China, where demand had previously accounted for at least 10% of all global volumes.<2E>Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, called this week for regulation of cryptocurrencies , saying their use <20>bears serious risks<6B> such as money laundering, tax evasion and funding for terrorism. But he also warned against imposing <20>too many barriers,<2C> which appears to have given bitcoin a boost.Despite warnings over a bubble, bitcoin is gaining in acceptance. Last month, a London property developer, The Collective, said it would allow its tenants to pay their deposits in bitcoin and accept rent payments in the cryptocurrency by the end of the year. Bitcoin''s price bubble will burst under government pressure - Kenneth Rogoff Read more Two weeks ago, Japan<61>s government implemented rules that recognise bitcoin as a payment method. Celebrities have also got involved , with the boxer Floyd Mayweather, the socialite Paris Hilton and the actor Jamie Foxx promoting coin offerings.Using bitcoin allows people to bypass banks and traditional payment processes to pay for goods and services directly. Banks and other financial institutions have been concerned about bitcoin<69>s associations with money laundering and online crime because transactions take place anonymously.The soaring value of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies comes despite growing warnings over a price bubble.The starkest warning came from the JP Morgan chief executive, Jamie Dimon, who said bitcoin was a fraud that would ultimately blow up . Speaking last month, he said there was a limited market for the digital currency, arguing that it was only fit for use by drug dealers, murderers and people living in countries such as North Korea. He pledged to sack any JP Morgan trader investing in Bitcoin, but also admitted he had not been able to dissuade his daughter from investing.Dimon declined to comment on the surge in bitcoin during an earnings call on Thursday. <20>I<EFBFBD>m not going to talk about bitcoin any more,<2C> he said.Kenneth Rogoff, a professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University and a former IMF chief economist, has predicted that the technology behind cryptocurrencies will thrive, but the price of bitcoin will collapse.Warnings grow louder over cryptocurrency as valuations soar Read more <20>It is folly to think that bitcoin will ever be allowed to supplant central bank-issued money,<2C> he wrote in the Guardian this week. <20>It is one thing for governments to allow small anonymous transactions with virtual currencies; indeed, this would be desirable. But it is an entirely different matter for governments to allow large-scale anonymous payments, which would make it extremely difficult to collect taxes or counter criminal activity.<2E>Daniel Murray, global head of research at EFG Asset Management, noted that in 2013, bitcoin soared twelvefold in just four months but within a month had lost a third of its value and four months after its peak had lost 60% of its value.<2E>Investors buy [an] asset because they are seduced by the prospect of further rapid gains without necessarily thinking about intrinsic value,<2C> he said. He noted that historically currencies were backed by precious metals, and these days m
'209c118946cc10250eb269fb5d7f64ef4acdc018'|'Recruitment firm Hays reports slight pick-up in British jobs market'|'October 12, 2017 / 6:33 AM / Updated 6 hours ago Banks filling London staffing gaps before Brexit - Hays Esha Vaish 4 Min Read A clock is seen in London''s Financial centre at Canary Wharf In London, Britain as a minute silence is held at 11.00 for the victims of the Manchester bomb attack May 25, 2017. REUTERS/Russell Boyce (Reuters) - Global banks are still filling job vacancies in London despite concerns that Brexit could threaten the city<74>s status as a major financial centre, recruiter Hays ( HAYS.L ) said on Thursday. Although many financial companies have plans to transfer some jobs to continental Europe to keep serving clients in the single market once Britain leaves the European Union, Hays said they were holding off on pulling the trigger. <20>The banks have got their contingency plans in place, but they<65>re waiting to see if they can get any steer at all on the eventual deal that will be done,<2C> Finance Director Paul Venables told Reuters. <20>The pleasing part is that leavers (in London) are being replaced. This is encouraging for the future of the financial services industry in London. It will still be a very large business when we get through the Brexit part,<2C> he added. Venables said London banks were replacing departing staff in most roles, including in IT and compliance. Smaller rival Robert Walters ( RWA.L ) said on Tuesday that risk, regulatory, audit and cybersecurity were the strongest job functions in finance at the moment. Hays said banks had begun moving staff from Britain to Europe, but numbers remained relatively small. It had not received requests for large-scale financial hiring in Europe, mirroring comments from PageGroup ( PAGE.L ) and Robert Walters earlier this week. UK FEE INCOME STABILISES Hays said net fees from its UK and Ireland operations rose 1 percent in the three months ended Sept. 30 on the same period last year, showing an improvement against a 5 percent fall in the preceding quarter. Hays said its British private sector business continued to experience modest signs of improvement, and Venables forecast that growth in the UK over the next few quarters would remain in line with the first quarter. <20>There<72>s still very tight cost control across most companies in the UK, but some of the investments that were put on hold a year ago, a small proportion of those are now being released,<2C> he said. The group, which gets about three quarters of its business from outside the UK, also noted growth across its other regions, pushing quarterly group net fees up 10 percent, ahead of consensus of a 8.5 percent rise. Whilst Hays<79> quarterly performance lagged Robert Walters which has broken ahead of the pack due to growth in its outsourcing business, it was broadly in line with the 8.8 percent growth reported by PageGroup on Wednesday. PageGroup noted a sharper decline in its British business from the previous quarter. <20>We believe, investors are likely to focus on the marginal growth in UK, which will come as a relief for the market, following yesterday<61>s weaker than expected UK figures from PageGroup,<2C> Panmure Gordon analyst Adrian Kearsey wrote. The brokerage has a <20>hold<6C> rating and a target price of 195 pence on Hays<79> stock. The group<75>s shares were up 0.95 percent at 191.8 pence at 0930 GMT. Reporting by Esha Vaish in Bengaluru; Editing by Greg Mahlich/Keith Weir 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hays-results/recruitment-firm-hays-reports-slight-pick-up-in-british-jobs-market-idUKKBN1CH0N4'|'2017-10-12T09:33:00.000+03:00'
'd5d7a29d2132e75d6a5ec9631e4f482fd6425d96'|'Germany''s DAX peaks above 13,000 points for first time ever'|' 58 PM / Updated 17 minutes ago Germany''s DAX peaks above 13,000 points for first time ever   The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote MILAN (Reuters) - Germany''s benchmark DAX index .GDAXI hit a fresh record high on Thursday topping above 13,000 points for the first time in its 30-year history, helped by a pullback in the euro and optimism about global economic growth. <20>The DAX<41>s rally could accelerate in the event the euro eases back from current levels, as this would boost the appeal of German exporters,<2C> said FOREX.com analyst Fawad Razaqzada. <20>Favourable market conditions, relief on the back of a reduced threat of Catalonian secession from Spain and record low interest rates and QE combined has helped to lift the DAX to a new record level today,<2C> he added. The export-oriented blue chip index, where big global companies such as carmaker Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ), Deutsche Bank ( DBKGn.DE ) and IT firm SAP ( SAPG.DE ) are listed, was up 0.1 percent by 1445 GMT. It rose as much as 0.2 percent to 13,002.34 points earlier in the session. Reporting by Danilo Masoni, Editing by Helen Reid 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-stocks-dax/germanys-dax-peaks-above-13000-points-for-first-time-ever-idUKKBN1CH27Y'|'2017-10-12T17:58:00.000+03:00'
'da77d234a57f93921383203e0c4d911c7734ca5e'|'Exclusive: ACS to launch cash-and-share bid for Abertis next week - sources'|'FRANKFURT/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) - Spanish builder ACS ( ACS.MC ) will launch next week a cash-and-share offer for toll road operator Abertis ( ABE.MC ), sources said on Thursday, complicating a rival bid by Italy<6C>s Atlantia ( ATL.MI ).The sources said the offer was expected to be roughly half in cash and the rest in newly issued shares in German construction group Hochtief ( HOTG.DE ), which is controlled by ACS.Both ACS and Hochtief declined to comment.Atlantia unveiled in May a 17 billion euro ($20 billion) cash-and-share offer for Abertis, prompting ACS to announce shortly afterwards it was considering a counterbid.Atlantia<69>s offer was formally launched on Tuesday, a day after being approved by Spain<69>s market regulator, and runs until Oct. 24. On Friday, EU authorities are also expected to give a green light to the deal, which would create the world<6C>s largest toll-road operator.Shares in Abertis closed little changed at 17.43 euros each, giving the group a market value of 15.89 billion euros.Earlier on Thursday, people close to the matter had said Hochtief<65>s supervisory board would discuss a possible offer at a meeting on Wednesday.To help finance a potential deal, Hochtief would launch a multi-billion euro capital increase, in which parent ACS would not take part and therefore see its 72 percent stake diluted, the people said.Under Spanish rules, any alternative suitors have until Thursday to present their own offer for Abertis.Shares in Hochtief closed down 0.3 percent at 139.55 euros each.Atlantia is offering 16.50 euros in cash or 0.697 Atlantia shares for each Abertis share. But the offer is conditional on shareholders owning between 10 percent and 23 percent of the Spanish company<6E>s capital accepting the share offer.Though the offer has been described as <20>friendly<6C> by Atlantia, shareholders in Abertis have not expressed a view on the proposal.The board of the Spanish company must publish its assessment of the bid within 10 days from its start.The top shareholder in Abertis is Criteria Caixa, the financial arm of a politically connected and powerful banking foundation that controls Catalonia<69>s largest lender Caixabank ( CABK.MC ).Additional reporting by Jose Elias Rodriguez in Madrid, writing by Valentina Za, editing by David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-abertis-m-a-acs-offer/exclusive-acs-to-launch-cash-and-share-bid-for-abertis-next-week-sources-idINKBN1CH2W8'|'2017-10-12T18:04:00.000+03:00'
'86b2e147c9b4e2c2f51e34d3fd6510a312f21849'|'Ford offers repairs to prevent exhaust leaks in 1.4 million Explorers'|'October 13, 2017 / 6:13 PM / in 33 minutes Ford offers repairs to prevent exhaust leaks in 1.4 million Explorers David Shepardson 4 Min Read The 2016 Ford Explorer is shown during the model''s world debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California November 19, 2014. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co ( F.N ) said on Friday it will offer free repairs to North American owners of more than 1.4 million Explorer sport utility vehicles to help ensure that carbon monoxide and other exhaust gases cannot get into the vehicles, following the U.S. government<6E>s decision to upgrade an investigation in July. Several U.S. police agencies have raised concerns about potentially deadly carbon monoxide gas entering the cabins of Ford Explorers that had been adapted for law enforcement uses. Federal regulators have said they are aware of more than 2,700 complaints for exhaust odors as well as reports of three crashes and 41 injuries that may be linked to exposure to carbon monoxide among police and civilian 2011-2017 Explorer vehicles. Ford said its investigation has not found <20>carbon monoxide levels that exceed what people are exposed to every day<61> in the 1.4 million civilian vehicles. There is no U.S. government standard for in-vehicle carbon monoxide levels. Ford says it believes the vehicles are safe and is making the offer, which it is not classifying as a recall, in response to customer concerns. The second largest U.S. automaker said starting November 1, dealers will reprogram the air conditioner, replace the liftgate drain valves and inspect sealing of the rear of the vehicle. The fix covers about 1.3 million U.S. vehicles and about 100,000 in Canada and Mexico. Ford declined to comment on the potential financial impact of the service offer that will last through the end of 2018. Ford shares fell 0.7 percent to $12.04 in afternoon trading. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in July upgraded and expanded a probe into 1.33 million Ford Explorer SUVs over reports of exhaust odors in vehicle compartments and exposure to carbon monoxide. Police agencies have reported two crashes that may be linked to carbon monoxide exposure and a third incident involving injuries related to carbon monoxide exposure. NHTSA said it is evaluating preliminary testing that suggests carbon monoxide levels may be elevated in certain driving scenarios. Ford has issued four technical service bulletins related to the exhaust odor issue to address complaints from police fleets and other owners. In July, Ford said it would pay to repair police versions of its Ford Explorer SUVs to correct possible carbon monoxide leaks that may be linked to crashes and injuries after some police reports temporarily halted use of the vehicles over carbon monoxide concerns. The city of Austin, Texas said in July it would remove all 400 of the city<74>s Ford Explorer SUVs from use for additional testing and repairs after the city said 20 police officers were found with elevated levels of carbon monoxide. The department returned the vehicles to service after repairs and testing. In 2016, Ford agreed to settle a U.S. class-action lawsuit involving 1 million 2011-2015 Explorer SUVs over exhaust odor complaints, including reimbursements of up to $500 for repairs and the company agreed to make repairs. That settlement was approved in June but has not taken effect because of a penidng appeal. Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ford-motor-emissions/ford-offers-repairs-to-prevent-exhaust-leaks-in-1-4-million-explorers-idUSKBN1CI2N3'|'2017-10-13T21:12:00.000+03:00'
'b25eb324051270f672c46cfc80134ce14c5b5ae1'|'BASF to buy seeds, herbicide businesses from Bayer for $7 billion'|'October 13, 2017 / 5:44 AM / Updated 7 hours ago BASF to buy seeds, herbicide businesses from Bayer for $7 billion Maria Sheahan 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A truck drives past a warehouse of German chemical company BASF in Ludwigshafen, April 23, 2015. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo FRANKFURT (Reuters) - BASF ( BASFn.DE ) has agreed to buy seed and herbicide businesses from Bayer ( BAYGn.DE ) for 5.9 billion euros ($7 billion) in cash, as Bayer tries to convince competition authorities to approve its planned acquisition of Monsanto ( MON.N ). BASF, the world<6C>s third-largest maker of crop chemicals, has so far avoided seed assets and instead pursued research into plant characteristics such as drought tolerance, which it sells or licenses out to seed developers. But Bayer<65>s $66 billion deal to buy U.S. seeds group Monsanto, announced in September 2016, has created opportunities for rivals to snatch up assets that need to be sold to satisfy competition authorities. Bayer said it would use the proceeds to partly refinance the Monsanto acquisition. It plans to raise $19 billion toward the deal by issuing convertible bonds and new shares, and has lined up as much as $57 billion of bridge financing from banks. Baader Helvea analyst Markus Mayer said a higher-than-expected valuation of the assets up for sale could mean Bayer now needs to raise less than $10 billion from the sale of new shares, which would be a positive surprise. Bayer had offered to sell assets worth around $2.5 billion. The European Commission said in August that the divestments offered by Bayer so far did not go far enough and started an in-depth investigation of the deal. Bayer has to sell the LibertyLink-branded seeds and Liberty herbicide businesses, which generated 2016 sales of 1.3 billion euros, because they compete with Monsanto<74>s Roundup weed killer and Roundup Ready seeds. Related Coverage LibertyLink seeds, used by soy, cotton and canola growers, are one alternative to Roundup Ready seeds for farmers suffering from weeds that have developed resistance to the Roundup herbicide, also known as glyphosate. The spread of Roundup-resistant weeds in North America has been a major driver behind Liberty sales. <20>BASF<53>s decision to acquire seeds assets represents something of a change to its prior view on its needs to respond to recent industry consolidation in agriculture,<2C> Morgan Stanley analysts said. <20>Nonetheless, the proposed assets for acquisition are high margin and high growth and represent a sensible bolt-on addition,<2C> they added. BASF Chief Executive Kurt Bock told a conference call he would look at further acquisition opportunities in the seeds sector as well but said it would take <20>two to tango<67>. The group is also expected to look at other assets <20> such as vegetable seeds <20> that Bayer may be forced to divest, a person close to the matter said. Shares in Bayer rose 1.2 percent to the top of Germany''s blue-chip DAX index .GDAXI by 1230 GMT, while BASF was up 0.2 percent. POSITIVE SURPRISE The sale to BASF values Bayer<65>s assets at around 15 times 2016 operating profit (EBITDA) of 385 million euros, which analysts said was reasonable compared with multiples of 19.3 for ChemChina<6E>s [CNNCC.UL] takeover of Syngenta ( SYNN.S ) and more than 20 for Dow<6F>s DOW.N tie-up with DuPont DD.N. BASF will finance the acquisition through a combination of cash on hand, commercial paper and bonds. It is expected to reap sales synergies in the hundreds of millions of euros. On the cost side, however, savings will be slim at first as there is little overlap with BASF<53>s existing business and the group has promised to keep all permanent staff at the businesses it is buying for at least three years. The acquisition will add to its earnings by 2020, it said. The deal is conditional upon Bayer<65>s acquisition of Monsanto going through. While the European Commission could block that transaction, it has approved others, such as the Dow-DuPont deal and ChemChina<6E>s takeover
'8a825669d0a0e62a9142f92a76a567043e760809'|'Exclusive: Atlantia ready to raise Abertis'' bid to beat ACS - sources'|'FILE PHOTO: The Abertis''s logo is seen during a news conference in Barcelona, Spain, April 12, 2016. REUTERS/Albert Gea/File Photo MILAN/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) - Italian toll-road operator Atlantia ( ATL.MI ) is prepared to raise its takeover bid for Spanish rival Abertis to up to about 17.8 billion euros ($21 billion) should a rival offer by builder ACS materialise, three sources close to the matter said.Atlantia this week formally launched a cash and share offer that values Abertis ( ABE.MC ) at around 17 billion euros - or about 17 euros per share - in a deal that would create the world<6C>s biggest toll-road operator.However, Spain<69>s ACS ( ACS.MC ) is expected to launch a rival cash-and-paper bid for Abertis next week, sources have told Reuters.The sources on Friday said Atlantia was prepared to offer up to 18 euros per share, if necessary.Under Spanish rules, ACS needs to disclose a counter-bid by Oct. 19, or five days before the end of Atlantia<69>s current offer. Such a move would put Atlantia<69>s bid on hold for weeks or months as Spanish market watchdog CNMV would have to examine ACS<43>s offer and decide whether it can go ahead.<2E>Atlantia does not have a problem increasing its offer,<2C> said one of the sources.Another source said Atlantia could raise its bid to 18 euros per share without hurting its credit rating and significantly increasing its cost of funding.Atlantia<69>s current offer won unconditional approval from the European Commision and from Chile<6C>s antitrust authority on Friday, meaning it has cleared all regulatory hurdles.But the takeover of Abertis, which manages politically sensitive concessions for motorways across Spain, by a foreign company has raised some concerns in Madrid, according to sources.Political interference in the past blocked a planned tie-up between Atlantia and Abertis - a merger deal was scrapped in 2006 because of Italian government opposition.Sources said on Thursday that ACS<43>s offer was expected to be roughly half in cash and the rest in newly issued shares in German construction group Hochtief ( HOTG.DE ), which is controlled by ACS. The value of ACS<43>s potential offer was not known.Milan brokerage Banca IMI said on Friday an offer with no premium versus Atlantia<69>s offer would be unattractive, as investors were unlikely to prefer receiving Hochtief shares.<2E>Abertis shareholders would be directly exposed to the less predictable construction sector and, strangely, would even be financing the offer as Hochtief would issue new shares potentially to be underwritten by Abertis<69> shareholders themselves,<2C> the broker said in a note.However, an Italian source said that, by presenting a rival bid, ACS would be able to buy time and work on improving the financial structure of its offer. ACS declined to comment.Atlantia is currently offering 16.50 euros in cash or 0.697 Atlantia shares for each Abertis share. The deal is conditional on Abertis shareholders who own between 10 percent and 23 percent of the Spanish company<6E>s capital accepting the share offer. At current market prices, Atlantia would value Abertis<69> 990.4 million shares at between 16.6 billion and 17 billion euros.Though the offer has been described as <20>friendly<6C> by Atlantia, shareholders in Abertis have yet to express a view on the proposal.Abertis<69>s top shareholder is Criteria Caixa, the financial arm of a politically connected and powerful banking foundation that controls Catalonia<69>s largest lender Caixabank ( CABK.MC ).<2E>Apparently, La Caixa would be willing to sell, but it wants a compelling case with a better price,<2C> analysts at Mediobanca said in a note to clients.Additional reporting by Jose Rodriguez and Andres Gonzalez in Madrid; Editing by Silvia Aloisi and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-abertis-m-a-atlantia-exclusive/exclusive-atlantia-ready-to-raise-abertis-bid-to-up-to-18-euros-share-to-beat-acs-sources-idINKBN1CI29A'|'2017-10-13T14:30:00.000+03:0
'95bd51c284127d830486fd08799e08d7dc46ddb4'|'Ford offers repairs to prevent exhaust leaks in 1.4 million Explorers'|'October 13, 2017 / 6:19 PM / in 12 minutes Ford offers repairs to prevent exhaust leaks in 1.4 million Explorers 3 Min Read A Ford logo is pictured at a car dealership in Monterrey, Mexico, November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co ( F.N ) said on Friday it will offer free repairs to North American owners of more than 1.4 million Explorer sport utility vehicles to help ensure that carbon monoxide and other exhaust gases cannot get into the vehicles, following the U.S. government<6E>s decision to upgrade an investigation into the issue in July. Several U.S. police agencies have raised concerns about potentially deadly carbon monoxide gas entering the cabins of Ford Explorers that had been adapted for law enforcement uses. Federal regulators have said they are aware of more than 2,700 complaints, three crashes and 41 injuries that may be linked to exposure to carbon monoxide among police and civilian 2011-2017 Explorer vehicles. Ford said its investigation has not found <20>carbon monoxide levels that exceed what people are exposed to every day<61> in the 1.4 million civilian vehicles. There is no U.S. government standard for in-vehicle carbon monoxide levels. Ford says it believes the vehicles are safe and is making the offer, which it is not classifying as a recall, in response to customer concerns. The second largest U.S. automaker said starting November 1, dealers will reprogram the air conditioner, replace the liftgate drain valves and inspect sealing of the rear of the vehicle. The fix covers about 1.3 million U.S. vehicles and about 100,000 in Canada and Mexico. Ford declined to comment on the potential financial impact of the service offer that will last through the end of 2018. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in July upgraded and expanded a probe into 1.33 million Ford Explorer SUVs over reports of exhaust odours in vehicle compartments and exposure to carbon monoxide. Police agencies have reported two crashes that may be linked to carbon monoxide exposure and a third incident involving injuries related to carbon monoxide exposure. NHTSA said it is evaluating preliminary testing that suggests carbon monoxide levels may be elevated in certain driving scenarios. Ford has issued four technical service bulletins related to the exhaust odour issue to address complaints from police fleets and other owners. In July, Ford said it would pay to repair police versions of its Ford Explorer SUVs to correct possible carbon monoxide leaks that may be linked to crashes and injuries after some police reports temporarily halted use of the vehicles over carbon monoxide concerns. The city of Austin, Texas said in July it would removing all 400 of the city<74>s Ford Explorer SUVs from use for additional testing and repairs after the city said 20 police officers were found with elevated levels of carbon monoxide. The department returned the vehicles to service after repairs and testing. Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ford-motor-emissions/ford-offers-repairs-to-prevent-exhaust-leaks-in-1-4-million-explorers-idUKKBN1CI2NF'|'2017-10-13T21:17:00.000+03:00'
'812406493d96548d529eb821ff47845f67382e66'|'UPDATE 1-Italy extends Alitalia bridge loan'|'(Changes sourcing, adds detail after cabinet meeting)ROME, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Italy on Friday extended a bridge loan for airline Alitalia, which is in special administration as state commissioners seek to sell, overhaul or liquidate the carrier.Italy<6C>s cabinet said in a statement it had passed an emergency decree to add a further 300 million euros ($354.36 million) to the loan of 600 million euros it made to the ailing company in May.It also extended the deadline for the repayment of the loan, which was due in November this year, to Sept. 30, 2018.The cabined headed by Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni also extended the deadline for prospective buyers to present offers to acquire the national carrier to April 30, 2018, from the previous deadline of Oct. 16 this year. (reporting by Francesca Piscioneri, writing by Gavin Jones. Editing by Jane Merriman)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/alitalia-restructuring/update-1-italy-extends-alitalia-bridge-loan-idINL8N1MO5JL'|'2017-10-13T16:51:00.000+03:00'
'873f521842ad3ef2060203a7d60266cac50fe1b0'|'PRESS DIGEST- Financial Times - Oct 13'|'Oct 13 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Financial Times. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.Headlines* Royal Mail wins court battle as judge rules strike is illegal on.ft.com/2yJuBvq* HSBC picks insider John Flint as chief executive on.ft.com/2yHqjVI* Ministers haggle over 2,000 new staff as Brexit tests civil service on.ft.com/2yHqKiO* Lloyds Banking Group buys Zurich''s UK pensions and savings unit on.ft.com/2yIcmqaOverview- Royal Mail Plc on Thursday won an injunction to block next week<65>s two-day postal strike as the London<6F>s High Court ruled it as <20>unlawful<75>.- HSBC Holdings Plc on Thursday named John Flint, head of the bank<6E>s retail and wealth management arm, as its next chief executive.- UK<55>s Cabinet Office is planning to hire another 2,000 staff to deal specifically with Brexit. It has already hired more than 1,500 staff since the EU referendum in June 2016.- Lloyds Banking Group Plc on Thursday said it struck a deal to acquire 19 billion pounds ($25.21 billion) of Zurich UK<55>s pensions and savings assets. ($1 = 0.7538 pounds) (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-press-ft/press-digest-financial-times-oct-13-idINL2N1MN2E9'|'2017-10-12T21:52:00.000+03:00'
'44a0b9d5b5f6d18d95c5c28f7221819ec41fa901'|'California unveils revised rules on self-driving testing'|'October 11, 2017 / 4:17 PM / in 20 minutes California seeks to ease rules on self-driving cars David Shepardson 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A self-driving car being developed by nuTonomy, a company creating software for autonomous vehicles, is guided down a street near their offices in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., June 2, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - California regulators on Wednesday unveiled revised rules that would allow self-driving cars to travel the state<74>s highways without human drivers for the first time as early as next year, a move that won the support of automakers. The new rules represent a compromise with automotive and technology companies, which had objected to many of the requirements previously proposed by the state. The California rules could still conflict with proposed federal legislation that would largely bar states from regulating autonomous vehicles. But they are a boost for automakers who want to be able to deploy vehicles without human controls in California. More than 40 companies are testing self-driving vehicles in California with human controls, and most automakers have autonomous research centers in the state, which is the largest U.S. auto market. The new rules are expected to take effect by June 2018, the state said. Waymo, the self-driving car unit of Google parent company Alphabet Inc, Ford Motor Co, Tesla Inc, Apple Inc, General Motors Co had sought changes in California. Previous rules had demanded that firms submit safety assessment reports to state regulators and seek new approval for updated vehicles. Existing rules also require a backup human driver to be in all driverless vehicles. Wade Newton, a spokesman for trade group the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said Wednesday it appeared that California had recognized that <20>certain onerous<75> requirements could delay deployment of self-driving technology. <20>We appreciate the (state<74>s) attempts to streamline requirements consistent with the recently updated federal guidance,<2C> Newton said. But the Association of Global Automakers, a trade group representing mostly Asian and European automakers, said California did not go far enough. <20>A special permit is still required to deploy, creating regulatory uncertainty and raising concerns about the ability of autonomous vehicles to cross state lines,<2C> it said. Companies would still need a California permit to test or deploy vehicles on state roads. California would also require automakers and tech firms to record information about autonomous sensors in the 30 seconds before a collision. Vehicles must follow all state laws <20>except when necessary for the safety of the vehicle<6C>s occupants<74> or other road users. Consumer Watchdog criticized the revisions, saying California should stick to its earlier, stricter state requirements. The group noted local communities could not block testing under the proposal. Last week, a Senate panel approved a bill aimed at speeding the use of self-driving cars without human controls in the United States, a measure that also bars states from imposing regulatory road blocks. Automakers would be able to win exemptions from safety rules that require human controls if they met certain requirements. States could set rules on registration, licensing, liability, insurance and safety inspections, but not performance standards. General Motors chief executive Mary Barra told Reuters on Tuesday that the federal legislation <20>allows us to get this technology on the road,<2C> but declined to say when the automaker might seek approval for exemptions. Reporting by David Shepardson, Editing by Rosalba O''Brien 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-selfdriving-california/california-unveils-revised-rules-on-self-driving-testing-idUSKBN1CG290'|'2017-10-11T19:10:00.000+03:00'
'0592f58f9e9e51dc333b04dfd79c28248982a953'|'TREASURIES-Yields rise before supply, CPI in focus'|'* Treasury to sell $12 bln 30-year bonds * Consumer price data on Friday in focus * Producer prices rise in September By Karen Brettell NEW YORK, Oct 12 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury yields rose before the Treasury Department is due to sell new 30-year supply, and after data showed that U.S. producer prices rose in September. The Treasury Department will sell $12 billion in 30-year bonds on Thursday, the final sale of $56 billion in new coupon-bearing supply this week. The government saw solid demand for $24 billion in three-year notes and $20 billion in 10-year notes on Wednesday. The Labor Department said on Thursday its producer price index for final demand increased 0.4 percent last month. In the 12 months through September, the PPI jumped 2.6 percent, the biggest gain since February 2012. Traders are mainly focused, however, on consumer price data due on Friday for further indications of whether inflation is picking up. <20>PPI was a little bit better, but that doesn<73>t really translate well to CPI,<2C> said Gennadiy Goldberg, an interest rate strategist at TD Securities in New York. <20>I think for the most part markets are still waiting for the CPI report tomorrow.<2E> Benchmark 10-year notes were last up 1/32 in price to yield 2.341 percent, up from 2.334 percent before the data. The 10-year yields jumped to 2.402 percent on Friday, the highest level since May 11, after the government<6E>s employment report for September showed a rise in wages that boosted expectations inflation is increasing. Analysts, however, have said that data is muddied by recent hurricanes. Adverse weather is seen as having impeded lower-income workers from getting to work more than it did higher-income workers. Minutes from the Federal Reserve<76>s September meeting released on Wednesday showed that Fed policymakers had a prolonged debate about the prospects of a pickup in inflation and the path of future interest rate rises if it did not. (Editing by Susan Thomas) )'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-bonds/treasuries-yields-rise-before-supply-cpi-in-focus-idINL2N1MN0LX'|'2017-10-12T11:16:00.000+03:00'
'7d880c9684dc30a69915880d4976d6c98fe49a30'|'EU weakens plan on bank deposits safety net, risks clash with ECB'|'October 11, 2017 / 1:00 PM / Updated an hour ago EU weakens plan on bank protection, risks ECB clash on bad loans Francesco Guarascio 5 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission proposed on Wednesday watered-down measures to help guard European Union banks against future crises, after two years of fruitless talks among the 28 EU states on more ambitious plans. The new proposals were designed to win over Germany, the EU<45>s largest economy and the staunchest opponent of sharing banking risks among EU states, but the German banking lobby quickly dismissed them. The proposals could also slow the European Central Bank<6E>s plans to reduce the exposure of banks to bad loans. Shares of Italian banks rose, since they would face big losses if the EU mandated they quickly unload bad debts [nL8N1MM4Q8]. The Commission proposal would reduce the sharing of banking risks and set strict conditions that states must meet before their banks gain access to safety nets funded at the EU level. Those changes were intended to placate Germany, whose departing finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, repeatedly argued that sharing risks meant richer German banks would prop up weaker banks in other EU countries. His successor may be equally dubious. The plan, revealed by Reuters last week, discards earlier proposals for full-fledged European insurance of savers if banks fail, leaving the burden largely with individual member states. EU rules guarantee deposits up to 100,000 euros ($118,000), a provision meant to strengthen confidence in the region<6F>s banks after a decade-long crisis that has seen the bailout of several top banks. But existing national schemes to insure depositors are considered insufficient to cope with a major banking crisis. An EU backstop, funded by all banks in the bloc, is considered the best guarantee to protect savers and increase market confidence. UMBRELLA WITH HOLES? Under the new proposals, a European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS) would intervene only after national schemes had spent all the money they had available. In an initial phase, EDIS would lend to national insurers only enough to cover 30 percent of their losses. That would increase in stages to 90 percent in 2021. In a second phase, EDIS would directly cover depositors<72> losses, but only partly. National insurance schemes would continue to bear the brunt of a banking crisis. The beginning of the second phase would not be automatic but would depend on banks<6B> ability to clean up their balance sheets and dispose of bad loans. But the German banking lobby DK said the plan was <20>only a marginal advance<63> and urged measures to clean up bank balance sheets before the first phase began. Non-performing loans (NPLs) in EU banks are decreasing, but still amount to nearly 1 trillion euros ($1.18 trillion), mostly at lenders in southern euro zone countries. The Commission said it would make new legislative proposals by spring to address the NPLs problem, including measures to revamp a secondary market for bad loans and to favour banks<6B> recovery of soured credit, such as mortgages. It will also consider possible legislative measures on <20>minimum levels of provisioning which banks must make for future NPLs arising from newly originated loans.<2E> The Commission document did not mention stricter provisions for existing bad loans, an omission that pushed Italian banks<6B> stocks up, traders said. Italy<6C>s bank index was up 0.9 percent by 1445 GMT, outperforming a 0.3 percent decline in the pan-European banking index after the Commission<6F>s proposal. Italian banks sold off over the past week after the European Central Bank disclosed plans to require lenders to set aside more money on new bad loans from next year and considered moves to reduce the existing stock of bad loans. CLASH WITH ECB? The Commission<6F>s aims match the ECB plan, but a parallel process could slow things down. EU legislative proposals require the backing of EU states and parliamentarians, a process that 
'573eca15f0bcce3137beaab8a141935d29c3575c'|'Hammond speaks on economy, Brexit in parliament'|'October 11, 2017 / 10:11 AM / in 8 minutes UK''s Hammond speaks about Brexit and economy in parliament Reuters Staff 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Britain''s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, leaves Downing Street in central London, Britain October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville LONDON (Reuters) - British finance minister Philip Hammond spoke about Brexit and the economy to the Treasury Committee in parliament on Wednesday. Below are highlights from the question-and-answer session. HAMMOND ON NEED FOR EU TO TALK ABOUT FUTURE TIES TO UK <20>Astonishingly, the most important question, which is what is our long-term relationship with the European Union going to look like, has not yet even begun to be discussed ... We have made the running in this and we really need our European Union partners to engage. It<49>s quite a small ask really. Let<65>s sit down around a table and have a chat. That<61>s all we are saying. We are not asking them to sign up. We are not asking them to write blank cheques. We are simply asking them to start talking to us because we are friends, we hope to remain friends in a comprehensive partnership arrangement. But when friends have an issue to resolve they sit down and talk about it. And I think people in this country are finding it increasingly difficult to understand why we can<61>t start talking about our the substance of our future relationship.<2E> HAMMOND ON NEED FOR SPEED ON TRANSITIONAL DEAL <20>It is self-evident to me ... that a transitional arrangement is a wasting asset. It has a value today. It will still have a very high value at Christmas, early in the new year. But as we move through 2018 its value to everybody will diminish significantly. And I think our European partners need to think very carefully about the need for speed in order to protect the potential value to all of us of having an interim period...<2E> HAMMOND ON SPENDING NOW FOR NO-DEAL BREXIT SCENARIO <20>I am clear that we have to be prepared for a no-deal scenario unless and until we have clear evidence that is not where we will end up. What I am not proposing to do is to allocate funds to departments in advance of the need to spend ... I don<6F>t believe we should be in the business of making potentially nugatory expenditure until the very last moment when we need to do so.<2E> <20>I am clear that at the moment, the areas where we need to spend money - I have already authorised 250 million pounds of expenditure - there will be a rolling programme. There will be some areas where we need to start spending money in the new year if we can<61>t tell ourselves that we are moving steadily and pretty assuredly towards a transition agreement.<2E> HAMMOND ON UK ECONOMY <20>The IMF report yesterday showed the UK figures for <20>17 and <20>18 unchanged from their July report. It<49>s true, that<61>s against the backdrop of increases that were posted for many other countries around the world. <20>I think it reflects a sense that while the UK economy is fundamentally strong and in good shape, we are being affected by uncertainty around the negotiation process that we are engaged in at the moment. I think there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that businesses and consumers are waiting to see what the outcome is, or at least what the direction of travel is, before firming up investment decisions, consumption decisions.<2E> HAMMOND ON BREXIT AND ECONOMY <20>My general view of our economy is that it is fundamentally robust. We have some very strong things going for us, a strong outlook for the future. But the cloud of uncertainty is a temporary damper and we need to remove it as soon as possible by making progress with the (Brexit) negotiation process.<2E> Reporting by UK bureau'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-budget-highlights/hammond-speaks-on-economy-brexit-in-parliament-idUKKBN1CG16I'|'2017-10-11T13:11:00.000+03:00'
'de48b2b22c197d6d4c245ae98505662f7ad4eec4'|'House Republicans to take up disaster funding Thursday'|'WASHINGTON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said on Wednesday the House will take up supplemental disaster funding to help areas hit by hurricanes and wildfires on Thursday.<2E>We think it<69>s critical that we pass this legislation this week to give the people in California the support that they need to fight these fires, to help the victims, and also to help the communities still recovering and dealing with humanitarian problems with the hurricanes,<2C> Ryan said at a news briefing on Wednesday, citing Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. (Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-puertorico-congress/house-republicans-to-take-up-disaster-funding-thursday-idINW1N1KT01T'|'2017-10-11T12:49:00.000+03:00'
'5e88d87a707b7f9ad39b386f70218b4a9efd663d'|'Toshiba shares to be removed from special watch list - Nikkei'|'October 11, 2017 / 5:50 AM / Updated 23 minutes ago Toshiba off Tokyo bourse''s special watchlist, but ISS critical of accounting Makiko Yamazaki 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A logo of Toshiba Corp is seen outside an electronics retail store in Tokyo, Japan, February 14, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - The Tokyo bourse said on Wednesday it was taking Toshiba Corp ( 6502.T ) off a special watchlist, citing improved internal controls - a move that lessens but does not completely remove the risk of a delisting for the embattled conglomerate. But offering a starkly different view of Toshiba<62>s accounting practices, proxy advisory firm ISS said it has recommended that Toshiba<62>s shareholders do not approve the firm<72>s earnings statements for the past financial year after a mixed review from its auditor. Toshiba was placed on the bourse<73>s watchlist in the wake of a 2015 accounting scandal. It plunged into crisis again as of late last year after billions of dollars in liabilities emerged at its now bankrupt U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse - problems that also raised fresh accounting concerns. Aiming to plug the hole in its balance sheet, the Japanese company last month agreed to sell its chip unit to a consortium led by U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital for $18 billion (13.65 billion pounds), although the deal still needs to clear regulatory reviews and overcome legal challenges. <20>The market had been expecting that the Tokyo bourse will remove Toshiba from the list and allow it to remain listed because the firm is too big to fail,<2C> said Masayuki Otani, chief market analyst at Securities Japan. Not only does the Japanese government see Toshiba<62>s chip business as vital to its national interests, the conglomerate<74>s domestic nuclear business is also key to the decommissioning of the Fukushima plants damaged in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. But the Tokyo stock exchange could come under further pressure to delist Toshiba if it is in negative net worth for a second year in a row at the end of March - a very real possibility as the chip deal may not gain regulatory clearance by then and it may struggle to raise funds by other means. S&P Global Ratings said this month that there was <20>over a one-in-three chance that Toshiba will fail to receive sale proceeds and resolve its insolvency by March 31.<2E> If shareholders do not sign off on Toshiba<62>s earnings at a Oct. 24 extraordinary meeting as recommended by ISS, that could also imperil Toshiba<62>s ability to the recover from the crisis. Japanese shareholders, however, rarely reject proposals by management. Auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers Aarata LLC gave Toshiba<62>s financial statements a <20>qualified opinion<6F> that endorsed Toshiba<62>s finances despite some minor problems, but also made an <20>adverse<73> statement on Toshiba<62>s internal controls. <20>It would be difficult to justify support for this resolution given the fact that the audit firm has rendered a qualified opinion, basically reflecting the auditor<6F>s view that Toshiba<62>s financial statements are not accurate,<2C> ISS said. The controversy over Toshiba<62>s internal controls comes just as questions over corporate governance in Japan have taken the spotlight again, with a Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ) crisis deepening on fresh revelations of data fabrication. Separately, Toshiba said on Wednesday it would invest an additional 110 billion yen ($980 million) in the Fab 6 chip production line in Yokkaichi, central Japan, on top of a planned initial investment of 195 billion yen. Toshiba also said it has recently asked Western Digital<61>s ( WDC.O ) SanDisk unit whether it intends to jointly participate in the investment. Western Digital, Toshiba<62>s joint chip venture partner, objects to any sale without its consent, and is seeking an injunction to block the deal in the International Court of Arbitration. Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Additional reporting by Chris Gallagher and Takahiko Wada; Editing by Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http:
'490f8b2dff09720f6065cc835ca76869d22d7f14'|'Britain plans billion-pound boost for electric cars as part of climate change plan'|'October 12, 2017 / 12:11 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago Britain plans billion-pound boost for electric cars as part of climate change plan Susanna Twidale 4 Min Read An electric car is plugged into a charging point in London, Britain April 7, 2016. An electric carsharing scheme being rolled out in London by French firm Bollore is taking longer than expected to set up fully because contract talks with the capital''s local councils are dragging on.REUTERS/Neil Hall - LR2EC470ZND8Y LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will spend one billion pounds to promote electric and other low-emission vehicles, and step up spending on research and innovation, as part of plans to invest 2.5 billion pounds by 2021 to help meet its climate change targets. The government<6E>s Clean Growth Strategy, which details government spending between 2015 and 2021, includes heavy investment in science, research and innovation to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Around 900 million pounds will be spent on innovation. This includes 265 million pounds for smart energy, 460 million pounds to support new nuclear technology and 177 million pounds to help develop new technology to further reduce the cost of renewables such as innovations in turbine blades for wind power. The funding will cover programmes in the energy, transport, agriculture and waste sectors. The government said it said it would spend one billion pounds <20>supporting the take-up of ultra low-emission vehicles, including helping consumers to overcome the upfront cost of an electric car,<2C> but gave no details of how the scheme would work. In July, the government said it would ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2040. Britain has a legally binding target to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, blamed for global warming, by 80 percent by 2050 compared with 1990. Government data showed by the end of 2016 Britain was more than half way to meeting the target, having cut GHG emissions by 42 percent compared with 1990 levels. However, with many of the cheaper and easier emission reductions completed, the government said it would <20>not be easy<73> to meet its targets. FILE PHOTO - The Houses of Parliament are shrouded by mist as people cross Waterloo Bridge during the morning rush hour in London, Britain September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay Britain said it was committed to using a price on carbon dioxide as a means of reducing emissions but said it is yet to determine whether it will remain in Europe<70>s Emissions Trading System (ETS) when it leave the European Union. The plan showed the government is keeping faith with attempts to develop technology to collect emissions from power plants and industry and store them underground despite high-profile setbacks. The government will invest up to 100 million pounds in technology to capture, use and store carbon dioxide emissions and in industrial innovations to drive down emissions, according to the plan published on Thursday. The British government had viewed carbon capture and storage (CCS) as vital to help it to meet emissions targets, but two competitions over the past 10 years have failed to produce a commercial-scale project. A parliamentary watchdog said in January that Britain had spent 168 million pounds on two failed initiatives to help to fund CCS technology. {nL5N1F95ES] The government confirmed a plan, first announced in 2015, to phase out coal-fired power stations by 2025 unless they are fitted with CCS technology. As a part of efforts to replace Britain<69>s ageing coal power stations, the government on Wednesday pledged 557 million pounds for clean electricity subsidy auctions for renewable power. The government hopes clean energy projects will be an important driver of growth, adding to the 430,000 jobs it says already exist in British low-carbon businesses. It believes the low carbon economy could grow by 11 percent a year up to 2030. Business lobby group the CBI welcomed the plan and said it provides clarity 
'75926ed3895724603e870922d0ebff6beec1b350'|'ECB''s Coeure warns buying bonds for too long can cause bubbles'|'October 12, 2017 / 8:07 PM / Updated 17 minutes ago ECB''s Coeure warns buying bonds for too long can cause bubbles Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Benoit Coeure, board member of the European Central Bank (ECB), is photographed during an interview with Reuters journalists at the ECB headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, May 17, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Central banks risk causing financial bubbles if they keep buying bonds for too long, European Central Bank director Benoit Coeure said on Thursday, two weeks before the ECB decides on the future of its stimulus programme. <20>We need to be mindful of risks to financial stability,<2C> Coeure, long considered an ally of president Mario Draghi on the Executive Board, said at en event in Washington. <20>A too protracted period of asset purchases, for example, may cause financial imbalances to build up with potentially adverse consequences for price stability.<2E> Reporting By Balazs Koranyi; Writing by Francesco Canepa in Frankfurt; Editing by Toby Chopra 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ecb-policy-bonds/ecbs-coeure-warns-buying-bonds-for-too-long-can-cause-bubbles-idUKKBN1CH2WL'|'2017-10-12T23:07:00.000+03:00'
'0ee69e84238f2f3715643ea68bcb4703322949c8'|'GM, suppliers to invest $500 mln in Argentina to produce new model'|' 09 PM / a few seconds ago GM, suppliers to invest $500 million in Argentina to produce new model Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The GM logo is seen in Warren, Michigan, U.S. on October 26, 2015. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File Photo BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - General Motors Co ( GM.N ) and its suppliers will invest a total of $500 million in Argentina operations through 2019 to prepare to produce a new Chevrolet model in 2020, the company said in a statement on Thursday. The company will invest $300 million while its supplier network will invest $200 million at the Alvear plant in Argentina<6E>s Santa Fe province. The company invested $740 million in the plant between 2014 and 2016. The investment announcement comes as automobile production in Latin America<63>s No. 3 economy begins to rebound, following a sharp decline amid recessions last year in Argentina and neighboring Brazil, a major export destination. Attracting investment from major multinationals like GM is a priority of market-friendly President Mauricio Macri. But investments have been slow to arrive since he took office in December 2015, in part due to a tax code and labor regulations that businesses say are in need of reform. In March, the government reached a deal with labor unions aimed at increasing car production to 1 million per year by 2023, part of the government<6E>s strategy of negotiating more competitive labor arrangements sector-by-sector rather than through wholesale reform like Brazil. The investment will include an increase in GM<47>s operations at the port of Rosario, with the aim of doubling the volume of containers it moves in and out of the country each year, the company said. Reporting by Luc Cohen; Editing by Cynthia Osterman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-argentina-gm/gm-suppliers-to-invest-500-million-in-argentina-to-produce-new-model-idUSKBN1CH2NY'|'2017-10-12T21:04:00.000+03:00'
'6302fba0495f430989e1ef5526f312b9ed513297'|'London regulator will defend decision not to renew Uber''s licence in court -mayor'|'October 12, 2017 / 9:38 AM / Updated 4 hours ago London regulator will defend decision not to renew Uber''s license in court: mayor Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A photo illustration shows the Uber app on a mobile telephone, as it is held up for a posed photograph in central London, Britain September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - London Mayor Sadiq Khan said on Thursday that the city<74>s transport regulator will defend its decision in court not to renew Uber<65>s license to operate in the British capital. Uber has until Friday to submit its appeal and can continue to operate until the appeal process has been exhausted, which could take several months. <20>The courts now will consider the appeal from Uber and of course TfL (Transport for London) will defend the decision they made,<2C> Khan said during a monthly question time session. Reporting by Costas Pitas; editing by Stephen Addison 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-uber-britain/london-regulator-will-defend-decision-not-to-renew-ubers-license-in-court-mayor-idUKKBN1CH17Q'|'2017-10-12T12:51:00.000+03:00'
'75051badda77085153464d33e72a41ff82513ca4'|'BOJ''s Kuroda says sees no problem with policy divergence'|'October 12, 2017 / 8:24 PM / Updated 19 minutes ago BOJ''s Kuroda says sees no problem with policy divergence Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Governor of the Bank of Japan Haruhiko Kuroda attends IMFC plenary during the IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Washington, U.S., October 8, 2016. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said on Thursday he saw no problem with major central banks diverging in their monetary policy paths, given each of them faces different challenges in their economy and prices. <20>Each central bank guides monetary policy best suited for its country<72>s economy and prices,<2C> Kuroda told reporters upon arriving for the Group of 20 finance leaders<72> meeting in Washington. <20>Inflation in Japan is still around 0.5 percent, distant from our 2 percent target. I would like to explain at the G20 meeting that we will continue our ultra-loose monetary policy to achieve 2 percent inflation at the earliest date possible,<2C> he said. Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Andrea Ricci 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-imf-g20-boj/bojs-kuroda-says-sees-no-problem-with-policy-divergence-idUKKBN1CH2YI'|'2017-10-12T23:24:00.000+03:00'
'b7b5fe05393888284f81ae19b1fa256a5b897df8'|'Bain Capital leads the charge as Japan''s private equity dealmaking picks up'|'October 12, 2017 / 6:08 AM / in 6 hours Bain Capital leads the charge as Japan''s private equity dealmaking picks up Kane Wu , Junko Fujita 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A reporter raises his hand to ask a question during a news conference by Bain Capital LP Managing Director Yuji Sugimoto (not in the picture) in Tokyo, Japan October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung/File Photo HONG KONG/TOKYO (Reuters) - Bain Capital is planning on further ramping up its dealmaking in Japan after it came out on top in the recent battle to purchase Toshiba<62>s semiconductors arm and as it bids to buy out Japan<61>s third-largest advertising agency, Asatsu-DK (ADK). In making further acquisitions, the Boston-based Bain would cement its position as one of the most active private equity firms in Japan and help to break down a corporate culture that has been mostly hostile to foreign investors. <20>Japan is a hard market. It takes years to build teams, relationships, credibility,<2C> said David Gross-Loh, who is Bain<69>s co-head of Asia and is in charge of its business in Japan, in an interview. <20>I wouldn<64>t be surprised that five years from now we<77>ll have twice as many deals as we do now.<2E> Japan<61>s private equity market is small relative to its economy, the world<6C>s third largest. This year, though, the Toshiba acquisition has pushed private equity-backed deals in Japan to a record $22 billion - more than double 2016<31>s $8 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data. From 2007 to 2016, some 30-40 buyout deals on average were struck annually with slightly fewer exits each year, according to data provider Preqin. And both deals and exits have been worth a fraction of those done in China every year. Yet this year has seen a pick up in interest, industry sources say, in part thanks to significant volumes of cash raised in 2016 as funds look to Japan. They are hoping to cash in on demographic shifts -- such as the nation<6F>s aging population - changes in corporate governance standards and a more active initial public offering market allowing for future exits. Bain led a group of investors, including Apple, SK Hynix <000660 KS>, Dell, Seagate Technology Plc and Kingston Technology that agreed to pay $18 billion for the Toshiba chips business after a mammoth bidding battle. FORGING TIES Bain is one of several global private equity firms that opened offices in Japan before the global financial crisis, but it has bet on its own team to forge relationships, rather than rely on banks or advisers - a slower process. And American rivals have also piled in. KKR & Co is looking to deploy more money in Japan after completing a string of investments, while Carlyle Group targets companies in the upper-mid size with its Japan fund, while seeking larger deals with its funds in other global regions. Another global name, Blackstone Group, will remain focused on real estate in Japan, a person familiar with the firm said. But Bain has been ahead, striking two of Japan<61>s five largest private equity-backed M&A deals, with Toshiba the biggest. KKR<4B>s $4.2 billion acquisition of auto parts maker Calsonic Kansei Corp is the second largest. Gross-Loh said that Bain is able to catalyze growth at Japanese domestic businesses that were stable and well-managed but weren<65>t exposed to global rivals and therefore not as competitive as they could be. Both Bain and Carlyle last year participated in the high-profile auction of Takata Corp, which filed for bankruptcy in June after its air bags were linked to deaths and injuries. According to people familiar with the deal, Bain is part of the winning bid for Takata, led by Chinese-owned U.S.-based Key Safety Systems. Bain declined to comment on Takata. BIG IN JAPAN In a decade, Bain has invested in a wide range of companies in Japan, from hot spring chains, wind farms to a mushroom growing business. Bain invests in Japan out of its Asian funds and sometimes use dry powder from its global funds for larger transactions - such as the Toshiba deal.
'533b66e05a9a07e1d71fc813841beaccc6cd5695'|'Taiwan Fair Trade Commission fines Qualcomm more than $700 million'|'FILE PHOTO: Qualcomm''s logo is seen during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 28, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard/File Photo HONG KONG (Reuters) - The Taiwan Fair Trade Commission said on Wednesday it will fine U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm Inc T$23.4 billion ($774.14 million) for anti-trust violations of its chip technology.The Commission said in a Chinese-language statement that Qualcomm had a monopoly over the CDMA, WCDMA and LTE chip market and refused to licence its technology to other industry players.Qualcomm is required to submit a progress report on the matter every six months to the Commission on negotiations with related parties over the issue.($1 = 30.2270 Taiwan dollars)Reporting by Meg Shen in Hong Kong and Lee Chyen Yee in Singapore, editing by Louise Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/qualcomm/taiwan-fair-trade-commission-fines-qualcomm-more-than-700-million-idINKBN1CG1X8'|'2017-10-11T17:22:00.000+03:00'
'bd23bde9d4b2962c32da049163c75854dc47932e'|'South Africa''s Exxaro completes sale of Tronox shares, nets $474 mln'|'JOHANNESBURG, Oct 11 (Reuters) - South African miner Exxaro Resources said on Wednesday it had completed its sale of 22.4 million shares in U.S. titanium products company Tronox with net proceeds of $474 million. Exxaro, which mainly produces coal, said last week it would sell the shares in Tronox as the company looks to focus on its core mining activities, provide funding for its future capital commitments, repay debt and return capital to shareholders.The disposal reduces Exxaro<72>s ownership of Tronox<6F>s total outstanding voting shares to approximately 24.0 percent or 28.7 million shares.Exxaro also said it would continue to assess market conditions going forward for further possible sell downs in its remaining Tronox investment. (Reporting by Tanisha Heiberg; Editing by Ed Stoddard)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/exxaro-resources-tronox-ltd-divesture/south-africas-exxaro-completes-sale-of-tronox-shares-nets-474-mln-idINL8N1MM0M1'|'2017-10-11T03:53:00.000+03:00'
'9aac478df77db6afecaa89f6303d7597069f998c'|'Futures higher as earnings take focus'|'October 10, 2017 / 11:33 AM / Updated 17 minutes ago Wal-Mart rally pushes Dow to all-time high Noel Randewich 4 Min Read Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (Reuters) - The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a record high on Tuesday, helped by a surge in Wal-Mart Stores, while Amazon and Facebook lost ground and investors focused on upcoming quarterly reports. Wal-Mart ( WMT.N ) jumped 4.47 percent to a two-year high after forecasting U.S. online sales would rise by about 40 percent in the next fiscal year and unveiling a $20-billion share buyback. That helped the S&P 500 consumer staples index .SPLRCS jump 0.99 percent, although gains in that sector were limited by P&G ( PG.N ), which dropped 0.54 percent after activist investor Nelson Peltz unexpectedly failed in his bid to win a board seat. Third-quarter corporate reporting season kicks into high gear on Thursday with results from JPMorgan Chase ( JPM.N ) and Citigroup ( C.N ). With the S&P 500 up 14 percent in 2017, investors are betting on strong earnings growth across the S&P 500. Wall Street has mostly shrugged off recent saber-rattling between the United States and North Korea, as well as a lack of progress by President Donald Trump in delivering promised corporate tax cuts. <20>The only fear in this market is the fear of missing out,<2C> said Dennis Dick, a proprietary trader at Bright Trading LLC in Las Vegas. <20>But things can change quickly. There<72>s stuff out there, like North Korea. You still have to be cautious.<2E> The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 0.31 percent to 22,830.68 points, a record-high close. It is up 15.5 percent in 2017. The S&P 500 .SPX gained 0.23 percent to 2,550.64 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 0.11 percent to 6,587.25. The tech index .SPLRCT, the best performing among the 11 major S&P sectors this year, was mostly unchanged, with Facebook falling 0.53 percent and Nvidia ( NVDA.O ) adding 1.91 percent after unveiling chips for autonomous vehicles, bringing its gain over the past year to 182 percent. American Airlines ( AAL.O ) jumped 4.80 percent and United Continental ( UAL.N ) soared 4.67 percent after the two airlines gave encouraging third-quarter forecasts. Delta ( DAL.N ), which reports on Wednesday, rose 1.85 percent. Energy stocks .SPNY got a boost from a near 2-percent rise in oil prices supported by Saudi Arabian export cuts in November and comments from OPEC and trading companies that the market is rebalancing after years of oversupply. Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.90-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.58-to-1 ratio favored advancers. About 5.6 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, well below the 6.1 billion daily average for the past 20 trading days, according to Thomson Reuters data. Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza and Nick Zieminski'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/futures-higher-as-earnings-take-focus-idUSKBN1CF1DG'|'2017-10-10T14:32:00.000+03:00'
'223c74daba85087e27cad6593e63c8c6c2550ee9'|'Qatar discussing idea of dollar bond with market, no decision'|'DUBAI, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Qatar has been discussing with banks the idea of issuing an international bond this year, but no decision has been made yet, a Qatari finance ministry official told Reuters on Monday.Regional and international commercial bankers confirmed that the Qatari government had been asking banks how a potential dollar bond issue might be received by the market.They said discussions were in the nature of regular contacts which many governments maintain with the market to gauge their fund-raising options, rather than preparatory talks for an issue.Qatar issued a $9 billion bond in June last year with maturities of five, 10 and 30 years. The bonds were yielding 2.9 percent, 3.5 percent and 4.4 percent respectively on Monday, Thomson Reuters data showed.But the country<72>s access to the international bond market has been complicated by the decision of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt to cut diplomatic and transport ties with Qatar in June this year. The four states accused Doha of supporting terrorism, which Doha denies.<2E>Logic would dictate that the government would have to pay some premium<75> for the current political uncertainty, said a debt capital markets banker at a Qatari bank.<2E>The investor base that they had in 2016 would not be the same - some accounts would not be there for sure, but global demand for Middle East is high,<2C> he added.Qatar<61>s potential deal would follow Saudi Arabia<69>s $12.5 billion bond in September and Abu Dhabi<62>s $10 billion bond earlier this month. Both the deals were heavily oversubscribed, receiving a combined demand of around $70 billion.Given the high level of global demand, Qatar might only pay a premium of as much as 10 basis points over its last issue, a banker at an international bank said.Qatar<61>s international reserves and foreign currency liquidity fell sharply after the sanctions were imposed, but partially rebounded in August, official data showed last week.Bankers said this may have been the result of a liquidity injection into the reserves by Qatar<61>s sovereign wealth fund, which has enough money to support the balance of payments for years. (Additional reporting by Tom Arnold in Dubai and Sudip Roy in London; Editing by Andrew Torchia/Jeremy Gaunt) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/qatar-bond/qatar-discussing-idea-of-dollar-bond-with-market-no-decision-idINL8N1MK1ED'|'2017-10-09T07:27:00.000+03:00'
'a9e11cafca3c2f968cda4f4317f8681b0612abf7'|'Belgium''s Bpost to buy U.S. e-commerce firm Radial for $820 million'|'October 9, 2017 / 6:19 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Belgium''s Bpost to buy U.S. e-commerce firm Radial for $820 million Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BRUSSELS, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Bpost, Belgium<75>s national postal deliverer, said on Monday it has agreed to buy Radial, the U.S.-based distribution centre operator, for $820 million in cash and debt. The move is intended to give Bpost a major boost in its speed and reach in delivering packages ordered online, the major growth area in the postal industry. Radial, owned by Sterling Partners, was created by merging eBay<61>s former operations services division with U.S. firm Innotrac in 2016. Bpost said Radial expects revenue of around $1 billion in 2017 and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of at least $65 million. Reporting by Toby Sterling; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/radial-commerce-ma-bpost/belgiums-bpost-to-buy-u-s-e-commerce-firm-radial-for-820-million-idUSL8N1MK0O7'|'2017-10-09T09:19:00.000+03:00'
'ce95b3dce8f5c6c6e9eedc40af29b655100cebc8'|'Behind bars, Samsung scion Lee sees his wealth top $2 billion'|'October 13, 2017 / 8:02 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago Behind bars, Samsung scion Lee sees his wealth top $2 billion Reuters Staff 3 Min Read Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman, Jay Y. Lee, arrives at a court in Seoul, South Korea, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji SEOUL (Reuters) - Jay Y. Lee, the billionaire heir to South Korea<65>s Samsung Group, should find some comfort that its crown jewel Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has reported record profit every quarter since he was jailed in February, making him even richer. Detained over charges that he bribed former president Park Geun-hye, Lee has since missed the launch of two new flagship phones and three record-breaking quarterly earnings, including July-September earnings guidance on Friday. He will also be briefed that his top lieutenant and chief executive of Samsung Electronics, Kwon Oh-hyun, has decided to step down to make way for a new leader. Kwon, who was expected to take a bigger role following Lee<65>s arrest and the departures of other key executives in the wake of the bribery scandal, made the surprise announcement on Friday when Samsung also forecast record quarterly profit on the back of the memory chip business. While Lee is unable to do much to minimise a leadership vacuum at one of the world<6C>s biggest technology firms, the 49-year-old Samsung scion will get some solace that Samsung is chugging along without him. He may also like to know his wealth, in terms of his stake in Samsung Electronics, has increased by at least 45 percent since his arrest. His Samsung Electronics stake, albeit below one percent, is now worth 2.3 trillion won ($2.0 billion/1.50 billion pounds). Lee also received at least 11.8 billion won ($10.5 million) in dividends from Samsung Electronics during his detention, and 837 million won in pay during the first half of 2017. He owns stakes in other Samsung affiliates. He will miss another record earnings announcement expected in the fourth quarter as he is expected to stay in prison at least until February, when the appellate court hearing his case is likely to try to rule on the bribery suit. While some investors worry about a prolonged leadership vacuum, and Kwon warned that Samsung was struggling to find new growth engines, others seem more sanguine. <20>I think Samsung has a firm system to run the company even in the absence of its head, as we saw from the case of both Lee Kun-hee and (his son) Jay Y. Lee,<2C> said a fund manager who owns Samsung shares, referring to the Samsung Group patriarch who was incapacitated in 2014 following a heart attack. <20>Someone will replace him somehow. It<49>s just like Apple doing fine even after Steve Jobs,<2C> he said, declining to be named as he was not authorised to talk to the media. Reporting by Joyce Lee; Additional reporting by Dahee Kim; Editing by Stephen Coates 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-samsung-elec-results-lee/behind-bars-samsung-scion-lee-sees-his-wealth-top-2-billion-idUKKBN1CI0TU'|'2017-10-13T11:01:00.000+03:00'
'6943ee23cf5fb9dd406d624b202b53b2ed2d5e4f'|'Exclusive - Total & Erg aim to wrap up Italian gas station sale as electric car era approaches'|'October 11, 2017 / 2:01 PM / Updated 43 minutes ago Exclusive - Total & Erg aim to wrap up Italian gas station sale as electric car era approaches Stephen Jewkes , Giancarlo Navach 4 Min Read Workers fixing the logo for oil giant Total is seen at a petrol station in Cairo, Egypt, October 13, 2016. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh MILAN (Reuters) - French oil company Total ( TOTF.PA ) and energy group Erg ( ERG.MI ) are in exclusive talks to try and sell their Italian petrol station network, sources said, after some investors grew jittery over the move to electric cars. Italian refiner API Anonima Petroli, which already owns 2,600 stations of its own, is in exclusive talks to buy the pump network to create efficiencies of scale, three sources said on Wednesday. <20>The aim is to reach a general agreement in coming weeks and wrap the deal up by the year end,<2C> one of the sources said, but added no final decision had been taken yet. Total and Erg jointly control TotalErg which operates close to 2,600 service stations in Italy with a market share of around 11 percent. HARD SELL Last year they appointed HSBC and Rothschild to sell the business which sources have said could be worth more than 600 million euros (537.31 million pounds). The deal originally drew interest from private equity and industry players but people close to the matter said many had opted not to press ahead. One of the sources said investors were concerned that the rise of electric cars might mean traditional pump stations could go into decline. The number of electric vehicles on roads is forecast to grow significantly in the coming decades, with an impact on petrol consumption and pump network business models. Charging points are becoming more common in workplaces, shopping centres and public venues. In Italy, the country<72>s biggest utility Enel has already earmarked around 300 million euros to install some 12,000 recharging columns to meet demand. Some of those columns will be installed in existing pump stations. <20>TotalErg has been trying to sell its network for a long time but it<69>s a hard sell because any buyer will have to spend to modernise,<2C> a banking source said on Wednesday. BANK BACKING? Privately-owned API had been negotiating with private equity groups to back its bid, sources previously said. But with interest waning, two sources said it had now turned to Italian banks UniCredit ( CRDI.MI ) and UBI ( UBI.MI ) to help it fund the deal. The TotalErg joint venture also holds a quarter of Italian refinery Sarpom, controlled by ExxonMobil<69>s ( XOM.N ) Esso unit, which sources previously said was a stumbling block to the deal. One of the sources on Wednesday said the talks with API excluded the Sarpom stake by way of a sweetener. A deal with API would create Italy<6C>s biggest service station operator, ahead of Eni and Kuwait Petroleum International which last year bought a network from Royal Dutch Shell ( RDSa.L ). API and UniCredit declined to comment while Erg and UBI were not immediately available for a comment. A spokesperson for Total said the company could not comment because the process was ongoing. Reporting by Stephen Jewkes and Giancarlo Navach; additional reporting by Julia Payne, editing by David Evans and Elaine Hardcastle 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-totalerg-m-a-exclusive/total-erg-in-talks-with-api-on-italy-pump-stations-sources-idUKKBN1CG1V5'|'2017-10-11T21:14:00.000+03:00'
'7fb4075c48cca6541c3edc2a7d348762eb86a5a1'|'Japan Aug core machinery orders rise in signs of pick-up in capex'|'October 11, 2017 / 1:30 AM / in a minute Japan August core machinery orders rise in signs of pick-up in capex Tetsushi Kajimoto 4 Min Read Heavy machineries are seen next to a subway train at a construction site in Tokyo, Japan, March 13, 2016. REUTERS/Yuya Shino TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s core machinery orders rose for a second straight month in August, handily beating market expectations, signaling a pickup in capital expenditure that should encourage Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ahead of a general election this month. The premier hopes to convince voters in the Oct.22 elections that his <20>Abenomics<63> recipe of aggressive monetary stimulus, fiscal spending and reform plans has improved the economy enough to stoke a sustainable recovery. Cabinet Office data showed on Wednesday that core orders, a highly volatile data series regarded as an indicator of capital spending in the coming six to nine months, rose 3.4 percent on-month in August. That beat the median estimate of a 1.1 percent increase seen in a Reuters poll of economists, following an 8.0 percent gain in July. The value of core orders, which exclude those of ships and utilities<65> electrical power equipment, stood at 882.4 billion yen ($7.86 billion), the highest since July 2016. <20>There are uncertainties such as the outlook for U.S.   trade policy, North Korea, and Japan<61>s political risks, but conditions surrounding capital spending remain basically favorable,<2C> said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute.<2E>Capital expenditure will perform well in the coming one to two years.<2E> Analysts expect capital expenditure to pick up gradually, backed by refurbishing demand, infrastructure investment for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, and spending on labor-saving equipment, as well as spending encouraged by low borrowing costs enabled by the Bank of Japan<61>s negative interest rate policy. <20>The current level of orders remains consistent with a further increase in capital spending last quarter,<2C> Marcel Thieliant, senior Japan economist at Capital Economics noted in a report. <20>The continued recovery in capital goods shipments excluding transport equipment also suggests that the expansion in investment spending remains intact.<2E> Orders from manufacturers jumped 16.1 percent month-on-month in August, driven by general-purpose production machinery such as machine tools, while service-sector orders grew 3.1 percent, led by orders for boilers and turbines. The Cabinet Office raised its assessment of machinery orders from stalling to showing <20>signs of pick-up<75>. Overseas orders, which are not counted as core orders, grew 11.5 percent in August, due to some big-ticket orders including power generators and aircraft. The BOJ<4F>s closely-watched quarterly tankan survey showed last week that big firms plan to increase capital spending by 7.7 percent in the current fiscal year ending in March 2018, underscoring the view business expenditure is on a firm footing. A sustained recovery in business expenditure should support the central bank<6E>s view that a virtuous circle of private sector-led growth will take hold in the economy. Still, wage growth and inflation remain stubbornly low despite recent signs of rebounding private consumption, keeping the BOJ under pressure to maintain its massive monetary stimulus. Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Eric Meijer 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-orders/japan-august-core-machinery-orders-rise-in-signs-of-pick-up-in-capex-idUKKBN1CG045'|'2017-10-11T04:25:00.000+03:00'
'7a3e7ab78f2f51c283df9f7e37a40231a721c829'|'Hot chips to make Samsung''s third-quarter profit sizzle'|' 05 PM / Updated 17 minutes ago Hot chips to make Samsung''s third-quarter profit sizzle Joyce Lee 3 Min Read The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at its office building in Seoul, South Korea, August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is expected to forecast a record third-quarter profit on Friday thanks to the strong market for memory chips, and as mobile earnings bounce back from last year<61>s costly withdrawal of the Note 7. The failure of the fire-prone Note 7 smartphone is now a distant memory for the South Korean technology giant, which is near its highest ever market valuation after a nearly 50 percent surge in its share price so far this year. The world<6C>s biggest maker of memory chips and mobile phones has been the chief beneficiary of the sizzling semiconductor market, as mobile devices and servers demand ever greater processing power. Brisk sales of the latest Galaxy Note 8 smartphone, launched in mid-September, also are likely to further boost its performance, analysts said. <20>Samsung<6E>s valuation is still comparatively lower than global competitors,<2C> said Doh Hyun-woo, analyst at Mirae Asset Daewoo Securities. <20>Fourth-quarter earnings will improve across the board and keep improving in 2018.<2E> Samsung<6E>s July-September operating profit is expected to rise to 14.3 trillion won ($12.51 billion), according to a Thomson Reuters survey of 19 analysts. That is nearly three times the 5.2 trillion won posted a year earlier and slightly better than the previous quarter<65>s 14.1 trillion won. The Apple Inc rival will issue its earnings guidance early on Friday. Strong global demand for DRAM chips will continue to outpace supply in 2018, while demand for NAND flash chips exceeded supply for six straight quarters as of last month, DRAMeXchange, a division of data provider TrendForce, said. Samsung<6E>s mobile division is seen posting operating profit of about 3 trillion won, compared to just 100 billion won in the third quarter of 2016. Pre-orders for the Note 8 hit the highest-ever for the Note series. Lower liquid-crystal display (LCD) panel prices as well as one-off costs are expected to weigh on Samsung<6E>s display business during the third quarter, analysts said. However, the display business could improve in the fourth quarter on the back of sales of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels for new Apple smartphones. Samsung will only provide estimates for July-September revenue and operating profit on Friday, and will disclose detailed results in late October. ($1 = 1,142.7700 won) Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Stephen Coates 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-results-preview/hot-chips-to-make-samsungs-third-quarter-profit-sizzle-idUKKBN1CF357'|'2017-10-11T02:02:00.000+03:00'
'a5802915f7c4dfb0f85a659243c93e9963c402e3'|'Subsea 7 shares rise on report of Baker Hughes talks'|'OSLO (Reuters) - Shares in oilfield services firm Subsea 7 ( SUBC.OL ) rose on Wednesday on an unconfirmed report it had been in talks with Baker Hughes ( BHGE.N ) about a possible takeover, but that the talks had now ended.A Wall Street Journal report, which Quote: d anonymous sources, said the discussions broke down over the price but could be revived.Shares in Subsea 7 were up 6.6 percent at 1254 GMT on the report. They had been up 1.9 percent when the Oslo stock exchange imposed a matching halt at 1117 GMT.Earlier the stock had been trading down following a note by Goldman Sachs cutting its rating on the stock.<2E>Subsea 7 ... is aware of today<61>s press speculation and subsequent share price movement. The Company has a policy not to comment on speculation or rumors,<2C> it said in a statement.The chairman of Subsea 7 and its top owner with 21.3 percent of the shares, Kristian Siem, told Reuters the firm would always comply with its duty to inform the market if there are material changes to the company.<2E>As a general comment, I can say that everybody in this industry talks and that may lead to rumors. But that does not mean the rumors are correct,<2C> he said.Subsea 7 CEO Jean Cahuzac declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.Reporting by Gwladys Fouche; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-subsea7-m-a-baker-hughes-ge/subsea-7-shares-rise-on-report-of-baker-hughes-talks-idINKBN1CG1SJ'|'2017-10-11T11:38:00.000+03:00'
'a6319a95e625074d66c152b9e2bf455fdc543c24'|'In Brexit poker, clock narrows transition options'|'October 11, 2017 / 7:15 PM / in an hour In Brexit poker, clock narrows transition options Alastair Macdonald , Gabriela Baczynska , Jan Strupczewski 5 Min Read An EU flag is waved near the Houses of Parliament in central London, Britain September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Nerves are fraying in the Brexit talks, negotiators are trying to work out if the other side is bluffing about walking away, and a ticking clock is fast narrowing British options come March 2019. Philip Hammond, Britain<69>s Chancellor, echoed recent EU assertions when he said that a transition period to some new relationship was a <20>wasting asset<65>, the value of which would <20>diminish significantly<6C> for both sides if its form remains unclear to businesses much after the start of the new year. As negotiators in Brussels make little progress before Prime Minister Theresa May meets EU leaders next week, a warning about a breakdown in talks from a minister seen strongly to favour a business-friendly <20>bespoke<6B> transition out of the EU came a day after the EU summit chair spoke of a similar new year deadline. Donald Tusk said on Tuesday that if London fails to settle divorce terms by December, and so unlock talks on the transition and future trade pact, then the EU would reconsider its objectives. That reflects mounting doubts across Europe that any legal exit deal can be struck. The longer the stand-off goes on, EU negotiators said, the more Britain<69>s choice come March 30, 2019 will be between the <20>hard Brexit<69> by which it will simply quit all EU systems and be treated like, say, Australia, and a virtual status quo, staying in most EU systems, without voting rights, rather like Norway. <20>The closer we get, the less there is to discuss about a transition and the more it just goes to a standstill transition, with Britain still in everything, but without a vote,<2C> one said. <20>Pretty soon,<2C> said another, <20>It will be Norway or nothing.<2E> While all such commentary reflects the sides<65> jockeying for negotiating advantage, the evidence this week is that they remain far apart and are getting tetchy. May and the EU traded jabs over whose court <20>the ball<6C> is in after the prime minister made concessions in a speech at Florence on Sept. 22. Behind closed doors, British negotiators voiced outraged surprise that her offer was seen as insufficient to launch talks on the future relationship. <20>It<49>s hard to say it was genuine,<2C> one EU official said of the show of emotion. <20>It<49>s a form of pressure.<2E> BUSINESS WORRIES Businesses are sounding the alarm. A German industry federation warned members to start preparing for a <20>very hard Brexit<69>. A senior representative of London<6F>s financial services industry told a Brussels audience this week that a legal transition agreement must be reached by the end of this year. <20>Most importantly, it must reflect the status quo,<2C> said Catherine McGuinness of the City of London Corporation. <20>There is no feasibility in asking firms to transition to a transition. If uncertainty continues, businesses will vote with their feet.<2E> Hammond ruled out budgeting -- yet -- for more customs and border facilities, and few on the continent believe threats of a walkout they say would hurt Britain more than them. So leaders will watch May<61>s struggle to unite her government and sit tight. One senior EU diplomat said British counterparts were in such a weak position that <20>sometimes I feel sorry them<65>. For many in Brussels, that makes a virtual status quo after Brexit the increasingly likely outcome: <20>In March 2019, Britain will formally leave,<2C> said another EU official. <20>But de facto most of the existing arrangements will remain ... They will have their celebration of <20>independence<63> and then we will sit down to talking business again.<2E> May insists a two-year transition period is enough to agree a new free trade pact, but many question that. John Bruton, the former prime minister of Ireland, has recommended an alternative to either no deal at all or a virt
'dc1f32d6538aa15ed36883fb7e7cfbd2fec1f93a'|'CEE MARKETS-Strong auction helps Hungarian assets buck regional currency fall'|'* Currencies mostly ease on dollar rebound * Hungarian bond auction draws strong demand, forint firms * Budapest stocks hit record high (Recasts, with currencies fall, Hungarian bond auction, new comments) By Sandor Peto and Marcin Goclowski BUDAPEST/WARSAW, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Central European currencies mostly eased on Thursday as the dollar rebounded in global markets, but gains in some government bonds and stocks and a robust Hungarian bond auction suggested demand for emerging market assets remains solid. The zloty and the leu eased 0.2 percent against the euro by 1313 GMT. Polish data confirmed a rise in annual inflation to 2.2 percent in September, although that failed to prevent a retreat in the zloty. Figures two weeks ago had led to forward rate agreements pricing in a Polish interest rate hike within 12 months, but most analysts expect a later rise. Polish and Hungarian government bond yields still mostly fell by a few basis points. Hungary sold bonds worth 63.6 billion forints at two auctions, 23.6 billion forints more than the planned amount and for lower costs than those suggested by secondary market yields. Yields rose mildly after the auction, "but the positive sentiment persists," one Budapest-based trader said. Budapest''s stock index gained half a percent to reach record highs, while the forint bucked the regional trend of weakening. It traded on the firmer side of 310 against the euro, off the five-month highs it reached at 312.58 after the central bank cut its overnight deposit rate and announced liquidity-boosting measures last month. "The central bank has failed to keep it weaker than 310, and there are expectations that it will do something again, like cutting the overnight rate further," the trader said. The leu, meanwhile, touched a two-week low against the euro, and Romanian government bond yields rose by 2-3 basis points. The leu has been the region''s worst-performing unit against the euro this year and has shed more than 1 percent. Last week a liquidity squeeze which also lifted interbank leu interest rates helped the currency. But this week it has been retreating from a two-month high due to worries over a government reshuffle and a bigger than expected rise in Romanian inflation in September. Prime Minister Mihai Tudose said corruption allegations over three ministers may pave the way for a proposed cabinet reshuffle, which could create tension with the head of the ruling Social Democrat party. The party''s executive meets after markets close on Thursday to decide whether to endorse the reshuffle proposal. CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1513 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.890 25.879 -0.04% 4.31% 0 5 Hungary 308.95 309.33 +0.12 -0.04% forint 00 50 % Polish zloty 4.2741 4.2666 -0.18% 3.04% Romanian leu 4.5925 4.5852 -0.16% -1.25% Croatian 7.5077 7.5105 +0.04 0.63% kuna % Serbian 119.31 119.46 +0.13 3.39% dinar 00 00 % Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1055.6 1054.3 +0.12 +14.5 4 7 % 4% Budapest 38688. 38453. +0.61 +20.8 60 12 % 9% Warsaw 2537.1 2551.7 -0.57% +30.2 6 8 5% Bucharest 8001.6 8004.8 -0.04% +12.9 0 4 4% Ljubljana 813.57 814.90 -0.16% +13.3 8% Zagreb 1866.4 1849.3 +0.92 -6.44% 2 8 % Belgrade 727.79 726.96 +0.11 +1.45 % % Sofia 668.34 672.80 -0.66% +13.9 7% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs change Bund in Czech spread Republic 2-year 0.057 0 +075b +0bps ps 5-year 0.486 0.004 +076b +2bps ps 10-year 1.357 -0.007 +091b +1bps ps Poland 2-year 1.728 0.004 +242b +1bps ps 5-year 2.703 -0.017 +298b +0bps ps 10-year 3.381 -0.034 +293b -2bps ps FORWARD RATE AGREEMENT 3x6 6x9 9x12 3M interb ank Czech Rep <PR 0.75 0.89 1 0 IBOR=> Hungary <BU 0.07 0.1 0.15 0.03 BOR=> Poland <WI 1.764 1.808 1.876 1.73 BOR=> Note: FRA are for ask Quote: s prices'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/ar
'f5a0fdb3f8146bad949a5e79453e58d1be026b95'|'Lufthansa spreads wings by snapping up parts of failed Air Berlin'|'German carrier Air Berlin aircrafts are pictured at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt/Files FRANKFURT/BERLIN (Reuters) - Lufthansa reinforced its position as Germany<6E>s largest airline on Thursday by signing a 210 million euro ($249 million)deal to buy large parts of insolvent Air Berlin.Lufthansa plans to use the Air Berlin assets to quickly expand its Eurowings budget business. News of the deal pushed Lufthansa shares up more than 3 percent to their highest level in nearly 17 years.Air Berlin, which has struggled to turn a profit over the last decade, filed for insolvency on Aug. 15, and a government loan has kept its planes aloft while its administrator negotiated with prospective buyers for parts of the business.Lufthansa has agreed to acquire Air Berlin<69>s Austrian leisure travel airline Niki, its LG Walter regional airline and 20 additional aircraft, Air Berlin said in a statement.<2E>This contract provides new opportunities for jobs for a large part of our workforce. But we can only really breathe again when the EU Commission approves the deal,<2C> Air Berlin Chief Executive Thomas Winkelmann said.Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said earlier he expected the European Union to approve the transaction by the end of 2017.Talks to sell some of Air Berlin<69>s remaining assets to Britain<69>s easyJet and other bidders are continuing, Air Berlin said, without providing details.EasyJet, which has a base at Berlin<69>s Schoenefeld airport, has been discussing acquiring 27 to 30 planes. Air Berlin previously said others, such as Thomas Cook<6F>s Condor, could pick up some parts of the business.EasyJet declined to comment on the progress of talks on Thursday.Planes of the Lufthansa airline stand on the tarmac in Frankfurt airport, Germany, March 17, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/Files BIG INVESTMENTS Lufthansa CEO Spohr told a German paper earlier that his airline would be investing around 1.5 billion euros in total as a result of the Air Berlin deal.That sum includes investment in new planes, for which the board freed up 1 billion euros of funds last month, the purchase price and the costs of taking on new staff.Air Berlin, Germany<6E>s second largest carrier, will cease operating flights this month, capping a turbulent summer for European carriers.Italy<6C>s national airline Alitalia is in administration and seeking investors too, British leisure airline Monarch collapsed at the start of this month.Lufthansa<73>s Spohr said on Thursday while he was not interested in the Italian carrier in its current shape he would be interested in talks to create a new Alitalia.Shares in Lufthansa were up 3.3 percent at 25.38 euros, the top gainer in Germany<6E>s DAX market index by 1340 GMT.Analysts at Bernstein Research raised their rating on Lufthansa<73>s shares to <20>outperform<72> from <20>market-perform<72>, saying they expected a deal with Air Berlin to add around 70 to 90 million euros to annual operating profits at Lufthansa<73>s budget unit Eurowings in the medium term.HSBC analysts lifted their target share price to 29 euros from 25 euros, citing the imminent agreement with Air Berlin, a new multi-year labour deal with pilots announced this week and a positive trading performance this year.($1 = 0.8442 euros)Additional reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Greg Mahlich and Keith Weir'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/air-berlin-lufthansa/lufthansa-spreads-wings-by-snapping-up-parts-of-failed-air-berlin-idINKBN1CH216'|'2017-10-12T16:54:00.000+03:00'
'28405559ec776a58428e1f4bb2ea5b866b6e9e80'|'IMF says Australia has one of the fastest rising income inequality rates'|'Australia is among countries with the highest growth in income inequality in the world over the past 30 years, according to the International Monetary Fund.Vitor Gaspar, the IMF<4D>s director of fiscal affairs, has told an audience at the launch of the IMF<4D>s latest Fiscal Monitor that Australia<69>s income inequality growth has been similar to the US, South Africa, India, China, Spain and the UK since the 1980s.IMF tackles stalled wages growth with unusually radical thinking - Greg Jericho Read moreLast month the treasurer, Scott Morrison , said that income inequality was not getting worse in Australia.Morrison told the Business Council of Australia in late September that Treasury and the Reserve Bank had found, in specific analysis of current wage fundamentals, that Australian wages were growing slowly across most industries in the economy, and most regions of the country, so the slow growth was evenly shared.However, he would not release the Treasury analysis.Graph showing inequality by country by the IMF. Illustration: IMFGaspar said IMF staff had used the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development<6E>s income distribution database, Eurostat, and the World Bank<6E>s Povcalnet data, among other sources, to calculate that income inequality had increased in nearly half of the world<6C>s countries in the past three decades, and Australia had experienced a <20>large increase<73> in that time.<2E>Most people around the world live in countries where inequality has increased,<2C> he said.The IMF<4D>s latest Fiscal Monitor, released overnight , is dedicated to the global growth in income inequality. It warns that while some inequality is inevitable in a market-based economic system as a result of <20>differences in talent, effort, and luck<63>, excessive inequality could <20>erode social cohesion, lead to political polarisation, and ultimately lower economic growth<74>.It also warns that income inequality tends to be <20>highly correlated<65> with wealth inequality, inequality of opportunity, and gender inequality.In July this year, when dismissing the Labor party<74>s plan to crackdown on trusts and other forms of tax minimisation , Morrison claimed that income inequality was actually getting better in Australia.<2E>The latest census showed on the global measure of inequality, which is the Gini coefficient , that is the accepted global measure of income inequality around the world and that figure shows it hasn<73>t got worse, it has actually got better,<2C> he said.He was technically right <20> if you only consider the last few years.The Gini index is the most widely used measure of inequality. It looks at the distribution of a nation<6F>s income or wealth, where 0 represents complete equality and 100 total inequality.The 2016 census showed the Gini coefficient for equivalised disposable household income in Australia fell from 0.333 in 2013-14, to 0.323 in 2015-16 .Morrison did not mention that the Gini coefficient had been even lower in 2005-06, at 0.314.Earlier this year, the OECD economic survey of Australia in April found <20>inclusiveness has been eroded<65> in the past two decades.<2E>The Gini coefficient has been drifting up and households in upper-income brackets have benefited disproportionally from Australia<69>s long period of economic growth,<2C> the report said.Income inequality in Australia: see how much the 1% earn in your area Read more<72>Real incomes for the top quintile of households grew by more than 40% between 2004 and 2014, while those for the lowest quintile only grew by about 25%.<2E>In July the Reserve Bank governor, Philip Lowe, when asked about his views on inequality at a charity lunch in Sydney, said it had grown <20>quite a lot<6F> in the 1980s and 1990s and had risen <20>a little bit<69> recently , but it was important to make a distinction between income and wealth inequality.<2E>Wealth inequality has become more pronounced particularly in the last five or six years because there<72>s been big gains in asset prices,<2C> Lowe said. <20>So the people who own assets, which ar
'2cf21d572b3fb2787dcb3a67b3ca30771f3e7d24'|'BASF to buy seeds, herbicide businesses from Bayer for $7 billion'|'FILE PHOTO: A truck drives past a warehouse of German chemical company BASF in Ludwigshafen, April 23, 2015. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo FRANKFURT (Reuters) - BASF has agreed to buy significant parts of Bayer<65>s seed and herbicide businesses for 5.9 billion euros ($7 billion) in cash, the two companies said on Friday.BASF, the world<6C>s third-largest maker of crop chemicals, has so far avoided seed assets and instead pursued research into plant characteristics such as drought tolerance, which it sells or licenses out to seed breeders.But Bayer<65>s $66 billion deal to buy Monsanto has created opportunities for rivals to snatch up assets it must sell to satisfy competition authorities.<2E>With this investment, we are seizing the opportunity to acquire highly attractive assets in key row crops and markets,<2C> BASF Chief Executive Kurt Bock said in a statement.<2E>It will be a strategic complement to BASF<53>s well-established and successful crop protection business as well as to our own activities in biotechnology,<2C> he said.The sale of the LibertyLink-branded seeds and Liberty herbicide businesses, which generated around 1.3 billion euros of sales in 2016, is a key part of the assets Bayer must sell.It said it would use the proceeds of the sale to partially refinance the planned acquisition of Monsanto, which it still hopes will close in early 2018.Bayer said it would provide an update on expected synergies from the acquisition when the deal closed, at the latest.As part of the asset sale to BASF, which is conditional upon the Monsanto acquisition going through, more than 1,800 staff located primarily in the United States, Germany, Brazil, Canada and Belgium will transfer to BASF.As part of the agreement, BASF has committed to maintaining all permanent positions, under similar conditions, for at least three years after the deal closes, Bayer said.BASF will also acquire Bayer<65>s manufacturing sites for glufosinate-ammonium production and formulation in Germany, the United States, and Canada, seed breeding facilities in the Americas and Europe as well as trait research facilities in the United States and Europe.Shares in Bayer rose 0.7 percent to the top of Germany<6E>s blue-chip DAX index in pre-market trade at brokerage Lang & Schwarz. BASF fell 0.9 percent to the bottom of the DAX.Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Stephen Coates and Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-basf-seeds-bayer/basf-to-buy-seeds-herbicide-businesses-from-bayer-for-7-billion-idINKBN1CI0HF'|'2017-10-13T03:44:00.000+03:00'
'9205afa48b617467b76d9ccfaaa5a16d77446566'|'IAG CEO sees ''significant'' competition issues with Lufthansa/Air Berlin deal'|'October 13, 2017 / 10:09 AM / a few seconds ago IAG CEO sees ''significant'' competition issues with Lufthansa/Air Berlin deal Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A Lufthansa airliner taxis next to the Air Berlin aircraft at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke LONDON (Reuters) - British Airways parent IAG ( ICAG.L ) sees significant competition issues with a deal for Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) to buy large parts of Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ), its chief executive said on Friday. <20>We did make a bid for Air Berlin, but our view was that Lufthansa was always going to get it,<2C> IAG CEO Willie Walsh said on the sidelines of the CAPA global summit in London. <20>We will watch carefully because we think there are significant competition issues,<2C> he said, also saying it was unclear to him what was happening with easyJet ( EZJ.L ), which is also in talks for Air Berlin assets, but has not yet agreed a deal. Reporting by Victoria Bryan and Alistair Smout; Editing by Maria Sheahan 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-lufthansa-iag/iag-ceo-sees-significant-competition-issues-with-lufthansa-air-berlin-deal-idUKKBN1CI16B'|'2017-10-13T13:04:00.000+03:00'
'178d9252e66c11e386dbdca0cd1b52fdcf7f70ac'|'Citigroup profit rises on asset sale benefit, cost cuts'|'October 12, 2017 / 12:10 PM / in 8 minutes Costs help Citi beat Wall Street view; consumer debts rise David Henry , Sweta Singh 5 Min Read (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc<6E>s ( C.N ) quarterly earnings beat Wall Street expectations on Thursday as cost-cutting, a unit sale and a gain in investment bank fees compensated for weak bond trading and a jump in provisions for consumer bad debts. Chief Executive Michael Corbat has pledged to grow profits from consumer lending to stock trading, and return tens of billions of dollars to shareholders after finally putting the United States<65> fourth-largest bank on a stable path following the 2007-09 financial crisis. But hopes President Donald Trump would stimulate trading activity and greater economic demand through tax reforms and a loosening in financial regulations have failed to materialize. <20>We all would anticipate greater loan growth if there was a bit more clarity as far as you know when or if tax reform was going to pass,<2C> Chief Financial Officer John Gersprach told reporters. Citigroup reported a 7.6 percent increase in net income in the third quarter. Earnings per share rose about 15 percent to $1.42, bolstered by the bank<6E>s move to reduce its shares outstanding by 7 percent. Analysts had, on average, estimated earnings per share of $1.32, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Expenses dropped 2 percent. Total revenue, meanwhile, rose about 2 percent to $18.17 billion, topping expectations of $17.90 billion helped in part by an increase in fees earned on share sales at Citi<74>s investment bank and a jump in equity trading. Overall, however, trading dropped 11 percent, dragged under by Citi<74>s large fixed income division. Wall Street banks have seen major declines in bond trading activity, which was boosted last year on global macroeconomic uncertainty, especially around Brexit and the U.S. presidential election. Overall, Citi<74>s trading performance was still better than expected and bested rival JPMorgan which saw a 27 percent slide in bond trading compared with the 16 percent drop at Citi. Last month, Gersprach warned that overall trading revenue would fall by 15 percent, worse than the 11 percent drop that materialized. He said, in the end, September was better than anticipated. FILE PHOTO: A view of the exterior of the Citibank Corporate headquarters in the Manhattan borough of New York City, May 20, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo Citi<74>s shares were down 2 percent in late morning trade, the worst performer among the major U.S. banks. Citigroup<75>s shares have had a strong run-up this year, climbing 26 percent partly due to its share buyback plan. U.S. BRANDED CARDS Citi<74>s global consumer banking business had a mixed quarter as growth in Asia and Latin America was overshadowed by a drop in the United States. Total consumer net profit fell 6 percent with income in its core North American market down 16 percent as provisions for bad debts rose. FILE PHOTO -- Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat (C) chats with Thomson Reuters CEO Jim Smith and his wife Pam Kushmerick at the Thomson Reuters reception prior to the White House Correspondents'' Association Gala in Washington, DC, U.S. on April 27, 2013. REUTERS/Mike Theiler/File Photo Adding to increasing concerns that more consumers may be getting stretched on credit card bills, Citigroup said its company wide net credit losses were up 17 percent from a year earlier and that it had added $194 million to its loan loss reserves. Corbat told analysts the uptick in provisions were a normal part of the credit cycle and did not point to evidence of consumers under stress. Citigroup this year has been ratcheting up its expectations for soured loans for its two North American credit card businesses, Citi-branded cards and cards issued for stores. The store cards business has been grappling with less successful collection efforts after accounts become delinquent. The branded cards business has seen loss rates rise as some customers who the bank has ad
'4e56d1fb40d95005c5d111f0e3994893d5ad9b27'|'Kroger says exploring sale of convenience stores business'|'October 11, 2017 / 1:28 PM / in 20 minutes Kroger exploring sale of convenience stores, shares rise Lisa Baertlein , Sruthi Ramakrishnan 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: An isle of a Ralphs grocery store, which is owned by Kroger Co, is pictured ahead of company results in Altadena, California U.S., December 1, 2016. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni (Reuters) - Kroger Co ( KR.N ) said on Wednesday it is exploring the sale of its nearly 800 convenience stores as the No. 1 U.S. supermarket operator strengthens its Web business in a market share war that has intensified after Amazon.com Inc<6E>s ( AMZN.O ) purchase of Whole Foods. Kroger shares jumped as much as 7.3 percent. Kroger has 784 KwikShop, Tom Thumb and QuickStop convenience stores in 18 states. Kroger said that the business generates $4 billion in annual sales. The company, with nearly 2,800 U.S. supermarkets, has been lowering prices and exploring new ways to sell food as it battles rivals such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc ( WMT.N ), discounters Lidl and Aldi, and the newly merged Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ) and Whole Foods Market. "This is the result of a review of assets that are potentially of more value outside of the company than as part of Kroger," the company said in a statement ahead of its investor meeting in New York. ( bit.ly/2g173qv ) Kroger hired Goldman Sachs to assist with the strategic review. Kroger reiterated its 2017 net earnings forecast of $1.74 to $1.79 per diluted share. It also said it expects 2018 identical supermarket sales to be stronger than in 2017, when it expects adjusted earnings per share of $2.00 to $2.05. Cincinnati, Ohio-based Kroger rattled investors in September when it said it would stop providing long-term growth forecasts. It said on Wednesday <20>it doesn<73>t see anything in the environment that would cause 2018 earnings per diluted share to be below $1.80.<2E> Kroger shares, which hit a 2017 high of $36.44 before the Amazon-Whole Foods announcement in June, have since tumbled roughly 40 percent. Investors are worried the online retail behemoth<74>s increased interest in grocery sales could upend the business as it did with books and electronics. Kroger, for years a leader in using customer data to tailor store offerings and advertising, is responding by testing delivery via Uber, courier service Shyp and its own drivers at more than 150 stores. It is investing in digital sales through ClickList, an online ordering and curbside pickup service, that is expected to be in more than 1,000 stores by the end of the year. And it is selling Prep+Pared meal kits at more than 50 stores and tapping customer data to generate personalized recipe suggestions on Kroger.com. The stock was up 2.5 percent to $21.04 in morning trade. (This story officially corrects convenience store sales to $4 billion from $1.4 billion in paragraph 3) Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru and Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Savio D''Souza and Jeffrey Benkoe 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-kroger-investors/kroger-says-exploring-sale-of-convenience-stores-business-idINKBN1CG1R9'|'2017-10-11T11:28:00.000+03:00'
'28f91f1238603d7a9bcd4f3f281fe207f2e0424f'|'Union presses post-bankruptcy Caesars on benefits, worker protections'|'CHICAGO, Oct 11 (Reuters) - A union representing casino workers on Wednesday asked Caesars Entertainment Corp<72>s new board of directors to consider safety, protections against discrimination and other concerns during contract negotiations set to kick off next year.Caesars<72> main operating unit last week exited a three-year, $18 billion bankruptcy. The company owns the Caesars Palace, Harrah<61>s and Horseshoe brands with locations across the country but earns the majority of its operating profit in Las Vegas, where contracts expire on May 31, Unite Here said in a letter to the board seen by Reuters on Wednesday.Unite Here represents 20,000 union members who cook, clean and serve at Caesars<72> hotels and casinos, including almost 14,000 Las Vegas workers.Employees<65> ability to provide for their families was eroded following the 2008 leveraged buyout of Caesars and protracted bankruptcy proceedings, the union said. With the casino group on firmer financial footing, Unite Here said it wants to establish a new working relationship with the company.A Caesars spokesman said he had not yet seen the letter.The union in its letter also asked Caesars to come to the bargaining table with proposals on issues such as health care, training, retirement and safety.Las Vegas was the scene of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history on Oct. 1.The union also urged Caesars to provide additional protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and immigration status.U.S. President Donald Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program last month that protected those brought to the country illegally as children and is considering ending the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, which applies to more than 300,000 people.Unite Here said hundreds of employees on the Las Vegas Strip have TPS status, which allows nationals of certain countries already in the United States to remain and work there.Last August, billionaire investor Carl Icahn shut the Trump Taj Mahal casino after a bitter strike with Unite Here<72>s Atlantic City chapter. The casino had already been struggling amid a broader gambling slowdown in the New Jersey beach resort.Caesars last week appointed a new board of directors to lead the reorganized company and is targeting expansion in the United States and abroad, though analysts have said it may be too late to catch up with rivals that spent years investing in high-growth markets in Asia. (Reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/caesars-unions/union-presses-post-bankruptcy-caesars-on-benefits-worker-protections-idINL2N1ML22V'|'2017-10-11T14:22:00.000+03:00'
'c75f20dba583571ba5b8053118b281a99e06e2c3'|'Altus Strategies explorer joins the Mali gold rush'|'October 11, 2017 / 2:17 PM / Updated 18 minutes ago Altus Strategies explorer joins the Mali gold rush Barbara Lewis 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British explorer Altus Strategies ( ALS.L ) on Wednesday signed an outline 3.4 million pound deal to buy Legend Gold Corp ( LGN.V ) and said it was aiming to make the most of a subdued market to grow the newly-listed company further. The smallcap mining sector is taking longer to recover from the commodity price crash of 2015-16 than the majors. But the juniors have been increasingly active in Mali, regarded as a relatively stable jurisdiction, where Legend has a portfolio of gold projects and licences covering nearly 400 square kilometres. Altus Strategies, which has signed a letter of intent to buy Toronto-listed Legend Gold, valuing it at 3.4 million pounds, said it was offering a 130 percent premium to Legend<6E>s market close on Tuesday, but given low levels of liquidity for small miners that could still be cheap. <20>Hopefully our timing is good. Some companies can go up 25 percent in a day in a highly illiquid market where price is not necessarily the same as value,<2C> Steven Poulton, CEO of Altus Strategies, said in an interview. The letter of intent should be followed by a firm all-equity deal by the end of the month. Nervousness about Africa risk revived by an upsurge in resource nationalism, especially in Tanzania, has rattled the sector, but Mali<6C>s gold is viewed as a relatively safe haven. On Monday, another small miner Cora Gold ( CORAC.L ) listed on London<6F>s AIM to raise cash to fund its mining project in Mali. Altus Strategies listed in August to raise funds for its vocation as an African-focused project generator, which aspires to sell on its assets once they are established or find venture partners to develop them. It has projects in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Morocco and Liberia, covering a range of commodities, in addition to its anticipated purchases in Mali. Poulton said until now Altus had been <20>underweight gold<6C> and was still in acquisition mode. <20>We<57>re restless in the sense we want to create value. Once this transaction is done, we will have grown the business, but we are constantly on the look out for accretive opportunities,<2C> he said. Michael Winn, CEO of Legend who will join the Altus board as a non-executive director, said in a statement the deal would be <20>positive and transformative<76> for Legend shareholders. Editing by David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-altus-legend-mining/altus-strategies-explorer-joins-the-mali-gold-rush-idUKKBN1CG1WW'|'2017-10-11T17:17:00.000+03:00'
'3925e409d929509707111709ce46dc11cb8ed8f6'|'Bad loans at Italian banks fall to three-year low'|'October 10, 2017 / 8:55 AM / in 6 minutes Bad loans at Italian banks fall to three-year low Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MILAN, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Insolvent loans held by Italian banks fell to their lowest level in August since July 2014 as the country<72>s economy gathers pace and lenders work to shift risky assets off their balance sheets. The Bank of Italy said in its monthly report Italian banks<6B> bad debts totaled 172.85 billion euros ($204 billion) in August, down from 173.58 billion euros in July -- when a jumbo bad loan sale by UniCredit helped cut the stock by 18 billion euros. While Italy<6C>s economic recovery has lowered the share of loans turning sour back to pre-crisis levels, banks are still under pressure to reduce the backlog of impaired debts. Italian banking stocks have been falling in recent days after the European Central Bank unveiled a proposal to introduce automatic writedowns of the value of newly-classified bad debts. For a graphic of Italian bad loans click on tmsnrt.rs/2z9QrWe ($1 = 0.8492 euros) (Reporting by Valentina Za)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/italy-banks-bad-loans/bad-loans-at-italian-banks-fall-to-three-year-low-idUSI6N1M302P'|'2017-10-10T11:54:00.000+03:00'
'6165ab0d21265868de6e6329f03de7aaf8733530'|'Goldman creates ''brain trust'' in effort to boost deals business'|'October 11, 2017 / 11:07 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Goldman creates ''brain trust'' in effort to boost deals business Olivia Oran 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A view of the Goldman Sachs stall on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, U.S. on July 16, 2013. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( GS.N ) is betting it can get its money-making mojo back by pitching creative deals to big, complex clients, marking a return to its investment banking roots as trading revenue slows. The Wall Street bank is forming a group, known internally as the Innovation Lab, focused on generating compelling deal ideas for companies like Warren Buffett<74>s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway Inc ( BRKa.N ) or Japan<61>s SoftBank Group Corp<72>s ( 9984.T ) $93 billion investment fund, people familiar with the matter said. The new <20>brain trust,<2C> as one insider called it, is aimed at supercharging investment banking revenue as trading, for many years Goldman<61>s profit engine, has faltered amid regulations and market trends that hurt the bank more than rivals. From 2009-2016, Goldman<61>s annual trading revenue fell by more than $18 billion, or 32 percent, while investment banking revenue rose by $1.3 billion, or 26 percent. That trend has accelerated this year. Analysts expect Goldman to reveal more trading pain when it reports third-quarter results on Tuesday, building on two consecutive quarters of declines. After facing angry questions from shareholders, Goldman last month unveiled a plan to boost annual revenue by $5 billion. Management has emphasized Goldman<61>s roots as a strategic adviser to corporations, wealthy families and investment funds, and has also expanded into areas like consumer lending. But while fees from those services can be more reliable than trading, analysts say Goldman will not replace the income from its stock and bond market heyday any time soon. <20>Many investors still view it as a <20>show me<6D> story because the initiatives are in businesses that are highly competitive,<2C> said Steven Chubak, a banking analyst with Instinet. A Goldman spokeswoman declined to comment on the new group. Led by Goldman dealmakers Brian DeCenzo and James Morris, the group will perform a different role than traditional bankers focused broadly on pitching mergers and acquisitions to big companies, the people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because they are not authorized to speak to the media. The group is expected to come up with out-of-the box ideas and focus on clients who want to acquire or make big investments in businesses across industries, and do not fit neatly into individual categories, like technology or industrials, that sector bankers already cover. Berkshire owns more than 90 businesses across aerospace, energy industrials, financials, transportation, consumer products and food. Meanwhile, SoftBank<6E>s Vision Fund has invested in companies ranging from satellite startup OneWeb to asset manager Fortress Investment Group LLC ( FIG.N ). On top of spotting deal opportunities, the new team will analyze broad trends like the impact of oil prices across various sectors. DeCenzo and Morris were previously part of Goldman<61>s financial sponsors group, which scouts deals for private equity firms. The group is the latest change under new management of the investment bank, which earlier this year elevated Gregg Lemkau and Marc Nachmann as co-heads alongside John Waldron. Under their leadership, the business has added bankers to cities like Atlanta and Dallas to serve local clients more closely, and hired dealmakers at the partner level from Wall Street rivals. They have also installed programmers alongside dealmakers to increase productivity and give clients better advice. Reporting by Olivia Oran in New York; Editing by Lauren Tara LaCapra and Meredith Mazzilli 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-goldman-sachs-m
'7191757acff7b7a9f073b4a3d502855d98a41cbb'|'Amazon finally made a waterproof Kindle 11,'|'Amazon finally made a waterproof Kindle by Heather Kelly @heatherkelly October 11, 2017: 10:55 AM ET Amazon unveils new Alexa devices Jeff Bezos can finally take his Kindle in the bath without a Ziploc bag. Amazon is releasing an updated version of its Kindle Oasis e-reader, now waterproofed for all your bathtub, ocean and rain storm reading needs. This is the first waterproof Kindle. The e-ink device was first released 10 years ago. The Kindle Oasis is Amazon''s high-end e-reader and it has the price tag to prove it. This new version of the device starts at $250, more than double the cost of the company''s popular Kindle Paperwhite. The Oasis has a 7-inch 300-dpi screen (one inch larger than the previous version) and includes a free Audible account. The device has a waterproof rating of IPX8, which means it''s been tested for up to 60 minutes under two meters of fresh water. Readers have been requesting a waterproof Kindle for years. In 2009, The New York Times asked Amazon CEO Bezos about the difficulty of reading a Kindle in the bath. "I put my Kindle in my one-gallon Ziploc bag, and it works beautifully," Bezos said. For avid readers who wanted more protection, third-party companies have long made waterproof cases for the devices. There are a number of other changes in the Oasis. Amazon ( AMZN , Tech30 ) has doubled the starting memory amount to 8GB. There''s a new option to invert the display so it shows white text on a dark background and built-in sensors adjust the brightness based on your location. Amazon is also adding new bold and font options, including the OpenDyslexic typeface. One of the signature features of the Oasis is gone: Amazon has dropped the cover that doubled as a back-up battery. The new Oasis battery lasts "weeks," according to Amazon. The device still has its signature asymmetrical design. Kindle Oasis will be available on October 31. In addition to the 8GB model, there''s a 32GB version ($280) and a 32GB version with a cellular connection ($350). If the Oasis seems too expensive for a simple e-reader, don''t fret. You can still get a bare-bones Kindle for $80 and a box of Ziploc freezer bags for $5 on Amazon. CNNMoney (San Francisco) First published October 11, 2017: 10:48 AM ET'|'cnn.com'|'http://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_technology.rss'|'http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/11/technology/kindle-waterproof-oasis/index.html'|'2017-10-11T18:55:00.000+03:00'
'24902ef790dea79ce0cd3c771e3cb3417ffdcbb9'|'MOVES-Advent International names Mark Wood operating partner'|'October 11, 2017 / 10:23 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago MOVES-Advent International names Mark Wood operating partner Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 11 (Reuters) - Private equity firm Advent International Corp on Wednesday appointed Mark Wood as an operating partner to assess investment opportunities in the insurance and financial services sectors. Wood has previously worked as the chief executive of several firms, including AXA SA<53>s UK operations and Prudential Financial Inc<6E>s UK and European operations. The firm had 38 billion euros in assets under management as of June 30. (Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/advent-moves-markwood/moves-advent-international-names-mark-wood-operating-partner-idUSL4N1MM3QJ'|'2017-10-11T13:24:00.000+03:00'
'dd5d54b8b557dbbc64574fc452b4842140feacc2'|'Hitachi Kokusai says KKR raised offer price to 2,900 yen a share'|'October 11, 2017 / 10:36 AM / in 5 minutes KKR raises Hitachi Kokusai offer following pressure from hedge fund Junko Fujita 3 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - KKR & Co LP ( KKR.N ) has raised its offer price for Hitachi Kokusai Electric Inc ( 6756.T ) to 2,900 yen a share from 2,503 yen, the Japanese firm said on Wednesday, after a U.S. hedge fund put pressure on the private equity firm to revise terms. A KKR representative in Tokyo declined to comment on the revised offer. KKR agreed in April to buy the chip-making machinery and communications and video equipment business from Hitachi Ltd ( 6501.T ). But the deal was put on hold in August when KKR said it would continue discussions with Hitachi Kokusai after a third-party committee reporting to the Japanese firm<72>s board said it did not support the terms. KKR<4B>s improved bid also comes after U.S. hedge fund Elliott Management said last month it owned 5.01 percent of Hitachi Kokusai. Elliott, known for buying stakes in firms in the middle of takeovers or acquisitions and seeking better deals for shareholders, then raised its stake in Hitachi Kokusai to 7.11 percent, according to a filing dated Sept. 28. Since Elliott<74>s first disclosure of its stakeholding on Sept. 11 Hitachi Kokusai<61>s share price has risen 12.5 percent and is now trading 24 percent above KKR<4B>s original offer. Trading in Hitachi Kokusai<61>s shares closed on Wednesday at 3,115 yen. KKR plans to spend 144 billion yen to buy up to 48.33 percent of Hitachi Kokusai at 2,900 yen a share through the tender offer, which opens on Thursday, according to a statement from Hitachi Kokusai. As part of the same deal, Hitachi Kokusai plans to buy back a 51.67 percent stake from Hitachi for 1,870 yen a share - up from an initial price of 1,710 yen - and cancel those shares. After completion, KKR plans to spin off Hitachi Kokusai<61>s chip-making equipment division, retaining 100 percent ownership. KKR will sell to Hitachi and investment fund Japan Industrial Partners Inc (JIP) 40 percent of the remaining business. Last week, U.S. buyout firm Bain Capital LP<4C>s offer price for Japan<61>s Asatsu-DK Inc ( 9747.T ) was similarly labeled too low, by the advertising agency<63>s second-largest shareholder. Reporting by Junko Fujita; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Greg Mahlich 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hitachi-kokusai-m-a-kkr/hitachi-kokusai-says-kkr-raised-offer-price-to-2900-yen-a-share-idUSKBN1CG18C'|'2017-10-11T13:29:00.000+03:00'
'4424563243ec60efd603943e7d63a533848403c6'|'Reinsurer GIC Re''s $1.75 billion IPO fully subscribed'|'October 13, 2017 / 8:14 AM / Updated 5 hours ago India raises $1.5 bln in IPO of reinsurer GIC Re Reuters Staff 3 Min Read An aircraft flies over a billboard of General Insurance Corporation of India in Mumbai, India October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade MUMBAI (Reuters) - The Indian government raised about 98 billion rupees ($1.5 billion) on Friday by selling some of its shares in General Insurance Corp of India (GIC Re), the nation<6F>s top reinsurer, in the country<72>s biggest listing in seven years. The funds could be critical at a time when the government is looking to boost spending to help counter the slowest economic growth in more than three years, but has been constrained in part by lower-than-expected tax collections. The government is aiming to raise 725 billion rupees by selling off some of its stakes in state-run companies in the year to March, including through the initial public offering (IPO) of GIC Re, which was set to close later on Friday having already attracted 1.35 times the number of shares on offer. GIC Re<52>s IPO brings the total money raised through IPOs this year to about $8 billion, not far from the record $8.65 billion in 2007, amid a market rally that has sent indexes to record highs. The NSE index closed up 0.7 percent after hitting its latest all-time high earlier in the session. [.BO] GIC Re, which had a 60 percent share in India<69>s reinsurance market according to Crisil Research, is expected to benefit from growing premiums in India, which has relatively lower insurance penetration. The company is also expanding internationally. <20>We are not expecting any fancy listing gains on GIC Re just like in other recent insurance company IPOs, but the company is a good long-term buy,<2C> said Krishna Rana, an analyst with brokerage Sushil Finance. <20>Insurance is a relatively new sector and the knowledge about this sector is still quite low, so retail interest in these IPOs also has been lower,<2C> she added. A broker (L) watches a TV news channel as another monitors share prices at a brokerage firm in Mumbai August 9, 2011. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/Files The government, which currently fully owns the reinsurer, was selling 107.5 million shares in the IPO, while the company was selling 17.2 million new shares, for a total IPO size of 113.7 billion rupees ($1.75 billion). The total offer of 124.7 million shares constitutes 14.2 percent of the post-offer paid up share capital. Crisil estimates reinsurance premiums in India will grow at an average annual rate of 11-14 percent over five years to reach 700 billion rupees by March 2022. Most analysts had recommended subscribing to the IPO, citing its reasonable valuations, although recent lacklustre listings by two big insurance companies had dampened sentiment. GIC Re is set to debut in markets on Oct. 25. Citi, Axis Capital, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Kotak were the banks managing the GIC Re IPO, which was the biggest since Coal India<69>s 2010 share sale that raised 155 billion rupees. ($1 = 64.9100 Indian rupees) Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy and Swati Bhat; Additional reporting by Gaurav Dogra in Bengaluru; Editing by MarkPotter 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/gen-ins-india-ipo/reinsurer-gic-res-1-75-billion-ipo-fully-subscribed-idINKBN1CI0UL'|'2017-10-13T11:10:00.000+03:00'
'19bfb430ffcdbd7b058495cf5dfa6b7291e61152'|'CORRECTED-ExxonMobil opens 3rd cogeneration power plant in Singapore'|'(Corrects combined capacity to 440 MW in 2nd paragraph, and numbers for emissions cuts and cars in 5th paragraph)By Jessica JaganathanSINGAPORE, Oct 12 (Reuters) - U.S. oil major ExxonMobil officially opened its third cogeneration power plant in Singapore on Thursday on the site of its Jurong refinery, increasing its total cogeneration capacity in the city-state by nearly a quarter.The new 84 megawatt cogeneration plant - which produces both electricity and steam - will increase the energy efficiency of the refinery, the company said. Together with its two other plants, the Jurong site has combined power capacity of 440 megawatts.The start of the facility comes ahead of a proposed carbon tax to be introduced from 2019 on direct emitters which will include the three refineries in Singapore, including ExxonMobil<69>s Jurong site.Countries around the world have been under increasing pressure to crack down on carbon emissions, with Singapore part of the historic Paris climate accord that went into force late last year.Steam production from the new Jurong facility will allow the company to shut down two older, less efficient boilers and in turn reduce emissions and reduce 265 kilotonnes per year of carbon dioxide emissions - equivalent to taking more than 90,000 cars off the roads of Singapore, it said. (Reporting by Jessica Jaganathan; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/singapore-exxon-plant/exxonmobil-opens-3rd-cogeneration-power-plant-in-singapore-idINL4N1MM1ZD'|'2017-10-12T00:09:00.000+03:00'
'68adfb02180b1135c4e123fd50b04c93cbc05319'|'Crafty app developers are ripping off big-name brands'|'THE new app for an upmarket British department store certainly looks the part. Released on Google Play, a shop for Android software, on September 5th, it has the right logo, the correct vibrant colour and offers fashionable clothes and accessories. But the app is not authorised by the brand, is littered with pop-up ads and is painfully slow (furious users gave it one-star ratings). Its developer, Style Apps, has also launched apps for other clothing brands that are household names in America.Such fake apps are designed by crafty developers to trick inattentive users. Google and Apple police their app stores but many impostors get through. In third-party app stores, unofficial platforms run by someone other than the two tech giants, the problem is even worse. Users are tricked in two ways. Some apps fill a gap in the market. Selfridges, a chain of British fashion stores, for instance, has a legitimate app for Apple devices but not for Android ones. RadioShack, an American electronics retailer that filed for bankruptcy in February 2015, has a website but not an official app. Three imitation apps have by now sprouted under the shop<6F>s name.Latest updates Taxing the rich Buttonwood<6F>s notebook 36 minutes ago The   4   See all updates Other developers simply copy an existing app and hope users will fail to notice. The Economist found that half of the 50 top-selling apps in Google Play had fakes. These included ones with tweaked names (<28>MyGoogleTranslate<74> rather than <20>Google Translate<74>) and a bogus Netflix app that uses a weird Halloween-themed font for the logo. Google says it is reviewing these apps and will take action where necessary.Fake apps are often stuffed with malicious code. Academics from a research group, SerVal, at the University of Luxembourg, estimate that around a fifth of all Android app-based malware is hidden in fake apps. The malware facilitates various money-making schemes. The most egregious are designed to steal the passwords that unlock users<72> bank accounts. But it is more common for scams to profit from ordinary advertising, particularly on Android devices, says Eliran Sapir of Apptopia, a tech firm. Adverts in the smartphone<6E>s web browser get quietly replaced by similar ones chosen by the fake-app developer.Another money-spinner is to mine cryptocurrencies. Analysts at Trend Micro, a cybersecurity firm, in 2014 discovered that copies of Football Manager Handheld, a smartphone game, and TuneIn Radio, an audio app, contained malicious software that mined cryptocurrencies, the proceeds of which were probably funneled to the developers. This still goes on. It does not harm users directly, but researchers warn that such <20>vampire<72> apps drain phone batteries.Developers can make much more money with fake apps than through legitimate means, reckons Mr Sapir. On dark-web forums, hackers and small-time digital advertisers offer developers around $1 per user per year to inject their apps with malicious code. In theory, a single app with 15,000 users (about a tenth of all apps have this many) could bring in roughly $1,250 per month. Most legitimate apps make about $1,000 per month, according to a survey from InMobi, a mobile-advertising company.Fake-app developers are also quick to catch onto the latest trends. When Pok<6F>mon Go, a smartphone app based on a video game, became popular in July 2016, developers released a walk-through guide to the game which flooded smartphones with advertising. The guide was downloaded over 500,000 times. But the pickings are richest in retail, and especially in the autumn when fake-app developers are gearing up for spending binges during sales around Thanksgiving and Christmas, says Chris Mason of Branding Brand, a tech firm. Shoppers, beware.  "Mind the app"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/rss/business_rss.xml'|'https://www.economist.com/news/business/21730242-legitimate-app-developers-they-make-money-selling-adverts-crafty-app-developers-are?fsrc=rss%7Cbus'|'2017-10-12T22:
'81956da1b315f1ac33aadc669330ad6aad3d78b5'|'British insurer Hyperion hires Morgan Stanley for stake sale - sources'|'October 12, 2017 / 5:51 PM / in 9 minutes British insurer Hyperion hires Morgan Stanley for stake sale - sources Pamela Barbaglia , Carolyn Cohn , Dasha Afanasieva 3 Min Read The corporate logo of financial firm Morgan Stanley is pictured on the company''s world headquarters in New York, U.S. April 17, 2017. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton LONDON (Reuters) - British insurer Hyperion has hired Morgan Stanley to sound out financial investors for a minority stake sale, sources told Reuters, in a deal that could value the London-based firm at more than 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion). Hyperion describes itself as the world<6C>s largest employee-owned insurance group. It is partly backed by U.S. investment firm General Atlantic, which owns around 35 percent of the business while its employees, including founder and Chief Executive David Howden, hold the rest. The firm, which mainly operates as an insurance broker, is looking to sell about 25 percent to a sovereign wealth fund or another long-term investor, the sources said, as it seeks to secure growth capital to fund its global expansion. Hyperion, General Atlantic and Morgan Stanley declined to comment. Preliminary discussions with interested parties are currently taking place, the sources said, adding that General Atlantic and all the existing investors will trim their shareholding as a result of any deal. General Atlantic came onboard in 2013, acquiring just over 30 percent of Hyperion. At the time its equity value stood at 250 million pounds. Hyperion, whose portfolio includes brokers Howden and RKH and underwriter Dual, has significantly grown over the past two years, with its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) climbing 82 percent to 103 million pounds in the year ending Sept. 2016. It could now be valued at more than ten times its EBITDA, one of the sources said, adding its growth rate would appeal to deep-pocketed investors such as Singapore<72>s sovereign wealth fund GIC. Its brokerage business competes with the likes of Marsh & McLennan and Aon which trade at about 12-14 times their core earnings. The sale comes as private equity funds are increasingly taking advantage of pension and sovereign wealth funds to reduce their exposure to their prized assets as they strive to deliver returns for investors in a hotly competitive market for deals. Singapore<72>s sovereign wealth fund GIC has been one of the most prolific acquirers this year, mopping up stakes in Norwegian software firm Visma, Swedish home alarms maker Verisure and financial news and data company Acuris, formerly known as Mergermarket. One of the sources said Hyperion could bring in an investor with a similar profile to finance its expansion. Hyperion has about 3,800 employees in over 39 countries and more than 20 percent of its workforce owns shares in the insurer and its subsidiaries. The group, which is active in cyber insurance through a joint venture between its broking arm Howden and Insurisx Inc., generates 48 percent of its revenues in Europe and 36 percent in the Americas while Asia and the Middle East account for 11 and 5 percent respectively. Additional reporting by Ben Martin; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hyperion-stake-m-a/british-insurer-hyperion-hires-morgan-stanley-for-stake-sale-sources-idUKKBN1CH2MG'|'2017-10-12T20:51:00.000+03:00'
'bd177bf29abce39908bdf939e061bbdeb794f75d'|'Ending NAFTA could cost U.S. up to 50,000 auto parts jobs: study'|'Trucks are parked at a yard of the manufacturing plant of International brand commercial trucks, owned by Navistar, in Escobedo, on the outskirts of Monterrey, Mexico, June 29, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril/Files WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. auto parts industry could lose up to 50,000 jobs if the North American Free Trade Agreement is terminated and companies must pay higher tariffs to ship products to Mexico and Canada, according to a new study set for release on Thursday.U.S., Canadian and Mexican negotiators are meeting in Arlington, Virginia, this week for a fourth round to try to revise the 23-year-old agreement, which allows the tariff-free flow of vehicles and parts across the three borders.U.S. President Donald Trump has criticized NAFTA for luring U.S. manufacturing jobs to low-wage Mexico and has vowed to quit the pact or revise it to reduce his country<72>s $64 billion trade deficit with its southern neighbor.Ending NAFTA, however, would result in a full reversion to tariffs under World Trade Organization rules, according to the Boston Consulting Group study sponsored by the Motor Equipment Manufacturers Association. The U.S. auto parts industry employs about 870,000 workers.Mexico and Canada would fare better because they previously charged higher tariffs than the United States and would revert to those levels. And with no trade incentive to manufacture in the United States other than to avoid the 25 percent truck tariff, more full vehicle production would migrate to low-cost countries such as China, auto experts say.Job losses could be as much as 24,000 if renegotiations lead to requirements for content from North American and specifically the United States, according to the study.U.S. President Donald Trump awaits the arrival of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House in Washington, U.S., October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst NAFTA negotiators face tough new U.S. demands to increase regional content for autos to 85 percent from 62.5 percent, with 50 percent from the United States, according to people briefed on the plan.The rules of origin demands are among several conditions that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has labeled <20>poison pill proposals<6C> that threaten to torpedo the talks.The auto parts study was conducted before these targets were revealed.Raising the automotive content thresholds and forcing automakers to verify the North American origin of more electronics and other parts now sourced from Asia would cause some parts manufacturers to forego NAFTA benefits, said Ann Wilson, the association<6F>s head of government affairs.Instead, companies may ship in more products from low-cost countries outside the region, paying U.S. tariffs ranging from 2.5 to 5.0 percent.<2E>Instead of encouraging more U.S. content, these provisions will lead to less U.S. content,<2C> Wilson said.Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/trade-nafta-autos/ending-nafta-could-cost-u-s-up-to-50000-auto-parts-jobs-study-idINKBN1CH1ZI'|'2017-10-12T16:37:00.000+03:00'
'440a7aa06c3b57ff0319fc6f131b16b884d3ccee'|'UBS to hire fewer trainees, spend more on them, to satisfy clients'|'Reuters TV United States October 11, 2017 / 10:29 PM / in 3 minutes UBS to hire fewer trainees, spend more on them, to satisfy clients Elizabeth Dilts 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The offices of Swiss bank UBS are seen in the financial district of the City of London, Britain October 31, 2012. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - UBS Group AG ( UBSG.S ) will hire fewer trainees in 2018 but spend two to three times more on teaching them to be financial advisers, a senior executive said, in the latest sign of industry efforts to satisfy wealthier clients and grapple with an aging workforce. UBS Wealth Management Americas President Tom Naratil said the company would hire 30 percent fewer trainees but look for candidates who had more work experience so they could team up with experienced advisers to work with current clients and the next generation of clients. <20>The client we need to serve is the wealthiest client we<77>ve ever had in history,<2C> Naratil said in an Oct. 2 interview. <20>We can have fewer advisers but they need to be more highly skilled to meet those clients<74> needs.<2E> Over the next several decades, more than $30 trillion in wealth is expected to be handed from Baby Boomers to heirs as current clients age. Currently high net worth clients control more than a third of the investible assets in the United States, and more than 67 percent are older than 60. As those clients start to pass wealth to the next generation, older advisers worry about how to relate to new money millennials, some of whom prefer computers over humans. Roughly half of brokers at U.S. wealth management firms are over 55, according to Cerulli Associates, and UBS is in line with the average. Naratil hopes that by putting trainees from professions like the military or pharmaceutical sales with experienced advisers, existing advisers will boost productivity. When senior advisers retire and clients<74> children inherit their wealth, the trainees will be well positioned to take over their accounts, the firm hopes. LESS IS MORE UBS is not alone in trying a new kind of recruiting, which it announced to advisers on Wednesday. Competitor Bank of America ( BAC.N ) Merrill Lynch said last April it was redoubling efforts to recruit and train younger advisers for all units, from its high end Private Banking and Investment Group to the brokers located in bank branches. However, Wall Street training programs have historically high failure rates with as many as 50 percent of trainees leaving the firm within the first five years. UBS has the smallest work force of the four traditional Wall Street securities brokerages, which also include Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ), Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo Advisors ( WFC.N ). Therefore, it can not afford to take a spaghetti at the wall approach. <20>Others are still playing a scale game,<2C> said Naratil. <20>Our success relies on improving the productivity of our advisers because if we improve their productivity we see better results.<2E> UBS is already in the lead for average revenue produced per adviser, in part because its advisers only work with clients who have more than $1 million in their accounts. Morgan Stanley and Bank of America set their client minimums at $250,000. On average, UBS<42>s 6,915 advisors produced $1.2 million in revenue as of the second quarter this year. Morgan Stanley<65>s 15,777 advisers on average produced $1.05 million in the second quarter, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch said its 14,811 advisers earned an average $1.04 million each, including new advisers. Firms will report third quarter earnings this month, with Bank of America and Wells Fargo reporting on Friday. UBS<42> new training program will last 3 years, with development activities throughout, and trainees will be paid a salary for the first two years. Previously, trainees received a salary for just 7 months. Reporting By Elizabeth Dilts; Editing by Andrew Hay 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk
'1765659c750f8cc3b19e8b153f5cd49ed67ad180'|'NAFTA talks focus on procurement amid doubts over deal chances'|'President Trump welcomes Canada''s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the South Lawn before their meeting about the NAFTA trade agreement at the White House. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst ARLINGTON, Va. (Reuters) - North American Free Trade Agreement negotiators are set to cover the difficult issue of government procurement on Thursday as they try to revamp the pact that U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to terminate.Canada and Mexico want their companies to be able to bid on more U.S. federal and state government contracts, but this is at odds with Trump<6D>s <20>Buy American<61> agenda. U.S. negotiators have countered with a proposal that would effectively grant the other countries less access, people familiar with the talks say.According to a schedule seen by Reuters, meetings on government procurement, cross-border services trade, environmental issues and state-owned enterprises were set to conclude for the current round on Thursday.Talks on rules of origin, a contentious issue involving regional content requirements for autos, are expected to start on Friday and continue through early next week. Discussions on labor, centered on Mexico<63>s chronically low wage rates, also start on Friday.Some observers said that with the United States<65> demands, it is difficult to see how the negotiators could reach an agreement.Jerry Dias, president of Unifor, Canada<64>s largest labor union, said it was clear the United States does not want a deal.<2E>The comedy show is unfolding in Washington, there<72>s no question about it,<2C> he said. <20>That<61>s exactly what this NAFTA renegotiation is.<2E>Trump on Wednesday repeated his warnings that he might terminate the pact and said he was open to doing a bilateral deal with either Canada or Mexico if three-way negotiations fail..He was speaking at the White House with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who said Canada was <20>braced<65> for Trump<6D>s unpredictability but taking a serious approach to the NAFTA talks.U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross defended the nation<6F>s government procurement proposal on Wednesday, saying it was based on the relative sizes of the markets in the three countries.<2E>Our market is 10 times the size of either of those markets, so if you gave equal percentage market share, you<6F>d be giving them 10 for one,<2C> Ross told a trade forum organized by a Washington law firm. He added that the past arrangement was <20>absurd.<2E>On automotive rules of origin, NAFTA negotiators face tough new U.S. demands to increase regional vehicle content to 85 percent from 62.5 percent, with 50 percent required from the United States, according to people briefed on the plan.The rules of origin demands are among several conditions that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has labeled <20>poison pill proposals<6C> that threaten to torpedo the talks.Ross said that he believed higher percentages for automotive content would be achieved, and <20>car companies will adapt themselves to it.<2E>However, a study released on Thursday by the Motor Equipment Manufacturers Association, which represents U.S. auto parts makers, showed the higher content requirements would lead to the loss of up to 24,000 U.S. jobs, as some companies would forego NAFTA<54>s tariff-free benefits and ship in more components from other countries.If NAFTA is terminated, up to 50,000 jobs would be lost, the study showed.Additional reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-trade-nafta/nafta-talks-focus-on-procurement-amid-doubts-over-deal-chances-idINKBN1CH2EO'|'2017-10-12T14:15:00.000+03:00'
'b92bd89b73b393bdb43f0d169dc48b2762b9e828'|'OPEC Secretary General urges U.S. shale oil producers to help cap global supply'|'OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo speaks to the media during his visit in Abuja, Nigeria Febuary 27, 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde NEW DELHI (Reuters) - OPEC<45>s Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo on Tuesday called on U.S. shale oil producers to help curtail global oil supply, warning extraordinary measures might be needed next year to sustain the rebalanced market in the medium to long term.<2E>We urge our friends, in the shale basins of North America to take this shared responsibility with all seriousness it deserves, as one of the key lessons learnt from the current unique supply-driven cycle,<2C> said Barkindo.The comments by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries official came during a speech delivered at the India Energy Forum organized by CERAWeek in New Delhi.<2E>At the moment we (OPEC and independent U.S. producers) both agreed that we have a shared responsibility in maintaining stability because they are also not insulated from the impact of this downturn,<2C> Barkindo said, referring to a slide in oil prices that spurred OPEC to agree production cuts late last year.Related Coverage OPEC says to reconvene meeting with U.S. on deal to cut oil output<75>The call by independents themselves (is) that we need to continue this interaction,<2C> he said.While OPEC and some other producers, including Russia have cut supplies this year in order to prop up prices, U.S. production has soared by almost 10 percent this year, driven largely by shale drillers. Barkindo said he hoped that new producers, not just U.S. shale drillers, would join production cuts.On Monday, Saudi Arabia cut crude oil allocations for November by 560,000 barrels per day (bpd), in line with the kingdom<6F>s commitment to the supply reduction pact.<2E>Demand-supply is returning to rebalance through massive destocking that we have been witnessing of stocks in OECD across regions in a very massive way,<2C> Barkindo said later, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the conference.<2E>In the past four months alone, we have seen destocking to the tune of 130 million bpd,<2C> he said.The aim of the OPEC-led cut is to trim the level of oil in OECD industrialized countries compared with the five-year supply average. Barkindo said the stock overhang to the five-year average stood at 171 million barrels in August, against 338 million at the start of the year.<2E>The speed and pace (of destocking) has accelerated as a result of anticipated and projected demand growth in the second half of 2017 to the tune of 2 million bpd. We are witnessing a fast return to a balanced market,<2C> Barkindo said.Still, on Sunday Barkindo said OPEC and other oil producers might need to take <20>some extraordinary measures<65> next year to rebalance the oil market.World oil demand growth in 2017 is expected at 1.45 million barrels per day (BPD) and it should stay around 1.4 million bpd in 2018, Barkindo said. He said India<69>s share of global oil demand is expected to rise to over 9 percent by 2040, up from 4 percent now.Reporting by Nidhi Verma, Promit Mukherjee and Neha Dasgupta; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-india-energy/opec-secretary-general-urges-u-s-shale-oil-producers-to-help-cap-global-supply-idINKBN1CF0C4'|'2017-10-10T08:25:00.000+03:00'
'ce8dda4ae3d3ebc7d915553d4b6946fea2821b03'|'UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Oct 12'|'(Corrects number of citizens affected in Equifax item) Oct 12 (Reuters) - Britain''s FTSE 100 index is seen opening 6 points lower on Thursday, according to financial bookmakers. * EU BANKS: The European Commission proposed on Wednesday watered-down measures to help guard European Union banks against future crises, after two years of fruitless talks among the 28 EU states on more ambitious plans. * EQUIFAX BREACH: The powerful chair of Britain''s parliamentary treasury committee demanded on Wednesday that U.S. credit reporting agency Equifax explain why it has taken more than a month to notify UK users of a massive data breach affecting more than 15 million records and nearly 700,000 UK citizens. * TULLOW OIL: Tullow Oil has signed four production-sharing contracts in Ivory Coast with an initial investment of $21 million, an Ivorian government spokesman said on Wednesday. * BRITAIN HOUSE PRICES: British house prices face the weakest outlook since last year''s Brexit vote, largely reflecting the prospect of further falls in central London, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said on Thursday * BOMBARDIER: Workers at Bombardier''s Northern Irish plant called on British Prime Minister Theresa May to be more visible in her attempts to save their jobs after the United States imposed tariffs on planes made by the Canadian aerospace firm. * UK ENERGY PRICE CAP LAWS: Britain will publish on Thursday a draft law designed to cap consumer energy prices for millions of households, taking action to try and fix a market it says punishes loyal customers. * GOLD: Gold prices rose to their highest in two weeks on Thursday amid a muted dollar, after minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve''s September policy meeting revealed low inflation concerns. * OIL: Oil prices eased on Thursday as U.S. fuel inventories rose despite efforts by OPEC to cut production and tighten the market. * EX-DIVS: Centrica, HSBC and Tesco will trade without entitlement to their latest dividend pay-out on Thursday, trimming 7 points off the FTSE 100 according to Reuters calculations * The UK blue chip index closed down 0.06 percent at 7,533.81 points on Wednesday after results from paper and packaging firm Mondi disappointed and sub-prime lender Provident Financial sank after a downgrade from Barclays. * For more on the factors affecting European stocks, please click on: cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarkets * UK CORPORATE DIARY: Hays PLC Q1 2018 Trading Statement Release WH Smith PLC Full Year 2017 Earnings Release Booker Group PLC Half Year 2018 Earnings Release Sky PLC Q1 2018 Earnings Release N Brown Group Half Year 2018 Earnings Release PLC TODAY''S UK PAPERS > Financial Times > Other business headlines Multimedia versions of Reuters Top News are now available for: * 3000 Xtra : visit topnews.session.rservices.com * For Top News : topnews.reuters.com (Reporting by Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-stocks-factors/uk-stocks-factors-to-watch-on-oct-12-idUSL4N1MN232'|'2017-10-12T08:25:00.000+03:00'
'426cb40f177bc759254548da1bb664932c540486'|'UPDATE 1-Business leaders say no NAFTA better than bad deal'|'(Adds US deficit issue)By Stefanie EschenbacherMEXICO CITY, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Business leaders attending a U.S.-Mexico CEO conference said on Wednesday that no North American Free Trade Agreement would be better than a bad deal, as industry braces for the end of a treaty that drives $1 trillion in annual trade.The CEO meeting ran in parallel to talks near Washington aimed at refreshing the 1994 agreement, with Mexico, Canada and businesses united in opposition to a number of radical U.S. proposals they say would damage the North American economy.U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would be open to bilateral trade pacts with Mexico or Canada if a deal cannot be reached to substantially revise NAFTA.<2E>We are all much worse off with a bad agreement than with no (NAFTA),<2C> said Guillermo Vogel, who co-chaired the Mexico City event and is a vice president at Tenaris, a steel company.The meeting, part of a bilateral <20>CEO dialogue<75> that meets a couple of times each year, included a closed-door discussion on the NAFTA negotiations addressed by Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray and Economy Minister Idelfonso Guajardo, who are in charge of the negotiations for Mexico.On the U.S. side the event was co-chaired by Fedex<65>s CEO Michael Ducker and U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue.The event<6E>s organizers declined to say who else attended. American Express, AT&T, GM and Delta were listed on publicity material for an event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Mexico on Tuesday, where Donohue warned that several U.S. proposals in the NAFTA talks were <20>poison pills<6C> that risked dooming the agreement.The process of renegotiating NAFTA has turned increasingly sour. Mexico accuses Trump of spoiling for a <20>protectionist war<61> with proposals aimed at balancing trade.Those proposals include removing dispute resolution mechanisms, limiting trade in fresh produce and introducing minimum quotas for U.S. parts in autos.While better than a bad deal, Vogel said the failure of NAFTA would be a <20>lose-lose<73> situation, and that U.S.-Mexico trade without it could lead to a U.S. trade deficit larger than the current $64 billion.Without NAFTA, Mexico trade experts say U.S. products would face higher tariffs to enter Mexico, which could further skew the trade balance.Vogel said content rules for auto parts were still negotiable, despite shock in Mexico at suggestions half of all parts in cars should be made in the United States. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Wednesday he expected an agreement would be reached on that issue.On Tuesday, Donohue also singled out a <20>sunset clause<73> that would automatically terminate NAFTA every five years unless there were fresh negotiations.<2E>Clearly, a clause that cancels the agreement every five years totally defangs it,<2C> Vogel said. <20>Starting to play with a non-market economy would be terrible for us.<2E>Vogel said U.S. and Mexican businesses still believed NAFTA talks would produce a good deal and said they would continue to lobby their governments and lawmakers to negotiate a good deal.<2E>With an agreement, in 10 years I see a strong region that can face Asia or China, without an agreement I see a weaker region in the medium and long term.<2E> (Additional reporting by Frank Jack Daniel and Sharay Angulo; Editing by Cynthia Osterman & Simon Cameron-Moore)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/nafta-trade-mexico-ceo/update-1-business-leaders-say-no-nafta-better-than-bad-deal-idINL2N1MN03D'|'2017-10-12T00:39:00.000+03:00'
'094357cde19050c973be4d3072b37cf5d6854930'|'UPDATE 1-Russia''s Otkritie, B&N Bank bailouts to cost up to 820 bln rbls -c.bank'|'(Adds details, Quote: s, context)MOSCOW, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Russia<69>s central bank on Thursday raised its forecast for the cost of bailing out two of the country<72>s biggest banks, saying it could now require up to 820 billion roubles ($14.22 billion).Russia<69>s banking sector is under intense scrutiny after the central bank had to step in to save two of its biggest private lenders in the space of a month.Central Bank Deputy Chairman Vasily Pozdyshev has previously said troubled banks Otkritie and B&N Bank would require up to 400 billion roubles and 350 billion roubles respectively to return to financial health.But speaking to Russian state television on Thursday, he said the total cost would now be between 800-820 billion roubles.<2E>In general and in total, the financial rehabilitation of one banking group will require around 450 billion roubles, and the second - around 350-370 billion roubles,<2C> he said.Pozdyshev said the situation with the liquidity of the banks, which both suffered sustained runs on their assets, had improved under the central bank<6E>s management and investors were now putting money back into Otkritie.<2E>The outflows have stopped, and the situation with the liquidity of both banking groups has stabilised,<2C> Russia<69>s RIA news agency Quote: d him as saying.<2E>The temporary administration (of Otkritie) send me daily reports, yesterday there was an inflow - a few billion roubles of business funds.<2E>Pozdyshev also repeated central bank assurances that the bailouts had not diminished the credibility of the Russian banking sector, but warned future bank failures were still possible<6C>I think new bailouts could still happen because no one bank is insured against a serious outflow,<2C> he said.$1 = 57.6800 roubles Reporting by Jack Stubbs, Polina Devitt and Polina Nikolskaya; Editing by Gareth Jones'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/russia-banks/update-1-russias-otkritie-bn-bank-bailouts-to-cost-up-to-820-bln-rbls-c-bank-idINL8N1MN0OU'|'2017-10-12T06:13:00.000+03:00'
'54269375511a7492a67b4af3b6557c19a0c90822'|'Bank of England chief economist warns against regulatory roll-back'|' 49 PM / Updated 17 minutes ago Bank of England chief economist warns against regulatory roll-back Reuters Staff 3   A pedestrian walks past the Bank of England in the City of London, Britain April 19,   McKay/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Financial regulators should be wary of rolling back rules put in place after the 2007-09 global financial crisis in the name of boosting economic dynamism, the Bank of England<6E>s chief economist, Andy Haldane, warned on Thursday. Haldane told a conference hosted by the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington that new rules still needed to be fine-tuned, but that should not be used as an excuse to dilute them. <20>To follow this course unthinkingly would risk repeating regulatory mistakes from the past, recent and distant. Only 10 years on from the biggest crisis in several generations, there are already some eerie echoes of those siren voices,<2C> he said in a text provided by the BoE. U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s administration is seeking to reverse some post-crisis restrictions on American banks<6B> investment activities. The BoE has said previously there may be good reasons to change some domestically-focused U.S. rules, but that it is important that regulation of major internationally operating banks remains consistent with global norms. Since the financial crisis, the BoE has received the widest powers of any major central bank over financial regulation. In recent years has restricted some mortgage lending and last month sought to ensure banks set enough reserves aside in case fast-rising consumer lending sours. Haldane said there was <20>unfinished business<73> around how central banks explained potentially politically charged decisions over lending rules. <20>There is a debate to be had ... about the appropriate degree of discretion to confer on regulators, to ensure they retain the flexibility they need to respond to events while ensuring their decisions are clear, transparent and unpolluted by behavioural biases and time-inconsistency problems,<2C> he said. <20>There are also interesting issues to explore about how regulators explain and account for their decisions to wider society, particularly when they have strongly distributional consequences,<2C> Haldane added. Haldane did not discuss Britain<69>s economic outlook or BoE monetary policy in the paper. Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Toby Chopra 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-boe-haldane/bank-of-england-chief-economist-warns-against-regulatory-roll-back-idUKKBN1CH2ME'|'2017-10-12T20:50:00.000+03:00'
'6f5c6ee513e99732ea5f84cddc5166b5097018a4'|'Chinese buyers eye German industrial firm FFT in deal that could top $700 mln - sources'|'HONG KONG, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Chinese firms including high-end equipment maker Jiangsu Hagong Intelligent Robot Co plan to bid for German industrial company FFT, likely to be valued at up to $712 million, two people familiar with the matter said.China<6E>s state-owned power company Shanghai Electric and Asian-European private equity firm AGIC Capital had also expressed interest earlier in the process, being managed by Morgan Stanley as FFT<46>s financial adviser, the people said.FFT, a maker of manufacturing facilities for car makers and owned by private equity investor Aton, is expected to be valued at around 8-10 times its expected 2017 core earnings of about 60 million euros ($71.21 million), another person said.Chinese interest in FFT comes as the world<6C>s second-largest economy strives to boost locally-made products as part of a broad <20>Made in China 2025<32> plan, in ten sectors ranging from robotics to biopharmaceuticals.The Chinese government issued new guidelines in August to support overseas investments in sectors such as advanced technology and high-tech manufacturing, while restricting deals in property and entertainment.Jiangsu Hagong is among a growing number of Chinese firms seeking access to advanced German industrial technology as China pushes to bolster its high-end manufacturing.A maker of industrial robots and auto automation equipment, Jiangsu Hagong could be the most serious bidder for FFT, said two of the people.All the people declined to be named as the bidding plans are not public. FFT, Jiangsu Hagong, Shanghai Electric and AGIC Capital didn<64>t respond to requests for comment. Morgan Stanley and Aton declined to comment.Chinese bidders<72> pursuit of FFT comes a year after Shenzhen-listed Midea launched a $5 billion offer for German robotics maker Kuka, in a deal that triggered concerns that China was gaining greater access to key technologies.China itself expressed concern in July after Germany became the first European Union country to tighten its rules on foreign corporate takeovers, following a series of Chinese deals giving access to Western technology and expertise.The new regulations allow the German government to block takeovers if there<72>s a risk of critical technology going abroad.However, several German companies, including Eisenmann and Eissmann Automotive, were pushing ahead with talks with potential Chinese buyers, and did not expect political interference, separate sources told Reuters in July.German auto supplier ZF said in August it sold its Body Control Systems division to China<6E>s Luxshare for an undisclosed amount.Separate sources said in July that companies like FFT are not the type of technologically critical assets that Germany would look to protect.<2E>I don<6F>t think there<72>s going to be any big issue,<2C> said one of the people. <20>Midea closed the Kuka deal, which was much bigger and set a precedent for smaller deals. FTT<54>s management is also keen to sell the company to the Chinese.<2E>$1 = 0.8425 euros Reporting by Kane Wu and Julie Zhu in Hong Kong, with additional reporting by Arno Schuetze in Frankfurt; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Ian Geoghegan'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/fft-ma-china/chinese-buyers-eye-german-industrial-firm-fft-in-deal-that-could-top-700-mln-sources-idINL8N1MN04Y'|'2017-10-12T06:20:00.000+03:00'
'9b925d5be7f308c9611f08cbeec5e0b81148fdc0'|'Asia stocks near decade-high on global equity surge, dollar sags'|'October 12, 2017 / 12:52 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago Dollar recovers as Fed worries about low inflation John Geddie 5 Min Read The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote LONDON (Reuters) - The dollar recovered on Thursday, having hit its lowest in more than two weeks as U.S. central bankers showed they were taking a more guarded view of inflation, helped by a steep fall in the British pound. Asian stocks climbed to their highest in a decade, powering global shares to another record high and keeping them on course for their longest winning streak ever. Wall Street was set to open down from Wednesday<61>s record high ESc1. The dollar<61>s dip came after minutes of the Federal Reserve<76>s September meeting on Wednesday showed policymakers had a prolonged debate about whether inflation would pick up and the path of future interest rate rises if it did not. But it slowly regained ground on Thursday and the pound tumbled after the European Union<6F>s chief negotiator said talks over Britain<69>s exit from the EU were at an impasse [GBP/]. <20>The minutes highlighted Fed officials are growing concerned low inflation might reflect more than transitory factors,<2C> RBC<42>s global macro strategist Peter Schaffrik said. European government bond yields fell in step with their U.S. peers. Italian yields led the trend, falling to near a three-week low after the government won support for electoral change likely to penalize the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement [GVD/EUR]. U.S. US10YT=TWEB and German 10-year yields DE10YT=TWEB fell 1 basis points to 2.33 percent and 0.45 percent, respectively. Italian yields were down 3 basis points at 2.14 percent IT10YT=TWEB. The eye-catching move in stock markets came in Asia, with MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS reaching their highest since December 2007, up 0.7 percent on the day. Japan''s Nikkei .N225 was up 0.4 percent after brushing 20,994.40, its highest since November 1996. South Korea''s KOSPI .KS11 added 0.55 percent to reach a record high. Hong Kong''s Hang Seng .HIS scaled a decade-high. MSCI<43>s broadest index of world stocks also reached record highs, as it has for six of the past eight trading days .MIWD PUS. It is on course for its 12th month of gains in October, its best run ever. <20>Fundamentally, the global economy is in decent shape. Corporate sentiment is also sound as evidenced by strong data like the Chinese PMI, U.S. ISM and Japanese tankan,<2C> said Masahiro Ichikawa, senior strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management in Tokyo. European stocks were less bouyant, with financial shares the biggest burden. Just Eat was the top performer after its merger with Hungryhouse got provisional clearance. For Reuters Live Markets blog on European and UK stock markets see reuters://realtime/verb=Open/url=http://emea1.apps.cp.extranet.thomsonreuters.biz/cms/?pageId=livemarkets DOLLAR WEAK In currencies, sterling was down 0.7 percent to $1.3135 after Michel Barnier said talks between the EU and Britain have not made major progress this week and are stuck over how much Britain should pay when it leaves. The euro rose to its highest since Sept. 25 in early trades and was on course for a fifth day of gains. EUR= Political developments in Italy and easing tensions in Spain after Catalonia stopped short of declaring independence have supported the common currency in recent days. The yen was up 0.2 percent against the dollar JPY= and the euro EURJPY= after a media survey showed that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe''s ruling party may come close to keeping its two-thirds "super" majority in an Oct. 22 lower house election. The Mexican peso was up at 18.735 pesos per dollar MXN=D2 . That added to gains of 0.7 percent overnight as it rose from a five-month low, although the currency may come under renewed pressure if North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) talks run aground. Bitco
'b21153b58f5d5ef61f4065bbbb4c4b3a7e729229'|'Samsung scion''s defence fights back as legal appeal begins'|'October 12, 2017 / 3:56 AM / in an hour Samsung scion''s defence fights back as legal appeal begins Joyce Lee 3 Min Read Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman, Jay Y. Lee, arrives at a court in Seoul, South Korea, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji SEOUL (Reuters) - The heir to South Korea<65>s Samsung Group appeared in a packed court on Thursday for the first day of arguments in the appeal of his five-year jail term for corruption. The 49-year-old Jay Y. Lee was convicted by a lower court in August of bribing former president Park Geun-hye to help strengthen his control of the crown jewel in the conglomerate, Samsung Electronics ( 005930.KS ), one of the world<6C>s biggest technology companies. The appellate court hearing the appeal is likely to try to rule on the case by next February, legal experts said. Whichever side loses could take the case to the Supreme Court, the final court of appeal in South Korea. Lee<65>s presence marked his first public appearance since the August ruling. He did not speak during the early proceedings other than giving his birth date and address. The lower court in August had ruled that while Lee never asked for Park<72>s help directly, the fact that a 2015 merger of two Samsung affiliates did help cement Lee<65>s control over Samsung Electronics <20>implied<65> he was asking for the president<6E>s help to strengthen his control of the firm. The defence strongly challenged the lower court<72>s logic that Lee<65>s actions <20>implied<65> solicitation for help from Park by providing financial support for the former president<6E>s close friend and confidante Choi Soon-sil. Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman, Jay Y. Lee, arrives at a court in Seoul, South Korea, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji The prosecution, which has lodged a cross-appeal against the lower court ruling that found Lee innocent on some charges, said the court<72>s decision to not acknowledge explicit solicitation for Park<72>s help from Samsung despite the evidence found <20>did not make sense<73>. DEFENCE FIGHTS BACK A traffic sign is seen in front of a Samsung Electronics office building (C) in Seoul, South Korea South Korea, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji The defence, which spent much of its time during the initial trial refuting the prosecution<6F>s individual charges, is expected to focus on a few key arguments in the appeal - including whether there was in fact an <20>ordinary type of bribery<72> as defined under South Korean law, which says only civil servants come under the statute. Park<72>s friend Choi was not a civil servant. The lower court found that Samsung<6E>s financial support of 7.2 billion won (<28>4.7 million) to sponsor the equestrian career of Choi<6F>s daughter constituted an ordinary type of bribery, as <20>it can be considered the same as she (Park) herself receiving it.<2E> The defence is expected to strongly challenge this by saying that the prosecution, on whom the burden of proof lies, has not proved collusion between Park and Choi. Reporting by Joyce Lee; Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Neil Fullick 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-samsung-lee/samsung-scions-defence-fights-back-as-legal-appeal-begins-idUKKBN1CH0D1'|'2017-10-12T06:55:00.000+03:00'
'c238121cdcba9d1db0648431a99ad31e7d2cbb8f'|'U.S. justices wrestle over Arab Bank liability in militant attacks'|'October 11, 2017 / 4:27 PM / in 37 minutes U.S. justices wrestle over Arab Bank liability in militant attacks Lawrence Hurley 2 Min Read WASHINGTON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - The Supreme Court appeared divided on Wednesday over whether companies can be sued under U.S. law for human rights abuses abroad in a case about whether Arab Bank Plc can be held responsible for allegedly helping to finance militant attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Some of the conservative justices on the nine-member court signaled concern about potential U.S. foreign policy tensions arising if such cases are heard in American courts. The court<72>s four liberals indicated that corporations should not be immune. Even if the court rules for the roughly 6,000 plaintiffs suing the Jordan-based bank, the lawsuit could still be dismissed on other grounds once it returns to lower courts. The plaintiffs accused the bank of being the <20>paymaster<65> behind attacks including suicide bombings because of its role in processing certain financial transactions. The plaintiffs include relatives of non-U.S. citizens killed in attacks and survivors of the incidents. Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-court-arab-bank-plc/u-s-justices-wrestle-over-arab-bank-liability-in-militant-attacks-idUSL2N1MM1AD'|'2017-10-11T19:26:00.000+03:00'
'ce3b5a8c9f4f57daaeead3db6c757d46fe60786c'|'Brazil government to buy back all its Jan. 2019 dollar bonds'|'SAO PAULO, Oct 13 (Reuters) - The Brazilian government will buy back all its dollar-denominated bonds due on January 2019, another step in its efforts to stretch out maturities.In a statement on Friday, the National Treasury said it will exercise an option to repurchase $1.711 billion worth of January 2019 coupon-bearing dollar bonds.Earlier this month, Brazil sold $3 billion worth of 10-year dollar bonds and repurchased $419 million worth of debt, taking advantage of growing investor optimism to cheapen its financing costs. (Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer; Writing by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/brazil-bonds/brazil-government-to-buy-back-all-its-jan-2019-dollar-bonds-idINE6N1ML007'|'2017-10-13T16:05:00.000+03:00'
'9d544840d68623adc5942a2361de6740afa97b50'|'UK economy shows few signs of comeback as rate hike decision nears - BCC'|'October 12, 2017 / 11:14 PM / Updated 3 hours ago ''Extraordinary'' for BoE to mull rate hike as economy struggles, BCC says Andy Bruce 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s economy shows little sign of improving on lacklustre growth and it seems <20>extraordinary<72> that the Bank of England is considering raising interest rates, the British Chambers of Commerce said on Friday. The BCC<43>s Quarterly Economic Survey of businesses, the largest of its kind, said sales at services firms that make up the bulk of the economy were steady in the third quarter. But there was little pick-up in pay pressures or investment, both of which the BoE expects to rise markedly next year. Overall the BCC described the survey as <20>uninspiring<6E>, with political uncertainty, currency fluctuations and Brexit clearly affecting British businesses. Despite confounding forecasts that the 2016 vote to leave the European Union would lead to a sudden slowdown, Britain<69>s economy has struggled this year, posting its worst first-half performance since 2012. The BCC said price pressures in companies, while high historically, looked likely to peak soon. <20>Against this backdrop, it seems extraordinary that the Bank of England are considering raising interest rates,<2C> said Suren Thiru, BCC head of economics. In September the BoE said interest rates would probably rise <20>in the coming months<68> if the economy continued to grow and price pressures kept building. The City of London is seen from Canary Wharf, Britain May 17, 2017. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth INFLATION The BCC survey suggested that business activity was probably strong enough to absorb slack in the economy - one of the BoE<6F>s markers for raising rates soon, JPMorgan economist Allan Monks said in a research note. <20>Another marker, however, was to see underlying inflation pressures building. But the pay settlements reading of the BCC remained close to a record low in (the third quarter),<2C> Monks added. Slideshow (2 Images) A majority of economists polled by Reuters think the BoE will move at its next meeting in November - but most also said it would be a mistake to act now. [BOE/INT] Unlike the larger services sector, manufacturers enjoyed both better domestic and export sales over the past three months, the BCC said. While gauges of confidence in turnover and profitability stood at their highest levels since 2015, the survey pointed to only a marginal improvement in manufacturers<72> investment intentions. A slightly larger proportion of manufacturers said they expected to raise prices, but this was mostly down to the cost of raw materials rather than pressure from pay settlements. In the services sector, a net 15 percent of firms reported that pay was putting pressure on prices - up just a percentage point from the five-year low struck in the second quarter. Other surveys, including one from the BoE<6F>s regional advisers, have pointed to similar weakness in corporate pay intentions. Editing by Gareth Jones'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy/uk-economy-shows-few-signs-of-comeback-as-rate-hike-decision-nears-bcc-idUKKBN1CH37X'|'2017-10-13T02:23:00.000+03:00'
'f48bc7f36ad56907ed572db663aef99d2852774a'|'Asia shares firm to near ten-year high ahead of U.S. data, China Congress'|'October 13, 2017 / 1:23 AM / in 8 minutes Treasury yields slip on U.S. inflation data, stocks up Sinead Carew 4 Min Read Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid NEW YORK (Reuters) - Treasury yields slipped on Friday after muted underlying U.S. inflation data offset higher gasoline prices and strong retail sales while the U.S. dollar regained ground lost earlier in the day but was still set for its worst week in five. Stocks on major world markets, however, hit their fourth record high in a row, with Wall Street moving higher as some investors bet the inflation data could curb future interest rate hikes while others eyed trade discussions and retail data. U.S. consumer prices recorded their biggest increase in eight months in September as gasoline prices soared in the wake of hurricane-related refinery disruptions, but underlying inflation remained muted. <20>It all comes out to the economic data that came out today,<2C> said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Cornerstone Financial Partners, in Huntersville, NC, referring to moves in bonds, currency and stocks. <20>In general the idea of lower inflation puts in people<6C>s minds that the Fed will go more slowly. It<49>s less of a headwind for the stock market.<2E> The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 30.71 points, or 0.13 percent, to end at 22,871.72, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 2.24 points, or 0.09 percent, to 2,553.17 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 14.29 points, or 0.22 percent, to 6,605.80. U.S. retail sales recorded their biggest increase in 2-1/2 years in September as demand rose for building materials and motor vehicles in areas hurt by hurricanes. On Wall Street international trade talks boosted the materials sector while higher oil prices helped the energy sector and retail data helped consumer stocks, said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Asset Management in New York. <20>It<49>s a risk-on day,<2C> he said also citing a jump in technology stocks. <20>You<6F>ve multiple levers here in multiple sectors. Earnings is almost taking a back seat today.<2E> The Trump administration is seeking to use talks on renegotiating NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, to propose automotive content rules that require the use of North American-made steel, aluminum, copper and plastic resins, according to a Reuters report. FILE PHOTO: Euro and Dollar banknotes are seen in a picture illustration taken October 19, 2016. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo European shares rose to their highest in nearly four months, helped by corporate earnings updates. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 rose 0.22 percent and MSCI''s gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD PUS gained 0.24 percent. The dollar was lower for the week for the first time in five weeks but on the day it was little changed against a basket of major currencies. [L2N1MO1IL] Slideshow (2 Images) The U.S. dollar index .DXY was flat, with the euro EUR= down 0.05 percent to $1.1823. [L8N1MO3VA] Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes US10YT=RR rose 13/32 in price to yield 2.2766 percent, from 2.323 percent late on Thursday. The 30-year bond US30YT=RR rose 29/32 to yield 2.8074 percent, from 2.853 percent Thursday. <20>There is really no fig leaf to cover up this notion that inflation is weak, and it<69>s weak in a very broad sense,<2C> said Aaron Kohli, an interest rate strategist at BMO Capital Markets in New York. <20>The Fed has pointed to inflation bouncing back and there is no data to support that at the moment.<2E> Oil prices closed at their highest level in October on bullish news from strong Chinese oil imports and after U.S. President Donald Trump decided not to certify Iran compliance with a nuclear agreement. U.S. crude CLcv1 rose 1.52 percent to $51.37 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $57.16, up 1.62 percent. Spot gold XAU= added 0.7 percent to $1,302.98 an ounce. (For a graphic on ''World FX rates in 2017'
'2ae493d9681b9b52aa0be36d6e984efe53b9a3fc'|'EU mulls Brexit summit gesture, May hints on cash'|'A demonstrator rides through Trafalgar Square in London, Britain, September 13, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay LUXEMBOURG/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU governments wrangled on Friday over a goodwill gesture to Theresa May that some hope might break deadlock in Brexit talks but others fear may let Britain dodge demands for tens of billions of euros.The British prime minister indicated she too might make a move at next week<65>s Brussels summit. A spokeswoman said <20>there will be more to say there<72> on a promise May made last month to honour financial commitments when Britain leaves.But Germany was leading a hardline camp wary of a proposal by summit chair Donald Tusk to tell May next week that the EU will start internal work on a post-Brexit transition plan despite her failure so far to spell out exactly what London is ready to pay in a divorce settlement which Brussels puts at roughly 60 billion euros ($70 billion).<2E>This is a very big gesture towards Britain, maybe way too big,<2C> a senior EU diplomat said ahead of an evening meeting of envoys from the 27 remaining states to discuss Tusk<73>s draft for a statement to made after leaders meet in a week<65>s time.<2E>Time is running out<75>, German Chancellor Angela Merkel<65>s spokesman warned after week of stalemate in negotiations and faction-fighting within May<61>s government that have raised concerns that talks could collapse, leaving Britain bumping out into legal limbo in March 2019.Hammering the point, EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker said in Luxembourg: <20>They have to pay. They have to pay.<2E>Businesses planning investment decisions are calling for a clear idea by the new year of how the split and subsequent years of transition to a new trade relationship will function. Otherwise, some firms say, they may assume a disruptive <20>hard Brexit<69> and move some operations to continental Europe.<2E>SEARCH AND RESCUE MISSION<4F>As the process approaches the half-way stage between last June<6E>s shock referendum vote for Brexit and Britain<69>s departure on March 30, 2019, tensions are building not just between the two negotiating sides but also within the bloc of 27, despite a strong sense that sticking to a common line is a major advantage for every state, whatever their differing national interests.While hardliners would prefer less or no talk of a future after Brexit and more about demanding money, others are keen to give May, beleaguered at home, something to show for the effort to compromise she displayed in a speech at Florence last month.One diplomat called the draft a <20>search and rescue mission<6F> to help the British premier out of a jam. Another said it was a bid to break <20>stalemate<74> and avert <20>disaster<65> over the winter:<3A>Some states were not very happy about this but what else can we do?<3F> the diplomat added. <20>We are trying to reach out.<2E>They must come up with something on the money.<2E>Lead powers Germany and France were coordinating, diplomats said, to limit any watering down of the EU position that its negotiator, Michel Barnier, cannot so much as mention to his British counterparts what might come after Brexit until leaders deem there has been <20>sufficient progress<73> on three issues the EU says must be settled in a treaty signed before Britain leaves.These are the rights of EU citizens in Britain, Northern Ireland<6E>s new EU border and the intractable <20>Brexit bill<6C>.<2E>LET<45>S TRY IT<49>Tusk, who met Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron in a week when he has spoken to almost all other EU leaders including May, offered a draft text saying there is not enough progress but welcoming the advances there have been and flagging a hope that the next summit in December could open trade talks.And in its strongest conclusion, it proposes that Barnier start working out internally - without negotiating with London - what will happen after Brexit. Barnier himself has sought flexibility to break the deadlock, diplomats say.<2E>If this is the concession May needs to be able to make a move on financial settlement, let<65>s try it,<2C> said a dipl
'8ce31531d22fbb5c08653a72135ed5282c878141'|'EU clears Atlantia-Abertis tie-up as ACS readies rival bid'|'October 13, 2017 / 8:53 AM / in 7 hours EU clears Atlantia-Abertis tie-up as ACS readies rival bid Reuters Staff 4 Min Read Toll road operator Abertis<69> headquarters is seen in Barcelona, Spain, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/MILAN (Reuters) - Atlantia<69>s ( ATL.MI ) 17-billion-euro ($20 billion) bid for fellow toll road operator Abertis ( ABE.MC ) won unconditional EU antitrust clearance on Friday as Spanish builder ACS ( ACS.MC ) looked to prepare a rival bid. ACS is working on a cash-and-share offer for Spain<69>s Abertis, which it plans to launch next week, sources close to the matter said on Thursday. The European Commission said the Atlantia-Abertis deal, which would create the world<6C>s largest toll-road operator, would not hurt competition, confirming a Reuters report. Sources said on Thursday that ACS<43> offer was expected to be roughly half in cash and the rest in newly issued shares in German construction group Hochtief ( HOTG.DE ), which is controlled by ACS. The value of an ACS offer was not known. Milan brokerage Banca IMI said on Friday a potential offer with no premium versus Atlantia<69>s offer would be unattractive given the quality of Hochtief shares compared to those of the Italian company. <20>Abertis shareholders would be directly exposed to the less predictable construction sector and, strangely, would even be financing the offer as Hochtief would issue new shares potentially to be underwritten by Abertis<69> shareholders themselves,<2C> the broker said in a note. Atlantia<69>s offer was formally launched on Tuesday, a day after being approved by Spain<69>s market regulator, and runs until Oct. 24. People close to the matter told Reuters that Atlantia may consider sweetening its offer if a counter-bid emerged, depending on the price and structure of any offer. Under Spanish rules, any alternative suitors have until Thursday to present their own bid for Abertis. Atlantia is offering 16.50 euros in cash or 0.697 Atlantia shares for each Abertis share. But the offer is conditional on Abertis shareholders who own between 10 percent and 23 percent of the Spanish company<6E>s capital accepting the share offer. Stefano Fabiani, fund manager at Milan-based Zenit, said the Atlantia deal offered synergies which could offer shareholders upside further down the road. <20>Atlantia<69>s bid is there and the price looks about right. Time is running out for any counterbid,<2C> he said, adding the market was waiting for concrete news. At 1028 GMT Atlantia shares were up 0.26 percent while Abertis shares were unchanged. Though the offer has been described as <20>friendly<6C> by Atlantia, shareholders in Abertis have not expressed a view on the proposal. The board of the Spanish company must publish its assessment of the bid within 10 days of its start. Abertis<69>s top shareholder is Criteria Caixa, the financial arm of a politically connected and powerful banking foundation that controls Catalonia<69>s largest lender Caixabank ( CABK.MC ). <20>Apparently, La Caixa would be willing to sell, but it wants a compelling case with a better price,<2C> analysts at Mediobanca said in a note to clients. Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, Arno Schuetze, Matthias Inverardi, Francesca Landini, Stephen Jewkes; Editing by Adrian Croft 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-abertis-m-a-atlantia-eu/eu-regulators-approve-17-billion-euro-atlantia-abertis-tie-up-idUSKBN1CI0YN'|'2017-10-13T14:11:00.000+03:00'
'84ce12e48d79b00d4965637626e4b0aefcea3569'|'Kuroda says BOJ to keep easy policy, tread different path from Fed, ECB'|'October 12, 2017 / 8:19 PM / in 7 minutes Kuroda says BOJ to keep easy policy, tread different path from Fed, ECB Leika Kihara 2 Min Read Governor of the Bank of Japan Haruhiko Kuroda attends IMFC plenary during the IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Washington, U.S., October 8, 2016. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda on Thursday stressed the central bank<6E>s resolve to maintain its ultra-loose monetary policy, even as its U.S. and European counterparts begin to dial back their massive, crisis-mode monetary stimulus. Kuroda offered an upbeat view of Japan<61>s economy, saying it was expanding moderately with rising incomes leading to higher corporate and household spending. But he said inflation and wage growth were disappointingly low, despite such improvements in the economy. <20>Inflation remains around 0.5 percent, still below our target,<2C> Kuroda told reporters upon arrival for the Group of 20 finance leaders<72> gathering. <20>I would like to explain to the G20 that we will continue our ultra-loose monetary policy to achieve 2 percent inflation at the earliest date possible,<2C> he said. Kuroda deployed a massive asset-buying programme in 2013 in the hope of accelerating inflation to the BOJ<4F>s 2 percent target in a country mired in two decades of deflation. But inflation remained subdued, forcing the BOJ to revamp its policy framework last year to one seen as more suited for a long-term battle to boost price growth. Kuroda said subdued price and wage growth has become a common phenomenon in advanced economies including in Japan, where years of sliding prices have led the public to believe deflation will continue in the future. But he voiced confidence that stronger economic growth, a narrowing output gap and a tightening labor market would eventually drive up inflation. <20>It<49>s only a question of time,<2C> he added. The BOJ is widely expected to keep monetary settings unchanged at this month<74>s rate review, even though it may cut yet again its inflation forecasts in a quarterly review of its long-term projections, due at the rate meeting. Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Andrea Ricci 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-imf-g20-boj/bojs-kuroda-says-sees-no-problem-with-policy-divergence-idUKKBN1CH2XR'|'2017-10-12T23:57:00.000+03:00'
'16aff751f990cb39d518601e33e5ab87a3736d4b'|'Wells Fargo revises expense target, signalling profit difficulties ahead'|'October 13, 2017 / 12:22 PM / in an hour Wells Fargo revises expense outlook, signalling profit difficulties ahead Dan Freed , Sweta Singh 5 Min Read (Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co ( WFC.N ) management signalled on Friday that the bank may struggle to hit expense targets through next year, raising questions about how much a sales scandal is weighing on the bottom line. The third-largest U.S. bank by assets said its third-quarter profit fell 19 percent, due mostly to a $1 billion mortgage litigation accrual. But management also revised its outlook on a key expense-related metric, saying the bank expects to spend 61 cents for every dollar of revenue it generates this year, up from a range of 60 to 61 cents. Chief Financial Officer John Shrewsberry suggested Wells Fargo may also face issues hitting next year<61>s cost-efficiency target. Management now hopes to spend 59 cents for every dollar of revenue next year, the high end of a target range of 55 to 59 cents, he said. But much depends on loan growth and interest rates, as well as elevated costs from regulations, technology and <20>lingering sales practice issues,<2C> Shrewsberry cautioned. Wells Fargo<67>s loan balances at the end of the third quarter were $951.9 billion (716.47 billion pounds), down $5.6 billion from the second quarter and down $9.4 billion from a year earlier <20>We are waiting for the quarter that Wells shows stronger momentum across the business and this was not the quarter,<2C> analysts from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said in a client note. Related Coverage Wells Fargo $1 billion accrual due to talks with U.S. Justice Department The mortgage litigation accrual is for a still-pending lawsuit brought by a U.S. Justice Department-led task force, Shrewsberry told Reuters. The Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group has reached multi-billion dollar settlements with other banks over pre-financial crisis conduct, including Bank of America Corp ( BAC.N ), JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM.N ) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( GS.N ). <20>They<65>re working down toward the end of that list and now we<77>re sort of in discussions with them,<2C> Shrewsberry said in an interview. <20>The billion dollars is in connection with that activity.<2E> The bank<6E>s shares were last down 3.3 percent to $53.40. FILE PHOTO: A Wells Fargo bank sign is pictured in downtown Los Angeles, California, U.S. August 10, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo SCANDAL WOES Wells Fargo has been embroiled in a sales practices scandal for more than a year. It has acknowledged opening perhaps 3.5 million accounts in customers<72> names without their permission, signing others up for unwanted auto insurance, charging some for a mortgage rate-lock feature they did not request and tacking other costly add-ons to accounts. The bank also has the same underlying challenges as rivals, including a drop in mortgage refinancing, interest income rising slowly after a prolonged period of rock-bottom rates, expensive technology investments and new regulations. That has made it hard for outsiders to quantify how Wells Fargo<67>s scandal has influenced results. On a conference call, analysts asked management whether weak loan growth was attributable to consumers backing away from the bank due to the scandal, or to the bank<6E>s caution about credit risk. The bank missed consensus revenue expectations for the fourth straight quarter due to the weak loan growth, and its lending profit fell. Overall earnings fell to $4.6 billion. On an adjusted basis, profit was $1.04 per share, scraping past estimates of $1.03, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Revenue fell 2 percent to $21.9 billion, hit by a 37 percent slump in mortgage banking and auto lending. Analysts had forecast revenue of $22.4 billion. Wells Fargo<67>s net interest margin, which measures the difference between what banks spend on funds and what they generate from lending those funds, was 2.87 percent, down from 2.9 percent the prior quarter and below some analyst expectations. Th
'ca143d2553f6de43d779368028769d88cacbd2cc'|'Govt reduces GST on bunker fuels; sets tax for offshore exploration, gas sales'|'October 11, 2017 / 8:55 AM / Updated 8 hours ago Govt reduces GST on bunker fuels; sets tax for offshore exploration, gas sales Reuters Staff 2 Min Read NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India has reduced the goods and service tax (GST) on marine fuel oil, known as bunker fuel, to 5 percent for all vessels, the government said on Wednesday, which should help the country<72>s fuel sellers compete with other lower-tax ports in Asia. India<69>s nationwide GST taxed bunker fuel sales at 18 percent when it was implemented on July 1. The GST replaced state value-added taxes that were typically between zero and 5 percent. India<69>s GST Council decided to reduce the tax on the bunker fuel sales after an Oct. 6 meeting where it recommended assessing GST rates for the bunker fuel sales, natural gas transportation and for offshore oil and gas field services, according to the statement the Council posted on Twitter. <20>This would provide limited relief to the bunker fuel sellers that had seen their market shifting to Colombo,<2C> a trade source said. Like Asian bunkering hubs in Singapore and Fujairah, Sri Lanka levies no taxes on bunker fuel oil. For the offshore oil and gas field services, the Council set the GST at 12 percent. Natural gas transported through a pipeline will have a GST of 5 percent without so-called input tax credits, or 12 percent if the tax credits are included, according to the statement. Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Christian Schmollinger 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-bunker-fuel/india-reduces-gst-on-bunker-fuels-sets-tax-for-offshore-exploration-gas-sales-idINKBN1CG0YH'|'2017-10-11T11:57:00.000+03:00'
'8f8549ed52988d7c4d9b98e1574eec0d5e40da61'|'PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 9'|'Oct 9 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.- The Weinstein Company fired its co-founder Harvey Weinstein on Sunday, after an investigation uncovered allegations that he had engaged in rampant sexual harassment. nyti.ms/2hZR9kN- The expensive science-fiction sequel "Blade Runner 2049" collapsed at the North American box office over the weekend, taking in $31.5 million, or roughly 30 percent less than analysts had expected, as younger audiences and women failed to materialize in sizable numbers. nyti.ms/2hXB8LQ- Dove dropped a Facebook ad for Dove body wash in which a black woman removes her brown shirt and underneath is a white woman in a light shirt. nyti.ms/2hZUpN3 (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/press-digest-nyt/press-digest-new-york-times-business-news-oct-9-idINL4N1MK0XU'|'2017-10-09T03:10:00.000+03:00'
'5303f1bce803a27150a198264a8bdc763ef22c6b'|'GLOBAL MARKETS-Asia shares inch ahead, Turkish lira takes a dive'|'October 8, 2017 / 11:46 PM / Updated 4 hours ago GLOBAL MARKETS-Asia shares inch ahead, Turkish lira takes a dive Reuters Staff * Japan markets shut and partial holiday in U.S., China returns * Fall in U.S. payrolls outweighed by jump in wages * Turkish lira dives on diplomatic tensions with Washington * Pound blips up on report PM May might fire Foreign Secretary By Wayne Cole SYDNEY, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Asian share markets inched higher on Monday as the flow of economic news remained generally supportive for global growth, while political uncertainty caused some early ructions in currencies. Liquidity was lacking with Japan and South Korea on holiday and a partial holiday in the United States where stocks will be open but bonds will be closed. Chinese markets are set to re-open after a week-long break. MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan edged up 0.1 percent, having rebounded by 1.7 percent last week. Australian stocks also put on 0.45 percent. E-Mini futures for the S&P 500 were trading 0.04 percent firmer, while futures for the Treasury 10-year note added 1 tick. Yields had initially spiked higher on Friday in reaction to firm U.S. wage numbers, only to retreat as fresh jitters over North Korea bolstered safe havens. Annual growth in average hourly earnings accelerated to a relatively rapid 2.9 percent in September, though that was biased upward by bad weather. The gain outweighed a 33,000 drop in nonfarm payrolls as hurricanes Harvey and Irma left displaced workers temporarily unemployed and delayed hiring. The pick up in wages boosted already high expectations that the U.S. central bank will raise rates at its December meeting, and that further hikes are likely in 2018. Minutes of the Federal Reserve<76>s last meeting are due on Wednesday and may well show enough support for a move by year end. A host of Fed speeches are also due this week. In currency markets, the dollar was a shade softer at 93.772 against a basket of competitors. It also edged down to 112.52 yen, having been as high as 113.43 on Friday. The euro was a fraction firmer at $1.1741, perhaps aided by TV pictures of hundreds of thousands of people in Catalonia<69>s capital Barcelona demonstrating against moves to declare independence from Spain. Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont is expected to address the region<6F>s parliament on Tuesday, when he could unilaterally declare independence. Another early mover was the Turkish lira, where the dollar surged 4 percent at one point to the highest in seven months amid a diplomatic spat with Washington. The U.S. mission in Turkey and subsequently Turkish mission in Washington mutually reduced visa services after a U.S. mission employee was detained in Turkey last week. The pound popped higher on reports British Prime Minister Theresa May could sack Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson as she tries to reassert her authority after a series of political disasters. Sterling had been undermined by speculation that May herself could be ousted ahead of crucial Brexit talks between Britain and the EU. The initial spike could not be maintained, however, and the pound soon steadied around $1.3083. The New Zealand dollar hit a four-month low on Monday after a final vote count in the country<72>s tight general election released over the weekend failed to identify a clear winner. In commodity markets, gold held at $1,277.18 an ounce and off a two-month low touched on Friday. Oil prices were little changed after losses last week put paid to a five-week winning streak amid concerns of over supply. Brent futures were flat at $55.62 a barrel, while U.S. crude rose 12 cents to $49.41. Reporting by Wayne Cole; Editing by Eric Meijer'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/global-markets/global-markets-asia-shares-inch-ahead-turkish-lira-takes-a-dive-idUSL4N1MJ0H8'|'2017-10-09T07:46:00.000+03:00'
'0a45cec0603da1bb256a674294f8f1fbe528e4ff'|'Mantra Group receives $917 bid from French hotel group'|'October 8, 2017 / 11:31 PM / Updated 4 minutes ago Accor in $920 million Mantra bid as Australia tourist boom stokes hotel demand Tom Westbrook 3 Min Read A sign bearing the logo of the Mantra Group Ltd is displayed on the wall of a hotel in central Sydney, Australia, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/David Gray SYDNEY (Reuters) - France<63>s Accor SA has bid A$1.18 billion ($920 million) for Mantra Group Ltd - a deal that would combine the two biggest hotel owners in Australia and seek to capitalize on surging tourism in the country. Accor, already the biggest hotelier in Australia, offered A$3.96 a share, or a 23 percent premium to Mantra<72>s closing price on Friday. The total offer is worth A$4.02 per share if a six-cent final dividend paid in 2017 is included, Mantra said in a statement. <20>They haven<65>t lowballed it, that<61>s for sure,<2C> said Anthony Porto, portfolio manager at Martin Currie Australia, which owns a stake in Mantra. A deal would be the second-largest in Australia<69>s hotel sector, but the industry is quite fragmented and shares in Sydney-listed Mantra surged 17 percent on Monday as investors bet the deal would have a fair shot at gaining regulatory clearance. Mantra said it was allowing Accor to conduct due diligence <20>to determine if a transaction can be agreed and recommended unanimously by the Mantra board.<2E> An Accor spokeswoman had no immediate comment. Accor<6F>s bid comes as the country<72>s hoteliers rush to build extra rooms to meet growing demand. The number of visitors to Australia surged 9 percent in the past financial year to hit a record 7.9 million while spending by international visitors climbed to $40.6 billion - also a record. A sign bearing the logo of the Mantra Group Ltd is displayed on the wall of a hotel in central Sydney, Australia, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/David Gray Visits from Chinese tourists - who tend to make longer trips and spend more - jumped 10 percent and visitor numbers from Europe and the United States also rose. Porto said there was potentially a lot of savings to be gained from the deal as the firms<6D> back office and booking systems could be combined and Accor would benefit from having swallowed its biggest rival. But he also noted the industry faced tough competition from disruptive newcomers such as Airbnb. A pedestrian stands next to a sign bearing the logo of the Mantra Group Ltd on the wall of a hotel in central Sydney, Australia, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/David Gray Together, Accor and Mantra would own over 300 hotels and about 50,000 rooms. That would give them roughly 11 percent of Australia<69>s hotel market, according to IBISWorld statistics. Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets, said any decision by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) on whether to sign off on the deal would depend on how it views the make-up of the sector. <20>It<49>s a difficult one to make a call on because the ACCC could take a narrow or broad definition to competition, for example, is Airbnb included in the competitive landscape?,<2C> he said. The ACCC said it was aware of the offer but has yet to determine whether to scrutinize it. Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Additional reporting by Urvashi Goenka and Shashwat Pradhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Edwina Gibbs '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-mantra-group-m-a-accor/australias-mantra-group-receives-917-million-bid-from-french-hotel-group-idINKBN1CD11D'|'2017-10-08T21:31:00.000+03:00'
'3d74c9715c296ae13fbe11e15aa6f9c6ec026682'|'Exclusive - Symantec CEO says source code reviews pose unacceptable risk'|'October 10, 2017 / 7:58 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago Exclusive: Symantec CEO says source code reviews pose unacceptable risk Dustin Volz , Joel Schectman 6 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S.-based cyber firm Symantec ( SYMC.O ) is no longer allowing governments to review the source code of its software because of fears the agreements would compromise the security of its products, Symantec Chief Executive Greg Clark said in an interview with Reuters. Tech companies have been under increasing pressure to allow the Russian government to examine source code, the closely guarded inner workings of software, in exchange for approvals to sell products in Russia. Symantec<65>s decision highlights a growing tension for U.S. technology companies that must weigh their role as protectors of U.S. cybersecurity as they pursue business with some of Washington<6F>s adversaries, including Russia and China, according to security experts. While Symantec once allowed the reviews, Clark said that he now sees the security threats as too great. At a time of increased nation-state hacking, Symantec concluded the risk of losing customer confidence by allowing reviews was not worth the business the company could win, he said. The company<6E>s about-face, which came in the beginning of 2016, was reported by Reuters in June. Clark<72>s interview is the first detailed explanation a Symantec executive has given about the policy change. In an hour-long interview, Clark said the firm was still willing to sell its products in any country. But, he added, <20>that is a different thing than saying, <20>Okay, we<77>re going to let people crack it open and grind all the way through it and see how it all works<6B>.<2E> While Symantec had seen no <20>smoking gun<75> that foreign source code reviews had led to a cyberattack, Clark said he believed the process posed an unacceptable risk to Symantec customers. <20>These are secrets, or things necessary to defend (software),<2C> Clark said of source code. <20>It<49>s best kept that way.<2E> Because Symantec<65>s market share was still relatively small in Russia, the decision was easier than for competitors heavily invested in the country, Clark said. <20>We<57>re in a great place that says, <20>You know what, we don<6F>t see a lot of product over there<72>,<2C> Clark said. <20>We don<6F>t have to say yes.<2E> Symantec<65>s decision has been praised by some western cyber security experts, who said the company bucked a growing trend in recent years that has seen other companies accede to demands to share source code. <20>They took a stand and they put security over sales,<2C> said Frank Cilluffo, director of the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University and a former senior homeland security official to former President George W. Bush. FILE PHOTO - Greg Clark, Chief Executive Officer of Symantec, takes part in the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit in New York, U.S., February 8, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson <20>Obviously source code could be used in ways that are inimical to our national interest,<2C> Cilluffo said. <20>They took a principled stand, and that<61>s the right decision and a courageous one.<2E> Reuters last week reported that Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) ( HPE.N ) allowed a Russian defense agency to review the inner workings of cyber defense software known as ArcSight that is used by the Pentagon to guard its computer networks. HPE said such reviews have taken place for years and are conducted by a Russian government-accredited testing company at an HPE research and development center outside of Russia. The software maker said it closely supervises the process and that no code is allowed to leave the premises, ensuring it does not compromise the safety of its products. A spokeswoman said no current HPE products have undergone Russian source code reviews. ArcSight was sold to British tech company Micro Focus International Plc ( MCRO.L ) in a sale completed in September. On Monday, Micro Focus said the reviews were a common industry practice. But the company 
'165645b849dcf5214af3534b3fdafe310feb60f9'|'METALS-LME copper gains on weaker dollar, ShFE nickel up 1 pct'|'October 10, 2017 / 8:53 AM / Updated 23 minutes ago METALS-LME copper gains on weaker dollar, ShFE nickel up 1 pct Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Updates prices) By James Regan SYDNEY, Oct 10 (Reuters) - London copper prices edged higher on Tuesday after stagnating overnight, buoyed by a weaker dollar, while Shanghai copper slipped. Chinese aluminium futures lost ground in the afternoon trade following a steep drop in Shanghai steel prices, while nickel continued its advance. A weaker dollar makes dollar-denominated assets such as copper cheaper for holders of other currencies. "Both metals (nickel and aluminium) are expected to see production output curtailed in the coming weeks on environmental grounds as the National Congress draws nearer," ANZ Bank said in a note. * LME COPPER: Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange was up 0.9 percent at $6,689 a tonne, as of 0809 GMT, after trading flat overnight. * The most-traded copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange slipped 0.42 percent to 51,900 yuan ($7,876.53) a tonne. * NICKEL PRICES: LME three-month nickel retreated 0.7 percent to $10,945 a tonne. In the previous session, it closed 4 percent higher, its best since Sept. 21. ShFE nickel climbed 1 percent, after having surged 3.3 percent in the previous session. * ALUMINIUM: Three-month aluminium was mostly steady at $2,164 a tonne, while ShFE aluminium ended 0.91 percent lower. * CHINA CONGRESS: Some analysts believe part of the reason for looming industrial plant closures, which come before the major heating season begins in mid-November, is to clean the air in the capital of Beijing ahead of the once-in-five-years 19th Party Congress, beginning on Oct. 18. * STEEL DOWN: The most-active rebar on the Shanghai Futures Exchange reversed Monday''s gains to end down nearly 5 percent. * DOLLAR: The dollar ran into some profit-taking on Tuesday with the currency dropping a fifth of a percent against a trade-weighted basket of its rivals. * FREEPORT''S WORTH: Indonesia''s mining minister Ignasius Jonan said on Monday he estimates the local unit of Freeport-McMoRan Inc , operator of the giant Grasberg copper mine, to be worth $8 billion, amid talks over the divestment of a majority stake in the unit. PRICES Three month LME copper Most active ShFE copper Three month LME aluminium Most active ShFE aluminium Three month LME zinc Most active ShFE zinc Three month LME lead Most active ShFE lead Three month LME nickel Most active ShFE nickel Three month LME tin Most active ShFE tin ARBS ($1 = 6.5892 Chinese yuan) (Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/global-metals/metals-lme-copper-gains-on-weaker-dollar-shfe-nickel-up-1-pct-idUSL4N1ML29T'|'2017-10-10T11:52:00.000+03:00'
'562e0a34702aee7615e98019f088bc446f162744'|'Commerzbank in the sights of potential suitors'|'Commerzbank in the sights of potential suitors Rivals eye bank<6E>s strong market position in German corporate credit Read next Play audio for this article Pause This is an experimental feature. Give us your feedback. Thank you for your feedback. What do you think? I<>ll use it in the future I don<6F>t think I<>ll use it Please tell us why (optional) Send Feedback Commerzbank has long been a symbol of what is wrong with Germany<6E>s banking sector. Now the country<72>s second-largest bank seems to be attracting the attention of several rivals and could be a potential target in a takeover that would be German banking<6E>s largest in a decade. However, any potential suitor would need to sway the German government, which rescued the bank in the financial crisis and still holds a stake of more than 15 per cent, making it Commerzbank<6E>s biggest shareholder. In recent weeks, several media reports have suggested that Italian rival UniCredit and France<63>s BNP Paribas are considering a deal. Cr<43>dit Agricole may also be interested, according to the French bank<6E>s chief executive Philippe Brassac, who told the German business daily Handelsblatt: <20>If a big lender like Commerzbank was really put up for sale, we surely would have to analyse this.<2E> In recent months, private equity group Cerberus has built a 5 per cent stake . A doubling of Commerzbank<6E>s share price over the past twelve months makes the lender into one of Germany<6E>s best performing blue-chips. The wider Dax index is up 22 per cent over the same period. This stands in stark contrast to the bank<6E>s woeful performance over the past decade or so. Two misguided acquisitions of estate lender Eurohypo and German rival Dresdner Bank in 2005 and 2008 meant Commerzbank needed a bailout by the German taxpayer. Investors had to put up with years of paltry returns, capital increases and no dividends. Commerzbank has done a good job in achieving the turnround in retail banking Benjamin Goy, analyst with Deutsche Bank In recent years, Commerzbank has unshackled itself successfully from most of its legacy problem assets. Its pile of bad shipping and commercial real estate loans, which mounted to <20>117bn in 2008, has shrunk to <20>6bn. And analysts see it as one of the biggest winners among European banks should interest rates eventually rise. The strategic merger and acquisition case for Commerzbank mainly rests on its strong market position in German corporate credit. It finances almost a third of the lending to the country<72>s small and medium companies, the economic backbone of Europe<70>s largest economy. Autonomous Research estimates the division is worth <20>10.7bn, about three-quarters of its total market capitalisation. The Frankfurt-based lender is also big in consumer financing, where it has outpaced the broader market. Over the past year, its retail banking division has won half a million new customers, by touting free current accounts at a time when local savings banks and mutuals are closing branches and pushing up fees. <20>Commerzbank has done a good job in achieving the turnround in retail banking<6E>, says Benjamin Goy, analyst with Deutsche Bank. The snag is that, despite this progress, profitability is still meagre. Even if interest rates rise, Commerzbank boss Martin Zielke only predicts a 2020 return on tangible equity of at least 8 per cent. This would be below Commerzbank<6E>s cost of equity, which Autonomous estimates at 9.4 per cent. Recommended'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/content/09960c52-ad98-11e7-aab9-abaa44b1e130'|'2017-10-10T17:53:00.000+03:00'
'b77c2880b4285874aab8eb7f5d55e28806cf10cb'|'U.S. oil output may be set for last spike in 2018: Vitol - Reuters'|'LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. oil output could be set for a last spike in 2018 before growth flattens for a number of years as rising costs make a big chunk of production uneconomic, the head of top oil trader Vitol, Ian Taylor, told Reuters.The United States has turned into a major oil exporter in recent years on the back of a shale revolution, which created a global oil glut and sent prices plunging to below $30 per barrel last year from as high as $110 in 2014.<2E>I think the question, a little bit in the longer term is - is this the last big rise in U.S. production?<3F> said Taylor, chief executive at Vitol, which trades more than 7 percent of global oil and has a large presence in U.S. markets.He said Vitol expected U.S. output to climb by 0.5-0.6 million barrels per day (bpd) next year but the increase would cause cost inflation and make some production loss-making.<2E>If you look at the economics on most of the big Permian players, not many of them make a lot of money,<2C> Taylor said, referring to the oil-rich Permian basin in the United States.The anticipated slowdown in U.S. output combined with robust growth in global demand for oil should push prices above the current range of $50-60 per barrel LCOc1, Taylor said.But in the short and medium term, the oil market will remain <20>boringly rangebound<6E> with prices possibly coming under downward pressure in the first few months of 2018, when demand would typically weaken.<2E>The market is tightening up. But it<69>s very shallow ... There will be moments when we must get closer to $60 and moments I<>m sure when we<77>ll flirt with a number with a 4 in front of it. But it<69>s a pretty narrow range,<2C> Taylor said.Vitol has sold most of its oil in storage as it believes the market is tightening, supported by robust demand growth of around 1.5-1.6 million bpd this year and next as well as a paucity of investments by oil majors in new projects.Taylor said Vitol was trading larger volumes than in 2016, when it shifted around 7 million bpd of oil and products, while margins this year were down.He said 2017 was probably as challenging as 2013, when gross margins for most trading houses fell below 1 percent due to a lack of market direction and volatility.<2E>The prices haven<65>t moved, the disconnects aren<65>t really there, so it<69>s a tougher business ... We traders don<6F>t like instant volatility. We<57>re very useless at that. We do like to see a trend for more than a nanosecond.<2E><>We<57>re doing a bit more volume for a little less return ... It<49>s not rocket science, but margins are very, very tight. Extremely tight,<2C> he said.Writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Dale HudsonOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/summits'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-commodities-summit-vitol/u-s-oil-output-may-be-set-for-last-spike-in-2018-vitol-idUSKBN1CF1MZ'|'2017-10-10T21:01:00.000+03:00'
'4d7d0701516b7b0c447fd4987b8c60540ec602ae'|'Emergency slides on some Airbus planes may be broken - regulator'|'October 13, 2017 / 6:14 AM / in 35 minutes Emergency slides on some Airbus planes may be broken - regulator Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of Airbus Group is seen on the company''s headquarters building in Toulouse, Southwestern France, April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Pumps used to inflate emergency slides on some Airbus ( AIR.PA ) A330 and A340 aircraft may be damaged due to improper folding by maintenance crews that caused cracks or leaks in shutoff valves, Europe<70>s aviation regulator warned. <20>The slide may not perform as required in an emergency evacuation scenario,<2C> the European Aviation Safety Agency said in a bulletin published on its website. It said it did not consider the issue to cause unsafe conditions on the affected aircraft but said it wanted to remind airlines and maintenance crews to follow instructions for folding and packing the emergency slides. Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Adrian Croft 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-airlines/emergency-slides-on-some-airbus-planes-may-be-broken-regulator-idUKKBN1CI0K2'|'2017-10-13T09:14:00.000+03:00'
'8f7ca0e23a1b4282b56aec150fc34f3877555d94'|'Deutsche Boerse CEO discussed merger with FinMin before share purchase - document'|'October 13, 2017 / 11:00 AM / Updated 3 minutes ago Deutsche Boerse CEO discussed merger with FinMin before share purchase - document Tom Sims , Hans Seidenstuecker 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Carsten Kengeter, CEO of Deutsche Boerse attends the initial public offering of Scale at the Frankfurt stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany March 1, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The head of Deutsche Boerse ( DB1Gn.DE ) met with the German government to discuss a possible merger with London Stock Exchange ( LSE.L ) before he made a share purchase that sparked an insider trading investigation, according to excerpts of a document reviewed by Reuters. CEO Carsten Kengeter purchased 4.5 million euros (4.01 million pounds) in Deutsche Boerse shares in mid-December of 2015, two months before the announcement of merger talks that resulted in a sharp rise in the share price. Kengeter has denied insider trading and said the purchase was part of an executive compensation program. Linklaters, Deutsche Boerse<73>s external counsel, said in excerpts of a document that Kengeter met with German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Nov. 3, 2015. In the days before that meeting, Deutsche Boerse sent a paper to the finance ministry in an effort to <20>learn how politicians would view a possible transaction with LSE,<2C> Linklaters said. A spokesman for Deutsche Boerse declined to comment but quoted the summary of the Linklaters document: <20>In our opinion, insider information was not available on the date of the acquisition of the share purchase by Mr. Kengeter on Dec. 14, 2015, up until Jan. 19, 2016.<2E> A spokesman for the German Finance Ministry declined to comment. Linklaters didn<64>t respond to a request for comment. The German magazine WirtschaftsWoche reported some of the details of the communication between Kengeter and the German finance ministry earlier on Friday. Deutsche Boerse last month agreed to pay 10.5 million euros of fines to draw a line under allegations of insider trading, but the settlement is still pending approval in a Frankfurt court. As part of the agreement, Kengeter would pay an additional 500,000 euros personally. Deutsche Boerse and Kengeter maintain their long-held position that the allegations of insider trading are unfounded. Kengeter<65>s contract is set to expire at the end of March. Reporting by Tom Sims; Additional reporting by Hans Seidenstuecker in Frankfurt and Tom Koerkemeier in Berlin; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-deutsche-boerse-insidertrading/deutsche-boerse-ceo-discussed-merger-with-finmin-before-share-purchase-report-idUKKBN1CI1CL'|'2017-10-13T19:53:00.000+03:00'
'bc8aa5e63fc55ee12dc09fc2348817913295a14d'|'Sunoco''s $3.3 billion 7-Eleven deal faces bondholder snag: Bloomberg'|'(Reuters) - Sunoco LP''s ( SUN.N ) bondholders are creating a stumbling block for the company''s deal to sell more than 1,100 gas stations and convenience stores to 7-Eleven Inc [SILC.UL] for $3.3 billion, Bloomberg reported on Friday. ( bloom.bg/2iaXI3U )A group of creditors has told Sunoco it intends to oppose the company<6E>s attempt to change the terms of the credit pact governing about $1.6 billion of bonds <20> a step Sunoco has said is needed to complete the sale, Bloomberg reported, citing a letter it saw.The debtholders are demanding more money and better protections to agree to the changes in the bond indentures, Bloomberg reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.Sunoco was not immediately available for a comment.The company announced the deal to sell the 1,000 convenience stores to 7-Eleven<65>s U.S. unit in April to focus on its fuel supply business.Sunoco<63>s shares fell as much as 5 percent $30.73 on Friday.Reporting by John Benny in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-sunoco-lp-7-eleven/sunocos-3-3-billion-7-eleven-deal-faces-bondholder-snag-bloomberg-idINKBN1CI2BY'|'2017-10-13T14:50:00.000+03:00'
'ed56b3f2608b6ab39394b22b7462fd405061e0fb'|'ECB policymakers hone in on stimulus extension at lower volumes'|' 50 PM / a few seconds ago ECB policymakers hone in on stimulus extension at lower volumes Balazs Koranyi 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: European Union flags flutter outside the headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, Germany, April 21, 2016. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - European Central Bank policymakers broadly agree to extend asset purchases at a lower volume at their October policy meeting with views converging on a nine-month extension, five people with direct knowledge of the discussion told Reuters. With asset buys due to expire at the end of the year, policymakers are set to decide on Oct. 26 whether to prolong stimulus, having to reconcile between the bloc<6F>s best growth run in a decade with an inflation rate that will undershoot the ECB<43>s target of almost 2 percent for years. The next move, still up for discussion, is intended to signal both the need to cut support given strong growth, while at the same time committing to accommodation for a long time to come, the sources said. The biggest debate is likely to be whether to keep the programme open ended, giving the ECB the flexibility to extend it once again, or to send a firm signal about the end, they said. While hawks want the ECB to signal its intent to wind down and end the purchases, policy doves want at least the same type of flexibility the bank has now to extend purchases in case the outlook worsened. <20>Whether it<69>s open or closed ended is going to be the biggest debate,<2C> one person said. <20>I can see a compromise that we<77>ll keep it like it is now, so with an end date that could let us extend again if necessary.<2E> The exact amount of purchases is still up for discussion with views ranging between 25 billion euros and 40 billion euros a month, but the sources said there was consensus that they needed to be sharply reduced from their current 60 billion euro rate. The ECB declined to comment. The sources said no formal proposals have been made. 9 MONTHS? <20>The exact monthly volume does not matter greatly because its impact on inflation will be very small,<2C> one of the people familiar with the discussions said. <20>But a nine month extension also pushes out the first rate hike, and that<61>s significant. It also has a strong signaling effect that substantial accommodation will continue.<2E> The sources added that a six month extension is too short and policymakers would have to start debating this question soon, once again. A longer extension, such as 12 months, though cannot be ruled out, is difficult because the ECB is running out of bonds to buy, so setting volumes according to what is available would results in relatively low monthly purchases. ECB chief economist Peter Praet has recently argued that during periods of calm markets, a longer extension of asset purchases at lower volumes may be more beneficial as investors are better able to appreciate the long term support provided by the bank. The sources added that the ECB may also decide to retain its guidance to raise asset purchases if the outlook deteriorates. They also added that even if the ECB reduces its purchase of sovereign bonds, it was under no pressure to cut corporate bond purchases so it was possible those buys would be maintained near their current levels. Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Tomasz Janowski 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-policy/ecb-policymakers-hone-in-on-stimulus-extension-at-lower-volumes-idUKKBN1CH39Q'|'2017-10-13T02:44:00.000+03:00'
'72ad1e2a91d6021729e5891ca1a05b186541c09d'|'Dollar stays low as global stocks cheer latest record streak'|'FILE PHOTO: A trader walks past the German DAX Index board on the trading floor at the Frankfurt stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany February 15, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - Treasury yields were lower on Friday after muted underlying U.S. inflation data offset higher gasoline prices and strong retail sales while the U.S. dollar regained ground but was set for its worst week in five.Stocks on major world markets, however, hit their fourth record high in a row, with Wall Street moving higher as some investors bet the inflation data could curb future rate hikes while others eyed trade discussions and retail data.U.S. consumer prices recorded their biggest increase in eight months in September as gasoline prices soared in the wake of hurricane-related refinery disruptions, but underlying inflation remained muted.U.S. retail sales recorded their biggest increase in 2-1/2 years in September as demand rose for building materials and motor vehicles in areas hurt by hurricanes Harvey and Irma.Wall Street had a variety of drivers ranging from trade talks, which helped the materials sector, to oil prices, which boosted the energy sector, and retail data that helped consumer stocks, according to Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Asset Management in New York.<2E>It<49>s a risk-on day,<2C> he said also citing a jump in technology stocks. <20>You<6F>ve multiple levers here in multiple sectors. Earnings is almost taking a back seat today.<2E>The Trump administration is seeking to use NAFTA to propose automotive content rules that require the use of North American-made steel, aluminium, copper and plastic resins according to a Reuters report citing three unnamed sources.The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 44.28 points, or 0.19 percent, to 22,885.29, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 4.63 points, or 0.18 percent, to 2,555.56 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 19.10 points, or 0.29 percent, to 6,610.61.European shares rose to their highest in nearly four months, helped by corporate earnings updates.The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 rose 0.22 percent and MSCI''s gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD PUS gained 0.29 percent.The dollar was little changed against major currencies in the late afternoon, shaking off early weakness from the inflation data.<2E>We did see a knee-jerk reaction that was perhaps overdone. On more sober reflection, traders are coming to bid up the dollar,<2C> said Karl Schamotta, director of global product and market strategy at Cambridge Global Payments in Toronto.The U.S. dollar index .DXY rose 0.03 percent, with the euro EUR= down 0.1 percent to $1.1817. [L8N1MO3VA]European Central Bank policymakers broadly agreed to extend asset purchases at a lower volume at their October policy meeting with views converging on a nine-month extension, sources at the central bank told Reuters.Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes US10YT=RR were last up 12/32 in price to yield 2.2819 percent, from 2.323 percent late on Thursday. The 30-year bond US30YT=RR was last up 25/32 to yield 2.8144 percent, from 2.853 percent Thursday.Oil prices firmed on Friday as bullish news from strong Chinese oil imports to turmoil in the Middle East put Brent on track for a nearly 2.8 percent weekly gain. U.S. crude was on track for its fifth weekly gain out of six weeks.U.S. crude CLcv1 rose 1.54 percent to $51.38 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $57.11, up 1.53 percent.Spot gold XAU= added 0.6 percent to $1,301.41 an ounce.Additional reporting by Karen Brettell and Saqib Iqbal Ahmed in New York, Ritvik Carvalho and Helen Reid in London and Asia markets team; Editing by Clive McKeef and James Dalgleish'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-markets/dollar-stays-low-as-global-stocks-cheer-latest-record-streak-idINKBN1CI14F'|'2017-10-13T12:43:00.000+03:00'
'def60c39cd21d8290c084d99213f4cdd206dfec2'|'British debt collector Cabot to launch 1 bln stg IPO next week: source'|'October 13, 2017 / 12:20 PM / Updated 6 hours ago British debt collector Cabot to launch 1 bln stg IPO next week: source Ben Martin 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Cabot Credit Management, Britain<69>s biggest debt collector, is set to launch a 1 billion pound ($1.3 billion) stock market float next week after a delay last month to revamp its board, a person familiar with the matter said. The firm had hoped to announce its intention to float in September, but postponed it after Peter Crook, the former chief executive of Provident Financial ( PFG.L ), stepped down from its board. Cabot had planned to appoint Crook as its chairman in preparation for the London listing, the person said. Crook<6F>s resignation from Provident Financial following an August profit warning also prompted him to leave Cabot, forcing the debt collector to find a replacement. It is not known who Cabot will appoint in Crook<6F>s place. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Jefferies are managing the float of Cabot, which is owned by U.S. debt recovery business Encore Capital Group and JC Flowers. They are targeting a 1 billion pound market capitalization for the business. A spate of companies have unveiled plans for London IPOs since the start of October, including ready meals supplier Bakkavor and power firm ContourGlobal. ($1 = 0.7524 pounds) Reporting by Ben Martin; editing by Mark Potter and Jason Neely 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-cabot-ipo/british-debt-collector-cabot-to-launch-1-bln-stg-ipo-next-week-source-idINKBN1CI1M8'|'2017-10-13T10:20:00.000+03:00'
'd9721fa5d2cc04a8f66e5e8b378db11217738532'|'PRESS DIGEST- British Business - Oct 13'|'OCT 13 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.The Times- More high street banks and building societies intend to curb their supply of credit to consumers over the next three months than at any time since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, according to the Bank of England. bit.ly/2i91RW9- HSBC Holding Plc has appointed a long-serving executive John Flint as chief executive, less than two weeks after Mark Tucker took over as chairman of HSBC. bit.ly/2yksRaHThe Guardian- Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund , has said it is unimaginable that Britain would leave the EU without a deal in March 2019, as she called for faster progress in the slow-moving Brexit talks. bit.ly/2xBGUFl- The energy bills of 11 million households will be capped for as long as five years under legislation put forward by government, which the Conservatives have claimed could save people up to 100 pounds ($132.66) a year. bit.ly/2g6UqKRThe Telegraph- Royal Mail Plc has won a High Court injunction preventing next week''s planned 48-hour strike by postal workers. bit.ly/2g7husC- Treasury committee chair Nicky Morgan has threatened to use parliamentary powers to force the disclosure of a report into the conduct of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc''s controversial business restructuring arm. bit.ly/2i92bURSky News- The second-largest investor in Johnston Press Plc, the owner of The Scotsman and i newspapers, will next week ignite a battle for control of its board by demanding a shareholder meeting to oust its chairman. bit.ly/2ykwLAj- Shareholders of Sky Plc, the owner of Sky News, have voted to reappoint James Murdoch as chairman of Europe''s largest pay-TV broadcaster. bit.ly/2zjKCWcThe Independent- Business leaders and financial analysts have issued a fresh slew of warnings about the state of Brexit negotiations, after the European Commission''s chief negotiator spoke of a "disturbing deadlock", sending the pound lower. ind.pn/2xC7hji- The UK Government announced on Thursday that it would invest 900 million pounds in renewables and nuclear to meet a 2050 emissions reduction target. ind.pn/2yj2pOI$1 = 0.7538 pounds Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Andrew Hay'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-press-business/press-digest-british-business-oct-13-idUSL4N1MN64Z'|'2017-10-13T03:05:00.000+03:00'
'a8dffa7305dc8451db43d07e98755d996bb4b26c'|'Britain could join NAFTA if Brexit trade deal fails - Telegraph newspaper'|'October 10, 2017 / 10:50 AM / in 7 hours Britain could join NAFTA if Brexit trade deal fails - Telegraph newspaper Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - An umbrella with EU and British flags attached to it is held ahead of a speech by Britain''s Prime Minister Theresa May in Florence, Italy September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Max Rossi LONDON (Reuters) - Britain could join a formal trade alliance with the United States, Canada and Mexico if the European Union refuses to clinch a post-Brexit trade deal, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Tuesday. The newspaper said British ministers were looking at joining the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as part of planning for the possibility of Britain leaving the EU in March 2019 without a trade deal. It gave no sources for the report. <20>As we prepare to leave the EU, we will seek to transition all existing EU trade arrangements to ensure that the UK maintains the greatest amount of certainty, continuity and stability in our trade and investment relationships,<2C> a spokesman for the Department for International Trade said. When asked for comment on The Telegraph report, the spokesman said: <20>We are confident that we will find a deal that works for Britain and Europe too. But it is our responsibility as a government to prepare for every eventuality, and that is what we are doing.<2E> Britain is currently negotiating the terms of its divorce from the EU though Prime Minister Theresa May is pushing to move onto discussions about a major free trade deal with the world<6C>s biggest trading bloc. With the clock ticking down towards Brexit day in 2019, British ministers are exploring the options if the world<6C>s fifth largest economy drops out of the EU without a clear trade deal. Besides aiming to clinch a U.S. trade deal or forming some new trade grouping, some British supporters of Brexit have pondered joining an existing trade alliance such as NAFTA. But U.S. President Donald Trump has warned he may terminate the 1994 NAFTA deal because he says it does not serve U.S. economic interests. If Britain did join NAFTA, manufacturers wanting to export to the EU and North America would have to produce goods in accordance with the two separate sets of rules, according to trade analysts. Britain, whose regulation has been within the EU<45>s orbit for over 40 years, would also have to shift towards the North American model for services, goods, competition policy and data protection. The EU is Britain<69>s biggest single export market, accounting for about 50 percent of goods exports in August. The United States was the single biggest destination for British exports, accounting for 14 percent in August. Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Stephen Addison, Andy Bruce and Richard Balmforth 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-nafta/britain-could-join-nafta-if-it-fails-to-get-brexit-trade-deal-telegraph-newspaper-idUKKBN1CF189'|'2017-10-10T22:23:00.000+03:00'
'afc46296e5743ae35501cbeba063df4c924361e3'|'UK''s economy under a cloud of Brexit uncertainty: Hammond'|'October 11, 2017 / 9:12 AM / Updated 9 hours ago UK''s economy under a cloud of Brexit uncertainty: Hammond Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Britain''s Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond speaks at the Conservative Party''s conference in Manchester, Britain October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay LONDON (Reuters) - British finance minister Philip Hammond said on Wednesday that a <20>cloud of uncertainty<74> about Brexit was hanging over the country<72>s economy and needed to be cleared as quickly as possible. <20>My general view of our economy is that it is fundamentally robust. We have some very strong things going for us, a strong outlook for the future,<2C> Hammond told lawmakers. <20>But the cloud of uncertainty is a temporary damper and we need to remove it as soon as possible by making progress with the (Brexit) negotiation process,<2C> he said. The International Monetary Fund kept its growth forecasts for Britain on hold on Tuesday even as it raised its projections for growth in many other economies around the world. Reporting by David Milliken and Andy Bruce; Writing by William Schomberg; Editing by Catherine Evans 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-hammond/uks-economy-under-a-cloud-of-brexit-uncertainty-hammond-idINKBN1CG0ZV'|'2017-10-11T12:05:00.000+03:00'
'b66f200a45d9414dc915bca3526058c224873a53'|'Gold gains on weaker dollar'|'A employee works on 1 kg. gold bars in Ahlatci Metal Refinery in the central Anatolian city of Corum, Turkey, May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Gold edged higher on Wednesday after Catalonia<69>s leader baulked at making a formal declaration of independence from Spain,sending the euro higher and the dollar down.The dollar index fell to the lowest in over a week, making dollar-priced gold cheaper for buyers using other currencies.<2E>These concerns about the ramifications of the Catalan independence referendum are fading, giving some support to the euro and weakening the dollar,<2C> said Jens Pedersen, senior analyst at Danske Bank in Copenhagen.Spot gold was up 0.2 percent at $1,289.50 an ounce by 1400 GMT while U.S. gold futures for December delivery eased 0.2 percent to $1,291.60 per ounce.Spot gold hit the highest level in nearly two weeks on Tuesday on the third straight day of gains.Before that, gold had been declining since early September after touching a 1-year high of $1,357.54.Investors were awaiting minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve<76>s latest meeting, due to be released at 1800 GMT, for clues on the outlook for potential interest rate rises.But there is scant chance they will have a major impact, Pedersen said, since they probably will merely support expectations that the U.S. central bank will raise rates in December, for the third time this year.Gold is highly sensitive to rising interest rates, as these increase the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion while boosting the dollar, in which the metal is priced.The news about Catalonia together with more upbeat predictions for the global economy helped push world stocks to another record high. [MKTS/GLOB]<5D>With equities at all-time highs, gold also looks attractive as a hedge, especially given the correlation between the two assets has remained in negative territory this year,<2C> Joni Teves, strategist at UBS in London, said in a note.In other precious metals, silver rose 0.3 percent to $17.13 an ounce, having hit a three-week high in the previous session.<2E>Silver regained the $17 per troy ounce mark yesterday but then failed to exceed the technically important 200-day moving average,<2C> Commerzbank said in a note.<2E>Silver has outperformed gold in October so far. The gold/silver ratio has fallen from just shy of 77 at the beginning of the month to a good 75 at present.<2E>Platinum rose 0.4 percent to $932.90 an ounce after hitting a two-week high of $934.50 and palladium climbed 1.7 percent to $949.30 an ounce, the highest since Sept. 13.Additional reporting by Apeksha Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Dale Hudson and Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-precious/gold-gains-on-weaker-dollar-idINKBN1CG03A'|'2017-10-11T04:06:00.000+03:00'
'c400440b23f7bc5cb9780fa7e3e579a85d55005d'|'Mediaset up 5 percent on report of Vivendi mulling 1 billion euros offer to settle pay-TV dispute'|'FILE PHOTO: A woman walks walk past the main entrance of the entertainment-to-telecoms conglomerate Vivendi''s headquarters in Paris, France, April 8, 2015. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo MILAN (Reuters) - Shares in Mediaset ( MS.MI ) rose more than 5 percent on Tuesday after a Bloomberg report said French media group Vivendi ( VIV.PA ) was considering making a cash and stock offer to settle its pay-TV dispute with the Italian broadcaster.Bloomberg said in a source-based report that Vivendi was considering giving Mediaset a compensation package that may be valued around 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion).The report also added that Mediaset<65>s Premium pay-TV unit could become part of a joint venture that is being set up between Vivendi<64>s own pay-TV arm Canal+ and Italian phone group Telecom Italia ( TLIT.MI ). Vivendi is the biggest shareholder in Telecom Italia with a 24 percent stake.Mediaset shares were up 3 percent by 1455 GMT, while Telecom Italia stock was down 1.3 percent.Reporting by Valentina Za, writing by Agnieszka Flak'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mediaset-vivendi/mediaset-up-5-percent-on-report-of-vivendi-mulling-1-billion-euros-offer-to-settle-pay-tv-dispute-idUSKBN1CF235'|'2017-10-10T23:04:00.000+03:00'
'b3a53d3c490d7ff791348ac1dace30a491d40996'|'CEE MARKETS-Forint bucks ECB-driven rise, talked down by rate-setter Nagy'|'* Forint dips for some time on dovish rate setter comments * Forint, zloty at multi-week highs on ECB expectations, U.S. data * Leu firms as ruling party settles government reshuffle * Romanian bonds buck rise on overheating worry-trader (Recasts with forint gains, Romanian markets) By Sandor Peto BUDAPEST, Oct 13 (Reuters) - The forint joined a rally in Central European markets on Friday, shaking off dovish comments from a Hungarian rate setter, due to expectations for an extension of the European Central Bank''s asset buying. Less monetary stimulus in the euro zone and the United States would erode the relative attractiveness of Central European assets. Hungarian central bank Deputy Governor Marton Nagy spurred expectations for further monetary easing in dovish comments which market players believe were aimed at stemming a rise of the forint. Nagy told a conference that there was still room for long-term Hungarian government debt yields to fall and that downside inflation risks had increased. The forint sent the forint into a fall against the euro, after it touched a 3-week high. But its weakness prevailed only for a few hours. Lower than expected U.S. inflation figures reinforced the strengthening of Central European currencies and government bonds, curbing expectations for Federal Reserve interest rate hikes. "The forint has firmed despite the comments as the Hungarian prospects suggest stability and predictability ... while the positive global impact dominates," one Budapest-based trader said. The forint, trading at 308.25 against the euro at 1444 GMT, firmed 0.1 percent, in tandem with the Czech crown . The zloty gained a third of a percent, touching a one-month high. The leu also firmed, getting help from a meeting held by Romania''s ruling Social Democrats late on Thursday. It endorsed a proposed government reshuffle, which had been weighing on Bucharest asset prices. Romanian government bonds, however, continued to underperform, easing, while their Polish and Hungarian peers rode the global tide. Romania''s two-year bonds traded at yield of 2.3 percent, up 3 basis point on the day and about 90 basis points since the end of August. Hungary''s corresponding bonds traded near zero. "The Romanian economy is showing the signs of overheating, they are moving closer to central bank rate hikes," the trader said. "In Hungary, meanwhile, if the central bank continues to pump in money through its fx swaps on Monday, the 3-month (interbank) BUBOR rate might head towards zero (from 0.03 percent, or lower." The trader added that a slipping of further parts of the yield curve into the negative could encourage the buying of longer-term government debt which still has positive yields. Hungary''s 10-year benchmark bond yield dropped 8 basis points on Friday, to 2.53 percent. Poland''s corresponding yield eased 7 basis points to 3.30 percent. CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1644 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.836 25.868 +0.13 4.53% 0 5 % Hungary 308.25 308.60 +0.12 0.18% forint 00 50 % Polish zloty 4.2530 4.2675 +0.34 3.55% % Romanian leu 4.5845 4.5890 +0.10 -1.08% % Croatian 7.5100 7.5097 +0.00 0.60% kuna % Serbian 119.40 119.36 -0.03% 3.31% dinar 00 00 Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1053.0 1054.8 -0.17% +14.2 8 8 7% Budapest 38919. 38772. +0.38 +21.6 13 08 % 1% Warsaw 2533.8 2537.6 -0.15% +30.0 3 9 8% Bucharest 8040.5 7997.2 +0.54 +13.4 4 2 % 9% Ljubljana 816.75 813.57 +0.39 +13.8 % 2% Zagreb 1862.4 1863.2 -0.04% -6.64% 8 9 Belgrade 727.24 727.79 -0.08% +1.38 % Sofia 669.17 668.31 +0.13 +14.1 % 1% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs change Bund in Czech spread Republic 2-year -0.063 -0.149 +065b -14bps ps 5-year 0.439 -0.073 +074b -5bps ps 10-year 1.366 -0.006 +095b +3bps ps Poland 2-year 1.709 -0.013 +243b +0bps ps 5-year 2.659 -0.014 +296b +1bps ps 10-year
'e3e7f2718d870ed55a06aa768914f9f3c884d235'|'Gasoline buoys U.S. consumer prices, underlying inflation tame'|'October 13, 2017 / 1:34 PM / Updated 3 minutes ago Gasoline buoys U.S. consumer prices, underlying inflation tame Lucia Mutikani 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Customers shop at a Whole Foods store in New York City, U.S., August 28, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. consumer prices recorded their biggest increase in eight months in September as gasoline prices soared in the wake of hurricane-related production disruptions at oil refineries in the Gulf Coast area, but underlying inflation remained muted. The mixed report from the Labour Department on Friday comes as Federal Reserve officials have been engaged in a vigorous debate on the inflation path and suggests a December interest rate increase is not a done deal. As a result, the dollar fell against a basket of currencies, while prices for U.S Treasuries rose. U.S. stock index futures rose. Policymakers could, however, find solace from another report indicating that the economy was swiftly recovering from the damage inflicted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, with a strong rebound in retail sales last month. <20>The firmness in retail sales should override the enduring mystery of low inflation to spur a December Fed rate hike,<2C> said Sal Guatieri, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto. The Labour Department said its Consumer Price Index increased 0.5 percent last month after advancing 0.4 percent in August. September<65>s rise was the biggest since January and pushed up the year-on-year gain in the CPI to 2.2 percent from 1.9 percent in August. The increase in the CPI was broadly in line with economists<74> expectations. Gasoline prices surged 13.1 percent last month, accounting for 75 percent of the rise in the CPI. The increase in gasoline prices was the largest since June 2009 and followed a 6.3 percent advance in August. The Labour Department said Harvey was reported to have impacted refinery capacity in the Gulf Coast and was likely a factor in last month<74>s increase in gasoline prices. Outside gasoline, price pressures were benign. Excluding the volatile food and energy components, consumer prices gained 0.1 percent in September as the increase in rental accommodation slowed and the cost of new motor vehicles and medical care declined. The so-called core CPI rose 0.2 percent in August. In the 12 months through September, the core CPI increased 1.7 percent. The year-on-year core CPI has now increased by the same margin for five consecutive months. INTENSE INFLATION DEBATE The Fed tracks the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index excluding food and energy. The core PCE has consistently undershot the U.S. central bank<6E>s 2 percent target for more than five years. Fed Chair Janet Yellen has said that temporary factors such as one-off price cuts by wireless telephone companies are holding back inflation. Minutes of the Fed<65>s Sept. 19-20 meeting published on Wednesday showed <20>many participants expressed concern that the low inflation readings this year might reflect not only transitory factors, but also the influence of developments that could prove more persistent.<2E> Last month, food prices rose 0.1 percent after a similar gain in August. Owners<72> equivalent rent of primary residence rose 0.2 percent after advancing 0.3 percent in August. Prices for new motor vehicles fell 0.4 percent as manufacturers resort to deep discounting to eliminate an inventory overhang. There were also decreases in the cost of medical care, apparel, and household furnishings. But the cost of mobile phone services rose 0.4 percent after 14 straight months of declines. In a separate report on Friday, the Commerce Department said retail sales jumped 1.6 percent in September likely as reconstruction and clean-up efforts in areas devastated by Harvey and Irma boosted demand for building materials and motor vehicles. Retail sales were also buoyed by a surge in receipts at service stations, which reflected higher gasoline prices. Last month<74>s increase
'874b86f980af5632989a33aa32193f5dcf5fd7fd'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX retreats as energy stocks pressured by oil prices'|'October 12, 2017 / 9:39 PM / in 32 minutes CANADA STOCKS-TSX retreats as energy stocks pressured by oil prices Reuters Staff (Updates closing figures and adds analyst comment) * TSX down 58.20 points, or 0.37 percent, to 15,742.20 * Seven of the TSX<53>s 10 main industry groups fell By Solarina Ho TORONTO, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index pulled back from a 7-1/2-month high on Thursday with broad declines led by energy stocks under pressure from weaker oil prices. Suncor Energy Inc was the biggest drag on the index, falling 2.2 percent to C$42.06. It was followed by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd, which declined 2 percent to C$40.66. The overall sector retreated 1.7 percent, as oil prices fell. A bearish 2018 outlook for oil demand by the International Energy Agency weighed on the market. U.S. crude prices settled down 1.4 percent at $50.60 a barrel. Other influential decliners included Shaw Communications Inc , which slid 3.7 percent to C$27.49 and Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd, which tumbled 8.9 percent to C$16.85. Desjardins cut its rating on Kirkland Lake to <20>hold<6C> from <20>buy<75> after the company released quarterly and production results. The overall materials sector, home to mining firms and other resource companies, lost 0.2 percent. The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index fell 58.20 points, or 0.37 percent, to end at 15,742.20. Of the index<65>s 10 main groups, seven were in negative territory. The retreat comes amid a backdrop of uncertainty surrounding the North American Free trade Agreement, with negotiations on the pact turning increasingly sour and talks of a <20>sunset clause<73> that would automatically terminate NAFTA every five years unless there were fresh negotiations. <20>The market doesn<73>t like change, so I think it would be perceived initially as negative,<2C> said Michael Sprung, president at Sprung Investment Management about the potential impact of such a clause. <20>But we do a lot of cross border trade. I can<61>t see how in the long-term that<61>s going to change very much ... I really think things would adjust.<2E> Financial services stocks fell 0.4 percent, with Bank of Nova Scotia down 0.8 percent at C$80.21. On the positive side, Alimentation Couche Tard Inc rose 3.9 percent to C$61.24. The company is buying back 4.4 million of its shares that were held by Metro Inc and Eight Capital upgraded the company to a <20>buy<75> from <20>neutral,<2C> citing positive trends. The overall consumer staples sector added 0.7 percent. Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the TSX by 151 to 93, for a 1.62-to-1 ratio on the downside. (Reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Lisa Shumaker) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks/canada-stocks-tsx-retreats-as-energy-stocks-pressured-by-oil-prices-idUSL2N1MN26U'|'2017-10-13T00:39:00.000+03:00'
'4c7f691a42e206e07c878be2756c49f7a16dd3e5'|'Samsung Electronics says third-quarter operating profit likely nearly tripled from year ago'|'October 12, 2017 / 11:43 PM / in 6 hours Samsung Elec on track for record third quarter as chips soar Joyce Lee 3 Min Read A woman tries out a Samsung Electronics'' Galaxy Note 8 at its store in Seoul, South Korea, October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Friday its third-quarter operating profit likely nearly tripled from a year earlier to a new record, beating analyst estimates as strong memory chip prices fattened margins. Samsung shares touched a fresh high of 2.74 million won soon after the market opened on Friday, on hopes for record 2017 earnings driven by soaring demand for memory chips with ever greater storage capacity. <20>Memory chips have entered a brave new world. The rate of supply increase has slowed drastically, while demand has exceeded expectations, rapidly lifting prices,<2C> said Kim Woon-ho, analyst at IBK Investment & Securities. <20>Although the share price has recently seen steep jumps, it still doesn<73>t reflect all the forecast profit increases.<2E> Brisk sales of the latest Galaxy Note 8 smartphone, launched in mid-September, lifted mobile profit as Samsung recovered from last year<61>s costly withdrawal of the fire-prone Note 7 device, analysts said. Samsung is also expected to announce a new shareholder return policy for the next three years as soon as the end of October, when it releases third-quarter results. It is seen ramping up returns to a level higher than its current 50 percent of free cash flow, supporting its stock valuation, analysts said. An employee helps a customer purchase a Samsung Electronics'' Galaxy Note 8 at its store in Seoul, South Korea, October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji The Apple Inc smartphone rival and global memory chip leader said third-quarter operating profit was likely 14.5 trillion won ($12.81 billion), compared with the 14.3 trillion won average of 20 analyst estimates in a Thomson Reuters poll. Revenue likely rose 29.7 percent from a year earlier to 62 trillion won, versus the analysts<74> average forecast of 62.1 trillion won. A man stands at Samsung Electronic''s store in Seoul, South Korea, October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji Samsung did not elaborate on its July-September performance and will disclose detailed results at the end of October. Analysts have tipped its chip division to propel the firm to record overall profit. Strong global demand for DRAM chips will continue to outpace supply in 2018 as new plants from Samsung and No. 2 memory chip maker SK Hynix are not expected to operate until 2019, while demand for NAND flash chips exceeded supply for six straight quarters as of last month, DRAMeXchange, a division of data provider TrendForce, said. Growing sales of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) smartphone screens for new Apple smartphones also have supported forecasts of a new earnings record in the fourth quarter. Pre-orders for the Note 8 hit the highest-ever for the Note series, Samsung previously said. Samsung shares were trading down 0.8 percent at 0022 GMT as investors booked profits, while the broader market was flat. Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Stephen Coates 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-results/samsung-electronics-says-third-quarter-operating-profit-likely-nearly-tripled-from-year-ago-idUKKBN1CH39F'|'2017-10-13T02:41:00.000+03:00'
'f40c00894f8119887e5b880c6a4bfd01fdfec78f'|'PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 13'|'Oct 13 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.- The Trump administration intends to end billions of dollars in payments to insurers under the Affordable Care Act program, but President Donald Trump has told at least one lawmaker that the payments may continue if a bipartisan deal is reached on heath care. on.wsj.com/2ydy591- U.S. President Trump is expected to announce Friday he won''t certify that Iran is complying with the 2015 international nuclear pact and will take Tehran to task more broadly for practices ranging from missile tests to support of violent groups, U.S. officials said. on.wsj.com/2yfbyc0- Amazon.com suspended the head of its entertainment studio, Roy Price, in the wake of allegations of mismanagement and sexual harassment and criticism of his close business relationship with Harvey Weinstein. on.wsj.com/2ydUOSh- U.S. President Donald Trump is nearing a decision on whom to pick to lead the Federal Reserve, and met Wednesday with one of four candidates, Stanford University economist John Taylor. on.wsj.com/2yfcQnm- Goldman Sachs is acquiring Genesis Capital, a private Los Angeles firm that backs investors seeking to buy, renovate and quickly sell single-family homes. on.wsj.com/2yfkkXs- Embattled Equifax Inc has moved one of its web pages offline as the company looks into whether hackers tried to breach its systems this week. on.wsj.com/2yflVfI- U.S. air-safety regulators have issued an emergency order requiring airlines to inspect engines on roughly 120 Airbus A380 superjumbo jets world-wide, prompted by an engine that violently broke apart during a recent Air France flight. on.wsj.com/2yfl130- General Motors plans to close a Detroit factory through the end of the year and deepen production cuts to slow-selling cars the plant manufactures, idling some workers and letting go others in response to weak sales. on.wsj.com/2ye38l1- Samsung Electronics, continuing to see roaring demand for its components, is forecasting third-quarter profits will be the company''s highest ever. Chief Executive Kwon Oh-hyun, who has overseen the firm''s lucrative components business, also said he will resign. on.wsj.com/2ydK4Dl (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-wsj/press-digest-wall-street-journal-oct-13-idUSL4N1MO23Z'|'2017-10-13T07:18:00.000+03:00'
'0c9b736e9e0460597a445f217f26908d37db9eeb'|'Goldman exploring options for stake in Weinstein Co'|'Harvey Weinstein, Co-Chairman of The Weinstein Company, speaks at the UBS 40th Annual Global Media and Communications Conference in New York, December 5, 2012. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc said on Friday it was exploring options for the stake it holds in the Weinstein Co following allegations of sexual harassment against co-Chairman Harvey Weinstein. <20>There is no place for the inexcusable behavior that had been reported, and we strongly condemn it,<2C> Andrew Williams, a spokesman for Goldman, said in an email. He said Goldman held a stake worth less than $1 million in The Weinstein Co. Harvey Weinstein, who has produced or distributed Oscar-winning movies including <20>Shakespeare in Love<76> and <20>Chicago<67>, was ousted from the Weinstein Co on Sunday. The Weinstein Company did not respond to emails and calls seeking comment. Reporting By Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-harvey-weinstein-goldman/goldman-exploring-options-for-stake-in-weinstein-co-idUSKBN1CI1WO'|'2017-10-13T17:11:00.000+03:00'
'a96e938c5a121fce2ac4a6052493aab7ac1f07f5'|'EU mergers and takeovers (Oct 12)'|'BRUSSELS, Oct 12 (Reuters) - The following are mergers under review by the European Commission and a brief guide to the EU merger process:APPROVALS AND WITHDRAWALS -- French carmaker Renault to acquire a 25 percent stake in electric car charging services Jedlix (approved Oct. 10)NEW LISTINGS -- Medical device maker Avantor, which is controlled by private equity firm New Mountain Capital, to acquire laboratory equipment distributor VWR (notified Oct. 11/deadline Nov. 17)-- Public pension fund provider ATP and Canadian teachers<72> pension fund OTPP to jointly acquire Danish airport operator Copenhagen airports (notified Oct. 10/deadline Nov. 16/simplified)-- West Midland Holdings Ltd, which is a joint venture between Dutch rail operator Abellio Transport Holding BV, East Japan Railway Co and Mitsui Co, to acquire the West Midlands franchise from London & Birmingham Railway Ltd (notified Oct. 10/deadline Nov. 16/simplified)-- Private equity firms Carlyle Group, CVC and China Investment Corp to acquire joint control of French energy company Engie<69>s holding company for oil and gas exploration and production business (notified Oct. 2/deadline Nov. 8/simplified)-- Special purpose vehicle ShaMrock Wind to acquire 60 percent of Irish wind farm operator Evalair, which is jointly owned by Luricawne, Fixarra and Luricawne (notified Sept. 29/deadline Nov. 7/simplified)EXTENSIONS AND OTHER CHANGES NoneFIRST-STAGE REVIEWS BY DEADLINE OCT 13 -- Italian infrastructure group Atlantia to acquire Spanish rival Abertis (notified Sept. 8/deadline Oct. 13)-- Anglo-Dutch oil group Royal Dutch Shell to acquire indirect joint control of natural gas producer Crestwood Permian Basin LLC which is now solely controlled by Crestwood Permian Basin Holdings (notified Sept. 8/deadline Oct. 13/simplified)OCT 16 -- Swiss food company Nestle to acquire sole control of Beverage Partners Worldwide, a joint venture between Nestle and the Coca-Cola Co (notified Oct. 11/deadline Oct. 16)OCT 17 -- U.S. specialty material company Celanese and private equity firm Blackstone to combine their cellulose acetate tow units under a new joint venture (notified Sept. 9/deadline Oct. 17)OCT 18 -- U.S. medical equipment supplier Becton Dickinson and Co to acquire U.S. peer C R Bard Inc (notified Aug. 30/deadline extended to Oct.18 after commitments submitted on Sept. 27)-- Bermuda-headquartered reinsurer Axis Capital Holdings Ltd to acquire UK insurer Novae (notified Sept. 13/deadline Oct. 18/simplified)-- German insurer Allianz to acquire UK financial services group Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society Ltd<74>s general insurance businesses (notified Sept. 13/deadline Oct. 18/simplified)OCT 20 -- U.S. life sciences company Avantor to acquire U.S. lab supplies company VWR (notified Sept. 15/deadline Oct. 20)OCT 23 -- Dutch warehouse owner Borealis European Holdings B.V., Ontario Teachers<72> Pension Plan Board and SSE to acquire joint control of UK energy meter company Maple (notified Sept. 18/deadline Oct. 23/simplified)OCT 24 -- U.S. company Platinum Equity Group to acquire UK aerospace distributor Pattonair Holdings Ltd (notified Sept. 19/deadline Oct. 24/simplified)-- UK energy company Greenergy to acquire fuel supplier Inver Energy Ltd (notified Sept. 19/deadline Oct. 24)OCT 25 -- Jacobs Engineering Group to acquire technical consulting services provider CH2M Hill Companies (notified Sept. 20/deadline Oct. 25/simplified)-- Private equity firm Warburg Pincus and carmaker Tata Motors to jointly acquire Tata Technologies (notified Sept. 20/deadline Oct. 25/simplified)OCT 26 -- Luxembourg-based steelmaker ArcelorMittal to acquire Italian steel plant (notified Sept. 21/deadline Oct. 26)-- French car parts maker Valeo to acquire German clutch maker FTE Automotive(notified Sept. 7/deadline Oct. 26/commitments submitted Sept. 7)OCT 27 -- German chemicals company Evonik and Dutch peer DSM to set up a joint venture (notified Sept. 22/deadline Oct. 27/simplified)OCT 30 -- British company CRH plc to acquire XI (
'e1d62c553bd037f84ac34ed0b9e35658d91633f1'|'TREASURIES-Prices gain after strong auction, before CPI data'|'(Adds auction results, Quote: s, North Korean fears, updates prices) * Solid demand for $12 bln sale of 30-year bonds * Consumer price data on Friday in focus * North Korea fears adds some safety buying By Karen Brettell NEW YORK, Oct 12 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury prices gained on Thursday after the Treasury Department''s $12 billion bond sale drew strong demand, and as investors repositioned ahead of inflation data due on Friday. The 30-year bonds sold at yields just below pre-auction levels, and the bid-to-cover ratio was 2.53, the highest since September 2015. "It went well," said Justin Lederer, an interest rate strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald in New York. "There was demand out the curve, after the recent selloff rates have stabilized." Demand was also solid for Treasury''s $24 billion in three-year notes and $20 billion in 10-year notes on Wednesday. Bids were supported by news from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) on Thursday about an event with "earthquake like characteristics" in an area in North Korea where there had previously been nuclear tests, but that the USGS could not determine if it was natural or man-made. Benchmark 10-year notes gained 5/32 in price to yield 2.327 percent, down from 2.345 percent on Wednesday. Traders shifted focus to consumer price data due on Friday for further indications of whether inflation is picking up. The Labor Department said on Thursday its producer price index for final demand increased 0.4 percent in September. In the 12 months through September, the PPI jumped 2.6 percent, the biggest gain since February 2012. "PPI was a little bit better, but that doesn''t really translate well to CPI," said Gennadiy Goldberg, an interest rate strategist at TD Securities in New York. "I think for the most part markets are still waiting for the CPI report tomorrow." Ten-year yields jumped to 2.402 percent on Friday, the highest level since May 11, after the government''s employment report for September showed a rise in wages that boosted expectations for rising inflation. Analysts, however, have said that data was muddied by recent hurricanes. Adverse weather is seen as having impeded lower-income workers from getting to work more than it did higher-income workers. Minutes from the Federal Reserve''s September meeting released on Wednesday showed that Fed policymakers had a prolonged debate about the prospects of a pickup in inflation and the path of future interest rate rises if it did not. (Editing by Susan Thomas and Richard Chang) )'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-bonds/treasuries-prices-gain-after-strong-auction-before-cpi-data-idINL2N1MN1KS'|'2017-10-12T16:55:00.000+03:00'
'6dcbd5a09a6c7366eadbe5c5a78f52a04b160907'|'WPP objects to Bain''s offer for Japan''s Asatsu-DK'|'The logo of Bain Capital is displayed on the screen during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/Files LONDON (Reuters) - WPP, the world<6C>s biggest advertising agency, on Thursday stepped up its efforts to stop U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital from buying Japan<61>s Asatsu-DK Inc, saying the offer significantly undervalued its stake in the firm.Bain announced an agreed deal to buy Japan<61>s third-largest advertising agency this month for $1.35 billion, marking a 15.4 percent premium over the day before it was announced. However the news triggered a backlash from WPP, which owns a 24.96 percent stake in Asatsu-DK.On Thursday it questioned whether Asatsu-DK had considered any other offer for the company and said it had concerns about the group<75>s overall strategy in terms of its approach to improving overseas operations and developing digital services.<2E>Has Bain Capital ever given ADK<44>s management reassurance about their own position as part of this transaction and, if so, should not those terms be disclosed?<3F> WPP said.The buyout will be cancelled if Bain fails to buy a stake larger than 50.1 percent.Asatsu-DK has said it supports Bain<69>s offer, arguing that a strategic review found that private ownership represented the best option to position the company for sustainable growth.<2E>In collaboration with Bain Capital, we will set a course towards bold structural reforms and growth strategies that will help us to enhance our competitiveness and to expand our market share, both in Japan and overseas,<2C> President and Group CEO Shinichi Ueno said when the deal was announced.Reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Keith Weir'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/asatsu-dk-m-a-bain-wpp/wpp-objects-to-bains-offer-for-japans-asatsu-dk-idINKBN1CH16E'|'2017-10-12T07:29:00.000+03:00'
'70666dda72632a04572ff0fe69937e96f012476f'|'American factories could prosper if they find enough skilled workers'|'<27>WE ARE always short ten to 20 people,<2C> says Jack Marshall, the manager of PPG<50>s plant in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The company makes coatings, paint and speciality materials for customers such as Harley Davidson, a motorcycle manufacturer based in the state, with a palette ranging from black denim to candy orange. His factory employs 550 people, many of whom must work overtime. It is hard to fill jobs, he explains, because many still think factory work involves repetitive assembly-line tasks, as in the candy factory on the old TV sitcom <20>I Love Lucy<63>.As part of trying to shed this outdated image, America<63>s manufacturing industry has for the past five years celebrated the first Friday in October as National Manufacturing Day. Some 2,800 events across the country were organised this time round, ranging from factory tours to banquets. Intel, a chip giant, displayed its wafer-fabrication equipment at its enormous semiconductor manufacturing campus outside Portland, Oregon. Toyota showed visitors its robots and other advanced equipment used to make trucks at its factory in San Antonio, Texas.Latest updates Taxing the rich Buttonwood<6F>s notebook 30 minutes ago The   3   See all updates The notion of a fading economic sector arises from a big drop in manufacturing employment over the past two decades (see chart). Some places were hit especially hard. From 1980 to 2005, for example, the number of factory jobs fell by some 45% in Rochester, New York, and in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Many people, including President Donald Trump, reckon that global trade, especially with China, is largely to blame. When Taiwan<61>s Foxconn, the world<6C>s largest contract manufacturer, which employs over 1m people in China, said this summer it would build a factory in Wisconsin employing up to 13,000 people in return for $3bn in various tax breaks and subsidies from the state, Mr Trump called a press conference to celebrate.However, studies show that the majority of past factory job losses were the result of investments in automation, which continue to pay off. American manufacturing has more than doubled output in real terms since the Reagan era, to over $2trn today. Productivity is soaring. Output per labour-hour rose by 47% between 2002 and 2015, outpacing gains in Britain, France and Germany. A survey of global chief executives conducted in 2016 by Deloitte, a consultancy, found that bosses expect American manufacturing to become more competitive than China<6E>s as soon as the next few years, in part because pay for Chinese workers has risen. A closely followed index of American manufacturing activity hit a 13-year high in September.America<63>s most technologically-advanced manufacturers are now expanding confidently. Take, for example, factories in Connecticut, which long ago led the country but which have suffered badly in recent decades (from 1980 to 2005, manufacturing employment in Hartford, the state<74>s capital, collapsed by half). In the 1800s local manufacturers including Eli Whitney, who invented the cotton gin, perfected the use of interchangeable parts. Those grimy workshops made muskets and machine tools. Today the state<74>s manufacturers make the high-tech products of their age.General Dynamics Electric Boat (EB), a local defence contractor, won a $5.1bn contract in September to develop a new class of nuclear-powered submarines. It expects to hire between 15,000 and 20,000 workers by 2030. Pratt & Whitney (P&W), a division of United Technologies Corporation that makes jet engines, plans to hire some 8,000 workers in Connecticut (and 25,000 worldwide) over the next decade.A huge problem is that factories are struggling to find enough skilled workers. The Manufacturing Institute, an industry body, and Deloitte calculate that there will be nearly 3.5m manufacturing job openings in America in the decade to 2025, but that 2m may go unfilled. Scott Peterson, chief human-resources officer at Schwan<61>s, a privately owned food-manufacturing firm 
'47995cb77fea9254f21f1f27c30919426c4fc98e'|'James Murdoch wins backing of Sky shareholders to stay as chairman'|'October 12, 2017 / 11:37 AM / Updated 8 hours ago James Murdoch wins backing of Sky shareholders to stay as chairman Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - James Murdoch, the son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and his wife Kathryn Hufschmid arrive for a reception to celebrate the wedding between Rupert Murdoch and former supermodel Jerry Hall which took place on Friday, in London, Britain March 5, 2016. REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON (Reuters) - A majority of independent votes cast at the annual shareholders<72> meeting of Sky ( SKYB.L ) on Thursday supported the re-election of James Murdoch as chairman, a spokesman for the European pay TV group said. Ahead of the meeting some shareholders had said they were planning to oppose Murdoch<63>s re-election because they did not believe he could effectively represent independent investors as he is also chief executive of Twenty-First Century Fox ( FOXA.O ). Twenty-First Century Fox, which already owns 39 percent of Sky, agreed to buy the rest of the company in December 2016, a deal which is currently being reviewed by Britain<69>s competition regulators. At Sky<6B>s AGM, independent director Martin Gilbert said he was <20>pretty confident<6E> past events at Fox News in the United States would not affect the UK Competition and Markets Authority<74>s current review of the deal. Gilbert<72>s comment was a reference to allegations of sexual and racial harassment at Fox News. Reporting by Paul Sandle, writing by James Davey. Editing by Jane Merriman 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sky-m-a-fox/james-murdoch-wins-backing-of-sky-shareholders-to-stay-as-chairman-idUSKBN1CH1LB'|'2017-10-12T14:36:00.000+03:00'
'ffe03647805f3d362b35b03045aa48dba534e3a5'|'Hyperloop One gets Richard Branson on board'|'October 12, 2017 / 3:09 PM / Updated 31 minutes ago Richard Branson takes another bet on the future with Hyperloop One Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Virgin Group founder Richard Branson speaks at a press event in Sydney, September 9, 2015. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo (Reuters) - British billionaire Richard Branson on Thursday placed another bet on the future with an investment in Hyperloop One, which is developing super high-speed transportation systems. Hyperloop One said Branson<6F>s Virgin Group would take the company global and rebrand itself as Virgin Hyperloop One in the near future. Branson has joined the board of Hyperloop One, which will develop pods that will transport passenger and mixed-use cargo at speeds of 250 miles per hour (402 km per hour). The pod lifts above a track using magnetic levitation and glides at airline speeds for long distances due to low aerodynamic drag. The company did not disclose the size of the investment. Hyperloop One was originally conceptualized by Elon Musk. In July, Musk said he had received verbal approval to start building the systems that would link New York and Washington, cutting travel time to about half an hour. Last month, Hyperloop One raised $85 million in new funding, bringing the total financing raised to $245 million since it was founded in 2014. Hyperloop One<6E>s co-founders, executive chairman Shervin Pishevar and president of engineering Josh Giegel, have previously worked at Virgin Galactic. Virgin Galactic is Branson<6F>s space company, which in 2016, was granted an operating license to fly its passenger rocketship with the world<6C>s first paying space tourists once final safety tests are completed. "Virgin Hyperloop One will be all-electric and the team is working on ensuing it is a responsible and sustainable form of transport," Virgin Group said in a statement. ( bit.ly/2xB8TcQ ) Hyperloop One is also working on projects in the Middle East, Europe, India and Canada, according to the statement. Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-hyperloop-virgin-group/hyperloop-one-gets-richard-branson-on-board-idUSKBN1CH290'|'2017-10-12T18:08:00.000+03:00'
'896218d46a7a638221de22f88beb27ea0a4e6c41'|'RWE likely to target Uniper assets after Fortum takeover: sources'|'FILE PHOTO: A general view of the Fortum headquarters in Espoo, Finland August 18, 2017. REUTERS/Lefteris Karagiannopoulos/File Photo FRANKFURT/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) - Germany<6E>s RWE ( RWEG.DE ) is likely to buy Uniper ( UN01.DE ) assets that Fortum ( FORTUM.HE ) sells after the Finnish firm<72>s planned 8.05 billion euro ($9.5 billion) takeover rather than launch a counterbid, investors and M&A sources said.State-controlled Fortum, under pressure from investors to do a big deal, bid for Uniper last month to try to snap up a 46.65 percent stake E.ON ( EONGn.DE ) wants to divest.Fortum is mainly interested in Uniper<65>s assets in Sweden and Russia and less in its more polluting gas and coal fired power plants, which would be a better fit for RWE, the sources said.<2E>It is much cheaper for RWE to wait it out than embarking on a bidding war with Fortum,<2C> a person familiar with the deal said, adding that RWE would essentially be <20>cherry-picking<6E>.RWE declined to comment on its plans on Friday.Fortum, keen to expand its carbon-free energy business, said it had no plans for a restructuring and wants to be a long-term investor in Uniper.However, Finnish business daily Kauppalehti on Friday Quote: d Fortum<75>s head of generation Tiina Tuomela as saying that the company expects the power industry to stop using coal in the long term, without commenting on the company<6E>s short-term plans.Investors doubt Fortum will hold on to all of Uniper<65>s assets should its bid succeed.<2E>There is a chance that Uniper will be broken up,<2C> said Thomas Deser, fund manager at Union Investment, a Uniper shareholder, adding RWE could be interested in Uniper<65>s 1.05 gigawatt Datteln 4 coal-fired plant.Smaller deals would also be more in line with RWE<57>s strategy of selective M&A.RWE could easily sell stakes in its network and renewable unit Innogy ( IGY.DE ), in which it still holds 76.8 percent, to pay for parts of Uniper, the sources said.Fortum has bid 22 euros per share for Uniper, which is trading at around 24 euros and any counterbid would have to be above 26 euros to compensate for a break-up fee, Andreas Schneller, fund manager at Swiss asset manager EIC, said.<2E>Chances for a counterbid are currently zero,<2C> he added.Uniper, which is opposed to the deal, hopes that the Finnish government could shy away given expected ratings downgrades for Fortum, one of the people said. But Finland<6E>s Economy Minister earlier this week said it supported the deal.(This story corrects paragraph 7 to clarify Fortum comment)Additional reporting by Arno Schuetze in Frankfurt and Jussi Rosendahl and Tuomas Forsell in Helsinki; editing by Alexander Smith and Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-uniper-m-a-fortum-oyj-rwe/rwe-likely-to-target-uniper-assets-after-fortum-takeover-sources-idINKBN1CI18U'|'2017-10-13T08:24:00.000+03:00'
'e857fd1d3c66e96381038501fadd32c28a88d587'|'Hellman & Friedman explores sale of software firm OpenLink -sources'|'October 13, 2017 / 5:53 PM / Updated 8 minutes ago Hellman & Friedman explores sale of software firm OpenLink -sources Greg Roumeliotis , David French 2 Min Read Oct 13 (Reuters) - Hellman & Friedman LLC is exploring the sale of OpenLink Financial LLC, a U.S. software provider to the commodity, energy and financial services sectors that could be valued at over $1 billion, including debt, people familiar with the matter said. Hellman & Friedman, a private equity firm, bought OpenLink from Carlyle Group LP in 2011 for an undisclosed sum. It is working with investment bank Centerview Partners on exploring a sale of OpenLink, the sources said. Hellman & Friedman and OpenLink did not respond to requests for comment. Centerview declined to comment. The sources asked not to be identified because the deliberations are confidential. Based in Uniondale, New York, OpenLink has offices in 10 countries and counts BP Plc, Chevron Corp, Bank of America Corp and Conagra Brands Inc among its clients, according to its website. OpenLink<6E>s software also helps manage trading operations and risk management for its customers. It generates 12-month earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of about $80 million, one of the sources said. Last month, OpenLink appointed Rich Grossi as its chief executive officer, following John O<>Malley<65>s elevation to the role of executive chairman. (Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis and David French in New York; Additional reporting by Liana B. Baker in San Francisco; Editing by Susan Thomas) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/openlink-ma/hellman-friedman-explores-sale-of-software-firm-openlink-sources-idUSL2N1MN18N'|'2017-10-13T20:51:00.000+03:00'
'120e5892a42f975c1981b1f580ab14488017ebf6'|'Raiffeisen evacuates all Russian offices after bomb warning'|'MOSCOW, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Austria<69>s Raiffeisen Bank said on Friday it had evacuated all staff from its offices in Russia, and searches were being conducted, after it received a bomb warning.<2E>We have received information about an explosive device planted without its precise location being named,<2C> the lender said on its website. <20>We hope to complete the checks in the nearest future.<2E>Reporting by Andrei Ostroukh; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Christian Lowe'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/russia-raiffeisen-bombthreat/raiffeisen-evacuates-all-russian-offices-after-bomb-warning-idINR4N1MM008'|'2017-10-13T11:45:00.000+03:00'
'68c086b910c232194edbb604c135464971f6654a'|'BofA profit rises on higher rates, lower costs'|'October 13, 2017 / 11:04 AM / in 7 hours BofA profit rises on higher rates, lower costs Reuters Staff 2 Min Read REUTERS - Bank of America Corp, the second-largest U.S. bank by assets, reported a 15 percent rise in quarterly profit as the lender kept a tight leash on costs and benefited from higher interest rates. BofA<66>s shares rose about 1 percent in premarket trade. The bank''s net income attributable to common shareholders rose to $5.12 billion for third quarter ended Sept. 30 from $4.45 billion in the year-ago period. Earnings per share rose to 48 cents from 41 cents. ( bit.ly/2hDYUZK ) Analysts on average had expected earnings of 45 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. It was not immediately clear if the reported results were comparable. Benefiting from higher Federal Reserve interest rates, the lender<65>s net interest income rose 9.4 percent to $11.16 billion. The Fed is widely expected to raise rates again in December. BofA<66>s large stock of deposits and rate-sensitive mortgage securities make the lender particularly dependent on a rise in interest rates to boost profits. Trading revenue fell 15 percent, with revenue from fixed income trading down 22 percent. JPMorgan and Citigroup also reported declines in trading revenue on Thursday due to a slump in volatility. BofA<66>s non-interest expenses fell 2.5 percent to $13.14 billion. Total revenue rose about 1 percent to $22.08 billion. Reporting by Nikhil Subba and Sweta Singh in Bengaluru and Dan Freed in New York; editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bank-of-america-results/bank-of-america-profit-rises-15-percent-on-lower-costs-idINKBN1CI1DE'|'2017-10-13T09:04:00.000+03:00'
'0b7d723bbc1baf1984159fc52282d88be769424e'|'American efforts to control Chinese firms abroad are dangerous'|'WARS are fought with weapons, but also with money. To understand the global balance of power in the coming decades, it helps to pay attention to the commercial subplot of the North Korean crisis. For the first time, America is attempting to use its full legal and financial might to change the behaviour of Chinese companies and banks, which it believes are propping up North Korea by breaking UN and American sanctions. Some American politicians have concluded that, as China<6E>s firms have integrated with the global economy, they have become more vulnerable to Uncle Sam<61>s wrath. America has potent weapons, but the trouble is that China can retaliate in devastating fashion.North Korea is highly dependent on China. Some 60-90% of its trade is with its northern neighbour. China<6E>s state-run energy giant, CNPC, is thought to have sold it oil in recent years<72>and is the parent of PetroChina, which has depositary receipts listed in New York. North Korean banks and firms operate in China, and it is likely that Chinese banks have dealt with them or their proxies. After months of American pressure, on September 21st China<6E>s central bank was reported to have told the country<72>s lenders to stop writing new business with North Koreans. But America<63>s Treasury is still on the warpath. On September 26th it blacklisted 19 North Korean bankers working in China and eight North Korean firms. In private it is excoriating China<6E>s largest lenders, which own $125bn of assets in America, equivalent to 14% of their total capital. On September 28th a Senate committee demanded an ever tougher crackdown on Chinese banks.Such extraterritorial reach by American regulators (and courts) is a feature of international business. Misdeeds anywhere can be punished, if the firm in question issues securities in America, has a subsidiary there or makes electronic transactions in dollars. America has pursued eight of Europe<70>s biggest 50 companies by market value for breaking sanctions in the past decade, and 18 of them for corruption. After the attacks of September 11th 2001 America stepped up efforts to police the global dollar payments system. It aggressively enforced sanctions against Iran. European financial firms faced $13bn of related fines and France<63>s BNP Paribas and Britain<69>s Standard Chartered almost lost their American licences, which would probably have put them out of business.Yet until a year ago, big Chinese firms were exempt, at least informally. America probably worried about starting a trade war. Sanctions in 2013 on four small Chinese firms that traded with Iran met a furious response from China<6E>s foreign ministry. In some cases Uncle Sam<61>s relaxed attitude was obvious. In 2015 China Construction Bank<6E>s New York office was found by the Federal Reserve to have deficient anti-money-laundering processes but was forgiven. In 2014-15 Agricultural Bank of China<6E>s New York office processed over $100bn of payments without adequate controls. It got a token $215m fine. When PetroChina listed in New York in 2000, it sidestepped sanctions by transferring assets in Sudan to CNPC, according to the memoirs of Hank Paulson, a Goldman Sachs banker who was later treasury secretary.Now China Inc would appear to be a sitting duck. Hundreds of firms have securities listed in America. There is lots of graft in China and it is a large trading partner not only of North Korea but of Iran, Syria and Cuba, which also face American sanctions. A sharp change of mood was signalled in March when Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, announced a $1.2bn fine on ZTE, an IT company which had done business with Iran and North Korea. Huawei, a rival, is under scrutiny for a possible breach of American trade controls on Iran and Syria. While China may hope that its recent order to its banks may calm things, there is a fever in Washington to punish its firms, both for patriotic reasons and because protectionists are newly influential.China<6E>s banks run large businesses in dollars as
'446af79c629cd64ba6e2136b9fb0d42be2c88cc8'|'Lufthansa''s swoop on Air Berlin stirs competition concerns'|'October 13, 2017 / 1:31 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago Lufthansa''s swoop on Air Berlin stirs competition concerns Reuters Staff 3 Min Read A Lufthansa airliner taxis next to the Air Berlin aircrafts at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke LONDON/VIENNA (Reuters) - With the ink barely dry on Lufthansa<73>s ( LHAG.DE ) deal to take over large parts of insolvent Air Berlin, the airline risks having its wings clipped by regulators and rivals concerned about unfair competition. Lufthansa signed a 210 million euro ($248 million) deal on Thursday to take over Air Berlin units Niki and LG Walter, plus some short-haul planes, to cement its position in Germany and expand its Eurowings budget brand. Austrian competition authorities said on Friday they believed Lufthansa, which also owns Austrian Airlines, would be too dominant in Vienna if it owned Austria-based Niki. <20>We see an anti-competitive Lufthansa monopoly in Vienna on many routes after the takeover of Fly Niki,<2C> the competition authority<74>s spokeswoman said. <20>We will voice our concern about the takeover at the European Commission.<2E> The German cartel office said it expected the European Commission to take a close look at the deal. The European Commission had no comment, with a spokesman saying it had not yet been formally notified of the deal. RIVALS COMPLAIN The deal has also raised eyebrows with rival airlines. Ryanair ( RYA.I ) CEO Michael O<>Leary has called it a <20>stitch-up<75>, saying it would give Lufthansa a 95 percent share of the German domestic market. Ryanair said on Thursday it would take up its case with the EU. Lufthansa has hit back at such claims, saying the deal would have to be examined not only from the point of view of the German market but Europe as a whole. Lufthansa has said it has a market share of 34 percent on routes to and from Germany, while Air Berlin had 14 percent. With the takeover of parts of Air Berlin that will remain below 48 percent, which Lufthansa says is equivalent to Ryanair<69>s market share in Ireland. Willie Walsh, CEO of British Airways parent IAG ( ICAG.L ), said on Friday he saw <20>significant<6E> competition concerns with the deal, which will see Lufthansa taking on around 80 of Air Berlin<69>s 130 planes. Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said on Thursday he expected the deal would be approved by the end of the year. A company source said Lufthansa was confident of getting approval, but expected there would be some remedies, as was the case when Lufthansa acquired Austrian Airlines and Swiss International Air Lines. Air Berlin remains in talks with Britain<69>s easyJet ( EZJ.L ) over other assets. Reporting by Victoria Bryan, Alistair Smout, Kirsti Knolle, Matthias Inverardi, Ilona Wissenbach; Editing by Douglas Busvine and Elaine Hardcastle 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-lufthansa/lufthansas-swoop-on-air-berlin-stirs-competition-concerns-idUSKBN1CI1SM'|'2017-10-13T16:30:00.000+03:00'
'f434db716d924b17c9952976709eb290917c7d6f'|'Saudi Aramco in talks to shelve international IPO: FT'|'Visitors are seen at the Saudi Aramco stand at the Middle East Process Engineering Conference & Exhibition in Manama, Bahrain, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed (Reuters) - Saudi Aramco is considering shelving plans for an international public offering in favor of a private share sale to world sovereign funds and institutional investors, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.Talks for a private sale to foreign governments, including China, and other investors have gathered pace in recent weeks, according to the report. ( on.ft.com/2gBheCT )The company is still looking to list its shares on Saudi Arabia<69>s Tadawul exchange next year if it pursues the private sale, the report said.No final decision has yet been made and an international listing could still occur next year, the FT reported.<2E>A range of options, for the public listing of Saudi Aramco, continue to be held under active review. No decision has been made and the IPO process remains on track,<2C> a Saudi Aramco spokesman said.Saudi Aramco had formally appointed JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM.N ), Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ) and HSBC ( HSBA.L ) as international financial advisers for its initial public offering, sources familiar with the matter had told Reuters in March.Both JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.A plan to list Aramco in 2018 was on track, senior Saudi officials had said in Moscow earlier this month.Reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Martina D''Couto'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-saudiaramco-ipo/saudi-aramco-in-talks-to-shelve-ipo-ft-idINKBN1CI2GS'|'2017-10-13T15:25:00.000+03:00'
'b89c5f5313fa1f3bb7f08449c26bca51c70df284'|'Samsung scion''s defence fights back as legal appeal begins'|'October 12, 2017 / 3:57 AM / in 6 hours Samsung scion''s defence fights back as legal appeal begins Joyce Lee 3 Min Read Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman, Jay Y. Lee, arrives at a court in Seoul, South Korea, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji SEOUL (Reuters) - The heir to South Korea<65>s Samsung Group appeared in a packed court on Thursday for the first day of arguments in the appeal of his five-year jail term for corruption. The 49-year-old Jay Y. Lee was convicted by a lower court in August of bribing former president Park Geun-hye to help strengthen his control of the crown jewel in the conglomerate, Samsung Electronics, one of the world<6C>s biggest technology companies. The appellate court hearing the appeal is likely to try to rule on the case by next February, legal experts said. Whichever side loses could take the case to the Supreme Court, the final court of appeal in South Korea. Lee<65>s presence marked his first public appearance since the August ruling. He did not speak during the early proceedings other than giving his birth date and address. The lower court in August had ruled that while Lee never asked for Park<72>s help directly, the fact that a 2015 merger of two Samsung affiliates did help cement Lee<65>s control over Samsung Electronics <20>implied<65> he was asking for the president<6E>s help to strengthen his control of the firm. The defence strongly challenged the lower court<72>s logic that Lee<65>s actions <20>implied<65> solicitation for help from Park by providing financial support for the former president<6E>s close friend and confidante Choi Soon-sil. The prosecution, which has lodged a cross-appeal against the lower court ruling that found Lee innocent on some charges, said the court<72>s decision to not acknowledge explicit solicitation for Park<72>s help from Samsung despite the evidence found <20>did not make sense<73>. DEFENCE FIGHTS BACK The defence, which spent much of its time during the initial trial refuting the prosecution<6F>s individual charges, is expected to focus on a few key arguments in the appeal - including whether there was in fact an <20>ordinary type of bribery<72> as defined under South Korean law, which says only civil servants come under the statute. Park<72>s friend Choi was not a civil servant. The lower court found that Samsung<6E>s financial support of 7.2 billion won ($6.27 million) to sponsor the equestrian career of Choi<6F>s daughter constituted an ordinary type of bribery, as <20>it can be considered the same as she (Park) herself receiving it.<2E> The defence is expected to strongly challenge this by saying that the prosecution, on whom the burden of proof lies, has not proved collusion between Park and Choi. Reporting by Joyce Lee; Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Neil Fullick 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/samsung-lee/samsung-scions-defence-fights-back-as-legal-appeal-begins-idINKBN1CH0D7'|'2017-10-12T06:55:00.000+03:00'
'49fb1cd585c87a5901a60da3856be53ff9ebdb27'|'An epic but inconsequential proxy vote at Procter & Gamble'|'SHAREHOLDER meetings in Ohio are not usually the stuff of high drama, but a recent gathering was a nail-biter. Nelson Peltz of Trian Fund Management, an activist hedge fund, sought a seat on the board of Procter & Gamble (P&G), the world<6C>s largest consumer-goods company, in a proxy vote on October 10th. It was the biggest such battle ever. In the weeks leading up to P&G<>s shareholder meeting, the fight resembled a political contest, complete with carefully crafted videos, lengthy white papers, mass mailings and tens of thousands of phone calls urging shareholders to vote blue (P&G) or white (Trian).As The Economist went to press, P&G said it had won and Mr Peltz was contesting the tally. <20>Everybody but [P&G<>s] current employees voted for us,<2C> he said after P&G declared victory. <20>Maybe that<61>s why they keep so much overhead.<2E> So the brawl is not over. Yet the outcome may not matter much. Mr Peltz will push P&G for change regardless of whether he wins a board seat, and it is unclear that he will have much effect, be he on the board or off. 13 It is not that Mr Peltz lacks heft. He has taken on consumer firms including Heinz and Wendy<64>s in the past. Martin Lipton, a lawyer who has long defended companies from such activists, has noted his <20>impressive record of success with consumer products companies<65>. Even when Trian technically loses a fight, it often wins. It lost a proxy battle against DuPont, a chemical company, in 2015, but the company went on to make many changes that Mr Peltz had sought. Trian recently won a separate victory, securing a seat on the board of General Electric on October 9th.At P&G, new thinking is sorely needed. The 180-year-old company sells products in nearly 200 countries and territories. It has America<63>s bestselling razors (Gillette), toothpaste (Crest), detergent (Tide) and toilet paper (Charmin), to name but a few of its products, but has lost share in more than a dozen of its top categories. Total shareholder return in the five years to February 13th 2017, the last trading day before Trian<61>s stake (of 1.5%) was announced, lagged the median of its peers by 55 percentage points and the S&P 500 Consumer Staples Index by 27 percentage points.P&G has taken steps to become more streamlined. In the past three years it has culled its brands from 170 to 65 and reduced the number of employees by 35,000. But Mr Peltz maintains that the firm remains too insular and slow to adapt to a fast-moving market. His frustrations are shared by many institutional investors. Those recently surveyed by Sanford C. Bernstein, a research firm, were particularly critical of the board, which is packed with other bosses, including Terry Lundgren, the chairman of Macy<63>s, a department store, and Meg Whitman, boss of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, an IT firm.Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), an influential proxy-advisory firm, recently noted that the board had presided over bureaucratic tangles and botched acquisitions. Both it and Glass Lewis, another proxy adviser, backed Mr Peltz<74>s appointment. Many small investors, who own about 40% of P&G<>s shares, appear to have disagreed. Employees may have feared bigger layoffs to come. Mr Peltz says he will continue to push P&G even if he fails to prevail in the proxy<78>s certified vote count.But his powers may be limited. He is not seeking to sack David Taylor, who became chief executive in 2015 and is thought to be moving P&G in the right direction (albeit too slowly for investors<72> taste). Nor is he trying to split up P&G. Mr Peltz<74>s most substantive change would be to reorganise its ten business units into three, overseen by a lean holding company, to make the firm nimbler. Reorganisation<6F>if the board supports it<69>could take years to yield results.Mr Peltz is also urging P&G to acquire more small and local brands. Yet given the mismanagement of prior deals, it is unclear that it would find suitable targets or sustain their growth. Many of the world<6C>s largest consumer firms are 
'0c4ecbcd5ed0edb964fbbc1c2c88b7f27642cf63'|'Kobe Steel admits falsifying data on 20,000 tonnes of metal'|'THE port city of Kobe, on the southern side of Japan<61>s main island, is known for luxury beef from pampered cattle, fine sake and precision engineering. Its reputation for the last of those products took a blow on October 8th when one of its oldest industrial firms, Kobe Steel, admitted that that it had falsified data on many of its aluminium, copper and steel products. By October 11th, the company<6E>s shares had fallen by a third, reducing its market value by <20>180bn ($1.6bn).Kobe Steel has admitted to falsification over the past year relating to large quantities of four types of material; 19,300 tonnes of aluminium sheets and poles; 19,400 aluminium components; 2,200 tonnes of copper products and an unspecified amount of iron powder that was supplied to over 200 customers. These items were certified as having properties<65>such as a level of tensile strength, meaning stiffness<73>that they did not in fact possess.Latest updates The   3   Airlines are trying to cram ever more seats onto planes Gulliver a day ago See all updates No deaths or accidents have yet resulted, but the firm<72>s products are used by a long list of household names in Japan and overseas. Companies ranging from Boeing, Ford and GM of America to Hitachi, Nissan, Toyota and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan are rushing to examine their products<74> safety. Mitsubishi has already said that affected steel was used in an H-2A rocket that safely launched a global-positioning satellite into orbit on October 10th.Replacing the faulty metal sold may initially cost Kobe Steel just <20>15bn, according to J.P. Morgan, a bank. Yet taking into account the need to idle and repair any affected cars and planes, the overall cost could soar. More revelations may be on the way, for Kobe Steel admits that its current problems stretch back at least a decade.The news has come at the worst possible moment. Like the rest of its industry in the rich world, Kobe Steel has been hit by a flood of cheap aluminium and steel imports. In 2016 it lost <20>23bn. In order to compete, mills will have to produce the sort of high-tech steel for cars, planes and trains that still commands premium prices, says Wolfgang Eder of Voestalpine, one of the few steel firms in Europe that is still profitable. Kobe Steel has lately switched its focus to higher-tech metals, but if it cannot guarantee their quality it will be in trouble.The firm<72>s stumble is the latest in a long list of scandals for Japan<61>s once-bright corporate stars. Earlier this month Nissan was obliged to recall 1.2m cars after finding that unqualified inspectors had been conducting safety checks. In June, Takata, a maker of faulty airbags linked to 18 deaths worldwide, declared bankruptcy after being hit by a whirlwind of lawsuits. Last year, the bosses of Suzuki and Mitsubishi, two Japanese carmakers, resigned after their firms were found to have falsified fuel-consumption data on their vehicles. And between 2009 and 2011, Toyota, another carmaker, recalled 9m cars equipped with dangerous accelerator pedals.Such scandals are not unique to Japan. Volkswagen, a German carmaker, has been caught falsifying emissions data. Reckitt Benckiser, a British firm, sold cleaning products linked to the deaths of over 90 people in South Korea from 2011 onwards. But it is obvious that Japanese firms have not learned the lessons from recent scandals, says Toshiaki Oguchi of Governance for Owners Japan, a corporate-governance lobby group. A recurring theme is a lack of transparent leadership and a tendency to paper over problems. Japanese workers are ethical, he says, but tend to hide wrongdoing rather than confront management. Kobe Steel ignored at least one whistleblower who sounded the alarm over its substandard metal. Its president and chief executive, Hiroya Kawasaki, has promised to lead an internal probe.His company<6E>s woes add urgency to efforts to improve corporate governance in Japan. Shinzo Abe, the prime minister (who worked at the steel group bef
'd1276feeee814c0958b9983bf4da2c277a8b526d'|'Toyota plans to halve Japan car models by 2025: source'|'October 12, 2017 / 12:41 AM / Updated 9 hours ago Toyota seeking to halve Japan car models as domestic market shrinks Maki Shiraki , Naomi Tajitsu 3 Min Read A man walks past a Toyota Motor Corp logo at the company''s showroom in Tokyo, Japan June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Toru Hanai TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp is aiming to halve the number of car models it sells at home by 2025, a person briefed on the matter said - the second time this month that a Japanese automaker has emerged with plans to sharply scale back in a shrinking domestic market. Car sales in Japan have been on a declining trend for more than two decades as the population rapidly ages and young people are losing interest in car ownership. At the same time, global automakers are increasingly focusing their R&D efforts on electric cars and self-driving technologies. Toyota offers about 60 car models in Japan, where consumers clamor for variety. But it aims to gradually cut that to about 30 by 2025 to make better use of resources, the person said, declining to be identified as he was not authorized to speak on the matter. But even halved, the new domestic model portfolio would still beat the 25 models available in North America, Toyota<74>s biggest market. The plan comes on the heels of Honda Motor Co Ltd<74>s announcement last week that it aims to end production at a domestic factory by 2022, cutting output in Japan by 24 percent to focus on electric cars and other technologies. Toyota spokeswoman Akiko Kita declined to comment on product plans but said the company was pursuing a number of strategies to maintain sales of at least 1.5 million Toyota-branded vehicles annually in Japan. It currently sells around 1.6 million a year. The domestic line-up for Japan<61>s No. 1 automaker includes the popular Prius gasoline hybrid and the Aqua compact hatchback, versions of which are also available overseas. It also sells lower-volume models, including the Premio sedan, that are often derivatives of other models. <20>As Toyota begins to develop EVs for markets including China, Europe and the United States, they will likely focus on making models which can be sold both at home and abroad,<2C> said Yoshiaki Kawano, manager of Japan/Korea vehicle sales forecasts at IHS Automotive. Reporting by Maki Shiraki and Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-toyota-strategy/toyota-plans-to-halve-japan-car-models-by-2025-source-idUSKBN1CH025'|'2017-10-12T03:40:00.000+03:00'
'e2930a850d0c072f7e99cbf48c6d94afcbf47141'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX opens broadly higher, Pretium Resources jumps'|' 42 PM / in 17 minutes CANADA STOCKS-TSX opens broadly higher, Pretium Resources jumps Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TORONTO, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index opened broadly higher on Wednesday as the influential financial stocks led gains, while Pretium Resources Inc surged more than 13 percent after it released gold production results from one of its mines. The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index was up 31.30 points, or 0.2 percent, at 15.801.66 shortly after the open, with all 10 sectors advancing. (Reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks-open/canada-stocks-tsx-opens-broadly-higher-pretium-resources-jumps-idUSL2N1MM0T1'|'2017-10-11T16:42:00.000+03:00'
'2d4363d11b9796fa48a8b0b5e9f6c2485d85c459'|'MOVES- Credit Suisse, ING Bank, Advent International'|'October 11, 2017 / 10:33 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago MOVES- Venbrook Group, Harvest Global, Pine River Capital, Credit Suisse Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Adds Venbrook Group LLC, Harvest Global Investments, Pine River Capital Management LP) Oct 11 (Reuters) - The following financial services industry appointments were announced on Wednesday. To inform us of other job changes, email moves@thomsonreuters.com. VENBROOK GROUP LLC The independent insurance brokerage and services firm appointed Lee Exton as managing director of employee benefits and total rewards. HARVEST GLOBAL INVESTMENTS The Asian and Chinese markets specialist asset manager appointed Regis Dale chief executive and Angela Wang vice president of business development in its New York office. PINE RIVER CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LP Pine River wrote to investors last week that Colin Teichholtz, a partner and fixed income expert who joined the firm in 2011, will be leaving this weekend, a person who saw Pine River<65>s letter to investors about the departure said. CREDIT SUISSE GROUP AG The bank has elevated two of its senior bankers in Asia, naming one as chairman of its Hong Kong operations and promoting another to CEO for Greater China, IFR reported. ING GROEP NV The Dutch bank has hired Eddy Henning as head of corporate client coverage for transaction services and head of corporate finance for Asia, effective Jan. 1, IFR reported. BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI The head of Banque Saudi Fransi<73>s corporate bank is leaving the bank, sources familiar with the matter said. ADVENT INTERNATIONAL CORP The private equity firm appointed Mark Wood as an operating partner to assess investment opportunities in the insurance and financial services sectors. LLOYDS BANKING GROUP PLC The UK-based financial services group said it made two appointments in its commercial banking division, including naming a new managing director of global transaction banking. SAVILLS INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT The international real estate investment manager appointed Marco Zorzetto as director, transactions, in its Italian team. AVIVA INVESTORS The global asset management business of Aviva Plc appointed Mike Craston non-executive director, effective immediately, and also named him chairman of the board of Aviva Investors Holdings Ltd, effective Nov. 17. (Compiled by Arunima Banerjee and Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/financial-moves/moves-credit-suisse-ing-bank-advent-international-idUSL4N1MM3SV'|'2017-10-11T13:33:00.000+03:00'
'9834e74828cf369fe30dd44cde9c554ea218eec4'|'HK regulator drops lawsuit against StanChart, UBS over 2009 IPO - sources'|'October 13, 2017 / 2:29 PM / Updated 2 minutes ago HK regulator drops lawsuit against StanChart, UBS over 2009 IPO: sources Sumeet Chatterjee , Elzio Barreto 4 Min Read A man walks past a logo of the Standard Chartered Kenya bank in their main office in Nairobi, Kenya September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Baz Ratner HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong<6E>s securities regulator has dropped a lawsuit against Standard Chartered Plc ( STAN.L ) and UBS Group AG ( UBSG.S ) over their roles in the 2009 IPO of timber company China Forestry Holdings Co Ltd, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) suit filed in January this year sought unspecified damages for <20>market misconduct<63> over the IPO of China Forestry filed in November 2009, according to the court documents at that time. UBS and StanChart were joint sponsors, as investment banks and securities firms that underwrite listings in Hong Kong are called, for the initial public offering (IPO). China Forestry raised $216 million in the offering, but its shares have been suspended since January 2011, after its auditor said it had found possible accounting irregularities. The company is now in liquidation and has been delisted from the Hong Kong exchange. The regulator<6F>s latest move comes despite the fact it is widening its probe into cases of alleged market manipulation and corporate fraud that risk tarnishing former British colony<6E>s reputation as a global financial center. The SFC is probing <20>substandard work<72> by 15 firms in their roles as sponsors for IPOs that have caused billions of dollars in investment losses, a senior regulatory official said on Wednesday. <20>The SFC issued the protective writ on s213 action with a view to achieving maximum benefit for investors who have suffered harm from alleged misconduct,<2C> the SFC said in a statement on Friday in response to Reuters request for comment. S213 refers to section 213 of the Securities and Futures Ordinance to combat market misconduct. After considering its legal position, the SFC determined its action against <20>certain parties was probably time barred<65>, the regulator said, without elaborating and naming any of the banks in its emailed statement. Standard Chartered and UBS declined to comment. The sources declined to be named as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the subject. The Wall Street Journal first reported the development. The SFC<46>s charges in the lawsuit against the two banks also related to China Forestry<72>s 2009 annual report, its 2009 annual results and the results for the first six months of 2010, as per the documents it had filed with Hong Kong<6E>s High Court. The regulator had also sued China Forestry itself, as well as the company<6E>s two co-founders and its auditor KPMG, the court documents showed. It was not immediately clear if the SFC would pursue its lawsuit against those entities. Standard Chartered and UBS separately disclosed late last year that the SFC was probing their role as sponsors of unidentified IPOs and that the regulator<6F>s actions could result in financial consequences. One of the people with knowledge of the matter said that despite withdrawal of the lawsuit, the SFC<46>s own investigation into the 2009 IPO would continue, which could result in some action against the banks. Standard Chartered no longer has an IPO sponsorship license in Hong Kong, but UBS still does. With Hong Kong the world<6C>s hottest market for IPOs, scrutiny of listings is key to retaining its attractiveness to investors. Under SFC rules, banks can face fines and sanctions if their clients<74> IPO documents mislead investors. Reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee and Elzio Barreto; Editing by Jane Merriman and Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-regulator-banks/hk-regulator-drops-case-against-stanchart-ubs-over-2009-ipo-sources-idUKKBN1CI1XW'|'2017-10-13T19:34:00.000+03:00'
'1366b07e0ff4432246fdf091e07008f76cb9d3ba'|'Saudi Aramco in talks to shelve IPO - FT'|'October 13, 2017 / 5:27 PM / in 36 minutes Saudi Aramco in talks to shelve international IPO - Financial Times Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A view shows Saudi Aramco''s Manifa oilfield, Saudi Arabia January 22, 2015. Picture taken January 22, 2015. Saudi Aramco/Handout via REUTERS (Reuters) - Saudi Aramco is considering shelving plans for an international public offering in favour of a private share sale to world sovereign funds and institutional investors, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Talks for a private sale to foreign governments, including China, and other investors have gathered pace in recent weeks, according to the report. ( on.ft.com/2gBheCT ) The company is still looking to list its shares on Saudi Arabia<69>s Tadawul exchange next year if it pursues the private sale, the report said. No final decision has yet been made and an international listing could still occur next year, the FT reported. <20>A range of options, for the public listing of Saudi Aramco, continue to be held under active review. No decision has been made and the IPO process remains on track,<2C> a Saudi Aramco spokesman said. Saudi Aramco had formally appointed JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM.N ), Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ) and HSBC ( HSBA.L ) as international financial advisers for its initial public offering, sources familiar with the matter had told Reuters in March. Both JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley declined to comment. A plan to list Aramco in 2018 was on track, senior Saudi officials had said in Moscow earlier this month. Reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Martina D''Couto 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-saudiaramco-ipo/saudi-aramco-in-talks-to-shelve-ipo-ft-idUKKBN1CI2H9'|'2017-10-13T20:43:00.000+03:00'
'024715df6ec3155081b8da503afdec8ab9a153df'|'UPDATE 1-Bids on Lebanon offshore energy blocks close'|'(Adds comment on number of bids)BEIRUT, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Lebanon<6F>s Energy Minister Cesar Abi Khalil on Thursday said a tender had closed on a first round of offshore energy blocks, and told local media that two consortiums had submitted bids.It will take years for revenue from any of the blocks to start flowing to the country, he said in a televised news conference.<2E>The first licensing round for oil exploration closed,<2C> he said. The country<72>s petroleum authority and the cabinet will evaluate the bids, he added.The local English-language Daily Star reported that Abi Khalil told it that two bids were submitted and that there were French, Italian and Russian companies involved in those bids.Lebanon relaunched the licensing round for five offshore blocks (1, 4, 8, 9 and 10) in January after a three-year delay due to political paralysis. It extended the bid deadline in September.Lebanon sits on the Levant Basin in the eastern Mediterranean along with Cyprus, Egypt, Israel and Syria. A number of gas fields have been discovered there since 2009, such as the Leviathan and Tamar fields.A total of 52 companies qualified earlier in the year to bid in this round.When the process was first launched in 2013, 46 companies qualified to take part in bidding, 12 of them as operators, including Chevron Corp, Total SA and Exxon Mobil Corp. (Reporting by Angus McDowall and Lisa Barrington; editing by David Evans and Jonathan Oatis)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/lebanon-energy/update-1-bids-on-lebanon-offshore-energy-blocks-close-idINL8N1MN6XT'|'2017-10-12T19:36:00.000+03:00'
'd9c8bf16fa489438f0581696f94f15922e4ddf8e'|'Tesla to recall 11,000 Model X SUVs due to seat issue'|'October 12, 2017 / 9:25 PM / Updated 22 minutes ago Tesla to recall 11,000 Model X SUVs due to seat issue Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk delivers Model X electric sports-utility vehicles during a presentation in Fremont, California September 29, 2015. REUTERS/Stephen Lam (Reuters) - Electric carmaker Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ) is recalling 11,000 Model X sport utility vehicles worldwide due to a faulty locking mechanism in their rear seats that raises the risk of the seats falling forward in a crash. Tesla said on Thursday a small number of cables in the second row fold-flat seats in some Model X vehicles, manufactured between October 28, 2016 and August 16, 2017, may need to be adjusted to fix the issue. The company, which is led by Elon Musk, said about 3 percent of the recalled vehicles may have the issue, which was detected during internal testing. Tesla said it had not received reports of any issues or accidents related to the problem. Palo Alto, California-based Tesla had recalled 2,700 Model X SUVs in the United States in April 2016 due to a faulty locking hinge in the third-row seats. ( reut.rs/2yIuFvG ) The company recalled 90,000 Model S sedans worldwide in 2015 over a possible defect in the front seat belt assembly and a year earlier had recalled 29,222 of the same model over a charging defect that posed a fire hazard. Tesla<6C>s shares were little changed at $355.64 in extended trading on Thursday. Reporting by Alexandria Sage in San Francisco and Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D''Silva 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-recall/tesla-to-recall-11000-model-x-suvs-due-to-seat-issue-idUKKBN1CH32R'|'2017-10-13T00:24:00.000+03:00'
'6a2fcd89c68fb263f07b42f9e01a744a8291cac1'|'Man Group third-quarter assets up 7.9 percent on market gains, inflows'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Shares in British hedge fund Man Group ( EMG.L ) rose 4 percent on Friday after a rise in third quarter assets and a new share buyback was announced.Man Group assets rose 7.9 percent in the three months ending Sept. 30, boosted by market gains and net inflows to its funds, including in emerging market debt.Total assets rose from $95.9 billion at the end of June to $103.5 billion at the end of September, at the top end of consensus figures that ranged from $98.2 billion to $103.5 billion.The firm took in $2.8 billion in fresh investor cash, generated $900 million in currency gains and $3.3 billion from positive investment movements, it said.Man Group also announced a new $100 million share buyback after concluding its last one around the same time last year, according to an analyst note from Credit Suisse.<2E>Man has again proven itself a shareholder friendly allocator of capital,<2C> said the note.Among Man Group<75>s business to increase assets, the long-only stock-picking unit rose by 11 percent to $19.7 billion, with investors adding $600 million to emerging market debt strategies and $500 million to the European equities strategy.Flows were partially offset by $400 million of redemptions pulled from funds of funds and $400 million from equity long short strategies as well as $300 million yanked from computer-driven strategies.In a reversal of an earlier decision, Man Group said it would absorb research costs for the majority of its business in 2018 under MiFID II reforms, estimating the impact to the business to be about $10 to $15 million.<2E>Whilst we did not think it was inevitable that liquid alternative managers would absorb research costs in the near term, we view this as a sensible decision for the business,<2C> said the report from Credit Suisse. <20>It could, arguably, also be a modest competitive advantage for Man if its unlistedcompetitors do not follow suit.<2E>Reporting by Maiya Keidan; editing by Simon Jessop, John Stonestreet and Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/uk-man-group-outlook/man-group-third-quarter-assets-up-7-9-percent-on-market-gains-inflows-idINKBN1CI0NQ'|'2017-10-13T06:49:00.000+03:00'
'72ed7fda2ce4f9265ec98c7379e7c93e113caf7d'|'Rio Tinto''s $2 billion coal assets attract investor consortium: sources'|'FILE PHOTO - The Rio Tinto''s company logo is featured on a TV monitor at the mining company'' annual general meeting in Sydney, Australia, May 4, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Reed LONDON (Reuters) - A group of investors including buyout firm Apollo and pension fund Canada Pension Plan (CPP) is bidding for coal assets put up for sale by mining giant Rio Tinto ( RIO.L ), which could fetch $2 billion, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.The sale, run by Credit Suisse, of the Kestrel and Hail Creek coking coal mines is part of Rio<69>s ( RIO.AX ) planned exit from Australian coal to focus on iron ore, copper and aluminum.Interested parties have been invited to submit tentative offers by a Dec. 8 deadline.Apollo Global Management and the CPP have joined forces with U.S. coal company Xcoal Energy & Resources and a former Glencore ( GLEN.L ) executive to bid for the assets, two sources said.They added that Anglo American ( AAL.L ) had expressed an interest but the deteriorating outlook for met coal, whose third-quarter contract price fell by five percent, might deter it from making a formal bid in December.Australia<69>s Whitehaven Coal was also likely to put in an offer, one of the sources said.Rio Tinto has just completed the sale of its Australian Coal & Allied thermal coal unit to China-backed Yancoal Australia ( YAL.AX ) for $2.69 billion.Rio is viewed as having the strongest balance sheet in the sector, with little debt and a mounting cash pile from its low-cost iron ore operations and possibly more asset sales.Rio, Anglo American and Whitehaven Coal declined to comment. Apollo, XCoal Resources, and the CPP were not immediately available to comment.Reporting by Clara Denina and Barbara Lewis in London; Additional reporting by James Regan in Sydney; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-rio-tinto-coal-divestiture/rio-tintos-2-billion-coal-assets-attract-investor-consortium-sources-idINKBN1CH1JW'|'2017-10-12T09:28:00.000+03:00'
'005465a4b854fc19733182ae2fe94d72df1a947a'|'Germany''s Schaeuble says soft Brexit best way to minimise damage'|'October 12, 2017 / 5:21 PM / in 23 minutes Germany''s Schaeuble says soft Brexit best way to minimise damage Gernot Heller 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble talks to reporters during the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting in Baden-Baden, Germany, March 17, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A <20>soft Brexit<69> incorporating trade deals would be the best way to minimise damage to Britain and the European Union, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Thursday. Schaeuble, in Washington for a meetings of the International Monetary Fund, also praised the pro-European stance of French President Emmanuel Macron and said multilateralism was a prerequisite for world peace. He said he hoped British finance minister Philip Hammond and other backers of a so-called <20>soft Brexit<69> prevailed in negotiations over the terms of Britain<69>s exit from the EU. The talks have stalled on issues like the bill Britain must pay to leave and the future of Northern Ireland<6E>s land border with the EU. Hammond, considered one of the most pro-EU members of Prime Minister Theresa May<61>s cabinet, on Wednesday warned that the lack of direction to talks was hurting business investment and consumer confidence. A <20>soft Brexit<69> - in which Britain remains in or close to the EU<45>s single market and keeps many of the trade and business benefits it had as member - would be preferable, Schaeuble said. <20>That is the best way to keep the damage as minimal as possible,<2C> he said during a event on the sidelines of the IMF meeting. Schaeuble said he was optimistic that Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservatives would be able to forge a new coalition government before Christmas, that the new team would stick to a stable economic and pro-European course. Merkel is trying to put together a three-way coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats and the environmentalists Greens. The parties must still resolve differences over immigration, taxes and energy. Schaeuble is due to become president of the lower house of the German parliament and step down as finance minister, freeing the post for someone from another party. The job is likely to go to a member of the FDP, but a key ally of Merkel on Thursday said he would like to keep the spot for the conservatives to preserve Schaeuble<6C>s insistence on a balanced budget. Reporting by Gernot Heller; Writing by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Larry King 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-germany/germanys-schaeuble-says-soft-brexit-best-way-to-minimise-damage-idUKKBN1CH2KI'|'2017-10-12T21:24:00.000+03:00'
'c4ded8754d53458c20bff4c4fe30695167ebd364'|'RPT-Shaky NAFTA deal threatens Navistar''s Mexico-made exports to world'|'(Repeats story published early on Oct. 9)By Sharay AnguloMONTERREY, Mexico, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Less than half the trucks exported from Navistar<61>s mammoth Escobedo plant in Mexico are sold in North America but the factory<72>s success remains tightly tied to the uncertain future of the region<6F>s NAFTA free trade deal.Navistar<61>s Mexican factory, now the U.S. company<6E>s largest worldwide, exports to around 30 countries and sells less to the United States than competitors such as Daimler AG, one of the top three truck-makers in Mexico, which sends three-quarters of its Mexican-made commercial vehicles north.But Navistar<61>s reliance on tariff-free imported parts shows why even Mexico manufacturers that have diversified their customer base away from the United States still fear U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s threats to scrap NAFTA.<2E>To lose this treaty would be to go backwards 40 years,<2C> said Oscar Ruiz, operations director at the plant, fearing a return to an era when barriers made foreign investment and trade expensive between the two neighbors.Trade negotiators from the United States, Mexico and Canada will meet this week in Washington for a fourth round of talks on reworking NAFTA amid growing signs of an impasse between the Trump administration and the other two signatories of the pact.Mexican officials warn that Trump is leading the region towards a protectionist trade war with his <20>America First<73> policy, flirting with major curbs on commerce.Nowadays, over half the original parts for the vehicles made at Navistar<61>s 250 acre (100 hectare) site in the northern state of Nuevo Leon arrive duty-free from the United States and Canada in hundreds of trailers every day, Ruiz said.Higher tariffs on imports or reduced trade flows would raise the cost of production and of exporting to the United States. That would make trucks more expensive for all Navistar<61>s customers, experts consulted by Reuters said.Navistar, for example, uses Alabama-made Cummins engines in its International Prostar and LT heavy tractors. Without NAFTA, importing the engines would likely cost 10 percent more, based on World Trade Organization tariffs, according to Manuel Nieblas, a manufacturing consultant at Deloitte Mexico.With engines representing up to 45 percent of the $130,000 cost of a Prostar truck, that tariff alone could add around $5,800 to the final price.Prices would also rise for most of the up-to 12,000 parts used in a Navistar truck, both due to the tariffs and slower border-customs checks if trade were to be more regulated.A <20>LOGISTIC SPRINGBOARD<52>Aside from higher prices for imported parts, ending NAFTA would likely impose a 4 percent tariff on top of the total value of the Class 8 truck 18-wheeler for export to the United States.Still, that might be slight enough for U.S. consumers to absorb, or for the company to shave off its margins.And Navistar<61>s strategy of using Mexico<63>s low costs and multiple free trade deals to export to markets from Saudi Arabia to Australia could soften the blow of any tougher export rules for the United States, Mexican Chief Executive Carlos Pardo said.<2E>More than ever I believe Mexico is a logistic springboard, where on top of a qualified work force and reasonable production costs, logistically it has created the connections to supply any part of the world,<2C> Pardo said in Navistar<61>s Mexico City headquarters.While 98 percent of trucks exported from Mexico go to the United States or Canada, U.S. truckmaker Kenworth, China<6E>s Giant and Korean automaker Kia all have a similar strategy of building in Mexico to export to countries other than the United States.Scrapping NAFTA might not hurt exports to robust European economies, but those to Latin America, Navistar<61>s top market after North America, would become much more complicated, said Salvador Pasquel, an automotive expert at Baker McKenzie.Business with Colombia, which in 2011 was the biggest market in Latin America for U.S. truck companies after Mexico, helps
'596388cb0f1ac3a94d8f322f3663c3fb55f6c5e8'|'GM says to buy LIDAR-tech firm Strobe in self-driving car push'|'The corporate logo of General Motors is seen at the facilities of the company in Valencia, Venezuela, August 15, 2017. Picture taken August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares DETROIT (Reuters) - No. 1 U.S. automaker General Motors Co ( GM.N ) said on Monday it would buy Strobe Inc, which uses LIDAR technology to help self-driving cars identify objects at a distance, to speed up development of autonomous vehicles and slash sensor costs.LIDAR is one of the major sensor technologies used in autonomous, or self-driving vehicles, and there is fierce competition between large automakers to bring the cars to market first.Fully self-driving vehicles are expected to hit the market in a limited form by around 2020. GM and its U.S. rival Ford Motor Co ( F.N ) have both publicly stated that they aim to have fully self-driving cars on sale by 2021.<2E>This acquisition is a game changer for GM and Cruise,<2C> because of the cost savings it will bring,<2C> Kyle Vogt, chief executive of GM<47>s Cruise Automation unit, said.<2E>We<57>ve made this acquisition because we aim to speed our path to market,<2C> he added.Strobe<62>s new microchip LIDAR system would significantly enhance the capabilities of the self-driving cars GM was developing, Vogt said in a blog post and on a conference call with reporters.By reducing the entire sensor down to a single chip, Strobe<62>s system should reduce the cost of each LIDAR on its self-driving cars by 99 percent, he said.The technology provided not just a distance measurement for an object on the road - vehicles, people and objects - but also measured that object<63>s velocity.<2E>This is really important for self-driving cars, especially in challenging situations,<2C> Vogt said.Vogt did not disclose financial terms, but said 11 full-time Strobe employees would join Cruise as part of the deal.He said last week that the unit was making <20>rapid progress<73> toward deploying self-driving cars in part through testing vehicles on the crowded streets of San Francisco.In morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange, GM shares were up 26 cents at $45.20.Additional reporting by Arunima Banerjee; Editing by Susan Thomas '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-strobe-m-a-gm/gm-says-to-buy-lidar-tech-firm-strobe-in-self-driving-car-push-idINKBN1CE1IS'|'2017-10-09T11:34:00.000+03:00'
'213d5a44bb7509bcb8bb48666c2fe0f2393818ac'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Mexico peso hits 4-month low ahead of NAFTA talks'|'By Bruno Federowski SAO PAULO, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Mexico''s peso slipped to its weakest in more than four months on Monday, mirroring a fall in other Latin American currencies, ahead of the latest round of talks over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The peso fell 0.6 percent to 18.65 to the dollar, roughly in line with losses on the Brazilian and Colombian currencies. Demand for high-yielding assets has waned since Friday, when data showing rising U.S. wages fueled bets that the Federal Reserve will increase interest rates faster than expected in coming months. Fears of increased U.S. protectionism have hit the Mexican peso particularly hard as the United States purchases over three-quarters of Mexico''s exports. Trade officials from Mexico, the United States and Canada meet on Wednesday in the Washington area for a fourth round of talks on renegotiating NAFTA amid signs of increasing tension over the accord between Mexico and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump''s "America First" policy has raised questions about his government''s desire to maintain NAFTA. Mexican officials said last week that Trump risks sparking a "protectionist war" with his demands. Brazil''s benchmark Bovespa stock index slipped 1 percent, weighed down by a decline in shares of miner Vale SA on the heels of falling iron ore futures. Still, shares in sewage and water utility Cia de Saneamento B<>sico do Estado de S<>o Paulo SA rose 2.4 percent after regulators sanctioned a 7.8888 percent tariff hike. Chilean markets were closed for the Columbus Day holiday. Key Latin American stock indexes and currencies at 1610 GMT: Stock indexes daily % YTD % change change Latest MSCI Emerging Markets 1100.26 -0.26 27.93 MSCI LatAm 2918.32 -1.2 26.19 Brazil Bovespa 75310.57 -0.98 25.04 Mexico S&P/BVM IPC 50171.82 -0.26 9.92 Argentina MerVal 26827.78 0.11 58.58 Colombia IGBC 11061.75 -0.52 9.22 Venezuela IBC 519.81 -99.91 -98.36 Currencies daily % YTD % change change Latest Brazil real 3.1846 -0.86 2.03 Mexico peso 18.6515 -0.59 11.22 Colombia peso 2947.3 -0.40 1.84 Peru sol 3.272 -0.09 4.34 Argentina peso (interbank) 17.5000 -0.29 -9.29 Argentina peso (parallel) 17.78 0.00 -5.40 (Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by W Simon) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/emerging-markets-latam/emerging-markets-mexico-peso-hits-4-month-low-ahead-of-nafta-talks-idINL2N1MK0P0'|'2017-10-09T14:34:00.000+03:00'
'855b1d2c70fc4282a5962c701242d035476a0591'|'American factories could prosper if they find enough skilled workers'|'<27>WE ARE always short ten to 20 people,<2C> says Jack Marshall, the manager of PPG<50>s plant in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The company makes coatings, paint and speciality materials for customers such as Harley Davidson, a motorcycle manufacturer based in the state, with a palette ranging from black denim to candy orange. His factory employs 550 people, many of whom must work overtime. It is hard to fill jobs, he explains, because many still think factory work involves repetitive assembly-line tasks, as in the candy factory on the old TV sitcom <20>I Love Lucy<63>.As part of trying to shed this outdated image, America<63>s manufacturing industry has for the past five years celebrated the first Friday in October as National Manufacturing Day. Some 2,800 events across the country were organised this time round, ranging from factory tours to banquets. Intel, a chip giant, displayed its wafer-fabrication equipment at its enormous semiconductor manufacturing campus outside Portland, Oregon. Toyota showed visitors its robots and other advanced equipment used to make trucks at its factory in San Antonio, Texas. 13 The notion of a fading economic sector arises from a big drop in manufacturing employment over the past two decades (see chart). Some places were hit especially hard. From 1980 to 2005, for example, the number of factory jobs fell by some 45% in Rochester, New York, and in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Many people, including President Donald Trump, reckon that global trade, especially with China, is largely to blame. When Taiwan<61>s Foxconn, the world<6C>s largest contract manufacturer, which employs over 1m people in China, said this summer it would build a factory in Wisconsin employing up to 13,000 people in return for $3bn in various tax breaks and subsidies from the state, Mr Trump called a press conference to celebrate.However, studies show that the majority of past factory job losses were the result of investments in automation, which continue to pay off. American manufacturing has more than doubled output in real terms since the Reagan era, to over $2trn today. Productivity is soaring. Output per labour-hour rose by 47% between 2002 and 2015, outpacing gains in Britain, France and Germany. A survey of global chief executives conducted in 2016 by Deloitte, a consultancy, found that bosses expect American manufacturing to become more competitive than China<6E>s as soon as the next few years, in part because pay for Chinese workers has risen. A closely followed index of American manufacturing activity hit a 13-year high in September.America<63>s most technologically-advanced manufacturers are now expanding confidently. Take, for example, factories in Connecticut, which long ago led the country but which have suffered badly in recent decades (from 1980 to 2005, manufacturing employment in Hartford, the state<74>s capital, collapsed by half). In the 1800s local manufacturers including Eli Whitney, who invented the cotton gin, perfected the use of interchangeable parts. Those grimy workshops made muskets and machine tools. Today the state<74>s manufacturers make the high-tech products of their age.General Dynamics Electric Boat (EB), a local defence contractor, won a $5.1bn contract in September to develop a new class of nuclear-powered submarines. It expects to hire between 15,000 and 20,000 workers by 2030. Pratt & Whitney (P&W), a division of United Technologies Corporation that makes jet engines, plans to hire some 8,000 workers in Connecticut (and 25,000 worldwide) over the next decade.A huge problem is that factories are struggling to find enough skilled workers. The Manufacturing Institute, an industry body, and Deloitte calculate that there will be nearly 3.5m manufacturing job openings in America in the decade to 2025, but that 2m may go unfilled. Scott Peterson, chief human-resources officer at Schwan<61>s, a privately owned food-manufacturing firm based in Minnesota, says he is struggling to find workers. The state is short of around 20
'2ad4fcd6c647981d9e9e143fb4bb52291dbd6b57'|'Dow to sell GMO soy seed under tight U.S. controls, awaiting China approval'|'CHICAGO (Reuters) - Dow AgroSciences will launch a genetically engineered soybean seed that has been barred by major importers under tight controls in the United States next year, the company said Wednesday, as it seeks to avoid roiling global trade while making sales to farmers.Archer Daniels Midland Co, one of the world<6C>s largest grain companies, will oversee the handling of the harvests to keep them out of Europe and China, which have not yet approved imports of the soybeans.The arrangement shows the lengths that Dow, a division of DowDuPont Inc, is taking to get its Enlist E3 soybean seeds to market as it faces increasing competition for U.S. sales from Monsanto Inc.Dow also is coping with long regulatory reviews by China and Europe, importers that have frustrated the U.S. seed sector for years with slow approvals for new GMO crops. The company first submitted E3 soybeans for clearance in Europe in 2012 and in China in 2013.<2E>You cannot predict when you will see the approvals,<2C> said Joe Vertin, global leader for the Enlist brand.Getting new genetically engineered seeds to market quickly is important for seed companies because it can take up to 10 years and $150 million to develop products.Dow did not release an estimate of how many acres of E3 soybeans will be planted in 2018. Monsanto expects its Xtend soybeans to be grown on about 40 million acres, or more than 40 percent of plantings, up from 20 million this year.<2E>We want to make sure we give the choices to farmers,<2C> Vertin said.It is a common practice for farmers and grain handlers to mix different soybean varieties in storage and during transportation. That means a lack of approval for one GMO variety can put at risk of rejection large shipments that include approved GMO grains.To prevent that, farmers who plant E3 soybeans must agree to deliver their harvests to four ADM facilities at set times. Crops received during those periods will be kept in North America, ADM said.In 2013, China began blocking boatloads of U.S. corn because they contained a Syngenta GMO trait that had not been approved for import.Jim Sutter, head of the U.S. Soybean Export Council, said he was confident Dow and ADM can keep E3 soybeans out of unapproved markets. Two years ago, U.S. soybean exports to China were valued at $12.7 billion.<2E>If an unapproved variety got into the supply chain, it would be catastrophic,<2C> Sutter said.Reporting by Tom Polansek; Editing by Leslie Adler'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gmo-soy-china/dow-to-sell-gmo-soy-seed-under-tight-u-s-controls-awaiting-china-approval-idUSKBN1CH05Q'|'2017-10-12T04:27:00.000+03:00'
'15e9f5d32abeee8199ac7b04d842eaa89e75e354'|'Exclusive - Alphabet''s Waymo demanded $1 billion in settlement talks with Uber: sources'|'October 12, 2017 / 7:03 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago Exclusive - Alphabet''s Waymo demanded $1 billion in settlement talks with Uber: sources Dan Levine 6 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Waymo logo is displayed during the company''s unveil of a self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivan during the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., January 8, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo SAN FRANCISCO(Reuters) - Alphabet Inc<6E>s ( GOOGL.O ) Waymo sought at least $1 billion (<28>754.8 million) in damages and a public apology from Uber Technologies Inc as conditions for settling its high-profile trade secret lawsuit against the ride-services company, sources familiar with the proposal told Reuters. The Waymo self-driving car unit also asked that an independent monitor be appointed to ensure Uber does not use Waymo technology in the future, the sources said. Uber rejected those terms as non-starters, said the sources, who were not authorized to publicly discuss settlement talks. The precise dollar amount requested by Waymo and the exact time the offer was made could not be learned. Waymo<6D>s tough negotiating stance, which has not been previously reported, reflects the company<6E>s confidence in its legal position after months of pretrial victories in a case which may help to determine who emerges in the forefront of the fast-growing field of self-driving cars. The aggressive settlement demands also suggest that Waymo is not in a hurry to resolve the lawsuit, in part because of its value as a distraction for Uber leadership, said Elizabeth Rowe, a trade secret expert at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. Waymo recently persuaded a San Francisco federal judge to delay a trial to decide the dispute from October to early December, citing the need to investigate evidence Uber had not disclosed earlier. No further settlement talks are currently scheduled, the sources said. The judge overseeing the case mandated that the companies enter mediation with a court-appointed magistrate. Amy Candido, a Waymo attorney, declined to comment on any settlement talks, but said the company<6E>s reasons for suing Uber are <20>pretty clear.<2E> <20>Waymo had one goal: to stop Uber from using its trade secrets,<2C> she said. <20>That remains its goal.<2E> An Uber spokesperson declined to comment. DISRUPTIVE Waymo sued Uber in February, claiming that former engineer Anthony Levandowski downloaded more than 14,000 confidential files before leaving to set up a self-driving truck company, called Otto, which Uber acquired soon after. Uber denied using any of Waymo<6D>s trade secrets. Waymo<6D>s lawsuit has been disruptive for Uber. U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted Waymo<6D>s request for a pretrial injunction in May, which prohibited Levandowski from working on Lidar, a key sensor technology for self-driving cars that is the crux of the current litigation. Uber later fired Levandowski, regarded as a visionary in autonomous technology, after he refused to return Waymo documents at the heart of the case. Levandowski has asserted his constitutional right against self-incrimination and declined to answer questions from Waymo lawyers. Meanwhile, Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick stepped down as chief executive in June after allegations of widespread misconduct at the company became public. Kalanick has since become embroiled in a boardroom fight with fellow Uber investor Benchmark Capital. Benchmark cited Waymo<6D>s allegations of trade secret theft in separate litigation aimed at forcing Kalanick off Uber<65>s board. A Delaware judge put that lawsuit on hold and sent it to private arbitration. On Sunday Oct. 1, the day before Kalanick was scheduled to give a deposition in the Waymo case, Kalanick<63>s lawyers called Waymo and asked to postpone the deposition, lawyers for both companies said in court last week. Kalanick<63>s lawyers said he was in the middle of a fight to appoint new board members and was therefore too busy, Waymo attorneys
'ce8c41420d098c6cb1de1cb771135fec7f9a396e'|'Trump says could envision trade deal with Canada without Mexico'|'October 11, 2017 / 5:04 AM / Updated 21 minutes ago Trump says U.S.-Canada trade deal possible, excluding Mexico Roberta Rampton , David Ljunggren 5 Min Read U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Canada''s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the South Lawn before their meeting about the NAFTA trade agreement at the White House in Washington, U.S. October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would be open to a bilateral trade pact with Canada if a deal cannot be reached with Mexico to substantially revise the North American Free Trade Agreement. Asked by a reporter if he could envision maintaining free trade with Canada if NAFTA talks sour with Mexico, Trump said: <20>Oh sure, absolutely. It<49>s possible we won<6F>t be able to reach a deal with one or the other, but in the meantime we<77>ll make a deal with one.<2E> He spoke at the White House alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, on a visit to try to convince the U.S. leader of NAFTA<54>s merits as a new round of renegotiations began near Washington. Asked about Trump<6D>s comments at a news conference later, Trudeau said he was still optimistic about the chances of modernizing the 1994 trade pact. <20>I continue to believe in NAFTA ... so saying, we are ready for anything, and we will continue to work diligently to protect Canadian interests,<2C> Trudeau said. Trudeau also said that Canada was well aware of Trump<6D>s unpredictability. <20>That is certainly something that we are very much aware of and very braced for and conscious of but at the same time, Canadians expect us to work in a thoughtful meaningful way towards getting a good deal.<2E> Related Coverage U.S. administration does not want to walk away from NAFTA - Ross The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday accused Trump<6D>s administration of trying to sabotage the talks with <20>poison pill proposals,<2C> including demands for more favourable treatment for the U.S. side on car production, and a <20>sunset clause<73> to force regular negotiations. In his appearance with Trudeau, Trump said <20>we<77>ll see what happens<6E> when asked whether NAFTA was doomed. <20>It<49>s possible we won<6F>t be able to make a deal, and it<69>s possible that we will,<2C> he said. <20>We<57>ll see if we can do the kind of changes that we need. We have to protect our workers, and in all fairness, the prime minister wants to protect Canada and his people also.<2E> U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump welcome Canada''s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau as they walk past the Rose Garden before the leaders'' meeting about the NAFTA trade agreement at the White House in Washington, U.S. October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, one of Trump<6D>s top trade advisers, downplayed the chances that a NAFTA termination would become necessary. <20>We don<6F>t hope it will, we don<6F>t desire that it will, we don<6F>t believe that it will, but it is at least a conceptual possibility as we go forward,<2C> Ross said. AGGRESSIVE PROPOSALS Trade experts say the NAFTA talks are likely to stall in the face of aggressive U.S. attempts to sharply increase content requirements for autos and auto parts. Slideshow (10 Images) People briefed on U.S. proposals to be presented this week said Washington is seeking to sharply lift North American content threshold in car manufacturing. The proposals call for North American content overall to rise to 85 percent from the current 62.5 percent. In addition, the United States wants to add a new 50-percent U.S.-specific content requirement, something that was not in the earlier agreements. <20>These will be met with widespread opposition from Canada and Mexico. I think it<69>s just a bridge too far,<2C> said Wendy Cutler, the Asia Society<74>s Washington policy director and former chief U.S. negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal cancelled by Trump. The U.S. side sees strengthening the rules of origin for the auto industry as a way to bring
'e585bdb241204932d52a160490bfc3f1262cce22'|'UPDATE 1-UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Oct 12'|'October 12, 2017 / 6:43 AM / Updated 8 hours ago CORRECTED-UPDATE 1-UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Oct 12 Reuters Staff 4 Min Read (Corrects number of citizens affected in Equifax item) Oct 12 (Reuters) - Britain<69>s FTSE 100 futures were up 0.07 percent ahead of the cash market open. * N BROWN: British clothing retailer N Brown Group Plc reported a 5.6 percent rise in half-year revenue on strong growth in plus-sized apparel sales. * HAYS: UK-based job recruitment agency Hays reported a rise in first-quarter net fees on Thursday, with growth across its regions, including in its home market, where there was a modest improvement over the slowdown last year following the Brexit vote. * ACACIA: Acacia Mining Plc on Thursday said it produced about 191,203 ounces of gold during the third quarter, boosted by better than expected output from its Buzwagi mine. * BOOKER/TESCO: Booker, the British wholesaler that has agreed to a 3.7 billion pound ($4.9 billion) takeover by Tesco, on Thursday reported a 9 percent rise in first-half profit, driven by progress in both catering and retail. * SKY: Sky, the European pay TV group that Rupert Murdoch is trying to buy, said it made a strong start to its new year, with like-for-like revenue up 5 percent and 160,000 new customers, up 51 percent from the same period a year ago. * EU BANKS: The European Commission proposed on Wednesday watered-down measures to help guard European Union banks against future crises, after two years of fruitless talks among the 28 EU states on more ambitious plans. * EQUIFAX BREACH: The powerful chair of Britain<69>s parliamentary treasury committee demanded on Wednesday that U.S. credit reporting agency Equifax explain why it has taken more than a month to notify UK users of a massive data breach affecting more than 15 million records and nearly 700,000 UK citizens. * TULLOW OIL: Tullow Oil has signed four production-sharing contracts in Ivory Coast with an initial investment of $21 million, an Ivorian government spokesman said on Wednesday. * BRITAIN HOUSE PRICES: British house prices face the weakest outlook since last year<61>s Brexit vote, largely reflecting the prospect of further falls in central London, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said on Thursday * BOMBARDIER: Workers at Bombardier<65>s Northern Irish plant called on British Prime Minister Theresa May to be more visible in her attempts to save their jobs after the United States imposed tariffs on planes made by the Canadian aerospace firm. * UK ENERGY PRICE CAP LAWS: Britain will publish on Thursday a draft law designed to cap consumer energy prices for millions of households, taking action to try and fix a market it says punishes loyal customers. * GOLD: Gold prices rose to their highest in two weeks on Thursday amid a muted dollar, after minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve<76>s September policy meeting revealed low inflation concerns. * OIL: Oil prices eased on Thursday as U.S. fuel inventories rose despite efforts by OPEC to cut production and tighten the market. * EX-DIVS: Centrica, HSBC and Tesco will trade without entitlement to their latest dividend pay-out on Thursday, trimming 7 points off the FTSE 100 according to Reuters calculations * The UK blue chip index closed down 0.06 percent at 7,533.81 points on Wednesday after results from paper and packaging firm Mondi disappointed and sub-prime lender Provident Financial sank after a downgrade from Barclays. * For more on the factors affecting European stocks, please click on: cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarkets TODAY<41>S UK PAPERS > Financial Times > Other business headlines Multimedia versions of Reuters Top News are now available for: * 3000 Xtra : visit topnews.session.rservices.com * For Top News : topnews.reuters.com (Reporting by Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru) 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-stocks-factors/update-1-uk-stocks-factors-to-watch-on-oct-12-idUSL4N1MN2G
'b9b91be2ba5192918f37d3077cdeb90f7584e58d'|'Hellman & Friedman explores sale of software firm OpenLink -sources'|'Oct 13 (Reuters) - Hellman & Friedman LLC is exploring the sale of OpenLink Financial LLC, a U.S. software provider to the commodity, energy and financial services sectors that could be valued at over $1 billion, including debt, people familiar with the matter said.Hellman & Friedman, a private equity firm, bought OpenLink from Carlyle Group LP in 2011 for an undisclosed sum. It is working with investment bank Centerview Partners on exploring a sale of OpenLink, the sources said.Hellman & Friedman and OpenLink did not respond to requests for comment. Centerview declined to comment. The sources asked not to be identified because the deliberations are confidential.Based in Uniondale, New York, OpenLink has offices in 10 countries and counts BP Plc, Chevron Corp, Bank of America Corp and Conagra Brands Inc among its clients, according to its website.OpenLink<6E>s software also helps manage trading operations and risk management for its customers. It generates 12-month earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of about $80 million, one of the sources said.Last month, OpenLink appointed Rich Grossi as its chief executive officer, following John O<>Malley<65>s elevation to the role of executive chairman. (Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis and David French in New York; Additional reporting by Liana B. Baker in San Francisco; Editing by Susan Thomas)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/openlink-ma/hellman-friedman-explores-sale-of-software-firm-openlink-sources-idINL2N1MN18N'|'2017-10-13T15:55:00.000+03:00'
'2161d9db756d94e56053b0c29314c57674da8f24'|'Aerie''s glaucoma drug effectively lowers eye pressure-FDA review'|'October 11, 2017 / 1:05 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Aerie''s glaucoma drug effectively lowers eye pressure: FDA review Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Aerie Pharmaceuticals Inc<6E>s experimental glaucoma treatment Rhopressa is effective in lowering eye pressure, a preliminary review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration concluded. The review, posted on Wednesday on the FDA<44>s website, comes two days ahead of a meeting of outside experts who will advise the agency on whether the treatment should be approved. Glaucoma, a condition caused by damage to the optic nerve, is the second-leading cause of blindness in the world. It is expected to affect more than 4 million Americans by 2030, up from 2.7 million today. The FDA said it agreed with Aerie<69>s overall conclusion that Rhopressa, when given once a day, effectively lowers pressure inside the eye. Elevated eye pressure can cause glaucoma. However, the agency said the product was less effective when given twice a day in people with the highest pressure. The disease is typically treated with a class of drugs known as prostaglandins that lower eye pressure. These include Pfizer Inc<6E>s Xalatan, known generically as latanoprost, Novartis AG<41>s Travatan and Allergan Plc<6C>s Lumigan. Rhopressa was tested against an older drug called timolol. Rhopressa is the first in a new class of treatments. It also lowers eye pressure, but does so by targeting the trabecular network, the main drain through which fluid flows out of the eye. It is intended to reduce the risk of changes in eyelash length and pigmentation. Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Frances Kerry 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aerie-glaucoma-fda/aeries-glaucoma-drug-effectively-lowers-eye-pressure-fda-review-idUSKBN1CG1O4'|'2017-10-11T15:56:00.000+03:00'
'1f6645af96ce89a2638873dad44b8e7341795687'|'Lloyds buys Zurich UK''s pensions, savings business'|'October 12, 2017 / 10:28 AM / Updated 14 minutes ago Lloyds buys Zurich UK''s pensions, savings business Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A man enters a Lloyds Bank branch in central London, Britain February 25, 2016. Lloyds Banking Group rewarded investors with a surprise 2 billion pound payout on Thursday, underlying its intent to be the biggest dividend payer among Britain''s banks and its recovery after a state bailout. REUTERS/Paul Hackett LONDON (Reuters) - Lloyds Banking Group ( LLOY.L ) has agreed a deal to buy Zurich Insurance<63>s ( ZURN.S ) UK workplace pensions and savings business, the bank said on Thursday. The business has 15 billion pounds ($19.82 billion) in assets under administration and around 500,000 customers, Lloyds said in a statement. Lloyds has not disclosed the price for the deal, a spokeswoman said. Reporting by Carolyn Cohn and Emma Rumney; Editing by Rachel Armstrong 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lloyds-zurich-m-a/lloyds-buys-zurich-uks-pensions-savings-business-idUKKBN1CH1DC'|'2017-10-12T13:27:00.000+03:00'
'01b0361988f50c752214dc75de7430ae271a735f'|'Bain Capital leads the charge as Japan''s private equity dealmaking picks up'|'October 12, 2017 / 6:08 AM / in 7 hours Bain Capital leads the charge as Japan''s private equity dealmaking picks up Kane Wu , Junko Fujita 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A reporter raises his hand to ask a question during a news conference by Bain Capital LP Managing Director Yuji Sugimoto (not in the picture) in Tokyo, Japan October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung/File Photo HONG KONG/TOKYO (Reuters) - Bain Capital is planning on further ramping up its dealmaking in Japan after it came out on top in the recent battle to purchase Toshiba<62>s semiconductors arm and as it bids to buy out Japan<61>s third-largest advertising agency, Asatsu-DK (ADK). In making further acquisitions, the Boston-based Bain would cement its position as one of the most active private equity firms in Japan and help to break down a corporate culture that has been mostly hostile to foreign investors. <20>Japan is a hard market. It takes years to build teams, relationships, credibility,<2C> said David Gross-Loh, who is Bain<69>s co-head of Asia and is in charge of its business in Japan, in an interview. <20>I wouldn<64>t be surprised that five years from now we<77>ll have twice as many deals as we do now.<2E> Japan<61>s private equity market is small relative to its economy, the world<6C>s third largest. This year, though, the Toshiba acquisition has pushed private equity-backed deals in Japan to a record $22 billion - more than double 2016<31>s $8 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data. From 2007 to 2016, some 30-40 buyout deals on average were struck annually with slightly fewer exits each year, according to data provider Preqin. And both deals and exits have been worth a fraction of those done in China every year. Yet this year has seen a pick up in interest, industry sources say, in part thanks to significant volumes of cash raised in 2016 as funds look to Japan. They are hoping to cash in on demographic shifts -- such as the nation<6F>s aging population - changes in corporate governance standards and a more active initial public offering market allowing for future exits. Bain led a group of investors, including Apple, SK Hynix <000660 KS>, Dell, Seagate Technology Plc and Kingston Technology that agreed to pay $18 billion for the Toshiba chips business after a mammoth bidding battle. FORGING TIES Bain is one of several global private equity firms that opened offices in Japan before the global financial crisis, but it has bet on its own team to forge relationships, rather than rely on banks or advisers - a slower process. And American rivals have also piled in. KKR & Co is looking to deploy more money in Japan after completing a string of investments, while Carlyle Group targets companies in the upper-mid size with its Japan fund, while seeking larger deals with its funds in other global regions. Another global name, Blackstone Group, will remain focused on real estate in Japan, a person familiar with the firm said. But Bain has been ahead, striking two of Japan<61>s five largest private equity-backed M&A deals, with Toshiba the biggest. KKR<4B>s $4.2 billion acquisition of auto parts maker Calsonic Kansei Corp is the second largest. Gross-Loh said that Bain is able to catalyze growth at Japanese domestic businesses that were stable and well-managed but weren<65>t exposed to global rivals and therefore not as competitive as they could be. Both Bain and Carlyle last year participated in the high-profile auction of Takata Corp, which filed for bankruptcy in June after its air bags were linked to deaths and injuries. According to people familiar with the deal, Bain is part of the winning bid for Takata, led by Chinese-owned U.S.-based Key Safety Systems. Bain declined to comment on Takata. BIG IN JAPAN In a decade, Bain has invested in a wide range of companies in Japan, from hot spring chains, wind farms to a mushroom growing business. Bain invests in Japan out of its Asian funds and sometimes use dry powder from its global funds for larger transactions - such as the Toshiba deal.
'a7b8bea69792ede1f04335f5cac4eb81eae30058'|'Gold prices extend gains amid subdued U.S. dollar'|'October 12, 2017 / 1:23 AM / Updated 11 hours ago Gold prices touch two-week high amid subdued U.S. dollar Apeksha Nair 3 Min Read A 1000 gram gold bar is seen at the Kazakhstan''s National Bank vault in Almaty, Kazakhstan September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Mariya Gordeyeva/File Photo (Reuters) - Gold prices rose to their highest in two weeks on Thursday amid a muted dollar, after minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve<76>s September policy meeting revealed low inflation concerns. Spot gold was up 0.2 percent at $1,294.29 an ounce by 0338 GMT, after earlier marking its best since Sept. 27 at $1295.45. U.S. gold futures for December delivery climbed 0.6 percent to $1,296.50 per ounce. <20>Gold prices rose slightly as the market appeared to take the Fed minutes as slightly dovish. In particular, it was the comments on persistently low inflation that seemed to gain much attention. This saw the US dollar weaken slightly, increasing investor appetite for the precious metal,<2C> ANZ analysts said in a note. Fed policymakers had a prolonged debate about the prospects of a pickup in inflation and slowing the path of future interest rate rises if it did not, according to the minutes of the U.S. central bank<6E>s last policy meeting on Sept. 19-20 released on Wednesday. The dollar hit a fresh over two-week low on Thursday following the news. Several policymakers said they would focus on upcoming inflation data over the next few months when deciding on the central bank<6E>s future rate hike path. U.S. short-term interest rate futures were steady on Wednesday as traders stuck to their bets on a possible U.S. rate hike in December. Gold is highly sensitive to rising interest rates, as these tend to boost the dollar, the currency in which the metal is priced. <20>Investors<72> concerns over escalating tensions between U.S. and North Korea remain high,<2C> ANZ analysts noted. Trump has <20>lit the wick of war<61> with North Korea and his country will be made to pay with <20>a hail of fire<72>, a Russian news agency quoted North Korea<65>s foreign minister as saying on Wednesday. If people are not too worried about the Fed<65>s policy, we have North Korea. Surely, geopolitical tensions are supporting prices ... we may try $1,300 next week, said Yuichi Ikemizu, Tokyo branch manager at CIBC Standard Bank. Spot gold may test resistance at $1,299 per ounce, with a good chance of breaking above this level and rising more towards the next resistance at $1,305, Reuters technicals analyst Wang Tao said. Silver edged up 0.1 percent to $17.18 an ounce. Platinum was 0.2 percent higher at $929.55 an ounce, having hit a two-week high in the previous session. Palladium was unchanged at $959.10 an ounce. Reporting by Apeksha Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Joseph Radford and Vyas Mohan 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-precious/gold-prices-extend-gains-amid-subdued-u-s-dollar-idINKBN1CH04Q'|'2017-10-12T04:21:00.000+03:00'
'6add33ef65a1bb630eca6d35531ff9cf360cf14f'|'Facebook to launch new virtual reality headset, ''Oculus Go'''|'October 11, 2017 / 5:32 PM / in 19 minutes Facebook to launch new virtual reality headset, ''Oculus Go'' 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Facebook application is seen on a phone screen August 3, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/File Photo SAN JOSE, Calif. (Reuters) - Facebook Inc ( FB.O ) plans to release a new virtual reality headset that does not require a separate computer to operate, allowing more mobile uses than the company<6E>s existing Oculus Rift product, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. Zuckerberg, speaking at a conference for virtual reality developers, said the <20>Oculus Go<47> device would cost $199 and ship early next year, too late for this year<61>s holiday shopping season but likely ahead of rivals. Facebook has invested heavily in virtual reality hardware in hopes the technology, which offers a 360-degree panoramic view of faraway or imaginary spaces, will move from a niche interest to a widely used platform for gaming, communication and business applications. In 2014, Facebook paid $3 billion to acquire Oculus and retain its employees. The new standalone headset will differentiate itself from the rival Vive system made by HTC Corp ( 2498.TW ) and the Google Daydream headset, made by Alphabet Inc ( GOOGL.O ), because it will not require a smartphone to operate. Consumers could be attracted to the Oculus Go if it had enough interesting material, such as games and movies, said Stephanie Llamas, vice president of research at Super Data, a research firm. <20>The Oculus Go has potential to be a huge driver of growth, but only if its up to consumer standards,<2C> she said in an email. Facebook will permanently cut the price of the Oculus Rift system to $399 from $499, the company said. Facebook is expected to ship about 213,000 Rift systems this year, while HTC is expected to ship about 305,000 Vive systems, according to Super Data research. Beyond price cuts and new products, Facebook is trying a variety of ways to attract more people to the virtual-reality medium. The company has been developing software known as Facebook Spaces that allows friends to meet in virtual rooms, and it said it will soon integrate live video. On Wednesday, the company said it was releasing new technology to create better, customized facial images, or avatars, and would soon add the ability to use playing cards in Facebook Spaces, in addition to the dice it already has. Reporting by David Ingram, editing by David Gregorio and Andrew Hay 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-tech-virtualreality/facebook-to-launch-new-virtual-reality-headset-oculus-go-idUKKBN1CG2FP'|'2017-10-11T22:09:00.000+03:00'
'0a22548fbb3c2f3b9a12615e100235790ceb9edf'|'T-Mobile, Sprint deal likely opposed by Justice Dept staff -sources'|'WASHINGTON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - When Sprint and T-Mobile bring their expected merger plans to the U.S. Department of Justice for antitrust review, the career staff who do the bulk of the probe into whether the deal will hurt customers will likely recommend that it be stopped, three people familiar with their thinking told Reuters.The deal between the U.S. third- and fourth-largest U.S. wireless carriers, likely to be announced later this month, is set to test how antitrust enforcers will approach big deals under the administration of President Donald Trump, who is seen as pro-business but also ran a populist campaign aimed at the worries of ordinary Americans.The Justice Department<6E>s main concern is how the deal would affect competition in the U.S. mobile sector. Antitrust staff will want to let T-Mobile continue as it has done, aggressively wooing customers away from market leaders Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc, the people said.T-Mobile touts itself as the fastest-growing U.S. wireless company, and its annual report lists enticements to attract customers like paying termination fees for new customers who leave their old company.If combined, T-Mobile U.S. Inc and Sprint Corp would have more than half the market for pre-paid plans, favored by people with little or poor credit, which will likely figure in competition considerations.<2E>Losing that head-to-head competition could drive up prices for those on a more limited income,<2C> said Gene Kimmelman, president of Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group.Sprint and T-Mobile agreed on tentative terms on a plan to merge in late September, sources said.But it is not clear the deal will be any more successful than three years ago, when Japan<61>s SoftBank Group Corp, which controls Sprint, abandoned talks to acquire T-Mobile for Sprint in the face of opposition from U.S. antitrust regulators.An informal poll of seven antitrust experts contacted by Reuters found them split between predicting that the deal would be stopped and saying they did not know if it would be allowed. A tiny fraction of deals are blocked.As influential as the career staff is, the final decision will lie with Trump<6D>s antitrust enforcer at the Justice Department, Makan Delrahim, and the Federal Communications Commission.Deutsche Bank analysts said in a research note this week they were <20>very bearish on the prospects for deal approval,<2C> citing not only regulatory risk, but also political opposition from Democrats to deals that could threaten U.S. consumers.If the agencies decide to try to stop the merger, they have ammunition.The U.S. wireless market is dominated by Verizon with about 146 million wireless customers and AT&T with nearly 135 million. T-Mobile is third with 71.5 million and Sprint is No. 4 with 58.5 million, according to Fierce Wireless, which collects and analyzes wireless market data. Together, the four have 98.8 percent of the U.S. wireless market.T-Mobile dominates the prepaid market. Combining with Sprint would give it 56 percent of the market to provide wireless to people who tend to be poorer or have no or bad credit, according to John Fletcher, an analyst with S&P Global.One point in the deal<61>s favor is that the mobile market is competitive. Between August 2016 and August 2017, wireless telephone services prices fell a stunning 13.2 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.<2E>Chances are better now, meaningfully better,<2C> that the deal will win approval, said Daniel Bitton, an antitrust attorney with Axinn, Veltrop and Harkrider. (Reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington; Editing by Bill Rigby)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/sprint-corp-ma-t-mobile/t-mobile-sprint-deal-likely-opposed-by-justice-dept-staff-sources-idINL2N1ML1YC'|'2017-10-11T17:09:00.000+03:00'
'bd78a551b36e892cf2d03a797275eb85071ea830'|'Philips must suspend making some defibrillators in US; profits hit'|'AMSTERDAM, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Dutch healthcare technology company Philips said on Wednesday it had agreed to suspend manufacturing some defibrillator devices in the United States and would continue making others under heightened scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration.The company said it expected a reduction of 20 million euros ($23.6 million) in earnings before interest, taxes and amortisation (EBITA) in the fourth quarter of 2017 as a result, and another 60 million euros reduction in 2018 ($1 = 0.8466 euros) (Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Stephen Coates)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/philips-us-devices/philips-must-suspend-making-some-defibrillators-in-us-profits-hit-idUSL8N1MM0GR'|'2017-10-11T13:26:00.000+03:00'
'641f948b80a87c08928103d7e414252a46ddbcd6'|'UPDATE 2-Leahy to bow out from Airbus at year-end after final sales push'|'* Leahy has held top Airbus sales role since 1994* Seen as a relentless <20>deal closer<65>* Rare defeat to Boeing at June<6E>s Paris Airshow (Adds market sources, market share vs Boeing)By Tim HepherPARIS, Oct 11 (Reuters) - John Leahy, who has sold planes worth over a trillion dollars during more than two decades as sales chief at Europe<70>s Airbus, is finally calling it a day at the end of the year after one last push to level the score with Boeing, executives said.The 67-year-old New Yorker, who hinted earlier this year he would retire in the autumn to make way for his deputy Kiran Rao, is once again in battle mode as Airbus faces an aggressive new sales drive from its U.S. rival.That comes as Airbus is trying to end a hiatus in sales of its A380 <20>superjumbo<62> by seeking more orders from Emirates and other deals at the Dubai Airshow, which Leahy is now expected to attend after earlier saying he would not be going. He has agreed to stay on until the end of the year, the executives said.Chief Executive Tom Enders disclosed the timing of Leahy<68>s departure during a recent internal sales meeting, but has not publicly confirmed details of the transition.Leahy, who has run sales at Airbus since 1994, could not be reached for comment on his plans on Wednesday, while Airbus declined comment.A tireless <20>deal closer<65> known for snatching deals at the last moment, Leahy sold small Piper aircraft before joining Airbus to help break open the U.S. market in the 1980s.Aides say he has overseen sales of more than 15,500 aircraft worth $1.7 trillion at list prices. But after a prolonged boom, Airbus has slipped behind Boeing in the order race this year with just 35 percent of net orders.WOOING EMIRATES After suffering a rare defeat at the Paris Airshow in June, Leahy seems determined to end his career on a high and has set his sights on new sales for the A380, without which the plane could struggle to survive, industry sources said.Emirates president Tim Clark, the biggest A380 operator who has negotiated with Leahy for decades, declined to say whether he would write more cheques for jets at the Dubai Airshow but confirmed he was being courted to expand his superjumbo fleet.<2E>He<48>s anxious that we should order a squillion A380s before he goes, so that he<68>ll go out with a fanfare of trumpets or whatever,<2C> Clark joked in an interview with Reuters in Asia.<2E>But he<68>s been telling me for the last four years that he<68>ll retire in the next year, so I<>ll believe it when I see it.<2E>The veteran CEO paid tribute to Leahy<68>s record, which leaves Airbus with a record backlog but questions over short-term jet demand, and declined to comment on his own retirement plans.<2E>He<48>s been very good at what he is doing. He<48>s certainly a character who has been a big contributor to the industry.<2E>With more than 200 sales needed to close the gap with Boeing in a market already bursting with jets, some market sources said Leahy<68>s looming departure may put pressure on prices.<2E>Now is the time to strike. Airlines know the last thing Leahy will want is to lose his last annual order competition against Boeing,<2C> said a senior aircraft financing source.Leahy, however, has said Airbus does not expect 2017 to be a marquee year for orders as the industry slows.Reporting by Tim Hepher; Additional reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/airbus-leahy/update-1-airbus-sales-boss-leahy-sets-end-2017-retirement-date-sources-idINL8N1MM45L'|'2017-10-11T11:37:00.000+03:00'
'987e915840c6660673478483ddf6b7d609cf7682'|'Forecast-beating sales lift LVMH shares towards record high'|'October 10, 2017 / 7:11 AM / Updated 39 minutes ago Forecast-beating sales lift LVMH shares towards record high Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A woman buys a Louis Vuitton bag in a shop in Singapore May 19, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - Shares in LVMH ( LVMH.PA ) climbed towards record highs on Tuesday, after the world<6C>s biggest luxury goods company reported stronger-than-forecast revenue growth for the third quarter. The shares were up 1.8 percent at 236.45 euros in early trading, near a record high of 239.65 euros reached in May. The stock was also the top performer on France''s benchmark CAC-40 .FCHI index, with the CAC slipping 0.1 percent, and its gains pushed up shares in other luxury goods companies, with Kering ( PRTP.PA ) advancing by 1.6 percent. <20>While this likely will be read positively across the sector, we think this performance sets LVMH ever more firmly as one of the best performers of the industry,<2C> wrote JP Morgan analysts, keeping an <20>overweight<68> rating on LVMH shares. Deutsche Bank, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs also kept <20>buy<75> ratings on the shares. LVMH, home to labels such as Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Moet & Chandon champagne, reported on Monday that third-quarter like-for-like revenues, which strip out currency swings and acquisitions or disposals, grew 12 percent from a year earlier to 30.1 billion euros ($35.4 billion). That beat the 9 percent organic growth forecast in an analyst poll compiled for Reuters by Inquiry Financial and was in line with the previous quarter, in spite of a weaker showing by LVMH<4D>s spirits unit and a tricky foreign exchange climate. <20>Given LVMH<4D>s size and diversity, the continued strong growth in 3Q despite tougher comparisons signals a positive demand environment amongst luxury consumers that is encouraging for the broader luxury sector,<2C> Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a note. LVMH shares are up around 30 percent so far in 2017, beating an 11 percent gain on the STOXX Europe 600 Personal & Household Goods index .SXQP, which contains other luxury goods stocks. Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Dominique Vidalon and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lvmh-results/lvmh-shares-climb-to-near-record-highs-after-third-quarter-sales-rise-idUKKBN1CF0MP'|'2017-10-10T10:38:00.000+03:00'
'46a13a3d4c2f65dc2640f8183a97cead650a5ea7'|'China''s Great Wall Motor shares jump after report on BMW tie-up'|'October 11, 2017 / 5:36 AM / in 17 minutes BMW looking at venture with China''s Great Wall, may build factory: source Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Great Wall Motors Haval hybrid vehicle is presented during the Auto China 2016 auto show in Beijing, China, April 29, 2016. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) - German luxury automaker BMW is looking at forming a venture with Great Wall Motor, a source familiar with the matter said - plans which sent the Chinese automaker<65>s shares surging by nearly a fifth on Wednesday. The automakers are looking at the possibility of opening an assembly plant in the eastern Chinese city of Changshu, a BMW executive said but declined to say what sort of vehicles were under consideration. <20>I don<6F>t know how far along we have gone nailing this deal,<2C> or whether the two companies have official central government approval for the JV or not, said the executive, who was not authorized to speak on the matter and declined to be identified. Foreign automakers have announced a raft of electric vehicle investments in China, which wants electric and hybrid cars to make up at least a fifth of the country<72>s auto sales by 2025 and plans to loosen joint venture regulations. FILE PHOTO: A Great Wall Motors Haval HB-02 concept vehicle is presented during the Auto China 2016 auto show in Beijing, China, April 29, 2016. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo Tesla, Ford Motor Co, Daimler AG, and General Motors are among firms that have already announced plans for making electric vehicles in China. A BMW spokesman in China did not provide an immediate comment when contacted by Reuters on Wednesday. A Great Wall official declined to comment. Great Wall<6C>s Hong Kong-listed shares soared as much as 19.2 percent to their highest level in over two years, before paring some of the gains to be up 14 percent in afternoon trade. Its Shanghai-listed shares were suspended from trading, pending an announcement. The BMW and Great Wall plans were first reported by Shanghai-based www.iautodaily.com. BMW already has one joint venture in China with local carmaker Brilliance China Automotive Holdings. Reporting by Adam Jourdan in SHANGHAI and Norihiko Shirouzu in BEIJING; Editing by Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-great-wall-bmw/chinas-great-wall-motor-shares-jump-after-report-on-bmw-tie-up-idUKKBN1CG0FZ'|'2017-10-11T08:26:00.000+03:00'
'612e03b3ba0c634ad28ebdec9a07bf9e60763337'|'WH Smith reports rise in annual profit led by travel hub outlets'|'October 12, 2017 / 6:55 AM / Updated 24 minutes ago WH Smith''s profits boosted by sales growth at travel stores Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - British books and stationery retailer WH Smith Plc ( SMWH.L ) reported a 6.9 percent rise in annual pretax profits to 140 million pounds on Thursday, with growth led by outlets at airports and other travel sites. WH Smith said trading profit at its more than 750 outlets at travel hubs, including railway stations and motorway service areas, rose 10.3 percent to 96 million pounds and now makes up over 60 percent of its trading profit. Trading profit at its high street outlets was flat at 62 million pounds. The final dividend was increased by 10 percent to take the year<61>s total payout to 48.2p a share. However, shares in the company were down 2.6 percent at 2016 pence at 0725 GMT, having risen more than 45 percent so far this year. The company<6E>s travel business has been expanding internationally. It announced the win of six units in both Rome airports, adding another country to its mainland European presence of Alicante and Dusseldorf. At home travel business sales over the summer also benefited from a sharp rise in the number of foreigners visiting Britain. Official data showed that tourist numbers hit a record in July adding to evidence that the weak pound has made tourism a big beneficiary of last year<61>s Brexit vote. Reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely, Greg Mahlich 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-wh-smith-results/wh-smith-reports-rise-in-annual-profit-led-by-travel-hub-outlets-idUKKBN1CH0PP'|'2017-10-12T09:55:00.000+03:00'
'9e9915fbdf7a47dc167fe6a20fa9622d397cd2eb'|'Analysis: GE stock hits four-year low as analysts debate possibility of dividend cut'|'October 12, 2017 / 1:11 AM / Updated 10 hours ago Analysis: GE stock hits four-year low as analysts debate possibility of dividend cut Alwyn Scott 4 Min Read The logo of General Electric Co. is pictured at the Global Operations Center in San Pedro Garza Garcia, neighbouring Monterrey, Mexico, on May 12, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - Concern among investors that General Electric Co ( GE.N ) may not generate enough cash this year to fully cover its dividend and other promised spending sent its stock to its lowest level in more than four years on Wednesday. The shares fell 1.2 percent to $23.07 after JPMorgan said a dividend cut was <20>increasingly likely<6C> and lowered its price target on the stock to $20 from $22. <20>Despite the recent CEO change, by the numbers we see a core operating performance that is below (GE<47>s) plan,<2C> JPMorgan analyst Stephen Tusa wrote in a note on Wednesday, referring to GE<47>s full year forecast. Tusa was not available to comment beyond the note. Chief Executive John Flannery, who took over the position on August 1, is doing a comprehensive review of the company and is due to set new targets for earnings and capital allocation, which includes dividends, on Nov. 13. GE has affirmed its commitment to the dividend, which gives GE stock the second-highest dividend yield in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and ranks it 30th among the S&P 500. <20>Dividends remain a top priority,<2C> GE spokeswoman Jennifer Erickson said on Wednesday, declining to answer further questions as the company is in a quiet period ahead of its third-quarter results due next week. The dividend due to be paid Oct. 25 is not subject to being cut. GE<47>s stock has fallen 5.4 percent since Friday, including falling 1.24 percent to $23.07 on Wednesday, its lowest close since Sept. 3, 2013. The stock is down 27 percent this year, the worst Dow performer. On Friday GE said that its long-time Chief Financial Officer Jeff Bornstein would retire and be replaced by Jamie Miller, who has been the head of its transportation unit. A Reuters analysis of a GE presentation released in July and executives<65> comments showed that GE could generate $6 billion less cash this year than it planned to spend on dividends, share buybacks and other items. Its plan called for spending up to $25.8 billion, including about $8 billion on dividends, while generating about $20 billion in cash from operations and asset sales. GE has the capacity to pay the dividend. The company has more than $14 billion in cash on its balance sheet and $327 billion in orders for power plants, jet engines, locomotives, oil and gas equipment and healthcare devices. It could trim other spending instead, such as buying back fewer shares than the $11 billion to $13 billion it has targeted for this year. The 125-year-old company has cut its dividend six times in the last 34 years, including a 68 percent cut in 2009 during the financial crisis. It is operating against a far more favourable economic backdrop now. <20>A dividend cut could crush the stock as retail investors flee, but maintaining it gives GE little or no excess cash to grow,<2C> Jeffrey Sprague, an analyst at Vertical Research Partners, said in a note after the Bornstein announcement on Friday. <20>GE has continued to shrink the company but it has not proportionally shrunk the dividend.<2E> Some analysts saw a dividend cut as unlikely. <20>Cutting the dividend would be a last resort,<2C> Moody<64>s Investors Service credit analyst Rene Lipsch told Reuters on Wednesday. But, he said, GE<47>s options would narrow next year when it no longer receives billions from asset sales at GE Capital. Long term, he said, the dividend <20>depends on Flannery<72>s ability to increase cash flow from the businesses.<2E> Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Toni Reinhold 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/ge-stock-analysis/analysis-ge-stock-hits-four-year-low
'18fa868cfd020039f581c1aae8b911791453c779'|'Samsung Electronics shares jump on expected record third quarter memory chip profit'|'October 10, 2017 / 1:47 AM / in 2 hours South Korea tech shares start post-holiday trade with surge on earnings hopes Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - An advertisement board for Samsung''s solid state drives are pictured at Tokyo Game Show 2017 in Chiba, east of Tokyo, Japan, September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean tech shares led by Samsung Electronics Co Ltd soared early on Tuesday, catching up with gains made by global stock markets after a break of more than a week, and as strength in chip prices bolstered investor hopes for earnings. <20>Global stock markets marked strong gains while Seoul markets were off for a long holiday break, and the price of semiconductors continued to rally,<2C> said Lee Seung-woo, a stock analyst at Eugene Investment & Securities. Shares in Samsung jumped 4.3 percent, with expectations high that the world<6C>s top memory chipmaker will flag record profit when it announces its earnings estimates for July-September quarter on Friday. The tech giant is expected to report 14.3 trillion won (<28>9.5 billion) in third-quarter operating profit, up from a record 14.1 trillion won it posted in the previous quarter, according to the average of 19 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. <20>Their fourth-quarter earnings are highly likely to be even better, meaning that the shares will continue their upward trend,<2C> Lee said. Shares in smaller rival SK Hynix Inc jumped as much as 7.8 percent to an all-time high of 89,400 won, while battery maker Samsung SDI gained 7.8 percent. Gains in tech shares helped the Seoul<75>s main stock index rise 1.9 percent. Reporting by Dahee Kim and Joyce Lee; Editing by Sam Holmes and Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-samsung-elec-stocks-sk-hynix/samsung-electronics-shares-jump-on-expected-record-third-quarter-memory-chip-profit-idUKKBN1CF055'|'2017-10-10T04:46:00.000+03:00'
'1f2c3445fb499c6c843f5848815cbe32a5556296'|'URGENT-Wells Fargo $1 bln accrual due to talks with U.S. Justice Department'|'October 13, 2017 / 5:39 PM / Updated 13 minutes ago URGENT-Wells Fargo $1 bln accrual due to talks with U.S. Justice Department Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 13 (Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co took a $1 billion mortgage litigation accrual in the third quarter because it is in talks with the U.S. Department of Justice, Chief Financial Officer John Shrewsberry told Reuters on Friday. The talks are with a task force that has reached settlements with several other large banks, he said. <20>They<65>re working down toward the end of that list and now we<77>re sort of in discussions with them,<2C> he said. <20>The billion dollars is in connection with that activity.<2E> (Reporting by Dan Freed in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/wells-fargo-results-mortgage/urgent-wells-fargo-1-bln-accrual-due-to-talks-with-u-s-justice-department-idUSL2N1MO0SP'|'2017-10-13T20:39:00.000+03:00'
'683955aab03ddbc275db051427f0e2fdf912703a'|'Standard Chartered chairman urges U.S. to preserve bank resolution regime'|'October 12, 2017 / 11:03 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Standard Chartered chairman urges U.S. to preserve bank resolution regime Michelle Price , Pete Schroeder 4 Min Read A logo of Standard Chartered is displayed at its main branch in Hong Kong, China August 1, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of British bank Standard Chartered [STANB.UL] called on U.S. policymakers to preserve a key post-crisis power that allows bank regulators to wind down a failing lender, even as the Trump administration looks to slash red tape across the financial sector. The comments by Jose Vinals, one of the industry<72>s most senior and influential bankers, will add to growing pressure on the U.S. Treasury to support preserving special bank liquidation powers introduced after the 2007-09 global financial crisis. The Treasury is expected to release a widely anticipated review of the policy in the coming weeks, which was ordered by President Donald Trump in April. The <20>orderly liquidation authority<74> or OLA, introduced by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, gives U.S. regulators the power to step in and liquidate a troubled bank instead of putting it through a traditional bankruptcy. <20>It<49>s very important to preserve the ability of the U.S. to have special procedures to intervene and resolve systemically important financial institutions when there is an emergency,<2C> Vinals told Reuters on Wednesday on the sidelines of the Institute of International Finance conference in Washington. <20>In exceptional circumstances you need to resort to exceptional means. As there is yet to be clarity on what is going to happen, I have a hope, rather than an expectation<6F> that the U.S. will preserve it, he added. Conservative Republicans oppose the OLA which they say is an intrusive bailout mechanism in disguise, arguing that banks should be steered through a traditional bankruptcy process. Big banks and their regulators say bankruptcy codes are not sophisticated enough to handle a global bank failure and that special powers are needed to prevent another Lehman Brothers-style bankruptcy that could destabilise the financial system. The United States is one of several jurisdictions including the European Union that agreed to introduce special powers to ensure banks can be wound down across multiple borders. Vinals said it made sense to see how rules could be recalibrated now regulators are moving into a <20>business as usual mode<64> but stressed it was important to broadly maintain continuity, both inside and outside the United States. <20>It is also critical to ensure cross-border resolution, otherwise we will go back to what we had before, where global banks are global in life, but local in death,<2C> said Vinals, who joined Standard Chartered a year ago after having served at the International Monetary Fund where he helped draft post-crisis rules. LOBBYING EFFORTS Global banks as well as U.S. and European regulators have been heavily lobbying the Treasury to preserve the OLA, according to several people with knowledge of the discussions. They have argued that rescinding the OLA would increase systemic risk and put U.S. banks on an uneven footing overseas, potentially leading foreign regulators to require them to ringfence more capital in the markets in which they operate. It would also likely require banks to upgrade their so-called living wills, which outline how they would be unwound in the event of bankruptcy. They have spent years and millions of dollars refining those plans. The sources said they believed the Treasury was poised to recommend preserving the mechanism, while also urging changes to the current bankruptcy code. The Treasury declined to comment. Repealing the OLA would ultimately have to be decided by Congress, but the Treasury<72>s recommendation would carry weight. Anthony Cimino, head of government affairs at bank lobby group the Financial Services Roundtable, said large financial firms strongly support efforts to beef u
'2e3601aab5924e8bc30fa71cfe587956e2b9b828'|'FAA orders A380 engine inspections after Air France incident'|'SINGAPORE, Oct 13 (Reuters) - U.S. aviation authorities have ordered visual inspections of fan hubs in engines used on some Airbus SE A380 jets after an engine came apart on an Air France flight last month, forcing it to make an emergency landing.The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency airworthiness directive requiring owners and operators of Engine Alliance (EA) Model GP7200 series engines to visually inspect the engines and remove the fan hub if defects are found.The EA engines are manufactured by a 50-50 joint venture between General Electric Co and United Technologies Corp<72>s Pratt & Whitney unit.Reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/air-france-canada-faa/faa-orders-a380-engine-inspections-after-air-france-incident-idINL4N1MO25H'|'2017-10-13T02:24:00.000+03:00'
'005fc67c69fcce1b37c06bf263c5f5ac789fa537'|'General Motors checking impact of Kobe Steel data cheating'|'October 12, 2017 / 12:02 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago General Motors checking impact of Kobe Steel data cheating Reuters Staff 3 Min Read The logo of Kobe Steel is seen at the group''s Tokyo headquarters building in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato DETROIT/TOKYO (Reuters) - General Motors [GM.N] is checking whether its cars contain falsely certified parts or components sourced from Japan<61>s Kobe Steel <5406.T, the latest major automaker to be dragged into the cheating scandal. <20>General Motors is aware of the reports of material deviation in Kobe Steel copper and aluminium products,<2C> spokesman Nick Richards told Reuters, confirming a Kyodo News report. <20>We are investigating any potential impact and do not have any additional comments at this time<6D> GM joins automakers including Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ) and as many as 200 other companies that have received parts sourced from Kobe Steel as the scandal reverberates through global supply chains. On Wednesday fresh revelations showed data fabrication at the steelmaker was more widespread than it initially said, as the company joins a list of Japanese manufacturers that have admitted to similar misconduct in recent years. Investors, worried about the financial impact and potential legal fallout, again dumped Kobe Steel stock, wiping about $1.6 billion off its market value in two days. On Thursday in Tokyo, the shares stabilised and were up 1.1 percent by around 0150 GMT, compared with a 0.3 percent gain in the Nikkei 225 .N225 . Kobe Steel President Hiroya Kawasaki said on Thursday his company would do the utmost to investigate the reason for the tampering and take measures to prevent further occurrences. He was speaking before meeting an industry ministry official to discuss the matter. The GM logo is seen at the General Motors Assembly Plant in Valencia, Venezuela April 21, 2017. REUTERS/Marco Bello The steelmaker admitted at the weekend it had falsified data about the quality of aluminium and copper products used in cars, aircraft, space rockets and defence equipment, a further hit to Japanese manufacturers<72> reputation for quality products. Kobe Steel said late on Wednesday it found 70 cases of tampering with data on materials used in optical disks and liquid crystal displays at its Kobelco Research Institute Inc, which makes and tests products for the company. It also found one case of falsified data on iron powder products - material used for car parts such as gears - that were shipped to a customer. An internal probe carried out since it discovered the issues in its aluminium and copper business has not found other cases of data tampering, Yoshihiko Katsukawa, a managing executive officer at Kobe Steel, told a news conference on Wednesday. He said the company - which has said it was examining possible data falsification going back 10 years - has begun an external investigation of all its units, including those overseas. <20>We can<61>t rule out the possibility that the external investigation will find other cases,<2C> Katsukawa said, adding no customers had raised any safety issues or stopped buying its products. Reporting by Nick Carey in DETROIT and Kaneko Kaori in TOKYO; Writing by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Stephen Coates and Kenneth Maxwell 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-kobe-steel-scandal/general-motors-checking-impact-of-kobe-steel-data-cheating-kyodo-idUKKBN1CG333'|'2017-10-12T04:56:00.000+03:00'
'979cc0f9cb236f1990461b9c59b5c9348aad8759'|'China''s COMAC says C919''s third test flight delayed due to bad weather'|'Reuters TV United States October 12, 2017 / 5:03 AM / in 33 minutes China''s COMAC says C919''s third test flight delayed due to bad weather Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: China''s domestically developed C919 passenger jet takes off on its second test flight at Pudong International Airport in Shanghai, China September 28, 2017. China Daily via REUTERS SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Plans to send China<6E>s home-built C919 passenger jet on its third test flight have been delayed due to bad weather, a Commercial Aircraft Corp of China Ltd (COMAC) official told Reuters on Thursday. COMAC Vice President Shi Jianzhong said last month that the plane was expected to make its third test flight within two weeks of its second test flight on Sept. 28, suggesting the test flight would take place by the end of this week. A COMAC official, who declined to give his name due to company policy, said that plans for that flight had been pushed back due to bad weather. <20>No decision has yet been made on when the next flight will be,<2C> he said. The almost five month-gap between the C919<31>s first and second flight was far longer than that of other new aircraft and had raised concerns that COMAC<41>s plans to deliver the aircraft were running behind schedule. Shi had said the firm was being cautious over issues with the plane<6E>s technology and engine that had surfaced but that COMAC expected future test flights to be very close together. The narrow-body C919, which will compete with Boeing Co<43>s 737 and the Airbus SE<53>s A320, is a symbol of China<6E>s efforts to become a key player in the global civil aerospace market and also represents President Xi Jinping<6E>s ambitions to upgrade the country<72>s manufacturing industry. Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Christian Schmollinger 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-china-aviation-comac/chinas-comac-says-c919s-third-test-flight-delayed-due-to-bad-weather-idUKKBN1CH0GS'|'2017-10-12T07:58:00.000+03:00'
'f33af57e3c822d927de863b4d08189ebc348e48a'|'Workers call on UK PM May to be more visible in Bombardier dispute'|'October 11, 2017 / 10:48 AM / in 8 hours Workers call on May to be more visible in Bombardier dispute Polina Ivanova 3 Min Read Member of Britain''s Unite trade union presents a t-shirt with slogans during a protest outside the Houses of Parliament in support of Bombardier workers in London, Britain, October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls LONDON (Reuters) - Workers at Bombardier<65>s Northern Irish plant called on Prime Minister Theresa May to be more visible in her attempts to save their jobs after the United States imposed tariffs on planes made by the Canadian aerospace firm. The United States has backed a complaint brought by Boeing ( BA.N ) that Bombardier ( BBDb.TO ) received illegal subsidies and dumped planes at <20>absurdly low<6F> prices, imposing duties of nearly 300 percent on its C-series aircraft. Britain is confident that it can successfully fight the ruling, which jeopardises some 4,200 jobs in Northern Ireland, where it is the biggest manufacturing employer. <20>We do feel that the levies that are put on are unfair and will be detrimental to jobs in Northern Ireland,<2C> Ron McDowell, 42, who has been an aerospace fitter for 25 years, told Reuters outside parliament in London, where workers had gathered for a protest. <20>What we want is for Theresa May to come out publicly rather than speaking behind closed doors.<2E> McDowell was one of around 20 protesters who stood behind a sign saying <20>Back Bombardier: Defend our jobs, skills and communities.<2E> Members of Britain''s Unite trade union protest outside the Houses of Parliament in support of Bombardier workers in London, Britain, October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls May and U.S. President Donald Trump discussed Bombardier in a call on Tuesday, after business secretary Greg Clark outlined to lawmakers the government<6E>s case against the suit. Britain and the trade union Unite argue that Boeing<6E>s case is without merit because it does not make a plane comparable to Bombardier<65>s C-series. May has emphasised the strength of Britain<69>s alliance with the United States since Trump came to power as it prepares to leave the European Union, its biggest trading partner. However, Jimmy Kelly of the Unite union said the dispute emphasised how Trump<6D>s protectionist policies might undermine May<61>s hopes for a good trading relationship. <20>I just don<6F>t fall for Theresa May saying <20>well I<>ve contacted Donald Trump<6D> and <20>I<EFBFBD>ve phoned Donald Trump<6D>. He<48>s parroting <20>USA, USA, USA<53>. And post-Brexit, why would he be changing his tune?<3F> he said. <20>So I think it<69>s dismal days for UK workers if this is the indicator.<2E> Reporting by Polina Ivanova; Writing by Alistair Smout; editing by Stephen Addison 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-boeing-bombardier-britain-protest/workers-call-on-uk-pm-may-to-be-more-visible-in-bombardier-dispute-idUKKBN1CG19L'|'2017-10-11T13:48:00.000+03:00'
'1a89f7a3504a24c7a4ec36ea8259859bd0bbd0f1'|'PRESS DIGEST-Canada - Oct 11'|'Oct 11 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories from selected Canadian newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.THE GLOBE AND MAIL ** Sears Canada Inc said it plans to liquidate its remaining 131 stores and put 12,000 employees out of work, after an attempt by its executive chairman to save the department store retailer failed. tgam.ca/2guGsTs** Canadian auto-parts giant Magna International Inc has joined a consortium led by BMW AG that is developing a self-driving vehicle platform that can be used by multiple auto makers. tgam.ca/2gujPPaNATIONAL POST ** Starlight Investments, one of the largest privately held apartment landlords in Canada, is creating a $1.3 billion partnership with two of the largest pension funds in the country to look for multi-family assets in south United States, a region largely free of rent control. bit.ly/2guMZ0j** Sabrina Geremia is taking over as director of Google''s Canadian Operations, the company said Tuesday, after filling in as interim leader since Sam Sebastian left for Pelmorex Media Inc in July. bit.ly/2guaYwQ (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/press-digest-canada/press-digest-canada-oct-11-idINL4N1MM3SI'|'2017-10-11T08:32:00.000+03:00'
'9f451522e25ea8affb3ef5234b992e637d10ee4d'|'Deals of the day-Mergers and acquisitions'|'(Adds Total, Novartis, Altus Strategies, Lufthansa , Updates Kroger, Qatar National Bank)Oct 11 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 2000 GMT on Wednesday:** French oil company Total and energy group Erg are in exclusive talks to try and sell their Italian petrol station network, sources said, after some investors grew jittery over the move to electric cars.** Novartis has decided not to sell its roughly $14 billion, 33 percent voting stake in Roche following a review, Chairman Joerg Reinhardt said in an interview published on Wednesday in Swiss newspaper HandelsZeitung.** Kroger Co said on Wednesday it is exploring the sale of its nearly 800 convenience stores as the No. 1 U.S. supermarket operator strengthens its Web business in a market share war that has intensified after Amazon.com Inc<6E>s purchase of Whole Foods.** British explorer Altus Strategies on Wednesday signed an outline 3.4 million pound ($4.5 million) deal to buy Legend Gold Corp and said it was aiming to make the most of a subdued market to grow the newly-listed company further.** Lufthansa is poised to agree a deal to buy assets from insolvent Air Berlin, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters, ahead of a deadline on Thursday.** A group of six Chinese independent oil refiners set up a 33 billion yuan ($5 billion) joint venture to compete with state-owned giants and the rise of private chemical giants, a senior executive at one of the partners said.** South African miner Exxaro Resources said it had completed its sale of 22.4 million shares in U.S. titanium products company Tronox with net proceeds of $474 million.** Brazilian energy conglomerate Cosan SA Industria e Com<6F>rcio agreed to pay its partner Royal Dutch Shell Plc 1.16 billion reais ($365 million) for a 16.8 percent stake in gas distribution company Companhia de G<>s de S<>o Paulo, or Comg<6D>s.** Russian tycoons Mikhail Prokhorov and Viktor Vekselberg have sold a 3 percent stake in Russian aluminum giant Rusal via an accelerated bookbuilding (ABB) for $315 million, one of their bookrunners said.** Buyout group BC Partners has agreed to buy German industrial ceramics group Ceramtec from peer investor Cinven , the groups said.** KKR & Co LP has raised its offer price for Hitachi Kokusai Electric Inc to 2,900 yen a share from 2,503 yen, the Japanese firm said, after a U.S. hedge fund put pressure on the private equity firm to revise terms.** Bharti Airtel Ltd, India<69>s top telecom operator, said it had partnered with handset maker Karbonn Mobiles to introduce a 4G-enabled smartphone at the price of a feature phone.** Qatar National Bank<6E>s said on Wednesday its stake in United Arab Emirates-based Commercial Bank International is not for sale. (Compiled by Arunima Banerjee and Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/deals-day/deals-of-the-day-mergers-and-acquisitions-idINL4N1MM3NW'|'2017-10-11T08:08:00.000+03:00'
'78d5727d6799b5af41309521b9d2e152f8b08947'|'Asian shares hit decade highs, Catalan fears ease'|'October 11, 2017 / 12:52 AM / in 5 hours Spain-Catalonia relief edges world stocks to fresh high Marc Jones 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Pedestrians leave and enter the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON (Reuters) - Spanish stocks and bonds rallied and the euro hit a two-week high on Wednesday as European markets took relief from Catalonia stopping short of declaring immediate independence from Madrid. Catalonia<69>s leader Carles Puigdemont had balked on Tuesday at making a formal declaration of independence, saying the plan would be put on hold and that he instead wanted talks with Spain<69>s government over the region<6F>s future. The move disappointed many pro-independence supporters but pleased financial markets with hopes the gesture would mark a de-escalation of Spain<69>s worst political crisis since an attempted military coup in 1981. MSCI''s 47-country world stocks index .MIWD PUS briefly hit a fresh record high in opening European trading as a 1.5 percent jump in Spain''s IBEX .IBEX added to a 10-year high set by Asian shares overnight. The biggest surge came from Spanish banks which rallied as much as 4 percent .IBEXIB, while the country<72>s government bond yields - which gauge political tension levels - saw their second biggest fall in a month. <20>There was a chance Puigdemont would have made a decisive declaration, so now yields are dropping because there is room for negotiation left,<2C> said DZ Bank strategist Christian Lenk. The euro climbed to a two-week high of $1.18345 against a broadly weaker dollar which was down for a fourth day running in its worst run since July. U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s public feud with Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, an influential fellow Republican, has raised concern that his push for a tax-code overhaul could be harmed. At the same time, the Federal Reserve will publish the minutes from its last minute later with a third U.S. rate hike of the year now looking nailed on for December. <20>Squabbles surrounding Trump<6D>s efforts come as no surprise, but it is still not helping the dollar,<2C> said Yukio Izhizuki, senior currency strategist at Daiwa Securities in Tokyo. Europe<70>s Spain gains bolstered what was already a confident market mood after the International Monetary Fund pushed up its forecast for global growth on Tuesday That had helped Wall Street hit its latest all-time high. Asian shares then climbed to their highest in a decade as Japan''s Nikkei .N225 reached its strongest since 1996 despite more losses for scandal-hit Kobe Steel ( 5406.T ) and as South Korean stocks .KOPSI made a new all-time top. <20>A risk-on mood has set in and money is flowing out of bond funds into equities funds,<2C> said Hugh Dive, chief investment officer at Atlas Funds Management. <20>One of the biggest drivers of global equities is the United States and some of the macro data coming out from there has been quite positive. There is also this view that China is travelling much better than many people had expected.<2E> FED MINUTES The dollar was also under pressure amid ongoing uncertainty over who will be the next Federal Reserve chair, with the predictions market site, PredictIt, favouring Fed Governor Jerome Powell as the most likely candidate. While Powell is regarded as more hawkish than incumbent Janet Yellen, whose term expires in February, analysts say he probably wouldn<64>t look to unwind stimulus as aggressively as some of the candidates on the list. Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Robert Kaplan, who votes this year on Fed policy, had also said overnight that he wants to see more signs of upward inflation before raising interest rates again. The weaker dollar continued to help commodities. U.S. crude CLcv1 rose 19 cents to $51.11 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 added 13 cents to $56.74, also on signs of tighter near-term supply.[O/R] Gold prices hovered around their highest in two weeks, with spot gold XAU= at $1,289.06 an ounce, while industrial bellwether metal copper was just 
'5bd4d5d460f992fae43e4c7a98e8033763f00b5f'|'Aviva to sell Taiwan business'|'October 13, 2017 / 6:50 AM / Updated 21 minutes ago Aviva to sell Taiwan business to local partner for $1 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A man walks past an AVIVA logo outside the company''s head office in the city of London March 5, 2009. REUTERS/Stephen Hird LONDON (Reuters) - British insurer Aviva ( AV.L ) said on Friday its decision to sell its 49 percent stake in a Taiwan joint venture to its partner First Financial Holding ( 2892.TW ) fits into its strategy of withdrawing from less profitable markets. Aviva declined to put a price tag on the sale, but Annie Lee, head of investor relations at Taiwan<61>s First Financial ( 2892.TW ), said Aviva sold its share in the joint venture, First Aviva Life, for $1 (0.7522 pounds). The sale enables Aviva to withdraw its capital from the business, following low returns after the financial crisis, she added. The decision came after a review of the business found it did not fit with the group<75>s aim of focusing on markets where it can achieve scale or have a distinct competitive advantage, Aviva said in a statement. <20>This was not about financials, it was more a strategic decision,<2C> an Aviva spokeswoman said. The insurer has also this year sold its stake in three Spanish joint ventures, its Italian joint venture and part of its French business, as it tries to focus on core markets including Britain and Canada. It has also said it would look at its Indian joint venture with Dabur Invest Corp ( DABU.NS ). The sale of the Taiwan business will have a negligible impact on Aviva<76>s capital position and operating profit, the insurer said. Aviva previously looked at exiting Taiwan in 2010 and 2012, but opted not to in the face of opposition from regulators. Aviva<76>s shares were trading at 499.4 pence at 0841 GMT, down 0.1 percent. Reporting by Clara Denina and Carolyn Cohn; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Adrian Croft 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-aviva-taiwan-divestiture/aviva-to-sell-taiwan-business-idUKKBN1CI0NM'|'2017-10-13T09:50:00.000+03:00'
'a2d8ca1269ba0fb398c5e012b85b325695770496'|'BASF to buy seeds, herbicide businesses from Bayer for $7 billion'|'October 13, 2017 / 7:44 AM / Updated 6 hours ago BASF to harvest seeds, herbicide businesses from Bayer for $7 billion 5 Min Read The logo of Germany''s largest drugmaker Bayer is pictured in Leverkusen April 26, 2014. REUTERS/Ina Fassbender/Files FRANKFURT (Reuters) - BASF has agreed to buy seed and herbicide businesses from Bayer for 5.9 billion euros ($7 billion) in cash, as Bayer tries to convince competition authorities to approve its planned acquisition of Monsanto. BASF, the world<6C>s third-largest maker of crop chemicals, has so far avoided seed assets and instead pursued research into plant characteristics such as drought tolerance, which it sells or licenses out to seed developers. But Bayer<65>s $66 billion deal to buy U.S. seeds group Monsanto, announced in September 2016, has created opportunities for rivals to snatch up assets that need to be sold to satisfy competition authorities. Bayer said it would use the proceeds to partly refinance the Monsanto acquisition. It plans to raise $19 billion towards the deal by issuing convertible bonds and new shares, and has lined up as much as $57 billion of bridge financing from banks. Baader Helvea analyst Markus Mayer said a higher-than-expected valuation of the assets up for sale could mean Bayer now needs to raise less than $10 billion from the sale of new shares, which would be a positive surprise. Bayer had offered to sell assets worth around $2.5 billion. The European Commission said in August that the divestments offered by Bayer so far did not go far enough and started an in-depth investigation of the deal. Bayer has to sell the LibertyLink-branded seeds and Liberty herbicide businesses, which generated 2016 sales of 1.3 billion euros, because they compete with Monsanto<74>s Roundup weed killer and Roundup Ready seeds. LibertyLink seeds, used by soy, cotton and canola growers, are one alternative to Roundup Ready seeds for farmers suffering from weeds that have developed resistance to the Roundup herbicide, also known as glyphosate. The spread of Roundup-resistant weeds in North America has been a major driver behind Liberty sales. <20>BASF<53>s decision to acquire seeds assets represents something of a change to its prior view on its needs to respond to recent industry consolidation in agriculture,<2C> Morgan Stanley analysts said. <20>Nonetheless, the proposed assets for acquisition are high margin and high growth and represent a sensible bolt-on addition,<2C> they added. A cyclist rides his bike past the entrance of the BASF plant in Schweizerhalle, Switzerland, July 7, 2009. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann/Files BASF Chief Executive Kurt Bock told a conference call he would look at further acquisition opportunities in the seeds sector as well but said it would take <20>two to tango<67>. The group is also expected to look at other assets <20> such as vegetable seeds <20> that Bayer may be forced to divest, a person close to the matter said. Shares in Bayer rose 1.2 percent to the top of Germany<6E>s blue-chip DAX index by 1230 GMT, while BASF was up 0.2 percent. POSITIVE SURPRISE The sale to BASF values Bayer<65>s assets at around 15 times 2016 operating profit (EBITDA) of 385 million euros, which analysts said was reasonable compared with multiples of 19.3 for ChemChina<6E>s takeover of Syngenta and more than 20 for Dow<6F>s tie-up with DuPont. BASF will finance the acquisition through a combination of cash on hand, commercial paper and bonds. It is expected to reap sales synergies in the hundreds of millions of euros. On the cost side, however, savings will be slim at first as there is little overlap with BASF<53>s existing business and the group has promised to keep all permanent staff at the businesses it is buying for at least three years. The acquisition will add to its earnings by 2020, it said. The deal is conditional upon Bayer<65>s acquisition of Monsanto going through. While the European Commission could block that transaction, it has approved others, such as the Dow-DuPont deal and ChemChin
'da11e3d515687d81db059b5786847d51f03d0453'|'Nikkei notches 21-yr high as Fast Retailing adds momentum, Kobe Steel dives'|'October 13, 2017 / 2:27 AM / in 9 hours Nikkei notches 21-yr high as Fast Retailing adds momentum, Kobe Steel dives Reuters Staff * Fast Retailing contributes hefty gains to Nikkei * Event-driven funds likely chasing market higher before election - analyst * Kobe Steel dives more than 8 pct, most-traded stock by turnover By Ayai Tomisawa TOKYO, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Nikkei share average edged up and hit a fresh a 21-year high on Friday helped by index heavyweight Fast Retailing, while selling of Kobe Steel continued as worries from its data fabrication scandal extended overseas. For the overall market, though, continued hopes that the ruling party bloc will win a general election later this month underpinned sentiment, traders said. Kobe Steel Ltd dived more than 8 percent after the Nikkei business daily reported that more than 30 companies outside Japan were found to have received products with falsified specifications. The paper also reported that quality inspection data in Kobe<62>s core steel products business was also falsified. The Nikkei opened flat, traversing positive and negative territory, and then rose 0.3 percent to 21,013.38 in midmorning trade, the highest level since December 1996. <20>This is an election play,<2C> said Norihiro Fujito, a senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities. <20>Such hedge funds as event-driven funds are likely chasing the Japanese market higher thinking that it won<6F>t fall before the election. But they may take profits at the end of the next week.<2E> Media forecasts showed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe<62>s ruling bloc heads for a surprisingly big win in a snap election on Oct. 22, assuring investors that his <20>Abenomics<63> programme of easy monetary policy, fiscal spending and promised structural reforms would continue. Index-heavyweight Fast Retailing Co was the biggest contributor on the Nikkei benchmark index, rising 3.7 percent and contributing a hefty positive 46 points to the index after it posted a record profit for the fiscal year ended in August. Financial stocks tumbled, with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group falling 1.1 percent and insurer Sompo Holdings shedding 1.9 percent. Automakers also languished, with Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T. declining 0.6 percent and Honda Motor Co dropping 1.3 percent. The broader Topix shed 0.1 percent to 1,699.19. (Reporting by Ayai Tomisawa; Editing by Eric Meijer) 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/japan-stocks-midday/nikkei-notches-21-yr-high-as-fast-retailing-adds-momentum-kobe-steel-dives-idUSL4N1MO1EA'|'2017-10-13T05:23:00.000+03:00'
'25577dbbfc4b9ffa616b81ae017fec4a01b9cabf'|'UK watchdog says sovereign listing plan in line with government policy'|'October 13, 2017 / 9:38 AM / in 31 minutes UK watchdog says sovereign listing plan in line with government policy Huw Jones 2 Min Read Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, speaks at his office in London, Britain, September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde LONDON (Reuters) - The Financial Conduct Authority said its proposals for listing state-controlled companies such as Saudi Aramco were in line with Britain<69>s aim of London remaining a leading financial center, raising concerns about whether they were robust enough. The FCA in July proposed the new listing category in a move seen as helping London to court the initial public offering of Aramco, which is likely to be the largest ever IPO. The oil giant is also looking at rival financial center New York. The watchdog has not issued any final rules, but lawmakers and Britain<69>s leading trade body for the investment industry worry the proposed changes would not give investors enough protection. In a letter to parliament<6E>s Treasury and Business Committees, FCA Chief Executive Andrew Bailey said the proposals were consistent with the finance ministry<72>s recommendations to the watchdog in March. <20>The recommendations include the point that London retaining its position as the leading international financial center supports the aim of sustainable economic growth,<2C> Bailey said. <20>Those recommendations had been discussed with Treasury.<2E> Bailey said he has had no conversations with ministers about plans to reform the listing rules. <20>However, given the public discussion of these events, we can confirm that we held conversations with Saudi Aramco and their advisors in light of their interest in a possible UK listing in the early part of this year,<2C> Bailey said. <20>We emphasized during those conversations that we were reviewing the Listing Regime.<2E> TSC Chair Nicky Morgan said on Friday that questions remain about the level of political involvement in the consultation. <20>The UK<55>s world-class reputation for upholding strong corporate governance mustn<74>t be watered down,<2C> Morgan said in a statement. Bailey said protections for investors will not be weakened under the proposals. He is due to appear before the TSC later this month in a regular hearing in parliament. Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Keith Weir 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-markets-regulations/uk-watchdog-says-sovereign-listing-plan-in-line-with-government-policy-idUSKBN1CI13R'|'2017-10-13T12:33:00.000+03:00'
'483bdc6d5a680cb7157a4dd24d13f3d6dc6e8b31'|'An epic but inconsequential proxy vote at Procter & Gamble'|'SHAREHOLDER meetings in Ohio are not usually the stuff of high drama, but a recent gathering was a nail-biter. Nelson Peltz of Trian Fund Management, an activist hedge fund, sought a seat on the board of Procter & Gamble (P&G), the world<6C>s largest consumer-goods company, in a proxy vote on October 10th. It was the biggest such battle ever. In the weeks leading up to P&G<>s shareholder meeting, the fight resembled a political contest, complete with carefully crafted videos, lengthy white papers, mass mailings and tens of thousands of phone calls urging shareholders to vote blue (P&G) or white (Trian).As The Economist went to press, P&G said it had won and Mr Peltz was contesting the tally. <20>Everybody but [P&G<>s] current employees voted for us,<2C> he said after P&G declared victory. <20>Maybe that<61>s why they keep so much overhead.<2E> So the brawl is not over. Yet the outcome may not matter much. Mr Peltz will push P&G for change regardless of whether he wins a board seat, and it is unclear that he will have much effect, be he on the board or off.  It is not that Mr Peltz lacks heft. He has taken on consumer firms including Heinz and Wendy<64>s in the past. Martin Lipton, a lawyer who has long defended companies from such activists, has noted his <20>impressive record of success with consumer products companies<65>. Even when Trian technically loses a fight, it often wins. It lost a proxy battle against DuPont, a chemical company, in 2015, but the company went on to make many changes that Mr Peltz had sought. Trian recently won a separate victory, securing a seat on the board of General Electric on October 9th.At P&G, new thinking is sorely needed. The 180-year-old company sells products in nearly 200 countries and territories. It has America<63>s bestselling razors (Gillette), toothpaste (Crest), detergent (Tide) and toilet paper (Charmin), to name but a few of its products, but has lost share in more than a dozen of its top categories. Total shareholder return in the five years to February 13th 2017, the last trading day before Trian<61>s stake (of 1.5%) was announced, lagged the median of its peers by 55 percentage points and the S&P 500 Consumer Staples Index by 27 percentage points.P&G has taken steps to become more streamlined. In the past three years it has culled its brands from 170 to 65 and reduced the number of employees by 35,000. But Mr Peltz maintains that the firm remains too insular and slow to adapt to a fast-moving market. His frustrations are shared by many institutional investors. Those recently surveyed by Sanford C. Bernstein, a research firm, were particularly critical of the board, which is packed with other bosses, including Terry Lundgren, the chairman of Macy<63>s, a department store, and Meg Whitman, boss of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, an IT firm.Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), an influential proxy-advisory firm, recently noted that the board had presided over bureaucratic tangles and botched acquisitions. Both it and Glass Lewis, another proxy adviser, backed Mr Peltz<74>s appointment. Many small investors, who own about 40% of P&G<>s shares, appear to have disagreed. Employees may have feared bigger layoffs to come. Mr Peltz says he will continue to push P&G even if he fails to prevail in the proxy<78>s certified vote count.But his powers may be limited. He is not seeking to sack David Taylor, who became chief executive in 2015 and is thought to be moving P&G in the right direction (albeit too slowly for investors<72> taste). Nor is he trying to split up P&G. Mr Peltz<74>s most substantive change would be to reorganise its ten business units into three, overseen by a lean holding company, to make the firm nimbler. Reorganisation<6F>if the board supports it<69>could take years to yield results.Mr Peltz is also urging P&G to acquire more small and local brands. Yet given the mismanagement of prior deals, it is unclear that it would find suitable targets or sustain their growth. Many of the world<6C>s largest consumer firms are st
'ca424772e9a7452c6bcd942cbbfc2c90094e929b'|'Loma Negra plans to raise $800 million in U.S.-Argentina IPO'|'SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Loma Negra Cia Industrial Argentina SA, the country<72>s largest cement producer, plans to raise up to $800 million in an initial public offering in Argentina and the United States.Most of the proceeds, around $700 million according to a securities filing, will go to parent company Intercement Brasil SA, which is selling a 32 percent stake in the company, to pay down debt. After the IPO, Intercement will hold a 57 percent stake in the Argentine producer.Loma Negra intends to sell 50 million American Depositary Shares (ADS) representing five common shares each, for between $15 and $19. Common shares in Argentina will be sold for between $3 and $3.80.Intercement is owned by construction conglomerate Camargo Correa SA, which is battling the effects of Brazil<69>s longest recession on record and a corruption probe that ensnared the group<75>s engineering unit.Loma Negra will receive around $90 million from the IPO through the issuance of new shares, considering a mid-range pricing. The cement producer aims to fund the expansion of the L<>Amali plant, in the Buenos Aires region.The filing did not disclose the schedule for the transaction. Reuters reported Loma Negra had hired banks to underwrite an IPO on Sept. 6.Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer: Editing by Andrew Hay'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-loma-negra-ciasa-ipo/loma-negra-plans-to-raise-800-million-in-u-s-argentina-ipo-idINKBN1CI2IN'|'2017-10-13T15:40:00.000+03:00'
'1d659895d86f87eb19fac2ef93b3bb9db061bc87'|'Activists urge Apple to drop apps that play up Philippine drugs war'|'MANILA, Oct 13 (Reuters) - A group of civil society organisations has demanded that Apple Inc remove from its app store games it said violated the tech firm<72>s guidelines and promoted violence and killings commonplace in the Philippines<65> war on drugs.The group named several apps featuring characters based on Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and his national police chief, Ronaldo <20>Bato<74> dela Rosa, who engage criminals in gun battles and fistfights.<2E>These games valorise and normalise the emerging tyranny of Duterte<74>s presidency and his government<6E>s disregard for human rights principles,<2C> the Asian Network of People who Use Drugs (ANPUD) said in an open letter to Apple<6C>s Chief Executive Officer, Tim Cook.Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.The group listed 131 organisations from numerous countries as supportive of the Oct. 10 complaint to Apple, among them groups working on human rights, youth and drug policy reform.They urged Apple to issue an apology for hosting such <20>insensitive content<6E>.Thousands of Filipinos have been killed in Duterte<74>s 15-month-old war on drugs, a campaign that has caused international alarm. Human rights groups say state-sponsored executions are taking place, an assertion the authorities vehemently reject.The group said games such as <20>Fighting Crime 2<>, <20>Duterte knows Kung Fu<46>, <20>Duterte Running Man Challenge<67>, <20>Tsip Bato<74> and <20>Duterte Vs Zombies<65> <20>might seem harmless and fun<75> but were offensive and distasteful because in reality, murder and impunity had prevailed.<2E>Duterte Running Man Challenge<67> was not available for download on Friday, and three of the app developers could not be reached for comment.Ben Joseph Banta, a managing partner of Ranida Games, which developed <20>Tsip Bato<74>, said the game sought to discourage drug use with the use of banner messages opposing drugs that were visible to players.<2E>The aim of our game is not to promote violence,<2C> Banta said in an emailed response, adding that it featured <20>supplemental digital content against the use of illegal drugs.<2E><>We understand the human rights groups and we<77>re very much open to make changes in the game in order to remove the stigma that the game is promoting violence,<2C> he said. (Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Martin Petty and Clarence Fernandez)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/philippines-drugs-apple-apps/activists-urge-apple-to-drop-apps-that-play-up-philippine-drugs-war-idINL4N1MO31U'|'2017-10-13T07:39:00.000+03:00'
'4c46664213475951e8d09cc46bf00976a5abe13c'|'HSBC picks company veteran John Flint as new chief executive'|'October 12, 2017 / 10:11 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago HSBC picks company veteran John Flint as new chief executive Rachel Armstrong , Lawrence White 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC ( HSBA.L ) has chosen John Flint as its next chief executive, with its newly arrived chairman promoting an insider to drive revenue growth at Europe<70>s biggest bank. Flint, who runs HSBC<42>s retail and wealth management business out of London, will take over as CEO in February next year when Stuart Gulliver, 58, retires after seven years in the job. The appointment is the first major decision taken by former AIA Group ( 1299.HK ) chief Mark Tucker, who officially took up his post at HSBC just 12 days ago as its first externally-appointed chairman. Flint, who is not related to Tucker<65>s predecessor Douglas Flint, is viewed by other HSBC executives as the safe option, having worked at the bank since 1989. During his career at HSBC Flint, 49, has worked across most of its businesses and spent his first 14 years in Asia, giving him the breadth of experience seen as vital for the CEO role. <20>He has a great understanding and regard for HSBC<42>s heritage, and the passion to build the bank for the next generation,<2C> Tucker said in a statement. Flint emerged as the forerunner in the past six months as expectations HSBC could appoint its first external CEO in its 150-year history waned on the back of a rally in its share price. Related Coverage Careers chat sparked banking bug for HSBC lifer Flint The bank<6E>s stock is up   year, though was little moved on Thursday following the announcement of Flint<6E>s appointment. <20>It<49>s good news - it<69>s important to mix an insider with the new outside chairman and continue on the path set by the current team,<2C> said Hugh Young, head of Asia at Standard Life Aberdeen, one of the bank<6E>s top ten shareholders. PUSH FOR GROWTH Flint will be paid a base salary of 1.2 million pounds a year, as well as a fixed pay allowance of 1.7 million pounds and an annual pension allowance of 360,000 pounds. FILE PHOTO: HSBC headquarters is seen at the financial Central district in Hong Kong, China September 6, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo He will also be entitled to an annual bonus worth up to 215 percent of his base pay and a long-term incentive award of up to 320 pct of his base pay. His main task will be to grow revenues across HSBC<42>s businesses, as it seeks to grow profits again following a period of restructuring after the 2008-9 financial crisis. HSBC<42>s previous management duo of Gulliver and Douglas Flint spent the years since their appointment in 2010 shrinking HSBC, after a period of empire-building in the run-up to the 2008 global financial crisis left the bank over-extended. In July, HSBC announced its third share buyback in a year and rising profits, in a sign of its turnaround. But the bank still faces a tough challenge to meet its long term goal of making a better than 10 percent return on equity. In August last year HSBC abandoned a timetable for achieving that target, as increased regulatory requirements on capital, low interest rates and rising competition from low-cost competitors pressure lenders<72> profits worldwide. Investors will watch closely to see whether Flint continues Gulliver<65>s shift towards the bank<6E>s second home market of Asia. HSBC said in 2015 it would hire 4000 staff and lend more in China<6E>s southern Pearl River Delta region, a plan that has since encountered some setbacks as China<6E>s growth slowed. It has also lost market share in its Asian life insurance business, a trend which analysts expect the bank<6E>s new chairman to attempt to reverse given his background in the industry. Flint spent much of his early carer in Asia, and has done stints in Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and India as well as the United States and Britain. Before taking on his retail and wealth role in 2013, he was HSBC<42>s head of strategy and planning having previously run its global asset management business and was deputy
'b9635ab01a00a3cbc18f468149f1b55180414520'|'Goldman Sachs plans to expand Swiss investment bank - source'|'October 12, 2017 / 3:03 PM / a few seconds ago Goldman Sachs plans to expand Swiss investment bank: source Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A trader works at the Goldman Sachs stall on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, New York, U.S. on April 16, 2012. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo ZURICH (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ) wants to expand its investment bank in Switzerland and is in the process of upgrading its trading operations in Zurich to a branch from a representative office, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday. The bank hopes to receive the approval for the switch from Switzerland<6E>s Financial Market Supervisory Authority, FINMA, next year, the person said. The Wall Street giant<6E>s trading business in Switzerland is part of Goldman Sachs International, its European arm. News of the Swiss expansion was reported earlier by Bloomberg News. Reporting by Oliver Hirt; Writing by Joshua Franklin 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-goldman-sachs-swiss/goldman-sachs-plans-to-expand-swiss-investment-bank-source-idUSKBN1CH28I'|'2017-10-12T17:49:00.000+03:00'
'bca961e9452b31e784b110a2bd89b9a365e726fe'|'Barclays says chief compliance officer Roemer leaves'|'LONDON, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Barclays<79> chief compliance officer Michael Roemer is leaving at the end of this month to take a leading compliance role at a <20>major U.S. bank<6E>, the bank said on Thursday.Laura Padovani, currently Barclays<79> head of global compliance services, will act as interim group chief compliance officer following Roemer<65>s departure, Barclays said in a statement.Barclays plans an internal and external search for Roemer<65>s successor, it said. (Reporting by Carolyn Cohn and Anjuli Davies; editing by Kirstin Ridley)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/barclays-roemer/barclays-says-chief-compliance-officer-roemer-leaves-idUSL8N1MN4PC'|'2017-10-12T17:15:00.000+03:00'
'9a5d5c8f8f3c53b190ed3e6a0d1c344414aed12f'|'Royal Mail to seek court injunction to prevent strike'|'October 9, 2017 / 12:11 PM / in 3 hours Royal Mail to seek court injunction to prevent strike Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A Royal Mail postal van is parked outside homes in Maybury near Woking in southern England March 25, 2014. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor (Reuters) - Britain<69>s Royal Mail ( RMG.L ) said on Monday it was seeking a High Court injunction after the Communications Workers Union (CWU) failed to withdraw a plan for its Royal Mail members to strike later this month in a dispute over pensions. <20>CWU has declined to withdraw its notification,<2C> Royal Mail said in an email. <20>As a result, Royal Mail will today lodge an application with the High Court for an injunction to prevent industrial action so that the contractual external mediation process can be followed,<2C> it added. The company added that a date for a hearing would be arranged with the High Court. In response the CWU said it would not be withdrawing the notice for strike action and that following legal advice the union has decided to defend its position in court, if necessary. CWU has said that Royal Mail<69>s move to replace its defined benefit pension scheme would result in members losing, on average, up to a third of their future pensions. Royal Mail had said on Friday that it would ask the High Court for an injunction if CWU did not withdraw its strike plan by midday, Oct. 9. CWU said last week that the members would start a 48-hour strike on Oct. 19 after it opposed the company<6E>s move to replace the defined benefit pension scheme. Royal Mail responded by saying it will use all legal options at its disposal to halt the strike. Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain and Esha Vaish in Bengaluru; Editing by Louise Heavens, Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-royal-mail-pensions/royal-mail-to-seek-court-injunction-to-prevent-strike-idUKKBN1CE1CR'|'2017-10-09T15:11:00.000+03:00'
'93a1ce6c505f5f9f5837ce8ef5903f6b1fd22184'|'Ivascyn''s Pimco Income fund surpasses $100 bln despite fee raise <20>sources'|'NEW YORK, Oct 13 (Reuters) - The Pimco Income Fund (PIMIX), widely seen by investors and analysts as Pacific Investment Management<6E>s new flagship fund, surpassed $100 billion in assets under management this week in spite of increasing management fees set on October 2, two sources familiar with the matter said Friday.The Pimco Income fund, overseen by Dan Ivascyn and Alfred Murata, increased its fees 5 cents per $100 at the beginning of this month for most share classes, bringing expenses for the institutional-class shares to 50 cents per $100. (Reporting By Jennifer Ablan; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/funds-pimco/ivascyns-pimco-income-fund-surpasses-100-bln-despite-fee-raise-sources-idINL2N1MO17G'|'2017-10-13T14:40:00.000+03:00'
'f49ec9044a8dd939ac23a10834a100a602ac3a57'|'METALS-Nickel hits one-month high on bets of looming Chinese output cuts'|'(Adds closing prices)* Nickel hits months high at $11,725/T* LME/ShFE arb: bit.ly/2wZSAEz* GRAPHIC-2017 metal returns: tmsnrt.rs/2eqHKkLBy Maytaal AngelLONDON, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Nickel prices hit a one-month high on Friday on concerns China might order further output cuts as it ramps up efforts to clean its skies, while aluminium gave back gains after rising on news a Chinese city had ordered capacity reductions.China<6E>s Communist Party Congress takes place next week and markets expect Beijing could broaden efforts to eliminate more polluting mines and metal plants, especially during the winter months.In aluminium news, the city of Binzhou, home to top global aluminium maker China Hongqiao Group, has ordered 2.57 million tonnes of annual smelting capacity to be closed this winter.<2E>The China environmental cuts are definitely having an impact. The concern is they could spread. On the nickel side there<72>s been reports we may see capacity cuts in nickel pig iron,<2C> said Warren Patterson, commodities strategist at ING.<2E>The global economy is ticking along, China<6E>s come back from holidays more bullish (and) every data point we see out of China, out of the U.S., out of Europe, looks fairly positive.<2E>China<6E>s import and export growth accelerated in September, data showed, suggesting the economy is still expanding at a healthy pace despite widespread forecasts of an eventual slowdown.* NICKEL PRICE: Three-month nickel on the London Metal Exchange ended up 2.5 percent at $11,675, having hit a one-month high of $11,725.* OTHER METAL PRICES: Aluminium ended down 0.6 percent at $2,134 a tonne having rallied earlier on the output cut news; copper closed down 0.1 percent at $6,882, having hit a one-month high of $6,918.50, while zinc ended down 0.5 percent at $3,235, having hit its highest in more than 10 years last week.* CHINA COMMODITY IMPORTS: China<6E>s factories splurged on imported commodities last month amid rising costs and tighter raw material supplies driven by Beijing<6E>s anti-pollution campaign. But the strength is unlikely to be sustained as many companies curb production during winter.* WIDER MARKETS: The U.S. dollar fell on disappointing U.S. inflation data, while world stocks advanced on expectations of broad-based global growth.* CHINA COPPER IMPORTS: China<6E>s copper imports climbed 26.5 percent in September from a year earlier, hitting their highest monthly level this year..* CHINA ALUMINIUM EXPORTS: China aluminium exports fell 10 percent in September from August, hitting their lowest since February.* ZINC SPREAD: Indicating tight nearby supply, cash zinc traded at a premium of $76 a tonne to the three-month price CMZN0-3, its highest level on Reuters data going back to June 2009.* ZINC STOCKS: LME data showed on-warrant or available zinc stocks fell to 122,425, down some 60 percent this year. MZNSTX-TOTAL* LEAD, TIN PRICES: Tin ended down 0.7 percent at $20,600 while lead closed down 1 percent at $2,530.Additional reporting by James Regan; Editing by Dale Hudson and Elaine Hardcastle'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-metals/metals-nickel-hits-one-month-high-aluminium-rallies-on-china-cuts-idINL8N1MO1KX'|'2017-10-13T08:54:00.000+03:00'
'5a972a1a72e76a743f462de44a6e4ba25dbed4b1'|'UK to provide 557 mln sterling funding for renewable subsidy auctions'|'October 11, 2017 / 11:31 AM / in 11 minutes UK to provide 557 million pounds funding for renewable subsidy auctions Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A couple walk their dog on Redcar beach past an offshore wind farm in Redcar, northeast England January 11, 2015. REUTERS/Andrew Yates LONDON (Reuters) - The British government confirmed on Wednesday up to 557 million pounds of funding for the next clean electricity auctions for less-established renewables. The next so-called contracts-for-difference (CfD) auction will take place in spring 2019, the government said in a statement but has not yet confirmed how much will be available for that auction. Less-established renewables include offshore wind, biomass, energy-from-waste technologies and some combined heat and power projects, a government spokesman said. Under the CfD scheme, qualifying projects are guaranteed a minimum price at which they can sell electricity and renewable power generators bid for CfD contracts in a round of auctions. The results of the last CfD auction were released last month. In that auction, the cost of new offshore wind power fell below new nuclear generation for the first time. The eleven renewable energy projects which won contracts were expected to deliver up to 3 gigawatts (GW) of new electricity generation capacity from 2021-2023, with the contracts worth up to 176 million pounds a year. Offshore wind is one of the more expensive forms of renewable energy, but the government said it will continue to support the technology as long as costs come down. The government is expected to publish its Clean Growth Strategy plan soon, which will include proposals on reducing emissions from housing, business, transport and the power sector. Reporting by Nina Chestney and Susanna Twidale, editing by Louise Heavens 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-renwewables/uk-to-provide-557-million-sterling-funding-for-new-renewable-energy-projects-idUKKBN1CG1F4'|'2017-10-11T15:12:00.000+03:00'
'2c67ff64b732b8330b432212d69d4e72a7951c17'|'NuVasive sues former executive who moved to rival Alphatec'|'Oct 10 (Reuters) - NuVasive Inc on Tuesday filed a lawsuit accusing a former executive and director of discouraging the company from buying rival medical device maker Alphatec Holdings Inc so he could invest in Alphatec himself, and ultimately become its executive chairman.The complaint, filed in Delaware Chancery Court, also accused the former executive, Patrick Miles, of soliciting NuVasive employees to join him at Alphatec, violating an earlier agreement.It includes claims for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and fraudulent inducement. NuVasive is asking the court to compel Miles to pay back his compensation and pay unspecified punitive damages.A lawyer for Miles could not immediately be identified. Alphatec could not immediately be reached for comment.Both NuVasive and Alphatec are based in California and specialize in spine implants.Miles worked for NuVasive for 17 years, including as president and chief operating officer in 2015 and 2016, according to the complaint. In August 2016, he was appointed to the company<6E>s board, and the following month was named vice chairman, the complaint said.NuVasive said that in January 2016, UBS Financial Services Inc contacted the company about whether it would be interested in acquiring Alphatec. Miles told NuVasive that pursuing the deal would be <20>a waste of time<6D> because Alphatec had an <20>aged, undifferentiated portfolio,<2C> the lawsuit said.NuVasive claimed that in March 2017, Miles bought $500,000 of Alphatec stock in a private placement, and in September 2017 accepted an offer from Alphatec to serve as executive chairman. As part of the offer, Miles was given stock worth more than $3 million as of Oct. 2, NuVasive said.Miles also agreed to purchase additional shares worth nearly $3 million, and was promised warrants that could give him ownership of 23 percent of Alphatec<65>s outstanding stock, according to NuVasive.Miles told NuVasive he was resigning on Oct. 1, according to the complaint. NuVasive also claimed that Miles has solicited NuVasive employees and customers, and that at least one employee, a senior associate product manager, has left to join Miles at Alphatec. (Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/nuvasive-lawsuit-alphatec-hldg/nuvasive-sues-former-executive-who-moved-to-rival-alphatec-idINL2N1ML11B'|'2017-10-10T19:44:00.000+03:00'
'd6c00a175aac5e0ab867f3cfe2bbc5ed479a0383'|'Facebook will help investigators release Russia ads, Sandberg tells Axios'|'October 12, 2017 / 7:59 PM / in 6 minutes Facebook will help investigators release Russia ads, Sandberg tells Axios Dustin Volz 5 Min Read REFILE - CORRECTING TITLE OF SCHRAGE Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, L, and Vice President of communications and public policy Elliot Schrage, R, on Capitol Hill after meeting with U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) in Washington, U.S. October 12, 2017. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Facebook Inc ( FB.O ) Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said on Thursday the company was committed to helping U.S. congressional investigators publicly release Russia-backed political ads that ran during the 2016 U.S. election. <20>Things happened on our platform in this election that should not have happened,<2C> Sandberg said in an interview in Washington with Axios news that was broadcast on its website. <20>We told Congress and the intelligence committees that when they are ready to release the ads, we are ready to help them.<2E> Axios asked Sandberg what the world<6C>s largest social network knew about the extent of Russia<69>s use of its platform and if ads on Facebook that had been placed by Russian accounts and Donald Trump<6D>s presidential campaign had overlapped in terms of target audiences. She appeared to sidestep the questions and said only that targeting on Facebook was often very broad. The interview was the first by a senior Facebook executive since the company disclosed last month that it had found some 3,000 politically divisive ads believed to have been bought by Russia before and after the presidential campaign. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia used cyber-enabled means in an attempt to help Trump win the White House, an allegation the Kremlin has denied. Sandberg was in Washington for meetings with U.S. lawmakers. Sandberg told the Congressional Black Caucus on Thursday that Facebook planned to add an African-American to its board of directors, a source familiar with the closed-door meeting said, but she offered no details. The board has been criticized for its lack of diversity. She and two other Facebook executives, Erin Egan and Elliot Schrage, also met privately with Representative Jackie Speier, a California Democrat and member of the House Intelligence Committee. Facebook and other major internet companies including Alphabet<65>s Google ( GOOGL.O ) and Twitter ( TWTR.N ) are on the defensive as they try to limit fallout from a torrent of revelations about how Moscow sought to use their platforms to sow discord in the United States and influence the election. Sandberg told Axios that Facebook began hearing rumours around Election Day last November of Russian attempts to use the platform to spread propaganda but did not give a precise timeline about when the company began its review. Sandberg said she supported the public release of those ads, and the pages to which they were connected. Information about how the ads targeted specific types of users would also be released, she said. Asked if Facebook contributed to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton<6F>s defeat last year, Sandberg, an open Clinton supporter during the campaign, did not answer directly but said it was important the website was <20>free from abuse<73> during any election in any country. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg on Capitol Hill after meeting with U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) in Washington, U.S. October 12, 2017. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan Congressional committees and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating Russian interference in the election, including whether there was any collusion between Trump associates and Moscow. Trump has denied that there was any collusion between his campaign and associates and Russia. ANGRY, UPSET Sandberg acknowledged that the company had erred in how it handled the issue of foreign interference last year. Slideshow (2 Images) <20>It<49>s not just that we apologise. We<57>re angry, we<77>re upset. But what we really 
'd8d4b9b8af1f750e5d5cd8e53c38f5359be5826b'|'ECB''s Draghi pledges rock-bottom rates as Germany calls for change'|'October 12, 2017 / 3:26 PM / in 10 minutes ECB''s Draghi pledges rock-bottom rates as Germany calls for change Balazs Koranyi , Francesco Canepa 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi waits to address the European Parliament''s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee in Brussels, Belgium September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir WASHINGTON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The head of the European Central Bank defended a pledge to keep interest rates at rock bottom on Thursday, batting back German calls for a speedy exit from years of easy money in the euro zone. With two weeks to go before the ECB decides on the future of its stimulus policy, its president, Mario Draghi, said the promise to maintain rates at their current level <20>well past<73> the end of its bond-buying programme was very important for keeping borrowing costs at bay. (Click reut.rs/2kInPAa for a graphic on ''ECB rates'') <20>The <20>well past<73> is very, very important in anchoring rate expectations,<2C> Draghi said at an event in Washington, where he is due to attend the G20 meeting. His comments suggested that phrase was likely to be kept in the ECB<43>s policy message at a meeting on Oct. 26 even if the euro zone<6E>s rate setters decide to go ahead with an expected reduction in the monthly pace of their bond buys from the current 60 billion euros. Draghi<68>s words also poured cold water on German hopes, expressed by the head of Bundesbank in an interview published earlier on Thursday, that an era of low or negative rates was finally nearing its end. <20>(Ultra-low rates) must not last too long and, in an economic upturn, the monetary policy taps should be turned off in a quick and consistent manner,<2C> Jens Weidmann was quoted as saying by Germany weekly Wirtschaftswoche. The ECB has spent more than 2 trillion euros on bonds and charged banks on their idle cash in a bid to revive lending in the euro zone and bring inflation back to its target of almost 2 percent. The ECB<43>s policy has been blamed in Germany for bankrolling indebted governments south of the Alps, depressing returns for savers and fuelling price bubbles in richer countries in the north of the euro zone. Even Benoit Coeure, long considered a key Draghi ally, warned of the risk of bubbles if a central bank buys bonds for too long. <20>We need to be mindful of risks to financial stability,<2C> Coeure, said in Washington. <20>A too protracted period of asset purchases, for example, may cause financial imbalances to build up with potentially adverse consequences for price stability.<2E> Speaking earlier in Washington, ECB chief economist and policy dove Peter Praet, recognised the euro zone<6E>s economy was now growing briskly but warned this was still not showing up in inflation data - meaning monetary policy needed to remain easy. <20>We are undoubtedly experiencing a solid, broad-based and resilient economic recovery,<2C> Praet said. <20>But there still appears to be a disconnect between growth and inflation.<2E> Reporting by Balazs Koranyi and Francesco Canepa; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ecb-policy-rates/ecb-pledge-to-keep-rates-low-well-past-qe-is-key-draghi-idUKKBN1CH2AQ'|'2017-10-12T23:34:00.000+03:00'
'05c321245a49f94f3135e73f0bb251691356ef46'|'Delta Air says Q3 results hurt by Hurricane Irma'|'October 11, 2017 / 11:16 AM / in an hour Delta profit beats Wall Street as storms cost less than expected Alana Wise 2 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Delta Air Lines Inc ( DAL.N ) said on Wednesday its third-quarter profit fell less than expected as disruptions caused by hurricanes cost the airline less than some investors had feared, sending its stock up slightly. The No. 2 U.S. carrier by passenger traffic reported a 6 percent dip in net profit, largely due to a $120 million pretax hit from Hurricane Irma in September, which forced it to cancel flights. Excluding some items, Delta reported adjusted earnings of $1.57 per share, ahead of analysts<74> average expectation of $1.53, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The carrier forecast it would increase its fourth-quarter year-over-year passenger unit revenue by between 2 percent and 4 percent and have an operating margin of between 11 percent and 13 percent. Delta planes line up at their gates while on the tarmac of Salt Lake City International Airport in Utah September 28, 2013. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo Its shares were up 0.7 percent at $53.03 on the New York Stock Exchange, their highest since mid-July. Investors had been worried that the brutal hurricane season, which included three back-to-back storms and resulted in thousands of canceled flights, would have weighed more heavily on the carrier<65>s profitability. Of the three storms, Hurricane Irma had the most pronounced effect on Delta<74>s operations, resulting in 2,200 canceled flights at airports in Florida, the Caribbean and Delta<74>s hub in Atlanta. Despite the cancellations, Delta said its quarterly operating revenue rose 5.5 percent to $11.1 billion. <20>Having just completed the busiest summer travel season in our history, we have good momentum, a determined team and a solid pipeline of initiatives to grow earnings and margins,<2C> Delta Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian said in a statement. Reporting by Alana Wise; Editing by W Simon and Bill Rigby 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-delta-air-results/delta-air-says-third-quarter-results-hurt-by-hurricane-irma-idUSKBN1CG1CI'|'2017-10-11T14:12:00.000+03:00'
'3fb7d5980491c9aab35666aad36e8764ecd8abab'|'Exclusive: Total & Erg aim to wrap up Italian gas station sale as electric car era approaches'|'FILE PHOTO: A customer holds a gas pump as he fills-up his car in a Total station in Nice, France, February 9, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard/File Photo MILAN (Reuters) - French oil company Total ( TOTF.PA ) and energy group Erg ( ERG.MI ) are in exclusive talks to try and sell their Italian petrol station network, sources said, after some investors grew jittery over the move to electric cars.Italian refiner API Anonima Petroli, which already owns 2,600 stations of its own, is in exclusive talks to buy the pump network to create efficiencies of scale, three sources said on Wednesday.<2E>The aim is to reach a general agreement in coming weeks and wrap the deal up by the year end,<2C> one of the sources said, but added no final decision had been taken yet.Total and Erg jointly control TotalErg which operates close to 2,600 service stations in Italy with a market share of around 11 percent.HARD SELL Last year they appointed HSBC and Rothschild to sell the business which sources have said could be worth more than 600 million euros ($710 million).The deal originally drew interest from private equity and industry players but people close to the matter said many had opted not to press ahead.One of the sources said investors were concerned that the rise of electric cars might mean traditional pump stations could go into decline.The number of electric vehicles on roads is forecast to grow significantly in the coming decades, with an impact on petrol consumption and pump network business models.Charging points are becoming more common in workplaces, shopping centers and public venues.In Italy, the country<72>s biggest utility Enel has already earmarked around 300 million euros to install some 12,000 recharging columns to meet demand. Some of those columns will be installed in existing pump stations.<2E>TotalErg has been trying to sell its network for a long time but it<69>s a hard sell because any buyer will have to spend to modernize,<2C> a banking source said on Wednesday.BANK BACKING? Privately-owned API had been negotiating with private equity groups to back its bid, sources previously said. But with interest waning, two sources said it had now turned to Italian banks UniCredit ( CRDI.MI ) and UBI ( UBI.MI ) to help it fund the deal.The TotalErg joint venture also holds a quarter of Italian refinery Sarpom, controlled by ExxonMobil<69>s ( XOM.N ) Esso unit, which sources previously said was a stumbling block to the deal.One of the sources on Wednesday said the talks with API excluded the Sarpom stake by way of a sweetener.A deal with API would create Italy<6C>s biggest service station operator, ahead of Eni and Kuwait Petroleum International which last year bought a network from Royal Dutch Shell ( RDSa.L ).API and UniCredit declined to comment while Erg and UBI were not immediately available for a comment. A spokesperson for Total said the company could not comment because the process was ongoing.Reporting by Stephen Jewkes and Giancarlo Navach; additional reporting by Julia Payne, editing by David Evans and Elaine Hardcastle'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-totalerg-m-a-exclusive/exclusive-total-erg-in-talks-with-api-on-italy-pump-stations-sources-idUSKBN1CG1V9'|'2017-10-11T22:02:00.000+03:00'
'57b01e40ae956c71a903dd2fc354ed52f94536a7'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Mexico peso hits near five-month low on NAFTA jitters'|'October 10, 2017 / 10:59 PM / in 14 minutes EMERGING MARKETS-Mexico peso hits near five-month low on NAFTA jitters Reuters Staff 4 Min Read (Recasts with peso at five-month low; updates prices) Oct 10 (Reuters) - The Mexican peso weakened for a fifth straight trading day on Tuesday, slumping to a nearly five-month low, on concerns that talks between Mexico and the United States may fail to reach a new trade deal. Trade officials from Mexico, the United States and Canada meet on Wednesday in the Washington area for a fourth round of talks on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. On the eve of the talks, U.S. President Donald Trump warned again in an interview with Forbes that he would like to scrap the treaty that created one of the world''s biggest trade blocs. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce accused the Trump administration of making "poison-pill proposals" to sabotage NAFTA on Tuesday. Fears of increased U.S. protectionism have hit the Mexican peso particularly hard as the United States purchases over three-quarters of Mexico''s exports. Mexican bank Base said in a report that the talks were now turning to issues such as wages and rules on where components need to be sourced "that could lead to disagreements between Mexico and the United States." The peso shed more than 0.8 percent to the weakest since mid-May. It has lost more than 3 percent in the last five sessions as concerns about NAFTA have increased. Meanwhile, the Chilean peso firmed sharply, helped by stronger copper prices. Stocks in Brazil''s rebounded after two days of losses. Financial shares rose while shares in state-controlled oil company tracked oil prices higher. Latin American stock indexes and currencies at 2148 GMT: Stock indexes Latest Daily YTD pct pct change change MSCI Emerging Markets 1,112.52 +1.10 +29.02 MSCI LatAm 2,965.44 +1.25 +26.69 Brazil Bovespa 76,897.21 +1.55 +27.68 Mexico S&P/BVM IPC 49,982.94 -0.18 +9.51 Chile IPSA 5,477.32 -0.15 +31.94 Chile IGPA 27,401.87 -0.11 +32.16 Argentina MerVal 27,097.26 +1.24 +60.17 Colombia IGBC 11,065.50 +0.15 +9.26 Venezuela IBC 531.11 +0.65 -98.32 Currencies Latest Daily YTD pct pct change change Brazil real 3.1833 +0.06 +2.07 Mexico peso 18.830 -0.82 +10.14 Chile peso 629.000 +0.68 +6.63 Colombia peso 2,957.000 -0.33 +1.51 Peru sol 3.264 +0.21 +4.60 Argentina peso (interbank) 17.420 +0.23 -8.87 Argentina peso (parallel) 17.810 +0.34 -5.56 (Reporting by Bruno Federowski and Michael O''Boyle; Editing by James Dalgleish) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/emerging-markets-latam/emerging-markets-mexico-peso-hits-near-five-month-low-on-nafta-jitters-idUSL2N1ML20O'|'2017-10-11T01:59:00.000+03:00'
'4896463c6c23ae626ebfe1826ba684038a20f8a0'|'Lawmakers hit out at ECB as bad loans standoff hardens'|' 49 AM / in 16 minutes Lawmakers hit out at ECB as bad loans standoff hardens 3 Min Read European Central Bank (ECB) headquarters building is seen in Frankfurt, Germany July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The head of the EU Parliament<6E>s influential economic affairs committee has urged the European Central Bank to <20>correct<63> its stance on bad loans, adding to a backlash against attempts to clean up soured credit. Roberto Gualtieri<72>s comments to Reuters echoed concerns expressed by the parliament<6E>s president Antonio Tajani this week, in what is emerging as the biggest challenge yet to the ECB as banks supervisor. At the center of the dispute is how best to tackle banks<6B> bad loans, which stand at more than $1 trillion, a thorny issue that has divided euro zone countries and is now driving a wedge between the ECB and the EU<45>s parliament. The ECB recently announced timelines to set aside money for losses on new loans that have gone roughly three months unpaid, angering EU lawmakers, who are trying to draft their own rules on soured credit. <20>I share the concerns expressed by President Tajani,<2C> Gualtieri told Reuters. Lawmakers want the ECB to first wait for the EU parliament before introducing such rules. <20>I hope ... the consultation process will help the SSM (banks supervisor) to ... correct its guidance in order to make it more balanced.<2E> Both Tajani and Gualtieri are Italian but their views, unusually, are shared by some Germans. Italy and Germany clashed over Rome<6D>s handling of its banking crisis, with Berlin pushing for tougher treatment of those banks<6B> creditors. Markus Ferber, vice chair of the economic and monetary affairs committee and an influential member of German chancellor Angela Merkel<65>s Christian Democrats party, accused the ECB of overstepping its powers. <20>I ... think that the ECB went beyond its mandate and in my opinion that undermines confidence in the work of the ECB as a supervisor,<2C> Ferber told Reuters. <20>The ECB tried to come up with universal new capital requirements. Such universal rules, however, should be a prerogative of the European legislator.<2E> The remarks came as rating agency Moody<64>s warned that the ECB drive could hurt the credit standing of banks in countries with many problem loans. <20>This could cause problems for some firms, especially for those that do not have large capital buffers,<2C> said Moody<64>s Alain Laurin. Reporting By John O''Donnell; Editing by Andrew Heavens 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-europe-badloans-parliament/lawmakers-hit-out-at-ecb-as-bad-loans-standoff-hardens-idUKKBN1CI0XX'|'2017-10-13T11:43:00.000+03:00'
'90973cd2686756617781fc775409b551d5547ec6'|'BAWAG PSK books already covered in Austria''s biggest IPO'|'FILE PHOTO: The logo of BAWAG PSK Bank is pictured on one of its branches in Vienna, Austria, March 2, 2016. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo ZURICH/VIENNA (Reuters) - Books are already covered for the listing of BAWAG PSK [CCMLPB.UL], the Austrian bank majority owned by U.S. private equity group Cerberus Capital Management [CBS.UL], one of the bookrunners said on Thursday.BAWAG plans to raise up to 2.1 billion euros ($2.49 billion) in its initial public offering, which would be the biggest IPO in Austrian history. The deal values the bank at up to 5.2 billion euros.<2E>Books are covered within the range on the full deal size including greenshoe,<2C> the bookrunner said.Writing by Michael Shields'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-bawag-psk-ipo/bawag-psk-books-already-covered-in-austrias-biggest-ipo-idINKBN1CH1T9'|'2017-10-12T10:39:00.000+03:00'
'46e9f08cda8392db53a47d4d2d29d29cd46c708b'|'Global financial stability has improved, but risks ahead - IMF'|'October 11, 2017 / 12:06 PM / in 4 hours Global financial stability has improved, but risks ahead: IMF Lindsay Dunsmuir 3 Min Read IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde makes remarks during a conversation entitled "G20: Compact With Africa" at the Institute of International Finance''s (IIF) annual meeting, during the IMF and World Bank''s 2017 Annual Fall Meetings, in Washington, U.S., October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Theiler WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The global economic recovery has strengthened financial stability but easy monetary and financial conditions against a backdrop of sluggish inflation is elevating medium-term risks, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday. The IMF, whose autumn meetings with the World Bank get under way in Washington later this week, also noted risks are rotating from banks, which have fortified their balance sheets, to financial markets as credit spreads compress, volatility declines and asset prices rise. <20>While increased risk appetite and search for yield are a welcome and intended consequence of unconventional monetary policy measures...there are risks if these trends extend too far,<2C> the IMF said in its biannual global financial stability update. A prolonged search for yield has raised the sensitivity of the financial system to market and liquidity risks, the Fund said, keeping those risks elevated. The IMF urged national regulators to consider carefully any proposals that would substantially ease capital, liquidity or prudential standards in <20>light of their potential to damage the agenda of global regulatory harmonization.<2E> The improvement in near-term financial stability has been underpinned by a broad-based global economic upswing. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde makes remarks during a conversation entitled "G20: Compact With Africa" at the Institute of International Finance''s (IIF) annual meeting, during the IMF and World Bank''s 2017 Annual Fall Meetings, in Washington, U.S., October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Theiler On Tuesday, the IMF upgraded its global economic growth forecast for 2017 by 0.1 percentage point to 3.6 percent, and to 3.7 percent for 2018, from its April and July outlook, driven by a pickup in trade, investment, and consumer confidence. But global central banks have found themselves at different stages in removing monetary policy accommodation, which has been complicated by overall sluggish inflation. The U.S. Federal Reserve has picked up the pace of interest rate rises since it began a tightening cycle in late 2015, but the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan have yet to move away from negative rates and bond buying. <20>Too quick an adjustment in monetary policies could cause unwanted turbulence in financial markets and set back progress toward inflation targets,<2C> the IMF said in its report, while keeping rates low for too long may cause a harmful buildup in market and credit risks. Elsewhere, the Fund warned that leverage in the non-financial sector was now higher than before the financial crisis across the so-called G20 advanced economies as a whole. Such leverage made households and companies more vulnerable to changes in interest rates and weaker economic activity. <20>The key challenge confronting policymakers is to ensure that the buildup of financial vulnerabilities is contained while monetary policy remains supportive of the global recovery,<2C> the IMF warned. <20>Otherwise, rising debt loads and overstretched asset valuations could undermine market confidence in the future, with repercussions that could put global growth at risk.<2E> Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Andrea Ricci 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-imf-g20-stability/global-financial-stability-has-improved-but-risks-ahead-imf-idUKKBN1CG1IC'|'2017-10-11T15:04:00.000+03:00'
'e7f16acfdd4f5a7dfa64ed132ecb4dff8130eadd'|'U.S. Justice, State Depts join forces to probe companies abusing visa programs'|'October 11, 2017 / 3:52 PM / in 25 minutes U.S. Justice, State Depts join forces to probe companies abusing visa programs Sarah N. Lynch 3 Min Read WASHINGTON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice and State departments have agreed to share information in order to better probe companies that abuse visa programs used to hire foreign workers, the latest effort by the Trump administration to crack down on immigration abuses. The information-sharing agreement was announced on Wednesday by the Justice Department. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made immigration issues one of his priorities since taking over at the head of the department in February. Under the memorandum of understanding, the Justice Department<6E>s Civil Rights Division and State Department<6E>s Bureau of Consular Affairs will agree to share information about companies that could be discriminating against American workers or lying on employment-based visa applications. The types of visa under scrutiny include the H-1B, a program routinely used by technology firms like Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp and Infosys Ltd to bring skilled foreign workers such as engineers to the United States. Other visa programs, such as the H-2A and H-2B, are used for hiring temporary or seasonal agricultural workers and temporary non-agricultural workers, respectively. The Labor Department, which plays a crucial role in reviewing visa program applications by companies, announced earlier this year it planned to step up efforts to root out fraud and make more criminal referrals, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in April calling for a review as part of his <20>America First<73> pledge. Sessions, meanwhile, has long been concerned about possible misuse of these visa programs by companies, and made it a big issue during his time in the U.S. Senate. By law, companies are not allowed to discriminate against U.S. workers on the basis of citizenship. Companies that have a workforce of more than 15 percent of H-1B workers, meanwhile, are also required to try recruiting U.S. workers first and attest they are not displacing Americans. That visa program, however, includes a provision that exempts companies from those requirements if they pay H-1B workers more than $60,000 a year or hire those with a graduate degree. Historically, this has complicated Justice Department efforts to police discrimination. However, recently, the Justice Department has had some success in bringing cases against companies that hire seasonal, non-highly skilled workers. Most recently, it filed a lawsuit in September against an agricultural company in Colorado for allegedly discriminating against U.S. seasonal technicians, in favor of H-2A foreign workers. (Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Frances Kerry) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-justice-visas/u-s-justice-state-depts-join-forces-to-probe-companies-abusing-visa-programs-idUSL2N1MM0W5'|'2017-10-11T18:52:00.000+03:00'
'fcf3cc973f73d82ea74cc0a3806ca4ae570b7869'|'Japan August core machinery orders rise in signs of pick-up in capex'|'October 11, 2017 / 12:46 AM / in 16 minutes Japan August core machinery orders rise in signs of pick-up in capex Tetsushi Kajimoto 3 Min Read File photo: Heavy machineries are seen next to a subway train at a construction site in Tokyo, Japan, March 13, 2016. REUTERS/Yuya Shino TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s core machinery orders rose for a second straight month in August, handily beating market expectations, signalling a pickup in capital expenditure that should encourage Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ahead of a general election this month. The premier hopes to convince voters in the Oct.22 elections that his <20>Abenomics<63> recipe of aggressive monetary stimulus, fiscal spending and reform plans has improved the economy enough to stoke a sustainable recovery. Cabinet Office data showed on Wednesday that core orders, a highly volatile data series regarded as an indicator of capital spending in the coming six to nine months, rose 3.4 percent on-month in August. That beat the median estimate of a 1.1 percent increase seen in a Reuters poll of economists, following an 8.0 percent gain in July. Compared with a year earlier, the core orders, which exclude orders of ships and utilities<65> electrical power equipment, grew 4.4 percent in August versus the expected 0.8 percent rise. Orders from manufacturers jumped 16.1 percent month-on-month in August, driven by general-purpose production machinery such as machine tools, while service-sector orders grew 3.1 percent, led by orders for boilers and turbines. The Cabinet Office raised its assessment of machinery orders from stalling to showing <20>signs of pick-up<75>. Overseas orders, which are not counted as core orders, grew 11.5 percent in August, due to some big-ticket orders including power generators and aircraft. Analysts expect capital expenditure to pick up gradually, backed by refurbishing demand, infrastructure investment for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, and spending on labour-saving equipment, as well as spending encouraged by low borrowing costs enabled by the Bank of Japan<61>s negative interest rate policy. A sustained recovery in business expenditure should support the central bank<6E>s view that a virtuous circle of private sector-led growth will take hold in the economy. Still, wage growth and inflation remain stubbornly low despite recent signs of rebounding private consumption, keeping the BOJ under pressure to maintain its massive monetary stimulus. The BOJ<4F>s closely-watched quarterly tankan survey showed last week that big firms plan to increase capital spending by 7.7 percent in the current fiscal year ending in March 2018, underscoring the view business expenditure is on a firm footing. Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Eric Meijer 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-economy-orders/japan-august-core-machinery-orders-rise-in-signs-of-pick-up-in-capex-idUKKBN1CG01V'|'2017-10-11T03:45:00.000+03:00'
'a1f1b020c8135a9a7ddfa8e2fb412724b1dd20f1'|'U.S. proposes NAFTA sunset clause, raising tensions in talks'|'October 12, 2017 / 4:14 PM / Updated 21 minutes ago U.S. hikes tensions in NAFTA talks with call for ''sunset clause'' David Lawder , Dave Graham 5 Min Read President Trump welcomes Canada''s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the South Lawn before their meeting about the NAFTA trade agreement at the White House. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst ARLINGTON, Va. (Reuters) - Washington has dramatically increased tensions in talks to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement by proposing that the lifespan of any new deal be limited to five years, people familiar with the negotiations said on Thursday. The proposal for a so-called sunset clause - just one of a series of U.S. initiatives that are opposed by NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico - only served to increase uncertainty about the future of the deal. Two sources with direct knowledge of the talks described the atmosphere as <20>horrible<6C> and highly charged. The U.S. side proposed the sunset clause late on Wednesday during the fourth of seven scheduled rounds to update the rules governing one of the world<6C>s biggest trade blocs, said two officials, who asked not to be identified because the talks are confidential. The Trump administration says the clause, causing NAFTA to expire every five years unless all three countries agree it should continue, is to ensure the pact stays up to date. But Mexico and Canada insist there is no point updating the pact with such a threat hanging over it, arguing the clause would stunt investment by sowing too much uncertainty about the future of the agreement. <20>It<49>s a source of total uncertainty,<2C> said one of the NAFTA government officials. Related Coverage Mexican finance minister prepares tariffs in case NAFTA talks fail Speaking in Mexico City, Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade said the government was working on plans to alter tariffs and identify substitute markets in case the NAFTA talks failed. His remarks and the tension around NAFTA helped push the peso down 1 percent against the U.S. dollar to a five-month low. U.S. President Donald Trump says NAFTA, originally signed in 1994, has been a disaster for the United States and has frequently threatened to scrap it unless major changes are made. Business and farm groups say abandoning the 23-year-old pact would wreak economic havoc, disrupting cross-border manufacturing supply chains and slapping high tariffs on agricultural products. Trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico has quadrupled under NAFTA, now topping $1.2 trillion a year. In addition to the sunset clause, the United States wants to boost how much North American content autos must contain to qualify for tax-free status and eliminate a dispute settlement mechanisms that Canada insists must stay. Some trade observers said it is difficult to see how negotiators could reach an agreement given U.S. demands that many see as non-starters. The head of Unifor, Canada<64>s largest private sector labor union, said it was clear the United States did not want a deal. <20>NAFTA is not going anywhere. This thing is going into the toilet,<2C> Jerry Dias told reporters on Thursday. Despite clear signs of impatience from Canada in particular, U.S. negotiators have yet to submit their proposal on rules of origin for the auto sector. That looked unlikely to come before Friday, another official familiar with the talks said. Trump on Wednesday repeated his warnings that he might terminate the pact and said he was open to doing a bilateral deal with either Canada or Mexico. [nL2N1MM0LE]. He was speaking alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who later said Canada was <20>braced<65> for Trump<6D>s unpredictability. Negotiators were also set to cover the difficult issue of government procurement on Thursday. Canada and Mexico want their companies to be able to bid on more U.S. federal and state government contracts, but this is at odds with Trump<6D>s <20>Buy American<61> agenda. U.S. negotiators have countered with a proposal that would effectively grant the
'98ffdcccf6c3af6a170871ca1df2adac5ec08c61'|'Growth gathering momentum, but where''s the inflation?'|'October 13, 2017 / 12:06 PM / in 9 minutes Growth gathering momentum, but where''s the inflation? Jonathan Cable 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A commuter train passes over a bridge next to the headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, Germany, October 1, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach LONDON (Reuters) - The euro zone economy may be building up an impressive head of steam that shows no signs of cooling, but what policymakers at the European Central Bank really want - higher inflation - is still largely absent. Industrial output in the bloc rose faster than anyone polled by Reuters expected in August, according to data on Thursday which followed a slew of forecast-beating releases and after the International Monetary Fund upgraded its outlook for global growth. <20>Although the industrial sector only accounts for a quarter of GDP it has been the euro zone<6E>s most cyclical sector historically, and so is an important indicator of the economy<6D>s wider health,<2C> said Christian Jaccarini at CEBR. <20>With the economy gathering momentum, the European Central Bank should feel confident about starting to taper its asset purchase programme at the beginning of next year.<2E> The economy is performing stronger than at any time since the global financial crisis so speculation the ECB will soon begin scaling back its massive stimulus programme has been rife. Policymakers at the Bank will announce on Oct. 26 a six-month extension to its asset purchase programme but will cut how much it buys each month to 40 billion euros from January, a September Reuters poll predicted. [ECILT/EU] Five people with direct knowledge of discussions told Reuters the ECB is homing in on extending its stimulus for nine months at the next meeting while scaling it back. Yet the ECB<43>s key focus is inflation and numbers due on Tuesday will probably confirm prices only rose 1.5 percent in September on a year ago, still a lot weaker than the just below 2 percent rate-setters would like. reuters://realtime/verb=Open/url=cpurl://apps.cp./Apps/econ-polls?RIC=EUHICY%3DECI According to Reuters polls taken throughout 2017, which have been correct about how low it would remain this year, inflation won<6F>t hit that ECB target for years. <20>There is likely to be only a limited pick-up in inflationary pressures, meaning that interest rate hikes can be kept on hold until 2019 <20> later than markets seem to expect,<2C> economists at Capital Economics wrote. BRITISH DILEMMA Across the Atlantic, U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers have already begun tightening but had a prolonged debate about the prospects of a pickup in inflation and slowing the path of future interest rate rises if it did not, according to minutes of the central bank<6E>s last policy meeting. <20>Many participants expressed concern that the low inflation readings this year might reflect... the influence of developments that could prove more persistent, and it was noted that some patience in removing policy accommodation while assessing trends in inflation was warranted,<2C> the Fed said in the minutes. Britain, however, has the opposite problem. Since the vote in June 2016 to leave the European Union, the pound has lost around 13 percent of its value against the dollar, driving up the costs of imports and caused inflation to run well above the 2 percent the Bank of England would like it at. In the referendum<75>s aftermath the Bank cut 25 basis points from borrowing costs, taking them to a record low 0.25 percent, hoping to stave off a predicted economic meltdown after the leave vote. That meltdown never happened and Britain<69>s economy was one of the best performers last year although growth has since slowed sharply. Still, at its November meeting the BoE will raise interest rates for the first time in a decade, according to economists in a recent Reuters poll taken after a barrage of hawkish rhetoric from BoE policymakers. However, most of them also said raising rates now would be a policy mistake. [BOE/INT] <20>On the strength of the
'010ac7b4edcc5a2464952f1b6dae592f19abab67'|'ECB policymakers converge on QE extension at lower volumes'|'October 12, 2017 / 11:22 PM / Updated an hour ago ECB homes in on nine more months of bond buying, at lower volumes Balazs Koranyi 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: European Union flags flutter outside the headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, Germany, April 21, 2016. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - European Central Bank policymakers are homing in on extending their stimulus programme for nine months at their next meeting while scaling it back, five people with direct knowledge of discussions told Reuters. The ECB<43>s asset purchases are due to expire at the end of the year, and policymakers are set to decide on Oct. 26 whether to prolong them. They will have to reconcile the bloc<6F>s best growth run in a decade with an inflation rate expected to undershoot the bank<6E>s target of almost 2 percent for years. The next move is still up for discussion, but there is a consensus that it should signal both the need to cut support in light of strong economic growth, while also committing to an extended period of monetary accommodation, the sources said. The biggest debate is likely to be whether to keep the programme open ended, giving the ECB the flexibility to extend it once again, or to send a firm signal about the end, they said. While hawks led by Germany want the ECB to signal its intent to wind down and end the purchases, policy doves want at least the same type of flexibility the bank has now to extend purchases in case the outlook worsens. <20>Whether it<69>s open- or closed-ended is going to be the biggest debate,<2C> said one of the sources, who are all on or close to the ECB<43>s Governing Council. <20>I can see a compromise that we<77>ll keep it like it is now, so with an end date that could let us extend again if necessary.<2E> The volumes of monthly purchases under the extended scheme was still up for discussion, with views ranging between 25 billion euros and 40 billion euros. But the sources said there was a general feeling that they needed to be sharply reduced from the current 60 billion euros. The sources said no formal proposals have been made. The ECB declined to comment. NINE MONTHS? With the ECB having spelled out its intention to keep interest rates at record lows until well after the end of the bond buys, an extension of the programme effectively postpones the prospect of a first hike since 2011. <20>The exact monthly volume does not matter greatly because its impact on inflation will be very small,<2C> one of the people familiar with the discussions said. <20>But a nine-month extension also pushes out the first rate hike, and that<61>s significant. It also has a strong signalling effect that substantial (monetary) accommodation will continue.<2E> The sources said a six-month extension was too short and would mean policymakers would have to start debating the same questions again soon. A longer extension such as 12 months, though it could not be ruled out, was problematic because the ECB was running out of eligible bonds to buy, so setting volumes according to what was available would result in relatively low monthly purchases. Specifically, the ECB wanted to avoid hitting a limit in respect of German bonds that bars it from owning more than a third of any country<72>s debt. That would force it to deviate farther from national quotas and buy more debt from other countries. The head of Germany<6E>s central bank, Jens Weidmann, stressed in an interview published by Wirtschaftswoche on Friday his opposition to breaking either of those constraints. ECB chief economist Peter Praet has argued that during periods of calm markets, a longer extension of asset purchases at lower volumes may be more beneficial as investors are better able to appreciate the long-term support provided by the bank. The sources added that the ECB may also decide to retain its guidance to raise asset purchases if the outlook deteriorated. They also noted that if the ECB cut purchases of sovereign bonds, it was under no pressure to do likewis
'c94a8456686bb4aae6acf18c81c4a7eaa5f824dd'|'Emirates says open to cooperation with rival UAE airline Etihad'|'October 11, 2017 / 7:19 AM / Updated 8 hours ago Emirates willing to cooperate with rival UAE airline Etihad Jamie Freed 4 Min Read Sir Tim Clark, President of Emirates Airlines speaks at the 2016 International Air Transport Association (IATA) Annual General Meeting (AGM) and World Air Transport Summit in Dublin, Ireland June 2, 2016. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Emirates [EMIRA.UL] is open to cooperation with rival Etihad Airways in areas including procurement, its president Tim Clark said on Wednesday, adding a full merger between the pair was unlikely but up to the owners. Based in the United Arab Emirates, Emirates and Etihad have competed to build global networks from their respective hubs in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, even as they battled overcapacity, security concerns and a fall in regional business travel. <20>I think there is value to be had working more closely with them,<2C> Clark told Reuters by phone, adding there might be concerns from regulators in some foreign markets. <20>There are many areas that the airlines could work together on like procurement. But we have to go the first jump first to understand what it is we could do and I<>m simply the manager of one of the businesses,<2C> he said. <20>It is my superiors who have to make that call, not me.<2E> When asked if the pair could pursue a merger along the lines of Europe<70>s Air France and KLM, Clark said: <20>I don<6F>t think that will be the case but it is not my call, really. It is whatever (the shareholders) may do in the future.<2E> Emirates is owned by the Dubai government while Etihad is owned by the Abu Dhabi government. Etihad, which has been hit by loss-making investments in Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ) and Italy<6C>s Alitalia [CAITLA.UL], said in response to Clark<72>s remarks that it was common for airlines to leverage in-country expertise and economies of scale. <20>We constantly seek opportunities for innovative collaboration with other organisations, where it makes business and commercial sense,<2C> an Etihad spokesman said in an emailed statement. Last month, Etihad announced it would appoint Tony Douglas, former boss of Abu Dhabi<62>s airport and London<6F>s Heathrow, as its CEO from January as it rethinks its expansion strategy. EMIRATES ORDER PLANS Emirates, a bigger airline than Etihad, is the largest customer for the Airbus SE ( AIR.PA ) A380, a plane facing slowing production rates due to a lack of sales. Clark said an order for more was under consideration, adding that any A380 order would help replace 25 A380s due to be retired in the mid-2020s. He did not give any details on the likely volume of any order or whether a deal would be signed at the Dubai Airshow next month. <20>Airbus would love us to do that but we<77>ve got a few things to sort out first so I<>m not sure that we<77>ll get there for the airshow,<2C> he said. The airline is separately looking at the Airbus A350 and the Boeing Co ( BA.N ) 787 to meet its needs in the 250-300 seat market, Clark said. Last month he told Aviation Week magazine that a planned order was <20>off the table for now<6F>. In 2014, Emirates canceled an order for 70 A350s. Clark said Emirates<65> procurement and operational groups were engaging with both manufacturers about potential orders. <20>I don<6F>t want to focus on the Dubai Airshow,<2C> he said of the timing. <20>The important thing is to get the right deal for the company at the time that suits us, not driven by a guillotine of the middle of November.<2E> Reporting by Jamie Freed; editing by Himani Sarkar and Jason Neely 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-emirates-airline/emirates-says-open-to-cooperation-with-rival-uae-airline-etihad-idUSKBN1CG0PJ'|'2017-10-11T10:17:00.000+03:00'
'35cb6157197abe2df03b628f5ee6c884dcf6624b'|'Global financial stability has improved, but risks ahead - IMF'|'October 11, 2017 / 12:05 PM / in an hour Global financial stability has improved, but risks ahead - IMF Lindsay Dunsmuir 3 Min Read Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF, listens a question during the Concordia Summit in Manhattan, New York, U.S., September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The global economic recovery has strengthened financial stability but easy monetary and financial conditions against a backdrop of sluggish inflation is elevating medium-term risks, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday. The IMF, whose autumn meetings with the World Bank get under way in Washington later this week, also noted risks are rotating from banks, which have fortified their balance sheets, to financial markets as credit spreads compress, volatility declines and asset prices rise. <20>While increased risk appetite and search for yield are a welcome and intended consequence of unconventional monetary policy measures...there are risks if these trends extend too far,<2C> the IMF said in its biannual global financial stability update. A prolonged search for yield has raised the sensitivity of the financial system to market and liquidity risks, the Fund said, keeping those risks elevated. The IMF urged national regulators to consider carefully any proposals that would substantially ease capital, liquidity or prudential standards in <20>light of their potential to damage the agenda of global regulatory harmonization.<2E> The improvement in near-term financial stability has been underpinned by a broad-based global economic upswing. On Tuesday, the IMF upgraded its global economic growth forecast for 2017 by 0.1 percentage point to 3.6 percent, and to 3.7 percent for 2018, from its April and July outlook, driven by a pickup in trade, investment, and consumer confidence. But global central banks have found themselves at different stages in removing monetary policy accommodation, which has been complicated by overall sluggish inflation. The U.S. Federal Reserve has picked up the pace of interest rate rises since it began a tightening cycle in late 2015, but the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan have yet to move away from negative rates and bond buying. <20>Too quick an adjustment in monetary policies could cause unwanted turbulence in financial markets and set back progress toward inflation targets,<2C> the IMF said in its report, while keeping rates low for too long may cause a harmful buildup in market and credit risks. Elsewhere, the Fund warned that leverage in the non-financial sector was now higher than before the financial crisis across the so-called G20 advanced economies as a whole. Such leverage made households and companies more vulnerable to changes in interest rates and weaker economic activity. <20>The key challenge confronting policymakers is to ensure that the buildup of financial vulnerabilities is contained while monetary policy remains supportive of the global recovery,<2C> the IMF warned. <20>Otherwise, rising debt loads and overstretched asset valuations could undermine market confidence in the future, with repercussions that could put global growth at risk.<2E> Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Andrea Ricci 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-imf-g20-stability/global-financial-stability-has-improved-but-risks-ahead-imf-idUKKBN1CG1IP'|'2017-10-11T15:04:00.000+03:00'
'e9b84f67854d082556bb8ba92b64af964ae39c6e'|'Lotte Chemical sees petchem market ''stable to firm'' up to 2020 - Reuters'|'Kim Gyo-hyun, CEO of Lotte Chemical, speaks during an interview with Reuters in Seoul, South Korea, October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji Seoul (Reuters) - South Korea<65>s Lotte Chemical Corp sees the global petrochemical market remaining <20>stable to firm<72> out to 2020 thanks to low oil prices, but its chief executive wants to diversify the company<6E>s feedstock to help it cut costs.South Korea<65>s second-biggest petrochemicals maker has benefited from low oil prices as its main feedstock, naphtha, is derived from crude oil, which has a bigger influence on its business than supply and demand, Lotte Chemical Chief Executive Officer Kim Gyo-hyun said at the Reuters Global Commodities Summit.<2E>By 2020, petrochemical markets are likely to be stable to firm as oil prices are expected to remain stable at $60,<2C> Kim said in his first interview since starting as CEO in March.<2E>Given that, the profitability of petrochemical makers with naphtha crackers, like us, is likely to change little.<2E>The petrochemical maker is on track to increase its global ethylene capacity by 40 percent to 4.5 million tonnes per year (tpy) by the end of 2018, expanding its Yeosu plant in South Korea and building an ethane cracker with Axiall in Louisiana.The plant in Louisiana will help it diversify away from mainly naphtha as a feedstock at its plants.<2E>Of the expected total capacity of 4.5 million tonnes, if we make 1.5 million tonnes with ethane crackers, it will help us diversify 30 percent of our raw materials to ethane or liquefied petroleum gas,<2C> the chief executive said.<2E>By doing so, we can make stable profits and become a sustainable petrochemical company even if oil prices rise to $100.<2E>Kim Gyo-hyun, CEO of Lotte Chemical, speaks during an interview with Reuters in Seoul, South Korea, October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji U.S. ethylene output has been growing rapidly using cheap shale gas, and Kim expects up to 10 million tonnes of new ethylene supply to hit the market in the next two to three years.But he did not expect that to create a glut, with demand growing at 5 million to 6 million tonnes a year.Slideshow (2 Images) <20>Even if we have 10 million tonnes of U.S. ethylene, the annual demand growth could absorb supplies,<2C> Kim said in an interview held at the Lotte Chemical office in Seoul.He expected 7 million to 8 million tonnes to be processed into polyethylene with a third of that flowing to Asia.<2E>But as China<6E>s demand continues to grow, its imports won<6F>t decrease and this means the size of our market won<6F>t be affected,<2C> he said.The CEO also said the company is looking to expand in Southeast Asia as the markets look attractive, supported by solid demand for petrochemicals, which are mostly used to make plastics.<2E>We<57>re thinking of adding one naphtha cracker to secure the Southeast Asian markets,<2C> he said. <20>We<57>re eyeing both Malaysia and Indonesia.<2E>In July, Lotte Chemical listed its Malaysian unit Lotte Chemical Titan Holding Bhd on the Malaysian stock exchange, raising $879 million in the largest float there since 2012.Reporting By Jane Chung; Editing by Sonali Paul'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/summits'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-commodities-summit-lotte-chemical/lotte-chemical-sees-petchem-market-stable-to-firm-up-to-2020-idUSKBN1CH0J8'|'2017-10-12T13:53:00.000+03:00'
'c1f451f40aaf562152b742dfc3c68c6ac7b55b8c'|'BoE''s Carney sticks to view UK rates may rise in ''coming months'''|'October 13, 2017 / 5:53 PM / Updated an hour ago No new clues on UK rate rise from Bank of England''s Carney David Milliken 3 Min Read Britain''s Bank of England Governor, Mark Carney, addresses journalists during a press conference to deliver the quarterly inflation report in London, August 3, 2017. REUTERS/Frank Augstein/Pool LONDON (Reuters) - Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said on Friday the central bank expected to raise interest rates in the coming months but he declined to be drawn on whether it would be as soon as next month, or if a series of rises is planned. Since the BoE said after its September meeting it was likely to raise interest rates <20>in the coming months<68>, financial markets have priced in an 85 percent chance of a rate move on Nov. 2, having previously seen a move as more than a year away. The BoE has not raised interest rates since 2007 and last year it cut rates for the first time since 2009 following Britain<69>s the vote to leave the European Union, lowering the benchmark cost of borrowing to 0.25 percent from 0.5 percent. Carney was pressed on more exact timing in an interview with CNBC in Washington, where he is attending a meeting of the International Monetary Fund, but declined to be drawn. <20>The language we used - and I<>m going to stick to it ... was <20>in coming months<68> ... and I won<6F>t make a decision here on air,<2C> he told the U.S. broadcaster. The BoE has long said that when the time comes to start raising interest rates, it will be a gradual and limited process, and that a return to the 5 percent level of BoE rates before the financial crisis is highly unlikely. Most economists polled by Reuters think that even raising interest rates by 0.25 percentage points to 0.5 percent next month would be a mistake, and some think that the BoE may stop there - effectively just reversing last year<61>s rate cut. Asked if the BoE<6F>s next rate rise would mark the start of a tightening cycle, Carney said: <20>I think you got to take one decision at a time, first point. Second, we are in a world of limited and gradual rate moves in any direction, in part because global equilibrium rates are so low.<2E> Later, he said that globally interest rates were rising - so countries that kept rates on hold were effectively loosening policy. Britain<69>s employment rate was at a record high, and there was little spare capacity in the economy, even if the Brexit process created uncertainty about the future, he added. Data next week is expected to show British consumer price inflation has hit a five-year high of 3 percent. But economists who doubt the case for a rate rise say this mostly reflects the temporary effects of sterling<6E>s fall after the Brexit vote, and that there is little sign of more lasting sources of inflation pressure such as strong wage growth. Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-boe-carney/boes-carney-sticks-to-view-uk-rates-may-rise-in-coming-months-idUKKBN1CI2K6'|'2017-10-13T20:53:00.000+03:00'
'f7811f8a80a866c1ce17aa9cc54e6b13c7e759aa'|'U.S. unveils proposal to boost autos content in NAFTA - sources'|'FILE PHOTO: New cars are shown for sale at a Chevrolet dealership in National City, California, U.S., June 30, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo ARLINGTON, Va. (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Friday demanded that U.S.-made content account for half the value of the cars and trucks sold under the North American Free Trade Agreement, raising further doubts about any potential deal to renew the pact.Three sources briefed on the protectionist U.S. proposal, which is in line with U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s goal of shrinking a trade deficit with Mexico and stemming the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs, said it also seeks sharply higher North American automotive content overall.The proposal was made during contentious talks in Washington, in the fourth of seven planned rounds of negotiations to overhaul the treaty. Mexican sources denounced it as <20>absurd<72> and unacceptable, underlining the gaps between NAFTA<54>s three members as they try to wrap up a deal by a year-end deadline.Trump, who complains that the original 1994 pact has been a disaster for the United States, is threatening to walk away from the agreement unless major changes are made.Washington<6F>s auto industry gambit came hot on the heels of its demand that NAFTA also contain a so-called sunset clause. That could mean any new deal expires in five years, an idea that Canada and Mexico also strongly oppose.Although sources briefed on the talks describe the mood as sour, Mexican and Canadian politicians say there is no question of leaving the table for now.Related Coverage Mexico says NAFTA would survive with Canada even without U.SA collapse of NAFTA would wreak havoc throughout the North American economy, disrupting highly integrated manufacturing supply chains and agricultural exports with steep tariffs that would snap back into place. Trade among the three countries has more than quadrupled since 1994 to over $1.2 trillion annually.One of the sources close to the talks said Washington wants to increase the North American content requirement for trucks, autos and large engines to 85 percent from 62.5 percent over a period of years. That is in addition to its insistence that 50 percent of content be U.S.-made within the first year of a signed deal.PROPOSAL SEEN UNWORKABLE A Canadian official noted that senior government figures in Ottawa had already rejected both ideas as unworkable.Trump has made no secret that he prefers bilateral trade deals, and skeptics wonder whether the U.S. demands are part of an <20>America First<73> strategy designed to ensure the current talks fail.The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has listed the U.S. auto industry demand among a number of <20>poison pill<6C> proposals that it said would torpedo the talks to renew NAFTA. {nL4N1ML4JW]The chamber, the most powerful U.S. business lobby, has also warned that the proposal would cost jobs, since automakers and parts suppliers would likely forgo NAFTA benefits and simply pay the 2.5 percent U.S. tariff for imported cars and many parts.Trump aides say current content rules are too lax and have allowed auto companies to bring in too many cheap parts from China and other low-wage Asian countries. They are also seeking to halt the shift of vehicle production and jobs to Mexico from the United States.Mexico is heavily dependent on the United States and NAFTA for its economic viability, and uncertainty over the outcome of the talks helped push the Mexican peso to near five-month lows this week.Mexican Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade, seeking to downplay any setbacks in the latest round of negotiations, said on Friday that tension in the talks was only natural.<2E>There is scope in the negotiation of the agreement for a consensus that benefits the three countries,<2C> he said.Canadian officials also said it was too soon to write off the deal-making process. They noted that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo
'af0c0ee2d28cecd4852f943b3600ce4c9dce2b47'|'Blackrock''s Fink warns global surprise could drive major market correction'|'October 13, 2017 / 6:05 PM / in 5 minutes BlackRock''s Fink warns global surprise could drive stock market correction Pete Schroeder 4 Min Read Larry Fink, Chief Executive Officer of BlackRock, takes part in the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit in New York, U.S., February 8, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - BlackRock Inc ( BLK.N ) Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink warned on Friday that financial markets are ignoring underlying risks, which means there could be a <20>big correction<6F> if a major surprise world event occurred. Fink, head of the world<6C>s largest asset manager, said the amount of risk in the financial system is comparable to 2007 levels. He said that consistently low volatility in the stock market, as well as the overall strength of the global economy, may mean markets are not accounting for that risk as much as they did in the past. <20>If there is a major event, which I don<6F>t foresee anything, but if there is one, we could have a big correction,<2C> he said at the annual meeting of the Institute of International Finance. All three major U.S. stock indexes have been on an extended rally this year, repeatedly setting new record highs, as investors anticipate expanded business activity thanks to a lighter regulatory road and potential tax cuts. A stock market correction is defined as a fall of at least 10 percent from the high point of the last 52 weeks. Fink spoke during a panel discussion alongside the CEOs of JPMorgan ( JPM.N ) and Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ) - Jamie Dimon and James Gorman. All three were generally optimistic about the economy, although they highlighted several significant risks. Fink said there is no evident economic reason for a major spike in volatility in the near future. <20>Over the long horizon, I think the world is a great place to be,<2C> he said. But all three CEOs found ample room to criticize the White House and the U.S. Congress for failing to take any major steps to boost the nation<6F>s economy. Dimon said the steady if not spectacular U.S. economic growth has occurred <20>in spite<74> of the failure in Washington to act. <20>We have got to get our act together,<2C> he said, adding that the United States needs to spend more on infrastructure. The three also emphasized the importance of cutting the U.S. corporate tax rate - something that President Donald Trump has been promising as part of his tax plan - warning that a failure to do so by Congress could upend the strong run in the U.S. stock markets in 2017. <20>If nothing gets done on the corporate tax, that<61>ll be a big disappointment,<2C> warned Gorman. <20>That<61>ll take a lot of energy out of the market.<2E> On economic policy, Fink said he believes Trump has considered well-qualified candidates to serve as the next chair of the Federal Reserve to succeed Janet Yellen, whose term expires in February. He said he hoped the next central bank head would continue the <20>glide path<74> on gradually raising interest rates established by Yellen. And one day after vowing never to address the topic again, Dimon again assailed bitcoin, the cryptocurrency which he previously called a <20>fraud.<2E> People who invest in it <20>stupid<69> and will <20>pay the price someday,<2C> Dimon said. He did identify some value in blockchain technology, which underpins bitcoin, but said that any completely anonymous cryptocurrency not backed by any government will not last forever. <20>Governments are going to crush [bitcoin] one day,<2C> Dimon said. <20>Governments like to know where the money is, who has it, and what they<65>re doing with it.<2E> Reporting by Pete Schroeder; Additional reporting by Michelle Price; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Leslie Adler 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-iif-banks/blackrocks-fink-warns-global-surprise-could-drive-major-market-correction-idUSKBN1CI2M5'|'2017-10-13T21:01:00.000+03:00'
'bf3c43b62fed9a34edd16c7c35a2af39bfc0689a'|'Lotte says has several suitors for China supermarkets, seeks sale by year-end'|'October 12, 2017 / 1:58 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago Lotte says has several suitors for China supermarkets, seeks sale by year-end Hyunjoo Jin 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Lotte Mart is seen closed in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, China September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Adam Jourdan/File Photo SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea<65>s embattled Lotte Group said on Thursday several firms have expressed interest in acquiring its Lotte Mart stores in China and that is aiming for a sale by the end of this year. The country<72>s No.5 conglomerate decided to bow out of the business after most of its hypermarkets and supermarkets in China were shut down amid political tensions between the two nations. <20>We are in detailed talks with some of those companies,<2C> Lim Byung-yun, an executive vice president at Lotte Corp, said at a news conference to mark the launch of the group<75>s new holding company. The size of the deal is expected to be small at a couple hundred million dollars, a banking source said, declining to be identified as the talks were confidential. Goldman Sachs has been picked to managed the sale. Lotte, already reeling from internal power struggles and a corruption scandal, has been particularly hard hit by the political friction after it agreed to hand over land for a U.S.-made missile defense system - a plan that has angered Beijing which argues the radar can penetrate far into its territory. But even before the disputes, Lotte<74>s Chinese hypermarket operation had been generating operating losses of well over 100 billion won ($88 million) per year for the past three years, Fitch Rating said in report last month. Listing the group<75>s Hotel Lotte unit will take time, Lotte Corp executive Lee Bong-chul said, noting that the political tensions have reduced the number of Chinese tourists visiting South Korea, hurting sales of both its hotel and its duty free businesses. The offering was delayed following a corruption scandal involving Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin. He is on trial after prosecutors indicted him and other executives on embezzlement and other charges. Shin has denied the charges. Before the scandal and decline in Chinese tourist numbers, the IPO had been expected to worth around $4.5 billion. A power struggle between Shin and his elder brother Shin Dong-joo put pressure on the conglomerate to improve corporate transparency, prompting it to form the new holding company Lotte Corp which will make its debut on South Korea<65>s main stock market on Oct.30. Lotte Corp plans to look at acquisition opportunities in food businesses in emerging markets like Myanmar and India, while it is also considering purchases of overseas hotels, Lee said.($1 = 1,134.2000 won) Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Additional reporting by Kane Wu in HONG KONG; Editing by Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-lottemart-china-sale/lotte-group-aims-to-sell-lotte-mart-stores-in-china-by-year-end-executive-idUKKBN1CH06G'|'2017-10-12T07:35:00.000+03:00'
'8ab01f0a632a9b209746d55f3dc7fedd708083e9'|'China banking regulator, Hubei chief front runners to head central bank-sources'|'* PBOC chief Zhou expected to retire next March-sources* CBRC head Guo seen as highly suitable replacement-sources* Hubei Party chief Jiang has backing of some top leaders-sources* In-house candidate Yi is not seen as frontrunner-sourcesBy Kevin Yao and Benjamin Kang LimBEIJING, Oct 13 (Reuters) - China<6E>s top banking regulator Guo Shuqing and veteran banker Jiang Chaoliang are front runners to succeed Zhou Xiaochuan, the country<72>s longest-serving central bank head who is likely to step down next year, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.The leadership reshuffle at the People<6C>s Bank of China (PBOC) is closely watched in global financial markets as monetary policy changes and any moves to further liberalise the financial system of the world<6C>s second-large economy would have repercussions well beyond China<6E>s shores.The 69-year-old Zhou has spearheaded financial reforms and boosted the yuan currency<63>s global clout, as well as the central bank<6E>s policy influence, since taking up his post in 2002.Zhou is likely to retire around the time of the annual session of parliament next March, according to the seven sources with ties to the leadership and close to the central bank.Guo, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), whose rich experience and reformist credentials are similar to Zhou<6F>s, is seen as more qualified for the job, the sources said.However, Jiang, the Communist Party chief of Hubei province, has the backing of some top leaders and is seen as having a roughly equal chance of getting the post, they noted.The PBOC and the CBRC did not respond to Reuters<72> requests for comment, while officials at Hubei Communist Party committee<65>s propaganda department declined to comment.Yi Gang, 59, a PBOC vice-governor who has a PhD in economics from the University of Illinois, is the leading in-house candidate to replace Zhou but is not seen as a frontrunner.Yi is a well-trained economist who is supported by Zhou, but his background as a <20>sea turtle<6C> - a colloquialism for Chinese who have returned from overseas - means he is less likely to gain the full trust of China<6E>s leaders, the sources said.One of the sources, who correctly predicted a reshuffle of the country<72>s top banking, securities and insurance regulators in 2011, said that Guo is most favored, helped by his understanding of the financial markets and the global economy.<2E>His appointment would boost confidence,<2C> the source added.NO DARK HOUSE Guo, 61, was summoned back to Beijing in February to lead the CBRC after serving as governor of Shandong province for four years - his second regional stint after serving as a deputy governor of Guizhou province in the late 1990s.Under Guo<75>s leadership earlier this year, the CBRC started what was widely dubbed a <20>regulatory windstorm<72> to force banks to cut debt, but he later eased up after the move fuelled fears of a liquidity crunch.Guo, a philosophy major and once a visiting scholar at Oxford University, has served as a deputy central bank governor and as the top foreign exchange regulator, and steered China Construction Bank Corp to a successful share listing. As a top stock market regulator, Guo cemented a reputation as an economic reformer.Still, Jiang, who has also alternated between top financial and provincial posts, remains a formidable challenger for Guo, the sources said.The 60-year-old Hubei party chief, who has had stints as an assistant central bank governor and head of China Development Bank, the country<72>s largest policy bank, emerged as a possible successor to Zhou relatively recently.Jiang has been credited with helping to transform the state-owned Bank of Communications , which had been plagued by bad debt, into a bank with a stronger balance sheet that then listed in Hong Kong and Shanghai.<2E>Jiang is not a dark horse, his resume is very good and he has been proved to be very capable,<2C> said one of the sources.MORE CONTINUITY Whoever takes the helm of the central
'7e54b7d9702ebdd74aed15d41ff9d334002b7cf7'|'CEE MARKETS-Currencies, bonds firm as ECB seen extending asset buying'|'* Forint, zloty set multi-week highs on ECB expectations * U.S. CPI data watched, but Dec Fed hike is priced anyway * Hawkish rate setter comments give limited help to crown By Sandor Peto BUDAPEST, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Central European currencies and government bonds mostly firmed slightly after sources told Reuters that the European Central Bank is likely to extend its asset purchases. The also crown got some support from hawkish comments from Czech central banker Vojtech Benda. And Romania''s ruling Social Democrats, at a party meeting late on Thursday, endorsed a proposed government reshuffle, which had been weighing on Bucharest asset prices. But price movements in regional markets were limited due to the caution ahead of U.S. inflation figures due in the afternoon. Signs of the Fed moving towards an interest rate rise could make regional assets less attractive as the potential reward over U.S. assets diminishes. "The figures, even if they increase the odds of a December Fed rate hike, could not cause a big market retreat: a hike looks like a done deal, anyway," one Budapest-based fixed income trader said. "The report on the ECB had more weight: markets have taken it as a dovish signal," the trader added. Five people with direct knowledge of the discussion told Reuters that ECB policymakers broadly agreed to extend asset purchases at a lower volume at their October meeting, with views converging on a nine-month extension, and ranging between 25 billion and 40 billion euros a month, compared with 60 billion euros now. The ECB''s asset purchases in the euro zone have indirectly also lifted demand for relatively high-yielding Central European assets. Hungarian government bond yields dropped by 2-3 basis points. The 10-year benchmark paper traded at 2.59 percent. The Polish yield curve flattened a little, with the 10-year yield dropping 4 basis points to 3.335 percent, its lowest level since a downtrend of the dollar started to trigger zloty and forint buying early this month. The zloty, gaining 0.2 percent by 0858 GMT, hit a one-month high against the euro. The forint firmed 0.1 percent to 308.35, touching a 3-week high. Piercing its 200-day moving average, it may head to 307, Erste Group''s Budapest brokerage arm said in a note. Its firming through 310 on Wednesday already boosted speculation that the Hungarian central bank may further loosen monetary policy screws. In Poland, FRAs <PLN12X15F= > have showed an opposite trend, with expectations strengthening that the Polish central bank will start to hike interest rates earlier than late 2018. The Czech has been the only central bank in the European Union that has increased rates since 2012. The economy would benefit from a 50-75 basis point interest rate increase before the end of this year, one of the seven Czech central bank rate setters, Vojtech Benda was Quote: d as saying on Thursday. The crown firmed only 0.1 percent on Friday to 25.843 against the euro. "Mr. Benda is just one of 7 illuminatis," Komercni Banka traders said in a note. CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1058 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.843 25.868 +0.10 4.50% 0 5 % Hungary 308.35 308.60 +0.08 0.15% forint 00 50 % Polish zloty 4.2604 4.2675 +0.17 3.37% % Romanian leu 4.5880 4.5890 +0.02 -1.16% % Croatian 7.5100 7.5097 +0.00 0.60% kuna % Serbian 119.30 119.36 +0.05 3.39% dinar 00 00 % Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1053.0 1054.8 -0.17% +14.2 4 8 6% Budapest 38591. 38772. -0.46% +20.5 98 08 9% Warsaw 2532.8 2537.6 -0.19% +30.0 2 9 3% Bucharest 8030.9 7997.2 +0.42 +13.3 0 2 % 5% Ljubljana 815.87 813.57 +0.28 +13.7 % 0% Zagreb 1862.0 1863.2 -0.07% -6.66% 7 9 Belgrade 725.54 727.79 -0.31% +1.14 % Sofia 669.78 668.31 +0.22 +14.2 % 1% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs change Bund in Czech spread Republic 2-year 0.086 0 +081b +1bps ps 5-yea
'868d42d0d891471ecce29f96edb4b69efd68b98c'|'India''s trade deficit narrows to 7-month low of $8.98 billion in September'|'October 13, 2017 / 12:44 PM / Updated 7 hours ago India''s trade deficit narrows to 7-month low of $8.98 billion in September Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A general view of a container terminal is seen at Mundra Port in the western Indian state of Gujarat April 1, 2014. REUTERS/Amit Dave NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India<69>s trade deficit narrowed to $8.98 billion in September, its lowest in seven months, government data showed on Friday. The deficit was $11.64 billion in August. Merchandise exports for September rose 25.67 percent from a year ago to $28.61 billion, mainly driven by a rise in export of engineering and oil products. Goods imports last month were $37.6 billion, a gain of 18.09 percent from the same period last year, data from the commerce and industry ministry showed. Reporting by Manoj Kumar; Editing by Malini Menon 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-trade/indias-trade-deficit-narrows-to-7-month-low-of-8-98-billion-in-september-idINKBN1CI1OE'|'2017-10-13T15:41:00.000+03:00'
'c8e47348fef004af253cba270a187e0774f8ca3c'|'Booker sees Tesco deal closing in early 2018'|'October 12, 2017 / 6:58 AM / in 21 minutes Britain''s Booker sees Tesco deal closing in early 2018 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A branded sign is displayed outside of a Booker Wholesale store in London, Britain January 27, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON (Reuters) - British wholesaler Booker said on Thursday it expected its 3.7 billion pound ($4.9 billion) takeover by Tesco to complete early next year, as it reported a 9 percent rise in first-half profit. The agreed deal is currently being investigated by regulator the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and provisional findings are expected by the end of the month, ahead of a final report by the end of the year. <20>It is expected that the merger will complete in early 2018, subject to, amongst other things, the necessary shareholder approvals,<2C> Booker said. The group supplies the Budgens, Londis, Happy Shopper and Premier convenience chains, catering firms such as Wagamama and Carluccio<69>s, and also operates cash and carry business Makro. Booker said it made a pretax profit of 88 million pounds in the 24 weeks to Sept. 8, up from 81 million pounds in the same period last year. Total sales rose 2.5 percent to 2.6 billion pounds with progress in both the catering and retail sides of the business. It said non-tobacco revenue in the first four weeks of its new financial year is ahead of last year. Booker said it will not be making forward looking statements for the duration of the Tesco offer period. Shares in Booker, up 21 percent over the last year, closed at 205.3 pence on Wednesday, valuing the business at 3.66 billion pounds. For each Booker share Tesco is offering 0.861 new Tesco shares and 42.6 pence in cash. Reporting by James Davey; editing by Jason Neely and Kate Holton 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-booker-group-results/britains-booker-sees-tesco-deal-closing-in-early-2018-idUKKBN1CH0Q4'|'2017-10-12T09:53:00.000+03:00'
'bd139a796e25d6a478e3bd3a922fa44ab59d6f43'|'Business Made Simple events: Reading - Guardian Small Business Network'|'The Guardian Business Made Simple events series, to guide you and your business, is coming to Reading with an expert masterclass and keynote address on Tuesday 21 November, 6-9pm.Entrepreneur Darron Anley, founder of Siren Craft Brew in Reading, will give a talk, discussing his recent success in starting a brewery business, followed by a Q&A. Siren takes an innovative approach to the craft of brewing, experimenting with unusual ingredients from cacao nibs to mango pulp, to produce beers including Undercurrent, Sound Wave, Liquid Mistress and Broken Dream. Anley, who has an IT background, changed careers to <20>play with flavours<72>, as he puts it. He launched the business in 2013 and since then it has received many accolades, including being awarded Best Brewery in England, Second Best Brewery in the World in 2014 and rated among the top 100 breweries in the world for the past four years by RateBeer .In the inspirational masterclass that follows the talk, data visualisation expert, designer Laura Knight, will be leading a workshop with tips and tactics for entrepreneurs and new businesses on how to transform data into engaging graphics and imagery.Sign up now to get a place at this free event <20> the third of a series taking place around the UK, which launched in Edinburgh this September. Future events include London (Thursday, 25 January 2018), Manchester (Tuesday, 27 February 2018) and Birmingham (Thursday, 24 May 2018). Programme 6.00pm-6.30pm: Attendee arrival, registration, refreshments, networking.6.30pm-6.35pm: Chair<69>s welcome from Anne Cassidy, editor of the Guardian Small Business Network.6.35pm-6.40pm: Vodafone welcome.6.40pm-7.00pm: Keynote address from Darron Anley, founder and managing director, Siren Craft Brew.7.00pm-8.30pm: Masterclass in data visualisation.Learn how to transform data into beautiful infographics in this hands-on workshop with data visualisation expert, Laura Knight, Guardian Masterclass tutor.8.30pm-9.00pm: Networking and prizes.While this is a free event, please be aware that space is limited. Those who have been successful will receive an email to confirm their place.Register Topics Business to business Business Made Simple Small business Food & drink'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2017/oct/13/business-made-simple-events-reading'|'2017-10-13T14:00:00.000+03:00'
'702aa01cf0518ad7f2ca90475cb30bd5825cebab'|'Uber appeals against loss of London licence'|'October 13, 2017 / 9:59 AM / in 22 minutes Uber appeals against loss of London license Costas Pitas 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A photo illustration shows the Uber app on a mobile telephone, as it is held up for a posed photograph in central London, Britain September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Uber [UBER.UL] submitted a court appeal on Friday to overturn a decision by London<6F>s transport regulator that stripped the taxi app of its operating license in one of its most important markets. Transport for London (TfL) shocked the Silicon Valley firm last month by deeming it unfit to run a taxi service and refusing to renew its license, citing its approach to reporting serious criminal offences and background checks on drivers. Friday<61>s filing is a short notification of Uber<65>s intention to appeal rather than the detailed grounds. A hearing is likely to take place on Dec. 11, a spokesman at Britain<69>s Judicial Office told Reuters. Uber, criticized by London Mayor Sadiq Khan for employing an <20>army of lawyers<72>, said that it hoped to keep talking to TfL to find a way forward. <20>While we have today filed our appeal so that Londoners can continue using our app, we hope to continue having constructive discussions with Transport for London,<2C> an Uber spokesman said. <20>As our new CEO has said, we are determined to make things right.<2E> New global Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi met TfL Commissioner Mike Brown for talks earlier this month, which both sides said were <20>constructive<76> as the $70-billion firm tries to repair its relationship with the regulator. The appeal was submitted to Westminster Magistrates<65> Court on Friday in the first stage of a legal process which could take months or years to reach a conclusion. Uber<65>s 40,000 drivers in the British capital will be able to continue operating until the appeals process is exhausted. Khan, a politician from the opposition Labour Party who is also chairman of TfL, has long criticised Uber<65>s British management and backed the regulator<6F>s decision on Thursday. <20>The courts now will consider the appeal from Uber and of course TfL will defend the decision they made,<2C> he said during a monthly question time session. Reporting by Costas Pitas; editing by Guy Faulconbridge 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-uber-britain/uber-files-appeal-to-overturn-london-license-loss-idUKKBN1CI14Y'|'2017-10-13T13:11:00.000+03:00'
'11d440fd62e844f7e1e34d12c37e5c3bcd42efda'|'UK lawmakers pile pressure on watchdog over RBS report'|'October 12, 2017 / 11:10 PM / in 17 minutes UK lawmakers pile pressure on watchdog over RBS report Huw Jones 3 Min Read A worker cleans the glass exterior next to the logo of RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) bank at a building in Gurugram on the outskirts of New Delhi, India, September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi LONDON (Reuters) - British lawmakers have hired a barrister to check if a summary of a report by regulators into how Royal Bank of Scotland ( RBS.L ) treated companies in difficulties is comprehensive and fair. The Financial Conduct Authority has refused to publish the main report, saying it was never meant to be public and that a summary would be made available. But in a sign of how lawmakers are losing patience with the watchdog, the Treasury Select Committee (TSC) said on Friday it has appointed barrister Andrew Green to check by Oct. 27 if the FCA<43>s summary closely reflects the main report. <20>On receiving the adviser<65>s assessment, the committee would decide how to proceed, and the arrangement would be without prejudice to its formal powers to require that the FCA produce the report,<2C> TSC Chair Nicky Morgan said in a letter to FCA CEO Andrew Bailey and released to the media. <20>The committee wants the maximum possible transparency to be brought to this long-standing issue,<2C> Morgan said. <20>In any case, the long-awaited summary should be published as soon as possible. The committee<65>s review is not a reason for further delays.<2E> RBS<42>s Global Restructuring Group handled 12,000 troubled firms between 2007 and 2012, and has been accused by customers of pushing some of them into bankruptcy in order to pick up assets on the cheap. State-backed RBS has admitted some wrongdoing over its handling of small businesses, but has said there was no evidence it pushed companies into bankruptcy. The FCA said on Friday it has already asked an independent external counsel to confirm that the watchdog<6F>s summary is a fair and balanced account of the full report<72>s findings. <20>We welcome further dialogue with the TSC on providing assurance about the publication of the summary,<2C> the FCA said. The full report is based on a so-called skilled persons report conducted by Promontory consultancy in 2014. The FCA has said that reports of this kind were compiled on the understanding they won<6F>t be published. But Morgan said on Friday the GRG report is an <20>exceptional case<73>, given that is has already been leaked and reported by the BBC. She will quiz Bailey in public when he appears before her committee in the coming weeks. Reporting by Huw Jones, editing by David Evans 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-royal-bank-scot-parliament-report/uk-lawmakers-pile-pressure-on-watchdog-over-rbs-report-idUKKBN1CH381'|'2017-10-13T02:06:00.000+03:00'
'152c23c6bc2d85ecb977f394f70cad0ea6d08255'|'FAA orders A380 engine inspections after Air France incident'|'SINGAPORE, Oct 13 (Reuters) - U.S. aviation authorities have ordered visual inspections of fan hubs in engines used on some Airbus SE A380 jets after an engine came apart on an Air France flight last month, forcing it to make an emergency landing.The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency airworthiness directive requiring owners and operators of Engine Alliance (EA) Model GP7200 series engines to visually inspect the engines and remove the fan hub if defects are found.The EA engines are manufactured by a 50-50 joint venture between General Electric Co and United Technologies Corp<72>s Pratt & Whitney unit.Reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/air-france-canada-faa/faa-orders-a380-engine-inspections-after-air-france-incident-idUSL4N1MO25H'|'2017-10-13T07:22:00.000+03:00'
'b1bad7c0a1c90a4cea2be8b339d55f65cc87c7fc'|'Dassault CEO not yet considering alternative engine suppliers'|' 08 PM / in 7 minutes Dassault CEO not yet considering alternative engine suppliers Allison Lampert 3   Eric Trappier, Dassault Aviation CEO, poses for pictures in front of an Dassault Rafale C fighter during the 51st Paris Air Show at Le Bourget airport near Paris, June 15, 2015. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Dassault Aviation ( AVMD.PA ) Chief Executive Eric Trappier said he wants to hear how aerospace group Safran SA ( SAF.PA ) will tackle engine development issues that have delayed the French planemaker<65>s latest business jet before considering alternative suppliers. <20>For the moment we are waiting to see whether Safran are able to tell us how they will try to minimize the impact,<2C> he told Reuters. Dassault is keeping its options open for the new long-range Falcon 5X business jet, Trappier said on the sidelines of a company event in Las Vegas during the National Business Aviation Association<6F>s (NBAA) flagship gathering this week. Safran was not immediately available for comment. Earlier this week, Trappier said that the business jet, which had already been delayed to 2020, would have to be postponed again, after Safran informed Dassault of performance issues with the high-pressure compressor. Trappier said Dassault has an execution contract with Safran over the new Silvercrest engine used to power the long-range jets, but he declined to say whether the French planemaker would receive compensation for the delays because such talks are confidential. Trappier also said he viewed the possibility of selling Dassault<6C>s Rafale fighter jets to the Canadian government as an opportunity for <20>strong cooperation<6F> between Canada and France. The Rafale could be partly built in Canada, he said. Earlier this year, Canada froze talks on the planned purchase of 18 F-18 Super Hornet jets from Boeing Co ( BA.N ) for more than $5 billion, after the company launched a trade challenge accusing Montreal-based Bombardier Inc ( BBDb.TO ) of dumping its new CSeries airliners into the U.S. market. Canada needs the 18 jets to act as a stopgap measure until it is able run an open competition to replace its veteran CF-18 fighters, a process that could take five years. The CF-18 is the Canadian version of the F-18 Hornet, a design that is 40 years old. Reporting by Allison Lampert in Las Vegas; editing by Cynthia Osterman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dassaultavi-falcon/dassault-ceo-not-yet-considering-alternative-engine-suppliers-idUSKBN1CG2NH'|'2017-10-11T22:08:00.000+03:00'
'c4a7d0a78de33524ee6e2ec326c9c84c21c23562'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX opens broadly higher, Pretium Resources jumps'|'TORONTO, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index opened broadly higher on Wednesday as the influential financial stocks led gains, while Pretium Resources Inc surged more than 13 percent after it released gold production results from one of its mines.The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index was up 31.30 points, or 0.2 percent, at 15.801.66 shortly after the open, with all 10 sectors advancing. (Reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks-open/canada-stocks-tsx-opens-broadly-higher-pretium-resources-jumps-idINL2N1MM0T1'|'2017-10-11T11:42:00.000+03:00'
'e080d4625465e8855000b7f7023451cd1868612e'|'Time running out for airlines as Brexit talks hit impasse'|'LONDON, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Airlines are still seeking answers from Britain as to future flying rights, with less than a year to go until they start selling tickets in a post-Brexit world, industry executives said on Thursday.British and EU negotiators hit a dead-end over money in four days of talks, the European Union<6F>s Michel Barnier said on Thursday as he ruled out discussions on future trade being launched by EU leaders next week.Britain will leave the European Union in March 2019, and while it has highlighted aviation as a sector which needs to be prioritised in Brexit talks, the slow progress of talks raises the prospect of airlines having to put tickets on sale without a guarantee of an agreement that will allow flights to happen.<2E>Airlines sell tickets 300 days out, so they are about 6-8 months away from needing some certainty,<2C> Michael Whitaker, principal of Whitaker Airspace and former deputy administrator at the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, told the CAPA Global Summit in London.Flying rights to, from and within the European Union, plus between the United States and Britain are currently covered by EU-wide Open Skies agreements.For the aviation sector, there is no default <20>fallback<63> option in the event of a <20>no deal<61>, unlike with trade, where Britain would revert to WTO rules.On Wednesday, British Chancellor Philip Hammond said it was <20>theoretically conceivable<6C> that in a no-deal scenario air traffic between Britain and the European Union could be grounded.One option could be to return to the old bilateral agreements that used to govern air traffic rights between Britain and other countries, but those often date back to the 1940s and 1950s and are very restrictive.Christine Ourmi<6D>res-Widener, CEO of British regional airline Flybe, said the airline planned to release its schedules with the regular 12-18 months<68> notice. Flybe has prepared for various risks but needs answers from the government, she said.<2E>We can deal with any scenario but the question is which scenario we will have to use depending on the decision,<2C> she told Reuters.Craig Kreeger, CEO of Virgin Atlantic, expects a bilateral deal between Britain and the United States, the most crucial aspect for the transatlantic carrier, will be agreed before Britain leaves the EU.<2E>Sanguine might be a teeny bit strong, but I<>m still generally confident that from a Virgin Atlantic perspective, things will be OK,<2C> Kreeger told Reuters. (Reporting by Alistair Smout and Victoria Bryan; Editing by Adrian Croft)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-eu-airlines/time-running-out-for-airlines-as-brexit-talks-hit-impasse-idINL8N1MN49Y'|'2017-10-12T12:55:00.000+03:00'
'772cd58e05d7bdd4d71e97e0bbaa7394f410fa2a'|'Top global trading houses see range-bound, stable oil price'|'October 13, 2017 / 10:04 AM / in 16 minutes Top global trading houses see range-bound, stable oil price Alex Lawler , Julia Payne 3 Min Read Brazil''s state-run oil company Petrobras LPG fuelling stations are seen in the Guanabara bay in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil October 7, 2017. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares LONDON (Reuters) - A rebalancing of the global oil market is under way helped by supply curbs led by OPEC, although the chance of big further gains in prices looks unlikely in the next year or so as tighter supply may not last, top trading firms told Reuters. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other countries led by Russia are curbing oil production by around 1.8 million barrels per day until March 2018 to get rid of a global surplus in crude and refined products. Oil inventories in the industrialized world are coming down although they remain above the five-year average. Brent crude, after hitting a 12-year low near $27 in January 2016 has rallied to $57, but is still half its level of mid-2014. <20>I think the market is on the right track. You can see the rebalancing starting to happen,<2C> the global head of oil at Glencore, Alex Beard, told the Reuters Global Commodities Summit taking place this week. <20>But it<69>s a gradual gradient, so I don<6F>t think we expect to see any explosive draw in stocks or a massive rally in flat prices.<2E> Beard said he expected oil to <20>slowly appreciate<74> and Brent was likely towards the end of this year to trend towards $60. Marco Dunand, chief executive of trading firm Mercuria, said nearby prices could head closer to $60 supported by lower stock levels, but the five-year forward price should be around $50-$55 as that<61>s roughly the production cost for U.S. shale producers. <20>The fourth quarter should be globally in deficit,<2C> he said. <20>The price is going to maybe go closer to $60 <20> the nearby price, but the deferred price (has) no particular reason to move.<2E> He said he could see a scenario in which oil moves above $60 in the next year in response to geopolitical events, but not for a sustained period. <20>BORINGLY RANGE-BOUND<4E> The boss at Vitol, the world<6C>s largest trading house, also does not expect a large rally in prices either, telling the summit prices will remain <20>boringly range-bound<6E> at $50 to $60 a barrel in the next year. <20>We<57>ve had some significant stock draws globally this year and the situation looks much better than it did a year ago,<2C> Vitol<6F>s Ian Taylor said. <20>The market is, while tighter and moving towards a much tighter stocks position, I<>m not totally sure the market is convinced this is going to be a long-term thing.<2E> The chief executive of trading firm Gunvor, Torbjorn Tornqvist, said OPEC could not <20>afford to let up<75> on its production cuts in the face of rising non-OPEC supply next year and also did not expect a big price jump. Asked about his price projections for the next 12-18 months, Tornqvist said Brent could remain <20>more or less in the upper end of the $50s<30> if <20>OPEC keeps some discipline<6E> and demand grows by 1.5 million bpd, or around this year<61>s rate. Follow Reuters Summits on Twitter @Reuters_Summits For more summit stories, see Reporting by Alex Lawler, Ahmad Ghaddar, Julia Payne, Ron Bousso and Libby George, editing by David Evans 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-commodities-summit-prices/top-global-trading-houses-see-range-bound-stable-oil-price-idUKKBN1CI15O'|'2017-10-13T12:56:00.000+03:00'
'21c28cd6e600d80fec406b363c2340787c63021f'|'Cyclical sector rally banks on global economic expansion'|'October 13, 2017 / 11:08 AM / Updated 7 hours ago Cyclical sector rally banks on global economic expansion Lewis Krauskopf 5 Min Read Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stock sectors that are particularly dependent on economic growth recently grabbed hold of the market<65>s rally and are poised to keep the reins should further signs of global expansion emerge. Such sectors, including energy, industrials and financials, beat the S&P 500<30>s 1.9 percent gain in September. Those sectors had previously lagged behind the benchmark S&P .SPX , which has climbed 14 percent this year while feasting on a steady diet of record highs. Instead, shares of technology and healthcare companies, whose profits are more impervious to economic down cycles, have led 2017<31>s rally. The question for equity investors is now: Was September just a catch-up period for the lagging, cyclical sectors, or can an economic lift support a sustained run? <20>If it<69>s just a mean-reversion trade, then it<69>s probably going to last another few weeks and then we<77>re back to the old winners,<2C> said Walter Todd, chief investment officer at Greenwood Capital Associates in Greenwood, South Carolina. <20>If it<69>s something more fundamental, it should be longer lasting than that.<2E> A test comes next week, as third-quarter corporate earnings season kicks into high gear. Reports from industrial conglomerates General Electric ( GE.N ) and Honeywell International ( HON.N ), railroads CSX Corp ( CSX.O ) and Kansas City Southern ( KSU.N ) and steel company Nucor Corp ( NUE.N ) stand to yield insight into the economy<6D>s health. September<65>s stock action, which also included outsized gains for small-cap stocks, had echoes of the immediate aftermath of President Donald Trump<6D>s election in November 2016. The same areas showed strength on hopes that a Republican-led federal government would push through an agenda, including tax cuts and deregulation, that juices economic growth. Those trades faded as Trump struggled to rack up any significant legislative wins. Now, investors say, September<65>s stock rally for those groups again stemmed at least in part from policy hopes, as Trump revved up his tax-reform push. <20>In many ways, we began to replicate the market performance following Trump<6D>s election,<2C> said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey. But an improving economic picture in the United States and globally lends confidence for the cyclical sector rally. The Citi economic surprise index for the United States .CESIUSD, a measure of economic data that can come in weaker or stronger than forecast, is around a five-month high, with the barometer trending higher since hitting multi-year lows this summer. This week, the International Monetary Fund upgraded its global economic growth forecast for 2017 by 0.1 percentage point to 3.6 percent, and to 3.7 percent for 2018, from its April and July outlook, driven by a pickup in trade, investment, and consumer confidence. The U.S. Commerce Department last month revised its estimate for second-quarter gross domestic product growth to 3.1 percent, up from 3 percent. <20>We<57>ve just had better data,<2C> said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at The Leuthold Group in Minneapolis, who also points to indicators such as firming industrial commodity and oil prices and a rise in the Baltic Exchange<67>s main sea freight index .BADI. <20>Those things are all kind of reflecting a realism of economic momentum, not just a one-off, Trump pie-in-the-sky expectation about policy change,<2C> Paulsen said. Bets seemed to build on the cyclical sectors in the first week of October, which saw flows into the largest sector exchange-traded funds for financials ( XLF.P ), industrials ( XLI.P ) and energy ( XLE.P ), and outflows for technology ( XLK.P ) and healthcare ( XLV.P ), according to Lipper data. <20>There is some momentum deve
'48974ea16c8f8bdac46a9603d958170a6075f21f'|'Kobe Steel scandal latest to expose ''Made-in-Japan'' fault-lines'|'October 13, 2017 / 3:50 PM / in 15 minutes Kobe Steel scandal latest to expose ''Made-in-Japan'' fault-lines Sam Nussey 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the signboard of Kobe Steel at the group''s Tokyo headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Under the once-vaunted <20>keiretsu<73> system of close, trust-based ties between manufacturers and suppliers, <20>Made-in-Japan<61> became a byword for industrial quality and reliability. That reputation has eroded over recent years. Kobe Steel ( 5406.T ) is just the latest in a string of corporate scandals involving data tampering and other methods of cheating to tarnish the Japan Inc quality stamp. It may be a sign that the government<6E>s push to improve corporate governance is seeing greater disclosure of wrongdoing. But the root cause is more likely that Japanese manufacturers are failing modern compliance standards as they grapple with a shrinking domestic market and increased global competition. As the focus has shifted to market mechanisms instead of cosy relationship-based arrangements, Japanese manufacturers have had to compete on price and expand their client base. <20>Growing global competition has forced Japanese manufacturers to cut costs to be more efficient, while fulfilling a production quota which is often difficult to achieve,<2C> said Motokazu Endo, a lawyer at Tokyo Kasumigaseki law office. The <20>keiretsu<73> system was the bedrock of Japan<61>s automotive industry. As the market has become more competition based, those automakers now invest less money in their suppliers and spend less time checking what those suppliers<72> factories are producing, says Hitoshi Kaise, an auto industry consultant and partner at Roland Berger. Beyond that, Japan<61>s economy has suffered decades of anaemic growth, bogged down in deflation with its population shrinking and with growing competition from its Asian neighbours. Those pressures have potentially whittled away at Japanese firms<6D> ability to compete, says Hideaki Miyajima, a Waseda University professor and corporate governance expert. <20>GONE TOO FAR<41> The list of manufacturer miscreants is long, and growing. Nissan Motor Co ( 7201.T ) has had to recall every new car it sold in Japan in the last three years after it falsified safety checks. Both Suzuki Motor Corp ( 7269.T ) and Mitsubishi Motors Corp ( 7211.T ) have faced scandals over fuel economy tests on their vehicles, and there was wrongdoing by the now bankrupt air bag maker Takata, Toyo Tire & Rubber Co ( 5105.T ) and Asahi Kasei Corp ( 3407.T ). <20>While focusing on targets was right in the beginning it has gone too far, with companies that can<61>t hit their targets resorting to deception,<2C> says Hiroshi Osada, a production quality expert and Bunkyo University professor. Over the last 15 years compliance rules have become stricter but many Japanese companies have carried on with practices common in the past, says Nobuo Gohara, a lawyer specialising in compliance, who took part in an audit of Olympus Corp ( 7733.T ) after its accounting scandal in 2011. <20>There are many of these problems lying dormant on the factory floor,<2C> he said. Japan runs the risk it will <20>lose out as other Asian economies, including China, progressively raise their standards of quality and reliability,<2C> said Professor Thomas Clarke, a corporate governance expert at the University of Technology in Sydney. BETTER BOARDS And it<69>s not just dodgy data. Conglomerate Toshiba Corp ( 6502.T ) is still battling an accounting scandal, and there is a litany of wrongdoing at Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) ( 9501.T ), the operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex. Just this week, Japan<61>s nuclear regulator said Japan Nuclear Fuel had violated safety rules at its Rokkasho site by fabricating records to say safety checks had been carried out. The plant<6E>s start data has been delayed 23 times. Even when moves are taken to strengthen external monitoring of companies
'5a09a63d05f5ea79693b9e7e2520b5643902c073'|'GM says China September vehicle sales up 6.6 percent year on year'|'Reuters TV United States October 11, 2017 / 6:16 AM / Updated 3 hours ago GM says China September vehicle sales up 6.6 percent year on year Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The GM logo is seen in Warren, Michigan, U.S. on October 26, 2015. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File Photo BEIJING (Reuters) - General Motors Co<43>s vehicle sales in China rose 6.6 percent in September from a year earlier to 366,305 vehicles, following a 12 percent increase in August and a 6.3 percent increase in July, the Detroit automaker said on Wednesday. GM has seen sales growth pick up, helped by a slate of new or significantly redesigned models such as the Chevy Equinox, Baojun 510 and the Baojun 310, after a weak first half of the year where sales dipped 2.5 percent. GM<47>s January-September sales totaled 2.75 million vehicles, a 1.1 percent gain from the same period a year ago. Reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk; Editing by Stephen Coates 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-autos-gm/gm-says-china-september-vehicle-sales-up-6-6-percent-year-on-year-idUSKBN1CG0JS'|'2017-10-11T14:16:00.000+03:00'
'b5a7feb2a08dd544ca0c92a84793aeaa2548428d'|'Nexa, merly Votorantim Metais, plans IPO for up to $651 million'|'SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Mining company Nexa Resources SA, formerly Votorantim Metais Holding SA, and its controlling shareholder expect to raise between $576 million and $651 million in its initial public offering in New York and Toronto.In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Nexa said parent Votorantim SA, Brazil<69>s largest diversified industrial group, would sell 10.5 million common shares. Nexa, based in Luxembourg, will also sell some 20.5 million new shares.The company will use proceeds of the primary offering to finance growth projects. Reuters first reported the IPO plan on April 10, and the company filed for the transaction on Sep. 21.With a presence in Brazil and Peru, where it holds a majority stake in Cia Minera Milpo SSA MIL.LM, Nexa operates five industrial compounds in Brazil<69>s state of Minas Gerais and in Cajamarquilla, in Peru.Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Richard Chang'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-nexa-resources-ipo/nexa-formerly-votorantim-metais-plans-ipo-for-up-to-651-million-idINKBN1CF35W'|'2017-10-10T21:21:00.000+03:00'
'4b9838d40316b8c398b24da48e55ed345d5718e8'|'Procter & Gamble foresees proxy war victory, Peltz refuses to concede'|'October 10, 2017 / 2:41 PM / in 32 minutes Procter & Gamble foresees proxy war victory, Peltz refuses to concede Svea Herbst-Bayliss , Siddharth Cavale 5 Min Read (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble Co ( PG.N ) said on Tuesday activist hedge fund manager Nelson Peltz lost his fight to win a seat on the company<6E>s board, according to a preliminary tally of shareholder votes in the biggest and most expensive proxy contest ever. Peltz, whose Trian Fund Management LP owns a $3.5 billion (2.65 billion pounds) stake in the world<6C>s largest consumer products maker by market capitalization, refused to concede defeat, saying the vote was too close to call before the certified results are released. Sources said the difference in for and against votes for Peltz<74>s board director nomination was well within one percentage point. An independent inspector is expected to review and certify the votes this month and Trian could then legally challenge the result. <20>We anticipate Peltz, who has taken issue with the firm<72>s organizational structure, corporate governance, and recent financial performance, to contest the vote,<2C> Morningstar analyst Erin Lash said. If the outcome is confirmed, it would be a bruising loss for Peltz, given that P&G sought to turn the proxy contest into a referendum on his credentials as a seasoned executive in the consumer sector, with board director experience at Kraft Heinz Co ( KHC.O ) and Mondelez International Inc ( MDLZ.O ). Peltz had called for the maker of Pampers diapers, Gillette razors and Tide laundry detergent to reorganize into three business units: beauty, grooming and healthcare; fabric and home care and baby, feminine and family care. P&G, led by Chief Executive David Taylor, countered that management is already working on several operational changes, and that Peltz does not have the relevant experience to be helpful in the process. <20>I shook (Peltz<74>s) hand, he shook my hand, and we said that just like we have through this proxy contest... folks want to make it a fight, but it is about ideas and the future. I told Nelson I will continue to listen to him as I have throughout this,<2C> Taylor told a news conference after the shareholder meeting. P&G shares were down 1 percent at $91.12 in afternoon trading in New York, giving the company a market capitalization of $232 billion. Its shares have risen 8.3 percent year-to-date, roughly in line with the S&P 500 Household Products Index .SPLRCPROD, which is up 8.5 percent. RETAIL INVESTORS FILE PHOTO - Nelson Peltz founding partner of Trian Fund Management LP. speak at the WSJD Live conference in Laguna Beach, California October 25, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo Peltz was widely seen as the favourite to win the contest, because he had the backing of all three top shareholder advisory firms, which recommend how mutual funds should cast their vote, and was only seeking one board seat on P&G<>s 11-member board. <20>Win or lose, Nelson Peltz has taken the activist campaign to the largest companies, which have previously been able to inoculate themselves from these kind of experiences by spending enough money to keep activists at bay,<2C> said Bruce Goldfarb, founder of Okapi Partners, which advises on proxy contests. Several activist shareholders have won a seat on the boards of companies over the years by arguing there was no harm in them bringing onboard a fresh perspective. Trian<61>s defeat could embolden corporate America to push back more against activists. The two sides collectively spent more than an estimated $100 million on mailings, phone calls and advertisements to woo investors. Vanguard Group Inc, State Street Global Advisors and BlackRock Inc ( BLK.N ) are P&G<>s top three shareholders. State Street and BlackRock sided with Peltz, but Vanguard backed P&G, according to sources familiar with the matter. Individual stock owners, such as retirees and amateur stock pickers, collectively hold about 40 percent of the company<6E>s stock, a much higher proporti
'271f768f636d090522c0e22c09af0cc94199dd13'|'Cabot Credit expected to launch <20>1bn market flotation next week - Business'|'The UK<55>s biggest debt collector, Cabot Credit Management, is understood to be preparing to launch a <20>1bn stock market flotation next week.The flotation plan is said to be back on track after being delayed because Peter Crook, the former chief executive of troubled Provident Financial, had resigned from its board.Cabot buys debts and loans in arrears from banks, utilities, telecom companies and local authorities, and then chases the borrower or customer for missed payments. If the flotation of the Kent-based company goes ahead, it will be at a time when there are mounting concerns about the debts racked up by consumers on credit cards, personal loans and to buy cars.Last month, the Bank of England said the UK<55>s biggest lenders could incur <20>30bn of losses on these types of consumer credit if the economy weakened and unemployment rose. The Bank<6E>s monetary policy committee is widely expected to increase interest rates from their record low of 0.25% at next month<74>s meeting in what would be the first increase since July 2007 .Cabot could not be reached to comment on the Reuters report that its flotation was back on. The firm, which is owned by US company Encore Capital Group and private equity house JC Flowers, is being advised by bankers at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Jefferies.UK banks plan biggest squeeze on consumer credit since 2008 Read more It has operations in the UK, Ireland and Spain and runs a number of brands, including the Mortimer Clarke firm of solicitors, debt collection agency DLC and the Apex debt collections business.There were reports in July that private equity firm Apax Partners was considering mounting a bid for Cabot. Such a move would derail any flotation plans. Encore said in February that it was <20>exploring an initial public offering of Cabot Credit Management, which we believe will help crystallise the value we<77>ve created within our European franchise<73>.At the time, the San Diego-based Encore said: <20>Since we purchased Cabot with our partner JC Flowers, we believe Cabot<6F>s equity value has grown through operational improvement, market consolidation and expansion into other European countries. <20>We are in the very early stages of the IPO [initial public offering] process, but we believe that it could be completed as early as the back end of 2017.<2E>Topics London Stock Exchange Borrowing & debt Credit cards Stock markets IPOs FTSE news'|'theguardian.com'|'http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/business/uk-edition/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/13/cabot-credit-expected-to-launch-1bn-market-flotation-next-week'|'2017-10-13T03:00:00.000+03:00'
'0527301ba1b01da21c813c078493398bc5333460'|'New airline Level''s fleet to reach 30 aircraft by 2022 - IAG CEO'|' 56 AM / in 23 minutes New airline Level''s fleet to reach 30 aircraft by 2022 - IAG CEO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read International Airlines Group Chief Executive Officer Willie Walsh speaks at a joint news conference in Diegem, near Brussels international airport, Belgium, June 17, 2015. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir LONDON (Reuters) - IAG<41>s ( ICAG.L ) new long-haul low-cost airline Level will have a fleet of 30 aircraft by 2022 and will grow at a rate that is financially sustainable, IAG<41>s CEO Willie Walsh said on Friday. Walsh told the CAPA Global Summit in London that Level, which launched in Barcelona this year, will operate five aircraft next year, with two or three of those to be flown from outside of the Spanish city. He said the airline would get a further three to five aircraft in 2019. Reporting by Victoria Bryan and Alistair Smout 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-airlines-europe-iag-level/new-airline-levels-fleet-to-reach-30-aircraft-by-2022-iag-ceo-idUKKBN1CI0ZG'|'2017-10-13T11:55:00.000+03:00'
'd9fedb8e22b358a3e68388340313c7c74a9e11e0'|'UPDATE 3-Brazil''s Oi creditors shun debt plan, warn of lengthy feud'|'(Updates with comments from Soci<63>t<EFBFBD> Mondiale)By Guillermo Parra-Bernal and Bruno FederowskiSAO PAULO, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Oi SA<53>s revamped restructuring plan fails to address most creditor concerns and may unleash a legal battle or government intervention to avert a collapse of Brazil<69>s No. 4 mobile phone carrier, two people with knowledge of the matter said on Friday.According to the people, the plan approved by Oi<4F>s board on Wednesday contains conflicts of interest and gives too much control to Soci<63>t<EFBFBD> Mondiale FIA, which despite having 6.5 percent of Oi<4F>s voting capital has amassed great power. Soci<63>t<EFBFBD> Mondiale is controlled by Brazilian businessman Nelson Tanure.Earlier on Friday, Oi<4F>s largest bondholder groups and export credit agencies rejected the carrier<65>s management-proposed restructuring plan, saying it <20>ignores fundamental creditor concerns, threatens the company<6E>s long-term viability and abusively enriches existing shareholders.<2E>The people, who are familiar with government and private-sector creditor strategies, reckon the only feasible solutions for Oi seem to be a state seizure of the carrier<65>s licenses or a protracted legal battle. Friday<61>s statement laid bare creditor animosity for Tanure, an investor with a mixed and litigious track record in past restructurings.Tanure<72>s Soci<63>t<EFBFBD> Mondiale fought back against the creditors<72> criticism in an emailed statement, calling their demands <20>vulturine, unreasonable and greedy<64> and accusing them of making a hostage out of the Brazilian government.<2E>The vulture funds have never had any commitment to the country or its companies; they are destroyers of wealth,<2C> Soci<63>t<EFBFBD> Mondiale<6C>s statement said, noting that bondholders <20>are worried about their own short-term interests, not with Oi<4F>s future.<2E>Common shares in Oi rose the most since April, adding 14 percent, in a sign investors expect Tanure and other large shareholders to fight any dilution attempt from creditors at a Oct. 23 recovery plan vote. Preferred shares soared nearly 23 percent.Oi<4F>s revamped plan aims to restructure 65.4 billion reais ($21 billion) of debt, including a 9 billion-real capital increase. Under the proposed terms, Oi would sell 6 billion reais of new shares to current bondholders and other investors and swap some debt for no more than 25 percent of capital.The steering committees of Oi<4F>s two largest bondholder groups and the credit agencies in August put together an alternative proposal to exchange up to 26.1 billion reais of their debt into common shares, representing 88 percent of Oi<4F>s capital.Analysts at Ita<74> BBA led by Susana Salaru estimated that Oi management<6E>s proposed capital hike would represent a premium of 42 percent over current prices, while imposing a 73 percent loss on bondholders.<2E>The equity upside potential is thus directly associated with the capital increase materializing, and we have limited visibility on that, given the high price premium,<2C> Salaru wrote.INTERVENTION Oi<4F>s in-court reorganization, the nation<6F>s largest ever, has been marked by disputes between management, bondholders and regulators. Local media reports have repeatedly raised the possibility that the federal government could intervene to avoid a messy bankruptcy.In Brazil, shareholders have the right to help shape and vote on restructuring plans, unlike the United States, where they come last and may not have voting rights at all.<2E>Under Tanure<72>s auspices, Oi has engaged in spurious talks with conflicted creditors who also hold Oi<4F>s shares, in order to preserve value for existing shareholders,<2C> said one of the people, who requested anonymity to discuss the matter freely.Newspaper Valor Econ<6F>mico on Friday said that two European export-credit agencies emailed four of President Michel Temer<65>s cabinet ministers to complain that the restructuring plan benefits only current shareholders. (Editing by Bernadette Baum and James Dalgleish)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com
'ed8f74498efe08892d2cdd86e258847f7d978032'|'REFILE-Weak Alberta gas prices to hurt producer, provincial revenues'|' 13 PM / in 12 minutes REFILE-Weak Alberta gas prices to hurt producer, provincial revenues Reuters Staff (Adds dropped word <20>from<6F> in third paragraph.) By Nia Williams CALGARY, Alberta, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Western Canadian natural gas prices have been stuck at historically weak levels since summer due to prolonged pipeline maintenance, which will hurt producers<72> quarterly profits and royalties paid to the cash-strapped province of Alberta. In the Alberta market, known as AECO, spot natural gas prices for immediate delivery have turned negative eight times in the last three months, most recently on Oct. 9, meaning producers got nothing for gas sold on those days. Throughout the third quarter of 2017 AECO spot prices fluctuated wildly, averaging around C$1.36 a gigajoule, down from C$2.05 a gigajoule or roughly a third on the whole of 2016, also a weak year. One reason is hefty maintenance and expansion work on TransCanada Corp<72>s NOVA Gas Transmission Ltd (NGTL) pipeline system that has resulted in more severe capacity outages than market players expected and hindered gas flow across western Canada. <20>In August, September and October we have seen these wild swings and the price has gone ridiculously low. It<49>s literally unprecedented,<2C> said GMP FirstEnergy analyst Martin King, who has tracked Canadian gas prices since 1993. Encana Corp and Kelt Exploration Ltd have shut in some natural gas production because of the maintenance work and weak prices. BMO Capital Markets this week downgraded their trading recommendations on Tourmaline Oil Corp, Peyto Exploration and Development, Advantage Oil & Gas Ltd and Paramount Resources Ltd to <20>market perform<72> from <20>outperform<72> because of exposure to AECO prices. Weak prices will also affect the royalties gas producers pay to the province of Alberta, which are based on AECO spot prices and contributed C$520 million to the province<63>s coffers last fiscal year, about 1.2 percent of revenues. The Alberta government last updated its 2017-18 natural gas price forecast in August to C$2.60 a gigajoule, down 30 cents from its original budget estimate. A weaker gas price this year could deepen Alberta<74>s expected C$10.5 billion deficit. <20>This is a bigger issue than oil and gas companies getting smaller profits, it<69>s less money going into the hands of the province,<2C> GMP FirstEnergy<67>s King said. Alberta Treasury Board and Finance spokesman Mike Berezowsky said if needed the gas price forecast would be revised in the November budget update. Price swings have been accentuated by the maintenance limiting access to gas storage facilities, leaving producers no option but to shut in production or send gas to the AECO market hub, where it has bottlenecked. <20>The market does not have the shock absorber of storage,<2C> said ARC Financial analyst Jackie Forrest. TransCanada spokeswoman Ruth Anne Beck said the company had met most of its firm service commitments recently and it told customers about expansion and maintenance plans early and often to minimize impact on production and gas flows. Once the maintenance is complete capacity on the northwest part of the NGTL system will increase by 700 million cubic feet a day, adding 6 percent to the entire network and helping alleviate the bottleneck. However BMO analysts expect prices to remain under pressure as western Canadian production grows from 15.8 billion cubic feet a day (Bcf/d)in 2017 to 18.7 Bcf/d in 2019. <20>The resulting structural imbalance could place downward pressure on Western Canadian natural gas prices through 2019,<2C> analyst Randy Ollenberger said in a note. (Reporting by Nia Williams; Editing by Susan Thomas) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-energy-natgas/weak-alberta-gas-prices-to-hurt-producer-provincial-revenues-idUSL2N1ML202'|'2017-10-13T20:23:00.000+03:00'
'eb03d2001afebbd85b9b9fcaeedfead89a5b18fd'|'Ailing Illinois among heavier supply of U.S. muni deals next week'|'NEW YORK, Oct 13 (Reuters) - A heftier-than-average U.S. municipal bond supply is expected to hit the market next week, led by Illinois<69> $1.5 billion offering of tax-exempt general obligation bonds, according to Thomson Reuters data.The $1.5 billion bond offering - scheduled for competitive bidding in three $500 million series on Tuesday - is part of a bigger deal. Another $4.5 billion of Illinois GO bonds is to be priced in the following week.The beleaguered state is borrowing to help pay down a nearly $16 billion pile of unpaid bills that stacked up during a two-year budget standoff that ended in July.The spread for the state<74>s 10-year bonds was 168 basis points over top-rated municipal debt on Thursday, according to Municipal Market Data, a unit of Thomson Reuters.Even without Illinois<69> big deal, next week<65>s calendar is the largest in some time, with about $11.3 billion of bonds and notes expected to price.The total tax-exempt muni supply is estimated at just above $9 billion, compared with a year-to-date weekly average of $6.5 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data. About half of the deals are competitive. Another massive offering includes nearly $1.6 billion in competitive bonds, tax-exempt and taxable, from the state of California.Anchoring note sales is a $1 billion offering from New York state<74>s Metropolitan Transportation Authority. (Additional reporting by Karen Pierog in Chicago; editing by Hilary Russ and Jonathan Oatis)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-municipals-deals/ailing-illinois-among-heavier-supply-of-u-s-muni-deals-next-week-idINL2N1M813M'|'2017-10-13T15:50:00.000+03:00'
'bb81c7078ed626f83040d6d389483a5ed2c68c8d'|'Mercedes-Benz, China JVs to recall 351,218 vehicles - watchdog'|'Reuters TV United States  19 AM / Updated 21 minutes ago Mercedes-Benz, China JVs to recall 351,218 vehicles: watchdog Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Mercedes-Benz logo is seen before the company''s annual news conference in Stuttgart, Germany, February 4, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo BEIJING (Reuters) - Mercedes-Benz, the luxury brand of German carmaker Daimler AG DAIGn.De, and its Chinese joint ventures will recall 351,218 vehicles due to potential issues with Takata Corp air bags, China<6E>s quality watchdog said on Friday. The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) posted the recall in an online statement. Reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-dailmer-china-recall/mercedes-benz-china-jvs-to-recall-351218-vehicles-watchdog-idUKKBN1CI0VQ'|'2017-10-13T11:15:00.000+03:00'
'1512cc857c6cdbe0b37074116ace5e7e1970eba7'|'Arab World Banking & Finance'|'Close Arab World Banking & Finance From the Qatar crisis to Saudi privatisation and legal wrangling in Dubai, plus going digital in underbanked Egypt Stand-off with neighbours blocks movement of money, people and goods Friday, 13 October, 2017 Oil prices are driving the kingdom to reshape its finances Friday, 13 October, 2017 Friction between courts over jurisdictions has caused alarm in the UAE Friday, 13 October, 2017 Mergers are proving elusive despite favourable conditions Friday, 13 October, 2017 After launching electronic bill payment in shops, Fawry is pushing payment by phone Friday, 13 October, 2017 GCC governments have interests in 80% of the 50 biggest lenders Friday, 13 October, 2017'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/content/cbc848ec-ae1c-11e7-aab9-abaa44b1e130'|'2017-10-13T04:01:00.000+03:00'
'db4652d8dcfdf0c66572054c7cdc39243776c134'|'Sports car maker Aston Martin counts on an SUV to drive its future'|'October 12, 2017 / 12:07 PM / Updated 30 minutes ago Sports car maker Aston Martin counts on an SUV to drive its future Joseph White 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd. CEO Andrew Palmer addresses media during the first press day ahead of the 85th International Motor Show in Geneva March 3, 2015. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo DETROIT (Reuters) - The arrival of Aston Martin<69>s DBX sport utility vehicle in 2019 could help more than double sales of the British sports car maker by early next decade, its chief executive told Reuters. The company<6E>s entry into the fast-growing super-premium SUV market <20>absolutely changes the business,<2C> Andy Palmer said in an interview in the United States. It could boost sales to as many as 12,000 vehicles a year by early in the next decade, more than double the roughly 5,000 sports cars the company expects to sell globally this year, he forecast. Aston Martin<69>s previous peak sales year was 2007, when it sold 7,300 cars just before the financial crisis. Palmer said U.S. sales could reach about 1,300 cars this year, propelled by the new DB11 model. <20>I am not claiming success,<2C> he said. Aston<6F>s goal is to get over 2,000 cars a year in the United States. The DBX will be a four-door SUV designed to compete with models such as Volkswagen AG<41>s Bentley Bentayga, a $229,000-and-up vehicle billed by its maker as <20>the fastest SUV ever built<6C>. The DBX<42>s design <20>is complete<74>, Palmer said, and the factory should be building prototypes by the end of 2018. Aston Martin, the preferred drive of fictional British spy James Bond, is late to join the SUV mania gripping the global luxury car business. The financial incentives are clear. In the United States, SUVs accounted for nearly 40 percent of total U.S. vehicle sales in 2016, up from 32.6 percent in 2014, and super-premium models are one of the fastest growing segments. BREXIT Privately-owned Aston Martin reported 94.6 million pounds ($125.1 million) of cash from operations during the first half of 2017, after years of losses. Under Palmer, a former Nissan Motor Co executive, Aston Martin has restructured and issued 550 million pounds in debt securities that are due in 2022. That year is also near the end of Palmer<65>s restructuring plan. By then, Aston Martin - with the DBX SUV and the relaunch of the Lagonda brand - will have a profile similar to Ferrari, Palmer said, adding: <20>Ferrari is a $15 billion company.<2E> Decisions about a public offering or a sale of the company are up to the Kuwaiti and Italian investors who control it, Palmer said. <20>One assumes they will want an exit.<2E> Britain<69>s departure from the European Union could make Aston Martin<69>s road tougher if the two sides fail to maintain favourable trade rules, Palmer said. Non-tariff barriers that could slow deliveries in Europe <20>are my first concern,<2C> he said. <20>Our brand is largely rooted in the UK so it<69>s a tough call<6C> to consider factories elsewhere, he added. A weaker British pound and the ability of Aston<6F>s client base to absorb the costs of tariffs could offset Brexit costs, he said. In the meantime, Aston Martin faces the same pressures to develop cleaner petroleum fuelled engines and electric cars as better funded rivals. Aston will eventually offer hybrid options on all its models, and will build a limited run of 155 RapidE electric cars in 2019 that will serve as a test fleet for developing a future generation of electric cars, Palmer said. <20>The idea that every vehicle on the road will be electric in 2040 isn<73>t going to happen,<2C> he said. Aston<6F>s more valuable play in the electric vehicle field could be as a consultant for electric car startups that don<6F>t know how to build lightweight vehicles such as Aston<6F>s aluminum- bodied sports cars. The company recently established an engineering consulting arm. <20>It<49>s starting to get its first contracts,<2C> Palmer said. Reporting by Joe White; Editing by Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessN
'eb3df600915e4afb2cba3b1efac2e509d35304b8'|'UPDATE 2- Barrick Gold sees drop in production as Tanzanian troubles drag'|'October 12, 2017 / 3:48 PM / in 16 minutes Barrick Gold sees drop in production as Tanzanian troubles drag John Benny , Anirban Paul 2 Min Read Barrick Gold Executive Chairman John Thornton attends the company''s annual shareholders meeting in Toronto, Ontario, Canada April 25, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Helgren (Reuters) - Canada<64>s Barrick Gold Corp, the world<6C>s largest gold miner, estimated a decline in third-quarter gold production amid pressure from the Tanzanian government on its Acacia Mining unit. The operation has been accused by the country<72>s government of evading taxes for years by under-declaring exports, stalling work at the mines as well exports of its gold and copper concentrates. Acacia, 63.9 percent owned by Barrick, said earlier on Thursday that its gold production fell 8.3 percent to 191,203 ounces in the three months to September. Barrick Gold estimated it produced 1.24 million ounces of gold in the quarter, less than the 1.38 million ounces produced a year earlier and slightly lower than Deutsche Bank Securities<65> estimate of 1.29 million ounces. However, the company, which is scheduled to report its third-quarter results on Oct. 25, said it was on track to meet full-year gold production forecast of 5.3 million ounces to 5.6 million ounces. <20>We expect year to end strongly, based on a pick up at key operations,<2C> said Deutsche Bank Securities analyst Chris Terry. Average price for gold fell to $1,278 per ounce during the quarter from $1,333 a year earlier, the company said. Barrick<63>s shares were marginally down at both New York and Toronto stock exchanges. Acacia<69>s shares recover to trade down marginally after dropping as much as 4.5 percent. Shares of Barrick, which intends to cut its debt to $5 billion by 2018-end, are down nearly 3 percent this year, while gold is up more than 12 percent. Reporting by John Benny in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza and Sriraj Kalluvila 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-barrick-gold-resf/barrick-gold-sees-drop-in-production-as-tanzanian-troubles-drag-idUSKBN1CH1NB'|'2017-10-12T18:42:00.000+03:00'
'8443080901d359bb953acf3698becf1fe383e04b'|'Evergrande property magnate seizes top spot on China rich list'|'October 12, 2017 / 4:39 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago Evergrande property magnate seizes top spot on China rich list Adam Jourdan 4 Min Read Evergrande Group Chairman Xu Jiayin gestures during a press conference for the Fifth Session of the 12th CPPCC National Committee in Beijing, China March 9, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China has a new richest man, according to the annual Hurun rich list of the country<72>s top movers and shakers. Xu Jiayin, the chairman of developer China Evergrande Group ( 3333.HK ), has seized top spot - beating out more familiar faces such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd<74>s ( BABA.N ) Jack Ma and rival property magnate Wang Jianlin of Dalian Wanda Group. Xu<58>s reported $43 billion (<28>32.43 billion) wealth - a gain of around $30 billion against last year - comes on the back of a surge in Evergrande<64>s shares, up over 450 percent so far this year amid plans to cut debt and focus on profit over scale. The Hurun Report, established in 1999, is the leading China-based organization ranking the wealth of the country<72>s rich and famous, and its list gives a temperature check on the winners and losers in China. Growth in China stabilised this year, but while the world<6C>s second largest economy averted a hard landing, some major corporations have buckled under the weight of their debt or been sanctioned by authorities over risky investments overseas. Wanda<64>s Wang - who took top spot for the last two years - dropped to fifth in the list after Wanda sold off much of the firm<72>s hotel and theme park assets to rivals in July, after coming under regulatory scrutiny over its high leverage. Close behind Evergrande<64>s Xu were China<6E>s top tech titans - Alibaba<62>s Jack Ma and Tencent Holdings Ltd<74>s ( 0700.HK ) Pony Ma, who has seen his firm<72>s value rise on the popularity of its WeChat messaging app and its popular online games. FILE PHOTO: Wanda Group Chairman Wang Jianlin speaks before a signing ceremony between his company and the Abbott World Marathon Majors (WMM) in Beijing, China April 26, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo The list also underlined those who have fallen from grace in corporate China. Jia Yueting, founder of sprawling conglomerate LeEco that once looked to rival both Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ) and Netflix, dropped to 1,978th place from 31st last year. Yang Kai, chairman of embattled Huishan Dairy ( 6863.HK ) - 66th last year - dropped off the list entirely as his firm fights off creditors amid billions of dollars of unpaid debt. Slideshow (2 Images) On the up was Wuxi Pharma Tech<63>s Li Ge and his wife, propelled by China<6E>s push towards drug innovation, Zhang Lei of fast-growing online news portal Toutiao and Li Shufu of carmaker Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd ( 0175.HK ). <20>It has been a good year for manufacturing, cars, education, TMT and healthcare,<2C> Hurun founder Rupert Hoogewerf said. While many of those on the 2,000-strong list were members of the National People<6C>s Congress and Chinese People<6C>s Political Consultative Conference, only a few were delegates at the upcoming five-yearly Party Congress that begins next week. These included corn magnate Li Denghai, alcohol billionaire Wu Shaoxun and Pan Gang of dairy giant Yili ( 600887.SS ). The list, with a combined wealth of $2.6 trillion, saw average wealth rising 12.5 percent - faster than broader economic growth - pointing to the growing financial muscle of China<6E>s super-rich elite. Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-wealth-list/evergrande-property-magnate-seizes-top-spot-on-china-rich-list-idUKKBN1CH0F7'|'2017-10-12T07:43:00.000+03:00'
'814228a22360d737ea266b26343769f8ee3ee6b5'|'MMG seeking M&A in copper, zinc, other commodities: CEO'|'MELBOURNE (Reuters) - MMG Ltd, the international mining unit of state-owned China Minmetals Corp, has become China<6E>s preferred developer of overseas projects and is looking at acquisitions beyond its core strengths of copper and zinc, MMG<4D>s chief executive said.As well as actively looking for copper and zinc projects to develop, <20>We continue to assess other commodities,<2C> Jerry Jiao told reporters at a Melbourne Mining Club lunch. Jiao said that could include other materials needed for electric vehicles.China<6E>s government is supporting moves overseas by state-owned industries with a keen focus on commodities in which China is short, said the CEO of MMG, headquartered in Melbourne.<2E>Minmetals has been selected as a pilot program for SOE (state-owned enterprise) reform <20> the only one in the metals sector,<2C> he said. <20>This has now positioned MMG as a preferred vehicle for foreign direct investment into international resource investment in <20>China-short<72> commodities.<2E>Jiao said it is becoming more difficult to make acquisitions, as his firm is chasing the same copper assets that other miners, now cash-rich after fixing their balance sheets, want to snare.<2E>The competition is getting more severe. It<49>s just not easy to do what we planned,<2C> he told reporters after speaking at the event in Melbourne.As a result, MMG may look more towards partnering other companies on the assets it wants to acquire, rather than going for acquisitions paid fully in cash, he said.Beijing is trying to streamline and modernize its bloated and debt-ridden state-owned sector and create conglomerates capable of competing globally. It has ordered all state-run enterprises to modernize their ownership structures and introduce private capital as part of a far-reaching reform program for its debt-ravaged state sector.Minmetals<6C> selection for the trial was partly due to MMG<4D>s successful development of the Las Bambas copper mine in Peru and its zinc mine, Dugald River, in northern Australia, Jiao said, a <20>demonstration that China can deliver and operate world scale international mining projects <20> and deliver value.<2E>MMG expects to produce 65,000-72,000 tonnes of zinc and 560,000-615,000 tonnes of copper this year, it said in August. It will release its third-quarter production report on Oct. 18.The company posted a half-year profit of $17.8 million in August.Reporting by Melanie Burton and Sonali Paul in MELBOURNE. Additional reporting by David Stanway in SHANGHAI; Editing by Neil Fullick and Kenneth Maxwell'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-mmgltd-presentation/mmg-seeking-ma-in-copper-zinc-other-commodities-ceo-idINKBN1CH0EW'|'2017-10-12T02:33:00.000+03:00'
'3b15fa64d1b69838910ee85760446d19580656e3'|'Q&A-Trump''s not-so-quick fix to undo Obamacare'|'October 12, 2017 / 6:57 PM / Updated 22 minutes ago Trump''s not-so-quick fix to undo Obamacare Caroline Humer 4 Min Read U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) applauds as U.S. President Donald Trump signs an executive order to make it easier for Americans to buy bare-bones health insurance plans and circumvent Obamacare rules at the White House in Washington, U.S., October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Thursday prescribed a quick fix to undo Obamacare through executive order after Republicans in the U.S. Congress failed to repeal and replace the healthcare law as promised, but industry experts said there are many steps involved that will slow it down. Trump<6D>s plan rests on one main pillar, the creation of associations in which multiple employers can band together to buy health plans under the same law that large employers do. That law rests outside of many of the mandates of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, dubbed Obamacare. Here are some questions and answers about these plans. WHO CAN BUY THESE PLANS? Potentially, small business employees and maybe even more people would be able to buy such plans. The executive order envisions that associations will form to offer these new health plans for small businesses that want to join together. It is not clear from the order whether freelance workers or other individuals interested in buying health insurance outside of Obamacare would be able to access these association plans through other routes. That may be decided in the federal rule-making process, which takes months. WHO WILL FORM THESE NEW ASSOCIATIONS? There currently are some associations that have united to buy health insurance, but the order imagines the creation of many new associations around the country. By allowing small businesses to join forces to create a larger pool of employees when buying insurance, these associations can decrease the risk of having a higher proportion of members with costly illnesses that can drive up coverage costs for small employers. It is not clear who would create these groups, but there are some employer trade groups, like the National Restaurant Association, that have advocated this year to allow restaurants to band together to buy healthcare. WHAT<41>S THE NEXT STEP? Groups first need to create an association, register it with the U.S. Labor Department, design the benefit plans, sign up medical providers or hire a third-party company that establishes networks of doctors, and then advertise and sell those plans to employees, insurance experts said. Signing up providers such as doctors and hospitals could be challenging, especially across state lines, said Dave Dillon, a fellow and actuary at the Society of Actuaries. Doctors and hospitals charge higher prices when they are uncertain about how many patients they might have, even when they are dealing with known entities like the large health insurers. In addition, Americans next month are due to start buying their plans for next year during open enrollment, whether that is through an employer or on their own. That means 2018 would be off the table for the executive order<65>s provisions. 2019 AT THE EARLIEST? <20>To get ready for 2019, you would have to be fairly up and running by the spring or early summer, and you would have to have things in place for the employers who would want to sell coverage for a 1/1 date,<2C> Dillon said, referring to Jan. 1, 2019. By the time April rolls around, health insurers like Aetna Inc and UnitedHealth Group Inc and benefit design brokers like Aon PLC and Mercer, part of Marsh & McLennan Cos., are shopping around plans for 2019 with the goal to sign contracts by the summer. That gives them time to create the advertisements and documents that go to employees in time for sign-up. The 2019 plans would go on sale in November 2018. WHAT ELSE COULD MESS THIS UP? Legal challenges from Democratic state attorneys general who have fought some of Trump<6D>s initiatives could further delay associ
'ca9bd7b7e625dd90a1e3d117e3fb52a4c45920ca'|'An epic but inconsequential proxy vote at Procter & Gamble'|'SHAREHOLDER meetings in Ohio are not usually the stuff of high drama, but a recent gathering was a nail-biter. Nelson Peltz of Trian Fund Management, an activist hedge fund, sought a seat on the board of Procter & Gamble (P&G), the world<6C>s largest consumer-goods company, in a proxy vote on October 10th. It was the biggest such battle ever. In the weeks leading up to P&G<>s shareholder meeting, the fight resembled a political contest, complete with carefully crafted videos, lengthy white papers, mass mailings and tens of thousands of phone calls urging shareholders to vote blue (P&G) or white (Trian).As The Economist went to press, P&G said it had won and Mr Peltz was contesting the tally. <20>Everybody but [P&G<>s] current employees voted for us,<2C> he said after P&G declared victory. <20>Maybe that<61>s why they keep so much overhead.<2E> So the brawl is not over. Yet the outcome may not matter much. Mr Peltz will push P&G for change regardless of whether he wins a board seat, and it is unclear that he will have much effect, be he on the board or off.Latest updates Taxing the rich Buttonwood<6F>s notebook 33 minutes ago The   4   See all updates It is not that Mr Peltz lacks heft. He has taken on consumer firms including Heinz and Wendy<64>s in the past. Martin Lipton, a lawyer who has long defended companies from such activists, has noted his <20>impressive record of success with consumer products companies<65>. Even when Trian technically loses a fight, it often wins. It lost a proxy battle against DuPont, a chemical company, in 2015, but the company went on to make many changes that Mr Peltz had sought. Trian recently won a separate victory, securing a seat on the board of General Electric on October 9th.At P&G, new thinking is sorely needed. The 180-year-old company sells products in nearly 200 countries and territories. It has America<63>s bestselling razors (Gillette), toothpaste (Crest), detergent (Tide) and toilet paper (Charmin), to name but a few of its products, but has lost share in more than a dozen of its top categories. Total shareholder return in the five years to February 13th 2017, the last trading day before Trian<61>s stake (of 1.5%) was announced, lagged the median of its peers by 55 percentage points and the S&P 500 Consumer Staples Index by 27 percentage points.P&G has taken steps to become more streamlined. In the past three years it has culled its brands from 170 to 65 and reduced the number of employees by 35,000. But Mr Peltz maintains that the firm remains too insular and slow to adapt to a fast-moving market. His frustrations are shared by many institutional investors. Those recently surveyed by Sanford C. Bernstein, a research firm, were particularly critical of the board, which is packed with other bosses, including Terry Lundgren, the chairman of Macy<63>s, a department store, and Meg Whitman, boss of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, an IT firm.Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), an influential proxy-advisory firm, recently noted that the board had presided over bureaucratic tangles and botched acquisitions. Both it and Glass Lewis, another proxy adviser, backed Mr Peltz<74>s appointment. Many small investors, who own about 40% of P&G<>s shares, appear to have disagreed. Employees may have feared bigger layoffs to come. Mr Peltz says he will continue to push P&G even if he fails to prevail in the proxy<78>s certified vote count.But his powers may be limited. He is not seeking to sack David Taylor, who became chief executive in 2015 and is thought to be moving P&G in the right direction (albeit too slowly for investors<72> taste). Nor is he trying to split up P&G. Mr Peltz<74>s most substantive change would be to reorganise its ten business units into three, overseen by a lean holding company, to make the firm nimbler. Reorganisation<6F>if the board supports it<69>could take years to yield results.Mr Peltz is also urging P&G to acquire more small and local brands. Yet given the mismanagement of prior deals, it is unclear that it would find
'8f74b8726ff3b4ec05bfd6a9aa97ab1c2ada6cc7'|'Early 2018 is crunch time for banks'' Brexit decisions - UK official'|'LONDON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Many international banks and financial services firms based in Britain will decide in the first quarter of next year whether to move operations away from Britain ahead of Brexit, a senior official at Britain<69>s finance ministry said on Wednesday.Katharine Braddick, the ministry<72>s director general for financial services, said banks using Britain to serve clients in the European Union were showing the most urgency in considering relocation plans.<2E>Those plans, if you like, harden, become more firm, at the point at which they start to alter contractual paperwork. For most of the firms that we talk to that will fall at some point in the first quarter of next year,<2C> Braddick told lawmakers. (Reporting by David Milliken and Andy Bruce; Writing by William Schomberg; editing by John Stonestreet)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-eu-banks/early-2018-is-crunch-time-for-banks-brexit-decisions-uk-official-idINL9N1KV00O'|'2017-10-11T07:41:00.000+03:00'
'2e069541dc199f035ddec85a21b77f79eddf9997'|'Exclusive: Total, Erg in talks with API on Italy pump stations - sources'|'FILE PHOTO: A customer holds a gas pump as he fills-up his car in a Total station in Nice, France, February 9, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard/File Photo MILAN (Reuters) - French oil company Total ( TOTF.PA ) and energy group Erg ( ERG.MI ) are in exclusive talks to try and sell their Italian petrol station network, sources said, after some investors grew jittery over the move to electric cars.Italian refiner API Anonima Petroli, which already owns 2,600 stations of its own, is in exclusive talks to buy the pump network to create efficiencies of scale, three sources said on Wednesday.<2E>The aim is to reach a general agreement in coming weeks and wrap the deal up by the year end,<2C> one of the sources said, but added no final decision had been taken yet.Total and Erg jointly control TotalErg which operates close to 2,600 service stations in Italy with a market share of around 11 percent.HARD SELL Last year they appointed HSBC and Rothschild to sell the business which sources have said could be worth more than 600 million euros ($710 million).The deal originally drew interest from private equity and industry players but people close to the matter said many had opted not to press ahead.One of the sources said investors were concerned that the rise of electric cars might mean traditional pump stations could go into decline.The number of electric vehicles on roads is forecast to grow significantly in the coming decades, with an impact on petrol consumption and pump network business models.Charging points are becoming more common in workplaces, shopping centers and public venues.In Italy, the country<72>s biggest utility Enel has already earmarked around 300 million euros to install some 12,000 recharging columns to meet demand. Some of those columns will be installed in existing pump stations.<2E>TotalErg has been trying to sell its network for a long time but it<69>s a hard sell because any buyer will have to spend to modernize,<2C> a banking source said on Wednesday.BANK BACKING? Privately-owned API had been negotiating with private equity groups to back its bid, sources previously said. But with interest waning, two sources said it had now turned to Italian banks UniCredit ( CRDI.MI ) and UBI ( UBI.MI ) to help it fund the deal.The TotalErg joint venture also holds a quarter of Italian refinery Sarpom, controlled by ExxonMobil<69>s ( XOM.N ) Esso unit, which sources previously said was a stumbling block to the deal.One of the sources on Wednesday said the talks with API excluded the Sarpom stake by way of a sweetener.A deal with API would create Italy<6C>s biggest service station operator, ahead of Eni and Kuwait Petroleum International which last year bought a network from Royal Dutch Shell ( RDSa.L ).API and UniCredit declined to comment while Erg and UBI were not immediately available for a comment. A spokesperson for Total said the company could not comment because the process was ongoing.Reporting by Stephen Jewkes and Giancarlo Navach; additional reporting by Julia Payne, editing by David Evans and Elaine Hardcastle'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-totalerg-m-a-exclusive/exclusive-total-erg-in-talks-with-api-on-italy-pump-stations-sources-idINKBN1CG1V9'|'2017-10-11T12:02:00.000+03:00'
'c92b0375295c490be1ece8c95173ac949a506440'|'Wal-Mart sees 40 percent online sales growth next year, shares rise'|'October 10, 2017 / 11:44 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago Wal-Mart sees 40 percent online sales growth next year, shares rise Sruthi Ramakrishnan , Sayantani Ghosh 3 Min Read People line up at a Walmart store that reopened Friday after Tropical Storm Harvey in Port Arthur, Texas, U.S., September 1, 2017. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc on Tuesday forecast a 40 percent rise in U.S. online sales next year as it ramps up competition with Amazon.com Inc, boosting shares of world<6C>s biggest brick-and-mortar retailer to the highest in more than two years. Wal-Mart also forecast overall net sales would rise by at least 3 percent in the year ending January 2019, and said it would buy back $20 billion of its shares over the next two years. Wal-Mart shares rose 4.5 percent to close at $84.13, the top driver of gains in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 index. <20>We are going to lean into places like technology, e-commerce, international stores,<2C> Wal-Mart Chief Financial Officer Brett Biggs said at the Bentonville, Arkansas company<6E>s annual investor meeting which was webcast. Wal-Mart, which is battling Amazon for market share, has been investing in its online business and letting customers pick up online orders at its 4,700-plus stores. The company has already started offering free two-day shipping and said on Tuesday it planned to roughly double the locations for shipping online grocery orders. On Monday, it said it would speed up the process for in-store returns of items bought on its website. Wal-Mart, which expects online sales to hit about $11.5 billion for the fiscal year ending January 2018, did not break out U.S. e-commerce sales last year. It reported growth of about 62 percent for the first half of fiscal 2018, up from 12 percent in the year-ago period. With a steady rise in online shopping, Wal-Mart<72>s e-commerce sales growth has been outstripping brick-and-mortar, leading the company to slash new store openings. The company plans to open fewer than 15 supercenters and less than 10 neighbourhood markets in the United States in fiscal 2019, it said in a statement on Tuesday. That is half the stores it intends to open in fiscal 2018. <20>Digital has been a recent highlight for WMT and it expects this momentum to carry into FY <20>19,<2C> UBS said in a note. <20>Faster growth in (e-commerce) should lead to earnings pressure though, as this operation is likely still several years away from profitability.<2E> In August, Wal-Mart warned that current-quarter profit could miss market estimates as margins are hurt by price-cutting and heavy spending on e-commerce. The company on Tuesday estimated capital expenditures of about $11 billion for fiscal 2018 and 2019. Grocery competition has increased since Amazon bought Whole Foods and started to cut prices at the upmarket grocer in August. Wal-Mart forecast fiscal 2019 profit would increase about 5 percent over its expected adjusted earnings of $4.30 to $4.40 per share for the year ending January 2018. The new buyback replaces the existing $20 billion program announced in October 2015. In the seven quarters since, Wal-Mart had bought back $15.10 billion worth of shares. Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru and Sayantani Ghosh in New York; Additional reporting by Dan Burns in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Richard Chang'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-walmart-outlook/wal-mart-sees-40-percent-growth-in-u-s-online-sales-for-fiscal-2019-idUKKBN1CF1EP'|'2017-10-10T23:51:00.000+03:00'
'78ec0b1b5bd7c266d773dd27271d06daefedb391'|'UPDATE 2-Kobe Steel crisis deepens on new revelations of data fabrications, shares dive'|'* Shares tumble 18 percent in flat market* Data falsification concerns spread to iron powder products* Kobe previously said aluminium and copper products affected (Adds context, company investigating further possible abuses, comment from government spokesman, analyst & updates shares)TOKYO, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Kobe Steel Ltd plunged deeper into crisis on Wednesday as fresh revelations showed data fabrication at the steelmaker was more widespread than initially thought, heightening a safety scare along the global supply chain.Investors, worried about the potential legal ramifications and the financial impact for Kobe, dumped the stock for a second day, wiping out nearly two-fifths of the market value of Japan<61>s third-biggest steelmaker.Earlier on Wednesday, Kobe Steel said it may have fabricated data on iron powder products used in components such as automotive gears and was investigating the issue after media reported the abuses.It has also launched an investigation into Kobelco Research Institute Inc, which tests products for the company, the steelmaker said. The Nikkei newspaper reported the unit had shipped materials used for making semiconductors to customers without inspecting them.The new revelations came after the steelmaker admitted over the weekend it had falsified data about the quality of aluminium and copper products used in cars, aircraft, space rockets and defence equipment in a fresh blow to Japanese manufacturers<72> s vaunted reputation for quality production.Kobe Steel has said it was examining other possible data falsifications going back 10 years.The company faces potential costs from any recalls, replacements and any legal action, including class-action suits in the U.S. where it has over-the-counter traded American Depositary Receipts, Yuji Matsumoto, an analyst at Nomura Securities, said in a report.The revelations about data tampering in its aluminium unit could also hit its plans to expand the business as carmakers increasingly use the material, which is lighter than steel, to meet tighter environmental rules.<2E>Aluminium is one of the key focus areas in the medium term as part of its strategy to help lighten vehicles (and) this will certainly have a negative impact on the expansion,<2C> Matsumoto said in the report.Multinationals, including automakers like Toyota Motor and Ford Motor, and aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, have said they are investigating.SHARES DIVE The market impact on Kobe Steel has been unforgiving, with its stock tumbling 18 percent to 878 yen after dropping 22 percent on Tuesday, wiping about $1.6 billion off its market value over two days.The deepening scandal has forced the government to push the company to speedily resolve the crisis.<2E>This inappropriate behaviour shakes the foundation of fair trading,<2C> Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Kotaro Nogami told a regular news conference on Tuesday.<2E>We ask Kobe Steel to thoroughly look into the causes ... and take steps to prevent a recurrence as well as to make utmost efforts to restore the trust of not only its customers but of society as a whole.<2E>The misconduct at Kobe Steel follows scandals involving falsified data at household names such as Nissan Motor, Mitsubishi Motors and Takata Corp., which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.Toshiba Corp is still battling the fallout of a scandal involving reporting inflated profits. The corrosive business practices have raised broader questions over corporate governance in Japan and cast doubts about the integrity of nation<6F>s once-admired manufacturing industry.EARLIER MISCONDUCT The revelations of tampered data and specifications aren<65>t the first for Kobe Steel.The company said in June 2016 that an affiliate, Shinko Wire Stainless Co, had falsified data on tests for tensile strength of some stainless steel wire for springs over a period of more than nine years.In 2006, Kobe Steel said its Kakogawa steel works in western Ja
'ea85a13c2e5f3a67ce7281acf1970cbdf9560de0'|'Indian investors eye GST impact on July-Sept corporate earnings'|'An employee rests on a power loom machine inside a partially operational factory at an industrial area on the outskirts of Mumbai, India, October 5, 2017. REUTERS/ Danish Siddiqui/Files MUMBAI/BENGALURU (Reuters) - Profits from India<69>s top firms are expected to have swung back to growth in July-September from a decline in the previous quarter, though economic headwinds are likely to have kept the pace of growth sluggish.The latest results are critical for investors, marking the first quarter since the rollout of a national goods and services tax (GST) on July 1 and coming amid a wider retreat in share markets on investor concern about stocks being overvalued.Forecasts compiled by Reuters show net profits are expected to rise 12.8 percent in the latest quarter for members of the main NSE index, known as Nifty, marking a recovery from the 1 percent fall in net profits in April-June.That would be less than half the 33 percent increase posted in the January-March quarter and lag the 17.7 percent rise in October-December last year.Profits are expected to be driven by energy and metals firms benefiting from stronger commodity prices, while telecoms are expected to post weak results due to aggressive competition. Drug makers profits are also likely to have suffered, mostly from regulatory challenges in the key U.S. market.However, the impact of India<69>s new GST on earnings remains the biggest unknown for investors positioning themselves for the earnings season.Uncertainty caused by companies rushing to prepare for the new tax and cutting production dented profits in the April-June quarter more than analysts had initially expected.Fund managers now warn another disappointing set of results could hurt India<69>s recent bull run.A vendor hangs shoes for sale at his stall under a flyover in Kolkata, India, August 17, 2017. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri/Files Nilesh Shah, managing director at Kotak Mahindra Asset Management, said markets were pricing in a recovery in earnings in the next 3-5 quarters.He said markets would correct if earnings don<6F>t show a solid recovery.A boy riding a motorcycle gestures as he passes a hoarding in favour of the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) at a street in New Delhi, India June 30, 2017. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/Files Meanwhile, operating profits are expected to rise 11.5 percent from a year earlier, while revenues are expected to advance 6.5 percent.The results come at a time of deep uncertainty for markets. The Nifty has fallen about 1.9 percent since hitting a record high on Sept. 19, amid heavy foreign selling and rising worries as economic growth slows to its weakest pace in three years.The Nifty is trading at a price to current fiscal year<61>s earnings (PE) ratio of 21.3, a healthy premium over the historic five-year average of 16.8.Investors say the GST<53>s impact is hard to measure given it can affect virtually every aspect of the economy from consumer purchases to industrial production. Some manufacturers are expected to have restored inventory levels in the latest quarter.<2E>We had seen an uptick in terms of re-stock in July, which was positively received by the markets,<2C> said Sunil Sharma, chief investment officer at Sanctum Wealth Management.<2E>But the dip in consumer and business sentiment alongside GST implementation pains are causes for concern in the shorter term.<2E>Reporting by Abhirup Roy in Mumbai and Gaurav S Dogra in Bengaluru; Editing by Sam Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-results-preview/india-investors-eye-gst-impact-on-july-september-corporate-earnings-idINKBN1CG0X1'|'2017-10-11T11:44:00.000+03:00'
'1dd3de5be6f9015a96539579699af0cc8ffc2ee3'|'Iran says Trump''s nuclear deal policy not to have high impact on oil prices - TV'|'October 15, 2017 / 6:38 AM / Updated 2 minutes ago Iran says Trump''s nuclear deal policy not to have high impact on oil prices: TV Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A gas flare on an oil production platform in the Soroush oil fields is seen alongside an Iranian flag in the Gulf July 25, 2005. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi/File Photo ANKARA (Reuters) - President Donald Trump<6D>s hardened stance on a multinational nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers will not have much impact on global oil prices, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh told state TV on Sunday. Trump refused on Friday to formally certify that Tehran was complying with the 2015 accord even though international inspectors say it is. He warned he might ultimately terminate the agreement. Writing by Parisa Hafezi, editing by Louise Heavens 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-oil/iran-says-trumps-nuclear-deal-policy-not-to-have-high-impact-on-oil-prices-tv-idUKKBN1CK05O'|'2017-10-15T09:34:00.000+03:00'
'61e41e5ea4e8e4f48c152da2ecc8b14ad0861771'|'Saudi Aramco in talks to shelve IPO: FT'|'October 13, 2017 / 5:24 PM / Updated an hour ago Saudi Aramco in talks to shelve international IPO: FT Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Visitors are seen at the Saudi Aramco stand at the Middle East Process Engineering Conference & Exhibition in Manama, Bahrain, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed (Reuters) - Saudi Aramco is considering shelving plans for an international public offering in favor of a private share sale to world sovereign funds and institutional investors, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Talks for a private sale to foreign governments, including China, and other investors have gathered pace in recent weeks, according to the report. ( on.ft.com/2gBheCT ) The company is still looking to list its shares on Saudi Arabia<69>s Tadawul exchange next year if it pursues the private sale, the report said. No final decision has yet been made and an international listing could still occur next year, the FT reported. <20>A range of options, for the public listing of Saudi Aramco, continue to be held under active review. No decision has been made and the IPO process remains on track,<2C> a Saudi Aramco spokesman said. Saudi Aramco had formally appointed   ), Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ) and HSBC ( HSBA.L ) as international financial advisers for its initial public offering, sources familiar with the matter had told Reuters in March. Both JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley declined to comment. A plan to list Aramco in 2018 was on track, senior Saudi officials had said in Moscow earlier this month. Reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Martina D''Couto 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudiaramco-ipo/saudi-aramco-in-talks-to-shelve-ipo-ft-idUSKBN1CI2GS'|'2017-10-13T20:24:00.000+03:00'
'13c5d2e20b3326a0791457b237c5b40219b752c0'|'British debt collector Cabot to launch 1 billion pounds IPO next week - source'|'October 13, 2017 / 11:32 AM / in 16 minutes British debt collector Cabot to launch 1 bln stg IPO next week - source Ben Martin 2   Cabot Credit Management, Britain<69>s biggest debt collector, is set to launch a 1 billion pound (1.00 billion pounds)stock market float next week after a delay last month to revamp its board, a person familiar with the matter said. The firm had hoped to announce its intention to float in September, but postponed it after Peter Crook, the former chief executive of Provident Financial ( PFG.L ), stepped down from its board. Cabot had planned to appoint Crook as its chairman in preparation for the London listing, the person said. Crook<6F>s resignation from Provident Financial following an August profit warning also prompted him to leave Cabot, forcing the debt collector to find a replacement. It is not known who Cabot will appoint in Crook<6F>s place. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Jefferies are managing the float of Cabot, which is owned by U.S. debt recovery business Encore Capital Group and JC Flowers. They are targeting a 1 billion pound market capitalisation for the business. A spate of companies have unveiled plans for London IPOs since the start of October, including ready meals supplier Bakkavor and power firm ContourGlobal. Reporting by Ben Martin; editing by Mark Potter and Jason Neely 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-cabot-ipo/british-debt-collector-cabot-to-launch-1-billion-pounds-ipo-next-week-source-idUKKBN1CI1HI'|'2017-10-13T14:31:00.000+03:00'
'806a6fd9741c9ffb36f73d40515c6daa9a032004'|'Bayer, earnings updates help European shares hit four-month high'|'October 13, 2017 / 7:33 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago Bayer, earnings updates help European shares hit four-month high Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote MILAN (Reuters) - European shares rose to their highest level in nearly four months in early deals on Friday, helped by some well-received earnings updates and gains in Bayer after a $7 billion acquisition. The pan-European STOXX 600 rose 0.2 percent by 0724 GMT and was set for its fifth straight week of gains as inflows into the region<6F>s equities continued with confidence over its economic recovery offseting a fresh focus on political risk. Germany''s DAX .GDAXI index was flat, just below the fresh all-time high hit in the previous session, while Britain''s FTSE .FTSE eased back 0.4 percent after a record close on Thursday. According to EPFR Global data European equity funds posted solid weekly inflows overall, but Spanish equity funds suffered their second largest outflow on record and redemptions from Italy climbed to levels last seen in the second quarter of 2015. BASF was the biggest single stock boost to the STOXX, up 1.5 percent. The world<6C>s third-largest maker of crop chemicals agreed to buy significant parts of Bayer<65>s ( BAYGn.DE ) seed and non-selective herbicide businesses for 5.9 billion euros in cash. Bayer was up 1.4 percent. Among top gainers on the STOXX were Provident Financial ( PFG.L ), up 10 percent, after the British subprime lender put in place a recovery plan for its home credit business which it said was set to post a 2017 loss of up to 120 million pounds. A well-received earnings update also boosted shares in Man Group ( EMG.L ), up 3.9 percent. The British hedge fund said assets rose 7.9 percent in the third quarter, boosted by market gains and net inflows to its funds. Reporting by Danilo Masoni, Editing by Helen Reid 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-stocks/bayer-earnings-updates-help-european-shares-hit-four-month-high-idUKKBN1CI0RE'|'2017-10-13T10:33:00.000+03:00'
'848b75653daf86d117b0eed15d3b91a8d83d8c1d'|'EU regulators approve 17-billion-euro Atlantia, Abertis tie-up'|' 54 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago EU regulators approve 17-billion-euro Atlantia, Abertis tie-up Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Toll road operator Abertis<69> headquarters is seen in Barcelona, Spain, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU antitrust authorities cleared on Friday Italian toll-road operator Atlantia<69>s 17-billion-euro ($20.10 billion) bid for Spanish peer Abertis without demanding conditions. The European Commission said the deal, which would create the world<6C>s largest toll-road operator, would not hurt competition, confirming a Reuters story on Oct. 10. <20>We can approve the transaction because our analysis under EU merger control found that the European markets for motorway concessions will remain competitive,<2C> European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement. Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-abertis-m-a-atlantia-eu/eu-regulators-approve-17-billion-euro-atlantia-abertis-tie-up-idUKKBN1CI0YN'|'2017-10-13T11:48:00.000+03:00'
'0b6a941469d9e4ec2a4d94e3ab997ae2de6d73b5'|'TREASURIES-Yields drop as inflation data disappoints'|'(Adds Trump on Iran, Yellen appearance; Updates prices) * Inflation benign in September, retail sales increase * 10-year Treasury yields lowest since Sept. 27 * Trump warns on Iran nuclear agreement By Karen Brettell NEW YORK, Oct 13 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury yields fell to two-week lows on Friday after consumer price data showed still benign inflation, disappointing investors who had expected it to improve. Excluding the volatile food and energy components, consumer prices gained 0.1 percent in September. In the 12 months through September, the so-called core CPI increased 1.7 percent. The year-on-year core CPI has now advanced by the same margin for five consecutive months. <20>There is really no fig leaf to cover up this notion that inflation is weak, and it''s weak in a very broad sense,<2C> said Aaron Kohli, an interest rate strategist at BMO Capital Markets in New York. <20>The Fed has pointed to inflation bouncing back and there is no data to support that at the moment.<2E> Geopolitical concerns also added a safety bid for Treasuries on Friday after U.S. President Donald Trump chose not to certify that Tehran is complying with the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, in defiance of other world powers, and warned he might ultimately terminate it. Benchmark 10-year notes gained 13/32 in price to yield 2.278 percent, the lowest since Sept. 27, and down from 2.323 percent on Thursday. Other data on Friday showed that U.S. retail sales recorded their biggest increase in 2-1/2 years in September, likely as reconstruction and clean-up efforts in areas devastated by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma boosted demand for building materials and motor vehicles. Ten-year yields had jumped to 2.402 percent last Friday, the highest level since May 11, after the government''s employment report for September showed a rise in wages that boosted expectations for a jump in inflation. Analysts, however, have said that data was muddied by recent hurricanes. Adverse weather is seen as having impeded lower-income workers from getting to work more than it did higher-income workers. Minutes from the Federal Reserve''s September meeting released on Wednesday showed that Fed policymakers had a prolonged debate about the prospects of a pickup in inflation and the path of future interest rate rises if it did not. Fed Chair Janet Yellen is due to speak on Sunday at an event in Washington on global economic growth. (Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) )'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-bonds/treasuries-yields-drop-as-inflation-data-disappoints-idINL2N1MO1KT'|'2017-10-13T17:00:00.000+03:00'
'23d7ca57973700e9ad814095444337089fd37906'|'Fidelity tests virtual reality for customer service training'|'October 13, 2017 / 4:07 AM / Updated 9 hours ago Fidelity tests virtual reality for customer service training 2 Min Read A sign marks a Fidelity Investments office in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. September 21, 2016. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - Fidelity Investments is testing virtual reality technology to train customer service representatives in its call centers across the United States. The company<6E>s innovation unit Fidelity Labs said in a blog post on Friday that it had developed and tested a virtual reality prototype to train employees on how to handle incoming customer calls. By using virtual reality, the company hopes to make it easier for employees to empathize with customers, Adam Schouela, vice president at Fidelity Labs, said in an interview. While virtual reality has been used for decades for training programs in other sectors, Fidelity said it is the first company in financial services to use the technology for that purpose. Large technology companies including Alphabet Inc<6E>s Google, Facebook are investing in virtual reality, making the technology more easily accessible by consumers and developers. The Fidelity prototype, which was built on the Google VR headset, simulates a scenario in which the customer representative is at a desk in the company<6E>s call center in New Hampshire. The representative is prompted to handle a call from a distressed client who needs to withdraw money from her account. During the call the client is shown in her kitchen surrounded by bills. The technology<67>s ability to immerse the user into a realistic scenario, makes it well suited for <20>empathy training<6E>, said Schouela. The results of the tests will be assessed to determine whether to proceed with the project, Schouela said. Reporting by Anna Irrera; Editing by Cynthia Osterman 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fidelity-investment-tech/fidelity-tests-virtual-reality-for-customer-service-training-idUSKBN1CI0AR'|'2017-10-13T07:01:00.000+03:00'
'e79bf563cb0647818b291f16542fc9b3119dfd92'|'Provident tries to revive home credit unit as annual loss looms'|' 16 AM / in 24 minutes Provident tries to revive home credit unit as annual loss looms Noor Zainab Hussain 4 Min Read (Reuters) - British subprime lender Provident Financial Plc ( PFG.L ) set out a recovery plan for its home credit business, which is set to post a 2017 loss of up to 120 million pounds as it grapples with a staff shortage. Provident<6E>s shares jumped 18.5 percent on Friday after it said it would move from two UK home credit divisions to four units, employing more regional managers and at least 300 part-time staff who used to work as self-employed agents. This would help <20>re-establish relationships with customers (and) stabilise the operation of the business<73>, it said. Provident has run into trouble after trying to reorganise its door-to-door lending business by ending its model of using self-employed agents as debt collectors and replacing them with directly employed staff. The company, which gives loans to people who do not meet lending criteria of mainstream banks, has been unable to recruit 2,500 employees to replace its 5,000 agents, leading to uncollected debt, a sales slump and the departure of its chief executive. The company''s shares, which have slumped over 70 percent since its June warning, were top London midcap gainers on Friday. ( bit.ly/2y9eOmJ ) <20>Things aren<65>t getting any worse at Provident.. The share price showing some relief...is natural, but there<72>s still a long rocky road ahead,<2C> Hargreaves Lansdown senior analyst Laith Khalaf said. The company did provide an outlook for the group<75>s performance as a whole in the year, beyond confirming a loss of 80-120 million pounds for the home credit business. Analysts expect pretax profit of 130.6 million pounds in 2017, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Provident reported pretax profit of 343.9 million pounds in 2016. CHALLENGES AHEAD The home credit unit<69>s collections performance - which measures the percentage of due loan payments it recoups - in September was 65 percent, up from 57 percent in August. Liberum analyst Portia Patel said that performance was at the bottom of the 65-75 percent range they had forecast. <20>Can they recover the business to where it was? Most definitely not... The fact is good agents have gone to competitors and they<65>ve taken the good customers with them,<2C> Patel told Reuters ahead of results. Provident faces a host of other challenges to recover beyond filling staff gaps: The group is seeking a new CEO, its banking unit is facing a probe by Britain<69>s financial watchdog and its credit rating is on the bring of being downgraded to junk, analysts say. That<61>s despite the UK subprime market as a whole performing relatively well, with Provident<6E>s rivals benefiting from its problems. Morses Club ( MCLM.L ) has forecast a jump in profits and customer numbers after recruiting dozens of Provident agents, while Non-Standard Finance ( NSF.L ) told Reuters that the lender had taken on about 438 agents and about 80 managers from Provident. <20>The home credit market has... worked in the same way for hundreds of years, and then Provident have come along and broken that model,<2C> Peel Hunt analyst Stuart Duncan said ahead of the update. <20>The sector has been thrown up in the air and the largest participant in that market is shedding market share to some of the others are taking full advantage of their self-inflicted wounds.<2E> Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Rachel Armstrong 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-provident-fin-outlook-test/provident-tries-to-revive-home-credit-unit-as-annual-loss-looms-idUKKBN1CI17T'|'2017-10-13T13:15:00.000+03:00'
'3b533bde13d1e41e811feed592019810f311bdc8'|'Germany''s economic upswing to lose some momentum in second year-half - ministry'|' 09 AM / in 30 minutes Germany''s economic upswing to lose some momentum in second year-half: ministry Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - People walk through the Mall of Berlin shopping centre during its opening night in Berlin, September 24, 2014. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File photo BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany<6E>s economic upswing has broadened and is set to continue in the second half of the year, but it is likely to lose some momentum after its strong performance in the first six months, the Economy Ministry said on Friday. Europe<70>s biggest economy is enjoying a consumer-led upswing, helped by record-high employment, moderate inflation and ultra-low borrowing costs. <20>The upswing of the German economy is gaining in breadth. In addition to consumer spending and construction, exports and investment in equipment have picked up,<2C> the ministry said in its monthly report. Gross domestic product (GDP) grew 0.7 percent on the quarter in the first three months of the year and 0.6 percent from April to June, propelled by increased household and state spending as well as high investments in buildings and equipment. <20>Indicators are pointing to a brisk continuation of the upturn in the second half of the year, although not quite with the momentum of the first half of the year,<2C> the ministry said. The German government on Wednesday raised its GDP growth forecast to 2.0 percent this year, up sharply from its previous estimate of 1.5 percent. It sees growth of 1.9 percent in 2018. Adjusted for calendar effects, these figures translate into GDP growth rates of 2.2 percent in 2017 and 2.0 percent in 2018. This would be the strongest performance since 2011 when the economy expanded by 3.7 percent following the financial crisis. Reporting by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Maria Sheahan 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-germany-economy/germanys-economic-upswing-to-lose-some-momentum-in-second-year-half-ministry-idUKKBN1CI0U2'|'2017-10-13T11:04:00.000+03:00'
'b7e2520b5a8654073612fc4bd0ffa05a7f36459f'|'''Hard'' Brexit seen dire for Dutch but far worse for Brits - Rabobank'|'October 12, 2017 / 8:18 AM / a minute ago ''Hard'' Brexit seen dire for Dutch but far worse for Brits: Rabobank Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A European Union flag flies in front of Union Jack flags in London, Britain, September 13, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A disorderly Brexit could hit Dutch GDP twice as hard as previously estimated while decimating Britain<69>s economy, Rabobank said in a study published on Thursday. Britain leaving the European Union in March 2019 without a replacement trade deal would trim as much as 4.25 percentage points off the Dutch economy by 2030, the Dutch bank estimated. Dutch economic forecaster CPB last year calculated the loss in that scenario at up to 2 points of GDP. In Britain, meanwhile, a hard Brexit would slash the economy by up to 18 points by the same date, Rabobank said in the 17-page study. Given the many uncertainties still in play, banks have generally been wary of trying to quantify the impact of Brexit. But there is a consensus that a divorce with no trade deal would spook financial markets, tarnish London<6F>s reputation as one of the world<6C>s top two financial centers and sow economic chaos across the region. Rabobank estimated the loss for the Netherlands in the worst-case scenario would be 4,000 euros ($4,750) per worker by 2030, and 13,500 euros per British worker. A <20>soft<66> Brexit incorporating trade deals would knock up to 3 percentage points off Dutch GDP, the bank said, again a less optimistic scenario than CPB<50>s estimate of 1.2 points. Reporting By Anthony Deutsch; editing by John Stonestreet 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-rabobank/hard-brexit-seen-dire-for-dutch-but-far-worse-for-brits-rabobank-idUKKBN1CH0XI'|'2017-10-12T11:10:00.000+03:00'
'365320f060cb55f413edda735323809ae2bf6316'|'London regulator will defend decision not to renew Uber''s licence in court -mayor'|'October 12, 2017 / 9:39 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago London regulator will defend decision not to renew Uber''s licence in court -mayor Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A photo illustration a London taxi passing as the Uber app logo is displayed on a mobile telephone, as it is held up for a posed photograph in central London September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - London Mayor Sadiq Khan said on Thursday that the city<74>s transport regulator will defend its decision in court not to renew Uber<65>s [UBER.UL] licence to operate in the British capital. Uber has until Friday to submit its appeal and can continue to operate until the appeal process has been exhausted, which could take several months. <20>The courts now will consider the appeal from Uber and of course TfL (Transport for London) will defend the decision they made,<2C> Khan said during a monthly question time session. Reporting by Costas Pitas; editing by Stephen Addison 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-uber-britain/london-regulator-will-defend-decision-not-to-renew-ubers-licence-in-court-mayor-idUKKBN1CH17S'|'2017-10-12T12:51:00.000+03:00'
'4720ddd012d41ec0fb4c180420ea29d6efd8b725'|'BC Partners acquires German technical ceramics maker Ceramtec'|'FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Buyout group BC Partners has agreed to buy German industrial ceramics group Ceramtec from peer investor Cinven, the groups said on Wednesday.The purchase price was not disclosed, but a person close to the matter had told Reuters on Tuesday that the deal values Ceramtec at 2.6 billion euros ($3.1 billion), including debt.Ceramtec is a maker of technical ceramics used in products ranging from artificial hips and circuit boards to bearings and faucets.The Canadian pension funds Public Sector Pension Investment Board and Ontario Teachers<72> Pension Plan are acting as co-investors and taking a stake in Ceramtec.BC Partners managing partner Stefan Zuschke said that the investor sees potential in Ceramtec growing both organically and through acquisitions.Ceramtec traces its roots to porcelain manufacturer Thomaswerke, founded in 1903, which from the 1920s onwards supplied AEG with technical ceramics.Cinven bought Ceramtec for 1.5 billion euros in 2013 and unsuccessfully tried to list the company in 2015.It has strengthened the group with the acquisitions of U.S.-based peer DAI Ceramics in 2015 and a British electro-ceramics business from Morgan Advanced Materials this year.Cinven launched the sale in September and concluded it more quickly than anticipated.In the 12 months to June 2017, Ceramtec generated revenues of 538 million euros and adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of 196 million euros. It employs roughly 3,400 staff.Reporting by Arno Schuetze; Editing by Victoria Bryan'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-cinven-ceramtec/bc-partners-acquires-german-technical-ceramics-maker-ceramtec-idINKBN1CG0QF'|'2017-10-11T05:27:00.000+03:00'
'99c1e5490040f9e8c801e46b5c5dbe0c86ec9959'|'UPDATE 1-CSX CEO Harrison apologizes to rail customers, defends strategy'|'(Recasts with remarks from CSX<53>s CEO)By Eric M. JohnsonOct 11 (Reuters) - CSX Corp<72>s chief executive apologized to customers for months of service disruptions at the No. 3 U.S. railroad but passionately defended his operating strategy, at a hearing on Wednesday called by the top U.S. rail regulator.Seated before two regulators at the U.S. Surface Transportation Board (STB) in Washington, CSX Chief Executive Hunter Harrison defended his vision for streamlining efficiency, which he calls <20>precision scheduled railroading.<2E>The STB announced the public hearing in August after customers complained of service issues, including longer transit times, unreliable switching operations, inefficient car routings and poor communications with CSX customer service.Harrison, appointed to the job amid investor fanfare in March, said his strategy was critical to his turnarounds of two Canadian railroads - Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd and Canadian National Railway Co.Since he took over, Harrison has rapidly closed CSX rail yards, lengthened trains, mothballed locomotives, and slashed overtime pay and hundreds of jobs. He changed the way rail cars are sorted in yards and replaced <20>unit<69> trains carrying a single commodity like coal or grain to carry diverse freight.<2E>If I don<6F>t accomplish anything else today, I want to apologize to our valued shippers,<2C> Harrison said on Wednesday. <20>Whatever problems we<77>ve had, we<77>ve had internally, we<77>ve made some mistakes, this is not a failure of precision scheduled railroading.<2E>Harrison spoke before Cargill Inc, Dow Chemical Co and seven other major rail customers were due to testify about their experiences with CSX<53>s network.CSX<53>s service disruptions have created logistical headaches for companies ranging from chemical and agricultural to automotive and steel producers whose supply chains, plants and distribution channels rely on CSX<53>s rail network across the eastern United States.The STB<54>s <20>listening session<6F> was the first public forum for customers to air grievances and give Harrison the chance to defend his strategy. The agency has been reviewing CSX<53>s performance weekly and talking to senior management for months.At least three companies have withdrawn requests to testify as service has improved. Other companies due to testify on Wednesday included The Chemours Company, Kellogg Company and Murray Energy Corp, the largest private U.S. coal mining company.An assortment of trade groups including automotive, grain, and paper lobbyists expected to speak on Wednesday have called on Congress to make it easier for shippers to file complaints and to allow other operators to use CSX track during service disruptions.Other stakeholders have filed comments with the STB. (Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Leslie Adler and Frances Kerry)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/csx-disruptions/update-1-csx-ceo-harrison-apologizes-to-rail-customers-defends-strategy-idINL2N1MM0PR'|'2017-10-11T12:49:00.000+03:00'
'5eb75b1ce575fc0f0d699e64854ac73d8613d31f'|'Oil up on signs of tighter market, but 2018 looks more uncertain'|'FILE PHOTO: Pump jacks pump oil at an oil field on the shores of the Caspian Sea in Baku, Azerbaijan, October 5, 2017. Picture taken October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Grigory Dukor NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices were virtually flat on Wednesday as Saudi Arabia said it pumped more in September than August, even as OPEC forecast higher demand for 2018.Brent crude futures LCOc1 were trading down 14 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $56.47 per barrel by 12:32 p.m. EDT (1232 GMT). Brent closed 2 percent higher the previous day.U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 rose 7 cents, or 0.1 percent, to $50.99 a barrel.Saudi Arabia told the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on Wednesday that it pumped 9.97 million barrels per day in September, up about 22,000 barrels per day from August, but still below its OPEC target.<2E>It calls into question how committed Saudi Arabia is to those production cuts,<2C> said Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.OPEC, along with other producers including Russia, agreed to cut output by 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) through March 2018 to balance the market.On Wednesday, OPEC forecast higher demand for its oil in 2018 and said its production-cutting deal with rival producers was clearing the glut after more than three years.Barclays had raised its price outlook for the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2017.Saudi Arabia trimmed crude supplies to its biggest buyers in Asia, sources told Reuters, a sign it is meeting its cut commitment.Prices drew support when the International Monetary Fund projected global economic growth of 3.6 percent this year and 3.7 percent for 2018, indicating fuel demand would rise.Libya<79>s goal of boosting oil production to 1.25 million bpd by year-end will be difficult to achieve, the chairman of state oil firm NOC said.Longer term, Barclays said it expected <20>a return to build mode next year<61>, while PVM<56>s Stephen Brennock said the IMF viewed the economic recovery as being <20>on thin ice<63>.The United States is not participating in the supply cut, and its crude output has risen 10 percent this year to more than 9.5 million bpd. C-OUT-T-EIASpeaking at the Reuters Global Commodities Summit, Vitol CEO Ian Taylor said U.S. output would climb another 500,000 to 600,000 bpd next year before flattening.Later on Wednesday, the American Petroleum Institute will release weekly U.S. fuel inventory data, followed by official figures from the U.S. Department of Energy on Thursday. [EIA/S]Haworth said the market and OPEC are <20>hoping US producers slow down production and make further progress on inventory cuts.<2E> He said the picture was <20>not clear because you still have hurricane related news.<2E>U.S. crude inventories probably fell for a third straight week, while refined product stockpiles also likely declined, a Reuters poll showed.Additional reporting by Libby George in London, Roslan Khasawneh and Henning Gloystein; in Singapore; Editing by Dale Hudson and David Gregorio'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil/oil-prices-stable-on-signs-of-tighter-market-but-2018-looks-more-uncertain-idINKBN1CG023'|'2017-10-11T04:30:00.000+03:00'
'78d26a05d027ce23dbc40b9b47874e8a06bddf60'|'OPEC again raises demand for its oil, points to 2018 deficit'|'October 11, 2017 / 11:19 AM / in 6 minutes OPEC again raises demand forecast for its oil, points to 2018 deficit Alex Lawler 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A flag with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) logo is seen during a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-OPEC producing countries in Vienna, Austria September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger LONDON (Reuters) - OPEC forecast higher demand for its oil in 2018 on Wednesday and said its production-cutting deal with rival producers was getting rid of a glut, pointing to a tighter market that could move into a deficit next year. In a monthly report, the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said the market could find support in winter from low distillate fuel stocks and forecasts of colder weather, which would boost distillates demand for heating. OPEC said the world would need 33.06 million barrels per day (bpd) of its crude next year, up 230,000 bpd from its previous forecast. That is its third consecutive monthly increase in the projection from its first estimate made in July. The report illustrates growing confidence among OPEC officials that its supply cut is working. Still, OPEC is not banking on a surge in prices, saying in the report crude is expected to remain at $50 (37.91 pounds)to $55 a barrel in the next year. Brent oil LCOc1 traded higher near $57 on Wednesday. <20>With the market moving into the winter season, distillate fuel supplies are notably tight, representing a change from the excess supplies seen in the last two years,<2C> OPEC said. <20>OPEC and key non-OPEC oil producers continue to successfully drain the oil market of excess barrels.<2E> In a deal aimed at clearing the glut, OPEC is curbing output by about 1.2 million bpd, while Russia and other non-OPEC producers are cutting half as much, until March 2018. The 14-country producer group said its oil output in September, as assessed by secondary sources, came in below the 2018 demand forecast, even though production climbed by about 89,000 bpd to 32.75 million bpd. In a further sign that the supply excess is easing, OPEC said inventories in developed economies declined by 24.7 million barrels in August to 2.996 billion barrels, 171 million barrels above the five-year average. OPEC and its allies want to bring stocks down to the five-year average and are discussing extending their supply restraint. HEADWINDS FOR SHALE OPEC lowered its estimate of supply growth from non-OPEC countries next year, seeing a rise of 940,000 bpd, down 60,000 bpd from the previous forecast, due to downward revisions to Russia. The report also cited headwinds in 2018 for an expansion of supplies in U.S. shale, such as lower drilling efficiency and cost inflation. Growth in U.S. shale three years ago contributed to the global excess OPEC<45>s cut is now targeting. <20>The supply forecast for next year will be revised downward if higher oil prices and lower costs do not materialize,<2C> the report said. <20>Oil prices are expected to remain at $50-55 in the next year. A rise above that level would encourage U.S. oil producers to expand their drilling activities, otherwise the lower prices could lead to a reduction in their capex.<2E> The price expectation, given on page 45 of the 96-page report, is an assumption, not a forecast, OPEC sources said. OPEC does not issue price forecasts. OPEC raised its forecasts for global oil demand growth in 2017 and 2018, saying consumption would rise by 1.38 million bpd next year, 30,000 bpd more than previously thought. The report<72>s OPEC production figures mean compliance with the supply cut by the 11 members with output targets remains high at 98 percent, according to a Reuters calculation. This is up from 83 percent initially reported in August, as September<65>s rise in overall OPEC output was led by Nigeria and Libya, which are exempt from the cut. Should OPEC keep pumping at September<65>s level, the market could move into a deficit next
'dbff43e8c6cef208ed5e71d5322a0c985026c653'|'Loyalists unhappy as Coach becomes Tapestry Inc'|'October 11, 2017 / 6:40 PM / in 15 minutes Loyalists unhappy as Coach becomes Tapestry Inc 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A view of a Coach store in Pasadena, California, January 26, 2015. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni (Reuters) - Iconic luxury handbag maker Coach Inc risked Wall Street and social media ire on Wednesday by announcing a change of its corporate name to Tapestry Inc, as it evolves into a multi-brand upscale retailer. The company<6E>s shares fell as much as 3 percent in early trading, which analysts attributed to strong results from rival LVMH on Tuesday, and to a broader selloff in the consumer discretionary space on Wednesday. Still, social media reacted harshly to the 76-year old company changing its well-known corporate identity with many Twitter users criticizing the decision that calls for Tapestry being the holding entity that houses the Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman brands. <20>This is bizarre & a strategy departure. Dying to know the logic,<2C> Andrea Wasserman, a former Nordstrom and Hudson<6F>s Bay executive, wrote on Twitter following the news. The derision kept coming as people questioned and even mocked the move. <20>$COH changing its name to <20>Tapestry<72> is a horrible branding idea. Fire the executive who proposed the change,<2C> J Christian Bernabe, a nonprofit digital content director, tweeted. Chief Executive Victor Luis, however, downplayed the social media backlash. <20>At the end of the day some of the social media reaction is misplaced because people think we are changing the name of the Coach brand, which we are not doing,<2C> Luis told Reuters. <20>It<49>s really about creating a new corporate identity for Coach as a house of brands.<2E> Luis added that the management had been thinking about changing the company<6E>s corporate name for a while, but made the decision to change it after the acquisition of Kate Spade. Founded in a loft in Manhattan in 1941, Coach has grown into a multi-billion dollar company, building its business on the success of its Coach handbags that for many years were widely coveted by wealthy women shoppers around the world. Coach, however, lost some shine in recent years in part due to the financial recession and increased online shopping. The company is trying to regain its former glory buy buying new brands, keeping a tight lid on discounting and pulling back from department stores. Coach bought smaller rival Kate Spade for $2.4 billion earlier this year and shoemaker Stuart Weitzman in 2015, broadening its portfolio and transforming into an upscale fashion house rather than just a pricey handbag retailer. The company said on Wednesday the name change goes into effect on Oct. 31 and will start trading under the ticker symbol <20>TPR<50> on the New York Stock Exchange. Coach<63>s shares were down 2.8 percent at $38.87 in afternoon trading. Reporting by Siddharth Cavale, Uday Sampath Kumar and Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Bernard Orr 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-coach-strategy/loyalists-unhappy-as-coach-becomes-tapestry-inc-idUKKBN1CG2L4'|'2017-10-11T21:48:00.000+03:00'
'69737571443313f8ecec5f8dbea293d3669a5832'|'Arbuthnot Banking Group reports jump in third quarter loans'|'October 11, 2017 / 6:41 AM / Updated 32 minutes ago Arbuthnot Banking Group reports jump in third quarter loans Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Arbuthnot Banking Group ( ARBB.L ) on Wednesday reported a 75 percent jump in written loan volumes in the third quarter from a year earlier, backed by a strong lending pipeline. The lender also said it remained active in developing new businesses to diversify its sources of income. Following positive feedback from potential investors, Arbuthnot<6F>s commercial bank would invest in infrastructure to launch a commercial property fund, it said. <20>(The) Group is also in active dialogue with management teams, which should, during the course of 2018, further assist the business in continuing its strategy of diversifying its asset base and earnings,<2C> Arbuthnot said. Arbuthnot, which has its roots in a 184-year-old private bank and wealth manager Arbuthnot Latham, said its loan portfolio rose 33 percent in the three months ended Sept. 30 from a year earlier. Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-arbuthnot-bnkng-outlook/arbuthnot-banking-group-reports-jump-in-third-quarter-loans-idUKKBN1CG0LG'|'2017-10-11T09:41:00.000+03:00'
'0552651cef2cdf85bd797c3e3c266a70795aae0a'|'First spending boost in years set to pad tech stock earnings'|'October 13, 2017 / 4:17 PM / Updated 18 minutes ago First spending boost in years set to pad tech stock earnings 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Facebook application is seen on a phone screen August 3, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - The first global increase in corporate spending since 2012 will likely boost the earnings of technology companies outside of the so-called FAANG group of Facebook Inc ( FB.O ), Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ), Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ), Netflix Inc ( NFLX.O ) and Google ( GOOGL.O ), adding momentum to a 25 percent rally in the sector for the year to date. Capital expenditure - a term that encompasses corporate spending on everything from new buildings to new computers - is expected to climb 5.5 percent in 2017 after falling 7 percent or more in each of the last three years, according to a July 31 report from S&P Capital. Spending is expected to increase in every region of the world, with North American capex growing by 4 percent, and spending in Western Europe and Japan each surging about 10 percent, the report noted. Rising corporate confidence and the prospect that the administration of President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress will lower taxes is one reason behind the increase in U.S. capital spending, said Steve Chiavarone, a portfolio manager at Federated Investors in New York. <20>Labor is no longer cheap and abundant, so companies are looking for somewhere else to invest,<2C> he said. McDonald<6C>s Corp ( MCD.N ), for instance, is expanding its use of self-service kiosks and mobile ordering technology, rather than hiring new workers, he noted. The company has said that the kiosks, each of which costs about $50,000 to install, should be in nearly all its 14,000 U.S. locations by 2020. Corporate investment in technology over the next 12 months will likely focus on automation, cybersecurity and new software systems, allowing companies to increase or maintain productivity as labor costs rise. That, in turn, should boost revenues for technology companies that focus more on businesses than consumers. <20>With every additional dollar in capex comes more spending on technology and automation,<2C> said Matt Litfin, a portfolio manager of the $4.8 billion Columbia Acorn fund ( LACAX.O ). FILE PHOTO: The logo of the web service Amazon is pictured in Mexico City, Mexico on June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/Illustration/File Photo <20>DELAYED MAINTENANCE<43> Litfin has been adding to his position in cybersecurity company Qualys Inc ( QLYS.O ), whose shares are up 60 percent for the year to date, betting partly that technology spending will climb after high-profile data breaches at companies like Equifax. While the bulk of capex spending will likely go to technology, industrial companies such as Deere & Co ( DE.N ) and CNH Industrial NV ( CNHI.MI ) should also benefit as corporations either expand new facilities or put more money into maintaining existing assets, said Brian Sponheimer, head of industrial research at Gabelli Funds. Shares of equipment rental companies such as United Rentals Inc ( URI.N ) are up 25 percent over the last three months, due in part to cleanup efforts in Texas and Florida after recent hurricanes, yet shares of industrial stocks as a whole do not reflect rising capex spending, he said. <20>You have a backdrop of a half decade of delayed maintenance and that<61>s going to set a nice foundation<6F> for revenues in the sector, he said. The Industrial Select SPDR ETF ( XLI.P ), which tracks the performance of industrial companies in the S&P 500, is up 15.7 percent for the year, slightly more than the 14.1 percent gain in the benchmark S&P 500 stock index, while the Technology Select SPDR ( XLK.P ) is up 24.8 percent over the same time. Chiavarone, the Federated fund manager, said Amazon is the most likely of FAANG stocks to benefit from capex due to its Amazon Web Services division, which hosts websites and other cloud-based services for corporate customers. Amazon ha
'08546c08f154818a425a64c0b16866f3abb73320'|'FTSE retreats from record, Provident Financial soars'|'October 13, 2017 / 8:57 AM / Updated 12 minutes ago FTSE retreats from record as pound, GKN weigh 3 Min Read Pedestrians leave and enter the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s major share index ended Friday within touching distance of the previous session<6F>s record close, boosted by a late rally in mining stocks but dragged down by gains in the pound and a profit warning from engineering group GKN. The FTSE 100 .FTSE was down 0.28 percent at 7,535.44 points as Britain''s pound rose to an 11-day high. Sterling benefited from a dollar weakened by U.S. inflation data and new- found optimism on the outcome of Brexit negotiations. The pound, whose plunge after the Brexit vote helped dollar earners on the index, has become the main gauge of how talks are progressing on Britain<69>s separation from the European Union. Mining companies, which are predominantly dollar-earning constituents of the FTSE 100, provided some support to the index. Rio Tinto ( RIO.L ) rose 3.3 percent,Glencore ( GLEN.L ) 2.7 percent and Anglo American AA.L 1.8 percent. Sub-prime lender Provident Financial ( PFG.L ) shone among mid-caps, soaring 12.4 percent to a six-week high after it said it had implemented a recovery plan for its troubled home credit business. The stock has plummeted around 70 percent this year. Shares in emerging markets-focused manager Ashmore ( ASHM.L ) jumped 7.1 percent after it reported its highest net inflows of client money for four years. Strong performances in emerging markets drew investors into the asset class. Hedge fund Man Group ( EMG.L ) rose 3.4 percent to a two-year high. Assets in its long-only stock-picking unit gained 11 percent; $600 million flowed into emerging market debt strategies. The top loser of the session was engineering group GKN ( GKN.L ), which sank 9.8 percent after it warned that weaker trading in aerospace would cause full-year profit to miss expectations. <20>As anticipated, aerospace has seen a significant reduction in margin caused by pricing pressures, continuing operational challenges and the impact of programme transitions,<2C> analysts at Panmure Gordon said. Reporting by Helen Reid and Julien Ponthus; Editing by Larry King 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-stocks/ftse-retreats-from-record-provident-financial-soars-idUKKBN1CI0ZR'|'2017-10-13T11:56:00.000+03:00'
'79405c9a4dd41eaa6f5dc52e841ae09111decc3e'|'Boeing passenger jets have falsely-certified Kobe Steel products-source'|'TOKYO, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Boeing Co, the world<6C>s biggest maker of passenger jets, has used Kobe Steel products that include those falsely certified by the Japanese company, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.Boeing does not as yet consider the issue a safety problem, the source stressed, but the revelation may raise compensation costs for the Japanese company, which is embroiled in a widening scandal over the false certification of the strength and durability of components supplied to hundreds of companies.The U.S. airline maker is carrying out a survey of aircraft to ascertain the extent and type of Kobe Steel components in its planes and will share the results with airline customers, said the source who has knowledge of the investigation.The source asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.Even if the falsely certified parts do not affect safety, given the intense public scrutiny that airlines operate under they may opt to replace suspect parts rather than face any backlash over concerns about safety.Any large-scale program to remove those components, even during scheduled aircraft maintenance, could prove costly for Kobe Steel if it has to foot the bill.Kobe Steel<65>s CEO, Hiroya Kawasaki, on Thursday said his company<6E>s credibility was at <20>zero.<2E> The company, he said, is examining possible data falsification going back 10 years, but does not expect to see recalls of cars or airplanes for now. .Also in the U.S., General Motors said it is checking whether its cars contain falsely certified components from Kobe Steel, joining Toyota Motor Corp and around 200 other firms that have received falsely certified parts from the company.Boeing does not buy products such as aluminium composites, used in aircraft because of their light weight, directly from Kobe Steel. Its key Japanese suppliers, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Subaru Corp, however, do.These Japanese companies are key parts of Boeing<6E>s global supply chain, building one fifth of its 777 jetliner and 35 percent of its carbon composite 787 Dreamliner.<2E>Boeing has been working closely and continuously with our suppliers since being notified of the issue to ensure timely and appropriate action,<2C> Boeing said in a statement earlier this week after Kobe Steel<65>s bombshell announcement over the weekend.<2E>Nothing in our review to date leads us to conclude that this issue presents a safety concern,<2C> it added.Work for the U.S. planemaker employs around 22,000 Japanese engineers, or 40 percent employed in the nation<6F>s aerospace business. (Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/kobe-steel-scandal-boeing/boeing-passenger-jets-have-falsely-certified-kobe-steel-products-source-idINL4N1MN3HF'|'2017-10-13T00:09:00.000+03:00'
'99fce423e80439c5c4471c5933f1a11b07768594'|'Princeton graduates'' crypto-currency wins backing of big U.S. investors'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. investors including Digital Currency Group have taken part in a pre-sale of basecoin, a crypto-currency to be created by three Princeton University computer science graduates, Intangible Labs CEO and co-founder Nader Al-Naji said.The other investors in Intangible Labs<62> basecoin include Bain Capital Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and AngelList CEO Naval Ravikant, Al-Naji told Reuters.Digital Currency Group confirmed its investment in basecoin. Bain Capital, Pantera, and Andreessen Horowitz were not immediately available to comment.The investors had bought a unit of Intangible Labs, which entitled them to basecoin - a token with a rules-based monetary policy built into its blockchain system - in the future, Al-Naji said in an interview with Reuters on Friday.He did not disclose an investment figure.Blockchain, a digital ledger of transactions, underpins crypto-currency bitcoin and can be used to track, record, and transfer assets across all industries.Intangible Labs is one of many blockchain start-ups creating and distributing tokens to investors to raise funds for their projects. Start-ups typically hold a token pre-sale to institutional investors before opening the token offering to the public.Al-Naji, who founded the company with Lawrence Diao and Josh Shen, said basecoin essentially worked the same way as the Federal Reserve.<2E>We found a way to keep the price stable while keeping all the other great features of crypto-currencies such as decentralized, private, and international,<2C> he added.It originated from Al-Naji<6A>s blog, called Nader Theory, in June in which he broached the idea of a stable coin that can shrink and grow its supply on the blockchain.The blog went viral and Ravikant of AngelList - a website that connects startups and investors - and Bain came to see him to discuss his idea. That set the wheels in motion, he added.Intangible Labs will release its whitepaper on Tuesday and the network will be launched anywhere between six months and two years<72> time, Al-Naji said.<2E>The problem we<77>re solving is simple: because bitcoin is so volatile, your mom is never going to buy her morning coffee with it,<2C> Al-Naji said.<2E>And you<6F>d never even think about keeping all your savings in it. The fact is that bitcoin and other crypto-currencies are just playgrounds for speculation right now.<2E>Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cryptocurrency-investment/princeton-graduates-crypto-currency-wins-backing-of-big-u-s-investors-idUSKBN1CI2YF'|'2017-10-14T05:14:00.000+03:00'
'1ef46b6bcfd1977d732b11314524752f26f1b9a0'|'UK proposes internet firm levy with web safety plan'|' 16 PM / a few seconds ago UK proposes internet firm levy with web safety plan Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Karen Bradley, Britain''s Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, leaves a cabinet meeting in Downing Street, London September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah Mckay LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will publish a formal proposal on Wednesday for a levy on social media firms and internet providers to help fund its online safety strategy, designed to tackle bullying, abuse and other risks for children and vulnerable users. Prime Minister Theresa May and her ministers have been critical of firms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google, repeatedly calling on them to do more to stop the spread of extremist content online and help victims of abuse. May first promised a levy on <20>social media companies and communication service providers<72> in her 2017 election manifesto. On Wednesday, digital minister Karen Bradley will publish proposals for an Internet Safety Strategy including the levy, a code of practice on removing intimidating or humiliating content from social media, and online safety classes in schools. <20>The internet has been an amazing force for good, but it has caused undeniable suffering and can be an especially harmful place for children and vulnerable people,<2C> Bradley said in a statement ahead of the publication. <20>We need an approach to the internet that protects everyone without restricting growth and innovation in the digital economy.<2E> No further details of the levy were available in advance. Social media firms have typically been exempt from regulatory fees that can apply to communication services. Recently-passed laws in Germany give social media networks 24 hours to delete or block obviously criminal content and seven days to deal with less clear-cut cases. Reporting by William James; editing by Stephen Addison 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-internet-strategy/uk-proposes-internet-firm-levy-with-web-safety-plan-idUKKBN1CF35M'|'2017-10-11T02:11:00.000+03:00'
'05a03f444fb0fc5539847a221ad705c7056a358a'|'BOJ''s Kuroda does not see excesses building up in markets'|'Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda attends a news conference at the BOJ headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said on Friday he did not see any signs of bubbles or excesses building up in U.S., European and Japanese markets as a result of heavy money printing by their central banks.Kuroda also dismissed some analysts<74> criticism that the BOJ<4F>s purchases of exchange-traded funds (ETF) were distorting financial markets or dominating Japan<61>s stock market.<2E>I don<6F>t think we have a very big share<72> of Japan<61>s total stock market capitalisation, he told reporters after attending the Group of 20 finance leaders<72> gathering.The International Monetary Fund painted a rosy picture of the global economy in its World Economic Outlook earlier this week, but warned that prolonged easy monetary policy could be sowing the seeds of excessive risk-taking.Kuroda said that while policymakers should not be complacent about their economies, he did not see huge risks materializing as a result of their policies.Although major central banks deployed massive stimulus programmes to battle the global financial crisis, they have always scrutinized whether their policies were causing excessive risk-taking, he said.<2E>I don<6F>t think we<77>re seeing excesses building up and emerging as a big risk,<2C> Kuroda said, adding that recent rises in global stock prices reflected strong corporate profits in Japan, the United States and Europe.He added that Japan<61>s economy was on track for a steady recovery that will likely gradually push up inflation and wages.<2E>I don<6F>t see any big risk for Japan<61>s economy. But there could be external risks, such as geopolitical ones, so we<77>re watching developments carefully,<2C> he said.A senior Japanese finance ministry official said currency rate moves were not discussed at the G20 meeting or a gathering of G7 finance leaders held on the sidelines.Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Paul Simao'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/imf-g20-japan/bojs-kuroda-does-not-see-excesses-building-up-in-markets-idINKBN1CI33P'|'2017-10-14T02:49:00.000+03:00'
'e1a22eee4ba56b847a2ada862ceb0a6275ce4148'|'General Motors reaches tentative agreement with striking Canada auto workers'|'TORONTO, Oct 13 (Reuters) - General Motors Co said on Friday it has reached a tentative labour agreement with its striking workers at CAMI plant in Canada though the agreement is subject to member ratification.Some 2,500 workers at GM<47>s CAMI plant in Ingersoll, in southern Ontario, walked off the job on Sept. 18 after the U.S. automaker rejected a union call to designate the factory as lead production site for the Equinox model in North America.This week, the dispute ratcheted up when GM warned the union that it would start winding down production at the CAMI plant and ramp up Equinox output at two plants in Mexico unless workers called off their strike. (Reporting by Susan Taylor and Denny Thomas; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/gm-canada/general-motors-reaches-tentative-agreement-with-striking-canada-auto-workers-idINL4N1MP00W'|'2017-10-13T22:41:00.000+03:00'
'09b9812f2ed2c377a7427496c57205ed603b9001'|'Exclusive: ACS to launch cash-and-share bid for Abertis next week - sources'|'FRANKFURT/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) - Spanish builder ACS ( ACS.MC ) will launch next week a cash-and-share offer for toll road operator Abertis ( ABE.MC ), sources said on Thursday, complicating a rival bid by Italy<6C>s Atlantia ( ATL.MI ).The sources said the offer was expected to be roughly half in cash and the rest in newly issued shares in German construction group Hochtief ( HOTG.DE ), which is controlled by ACS.Both ACS and Hochtief declined to comment.Atlantia unveiled in May a 17 billion euro ($20 billion) cash-and-share offer for Abertis, prompting ACS to announce shortly afterwards it was considering a counterbid.Atlantia<69>s offer was formally launched on Tuesday, a day after being approved by Spain<69>s market regulator, and runs until Oct. 24. On Friday, EU authorities are also expected to give a green light to the deal, which would create the world<6C>s largest toll-road operator.Shares in Abertis closed little changed at 17.43 euros each, giving the group a market value of 15.89 billion euros.Earlier on Thursday, people close to the matter had said Hochtief<65>s supervisory board would discuss a possible offer at a meeting on Wednesday.To help finance a potential deal, Hochtief would launch a multi-billion euro capital increase, in which parent ACS would not take part and therefore see its 72 percent stake diluted, the people said.Under Spanish rules, any alternative suitors have until Thursday to present their own offer for Abertis.Shares in Hochtief closed down 0.3 percent at 139.55 euros each.Atlantia is offering 16.50 euros in cash or 0.697 Atlantia shares for each Abertis share. But the offer is conditional on shareholders owning between 10 percent and 23 percent of the Spanish company<6E>s capital accepting the share offer.Though the offer has been described as <20>friendly<6C> by Atlantia, shareholders in Abertis have not expressed a view on the proposal.The board of the Spanish company must publish its assessment of the bid within 10 days from its start.The top shareholder in Abertis is Criteria Caixa, the financial arm of a politically connected and powerful banking foundation that controls Catalonia<69>s largest lender Caixabank ( CABK.MC ).Additional reporting by Jose Elias Rodriguez in Madrid, writing by Valentina Za, editing by David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-abertis-m-a-acs-offer/exclusive-acs-to-launch-cash-and-share-bid-for-abertis-next-week-sources-idUSKBN1CH2W8'|'2017-10-13T04:04:00.000+03:00'
'0bdae3a922c04c777fd1750d1628cebae5da052b'|'Shell buys electric vehicle charging firm NewMotion'|'A guard stands outside Anglo-Dutch oil major Royal Dutch Shell''s first gas station in Mexico City, Mexico September 5, 2017. REUTERS/Ginnette Riquelme AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell ( RDSa.L ) has agreed to buy Dutch-based NewMotion, the owner of one of Europe<70>s largest electric vehicle charging networks, marking the company<6E>s first deal in electric mobility as demand for cleaner vehicles is expected to soar.Shell said NewMotion, which manages over 30,000 charging points for electric vehicles in Western Europe and offers access to thousands more, will operate in parallel to Shell<6C>s program of rolling out fast charging points at its forecourts.<2E>They<65>re complementary offers. One is fast charging on the go on the forecourt and the other is a slightly slower rate of charge at the workplace or at home. At this stage there are no plans to integrate the two,<2C> Shell<6C>s vice-president for new fuels, Matthew Tipper, told journalists.Shell is installing electric vehicle charging points at retail stations in Britain, the Netherlands, Norway and the Philippines.Demand for electric vehicles is expected to rise significantly in coming decades and Morgan Stanley estimates that 1-3 million public charging points could be needed in Western Europe by 2030. Currently, there are fewer than 100,000.Shell expects around a quarter of the world<6C>s car fleet to be electric by 2040.Oil companies are growing increasingly aware of the potential threat to parts of their downstream business from the electrification of transport.Rival BP ( BP.L ) said in August it was in talks with electric vehicle makers about partnering to offer charging stations at its retail sites.NewMotion, founded in 2009, has more than 100,000 registered charge card users in Europe and offers access to its own charging points as well as another 50,000 partner locations.In September, NewMotion signed a deal with Total ( TOTF.PA ) to allow the French oil company<6E>s customers access to its electric vehicle charging network.Shell and NewMotion declined to comment on the value of Thursday<61>s takeover.NewMotion had a net turnover of 12.9 million euros ($15.3 million) and made a net loss of 3.9 million euros in 2016, according to its financial statement filed with the Dutch chamber of commerce.Additional reporting by Bart Meijer; Editing by Dale Hudson and Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-newmotion-m-a-shell/shell-buys-electric-vehicle-charging-firm-newmotion-idINKBN1CH1QV'|'2017-10-12T10:23:00.000+03:00'
'cefa5689138ccdc1f9a43f181cccb41d9065df7a'|'FDA panel votes in favor of Spark''s blindness gene therapy'|'Oct 12 (Reuters) - Spark Therapeutics Inc<6E>s experimental gene therapy for a rare form of blindness improves vision and should be approved, advisers to the Food and Drug Administration concluded on Thursday, paving the way for the first U.S. gene therapy for an inherited disease.The panel voted unanimously in favor of the treatment, Luxturna, which is designed to treat inherited retinal diseases caused by defects in a gene known as RPE65, which tells cells to produce an enzyme critical to normal vision.The FDA is not obliged to follow the recommendations of its advisers but typically does. (Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/spark-blindness-fda/fda-panel-votes-in-favor-of-sparks-blindness-gene-therapy-idINL2N1MN1QK'|'2017-10-12T17:30:00.000+03:00'
'1ebd6e1b66d30120128df05aa3adceecb794df63'|'Amazon to hire 120,000 workers in the U.S. for holiday season'|'October 12, 2017 / 1:38 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago Amazon to keep U.S. holiday hiring flat at 120,000 workers Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: An Amazon pickup location is seen at the University of California in Berkeley, California, U.S. August 14, 2017. Reuters/Jeffrey Dastin/File Photo (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ) said it would hire 120,000 workers in the United States this holiday season, same as last year, joining a list of U.S. retailers cautious about their hiring plans amid an improving job market. Shoppers this year will shell out more on holiday gifting, according to industry surveys, buoyed by a labor market that is churning out more jobs every month, rising home prices and stock markets hovering at record highs. Unemployment rates fell to a more than 16-1/2-year low of 4.2 percent and annual wage growth accelerated to 2.9 percent in September, suggesting that retailers are wary of hiring more seasonal workers as it could boost labor costs. Top U.S. department store chain Macy<63>s Inc ( M.N ) announced plans to hire 3,000 fewer workers this year, in part due to store closures, while Kohl<68>s Corp said it would hire the same number of people it did as last year. But both retailers boosted seasonal hiring for their distribution centers and warehouses, as they seek to be better prepared for a spike in online order volumes during the holidays. Department store operator Target Corp ( TGT.N ), however, was an outlier, saying it plans to employ 43 percent more temporary workers this year than last year as its turnaround efforts take hold. Amazon on Thursday said the seasonal jobs will be spread out over more than 75 fulfillment centers countrywide to help pick, pack and ship holiday orders. It also said it expects to convert thousands of these positions to full-time roles. <20>Amazon hiring same number of workers as last year reflects their efficiency and not necessarily the cost of hiring workers,<2C> D.A. Davidson analyst Thomas Forte said. Overall, U.S. retailers are expected to hire 25,000 fewer workers this holiday season, the National Retail Federation said, citing strong staffing levels and companies such as Wal-Mart ( WMT.N ) offering existing workers more hours rather than adding temp workers. U.S. shoppers are expected to spend between $678.75 billion and $682 billion on holiday shopping this year, a growth of 3.6 percent to 4 percent over last year, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF). This forecast includes online shopping, which is expected to accelerate its pace of growth to 11-15 percent to about $140 billion. Reporting by Siddharth Cavale and Sonam Rai in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-employment/amazon-to-hire-120000-workers-in-the-u-s-for-holiday-season-idUSKBN1CH1ZM'|'2017-10-12T16:29:00.000+03:00'
'67f088119a09bd2209c578d16684910c62909db9'|'Australian hotel group Mantra rolls out the carpet for Accor''s $920 million bid'|'October 12, 2017 / 11:15 AM / Updated 31 minutes ago Australian hotel group Mantra rolls out the carpet for Accor''s $920 million bid Tom Westbrook , Shashwat Pradhan 4 Min Read A sign bearing the logo of the Mantra Group Ltd is displayed on the wall of a hotel in central Sydney, Australia, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/David Gray SYDNEY (Reuters) - Mantra Group Ltd ( MTR.AX ) on Thursday agreed to a A$1.18 billion (701.45 million pounds)buyout from French hotel company Accor SA ( ACCP.PA ), a deal which will create the biggest hotel group in Australia where tourism is rising sharply. AccorHotels has been on an acquisition spree that, in part, aims to support chief executive Sebastien Bazin<69>s goal of adding businesses that can complement its core hotel operations and offer more control of hotel distribution. This latest deal would give the combined group about 50,000 rooms - roughly 11 percent of Australia<69>s hotel market, according to IBISWorld statistics. Accor is offering A$3.96 per share, a 23 percent premium to Mantra<72>s last trade before the bid was initially announced on Monday. The offer price is more than double Mantra<72>s A$1.80 issue price when it listed in 2014. Bazin said in a statement that the takeover would <20>underpin our long-term growth in the Asia-Pacific region<6F>. Accor, the world<6C>s fifth largest hotel group with more than 540,000 rooms worldwide, has made expansion in the Asia Pacific region among its priorities, and it also wants to focus on building and acquiring luxury, lifestyle and resort hotels. Last year, it expanded by 80,000 rooms, around half through acquisition and half through organic growth. Shares in Sydney-listed Mantra rose 0.3 percent to around A$3.88, showing investor support for the deal but also some uncertainty about the possibility it may meet regulatory hurdles. <20>It<49>s within the bounds of fairness, given what the shares have done recently,<2C> said Noel Webster, a portfolio manager at BT Investment Management, Mantra<72>s largest shareholder. <20>Our first reaction would be not to block it.<2E> The merger needed clearance from the Foreign Investment Review Board and antitrust regulator the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Mantra said. The ACCC expected the companies to file a <20>detailed submission<6F> about the deal shortly, a spokesman said. The regulator previously said it would review any deal to decide whether to open a formal investigation. ACCOR<4F>S RESTRUCTURING PLANS The transaction would be the second-biggest in Australia<69>s hotel sector, and the largest buyout of an Australian entity by French interests, according to Thomson Reuters data. Deutsche Bank, which has a <20>buy<75> rating on Accor, said the deal fitted Accor<6F>s general strategy and increased the likelihood of Accor concluding a sale of its so-called <20>Booster<65> group of non-core assets, which is set to bring in around 4 billion euros. <20>Australia is one of the largest markets for Accor outside Europe,<2C> Deutsche said in a research note. <20>This deal would be in line with the Accor strategy to consolidate market share in markets where the company benefits or may benefit from scale.<2E> Gregoire Laverne, fund manager at Paris-based Roche Brune Asset Management, said the Mantra deal would strengthen Accor<6F>s presence in Australia. Laverne also said he had sold off Accor shares in March due to a <20>lack of visibility<74> over Accor<6F>s restructuring plans. Accor shares were down 0.6 percent in mid-session trading. The number of visitors to Australia surged 9 percent in the past financial year to hit a record 7.9 million while spending by international visitors climbed to $40.6 billion - also a record. Mantra Chairman Peter Bush said in a statement the company<6E>s board was recommending the deal to shareholders, having concluded that the <20>sale of the company at a significant premium to market is an attractive outcome<6D>. If approved, the merger could put pressure on Australia<69>s third-largest hotel company, Marriott Inter
'ba46ec74bfa3441976b97bf6dbe56ab6e794b0b1'|'IPhone 7 is outselling iPhone 8 - analyst'|'October 16, 2017 / 1:59 PM / a minute ago IPhone 7 is outselling iPhone 8: analyst Reuters Staff 2   A man looks at Apple''s new iPhone 8 (L) and his iPhone 7 at the Apple Store in Tokyo''s Omotesando shopping district, Japan, September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato (Reuters) - Apple Inc<6E>s older iPhone 7 models are outselling the recently launched iPhone 8 ahead of the early November debut of the premium iPhone X, broker KeyBanc Capital Markets said, citing carrier store surveys. Traditionally, new editions of the iPhone have sold quickly as fans queue for the latest upgrade and the surveys would add to signs that the iPhone 8 is not proving as popular as its predecessors. <20>Many respondents indicated that a meaningful portion of customers are buying iPhone 7 in lieu of the new iPhone 8, given the lack of significant enhancements in the new phone,<2C> KeyBanc analyst John Vinh wrote in a client note. Apple last month introduced the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, which resemble the iPhone 7 line but have a glass back for wireless charging. [nL2N1LT21G] While iPhone 8 starts from $699 in the United States, iPhone 7 is retailing from $549 after a price cut. <20>Feedback from stores indicate customers are waiting to purchase the iPhone X or to compare the iPhone X before buying the iPhone 8,<2C> wrote Vinh, who is rated four out of five stars by Thomson Reuters StarMine for his recommendation accuracy on the Apple stock. Apple<6C>s much-anticipated iPhone X, a glass and stainless steel device with an edge-to-edge display, will start shipping from Nov. 3. The 10th-anniversary iPhone is priced from $999 - Apple<6C>s most expensive mobile till date. Another reason for the slow uptick of the iPhone 8 could be the modest promotion by U.S. carriers, Vinh said. <20>While carriers continue to offer promotions for the new iPhone 8, they have been much more modest compared to the iPhone 7 launch last year,<2C> he wrote. KeyBanc did surveys in the United States and United Kingdom. Apple was not immediately available for comment. The company<6E>s shares were up 0.8 percent at $158.20 in early trading. Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphone-research/iphone-7-is-outselling-iphone-8-analyst-idUKKBN1CL1Z1'|'2017-10-16T16:50:00.000+03:00'
'5e15007e96349a67986ae87f1cb7b95d6e366d2b'|'Australia''s Mantra Group unanimously approves Accor offer'|'October 11, 2017 / 11:18 PM / in 8 hours Australian hotel group Mantra rolls out the carpet for Accor''s $920 million bid Tom Westbrook , Shashwat Pradhan 4 Min Read A sign bearing the logo of the Mantra Group Ltd is displayed on the wall of a hotel in central Sydney, Australia, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/David Gray SYDNEY (Reuters) - Mantra Group Ltd ( MTR.AX ) on Thursday agreed to a A$1.18 billion ($920 million) buyout from French hotel company Accor SA ( ACCP.PA ), a deal which will create the biggest hotel group in Australia where tourism is rising sharply. AccorHotels has been on an acquisition spree that, in part, aims to support chief executive Sebastien Bazin<69>s goal of adding businesses that can complement its core hotel operations and offer more control of hotel distribution. This latest deal would give the combined group about 50,000 rooms - roughly 11 percent of Australia<69>s hotel market, according to IBISWorld statistics. Accor is offering A$3.96 per share, a 23 percent premium to Mantra<72>s last trade before the bid was initially announced on Monday. The offer price is more than double Mantra<72>s A$1.80 issue price when it listed in 2014. Bazin said in a statement that the takeover would <20>underpin our long-term growth in the Asia-Pacific region<6F>. Accor, the world<6C>s fifth largest hotel group with more than 540,000 rooms worldwide, has made expansion in the Asia Pacific region among its priorities, and it also wants to focus on building and acquiring luxury, lifestyle and resort hotels. Last year, it expanded by 80,000 rooms, around half through acquisition and half through organic growth. Shares in Sydney-listed Mantra rose 0.3 percent to around A$3.88, showing investor support for the deal but also some uncertainty about the possibility it may meet regulatory hurdles. <20>It<49>s within the bounds of fairness, given what the shares have done recently,<2C> said Noel Webster, a portfolio manager at BT Investment Management, Mantra<72>s largest shareholder. <20>Our first reaction would be not to block it.<2E> The merger needed clearance from the Foreign Investment Review Board and antitrust regulator the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Mantra said. The ACCC expected the companies to file a <20>detailed submission<6F> about the deal shortly, a spokesman said. The regulator previously said it would review any deal to decide whether to open a formal investigation. ACCOR<4F>S RESTRUCTURING PLANS The transaction would be the second-biggest in Australia<69>s hotel sector, and the largest buyout of an Australian entity by French interests, according to Thomson Reuters data. Deutsche Bank, which has a <20>buy<75> rating on Accor, said the deal fitted Accor<6F>s general strategy and increased the likelihood of Accor concluding a sale of its so-called <20>Booster<65> group of non-core assets, which is set to bring in around 4 billion euros. <20>Australia is one of the largest markets for Accor outside Europe,<2C> Deutsche said in a research note. <20>This deal would be in line with the Accor strategy to consolidate market share in markets where the company benefits or may benefit from scale.<2E> Gregoire Laverne, fund manager at Paris-based Roche Brune Asset Management, said the Mantra deal would strengthen Accor<6F>s presence in Australia. Laverne also said he had sold off Accor shares in March due to a <20>lack of visibility<74> over Accor<6F>s restructuring plans. Accor shares were down 0.6 percent in mid-session trading. The number of visitors to Australia surged 9 percent in the past financial year to hit a record 7.9 million while spending by international visitors climbed to $40.6 billion - also a record. Mantra Chairman Peter Bush said in a statement the company<6E>s board was recommending the deal to shareholders, having concluded that the <20>sale of the company at a significant premium to market is an attractive outcome<6D>. If approved, the merger could put pressure on Australia<69>s third-largest hotel company, Marriott International ( MAR.O ). Marriott Australia and
'e770ef9177a45bd4cc8e834a8b9ec0770f513f8c'|'Kobe Steel''s cheating engulfs more divisions; shares resume slide'|'October 13, 2017 / 12:49 AM / Updated 12 minutes ago Kobe Steel''s cheating engulfs more divisions; shares resume slide Yuka Obayashi 6 Min Read Kobe Steel President and CEO Hiroya Kawasaki attends a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon TOKYO (Reuters) - Crisis-hit Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ) said on Friday its steel division has also falsely labelled products, the latest in a string of revelations confirming widespread cheating at the firm that has engulfed its global customers. The bombshell admissions by Japan<61>s third-largest steel maker sent its shares plummeting again, with the scale of the misconduct dealing a body blow to the nation<6F>s reputation as a high-quality manufacturing destination. Investors, worried about the financial impact and legal fallout, have wiped out about $1.8 billion off Kobe Steel<65>s market value this week after the firm said about 200 companies were affected by its cheating. On Friday, the company said it found data tampering in its steel wire products. Customers have said there are no problems with the safety or function of the products, the spokesman said. Chief Executive Hiroya Kawasaki will brief media at 0800 GMT, as the crisis ripples through supply chains across the world after the firm admitted at the weekend it had falsified data about the quality of aluminium and copper products used in cars, aircraft, space rockets and defence equipment. Boeing Co ( BA.N ), has some of the falsely certified products, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, but stressed that the world<6C>s biggest maker of passenger jets does not as yet consider the issue a safety problem. More than 30 non-Japanese customers including Daimler AG ( DAIGn.DE ) and Airbus SE ( AIR.PA ) had been affected by the firm<72>s data fabrication, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Friday. A Kobe Steel spokesman said the companies received its products but would not confirm they had any of the falsely certified components. Related Coverage Kobe Steel says also fabricated data in steel wire products Nuclear power plant parts are the latest to join the list of affected equipment as Fukushima nuclear operator Tokyo Electric Power ( 9501.T ) (Tepco) said on Friday it had taken delivery of pipes from Kobe Steel that were not checked properly. The pipes were delivered to its Fukushima Daini station, located near the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi plant, but have not been used, Tepco said, adding it was checking all its facilities. Faulty parts have also been found in Japan<61>s famous bullet trains that run at speeds as high as around 300 kilometres (180 miles) per hour and a space rocket that was launched in Japan earlier this week. One bullet train operator has already said it will seek compensation from Kobe Steel. The government has ordered Kobe Steel to address safety concerns within about two weeks and report on how the misconduct occurred in a month. Kobe Steel President and CEO Hiroya Kawasaki (R) and a company official bow during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon CREDIBILITY <20>ZERO<52> No safety issues have yet been identified in the unfolding imbroglio. Kobe Steel shares fell nearly 9 percent on Friday and have fallen more than 40 percent since the scandal broke. The steel maker faces a range of legal risks, including compensation sought by clients or their customers, penalties for violating unfair competition laws for false representation, shareholder lawsuits for the fall in the company<6E>s stock price and class lawsuits from overseas customers seeking punitive damages, a lawyer said (does this lawyer specialise in any area?) The logo of Kobe Steel is seen at the group''s Tokyo headquarters building in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato <20>It is hard to predict the extent of legal costs,<2C> said Motokazu Endo, a lawyer at Tokyo Kasumigaseki law office. <20>We cannot rule out the possibility that this will shake Kobe Steel to its foundatio
'277ae11b7d454b935b99c5401ba069718fa96e0a'|'PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 13'|'Oct 13 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.- The Trump administration intends to end billions of dollars in payments to insurers under the Affordable Care Act program, but President Donald Trump has told at least one lawmaker that the payments may continue if a bipartisan deal is reached on heath care. on.wsj.com/2ydy591- U.S. President Trump is expected to announce Friday he won''t certify that Iran is complying with the 2015 international nuclear pact and will take Tehran to task more broadly for practices ranging from missile tests to support of violent groups, U.S. officials said. on.wsj.com/2yfbyc0- Amazon.com suspended the head of its entertainment studio, Roy Price, in the wake of allegations of mismanagement and sexual harassment and criticism of his close business relationship with Harvey Weinstein. on.wsj.com/2ydUOSh- U.S. President Donald Trump is nearing a decision on whom to pick to lead the Federal Reserve, and met Wednesday with one of four candidates, Stanford University economist John Taylor. on.wsj.com/2yfcQnm- Goldman Sachs is acquiring Genesis Capital, a private Los Angeles firm that backs investors seeking to buy, renovate and quickly sell single-family homes. on.wsj.com/2yfkkXs- Embattled Equifax Inc has moved one of its web pages offline as the company looks into whether hackers tried to breach its systems this week. on.wsj.com/2yflVfI- U.S. air-safety regulators have issued an emergency order requiring airlines to inspect engines on roughly 120 Airbus A380 superjumbo jets world-wide, prompted by an engine that violently broke apart during a recent Air France flight. on.wsj.com/2yfl130- General Motors plans to close a Detroit factory through the end of the year and deepen production cuts to slow-selling cars the plant manufactures, idling some workers and letting go others in response to weak sales. on.wsj.com/2ye38l1- Samsung Electronics, continuing to see roaring demand for its components, is forecasting third-quarter profits will be the company''s highest ever. Chief Executive Kwon Oh-hyun, who has overseen the firm''s lucrative components business, also said he will resign. on.wsj.com/2ydK4Dl (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/press-digest-wsj/press-digest-wall-street-journal-oct-13-idINL4N1MO23Z'|'2017-10-13T02:19:00.000+03:00'
'bbbabdd29144800bf26360809d7754430ff0919e'|'Wall Street weekahead: Cyclical sector rally banks on global economic expansion'|'October 13, 2017 / 11:10 AM / Updated 7 hours ago Cyclical sector rally banks on global economic expansion Lewis Krauskopf 5 Min Read Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stock sectors that are particularly dependent on economic growth recently grabbed hold of the market<65>s rally and are poised to keep the reins should further signs of global expansion emerge. Such sectors, including energy, industrials and financials, beat the S&P 500<30>s 1.9 percent gain in September. Those sectors had previously lagged behind the benchmark S&P .SPX , which has climbed 14 percent this year while feasting on a steady diet of record highs. Instead, shares of technology and healthcare companies, whose profits are more impervious to economic down cycles, have led 2017<31>s rally. The question for equity investors is now: Was September just a catch-up period for the lagging, cyclical sectors, or can an economic lift support a sustained run? <20>If it<69>s just a mean-reversion trade, then it<69>s probably going to last another few weeks and then we<77>re back to the old winners,<2C> said Walter Todd, chief investment officer at Greenwood Capital Associates in Greenwood, South Carolina. <20>If it<69>s something more fundamental, it should be longer lasting than that.<2E> A test comes next week, as third-quarter corporate earnings season kicks into high gear. Reports from industrial conglomerates General Electric ( GE.N ) and Honeywell International ( HON.N ), railroads CSX Corp ( CSX.O ) and Kansas City Southern ( KSU.N ) and steel company Nucor Corp ( NUE.N ) stand to yield insight into the economy<6D>s health. September<65>s stock action, which also included outsized gains for small-cap stocks, had echoes of the immediate aftermath of President Donald Trump<6D>s election in November 2016. The same areas showed strength on hopes that a Republican-led federal government would push through an agenda, including tax cuts and deregulation, that juices economic growth. Those trades faded as Trump struggled to rack up any significant legislative wins. Now, investors say, September<65>s stock rally for those groups again stemmed at least in part from policy hopes, as Trump revved up his tax-reform push. <20>In many ways, we began to replicate the market performance following Trump<6D>s election,<2C> said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey. But an improving economic picture in the United States and globally lends confidence for the cyclical sector rally. The Citi economic surprise index for the United States .CESIUSD, a measure of economic data that can come in weaker or stronger than forecast, is around a five-month high, with the barometer trending higher since hitting multi-year lows this summer. This week, the International Monetary Fund upgraded its global economic growth forecast for 2017 by 0.1 percentage point to 3.6 percent, and to 3.7 percent for 2018, from its April and July outlook, driven by a pickup in trade, investment, and consumer confidence. The U.S. Commerce Department last month revised its estimate for second-quarter gross domestic product growth to 3.1 percent, up from 3 percent. <20>We<57>ve just had better data,<2C> said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at The Leuthold Group in Minneapolis, who also points to indicators such as firming industrial commodity and oil prices and a rise in the Baltic Exchange<67>s main sea freight index .BADI. <20>Those things are all kind of reflecting a realism of economic momentum, not just a one-off, Trump pie-in-the-sky expectation about policy change,<2C> Paulsen said. Bets seemed to build on the cyclical sectors in the first week of October, which saw flows into the largest sector exchange-traded funds for financials ( XLF.P ), industrials ( XLI.P ) and energy ( XLE.P ), and outflows for technology ( XLK.P ) and healthcare ( XLV.P ), according to Lipper data. <20>Ther
'e7018dbe4204f3571c939294ea26b3be539a07e0'|'U.S. proposes NAFTA sunset clause, raising tensions in talks'|'October 12, 2017 / 10:28 PM / Updated 6 hours ago U.S. hikes tensions in NAFTA talks with call for ''sunset clause'' David Lawder , Dave Graham 5 Min Read President Trump welcomes Canada''s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the South Lawn before their meeting about the NAFTA trade agreement at the White House. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst ARLINGTON, Va. (Reuters) - Washington has dramatically increased tensions in talks to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement by proposing that the lifespan of any new deal be limited to five years, people familiar with the negotiations said on Thursday. The proposal for a so-called sunset clause - just one of a series of U.S. initiatives that are opposed by NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico - only served to increase uncertainty about the future of the deal. Two sources with direct knowledge of the talks described the atmosphere as <20>horrible<6C> and highly charged. The U.S. side proposed the sunset clause late on Wednesday during the fourth of seven scheduled rounds to update the rules governing one of the world<6C>s biggest trade blocs, said two officials, who asked not to be identified because the talks are confidential. The Trump administration says the clause, causing NAFTA to expire every five years unless all three countries agree it should continue, is to ensure the pact stays up to date. But Mexico and Canada insist there is no point updating the pact with such a threat hanging over it, arguing the clause would stunt investment by sowing too much uncertainty about the future of the agreement. <20>It<49>s a source of total uncertainty,<2C> said one of the NAFTA government officials. Related Coverage Canada, Mexico vow to stick with NAFTA talks, Mexico works on Plan B Speaking in Mexico City, Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade said the government was working on plans to alter tariffs and identify substitute markets in case the NAFTA talks failed. His remarks and the tension around NAFTA helped push the peso down 1 percent against the U.S. dollar to a five-month low. U.S. President Donald Trump says NAFTA, originally signed in 1994, has been a disaster for the United States and has frequently threatened to scrap it unless major changes are made. Business and farm groups say abandoning the 23-year-old pact would wreak economic havoc, disrupting cross-border manufacturing supply chains and slapping high tariffs on agricultural products. Trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico has quadrupled under NAFTA, now topping $1.2 trillion a year. In addition to the sunset clause, the United States wants to boost how much North American content autos must contain to qualify for tax-free status and eliminate a dispute settlement mechanisms that Canada insists must stay. Some trade observers said it is difficult to see how negotiators could reach an agreement given U.S. demands that many see as non-starters. The head of Unifor, Canada<64>s largest private sector labour union, said it was clear the United States did not want a deal. <20>NAFTA is not going anywhere. This thing is going into the toilet,<2C> Jerry Dias told reporters on Thursday. Despite clear signs of impatience from Canada in particular, U.S. negotiators have yet to submit their proposal on rules of origin for the auto sector. That looked unlikely to come before Friday, another official familiar with the talks said. Trump on Wednesday repeated his warnings that he might terminate the pact and said he was open to doing a bilateral deal with either Canada or Mexico.. He was speaking alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who later said Canada was <20>braced<65> for Trump<6D>s unpredictability. Negotiators were also set to cover the difficult issue of government procurement on Thursday. Canada and Mexico want their companies to be able to bid on more U.S. federal and state government contracts, but this is at odds with Trump<6D>s <20>Buy American<61> agenda. U.S. negotiators have countered with a proposal that would effectively grant the other count
'11e2072392e8e6abc1119cfaa0d08a54c280835d'|'UK small businesses not changing plans in face of Brexit - survey'|'October 12, 2017 / 9:33 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago UK small businesses not changing plans in face of Brexit: survey Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Union Jack flags are seen in London, Britain, May 27, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay LONDON (Reuters) - Nearly three quarters of small businesses have not changed their plans because of last year<61>s Brexit vote, though most expect it to weaken sales over the coming year, a survey showed on Thursday. Morale among small businesses is weaker than a year ago, although stronger than shortly after Prime Minister Theresa May lost her majority in June, according to the survey from retailer Amazon UK and business promotion company Enterprise Nation. Businesses have been hit by higher raw materials costs due to the fall in the pound since last year<61>s Brexit, and the survey showed firms expect a continued squeeze on revenue over the next year. However, 73 percent of firms have not delayed business decisions as a result of the Brexit vote. Of those that have, hiring was the main area affected. Some 42 percent of small businesses surveyed wanted Britain to stay in the European Union, but most want to leave - albeit with little agreement on terms. Just over a quarter of firms wanted a Canadian-style trade deal with the EU, 13 percent want ties like Switzerland<6E>s, while smaller proportions wanted to be part of the European Economic Area trade bloc, a customs union or have no trade deal at all. Finance minister Philip Hammond told lawmakers on Wednesday that uncertainty about the shape of Britain<69>s future deal with the EU was harming investment and consumer confidence. The survey was based on replies from 1,031 senior decision makers at small and medium-sized businesses who were polled by market research company YouGov between Aug. 17 and Sept. 1. Reporting by David Milliken, editing by Andy Bruce 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-economy-sme/uk-small-businesses-not-changing-plans-in-face-of-brexit-survey-idUKKBN1CH171'|'2017-10-12T12:32:00.000+03:00'
'94432d6ff2553df9ff2fca4d30045cfd73c59d5f'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX opens lower as energy, Kirkland Lake weighs'|' 43 PM / Updated 14 minutes ago CANADA STOCKS-TSX opens lower as energy, Kirkland Lake weighs Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TORONTO, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index opened lower on Thursday as energy stocks, under pressure from falling oil prices, and Kirkland Lake Gold, led the declines. The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index fell 29.39 points, or 0.19 percent, to 15,771.01 shortly after the open. Six of the index<65>s 10 main groups fell into negative territory. (Reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks-open/canada-stocks-tsx-opens-lower-as-energy-kirkland-lake-weighs-idUSL2N1MN0Q7'|'2017-10-12T16:43:00.000+03:00'
'9f7ea21113825183e4d499cca0e7744d659eacaa'|'UPDATE 1-Australia''s Mantra Group accepts Accor''s $920 mln bid'|'* Mantra welcomes takeover at <20>significant premium<75>* Offer at 23 pct premium to last trade before announcement* Merged group to have about 11 pct of Australian market-IBISWorld* Merger needs foreign investment, competition approvals (Adds share movement, background, analyst comment and details about deal)By Shashwat PradhanOct 12 (Reuters) - Mantra Group Ltd on Thursday agreed to a A$1.18 billion ($920 million) takeover offer from France<63>s Accor SA, which would put together the two biggest hotel groups in Australia.The merger would give the combined group about 50,000 rooms or roughly 11 percent of Australia<69>s hotel market, according to IBISWorld statistics. The deal comes as the country<72>s hoteliers rush to build more rooms to meet growing demand.Accor offered A$3.96 per share, which was a 23 percent premium to Mantra<72>s last trade before the bid was announced on Monday.<2E>Mantra<72>s board has concluded that the sale of the company at a significant premium to market is an attractive outcome for shareholders,<2C> Mantra Chairman Peter Bush said in a statement.Under the deal, Mantra may pay out a special dividend of 23.5 cents per share to its shareholders, which would then be deducted from the A$3.96 that Accor has offered.Mantra<72>s board urged shareholders to approve the deal. Shares in Sydney-listed Mantra edged up 0.1 percent in early trade to A$3.88, indicating investors are not holding out for a higher bid and expect the deal to go ahead.<2E>We priced in the bid earlier this week, but now that the board has accepted it, there is still a bit more to squeeze out of this fruit,<2C> said Ben Le Brun, market analyst at OptionsXpress.The merger will need clearance from Australia<69>s Foreign Investment Review Board and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Mantra said.$1 = 1.2829 Australian dollars Reporting by Shashwat Pradhan in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Ambar Warrick; Reporting by Stephen Coates and Sonali Paul'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mantra-group-ma-accor/update-1-australias-mantra-group-accepts-accors-920-mln-bid-idINL4N1MM5Y0'|'2017-10-11T22:19:00.000+03:00'
'c642eb3d135a75ec0bb66fb249fd9286635b29e3'|'Trump picks Lockheed executive Rood for top Pentagon policy post'|'WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump plans to name John Rood, a senior executive at defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp and a 20-year veteran of various government roles, as undersecretary of defense for policy, the Pentagon<6F>s No. 3 job, the White House said on Wednesday.Rood, an Arizona native, previously worked for arms maker Raytheon Inc and was a State Department and National Security Council official in the administration of former President George W. Bush.His appointment to the position, which has been vacant since the start of the Trump administration, is subject to Senate confirmation.Rood served at the Defense Department as deputy assistant secretary of defense for forces policy and spent 11 years as an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency following missile programs in foreign countries.Rood was also a senior policy adviser to former Republican U.S. Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona.At Lockheed, he was senior vice president for Lockheed Martin International, where his responsibilities included managing marketing and government relationships.Army Secretary Mark Esper is a former lobbyist at Raytheon, as well as a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel.Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by Peter Cooney'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-pentagon-rood/trump-picks-lockheed-executive-rood-for-top-pentagon-policy-post-idUSKBN1CH05K'|'2017-10-12T04:30:00.000+03:00'
'5a413a84a131f41ee564c4dcba4f02b2b2820be2'|'GLOBAL MARKETS-Dollar suffers from Fed''s inflation headache'|'* Dollar wallows at 2-week low after Fed minutes* Asian stocks hit 10-year high in broad equity rally* Euro set for fifth straight day of gains* Italy bond yields fall after govt wins confidence vote* Graphic: World FX rates in 2017 tmsnrt.rs/2egbfVhBy John GeddieLONDON, Oct 12 (Reuters) - The dollar sagged on Thursday after the U.S. Federal Reserve showed a more guarded view towards inflation, but that did not derail a rally in stock markets that pushed Asian shares to their highest in a decade.Against a basket of six major currencies, the dollar wallowed at its lowest in more than two weeks after minutes from the Fed<65>s September meeting showed policymakers had a prolonged debate about the prospects of a pickup in inflation and the path of future interest rate rises if it did not.While this did not cool market expectations for a hike in December - which stand at around 80 percent, according to CME<4D>s FedWatch tool - it did make investors re-evaluate the long-term path for policy in the world<6C>s largest economy.<2E>We just had the minutes and saw there was a slightly more dovish take, so there is this ongoing debate about the lack of inflation momentum in the U.S.,<2C> said Benjamin Schroeder, senior rates strategist at ING.European government bond yields fell broadly in step with U.S. peers, a trend led by Italian yields which were near a three-week low after the government in Rome won support for electoral change likely to penalise the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement.U.S. and German 10-year yields fell 2 basis points to 2.32 percent and 0.44 percent, respectively, while Italian yields were down 4 basis points at 2.13 percent.Reports that a market-friendly candidate was being pushed as successor to Janet Yellen at the helm of the Fed helped major stock indexes on Wall Street close at yet another record high on Wednesday.Asia followed suit on Thursday with MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan up 0.7 percent and at its highest since December 2007.Japan<61>s Nikkei was up 0.4 percent after brushing 20,994.40, its highest since November 1996. South Korea<65>s KOSPI added 0.55 percent to mark a fresh record peak and Hong Kong<6E>s Hang Seng scaled a decade-high.MSCI<43>s broadest index of world stocks also reached record highs as it has done for six of the last eight trading days .<2E>Fundamentally, the global economy is in decent shape. Corporate sentiment is also sound as evidenced by strong data like the Chinese PMI, U.S. ISM and Japanese tankan. All these factors are leading to the rise in global stocks,<2C> said Masahiro Ichikawa, senior strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management in Tokyo.<2E>Financial markets will remain wary of geopolitical headlines. But barring actual military conflicts, negative responses by equities are expected to be short-lived.<2E>European stocks were less bouyant, with financial shares being the biggest burden and Just Eat the top performer after its merger with Hungryhouse got provisional clearance.For Reuters Live Markets blog on European and UK stock markets see reuters://realtime/verb=Open/url=http://emea1.apps.cp.extranet.thomsonreuters.biz/cms/?pageId=livemarketsDOLLAR WEAK Elsewhere in currencies, the euro nudged to its highest since Sept. 25 at $1.188 and was on track for its fifth straight day of gains.Political developments in Italy and relief as the wealthy region of Catalonia stopped short of a formal declaration of independence supported the common currency, analysts said.The yen was up 0.2 percent against the dollar, finding support after a media survey showed that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe<62>s ruling party could come close to keeping its two-thirds <20>super<65> majority in an Oct. 22 lower house election.The Mexican peso was up slightly at 18.695 pesos per dollar . That added gains of 0.7 percent overnight as it pulled away from a five-month low, although the currency was seen coming under renewed pressure if the ongoing North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) talks run
'669041c347ad3a7167f7a6d9dfdd9545301589f0'|'MIDEAST STOCKS-Saudi rebounds on insurers, QNB rises after earnings'|'* Most insurers rise after plunge on Wednesday* Qatar National Bank profit at high end of estimates* Dubai<61>s Marka slides after announcing recovery plan* National Bank of Ras al Khaimah surges after securing loan* Egypt<70>s Arab Cotton Ginning buoyed by dividendBy Andrew TorchiaDUBAI, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia<69>s stock market rebounded on Thursday as insurance stocks regained some strength, while Qatar<61>s biggest bank edged up after it reported solid earnings.The main Saudi index, which had sunk 2.2 percent on Wednesday, rose 1.4 percent to 6,988 points after testing demand at lower levels. However, it remained below the 200-day average, now at 7,041 points, which it fell through this week - a negative technical signal.Twenty-three of the 33 listed insurers rose. All but one had dropped on Wednesday because of fears of an industry shakeout caused by a regulatory crackdown.Al Rajhi Bank, the most heavily traded stock, gained 0.8 percent. Bank Aljazira, which had plunged for two days after reviving a plan for a big rights issue, rebounded 1.1 percent.Qatar<61>s index edged up 0.1 percent as Qatar National Bank gained 0.6 percent. It posted a net profit of 3.60 billion riyals ($989 million) for the three months to Sept. 30, up 5.6 percent from a year ago. EFG Hermes had forecast 3.46 billion riyals and SICO Bahrain, 3.51 billion.The earnings partly eased concern about the impact on banks of sanctions imposed on Qatar by other Arab states since June, although smaller banks may not have coped so well with the withdrawal of deposits held by Gulf banks.Non-Gulf foreign investors were net buyers of Qatari shares by a substantial margin on Thursday, as they have been for several days, bourse data showed. Some stocks have been beaten down so far by worries about the sanctions that dividend yields look attractive.The Dubai index gained 0.6 percent, although loss-making retail and restaurant investment firm Marka fell 2.9 percent after saying shareholders had approved a plan to continue operations. The company will exit underperforming fashion and sports segments and restructure debt.Abu Dhabi rose 0.2 percent as National Bank of Ras al Khaimah surged 4.7 percent after obtaining a $350 million syndicated loan, increased from $250 million, for general funding purposes.Egypt<70>s index climbed 0.6 percent as Arab Cotton Ginning surged 3.3 percent after announcing a dividend of 0.2 Egyptian pounds per share for holders on Oct. 22.HIGHLIGHTS SAUDI ARABIA * The index rose 1.4 percent to 6,988 points.DUBAI * The index rose 0.6 percent to 3,660 points.ABU DHABI * The index gained 0.2 percent to 4,526 points.QATAR * The index edged up 0.1 percent to 8,342 points.EGYPT * The index climbed 0.6 percent to 13,894 points.KUWAIT * The index edged up 0.04 percent to 6,629 points.BAHRAIN * The index was flat at 1,275 points.OMAN * The index edged up 0.1 percent to 5,128 points. (Reporting by Andrew Torchia, editing by Larry King)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/mideast-stocks/mideast-stocks-saudi-rebounds-on-insurers-qnb-rises-after-earnings-idUSL8N1MN24N'|'2017-10-12T17:07:00.000+03:00'
'b11a2fbdb51d4f60f4c47b5b1998b3450a968627'|'Peltz''s Procter & Gamble defeat could be more humbling than harmful'|'Reuters TV United States October 10, 2017 / 11:52 PM / in 3 minutes Peltz''s Procter & Gamble defeat could be more humbling than harmful Svea Herbst-Bayliss 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Nelson Peltz founding partner of Trian Fund Management LP. speak at the WSJD Live conference in Laguna Beach, California October 25, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo (Reuters) - Nelson Peltz put his activist hedge fund credentials on the line to win a board seat at Procter & Gamble Co ( PG.N ), only to be narrowly defeated, according to a preliminary shareholder vote count. Yet he stands to lose more face than he does money. Peltz, CEO of Trian Fund Management, was also rebuffed in a battle for board seats, or proxy contest, at DuPont two years ago. But he went on to attract more money from investors and have a key ally installed as the chemical maker<65>s new chief executive. Trian said on Tuesday that the shareholder vote at P&G, the biggest company to ever face a proxy contest, was too close to call, and that it would wait for the result to be certified by an independent inspector. P&G says Peltz has lost. But if Peltz<74>s defeat is confirmed, there is little evidence it would cost him with his investors, industry analysts and academics said. <20>Overall, Nelson Peltz has a good record and he does work hard to improve companies,<2C> said University of Michigan professor Erik Gordon. <20>He will have no trouble finding companies where improvements need to be made and where he<68>ll be let in the door.<2E> Trian<61>s assets under management are at an all-time high of $14 billion, the result of long-standing confidence by pension funds and endowments in Trian<61>s 12-year investment history. There was no sign on Tuesday of significant redemptions by Trian investors. Indeed, Trian got a boost this week from another big U.S. conglomerate, when General Electric Co ( GE.N ) offered a board seat to Trian chief investment officer Ed Garden, without any proxy contest. To be sure, Trian was eager for a win at P&G. Trian<61>s 2.1 percent return through the end of September trails the average activist hedge fund<6E>s 4.8 percent gain this year. And it lags last year<61>s 11 percent return. Trian prefers to work behind the scenes and has only waged three proxy contests since its founding in 2005. It now looks to have lost two of them, and joins a small club of activist hedge funds that have experienced such defeat. They include Bill Ackman<61>s Pershing Square Capital Management, Barry Rosenstein<69>s Jana Partners and Jeff Smith<74>s Starboard Value. In the investment community, 75-year old Peltz, who speaks in calm tones and steers clear of the name-calling often heard in other contests, was thought to be the only activist who could take on P&G and its entrenched management. However, the 180-year-old company, which makes Tide detergent, Crest toothpaste and Gillette razors, always presented a challenging target for Peltz because an unusually high 40 percent of P&G<>s stock is held by individual investors. They include P&G employees and retirees, who are traditionally loyal to the company<6E>s management. <20>Even if they win, which I<>m not sure they did, think of what a pyrrhic victory it is,<2C> Peltz told CNBC on Tuesday. <20>I mean everybody but the current employees voted for us up and down the line.<2E> P&G cannot afford to ignore Peltz even if victory has eluded him on this vote, said Charles Elson, a professor of corporate governance at the University of Delaware. <20>In many ways, this could echo what happened at DuPont, where within the year, the CEO was out and the things Trian called for were happening,<2C> he said. On Tuesday P&G<>s share price fell, closing down 0.5 percent, as investors worried whether the company would let up on its promises to pursue operational reforms. P&G has said that management is already working on several operational changes, and that Peltz does not have the relevant experience to be helpful in the process. Investor pressure could still deliver change, industry 
'5d42fc7afb5e7a62421dd3d08eee043c8f41730d'|'Aldi to accept old <20>1 coin for two weeks after deadline'|'The discount supermarket chain Aldi is to accept the old <20>1 coins in its UK stores for two weeks after they cease to be legal tender.Earlier this week the UK<55>s largest retailer, Tesco, said it would allow its shoppers to pay with the round pound coins at tills and self-service machines for an extra week in apparent defiance of the 15 October deadline imposed by the Royal Mint. It follows a similar announcement by discount retailer Poundland, which will accept round pounds until 31 October. About 500m round pounds are believed to still be in circulation.Aldi told the Guardian: <20>We<57>ve been ready to accept the new <20>1 coins since they first came into circulation in March. To make the transition as easy as possible for our customers, we will continue to accept the old <20>1 coins as payment across our stores until 31 October.<2E>The old coin remains legal tender until midnight on Sunday After that time, businesses can stop accepting it and will not automatically be giving it as change for notes. The Royal Mint and the Treasury were keen for retailers to stick to the deadline with a clean break from the round pound to avoid potential chaos being created by some shops continuing to accept them.The new 12-sided <20>1 coin, which resembles the old threepenny bit, entered circulation in March and boasts new high-tech security features to thwart counterfeiters. The production of the new coins followed concerns about round pounds being vulnerable to sophisticated counterfeiters. About one in 30 old-style pound coins in people<6C>s change in recent years have been fake.'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/oct/11/aldi-to-accept-old-1-pound-coin-for-two-weeks-after-deadline'|'2017-10-11T23:39:00.000+03:00'
'f4174412ca03eb3feabd66609debf34c0b339fee'|'CEE MARKETS-Bonds extend gains, Warsaw and Budapest stock test highs'|'* Zloty eases a touch on dollar rebound * Budapest stocks touch record high, Warsaw almost 4-year high * Hungarian bonds auction seen drawing strong demand By Sandor Peto and Marcin Goclowski BUDAPEST/WARSAW, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Central European government bonds extended their gains on Thursday before an auction in Budapest which is expected to draw strong demand. A weakening of the dollar fuelled capital flows into the region''s liquid currencies and government bonds this week. The U.S. currency regained some ground on Thursday, causing a minor retreat of the zloty against the euro in morning trade, while the forint stayed steady. But its weakness still fuels appetite for assets in emerging markets, including Central Europe. A correction in the euro/zloty was timely after the past days'' gains, but it may appreciate again after the publication of the breakdown of September Polish inflation data, due at 1200 GMT, BZ WBK analysts said in a note. "The data should influence investors'' expectations about the path of interest rates in Poland, bringing the date of the first (Polish central bank interest) rate hike closer," they said. Since the preliminary figures showed a rise in annual inflation two weeks ago, Polish forward rate agreements have surged, pricing in a start of hikes within 12 months. Most analysts have projected a later rise. The expectations, however, are not cutting demand for high-yielding Polish bonds which are also supported by capital flowing out of the dollar. In Hungary, traders expected robust demand for bonds which the government auctions on Thursday. Hungarian and Polish government bond yields dropped further by 2-4 basis points. "I expect strong demand, and the papers will be probably sold by a few basis points below the current market levels," one Budapest-based fixed income trader said. Budapest''s stock index tested record highs in early trade and Polish shares set their highest level since late 2013, joining a global trend, before some retreat. CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1048 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.881 25.879 -0.01% 4.35% 0 5 Hungary 309.15 309.33 +0.06 -0.11% forint 00 50 % Polish zloty 4.2699 4.2666 -0.08% 3.14% Romanian leu 4.5900 4.5852 -0.10% -1.20% Croatian 7.5070 7.5105 +0.05 0.64% kuna % Serbian 119.30 119.46 +0.13 3.39% dinar 00 00 % Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1054.8 1054.3 +0.04 +14.4 1 7 % 5% Budapest 38526. 38453. +0.19 +20.3 68 12 % 8% Warsaw 2548.5 2551.7 -0.13% +30.8 3 8 3% Bucharest 8010.8 8004.8 +0.07 +13.0 3 4 % 7% Ljubljana 812.45 814.90 -0.30% +13.2 2% Zagreb 1854.9 1849.3 +0.30 -7.01% 7 8 % Belgrade 725.73 726.96 -0.17% +1.17 % Sofia 672.06 672.80 -0.11% +14.6 0% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs change Bund in Czech spread Republic 2-year 0.057 0 +076b +1bps ps 5-year 0.486 0.004 +076b +2bps ps 10-year 1.357 -0.007 +091b +1bps ps Poland 2-year 1.714 0 +241b +1bps ps 5-year 2.693 -0.026 +296b -1bps ps 10-year 3.387 -0.028 +294b -1bps ps FORWARD RATE AGREEMENT 3x6 6x9 9x12 3M interb ank Czech Rep <PR 0.75 0.89 1 0 IBOR=> Hungary <BU 0.07 0.105 0.16 0.03 BOR=> Poland <WI 1.79 1.83 1.89 1.73 BOR=> Note: FRA are for ask Quote: s prices'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/easteurope-markets/cee-markets-bonds-extend-gains-warsaw-and-budapest-stock-test-highs-idINL8N1MN1ZW'|'2017-10-12T07:20:00.000+03:00'
'5dfba52439e412746c02992dfe1e007738e660d0'|'MOVES-Huchro heads to Deutsche for credit trading'|'October 13, 2017 / 9:08 AM / in 11 minutes MOVES-Huchro heads to Deutsche for credit trading Christopher Spink 2 Min Read LONDON, Oct 13 (IFR) - Paul Huchro has been made global head of investment grade credit trading at Deutsche Bank. He was previously head of US flow credit trading at Goldman Sachs from 2010 to 2016. He will also head up high yield credit trading in the US and Europe. Goldman has suffered from weaker trading across its fixed income, currencies and commodities division this year. Huchro worked at the US bank for 30 years and was in charge of investment grade trading for 10 years from 1998 and high yield after 2008. He will start at Deutsche on October 16. Deutsche said it had made 21 new hires in its investment grade trading division in Europe and 19 in the United States over the last 18 months. The bank suffered a weak period a year ago on concerns it might have to pay a US$14bn fine for US mortgage-backed securities offences. <20>We intend to keep investing in this area,<2C> said Shawn Faurot, head of North American credit trading. His counterpart in Europe, Gavin Colquhoun, said he expected client activity to increase in the coming months <20>as monetary stimulus is withdrawn [by central banks]<5D>. Deutsche said it has also hired Tian Zeng as a senior credit index trader from Citadel Securities, where he built the firm<72>s credit index trading team. (Reporting by Christopher Spink) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/moves-huchro-heads-to-deutsche-for-credi/moves-huchro-heads-to-deutsche-for-credit-trading-idUSL8N1MO1OK'|'2017-10-13T12:06:00.000+03:00'
'32eb77e46deb70d6e6a45701111429a7ffc16abf'|'Crafty app developers are ripping off big-name brands'|'THE new app for an upmarket British department store certainly looks the part. Released on Google Play, a shop for Android software, on September 5th, it has the right logo, the correct vibrant colour and offers fashionable clothes and accessories. But the app is not authorised by the brand, is littered with pop-up ads and is painfully slow (furious users gave it one-star ratings). Its developer, Style Apps, has also launched apps for other clothing brands that are household names in America.Such fake apps are designed by crafty developers to trick inattentive users. Google and Apple police their app stores but many impostors get through. In third-party app stores, unofficial platforms run by someone other than the two tech giants, the problem is even worse. Users are tricked in two ways. Some apps fill a gap in the market. Selfridges, a chain of British fashion stores, for instance, has a legitimate app for Apple devices but not for Android ones. RadioShack, an American electronics retailer that filed for bankruptcy in February 2015, has a website but not an official app. Three imitation apps have by now sprouted under the shop<6F>s name. 13 Other developers simply copy an existing app and hope users will fail to notice. The Economist found that half of the 50 top-selling apps in Google Play had fakes. These included ones with tweaked names (<28>MyGoogleTranslate<74> rather than <20>Google Translate<74>) and a bogus Netflix app that uses a weird Halloween-themed font for the logo. Google says it is reviewing these apps and will take action where necessary.Fake apps are often stuffed with malicious code. Academics from a research group, SerVal, at the University of Luxembourg, estimate that around a fifth of all Android app-based malware is hidden in fake apps. The malware facilitates various money-making schemes. The most egregious are designed to steal the passwords that unlock users<72> bank accounts. But it is more common for scams to profit from ordinary advertising, particularly on Android devices, says Eliran Sapir of Apptopia, a tech firm. Adverts in the smartphone<6E>s web browser get quietly replaced by similar ones chosen by the fake-app developer.Another money-spinner is to mine cryptocurrencies. Analysts at Trend Micro, a cybersecurity firm, in 2014 discovered that copies of Football Manager Handheld, a smartphone game, and TuneIn Radio, an audio app, contained malicious software that mined cryptocurrencies, the proceeds of which were probably funneled to the developers. This still goes on. It does not harm users directly, but researchers warn that such <20>vampire<72> apps drain phone batteries.Developers can make much more money with fake apps than through legitimate means, reckons Mr Sapir. On dark-web forums, hackers and small-time digital advertisers offer developers around $1 per user per year to inject their apps with malicious code. In theory, a single app with 15,000 users (about a tenth of all apps have this many) could bring in roughly $1,250 per month. Most legitimate apps make about $1,000 per month, according to a survey from InMobi, a mobile-advertising company.Fake-app developers are also quick to catch onto the latest trends. When Pok<6F>mon Go, a smartphone app based on a video game, became popular in July 2016, developers released a walk-through guide to the game which flooded smartphones with advertising. The guide was downloaded over 500,000 times. But the pickings are richest in retail, and especially in the autumn when fake-app developers are gearing up for spending binges during sales around Thanksgiving and Christmas, says Chris Mason of Branding Brand, a tech firm. Shoppers, beware. "Mind the app"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/rss/business_rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/news/business/21730242-legitimate-app-developers-they-make-money-selling-adverts-crafty-app-developers-are?fsrc=rss%7Cbus'|'2017-10-12T22:50:00.000+03:00'
'614fccb10bc7554fa6fae1866a5a914827b58f90'|'UK big six energy firms lost record number of customers in September <20> data'|'October 13, 2017 / 10:33 AM / in 6 hours UK big six energy firms lost record number of customers in September <20> data Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A British Gas sign is seen at its offices in Staines in southern England, July 31, 2014. REUTERS/Toby Melville LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s big six energy firms lost a record number of customers in September to smaller challengers, data from industry group Energy UK showed. A total of 163,274 customers switched from the Big Six, the data published this week showed, ramping up pressure on energy companies already facing the introduction of a price cap on their most common tariffs. Britain<69>s energy market is dominated by the so-called big six including Centrica<63>s ,( CNA.L ) British Gas, SSE ( SSE ), Iberdrola<6C>s ( IBE.MC ) Scottish Power, Innogy<67>s npower ( IGY.DE ), E.ON ( EONGn.DE ) and EDF Energy ( EDF.PA ), which account for about 85 percent of the retail electricity market. The data did not detail which companies lost the most customers. Britain<69>s biggest supplier, British Gas increased prices by 12.5 percent for millions of its customers in the middle of September. <20>Competition between the independents and the Big Six is likely to remain fierce, even with the... price cap, as the smaller suppliers are likely to continue to offer the cheapest deals in the market,<2C> analysts at Jefferies said in a research note on Friday. Reporting By Susanna Twidale; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-energy-customers/uk-big-six-energy-firms-lost-record-number-of-customers-in-september-data-idUKKBN1CI199'|'2017-10-13T13:32:00.000+03:00'
'862c2f429153bcf1cfb1288c578fcc05c2933ac0'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Rand jumps on Zuma court ruling; MSCI index at 6-year high'|'October 13, 2017 / 9:18 AM / a minute ago EMERGING MARKETS-Rand jumps on Zuma court ruling; MSCI index at 6-year high Sujata Rao 5 Min Read LONDON, Oct 13 (Reuters) - The South African rand jumped to two-week highs on Friday after a court ruling that upheld reinstating corruption charges against unpopular President Jacob Zuma, while the rally on broader emerging markets continued. MSCI<43>s emerging equity index inched to new six-year highs on back of encouraging Chinese trade data, record high world shares and a further fall in U.S. yields, while a flat dollar encouraged emerging currencies higher on the day. JPMorgan<61>s ELMI Plus currency index closed Thursday at a three-week high and local debt yields slipped 3 basis points on average over the week, to hover just above the 6 percent mark. The South African rand firmed almost 1 percent, thanks to a Supreme Court decision to uphold a High Court ruling that reinstated graft charges against Zuma. Bond yields slipped to a one-week low. <20>I<EFBFBD>m not surprised the market has taken it positively, but the issue is really who is going to take over from (Zuma) at the end of the year. Whether or not he gets his just desserts is a side issue,<2C> said Paul Fage, senior emerging markets strategist at TD Securities. He was referring to the ruling African National Congress<73>s December conference at which Zuma will be replaced. The emerging markets rally is down to this week<65>s dollar retreat - the greenback has lost 0.8 percent this week against a basket of currencies - but the party could be scuppered if data due later in the day reveals a pick-up in U.S. inflation. On the other hand, data earlier on Friday showed strong growth in Chinese exports and imports - crucial ahead of next week<65>s 19th Communist Party Congress. That helped the yuan to three-week highs, putting it on track for a weekly 1 percent gain versus the dollar. That in turn lifted other Asian currencies, especially after Singaporean data reinforced the picture of robust growth across the developing world Morgan Stanley analysts told clients they remained bullish on emerging markets, adding: <20>We remain of the view that EM currencies will be resilient in the face of gradual moves higher in U.S. yields, considering the strong growth momentum and valuation support many emerging markets.<2E> One of the exceptions to this week<65>s emerging market rally is Turkey, which is involved in a visa dispute with the United States. The lira rose slightly on the day but is set for a fifth week of losses. Although the visa row seems to be ebbing, Morgan Stanley wrote: <20>We stick with our <20>dislike<6B> stance on lira<72>. Investors are also closely watching Mexican markets, which could suffer hefty losses should talks on renegotiating the NAFTA free-trade deal fail. Sources with knowledge of the talks called the atmosphere <20>horrible<6C>, with Mexico saying it is already working on a Plan B. The peso is trading near five-month lows and Mexican stocks have fallen 0.7 percent on the week so far For GRAPHIC on emerging market FX performance 2017, see tmsnrt.rs/2e7eoml For GRAPHIC on MSCI emerging index performance 2017, see tmsnrt.rs/2dZbdP5 For CENTRAL EUROPE market report, see For TURKISH market report, see For RUSSIAN market report, see) Emerging Markets Prices from Reuters Equities Latest Net Chg % Chg % Chg on year Morgan Stanley Emrg Mkt Indx 1123.97 +2.35 +0.21 +30.35 Czech Rep 1053.05 -1.83 -0.17 +14.26 Poland 2533.38 -4.31 -0.17 +30.06 Hungary 38614.23 -157.85 -0.41 +20.66 Romania 8030.90 +33.68 +0.42 +13.35 Greece 758.19 +6.84 +0.91 +17.80 Russia 1147.72 +3.76 +0.33 -0.40 South Africa 51331.89 -20.93 -0.04 +16.92 Turkey 05749.99 -182.26 -0.17 +35.34 China 3391.54 +5.44 +0.16 +9.28 India 32456.60 +274.38 +0.85 +21.90 Currencies Latest Prev Local Local close currency currency'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/emerging-markets/emerging-markets-rand-jumps-on-zuma-court-ruling-msci-i
'e250772d2c35e1ad8c6e5c444166352cb10c980f'|'Liam Fox ridiculed for being only member of new UK board of trade - Business'|'A new board of trade unveiled by the government has been met with derision after it was revealed that the international trade secretary, Liam Fox , is the only official member.Announcing the board on Thursday, the Department for International Trade said it would <20>ensure the benefits of free trade are spread throughout the UK<55>, naming more than a dozen advisers to the body including former ministers and business leaders.However, the DIT announcement said Fox was the only official member of the board and would be its chair. <20>Membership of the board of trade is restricted to privy councillors,<2C> the department said. <20>The only member is: (i) secretary of state for Department of International Trade and president of the board of trade (chair).<2E>Advisers to the board include Collette Roche, the chief of staff at Manchester airport, the former Labour minister Patricia Hewitt, who was president of the board of trade under Tony Blair, and Ian Curle, the chief executive of the Edrington Group, a Scottish spirits company that produces the whisky brand The Famous Grouse. Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman, said the board was a <20>job-creation scheme<6D> for Fox.<2E>The secretary of state, no doubt embarrassed by his lack of a real role in government beyond accumulating millions of air miles, has had to invent a grandiose title for himself,<2C> he said. <20>It will convince nobody. The signing of the first trade deals are years away, whereas the damage to our existing largest trade deal, with the EU, is happening now.<2E>James McGrory, the executive director of the pro-Europe Open Britain campaign, said: <20>I hope that at the inaugural meeting of the new board of trade, Liam Fox managed to have positive and constructive discussions with Liam Fox, after hearing expert analysis by Dr Liam Fox on the impact of Brexit. <20>Britain<69>s trade policy is just the sound of one hand clapping. It would be funny in another context, but not when the government is justifying its decision to damage our trade by leaving the customs union on a mirage of future trade deals.A DIT spokesman said it was a <20>technicality<74> that Fox was the sole member of the board, because of a constitutional convention that full membership is only for privy counsellors. <20>That is why we are drawing on prominent figures from business and politics across the country and not just restricting to privy counsellors, as happened in the past,<2C> he said.A departmental source said advisers would in effect be members and appointed for a year each, with the option to extend for a further two years.In a statement announcing the board at its first meeting at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, Fox said advisers would act as <20>the <20>eyes and ears<72> of the modern business community<74>.The board will meet four times a year, which he said would guarantee that all parts of the UK have an opportunity to participate. The cabinet<65>s Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland secretaries are also listed as advisers to the board.'|'theguardian.com'|'http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/business/uk-edition/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/12/liam-fox-only-official-member-new-uk-board-of-trade'|'2017-10-12T03:00:00.000+03:00'
'da882ec8753888d84be21dc0e71b3ee041323272'|'Asia shares at 10-year high ahead of U.S. data, China Congress'|'October 13, 2017 / 1:23 AM / in 9 minutes U.S. dollar, Treasury yields slip on U.S. inflation data, stocks up Sinead Carew 3   A U.S. Dollar note is seen in this June 22, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar fell and was on course for its worst week in more than a month, while Treasury yields fell after underlying U.S. inflation data offset higher gasoline prices and strong retail sales in the wake of disruptions caused by hurricanes. Stocks on major world stocks however hit their fourth record in a row, with Wall Street moving higher as some investors bet that the inflation data could curb future Federal Reserve<76>s rate rises. European shares also rose to their highest level in nearly four months, helped by some well-received corporate earnings updates. U.S. consumer prices recorded their biggest increase in eight months in September as gasoline prices soared in the wake of hurricane-related production disruptions at oil refineries in the Gulf Coast area, but underlying inflation remained muted. U.S. retail sales recorded their biggest increase in 2-1/2 years in September likely as reconstruction and clean-up efforts in areas devastated by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma boosted demand for building materials and motor vehicles. <20>Its a favorable environment for risk taking. Economic and earnings growth with slow inflation means rates stay low and the dollar trends lower and risk taking is rewarded,<2C> said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 54.25 points, or 0.24 percent, to 22,895.26, the S&P 500 gained 6.23 points, or 0.24 percent, to 2,557.16 and the Nasdaq Composite added 23.17 points, or 0.35 percent, to 6,614.68. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index rose 0.29 percent and MSCI<43>s gauge of stocks across the globe gained 0.37 percent. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Earlier in Asia, MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan hit a roughly 10-year high. <20>With a December rate hike almost fully priced in by now, however, investors are starting to focus on the Fed<65>s still cautious forward guidance and hence the limited scope for a further increase of the dollar<61>s rate advantage,<2C> Credit Agricole strategists said in a note. The U.S. dollar index fell 0.14 percent, with the euro up 0.16 percent to $1.1848. [L8N1MO3VA] European Central Bank policymakers broadly agreed to extend asset purchases at a lower volume at their October policy meeting with views converging on a nine-month extension, sources at the central bank told Reuters. Digital currency Bitcoin was up 5.9 percent $5,767.33 after the previous session<6F>s 12.9 percent gain pushed it above $5,000 for the first time. Benchmark 10-year notes last rose 7/32 in price to yield 2.2998 percent, from 2.323 percent late on Thursday. The 30-year bond last rose 9/32 in price to yield 2.8388 percent, from 2.853 percent late on Thursday. Oil prices firmed on Friday as bullish news from strong Chinese oil imports to turmoil in the Middle East put Brent on track for a nearly 3 percent weekly gain. U.S. crude rose 1.11 percent to $51.16 per barrel and Brent was last at $56.79, up 0.96 percent on the day. Additional reporting by Karen Brettell and Saqib Iqbal Ahmed in New York, Ritvik Carvalho and Helen Reid in London and Asia markets team; Editing by Keith Weir and Clive McKeef 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asia-shares-firm-to-near-ten-year-high-ahead-of-u-s-data-china-congress-idUKKBN1CI033'|'2017-10-13T06:42:00.000+03:00'
'6db5326f9e94cd0b5e397a8732b15fe6e47f5b20'|'U.S. Justice Department official should not review AT&T Time Warner deal: senator'|'October 12, 2017 / 8:59 PM / Updated 7 hours ago U.S. Justice Dept official should not review AT&T/Time Warner deal: senator Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaks during an event to introduce the "Medicare for All Act of 2017" on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 13, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on Thursday urged the Justice Department<6E>s top antitrust official to recuse himself from an ongoing review of AT&T Inc<6E>s planned $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc. She urged Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Makan Delrahim, who was confirmed late last month, not to take part in the review because of his previous statement that the merger did not pose a <20>major antitrust problem.<2E> <20>Your refusal to recuse yourself will undermine public confidence in the division<6F>s ability to reach an unbiased final decision in the matter,<2C> Warren wrote in the letter. Warren<65>s concern over the deal is based on the fact that AT&T already owns DirecTV, which means that the proposed transaction would combine the biggest pay TV provider with a major U.S. content provider. Time Warner<65>s stable of content includes the premium cable channel HBO, TNT and news channel CNN, among others. AT&T said last month it plans to reinvest more advertising revenue into content as it goes head-to-head with online streaming services such as Netflix Inc. AT&T declined to comment and has said it hopes to complete the transaction by the end of the year. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reporting by David Shepardson and Diane Bartz; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and James Dalgleish 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-time-warner-m-a-at-t-warren/u-s-justice-department-official-should-not-review-att-time-warner-deal-senator-idINKBN1CH31C'|'2017-10-12T18:59:00.000+03:00'
'ebb92da54ba9784ea7bd6ba8a55f548eee83d5c2'|'Toshiba discussing joint investment in chips with Western Digital''s Sandisk'|'October 13, 2017 / 6:13 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago Toshiba discussing joint investment in chips with Western Digital Kentaro Hamada 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A logo of Toshiba Corp is seen on a printed circuit board in this photo illustration taken in Tokyo July 31, 2012. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao/File Photo YOKKAICHI, Japan (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp said it is discussing joint investment in a new chip production line with Western Digital Corp - its estranged business partner after the Japanese firm chose a different suitor to buy its $18 billion semiconductor business. After a long and highly contentious auction, Toshiba agreed last month to sell the prized chip unit to a consortium led by Bain Capital LP, overcoming a key hurdle as it scrambles for funds to cover billions of dollars in liabilities arising from its now bankrupt U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse. Western Digital, which became Toshiba<62>s chip venture partner with its acquisition of SanDisk last year, argues that any deal will need its consent and has sought an injunction with the International Court of Arbitration. Given competition with Samsung Electronics Co, it is best to have amicable ties with Sandisk, Yasuo Naruke, the head of the flash memory chip unit told a news conference. Representatives for Western Digital were not immediately available for comment. Western Digital, one of world<6C>s leading makers of hard disk drives, paid some $16 billion last year to acquire SanDisk, Toshiba<62>s chip joint venture partner since 2000. It sees chips as a key pillar of growth and is desperate to keep the business out of the hands of rival chipmakers. The Bain consortium includes South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc. Toshiba said this week it would invest an additional 110 billion yen ($980 million) in the Fab 6 chip production line in Yokkaichi, central Japan, on top of a planned initial investment of 195 billion yen. Reporting by Kentaro Hamada; Writing by Taiga Uranaka; Editing by Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting/toshiba-discussing-joint-investment-in-chips-with-western-digitals-sandisk-idUKKBN1CI0J1'|'2017-10-13T09:08:00.000+03:00'
'117a1182d2ef4401a5dc15e60e33a72492d7c498'|'IMF Lagarde - Trade revisions can be a ''win-win'' for all involved'|'October 14, 2017 / 5:52 PM / in 2 minutes IMF Lagarde: Trade revisions can be a ''win-win'' for all involved Reuters Staff 1 Min Read International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde makes remarks during the Plenary Session of the IMF and World Bank''s 2017 Annual Fall Meetings, in Washington, U.S., October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Theiler WASHINGTON (Reuters) - International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said on Saturday a revision of long-standing trade agreements, if done well, can be a <20>win-win<69> for all countries involved. <20>Trade is a very powerful engine of growth, innovation, competition and productivity,<2C> Lagarde said in a news conference after a meeting of the IMF<4D>s steering committee. <20>It has to be fair, certainly something that everyone agrees upon,<2C> she said, when asked about trade deal renegotiations such as the one for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that is now under way. Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Andrea Ricci 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-imf-g20-trade/imf-lagarde-trade-revisions-can-be-a-win-win-for-all-involved-idUKKBN1CJ0OH'|'2017-10-14T20:45:00.000+03:00'
'ee9f02b1dea4899b6411aa79bb53733488621501'|'BlackBerry patent licensing director says he has left company'|'A Blackberry sign is seen in front of their offices on the day of their annual general meeting for shareholders in Waterloo, Canada in this June 23, 2015 file photo. BlackBerry posted a bigger-than-expected fall in first quarter revenue June 23, 2016, but forecast full-year results above market expectations. REUTERS/Mark Blinch/Files TORONTO (Reuters) - A key attorney executing BlackBerry Ltd<74>s patent licensing strategy has left the company, the second recent departure from the team tasked with making money from the Canadian company<6E>s intellectual property.Victor Schubert, who was a licensing director for BlackBerry, told Reuters in a brief LinkedIn message that he was no longer with the company. He did not say when he left or why.Monetizing the company<6E>s intellectual property is a key part of Chief Executive John Chen<65>s plan for turning around the company whose revenues have declined for six straight years as sales of its once ubiquitous smartphones have tumbled.Company representatives did not respond to requests for comment on Schubert. Two switchboard operators at the Canadian company said his name was not in a global employee directory.News of his exit follows the recent departure of Mark Kokes, who lead BlackBerry<72>s overall patent strategy. Kokes last month joined a health technology company.Schubert joined BlackBerry in March 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile, as the company was embarking on a major push to boost licensing revenue.BlackBerry is trying to persuade other companies to pay licensing royalties to use its trove of some 40,000 global patents on technology including operating systems, networking infrastructure, acoustics, messaging, automotive subsystems, cybersecurity and wireless communications.Schubert has created and executed patent-licensing programs for at least four companies, including BlackBerry, dating back to 1992, according to his LinkedIn profile. It lists portfolio mining, patent valuation and negotiating patent sales as areas of expertise.He was due to represent BlackBerry at a Seattle-area patent conference next month to discuss how operating companies can make money off their intellectual property, according to an agenda posted on the conference website in August. He is no longer listed as a panelist.BlackBerry disclosed it had secured royalty-bearing deals with Cisco Systems Inc and another company that it did not name soon after Schubert joined. It also filed patent infringement lawsuits during his tenure against Nokia and Avaya Inc [AVXX.UL] that are ongoing.BlackBerry on Thursday disclosed that it had settled another lawsuit, filed against low-end Android phone manufacturer BLU Products Inc.Both companies declined to disclose terms of the deal.Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Additional reporting by Jan Wolfe in New York; Editing by Jim Finkle and Lisa Shumaker'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blackberry-patents/blackberry-patent-licensing-director-says-he-has-left-company-idUSKBN1CI313'|'2017-10-14T01:11:00.000+03:00'
'6dc02bb225ca8befa3ed2c47353948fb4d1307ba'|'BOJ''s Kuroda does not see excesses building up in markets'|'October 13, 2017 / 11:47 PM / in 11 hours BOJ''s Kuroda says no signs of excesses building in markets Leika Kihara 2 Min Read Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda attends a news conference at the BOJ headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said on Friday he did not see any signs of bubbles or excesses building up in U.S., European and Japanese markets as a result of heavy money printing by their central banks. Kuroda also dismissed some analysts<74> criticism that the BOJ<4F>s purchases of exchange-traded funds (ETF) were distorting financial markets or dominating Japan<61>s stock market. <20>I don<6F>t think we have a very big share<72> of Japan<61>s total stock market capitalization, he told reporters after attending the Group of 20 finance leaders<72> gathering. The International Monetary Fund painted a rosy picture of the global economy in its World Economic Outlook earlier this week, but warned that prolonged easy monetary policy could be sowing the seeds of excessive risk-taking. Kuroda said that while policymakers should not be complacent about their economies, he did not see huge risks materializing as a result of their policies. Although major central banks deployed massive stimulus programmes to battle the global financial crisis, they have always scrutinized whether their policies were causing excessive risk-taking, he said. <20>I don<6F>t think we<77>re seeing excesses building up and emerging as a big risk,<2C> Kuroda said, adding that recent rises in global stock prices reflected strong corporate profits in Japan, the United States and Europe. He added that Japan<61>s economy was on track for a steady recovery that will likely gradually push up inflation and wages. <20>I don<6F>t see any big risk for Japan<61>s economy. But there could be external risks, such as geopolitical ones, so we<77>re watching developments carefully,<2C> he said. A senior Japanese finance ministry official said currency rate moves were not discussed at the G20 meeting or a gathering of G7 finance leaders held on the sidelines. Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Paul Simao 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-imf-g20-japan/bojs-kuroda-does-not-see-excesses-building-up-in-markets-idUKKBN1CI33M'|'2017-10-14T02:46:00.000+03:00'
'4443cc4428bef978ef9871549a1366493a712551'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Emerging stocks hit 6-yr high fuelled by dollar, growth'|'October 11, 2017 / 9:13 AM / Updated 8 hours ago EMERGING MARKETS-Emerging stocks hit 6-yr high fuelled by dollar, growth Karin Strohecker 5 Min Read LONDON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Emerging market stocks sailed to fresh six-year highs on Wednesday, buoyed by optimism over global growth and company earnings. Currencies from emerging economies benefited from the dollar stalling on concerns over U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s tax plan. MSCI<43>s emerging market index added 0.4 percent in its second straight day of gains, trading at its highest level since August 2011 as Asian heavyweights tracked the global rally that saw Wall Street scaling all-time highs on Tuesday. South Korea<65>s KOSPI index added 1 percent to close at record highs as expectations for robust third-quarter earnings from corporates such as Samsung Electronics boosted market sentiment. Taiwan stocks matched those gains. Investors risk appetite was whetted after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) raised its outlook for the global economy, indicating the current broad-based global economic upswing will likely be sustained this year and next. The IMF upgraded its global growth forecast for 2017 by 0.1 percentage points to 3.6 percent and to 3.7 percent for 2018, driven by a pickup in trade, investment and consumer confidence. Turkey got one of the biggest upgrades after a stronger-than expected performance at the start of the year. <20>The IMF doubled its 2017 GDP growth forecast to 5.1 percent - raises 2018 to 3.5 percent,<2C> Simon Quijano-Evans, emerging market strategist at Legal & General Investment Management wrote in a note to clients. <20>That should remove a lot of the doubts.<2E> Turkey<65>s lira strengthened 0.9 percent against the dollar. Those gains follow losses in seven of the past eight sessions after Turkish assets have come under pressure in recent days over a stand-off with NATO ally Washington. But currencies broadly firmed against the weaker dollar as Trump<6D>s escalating war of words with Republican Senator Bob Corker raised concerns about the administration<6F>s ability to pass promised reforms. South Africa<63>s rand strengthened 1 percent in a second day of gains while Russia<69>s rouble edged 0.1 percent higher. However, China<6E>s yuan eased against the dollary, as corporate demand for the greenback outweighed a much stronger official fix. Not everyone is convinced the sector<6F>s difficulties are past. Emerging local debt yields rose on Monday to the highest since August though they have clawed back some gains since. <20>Currencies ... have been a bit wobbly since the end of last week though the dollar is retreating a bit now,<2C> said Rob Drijkoningen, head of emerging market debt at Neuberger Berman. He noted the expectations of tax reform and a December rate rise had boosted U.S. Treasury yields <20>Then there is also quite high positioning in EM by hedge funds and short-term players so all that is coming together to add to pressure on EM,<2C> Drijkoningen added. For GRAPHIC on emerging market FX performance 2017, see tmsnrt.rs/2e7eoml For GRAPHIC on MSCI emerging index performance 2017, see tmsnrt.rs/2dZbdP5 For CENTRAL EUROPE market report, see For TURKISH market report, see For RUSSIAN market report, see) Emerging Markets Prices from Reuters Equities Latest Net Chg % Chg % Chg on year Morgan Stanley Emrg Mkt Indx 1116.15 +3.63 +0.33 +29.44 Czech Rep 1052.60 +2.54 +0.24 +14.21 Poland 2537.49 +21.00 +0.83 +30.27 Hungary 38218.80 +187.13 +0.49 +19.42 Romania 8007.40 -15.11 -0.19 +13.02 Greece 752.75 -2.28 -0.30 +16.95 Russia 1142.50 +7.64 +0.67 -0.85 South Africa 51395.25 +32.52 +0.06 +17.07 Turkey 03623.87 +229.88 +0.22 +32.62 China 3389.05 +6.06 +0.18 +9.20 India 31836.73 -87.68 -0.27 +19.57 Currencies Latest Prev Local Local close currency currency '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/emerging-markets/emerging-markets-emerging-stocks-hit-6-yr-high-fuelled-by-dollar-growth-idUSL8N1MM1VA'|'2017-10-11T1
'4140bc85739c6d620c7d275890c82999cf555422'|'Auditor values Oi assets at $12.9 billion in Brazil bankruptcy case'|'FILE PHOTO: Consumers stand in front of an Oi store, Brazil''s largest fixed-line telecoms group, in Sao Paulo, Brazil June 24, 2016. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Oi SA<53>s ( OIBR3.SA ) assets are worth 40.8 billion reais ($12.9 billion) but that could drop by more than a half if the indebted Brazilian phone company is forced to sell them in a hurry, a financial auditor said on Thursday.Auditor Ernst & Young LLP estimated the so-called forced liquidation value of assets held by Oi and subsidiaries included in its bankruptcy protection process at 17.9 billion reais, according to a securities filing.That would cover less than 30 percent of the 65.4 billion reais worth of debt under renegotiation.The figures highlight the difficulties of finding a solution for Oi<4F>s debt problems as management, bondholders and regulators struggle to reach consensus in Brazil<69>s biggest-ever in-court renegotiation case.Oi on Wednesday submitted a debt restructuring plan that would limit the debt-for-equity swap demanded by creditors to 25 percent of its capital, far below the 88 percent proposed by a group of bondholders in August.Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Steve Orlofsky'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-oi-sa-restructuring/auditor-values-oi-assets-at-12-9-billion-in-brazil-bankruptcy-case-idINKBN1CH2DS'|'2017-10-12T14:04:00.000+03:00'
'8375d2fca436f849eb9c399a8b2b3888fb609a8e'|'Andhra Pradesh revokes order to check planting of Monsanto GM cotton'|'October 14, 2017 / 1:47 PM / Updated 6 hours ago Andhra Pradesh revokes order to check planting of Monsanto GM cotton 2 Min Read Monsanto''s research farm is pictured near Carman, Manitoba, Canada August 3, 2017. REUTERS/Zachary Prong/Files NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Andhra Pradesh, a leading cotton producing-state, has withdrawn an order asking government officials to inspect fields planted with an unapproved variety of genetically modified (GM) cotton developed by Monsanto Co, the world<6C>s No. 1 seed maker. Farmers in the state have planted 15 percent of the cotton area in the state with Bollgard II Roundup Ready Flex (RRF), prompting the local government on Oct. 5 to form a panel of officials to inspect the fields of farmers growing RRF. The earlier order has been cancelled, senior Andhra Pradesh official B. Rajasekhar said in a statement issued on Friday, and seen by Reuters. Rajasekhar did not give any reason for rescinding last week<65>s order. Calls to his office went unanswered. Bollgard II RRF is a proprietary technology owned by Monsanto, which last year withdrew its application seeking approval from the regulator, Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), for this variety. It is not clear how Bollgard II RRF seeped into some cotton fields without the approval of GEAC. Monsanto applied for GEAC approval of Bollgard II RRF, known for its herbicide-tolerant properties, in 2007. When the U.S. company withdrew the application last year, it was in the final stages of a lengthy process that included years of field trials. A Monsanto spokesman had earlier said that it was a matter of <20>grave concern<72> that some seed companies were attempting to incorporate unauthorised, unapproved technologies into their seeds. New Delhi approved the first GM cotton seed trait in 2003 and an upgraded variety in 2006, helping transform India into the world<6C>s top producer and second-largest exporter of the fibre. Monsanto is locked in a bitter battle with a leading India seed company, Nuziveedu Seeds Ltd, drawing in the Indian and U.S. governments, Reuters revealed earlier this year.( reut.rs/2ncBknn ) Reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj; Editing by Adrian Croft 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-monsanto-cotton-andhrapradesh/andhra-pradesh-revokes-order-to-check-planting-of-monsanto-gm-cotton-idINKBN1CJ0HD'|'2017-10-14T16:45:00.000+03:00'
'5370369c0da5de33e13242cdc882a0b54e43daa2'|'Etihad flight from Abu Dhabi to Sydney makes emergency landing'|'SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Etihad Airways flight traveling from Abu Dhabi to Sydney made an emergency landing at Australia<69>s Adelaide Airport early on Saturday after a warning indicator activated in the cockpit.Crew on board Etihad flight EY450 landed the plane at 5 a.m. (1830 GMT) at Adelaide Airport, in the state of South Australia.The Boeing 777 passenger jet had 349 passengers on board who disembarked via emergency exits, according to online news service Adelaide Advertiser.A technical fault with a cargo hold air recirculation fan had been found, Etihad Airways told Reuters in an email.<2E>Etihad Airways apologizes for the inconvenience. The safety of our guests and crew is of paramount importance,<2C> it said.Australia<69>s ABC News had reported that a smoke alarm had activated.Passengers would make their onward journeys via other airlines due to crew rest requirements, the airline said.Saturday<61>s Etihad flight EY451, from Sydney to Abu Dhabi, had been canceled and passengers would be rescheduled on later Etihad services out of Sydney, the airline said.It was the second incident this year for the Etihad flight that connects Australia<69>s biggest city with the hub of Abu Dhabi, where passengers transit for worldwide destinations.In July, four men were arrested in Sydney over an Islamist plot to attack the flight.One of the men sent his unsuspecting brother to catch the July 15 Sydney to Abu Dhabi flight carrying a bomb hidden in a meat-mincer.Reporting by Alison Bevege; Editing by G Crosse, Robert Birsel'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-airlines-etihad/etihad-flight-from-abu-dhabi-to-sydney-makes-emergency-landing-idUSKBN1CI33F'|'2017-10-14T02:34:00.000+03:00'
'277a35d43be903486eec4f8daf98c19a25dc8daf'|'Royal Mail wins injunction to stop workers strike- Press Association'|'October 12, 2017 / 2:59 PM / in 17 minutes Royal Mail wins temporary block on strike with injunction Noor Zainab Hussain 2 Min Read A Royal Mail postal worker stands in the yard of a sorting office in Altrincham, Britain October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble (Reuters) - Royal Mail blocked a strike by Communications Workers Union members on Thursday, winning a High Court injunction preventing action during the crucial pre-Christmas delivery period. The union has been at odds with the British postal company over its plans to save billions of pounds on its pension contributions by ending a long-standing defined benefit scheme. The High Court in London ruled that dispute resolution procedures must be followed before any industrial action, Royal Mail said in a statement, adding it would contact the CWU as a matter of urgency to begin the process of external mediation, which could take until Christmas or beyond. <20>We want an agreement and will comply with the injunction to undertake further external mediation. But sooner rather than later Royal Mail Group will have to confront the harsh reality that they are completely out of touch with the views of its workforce,<2C> CWU General Secretary Dave Ward said. FILE PHOTO - A Royal Mail postal van is parked outside homes in Maybury near Woking in southern England March 25, 2014. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor The CWU said, however, that it would call a strike as soon as the mediation period closed if no agreement was reached. Both sides have failed to agree on new pension terms since April, and CWU last week called a 48-hour strike that analysts said would have caused major disruptions to deliveries. Royal Mail, which was privatised in 2013, is trying to modernise after years of underinvestment and has reduced layers of management, upgraded technology and cut its property bill. However, it was left struggling last year as its domestic parcels business faced increased competition and as uncertainty following Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union accelerated the rate of decline in its letters business. Royal Mail shares, which have fallen 16.3 percent this year, were up 0.3 percent at 386.8 pence at 1521 GMT. Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; editing by David Evans and Alexander Smith 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-royal-mail-pensions/royal-mail-wins-injunction-to-stop-workers-strike-press-association-idUKKBN1CH284'|'2017-10-12T17:59:00.000+03:00'
'5428a0ebc34cc51ad867cfb78ffe0a15f7b81176'|'Owner of failed airline Monarch should contribute to customer repatriation - MP Grayling'|'October 16, 2017 / 4:15 PM / in 32 minutes Owner of failed airline Monarch should contribute to customer repatriation - Grayling Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Monarch aircraft are seen parked after the airline ceased trading, at Luton airport in Britain, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner LONDON (Reuters) - The owner of failed British airline Monarch should, in principle, foot some of the bill for a massive repatriation effort co-ordinated by the country<72>s aviation authority, transport secretary Chris Grayling said on Monday. Monarch collapsed two weeks ago, wrecking the holiday plans of hundreds of thousands of Britons, a year after owner Greybull Capital secured a bailout for the struggling airline. Asked by MPs whether Greybull Capital should contribute to the costs of returning tourists to Britain, Grayling said that if the investment firm ends up with a gain after the administration process, a payment towards repatriation costs would demonstrate goodwill. <20>There<72>s no formal legal mechanism that we can use, but in terms of the principle I completely agree,<2C> Grayling told a panel of MPs. <20>I would hope that if any of the creditors end up with money in pocket, whether they might indeed consider doing that.<2E> He also said it could take weeks to determine how much money might be recovered from credit card companies and insurers. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) on Monday said that it had completed its programme to repatriate the 110,000 Monarch customers who were abroad when the airline went bust. Reporting by Alistair Smout; Editing by Andy Bruce and David Goodman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-monarch-airlines-licence-grayling/owner-of-failed-airline-monarch-should-contribute-to-customer-repatriation-mp-grayling-idUKKBN1CL2EL'|'2017-10-16T19:14:00.000+03:00'
'6a52b8e8e63c7160839ae21209efd59fc183a080'|'As the quartet breaks up, central banking leadership flux looms'|'FILE PHOTO: Governor of the Bank of Japan Haruhiko Kuroda (L to R), United States Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi walk after posing for a photo opportunity during the annual central bank research conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Jade Barker/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The leaders of the world<6C>s top central banks who risked trillions of dollars and their reputations to rescue the global economy are now set to walk off stage at a time when the lingering effects of the crisis, evolving technology and a combustible political landscape will challenge their successors.The Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the People<6C>s Bank of China may all have new bosses in early 2018 and there will be a new head of the European Central Bank the following year.The new leaders will have to deal with the hangover from the 2007-2009 crisis and its immediate aftermath as well as newly emerging risks.Some $10 trillion in assets bought by the Fed, the ECB and the BOJ to prop up their economies remains on the books and will have to be pared back. Stubbornly low global inflation and weak growth complicate the return to more conventional policies. There are unfinished reforms in China and Europe, while the rise of nationalism could erode central bank independence.Further ahead, the spread of cryptocurrencies and other technologies threatens to weaken central bank control over the financial system.<2E>The bad news is that in a crisis people learn by doing,<2C> said Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at investment firm Standish Mellon and a longtime official at the Federal Reserve. <20>Will the next set of people have the set of experiences that allows them to do that? Will they have a test?<3F>The changing of the guard could veer in unpredictable directions. China<6E>s president is considering a provincial official to succeed Zhou Xiaochuan, a veteran policymaker who has led the central bank since 2002 and whom analysts regard as a champion of reforms that could falter without his leadership.In the United States, President Donald Trump will have the opportunity to infuse his <20>America First<73> sensibility at the Fed, an institution with an undeniable global role, when Chair Janet Yellen<65>s term ends in early February.BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda<64>s shock-and-awe record monetary stimulus gets credited for helping Japan snap out of years of stagnation. He will see his term end next April with the economy expected to keep growing, but inflation still far from his target, fueling doubts about the overall effectiveness of his policy.ECB President Mario Draghi will be around until late 2019, but the succession battle could renew tensions over Britain<69>s departure from the European Union, ways of aligning the interests of economic superpower Germany with the rest of Europe, and concerns that the rise of nationalism could impair the ECB<43>s ability to set monetary policy for 19 countries.<2E>Given the divisions in Europe both politically and economically, you could have a very large swing in ECB behavior,<2C> said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.Yellen, Kuroda and Zhou appeared together on Sunday to talk about the global economy on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings.It was a <20>farewell concert<72> of sorts for a group whose tenure has transformed central banking.With rare exceptions, monetary policymakers from different countries avoid any hint of direct coordination with each other, and primarily tailor policies to domestic needs. Still, the four in charge now have shared years at the helm of the global financial system, met and talked at countless international meetings, and managed a major crisis together.Along the way they deployed open-ended central bank asset purchases, introduced negative interest rates, salvaged the euro zone from a possible fracture, and steered China, now the world<6C>s second
'433892728fd004dc3928c6219f6222235e219745'|'Chance of ''no deal'' Brexit rises to 1-in-4 - JPMorgan'|'October 16, 2017 / 1:36 PM / in 25 minutes Chance of ''no deal'' Brexit rises to 1-in-4 - JPMorgan Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Pro-EU demonstrators take part in an anti-Brexit march, during the opposition Labour party annual conference, in Brighton, Britain September 24, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville LONDON (Reuters) - The probability that Britain exits the European Union without having agreed a divorce deal has risen to 25 percent, compared with 15 percent previously, JPMorgan said on Monday. <20>With the possibility of <20>no deal<61> having been an active part of the UK political discussion for a couple of weeks, our confidence... has been shaken a little,<2C> JPMorgan economist Malcolm Barr said in a note to clients. <20>As a result, we have revised our set of probabilities on March 2019 outturns to show a somewhat higher probability of no-deal.<2E> Reporting by Andy Bruce; Editing by Alistair Smout 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-jpmorgan/chance-of-no-deal-brexit-rises-to-1-in-4-jpmorgan-idUKKBN1CL1VA'|'2017-10-16T16:35:00.000+03:00'
'8e52dc5224c52c9b867d0e74123c92a21362c809'|'Vincom Retail launches up to $713 mln IPO, Vietnam''s largest-IFR'|'HONG KONG, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Vincom Retail, the shopping mall subsidiary of Vingroup, launched on Monday Vietnam<61>s largest-ever initial public offering (IPO), in a deal worth up to $713 million, IFR reported, citing a term sheet of the deal.The IPO consists of 380.22 million shares in the institutional tranche and another 19 million for the retail tranche, offered in an indicative range of 37,000 to 40,600 dong each, added IFR, a Thomson Reuters publication.That would put the offering at up to 16.2 trillion dong ($713 million), with all proceeds going to Vincom Retail<69>s private equity investors and other shareholders.Vingroup did not immediately responded to a request for comment on the IPO terms.$1 = 22,710.0000 dong Reporting by S. Anuradha of IFR; Additional reporting by Mai Nguyen in Hanoi; Writing by Elzio Barreto; Editing by Stephen Coates'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/vingroup-ipo/vincom-retail-launches-up-to-713-mln-ipo-vietnams-largest-ifr-idINL4N1MR1FD'|'2017-10-16T00:30:00.000+03:00'
'a33b83ff62883402ca841901185a074230795217'|'Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week: Mercury News'|'October 14, 2017 / 12:55 AM / in 3 hours Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A Tesla charging station is seen in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S. September 28, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson (Reuters) - Luxury electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ) fired about 400 employees this week, including associates, team leaders and supervisors, a former employee told Reuters on Friday. The dismissals were a result of a company-wide annual review, Tesla said in an emailed statement, without confirming the number of employees leaving the company. <20>It<49>s about 400 people ranging from associates to team leaders to supervisors. We don<6F>t know how high up it went,<2C> said the former employee, who worked on the assembly line and did not want to be identified. Though Tesla cited performance as the reason for the firings, the source told Reuters he was fired in spite of never having been given a bad review. The Palo Alto, California-based company said earlier in the month that <20>production bottlenecks<6B> had left Tesla behind its planned ramp-up for the new Model 3 mass-market sedan. The company delivered 220 Model 3 sedans and produced 260 during the third quarter. In July, it began production of the Model 3, which starts at $35,000 - half the starting price of the Model S. Mercury News had earlier reported about the firing of hundreds of employees by Tesla in the past week. Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru and Alexandria Sage in San Francisco; Editing by Andrew Hay 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-jobs/tesla-fired-hundreds-of-employees-in-past-week-mercury-news-idUSKBN1CJ00L'|'2017-10-14T03:57:00.000+03:00'
'144c9bd3d32b30d3e2d401160b493ac83d414c21'|'Euro zone bailout fund may get monitoring powers next year'|'October 13, 2017 / 9:54 PM / Updated 18 hours ago Euro zone bailout fund may get monitoring powers next year Jan Strupczewski 7 Min Read File photo: European Stability Mechanism Managing Director Klaus Regling attends a conference in Nicosia, Cyprus November 1, 2016. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) could get new powers to monitor euro zone economies next year as part of the single currency bloc<6F>s plan to integrate more deeply, Klaus Regling, the head of the euro zone bailout fund, said on Friday. The new powers, which would require amendments to the ESM treaty signed by euro zone governments, would allow the bailout fund to be ready with a possible bailout and attached conditions for a troubled sovereign at very short notice, Regling said. <20>It is correct that if the ESM gets the mandate to be ready at any time on short notice to put together, with the European Commission, a programme with conditionality, we would only be able to do that if we do some continuous monitoring,<2C> he said. <20>Otherwise one cannot do that job,<2C> Regling told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank fall meetings in Washington. He added that the idea was <20>not so revolutionary<72> because it was already in place for half of the euro zone countries. The issue is delicate because European Union treaties have assigned the job of policy monitoring and surveillance to the European Commission. Germany, however, would be happy to see those powers shared by an intergovernmental institution like the ESM, because it believes the Commission has become too political in enforcing EU rules to limit government borrowing that underpin the euro. <20>I do not intend to take away any competences of the European Commission, it would not be possible, because they are enshrined in the EU treaty,<2C> Regling said, adding that the two institutions could peacefully cooperate. <20>KEEPING A CLOSE EYE<59> He said the ESM was already monitoring Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus - the five countries that borrowed from the bailout fund during the sovereign debt crisis started in 2010 (not 2007-2009) and were under post-bailout surveillance until they repay the loans. <20>We also monitor our largest economies. They are sometimes surprised to hear that. But because of our market activities on the funding side, on the investment side we must understand what is happening in Europe,<2C> Regling said. That means keeping a close eye on what is happening in Germany, France, Italy and Spain, he said. <20>So half of our countries, for different reasons, we are monitoring already but not the other half. To monitor the other half we would need ESM treaty changes,<2C> he said. Such changes may come next year, he said, including one allowing the ESM to become a financial backstop for the Single Resolution Fund for banks that will not reach its full capacity, funded from bank annual contributions, until 2023. Asked when the ESM treaty change could take place, Regling said pointed to 2018 as <20>a good year.<2E> DEBT RESTRUCTURING The changes would be part of a broader package of reforms in the euro zone aimed at helping the 19 countries that share the single currency to rally around it. That has become more of an urgent matter as Britain prepares to leave the EU in 2019. <20>We have a window of opportunity in the next 12 months because there are no other big distracting events like in 2019, when we have the elections to the European Parliament and the selection of the new Commission,<2C> Regling said. Germany would also like the euro zone reforms to include a mechanism for sovereign debt restructuring. Under such a mechanism, if a country were to ask for a bailout from the ESM, its bond maturities would be automatically extended and its debt could be more deeply restructured if that were needed to make it sustainable. <20>Burden-sharing can be important to create the right incentives,<2C> Regling said, adding that so fa
'6c14e68eba2a3f322e8429b42caa1f41da4d7115'|'Wells Fargo hit by legal charges, mortgage banking slump'|'October 13, 2017 / 12:20 PM / in 2 hours Wells Fargo revises expense outlook, signaling profit difficulties ahead Dan Freed , Sweta Singh 5 Min Read (Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co ( WFC.N ) management signaled on Friday that the bank may struggle to hit expense targets through next year, raising questions about how much a sales scandal is weighing on the bottom line. The third-largest U.S. bank by assets said its third-quarter profit fell 19 percent, due mostly to a $1 billion mortgage litigation accrual. But management also revised its outlook on a key expense-related metric, saying the bank expects to spend 61 cents for every dollar of revenue it generates this year, up from a range of 60 to 61 cents. Chief Financial Officer John Shrewsberry suggested Wells Fargo may also face issues hitting next year<61>s cost-efficiency target. Management now hopes to spend 59 cents for every dollar of revenue next year, the high end of a target range of 55 to 59 cents, he said. But much depends on loan growth and interest rates, as well as elevated costs from regulations, technology and <20>lingering sales practice issues,<2C> Shrewsberry cautioned. Wells Fargo<67>s loan balances at the end of the third quarter were $951.9 billion, down $5.6 billion from the second quarter and down $9.4 billion from a year earlier <20>We are waiting for the quarter that Wells shows stronger momentum across the business and this was not the quarter,<2C> analysts from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said in a client note. Related Coverage Wells Fargo $1 billion accrual due to talks with U.S. Justice Department The mortgage litigation accrual is for a still-pending lawsuit brought by a U.S. Justice Department-led task force, Shrewsberry told Reuters. The Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group has reached multi-billion dollar settlements with other banks over pre-financial crisis conduct, including Bank of America Corp ( BAC.N ), JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM.N ) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( GS.N ). <20>They<65>re working down toward the end of that list and now we<77>re sort of in discussions with them,<2C> Shrewsberry said in an interview. <20>The billion dollars is in connection with that activity.<2E> The bank<6E>s shares were last down 3.3 percent to $53.40. FILE PHOTO: A Wells Fargo branch is seen in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, U.S. February 10, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo SCANDAL WOES Wells Fargo has been embroiled in a sales practices scandal for more than a year. It has acknowledged opening perhaps 3.5 million accounts in customers<72> names without their permission, signing others up for unwanted auto insurance, charging some for a mortgage rate-lock feature they did not request and tacking other costly add-ons to accounts. The bank also has the same underlying challenges as rivals, including a drop in mortgage refinancing, interest income rising slowly after a prolonged period of rock-bottom rates, expensive technology investments and new regulations. That has made it hard for outsiders to quantify how Wells Fargo<67>s scandal has influenced results. On a conference call, analysts asked management whether weak loan growth was attributable to consumers backing away from the bank due to the scandal, or to the bank<6E>s caution about credit risk. The bank missed consensus revenue expectations for the fourth straight quarter due to the weak loan growth, and its lending profit fell. Overall earnings fell to $4.6 billion. On an adjusted basis, profit was $1.04 per share, scraping past estimates of $1.03, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Revenue fell 2 percent to $21.9 billion, hit by a 37 percent slump in mortgage banking and auto lending. Analysts had forecast revenue of $22.4 billion. Wells Fargo<67>s net interest margin, which measures the difference between what banks spend on funds and what they generate from lending those funds, was 2.87 percent, down from 2.9 percent the prior quarter and below some analyst expectations. The bank spent 65.5 cents per dollar of re
'c95785bd51f8253123ea9e1fbf23b5fa9f0f66c9'|'Man Group third-quarter assets up 7.9 percent on market gains, inflows'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Shares in British hedge fund Man Group ( EMG.L ) rose 4 percent on Friday after a rise in third quarter assets and a new share buyback was announced.Man Group assets rose 7.9 percent in the three months ending Sept. 30, boosted by market gains and net inflows to its funds, including in emerging market debt.Total assets rose from $95.9 billion at the end of June to $103.5 billion at the end of September, at the top end of consensus figures that ranged from $98.2 billion to $103.5 billion.The firm took in $2.8 billion in fresh investor cash, generated $900 million in currency gains and $3.3 billion from positive investment movements, it said.Man Group also announced a new $100 million share buyback after concluding its last one around the same time last year, according to an analyst note from Credit Suisse.<2E>Man has again proven itself a shareholder friendly allocator of capital,<2C> said the note.Among Man Group<75>s business to increase assets, the long-only stock-picking unit rose by 11 percent to $19.7 billion, with investors adding $600 million to emerging market debt strategies and $500 million to the European equities strategy.Flows were partially offset by $400 million of redemptions pulled from funds of funds and $400 million from equity long short strategies as well as $300 million yanked from computer-driven strategies.In a reversal of an earlier decision, Man Group said it would absorb research costs for the majority of its business in 2018 under MiFID II reforms, estimating the impact to the business to be about $10 to $15 million.<2E>Whilst we did not think it was inevitable that liquid alternative managers would absorb research costs in the near term, we view this as a sensible decision for the business,<2C> said the report from Credit Suisse. <20>It could, arguably, also be a modest competitive advantage for Man if its unlistedcompetitors do not follow suit.<2E>Reporting by Maiya Keidan; editing by Simon Jessop, John Stonestreet and Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-man-group-outlook/man-group-third-quarter-assets-up-7-9-percent-on-market-gains-inflows-idUSKBN1CI0NQ'|'2017-10-13T16:48:00.000+03:00'
'2d50bacb5d94c5ed52264fa46c05bda42df49ba3'|'PSA says to cut about 400 jobs at Vauxhall''s Ellesmere Port'|'October 13, 2017 / 10:46 PM / Updated 19 minutes ago PSA says to cut about 400 jobs at Vauxhall''s Ellesmere Port Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A sign for a car dealership is displayed near Vauxhall''s plant in Luton, Britain, March 6, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall PARIS (Reuters) - French carmaker PSA ( PEUP.PA ) on Friday said it would cut about 400 jobs at Vauxhall<6C>s Ellesmere Port in Britain by the end of the year to improve the production facility<74>s competitiveness. PSA acquired the Opel and Vauxhall brands from General Motors Co ( GM.N ) in August, helping the carmaker leapfrog French rival Renault SA ( RENA.PA ) to become Europe<70>s second-ranked carmaker by sales. <20>Facing challenging European market conditions and a declining passenger car market, Vauxhall needs to adjust production volumes at its Ellesmere Port production facility to the current level of demand and to improve its performance, in order to protect its future,<2C> a PSA spokesman told Reuters. The spokesman said the 400 job cuts - which amount to about a quarter of the facility<74>s staff - would be carried out via a voluntary redundancy plan. This and a move towards a single-shift operation will be discussed with employees representatives over a 45-day period. PSA is committed to the Opel Astra plant at Ellesmere Port, the spokesman added, while pointing that current manufacturing costs there were <20>significantly higher<65> than those of the benchmark plants of the PSA Group in France. PSA<53>s Chief Executive Carlos Tavares had said last month that it was hard to decide upon the group<75>s strategy for Vauxhall given lack of clarity over Britain<69>s plans to leave the European Union. The spokesman on Friday said PSA would be in a position to consider future investments once it has visibility on Britain<69>s future trading relationship with the EU and once the plant<6E>s competitiveness has been addressed. Reporting by Gilles Guillaume; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Jonathan Oatis 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-psa-opel-vauxhall/psa-says-to-cut-about-400-jobs-at-vauxhalls-ellesmere-port-idUKKBN1CI325'|'2017-10-14T01:45:00.000+03:00'
'950442303f066dcaf3833c781ff312bedbfc0df3'|'Euro zone wages will take time to rise - Draghi'|'October 14, 2017 / 6:39 PM / Updated an hour ago ECB still believes in eventual inflation, wage rise: Draghi Reuters Staff 3 Min Read People walk past government''s office in Helsinki, Finland, May 3, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins   Wages and inflation in the 19-country euro zone will eventually rise but more slowly than earlier thought, requiring continued patience from policymakers, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said on Saturday. Wage growth has failed to respond to stimulus for a list of reasons but the ECB remains convinced that labor markets and not a structural change in the nature of inflation is the chief culprit behind low prices, Draghi told a news conference on the sidelines   annual meeting. Having fought low inflation for years, the ECB is due to decide at its Oct. 26 meeting whether to prolong stimulus, having to reconcile rapid economic expansion with weak wage and price growth. Sources close to the discussion earlier told Reuters that the ECB will likely extend asset purchases but at lower volumes, signaling both confidence in the outlook but also indicating that policy support will continue for a long time. <20>The bottom line in terms of policy is that we are confident that as the conditions will continue to improve, the inflation rate will gradually converge in a self-sustained manner,<2C> Draghi said. <20>But together with our confidence, we should also be patient because it<69>s going to take time.<2E> European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi waits to address the European Parliament''s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee in Brussels, Belgium September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir Even as the euro zone has enjoyed 17 straight quarters of economic growth, wage growth has underperformed expectations, due in part to hidden slack in the labor market and low wage demands from unions. Some policymakers also argue that globalization and technological changes have made value chains more international, making low inflation a global phenomenon and limiting central banks<6B> ability to control prices in their own jurisdiction. Draghi acknowledged the debate but said the ECB was convinced the main problem was the labor market and even if there was a broader issue, it would not lead to policy change. The ECB has kept interest rates in negative territory for years and already bought over 2 trillion euros worth of bonds to cut borrowing costs and induce household and corporate spending. Draghi dismissed suggestions that low ECB rates may overinflate asset prices and argued that the few bubbles already observed, particularly in commercial real estate markets, should be fought with macroprudential tools and not monetary policy. Still, he acknowledged that a disorderly correction in asset prices, particularly stocks, is among the chief risks for the global economy. Reporting by Balazs Koranyi;  '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-imf-g20-ecb-draghi/euro-zone-wages-will-take-time-to-rise-draghi-idUKKBN1CJ0PV'|'2017-10-14T21:21:00.000+03:00'
'315e3eefa23e8a7e5dc080a67023b040c4e6a336'|'Oil rallies nearly 2 percent on China import boost, U.S.-Iran tensions'|'October 13, 2017 / 3:08 AM / in 33 minutes Oil rallies nearly 2 percent on China import boost, U.S.-Iran tensions 4 Min Read A oil pump is seen at sunset outside Scheibenhard, near Strasbourg, France, October 6, 2017 . REUTERS/Christian Hartmann NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices on Friday closed at their highest level in October on bullish news from strong Chinese oil imports, U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s decision not to certify that Iran is complying with a nuclear agreement and other tensions in the Middle East. Brent LCOc1 futures gained 92 cents, or 1.6 percent, to settle at $57.17 a barrel, while U.S. crude CLc1 rose 85 cents, or 1.7 percent, to settle at $51.45 per barrel. That put both contracts at their highest settlements since Sept. 29. For the week, Brent was up almost 3 percent and U.S. was up over 4 percent. Traders said the oil market pulled back from even higher gains - both contracts were up over 2 percent - earlier in the day out of relief that Trump did not immediately seek to impose sanction on Iran. Instead, he gave the U.S. Congress 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions. <20>The market is relieved that the U.S. is not going to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal today and they will instead kick the can down the road,<2C> said Phil Flynn, senior energy analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago. Chinese oil imports hit 9 million barrels per day (bpd) in September, data showed. Imports averaged 8.5 million bpd between January and September, solidifying China<6E>s position as the world<6C>s biggest oil importer. <20>We woke up with the strong data from China. That<61>s on the supportive side,<2C> said Olivier Jakob, managing director of oil consultancy PetroMatrix. China<6E>s robust imports have been driven by purchases for its strategic petroleum reserves. The nation has spent around $24 billion building its crude reserves since 2015 and now holds around 850 million barrels of oil in inventory, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). For a graphic on China crude oil imports click reut.rs/2xC6jUb Unrest in Iraq also underpinned prices. Tensions between the two, which traders fear could impinge on oil exports from the region, have been building since Iraq<61>s Kurds overwhelmingly backed independence in a Sept. 25 vote. Kurdish authorities have sent thousands more troops to the oil region of Kirkuk to confront <20>threats<74> from Iraq<61>s central government, the vice president of the autonomous Kurdistan region said. Despite the bullish signals, analysts warned that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries needed to extend its agreement to reduce oil output beyond its current March 2018 expiry date in order to clear stocks. OPEC, with other producers including Russia, has agreed to production cuts of 1.8 million bpd. <20>OPEC-led cuts have breathed new life into oil bulls but unless the organization digs deeper, the drawdown in global oil stockpiles will soon fizzle out,<2C> broker PVM<56>s Stephen Brennock wrote. Separately, Saudi Aramco said it was considering shelving plans for an international public offering (IPO) in favor of a private share sale to world sovereign funds and institutional investors, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Many oil traders have said the reason OPEC has been compliant with the production cut agreement was because Saudi Arabia wanted the cuts to work to prop up oil prices ahead of the Aramco IPO. <20>If the IPO is not going to happen, some traders may see that as Saudi Arabia<69>s excuse to start increasing production again,<2C> Flynn at Price Futures said, noting he, however, thinks Saudi Arabia has a larger mission to get the market in balance. <20>(Saudi Arabia) may need oil prices to go even higher if the IPO does not go through,<2C> Flynn said. Additional reporting by Libby George in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.co
'8cdc8623610ce43922533b3902424392056d85c2'|'Mercedes-Benz, China JVs to recall 351,218 vehicles: watchdog'|'October 13, 2017 / 8:17 AM / in 7 hours Mercedes-Benz, JVs to recall over 350,000 vehicles in China: watchdog Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Mercedes-Benz logo is seen before the company''s annual news conference in Stuttgart, Germany, February 4, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo BEIJING (Reuters) - Mercedes-Benz, the luxury brand of German carmaker Daimler AG, and its Chinese joint ventures will recall 351,218 vehicles due to potential issues with air bags made by Japan<61>s Takata Corp, China<6E>s quality watchdog said on Friday. The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) said on its website that it was concerned about risks arising from possible defects in the cars<72> air bag inflators. Official Chinese estimates showed over 20 million cars in China had air bags made by Takata, which have been linked to at least 16 deaths and 180 injuries globally. The air bags have the potential to deploy with too much force and spray shrapnel. The defect led to the biggest recall in automotive history and eventual bankruptcy of the Japanese maker which had become burdened with tens of billions of dollars worth of liabilities. The recall by Mercedes-Benz and its Chinese joint ventures will begin from Oct. 15 and will include domestically built and imported cars produced from 2006 through 2012, with models including the SLK-Class and A-Class, the AQSIQ said. It follows similar recalls by General Motors Co and Volkswagen AG last month. The Chinese watchdog asked the three automakers in July to recall vehicles in China affected by potentially faulty Takata air bags. Up to that time, the automakers had proposed recalling a small number of vehicles for testing and analysis. Reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk and Brenda Goh in SHANGHAI; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Christopher Cushing 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dailmer-china-recall/mercedes-benz-china-jvs-to-recall-351218-vehicles-watchdog-idUSKBN1CI0VQ'|'2017-10-13T11:17:00.000+03:00'
'a8b5a80ad5729f2c7d28a70e3e310b61fb37d30b'|'Prime Minister Trudeau says Canada will not abandon NAFTA talks'|'October 13, 2017 / 1:59 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Prime Minister Trudeau says Canada will not abandon NAFTA talks Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau waves to the media after a meeting with the civil society leaders in Mexico City, Mexico October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday Canada will not walk away from talks to rehash the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) despite a U.S. proposal to include a clause that could terminate the pact in five years. Speaking at a news conference with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico City as a fourth round of talks to renegotiate NAFTA was held near Washington, Trudeau said he was committed to a <20>win-win-win<69> deal. <20>We will not be walking away from the table based on the proposals put forward,<2C> Trudeau said, in response to a question about whether the so-called sunset clause was a poison pill for the talks. Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Lisa Shumaker 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-trade-nafta-trudeau/prime-minister-trudeau-says-canada-will-not-abandon-nafta-talks-idUKKBN1CI04W'|'2017-10-13T04:58:00.000+03:00'
'65d4eda1b6fde1e3654acd71a7d1052e57dc4fe9'|'UPDATE 1-Ford''s China sales stuck in first gear as rivals overtake'|'* Ford China sales virtually flat in September* Japanese rivals have logged big gains, GM sales also stronger* Ford revamping strategy, has brought in new China head (Adds comparison with rivals, plans to revamp strategy)BEIJING, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co saw its China vehicle sales make the barest of increases in September, extending a tough run in the world<6C>s largest auto market even as global rivals have logged robust gains.The U.S. automaker has lacked a high-volume brand of affordable entry cars for China and has been criticised for slow decision-making that has cost it share in a market where consumer tastes change quickly.In response, it has brought in a new China head, Jason Luo, a Chinese-born American formerly at U.S.-based air bag maker Key Safety Systems, tasked with building closer ties with Ford<72>s local partners and working more effectively with regulators.The U.S. carmaker sold 112,902 vehicles in China last month, an increase of some 430 from the same period a year earlier.By contrast, rivals Toyota Motor Corp, Honda Motor Co and Nissan Motor Co Ltd saw gains of 14 percent or more while General Motors posted an increase of 7 percent.Overall vehicles sales in China rose 5.7 percent in September - a fourth straight month of growth.Like many other global automakers, Ford is also looking to revamp its strategy towards electric vans and cars to keep up with Beijing<6E>s push for cleaner new-energy vehicles (NEV).The country has set strict quotas for NEVs which carmakers must meet by 2019, a move that is prompting a flurry of electric car deals and new launches of electric and hybrid models. Ford said it was looking to set up an electric car venture with Chinese firm Anhui Zotye Automobile Co in August. (Reporting by Adam Jourdan and Norihiko Shirouzu; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/china-autos-ford/update-1-fords-china-sales-stuck-in-first-gear-as-rivals-overtake-idINL4N1MO1K7'|'2017-10-13T01:29:00.000+03:00'
'e727ee6cb9f9a4e22fd12fe53b10456c7adb2afe'|'An assessment of the White House<73>s progress on deregulation'|'DEREGULATION, along with tax cuts and trade reform, is one of the three pillars of President Donald Trump<6D>s economic agenda. Republicans promise that, freed of red tape, American firms will invest more and unleash faster economic growth. And while Mr Trump has yet to unite his party around a major piece of legislation, the White House has plenty of sway over regulatory policy. For a start, the government agencies Mr Trump commands can regulate and deregulate on their own (subject only to the instructions that Congress has given them in the past). How much red tape have they managed to tear down since Mr Trump took office?Regulation is difficult to measure precisely, but the long-term trend towards excessive rulemaking has been obvious. In 1970 there were about 400,000 prescriptive words such as <20>shall<6C> or <20>must<73> in the code of federal regulations, according to the Mercatus Centre, a libertarian-leaning think-tank. Today there are 1.1m (see chart). Wonks of many stripes agree that this is far too many and that the rule book must be shortened. Agencies have rarely combed over old edicts to see whether they are worth keeping. The problem predated Barack Obama<6D>s administration; both Republicans and Democrats have presided over regulatory expansions. That said, Mr Obama was an unusually prolific rule-writer, because for much of his presidency a hostile Congress meant that regulation was often his best tool. Against this backdrop, the impact of the Trump administration has been dramatic. The flow of new rules is suddenly a dribble. Since Mr Trump was inaugurated the number of regulatory restrictions has grown at about two-fifths of the usual speed. In the last year of the Obama administration, the federal government wrote 527 regulations deemed <20>significant<6E>. Mr Trump<6D>s bureaucrats have penned only 118. And even that number is artificially high, because many of those edicts served only to delay or weaken Mr Obama<6D>s rules. Examples of genuinely new regulations are few and far between. The White House has acknowledged only one<6E>a rule aimed at reducing the amount of mercury dentists discharge into sewers, which went into effect in July.Mr Trump has slowed rulemaking in two main ways. First, on coming to office, he ordered government agencies not to impose any net new regulatory costs on companies, regardless of the benefits of doing so, and said that in order to write any new rules they would have to repeal two old ones. Because it takes time to unearth and discard dud rules, the practical effect of this has been to put a brake on new issuance.Second, Mr Trump has signed 14 bills stopping rules that were issued late in the Obama administration, and were therefore still subject to review by Congress, from going into effect. Not only were those regulations blocked (by means of the Congressional Review Act, or CRA); agencies will never again be able to write replacements that are <20>substantially the same<6D> without lawmakers<72> express approval. Before 2017, Congress had exercised its power to review regulations only once: in 2001, after George W. Bush came to office, it blocked a set of standards for chairs and desks aimed at stopping office workers getting back pain.Yet wielding CRA as a deregulatory weapon has its limits, for Congress can review only rules issued during its previous 60 days in session. Tackling the bedrock of regulation is far harder. Three approaches are possible: later implementation of newish rules, looser enforcement of existing ones, and formal rollbacks of others.Make America wait againThe first tactic, delay, is being used with abandon. For example, the Labour Department is trying to stave off parts of a new <20>fiduciary rule<6C>, which requires investment advisers always to work in the best interests of their clients. (This requirement, like many seemingly simple rules, has somehow spawned hundreds of pages of legalese.) The fiduciary rule came into partial effect in June, but the administration is trying to p
'49272b56cf05de4eb82ca2ec055ab62f409e3c35'|'Boeing passenger jets have falsely-certified Kobe Steel products-source'|'October 13, 2017 / 2:14 AM / in 8 hours Boeing passenger jets have falsely-certified Kobe Steel products: source Tim Kelly 5 Min Read Boeing Co''s logo is seen above the front doors of its largest jetliner factory in Everett, Washington, U.S. January 13, 2017. REUTERS/Alwyn Scott TOKYO (Reuters) - Boeing Co ( BA.N ), the world<6C>s biggest maker of passenger jets, has used Kobe Steel ( 5406.T ) products that include those falsely certified by the Japanese company, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. Boeing does not consider the issue a safety problem, the source stressed, but the revelation may raise compensation costs for the Japanese company, which is embroiled in a widening scandal over the false certification of the strength and durability of components supplied to hundreds of companies. The U.S. airline maker is carrying out a survey of aircraft to ascertain the extent and type of Kobe Steel components in its planes and will share the results with airline customers, said the source who has knowledge of the investigation. The source asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. Even if the falsely certified parts do not affect safety, given the intense public scrutiny that airlines operate under they may opt to replace suspect parts rather than face any backlash over concerns about safety. Any large-scale program to remove those components, even during scheduled aircraft maintenance, could prove costly for Kobe Steel if it has to foot the bill. Boeing<6E>s European rival Europe<70>s Airbus ( AIR.PA ) said it does not buy products directly from Kobe Steel but is investigating whether any suppliers have been affected. <20>So far we have not identified any suppliers that procure materials from Kobe Steel for parts fitted on our aircraft,<2C> an Airbus spokesman said by email. Airbus does, however, buy titanium landing gear parts for its latest long-haul jet, the A350, from France<63>s Safran ( SAF.PA ), which are manufactured by Japan Aeroforge, a joint venture between Kobe Steel and Hitachi Metals ( 5486.T ). A spokesman for Kobe Steel said Japan Aeroforge products were not under investigation <20>at this point.<2E> Kobe Steel<65>s CEO, Hiroya Kawasaki, on Thursday said his company<6E>s credibility was at <20>zero.<2E> On Friday he pledged that Kobe Steel would pay customers<72> costs resulting from the data fabrication of that may stretch back 10 years.. In the U.S., General Motors ( GM.N ) said it is checking whether its cars contain falsely certified components from Kobe Steel, joining Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ) and around 200 other firms that have received falsely certified parts from the company. Boeing does not buy products such as aluminum composites, used in aircraft because of their light weight, directly from Kobe Steel. Its key Japanese suppliers, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries ( 7011.T ), Kawasaki Heavy Industries ( 7012.T ) and Subaru Corp ( 7270.T ), however, do. Mitsubishi Aircraft, a Mitsubishi Heavy subsidiary, said it uses Kobe Steel in the Mitsubishi regional Jet (MRJ), Japan<61>s first passenger aircraft in half a century. The aircraft has yet to enter service. <20>We have concluded at this time that it will not impact the MRJ as it remains within the design standards we originally set for aircraft safety,<2C> a spokeswoman for Mitsubishi Aircraft said. Japanese companies are a key part of Boeing<6E>s global supply chain, building one fifth of its 777 jetliner and 35 percent of its carbon composite 787 Dreamliner. <20>Boeing has been working closely and continuously with our suppliers since being notified of the issue to ensure timely and appropriate action,<2C> Boeing said in a statement earlier this week after Kobe Steel<65>s bombshell announcement over the weekend. <20>Nothing in our review to date leads us to conclude that this issue presents a safety concern,<2C> it added. Work for the U.S. planemaker employs around 22,000 Japanese engineers, or 40 percent employed in the nation<6F>s aerospace business. 
'5ae25323c0d6f0301ae89d2ab01add658cce003a'|'China''s Great Wall says in talks with BMW for Mini cooperation, no JV signed yet'|'October 13, 2017 / 10:14 AM / in 3 hours China''s Great Wall says in talks with BMW for Mini cooperation, no JV signed yet Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China<6E>s Great Wall Motor Co Ltd ( 601633.SS ) ( 2333.HK ) on Friday said it was in talks with BMW ( BMWG.DE ) to cooperate on vehicles including those the German firm produces under the Mini brand, and that the pair have not yet agreed on any new ventures. Great Wall made the comments in a stock exchange filing. Reuters earlier this week reported the two automakers were looking to establish a joint venture in China. Great Wall said trading in its Hong Kong and mainland-listed shares would resume on Monday. The company suspended trading in the shares on Oct. 12 and Sept. 29 respectively. BMW, in a separate statement, said it aimed to expand business in China and could imagine partnership and cooperation for the Mini brand. Related Coverage Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Christopher Cushing 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-great-wall-bmw/chinas-great-wall-says-in-talks-with-bmw-for-mini-cooperation-no-jv-signed-yet-idINKBN1CI17N'|'2017-10-13T08:14:00.000+03:00'
'ec8b193146655cd72e76767bd0be1428d25758f1'|'Lufthansa CEO says to sign Air Berlin deal today'|'October 12, 2017 / 7:28 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Lufthansa spreads wings by snapping up parts of failed Air Berlin Maria Sheahan , Klaus Lauer 4 Min Read FRANKFURT/BERLIN (Reuters) - Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) reinforced its position as Germany<6E>s largest airline on Thursday by signing a 210 million euro ($249 million)deal to buy large parts of insolvent Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ). Lufthansa plans to use the Air Berlin assets to quickly expand its Eurowings budget business. News of the deal pushed Lufthansa shares up more than 3 percent to their highest level in nearly 17 years. Air Berlin, which has struggled to turn a profit over the last decade, filed for insolvency on Aug. 15, and a government loan has kept its planes aloft while its administrator negotiated with prospective buyers for parts of the business. Lufthansa has agreed to acquire Air Berlin<69>s Austrian leisure travel airline Niki, its LG Walter regional airline and 20 additional aircraft, Air Berlin said in a statement. <20>This contract provides new opportunities for jobs for a large part of our workforce. But we can only really breathe again when the EU Commission approves the deal,<2C> Air Berlin Chief Executive Thomas Winkelmann said. Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said earlier he expected the European Union to approve the transaction by the end of 2017. However, Ryanair ( RYA.I ), which has previously called the talks a <20>stitch-up<75>, said it would be referring the matter to the EU competition authority in due course. Andreas Mundt, head of the German cartel office, said the Commission would take a close look at the deal and that the German authorities would follow the process closely. Talks to sell some of Air Berlin<69>s remaining assets to Britain<69>s easyJet ( EZJ.L ) and other bidders are continuing, Air Berlin said, without providing details. EasyJet, which has a base at Berlin<69>s Schoenefeld airport, has been discussing acquiring 27 to 30 planes. Air Berlin previously said others, such as Thomas Cook<6F>s ( TCG.L ) Condor, could pick up some parts of the business. A Lufthansa airliner taxis next to the Air Berlin aircraft at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke EasyJet declined to comment on the progress of talks on Thursday. BIG INVESTMENTS Lufthansa CEO Spohr told a German paper earlier that his airline would be investing around 1.5 billion euros in total as a result of the Air Berlin deal. Slideshow (5 Images) That sum includes investment in new planes, for which the board freed up 1 billion euros of funds last month, the purchase price and the costs of taking on new staff. Air Berlin, Germany<6E>s second largest carrier, will cease operating flights this month, capping a turbulent summer for European carriers. Italy<6C>s national airline Alitalia [CAITLA.UL] is in administration and seeking investors too, British leisure airline Monarch collapsed at the start of this month. Lufthansa<73>s Spohr said on Thursday while he was not interested in the Italian carrier in its current shape he would be interested in talks to create a new Alitalia. Shares in Lufthansa were up 2.8 percent at 25.25 euros, the top gainer in Germany<6E>s DAX market index <0#.GDAXI> by 1505 GMT. Analysts at Bernstein Research raised their rating on Lufthansa<73>s shares to <20>outperform<72> from <20>market-perform<72>, saying they expected a deal with Air Berlin to add around 70 to 90 million euros to annual operating profits at Eurowings in the medium term. HSBC analysts lifted their target share price to 29 euros from 25 euros, citing the imminent agreement with Air Berlin, a new multi-year labor deal with pilots announced this week and a positive trading performance this year. Additional reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Keith Weir and David Evans 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-lufthansa/lufthansa-ceo-says-to-sign-air-berlin-deal-today-idINKBN1CH0SS'|'2017-10-12T05:28:00.000+03:00'
'4f88804be140d584cf9df4da8bba1beb6cd7b7d6'|'Time running out for NAFTA talks, set to be extended - sources'|'October 15, 2017 / 5:57 PM / in 10 minutes Time running out for NAFTA talks, set to be extended - sources David Ljunggren , Dave Graham 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau walk from the Oval Office to the Residence of the White House in Washington, DC, U.S. on February 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo ARLINGTON, Va. (Reuters) - Negotiators at talks to modernize NAFTA are running out of time and look set to extend the remaining rounds in a bid to meet an end-year deadline as tensions rise, three sources familiar with the matter said on Sunday. The Trump administration, which is demanding big changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement, has presented a series of hard-line proposals that partners Canada and Mexico say will be tough to accept. Sources say neither nation will walk away from the talks, preferring instead to stay at the table and gradually work out what compromises they might be able to wrest from the U.S. side. Another challenge is a very tight negotiating schedule - described as <20>insane<6E> by one official - with rounds every 12 days or so compared with gaps of several weeks seen in more traditional trade talks. <20>There is too much work to do and not enough time,<2C> said one of the sources, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. Mexico''s Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray speaks during a meeting at the Senate in Mexico City, Mexico October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Ginnette Riquelme The current round of talks in Arlington, Virginia, near Washington - the fourth in a planned series of seven - has been extended by two days to a full week, and the remaining three could also be lengthened, said two of the sources. Officials are also starting to look at possible dates for extra rounds early next year, they added. The three nations initially set an end-December deadline, citing the need to avoid a Mexican presidential election next year. Privately, officials now say that if the negotiations need to be extended, they could run till the end of February without causing too many problems. People briefed on the talks describe the atmosphere as very tense amid increasing doubts in Canada and Mexico about whether the Trump administration really wants a deal. U.S. negotiators have presented demands that would boost the North American content for autos, cut Mexican and Canadian access to government procurement, introduce a clause that could kill the deal in five years and end a trade dispute settlement system that has deterred U.S. antidumping cases. Although trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico has more than quadrupled since 1994, Trump blames the pact for hundreds of thousands of lost manufacturing jobs in the United States and a $64 billion trade deficit with Mexico. Writing by David Ljunggren; Editing by Jonathan Oatis 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-trade-nafta/time-running-out-for-nafta-talks-set-to-be-extended-sources-idUKKBN1CK0RX'|'2017-10-15T20:57:00.000+03:00'
'45bf6ab3905860ce9969350a2bf6893fa2c84d4f'|'Airbus sets A330neo debut flight for Oct 19'|'October 16, 2017 / 2:41 PM / in 2 hours Airbus sets A330neo debut flight for Oct 19 Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of Airbus Group is seen on the company''s headquarters building in Toulouse, Southwestern France, April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus ( AIR.PA ) plans to stage the maiden flight of an upgraded version of its best-selling A330 wide-body jet on Thursday Oct 19, the planemaker said on Monday. The planned debut of the A330neo is subject to weather conditions. Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Laurence Frost 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-airbus-a330neo/airbus-sets-a330neo-debut-flight-for-oct-19-idUKKBN1CL23W'|'2017-10-16T17:41:00.000+03:00'
'2fb9fb1805d9d48bf8677fa282e6198ff6df4e55'|'BP Midstream Partners seeks to raise up to $893 million in IPO'|'October 16, 2017 / 11:37 AM / Updated an hour ago BP Midstream Partners seeks to raise up to $893 million in IPO Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - BP Midtsream Partners, a unit of British energy company BP Plc ( BP.L ), said on Monday it expects to raise up to $893 million (<28>671.3 million) from its initial public offering. BP Midtsream expects to sell 42.5 million shares, excluding underwriters'' option, at a suggested price range of $19 to $21 each, the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. ( bit.ly/2ge6biF ) BP Midstream Partners, a master limited partnership (MLP) formed by BP<42>s U.S. pipeline unit, plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol <20>BPMP<4D>. An MLP is a tax-advantaged structure often used by pipelines and other capital intensive companies to distribute excess cash to investors in the form of tax-deferred dividends. Most MLPs rely on external debt to fund new projects. The IPO revives a plan BP first broached internally about five years ago before slumping crude oil prices forced the oil giant to put the idea on hold, a source told Reuters in July. Oasis Midstream Partners, an MLP formed by Oasis Petroleum Inc ( OAS.N ), fell nearly 3 percent in its debut last month, opening slightly below its offering price. Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are among the underwriters for BP Midstream Partners<72> IPO. Reporting By Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bp-midstream-ipo/bp-midstream-partners-seeks-to-raise-up-to-893-million-in-ipo-idUKKBN1CL1HT'|'2017-10-16T14:44:00.000+03:00'
'72e47f99c871d5316ae422f801a7d7a57990bb4a'|'Saudi Aramco in stake sale talks with Chinese investor - sources'|'October 13, 2017 / 10:19 PM / in 8 hours Saudi Aramco in stake sale talks with Chinese investor - sources Saeed Azhar , David French 4 Min Read Logo of Saudi Aramco is seen at the 20th Middle East Oil & Gas Show and Conference (MOES 2017) in Manama, Bahrain, March 7, 2017. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed DUBAI/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Saudi Aramco is considering the sale of a stake to a Chinese investor as plans for its highly-anticipated international public offering are pushed beyond its 2018 target, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. The initial public offering is expected to be the world<6C>s largest stock sale, and is a key component of the Saudi government<6E>s economic reform program which aims to diversify the desert kingdom away from its reliance on oil exports. A private placement of shares in the state oil company to a Chinese investor is being evaluated as a precursor to the international IPO, according to two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity as the information was not public. They declined to name the investor or how much of Aramco would be sold. The move would provide Saudi Arabia with cash to help implement the National Transformation Program (NTP), as the reform package is formally known, according to one of the sources. The NTP comprises a number of difficult economic adjustments for Saudi Arabia - including removing some state subsidies and raising taxes - that are aimed at taming huge budget deficits caused by lower oil prices. Concerns about the impact of the austerity measures on the economy are rising. While data earlier this month showed the deficit was shrinking, the Saudi economy entered recession in the second quarter, consumer prices are falling and unemployment among Saudis is at 12.8 percent. A Saudi Aramco spokesman said: <20>A range of options, for the public listing of Saudi Aramco, continue to be held under active review. No decision has been made and the IPO process remains on track.<2E> LISTING Aramco<63>s dual listing on the Saudi stock market, Tadawul, and an international exchange had been earmarked for 2018 by the Saudi authorities - with stock markets in New York, London and Asia all vying for the offering. A decision on which exchange would secure the offering has still not been made, with top members of the Saudi royal family preferring New York and Aramco<63>s financial and legal advisers advocating London. Both venues have political issues which have caused the Saudis unease and delayed the location decision, according to a third source familiar with the matter. The U.S. Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), passed in September 2016, allowed lawsuits to proceed against the Saudi government claiming it had helped to plan the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and should pay damages to victims. Riyadh denies the allegations. Meanwhile, London<6F>s markets regulator has been criticized for proposing new listing rules aimed at attracting state-controlled companies such as Aramco, which some U.K. industry groups have warned would weaken investor protection. The third source added an international IPO beyond 2018 was still very much an option, while a Tadawul listing was on track for 2018, pointing to comments from senior Saudi officials, such as those made in Moscow earlier this month. The Financial Times reported that Aramco had held talks about a private stake sale to foreign governments <20> including China <20> and other investors, amid growing concerns about the feasibility of an international listing.( on.ft.com/2gBheCT ) Reporting by Saeed Azhar in Dubai and David French in New York. Additional Reporting by Tom Arnold in Dubai and Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Andrew Hay 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-saudi-aramco-ipo/saudi-aramco-in-stake-sale-talks-with-chinese-investor-sources-idUKKBN1CI31A'|'2017-10-14T01:18:00.000+03:00'
'f42fc6496a790167e26a5cd597e457af3874484b'|'Ford China Sept vehicle sales little changed yr/yr'|'BEIJING, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co sold 112,902 vehicles in China in September, little changed compared with the same period a year earlier, the U.S. carmaker said on Friday, following a 1 percent drop in August and a 7 percent slide in July.Ford<72>s January-September sales totaled 832,761 vehicles, a decline of 5 percent from the same period a year ago.The U.S. carmaker is being outpaced by rivals in China, the world<6C>s largest auto market, where it is now looking to revamp its strategy towards electric vans and cars to keep up with Beijing<6E>s push for cleaner new-energy vehicles. (Reporting by Adam Jourdan and Norihiko Shirouzu; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/china-autos-ford/ford-china-sept-vehicle-sales-little-changed-yr-yr-idUSB9N1ML001'|'2017-10-13T05:13:00.000+03:00'
'90af42575ea5c6cc705570c93651913cd26a56cd'|'MIDEAST STOCKS-Saudi falls, most markets trade narrowly'|'* Al Rajhi Bank, Ma<4D>aden, SABIC sink in Saudi* Almarai surges after PIF keeps 16.3 percent stake* Dubai<61>s Islamic Arab Insurance swings widely in heavy trade* Abu Dhabi<62>s Dana sinks after London sukuk hearings adjourned* Qatar National Bank firm after last week<65>s earningsBy Andrew TorchiaDUBAI, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Most Middle East stock markets traded in narrow ranges on Sunday while Saudi Arabia was dragged down by several major blue chips.The Saudi index dropped 0.7 percent as Al Rajhi Bank lost 1.0 percent and miner Ma<4D>aden sank 1.9 percent. Petrochemical producer Saudi Basic Industries fell 0.7 percent.Insurers were roughly evenly split between gainers and losers after they tumbled last week on expectations for a shakeout in the sector caused by tougher regulation. Amana Insurance, which had plunged 14.9 percent last week, surged 5.8 percent in unusually heavy trade.Food company Almarai rose 3.4 percent after saying the Public Investment Fund, the main Saudi sovereign wealth fund, had retained a 16.3 percent stake in the company after a 25 percent capital increase through an issue of bonus shares.Dubai<61>s index edged down 0.1 percent to 3,658 points, retreating from technical resistance at 3,667-3,681 points, the August and September peaks.Islamic Arab Insurance, the most heavily traded stock, surged in early trade but closed 2.4 percent lower. On Thursday, it had risen sharply in its heaviest volume since March, attracting speculative traders into the stock.Abu Dhabi fell 0.2 percent as Dana Gas sank 3.8 percent after a London High Court judge adjourned hearings on its $700 million of Islamic bonds to mid-November.The company is fighting sukuk holders in courts in Britain and the United Arab Emirates, arguing it does not need to redeem the instruments because they have become invalid; some equity investors have been hoping the hearings will result in a settlement that benefits the firm.Qatar<61>s index was almost flat. Qatar National Bank , which last week reported solid third-quarter earnings, climbed 1.2 percent.Egypt<70>s index edged up 0.1 percent. GB Auto surged 9.7 percent in unusually heavy trade.HIGHLIGHTS SAUDI ARABIA * The index dropped 0.7 percent to 6,938 points.DUBAI * The index edged down 0.1 percent to 3,658 points.ABU DHABI * The index fell 0.2 percent to 4,518 points.QATAR * The index edged down 0.01 percent to 8,341 points.EGYPT * The index edged up 0.1 percent to 13,906 points.KUWAIT * The index edged down 0.1 percent to 6,622 points.BAHRAIN * The index slipped 0.03 percent to 1,274 points.OMAN * The index rose 0.2 percent to 5,139 points. (Reporting by Andrew Torchia, editing by Louise Heavens)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/mideast-stocks/mideast-stocks-saudi-falls-most-markets-trade-narrowly-idUSL8N1MQ0EE'|'2017-10-15T17:04:00.000+03:00'
'ee9f7524fcd7183fd63d72f439af26a434ce38d9'|'UPDATE 1-Saudi may raise loan-deposit ratio if needed, c.bank chief tells Arabiya'|'(Adds context, comments on bank mergers and licences)DUBAI, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia<69>s central bank may raise the maximum loan-to-deposit ratio for commercial banks if that is needed to help the economy, central bank governor Ahmed al-Kholifey told Al Arabiya television.Kholifey was speaking on the sidelines of meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington at the weekend. The central bank last raised the ratio in February 2016, to 90 percent from 85 percent.The ratio for the banking sector as a whole stood at 81.7 percent in August, down from 84.8 percent a year ago, according to the latest central bank data.Kholifey also noted that the non-oil sector of the economy grew 0.6 percent from a year earlier in the first half of this year, which he said suggested the non-oil sector would lead economic expansion. Saudi banks have passed stress tests and are not worried about bad loans, he added.Earlier this year, Alawwal Bank entered talks to merge with Saudi British Bank, partly owned by HSBC . Kholifey told Al Arabiya that the situation with the possible merger would be clear by the end of this year.He also said two regional banks and one Asian bank were in advanced stages of procedures to obtain Saudi banking licences. He did not name the institutions. (Reporting by Sami Aboudi; Writing by Andrew Torchia)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/saudi-cenbank-policy/update-1-saudi-may-raise-loan-deposit-ratio-if-needed-c-bank-chief-tells-arabiya-idINL8N1MQ066'|'2017-10-15T05:59:00.000+03:00'
'bf8fdc7c18c88727f98ad1c609c5211dbcbd2ce8'|'High Noon.com: Battle for Saudi e-commerce market begins'|'October 15, 2017 / 10:26 AM / Updated 20 minutes ago High Noon.com: Battle for Saudi e-commerce market begins Katie Paul 5 Min Read RIYADH (Reuters) - In Saudi Arabia, a kingdom where postal codes are rarely used, most people pay in cash, and shopping is done in giant air-conditioned malls, building an online retail business is no easy task. But two powerfully-backed companies are trying to do just that, betting a young, tech-savvy population will eventually deliver up a large slice of the Arab world<6C>s largest consumer market. After months of delays, Noon.com launched in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Oct. 1 and said it would enter the Saudi market <20>within the coming weeks.<2E> That will start a race for dominance in a largely untapped market against Dubai-based Souq.com, which is already present in Saudi Arabia and poised for expansion after its acquisition this year by Amazon ( AMZN.O ). Both companies are well armed for the fight. Investors in Noon.com, including Dubai billionaire Mohamed Alabbar and Saudi Arabia<69>s sovereign wealth fund, have put $1 billion into the project. The business also plans to leverage existing assets from Alabbar<61>s Emaar Malls, Aramex delivery service and Namshi and JadoPado online marketplaces. Souq.com was known as the <20>Amazon of the Middle East<73> even before its purchase by the world<6C>s biggest online retailer, having built up a following and brand relationships since its launch in 2005. <20>Amazon and Souq.com will benefit from early-mover advantage in our view,<2C> said Josh Holmes, a consumer analyst at market researcher BMI. But with online sales in Saudi Arabia expected to surge to $13.9 billion by 2021 from a projected $8.7 billion this year, he said there would be plenty for Noon.com to play for. <20>While the rivalry between Amazon/Souq and Noon.com will be intense, we believe there is more than enough room for both players to thrive in Saudi Arabia and the wider region,<2C> Holmes said. SEA CHANGE FOR COMMERCE Shifting retail online would be a sea change for commerce in the Middle East, where internet sales now represent less than two percent of total retail, twelve times less than in the United Kingdom, according to a Boston Consulting Group report. In Saudi Arabia, which has lagged behind regional leader the UAE, it is only 0.8 percent of the total, and both Noon.com and Souq.com will have to adapt to the particular challenges of the market to prosper. One is getting deliveries right. Currently, delivery companies in Saudi Arabia regularly ask for landmarks rather than addresses, with drivers often requesting WhatsApped locations. Then there is payment. With less than half the population owning credit cards, e-commerce businesses often have to offer cash on delivery options, increasing their risks. There are other dangers too. High unemployment among the kingdom<6F>s millennials could cap spending power in the long term. Yet analysts point to the young population, high rate of technology adoption and high-quality transport networks as reasons for optimism. Some companies are already thriving. E-commerce now represents more than 40 percent of logistics provider DHL<48>s inbound parcel business into Saudi Arabia, said country general manager Faysal ElHajjami, forecasting this would continue to grow. Start-ups are also developing ways to accommodate the kingdom<6F>s last-mile delivery quirks. Dubai-based Fetchr, for example, operates an app that allows users to identify their location by using GPS, like Uber. <20>We realised nobody in Saudi really has a formal address, but everybody has a smart phone attached to their hip,<2C> said co-founder Joy Ajlouny, speaking with partner Idriss Al Rifai. Over the last year, Fetchr has grown its presence in the kingdom from three to 84 cities, with plans to tackle another 25 by the end of the year, and now employs about 1,000 people. Ajlouny and Rifai estimate market growth of 20 to 30 percent per year over the next five years, but caution that a five percent value adde
'f7a3791c531b2c442046748b66e5a21e14bccf00'|'Baidu''s iQiyi picks BofA, C. Suisse, Goldman for U.S. IPO: IFR'|'A person holds a phone with Baidu Inc''s video streaming service iQiyi in Jinan, Shandong province, China, in this May 25, 2016 photo illustration. Picture taken May 25, 2016. REUTERS/Stringer HONG KONG (Reuters) - Baidu Inc<6E>s iQiyi, a Netflix style video streaming service in China, has picked three banks to help arrange a U.S. initial public offering (IPO) worth about $1 billion, IFR reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the plans.Bank of America, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs will help manage the deal, expected for as soon as the first half of 2018, added IFR, a Thomson Reuters publication.Baidu and the three banks did not immediately reply to Reuters requests for comment on the IPO plans.Reporting by Fiona Lau of IFR; Writing by Elzio Barreto'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/baidu-iqiyi-ipo/baidus-iqiyi-picks-bofa-c-suisse-goldman-for-u-s-ipo-ifr-idINKBN1CL12F'|'2017-10-16T12:52:00.000+03:00'
'3b9e70be96320669bca33211989ef8306a7f4f93'|'Daimler takes first steps on new structure for cars and trucks'|'Reuters TV United States October 16, 2017 / 9:44 AM / in 40 minutes Daimler commits cash to help reshape company Reuters Staff 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Mercedes star logo of an E Coupe is pictured before the annual news conference of Daimler AG in Stuttgart, Germany, February 2, 2017. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo BERLIN (Reuters) - Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ) has committed more than 100 million euros ($118 million) to help create separate legal entities for its Mercedes-Benz cars and Daimler Trucks divisions, a move that would facilitate an eventual break up of the German company. Daimler wants to create a more agile structure as the latest luxury cars demand increasing input from technology and software specialists. <20>We not only need to be as close as possible to our customers<72> pulse, but also to be able to react as quickly and flexibly as possible to market developments and a fundamentally changing competitive environment,<2C> finance chief Bodo Uebber said. Daimler, which has annual sales of 153 billion euros ($181 billion), said it did not plan to divest any of its divisions and no final decision on the legal split had been made. Under the proposals, Daimler would be split into three independent stock corporations with their own management and supervisory boards capable of signing cross-shareholding agreements with any partners, a person familiar with the matter said, without giving more details. The move announced on Monday follows comments by CEO Dieter Zetsche who said in July that Daimler was considering putting parts of its business into separate legal entities, spurring talk of a possible break up as the group looks to fund big investments in self-driving and electric cars. Alongside the Financial Services AG business, the two new entities would combine Mercedes-Benz Cars and Vans operations as well as Trucks and Buses divisions, the company said. JOBS PROTECTED The Stuttgart-based company said in a separate statement on Monday that it was not pursuing any savings, efficiencies or job cuts related to the reorganization. To win the support of its labor unions, Daimler said it has further extended job guarantees until 2029 from 2020 and will make a 3 billion-euro contribution to the group<75>s pension fund in the fourth quarter. Separating Daimler<65>s divisions could make it easier to value them and create a higher figure than for the current combination, with trucks and buses on their own worth 31 billion euros, analysts at Evercore ISI have said. The German company<6E>s total market value is around 72.7 billion euros, according to Thomson Reuters data. <20>Daimler may be against putting anything up for sale now but of course things can look entirely different in 10 to 15 years<72> time,<2C> said NordLB analyst Frank Schwope, who has a <20>hold<6C> recommendation on the stock, adding he saw the trucks operations as the most likely candidate for a future divestment. <20>The implications of this (separation) are more long-term,<2C> he said. Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ), the world<6C>s biggest automotive group which also sells trucks and vans alongside its car business, has no plans to follow Daimler and divide up the group, Chief Executive Matthias Mueller said last month. Daimler shareholders could approve a possible legal overhaul in 2019 at the earliest, the company said, adding that further examination and due diligence were needed before the management and supervisory boards can reach a final verdict. The shares were trading up 0.8 percent at 68.46 euros as of 1305 GMT. Reporting by Andreas Cremer, Victoria Bryan and Ilona Wissenbach.; Editing by Mark Potter and Keith Weir 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-daimler-restructuring/daimler-takes-first-steps-on-new-structure-for-cars-and-trucks-idUKKBN1CL11U'|'2017-10-16T12:40:00.000+03:00'
'd3f048756fb5486006dec1beff08c6851c11a504'|'Sales tax hike is ''obvious'' choice for Japan debt woes - IMF'|'October 13, 2017 / 8:40 PM / a few seconds ago Sales tax hike is ''obvious'' choice for Japan debt woes: IMF Leika Kihara 4 Min Read The International Monetary Fund logo is seen during the IMF/World Bank spring meetings in Washington, U.S., April 21, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Raising the sales tax is a <20>very obvious<75> choice for Japan to get its fiscal house in order, a senior IMF official said on Friday, shrugging off proposals by the country<72>s opposition parties to freeze a hike scheduled for 2019. Odd Per Brekk, the International Monetary Fund<6E>s mission chief for Japan, also said he saw no need for the Bank of Japan to begin communicating a future exit strategy from its ultra-easy monetary policy anytime soon. <20>We think communication that focuses on maintaining monetary accommodation and achieving the 2 percent (inflation) target is the right approach and should remain the approach,<2C> Brekk, who is also deputy director of the IMF<4D>s Asia and Pacific Department, told Reuters in an interview. Japan<61>s sales tax hike has emerged as a key issue ahead of an Oct. 22 general election called by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Abe has pledged to proceed with the move to raise the sales tax to 10 percent in 2019, from the current 8 percent, but said he wants to use the revenue more for education and childcare spending than paying down debt. Opposition parties have called for freezing the hike, arguing it would harm Japan<61>s fragile economic recovery. Brekk said he had some concerns the hike could cool the economy, and called instead for a smaller, gradual hike in several stages. But he stressed that raising the tax rate was essential and the best way to rein in Japan<61>s huge public debt, which, at twice the size of its economy, is the biggest among advanced nations. <20>When you look around for revenue sources, this is a very obvious choice for Japan,<2C> he said. <20>The government can also look around for other areas for taxation. But clearly, any strategy for fiscal adjustment needs to feature an increase in the consumption tax.<2E> TATTERED FINANCES Abe<62>s administration abandoned a promise to balance the budget - excluding debt service and new bond sales - by March 2021, as efforts to fix Japan<61>s tattered finances stalled. The government plans to review its fiscal framework around the middle of next year, though it is uncertain whether it will set a new time frame for achieving the balanced-budget target. Given the huge size of Japan<61>s public debt, the upcoming fiscal review becomes <20>particularly important,<2C> Brekk said. <20>The focus should be on formulating a credible medium-term fiscal framework<72> that includes specific measures and a new time frame for hitting the balanced-budget target, he said. Referring to Japan<61>s monetary policy, Brekk said there was no problem with the BOJ lagging behind its U.S. and European counterparts in dialing back stimulus given Japan<61>s subdued inflation. He countered the view held by some analysts that delaying an exit from ultra-easy policy could leave the BOJ with fewer tools to fight another recession than other central banks. <20>You can still fine-tune the yield curve in the event of an adverse development,<2C> he said. <20>If you also establish a credible medium-term fiscal framework, that will also give you short-term fiscal space so you can also use that.<2E> Under a yield-curve control policy adopted last year, the BOJ now guides short-term interest rates at minus 0.1 percent and the 10-year government bond yield around zero percent. Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Paul Simao 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-imf-g20-japan-tax/sales-tax-hike-is-obvious-choice-for-japan-debt-woes-imf-idUKKBN1CI2XI'|'2017-10-13T23:32:00.000+03:00'
'2f8ca713c627e2b6aa2024a863b6915ba7552e92'|'IRS puts Equifax contract on hold during security review'|'October 13, 2017 / 5:23 PM / Updated 18 minutes ago IRS puts Equifax contract on hold during security review John McCrank 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Credit reporting company Equifax Inc. corporate offices are pictured in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Tami Chappell/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has temporarily suspended a contract worth more than $7 million it recently awarded to Equifax Inc following a security issue with the beleaguered credit reporting agency<63>s website on Thursday. Equifax, which disclosed last month that cyber criminals breached its systems between mid-May and late July and made off with sensitive data on 145.5 million people, said on Thursday it shut down one of its website pages after discovering that a third-party vendor was running malicious code on the page. <20>The IRS notified us that they have issued a stop-work order under our Transaction Support for Identity Management contract,<2C> an Equifax spokesperson said on Friday. <20>We remain confident that we are the best party to perform the services required in this contract,<2C> the spokesperson said. <20>We are engaging IRS officials to review the facts and clarify available options.<2E> The IRS is the first organization to say publicly that it is suspending a contract with Equifax since the credit reporting agency<63>s security problems came to light. Atlanta-based Equifax said its systems were not compromised by the incident on Thursday, which involved bogus pop-up windows on the web page that could trick visitors into installing software that automatically displays advertising material. Still, the IRS said it decided to temporarily suspended its short-term contract with Equifax for identity-proofing services. <20>During this suspension, the IRS will continue its review of Equifax systems and security,<2C> the agency said in a statement. There was no indication that any of the IRS data shared with Equifax under the contract had been compromised, it added. The move means that the IRS will temporarily be unable to create new accounts for taxpayers using its Secure Access portal, which supports applications including online accounts and transcripts. Users who already had Secure Access accounts will not be affected, the IRS said. IRS granted the $7.25 million contract to Equifax on Sept. 29, weeks after Equifax disclosed the massive data hack that drew scathing criticism from several lawmakers. <20>From its initial announcement, the timing and nature of this IRS-Equifax contract raised some serious red flags ... we are pleased to see the IRS suspend its contract with Equifax,<2C> Republican Representatives Greg Walden and Robert Latta said in a joint statement on Friday. <20>Our focus now remains on protecting consumers and getting answers for the 145 million Americans impacted by this massive breach,<2C> they said. Government contracts in areas such as healthcare, law enforcement, social services, and tax and revenue, are major sources of revenue for Equifax. In 2016, government services made up 5 percent of Equifax<61>s overall $3.1 billion in revenue, accounting for 10 percent of its workforce solutions revenues, 3 percent of its U.S. information solutions revenues, and 7 percent of its international revenues, according to a regulatory financial filing. Reporting by John McCrank in New York; additional reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington; Editing by Bill Rigby 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-equifax-cyber/irs-puts-equifax-contract-on-hold-during-security-review-idUSKBN1CI2G9'|'2017-10-13T20:20:00.000+03:00'
'c39f3a5e12027e4eb4d98d773ab9bcde3904632c'|'Two Chinese firms bidding for Chicago Exchange withdraw - WSJ'|'October 13, 2017 / 8:58 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago Two Chinese firms bidding for Chicago Exchange withdraw: WSJ Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Two Chinese investors, vying for a piece of the Chicago Stock Exchange, withdrew in the past two weeks, after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sought more details from the participants about their bid, the Wall Street Journal reported. Chongqing Jintian Industrial Co Ltd and Chongqing Longshang Decoration Co Ltd had agreed to invest about $8 million as part of a consortium that offered up to $25 million, according to the report. ( on.wsj.com/2yIzJjr ) The firms<6D> managers dropped out as they felt abused by political criticism of the deal in Congress and the slow progress of approval at the SEC, the WSJ reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Chicago exchange plans to file records with the SEC disclosing the investors<72> exit as soon as next week, according to the report. However, CHX Holdings Inc, the parent of the Chicago Stock Exchange, could recruit new American investors to replace the lost funding, the Journal said. A Chicago Stock Exchange spokesman and the SEC declined to comment. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which scrutinizes deals for potential national security concerns, approved the planned sale in December, prior to President Donald Trump taking office. The proposed sale of the privately owned exchange for an undisclosed amount to a consortium led by Chinese conglomerate Chongqing Casin Enterprise Group has drawn criticism from U.S. lawmakers, who questioned the U.S. SEC<45>s ability to regulate and monitor the foreign buyers if the deal is approved. In August, the SEC put on hold a decision approving the sale of the Chicago Stock Exchange, giving the regulator more time to mull the politically sensitive deal. With a market share of less than 0.5 percent, Chicago Stock Exchange is a niche player in the U.S. stock market, where it competes against 12 other exchanges including Intercontinental Exchange Inc<6E>s ( ICE.N ) New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Inc ( NDAQ.O ). Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chicagostockexchange-m-a/two-chinese-firms-bidding-for-chicago-exchange-withdraw-wsj-idUSKBN1CI2XX'|'2017-10-13T23:52:00.000+03:00'
'8601d7dc754821f39fceb2a3a2ed572e8b825341'|'Mexichem says its subsidiaries lift force majeure after hurricane Harvey'|' 28 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago Mexichem says its subsidiaries lift force majeure after hurricane Harvey Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MEXICO CITY, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Mexican petrochemical firm Mexichem on Friday said its subsidiaries had lifted measures of force majeure imposed after hurricane Harvey struck, hobbling their suppliers. Mexichem said in a bourse filing that Mexichem Resinas Vinilicas S.A. de C.V., Mexichem Resinas Colombia S.A.S. and Mexichem Specialty Resins Inc. had all lifted force majeure resulting from the hurricane, which inundated Houston and stalled operations in Texas<61> refineries. (Reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/mexico-mexichem/mexichem-says-its-subsidiaries-lift-force-majeure-after-hurricane-harvey-idUSS0N1LV032'|'2017-10-14T00:26:00.000+03:00'
'63c861c7d5e15d7873ac5237069f7c071cc0067c'|'FDA panel votes in favor of Spark''s blindness gene therapy'|'October 12, 2017 / 7:42 PM / Updated 4 minutes ago FDA panel backs gene therapy for rare form of blindness Toni Clarke 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A view shows the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland August 14, 2012. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo (Reuters) - Spark Therapeutics Inc<6E>s experimental gene therapy for a rare form of blindness improves vision and should be approved, advisers to the Food and Drug Administration concluded on Thursday, paving the way for the first U.S. gene therapy for an inherited disease. The panel voted unanimously in favor of the treatment, Luxturna, which is designed to treat inherited retinal diseases caused by defects in a gene known as RPE65, which tells cells to produce an enzyme critical to normal vision. The FDA is not obliged to follow the recommendations of its advisers but typically does. Michael Yee, an analyst at Jefferies, said in a recent research report that approval of the therapy would <20>thematically mark a watershed moment for the entire field.<2E> The panel<65>s vote followed scientific presentations from Spark and the FDA and testimonies from patients who described the impact of the therapy, such as allowing them for the first time to see the moon and stars, go out with friends at night, and see food on their plate. The agency is due to makes its decision by Jan. 12, 2018. Jeffrey Marrazzo, Spark<72>s chief executive, declined in a recent interview to say what the company would charge for the treatment. He said one benchmark would be the price of drugs for other ultra-rare diseases such as Pompe disease, Hunter Syndrome and paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, which can range from $300,000 a year to $600,000 a year or more. If approved, analysts expect Luxturna to generate annual sales of more than $400 million by 2021. The company<6E>s shares have risen 160 percent over the past 12 months, reaching a high of $91.00 on Sept. 29, amid optimism the product would be approved. They were halted during the committee meeting. Retinal disease caused by defects to the RPE gene affect between 1,000 and 2,000 people in the United States. Roughly half of those become legally blind by the age of 16 and all are legally blind by the age of 34. Most progress to complete blindness. Legal blindness refers to people whose vision is 20/200 or less. A person with normal vision can see an object 200 feet away. A legally blind person must stand 20 feet in front of it. People who are completely blind cannot see any light or shapes. Clinical trial results showed 93 percent of participants experienced some improvement in their functional vision as measured by their ability to navigate obstacles in poor light. Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Diane craft 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spark-blindness-fda/fda-panel-votes-in-favor-of-sparks-blindness-gene-therapy-idUSKBN1CH2UP'|'2017-10-12T22:31:00.000+03:00'
'd4ed819595fd7554713b004305734ba7886d0ce8'|'Movie studios join Disney-led service to link digital purchases'|'October 12, 2017 / 4:10 AM / Updated 15 hours ago Movie studios join Disney-led service to link digital purchases Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The water tank of The Walt Disney Co Studios is pictured in Burbank, California February 5, 2014. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Five Hollywood film studios have joined together to offer a new service designed to make it easier for consumers to collect digital movies that they can watch at home or on mobile devices, the studios said in a statement on Wednesday. The Movies Anywhere service was developed by Walt Disney Co ( DIS.N ) to provide a single app and website where customers can find movies they have purchased from a variety of retailers. Comcast Corp<72>s ( CMCSA.O ) Universal Pictures, Time Warner Inc<6E>s ( TWX.N ) Warner Bros, Twenty-First Century Fox Inc<6E>s ( FOXA.O ) 20th Century Fox and Sony Corp<72>s ( 6758.T ) Sony Pictures Entertainment have signed on to the effort, the statement said. Hollywood<6F>s movie studios are looking for ways to encourage digital sales of movies after they leave theaters in order to help make up for the decline in popularity of physical DVDs. The free Movies Anywhere service, launched in the United States on Wednesday, initially will allow users to access movies purchased from Apple Inc<6E>s ( AAPL.O ) iTunes, Amazon.com Inc<6E>s ( AMZN.O ) Amazon Video, Alphabet Inc<6E>s ( GOOGL.O ) Google Play and Wal-Mart Stores Inc<6E>s ( WMT.N ) Vudu. Other retailers and studios may join in the future. Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Lisa Shumaker 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-walt-disney-films/movie-studios-join-disney-led-service-to-link-digital-purchases-idUKKBN1CH0DV'|'2017-10-12T07:14:00.000+03:00'
'2692e3f39ac8e315e63b4f96862f476d2ca4c12f'|'UPDATE 1-Acacia''s gold production hit by Tanzania''s export ban'|' 26 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago UPDATE 1-Acacia''s gold production hit by Tanzania''s export ban Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Updates with detail, shares, analysts) LONDON, Oct 12 (Reuters) - London-listed gold miner Acacia Mining reported on Thursday a drop in production over the last three months, hit by work permit issues and reduced operations at its main Tanzanian mines. Acacia is caught up in a dispute with the Tanzanian government which banned the export of unprocessed minerals and enacted new laws to raise state ownership of the nation<6F>s mines. The company<6E>s share price, which is down by 50 percent so far this year, was down 3 percent at 184 pence by 0819 GMT, the only decliner in its sector index . Its gold production in the three months to September fell 8.3 percent to 191,203 ounces compared with the previous quarter although sales were up 3 percent at 132,787 ounces, Acacia said in a brief update. Sales were hit by the export ban which impacts concentrate at the Bulyanhulu and Buzwagi mines, while North Mara production was lower on work permit issues. The miner stopped underground work at its flagship Bulyanhulu mine in September in reaction to the export ban and cut its annual production guidance to 750,000 tonnes. However, Acacia was still well placed to meet its full-year production target as output for the year is so far 620,000 ounces, despite the pull-back in output at Bulyanhulu, Investec analysts said in a note. The company said it was providing a brief update ahead of major shareholder Barrick Gold<6C>s third-quarter figures due later on Thursday. Reporting by Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru and Zandi Shabalala in London; editing by Jason Neely, Greg Mahlich 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/acacia-mining-outlook/update-1-acacias-gold-production-hit-by-tanzanias-export-ban-idUSL8N1MN1AK'|'2017-10-12T11:27:00.000+03:00'
'7e57a78924c0ccf5770a7d01855e5435c62f6b3f'|'JPMorgan gets boost from lending as trading slumps'|'October 12, 2017 / 10:58 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Loan growth helps JPMorgan beat expectations despite trading decline David Henry , Sweta Singh 4 Min Read (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM.N ) easily beat Wall Street<65>s third-quarter profit expectations on Thursday, with loan growth and higher interest rates more than offsetting weakness in its markets-related unit. Executives at the largest U.S. bank touted the diverse mix of businesses that allow JPMorgan to weather a dip in one area or another, and downplayed a 27 percent drop in bond trading revenue even though weakness has continued into the fourth quarter. Overall, JPMorgan<61>s profit rose 7.1 percent in the third quarter compared with the year-ago period, to $6.73 billion, or $1.76 per share. Analysts had expected earnings of $1.65 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The bank<6E>s total revenue of $25.33 billion also topped the average analyst estimate of $25.23 billion. In early notes to clients, analysts characterized the results as <20>solid<69> or <20>pretty good,<2C> given problems in bond trading that have affected Wall Street banks for some time. Related Coverage <20>The results were solid but not exceptional,<2C> said Morningstar analyst Jim Sinegal. JPMorgan shares were down 0.4 percent at $96.48 in morning trading. FILE PHOTO: People pass the JP Morgan Chase & Co. Corporate headquarters in the Manhattan borough of New York City, May 20, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo Growth in credit cards, auto loans, commercial banking and corporate advisory fees drove the results, with average core loans up 7 percent during the quarter. JPMorgan<61>s net interest income, or the difference between what it pays for funds and collects from lending them out, rose 10 percent. However, markets revenue fell 21 percent as the slump in bond trading outweighed a more modest dip in equities, slightly worse than the roughly 20 percent drop Chief Executive Jamie Dimon had forecast at an event in September. Wall Street banks have been grappling with bond market challenges for most of the past seven years, as client volumes have been depressed for a number of reasons and new regulations have restricted certain activities and made trading more expensive. JPMorgan fared worse last quarter than rival Citigroup Inc ( C.N ), which reported a 16 percent decline in bond trading on Thursday. The trends bode poorly for Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( GS.N ), which has struggled more in bond trading recently than other Wall Street banks. JPMorgan<61>s markets revenue is likely to drop again in the fourth quarter because the year-ago period was strong, Chief Financial Officer Marianne Lake said on a conference call with analysts. Trading revenue during the fourth quarter of 2016 benefited from a surge in trading activity following the U.S. election. Still, management maintained earlier guidance for full-year net interest income, expenses, charge-offs and loan growth, indicating that they expect JPMorgan<61>s other businesses to continue to offset capital markets pain. During a call with reporters, Lake cited <20>the benefits of diversification and scale,<2C> while Daniel Pinto, who runs JPMorgan<61>s investment bank, pointed to <20>balanced strength across diverse businesses<65> in a memo to employees. Reporting by Sweta Singh in Bengaluru and David Henry in New York; Writing by Lauren Tara LaCapra; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Meredith Mazzilli 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jpmorgan-results/jpmorgan-gets-boost-from-lending-as-trading-slumps-idUSKBN1CH1GW'|'2017-10-12T14:00:00.000+03:00'
'64614bb201e6a3fccb7e067217945804f6c9b265'|'Hyatt Hotels discovers card data breach at 41 properties'|'October 12, 2017 / 8:17 PM / Updated 13 minutes ago Hyatt Hotels discovers card data breach at 41 properties Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The company''s logo is seen on the Ararat Park Hyatt Moscow hotel in central Moscow, Russia, March 23, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov (Reuters) - Hyatt Hotels Corp ( H.N ) said on Thursday it had discovered unauthorized access to payment card information at certain Hyatt-managed locations worldwide between March 18, 2017 and July 2, 2017. Hyatt said the incident affected payment card information, such as, cardholder name, card number, expiration date and internal verification code, from cards manually entered or swiped at the front desk of certain Hyatt-managed locations. ( bit.ly/2yHBSfr ) The owner of Andaz, Park Hyatt and Grand Hyatt chain of hotels said a total of 41 properties were affected in 11 countries, with China accounting for 18 properties, the most among impacted countries. Seven Hyatt properties were affected at U.S. locations, including three in Hawaii, three in Puerto Rico and one in Guam. The Chicago, Illinois-based company said its cyber security team discovered signs of the unauthorized access in July and launched an internal investigation, completed on Thursday, that resolved the issue and took steps to prevent this from happening in the future. This is not the first time Hyatt is facing data breach problem at its hotels. In late 2015 Hyatt said its payment processing system was infected with credit-card-stealing malware, that had affected 250 hotels in about 50 countries. Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hyatt-hotels-cyber/hyatt-hotels-discovers-card-data-breach-at-41-properties-idUKKBN1CH2X1'|'2017-10-12T23:25:00.000+03:00'
'dab549af3112e8d1a0e8005b51a17e4d795ea6ff'|'Japan''s Tepco, Chubu Elec get regulatory nod to merge fossil power plants'|'A worker puts up new logo of TEPCO Holdings and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Group on the wall ahead of the transition to a holding company system through a company split at the TEPCO headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, March 31, 2016. REUTERS/Masayuki Terazawa/Pool/File Photo (Reuters) - The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) has approved plans by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco) and Chubu Electric Power Co to integrate their fossil fuel power plants under their JERA Co joint venture, an official with the anti-monopoly regulator said on Friday.The JFTC gave the green light in late September after determining that the deal, involving Japan<61>s biggest and third-biggest regional power utilities, would not have an impact on fair competition in the industry, the official said.The pair had agreed in March to combine the businesses in April-September 2019, forming a company that will oversee 68 gigawatts (GW) of domestic power capacity, nearly half the country<72>s power generation.Tepco and Chubu Electric set up JERA in 2015. It now handles all of Tepco<63>s and Chubu<62>s upstream energy and fuel procurement business and is the world<6C>s biggest liquefied natural gas (LNG) buyer with annual intake of around 35 million tonnes.The integration of fossil fuel plants is the last of a three-step plan for JERA, which also handles fuel transportation/trading, upstream energy assets and overseas power generation.With nearly 8 GW worth of overseas power capacity, the integration of the JERA parents<74> domestic plants would propel it to become one of the world<6C>s major power utilities by installed capacity.Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-japan-power-m-a/japans-tepco-chubu-elec-get-regulatory-nod-to-merge-fossil-power-plants-idINKBN1CI0CT'|'2017-10-13T02:39:00.000+03:00'
'398c067aa9e4d11bade932efebb6c639128d8c3a'|'UPDATE 1-Ford''s China sales stuck in first gear as rivals overtake'|'Reuters TV United States October 13, 2017 / 2:18 AM / Updated 9 hours ago Ford''s China sales stuck in first gear as rivals overtake Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Ford Taurus cars are seen during a presentation at the 16th Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition in Shanghai, April 21, 2015. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo BEIJING (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co saw its China vehicle sales make the barest of increases in September, extending a tough run in the world<6C>s largest auto market even as global rivals have logged robust gains. The U.S. automaker has lacked a high-volume brand of affordable entry cars for China and has been criticized for slow decision-making that has cost it share in a market where consumer tastes change quickly. In response, it has brought in a new China head, Jason Luo, a Chinese-born American formerly at U.S.-based air bag maker Key Safety Systems, tasked with building closer ties with Ford<72>s local partners and working more effectively with regulators. The U.S. carmaker sold 112,902 vehicles in China last month, an increase of some 430 from the same period a year earlier. By contrast, rivals Toyota Motor Corp, Honda Motor Co and Nissan Motor Co Ltd saw gains of 14 percent or more while General Motors posted an increase of 7 percent. Overall vehicles sales in China rose 5.7 percent in September - a fourth straight month of growth. Like many other global automakers, Ford is also looking to revamp its strategy towards electric vans and cars to keep up with Beijing<6E>s push for cleaner new-energy vehicles (NEV). The country has set strict quotas for NEVs which carmakers must meet by 2019, a move that is prompting a flurry of electric car deals and new launches of electric and hybrid models. Ford said it was looking to set up an electric car venture with Chinese firm Anhui Zotye Automobile Co in August. Reporting by Adam Jourdan and Norihiko Shirouzu; Editing by Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-autos-ford/ford-china-september-vehicle-sales-little-changed-year-on-year-idUSKBN1CI05Z'|'2017-10-13T06:27:00.000+03:00'
'c10fcf1ca8c9a7a6a3f3b9cf643e308778f2de9e'|'Two Chinese firms bidding for Chicago Exchange withdraw: WSJ'|'October 13, 2017 / 8:55 PM / Updated 9 hours ago Two Chinese firms bidding for Chicago Exchange withdraw: WSJ Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Two Chinese investors, vying for a piece of the Chicago Stock Exchange, withdrew in the past two weeks, after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sought more details from the participants about their bid, the Wall Street Journal reported. Chongqing Jintian Industrial Co Ltd and Chongqing Longshang Decoration Co Ltd had agreed to invest about $8 million as part of a consortium that offered up to $25 million, according to the report. ( on.wsj.com/2yIzJjr ) The firms<6D> managers dropped out as they felt abused by political criticism of the deal in Congress and the slow progress of approval at the SEC, the WSJ reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Chicago exchange plans to file records with the SEC disclosing the investors<72> exit as soon as next week, according to the report. However, CHX Holdings Inc, the parent of the Chicago Stock Exchange, could recruit new American investors to replace the lost funding, the Journal said. A Chicago Stock Exchange spokesman and the SEC declined to comment. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which scrutinizes deals for potential national security concerns, approved the planned sale in December, prior to President Donald Trump taking office. The proposed sale of the privately owned exchange for an undisclosed amount to a consortium led by Chinese conglomerate Chongqing Casin Enterprise Group has drawn criticism from U.S. lawmakers, who questioned the U.S. SEC<45>s ability to regulate and monitor the foreign buyers if the deal is approved. In August, the SEC put on hold a decision approving the sale of the Chicago Stock Exchange, giving the regulator more time to mull the politically sensitive deal. With a market share of less than 0.5 percent, Chicago Stock Exchange is a niche player in the U.S. stock market, where it competes against 12 other exchanges including Intercontinental Exchange Inc<6E>s ( ICE.N ) New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Inc ( NDAQ.O ). Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-chicagostockexchange-m-a/two-chinese-firms-bidding-for-chicago-exchange-withdraw-wsj-idINKBN1CI2XX'|'2017-10-13T18:55:00.000+03:00'
'2ae8fc1a3cc79d0a9fbc91bacbb770dbd7a09063'|'BlackBerry patent licensing director says he has left company'|'Trump strikes blow at Iran nuclear deal Trump strikes blow at Iran nuclear deal Trump strikes blow at Iran nuclear deal Reuters TV United States October 13, 2017 / 10:15 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago BlackBerry patent licensing director says he has left company Alastair Sharp 3 Min Read A Blackberry sign is seen in front of their offices on the day of their annual general meeting for shareholders in Waterloo, Canada in this June 23, 2015 file photo. BlackBerry posted a bigger-than-expected fall in first quarter revenue June 23, 2016, but forecast full-year results above market expectations. REUTERS/Mark Blinch/Files TORONTO (Reuters) - A key attorney executing BlackBerry Ltd<74>s patent licensing strategy has left the company, the second recent departure from the team tasked with making money from the Canadian company<6E>s intellectual property. Victor Schubert, who was a licensing director for BlackBerry, told Reuters in a brief LinkedIn message that he was no longer with the company. He did not say when he left or why. Monetizing the company<6E>s intellectual property is a key part of Chief Executive John Chen<65>s plan for turning around the company whose revenues have declined for six straight years as sales of its once ubiquitous smartphones have tumbled. Company representatives did not respond to requests for comment on Schubert. Two switchboard operators at the Canadian company said his name was not in a global employee directory. News of his exit follows the recent departure of Mark Kokes, who lead BlackBerry<72>s overall patent strategy. Kokes last month joined a health technology company. Schubert joined BlackBerry in March 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile, as the company was embarking on a major push to boost licensing revenue. BlackBerry is trying to persuade other companies to pay licensing royalties to use its trove of some 40,000 global patents on technology including operating systems, networking infrastructure, acoustics, messaging, automotive subsystems, cybersecurity and wireless communications. Schubert has created and executed patent-licensing programs for at least four companies, including BlackBerry, dating back to 1992, according to his LinkedIn profile. It lists portfolio mining, patent valuation and negotiating patent sales as areas of expertise. He was due to represent BlackBerry at a Seattle-area patent conference next month to discuss how operating companies can make money off their intellectual property, according to an agenda posted on the conference website in August. He is no longer listed as a panelist. BlackBerry disclosed it had secured royalty-bearing deals with Cisco Systems Inc and another company that it did not name soon after Schubert joined. It also filed patent infringement lawsuits during his tenure against Nokia and Avaya Inc [AVXX.UL] that are ongoing. BlackBerry on Thursday disclosed that it had settled another lawsuit, filed against low-end Android phone manufacturer BLU Products Inc. Both companies declined to disclose terms of the deal. Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Additional reporting by Jan Wolfe in New York; Editing by Jim Finkle and Lisa Shumaker 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-blackberry-patents/blackberry-patent-licensing-director-says-he-has-left-company-idUKKBN1CI313'|'2017-10-14T01:10:00.000+03:00'
'e558b9cae1959f3eb77814f857373cae7b4dfb54'|'IMFC welcomes global economic upswing, warns of low inflation'|'October 14, 2017 / 7:38 PM / in 14 minutes IMFC welcomes global economic upswing, warns of low inflation Leika Kihara 3 Min Read IMF Governors family photo during the IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Washington, U.S., October 14, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas   Member countries   on Saturday welcomed the global upswing in economic activity but warned that the recovery was not yet complete given low inflation and geopolitical risks. The IMF<4D>s steering body repeated its past commitments on currency exchange rates and made no mention of trade in its communique, as contentious talks to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) overshadowed the global lender<65>s autumn gathering. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde sought to offer a bright note, saying that it was <20>perfectly legitimate<74> to renew long-standing trade agreements to respond to a changing world. <20>Trade is a very powerful engine of growth, innovation, competition and productivity ... Hopefully if it is well done, it can be a win-win for all countries in those negotiations,<2C> she said, when asked about the NAFTA talks. The International Monetary and Financial Committee<65>s (IMFC) communique said global growth prospects were strengthening thanks to a pick-up in investment, trade and factory output. <20>But the recovery is not yet complete, with inflation below target in most advanced economies, and potential growth remains weak in many countries,<2C> it said, warning policymakers against complacency with medium-term risks tilted to the downside. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin arrives at IMF Governors family photo during the IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Washington, U.S., October 14, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas The IMFC said member countries agreed to work together to reduce <20>excessive global imbalances,<2C> and to look more carefully at potential side-effects that prolonged low interest rates could have on asset prices and economic activity. <20>Effective financial supervision and macroprudential frameworks are key to guard against financial stability risks,<2C> the communique said, reflecting concerns among some policymakers that years of heavy money printing by central banks could be sowing the seeds of excessive risk-taking in markets. (L-R) Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde attend IMF Governors family photo during the IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Washington, U.S., October 14, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas The communique reiterated the member countries<65> pledge to refrain from competitive currency devaluations. It also called on policymakers to complement ultra-easy monetary policy with flexible fiscal policy and structural reforms, to solidify the global recovery. <20>Structural reforms that were difficult to do in hard times would be much easier in better times because the outlook is stronger and there is less fatigue on the shoulders of people when the growth is picking up, when jobs are created,<2C> Lagarde said. <20>It<49>s when the sun is shining that you need to fix the roof. That message was received 100 percent (by the policymakers).<2E> Reporting by Leika Kihara;  '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-imf-g20/imfc-welcomes-global-economic-upswing-warns-of-low-inflation-idUKKBN1CJ0R2'|'2017-10-14T22:37:00.000+03:00'
'939096ad4da0fe6af9972caba35505306b9c9b01'|'Regulators need to develop global cyber security standards -JPM''s Pinto'|'October 14, 2017 / 3:44 PM / in 4 hours Regulators need to develop global cyber security standards -JPM''s Pinto Reuters Staff * Cyber security laws, supervision need to change -Pinto * Payments services next <20>battleground<6E> for banks -Barclay<61>s CEO WASHINGTON, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Governments need to develop global cyber security standards and increase information sharing on cyber threats, Daniel Pinto, chief executive of JPMorgan<61>s corporate and investment bank, said on Saturday. Pinto, speaking during a panel at the Institute of International Finance meeting in Washington, said globbal banks have to comply with a hodgepodge of cyber security standards across different countries, increasing costs and risks. Pinto said cyber security laws and the way banks are supervised on cyber security had to change. <20>Each country has a different standard but we have a global problem ... When you go to point where you have to have different standards in every place, you put yourself in a vulnerable position,<2C> he said. His comments highlight growing concerns among financial market participants and regulators about the risks cyber attacks pose to the financial system following a series of recent incidents. Last month, credit reporting firm Equifax disclosed a massive breach had exposed data on more than 140 million customers, while the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also said last month its corporate filing system had been breached. On Friday, the Financial Stability Board, which comprises central banks, released a stock take of different countries<65> cyber security regulations and guidelines for financial services, noting some countries had as many as 10 different sets of rules and that these typically varied widely across jurisdictions. Barclays CEO Jes Staley, speaking to the same panel, said cyber risk and payments services were big issues for banks. New fintech payment providers, as well as the established tech giants such as Amazon and Facebook, were becoming major competitive challengers to financial firms, he said. <20>All the banks are very focused on the payments space,<2C> Staley said. <20>That may be where the battleground for finance is fought over the next 15 years.<2E> (Reporting by Michelle Price; Editing by Bill Trott) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-iif-banks/regulators-need-to-develop-global-cyber-security-standards-jpms-pinto-idUSL4N1MP093'|'2017-10-14T18:41:00.000+03:00'
'ade8a91170b181403e7b0097234f53c62dbfe3af'|'Citi''s private bank to set up Luxembourg unit to cope with Brexit'|'October 12, 2017 / 8:37 AM / in an hour Citi''s private bank to set up Luxembourg unit to cope with Brexit Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A view of the exterior of the Citibank Corporate headquarters in the Manhattan borough of New York City, May 20, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Citigroup ( C.N ) said its private bank is to set up a booking centre in Luxembourg to ensure it can continue to serve European Union clients after Britain leaves the bloc in 2019. Citi currently operates its European private banking operations out of London, but UK finance firms may lose their ability to sell their services to EU clients unless the British government manages to strike a deal with the bloc. <20>The decision is based on what is best for our clients and what will allow us to continue to service our clients without any disruption,<2C> a spokeswoman for Citi said in a statement on Thursday. The U.S. bank has already said it will headquarter its EU trading operations in Frankfurt after Brexit, and has also applied for a licence for its markets business in France. Reporting by Rachel Armstrong; editing by Carolyn Cohn 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-citigroup-luxembourg/citis-private-bank-to-set-up-luxembourg-unit-to-cope-with-brexit-idUKKBN1CH0ZM'|'2017-10-12T11:36:00.000+03:00'
'83b2062f03689d8a73ba441a63ae7b64aeab770c'|'HSBC names John Flint as next chief executive'|'October 12, 2017 / 10:11 AM / Updated 4 hours ago HSBC picks company veteran John Flint as new chief executive Rachel Armstrong , Lawrence White 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC ( HSBA.L ) has chosen John Flint as its next chief executive, with its newly arrived chairman promoting an insider to drive revenue growth at Europe<70>s biggest bank. Flint, who runs HSBC<42>s retail and wealth management business out of London, will take over as CEO in February next year when Stuart Gulliver, 58, retires after seven years in the job. The appointment is the first major decision taken by former AIA Group ( 1299.HK ) chief Mark Tucker, who officially took up his post at HSBC just 12 days ago as its first externally-appointed chairman. Flint, who is not related to Tucker<65>s predecessor Douglas Flint, is viewed by other HSBC executives as the safe option, having worked at the bank since 1989. During his career at HSBC Flint, 49, has worked across most of its businesses and spent his first 14 years in Asia, giving him the breadth of experience seen as vital for the CEO role. <20>He has a great understanding and regard for HSBC<42>s heritage, and the passion to build the bank for the next generation,<2C> Tucker said in a statement. Flint emerged as the forerunner in the past six months as expectations HSBC could appoint its first external CEO in its 150-year history waned on the back of a rally in its share price. The bank<6E>s stock is up 14 percent so far this year, though was little moved on Thursday following the announcement of Flint<6E>s appointment. <20>It<49>s good news - it<69>s important to mix an insider with the new outside chairman and continue on the path set by the current team,<2C> said Hugh Young, head of Asia at Standard Life Aberdeen, one of the bank<6E>s top ten shareholders. PUSH FOR GROWTH Flint will be paid a base salary of 1.2 million pounds ($1.6 million) a year, as well as a fixed pay allowance of 1.7 million pounds and an annual pension allowance of 360,000 pounds. FILE PHOTO: HSBC headquarters is seen at the financial Central district in Hong Kong, China September 6, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo He will also be entitled to an annual bonus worth up to 215 percent of his base pay and a long-term incentive award of up to 320 pct of his base pay. His main task will be to grow revenues across HSBC<42>s businesses, as it seeks to grow profits again following a period of restructuring after the 2008-9 financial crisis. HSBC<42>s previous management duo of Gulliver and Douglas Flint spent the years since their appointment in 2010 shrinking HSBC, after a period of empire-building in the run-up to the 2008 global financial crisis left the bank over-extended. In July, HSBC announced its third share buyback in a year and rising profits, in a sign of its turnaround. But the bank still faces a tough challenge to meet its long term goal of making a better than 10 percent return on equity. In August last year HSBC abandoned a timetable for achieving that target, as increased regulatory requirements on capital, low interest rates and rising competition from low-cost competitors pressure lenders<72> profits worldwide. Investors will watch closely to see whether Flint continues Gulliver<65>s shift toward the bank<6E>s second home market of Asia. HSBC said in 2015 it would hire 4000 staff and lend more in China<6E>s southern Pearl River Delta region, a plan that has since encountered some setbacks as China<6E>s growth slowed. It has also lost market share in its Asian life insurance business, a trend which analysts expect the bank<6E>s new chairman to attempt to reverse given his background in the industry. Flint spent much of his early carer in Asia, and has done stints in Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and India as well as the United States and Britain. Before taking on his retail and wealth role in 2013, he was HSBC<42>s head of strategy and planning having previously run its global asset management business and was deputy head of its markets business as well as serving as Gr
'e2ac307abd93e32c66336d57b82e3479b960cada'|'Fiat Chrysler recalls 470,000 vehicles for restraint defect'|'October 13, 2017 / 7:59 PM / in 39 minutes Fiat Chrysler recalls 470,000 vehicles for restraint defect Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A screen displays the ticker information for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV at the post where it''s traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., January 12, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV ( FCHA.MI ) said on Friday it is recalling 470,000 vehicles worldwide to replace a component that may inhibit deployment of the vehicles<65> active head restraints in the event of a crash. The Italian-American automaker said it is unaware of any injuries or accidents related to the recall. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into the issue in June. The recall covers 2012 Jeep Liberty sport utility vehicles and 2012-13 Chrysler 200 and Dodge Avenger mid-size cars. Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Steve Orlofsky 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-fiat-chrysler-recall/fiat-chrysler-recalls-470000-vehicles-for-restraint-defect-idUKKBN1CI2VP'|'2017-10-13T22:59:00.000+03:00'
'8b2c07abe42338679ed614e695b680c1a0d16d64'|'IMF urges euro zone to use economic rebound to tackle problems'|'A security personnel stands next to International Monetary Fund logo at IMF headquarters in Washington, U.S., April 19, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The euro zone should use its <20>robust<73> economic rebound to tackle reforms that are politically difficult to push through, Poul Thomsen, the head of the International Monetary Fund<6E>s European Department, said on Friday.The European Commission expects the gross domestic product of the 19 countries sharing the single currency to grow 1.7 percent this year and 1.8 percent in 2018. The IMF expects growth of 2.1 percent this year and 1.9 percent in 2018.<2E>The key challenge facing policy-makers is to take advantage of the robust recovery to take measures that are politically difficult,<2C> Thomsen said in a press conference at the IMF and World Bank fall meetings in Washington.<2E>This is the time for authorities in countries that need to build fiscal space to do so. This is the time for regulators in countries where banks need to clean their balance sheets to start doing so,<2C> he said.<2E>And this is the time for countries that need to make structural reforms to boost productivity to start doing so. If not now, when?<3F> Thomsen said.Thomsen did not name any countries.Italy, however, is struggling with low growth, high public debt and a high level of non-performing loans in its banking system, while France needs to make its labour market more flexible and Spain has to tackle high unemployment. Germany, the powerhouse of the euro zone, needs to boost investment.Reporting by Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Paul Simao'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/g20-imf-thomsen-eurozone/imf-urges-euro-zone-to-use-economic-rebound-to-tackle-problems-idINKBN1CI1ZA'|'2017-10-13T17:41:00.000+03:00'
'13332cf0480f5f9f1cdf80b94d4a5d694182f251'|'''They''ll be around as long as people shake hands'': why business cards won''t die - Guardian Small Business Network'|'Monday 16 October 2017 07.37 BST Last modified on Monday 16 October 2017 08.28 BST Y our business card says a lot more about you than you think, as anyone who has watched the scene in American Psycho , where bankers compare their expensively made yet largely indistinguishable cards, will know. While most saw this as the ultimate display of absurd masculine competition on 1980s Wall Street; for one company it was market research. Black Astrum produces diamond-encrusted business cards for a select number of exceedingly wealthy clients. The psychologists'' guide to networking Read more The company<6E>s concept director, Sufian Khawaja, says: <20>Looking beyond the diamonds, when developing the Signature card, we spent more than six months searching for the perfect material. We tested the material<61>s scratch resistance, how much it weighed, how it looked and felt in the hand, even how it sounded when it was dropped.<2E> The cards cost between <20>300 and <20>1,500 each, depending on the number of diamonds included in the design. Clients include members of the royal family in the Middle East, as well as business people in Europe and China. Khawaja says: <20>For many of our clients, wealth is no longer a distinguishing factor in the circles in which they move. In an ever-increasing digital world, people still like to leave a lasting impression and our cards allow our clients to do just that.<2E> While Black Astrum supplies a very niche market, business cards still play a role in corporate life, despite the digital revolution. Richard Ellis, chairman of the Original Cottage Company, says he regularly uses them with owners of holiday homes and his financial advisers alike. <20>It<49>s got your email address, mobile number, the company you work for. It<49>s an incredibly cost-effective, simple way of passing over details, without standing there and typing lots of information into your smartphone.<2E> Having this information on a physical object helps trigger the memory of a business acquaintance. Asi Sharabi, chief executive of the children<65>s book publisher Wonderbly, says: <20>You can always go back and dig in your box of business card memories, and find some lost gems; or some people that you didn<64>t really think would come in handy.<2E> Ellis agrees: <20>If you file it electronically, it<69>s invisible, you have to go and actively remember who it is and search it out. I don<6F>t remember people<6C>s names necessarily, or the company. I remember I met someone at that exhibition, I<>ll have his business card, I<>ll remember it when I see it. I wouldn<64>t remember enough information to go on to my smartphone and search.<2E> The physical nature of business cards also enables creative designs, such as the divorce lawyer<65>s card designed to be torn evenly in two; or a card for a personal trainer made from stretchy material that requires you to exercise in order to read the text. Moo.com business cards made from cotton fabric. Photograph: Moo.com Ironically, it was the digital revolution that sparked a more creative approach to business cards. In 2006, British company Moo came onto the scene with its graphic, multi-coloured versions, which could carry a different image on every single card thanks to the digital printing press. Last year, Moo printed almost 200m business cards, helping generate revenues of <20>75m. It has customers in more than 190 countries and employs 500 people across six offices in the UK and US. Networking for small businesses <20> Q&A roundup Read more Toby Hextall, director of product design at Moo, is unsurprisingly bullish about the future of the physical business card, even in the digital age. <20>Business cards are still such an important part of business networking that I think they will only go out of fashion when people stop shaking hands.<2E> The company recently launched a range of eco-friendly cards made from cotton T-shirts . That is not to say that Moo has ignored the shift to digital. A new range of cards in
'08477e13d9db69de3602784926b691297c5220f7'|'BlackBerry CEO says patent plans on track after departures'|' 27 PM / in 17 minutes BlackBerry CEO says patent plans on track after departures Alastair Sharp 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Blackberry CEO John Chen speaks to reporters following their annual general meeting for shareholders in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada on June 23, 2015. REUTERS/Mark Blinch/File Photo TORONTO (Reuters) - BlackBerry Ltd ( BB.TO ) Chief Executive John Chen said on Monday the company<6E>s strategy for generating licensing revenue from its patent portfolio remains on track following the recent departures of two people from the team negotiating deals. <20>I<EFBFBD>m confident. I<>m on top of this,<2C> Chen said in an interview with CNBC when asked about the departures. Reuters on Friday reported attorney Victor Schubert said he had left BlackBerry. Last month, Mark Kokes, who led BlackBerry<72>s overall patent strategy, joined a health technology company. <20>We have over 80 people in that group and very senior people,<2C> Chen told CNBC. <20>All our IP (intellectual property) licensing are managed by myself, the CFO, our legal counsel and the president of the group.<2E> The company<6E>s shares were down 1 percent at $11.45 in Monday morning trade on the New York Stock Exchange ( BB.N ). Reporting by Alastair Sharp in Toronto; Editing by Jim Finkle and Bill Trott 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-blackberry-patents/blackberry-ceo-says-patent-plans-on-track-after-departures-idUKKBN1CL2A3'|'2017-10-16T18:27:00.000+03:00'
'a7d8e3ee45163ee9995c53c5541f8e200ba6d0fa'|'Crafty app developers are ripping off big-name brands'|'THE new app for an upmarket British department store certainly looks the part. Released on Google Play, a shop for Android software, on September 5th, it has the right logo, the correct vibrant colour and offers fashionable clothes and accessories. But the app is not authorised by the brand, is littered with pop-up ads and is painfully slow (furious users gave it one-star ratings). Its developer, Style Apps, has also launched apps for other clothing brands that are household names in America.Such fake apps are designed by crafty developers to trick inattentive users. Google and Apple police their app stores but many impostors get through. In third-party app stores, unofficial platforms run by someone other than the two tech giants, the problem is even worse. Users are tricked in two ways. Some apps fill a gap in the market. Selfridges, a chain of British fashion stores, for instance, has a legitimate app for Apple devices but not for Android ones. RadioShack, an American electronics retailer that filed for bankruptcy in February 2015, has a website but not an official app. Three imitation apps have by now sprouted under the shop<6F>s name.  Other developers simply copy an existing app and hope users will fail to notice. The Economist found that half of the 50 top-selling apps in Google Play had fakes. These included ones with tweaked names (<28>MyGoogleTranslate<74> rather than <20>Google Translate<74>) and a bogus Netflix app that uses a weird Halloween-themed font for the logo. Google says it is reviewing these apps and will take action where necessary.Fake apps are often stuffed with malicious code. Academics from a research group, SerVal, at the University of Luxembourg, estimate that around a fifth of all Android app-based malware is hidden in fake apps. The malware facilitates various money-making schemes. The most egregious are designed to steal the passwords that unlock users<72> bank accounts. But it is more common for scams to profit from ordinary advertising, particularly on Android devices, says Eliran Sapir of Apptopia, a tech firm. Adverts in the smartphone<6E>s web browser get quietly replaced by similar ones chosen by the fake-app developer.Another money-spinner is to mine cryptocurrencies. Analysts at Trend Micro, a cybersecurity firm, in 2014 discovered that copies of Football Manager Handheld, a smartphone game, and TuneIn Radio, an audio app, contained malicious software that mined cryptocurrencies, the proceeds of which were probably funneled to the developers. This still goes on. It does not harm users directly, but researchers warn that such <20>vampire<72> apps drain phone batteries.Developers can make much more money with fake apps than through legitimate means, reckons Mr Sapir. On dark-web forums, hackers and small-time digital advertisers offer developers around $1 per user per year to inject their apps with malicious code. In theory, a single app with 15,000 users (about a tenth of all apps have this many) could bring in roughly $1,250 per month. Most legitimate apps make about $1,000 per month, according to a survey from InMobi, a mobile-advertising company.Fake-app developers are also quick to catch onto the latest trends. When Pok<6F>mon Go, a smartphone app based on a video game, became popular in July 2016, developers released a walk-through guide to the game which flooded smartphones with advertising. The guide was downloaded over 500,000 times. But the pickings are richest in retail, and especially in the autumn when fake-app developers are gearing up for spending binges during sales around Thanksgiving and Christmas, says Chris Mason of Branding Brand, a tech firm. Shoppers, beware.This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline "Mind the app"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'https://www.economist.com/news/business/21730242-legitimate-app-developers-they-make-money-selling-adverts-crafty-app-developers-are?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-12T22:5
'fe84bf77d6a97f91fd1fc4c368d4cbec3a940e8b'|'EU mergers and takeovers (Oct 13)'|'BRUSSELS, Oct 13 (Reuters) - The following are mergers under review by the European Commission and a brief guide to the EU merger process:APPROVALS AND WITHDRAWALS -- Italian infrastructure group Atlantia to acquire Spanish rival Abertis (approved Oct. 13)-- French car parts supplier Valeo to acquire German peer FTE Autmotive (approved Oct. 13)-- Private equity firm Warburg Pincus and carmaker Tata Motors to jointly acquire Tata Technologies (approved Oct. 12)NEW LISTINGS NoneEXTENSIONS AND OTHER CHANGES -- Anglo-Dutch oil group Royal Dutch Shell to acquire indirect joint control of natural gas producer Crestwood Permian Basin LLC which is now solely controlled by Crestwood Permian Basin Holdings (notified Sept. 8/deadline Oct. 13/simplified/withdrawn Oct. 9)-- German industrial group Bayer to acquire U.S. seeds company Monsanto (notified June 30/deadline suspended on Sept. 21)FIRST-STAGE REVIEWS BY DEADLINE OCT 16 -- Swiss food company Nestle to acquire sole control of Beverage Partners Worldwide, a joint venture between Nestle and the Coca-Cola Co (notified Oct. 11/deadline Oct. 16)OCT 17 -- U.S. specialty material company Celanese and private equity firm Blackstone to combine their cellulose acetate tow units under a new joint venture (notified Sept. 9/deadline Oct. 17)OCT 18 -- U.S. medical equipment supplier Becton Dickinson and Co to acquire U.S. peer C R Bard Inc (notified Aug. 30/deadline extended to Oct.18 after commitments submitted on Sept. 27)-- Bermuda-headquartered reinsurer Axis Capital Holdings Ltd to acquire UK insurer Novae (notified Sept. 13/deadline Oct. 18/simplified)-- German insurer Allianz to acquire UK financial services group Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society Ltd<74>s general insurance businesses (notified Sept. 13/deadline Oct. 18/simplified)OCT 20 -- U.S. life sciences company Avantor to acquire U.S. lab supplies company VWR (notified Sept. 15/deadline Oct. 20)OCT 23 -- Dutch warehouse owner Borealis European Holdings B.V., Ontario Teachers<72> Pension Plan Board and SSE to acquire joint control of UK energy meter company Maple (notified Sept. 18/deadline Oct. 23/simplified)OCT 24 -- U.S. company Platinum Equity Group to acquire UK aerospace distributor Pattonair Holdings Ltd (notified Sept. 19/deadline Oct. 24/simplified)-- UK energy company Greenergy to acquire fuel supplier Inver Energy Ltd (notified Sept. 19/deadline Oct. 24)OCT 25 -- Jacobs Engineering Group to acquire technical consulting services provider CH2M Hill Companies (notified Sept. 20/deadline Oct. 25/simplified)OCT 26 -- Luxembourg-based steelmaker ArcelorMittal to acquire Italian steel plant (notified Sept. 21/deadline Oct. 26)-- French car parts maker Valeo to acquire German clutch maker FTE Automotive(notified Sept. 7/deadline Oct. 26/commitments submitted Sept. 7)OCT 27 -- German chemicals company Evonik and Dutch peer DSM to set up a joint venture (notified Sept. 22/deadline Oct. 27/simplified)OCT 30 -- British company CRH plc to acquire XI (RMAT) Holdings GmbH, the German holding company of limestone producer Fels-Werke GmbH which is part of Xella International (notified Sept. 25/deadline Oct. 30)OCT 31 -- French energy company Engie and Caisse des Depots et Consignations to acquire joint control of a wind power producer (notified Sept. 26/deadline Oct. 31/simplified)-- Private equity firm Equistone Partners Europe SAS to acquire French furniture disbributor Groupe Bruneau (notified Sept. 26/deadline Oct. 31/simplified)NOV 3 Private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners to acquire legal services provider CPA Global Group (notified Sept. 27/deadline Nov. 3/simplified)NOV 7 -- Special purpose vehicle ShaMrock Wind to acquire 60 percent of Irish wind farm operator Evalair, which is jointly owned by Luricawne, Fixarra and Luricawne (notified Sept. 29/deadline Nov. 7/simplified)NOV 8 -- Private equity firms Carlyle Group, CVC and China Investment Corp to acquire joint control of French energy company Engie<69>s holding company for oil and gas exploration
'7b4fc5f05967931f4a56cac4e59a566349573d6e'|'BOJ''s Kuroda warns markets may be complacent of geopolitical risks'|'October 15, 2017 / 4:53 PM / in 6 minutes BOJ''s Kuroda warns markets may be complacent of geopolitical risks Leika Kihara 3 Min Read Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda gestures before IMFC plenary during the IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Washington, U.S., October 14, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda warned on Sunday that investors may be complacent about geopolitical risks that could trigger financial market turbulence and disrupt an otherwise broadening global economic recovery. Optimism over the global economy have driven world stock prices to multi-decade highs, with investors largely dismissing geopolitical risks like escalating tensions between North Korea and the United States. Speaking at a Group of 30 seminar, Kuroda said the global economic recovery was becoming more broad-based with rising trade and factory output spurring capital spending and private consumption. But he said policymakers had to be mindful of factors that could cloud the outlook such as falling productivity, weak inflation in many advanced economies and geopolitical risks. <20>So far, heightening geopolitical risks have not led to a serious risk aversion in the market. Asset valuations remain elevated with volatility being at historically low levels,<2C> Kuroda said. <20>Stability in financial markets is good news. But there is a possibility that market players are complacent and not properly pricing risks, which requires attention,<2C> he said. On Japan, Kuroda said inflation remained weak despite the economy<6D>s moderate but steady expansion, which meant the BOJ would maintain its massive monetary stimulus for the time being. <20>Achieving our 2 percent inflation target is still a long way off. The BOJ will persistently pursue aggressive monetary easing, with a view of achieving its target at the earliest possible time,<2C> he said. Kuroda was in Washington to attend the autumn International Monetary Fund meeting, where policymakers gave lukewarm endorsement to a strengthening global economy but conceded they were not out of the woods as they grappled with subdued inflation and low potential growth. Japan<61>s economy expanded at an annualised 2.5 percent in the second quarter on robust consumer and corporate spending, heightening hopes of a sustained recovery. But price and wage growth remain weak with firms still wary of passing more profits to employees, forcing the BOJ to push back the timing for reaching its 2 percent inflation target six times since deploying a massive stimulus programme in 2013. Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Andrew Hay 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-imf-g20-boj/bojs-kuroda-warns-markets-may-be-complacent-of-geopolitical-risks-idUKKBN1CK0Q8'|'2017-10-15T19:52:00.000+03:00'
'34c8b841bd3868cb797136a4324c731a787e7851'|'ECB sees inflation pick up despite weak wages - Constancio'|'October 15, 2017 / 1:30 PM / Updated an hour ago ECB sees inflation pick up despite weak wages - Constancio Reuters Staff 1 Min Read European Central Bank Vice-President Vitor Constancio listens   following the Governing Council meeting in Tallinn, Estonia, June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Euro zone inflation will pick up as the economic recovery continues, despite a puzzling disconnect between strong growth and weak wages, European Central Bank Vice President Vitor Constancio said on Sunday. <20>We remain confident that the continued closing of the output gap will lead inflation to return to our medium-term objective, yet this return remains conditional on a very substantial degree of monetary accommodation,<2C> Constancio said in Washington. <20>The apparent disconnect between strong economic activity, on the one hand, and low inflation and wages on the other is one of the stand-out characteristics of the ongoing recovery,<2C> he added. ECB policymakers are due to decide on Oct. 26 whether to extend stimulus, with investors now expecting an extension of asset purchases but at significantly lower volumes. Reporting by Balazs Koranyi, editing by Louise Heavens 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ecb-policy-constancio/ecb-sees-inflation-pick-up-despite-weak-wages-constancio-idUKKBN1CK0JH'|'2017-10-15T16:31:00.000+03:00'
'89d61b53c33fb0a098f41385e2c36aae1e8a7e2a'|'Brazil''s Algar files for IPO as offerings have best year since 2013'|'SAO PAULO, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Algar Telecom SA, a Brazilian telecommunications and information technology service provider, has filed for an initial public offering before the S<>o Paulo Stock Exchange, as sales of new stock topped their best year since 2013.In a Monday securities filing, Ub<55>rlandia, Brazil-based Algar said it will issue undetermined amount of new shares in the IPO. Shareholders led by Algar SA Empreendimentos & Participa<70><61>es, <20>rvore SA Empreendimentos & Participa<70><61>es and other shareholders will relinquish some of their existing shares in the transaction, the filing added.Algar has hired the investment-banking unit of Banco Bradesco SA to underwrite the IPO, alongside those of Grupo BTG pactual SA, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Banco Santander Brasil SA, Banco do Brasil SA, UBS Group AG and Ita<74> Unibanco Holding SA, the filing said. It had picked the underwriting banks around Sept. 25.Reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/algar-telecom-ipo/brazils-algar-files-for-ipo-as-offerings-have-best-year-since-2013-idINL2N1MR0DA'|'2017-10-16T09:16:00.000+03:00'
'f96a91c429d78ed7a57001cd3d9c01240ce708e8'|'Lufthansa bids for Alitalia as European deals take off'|'Reuters TV United States October 16, 2017 / 10:39 AM / Updated 23 minutes ago Lufthansa bids for Alitalia as European deals take off Reuters Staff 3 Min Read An airplane of Alitalia approaches to land at Fiumicino international airport in Rome, central Italy, May 3, 2017. REUTERS/Max Rossi ROME (Reuters) - German airline Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) has submitted an offer for parts of Alitalia [CAITLA.UL] and a plan to reshape Italy<6C>s ailing national carrier just days after agreeing to buy some of Air Berlin<69>s assets. Lufthansa<73>s offer is not for the whole Italian airline, but only for parts of its network, meaning it may not find favor with Rome, which wants to sell Alitalia in one package and avoid a split of its aviation and ground service activities. Possible job cuts are also likely to stoke resistance to the Lufthansa approach. Italy had on Friday delayed the sale process, extending to April 30 a deadline to improve the bids which had previously been set for Nov. 5. The German carrier did not provide details of its offer but said it included plans for what it termed a new Alitalia. <20>The offer includes a concept for a newly structured Alitalia with a focused business model (<28>NewAlitalia<69>), which could develop long-term economic prospects,<2C> it said. Earlier, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported Lufthansa was offering 500 million euros ($590 million) to acquire the planes, airport runway slots and air crew. [nL8N1MR2BD] Citing three anonymous sources, the paper said Lufthansa has also proposed halving Alitalia<69>s workforce of 12,000 employees and reducing its short- and medium-range flights. The paper said the offer was likely to be rejected by the state commissioners who are managing the carrier while it is being sold. LUFTHANSA SPREADS WINGS The offer from Lufthansa, which also owns Brussels Airlines, Swiss, Austrian and Eurowings, comes after it agreed a deal last week for large parts of Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ), which will see its Eurowings budget unit grow to 210 aircraft from 160. Cut-throat competition on short-haul routes in Europe has pressured several airlines, with British leisure carrier Monarch also collapsing this month, on top of the administration processes for Air Berlin and Alitalia. Carriers such as British Airways parent IAG ( ICAG.L ) and Norwegian Air Shuttle ( NWC.OL ) have said they would be interested in some Monarch airport slots, while easyJet ( EZJ.L ) said it is in talks for 25 Air Berlin planes at Berlin Tegel airport. Alitalia, which has made a profit only a few times in its 70-year history, filed for special administration this year after staff rejected a plan to cut jobs and salaries. Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said last week he was only interested if a new Alitalia could be created. Ryanair had also been interested in making a bid, provided Alitalia could be drastically restructured. However, it pulled out to focus on its rostering issues. On Friday the Italian government also passed an emergency decree to add a further 300 million euros to the loan of 600 million euros it made to the loss-making carrier in May and extend the repayment deadline. Reporting by Valentina Za in Milan and Victoria Bryan in Berlin; Editing by Greg Mahlich/Keith Weir 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-alitalia-sale-lufthansa/lufthansa-offers-500-million-euros-for-alitalias-planes-and-staff-paper-idUKKBN1CL191'|'2017-10-16T18:12:00.000+03:00'
'aa940f0872549ed4a96e36d184150fa41f854e5c'|'Lotte Group aims to sell Lotte Mart stores in China by year-end: executive'|'October 12, 2017 / 1:58 AM / Updated 10 hours ago Lotte says has several suitors for China supermarkets, seeks sale by year-end Hyunjoo Jin 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Lotte Mart is seen closed in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, China September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Adam Jourdan/File Photo SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea<65>s embattled Lotte Group said on Thursday several firms have expressed interest in acquiring its Lotte Mart stores in China and that is aiming for a sale by the end of this year. The country<72>s No.5 conglomerate decided to bow out of the business after most of its hypermarkets and supermarkets in China were shut down amid political tensions between the two nations. <20>We are in detailed talks with some of those companies,<2C> Lim Byung-yun, an executive vice president at Lotte Corp, said at a news conference to mark the launch of the group<75>s new holding company. The size of the deal is expected to be small at a couple hundred million dollars, a banking source said, declining to be identified as the talks were confidential. Goldman Sachs has been picked to managed the sale. Lotte, already reeling from internal power struggles and a corruption scandal, has been particularly hard hit by the political friction after it agreed to hand over land for a U.S.-made missile defense system - a plan that has angered Beijing which argues the radar can penetrate far into its territory. But even before the disputes, Lotte<74>s Chinese hypermarket operation had been generating operating losses of well over 100 billion won ($88 million) per year for the past three years, Fitch Rating said in report last month. Listing the group<75>s Hotel Lotte unit will take time, Lotte Corp executive Lee Bong-chul said, noting that the political tensions have reduced the number of Chinese tourists visiting South Korea, hurting sales of both its hotel and its duty free businesses. The offering was delayed following a corruption scandal involving Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin. He is on trial after prosecutors indicted him and other executives on embezzlement and other charges. Shin has denied the charges. Before the scandal and decline in Chinese tourist numbers, the IPO had been expected to worth around $4.5 billion. A power struggle between Shin and his elder brother Shin Dong-joo put pressure on the conglomerate to improve corporate transparency, prompting it to form the new holding company Lotte Corp which will make its debut on South Korea<65>s main stock market on Oct.30. Lotte Corp plans to look at acquisition opportunities in food businesses in emerging markets like Myanmar and India, while it is also considering purchases of overseas hotels, Lee said.($1 = 1,134.2000 won) Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Additional reporting by Kane Wu in HONG KONG; Editing by Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-lottemart-china-sale/lotte-group-aims-to-sell-lotte-mart-stores-in-china-by-year-end-executive-idINKBN1CH06G'|'2017-10-11T23:58:00.000+03:00'
'df109d2eac6575b648a58d67707970345c6289d9'|'India prefers domestic buyer for Air India: government source'|'October 16, 2017 / 12:51 PM / in 2 hours India prefers domestic buyer for Air India: government source Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: An Air India aircraft takes off from the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad, India, July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Amit Dave NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India would prefer selling state-owned Air India to a domestic buyer, a government source told reporters on Monday, as it finalizes the privatization process. Earlier this year the government said it would sell its stake in the loss-making airline but it has yet to decide what to do with the carrier<65>s debt burden of $8.5 billion. The government is mulling selling the airline<6E>s various businesses which include ground-handling, domestic operations and international flights, in parts, the source said. Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Writing by Aditi Shah; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-air-india-sale/india-prefers-domestic-buyer-for-air-india-government-source-idINKBN1CL1OT'|'2017-10-16T15:45:00.000+03:00'
'7041f8bd43b6047ee85f989abe05b0f54299d4ea'|'BlackBerry shares down after another top exec leaves'|'October 16, 2017 / 11:57 AM / in an hour BlackBerry shares down after another top exec leaves Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A Blackberry logo hangs behind a Canadian flag at their offices on the day of their annual general meeting for shareholders in Waterloo, Canada June 23, 2015. REUTERS/Mark Blinch/File Photo (Reuters) - BlackBerry Ltd<74>s ( BB.N ) ( BB.TO ) U.S.-listed shares fell more than 1 percent on Monday, their first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, after a second senior executive at its patent licensing unit quit this month. Victor Schubert, who was a licensing director for BlackBerry, said on Friday he was no longer with the company, following on the heels of the departure of Mark Kokes, who led BlackBerry<72>s overall patent strategy. <20>Investors are left asking, if corporate insiders are leaving, why should we stick around?<3F>, said Adam Sarhan, chief executive of 50 Park Investments in New York. <20>With BlackBerry there<72>s also a larger macro question and its investors are asking <20>what<61>s their professional edge?''<27>, said Sarhan, who does not own shares in the company. Monetizing the company<6E>s intellectual property is a key part of BlackBerry Chief Executive John Chen<65>s plan for turning around the company, which took a back seat to Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) and other firms in the smartphone industry. BlackBerry is trying to get companies to pay licensing fees for the use of its 40,000 global patents on technology - spanning operating systems, networking infrastructure, automotive subsystems, cybersecurity and wireless communications. The company is hoping the move will curb a six-year revenue decline as customers ditched its once-popular smartphones for Android and Apple devices. BlackBerry debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, transferring its shares from Nasdaq. Shares of the company were down 1.03 percent at $11.45, while the broader S&P 500 Index .SPX and the Dow Jones industrial average .DJI were up. Reporting by Tanya Agrawal and Nivedita Bhattacharjee; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Bernard Orr 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-stocks-blackberry/blackberry-shares-down-after-another-top-exec-leaves-idUSKBN1CL1KD'|'2017-10-16T14:56:00.000+03:00'
'fb053e60dfe54c1bc4bb83733de98971f46eb53f'|'Hong Kong''s leader tinkers with economy in the face of "grave" challenges'|'October 16, 2017 / 9:04 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago Hong Kong''s leader tinkers with economy in the face of "grave" challenges Marius Zaharia , Anne Marie Roantree 6 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam poses with copies of her policy speech in Hong Kong, China October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong<6E>s new leader Carrie Lam showed last week that bringing the mojo back to the territory<72>s once uniquely dynamic economy isn<73>t going to be easy. In her first policy address since coming into power in July, the chief executive acknowledged that <20>Hong Kong is facing increasingly grave challenges,<2C> citing in particular competition from other economies. She called for the development of an economy that was more diversified and fostered leading technologies. It was an echo of Chinese President Xi Jinping<6E>s comment that Hong Kong<6E>s traditional strengths are <20>losing their edge, while new drivers of growth have yet to emerge,<2C> during his visit to the city in July. But economists and investment strategists said that while Lam and her big boss in Beijing may have identified the disease, they have yet to come up with a cure. In her policy speech she sought to tinker with probably the territory<72>s biggest social problem <20> soaring property prices that have put owning an apartment out of reach for many young middle and working class Hong Kongers. And she decided to throw money at another issue <20> the lack of innovation <20> by targeting a doubling of the percentage of the city<74>s gross domestic product that goes to research and development (R&D). But her <20>Starter Homes<65> scheme <20> meant to provide affordable housing for purchase by lower-income residents <20> may only make a small dent in the problem. Hopes she would come up with proposals to free up much more land for development weren<65>t addressed. Kevin Lai, chief economist for Asia ex-Japan at Daiwa, called the new housing measures and some tax cuts aimed at small businesses <20>trivial.<2E> He said the government needed to rid young people of the housing burden to allow them to focus on more enterprising activities, which he says would have more success than government-funded projects. <20>Unless you give more power to the younger generation your economy will not be able to rebalance,<2C> Lai said. <20>I<EFBFBD>m afraid Hong Kong is losing its relevance to the rest of the world.<2E> PAST MISSTEPS There have been a number of faltering attempts by the Hong Kong authorities to diversify the territory<72>s economy in the past 20 years. The Cyberport business park, which was first announced in 1999 and built in the following decade, was supposed to make Hong Kong a great incubator for technology start-ups. But many new businesses prefer Shenzhen, just across the border in mainland China, and the park area has turned into as much of a residential development as a base for entrepreneurs. Among a number of other examples of less-than-stellar results from government-financed projects is Hong Kong<6E>s Kai Tak Cruise Terminal, which has attracted both fewer ships and high-spending passengers than the government hoped when it opened it in 2013 after investing HK$6.6 billion ($845 million). FILE PHOTO: Shoppers cross a street at the Causeway Bay shopping district in Hong Kong July 22, 2014. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo Hong Kong<6E>s old model is not delivering: its once world-leading port has been overtaken by cheaper options on the Chinese mainland, and its role as a middleman selling everything from iPhones to infant milk formula to mainlanders has diminished as China<6E>s own retail industry has developed. The problem is that the benefits it gets from being a gateway to and from China all come with big prices. Cash-rich mainland Chinese have sent apartment prices into the stratosphere <20> UBS recently estimated that Hong Kong was the world<6C>s most expensive city for apartments with the average living space per person now only 150 square feet (14 square meters). That
'31281d4ed4a3be23056f99770ff003c3ae865c5a'|'Exclusive: China offers to buy 5 percent of Saudi Aramco directly - sources'|'October 16, 2017 / 1:58 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Exclusive: China offers to buy 5 percent of Saudi Aramco directly - sources Rania El Gamal , Alex Lawler 6 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Logo of Saudi Aramco is seen at the 20th Middle East Oil & Gas Show and Conference (MOES 2017) in Manama, Bahrain, March 7, 2017. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/File Photo DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) - China is offering to buy up to 5 percent of Saudi Aramco directly, sources said, a move that could give Saudi Arabia the flexibility to consider various options for its plan to float the world<6C>s biggest oil producer on the stock market. Chinese state-owned oil companies PetroChina ( 0857.HK ) and Sinopec ( 0386.HK ) have written to Saudi Aramco in recent weeks to express an interest in a direct deal, industry sources told Reuters. The companies are part of a state-run consortium including China<6E>s sovereign wealth fund, the sources say. Saudi Arabia<69>s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said last year the kingdom was considering listing about 5 percent of Aramco in 2018 in a deal that could raise $100 billion, if the company is valued at about $2 trillion as hoped. <20>The Chinese want to secure oil supplies,<2C> one of the industry sources said. <20>They are willing to take the whole 5 percent, or even more, alone.<2E> PetroChina and Sinopec declined to comment. The initial public offering (IPO) of Saudi Aramco is the centerpiece of an economic reform plan to diversify the Saudi economy beyond oil and it would also provide a welcome boost to the kingdom<6F>s budget which has been hit by low oil prices. But the IPO plan has created public misgivings that Riyadh is relinquishing its crown jewels to foreigners cheaply at a time of low oil prices. Some Aramco employees would like the whole idea to be shelved, sources say. Internal disagreements between what some advisers recommend and what the crown prince wants have delayed several key decisions about the IPO, industry sources said. The sources also point to disagreements between senior government officials, with some pushing only to list Aramco locally or to delay the IPO beyond 2018 when they hope oil prices will have stabilized at $55 to $60 a barrel. <20>A range of options, for the public listing of Saudi Aramco, continue to be held under active review. No decision has been made and the IPO process remains on track,<2C> said a Saudi Aramco spokesman. Industry sources said the sale of a significant stake to Chinese firms was one of several options being considered by the kingdom as it weighs the benefits of a public listing. One option includes selling some stock immediately to so-called cornerstone investors, such as China, and then selling shares on the local bourse as well as an international stock exchange, with New York, London and Hong Kong in the running. CORNERSTONE INVESTOR Two senior industry sources said Riyadh was keen on China, its biggest buyer of oil, becoming a cornerstone investor in Aramco. But no decision has yet been taken on whether to accept China<6E>s offer, or how much stock could be offered to cornerstone investors, the sources said. China is creating a consortium made up of state-owned oil firms, banks and its sovereign wealth fund to act as a cornerstone investor in the IPO, people with knowledge of the discussions told Reuters in April. Sources told Reuters on Friday that Saudi Aramco was now evaluating a private placement of shares to a Chinese investor as a precursor to an international IPO, which could be delayed beyond 2018. But allowing China to buy 5 percent would effectively mean cancelling the IPO altogether, which is an unlikely outcome, one of the sources said. Sources said postponing the listing would be the least preferred option, given the preparations that have been already done and the determination of Prince Mohammed, who is expected to be the next king, to proceed with the listing. Two sources told Reuters that sovereign wealth funds from South Korea and Japan, which are 
'24a98b3e8b9cb741dbca84acd544969e9b5cdd04'|'Exclusive: T-Mobile, Sprint aim to announce merger without asset divestitures - sources'|'October 15, 2017 / 9:15 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Exclusive: T-Mobile, Sprint plan merger without selling assets Liana B. Baker , Anjali Athavaley 6 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Smartphones with the logos of T-Mobile and Sprint are seen in this illustration taken September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo (Reuters) - T-Mobile U.S. Inc ( TMUS.O ) and Sprint Corp ( S.N ) plan to announce a merger agreement without any immediate asset sales, as they seek to preserve as much of their spectrum holdings and cost synergies as they can before regulators ask for concessions, according to people familiar with the matter. While it is common for companies not to unveil divestitures during merger announcements, T-Mobile<6C>s and Sprint<6E>s approach shows that the companies plan to enter what could be challenging negotiations with U.S. antitrust and telecommunications regulators without having made prior concessions. Reuters reported last week that some of the U.S. Justice Department<6E>s antitrust staff were skeptical about the deal, which would combine the third and fourth largest U.S. wireless carriers. However, regulators can only begin reviewing a corporate merger once it has been agreed to and announced. T-Mobile and Sprint are preparing a negotiating strategy to tackle demands from regulators regarding asset sales, including the divestment of some of their spectrum licenses after their deal is announced, the sources said. The companies<65> announcement of a merger agreement, currently expected to come either in late October or early November, will focus on the potential benefits of the deal for U.S. consumers, including the advancement of next-generation 5G wireless technology, which requires considerable investment, the sources added. The sources asked not to be identified because the deliberations are confidential. T-Mobile and Sprint declined to comment. <20>It is better for Sprint and T-Mobile to listen and learn the concerns of regulators first, and see whether there is anything that can be done to address those concerns,<2C> MoffettNathanson research analyst Craig Moffett said. A combination of T-mobile and Sprint would create a business with more than 130 million U.S. subscribers, just behind Verizon Communications Inc ( VZ.N ) and AT&T Inc ( T.N ). Companies often chose not to make any pre-emptive announcements on divestitures when they announce mergers. For example, when U.S. health insurers Anthem Inc ( ANTM.N ) and Aetna Inc ( AET.N ) separately announced deals two years ago to acquire peers Cigna Corp ( CI.N ) and Humana Inc ( HUM.N ), they did not reveal which assets they would be willing to divest. U.S. federal judges shot down both mergers on antitrust grounds earlier this year. Some media and telecommunications deals in recent years have been announced with divestitures, such as U.S. cable operator Comcast Corp<72>s ( CMCSA.O ) proposed takeover of Time Warner Cable in 2014, which was later called off after regulatory pushback. When U.S. TV station owner Sinclair Broadcast Group ( SBGI.O ) announced its acquisition of peer Tribune Media Co ( TRCO.N ) in May, it said it might sell certain stations to comply with regulators. Companies often also choose to place caps in their merger agreements on the size of divestitures they would be willing to accept in their negotiations with regulators. T-Mobile and Sprint have not yet agreed to include such a cap in their merger agreement, though it is possible they will do so, one of the sources said. SPECTRUM HOLDINGS UBS research analyst John Hodulik said in a research note earlier this month that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission will likely force T-Mobile and Sprint to make some divestitures of spectrum, since the combined company would have the most airwaves in its sector with more than 300 MHz, putting it ahead of Verizon<6F>s and AT&T<>s holdings. T-Mobile spent $8 billion in a government auction of airwaves earlier this year. Sprint stayed
'1880a3060f51ff822a75a01c76434b047d9bf9ce'|'Mexico''s FinMin says NAFTA uncertainty hitting peso'|'October 16, 2017 / 3:45 PM / Updated 14 minutes ago Mexico finance minister says NAFTA uncertainty hitting peso Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Mexican Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade delivers speech during Forbes Forum 2017 in Mexico City, Mexico, September 18, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico<63>s Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade said on Monday that the peso<73>s recent depreciation reflects uncertainty about the NAFTA renegotiation process and questions about how quickly the U.S. Federal Reserve will normalize rates. <20>The exchange rate reflects different kinds of uncertainties, many of which we cannot control, such as the normalization process of interest rates in the United States,<2C> said Meade, speaking at an event in Mexico City. <20>There are other elements which are Mexico-specific. The concern surrounding the (NAFTA) trade agreement,<2C> he added. The peso MXN=D2 slipped over 1.0 percent against the dollar on Monday to its weakest level since May 18. It has shed about 4.5 percent this month. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, which is demanding significant changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement, has presented a series of hard-line proposals that partners Canada and Mexico say will be tough to accept. Reporting by Michael O''Boyle; Writing by Anthony Esposito, Editing by Rosalba O''Brien 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trade-nafta-mexico-peso/mexicos-finmin-says-nafta-uncertainty-hitting-peso-idUSKBN1CL2CC'|'2017-10-16T18:44:00.000+03:00'
'a7c71660c29470915ed8063c72607f0c85b5ecf8'|'Viacom, Charter agree to extend renewal deadline: source'|'(Reuters) - Viacom Inc ( VIAB.O ) and Charter Communications Inc ( CHTR.O ) agreed on a short-term extension of their renewal deadline, a source familiar with the matter said, as the companies aim to avoid the immediate blackout of Viacom networks. If no deal is reached, 16.6 million subscribers of Charter<65>s Spectrum service will lose Viacom<6F>s networks, which include Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon. Viacom and Charter are working to <20>reach a mutually beneficial deal,<2C> said the source, who did not want to be identified. Viacom stands to lose $760 million, or about 16 percent, of its annual affiliate revenue if an agreement is not reached, according to an analyst at Gabelli & Co, Viacom<6F>s second-largest voting shareholder. Both sides are under pressure from cord-cutting, or dropping of pay television, as audiences flock to cheaper streaming services that have emerged in the past decade. An agreement between the two companies would be <20>mutually beneficial,<2C> wrote Evercore ISI in an note Sunday. Reporting By Jessica Toonkel; Editing by Bill Rigby and Amrutha Gayathri'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-viacom-charter-commns/viacom-charter-agree-to-extend-renewal-deadline-source-idUSKBN1CL0B6'|'2017-10-16T07:24:00.000+03:00'
'6466d71544215edeeafb090bccc652c7bad3882e'|'An assessment of the White House<73>s progress on deregulation'|'DEREGULATION, along with tax cuts and trade reform, is one of the three pillars of President Donald Trump<6D>s economic agenda. Republicans promise that, freed of red tape, American firms will invest more and unleash faster economic growth. And while Mr Trump has yet to unite his party around a major piece of legislation, the White House has plenty of sway over regulatory policy. For a start, the government agencies Mr Trump commands can regulate and deregulate on their own (subject only to the instructions that Congress has given them in the past). How much red tape have they managed to tear down since Mr Trump took office?Regulation is difficult to measure precisely, but the long-term trend towards excessive rulemaking has been obvious. In 1970 there were about 400,000 prescriptive words such as <20>shall<6C> or <20>must<73> in the code of federal regulations, according to the Mercatus Centre, a libertarian-leaning think-tank. Today there are 1.1m (see chart). Wonks of many stripes agree that this is far too many and that the rule book must be shortened. Agencies have rarely combed over old edicts to see whether they are worth keeping. The problem predated Barack Obama<6D>s administration; both Republicans and Democrats have presided over regulatory expansions. That said, Mr Obama was an unusually prolific rule-writer, because for much of his presidency a hostile Congress meant that regulation was often his best tool. 9 15 hours ago Hazing Against this backdrop, the impact of the Trump administration has been dramatic. The flow of new rules is suddenly a dribble. Since Mr Trump was inaugurated the number of regulatory restrictions has grown at about two-fifths of the usual speed. In the last year of the Obama administration, the federal government wrote 527 regulations deemed <20>significant<6E>. Mr Trump<6D>s bureaucrats have penned only 118. And even that number is artificially high, because many of those edicts served only to delay or weaken Mr Obama<6D>s rules. Examples of genuinely new regulations are few and far between. The White House has acknowledged only one<6E>a rule aimed at reducing the amount of mercury dentists discharge into sewers, which went into effect in July.Mr Trump has slowed rulemaking in two main ways. First, on coming to office, he ordered government agencies not to impose any net new regulatory costs on companies, regardless of the benefits of doing so, and said that in order to write any new rules they would have to repeal two old ones. Because it takes time to unearth and discard dud rules, the practical effect of this has been to put a brake on new issuance.Second, Mr Trump has signed 14 bills stopping rules that were issued late in the Obama administration, and were therefore still subject to review by Congress, from going into effect. Not only were those regulations blocked (by means of the Congressional Review Act, or CRA); agencies will never again be able to write replacements that are <20>substantially the same<6D> without lawmakers<72> express approval. Before 2017, Congress had exercised its power to review regulations only once: in 2001, after George W. Bush came to office, it blocked a set of standards for chairs and desks aimed at stopping office workers getting back pain.Yet wielding CRA as a deregulatory weapon has its limits, for Congress can review only rules issued during its previous 60 days in session. Tackling the bedrock of regulation is far harder. Three approaches are possible: later implementation of newish rules, looser enforcement of existing ones, and formal rollbacks of others.Make America wait againThe first tactic, delay, is being used with abandon. For example, the Labour Department is trying to stave off parts of a new <20>fiduciary rule<6C>, which requires investment advisers always to work in the best interests of their clients. (This requirement, like many seemingly simple rules, has somehow spawned hundreds of pages of legalese.) The fiduciary rule came into partial effect in June, but the adminis
'ec3da72dd4641dae083910f66c98b84a4535b76e'|'All change at the Fed? Yellen''s term ends soon but Trump won''t say if she''ll stay'|'T he Federal Reserve chair, Janet Yellen, will end her term in February, and Donald Trump has yet to say if he will follow tradition and renominate the Obama-appointed incumbent to a second term <20> or nominate someone of his own choosing.The great unwinding: Fed begins slow demise of its post-crash stimulus Read more Despite Trump<6D>s assertion over the summer that he was considering Yellen<65>s renomination, Wall Street is betting against that outcome. The president, true to form, is fueling anticipation. Last month he said he <20>had four meetings for Fed chairman, and I<>ll be making a decision over the next two or three weeks<6B>.The decision is one of the most important for the president, and comes at a critical moment for the central bank as it begins to trim its massive $4.4tn balance sheet, built up over almost a decade of asset-purchasing designed to boost the US economy and stabilize markets after of the 2008 financial crisis.At the same time, the Fed is moving to inch up the cost of borrowing, which could begin to cool parts of the economy accustomed to near-zero interest rates. The latest Fed minutes show that board members remain anxious about stubbornly low inflation.<2E>Many participants expressed concern that the low inflation readings this year might reflect not only transitory factors, but also the influence of developments that could prove more persistent,<2C> according to minutes of the 19-20 September meeting, released on Wednesday in Washington.<2E>The Fed chair always faces tough issues,<2C> said Nellie Liang of the Brookings Institution.For good reason, then, markets are watching Trump<6D>s signaling on the Fed chair nomination with hawk eyes.Larry Fink, the CEO of Blackrock, the fund giant with $6tn in assets, warned this week that central bankers need to tread carefully as they normalize monetary policy or risk short-term interest rates exceeding the long-term rates <20> a reliable signal of an approaching recession.<2E>My greatest fear <20> is that we have a very aggressive Federal Reserve,<2C> Fink told CNBC.But Trump<6D>s choice seems wide open. <20>There are still ongoing interviews,<2C> the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, said on Thursday. <20>All of the people that have been in to interview have been really first-round draft choices, and we have more to come.<2E>Trump attacked Yellen relentlessly during the campaign, accusing her of creating a <20>false stock market<65> with low interest rates. Nowadays Trump claims to be a <20>low interest-rate person<6F> and frequently takes credit for the record stock market. <20>Janet Yellen has done a superb job over the past four years and deserves to be reappointed,<2C> said Andrew Levin, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College.Under Yellen<65>s leadership, the US economy has expanded by nearly 10 million jobs. If she is not renominated by the new president <20> a tradition that serves to underscore the central bank<6E>s political independence <20> she would be only the third Fed leader to serve a single term since 1934.Yellen has not said if she would accept a second term if offered.<2E>Everyone recognizes that she has a remarkable amount of common sense, and avoids relying on any single model or statistical method,<2C> Levin said. <20>She has adeptly managed to build a consensus among Fed officials in the complex process of launching the normalization of interest rates and the Fed<65>s balance sheet.<2E>If Trump chooses to replace Yellen, her presumptive successor had been seen as Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs banker and current White House chief economic adviser. But Cohn is now seen as a fading star after public criticism of Trump<6D>s response to the Charlottesville violence.Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kevin Warsh, left, has described the Fed as <20>poorly positioned to respond with force, efficacy and credibility<74>. Photograph: Will Oliver/EPA Cohn<68>s fall from grace boosts the prospects of former Fed governor Kevin Warsh. Warsh was appointed to the central bank<6E>s board by George W Bush aged just 35, 
'aad5be0511a18886c1b4f7ff324417e176d8bec1'|'Facebook launches U.S. food order and delivery service'|'October 13, 2017 / 1:59 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Facebook launches U.S. food order and delivery service Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A Facebook logo is pictured at the Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt, Germany September 16, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski (Reuters) - Facebook Inc on Friday launched a service through which its U.S. users can order food for take-away or delivery directly through its app or website. Facebook said it has partnered with restaurants including Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc, Jack in the Box Inc, Five Guys and Papa John<68>s International Inc. The company said in a blog post that it has also signed on food ordering services such as EatStreet, Delivery.com, DoorDash and Olo. ( bit.ly/2ygvF6Z ) Users will have to go to the <20>order food<6F> section on Facebook<6F>s <20>explore<72> menu, which will show them a list of participating restaurants in the vicinity through which they can place their order. A year back, the company has said its U.S. users would be able to order food through a restaurants<74> Facebook page. Facebook<6F>s shares were up nearly 1 percent in early trading on Friday. Shares of food order and delivery service GrubHub Inc dropped nearly 3 percent. GrubHub<75>s shares had also dropped last month after Amazon Restaurants teamed up with Olo, whose network of restaurants includes Applebee<65>s and Chipotle. Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-food/facebook-launches-u-s-food-order-and-delivery-service-idUSKBN1CI1UU'|'2017-10-13T17:01:00.000+03:00'
'19a94b3e3228299ad192c42029bc4fc217bde1a0'|'Amazon Studios chief Roy Price suspended following harassment allegation'|'SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Amazon Studio chief Roy Price was put on an immediate leave of absence Thursday, the company said, following allegations that he harassed a producer and ignored an actress<73>s claim of a sexual assault by producer Harvey Weinstein.The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday reported an allegation by Isa Hackett, a producer on one of Amazon.com Inc<6E>s shows, that Price had lewdly propositioned her in 2015.Hackett did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reuters could not independently confirm the allegation. Price could not immediately be reached independently by Reuters and declined to comment to the Hollywood Reporter.Also on Thursday, actress Rose McGowan said on Twitter that she had told Price that she had been assaulted by Weinstein, who was forced out of his company this week following reports in the New Yorker and the New York Times that he had harassed and assaulted numerous women over the years.Amazon said in a statement: <20>Roy Price is on leave of absence effective immediately. We are reviewing our options for the projects we have with The Weinstein Co.<2E>A spokeswoman for Harvey Weinstein said: <20>Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein.<2E> (Reporting by Jonathan Weber; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/people-roy-price/amazon-studios-chief-roy-price-suspended-following-harassment-allegation-idINL2N1MO00K'|'2017-10-12T23:33:00.000+03:00'
'c4fe2cf609e55708d8237c09f29e064e9ebfe49e'|'US regulator unveils new restrictions on weed killer dicamba'|'NEW YORK, Oct 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency unveiled new restrictions on Friday on the use of the weed killer dicamba, which has caused widespread crop damage in the Midwest for the past two years.The EPA, in a statement, said that only certified pesticide applicators, or people under their supervision, will be allowed to spray dicamba, which is manufactured by Monsanto and BASF in its newest form, onto crops during the 2018 growing season.The EPA also said it is reducing the maximum wind speed and the hours during each day when dicamba may be sprayed and will require farmers to keep records proving they<65>re complying with instructions on the pesticide<64>s label. (Reporting By Emily Flitter)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-agriculture-dicamba/us-regulator-unveils-new-restrictions-on-weed-killer-dicamba-idINL2N1MO0XA'|'2017-10-13T13:00:00.000+03:00'
'118c7a4e41077ce8da9cca988d0e136aa7dff5d7'|'JPMorgan''s card gamble lures millennial travellers, squeezes competitors'|'October 13, 2017 / 5:03 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago JPMorgan''s card gamble lures millennial travellers, squeezes competitors Reuters Staff 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: People pass the JP Morgan Chase & Co. Corporate headquarters in the Manhattan borough of New York City, May 20, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - Morrie Low, a 28-year-old who works for a mobile technology start-up in Seattle, called from vacation in Taiwan to chat about what he has been doing the past year with his Chase Sapphire Reserve card. Sapphire Reserve is the credit card that shocked the industry when JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM.N ) debuted it in August 2016. Upwards of 1 million people signed up as users wrote in Internet posts that its perks, credits and give-backs were so rich people could recoup the $450 annual fee and pickup another $1,000 or so of value. <20>It is definitely working out for me,<2C> said Low, recounting trips he made using Sapphire Reserve and other card travel rewards to Miami, Berlin, London, the Philippines and Taiwan. It hasn<73>t worked out so well for JPMorgan<61>s card competitors. And it is not clear when, or if, it will work out for JPMorgan, analysts and bank executives said. Entering the premium card market with the Sapphire Reserve bid, JPMorgan dramatically undercut the pricing of the Platinum Card of American Express Co ( AXP.N ) and the Prestige Card of Citigroup Inc. ( C.N ) It also lured credit card spending from customers of Bank of America Corp ( BAC.N ). An American Express executive earlier this year called the move a <20>full frontal assault<6C> on the Platinum Card. On Thursday, a Citigroup executive said that after JPMorgan<61>s move Citi changed course and turned its marketing towards no-fee cards that offer free borrowing for as long 21 months instead of travel rewards. <20>We shifted our focus away from rewards because of the competitive heat,<2C> Citigroup Chief Financial Officer John Gerspach said in a conference call with reporters after posting quarterly results. JPMorgan<61>s invasion of the premium card business illustrates how Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon is leveraging the scale and strength of the biggest bank in the United States to undercut profit margins of competitors and take business, analysts said. <20>This is another example of Dimon<6F>s scorched earth strategy,<2C> said one analyst who declined to be named talking so bluntly about the bank<6E>s tactics. JPMorgan has also muscled in since the financial crisis on European debt, fixed income trading, securities custody for institutional investors and commercial lending. Earlier this year Dimon quoted Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com as saying <20>your margin is my opportunity,<2C> noted analyst Jason Goldberg of Barclays. <20>JPMorgan is trying to bring some of that to the financial space,<2C> Goldberg said. The company has not given an exact cost for the Sapphire Reserve foray. It has said it must account for the expense of signing customers in the first year and that those costs have run as much as $200 million each quarter. That $800 million a year is a lot of money for most companies, but not such much for JPMorgan, which this year is expected to earn about $25 billion, one analyst said. EARNING SHARE IN CUSTOMERS<52> WALLETS The move on premium cards is also an example of how Dimon<6F>s lieutenants throughout the bank look for thin spots in their market penetration. When JPMorgan brought out Sapphire Reserve, its no-fee, low-fee and cash-back cards had already made it a strong second to American Express in card spending, according to the Nilson Report. But it needed a premium travel card of its own for its customers, Jennifer Piespzak, chief executive for Chase Card Services, said in an interview. <20>For us to be able to earn the greatest share of the customer wallet, we don<6F>t want them to have American Express Platinum,<2C> she said. <20>We want them to have Sapphire Reserve.<2E> JPMorgan earlier this year cut its sign-up bonus for Sapphire Reserve in half, saying t
'c29099fc81fc5c69c8f5129f801f8a5cf67ebdbe'|'PRECIOUS-Gold rally pauses ahead of U.S. inflation data'|'October 13, 2017 / 1:17 AM / Updated 12 hours ago PRECIOUS-Gold rally pauses ahead of U.S. inflation data Reuters Staff 3 Min Read Oct 13 (Reuters) - Gold prices were little changed amid a steady dollar on Friday, halting a five-day rally as investors wait for key U.S. inflation data for clues on the outlook for potential hikes in U.S. interest rates. FUNDAMENTALS * Spot gold was nearly unchanged at $1,293.76 an ounce at 0054 GMT after gaining for five straight sessions. * U.S. gold futures for December delivery were flat at $1,296.10 per ounce. * The dollar steadied in early Asian trading on Friday, on track for weekly losses as investors awaited the U.S. inflation data to gauge the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will stick to its plan to raise interest rates again this year. * U.S. producer prices rose in September as the price of gasoline recorded its biggest gain in more than two years amid hurricane-related production disruptions at oil refineries in Texas. * The Fed needs to mount a clear defence of its 2 percent inflation target and stop raising rates until the pace of price increases strengthens, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said on Thursday. * European Central Bank policymakers broadly agree to extend asset purchases at a lower volume at their October policy meeting with views converging on a nine-month extension, five people with direct knowledge of the discussion told Reuters. * The head of the European Central Bank defended a pledge to keep interest rates at rock bottom on Thursday, batting back German calls for a speedy exit from years of easy money in the euro zone. * Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda on Thursday stressed the central bank''s resolve to maintain its ultra-loose monetary policy, even as its U.S. and European counterparts begin to dial back their massive, crisis-mode monetary stimulus. * The Russian central bank is considering buying gold on the Moscow Exchange, First Deputy Governor Ksenia Yudayeva said, TASS state news agency said, confirming an earlier report by Reuters. * Republican lawmakers are considering indirect paths to meeting President Donald Trump''s goal of slashing the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, one of the toughest challenges they face in trying to overhaul the U.S. tax code. * Canada''s Barrick Gold Corp , the world''s largest gold miner, estimated a decline in third-quarter gold production amid pressure from the Tanzanian government on its Acacia Mining unit. DATA/EVENT AHEAD (GMT) * China Trade balance Sep 1230 U.S. Consumer prices Sep 1230 U.S. Retail sales Sep 1400 U.S. Business inventories Aug 1400 U.S. Univ of Michigan sentiment index Oct *No fixed timing (Reporting by Apeksha Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Joseph Radford) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/global-precious/precious-gold-rally-pauses-ahead-of-u-s-inflation-data-idUSL4N1MO0GJ'|'2017-10-13T04:17:00.000+03:00'
'5134538c45a5fd3345df3765589c494d128b3fe2'|'Man Group third quarter assets up 7.9 percent on market gains, inflows'|'October 13, 2017 / 6:53 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago Man Group third-quarter assets up 7.9 percent on market gains, inflows Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Shares in British hedge fund Man Group ( EMG.L ) rose 4 percent on Friday after a rise in third quarter assets and a new share buyback was announced. Man Group assets rose 7.9 percent in the three months ending Sept. 30, boosted by market gains and net inflows to its funds, including in emerging market debt. Total assets rose from $95.9 billion at the end of June to $103.5 billion at the end of September, at the top end of consensus figures that ranged from $98.2 billion to $103.5 billion. The firm took in $2.8 billion in fresh investor cash, generated $900 million in currency gains and $3.3 billion from positive investment movements, it said. Man Group also announced a new $100 million share buyback after concluding its last one around the same time last year, according to an analyst note from Credit Suisse. <20>Man has again proven itself a shareholder friendly allocator of capital,<2C> said the note. Among Man Group<75>s business to increase assets, the long-only stock-picking unit rose by 11 percent to $19.7 billion, with investors adding $600 million to emerging market debt strategies and $500 million to the European equities strategy. Flows were partially offset by $400 million of redemptions pulled from funds of funds and $400 million from equity long short strategies as well as $300 million yanked from computer-driven strategies. In a reversal of an earlier decision, Man Group said it would absorb research costs for the majority of its business in 2018 under MiFID II reforms, estimating the impact to the business to be about $10 to $15 million. <20>Whilst we did not think it was inevitable that liquid alternative managers would absorb research costs in the near term, we view this as a sensible decision for the business,<2C> said the report from Credit Suisse. <20>It could, arguably, also be a modest competitive advantage for Man if its unlisted competitors do not follow suit.<2E> Reporting by Maiya Keidan; editing by Simon Jessop, John Stonestreet and Adrian Croft 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-man-group-outlook/man-group-third-quarter-assets-up-7-9-percent-on-market-gains-inflows-idUKKBN1CI0NQ'|'2017-10-13T09:53:00.000+03:00'
'924b0ad5de3e451166a2233e7c061d4375630521'|'UPDATE 1-BA owner IAG interested in failed airline Monarch''s Gatwick slots - CEO'|'(Adds comment on unit revenues, Level plans, A321LR)By Alistair Smout and Victoria BryanLONDON, Oct 13 (Reuters) - British Airways owner IAG is interested in the London Gatwick slots of failed airline Monarch after it collapsed last week, IAG CEO Willie Walsh said on Friday, adding that the reduction of capacity was good for the industry.Monarch went bust on October 2, falling victim to intense competition in the sector and following Alitalia and Air Berlin into administration in what has been a tough year for Europe<70>s smaller players.<2E>With Monarch, I think everybody<64>s interested in slots at Gatwick, and that would be principally our interest as well... If we can get more slots at Gatwick, we<77>ll certainly be looking for more,<2C> Walsh said on the sidelines of the CAPA centre for aviation global summit.Norwegian Air Shuttle<6C>s CEO said on Thursday that he was also interested in the slots, depending on the price and clarification over how the slots will be allocated.Monarch<63>s collapse could reduce capacity in Europe<70>s highly competitive airline sector. Walsh said that while Monarch<63>s flights from Gatwick would likely be replaced, slots at smaller airports such as Birmingham might stay vacant.With Ryanair cancelling flights over a pilot rostering fiasco, and the issues at Air Berlin and Alitalia, the rest of the sector could benefit, Walsh said.<2E>What the whole combination does is it clearly means there will be less growth, less capacity going into the market, particularly through this winter, so from an industry point of view that<61>s probably to be viewed as a positive,<2C> Walsh said.Walsh said that underlying demand was good, and supported a positive view of the market for the rest of 2017.<2E>We had said earlier this year that we saw unit revenue being positive in the second half of the year,<2C> he said. <20>I<EFBFBD>ve not seen anything at this stage to change that.<2E>Walsh said IAG<41>s new long-haul, low-cost airline Level planned a fleet of up to 30 aircraft by 2022 and was looking at flying to Asia as well, particularly the secondary cities.Level currently flies A330 jets but the business plan includes A321LR jets, and Walsh said 787s were also an option.<2E>We are not wedded to one particular aircraft. The 787 is more efficient from a fuel point of view, but the A330 ownership cost is a fraction of the 787,<2C> he said.IAG has just approved an eighth A321LR for Aer Lingus and could go as high as 12, Walsh said, adding that the plane was also of interest for British Airways and Iberia.<2E>It<49>s not a transatlantic aircraft, but it does have good range and could work for us in both Iberia and British Airways,<2C> he said. (Reporting by Alistair Smout and Victoria Bryan; Editing by Elisabeth O<>Leary and Adrian Croft)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/airlines-europe-iag/update-1-ba-owner-iag-interested-in-failed-airline-monarchs-gatwick-slots-ceo-idINL8N1MO277'|'2017-10-13T08:49:00.000+03:00'
'f4bdd6f52ec53c28bc01de15b92c9aab396769c9'|'VTB says ready to help finance CEFC''s purchase of Rosneft stake'|'The logo of Russian bank VTB is seen on a board at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2017 (SPIEF 2017) in St. Petersburg, Russia, June 1, 2017. Picture taken June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian lender VTB is ready to help finance CEFC China Energy<67>s acquisition of a stake in Russian oil major Rosneft, the bank<6E>s chief executive, Andrei Kostin, said on Friday.Asked about providing finance for the deal, Kostin told Rossyia 24 TV station the deal did not depend on VTB<54>s help, <20>but we are ready to do it, if there is interest in that. It<49>s a fairly interesting deal.<2E>He said he did not want to provide any more details.CEFC last month said it would buy a 14.16 percent stake in Rosneft from a consortium of Glencore ( GLEN.L ) and the Qatar Investment Authority.The deal, which strengthens energy ties between Moscow and Beijing, is worth $9.1 billion.Earlier this month, Reuters reported, citing three people with knowledge of the matter, that CEFC is set to raise $5.1 billion in short-term loans from VTB to part-finance the acquisition of the Rosneft stake.Kostin also said VTB, Russia<69>s second-biggest lender, would have to write off 7 billion roubles ($122 million) as a result of the bailout of Russia<69>s Otkritie Bank, in which VTB holds a 9.9 percent stake.He said it was premature to talk about VTB becoming a shareholder again in Otkritie once it has been rescued.Reporting by Anastasia Teterevleva; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Jane Merriman'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-cefc-rosneftoil-vtb-kostin/vtb-says-ready-to-help-finance-cefcs-purchase-of-rosneft-stake-idINKBN1CI2JZ'|'2017-10-13T15:55:00.000+03:00'
'ae2f1e40397d6269a181ef2e9aad3a3cf1642ce7'|'Italy regulator explores forced Telecom Italia network split - sources'|'October 13, 2017 / 4:01 PM / Updated 6 minutes ago Italy regulator explores forced Telecom Italia network split - sources Stefano Rebaudo , Agnieszka Flak , Giselda Vagnoni 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Telecom Italia''s new logo for the TIM brand is seen on a building in Rome, Italy, in this February 18, 2016 file photo. REUTERS/Tony Gentile/Files MILAN/ROME (Reuters) - Italy<6C>s communications regulator is considering whether it could force Telecom Italia (TIM) ( TLIT.MI ) to put its fixed-line network into a separate company to address competition concerns, three sources close to the matter said. Such a move would result in the network becoming a legal entity in its own right, with its own governance and management structure although the company would still be fully controlled by TIM, the sources told Reuters on Friday. Politicians and rival phone companies have long called for TIM to separate its network, but pressure has increased since Rome took issue with the growing influence of French media group Vivendi ( VIV.PA ), which is its top investor with a 24 percent stake and recently appointed two of TIM<49>s top managers. One option that could be explored to make the new company more independent from TIM would be to put representatives from the regulator, known by its acronym AGCOM, on its board, one of the sources said. If it went ahead with the plan, AGCOM would follow the example of British counterpart Ofcom, which forced BT ( BT.L ) to separate its network unit Openreach. The deal was finalised in March after a two-year regulatory battle. <20>It<49>s not easy to do, and TIM would likely fight it, but it<69>s technically possible,<2C> one of the sources said, adding the watchdog was conducting a market analysis to establish whether there were any grounds that would justify such a move. A TIM spokesman reiterated that the network, which is valued at up to 15 billion euros (13.38 billion pounds), is a strategic asset. He declined any further comment. Italy<6C>s biggest phone group is vertically integrated, which means it gives rivals access to its backbone infrastructure, but also competes with the same players in commercial activities. While TIM has put in place measures to boost transparency and ensure equal access to competitors, notably by setting up an in-house structure called Open Access, the regulator regularly reviews the set-up to see whether any changes are needed. AGCOM<4F>s latest review will be concluded before the end of the year, two sources said, adding that if it is not satisfied, the regulator could take advantage of a European directive allowing it to impose the separation of the network. What could prompt AGCOM to push for a split is the fact that Italy<6C>s antitrust authority has opened two investigations into TIM<49>s broadband rollout this year, one of the sources said. The regulatory review comes as Vivendi<64>s role at TIM is under increased scrutiny by the government which considers it a strategic asset. The president of Italy<6C>s ruling PD party said this week a separation of TIM<49>s network could lead to a merger of the infrastructure with that of broadband rival Open Fiber, which is jointly controlled by utility Enel ( ENEI.MI ) and state lender Cassa Depositi e Presiti (CDP). Heavily-indebted, TIM has been criticized for putting off costly upgrades to its aging copper network. Editing by Silvia Aloisi and Alexander Smith 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-telecomitalia-network/italy-regulator-explores-forced-telecom-italia-network-split-sources-idUSKBN1CI26X'|'2017-10-13T19:00:00.000+03:00'
'52ef5475a10296b7a05821db87de7994b876ea98'|'HK regulator drops case against StanChart, UBS over 2009 IPO: sources'|'A man walks past a logo of the Standard Chartered Kenya bank in their main office in Nairobi, Kenya September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Baz Ratner HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong<6E>s securities regulator has dropped a lawsuit against Standard Chartered Plc ( STAN.L ) and UBS Group AG ( UBSG.S ) over their roles in the 2009 IPO of timber company China Forestry Holdings Co Ltd, two people with knowledge of the matter said.The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) suit filed in January this year sought unspecified damages for <20>market misconduct<63> over the IPO of China Forestry filed in November 2009, according to the court documents at that time.UBS and StanChart were joint sponsors, as investment banks and securities firms that underwrite listings in Hong Kong are called, for the initial public offering (IPO).China Forestry raised $216 million in the offering, but its shares have been suspended since January 2011, after its auditor said it had found possible accounting irregularities.The company is now in liquidation and has been delisted from the Hong Kong exchange.The regulator<6F>s latest move comes despite the fact it is widening its probe into cases of alleged market manipulation and corporate fraud that risk tarnishing former British colony<6E>s reputation as a global financial center.The SFC is probing <20>substandard work<72> by 15 firms in their roles as sponsors for IPOs that have caused billions of dollars in investment losses, a senior regulatory official said on Wednesday.<2E>The SFC issued the protective writ on s213 action with a view to achieving maximum benefit for investors who have suffered harm from alleged misconduct,<2C> the SFC said in a statement on Friday in response to Reuters request for comment.S213 refers to section 213 of the Securities and Futures Ordinance to combat market misconduct.After considering its legal position, the SFC determined its action against <20>certain parties was probably time barred<65>, the regulator said, without elaborating and naming any of the banks in its emailed statement.Standard Chartered and UBS declined to comment. The sources declined to be named as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the subject. The Wall Street Journal first reported the development.The SFC<46>s charges in the lawsuit against the two banks also related to China Forestry<72>s 2009 annual report, its 2009 annual results and the results for the first six months of 2010, as per the documents it had filed with Hong Kong<6E>s High Court.The regulator had also sued China Forestry itself, as well as the company<6E>s two co-founders and its auditor KPMG, the court documents showed. It was not immediately clear if the SFC would pursue its lawsuit against those entities.Standard Chartered and UBS separately disclosed late last year that the SFC was probing their role as sponsors of unidentified IPOs and that the regulator<6F>s actions could result in financial consequences.One of the people with knowledge of the matter said that despite withdrawal of the lawsuit, the SFC<46>s own investigation into the 2009 IPO would continue, which could result in some action against the banks.Standard Chartered no longer has an IPO sponsorship license in Hong Kong, but UBS still does.With Hong Kong the world<6C>s hottest market for IPOs, scrutiny of listings is key to retaining its attractiveness to investors. Under SFC rules, banks can face fines and sanctions if their clients<74> IPO documents mislead investors.Reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee and Elzio Barreto; Editing by Jane Merriman and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-regulator-banks/hk-regulator-drops-case-against-stanchart-ubs-over-2009-ipo-sources-idINKBN1CI1XW'|'2017-10-13T12:30:00.000+03:00'
'47beec007cba21bee5c5dda1e35f748ca1430768'|'Interserve in talks with banks after profit warning'|'October 16, 2017 / 7:38 AM / in 13 minutes Interserve in talks with banks after profit warning Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Reuters) - British support services and construction company Interserve Plc ( IRV.L ) said it was in talks with its banks to provide clarity on its current trading after warning on profits last month. Shares in the company were down 3.2 percent in morning trading, after falling as much as 8.6 percent earlier. They have lost almost 70 percent of their value this year. The statement follows a Sky News report on Sunday that Interserve''s lenders, including HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland, have hired EY as an adviser last week.( bit.ly/2gdwqFN ) HSBC, RBS and EY could not immediately be reached for a comment. The company said that work was under way to <20>provide greater clarity<74> on Interserve<76>s current trading and waste-from-energy provision. In its half-year results published in August, Interserve said net debt stood at 387.5 million pounds as of June, 2017. Interserve cut its full year profit and revenue forecast in September due to disappointing trading in its domestic market in the previous two months and higher costs to wind down its waste-to-energy business. Interserve decided to exit the business in August 2016, after struggling with cost overruns and delays in a Glasgow contract. The company in February more than doubled its expected charge to 160 million pounds after a review. Interserve said in September that <20>complexities of completion<6F> meant final costs associated with its exit from the waste-to-energy business would exceed the 160 million pound provision. Many companies trying to generate energy from waste have seen costs escalating after being forced to make expensive design changes. Interserve also named Mark Whiteling, a former head of finance at engineering supplies group Premier Farnell, as its new finance chief in September. The company had appointed Debbie White as chief executive in March. Companies such as Mitie ( MTO.L ), Capita ( CPI.L ) and Carillion ( CLLN.L ) have also been hit over the past year by rising labour costs and as unplanned changes have escalated costs on past contracts. Carillion made its second profit warning this year in September and said it may need to sell shares to shore up its balance sheet, while Mitie said it may cut up to 480 jobs and warned of higher turnaround costs. Last week, Capita picked turnaround specialist Jonathan Lewis as its new chief executive, with a remit to overhaul the British outsourcing firm after a string of profit warnings. Reporting by Arathy S Nair and Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Louise Heavens/Keith Weir 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-interserve-lenders/interserve-in-talks-with-banks-after-profit-warning-idUKKBN1CL0N9'|'2017-10-16T10:40:00.000+03:00'
'2372cb7e4e54a181d20884d2624b105925fa6be9'|'Fintechs focus on small business services'|'<27>Banks just aren<65>t set up to understand small businesses<65> There is an estimated $2tn gap between SME funding needs and what banks will provide Sofie Blakstad, chief executive of The Hive Network, says banks are not set up to serve small businesses well. Play audio for this article Pause This is an experimental feature. Give us your feedback. Thank you for your feedback. What do you think? I<>ll use it in the future I don<6F>t think I<>ll use it Please tell us why (optional) Send Feedback If there were one overriding theme to pick out in the applications for this year<61>s Future of Fintech Awards , it was a focus on small business customers. The words <20>small businesses are poorly served by banks<6B> kept cropping up on submissions. Fintech companies, it would seem, are lining up to fill this gap in the market by providing small companies with everything from lending, foreign exchange to advice. For many founders the idea for their start-up had come from a bad personal experience with small business banking. Jared Hecht, for example, stumbled on the idea for Fundera when he was helping his cousin raise money for a new restaurant. Two previous sushi restaurants were already open and thriving, but Mr Hecht<68>s cousin was struggling to raise the $300,000 he needed to open a third outlet. Three banks had turned him down. Mr Hecht had previously built and sold, GroupMe, a consumer internet business, and was struck by the difference between getting funding for an internet venture and financial backing for a traditional small business. <20>Investors are willing to give internet companies money on the basis of a business plan. My cousin couldn<64>t get funding for a proven business model. It seemed preposterous,<2C> he says. <20>It was a big red flag and an opportunity.<2E> Fundera set out to provide small business owners a one-stop shop to find information about available loans. It acts as a middleman between lenders and small and medium enterprises, qualifying both the lender and borrower to take some of the uncertainty out of the transaction. SMEs are a potential enormous market. Small companies account for 90 per cent of the world<6C>s businesses, according to the SME Finance Forum, a global small business association. They are, indeed, poorly served by banks, says Matt Gamser, head of the forum. Banks tend to provide personalised services for a few high-value customers, or automate services for a mass consumer market. <20>SMEs don<6F>t work well with either of those models,<2C> he says. <20>Just because they are small doesn<73>t mean these businesses aren<65>t complicated and banks just aren<65>t set up to understand them.<2E> Mr Gamser estimates there is globally at least a $2tn gap between small businesses demand for financing and what financial institutions are willing to provide. I always ask people what their main problem is, is it cash flow, is it payments, but for a lot of them it was trust Sofie Blakstad, chief executive of The Hive Network, saw the problem first hand when she was working at a bank. <20>When I was at Citigroup we were making a 6 per cent return on retail banking, which is nothing. Customising anything is difficult when you are working on a core system that was built 40 years ago.<2E> Ms Blakstad wanted to build something uniquely tailored to very small businesses such as construction companies and caterers, who spend very little time sitting in an office. The Hive Network offers them a way to carry out administration tasks such as giving customers quotes or sending invoices, over their mobile phone. In addition The Hive Network ended up helping these microbusinesses with another problem: trust <20>I always ask people what their main problem is, is it cash flow, is it payments, but for a lot of them it was trust. Many recommendations still come word of mouth,<2C> says Ms Blakstad. Small businesses can find themselves excluded from bigger contracts because they can<61>t prove their record easily. The Hive Network system builds up profiles of users, based on jobs completed, that can b
'1e6c381a29680725873f851adde9c0b2ee3c5a54'|'Bombardier exploring options for aerospace businesses - Bloomberg'|'Oct 15 (Reuters) - Canadian aerospace manufacturer Bombardier Inc is exploring options for its aerospace businesses, including a sale of some operations, Bloomberg reported on Sunday.The company is considering disposal of assets including its Q400 turboprop and CRJ regional-jet unit, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. bloom.bg/2gdycXFBombardier is also looking at partnerships with other aerospace companies, Bloomberg reported. According to the report, Europe<70>s Airbus SE is among the prospective buyers.Bombardier declined to comment on the report. Airbus said it did not comment on market rumors. (Reporting by Kanishka Singh; Editing by Andrew Hay)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/bombardier-divestiture/bombardier-exploring-options-for-aerospace-businesses-bloomberg-idUSL4N1MQ0DQ'|'2017-10-15T23:58:00.000+03:00'
'a5e60bfd7212a6e79a570524d3654f251eba5acd'|'Asia oil buyers turn to U.S. in hunt for cheap supply'|'A general view of a crude oil importing port in Qingdao, Shandong province, in this November 9, 2008 file photo. REUTERS/Stringer/Files SINGAPORE/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Asia is set to ramp up crude oil imports from the United States in late 2017 and early next year, with buyers searching out cheap supplies after hurricanes hit U.S. demand for the commodity at a time of rising production in the country.As many as 11 tankers, partly or fully laden with U.S. crude, are due to arrive in Asia in November, with another 12 to load oil in the United States later in October and November before sailing for Asia, according to shipping sources and data on Thomson Reuters Eikon.U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude benchmark stands at its largest discount in years against the Atlantic Basin<69>s Brent, with local appetite curbed as U.S. refineries are still pushing to get back on track in the wake of hurricanes such as Harvey.<2E>Between November and January, there is a very big volume of U.S. crude heading to Asia,<2C> said a Chinese trader who has bought 4 million barrels of medium-sour U.S. oil to arrive in December. He declined to be identified as he was not authorised to speak with media.The price-spread between the two crudes had already pushed U.S. crude exports to a record 1.98 million barrels per day by late September, according to the Energy Information Administration in the United States.Exports in the next two to three weeks could hit 2.2 million bpd, Marco Dunand, chief executive of trading house Mercuria, said last week.That has also been driven as some Asian governments look to diversify supply sources and reduce trade surpluses with the world<6C>s top economy. India joined China, Japan and South Korea when it imported its first U.S. crude in October.And high premiums for Middle Eastern grades of crude are also stoking Asian appetite for U.S. supplies.Crude oil storage tanks are seen from above at the Cushing oil hub, in Cushing, Oklahoma, March 24, 2016. REUTERS/Nick Oxford/Files <20>U.S. medium sour grades can replace most Middle East grades and the light sweets may replace some African crude,<2C> said the Chinese trader.DESTINATION ASIA The tankers to arrive in Asia in November include eight Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC), capable of carrying 2 million barrels of oil each, and three Suezmaxes that can load half that volume, according to shipping data in Eikon.China remains the largest buyer with four tankers, followed by three to South Korea and two to India. The remaining two could head to Singapore, the data shows.Unipec, the trading arm of Asia<69>s largest refiner Sinopec, dominates the trade with imports set to hit 5.7 million tonnes in 2017, up from 3.6 million tonnes in the first eight months, a source familiar with the matter said. The company buys about 8 million barrels of U.S. crude on average per month, the source said. Reuters could not immediately reach the company for comment.Another 12 tankers are provisionally chartered to load U.S. oil in October and November, the data showed.Four of these are supertankers chartered by South Korean buyers to load Mexican and U.S. crude. The country<72>s top refiner SK Energy has bought 6.5 million barrels of U.S. crude to be delivered between November and January.Several Indian refiners have also purchased their first U.S. crude for delivery in the fourth quarter, including the country<72>s largest refiner Indian Oil Corp.Japan<61>s largest refiner JXTG Holdings has provisionally chartered a VLCC to load crude in Mexico and the U.S. Gulf in November. The company declined to comment on individual trades.Reporting by Florence Tan in Singapore and Catherine Ngai in New York; Additional reporting by Jane Chung in Seoul and Osamu Tsukimori in Tokyo; Editing by Joseph Radford'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-asia-oil/asia-oil-buyers-turn-to-u-s-in-hunt-for-cheap-supply-idINKBN1CL18C'|'2017-10-16T13:29:00.000+03:00'
'ed9b2cf13e2f3e37f9e2438e5ef2d090b2a0d212'|'UPDATE 2-Euro zone bond yields fall to 1-month lows, Spain recovers ground'|'* Most euro zone bond yields hit one-month low* ECB <20>lower for longer<65> taper expectations support market* Allow Spanish bonds to recover ground from Catalonia jitters* Euro zone periphery govt bond yields tmsnrt.rs/2ii2Bqr (Recasts with late move in bonds)By Dhara Ranasinghe and Abhinav RamnarayanLONDON, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Most bond yields across the euro zone fell to their lowest in around a month on Monday, pushed down by growing expectations that the ECB is moving towards extending its asset-buying scheme at a lower volume.The broad rally in euro zone bond prices, which pushed yields down, allowed Spain<69>s bond market to recover from Catalonia-related jitters.The Spanish debt market had lagged the rest of the euro zone for much of the session as Madrid moved towards direct rule over Catalonia, which held a banned independence referendum on Oct. 1.Catalan authorities must drop a bid for independence by Thursday, the Spanish government said.But as the session progressed, selling pressure in Spain<69>s government bonds abated, with yields reversing course to fall in line with the broader euro zone market.Ten-year bond yields in Germany and Italy hit one-month lows, extending moves seen late last week on reports that ECB policymakers broadly agree to extend asset purchases at a lower volume at their October policy meeting with views converging on a nine-month extension.That pushed Spain<69>s 10-year bond yield down 2 basis points to 1.57 percent, its lowest level in four weeks, according to Reuters data.<2E>We<57>re still really struggling to work out what<61>s the next step in Catalonia,<2C> said Rabobank fixed-income strategist Lyn Graham-Taylor. <20>It would seem that the nine-month tapering scenario is supporting markets.<2E>Earlier, Catalonia jitters had briefly pushed out the gap between Spanish and German bond yields.Spain<69>s IBEX share index lagged the broader European market, dropping almost 1 percent with financials weighing most. Spanish banks Caixabank, BBVA and Banco Sabadell were down 2 to 2.9 percent.Across the euro zone, bond yields fell 2-4 basis points, with Germany<6E>s benchmark 10-year bond yield hitting a one-month low of 0.37 percent.That was in contrast to a rise in U.S. bond yields, which were pushed up after a stronger-than-expected report on manufacturing from the New York Federal Reserve.U.S. and European bond markets often move in step with each other but the outlook for European Central Bank policy was in the driving seat for now.Currently, the ECB buys 60 billion euros ($71 billion) of assets a month in a scheme that runs until the end of the year. That buying is expected to be scaled back given brighter economic conditions and technical constraints facing the programme.<2E>Draghi & co will get the opportunity to put market expectations right ahead of the blackout period,<2C> analysts at Commerzbank said in a note, referring to scheduled appearances from top ECB officials in the days ahead. The ECB meets next week.They expected German 10-year yields to establish a new range between 0.40 and 0.45 percent in light of changed policy expectations. ($1 = 0.8467 euros)Reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe and Abhinav Ramnarayan; Editing by Dale Hudson'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/eurozone-bonds/update-1-south-europe-bonds-fall-behind-on-catalan-concerns-idINL8N1MR2UP'|'2017-10-16T09:16:00.000+03:00'
'bd0c5965a487c729121ef157624c3a588282d1fb'|'London court adjourns Dana Gas sukuk trial'|'October 13, 2017 / 3:53 PM / in a day London court adjourns Dana Gas sukuk trial Reuters Staff 2 Min Read DUBAI, Oct 13 (Reuters) - A London High Court judge has adjourned hearings on whether the United Arab Emirates<65> Dana Gas must redeem $700 million of Islamic bonds when they mature at the end of this month, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. High Court judge George Leggatt is expected to resume the hearings by Nov. 13, the sources said. In a complex case that is being fought in British and UAE courts, Dana is refusing to make payments on the sukuk on the grounds that changes in Islamic finance over recent years have made the bonds unlawful in the UAE. The dispute may have implications for issuers and holders of Islamic debt around the world, as any win by Dana could set a precedent for other companies to treat their outstanding sukuk in a similar fashion. Judge Leggatt had originally been expected to rule on the case as soon as September, but proceedings have been slowed by manoeuvrings in the UAE courts. Some of Dana<6E>s shareholders obtained an injunction in a court in the emirate of Sharjah preventing the company from taking part in the London hearings. Dana has applied to a Sharjah appeals court to have that injunction changed, but this week the appeals court adjourned without making a decision. Meanwhile, Dana has applied for permission to appeal against the London High Court<72>s decision to proceed with the English trial while Dana was absent. It is also seeking to appeal the London High Court<72>s decision last month to allow fund manager BlackRock, a sukuk holder, to join the trial. (Reporting by Davide Barbuscia; Writing by Andrew Torchia; Editing by Mark Potter) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/dana-gas-sukuk/london-court-adjourns-dana-gas-sukuk-trial-idUSL8N1MO4L7'|'2017-10-13T23:53:00.000+03:00'
'2bec37ee1e7dee77c8c8595791c39ea3d4fd45e9'|'Aviva to sell Taiwan business'|'FILE PHOTO: A man walks past an AVIVA logo outside the company''s head office in the city of London March 5, 2009. REUTERS/Stephen Hird LONDON (Reuters) - British insurer Aviva said on Friday its decision to sell its 49 percent stake in a Taiwan joint venture to its partner First Financial Holding fits into its strategy of withdrawing from less profitable markets.Aviva declined to put a price tag on the sale, but Annie Lee, head of investor relations at Taiwan<61>s First Financial, said Aviva sold its share in the joint venture, First Aviva Life, for $1.The sale enables Aviva to withdraw its capital from the business, following low returns after the financial crisis, she added.The decision came after a review of the business found it did not fit with the group<75>s aim of focusing on markets where it can achieve scale or have a distinct competitive advantage, Aviva said in a statement.<2E>This was not about financials, it was more a strategic decision,<2C> an Aviva spokeswoman said.The insurer has also this year sold its stake in three Spanish joint ventures, its Italian joint venture and part of its French business, as it tries to focus on core markets including Britain and Canada.It has also said it would look at its Indian joint venture with Dabur Invest Corp.The sale of the Taiwan business will have a negligible impact on Aviva<76>s capital position and operating profit, the insurer said.Aviva previously looked at exiting Taiwan in 2010 and 2012, but opted not to in the face of opposition from regulators.Aviva<76>s shares were trading at 499.4 pence at 0841 GMT, down 0.1 percent.Reporting by Clara Denina and Carolyn Cohn; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-aviva-taiwan-divestiture/aviva-to-sell-taiwan-business-idINKBN1CI0MP'|'2017-10-13T04:44:00.000+03:00'
'7bbb42478ab85c8594a2ab30c11301095a1510c4'|'Fake paperwork, poor parts challenge China''s aerospace boom'|'October 16, 2017 / 7:57 AM / Updated 10 minutes ago Fake paperwork, poor parts challenge China''s aerospace boom Brenda Goh 7 Min Read Charles Shi, a former Moog supply chain manager for Far East Asia, speaks during an interview in Shanghai, China August 31, 2017. Picture taken August 31, 2017. SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese suppliers to U.S. flight control systems maker Moog ( MOGa.N ) sold it poorly made parts, faked paperwork and outsourced work to a factory not approved by the company, according to an internal report by U.S. aviation regulators. In a 9-page report dated Nov. 4, 2016 obtained by Reuters through a freedom of information request, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) said 273 affected parts were installed in an unspecified number of Boeing 777 wing spoilers, which help slow a plane when coming in to land. It did not identify the parts or say when they were installed. The FAA, Boeing ( BA.N ) and Moog said in the report and in emails to Reuters they posed no safety risk. Moog supplies flight control systems for commercial and military planes - an industry where supply chain traceability and material quality are highly regulated and crucial for flight safety. The episode does not raise immediate safety issues. However, it highlights the pressure on Chinese suppliers and regulators as the world<6C>s fastest growing aviation sector seeks to be less reliant on foreign manufacturers. To be sure, it<69>s not just a Chinese issue. Shares in Japan<61>s Kobe Steel ( 5406.T ), a supplier of aluminum and copper products used in aircraft and cars, plunged last week after it found numerous cases of data falsification, sending customers scrambling to check product safety. Supply firms have flocked to China<6E>s booming aerospace sector, which is looking to supply parts faster and cheaper in a competitive global market. China<6E>s exports of parts to the U.S. aerospace industry have trebled to $1.2 billion since 2009, U.S. trade data show. The demand has fueled the rise of smaller makers of airplane parts in an industry that has been dominated by state-owned firms. China<6E>s aerospace industry isn<73>t just a supplier to foreign plane makers. Its airlines are among the biggest buyers of Boeing and Airbus ( AIR.PA ) planes, but China is now building its own passenger jets, flying its first narrow-body C919 plane in May. Mao Pingzhou, a program and quality manager at Airbus, who previously worked at Moog, says China still needs to improve the management of its supply chain. <20>There are a lot of procedures, but supervisors and workers don<6F>t strictly implement them,<2C> he told Reuters. In an emailed response to Reuters, the FAA said it investigated safety concerns raised by a whistleblower, Charles Shi, and substantiated two of his allegations. One was addressed and closed, and the other <20>remains open until the corrective action is fully implemented by Boeing and verified by the FAA.<2E> It did not elaborate. Boeing said it and Moog <20>had already assessed these two issues and taken all necessary corrective actions.<2E> It stressed that <20>the safety of the flying public is our primary concern.<2E> Moog said it <20>promptly and properly investigated<65> the irregularities. <20>The suspect parts - none of which are flight safety critical - were determined to meet specifications,<2C> it said. According to the FAA report, more than 720 hours of stress-testing the parts at Moog showed no failures, and it was agreed with Boeing to leave them on the planes. WHISTLEBLOWER The FAA began investigating Moog parts in March 2016 after Shi, a former Moog supply chain manager for Far East Asia, contacted its whistleblower hotline, according to Shi and copies of emails between him and the regulator. Charles Shi, a former Moog supply chain manager for Far East Asia, speaks during an interview in Shanghai, China August 31, 2017. Picture taken August 31, 2017. Shi had previously raised concerns at Moog about Suzhou New Hongji Precision Parts Co Ltd (NHJ), a supplier he said had faked 
'b05758fcd9135766ac5b7550c6f8f25175402cd9'|'Mike Ashley puts Newcastle United up for sale'|'FILE PHOTO: Football Soccer - Premier League - Newcastle United vs Tottenham Hotspur - Newcastle, Britain - August 13, 2017 Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley (C) looks on from the stands Action Images via Reuters/Lee Smith (Reuters) - Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley put the Premier League club up for sale on Monday, signaling an end to his decade-long reign at St James<65> Park.<2E>As one of the Premier League<75>s oldest and best supported football clubs - and for the benefit of its many fans and supporters in the UK and across the world - Newcastle United requires a clear direction and a path to a bright and successful future,<2C> the club said in a statement.<2E>To give the club the best possible opportunity of securing the positioning and investment necessary to take it to the next level, at what is an important time in its history, its present ownership has determined that it is in the best interests of Newcastle United and its fans for the club to be put up for sale.<2E>The club said they were willing to listen to offers that would be capable of <20>delivering sustained investment<6E> towards achieving their ambitions in the top flight.Newcastle have been relegated twice since Ashley took charge in 2007. After winning promotion to the Premier League last season, Rafa Benitez<65>s side are ninth in the standings with 11 points from eight games.Reporting by Hardik Vyas in Bengaluru; editing by Clare Lovell'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-soccer-england-new-ownership/mike-ashley-puts-newcastle-united-up-for-sale-idINKBN1CL2HO'|'2017-10-16T14:56:00.000+03:00'
'1ca09fe9ae1c3eb181033ab2637d289297e5099b'|'Carrefour appoints FNAC Darty''s Malige as new CFO'|'October 16, 2017 / 7:51 AM / in 2 hours Carrefour turns to Fnac Darty again for new finance chief Dominique Vidalon , Sudip Kar-Gupta 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of France-based food retailer Carrefour is seen on shopping trolleys in Sao Paulo, Brazil July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - New Carrefour ( CARR.PA ) boss Alexandre Bompard has turned to a former colleague from Fnac Darty to be his finance chief as he strives to revive the world<6C>s second-biggest retailer. Carrefour said on Monday that former Fnac Darty ( FNAC.PA ) chief financial officer Matthieu Malige, 43, would start with immediate effect, replacing Pierre Jean Sivignon, 60, who is stepping down for personal reasons. The French company''s shares, which plunged in August after it warned 2017 operating profit could fall by as much as 12 percent, were up 1.8 percent in early trading, the top performer on the CAC-40 .FCHI index of French blue-chip stocks. <20>Matthieu Malige and Alexandre Bompard successfully turned Fnac around .... We have been impressed by the complementary nature of this team at Fnac, where Matthieu Malige built a strong track record in managing cost-cutting, working capital, and cash,<2C> wrote analysts at brokerage Raymond James. <20>We believe, just as at Fnac back in 2011, Carrefour needs to make some progress on these three metrics,<2C> they added. The new Carrefour team faces a challenge to improve the performance of its French hypermarkets, a goal that has eluded several predecessors. Carrefour is up against fierce competition in France, which accounts for nearly half of group sales and 44 percent of operating profit, from online and other rivals. A union official said last month that Carrefour<75>s options included closing some hypermarkets, turning some into franchises or introducing Sunday opening for others. Malige should know the challenges ahead of him, as he worked at Carrefour between 2003 and 2011, holding several positions including finance chief of Belgium and France. NEW TEAM His appointment comes at a crucial time as Bompard, who joined from music, books and electricals chain Fnac Darty in July, has yet to unveil his turnaround plan. <20>It<49>s a bit of a surprise, but it confirms the idea that Bompard wants a new team around him. Shareholders will want Malige to review the hypermarkets business, which is losing market share, and to accelerate Carrefour<75>s online strategy,<2C> said Benoit de Broissia, a fund manager at Paris-based Keren Finance, which owns Carrefour shares. Bompard has already made other management changes as he looks to revive the company<6E>s fortunes. Carrefour said Sivignon, who had been group finance chief since 2011, would stay on as an adviser to Bompard. <20>The lack of a robust and or effective capital allocation framework is one of the big reasons that Carrefour is in its difficult situation today. As a CFO, Mr. Sivignon stood over that capital allocation framework. Therefore a clean start will help convince investors that things might change for the better at Carrefour,<2C> said Bernstein analyst Bruno Monteyne. Carrefour shares have fallen around 24 percent this year, underperforming the STOXX Europe 600 index and France''s benchmark CAC-40 .FCHI , which are both up by roughly 10 percent. Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Dominique Vidalon; Additional reporting by Pascale Denis; Editing by Jason Neely and Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-carrefour-management/carrefour-appoints-fnac-dartys-malige-as-new-cfo-idUSKBN1CL0JR'|'2017-10-16T09:28:00.000+03:00'
'f7844075df9522aa57f5e6903eb1bef40362eb05'|'Hillary Clinton warns Britain on potential trade deal with Trump'|'October 15, 2017 / 1:00 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Hillary Clinton warns Britain on potential trade deal with Trump Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Former U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton speaks during an interview with Mariella Frostrup at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in Cheltenham, Britain October 15, 2017. REUTERS/Rebecca Naden LONDON (Reuters) - Former U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton cautioned Britain on Sunday over its push to secure a trade deal with U.S. President Donald Trump after it leaves the European Union. Clinton, the Democratic Party candidate who lost out to Trump in last November<65>s election, also said Britain would face serious disruption if it left the EU without a negotiated deal with Brussels. The British government has talked up the prospect of bilateral trade deals with the United States and others as one of the major benefits of leaving the EU following last year<61>s surprise referendum vote to leave. Asked about the prospects of a British-U.S. deal, Clinton told the BBC: <20>You<6F>re making a trade deal with somebody who says he doesn<73>t believe in trade, so I<>m not quite sure how that<61>s going to play out over the next few years.<2E> British Prime Minister Theresa May visited Trump in January to talk trade. The countries share $200 billion of trade each year. Former U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton speaks during an interview with Mariella Frostrup at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in Cheltenham, Britain October 15, 2017. REUTERS/Rebecca Naden But May has since intervened in a dispute between U.S. aerospace firm Boeing ( BA.N ) and Canadian planemaker Bombardier ( BBDb.TO ), lobbying in the interests of Bombardier to try to protect jobs at its factory in Northern Ireland. Slideshow (6 Images) Clinton also said Britain would be at a <20>very big disadvantage<67> if divorce negotiations with the EU failed, and went on to compare the factors behind the Brexit vote to her own election loss. <20>Looking at the Brexit vote now it was a precursor to some extent to what happened to us in the United States... The amount of fabricated, false information that your voters were given by the <20>Leave<76> campaign,<2C> she said. She said her own presidential campaign was subject to similar treatment, citing the spread of false stories by online news outlets, and warned that Britain and other countries must be alert to the risks of such new media. <20>The big lie is a very potent tool,<2C> she said. Reporting by William James; Editing by Janet Lawrence 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-britain-clinton/hillary-clinton-warns-britain-on-potential-trade-deal-with-trump-idUKKBN1CK0IF'|'2017-10-15T15:59:00.000+03:00'
'd91c2b5cd8387897bc1a859cb85d3a92adcf8a1e'|'Viacom, Spectrum continue talks past 7 pm deadline-source'|'Oct 15 (Reuters) - Viacom Inc and cable operator Spectrum continued talks Sunday night as the 7 pm ET (2300 GMT) deadline on their programming agreement passed, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters.As of 7 pm Sunday evening, Viacom<6F>s networks, which include Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, continued to be available to Spectrum<75>s 16.6 million customers. Spectrum is owned by Charter Communications Inc..However, Viacom continued to run messaging at the bottom of the screen urging viewers to call Spectrum to complain about a potential blackout, noting that the media company was not asking Spectrum for more money..A Viacom spokeswoman declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for Charter.Viacom CEO Bob Bakish, who took on his role last year, has made improving relations with distributors a key part of his turnaround strategy for the company.Like its peers, Viacom is struggling to keep viewers as more people watch shows on smartphones and tablets.Six of the largest U.S pay-TV providers lost a total of 723,000 subscribers during the second quarter. Of that total, Charter reported 90,000 subscriber losses.An agreement between the two companies would be <20>mutually beneficial,<2C> wrote Evercore ISI in an note Sunday.Having Viacom content helps Charter add video subscribers amidst increasing competition from virtual streaming services, like Hulu and DirecTV Now, while Viacom is still heavily dependent on cable and satellite companies for distribution, according to Evercore ISI. (Reporting By Jessica Toonkel; Editing by Mary Milliken)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/viacom-charter-commns/viacom-spectrum-continue-talks-past-7-pm-deadline-source-idINL2N1MQ0LW'|'2017-10-15T21:40:00.000+03:00'
'f2bcbb08aec442449c2ff5aa0a3de43e7102f355'|'Aldermore/FirstRand: unchallenging'|'  The UK<55>s challenger banks curry more favour with politicians than patrons. Dishing out new licences to opponents of incumbents deemed <20>too big to fail<69> is one thing. Convincing savers and borrowers to sign up with unfamiliar names is another. An approach for niche lender Aldermore suggests greater scale is needed. South African group FirstRand is mulling a 313p per share cash offer for the Reading based-bank that no one seems minded to oppose. Aldermore<72>s shares jumped 19 per cent on the news and the board sounds keen on the <20>1.1bn valuation. FirstRand<6E>s addendum that the offer will not rest on unanimous boardroom support looks superfluous. The financial services group has made an astute choice for its first foray into UK banking. Aldermore may be small but its growth has been sure-footed. As the number of buy-to-let landlords has fallen, the lender has skimmed market share from larger rivals. Mortgage lending in the first half of the year rose 9 per cent to <20>6.2bn. Cheap financing under the Bank of England<6E>s term funding scheme, which ends early next year, has helped to cut cost of funds. If the BoE rethinks heavy capital requirements for small lenders, it has more to gain. There is an obvious link between FirstRand<6E>s second-hand UK car financier MotoNovo, with its <20>3bn loan book, and Aldermore<72>s <20>7bn of deposits. And the bid price looks fair at a 63 per cent premium to the bank<6E>s float price in early 2015. At 1.7 times book, Aldermore is being bought on similar terms as Shawbrook , another challenger bank that agreed to a takeover in July. With two challenger banks taken private so far this year, speculation is hot over who will be next. The government had hoped challenger banks would spark competition for customers, rather than a bidding scramble. But there is a chance the former will be assisted by the latter. Do you want to receive Lex in your inbox? Sign up for the weekly Best of Lex email at ft.com/newsletters . Copyright  '|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/content/d0947130-b267-11e7-aa26-bb002965bce8'|'2017-10-16T18:15:00.000+03:00'
'20cb3af88da0c1acf97b150c5be0b1e903b89865'|'As the quartet breaks up, central banking leadership flux looms'|'October 16, 2017 / 5:04 AM / Updated 6 hours ago As the quartet breaks up, central banking leadership flux looms Howard Schneider , Leika Kihara 7 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Governor of the Bank of Japan Haruhiko Kuroda (L to R), United States Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi walk after posing for a photo opportunity during the annual central bank research conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Jade Barker/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The leaders of the world<6C>s top central banks who risked trillions of dollars and their reputations to rescue the global economy are now set to walk off stage at a time when the lingering effects of the crisis, evolving technology and a combustible political landscape will challenge their successors. The Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the People<6C>s Bank of China may all have new bosses in early 2018 and there will be a new head of the European Central Bank the following year. The new leaders will have to deal with the hangover from the 2007-2009 crisis and its immediate aftermath as well as newly emerging risks. Some $10 trillion in assets bought by the Fed, the ECB and the BOJ to prop up their economies remains on the books and will have to be pared back. Stubbornly low global inflation and weak growth complicate the return to more conventional policies. There are unfinished reforms in China and Europe, while the rise of nationalism could erode central bank independence. Further ahead, the spread of cryptocurrencies and other technologies threatens to weaken central bank control over the financial system. <20>The bad news is that in a crisis people learn by doing,<2C> said Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at investment firm Standish Mellon and a longtime official at the Federal Reserve. <20>Will the next set of people have the set of experiences that allows them to do that? Will they have a test?<3F> The changing of the guard could veer in unpredictable directions. China<6E>s president is considering a provincial official to succeed Zhou Xiaochuan, a veteran policymaker who has led the central bank since 2002 and whom analysts regard as a champion of reforms that could falter without his leadership. In the United States, President Donald Trump will have the opportunity to infuse his <20>America First<73> sensibility at the Fed, an institution with an undeniable global role, when Chair Janet Yellen<65>s term ends in early February. BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda<64>s shock-and-awe record monetary stimulus gets credited for helping Japan snap out of years of stagnation. He will see his term end next April with the economy expected to keep growing, but inflation still far from his target, fueling doubts about the overall effectiveness of his policy. ECB President Mario Draghi will be around until late 2019, but the succession battle could renew tensions over Britain<69>s departure from the European Union, ways of aligning the interests of economic superpower Germany with the rest of Europe, and concerns that the rise of nationalism could impair the ECB<43>s ability to set monetary policy for 19 countries. <20>Given the divisions in Europe both politically and economically, you could have a very large swing in ECB behavior,<2C> said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Yellen, Kuroda and Zhou appeared together on Sunday to talk about the global economy on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings. It was a <20>farewell concert<72> of sorts for a group whose tenure has transformed central banking. With rare exceptions, monetary policymakers from different countries avoid any hint of direct coordination with each other, and primarily tailor policies to domestic needs. Still, the four in charge now have shared years at the helm of the global financial system, met and talked at countless international meetings, and managed a major crisis together. Along the way they deploy
'49acf3e2c76609ada7e915440080bfcc7a566153'|'PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 16'|'Oct 16 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.- The U.S. Senate this week will grapple with President Trump''s decision to stop making subsidy payments to health insurers, with lawmakers seeking a deal that would keep the money flowing while Republicans try to fold in conservative-oriented priorities. on.wsj.com/2gdbLBN- Iraqi forces clashed with fighters from the Kurdish semi-autonomous region in the oil-rich province of Kirkuk early Monday, Iraqi and Kurdish officials said, in a standoff over Kurdish independence that threatens to unravel a multinational coalition battling Islamic State. on.wsj.com/2gdqfS7- The death toll from twin bombings in capital Mogadishu climbed above 200 over the weekend, making it one of the deadliest attacks in the country. on.wsj.com/2gclb0d- U.S. officials defended President Donald Trump''s refusal to certify the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, saying the country threatens global stability even while technically complying with the accord itself. on.wsj.com/2gdC5vG- Blackstone Group is pushing aggressively into products for retail investors, betting it can raise as much from them over the long term as it does from the institutions that form the main source of its $371 billion of assets. on.wsj.com/2gcC2jA- Food-service giant Aramark Corp plans to acquire two closely held companies for a total of $2.35 billion, in its largest deals since going public nearly four years ago. on.wsj.com/2gc5vdo- Harvey Weinstein saw fallout from sexual assault allegations increase over the weekend, including fresh investigations in London, as the producer was expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. on.wsj.com/2gb95EO (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/press-digest-wsj/press-digest-wall-street-journal-oct-16-idINL4N1MR227'|'2017-10-16T03:01:00.000+03:00'
'47982f292759661dca2a01bc410614e36cb5a026'|'Global steel demand to grow 7 percent in 2017 - Worldsteel'|'October 16, 2017 / 7:39 AM / Updated 29 minutes ago Global steel demand growth to slow in 2018, worldsteel says Maytaal Angel 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A labourer works at a cold-rolling mill on the outskirts of Wuhan, capital of central China''s Hubei province August 22, 2006. REUTERS/Alfred Cheng Jin/File Photo BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Global steel demand growth is expected to slow to 1.6 percent next year, after strong growth in 2017 driven by demand from top consumer China, the World Steel Association (worldsteel) said on Monday. Demand will reach 1.648 billion tonnes next year, up from 1.622 billion tonnes this year, worldsteel said. The 2017 figure corresponds to nominal growth of 7 percent and underlying growth of 2.8 percent. <20>The risks to the global economy ... have to some extent abated. We see the best balance of risks since the 2008 economic crisis,<2C> worldsteel said in a statement at its general assembly in Brussels. However, it added: <20>In 2018 we expect growth to moderate, mainly due to slower growth in China.<2E> The steel industry, worth about $900 billion a year, is a gauge of the world<6C>s economic health. Average global prices have climbed some 50 percent since the 12-year lows of December 2015, according to consultants MEPS. China this year closed most of its outdated and in many cases illegal induction furnaces, a category not previously captured in official demand statistics, hence the one-off effect on nominal versus underlying demand. Worldsteel expects demand in China to reach 765.7 million tonnes this year and next. The 2017 figure corresponds to nominal growth of 12.4 percent this year and underlying growth of 3 percent, worldsteel said. Next year, however, China<6E>s demand will be flat. Worldsteel, which represents more than 160 steelmakers accounting for 85 percent of global production, had forecast in April that global demand would grow just 1.3 percent in 2017 and 0.9 percent in 2018. <20>Progress in global steel markets this year to date has been encouraging. We have seen the cyclical upturn broadening and firming ... <20> said T.V. Narendran, chairman of the worldsteel Economics Committee. Future prospects are less encouraging, though, especially in the longer term. <20>The lack of a strong growth engine to replace China and a long-term decline in steel intensity due to technological and environmental factors will continue to weigh on steel demand in the future,<2C> worldsteel said. Demand in India, the world<6C>s third-largest steel consumer and the industry<72>s best hope after China, is expected to grow just 4.4 percent this year and 5.7 percent next year, compared with an April forecast of 6.1 percent and 7.1 percent, respectively. On the plus side, excess capacity is being reduced, thanks largely to China<6E>s cuts, worldsteel director general Edwin Basson said at the general assembly. <20>There<72>s ample evidence that over a two-year space China will have closed capacity similar to total U.S. capacity and on top of that comes the induction furnace closures,<2C> Basson said . <20>There<72>s (still) enough capacity globally to satisfy demand for the next 20 years (but) we<77>re positive because the G20 (Global Forum on Steel Excess Capacity) is looking at this and there<72>s good co-operation between all member countries.<2E> Official figures from China show it has cut nearly 100 million tonnes of legal steel capacity and 120 million tonnes of illegal induction furnace capacity since the start of last year. Reporting by Maytaal Angel; Editing by Louise Heavens and Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-steel-demand-global/global-steel-demand-to-grow-7-percent-in-2017-worldsteel-idUKKBN1CL0Q2'|'2017-10-16T10:38:00.000+03:00'
'431e7c2d421be33a053974d93c35bee434f2b46c'|'REFILE-Owner of failed airline Monarch should contribute to customer repatriation - UK transport minister'|'(Removes extraneous word from headline)LONDON, Oct 16 (Reuters) - The owner of failed British airline Monarch should in principle foot some of the bill for a massive repatriation effort co-ordinated by the country<72>s aviation authority, British transport minister Chris Grayling said on Monday.Asked by lawmakers whether Greybull Capital, owner of Monarch, should contribute to the costs of returning tourists to Britain, Grayling said, <20>There<72>s no formal legal mechanism that we can use, but in terms of the principle I completely agree.<2E><>I would hope that if any of the creditors end up with money in pocket, whether they might indeed consider doing that.<2E> (Reporting by Alistair Smout, editing by Andy Bruce)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/monarch-airlines-licence-grayling/owner-of-failed-airline-monarch-owner-should-contribute-to-customer-repatriation-uk-transport-minister-idINL9N1IW013'|'2017-10-16T14:12:00.000+03:00'
'7139d620ef28909c2c7fa09b0cd2d9e5755e7ef2'|'Lufthansa confirms made offer for part of Alitalia'|'FILE PHOTO: Lufthansa airliners park at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke BERLIN (Reuters) - German airline group Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) has made an offer for parts of Italy<6C>s ailing national carrier Alitalia [CAITLA.UL], it said on Monday, just days after agreeing a deal for parts of insolvent rival Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ).<2E>Lufthansa has opted not to make an offer for the complete Airline but has stated interest in only parts of the Global network traffic and European and domestic point-to-point business,<2C> it said in a statement.Earlier, Italian daily Corriere della Serra reported Lufthansa had offered 500 million euros ($590 million) for planes, airport runway slots and air crew. It had also proposed halving Alitalia<69>s workforce of 12,000 employees and reducing its short- and medium-range flights, the report said.Reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Maria Sheahan'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-alitalia-sale-lufthansa-offer/lufthansa-confirms-made-offer-for-part-of-alitalia-idINKBN1CL224'|'2017-10-16T12:26:00.000+03:00'
'1166cb3b8873680bb3dee917cec337c5eb451141'|'Nordstrom family suspends attempt to take retailer private'|'(Reuters) - Nordstrom Inc ( JWN.N ) said on Monday its founding family had suspended attempts to take the upscale retailer private for the rest of the year due to difficulties in arranging funds for the deal ahead of the holiday season.The company<6E>s shares were down 5 percent in early trading, valuing it at about $6.7 billion.Nordstrom said in June that the family group, which owns 31.2 percent of the storied retailer, was looking to take the company private as it struggled to compete amid an industry-wide slowdown.A rapid rise in online shopping and slowing customer traffic at malls have hurt mall-based retailers, including Nordstrom.The family had hired private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners to help take the retailer private, a source told Reuters last month and were seeking to raise $1 billion to $2 billion in equity.Media reports earlier this month suggested the family was finding it difficult to shore up financing, especially after the surprise bankruptcy filing of retailer Toys ''R'' Us that stoked fears of dwindling mall traffic among lenders. ( nyp.st/2xJTFBL )Reporting by Siddharth Cavale in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza and Arun Koyyur'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-nordstrom-m-a-urgent/nordstrom-family-suspends-attempt-to-take-retailer-private-idINKBN1CL1VK'|'2017-10-16T11:41:00.000+03:00'
'8373a1b77661b3b7ac9b170ffa60dd078be5fcf5'|'UPDATE 1-Saudi may raise loan-deposit ratio if needed, c.bank chief tells Arabiya'|'October 15, 2017 / 8:01 AM / in 12 hours UPDATE 1-Saudi may raise loan-deposit ratio if needed, c.bank chief tells Arabiya Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Adds context, comments on bank mergers and licences) DUBAI, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia<69>s central bank may raise the maximum loan-to-deposit ratio for commercial banks if that is needed to help the economy, central bank governor Ahmed al-Kholifey told Al Arabiya television. Kholifey was speaking on the sidelines of meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington at the weekend. The central bank last raised the ratio in February 2016, to 90 percent from 85 percent. The ratio for the banking sector as a whole stood at 81.7 percent in August, down from 84.8 percent a year ago, according to the latest central bank data. Kholifey also noted that the non-oil sector of the economy grew 0.6 percent from a year earlier in the first half of this year, which he said suggested the non-oil sector would lead economic expansion. Saudi banks have passed stress tests and are not worried about bad loans, he added. Earlier this year, Alawwal Bank entered talks to merge with Saudi British Bank, partly owned by HSBC . Kholifey told Al Arabiya that the situation with the possible merger would be clear by the end of this year. He also said two regional banks and one Asian bank were in advanced stages of procedures to obtain Saudi banking licences. He did not name the institutions. (Reporting by Sami Aboudi; Writing by Andrew Torchia) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/saudi-cenbank-policy/update-1-saudi-may-raise-loan-deposit-ratio-if-needed-c-bank-chief-tells-arabiya-idUSL8N1MQ066'|'2017-10-15T10:59:00.000+03:00'
'f7774e093b43d2f8d2d26d6d72ebe9335940d71f'|'World Bank sets spring 2018 target to enhance financial capacity'|'October 14, 2017 / 10:53 PM / Updated 11 hours ago World Bank sets spring 2018 target to enhance financial capacity Reuters Staff 2 Min Read An atrium is seen at the World Bank headquarters building during the IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Washington, U.S., October 14, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The World Bank Group is aiming to develop new measures to enhance its financial capacity and have its board decide on them at its next spring meetings in April 2018, a spokesman for the institution said on Saturday. The World Bank has been seeking a general capital increase for its IBRD lending arm for two years, but the Trump administration has been reluctant to support it. A U.S. Treasury official told Reuters earlier this week that it was too soon to consider such an increase and the World Bank needed to review its balance sheet and shift resources away from higher-income emerging markets such as China toward countries with greater needs. The bank had originally set a goal of its shareholders deciding on a capital increase at this week<65>s World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings. In a communique issued on Saturday, the World Bank and IMF joint development committee directed the institution to look at any and all options. <20>We ask the Board and Management to review all possible options to enhance the World Bank Group<75>s financial capacity and develop a package of measures, including internal levers and general and selective capital increases, for Governors<72> consideration, with the aim of reaching a decision at the 2018 Spring Meetings,<2C> the committee said. A World Bank official said these options could include a selective capital increase with only certain countries contributing, a general capital increase from all shareholders or internal measures to stretch resources such as raising interest rates for higher-income borrowers, adjusting equity-to- loan ratios higher, or other steps that would not need the approval of shareholders. Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Andrea Ricci 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-imf-g20-worldbank/world-bank-sets-spring-2018-target-to-enhance-financial-capacity-idUKKBN1CJ0TM'|'2017-10-15T01:52:00.000+03:00'
'e27e6f530f15699ded19be7a46a4d56892878a08'|'WWE signs first woman wrestler from Arab world in global push'|'DUBAI, Oct 15 (Reuters) - World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. signed its first female performer from the Arab world on Sunday, smashing cultural taboos as the U.S.-based pageant seeks to piledrive its way into lucrative foreign markets.Shadia Bseiso, a Jordanian versed in jiu-jitsu, dreams of encouraging more Arab women to take up sports - and of one day maybe even crashing a metal chair over WWE mega-star John Cena.<2E>Female athletes are finally getting the credit they deserve. The world is more open to that, and in terms of how the region will react to it, I<>m hoping its going to be very positive,<2C> said Bseiso.While women exercising in public is rare in the Arab world and the local entertainment industry often relegates them to docile roles, big companies such as Nike have stepped up advertising geared towards female athletes.Still, the high octane physicality and outrageous storylines of professional wrestling remain a novelty in the region.Speaking to Reuters in the WWE<57>s Dubai office, Bseiso said she made sure to tell her parents about her colourful career choice in person.After announcing she would join the ranks of the WWE, they paused in disbelief for a moment, she said, worried for her safety in the often bruising shows.They support her fully, she added, as she now heads to the company<6E>s Orlando, Florida, training centre for gruelling in-ring training and what WWE calls <20>character development<6E> - transformation into one of their trademark big personalities.She has a Jordan-themed persona in mind, she says, declining to elaborate.For decades a quintessential if curious emblem of Americana, professional wrestling has now won die-hard fans in the Arab world and beyond, and features widely in apparel and toys.WWE<57>s reach deeper into new demographics makes plenty of business sense for the $1.5 billion Connecticut company, which has also recently signed several Indian and Chinese athletes in the hope of snaring millions of potential new devotees.<2E>Recruiting Shadia to join our developmental system underscores WWE<57>s ongoing commitment to building a talent roster as diverse as our fan base,<2C> said Paul <20>Triple H<> Levesque, WWE Executive Vice President and himself a popular wrestler.Bseiso insists the quirky genre has room to expand if only fans could find a hero from home.<2E>As it is, the WWE<57>s incredibly popular in the Middle East, but I think having athletes from the region who grew up here - it will change things. You finally have someone to root for.<2E> (Editing by Mark Potter)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/emirates-wwe/wwe-signs-first-woman-wrestler-from-arab-world-in-global-push-idUSL8N1MQ0A2'|'2017-10-15T14:57:00.000+03:00'
'9e4e6ab14524c038a68136407db5f36f99493cdf'|'Uber files appeal to overturn London licence loss'|'October 13, 2017 / 9:54 AM / in 35 minutes Uber embarks on legal battle to retain London licence Costas Pitas 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A photo illustration a London taxi passing as the Uber app logo is displayed on a mobile telephone, as it is held up for a posed photograph in central London September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Uber [UBER.UL] lodged a court appeal on Friday to overturn a decision by London<6F>s transport regulator that stripped the taxi app of its operating licence in its most important European market, the first stop on what is set to be a long legal road. Transport for London (TfL) shocked the Silicon Valley firm last month by deeming it unfit to run a taxi service and refusing to renew its licence, citing its approach to reporting serious criminal offences and background checks on drivers. The appeal marks the beginning of months of legal wrangling in a battle that had pitched one of the world<6C>s richest cities against a Silicon Valley giant known for forays into new markets across the globe that have stoked competition for established cab companies. Uber, whose backers include Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ) and BlackRock ( BLK.N ), will defend its London business at a hearing most likely due on Dec. 11, a spokesman at Britain<69>s Judicial Office told Reuters. Uber, criticised by London Mayor Sadiq Khan for employing an <20>an army of PR experts and an army of lawyers<72>, said that it hoped to keep talking to TfL to find a way forward. <20>While we have today filed our appeal so that Londoners can continue using our app, we hope to continue having constructive discussions with Transport for London,<2C> an Uber spokesman said. <20>As our new CEO has said, we are determined to make things right.<2E> Only a month into the job, Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi met TfL Commissioner Mike Brown for talks earlier in October, which both sides said were constructive as the $70-billion firm tries to repair its relationship with the regulator. Uber<65>s licence expired on Sep. 30 but its roughly 40,000 drivers in the British capital will be able to continue operating until the appeals process is exhausted. Friday<61>s appeal was submitted to Westminster Magistrates<65> Court in London as part of the first stage of a legal process which could take months or years to reach a conclusion. FILE PHOTO: A photo illustration shows the Uber app on a mobile telephone, as it is held up for a posed photograph in central London, Britain September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo The filing is a short notification of Uber<65>s intention to appeal rather than the detailed grounds. DISRUPTIVE YEAR London<6F>s decision is one of the most serious setbacks to the taxi app, which has been forced to quit several countries, including Denmark and Hungary, and faced regulatory battles in multiple U.S. states and around the world. It comes after a tumultuous few months for the San Francisco start-up that led to former CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick being forced out after a series of boardroom controversies. Earlier this month, the firm<72>s boss in Britain Jo Bertram said she would quit the taxi hailing app according to emails seen by Reuters. The company is also embroiled in court action against two drivers who won a tribunal case last year entitling them to workers<72> rights such as the minimum wage and holiday entitlement, threatening its business model. Uber is appealing the verdict. TfL said on Friday it would not comment before the licensing appeal hearing due later this year. A spokesman at the Mayor of London<6F>s office said that Khan, a politician from the opposition Labour Party who is also chairman of TfL, continued to back the licence decision and that all private hire firms must play by the rules. He said during a monthly question time session on Thursday that the transport authority would defend its decision during the legal action. <20>The courts now will consider the appeal from Uber and of course TfL will defend the decision they mad
'6cb37bf705d6336bb5cc74705cb3464cc06abfb9'|'Disney to cut about 200 jobs at its TV networks - source'|'Reuters TV United States October 12, 2017 / 10:38 PM / Updated 4 minutes ago Disney to cut about 200 jobs at its TV networks: source Lisa Richwine 1 Min Read The main gate of entertainment giant Walt Disney Co. is pictured in Burbank, California May 5, 2009. REUTERS/Fred Prouser (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co ( DIS.N ) plans to cut about 200 jobs at unit ABC and other cable networks, according to a source familiar with the matter. The largest number of layoffs will be in operational areas, but there would be no job cuts at ESPN, the source told Reuters. The New York Times had reported in September that Disney had cut 250 jobs at its animation unit. ( nyti.ms/2cv9Zti ) Disney had around 195,000 employees, according to its latest annual filing. Additional reporting by Laharee Chatterjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-disney-jobs/disney-to-cut-about-200-jobs-at-its-tv-networks-source-idUKKBN1CH36P'|'2017-10-13T01:37:00.000+03:00'
'bba2c84447cea22a586b53c81321d0f5245a1607'|'BA owner IAG interested in failed airline Monarch''s Gatwick slots - CEO'|'October 13, 2017 / 10:12 AM / in 10 minutes BA owner IAG interested in failed airline Monarch''s Gatwick slots - CEO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Chief Executive Willie Walsh of IAG attends a news conference in London November 17, 2011. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett LONDON (Reuters) - British Airways owner IAG ( ICAG.L ) is interested in the London Gatwick slots of failed airline Monarch after it collapsed last week, IAG CEO Willie Walsh said on Friday. <20>With Monarch, I think everybody<64>s interested in slots at Gatwick, and that would be principally our interest as well (...) If we can get more slots at Gatwick, we<77>ll certainly be looking for more,<2C> Walsh said on the sidelines of the CAPA centre for aviation global summit. Reporting by Alistair Smout and Victoria Bryan; Editing by Elisabeth O''Leary 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-airlines-europe-iag/ba-owner-iag-interested-in-failed-airline-monarchs-gatwick-slots-ceo-idUKKBN1CI172'|'2017-10-13T13:11:00.000+03:00'
'b6fdb96865fdb8adf805b9dfde1cc145c44b177c'|'Standard Chartered chairman urges U.S. to preserve bank resolution regime'|'October 12, 2017 / 10:58 PM / Updated 8 hours ago Standard Chartered chairman urges U.S. to preserve bank resolution regime Michelle Price , Pete Schroeder 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Standard Chartered sign is seen outside of a building, with a branch of the bank, in Jakarta, Indonesia September 28, 2016. REUTERS/Darren Whiteside/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of British bank Standard Chartered [STANB.UL] called on U.S. policymakers to preserve a key post-crisis power that allows bank regulators to wind down a failing lender, even as the Trump administration looks to slash red tape across the financial sector. The comments by Jose Vinals, one of the industry<72>s most senior and influential bankers, will add to growing pressure on the U.S. Treasury to support preserving special bank liquidation powers introduced after the 2007-09 global financial crisis. The Treasury is expected to release a widely anticipated review of the policy in the coming weeks, which was ordered by President Donald Trump in April. The <20>orderly liquidation authority<74> or OLA, introduced by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, gives U.S. regulators the power to step in and liquidate a troubled bank instead of putting it through a traditional bankruptcy. <20>It<49>s very important to preserve the ability of the U.S. to have special procedures to intervene and resolve systemically important financial institutions when there is an emergency,<2C> Vinals told Reuters on Wednesday on the sidelines of the Institute of International Finance conference in Washington. <20>In exceptional circumstances you need to resort to exceptional means. As there is yet to be clarity on what is going to happen, I have a hope, rather than an expectation<6F> that the U.S. will preserve it, he added. Conservative Republicans oppose the OLA which they say is an intrusive bailout mechanism in disguise, arguing that banks should be steered through a traditional bankruptcy process. Big banks and their regulators say bankruptcy codes are not sophisticated enough to handle a global bank failure and that special powers are needed to prevent another Lehman Brothers-style bankruptcy that could destabilize the financial system. The United States is one of several jurisdictions including the European Union that agreed to introduce special powers to ensure banks can be wound down across multiple borders. Vinals said it made sense to see how rules could be recalibrated now regulators are moving into a <20>business as usual mode<64> but stressed it was important to broadly maintain continuity, both inside and outside the United States. <20>It is also critical to ensure cross-border resolution, otherwise we will go back to what we had before, where global banks are global in life, but local in death,<2C> said Vinals, who joined Standard Chartered a year ago after having served at the International Monetary Fund where he helped draft post-crisis rules. LOBBYING EFFORTS Global banks as well as U.S. and European regulators have been heavily lobbying the Treasury to preserve the OLA, according to several people with knowledge of the discussions. They have argued that rescinding the OLA would increase systemic risk and put U.S. banks on an uneven footing overseas, potentially leading foreign regulators to require them to ringfence more capital in the markets in which they operate. It would also likely require banks to upgrade their so-called living wills, which outline how they would be unwound in the event of bankruptcy. They have spent years and millions of dollars refining those plans. The sources said they believed the Treasury was poised to recommend preserving the mechanism, while also urging changes to the current bankruptcy code. The Treasury declined to comment. Repealing the OLA would ultimately have to be decided by Congress, but the Treasury<72>s recommendation would carry weight. Anthony Cimino, head of government affairs at bank lobby group the Financial Services Roundtable, sa
'b1ca6310f31a10e4397f2efe8e091bfb2ac06f2e'|'EU''s Juncker backs Macron economy moves before euro zone reform talks'|'October 16, 2017 / 1:22 PM / Updated 23 minutes ago EU''s Juncker backs Macron economy moves before euro zone reform talks Francesco Guarascio 3 Min Read European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker attends a joint news conference with French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe (unseen) in Brussels, Belgium October 16, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir BRUSSELS (Reuters) - France is on its way to tidy up its public finances, the European Commission president said on Monday, signalling confidence in the economic changes pursed by French President Emmanuel Macron before euro zone reform talks. The informal green light strengthens Macron<6F>s stand in the negotiations for the reform of the currency bloc, which Paris and the EU commission want more integrated - a position that may not be so popular in Berlin when its new coalition government takes form after last month<74>s election. <20>France, with no doubts, will manage to bring its deficit level below 3 percent in 2017,<2C> Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters, praising labour market reform proposed by the French government in August. EU fiscal rules require the 28 member states to keep their public deficits below 3 percent of gross domestic product. Those who are above the ceiling are put under disciplinary procedures that could lead to financial sanctions. Speaking in a joint news conference with French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe in Brussels, Juncker said he was confident that France will exit the procedure next year, nearly a decade after it was launched to tackle the country<72>s excessive deficit. <20>I believe France... will exit this uncomfortable situation in 2018,<2C> Juncker said. Of the 28 EU countries, only France, Spain and Britain are under the procedure. The informal endorsement, made before Paris submitted its budgetary plans for next year, removes one argument for sceptics of Macron<6F>s plans to reshape the 19-country euro zone and relaunch the EU project after Britain voted to leave. Critics saw France<63>s persistent non-compliance with EU fiscal rules as inconsistent with its intent to regain a leading role in EU reforms. A first formal reaction by the commission on the French budget is expected before the end of November. Final decisions to end a disciplinary procedure are taken after countries are on a firm path towards respecting EU rules. EU leaders meet this week in Brussels for a regular summit in which they will hold first discussions on completing the banking union, a project meant to increase financial stability after a decade-long economic crisis. Talks to reshape the currency bloc will continue at a euro zone summit in December. Macron has floated the idea of a separate euro zone budget, financed from dedicated taxes and worth several hundred billion euros. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been more in favour of a <20>small<6C> budget, while a German position paper for a finance ministers<72> meeting last week said it was not necessary at all. Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Philip Blenkinsop and Andrew Heavens 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-france-europe-deficit/eus-juncker-backs-macron-economy-moves-before-euro-zone-reform-talks-idUKKBN1CL1T4'|'2017-10-16T16:21:00.000+03:00'
'58a74dc6ef5dd250503c059a438a4b20c25755fa'|'Sterling skids on report of possible ''Brexit breakdown'''|'October 16, 2017 / 9:05 AM / in an hour Sterling skids on report of possible ''Brexit breakdown'' Reuters Staff 1 Min Read An English ten Pound note is seen in an illustration taken March 16, 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble/Illustration LONDON (Reuters) - Sterling fell by almost half a cent against the dollar in a minute on Monday, with traders citing a Bloomberg headline that Brexit negotiations could be heading for a breakdown. The pound fell to the day''s lows of $1.3246 GBP=D3 , having been trading around $1.3291 beforehand, leaving it down 0.2 percent on the day. <20>(The move) is squarely on that phrase, <20>Brexit breakdown<77>,<2C> said Mizuho<68>s head of hedge fund currency sales, Neil Jones. <20>The correlation is still there <20> any suggestion of a harder Brexit is generating significant sterling selling.<2E> Reporting by Jemima Kelly; Editing by Mike Dolan 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-sterling/sterling-strengthens-as-investors-bet-on-data-boost-idUKKBN1CL0WZ'|'2017-10-16T15:58:00.000+03:00'
'f28885e51a6fb8b271f36c641ee9610813d0bb98'|'Monarch collapse leaves yet another pension fund up in the air - Business'|'Saturday 14 October 2017 18.48 BST First published on Saturday 14 October 2017 17.00 BST P ensions are the tail wagging the economic dog <20> sometimes in the strangest ways. Take the high-profile collapse at Monarch Airlines . It<49>s a sorry story of corporate raiders facing accusations of asset-stripping one of the country<72>s largest holiday airline businesses and leaving taxpayers to pick up the tab. The once strong, if slightly dated, brand was taken over by private equity financiers to try to make it into another Ryanair. When that failed, it appears the owners could still walk away with a profit, following a sophisticated offloading of the debts, including the ailing pension fund <20> once a major creditor to the business. The fund, which is in the state-sponsored Pension Protection Fund (PPF), may have been left short when it first collapsed in 2014. The Labour MP Frank Field, the indomitable head of the work and pensions select committee, has called for an investigation. His judgment is finely tuned after his battle with Sir Philip Green and the businessman Dominic Chappell, who bought BHS from Green before its collapse. Years of asset-stripping had left BHS with its shelves stacked high with clothes no one wanted to wear, and ditching the pension fund was one of the main methods of saving cash from the wreckage. For its part, Monarch<63>s owner, Greybull Capital, said it had been talking to the PPF since 2014 and had not taken out loan repayments, dividends or interest in the past three years. Furthermore, Greybull said it expected a <20>7.5m loan note from Monarch to the PPF to be repaid in full. But the PPF is creaking under the weight of final-salary schemes that have discovered their sponsoring companies can, for whatever reason, no longer support them. Today UK final-salary pension schemes have <20>1.6tn of liabilities and a <20>224bn deficit. Worryingly, the deficits of the worst-affected schemes are only getting into deeper trouble. So what could be better than to find a way to offload a debilitating pensions deficit into a fund that was set up by the government, that is ostensibly independent and funded by the remaining <20>good<6F> employers, but will most likely fall into the taxpayer<65>s lap some time in the future, limiting complaints from retirees? In the world of unintended consequences, another problem is that companies freed from their pension deficit are more attractive to corporate financiers looking to merge or take over firms with their spare cash. It could be argued that one of the chief defence mechanisms against corporate raiders over the past 15 years, in the absence of any protection from government, has been the deterrent effect of pension deficits. Why would a buyer want a juicy business when to bite into its balance sheet is to hit the sour taste of its heavily indebted retirement fund? That has almost certainly been a key factor in keeping British Telecom, Unilever and Marks & Spencer from being snapped up by a foreign rival. Likewise all our best engineering firms, most of them founded 50 or 60 years ago and with big fat pension deficits, have been safeguarded by their whopping pension liabilities. But this is an isolated example of the good that a pension fund does for the long-term health of the economy. For example, most strikes since the crash of 2008 have not been about the failure of employers to pay a decent wage or the shift to a casualised workforce, as exemplified by the rise of zero-hours contracts. Most have been organised by shop stewards in their 50s and an ageing, unionised workforce in an effort to save their pensions. Picketing outside a Royal Mail sorting office. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters Never mind that the entitlements awarded more than 40 or 50 years ago and gold-plated by a naive Major government in the 1995 Pensions Act are unaffordably generous. The Communication Workers Union said that its planned strike action at Royal Mail <20>was sparked by the company<6E>s atta
'f4fd87f1bcc36d3c753e93cfcdbd7bd0a6aa0dd9'|'India''s NSL to pursue intellectual property litigation with Monsanto'|'October 14, 2017 / 11:30 AM / Updated 40 minutes ago India''s NSL to pursue intellectual property litigation with Monsanto Mayank Bhardwaj 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Monsanto logo is displayed on a screen where the stock is traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., May 9, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India<69>s Nuziveedu Seeds Ltd (NSL) said on Saturday it will not settle a long-standing intellectual property dispute with Monsanto Co ( MON.N ) over genetically modified (GM) cotton, despite some other Indian companies doing so in recent weeks. Reuters reported on Wednesday that three Indian seed makers - Ajeet Seeds, Kaveri Seed Co Ltd KVRI.NS and Ankur Seeds - have agreed to resolve differences and end their arbitration proceedings with Monsanto ( MON.N ). But Monsanto is yet to settle the dispute with Sri Rama Agri Genetics, Amar Biotech and NSL along with two group companies, Prabhat Agri Biotech and Pravardhan Seeds. <20>We do not want to compromise,<2C> Narne Murali Krishna, a company secretary of NSL, said on the phone from Hyderabad, the capital of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. <20>On the IPR (intellectual property rights) matter, we<77>ll continue with our legal case in the Delhi High Court.<2E> Mahyco Monsanto Biotech (India) (MMB), a joint venture between Monsanto and local firm Mahyco, licenses a gene that produces its own pesticide to more than 45 local cotton seed companies in lieu of royalties and an upfront payment. Acting on complaints by some local seed companies that MMB''s royalties were too high, the farm ministry last year cut the fees these local firms paid to Missouri-based Monsanto. ( reut.rs/2yf4qvA ) Since then, Monsanto - which is being bought by Germany<6E>s Bayer ( BAYGn.DE ) for $66 billion - has been at loggerheads with the seed firms and India<69>s government over how much it can charge for its GM cotton seeds, costing it tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue a year. <20>Based on the advice of competent IPR lawyers and communications of Monsanto with the Indian patent office, NSL realised that it was cheated by MMB<4D>s false representations and claims on IPR,<2C> Krishna said. Earlier this year, citing a local law that excludes seeds from being patented, NSL<53>s Chairman and Managing Director M. Prabhakara Rao told Reuters that Monsanto should never have been allowed to collect royalties after an initial payment to use its technology. At the very least, Rao added, prices should have been set by the government. <20>Since we first signed the licensing agreement with Monsanto in 2004, we have paid 7.09 billion rupees (82.50 million pounds), which Monsanto should refund to NSL,<2C> Krishna said. A Monsanto spokesman said: <20>NSL has already collected the royalty fee from India<69>s cotton farmers. Instead of honouring the mutually agreed bilateral contract, it continues to default on payments rightfully due to MMB.<2E> Editing by Krishna N. Das and Andrew Bolton 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-india-monsanto-nsl/indias-nsl-to-pursue-intellectual-property-litigation-with-monsanto-idUKKBN1CJ0CR'|'2017-10-14T14:29:00.000+03:00'
'0031ea05c6b23963369d440862daf2ca5634fce5'|'Kobe Steel shares hit lowest in nearly five years as cheating crisis deepens'|'October 16, 2017 / 2:44 AM / Updated an hour ago Kobe Steel shares hit near five-year lows as cheating scandal raises financial risks Reuters Staff 5 Min Read A man walks past the signboard of Kobe Steel at the group''s Tokyo headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato TOKYO (Reuters) - Just over a week out from revelations of a cheating scandal that plunged Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ) in crisis and ensnared hundreds of firms, the embattled steelmaker<65>s shares skidded to five-year lows on Monday as investors worried about the financial and legal fallout. Kobe Steel Chief Executive Hiroya Kawasaki on Friday said about 500 companies had received its falsely certified products, more than double its earlier count, confirming widespread wrongdoing at the steelmaker. Shares of Japan<61>s third-biggest steelmaker hit 774.0 yen in the morning, the lowest since Dec. 11, 2012. They managed to recover and rise 2.7 percent by the close to 827.0 yen, but remain well off the pre-crisis level of 1,368 yen. The broader Tokyo stock market .N225 ended 0.47 percent, touching a 21-year high. No safety problems have surfaced as the Japanese steelmaker attempts to get a grip on the data tampering that it earlier said may go back as far as ten years. The revelations over the past week rippled through supply chains across the world as companies from operators of Japan<61>s famous bullet trains to the world<6C>s biggest aircraft maker, Boeing Co, ( BA.N ), were ensnared in the scandal. The company<6E>s finances could come under increasing pressure as Kawasaki has promised to compensate customers for any costs arising from replacements. Kobe Steel is forecasting profit of 35 billion yen (235.5 million pounds) in the year through March 2018, after two annual losses, mostly recently because of falling margins in its steel business and a one-off loss related to its China construction machinery unit. Sales are forecast to rise a bit more than 10 percent to 1.88 trillion yen. The company is forecasting a third year of negative free cash flow, according to the Nikkei newspaper. Kobe Steel has been investing in upgrading facilities in the area most hard hit by the revelations, its aluminium business, as it tries to diversify away from the steel business. The company said in May it plans to spend 55 billion yen to expand its aluminium business to meet rising demand for carmakers that are turning to the lighter metal to meet stricter environmental rules. While the immediate impact from the cheating scandal exposes 500 companies to potential safety issues, Kobe Steel<65>s total client base is far larger. In Japan alone, more than 2,100 companies deal with the company, according to credit research firm Teikoku Databank. The majority of these firms, 56 percent, are the small to medium enterprises which make up the backbone of Japan<61>s economy. <20>Many of the big Japanese companies have been struggling to cope with fast-changing society, especially without strong leadership of managers to steer it around to a new phase of growth,<2C> a fund manager at an independent asset management firm in Japan said. His firm, which focuses on growth companies, does not own shares in Kobe Steel. Japanese companies are run by managers who have moved up through corporate bureaucracy, he said, adding that these managers tend not to take big risk during their terms of about 4-6 years. The scale of the misconduct at the steelmaker hammered its shares as investors, worried about the financial impact and legal fallout, wiped about $1.8 billion off its market value last week. Kobe Steel said the problems had gone beyond the borders of Japan with data falsification found in subsidiaries in Thailand, China and Malaysia. Kobe Steel initially said on Oct. 8, 200 companies were affected when it admitted at the weekend it had falsified data about the quality of aluminium and copper products used in cars, aircraft, space rockets and defence equipment. The recent misco
'47d5d41bcf4e48d51b2aa842008a8ac008041b56'|'Bombardier pursues options for aerospace division; no deal imminent: sources'|'A logo of jet manufacturer Bombardier is pictured on their booth during the European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (EBACE) in Geneva, Switzerland on May 22, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/Files MONTREAL (Reuters) - Canada<64>s Bombardier Inc is continuing to look at strategic options for its aerospace division but no deal is imminent, people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday.As part of that process, the Canadian train-and-plane maker has held informal talks with Chinese companies among others, but the sources played down the chances of Europe<70>s Airbus being a likely partner.On Sunday, Bloomberg reported that Bombardier was considering disposal of aerospace assets including its Q400 turboprop and CRJ regional-jet unit, while looking at partnerships with other aerospace companies, with Airbus among the prospective buyers.Bombardier<65>s talks with Chinese companies is aimed delivering an investment in the company<6E>s 110 to 130 seat CSeries jets and improving the aircraft<66>s sales through better access to the fast-growing Chinese aviation market, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this autumn.But those talks have been complicated, among other reasons, by the agendas of various stakeholders, including the Quebec provincial government, which owns a 49 percent stake in the plane program.Bombardier shares were up 1.7 percent at C$2.37 in early morning trades, while the benchmark Toronto share are index was up 0.4 percent.Bombardier<65>s aerospace division has been under pressure because of lackluster demand for its turboprops and regional jets, and more recently because of a trade dispute with U.S. planemaker Boeing Co over the CSeries.Bombardier was not immediately available for comment on Monday, and had declined to comment on Sunday. Airbus declined to comment.Reporting By Allison Lampert; Editing by Marguerita Choy'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bombardier-airbus/bombardier-pursues-options-for-aerospace-division-no-deal-imminent-sources-idINKBN1CL21F'|'2017-10-16T17:14:00.000+03:00'
'4d58cb9d20a0b1f35573cddd38bc1248b8b899f4'|'California extends sanctions against Wells Fargo for at least another year'|'October 16, 2017 / 4:47 PM / Updated an hour ago California extends ban on Wells Fargo business for at least another year Dan Freed 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Wells Fargo branch is seen in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, U.S. February 10, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo (Reuters) - California will extend sanctions against Wells Fargo & Co ( WFC.N ) for at least another year, Treasurer John Chiang said on Monday, after the state suspended doing business with the bank in 2016 as punishment for a sales practices scandal. Chiang cited progress by the bank in certain areas, but expressed concern over an <20>alarming drumbeat of news reports of egregious or illegal actions over the past year<61> in extending the sanctions, which apply only to business his office oversees. In a statement, Wells Fargo spokesman Gabe Boehmer said the bank <20>is in the business of banking, not politics,<2C> and had <20>met and exceeded all of Treasurer Chiang<6E>s expectations.<2E> The sanctions, announced in September 2016, include suspending Wells Fargo as a managing underwriter on state negotiated bond sales. California manages a $75 billion investment portfolio and is the nation<6F>s largest issuer of municipal debt. The sanctions also suspend state investments in all Wells Fargo securities and halt the use of Wells Fargo as a broker-dealer for investment purchasing. Boehmer said on Monday Wells Fargo loaned $500 million this year to California<69>s Department of Water Resources and had underwritten $800 million in bond issuance for the state this year. He declined to disclose how much business Wells Fargo did with California before the ban was enacted. Wells Fargo has acknowledged opening perhaps 3.5 million accounts in customers<72> names without their permission, signing others up for unwanted auto insurance, charging some for a mortgage rate-lock feature they did not request and tacking other costly add-ons to accounts. California<69>s decision comes less than a week after Ohio Governor John Kasich extended the state<74>s ban on Wells Fargo, saying the bank had not done enough to turn around its culture. New York City, Chicago, Massachusetts, and Illinois have all enacted similar bans, though Boehmer said Chicago recently lifted its ban. Reporting by Dan Freed in New York; Editing by Susan Thomas 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wells-fargo-accounts-california/california-extends-sanctions-against-wells-fargo-for-at-least-another-year-idUSKBN1CL2HG'|'2017-10-16T19:46:00.000+03:00'
'fbd8c8e727d3c0d6854156ee3c46ca69ccf9af39'|'Exclusive: Atlantia ready to raise Abertis'' bid to beat ACS - sources'|'FILE PHOTO: The Abertis''s logo is seen during a news conference in Barcelona, Spain, April 12, 2016. REUTERS/Albert Gea/File Photo MILAN/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) - Italian toll-road operator Atlantia ( ATL.MI ) is prepared to raise its takeover bid for Spanish rival Abertis to up to about 17.8 billion euros ($21 billion) should a rival offer by builder ACS materialise, three sources close to the matter said.Atlantia this week formally launched a cash and share offer that values Abertis ( ABE.MC ) at around 17 billion euros - or about 17 euros per share - in a deal that would create the world<6C>s biggest toll-road operator.However, Spain<69>s ACS ( ACS.MC ) is expected to launch a rival cash-and-paper bid for Abertis next week, sources have told Reuters.The sources on Friday said Atlantia was prepared to offer up to 18 euros per share, if necessary.Under Spanish rules, ACS needs to disclose a counter-bid by Oct. 19, or five days before the end of Atlantia<69>s current offer. Such a move would put Atlantia<69>s bid on hold for weeks or months as Spanish market watchdog CNMV would have to examine ACS<43>s offer and decide whether it can go ahead.<2E>Atlantia does not have a problem increasing its offer,<2C> said one of the sources.Another source said Atlantia could raise its bid to 18 euros per share without hurting its credit rating and significantly increasing its cost of funding.Atlantia<69>s current offer won unconditional approval from the European Commision and from Chile<6C>s antitrust authority on Friday, meaning it has cleared all regulatory hurdles.But the takeover of Abertis, which manages politically sensitive concessions for motorways across Spain, by a foreign company has raised some concerns in Madrid, according to sources.Political interference in the past blocked a planned tie-up between Atlantia and Abertis - a merger deal was scrapped in 2006 because of Italian government opposition.Sources said on Thursday that ACS<43>s offer was expected to be roughly half in cash and the rest in newly issued shares in German construction group Hochtief ( HOTG.DE ), which is controlled by ACS. The value of ACS<43>s potential offer was not known.Milan brokerage Banca IMI said on Friday an offer with no premium versus Atlantia<69>s offer would be unattractive, as investors were unlikely to prefer receiving Hochtief shares.<2E>Abertis shareholders would be directly exposed to the less predictable construction sector and, strangely, would even be financing the offer as Hochtief would issue new shares potentially to be underwritten by Abertis<69> shareholders themselves,<2C> the broker said in a note.However, an Italian source said that, by presenting a rival bid, ACS would be able to buy time and work on improving the financial structure of its offer. ACS declined to comment.Atlantia is currently offering 16.50 euros in cash or 0.697 Atlantia shares for each Abertis share. The deal is conditional on Abertis shareholders who own between 10 percent and 23 percent of the Spanish company<6E>s capital accepting the share offer. At current market prices, Atlantia would value Abertis<69> 990.4 million shares at between 16.6 billion and 17 billion euros.Though the offer has been described as <20>friendly<6C> by Atlantia, shareholders in Abertis have yet to express a view on the proposal.Abertis<69>s top shareholder is Criteria Caixa, the financial arm of a politically connected and powerful banking foundation that controls Catalonia<69>s largest lender Caixabank ( CABK.MC ).<2E>Apparently, La Caixa would be willing to sell, but it wants a compelling case with a better price,<2C> analysts at Mediobanca said in a note to clients.Additional reporting by Jose Rodriguez and Andres Gonzalez in Madrid; Editing by Silvia Aloisi and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-abertis-m-a-atlantia-exclusive/exclusive-atlantia-ready-to-raise-abertis-bid-to-up-to-18-euros-share-to-beat-acs-sources-idUSKBN1CI29A'|'2017-10-14T00:28:00.000+03
'b4fc5cffe8356f833ddace82add80cab952ea586'|'J&J psoriasis drug gets expanded U.S. approval for teens'|'October 13, 2017 / 9:08 PM / in 9 hours J&J psoriasis drug gets expanded U.S. approval for teens Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The logo of healthcare company Johnson & Johnson is seen in front of an office building in Zug, Switzerland July 20, 2016. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann (Reuters) - Johnson & Johnson said on Friday it has received an expanded U.S. approval for its blockbuster psoriasis drug Stelara to treat adolescent patients aged 12 and over with moderate to severe cases of the unsightly skin condition. Stelara was already approved to treat adults with the condition, a chronic, autoimmune inflammatory disorder that causes inflamed, scaly, sometimes painful skin patches. It is also approved to treat adults with the related condition psoriatic arthritis, and for moderate to severe Crohn<68>s disease. About one-third of people who develop plaque psoriasis do so before 20 years of age, J&J said. <20>Psoriasis is a highly visible disease, and it is essential that these younger patients and their caregivers have options that can effectively reduce the difficult-to-conceal and often misunderstood plaques,<2C> Michael Siegel of the National Psoriasis Foundation said in a statement. Stelara is one of J&J<>s most important pharmaceutical products, with 2017 sales expected to reach $3.7 billion and increasing to more than $5 billion by 2021, according to Thomson Reuters data. Reporting by Bill Berkrot; Editing by Jonathan Oatis 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-johnson-johnson-psoriasis/jj-psoriasis-drug-gets-expanded-u-s-approval-for-teens-idUSKBN1CI2Y5'|'2017-10-14T00:03:00.000+03:00'
'faea631ea7f97107eea2a32cf3ce39fd76e208a6'|'MIDEAST STOCKS-Saudi falls, most markets trade narrowly'|'* Al Rajhi Bank, Ma<4D>aden, SABIC sink in Saudi* Almarai surges after PIF keeps 16.3 percent stake* Dubai<61>s Islamic Arab Insurance swings widely in heavy trade* Abu Dhabi<62>s Dana sinks after London sukuk hearings adjourned* Qatar National Bank firm after last week<65>s earningsBy Andrew TorchiaDUBAI, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Most Middle East stock markets traded in narrow ranges on Sunday while Saudi Arabia was dragged down by several major blue chips.The Saudi index dropped 0.7 percent as Al Rajhi Bank lost 1.0 percent and miner Ma<4D>aden sank 1.9 percent. Petrochemical producer Saudi Basic Industries fell 0.7 percent.Insurers were roughly evenly split between gainers and losers after they tumbled last week on expectations for a shakeout in the sector caused by tougher regulation. Amana Insurance, which had plunged 14.9 percent last week, surged 5.8 percent in unusually heavy trade.Food company Almarai rose 3.4 percent after saying the Public Investment Fund, the main Saudi sovereign wealth fund, had retained a 16.3 percent stake in the company after a 25 percent capital increase through an issue of bonus shares.Dubai<61>s index edged down 0.1 percent to 3,658 points, retreating from technical resistance at 3,667-3,681 points, the August and September peaks.Islamic Arab Insurance, the most heavily traded stock, surged in early trade but closed 2.4 percent lower. On Thursday, it had risen sharply in its heaviest volume since March, attracting speculative traders into the stock.Abu Dhabi fell 0.2 percent as Dana Gas sank 3.8 percent after a London High Court judge adjourned hearings on its $700 million of Islamic bonds to mid-November.The company is fighting sukuk holders in courts in Britain and the United Arab Emirates, arguing it does not need to redeem the instruments because they have become invalid; some equity investors have been hoping the hearings will result in a settlement that benefits the firm.Qatar<61>s index was almost flat. Qatar National Bank , which last week reported solid third-quarter earnings, climbed 1.2 percent.Egypt<70>s index edged up 0.1 percent. GB Auto surged 9.7 percent in unusually heavy trade.HIGHLIGHTS SAUDI ARABIA * The index dropped 0.7 percent to 6,938 points.DUBAI * The index edged down 0.1 percent to 3,658 points.ABU DHABI * The index fell 0.2 percent to 4,518 points.QATAR * The index edged down 0.01 percent to 8,341 points.EGYPT * The index edged up 0.1 percent to 13,906 points.KUWAIT * The index edged down 0.1 percent to 6,622 points.BAHRAIN * The index slipped 0.03 percent to 1,274 points.OMAN * The index rose 0.2 percent to 5,139 points. (Reporting by Andrew Torchia, editing by Louise Heavens)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mideast-stocks/mideast-stocks-saudi-falls-most-markets-trade-narrowly-idINL8N1MQ0EE'|'2017-10-15T12:04:00.000+03:00'
'3ed2581429e7dcf50d9a523f36ee9e6d3cd2831d'|'Fed''s Yellen says watching inflation closely but economy is strong'|'FILE PHOTO: Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen speaks during a news conference after a two-day Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) policy meeting in Washington, U.S., September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S economy remains strong and the strength of the labor market calls for continued gradual increases in interest rates despite subdued inflation, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said on Sunday.<2E>We will be paying close attention to the inflation data in the months ahead,<2C> Yellen said in prepared remarks at an international banking seminar in Washington. <20>My best guess is that these soft readings will not persist.<2E>Yellen also said she expected the U.S. economy to exceed its long-term trend during the second half of the year and repeated the impact of recent hurricanes on the economy should be temporary.The U.S. central bank voted to hold interest rates steady at its last policy meeting in September. Since then, Yellen has repeatedly acknowledged rising uncertainty on the path of inflation, which has been retreating from the Fed<65>s 2 percent target rate for much of the year.Minutes from the meeting, released last Wednesday, showed policymakers had a broad debate about recent soft inflation and the impact on interest rates if it fails to rebound.However, Yellen and some other key policymakers have also made plain they expect to continue to gradually raise interest rates given the strength of the overall economy and continued tightening of the labor market.Fed officials largely shrugged off a weak jobs report for September and pinned the decline in employment on Hurricanes Harvey and Irma temporarily displacing workers.In her speech, Yellen said the most recent wage gains contained in the September jobs report were encouraging and that she expected the central bank to raise interest rates further.<2E>We continue to expect that the ongoing strength of the recovery will warrant gradual increases in that rate to sustain a healthy labor market and stabilize inflation around our 2 percent longer-run objective.<2E>The central bank has raised interest rates four times in its tightening cycle which began in late 2015. The Fed currently predicts one more rate rise this year and three the next.The Fed has two more scheduled meetings this year, in November and December. Investors currently see the Fed raising interest rates in December.Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-yellen/feds-yellen-says-watching-inflation-closely-but-economy-is-strong-idUSKBN1CK0IO'|'2017-10-15T16:03:00.000+03:00'
'5f37b9e60540cd77d0549999e7dc3d43b359b7c0'|'China data boosts world stocks and copper; oil jumps'|'October 16, 2017 / 1:10 AM / in 4 minutes Wall Street hits new highs; oil surges after Kirkuk Hilary Russ 5 Min Read The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street closed at record highs, the dollar edged up and copper touched a three-year peak on Monday as upbeat Chinese data drove optimism about the world<6C>s second-biggest economy, while oil prices jumped due to supply worries after Iraqi forces seized the oil-rich city of Kirkuk from Kurdish fighters. Asian shares rallied to a decade high after figures showed China<6E>s producer prices beat market expectations, rising 6.9 percent in September from a year earlier. Major U.S. stock indexes rose to record high closes as banking stocks recovered from last week<65>s losses, with the S&P financial index .SPSY posting its first gain in four days. Energy stocks rose on higher oil prices and technology shares also rallied, driven by a 1.6 percent increase in Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ). Wall Street<65>s rise comes ahead of a barrage of quarterly earnings reports this week. <20>The market is going higher despite all the news flow of geopolitical events,<2C> said Jeff Zipper, managing director at U.S. Bank Private Client Reserve in Palm Beach, Florida. <20>There is optimism on earnings, economic indicators and hopes of budget resolution.<2E> The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 85.24 points, or 0.37 percent, to 22,956.96, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 4.47 points, or 0.18 percent, to 2,557.64 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 18.20 points, or 0.28 percent, to 6,624.01. In China, upbeat data came before the Communist Party Congress on Wednesday and third-quarter economic data on Thursday. MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS closed up 0.57 percent at its highest level since late 2007. <20>What has helped risk appetite this morning is that the Chinese inflation data suggests the world<6C>s second biggest economy is doing much better than people expected this time a year ago for 2017,<2C> said Michael Hewson, chief markets analyst at CMC Markets. Japan''s Nikkei .N225 climbed 0.47 percent to a level not seen since late 1996. Traders said that belief that Japan<61>s ruling party bloc will win the general election later this month continued to underpin market sentiment, and a weaker yen raised hopes that Japanese companies will report strong earnings. MSCI<43>s gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD PUS gained 0.09 percent. Emerging market stocks rose 0.49 percent. Copper CMCU3 jumped 3.7 percent to $7,134 per tonne on the London Metal Exchange, after touching the July 2014 high of $7,177 a tonne, driven by economic data from China, the world<6C>s top copper consumer. Prices are up about 29 percent year to date, on track for the biggest annual gain since 2010. Oil prices rose after Iraqi forces entered Kirkuk, briefly cutting some crude output from OPEC<45>s second-biggest producer. U.S. crude CLcv1 rose 0.82 percent to $51.87 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $57.86, up 1.21 percent on the day. The euro weakened after the Austrian election put conservative Sebastian Kurz on track to become the next leader. He is seen as likely to seek a coalition with the resurgent far right because his party is far short of a majority. The euro EUR= slumped 0.25 percent to $1.1792, while the dollar index .DXY added to gains, rising 0.21 percent as investors repositioned following disappointing inflation data on Friday that sent the greenback lower. Spanish stocks lagged Europe after Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont failed to clarify whether he had declared independence from Spain last week, possibly paving the way for the central government to take control of the wealthy region. Spain''s country index IBEX .IBEX fell 0.75 percent, compared to the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 , which ticked up 0.04 percent. Reporting by Hilary Russ in New York; Additional reporting by Ritvi
'38bec7e589a70eda9bef8c7e2e2e23636f148e4c'|'Fed''s Yellen says watching inflation closely but economy is strong'|'October 15, 2017 / 1:04 PM / in 16 minutes Fed''s Yellen says watching inflation closely but economy is strong Lindsay Dunsmuir 3 Min Read Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen speaks during a news conference after a two-day Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) policy meeting, in Washington, U.S., September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S economy remains strong and the strength of the labour market calls for continued gradual increases in interest rates despite subdued inflation, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said on Sunday. <20>We will be paying close attention to the inflation data in the months ahead,<2C> Yellen said in prepared remarks at an international banking seminar in Washington. <20>My best guess is that these soft readings will not persist.<2E> Yellen also said she expected the U.S. economy to exceed its long-term trend during the second half of the year and repeated the impact of recent hurricanes on the economy should be temporary. The U.S. central bank voted to hold interest rates steady at its last policy meeting in September. Since then, Yellen has repeatedly acknowledged rising uncertainty on the path of inflation, which has been retreating from the Fed<65>s 2 percent target rate for much of the year. Minutes from the meeting, released last Wednesday, showed policymakers had a broad debate about recent soft inflation and the impact on interest rates if it fails to rebound. However, Yellen and some other key policymakers have also made plain they expect to continue to gradually raise interest rates given the strength of the overall economy and continued tightening of the labour market. Fed officials largely shrugged off a weak jobs report for September and pinned the decline in employment on Hurricanes Harvey and Irma temporarily displacing workers. In her speech, Yellen said the most recent wage gains contained in the September jobs report were encouraging and that she expected the central bank to raise interest rates further. <20>We continue to expect that the ongoing strength of the recovery will warrant gradual increases in that rate to sustain a healthy labour market and stabilize inflation around our 2 percent longer-run objective.<2E> The central bank has raised interest rates four times in its tightening cycle which began in late 2015. The Fed currently predicts one more rate rise this year and three the next. The Fed has two more scheduled meetings this year, in November and December. Investors currently see the Fed raising interest rates in December. Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-fed-yellen/feds-yellen-says-watching-inflation-closely-but-economy-is-strong-idUKKBN1CK0IS'|'2017-10-15T16:04:00.000+03:00'
'a625926657d1a13f773a933644e9a7e9136c6210'|'Xi<58>s report card - has met China economic goals but can he keep it going?'|'October 16, 2017 / 10:50 AM / in 27 minutes Xi<58>s report card - has met China economic goals but can he keep it going? Elias Glenn 7 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A night view of the old houses surrounded by new apartment buildings at Guangfuli neighbourhood in Shanghai, China, April 10, 2016. I REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo BEIJING (Reuters) - As Chinese President Xi Jinping prepares to consolidate his power for a second five-year term at the 19th Communist Party Congress, beginning on Oct. 18, he can point to another impressive period of growth for the nation<6F>s economy. While the turbocharged days of double-digit annual expansion achieved in previous decades may be over, the Chinese economy still managed to expand more than 50 percent in yuan terms in the five years to the middle of 2017. Real gross domestic product has clocked an annual growth rate of 7.2 percent over that period. The question he will need to address in the next five years is was this growth achieved on a sustainable basis or was it too reliant on surging housing prices and massive levels of borrowing. Two years ago, President Xi affirmed targets set in 2012 to double GDP and per capita income by 2020, and growth is on target to hit those goals. The leadership has also vowed to rein in a rapid buildup in debt, and to shift the focus of the economy to domestic consumption from capital investment to put growth on a more sustainable long-term footing and avoid a painful adjustment later. Economic growth accelerated to 6.9 percent in the first half of this year, thanks to a construction boom, well ahead of the government<6E>s target of around 6.5 percent. Still, disposable income growth had slowed for several years through the end of last year, though it picked up again in the first half of this year. China<6E>s central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan made a bullish and uncharacteristically explicit growth forecast over the weekend, saying growth could accelerate to 7 percent in the second half of the year. COMPARISON TO U.S. China<6E>s economy is often measured against that of the United States, and is projected to become the largest economy in the world anywhere from between 2018 and 2030. It has continued to gain on the United States over the last five years, rising from 53 percent of the U.S. economy in 2012 to 60 percent in 2016 based on U.S. dollar figures, but on a per capita basis, U.S. GDP is still seven times the size of China. China<6E>s rapid economic progress has been a lightening rod for critics, led by U.S. President Donald Trump, who claim it uses unfair practices to gain a trade advantage, stoking fears of a trade spat with the U.S. REBALANCING ACT A big reason for China<6E>s strong GDP growth is its abnormally large reliance on investment to backstop growth. Yet despite years of government rhetoric on rebalancing the growth drivers, progress has been slow as investment is still a bigger part of the economy than household spending. HOUSEHOLD CONSUMPTION Household consumption accounted for 39.3 percent of China<6E>s economy last year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, up from 38.05 percent in 2015 and 36.7 percent in 2012. Despite last year<61>s improvement for household consumption, the global average of over 200 countries was still much higher at 58 percent in 2015, according to data from the World Bank. Government spending, meanwhile, has grown faster than personal spending as Beijing adopted an active fiscal policy to stabilise the economy. CREDIT-DRIVEN GROWTH High investment levels in China means credit growth is high. Indeed, outstanding bank loans have grown faster than GDP for decades. DEBT BUILDUP Reliance on ever increasing investment means its debt load is also rising. But even as policymakers have moved to wean the economy off its credit addiction, progress has been slow as debt continues to grow. The ratio of total debt to GDP reached 257.8 percent in the first quarter of 2017, according to the Bank of International Se
'bbd06091b2f8e1418b75f4e9e1afbd4ff5b3ce43'|'Lufthansa offers 500 million euros for Alitalia''s planes and staff: paper'|'An airplane of Alitalia approaches to land at Fiumicino international airport in Rome, central Italy, May 3, 2017. REUTERS/Max Rossi ROME (Reuters) - German airline Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) has offered 500 million euros ($590 million) to acquire the planes, airport runway slots and air crew of Italy<6C>s ailing national carrier Alitalia [CAITLA.UL], the newspaper Corriere della Sera said on Monday.Citing three anonymous sources, the paper said Lufthansa has also proposed halving Alitalia<69>s workforce of 12,000 employees and reducing its short- and medium-range flights.The paper said the offer was likely to be rejected by the state commissioners who are managing the carrier while it is being sold. Lufthansa declined to comment on the report.The deadline for suitors to submit binding bids for Alitalia is 1700 GMT on Monday. However, on Friday Italy<6C>s government extended to April 30 a deadline to improve the bids which had previously been set for Nov. 5.Rome wants to sell the whole of Alitalia in one package and avoid a split of its aviation and ground service activities.On Friday the government also passed an emergency decree to add a further 300 million euros to the loan of 600 million euros it made to the loss-making carrier in May.It also extended the deadline for the repayment of the loan,which was due in November this year, to Sept. 30, 2018.Reporting by Valentina Za; Editing by Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alitalia-sale-lufthansa/lufthansa-offers-500-million-euro-for-alitalias-planes-and-staff-paper-idUSKBN1CL191'|'2017-10-16T18:38:00.000+03:00'
'5e065e84363d7d92d0a2350f774c10681d365ac1'|'MOVES-Legg Mason promotes Joe O''Donnell to wealth management distribution head'|'Oct 16 (Reuters) - Asset manager Legg Mason promoted Joe O<>Donnell to head of wealth management distribution and investment trusts.O<>Donnell, who has been with the firm for over 10 years as regional sales director, will report to Alexander Barry, head of UK sales, Legg Mason said. (Reporting by Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/legg-mason-moves-joe-odonnell/moves-legg-mason-promotes-joe-odonnell-to-wealth-management-distribution-head-idUSL4N1MR4F5'|'2017-10-16T15:53:00.000+03:00'
'd91abe0669c7fd82af7b3902aaba3585bd6c45d8'|'Bombardier pursues options for aerospace division; no deal imminent - sources'|'October 16, 2017 / 4:45 PM / Updated 25 minutes ago Bombardier pursues options for aerospace division; no deal imminent - sources Allison Lampert 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A plane flies over a Bombardier plant in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on January 21, 2014. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi/File Photo MONTREAL (Reuters) - Canada<64>s Bombardier Inc ( BBDb.TO ) is continuing to look at strategic options for its aerospace division but no deal is imminent, people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday, as the company seeks to shore up sales and improve finances. As part of that process, the Canadian train-and-plane maker has held informal talks with Chinese companies among others in recent months, but the sources played down the chances of Europe<70>s Airbus ( AIR.PA ) being a likely partner. On Sunday, Bloomberg reported that Bombardier was considering disposal of aerospace assets including its Q400 turboprop and CRJ regional-jet unit, while looking at partnerships with other aerospace companies, with Airbus among the prospective buyers. Bombardier<65>s talks with Chinese companies are aimed at delivering an investment in the company<6E>s 110 to 130 seat CSeries jets and improving the aircraft<66>s sales through better access to the fast-growing Chinese aviation market, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this autumn. The company has guided for a $400 million (<28>301 million) loss in commercial aircraft this year, but has set a breakeven target for 2020. The sources declined to be identified as the discussions are confidential. <20>A CSeries JV with the Chinese is an option we have long contemplated,<2C> wrote Credit Suisse analyst Robert Spingarn in a note to clients on Monday. <20>Canada would contribute a share of the programme, allowing China to access first rate aerospace technology. China would contribute capital and likely place a major order for the aircraft.<2E> Bombardier has been pushing for CSeries orders with carriers like China Southern and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to visit China in December. Investment talks have been complicated, among other reasons, by the presence of various stakeholders, including the Quebec provincial government, which acquired a 49 percent stake in the plane programme for $1 billion in 2015. The deal gives Quebec a say in any other potential investor in the CSeries programme and Bombardier must keep its corporate head office in Montreal. What is more, any deal involving the sale of aerospace technology to Chinese buyers would need the approval of Canada<64>s federal government and Bombardier<65>s founding family, which holds a controlling stake in the company through its dual class structure. A deal with an outside investor could allow Bombardier to repurchase the Quebec stake in the CSeries, which could eliminate the subsidy issue, Spingarn wrote. Bombardier was not immediately available for comment on Monday, and had declined to comment on Sunday. Airbus declined to comment. Bombardier has been looking at strategic options for its aerospace division since 2015, when it held talks with Airbus for a majority stake in the company<6E>s CSeries jet. But those discussions ended without a deal, Reuters reported then. Bombardier<65>s aerospace division has been under pressure because of lacklustre demand for its turboprops and regional jets, and more recently because of a trade dispute with U.S. planemaker Boeing Co ( BA.N ) over the CSeries. The U.S. Commerce Department has notched up proposed trade duties on Bombardier<65>s CSeries jets to nearly 300 percent after Boeing complained that the Canadian company received illegal subsidies and dumped the planes at <20>absurdly low<6F> prices. Bombardier shares were up 1.7 percent at C$2.37 by late morning while the benchmark Canada share index was up 0.2 percent. Reporting By Allison Lampert; Editing by Marguerita Choy 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/ar
'f7e7e1e8d24f230f35820b005872648fa88babf6'|'Food services firm Aramark to buy Avendra, AmeriPride in $2.35 billion deal'|' 20 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago Food services firm Aramark to buy Avendra, AmeriPride in $2.35 billion deal Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A Aramark company logo is seen at a facility in San Diego, California December 11, 2013. REUTERS/Mike Blake (Reuters) - Food services company Aramark ( ARMK.N ) said on Monday it would buy Avendra LLC, majority owned by Marriott International Inc ( MAR.O ), and uniform and linen supplier AmeriPride Services Inc for a total of $2.35 billion (1.77 billion pounds), before tax benefit adjustments. Aramark said it would pay Avendra $1.35 billion, or $1.05 billion in net purchase price after adjusting for anticipated tax benefits. AmeriPride<64>s purchase price of $1 billion came in at $850 million after adjusting for anticipated tax benefits, Aramark said. Separately, Marriott, which owns a 55 percent stake in Avendra, said it would receive about $650 million from the sale. Aramark also added it expected cost synergies of about $40 million from the purchase of Avendra and about $70 million from AmeriPride. Reporting by Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-avendra-m-a-aramark/food-services-firm-aramark-to-buy-avendra-ameripride-in-2-35-billion-deal-idUKKBN1CL0EP'|'2017-10-16T08:20:00.000+03:00'
'd451bb80568c5786e53705f7b957124a46482bad'|'Kobe Steel shares tumble to near five-year low as cheating crisis deepens'|'May heads for Brussels after Brexit talks deadlock May heads for Brussels after Brexit talks deadlock May heads for Brussels after Brexit talks deadlock Reuters TV United States October 16, 2017 / 2:59 AM / in 19 minutes Kobe Steel shares tumble to near five-year low as cheating crisis deepens Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Kobe Steel President and CEO Hiroya Kawasaki (C) and the company officials bow during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Shares of embattled Kobe Steel Ltd tumbled to their lowest level in nearly 5 years on Monday, as a cheating scandal at the Japanese steelmaker ensnared hundreds of firms and left investors fearing for the financial and legal fallout. Kobe Steel Chief Executive Hiroya Kawasaki on Friday revealed that about 500 companies had received its falsely certified products, more than double its earlier count, confirming widespread wrongdoing at the steelmaker. Shares of Japan<61>s third-biggest steelmaker were down 0.12 percent at 804 yen by the end of the morning session after hitting 774.0 yen, the lowest since Dec. 11, 2012. The broader Tokyo stock market was up 0.68 percent, touching a 21-year high. No safety problems have surfaced as the Japanese steelmaker attempts to get a grip on the data tampering that it earlier said may go back as far as ten years. Kobe Steel President and CEO Hiroya Kawasaki bows during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon The revelations over the past week rippled through supply chains across the world as companies from operators of Japan<61>s famous bullet trains to the world<6C>s biggest aircraft maker, Boeing Co,, were ensnared in the scandal. The scale of the misconduct at the steelmaker hammered its shares as investors, worried about the financial impact and legal fallout, wiped about $1.8 billion off its market value last week. Kobe Steel also said last week that the problems had gone beyond the borders of Japan with data falsification found in subsidiaries in Thailand, China and Malaysia. Kawasaki told a press briefing on Friday the steelmaker plans to compensate customers for any costs arising from replacements. Kobe Steel initially said on Oct. 8, 200 companies were affected when it admitted at the weekend it had falsified data about the quality of aluminum and copper products used in cars, aircraft, space rockets and defense equipment. Reporting by Yuka Obayashi and Hideyuki Sano; Writing by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Stephen Coates & Shri Navaratnam 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal/kobe-steel-shares-tumble-to-near-five-year-low-as-cheating-crisis-deepens-idUKKBN1CL011'|'2017-10-16T05:55:00.000+03:00'
'f79856b0cb76f8b789dcecdb91fb7450e25cd77c'|'Spanish shares lag European markets on Catalonia uncertainty'|' 35 AM / Updated 19 minutes ago Spanish shares lag European markets on Catalonia uncertainty Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Traders talk as they are seen near screens at Madrid''s bourse, Spain, July 6, 2015. REUTERS/Juan Medina MILAN (Reuters) - Spanish stocks lagged a steady European market in early deals on Monday, as uncertainty over the Catalonia crisis and a profit warning from renewables energy firm Siemens Gamesa weighed. Spain''s country index IBEX .IBEX fell 0.7 percent by 0716 GMT, while the pan-European STOXX 600 benchmark added 0.1 percent, staying near the four-month highs hit last week as optimism over global growth offset growing political worries. Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont on Monday failed to clarify whether he had declared Catalonia<69>s independence from Spain last week, paving the way for the central government to take control of the region and rule it directly if he does not do so by 0800 GMT. Spanish banks Caixa ( CABK.MC ), Bankia ( BKIA.MC ) and BBVA ( BBVA.MC ) were among the most hit, all down more than 1 percent, while Siemens Gamesa was the top faller in Madrid, down more than 6 percent after it warned on profit on Friday. Top faller on the STOXX was ConvaTec ( CTEC.L ), down 14.4 percent after the British medical technology company cut its full-year organic revenue growth forecast due to supply issues in the third quarter. Higher metal and crude oil prices, however, supported the broader market, sending heavyweight mining stocks like Glencore ( GLEN.L ), Rio Tinto ( RIO.L ) and BHP ( BLT.L ) up more than 2 percent. Reporting by Danilo Masoni; Editing by Georgina Prodhan 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-stocks/spanish-shares-lag-european-markets-on-catalonia-uncertainty-idUKKBN1CL0P2'|'2017-10-16T10:43:00.000+03:00'
'cf12da669de34423f81e5960d7eec1e6697409a5'|'May to host housing meeting on Tuesday - source'|'October 16, 2017 / 4:28 PM / Updated 28 minutes ago May to host housing meeting on Tuesday - source Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: An estate agent board is displayed outside a property in London, Britain July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May will host a meeting on Tuesday with developers and local housing associations in a bid to encourage the industry to build more homes and tackle soaring prices, an industry source said. The housing industry says Britain needs to build around 250,000 properties a year just to meet pent-up demand, which has pushed up prices and rents, stopping many younger people from getting onto the property ladder. The target is routinely missed. PM May has called the housing market broken and vowed to spend an additional two billion pounds to create a new generation of affordable housing. The source, who declined to be named because the meeting is not public, said the meeting was expected to cover a range of issues facing the industry. May<61>s office declined to comment on the meeting. Reporting by Kate Holton and William James; editing by Guy Faulconbridge 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-housebuilders/may-to-host-housing-meeting-on-tuesday-source-idUKKBN1CL2FP'|'2017-10-16T19:27:00.000+03:00'
'922c2e324b4325f004af5da78e71e39314403010'|'German stocks - Factors to watch on October 16'|'BERLIN/FRANKFURT, Oct 16 (Reuters) - The following are some of the factors that may move German stocks on Monday:DEUTSCHE TELEKOM T-Mobile U.S. Inc and Sprint Corp plan to announce a merger agreement without any immediate asset sales, as they seek to preserve as much of their spectrum holdings and cost synergies as they can before regulators ask for concessions, according to people familiar with the matter on Sunday.LINDE Air Products and Air Liquide may bid for parts of peers Linde and Praxair that the two groups may be forced to divest in the event of a merger, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Friday.Linde is considering carving out its engineering unit after the planned Praxair merger, but would keep majority stake in the business, Linde Chief Executive Aldo Belloni told Euro am Sonntag.AIRBUS Chief Executive Tom Enders sees no reason to resign over ongoing UK and French corruption investigations, but would be ready to do so if needed, he told a German newspaper.HOCHTIEF Italian toll-road operator Atlantia is prepared to raise its takeover bid for Spanish rival Abertis to up to about 17.8 billion euros ($21 billion) should a rival offer by builder ACS materialise, people close to the matter told Reuters.HUGO BOSS German financial watchdog Bafin said it was pressing insider trading charges relating to a drop last year in the price of Hugo Boss shares, confirming a Der Spiegel report.UNIPER Uniper works council head Harald Seegatz told Bild am Sonntag that the planned sale of E.ON<4F>s 47 percent stake in Uniper to Fortum puts Uniper jobs at risk, a claim E.ON rejected.AIR BERLIN EasyJet is in talks to take on up to 25 A320 aircraft that were operated by the insolvent German carrier at Berlin Tegel airport, the British budget airline said on Friday.Lufthansa plans to grow its Swiss unit<69>s fleet by five planes to enable it to take over flights from Air Berlin, Swiss weekly Sonntagszeitung reported.IPO German batter maker Varta has accelerated its IPO, shortening the offer period to Oct. 18, it said on Sunday.OVERSEAS STOCK MARKETS Dow Jones +0.1 pct, S&P 500 +0.1 pct, Nasdaq +0.2 pct at close.Nikkei +0.7 pct, Shanghai stocks -0.2 pct.Time: 5.01 GMT.GERMAN ECONOMIC DATA German September wholesale price index due at 0600 GMT.EUROPEAN FACTORS TO WATCH DIARIES REUTERS TOP NEWS (Reporting by Andreas Cremer, Arno Schuetze and Victoria Bryan)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/germany-stocks-factors/german-stocks-factors-to-watch-on-october-16-idINL8N1MO3ZL'|'2017-10-16T03:06:00.000+03:00'
'983f239fb8047f5a4abbaf99ab8afe989735a80c'|'Lufthansa offers 500 million euro for Alitalia''s planes and staff - paper'|'October 16, 2017 / 10:52 AM / in 13 minutes Lufthansa offers 500 million euro for Alitalia''s planes and staff - paper Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: An Italian flag flutters as an Alitalia airplane approaches to land at Fiumicino airport in Rome, Italy July 31, 2014. REUTERS/Max Rossi/File Photo ROME (Reuters) - German airline Lufthansa has offered 500 million euros (<28>443.7 million) to acquire the planes, airport runway slots and air crew of Italy<6C>s ailing national carrier Alitalia [CAITLA.UL], the newspaper Corriere della Sera said on Monday. Citing three anonymous sources, the paper said Lufthansa has also proposed halving Alitalia<69>s workforce of 12,000 employees and reducing its short- and medium-range flights. The paper said the offer was likely to be rejected by the state commissioners who are managing the carrier while it is being sold. Lufthansa declined to comment on the report. The deadline for suitors to submit binding bids for Alitalia is 1700 GMT on Monday. However, on Friday Italy<6C>s government extended to April 30 a deadline to improve the bids which had previously been set for Nov. 5. Rome wants to sell the whole of Alitalia in one package and avoid a split of its aviation and ground service activities. On Friday the government also passed an emergency decree to add a further 300 million euros to the loan of 600 million euros it made to the loss-making carrier in May. It also extended the deadline for the repayment of the loan, which was due in November this year, to Sept. 30, 2018. Reporting by Valentina Za; Editing by Greg Mahlich 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-alitalia-sale-lufthansa/lufthansa-offers-500-million-euro-for-alitalias-planes-and-staff-paper-idUKKBN1CL1B2'|'2017-10-16T14:09:00.000+03:00'
'e06e0f066485c42623647ae82a086ce3822571c2'|'Malaysia CEO to return to Ryanair to help fix pilot problems'|'Reuters TV United States  56 AM / a few seconds ago Malaysia CEO to return to Ryanair to help fix pilot problems Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Malaysia Airlines CEO Peter Bellew talks during a meeting of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in Cancun, Mexico June 5, 2017. REUTERS/Victor Ruiz Garcia DUBLIN (Reuters) - Malaysia Airlines<65> chief executive Peter Bellew is to leave after just over a year in charge and rejoin former employer Ryanair ( RYA.I ) as chief operations officer, the Irish airline said in a statement. Bellew will be given specific responsibility to help the airline address a pilot staffing issue that led to thousands of flight cancellations, the statement said. Bellew was director of flight operations before he left Ryanair in 2014. He joined Malaysia as chief operations officer in September 2015 and took over as chief executive in July last year. Reporting by Conor Humphries, editing by Louise Heavens 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ryanair-malaysia/malaysia-ceo-to-return-to-ryanair-to-help-fix-pilot-problems-idUKKBN1CM15T'|'2017-10-17T12:44:00.000+03:00'
'f344d442775f3dd5293cd75a2f4c3b70824e87c2'|'RPT-Wall St Week Ahead-Cyclical sector rally banks on global economic expansion'|'(Repeats Friday story with no changes)By Lewis KrauskopfNEW YORK, Oct 13 (Reuters) - U.S. stock sectors that are particularly dependent on economic growth recently grabbed hold of the market<65>s rally and are poised to keep the reins should further signs of global expansion emerge.Such sectors, including energy, industrials and financials, beat the S&P 500<30>s 1.9 percent gain in September. Those sectors had previously lagged behind the benchmark S&P, which has climbed 14 percent this year while feasting on a steady diet of record highs. Instead, shares of technology and healthcare companies, whose profits are more impervious to economic down cycles, have led 2017<31>s rally.The question for equity investors is now: Was September just a catch-up period for the lagging, cyclical sectors, or can an economic lift support a sustained run?<3F>If it<69>s just a mean-reversion trade, then it<69>s probably going to last another few weeks and then we<77>re back to the old winners,<2C> said Walter Todd, chief investment officer at Greenwood Capital Associates in Greenwood, South Carolina. <20>If it<69>s something more fundamental, it should be longer lasting than that.<2E>A test comes next week, as third-quarter corporate earnings season kicks into high gear. Reports from industrial conglomerates General Electric and Honeywell International, railroads CSX Corp and Kansas City Southern and steel company Nucor Corp stand to yield insight into the economy<6D>s health.September<65>s stock action, which also included outsized gains for small-cap stocks, had echoes of the immediate aftermath of President Donald Trump<6D>s election in November 2016.The same areas showed strength on hopes that a Republican-led federal government would push through an agenda, including tax cuts and deregulation, that juices economic growth. Those trades faded as Trump struggled to rack up any significant legislative wins.Now, investors say, September<65>s stock rally for those groups again stemmed at least in part from policy hopes, as Trump revved up his tax-reform push.<2E>In many ways, we began to replicate the market performance following Trump<6D>s election,<2C> said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.But an improving economic picture in the United States and globally lends confidence for the cyclical sector rally.The Citi economic surprise index for the United States , a measure of economic data that can come in weaker or stronger than forecast, is around a five-month high, with the barometer trending higher since hitting multi-year lows this summer.This week, the International Monetary Fund upgraded its global economic growth forecast for 2017 by 0.1 percentage point to 3.6 percent, and to 3.7 percent for 2018, from its April and July outlook, driven by a pickup in trade, investment, and consumer confidence.The U.S. Commerce Department last month revised its estimate for second-quarter gross domestic product growth to 3.1 percent, up from 3 percent.<2E>We<57>ve just had better data,<2C> said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at The Leuthold Group in Minneapolis, who also points to indicators such as firming industrial commodity and oil prices and a rise in the Baltic Exchange<67>s main sea freight index.<2E>Those things are all kind of reflecting a realism of economic momentum, not just a one-off, Trump pie-in-the-sky expectation about policy change,<2C> Paulsen said.Bets seemed to build on the cyclical sectors in the first week of October, which saw flows into the largest sector exchange-traded funds for financials, industrials and energy, and outflows for technology and healthcare, according to Lipper data.<2E>There is some momentum developing in these underperforming sectors,<2C> said Anthony Saglimbene, global market strategist at Ameriprise in Troy, Michigan.Earnings results could sway that momentum. Technology, which has gained 29 percent this year, topping all sectors, is expected to post a 12.2 percent increase in third-quarter profits
'41535648513765172f2f85d7b6a32fcacfca0823'|'Iran says Trump''s nuclear deal policy not to have high impact on oil prices - TV'|'October 15, 2017 / 6:35 AM / in 7 hours Iran says Trump''s nuclear deal policy not to have high impact on oil prices - TV Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Iran''s Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh talks to journalists during a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna, Austria, November 30, 2016. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader ANKARA (Reuters) - President Donald Trump<6D>s hardened stance on a multinational nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers will not have much impact on global oil prices, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh told state TV on Sunday. Trump refused on Friday to formally certify that Tehran was complying with the 2015 accord even though international inspectors say it is. He warned he might ultimately terminate the agreement. Related Coverage Writing by Parisa Hafezi, editing by Louise Heavens 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-iran-nuclear-oil/iran-says-trumps-nuclear-deal-policy-not-to-have-high-impact-on-oil-prices-tv-idUKKBN1CK05M'|'2017-10-15T13:08:00.000+03:00'
'ef10f8a2221f7f4b34e50e700ec3dfd0ebd127ce'|'Striking Canadian union approves deal with GM'|'MONTREAL, Oct 16 (Reuters) - General Motors Co. on Monday welcomed the ratification of a new four-year agreement by unionized workers at its SUV plant in Ontario, Canada, ending a near month-long strike.The U.S. auto giant and the union reached a tentative deal on Friday. About 2,500 workers at the CAMI plant in Ingersoll walked off the job on Sept. 18 after GM rejected a union call to designate the factory as the lead production site for its popular Chevrolet Equinox model in North America. (Reporting by Allison Lampert; Editing by Leslie Adler)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/gm-canada/striking-canadian-union-approves-deal-with-gm-idINFWN1MR0XN'|'2017-10-16T16:21:00.000+03:00'
'fb093164fc18a62adbb3836303811d5950403bff'|'FTSE 100 soars to record closing high following Brexit talks deadlock'|'The FTSE 100 has reached a new closing high after an impasse in the latest round of Brexit talks triggered a sell-off of the pound.The stock market made up of the UK<55>s biggest companies closed up 22 points (0.3%) at 7556.24.The rise reflected the weaker pound, which makes British goods and services cheaper abroad and tends to increase the share price of multinational companies with a large proportion of foreign earnings.FTSE 100 performance chart At one point, the pound was down as much as one cent against the dollar at $1.3123, after the EU<45>s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, said talks over Britain<69>s divorce bill were in a <20>very disturbing state of deadlock<63> .Currency traders reacted swiftly to the lack of progress, also sending sterling down to a four-week low against the euro at <20>1.109, although the pound later recovered after markets closed.Multinational exporters were among the FTSE 100<30>s biggest risers on Thursday, with Burberry gaining 2.7% and Unilever up 2.1%.Energy companies also helped push the index to the record closing high. SSE and Centrica, two of Britain<69>s biggest providers, gained 2.5% and 1.9% respectively after it emerged that the government<6E>s price cap was unlikely to come into effect until 2019.Analysts said the high on Thursday was not a vote of confidence in the UK economy.<2E>The bullish move was achieved for the wrong reasons, as the dip in the pound on the back of the stalled Brexit talks helped the British index,<2C> said David Madden of CMC Markets.Joshua Mahony, a market analyst at IG, said: <20>The continued ascent of the FTSE has had much to do with the negative effect of the disjointed Brexit negotiations, with daily updates seemingly highlighting just how unsuccessful the initial rounds of talks have been.<2E>The FTSE<53>s showing beat its previous closing high of 7,547 points in June, but was below the record intraday high of 7,598.99. Laith Khalaf, a senior analyst at the financial services group Hargreaves Lansdown, said: <20>The UK stock market continues its winning streak despite concerns over economic performance and the unfolding Brexit process. The question is whether the market<65>s strong run means it<69>s fit to burst.<2E>Factoring in earnings, from where we<77>re sitting, valuations in the UK stock market look reasonable, neither particularly cheap nor particularly expensive. That means in the short term the stock market can turn in either direction without defying the laws of statistics.<2E>The FTSE 250 also reached a record closing high on Thursday, up 0.4% at 20,251.24. The index comprises medium-sized companies that are not large enough to make it into the FTSE 100, and tend to be more focused on the UK market.Neil Wilson, a senior market analyst at ETX Capital, said the FTSE 250<35>s figure reflected a wider appetite among investors to buy equities.<2E>The FTSE 250 is also at a high and I think this is a sign of a broader risk-on attitude across global markets that has pushed Germany<6E>s Dax and America<63>s Dow to new records,<2C> he said.The Dow Jones index in the US also hit a record high of 22,884.00, but later dropped back.Topics FTSE Stock markets news'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/12/ftse-100-record-closing-high-brexit-talks-deadlock-pound-sell-off'|'2017-10-13T01:43:00.000+03:00'
'979378cc1bdec9d72eb508a896da49a6dec23bb7'|'General Motors checking impact of Kobe Steel data cheating - Kyodo'|'Reuters TV United States October 12, 2017 / 12:07 AM / in 3 minutes General Motors checking impact of Kobe Steel data cheating: Kyodo Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The logo of Kobe Steel is seen at the group''s Tokyo headquarters building in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato TOKYO (Reuters) - General Motors [GM.N] is checking whether its cars contain falsely certified parts or components sourced from Japan<61>s Kobe Steel ( 5406.T ), Kyodo News reported on Thursday, the latest major automaker to be dragged into the cheating scandal. <20>We are aware of the data falsification and examining its impact,<2C> Kyodo cited the company as saying in response to queries. GM could not be immediately contacted for comment. GM joins automakers including Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ) and as many as 200 other companies that have received parts sourced from Kobe Steel as the scandal reverberates through global supply chains. On Wednesday fresh revelations showed data fabrication at the steelmaker was more widespread than it initially said, as the company joins a list of Japanese manufacturers that have admitted to similar misconduct in recent years. Investors, worried about the financial impact and potential legal fallout, again dumped Kobe Steel stock, wiping about $1.6 billion off its market value in two days. Kobe Steel President Hiroya Kawasaki is due meet a senior official at the industry ministry on Thursday. Reporting by Kaneko Kaori; Writing by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Stephen Coates 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal/general-motors-checking-impact-of-kobe-steel-data-cheating-kyodo-idUKKBN1CH001'|'2017-10-12T03:01:00.000+03:00'
'c5e959f5b22b4c2f10dba8bb347da58bc78e07ce'|'Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week - Mercury News'|'October 14, 2017 / 12:59 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The logo of Tesla is seen in Taipei, Taiwan August 11, 2017. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu (Reuters) - Luxury electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ) fired about 400 employees this week, including associates, team leaders and supervisors, a former employee told Reuters on Friday. The dismissals were a result of a company-wide annual review, Tesla said in an emailed statement, without confirming the number of employees leaving the company. <20>It<49>s about 400 people ranging from associates to team leaders to supervisors. We don<6F>t know how high up it went,<2C> said the former employee, who worked on the assembly line and did not want to be identified. Though Tesla cited performance as the reason for the firings, the source told Reuters he was fired in spite of never having been given a bad review. The Palo Alto, California-based company said earlier in the month that <20>production bottlenecks<6B> had left Tesla behind its planned ramp-up for the new Model 3 mass-market sedan. The company delivered 220 Model 3 sedans and produced 260 during the third quarter. In July, it began production of the Model 3, which starts at $35,000 - half the starting price of the Model S. Mercury News had earlier reported about the firing of hundreds of employees by Tesla in the past week. bayareane.ws/2gb3PB8 Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru and Alexandria Sage in San Francisco; Editing by Andrew Hay 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tesla-jobs/tesla-fired-hundreds-of-employees-in-past-week-mercury-news-idUKKBN1CJ00X'|'2017-10-14T04:00:00.000+03:00'
'b5df1fcc07151911327494b57b081161d8464e39'|'Federal Bank second-quarter profit rises, beats estimates'|'October 16, 2017 / 7:35 AM / Updated 6 hours ago Federal Bank second-quarter profit rises, beats estimates Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Commuters walk past a bank sign along a road in New Delhi, India, November 25, 2015. REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee/File Photo REUTERS - Federal Bank Ltd ( FED.NS ) posted a 31 percent rise in second-quarter net profit, helped by lower provisions for bad loans. Net profit rose to 2.64 billion rupees ($40.8 million) in the quarter ended Sept. 30, the mid-sized private-sector lender said on Monday. bit.ly/2yreeCO Analysts on average had expected a net profit of 2.54 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters data. Gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans stood at 2.39 percent in the September quarter, compared with 2.42 percent in the June quarter and 2.78 percent a year earlier. Shares of the bank jumped as much as 4 percent after the results in midday trade on the National Stock Exchange. ($1 = 64.7450 Indian rupees) Reporting By Samantha Kareen Nair   Gopakumar Warrier 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/federal-bank-results/federal-bank-second-quarter-profit-rises-beats-estimates-idINKBN1CL0PO'|'2017-10-16T10:32:00.000+03:00'
'b950ee30e70e628e88bf3a2312dbb3773b5aae6e'|'ConvaTec cuts full-year revenue growth forecast on supply woes'|'October 16, 2017 / 7:38 AM / Updated 17 minutes ago ConvaTec slashes revenue growth outlook, shares slump Justin George Varghese 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Medical technology company ConvaTec Group Plc ( CTEC.L ) on Monday slashed its full-year organic revenue growth forecast after supply issues hurt its third quarter, wiping off a fifth of its market value. The maker of products used in acute wound care and critical care now expects full-year organic revenue growth in the 1-2 percent range compared with more than 4 percent previously forecast. ConvaTec shares posted their biggest percentage drop since listing in October 2016, wiping 1.2 billion pounds off its market value. The stock was the top percentage loser on the FTSE 100 index .FTSE , which was marginally higher. ConvaTec said performance in the third quarter was <20>severely<6C> impacted by supply issues at two of its divisions, and lower-than-anticipated revenue contribution from new products. However, the company reported a 6.8 percent growth in third-quarter revenue at $445.5 million. The company said the supply issues principally relate to the movement of the Advanced Wound Care division<6F>s manufacturing lines from the United States to the Dominican Republic. The unit makes surgical cover dressings and DuoDerm brand products. The supply issues at the Advanced Wound Care segment are expected to be resolved by the end of the fourth quarter, the company said. The company said logistics delays, including hurricanes disrupting shipping lanes in the Caribbean, hurt order fulfilments, and expects to fulfil the majority of the remaining backorders by the year-end. Ostomy Care, ConvaTec<65>s second biggest unit, also experienced supply constraints, leading to a build-up of backorders and some loss of orders in the quarter, with resolution anticipated in the first half of 2018, the company said. The divisions together make up more than 60 percent of company<6E>s annual revenue. ConvaTec, which said in August it was targeting a 300 basis-point improvement in adjusted gross margin for the year, said on Monday costs related to supply issues would hurt margin gains by 40 basis points. <20>The result today somewhat undermines the equity story set out at the time of the IPO last year, which was a combination of margin expansion from streamlining and organic growth re-acceleration from re-investing in the business; this will most likely see CTEC<45>s valuation multiple contract,<2C> said Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Jungling. In August, the company reported a steeper-than-expected drop in first-half profit due to higher expenses. Shares in the company were down 19.7 pct at 0823 GMT. Additional reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-convatec-group-outlook/convatec-cuts-full-year-revenue-growth-forecast-on-supply-woes-idUKKBN1CL0LG'|'2017-10-16T10:29:00.000+03:00'
'90bde7916f4a62be72ad7e13af09ce1cf35f1cfb'|'Equifax takes down web page after report of new hack'|' 54 PM / Updated 17 minutes ago Equifax takes down web page after report of new hack John McCrank 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo and trading information for Credit reporting company Equifax Inc. are displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson NEW YORK (Reuters) - Equifax Inc ( EFX.N ) said on Thursday it has taken one of its customer help website pages offline as its security team looks into reports of another potential cyber breach at the credit reporting company, which recently disclosed a hack that compromised the sensitive information of more than 145 million people. The move came after an independent security analyst on Wednesday found part of Equifax<61>s website was under the control of attackers trying to trick visitors into installing fraudulent Adobe Flash updates that could infect computers with malware, the technology news website Ars Technica reported. <20>We are aware of the situation identified on the equifax.com website in the credit report assistance link,<2C> Equifax spokesman Wyatt Jefferies said in an email. <20>Our IT and security teams are looking into this matter, and out of an abundance of caution have temporarily taken this page offline.<2E> The Atlanta-based company, which has faced seething criticism from consumers, regulators and lawmakers over its handling of the earlier breach, said it would provide more information as it becomes available. As of 1:15 p.m. (1715 GMT), the web page in question said: <20>We<57>re sorry... The website is currently down for maintenance. We are working diligently to better serve you, and apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. We appreciate your patience during this time and ask that you check back with us soon.<2E> Equifax shares were down 1.2 percent at $109.18 in early afternoon trading. Randy Abrams, the independent analyst who noticed the possible hack, said he was attempting to check some information in his credit report late on Wednesday when one of the bogus pop-up ads appeared on Equifax<61>s website. His first reaction was disbelief, he said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday. <20>You<6F>ve got to be kidding me,<2C> he recalled thinking. Then he successfully replicated the problem at least five times, making a video that he posted to YouTube. Equifax<61>s security protocols have been under scrutiny since Sept. 7 when the company disclosed its systems had been breached between mid-May and late July. The breach has prompted investigations by multiple federal and state agencies, including a criminal probe by the U.S. Department of Justice, and it has led to the departure of the company<6E>s chief executive officer, chief information officer and chief security officer. As a credit reporting agency, Equifax keeps vast amounts of consumer data for banks and other creditors to use to determine the chances of their customers<72> defaulting. Reporting by John McCrank; Editing by Bill Rigby 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-equifax-breach/equifax-takes-down-web-page-after-report-of-new-hack-idUKKBN1CH2NC'|'2017-10-12T20:54:00.000+03:00'
'8fdf624320c43197bbc233187f11fc5cb8fdf364'|'BASF to harvest seeds, herbicide businesses from Bayer for $7 billion'|'October 13, 2017 / 8:59 AM / in 36 minutes BASF to harvest seeds, herbicide businesses from Bayer for 5.9 billion euro Maria Sheahan 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A truck drives past a warehouse of German chemical company BASF in Ludwigshafen, April 23, 2015. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo FRANKFURT (Reuters) - BASF has agreed to buy seed and herbicide businesses from Bayer for 5.9 billion euros (<28>5.26 billion) in cash, as Bayer tries to convince competition authorities to approve its planned acquisition of Monsanto. BASF, the world<6C>s third-largest maker of crop chemicals, has so far avoided seed assets and instead pursued research into plant characteristics such as drought tolerance, which it sells or licenses out to seed developers. But Bayer<65>s $66 billion deal to buy U.S. seeds group Monsanto, announced in September 2016, has created opportunities for rivals to snatch up assets that need to be sold to satisfy competition authorities. Bayer had offered to sell assets worth around $2.5 billion. The European Commission said in August that the divestments offered by Bayer so far did not go far enough and started an in-depth investigation of the deal. Bayer has to sell the LibertyLink-branded seeds and Liberty herbicide businesses because they compete with Monsanto<74>s Roundup weed killer and Roundup Ready seeds. LibertyLink seeds, used by soy, cotton and canola growers, are one alternative to Roundup Ready seeds for farmers suffering from weeds that have developed resistance to the Roundup herbicide, also known as glyphosate. The spread of Roundup-resistant weeds in North America has been a major driver behind Liberty sales. Related Coverage BASF CEO says to look at more seed M&A after Bayer deal <20>BASF<53>s decision to acquire seeds assets represents something of a change to its prior view on its needs to respond to recent industry consolidation in agriculture,<2C> Morgan Stanley analysts said. <20>Nonetheless, the proposed assets for acquisition are high margin and high growth and represent a sensible bolt-on addition,<2C> they added. The sale to BASF values the assets at around 15 times 2016 operating profit (EBITDA) of 385 million euros, which Bankhaus Lampe analyst Volker Braun said was <20>reasonable<6C> considering the assets had to be sold anyway. BASF will finance the acquisition through a combination of cash on hand, commercial paper and bonds. It expects the acquisition to add to its earnings by 2020. Shares in Bayer rose 1.3 percent to the top of Germany<6E>s blue-chip DAX index by 0845 GMT, while BASF fell 0.7 percent. REGULATORY SCRUTINY The businesses Bayer is selling to BASF generated 2016 sales of 1.3 billion euros. While the Commission could block the deal, it has approved others, such as Dow<6F>s tie-up with DuPont and ChemChina<6E>s takeover of Syngenta - although only after securing big concessions. Bayer said it continued to work with the authorities to close the Monsanto deal by early 2018. As part of the asset sale to BASF, which is conditional upon the Monsanto acquisition going through, more than 1,800 staff, primarily in the United States, Germany, Brazil, Canada and Belgium, will transfer to BASF. BASF has committed to maintaining all permanent positions, under similar conditions, for at least three years after the deal closes, Bayer said. As part of the deal, BASF will acquire Bayer<65>s manufacturing sites for glufosinate-ammonium production and formulation in Germany, the United States, and Canada, seed breeding facilities in the Americas and Europe as well as trait research facilities in the United States and Europe. Bayer said it would use the proceeds of the sale to partially refinance the planned acquisition of Monsanto. It would provide an update on expected synergies from the acquisition by the time the deal closes. BofA Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse acted as financial advisors to Bayer. Its legal advisors are Sullivan & Cromwell, Dentons, Cohen & Grigsby and Redeker, Sellner & Dahs. Reporting by Maria Sh
'c191722d94b5aeba9ca21fb203912b856b4be3ad'|'Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week - Mercury News'|'October 14, 2017 / 1:11 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week - Mercury News Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The logo of Tesla is seen in Taipei, Taiwan August 11, 2017. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu (Reuters) - Luxury electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ) fired between 400 and 700 employees this week, including engineers, managers and factory workers, Mercury News reported on Friday, citing interviews with former and current employees. The dismissals were a result of a company-wide annual review, Tesla said in an emailed statement, without confirming the number of employees leaving the company. bayareane.ws/2gb3PB8 The Palo Alto, California-based company said earlier in the month that <20>production bottlenecks<6B> had left Tesla behind its planned ramp-up for the new Model 3 mass-market sedan. The company delivered 220 Model 3 sedans and produced 260 during the third quarter. In July, it began production of the Model 3, which starts at $35,000 - half the starting price of the Model S. Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Andrew Hay 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/tesla-jobs/tesla-fired-hundreds-of-employees-in-past-week-mercury-news-idINKBN1CJ018'|'2017-10-14T04:03:00.000+03:00'
'c567bcb01c2dc5d96800ffea1a3f3cb4893adc7f'|'Disney to cut about 200 jobs at its TV networks - source'|'October 12, 2017 / 10:38 PM / Updated 13 hours ago Disney to cut about 200 jobs at its TV networks: source Lisa Richwine 1 Min Read The main gate of entertainment giant Walt Disney Co. is pictured in Burbank, California May 5, 2009. REUTERS/Fred Prouser (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co ( DIS.N ) plans to cut about 200 jobs at unit ABC and other cable networks, according to a source familiar with the matter. The largest number of layoffs will be in operational areas, but there would be no job cuts at ESPN, the source told Reuters. The New York Times had reported in September that Disney had cut 250 jobs at its animation unit. ( nyti.ms/2cv9Zti ) Disney had around 195,000 employees, according to its latest annual filing. Additional reporting by Laharee Chatterjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-disney-jobs/disney-to-cut-about-200-jobs-at-its-tv-networks-source-idUSKBN1CH36P'|'2017-10-13T01:31:00.000+03:00'
'03e6836d8c272cad4c1dbda8d3f01b2963dcfb9d'|'CORRECTED-Petronas'' Canadian unit to look at other LNG opportunities -exec'|'(In Oct 11 item, corrects Petronas reserves total in second paragraph to 50 trillion cubic feet, instead of 50 trillion cubic feet a day)By Nia WilliamsCALGARY, Alberta, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Progress Energy, a wholly-owned unit of Malaysia<69>s Petronas, will look at other liquefied natural gas opportunities as a way to monetize its Canadian gas assets after Petronas scrapped a $29 billion LNG project this year, a company executive said on Wednesday.Petronas, the Malaysian state-owned energy company, abandoned plans to build the Pacific Northwest LNG plant in northern British Columbia in July due to weak prices, leaving Progress with 800,000 acres of land rights in the Montney shale play and 50 trillion cubic feet of reserves.Since the project was scrapped, Calgary-based Progress said it planned to make money out of its huge natural gas operations in the Montney, which spans northeast British Columbia and northwest Alberta, but gave few details of how it would do that.Progress<73>s vice president of production, Dennis Lawrence, told an energy conference in Calgary on Wednesday that the company had spent a significant amount of money acquiring that position over the last five years and it was time to get the gas to market.<2E>We are in the very early stages of this but we will look hard at other LNG opportunities, we will look hard at petrochemical opportunities,<2C> Lawrence said in a panel discussion. <20>That<61>s not a process you figure out in a month or two.<2E>Lawrence did not specify which LNG opportunities Progress would look at. In August Canada<64>s Globe and Mail newspaper reported that Petronas was considering acquiring a minority stake in the LNG Canada project, a joint venture led by Royal Dutch Shell.Petronas bought Progress in 2012 to supply the Pacific Northwest LNG project.Progress has signed up as an anchor shipper on a proposed pipeline that will connect gas from the Montney to the Alberta market hub and feed it into the North American market. Last week it said it was looking to sell its Deep Basin oil and gas asset in Alberta.LNG Canada<64>s chief executive, Andy Calitz, who also took part in the panel discussion, said his company will be ready to make a final investment decision on the $32 billion project in 2018.The joint venture group last year delayed a final decision to find ways to reduce costs. (Reporting by Nia Williams; Editing by Leslie Adler)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/canada-lng-petronas/petronas-canadian-unit-to-look-at-other-lng-opportunities-exec-idINL2N1MM1S0'|'2017-10-11T17:48:00.000+03:00'
'6928aca7b64b917455ce18999b6f34b45553eb28'|'Carlyle, OppenheimerFunds form wealth management venture'|'October 16, 2017 / 1:03 PM / in 6 hours Carlyle, OppenheimerFunds form wealth management venture Reuters Staff 1   general view of the lobby outside of the Carlyle Group offices in Washington, U.S. May 3, 2012. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo (Reuters) - U.S. private equity firm Carlyle Group LP and asset manager OppenheimerFunds Inc will form a joint venture to provide wealth management services to rich investors in the United States, the companies said on Monday. Kamal Bhatia, the head of investment solutions for OppenheimerFunds, and Mark Jenkins, the head of global credit for Carlyle, will lead the joint venture when it begins operations next year. Carlyle and Oppenheimer join a long list of firms, including Citigroup, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley, that are trying to lure the rich and the super-rich in an attempt to boost revenue and lower their reliance on more traditional businesses such as trading. The new venture will provide long-term income strategies to high net-worth investors, initially focusing on investments in credit, direct lending, distressed transactions, among other areas, Carlyle and OppenheimerFunds said. Reporting By Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-carlyle-group-jv-oppenheimerfunds/carlyle-oppenheimerfunds-form-wealth-management-venture-idUSKBN1CL1QB'|'2017-10-16T15:55:00.000+03:00'
'21a76691cf9e5ad51580c7c4050d2bb4c9e790a9'|'Food services firm Aramark to buy Avendra, AmeriPride in $2.35 billion deal'|'October 16, 2017 / 5:18 AM / Updated 9 hours ago Food services firm Aramark to buy Avendra, AmeriPride in $2.35 billion deal Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A Aramark company logo is seen at a facility in San Diego, California December 11, 2013. REUTERS/Mike Blake (Reuters) - Food services company Aramark ( ARMK.N ) said on Monday it would buy Avendra LLC, majority owned by Marriott International Inc ( MAR.O ), and uniform and linen supplier AmeriPride Services Inc for a total of $2.35 billion, before tax benefit adjustments. Aramark said it would pay Avendra $1.35 billion, or $1.05 billion in net purchase price after adjusting for anticipated tax benefits. AmeriPride<64>s purchase price of $1 billion came in at $850 million after adjusting for anticipated tax benefits, Aramark said. Separately, Marriott, which owns a 55 percent stake in Avendra, said it would receive about $650 million from the sale. Aramark also added it expected cost synergies of about $40 million from the purchase of Avendra and about $70 million from AmeriPride. Reporting by Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-avendra-m-a-aramark/food-services-firm-aramark-to-buy-avendra-ameripride-in-2-35-billion-deal-idUSKBN1CL0EJ'|'2017-10-16T08:17:00.000+03:00'
'1900242e66de2928f9d233c1561413de677a3837'|'Should I let out my parents'' old house or sell it and invest the capital? - Money - The Guardian'|'Q I am due to inherit my parents<74> three-bed semi in the Wirral which is worth about <20>180,000.I have little idea about whether to sell and invest the capital for what I guess would be a return of about 2% from a bank or building society, or let the property which could give me a yield of about 5%. Similar houses in the area rent for <20>750 per month in the area. On the face of it, letting is more than twice as lucrative as putting cash in the bank, but what costs such as tax, and so on would I face? I am a standard-rate taxpayer and am likely to need an agent to manage the property for me as I live in Kent.Most of the advice I have read largely concerns buy-to-let, not outright ownership, so I<>d be grateful to know what the matters to consider are. MS A You are right. On the face of it, letting the property is a much more lucrative proposition than selling the house and putting the cash in a savings account. That<61>s not least because you would be lucky to find an account offering more than 1.6% unless you are willing to tie into a fixed rate for a couple of years in which case you could get 2% or slightly more on your cash.You are also right that buy-to let for landlords with mortgages has become a lot less attractive since changes to the tax rules for relief on finance costs such as mortgage interest <20> as well as interest on other loans and loan arrangement and early repayment fees. Before 6 April 2017, a landlord could deduct all the mortgage interest from rental income to work out the tax bill. By 6 April 2020, landlords will be able to calculate what HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) calls a <20>basic-rate tax deduction<6F> of 20% of finance costs which is subtracted from your tax bill. A useful guide to the tax issues involved in letting property is available in the online guide to letting a property from HMRC .But as you say things are different if you own a property outright as, without a buy-to-let mortgage, the tax changes for finance costs won<6F>t make a lot of difference to how much tax you pay or on the return on your buy-to-let property. What will eat into your property earnings is the money you have to spend on getting the house into a state where it can be let. This may include redecorating and, if you plan to let the house furnished, buying new furniture which meets fire safety standards. It must include fitting smoke alarms and, if there are solid-fuel appliances, carbon dioxide alarms.You<6F>ll also have to pay for a qualified registered electrician to check the electrics and provide an electrical safety certificate and pay a Gas Safe engineer to approve any gas appliances and, every year, provide a gas safety certificate.If you were to use the full management service of a letting agent <20> which makes sense as you live so far away from the house <20> you could be looking at a reduction of 20% (including VAT) in the form of the agent<6E>s fee for managing the property in the amount of rent you get. There are extra costs for dealing with the tenancy paperwork, putting the tenant<6E>s deposit into a government-approved tenancy deposit scheme, making an inventory and arranging works or refurbishment on the property. You also have to factor in the cost of insurance for the property as well as months when the property is empty and you<6F>re not getting any rent.Taking just the cost of using a letting agent into account <20> and not any of the other costs mentioned <20> you might get after-tax rental income of just over <20>4,752 which represents a yield of 2.64% on the <20>180,000 house. However the true yield will depend on how much you have to pay for other costs. If they were to mount up to <20>1,000 or so, there would be very little difference in the after-tax income you would get from a savings account paying 2%.Topics Property Ask the experts: homebuying features'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/oct/16/should-i-let-out-my-parents-old-house-
'55c3d9c35b25c233b4d4c8d0e77c24cdfc14e741'|'UPDATE 2-Daimler commits cash to help reshape company'|'* To create separate entities for cars, trucks businesses* To invest more than 100 mln euros in reorganisation plan* Says has no plans to divest any divisions* Reaches labour agreement to safeguard jobs (Adds comments from CFO and analysts, detail and background)BERLIN, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Daimler has committed more than 100 million euros ($118 million) to help create separate legal entities for its Mercedes-Benz cars and Daimler Trucks divisions, a move that would facilitate an eventual break up of the German company.Daimler wants to create a more agile structure as the latest luxury cars demand increasing input from technology and software specialists.<2E>We not only need to be as close as possible to our customers<72> pulse, but also to be able to react as quickly and flexibly as possible to market developments and a fundamentally changing competitive environment,<2C> finance chief Bodo Uebber said.Daimler, which has annual sales of 153 billion euros ($181 billion), said it did not plan to divest any of its divisions and no final decision on the legal split had been made.Under the proposals, Daimler would be split into three independent stock corporations with their own management and supervisory boards capable of signing cross-shareholding agreements with any partners, a person familiar with the matter said, without giving more details.The move announced on Monday follows comments by CEO Dieter Zetsche who said in July that Daimler was considering putting parts of its business into separate legal entities, spurring talk of a possible break up as the group looks to fund big investments in self-driving and electric cars.Alongside the Financial Services AG business, the two new entities would combine Mercedes-Benz Cars and Vans operations as well as Trucks and Buses divisions, the company said.JOBS PROTECTED The Stuttgart-based company said in a separate statement on Monday that it was not pursuing any savings, efficiencies or job cuts related to the reorganisation.To win the support of its labour unions, Daimler said it has further extended job guarantees until 2029 from 2020 and will make a 3 billion-euro contribution to the group<75>s pension fund in the fourth quarter.Separating Daimler<65>s divisions could make it easier to value them and create a higher figure than for the current combination, with trucks and buses on their own worth 31 billion euros, analysts at Evercore ISI have said.The German company<6E>s total market value is around 72.7 billion euros, according to Thomson Reuters data.<2E>Daimler may be against putting anything up for sale now but of course things can look entirely different in 10 to 15 years<72> time,<2C> said NordLB analyst Frank Schwope, who has a <20>hold<6C> recommendation on the stock, adding he saw the trucks operations as the most likely candidate for a future divestment.<2E>The implications of this (separation) are more long-term,<2C> he said.Volkswagen, the world<6C>s biggest automotive group which also sells trucks and vans alongside its car business, has no plans to follow Daimler and divide up the group, Chief Executive Matthias Mueller said last month.Daimler shareholders could approve a possible legal overhaul in 2019 at the earliest, the company said, adding that further examination and due diligence were needed before the management and supervisory boards can reach a final verdict.The shares were trading up 0.8 percent at 68.46 euros as of 1305 GMT. ($1 = 0.8472 euros) (Reporting by Andreas Cremer, Victoria Bryan and Ilona Wissenbach.; Editing by Mark Potter and Keith Weir)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/daimler-restructuring/update-1-daimler-starts-reorganisation-that-could-lead-to-break-up-idINL8N1MR2FP'|'2017-10-16T08:31:00.000+03:00'
'd44a55798318d3d7936d05420a06b5c57b800c86'|'Insight: Fake paperwork, poor parts challenge China''s aerospace boom'|'Charles Shi, a former Moog supply chain manager for Far East Asia, speaks during an interview in Shanghai, China August 31, 2017. REUTERS/Aly Song/Files SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese suppliers to U.S. flight control systems maker Moog sold it poorly made parts, faked paperwork and outsourced work to a factory not approved by the company, according to an internal report by U.S. aviation regulators.In a 9-page report dated Nov. 4, 2016 obtained by Reuters through a freedom of information request, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) said 273 affected parts were installed in an unspecified number of Boeing 777 wing spoilers, which help slow a plane when coming in to land.It did not identify the parts or say when they were installed. The FAA, Boeing and Moog said in the report and in emails to Reuters they posed no safety risk.Moog supplies flight control systems for commercial and military planes - an industry where supply chain traceability and material quality are highly regulated and crucial for flight safety.The episode does not raise immediate safety issues. However, it highlights the pressure on Chinese suppliers and regulators as the world<6C>s fastest growing aviation sector seeks to be less reliant on foreign manufacturers.To be sure, it<69>s not just a Chinese issue. Shares in Japan<61>s Kobe Steel, a supplier of aluminium and copper products used in aircraft and cars, plunged last week after it found numerous cases of data falsification, sending customers scrambling to check product safety.Supply firms have flocked to China<6E>s booming aerospace sector, which is looking to supply parts faster and cheaper in a competitive global market. China<6E>s exports of parts to the U.S. aerospace industry have trebled to $1.2 billion since 2009, U.S. trade data show.The demand has fuelled the rise of smaller makers of airplane parts in an industry that has been dominated by state-owned firms.China<6E>s aerospace industry isn<73>t just a supplier to foreign plane makers. Its airlines are among the biggest buyers of Boeing and Airbus planes, but China is now building its own passenger jets, flying its first narrow-body C919 plane in May.Mao Pingzhou, a program and quality manager at Airbus, who previously worked at Moog, says China still needs to improve the management of its supply chain.<2E>There are a lot of procedures, but supervisors and workers don<6F>t strictly implement them,<2C> he told Reuters.In an emailed response to Reuters, the FAA said it investigated safety concerns raised by a whistleblower, Charles Shi, and substantiated two of his allegations. One was addressed and closed, and the other <20>remains open until the corrective action is fully implemented by Boeing and verified by the FAA.<2E> It did not elaborate.Boeing said it and Moog <20>had already assessed these two issues and taken all necessary corrective actions.<2E> It stressed that <20>the safety of the flying public is our primary concern.<2E>Moog said it <20>promptly and properly investigated<65> the irregularities. <20>The suspect parts - none of which are flight safety critical - were determined to meet specifications,<2C> it said.According to the FAA report, more than 720 hours of stress-testing the parts at Moog showed no failures, and it was agreed with Boeing to leave them on the planes.WHISTLEBLOWER The FAA began investigating Moog parts in March 2016 after Shi, a former Moog supply chain manager for Far East Asia, contacted its whistleblower hotline, according to Shi and copies of emails between him and the regulator.Charles Shi, a former Moog supply chain manager for Far East Asia, speaks during an interview in Shanghai, China August 31, 2017. REUTERS/Aly Song/Files Shi had previously raised concerns at Moog about Suzhou New Hongji Precision Parts Co Ltd (NHJ), a supplier he said had faked certificates, outsourced work and used substitute material without Moog<6F>s knowledge, according to copies of emails between Shi and his colleagues seen by Reuters.Reuters was unable to independently 
'c77c0f2f877ea8eb866f7a8df8d3b703281d9fa9'|'Unhedged debt stock could supercharge euro rise'|'October 16, 2017 / 10:59 AM / Updated 26 minutes ago Unhedged debt stock could supercharge euro rise Saikat Chatterjee , Dhara Ranasinghe 6 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Detail of a European map is seen on the face of a euro coin in London, Britain, January 31, 2016. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Euro zone investors who have snapped up over a trillion euros worth of foreign debt without protecting the foreign exchange risk are rethinking that vulnerability because of the currency<63>s hefty rally this year. The move entails buying euros to hedge, which turbo charges the rally even further - creating a headwind for the European Central Bank. The ECB is widely expected to start laying out its plans for scaling back monetary stimulus at next week<65>s policy meeting, but a strong euro complicates this since it puts downward pressure on inflation which is already running below target. One reason for the euro<72>s resilience is some 1.16 trillion euros (<28>1.03 trillion) of foreign bonds that have been purchased by European investors since the ECB launched its quantitative easing programme in March 2015, according to estimates from investors based on official data. They have been forced to buy non-euro debt because the ECB has been taking up much of the domestic pool of bonds. The bulk of the non-euro purchases were bought on a currency-unhedged basis because euro weakness during the bulk of ECB asset purchases meant that returns from overseas investments would be higher when accounting for exchange rates. While those investments flattered returns in the three consecutive years until last year when the euro posted annual losses against its major rivals, 2017 has prompted a sharp reversal in those bets. The currency has risen more than 13 percent against the dollar so far this year EUR= . So investors have rushed to cover their currency exposure as the euro has gained, notably after the French elections in April and again in July. Even with this, though, investors say a large chunk of foreign debt investments remain unhedged, indicating hedging-related purchases are likely to resurface if the euro renews its climb. <20>If the euro starts to rise again, these investors are going to have to come back and start buying euros again and you could see euro/dollar topside continue,<2C> said Michael Sneyd, global head of currency strategy at BNP Paribas in London. The euro traded at $1.1786 on Monday, not far off a 2-1/2 year high of $1.21 tested in early September. BlackRock strategists recommend hedging currency risk fully for an international bond portfolio but market watchers estimate that only about 60-70 percent of these international debt investments by European investors are currently hedged. Sneyd estimates that every 1 percent rise in overall hedge ratios translates into roughly $10 billion (<28>7.5 billion) buying of euros, a sizeable chunk for even the euro/dollar exchange rate which is the most liquid in the world and has an average daily trading volume of nearly $700 billion. STABLE EURO Opportunistic demand for euros from bond holders when there is any sign of currency weakness, explains the euro<72>s recent resilience during the conflict between the Spanish region of Catalonia and the central government, as well as unexpected German election results. The euro has remained stable against the dollar and has gained against some other rivals such as the British pound EURGBP= and the Australian dollar EURAUD= since the start of the month. That stability has puzzled some investors given that the euro was hurt early this year when the popularity of the anti-euro far-right in France ahead of elections sparked fears about the future of the currency bloc. <20>We have seen a raft of dollar positive news and euro negative news but the currency has remained in a tight range, indicating some purchasing activity by either bond holders, reserve managers or some large institutional players,<2C> said Borut Miklavcic, managing partner at Lindengrove Capital. An
'3e6ac5ac2222388b299efc6100e34f4ba82f55d5'|'Exclusive: China offers to buy 5 percent of Saudi Aramco directly - sources'|'October 16, 2017 / 1:51 PM / Updated 5 minutes ago Exclusive: China offers to buy 5 percent of Saudi Aramco directly - sources 5 Min Read A view shows Saudi Aramco''s Manifa oilfield, Saudi Arabia January 22, 2015. Saudi Aramco/Handout via REUTERS/Files DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) - China is offering to buy up to 5 percent of Saudi Aramco directly, sources said, a move that could give Saudi Arabia the flexibility to consider various options for its plan to float the world<6C>s biggest oil producer on the stock market. Chinese state-owned oil companies PetroChina and Sinopec have written to Saudi Aramco in recent weeks to express an interest in a direct deal, industry sources told Reuters. The companies are part of a state-run consortium including China<6E>s sovereign wealth fund, the sources say. Saudi Arabia<69>s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said last year the kingdom was considering listing about 5 percent of Aramco in 2018 in a deal that could raise $100 billion, if the company is valued at about $2 trillion as hoped. <20>The Chinese want to secure oil supplies,<2C> one of the industry sources said. <20>They are willing to take the whole 5 percent, or even more, alone.<2E> PetroChina and Sinopec declined to comment. The initial public offering (IPO) of Saudi Aramco is the centrepiece of an economic reform plan to diversify the Saudi economy beyond oil and it would also provide a welcome boost to the kingdom<6F>s budget which has been hit by low oil prices. But the IPO plan has created public misgivings that Riyadh is relinquishing its crown jewels to foreigners cheaply at a time of low oil prices. Some Aramco employees would like the whole idea to be shelved, sources say. Internal disagreements between what some advisers recommend and what the crown prince wants have delayed several key decisions about the IPO, industry sources said. The sources also point to disagreements between senior government officials, with some pushing only to list Aramco locally or to delay the IPO beyond 2018 when they hope oil prices will have stabilised at $55 to $60 a barrel. <20>A range of options, for the public listing of Saudi Aramco, continue to be held under active review. No decision has been made and the IPO process remains on track,<2C> said a Saudi Aramco spokesman. Industry sources said the sale of a significant stake to Chinese firms was one of several options being considered by the kingdom as it weighs the benefits of a public listing. One option includes selling some stock immediately to so-called cornerstone investors, such as China, and then selling shares on the local bourse as well as an international stock exchange, with New York, London and Hong Kong in the running. CORNERSTONE INVESTOR A Saudi Aramco employee sits in the area of its stand at the Middle East Petrotech 2016, an exhibition and conference for the refining and petrochemical industries, in Manama, Bahrain, September 27, 2016. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/Files Two senior industry sources said Riyadh was keen on China, its biggest buyer of oil, becoming a cornerstone investor in Aramco. But no decision has yet been taken on whether to accept China<6E>s offer, or how much stock could be offered to cornerstone investors, the sources said. China is creating a consortium made up of state-owned oil firms, banks and its sovereign wealth fund to act asa cornerstone investor in the IPO, people with knowledge of the discussions told Reuters in April. Sources told Reuters on Friday that Saudi Aramco was now evaluating a private placement of shares to a Chinese investor as a precursor to an international IPO, which could be delayed beyond 2018. But allowing China to buy 5 percent would effectively mean cancelling the IPO altogether, which is an unlikely outcome, one of the sources said. Sources said postponing the listing would be the least preferred option, given the preparations that have been already done and the determination of Prince Mohammed, who is expected to be the next king
'ffcc491cf8739fb12519ce0f613cc98c68ab90c6'|'Palm oil demand strong as top buyers China, India restock inventories'|'KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Palm oil demand is expected to remain robust for the rest of the month as key consumer countries India and China rebuild low stock levels, bucking a seasonal trend in which shipments of the tropical oil typically taper off at year-end.A narrow discount to a rival edible oil, however, could limit demand growth moving forward, say traders and analysts, since buyers usually switch to more favoured soyoil when its price premium over palm narrows.The price differential or the spread between palm oil on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade soyoil has been hovering between $80 and $90 a tonne, soyoil<69>s narrowest premium over palm since February.<2E>For October we<77>re looking at a 10 to 13 percent gain in exports, mainly from China and India, though India demand may slow compared to the previous month,<2C> said David Ng, a derivatives specialist at Phillip Futures in Kuala Lumpur.<2E>The current spread could be a limiting factor for demand (for palm oil), but major destinations are lacking palm this year, so they are restocking their inventories,<2C> Ng said.India in particular has been seeing shortages in its domestic vegetable oils supplies, he said.India and China are the world<6C>s top two buyers of palm oil, and command a substantial share of global demand. Palm oil import demand from China and India, which celebrate the Mid-Autumn and Diwali festivals respectively this month, had already gained in September as buyers stocked up ahead of the events.Malaysian shipments overall rose in September over August with notable gains in Chinese demand, according to data from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board.Also, the most recent export data from the Indonesian Palm Oil Association showed a 24 percent monthly gain, with shipments to China and India rising.Port stocks in China in October are at half of their peak levels this year, despite having risen from a yearly low in August.<2E>Consumer countries had been waiting for prices to decline in the second half of 2017, but prices held steady and did not fall significantly,<2C> said Alan Lim, plantations analyst at MIDF Research.Lim expects palm<6C>s spread or discount against soyoil to range between $80-100 per tonne until year-end, but <20>whether the discount can maintain will depend on the weather in Brazil<69>.Soybean production in Brazil, the world<6C>s second-largest producer, is likely to be smaller in the 2017/18 season compared to the prior crop year due to less favourable weather.<2E>If soybean output declines and soyoil prices go up, we expect that palm oil demand will increase,<2C> Lim said.Reporting by Emily Chow; Editing by Tom Hogue'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/malaysia-palmoil-demand/palm-oil-demand-strong-as-top-buyers-china-india-restock-inventories-idINKBN1CL12T'|'2017-10-16T12:48:00.000+03:00'
'ee8d10ea5629a5d60a95873be4dc2216e356d9a5'|'Sensex hits record high, rupee rallies as trade deficit narrows'|'October 16, 2017 / 7:35 AM / in 3 hours Sensex, Nifty hit record closing highs Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A broker laughs while speaking to a colleague, as they trade on their computer terminals at a stock brokerage firm in Mumbai, March 4, 2015. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade/Files REUTERS - Indian shares hit record closing highs on Monday as investors were encouraged by recent economic data which showed the country<72>s merchandise exports surged in September, pushing the trade deficit to a seven-month low. The broader NSE Nifty ended 0.62 percent higher at 10,230.85, after rising to a record high earlier in the session. The benchmark BSE Sensex closed up 0.62 percent at 32,633.64, after hitting an all-time high early in the day. Federal Bank Ltd gained about 7 percent after posting upbeat second-quarter profit. Reporting by Samantha Kareen Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/sensex-record-high-nifty/sensex-hits-record-high-rupee-rallies-as-trade-deficit-narrows-idINKBN1CL0K5'|'2017-10-16T09:34:00.000+03:00'
'bcecb00e2b0ac006ec60faa7d9521a6caf02a58a'|'Tata Steel, Thyssenkrupp will not spin off joint venture in next 2-3 years'|' 55 PM / Updated 7 minutes ago Tata Steel, Thyssenkrupp will not spin off joint venture in next 2-3 years Maytaal Angel 2 Min Read A man wears a helmet with glasses attached during a Thyssenkrupp steel workers protest rally in Bochum, Germany, September 22, 2017, against the planned combination of the group''s European steel operations with those of Tata Steel. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Tata Steel ( TISC.NS ) and Thyssenkrupp ( TKAG.DE ) have no plans to spin off their pending European steel joint venture within the next two to three years, Tata<74>s managing director said on Monday. The two companies announced last month a preliminary agreement to merge their European steel operations, creating the continent<6E>s second-largest steelmaker after ArcelorMittal ( MT.AS ), with revenues of 15 billion euros (<28>13.3 billion). Markets widely expect the longer-term aim of the merger is an initial public offering that would give the two companies a way to exit the volatile European steel business, but Tata Steel ruled that out in the near term. <20>Definitely no IPO in the next two to three years,<2C> T.V. Narendran, Tata<74>s managing director for India and South East Asia, told Reuters at the World Steel Association general assembly in Brussels. The memorandum of understanding the two companies signed has a lock-in period much longer than that, Narendran said. In India, where Tata plans to double capacity by 2022 to meet demand in one of the world<6C>s fastest-growing steel markets, Narendran said capacity at Tata<74>s Kalinganagar plant was likely to expand to 5 million tonnes, not 3 million. Tata<74>s board is due to decide on the matter within the next two to three months. Narendran added that none of Tata<74>s capacity expansions in India will involve an increase in the group<75>s leverage, because the company has strong earnings and can spread the costs out over several years. Reporting by Maytaal Angel. Editing by Larry King 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tata-steel-thyssenkrupp/tata-steel-thyssenkrupp-will-not-spin-off-joint-venture-in-next-2-3-years-idUKKBN1CL2CQ'|'2017-10-16T18:54:00.000+03:00'
'5d6275084b5756ce7dec6aa114817644bdec7627'|'Researchers uncover flaw that makes Wi-Fi vulnerable to hacks'|'October 16, 2017 / 1:34 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago Researchers uncover flaw that makes Wi-Fi vulnerable to hacks Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A magnifying glass is held in front of a computer screen in this picture illustration taken in Berlin May 21, 2013. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski (Reuters) - Belgian researchers have discovered a flaw in a widely used system for securing Wi-Fi communications that could allow hackers to read information that was previously understood to be encrypted, or infect websites with malware, they said on Monday. Researchers Mathy Vanhoef and Frank Piessens of Belgian university KU Leuven disclosed the bug in the WPA2 protocol, which secures modern Wi-Fi systems used by vendors for wireless communications between mobile phones, laptops and other connected devices with Internet-connected routers or hot spots. <20>If your device supports Wi-Fi, it is most likely affected,<2C> they said on a website, www.krackattacks.com, that they set up to provide technical information about the flaw and methods for attacking vulnerable devices. It was not immediately clear how difficult it would be for hackers to exploit the bug, or if the vulnerability has previously been used to launch any attacks. The Wi-Fi Alliance, an industry group that represents hundreds of Wi-Fi technology companies, said the issue <20>could be resolved through a straightforward software update.<2E> The group said in a statement it had advised members to quickly release patches and recommended that consumers quickly install those security updates. Reporting by Jim Finkle in Toronto; editing by Susan Thomas 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-wifi-flaw/researchers-uncover-flaw-that-makes-wi-fi-vulnerable-to-hacks-idUKKBN1CL1UE'|'2017-10-16T16:26:00.000+03:00'
'33eb9528bf413f136bb3585526cab5fbb66fb443'|'Analysis: As China''s leaders gather, market reform hopes fade'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:47 AM / Updated 4 hours ago As China''s leaders gather, market reform hopes fade Michael Martina , Kevin Yao 7 Min Read Communist Party spokesman Tuo Zhen and other officials arrive at a media briefing one day ahead of the opening of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter BEIJING (Reuters) - President Xi Jinping<6E>s rule in China has been marked by a muscular stance in many areas <20> from corruption to foreign policy - but investors and business leaders hoping that the nation<6F>s most powerful leader in decades will drive market reforms are girding for disappointment. As he gears up for his second term, hoped-for market liberalization is increasingly being viewed as secondary to Xi<58>s state-centered approach to economic policy and his focus on stability. The Communist Party Congress beginning on Wednesday in Beijing is expected to see Xi consolidate his power and is unlikely to see a change in his priorities. Party spokesman Tuo Zhen told reporters at a briefing on Tuesday that China will persist with opening up and expanding market access. But foreign executives and analysts question whether these kinds of comments will mean a lot on the ground. <20>I don<6F>t see market opening coming. It<49>s all about discipline and control,<2C> said one senior China-based American executive, who declined to be identified. China<6E>s State Council Information Office referred questions on market reforms to the country<72>s economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, which did not respond to a faxed request for comment. Some Chinese policy insiders said that they don<6F>t expect any significant speeding up. <20>We will not rush on reforms. The pace of changes will not change dramatically,<2C> said one advisor to the Chinese government who was speaking on condition of anonymity. EARLY HOPES DASHED Xi<58>s sweeping anti-corruption campaign and his move to personally take charge of economic policymaking had initially been seen by China analysts as early signs that he would use his consolidated power to push tough reforms through entrenched bureaucracies. The party<74>s 2013 pledge under Xi<58>s then-new administration to let the market play a decisive role in the economy had also given hope to those pushing for reform. But many analysts and business leaders now see Xi<58>s faith in markets as tenuous, and that 2013 reform pledge as a mere holdover from his predecessors. A lack of follow-through over the past several years on repeated State Council vows to open markets to the world have left foreign businesses with <20>promise fatigue<75>, as the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China put it last month. Those delays coincide with the passage of a raft of new national security and cyber security laws and regulations that China<6E>s trading partners complain will put them at a disadvantage. <20>For the past 20 or 30 years it was economic development at all costs, and I think we are seeing a new paradigm now where national security is dominant and economic issues are channelled through that lens,<2C> said Jude Blanchette, who studies the party at The Conference Board<72>s China Center for Economics and Business in Beijing. Blanchette said true market reforms in Xi<58>s second term would mean walking back much of the control he has fought to acquire, an unlikely prospect. STABILITY WINS Other painful reforms that many economists say are needed have also moved slowly under Xi. They include overhauling China<6E>s debt-laden state sector, fixing the fiscal system to tackle local government debt, bringing in new property taxes to ward off housing bubbles, and allowing farmers to sell their land more freely. Capital controls, including restrictions on some outbound investment deals, have helped stabilise the yuan, but at the cost of hampering China<6E>s ambition to internationalise the currency. Chinese reform advocates say the government has been avoidin
'e6744adbef8c1115a7c66a6dbff51636a808c64b'|'Obituary - Jim Saft, Reuters columnist, a man of humour and insight'|'Reuters TV United States October 17, 2017 / 5:03 PM / Updated 7 minutes ago Obituary: Jim Saft, Reuters columnist, a man of humor and insight Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Reuters columnist James Saft poses for a portrait at the Thomson Reuters building in the Canary Wharf financial district of London March 25, 2009. REUTERS/Simon Newman (Reuters) - <20>No one is paid to front run the apocalypse<73>. This headline by Jim Saft, who died on Monday after suffering a stroke last month, was typical of the writing of one of Reuters smartest and most engaging columnists on investment and markets. [SAFT/] Saft brought immense expertise, sensitivity and good humor to each of his roles over more than 20 years at Reuters. An American, he joined Reuters in London, leading the financial reporting team during the early days of the euro zone and during the internet bust of the early 2000s. He was global treasury editor from 2002 until 2007, when he became Reuters first columnist, in part so he could later relocate his family to Alabama. Saft made an immediate mark with prescient commentary on the threat from the U.S. subprime mortgage bubble, a recurrent theme in columns that ran twice weekly on Reuters, in the International Herald Tribune and elsewhere. His work won him an award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in 2008. Writing three columns a week in recent years, Saft said he never felt short of topics. Reuters Editor-in-Chief Stephen Adler said Saft<66>s insight and humor will be missed by his colleagues. Edited by Clive McKeef and Jeremy Gaunt 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-people-reuters-jimsaft/obituary-jim-saft-reuters-columnist-a-man-of-humor-and-insight-idUKKBN1CM2IE'|'2017-10-17T20:01:00.000+03:00'
'f434abd155c18096afcf4874fc149ae024aae0dd'|'China''s Xi says to maintain principle property is not for speculation'|' 45 AM / in 19 minutes China''s Xi says to maintain principle property is not for speculation Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks during the opening of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee BEIJING (Reuters) - China will maintain the principle that houses are for people to live in, not for speculation, President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday at the opening of a key Communist Party congress. The principle was first introduced by China<6E>s top leaders at an economic conference last December, as the country sought to crack down on rampant speculative buying in its property market through a flurry of government curbs. Reporting by Christian Shepherd and Stella Qiu; Writing by Yawen Chen; Editing by Jacqueline Wong 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-property/chinas-xi-says-to-maintain-principle-property-is-not-for-speculation-idUKKBN1CN0B5'|'2017-10-18T06:45:00.000+03:00'
'0cf57232aec8bf9769a2ae8b1e2d76ef7acd4e20'|'MOVES- AMP Capital, MUFG'|'October 18, 2017 / 7:48 PM / Updated 13 minutes ago MOVES- AMP Capital, MUFG Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 18 (Reuters) - The following financial services industry appointments were announced on Wednesday. To inform us of other job changes, email moves@thomsonreuters.com. AMP CAPITAL Investor manager AMP Capital appointed Sudhanshu Garg as institutional director for its newly opened representative office in Dubai. MITSUBISHI UFJ FINANCIAL GROUP INC Hussain Hussain has been appointed head of capital markets for the Middle East at MUFG, according to a source familiar with the matter, IFR reported. (Compiled by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/financial-moves/moves-amp-capital-mufg-idUSL4N1MT4VE'|'2017-10-18T22:47:00.000+03:00'
'5fd28d0c3eb66e846dbbe60f5c2b1d997bf3377f'|'Miners provide foundation for FTSE while Convatec plummets'|'October 16, 2017 / 8:48 AM / in 40 minutes Miners provide foundation for FTSE while ConvaTec plummets Helen Reid , Kit Rees 3 Min Read A sign displays the crest and name of the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON (Reuters) - Medical device firm ConvaTec was bruised after a profit warning on Monday, but mining companies stemmed broader losses on the FTSE share index. Britain''s FTSE 100 .FTSE ended the session down 0.1 percent, with basic resource stocks adding the most points to the index. Data showing improving manufacturing profits in China, indicating robust growth in the world<6C>s top metals consumer, boosted heavyweight miners as copper prices soared to a three-year high. Antofagasta ( ANTO.L ), Glencore ( GLEN.L ), BHP Billiton ( BLT.L ), Rio Tinto ( RIO.L ) and Anglo American ( AAL.L ) rose 0.5 percent to 1.9 percent. Mid-caps Sirius Minerals ( SXX.L ), Kaz Minerals ( KAZ.L ) and Vedanta Resources ( VED.L ) gained 3.1 to 6.4 percent. Analysts<74> earnings expectations for the basic resources sector have grown rosier in recent weeks. UK-listed miners rose in line with the European sector index .SXPP, which was up 0.8 percent at its highest since February 2013. ConvaTec ( CTEC.L ) plummeted 26.6 percent after the firm warned full-year revenue growth would fall short of expectations, citing severe supply issues impacting two divisions that account for 60 percent of revenue. The stock hit an all-time low and posted its worst day since its listing a year ago. <20>For such a high-profile IPO to have its growth expectations slide so soon after listing is a poke in the eye for the London market,<2C> Patronus Partners analysts said in a note. Earnings-per-share expectations could be downgraded 5 to 10 percent after this update, they predicted. <20>ConvaTec is on a punchy rating,<2C> said Paul Kavanagh, director at Patronus. <20>We hope this statement really bottoms out the extent of the problem, but the jury is still out until we see progress in the next three months,<2C> he added. <20>If there<72>s not a bit of catch-up then 2018 forecasts could come under further pressure.<2E> Another big faller was engineering group GKN ( GKN.L ), down 3.4 percent. Several brokerages cut their target price on the stock after GKN warned its annual profit would fall short of expectations due to disappointing aerospace trading. Reporting by Helen Reid and Kit Rees; Editing by Dale Hudson 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-stocks/miners-provide-foundation-for-ftse-while-convatec-plummets-idUKKBN1CL0WF'|'2017-10-16T11:48:00.000+03:00'
'552a8a71f0047bac11ec8eade668524e26491ad6'|'Home Capital to sell payment processing, prepaid card business'|'FILE PHOTO - The entry to the Home Capital Group''s headquarters is seen at an office tower in the financial district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada on May 1, 2017. Picture taken using a wide angle lens. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo (Reuters) - Canadian mortgage lender Home Capital Group Inc ( HCG.TO ) said on Monday it would sell its payment processing and prepaid card business.The sale, which also includes Home Capital<61>s payment services interactive gateway units, is expected to generate about C$20 million ($15.97 million) in annual savings, the lender said.Home Capital said it expects a reduction in fee and other income of about C$18 million due to the sale.The deal is expected to close in 2017, the company said, without identifying the buyer.($1 = 1.25 Canadian dollars)Reporting by John Benny in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-home-capital-divestiture/home-capital-to-sell-payment-processing-prepaid-card-business-idINKBN1CL2QQ'|'2017-10-16T17:16:00.000+03:00'
'3525ff3dfc5e15f1b9acaccc3d3b0abced5a958b'|'CEE MARKETS-Crown leads firming on rate hike bets, shrugs off elections'|'* Crown strongest vs euro for years on rate hike bets * Zloty firms, ignores that Poland will quit IMF credit line * Forint underperforms after dovish central banker comments By Sandor Peto and Jason Hovet BUDAPEST, Oct 16 (Reuters) - The Czech crown led a rise of Central European currencies on Monday, firming back to levels seen before the central bank (CNB) launched an intervention regime in 2013 and gaining on chances of more interest rate hikes to come. The crown traded at 25.788 against the euro at 0843 GMT, firmer by 0.2 percent from Friday. The economy would benefit from a 50-75 basis point interest rate increase before the end of 2018, CNB board member Vojtech Benda was Quote: d as saying on Thursday. The CNB, which has the lowest inflation target in the region at 2 percent, became the first European Union central bank in August to hike rates since 2012. The currency usually ignores politics. The prospect, that at elections at the end of this week, voters look set to hand leadership to tough-talking populist billionaire Andrej Babis, does not affect it either. Babis is ready to take on Brussels but without the burden of ideology that has dragged Poland and Hungary into rifts with Brussels. Warsaw judiciary reform plans, which have triggered worries over the rule of law in Brussels, maintain risks to the zloty which has been helped this month by a dollar selling. The dollar regained some composure on Monday, but Poland''s good economic prospects and stability buoyed the zloty which firmed 0.2 percent to 4.2432 against the euro. It shrugged off an announcement made by the Finance Ministry on Saturday that Poland would quit a precautionary Flexible Credit Line from the International Monetary Fund. "The external stability of the economy remains high (low current account deficit, high foreign exchange reserves, low short-term debt)," Bank Millennium economists said in a note. Polish and Hungarian government bond yields mostly fell by 2-3 basis points. The forint and the leu underperformed the crown and the zloty. Hungarian central bank (NBH) Deputy Governor Marton Nagy spurred expectations for further monetary easing in dovish comments on Friday, but failed to talk down the forint. Trading at 308.10 against the euro on Monday, it stays near four-week highs, and it may head towards 305 if the international sentiment remains positive, one Budapest-based dealer said. The NBH''s weekly fx swap auction later on Monday is unlikely to weaken the forint as it will not tender the most liquid 12-month expiry, traders said. Elsewhere, Bucharest also plans controversial judiciary reforms, like Warsaw, and that is an issue weighing on Romanian assets. CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1043 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.788 25.838 +0.20 4.73% 0 5 % Hungary 308.10 308.41 +0.10 0.23% forint 00 50 % Polish zloty 4.2432 4.2525 +0.22 3.79% % Romanian leu 4.5845 4.5877 +0.07 -1.08% % Croatian 7.5060 7.5095 +0.05 0.65% kuna % Serbian 119.16 119.35 +0.16 3.52% dinar 00 00 % Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1052.2 1053.0 -0.08% +14.1 9 8 8% Budapest 38986. 38894. +0.24 +21.8 63 88 % 2% Warsaw 2536.3 2528.1 +0.32 +30.2 0 6 % 1% Bucharest 8031.4 8034.9 -0.04% +13.3 7 6 6% Ljubljana 812.98 816.75 -0.46% +13.2 9% Zagreb 1847.8 1862.4 -0.79% -7.37% 3 8 Belgrade 728.75 727.24 +0.21 +1.59 % % Sofia 669.47 669.17 +0.04 +14.1 % 6% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs change Bund in Czech spread Republic 2-year 0.086 0.149 +081b +15bp ps s 5-year 0.504 0.012 +082b +2bps ps 10-year 1.364 -0.002 +096b +0bps ps Poland 2-year 1.694 -0.004 +241b -1bps ps 5-year 2.648 -0.017 +297b -1bps ps 10-year 3.288 -0.02 +288b -2bps ps FORWARD RATE AGREEMENT 3x6 6x9 9x12 3M interb ank Czech Rep <PR 0.78 0.93 1.05 0 IBOR=> Hungary <BU 0.07 0.1 0.15 0.03 BOR=> Poland <WI 1.773 1.811 1.868 1.73 BOR=> Note:
'236054fc0aff738a6e5bee82b3e1cf02d2966b8f'|'Nordstrom family suspends attempt to take retailer private'|'A sign directs shoppers to a Nordstrom store at a shopping mall in La Jolla, California, U.S., May 17, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo (Reuters) - Nordstrom Inc said on Monday that a founding family group had suspended attempts to take the U.S. department store operator private because of difficulties in arranging debt financing for its bid ahead of the key holiday shopping season.Nordstrom shares dropped as much as 7 percent as investors were again reminded of the challenges of the U.S. brick-and-mortar retail sector, which has seen a record number of bankruptcies this year amid competition from e-commerce firms such as Amazon.com Inc and off-price stores like TJX Cos Inc.Nordstrom<6F>s rival Hudson<6F>s Bay Co, owner of the Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor retail chains, has also been exploring going private, Reuters has reported. Its shares dropped 5 percent on Monday as analysts said the chances of other retailers clinching such deals had become slimmer.<2E>It<49>s difficult to make a case for private equity investing in these legacy retail companies when the play is really not about growing the company so much as right sizing it,<2C> said Neil Saunders, retail analyst at Global Data.Nordstrom shares dropped to $39.64, their lowest level in five months, giving the company a market capitalization of around $6.6 billion.Nordstrom said in June that the family group, which owns 31.2 percent of the storied retailer, was looking to take the company private. Sources said the family believed it could better manage the company<6E>s operational restructuring and transition to e-commerce away from the public markets.Nordstrom, which has sought to become more competitive by investing in its off-price discount chain Nordstrom Rack, in August reported better-than-expected quarterly same-store sales, as more people shopped at its online stores.The family was seeking to partner with buyout firm Leonard Green & Partners LP on the bid, sources had said. But investment banks balked at providing the debt financing required for the bid, estimated at between $7 billion and $8 billion.Last Friday, representatives of the Nordstrom family group informed Nordstrom<6F>s special board committee handling the potential deal that it had given up on efforts to take the company private until the end of the year because of the difficult of obtaining debt financing, according to a Nordstrom regulatory filing. It added that the group would explore a take-private bid after the holiday season.A source close to the family group said Nordstrom<6F>s upcoming holiday sales did not have to be particularly strong for a deal to materialize, and that it was the uncertainty of what the shopping season will look like that weighed on the banks<6B> appetite to finance the bid.However, the market for leveraged buyouts in the retail sector has been very choppy of late, with debt investors licking their wounds after participating in recent deals.The $2 billion of bonds issued by specialty pet retailer PetSmart in May to finance its $3 billion acquisition of online rival Chewy have suffered steep losses.When private equity firm Sycamore Partners acquired office supplies retailer Staples Inc for $6.9 billion last month, it separated its retail from its business-to-business delivery operations to make financing more palatable to investors.However, Sycamore was forced to cut the size of the planned bond deal by $300 million to $1 billion to pay a higher yield than originally targeted to sell the debt. The bonds have lost some of their value since then.Neiman Marcus, another Nordstrom<6F>s rival, canceled plans earlier this year for an initial public offering after struggling with its soaring debt pile.Some activist investors are pushing ailing retailers to explore other strategies.Hedge fund Snow Park Capital Partners LP has advocated for department store operator Dillard<72>s Inc to unlock the value of its real estate by replacing some of its own stores with other, potentially higher value, oc
'37045c1833598f1db0d83e91529638bb4df83bee'|'Virgin Media is chasing me for over outstanding bill for a phone I never owned - Money - The Guardian'|'Can you please help me to get Virgin Media to call off the debt collectors for a mobile phone contract that is nothing to do with me?I have never owned a mobile, but in June I noticed the company had taken two <20>13 payments by direct debit. I contacted the bank to cancel the direct debit, and staff confirmed that I had been refunded the money. They advised me that it was probably a clerical error and nothing to worry about. But in August I received a threatening letter from debt collectors demanding <20>39 outstanding from Virgin Mobile.I have since spent many hours trying to resolve this. Over 50 phone calls have ended in failure because the call handler demands the number of the mobile and/or password, which not having ever opened an account with Virgin Mobile I cannot supply. Please help. IW, CroydonVirgin Media got on the case and have now assured you that the matter is resolved. The company said that staff failings would be followed up with the individuals who declined to escalate calls and their managers. A goodwill payment of <20>50 to reflect the loss of time and phone costs is being sent.I would advise you to sign up with the fraud prevention service Cifas . This will mean you will be notified if anyone else applies for credit in your name in the future. It is clear that a fraudster used your identity to purchase the phone, and they may try and do the same again.We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@theguardian.com or write to Consumer Champions, Money, the Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone numberTopics Mobile phones Consumer champions Consumer rights Consumer affairs Virgin Media features'|'theguardian.com'|'http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/business/uk-edition/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/oct/17/virgin-media-mobile-bill-debt-collectors'|'2017-10-17T03:00:00.000+03:00'
'd55b94fd91e031b9ce014fe3d6196e326b8aaeb9'|'Indian state revokes order to check planting of Monsanto GM cotton'|'October 14, 2017 / 2:41 PM / in 8 minutes Indian state revokes order to check planting of Monsanto GM cotton 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Monsanto''s research farm is pictured near Carman, Manitoba, Canada August 3, 2017. REUTERS/Zachary Prong/File Photo NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A leading Indian cotton producing-state has withdrawn an order asking government officials to inspect fields planted with an unapproved variety of genetically modified (GM) cotton developed by Monsanto Co ( MON.N ), the world<6C>s No. 1 seed maker. Farmers in Andhra Pradesh have planted 15 percent of the cotton area in the state with Bollgard II Roundup Ready Flex (RRF), prompting the local government on Oct. 5 to form a panel of officials to inspect the fields of farmers growing RRF. The earlier order has been cancelled, senior Andhra Pradesh official B. Rajasekhar said in a statement issued on Friday, and seen by Reuters. Rajasekhar did not give any reason for rescinding last week<65>s order. Calls to his office went unanswered. Bollgard II RRF is a proprietary technology owned by Monsanto, which last year withdrew its application seeking approval from the regulator, Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), for this variety. It is not clear how Bollgard II RRF seeped into some cotton fields without the approval of GEAC. Monsanto applied for GEAC approval of Bollgard II RRF, known for its herbicide-tolerant properties, in 2007. When the U.S. company withdrew the application last year, it was in the final stages of a lengthy process that included years of field trials. A Monsanto spokesman had earlier said that it was a matter of <20>grave concern<72> that some seed companies were attempting to incorporate unauthorised, unapproved technologies into their seeds. New Delhi approved the first GM cotton seed trait in 2003 and an upgraded variety in 2006, helping transform India into the world<6C>s top producer and second-largest exporter of the fibre. Monsanto is locked in a bitter battle with a leading India seed company, Nuziveedu Seeds Ltd, drawing in the Indian and U.S. governments, Reuters revealed earlier this year.( reut.rs/2ncBknn ) Reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj; Editing by Adrian Croft 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-india-monsanto-cotton/indian-state-revokes-order-to-check-planting-of-monsanto-gm-cotton-idUKKBN1CJ0IP'|'2017-10-14T17:40:00.000+03:00'
'b52034c9590dd7a65654f12a39abf03eb7faef1c'|'Wells Fargo hit by legal charges, mortgage banking slump'|'Oct 13 (Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co reported an 18.6 percent decline in quarterly profit on Friday, hurt by previously disclosed legal costs and a slump in mortgage banking income.Net income fell to $4.60 billion, or 84 cents per share for the quarter ended Sept. 30, from $5.64 billion, or $1.03 per share, in the same quarter of 2016.The results included $1 billion in previously disclosed legal costs, but it was not clear whether that figure factored into Wall Street estimates.Revenue fell to $21.9 billion from $22.3 billion a year earlier. Mortgage banking income plunged 37.3 percent.Analysts had forecast net income of $5.16 billion on revenue of $22.4 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data from earlier this week. (Reporting by Sweta Singh in Bengaluru and Dan Freed in New York; Editing by Bernard Orr)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/wells-fargo-results/wells-fargo-hit-by-legal-charges-mortgage-banking-slump-idINL4N1MO4DS'|'2017-10-13T10:20:00.000+03:00'
'4bbd453ed5f648a40202d4dc20a161499932af54'|'Airlines are trying to cram ever-more seats onto planes'|'AIRLINES use all sorts of clever tricks to make more money from passengers. They charge extra for bags, for food and for selecting where you sit. Now they are embracing another strategy: packing more seats onto each plane. Last month American Airlines announced that it will insert 12 more seats, or two rows, into its economy class on its Boeing 737-800 fleet and an extra nine seats into its Airbus A321s. Similarly, JetBlue recently said it will cram 12 additional seats into its A320s.But flyers do not like being packed ever-more tightly into the sardine tins that planes have become. This summer American Airlines announced that it would reduce the distance between rows<77>known as seat pitch<63>from 30 to 29 inches on some of its new planes. The public outcry was so heated that the carrier scrapped its plans, as Gulliver has previously reported . This February a member of Congress introduced legislation to mandate a minimum seat pitch on commercial flights, though it failed to become law. And in July, a federal judge ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to review a public petition which argued for seat-pitch regulation on health and safety grounds. The judge dubbed it <20>the case of the incredible shrinking airline seat<61>. 9 But there are ways to get more passengers onto planes without sacrificing comfort or enraging the public. One is to use thinner seats. And manufacturers are racing to come up with innovative designs. Gone are the stiff metal backrests coated with thick padding. Many seats now have netted frames that require less cushioning. A California-based manufacturer says one inch of its honeycomb-design thermoplastic urethane cushioning can replace three inches of old foam padding.Other space-saving ideas abound. Magazine holders are migrating from the bottom of the back of the seat, where they bumped knees, to the top. Some manufacturers are contouring their seats to match the curve of a plane<6E>s walls and maximize width. Mark Hiller, the boss of Recaro Aircraft Seating, a German firm, told the Chicago Tribune that new designs can make a 27-inch pitch feel as comfortable as a 29-inch one.This could be a boon for seatmakers. Aircraft interiors industry, which includes seat manufacturers, is worth $17bn today and is forecast to grow to $29bn by 2021, according to the Los Angeles Times . That is partly explained by high demand for new planes: Boeing expects airlines to require more than 37,000 jets over the next two decades. But it is also because of the need for more compact seats.Few would describe a 29-inch pitch<63>which leaves maybe an inch of spare legroom for a 5-foot-11-inch man<61>as comfortable. Gulliver wishes that manufacturers were instead working to make 33-inch pitches feel like the 35 inches of yesteryear. But packing in more seats has become a necessary step for airlines to keep fares low. For flyers who want to pay as little as possible, those cramped knees are worth it. And for those who do not, there is always an upgrade to business class.Next All-you-can-fly membership models are slowly catching on'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/10/squeezy-jet?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-11T22:03:00.000+03:00'
'0dd267a164e054dc8b5e16d9b7d4847fba8da3e2'|'U.S. Supreme Court to decide major Microsoft email privacy fight'|'October 16, 2017 / 2:09 PM / in 16 minutes U.S. Supreme Court to decide major Microsoft email privacy fight Lawrence Hurley 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Microsoft logo is shown on the Microsoft Theatre at the E3 2017 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, U.S. June 13, 2017. REUTERS/ Mike Blake/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to resolve a major privacy dispute between the Justice Department and Microsoft Corp over whether prosecutors should get access to emails stored on company servers overseas. The justices will hear the Trump administration<6F>s appeal of a lower court<72>s ruling last year preventing federal prosecutors from obtaining emails stored in Microsoft computer servers in Dublin, Ireland in a drug trafficking investigation. That decision by the New York-based 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals marked a victory for privacy advocates and technology companies that increasingly offer cloud computing services in which data is stored remotely. Microsoft, which has 100 data centers in 40 countries, was the first U.S. company to challenge a domestic search warrant seeking data held outside the country. There have been several similar challenges, most brought by Google. <20>If U.S. law enforcement can obtain the emails of foreigners stored outside the United States, what<61>s to stop the government of another country from getting your emails even though they are located in the United States?<3F> Brad Smith, Microsoft<66>s president and chief legal officer, said in a blog post on Monday. The Justice Department said in its appeal that the lower court ruling <20>gravely threatens public safety and national security<74> because it limits the government<6E>s ability to <20>ward off terrorism and similar national security threats and to investigate and prosecute crimes.<2E> The case attracted significant attention from technology and media companies concerned that a ruling favoring the government could jeopardize the privacy of customers and make them less likely to use cloud services because of concern that data could be seized. The appeals court ruled that Microsoft could not be forced to turn over emails sought in the narcotics case that were stored in Dublin. The Microsoft customer in question had told the company he was based in Ireland when he signed up for his account. Though Microsoft is based in Washington state, the court said the emails were beyond the reach of U.S. domestic search warrants issued under a 1986 law called the Stored Communications Act. The Microsoft case is the second that the justices have agreed to hear in their current term that touches upon privacy rights in the digital age and the sheer amount of data on customers that companies now hold. The other case concerns whether police officers need a warrant to access historic location information on cell phone users that is held by wireless carriers. Rulings in both cases are due by the end of June. BEYOND THE REACH In the Microsoft dispute, the Justice Department asked the appeals court to rehear the case but in January the full court split 4-4 on whether to do so, leaving the original decision intact. The lower court ruling put stored electronic communications held overseas beyond the reach of U.S. prosecutors even when there is probable cause that they contain evidence of a crime, Justice Department lawyers said in court papers. In the appeals court, Microsoft was supported by dozens of technology and media companies including Amazon, Apple, CNN and Verizon Communications, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce business group. A coalition of 33 U.S. states and Puerto Rico backed the Justice Department<6E>s appeal. In the underlying case, the government in 2013 sought a warrant requiring information about a Microsoft email account that prosecutors believed was being used for narcotics trafficking. No further details about the investigation have been made public. The Supreme Court has
'bac85326ddf886ab69fceba433ee4d7977d2e055'|'Ford offers repairs to prevent exhaust leaks in 1.4 million Explorers'|'October 13, 2017 / 6:30 PM / Updated 20 minutes ago Ford offers repairs to prevent exhaust leaks in 1.4 million Explorers David Shepardson 3 Min Read A Ford logo is pictured at a car dealership in Monterrey, Mexico, November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co ( F.N ) said on Friday it will offer free repairs to North American owners of more than 1.4 million Explorer sport utility vehicles to help ensure that carbon monoxide and other exhaust gases cannot get into the vehicles, following the U.S. government<6E>s decision to upgrade an investigation into the issue in July. Several U.S. police agencies have raised concerns about potentially deadly carbon monoxide gas entering the cabins of Ford Explorers that had been adapted for law enforcement uses. Federal regulators have said they are aware of more than 2,700 complaints, three crashes and 41 injuries that may be linked to exposure to carbon monoxide among police and civilian 2011-2017 Explorer vehicles. Ford said its investigation has not found <20>carbon monoxide levels that exceed what people are exposed to every day<61> in the 1.4 million civilian vehicles. There is no U.S. government standard for in-vehicle carbon monoxide levels. Ford says it believes the vehicles are safe and is making the offer, which it is not classifying as a recall, in response to customer concerns. The second largest U.S. automaker said starting November 1, dealers will reprogramme the air conditioner, replace the liftgate drain valves and inspect sealing of the rear of the vehicle. The fix covers about 1.3 million U.S. vehicles and about 100,000 in Canada and Mexico. Ford declined to comment on the potential financial impact of the service offer that will last through the end of 2018. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in July upgraded and expanded a probe into 1.33 million Ford Explorer SUVs over reports of exhaust odours in vehicle compartments and exposure to carbon monoxide. Police agencies have reported two crashes that may be linked to carbon monoxide exposure and a third incident involving injuries related to carbon monoxide exposure. NHTSA said it is evaluating preliminary testing that suggests carbon monoxide levels may be elevated in certain driving scenarios. Ford has issued four technical service bulletins related to the exhaust odour issue to address complaints from police fleets and other owners. In July, Ford said it would pay to repair police versions of its Ford Explorer SUVs to correct possible carbon monoxide leaks that may be linked to crashes and injuries after some police reports temporarily halted use of the vehicles over carbon monoxide concerns. The city of Austin, Texas said in July it would removing all 400 of the city<74>s Ford Explorer SUVs from use for additional testing and repairs after the city said 20 police officers were found with elevated levels of carbon monoxide. The department returned the vehicles to service after repairs and testing. Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/ford-motor-emissions/ford-offers-repairs-to-prevent-exhaust-leaks-in-1-4-million-explorers-idINKBN1CI2OU'|'2017-10-13T21:27:00.000+03:00'
'2b4612ad90259f04bfb6736f36cd2f1230970876'|'ThaiBev acquires Myanmar distilleries as TPG exits'|' 22 AM / Updated 18 minutes ago ThaiBev acquires Myanmar distilleries as TPG exits Kane Wu 2 Min Read HONG KONG, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Thai Beverage Public Co has acquired a combined 75 percent stake in two Myanmar distilleries in a deal worth $742 million, hoping to tap into growth in the country<72>s nascent spirits market. ThaiBev acquired the 75 percent stake in Myanmar Supply Chain and Services Go (MSCS) and Myanmar Distillery Co (MDC) from four third-party vendors, including Texas-based private equity firm TPG which sold its 50 percent stake in MDC, according to their separate announcements. The deal gives Singapore-listed ThaiBev access to an expanded distribution network in Myanmar, as the food and beverage conglomerate looks to overseas market for growth after a recent sales dip. ThaiBev sales in the first nine months of its fiscal year, from October 2016 to June 2017, dropped 6 percent year-on-year to 142 billion baht ($4.3 billion), due to slow economic growth and the observance of a national mourning period. ThaiBev executives said earlier this month it planned to launch two new spirit products in November and that M&A activities in key markets such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar were needed. The two Myanmar companies operate two production facilities in Yangon and Mandalay under the spirits brand Grand Royal, the largest whisky player in the country. TPG, one of early global investors in the Southeast Asian country after it opened up to foreign investors a few years ago, more than tripled its investment in a sooner-than-expected exit. TPG<50>s 50 percent stake in MDC via an investment vehicle was sold for $494.4 million, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal. The firm bought the stake for $150 million in Dec 2015, the person said. ThaiBev acquired a five percent direct stake in the two companies and another 70 percent indirect stake held by two investment holding companies, in a combined cash deal of $741.6 million. The transaction was funded with internal cash and bank financing, ThaiBev said. (Reporting by Kane Wu; Editing by Stephen Coates) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/myanmar-ma-thai-beverage/thaibev-acquires-myanmar-distilleries-as-tpg-exits-idUSL4N1MO26A'|'2017-10-13T13:22:00.000+03:00'
'7254d9100968d28e1ac34a5f299d3cc58e6fe1bc'|'Austrian competition authority concerned about Lufthansa monopoly in Vienna'|'Lufthansa airliners park at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria<69>s competition authority BWB sees Lufthansa gain anti-competitive dominance on many routes in Vienna after the agreed takeover of Air Berlin<69>s Niki unit and plans to voice its concerns in Brussels, a spokeswoman said on Friday.The German airline signed a 210 million euro ($249 million) deal to buy large parts of insolvent Air Berlin on Thursday, which includes the takeover of the Austrian leisure airline.<2E>We see an anti-competitive Lufthansa monopoly in Vienna on many routes after the takeover of Fly Niki,<2C> the competition authority<74>s spokeswoman said. <20>We will voice our concern about the takeover at the European Commission.<2E>Reporting by Kirsti Knolle; Editing by Shadia Nasralla'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-lufthansa-niki/austrian-competition-authority-concerned-about-lufthansa-monopoly-in-vienna-idINKBN1CI0SF'|'2017-10-13T05:49:00.000+03:00'
'6d8567f531c57cb1038eb6709bdb269a4fc2a4c0'|'Russia''s Gazprom Neft ''holds its nose'' at global oil output cut'|'October 16, 2017 / 11:46 AM / in an hour Russia''s Gazprom Neft ''holds its nose'' at global oil output cut Olesya Astakhova 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Vadim Yakovlev, Gazprom Neft first deputy chief executive, attends an interview at the Reuters Russia Investment Summit in Moscow, Russia September 16, 2016. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin/File Photo ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Russian energy firm Gazprom Neft ( SIBN.MM ) is chafing at a global deal to cut oil output because the pact has forced the company to curtail its ambitious plans for production growth, deputy chief executive Vadim Yakovlev said in an interview. Yakovlev said the company, Russia<69>s fastest-growing oil producer by output, views the deal as short-term. He also said Gazprom Neft<66>s Middle East operations are of <20>strategic importance<63> and it plans to increase its presence there. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other leading oil producers, including Russia, agreed to reduce their combined output by around 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) until the end of March 2018. There have been mixed signals about the possibility of extending the deal, while Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested it could be stretched to the end of next year. Yakovlev<65>s comments underscore the frustration of some Russian companies with the deal, which forced them to cut production from 30-year highs reached in October 2016 - the baseline for the agreement. <20>We are working today in conditions of uncertainty over the extension of the OPEC and non-OPEC deal,<2C> Yakovlev told Reuters in an interview cleared for publication on Monday. <20>The companies involved in this deal are paying a different price. The effect is equal for everyone, but the contribution of the companies to the deal is different,<2C> he said. <20>This is related to the market players<72> ability to increase their output - we have such a possibility and have to <20>hold our noses<65> (at the deal). Gazprom Neft makes a big contribution to the deal. For us, this is a very sensitive issue as it is holding up the development of our fields.<2E> The company plans to increase its oil output in 2018, he said. FILE PHOTO: Vadim Yakovlev, Gazprom Neft first deputy chief executive, attends an interview at the Reuters Russia Investment Summit in Moscow, Russia September 16, 2016. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin/File Photo <20>In any case, we view this deal as a short-term one,<2C> Yakovlev said. Gazprom Neft has been the fastest-growing Russian energy company by output because of new fields. Last year, it produced 86.2 million tonnes of oil equivalent, with plans to boost that to 89.4 million this year and to at least 90 million in 2018. Its production jumped by 20 percent in 2015 and by 8 percent in 2016. Oil output is seen rising to 63 million tonnes (1.26 million bpd) in 2018 from the planned 62 million tonnes this year, Yakovlev said. <20>Our proposal to the board is to produce at least 90 million tonnes of hydrocarbons in 2018, including over 63 million tonnes of oil and gas condensate,<2C> Yakovlev said, adding that key greenfields, such as Novoport, Messoyakha and Prirazlomnoye, will show production growth next year. IRAQ, IRAN Gazprom Neft produces oil at Iraqi<71>s Badra field. It expects production there to stay between 85,000 and 90,000 bpd in 2018, plateauing as high as 110,000 bpd in the future, Yakovlev said. Iraq has asked foreign producers to cut spending on oil projects to reduce the cash-strapped government<6E>s contribution in shared ventures. Gazprom Neft<66>s peer Lukoil ( LKOH.MM ) was forced to curtail its output plans there. Yakovlev said Baghdad had not asked Gazprom Neft to curtail production. Gazprom Neft also plans to develop two oilfields in neighbouring Iran - Shangule and Cheshmeh-Khosh. Tehran has said it expects to sign deals in the next five to six months with Russian firms on developing Iranian oil and gas resources. <20>We made our proposals, which we are discussing with the Iranian oil ministry and the Nati
'2dd9fdca2c16ead50a9ea2fda80a7679b8ff3002'|'U.S., Japan econ dialogue to seek common ground on thorny trade issues'|'National flags of Japan and the U.S. are seen in front of a monitor showing a graph of the Japanese yen''s exchange rate against the U.S. dollar at a foreign exchange trading company in Tokyo, Japan, January 23, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and Japan will seek to find common ground in thorny issues on trade in their second round of bilateral economic dialogue on Monday, with Tokyo showing little appetite to meet U.S. calls to open up its highly protected agricultural markets ahead of a general election this week.The U.S. delegation led by Vice President Mike Pence has said his administration hopes the dialogue, which kicked off in April, will lead to negotiations on a two-way trade deal that will give U.S. goods more access to Japanese markets.Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso, who heads the Japanese team, hopes to diffuse such calls with cooperation on infrastructure and energy, for fear a two-way trade agreement would expose it to stronger U.S. pressure to open up politically sensitive markets like farm products and beef.While Aso has said he hopes for a <20>win-win<69> deal, there is uncertainty on whether the two sides can narrow differences exposed at the first round of talks, analysts say.<2E>Japan has no plan to open talks for a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) any time soon,<2C> said a Japanese government official with knowledge of the negotiations.<2E>We may not see much progress as Washington seems to have a lot on their plate,<2C> with talks on renewing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) also under way, the official said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak publicly.Pence, Aso and U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will attend the meeting, at which officials will work on topics ranging from trade and investment rules to economic and structural policies. A joint statement will be released later.TEST OF BILATERAL RELATIONSHIP Japan will propose changes to safeguard mechanisms on U.S. frozen beef imports, though it is uncertain this would appease U.S. complaints, sources have told Reuters.The two sides may also discuss U.S. requests to loosen safety and environment requirements for Japan<61>s auto market, though Tokyo is against making any compromise.The dialogue is shaping up to be a test of whether the close U.S.-Japan relationship can withstand U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s campaign pledge to put <20>America First<73>.Japan has little political room for compromise, as premier Shinzo Abe<62>s ruling coalition seeks to win votes from farmers and dairy producers in a general election on Sunday.Trump campaigned for office saying he would boost U.S. manufacturing jobs and shrink the country<72>s trade deficit. He also abandoned the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and vowed to focus on two-way agreements.In the first dialogue in Tokyo, Pence said the dialogue could lead to negotiations on a two-way trade deal.Japan is opposed to two-way talks and negotiating on a TPP deal without the United States. David Lawder and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-japan-dialogue/u-s-japan-econ-dialogue-to-seek-common-ground-on-thorny-trade-issues-idINKBN1CL2LV'|'2017-10-16T20:52:00.000+03:00'
'6b019b969d7dea32ba5ef7746d375a224aa461ab'|'Asia shares sit on gains, await word from China''s Xi'|'October 18, 2017 / 12:41 AM / in 23 minutes Stocks rise on earnings while bonds, dollar fall Sinead Carew 4 Min Read Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street posted record closing highs on Wednesday, driven by strong earnings, while U.S. Treasuries declined in price as investors focused on monetary policy and the dollar snapped a four-day rally. Long-dated U.S. Treasury yields rose and yields on the 2-year Treasury note US2YT=RR hit their highest level since November 2007, as investors bet on tighter global monetary policy. [L2N1MT1VT] All three Wall Street major indexes posted record closing highs. Strong earnings from International Business Machines Corp ( IBM.N ) helped the Dow Jones Industrial Average close above the 23,000 milestone for the first time. <20>People are of the mindset that there is no alternative to equities and therefore they<65>re continuing to pour into them,<2C> said Ian Winer, head of equities at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 160.16 points, or 0.7 percent, to 23,157.6, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 1.9 points, or 0.07 percent, to 2,561.26 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 0.56 points, or 0.01 percent, to 6,624.22. MSCI<43>s gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD PUS gained 0.15 percent. Investors focused on global economic strength and expectations for a gradual monetary policy tightening as they waited for signals that the European Central Bank would buy fewer bonds, said Paul Christopher, head global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute in St. Louis. <20>That<61>s equivalent to taking your foot a little bit off the gas but not hitting the brake,<2C> he said. Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR last fell 12/32 in price to yield 2.3411 percent, from 2.298 percent late on Tuesday. The 30-year bond US30YT=RR last fell 29/32 in price to yield 2.8483 percent, from 2.803 percent late on Tuesday. Short-dated notes added to selling after comments from New York Fed President William Dudley, who sounded supportive of Fed Chair Janet Yellen<65>s weekend comments that the Fed was likely to continue its path of U.S. interest rate increases. While the dollar found some support from higher U.S. Treasury yields, the greenback, as measured against six other major currencies, reversed from a small gain to a small decline in afternoon trading. The dollar index .DXY fell 0.08 percent, with the euro EUR= up 0.22 percent to $1.1792. The dollar index may have hit technical resistance at around the 93.80 level, which could have restrained the currency<63>s rise at least in the near term, Eric Viloria, currency strategist at Wells Fargo Securities in New York, said. <20>I think we are looking at generally consolidative movement in the U.S. dollar,<2C> he said. In commodity markets, Brent oil prices retreated from three-week highs reached earlier on Wednesday, after a surprising fall-off in U.S. refining runs and an unexpected increase in inventories of gasoline and diesel. U.S. crude CLcv1 rose 0.31 percent to $52.04 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $58.20, up 0.55 percent on the day. Gold fell for a third straight session as investors favored riskier bets. Spot gold XAU= dropped 0.3 percent to $1,280.90 an ounce. Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch, Stephanie Kelly, Dion Rabouin, Saqib Iqbal Ahmed, David Gaffen in New York, Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru, Danilo Masoni in Milan; Editing by Leslie Adler and Tom Brown 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-markets/asia-shares-sit-on-gains-await-word-from-chinas-xi-idUKKBN1CN01S'|'2017-10-18T03:41:00.000+03:00'
'2bc6d628c138e2eebd055376869ee2ba2a01a29c'|'Nikkei rises for the 12th day, Kobe Steel resumes slide'|'* Winning streak for Nikkei is longest since May-June 2015* Kobe Steel resumes downtrend as US Justice Dept asks for recordsBy Lisa Twaronite and Ayai TomisawaTOKYO, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Nikkei share average rose for a 12th consecutive day on Wednesday, getting a lift from hopes that this weekend<6E>s election will produce political stability and continuation of loose monetary policy.The Nikkei ended 0.1 percent higher at a fresh 21-year high of 21,363.05. It<49>s the longest winning streak since May-June 2015, which was also 12 days, and equals the longest since Abenomics started in late 2012.<2E>Unlike Japan<61>s lost decade era, the Nikkei has posted a long winning streak once in a few years lately. It means that something has changed, and that<61>s corporate profits,<2C> said Takashi Ito, equity market strategist at Nomura Securities.He said that Japanese companies<65> profits have been rising over the past few years and this fundamental factor is underpinning investors<72> risk appetite, on top of hopes that the ruling bloc will win Sunday<61>s election.The broader Topix was slightly higher, up 0.1 percent at 1,724.64.Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe<62>s coalition is on track for a roughly two-thirds majority in the general election, a survey by Kyodo news agency showed, as its conservative rival led by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike appeared to lose momentum.Japanese companies overwhelmingly want Abe<62>s ruling coalition to stay in power but about two-thirds hope that it loses seats, according to a Reuters poll published on Wednesday.Exporters were broadly steady on Wednesday, with Toyota Motor Corp up 0.7 percent and Hitachi Ltd climbing 0.9 percent.Stock gains were capped by wariness over corporate scandals at some large firms.Shares of Kobe Steel Ltd shed 3.1 percent, resuming their slide after rising in the previous session. The steelmaker<65>s stock has dropped over 39 percent this month, since its scandal over data falsifying came to light.Kobe Steel said Tuesday it has been asked by the U.S. Justice Department to submit documents related to its data fabrication, as the company delivers its products to a wide range of industries in the United States from car makers to airlines. (Reporting by Lisa Twaronite and Ayai Tomisawa; Editing by Richard Borsuk)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/japan-stocks-close/nikkei-rises-for-the-12th-day-kobe-steel-resumes-slide-idINL4N1MT2L5'|'2017-10-18T05:19:00.000+03:00'
'df837ad45cb87085eb40b6456368b95c3cd31dcb'|'ACS''s Hochtief launches counter-bid for Abertis'|'October 18, 2017 / 1:49 PM / Updated 27 minutes ago ACS''s Hochtief makes $20 billion counterbid for Abertis 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Toll road operator Abertis<69>headquarters is seen in Barcelona, Spain, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard DUESSELDORF/MILAN (Reuters) - German builder Hochtief ( HOTG.DE ), controlled by Spain<69>s ACS ( ACS.MC ), made a 17.1 billion euro ($20.1 billion) bid for Spanish toll road operator Abertis ( ABE.MC ) on Wednesday, topping a rival offer from Italy<6C>s Atlantia ( ATL.MI ). Hochtief is offering 18.76 euros in cash, or 0.1281 Hochtief shares, for each Abertis share and has set a minimum acceptance threshold of 50 percent plus one share. Builder ACS is launching the bid via cash-positive Hochtief to protect its credit rating and avoid having to raise equity itself, though Hochtief<65>s plan to issue up to 24.8 million shares could dilute ACS<43>s 72 percent stake in the German firm to below 50 percent. The move creates a dilemma for Abertis, which has also received a cash and shares offer from Atlantia worth around 15.7 billion euros on a comparable basis, according to analysts. A tie-up between Atlantia, controlled by the Benetton family, and Abertis would create the world<6C>s biggest toll-roads operator and help both companies in their drive to branch out from their home markets. However, a source close to ACS - whose chairman Florentino Perez also heads Real Madrid soccer club - has told Reuters that its bid has the backing of the Spanish government, which may be reluctant to see Abertis<69>s politically sensitive motorways concessions in Spain fall into foreign hands. A previous deal between Atlantia and Abertis fell through in 2006 due to opposition from the Italian government. Related Coverage Hochtief CEO Marcelino Fernandez Verdes told reporters his firm<72>s bid was based purely on business considerations. <20>(It has) nothing to do with political decisions,<2C> he said at a press conference. Hochtief said Abertis would complement its business by adding the operation and maintenance of infrastructure to its developing and building operations, allowing it to <20>generate value throughout the entire infrastructure project life cycle.<2E> <20>It<49>s a combination of two completely complementary companies,<2C> Verdes said. He added that by securing a larger share in future infrastructure projects; by expanding the portfolio to include hospitals and schools; and via cost optimizations the deal could reap 6-8 billion euros in synergies. EXPECTING A FIGHT Atlantia launched its cash and shares bid in May, and people familiar with the matter told Reuters last week it was prepared to raise it if ACS - as expected - triggered a takeover battle. <20>Hochtief<65>s offer is very competitive, but we would expect Atlantia to fight for Abertis as this is a once in a lifetime opportunity,<2C> a Milan-based trader said. Abertis shares closed up 7 percent at 18.84 euros. ACS<43>s were up 5.2 percent at 33.06 euros, Hochtief<65>s up 1 percent at 151 euros and Atlantia<69>s down 1.2 percent at 26.91 euros. Hochtief has secured financing of 15 billion euros at a 2 percent interest rate and is planning to pay out up to 90 percent of its profit to shareholders after a successful Abertis bid, it said. Verdes said he was not planning job cuts and did not expect to face regulatory hurdles. Atlantia<69>s bid has already been approved by regulators and, according to two Italian sources, has the non-binding backing of investors representing more than 50 percent of Abertis<69>s capital. But one of the sources said Abertis<69> top investor, Criteria Caixa - the financial arm of a politically connected and powerful banking foundation - had not committed to taking up Atlantia<69>s offer. Criteria has a 22.3 percent stake in Abertis. Hochtief<65>s bid puts Atlantia<69>s offer, which began on Oct. 10 and was due to run through Oct. 24, on hold. Spanish market watchdog CNMV now has to examine Hochtief<65>s offer and decide whether it can go ahead. Additional reporting by Pamela Barbaglia and France
'42fb345b9542954d7618dae6af53a4bff41587d2'|'Lone Star takes charge of Portugal''s state-rescued Novo Banco'|'LISBON (Reuters) - U.S. private equity firm Lone Star signed on Wednesday the definitive agreement with Portugal<61>s bank resolution fund, giving it a 75 percent stake in state-rescued lender Novo Banco and putting an end to a near three-year sale process.Under the deal, Lone Star will inject a total of 1 billion euros ($1.18 billion) into the bank, which was formed from the ashes of Banco Espirito Santo<74>s collapse in 2014 after a 4.9 billion euro rescue, mostly in public funds.Earlier this month, Novo Banco said it had secured bondholders<72> approval for a discounted debt buyback guaranteeing savings on interest worth more than 500 million euros, a key condition for completing the sale first agreed in March.The country<72>s bank resolution fund, which is funded by all banks operating in Portugal, retains a 25 percent stake in Novo Banco.Reporting By Sergio Goncalves, writing by Andrei Khalip, editing by Axel Bugge'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-portugal-novobanco-lone-star/lone-star-takes-charge-of-portugals-state-rescued-novo-banco-idINKBN1CN1HG'|'2017-10-18T09:14:00.000+03:00'
'b80a8cc3c9cf3d6f4b2c84bef83454a1a105931a'|'Daimler takes first steps on new structure for cars and trucks'|'October 16, 2017 / 9:40 AM / in 4 minutes Daimler commits cash to help reshape company Reuters Staff 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Mercedes star logo of an E Coupe is pictured before the annual news conference of Daimler AG in Stuttgart, Germany, February 2, 2017. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo BERLIN (Reuters) - Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ) has committed more than 100 million euros (<28>89 million) to help create separate legal entities for its Mercedes-Benz cars and Daimler Trucks divisions, a move that would facilitate an eventual break up of the German company. Daimler wants to create a more agile structure as the latest luxury cars demand increasing input from technology and software specialists. <20>We not only need to be as close as possible to our customers<72> pulse, but also to be able to react as quickly and flexibly as possible to market developments and a fundamentally changing competitive environment,<2C> finance chief Bodo Uebber said. Daimler, which has annual sales of 153 billion euros, said it did not plan to divest any of its divisions and no final decision on the legal split had been made. Under the proposals, Daimler would be split into three independent stock corporations with their own management and supervisory boards capable of signing cross-shareholding agreements with any partners, a person familiar with the matter said, without giving more details. The move announced on Monday follows comments by CEO Dieter Zetsche who said in July that Daimler was considering putting parts of its business into separate legal entities, spurring talk of a possible break up as the group looks to fund big investments in self-driving and electric cars. Alongside the Financial Services AG business, the two new entities would combine Mercedes-Benz Cars and Vans operations as well as Trucks and Buses divisions, the company said. JOBS PROTECTED The Stuttgart-based company said in a separate statement on Monday that it was not pursuing any savings, efficiencies or job cuts related to the reorganisation. To win the support of its labour unions, Daimler said it has further extended job guarantees until 2029 from 2020 and will make a 3 billion-euro contribution to the group<75>s pension fund in the fourth quarter. Separating Daimler<65>s divisions could make it easier to value them and create a higher figure than for the current combination, with trucks and buses on their own worth 31 billion euros, analysts at Evercore ISI have said. The German company<6E>s total market value is around 72.7 billion euros, according to Thomson Reuters data. <20>Daimler may be against putting anything up for sale now but of course things can look entirely different in 10 to 15 years<72> time,<2C> said NordLB analyst Frank Schwope, who has a <20>hold<6C> recommendation on the stock, adding he saw the trucks operations as the most likely candidate for a future divestment. <20>The implications of this (separation) are more long-term,<2C> he said. Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ), the world<6C>s biggest automotive group which also sells trucks and vans alongside its car business, has no plans to follow Daimler and divide up the group, Chief Executive Matthias Mueller said last month. Daimler shareholders could approve a possible legal overhaul in 2019 at the earliest, the company said, adding that further examination and due diligence were needed before the management and supervisory boards can reach a final verdict. The shares were trading up 0.8 percent at 68.46 euros as of 1305 GMT. Reporting by Andreas Cremer, Victoria Bryan and Ilona Wissenbach.; Editing by Mark Potter and Keith Weir 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-daimler-restructuring/daimler-takes-first-steps-on-new-structure-for-cars-and-trucks-idUKKBN1CL11O'|'2017-10-16T12:40:00.000+03:00'
'80a57e3cd7b633b60f6e0e789139b517aaffa56c'|'Brazil''s JBS withdraws plan for U.S. processed food unit IPO'|'October 16, 2017 / 8:30 PM / a few seconds ago Brazil''s JBS withdraws plan for U.S. processed food unit IPO Guillermo Parra-Bernal , Jake Spring 3 Min Read The logo of Brazilian meatpacker JBS SA is seen in the city of Jundiai, Brazil June 1, 2017. Picture taken June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker SAO PAULO/BRASILIA (Reuters) - JBS SA ( JBSS3.SA ) has pulled a planned $500 million U.S. initial public offering of processed food subsidiary JBS Foods International BV, almost six months after a spree of corruption and food safety scandals in Brazil hurt investor demand for the deal. In a Friday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, JBS Foods International requested a withdrawal of the IPO. While neither company gave a new timetable for the IPO, JBS said in a statement to Reuters that a U.S. listing of JBS Foods <20>is the best way possible to maximize shareholder value.<2E> Parent JBS and the processed food subsidiary first announced plans for a U.S. offering on Dec. 5. S<>o Paulo-based JBS, the world<6C>s No. 1 meatpacker, reaffirmed plans to list the subsidiary in August, saying a transaction could take place by the end of next year. The proposal for the JBS Foods International IPO was first put to test in March, after a scandal over an alleged bribery of health officials triggered bans on Brazilian meat exports. Two months later, two members of the family that controls JBS agreed to a plea bargain deal in Brazil relating to a corruption probe. A collapse of the plan is a setback for Brazil<69>s billionaire Batista family, which owns 42 percent of JBS and saw the IPO as a way to improve JBS<42>s global standing. The transaction was seen as a way to help decouple JBS<42>s businesses from Brazil -- where reputational issues have impaired share performance in recent months. Reuters reported in March and in May, shortly after the food safety and corruption scandals, respectively, that JBS would press ahead with the $1 billion IPO plan despite dwindling investor confidence. Common shares ( JBSS3.SA ) fell 0.6 percent to 8.60 reais on Monday. The stock is down 25 percent so far this year. Brothers Wesley and Joesley Batista were arrested last month in connection with insider trading and other offenses related to their plea deal. Wesley, the elder of them and also JBS<42>s former chief executive, quit as a result. Both brothers will face trial for carrying out stock and foreign exchange transactions based on knowledge of their plea deal, a federal court confirmed on Monday. Both have been charged last week on the same case. Both Batistas worked personally on the refinancing of 21 billion reais ($6.7 billion) in short-term debt of JBS and spearheaded the sale of several assets. ($1 = 3.1562 reais) Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Sandra Maler 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-jbs-usa-ipo/brazils-jbs-withdraws-plan-for-u-s-processed-food-unit-ipo-idUKKBN1CL1KN'|'2017-10-16T23:24:00.000+03:00'
'22cc8a413b3bde251e9a5459f8a9efddfff295f5'|'Grim reality of NAFTA talks sets in after tough U.S. demands'|'October 14, 2017 / 10:50 PM / Updated 11 hours ago Grim reality of NAFTA talks sets in after tough U.S. demands Dave Graham , David Lawder 5 Min Read U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Canada''s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the South Lawn before their meeting about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) at the White House in Washington, U.S. October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst ARLINGTON, Va. (Reuters) - Negotiators from Canada and Mexico grappled with U.S. demands to drastically alter the North American Free Trade Agreement on Saturday, as talks over renewal of the pact vilified by President Donald Trump ran through a fourth straight day. Some downcast participants said the demands, unveiled this week in line with Trump<6D>s <20>America First<73> agenda, have increased the odds of NAFTA<54>s demise. At the very least, they could make it impossible to reach a deal renewing the treaty before a year-end deadline. <20>The atmosphere is complicated,<2C> one trade official told reporters, adding that his fears about some <20>pretty harsh, pretty horrible<6C> demands from the U.S. side of the negotiating table were coming true. Speaking on condition of anonymity because the talks are confidential, the official added the U.S. stance <20>has a clear protectionist bias, a bias that is trying to eradicate, minimize, eliminate the mechanisms that existed in NAFTA in the last 20 years.<2E> Trump, who blamed NAFTA for shifting U.S. manufacturing jobs to Mexico during his election campaign last year, has repeatedly vowed to scrap the treaty unless it can be renegotiated on more favourable terms. At the mid-point of seven scheduled negotiating rounds, many of the U.S. proposals appear aimed at turning back the clock on changes in the global economy since NAFTA took effect 23 years ago. Collapse of the deal could reverberate well beyond North America, where trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico has more than quadrupled since 1994. Former Mexican Trade Minister Jaime Serra, who was responsible for negotiating the original trade pact, said there was no economic logic to the U.S. demands. <20>Issues are being put on the table that are practically absurd,<2C> he told Reuters. <20>I don<6F>t know if these are poison pills, or whether it<69>s a negotiating position or whether they really believe they<65>re putting forward sensible things.<2E> Some officials from NAFTA governments said they knew all along the negotiations would be tough, but vowed to soldier on through the three remaining scheduled rounds of talks. <20>We said from the beginning that this was never going to be easy,<2C> Canadian Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne told CBC radio. <20>We want to be at the table, be constructive, offering alternative proposals.<2E> One of the U.S. proposals unveiled this week would require that 50 percent of the value of all NAFTA-produced cars, trucks and large engines come from the United States, people briefed on the negotiations said. The same proposal calls for a sharp increase in NAFTA<54>s regional automotive content requirement, boosting it to 85 percent from the current 62.5 percent. The existing level is already the highest local content requirement of any trading bloc in the world. [L2N1MO0U5] Meanwhile, the Trump administration<6F>s call for a so-called NAFTA sunset clause would effectively trigger a renegotiation of the pact every five years. Serra said the U.S. content requirements would distort NAFTA trade with <20>pure protectionism<73> while the sunset clause would choke off investment decisions with uncertainty. U.S. negotiators also want to end a trade dispute settlement system that has deterred U.S. anti-dumping cases while erecting new protective barriers for seasonal fruit and vegetable growers. And though Canada and Mexico had sought more access to U.S. government procurement contracts, they were met this week with a proposal that would effectively grant them less. Even before the current round of negotiations got underway in a suburban Washington hote
'530e9bfd7ec72224d118d9d06248336cc38b1b25'|'Britain''s ''Big Four grocers all lose market share - Kantar Worldpanel'|'LONDON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Britain<69>s <20>Big Four<75> supermarkets all lost market share in the 12 weeks to Oct. 8 despite growing sales as the march of the discount chains continued, Kantar Worldpanel said on Tuesday.Morrisons was the best performing of the four, with sales up 2.8 percent, Kantar said, followed by market leader Tesco up 2.1 percent.Sainsbury<72>s sales were up 1.9 percent and Asda saw growth of 1.8 percent, it said.Discount chains Aldi and Lidl continued their strong runs, with sales up 13.4 percent and 16.0 percent respectively.Inflation in the period was 3.2 percent, Kantar said.Reporting by Paul Sandle; editing by Michael Holden'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-grocers-kantar/british-supermarket-sales-up-3-6-pct-in-the-summer-kantar-worldpanel-idINU8N12T015'|'2017-09-19T05:30:00.000+03:00'
'250efee9fcf54dcb40a8c1e1d941d9f241bae08c'|'Airbus''s ingenious Bombardier plan is comeuppance for Boeing - Business - The Guardian'|'C omeuppance for a corporate bully rarely arrives so swiftly or so elegantly. Boeing attempted to kill Bombardier<65>s C-Series plane in its infancy by getting US trade authorities to impose stiff import tariffs . Now those heavy-handed legal tactics have produced an outcome that could be damaging in the long-term for Boeing. Arch-rival Airbus has swooped from the wings to grab majority control of the C-Series and proclaim that the 300% tariffs can be side-stepped via the simple remedy of conducting the final assembly of planes   in Alabama.If Airbus<75>s plan works, it<69>s ingenious. It will get a 50.1% stake in the C-Series without paying a penny and will collect some cheap warrants on Bombardier<65>s shares. Bombardier wins in the sense that it now has a partner with the financial muscle and supply chains to make a success of the C-Series.True, the Canadian firm has to accept that its stake in the C-Series will be diluted from 62% to 31%, but it can console itself that something is better than nothing, which was the likely alternative. Finally, production jobs on the C-Series programme <20> including 1,000 at the Bombardier factory in Belfast <20> should be better protected.Is Airbus<75>s manoeuvre too clever by half? That was gist of Boeing<6E>s predictable grumble. <20>This looks like a questionable deal between two heavily state-subsidised competitors to skirt the recent findings of the US government,<2C> it said.We<57>ll ignore the absurdity of Boeing complaining about subsidies and wait to see how its complaint plays out. Until clarity arrives, the GMB union representing workers in Belfast is right to caution that it hopes Airbus<75>s legal advice is solid. But, on the face of it, it<69>s hard to see why US trade rules would stop a plane being assembled in the US for the use of US airlines.If, as Airbus and Bombardier hope, the C-Series and some politically-sensitive jobs have been saved, Theresa May may wish to reflect on one moral of the tale. Her personal appeals to a protectionist US president got nowhere. It was Airbus, supposedly a lumbering exercise in pan-European co-operation, that knew how to play the game.Carney seems settled on rate rise It is now odds-on that interest rates will rise on 2 November for the first time since 2007. Inflation, on the CPI measure, stood at 3% in September and Bank of England governor Mark Carney expects it to go higher. Indeed, when giving evidence to the Treasury select committee, Carney sounded like a man whose mind is settled. The inflationary effects of last year<61>s post-referendum fall in sterling will take three years to work their way through the economy, he argued.That is starting to sound like the majority view. Economists at Barclays reckon there is just one dove left on the nine-strong rate-setting committee <20> David Ramsden, one of the two new members.There are two ways to view the Bank<6E>s approach to this point. A generous interpretation says Carney & co have skilfully prepared the ground. The market, which only a few months ago was expecting rates to remain at 0.25% until the end of next year, has been given time to adjust to the new thinking.An alternative view says the Bank has boxed itself into a corner unnecessarily. By talking up the prospect of a rate-rise, the Bank has to deliver in a fortnight<68>s time or lose its credibility and risk another sharp reverse in the value of sterling, which would squeeze real incomes at a bad moment.There was a better way. The August 2016 cut to 0.25% should have been reversed at the start of this year when the post-referendum slump failed to materialise. That would have avoided the current mini-drama over what is, after all, a modest tweak to monetary policy.Rollercoaster for Merlin Entertainments shares Merlin Entertainments used to argue that its theme parks and attractions, such as the London Eye, Legoland and Gardaland in Italy, were so popular that terrorist attacks in the UK and the rest of Europe only had a temporary effec
'fabfae4210dcaaed0e3bbc718ee414bd9cca41da'|'Goldman sees Iran tensions posing long-term threat to global oil supply'|'October 17, 2017 / 8:00 AM / in 8 minutes Goldman sees Iran tensions posing long-term threat to global oil supply Reuters Staff 3 Min Read A gas flare on an oil production platform in the Soroush oil fields is seen alongside an Iranian flag in the Persian Gulf, Iran, July 25, 2005. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi/File Photo (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs said that while oil output from the Kurdistan region was potentially at risk due to a standoff with Iraq, tensions between the United States and Iran remained a larger and longer term threat to global supply. A risk premium has returned to oil markets, boosting global prices as escalating fighting in Iraq threatens supplies while political tensions loom between the U.S. and Iran. [O/R] <20>In the case of Iran, there are likely no immediate impacts on oil flows and there remains high uncertainty on potential reintroduction of U.S. secondary sanctions. If they are, we expect that several hundred thousand barrels of Iranian exports would be immediately at risk,<2C> the bank said in a note. Last Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump refused to certify Iran<61>s compliance over a nuclear deal, leaving Congress 60 days to decide further action against Tehran. However, without the support of other countries, it appears unlikely that production would fall by 1 million barrels per day to the levels before Western sanctions were imposed on the country, Goldman said. <20>In the case of Kurdistan, the 500,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Kirkuk oil field cluster is at risk with initial reports that 350,000 bpd has shut in, although this remains unclear,<2C> the bank said. However, both the low production costs and high revenue per barrel could prompt both sides to keep oil flowing, it added. <20>Yet, this does not rule out sustained production disruptions as we note that Iraq has less downside risk (given its southern exports) than KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government) if flows to Ceyhan (in Turkey) are interrupted and global oil prices rally.<2E> On the likely impact on prices from the intensifying geopolitical tensions, the bank said a 500,000 bpd outage for three months, or a six-month long 250,000 bpd outage could push Brent LCOc1 prices higher by $2.50 per barrel. <20>The limited market response so far is therefore consistent with the high uncertainty on potential production disruptions, with larger moves only likely to occur should new disruptions actually occur, in our view.<2E> The price response to these potential disruptions could cause greater Brent backwardation and new outages could fast-forward the normalisation of excess global stocks, the bank noted. Backwardation is a market condition in which prices for immediate delivery of a product are higher than those later on. The increasing geopolitical risks, combined with better demand and compliance with an OPEC-led deal to curb production, posed risks to its year-end $58 per barrel forecast for 2018, it added. Reporting by Arpan Varghese in Bengaluru, editing by Louise Heavens 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-research-crude-goldman/goldman-sees-iran-tensions-posing-long-term-threat-to-global-oil-supply-idUKKBN1CM0RW'|'2017-10-17T10:59:00.000+03:00'
'183bb03d98c076217d0739d1bfb355d04b82a272'|'MOVES-Barclays, Fullerton Fund, Willis Towers, Exotix Capital'|'(Adds Bentham IMF, RenCap Securities, Crayhill Capital Management, Macquarie Group)Oct 16 (Reuters) - The following financial services industry appointments were announced on Monday. To inform us of other job changes, email moves@thomsonreuters.com.BENTHAM IMF The U.S. arm of litigation funding company IMF Bentham Ltd , has hired Ken Epstein to head its new bankruptcy unit, which will provide funding for insolvency disputes.RENCAP SECURITIES INC The U.S. subsidiary of investment bank Renaissance Capital, has appointed Amir Zada and James Hogan to its fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) team in New York.CRAYHILL CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LP The alternative asset management firm said it hired Shamafa Khan as a managing director and head of investor relations and marketing.MACQUARIE GROUP LTD Macquarie has hired Tom Price to replace Colin Hamilton in its commodities research unit, sources close to the matter said, adding that Price was on gardening leave until he started his new job early next year.FULLERTON FUND MANAGEMENT The investment manager appointed Jenny Sofian as its chief executive officer, effective Nov. 1.BARCLAYS Barclays has hired Amit Goel and Chris Manners as co-heads of European banks equity research, with Goel covering investment banks and Manners covering UK banks.WILLIS TOWERS WATSON PLC The advisory and broking firm appointed Neil Irwin to lead its Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEEMEA) region, effective immediately.The firm also appointed Gianmarco Tosti head of its Italy unit, effective Jan. 1.EXOTIX CAPITAL The specialist emerging markets investment bank made three senior hires <20> a non-executive director and heads of investment banking and equity sales <20> as part of its frontier markets expansion.MUZINICH & CO Investment firm Muzinich & Co appointed Terence Teh and Richard Smith as credit analysts in its London office.SANLAM UK Sanlam UK, a wealth management unit of Sanlam Ltd, appointed Charlie Parker as head of portfolio management.M&G INVESTMENTS Asset management firm M&G Investments named Giuseppe Caltabiano head of its UK direct-to-consumer business, effective December.AXA AXA Investment Managers, the asset management arm of French insurer AXA SA, appointed Alessandro Tentori as chief investment officer for Italy.LEGG MASON Asset manager Legg Mason promoted Joe O<>Donnell to head of wealth management distribution and investment trusts. (Compiled by Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/financial-moves/moves-barclays-fullerton-fund-willis-towers-exotix-capital-idINL4N1MR3QA'|'2017-10-16T08:06:00.000+03:00'
'689dc675ab22af94a6a21a335a1d222d3caf308f'|'India''s Flipkart in talks to buy stake in BookMyShow - Economic Times'|'October 16, 2017 / 4:28 AM / in 33 minutes India''s Flipkart in talks to buy stake in BookMyShow - Economic Times Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 16 (Reuters) - Indian e-commerce firm Flipkart is in talks for a partnership with online ticketing platform BookMyShow in a bid to build out its services and transaction offering, the Economic Times newspaper reported. The talks are at a preliminary stage and may see Flipkart picking up a significant minority stake in BookMyShow, two people familiar with the discussions told the paper. bit.ly/2gHuPc4 Flipkart, which secured nearly $2.5 billion in funding from Japan<61>s SoftBank Group in August, did not respond to a request for comment. BookMyShow, owned by Mumbai-based Bigtree Entertainment Pvt Ltd, was not immediately available for comment. (Reporting by Tanvi Mehta in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/bookmyshow-flipkart-stake/indias-flipkart-in-talks-to-buy-stake-in-bookmyshow-economic-times-idUSL4N1MR21O'|'2017-10-16T07:27:00.000+03:00'
'610aae39d41a659cdf8a92ad58f0c4aaa73ad855'|'Firms must prepare for Brexit without transition, Irish central bank says'|'October 17, 2017 / 10:15 AM / in 23 minutes Firms must prepare for Brexit without transition, Irish central bank says Padraic Halpin 2 Min Read The Houses of Parliament are seen through a European Union flag as demonstrators arrive in Parliament Square during the anti-Brexit ''People''s March for Europe'', in central London, Britain September 9, 2017. REUTERS/Tolga Akmen DUBLIN (Reuters) - Its is entirely possible that Britain will leave the European Union without a transition agreement, and companies need to do more to prepare for an abrupt departure, Irish Central Bank Deputy Governor Ed Sibley said on Tuesday. Negotiations on the terms of Britain<69>s exit from the EU have made slow progress before a March 2019 deadline. Talks on the transition period have not even begun. EU leaders meet on Thursday and Friday to discuss Brexit, and a draft communique showed they won<6F>t adopt guidelines on possible transitional arrangements until December. JPMorgan said on Monday the chance of a <20>no deal<61> Brexit had risen to 25 percent from 15 percent previously, in line with the consensus of a Reuters poll of economists published last month. <20>It is entirely plausible, while it might well be regrettable, that there will be a hard Brexit with no transition period, and much more work needs to be done to prepare for this plausible scenario, particularly in the insurance sector,<2C> Sibley said in a speech at a conference in Dublin. One of Ireland<6E>s senior civil servants told the same conference that Britain had failed to understand that while a disorderly exit would be disastrous for both it and Ireland, it might be a price the rest of the EU is be willing to pay. <20>The worst-case scenario of Britain leaving in a disorderly fashion would be a catastrophe for us, for the UK, but for the EU as a whole, for many counties in the EU, it won<6F>t be a catastrophe, it will be a cost,<2C> said Robert Watt, secretary general at Ireland<6E>s Department of Public Expenditure. <20>That<61>s something, particularly in the debate in the UK, that<61>s missed. I think this is what the UK have misunderstood. There is a cost and Europe is willing to pay that price in order to keep the union together.<2E> Reporting by Larry King'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-ireland/firms-must-prepare-for-brexit-without-transition-irish-central-bank-says-idUKKBN1CM18B'|'2017-10-17T13:14:00.000+03:00'
'8e116afcf9254e6c4729adf557a615abb2983b1f'|'Avenue Capital urges Ocean Rig to hire advisers'|'Oct 17 (Reuters) - Ocean Rig UDW<44>s fifth-biggest investor Avenue Capital Group on Tuesday urged the offshore driller to hire advisers to review <20>opportunities<65>, a day after top investor Elliott Management made a similar demand.The hedge fund said it intends to hold discussions with Elliott and second-biggest investor BlueMountain Capital Management LLC.Avenue Capital urged the company to look at changes to its capital structure, asset utilization and possible strategic deals.The fund has a 7.63 percent stake in Ocean Rig as per Thomson Reuters data. (Reporting by Taenaz Shakir; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/ocean-rig-udw-avenue-capital-group/avenue-capital-urges-ocean-rig-to-hire-advisers-idINL4N1MS4ZW'|'2017-10-17T18:03:00.000+03:00'
'418a520b2b296542d469941783385f4241c6dfda'|'Amazon to ship electronics in Brazil from third-party sellers'|'October 18, 2017 / 2:00 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago Amazon to ship electronics in Brazil from third-party sellers Reuters Staff 2 Min Read SAO PAULO, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc began offering electronics from third-party sellers to Brazilian shoppers on Wednesday, expanding beyond books in the fiercely competitive e-commerce market in Latin America<63>s largest economy. The long-awaited move will offer televisions, cell phones and laptops from hundreds of independent sellers on Amazon<6F>s website in Brazil without involving the company in the tricky logistics that have hurt many online retailers in the country. Alex Szapiro, Amazon<6F>s country manager in Brazil, declined to say if there were plans for the company to stock its own electronics inventory or open a fulfillment center to ship third-party goods more efficiently, as it did simultaneously with the launch of independent sellers in Mexico two years ago. <20>Each country has a different playbook,<2C> said Szapiro in an interview with Reuters at Amazon headquarters in Sao Paulo. He helped launch the company<6E>s Brazil business with e-books in 2012 after running operations for Apple Inc in the country for five years. Shares of local e-commerce rivals MercadoLibre Inc, Magazine Luiza SA and B2W Cia Digital have fallen 14 percent, 17 percent and 20 percent, respectively, in the past week on concerns of heightened competition from Amazon. Keeping pace with the local e-commerce market, Amazon will parcel purchases into as many as 10 monthly installments without interest, a practice the company started in Brazil for Kindle e-reader sales in 2014, then extended to Mexico and other markets. Sellers will be paid up-front, minus a 10 percent commission to Amazon and fees of 19 reais ($6) per month or 2 reais per item. Szapiro called the 10 percent commission a <20>promotional<61> rate without saying when or how much it would eventually rise. $1 = 3.16 reais Reporting by Brad Haynes; Editing by Lisa Shumaker 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/amazon-brazil/amazon-to-ship-electronics-in-brazil-from-third-party-sellers-idUSL2N1MT023'|'2017-10-18T05:00:00.000+03:00'
'e60cdbe25894a4277904825802e32dce493ebd3d'|'EU-U.S. data transfer pact passes first annual review'|'October 18, 2017 / 4:35 AM / in 21 minutes EU-U.S. data transfer pact passes first annual review Julia Fioretti 4 Min Read An illustration picture shows a projection of binary code around the shadow of a man holding a laptop computer in an office in Warsaw June 24, 2013. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A year-old pact underpinning billions of dollars of transatlantic data transfers won a green light from the European Union on Wednesday after a first review to ensure Washington protects Europeans<6E> data stored on U.S. servers. The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield was agreed last year after everyday cross-border data transfers were plunged into limbo when the EU<45>s top court struck down a previous data transfer pact in 2015 because it allowed U.S. spies excessive access to people<6C>s data. The European Commission last month conducted its first annual review of the framework as it seeks to ensure the United States lives up to its promises to better protect Europeans<6E> data when they are transferred across the Atlantic - failing which it could suspend the Privacy Shield. The EU executive said it was satisfied that the framework continues to ensure adequate protection for Europeans<6E> personal data although it asked Washington to improve the way it works, including by strengthening the privacy protections contained in a controversial portion of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The conclusion will come as a relief to the more than 2,400 companies signed up to the scheme, including Alphabet Inc<6E>s Google, Facebook and Microsoft, especially since the Privacy Shield is already being challenged in court by privacy activists. The Commission said the U.S. Department of Commerce should be more pro-active in monitoring companies<65> compliance with the privacy obligations in the framework. <20>Transatlantic data transfers are essential for our economy, but the fundamental right to data protection must be ensured also when personal data leaves the EU. Our first review shows that the Privacy Shield works well, but there is some room for improving its implementation,<2C> EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said. Companies wanting to transfer Europeans<6E> personal data outside the bloc have to comply with tough EU data protection rules which forbid them from transferring personal data to countries deemed to have inadequate privacy protections unless they have special legal contracts in place. The Privacy Shield allows firms to move data across the Atlantic without relying on such contracts, known as model clauses, which are more cumbersome and expensive. The Commission urged the United States to appoint a permanent Privacy Shield Ombudsperson - a new office that was created to deal with complaints from EU citizens about U.S. spying, but which is currently only filled on an <20>acting<6E> basis. It also urged Washington to fill empty posts on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. In addition, the Commission said it would welcome privacy protections for foreigners contained in a Presidential Policy Directive issued by former U.S. President Barack Obama being enshrined in FISA. Section 702 of FISA - that allows the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to collect and analyse emails and other digital communications of foreigners living overseas - will expire at the end of the year unless it is re-authorised by the U.S. Congress. Reporting by Julia Fioretti; Editing by Adrian Croft 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-dataprotection-usa/eu-u-s-data-transfer-pact-to-pass-first-annual-review-idUKKBN1CN0DR'|'2017-10-18T14:22:00.000+03:00'
'd12c41a0524dbc12d0698ff8ebb513056055b1db'|'Nissan used uncertified inspectors even after misconduct found: sources'|'October 18, 2017 / 12:59 AM / Updated 17 hours ago Nissan used uncertified inspectors even after misconduct found: sources Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Logo of the Nissan Motor Co. is displayed at the 44th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan, November 2, 2015. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co ( 7201.T ) had conducted uncertified vehicle checks as recently as last week even after revealing the widespread misconduct at its domestic factories, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday. Japan<61>s second-largest automaker has recalled all 1.2 million new cars it sold in the domestic market over the past three years after discovering final vehicle checks were not performed by certified technicians. The sources, who asked not to be named because they were not authorised to speak to media, said an internal investigation had found the latest misconduct at affiliate Nissan Shatai Co<43>s ( 7222.T ) Shonan factory, where uncertified technicians had been involved in inspections until Oct. 11. The Sankei daily reported the misconduct affected about 3,800 vehicles, but that Nissan would not issue a recall because they had cleared safety standards. Spokespeople at Nissan could not immediately be reached. At a news conference on Oct. 2, Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa said that only certified technicians had conducted checks since Sept. 20. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has also inspected Nissan<61>s factories, where it found names of certified technicians used on documents to sign off on final vehicle checks conducted by non-certified technicians. The ministry has asked Nissan to report measures to prevent a recurrence of the issue by the end of this month. Shares of Nissan were down a fraction of a percent, while the broader Tokyo market was slightly higher. Nissan Shatai was down 1.2 percent. Reporting by Maki Shiraki; Writing by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Stephen Coates 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/nissan-recall/nissan-used-uncertified-inspectors-even-after-misconduct-found-sources-idINKBN1CN030'|'2017-10-18T03:56:00.000+03:00'
'534f4a6094b12ff13f50dd327171fa062388d46c'|'UPDATE 5-U.S. senators reach bipartisan deal on Obamacare, Trump indicates support'|'(Adds Trump Quote: , document with details on plan)By Yasmeen Abutaleb and Richard CowanWASHINGTON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Two U.S. senators on Tuesday reached a bipartisan agreement to shore up Obamacare for two years by reviving federal subsidies for health insurers that President Donald Trump planned to scrap, and the president indicated his support for the plan.The deal worked out by Republican Senator Lamar Alexander and Democratic Senator Patty Murray would meet some Democratic objectives, including reviving the subsidies for Obamacare and restoring $106 million in funding for a federal program that helps people enroll in insurance plans.In exchange, Republicans would get more flexibility for states to offer a wider variety of health insurance plans while maintaining the requirement that sick and healthy people be charged the same rates for coverage.The Trump administration said last week it would stop paying billions of dollars to insurers to help lower-income Americans pay medical expenses, part of the Republican president<6E>s effort to dismantle Obamacare, former Democratic President Barack Obama<6D>s signature healthcare law.The subsidies to private insurers cost the government an estimated $7 billion this year and were forecast at $10 billion for 2018. Trump<6D>s move to scuttle them had raised concerns about chaos in insurance markets.Trump hoped to make good on his campaign promise to dismantle the law when he took office in January, with Republicans, who pledged for seven years to scrap it, controlling Congress. But he has been frustrated with their failure to pass legislation to repeal and replace it.Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act, extended health insurance coverage to 20 million Americans. Republicans say it is ineffective and a massive government intrusion in a key sector of the economy.The Alexander-Murray plan could keep Obamacare in place at least until the 2020 presidential campaign starts heating up.<2E>This takes care of the next two years. After that, we can have a full-fledged debate on where we go long-term on healthcare,<2C> Alexander said of the deal.It is unclear whether the agreement can make it through Congress.Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, said it had <20>broad support<72> among senators in his party, but it was harder to gauge possible support among Republicans.Moderate Republican Senator Susan Collins, who helped sink earlier Obamacare repeal legislation, voiced backing for the new plan, but conservative Republicans may be less welcoming.Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, threw his weight behind the effort. In an interview with Reuters, Sanders said Alexander was a <20>well-respected figure<72> known for bipartisanship and that the Tennessee senator<6F>s reputation would help propel the legislation through the Senate.The willingness of Sanders, a liberal champion, to offer his support of a deal with Republicans that could allow states to change some Obamacare requirements provided a boost to the Alexander-Murray effort. <20>We are going to overturn what Trump is trying to do,<2C> Sanders said.Schumer urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring the plan to a vote on the Senate floor and urged the House of Representatives to take it up then as quickly as possible so Trump can sign it.TRUMP STILL SEEKS LONG-TERM SOLUTION Trump, during comments at the White House, suggested he could get behind the Alexander-Murray plan as a short-term solution.In remarks later at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Trump commended the work by Alexander and Murray, but said: <20>I continue to believe Congress must find a solution to the Obamacare mess instead of providing bailouts to insurance companies.<2E>Trump said earlier he wanted lawmakers, once they completed a major tax reform effort, to again take up broader legislation that failed in the Senate last month that would divvy up federal healthcare mo
'fb7a51df5b63b6b17bf487323a04388fff90be76'|'Procter & Gamble says Peltz loses board seat bid by around 6 million votes'|'October 16, 2017 / 11:48 PM / Updated 9 hours ago Procter & Gamble says Peltz loses board seat bid by around 6 million votes Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Nelson Peltz founding partner of Trian Fund Management LP. speak at the WSJD Live conference in Laguna Beach, California October 25, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble Co ( PG.N ) said on Monday that activist hedge fund manager Nelson Peltz had lost his bid to win a seat on the consumer goods company<6E>s board by 6.15 million votes, according to its preliminary tally. Peltz, whose Trian Fund Management LP owns a $3.5 billion stake in P&G, has sought a board seat in one of the biggest and most expensive proxy contests ever. P&G chief executive David Taylor said last week that Peltz had lost the fight, but Peltz said the vote was too close to call and was not conceding. He had contested the existing seat of Ernesto Zedillo, the former president of Mexico. Peltz received 973.0 million votes, compared to Zedillo''s 979.2 million votes, P&G said in a filing. ( bit.ly/2yt33t6 ) The results were preliminary estimates and subject to change based on certification by an independent firm, the maker of Pampers diapers and Gillette razors said. It is expected to take the independent firm weeks to deliver a final tally. The counting process is made difficult in this case because P&G has a large number of individual investors and many of them voted their own shares instead of having brokerages who hold the shares do the voting. Peltz could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday. Reporting by Laharee Chatterjee, Editing by Rosalba O''Brien 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-procter-gamble-trian/procter-gamble-says-peltz-loses-board-seat-bid-by-around-6-million-votes-idUSKBN1CL35B'|'2017-10-17T02:46:00.000+03:00'
'3d4c6a11465d5ec8daeeda6ab97c5d4377c33340'|'Schoeller-Bleckmann Q3 profit hit by 90 mln eur acquisition charge'|'VIENNA, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Austria<69>s Schoeller-Bleckmann Oilfield Equipment will have to pay more than expected to buy the rest of U.S. unit Downhole Technology, and it will post a pre-tax loss of roughly 78 million euros ($91.6 million) in the third quarter, it said.Schoeller-Bleckmann (SBO) has bought 68 percent of the unit but acquiring the rest under an option it has will be more expensive because of Downhole<6C>s <20>strong growth<74>, it said on Tuesday.<2E>SBO<42>s accounting principles require in the third quarter of 2017 a non-cash-effective expense posting of 90 million euros in the financial result of the income statement,<2C> it said.$1 = 0.8519 euros Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Michael Shields'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/sbo-profit/schoeller-bleckmann-q3-profit-hit-by-90-mln-eur-acquisition-charge-idINFWN1MS0RU'|'2017-10-17T12:23:00.000+03:00'
'e46e767b1b39512c2f0a5f750a333013583b8ad1'|'U.S. unveils proposal to boost autos content in NAFTA -sources'|'October 13, 2017 / 2:08 PM / Updated 14 minutes ago U.S. unveils proposal to boost autos content in NAFTA -sources Reuters Staff 1 Min Read WASHINGTON, Oct 13 (Reuters) - The United States on Friday formally unveiled proposals to boost the amount of regional content that autos must contain to qualify for NAFTA tariff-free access, three sources familiar with the negotiations told Reuters on Friday. The sources were not immediately able to provide details of the proposal, one of the Trump administration<6F>s key demands at talks to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement. Canada and Mexico, the other two members of the pact, oppose the idea. Reporting by David Ljunggren and Dave Graham; Editing by Bernadette Baum 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/trade-nafta/u-s-unveils-proposal-to-boost-autos-content-in-nafta-sources-idUSL2N1MO0QJ'|'2017-10-13T17:07:00.000+03:00'
'3e56fd781ecf332c9437b199bb2156f40becc84e'|'Deals of the day-Mergers and acquisitions'|'(Adds Weinstein Co, easyJet, Tata Steel, Ita<74> Unibanco Holding SA<53>s, Impala Platinum, Aramco, Ruby Tuesday, Nordstrom; Updates Lufthansa, Bombardier)Oct 16 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 20:00 GMT on Monday:** The Weinstein Company has entered talks to sell the bulk of its assets to private equity firm Colony Capital, the companies said on Monday, as the film production company looks for stability after the departure of co-founder Harvey Weinstein.** British budget airline easyJet said on Monday it had submitted an expression of interest in acquiring parts of Italy<6C>s insolvent national carrier Alitalia.** Tata Steel and Thyssenkrupp have no plans to spin off their pending European steel joint venture within the next two to three years, Tata<74>s managing director said on Monday.** Brazilian bank Ita<74> Unibanco Holding SA<53>s purchase of a minority stake in independent financial services firm XP Investimentos SA is complex due to competition concerns and needs further analysis, a unit of antitrust watchdog Cade said.** South Africa<63>s Impala Platinum (Implats) said on Monday it would pay $30 million for a 15 percent interest in a platinum project in the northern Waterberg region and had an option to acquire a majority stake in the development.** China is offering to buy up to 5 percent of Saudi Aramco directly, sources said, a move that could give Saudi Arabia the flexibility to consider various options for its plan to float the world<6C>s biggest oil producer on the stock market.** Ruby Tuesday Inc said on Monday it would be acquired by private equity firm NRD Capital for an enterprise value of about $335 million.** Nordstrom Inc said on Monday that a founding family group had suspended attempts to take the U.S. department store operator private because of difficulties in arranging debt financing for its bid ahead of the key holiday shopping season.** German airline Lufthansa has submitted an offer for parts of Alitalia and a plan to reshape Italy<6C>s ailing national carrier just days after agreeing to buy some of Air Berlin<69>s assets.** Russia<69>s state-owned oil major Rosneft announced first tenders to sell oil products from its refineries for delivery in January-December 2018, the company said on its website.** Brazil<69>s antitrust regulator Cade is set to approve AT&T Inc<6E>s acquisition of Time Warner Inc, with conditions, newspaper Valor Economico reported on Monday.** Canada<64>s Bombardier Inc is continuing to look at strategic options for its aerospace division but no deal is imminent, people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday, as the company seeks to shore up sales and improve finances.** T-Mobile U.S. Inc and Sprint Corp plan to announce a merger agreement without any immediate asset sales, as they seek to preserve as much of their spectrum holdings and cost synergies as they can before regulators ask for concessions, according to people familiar with the matter.** Indian e-commerce firm Flipkart is in talks for a partnership with online ticketing platform BookMyShow in a bid to build out its services and transaction offering, the Economic Times newspaper reported.** Food services company Aramark said it would buy Avendra LLC, majority owned by Marriott International Inc , and uniform and linen supplier AmeriPride Services Inc for a total of $2.35 billion, before tax benefit adjustments.** South African construction firm Group Five said Greenbay Properties, had made an unsolicited offer to acquire its European assets for 1.6 billion rand ($120 million), sending its shares sharply higher.** The Italian government is not currently talking to Telecom Italia about the idea of spinning off the group<75>s fixed-line network, a junior minister said. (Compiled by Vibhuti Sharma and Uday Sampath in Bengaluru)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/deals-day/deals-of-the-day-mergers-and-acquisitions-idINL4N1MR3P4'|'2017-10-16T08:06:00.000+03:00'
'769ac765e950946e8bde00d637c241fc4ae8a424'|'Italy Cabinet exercises ''golden power'' to protect TIM - PM Gentiloni'|'October 16, 2017 / 2:01 PM / Updated 13 minutes ago Italy exercises ''golden power'' to rein in Vivendi at Telecom Italia Giuseppe Fonte 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: Telecom Italia logo is seen at the headquarters in Milan, Italy, May 25, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini/File Photo/File Photo ROME (Reuters) - The Italian government approved on Monday the exercise of its <20>golden power<65> over Telecom Italia (TIM) ( TLIT.MI ), following concerns over French media group Vivendi<64>s ( VIV.PA ) growing influence at the company. Without giving any details Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said that he had signed a decree activating the so-called <20>golden power<65> after Vivendi, now TIM<49>s biggest investor with a 24 percent stake, tightened its grip on the company. The golden power - which has never been used by Rome before - enables the government to veto certain actions, including asset sales, mergers and any change of control of companies which are regarded as being of strategic national importance. TIM<49>s shares were down 1.4 percent at 0.76 euros by 1535 GMT, when shares in Vivendi were down 0.3 percent at 21.20 euros. Both companies declined to comment. Rome took notice of Vivendi<64>s growing influence at TIM after the French group, led by acquisitive billionaire Vincent Bollore, appointed a majority of board members at the Italian company and also installed two of its own top executives as chairman and chief executive earlier this year. Last month Italy<6C>s market watchdog Consob said Vivendi was effectively controlling TIM, a charge which has been denied by the French company. Industry sources said the government<6E>s special powers may be applied to all the assets within the company which Rome considers strategic such as international service provider Sparkle and software unit Telsy. Sparkle is seen as politically sensitive because its submarine network connects countries in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Americas, while Telsy provides encrypted communications technology to customers such as the Italian army and the government. However, according to industry sources the golden power could also be extended to TIM<49>s fixed-line network, one of the company<6E>s most prized assets. There has been widespread media speculation that Rome could push for the various assets to be spun-off or sold, or it could ask for representatives from the government or communications regulator AGCOM to flank executives at the various companies on certain matters. The government may also decide to fine TIM for failing to promptly notify the authorities when Vivendi gained effective control. Italian politicians have been calling on and off since 2006 for TIM<49>s landline network to be transferred to a state-controlled entity as Rome considers it a strategic asset that should be a neutral platform open to all phone companies. Heavily-indebted TIM has also been criticised for putting off completely replacing its ageing copper network with optic fibre. Vivendi is also under regulatory scrutiny in Italy for its accumulation of a near 30 percent stake in private broadcaster Mediaset ( MS.MI ), owned by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, because of concerns that Bollore will come to dominate the country<72>s media and telecoms industries. Writing by Agnieszka Flak; Editing by Greg Mahlich 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-vivendi-telecom-italia-golden-power/italy-cabinet-exercises-golden-power-to-protect-tim-pm-gentiloni-idUKKBN1CL1Z9'|'2017-10-16T17:00:00.000+03:00'
'673fe154c7d6329a4d14ef12dca33a80fe03bd88'|'Japan to offer $10 billion to back Asia LNG infrastructure push - media'|'October 16, 2017 / 2:05 AM / Updated 21 minutes ago Japan to offer $10 billion to back Asia LNG infrastructure push - media Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Japan''s Minister of Economy,Trade and Industry Hiroshige Seko arrives at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe''s official residence in Tokyo, Japan August 3, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai TOKYO (Reuters) - The Japanese government will offer $10 billion (7.5 billion pounds) to support firms bidding to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure around Asia, the Nikkei business daily said on Monday. It will allow Japanese firms to bid aggressively for work to build facilities such as LNG receiving terminals and power plants, backed by loans and investments from Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and insurance from Nippon Export and Investment Insurance (NEXI), it said, without citing sources. Japan<61>s Trade Minister Hiroshige Seko will announce the initiative in Tokyo on Wednesday at the annual LNG Producer-Consumer Conference, the newspaper said, adding that it was part of an effort to build markets in Asia for U.S. LNG. Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Sonali Paul 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lng-japan/japan-to-offer-10-billion-to-back-asia-lng-infrastructure-push-media-idUKKBN1CL048'|'2017-10-16T05:04:00.000+03:00'
'd9212d8c4a44cd46ce6c75c85f64fc14d186c4e3'|'China''s economy expected to grow 7 percent in second half of this year - PBOC''s Zhou'|'October 16, 2017 / 2:00 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago China''s PBOC chief sees 7 percent GDP growth in second half, stronger than economist forecasts Reuters Staff 6 Min Read FILE PHOTO: China''s central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan delivers a speech during the annual Lujiazui Forum in Shanghai, China June 20, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s economy is expected to grow 7 percent in the second half of this year, the central bank governor said, accelerating from the first six months and defying widespread expectations for a slowdown. While China produced forecast-beating growth of 6.9 percent in the first half, many economists and investors had expected its momentum would start to fade in the latter part of the year. Those views of a slowdown have been largely predicated on three factors: higher borrowing costs; increasing curbs on home buying to cool soaring prices; and government-mandated shutdowns of many steel mills and other industrial plants in coming months to reduce winter air pollution. But the driving force behind growth has been mainly rising household consumption, Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said in remarks published on the People<6C>s Bank of China<6E>s (PBOC) website on Monday. <20>China<6E>s economic growth has slowed over the past few years...but economic growth has rebounded this year, with GDP reaching 6.9 percent in the first half, and may achieve 7 percent in the second half,<2C> Zhou was quoted as saying at the G30 International Banking Seminar in Washington on Sunday. Zhou<6F>s uncharacteristically explicit growth forecast came just days ahead of the start of the twice-in-a-decade Communist Party congress where President Xi Jinping is expected to strengthen his grip on power in a major party leadership reshuffle. Investors are waiting to see if hearty and sustained economic growth this year gives China<6E>s leaders the confidence to quicken their reform push in the next five years. The government had set a 2017 GDP growth target of around 6.5 percent. Zhou<6F>s estimate implies a full-year expansion of about 6.95 percent, topping the annual growth rates in 2015-2016. Economists had widely expected growth to ease marginally to 6.8 percent in the third quarter and cool further to around 6.6 percent in the fourth quarter, but the impact of the pollution shutdowns is a major wild card. China is in the midst of publishing September data, culminating in its third-quarter gross domestic product number on Thursday. FIRING ON ALL CYLINDERS? China<6E>s imports rose by a stronger-than-expected 18.7 percent in September, with iron ore volumes hitting a record, data showed on Friday. Exports picked up to a three-month high, signalling robust demand at home and abroad. Another surprise for markets followed early on Monday, when data showed producer prices jumped 6.9 percent in September from a year earlier, confounding expectations that price gains had peaked. [L4N1MR1E4] A year-long construction boom has helped boost prices for building materials from steel to copper pipes, giving China<6E>s long-ailing industrial sector its best profits in years. Prices have turned even more volatile in recent weeks as the government embarks on its biggest environmental crackdown yet to reduce the country<72>s notorious winter smog. Some steel mills, smelters and coal companies have cranked up production ahead of expected official curbs on output or outright shutdowns in coming months. Environmental inspections have disrupted some supply lines and added to uncertainty in the market. Shanghai steel futures surged nearly 7 percent on Friday, spurring a similar rally in raw materials iron ore and coking coal.[IRONORE/] Activity data to be released along with the GDP readings on Thursday are expected to reinforce the view that China is still running in high gear. Fixed-asset investment is predicted to have increased 7.7 percent in the first three quarters on-year, only slightly softer than a 7.8 percent rise in J
'07421e2410abdde3e14bbce331bd3137cde6b6ff'|'JD.com shares are a better deal than Alibaba''s -Barron''s - Reuters'|'NEW YORK, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Shares of China<6E>s No.2 e-commerce firm JD.com are a better deal for investors than Alibaba Group<75>s stock and could rise 30 percent or more over the next year, Barron<6F>s said on Sunday.JD.com<6F>s shares have underperformed Alibaba<62>s since the beginning of August due to misplaced concerns, and JD.com stands to be among the biggest beneficiaries of China<6E>s shopping holiday on Nov. 11, the Barron<6F>s report said.A decline in gross profit margin when the JD.com reported quarterly results in mid-August spooked investors but was not as worrisome as it seemed, Barron<6F>s said.The slip was due to aggressive promotions in June and a change in the way JD.com accounts for some third-party logistics costs, Barron<6F>s said.Worries about increased competition from Alibaba were also overdone after it said in September that it would raise its stake in Cainiao Smart Logistics Network Ltd. JD.com has superior capabilities in middle and last-mile delivery, Barron<6F>s said, citing MKM Partners analyst Rob Sanderson.JD.com<6F>s shares, which have gained 52 percent this year, have slipped 14 percent since the start of August, compared with a 15 percent gain for Alibaba shares over the same period.Alibaba shares have doubled in price this year. (Reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/jdcom-stocks/jd-com-shares-are-a-better-deal-than-alibabas-barrons-idINL2N1MQ0KI'|'2017-10-15T20:25:00.000+03:00'
'47c0f46c26e403cf55a0d01dd69da58b6c9d5ab3'|'Nigerian lenders pick Barclays to find new investors for 9mobile - sources'|'October 19, 2017 / 5:31 PM / in 17 minutes Nigerian lenders pick Barclays to find new investors for 9mobile - sources Chijioke Ohuocha 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A man walks towards a 9 Mobile telecom company outdoor billboard in Abuja, Nigeria, August 30, 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde/File Photo LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigerian lenders have picked Barclays ( BARC.L ) to try to find new investors for debt-laden 9mobile, two banking sources said on Thursday. Barclays has started work on the mandate and is in the process of setting up a database for prospective investors to conduct due diligence, they said. Banking sources had previously said Citigroup and Standard Bank were in the running for the role. But the lenders decided against them due to their previous links with 9mobile, the sources said on Thursday. Standard<72>s local unit, Stanbic IBTC Bank ( IBTC.LG ), is among the group of lenders to 9mobile while Citi has advised the telecom company, formerly known as Etisalat Nigeria, in the past, they said. Barclays was not immediately available for comment. Etisalat Nigeria took out a $1.2 billion (<28>912.4 million) syndicated loan from a group of 13 local banks but struggled to make repayments this year due to a currency crisis and recession in Nigeria. The Nigerian central bank intervened to save the company from collapse and prevent creditors from putting it into receivership, leading to a change in its board and management, as well as the new name 9mobile. The crisis forced the telecoms company<6E>s one-time parent Etisalat ( ETEL.AD ) to terminate its management agreement with its Nigerian business and surrender its 45 percent stake to a trustee following the central bank intervention. 9mobile CEO Boye Olusanya has said he is focused on getting the telecoms company back on track to make a profit, while working on the paperwork to eventually raise new capital, adding the company was open to new investors. Lenders have put a freeze on collecting the principal and interest payments on the syndicate loan pending new investors, in order to help the company survive, the sources told Reuters. They have also held back on taking provisions for the syndicated loan and agreed to extend it after the regulatory intervention in July. The sources said the central bank had asked the lenders to take a five percent provision on the loan as part of their-quarter results due this month. Some lenders, such as Zenith Bank ( ZENITHB.LG ), UBA ( UBA.LG ), and Access Bank ( ACCESS.LG ), have made already provisions to cover direct lending to 9mobile outside the syndicated loan. 9mobile has 20 million subscribers with a 14 percent share of the Nigerian market. South Africa<63>s MTN ( MTNJ.J ) is the market leader with 47 percent, Nigeria<69>s Globacom has 20 percent and Bharti Airtel<65>s local subsidiary has 19 percent. Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nigeria-9mobile/nigerian-lenders-pick-barclays-to-find-new-investors-for-9mobile-sources-idUKKBN1CO2N5'|'2017-10-19T20:31:00.000+03:00'
'4ac34e208870a467f0f68e0ada10e510d00653f8'|'A property billionaire rescues Harvey Weinstein<69>s studio'|'AS DISTRESSED assets go, the Weinstein Company (TWC) is uniquely distressing. Much of its value was bound up in the brands of its eponymous founding brothers, one of whom, Harvey Weinstein, has been accused of sexual harassment and of assault by dozens of women in the film industry in America and elsewhere. Amazon Studios, Apple and some television networks have hastened to cut ties with the studio, unwind production deals and remove Mr Weinstein<69>s name from credits. Mr Weinstein<69>s accusers may well sue the company. It was already heavily indebted after a recent string of box-office flops.Who would see an opportunity? Aside from TWC<57>s particular troubles, independent films are a tough business, and the studio has had to haggle with creditors. But for a vulture investor some of the studio<69>s assets hold value. On October 16th Thomas Barrack (pictured above), chairman of Colony Capital, a private-equity firm, said he would immediately put an undisclosed sum of cash into TWC and look at buying part or all of it. Mr Barrack, a 70-year-old property investor who is a friend of President Donald Trump and who has served as the chairman of Mr Trump<6D>s inaugural committee, has experience swooping in for high-profile distressed assets. In 2008 his firm acquired Michael Jackson<6F>s Neverland ranch. Colony also put up millions to rescue Annie Leibovitz, a photographer known for her work with celebrities, from financial trouble.Latest updates Germany<6E>s coalition talks begin Kaffeeklatsch 34 minutes ago Not   4   4   5   5 hours ago Annie Baker is a master of loaded silences Prospero 6   Still, some see the potential acquisition as a bail-out for the Weinsteins, who own more than two-fifths of the studio. Harvey Weinstein, who was fired from running the company on October 8th, has now given up his board seat, and Bob Weinstein, who now faces a single accusation of sexual harassment (and denies the allegation), may be on his way out. Making no direct reference to the scandal engulfing the studio, Mr Barrack said Colony would help return TWC to <20>its rightful iconic position in the independent film and television industry<72>.He is certainly familiar with TWC<57>s assets, which comprise its film library as well as a slate of films and television projects. In 2010 his firm participated in the purchase of Miramax Films, the Weinstein brothers<72> predecessor film company, from Disney for $660m. According to a Hollywood producer familiar with both firms, Miramax<61>s new owners could not develop projects based on many of their successful old titles, like <20>Shakespeare in Love<76> and <20>Bad Santa<74>, without the consent of the Weinstein brothers, who had produced them. Miramax and TWC entered into complicated development agreements, but little of significance has come from them thus far (<28>Bad Santa 2<> was made, and flopped on its release last year, failing to earn back its budget). The two also share production rights to some television properties, including Project Runway, a reality competition around fashion.Combining Miramax and TWC into one entity would clear up rights issues for both companies. Mr Barrack no longer has a stake in Miramax, as Colony and its fellow investors sold the studio last year to beIN Media Group, a sports media company based in Qatar, for an undisclosed sum. Mr Barrack may buy TWC as a short-term salvage job in order to sell it to Miramax<61>s current owner, or he could break the company into pieces, splitting off, for example, the television production business, and sell them off individually. Whatever happens to the business now, the Weinstein name will not be on it.This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline "Into the frame"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/rss/business_rss.xml'|'https://www.economist.com/news/business/21730476-tom-barrack-has-promised-restore-weinstein-company-its-rightful-iconic-position?fsrc=rss%7Cbus'|'2017-10-19T22:56:00.000+03:00'
'96fdc4b2f0b9deec7ffdf5eb1fabda8de85898f5'|'China central bank warns against ''Minsky Moment'' due to excessive optimism'|'October 19, 2017 / 8:28 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago China central bank warns against ''Minsky Moment'' due to excessive optimism Reuters Staff 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Zhou Xiaochuan, Governor of the People''s Bank of China, attends a news conference during the ongoing National People''s Congress (NPC), China''s parliament, in Beijing China March 10, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo BEIJING (Reuters) - China will fend off risks from excessive optimism that could lead to a <20>Minsky Moment<6E>, central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said on Thursday, adding that corporate debt levels are relatively high and household debt is rising too quickly. A Minsky Moment is a sudden collapse of asset prices after a long period of growth, sparked by debt or currency pressures. The theory is named after economist Hyman Minsky. Zhou<6F>s warnings of potential risks facing the world<6C>s second-largest economy contrast with the rosier views of most Chinese officials. <20>If there are too many pro-cyclical factors in the economy, cyclical fluctuations are magnified and there is excessive optimism during the period, accumulating contradictions that could lead to the so-called Minsky Moment,<2C> Zhou was speaking on the sidelines of China<6E>s 19th Communist Party congress. <20>We should focus on preventing a dramatic adjustment,<2C> he said. China will control risks from sudden adjustments to asset bubbles and will seriously deal with disguised debt of local government financing vehicles, Zhou said. Still, China<6E>s overall debt levels could decline as long as authorities keep a tight control on credit, he said. Related Coverage Worries about a rapid build-up in China<6E>s debt prompted S&P Global Ratings to cut China<6E>s sovereign credit rating last month, following a cut by Moody<64>s in May. China<6E>s finance ministry said S&P<>s downgrade was a <20>wrong decision<6F>. The International Monetary Fund IMF said in August it expected China<6E>s total non-financial sector debt to rise to almost 300 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) by 2022, up from 242 percent last year. When asked whether he would retire this year or next, Zhou said: <20>Either way it<69>ll be soon.<2E> The 69-year-old Zhou, the country<72>s longest-serving central bank chief, has spearheaded financial reforms and boosted the yuan<61>s global profile. Sources told Reuters earlier that Zhou was likely to retire around the time of the annual session of parliament next March, and China<6E>s top banking regulator Guo Shuqing and veteran banker Jiang Chaoliang are front runners to succeed Zhou. YUAN BAND NOT KEY FOCUS Zhou also said that the trading range of the yuan exchange rate was not a key issue at the moment, and that the width of the yuan<61>s current band rarely constrains supply and demand. <20>Sometimes a widening of the exchange rate<74>s floating range is a signal that (China<6E>s) opening up will move forward. But this is not the key focus currently,<2C> he said. The central bank is considering a widening of the yuan<61>s trading band after the 19th Communist Party congress, Reuters reported in August, citing sources. The central bank could widen the yuan trading range to allow it to rise or fall 3 percent against the dollar from the daily mid-point rate set by the central bank, up from the current 2 percent, according to the sources. The foreign exchange market is currently stable, Pan Gongsheng, chief of the forex regulator, said on the sidelines of the congress, adding that supply and demand in the foreign exchange market was basically balanced. Pan said on Wednesday that he expected yuan exchange rates to have a more stable foundation after the congress, and the central bank had <20>basically exited<65> from its regular yuan intervention. Beijing burned through nearly $320 billion (<28>243.2 billion) of reserves last year and the yuan CNY=CFXS still fell about 6.5 percent against the surging dollar, its biggest annual drop since 1994. The yuan has gained nearly 5 percent so far this year. Reporting by Min Zhang, John Ruw
'69cd0204527bda6c4d3918f1685587427b86035e'|'Top startup investors see mounting ''backlash'' against tech'|'October 18, 2017 / 11:35 PM / in 16 hours Top startup investors see mounting ''backlash'' against tech Heather Somerville 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Bill Maris, president and chief executive officer of Google Ventures, speaks about the future during the Wall Street Journal Digital Live (WSJDLive) conference at the Montage hotel in Laguna Beach, California October 20, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Blake LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. (Reuters) - Two of the technology industry<72>s top startup investors took to the stage at a conference on Wednesday to decry the power that companies such as Facebook Inc ( FB.O ) had amassed and call for a redistribution of wealth. Bill Maris, who founded Alphabet Inc<6E>s ( GOOGL.O ) venture capital arm and now runs venture fund Section 32, and Sam Altman, president of startup accelerator Y Combinator, said widespread discontent over income inequality helped elect U.S. President Donald Trump and had put wealthy technology companies in the crosshairs. <20>I do know that the tech backlash is going to be strong,<2C> said Altman. <20>We have more and more concentrated power and wealth.<2E> The market capitalization of the so-called Big Five technology companies - Alphabet, Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ), Amazon Inc ( AMZN.O ), Microsoft Corp ( MSFT.O ) and Facebook - has doubled in the last three years to more than $3 trillion (2.27 trillion pounds). Silicon Valley broadly has amassed significant wealth during the latest tech boom. Altman and Maris spoke on the final day of The Wall Street Journal DLive technology conference in Southern California. Facebook<6F>s role in facilitating what U.S. intelligence agencies have identified as Russian interference in last year<61>s U.S. presidential election is an example of the immense power the social media company has amassed, the investors said. FILE PHOTO - Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator, speaks at the Wall Street Journal Digital Conference in Laguna Beach, California, U.S., October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson <20>The companies that used to be fun and disruptive and interesting and benevolent are now disrupting our elections,<2C> Maris said. Altman said people <20>are understandably uncomfortable with that.<2E> Altman, who unequivocally rebuffed rumors that he would run for governor of California next year, said he expects more demands from both the public and policy makers on data privacy, limiting what personal information Facebook and others can collect. Maris said regulators would have good cause to break up the big technology companies. <20>These companies are more powerful than AT&T ever was,<2C> he said. Facebook said last month it had discovered an operation likely based in Russia that spent $100,000 on political ads and created 470 fake accounts and pages that spread polarizing views on political and social issues. Altman and Maris offered few details of how to accomplish a redistribution of wealth. Maris proposed shorter term limits for elected officials and simplifying the tax code. Altman has advocated basic income, a poverty-fighting proposal in which all residents would receive a regular, unconditional sum of money from the government. Reporting by Heather Somerville; editing by Jonathan Weber and David Gregorio 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/wsjd-conference-critics/top-startup-investors-see-mounting-backlash-against-tech-idINKBN1CN3A6'|'2017-10-19T02:35:00.000+03:00'
'501594f332b750e33579e0a3a7e8aa33d4f38dba'|'India''s WPI inflation eases to 2.60 percent in September'|'October 16, 2017 / 7:36 AM / Updated 13 hours ago India''s WPI inflation eases to 2.60 percent in September Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A man pushes a handcart carrying vegetables at a wholesale market in Mumbai, India, October 16, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India<69>s annual wholesale price inflation eased to 2.60 percent in September from the provisional 3.24 percent in the previous month, dragged down by smaller increases in food prices, data showed on Monday. The rise compares with a 3.41 percent increase forecast by economists in a Reuters poll. Wholesale food prices in September rose 1.99 percent on the year, compared with a 4.41 percent rise a month earlier, the data showed. Reporting by Manoj Kumar; Editing by Nidhi Verma and Sanjeev Miglani 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-inflation-wpi/indias-wpi-inflation-eases-to-2-60-percent-in-september-idINKBN1CL0LU'|'2017-10-16T09:51:00.000+03:00'
'51e7bbb742ec43b720914cb519aab820776ff73f'|'Daimler recalls over 1 million vehicles worldwide for air bag fix'|'October 16, 2017 / 3:41 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Daimler recalls over 1 million vehicles worldwide for air bag fix Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Mercedes-Benz logo is seen before the company''s annual news conference in Stuttgart, Germany, February 4, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo BERLIN/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Daimler AG is recalling more than 1 million Mercedes-Benz cars and sport utility vehicles worldwide to address potential unintended air bag deployments, the German automaker said on Monday. The safety recall covers 495,000 vehicles in the United States, 400,000 in Britain, 76,000 in Canada and a few hundred thousand in Germany, company officials said. The German automaker did not immediately have a complete worldwide total. An electrostatic discharge, coupled with a broken clock spring and insufficient grounding of steering components, can lead to inadvertent deployment of the driver side front air bag in vehicles subject to the recall, the company said. As part of the fix, it said dealers would add new grounding to the steering components. A Mercedes-Benz spokeswoman in the United States said there had been <20>a handful of instances where drivers suffered minor abrasions or bruises<65> due to the air bag problem. No deaths have been reported and the issue is not related to the massive recall of Takata air bag inflators worldwide. The recalls covers some 2012-2018 model year A, B, C, and E-Class models and CLA, GLA and GLC vehicles. Reporting by Andreas Cremer and David Shepardson; Editing by Maria Sheahan and Tom Brown 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-daimler-recall/daimler-recalls-400000-cars-in-britain-amid-global-measure-idUSKBN1CL2BY'|'2017-10-16T19:33:00.000+03:00'
'68cb797437040c5ebae180b223874cbd6137183e'|'CEE MARKETS-Zloty rallies on data, rate hike bets boost Czech crown'|'* Crown strongest vs euro for years on rate hike bets * Zloty, forint firms to multi-week highs * Zloty ignores dropping IMF credit line, helped by data * Bucharest rejects all bids at debt auction again (Adds Polish economic data, dealer Quote: , Hungarian and Romanian tenders) By Sandor Peto and Jason Hovet BUDAPEST, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Central European currencies extended last week''s gains on Monday, with interest rate hike expectations lifting the Czech crown and improving current account data buoying Poland''s zloty. Global investor sentiment remains positive towards emerging markets, dealers said. The zloty led the currency gains in Central Europe, touching six-week highs and testing 3-month highs against the euro as Poland''s August current account deficit came in at 100 million euros, well below expectations. At 1349 GMT it traded at 4.2355, up 0.4 percent. The deficit has narrowed even though the economy is growing robustly, and a batch of Polish economic figures due this week are expected to confirm this. "On Wednesday we will have industrial output and retail sales data and that''s what the market will focus on. Robust readings may result in further zloty appreciation," said BZ WBK dealer Adam Wardzilak. The zloty shrugged off an announcement made by the Finance Ministry on Saturday that Poland would quit a precautionary Flexible Credit Line from the International Monetary Fund. The crown traded at 25.755, up by a third of a percentage point. It reached levels seen before the Czech central bank (CNB) launched an intervention regime in 2013, and gained on chances of more interest rate hikes to come. The Czech economy would benefit from a 50-75 basis point interest rate increase before the end of 2018, CNB board member Vojtech Benda was Quote: d as saying on Thursday. The currency usually ignores politics, and it has not been affected by the prospect of Czech voters handing victory - according to opinion polls - to tough-talking populist billionaire Andrej Babis in a parliamentary election at the end of this week. Babis has signalled he is ready to take a more combative approach towards the European Union, though he is not expected to strain ties with Brussels as much as the nationalist governments in Poland and Hungary have done. The forint and the leu also firmed on Monday, but underperformed the crown and the zloty. Hungarian central bank (NBH) Deputy Governor Marton Nagy spurred expectations for further monetary easing in dovish comments on Friday, but failed to talk down the forint. The forint even touched a 5-week high against the euro. The NBH''s weekly fx swap auction on Monday did not weaken the forint as the central bank did not tender the most liquid 12-month expiry, traders said. Elsewhere, Romania is planning a controversial shakeup of the judiciary, as has happened already in Poland, and that issue is weighing on Romanian assets. The government rejected all bids at a tender of 2019-expiry bonds, its fourth failed auction this month. CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1549 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.755 25.838 +0.32 4.86% 0 5 % Hungary 307.80 308.41 +0.20 0.33% forint 00 50 % Polish zloty 4.2355 4.2525 +0.40 3.98% % Romanian leu 4.5835 4.5877 +0.09 -1.06% % Croatian 7.5045 7.5095 +0.07 0.67% kuna % Serbian 119.15 119.35 +0.17 3.52% dinar 00 00 % Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1053.4 1053.0 +0.03 +14.3 2 8 % 0% Budapest 39009. 38894. +0.29 +21.8 02 88 % 9% Warsaw 2542.6 2528.1 +0.57 +30.5 9 6 % 3% Bucharest 8035.4 8034.9 +0.01 +13.4 1 6 % 1% Ljubljana 814.28 816.75 -0.30% +13.4 7% Zagreb 1852.3 1862.4 -0.54% -7.14% 7 8 Belgrade 730.90 727.24 +0.50 +1.89 % % Sofia 670.28 669.17 +0.17 +14.3 % 0% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs change Bund in Czech spread Republic 2-year 0.092 0.155 +083b +17bp ps s 5-year 0.479 -0.013 +081b +0bps ps
'd025793b58d387e84a36ac1c738f0d6f1e501d3b'|'U.S. shale output seen posting 11th straight rise in November: EIA'|'FILE PHOTO: Pump jacks are seen near vast Monterey shale formation in the Midway Sunset oilfield, California, U.S. on April 29, 2013. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. shale production for November is forecast to rise for a 11th consecutive month, the U.S. government said on Monday, as U.S. prices CLc1 stabilize around $50 a barrel. U.S. oil output is expected to increase by 82,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 6.12 million bpd, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration<6F>s drilling productivity report. North Dakota<74>s Bakken output is set to rise by 7,600 bpd to 1.1 million bpd, the most since March 2016, while Eagle Ford oil output in Texas is set to rise by 2,500 bpd to 1.2 million bpd. Permian production is forecast to rise by 50,000 bpd to 2.7 million bpd, a new record, the EIA said. Meanwhile, U.S. natural gas production was projected to increase to a record 60.9 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) in November. That would be up over 0.8 bcfd from the October forecast and would be the eighth monthly increase in a row. The EIA projected gas output would increase in all of the big shale basins in November, with the biggest increase in the Appalachia region, which includes the Marcellus and Utica shale formations. Output in the Appalachia region, the biggest shale gas play, was set to rise by 0.4 bcfd to a record high of 25.7 bcfd in November, an eighth consecutive increase. Production in Appalachia was 22.5 bcfd in the same month a year ago. EIA also said producers drilled 1,208 wells and completed 1,029 in the biggest shale basins in September, leaving total drilled but uncompleted wells up 179 at a record high 7,270, according to data going back to December 2013. Reporting by Catherine Ngai and Scott DiSavino; Editing by Leslie Adler and Lisa Shumaker'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-oil-productivity/u-s-shale-output-set-to-rise-by-82000-bpd-in-november-eia-idUSKBN1CL2OH'|'2017-10-16T22:39:00.000+03:00'
'3b9f0bd6b6179775f9d9ac7adbca1fbc43d02926'|'Hitachi not planning to raise stake in Ansaldo STS at present'|' 06 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago Hitachi not planning to raise stake in Ansaldo STS at present   MILAN, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Hitachi is happy with its stake of just above 50 percent in Italian rail signalling group Ansaldo STS and is not planning any bid to increase it, the head of the Hitachi Rail unit said. Hitachi Rail CEO Alistair Dormer said the Japanese firm was a <20>very long term<72> investor in Ansaldo STS and, as such, happy with the current shareholding structure, which did not prevent Ansaldo from cooperating with the rest of the Hitachi group. Investment funds led by Elliott Management have engaged in a feud with Hitachi since it bought Ansaldo STS in 2016. Elliott is the second biggest shareholder in Ansaldo STS, with a 22.5 percent stake, an option to buy a further 8.8 percent. <20>I<EFBFBD>m under no pressure from Hitachi to buy anymore shares in Ansaldo STS,<2C> Dormer told Reuters on the sidelines of an event in Milan. (Reporting by Elisa Anzolin, writing by Valentina Za, editing by Stephen Jewkes) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/hitachi-ansaldo/hitachi-not-planning-to-raise-stake-in-ansaldo-sts-at-present-idUSI6N1MF019'|'2017-10-18T19:06:00.000+03:00'
'7c266d7175e1443e5c91f045e124fdcc5a579230'|'China''s Xi says to maintain principle property is not for speculation'|'October 18, 2017 / 3:46 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago China''s Xi says to maintain principle property is not for speculation Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A poster with a portrait of Chinese President Xi Jinping overlooks a street in Huangshan, Anhui province, China, September 16, 2017. The slogan reads: "Core Socialist Values: prosperity, democracy, civility, and harmony; freedom, equality, justice, rule of law; patriotism, dedication, integrity and friendship." Picture taken September 16, 2017. REUTERS/Aly Song BEIJING (Reuters) - China will maintain the principle that houses are for people to live in, not for speculation, President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday at the opening of a key Communist Party congress. The principle was first introduced by China<6E>s top leaders at an economic conference last December, as the country sought to crack down on rampant speculative buying in its property market through a flurry of government curbs. Reporting by Christian Shepherd and Stella Qiu; Writing by Yawen Chen; Editing by Jacqueline Wong 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-economy-property/chinas-xi-says-to-maintain-principle-property-is-not-for-speculation-idUKKBN1CN0BB'|'2017-10-18T06:45:00.000+03:00'
'425d591c5bb34318acc7956812650451bfdb0687'|'U.S. exchanges set for highest number of Asian IPOs since 2010'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:40 AM / Updated 5 hours ago U.S. exchanges set for highest number of Asian IPOs since 2010 Elzio Barreto 3 Min Read A view of the exterior of the Nasdaq market site in Times Square in the Manhattan borough of New York City, U.S., October 24, 2016. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton HONG KONG (Reuters) - U.S. exchanges are set to record their busiest year for IPOs from Asian firms since 2010 and may sustain the pace in 2018, as startups from Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam join a flurry of Chinese firms that have already listed in the country. Chinese issuers have dominated U.S. IPO activity for several years, but Nasdaq and rival New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) have been increasingly targeting firms from fast-growing Southeast Asian economies and startups from Japan and Australia to counter their dependence on mainland companies. <20>We see great growth and great opportunities ahead, and it<69>s not just about China. Entrepreneurship and innovation are all over the region,<2C> Bob McCooey, chairman for Asia Pacific and global head of capital markets at Nasdaq, said in an interview. Five companies, including Singaporean online games maker Sea Ltd, China<6E>s oldest peer-to-peer (P2P) lender Ppdai Group and search company Sogou Inc, are currently pitching their plans for initial public offerings to investors, adding to the 10 Chinese firms that have listed so far this year in the United States. Australian biopharmaceutical company Immuron Ltd ( IMRN.O ) also listed in the United States in June. The final tally of IPOs from Asian companies in the United States is expected to reach 20-24, McCooey said. That would be the most from the region since a record 42 new listings in 2010, Thomson Reuters data showed. While the number of Asian firms listing on U.S. exchanges should be about the same in 2018, the year is expected to see an increase in the amount of funds raised from 2017, McCooey added. Sectors leading deal activity include life sciences, e-commerce, education and financial technology. IPO proceeds from Asian companies listing on Nasdaq and the NYSE peaked in 2014, when e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group Holding Ltd ( BABA.N ) went public in a record $25 billion deal. That year, two-thirds of new listings were from China. Despite the dominance from Chinese issuers, U.S. IPOs over the past several years have included companies from Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and India. Nasdaq is tracking about 100 companies from mainland China that it could engage with for potential listings as they look to go public in coming years, McCooey said. But the exchange is also meeting with firms from Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. The exchange in May signed an agreement to help Vietnamese online gaming and messaging company VNG Corp explore an IPO, making it a rare U.S. listing from a company in the Southeast Asian nation. Reporting by Elzio Barreto; Editing by Himani Sarkar 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nasdaq-asia/u-s-exchanges-set-for-highest-number-of-asian-ipos-since-2010-idUSKBN1CM12Y'|'2017-10-17T12:42:00.000+03:00'
'1885a91ef986c5d33eef4f93a911c3514e372b24'|'UPDATE 1-U.S. policy on Iran won''t harm its oil sector - minister'|'October 17, 2017 / 4:05 PM / Updated 8 minutes ago UPDATE 1-U.S. policy on Iran won''t harm its oil sector - minister Reuters Staff * Iran plans to boost oil, gas output by 2021 * To sign 10 new oilfield deals by March 2018 (Adds details, quotes, background) By Ron Bousso and Julia Payne LONDON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s revised hardline policy towards Iran will have little impact on Tehran<61>s ambition to develop its vital oil sector and attract foreign investment, a senior Iranian official said on Tuesday. The Islamic Republic hopes to signs 10 new deals with foreign companies to develop new oil and gas fields by March 2018, Amir Zamaninia, Iran<61>s deputy oil minister for trade and international affairs, told the Oil & Money conference in London. Trump<6D>s decision last Friday not to certify that Iran was complying with a landmark 2016 international nuclear deal will not detract from Tehran<61>s plans, he said. <20>I don<6F>t think any of us, or any of our partners have been surprised by this statement. Our expectations of policy formulation from Washington have been very measured,<2C> he said. <20>The (U.S.) statement and policy ... has little or no effect and implication on our future plan in the oil industry,<2C> Zamaninia said. Iran is negotiating 28 contracts with foreign companies, including many of Europe<70>s top oil companies, under a new development contract, he added. France<63>s Total became in July the first western oil major to re-enter Iran following the lifting of international sanctions with an agreement to develop the giant South Pars offshore gas field. Royal Dutch Shell has also signed an agreement with Iran for the possible development of oil and gas fields. Iran, which holds the world<6C>s largest gas reserves, plans to boost its gas production to 1.1 billion cubic metres per day by 2021 from the current 800 million bcm per day, he said. The OPEC member also aims to raise its oil production capacity to 4.7 million barrels per day by 2021 from the current 3.8 million bpd, he said. He said that the major oilfields - Azadegan, Yadavaran, Abteymour and Mansouri - have potential to increase output by 2 million bpd combined. (Reporting by Ron Bousso and Julia Payne; Editing by Adrian Croft) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/iran-oil-sanctions/update-1-u-s-policy-on-iran-wont-harm-its-oil-sector-minister-idUSL8N1MS5M1'|'2017-10-17T19:04:00.000+03:00'
'78ff38141bce21ab3e0d709ac4fa910522aca69e'|'Brazil antitrust watchdog blocks JBJ-Mataboi deal'|'October 18, 2017 / 2:27 PM / Updated 14 minutes ago Brazil antitrust watchdog blocks JBJ-Mataboi deal Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BRASILIA, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Brazil<69>s antitrust watchdog Cade on Wednesday unanimously voted to block the purchase of meatpacker Mataboi Alimentos SA by JBJ Agropecu<63>ria Ltda, a further blow to the billionaire Batista family. JBJ is owned by Jos<6F> Batista Jr., whose brothers control the world<6C>s largest meatpacker, JBS SA, through holding company J&F Investimentos SA. Batista Jr.<2E>s family ties would allow JBJ to exchange valuable information with JBS and coordinate strategic decisions to stifle competition, the board of Cade argued. This analysis aligns with Cade<64>s general-superintendency, which in September warned of coordination risks despite the lack of formal ties between both JBS and Mataboi, Brazil<69>s No. 4 meatpacker. Batista Jr. sold his shares in J&F to his brothers Joesley and Wesley in 2013. Two years later, JBJ agreed to purchase the entirety of Fratelli Dorazio Investimentos SA, as the owner of Mataboi was then known, for an undisclosed value. The decision is another setback to the Batista family<6C>s efforts to emerge stronger from a corruption scandal, five months after Joesley and Wesley admitted to bribing nearly 2,000 politicians. JBS withdrew this week the plan for the initial public offering of its U.S. unit, initially expected for this year. (Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Andrea Ricci) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/mataboi-ma-jbj-antitrust/brazil-antitrust-watchdog-blocks-jbj-mataboi-deal-idUSL2N1MT0SD'|'2017-10-18T17:26:00.000+03:00'
'5c77ee12b4901cfb288757499928b2b1dfef099a'|'Domino''s German JV to buy independent chain Hallo Pizza'|'FILE PHOTO: The sign of a Domino''s Pizza restaurant is seen in Paris, France, October 27, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo (Reuters) - Domino<6E>s Pizza Group Plc ( DOM.L ) said its German joint venture, in which it owns a third of the stake, would buy Germany<6E>s largest independent pizza chain, Hallo Pizza, to expand its business in the country.Domino<6E>s Pizza, a master franchisee of U.S.-based Domino<6E>s Pizza Inc ( DPZ.N ), said the deal worth 32 million euros ($37.8 million) on a cash-and-debt-free basis, would add Hallo<6C>s 170 stores to its business.The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2018, Britain<69>s biggest pizza delivery firm said on Thursday.Reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-dominos-piza-grp-deals-hallo-pizza/dominos-german-jv-to-buy-independent-chain-hallo-pizza-idINKBN1CO0MO'|'2017-10-19T04:31:00.000+03:00'
'eb17bcb0e789721777e6371e60bacad70d3c0d77'|'Amazon offered billions in tax breaks for second U.S. headquarters'|' 09 AM / in 5 minutes Amazon offered billions in tax breaks for second U.S. headquarters Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of the web service Amazon is pictured in Mexico City, Mexico on June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/Illustration/File Photo - RC1F1E649DB0 (Reuters) - U.S. cities are offering Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ) at least as much as $7 billion in tax breaks ahead of a Thursday deadline as they compete to house its second headquarters. The world<6C>s largest online retailer has won promises from elected officials who are eager for the $5 billion-plus investment and up to 50,000 jobs that will come with <20>Amazon HQ2.<2E> New Jersey proposed $7 billion in potential credits against state and city taxes if Amazon locates in Newark and sticks to hiring commitments, according to a Monday news release from the governor<6F>s office. Across the Hudson River, New York City made a proposal without incentives special for Amazon, though the state is expected to offer some, a spokesman for the city<74>s economic development corporation said on Wednesday. And across the country, California is offering some $300 million in incentives over several years and other benefits, the governor said in an Oct. 11 letter to Amazon<6F>s Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, published online by the Orange County Register. Dozens of cities and states have expressed interest in HQ2. Credit ratings and research company Moody<64>s has ranked Austin as the most likely to win based on its labor pool, costs of doing business and quality of life, among other criteria. Austin is also the headquarters of Whole Foods Market, which Amazon recently acquired. The city<74>s chamber of commerce said in a Twitter post on Wednesday that it submitted its bid for HQ2. Amazon has said it will announce a decision for its second campus, in addition to its Seattle headquarters, next year. Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Lisa Shumaker 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-headquarters/amazon-offered-billions-in-tax-breaks-for-second-u-s-headquarters-idUKKBN1CO1IP'|'2017-10-19T14:06:00.000+03:00'
'5530a0e2e1a03eab340aa5fbb0961b64b758682f'|'METALS-Copper hovers near 3-yr top as China growth supports'|'SYDNEY, Oct 17 (Reuters) - London copper paused for breath near three-year highs on Tuesday as it faced headwinds from a stronger dollar, but renewed optimism over China''s economic outlook has lent support to prices. FUNDAMENTALS * LME COPPER: London Metal Exchange copper was little changed at $7,128 a tonne by 0125 GMT, following its biggest daily jump in eight months at 3.7 percent on Monday. Prices struck $7,177 a tonne in the previous session, the highest since July 2014. * SHFE COPPER: Shanghai Futures Exchange copper advanced 2.6 percent to 55,460 yuan ($8,418) a tonne. It earlier hit its highest since Feb 2013 at 55,910. * SCRAP: The market was keeping an eye on reports that China is enforcing some restrictions on copper imports, including scrap, traders said. * CHINA ECONOMY: China''s producer profits and copper imports have picked up, recent data showed, even as China''s economic growth is expected to ease to 6.8 percent in the third quarter from 6.9 percent in the previous quarter due to a cooling property sector and the government''s battle against debt risks. * RIO TINTO: Rio Tinto cut its mined copper production guidance for 2017 to 460,000-480,000 tonnes from 500,000-550,000 tonnes owing to a delayed ramp-up at its Chilean Escondida mine. * ZINC: SHFE zinc slipped by 1 percent but was still near its highest in 9-1/2 years, having peaked at 26,630 on Oct. 9. LME zinc was also within reach of decade highs at $3,308.75, with supply constrained by China''s crackdown on polluters in heavy industry. * ZINC SPREADS SLACKEN: The premium for cash zinc has slumped in recent days, suggesting that the metal may be delivered against short positions as the main October contract expires this week. LME cash CMZN0-3 is at a $35 premium against the benchmark, down from $91 on Oct. 12. * STOCKS: LME zinc stocks have already climbed about 20,000 tonnes since Oct. 5 to the highest since mid July. MZNSTX-TOTAL * USD: Headwinds came from the dollar, which was supported by a rise in Treasury yields following a report that U.S. President Donald Trump was favouring a policy hawk as the next head of the Federal Reserve. * JAPAN MANUFACTURING: Confidence among Japanese manufacturers rebounded in October to match a peak last seen in mid-2007, a Reuters poll found, further evidence that the economic recovery is gathering momentum helped by a weak yen and strong overseas demand. * For the top stories in metals and other news, click or DATA AHEAD (GMT) 0900 Germany ZEW economic sentiment Oct 1000 Euro zone Inflation final Sep 1230 U.S. Import prices Sep 1230 U.S. Export prices Sep 1315 U.S. Industrial production Sep 1400 U.S. NAHB housing market index Oct PRICES BASE METALS PRICES 0136 GMT Three month LME copper 7123 Most active ShFE copper 55460 Three month LME aluminium 2143 Most active ShFE 16400 aluminium Three month LME zinc 3205 Most active ShFE zinc 25815 Three month LME lead 2549.5 Most active ShFE lead 20295 Three month LME nickel 11865 Most active ShFE nickel 94790 Three month LME tin 20730 Most active ShFE tin 147110 BASE METALS ARBITRAGE LME/SHFE COPPER LMESHFCUc3 669.24 LME/SHFE ALUMINIUM LMESHFALc3 -33.16 LME/SHFE ZINC LMESHFZNc3 616.09 LME/SHFE LEAD LMESHFPBc3 -129.3 LME/SHFE NICKEL LMESHFNIc3 2183.45 ($1 = 6.5885 Chinese yuan) (Reporting by James Regan and Melanie Burton; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-metals/metals-copper-hovers-near-3-yr-top-as-china-growth-supports-idINL8N1MR71R'|'2017-10-16T23:57:00.000+03:00'
'73627c1d39ed1c29b4f4355ada253e7c67b3632b'|'ANZ confirms partial sale of wealth business to IOOF'|'October 16, 2017 / 8:21 PM / in 14 minutes Australia''s ANZ Bank on trading halt ahead of deal announcement Byron Kaye 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A man who claims to have been homeless for over 30 years begs for money as he sits outside a branch of the ANZ Banking Group in central Sydney, Australia, July 18, 2017. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian No. 4 lender Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd ( ANZ.AX ) sold its pension unit to financial services company IOOF Holdings ( IFL.AX ) for A$975 million (577.54 million pounds), continuing the rush of banks quitting non-core divisions. The deal fell short of a total exit of ANZ<4E>s wealth management operations which the bank had flagged a year earlier, and which had been expected to fetch the bank about A$4 billion. A month earlier, larger Commonwealth Bank of Australia sold its life insurance unit to Hong Kong<6E>s AIA Group ( 1299.HK ) for $3.1 billion while saying it may spin off its wealth management unit in an initial public offering. The divestments are part of a trend of asset sales across Australia<69>s banking sector as the country<72>s lenders seek to cut exposure to fierce competition and satisfy tough new rules about how much cash they must keep on hand. <20>As we<77>ve gone through this process it<69>s become clear that it<69>s actually better for the customers and for the shareholder that we separate the superannuation and insurance businesses and look for alternative outcomes for both of those,<2C> said ANZ Wealth Group Executive Alexis George in comments published by the Australian Securities Exchange. <20>Separating the super business from the insurance business will take some time but once that happens it means we<77>ve got a clear life insurance business and that gives us much more opportunities than we<77>ve got today,<2C> George added. ANZ announced the deal before the start of share trading on Tuesday. ANZ and IOOF both put their shares in a trading halt. For IOOF, the deal makes it Australia<69>s second-largest pension management business. <20>It presents a unique opportunity for IOOF to significantly increase scale, create value from cost synergies, and partner with an iconic Australian institution,<2C> said IOOF managing director Christopher Kelaher in a statement. IOOF said it would fund the deal with a A$450 million institutional share placement. (This version of the story refiles to update headline.) Additional reporting by Sonali Paul and Chris Thomas; Editing by James Dalgleish 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-anz-bank-m-a-ioof-hldgs/australias-anz-bank-on-trading-halt-ahead-of-announcing-deal-idUKKBN1CL2UQ'|'2017-10-17T01:04:00.000+03:00'
'8e0d3c4d9d47c1837d095764b646d464bee20dbd'|'COLUMN-DOJ: Trump tweets are not presidential actions. Except when they are. - Frankel'|'October 16, 2017 / 8:50 PM / in 40 minutes REFILE-COLUMN-DOJ: Trump tweets are not presidential actions. Except when they are. - Frankel Reuters Staff (Corrects foundation to institute in paragraghs 18 and 19.) By Alison Frankel NEW YORK, Oct 16 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump has more than 40 million followers at @realdonaldtrump, the Twitter account he started in 2009 and has used to such consequential effect during and after the presidential campaign. President Trump sometimes announces policies, such as his proposed ban on transgender troops in the U.S. military, on Twitter. He regularly uses the @realdonaldtrump account to advance his agenda. The president goes to Twitter to push legislation, boost loyal supporters and attack those he perceives as disloyal, from Republican Senators John McCain, Mitch McConnell and Bob Corker to pro football players who kneel during the national anthem and the news media. Attempting to understand the Trump administration without reading the @realdonaldtrump Twitter account is like trying to read a map without street names. You can still figure out where you are, but it<69>s a lot harder. Last June seven Twitter users and Columbia University<74>s Knight First Amendment Institute sued President Trump and several White House officials in federal court in Manhattan, arguing that the president and his aides violated their First Amendment rights by blocking access to the @realdonaldtrump Twitter account. Their argument, in a nutshell, is that Trump<6D>s Twitter account <20> which has 20 million more followers than the official @potus account launched by the Obama administration <20> is a public forum from which the president cannot exclude his critics. The Justice Department, which is representing the president and his aides in the case, filed its motion for summary judgment on Friday. PRIVATE SPEECH The brief<65>s primary argument is that @realdonaldtrump is not a public forum. It<49>s a private platform governed by the rules of a private company, the Justice Department said. The president opened his account before he was an elected official, the brief said, and his continued operation of the account is not a right conferred by his election to the presidency. <20>The president does not operate his personal Twitter account by virtue of federal law, nor is blocking made possible because the President is clothed in Article II powers,<2C> the brief said. So according to the Justice Department, President Trump<6D>s posts to @realdonaldtrump are simply not <20>state actions<6E> subject to the First Amendment. They are private speech, Justice insisted, like a toast at a wedding or a speech at a fundraiser, even if Trump<6D>s purportedly private speech is about presidential policies. <20>To be sure, the President<6E>s account identifies his office, and his tweets make official statements,<2C> the DOJ brief said. <20>But the fact that the president may announce the <20>actions of the state<74> through his Twitter account does not mean that all actions related to that account are attributable to the state.<2E> President Trump, in other words, is not flexing his presidential power when he tweets as @realdonaldtrump, according to the Justice Department. But at the same time, Justice argued in the summary judgment brief, the president can<61>t be sued for posting to his private account because he<68>s acting as the president. DOJ said the Knight Institute and the president<6E>s critics do not have standing to bring their case because they can<61>t win the injunction they<65>ve asked for. Under U.S. Supreme Court separation-of-powers precedent, most recently in 1992<39>s Franklin v. Massachusetts (505 U.S. 788), courts cannot interfere with the president<6E>s authority to make judgment calls. EXECUTIVE FUNCTION President Trump<6D>s decisions about his Twitter interactions, including whom he blocks, are <20>squarely <20> discretionary choices,<2C> the brief said. The president cannot be barred, DOJ said, from <20>exercising the executive function<6F> of blocking Twi
'fbcb98ae9e56e6060ac9b36de572dd1143e106d1'|'Finnish government looks to list drinks company Altia'|'HELSINKI (Reuters) - The Finnish government is set to press ahead with a stock market listing of state-owned alcoholic drinks company Altia to help boost its growth.The likely flotation is part of the center-right coalition<6F>s plan to sell shares in state-owned companies worth about 1.6 billion euros ($1.9 billion) by 2018.Known for its Koskenkorva vodka brand, Altia generated sales of 357 million euros last year. It has recently acquired cognac brands Larsen, Renault and Xante.<2E>The company is in a good shape now, the market is favorable and this is politically manageable... it is very likely that this leads to an IPO,<2C> said Eero Heliovaara, Director General of the Finnish Government Ownership Steering Department.The government said it would retain a stake of at least one third in Altia after a possible listing on the Helsinki bourse. The review is expected to be finished in the first half of 2018.Privatization is a sensitive topic in Finland and pressure from labor unions has limited sell-offs in recent years. The state owns stakes in 14 of the Helsinki market<65>s listed firms, as well as 55 other companies.The Altia plan was no surprise after parliament in 2014 scrapped a clause obliging the state to hold a majority stake in the firm.The government has so far sold its stake in waste treatment company Ekokem for 198 million euros, and it has recently sought a mandate to cut its stake in refiner Neste ( NESTE.HE ).The government has also said that mail and delivery company Posti is another possible privatization target.($1 = 0.8507 euros)Reporting by Jussi Rosendahl and Tuomas Forsell; Editing by Keith Weir'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-altia-ipo/finnish-government-looks-to-list-drinks-company-altia-idINKBN1CM1U6'|'2017-10-17T11:03:00.000+03:00'
'6f0fd4fae67794b8d2e173111f62e238ecd0e6d5'|'Bank of England still faces growth-inflation trade-off - Carney'|'October 17, 2017 / 10:56 AM / Updated 22 minutes ago Bank of England still faces growth-inflation trade-off - Carney Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, speaks at the Bank of England conference ''Independence 20 Years On'' at the Fishmonger''s Hall in London, Britain September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde LONDON (Reuters) - Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said on Tuesday the central bank still had to balance the need to support job creation and growth with an inflation rate that is running above its target. <20>Inflation rising potentially above the 3 percent level in coming months is something that we have anticipated,<2C> Carney told MPs in parliament, saying the Bank had said before last year<61>s Brexit vote that a fall in sterling would push up prices. <20>As a consequence we faced a trade-off, and we still face a trade-off, between having inflation above target and the need to support, or the desirability of supporting, jobs and activity.<2E> The Bank has said most of its rate-setters think they will need to raise interest rates <20>in the coming months<68> to head off a build-up of inflation pressure. Carney has previously said he is part of that majority. Earlier on Tuesday, official data showed Britain<69>s inflation rate hit 3 percent, above the Bank<6E>s 2 percent target. Much of the increase however has been caused by the fall in the value of the pound since last year<61>s Brexit vote which is likely to be a temporary driver of price increases. Reporting by David Milliken; Writing by William Schomberg; editing by Stephen Addison 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-boe-carney/bank-of-england-still-faces-growth-inflation-trade-off-carney-idUKKBN1CM1DH'|'2017-10-17T13:58:00.000+03:00'
'eab5d8c9abfc05fb356442ef6f1695785f1aebb3'|'Saudi Aramco asks FTI Consulting to halt IPO investor relations work: sources'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:05 AM / in 5 hours Saudi Aramco asks FTI Consulting to halt IPO investor relations work: sources Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Visitors are seen at the Saudi Aramco stand at the Middle East Process Engineering Conference & Exhibition in Manama, Bahrain, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/File photo KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia/DUBAI (Reuters) - State-owned Saudi Aramco has asked FTI Consulting ( FCN.N ) to suspend its investor relations advisory work related to the oil company<6E>s planned initial public offering, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Aramco brought in Brunswick to advice on media relations and appointed FTI Consulting to manage investor relations. It was not immediately clear why FTI was asked to suspend its work for Aramco, but one of the sources said the latest decision could broaden Brunswick<63>s role beyond media relations. FTI has been reporting to Aramco head of investor relations Fergus MacLeod, a former group head of strategic planning at BP. FTI and Brunswick declined to comment on Aramco<63>s move. Saudi Aramco did not respond to a request for immediate comment. China is offering to buy up to 5 percent of Saudi Aramco directly, Reuters reported this week citing sources, a move that could give Saudi Arabia more flexibility in floating the world<6C>s biggest oil producer on the stock market. Reporting by Reem Shamseddine, Stephen Kalin and Hadeel El Sayegh; additional reporting by Rania El Gamal; editing by Jason Neely 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-aramco-ipo-fti-consulting/saudi-aramco-asks-fti-consulting-to-halt-ipo-investor-relations-work-sources-idUSKBN1CM0YG'|'2017-10-17T12:04:00.000+03:00'
'dbb936ffef6e452c7ec4f1dfba6d32deff42418b'|'TREASURIES-Yield curve flattens as 2-year yields hit nearly 9-year high'|'* Expectations for more hawkish Fed boost short-dated yields * 2-year yields hit highest in nearly 9 years * U.S. import prices rise to highest since June 2016 * Long-term inflation indicators continue to lag (Updates to afternoon trading) By Dion Rabouin NEW YORK, Oct 17 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury yield curve flattened on Tuesday as 2-year yields rose to their highest level since November 2008 and yields on longer-dated maturities declined. Analysts said the spread compression between shorter- and longer-dated maturities was due to increased expectations for interest rate tightening by the Federal Reserve and minimal signs of a pick-up in long-term inflation, as indicators of U.S. price growth have been consistently weak this year. Yields on 5-year notes touched their highest level since Oct. 6 while 30-year yields fell to the lowest since Sept. 27. That pushed the yield spread between 5- and 30-year maturities to 83.94 basis points, the lowest since November 2007. The difference between yields of Treasuries maturing in two years and those maturing in 10 years fell to the lowest since August 2016. A report on Monday that Stanford University economist John Taylor had impressed in his meeting with President Donald Trump and was a viable nominee to succeed Fed Chair Janet Yellen accelerated the upward pace of short-dated Treasury yields. "Prior to this meeting the thinking was that Trump would want to pick someone relatively dovish because given his plans for fiscal policy that would line up better," said Tom Simons, money market economist at Jefferies and Co. in New York. "With Taylor coming into center stage not only is he hawkish but much more hawkish than the rest of the candidates being considered." Central bankers more concerned with maintaining low inflation favor higher interest rates, while dovish central bankers favor maintaining low unemployment with lower rates. Yellen on Sunday said the U.S economy remains strong and that she expects to continue gradual interest rate increases despite subdued inflation readings much of the year. "It<49>s a little bit of a convergence of expectations for Fed policy at the short end, which is getting more hawkish, not only Janet Yellen and what she<68>s saying, but the potential for a Fed governor who could be even more hawkish," said Justin Hoogendoorn, head of fixed income strategy at Piper Jaffray & Co. in Chicago. Hoogendoorn highlighted technology, aging populations in large economies like the United States and Europe and global trade as headwinds to long-term inflation growth. Stronger-than-expected data on U.S. import prices also helped boost yields on shorter-dated maturities. The Labor Department said import prices jumped 0.7 percent last month, the biggest gain since June 2016, after an unrevised 0.6 percent rise in August. (Reporting by Dion Rabouin; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Dan Grebler)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-bonds/treasuries-yield-curve-flattens-as-2-year-yields-hit-nearly-9-year-high-idINL2N1MS1KI'|'2017-10-17T17:18:00.000+03:00'
'ea65698ccf001fda1266a239108e7e2185453b45'|'U.S. housing starts hit one-year low in September'|'October 18, 2017 / 1:20 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago U.S. housing starts hit one-year low in September Lucia Mutikani   - A single family home is shown under construction by Toll Brothers Inc, the largest U.S. luxury homebuilder, in Carlsbad, California, United States May 23, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. homebuilding fell to a one-year low in September as Hurricanes Harvey and Irma disrupted the construction of single-family homes in the South, suggesting housing probably remained a drag on economic growth in the third quarter. Housing starts decreased 4.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.127 million units, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday. That was the lowest level since September 2016 and marked the third monthly decline in starts. Groundbreaking tumbled 9.3 percent in the South to the lowest level since October 2015, with single-family homebuilding in the region plunging 15.3 percent to more than a one-year low. The South accounts for almost half of the nation<6F>s homebuilding. Building permits fell 4.5 percent to a rate of 1.215 million units in September. Permits in the South dropped 5.6 percent. It was not clear what the impact of Harvey and Irma was on the September housing starts and permits data. The Commerce Department said the Texas and Florida areas impacted by the storms accounted for about 13 percent of U.S. building permits in 2016. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast housing starts falling to a rate of 1.175 million units last month and building permits slipping to a rate of 1.250 million units. Prices of U.S. Treasuries fell in early morning trading while U.S. stock index futures were trading higher. The dollar .DXY was firmer against a basket of currencies. HOUSING STALLING Even before the storms struck, residential construction had almost stagnated this year amid shortages of land and skilled labour as well as rising costs of building materials. Investment in homebuilding contracted at a 7.3 percent annualised rate in the second quarter, the steepest drop in nearly seven years. As a result, housing subtracted three-tenths of a percentage point from gross domestic product in the April-June quarter. While economists expect housing starts to rebound in the fourth quarter, they caution that rebuilding in the areas devastated by the hurricanes could pull scarce labour away from other parts of the country and limit gains. The reconstruction effort is also pushing up prices of building materials. A survey on Tuesday showed confidence among homebuilders rising to a five-month high in October, though concerns about labour and land shortages lingered. Single-family homebuilding, which accounts for the largest share of the housing market, fell 4.6 percent to a rate of 829,000 units in September. That was the lowest level since May. Groundbreaking on single-family housing projects has slowed since vaulting to near a 9-1/2-year high in February. Single-family starts rose in the Northeast and Midwest last month and hit more than a 10-year high in the West. Last month, starts for the volatile multi-family housing segment fell 5.1 percent to a rate of 298,000 units. Though the housing market appears to be stalling, the fundamentals remain solid. Unemployment is at more than a 16-1/2-year low of 4.2 percent, wages are rising steadily and mortgage rates remain close to historic lows. In September, single-family home permits rose 2.4 percent. Permits, however, continued to lag starts, suggesting single-family homebuilding will probably not rebound strongly. Permits for the construction of multi-family homes dropped 16.1 percent. Despite the drop, permits continued to outpace starts, a positive sign for future multi-family construction. Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Paul Simao 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-economy/u-s-housing-starts-hit-one-year-low-in-september-idU
'458603a5f8fe45fee7eee03a05c10e660152aefa'|'Deals of the day-Mergers and acquisitions'|'Oct 18 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 1330 GMT on Wednesday:** Japan will offer $10 billion in support in joint private enterprise and government projects to supply liquefied natural gas (LNG) or build LNG infrastructure in Asia, the country<72>s trade minister said on Wednesday.** China<6E>s Orient Hontai has agreed to buy a majority stake in Spanish sports rights group Imagina for $1 billion, the latest deal from deep-pocketed Chinese investors to transform the Asian country into a global soccer powerhouse.** Bahrain-listed Investcorp said on Wednesday it has agreed to acquire Kee Safety Ltd, a supplier of safety products, from Dunedin LLP and LDC for an enterprise value of 280 million pounds ($370 million).** Australia<69>s competition regulator said on Wednesday it will review French hotelier Accor SA<53>s planned $920 million buyout of Australian hotel operator Mantra Group Ltd MTR.AX.** Processed meat supplier Hilton Food Group said it agreed to buy chilled-fish processor Seachill for a cash consideration of 80.8 million pounds ($106.5 million), in a move to enter the UK fish market.** German construction group Hochtief, controlled by Spain<69>s ACS, is holding a supervisory board meeting on Wednesday morning to discuss and likely give the go-ahead for a takeover bid for toll road operator Abertis, people close to the matter told Reuters.** Britain<69>s DS Smith Plc said on Wednesday it would acquire a Romania-based paper and packaging business for an enterprise value of about 208 million euros ($244.6 million) to expand its Eastern European presence.** German builder Hochtief, controlled by Spain<69>s ACS, is likely to make a bid for Spanish toll road operator Abertis on Wednesday, sources said, complicating an existing 17 billion-euro ($20 billion) offer by Italy<6C>s Atlantia ATL.MI.** PCP Capital Partners, the investment firm run by British businesswoman Amanda Staveley, is interested in bidding around $400 million for Newcastle United after owner Mike Ashley put the Premier League club up for sale on Monday, according to a source familiar with the matter.** Israeli flavours and fine ingredients maker Frutarom said on Wednesday it agreed to buy 60 percent of Thai flavours firm The Mighty Co for 393 million baht ($12 million).** Shanghai Pharmaceuticals Holding Co has bid for Cardinal Health Inc<6E>s China business as the U.S. company looks to sell ahead of China<6E>s planned drug distribution reform.** U.S. insurer Assurant Inc said on Wednesday it would buy Warranty Group for $1.9 billion, as it looks to offer vehicle protection services and expand in the Asia-Pacific region.** Russian food retailer Magnit said on Wednesday it was in talks to buy Siberian company ETK which holds lease rights in and around the city of Krasnoyarsk.** British translation and intellectual property services company RWS Holdings will buy Czech translation service provider Moravia for $320 million, the companies said on Wednesday.** The European Commission on Wednesday pushed back a deadline by which it will review the 46-billion-euro ($54.0 billion) merger of Italian eyewear maker Luxottica and French lens manufacturer Essilor. (Compiled by Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/deals-day/deals-of-the-day-mergers-and-acquisitions-idINL4N1MT43D'|'2017-10-18T11:34:00.000+03:00'
'465f09d31147eb6ad9ddb3124361852ed6274640'|'Morning News Call - India, October 18'|'(India Morning Newsletter will not be published on Thursday, October 19 and Friday, October 20, as markets are closed for Diwali) To access the newsletter, click on the link: here If you would like to receive this newsletter via email, please register at: here FACTORS TO WATCH 9:15 am: MAS Financial Services lists on exchanges in Mumbai. 11:00 am: Bajaj Auto conference call to discuss 2Q results in Mumbai. 11:45 am: Money Trade Coin Director Amit Lakhanpal to announce cryptocurrency trading platform in Mumbai. LIVECHAT- JAPAN ELECTIONS We get insights on the upcoming snap elections in Japan with Fung Siu, lead Asia analyst at the Economist Insight Unit at 2:30 pm IST. To join the conversation, click on the link: here INDIA TOP NEWS <20> EXCLUSIVE-India likely to stick to deficit target, may step up bank reform -Modi adviser India is likely to stick to its fiscal deficit target of 3.2 percent of GDP, and may accelerate sales of government stakes in lenders and other companies as part of an effort to recapitalise banks, an adviser to the prime minister said on Tuesday. <20> Wipro Q2 profit beats estimates India''s third-largest software services exporter Wipro Ltd posted a better than expected second-quarter profit on Tuesday, adding that it would match industry growth rates by the fourth quarter. <20> Axis Bank Q2 profit rises around 36 percent Axis Bank Ltd, India''s third-biggest private sector lender by assets, said on Tuesday second-quarter net profit jumped by about 36 percent, as provisions for bad loans eased from a year earlier. <20> Bajaj Auto Q2 profit falls about 1 percent Bajaj Auto Ltd, India''s fourth biggest automaker by market capitalisation, on Tuesday reported a 1 percent fall in quarterly profit, in line with analysts'' expectations. <20> MCX launches India''s first gold options contract India''s Multi Commodity Exchange on Tuesday launched the country''s first gold options contract in New Delhi to coincide with the gold-buying festival of Dhanteras. <20> Cement maker ACC''s September-quarter profit more than doubles Cement maker ACC Ltd''s quarterly profit more than doubled, beating analysts'' expectations, helped by strong cement sales volume growth. <20> India''s Renuka fires 900 workers at Brazil sugar mills -sources Renuka do Brasil, a subsidiary of India''s sugar maker Shree Renuka Sugars Ltd, has fired around 900 people from its two cane mills in Brazil and returned to owners most of the land it used to lease to plant cane, three sources close to the situation told Reuters on Tuesday. <20> Andhra Pradesh investigates planting of Monsanto''s unapproved GM cotton One of India''s biggest cotton-growing states has formed a panel to investigate how 15 percent of the state''s cotton acreage has been planted with a non-approved genetically modified strain developed by Monsanto and may bring criminal charges. GLOBAL TOP NEWS <20> China''s Xi says anti-graft campaign has "overwhelming momentum" China''s campaign against corruption has achieved "overwhelming momentum", President Xi Jinping said at the start of a critical Communist Party congress expected to cement his authority. <20> Boeing says Bombardier CSeries jets may face hefty duties despite Airbus deal Boeing Co said on Tuesday that Bombardier Inc''s CSeries jets could still be hit with high U.S. import duties, even if they are assembled in Alabama through an industry-changing deal with Airbus. <20> Nissan used uncertified inspectors even after misconduct found -sources Nissan Motor Co had conducted uncertified vehicle checks as recently as last week even after revealing the widespread misconduct at its domestic factories, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. LOCAL MARKETS OUTLOOK (As reported by NewsRise) <20> The SGX Nifty Futures were trading at 10,220.50, trading down 0.4 percent from its previous close. <20> Indian government bonds are likely to trade steady in early session amid a lack of fresh cues, as investors remain cautious ahead of holidays during the week. The yield on the 
'842b2ab2545ff3bbe3368a53057804282acb3986'|'Bain defends Asatsu-DK bid as shareholder opposition grows'|'October 18, 2017 / 10:11 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago Bain defends Asatsu-DK bid as shareholder opposition grows Elzio Barreto , Junko Fujita 3 Min Read Logo of Bain Capital is screened at a news conference in Tokyo, Japan September 28, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon HONG KONG/TOKYO (Reuters) - Bain Capital defended its $1.35 billion (<28>1 billion) offer to buy Asatsu-DK Inc ( 9747.T ) on Wednesday as shareholder opposition to the deal grew, saying the offer is <20>fully priced<65>. Hong Kong-based activist hedge fund Oasis Management Company and other shareholders of Japan<61>s third-largest advertising agency have said the offer is too low. Asatsu-DK<44>s two largest shareholders, global advertising giant WPP ( WPP.L ) and London-based fund manager Silchester International, have also said the offer significantly undervalues the company and they have called for competing bids. The dispute between Bain and the shareholders marks the second time in about a month that a private equity firm squared off against shareholders for a Japanese asset, after U.S. hedge fund Elliott Management Corp put pressure on KKR & Co LP ( KKR.N ) to raise its bid for Hitachi Kokusai Electric ( 6756.T ) in a deal valuing the firm at some $2.3 billion. Asatsu-DK shares closed at 3,790 yen on Wednesday, 3.6 percent higher than Bain<69>s offer price of 3,660 yen. Asatsu-DK shares have risen 19 percent since Bain announced its offer to buy Asatsu-DK. <20>The offer is fully priced and provides shareholders with an opportunity to realise attractive value,<2C> Bain said in a statement on Wednesday. Asatsu-DK spokeswoman Kaori Nakajima reiterated on Wednesday the company<6E>s statement issued on Monday that Bain<69>s proposal is the most feasible among other choices and best serves shareholders. Oasis and other investors disagree. <20>We believe there is lot of potential growth in earnings by ADK through expanding its digital strategy and animation. Bain is attempting to buy a steady, consistent platform with large untapped potential,<2C> Seth Fischer, chief investment officer of Oasis, said on Tuesday. <20>We, as long-term shareholders, want to get paid a fair price for our shares, which we think is at a premium to the current market price.<2E> WPP owns about 24 percent of Asatsu-DK, while Silchester International has about 17 percent. Asatsu-DK<44>s Nakajima said Oasis<69>s holding is less than 5 percent. Bain has said it will cancel the buyout unless it secures at least 50.1 percent of Asatsu-DK. Typically, private equity firms adopt a higher threshold of about 67 percent. The tender offer, which started on Oct. 3, will remain open until Nov. 15. Reporting by Elzio Barreto in HONG KONG and Junko Fujita in TOKYO: Editing by Neil Fullick 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-asatsu-dk-m-a/bain-defends-asatsu-dk-bid-as-shareholder-opposition-grows-idUKKBN1CN19V'|'2017-10-18T13:11:00.000+03:00'
'a3247c55314cecb1c371d94421a293fe5170c42b'|'BPCL sells its first 50 ppm sulphur diesel cargo for export - traders'|'October 16, 2017 / 9:46 AM / Updated 32 minutes ago BPCL sells its first 50 ppm sulphur diesel cargo for export - traders Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A worker rides a bicycle at the Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd. refinery in Mumbai April 24, 2008. REUTERS/Punit Paranjpe/File Photo SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil refiner Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) ( BPCL.NS ) sold a diesel cargo with a sulphur content of 50 parts per million (ppm) through an export tender for the first time, three industry sources said on Monday. The Indian refiner sold a combination cargo comprising 15,000 tonnes of 350 ppm sulphur diesel and 20,000 tonnes of 50 ppm sulphur diesel for loading from Mumbai over Oct. 21 to 25, the sources said. The cargo was sold to Unipec at a discount of about $1 a barrel to Singapore quotes, they added. While BPCL has exported higher sulphur gasoil grades in the past, this is the first time the refiner is exporting the 50 ppm sulphur diesel grade through a tender, said one of the sources. Reporting by Jessica Jaganathan; Editing by Christian Schmollinger 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-diesel/bpcl-sells-its-first-50-ppm-sulphur-diesel-cargo-for-export-traders-idINKBN1CL11Z'|'2017-10-16T12:42:00.000+03:00'
'c9e560e4d59a324d613fedded5823d708b5af6b0'|'BP Midstream Partners seeks to raise up to $893 mln in IPO'|'Oct 16 (Reuters) - BP Midtsream Partners, a unit of British energy company BP Plc, said on Monday it expects to raise up to $893 million from its initial public offering.BP Midtsream expects to sell 42.5 million shares, excluding underwriters'' option, at a suggested price range of $19 to $21 each, the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. ( bit.ly/2ge6biF )BP Midstream Partners, a master limited partnership (MLP) formed by BP<42>s U.S. pipeline unit, plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol <20>BPMP<4D>.An MLP is a tax-advantaged structure often used by pipelines and other capital intensive companies to distribute excess cash to investors in the form of tax-deferred dividends. Most MLPs rely on external debt to fund new projects.The IPO revives a plan BP first broached internally about five years ago before slumping crude oil prices forced the oil giant to put the idea on hold, a source told Reuters in July.Oasis Midstream Partners, an MLP formed by Oasis Petroleum Inc, fell nearly 3 percent in its debut last month, opening slightly below its offering price.Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are among the underwriters for BP Midstream Partners<72> IPO. (Reporting By Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bp-midstream-ipo/bp-midstream-partners-seeks-to-raise-up-to-893-mln-in-ipo-idINL4N1MR43X'|'2017-10-16T09:36:00.000+03:00'
'dac00eb41e2e2fcdec9ddee45946c9a999de4a16'|'As the quartet breaks up, central banking leadership flux looms'|'October 16, 2017 / 5:07 AM / Updated 3 hours ago As the quartet breaks up, central banking leadership flux looms Howard Schneider , Leika Kihara 7 Min Read Governor of the Bank of Japan Haruhiko Kuroda (L to R), United States Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi walk after posing for a photo opportunity during the annual central bank research conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Jade Barker WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The leaders of the world<6C>s top central banks who risked trillions of dollars and their reputations to rescue the global economy are now set to walk off stage at a time when the lingering effects of the crisis, evolving technology and a combustible political landscape will challenge their successors. The Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the People<6C>s Bank of China may all have new bosses in early 2018 and there will be a new head of the European Central Bank the following year. The new leaders will have to deal with the hangover from the 2007-2009 crisis and its immediate aftermath as well as newly emerging risks. Some $10 trillion (7.53 trillion pounds) in assets bought by the Fed, the ECB and the BOJ to prop up their economies remains on the books and will have to be pared back. Stubbornly low global inflation and weak growth complicate the return to more conventional policies. There are unfinished reforms in China and Europe, while the rise of nationalism could erode central bank independence. Further ahead, the spread of cryptocurrencies and other technologies threatens to weaken central bank control over the financial system. <20>The bad news is that in a crisis people learn by doing,<2C> said Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at investment firm Standish Mellon and a longtime official at the Federal Reserve. <20>Will the next set of people have the set of experiences that allows them to do that? Will they have a test?<3F> The changing of the guard could veer in unpredictable directions. China<6E>s president is considering a provincial official to succeed Zhou Xiaochuan, a veteran policymaker who has led the central bank since 2002 and whom analysts regard as a champion of reforms that could falter without his leadership. In the United States, President Donald Trump will have the opportunity to infuse his <20>America First<73> sensibility at the Fed, an institution with an undeniable global role, when Chair Janet Yellen<65>s term ends in early February. BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda<64>s shock-and-awe record monetary stimulus gets credited for helping Japan snap out of years of stagnation. He will see his term end next April with the economy expected to keep growing, but inflation still far from his target, fuelling doubts about the overall effectiveness of his policy. ECB President Mario Draghi will be around until late 2019, but the succession battle could renew tensions over Britain<69>s departure from the European Union, ways of aligning the interests of economic superpower Germany with the rest of Europe, and concerns that the rise of nationalism could impair the ECB<43>s ability to set monetary policy for 19 countries. <20>Given the divisions in Europe both politically and economically, you could have a very large swing in ECB behaviour,<2C> said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Yellen, Kuroda and Zhou appeared together on Sunday to talk about the global economy on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings. It was a <20>farewell concert<72> of sorts for a group whose tenure has transformed central banking. With rare exceptions, monetary policymakers from different countries avoid any hint of direct coordination with each other, and primarily tailor policies to domestic needs. Still, the four in charge now have shared years at the helm of the global financial system, met and talked at countless international meetings, and managed a major crisis together. Along the way they depl
'360e6a33da84e1a215f16b630efcfe4c0d8ee3d5'|'Greek January-September government budget surplus slightly below target on lower revenues'|'October 16, 2017 / 11:28 AM / Updated 4 minutes ago Greek January-September government budget surplus slightly below target on lower revenues Reuters Staff 2 Min Read People visit the ancient Temple of Zeus during the European Heritage Days in Athens, Greece September 24, 2017. REUTERS/Costas Baltas ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece<63>s central government attained a primary budget surplus of 4.5 billion euros (<28>4 billion) in the first nine months of the year, slightly below target due to lower tax revenues, finance ministry data showed on Monday. The government<6E>s target was for a primary budget surplus - which excludes debt-servicing costs - of 4.556 billion euros for the January-to-September period, meaning the surplus missed the target by 54 million euros. The central government surplus excludes the budgets of social security organizations and local administration. It is different from the figure monitored by Greece<63>s EU/IMF lenders but indicates the state of the country<72>s finances. Net tax revenue came in at 34.7 billion euros, 2.29 billion euros below target, while spending reached 34.58 billion euros, below a target of 36.17 billion euros. The government is aiming for a general government primary budget surplus of 1.9 percent of GDP this year, based on its medium-term fiscal strategy plan. The bailout target is for a primary surplus of 1.75 percent of GDP. Reporting by George Georgiopoulos'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-greece-budget/greek-january-september-government-budget-surplus-slightly-below-target-on-lower-revenues-idUKKBN1CL1G7'|'2017-10-16T14:28:00.000+03:00'
'de3250dce9942cccd77818521b1888e6f24f7e37'|'Commentary: Hedge funds bet on euro to fatten up meager returns'|'The signature of the President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi, is seen on the new 50 euro banknote during a presentation by the German Central Bank (Bundesbank) at its headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, March 16, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach LONDON (Reuters) - Hedge funds turned their most bullish on the euro in well over six years last week, betting it will rise in value and put a gloss on what has so far been a mediocre year for returns.The latest futures market positioning data from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange show speculators increased their net long euro positions to 98,079 contracts in the week to Oct. 10, the most since May, 2011.Collectively, that<61>s a $14.5 billion bet that the euro will strengthen. Not only is it the most bullish euro positioning in six and a half years, hedge funds and other speculators have only been more euro-bullish 11 other weeks since the currency<63>s launch in 1999. They were all between Dec. 2006 and July 2007.It<49>s the third week in a row hedge funds have increased their net long euro positions, suggesting they<65>re gunning for a break above $1.20. It hasn<73>t happened though - the euro hasn<73>t been above $1.20 since Sept. 22, pretty much three weeks ago.The euro opened the year at $1.05, and the overwhelming consensus at the time was for a break below parity. That didn<64>t happen, and it sailed all the way towards $1.21 in early September. But it<69>s struggled to keep a foothold above $1.20, and on Monday was trading below $1.18.The European Central Bank is expected to outline plans later this month to extend its stimulus programme for nine months while scaling it back, an attempt to reconcile the bloc<6F>s best growth run in a decade with inflation undershooting the bank<6E>s target of almost 2 percent for years.Hedge funds will be hoping the euro can make that break above $1.20. Macro funds, which take longer-term directional bets on currencies and interest rates, have had a bad year. Market volatility has never been lower, bond yields haven<65>t risen as much as expected and returns have been patchy, at best.The BarclayHedge Global Macro Index was up 2.03 percent January-September, the second worst performance of 16 sub- indices of the broader Hedge Fund Index, which was up 7.4 percent over the period. Drilling further into BarclayHedge data, currency hedge funds<64> median rate of return in September was just 0.18 percent.For comparison, the S&P 500 index is up 14 percent so far this year, and the MSCI World stock index up 17.5 percent.DOUBLING DOWN ON YEN (LITERALLY) Although hedge funds doubled down on their bullish euro bets in the latest week, they dialled back a bit on their overall bearish stance on the dollar.That was largely down to the third straight increase in net short yen positions to 101,419 contracts, worth more than $11 billion. The net short yen position has doubled in the past four weeks.But again, this has been a frustrating trade for hedge funds recently. The dollar has been stuck in a narrow 111-113 yen range for the best part of a month, slipping to a three-week low of 111.64 yen on Monday.Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe<62>s ruling coalition is on track for a big win in Sunday<61>s general election. Investors reckon his victory would make certain that the Bank of Japan will stick to the current easy policy even after current BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda<64>s term expires next year.Overall, hedge funds trimmed their bets on the dollar falling for the second week in a row. The CFTC net short dollar position against six major currencies fell to $15.4 billion from $16.8 billion the week before.A broader measure of speculators<72> net short dollar bets, including against some leading emerging market currencies, fell to $19.28 billion from $21.01 billion a week earlier.Two weeks ago, the value of that bearish dollar bet stood at $21.1 billion, the biggest short position since January, 2013, according to Reuters calculations. So while they may be scaling back a bit,
'ec5e4a171a8187e502b53e958d42727fafc4cd58'|'Daimler recalls 400,000 cars in Britain amid global measure'|'Reuters TV United States October 16, 2017 / 3:40 PM / Updated 27 minutes ago Daimler recalls over 1 million vehicles worldwide for air bag fix   FILE PHOTO: The Mercedes-Benz logo is seen before the company''s annual news conference in Stuttgart, Germany, February 4, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo BERLIN/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Daimler AG ( DAIGn.DE ) is recalling more than 1 million Mercedes-Benz cars and sport utility vehicles worldwide to address potential unintended air bag deployments, the German automaker said on Monday. The safety recall covers 495,000 vehicles in the United States, 400,000 in Britain, 76,000 in Canada and a few hundred thousand in Germany, company officials said. The German automaker did not immediately have a complete worldwide total. An electrostatic discharge, coupled with a broken clock spring and insufficient grounding of steering components, can lead to inadvertent deployment of the driver side front air bag in vehicles subject to the recall, the company said. As part of the fix, it said dealers would add new grounding to the steering components. A Mercedes-Benz spokeswoman in the United States said there had been <20>a handful of instances where drivers suffered minor abrasions or bruises<65> due to the air bag problem. No deaths have been reported and the issue is not related to the massive recall of Takata air bag inflators worldwide. The recalls covers some 2012-2018 model year A, B, C, and E-Class models and CLA, GLA and GLC vehicles. Reporting by Andreas Cremer and David Shepardson; Editing by Maria Sheahan and Tom Brown 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-daimler-recall/daimler-recalls-400000-cars-in-britain-amid-global-measure-idUKKBN1CL2BY'|'2017-10-16T18:39:00.000+03:00'
'c5d5bf89faf6bb9f01f4c5d6b1467a21d108bb79'|'Wanda vice president quits amid government crackdown on offshore investment'|' 22 PM / Updated 13 minutes ago Wanda vice president quits amid government crackdown on offshore investment Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Jack Gao, Senior Vice President and CEO of International Investments and Operations Dalian Wanda Group, speaks at a business event at the Bing theatre in Los Angeles, California, U.S., October 17, 2016. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni BEIJING (Reuters) - Dalian Wanda<64>s senior vice president, Jack Gao, has resigned from the Chinese conglomerate, sources close to the company said. Gao was also the interim CEO of Legendary Entertainment, an American movie studio that Wanda acquired last year for nearly $3.5 billion (<28>2.6 billion). Zeng Maojun, president of Wanda Film Holding Co., will take over Gao<61>s role as interim CEO, the sources said. Thomas Tull, the founder of Legendary, quit in January. The story was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter. The Chinese government has cracked down on high-profile cross-border acquisition and warned against any <20>irrational investment<6E>. China<6E>s crackdown on overseas investment has diminished the scope of Gao<61>s work, the sources said. Dalian Wanda Group   Legendary didn<64>t reply when contacted by Reuters. Reporting by Pei Li and Adam Jourdan, editing by Larry King 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-wanda-jackgao/wanda-vice-president-quits-amid-government-crackdown-on-offshore-investment-idUKKBN1CM1QJ'|'2017-10-17T15:21:00.000+03:00'
'fb0b4986d7b77c21468e0a29bb53f9b3e02ff334'|'China September producer prices jump most in six months in boost for global inflation'|'October 16, 2017 / 2:33 AM / Updated 23 minutes ago China September producer prices jump most in six months in boost for global inflation Reuters Staff 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: People buy vegetables at a fresh food market in Beijing, China June 9, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s producer price inflation unexpectedly accelerated to a six-month high in September as a construction boom shows no signs of abating and a government crackdown on air pollution triggers fears of winter shortages and frenzied jumps in commodity prices. China<6E>s strong demand for building materials has triggered a year-long commodities rally which is helping to buoy manufacturing activity and inflation around the world, even if it has yet to trickle down to the consumer level. China<6E>s economy is expected to grow 7 percent in the second half of this year, the country<72>s central bank governor said, defying economists<74> expectations for a slowdown. The producer price index (PPI) rose 6.9 percent in September from a year earlier, from 6.3 percent in August, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday. The gain - the strongest since March - signals continued resilience in China<6E>s economy and industrial sector profits, welcome news for Communist Party leaders two days ahead of a twice-a-decade party congress. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected September producer inflation would be steady from August at 6.3 percent. On a month-on-month basis, the PPI rose 1.0 percent in September. China<6E>s commodity futures prices have seesawed wildly in recent weeks as the government embarks on its biggest environmental crackdown yet to reduce the country<72>s notoriously thick winter smog. Some steel mills, smelters and coal companies have cranked up production ahead of expected official curbs on output or outright shutdowns in coming months. Environmental inspections have disrupted some supply lines and added to uncertainty in the market. Labourers work at a steel plant of Shandong Iron & Steel Group in Jinan, Shandong province, China, July 7, 2017. Picture taken July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer Shanghai steel futures surged nearly 7 percent on Friday, spurring a similar rally in raw materials iron ore and coking coal. Iron ore and coal prices had tumbled sharply in September on fears of weaker demand for raw materials, but traders are confused as to how the winter supply and demand picture will play out and how much of the impact will ripple through into global commodity markets.[IRONORE/] Top steelmaking city Tangshan became the latest to enforce production cuts this month, ahead of the previous deadline of Nov. 15, when winter heating systems in China are switched on. Residential apartments are under construction at Hengqin Island adjacent to Macau, China September 13, 2017. Picture taken September 13, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip Bolstered by manufacturing and a hot property market, China<6E>s economy grew by a faster-than-expected 6.9 percent in the first half of 2017. China will have no problem meeting its economic growth target of around 6.5 percent this year, and may even beat it, the head of the Statistics Bureau said last Tuesday. Analysts still predict producer prices will start to soften in the fourth quarter due to a high base of comparison last year and as overall demand moderates along with economic growth. China<6E>s consumer price index (CPI) rose 1.6 percent as expected in September, versus 1.8 percent in August and well within Beijing<6E>s 2017 target of 3 percent. Food prices, the biggest component of the consumer price index (CPI), fell 1.4 percent from a year earlier. Non-food price inflation quickened to 2.4 percent in September from 2.3 percent in August. Reporting by Cheng Fang and Sue-Lin Wong; Editing by Kim Coghill 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-economy-inflation/china-september-producer-prices-jump-most-in
'961230f73ba1a04468c9c04d2df2f90df967b2bc'|'U.S. senator probes Pentagon on Russian source code reviews'|'October 18, 2017 / 12:08 AM / in 21 hours U.S. senator probes Pentagon on Russian source code reviews Dustin Volz , Joel Schectman 4 Min Read Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) speaks at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. senator on Tuesday asked the Defense Department to explain how it manages the risks when it uses software that has been scrutinized by foreign governments, saying the practice may represent a national security threat. Reuters reported earlier this month that Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co allowed a Russian defense agency to review the source code or inner workings of cyber defense software known as ArcSight, which is used by the Pentagon to guard its computer networks. <20>HPE<50>s ArcSight system constitutes a significant element of the U.S. military<72>s cyber defenses,<2C> Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis seen by Reuters. Shaheen, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said disclosure of ArcSight<68>s source code to the Russian agency presented an <20>opportunity to exploit a system used on [Defense Department] platforms.<2E> Shaheen questioned whether the Trump administration was pushing back on demands for source code from Russia and elsewhere that are imposed on U.S. companies as a condition for entry into foreign markets. Such reviews highlight a quandary for U.S. technology companies, as they weigh U.S. cyber security protections while pursuing business with some of Washington<6F>s adversaries, including Russia and China, according to security experts. <20>I understand that individual businesses must make decisions weighing the risk of intellectual property disclosure against the opportunity of accessing significant overseas markets,<2C> Shaheen wrote. <20>However, when such products undergird [Defense Department] cyber defenses, our national security may be at stake in these decisions.<2E> The Pentagon and HPE did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the letter. Cyber security experts, former U.S. intelligence officials and former ArcSight employees said the review of ArcSight<68>s core instruction, also known as source code, could help Moscow discover weaknesses in the software, potentially helping hackers to blind the U.S. military to an attack. HPE has said in the past that such reviews, by a Russian government-accredited testing company, have taken place for years at a research and development center it operates outside of Russia. The software maker has also said it closely supervises the process and that no code is allowed to leave the premises, ensuring it does not compromise the safety of its products. A company spokeswoman said last week that no current HPE products have undergone Russian source code reviews. HPE was spun off from Hewlett-Packard Inc as a separate software company in 2015. Shaheen<65>s letter asked Mattis whether he foresaw risks associated with the disclosure of ArcSight<68>s code and whether the Pentagon was monitoring whether technology vendors share source code or <20>other sensitive technical data.<2E> She also asked how frequently vendors disclose the source code of products used by the Pentagon to foreign governments. Shaheen recently led successful efforts in Congress to ban all government use of software provided by Moscow-based antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab, amid allegations the company is allied with Russian intelligence. Kaspersky vehemently denies such links. Tech companies have been under increasing pressure to allow the Russian government to examine source code in exchange for approvals to sell products in Russia. While many Western firms have complied, some, including California-based cyber firm Symantec, have refused. ArcSight was sold to British tech company Micro Focus International Plc in a deal completed in September. The company said last week that while source code reviews were a common industry practice, it would restrict
'f4b0e937661edd1e3c36b1ba2e2c7cb7a5c7416f'|'MIDEAST STOCKS-Petchems pull down Saudi, Dubai developers active on earnings'|'October 18, 2017 / 2:32 PM / in 8 minutes MIDEAST STOCKS-Petchems pull down Saudi, Dubai developers active on earnings Reuters Staff * 12 of 14 listed Saudi petchems drop * Builder Khodari falls after quarterly earnings * Insurer Malath soars after rights trading ends * Real estate developers slide in Qatar * Egypt<70>s Electro Cable surges in very heavy trade By Andrew Torchia DUBAI, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Petrochemical shares dragged down Saudi Arabia<69>s stock market on Wednesday while Dubai real estate developers were actively traded after two of them reported third-quarter earnings. The Saudi index fell 0.7 percent as 12 of 14 listed petrochemical producers dropped, with Yanbu Petrochemical down 1.9 percent. Most have yet to report third-quarter earnings and will do so in the next few weeks. The biggest producer, Saudi Basic Industries, edged up 0.1 percent, however. Construction firm Khodari fell 0.9 percent after reporting a quarterly net loss of 22.9 million riyals ($6.1 million), narrowing from a year-earlier loss of 54.4 million riyals. The loss was still larger than the 12 million riyal loss forecast by EFG Hermes, and revenue sank 41 percent. But insurer Malath surged its 10 percent daily limit for a second straight day after trading in its rights issue ended on Monday. In Dubai, the index edged up 0.1 percent. Union Properties , the most heavily traded stock, jumped 3.8 percent while Deyaar, the second most active, lost 0.4 percent. Deyaar reported that third-quarter profit dropped 41 percent from a year earlier but revenue surged 55 percent. Another real estate firm, DAMAC Properties, posted a 20 percent drop in quarterly profit; it fell sharply in early trade but closed flat. Qatar<61>s index lost 1.0 percent as real estate firms declined, with Ezdan Holding slipping 2.0 percent and United Development falling 2.3 percent. Sanctions imposed on Qatar by other Arab states have accelerated a downturn in the Qatari property market. In Egypt, the index climbed 0.5 percent as Palm Hills Development gained 4.2 percent. Electro Cable Egypt jumped 9.3 percent to 0.94 Egyptian pound in its heaviest trade since March 2014, testing technical resistance on the January and December peaks of 0.95 pound. HIGHLIGHTS * The index fell 0.7 percent to 6,942 points. DUBAI * The index edged up 0.1 percent to 3,645 points. ABU DHABI * The index rose 0.3 percent to 4,502 points. QATAR * The index fell 1.0 percent to 8,144 points. EGYPT * The index climbed 0.5 percent to 13,590 points. KUWAIT * The index fell 0.5 percent to 6,619 points. BAHRAIN * The index lost 0.3 percent to 1,278 points. OMAN * The index edged up 0.03 percent to 5,090 points. (Reporting by Andrew Torchia; editing by Mark Heinrich) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/mideast-stocks/mideast-stocks-petchems-pull-down-saudi-dubai-developers-active-on-earnings-idUSL8N1MT4P3'|'2017-10-18T17:31:00.000+03:00'
'1847f4e07786e934140c79818197076aa5744f59'|'Europe aviation agency advises suspending use of Kobe Steel products'|'FILE PHOTO: The logo of Kobe Steel is seen on the group''s Tokyo headquarter building in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo PARIS/TOKYO (Reuters) - Europe<70>s aviation regulator has advised aircraft manufacturers to stop using parts supplied by Kobe Steel ( 5406.T ) until their safety can be verified, following product data manipulation by the Japanese company. The move by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is another headache for Kobe Steel, which has shocked aircraft, auto, train and other industries with its revelations that it has been shipping some products to customers with falsified data on strength and durability. The U.S. Justice Department is also see eking information from Kobe Steel and has requested documentation on products the company has sold to U.S. buyers, Kobe Steel said earlier. The Justice Department inquiry could significantly raise the stakes for the Japanese steelmaker, Daisuke Yuki, a lawyer at Nozomi Sogo Attorneys at Law said. The Japan Civil Aviation Bureau is investigating the issue and gathering information from Japanese manufacturers and Kobe Steel, a spokesman told Reuters on Wednesday. <20>Where alternative suppliers are available, it is recommended to suspend use of Kobe Steel products until the legitimacy of the affected parts can be determined,<2C> EASA said in a Safety Information Bulletin (SIB) dated Oct. 17. EASA said the concern was not serious enough at this stage to warrant any compulsory measures. A Kobe Steel spokesman declined to comment on the EASA statement. SUPPLY CHAIN CONCERNS The admissions that Kobe Steel<65>s supply chains have been tainted, affecting about 500 companies across the world, has sent its shares into freefall. The tampering went back more than 10 years, a source told Reuters earlier this week. The scandal puts another stain on Japan<61>s manufacturing prowess after similar cases including automakers Mitsubishi Motors Corp ( 7211.T ) and Nissan Motor Co ( 7201.T ). <20>All organizations that may have specified or used Kobe Steel products should do a thorough review of their supply chains in order to identify if, and when, Kobe Steel products have been used in their product designs and fabrications,<2C> the SIB said. Because the period of the data tampering has not been ascertained, the focus should be on <20>current production,<2C> the agency said. The world<6C>s two largest planemakers, Airbus ( AIR.PA ) and Boeing ( BA.N ), have already said they are conducting a review. Kobe Steel will hold a first round of bidding on Friday in the sale of a real estate unit, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday. The company has hired Mizuho Securities, the brokerage arm of Mizuho Financial Group Inc ( 8411.T ), as an advisor for the sale of more than two-thirds of Shinko Real Esate, Bloomberg said, citing unidentified sources. The Nikkei newspaper reported last week the sale may raise about 50 billion yen ($444 million). Kobe Steel and Mizuho Securities declined to comment. Mitsubishi Motor also said on Wednesday it is investigating how components from suppliers containing Kobe Steel parts have been affected by the data tampering. Reporting by Ritsuko Shimizu and Tim Hepher; Additional reporting by Sam Nussey; Writing by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal-easa/europe-aviation-agency-advises-suspending-use-of-kobe-steel-products-idUSKBN1CN0XO'|'2017-10-18T12:34:00.000+03:00'
'6efd57f375a54386f7eb18b184ce808ba4f4e593'|'Ecuador''s Petroamazonas to issue $350 mln bonds to help pay Schlumberger debt'|'October 19, 2017 / 5:17 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago Ecuador''s Petroamazonas to issue $350 mln bonds to help pay Schlumberger debt Alexandra Valencia 2 Min Read QUITO, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Ecuador<6F>s state oil company Petroamazonas said it will issue some $350 million in bonds to repay part of its debts with oil services company Schlumberger as part of a wider deal that also includes other payment decisions. Petroamazonas accumulated debt with foreign suppliers as of 2015 in part due to lower oil prices. The company owes Schlumberger some $850 million. <20>An agreement with Schlumberger was reached last week for the payment of the total debt ... In November we will issue bonds for $350 million,<2C> Alex Galarraga, Petroamazonas<61> boss told reporters during a visit to the country<72>s oil bloc known as ITT on Wednesday. <20>Petroamazonas will issue bonds and several buyers will acquire the paper, and through Citibank the money will be delivered to Schlumberger,<2C> he added. Schlumberger did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The agreement also includes payment of $250 million in monthly installments as of next January for two years, at an interest rate of around 4 percent. The remainder of the debt will be covered in cash and in central bank notes, known by the Spanish acronym TBC. Ecuador recently negotiated a new fee for service with Schlumberger in an oilfield in the jungle. (Reporting by Alexandra Valencia; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/ecuador-oil/ecuadors-petroamazonas-to-issue-350-mln-bonds-to-help-pay-schlumberger-debt-idUSL2N1MU0UQ'|'2017-10-19T20:15:00.000+03:00'
'51c17729d2133d817eeb1f385c534a70b68668f2'|'London will remain leading financial centre - PM May''s spokesman'|'October 19, 2017 / 3:12 PM / in 17 minutes London will remain leading financial centre - PM May''s spokesman Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - London will remain the world<6C>s leading financial centre, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Thursday when asked about comments by Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein. <20>We<57>re not going to comment on each individual statement but lets be clear, London is and will remain the world<6C>s leading financial centre,<2C> the spokesman said when asked about a tweet in which Blankfein said he was planning to spend more time in Frankfurt - a rival financial centre. (Reporting by William James; Editing by Alistair Smout) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-eu-goldman-sachs-may/london-will-remain-leading-financial-centre-pm-mays-spokesman-idUSL9N1IW018'|'2017-10-19T18:11:00.000+03:00'
'de33a9c8ec29986d4c404fc816bc9a179ac951f8'|'Chinese-funded EV startup buys tech firm headed by former Tesla executive'|'BEIJING, Oct 19 (Reuters) - SF Motors Inc, a California-based electric vehicle (EV) unit of China<6E>s Chongqing Sokon Industry Group Co Ltd, on Thursday said it has bought an EV and battery tech firm headed by former Tesla Inc executive Martin Eberhard for $33 million.The acquired company, InEVit Inc, will become a wholly owned subsidiary of SF Motors, one of an array of Chinese-funded EV startups in China and the United States.InEVit will continue to operate as a standalone technology firm licensing EV and battery know-how to global automakers. Eberhard, who has worked with SF Motors as an advisor, will become SF Motors<72> chief innovation officer and vice chairman of the board.<2E>In this new role, Eberhard will primarily focus on technology innovation, product development, product positioning and branding <20> all with the goal of helping SF Motors meet global EV demands,<2C> SF Motors said in a statement.<2E>InEVit<69>s expertise, patented technologies and manufacturing techniques will be leveraged to help SF Motors to rapidly and profitably scale e-powertrain production for its own future products, and will look to license this technology to other automakers to help speed zero emission vehicle proliferation across the industry.<2E>SF Motors is the latest Chinese-funded firm to join a boom in EV development.Established by Sokon Industry, a small automaker in Chongqing producing low-cost micro commercial vans, SF Motors recently established a U.S. research and development (R&D) centre in Silicon Valley and an R&D branch in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as well as branches in Germany, Japan and China.Sokon Industry also produces and sells crossover sport-utility vehicles (SUVs). (Reporting by Norihiko Shirouzu; Editing by Christopher Cushing)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/china-autos-sf-motors/chinese-funded-ev-startup-buys-tech-firm-headed-by-former-tesla-executive-idINL4N1MU3L4'|'2017-10-19T12:01:00.000+03:00'
'4f48d85b7d1d5d654607240f44d0e9bfa5c257cb'|'Publicis advertises stronger growth in H2 after further pick-up in U.S.'|'October 19, 2017 / 5:52 AM / Updated 25 minutes ago Publicis advertises stronger growth in H2 after further pick-up in U.S. Reuters Staff * Q3 sales rise 1.2 pct on organic basis to E2.26 bln * Analysts were expecting revenue of E2.34 bln * Says environment for clients still <20>challenging<6E> * 2018 targets expected next March By Gw<47>na<6E>lle Barzic PARIS, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Advertising group Publicis expressed confidence for the second half of 2017 despite what it called a <20>challenging environment<6E> for clients, stating that doing more digital consultancy work would help deliver solid results. Publicis, the world<6C>s third-largest advertising group which competes with WPP and Omnicom, reported a second sequential rise in organic growth for the third quarter, partly helped by a further pick-up in North America. Sales in the quarter ended September were up 1.2 percent on an organic basis to 2.264 billion euros ($2.67 billion) following a 0.8 percent rise in the second quarter. Analysts polled by Reuters had on average been expecting total revenue of 2.34 billion euros. Sales in North America, the group<75>s biggest market, were up 3 percent to 1.24 billion euros. Publicis, whose headquarters lie on Paris<69> Champs Elysees, has gone through an internal reorganisation over the last 18 months dubbed <20>The Power of One<6E>, aimed at fostering greater cooperation between its myriad agencies. The plan has been backed by newly-appointed chief executive Arthur Sadoun. Yet Publicis still has to prove that going into the digital transformation business is the right choice, after it took a big writedown on its digital arm Publicis.Sapient that is hampering its capacity to increase dividends. <20>We know we are only in the middle of our transformation journey,<2C> Sadoun told journalists. <20>What we are doing is difficult, the environment is challenging, but we believe it will result in a sustained organic growth path at Publicis,<2C> he added. He said the company would hold an investor day on March 20 next year, which should provide guidance over its 2018 outlook. Publicis, like many of its peers, is under pressure to overcome changes in consumer behaviour. It also has to adapt to changes imposed by Internet heavyweights such as Google and Facebook which have transformed the sector by using data to better target advertising. Sadoun, 46, replaced company veteran Maurice Levy in June. He approved the strategy initiated by his predecessor to position the group closer to digital consulting, making it compete increasingly with companies like Accenture. However, Sadoun has not endorsed previous targets for 2018 which included an operating margin of 17.3 to 19.3 percent. Publicis<69> first-half operating margin stood at 13.2 percent. Omnicom reported lower third quarter revenue this week, hurt partly by competition from Accenture and IBM, although its numbers topped analysts estimates. $1 = 0.8473 euros Writing by Matthias Blamont; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/publicis-results/publicis-advertises-stronger-growth-in-h2-after-further-pick-up-in-u-s-idUSL8N1MS56Y'|'2017-10-19T08:50:00.000+03:00'
'ad1ef9787219ffe9af0ada5f8c7f0a26f880ed7c'|'European shares rise as third-quarter earnings roll in, Catalonia weighs on IBEX'|'October 18, 2017 / 7:48 AM / in 9 minutes European shares rise as third-quarter earnings roll in, Catalonia weighs on IBEX Julien Ponthus 3 Min Read The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote LONDON (Reuters) - European shares opened slightly higher on Wednesday as a flurry of fresh third-quarter results came in, though politics kept Spanish equities in negative territory. The pan-European STOXX 600 index was up 0.2 percent with all sectors trading in positive territory. After opening in line with other bourses, Madrid<69>s IBEX IBEX eased back with a 0.3 percent slide. Catalonia and Spain<69>s central government seem set for political collision after the region refused to give up a symbolic declaration of independence. Spanish shares, particularly banks, have underperformed their European peers on the back of Spain<69>s worst political crisis in 35 years. Caixabank ( CABK.MC ), Sabadell ( SABE.MC ) and BBVA ( BBVA.MC ) with around one-third of their total deposits coming from the region, were retreating 1 percent, 0.9 percent and 0.6 percent respectively. In a first sign that a short-term business exodus from the restive region may become more permanent, Sabadell is considering moving some of its top management to Madrid, a source close to the board said on Tuesday. On the wider European corporate earnings front, companies failing to meet market expectations saw their shares come under pressure. The biggest STOXX fallers included Finnish telco Elisa ( ELISA.HE ), Germany<6E>s Duerr ( DUEG.DE ) and Zalando ( ZALG.DE ) as well as Dutch paints maker Akzo Nobel ( AKZO.AS ) which lost 4.4 percent, 2.9 percent, 2 percent and 1.7 percent respectively. The UK<55>s Reckitt Benckiser ( RB.L ) was flat after initial losses after the maker of Durex condoms said it would split into two business units after a third-quarter fall in sales prompted it to cut its full-year forecast. In the banking sector, Sweden<65>s Handelsbanken ( SHBa.ST ) reported third-quarter operating profit slightly above market expectations, boosted by higher than expected income from core lending activities and rose 0.3 percent. Sainsbury<72>s ( SBRY.L ), Britain<69>s second biggest supermarket fell 1.1 percent after it said it aimed to cut up to 2,000 jobs. European third quarter earnings are expected to grow by 4.5 percent from the same period in 2016, which would be an increase of 1.3 percent excluding the energy sector, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S estimates. Reporting by Julien Ponthus, Editing by Kit Rees and Richard Balmforth 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-stocks/european-shares-rise-as-third-quarter-earnings-roll-in-idUKKBN1CN0UC'|'2017-10-18T12:15:00.000+03:00'
'c0ab150d67fda55d6f2acb31506659d82bcf5ce8'|'UK firms freeze marketing spend as economic uncertainty rises: survey'|'October 18, 2017 / 12:08 AM / Updated 13 hours ago UK firms freeze marketing spend as economic uncertainty rises: survey Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A clock is seen in London''s Financial centre at Canary Wharf In London, Britain as a minute silence is held at 11.00 for the victims of the Manchester bomb attack May 25, 2017. REUTERS/Russell Boyce (Reuters) - British companies froze their marketing budgets during the third quarter amid rising uncertainties about the economy as the UK looks to exit the European Union, a survey showed on Wednesday. The IPA Bellwether report showed that near 70 percent of its survey panel recorded no change in marketing budget since the second quarter. Rising inflation - driven largely by the pound<6E>s fall since last year<61>s vote to leave the European Union - has squeezed household incomes, causing broader economic growth to slow. The survey, conducted by IHS Markit on behalf of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, showed that about 21 percent of the survey panel recorded an upward revision to marketing budgets from the second quarter while 11 percent of companies recorded a trim. However, internet marketing remained a bright spot as companies continue to take to digital ways to tap into their customers. This increase was led by greater spending in Search Engine Optimisation by companies. A stagnation of marketing budgets was also seen in the sales promotion and direct marketing categories during the third quarter, the report said. Growth in ad spending is expected to be a marginal 0.6 percent in 2017 and expected to stagnate in 2018 -- the survey said -- is reflective of the uncertainty associated with Brexit. <20>The latest Bellwether survey was characterised by uncertainty, which is reported to be weighing on investment and household spending,<2C> Paul Smith, director at IHS Markit and author of the Bellwether Report said. British inflation rose to its highest level in more than five years in September, official data showed on Tuesday. Reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru, editing by David Evans 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-advertising/uk-firms-freeze-marketing-spend-as-economic-uncertainty-rises-survey-idINKBN1CN005'|'2017-10-18T03:04:00.000+03:00'
'bcc0aedaec7f52839ecb08360a51aa702f77fddf'|'Ex-Lloyds bank bosses used "spin and puff" in HBOS deal, court told'|' 16 PM / in 21 minutes Ex-Lloyds bank bosses used "spin and puff" in HBOS deal, court told Kirstin Ridley , Emma Rumney 4 Min Read LONDON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Former bosses of Lloyds Banking Group used <20>spin and sales puff<66> to win over investors and secure a <20>disastrous<75> acquisition of rival HBOS during the credit crisis, a lawyer for thousands of shareholders told London<6F>s High Court on Wedesday. Around 6,000 Lloyds investors, who are seeking around 550 million pounds ($724 million) in damages, allege that five former directors at Lloyds, including ex-CEO Eric Daniels, concealed information about HBOS<4F>s financial position in 2008 and 2009 and breached their duties by recommending the purchase. On the first day of a 14-week London trial, the claimant<6E>s lawyer Richard Hill told the court that the deal saved HBOS from nationalisation but looked like a catastrophe for Lloyds within days of completion in early 2009. <20>We say shareholders were indeed mugged,<2C> Hill said, adding that former Lloyds executives such as Daniels also glossed over severe problems with HBOS<4F>s liquidity and corporate loan portfolio when presenting the case to the board. Lloyds, Britain<69>s largest retail bank, and the individual defendants, who include former chairman Victor Blank, Tim Tookey, the former finance director, Helen Weir, the former head of retail and Truett Tate, the former head of wholesale banking, deny any wrongdoing. <20>The group<75>s position remains that we do not consider there to be any merit to these claims and we will robustly contest this legal action,<2C> the bank said in a statement. All defendants are being collectively represented by Lloyds lawyers. It is the second British investor lawsuit against a bank stemming from the credit crisis - and the first to go to trial. Royal Bank of Scotland reached an out-of-court settlement over a 2008 cash call shortly before a trial scheduled in June. HBOS, formed from the merger in 2001 of former English building society Halifax and the 300-year-old Bank of Scotland, was close to collapse in 2008 after the failure of Lehman Brothers caused money markets to seize up, meaning HBOS could not get the funding it needed for its ballooning loan book. Lloyds shareholders allege the subsequent government-brokered takeover of HBOS, that valued the struggling bank at around 5.9 billion pounds, wiped billions off the bank<6E>s market value. Lloyds itself then had to be rescued with a 20.5 billion- pound government bailout in 2009. Investors allege Lloyds secretly loaned HBOS 10 billion pounds in 2008 so it could continue trading and that the bank<6E>s directors did not disclose that HBOS was receiving emergency support from the Bank of England and the U.S. Federal Reserve, which peaked at about 25.6 billion pounds and $18 billion respectively. Hill said Daniels and Blank were put under pressure by the government in 2008 to rescue HBOS but owed their allegiance to LLoyds shareholders. Lloyds, which has returned to profit and emerged from state ownership in May, denies the claims and says the bank and the ex-directors all acted properly. ($1 = 0.7595 pounds) (Editing by Rachel Armstrong, Greg Mahlich) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/lloyds-hbos-shareholders/ex-lloyds-bank-bosses-used-spin-and-puff-in-hbos-deal-court-told-idUSL8N1MS5UF'|'2017-10-18T18:15:00.000+03:00'
'1bde0405187915aefe209e1fe38274bbbd057c61'|'Viacom, Spectrum continue talks past 7 pm deadline-source'|'FILE PHOTO - A woman exits the Viacom Inc. headquarters in New York, U.S. on April 30, 2013. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo (Reuters) - Viacom Inc ( VIAB.O ) and cable operator Spectrum continued talks Sunday night as the 7 pm ET (2300 GMT) deadline on their programming agreement passed, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters.As of 7 pm Sunday evening, Viacom<6F>s networks, which include Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, continued to be available to Spectrum<75>s 16.6 million customers. Spectrum is owned by Charter Communications Inc. ( CHTR.O ).However, Viacom continued to run messaging at the bottom of the screen urging viewers to call Spectrum to complain about a potential blackout, noting that the media company was not asking Spectrum for more money..A Viacom spokeswoman declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for Charter.Viacom CEO Bob Bakish, who took on his role last year, has made improving relations with distributors a key part of his turnaround strategy for the company.Like its peers, Viacom is struggling to keep viewers as more people watch shows on smartphones and tablets.Six of the largest U.S pay-TV providers lost a total of 723,000 subscribers during the second quarter. Of that total, Charter reported 90,000 subscriber losses.An agreement between the two companies would be <20>mutually beneficial,<2C> wrote Evercore ISI in an note Sunday.Having Viacom content helps Charter add video subscribers amidst increasing competition from virtual streaming services, like Hulu and DirecTV Now, while Viacom is still heavily dependent on cable and satellite companies for distribution, according to Evercore ISI.Reporting By Jessica Toonkel; Editing by Mary Milliken'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-viacom-charter-commns/viacom-spectrum-continue-talks-past-7-pm-deadline-source-idUSKBN1CK0Z9'|'2017-10-16T02:36:00.000+03:00'
'5bbb87b7f3c749e8cbff8d61ed46f203589998bd'|'Japan agrees to streamline tests for some U.S. auto exports: statement'|'WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Japan agreed to streamline noise and emissions testing procedures for certain U.S. auto exports during Monday<61>s bilateral economic talks that were focused on trade, the two governments said in a statement.Japan also agreed to lift trade restrictions on U.S. potatoes from Idaho, while the United States agreed to lift restrictions on Japanese persimmons, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso said in the statement.<2E>Both sides affirmed that they would intensify work to achieve further progress in the near term on bilateral trade issues,<2C> Pence and Aso said.Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Leika Kihara; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-usa-japan-trade/japan-agrees-to-streamline-tests-for-some-u-s-auto-exports-statement-idINKBN1CL2YC'|'2017-10-17T00:17:00.000+03:00'
'6f1fb5c74cf05077b1663515f909bdea8c468f74'|'Activist hedge fund seeks Credit Suisse break-up'|'Banks Activist hedge fund seeks Credit Suisse break-up Credit Suisse has come under attack from an activist shareholder RBR that is trying to win support for a plan to break up the Swiss banking group. Patrick Jenkins discusses whether there is any merit in the plan with the FT''s Laura Noonan and Attracta Mooney and Davide Serra of hedge fund Algebris. Save to myFT'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/video/e416a2ab-aebd-4a14-a5d4-defac4f87055'|'2017-10-17T17:44:00.000+03:00'
'f052916994cdd4a40e8961355fcfb107755c6531'|'Deutsche Bank asks banks to pitch for asset management IPO: sources'|'October 17, 2017 / 12:43 PM / in 7 hours Deutsche Bank asks banks to pitch for asset management IPO: sources Arno Schuetze 3 Min Read The Deutsche Bank app logo is seen on a smartphone in this picture illustration taken September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Files FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank has asked banks to pitch for work on an initial public offering (IPO) of its asset management business that could raise around 2 billion euros ($2.4 billion), two people close to the matter said on Tuesday. Germany<6E>s largest lender said in March it planned to list the asset management arm, which could achieve a total valuation of around 8 billion euros, within two years as part of a broader overhaul following costly lawsuits and trading scandals. The requests to pitch for roles such as that of the global coordinator were sent out on Monday, the sources said, adding Deutsche Bank would likely act as the main organiser of the IPO itself but wants help to market the shares. The bank will start meeting representatives of other investment banks in the coming days to hear their view on the business, which includes its mainstay DWS retail asset management brand, the sources said. Banks are being asked to specify any concerns over the attractiveness of the business to equity investors, their view on the peer group, valuation method, timing of the deal and potential buyers of the stock. Banks that helped Deutsche with its 8.5 billion euro capital raising earlier this year stand good chances of securing roles on the deal, people close to the matter have said in the past. They include Barclays, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs. Deutsche Bank declined to comment. While investors had initially expected the IPO as soon as this autumn, Deutsche Bank pushed it back into the first half of 2018, wanting more time to refine and sell the business<73>s strategy to potential buyers of the stock. Some investors indicated they would prefer a stronger focus at Deutsche<68>s asset management arm on so-called passive investments or exchange traded funds (ETFs), whereas its main business is currently with actively managed funds. Deutsche Asset Management currently has 711 billion euros invested worldwide, of which 526 billion are actively managed, 107 billion in ETFs and the rest in alternatives such as real estate. Deutsche Bank reports third-quarter earnings on Oct. 26. Division head Nicolas Moreau said in the summer that the bundling of the unit<69>s businesses into one holding company would be done by October, as would the finalisation of distribution and service contracts between the business and its parent. Deutsche Bank hopes that by giving the unit more operational independence it will attract more talent. Group CEO John Cryan has said the bank will maintain a <20>controlling and super-majority stake<6B> in the asset management business. ($1 = 0.8505 euros) Additional reporting by Tom Sims; Editing by Maria Sheahan and Mark Potter 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/deutsche-bank-asset-management/deutsche-bank-asks-banks-to-pitch-for-asset-management-ipo-sources-idINKBN1CM1SE'|'2017-10-17T10:43:00.000+03:00'
'd21f15fd4e6a1482cba834bff6b64e325d3428a1'|'''Fake news!'': Ireland rebukes Trump over corporate tax claim'|'October 18, 2017 / 3:53 PM / Updated an hour ago ''Fake news!'': Ireland rebukes Trump over corporate tax claim Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Ireland''s Taoiseach Leo Varadkar arrives at a EU leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium, June 22, 2017. REUTERS/Julien Warnand/Pool DUBLIN (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s assertion that he had heard Ireland was going to cut its already low corporate tax rate is <20>fake news<77>, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Wednesday. Trump raised a few eyebrows in Ireland on Monday when he told reporters at the White House: <20>I hear that Ireland is going to be reducing their corporate rates down to 8 percent from 12.<2E> <20>I can confirm that President Trump<6D>s claim that we are proposing to reduce our corporation profit tax to 8 percent is indeed fake news. There is no such plan to do so,<2C> Varadkar told parliament in answer to a question on Trump<6D>s comments. Ireland<6E>s 12.5 percent corporate tax rate has long made it a hub for investment from major U.S. multinationals like Google ( GOOGL.O ) and Facebook ( FB.O ) and a target for criticism from U.S. politicians. Irish policymakers have responded by consistently stressing that the corporate tax rate will neither go up or down and the rate was reaffirmed just last week in the government<6E>s budget for 2018. <20>Our corporate profit tax is 12.5 percent, has been for a very long time through changes of government, through recessions and through periods of growth, and it as much that certainty that is as important to business as anything else,<2C> Varadkar said. Trump has said he would like to see the U.S. corporate income tax rate reduced to 20 percent from 35 percent, in part to better compete with lower tax jurisdictions like Ireland. Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by Peter Graff 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-tax-ireland/fake-news-ireland-rebukes-trump-over-corporate-tax-claim-idUKKBN1CN2C2'|'2017-10-18T18:55:00.000+03:00'
'5ae487b0ce522ee4ad0564ee89824aa315b1b4ff'|'Twitter looks to toughen rules on online harassment, abuse'|'October 18, 2017 / 1:39 PM / Updated 24 minutes ago Twitter looks to toughen rules on online harassment, abuse Angela Moon , Arjun Panchadar   People holding mobile phones are silhouetted against a backdrop projected with the Twitter logo in this illustration picture taken September 27, 2013. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/File Photo (Reuters) - Twitter Inc plans to toughen its rules on online sexual harassment and impose stronger penalties for misconduct, according to an email it sent to a group of safety advocates, academics and researchers that helps the social media service set its policies. The new rules, which will likely be introduced in the next few weeks, are aimed at tackling one of Twitter<65>s biggest and long-lasting problems. They follow a series of tweets by Chief Executive Jack Dorsey on Friday announcing plans to act more aggressively to limit the number of bullies and harassers using Twitter. The new guidelines include immediate and permanent suspensions of any account Twitter identifies as the original poster or source of non-consensual nudity. The site<74>s definition of non-consensual nudity will also be expanded to include what it called <20>upskirt imagery, creep shots and hidden camera content.<2E> The rules were set out in a letter, which was seen by Reuters, to Twitter<65>s Trust and Safety Council from Twitter<65>s head of safety policy. The micro-blogging platform is also looking to allow bystanders to report unwanted sexual advances, which previously had to be reported by users directly involved in the situation. It also promised to publish more details on a change in policy which would include hate symbols and imagery in its definition of sensitive media. Dorsey<65>s pledge to revamp Twitter<65>s guidelines came after some users boycotted the service for suspending actress Rose McGowan, who spoke out against Harvey Weinstein, the producer who faces allegations that he sexually harassed or assaulted a number of women over three decades in the film business. Weinstein has denied having non-consensual sex with anyone. Twitter also faces scrutiny from lawmakers investigating allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Last week, Twitter gave Senate investigators the profile names of 201 accounts it had determined were linked to an effort by Moscow to sow discord and divisiveness during and after the campaign, according to a source familiar with the matter. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference, previously called Twitter<65>s cooperation as <20>frankly inadequate.<2E> Reporting by Angela Moon in New York and Arjun Panchadar in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington DC; editing by Patrick Graham 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-abuse/twitter-toughens-guidelines-on-harassment-report-idUKKBN1CN1Y9'|'2017-10-18T20:05:00.000+03:00'
'bccaf05cc6bd286da31bb5fd32fb233577bc8dc7'|'China''s Hony to buy 30 percent in owner of Italian luxury brand'|'HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese private equity firm Hony Capital said on Tuesday it has agreed to buy a third of fashion brand Mr & Mrs Italy<6C>s owner Duemmei, marking its first investment in the luxury industry amid a recovery in the sector.Hony and Duemmei did not disclose details of the deal.Hony, one of China<6E>s biggest PE firms, has been eyeing targets in the United States and Europe in the consumer, services, and healthcare sectors. It will acquire the stake from Duemmei owners Fabio Leoncini and Andrea Bucalossi, Hony said a joint statement.The PE firm, backed by Legend Holdings ( 3396.HK ), parent of personal computer maker Lenovo Group ( 0992.HK ), has about $10 billion worth of assets under management and its portfolio companies include PizzaExpress and co-working space firm WeWork.The latest investment comes at a time when the luxury sector is making a comeback in the world<6C>s second-largest economy, after years of lull following a corruption crackdown on flashy spending.China, which accounts for close to a third of global luxury sales, has become a battleground for the likes of Prada ( 1913.HK ), Louis Vuitton ( LVMH.PA ), Fendi and more affordable luxury brands such as Coach ( COH.N ).Beijing has also stepped up efforts to lift consumption in the local market and woo back Chinese shoppers from destinations such as Paris, Milan, New York and Tokyo.Founded in 2007, Mr & Mrs Italy, is best known for its iconic <20>luxury parkas<61>, which are generally hand-made and lined with luxe fur.With international markets accounting for more than 80 percent of its revenues, the brand is expected to record 57 million euros ($67 million) in income in 2017, the statement said.Beijing-based Hony looks to expand Mr & Mrs Italy<6C>s stores in China from three to more than 10 over the next five years, said one person with knowledge of the plan, who declined to be named.<2E>Luxury consumers are trending much younger and looking for more casual and specialized items,<2C> Yuan Bing, a managing director at Hony who was involved in the transaction, said in the statement.Spurred by Chinese consumers<72> growing preference for buying luxury goods at home, the domestic luxury market will grow by 6-8 percent at constant exchange rates in 2017, up from 4 percent last year, according to consultancy Bain & Company.Duemmei owners Leoncini and Bucalossi will remain the majority shareholders of the company and will retain responsibility for its management after the transaction, the statement added.Reporting by Julie Zhu in Hong Kong; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Vyas Mohan'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-duemmei-m-a-honycapital/chinas-hony-to-buy-30-percent-in-owner-of-italian-luxury-brand-idINKBN1CM1I6'|'2017-10-17T09:23:00.000+03:00'
'2a259b46d64647226d8c8e3ac375311d9a0d0c41'|'Britain''s financial watchdog consents to scrutiny of confidential RBS report'|'October 17, 2017 / 12:48 PM / Updated 3 hours ago British financial watchdog consents to scrutiny of confidential RBS report Emma Rumney 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: A woman shelters under an umbrella as she walks past a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland in the City of London, Britain, September 17, 2013. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s Financial Conduct Authority has agreed to allow a confidential report on the Royal Bank of Scotland<6E>s ( RBS.L ) treatment of struggling companies to be scrutinised by a barrister, MPs said on Tuesday. In a letter to MPs , Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the FCA, agreed to allow a barrister to check a summary of the report against its full contents, which the regulatory agency says was never meant to be public. It has refused to publish the report, irritating MPs on Parliament<6E>s Treasury Select Committee, who announced they had appointed barrister Andrew Green to inspect the summary last week. The report examines the conduct of RBS<42>s small business restructuring unit, the Global Restructuring Group, which handled 12,000 troubled companies between 2007 and 2012, a period encompassing the financial crisis. Some customers have accused it of pushing them into bankruptcy so it could pick up cheap assets. State-backed RBS has admitted some wrongdoing over its handling of small businesses but has said there was no evidence it pushed companies into bankruptcy. The bank has, however, set aside 400 million pounds to reimburse fees to customers who claim they were mistreated. The report was leaked to the BBC, which said it showed just 10 percent of the companies placed in the recovery group emerged intact and returned to the main RBS bank. The unit has since been shut down, although a similar unit is still operating. Nicky Morgan, chair of the Treasury Select Committee, said its legal advisers will now start their work and report to the committee before Bailey appears before them in person at the end of October. <20>If the advisers<72> report does not provide the committee with the assurance it needs, it will decide whether any further steps are required,<2C> she said in a statement, adding the committee<65>s review should not delay the FCA from publishing its summary as soon as possible. The FCA said last week that it has already asked an independent external counsel to confirm its summary is a fair and balanced account of the full report<72>s findings. The full report is based on a so-called skilled persons report conducted by Promontory consultancy in 2014. The FCA has said such reports were compiled on the understanding they wouldn<64>t be published. But Morgan has said the GRG report is an <20>exceptional case<73>, since it has already been leaked. She will quiz Bailey in public when he appears before her committee in the coming weeks. Reporting by Emma Rumney, editing by Anjuli Davies, Larry King 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-royal-bank-scot-parliament-report/britains-financial-watchdog-consents-to-scrutiny-of-confidential-rbs-report-idUKKBN1CM1T2'|'2017-10-17T16:00:00.000+03:00'
'352672861da6439ba0a1ffbfc4995175b206b4b5'|'Britain''s ''Big Four'' grocers all lose market share - Kantar Worldpanel'|'October 17, 2017 / 7:36 AM / in 3 hours Britain''s ''Big Four" grocers all lose market share - Kantar Worldpanel Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Branding for Morrisons is seen in a conference room in central London, Britain September 10, 2015. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s <20>Big Four<75> supermarkets all lost market share in the 12 weeks to Oct. 8 despite growing sales as the march of the discount chains continued, Kantar Worldpanel said on Tuesday. Morrisons ( MRW.L ) was the best performing of the four, with sales up 2.8 percent, Kantar said, followed by market leader Tesco ( TSCO.L ) up 2.1 percent. Sainsbury<72>s ( SBRY.L ) sales were up 1.9 percent and Asda ( WMT.N ) saw growth of 1.8 percent, it said. Discount chains Aldi and Lidl continued their strong runs, with sales up 13.4 percent and 16.0 percent respectively. Inflation in the period was 3.2 percent, Kantar said. Market share and sales growth (percent) 12 wks to 12 wks to pct change Oct. 8 2017 Oct. 9 2016 in sales Tesco 27.9 28.2 2.1 FILE PHOTO: A company logo is pictured outside a Tesco supermarket in Altrincham northern England, April 16, 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo Sainsbury<72>s 15.8 16.0 1.9 Asda 15.4 15.6 1.8 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-grocers-kantar/britains-big-four-grocers-all-lose-market-share-kantar-worldpanel-idUKKBN1CM0P9'|'2017-10-17T10:36:00.000+03:00'
'b876404dc31773a7b5f11fe9cb563802bb470e41'|'Saudi needs Aramco billions as recession slows austerity drive'|'Reuters TV United States October 19, 2017 / 1:20 PM / in a minute Saudi needs Aramco billions as recession slows austerity drive Andrew Torchia 6 Min Read A vehicle drives past the King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia<69>s plans to sell state assets - including a stake in energy giant Saudi Aramco - are becoming even more important to its finances as a recession slows Riyadh<64>s effort to close a budget deficit caused by low oil prices. Last December, Riyadh released a plan to abolish the deficit by 2020, cutting it from $79 billion (<28>60 billion) or 12.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2016 via steps such as domestic energy price hikes and tax rises. The plan eased investor fears about Saudi Arabia<69>s fiscal stability and reduced pressure on its currency. But in recent weeks, it has become clear from official statistics that the 2020 target is much too optimistic, economists said. Austerity measures so far have pushed the economy into recession, with GDP shrinking for a second straight quarter in the April-June period. The slump is a threat to ambitious economic reforms announced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who wants to boost private sector growth and develop non-oil industries. So the government has delayed further austerity steps that could hurt businesses or consumers. Riyadh is reconsidering the speed at which it imposes austerity to avoid pushing up unemployment, the International Monetary Fund said this month. Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan told Bloomberg television in Washington last week that the government would not rush to lift domestic energy prices further. The result may be a fresh emphasis on raising money from the Aramco sale and other privatization exercises, until the economy recovers enough to let Riyadh proceed at full speed with austerity, economists in the region said. <20>The austerity measures have a cumulative impact on economic momentum -- each stage becomes even harder,<2C> said Monica Malik, chief economist at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank. <20>If oil stays at $50 to $60 a barrel, we expect to see deficits way beyond 2020.<2E> The government faces a chicken-and-egg problem: it needs to spend more to boost growth, but finding more funds to spend is hard when growth is low. By obtaining tens of billions of dollars in funds from abroad, the privatization program could be a way out of this dilemma, Malik said. Sources told Reuters this month that China was offering to buy up to 5 percent of Aramco directly. Consultancy Eurasia Group said it would be tempting for Riyadh to accept such a proposal in advance of a public offer and international listing of Aramco shares, which could occur in late 2018 or 2019. <20>An immediate cash injection through a private placement could prove too attractive to turn down,<2C> Eurasia said. An Aramco spokesman said a range of options for a public listing of Aramco remained under active review. <20>No decision has been made and the IPO process remains on track,<2C> the spokesman said without elaborating. Labourers work at a construction site of Riyadh Metro in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser Saudi spending, revenue and reserves - tmsnrt.rs/2qaFbqM DEFICIT Many economists expect the government to hit its deficit target of $53 billion or roughly 8 percent of GDP this year, helped by higher oil prices. Shrinking the gap further will be a slow and painful process, however, they say. Slideshow (2 Images) One austerity step, imposing a 5 percent value-added tax, looks likely to go ahead in January; an IMF official said official preparations for it were proceeding well. VAT may raise around $13 billion in annual revenues, the IMF has estimated. But VAT will be a heavy drag on the economy, equal to about 2 percent of GDP. Growth of the non-oil sector of the economy has already dropped near zero, so there may be little room for Riyadh to introduce more auste
'cafd90799a8a7d5097bc585f9847cba7806152a4'|'Japan September export growth slows slightly, growth trend intact'|'October 19, 2017 / 1:06 AM / Updated 18 hours ago Japan Sept. export growth slows slightly, growth trend intact Stanley White 3 Min Read Men are seen in front of containers and cranes at an industrial port in Tokyo, Japan September 29, 2017. Picture taken September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s export growth slowed in September for the first time in three months, official data on Thursday showed, in a sign overseas demand for goods from the world<6C>s third-largest economy may be taking a breather. The 14.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports was less than the median estimate for a 14.9 percent increase and was less than an 18.1 percent rise in August, which was the fastest expansion in almost four years. Economists expect Japan<61>s exports to start growing at a faster pace as demand for goods picks up heading into the year-end shopping season and as a weak yen increases export competitiveness, which should support economic growth. <20>This slowdown in export growth is temporary,<2C> said Hiroaki Muto, economist at Tokai Tokyo Research Center Co. <20>Data measuring manufacturing activity in overseas economies shows we are in the middle of an expansionary phase. Exports will continue to support Japan<61>s economy.<2E> Exports slowed in September due to weaker growth in shipments of cars, semiconductors, and electronic parts, data from the finance ministry showed. Exports were also hit by a decline in shipments of TVs, audio equipment, and ships, the data showed. However, other data from other Asian economies shows demand for electronics remains strong. Asia<69>s technology-producing economies have gained a big boost this year from improved global demand for electronics products and components such as semiconductors. South Korea and Taiwan, posted stronger-than-expected shipments in September, boosted by continued strong global demand for memory and processing chips. China<6E>s export growth also picked up in the month. In volume terms, Japan<61>s exports rose 4.8 percent in September from a year ago, following a 10.4 percent annual increase in August. Exports to the United States rose 11.1 percent in September from a year earlier due to an increase in shipments of semiconductor manufacturing equipment and pharmaceuticals. This compares with a 21.8 percent annual increase in the previous month. Japan<61>s trade surplus with the United States rose 5.1 percent in September from a year ago to 616.6 billion yen ($5.46 billion). The United States is calling for Japan to enter bilateral trade negotiations to lower its trade deficit, so Japan<61>s surplus with the United States could become a source of friction. China-bound exports rose 29.3 percent year-on-year in September, faster than a 25.8 percent annual increase in August, as Japan shipped more electronics. Imports rose 12.0 percent in the year to September, versus the median estimate for a 15.0 percent annual increase. The trade balance came to a surplus of 670.2 billion yen, versus the median estimate for a 559.8 billion yen surplus. Other recent data pointed to a pick-up in capital expenditure and a tentative turnaround in consumer spending, which suggests that Japan<61>s growth streak will continue due to domestic and external demand. ($1 = 112.9100 yen) Reporting by Stanley White; Editing by Sam Holmes 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-trade/japan-sept-export-growth-slows-slightly-growth-trend-intact-idINKBN1CO03P'|'2017-10-19T03:54:00.000+03:00'
'f6e4fd35fe0a9e0ebd76c4ead3eae310fc69bc9e'|'Canadian steel maker Stelco faces headwinds for planned IPO'|' 46 PM / in 3 minutes Canadian steel maker Stelco faces headwinds for planned IPO Nicole Mordant 4 Min Read VANCOUVER, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Canadian steel maker Stelco Holdings Inc<6E>s planned IPO could be a tough sell as it faces the twin headwinds of slowing North American auto sales and the uncertain impact of trade talks, even as it looks to cash in on a rebound in steel prices. Stelco also needs to regain investor confidence just months after emerging from its second bankruptcy in 13 years, analysts and investors said, as its new owner seeks to raise $150 million by selling a stake in the restructured, almost debt-free company. Stelco, now owned by U.S. private equity group Bedrock Industries, filed in late September for the initial public offering and is now marketing it. If the effort is successful, it would be the world<6C>s biggest steel IPO since 2010, when Indonesia<69>s Krakatau Steel raised $300 million in its offering, according to Thomson Reuters data. Krakatau<61>s stock has nearly halved since then. While global steel prices have jumped 160 percent since end-2015 as China, both the world<6C>s top steel producer and consumer, shut capacity in an environmental crackdown, sales of North American automobiles have been mostly weak this year. Stelco, which operates two steel-processing facilities in Ontario, is targeting the auto sector for growth with plans to lift production of lightweight, higher-strength steels that automakers are increasingly seeking for better fuel economy, it said in its prospectus. But high automobile inventory levels and record consumer discounts, are signs that North American auto sales could slow. <20>That is not good for steel mills,<2C> said Gordon Johnson, an analyst at Axiom Capital Management. The automotive market absorbs around 40 percent of North American-produced steel sheet, Stelco<63>s chief product, said KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Philip Gibbs. AUTOMOTIVE MARKET Competition for auto business is stiff, with the likes of ArcelorMittal B.V., the world<6C>s biggest steelmaker, also chasing this higher-margin business. Last year, sales to automotive customers made up only 3 percent of Stelco<63>s sales, down from 37 percent in 2006. <20>What you do have now is every steel company really trying to figure out how to capture more and more of that market,<2C> said Clarksons Platou analyst Lee McMillan. Stelco and Bedrock both declined to comment. In its IPO filing, Stelco said its competitive strengths included being one of North America<63>s lowest-cost producers and being near customers and suppliers. Meanwhile, the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement adds a layer of uncertainty for investors in steel companies in Canada and Mexico as U.S. protectionism increases under the Trump administration. <20>Trying to predict what this current administration is going to do is extremely difficult,<2C> said Johnson. Rising steel prices have lifted steel companies<65> profits and shares. Stelco made a C$61 million ($49 million) operating profit in the six months to end-June compared with a C$36 million loss in the same period last year. ArcelorMittal<61>s stock is up 170 percent, United States Steel Corp is 240 percent higher and Nucor Corp 30 percent firmer, gains that make it too late to invest in steel stocks, some investors say. <20>You buy these companies when they are losing money. Once they are making money, to me investors have missed a large part of the cycle,<2C> said Lorne Steinberg, president of Lorne Steinberg Wealth Management. $1 = 1.2479 Canadian dollars Reporting by Nicole Mordant in Vancouver; Additional reporting by Susan Taylor in Toronto; Editing by Denny Thomas and Leslie Adler 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/stelco-ipo-funds/canadian-steel-maker-stelco-faces-headwinds-for-planned-ipo-idUSL2N1MR1QQ'|'2017-10-18T23:45:00.000+03:00'
'7e8a8cc3bf120e0d3f368070a317d9049dbf8893'|'Defiant Kurds shrug off risk of trade war after independence vote'|'October 18, 2017 / 8:37 AM / Updated 20 minutes ago Defiant Kurds shrug off risk of trade war after independence vote Michael Georgy 6 Min Read A worker carries a bag of potatoes from the truck coming from Turkey, in the town of Zakho, Iraq October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Ari Jalal ZAKHO, Iraq (Reuters) - More than three weeks after Iraq<61>s Kurds voted for independence, it<69>s business as usual at the bustling Ibrahim Khalil border crossing with Turkey. Ankara has threatened to impose economic sanctions on Iraq<61>s autonomous Kurdistan region to deter moves towards independence, but hundreds of trucks still cross the border each day -- some with supplies for Kurdish areas, others en route to Baghdad. Closure of the border would sever a lifeline for the region in northern Iraq and step up efforts by Turkey, Iran and the Iraqi government to isolate it. But the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is gambling that its three main trade partners will be reluctant to impose a blockade that would put billions of dollars in trade at risk and could hurt all sides involved. <20>We send about 100 packed trucks a day to Baghdad,<2C> said Hani Anas, a trader standing by rows of steel rods stacked near the border. <20>Iraq will suffer as well.<2E> It is a risky gamble for a region that is heavily dependent on food imports and oil exports, via a pipeline that passes through Turkey. The undermining of its economy could deal a heavy blow to its chances of survival as an independent state if it pushes ahead with breakaway moves. The outcome of the standoff could also have repercussions far beyond the immediate region as Iraqi Kurdistan produces about 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day -- 15 percent of Iraqi output and around 0.7 percent of global oil production. The KRG has not taken any formal steps to break away from Iraq since the Kurds overwhelmingly backed independence in a referendum on Sept. 25, but has scheduled regional presidential and parliamentary elections for Nov. 1. <20>If Baghdad tries to hurt us it will hurt itself,<2C> said Soran Aziz, vice president of the chamber of commerce and industry in the Kurdish administrative capital Erbil. <20>If borders are closed with neighbouring countries it will have a limited impact on us,<2C> he added. <20>If an economic blockade impacts us by 1 percent, it will impact them by 10 percent.<2E> PRESSURE BUILDS Baghdad opposes Kurdish independence because it wants to hold Iraq together. Iran and Turkey fear secession would encourage their own Kurdish populations to press for a homeland, and Washington worries that the tensions will damage unity in the fight against Islamic State. Iraqi Kurdistan is certainly vulnerable over its economy. Apart from oil, it is largely dependent on agriculture, tourism, and cement and steel exports to Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. But some Iraqi officials acknowledge that blocking the main trade route between Iraqi Kurdistan and other parts of Iraq would hit not just the Kurds<64> economy. Workers load boxes of milk onto a truck at a market in the town of Zakho, Iraq October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Ari Jalal Turkish exports to Iraq this year had by the end of August reached $6.4 billion. <20>This key trade route is a lifeline for all of us and we will make sure to keep it operational, no matter what levels of disagreements,<2C> said Waleed Mohammed, an advisor to the Iraqi trade ministry. Near the border with Turkey, traders seem confident as they work their cell phones, dealing with orders. Around them, labourers load crates of powdered milk and potatoes on to trucks that haul average loads of 27 tonnes to Baghdad and elsewhere. <20>There is no way anyone can close down the border. One truck arrives and then heads to Baghdad, another one goes the other way,<2C> said Samer Rushdi, a trader who says he is so busy he cannot take time off. Even so, pressure on the Kurds has mounted since the referendum, especially from Baghdad, which has imposed an air ban on Iraqi Kurdistan, slapped sanctions on Kurdish bank
'8440b9c3cbf07fb8a7be02d18be89ac738e5d24c'|'RPT-UPDATE 1-Nature publisher prepares 2018 stock market listing -sources'|'FRANKFURT, Oct 18 (Reuters) - SpringerNature, the publisher of science magazines Nature and Scientific American, is preparing a 2018 stock market listing valuing the company at up to 4 billion euros ($4.7 billion), people close to the matter said.The company has recently asked investment banks to pitch for roles in the initial public offering that is expected to take place as early as the June or July 2018, as one of its owners seeks to cash out in buoyant equity markets, the people said.The SpringerNature joint venture is 53-percent owned by German publisher Holtzbrinck, with buyout group BC Partners holding the rest.It was formed in 2015 through the merger of Holtzbrinck<63>s Macmillan Science and Education unit with BC Partners<72> Springer business, which publishes scientific, technical and medical books and journals. At the time, the company was valued at more than 5 billion euros ($5.87 billion) including debt.BC Partners declined to comment, while Holtzbrinck was not immediately available for comment.Holtzbrinck may seek to keep a majority in the company following a stock market flotation, one of the people said, adding that the company could contribute other parts of its digital activities to the joint venture to avoid having to inject cash to stay above a 50 percent shareholding.The creation of SpringerNature was designed to make it easier for the SpringerNature to compete with the likes of RELX and Wolters Kluwer, as publishers move more and more into digital content and readers increasingly use smartphones and tablets to access information.SpringerNature posted 1.62 billion euros in sales last year and employs 13,000 staff. It publishes roughly 3,000 scientific magazines as well as 12,000 new books every year.It is expected to post earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of 480 million euros next year and may be valued at up to 6.5-7 billion euros including its 3 billion euros in debt, one of the people said.That would equate to 15-16 times its core earnings excluding capital expenditure, the person added.In 2015, BC Partners said that it targeted a stock market listing of the business within two to three years.SpringerNature is a separate company from German publisher Axel Springer. ($1 = 0.8502 euros) (Reporting by Arno Schuetze, editing by Emma Thomasson and Adrian Croft)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/springer-nature/rpt-update-1-nature-publisher-prepares-2018-stock-market-listing-sources-idINL8N1MT11C'|'2017-10-18T04:34:00.000+03:00'
'f30745f5e64870d40d86362684ef3b0be904c379'|'Becton Dickinson wins conditional EU approval for $24 billion Bard buy'|'October 18, 2017 / 2:16 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago Becton Dickinson wins conditional EU approval for $24 billion Bard buy Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. medical equipment supplier Becton Dickinson ( BDX.N ) secured EU antitrust approval for its $24-billion acquisition of U.S. peer C R Bard ( BCR.N ) after it agreed to sell two businesses to allay competition concerns. The deal, the latest in a recent wave of mergers and acquisitions in the medical technology sector, will boost Becton Dickinson<6F>s presence in the high-growth oncology and surgery market. The European Commission demanded the concessions because it was concerned the deal would reduce competition and hurt innovation. The EU antitrust enforcer said Becton Dickinson pledged to sell its global core needle biopsy devices business and a tissue marker product currently in the development stage. Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cr-bard-m-a-bd-eu/becton-dickinson-wins-conditional-eu-approval-for-24-billion-bard-buy-idUSKBN1CN21J'|'2017-10-18T22:16:00.000+03:00'
'cd595e9deb5819a0ff70cceb93cfb4af7cef1e98'|'Iraqi oil minister asks BP to develop Kirkuk oilfields, oil ministry says'|' 23 AM / in 9 minutes Iraqi oil minister asks BP to develop Kirkuk oilfields, oil ministry says   BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi has asked BP ( BP.L ) ''<27>to quickly make plans to develop the Kirkuk oifields,<2C><> an oil ministry statement said on Wednesday. Iraqi government forces on Monday took control of the oil-rich region of Kirkuk from Kurdish peshmerga fighters who had occupied the area in 2-14, in the course of the war on Islamic State. BP says on its website it has provided technical assistance in the past to the Iraqi state-owned North Oil Company to aid the redevelopment of the Kirkuk field. Kirkuk is estimated to have around 9 billion barrels of recoverable oil remaining, according to BP. Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli. Editing by Jane Merriman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-iraq-oil/iraqi-oil-minister-asks-bp-to-develop-kirkuk-oilfields-oil-ministry-says-idUKKBN1CN0KW'|'2017-10-18T09:22:00.000+03:00'
'42ef963da1be026a112b2acfd59aeb42ae5d186f'|'Taiwan ministry expresses ''deep concern'' about Qualcomm''s antitrust fine'|'October 18, 2017 / 9:16 AM / Updated 9 hours ago Taiwan ministry expresses ''deep concern'' about Qualcomm''s antitrust fine Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: One of many Qualcomm buildings is shown in San Diego, California, U.S. on November 3, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan<61>s economics ministry said it is <20>deeply concerned<65> about the antitrust agency imposing a $775 million fine on Qualcomm Inc ( QCOM.O ), in a rare public display of disagreement between authorities. Taiwan<61>s Fair Trade Commission (FTC) fined Qualcomm last week, saying the U.S. chipmaker had abused its monopolistic position by opting against licensing some modem-related technologies to other industry players. Qualcomm said it disagreed and would take the matter to court once the agency releases a final report in coming weeks. The Ministry of Economic Affairs, which oversees industrial policy, said it respected the agency<63>s position but was concerned about any impact on foreign investment. <20>With regards to the investigation and judgment process... our ministry is deeply concerned,<2C> the ministry said in a statement posted on its website late on Tuesday. <20>Considering economic stability and prosperity, as well as that the economics ministry is the government authority overseeing industry, the ministry would like to see better coordination between industrial development and fair trading.<2E> The ministry said the agency did not appear to take into account Qualcomm<6D>s contribution to the overall local technology industry or impact on future business opportunities, describing the U.S. firm as an <20>indispensable partner<65>. The FTC did not have an immediate comment when contacted by Reuters. Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek Inc ( 2454.TW ) supported the FTC<54>s action in a statement on Oct. 12, reiterating views of some industry players that it would lead to a fairer business environment for technological innovation. The action is the latest challenge to Qualcomm<6D>s business model, which involves selling chips and licensing patents related to installation and use. In December, South Korean regulators fined Qualcomm $854 million for violating competition law. That followed a $975 million fine from Chinese regulators in 2015. Reporting by Jess Macy Yu; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Christopher Cushing 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-qualcomm-taiwan/taiwan-ministry-expresses-deep-concern-about-qualcomms-antitrust-fine-idUSKBN1CN12Y'|'2017-10-18T12:16:00.000+03:00'
'a74b2bc0487c324a5e834c060340a8e566dfedcf'|'Time-Warner, AT&T win conditional antitrust nod in Brazil'|'BRASILIA, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Brazil<69>s antitrust authority on Wednesday approved a merger of Time-Warner Inc and AT&T Inc, and allowed the companies to keep all of their assets in the country, under certain conditions.The Brazilian regulator Cade unanimously voted to approve the deal, which is facing strong regulatory scrutiny in the United States, as long as the companies<65> operations in Brazil remain separate and agree not to share sensitive information.The merged company must also disclose the terms of all content licensing and TV programming deals to Cade, which will assess if they undermine competition in the market.<2E>The agreement forces the companies to observe objective non-discrimination standards that are more comprehensive than the usual legal demands,<2C> said Gilvandro Ara<72>jo, the Cade councilor in charge of the case.The $85.4 billion transaction is still subject to approval by Brazil<69>s telecom regulator, Anatel, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice. AT&T has said it expects the Time Warner acquisition to close by the end of the year.Time-Warner licenses several TV channels in Brazil including premium film channel HBO and sports network Esporte Interativo. AT&T owns one of its main clients, Sky Brasil Servi<76>os Ltda, Brazil<69>s No. 2 satellite television provider.Cade<64>s demands, which echo similar agreements in Chile and Mexico, aim to address concerns the resulting company could close off markets to rival content providers and television services.Still, AT&T may sidestep those measures. Reuters reported last month it is evaluating a sale of its TV operations in Latin America as it seeks to pay down debt. (Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Chris Reese)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/time-warner-ma-att-brazil/time-warner-att-win-conditional-antitrust-nod-in-brazil-idINL2N1MT1DR'|'2017-10-18T15:55:00.000+03:00'
'65bfd674f4750ec868cac3cd7b5328a37e545e73'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Stronger dollar rattles lira, yuan; stocks slip from 6-yr high'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:06 AM / Updated 14 minutes ago EMERGING MARKETS-Stronger dollar rattles lira, yuan; stocks slip from 6-yr high Claire Milhench 6 Min Read LONDON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Emerging market currencies such as the Turkish lira and Chinese yuan were squeezed by a stronger dollar on Tuesday after reports that a policy hawk could be the next U.S. Fed chair, while emerging stocks slipped off a six-year high. The dollar firmed 0.2 percent against a basket of currencies to the strongest in a week and U.S. 2-year Treasury yields jumped to their highest since 2008 after U.S. President Donald Trump met Stanford University economist John Taylor to discuss the job of Federal Reserve Chair. Taylor is known as a proponent of a rule-based monetary policy and according to his formula, the Fed funds rate needs to be much higher than the current target of 1.0-1.25 percent. A hawkish Fed could prompt investors to shift into U.S. assets on the prospect of better yields, triggering capital outflows from emerging markets. <20>Over the last three weeks, our official line has been stay away from dollar/EM as there is some uncertainty on the U.S. fiscal and monetary front ... and the market is wondering who next Fed chair will be,<2C> said Kiran Kowshik, an emerging FX strategist at UniCredit. <20>Positioning in long EM FX is quite stretched.<2E> Emerging currencies such as the Turkish lira and Chinese yuan sold off the most, weakening some 0.4 percent. Kowshik said although the lira was undervalued, the external balance of payments was quite weak and there weren<65>t sufficient inflows to cover the current account deficit. The visa ban spat with the United States has also weighed on the lira. China<6E>s yuan fell to a one-week low, slipping below a key threshold of 6.6 per dollar in the wake of a weaker official midpoint and higher corporate demand for dollars. Investors remain cautious ahead of China<6E>s twice-a-decade party congress starting on Wednesday. Other currencies traded flat or slightly lower, with the Mexican peso hovering near a five-month low hit on Monday. The peso has shed about 4.5 percent this month, with Mexico<63>s finance minister blaming the depreciation on uncertainty around trade treaty renegotiations and questions over the pace of Fed tightening. The Trump administration, which is demanding significant changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has presented a series of hard-line proposals that partners Canada and Mexico say will be tough to accept. The Russian rouble held its ground, helped by higher oil prices as fighting between Iraqi and Kurdish forces threatened supplies from northern Iraq while political tension rose between the United States and Iran. In emerging Europe, currencies fared better, with the Czech crown hitting another four-year high against the euro whilst the Polish zloty was trading just off a three-month high ahead of wages and unemployment data. Emerging stocks slipped from six-year highs, with MSCI<43>s benchmark emerging equity index down 0.25 percent, ending a five-day winning streak. Chinese mainland stocks fell 0.2 percent , Russian shares eased 0.4 percent and Hungary and Polish stocks nudged 0.3 percent lower. But both the South Korean and Philippines bourses powered to record highs. In the former, gains in large tech firms offset market caution about North Korean action as Washington and Seoul began week-long joint military drills. Philippines stocks were playing catch up as trading resumed after a holiday. In fixed income markets, Iraqi sovereign dollar bonds were steady after Iraqi government forces captured the major Kurdish-held oil city of Kirkuk on Monday. For GRAPHIC on emerging market FX performance 2017, see tmsnrt.rs/2e7eoml For GRAPHIC on MSCI emerging index performance 2017, see tmsnrt.rs/2dZbdP5 For CENTRAL EUROPE market report, see For TURKISH market report, see For RUSSIAN market report, see) Emerging Markets Prices from Reuters Equities Latest 
'9a2c7d52d78fecc2c586c7dea89242f126e38510'|'Unilever blames poor weather for slowing growth'|'China''s economy shows solid momentum as party meets Markets Thirty years ago this week, Wall Street slid into the abyss Trying to unlock Brexit, May to make offer on EU citizens Reuters TV United States October 19, 2017 / 6:23 AM / Updated 21 minutes ago Unilever blames poor weather for slowing growth Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The company logo for Unilever is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., February 17, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Unilever ( ULVR.L ) ( UNc.AS ) reported lower-than-expected third-quarter sales, blaming recent storms in the United States and poor weather for weak ice cream sales in Europe. Underlying sales rose 2.6 percent, Unilever said on Thursday. That was below the 3.9 percent growth expected by analysts in a company-supplied consensus, and below the 3 percent seen in the first half of the year. <20>While natural disasters doubtless played a part, the fact is that Unilever<65>s Q3 performance came in below expectations in all geographies,<2C> said RBC Capital Markets analysts. <20>Sales growth in personal care, at 1.8 percent, was particularly disappointing relative to consensus.<2E> The maker of Dove soap and Ben & Jerry<72>s ice cream, which in February rebuffed a $143 billion takeover bid from Kraft-Heinz ( KHC.O ), said turnover fell by 1.6 percent, hurt by a 5.1 percent hit from foreign exchange rates. Excluding its up-for-sale margarine and spreads business, for which tentative takeover bids are due on Thursday, sales rose 2.8 percent. Higher prices contributed 2.4 percentage points of the 2.6 percent sales growth, while increased volume accounted for the other 0.2 percent. The company stood by its full-year forecast for sales growth of 3 to 5 percent. Reporting by Martinne Geller; editing by Jason Neely 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-unilever-outlook/unilever-blames-poor-weather-for-slowing-growth-idUKKBN1CO0KS'|'2017-10-19T09:57:00.000+03:00'
'8c83433d55b99719168cbbd88a82b203c0962c46'|'METALS-Copper holds steady after in-line China economic report'|'October 19, 2017 / 4:21 AM / in 12 hours METALS-Copper holds steady after in-line China economic report Reuters Staff 4 Min Read (Adds comment, detail, updates prices) By Melanie Burton MELBOURNE, Oct 19 (Reuters) - London copper held steady on Thursday after in-line economic readings out of China signalled some moderation in growth. China''s economic growth looked set to accelerate for the first time in seven years this year, after hardly skipping a beat in the third quarter, but efforts to cut risks in property and debt are beginning to weigh on parts of the world''s second-largest economy. "China''s data was in line with expectations, so it''s not surprising that markets haven''t reacted too much," said Dan Hynes at ANZ in Sydney. Hynes said some measures of property investment had improved from August. "I suspect as (investors) do dig into the detail they are likely to be a little bit more positive." FUNDAMENTALS * LME COPPER: Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange was barely changed at $6,995 a tonne by 0716 GMT. In the previous session, it closed a tad softer just below the $7,000 mark, having touched a three-year high on Monday. * SHFE COPPER: Shanghai Futures Exchange copper ended down half a percent at 54,620 yuan ($8,249) a tonne. * CHINA FACTORIES: China''s industrial output rose 6.6 percent in September from a year ago, faster than expected, while fixed-asset investment expanded 7.5 percent in the first nine months of the year, missing forecasts, data showed on Thursday. * PROPERTY: Property sales in China dropped for the first time in more than 2-1/2 years in September, and housing starts slowed sharply, reinforcing expectations that robust growth in the world''s second-largest economy is starting to cool. * Other metals were mixed. LME zinc and lead fell by more than 1 percent, reversing gains made on Wednesday. LME nickel rallied 1 percent. * EV DEMAND: In supportive news for nickel and copper, China''s electric vehicle (EV) production could touch 1 million units next year and 3 million units by 2020, said Xu Heyi, chairman of carmaker BAIC Group, on Wednesday, likely exceeding a government-set target. * COPPER DEMAND: Chile state copper commission Cochilco forecast on Wednesday an average global copper price of $2.95 per pound in 2018, a sharp upward revision from its mid-year estimate of $2.68, due to greater demand in China. * For the top stories in metals and other news, click or MARKETS NEWS * Asian stocks shed early gains on Thursday, pulling back from decade highs, with Chinese equities leading the way lower after data showed growth in the world''s second largest economy slowed slightly in the third quarter. PRICES BASE METALS PRICES 0714 GMT Three month LME copper 6997 Most active ShFE copper 54600 Three month LME aluminium 2129.5 Most active ShFE aluminium 16145 Three month LME zinc 3089 Most active ShFE zinc 25195 Three month LME lead 2487 Most active ShFE lead 19185 Three month LME nickel 11765 Most active ShFE nickel 94280 Three month LME tin 20015 Most active ShFE tin 144700 BASE METALS ARBITRAGE LME/SHFE COPPER LMESHFCUc3 512.44 LME/SHFE ALUMINIUM LMESHFALc3 -268.02 LME/SHFE ZINC LMESHFZNc3 694.32 LME/SHFE LEAD LMESHFPBc3 -747.15 LME/SHFE NICKEL LMESHFNIc3 2131.18 ($1 = 6.6212 Chinese yuan) (Reporting by Melanie Burton; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu and Tom Hogue) 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/global-metals/metals-copper-holds-steady-after-in-line-china-economic-report-idUSL4N1MU1I1'|'2017-10-19T07:19:00.000+03:00'
'a6f55105a686f8591c0127340fcd25e1631483fa'|'UK Q3 retail sales growth weakest in 4 years as inflation bites'|'FILE PHOTO: Shoppers carry bags in London, Britain August 25, 2016. REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - British retail sales slowed unexpectedly sharply in September, dragging quarterly growth to its weakest annual rate since 2013 and suggesting consumer demand remains uncertain as the Bank of England nears its first rate rise in a decade.Retail sales volumes fell 0.8 percent in September, the Office for National Statistics said on Thursday, reversing a jump in August and undershooting all economists<74> forecasts in a Reuters poll. Third-quarter growth slowed to its lowest year-on-year rate since the second quarter of 2013 at 1.5 percent.Last month the BoE said it was likely to raise interest rates in the coming months if the economy and inflation pressures strengthen as expected, but in recent days a few investors have begun to doubt if the BoE will move as soon as next month.Markets see a roughly 80 percent chance of a rate rise on Nov. 2 after the BoE<6F>s next meeting, but sterling fell to a one-week low of $1.3126 after the data on Thursday as rate futures pared back the odds of further rate increases in 2018.<2E>Uncomfortable questions have been raised about just where UK growth is going to emerge from in Q4,<2C> said Jeremy Cook, chief economist at foreign exchange services company WorldFirst.<2E>We will find out in the coming months whether this is consumers holding off on purchases in preparation for Christmas, or whether the Bank of England<6E>s messaging on interest rate rises has been enough to keep some hands in pockets.<2E>BoE policymakers said in September that consumer demand was showing signs of improving after weakness earlier in the year, though it was too soon to tell if it would compensate for weak business investment.The ONS said Thursday<61>s figures pointed to retail sales adding 0.03 percentage points to economic growth in the third quarter, compared with 0.09 percentage points in Q2. The BoE and most economists expect economic growth of around 0.3 percent.LESS FOR THEIR MONEY The rising cost of goods in stores - which are now increasing at their fastest since March 2012 - meant the amount British shoppers were getting for their money was growing more slowly than the amount they spent, the ONS said.<2E>The slump in retail sales in September was driven by retailers implementing large price rises,<2C> Samuel Tombs of Pantheon Macroeconomics said.However, he and other economists cautioned against drawing too strong conclusions about the overall health of consumer demand from trends in retail sales.Compared with a year earlier, sales volumes in September alone were up 1.2 percent versus the average forecast in a Reuters poll of a 2.1 percent rise.Consumer price inflation hit a five-year high of 3.0 percent in September, largely reflecting the fall in the pound pushing up the cost of imports since last year<61>s Brexit vote.Pay has not kept up. Official data on Wednesday showed that regular pay in the three months to August was 0.4 percent lower in real terms than in 2016 - the sixth consecutive month of falls and the longest such run in almost three years.Some shoppers are tightening their belts, as industry data on Tuesday showed the market share of Britain<69>s four biggest supermarkets falling in response to growing sales at German discount chains Aldi and Lidl.Relatively cheap online fashion retailer ASOS also revised up growth forecasts on Tuesday, in part due to stronger demand after it froze its prices despite higher import costs following last year<61>s fall in the pound.Editing by Gareth Jones'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-economy-retail/uk-q3-retail-sales-growth-weakest-in-4-years-as-inflation-bites-idINKBN1CO1RH'|'2017-10-19T15:31:00.000+03:00'
'28df4ce71ef6591e5bd6dcfbe4c51be554f4878a'|'Airbus to take majority stake in Bombardier''s C-Series programme'|'MONTREAL/TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) - Airbus has agreed to take a majority stake in Bombardier<65>s troubled CSeries jetliner program, securing the plane<6E>s future and giving the Canadian firm a possible way out of a damaging trade dispute with Boeing.Shares in Bombardier leapt more than 20 percent on Tuesday after news of the deal with Europe<70>s biggest aerospace group.Airbus will get a 50.01 percent stake in an entity recently carved out of Bombardier to produce and market the CSeries, four years after it first flew with a goal to enter the $125 billion a year market for large jets.But in a move emblematic of the huge risks of aerospace competition, Bombardier will get just one dollar for the majority stake in exchange for Airbus<75>s purchasing and marketing power to support an aircraft that has won fans for its fuel efficiency but few recent orders due to doubts over its future.In reality, the terms of the deal mean Bombardier could pay Airbus to take over by agreeing to underwrite $700 million of risks related to cost overruns in coming years.<2E>It<49>s an unexpected move by Airbus but indicates they see good market potential for the CSeries. Neither they nor Boeing currently offer an aircraft in the regional jet market,<2C> said aerospace consultant John Strickland of JLS Consulting.Airbus shares rose around 5 percent.The deal is similar to one that Airbus walked away from in 2015 when it decided the investment in a plane that had not yet entered service was too risky - with one major difference: that some of the jets will be produced in the United States.That could change the power balance in Bombardier<65>s costly trade dispute with Boeing, though it is not the main reason why the two former rivals have come together, executives said.The U.S. Commerce Department has threatened a possible 300 percent duty on CSeries jet imports after backing Boeing<6E>s complaint that Bombardier received illegal subsidies and dumped the planes at low prices.The deal with Airbus now means CSeries jets can be built at Airbus<75> Alabama assembly plant, which according to the two companies would exempt them from import duties.Related Coverage Airbus deal may quash Bombardier dispute, challenge Boeing: analystsFactbox: Airbus-Bombardier CSeries tie-up details in a nutshellFactbox: Winners and losers in Bombardier/Airbus CSeries deal<61>Assembly in the U.S. can resolve the (tariff) issue because it then becomes a domestic product,<2C> Bombardier<65>s chief executive, Alain Bellemare, told reporters at Airbus<75>s headquarters in Toulouse.Airbus CEO Tom Enders hailed the tie-up as <20>a win for Canada ... a win for the UK,<2C> referring to Bombardier<65>s wing-making factory in Northern Ireland whose future had been threatened by the distant trade war.He said it would also create new U.S. jobs.The deal appeared to catch Boeing off guard. Locked in a separate 13-year trade dispute with Airbus, Boeing called it a <20>questionable deal<61> between two of its subsidized competitors.Bellemare said he hoped the deal would be approved within 6-12 months. Canadian Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains, who must officially decide whether to green-light the deal, said it looked like <20>Bombardier<65>s new proposed partnership ... would help position the CSeries for success<73>.An Airbus A320neo aircraft and a Bombardier CSeries aircraft are pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau Bombardier, which had not secured a new order in 18 months for the 110-130 seat plane, said the partnership should more than double the value of the CSeries program.While it will lose control of a project developed at a cost of $6 billion, the deal gives the CSeries improved economies of scale and a better sales network.For Airbus, the deal strengthens the bottom end of its narrowbody portfolio after poor sales of its own A319 model and expands its global footpri
'8fa3d4d733e78254a89db853ea949d701a9824a2'|'Kobe Steel plants faked quality data for decades - Nikkei'|'  16, 2017 / 10:20 PM / Updated 19 minutes ago Habitual cheat: Kobe Steel faked product data for more than 10 years - source Yoshiyasu Shida 4   A man walks past the signboard of Kobe Steel at the group''s Tokyo headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - When cheating becomes habitual, the consequences could be costly. At embattled Kobe Steel Ltd falsification of data on products went on for more than a decade, a source with knowledge told Reuters, deepening a scandal that has sliced off about $1.6 billion off its market value in just over a week. And that could be just the tip of the iceberg, legal experts have said, given the potential legal fallout as compensation for even a small number of the 500-odd companies engulfed in the scandal could prove costly. Japan<61>s No.3 steelmaker is still trying to nail down the extent of the tampering, said the source, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. According to an unsourced Nikkei report, the cheating at the firm went on for decades with the knowledge of plant and quality control managers, well over the 10 years that Kobe Steel had acknowledged last week <20>We cannot confirm the Nikkei report as our investigation is ongoing,<2C> a Kobe Steel spokesman said. The revelations made on Oct. 8 have sent shockwaves through supply chains around the world ensnaring companies from operators of Japan<61>s iconic bullet trains to the world<6C>s biggest aircraft maker, Boeing Co,. While the company has not fully identified the extent of the cheating, it told analysts and investors on Monday it had nearly 368 billion yen ($3.3 billion) on hand in cash, short-term securities and unused credit from banks. It is also seeking to generate cash by cutting working capital or selling assets. <20>They have ... received numerous feedback from their customers, such as from beverage can producers, or railway companies that no immediate recall is required or the products involved are not a safety concern,<2C> Thanh Ha Pham, an analyst at Jefferies who attended the briefing, wrote in a note. <20>Obviously, Kobe cannot rule out the risk of future impact, but so far so good, in our view,<2C> he said. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Kobe Steel is seen on the group''s Tokyo headquarter building in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo BOND PAYMENT The company will have no problem paying off a 20 billion yen bond due on Oct. 27, the source told Reuters. The firm has forecast a profit for the year through March 2018 after two successive annual losses, but the outlook has been clouded by the potential fallout from the scandal. The steelmaker faces a range of legal risks, including compensation sought by clients or their customers, penalties for violating unfair competition laws for false representation among others. Kobe Steel shares were up about 6 percent by 0406 GMT, while the broader market was slightly higher. The scandal follows other cases of similar malpractice and financial accounting problems at companies including Mitsubishi Motors, Takata Corp and Toshiba Corp, which have dented confidence in Japan<61>s manufacturing prowess and corporate governance. No safety problems have surfaced as Kobe Steel attempts to confirm the extent of the data tampering. Kobe Steel Chief Executive Hiroya Kawasaki on Friday said about 500 companies had received its falsely certified products, more than double its earlier count. Most of the problems have occurred in the company<6E>s aluminum and copper business, where many of the products are made to specifications required by automakers and other companies. But cases of falsified data have been found in its steel and other businesses. Such is the extent of Kobe Steel<65>s role in global supply chains, the company produces engine valve springs found in half the world<6C>s cars, according to its website. It also counts amongst its former employees Japan<61>s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who worked at Kobe Ste
'1b3f711891662677d08361e623a7efb1c5d76ca9'|'BP eyes smaller renewable investments to avoid repeating losses'|'October 18, 2017 / 11:12 AM / in 3 hours BP eyes smaller renewable investments to avoid repeating losses Ron Bousso   BP''s Chief Executive Bob Dudley speaks to the media after year-end results were announced at the energy company''s headquarters in London, Britain, February 1, 2011. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - BP ( BP.L ) is targeting smaller and wider-ranging investments in renewable energy to avoid large losses in the sector like those it suffered earlier in the decade, Chief Executive Bob Dudley said on Wednesday. BP and peers including Royal Dutch Shell ( RDSa.L ) and Total ( TOTF.PA ) have recognised the need to reduce carbon emissions in the fight against global warming, but their investment in renewables remains tiny compared to oil and gas. <20>We<57>re making smarter, in many cases, smaller bets, and making more of them across a wider range of technologies and business models,<2C> Dudley said in a speech at the Oil & Money conference. <20>Rather than bolting on a whole series of low-carbon businesses, as we have in the past, we<77>re building low carbon into what we do.<2E> Related Coverage BP made a number of large investments in solar power, wind farms in the United States, carbon-capturing technology and biofuels in the 2000s under the leadership of John Browne, who sought to rebrand the company as <20>Beyond Petroleum<75>. Some of those investments failed to pan out and BP in 2011 wrote off its solar business. BP still operates in renewables, including a large onshore wind power business in the United States, but those businesses are not generating much profit, he said. <20>We<57>re thinking beyond petroleum,<2C> Dudley said. <20>Our shareholders want to know we are committed and studying this ... We just don<6F>t know the answers yet.<2E> Within its traditional oil and gas business, BP is also developing low-carbon fuels for ground and air transportation and even ways of reducing carbon in cement, Dudley said. The London-listed company is considering getting back into solar power, but unlike the previous attempt when it focused on producing panels, this time it wants to integrate solar with gas power generation in specific countries, Dudley said. <20>Through these venturing and partnership activities, we are building our understanding so that we can avoid large speculative investments and instead give ourselves as much optionality as possible to back winners as they emerge.<2E> Dudley reiterated his call for a global price on carbon emissions, which would make cleaner energies, including renewables and gas, more profitable to develop. <20>This time the global commitment to action feels different, and the national pledges are a good start. But frankly we need even stronger and clearer signals to create the confidence to invest in and grow low-carbon businesses at scale.<2E> Reporting by Ron Bousso; Editing by Dale Hudson 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bp-renewables/bp-eyes-smaller-renewable-investments-to-avoid-repeating-losses-idUKKBN1CN1HC'|'2017-10-18T14:11:00.000+03:00'
'56269612775f82f8b9676c1d62283963946ec966'|'Flybe warns on first half profit, blames higher maintenance costs'|'October 18, 2017 / 6:19 AM / in 23 minutes Higher costs prompt Flybe profit warning in tough year for airlines Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - An airport worker examines a flybe aircraft before it takes off from Liverpool John Lennon Airport in Liverpool northern England, May 19 , 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble LONDON (Reuters) - British regional airline Flybe ( FLYB.L ) warned on Wednesday that first-half profit would be lower than expected, sending shares tumbling as higher maintenance costs compounded a tough airline market. Flybe said it would review its maintenance strategy with the aim of improving aircraft performance and costs. It would attempt to enhance the reliability of the Bombardier ( BBDb.TO ) Q400 turboprop in particular. Shares fell as much as 18 percent after a warning which comes against a backdrop of intense competition in the sector that has kept prices low and put several larger companies out of business. Flybe said it now expected a first-half adjusted profit before tax in the range of 5-10 million pounds ($6.6-$13.2 million), down from 15.9 million pounds in the first half of its 2016-17 year. <20>While half-year profits are lower than expected, I am confident that we are still on a clear sustainable path to profitability in line with our stated plan,<2C> CEO Christine Ourmieres-Widener said in a statement. <20>The increased maintenance costs are disappointing, but we are already addressing these in the second half and remain focused on improving our cost base and reliability performance.<2E> This year has been a tough one for the airline sector, with Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ), Alitalia [CAITLA.UL] and Monarch [MONA.UL] all going into administration. They struggled to stay competitive as rivals laid on more seats to vie for market share, hitting fares. Analysts at house broker Liberum said that the announcement was a <20>clear disappointment<6E> in the short term, and that overcapacity in the industry could also weigh on the stock. <20>Until there is greater clarity on maintenance costs, along with further evidence of capacity cuts supporting better unit revenue trends, we believe the shares will struggle to perform,<2C> the analysts at Liberum said in a note. Flybe said it would provide further information in its interim results on November 9. ($1 = 0.7586 pounds) Reporting by Alistair Smout and James Davey; editing by Kate Holton/Keith Weir 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-flybe-outlook/flybe-warns-on-first-half-profit-blames-higher-maintenance-costs-idUKKBN1CN0K7'|'2017-10-18T09:19:00.000+03:00'
'4eda94c23c654bef0daf33368b9ceadc63fd76b4'|'Sonangol''s dos Santos says new Angola president backs oil firm''s reforms'|'October 18, 2017 / 6:29 PM / Updated 30 minutes ago Sonangol''s dos Santos says new Angola president backs oil firm''s reforms Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Isabel dos Santos, Chairwoman of Sonangol, speaks during a Reuters Newsmaker event in London, Britain, October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville LONDON (Reuters) - Angola<6C>s new President Jo<4A>o Louren<65>o backs the reform plans of oil company Sonangol, the state firm<72>s powerful chief Isabel dos Santos said on Wednesday. <20>Our relations are full alignment,<2C> dos Santos said in a Reuters newsmaker interview, adding Lourenco was <20>fully aware<72> of her plans for Sonangol<6F>s transformation. <20>We are engaged with the government and the government<6E>s mission to overcome the difficulties in the Angolan economy.<2E> Dos Santos, appointed to her role in 2016, is 18 months into a five-year turnaround plan for Sonangol, which was hit hard by the slump in oil prices that began in 2014. Last month, Louren<65>o was sworn in as Angola<6C>s first new president in 38 years. Reporting by Libby George; Writing by Karin Strohecker; Editing by Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-angola-oil-sonangol/sonangols-dos-santos-says-new-angola-president-backs-oil-firms-reforms-idUKKBN1CN2Q5'|'2017-10-18T22:56:00.000+03:00'
'822518e60c9ded00de316df4e0b082c0175f7eb8'|'UK lawmakers say Amazon, eBay not doing enough to combat VAT fraud'|'October 17, 2017 / 11:09 PM / in 20 minutes UK lawmakers say Amazon, eBay not doing enough to combat VAT fraud Tom Bergin 3 Min Read The logo of the web service Amazon is pictured in this June 8, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/Illustration LONDON (Reuters) - A UK parliamentary report has criticised Amazon and eBay for not doing enough to prevent tax fraud on their online market places and recommended the government hold the online giants accountable for tax lost to evaders. In April the National Audit Office said Britain was losing up to 1 billion pounds a year in value-added-tax (VAT) because of fraud or error by frequently China-based sellers on eBay and Amazon. The Public Accounts Committee published the results of an investigation into the problem on Wednesday which said the companies had been slow to take even basic actions to tackle fraud, such as requesting VAT registration numbers. The investigation also said the companies had resisted sharing data with Her Majesty<74>s Revenue & Customs (HMRC), the UK tax authority. <20>These people are profiting from VAT fraud, because they still take their commission,<2C> said member of parliament Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the committee. The companies say they take the problem seriously. A spokeswoman for eBay said it wants a fair marketplace for all its buyers and sellers. An Amazon spokesman said the company was reviewing the committee<65>s recommendations. FILE PHOTO: An eBay sign is seen at an office building in San Jose, California, U.S. on May 28, 2014. REUTERS/Beck Diefenbach/File Photo Hillier said the fraud was costing jobs at UK online retailers who were being undercut by rivals not charging VAT. HMRC, which estimates total VAT fraud involving all online marketplaces of up to 1.5 billion pounds, had also not pursued the problem with vigour and had failed to use all the powers at its disposal, the report said. The government last year introduced measures to cut down on online VAT fraud, including the potential for marketplaces to be held liable for unpaid VAT where they had ignored calls to remove illegal sellers. However, the committee said these measures were not strong enough and indeed potentially totally ineffective. The committee said VAT was regularly being evaded on goods stored in UK-based <20>fulfilment centres<65> or warehouses and dispatched by UK-based companies including Amazon<6F>s UK arm. In the past the frauds often involved goods dispatches direct from places such as China. Reporting by Tom Bergin, editing by David Evans 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ebayamazon-com-tax/uk-lawmakers-say-amazon-ebay-not-doing-enough-to-combat-vat-fraud-idUKKBN1CM3AJ'|'2017-10-18T02:08:00.000+03:00'
'c3d321aea995218505b6eb5039b7504eb73e37cc'|'Nasdaq, Singapore Exchange sign pact for collaborative listings'|'Oct 18 (Reuters) - Singapore Exchange Ltd and Nasdaq Inc announced a pact on Wednesday that will allow firms to tap the capital markets possibly simultaneously under the two exchange operators<72> namesake exchanges.The tie-up would help fast-growing Asian companies to list on the SGX and subsequently pursue a Nasdaq listing as they expand globally, SGX Chief Executive Loh Boon Chye said in a statement.SGX and U.S.-based Nasdaq - which are also in a long-term market technology partnership - are gauging interest among companies that could seek a concurrent or sequential listing on both the SGX and the Nasdaq, the exchange operators said. (Reporting by Susan Mathew in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/sgx-nasdaq-partnership/nasdaq-singapore-exchange-sign-pact-for-collaborative-listings-idINL4N1MT4FF'|'2017-10-18T13:30:00.000+03:00'
'db8d99739076feb21cadd42f494a42f885b735be'|'Iraq wants to bring back BP after regaining control of Kirkuk oil'|'October 18, 2017 / 11:32 AM / in 44 minutes Iraq wants to bring back BP after regaining control of Kirkuk oil Maher Chmaytelli , Dmitry Zhdannikov , Ron Bousso 3 Min Read The logo of BP is seen at a petrol station in Kloten, Switzerland October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann BAGHDAD/LONDON (Reuters) - Iraq said on Wednesday it wanted to bring back BP ( BP.L ) to help develop Kirkuk oilfields, which Baghdad<61>s military took over this week from the Kurdish Pershmerga forces, but the oil major said it was in no rush to return until security improves. Kirkuk became the key area of tensions between Baghdad and Erbil since Iraq<61>s semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan held an independence referendum three weeks ago, triggering an angry response from Baghdad and neighbouring Turkey and Iran. Erbil refused to cancel the results of the vote, despite having its airspace and banking system blocked by Baghdad and Ankara. This week, Kurdistan<61>s Peshmerga forces pulled out from Kirkuk oilfields as Iraqi military advanced on the area, responsible for a half of Kurdistan<61>s oil production or around 300,000 barrels per day. The move could badly hit Kurdistan<61>s ability to generate money to plug budget holes from independent oil sales, which Erbil has been relying on since 2014. Related Coverage On Wednesday, Iraq<61>s oil ministry said minister Jabar al-Luaibi had asked BP <20>to quickly make plans to develop the Kirkuk oilfields<64>. BP said it was in no rush. <20>Circumstances change often ... If stability comes back and it is a different environment then ... we will not rule anything out,<2C> BP<42>s chief executive Bob Dudley told the annual oil and money conference in London. But he said he has not received any invitation yet from Iraq. <20>I read it on Reuters this morning,<2C> he said. Kirkuk is one of the biggest and oldest oilfields in the Middle East, still estimated to contain around 9 billion barrels of recoverable oil, according to BP. BP has provided technical assistance in the past to the Iraqi state-owned North Oil Company to aid the redevelopment of the Kirkuk field. But Dudley said no work has been done since 2015 when Kurdish forces took control of the fields and ramped up operations to export more oil towards the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. <20>We know the field very well, we were part of its discovery many years ago. We were doing technical assistance work for Iraq in the Kirkuk region which we stopped in 2015 because it was a little bit too uncertain for us,<2C> said Dudley. Over the past year and prior to the independence referendum, Erbil built solid ties with Russian state oil major Rosneft, agreeing oil and gas pipeline deals with the firm run by a close ally of President Vladimir Putin. BP has a stake of nearly 20 percent in Rosneft and Dudley said he was very happy with the partnership and future projects. Reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov and Ron Bousso; editing by Jason Neely and David Evans 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-iraq-bp/bp-to-study-iraqi-kirkuk-oilfields-only-when-stability-returns-idUKKBN1CN1K3'|'2017-10-18T15:37:00.000+03:00'
'ad199bc2235c81eda308138d02364b1b9fa6920a'|'Thomas Cook sets up new airline in Spain amid cost drive'|'October 18, 2017 / 11:01 AM / in 11 minutes Thomas Cook sets up new airline in Spain amid cost drive Reuters Staff 3 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Thomas Cook ( TCG.L ) is setting up a new airline in Spain, a move it hopes will lower costs at a time of tough conditions in the European short-haul market. The new airline will be based in Palma de Majorca and plans to start its first flights in early 2018 with at least three Airbus A320 planes, which were previously flying for the group<75>s Belgian airline. The Majorca aircraft, which fly under a Spanish operating licence, will also be used for Thomas Cook<6F>s other airlines, according to seasonal demand, while some staff will be on seasonal contracts. <20>The new airline and base will provide us with the right platform to better manage the seasonal demand in our business, giving us more control at lower cost as we continue to expand the choice of destinations we offer our customers,<2C> Christoph Debus, chief airline officer at Thomas Cook, said in a statement. Holiday companies and airlines like Thomas Cook have the problem of how to use aircraft and crews efficiently during the off-peak season in winter, and typically make a loss during that period. Thomas Cook announced earlier this month it would exchange several aircraft with Canada<64>s Transat AT Inc ( TRZ.TO ). Under the deal, Thomas Cook will provide planes that fly short-haul routes in the summer to the Canadian company during the winter, while it will receive a long-haul plane to take Europeans seeking winter sun to further flung destinations. EasyJet ( EZJ.L ) also has a seasonal base in Palma, with aircraft stationed there between March and October and crew working eight months of the year with four months off. Rival tourism group TUI ( TUIT.L ) is also trying to find ways to bring costs down at its German TUIfly. Thomas Cook Airlines have a combined 94 aircraft, flying 16.7 million passengers a year to holiday destinations, and have revenues of 2.8 billion euros (<28>2.5 billion). Reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Adrian Croft 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-thomas-cook-grp-airlines-spain/thomas-cook-sets-up-new-airline-in-spain-amid-cost-drive-idUKKBN1CN1FL'|'2017-10-18T14:00:00.000+03:00'
'7c58457dca9a3a8a14e62cc529cd515ef18673f6'|'German investor morale buoyed by flush order books'|'BERLIN (Reuters) - Flush order books and solid output figures boosted morale among German investors in October, the ZEW research institute said on Tuesday, suggesting a strong phase of growth in Europe<70>s biggest economy has further to run.The Mannheim-based institute<74>s monthly economic sentiment index rose to 17.6 from 17.0 in September. While that missed analysts<74> expectations, the ZEW said the fact that inflation had risen and was expected to rise further was a positive signal.<2E>(This)... equally points towards a positive economic development in Germany,<2C> said ZEW President Achim Wambach.Rising price pressures also made a change in the European Central Bank<6E>s ultra-loose monetary policy more likely, he said.The ECB is due to decide in October whether to extend its stimulus programme into next year. Sources have told Reuters it was likely to extend the purchases but reduce their size.But its President Mario Draghi cautioned on Friday that the euro zone continued to need substantial monetary stimulus as inflation had not yet risen sufficiently. [nF9N1JV021]Thomas Gitzel, chief economist of VP Bank Group, said the ZEW data suggested that well-filled industrial order books were underpinning ever more broad-based German growth.The economy should expand by more than 2 percent this year, he said. <20>Assuming there is no external shock, the current economic cycle still has time to run.<2E>Last week the Economy Ministry said it expected the German economy to grow by 2 percent, helped by robust consumption, while trade is not expected to contribute to growth.Nonetheless, the latest available data showed shipments abroad -- which have traditionally propelled the German economy -- surging in August and ZEW<45>s Wambach said the conditions for exports had improved due to stronger growth in Europe.Analysts polled by Reuters had expected the sentiment indicator to come in at 20.0. Another gauge, measuring investors<72> assessment of current economic conditions, also undershot expectations, edging down to 87.0 from 87.9. Analysts had expected a reading of 89.0.But Jennifer McKeown of Capital Economics said the ZEW survey was still encouraging in context despite the undershoot.<2E>It is encouraging that a majority of investors still expect conditions to improve despite the stronger likelihood that the ECB will taper its asset purchases next year,<2C> she said.Reporting by Thomas Escritt and Michelle Martin; Editing by Catherine Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/germany-economy-zew/german-investor-morale-buoyed-by-flush-order-books-idINKBN1CM1GX'|'2017-10-17T09:23:00.000+03:00'
'e83e8415588065dc25f105cbc12bd3fb97de3e4e'|'Ford, PSA led European car sales decline in September'|'Reuters TV United States October 17, 2017 / 6:11 AM / Updated 8 hours ago Ford, PSA led European car sales decline in September Reuters Staff 2 Min Read An airplane flies above a Ford logo in Colma, California, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam PARIS (Reuters) - French carmaker PSA Group ( PEUP.PA ) and U.S. competitor Ford ( F.N ) led a 2 percent decline in European car sales last month, according to industry data published on Tuesday. September registrations fell to a combined 1.466 million cars in the European Union and European Free Trade Area (EFTA), the Brussels-based Association of European carmakers said. Combined sales of PSA brands fell more than 5 percent, with Peugeot, DS and Opel/Vauxhall all recording year-on-year declines. Paris-based PSA acquired Opel earlier this year and began reporting registrations for the German brand in August. Ford sales dropped 13 percent to 93,288 cars, while EU market leader Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ) saw its registrations slip 1.1 percent, weighed down by the VW brand<6E>s 3.2 percent drop. Asian carmakers fared better last month, with Toyota<74>s ( 7203.T ) sales up 1.9 percent and Nissan ( 7201.T ) recording a 3.3 percent gain. Hyundai ( 005380.KS ) rose 2.1 percent as affiliate Kia ( 000270.KS ) jumped 6.5 percent. Reporting by Laurence Frost; Editing by Matthias Blamont 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-europe-vehicleregistrations/ford-psa-led-european-car-sales-decline-in-september-idUKKBN1CM0G5'|'2017-10-17T09:04:00.000+03:00'
'73ad6d8d701f6e272d003e08e15a9749483c2e0f'|'Morgan Stanley''s wealth management unit drives quarterly profit'|'Reuters TV United States October 17, 2017 / 11:04 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago Morgan Stanley''s wealth management unit drives quarterly profit Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The corporate logo of financial firm Morgan Stanley is pictured on the company''s world headquarters in New York, New York January 20, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ) posted an 11 percent rise in quarterly profit as strength in wealth management and investment banking businesses more than made up for a slowdown in trading. The bank<6E>s wealth management revenue rose 8.7 percent to $4.22 billion - its highest ever, while investment banking revenue rose 12.7 percent to $1.38 billion. Bond trading revenue, however, fell 20 percent to $1.2 billion, mirroring declines across the sector. Citigroup Inc ( C.N ), JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM.N ) and Bank of America Corp ( BAC.N ) have all reported steep declines in fixed income trading activity due to a slump in volatility. Revenue from equities trading, a business in which Morgan Stanley is typically strong, remained flat at $1.9 billion. <20>Our third quarter results reflected the stability our wealth management, investment banking and investment management businesses bring when our Sales and Trading business faces a subdued environment,<2C> Chief Executive James Gorman said in a statement. Earnings applicable to common shareholders rose to $1.69 billion from $1.52 billion a year ago. Earnings per share rose to 93 cents from 81 cents. Revenue rose 3 percent to $9.20 billion from a year earlier. Analysts had forecast earnings of 81 cents per share and revenue of revenue $9.01 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. It was not immediately clear if the figures were comparable. Margan Stanley<65>s shares were up 1.6 percent in premarket trading. Arch rival Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( GS.N ) is also scheduled to report results on Tuesday. Reporting by Sweta Singh in Bengaluru and Olivia Oran in New York; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-morgan-stanley-results/morgan-stanleys-profit-rises-despite-trading-slump-idUKKBN1CM1FB'|'2017-10-17T14:20:00.000+03:00'
'8a824f5da4bb30362d67e940f1c920428a120368'|'Greece, IMF agree on fast bailout review conclusion - Tsipras says'|'October 17, 2017 / 7:19 AM / in 3 minutes Greece, IMF agree on fast bailout review conclusion: Tsipras says Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (R) addresses lawmakers before a parliamentary vote of a law that allows citizens to declare a gender change on official documents in Athens, Greece October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Costas Baltas ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece and the International Monetary Fund agree that the next bailout review of the country<72>s fiscal and reform progress must be concluded fast, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Monday. European Union and IMF inspectors are expected in Athens next week to start talks on Greece<63>s bailout progress. Disagreements between Athens, the European Union and the Washington-based IMF over the country<72>s fiscal targets and the size of debt relief it needs helped delay the conclusion of a previous bailout review, which dragged on for months hurting economic activity. Athens now wants to speed up, hoping to end bailout supervision when its current program expires in August 2018. <20>We agreed that it is in all parties interest to conclude the third review in time, the soonest possible,<2C> Tsipras said after meeting IMF<4D>s Managing Director Christine Lagarde as part of an official trip to the United States. According to statements released in Greece on Tuesday, Tsipras said he believed that all parties have now overcome differences and hoped the IMF would play <20>a crucial and decisive<76> role in discussions on debt relief, a long standing Greek demand. He was expected to meet U.S. President Donald Trump later on Tuesday. Greece<63>s 86-billion-euro bailout, its third since 2010 when the debt crisis broke out, ends in less than a year. Athens hopes to conclude its third bailout review by December to start talks on the terms of exiting the program. Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-greece-usa-imf/greece-imf-agree-on-fast-bailout-review-conclusion-tsipras-says-idUKKBN1CM0NF'|'2017-10-17T10:17:00.000+03:00'
'3b272548ea3c8701a483fc2fe8c1528351c3ec94'|'Virgin Money reports gross mortgage lending of 6.5 billion in first nine months'|'October 17, 2017 / 6:30 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago Virgin Money reports steady mortgage lending in first nine months Reuters Staff 3 Min Read A man checks his phone as he walks past a branch of Virgin Money in Manchester, Britain September 21, 2017. Picture taken September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble (Reuters) - Virgin Money ( VM.L ) reported gross mortgage lending of 6.5 billion pounds ($8.6 billion) to the end of the third quarter, in line with a year earlier, and said it had seen robust customer demand due to low unemployment and a resilient housing market. The British challenger bank said on Tuesday that credit card balances were 2.89 billion pounds at the end of September, up from 2.44 billion pounds at the end of 2016. The lender said it remains on course to meet a target of 3 billion pounds in card balances by the end of 2017. Shares in Virgin Money were up 1.14 percent at 292.14 pence at 0703 GMT. The bank, which listed on London<6F>s main market in 2014, said it expected its full-year CET1 ratio, a closely watched measure of balance sheet strength, to be around 13.5 percent. Mortgage balances rose to 32.91 billion pounds at the end of September, from 29.74 billion pounds at the end of 2016. Virgin now has around a 3.5 percent share of the British mortgage market, Bank of England data shows, highlighting the difficulties faced by British newcomers such as Virgin Money and Aldermore ( ALD.L ) in challenging the established market grip of Barclays ( BARC.L ), HSBC ( HSBA.L ), Lloyds Banking Group ( LLOY.L ), Santander UK ( SAN.MC ) and Royal Bank of Scotland ( RBS.L ). There are also signs that housing market activity is slowing, with the number of mortgages approved for house purchase falling to 66,580 in August from 68,452 in July, according to Bank of England data. Deposits at the bank increased to 30.03 billion pounds at the end of September, from 28.1 billion pounds at year end, Virgin Money said. Consumer lending in Britain rebounded in August and rose by the largest amount in three months, Bank of England figures showed last month, shortly after Governor Mark Carney said banks had been lending too much. ($1 = 0.7548   Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru, editing by Anjuli Davies and Rachel Armstrong 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-virgin-money-outlook/virgin-money-reports-gross-mortgage-lending-of-6-5-billion-in-first-nine-months-idUKKBN1CM0IC'|'2017-10-17T09:29:00.000+03:00'
'443edd9a8875ffd8a2130f31f4b20b318f83b756'|'New market risks loom after tackling last crisis - global watchdog'|'October 17, 2017 / 4:17 PM / Updated an hour ago New market risks loom after tackling last crisis - global watchdog Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Ashley Alder, Chief Executive Officer of Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, addresses the Pan Asian Regulatory Summit by Thomas Reuters in Hong Kong, China October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip LONDON (Reuters) - Ten years after the start of the financial crisis, regulators face new, unregulated risks they must tackle, a top markets regulator said on Tuesday in a pointer to future rulemaking. Ashley Alder, chair of the International Organization of Securities Commissions or IOSCO, an umbrella body for securities watchdogs from across the world, said reforms since the crisis have made banks and markets safer, but don<6F>t help much against cyber and other <20>operational<61> risks. <20>These technology risks are now the dominant regulatory concern,<2C> Alder told a conference in Paris. There was a proliferation of standards around dealing with cyber risks and differences in regulatory approaches to handling data. The use of a relatively limited number of outside technology firms to carry out core operations for financial services companies was also a concern. <20>They are unregulated,<2C> Alder said. <20>There are a host of new risks that we need to get on top of.<2E> Alder, who also heads Hong Kong<6E>s Securities and Futures Commission watchdog, said there has been talk of a regulatory <20>rollback<63>, triggered in part by U.S. President Donald Trump telling U.S. regulators to scrap rules that stop banks lending. So far, there is no sign of any major U.S. disengagement from global rulemaking, Alder said. <20>I don<6F>t really see it,<2C> Alder said. <20>It<49>s more about adjustments... It<49>s not the end of international cooperation, far from it.<2E> Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Adrian Croft 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-regulation-markets-risks/new-market-risks-loom-after-tackling-last-crisis-global-watchdog-idUKKBN1CM2DT'|'2017-10-17T19:15:00.000+03:00'
'a19c666fec59c7294e253e5d7e6cbda3c8d184c1'|'Uber<65>s European policy chief quits, FT says'|' 51 AM / Updated 3 minutes ago Uber<65>s European policy chief quits, FT says Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A photo illustration shows a London taxi passing as the Uber app logo is displayed on a mobile telephone, as it is held up for a posed photograph in central London, Britain September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Uber<65>s European policy chief Christopher Burghardt has quit to join the electric vehicle charging network company Chargepoint, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, the latest senior figure to depart from the taxi app. Burghardt, the head of policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, departs after less than two years with the group, and will become managing director for Chargepoint in Europe in November, the FT said. Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-uber-burghardt/ubers-european-policy-chief-quits-ft-says-idUKKBN1CM1CR'|'2017-10-17T14:00:00.000+03:00'
'144a577c3205231f0d051b87affacadf533571bd'|'UK should ramp up investment if Brexit hits economy hard - OECD'|'October 17, 2017 / 10:30 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago UK should ramp up investment if Brexit hits economy hard - OECD Andy Bruce 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A view of the London skyline shows the City of London financial district, seen from St Paul''s Cathedral in London, Britain February 25, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo LONDON, (Reuters) - - Britain should ramp up public investment if the economy slows sharply ahead of its divorce with the European Union, the OECD said on Tuesday as it stayed downbeat about the world<6C>s No.5 economy. In a review that focused heavily on Britain<69>s poor productivity performance, the Paris-based Organisation for Co-operation and Development also said the Bank of England should keep monetary policy loose ahead of Brexit. Britain<69>s economy held up better than most forecasters thought immediately after the shock Brexit vote in June 2016, but it has slowed in 2017 as rising inflation has pinched the spending power of households. The OECD repeated its forecast from September that Britain<69>s economy looks likely expand by only 1.0 percent next year, slowing from growth of around 1.6 percent this year. The OECD assumed a <20>least favourable<6C> Brexit outcome in which Britain leaves the EU in 2019 without a trade deal or a smooth transition, reverting to World Trade Organization rules instead. Most other forecasters assume Britain will strike a deal with the EU to avert a disruptive Brexit. Some economists have said the risk of no deal has increased in recent weeks, citing a divided British government and the EU<45>s strict adherence to its negotiating guidelines. The OECD said a transition agreement - something Britain wants to talk about now with the EU - would limit the damage from Brexit. <20>(Brexit) has raised uncertainty and dented business investment, compounding the productivity challenge,<2C> it said. Last week Britain<69>s budget watchdog said it expects to cut <20>significantly<6C> its productivity growth forecasts for the next five years, potentially slowing overall economic growth, hurting the government<6E>s finances and the outlook for living standards. The OECD said if the economy slows sharply, the government should find investments that would boost productivity and be started quickly. It noted a fall in net migration to Britain since last year<61>s Brexit vote. If that trend intensified, it could reduce the labour force and productivity growth, given that migrants tend to possess higher skills, it said. <20>Rapidly concluding negotiations to guarantee the rights of EU citizens is a priority to sustain labour supply and ensure further progress in living standards,<2C> the OECD report said. If Brexit were reversed, whether through a change in government or a new referendum, it would result in a <20>significant<6E> boost to economic growth, the OECD said. Responding to the OECD report, Britain<69>s finance ministry said increasing productivity was already a priority, citing its 23 billion-pound fund for infrastructure, research and development and housing. Chancellor Philip Hammond does not have much leeway to spend more, if he wants to stick to his plan to eliminate Britain<69>s budget deficit by the mid-2020s. But he has come under growing pressure from within his ruling Conservative Party to do more to counter the threat from the left-wing Labour Party. MAJOR DEBT RISK? While most economists expect the Bank of England to raise interest rates in November, the OECD said it should <20>look through<67> the boost to inflation from the weak pound. <20>Monetary policy should remain supportive amidst the ongoing slowdown in the economy as the negative effects of Brexit continue to materialise,<2C> the OECD said. The OECD described high rates of consumer lending growth, coupled with stagnant household incomes, as a <20>major financial stability risk<73> - a starker assessment than the BoE<6F>s. The Bank has said there is no overall debt bubble in Britain but it has expressed concern about consumer debt, which had been growing at about 10 percent a 
'4978f6143e111d1322fd5e7322b08a09ab090a70'|'Sainsbury''s to cut 2,000 jobs across UK'|'Sainsbury<72>s is axing 2,000 store and back office roles as the supermarket chain looks to slash costs by <20>500m amid an intensifying price war with Aldi and Lidl.The retailer is restructuring its HR departments, getting rid of 1,400 store-based clerks and another 600 staff based in the back offices that serve the chain as well as Argos and Sainsbury<72>s bank.<2E>The UK grocery market is changing at a rapid pace and it<69>s crucial that we transform the way we operate to meet future challenges and continue to provide customers with best in class service,<2C> said a Sainsbury<72>s spokesman.All the big supermarket chains have announced recent job cuts as they seek to compete with the fast-growing German discounters Aldi and Lidl. Tesco is shedding 2,300 staff as part of a cost-cutting programme that is hitting head office workers as well as staff based at its Cardiff call centre which will close next year . Thousands of Asda workers are also facing redundancy or a dramatic cut in their working hours as Britain<69>s third-largest supermarket chain looks to cut costs.Sainsbury<72>s, which employs about 119,000 full-time staff, is moving towards a centralised HR model as it overhauls to save hundreds of millions of pounds. The company will reach the end of a three-year plan to save <20>500m in March 2018 but Mike Coupe, the chief executive, has said it will then embark on a new programme designed to save the same amount again.Sainsbury<72>s has been working with McKinsey, the management consultancy, on the headcount reduction plan. The changes to HR mean tasks like processing payroll will no longer be done in store. The 600 head office staff affected by the other change, first reported by the Times, are based in Manchester, Coventry, Edinburgh and London.<2E>Following a comprehensive review, we are proposing some updates to our HR structures and systems, as well as changes to a number of other support roles,<2C> added Sainsbury<72>s. <20>This has been a difficult decision and we appreciate that this will be a tough time for those colleagues affected by the changes.<2E>In March, Sainsbury<72>s said it was cutting 400 jobs in store while another 4,000 workers would face changes to their working hours as it looked to run its supermarkets more cheaply. The changes included scrapping the night shift in 140 supermarkets.Under the leadership of Coupe, Sainsbury<72>s has sought to broaden its appeal with the <20>1.4bn purchase of Argos . The deal reduced Sainsbury<72>s reliance on the highly competitive grocery market and also gave it access to Argos<6F>s fast delivery network. The big four supermarkets <20>Tesco, Sainsbury<72>s, Asda and Morrisons <20> are losing market share to Aldi and Lidl, which added <20>390m to their sales over the past three months, according to Kantar Worldpanel. That figure was half of thegrocery market<65>s overall growth in the 12 weeks ending 8 October. Kantar Worldpanel data showed Aldi and Lidl with a combined market share of 12%. However, Moody<64>s, the debt rating agency, predicts this proportion could rise to 15% over the next three years <20> a level that would force rival bosses to rethink their business models again.<2E>We believe most of the ongoing revenue gains by the discounters will come at the expense of the <20>big four<75>,<2C> said David Beadle at Moody<64>s. <20>The only uncertainties are the extent to which inflation and population growth soften the blow of this hit to revenue, and how the loss of market share will be spread out.<2E>The price war with the discounters comes at a time when retailers are struggling to pass on rising costs to hard up shoppers. On Tuesday, official data showed inflation had edged up to 3% <20> its highest level since 2012 .<2E>Retailers have done a great job of cushioning shoppers from the rising food chain costs they<65>re experiencing, exacerbated by the weakening pound, but this can<61>t last for ever,<2C> said Nielsen analyst Mike Watkins.Topics J Sainsbury Job losses Retail industry Supermarkets news'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theg
'0f18172c4daa1d3b1e3d36828fef6b203eb4b066'|'Solid company results help European shares stay near highs'|' 30 AM / in 26 minutes Solid company results help European shares stay near highs Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote MILAN (Reuters) - European shares inched higher in early deals on Tuesday, supported by solid earning updates including from food group Danone ( DANO.PA ) and education group Pearson ( PSON.L ). Credit Suisse ( CSGN.S ) was also in the spotlight with its shares rising 1.6 percent on reports that activist investor RBR Capital has launched a campaign to break up the Swiss investment bank after building up a small stake in it. By 0707 GMT, the pan-European STOXX 600 index was up 0.1 percent, staying close to the four month highs hit in the previous session. UK''s FTSE .FTSE however fell 0.1 percent before inflation data and a testimony by BOE Governor Mark Carney later in the day, while Spain''s IBEX .IBEX also slipped as worries over the crisis in Catalonia persisted. Danone rose 2.2 percent after the world<6C>s largest yoghurt maker posted a better-than-expected 4.7 percent rise in underlying third-quarter sales, while Person soared 7.1 percent after predicting that full-year operating profit in the top half of its forecast range. According to the latest Lipper report, STOXX 600 third-quarter earnings are expected to increase 5.3 percent from a year earlier. Reporting by Danilo Masoni, <20>diting by Julien Ponthus 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-stocks/solid-company-results-help-european-shares-stay-near-highs-idUKKBN1CM0OV'|'2017-10-17T10:29:00.000+03:00'
'78a16de296625eaae6825fcf61225d4be83e5e24'|'Markets steady as China congress starts and monetary policy gets back in focus'|'The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote MILAN (Reuters) - World stocks stayed near all-time peaks and the dollar extended a winning streak on Wednesday as the focus on upcoming changes to monetary policies in the U.S. and the euro zone grew.Talk over the next Federal Reserve Chairman lifted the dollar for a fifth straight day as the MSCI<43>s 47-country <20>All-World<6C> index .MIWD PUS inched up 0.1 percent by 1242 GMT, staying at striking distance from the record high hit on Monday.Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was set to open above 23,000 for the first time following a series of upbeat earnings reports from marquee companies.The start of China<6E>s Communist Party conference, the extension of talks over the North American Free Trade Agreement and uncertainty over the Catalonia crisis in Spain also gave investors something to chew on without reducing risky appetite.<2E>We need much more clarity on monetary policy: we have the ECB coming up next and we have some issues with the Fed. That<61>s where the market focus is going to be,<2C> Peter Rosenstreich, Head of Market Strategy at SwissQuote: Bank in Geneva said.In Europe, stocks edged up to near four month highs with a raft of company results in focus while euro zone bond yields rose from five-week lows as investors geared up for a key European Central Bank policy meeting next week. [.EU][GVD/EUR]Rosenstreich said appetite for risky assets remained intact as the solid growth outlook and low inflation combined in reinforcing expectations that the pace of central bank normalization will be gradual.<2E>People still see this as a low rate environment and risk appetite continues to drive the market pricing,<2C> he said.Reuters reported last week that policymakers are broadly in agreement about extending asset purchases at a lower volume, with views converging on a nine-month extension.Back in Asia, the MSCI<43>s index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS was flat, near its late 2007 peak after China President Xi Jinping kicked off the twice-a-decade party congress with a wide-ranging speech.Jinping said the market would be allowed to play a decisive role in allocating resources but also said the role of the state in the economy had to be strengthened.Investors are keen for clear direction on economic and financial market reform over the next five years, but history suggests these events can be light on detail.China''s blue-chip CSI300 index < .CSI300> added 0.8 percent in reaction, while Shanghai stocks .SSEC rose 0.3 percent.<2E>Market participants are paying much more attention to the party congress this time, as they are watching if any surprise reforms will emerge amid concerns over economic growth,<2C> said Yan Kaiwen, an analyst with China Fortune Securities.Japan''s Nikkei .N225 rose for a 12th consecutive day, nudging up 0.1 percent thanks to hopes that this weekend''s election will produce political stability and continuation of loose monetary policy.An opinion poll by Kyodo showed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe<62>s coalition was on track for a roughly two-thirds majority in Sunday<61>s general election there.DOLLAR ON WINNING STREAK In currencies, the dollar edged up for a fifth consecutive day as higher U.S. Treasury yields triggered a squeeze on investors who have been broadly bearish on the greenback in recent weeks.Speculation that President Donald Trump could chose a more hawkish leader to replace Fed Chair Janet Yellen and slow progress of U.S. tax helped the greenback hit a one-week high in the previous session.The dollar index .DXY was up 0.2 percent to 93.68, extending a rebound from Friday<61>s 2 1/2-week low of 92.749. It rose as high as 93.729 on Tuesday.Interest rates futures <0#FF:> imply around a 90 percent probability of a Fed hike in December FEDWATCH.The euro was down 0.06 percent at $1.1760 EUR= , still some way above the recent low and 
'7d708ad7902021b3552b56219f3595ae06f04271'|'Lone Star takes charge of Portugal''s state-rescued Novo Banco'|'LISBON (Reuters) - U.S. private equity firm Lone Star signed on Wednesday the definitive agreement with Portugal<61>s bank resolution fund, giving it a 75 percent stake in state-rescued lender Novo Banco and putting an end to a near three-year sale process.Under the deal, Lone Star will inject a total of 1 billion euros ($1.18 billion) into the bank, which was formed from the ashes of Banco Espirito Santo<74>s collapse in 2014 after a 4.9 billion euro rescue, mostly in public funds.Earlier this month, Novo Banco said it had secured bondholders<72> approval for a discounted debt buyback guaranteeing savings on interest worth more than 500 million euros, a key condition for completing the sale first agreed in March.The country<72>s bank resolution fund, which is funded by all banks operating in Portugal, retains a 25 percent stake in Novo Banco.Reporting By Sergio Goncalves, writing by Andrei Khalip, editing by Axel Bugge'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-portugal-novobanco-lone-star/lone-star-takes-charge-of-portugals-state-rescued-novo-banco-idUSKBN1CN1HG'|'2017-10-18T19:12:00.000+03:00'
'e45b51410e950156474ab1d1adf41f4034eafc03'|'Zimbabwe bans fruit, vegetable imports as forex crunch deepens'|'October 17, 2017 / 7:57 AM / Updated 12 minutes ago Zimbabwe bans fruit, vegetable imports as forex crunch deepens Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A till operator collects Zimbabwean bond notes from a shopper at a supermarket in the capital Harare, November 28, 2016. Picture taken November 28, 2016. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo/File Photo HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe has banned imports of fruit and vegetables with immediate effect to preserve scarce foreign exchange, the agriculture minister said on Tuesday. The country dumped its currency for the U.S. dollar in 2009 because it was wrecked by hyperinflation but it is now running short of dollars as well as quasi-currency <20>bond note<74> introduced last year to ease cash shortages. Last year Zimbabwe spent more than $80 million on fruit and vegetables, according to national statistics agency Zimstat. The produce included tomatoes, onions, carrots, grapes, apples and oranges. Agriculture Minister Joseph Made told the Herald newspaper he had been directed by President Robert Mugabe to stop the importation of fruit and vegetables because <20>they waste much needed foreign currency.<2E> <20>This means that the importation of fruit and vegetables will be stopped immediately. We are finalising on the exact list of foreign-produced fruits that are occupying shelves in shops,<2C> Made said. Made declined to comment further when contacted by Reuters. Zimbabwe relies heavily on cheaper imports from neighbouring South Africa, its biggest trading partner, and has over the years struggled to produce enough to meet domestic demand. In June, the government also banned maize imports, saying the country produced enough to satisfy domestic demand. Made said the ban would allow local farmers to increase output while saving the country foreign currency. A majority of banks have stopped giving out cash and when they do, it is in the form of bond coins. Most Zimbabweans are keeping U.S. dollars at home while those who want to travel or pay for imports buy currency on the black market. The same thing happened during the period of hyperinflation a decade ago. Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-zimbabwe-fruit/zimbabwe-bans-fruit-vegetable-imports-as-forex-crunch-deepens-idUKKBN1CM0RI'|'2017-10-17T10:56:00.000+03:00'
'e7e6e6aadbea57e1da3387cbb60f106493897a51'|'Online micro-lender Qudian'' IPO prices at $24 per ADS - sources'|'October 17, 2017 / 11:25 PM / in 19 minutes Qudian raises $900 mln in biggest U.S. listing by a Chinese fintech firm Nikhil Subba , Diptendu Lahiri 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Chinese online micro-credit provider Qudian Inc ( QD.N ) said it raised about $900 million in an IPO that priced above expectations, underscoring robust U.S. investor demand for fast-growing Chinese companies. The offering from Qudian represents the biggest-ever U.S. listing by a Chinese financial technology firm. It is also the most high-profile company to take part in a resurgence of U.S. listings by Asian firms this year. Qudian, which is backed by Alibaba Group ( BABA.N ) affiliate Ant Financial and became profitable last year, operates a website that allows college students and young white-collar workers to buy laptops, smartphones and other consumer electronics in monthly installments. Its American depositary shares were priced at $24 each, above the marketed range of $19-$22, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. Qudian<61>s shares will make their market debut on the New York Stock Exchange later on Wednesday. At the IPO price, Qudian would have a market value of about $7.9 billion. Qudian sold 35.63 million new shares, while shareholders including Kunlun Group ( 300418.SZ ) and board directors Li Du and Yi Cao sold 1.88 million existing shares. The company said it plans to use the proceeds for marketing campaigns to sign up more borrowers, as well as on potential strategic acquisitions and general corporate purposes. Founded over three years ago, the company provided $5.6 billion of credit in the first half of 2017 to 7 million active borrowers, according to its IPO prospectus. Qudian<61>s net income jumped almost eight times to 973.7 million yuan ($144 million) in the six months ended June 30, while revenue rose near five-fold to 1.83 billion yuan. It posted losses of 233.2 million yuan in 2015 and 40.8 million when it was launched in 2014. U.S. exchanges are set to record their busiest year for IPOs from Asian firms since 2010 and may sustain the pace in 2018, as startups from Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam join a flurry of Chinese firms that have already listed in the country. Five companies, including Singaporean online games maker Sea Ltd, China<6E>s oldest peer-to-peer (P2P) lender Ppdai Group and search company Sogou Inc, are currently pitching their plans for initial public offerings to investors, adding to the 10 Chinese firms that have listed so far this year in the United States. Citigroup, China International Capital Corp Ltd, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and UBS worked as joint bookrunners on the Qudian IPO. Reporting by Roopal Verma, Nikhil Subba and Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru and Elzio Barreto in Hong Kong; Writing by Elzio Barreto; Editing by Ankur Banerjee and Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-qudian-ipo-pricing/online-micro-lender-qudian-ipo-prices-at-24-per-ads-sources-idUSKBN1CM3BD'|'2017-10-18T02:21:00.000+03:00'
'b2b003f2189351a8967474dc3140ed39a523f309'|'Cricket: Brilliant De Villiers steers South Africa to series win'|'PAARL, South Africa (Reuters) - A swashbuckling century from AB de Villiers secured a 104-run victory for South Africa over Bangladesh and sealed the three-match series in the second One-Day International at Boland Park on Wednesday.De Villiers smashed his highest ODI score of 176 from 104 balls as South Africa posted 353 for six in their 50 overs having been asked to bat, before restricting the visitors to 249 all out in 47.5 overs in their reply.De Villiers was involved in a third wicket partnership of 136 with Hashim Amla (85 from 92 balls) and 117 for the fourth with JP Duminy (30 from 30 balls) as he thumped 15 fours and seven sixes, making batting look easy on a slow wicket.He was eventually caught at deep midwicket by Sabbir Rahman off the bowling of Rubel Hossain having looked on course for a double ton.Bangladesh made a good start to their reply as Imrul Kayes (68 from 77 balls) and Mushfiqur Rahim (60 from 70 balls) tried to keep up with the rate, but were strangled by career best figures from seamer Andile Phehlukwayo (four for 40) and the wily spin of Imran Tahir (three for 50).The final match of the series will be played in East London on Sunday.Reporting By Nick Said'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/cricket-odi-zaf-bgd/cricket-brilliant-de-villiers-steers-south-africa-to-series-win-idINKBN1CN2HT'|'2017-10-18T19:49:00.000+03:00'
'917208b6f9c3b8413ee0a8c4f9ffa7b3d219be70'|'Rio Tinto third-quarter iron ore shipments climb on rail haulage boost'|'October 16, 2017 / 9:42 PM / in 9 hours Rio Tinto iron ore shipments climb on rail upgrade, on track for annual target James Regan 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The Rio Tinto mining company''s logo is photographed at their annual general meeting in Sydney, Australia, May 4, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Reed (Reuters) - Global miner Rio Tinto on Tuesday said it had lifted its third quarter iron ore shipments by 6 percent after modernizing its haulage railway in Australia<69>s outback, but cut its production target for copper due to delays at a major mine in Chile. Rio Tinto ( RIO.AX )( RIO.L ), which competes with Vale SA ( VALE5.SA ) and BHP Billiton Ltd ( BHP.AX ) in the seaborne-traded iron ore market, maintained its target to ship 330 million tonnes of the steelmaking ingredient in 2017. The strong quarter comes after a sluggish first half when bad weather and rail track maintenance crimped iron ore production. <20>The business performed very well in the September quarter, with a strong quarterly production performance and a wave of productivity improvements embedded through our operations,<2C> Rio Tinto Chief Executive Jean-Sebastien Jacques said in a statement. Iron ore shipments totaled 85.8 million tonnes in the third quarter versus 80.9 million in the same period a year ago, Rio Tinto said. UBS had forecast third-quarter shipments of 84.6 million tonnes. The company runs about 200 locomotives on more than 1,700 km of track, hauling ore from 16 mines to four port terminals. It has been gradually pushing towards using completely driverless iron ore trains in 2018, speeding up journeys and eliminating driver fatigue. Iron ore has traded between $53 and $95 a tonne this year and currently stands at around $63 (47.49 pounds). .IO62-CNO=MB Australia<69>s Department of Industry, Innovation and Science expects prices to backtrack in the fourth quarter for a 2017 average at $64 a tonne. It sees a further retreat next year to $50 a tonne as Chinese demand for imported ore eases. COPPER CUT In other minerals, Rio Tinto cut its mined copper production guidance for 2017 to 460,000-480,000 tonnes from the 500,000-550,000 tonnes announced earlier, hit by the delayed ramp-up of extension work at its 30 percent-owned Escondida mine in Chile. That reduction in the mid-point of copper guidance of 55,000 tonnes represents $390 million in lost revenue, based on current copper prices above $7,000 a tonne CMCU3. Rio Tinto is forecast to generate overall revenue of around $39.3 billion in 2017, a 15-percent increase over 2016, according to Thomson Reuters forecast data. <20>Despite the softer copper headlines and lower guidance there is a positive story here: Escondida is coming back, albeit a tad slower than hoped,<2C> said Peter O<>Connor, an analyst for Shaw and Partners in Sydney. The delays are also expected to reduce copper production targets for BHP, which releases quarterly operations data on Wednesday. BHP holds a 57.5-percent stake in the Escondida mine. Rio Tinto stuck to a 2017 target to produce 3.5 million-3.7 million tonnes of aluminium. Reporting by James Regan; Additional reporting by Shashwat Pradhan in Bengaluru; Editing G Crosse, Jonathan Oatis and Joseph Radford 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-rio-tinto-output/rio-tinto-q3-iron-ore-shipments-climb-6-percent-on-lift-in-rail-haulage-idUKKBN1CL300'|'2017-10-17T01:21:00.000+03:00'
'51479e3e25c4a86ab39dc509285903d36c1b5426'|'Greece plans billion euro handout for poor'|'October 19, 2017 / 3:02 PM / in 4 minutes Greece plans billion euro handout for poor Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Greek national flag waves over people visiting the Acropolis hill in Athens, Greece, May 16, 2017. REUTERS/Costas Baltas/File Photo ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece plans to offer handouts worth 1 billion euros (<28>897.4 million) to poor Greeks who have suffered during the seven-year debt crisis after beating its budget targets this year, the government said on Thursday. Greece expects to return to nearly 2 percent growth this year and achieve a primary surplus - which excludes debt servicing costs - of 2.2 percent of gross domestic product, outpeforming the 1.75 percent bailout target. <20>The surplus outperformance which will be distributed to social groups that have suffered the biggest pressure during the financial crisis, will be close to 1 billion euros,<2C> government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos told reporters. It is not yet clear who would be eligible for what the leftist-led government calls a <20>social dividend<6E>. Hundreds of thousands of Greeks have lost their jobs during a six-year recession that cut more than a quarter of the country<72>s gross domestic product. With unemployment 21.3 percent and youth unemployment at 42.8 percent many households rely on the income of grandparents - although they have lost more than a third of the value of their pensions since 2010, when Athens signed up to its first international bailout. The government will make final decisions in late November, once it gets full-year budget data, Tzanakopoulos said. Greece<63>s fiscal performance this year and its 2018 budget is expected to be discussed with representatives from its European Union lenders and the International Monetary Fund next week when a crucial review of its bailout progress starts. Tzanakopoulos reiterated that Athens aims to wrap up the review as soon as possible, ruling out new austerity measures. Greece exceeded its goal for a primary budget surplus in 2015 and 2016. Last December, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras unexpectedly announced a one-off Christmas bonus to pensioners, angering foreign creditors. Reporting by Renee Maltezou; Editing by Alison Williams 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-greece-handouts/greece-plans-billion-euro-handout-for-poor-idUKKBN1CO27M'|'2017-10-19T18:01:00.000+03:00'
'2f80eeb8d0a700986a0eeb2dff598bbb425ed6d3'|'Alumina shortages to increase as Chinese crackdown bites'|'October 19, 2017 / 2:33 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago Alumina shortages to increase as Chinese crackdown bites Eric Onstad 4 Min Read Workers lay alumina particles inside an air treatment facility at an oxygen production plant in Ma''anshan, Anhui province, China July 19, 2017. China Daily via REUTERS LONDON (Reuters) - Shortages of alumina, the raw material for producing aluminium, may become more severe in the coming months as an environmental crackdown in China is due to shut capacity, forcing smelters to scramble for supplies and pushing up prices. Alumina prices have already shot up 73 percent since May and could see further gains, but they are likely to ease early next year as Chinese refineries resume output again following the winter shutdowns at the same time new operations elsewhere ramp up. <20>There<72>s this perfect storm in alumina. There<72>s been soaring sentiment ahead of the winter cuts,<2C> said Anthony Everiss, senior consultant at CRU. China has imposed its most stringent ever measures on heavy industry to cut pollution during the peak winter season, including on aluminium and alumina plants. In the run-up to the winter cuts, alumina buyers were mainly focused on the cuts at aluminium smelters, rather than on alumina refineries and on mines that produce bauxite, said Ami Shivkar, senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie. Some smelters reckoned that with lower aluminium production, there would be a surplus of alumina, depressing prices, so they held off buying, she said. But bauxite mines were unexpectedly swept into the shutdowns, creating a domino effect on the supply chain. <20>The smelters were running down their inventory, but they were completely blindsided by the fact that there were inspections of the bauxite mines,<2C> Shivkar said. GRAPHIC - Alumina price surges: reut.rs/2xS4UZD ADDITIONAL CLOSURES? As refineries ran short of bauxite Henan province started cutting alumina production two months ahead of schedule. Reflecting the shortages, Chinese bauxite imports surged 46 percent in August while those of alumina soared 123 percent. The alumina price, based on Metal Bulletin<69>s fob Australia index AL-NFINAUF-MB, has soared 53 percent to $469.74 a tonne over the last two months to the highest level since the index was launched in August 2010. <20>I think there is still some rally left,<2C> Shivkar said. <20>All the Chinese refineries don<6F>t have the amount of bauxite they want and smelters are still stockpiling.<2E> CRU estimates that the winter shutdowns will cut Chinese alumina output by 1.2 million tonnes this year while JPMorgan pegs it at 1.5 million. <20>But there<72>s still risk of additional closures. Some of the cities in Shanxi province weren<65>t on the list and Shanxi has a lot of alumina refineries,<2C> Everiss said. Unconfirmed reports have said that cuts will be imposed on the cities of Jinzhong and Luliang, the latter which has 12 million tonnes of alumina capacity, he added. Environmental departments in those cities could not be reached for comment on Thursday. While alumina prices are expected to hold at elevated levels until the spring, after the winter cuts are lifted in mid-March, they are due to decline, analysts said. Alumina refineries can restart more quickly than aluminium smelters, while new alumina plants outside of China are due to further increase global supply. Next year Emirates Global Aluminium is due to launch an alumina refinery with 2 million tonnes annual capacity while PT Well Harvest Winning Alumina is expected to double capacity at its Indonesian refinery to 2 million tonnes. The latter is a joint venture between Indonesian conglomerate Harita Group and China<6E>s Hongqiao Group ( 1378.HK ). <20>Given that this is the only commodity where there is significant ex-China supply preparing to enter the market, we find the bullishness in prices lately short-sighted and retain our downside call for alumina,<2C> Macquarie said in a note dated Oct. 10. Additional reporting by Tom Daly in Beijing; Editing by Greg Mahlich and
'9ccc964cccff6fdac226f3069c985a3924221c65'|'Newest outpost for U.S. crude exports: India'|'  4 minutes Newest outpost for U.S. crude exports: India Julia Simon , Nidhi Verma 4 Min Read NEW YORK/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India is set to emerge as a key market for American crude exports in coming months, as refineries in that country are ramping up <20>test<73> purchases of U.S. grades to diversify their imports. U.S. exports recently set a weekly record with nearly 2 million barrels of crude a day sent overseas. But shipments to India have been rare, with just a few deliveries since the U.S. lifted its ban on crude exports in late 2015. Indian refineries are starting to increase purchases as the country seeks to secure more supply from outside the Middle East. Refiners are testing both U.S. sweet and sour crudes in their facilities, a common practice when importing crude from new sources. <20>A lot of these (Indian refiners) want to see what it<69>s like if they run it,<2C> said one Houston-based oil broker. <20>They want to get a taste of U.S. crude.<2E> Those refiners are taking advantage of a wide spread between U.S. oil and other global benchmarks, which has created an attractive discount on American crude grades. Foreign refiners, including those in India, have bid up those physical grades against the U.S. crude benchmark to multi-year highs, traders and brokers said. That includes onshore grades from the Permian Basin in West Texas WTC-WTM and the Eagle Ford further east, as well as offshore U.S. Gulf grades including Mars Sour WTC-MRS and Southern Green Canyon WTC-SGC. In June, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Donald Trump met and discussed energy exports to India. Since then the Modi administration has been encouraging more crude imports by waiving some shipping requirements. Indian refiners Indian Oil Corp IOC.N, Bharat Petroleum Corp ( BPCL.NS ) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited were given a special permission by the shipping ministry to import oil from the United States until March. <20>They<65>ve been stepping up to be a sizeable importer; they<65>re looking to diversify away from the Middle East,<2C> said John Kilduff, partner at energy hedge fund Again Capital LLC in New York. The executive of India<69>s state-owned Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd ( HPCL.NS ) said in August the company was assessing whether U.S. crude could replace Nigerian barrels; it made its first buy of U.S. oil in September. One supertanker carrying nearly 2 million barrels discharged in India earlier this month, according to Eikon shipping data, while two other vessels carrying a combined 3 million barrels are set to arrive in November. Prior to this, U.S. crude rarely went to India, with only one month this year - February - showing deliveries, according to U.S. EIA data through July. In August, IOC bought 950,000 barrels of light sweet Eagle Ford shale oil and 950,000 barrels of heavy sour Mars crude for end-October delivery from trading firm Trafigura. In October the company bought 1 million barrels each of U.S. Southern Green Canyon (SGC) and WTI Midland crude. In October, India<69>s Reliance Industries Ltd ( RELI.NS ), the world<6C>s largest refining complex, purchased 1 million barrels of Midland and a similar-sized cargo of Eagle Ford crude for November delivery. Reporting by Julia Simon in New York; Additional reporting by Florence Tan in Singapore and Nidhi Verma in New Delhi; Editing by Matthew Lewis 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-exports-india/newest-outpost-for-u-s-crude-exports-india-idUKKBN1CM0D6'|'2017-10-17T08:06:00.000+03:00'
'bd2bcd319551763d0d5ecced5c6440854c3cb942'|'ChargePoint hires Uber EMEA policy chief as its top Europe exec'|'October 17, 2017 / 12:56 PM / a few seconds ago ChargePoint hires Uber EMEA policy chief as its top Europe exec Reuters Staff 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The regional policy chief of embattled ride-hailing company Uber [UBER.UL] is leaving to join ChargePoint, a U.S. electric-vehicle charging-network maker that has attracted major financial backing from European transport companies. Christopher Burghardt told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday that he plans to join ChargePoint early next month as its lead regional executive. He will oversee the Silicon Valley company<6E>s aggressive charging-point expansion plans in Europe. Uber faced a year of mounting scandals and regulatory battles after Burghardt signed on last September as policy and communications chief across the company<6E>s 45-country Europe, Middle East and Africa region. ChargePoint supplies charging hardware and software used to connect outlets. It owns no re-charging stations of its own but works like an AirBnB or Uber to create a network of locations and schedule bookings at available charge points. <20>The energy and mobility spaces are coming together,<2C> Burghardt said. <20>ChargePoint is really one of the leading companies in electric vehicle infrastructure - where the two trends meet.<2E> The company, which operates a network of 40,000 electric charging stations, mainly in the United States, raised $125 million this year in financing, led by German car maker Daimler and industrial giant Siemens. It has raised nearly $300 million since its founding a decade ago. Demand for electric cars depends on a network of charging points, which utilities, engineering groups, automakers and start-ups are vying to provide and control before the sector takes off. They plan to work with ChargePoint to build a recharging network in Europe, where it will face competition from French utility Engie, which has acquired Dutch firm EV-Box, and German electric utility Innogy. Both rivals are moving into ChargePoint''s home market in the United States. ( reut.rs/2gLhBe7 ) ( reut.rs/2xMdk4T ). In May, ChargePoint announced its most significant network deal in Europe to date by signing a pact with InstaVolt to supply it with 200 ChargePoint rapid charge systems. Before joining Uber, Burghardt spent seven years in business development, sales and public policy executive roles in Europe and the Middle East for U.S. solar-panel maker First Solar - a tough period of transition for the industry when European governments wound down incentives for solar producers. Reporting by Eric Auchard in London and Christoph Steitz in Frankfurt, editing by Larry King 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-electric-chargepoint/chargepoint-hires-uber-emea-policy-chief-as-its-top-europe-exec-idUSKBN1CM1TW'|'2017-10-17T15:54:00.000+03:00'
'88bba99014bccc3ebbf459655f281a2fda236629'|'Greece, lenders to start talks again, as countdown starts'|'October 18, 2017 / 12:37 PM / in 7 minutes Greece, lenders to start talks again, as countdown starts Lefteris Papadimas , Renee Maltezou 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A man looks down as a Greek national flag flutters atop one of the bastions of the 17th century fortress of Palamidi under an overcast sky at the southern port city of Nafplio, Greece, February 19. 2017. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis/File Photo ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece<63>s creditors will return to Athens next week to assess its bailout compliance, in a review which should be concluded swiftly if the country is to meet its goal of emerging from lenders<72> supervision next year. Athens hopes to wrap up the review by January to start discussions with its lenders right after on the terms of exiting its current, 86-billion euro (<28>76.8 billion) bailout in August 2018, and on further debt relief - a long-standing Greek demand. European Union and International Monetary Fund technical teams were expected in Athens on Wednesday to prepare the ground for the mission chiefs<66> return next Monday, the first of at least two scheduled visits, officials close to the talks said. The talks will focus on Greece<63>s efforts to reduce banks<6B> bad loans, a thorny issue for the EU and the IMF, and its fiscal performance, the officials said. Reforming the public sector and opening up the energy market will also be high on the agenda. So far, Athens has completed about 15 of about 100 demands which include some labour, pension and tax reforms, opening up professions and some privatisations in a seemingly easy review. But risks remain as the clock is ticking, the officials warned. <20>There aren<65>t many difficult issues under this review as opposed to the previous ones,<2C> an official close to the talks told Reuters. <20>But a delay (beyond January) entails the risk of igniting more demands from the IMF on banks and debt relief.<2E> Greece is expected to outperform this year<61>s target for a primary surplus - which excludes debt servicing costs - of 1.75 percent of gross domestic product. It also expects economic growth of 1.8 percent this year. POLITICAL CHALLENGE Reaching a deal with the lenders soon is a challenge for Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras who wants to convince angry voters that seven years of sacrifices have paid off and the crisis is nearly over, as he seeks to renew his term that ends in 2019. Differences between Athens, the EU and the IMF over reforms and debt relief have often delayed Greece<63>s progress assessments which are necessary for the release of vital loans. The previous bailout review dragged on for more than six months, and the delays hurt economic activity and unnerved markets. The management of non-performing loans is expected to dominate the upcoming talks. The Washington-based Fund backed away last month from a demand for an asset quality check on Greece<63>s banks after a proposal by the European Central Bank to bring forward planned stress tests next year. But a senior IMF official reiterated this month that the Fund wants to make sure that banks have adopted an effective strategy to reduce them. As part of plans to improve the management of bad loans, Greece has agreed to launch foreclosure e-auctions. They were initially expected to begin in September but one official said they were likely to be pushed back to December, despite a recent call from Tsipras to complete most agreed reforms by November. Separately, the IMF and Germany still disagree over Greece<63>s ability to achieve a 3.5 percent primary surplus in 2018. The IMF puts the figure at 2.2 percent. Athens has sought assurances from the Fund that it will not demand additional belt-tightening but will keep pushing for debt relief, an issue long contentious in Germany and that could become even more so with a new government in Berlin. Greece has received three bailouts - about 270 billion euros - since 2010. In July, it made its first market foray in three years, aiming to restore full market access by 2018. It also wants to b
'1901f832065fad7bfbc41f7130bcfa5bb0c90406'|'UPDATE 2-Nigerian regulator suspends Oando shares, orders audit'|'* SEC cites insider trading, ownership issues* Company gets notice, regulator orders audit* Oando has gained 27 pct this year (Adds comments from Oando, bullet points, background)By Chijioke OhuochaLAGOS, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Nigeria<69>s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said on Wednesday it had ordered the suspension of Oando shares, citing concerns about possible insider trading and the oil company<6E>s shareholding structure.The SEC ordered the Nigerian Stock Exchange to implement a 48-hour suspension of Oando<64>s shares after which it would implement a price freeze until further notice.Oando, which is also listed in Johannesburg, said it had received a communication from regulators on the share suspension, adding that it will state its position as soon as possible.Its shares, which have gained 27 percent this year after a sharp fall last year, last traded at 5.99 naira in Lagos.The regulator said it had carried out a comprehensive review of Oando after it received two petitions and found related party transactions were not conducted at arm<72>s length and discrepancies in its ownership structure.A company source said the petitions centred around the ownership of some Oando shares bought through an investment vehicle at the time the company bought ConocoPhillips<70> Nigerian business for $1.65 billion in 2014.<2E>The commission notes that the above findings are weighty and therefore needs to be further investigated. After due consideration, the commission believes that it is necessary to conduct a forensic audit into the affairs of Oando Plc,<2C> the SEC said in a statement.It said a team of auditors, lawyers, stockbrokers and share registrars would conduct the forensic audit on Oando to ensure independence.Last month Nigeria<69>s lower house of parliament gave the SEC two weeks to disclose the results of its investigation into the oil firm.The regulator has been investigating Oando<64>s shareholding structure but had not published its findings and last month allowed the company to proceed with its annual shareholder meeting. (Additional reporting by Alexis Akwagiram; editing by Jason Neely and Adrian Croft)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/nigeria-oando/update-1-nigerias-sec-orders-suspension-of-oando-shares-idINL8N1MT32N'|'2017-10-18T09:54:00.000+03:00'
'5116b3bdf5321cdfa88a64f9e8966a3e272849d2'|'Exclusive: F2i seeks $3.5 billion in record fundraising by Italian fund'|'MILAN (Reuters) - Italian infrastructure fund F2i is in talks with investors to raise at least 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion) in what would be the biggest ever fundraising by an Italian investment firm, four sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.F2i, which is 14 percent owned by Italian state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP), is in discussions with Singapore<72>s sovereign wealth fund GIC [GIC.UL], one of the sources said, adding there was considerable interest from overseas investors.The fundraising comes as yield-hungry investors look to pour money into infrastructure globally. Heavyweight U.S. funds such as Brookfield Asset Management ( BAMa.TO ) and Global Infrastructure Partners have raised record amounts of money over the past 18 months for infrastructure investment. Most recently, U.S. private equity firm Blackstone ( BX.N ) and Saudi Arabia<69>s main sovereign wealth fund said they planned to create a $40 billion vehicle to invest in infrastructure projects.If successful, Milan-based F2i<32>s new fund - called Fund III - could raise more than 3 billion euros with Italy<6C>s CDP also touted as a possible investor, the sources said.Mediobanca and BNP Paribas are advising F2i on the deal which could be finalised as soon as this year.The companies mentioned declined to comment or were not immediately available.F2i, led by former A2A ( A2.MI ) utility executive Renato Ravanelli, is one of Italy<6C>s leading renewable energy players with joint investment platforms with Europe<70>s biggest utility Enel ( ENEI.MI ) and EDF<44>s ( EDF.PA ) Italian unit Edison.It is looking to create a fiber network hub across Italy and could use part of the money to fund more telecoms deals as Italy presses ahead with plans to renew its digital backbone that lags European peers.F2i, whose shareholders also include Italian banks Intesa Sanpaolo ( ISP.MI ) and UniCredit ( CRDI.MI ) as well as China Investment Corporation (CIC), ranks as Italy<6C>s No. 2 gas distributor.It used resources from its earlier Fund I to clinch a deal to buy Gas Natural<61>s grid assets in Italy through its 2i Rete Gas unit that sources said could be worth around 700 million euros.SHIFTING ASSETS The Italian fund will use 1.5 billion euros from the new fundraising to buy out investors in Fund I and transfer assets such as 2i Rete Gas into Fund III, the sources said.F2i raised 1.8 billion euros in 2007 when it launched Fund I which has now been drawn down. Its investors have been given the option to cash out or re-invest into Fund III, as the Italian firm wants to keep plowing money into its companies that include airport firm 2i Aeroporti, which controls Bologna airport, the sources said.Its Fund II, which has a majority stake in renewable energy firm E2i Energie Speciali, will remain unaltered. It raised 1.2 billion euros in 2015 and has yet to deploy all of its capital.Appetite for Italian infrastructure investments is on the rise with Germany<6E>s Allianz taking a stake with other investors in the Italian motorway unit of toll-road group Atlantia ( ATL.MI ) earlier this year.Singapore<72>s GIC has clinched a series of property deals in Italy including the full takeover of Italian mall RomaEst Shopping Centre. Last year it took control of several logistics centers in Italy as part of its 2.4 billion euro purchase of European logistics property firm P3 Logistic Parks.Additional reporting by Massimo Gaia; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-f2i-fundraising-exclusive/exclusive-f2i-seeks-3-5-billion-in-record-fundraising-by-italian-fund-idINKBN1CN2MP'|'2017-10-18T15:50:00.000+03:00'
'fe511c1a8cf8864d5011f9951f0e7427be2464d7'|'Assurant enters Asia-Pacific with $1.9 billion Warranty Group deal'|'(Reuters) - U.S. insurer Assurant Inc ( AIZ.N ) will expand into the Asia-Pacific region with a $1.9 billion deal to buy Warranty Group that will add extended warranty contract services for consumer goods to its property and casualty portfolio.Shares of Assurant climbed more than 4 percent in early trading on Wednesday to their highest in nearly two months.Assurant will fund the deal with debt and preferred shares, the company said on Wednesday. The deal has a value of $2.5 billion, when including Warranty Group<75>s debt.Chicago-based Warranty, a unit of U.S. private equity firm TPG, provides extended warranty contracts for an array of items including home appliances, automobiles, mobile phones and electronics.Assurant shareholders will own about 77 percent of the combined company, while TPG will hold the rest.Assurant expects the deal to add modestly to 2018 operating earnings per share on a run-rate basis. reut.rs/2giwAM1By the end of 2019, the insurer expects to save $60 million in pre-tax costs resulting from job eliminations and infrastructure changes, Assurant said on a call with analysts.The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2018.Morgan Stanley served as financial adviser to Assurant, while Willkie Farr & Gallagher provided legal counsel.UBS was Warranty Group<75>s financial adviser. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom was its legal adviser.TPG bought Warranty Group from Canadian private equity firm Onex Corp ( ONEX.TO ) in 2014 for an enterprise value of about $1.5 billion. reut.rs/2gkG21GReporting By Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D''Silva and Sai Sachin Ravikumar'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-the-warranty-group-m-a-assurant/assurant-to-buy-warranty-group-in-2-5-billion-deal-idINKBN1CN1DP'|'2017-10-18T08:44:00.000+03:00'
'31ac550065f821b1295daf66634bd3f42f521cca'|'OPEC leans towards nine-month extension of oil supply cut - sources'|'October 18, 2017 / 12:53 PM / Updated 20 minutes ago OPEC leans towards nine-month extension of oil supply cut - sources Rania El Gamal , Alex Lawler  : A worker checks the valve of an oil pipe at Al-Sheiba oil refinery in the southern Iraq city of Basra, Iraq, April 17, 2016. REUTERS/Essam Al-Sudani/File Photo DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) - OPEC is leaning towards extending a deal with Russia and other non-members to cut oil supply for a further nine months, four OPEC sources said, although stronger-than-expected demand growth may allow the group to delay a decision until early next year. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus Russia and nine other producers are cutting oil output by about 1.8 million barrels per day until March 2018, in an attempt to eradicate a supply glut that has weighed on prices. After slow initial progress, OPEC is more confident the cut is working. Oil prices are near a two-year high, supported by falling stocks, strong global demand, a slowdown in U.S. shale output and high overall adherence to producers<72> supply pledges. Three OPEC sources said keeping the curbs in place until the end of 2018 was a likely outcome, while a fourth said an extension of six to nine months would be needed to remove all excess oil in storage. <20>If demand growth is performing very well, then the decision might be postponed till early next year,<2C> one of the four OPEC sources said. <20>But there is still a big chance for it to be taken in November.<2E> Discussions among producers are continuing in the run-up to the next OPEC meeting to set oil policy on Nov. 30 in Vienna. Before then, OPEC<45>s board of governors, who do not decide policy, will meet in Vienna on Oct. 23-24 and are likely informally to discuss options and scenarios, OPEC sources said. If a decision is not announced in November, OPEC and its allies could meet in early 2018, two OPEC sources said. Usually, OPEC holds each year<61>s first policy-setting meeting in May or June. OPEC wants to reduce the level of oil stocks in developed economies to the five-year average. The latest figures show this is in progress but not yet complete. In August, OPEC said such stocks stood at 2.996 billion barrels, 171 million barrels above the five-year average, reducing the excess from 340 million barrels in January. DEEPER CUT UNLIKELY Deepening the cut, which OPEC decided against when it last met in May, is not considered likely this time, two OPEC sources said, since some producers would struggle to reduce output further. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Oct. 4 the deal could be extended to the end of 2018, although OPEC ministers have not given specific commitments on doing so. A strengthening of the oil market has reduced the urgency of further measures. With Brent crude LCOc1 trading at $58 a barrel, it is within sight of the $60 mark that Saudi Arabia considers a good level. OPEC and other forecasters have been raising their projections for growth in global oil demand. The latest monthly OPEC report pointed to a supply deficit on the world market next year if OPEC keeps output at September<65>s level. Kuwait<69>s oil minister said on Sunday the market was moving in the right direction and it was too early to decide on extending the supply cut. But OPEC sources say prolonging the agreement, with nine months as the timeframe, is likely. <20>My belief is that the ministers will renew until stocks go back to normal,<2C> another of the four OPEC sources said. Editing by Dale Hudson'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-opec-oil/opec-leans-towards-nine-month-extension-of-oil-supply-cut-sources-idUKKBN1CN1SY'|'2017-10-18T16:02:00.000+03:00'
'1f038ad12cec5d2f9f74fb0594d3304c5e70220b'|'Australia''s Crown hit by accusations of poker machine-fixing, shares tumble'|' 54 AM / in 44 minutes Australia''s Crown hit by accusations of poker machine-fixing, shares tumble Reuters Staff 2 Min Read SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia<69>s Crown Resorts Ltd ( CWN.AX ) was hit by allegations of tampering with poker machines on Wednesday when a lawmaker tabled a video of whistleblowers in parliament, sending shares in the casino firm sliding. Independent lawmaker and anti-gambling campaigner Andrew Wilkie used parliamentary privilege, which allows lawmakers to make sensitive allegations without legal repercussions, to make the video public and call for an investigation by authorities. On the recording, unidentified people accuse Crown<77>s flagship casino in Melbourne of fixing poker machines to remove built-in controls designed to regulate gambling rates. They also allege that customers were encouraged to disguise their identity to avoid detection by anti-money-laundering agency AUSTRAC, and that the casino failed to stop drug use and domestic violence on its premises. Wilkie told a news conference he had verified the identity of the people on the video as former employees of Crown but declined to comment further on the accuracy of the allegations. Crown said in a statement that it rejected the allegations and that Wilkie should <20>immediately provide to the relevant authorities all information relating to the matters alleged<65>. Crown shares fell 7 percent by midsession, their biggest single-day loss in a year. Reporting by Byron Kaye and Colin Packham Editing by Jane Wardell and Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-crown-resorts-scandal/australias-crown-hit-by-accusations-of-poker-machine-fixing-shares-tumble-idUKKBN1CN0BS'|'2017-10-18T06:53:00.000+03:00'
'2f7bca1add59ebe213347556f32d0fd60a15b6c2'|'Dow set to open above 23,000 for the first time'|'October 18, 2017 / 11:35 AM / in 7 minutes Dow closes above 23,000 for first time; IBM soars Caroline Valetkevitch 4 Min Read Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 23,000 for the first time on Wednesday, driven by a jump in IBM after it hinted at a return to revenue growth. The Dow hit 22,000 on Aug. 2, only 54 trading days earlier and roughly half the time it took the index to move from 21,000 to 22,000. This marks the fourth time this year the Dow has reached a 1,000-point milestone. <20>Retail investors continue to pour into the marketplace, and with each headline about a new record, and especially round numbers like that, people tend to feel like they<65>re missing out and you kind of suck more people into the market,<2C> said Ian Winer, head of equities at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles. <20>Ultimately, the only way you<6F>re going to top is by getting everybody all in. And we<77>re getting close.<2E> Investors globally pulled $33.7 billion from U.S. equity funds during the third quarter, according to Thomson Reuters<72> Lipper research unit. The funds are on course to post net outflows for the full year. Shares of IBM ( IBM.N ), which beat expectations on revenue, jumped 8.9 percent and accounted for about 90 points of the day<61>s 160 point-gain in the blue-chip index. Solid earnings, stronger economic growth and hopes that President Donald Trump may be able to make progress on tax cuts have helped the market rally this year. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq also hit record closing highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 160.16 points, or 0.7 percent, to end at 23,157.6, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 1.9 points, or 0.07 percent, to 2,561.26 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 0.56 point, or 0.01 percent, to 6,624.22. <20>Today the catalyst is clearly IBM ... which appears to have turned the corner. It gave the Dow the boost to stay over 23,000,<2C> said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey. The Dow had briefly surpassed the all-time peak on Tuesday but closed just shy of it. The financial index .SPSY jumped 0.6 percent, led by bank stocks recovering from recent post-earnings losses. Bullish calls by brokerages helped to support the bank shares. Bank shares had run up ahead of recent results, which resulted in some selling following the news, Krosby said. Investors await news on Trump<6D>s decision on the Federal Reserve chair position. The White House said Wednesday Trump will announce his decision in the <20>coming days.<2E> Abbott ( ABT.N ) rose 1.3 percent after the company<6E>s profit beat estimates on strong sales in its medical devices business. After the bell, shares of eBay ( EBAY.O ) fell 4 percent following its results. Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.09-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.32-to-1 ratio favored advancers. About 5.6 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, below the 5.9 billion daily average for the past 20 trading days, according to Thomson Reuters data. Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in New York and Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Nick Zieminski and James Dalgleish 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/dow-set-to-open-above-23000-for-the-first-time-idUSKBN1CN1L4'|'2017-10-18T14:35:00.000+03:00'
'd765928f9c5c6ea1308babf44a500bd72d62317a'|'Abbott beats Street on strong medical device, generics sales'|'FILE PHOTO: An Abbott company logo is pictured at the reception of its office in Mumbai, India, September 8, 2015. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade/File Photo REUTERS - Abbott Laboratories<65> quarterly results beat estimates and the company raised the top end of its full-year earnings forecast range on Wednesday, as a string of recent deals and medical device approvals help spur growth in its largest unit.The company has acquired several rivals this year, including St. Jude Medical and Alere, to bolster its medical devices business, and favorable tax laws in India are boosting its generics business.The company<6E>s shares rose 2.8 percent to $56.60 to a record in morning trading.Strength in medical devices pulled this quarter, while recent product approvals puts Abbott in a good position, Jefferies analyst Raj Denhoy told Reuters.Sales in the medical devices business rose 6.5 percent to $2.60 billion, accounting for more than a third of total sales.The generics unit, which sells drugs in emerging markets, brought in sales of $1.17 billion, up 16 percent.Sales in India, a key market for the company, were helped as the implementation of the new Goods and Services Tax prompted inventory restocking.Abbott said it now expects full-year adjusted 2017 profit from continuing operations of $2.48-$2.50 per share, compared with its previous range of $2.43-$2.53.Chief Financial Officer Brian Yoor said he expects the recently closed Alere deal to contribute around $475 million to reported sales this year.Sales in Abbott<74>s nutrition unit, which had been under pressure due to challenges in China, rose marginally. <20>We<57>ve seen a stabilizing of China; it hasn<73>t been as choppy as it was in the last 2 years,<2C> Chief Executive Miles White said.Abbott and other makers of infant formula have struggled to boost sales in China after the country made it mandatory last year for manufacturers to re-register baby formulas with the government.During the quarter, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved several of Abbott<74>s devices, including the FreeStyle Libre glucose monitoring system and heart devices HeartMate 3 and Ellipse.<2E>Overall, we<77>d expect investors to view these results positively - not just for ABT, but again for the broader med-tech group,<2C> Leerink analyst Danielle Antalffy said.Net sales of $6.83 billion beat the average analyst estimate of $6.72 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Excluding items, profit was 66 cents per share, beating estimates by a penny.Reporting by Manas Mishra and Akankshita Mukhopadhyay in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/abbott-results/abbott-beats-street-on-strong-medical-device-generics-sales-idINKBN1CN1XT'|'2017-10-18T11:39:00.000+03:00'
'f35c44888df753335793294c7645d1014e99f3bc'|'PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 18'|'October 18, 2017 / 4:51 AM / in 11 minutes PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 18 Reuters Staff 3 Min Read Oct 18 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray finalized the basic contours of a bipartisan deal designed to shore up health-insurance markets while giving states more say in how they implement rules set out by the Affordable Care Act. on.wsj.com/2giRUkD - U.S. President Donald Trump''s new effort to impose a travel ban drew fire Tuesday from a federal judge who blocked implementation of restrictions on people from six Muslim-majority countries, on the eve of the policy taking full effect. on.wsj.com/2gjKk9B - George Soros, the 87-year-old pioneer of hedge-fund investing, has turned over nearly $18 billion to Open Society Foundations, a move that transforms both the philanthropy he founded and the investment firm supplying its wealth. on.wsj.com/2giVyuF - U.S.-backed forces said they have captured Islamic State''s de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, wrenching away the terror group''s last major urban stronghold. on.wsj.com/2ggvOPy - Sidewalk Labs, the city-building unit of Google''s parent company Alphabet Inc, will partner with the city of Toronto on a high-tech waterfront development, the first major foray of the search-engine giant into creating urban space. on.wsj.com/2ghtjN1 - Saudi Arabia still plans to publicly list a portion of its state oil company in 2018, the kingdom''s oil minister said Tuesday, after reports that the effort may be abandoned. on.wsj.com/2ggId6h - U.S. regulators sued Rio Tinto and two former top executives over claims they misled investors about the value of Mozambique coal assets obtained in an acquisition that caused massive losses for the company. on.wsj.com/2ghizya (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-wsj/press-digest-wall-street-journal-oct-18-idUSL4N1MT248'|'2017-10-18T07:50:00.000+03:00'
'f5f1773d5961407c576e7d31def74eb19b7852aa'|'Brazil planemaker Embraer to deliver first E190-E2 in April 2018'|' 25 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago Brazil planemaker Embraer to deliver first E190-E2 in April 2018 Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BRASILIA, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Brazil planemaker Embraer said on Wednesday it would deliver its first E190-E2 jet in April 2018 to Norway-based airline Wideroe. Wideroe has signed a contract with Embraer for up to 15 E2 jets in a deal worth up to $873 million at list prices. (Reporting by Jake Spring; editing by Jason Neely) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/embraer-deliveries/brazil-planemaker-embraer-to-deliver-first-e190-e2-in-april-2018-idUSE4N1KW01A'|'2017-10-18T13:24:00.000+03:00'
'e2be91f3b025ea02797f10d91b076efc71417c32'|'UPDATE 1-Akzo Nobel Q3 earnings miss; company issues second FY profit warning'|'(Updates with details, background)By Toby SterlingAMSTERDAM, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Akzo Nobel, the Dutch maker of Dulux paint, reported lower-than-expected third-quarter operating earnings of 383 million euros ($451 million) on Wednesday, citing <20>headwinds<64> at its marine coatings business and margin pressures from rising raw material costs.It said earnings before interest and taxes for the year would now be about flat from 2016 -- its second warning since saying in July it was on track to meet the goal of 100 million euros in EBIT growth it had promised as part of its rationale for rejecting a 26-billion-euro takeover from PPG Industries in May.Analysts polled by Reuters had expected third-quarter earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) at 432 million euros, down from 442 million euros in the same period a year ago.Akzo has struggled since refusing PPG<50>s advances, seeing both its CEO and CFO resign for health reasons and saying in September that full-year EBIT would grow by less than 100 million euros after all.<2E>EBIT for 2017 is now expected to be in line with 2016,<2C> said new CEO Thierry Vanlancker, citing <20>adverse foreign exchange, ongoing industry specific headwinds and supply chain disruptions, including the adverse impact of Hurricane Harvey in the US.<2E>Akzo said on Wednesday that two other promises to shareholders -- a superdividend of 1 billion euros before the end of the year and the sale or IPO of its Specialty Chemicals arm by early next year -- are still on track.$1 = 0.8501 euros Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier and Sunil Nair'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/akzo-nobel-results/update-1-akzo-nobel-q3-earnings-miss-company-issues-second-fy-profit-warning-idINL8N1MT0JA'|'2017-10-18T03:44:00.000+03:00'
'318b1eff15458188b51db93bdcfcdab3cf26d964'|'Germany''s top court rejects challenge to ECB asset purchases'|'October 18, 2017 / 7:41 AM / in 34 minutes Germany''s top court rejects fresh challenge to ECB powers Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The new headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt is pictured next to a red traffic light, January 22, 2015. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach KARLSRUHE, Germany (Reuters) - Germany<6E>s Constitutional Court on Wednesday rejected a new request to stop the Bundesbank from taking part in the European Central Bank<6E>s 2.3 trillion euro ($2.7 trillion) asset purchase program, leaving the case with the European Court of Justice. Although Germany<6E>s top court has expressed reservations in the past about the asset buys, it argued an injunction would essentially preempt a European ruling on the case, since it would severely restrict the ECB<43>s ability to carry out asset buys, commonly known as quantitative easing. Germans have repeatedly challenged the ECB<43>s powers to deploy unconventional monetary policy measures and while courts have placed some limits on asset buys, past decisions have cleared the ECB, arguing that its measures fall within its mandate to keep inflation stable just below 2 percent. The ECB has bought over 2 trillion euros worth of bonds to depress borrowing costs in the hope that cheap financing would induce spending and eventually inflation. Wednesday<61>s ruling follows a court<72>s decision in August to send the challenge to the ECJ, even though judges at the time suspected that the ECB<43>s measure may be violating a ban on government financing by central banks. But the plaintiffs, a group of German academics and politicians, brought the case back in front of the judges, requesting a temporary injunction on the argument that a European court decision would not come soon enough since the asset purchase program is nearing its end. Although the asset buys are due to expire at the end of the year, policymakers are likely to extend them well into 2018 as inflation remains weak and will not rise back toward the ECB<43>s target before the end of the decade. Still, any extension is likely to be small in volumes compared to past purchases as the bulk of the policy accommodation is now provided through the ECB<43>s bloated balance sheet and not fresh purchases. Reporting by Ursula Knapp; Writing by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Janet Lawrence 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-germany-ecb-court/germanys-top-court-rejects-challenge-to-ecb-asset-purchases-idUKKBN1CN0TH'|'2017-10-18T10:39:00.000+03:00'
'3f51b8042f83d09a882a3e5c4c4086bc3a3b67a4'|'ACS''s Hochtief launches counter-bid for Abertis'|' 51 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago ACS''s Hochtief launches counter-bid for Abertis Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A view of the Hochtief AG headquarters in Essen October 4, 2010. REUTERS/Ina Fassbender MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish building and infrastructures company ACS ( ACS.MC ) on Wednesday launched a 17.1 billion euros (<28>15.2 billion) counter-bid for toll road operator Abertis ( ABE.MC ) through its German subsidiary Hochtief ( HOTG.DE ), it said in a statement. Hochtief<65>s offer will be made at a price of 18.76 euros for each Abertis share and/or 0.1281 newly-issued Hochtief shares for each Abertis share. The combined Hochtief-Abertis group could deliver synergies of between 6 billion and 8 billion euros, it also said. Sources told Reuters last week that Italian toll-road operator Atlantia ( ATL.MI ) was ready to raise its takeover offer for Abertis to up to about 17.8 billion euros. Reporting by Julien Toyer; Editing by Jesus Aguado 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-abertis-m-a/acss-hochtief-launches-counter-bid-for-abertis-idUKKBN1CN1ZM'|'2017-10-18T16:51:00.000+03:00'
'2291dd73b8a8bdad462d98a769c1372cd89f6d2a'|'Nissan used uncertified inspectors even after misconduct found'|'October 18, 2017 / 9:06 AM / in 20 minutes Nissan used uncertified inspectors even after misconduct found Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Nissan logo is seen at a car dealership in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico May 30, 2017. Picture taken May 30, 2017. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co Ltd ( 7201.T ) said on Wednesday it conducted uncertified vehicle checks as recently as last week even after revealing the widespread misconduct at its domestic factories. Japan<61>s second-largest automaker has recalled all 1.2 million new cars it sold in Japan over the past three years after discovering final vehicle checks for the domestic market were not performed by certified technicians. An internal investigation discovered the latest misconduct at affiliate Nissan Shatai Co Ltd<74>s ( 7222.T ) Shonan factory on Oct. 11, a Nissan spokesman told Reuters by email. At a news conference on Oct. 2, Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa said only certified technicians had conducted checks since Sept. 20. However, two uncertified technicians carried out inspections at the Shonan plant even after that date, the automaker said on Wednesday, with around 3,800 vehicles affected. Shipments of vehicles produced at the Shonan plant were suspended after the issue was discovered and resumed on Oct. 16, the automaker said. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport inspected Nissan<61>s factories earlier this month, finding names of certified technicians used on documents to sign off final vehicle checks conducted by non-certified technicians. The ministry has asked Nissan to report measures to prevent a recurrence of the issue by the end of this month. Shares of Nissan closed up 0.1 percent, in line with the benchmark Nikkei stock price index .N225 . Nissan Shatai closed down 0.6 percent. Reporting by Maki Shiraki and Thomas Wilson; Writing by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Stephen Coates and Christopher Cushing 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nissan-recall/nissan-used-uncertified-inspectors-even-after-misconduct-found-idUKKBN1CN11O'|'2017-10-18T12:05:00.000+03:00'
'97fd5d5acafef67b01c56e73c43b3029ecc2e951'|'Europe aviation agency advises suspending use of Kobe Steel products'|'October 18, 2017 / 8:40 AM / in 18 minutes Europe aviation agency advises suspending use of Kobe Steel products Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of Kobe Steel is seen on the group''s Tokyo headquarter building in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - Europe<70>s aviation regulator has advised aircraft manufacturers to suspend using parts from Kobe Steel ( 5406.T ) until their legitimacy can be proved, following revelations about data cheating at the Japanese company. The move by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is another headache for Kobe Steel, which has shocked aircraft, auto, train and other industries with its revelations that it has been shipping some products to customers with falsified data on strength and durability. <20>Where alternative suppliers are available, it is recommended to suspend use of Kobe Steel products until the legitimacy of the affected parts can be determined,<2C> EASA said in a Safety Information Bulletin (SIB) dated Oct. 17. The EASA said the concern was not serious enough at this stage to warrant an airworthiness directive setting out compulsory measures. A Kobe Steel spokesman declined to comment on the EASA statement. The admissions that Kobe Steel<65>s supply chains have been tainted, affecting about 500 companies across the world, has sent its shares into free fall. The scandal puts another stain on Japan<61>s manufacturing prowess after similar cases including automakers Mitsubishi Motors Corp ( 7211.T ) and Nissan Motor Co ( 7201.T ). The EASA bulletin covers aircraft, engines and propellers using Kobe Steel materials or components. <20>All organisations that may have specified or used Kobe Steel products should do a thorough review of their supply chains in order to identify if, and when, Kobe Steel products have been used in their product designs and fabrications,<2C> the SIB says. Because the period of the data tampering has not been ascertained, the focus should be on <20>current production,<2C> the agency says. <20>At this time, the safety concern described in this SIB is not considered to be an unsafe condition that would warrant Airworthiness Directive action,<2C> it said. The world<6C>s two largest planemakers, Airbus ( AIR.PA ) and Boeing ( BA.N ), have already said they are conducting such a review. Reporting by Tim Hepher and Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Christian Schmollinger 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-kobe-steel-scandal-easa/europe-aviation-agency-advises-suspending-use-of-kobe-steel-products-idUKKBN1CN0ZE'|'2017-10-18T12:07:00.000+03:00'
'346e08db35c9eb97c34a3cfa5a0e7b944113d30d'|'Siemens plans cutbacks at Power & Gas business: Manager Magazin'|'FILE PHOTO: A flag with the logo of German technology firm Siemens is seen at its branch in Berlin, Germany, May 30, 2014. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Siemens ( SIEGn.DE ) may cut thousands of jobs as part of plans to overhaul its power turbine business, where growth in renewable energy is dampening demand for new coal and gas power stations, a person familiar with the matter said.<2E>Various scenarios are being considered,<2C> the source said, adding that details of the changes at the Power & Gas division were still to be decided.German monthly Manager Magazin earlier cited company sources as saying that Siemens could shut or sell up to 11 of its 23 Power & Gas sites around the world, which could include plants in the eastern German cities of Erfurt and Goerlitz.Separately, Bloomberg cited sources as saying that Siemens also planned to restructure its Process Industries and Drives business, which could result in <20>substantial<61> job cuts.Siemens said on Thursday it was continually thinking about its strategic direction, which could include consolidation of some businesses, but declined to say whether it was planning restructuring measures at specific businesses.Siemens has highlighted weakness at both the Power and Gas and the Process Industries divisions, indicating that restructuring was potentially in the pipeline.The Power and Gas business is struggling with lower worldwide demand for the large electricity generating turbines that Siemens specializes in, which finance chief Ralf Thomas has said is a structural rather than a temporary problem.The division reported a 41 percent drop in orders and a worse than expected 23 percent fall in profits in its fiscal third quarter that ended in June.Process Industries and Drives was Siemens<6E>s least profitable business in the quarter, with a profit margin of only 4.7 percent, as it suffered from weakness in demand for the large drives it supplies for power plants.DRAMATIC CHANGES The volume of new coal-fired power plant projects dropped last year due to a clamp-down in China and less finance available in India, according to a report in March by Greenpeace, U.S. group the Sierra Club and coal research group CoalSwarm.There was 570 gigawatts (GW) of coal power capacity in the pre-construction planning stage in January 2017, down 48 percent year-on-year, and projects under construction were down 19 percent at around 273 GW.<2E>In light of the dramatic changes seen across the global fossil power market, new cost-cutting measures are required (at Siemens) in our view,<2C> Barclays analysts said in a note on Thursday.They said they expected Siemens to restructure its U.S. plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, as part of an overhaul at Power and Gas.Excluding its services business, the division has 30,000 employees worldwide, of which 12,000 are based in Germany. Process Industries had about 45,000 employees last year.Analysts at Berenberg have said they expect that Siemens could ultimately seek to tackle the large gas turbine business by striking a joint venture with a sizeable player, such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries ( 7011.T ).Siemens has already taken steps to break up its lumbering conglomerate structure, including merging its rail business with that of French rival Alstom ( ALSO.PA ) and the listing of its healthcare business planned for next year.According to Manager Magazin, management will present the restructuring plan for Power & Gas to labor representatives in early November.Siemens is due to publish fourth-quarter financial results on Nov. 9. Its rival General Electric ( GE.N ) announces its results on Friday.Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Greg Mahlich, Douglas Busvine, Kathrin Jones and Jane Merriman'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-siemens-restructuring/siemens-plans-cutbacks-at-power-gas-business-manager-magazin-idINKBN1CO0YC'|'2017-10-19T06:26:00.000+03:00'
'dc57f86b544d8fd49ca8c4f3dffc9b7fa4221191'|'Shanghai Pharma says bid for U.S. Cardinal Health''s China business'|'October 18, 2017 / 10:47 AM / Updated 7 hours ago Shanghai Pharma bids for U.S. Cardinal Health''s China business Julie Zhu 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Logo of Shanghai Pharmaceutical Holding Co Ltd is seen outside a building in Shanghai, China May 25, 2012. Picture taken May 25, 2012. REUTERS/Stringer HONG KONG (Reuters) - Shanghai Pharmaceuticals Holding Co has bid for Cardinal Health Inc<6E>s China business as the U.S. company looks to sell ahead of China<6E>s planned drug distribution reform. Shanghai Pharma submitted two non-binding bids to buy Cardinal Health China, one of the country<72>s largest drug distributors, on July 21 and Sept. 15, it said in a filing with the Shanghai stock exchange on Wednesday. The company, backed by the Shanghai government, did not disclose the financial terms but said it has not entered into exclusive talks with the seller. Reuters first reported in July that Cardinal Health had put its China business up for sale in a deal that could fetch between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion. The sale has drawn keen interest from state-backed Chinese pharmaceuticals companies and private equity firms such as FountainVest, said sources with knowledge of the matter. Cardinal<61>s China business, which operates 16 distribution centers in 20 cities, generated more than $3.5 billion in revenue last year, compared with $3 billion in 2015, according to its earnings report. It has hired Lazard as an adviser for the China sale, according to the sources. FountainVest did not respond immediately to requests for comment and Lazard declined to comment. The sources asked not to be identified because the talks are not public. Beijing in January introduced a so-called <20>two-invoice<63> procurement system for drug distribution on a trial basis as part of a broader overhaul of the country<72>s fragmented healthcare sector. Under the new system, expected to be fully implemented in 2018, drug manufacturers can only work with a single distributor that directly supplies products to healthcare facilities such as hospitals. The policy is likely to squeeze margins for many distributors that lack links to strong manufacturers and healthcare facilities in China. In spite of the overhaul, state-owned pharma companies with strong backing from Beijing to create <20>national champions<6E> in key industries have been looking to expand. Shanghai Pharma, for example, said in August that it was bidding for a stake in U.S. specialty drugmaker Arbor Pharmaceuticals. Reporting by Julie Zhu; Additional reporting by Kane Wu; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath and David Goodman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-cardinalhealth-china-shanghai-pharma/shanghai-pharma-says-bid-for-u-s-cardinal-healths-china-business-idINKBN1CN1E1'|'2017-10-18T08:47:00.000+03:00'
'2b34be938431425fbc4a96decf1748aab0d76f3e'|'ACS''s Hochtief launches counter-bid for Abertis'|'October 18, 2017 / 1:47 PM / in an hour ACS''s Hochtief makes $20 billion counterbid for Abertis 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Toll road operator Abertis<69>headquarters is seen in Barcelona, Spain, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard DUESSELDORF/MILAN (Reuters) - German builder Hochtief ( HOTG.DE ), controlled by Spain<69>s ACS ( ACS.MC ), made a 17.1 billion euro ($20.1 billion) bid for Spanish toll road operator Abertis ( ABE.MC ) on Wednesday, topping a rival offer from Italy<6C>s Atlantia ( ATL.MI ). Hochtief is offering 18.76 euros in cash, or 0.1281 Hochtief shares, for each Abertis share and has set a minimum acceptance threshold of 50 percent plus one share. Builder ACS is launching the bid via cash-positive Hochtief to protect its credit rating and avoid having to raise equity itself, though Hochtief<65>s plan to issue up to 24.8 million shares could dilute ACS<43>s 72 percent stake in the German firm to below 50 percent. The move creates a dilemma for Abertis, which has also received a cash and shares offer from Atlantia worth around 15.7 billion euros on a comparable basis, according to analysts. A tie-up between Atlantia, controlled by the Benetton family, and Abertis would create the world<6C>s biggest toll-roads operator and help both companies in their drive to branch out from their home markets. However, a source close to ACS - whose chairman Florentino Perez also heads Real Madrid soccer club - has told Reuters that its bid has the backing of the Spanish government, which may be reluctant to see Abertis<69>s politically sensitive motorways concessions in Spain fall into foreign hands. A previous deal between Atlantia and Abertis fell through in 2006 due to opposition from the Italian government. Related Coverage Hochtief CEO Marcelino Fernandez Verdes told reporters his firm<72>s bid was based purely on business considerations. <20>(It has) nothing to do with political decisions,<2C> he said at a press conference. Hochtief said Abertis would complement its business by adding the operation and maintenance of infrastructure to its developing and building operations, allowing it to <20>generate value throughout the entire infrastructure project life cycle.<2E> <20>It<49>s a combination of two completely complementary companies,<2C> Verdes said. He added that by securing a larger share in future infrastructure projects; by expanding the portfolio to include hospitals and schools; and via cost optimizations the deal could reap 6-8 billion euros in synergies. EXPECTING A FIGHT Atlantia launched its cash and shares bid in May, and people familiar with the matter told Reuters last week it was prepared to raise it if ACS - as expected - triggered a takeover battle. <20>Hochtief<65>s offer is very competitive, but we would expect Atlantia to fight for Abertis as this is a once in a lifetime opportunity,<2C> a Milan-based trader said. Abertis shares closed up 7 percent at 18.84 euros. ACS<43>s were up 5.2 percent at 33.06 euros, Hochtief<65>s up 1 percent at 151 euros and Atlantia<69>s down 1.2 percent at 26.91 euros. Hochtief has secured financing of 15 billion euros at a 2 percent interest rate and is planning to pay out up to 90 percent of its profit to shareholders after a successful Abertis bid, it said. Verdes said he was not planning job cuts and did not expect to face regulatory hurdles. Atlantia<69>s bid has already been approved by regulators and, according to two Italian sources, has the non-binding backing of investors representing more than 50 percent of Abertis<69>s capital. But one of the sources said Abertis<69> top investor, Criteria Caixa - the financial arm of a politically connected and powerful banking foundation - had not committed to taking up Atlantia<69>s offer. Criteria has a 22.3 percent stake in Abertis. Hochtief<65>s bid puts Atlantia<69>s offer, which began on Oct. 10 and was due to run through Oct. 24, on hold. Spanish market watchdog CNMV now has to examine Hochtief<65>s offer and decide whether it can go ahead. Additional reporting by Pamela Barbaglia and Francesca Landini 
'562363aed98f2f3edacf226ac602125252295629'|'Venezuela''s deteriorating oil quality riles major refiners'|'October 18, 2017 / 4:14 PM / Updated 42 minutes ago Venezuela''s deteriorating oil quality riles major refiners Alexandra Ulmer , Marianna Parraga 8 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The corporate logo of the state oil company PDVSA is seen at a gas station in Caracas, Venezuela August 29, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins/File Photo CARACAS/HOUSTON (Reuters) - Venezuela<6C>s state-run oil firm, PDVSA, is increasingly delivering poor quality crude oil to major refiners in the United States, India and China, causing repeated complaints, cancelled orders and demands for discounts, according to internal PDVSA documents and interviews with a dozen oil executives, workers, traders and inspectors. The disputes involve cargoes soiled with high levels of water, salt or metals that can cause problems for refineries, according to the sources and internal PDVSA trade documents seen by Reuters. The quality issues stem from shortages of chemicals and equipment to properly treat and store the oil, resulting in shutdowns and slowdowns at PDVSA production facilities, along with hurried transporting to avoid late deliveries, the sources said. U.S. refiner Phillips 66 ( PSX.N ) cancelled at least eight crude cargoes because of poor oil quality in the first half of the year and demanded discounts on other deliveries, according to the PDVSA documents and employees from both firms. The cancelled shipments - amounting to 4.4 million barrels of oil - had a market value of nearly $200 million. Another key buyer of Venezuelan crude - India<69>s Reliance Industries Ltd ( RELI.NS ), operator of the world<6C>s largest refinery - has repeatedly complained about oil quality, a PDVSA employee told Reuters. State-run firm China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) also complained earlier this year about excessive water levels in oil cargoes, a former PDVSA employee said. The deterioration of PDVSA crude is the latest symptom of the firm<72>s ill-maintained production infrastructure, and it threatens to accelerate an already severe cash crisis at a time when Venezuela is hoarding dollars to pay some $3.4 billion to bondholders in the next few weeks. PDVSA<53>s financial woes radiate through the country<72>s recession-racked economy, which depends on oil for more than 90 percent of its export revenue. Venezuela<6C>s Oil Ministry and PDVSA did not respond to requests for comment. An official at PetroChina Co ( 601857.SS ), CNPC<50>s listed subsidiary, said he was not aware of complaints about Venezuela oil. A CNPC spokesman also said he had no knowledge of the issue. Phillips 66 declined to comment. Reliance did not respond to requests for comment. One of the PDVSA employees said quality started to drop about two years ago, and the deterioration has accelerated recently. <20>We<57>re refitting chemical injection points, recouping pumps and storage tanks,<2C> the worker told Reuters. <20>But without chemicals, we can<61>t do anything.<2E> OIL AND WATER Venezuela<6C>s crude output has already plummeted to its lowest level in almost three decades because of crime at oil fields, underinvestment, mismanagement at PDVSA, and a fourth straight year of economic contraction. The oil firm also faces sanctions imposed by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, which have caused many banks to refuse to extend the letters of credit needed to complete some oil sales and purchases, leading to contract suspensions and disputes. For graphic of Venezuela''s falling exports, see: tmsnrt.rs/2xD0l5r The full scale and severity of PDVSA<53>s oil-quality problems are unclear, although industry sources reported issues in major oil-producing regions including the western state of Zulia and the Orinoco Belt in the southeast. PDVSA has halted output at some Zulia production facilities because it does not have enough functioning storage tanks and chemicals to process the crude being pumped up, according to two workers with knowledge of the operation. <20>This is becoming a big problem. We<57>re trying to get production up, but now they<65>
'94d77513763a67d8356f748c9fd04453cf089487'|'Airbus CEO sees no reason to step down over probes'|'Philip Hammond''s future questioned by May''s allies Philip Hammond''s future questioned by May''s allies Philip Hammond''s future questioned by May''s allies Reuters TV United States October 15, 2017 / 2:48 PM / in a minute Airbus CEO sees no reason to step down over probes Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Airbus Group Chief Executive Tom Enders speaks during a news conference on the aerospace group''s annual results, in London, Britain February 24, 2016. REUTERS/Hannah McKay FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Airbus ( AIR.PA ) Chief Executive Tom Enders sees no reason to resign over ongoing UK and French corruption investigations, but would be ready to do so if needed, he told a German newspaper <20>You can be assured: Once I am no longer part of the solution, and I hope I would realize myself when that is, I will draw the consequences (and step down). But for now, I don<6F>t think we<77>re at this point,<2C> Enders told Handelsblatt, according to a pre-released version of its Monday edition. Airbus<75> board expressed full confidence in Enders on Thursday, but two people familiar with the matter said it only did so after commissioning its own study of top management. The investigations by Britain<69>s Serious Fraud Office and later its French counterpart were triggered by Airbus in 2016 when it reported itself to UK authorities after uncovering flawed documents over the use of intermediaries in airplane sales. It also faces an Austrian probe over a 2003 fighter sale. Airbus Group Chief Executive Tom Enders speaks during a news conference on the aerospace group''s annual results, in London, Britain February 24, 2016. REUTERS/Hannah McKay Enders and legal counsel John Harrison have come under fire from within Airbus and in the French media for opening the floodgates to widening investigations and for overseeing what several insiders have called a witch-hunt. Enders reiterated on Friday the group could face significant fines as the result of the UK and French probes. Airbus is conducting its own internal investigation in the hope of being offered a deal by UK prosecutors as a reward for co-operation and sharing results with investigators. Enders told Handelsblatt he had no knowledge of illicit funds at Airbus used to bribe potential customers. <20>I do not have any (slush funds) and don<6F>t know of any,<2C> he said, adding that unless the contrary was proven he would assume that no such funds exist at Airbus. Enders earlier this year announced his intention to renew his three-year mandate in 2019. Reporting by Arno Schuetze; Editing by Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-airbus-ceo/airbus-ceo-sees-no-reason-to-step-down-over-probes-idUKKBN1CK0M3'|'2017-10-15T17:44:00.000+03:00'
'516e5eb33ec8441274603905b37cef78df1b8252'|'Han Solo''s standalone film titled ''Solo: A Star Wars Story'''|'October 18, 2017 / 12:00 AM / Updated 36 minutes ago Han Solo''s standalone film titled ''Solo: A Star Wars Story'' Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LOS ANGELES, Oct 17 (Reuters) - The origin story of Han Solo, the roguish intergalactic <20>Star Wars<72> bounty hunter, has finally been given a title, director Ron Howard unveiled on Tuesday. <20>Solo: A Star Wars Story<72> will follow the beginnings of the gruff but loveable Han Solo, made famous by Harrison Ford in George Lucas<61><73>Star Wars<72> films. The movie is scheduled for release on May 25, 2018. Alden Ehrenreich is taking over the role of the titular bounty hunter, while Donald Glover will play young Lando Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams in the original trilogy. Howard, who took over the production of the film after the sudden departure of its two directors earlier this year, revealed the title in a short video and said that filming had wrapped on the project. The <20>Solo<6C> spin-off is part of Walt Disney Co<43>s expanding slate of <20>Star Wars<72> movies, which was rebooted by the 2015 blockbuster hit, <20>Star Wars: The Force Awakens.<2E> That film made more than $2 billion at the global box office. The Han Solo film is the second of three stand-alone <20>Star Wars<72> films that kicked off with last year<61>s <20>Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.<2E> (Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Sandra Maler) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/film-starwars-solo/han-solos-standalone-film-titled-solo-a-star-wars-story-idUSL2N1MS2F8'|'2017-10-18T02:59:00.000+03:00'
'6f8294c0de10b375832e2611730d447cf6e125fb'|'CEE MARKETS-Currencies firm, Czech short-term bonds draw tepid demand'|'* Crown strongest since intervention regime was launched in 2013 * Moody''s may improve Hungary''s rating this week-trader (Adds Polish economic figures, weakening of Czech 10-year bonds) By Sandor Peto and Jason Hovet BUDAPEST/PRAGUE, Oct 18 (Reuters) - The Czech crown hit a four-year high and the zloty tested 3-month highs against the euro on Wednesday as Polish retail and industrial data confirmed robust economic growth in Central Europe. The crown firmed past 25.7 for the first time since the central bank in late 2013 launched an intervention regime to keep the currency week. In April it removed a cap on the crown at 27, letting it rise, and in August it started to reverse years of interest rate cuts. Another hike may come as early as next month, and that prospect, coupled with strong economic figures, lifts the crown. Of the bonds offered by the Czech government at its auction on Wednesday, there were no sales of zero-coupon paper. "With CNB hikes looming people are not interested in short bonds at these levels," a dealer said. After the auction, the Czech 10-year benchmark government bond yield, bid at 1.453 percent, reached its highest level since August 2014. The crown shrugged off concerns that the likely election victory of ANO party at Czech elections over the weekend could lead to drawn-out coalition talks, Goldman Sachs said in a note. "Domestic financial markets are typically resilient to Czech political events, given the Czech Republic''s strong fiscal position, sound institutions and independent central bank," it added. Polish and Czech current account data released this week and recent government budget figures have confirmed that most of the region''s main economies remain well-balanced, analysts said. Polish figures released on Wednesday showed 8.6 percent annual surge in retail sales in September, and 4.3 percent rise in industrial output. The zloty firmed 0.15 percent to 4.2295 against the euro, still a touch off Tuesday''s three-month highs. Polish government bonds eased slightly, with the 10-year benchmark yield rising 3 basis points to 3.317 percent. The forint, steady on Wednesday at 308.15 per euro, reached 5-week highs versus the euro this week. It traded on the firm side of the key psychological line of 310, even though Hungary''s central bank has flagged further monetary easing. "Moody''s could lift the outlook of Hungary''s debt rating (in its review) to positive on Friday, and based on Hungarian economic indicators, an upgrade cannot be ruled out either," one Budapest-based fixed income trader said. Regional central bankers also watch European Central Bank rate setters and any hawkish guidance from the ECB''s Oct 26 meeting could reduce appreciation pressure on regional currencies, analysts said. CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1457 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.690 25.784 +0.37 5.13% 0 5 % Hungary 308.15 308.23 +0.03 0.22% forint 00 00 % Polish zloty 4.2295 4.2358 +0.15 4.12% % Romanian leu 4.5875 4.5840 -0.08% -1.14% Croatian 7.5080 7.5075 -0.01% 0.63% kuna Serbian 119.13 119.14 +0.01 3.54% dinar 00 00 % Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1053.7 1055.9 -0.22% +14.3 0 9 3% Budapest 39075. 38909. +0.43 +22.1 18 78 % 0% Warsaw 2517.8 2514.3 +0.14 +29.2 2 6 % 6% Bucharest 8047.5 8063.8 -0.20% +13.5 6 0 9% Ljubljana 810.37 811.10 -0.09% +12.9 3% Zagreb 1849.2 1847.0 +0.12 -7.30% 4 8 % Belgrade 726.52 730.39 -0.53% +1.28 % Sofia 669.74 671.11 -0.20% +14.2 1% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs change Bund in Czech spread Republic 2-year 0.277 0.047 +099b +3bps ps 5-year 0.61 0.074 +092b +5bps ps 10-year 1.453 0.043 +105b +0bps ps Poland 2-year 1.709 0.013 +243b +0bps ps 5-year 2.681 0.023 +299b +0bps ps 10-year 3.322 0.03 +292b -1bps ps FORWARD RATE AGREEMENT 3x6 6x9 9x12 3M interb ank Czech Rep <PR 0.81 0.99 1.13 0 IBOR=> Hungary
'577c6a3c31c849aeae8d4bb77b04fa11976d02db'|'Banks say EU''s grab for London''s financial sector could backfire'|'October 18, 2017 / 1:49 PM / in 6 hours Banks say EU''s grab for London''s financial sector could backfire Huw Jones 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A view of the City of London, Canary Wharf and the Shard, Britain July 7, 2017. REUTERS/John Sibley/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - A push by European Union countries to grab a slice of London<6F>s financial sector ahead of Brexit could backfire by raising costs for consumers and companies on the continent, the UK<55>s main banking industry body said on Wednesday. Frankfurt, Paris, Dublin and Luxembourg want to attract banks, insurers and asset managers in Britain who need an EU base by March 2019 to maintain links with European customers. France is also keen to take on some clearing of euro-denominated derivatives moving to the EU from London after Brexit. <20>We detect some degree of political will in certain parts of continental Europe in order to reclaim what they perceive to be 20 years loss of wholesale financial services to the London market,<2C> Stephen Jones, chief executive of UK Finance, told a House of Lords committee. However, Jones said, fragmenting markets could bump up costs significantly for consumers and companies on the continent. <20>It<49>s a very short sighted approach to negotiations, but I recognise that in certain markets it<69>s the political reality,<2C> he said. Jones and others urged MPs not to fight back by ditching some EU financial rules when they slot the bloc<6F>s regulations into UK law in the Withdrawal Bill now before parliament. Some MPs have said Brexit is an opportunity to scrap EU rules which they see as crimping London<6F>s global competitiveness in finance. Financial sector officials worry that too much divergence with EU rules would mean no market access to the bloc after Brexit. Mark Hoban, chair of the International Regulatory Strategy Group, a think tank backed by the City of London and TheCityUK lobby, said financial firms want predictability and not a <20>bonfire of regulations<6E>. <20>My concern would be... that if this bill is used as an opportunity to unpick regulation, that would be to the detriment of that stability and certainty,<2C> Hoban said. <20>The key concern that we hear from the sector is for clarity, certainty and stability, and just knowing there aren<65>t going to be tweaks and changes,<2C> added Catherine McGuinness, head of policy at the City of London. Jones said Britain should wait until it has agreed new trading terms with the EU before changing any rules. The financial sector has called on the government to quickly agree a <20>standstill<6C> transition period, during which Britain complies with EU rules to minimise job moves to the bloc. British Prime Minister Theresa May has said she expects to agree new trading terms by March 2019, which Jones said his members were taking with a <20>pinch of salt<6C>. Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-banks/banks-say-eus-grab-for-londons-financial-sector-could-backfire-idUKKBN1CN1ZC'|'2017-10-18T16:48:00.000+03:00'
'80c795122e83d4737fe8994dd9ba18ac9e5fbcfc'|'Stocks rise on earnings; yields up as monetary policy in focus'|'October 18, 2017 / 12:32 AM / in an hour Stocks rise on earnings; yields up as monetary policy in focus Sinead Carew 4 Min Read Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 16, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street again posted record highs on Wednesday, driven by strong earnings, and Treasury yields rose as investors focused on monetary policy, but the dollar slipped to snap a four-day rally. Long-dated U.S. Treasury yields were higher and the difference between the yields of U.S. 5-year and 30-year Treasuries fell to the lowest level since November 2007 as expectations for tighter global monetary policy put shorter-dated Treasuries under pressure. Investors focused on global economic strength and expectations for gradual monetary policy tightening as they waited for signals that the European Central Bank would buy fewer bonds, said Paul Christopher, head global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute in St. Louis. <20>That<61>s equivalent to taking your foot a little bit off the gas but not hitting the brake,<2C> he said. All three Wall Street major indexes posted intraday record highs. Strong earnings from International Business Machines Corp ( IBM.N ) helped the Dow Jones Industrial Average stay above the 23,000 milestone hit on Wednesday for the first time. <20>We continue to see solid numbers above expectations, stability in terms of economic growth and global growth,<2C> said Omar Aguilar, chief investment officer for equities at Charles Schwab Investment Management. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 158.07 points, or 0.69 percent, to 23,155.51, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 3.55 points, or 0.14 percent, to 2,562.91, and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 8.48 points, or 0.13 percent, to 6,632.14. Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR last fell 11/32 in price to yield 2.3375 percent, from 2.298 percent late on Tuesday. The 30-year bond US30YT=RR last fell 30/32 in price to yield 2.8491 percent, from 2.803 percent late on Tuesday. While the dollar found some support from higher U.S. Treasury yields, the greenback, as measured against six other major currencies, reversed from a small gain to a small decline in afternoon trading. The dollar index .DXY fell 0.1 percent, with the euro EUR= up 0.26 percent to $1.1797. <20>The market is just trudging along in the absence of any big news or headlines,<2C> said Sireen Harajli, FX strategist at Mizuho in New York. With company results in focus in Europe, the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 rose 0.30 percent, and MSCI''s gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD PUS gained 0.24 percent.[.EU] In commodity markets, Brent oil prices retreated from three-week highs reached earlier on Wednesday, after a surprising fall-off in U.S. refining runs and an unexpected increase in inventories of gasoline and diesel. U.S. crude CLcv1 fell 0.25 percent to $51.75 per barrel, and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $57.85, down 0.05 percent on the day. Gold fell for a third straight session on pressure from a firmer dollar amid speculation that the next chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve could be a policy hawk. Spot gold XAU= dropped 0.3 percent to $1,281.16 an ounce. Additional reporting by Stephanie Kelly, Dion Rabouin, Saqib Iqbal Ahmed, David Gaffen in New York, Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru, Danilo Masoni in Milan; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Leslie Adler 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asia-shares-sit-on-gains-await-word-from-chinas-xi-idUKKBN1CN01D'|'2017-10-18T22:14:00.000+03:00'
'56c39a3b75184ee2ac6b5f499d4e710e24a2ddba'|'Brexit raises existential questions for EU capital market'|'October 17, 2017 / 5:03 PM / in 8 minutes Brexit raises existential questions for EU capital market Huw Jones 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A view of the City of London and Canary Wharf. July 7, 2017. REUTERS/John Sibley/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - Britain<69>s exit from the European Union will potentially put London, the EU<45>s biggest capital market, out of reach, putting pressure on the other 27 countries to find new ways to finance their economies. Britain has the EU<45>s biggest financial market, where companies from across the EU raise money by issuing shares or bonds, meet with institutional investors and buy and sell securities and derivatives. But the UK is leaving the bloc in March 2019 and future trading relations between Britain and the EU have yet to be agreed. This is now raising fundamental questions over whether an EU of 27 countries should rely so heavily on a country outside the bloc to fund its economy. The EU has already sought to reboot its plans for a Capital Markets Union or CMU to increase capital market funding for the economy, a project originally conceived with Britain inside the bloc. This will not be enough for some. Olivier Guersent, the European Commission<6F>s top civil servant for financial services, said it was unlikely that any jurisdiction would accept being so heavily reliant on an outside financial centre as the EU would be on Britain after Brexit. <20>This thinking needs to happen,<2C> Guersent said on Tuesday at a conference organised by the EU<45>s markets watchdog ESMA. Sylvie Matherat, chief regulatory officer at Deutsche Bank, which has a large chunk of its capital market operations in London said: <20>The CMU is really a wonderful idea but to make it work we need to have a market, and currently within Europe we don<6F>t have a market.<2E> <20>The CMU is not enough post Brexit<69>, Rainer Riess, director general of the Federation of European Securities Exchanges, said. <20>We don<6F>t have the equity buffer in our economy.<2E> Fabrice Demarigny, a former ESMA official, said a high level group should look at the EU capital market after Brexit, to see if it has enough critical mass to finance the region<6F>s economy. <20>We need a clear and ambitious strategic sense of direction to make sure the union will be properly equipped to finance itself,<2C> Demarigny said. Guersent also said the EU should let the raft of financial rules agreed since the 2007-2009 financial crisis bed down. He said if financial rules were continuously changed, long-term investment could be hit. The EU has approved scores of new rules to make banks and markets safer and more transparent as part of an intensive global effort to improve the stability of the financial system since the crisis. <20>I think we should now let the dust settle,<2C> Guersent said. <20>We should not launch an all big, new workstream.<2E> Reporting by Huw Jones. Editing by Jane Merriman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-markets/brexit-raises-existential-questions-for-eu-capital-market-idUKKBN1CM2HZ'|'2017-10-17T19:56:00.000+03:00'
'0404747f28d066127c344b6a37e6cbb7e36af7b8'|'European companies ''extremely concerned'' with slow Brexit talks pace'|'October 17, 2017 / 4:23 PM / in 33 minutes European companies ''extremely concerned'' with slow Brexit talks pace Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: General view of the financial district of La Defense seen from Paris, France, September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European business association BusinessEurope said on Tuesday it was extremely concerned with the slow pace of Brexit talks and called on the British government to rapidly come up with proposals that would speed them up. BusinessEurope is a lobby group that speaks for all-sized enterprises in 34 European countries, including Britain. <20>Business Europe is extremely concerned with the slow pace of negotiations,<2C> the group said in a letter to the chairman of European leaders Donald Tusk. <20>One year has already been lost and time pressure is rising. Business wants to avoid a cliff edge. Our companies need clarity and time to prepare and adjust to the post-Brexit situation,<2C> said the letter ahead of an EU summit on Thursday and Friday. Britain is to leave the 28-nation bloc on March 29th, 2019 and is negotiating the terms of the divorce. Talks on the relations after March 2019 have not yet started because of the lack of progress on the terms of the separation. BusinessEurope said the best solution would be for Britain to stay part of the EU<45>s customs union and single market, with all its advantages and obligations, during a transition period after Brexit. London wants a 2-year transition phase. Reporting By Jan Strupczewski, editing by Julia Fioretti 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-companies/european-companies-extremely-concerned-with-slow-brexit-talks-pace-idUKKBN1CM2EN'|'2017-10-17T19:22:00.000+03:00'
'cc8d4ee9b4353414d9a7f66e66100fcef529206d'|'Britain proposes tougher M&A rules to protect national security'|'October 17, 2017 / 6:32 AM / in 4 hours Britain proposes tougher M&A rules to protect national security Anjuli Davies , Clara Denina 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A view of the City of London and Canary Wharf. July 7, 2017. REUTERS/John Sibley/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Britain wants more say over deals in its military and technology sectors, as the government tries to prevent homegrown companies in sensitive industries from falling into foreign hands. The proposals, announced on Tuesday as part of a broader consultation on potential changes to takeover rules, mark a shift for a country which has traditionally been one of the most open to foreign buyout deals. That emphasis has changed, with a string of acquisitions by Chinese companies across the world fuelling security concerns in countries including Germany and the United States. <20>At first sight we have concerns that these proposals will have a chilling effect - the opposite of the <20>UK open for business<73> message which accompanies them,<2C> said Angus Coulter, partner at law firm Hogan Lovells. The weakening of the pound since Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union has also made UK companies cheaper for foreign buyers. Theresa May, who became prime minister after the Brexit vote, said last September that her government would take a more cautious approach to foreign investments after approving a $24 billion plan for a Chinese-backed nuclear power plant in southwest England. Since then though there have been a number of other high profile foreign takeovers in Britain, particularly in the technology sector. In September, Canyon Bridge Capital Partners - a China-backed buyout fund that was barred a week earlier by U.S. President Donald Trump from buying a U.S. chipmaker - agreed to buy British chip designer Imagination Technologies ( IMG.L ), sparking criticism from some politicians and media of the UK<55>s relaxed rules.. <20>It is the first duty of government to make sure that we are protected from hostile threats,<2C> Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark said at a Q&A session after his parliamentary statement. <20>It is right to periodically upgrade our systems for scrutiny and .... smaller companies have the potential to carry a threat to national security and these measures respond to that.<2E> The proposals include lowering the turnover threshold at which the government can scrutinize deals to companies with annual revenues of at least 1 million pounds ($1.3 million), from 70 million previously. The proposed changes would apply to companies in the military sector and those involved in the design of computer chips and quantum technology. <20>This will mean that investment from certain countries will be looked at much more closely and inevitably when politicians are involved in transactions, it will increase uncertainty and a lack of predictability and, depending on how the system works, maybe a question mark over transparency,<2C> said Nigel Parr, partner at law firm Ashurst. BUYOUT BRITAIN The world<6C>s fifth-largest economy is trying to balance the need to remain open for investment after the Brexit vote while upholding a pledge by Prime Minister Theresa May to intervene when big foreign investments concern critical assets. Since the Brexit vote in June 2016, Britain has remained a busy market for mergers and acquisitions, with the value of deals up 26 percent so far this year to $125 billion, Thomson Reuters data shows. Some lawyers said these new proposals would not have made much difference to this recent pick-up in deals though, questioning the long-term need for them. <20>We are not aware of a significant number of <20>problem<65> transactions which the government has been unable to review under existing rules. There is a general question of whether there is a need to impose extra cost on business and government, and whether now is the right time to do so,<2C> Hogan Lovell<6C>s Coulter said. The government also said it would open a twelve-week consultation period on longer-term reform pro
'aa56ce60e5e2d3227aa1561759dc06780193060f'|'California extends sanctions against Wells Fargo for at least another year'|'Oct 16 (Reuters) - California will extend sanctions against Wells Fargo & Co for at least another year, Treasurer John Chiang said at a press conference Monday.Chiang cited progress by the bank in certain areas, but expressed concern over an <20>alarming drumbeat of news reports of egregious or illegal actions over the past year<61> in extending the sanctions, which impact the bank<6E>s municipal bond underwriting unit among other businesses. (Reporting by Dan Freed in New York)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/wells-fargo-accounts-california/california-extends-sanctions-against-wells-fargo-for-at-least-another-year-idINL2N1MR15D'|'2017-10-16T14:46:00.000+03:00'
'3f0efafe0c403184d3282b930ddb896a2a730248'|'Stronger currency shrinks euro zone trade surplus in August'|'October 16, 2017 / 9:20 AM / in 2 minutes Stronger currency shrinks euro zone trade surplus in August Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A general view of a cargo terminal at the Port of Barcelona October 23, 2013. REUTERS/Albert Gea/File Photo BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Euro zone<6E>s trade surplus shrank in August as the stronger euro fueled an import boom that was only partly offset by a rise in exports, official estimates released on Monday showed. Although the euro has depreciated against the dollar from a 2017 peak in early September, it is still up more than 12 percent this year. Cheaper imports have complicated European Central Bank<6E>s plans to raise inflation in the euro zone. The European statistics office Eurostat said the 19-country currency bloc<6F>s surplus in goods trade dropped to 16.1 billion euros ($18.9 billion) in August from 23.2 billion in July. It was also lower than in August 2016 when it stood at 17.5 billion euros. The lower surplus was caused by a surge in imports from countries outside the euro zone, which grew 8.6 percent on the year, according to seasonally unadjusted data. This rise outstripped the 6.8 percent increase in exports, resulting in a smaller surplus for the euro zone. The August surplus was the lowest recorded this year, excluding a temporary deficit in January. The strong euro, which peaked at nearly 1.20 dollars in August, contributed to the reduced surplus, as it made imports cheaper. This in turn capped inflation, making it harder for the ECB to tighten monetary policy. Inflation in the euro zone was 1.5 percent in September, according to Eurostat preliminary estimates, the same rate as in August and below the ECB target of a rate close to 2 percent. The ECB is expected to extend its stimulus program for nine months at its next meeting on Oct. 26 while scaling back the monthly purchases, sources said. Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio; editing by Philip Blenkinsop 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eurozone-economy-trade/stronger-currency-shrinks-euro-zone-trade-surplus-in-august-idUKKBN1CL0Z1'|'2017-10-16T12:18:00.000+03:00'
'fa6eeadba86b7875bda04ec7269960b993231795'|'Deutsche Bank asks banks to pitch for asset management IPO - sources'|' 43 PM / Updated 5 minutes ago Deutsche Bank asks banks to pitch for asset management IPO: sources Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The Deutsche Bank app logo is seen on a smartphone in this picture illustration taken September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank ( DBKGn.DE ) has asked banks to pitch for roles the planned 2 billion euro ($2.35 billion) initial public offering of its asset management business, two people close to the matter said on Tuesday. The requests for proposal for roles such as that of the global coordinator were sent out on Monday, the sources said. Banks are being asked to specify their concerns with the equity story of the asset management unit, their view on the peer group, valuation method, timing of the deal and potential investors. Deutsche Bank   Deutsche Bank said in March that it planned to list the asset management unit, which could reach a total valuation of 8 billion euros. A stock market flotation of the unit is expected to take place in the first half of 2018 at the earliest. Reporting by Arno Schuetze; Additional reporting by Tom Sims; Editing by Maria Sheahan 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-deutsche-bank-asset-management/deutsche-bank-asks-banks-to-pitch-for-asset-management-ipo-sources-idUKKBN1CM1SG'|'2017-10-17T15:41:00.000+03:00'
'78b7c4c33cdc93981e396e1d296bf71cfb2e78a9'|'With Spain gripped by Catalonia crisis, VW''s Seat delays naming new model'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:18 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago With Spain gripped by Catalonia crisis, VW''s Seat delays naming new model Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A logo of Spanish carmaker SEAT, part of the Volkswagen Group, is seen during a news conference in Barcelona, Spain June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Albert Gea BERLIN (Reuters) - With the Spanish media focussed on the political crisis over Catalonia, Volkswagen<65>s ( VOWG_p.DE ) Spanish division Seat has decided to delay announcing the name of its forthcoming model. Seat, based in Martorell in Catalonia, had planned to announce the name of its 2018 sport-utility vehicle (SUV) this month, about a year ahead of the 7-seat model<65>s launch. But the carmaker, which earlier this month halted production at the Martorell plant after parts supplies were disrupted by protests in Catalonia, said on Tuesday it would disclose the name of the car at a later time. <20>With the entire Spanish media focussed on politics at the moment, we have decided to find a better time,<2C> a spokesman for Seat said. Seat has also delayed the announcement of an agreement it has signed with a Spanish industry association on innovation and digitisation, he said, without elaborating. However, preparations for selling and building the vehicle, which is due to be made at Volkswagen<65>s (VW) Wolfsburg base in Germany, will not be affected by the delay, the spokesman said. Similarly, the presentation of Seat<61>s new Arona SUV to the international trade press in Barcelona is proceeding as planned and will run for another week, he said. Seat, acquired by VW in 1986, returned to profit last year for the first time in about a decade, helped by strong sales of the Ateca, its first crossover model. The 2018 SUV, its third such model in as many years, will play a key role in the brand<6E>s strategy to build on its recovery, chief executive Luca de Meo has said. Reporting by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-spain-politics-catalonia-seat/with-spain-gripped-by-catalonia-crisis-vws-seat-delays-naming-new-model-idUKKBN1CM0ZG'|'2017-10-17T12:18:00.000+03:00'
'e8770dbb96a33edf01fc333e389cd693d17ddf1b'|'FTSE edges down, Merlin collapses on poor summer trading'|'October 17, 2017 / 8:50 AM / in an hour FTSE inches down, Merlin collapses on poor summer trading 4 Min Read The London Stock Exchange is seen attached to the building London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON (Reuters) - British shares edged lower on Tuesday, with a flurry of trading updates driving sharp swings in individual stocks including tourist attractions operator Merlin Entertainments, which plummeted after disappointing summer sales. The FTSE .FTSE ended the day 0.1 percent lower, weighed down by a pullback in mining stocks as metals slipped from three-year peaks hit on Monday. The index was driven higher earlier, when the pound slipped after Bank of England policymakers speaking in parliament were interpreted by the market as broadly dovish and indicating internal debate over a November rate hike. Data showing inflation rose to its highest level in more than five years in September made a rate hike more likely, market participants said. [nU8N13000D] On the day, sharp moves in Merlin and Pearson took centre stage. Shares in Merlin ( MERL.L ) plunged as much as 21 percent before ending the day down 15.9 percent, its biggest fall ever, after the Madame Tussauds and Legoland operator blamed a series of attacks in Britain and unfavourable weather for a dip in trading in its key summer period. <20>Given all this additional uncertainty we see less and less reasons to own the shares,<2C> Liberum analysts said. <20>While the market may be quiet, it is currently extremely intolerant of any company that dares to miss forecasts<74>, Chris Beauchamp, an IG market analyst, wrote. Convatec ( CTEC.L ) however, which had plummeted 26 percent after a profit warning on Monday, bounced back 3.9 percent, despite several broker downgrades on the medical devices maker. Education group Pearson ( PSON.L ) was the top performer, up 7.3 percent after it said it expected full-year operating profit to come in at the top half of its forecast range. [nL8N1MS0W7] Mediclinic ( MDCM.L ) retreated 4.1 percent after the South African private hospital group said it expects half-year earnings to drop due to weak performance in the United Arab Emirates. A downgrade to <20>market perform<72> from Bernstein analysts sent recently merged asset manager Standard Life Aberdeen ( SLA.L ) down 3.9 percent. <20>The stock feels like a consensus long post-deal and we see limited scope for remaining catalysts to drive the shares materially higher over the next twelve months,<2C> analysts said in a note. Challenger bank Virgin Money ( VM.L ) shone at the top of the mid-cap index after reporting steady gross mortgage lending in the third quarter thanks to robust customer demand due to low unemployment and a resilient housing market. Investec analyst Ian Gordon said he expected the <20>stunning performance<63> to lead to new consensus upgrades on the stock. Shares in online fashion retailer ASOS ( ASOS.L ) rose 1.8 percent after it raised its sales growth forecast, saying new products, competitive prices and better customer services continued to attract millennials to its website. Reporting by Julien Ponthus; Editing by Andrew Heavens 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-stocks/britains-ftse-edges-down-merlin-collapses-on-poor-summer-trading-idUKKBN1CM0WS'|'2017-10-17T11:50:00.000+03:00'
'dd6b222645a9bd7477afbb3c69f68c4debc434b3'|'Investors holding over 50 percent of Abertis back Atlantia''s bid - Italian sources'|' 37 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago Investors holding over 50 percent of Abertis back Atlantia''s bid - Italian sources Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Toll road operator Abertis<69>headquarters is seen in Barcelona, Spain, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard MILAN (Reuters) - Investors holding more than 50 percent of Abertis<69> ( ABE.MC ) shares have expressed non-binding support for a takeover bid on the Spanish toll road operator launched by Italian rival Atlantia ( ATL.MI ), two Italian sources said on Wednesday. However, one of the sources said that Abertis<69> top investor Criteria Caixa - the financial arm of a politically connected and powerful banking foundation - has not yet committed to taking up Atlantia<69>s offer, which started last week and will end on Oct. 24. Atlantia and Criteria Caixa were not immediately available for comment. German construction group Hochtief ( HOTG.DE ), controlled by Spain<69>s ACS ( ACS.MC ), is expected to present a counterbid for Abertis later on Wednesday, people close to the matter told Reuters. Reporting by Paola Arosio, writing by Silvia Aloisi, editing by Francesca Landini 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-abertis-m-a-atlantia-investors/investors-holding-over-50-percent-of-abertis-back-atlantias-bid-italian-sources-idUKKBN1CN15R'|'2017-10-18T12:36:00.000+03:00'
'2b103707e48884966a65a41b5925421a05ad2d5d'|'Oil prices rise on tighter U.S. market, Middle East tensions'|'October 18, 2017 / 1:55 AM / in 8 minutes Oil prices rise on tighter US market, Middle East tensions Henning Gloystein 3 Min Read Crude oil storage tanks are seen from above at the Cushing oil hub, in Cushing, Oklahoma, March 24, 2016. REUTERS/Nick Oxford/File Photo SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices rose on Wednesday, lifted by a fall in U.S. crude inventories and   LCOc1, the international benchmark for oil prices, were at $58.27 at 0314 GMT, up 39 cents, or 0.7 percent from their last close - and a third above mid-year levels. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were at $52.13 per barrel, up 25 cents, or 0.5 percent, and almost a quarter above mid-June levels. Traders said that on charts for WTI a technical pattern known as a <20>Golden Cross<73> was approaching, in which the 50-day moving average price climbs higher than the 200-day moving average, which is widely seen as a bullish price indicator. Traders said that prices were pushed up by a   as well as concerns that fighting in Iraq and mounting tensions between the United States and Iran could affect supplies. U.S. crude inventories fell by 7.1 million barrels in the week to Oct. 13 to 461.4 million barrels, the American Petroleum Institute (API) said late on Tuesday. <20>API data from the U.S. overnight showed a big draw ... If $52.83 in WTI and $59.22 in Brent give way, then oil is stepping into a new and much higher range,<2C> said Greg McKenna, chief market strategist at futures brokerage AxiTrader. Official U.S. fuel inventory data is due later on Wednesday from the Energy Information Administration. Adding to a tightening U.S. market, tensions in the Middle East meant that a risk premium was being priced into oil markets. Iraqi government forces captured the major Kurdish-held oil city of Kirkuk earlier this week, responding to a Kurdish independence referendum, and there are concerns that fighting could disrupt supplies. <20>In the case of Kurdistan, the 500,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Kirkuk oil field cluster is at risk,<2C> U.S. bank Goldman Sachs said on Tuesday. The Iraq crisis adds to a looming dispute between the United States and Iran. U.S. President Donald Trump last week refused to certify Iran<61>s compliance over a nuclear deal, leaving Congress 60 days to decide further action against Tehran. During the previous round of sanctions against Iran, some 1 million bpd of oil was cut from global markets. Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Joseph Radford 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-oil/oil-prices-rise-on-tighter-u-s-market-middle-east-tensions-idUKKBN1CN05O'|'2017-10-18T04:54:00.000+03:00'
'5d34f4fd3b7ef1a34fb8908f5419b2355474a347'|'Delta says it did not play a role in Airbus-Bombardier deal'|'FILE PHOTO: Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Airlines at the 2016 International Air Transport Association (IATA) Annual General Meeting (AGM) and World Air Transport Summit in Dublin, Ireland, June 2, 2016. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne ATLANTA (Reuters) - Delta Air Lines<65> ( DAL.N ) chief executive on Wednesday said the carrier did not play a role in pushing an industry-changing deal between planemakers Airbus ( AIR.PA ) and Bombardier ( BBDb.TO ), as a regulatory spat between the United States and Canada threatened the future of a Bombardier plane program.Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian said that the spat over subsidy and dumping allegations pushed by Boeing Co ( BA.N ) against Bombardier<65>s C-Series jets would not affect possible future Delta orders of Boeing jets.Reporting by Alana Wise in Atlanta; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-delta-air-media-day-bombardier/delta-says-it-did-not-play-a-role-in-airbus-bombardier-deal-idINKBN1CN1ZI'|'2017-10-18T11:55:00.000+03:00'
'611a9b9adb6d242235e683039b5e7741698ea37f'|'Exclusive - COFCO delays $20 million port hub in southern Brazil'|'October 18, 2017 / 2:46 PM / in 8 minutes Exclusive - COFCO delays $20 million port hub in southern Brazil Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A general view shows the headquarters of China Oil and Foodstuffs Corporation (COFCO) in Beijing, China, November 3, 2016. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo SAO PAULO (Reuters) - A division of Chinese commodity trader COFCO has delayed completion of a $20 million (<28>15.1 million) port hub in southern Brazil, three sources told Reuters, as it reorganizes operations following the combination of its Nidera BV and Noble Agri businesses. The transshipment hub on the bank of the Sinos river, which is still under construction, is expected to move 850,000 tonnes of grains per year - from trucks to barges bound for Rio Grande for export, and receive imported wheat shipped through that port. COFCO, which did not reply to requests for comment, completed its takeover of Nidera this year. Reporting by Ana Mano; Additional reporting by Jake Spring in Brasilia; Editing by Brad Haynes and Susan Thomas 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-cofco-brazil/exclusive-cofco-delays-20-million-port-hub-in-southern-brazil-idUKKBN1CN250'|'2017-10-18T17:44:00.000+03:00'
'db1738e72898591c73ed419907a95d8032d0d4f8'|'Europe aviation agency advises suspending use of Kobe Steel products'|'PARIS, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Europe<70>s aviation regulator has advised aircraft manufacturers to suspend using parts from Kobe Steel until their legitimacy can be proved, following revelations about data cheating at the Japanese company.The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) said the concern was not serious enough at this stage to warrant an airworthiness directive setting out compulsory measures.However, EASA urged in a safety bulletin that planemakers review their supply chains and confirm how many Kobe Steel parts are being used, especially in critical structures and systems.<2E>Where alternative suppliers are available, it is recommended to suspend use of Kobe Steel products until the legitimacy of the affected parts can be determined,<2C> it said.The world<6C>s two largest planemakers, Airbus and Boeing, have already said they are conducting such a review. (Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/kobe-steel-scandal-easa/europe-aviation-agency-advises-suspending-use-of-kobe-steel-products-idINL8N1MT1MC'|'2017-10-18T06:19:00.000+03:00'
'd58eefab7578b0f2d752d9633f6f661df5dc4425'|'AIG UK underwrites M&A policy using Islamic principles'|'October 19, 2017 / 9:36 AM / Updated 20 minutes ago AIG UK underwrites M&A policy using Islamic principles Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The American International Group (AIG) office building is seen in the City of London on September 16, 2008. REUTERS/Andrew Winning (Reuters) - AIG UK said on Thursday it had underwritten its first sharia-compliant warranty and indemnity policy out of London<6F>s M&A insurance market, as the city looks to Islamic finance to help bring new business. Development of Islamic finance is accelerating in the UK ahead of the country<72>s exit from the European Union, with plans for Britain to issue a second Islamic bond in 2019. AIG UK, part of American International Group Inc ( AIG.N ), said the buyer of the 5 million pounds policy was a Gulf-based financial institution which acquired an industrial property in the North of England. The policy was placed by broker Risk Capital Advisors. AIG developed the Islamic insurance policy through a partnership with managing general agent Cobalt Underwriting, having closed a similar deal last month for a client based in the Middle East. Islamic insurance, or takaful, follows religious principles such as bans on gambling and outright speculation, with interest-bearing products deemed off-limits. There are more than 20 firms in Britain that offer sharia-compliant financial products, the most of any other Western country. Reporting by Bernardo Vizcaino; Editing by Jacqueline Wong 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-islamic-finance-aig/aig-uk-underwrites-ma-policy-using-islamic-principles-idUKKBN1CO16H'|'2017-10-19T12:35:00.000+03:00'
'd93f1407b2fa99dc230f06e8949e1112d66e58f3'|'UPDATE 1-EU mergers and takeovers (Oct 19)'|'(Updates with more approvals)BRUSSELS, Oct 19 (Reuters) - The following are mergers under review by the European Commission and a brief guide to the EU merger process:APPROVALS AND WITHDRAWALS -- Private equity firm Equistone Partners Europe SAS to acquire French furniture disbributor Groupe Bruneau (approved Oct. 19)-- French energy company Engie and Caisse des Depots et Consignations to acquire joint control of a wind power producer (approved Oct. 18)-- German insurer Allianz to acquire UK financial services group Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society Ltd<74>s general insurance businesses (approved Oct. 18)-- French car parts maker Valeo to acquire German clutch maker FTE Automotive(approved Oct. 13)NEW LISTINGS -- UK oil company BP and holding company Bridas Corp to acquire oil refiner Axion Energy Holding (notified Oct. 19/deadline Nov. 27/simplified)-- U.S. private equity firms Madison Dearborn Partners and HPS Investment Partners to jointly acquire private holding company Ardonagh Group, which owns insurance broker Towergate Insurance Ltd, and Nevada Investment Holdings 2 Ltd (notified Oct. 18/deadline Nov. 24/simplified)-- Private equity firms CVC and Blackstone to jointly acquire online payuments processing provider Paysafe Group (notified Oct. 16/deadline Nov. 22)EXTENSIONS AND OTHER CHANGES -- Luxembourg-based steelmaker ArcelorMittal to acquire Italian steel plant (notified Sept. 21/deadline eztended to Nov. 13 from Oct. 26 after ArcelorMittal offered concessions)-- Medical device maker Avantor, which is controlled by private equity firm New Mountain Capital, to acquire laboratory equipment distributor VWR (notified Oct. 11/deadline Nov. 17/withdrawn Oct. 9/refiled Oct. 11)FIRST-STAGE REVIEWS BY DEADLINE OCT 25 -- Jacobs Engineering Group to acquire technical consulting services provider CH2M Hill Companies (notified Sept. 20/deadline Oct. 25/simplified)OCT 27 -- German chemicals company Evonik and Dutch peer DSM to set up a joint venture (notified Sept. 22/deadline Oct. 27/simplified)OCT 30 -- British company CRH plc to acquire XI (RMAT) Holdings GmbH, the German holding company of limestone producer Fels-Werke GmbH which is part of Xella International (notified Sept. 25/deadline Oct. 30)NOV 3 Private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners to acquire legal services provider CPA Global Group (notified Sept. 27/deadline Nov. 3/simplified)NOV 7 -- Special purpose vehicle ShaMrock Wind to acquire 60 percent of Irish wind farm operator Evalair, which is jointly owned by Luricawne, Fixarra and Luricawne (notified Sept. 29/deadline Nov. 7/simplified)NOV 8 -- Private equity firms Carlyle Group, CVC and China Investment Corp to acquire joint control of French energy company Engie<69>s holding company for oil and gas exploration and production business (notified Oct. 2/deadline Nov. 8/simplified)-- Private equity-backed Neptune Oil & Gas to acquire majority stake in French utility Engie<69>s exploration and production business (notified Oct.2/deadline Nov.8/simplified)NOV 10 -- German auto components supplier Bosch and Chinese counterpart Hasco to acquire electric power steering products maker ASCN (notified Oct. 4/deadline Nov. 10/simplified)NOV 14 -- French insurer Axa and Dutch property developer Unibail-Rodamco to jointly acquire a shopping centre in Leipzig, Germany (notified Oct. 6/deadline Nov. 14)NOV 15 -- France<63>s CNP Assurances, Australian investment bank Macquarie and French insurer Predica, which is a unit of French bank Credit Agricole, to acquire joint control of French petroleum product storage company Pisto (notified Oct. 9/deadline Nov. 15/simplified)-- China<6E>s Legend Holdings to acquire 90 percent of Banque Internationale a Luxembourg (BIL) from Qatari investment vehicle Precision Capital (notified Oct. 9/deadline Nov. 15/simplified)Nov 16-- Public pension fund provider ATP and Canadian teachers<72> pension fund OTPP to jointly acquire Danish airport operator Copenhagen airports (notified Oct. 10/deadline Nov. 16/simplified)-- W
'081eba9d8753fc695ed9a92f3bdd6171834b2cfb'|'M&C Hotels directors defend bid in face of investor unrest'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Board directors at Millennium & Copthorne Hotels (M&C) PLC ( MLC.L ) defended their decision to back a takeover offer valuing the firm at 1.8 billion-pounds ($2.4 billion) from the London-listed company<6E>s majority shareholder, after other investors criticized the deal.The independent non-executive directors of the FTSE 250 hotelier said on Thursday that they had <20>taken into account both the potential growth and the risks inherent in the continued execution of M&C&rsquo;s strategy, as well as the underlying assets of M&C&rdquo; when deciding to back the bid from City Developments Limited (CDL).They also said they had rejected two previous proposals from CDL <20> the first pitched at 510 pence a share <20> before the Singaporean group offered 552.5 pence in cash, which was announced to the stock market on Oct. 9.The statement comes after minority shareholders in M&C, including Fidelity International, criticized the bid from CDL, which is part of billionaire Kwek Leng Beng<6E>s Hong Leong Group, as being too low, arguing it does not account for the value of the hotelier<65>s property assets. M&C has 137 hotels in 27 countries, including sites in London and New York.The independent directors, in a joint statement with CDL, said that historically the stock market has not tended to focus on M&C<>s underlying property assets when valuing the company.<2E>Whilst an assessment of the underlying assets of M&C is a relevant reference point, it is important to note that M&C has traded, and continues to be valued by the market, primarily on an earnings basis,<2C> the independent directors said. <20>It is not M&C&rsquo;s strategy to realize value through the sale or repurpose of its assets.<2E>CDL has previously said that it does not intend to sell off any of M&C&rsquo;s London or New York hotels if the takeover is successful and that it plans to continue running the company as a hotel owner and operator.The directors confirmed on Thursday that this constituted a so-called post-offer intention statement under Britain<69>s Takeover Code.While such statements are not binding, the Code stipulates that such statements must be accurate and made on reasonable grounds.CDL already owns 65.2 percent of M&C and its bid comes at a 21.4 percent premium to the hotelier<65>s share price before the takeover proposal was made public.The offer would see the Singaporean group acquire the 34.8 percent of M&C that it does not already own for 624.3 million pounds and values the hotelier in its entirety at about 1.8 billion pounds.Reporting by Ben Martin; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-mill-cop-hotels-m-a/mc-hotels-directors-defend-bid-in-face-of-investor-unrest-idINKBN1CO2UP'|'2017-10-19T17:17:00.000+03:00'
'8f1b0d9f9e1633d9fa260c64acf1f6410d464e3e'|'Cryptocurrency hedge funds top 100 for first time'|'Bitcoins are seen in this illustration picture taken September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration LONDON (Reuters) - Hedge funds that trade cryptocurrencies reached over 100 for the first time, according to new data from fintech research house Autonomous NEXT, of which more than three-quarters launched in 2017.A rise from 55 funds at Aug. 29 to 110 funds at Oct. 18 comes as investors pile into the high-performing cryptocurrency market, which has seen a tenfold increase in its value so far this year. A booming Bitcoin rallied to record highs above $5,000 in recent days BTC=BTSP .Of the 110 funds, 84 were launched in 2017, 11 in 2016 and the remainder previously, according to the data.Assets across the 110 funds rose to $2.2 billion.Reporting by Maiya Keidan and Jemima Kelly; Editing by Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-hedgefunds-bitcoin/cryptocurrency-hedge-funds-top-100-for-first-time-idINKBN1CN2H6'|'2017-10-18T14:30:00.000+03:00'
'cfd1b16ab6699ece2228251eb876fe670a19911f'|'China''s third quarter economic growth slows as expected, property measures bite'|'October 18, 2017 / 11:12 PM / Updated 2 hours ago China''s central bank warns of ''Minsky moment'' as economy powers ahead Kevin Yao , Elias Glenn 6 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s central bank chief on Thursday issued a stark warning about asset bubbles in the world<6C>s second-largest economy, which looks set to clock its first acceleration in annual growth since 2010, driven by public spending and record bank lending. Speaking on the sidelines of the closely-watched, twice-a-decade Communist Party Congress, People<6C>s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan spoke of the risks of a <20>Minsky moment<6E> in the economy, referring to a sudden collapse in asset prices after long periods of growth, sparked by debt or currency pressures. Zhou<6F>s comments refer to a theory on prices derived by American economist Hyman Minsky and follow official data that showed China<6E>s economic growth slowed in the third quarter from a year earlier, as expected, but remained on track to post the first full-year pickup in seven years. Coming on the 30th anniversary of the Black Monday Wall Street crash, the comments from the governor, who is likely to retire soon, echo concerns expressed in the past by international economic bodies about relative levels of corporate and household debt in the economy. But while hedge funds sometimes refer to Minsky in warnings about a China credit bubble threatening the global economy, China has so far proven doomsayers wrong. <20>I would doubt they really think China is in for a Minsky Moment, but maybe he is tying to impress (other leaders in Beijing) on the need to start reining in credit growth,<2C> said Louis Kuijs, head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics in Hong Kong. <20>It<49>s not really up to (the central bank)... We would have to look at what the leadership says about these things.<2E> Recent efforts to curb financial risks and cool the property market are beginning to weigh. While the economy grew a solid 6.8 percent from the previous year in the third quarter as expected, growth in new construction slowed and property sales dropped for the first time in more than two-and-half years in September. In all, growth was still on track to comfortably beat the government<6E>s target of around 6.5 percent for this year and 2016<31>s rate of 6.7 percent, which was a 26-year low. <20>URGENT<4E> REFORM NEEDED China September industrial output, retail sales beat expectations, investment growth slows Analysts and global economic bodies such as the International Monetary Fund warn Beijing is stimulating credit too heavily in its aim to meet fixed growth targets. Rating agencies estimate the overall debt burden at almost three times economic output. Data on Saturday showed Chinese banks extended more loans than expected in September, backed by demand from home buyers and companies. While household loans accounted for a smaller percentage of total new loans, their value jumped more than 10 percent to 734.9 billion yuan last month from August, according to Reuters calculations. <20>China<6E>s high debt burden is an area where reform is most urgently needed but progress has been the slowest,<2C> said Chi Lo, senior economist at BNP Paribas Asset Management. There are, however, signs that policymakers are making needed changes in other parts of the economy. FILE PHOTO: Workers survey the construction site of the terminal for the Beijing New Airport in Beijing''s southern Daxing District, China October 10, 2016. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo Beijing<6E>s push to consolidate and restructure its industrial sector has paid dividends as factory output beat expectations, while strong fiscal spending and sustained public investment helped boost domestic demand. The economy slowed slightly from 6.9 percent in the second quarter, however, and analysts say it could ease further due to an expected softening in property investment and construction as more cities try to cool housing prices, while a government campaign against riskier lending push
'a3fd44528bfc3132350bf395fbb34d0cc5296642'|'StanChart closed accounts linked to S.Africa''s Gupta family in 2014'|'LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Standard Chartered closed some bank accounts linked to the Gupta family in South Africa in 2014, a spokeswoman for the bank said on Thursday.<2E>We are not able to comment on the details of client transactions, but can confirm that after an internal investigation, accounts were closed by us by early in 2014,<2C> the spokeswoman said by email.The Gupta family, a trio of Indian-born businessmen, are under scrutiny for their close ties to South African President Jacob Zuma.Britain<69>s Financial Conduct Authority separately said it is in contact with StanChart and HSBC following reports in British newspapers that Britain<69>s finance minister has asked regulators to investigate the lenders<72> possible ties to the Gupta family and Zuma.<2E>The FCA is already in contact with both banks named and will consider carefully further responses received,<2C> the regulator said.The FBI in the U.S. is also investigating the matter .HSBC declined to comment. (Reporting By Lawrence White; Editing by Rachel Armstrong)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/safrica-politics-banks/stanchart-closed-accounts-linked-to-s-africas-gupta-family-in-2014-idINL9N1HY00V'|'2017-10-19T06:46:00.000+03:00'
'3dd216d6075de11dd5f8cec9efac6fddc26c6c7c'|'BAE to bid with Cammell-Laird to build five warships'|'October 18, 2017 / 10:29 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago BAE to bid with Cammell-Laird to build five warships Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A BAE systems sign is seen outside the company''s Warton site near Preston, northern England, October 1, 2009. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo (Reuters) - Britain<69>s biggest defence contractor BAE Systems Plc ( BAES.L ) will make a joint bid with Liverpool-based shipbuilder Cammell-Laird to manufacture five warships for the British government, BAE said on Wednesday. Cammell-Laird will be the prime contractor to build and assemble the Type 31e vessels, while BAE would lend its expertise to ensure delivery on time and budget, the statement added. While the statement did not disclose financial details, a Financial Times report suggested the contract is worth about 1.25 billion pounds. The report said a consortium led by Babcock International ( BAB.L ) was also likely to compete for the contract. Last week, BAE said it would cut around 2,000 jobs to tackle dwindling orders for the Typhoon fighter jet and the loss of revenue from Cold-War era aircraft nearing retirement. Reporting by Kanishka Singh, Editing by Rosalba O''Brien 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bae-systems-ship/bae-to-bid-with-cammell-laird-to-build-five-warships-idUKKBN1CN36X'|'2017-10-19T01:28:00.000+03:00'
'd5511f224caa0146f92642e2dae980ba7fcc444e'|'China steel output slips from record as smog war bites; further drop seen'|'October 19, 2017 / 5:59 AM / in 8 minutes China steel output slips from record as smog war bites; further drop seen Ruby Lian , Manolo Serapio Jr 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A worker observes melted steel in an electric arc furnace in a steel factory of Store Steel in Store, Slovenia November 17, 2016. REUTERS/Srdjan Zivulovic/File Photo SHANGHAI/MANILA (Reuters) - China<6E>s steel output dropped in September from a record high the previous month as mills in the world<6C>s top producer cut production in line with Beijing<6E>s campaign for clearer skies, pointing to further drops as winter curbs set in. Crude steel output hit 71.83 million tonnes in September, the lowest since February and down from 74.59 million tonnes in August, National Bureau of Statistics data showed on Thursday. September<65>s average daily output was 2.39 million tonnes, down 0.8 percent from August, according to Reuters<72> calculations. Before slipping last month, Chinese mills had mostly been churning out steel at a record rate from March to August amid strong domestic demand, fatter profit margins and an environmental crackdown that shut out some other producers. Mills in the northern part of China are expected to cut output during the winter season - four months from mid-November - on government orders to fight smog in part by cutting pollution from industrial plants. Some analysts have estimated at least 30 million tonnes of China<6E>s steel output may be lost during the four-month period, or nearly 4 percent of last year<61>s production. But that number could be bigger, with mills in several cities already slashing output as early as this month, including those in the top steelmaking city of Tangshan. <20>Definitely we will see production decrease in coming months. Several mills have started to cut production already,<2C> said CRU consultant Richard Lu. <20>Small mills will be heavily impacted but larger mills, particularly the government-backed ones, can do better.<2E> Xia Junyan, investment manager at Hangzhou CIEC Trading Co in Shanghai, estimates crude steel output will drop as much as 40 million tonnes between November and March. Chinese mills ramped up output earlier this year as higher prices, boosted by the government<6E>s supply-side reforms and infrastructure push, boosted profit margins particularly for construction steel products like rebar. Rebar futures in China SRBcv1 have risen 41 percent this year. That meant output in September was still 5.3 percent higher than in the same month a year ago. Production for the first three quarters of the year came in at 638.73 million tonnes, up 6.3 percent. Rebar prices sank nearly 4 percent on Thursday as worries over demand, which typically slows in winter, surfaced. <20>We think when supply-demand fundamentals take hold, margins will narrow and costs will go down and we forecast prices will follow,<2C> said CRU<52>s Lu. Reporting by Ruby Lian in SHANGHAI and Manolo Serapio Jr. in MANILA; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Kenneth Maxwell 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-economy-output-steel/china-steel-output-slips-from-record-as-smog-war-bites-further-drop-seen-idUKKBN1CO0J2'|'2017-10-19T08:57:00.000+03:00'
'2dd5cac62dc98d0333e6355331cfc8604a1fb1a9'|'Australia''s competition watchdog to probe Accor buyout of Mantra'|'October 18, 2017 / 6:50 AM / in 14 hours Australia''s competition watchdog to review Accor''s planned buyout of Mantra Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A sign bearing the logo of the Mantra Group Ltd is displayed on the wall of a hotel in central Sydney, Australia, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/David Gray SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia<69>s competition regulator said on Wednesday it will review French hotelier Accor SA<53>s ( ACCP.PA ) planned $920 million buyout of Australian hotel operator Mantra Group Ltd ( MTR.AX ). The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said it is monitoring the transaction and a <20>public review will be commenced in due course once certain information is provided by Accor and Mantra<72>. The deal, a takeover of Australia<69>s second-largest hotelier by its bigger rival, would create the biggest hotel group in the country, with about 50,000 rooms and roughly 11 percent of the market, according to IBISWorld statistics. The buyout requires the approval of the ACCC, as well as approval from Australia<69>s Foreign Investment Review Board. Analysts expect a green light as the market is quite fragmented and particularly if regulators regard newer rivals such as Airbnb as competitors in the sector. But some doubt is priced in to the market and there are concerns that divestments could be required in towns where the two hoteliers are the only players.. The ACCC announcement was made after market hours on Wednesday. Mantra shares had closed flat at A$3.89 below the offer price of A$3.96 per share. The broader S&P/ASX 200 index was also flat, while Accor shares were flat in early trade in Paris. Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mantra-group-m-a-accor/australias-competition-watchdog-to-probe-accor-buyout-of-mantra-idUSKBN1CN0O2'|'2017-10-18T09:44:00.000+03:00'
'c6afae9e0fe69e164a418f8b4267a7103b6b42c6'|'British builder Bellway expects higher prices and sales in 2018'|'October 17, 2017 / 7:07 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago British builder Bellway expects higher prices and sales in 2018 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A Bellway sign is seen at a housing construction site in London, Britain, February 5, 2017. Picture taken February 5, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville (Reuters) - British housebuilder Bellway ( BWY.L ) said it expects rising sales and higher prices in 2018 after reporting a 12.6 percent jump in full-year profit. Bellway, which also raised its proposed total dividend to 122 pence per share, said its order book stood at 1.36 billion pounds ($1.80 billion) as of Oct. 1, an increase of 17.4 percent. <20>The pricing environment remained positive, with modest low, single-digit house price inflation benefiting the average selling price on most sites across the country,<2C> the company said in a statement on Tuesday. Bellway said it expects the overall average selling price to rise to around 280,000 pounds in the current financial year. The average selling price in 2017 was 260,354 pounds. The company said it also expects the number of houses it sells to rise 5 percent this year. Bellway said it completed a record number of 9,644 homes in the year ended July 31, 10.6 percent higher than in 2016. Full-year profit before tax rose to 560.7 million pounds, up from 497.9 million pounds a year earlier. ($1 = 0.7547   Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru, editing by Louise Heavens 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bellway-results/british-builder-bellway-expects-higher-prices-and-sales-in-2018-idUKKBN1CM0LO'|'2017-10-17T10:05:00.000+03:00'
'5ef24f6b006d26a7cd74f4ba562242a5166fb351'|'Two investors join rebellion against $2.4 billion M&C hotels takeover'|'October 18, 2017 / 7:54 PM / in 17 minutes Two investors join rebellion against $2.4 billion M&C hotels takeover 3 Min Read A general view of the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair in central London, December 8, 2006. REUTERS/Toby Melville LONDON (Reuters) - Two fund management firms have joined an investor revolt against the planned 1.8 billion pound takeover of Britain<69>s Millennium & Copthorne Hotels (M&C) ( MLC.L ) by City Developments Limited (CDL) ( CTDM.SI ), its majority shareholder. International Value Advisers (IVA) and MSD Partners, which own 7 percent and 1.9 percent respectively of London-listed M&C, have sent a letter to the hotel company<6E>s independent directors to criticise them for supporting the 552.5 pence per share takeover proposal from Singapore<72>s CDL, which is part of billionaire Kwek Leng Beng<6E>s Hong Leong Group. They join Aberdeen Standard Investments and Fidelity International, two other minority shareholders reportedly unhappy with the terms of the deal. CDL, which already owns 65.2 percent of the hotelier, and the independent directors announced the possible deal on Oct. 9, when the directors said they unanimously intended to recommend the bid. <20>If the CDL proposal is implemented, M&C shareholders would, under your stewardship and the advice of Credit Suisse, be asked to approve massive value destruction of a company with a premium London Stock Exchange listing,<2C> said the Oct. 17 letter signed by Charles de Vaulx of IVA and Jonathan Esfandi of MSD and reviewed by Reuters. <20>This is not acceptable.<2E> Swiss bank Credit Suisse ( CSGN.S ) is corporate broker and adviser to M&C and advised the independent directors. M&C has 130 hotels across the world including in London and New York. CDL is aiming to buy the 34.8 percent of the hotelier it does not own for 624.3 million pounds, valuing the company as a whole at about 1.8 billion pounds. The CDL proposal implies a 32.5 percent discount to M&C<>s 820 pence per share balance sheet net asset value at the end of June, according to the letter. <20>Furthermore, we believe the current value of the assets, in existing use, is significantly higher than book value, as the figure used for the vast majority of the hotels is at 2003 valuations,<2C> the letter said. IVA and MSD said in the letter they <20>will, on advice, be exploring all potential options available to us in order to protect our interests.<2E> They added a valuation of the hotelier<65>s property portfolio should be carried out to help minority investors assess the CDL proposal. M&C could not be reached for comment out of regular business hours. Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mill-cop-hotels-m-a-city-development/two-investors-join-rebellion-against-2-4-billion-mc-hotels-takeover-idUKKBN1CN2VO'|'2017-10-18T23:04:00.000+03:00'
'cb2c5ca31d7fad49bfad11cb7430203108889138'|'Brazilian antitrust official says AT&T, Time Warner must keep operations separate'|' 12 PM / Updated 4 minutes ago Brazilian antitrust official says AT&T, Time Warner must keep operations separate   The AT&T logo is pictured during the Forbes Forum 2017 in Mexico City, Mexico, September 18, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido BRASILIA (Reuters) - A key official on Brazil<69>s antitrust watchdog Cade voted on Wednesday to approve AT&T Inc<6E>s ( T.N ) acquisition of Time Warner Inc ( TWX.N ) as long as both companies continued to run their Brazilian operations separately. Councillor Gilvandro Ara<72>jo, who is leading the antitrust analysis of the merger in Brazil, said both companies would have to commit to not exchanging <20>sensitive information<6F> and allow external auditors to verify the separation of their activities in the South American country. Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Writing by Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Paul Simao 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-time-warner-m-a-at-t-antitrust/brazilian-antitrust-official-says-att-time-warner-must-keep-operations-separate-idUSKBN1CN2F2'|'2017-10-18T19:06:00.000+03:00'
'e8d96465bbec7685691f87a7f55fc9387ac04c2e'|'Online micro-lender Qudian'' IPO prices at $24 per ADS: sources'|'(Reuters) - Chinese online micro-credit provider Qudian Inc ( QD.N ) said it raised about $900 million in an IPO that priced above expectations, underscoring robust U.S. investor demand for fast-growing Chinese companies.The offering from Qudian represents the biggest-ever U.S. listing by a Chinese financial technology firm. It is also the most high-profile company to take part in a resurgence of U.S. listings by Asian firms this year.Qudian, which is backed by Alibaba Group ( BABA.N ) affiliate Ant Financial and became profitable last year, operates a website that allows college students and young white-collar workers to buy laptops, smartphones and other consumer electronics in monthly installments.Its American depositary shares were priced at $24 each, above the marketed range of $19-$22, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. Qudian<61>s shares will make their market debut on the New York Stock Exchange later on Wednesday.At the IPO price, Qudian would have a market value of about $7.9 billion.Qudian sold 35.63 million new shares, while shareholders including Kunlun Group ( 300418.SZ ) and board directors Li Du and Yi Cao sold 1.88 million existing shares.The company said it plans to use the proceeds for marketing campaigns to sign up more borrowers, as well as on potential strategic acquisitions and general corporate purposes.Founded over three years ago, the company provided $5.6 billion of credit in the first half of 2017 to 7 million active borrowers, according to its IPO prospectus.Qudian<61>s net income jumped almost eight times to 973.7 million yuan ($144 million) in the six months ended June 30, while revenue rose near five-fold to 1.83 billion yuan.It posted losses of 233.2 million yuan in 2015 and 40.8 million when it was launched in 2014.U.S. exchanges are set to record their busiest year for IPOs from Asian firms since 2010 and may sustain the pace in 2018, as startups from Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam join a flurry of Chinese firms that have already listed in the country.Five companies, including Singaporean online games maker Sea Ltd, China<6E>s oldest peer-to-peer (P2P) lender Ppdai Group and search company Sogou Inc, are currently pitching their plans for initial public offerings to investors, adding to the 10 Chinese firms that have listed so far this year in the United States.Citigroup, China International Capital Corp Ltd, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and UBS worked as joint bookrunners on the Qudian IPO.Reporting by Roopal Verma, Nikhil Subba and Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru and Elzio Barreto in Hong Kong; Writing by Elzio Barreto; Editing by Ankur Banerjee and Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-qudian-ipo-pricing/online-micro-lender-qudian-ipo-prices-at-24-per-ads-sources-idINKBN1CM3BD'|'2017-10-17T21:29:00.000+03:00'
'23da944c03af07a902352f4bfc4fee56c0f6cc24'|'TSMC''s third-quarter net profit falls 7 percent on supply constraints, beats estimates'|'October 19, 2017 / 8:18 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago TSMC''s third-quarter net profit falls 7 percent on supply constraints, beats estimates Jess Macy Yu 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Flags of Taiwan and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) are displayed next to its headquarters in Hsinchu, Taiwan October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Eason Lam/File Photo TAIPEI (Reuters) - Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) ( 2330.TW ) on Thursday said supply-chain inventory constraints pulled down net profit in the third quarter, albeit by a lesser degree than analysts had estimated. The world<6C>s largest contract chipmaker also forecast revenue growth of about 10 percent in the fourth quarter when sales begin for Apple<6C>s iPhone X, which is widely expected to carry TSMC-made chips. Profit fell 7.1 percent to T$89.93 billion ($2.98 billion), in July-September, versus the T$88.19 billion average of 21 analyst estimates in a Thomson Reuters poll. Revenue rose 1.5 percent to $8.32 billion, slightly above a forecast issued in July. It put fourth-quarter revenue at $9.1 billion to $9.2 billion. <20>Even though demand was slightly dampened by supply chain inventory reduction, our customers<72> third-quarter growth was largely healthy,<2C> said co-Chief Executive Officer Mark Liu. Apple<6C>s recently launched iPhone 8 is proving less popular than predecessors and industry analysts are now awaiting the iPhone X shipping from Nov. 3. TSMC raised this year<61>s capital spending forecast by 8 percent to $10.8 billion, mainly to accelerate capacity of 7nm chip manufacturing technology. It expects 2017 revenue growth close to the high end of its 5 to 10 percent target. Operating margin was 38.9 percent in the third quarter and will likely be 37 to 39 percent in the fourth, TSMC said. CHINA COMPETITION TSMC acknowledged increasing competition from mainland China but said it was confident of meeting targets. <20>In terms of a lot of fabs (fabrication plants) in mainland China, we don<6F>t like it but we are very competitive. We<57>ll continue to compete of course and maintain our market share,<2C> co-Chief Executive C.C. Wei said. Chipmakers are riding a boom in demand for chips that power smartphones and computer servers, driving sharp gains in shares. TSMC<4D>s stock has jumped 68 percent this year, giving the firm a market value of T$6.16 trillion. The chipmaker also said it expects global semiconductor growth of 16 percent in 2017. The results come just days before TSMC celebrates its 30th anniversary and about a week before iPhone X pre-orders begin. They are also the first since Chairman Morris Chang - widely regarded as the father of Taiwan<61>s chip industry - said he would retire in June. He will be succeeded by Liu, leaving Wei as sole CEO. Following his announcement in early October, Chang told Reuters that TSMC would increase capital spending by 5 to 10 percent over the next five years. Shares of TSMC closed up 1.5 percent ahead of the earnings announcement. Reporting by Jess Macy Yu; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Christopher Cushing 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tsmc-results/tsmcs-third-quarter-net-profit-falls-7-percent-on-supply-constraints-beats-estimates-idUKKBN1CO0Y0'|'2017-10-19T11:17:00.000+03:00'
'9e2e5ea6078b4326876e536cd87439aa62de7fb8'|'BRIEF-TechnipFMC to buy Plexus<75> exploration wellhead business'|'Oct 19 (Reuters) - Technipfmc Plc:* To acquire Plexus<75>s Wellhead exploration equipment and services business* Business will be integrated into the TechnipFMC Surface Technologies segment and will include the transfer of key personnel from Plexus.* Says deal will enable TechnipFMC to be a leading provider of products and services to the global jack up exploration drilling market'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/brief-technipfmc-to-buy-plexus-explorati/brief-technipfmc-to-buy-plexus-exploration-wellhead-business-idINASM000F2H'|'2017-10-19T04:41:00.000+03:00'
'1bb6197b0739a59df9e24f5310677fe63464defd'|'U.S. jobless claims hit more than 44-year low'|'Job seekers apply for the 300 available positions at a new Target retail store in San Francisco, California August 9, 2012. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits dropped to its lowest level in more than 44 years last week, pointing to a rebound in job growth after a hurricane-related decline in employment in September.The labor market outlook was also bolstered by another report on Thursday showing a measure of factory employment in the mid-Atlantic region rising to a record high in October. The signs of labor market strength could cement expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in December.Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 22,000 to a seasonally adjusted 222,000 for the week ended Oct. 14, the lowest level since March 1973, the Labor Department said.But the decrease in claims, which was the largest since April, was probably exaggerated by the Columbus Day holiday on Monday.Claims are declining as the effects of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma wash out of the data. The hurricanes, which lashed Texas and Florida, boosted claims to 298,000 in early September.A Labor Department official said claims for the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico continued to be impacted by Irma and Hurricane Maria, which destroyed infrastructure. As a result the Labor Department continued to estimate claims for the islands.Nonfarm payrolls dropped by 33,000 jobs in September as Hurricanes Irma and Harvey left more than 100,000 restaurant workers temporarily unemployed. The Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico are not included in nonfarm payrolls.Economists had forecast claims falling to 240,000 in the latest week. The dollar pared losses against a basket of currencies after the data, while prices for U.S. Treasuries were unchanged.LABOR MARKET TIGHTENING Last week marked the 137th consecutive week that claims remained below the 300,000 threshold, which is associated with a strong labor market.That is the longest such stretch since 1970, when the labor market was smaller. The labor market is near full employment, with the jobless rate at a more than 16-1/2-year low of 4.2 percent.The four-week moving average of initial claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, fell 9,500 to 248,250 last week.The claims data covered the survey week for October nonfarm payrolls. The four-week average of claims fell 20,500 between the September and October survey periods, supporting views of a rebound in job growth this month.In a separate report on Thursday, the Philadelphia Fed said its measure of factory employment in the mid-Atlantic region soared 24 points to a record high reading of 30.6 in October.The average workweek index also increased 8 points to a reading of 19.4. It said no firms reported decreases in employment this month. The robust labor market readings helped to lift the Philadelphia Fed<65>s current manufacturing activity index four points to a five-month high of 27.9 in October, offsetting declines in new orders and shipments measures.The claims report also showed the number of people still receiving benefits after an initial week of aid decreased 16,000 to 1.89 million in the week ended Oct. 7, the lowest level since December 1973.The so-called continuing claims have now been below the 2 million mark for 27 straight weeks, pointing to diminishing labor market slack. The four-week moving average ofcontinuing claims dropped 22,750 to 1.91 million, the lowest level since January 1974. That was the 25th consecutive week that this measure remained below the 2 million market.Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-economy/u-s-jobless-claims-hit-more-than-44-year-low-idINKBN1CO1YL'|'2017-10-19T16:30:00.000+03:00'
'53dc40d50e3643264d67100c72fb2b7c3899667e'|'BHP''s chairman says speculation of a set tenure for CEO is false'|'October 19, 2017 / 2:25 PM / Updated 28 minutes ago BHP presents united front against activist Elliott Barbara Lewis , Zandi Shabalala 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - BHP Billiton Chief Executive Andrew Mackenzie is silhouetted against a screen projecting the company''s logo at a round table meeting with journalists in Tokyo, Japan June 5, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File photo LONDON (Reuters) - The new chairman of BHP ( BLT.L ) ( BHP.AX ), the world<6C>s biggest miner, threw his weight behind his CEO on Thursday after attacks from activist investor Elliott Advisers prompted speculation that the end of Andrew Mackenzie<69>s tenure was imminent. Pressure has mounted on BHP and its chief executive since Elliott went public in April with its criticisms of the miner<65>s strategy. <20>Any suggestion there is a set timeline around Andrew<65>s tenure is simply false and without merit,<2C> Chairman Ken MacKenzie told reporters after his first AGM since taking office at the start of September. Asked by a shareholder whether it was Elliott or the BHP board that was running the company, the chairman replied that <20>MacKenzie and Mackenzie<69> were running BHP, though he did not specify the order of the pair who share the same names but with slightly different spelling. At least five representatives from Elliott Advisors, which holds 5 percent of BHP, attended the London meeting but did not ask questions from the floor. Elliott declined to comment on Thursday, though it has welcomed the new chairman<61>s appointment. Chairman MacKenzie said he had met more than 100 shareholders across eight countries, which he said gave him confidence, though he added that there are areas where the company needs to sharpen its focus. He reiterated that work is in progress to sell shale assets, which is one of Elliott<74>s main demands, and that further action would take place to refresh the board of directors. SKILLS REVIEW <20>We recognise that the board needs to continue to evolve to take into account the rapidly changing environment in which we operate. So we will undertake a review of the board<72>s skills and experience requirements during this financial year,<2C> he said. BHP<48>s London share price has risen nearly 7 percent since the start of the year, about half as much as that of its main rival Rio Tinto. ( RIO.L )( RIO.AX ) Both the chairman and the CEO said they were striving to maximise shareholder value and that meant that shale assets would be sold only at the right price. <20>We will be both urgent and patient as we examine all the options,<2C> CEO Mackenzie said. <20>We have to get the timing right to maximise shareholder value.<2E> BHP<48>s big rival Rio Tinto suffered a setback this week when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the company and two of its former executives with inflating the value of coal assets in Mozambique and concealing critical information. The company said it would defend itself vigorously against the allegations. Chris LaFemina, a mining specialist at Jefferies bank, said he had preferred Rio over BHP for the past two years. <20>While our preference has not changed, BHP<48>s competitive position has modestly improved,<2C> he said in a note. <20>New chairman Ken MacKenzie seems willing to push for significant strategic changes at BHP ... after years of unacceptable underperformance of its share price versus Rio<69>s.<2E> Editing by Elaine Hardcastle and David Goodman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bhp-billiton-ceo/bhps-chairman-says-speculation-of-a-set-tenure-for-ceo-is-false-idUKKBN1CO247'|'2017-10-19T17:24:00.000+03:00'
'00d889d0be5d2ec533fd4a3ee892af272513017c'|'Rank Group revenue buoyed by online'|'October 19, 2017 / 6:50 AM / in 6 hours Rank Group revenue buoyed by online Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - British casino operator Rank Group Plc ( RNK.L ) on Thursday said comparable group revenue for the 16 weeks to Oct. 15 rose 2 percent on strong online growth. The operator of Grosvenor casinos and Mecca bingo hall said digital channel revenue across these two businesses rose by 34 percent and 11 percent, respectively. Expectations for the full year remain unchanged, Rank said. Reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-rank-group-gb-outlook/rank-group-revenue-buoyed-by-online-idUKKBN1CO0OD'|'2017-10-19T09:49:00.000+03:00'
'ef2881f4c9894fa54a66e31a46b18dde162fe4cb'|'Goldman Sachs beats Wall Street as bond trading falls less than expected'|'Reuters TV United States October 17, 2017 / 11:54 AM / in 21 minutes Goldman Sachs beats Wall Street as bond trading falls less than expected Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of Dow Jones Industrial Average stock market index listed company Goldman Sachs (GS) is seen on the clothing of a trader working at the Goldman Sachs stall on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, United States April 16, 2012. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( GS.N ) beat Wall Street estimates, as bond trading fell less than expected, and investment banking and investing and lending helped buoy results. The bank<6E>s profit declined 3 percent but its earnings per share handsomely beat analysts<74> estimates. Net income applicable to common shareholders was $2.04 billion, or $5.02 per share, for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with $2.10 billion, or $4.88 per share a year ago. Analysts on average had expected earnings of $4.17 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. All eyes were on its bond trading unit, which reported a 26 percent revenue decline. Revenue from trading bonds, currencies and commodities (FICC) fell to $1.45 billion. bit.ly/2gfWdgC The drop was in line with rivals Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ), which reported a 20 percent fall, and JPMorgan Chase & Co<43>s ( JPM.N ) 27 percent decline. The bank<6E>s core bond-trading unit has suffered three straight quarterly declines on low volatility and the bank has been looking for ways to shore up its FICC division. Goldman has been trying to shift away from the bond-trading unit to more stable businesses like investment management and consumer lending, where it launched Marcus, an online platform in 2016. Total revenue, including net interest income, rose 2 percent to $8.33 billion, helped by investment banking and lending business. Analysts expected revenue of $7.54 billion. Reporting By Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru and Olivia Oran in New York; Editing by Bernard Orr 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-goldman-sachs-results/goldman-sachs-quarterly-bond-trading-revenue-drops-26-percent-idUKKBN1CM1N3'|'2017-10-17T15:11:00.000+03:00'
'd92de985b5674e35739a6060648e3dba06ac3cbd'|'Siemens plans cuts at Process Industries business - Bloomberg'|' 31 AM / in 28 minutes Siemens plans cuts at Process Industries business - Bloomberg Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A logo of Siemens is pictured on a building in Mexico City, Mexico, May 16, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido/File Photo FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Siemens ( SIEGn.DE ) is planning restructuring at its Process Industries business as well as at Power & Gas, news agency Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing sources. It said job cuts at Process Industries, Siemens<6E>s least profitable business last year, could be <20>substantial<61>. A Siemens spokesman reiterated that it was continually thinking about its strategic direction, which could include consolidation of some businesses. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier that Siemens was planning further cost cuts at its Power & Gas division. Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Tom Sims 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-siemens-restructuring-processindustri/siemens-plans-cuts-at-process-industries-business-bloomberg-idUKKBN1CO1LX'|'2017-10-19T14:30:00.000+03:00'
'082f4453bf22d1134b01bea0dd767c2592a7a970'|'Nasdaq, SGX in pact to woo firms interested in listing on both boards'|'FILE PHOTO: The Nasdaq logo is displayed at the Nasdaq Market site in New York September 2, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo (Reuters) - Singapore Exchange Ltd (SGX) ( SGXL.SI ) and Nasdaq Inc ( NDAQ.O ) said on Wednesday they were teaming up to woo fast-growing Asian tech firms interested in listing on both their exchanges, as they look to better compete for mid-sized IPOs.The tie-up, which comes as the two exchanges grapple with a decline in new listings, would help Asian companies first list in Singapore as a springboard and then ease smoothly to the Nasdaq as they expand globally.<2E>This would be a very good East-West bridge for companies at different stages of growth to accelerate going public by choosing Singapore first or if they want to have a dual class regime, go to the U.S. but still have a secondary listing in Singapore concurrently,<2C> Chew Sutat, head of equities and fixed income at SGX, said in an interview.While global IPO volumes have jumped about 32 percent to $126.3 billion so far in 2017, according to Thomson Reuters data, much of that business is going to exchanges in China and the New York Stock Exchange.FILE PHOTO: An SGX sign is pictured at Singapore Stock Exchange July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo By contrast, Nasdaq has seen a 2.3 percent decline while SGX has seen a fall of 2.7 percent.Several Asian technology companies have sought listings in New York because of the size of the market and number of fund managers more familiar with investing in unprofitable startups.Asian companies aiming to list in the United States include Singaporean online games maker Sea Ltd, which is looking to raise nearly $700 million with its IPO, Thomson Reuters publication IFR has reported.Chew said there was strong case for many companies to start off in Asia first.<2E>Many regional Southeast Asian or Chinese companies have their businesses predominantly in Asia and if they<65>re not of the size and scale that makes them attractive in a big market like the U.S., they could get lost,<2C> he said.Additional reporting by Susan Mathew in Bengaluru; Editing by Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-sgx-nasdaq-partnership/nasdaq-sgx-in-pact-to-woo-firms-interested-in-listing-on-both-boards-idINKBN1CN2A9'|'2017-10-19T05:06:00.000+03:00'
'7a6c1d4941ab1ab50dfcb71b2d4b9cdaa8ae79c2'|'Boeing invests in autonomous flight tech provider Near Earth Autonomy'|'Oct 19 (Reuters) - Boeing Co said on Thursday it invested in Near Earth Autonomy, a Pittsburgh-based firm that develops technologies enabling autonomous flight such as drones.In addition to the undisclosed investment, Boeing said the two companies will also explore products and applications for emerging markets such as urban mobility.It was the first investment in autonomous technologies by Boeing<6E>s venture capital arm, Boeing HorizonX, since it was established in April of this year, Boeing said.Near Earth Autonomy, a spin-off from the Carnegie Mellon University<74>s Robotics Institute, develops technologies including sensor suites, three dimensional mapping and survey, and collision detection and avoidance that enables aircraft to operate autonomously.Earlier this month, Boeing said it would buy Aurora Flight Sciences Corp to help it advance the development of autonomous, electric-powered and long-flight-duration aircraft for its commercial and military businesses. ( reut.rs/2hPdLQZ )Manassas, Virginia-based Aurora has designed, produced and flown more than 30 unmanned air vehicles since its inception and has collaborated with Boeing on prototyping of aircraft and structural assemblies for military and commercial applications during the last decade. (Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/boeing-near-earth-autonomy/boeing-invests-in-autonomous-flight-tech-provider-near-earth-autonomy-idINL4N1MU4RT'|'2017-10-19T12:06:00.000+03:00'
'a289461f5cea2faa448bd17c8d2357c68f0b7346'|'Activist RBR wants Credit Suisse to float asset management unit, investment bank - presentation'|'October 19, 2017 / 11:27 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago Activist RBR wants Credit Suisse to float asset management unit, investment bank - presentation Joshua Franklin , Oliver Hirt 3 Min Read The logo of of Swiss bank Credit Suisse is seen at an office building in Zurich''s Oerlikon suburb, Switzerland July 27, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann ZURICH (Reuters) - Activist investor RBR Capital Advisors wants Credit Suisse ( CSGN.S ) to float its asset management business and investment bank, according to a presentation reviewed by Reuters. The Swiss hedge fund went public this week with a campaign to break up Switzerland<6E>s second-biggest bank into an investment bank, an asset management group and a wealth manager accommodating its retail and corporate banking operations. In the presentation dated October 2017, RBR estimated a divided up Credit Suisse would be worth at least double the bank<6E>s current market capitalisation of around 40 billion Swiss francs (<28>31 billion). The fund sees potential valuations of Credit Suisse<73>s independent wealth management arm at 62.5 billion francs, the investment bank at 15.6 billion and the asset management business at 6.8 billion. A spokesman for RBR declined to comment and said the fund will outline its strategy for Credit Suisse at the JP Morgan Robin Hood Investor Conference in New York on Friday. Credit Suisse has said it welcomes the views of shareholders but its focus is on the implementation of its current strategy. Credit Suisse is roughly two years into Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam<61>s three-year plan to focus on wealth management and rely less on investment banking. A demand to float the asset management business has not previously been reported, nor had the individual valuation estimates of the three Credit Suisse businesses. The Financial Times, which first reported the activist campaign on Monday, said RBR was seeking to float Credit Suisse<73>s investment bank. RBR wants Credit Suisse to list the investment bank, which it dubs First Boston 2.0, in either New York or London, according to the presentation seen by Reuters. Credit Suisse took control of U.S. investment bank First Boston in 1988. RBR, which is led by Rudolf Bohli, has taken a stake of only around 0.2 percent in Credit Suisse and faces a steep challenge to muster the backing needed to succeed in its campaign. Editing by Rachel Armstrong/Keith Weir 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-creditsuisse-rbr/activist-rbr-wants-credit-suisse-to-float-asset-management-unit-investment-bank-presentation-idUKKBN1CO1LC'|'2017-10-19T14:26:00.000+03:00'
'f5f664811f09d824b84872a76207fc09db28451d'|'Deals of the day-Mergers and acquisitions'|'(Adds CMS Group, Engie, Alloheim, Electric Motor, Barrick Gold, Wal-Mart)Oct 19 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 1300 GMT on Thursday:** Financial services group Mason Group Holdings Ltd said on Thursday it would buy a Liechtenstein-incorporated private banking services provider for 58.6 million Swiss franc ($59.73 million), as it expands into the European private banking market.** Two fund management firms have joined an investor revolt against the planned 1.8 billion pound ($2.4 billion) takeover of Britain<69>s Millennium & Copthorne Hotels (M&C) by City Developments Limited (CDL), its majority shareholder.** State-owned China metals firm Jiangxi Copper Co Ltd plans to make an acquisition in mineral-rich Africa, president and chairman Long Ziping said, as the country<72>s top integrated copper producer aims to step up overseas expansion.** The Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday it would allow the public to submit additional comments on Sinclair Broadcast Group<75>s proposed $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media Co that has drawn fire from across the political spectrum.** South Africa<63>s Anglogold Ashanti is to sell its newest mine to Harmony Gold for $300 million and another mine for 100 million rand ($7.4 million) to China<6E>s Heaven-Sent SA Sunshine Investment Company, the company said on Thursday.** Spanish toll road operator Abertis said its top shareholder was ready to take up an acquisition offer by Italy<6C>s Atlantia although its board thought the price could be improved after a rival offered more.** British home repairs provider HomeServe is stepping up its expansion in the United States by buying Dominion Energy<67>s home services unit, which has 500,000 customers across 16 states.** French energy group Engie is well ahead in its restructuring plan and has the means to make further acquisitions to boost its growth, Chief Executive Isabelle Kocher said on Thursday.** Several buyout groups remain in the running for Alloheim, one of Germany<6E>s top three nursing home operators, as its owner seeks to benefit from high valuations for healthcare assets, sources close to the matter said.** China<6E>s Jiangxi Special Electric Motor Co Ltd said on Thursday it planned to buy stake in an Australian lithium mining and exploration company, the latest electric vehicle company to scoop up supplies of raw materials.** Barrick Gold has agreed that Tanzania will own a 16 percent stake in three gold mines operated by Barrick<63>s Acacia Mining Plc, the company and a government minister announced on Thursday.** Wal-Mart Stores Inc is near a deal with Lord & Taylor that would give the department store dedicated space on walmart.com, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.** Turkish car wheel manufacturer CMS Group is looking to sell a stake in itself, possibly a majority stake, and has mandated HSBC to advise on a potential transaction, two people familiar with the matter said. (Compiled by Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/deals-day/deals-of-the-day-mergers-and-acquisitions-idINL4N1MU3VV'|'2017-10-19T08:01:00.000+03:00'
'cff33780bd2dd044db3b94ab9449c10451107249'|'Ecuador''s Petroamazonas to issue $350 mln bonds to help pay Schlumberger debt'|'QUITO, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Ecuador<6F>s state oil company Petroamazonas said it will issue some $350 million in bonds to repay part of its debts with oil services company Schlumberger as part of a wider deal that also includes other payment decisions.Petroamazonas accumulated debt with foreign suppliers as of 2015 in part due to lower oil prices. The company owes Schlumberger some $850 million.<2E>An agreement with Schlumberger was reached last week for the payment of the total debt ... In November we will issue bonds for $350 million,<2C> Alex Galarraga, Petroamazonas<61> boss told reporters during a visit to the country<72>s oil bloc known as ITT on Wednesday.<2E>Petroamazonas will issue bonds and several buyers will acquire the paper, and through Citibank the money will be delivered to Schlumberger,<2C> he added.Schlumberger did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The agreement also includes payment of $250 million in monthly installments as of next January for two years, at an interest rate of around 4 percent.The remainder of the debt will be covered in cash and in central bank notes, known by the Spanish acronym TBC.Ecuador recently negotiated a new fee for service with Schlumberger in an oilfield in the jungle. (Reporting by Alexandra Valencia; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/ecuador-oil/ecuadors-petroamazonas-to-issue-350-mln-bonds-to-help-pay-schlumberger-debt-idINL2N1MU0UQ'|'2017-10-19T15:16:00.000+03:00'
'35b1ced9d9847911e1b3726b9dd483ba5e591687'|'Paypal third-quarter profit rises 17.6 percent'|'The PayPal app logo seen on a mobile phone in this illustration photo October 16, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration (Reuters) - Payment processor PayPal Holdings Inc ( PYPL.O ) reported a 17.6 percent rise in quarterly profit, helped by higher ecommerce spending.The company<6E>s net income rose to $380 million, or 31 cents per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, from $323 million, or 27 cents per share, a year earlier.Revenue rose to $3.24 billion from $2.67 billion.Reporting by Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-paypal-hldg-results/paypal-third-quarter-profit-rises-17-6-percent-idUSKBN1CO2ZW'|'2017-10-20T04:23:00.000+03:00'
'8f7ff479ba679d26f829e25550e021871abd004f'|'Lloyds investor lawsuit over HBOS deal ''fundamentally flawed'', court hears'|'October 19, 2017 / 6:35 PM / in 14 minutes Lloyds investor lawsuit over HBOS deal ''fundamentally flawed'', court hears Emma Rumney , Kirstin Ridley 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A man enters a Lloyds Bank branch in central London, Britain February 25, 2016. REUTERS/Paul Hackett LONDON (Reuters) - Lloyds Banking Group ( LLOY.L ) saw a <20>unique opportunity<74> in buying struggling rival HBOS during the credit crisis and an investor lawsuit is <20>fundamentally flawed<65>, a lawyer for the bank told London<6F>s High Court on Thursday. Helen Davies defended Lloyds<64> actions during the takeover on the second day of a 14-week London trial in which about 6,000 investors are claiming more than 550 million pounds in damages. They allege that the bank and five former directors, including ex-CEO Eric Daniels, withheld or concealed crucial information about HBOS<4F>s financial position and breached their duties by recommending the purchase. Lloyds, Britain<69>s largest retail bank, and the individual defendants deny any wrongdoing. In her opening statement, Davies said a <20>veritable army<6D> of professional advisers worked alongside and helped advise executives on the deal and that the lawsuit was based on hindsight and <20>a large number of myths or misconceptions<6E>. <20>The claimants<74> case is fundamentally flawed at every level ... It is also legally unprecedented,<2C> Davies told the court. In a written filing submitted to the court, Wolfgang Berndt, the former head of Lloyds<64> remuneration committee who retired in 2010, was quoted as saying at the time that <20>the proposed acquisition was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Lloyds<64>. HBOS, formed from the merger in 2001 of former English building society Halifax and the 300-year-old Bank of Scotland, was close to collapse in 2008 after the failure of Lehman Brothers caused money markets to seize up, shutting funding avenues that HBOS needed for its ballooning loan book. The government-brokered takeover of HBOS valued the bank at around 5.9 billion pounds. But as recession deepened in the wake of the credit crisis, Lloyds itself had to be rescued with a 20.5 billion pound government bailout in 2009. Richard Hill, a lawyer for the claimants, has argued that executives failed to provide or seek proper financial analysis of the worst-case scenario of the <20>catastrophic<69> HBOS purchase, misleading shareholders, Lloyds<64> board and accountants PwC. Davies said Lloyds<64> executives named in the case, who include former chairman Victor Blank, ex-finance director Tim Tookey, Helen Weir, the former head of retail and one-time head of wholesale banking Truett Tate, were highly distinguished and had no motive for acting against shareholders<72> interests. She said Lloyds<64> board unanimously recommended the deal because it presented a rare chance for the bank to acquire HBOS without competition concerns and at a hefty discount to its underlying book value, which she put at 25 billion pounds. At a London event hosted by Citigroup ( C.N ) on September 15, 2008, Blank had received what he interpreted as assurances from former Prime Minister Gordon Brown that competition concerns would be swept aside if the deal could be completed quickly. The defence also disputed the claimants<74> argument that Lloyds should have told its shareholders about a 10 billion pound loan it had extended to HBOS, as well as emergency support its rival was receiving from the Bank of England and the U.S. Federal Reserve, which peaked at about 25.6 billion pounds and $18 billion respectively. Lawyers for Lloyds, which emerged from state ownership in May, argue that the allegations against the bank and its executives are <20>serious but unfounded<65>, that HBOS<4F>s troubles were well known and that a majority of shareholders would have approved the deal even if there had been additional disclosures. Two of the banks advising Lloyds on the HBOS purchase, Merrill Lynch ( BAC.N ) and UBS ( UBSG.S ), were each paid around 11 million pounds for their work on the deal
'7e2341467b7f3366e98ec8eac33681298be43e3a'|'EasyJet sees no need to enter long-haul given M&A options in Europe: CEO'|'October 17, 2017 / 2:03 PM / Updated 7 hours ago EasyJet sees no need to enter long-haul given M&A options in Europe: CEO Reuters Staff 3 Min Read An EasyJet passenger aircraft makes its final approach for landing in Colomiers near Toulouse, Southwestern France, November 24, 2016. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British budget airline easyJet ( EZJ.L ) won<6F>t enter the rapidly growing low-cost, long-haul market given its abundance of options to buy parts of failed European airlines, CEO Carolyn McCall said on Tuesday. In the last week, easyJet has confirmed its interest in parts of Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ) and Alitalia CAITLA.UL, which went into administration earlier this year, and McCall said easyJet was also interested in airport slots of failed airline Monarch [MONA.UL] after it went bust at the start of October. EasyJet has also agreed a long haul connection service with Norwegian Air Shuttle ( NWC.OL ). But asked if easyJet had any interest in getting involved in long haul directly, McCall said no. <20>From a board perspective, that<61>s not on the agenda. There<72>s so much organic growth. If you look at the consolidation, Monarch, Alitalia, Air Berlin, we are talking to all of them,<2C> she said on the sidelines of an Airlines for Europe meeting in Brussels. She said negotiations over Air Berlin were ongoing, without elaborating, after easyJet on Friday said it was interested in operating 25 of the German airline<6E>s planes at Berlin<69>s Tegel airport. <20>Talks are still very much alive, is all I<>m prepared to say,<2C> McCall said. McCall will leave easyJet in January to join broadcaster ITV ( ITV.L ), in a move announced earlier this year after a seven year stint in charge. The budget airline has not announced a replacement. The collapse of Monarch boosted the share prices of airlines such as easyJet and Ryanair ( RYA.I ) on the prospect of an easing in the intense competition in the sector which has kept a lid on prices. Flight cancellations by Ryanair after a pilot rostering fiasco have also reduced the supply of flights to customers, and McCall said she was already seeing signs of an improvement in pricing as a result of a reduction in capacity across the industry. <20>Consolidation in market has been expected and predicted ... any capacity out of market will help existing players,<2C> she said. <20>Fares will improve as a result.<2E> Reporting by Victoria Bryan; Writing by Alistair Smout; Editing by Mark Potter 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-airlines-europe-easyjet/easyjet-sees-no-need-to-enter-long-haul-given-ma-options-in-europe-ceo-idINKBN1CM221'|'2017-10-17T12:03:00.000+03:00'
'eecbb47d70c8ec244bb216047f9ee65164c91076'|'Germany''s 10-year bond yield falls to five-week low'|'LONDON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Germany<6E>s 10-year government bond yield fell to a five-week low on Tuesday, reversing an early rise, as a perception that any unwinding of ECB stimulus is likely to be prolonged continued to underpin debt markets in the region.The 10-year Bund yield fell to as low as 0.368 percent , while other euro zone bond yields also headed lower.They had opened the session higher as bond investors weighed up the implications of a potentially more hawkish Federal Reserve chief taking over from Janet Yellen. (Reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe; Editing by Saikat Chatterjee)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/eurozone-bonds/germanys-10-year-bond-yield-falls-to-five-week-low-idINL8N1MS1IB'|'2017-10-17T06:07:00.000+03:00'
'699bcf5622b9e678ff17b19f776e9d4f95ff6e89'|'Risk premium returns to oil over Iraq fighting, rising U.S.-Iran tensions'|'October 17, 2017 / 2:03 AM / Updated an hour ago Oil holds gains as Iraq, U.S.-Iran tension raises risks Christopher Johnson 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - An oil pump jack of Canadian group Vermilion Energy is pictured in Parentis-en-Born, France, October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices crept higher on Tuesday, holding on to gains made as fighting between Iraqi and Kurdish forces threatened supplies from northern Iraq while political tension rose between the United States and Iran. After months of rangebound trading during which OPEC-led supply cuts supported crude values but rising U.S. output capped markets, prices have moved up significantly this month. Brent crude oil LCOc1 was up 25 cents at $58.07 a barrel by 0845 GMT, up almost a third from its mid-year levels. U.S. light, sweet crude CLc1 was 25 cents higher at $52.12. Iraqi government forces captured the Kurdish-held oil city of Kirkuk on Monday, responding to a Kurdish independence referendum. There were unconfirmed reports that Kurdish forces had shut around 350,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil production from major fields. <20>In the case of Kurdistan, the 500,000 bpd Kirkuk oilfield cluster is at risk,<2C> Goldman Sachs said in a note to clients. Tension between the United States and Iran is rising, also raising the global risk premium for oil. U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday refused to certify Iran<61>s compliance over a nuclear deal, leaving Congress 60 days to decide further action against Tehran. <20>If there (were new sanctions), we expect that several hundred thousand barrels of Iranian exports would be immediately at risk,<2C> Goldman said. During the previous round of sanctions against Iran, around 1 million bpd of oil was cut from global markets. <20>Oil and geopolitics are very much interlinked,<2C> Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, told Reuters on Tuesday. <20>Oil security remains a critical issue for all the countries.<2E> With supply cuts led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries tightening the market, analysts have been revising upward their oil price forecasts. Birol said the rate of compliance by OPEC and its partners in their targeted cutting of around 1.8 million bpd between January this year and March 2018 was about 86 percent. Bank of America Merrill Lynch said it was raising its oil price forecasts. <20>We see Brent averaging $54 this quarter and $52.50 per barrel in 1H18, compared with our previous forecasts of $50 and $49.50 per barrel respectively. We also adjust WTI to average $49 this quarter, relative to our previous forecast of $47 per barrel.<2E> Merrill Lynch said it expected a sizeable deficit in 2017 of 230,000 bpd, and that there was further upside potential to its outlook. Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Dale Hudson and Louise Heavens 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-oil/risk-premium-returns-to-oil-over-iraq-fighting-rising-u-s-iran-tensions-idUKKBN1CM055'|'2017-10-17T05:03:00.000+03:00'
'bc41ba9f3e3bfbb0edab6cf692a3ea934fbe788c'|'LSE chief says shift in euro clearing would bump up costs'|'October 17, 2017 / 8:27 AM / in 19 minutes LSE chief says shift in euro clearing would bump up costs Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: CEO of the London Stock Exchange Xavier Rolet at the Qatar UK Business and Investment Forum in London, Britain March 27, 2017 REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - European Union plans to scrutinize clearing of euro denominated derivatives outside the bloc could fragment markets and cost EU customers 20 billion euros ($23.5 billion) a year, London Stock Exchange ( LSE.L ) Chief Executive Xavier Rolet said on Tuesday. The LSE owns LCH in London, the dominant clearing house for interest rate swaps in Europe denominated in euros. But London will no longer be part of the EU when Britain leaves the bloc in March 2019. The EU plans to propose joint supervision of foreign clearing houses that serve the bloc<6F>s customers. As a last resort, clearing would have to move to inside the EU. <20>The potential proposal to fragment and separate the clearing of euro denominated derivatives would lead to a deteriorating execution price of somewhere in the region of 20 billion euros in additional cost to EU based investors ... per annum,<2C> Rolet told a conference organized by EU securities watchdog ESMA. Earlier this month, rival Deutsche Boerse<73>s ( DB1Gn.DE ) Eurex Clearing arm announced a plan to attract customers away from LCH and clear their euro-denominated derivatives in Frankfurt. Rolet told Reuters he had not seen volumes move from LCH to Eurex and was not worried by the Eurex plan, which he said mimics an offering at LCH. <20>Debating this subject will take a lot of time, it<69>s a technical subject. They have been clearing interest rate swaps for three years and to our knowledge they have not done anything,<2C> Rolet said of Eurex<65>s impact on the market. <20>Imitation is the best form of flattery. We are being imitated and we welcome the renewed focus on customers. Customer partnership is our model and it has worked well,<2C> Rolet said. Thomas Book, chief executive of Eurex in Frankfurt, told the conference that the aim of its plan was the offer choice for customers. Reporting by Huw Jones and Maya Nikolaeva; Editing by Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-markets-clearing/lses-rolet-says-shift-in-euro-clearing-would-bump-up-costs-idUKKBN1CM0TX'|'2017-10-17T13:25:00.000+03:00'
'2d7f91dd68505630c642bb6813a11f9460ca42d9'|'Mitsubishi Motors to accelerate R&D, capital spending: Nikkei'|'October 16, 2017 / 11:21 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Mitsubishi Motors to accelerate R&D, capital spending: Nikkei Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Mitsubishi Motors Corp''s vehicles and a woman are reflected on an external wall at the company headquarters in Tokyo, Japan May 9, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai (Reuters) - Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors Corp ( 7211.T ) is planning to inject more than 600 billion yen ($5.35 billion) in capital spending and research and development (R&D) over the next three years through fiscal 2019 in a bid to turn around its business after recent scandals, the Nikkei said. The new plan calls for spending 5 percent of annual sales on equipment and the same proportion on R&D, the Nikkei reported.( s.nikkei.com/2geSr78 ) Funds will be used by the company for the development of electrified vehicles and for production in China and Indonesia. Mitsubishi Motors will release the specifics of the capital injection in a new medium-term plan due Wednesday, the business daily said. Reporting by Sumeet Gaikwad in Bengaluru; Editing by Stephen Coates 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mitsubishimotors-investment/mitsubishi-motors-to-accelerate-rd-capital-spending-nikkei-idINKBN1CL34M'|'2017-10-17T02:20:00.000+03:00'
'57502b2191b108d618bf49e3655d7c9b431afb5e'|'Pearson agrees deal to insure third of pension scheme risk'|'October 17, 2017 / 7:29 AM / in 19 minutes Pearson agrees deal to insure third of pension scheme risk Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Publisher Pearson said on Tuesday it had agreed a deal to insure a third of its pension scheme liabilities totalling 1.2 billion pounds with Legal & General and Aviva. The deal <20>substantially reduces<65> the risk that Pearson would be unable to fund future retiree benefits and was agreed at no further cost to the company, it said in a nine-month trading update. Under the so-called <20>buy-in bulk annuity<74>, the insurers take on some of the risk of the pension scheme, which remains with the company. Aviva, which is focussed on growing out its corporate pensions business, said in a separate statement the deal was the largest deal it had struck to-date. <20>We<57>re continuing to see very strong demand for bulk annuity deals as more and more trustees look to find the right solution to manage their defined benefit pension schemes,<2C> said Andy Briggs, Chief Executive Officer of Aviva UK Insurance. Clive Wellsteed, partner at LCP and lead adviser to the trustees of the fund, said in a separate statement that the deal meant the industry was on track to pass 10 billion pounds worth of transactions for the fourth year running. Reporting by Simon Jessop and Carolyn Cohn; Editing by Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-pearson-pension/pearson-agrees-deal-to-insure-third-of-pension-scheme-risk-idUKKBN1CM0NN'|'2017-10-17T10:28:00.000+03:00'
'4c537b49604eff3410ecbf410d3a776f10737274'|'Madame Tussauds-owner Merlin blames attacks for dip in summer trade'|'Reuters TV United States  24 AM / in 35 minutes Madame Tussauds-owner Merlin blames attacks for dip in summer trade Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The London Eye, run by Merlin Entertainments, is seen at dawn in central London, Britain October 21, 2013. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s Merlin Entertainments ( MERL.L ), operator of tourist attractions such as Madame Tussauds waxworks, said it saw a dip in trading in its key summer period, blaming a series of attacks in the UK and unfavorable weather. For the 40 weeks to Oct. 7 Merlin said total revenue rose 12.4 percent at actual exchange rates and 5.9 percent at constant rates. However, revenue was flat on a like-for-like basis, mainly reflecting difficult summer trading at its Midway London attractions and European theme parks. Merlin said it would reallocate capital investment to address the ongoing volatile market environment and underlying cost pressures. Reporting by James Davey, Editing by Paul Sandle 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-merlin-ent-outlook/madame-tussauds-owner-merlin-blames-attacks-for-dip-in-summer-trade-idUKKBN1CM0HR'|'2017-10-17T09:51:00.000+03:00'
'e3c4b1cb2500e5f25f9764ba133fb5c0b5c7da99'|'Sensex, Nifty inch up; key corporate results awaited'|'A man looks at a screen across the road displaying the Sensex on the facade of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) building in Mumbai February 6, 2014. REUTERS/Mansi Thapliyal/File Photo REUTERS - The Nifty ended little changed on Tuesday after hitting a third consecutive high earlier in the day, as investors turned cautious ahead of key corporate results including from Wipro Ltd and Axis Bank LTd.The Nifty closed up 0.04 percent at a record closing high of 10,234.45. The benchmark Sensex snapped a three-day rally to end down 0.08 percent at 32,609.16.Axis Bank fell 1.7 percent while Wipro declined 0.2 percent.Reporting by Samantha Kareen Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-stocks/sensex-nifty-inch-up-key-corporate-results-awaited-idINKBN1CM0HV'|'2017-10-17T09:21:00.000+03:00'
'ce76fa1e9901600d4792b56cf4069bb2a313b6d0'|'Bank of England''s Ramsden says sees little inflation risk from pay'|'October 17, 2017 / 8:54 AM / in 34 minutes New Bank of England deputy says not ready to vote for rate hike 4 Min Read People walk past the Bank of England in London, Britain, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England<6E>s new deputy governor distanced himself from the central bank<6E>s majority view that interest rates probably need to rise soon, and another newcomer said her support for that position was <20>very contingent on the data<74>. Sterling and government bond yields fell as investors took the comments from Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden and policymaker Silvana Tenreyro as a sign that even if the Bank raises rates in November, further increases are unlikely to happen quickly. Ramsden said he was not part of the majority of BoE policymakers who believe a rate hike is likely to be needed <20>in the coming months<68> because he saw little sign of inflation pressure building in Britain<69>s labour market. <20>Despite continued robust growth in employment, there is no sign of second-round effects onto wages from higher recent inflation,<2C> he told a committee of MPs in his first public comments on monetary policy. Ramsden joined the Bank last month after serving as the British finance ministry<72>s top economic adviser. Tenreyro, an external member of the Monetary Policy Committee, said she might back a rate hike <20>in the coming months<68> if inflation pressure builds in the labour market, but she was keeping a close eye on how the economy performs. Related Coverage <20>My view is that we are approaching a tipping point at which it would be necessary or justified to remove some of that stimulus,<2C> she said, also making her first policy comments to parliament<6E>s Treasury Committee. <20>However that is very contingent on the data.<2E> Tenreyro, a professor at the London School of Economics, said raising rates too soon would be a costly mistake. A man speaks on his mobile phone outside the Bank of England in London, Britain, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay CARNEY SEES CONTINUED GROWTH-INFLATION TRADE-OFF Britain<69>s economy has slowed this year, hurt by the rise in inflation since the 2016 Brexit vote and uncertainty about the country<72>s future trading ties with the European Union. Even so, the Bank said last month that most of its rate-setters expected to increase borrowing costs in the coming months, partly because Brexit would lead to higher inflation. Financial markets now see a roughly 80 percent chance that a first hike will come on Nov. 2, after the Bank<6E>s next policy meeting. <20>The debate is now about what message the BoE will send alongside the first hike. We expect the BoE to strike a cautious tone in November, while indicating that further tightening will still probably be required next year,<2C> JP Morgan economist Allan Monks said. BoE Governor Mark Carney told the committee on Tuesday that the central bank still had to balance the need to support job creation and growth with an inflation rate that is running above target. Data on Tuesday showed British inflation hit 3 percent in September, its highest level in more than five years and above the Bank<6E>s 2 percent target. But much of the increase has been caused by the fall in the value of the pound since the Brexit vote, which is likely to be a temporary driver of price increases. Sterling lost half a cent against the U.S. dollar and British government bond yields fell to their lowest since immediately after last month<74>s surprise comment from the Bank that a rate hike could come soon. [GBP/][GB/] Neil Jones, Mizuho<68>s head of currency sales for hedge funds in London, said Tuesday<61>s BoE comments <20>signalled a dovish and cautious stance among policymakers<72>. Writing by William Schomberg; Editing by Stephen Addison 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-boe/bank-of-englands-ramsden-says-sees-little-inflation-risk-from-pay-idUKKBN1CM0XA'|'2017-10-17T11:54:00.000+03:00'
'a9ccad74755325bc930426fd0a8d461fdb22ffa2'|'Australia''s ANZ Bank on trading halt ahead of deal announcement'|'October 16, 2017 / 8:37 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Australia''s ANZ sells pension business to IOOF for $766 million Paulina Duran , Byron Kaye 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ) is pictured on a local branch in Sydney in this April 30, 2014 file photo. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd has sold its pension unit to IOOF Holdings for A$975 million ($766 million), joining the rush of Australian banks quitting non-core and scandal-hit divisions to boost capital. The deal fell short of a total exit of ANZ<4E>s insurance and wealth management operations which the bank had flagged a year earlier, and which had been expected to fetch about A$4 billion. But Atlas Funds Management chief investment officer David Hugh, who owns ANZ shares, said it meant the bank could now focus again on its core lending business after decades of expansion into <20>capital-light wealth management<6E>. <20>There were concerns they were damaging their core lending businesses with all these scandals and things gone wrong in those areas. So we think this is overall a good deal for ANZ,<2C> he said. The sale is part of a trend of asset sales across Australia<69>s banking sector as major lenders dismantle their insurance and wealth businesses in the face of growing competition from global players like AIA Group, and in response to regulatory pressure to raise capital. Commonwealth Bank of Australia sold its life insurance unit last month to Hong Kong<6E>s AIA for $3.1 billion, and said it may spin off its wealth management unit in an initial public offering. Australia<69>s major banks have been hit by scandals in their wealth and insurance units in recent years. ANZ has had to pay millions of dollars to remediate 27 law breaches in the OnePath unit, affecting about 1.5 million customers. Shaw and Partners banking analyst David Spotswood said ANZ<4E>s decision to carve out the wealth management business and sell the insurance business separately was something of a surprise. <20>Clearly they are having trouble selling the whole wealth and life business,<2C> he said. <20>I think the market will be mildly disappointed with their progress of selling their wealth business and the cost.<2E> While the sale would boost ANZ<4E>s cash holdings, the lender also said it would cost A$300 million after tax in separation and transaction costs. ANZ Wealth Group Executive Alexis George said selling the insurance business separately gave <20>greater flexibility<74>. ANZ shares were up 0.65 percent at A$30.29 in early afternoon trade, behind gains at the other three major banks but in line with the broader market. IOOF shares were on a trading halt. The deal makes IOOF Australia<69>s second-largest pension management business, behind AMP Ltd, IOOF Managing Director Christopher Kelaher told Reuters. <20>The most exciting part is the partnership that is represented by the transaction ... We will work together and service their customer base,<2C> Kelaher said, referring to a 20-year distribution alliance agreement with ANZ. IOOF said it would fund the deal with a A$450 million institutional share placement. Analysts at Credit Suisse said the deal was highly accretive for IOOF, the largest independent financial network in Australia. Additional reporting by Sonali Paul and Chris Thomas; Editing by James Dalgleish 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-anz-bank-m-a-ioof-hldgs/australias-anz-bank-on-trading-halt-ahead-of-announcing-deal-idINKBN1CL2VG'|'2017-10-16T18:37:00.000+03:00'
'f97a2ae0c8d69b545efa7a8c68cd06cece2f44fe'|'Microsoft responded quietly after detecting secret database hack in 2013'|'October 17, 2017 / 5:06 AM / Updated 9 hours ago Microsoft responded quietly after detecting secret database hack in 2013 Joseph Menn 8 Min Read FILE PHOTO: An promotional video plays behind a window reflecting a nearby building at the Microsoft office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. on May 15, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp<72>s secret internal database for tracking bugs in its own software was broken into by a highly sophisticated hacking group more than four years ago, according to five former employees, in only the second known breach of such a corporate database. The company did not disclose the extent of the attack to the public or its customers after its discovery in 2013, but the five former employees described it to Reuters in separate interviews. Microsoft declined to discuss the incident. The database contained descriptions of critical and unfixed vulnerabilities in some of the most widely used software in the world, including the Windows operating system. Spies for governments around the globe and other hackers covet such information because it shows them how to create tools for electronic break-ins. The Microsoft flaws were fixed likely within months of the hack, according to the former employees. Yet speaking out for the first time, these former employees as well as U.S. officials informed of the breach by Reuters said it alarmed them because the hackers could have used the data at the time to mount attacks elsewhere, spreading their reach into government and corporate networks. <20>Bad guys with inside access to that information would literally have a <20>skeleton key<65> for hundreds of millions of computers around the world,<2C> said Eric Rosenbach, who was U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber at the time. Companies of all stripes now are ramping up efforts to find and fix bugs in their software amid a wave of damaging hacking attacks. Many firms, including Microsoft, pay security researchers and hackers <20>bounties<65> for information about flaws <20> increasing the flow of bug data and rendering efforts to secure the material more urgent than ever. In an email responding to questions from Reuters, Microsoft said: <20>Our security teams actively monitor cyber threats to help us prioritize and take appropriate action to keep customers protected.<2E> Sometime after learning of the attack, Microsoft went back and looked at breaches of other organizations around then, the five ex-employees said. It found no evidence that the stolen information had been used in those breaches. Two current employees said the company stands by that assessment. Three of the former employees assert the study had too little data to be conclusive. Microsoft tightened up security after the breach, the former employees said, walling the database off from the corporate network and requiring two authentications for access. The dangers posed by information on such software vulnerabilities became a matter of broad public debate this year, after a National Security Agency stockpile of hacking tools was stolen, published and then used in the destructive <20>WannaCry<72> attacks against U.K. hospitals and other facilities. After WannaCry, Microsoft President Brad Smith compared the NSA<53>s loss to the <20>the U.S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen,<2C> and cited <20>the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities.<2E> Only one breach of a big database from a software company has been disclosed. In 2015, the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation - which develops the Firefox web browser - said an attacker had gotten access to a database that included 10 severe and unpatched flaws. One of those flaws was then leveraged in an attack on Firefox users, Mozilla disclosed at the time. In contrast to Microsoft<66>s approach, Mozilla provided extensive details of the breach and urged its customers to take action. Mozilla Chief Business and Legal Officer Denelle Dixon said the foundation told the pub
'b9dfc2465a5a48e70553e1d2e7e3fea67dfe6bcc'|'MOVES-Natixis names Marc Mourre global markets commodities head'|'Oct 17 (Reuters) - French bank Natixis SA named Marc Mourre as head of global markets commodities at its corporate & investment banking segment.Marc, who has been with Natixis since March this year as a senior adviser, also worked at Morgan Stanley for 30 years as managing director of the commodities division. (Reporting by Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D<>Souza)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/natixis-sa-moves-marc-mourre/moves-natixis-names-marc-mourre-global-markets-commodities-head-idINL4N1MS4K7'|'2017-10-17T12:38:00.000+03:00'
'3edd326a15806e6e13f78afba2934b5bea4c9b64'|'OPEC compliance with oil output cut deal at 86 percent - IEA head'|'  17, 2017 / 4:34 AM / Updated 3 minutes ago OPEC compliance with oil output cut deal at 86 percent: IEA head Reuters Staff 2   Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency attends the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland January 19, 2017. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich SEOUL (Reuters) - The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has a compliance rate with their output cut pledges of about 86 percent, Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said on Tuesday. <20>Their compliance is about 86 percent, higher than in the past... whether or not they will continue with this plan in November it<69>s up to them,<2C> Birol told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul. <20>If they do so, we may see, sometime next year, a rebalancing of the markets, as we still see a significant amount of stock in the markets which is higher than historical averages.<2E> OPEC and other producers including Russia agreed to cut their production by around 1.8 million barrels a day until next March to drain a global oversupply and prop up prices. Asked about the conflict in Iraq between the government and separatist Kurds and the United States<65> decision to decertify its nuclear deal with Iran, Birol said it is premature to assess the impact of these geopolitical risks on oil markets. <20>It is too early to say how these geopolitical developments will continue and how much they will have an impact on oil prices,<2C> Birol said. <20>These issues remind us oil and geopolitics are very much interlinked and it will remain so... oil security remains a critical issue for all the countries,<2C> he said. Reporting By Jane Chung; Editing by Christian Schmollinger 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-iea-oil-interview/opec-compliance-with-oil-output-cut-deal-at-86-percent-iea-head-idUKKBN1CM0B6'|'2017-10-17T07:30:00.000+03:00'
'61847bf0d8e832c995c5dd451253b53cc427ef52'|'Financial, security woes put Libyan oil recovery on shaky ground'|'A view shows Mellitah oil and gas plant near Zuwarah, Libya, October 10, 2017. Picture taken October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Hani Amara TUNIS/TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya<79>s oil production revival is being undermined by the same financial, economic and security problems that threaten the promise of stability and a better life for the divided North African nation.Libya surprised many observers when it managed to raise its output fourfold to around one million barrels per day (bpd), boosting its only significant source of income.Continued disruptions by a range of local groups demanding a share of the revenues, as well as a lack of funds for maintenance and investment, are preventing the National Oil Corporation (NOC) from consolidating those gains, oil officials, engineers at the major fields and analysts say.NOC Chairman Mustafa Sanalla said last week that the corporation had only received a quarter of its 2017 budget, making a previously announced target of 1.25 million bpd by the end of the year <20>very difficult<6C> to achieve.Without sufficient investment, output would dip, he warned. <20>You can lose production at any time.<2E>One problem is that many of the gains made over the past year were relatively easy and cheap, said Riccardo Fabiani, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group.<2E>Now the problem in the east and other parts of the oil infrastructure is that you need more serious work to repair some of the facilities, so it<69>s more expensive, it<69>s technically more challenging ... and the additional volumes that will come out of that repair work are going to be more limited,<2C> he said.Fabiani predicted production is likely to hover between 700,000 and one million bpd in the short term.Shutdowns have been caused mainly by armed groups making demands for their members, sometimes claiming to act on behalf of local communities seeking jobs and public services, but also by peaceful civic groups protesting economic hardships since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.SHARARA Sanalla has said repeatedly he will not negotiate with blockaders and has threatened to prosecute them, although the NOC also tries to support communities near oil facilities and develop relationships with them.Limited resources and persistent lawlessness in a country split between rival political factions mean the NOC struggles to meet expectations, however.<2E>The National Oil Corporation is keen to preserve production but at the same time it<69>s a part of the problem,<2C> said Ghaith Salem al-Rooq, a negotiator from Zintan who took part in talks to reopen blockaded pipelines near the western town.<2E>They have been making promises to those who shut down the fields, but never fulfilled their promises.<2E>A view shows Mellitah oil and gas plant near Zuwarah, Libya, October 10, 2017. Picture taken October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Hani Amara Production at the southwestern Sharara field, which can pump up to 280,000 bpd, or more than a quarter of the country<72>s total output, is a frequent target of blockades.In the most recent incident, an armed group forced a two-day shutdown at Sharara in early October to demand salary payments, fuel supplies and the release of members that it said had been detained.A new group called <20>Enough Silence<63>, made up of young people from six districts in southern Libya, has said it will peacefully blockade supply roads to Sharara to lobby for oil revenues to be spent on the neglected south.<2E>The problems are endless,<2C> a spokesman for the movement, Mohamed Hamouzi, told Reuters by phone.<2E>We are talking about severe lack of medical, educational, and security services. There<72>s no liquidity at all,<2C> he said, referring to severe cash shortages in banks across Libya.<2E>If our demands for solving these problems are not met we are going to shut down Sharara within two weeks.<2E>On Wednesday, a group of Gaddafi loyalists posted a video of four men standing over a pipeline at an unnamed desert location, threatening to cut supplies of oil and gas to terminals in the Zawiya refinery
'736089b0fb85c7558edfc99f60ccc1ad1083123b'|'Renuka fires 900 workers at Brazil sugar mills, sources say'|'October 18, 2017 / 4:19 AM / in 14 hours Renuka fires 900 workers at Brazil sugar mills, sources say Jos<6F> Roberto Gomes 2 Min Read RIBEIRAO PRETO (Reuters) - Renuka do Brasil, a subsidiary of India<69>s sugar maker Shree Renuka Sugars Ltd ( SRES.NS ), has fired around 900 people from its two cane mills in Brazil and returned to owners most of the land it used to lease to plant cane, three sources close to the situation told Reuters on Tuesday. The sources, who asked to not be named because they are not authorized to discuss the issue, said the company is struggling to keep operations after a failed attempt to auction off one of its mills in September. Renuka do Brasil, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2015, declined to comment. <20>They are speeding up land returns to owners, because they can<61>t pay the lease,<2C> said one of the sources, adding the company cut use of land from third parties from 100,000 hectares to 30,000 hectares currently. Shree Renuka Sugars entered Brazil<69>s sugar sector between 2009 and 2010, buying controlling stakes in two companies which owned two mills each. The two Brazilian subsidiaries were called Renuka Vale do Ivai, operating in the Paran<61> state, and Renuka do Brasil, in Sao Paulo state. The two companies ran into financial difficulties after years of low sugar and ethanol prices in Brazil, as did many other firms. Almost 80 mills closed since then. Renuka do Brasil tried to sell one of the two mills it operates in a judicial auction in September, but the move was blocked by an injunction from Brazil<69>s development bank BNDES, a creditor involved in the process. A second source said Renuka do Brasil<69>s two mills will crush only around 4.5 million tonnes of cane in the current crop, less than half their capacity. Reporting by Jos<6F> Roberto Gomes; Writing by Marcelo Teixeira; Editing by Ana Mano and Cynthia Osterman 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/shree-renuka-brazil-sugar/renuka-fires-900-workers-at-brazil-sugar-mills-sources-say-idINKBN1CN0CP'|'2017-10-18T07:19:00.000+03:00'
'be0a242f998f82c030cc5e842874a75e5adff9eb'|'Saudi Aramco asks FTI Consulting to halt IPO investor relations work: sources'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:07 AM / Updated 5 hours ago Saudi Aramco asks FTI Consulting to halt IPO investor relations work: sources Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Visitors are seen at the Saudi Aramco stand at the Middle East Process Engineering Conference & Exhibition in Manama, Bahrain, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/File photo KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia/DUBAI (Reuters) - State-owned Saudi Aramco has asked FTI Consulting ( FCN.N ) to suspend its investor relations advisory work related to the oil company<6E>s planned initial public offering, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Aramco brought in Brunswick to advice on media relations and appointed FTI Consulting to manage investor relations. It was not immediately clear why FTI was asked to suspend its work for Aramco, but one of the sources said the latest decision could broaden Brunswick<63>s role beyond media relations. FTI has been reporting to Aramco head of investor relations Fergus MacLeod, a former group head of strategic planning at BP. FTI and Brunswick declined to comment on Aramco<63>s move. Saudi Aramco did not respond to a request for immediate comment. China is offering to buy up to 5 percent of Saudi Aramco directly, Reuters reported this week citing sources, a move that could give Saudi Arabia more flexibility in floating the world<6C>s biggest oil producer on the stock market. Reporting by Reem Shamseddine, Stephen Kalin and Hadeel El Sayegh; additional reporting by Rania El Gamal; editing by Jason Neely 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-aramco-ipo-fti-consulting/saudi-aramco-asks-fti-consulting-to-halt-ipo-investor-relations-work-sources-idINKBN1CM0YG'|'2017-10-17T07:07:00.000+03:00'
'cb803c44658275162b7312db2d7c3af844901e9e'|'Bank of England''s Tenreyro says not ready to vote for rate hike'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:47 AM / in 33 minutes Bank of England''s Tenreyro says   Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A man talks on a mobile phone as people walk past the Bank of England, in London, Britain September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner LONDON (Reuters) - New  setter Silvana Tenreyro said she was not ready to vote to raise the Bank<6E>s record low interest rates in November although she might do so   told British lawmakers on Tuesday. <20>So my position now is that if the data out-turns are consistent with the picture I just described of an outward gap going towards zero, then I<>d be minded to vote for a Bank Rate increase in the coming months. However   data,<2C> she said Reporting by David Milliken;   editing  '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-boe-tenreyro/bank-of-englands-tenreyro-says-not-ready-to-vote-for-rate-hike-idUKKBN1CM148'|'2017-10-17T12:46:00.000+03:00'
'a1e2df7f8c77d84361a51bc4a32d54fe852f2d2d'|'UK peer-to-peer lender RateSetter receives FCA regulatory OK'|' 42 AM / Updated 12 minutes ago UK peer-to-peer lender RateSetter receives FCA regulatory OK   The logo of the new Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is seen at the agency''s headquarters in the Canary Wharf business district of London April 1, 2013. REUTERS/Chris Helgren (Reuters) - British peer-to-peer lending platform RateSetter on Tuesday said it had received full regulatory authorisation from the country<72>s Financial Conduct Authority watchdog. One of Britain<69>s three largest peer-to-peer lenders, in September it withdrew from the Peer-to-Peer Finance Association (P2PFA) after revealing it had stepped in to bail out bad loans without disclosing the fact to its investors, contravening the trade body<64>s rules. Peer-to-peer platforms, which bring together individual borrowers and lenders without a bank being involved, have grown rapidly in Britain since 2015 but are starting to come under regulatory scrutiny. Reporting by Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ratesetter-fca/uk-peer-to-peer-lender-ratesetter-receives-fca-regulatory-ok-idUKKBN1CM0PN'|'2017-10-17T10:42:00.000+03:00'
'28dde2a9549276a82e65f3455f39118d64c9d3e9'|'Merck cyber attack may cost insurers $275 million - Verisk''s PCS'|'October 19, 2017 / 5:36 PM / in 35 minutes Merck cyber attack may cost insurers $275 million: Verisk''s PCS Reuters Staff 3 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Insurers could pay $275 million to cover the insured portion of drugmaker Merck & Co<43>s loss from a cyber attack in June, according to a forecast by Verisk Analytics Inc<6E>s Property Claim Services (PCS) unit. Merck, however, has not disclosed the magnitude of its uninsured losses from the <20>NotPetya<79> attack, which disrupted production of some Merck medicines and vaccines. The company was among dozens of firms worldwide hit in the June 27 attack, which began in Ukraine, then rapidly spread through corporate networks of multinationals with operations or suppliers in Eastern Europe. <20>Merck has not yet fully quantified its losses, much less given any of its insurers an estimate of the total amount of those losses,<2C> Merck spokeswoman Claire Gillespie said in a statement. She reiterated that Merck has insurance that would cover some costs, but declined to elaborate or say how much Merck expects to have to pay on its own. The drugmaker said in July that it had suffered a worldwide disruption of its operations as a result of the malware. It was still in the process of restoring its manufacturing operations a month later. Merck said then that it was confident it would be able to maintain a continuous supply of its top-selling and life-saving drugs, but warned of temporary delays in delivering some other products. NotPetya is a destructive virus that spread quickly across computer networks, crippling computers by encrypting hard drives so that machines cannot run. The attacks caused massive disruptions to industrial networks that rely on computers because businesses must individually replace damaged drives, a labor-intensive process. Cyber insurance can be expensive to buy and is not widely used outside the United States, with one insurer previously describing the cost as $100,000 for $10 million in data breach insurance. Policies typically cover expenses stemming from a data breach, such as forensics and data restoration, among other costs. Coverage also helps pay for business interruption expenses when a breach or malware attack shuts down a company<6E>s website. Some companies without cyber insurance have used their policies covering kidnap, ransom and extortion to recoup losses caused by ransomware viruses. Risk modeling companies like PCS estimate a wide variety of insured losses, ranging from damages caused by hacks to hurricanes and wildfires. Reporting by Michael Erman in New York and Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; editing by Jim Finkle and G Crosse 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-merck-co-cyber-insurance/merck-cyber-attack-may-cost-insurers-275-million-verisks-pcs-idUKKBN1CO2NP'|'2017-10-19T20:34:00.000+03:00'
'b0c4a3c0249503665dfeeb0dd29678b953c7c523'|'Viacom, Charter agree to deal to include 8 networks in basic package- source'|'October 18, 2017 / 4:27 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Viacom, Charter deal to include eight networks in basic package: source Jessica Toonkel 3 Min Read A woman exits the Viacom Inc. headquarters in New York, U.S. on April 30, 2013. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo (Reuters) - Viacom Inc ( VIAB.O ) and Charter Communications Inc ( CHTR.O ) have agreed to a distribution deal that puts eight of Viacom<6F>s most popular networks in Charter<65>s cheapest U.S. cable bundle, a source told Reuters on Wednesday. Under the deal, which has not been finalized, five of Viacom<6F>s six flagship networks - MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Paramount Network and BET - would be in the basic package of Charter<65>s Spectrum cable service, according to the source, who wished to remain anonymous because the discussions are confidential. The other three channels included would be VH1, TV Land and CMT. Viacom and Charter declined to comment. Having its most popular networks in the least expensive cable bundle on Spectrum means more audience and revenue for Viacom, which like its peers, is struggling to keep viewers as people increasingly watch shows on smartphones and tablets. Viacom<6F>s other networks, including flagship channel Nick Jr., would be in the more expensive Spectrum packages. Charter and Viacom agreed in principle on Tuesday night to the deal, which would see Viacom<6F>s networks remaining accessible to 16.6 million households. Viacom Chief Executive Bob Bakish, who took on the role last year, has made improving relations with distributors a key part of his turnaround strategy for the company. Six of the largest U.S. pay-TV providers lost a total of 723,000 subscribers during the second quarter, including 90,000 subscribers leaving Charter. An agreement between the two companies would be <20>mutually beneficial,<2C> wrote Evercore ISI in a note on Sunday. Having Viacom content helps Charter add video subscribers at a time of increasing competition from virtual streaming services like Hulu and DirecTV Now, while Viacom is still heavily dependent on cable and satellite companies for distribution, according to Evercore ISI. For Viacom, the agreement <20>eliminates a significant overhang<6E> to Viacom<6F>s stock, JPMorgan wrote in a note Tuesday night. Reporting by Jessica Toonkel in New York; Editing by Rosalba O''Brien and Lisa Shumaker 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-viacom-charter-commns/viacom-charter-agree-to-deal-to-include-8-networks-in-basic-package-source-idUSKBN1CN2GJ'|'2017-10-18T19:18:00.000+03:00'
'af544d52dd3c14cea0a5a226d2b1674271255ea9'|'Financier Amanda Staveley eyes $400 million bid for Newcastle United - source'|'October 18, 2017 / 9:49 AM / Updated 7 hours ago Financier Amanda Staveley eyes $400 million bid for Newcastle United - source Ben Martin 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Dubai International Capital''s chief negotiator Amanda Staveley smiles before the Champions League semi-final first leg soccer match between Liverpool and Chelsea at Anfield in Liverpool, northern England, April 22, 2008. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - PCP Capital Partners, the investment firm run by British businesswoman Amanda Staveley, is interested in bidding around $400 million (<28>303.7 million) for Newcastle United after owner Mike Ashley put the Premier League club up for sale on Monday, according to a source familiar with the matter. Speculation over Staveley<65>s interest in the St James<65> Park club was sparked when she was seen at the ground watching a match earlier this month against Liverpool, another club she has been linked with buying in the past. PCP Capital, which acts for investors in the Middle East and China, is one of four potential bidders for the club, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday. PCP is best known for acting as an intermediary between Barclays ( BARC.L ) and a group of Abu Dhabi investors during the 2008 financial crisis, helping the British bank avoid a government bailout. Newcastle United did not respond to requests for comment. PCP, which has not yet put in an offer for Newcastle United, believes the club is worth around 300 million pounds with a further 150 million pounds needed to invest in players over the next two years, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal is not public. The club has said they were willing to listen to offers that would be capable of <20>delivering sustained investment<6E> towards achieving their ambitions in the top flight. Newcastle have been relegated twice since Ashley took charge in 2007. After winning promotion back to the Premier League last season, Rafael Benitez<65>s side are ninth in the standings with 11 points from eight games. Reporting By Ben Martin; Writing by Anjuli Davies; Editing by Rachel Armstrong 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-soccer-newscastle-united-sale/financier-amanda-staveley-eyes-400-million-bid-for-newcastle-united-source-idUKKBN1CN16V'|'2017-10-18T12:52:00.000+03:00'
'f4d9a59286ab32c703bd78f8957748e96c986262'|'UPDATE 1-U.S. FDA panel backs approval of Novo Nordisk diabetes drug'|' 41 PM / Updated 8 minutes ago UPDATE 1-U.S. FDA panel backs approval of Novo Nordisk diabetes drug Reuters Staff (Adds analyst<73>s comment, background) By Toni Clarke WASHINGTON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Novo Nordisk A/S<>s new diabetes drug semaglutide is effective, reasonably safe and should be approved, an advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration concluded on Wednesday. The panel voted 16-0 with one abstention in favor of the drug being approved. It would compete with others in a class known as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogs, which imitate an intestinal hormone that stimulates the production of insulin. The FDA typically follows the recommendations of its advisors. Novo Nordisk is hoping that semaglutide, a once-weekly injection, will take market share from Eli Lilly & Co<43>s once-weekly Trulicity, which in turn has been taking share from Novo Nordisk<73>s once-daily Victoza. Novo Nordisk is also developing an oral form of semaglutide. <20>We believe semaglutide will be a formidable competitor for Lilly<6C>s Trulicity,<2C> Alex Arfaei, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said in a research note. Analysts on average expect annual semaglutide sales to reach $3.17 billion by 2023, with sales of Trulicity, which was approved in the United States in late-2014, rising to $3.71 in 2023, according to Thomson Reuters data. Panelists discussed data showing that semaglutide was associated with an initial worsening of diabetic retinopathy, a condition caused by damage to blood vessels in the retina due to high blood sugar levels. The damage can cause progressive deterioration in vision, potentially leading to blindness. But they found that the benefit of reducing blood sugar overall offset this risk, which the company argues is transient. Analysts expect the drug<75>s label to carry a standard warning, similar to insulins, regarding diabetic retinopathy. The FDA is scheduled to make its decision on semaglutide by Dec. 5th. (Reporting by Toni Clarke; Editing by Sandra Maler) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/novo-nordisk-diabetes-fda/update-1-u-s-fda-panel-backs-approval-of-novo-nordisk-diabetes-drug-idUSL2N1MT239'|'2017-10-18T23:39:00.000+03:00'
'476323f0a277954f1cef79d64cc0a89da0574af4'|'U.S. jobless claims hit more than 44-year low'|'October 19, 2017 / 1:24 PM / in 3 hours U.S. jobless claims hit 44-1/2-year low; mid-Atlantic factories humming Lucia Mutikani 5 Min Read Job seekers apply for the 300 available positions at a new Target retail store in San Francisco, California August 9, 2012. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits dropped to its lowest level in more than 44-1/2 years last week, pointing to a rebound in job growth after a hurricane-related decline in employment in September. The labour market outlook was also bolstered by another report on Thursday showing a measure of factory employment in the mid-Atlantic region racing to a record high in October. The signs of labour market strength could cement expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in December. <20>It doesn<73>t take one hundred PhD economists at the Fed to figure out that the labour market is on the tight side of normal,<2C> said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York. <20>At this point, we would expect a sharp bounce-back in employment growth in October.<2E> Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 22,000 to a seasonally adjusted 222,000 for the week ended Oct. 14, the lowest level since March 1973, the Labor Department said. But the decrease in claims, which was the largest since April, was probably exaggerated by the Columbus Day holiday on Monday. Claims are declining as the impact of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma washes out of the data. The hurricanes, which lashed Texas, Florida and the Virgin Islands, boosted claims to an almost three-year high of 298,000 at the start of September. A Labor Department official said claims for the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico continued to be impacted by Irma and Hurricane Maria, which destroyed infrastructure. As a result the Labor Department was estimating claims for the islands. Nonfarm payrolls dropped by 33,000 jobs in September as Hurricanes Irma and Harvey left more than 100,000 restaurant workers temporarily unemployed. The Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico are not included in nonfarm payrolls. Economists had forecast claims slipping to 240,000 in the latest week. The dollar briefly pared losses against a basket of currencies after the data. Stocks on Wall Street fell as investors booked profits after a recent rally that lifted shares to record highs. Prices for U.S. Treasuries rose. LABOUR MARKET TIGHTENING Last week marked the 137th consecutive week that claims remained below the 300,000 threshold, which is associated with a robust labour market. That is the longest such stretch since 1970, when the labour market was smaller. Improvements in the labour market have been largely due to a recovery that started during former President Barack Obama<6D>s first term. While U.S. stocks have risen in anticipation of President Donald Trump<6D>s tax plans, the administration has yet to enact any significant new economic policies. The labour market is near full employment, with the jobless rate at a more than 16-1/2-year low of 4.2 percent. Tightening labour market conditions likely keep the Fed on track to raise interest in December for a third time this year, even as inflation remains moderate. The four-week moving average of initial claims, considered a better measure of labour market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, fell 9,500 to 248,250 last week. The claims data covered the survey week for October nonfarm payrolls. The four-week average of claims fell 20,500 between the September and October survey periods, supporting views of a rebound in job growth this month. <20>The data suggest that the underlying trend in employment growth remains more than strong enough to keep the unemployment rate declining,<2C> said Jim O<>Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York. In a separate report on Thursday, the Philadelphia Fed said its measure of factory employment in the mid-Atlantic region soared 24 points to a
'24d36a8a830e72d8677a7bec4d264891ce67e9ba'|'MOVES-Citi names new business development head for APAC, Japan'|'Oct 19 (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc on Thursday named Rimmo Jolly head of ETF business development for APAC and Japan, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.Jolly has served as Citi<74>s senior relationship manager for a number of asset managers active in ETFs and index strategies since 2011, according to the memo. (Reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/citigroup-moves-rimmo-jolly/moves-citi-names-new-business-developmenthead-forapac-japan-idINL4N1MU50S'|'2017-10-19T13:46:00.000+03:00'
'2dbf5e5c562e625dabba6b7a7db654e502cd8580'|'Festive glitter brightens India gold demand'|'October 19, 2017 / 1:09 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Festive glitter brightens India gold demand Rajendra Jadhav , Arpan Varghese 3 Min Read A salesperson attends to a customer (not pictured) inside a jewellery showroom, during Akshaya Tritiya, a major gold-buying festival, in Mumbai, India April 28, 2017. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade/Files Demand for gold jumped in India this week on account of Dhanteras and Diwali, but high prices took some sheen off the yellow metal<61>s lure during the key festival period this year. Demand in the world<6C>s second largest gold consumer usually strengthens during the final quarter as the country gears up for the wedding season soon after the festivals when buying bullion is considered auspicious. After poor sales during Dussehra festival, demand improved significantly over the last two weeks, but was still 15 percent lower than last year<61>s Diwali, said Nitin Khandelwal, chairman of All Indian Gems & Jewellery Trade Federation. <20>In some regions, demand was nearly 30 percent lower than normal, but in others, it was at par compared with last year. Overall for the country, demand was down around 15 percent.<2E> Local gold rates were at a premium of up to $2 an ounce over official domestic prices this week, unchanged from last week. <20>Consumers were price sensitive and buying less gold than last year. They had a very tight budget,<2C> said Mangesh Devi, a jeweller in the western state of Maharashtra. Gold prices in India have risen nearly 8 percent so far in 2017. <20>This year, my husband<6E>s business is down due to GST (Goods and Services Tax). That<61>s why I reduced spending on gold,<2C> said Sangeeta Pardesi, a housewife, who buys gold on Dhanteras every year. The launch of the GST in July, which transformed India<69>s 29 states into a single customs union, has hit small and medium size businesses and consumers overall. Elsewhere in Asia, there was a slight uptick in demand for physical gold, with benchmark spot gold rates headed for a weekly decline after touching a one-week low of $1,276.22 an ounce on Thursday, pressured by a firmer dollar [GOL/]. <20>There was some buying as prices fell, especially around the $1,280 level,<2C> said Ronald Leung, chief dealer at Lee Cheong Gold Dealers in Hong Kong. However, investors remained cautious, awaiting direction on economic policy and market reforms during the 19th Communist Party Congress in China which kicked off on Wednesday and were also focused on the upcoming elections in Japan, he added. In top consumer China, premiums charged ranged between $8 and $12 per ounce over the benchmark this week, compared with $9-$14 a week earlier. Premiums of 50 cents were being charged in both Hong Kong and Singapore this week versus the 40 cents-$1.10 and 50-60 cents levels respectively in the previous week. In Tokyo, gold continued to be sold flat versus the benchmark. Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav and Radhika Bajaj in Mumbai; Apeksha Nair and Arpan Varghese in Bengaluru, editing by David Evans 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/asia-gold-demand/festive-glitter-brightens-india-gold-demand-idINKBN1CO1VI'|'2017-10-19T16:07:00.000+03:00'
'b0f10a8c09973cec40f1292b8b36ad02b6fd5ecb'|'New UK M&A rules will address threat from overseas, business minister says'|'LONDON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - New rules on company takeovers proposed by the British government on Tuesday will address increasing threats from overseas in areas such as cyber and technical components, Britain<69>s Business Secretary Greg Clark said.A national security assessment had identified that chip technology, sometimes manufactured by small companies, embedded in national infrastructure or defence could potentially allow a hostile party to disrupt the systems, Clark told BBC radio.Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Guy Faulconbridge'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mergers-britain-clark/new-uk-ma-rules-will-address-threat-from-overseas-business-minister-says-idINL9N1LW054'|'2017-10-17T05:12:00.000+03:00'
'78ef7fa43049c595ab1a2ac4826ce47175a28a87'|'When the revolution eats itself'|'WHEN a revolution happens, the consequences are not obvious straight away. The British referendum on EU membership in June 2016 was seen as a revolt of ordinary people against a globalised elite. The politicians who led the Leave campaign did not seem to expect to win. As wags remarked, they were like <20>the dog that caught the car<61>.This helps to explain the general chaos that has enveloped British policy since the result. The Leave campaign had contained two contradictions. The first was that Britain could have all the advantages of EU membership without the bother of actually belonging; the country could <20>have its cake and eat it<69> as Boris Johnson, Leave campaigner and now foreign secretary put it. The second was the split between the free market, Liberal brexiteers, who envisaged Britain as open to the world, and the nativist camp led by Nigel Farage .  2   Theresa May, who took office as prime minister in the wake of the referendum, has struggled to reconcile these camps. It took Britain a long time to trigger the Article 50 process for leaving the EU and the talks have since got bogged down (as Leavers insisted they wouldn''t be) on issues such as the size of the financial commitments Britain should continue to meet. Impatience is rising and the leadership is turning on itself. One camp wants Mrs May to sack Mr Johnson, who has been writing articles clearly dissenting from the government line; another camp wants to see the back of Philip Hammond, the chancellor, who is taking a cautious view of post-Brexit economic prospects. It seems likely that Mr Hammond is paying attention to the concerns of those in business and finance who expected Britain to take a pragmatic approach. Instead the ideologues are outflanking the pragmatists.But it is not clear whether the government can afford, politically, to do what business leaders want: settle the bill with the EU and stay in the single market and customs union. Brexiteers will see this as a betrayal. And the Conservatives will get no help from the Labour Party, which has a clear political interest in seeing the negotiations fail. The party can simply demand that the government deliver on the Leave campaign promises, knowing that this will be impossible.We are at the stage of the battle between the Girondins and the Jacobins in the French revolution. The Girondins may have helped to bring down Louis XVI but they found themselves outflanked by the Jacobins who in turn were consumed by the violence they unleashed. There is now lots of talk of <20>no deal<61>, creating the risk of a chaotic breakdown in trade, with backlogs of lorries from Dover to the M25. This is crazy stuff. While the Conservatives are battling with each other, the only cause they are serving is that of Jeremy Corbyn<79>s Labour Party.Let me sketch out a plausible outcome. In a last minute-deal in early 2019, Mrs May gives in on the main issues to the EU<45>on money, the European Court of Justice and migration. This is seen as a betrayal by her backbenchers, who force her out. A new prime minister takes over. That person calls an election<6F>possibly on the grounds of repudiating the deal or merely to give themselves a mandate. With the Conservatives in a mess, Labour sweeps to power with a manifesto promising higher taxes on individuals and companies, nationalisation and changes to the labour market to enhance workers<72> rights.This is where the economic and political risk comes in. In the aftermath of the referendum, the pound plunged but London stockmarket did fairly well (in local currency terms) because of the overseas earnings of many listed companies. Since then, it has been pretty clear that the markets have been happiest when a deal with the EU looks more plausible. But a post-Brexit, Corbyn-led Britain would prompt international investors to fundamentally reassess their view of the economy. For 30 years or more, Britain has been seen as a welcome home for international capital, an English-speaking, business-friendly place for companies to
'8e571e31f3b10e921a22ca705af23facacd12fea'|'Akzo Nobel third-quarter operating profit misses analysts'' estimates'|'October 18, 2017 / 5:27 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago Akzo Nobel third-quarter earnings miss; company issues second FY profit warning Toby Sterling 2 Min Read Empty Dulux paint cans wait to be filled inside AkzoNobel''s new paint factory in Ashington, Britain September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Akzo Nobel ( AKZO.AS ), the Dutch maker of Dulux paint, reported lower-than-expected third-quarter operating earnings of 383 million euros ($451 million) on Wednesday, citing <20>headwinds<64> at its marine coatings business and margin pressures from rising raw material costs. It said earnings before interest and taxes for the year would now be about flat from 2016 -- its second warning since saying in July it was on track to meet the goal of 100 million euros in EBIT growth it had promised as part of its rationale for rejecting a 26-billion-euro takeover from PPG Industries ( PPG.N ) in May. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected third-quarter earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) at 432 million euros, down from 442 million euros in the same period a year ago. Akzo has struggled since refusing PPG<50>s advances, seeing both its CEO and CFO resign for health reasons and saying in September that full-year EBIT would grow by less than 100 million euros after all. <20>EBIT for 2017 is now expected to be in line with 2016,<2C> said new CEO Thierry Vanlancker, citing <20>adverse foreign exchange, ongoing industry specific headwinds and supply chain disruptions, including the adverse impact of Hurricane Harvey in the US.<2E> Akzo said on Wednesday that two other promises to shareholders -- a superdividend of 1 billion euros before the end of the year and the sale or IPO of its Specialty Chemicals arm by early next year -- are still on track. ($1 = 0.8501 euros) Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier and Sunil Nair 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-akzo-nobel-results/akzo-nobel-third-quarter-operating-profit-misses-analysts-estimates-idUKKBN1CN0HH'|'2017-10-18T08:26:00.000+03:00'
'b0660554c7ea30528d8d1f9d02e89f0df447c7d5'|'TransCanada''s Keystone crude pipeline shut down after storm -sources'|'October 18, 2017 / 8:01 PM / a minute ago TransCanada''s Keystone crude pipeline shut down after storm -sources Reuters Staff 1 Min Read CALGARY, Alberta, Oct 18 (Reuters) - TransCanada Corp<72>s Keystone crude oil pipeline is shut down after a storm on Tuesday night in southeast Alberta and southwest Saskatchewan, market sources said on Wednesday. The 590,000 barrel per day Keystone pipeline ships crude from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska. (Reporting by Nia Williams) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/transcanada-keystone-pipeline/transcanadas-keystone-crude-pipeline-shut-down-after-storm-sources-idUSL2N1MT1XD'|'2017-10-18T22:59:00.000+03:00'
'a9df4e1d477b667e768878c715d7fca4bac6875b'|'Europeans making deals with Chinese buyers want to see money up front'|'LONDON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - European dealmakers who sell companies and real estate to Chinese investors are increasingly asking them to pay deposits upfront, after China clamped down on capital outflows, according to bankers and lawyers.Wary that Chinese buyers will have to pull out of a deal because they can<61>t send funds overseas, European sellers are asking for non-refundable deposits, often around 10 percent, before the deal can go forward, industry insiders say.Such deposits are common in the United States, where the federal government<6E>s Committee on Foreign Investment reviews acquisitions by foreign entities for their national security implications, leading to more deals falling through . Increasingly, European sellers are following suit.China<6E>s government began restricting foreign deals late last year, culminating in rules in August of this year to curb <20>irrational<61> investment overseas. It wanted to keep outflows of funds from destabilising its currency.Since then, overseas dealmaking has waned. Acquisitions of European companies by buyers from Hong Kong and China has fallen nearly 40 percent so far this year, according to Thomson Reuters data. The decline has been even greater in the Unites States, though, so overseas dealmaking has largely focused on Europe.According to corporate filings, CC Land put down 40 million pounds ($52.7 million) before agreeing to buy the Cheesegrater skyscraper in London for 1.15 billion pounds .Zhengzhou Coal Mining Machinery, which produces auto components and coal-mining machinery, paid a 54.5 million-euro ($64 million) deposit when it agreed to agree to buy Robert Bosch<63>s starters and generators business for 10 times as much. The transaction has yet to close.China<6E>s ZTE paid a $10 million deposit before its acquisition of a 48 percent shareholding in Turkey<65>s Netas Telekomunikasyon for $101 million.<2E>Everybody I know is demanding this for Chinese bidders, because there<72>s uncertainty about them being able to extract funds from China,<2C> said Tom Whelan, global head of private equity at law firm Hogan Lovells.In Europe, interested parties are rarely asked for deposits in mergers and acquisitions. Sellers worry such demands would deter interest and be seen as discriminatory. Buyers from countries with developed legal systems are not required to pay deposits because break-fee clauses - which pay the seller if a deal falls through - are considered more reliable.SET TO CONTINUE Dealmakers expect the volume and size of Chinese overseas mergers and acquisitions to pick up soon as a strengthening economy makes capital controls less necessary.Bankers are looking to China<6E>s 19th Party Congress, which opened on Wednesday, to clarify government policy on outbound investment. They expect restrictions on overseas M&A to ease. But the uncertainty of China<6E>s regulatory regime means deposit requests are unlikely to disappear anytime soon, bankers say.<2E>To see a change in this trend, either the Chinese authorities have to explicitly raise some of the restrictions, or even if the rules haven<65>t changed, we have to see a more open approach from the Chinese banks which have applied more stringent criteria than the regulation,<2C> said Andrew Huntley, senior managing director at cross-border investment banking firm BDA Partners. ($1 = 0.7595 pounds) ($1 = 0.8514 euros)Reporting by Dasha Afanasieva, editing by Larry King'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/deals-china-deposits/europeans-making-deals-with-chinese-buyers-want-to-see-money-up-front-idINL8N1M65OB'|'2017-10-18T08:49:00.000+03:00'
'e1d2de7b570e8f4c78a35d555f178b35efd233e1'|'U.S. shale producers ''hedging like mad'', to boost investments - Total CEO'|'October 18, 2017 / 8:47 AM / in 12 minutes U.S. shale oil industry to see wave of investment - Total CEO Ron Bousso , Julia Payne 4 Min Read Total Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanne speaks next to the logo of Total Spring during a news conference in Paris, France, October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau LONDON (Reuters) - The U.S. shale industry will see another production surge in 2018 as producers have sharply ramped up bets against a fall in oil prices, major oil executives and bankers said in London on Wednesday. Activity amongst small- and mid-sized producers is ahead of last year<61>s pace, analysts said, and a sharp increase in output could undermine the recent rally that in September pushed benchmark Brent crude to levels not seen since mid-2015. Patrick Pouyanne, the chief executive of Total ( TOTF.PA ), speaking at the Oil & Money conference in London, said he expected global oil demand to grow strongly again this year, by up to 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd). <20>Our U.S. colleagues are hedging like mad at $56 a barrel so we will see another wave of investment in U.S. shale, no doubt about it,<2C> Pouyanne said. However, U.S. rig counts have been falling for several weeks and recently hit a four-month low, while U.S. production has grown at a slower rate than expected earlier in the year by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. [RIG/U] Production for 2017 is up by 467,000 barrels a day through July, according to the EIA, which in the late spring forecast 2017 output growth to come to 680,000 bpd. That prediction has since fallen to 380,000 bpd. [EIA/M] That could change. Ben Montalbano, co-founder of PetroNerds, a Denver, Colorado, research firm that tracks hedging at about 40 medium-sized oil producers, says those firms are more heavily hedged than at any point in the past six quarters. The surge in hedging has come as prices have rallied, bringing the key WTI 2018 calendar swap CLCALYZ8, representing expected prices for 2018, to as much as $52.71 a barrel this week, one of the strongest levels since April. That incentivizes producers to keep drilling even if oil prices retreat from the recent rally. Ian Taylor, chief executive of Vitol, the world<6C>s largest oil trader, said at the conference that he sees Brent crude falling to $45 a barrel in the next year as U.S. output surges. Small and medium-sized U.S. shale producers have hedged about 32 percent of next year<61>s oil production at about $52 a barrel, researchers at investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co estimate. <20>There is definitely going to be a pretty large surge in production next year,<2C> said Jamaal Dardar, TPH<50>s E&P research associate. The EIA currently expects 2018 U.S. production of 9.9 million bpd, while TPH thinks that figure will come in at 10.2 million bpd. A sharp fall in investment since oil prices collapsed in 2014 has led to a drop in development of new projects, which could spark an oil supply shortage after 2020, Pouyanne said. He said the rate of final investment decisions (FIDs) in exploration and production had shrunk too much since 2015. <20>The number of FIDs from 2010-2014 averaged 35 FIDs per year ... to add potentially 2.5 million bpd,<2C> he said. <20>Since 2015, it<69>s 12 per year ... to add 1 million bpd that<61>s probably not enough. Post-2020, we will face an issue with these lower numbers of FIDs.<2E> He also said Total expects to give a green light by year-end for development of the Libra offshore field in Brazil, which will produce up to 150,000 bpd. Pouyanne sees Russia and Saudi Arabia extending production cuts. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and several non-OPEC producers agreed late last year on an output-cutting deal that has been extended until March 2018. A visit by the Saudi king to Moscow recently <20>is a clear signal (that) it is in the interest of both countries to support the market ... I will not be surprised to see the extension,<2C> Pouyanne said. Reporting by Ron Bousso and J
'c11b1c93a8c194f8a9a3b7730ee9f5727d299be1'|'Low ECB rates an opportunity to reform, Draghi argues'|'October 18, 2017 / 8:42 AM / Updated 19 minutes ago Low ECB rates an opportunity to reform, Draghi argues Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi holds a news conference during the IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Washington, U.S., October 14, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Easy monetary policy gives euro zone governments a window of opportunity to enact the reforms needed to boost growth once interest rates have to rise, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said on Wednesday. <20>ECB research finds no convincing evidence that high interest rates lead to more reforms,<2C> Draghi told a conference in Frankfurt. <20>In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true: lower rates tend to promote reforms, since they lead to a better macroeconomic environment.<2E> <20>With monetary policy being accommodative, we now have a window of opportunity to take these measures,<2C> Draghi added. Reporting by Francesco Canepa; Editing by Balazs Koranyi 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ecb-policy-draghi/low-ecb-rates-an-opportunity-to-reform-draghi-argues-idUKKBN1CN0ZQ'|'2017-10-18T11:41:00.000+03:00'
'5ac8a5475d81fdaa1e7ef0caf8fb79c6256f3bad'|'Futures lower as technology stocks dip'|'October 19, 2017 / 11:41 AM / Updated 2 minutes ago Wall Street ends flat; late gains on Fed Powell report Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks closed flat on Thursday, coming back from sharp losses after the open, while Apple ( AAPL.O ) fell more than 2 percent to lead a decline in technology shares. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 5.44 points, or 0.02 percent, to 23,163.04, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 0.84 points, or 0.03 percent, to 2,562.1 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 19.15 points, or 0.29 percent, to 6,605.07. The S&P turned positive minutes ahead of the close after Politico reported that Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell is the leading candidate to become President Donald Trump<6D>s nominee for Fed chair, in what would be a continuation of the current stock market-friendly monetary policy. Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch and Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Nick Zieminski 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/futures-lower-as-technology-stocks-dip-idUSKBN1CO1N4'|'2017-10-19T14:39:00.000+03:00'
'842dc29cc98cb462921d4743d5e73a627d38d7ac'|'Canada''s finmin says will adopt blind trust, divest assets'|' 57 PM / Updated 8 minutes ago Canada''s finmin says will adopt blind trust, divest assets Reuters Staff 1 Min Read OTTAWA, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau said on Thursday he has told the federal ethics watchdog he will place his assets in a blind trust and work to divest his holdings in Morneau Shepell Inc amid allegations he had a conflict of interest. Questions about the assets and holdings of Morneau, the multimillionaire former chief executive officer of human resources management firm Morneau Shepell, have dogged the finance minister for days, despite his repeated assurance that he had followed ethics rules to guard against any conflict of interest. Morneau also said he would announce the date of his fall fiscal update later on Thursday. (Reporting by Andrea Hopkins; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-politics-finmin/canadas-finmin-says-will-adopt-blind-trust-divest-assets-idUSO8N1G600Y'|'2017-10-19T20:57:00.000+03:00'
'063962093197c017cb62418e209b1a39cc9aba08'|'Greece, lenders to start talks again, as countdown starts'|'October 18, 2017 / 12:34 PM / in 5 minutes Greece, lenders to start talks again, as countdown starts Lefteris Papadimas , Renee Maltezou 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Greek national flag waves over people visiting the Acropolis hill in Athens, Greece, May 16, 2017. REUTERS/Costas Baltas/File Photo ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece<63>s creditors will return to Athens next week to assess its bailout compliance, in a review which should be concluded swiftly if the country is to meet its goal of emerging from lenders<72> supervision next year. Athens hopes to wrap up the review by January to start discussions with its lenders right after on the terms of exiting its current, 86-billion euro bailout in August 2018, and on further debt relief - a long-standing Greek demand. European Union and International Monetary Fund technical teams were expected in Athens on Wednesday to prepare the ground for the mission chiefs<66> return next Monday, the first of at least two scheduled visits, officials close to the talks said. The talks will focus on Greece<63>s efforts to reduce banks<6B> bad loans, a thorny issue for the EU and the IMF, and its fiscal performance, the officials said. Reforming the public sector and opening up the energy market will also be high on the agenda. So far, Athens has completed about 15 of about 100 demands which include some labor, pension and tax reforms, opening up professions and some privatizations in a seemingly easy review. But risks remain as the clock is ticking, the officials warned. <20>There aren<65>t many difficult issues under this review as opposed to the previous ones,<2C> an official close to the talks told Reuters. <20>But a delay (beyond January) entails the risk of igniting more demands from the IMF on banks and debt relief.<2E> Greece is expected to outperform this year<61>s target for a primary surplus - which excludes debt servicing costs - of 1.75 percent of gross domestic product. It also expects economic growth of 1.8 percent this year. POLITICAL CHALLENGE A vendor waits for customers at his shop in central Athens, Greece October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Costas Baltas Reaching a deal with the lenders soon is a challenge for Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras who wants to convince angry voters that seven years of sacrifices have paid off and the crisis is nearly over, as he seeks to renew his term that ends in 2019. Differences between Athens, the EU and the IMF over reforms and debt relief have often delayed Greece<63>s progress assessments which are necessary for the release of vital loans. The previous bailout review dragged on for more than six months, and the delays hurt economic activity and unnerved markets. The management of non-performing loans is expected to dominate the upcoming talks. The Washington-based Fund backed away last month from a demand for an asset quality check on Greece<63>s banks after a proposal by the European Central Bank to bring forward planned stress tests next year. A man makes his way past the Bank of Greece headquarters in Athens, Greece October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Costas Baltas But a senior IMF official reiterated this month that the Fund wants to make sure that banks have adopted an effective strategy to reduce them. As part of plans to improve the management of bad loans, Greece has agreed to launch foreclosure e-auctions. They were initially expected to begin in September but one official said they were likely to be pushed back to December, despite a recent call from Tsipras to complete most agreed reforms by November. Separately, the IMF and Germany still disagree over Greece<63>s ability to achieve a 3.5 percent primary surplus in 2018. The IMF puts the figure at 2.2 percent. Athens has sought assurances from the Fund that it will not demand additional belt-tightening but will keep pushing for debt relief, an issue long contentious in Germany and that could become even more so with a new government in Berlin. Greece has received three bailouts - about 270 billion euros - since 2010. In July, it made its firs
'63c86754b25720d3948c6ed3ab5dbf74e4932fe8'|'UPDATE 1-Puma raises outlook for third time this year'|'Reuters TV United States October 18, 2017 / 2:22 PM / Updated 4 minutes ago Puma raises outlook for third time this year Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of German sports goods firm Puma is seen at the entrance of one of its stores in Vienna, Austria, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo BERLIN (Reuters) - German sportswear company Puma ( PUMG.DE ) raised its outlook for 2017 sales and operating earnings for the third time this year on Wednesday, as it reported stronger-than-expected sales growth for the third quarter. Puma<6D>s shares jumped 4 percent after the unscheduled announcement. The company is due to report full quarterly results on Oct. 24. Like its German rival Adidas ( ADSGn.DE ), which reports results on Nov. 9, Puma has been enjoying a revival in the U.S. market, as shoppers snap up its fashion instead of basketball shoes, hurting Under Armour ( UAA.N ) and Nike ( NKE.N ). Nike Inc last month posted its slowest quarterly sales growth in nearly seven years in the face of the intensifying competition from Adidas and Puma and a looming price war amid sporting goods retailers. Puma said third-quarter sales rose about 17 percent to 1.122 billion euros ($1.32 billion), compared with an average analyst forecast for 1.091 billion euros, according to Thomson Reuters Smart Estimates. Puma said it was raising its outlook for currency-adjusted sales for the full year, to an increase of 14 to 16 percent from a previous 12 to 14 percent, due to the strong figures as well as the positive fourth-quarter outlook. It now expects full-year earnings before interest and taxation of 235 million to 245 million euros, up from previous guidance of 205 million to 215 million and compared with average analyst forecasts of 217 million euros. Reporting by Emma Thomasson; Editing by Larry King 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-puma-de-outlook/puma-raises-outlook-for-third-time-this-year-idUSKBN1CN227'|'2017-10-18T17:42:00.000+03:00'
'74b22b85bf182860ec1731c159d3de44f2366df6'|'Abu Dhabi state investor Mubadala sets up venture capital arm'|'DUBAI, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Abu Dhabi<62>s state fund Mubadala Investment Company said it has launched a venture capital arm that will oversee an early growth fund set up with Japan<61>s SoftBank, and a fund of funds focusing on emerging fund managers.A ventures investment team will be based in San Francisco, the first Mubadala office in the United States, it said in a statement on Wednesday.The team will also oversee and manage Mubadala<6C>s $15 billion commitment to the SoftBank Vision Fund, working in close partnership with SoftBank executives in California.Earlier this year, Japan<61>s SoftBank, Saudi Arabia<69>s main sovereign fund, and Mubadala became investors in a private equity fund that had raised over $93 billion. Other partners in the fund were Apple Inc, Qualcomm, Taiwan<61>s Foxconn Technology and Japan<61>s Sharp Corp.<2E>Mubadala<6C>s venture capital business intends to become an active member of the ventures community, leveraging Mubadala<6C>s global scale and power,<2C> said Ibrahim Ajami, head of the ventures unit.Mubadala Ventures Fund I, a $400 million early growth venture capital fund has been setup jointly by Mubadala and SoftBank with a major focus on the technology sector.The fund plans to invest in founder-led companies, focusing on series A and beyond, with the goal of building a portfolio of 25 companies in North America and Europe.Mubadala is also setting up a $200 million ventures fund of funds that will invest in both established and emerging fund managers.Under this programme, Mubadala intends to invest $50 million to $70 million per year in U.S and European-based venture capital funds, it said.<2E>Mubadala<6C>s approach to venture capital and their San Francisco office indicates a long-term commitment to the technology community,<2C> Rajeev Misra, CEO of the SoftBank Vision Fund, said in a statement.The venture capital initiative builds on a decade of investments Mubadala has made in the technology sector, beginning in 2007 with a significant stake in Advanced Micro Devices.Mubadala, which had assets of 465.5 billion dirhams ($126.8 billion) at the end of June, said earlier this year the firm was lining up new overseas investments in 2017. ($1 = 3.6726 UAE dirham) (Reporting by Saeed Azhar, editing by David Evans)'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/emirates-mubadala-funds/abu-dhabi-state-investor-mubadala-sets-up-venture-capital-arm-idUSL8N1MT4K4'|'2017-10-18T22:11:00.000+03:00'
'aaa1f7a5be4f273dd9da9d6884819f7377b42028'|'BOJ Sakurai: No need to take excessive steps to meet price target'|' 29 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago BOJ Sakurai: No need to take excessive steps to meet price target   HAKODATE, Japan (Reuters) - Bank of Japan board member Makoto Sakurai said on Wednesday there was no need for the central bank to take excessive steps to bring forward the timing of meeting its inflation target. It is important for the BOJ to pursue monetary easing with its current policy framework and wait to see the impact, Sakurai said in a press conference after meeting business leaders in Hakodate, northern Japan. Reporting by Sumio Ito; Writing by Stanley White in Tokyo; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-economy-boj-sakurai/boj-sakurai-no-need-to-take-excessive-steps-to-meet-price-target-idUKKBN1CN0HP'|'2017-10-18T08:28:00.000+03:00'
'62b3ec8433304129c40d99930f5904cb8613f151'|'"Fake news!": Ireland rebukes Trump over corporate tax claim'|'October 18, 2017 / 3:49 PM / in 9 minutes ''Fake news!'': Ireland rebukes Trump over corporate tax claim Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Ireland''s Taoiseach Leo Varadkar walks outside Government Buildings in Dublin, Ireland October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne DUBLIN (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s assertion that he had heard Ireland was going to cut its already low corporate tax rate is <20>fake news<77>, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Wednesday. Trump raised a few eyebrows in Ireland on Monday when he told reporters at the White House: <20>I hear that Ireland is going to be reducing their corporate rates down to 8 percent from 12.<2E> <20>I can confirm that President Trump<6D>s claim that we are proposing to reduce our corporation profit tax to 8 percent is indeed fake news. There is no such plan to do so,<2C> Varadkar told parliament in answer to a question on Trump<6D>s comments. Ireland<6E>s 12.5 percent corporate tax rate has long made it a hub for investment from major U.S. multinationals like Google ( GOOGL.O ) and Facebook ( FB.O ) and a target for criticism from U.S. politicians. Irish policymakers have responded by consistently stressing that the corporate tax rate will neither go up or down and the rate was reaffirmed just last week in the government<6E>s budget for 2018. <20>Our corporate profit tax is 12.5 percent, has been for a very long time through changes of government, through recessions and through periods of growth, and it as much that certainty that is as important to business as anything else,<2C> Varadkar said. Trump has said he would like to see the U.S. corporate income tax rate reduced to 20 percent from 35 percent, in part to better compete with lower tax jurisdictions like Ireland. Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by Peter Graff 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tax-ireland/fake-news-ireland-rebukes-trump-over-corporate-tax-claim-idUSKBN1CN2CD'|'2017-10-18T18:44:00.000+03:00'
'd565b5936b5af20a26d921f8d8b10eb25f758790'|'Ryanair, Google and eDreams reach settlement over advertisements'|' 14 AM / in a minute Ryanair, Google and eDreams reach settlement over advertisements Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Ryanair commercial passenger jets are seen at Barcelona El-Prat Airport in Barcelona, Spain, October 10, 2017. Picture taken October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ryanair reached a settlement with Google and online travel agent eDreams to end legal proceedings in the Irish High Court over what it said were misleading advertisements for Ryanair flights, the airline said on Thursday. Ryanair accused Google in 2015 of allowing eDreams to use <20>misleading<6E> subdomain www.Ryanair.eDreams.com and a website with branding similar to Ryanair<69>s to sell plane tickets at higher prices than on the Irish airline<6E>s own website. Ryanair said terms of the settlement would remain confidential. Ryanair, Google and eDreams said in a statement that they were pleased to have resolved the issue. Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by Jason Neely 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ryanair-google-court/ryanair-google-and-edreams-reach-settlement-over-advertisements-idUKKBN1CO1JE'|'2017-10-19T14:02:00.000+03:00'
'9a087f9704e4442e6c9ed3d4b5390234281a09bf'|'Samsung Electronics shares fall 3 percent, easing from record-high on profit-taking'|' 19 AM / a minute ago Samsung Electronics shares fall 3 percent, easing from record-high on profit-taking Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at its office building in Seoul, South Korea South Korea, October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji SEOUL (Reuters) - Shares of Samsung Electronics Co Ltd extended losses on Thursday, easing from a record-high reached on Tuesday due to profit-taking. Samsung Electronics shares fell as much as 3.2 percent to their lowest intraday level since Oct. 10. Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin and Dahee Kim 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-shares/samsung-electronics-shares-fall-3-percent-easing-from-record-high-on-profit-taking-idUKKBN1CO0G1'|'2017-10-19T08:17:00.000+03:00'
'7f924c274a295222b940005c7b899fd77ecba728'|'Too early to discuss consolidation involving Kobe Steel - Nippon''s Mimura'|'China''s economy shows solid momentum as party meets Markets Thirty years ago this week, Wall Street slid into the abyss Trying to unlock Brexit, May to make offer on EU citizens Reuters TV United States  45 AM / in 9 minutes Too early to discuss consolidation involving Kobe Steel: Nippon''s Mimura Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the signboard of Kobe Steel at the group''s Tokyo headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - It is too early to talk about any industry consolidation involving Kobe Steel Ltd as the impact of its long-standing practice of data fabrication is still unknown, a former top executive at Japan<61>s Nippon Steel Corp said. Akio Mimura, speaking to reporters as the chairman of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said he wanted to hear Kobe Steel<65>s own take on the scandal first, including how it views the impact on management, before giving any opinion on a potential realignment in the industry. <20>It<49>s too early to talk about that,<2C> said Mimura, a senior adviser and former chief executive at Nippon Steel Corp before its merger to form Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal Corp, Japan<61>s top steelmaker. <20>It<49>s a real shame what has happened ... There is no excuse for it. (Kobe Steel) has crossed a line that should not be crossed by a manufacturer,<2C> he said. Mimura is an influential figure in Japan<61>s industry and was a key figure behind the merger of Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal Industries. Reporting by Ritsuko Shimizu and Yuka Obayashi, writing by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Himani Sarkar 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal-industry/too-early-to-discuss-consolidation-involving-kobe-steel-nippons-mimura-idUKKBN1CO0NZ'|'2017-10-19T09:41:00.000+03:00'
'e0a93be48ffd706e606dcc3bbd8f494d36d2ce64'|'UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Oct 19'|'October 19, 2017 / 5:52 AM / Updated 25 minutes ago UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Oct 19 Reuters Staff 3 Min Read Oct 19 (Reuters) - Britain''s FTSE 100 index is seen opening 4 points lower at 7,538.5 points on Thursday. * GLENCORE: Glencore will convert its 8.75 percent stake in Russian aluminium giant Rusal 0486.HK to shares in En+ Group, an aluminium and hydropower group controlled by tycoon Oleg Deripaska, En+ said on Wednesday. * MILLENNIUM & COPTHORNE HOTELS: Two fund management firms have joined an investor revolt against the planned 1.8 billion pound ($2.4 billion) takeover of Britain''s Millennium & Copthorne Hotels (M&C) by City Developments Limited (CDL), its majority shareholder. * BAES: Britain''s biggest defense contractor BAE Systems Plc will make a joint bid with Liverpool-based shipbuilder Cammell-Laird to manufacture five warships for the British government, BAE said on Wednesday. * EX-DIVS: BAE Systems and Smiths Group will trade without entitlement to their latest dividend pay-out on Thursday, trimming 1.55 points off the FTSE 100 according to Reuters calculations * The blue chip FTSE 100 index closed up 0.4 percent at 7542.87 points on Wednesday, helped by a weaker pound following data showing UK wage growth edged above forecasts, bolstering expectations for a Bank of England rate hike. * For more on the factors affecting European stocks, please click on: cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarkets * UK CORPORATE DIARY: Rentokil Initial PLC Q3 2017 Rentokil Initial PLC Trading Statement Release Schroders PLC Q3 2017 Schroders PLC Interim Management Statement Release SEGRO PLC Q3 2017 SEGRO PLC Trading Statement Release Travis Perkins PLC Q3 2017 Travis Perkins PLC Trading Statement Release Tristel PLC Full Year 2017 Tristel PLC Earnings Release Genel Energy PLC Genel Energy PLC Trading Statement Release Unilever PLC Q3 2017 Unilever PLC Trading Statement Release Rank Group PLC Rank Group PLC Interim Management Statement Release London Stock Q3 2017 London Stock Exchange Exchange Group PLC Group PLC Interim Management Statement Release TODAY''S UK PAPERS > Financial Times > Other business headlines Multimedia versions of Reuters Top News are now available for: * 3000 Xtra : visit topnews.session.rservices.com * For Top News : topnews.reuters.com (Reporting by Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-stocks-factors/uk-stocks-factors-to-watch-on-oct-19-idUSL4N1MU2OX'|'2017-10-19T08:48:00.000+03:00'
'b6be0f8789643718af4c7f19182bb179293a99d6'|'BUZZ- Fractures may lead to DJI coming up lame'|'October 19, 2017 / 1:29 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago BUZZ- Fractures may lead to DJI coming up lame Reuters Staff 2 Min Read ** DJI in the lead in Oct, closing over 23k milestone on Weds ** However, the blue-chip index finished within Fibo projection zone with momentum study at levels suggesting risk for a crest ** DJI up 3.4 pct MTD, handily beating other major indices ** NYSE Composite, S&P 500, Nasdaq Composite , and Nasdaq 100 up 1.3-2.3 pct in Oct ** Small-cap Russell 2000 up just 1 pct, and DJ Transports actually down 0.1 pct. RUT and DJT both shy of fresh records in signs of fracturing ** And DJT has so far failed right at Fibo projection resistance amid longer-term momentum divergence ** Meanwhile, just 4 stocks: Boeing, UnitedHealth , McDonald<6C>s and Apple responsible for nearly half of DJI YTD gain ** BA, Goldman Sachs and IBM about a third of the index<65>s gain off Aug trough. IBM alone nearly 60 pct of DJI<4A>s gain Weds ** On Elliott Wave basis, DJI can be in 5th (final) wave up from early 2016 low, closed within 23044.17/23250.09 Fibo proj zone. Chart: ** Daily RSI nearing late 2016/early 2017 highs, just where should reverse to keep momentum divergence intact ** Support 22630 with rising 50-DMA (now 22237) ** Meanwhile, crushed SPX historical volatility study warns of instability risk ** And IXIC came within ~0.2 pct of its resistance Weds. This as internal measures have turned down, suggesting an exhausted rise 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/buzz-fractures-may-lead-to-dji-coming-up/buzz-fractures-may-lead-to-dji-coming-up-lame-idUSL2N1MU0NL'|'2017-10-19T16:28:00.000+03:00'
'd57fea53d524f3fd3275e8d1e180ac1a4301ed6a'|'Barrick Gold and Tanzania reach agreement, government to take stake in mines'|'October 19, 2017 / 11:33 AM / in 13 minutes Barrick to give Tanzania mines stake, $300 million to end dispute Fumbuka , Ng''wanakilala 2 Min Read DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Barrick Gold ( ABX.TO ) will give Tanzania a 16 percent stake in three gold mines, a 50 percent share in revenues from the mines and a one-off payment of $300 million (<28>227.6 million) to resolve a dispute that has hit its operations in the country, the two sides said. The Canadian miner and Tanzanian government have been in talks for months after the east African country banned the export of unprocessed minerals and enacted new laws to raise state ownership of the nation<6F>s mines. Tanzania is Africa<63>s fourth-largest gold producer, and Barrick<63>s Acacia Mining Plc ( ACAA.L ) is its largest miner, with three gold mines that also produce copper. At 1200 GMT, Acacia<69>s London-listed shares were up 18 percent following news of the deal. Barrick Chairman John Thornton told a news conference in the Tanzanian capital the deal would have to be approved by the independent shareholders and directors of Acacia Mining. Tanzanian justice and constitutional affairs minister Palamagamba Kabudi said the agreement was in keeping with the new mining laws passed in July. <20>We have also agreed to have a 50:50 share of revenues between the government and Acacia Mining from all the mines,<2C> he added. Reporting by Fumbuka Ng''wanakilala; Writing by Maggie Fick; Editing by Jason Neely and Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-barrick-gold-tanzania/barrick-gold-and-tanzania-reach-agreement-government-to-take-stake-in-mines-idUKKBN1CO1MB'|'2017-10-19T14:32:00.000+03:00'
'6198f9f285177b52070f3e234f8743b494d3fb70'|'Trump names Washington insiders to head antitrust, consumer protection agency'|'  Trump names Washington insiders to head antitrust, consumer protection agency Diane Bartz 2 Min Read WASHINGTON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - The White House formally announced on Thursday the president will nominate Washington antitrust lawyer Joseph Simons to the Federal Trade Commission, along with Rohit Chopra, a former official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Once the two are confirmed by the Senate, Simons will be named to chair the agency, which works with the Justice Department to enforce antitrust law and investigates allegations of deceptive behavior by companies. The FTC has five seats, and no more than three can be from one party. The president is also expected to nominate Noah Phillips, chief counsel for U.S. Senator John Cornyn, to fill an empty Republican seat, although that was not announced on Thursday. The agency is currently reviewing a number of big mergers in industries where there are already few players. One is a deal to merge industrial gases companies Praxair Inc and Linde AG, and another is fertilizer maker Potash Corp<72>s deal for Agrium Inc. It will also decide if lens maker Essilor International SA will be allowed to merge with dominant frame-maker Luxottica Group SpA. The agency has been operating with just Acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen, a Republican, and Democrat Terrell McSweeny, the only other commissioner. The president has long been expected to name a Republican as the permanent chair and fill the empty commission seats. Simons, a partner at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, was a director of the FTC<54>s Bureau of Competition from 2001 to 2003. To fill an empty Democratic seat on the commission, the president tapped Chopra, a financial services expert who is a veteran of the CFPB and is currently at the advocacy group Consumer Federation of America. Noah Phillips graduated from Stanford Law School in 2005. He is also a veteran of the law firms Steptoe & Johnson LLP and Cravath, Swaine & Moore. (Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Dan Grebler) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-ftc/trump-names-washington-insiders-to-head-antitrust-consumer-protection-agency-idUSL2N1MT1VH'|'2017-10-19T18:09:00.000+03:00'
'b359c9c4bc26e59ea110d17ec81f38fee245ffad'|'Zimbabwe says to slash budget deficit despite looming elections'|'October 18, 2017 / 10:46 AM / in 11 minutes Zimbabwe says to slash budget deficit despite looming elections MacDonald Dzirutwe 3 Min Read Workers pack out avocados at a fruit and vegetable market store in Harare, Zimbabwe October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe plans to cut its budget deficit by half next year to 4 percent of GDP, the national Treasury said, an ambitious goal at a time when the country is expected to hold a presidential vote that veteran President Robert Mugabe is set to contest. The southern African country has over the last four years failed to cut its deficit despite promises to do so, mainly due to high government spending on public sector salaries, which accounted for more than 90 percent of the 2016 budget. In an election year Mugabe<62>s government is unlikely to reduce spending, economic analysts said, making it difficult to cut the deficit to 4 percent of gross domestic product. This year the government targets a deficit of 8.4 percent fo GDP. Zimbabwe, which dumped its hyperinflation-hit currency for the U.S. dollar in 2009, is now running short of dollars as well as quasi-currency <20>bond note<74> introduced last year to ease cash shortages. A Treasury document seen by Reuters on Tuesday said the Treasury <20>will focus on containment of the budget deficit as one of the key fiscal anchors<72>. <20>In the absence of strong measures targeted at containing expenditures and enhancing revenues, further deterioration of the budget deficit is likely to be sustained beyond 2018,<2C> it said. The government expects improved tax collection next year to increase revenue while reducing the share of public sector salaries to 80 percent of the budget, from 85 percent this year. SCEPTICISM But analysts were sceptical, saying the government would likely buckle to pressure to spend in order to gain votes during next year<61>s presidential and parliamentary elections. <20>This government has a track record of spending beyond its means and in an election year we will see a much, much bigger deficit,<2C> said Harare-based economist John Robertson. Zimbabwe does not receive funding from foreign lenders such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank because it is in arrears, and so relies on domestic taxes and borrowing from local banks to fund the national budget. The country<72>s foreign and domestic debt will increase to $14 billion (<28>10.6 billion) in 2018 from $13 billion this year, the Treasury said. Analysts said government borrowing was pushing up money supply and ultimately inflation, which rose to 0.78 percent year-on-year in September, its fastest rise since 2009. Most independent economic analysts, however, say annual inflation has already hit double digit figures following an increase in prices, especially of imported goods. Zimbabwe is struggling to pay for imports due to the dollar crunch, which has also caused acute cash shortages. On Tuesday the agriculture minister said Harare would ban the importation of fruit and vegetables to preserve scarce dollars. Editing by James Macharia and Gareth Jones 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-zimbabwe-economy/zimbabwe-says-to-slash-budget-deficit-despite-looming-elections-idUKKBN1CN1E3'|'2017-10-18T13:45:00.000+03:00'
'35c79df29f8ffe5afb7186a95cd96c764cdeb8c2'|'U.S. bankers hold onto hopes that Trump will boost profits'|'October 18, 2017 / 11:07 AM / in 9 minutes U.S. bankers hold onto hopes that Trump will boost profits David Henry 3 Min Read U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the Heritage Foundation<6F>s President<6E>s Club Meeting in Washington, U.S., October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts NEW YORK (Reuters) - Top U.S. bankers are still hoping the President Trump<6D>s administration will make policy changes to boost profits, but made clear in public comments in recent days that they are not seeing any signs of progress so far. Optimism about tax cuts, infrastructure investment and an unwind of costly financial regulations sent bank stocks soaring after the November 2016 presidential election that ushered Donald Trump into the White House. THE KBW bank stock index .BKX rose 28 percent through the end of February. Since then, however, the index has risen only another 2.7 percent, less than the rise in the broader stock market. Related Coverage Factbox - Who will Trump pick to lead the Federal Reserve? In reporting third-quarter earnings, executives at JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM.N ), Bank of America Corp ( BAC.N ), Citigroup Inc ( C.N ), Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( GS.N ) and Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ) said Trump<6D>s actions so far have not driven business activity or expense reductions. <20>These things are great <20> if and when they happen <20> but they<65>re not embedded in any of our plans,<2C> Goldman Sachs Chief Financial Officer R. Martin Chavez said about the idea of changing financial regulations on a conference call with analysts on Tuesday. His comments echoed those of his JPMorgan counterpart, Marianne Lake, who said last week that discussing tax reform with clients is like <20>talking about a hypothetical at this point.<2E> The White House unveiled a nine-page tax <20>framework<72> in late-September that called for cutting the corporate tax rate, among other things, but it is unclear if or how Congress will actually adapt it into law. Nonetheless, bankers said the pro-business tone from Washington has been encouraging after a long period of anti-Wall Street sentiment and increasingly tough regulations. Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman said tax reform, higher interest rates, and regulatory changes could drive bank profits higher over the longer term, while Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat said he likes the direction the Trump administration is taking, even if policy changes remain uncertain. In presentations for investors, some analysts asked bank executives if slower commercial and industrial loan growth was a result of uncertainty in Washington, but executives said that was not the case. Bank of America<63>s business customers <20>continue to remain optimistic,<2C> Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said last week.<2E>They continue to look forward to continued implementation of a pro-growth agenda.<2E> Reporting by David Henry in New York; Additional reporting by Dan Freed and Olivia Oran; Editing by Lauren Tara LaCapra 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-banks-trump/u-s-bankers-hold-onto-hopes-that-trump-will-boost-profits-idUKKBN1CN1GI'|'2017-10-18T14:07:00.000+03:00'
'6f63a8f6c774dedd494b112ef7a46ec8677ece60'|'Abu Dhabi state investor Mubadala sets up venture capital arm'|'DUBAI, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Abu Dhabi<62>s state fund Mubadala Investment Company said it has launched a venture capital arm that will oversee an early growth fund set up with Japan<61>s SoftBank, and a fund of funds focusing on emerging fund managers.A ventures investment team will be based in San Francisco, the first Mubadala office in the United States, it said in a statement on Wednesday.The team will also oversee and manage Mubadala<6C>s $15 billion commitment to the SoftBank Vision Fund, working in close partnership with SoftBank executives in California.Earlier this year, Japan<61>s SoftBank, Saudi Arabia<69>s main sovereign fund, and Mubadala became investors in a private equity fund that had raised over $93 billion. Other partners in the fund were Apple Inc, Qualcomm, Taiwan<61>s Foxconn Technology and Japan<61>s Sharp Corp.<2E>Mubadala<6C>s venture capital business intends to become an active member of the ventures community, leveraging Mubadala<6C>s global scale and power,<2C> said Ibrahim Ajami, head of the ventures unit.Mubadala Ventures Fund I, a $400 million early growth venture capital fund has been setup jointly by Mubadala and SoftBank with a major focus on the technology sector.The fund plans to invest in founder-led companies, focusing on series A and beyond, with the goal of building a portfolio of 25 companies in North America and Europe.Mubadala is also setting up a $200 million ventures fund of funds that will invest in both established and emerging fund managers.Under this programme, Mubadala intends to invest $50 million to $70 million per year in U.S and European-based venture capital funds, it said.<2E>Mubadala<6C>s approach to venture capital and their San Francisco office indicates a long-term commitment to the technology community,<2C> Rajeev Misra, CEO of the SoftBank Vision Fund, said in a statement.The venture capital initiative builds on a decade of investments Mubadala has made in the technology sector, beginning in 2007 with a significant stake in Advanced Micro Devices.Mubadala, which had assets of 465.5 billion dirhams ($126.8 billion) at the end of June, said earlier this year the firm was lining up new overseas investments in 2017. ($1 = 3.6726 UAE dirham) (Reporting by Saeed Azhar, editing by David Evans)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/emirates-mubadala-funds/abu-dhabi-state-investor-mubadala-sets-up-venture-capital-arm-idINL8N1MT4K4'|'2017-10-18T12:15:00.000+03:00'
'f2a1a02d27ad05e18230812b8a30e6b31f11a751'|'Brazilian antitrust official says AT&T, Time Warner must keep operations separate'|'The AT&T logo is pictured during the Forbes Forum 2017 in Mexico City, Mexico, September 18, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido BRASILIA (Reuters) - A key official on Brazil<69>s antitrust watchdog Cade voted on Wednesday to approve AT&T Inc<6E>s ( T.N ) acquisition of Time Warner Inc ( TWX.N ) as long as both companies continued to run their Brazilian operations separately.Councillor Gilvandro Ara<72>jo, who is leading the antitrust analysis of the merger in Brazil, said both companies would have to commit to not exchanging <20>sensitive information<6F> and allow external auditors to verify the separation of their activities in the South American country.Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Writing by Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Paul Simao'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-time-warner-m-a-at-t-antitrust/brazilian-antitrust-official-says-att-time-warner-must-keep-operations-separate-idINKBN1CN2F2'|'2017-10-18T14:15:00.000+03:00'
'448b7d652ed5a6152aa2ae1f9e186dffc072538d'|'Snapchat signs Olympic deal with Eurosport'|'October 18, 2017 / 4:46 PM / Updated 2 hours ago Snapchat signs Olympic deal with Eurosport Simon Evans 3 Min Read The Snapchat app logo is seen on a smartphone in this picture illustration taken September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - Social media platform Snapchat will present Winter Olympics content at next year<61>s event in Pyeongchang after striking a deal with Discovery communications<6E> Eurosport, a move which could help the Games reach the younger demographic it craves. Discovery Communications is the exclusive TV and multimedia rights holder for 50 countries and territories in Europe for the Olympic Games from 2018-2024. The partnership with Snap Inc, is for a European, multi-language deal and will see Winter Olympics content as part of Snapchat<61>s <20>stories<65> feature. Snapchat will carry curated stories drawing on content sent in by users and also <20>Publisher Stories<65> which will be magazine-like content produced by media publishers and curated by Eurosport. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been looking at ways to reach a younger audience, with the average age of Games viewers rising gradually since the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. <20>We are thrilled to bring the excitement and passion of the Olympic Games directly to Snap<61>s dynamic and engaged younger audience, allowing Discovery to deliver on its promise to bring the Games to more people across more screens in Europe than ever before<72> said Michael Lang, President, International Development and Digital for Discovery International. The IOC reported that the 2016 Rio Olympics was the first time in which the digital coverage, primarily live streaming, exceeded traditional television coverage. The IOC said that digital coverage of Rio jumped to over 243,000 hours <20> double the coverage on traditional television and almost three times the digital offering for London 2012. The IOC<4F>s marketing report said there were over seven billion video views of official content from broadcasters and other <20>official stakeholders<72> on social media platforms. <20>We applaud Discovery<72>s engagement with a younger audience and new generation of fans at the Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang 2018, as it is fully in line with the objectives of our Olympic Agenda 2020,<2C> Anne-Sophie Voumard, the IOC<4F>s Vice President, Television and Marketing Services told Reuters. Reporting by Simon Evans, editing by Pritha Sarkar 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-olympics-snapchat/snapchat-signs-olympic-deal-with-eurosport-idUSKBN1CN2I3'|'2017-10-18T19:40:00.000+03:00'
'9f9a6ed3c7181b104087a0542f0ecb03334af6d9'|'Factbox - How is the UK economy doing versus Bank of England expectations?'|'October 18, 2017 / 10:31 AM / in 20 minutes How is the UK economy doing versus Bank of England expectations? 4 Min Read People sit outside the Bank of England in London, Britain, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England has said that the interest rate hike it is likely to make <20>in the coming months<68> depends on whether inflation pressures continue to build and the economy moves nearer to growing at full capacity. Most economists polled by Reuters now expect the central bank to raise rates on Nov. 2, after its next meeting, lifting the official cost of borrowing to 0.5 percent from 0.25 percent, the first increase in more than 10 years. Below is a summary of what the Bank has said it is expecting to see in the British economy, how the economy has been performing and when the next key data releases are due. INFLATION What the Bank said: the central bank, which has a target of 2 percent inflation, said on Sept. 14 that it expects consumer price growth will reach slightly above 3 percent in October before starting to fall slowly. What has happened: In September the CPI rose to a five-year high of 3.0 percent, up from 2.9 percent in August. WAGES What the Bank said: In August the BoE forecast that annual wage growth would be 2.0 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017, rising to 3.0 percent in the same period of 2018. What has happened: Wage growth during July and August was a bit stronger than the BoE expected at 2.2 percent year-on-year. A BoE survey has shown companies plan to offer pay deals in the 2-3 percent range, while a separate survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development gave a lower 2 percent average for the private sector. ECONOMIC GROWTH What the Bank said: Preliminary data is likely to show gross domestic product grew by 0.3 percent in the third quarter, the same slow quarterly growth as in the previous three months. But growth might be stronger due to improving consumer demand, it said. What has happened: Financial data company Markit said its purchasing managers<72> indices pointed to 0.3 percent third-quarter growth, while the National Institute of Economic and Social Research said official numbers pointed to an expansion of 0.4 percent. August factory output beat expectations, and private-sector measures of retail sales growth have been solid. But Britain<69>s goods trade deficit hit a record high. The preliminary official reading for GDP in the third quarter will be published on Oct. 25. UNEMPLOYMENT What the Bank said: the central bank forecast in August that unemployment would average 4.4 percent in the last three months of 2017 before rising slightly to 4.5 percent in 2018 and 2019, while labor force participation for over 16s would remain steady at 63.5 percent What has happened: Unemployment fell faster than forecast, dropping to a 42-year low of 4.3 percent of the workforce in the three months to July and remaining there in August. That is below the 4.5 percent level that the BoE has previously said could be a trigger for higher inflation. Working-age labor force participation rose to a record-high 75.3 percent in July, before slipping to 75.1 percent in August. WHAT ARE FINANCIAL MARKETS SAYING? Sterling rallied strongly in the run-up to and after the Bank<6E>s Sept. 14 meeting, when it made its announcement, as investors had not been pricing in an interest rate rise until late 2018. Economists polled by Reuters were even more skeptical - they had expected no rate rise until 2019. After the BoE announcement, financial markets brought forward their bets on when the rate hike would come and they are now pricing in an 80 percent chance of a hike on Nov. 2. Sterling peaked on Sept. 20 at $1.3656 GBP= , its highest since June 2016, but has since come under pressure and is now trading at a similar level to just before the Sept. 14 meeting at around $1.3170. One euro is worth about 89 pence. Editing by Alison Williams'|'reuters.com'|'http://fee
'ac1126a7eecfc4337f466af952608c05191dfc1e'|'Kobe Steel to hold bidding for real estate unit on Friday: Bloomberg'|'FILE PHOTO: The logo of Kobe Steel is seen at the group''s Tokyo headquarters building in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese steelmaker Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ), embroiled in a data falsification scandal that has roiled global supply chains, will hold a first round of bidding on Friday in the planned sale of a real estate unit, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday.Japan<61>s No.3 steelmaker has hired Mizuho Securities, the brokerage arm of Mizuho Financial Group Inc ( 8411.T ), as an advisor for the sale of more than two-thirds of Shinko Real Esate, Bloomberg said, citing unidentified sources. The news agency didn<64>t say how much the asset might be worth.Both Kobe Steel and Mizuho Securities declined to comment.Kobe Steel has said about 500 companies received falsely certified products. A person with knowledge of the matter told Reuters that data tampering on products went on for more than a decade.Related Coverage Europe aviation agency advises suspending use of Kobe Steel productsReporting by Sam Nussey; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal/kobe-steel-to-hold-bidding-for-real-estate-unit-on-friday-bloomberg-idINKBN1CN0UX'|'2017-10-18T05:59:00.000+03:00'
'd4a1c55780de92d3163393b10234f36b82d8605d'|'Deals of the day-Mergers and acquisitions'|'Oct 17 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 1000 GMT on Tuesday:** Airbus SE<53>s deal for a majority stake in Bombardier Inc<6E>s CSeries jet program is expected to jumpstart sales of the Canadian aircraft in Asia, analysts said.** China is offering to buy up to 5 percent of Saudi Aramco directly, sources said, a move that could give Saudi Arabia the flexibility to consider various options for its plan to float the world<6C>s biggest oil producer on the stock market.** Facebook Inc has acquired tbh, an app popular among teens, as the world<6C>s largest social network looks to attract more users.** Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd said on Tuesday it is selling its pensions and investments business to IOOF Holdings in a A$975 million ($765 million) deal.** China Foods Ltd said it would sell its wine and other non-beverage businesses to a unit of its state-owned parent COFCO Corp in a deal valued at HK$5.07 billion ($649 million) as it aims to focus on its beverage business. (Compiled by Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/deals-day/deals-of-the-day-mergers-and-acquisitions-idINL4N1MS3DY'|'2017-10-17T08:07:00.000+03:00'
'381e570ac4b9ae788f1cff3a5e35c9d775e25f90'|'Europeans making deals with Chinese buyers want to see money up front'|'October 18, 2017 / 10:55 AM / Updated 25 minutes ago Europeans making deals with Chinese buyers want to see money up front Dasha Afanasieva 4 Min Read A man stands underneath a Chinese national flag in a hutong alley in the old part of Beijing as the capital prepares for the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, October 14, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter LONDON (Reuters) - European dealmakers who sell companies and real estate to Chinese investors are increasingly asking them to pay deposits upfront, after China clamped down on capital outflows, according to bankers and lawyers. Wary that Chinese buyers will have to pull out of a deal because they can<61>t send funds overseas, European sellers are asking for non-refundable deposits, often around 10 percent, before the deal can go forward, industry insiders say. Such deposits are common in the United States, where the federal government<6E>s Committee on Foreign Investment reviews acquisitions by foreign entities for their national security implications, leading to more deals falling through. Increasingly, European sellers are following suit. China<6E>s government began restricting foreign deals late last year, culminating in rules in August of this year to curb <20>irrational<61> investment overseas. It wanted to keep outflows of funds from destabilising its currency. Since then, overseas dealmaking has waned. Acquisitions of European companies by buyers from Hong Kong and China has fallen nearly 40 percent so far this year, according to Thomson Reuters data. The decline has been even greater in the Unites States, though, so overseas dealmaking has largely focused on Europe. According to corporate filings, CC Land ( 1224.HK ) put down 40 million pounds before agreeing to buy the Cheesegrater skyscraper in London for 1.15 billion pounds. Zhengzhou Coal Mining Machinery, which produces auto components and coal-mining machinery, paid a 54.5 million-euro (<28>48.5 million) deposit when it agreed to agree to buy Robert Bosch<63>s starters and generators business for 10 times as much. The transaction has yet to close. China<6E>s ZTE 000063.SZ0763.HK paid a $10 million (<28>7.5 million) deposit before its acquisition of a 48 percent shareholding in Turkey<65>s Netas Telekomunikasyon for $101 million. <20>Everybody I know is demanding this for Chinese bidders, because there<72>s uncertainty about them being able to extract funds from China,<2C> said Tom Whelan, global head of private equity at law firm Hogan Lovells. In Europe, interested parties are rarely asked for deposits in mergers and acquisitions. Sellers worry such demands would deter interest and be seen as discriminatory. Buyers from countries with developed legal systems are not required to pay deposits because break-fee clauses - which pay the seller if a deal falls through - are considered more reliable. SET TO CONTINUE Dealmakers expect the volume and size of Chinese overseas mergers and acquisitions to pick up soon as a strengthening economy makes capital controls less necessary . Bankers are looking to China<6E>s 19th Party Congress, which opened on Wednesday, to clarify government policy on outbound investment. They expect restrictions on overseas M&A to ease. But the uncertainty of China<6E>s regulatory regime means deposit requests are unlikely to disappear anytime soon, bankers say. <20>To see a change in this trend, either the Chinese authorities have to explicitly raise some of the restrictions, or even if the rules haven<65>t changed, we have to see a more open approach from the Chinese banks which have applied more stringent criteria than the regulation,<2C> said Andrew Huntley, senior managing director at cross-border investment banking firm BDA Partners. Reporting by Dasha Afanasieva, editing by Larry King 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-deals-china-deposits/europeans-making-deals-with-chinese-buyers-want-to-see-money-up-front-idUKKBN1CN1EX'|'2
'13c31f028295c73f08f78da8c584bed606460ea0'|'Oil prices jump on fear of new U.S. sanctions against Iran'|'October 16, 2017 / 12:50 AM / Updated an hour ago Oil jumps on fears of new Iran sanctions, Iraq conflict Henning Gloystein 3 Min Read Flames are seen coming from a burn off valve at the American Refining Group, Inc., (ARG) the oldest continuously operated refinery in the United States founded in 1881, in Bradford, Pennsylvania, U.S. October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil markets jumped on Monday on concerns over potential renewed U.S. sanctions against Iran as well as conflict in Iraq, while an explosion at a U.S. oil rig and reduced exploration activity supported prices there. International Brent crude futures LCOc1 were at $57.82 at 0645 GMT, up 65 cents, or 1.1 percent, from the previous close. Prices were being pushed up by worries over renewed U.S. sanctions against Iran. U.S. President Donald Trump last Friday refused to certify that Tehran is complying with the accord even though international inspectors say it is. Under U.S. law, the president must certify every 90 days that Iran is complying with the deal. Congress will now have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose economic sanctions on Tehran. During the previous round of sanctions against Iran, around 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil supplies were cut off global markets. While analysts said they did not expect renewed sanctions to have such a big impact again, especially as the United States would likely act alone, they did warn that such a move would be disruptive. There were also concerns about the stability of Iraq, the second biggest oil producer within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) behind Saudi Arabia. Iraqi forces on Sunday began moving toward oil fields and an important air base held by Kurdish forces near the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, Iraqi and Kurdish officials said. Greg McKenna, chief market strategist at futures brokerage AxiTrader said that <20>Trump<6D>s reopening of the Iran nuclear issue, (and) the ongoing threat of the Kurdish pipeline being cut off<66> were the main factors pushing up oil prices. U.S. OIL RIG EXPLOSION An explosion overnight at an oil rig in Louisiana<6E>s Lake Pontchartrain drew market attention, with at least six people injured. U.S. crude prices were further supported by drillers cutting back the number of rigs looking for new production. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were at $51.89 per barrel, up 44 cents, or 0.9 percent. Drillers cut five oil rigs in the week to Oct. 13, bringing the total count up to 743, the lowest since early June, General Electric Co<43>s ( GE.N ) Baker Hughes energy services firm said late on Friday. RIG-OL-USA-BHI On the demand side, oil consumption has been strong, especially in China, where the central bank governor said on Monday that the economy is expected to grow by 7 percent in the second half of this year, accelerating from a forecast-beating 6.9 percent in the first six months and defying widespread expectations for a slowdown. Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Joseph Radford and Sonali Paul 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil/oil-prices-jump-on-fear-of-new-u-s-sanctions-against-iran-idUKKBN1CL01M'|'2017-10-16T03:44:00.000+03:00'
'e3a022edc4383799b180cec4f742431a2abff0f2'|'Germany''s Hubject gets funding to expand in United States, China'|'FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany<6E>s Hubject, which is developing a method to map and pay at electric charging stations, has secured fresh funding from shareholders to expand into the world<6C>s leading car markets in the United States and China, it said on Monday.The need to build, improve and access infrastructure for electric vehicles is seen as a key obstacle for the industry to take off.The company did not specify how much money it had raised, only saying the investment, the second within a year, was worth millions of euros.Hubject has more than 61,000 charging points for electric vehicles in its database, mostly in Europe and Japan, and the fresh funding gives it the resources to expand. It has already set up a subsidiary in the United States.<2E>In China and the United States, too, complex access and payment systems are hindering advances in e-mobility <20> a large number of non-standardized charging networks makes it difficult to ensure a smooth charging process,<2C> Hubject said.In China, the group is currently looking for a partner to set up a joint venture, a pre-condition for foreign companies to do business there, co-Chief Executive Thomas Daiber told Reuters.Owned by a group of carmakers, automotive suppliers, engineering groups and utilities, Hubject<63>s shareholder structure reflects the numerous sectors expected to be affected by a pickup in demand for electric vehicles.Hubject<63>s seven owners include Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ), Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ), BMW ( BMWG.DE ), Siemens ( SIEGn.DE ), Bosch [ROBG.UL], Innogy ( IGY.DE ) and EnBW ( EBKG.DE ), which are all banking on the industry<72>s shift away from combustion engines.Like rivals such as France<63>s Gireve and e-clearing.net, Hubject is trying to establish its service as the standard payment system for charging stations.Companies also map the stations and supply drivers with information about locations and availability, provided they have a working internet connection.Reporting by Christoph Steitz; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-hubject-usa-china/germanys-hubject-gets-funding-to-expand-in-united-states-china-idINKBN1CL0HU'|'2017-10-16T04:06:00.000+03:00'
'6dba0809be787d0aa0433705f2b2fba50b7889b9'|'Fintech market moves beyond lending'|'Fintech market moves beyond lending <20>Regtech<63> is a fast-growing area as Mifid draws close There is demand for technologies that help banks verify customers and comply with new banking rules <20> PA by Patrick Jenkins , Financial Editor Listen to this article Play audio for this article Pause This is an experimental feature. Give us your feedback. Thank you for your feedback. What do you think? I<>ll use it in the future I don<6F>t think I<>ll use it Please tell us why (optional) Send Feedback Goldman Sachs , arguably the world<6C>s leading investment bank, has not been the greatest success story of recent times. After all the challenges of the 2008 financial crisis and the post-crisis regulatory glut, its profitability has declined sharply. Today its stock market valuation, though far stronger than most banks, puts it on a so-called price-to-book valuation of 1.1 times. That is to say, its shares are worth 10 per cent more than the value of its net assets. Compare that with the market<65>s view of Lending Club , the upstart peer-to-peer lender. Despite a scandal last year founded in slipshod controls, and a fall in the group<75>s share price from a 2015 high of more than $25 to barely a fifth of that today, it is relatively far more valuable than the Wall Street titan, with a price-to-book multiple of 2.6 times. No wonder Goldman wants to reimagine itself as a tech group and online lender rather than an investment bank. For years Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive, has been describing Goldman as a technology company with a bank attached <20> justified to some degree by its superior investment in IT, its army of technologists (nearly a third of staff are engineers) and the fact that so much of its trading depends on models, algorithms and computerised structuring. In September, it reminded the world that it sees at least part of its future in a core wing of financial technology <20> online financing. Having launched an internet-based consumer lender and deposit-taker in the US in 2016, it is expanding that business to the UK . All that has yet to follow is a re-rating of Goldman stock <20> from bank to fintech. Though with barely $1bn of Goldman<61>s near $1tn balance sheet so far devoted to online lending, it may have a while to wait. Online lending is hardly the cutting edge of fintech, however, and may even be pass<73>, judging by the Financial Times<65> second annual Future of Fintech awards . Of the applications longlisted for both the Impact and Innovation awards <20> the winners of which will be unveiled in November <20> only a smattering were peer-to-peer lending engines or other online consumer finance businesses, a clear shift from 2016. In a sign that the fintech business is maturing into more sophisticated areas, <20>regtech<63> is among the fastest-growing areas, accounting for a chunk of applications to the Future of Fintech awards. Within regtech, there are further subdivisions, several of which appear particularly in vogue. Many banks believe that the high cost and duplication entailed in each bank conducting KYC work would justify the setting-up of an industry-wide utility to carry out checks on their behalf RSRCHXchange, one of the companies shortlisted for the Future of Fintech Innovation award, is among more than a dozen research marketplaces set up in anticipation of the EU<45>s Mifid II rules . The updated Markets in Financial Instruments Directive governs a range of activities by the financial sector, including the way in which equity analysts can market their research to asset management clients. At present, research is often given away in exchange for a bundle of investment banking fees but from next January, pricing must be clear and <20>unbundled<65>. Investment banks and their research departments are jostling for position with clients and a range of business models are emerging. RSRCHXchange and rivals such as Alpha and Research Tree are promising to cut through the chaos and provide clear access to multiple sources of research. Another booming area of regtech is compl
'a3fe9d85b2cdb6ace111fe57a502dbe2c63b1d26'|'HomeServe steps up U.S. push with Dominion Energy deal'|'LONDON (Reuters) - British home repairs provider HomeServe is stepping up its expansion in the United States by buying Dominion Energy<67>s home services unit, which has 500,000 customers across 16 states.The company said it would raise up to 125 million pounds ($165 million) in a share placing to fund the deal, which has an enterprise value of $143 million. That also gives it the firepower to do more, with opportunities in the United States, its European markets and in new regions such as Latin America.<2E>It gets us closer to our medium-term target, which is to be marketing to 80 million households (in the U.S.), and to get 10 percent of those signed up to cover,<2C> Chief Executive Richard Harpin said in an interview.The deal gives HomeServe access to 7.1 million additional households in 16 states in the mid-Atlantic region, he said.Harpin said its U.S. operations could achieve a 20 percent net profit margin, generating $160 million of profit a year in the medium term, which is more money than the whole group made last year.He said the group could have funded the deal from its existing finances and debt, but it was raising equity because it had <20>a really exciting pipeline<6E> of acquisition opportunities in the United States, Britain and France, and could potentially enter markets such as Latin America.HomeServe said it had a good first six months of the year and it remained on track to deliver further strong growth for the full financial year.Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Keith Weir'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-dominion-inc-m-a-homeserve/homeserve-steps-up-u-s-push-with-dominion-energy-deal-idINKBN1CO0WV'|'2017-10-19T06:11:00.000+03:00'
'5fdb5c3f9cd77d8610ff2138e39f9e0f9849d8e6'|'Airbus A330neo plane successfully takes off on maiden flight'|'October 19, 2017 / 8:02 AM / Updated an hour ago Airbus A330neo plane successfully takes off on maiden flight Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TOULOUSE, France, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Airbus began the maiden flight of its A330neo jetliner, a plane which is an upgraded version of its profitable A330 family and is designed to sharpen competition with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. The wide-bodied, long-distance jet took off at just before 0800 GMT under overcast skies. Its maiden flight was watched by top executives from Airbus and Britain<69>s Rolls Royce, which supplies the engines. (Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/airbus-a330neo/airbus-a330neo-plane-successfully-takes-off-on-maiden-flight-idUSP6N1M901L'|'2017-10-19T11:01:00.000+03:00'
'169dd7aedaec4375f52c232c415045f2bde54775'|'Tesla''s Model 3 gets an ''average'' as new tech dents auto reliability: Consumer Reports'|'FILE PHOTO: Tesla introduces one of the first Model 3 cars off the Fremont factory''s production line during an event at the company''s facilities in Fremont, California, U.S. on July 28, 2017. REUTERS/Alexandria Sage/File Photo DETROIT (Reuters) - New technology to stream music into dashboards or boost fuel efficiency is making cars less reliable, although electric cars such as the Tesla Model 3 and the Chevrolet Bolt should fare better than many conventional models, Consumer Reports magazine said on Thursday.The magazine said its survey of 640,000 vehicles showed that all-new vehicles or models with newly updated technology are more likely than older models to have a <20>wonky engine, a jerky transmission, or high-tech features that fail outright.<2E>Electric cars do away with many of the mechanical systems that prompt consumer complaints about conventional cars, the magazine said. Tesla Inc<6E>s ( TSLA.O )Model 3, despite recent production problems, should have <20>average<67> reliability because it relies on technology already used on the older Tesla Model S, Jake Fisher, the magazine<6E>s head of automotive testing said on Thursday at a meeting of the Detroit Automotive Press Association.The Bolt is the most reliable car in General Motors Co<43>s ( GM.N ) Chevrolet brand, he said.FILE PHOTO: Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk introduces one of the first Model 3 cars off the Fremont factory''s production line during an event at the company''s facilities in Fremont, California, U.S. on July 28, 2017. REUTERS/Alexandria Sage/File Photo Tesla in a statement on Thursday criticized Consumer Reports because it previously declared the Model S <20>to be the best car ever and then revoked the rating after being questioned by Tesla skeptics.<2E> As for the Model 3, Tesla said <20>it<69>s important to note that Consumer Reports has not yet driven a Model 3, let alone do they know anything substantial about how the Model 3 was designed and engineered.<2E>The magazine<6E>s annual survey of new vehicle reliability predicts which cars will give owners fewer or more problems than their competitors, based on data collected. Its scorecard is influential among consumers and industry executives.FILE PHOTO: Tesla Model 3 cars are seen as Tesla holds an event at the factory handing over its first 30 Model 3 vehicles to employee buyers at the company<6E>s Fremont facility in California, U.S. on July 28, 2017. Courtesy Tesla/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. For the fifth straight year, Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ) placed first in the magazine<6E>s ranking with the most reliable vehicles on average. General Motors Co<43>s ( GM.N ) Cadillac brand was last among 27 brands ranked. Tesla ranked 21st on the list.With many new cars, customers complain about problems with continuously variable transmissions and eight- and nine-speed gear boxes designed to boost fuel mileage, Fisher said.Hard to use infotainment systems also continue to annoy customers, Fisher said. But over-the-air updates are helping automakers alleviate problems more quickly, he said.Reporting by Joe White; Editing by Susan Thomas and Cynthia Osterman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-reliability/teslas-model-3-gets-an-average-as-new-tech-dents-auto-reliability-consumer-reports-idUSKBN1CO2IU'|'2017-10-19T19:50:00.000+03:00'
'c446b41a57e621e3ccd70461682f608a9582fb82'|'METALS-Copper marks time ahead of China reports'|'MELBOURNE, Oct 19 (Reuters) - London copper marked time on Thursday amid prospects of better demand and ahead of a slew of economic readings out of China that were expected to signal a slowdown in economic growth. FUNDAMENTALS * LME COPPER: Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange was barely changed at $6,982 a tonne by 0136 GMT, having closed a tad softer in the previous session. A close below the $7,000 watermark may trigger a technical consolidation. LME copper hit a three-year top of $7,177 a tonne on Monday. * SHFE COPPER: Shanghai Futures Exchange copper slipped by 0.7 percent to 54,510 yuan ($8,228) a tonne. * CHINA ECONOMY: China is expected on Thursday to post a modest slowdown in third-quarter economic growth from the previous quarter as the government''s efforts to rein in the property market and debt risks weigh on activity in the world''s second-largest economy. Analysts polled by Reuters expect gross domestic product (GDP) to have grown 6.8 percent in the July-September period, cooling from the previous quarter''s 6.9 percent expansion. * CHINA CONGRESS: Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday laid out a confident vision for a more prosperous nation and its role in the world, stressing the importance of wiping out corruption and curbing industrial overcapacity, income inequality and pollution. * US ECONOMY: The U.S. economy expanded at a modest to moderate pace in September through early October despite the impact of hurricanes on some regions, the Federal Reserve said in its latest snapshot of the U.S. economy released on Wednesday, but there were still few signs of an acceleration in inflation. * EV DEMAND: In supportive news for nickel and copper, China''s electric vehicle (EV) production could touch 1 million units next year and 3 million units by 2020, said Xu Heyi, chairman of carmaker BAIC Group, on Wednesday, likely exceeding a government-set target. * COPPER DEMAND: Chile state copper commission Cochilco forecasted on Wednesday an average global copper price of $2.95 per pound in 2018, a sharp upward revision from its mid-year estimate of $2.68, due to greater demand in China, a key market. * For the top stories in metals and other news, click or MARKETS NEWS * Asian stocks inched up to near decade highs on Thursday, continuing to ride on a global equities rally, while the dollar resumed its rise on the back of a spike in U.S. yields. DATA/EVENTS 0200 China GDP Q3 0200 China Industrial output Sep 0200 China Retail sales Sep 0200 China Urban investment Sep 0830 Britain Retail sales Sep 1230 U.S. Weekly jobless claims 1230 U.S. Philly Fed business index Oct 1400 U.S. Leading index Sep PRICES BASE METALS PRICES 0133 GMT Three month LME copper 6974 Most active ShFE copper 54550 Three month LME aluminium 2120 Most active ShFE aluminium 16050 Three month LME zinc 3110 Most active ShFE zinc 25275 Three month LME lead 2493 Most active ShFE lead 19350 Three month LME nickel 11605 Most active ShFE nickel 93270 Three month LME tin 0 Most active ShFE tin 144840 BASE METALS ARBITRAGE LME/SHFE COPPER LMESHFCUc3 569.01 LME/SHFE ALUMINIUM LMESHFALc3 -284.96 LME/SHFE ZINC LMESHFZNc3 584.6 LME/SHFE LEAD LMESHFPBc3 -698.72 LME/SHFE NICKEL LMESHFNIc3 2518.57 ($1 = 6.6246 Chinese yuan) (Reporting by Melanie Burton; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/global-metals/metals-copper-marks-time-ahead-of-china-reports-idUSL4N1MU1C4'|'2017-10-19T04:52:00.000+03:00'
'de23614e89570db662e6c3b49ef834a5afef0520'|'Asia stocks edge up, await China GDP, dollar rises as yields spike'|'The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote NEW YORK (Reuters) - World stock markets broadly retreated amid investor caution after a flurry of tepid corporate earnings reports from around the globe, stoking demand instead for safer assets like U.S. Treasuries, pushing yields lower.Equities on Wall Street were pulled lower a day after the Dow Industrials index cracked the 23,000 barrier for the first time. Shares of Apple ( AAPL.O ) fell 2.6 percent to $155.68 on signs of poor demand for the iPhone 8.Of the 11 major S&P sector groups, technology .SPLRCT, off 0.49 percent, was the biggest drag.Traders were marking 30 years to the day since the 1987 Black Monday stock market crash, although many market participants considered another such crash unlikely.The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 53.97 points, or 0.23 percent, to 23,103.63, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 5.43 points, or 0.21 percent, to 2,555.83 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 36.92 points, or 0.56 percent, to 6,587.30.European shares were on track for their biggest drop in two months on concerns over political upheaval in Spain and after disappointing results from large companies such as Unilever, France<63>s Publicis and Germany<6E>s Kion.Spain<69>s central government said it would suspend Catalonia<69>s autonomy and impose direct rule after the region<6F>s leader threatened to go ahead with a formal declaration of independence if Madrid refused to hold talks.<2E>The Spain thing is a negative story and considering the market is looking for a reason (to fall) and considering there are other negative stories today they are going to throw everything in the bathtub,<2C> said Ken Polcari, director of the NYSE floor division at O<>Neil Securities in New York.<2E>The market is begging for a reason to want to back off.<2E>The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 lost 0.62 percent and MSCI''s gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD PUS shed 0.15 percent.Madrid''s IBEX .IBEX was last down 0.7 percent, after dropping as much as 1 percent. Spanish 10-year government bonds ES10YT=RR last fell 3/32 in price to yield 1.637 percent, from 1.625 percent on Wednesday.That was enough to pull the euro EUR=EBS briefly into negative territory though it later recovered to hit a 1-week high on the dollar. [/FRX]Also putting a damper on risk appetite was data from China, which showed economic growth cooled slightly to 6.8 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, from the second quarter<65>s 6.9 percent.Other data showed that China<6E>s industrial output rose a stronger-than-expected 6.6 percent in September, while retail sales also outperformed.But property sales fell for the first time in over two years. In addition, People<6C>s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan spoke of the risks of a <20>Minsky moment<6E> in the economy, referring to a sudden collapse in asset prices sparked by debt or currency pressures.The dollar index .DXY fell 0.25 percent after touching a six-day low of 93.055, with the euro EUR= up 0.47 percent to $1.1842.Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR last rose 9/32 in price to yield 2.3088 percent, from 2.339 percent late on Wednesday.Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Bernadette Baum'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asia-stocks-edge-up-await-china-gdp-dollar-rises-as-yields-spike-idINKBN1CO037'|'2017-10-19T04:00:00.000+03:00'
'6a605f564e69ecdf95cb87f99a3e5c783df6690a'|'Siemens plans thousands of job cuts in Power & Gas: Manager Magazin'|'October 19, 2017 / 8:46 AM / in 9 minutes Siemens plans thousands of job cuts in Power & Gas: Manager Magazin Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A flag with the logo of German technology firm Siemens is seen at its branch in Berlin, Germany, May 30, 2014. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Siemens ( SIEGn.DE ) is planning an overhaul of its Power & Gas division that will include the closure or sale of some sites and result in thousands of job cuts, German monthly Manager Magazin reported, citing company sources. The Power and Gas business is struggling with a global shift away from using the large electricity generating turbines which Siemens specializes in. The company reported a 41 percent drop in orders and a worse than expected 23 percent fall in profits in its fiscal third quarter which ended in June. Manager Magazin said on Thursday that Siemens could shut or sell up to 11 of its 23 Power & Gas sites around the world, including a generator factory in the eastern German city of Erfurt. Management will present the plan to labour representatives in early November, it said. Power & Gas, excluding its services business, has 30,000 employees worldwide, of which 12,000 are based in Germany. Siemens said it was continually thinking about its strategic direction, which could include consolidation of some businesses, but declined to comment directly on the Manager Magazin article. Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Additional reporting by Irene Preisinger; Editing by Ludwig Burger, Greg Mahlich 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-siemens-restructuring/siemens-plans-thousands-of-job-cuts-in-power-gas-manager-magazin-idUKKBN1CO10M'|'2017-10-19T11:46:00.000+03:00'
'cc71496a68bd15bba2fe0b0705b6c5253e9bc327'|'Goldman''s fledgling consumer bank draws questions from curious analysts'|'Reuters TV United States October 18, 2017 / 2:28 PM / in 33 minutes Goldman''s fledgling consumer bank draws questions from curious analysts Olivia Oran 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of Dow Jones Industrial Average stock market index listed company Goldman Sachs (GS) is seen on the clothing of a trader working at the Goldman Sachs stall on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, United States April 16, 2012. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo (Reuters) - As Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( GS.N ) has unveiled more details about its strategy and financial targets to satisfy investor demands, Wall Street<65>s attention has turned to a business so small and new that there may not be much to disclose. On Tuesday, analysts questioned Chief Financial Officer Marty Chavez about Goldman<61>s nascent consumer lending operation, which has only begun to take shape over the past 18 months. During a conference call to discuss third-quarter results, analysts wanted to know what yields Goldman expects from consumer lending, how creditworthy its borrowers are, the loss rates it might incur from different kinds of loans and how a recession would impact the operation. Larger lenders with sprawling retail operations and long histories in consumer credit routinely disclose such information, but Goldman Sachs is a relatively new and small Main Street bank. It is also entering the business at a time when consumer credit may be deteriorating, as results from rivals JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM.N ) and Citigroup Inc ( C.N ) showed last week. Goldman<61>s inexperience, combined with its lack of disclosure on consumer banking, is giving some investors pause, said longtime banking analyst Martin Mosby. <20>Why not break out what you<6F>re actually generating in net interest income, and growth on the balance sheet, as a separate line item?<3F> Mosby said in an interview. <20>Being more explicit on the results from the balance sheet initiative would be helpful.<2E> Goldman recently took some broad steps toward transparency with investors, in what executives call its <20>under the hood<6F> initiative. After coming under pressure due to prolonged weakness in bond trading, once a profit engine for Goldman Sachs, the bank outlined its first-ever revenue growth target. On Tuesday, it also introduced details on capital plans. But Goldman<61>s consumer lending disclosures are relatively sparse. The bank reports those results within a unit that also includes revenue from merchant banking, private equity and other ad-hoc investments. Nine analysts, including Mosby, pressed Chavez to elaborate on loans or deposits, which were not itemized in Goldman<61>s 10-page earnings release. After pushing him to share more about borrowers and loan-loss expectations, Morgan Stanley analyst Betsy Graseck said it would helpful to provide more detail in future quarters. Autonomous Research analyst Guy Moszkowski said he planned to follow up with further questions. Goldman launched its retail operation in April 2016 by acquiring General Electric Co<43>s online deposit franchise. It created a digital loan platform called Marcus seven months later and last July announced GS Select, which caters to higher-end retail customers. Goldman<61>s loan book now stands at $61 billion, Chavez said. It is not clear how much of that comes from consumer lending versus other types of borrowing. That represents less than 7 percent of Goldman<61>s $930 billion balance sheet. By contrast, the $914 billion in loans held by JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM.N ), the largest U.S. bank, took up 36 percent of its $2.6 trillion balance sheet. Banks do not always offer granular details on businesses that do not contribute meaningfully to earnings. But because lending is a pillar of Goldman<61>s growth plans, analysts said they are hungry to know more. <20>When you are performing and continuing to grow earnings and profitability is up, you can kind of get away with<74> less disclosure, said Mosby. <20>When you<6F>re being pressured on your earnings and not 
'ff6aa2b900ecb5e64a28e12f190d2ba49d94b639'|'U.S. exchanges set for highest number of Asian IPOs since 2010'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:43 AM / in 5 hours U.S. exchanges set for highest number of Asian IPOs since 2010 Elzio Barreto 3 Min Read A view of the exterior of the Nasdaq market site in Times Square in the Manhattan borough of New York City, U.S., October 24, 2016. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton HONG KONG (Reuters) - U.S. exchanges are set to record their busiest year for IPOs from Asian firms since 2010 and may sustain the pace in 2018, as startups from Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam join a flurry of Chinese firms that have already listed in the country. Chinese issuers have dominated U.S. IPO activity for several years, but Nasdaq and rival New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) have been increasingly targeting firms from fast-growing Southeast Asian economies and startups from Japan and Australia to counter their dependence on mainland companies. <20>We see great growth and great opportunities ahead, and it<69>s not just about China. Entrepreneurship and innovation are all over the region,<2C> Bob McCooey, chairman for Asia Pacific and global head of capital markets at Nasdaq, said in an interview. Five companies, including Singaporean online games maker Sea Ltd, China<6E>s oldest peer-to-peer (P2P) lender Ppdai Group and search company Sogou Inc, are currently pitching their plans for initial public offerings to investors, adding to the 10 Chinese firms that have listed so far this year in the United States. Australian biopharmaceutical company Immuron Ltd ( IMRN.O ) also listed in the United States in June. The final tally of IPOs from Asian companies in the United States is expected to reach 20-24, McCooey said. That would be the most from the region since a record 42 new listings in 2010, Thomson Reuters data showed. While the number of Asian firms listing on U.S. exchanges should be about the same in 2018, the year is expected to see an increase in the amount of funds raised from 2017, McCooey added. Sectors leading deal activity include life sciences, e-commerce, education and financial technology. IPO proceeds from Asian companies listing on Nasdaq and the NYSE peaked in 2014, when e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group Holding Ltd ( BABA.N ) went public in a record $25 billion deal. That year, two-thirds of new listings were from China. Despite the dominance from Chinese issuers, U.S. IPOs over the past several years have included companies from Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and India. Nasdaq is tracking about 100 companies from mainland China that it could engage with for potential listings as they look to go public in coming years, McCooey said. But the exchange is also meeting with firms from Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. The exchange in May signed an agreement to help Vietnamese online gaming and messaging company VNG Corp explore an IPO, making it a rare U.S. listing from a company in the Southeast Asian nation. Reporting by Elzio Barreto; Editing by Himani Sarkar 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-nasdaq-asia/u-s-exchanges-set-for-highest-number-of-asian-ipos-since-2010-idINKBN1CM12Y'|'2017-10-17T12:40:00.000+03:00'
'44e054af12d6bf1b37b882f52b43f6d41e525d4c'|'China biotech''s ''coming out party'' masks long road ahead'|'October 19, 2017 / 6:09 AM / Updated 12 hours ago China biotech''s ''coming out party'' masks long road ahead 7 Min Read A scientist works at Zai Labo''s drug development facility in Shanghai, China October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Adam Jourdan LONDON/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Investors are betting on China<6E>s potential to feed the global pharmaceutical pipeline, putting a multi-billion-dollar price tag on a handful of stocks, even as the country struggles to close a huge R&D gap with the West. Shares in firms such as Chi-Med, Beigene and Zai Lab have soared on international markets this year, fueled by hopes for their drugs and recent reforms to China<6E>s regulatory system that should speed up approvals. <20>It<49>s almost a coming out party for China biotech,<2C> said Christian Hogg, chief executive of Hutchison China MediTech or Chi-Med, which presented promising data at a global medical congress this week on a lung cancer drug it discovered in China and is developing with AstraZeneca. <20>China is in vogue because of the positive moves on the regulatory side, as well as advances at companies. It<49>s a big, big change versus 10 years ago and it is accelerating.<2E> Importantly, national and provincial authorities are also moving faster to agree payments for innovative drugs, albeit after negotiating price discounts in many cases. Yet amid the euphoria it is easy to lose sight of the fact that China still has far to go. It contributes just 4 percent of global drug innovation - as measured by the number of products in development and recent launches - against 50 percent from the United States, according to an October 2016 report from four Chinese pharmaceutical associations. <20>It is very apparent they are trying to transition to being more of a novel drug development environment and bring in more innovative research,<2C> Scott Gottlieb, head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), told Reuters. <20>I think it<69>s going to be a long transition ... we built up an ecosystem in this country over decades and decades.<2E> China<6E>s traditional strengths lie in generic drugs and the bulk production of active pharmaceutical ingredients that are found in pills in pharmacies worldwide. The shift in focus to original research is a change in mindset, although it builds on the success of contract research and manufacturing company WuXi Biologics, which does much of the legwork for China<6E>s budding biotechs. REFORMING DRUGS WATCHDOG Bi Jingquan, the reformist bureaucrat who has led China<6E>s drugs watchdog the CFDA since 2015, views innovative - and affordable - drugs as the key to meeting the country<72>s growing clinical demands. China is now the world<6C>s second-biggest drugs market after the United States, with more cases of cancer and diabetes than any other nation, fueled by fast food, smoking and pollution. But the CFDA head lamented in a recent speech that Chinese domestic drug industry R&D investment was only 42 billion yuan ($6.3 billion) last year, a small slice of the $157 billion spent worldwide by drug companies in 2016, according to market intelligence group EvaluatePharma. Redressing the balance is a priority. <20>We want to make our pharma industry big and strong, make our drug companies more competitive, so that we can shift our country<72>s long-standing reliance on imported new drugs,<2C> said Bi Jingquan<61>s deputy Wu Zhen. A scientist works at Zai Labo''s drug development facility in Shanghai, China October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Adam Jourdan A big part of that involves overhauling regulation, with a new system now in place to accelerate full and conditional drug approvals as the CFDA strives to narrow a typical five to seven year lag between how long new drugs reach the market in China compared with Western countries. Plans announced last week mean the agency will now accept data from overseas clinical trials. That was applauded by Pfizer, the top foreign drugmaker in China, highlighting the stiff competition still facing local biotechs. So far many of the new drugs 
'aac93481b8c50a663501672321c36064e6ddc6f2'|'Brazil''s Petrobras seeks permission to list fuel distribution unit'|'October 16, 2017 / 11:42 PM / Updated 6 hours ago Brazil''s Petrobras seeks permission to list fuel distribution unit Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Brazil''s state-run oil company Petrobras LPG fuelling stations are seen in the Guanabara bay in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil October 7, 2017. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazil<69>s state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro ( PETR4.SA ) said on Monday it has requested permission from the country<72>s securities regulator CVM to list fuel distribution unit BR Distribuidora. The company said it was seeking permission for a secondary offering of ordinary shares in Brazil. Reporting by Roberto Samora; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-petrobras-br-distribuidora-ipo/brazils-petrobras-seeks-permission-to-list-fuel-distribution-unit-idINKBN1CL34X'|'2017-10-16T21:42:00.000+03:00'
'0483301b0b147059988081b36089555a3430abf0'|'Malaysia Airlines'' CEO to return to Ryanair to help fix pilot problems'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:45 AM / in 22 minutes Malaysia Airlines'' CEO to return to Ryanair to help fix pilot problems Conor Humphries , Jamie Freed 3 Min Read Malaysia Airlines CEO Peter Bellew talks during a meeting of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in Cancun, Mexico June 5, 2017. REUTERS/Victor Ruiz Garcia DUBLIN/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Malaysia Airlines CEO Peter Bellew is leaving after just over a year in charge to return to Ryanair ( RYA.I ) as chief operations officer to tackle the pilot shortages that has resulted in it cancelling more than 20,000 flights over the winter season. The move means that Malaysia will have to appoint a third chief executive in three years as it continues to recover from two tragedies in 2014, when flight MH370 disappeared in what remains a mystery and flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine. But for Ryanair Bellew<65>s return on Dec. 1 comes as Europe<70>s busiest airline is trying to recruit additional pilots and persuade existing pilots to stay with the offer of new, improved conditions to avoid a repeat of the cancellations. Bellew was director of flight operations at Ryanair before he left in 2014. He joined Malaysia as chief operations officer in September 2015 and took over as chief executive in July last year. Ryanair said that Bellew would be given a specific responsibility for managing pilots. His mission will be <20>to ensure that the pilot rostering failure which Ryanair suffered in early September will never be repeated,<2C> the company said in a statement. Ryanair in all has announced the cancellation of around 20,000 flights after admitting it did not have enough standby pilots to operate a reliable schedule. Irish stockbroker Goodbody last week said in a note that Bellew was well regarded in the industry and was <20>thought to have had a good relationship with the pilots when he was there.<2E> In recent weeks pilots at Ryanair, which does not recognise any labour union, have been getting together on social media to lobby for a major overhaul of the company<6E>s employment conditions. Bellew<65>s decision to leave Malaysia comes just over a year after former chief executive Christoph Mueller left the airline citing personal circumstances a year after being hired on a three-year mission to revive the state-controlled firm. Mueller later joined Emirates as its chief digital and transformation officer. Under Bellew<65>s leadership, the Malaysian national carrier has been restructuring its fleet. Malaysia Airlines could not be reached immediately for comment. Reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Louise Heavens, Greg Mahlich 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ryanair-malaysia/malaysia-ceo-to-return-to-ryanair-to-help-fix-pilot-problems-idUKKBN1CM13M'|'2017-10-17T14:11:00.000+03:00'
'255a8ae46fab8a75b801cab1363e2953ee204b2d'|'Kobe Steel faked quality data for more than 10 years: source'|'FILE PHOTO: The logo of Kobe Steel is seen on the group''s Tokyo headquarter building in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - When cheating becomes habitual, the consequences could be costly.Embattled Kobe Steel Ltd said on Tuesday the U.S. Justice Department is asking the steelmaker to provide documents related to its data falsification scandal.That came after a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters late on Monday that data tampering on products went on for more than a decade, deepening the crisis that has sliced off about $1.6 billion off its market value in just over a week.And that could be just the tip of the iceberg, legal experts have said, given the potential financial and legal fallout as compensation for even a small number of the 500-odd companies engulfed in the scandal could prove costly.Japan<61>s No.3 steelmaker is still trying to nail down the extent of the tampering, said the source, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.According to an unsourced Nikkei report, the cheating at the firm went on for decades with the knowledge of plant and quality control managers, well over the 10 years that Kobe Steel had acknowledged last week<65>We cannot confirm the Nikkei report as our investigation is ongoing,<2C> a Kobe Steel spokesman said.The revelations on Oct. 8 that the firm had falsified data on product quality and specifications have sent a chill through supply chains around the world in a fresh blow to Japan<61>s reputation as a high-quality manufacturing destination.The scandal has ensnared companies from operators of Japan<61>s iconic bullet trains to the world<6C>s biggest aircraft maker, Boeing Co,.The Justice Department is seeking documents related to products the firm has sold to U.S. companies, Kobe Steel said.While the company has not fully identified the extent of the cheating, it told analysts and investors on Monday it had nearly 368 billion yen ($3.3 billion) on hand in cash, short-term securities and unused credit from banks.It is also seeking to generate cash by cutting working capital or selling assets.<2E>Kobe Steel faces a serious governance issue and management should be replaced - which would open the possibility to spin off non-core businesses,<2C> Thanh Ha Pham, an analyst at Jefferies wrote in a note on Tuesday.<2E>We calculate that, broken apart, Kobe Steel is worth 860.5 billion yen or 2,375.5 yen a share,<2C> Thanh said, based on an assumption the cheating scandal will cost it 100 billion yen ($892 million).FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the signboard of Kobe Steel at the group''s Tokyo headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo Kobe Steel shares rose for a second day, gaining 3.1 percent to close at 853 yen, but still way below the pre-crisis level of 1,368 yen. The Nikkei 225 ended 0.4 percent higher.The company will have no problem paying off a 20 billion yen bond due on Oct. 27, the source told Reuters.The firm has forecast a profit for the year through March 2018 after two successive annual losses, but the outlook has been clouded by the potential fallout from the scandal.FACING RISKS Kobe Steel Chief Executive Hiroya Kawasaki who said earlier the firm<72>s credibility had plunged to <20>zero<72>, disclosed on Friday that about 500 companies had received its falsely certified products, more than double its earlier count.Kobe Steel President and CEO Hiroya Kawasaki attends a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon No safety problems have surfaced as Kobe Steel attempts to confirm the extent of the data tampering. The government has ordered the company to address safety concerns within about two weeks and report on how the misconduct occurred in a month.Most of the problems have occurred in the company<6E>s aluminium and copper business, where many of the products are made to specifications required by automakers and other companies. But cases of falsified data have
'06bcdaa551158bb1d7b010585f1b5a7c47f5d742'|'Ex-Lloyds bank bosses used ''spin and puff'' in HBOS deal, court told'|'October 18, 2017 / 3:23 PM / in 3 hours Ex-Lloyds bank bosses used ''spin and puff'' in HBOS deal, court told Kirstin Ridley , Emma Rumney 4 Min Read A man walks past the entrance to the head office of Lloyds Banking Group in the City of London December 11, 2013. REUTERS/Olivia Harris LONDON (Reuters) - Former bosses of Lloyds Banking Group ( LLOY.L ) used <20>spin and sales puff<66> to win over investors and secure a <20>disastrous<75> acquisition of rival HBOS during the credit crisis, a lawyer for thousands of shareholders told London<6F>s High Court on Wednesday. Around 6,000 Lloyds investors, who are seeking around 550 million pounds in damages, allege that five former directors at Lloyds, including ex-CEO Eric Daniels, concealed information about HBOS<4F>s financial position in 2008 and 2009 and breached their duties by recommending the purchase. On the first day of a 14-week London trial, the claimant<6E>s lawyer Richard Hill told the court that the deal saved HBOS from nationalisation but looked like a catastrophe for Lloyds within days of completion in early 2009. <20>We say shareholders were indeed mugged,<2C> Hill said, adding that former Lloyds executives such as Daniels also glossed over severe problems with HBOS<4F>s liquidity and corporate loan portfolio when presenting the case to the board. Lloyds, Britain<69>s largest retail bank, and the individual defendants, who include former chairman Victor Blank, Tim Tookey, the former finance director, Helen Weir, the former head of retail and Truett Tate, the former head of wholesale banking, deny any wrongdoing. <20>The group<75>s position remains that we do not consider there to be any merit to these claims and we will robustly contest this legal action,<2C> the bank said in a statement. All defendants are being collectively represented by Lloyds lawyers. It is the second British investor lawsuit against a bank stemming from the credit crisis - and the first to go to trial. Royal Bank of Scotland ( RBS.L ) reached an out-of-court settlement over a 2008 cash call shortly before a trial scheduled in June. HBOS, formed from the merger in 2001 of former English building society Halifax and the 300-year-old Bank of Scotland, was close to collapse in 2008 after the failure of Lehman Brothers caused money markets to seize up, meaning HBOS could not get the funding it needed for its ballooning loan book. Lloyds shareholders allege the subsequent government-brokered takeover of HBOS, that valued the struggling bank at around 5.9 billion pounds, wiped billions off the bank<6E>s market value. Lloyds itself then had to be rescued with a 20.5 billion- pound government bailout in 2009. Investors allege Lloyds secretly loaned HBOS 10 billion pounds in 2008 so it could continue trading and that the bank<6E>s directors did not disclose that HBOS was receiving emergency support from the Bank of England and the U.S. Federal Reserve, which peaked at about 25.6 billion pounds and $18 billion (<28>13.6 billion) respectively. Hill said Daniels and Blank were put under pressure by the government in 2008 to rescue HBOS but owed their allegiance to Lloyds shareholders. Lloyds, which has returned to profit and emerged from state ownership in May, denies the claims and says the bank and the ex-directors all acted properly. Editing by Rachel Armstrong, Greg Mahlich 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lloyds-hbos-shareholders/ex-lloyds-bank-bosses-used-spin-and-puff-in-hbos-deal-court-told-idUKKBN1CN299'|'2017-10-18T18:22:00.000+03:00'
'2cc60ed0451c3961fcfb758e63e0d73f68088029'|'German DIHK chambers of commerce see economy growing 2.2 percent in 2018'|'October 19, 2017 / 9:17 AM / Updated 24 minutes ago German DIHK chambers of commerce see economy growing 2.2 percent in 2018 Michael Nienaber 3 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany<6E>s DIHK Chambers of Industry and Commerce raised its growth forecast for Europe<70>s biggest economy to 2.0 percent for this year from its previous estimate of 1.8 percent and sees an even stronger expansion next year. The German economy is enjoying a consumer-led upswing, helped by record-high employment, moderate inflation and ultra-low borrowing costs. The upturn is boosting tax revenues and the state<74>s budget surplus, which should help Chancellor Angela Merkel seal a tricky coalition agreement in coming months. <20>The economy is firing on all cylinders,<2C> DIHK managing director Martin Wansleben said, adding that the upswing was broadly based on strong domestic demand and solid exports. The DIHK said it expected growth of 2.2 percent in 2018. <20>Investments are kicking in as an additional growth driver,<2C> Wansleben said. He urged the next government to lower corporate taxes, increase public investments in infrastructure and pass an immigration law to attract more skilled workers from abroad despite a popular backlash following the refugee crisis. According to the DIHK<48>s autumn survey, business morale regarding current conditions reached a record-high as 51 percent of firms reported good conditions, 43 percent said things were satisfactory and only 6 percent said things were bad. The DIHK<48>s survey of 27,000 managers, the biggest of its kind in Germany, found that 25 percent expected conditions to improve further, 64 percent for them to remain stable and only 11 percent expected a deterioration. Asked about the biggest threats for future growth, most companies pointed to shortages of skilled labour and rising labour costs as the principle risks. Wansleben said a failure by the European Union and Britain to clinch a Brexit trade agreement in time would not stifle Germany<6E>s economic upswing, but it would put a question mark over DIHK<48>s growth forecast for 2018. <20>Our projections are based on the assumption that the people in charge are dealing with the matter in a way so that there won<6F>t be a crash,<2C> Wansleben said. Asked whether a breakdown of talks between Brussels and London had the potential to derail Germany<6E>s economic upswing, he said: <20>The upswing wouldn<64>t be halted, but this would be a very bad signal, politically.<2E> Additional reporting by Gernot Heller; Editing by Madeline Chambers and Gareth Jones 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-economy-dihk/german-dihk-chambers-of-commerce-see-economy-growing-2-2-percent-in-2018-idUKKBN1CO145'|'2017-10-19T12:16:00.000+03:00'
'd9f9ce15e98cdbed43a5a8e9ff4fe1b1b4078df5'|'Alphabet leads Lyft''s latest $1 billion funding'|'October 19, 2017 / 3:45 PM / in 11 minutes Alphabet''s CapitalG leads Lyft''s $1 billion funding round Heather Somerville , Arjun Panchadar 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: An illuminated sign appears in a Lyft ride-hailing car in Los Angeles, California, U.S. September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo (Reuters) - Lyft Inc has raised $1 billion in fresh financing, the ride-services company said on Thursday, in a round led by one of Alphabet Inc<6E>s investment funds, further complicating the convoluted world of ride-hailing alliances and dealing a blow to rival Uber Technologies Inc. The round was led by CapitalG, the growth investment fund of Alphabet that has also backed large private tech companies such as home-renting platform Airbnb and payments firm Stripe. Six months ago, Lyft raised $600 million (456.14 million pounds)from a conglomeration of investors. Lyft said the latest round boosts its valuation to $11 billion from $7.5 billion. CapitalG partner David Lawee will join the company<6E>s board, Lyft said, bringing it to a total of 10 directors. <20>Ridesharing is still in its early days and we look forward to seeing Lyft continue its impressive growth,<2C> Lawee said in a statement. Lyft, which runs a distant second to Uber, has pushed expansion this year. The company says it is available across 41 states and completes more than a million rides a day Lyft is deepening ties to Alphabet despite its partnership with General Motors Co, which has invested $500 million. GM president Dan Ammann told Reuters this week that any further plans to collaborate with Lyft were <20>not defined at this time.<2E> Lyft and Alphabet already have a relationship through a partnership Lyft struck with Waymo, Alphabet<65>s self-driving car unit, in May. The two companies are collaborating on bringing autonomous vehicle technology to market, but have not provided many details. Spokespeople for Lyft and Alphabet have said the latest investment will not have any bearing on the Waymo partnership. Alphabet also has ties to Uber through its second investment arm, GV. GV invested in Uber in 2013, but then Uber began to develop autonomous cars and compete directly with Alphabet. Last year, Alphabet executive David Drummond stepped down from the Uber board. This year Waymo sued Uber, alleging trade secret theft, in a case that is set to go to trial in December. <20>It is another punch by Alphabet at Uber,<2C> said Erik Gordon, an entrepreneurship expert at the University of Michigan<61>s Ross School of Business. GV could have the opportunity to sell at least some of its stake in Uber in a highly anticipated deal between Uber and SoftBank Group Corp, which may be finalized in the next week. SoftBank wants to buy between $7 billion and $10 billion in shares from Uber employees and investors. Uber has also been embroiled in sexual harassment claims, lawsuits and U.S. Department of Justice investigations over its business practices. Bill Maris, founder of GV who has since left to run his own venture capital firm, told Reuters last week there is a strong case for GV to sell. <20>It is completely rational to me as an investor to take all of the money off the table now given all of the drama, all of the toxicity, all of the DOJ investigations,<2C> he said. But Maris and other Uber investors are conflicted, saying the company still has the potential to be worth $100 billion or more. <20>This thing likely goes up from here,<2C> Maris said. Lyft is close to hiring an initial public offering advisory firm, the first concrete step by the company to become publicly listed. This funding round may delay those IPO plans, however, as the capital will allow Lyft to continue growing its business privately. <20>We will go public when it<69>s right for us,<2C> said Lyft spokeswoman Alexandra LaManna. Reporting by Heather Somerville in Los Angeles and Arjun Panchadar and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr and David Gregorio 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml
'f97ba3b79f4f9b158e3dc6da6287f66ba3509718'|'Tesla''s Model 3 gets an ''average'' as new tech dents auto reliability - Consumer Reports'|'Reuters TV United States   in 20 minutes Tesla''s Model 3 gets an ''average'' as new tech dents auto reliability: Consumer Reports Joseph White 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Tesla introduces one of the first Model 3 cars off the Fremont factory''s production line during an event at the company''s facilities in Fremont, California, U.S. on July 28, 2017. REUTERS/Alexandria Sage/File Photo DETROIT (Reuters) - Tesla Inc<6E>s ( TSLA.O ) new Model 3 sedan is likely to have <20>average<67> reliability despite production snags because it uses older technology rather than newer innovations that are causing problems for automakers, Consumer Reports magazine said on Thursday. The magazine said its survey of 640,000 vehicles showed that all-new vehicles or models with newly updated technology are more likely than older models to have a wonky engine, a jerky transmission, or high-tech features that fail outright. The magazine<6E>s annual survey of new vehicle reliability predicts which cars will give owners fewer or more problems than their competitors, based on data collected. Its scorecard is influential among consumers and industry executives. For the fifth straight year, Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ) placed first in the magazine<6E>s ranking with the most reliable vehicles on average. General Motors Co<43>s ( GM.N ) Cadillac brand was last among 27 brands ranked. Tesla ranked 21st on the list. The magazine<6E>s prediction that the Tesla Model 3, which has faced production bottlenecks, will have average reliability illustrates the challenges automakers face. The Model 3 is the luxury electric vehicle maker<65>s newest car, and Consumer Reports said it had no data on the vehicle. But it relies largely on technology the carmaker has used on its Model S sedan, which has been in production since 2012, and Consumer Reports said predicted reliability for that car is now <20>above average.<2E> FILE PHOTO: Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk introduces one of the first Model 3 cars off the Fremont factory''s production line during an event at the company''s facilities in Fremont, California, U.S. on July 28, 2017. REUTERS/Alexandria Sage/File Photo <20>Electric vehicles are inherently less complicated than gasoline or hybrid alternatives. The Model 3 is the least complicated Tesla yet,<2C> Consumer Reports said. With many new cars, customers complain about problems with continuously variable transmissions and eight- and nine-speed gear boxes designed to boost fuel mileage, the magazine said. FILE PHOTO: Tesla Model 3 cars are seen as Tesla holds an event at the factory handing over its first 30 Model 3 vehicles to employee buyers at the company<6E>s Fremont facility in California, U.S. on July 28, 2017. Courtesy Tesla/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. Hard to use infotainment systems also continue to annoy customers. Consumer Reports said its survey found that owners of models in the first year of production reported twice as many complaints about vehicle electronics. <20>More often than not, our data suggests it<69>s prudent for consumers to wait for the technology to mature,<2C> Jake Fisher, head of Consumer Reports auto testing, said in a statement ahead of a presentation in Detroit. Automakers are moving quickly to fix problems, the magazine said. After Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Co ( 005380.KS ) got hit with complaints about the transmission on its 2016 Hyundai Tucson sport utility vehicle, the company took action that reduced complaints about the 2017 model by more than half, Consumer Reports said. In July, Consumer Reports restored a top rating in its class for Tesla<6C>s Model S after the company updated the braking system. Reporting by Joe White; Editing by Susan Thomas 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-autos-reliability/teslas-model-3-gets-an-average-as-new-tech-dents-auto-reliability-consumer-reports
'40cec88e67f0a6ed783b5976706daef88ec51d99'|'Goldman CEO says planning to spend a lot more time in Frankfurt'|'October 19, 2017 / 1:33 PM / Updated an hour ago In blow to Britain, Goldman CEO says to spend more time in Frankfurt Anjuli Davies 2 Min Read Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein speaks at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York City, U.S., September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid LONDON (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein is planning to spend a lot more time in Frankfurt, he said on Thursday, as the Wall Street bank pushes ahead with plans to make the German city a major base after Britain leaves the European Union. <20>Just left Frankfurt. Great meetings, great weather, really enjoyed it. Good, because I<>ll be spending a lot more time there. #Brexit<69> Blankfein tweeted on Thursday. The CEO had been meeting clients from across Germany and addressed a gathering of employees. Britain is currently home to most of Goldman<61>s European operations where it has around 6,000 employees, but the firm needs to ensure it will still be able to service clients in the EU once Britain leaves the bloc and may have limited access to the EU<45>s single market. Frankfurt is so far seen as the biggest beneficiary from Wall Street banks moving jobs out of London as a result of Brexit, with JPMorgan, Citi and Morgan Stanley all setting out plans to expand operations there. Asked about the tweet, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said: <20>We<57>re not going to comment on each individual statement but let<65>s be clear, London is and will remain the world<6C>s leading financial centre.<2E> <20>We have the breadth of talent, legal system, regulation and deep pools of capital that are simply unrivalled by centres anywhere else in Europe, and we are confident of securing an ambitious economic partnership with the EU that will include financial services.<2E> Earlier this month, Goldman said it had agreed to lease office space at a new building in Frankfurt, giving it space for up to 1,000 staff. That would be five times the current staff of 200 and see it bolstering activities including trading, investment banking and asset management Wolfgang Fink, Goldman<61>s co-head in Germany, said in September the bank may triple or quadruple its headcount in the country. A spokesman for Goldman Sachs declined to comment further on Blankfein<69>s tweet. Reporting by Anjuli Davies; Additional reporting by William James; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-godlman-sachs/goldman-ceo-says-planning-to-spend-a-lot-more-time-in-frankfurt-idUKKBN1CO1YG'|'2017-10-19T16:32:00.000+03:00'
'03dc1a56177981071c49359b44d11fe6604267e4'|'More airlines are offering free Wi-Fi for messaging services'|'AT A time when all aspects of air travel seem to come with a price tag, one service quite suddenly has become free. And it is not in-flight dining or checking in a bag or securing an exit-row seat.The increasingly common free service is onboard messaging. Earlier this month, Delta Airlines began allowing passengers to use its Wi-Fi system to send free messages on third-party apps, such as iMessage, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. Passengers can do so on their smartphones, laptops or tablets. (Mobile-network services, like 4G, tend to be unreliable after lift off). Delta is following the lead of Alaska Airlines, which rolled out a similar service earlier this year, as the Los Angeles Times reports , and American Airlines which announced its own plans to offer messaging in the near future. Sadly, this is still a far cry from a free internet service. Airlines still charge for browsing and they have a strong incentive to do so. That is because those charges contribute to the whopping $45bn in passenger fees that airlines around the world collected last year.Nevertheless, there is reason to think that free and fast internet connections could be just around the corner. That is down to improving bandwidths. Gary Leff, a travel blogger, points out that when bandwidth is limited, airlines have to ration it by charging for it. Otherwise you end up with unusably slow speeds, which is what happens on the rare flights that offer free internet.But now airlines like Delta and American have been introducing satellite internet, as opposed to the current systems which work by planes relaying signals to and from networks on the ground. In the past, carriers have been slow to add satellite internet because installing an antenna on the outside of a plane increases drag and thereby fuel costs. But often where satellite internet is used, internet speeds are much faster. Soon, connections may be robust enough to allow all passengers to browse simultaneously.And once one major airline provides free, fast internet to all passengers, there will, no doubt, be plenty of pressure on rivals to do the same. Business travellers, students, those who want to stay connected as well as flyers who want more in-flight entertainment will all be willing to pay a little extra for a flight that offers free internet. How much more they will be happy to spend remains to be seen. But just as internet access has spread across hotels and caf<61>s, it will surely spread at 35,000 feet. It is simply a matter of time.Next Carriers in America are doubling down on budget airfares'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/10/net-setting?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-17T19:03:00.000+03:00'
'b5d66a6dfef0b42145a7ca76ee3fcc804870efd4'|'CEE MARKETS-Crown hits 4-year high despite election uncertainty'|'* Rate hike expectations continue to fuel Czech crown rally * Coalition talks after Oct 20-21 vote may cause some retreat * Zloty, forint trade near multi-week highs, bonds lose steam By Sandor Peto BUDAPEST, Oct 17 (Reuters) - The crown hit 4-year highs on Tuesday, helped by expectations for interest rate hikes by the Czech central bank (CNB) and strong economic growth in the European Union''s eastern wing. The crown firmed 0.2 percent to 25.765 against the euro by 0822 GMT. Czech forward rate agreements have fully priced in 25 basis point increase in the CNB''s main rate in the next three months, which it started to increase in August in the first central bank rate hike in the European Union since 2012. The crown early this month broke through a resistance at 26 which had held it up for months, "driven not only by supportive economic conditions, but especially by ongoing rate hike expectations," Raiffeisen analyst Wolfgang Ernst said in a note. "The upcoming legislative election (20-21 October) and possibly difficult coalition forming thereafter could cause some (short) disruption in the appreciation trend," he added. Billionaire Andrej Babis'' ANO party has a double-digit lead over its closest rival in opinion polls. When Babis was finance minister, "the overall economic standing of the country has improved", but being a divisive person, some crown retreat may be in the cards, Nordea analyst Natalia Kornela Setlak said in a note. "If Babis maintains his ambition to become the next Czech PM, the post-election government formation might take longer than usual, increasing political instability and possibly weakening the CZK slightly," she said. Three-month outright crown forwards were bid at 25.748, showing some firming from current levels. Sentiment in the region''s currency markets remained generally positive, even though a rally of Polish and Hungarian government bonds lost steam. The zloty, trading at 4.2335 against the euro, was steady near 3-month highs reached on Monday. It has been helped by Monday''s figures showing a narrower-than-expected August current account deficit, and wage and jobless figures due later on Tuesday are expected to confirm robust economic growth. The daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily said Poland''s state budget recorded a surplus in the January-September period despite expectations of a deficit. The forint firmed 0.1 percent to 307.81, slightly off Monday''s 5-week high set at 307.35, supported by Hungary''s growth, trade surpluses and stability. The Hungarian central bank is expected to cut its overnight deposit interest rate of -0.15 percent further at its meeting next week based on the interest rate implied in the fx swap auction which the bank held on Monday, one dealer said. "The world is still awash in money, whatever the Fed and the ECB are dragging their feet," another trader said. CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1022 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.765 25.814 +0.19 4.82% 0 0 % Hungary 307.81 308.16 +0.11 0.33% forint 00 00 % Polish zloty 4.2335 4.2321 -0.03% 4.03% Romanian leu 4.5850 4.5840 -0.02% -1.09% Croatian 7.5055 7.5055 +0.00 0.66% kuna % Serbian 119.07 119.08 +0.01 3.59% dinar 00 00 % Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1054.3 1052.7 +0.15 +14.4 3 5 % 0% Budapest 38999. 39119. -0.31% +21.8 74 89 6% Warsaw 2526.7 2534.5 -0.31% +29.7 8 2 2% Bucharest 8061.7 8032.3 +0.37 +13.7 7 8 % 9% Ljubljana 808.71 814.28 -0.68% +12.7 0% Zagreb 1857.9 1855.0 +0.16 -6.86% 8 9 % Belgrade 729.41 730.90 -0.20% +1.68 % Sofia 669.29 670.28 -0.15% +14.1 3% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs change Bund in Czech spread Republic 2-year 0.126 -0.046 +086b -5bps ps 5-year 0.535 0.055 +088b +6bps ps 10-year 1.391 0.025 +102b +3bps ps Poland 2-year 1.694 0.001 +242b +0bps ps 5-year 2.65 0.005 +299b +1bps ps 10-year 3.275 0.004 +290b +1bps ps FOR
'91e5dd630a1be4b214838b740015024e8ea06952'|'Drugmakers Amneal and Impax to combine'|'October 17, 2017 / 11:52 AM / Updated 21 minutes ago Drugmakers Amneal and Impax to combine Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Privately-held generic drugmaker Amneal Pharmaceuticals LLC and peer Impax Laboratories Inc ( IPXL.O ) said on Tuesday they would combine in an all-stock transaction. Amneal Holdings<67> members will own about 75 percent and Impax shareholders will own 25 percent of the new company<6E>s pro forma shares. Reporting by Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-impax-labs-m-a-amneal/drugmakers-amneal-and-impax-to-combine-idUKKBN1CM1MW'|'2017-10-17T14:50:00.000+03:00'
'2252f4f0f668895de80342137bf065e687c8bcf8'|'Retailer Casino cools talk of Amazon deal as it posts higher sales'|'FILE PHOTO: A logo of French retailer Casino is pictured outside a Casino supermarket in Nantes, France, July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - Supermarket retailer Casino ( CASP.PA ) cooled talk of a deal with Amazon ( AMZN.O ), as it posted higher third quarter sales that lifted its shares.Casino, whose credit rating was cut to junk by Standard & Poor<6F>s in March 2016 and which has been criticized by U.S. activist fund Muddy Waters, is under pressure to show it can revive profits in its French home market as conditions remain tough for its business in Brazil.Amazon<6F>s $13.7 billion takeover of Whole Foods Market this year sparked speculation that it might be examining further tie-ups, possibly involving logistics partnerships with French supermarket operators.However, Casino<6E>s finance director Antoine Giscard d<>Estaing told reporters that such rumors were <20>fake news<77>, and that Casino had not received any demands from Amazon over using its purchasing center or regarding a logistics tie-up.Casino, which controls Brazil<69>s top retailer Grupo Pao de Acucar ( PCAR4.SA ), said group third quarter sales reached 9.2 billion euros ($10.8 billion), compared with analysts<74> expectations for 9.119 billion euros.Casino shares gained 1.5 percent in morning trading, among the best performers on the Paris market. The stock is up nearly 10 percent so far in 2017, outperforming a 3 percent fall on the STOXX Europe 600 retail index .SXRP.Casino<6E>s sales were up 3.4 percent on an organic basis, marking a moderate improvement from 3.3 percent growth in the second quarter, due to an improvement at its domestic stores in France such as Monoprix, Geant and its online Cdiscount unit.Casino also reiterated its 2017 financial targets, which include expecting growth of more than 15 percent regarding food retail trading profits in France.Additional reporting by Dominique Vidalon and Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Keith Weir'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-casino-results/retailer-casino-cools-talk-of-amazon-deal-as-it-posts-higher-sales-idINKBN1CM0XG'|'2017-10-17T06:57:00.000+03:00'
'94518127df815289524b42adb2c8b04e8afa51d1'|'NAFTA trade ministers to square off over hard-line U.S. demands'|'October 17, 2017 / 5:12 AM / in an hour NAFTA trade ministers to square off over hard-line U.S. demands David Lawder , David Ljunggren 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Canada''s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland (C) addresses the media with Mexico''s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo (L) and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer at the close of the third round of NAFTA talks involving the United States, Mexico and Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Wattie/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Trade ministers from the United States, Canada and Mexico wrap up a contentious round of NAFTA trade talks on Tuesday marked by aggressive U.S. demands that have left the future of the 23-year-old free trade pact in doubt. The proposals to drastically reshape the North American Free Trade Agreement to help shrink U.S. trade deficits have cast a pall over the modernization talks, leaving some participants and analysts wondering how the NAFTA partners can avoid an impasse. The U.S. demands, previously identified as red lines by its neighbors, include forcing renegotiations every five years, reserving the lion<6F>s share of automotive manufacturing for the United States and making it easier to pursue import barriers against some Canadian and Mexican goods. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland are scheduled to meet and take stock of the negotiations before issuing statements at a joint event at 3 p.m. (1900 GMT). They later plan to separately brief media. Lighthizer has made no apologies about his hard negotiating line, which he has said reflects U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s desire to claw back lost manufacturing jobs and shrink U.S. goods trade deficits amounting to $64 billion with Mexico and $11 billion with Canada last year. Trump has continued his attacks on NAFTA throughout the talks launched in August, repeating his threats to terminate the pact if Mexico and Canada won<6F>t agree to changes. U.S. negotiators opened a new front over the weekend with a proposal that Canada dismantle its system of protections for the dairy and poultry sectors, a move that Ottawa will reject, a source briefed on the matter said on Monday. FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House in Washington, U.S. on October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo U.S. opposition to NAFTA<54>s dispute resolution mechanisms, plans to restrict outside access to government contracts and attacks on Canadian dairy and softwood lumber producers have further stoked the grim mood among trade officials. While Mexican and Canadian officials have expressed dismay at the U.S. proposals, they have publicly taken a less confrontational stance, with three more negotiating rounds scheduled through December. <20>This is what negotiations are like,<2C> Vanessa Rubio, Mexico<63>s deputy finance minister, said on Saturday. <20>There are sectors where you get to a deal quicker, and in other sectors where you don<6F>t. But let<65>s just say we<77>re in the normal process of a free trade negotiation.<2E> Canadian and Mexican officials are loosely allied with U.S. industry, farm and services lobbying groups who are opposed to the Trump proposals and stepping up their efforts to persuade administration officials to ease them. Financial markets have taken notice of the acrimony over the negotiating table. By Monday, Mexico''s peso MXN=D2 hit a near five-month low with fears growing about the future of the deal underpinning $1.2 trillion in annual trade between the three countries. Mexico sends nearly 80 percent of its exports to the United States. Additional reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Kim Coghill 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-trade-nafta/nafta-trade-ministers-to-square-off-over-hard-line-u-s-demands-idUKKBN1CM0DG'|'2017-10-17T08:
'3195dc9b1c056a6cf2049b3a2db750914e4bed2a'|'China''s deleveraging will not have negative impact on economy - party spokesman'|' 59 AM / in 5 minutes China''s deleveraging will not have negative impact on economy - party spokesman Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Vehicles are seen through a window as they drive on Guomao Bridge during rush hour in Beijing, China, November 7, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s efforts to reduce debt and stable economic growth should not be viewed as being in opposition as the government will ensure its deleveraging campaign will not have a negative impact on the economy, a Communist Party spokesman said on Tuesday. <20>In the long term, proactive deleveraging helps to eliminate risks that could impact steady and healthy economic development,<2C> said spokesman Tuo Zhen. <20>Deleveraging has shown some initial results and has not shown any adverse impact on the economy.<2E> Tuo made the remarks at a news briefing a day ahead of the opening of the key, twice-a-decade Party Congress that will see President Xi Jinping map out his ambitions for the country and further tighten his grip on power. The Congress will end on Oct. 24, Tuo said. China<6E>s economy expanded at a robust 6.9 percent in the first six months of the year, though there are some concerns that a sustained crackdown on credit growth could crimp growth. Tuo also said China would continue to open up to the world as part of reform. <20>We will persist with our fundamental state policy of opening up, continue to expand openings to the outside, hasten in building an open economic system, further expand market access, and promote a new round of high-quality opening.<2E> But despite repeated pledges to further open the domestic market to foreign companies, hoped-for market liberalisation is increasingly being viewed as secondary to Xi<58>s state-centered approach to economic policy and his focus on stability. Reporting by Ryan Woo and Judy Hua; Additional reporting by Michael Martina; Writing by Elias Glenn; Editing by Jacqueline Wong 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-congress-economy/chinas-deleveraging-will-not-have-negative-impact-on-economy-party-spokesman-idUKKBN1CM1DP'|'2017-10-17T13:59:00.000+03:00'
'4139247d3d1654189b69f8331b3c354310b889cc'|'PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 19'|'October 19, 2017 / 4:26 AM / in 15 hours PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 19 Reuters Staff 3 Min Read Oct 19 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - A bipartisan proposal on health care teetered Wednesday after U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew his support and conservative GOP lawmakers said it didn''t do enough to roll back the Affordable Care Act. on.wsj.com/2ytatgS - U.S. President Donald Trump denied he made insensitive remarks in a phone call to the widow of a U.S. soldier and accused a Democratic congresswoman of making up the claim, which was supported by a member of the soldier''s family. on.wsj.com/2ytaQbg - General Electric CEO John Flannery is getting rid of company cars, a fancy executive retreat and perhaps thousands of corporate jobs under pressure to cut costs. on.wsj.com/2ys8CZJ - Kenneth Chenault, the head of American Express and one of the country''s most prominent African-American corporate leaders, will step down as chairman and chief executive on Feb. 1, capping a 16-year run at the card company as it grapples with a new wave of competition. on.wsj.com/2ytobjO - Gilead Sciences'' $11 billion bet on Kite Pharma is poised to pay off, with the approval of Kite''s flagship cell-therapy treatment for advanced lymphoma patients. on.wsj.com/2ysRenq - Hearst has agreed to purchase Rodale, the family-owned publisher of magazines including Women''s Health, Men''s Health and Prevention, in a move that will give it a major presence in the health and wellness arena. on.wsj.com/2ysPNW8 - The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday tapped J.P. Morgan Chase''s top electronic-trading executive, Brett Redfearn, as a senior regulator. on.wsj.com/2yrv5G5 - Swiss investor Marc Faber, the bearish newsletter writer who encountered sharp rebuke after his racist remarks, has resigned from at least five corporate boards. on.wsj.com/2yrvA2V (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom) 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-wsj/press-digest-wall-street-journal-oct-19-idUSL4N1MU2BA'|'2017-10-19T07:24:00.000+03:00'
'0f8dff1af7216e1df03e143ea9dbb5ceea18e7db'|'ACS''s Hochtief launches counter-bid for Abertis'|'FILE PHOTO: Toll road operator Abertis<69>headquarters is seen in Barcelona, Spain, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard DUESSELDORF/MILAN (Reuters) - German builder Hochtief ( HOTG.DE ), controlled by Spain<69>s ACS ( ACS.MC ), made a 17.1 billion euro ($20.1 billion) bid for Spanish toll road operator Abertis ( ABE.MC ) on Wednesday, topping a rival offer from Italy<6C>s Atlantia ( ATL.MI ).Hochtief is offering 18.76 euros in cash, or 0.1281 Hochtief shares, for each Abertis share and has set a minimum acceptance threshold of 50 percent plus one share.Builder ACS is launching the bid via cash-positive Hochtief to protect its credit rating and avoid having to raise equity itself, though Hochtief<65>s plan to issue up to 24.8 million shares could dilute ACS<43>s 72 percent stake in the German firm to below 50 percent.The move creates a dilemma for Abertis, which has also received a cash and shares offer from Atlantia worth around 15.7 billion euros on a comparable basis, according to analysts.A tie-up between Atlantia, controlled by the Benetton family, and Abertis would create the world<6C>s biggest toll-roads operator and help both companies in their drive to branch out from their home markets.However, a source close to ACS - whose chairman Florentino Perez also heads Real Madrid soccer club - has told Reuters that its bid has the backing of the Spanish government, which may be reluctant to see Abertis<69>s politically sensitive motorways concessions in Spain fall into foreign hands.A previous deal between Atlantia and Abertis fell through in 2006 due to opposition from the Italian government.Related Coverage Hochtief CEO says felt no political pressure to launch Abertis bidHochtief takeover of Abertis would create jobs: German unionTimeline: ACS''s Hochtief sparks takeover battle for AbertisHochtief CEO Marcelino Fernandez Verdes told reporters his firm<72>s bid was based purely on business considerations.<2E>(It has) nothing to do with political decisions,<2C> he said at a press conference.Hochtief said Abertis would complement its business by adding the operation and maintenance of infrastructure to its developing and building operations, allowing it to <20>generate value throughout the entire infrastructure project life cycle.<2E><>It<49>s a combination of two completely complementary companies,<2C> Verdes said.He added that by securing a larger share in future infrastructure projects; by expanding the portfolio to include hospitals and schools; and via cost optimizations the deal could reap 6-8 billion euros in synergies.EXPECTING A FIGHT Atlantia launched its cash and shares bid in May, and people familiar with the matter told Reuters last week it was prepared to raise it if ACS - as expected - triggered a takeover battle.<2E>Hochtief<65>s offer is very competitive, but we would expect Atlantia to fight for Abertis as this is a once in a lifetime opportunity,<2C> a Milan-based trader said.Abertis shares closed up 7 percent at 18.84 euros. ACS<43>s were up 5.2 percent at 33.06 euros, Hochtief<65>s up 1 percent at 151 euros and Atlantia<69>s down 1.2 percent at 26.91 euros.Hochtief has secured financing of 15 billion euros at a 2 percent interest rate and is planning to pay out up to 90 percent of its profit to shareholders after a successful Abertis bid, it said.Verdes said he was not planning job cuts and did not expect to face regulatory hurdles.Atlantia<69>s bid has already been approved by regulators and, according to two Italian sources, has the non-binding backing of investors representing more than 50 percent of Abertis<69>s capital.But one of the sources said Abertis<69> top investor, Criteria Caixa - the financial arm of a politically connected and powerful banking foundation - had not committed to taking up Atlantia<69>s offer. Criteria has a 22.3 percent stake in Abertis.Hochtief<65>s bid puts Atlantia<69>s offer, which began on Oct. 10 and was due to run through Oct. 24, on hold. Spanish market watchdog CNMV now has to examine Hochtief<65>s offer and decide whether it can go ahead.Addit
'ec8df4151bf7572a1760868f0f29a8a4cfe7c011'|'U.S. bill to regulate internet ads gains bipartisan support with McCain'|'October 18, 2017 / 7:51 PM / Updated an hour ago U.S. bill to regulate internet ads gains bipartisan support with McCain David Ingram 2 Min Read U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) speaks after being awarded the 2017 Liberty Medal by former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (unseen) at the Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. October 16, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Mostoller (Reuters) - U.S. legislation that would impose new disclosure requirements on political ads that run on Facebook and other websites received support on Wednesday from Senator John McCain, giving a bipartisan boost to a bill already popular among Democrats. McCain, a longtime supporter of regulating campaign finances, and two Democratic senators, Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner, plan to introduce the legislation on Thursday, according to a statement from their offices on Wednesday. Republicans control the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, so bills generally need Republican support to advance. Online political ads are much more loosely regulated in the United States than political ads on television, radio and satellite services. The lack of regulation was highlighted last month when Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc<6E>s Google and Twitter Inc said that they had found election-related ad buys on their services made by people in Russia in the run-up to last year<61>s U.S. presidential election. Non-Americans are generally not allowed to spend money to influence U.S. elections. The legislation from the three senators would put online ads under the same rules as television, radio and satellite, so that who paid for them and other information would need to be disclosed. Last month, after U.S. regulators and criminal investigators began looking at the Russia-linked ads, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said his company would take several voluntary steps to make political ads more transparent, such as allowing anyone to seem them no matter whom they target. Facebook and Twitter said on Wednesday that they are open to working with lawmakers on the matter. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. McCain<69>s office declined to comment. Reporting by David Ingram in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Osterman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-advertising/u-s-bill-to-regulate-internet-ads-gains-bipartisan-support-with-mccain-idUSKBN1CN2UW'|'2017-10-18T22:44:00.000+03:00'
'328c6869aa4b0844c92e40ac71de6a5c198f290f'|'Dow opens above 23,000 on strong IBM results - Reuters'|'Traders react to the Dow Jones Industrial Average almost hitting 20,000 in New York, U.S., January 6, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson REUTERS - The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened above 23,000 for the first time on Wednesday following strong quarterly results from IBM.The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 114.49 points, or 0.5 percent, to 23,111.93. The S&P 500 gained 4.3 points, or 0.16 percent, to 2,563.66. The Nasdaq Composite added 8.83 points, or 0.13 percent, to 6,632.48.Reporting by Tanya Agrawal; Editing by Arun Koyyur'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-stocks/dow-set-to-open-above-23000-for-the-first-time-idINKBN1CN1KR'|'2017-10-18T09:34:00.000+03:00'
'ea70b2bea376b299cc11f747979e524866c0c8c5'|'Brazil antitrust watchdog blocks JBJ-Mataboi deal'|'BRASILIA, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Brazil<69>s antitrust watchdog Cade on Wednesday unanimously voted to block the purchase of meatpacker Mataboi Alimentos SA by JBJ Agropecu<63>ria Ltda, a further blow to the billionaire Batista family.JBJ is owned by Jos<6F> Batista Jr., whose brothers control the world<6C>s largest meatpacker, JBS SA, through holding company J&F Investimentos SA.Batista Jr.<2E>s family ties would allow JBJ to exchange valuable information with JBS and coordinate strategic decisions to stifle competition, the board of Cade argued.This analysis aligns with Cade<64>s general-superintendency, which in September warned of coordination risks despite the lack of formal ties between both JBS and Mataboi, Brazil<69>s No. 4 meatpacker.Batista Jr. sold his shares in J&F to his brothers Joesley and Wesley in 2013. Two years later, JBJ agreed to purchase the entirety of Fratelli Dorazio Investimentos SA, as the owner of Mataboi was then known, for an undisclosed value.The decision is another setback to the Batista family<6C>s efforts to emerge stronger from a corruption scandal, five months after Joesley and Wesley admitted to bribing nearly 2,000 politicians.JBS withdrew this week the plan for the initial public offering of its U.S. unit, initially expected for this year. (Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Andrea Ricci)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mataboi-ma-jbj-antitrust/brazil-antitrust-watchdog-blocks-jbj-mataboi-deal-idINL2N1MT0SD'|'2017-10-18T12:30:00.000+03:00'
'3430bfd0bda125c73bc750ddc5379f9239cca501'|'Three biggest U.S. clearing houses pass liquidity stress tests - CFTC'|'October 16, 2017 / 4:07 AM / Updated 4 minutes ago Three biggest U.S. clearing houses pass liquidity stress tests - CFTC Michelle Price 2 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The three largest U.S. clearing houses have all passed stress tests assessing whether they could handle a major market shock, the country<72>s derivatives regulator said on Monday. CME Clearing, a unit of CME Group Inc ( CME.O ); ICE Clear U.S., a unit of Intercontinental Exchange Inc ( ICE.N ); and LCH Ltd, a unit of London Stock Exchange Group Plc ( LSE.L ), could all generate enough liquidity to settle payments if two of their largest members defaulted, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said in a statement. Clearing houses sit in between a trade to guarantee payment in the event either counterparty defaults. New rules introduced in the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis have forced banks to push hundreds of billions of dollars worth of trades through clearing houses, sparking fears they have become <20>too big to fail.<2E> Because clearing houses connect multiple large banks through a shared pool of trades and collateral, the failure of a clearing firm to meet its payment obligations could cause panic across the market, potentially leading other firms to default. The CFTC assessed the impact of a hypothetical <20>extreme but plausible market scenario<69> in which two systemically important members at each clearing house defaulted. The test encompassed cleared futures and options, and interest rate swaps. They were based on actual positions and collateral as of Aug. 16, 2017, the CFTC said. <20>All of the clearing houses demonstrated the ability to generate sufficient liquidity to fulfil settlement obligations on time,<2C> the CFTC said. The regulator said it would assess other potential scenarios in future stress tests, including other types of liquidity that clearers might be required to generate and how derivatives markets might react if a clearing house needed to liquidate positions.'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-cftc-clearing-tests/three-biggest-u-s-clearing-houses-pass-liquidity-stress-tests-cftc-idUKKBN1CL09O'|'2017-10-16T07:06:00.000+03:00'
'8b0e0543c066ca4436ce4bd07e413570e29853b9'|'Unit of Brazil antitrust watchdog sees Ita<74>-XP deal as ''complex'''|'SAO PAULO (Reuters) - A unit of Brazil<69>s antitrust watchdog Cade said Ita<74> Unibanco Holding SA<53>s purchase of a 49 percent stake in independent financial services firm XP Investimentos SA involves a series of complex aspects relating to competition that demand further analysis of the transaction.In Monday<61>s edition of the government gazette, Cade<64>s general superintendency recommended the watchdog<6F>s board to demand additional documentation detailing how consumers could benefit from the deal. So far, the body sees some <20>horizontal overlapping<6E> between Ita<74> and XP reaching local markets for securities brokerage, asset management and the distribution of financial products.<2E>In the light of the facts explained, the recommendation from the superintendency is that the act of concentration be declared complex,<2C> the gazette said.Reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-xp-investimentos-m-a-antitrust/unit-of-brazil-antitrust-watchdog-sees-ita-xp-deal-as-complex-idUSKBN1CL1PX'|'2017-10-16T15:50:00.000+03:00'
'30a22533346e8a46b8304e6be84f8efbbd78b307'|'Half of UK adults are financially vulnerable, City watchdog finds - Money - The Guardian'|'Half of the UK population are financially vulnerable with one in six people unable to cope with a <20>50 increase in monthly bills, according to a survey of Britain<69>s personal finances by the City regulator.The Financial Conduct Authority <20>s biggest ever survey of households found that 4.1 million people are already in serious financial difficulty, falling behind with bills and credit card payments, with 25- to 34-year-olds the most over-indebted.The FCA<43>s Financial Lives survey of 13,000 consumers is an attempt by the regulator to assess how many individuals are facing financial harm <20> and it paints an alarming picture of growing debt and credit problems across the UK.Young people are borrowing to cover basic living costs, warns City watchdog Read moreIts findings include:50% of adults (25.6 million people) <20>display one or more characteristics that signal their potential vulnerability<74>. Just under 8 million are over-indebted. 4.5 million adults have been turned down for a financial product in the last two years. One in six (17%) would struggle if their monthly mortgage or rent increased by less than <20>50. 40% of the population have confidence in the UK financial services industry. About 12 million adults have received an unsolicited approach that may be a scam, and 100,000 have lost money. The figures will increase concern among policymakers over how British households will cope with a rise in interest rates , with many in the City expecting a hike before the end of the year.It also comes at a time when households are facing a squeeze on their income as inflation outpaces pay increases.The report reveals a deep generational divide, with just 1% of over-65s defining themselves as <20>in difficulty<74> compared with 13% of 25- to 34-year-olds.The average cash savings held by the over-65s is <20>45,000, and 83% have no debts. But among 25- to 34-year-olds, 19% have no savings, and a further 30% have less than <20>1,000 saved. The survey found 36% had been overdrawn in the last 12 months, and 37% had taken out payday loans.Christopher Woolard, the FCA strategy and competition director, said: <20>We have talked a lot in the last couple of years about the question of financial vulnerability. This survey is the first comprehensive snapshot of the the size and scale of the issue.<2E>At any one point in time, 50% of the population have one or more characteristics of vulnerability. But that does not mean they will definitely suffer harm. The number who experience harm will be much lower.<2E>Woolard said that while there had been a <20>sharp uptick<63> in the level of consumer debt in the UK, the financial regulator was not at fault. Many of those in debt have experienced misfortunes the regulator could not control <20> such as divorce or unemployment <20> but he added that the survey showed the FCA had work to do to improve the financial resilience of the UK.The survey, the largest tracking survey on consumers and finance in the UK, threw up a number of idiosyncracies. For example, those people who did not go to university are financially happier than those who did.<2E>People with no formal qualifications are more satisfied with their financial situation on average than people with qualifications. For example, 31% of those with no qualifications are highly satisfied, compared with 23% of those with a graduate or postgraduate degree,<2C> said the report.It also tried to quantify the age-old question about whether having more money really makes you that much happier. The figures suggest it does <20> but not by much.The survey found that 19% of households with an income of under <20>15,000 were <20>highly satisfied<65> with their financial circumstances. But this only rose to 25% for people with a household income of <20>50,000 or more.The FCA defines over-indebted as having one or both of the following characteristics:Keeping up with domestic bills and credit commitments is a heavy burden.Payment for any credit commitments and/or any domestic bills have b
'12e6b293cdd9438689b0b6d980f33221b5d5a504'|'RPT-U.S. judge says he may reject plea deal with Novelion''s Aegerion'|'October 18, 2017 / 7:46 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago RPT-U.S. judge says he may reject plea deal with Novelion''s Aegerion Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Repeats with no change to text) BOSTON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Wednesday said he may reject a plea agreement that was part of Aegerion Pharmaceuticals Inc<6E>s $35 million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department to resolve claims related to its marketing of an expensive cholesterol drug. U.S. District Judge William Young at a court hearing in Boston held off on definitively not accepting the deal, in which the Novelion Therapeutics Inc unit would plead guilty to two misdemeanors. But he said his <20>instinct is to reject it.<2E> (Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Marguerita Choy) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/novelion-therape-settlement/rpt-u-s-judge-says-he-may-reject-plea-deal-with-novelions-aegerion-idUSL2N1MT1V6'|'2017-10-18T22:44:00.000+03:00'
'9dd13f12ba05695e13c452b864640a57edfd5126'|'Silent Partners - The bankrollers behind the rush of Australia shareholder lawsuits'|'October 18, 2017 / 5:08 AM / in 17 minutes Silent Partners - The bankrollers behind the rush of Australia shareholder lawsuits Byron Kaye 6 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The corporate logo of communications company Vocus is photographed at their Sydney headquarters, Australia, August 22, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo SYDNEY (Reuters) - After Australian internet company Vocus Telecommunications Ltd ( VOC.AX ) gave its second profit warning in seven months, fund manager David Pace received an email from a law firm asking him to join a shareholder class action. The case, proposed the email, would accuse Vocus of delaying reporting problems it was having bedding down some recent takeovers, and would seek compensation for shareholders. <20>I told them flatly, <20>we won<6F>t be participating<6E>,<2C> Pace, whose firm owns 8 percent of Vocus, told Reuters. <20>It<49>s just not in my clients<74> interests. This is a distraction. My priority is that they just keep focussed on turning the business around.<2E> Pace<63>s response reflects a growing impatience in Australia<69>s listed company sector, as local regulations encourage global litigation funders to prosecute more lawsuits of Australian corporates. Unlike the United States, lawyers in Australia are banned from taking percentage cuts of damages payouts, opening the door for litigation funders to fill the gap. Australia is now one of the world<6C>s biggest markets for litigation funders, by number of cases and number of participants. Some 30 funders are now vying for a piece of an industry which has seen more than 500 class action lawsuits since 1992, compared to none before then. The number of shareholder class actions in Australia jumped 115 percent in the five years to 2017, compared to the previous five years. U.S. shareholder class actions rose just 24 percent over the same time. <20>Australia is the country where the role played by third party funders in a class action landscape is greater than any country in the English-speaking world,<2C> said Vince Morabito, a law professor at Monash University who specialises in class actions. <20>It<49>s the place.<2E> <20>EASY TO POINT THE FINGER<45> While advocates argue third-party financing improves the ability of aggrieved parties to seek redress, some business groups say the model promotes more lawsuits and want tighter controls. <20>Class actions are on the rise, the proportion of class actions that are funded by entrepreneurial litigation funders are on the rise, and we believe that our regulatory environment is particularly conducive to activist class actions and ... profit-driven litigation funders,<2C> said Australian Institute of Company Directors General Manager for Advocacy Louise Petschler. <20>A national system of regulation around our class action regime would be a significant improvement.<2E> Attorney-General George Brandis, who in opposition said greater regulation of litigation funding should be considered, declined to comment. In 2016, a lawsuit against New Zealand-owned CBL Insurance Ltd generated headlines by winning a A$5 million damages payout, none of which went 300 laid-off factory workers. Litigation funder LCM Finance received A$1.85 million while lawyers, liquidators and auditors split the rest. The state government has since ordered an inquiry into litigation funding. LCM Managing Director Patrick Moloney said the lawsuit was brought by the trustees of the collapsed company, not by the factory workers themselves. The trustees were responsible for disbursing the funds recovered, he said. <20>It<49>s easy for everyone to point their finger at the funder, but our job is to fund, to just keep paying the bills. We don<6F>t give instructions, we don<6F>t run the litigation. They have the control over the proceedings.<2E> PRIVATE EQUITY STYLE Australian targets of litigation funders include surfwear retailer Surfstitch ( SRF.AX ) and the country<72>s biggest listed company, Commonwealth Bank of Australia ( CBA.AX ). Both are fighting accusations of failing to disclo
'f27372673b6ba5db7e6ff63a1ccc5bcf7a329505'|'Delta says it did not play a role in Airbus-Bombardier deal'|' 54 PM / in 18 minutes Delta says it did not play a role in Airbus-Bombardier deal Reuters Staff 1 Min Read U.S. employees gather during a grand opening ceremony of the Airbus airplane factory in Mobile, Alabama, U.S. on September 14, 2015. REUTERS/Alwyn Scott ATLANTA (Reuters) - Delta Air Lines<65> ( DAL.N ) chief executive on Wednesday said the carrier did not play a role in pushing an industry-changing deal between planemakers Airbus ( AIR.PA ) and Bombardier ( BBDb.TO ), as a regulatory spat between the United States and Canada threatened the future of a Bombardier plane programme. Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian said that the spat over subsidy and dumping allegations pushed by Boeing Co ( BA.N ) against Bombardier<65>s C-Series jets would not affect possible future Delta orders of Boeing jets. Reporting by Alana Wise in Atlanta; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-delta-air-media-day-bombardier/delta-says-it-did-not-play-a-role-in-airbus-bombardier-deal-idUKKBN1CN1ZZ'|'2017-10-18T16:54:00.000+03:00'
'f105459adf11ec0341b0c90b5c01d9f178ad8faf'|'China''s electric car output to hit 1 million next year - BAIC chairman'|' 53 AM / in 14 minutes China''s electric car output to hit 1 million next year - BAIC chairman Reuters Staff 2 Min Read The logo of Beijing Automotive Group (BAIC) is seen during the Auto China 2016 auto show in Beijing, China, April 29, 2016. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s electric vehicle (EV) production could touch 1 million units next year and 3 million units by 2020, said Xu Heyi, chairman of carmaker BAIC Group ( 1958.HK ), on Wednesday, likely exceeding a government set target. China is aiming to produce 2 million EVs a year by 2020 and 7 million units five years later, amounting to a fifth of total car production by 2025. The country produced 424,000 new energy vehicles in the first three quarters of this year, including hybrids, up 40.2 percent compared with the same period of 2016, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. <20>The trend is definite,<2C> Xu told reporters on the sidelines of the ongoing Communist Party Congress. <20>Rather than the time when gasoline-fuelled cars are withdrawn, it is more important to consider the extent to which new energy vehicles are popularised, or their market share,<2C> Xu said. An industry ministry official said last month that China was already looking into setting a timetable to ban the production and sale of cars using traditional fuels. Wang Chuanfu, chairman of leading EV producer BYD ( 002594.SZ ), said in September that all of China<6E>s vehicles could be <20>electrified<65> by as early as 2030. Reporting by John Ruwitch; Writing by David Stanway; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-baic-motor/chinas-electric-car-output-to-hit-1-million-next-year-baic-chairman-idUKKBN1CN10G'|'2017-10-18T11:52:00.000+03:00'
'e8212643117ad23794770d196e7fc1e56a7a3e19'|'Mitsubishi Motors checking how Kobe Steel parts affected by false data'|'October 18, 2017 / 7:44 AM / in 14 hours Mitsubishi Motors checking how Kobe Steel parts affected by false data Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Mitsubishi Motors Corp''s President and CEO Osamu Masuko speaks at a news conference at company headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon TOKYO (Reuters) - Mitsubishi Motors Corp ( 7211.T ) is investigating how components from suppliers containing Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ) parts have been affected by the steelmaker<65>s falsified data on product quality, the chief executive of the carmaker said on Wednesday. <20>The number of parts from suppliers which we<77>ve been told have been affected by the Kobe Steel issue has been increasing, and this is increasing our workload,<2C> Mitsubishi Motors CEO Osamu Masuko told a briefing. <20>We are working with our parts suppliers to get a full picture of the impact,<2C> he said. Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Michael Perry 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal-mitsubishimotors/mitsubishi-motors-checking-how-kobe-steel-parts-affected-by-false-data-idUSKBN1CN0U2'|'2017-10-18T10:43:00.000+03:00'
'd0062b28f80d8cdd493b7466ca29d8b5212d4e83'|'''Love for country'' behind move to Ryanair, says Malaysia Airlines'' CEO'|'October 18, 2017 / 6:28 AM / Updated 15 hours ago ''Love for country'' behind move to Ryanair, says Malaysia Airlines'' CEO Reuters Staff 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Malaysia Airlines CEO Peter Bellew talks during a meeting of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in Cancun, Mexico June 5, 2017. REUTERS/Victor Ruiz Garcia/File Photo KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia Airlines<65> outgoing chief executive Peter Bellew said on Wednesday his decision to leave the airline for Ryanair ( RYA.I ) was due to a sense of responsibility to his native country. His departure after just over a year in charge means Malaysia<69>s national carrier must appoint a third chief executive in three years as it continues to recover from two tragedies in 2014, when flight MH370 disappeared in mysterious circumstances and flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine. Ryanair announced on Tuesday that Bellew, its former director of flight operations, would be rejoining the Irish airline as chief operating officer on Dec. 1 to help address a pilot-staffing issue that has led to the cancellation of around 20,000 flights. Bellew, an Irish national, said his return to Ryanair was due to <20>love for country<72> and that he could not turn down a request to help the struggling airline. <20>It is Ireland<6E>s greatest company. They need my help and there is a big challenge. It is a form of national service,<2C> he said in a statement released in his personal capacity and not on behalf of Malaysia Airlines. Malaysia Airlines said Bellew<65>s decision to leave for Ryanair was <20>unexpected<65>, and that its board would meet to discuss the move. Bellew was Malaysia Airlines<65> chief operating officer before taking over as chief executive in July last year, after his predecessor Christoph Mueller abruptly quit less than a year after being hired for a three-year mission to revive the firm. Under Bellew<65>s leadership, Malaysia Airlines has been restructuring its fleet, while its owner, the state investment fund Khazanah Nasional Bhd [KHAZA.UL], has said it plans to re-list the airline<6E>s shares on the stock exchange in 2019. Bellew in his statement refuted reports in Malaysian media saying that political interference had played a role in his departure. A report by the New Straits Times, citing unnamed sources, on Tuesday had said both Bellew and Mueller<65>s departures were due to Khazanah<61>s interference in the running of the state-controlled airline. <20>Khazanah, in actual fact, was micro-managing Malaysia Airlines. There were cases where Khazanah bypassed the MAB board,<2C> a source was quoted by the paper as saying. But Bellew said there was no interference. <20>They (Khazanah) have been incredibly supportive to me personally and corporately...there has been no interference<63>. Khazanah in a statement called the allegations <20>erroneous and misleading<6E>. Malaysia Airlines was de-listed from the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange in 2014, and had removed around 6,000 jobs - at least a third of its workforce - at the peak of the airline<6E>s crisis in 2015. Under its restructuring program, the company is in talks to buy several widebody aircraft and is targeting a return to profits next year. Bellew said Malaysia Airlines needed just 4-5 percent increase in monthly revenue to return to profitability and urged the airline not to change its brand. <20>Much work has been done globally through the media and travel agents to rebuild our heritage...That work must continue and will yield the 5 percent revenue growth,<2C> he said. Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Editing by Jacqueline Wong 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysiaairlines-ceo/love-for-country-behind-move-to-ryanair-says-malaysia-airlines-ceo-idUSKBN1CN0LD'|'2017-10-18T09:26:00.000+03:00'
'c5b3caa77b610707d818616f815588f57abf65b5'|'Powell likely next Fed chief, though Yellen best suited: economists'|'October 17, 2017 / 10:48 AM / in 2 hours Powell likely next Fed chief, though Yellen best suited: economists Jonathan Cable 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Federal Reserve Board Governor Jerome Powell discusses financial regulation in Washington, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts LONDON (Reuters) - Jerome Powell likely will be the next Federal Reserve chairman, according to a slim majority of economists in a Reuters poll - but most of them said current Fed Chair Janet Yellen would be the best option. Just over half the 40 economists who participated in the survey, taken in the past few days, tipped Fed Governor Powell to be appointed chair by U.S. President Donald Trump when Yellen<65>s current four-year term ends on Feb 1, 2018. Powell, a lawyer and former investment banker, has served as a member of the Fed<65>s Board of Governors since May 2012. <20>The most continuity between Fed chairs would be Yellen to Powell. Given where we are in the tightening cycle some consistency would be welcomed by financial markets,<2C> said Ryan Sweet at Moody<64>s Analytics. <20>A regime change can be a little more rattling and unnerving for markets.<2E> The next most likely choice was Kevin Warsh, who served as a Fed governor during the financial crisis, with 13 forecasts. Yellen received only four. Related Coverage Trump likely to name Fed chair by early November: source Also on the list of options, alongside being able to suggest someone else, was Trump<6D>s top economic adviser Gary Cohn, the former chief executive of U.S. Bancorp Richard Davis, Columbia Business School<6F>s Glenn Hubbard, former head of BB&T John Allison and Stanford University professor John Taylor. They were all chosen by either one or no economist at all. When asked who would be the best choice, around two-thirds said Trump should allow Yellen to remain in place. Powell was in second place with seven of 37 votes. There is little daylight between his and Yellen<65>s thinking and none of the economists polled said Powell would implement the most radical change in policy. Instead they said Taylor would make the biggest change. Taylor is the author of an interest-rate forecasting model named after him in which rates are tied to inflation and growth. In line with this rule, he has long argued the Fed has kept rates too low for too long because of the risk of unwanted inflationary pressures. Expectations interest rates would go higher and at a faster clip under his leadership got Warsh the second most votes. <20>Warsh and Taylor might be hiking a bit more aggressively in the current environment,<2C> said James Knightley at ING. The Fed has slowly increased borrowing costs and is expected to raise rates again in December and follow that up with more hikes next year. [ECILT/US] However, minutes from September<65>s Federal Open Market Committee meeting revealed policymakers remained divided over the slow pickup in inflation, raising doubts over the future path of interest rate hikes. An inflation index closely watched by the Fed - the core PCE price index - has been below the central bank<6E>s medium-term target of 2 percent for more than five years. Trump said late last month he would make a choice <20>over the next two or three weeks<6B> on who will lead U.S. monetary policy. He has met with four candidates, but his chief of staff said last week he was still some time away from making a decision. In July, Trump said he might decide to renominate Yellen for a new four-year term, or turn to Cohn. He met with Taylor on Wednesday to discuss the job. <20>Probably depends on what Trump has for breakfast that day,<2C> said Scott Brown at Raymond James, when asked who the next chair would be. Additional reporting and polling by Indradip Ghosh in BENGALURU; Editing by Ross Finley and Chizu Nomiyama 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-poll/powell-likely-next-fed-chief-though-yellen-best-suited-economists-idUSKBN1CM1C8'|'2017-10-
'2b5cc58de1d30100ca4b97e3c50994783d4170c9'|'China factories grapple with soaring prices as pollution crackdown bites'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:19 AM / in 10 hours China factories grapple with soaring prices as pollution crackdown bites James Pomfret , Venus Wu 5 Min Read Visitors walk between booths at the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, China October 16, 2017. Picture taken October 16, 2017. REUTERS/Venus Wu GUANGZHOU, China (Reuters) - Chinese exporters at the country<72>s biggest trade fair are more optimistic about global demand now than six months ago but Beijing<6E>s crackdown on pollution is ramping up costs and product prices, hurting smaller factories and foreign buyers. At the Canton Fair where some 25,000 manufacturers are showcasing products from industrial engines to egg-cracking machines, the mood is sanguine. The world<6C>s second-largest economy has defied expectations for a slowdown this year and import and export growth in September suggests factory activity remains in high gear. In a survey of 102 exporters at the Guangzhou-based trade fair, 77 percent of the mostly small- to medium-sized Chinese manufacturers expect orders to increase next year, compared with 70 percent during the previous event in April. But many manufacturers, especially smaller ones, complained about currency fluctuations and China<6E>s stepped up anti-pollution drive pushing costs up as firms scramble to invest in new equipment or costly processes to meet more stringent emissions standards. <20>The environmental regulations are hitting everyone. I<>d say thirty percent of factories are affected,<2C> said Lynn Chen, a director of Masda, a Pearl River Delta manufacturer of antennas with around 20 million yuan ($3 million) in sales annually. Larger factories were weathering the anti-pollution blitz better but many small factories were being forced out of business including small aluminum tube makers in eastern Zhejiang province, Chen said, noting that the costs of sourcing such components for antennas had risen 20 percent. Price rallies across the commodities complex have accelerated in recent months as the government has ramped up environmental inspections and factories prepare for the most stringent ever smog-busting measures across the north this winter. Some 28 cities have been ordered to slash output of heavy industry from aluminum and steel to cement for four months from Nov. 15. PRICE OF CLEAN AIR David Li of Guangzhou Light Holdings that makes karaoke speakers with pulsing disco lights said plants with metal plating, dyeing, or spray painting processes had been badly hit, raising production costs by 5 to 10 percent. A virtual ban on waste paper imports on environmental grounds, was also creating a shortage of generic cardboard packaging, driving paper prices up more than 60 percent in some cases, four exporters said. <20>The changes are good, but they<65>re being pushed through too fast,<2C> said Li. Of the 102 exporters polled by Reuters, production cost was the biggest concern. While online sourcing has partially supplanted marquee trade events such as the Canton Fair, which began in 1957, the event continues to draw tens of thousands of Chinese factories and foreign buyers, making it a useful barometer of China trade. Staff at Ubtech Robotics chat behind Alpha1 Pro, a humanoid robot for entertainment and education, at the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, China October 16, 2017. Picture taken October 16, 2017. REUTERS/Venus Wu Some foreign businessmen said they were shocked by the jump in prices for some products. <20>It<49>s really scary. How could the price change so much?<3F> said Lagos-based Maxwell Akabuogu who has cut the number of containers he sends monthly to Nigeria from 12 to 3, with prices of lead batteries, his staple product, having surged 30 percent over the past four months. <20>I<EFBFBD>m starting to buy from South Korea now. It<49>s more reliable and the price is steady,<2C> he said. Venee Wen, a regional sales manager for the Guangzhou Tiger Head Battery Group, that makes the popular <20>555<35> brand, said lead battery prices had jumped 20 to 30 percent since April given a sur
'9e3c3df2dbcd91e997b830969d857d05511eabe9'|'Viacom, Charter agree to extend renewal deadline - source'|'May heads for Brussels after Brexit talks deadlock May heads for Brussels after Brexit talks deadlock May heads for Brussels after Brexit talks deadlock Reuters TV United States October 16, 2017 / 4:25 AM / in 20 minutes Viacom, Charter agree to extend renewal deadline: source Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A woman exits the Viacom Inc. headquarters in New York, U.S. on April 30, 2013. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo (Reuters) - Viacom Inc ( VIAB.O ) and Charter Communications Inc ( CHTR.O ) agreed on a short-term extension of their renewal deadline, a source familiar with the matter said, as the companies aim to avoid the immediate blackout of Viacom networks. If no deal is reached, 16.6 million subscribers of Charter<65>s Spectrum service will lose Viacom<6F>s networks, which include Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon. Viacom and Charter are working to <20>reach a mutually beneficial deal,<2C> said the source, who did not want to be identified. Viacom stands to lose $760 million, or about 16 percent, of its annual affiliate revenue if an agreement is not reached, according to an analyst at Gabelli & Co, Viacom<6F>s second-largest voting shareholder. Both sides are under pressure from cord-cutting, or dropping of pay television, as audiences flock to cheaper streaming services that have emerged in the past decade. An agreement between the two companies would be <20>mutually beneficial,<2C> wrote Evercore ISI in an note Sunday. Reporting By Jessica Toonkel; Editing by Bill Rigby and Amrutha Gayathri 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-viacom-charter-commns/viacom-charter-agree-to-extend-renewal-deadline-source-idUKKBN1CL0B6'|'2017-10-16T07:32:00.000+03:00'
'561cc4b60af8f62b20b8ac1b805d351f8f5668f1'|'China Foods to sell wine, non-beverage business to parent for $649 million'|'HONG KONG (Reuters) - China Foods Ltd ( 0506.HK ) said it would sell its wine and other non-beverage businesses to a unit of its state-owned parent COFCO Corp in a deal valued at HK$5.07 billion ($649 million) as it aims to focus on its beverage business.The Hong Kong-listed firm will pay a special dividend of HK$0.93 per share to shareholders after the deal and use the remaining net proceeds of HK$2.47 billion to repay bank borrowings and for working capital, it said in a filing to the Hong Kong bourse late on Monday.Beverage is the firm<72>s strongest performing business in terms of profitability and is carried out by COFCO Coca-Cola Beverages Ltd, a joint venture which is 65 percent owned by the China Foods and 35 percent by Coca-Cola Co ( KO.N ), it added.($1 = 7.8086 Hong Kong dollars)Reporting by Donny Kwok; Editing by Himani Sarkar'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-china-foods-disposal/china-foods-to-sell-wine-non-beverage-business-to-parent-for-649-million-idINKBN1CM049'|'2017-10-16T23:32:00.000+03:00'
'40f21261887cba359bbd2ea2e3059696afcafcc5'|'Greece, confounding creditors, fell in recession again last year'|' 22 AM / Updated 20 minutes ago Greece, confounding creditors, fell in recession again last year Lefteris Papadimas 3 Min Read A cargo ship is moored at the Piraeus Container Terminal, near Athens, Greece, September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece<63>s economy fell into recession again last year, confounding its international creditors who had predicted some growth after years of budget austerity. The economy contracted by 0.2 percent in 2016, statistics service ELSTAT said on Tuesday, releasing its revised estimate of full-year gross domestic product. ELSTAT<41>s estimate, based on seasonally unadjusted data was based on lower than previously estimated household consumption. It said gross domestic product in volume terms and measured at constant prices was 175.9 billion euros last year, down from 178.1 billion euros in 2015. Final consumption dropped by an annual 0.3 percent, versus a 0.6 percent rise estimated by the agency in March. <20>It<49>s a small change that has minor impact on other indices and on fiscal figures. It is a slightly weaker depiction of the real economy in 2016 due to the downwardly revised consumption expenditure,<2C> said National Bank economist Nikos Magginas. He said that the registered trend in consumption would also be a challenge for 2017. Years of austerity imposed by the International Monetary Fund and European Union in exchange for bailouts have made many Greeks far poorer and shrunk consumption accordingly. The European Commission, in its winter forecast published in February, projected GDP growth of 0.3 percent in 2016 while the International Monetary Fund<6E>s upwardly revised estimate saw GDP growth of 0.4 percent. The government, which faces a third review to its international bailout this autumn, has cut this year<61>s economic growth projection to 1.8 percent from 2.7 percent in May. The Commission has also cut its forecast to 2.1 percent from 2.7 percent. Greece<63>s central bank sees gross domestic product growing by 1.7 percent this year and picking up to 2.4 percent in 2018. Economic recovery will be key to bringing down a jobless rate of 21 percent, the highest in the euro zone, and attaining this year a primary budget surplus of 1.75 percent - excluding debt servicing outlays - demanded by Greece<63>s creditors. additional reporting Renee Maltezou and Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Karolina Tagaris/Jeremy Gaunt 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-greece-economy/greek-economy-in-recession-in-2016-statistics-agency-idUKKBN1CM103'|'2017-10-17T13:01:00.000+03:00'
'b2534df2c7441fbdbce9fa7119eca29768ff0319'|'Madame Tussauds-owner Merlin blames attacks for dip in summer trade'|'October 17, 2017 / 6:22 AM / in 11 minutes Madame Tussauds-owner Merlin blames attacks for dip in summer trade Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Tourists line up to buy tickets for Madame Tussauds beside a wax figure of soccer player C. Ronaldo in Hong Kong, China August 4, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s Merlin Entertainments ( MERL.L ), operator of tourist attractions such as Madame Tussauds waxworks, said it saw a dip in trading in its key summer period, blaming a series of attacks in the UK and unfavourable weather. For the 40 weeks to Oct. 7 Merlin said total revenue rose 12.4 percent at actual exchange rates and 5.9 percent at constant rates. However, revenue was flat on a like-for-like basis, mainly reflecting difficult summer trading at its Midway London attractions and European theme parks. Merlin said it would reallocate capital investment to address the ongoing volatile market environment and underlying cost pressures. Reporting by James Davey, Editing by Paul Sandle 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-merlin-ent-outlook/madame-tussauds-owner-merlin-blames-attacks-for-dip-in-summer-trade-idUKKBN1CM0HT'|'2017-10-17T09:22:00.000+03:00'
'74771a370f934ee2c40ad416ec09182d15aac296'|'Time running out for Brexit transition deal, Bank of England warns - Business - The Guardian'|'The governor of the Bank of England has warned that Britain<69>s financial industry is running out of time for ministers to strike a transitional deal with Brussels over leaving the European Union.Mark Carney told MPs that without a transitional deal banks would need to start moving staff and setting up offices in the EU from as early as the first three months of next year, given it would take at least 18 months to make the changes.Although he said the Bank expected a transitional deal to be agreed before the article 50 process completed in March 2019, Carney insisted Threadneedle Street was making plans for a hard exit as a precaution. Some European banks operating in London had failed to make sufficient plans due to an expectation that a deal would be struck and they would be allowed to remain operating branches in the UK from headquarters in the EU, he added. <20>I think they now understand the latter is not necessarily going to be the case. We<57>ll have more to say about that in due course,<2C> he said, speaking at the Treasury select committee on Tuesday. Carney said it was important not to ask banks to make too many changes in a short space of time, for fears over the difficulty of shifting complex financial products such as derivatives, which are used for a variety of reasons including protecting businesses from interest rate changes. Carney<65>s comments came as City firms were starting to lease office space in Frankfurt, Paris, Dublin and other EU financial centres amid concerns they may not be able to conduct business freely from London after Brexit.Goldman Sachs has booked space in a tower under construction in Frankfurt and it has also reportedly reserved school places in the city in anticipation of moving staff. Uncertainty over the prospects of a transitional deal could put up to 75,000 finance jobs at risk as well as up to <20>10bn in UK tax revenue, according to lobby group The CityUK.Under questioning from the Commons Treasury select committee, Carney said it would take 18-24 months for banks to take the initial steps required to retain access to trading in the EU. <20>There<72>s a very little amount of time between now and the end of March 2019 to transition large complex financial institutions and activities,<2C> he added.He said anything more ambitious than that, such as Brussels making demands for certain banking activities to take place solely within the EU after Brexit , would be <20>very, very risky to do<64> without a transitional deal.<2E>It is absolutely in the interests of the EU27 to have a transition agreement,<2C> he said.The Bank of England<6E>s deputy governor, Sam Woods, also used a speech at Mansion House in central London this month to warn that delays in securing a transitional deal would limit the ability of such a deal to stem an exodus from the City.Topics Bank of England Mark Carney Brexit Banks and building societies Article 50 European Union news'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/17/time-running-out-brexit-transition-deal-bank-england-mark-carney-mps'|'2017-10-18T00:27:00.000+03:00'
'169fe1f304eec928a9c02c653a6ea10d570ba36b'|'Reckitt to restructure after sales fall knocks outlook'|'FILE PHOTO: Products made by Reckitt Benckiser stand on a shelf in a store in Brighton, England, July 21, 2010. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s Reckitt Benckiser ( RB.L ) will split its business into two divisions -- consumer healthcare and home and hygiene products -- to try to revive sales that are set to stall this year.The change follows the group<75>s sixth straight quarter of weak results. It hopes to improve performance in its newly expanded health business, while bringing greater focus and accountability to its slower-growth home and hygiene business.Reckitt, whose products range from Durex condoms to Lysol disinfectant, has blamed fallout from a cyber attack, a failed product launch and a safety scandal in South Korea for its lackluster sales. The sales fell 1 percent in the third quarter, missing analysts<74> expectations for growth of 0.6 percent.The company is now targeting only flat like-for-like sales for the full year in its base business, down from a previous target of 2 percent growth. That goal was already cut from 3 percent, due to a June cyber attack that hobbled its operations.Reckitt, whose profit margins are among the sector<6F>s best, had for years enjoyed a reputation for setting the pace for sales growth. Including Wednesday<61>s share price decline, the stock has fallen more than 14 percent since June because of concerns over its performance.TWO HEADS Reckitt will operate from two business units from the start of 2018.Rob de Groot, who currently runs Reckitt<74>s business in Europe and North America, will head the home and hygiene business. He will report to Rakesh Kapoor, who will remain the group<75>s CEO and also have charge of the healthcare operations, which account for two-thirds of the company.The decision was made after the $16 billion purchase of baby milk maker Mead Johnson gave it greater scale in consumer health, Kapoor told Reuters.Some analysts saw the restructuring as a precursor to parting with home and hygiene, as Reckitt did with its pharmaceutical business in 2014 and when it sold its North American food business in August.<2E>In our view, the new structure may be a prelude to a split of the business or a sale of RB Hygiene Home, particularly if an attractive asset such as Pfizer<65>s consumer health division becomes available,<2C> Liberum analysts said.Pfizer ( PFE.N ) said this month it was weighing options including a sale of that business, home to Advil and Chapstick.Kapoor denied any intention to exit health and hygiene, saying the move was to improve each business over the long term.But he said he was interested in the Pfizer business.<2E>If one of those options (being considered) is going to be a sale, we are going to look at that. But we should not try and pre-guess,<2C> he said. He declined to comment on potential interest in the consumer health business Merck ( MRCG.DE ) is selling.Analysts have questioned whether Reckitt has the financial and managerial capacity to buy the Pfizer business so soon after the purchase of Mead Johnson.CREDIBILITY QUESTIONED Reckitt<74>s shares were down 1.8 percent at 6,911 pence at 1150 GMT, having dropped as much as 2.7 percent earlier in the session as investors digested the disappointing quarterly sales and a bigger than expected cut to its full-year sales forecast.<2E>Management credibility will take yet another blow with a second LFL sales warning in 2017,<2C> Bernstein analysts said, adding that the new forecast for zero growth was below expectations for a cut to 1 percent growth.Investec analysts said the new structure reflected the growing importance of the consumer health unit.Even though the separate units will make Reckitt more expensive to run, due to some duplicated costs, Kapoor said it made sense to separate the units as their products are marketed and sold differently.Reporting by Martinne Geller; editing by Greg Mahlich and Keith Weir'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-reckitt
'3ad4d1c669b616bfd67327cba00afb0fb43eaa01'|'India''s tightened consumer goods standards could hurt China imports'|'October 18, 2017 / 10:04 AM / Updated 10 hours ago India''s tightened consumer goods standards could hurt China imports Neha Dasgupta , Sanjeev Miglani 5 Min Read Toys are displayed inside a Chinese toy shop at a market in Kolkata, India October 11, 2017. Picture taken October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India is tightening quality controls for consumer and capital goods, officials say, a move that follows calls to curb cheap imports from China amid diplomatic tensions between the world<6C>s two most populous nations over their shared border. The new rules target toys, electronic goods, machinery, food processing, construction and chemicals, sectors dominated by China, and come amid greater scrutiny of mainland firms looking to enter India<69>s multi-billion dollar power transmission and telecoms business. For India<69>s toy retailers, who import everything from toy cars to musical phones and even robots from China, the new requirements have meant supply disruptions just ahead of the Diwali festive season. The government<6E>s Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has approximately 23,000 standards across industries, many of which are never fully enforced, officials say. Now, government departments have been asked to carry out laboratory tests and spot inspection to ensure goods conform to the regulations. <20>We have started this work on a war footing, to have quality control orders for almost every product that we are consuming in the country,<2C> said Ramesh Abhishek who heads the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. The new rules apply to both foreign manufacturers and domestic firms. However, two people familiar with trade policy who did not want to be named said the sectors targeted are ones in which China controls more than two-thirds of the market, such as toy and stainless steel good industries, and where there have been <20>chronic<69> complaints of substandard products. Separately, Indian Steel Secretary Aruna Sharma said her department will soon release new guidelines, raising quality norms for welded stainless steel pipes that are used in oil and gas as well as construction sector. <20>There is evidence of China exporting semi-finished and finished goods using stainless steel that do not meet the BIS standards,<2C> Sharma said. India<69>s trade ministry did not respond to Reuters<72> request for comment on the new rules. China<6E>s Foreign Ministry referred questions to the Commerce Ministry, which did not immediately respond to request for comment. Bilateral trade between India and China boomed to $71.45 billion in 2016-17 from $1.83 billion in 1999-2000, though most of this is skewed to Chinese exports. The trade deficit has widened to $51.1 billion over the past year, a nine-fold increase over the last decade, despite repeated Indian calls for China to address the imbalance and open its markets. Customers shop in a Chinese toy market in Kolkata, India October 11, 2017. Picture taken October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri Those trade differences are now being amplified by the resurfacing of a long-running border dispute, which has stirred protectionist sentiment in India. In June, a nationalist group tied to Prime Minister Narendra Modi<64>s ruling party began a campaign to discourage the use of Chinese goods in the country. The Swadeshi Jagran Manch, an affiliate of the main Hindu nationalist organisation that fights for domestic industry and agriculture, has planned a protest rally in Delhi later this month against the influx of Chinese products. TOYS FROM CHINA Customers shop in a Chinese toy shop at a market in Kolkata, India October 11, 2017. Picture taken October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri The new testing requirements for toys focus on their chemical content and flammability and demand more stringent testing for those that are electrically operated. China accounts for 85 percent of India<69>s $760 million toy industry and these are priced at anything from 50 cents to $150. Several
'd9c78d1044775f1270ae2d72dccb8190eadaaa6e'|'Japan manufacturers'' mood hits decade-high: Reuters Tankan'|'FILE PHOTO: A resident is silhouetted against the chimney of a factory at a park near an industrial district in Tokyo December 28, 2009. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Confidence among Japanese manufacturers rebounded in October to match a peak last seen in mid-2007, a Reuters poll found, further evidence that the economic recovery is gathering momentum helped by a weak yen and strong overseas demand.The monthly poll followed an Oct. 2 Bank of Japan survey that showed big manufacturers were the most optimistic about the business outlook in a decade.The survey results are an encouraging sign for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ahead of an Oct. 22 lower house election as he hopes to convince voters his reflationary policies are helping to sustain a private sector-led recovery.The Reuters Tankan service-sector sentiment index slipped from the previous month<74>s two-year high but remained relatively high.<2E>Global car sales have been performing well,<2C> a manager of a transport equipment maker wrote in the survey, in which companies respond anonymously.An electrical machinery maker said: <20>Currency fluctuations have been small and orders have been steady.<2E>The poll of 548 large- and mid-sized companies was conducted Sept. 28 to Oct. 12, in which 254 firms responded.The sentiment index for manufacturers rose six points in October to 31, driven by producers of electrical machinery, metal products and other machinery, and oil refiners. The index matched a high last seen in June 2007.Service-sector sentiment fell to 30 from the previous month<74>s two year-high of 34, dragged down by retailers. That could be a concern for private consumption, which constitutes some 60 percent of the economy.The manufacturers<72> and service-sector indexes were expected to fall to 24 and 28 respectively in January, reflecting concerns about North Korea, the outlook for the Chinese and U.S. economies, and Japan<61>s domestic politics.Business sentiment will be among indicators the BOJ board will scrutinise when it issues fresh long-term economic and price forecasts at a rate review on Oct. 30-31.BOJ policymakers hope a sustained economic recovery will boost wages and consumer spending, but analysts expect inflation to remain some way off the central bank<6E>s 2 percent target.Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Eric Meijer'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/japan-economy-tankan/japan-manufacturers-mood-hits-decade-high-reuters-tankan-idINKBN1CL344'|'2017-10-17T02:14:00.000+03:00'
'147854024530da9cd4b69110d40cfd35e0895fee'|'Time-Warner, AT&T win conditional antitrust nod in Brazil'|'An AT&T sign is seen outside a branch in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, U.S., October 24, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil<69>s antitrust authority on Wednesday approved a merger of Time-Warner Inc ( TWX.N ) and AT&T Inc ( T.N ), and allowed the companies to keep all of their assets in the country, under certain conditions.The Brazilian regulator Cade unanimously voted to approve the deal, which is facing strong regulatory scrutiny in the United States, as long as the companies<65> operations in Brazil remain separate and agree not to share sensitive information.The merged company must also disclose the terms of all content licensing and TV programming deals to Cade, which will assess if they undermine competition in the market.<2E>The agreement forces the companies to observe objective non-discrimination standards that are more comprehensive than the usual legal demands,<2C> said Gilvandro Ara<72>jo, the Cade councilor in charge of the case.The $85.4 billion transaction is still subject to approval by Brazil<69>s telecom regulator, Anatel, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice. AT&T has said it expects the Time Warner acquisition to close by the end of the year.Time-Warner licenses several TV channels in Brazil including premium film channel HBO and sports network Esporte Interativo. AT&T owns one of its main clients, Sky Brasil Servi<76>os Ltda, Brazil<69>s No. 2 satellite television provider.Cade<64>s demands, which echo similar agreements in Chile and Mexico, aim to address concerns the resulting company could close off markets to rival content providers and television services.Still, AT&T may sidestep those measures. Reuters reported last month it is evaluating a sale of its TV operations in Latin America as it seeks to pay down debt.Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Chris Reese'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-time-warner-m-a-at-t-brazil/time-warner-att-win-conditional-antitrust-nod-in-brazil-idINKBN1CN2NF'|'2017-10-18T16:00:00.000+03:00'
'4161210a59287d9759e32c69fbb2689057ab24d3'|'Becton Dickinson wins conditional EU approval for $24 billion Bard buy'|'BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. medical equipment supplier Becton Dickinson ( BDX.N ) secured EU antitrust approval for its $24-billion acquisition of U.S. peer C R Bard ( BCR.N ) after it agreed to sell two businesses to allay competition concerns.The deal, the latest in a recent wave of mergers and acquisitions in the medical technology sector, will boost Becton Dickinson<6F>s presence in the high-growth oncology and surgery market.The European Commission demanded the concessions because it was concerned the deal would reduce competition and hurt innovation.The EU antitrust enforcer said Becton Dickinson pledged to sell its global core needle biopsy devices business and a tissue marker product currently in the development stage.Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-cr-bard-m-a-bd-eu/becton-dickinson-wins-conditional-eu-approval-for-24-billion-bard-buy-idINKBN1CN21J'|'2017-10-18T12:15:00.000+03:00'
'90b724ab7981f489e0e6e15e9d90cf11cfc7da9c'|'GM''s Ammann says company moving "really quickly" on autonomous cars'|'October 17, 2017 / 11:20 PM / in 12 hours GM''s Ammann says company moving ''really quickly'' on autonomous cars Heather Somerville 3 Min Read Dan Ammann President of General Motors Company talks about autonomous vehicles at the Wall Street Journal Digital Conference in Laguna Beach, California, U.S., October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake Laguna Beach, Calif. (Reuters) - After a series of acquisitions, General Motors Co has the building blocks it needs to deploy a large-scale fleet of robot cars, the automaker<65>s president said on Tuesday. GM<47>s acquisition earlier this month of LIDAR technology company Strobe may have been the final missing piece, GM President Dan Ammann told Reuters. More acquisitions are unlikely, as Ammann said GM<47>s autonomous business is, for the moment, complete. <20>We feel pretty good about what we have,<2C> he said. Since buying San Francisco self-driving car startup Cruise GM last year for a price that could total about $1 billion, GM has accelerated efforts to build both autonomous driving software and mass produce electric cars that can pilot themselves. GM has indicated that it could start testing robot taxi services within two to three years. Investors have responded by pushing GM<47>s stock to $45 a share recently, up 29 percent from the beginning of the year. <20>By having all those capabilities under our control and making sure we have the ability to do that is enabling us to move really quickly,<2C> said Ammann, who spoke on stage at The Wall Street Journal DLive conference in Southern California and with Reuters on the conference sidelines Tuesday. Ammann said GM is focused on building large autonomous fleets, and he rejected the idea, put forward by some analysts, that GM could spin off its autonomous vehicle unit or Maven, the app-based car-sharing business. <20>The unique advantage is having all capability under one roof,<2C> Ammann said. As to when GM<47>s autonomous cars will be ready for prime time, Ammann was elusive. <20>We will see some pretty interesting developments<74> by 2021, he said. Nearly two years after GM struck a partnership with Lyft Inc, and invested $500 million into the ride-services company, the future of that relationship remains unclear. <20>Everybody is better off having worked together,<2C> said Ammann, and pointed to the success of Express Drive, a program through which Lyft drivers can rent cars from Maven. But there are no firm plans for the partnership going forward. Lyft in July formed a self-driving car division to build its own autonomous car systems, becoming something of a competitor to GM. Whether GM will collaborate with Lyft on those efforts is <20>not defined at this time,<2C> Ammann said. Lyft last month formed an alliance with GM<47>s arch-rival, Ford Motor Co, to deploy self-driving Ford vehicles in its fleet. Reporting by Heather Somerville '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wsjd-conference-gm/gms-ammann-says-company-moving-really-quickly-on-autonomous-cars-idUSKBN1CM3B5'|'2017-10-18T02:11:00.000+03:00'
'ee089223a48e59674d7eeaea01cad71603c88f33'|'Ireland threatens to penalise banks over mortgage overcharging'|'October 18, 2017 / 11:59 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago Ireland threatens to penalise banks over mortgage overcharging Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Irish Prime Minister Taoiseach Leo Varadkar speaks at Queen''s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland August 4, 2017. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland will raise taxes on retail banks if they do not speed up compensating thousands of mortgage customers that they overcharged, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Wednesday. <20>I want to state that the government will take further actions if we don<6F>t see further progress and much more quickly, whether that<61>s through enhanced powers for the Central Bank or increased taxation imposed on the banks,<2C> Varadkar told parliament. Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Adrian Croft 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ireland-banks/ireland-threatens-to-penalise-banks-over-mortgage-overcharging-idUKKBN1CN1N4'|'2017-10-18T14:59:00.000+03:00'
'e150e64f250837c71508d974370b3c53a853b96b'|'CEE MARKETS-Currencies firm ahead of Polish economic data'|'* Strong Polish economic data expected * Currencies hover at peaks * Moody''s may improve Hungary''s rating this week-trader * Politics, budget fears keep lid on Romanian assets By Sandor Peto and Bartosz Chmielewski BUDAPEST, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Central European currencies extended their gains ahead of a batch of Polish economic figures due later on Wednesday and which are expected to show continued robust economic growth in the region. The crown, which firmed 0.2 percent to 25.741 by 0828 GMT, is getting additional help from expectations that the Czech central bank will increase its interest rates further. Polish and Czech current account data released this week and recent government budget figures have confirmed that most of the region''s main economies remain well-balanced, analysts said. The Polish figures due at 1200 GMT are expected to show 5.2 percent annual growth in industrial output in September, and retail sales growth is seen accelerating to 7.85 pct from 7.6 pct, according to a Reuters poll of analysts. "Today we expect the zloty to gain slightly vs the euro which could be triggered by Polish industrial output and retail sales data," BZ WBK analysts said in a note. The zloty firmed 0.2 percent to 4.2285 against the euro, though it was slightly off Tuesday''s three-month highs. Polish government bonds eased a little, reflecting losses in euro zone markets, as investors awaited the afternoon figures which, if strong, could add fuel to expectations for Polish central bank policy tightening next year. "The long end might be particularly sensitive to these releases and the short end will stay strong amid high demand for short-term bonds," the BZ WBK note said. Central bank policies have been diverging in the region in the past months. Czechs, with the lowest inflation target, started to lift interest rates in August, while the Hungarian bank has eased policies further. The forint has still reached 5-week highs versus the euro this week, trading on the firm side of the key psychological line of 310. "Moody''s could lift the outlook of Hungary''s debt rating (in its review) to positive on Friday, and based on Hungarian economic indicators, an upgrade cannot be ruled out either," one Budapest-based fixed income trader said. Regional central bankers also watch the hands of European Central Bank rate setters and hawkish guidance from the ECB''s Oct 26 meeting could reduce appreciation pressure on regional currencies. A mixture of political and economic risks have been weighing on Romanian assets, including corruption scandals, a controversy about judicial reforms plans and fears of a jump in the budget and current account deficits and inflation. Low liquidity in leu markets have been keeping the currency in balance, though. It was steady at 4.584 against the euro on Wednesday. CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1028 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.741 25.784 +0.17 4.92% 0 5 % Hungary 308.25 308.23 -0.01% 0.18% forint 00 00 Polish zloty 4.2285 4.2358 +0.17 4.15% % Romanian leu 4.5840 4.5840 +0.00 -1.07% % Croatian 7.5060 7.5075 +0.02 0.65% kuna % Serbian 119.00 119.14 +0.12 3.66% dinar 00 00 % Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1057.3 1055.9 +0.12 +14.7 0 9 % 2% Budapest 38957. 38909. +0.12 +21.7 19 78 % 3% Warsaw 2519.4 2514.3 +0.20 +29.3 9 6 % 4% Bucharest 8068.0 8063.8 +0.05 +13.8 0 0 % 7% Ljubljana 805.72 811.10 -0.66% +12.2 8% Zagreb 1843.3 1847.0 -0.20% -7.59% 4 8 Belgrade 727.18 730.39 -0.44% +1.37 % Sofia 669.43 671.11 -0.25% +14.1 5% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs change Bund in Czech spread Republic 2-year 0.219 -0.011 +094b -2bps ps 5-year 0.555 0.018 +088b +1bps ps 10-year 1.416 0.007 +105b +0bps ps Poland 2-year 1.704 0.012 +242b +0bps ps 5-year 2.661 0.01 +299b +0bps ps 10-year 3.295 0.008 +293b +0bps ps FORWARD RATE AGREEMENT 3x6 6x9 9x12 3M interb ank
'873da54a63d47f492a98c0328dc0aef5a8e28064'|'DS Smith to buy Romanian packaging and paper business in $245 million deal'|' 44 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago DS Smith to buy Romanian packaging and paper business in $245 million deal Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Britain<69>s DS Smith Plc ( SMDS.L ) said on Wednesday it would acquire a Romania-based paper and packaging business for an enterprise value of about 208 million euros ($244.6 million) to expand its Eastern European presence. DS Smith, a maker of corrugated cardboard, recycled paper and plastic packaging, said family-owned EcoPack and EcoPaper<65>s packaging assets and a paper machine that specialises in light-weight paper would help boost growth and achieve cost synergies. DS Smith will use existing cash and debt facilities to fund the deal, along with 35 million euros worth of its shares, the company said in a statement. The transaction, expected to be closed in the third fiscal quarter, will add to earnings immediately, DS Smith said. ($1 = 0.8503 euros) Reporting By Justin George Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ds-smith-deals/ds-smith-to-buy-romanian-packaging-and-paper-business-in-245-million-deal-idUKKBN1CN0ZU'|'2017-10-18T11:43:00.000+03:00'
'cd7af808abb476ee543782a32e5db779701a24ad'|'Norwegian Air may strike long-haul passenger deal with JetBlue-CEO'|'OSLO, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Norwegian Air Shuttle would like to cooperate with U.S. JetBlue Airways on bookings for long-haul passengers, Chief Executive Bjoern Kjos told Reuters on Wednesday.<2E>There are a couple of companies we think are very good and which we<77>d like to cooperate with. JetBlue is a really good firm that is highly relevant for us to look at,<2C> Kjos said on the sidelines of a conference.The Oslo-based airline recently struck a similar deal with easyJet, allowing the British budget carrier<65>s customers to more easily connect to Norwegian<61>s long-haul flights to Asia and the United States. (Reporting by Joachim Dagenborg, writing by Terje Solsvik, editing by Gwladys Fouche)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/norweg-air-shut-jetblue-airways/norwegian-air-may-strike-long-haul-passenger-deal-with-jetblue-ceo-idINL8N1MT3S4'|'2017-10-18T10:34:00.000+03:00'
'098aa06f4e6456f8988f16f43230e0b9f575366e'|'PRESS DIGEST- British Business - Oct 17'|'Oct 17 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.The Times- Nex Group Plc, the electronic trading business run by the Michael Spencer, has announced the departure of Nex Optimisation''s Chief Executive Jenny Knott. bit.ly/2hJirrN- Workers at the Vauxhall plant of Ellesmere Port have raised concerns over the future of the factory after new owners, Peugeot SA of France, announced the axing of nearly a quarter of the workforce. bit.ly/2hJY4uwThe Guardian- Gillian Drakeford, the UK chief of Ikea, said she would like to see some clarity over the Brexit stance. "Theresa May talked about a transition period and this would be beneficial for us to adapt to a new trading reality, to allow us to offer products at the best prices", she said. bit.ly/2hJieF1- Npower is allowing its customers to fall as much as 1,600 pounds ($2,118.88) into debt on their energy bills before intervening to help them repay it. bit.ly/2hKDgD2The Telegraph- Union Unite said on Monday that staff at Capita Plc are planning to stage a nine-day strike over pension terms after talks between the company and the union failed. bit.ly/2hKp4tO- Accountancy firm EY has been fined 2.75 million pounds ($3.64 million) for a series of mistakes in the auditing of a tech company''s accounts five years ago. bit.ly/2hLziKnSky News- Mike Ashley has put Newcastle United up for sale, bowing to pressure from many fans who had demanded greater investment in the Premier League club. bit.ly/2hL2dyi- Lloyds Banking Group has rejected a bid from Harcus Sinclair, the law firm acting for the group of 6,000 former Lloyds TSB investors, to settle a legal claim over the HBOS merger, days before a trial featuring some of the UK''s most prominent financiers is due to begin. bit.ly/2hKmkMRThe Independent- Daimler AG on Monday said it is recalling 400,000 Mercedes-Benz cars in the UK over faulty airbags after reports that they had been prematurely deploying. ind.pn/2hKi7ZH- UK Transport Secretary Chris Grayling on Monday said Monarch Airlines had a "moral obligation to contribute" to the cost of the airlift. ind.pn/2hKQxvB ($1 = 0.7551 pounds) (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Sandra Maler)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-press-business/press-digest-british-business-oct-17-idINL2N1MR25W'|'2017-10-16T22:15:00.000+03:00'
'd72a6872ab34297dd28bd736e11c6978f46e07d6'|'Brexit transition deal likely to be too late for some banks, says TheCityUK'|'October 16, 2017 / 11:19 PM / in an hour Brexit transition deal likely to be too late for some banks, says TheCityUK Huw Jones 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Any binding Brexit transition agreement is unlikely before the first quarter of next year, too late to stop some banks in London from pressing the <20>relocate<74> button, a British financial services lobby group said on Tuesday. Britain<69>s financial sector is concerned that, with EU divorce talks bogged down by failure to agree the UK<55>s exit bill, time is running out for a transition deal that would be of any use to businesses. TheCityUK, which promotes Britain<69>s financial services sector abroad, said the value of such a deal is disappearing by the day and agreement would be needed in the first quarter of next year for financial businesses to reap any benefit and avoid fragmenting markets. <20>If they haven<65>t done so already, most will be ready to press <20>go<67> on their contingency plans in the New Year,<2C> said Miles Celic, chief executive of TheCityUK. <20>They can still take their foot off the accelerator if a transitional deal is agreed, but without progress soon, it may be too late,<2C> Celic said. Once businesses start moving, there is no reverse gear and the risk is that jobs and investment will head to Europe, he said. A transition period of at least two years -- the preferred option for Britain<69>s banks -- should entail as close to full European market access as possible, he added. EU leaders meet on Thursday and Friday to discuss Brexit and a draft communique showed they won<6F>t adopt guidelines on possible transitional arrangements until December. Meanwhile, some pro-Brexit lawmakers have said that Britain should not be subject to European Court of Justice rulings and that no new EU rules should be implemented during any transition period. A UK financial industry official said there is no time to negotiate a bespoke transition deal to meet such demands. <20>If you are going to be in the club, you can only have the set menu,<2C> he said. The Bank of England has said that a transition deal is needed by Christmas, given the time it takes to approve new licences for the continuation of cross-border banking after Brexit in March 2019. If a political deal on transition is agreed between the EU and Britain, regulators would also need to give banks assurances that they would respect it when it comes to assessing risks, TheCityUK said. The Bank of England has said it would decide by year-end whether London branches of EU banks must become subsidiaries if there is no transition deal in sight. Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by David Goodman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-banks/brexit-transition-deal-likely-to-be-too-late-for-some-banks-says-thecityuk-idUKKBN1CL34C'|'2017-10-17T02:16:00.000+03:00'
'8247d8b5419f3bca6ec42662d0d549d06d24dd46'|'Tough U.S. NAFTA demands send ball back into lobbyists'' court'|'President Donald Trump welcomes Canada''s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the South Lawn before their meeting about the NAFTA trade agreement at the White House in Washington, October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst ARLINGTON, Va. (Reuters) - Lobbying efforts on the North American Free Trade Agreement hit a crucial stage this week after the Trump administration ignored the U.S. business community<74>s advice and pitched proposals to radically reshape NAFTA, leaving its future in doubt.The U.S. demands to force renegotiations of NAFTA every five years and reserve the lion<6F>s share of automotive manufacturing for the United States have cast a pall over a fourth round of talks due to end Tuesday in suburban Washington.Though they were widely expected, the aggressive U.S. proposals were met with dismay by many officials from Mexico, Canada and U.S. industry, who have formed a loose alliance in opposing major changes to NAFTA.By Monday, Mexico''s peso MXN=D2 had hit a near five-month low with fears growing about the future of the deal underpinning $1.2 trillion in annual trade between the three countries.U.S. opposition to NAFTA<54>s dispute resolution mechanisms, plans to restrict outside access to government contracts and attacks on Canadian dairy and softwood lumber producers have further stoked the grim mood among trade officials.Bosco de la Vega, head of Mexico<63>s National Agricultural Council, the country<72>s main farming lobby, said coming weeks would show whether Mexico and Canada<64>s allies in Congress and the U.S. private sector could push back against the proposals.<2E>We<57>re going to see what the people here are made of,<2C> he told Reuters on the sidelines of the talks. <20>What I can guarantee you is that Mexico won<6F>t agree to a bad deal.<2E>Officials from the two biggest U.S. export markets have spent the months since Trump<6D>s November election victory working on U.S. bosses and political leaders to defend NAFTA, a 23-year-old accord the president has repeatedly called a <20>disaster<65>.The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has rejected what it calls the <20>poison pill<6C> plans, backed by other major industry groups.But whether lobbies that Trump has sought to characterize as part of the <20>Washington swamp<6D> can encourage a change of heart is far from certain, especially with the president openly feuding with a number of senior Republicans in Congress.Trump has attacked NAFTA throughout the talks and participants are doubtful how much influence Canadian foreign minister Chrystia Freeland and Mexico<63>s economy minister Ildefonso Guajardo will have on U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer when the three meet for talks on Tuesday.Arguing the deal has boosted Mexican manufacturing at the expense of the United States, Trump points to a goods trade deficit with its southern neighbour of $64 billion last year.To that end, his administration is seeking to raise the amount of NAFTA content in autos to 85 percent from 62.5 percent and secure 50 percent of the total for the United States.LOUDER NAFTA SALES PITCH Defenders of NAFTA say the cross-border integration has made the region more competitive with the rest of the world and prevented job losses to rival economies in Asia and Europe.Ann Wilson, senior vice president of government affairs for the Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association, which represents U.S. auto parts makers, said the group was speaking to <20>as many levels of policymakers as possible.<2E><>We are hopeful that by providing data and analysis ... that we can find a landing zone that will allow our members to continue to thrive,<2C> said Wilson. <20>But the proposal that I understand is on the table right now will not do that.<2E>Moises Kalach, head of the international negotiating arm of Mexico<63>s CCE business lobby, was confident the divisive measures did not have the support of Congress or key U.S. employers.<2E>The American private sector completely supports us, they<65>re very aligned, working with Congress, working with the governors and the S
'653af15ee9d279f2b601b685fec4b918d3d7397b'|'In the rough - China closes Wanda golf courses in chilly northeast'|' 49 AM / in 9 minutes In the rough - China closes Wanda golf courses in chilly northeast Adam Jourdan 3 Min Read SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China has ordered shut two high-end golf courses owned by Dalian Wanda Group, in a blow for the developer that has already come under scrutiny over high debt levels and has sold off a large part of its hotel and entertainment business this year. Fusong county in China<6E>s cold northeastern Jilin province shut the courses at Wanda<64>s Changbaishan International Resort, a statement on the local government<6E>s website dated Oct. 13 shows. China has been cracking down on golf in recent years, amid a sweeping anti-corruption drive under President Xi Jinping, as tales of officials<6C> high living, including extravagant banquets and expensive rounds on the golf course, stirred public anger. The Fusong government said it had on Oct. 9 ordered the resort to cease operations at its golf courses. The resort has two courses: an 18-hole course designed by golf star Jack Nicklaus and a 36-hole golf course. Dalian Wanda declined to comment. The Changbaishan resort is a 23 billion yuan (<28>2.6 billion) development near the border of North Korea. A worker at the resort, who asked not to be named as she was not permitted to speak to the media, said she was unaware of the closure order, but that the courses had closed anyway in October because of the start of the winter season. In January, China<6E>s state planner said it had ordered the closure of more than 100 golf courses in a multi-year campaign launched in 2011 to tackle illegal development in the sector. Golf has also been added to a list of Communist Party disciplinary violations, and is often cited in cases of graft. The Wanda closures come just ahead of a sensitive five-yearly Party Congress in Beijing that starts this week. Xi is looking to consolidate power and to reinforce Party principles within state-owned and private corporations before the meet. This year, China has been urging local firms to be cautious about offshore deals. Beijing<6E>s crackdown on showy overseas ventures and high-profile empire builders has drawn in several corporations such as Wanda, HNA Group, Anbang Insurance Group [ANBANG.UL]and Fosun International ( 0656.HK ). Wanda, headed by billionaire magnate Wang Jianlin, has been one of the country<72>s most prolific dealmakers, controlling or owning stakes in U.S. cinema chain AMC as well as high-flying Spanish football club Atletico Madrid. But it dialled back some of its ambitions earlier this year, announcing plans to sell most of its tourism projects and hotels in the country to Sunac China ( 1918.HK ) and Guangzhou R&F Properties ( 2777.HK ) for around $9 billion (<28>6.7 billion). Reporting by Adam Jourdan, additional reporting by Matt Miller in BEIJING and SHANGHAI newsroom; Editing by Himani Sarkar 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-wanda-golf/in-the-rough-china-closes-wanda-golf-courses-in-chilly-northeast-idUKKBN1CL12R'|'2017-10-16T12:49:00.000+03:00'
'd8eb6b9a685db4702426d0599deba112ddbef776'|'As the quartet breaks up, central banking leadership flux looms'|'October 16, 2017 / 5:04 AM / Updated 4 minutes ago As the quartet breaks up, central banking leadership flux looms Howard Schneider , Leika Kihara 7 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Governor of the Bank of Japan Haruhiko Kuroda (L to R), United States Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi walk after posing for a photo opportunity during the annual central bank research conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Jade Barker/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The leaders of the world<6C>s top central banks who risked trillions of dollars and their reputations to rescue the global economy are now set to walk off stage at a time when the lingering effects of the crisis, evolving technology and a combustible political landscape will challenge their successors. The Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the People<6C>s Bank of China may all have new bosses in early 2018 and there will be a new head of the European Central Bank the following year. The new leaders will have to deal with the hangover from the 2007-2009 crisis and its immediate aftermath as well as newly emerging risks. Some $10 trillion in assets bought by the Fed, the ECB and the BOJ to prop up their economies remains on the books and will have to be pared back. Stubbornly low global inflation and weak growth complicate the return to more conventional policies. There are unfinished reforms in China and Europe, while the rise of nationalism could erode central bank independence. Further ahead, the spread of cryptocurrencies and other technologies threatens to weaken central bank control over the financial system. <20>The bad news is that in a crisis people learn by doing,<2C> said Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at investment firm Standish Mellon and a longtime official at the Federal Reserve. <20>Will the next set of people have the set of experiences that allows them to do that? Will they have a test?<3F> The changing of the guard could veer in unpredictable directions. China<6E>s president is considering a provincial official to succeed Zhou Xiaochuan, a veteran policymaker who has led the central bank since 2002 and whom analysts regard as a champion of reforms that could falter without his leadership. In the United States, President Donald Trump will have the opportunity to infuse his <20>America First<73> sensibility at the Fed, an institution with an undeniable global role, when Chair Janet Yellen<65>s term ends in early February. BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda<64>s shock-and-awe record monetary stimulus gets credited for helping Japan snap out of years of stagnation. He will see his term end next April with the economy expected to keep growing, but inflation still far from his target, fueling doubts about the overall effectiveness of his policy. ECB President Mario Draghi will be around until late 2019, but the succession battle could renew tensions over Britain<69>s departure from the European Union, ways of aligning the interests of economic superpower Germany with the rest of Europe, and concerns that the rise of nationalism could impair the ECB<43>s ability to set monetary policy for 19 countries. <20>Given the divisions in Europe both politically and economically, you could have a very large swing in ECB behavior,<2C> said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Yellen, Kuroda and Zhou appeared together on Sunday to talk about the global economy on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings. It was a <20>farewell concert<72> of sorts for a group whose tenure has transformed central banking. With rare exceptions, monetary policymakers from different countries avoid any hint of direct coordination with each other, and primarily tailor policies to domestic needs. Still, the four in charge now have shared years at the helm of the global financial system, met and talked at countless international meetings, and managed a major crisis together. Along the way they depl
'4c50f4a108cdb4802899f29d5d7022e92c0850c9'|'Sinochem taps banks for Hong Kong IPO of oil assets - sources'|' 30 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago Sinochem taps banks for Hong Kong IPO of oil assets: sources Chen Aizhu , Julie Zhu , Matthew Miller 4 Min Read BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) - China<6E>s Sinochem Group has tapped three banks, including Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ), to work on the possible Hong Kong listing of its key oil assets, as it seeks to raise capital and revive the company, said four people with knowledge of the matter. Citic Securities ( 600030.SS ) and BOC International are also advising China<6E>s fourth-largest oil company on the planned initial public offering, which will likely take place in the second half of next year, the people said. No formal mandate for the IPO has been awarded yet, they said, adding preparations for the market float are at an early stage, and unlisted Sinochem has yet to decide the size of the public offering. The IPO plan also comes amid Beijing<6E>s latest push to revive its bloated state-owned enterprise sector via the so-called mixed-ownership reforms by injecting private capital into state enterprises. <20>Our people are preparing for it (IPO) ... but it<69>s still far away,<2C> Sinochem Chairman Ning Gaoning told Reuters on the sidelines of the Communist Party Congress. The planned listing will likely include Sinochem<65>s refining, fuel marketing, trading and storing assets, but not its struggling upstream business - mostly overseas oil and gas production - three of the people said. <20>These assets are considered the best under the company,<2C> said one person who was briefed by Sinochem management, referring to the businesses likely to be part of the listing. <20>Sinochem is looking to offload its upstream business to the government rather than to investors.<2E> All the people declined to be named as details of the listing process are not yet public. Sinochem did not respond to a request for comment. Morgan Stanley, Citic and BOCI declined to comment. Hit by low oil prices, Sinochem has aimed to shift from oil exploration and production to the more value-added refining and retailing businesses. It has been looking to sell a stake in Brazil<69>s Peregrino offshore oilfield. MIXED-OWNERSHIP Beijing has been working towards creating bigger, stronger state firms, and building enterprises capable of competing globally. It is also weeding out excessive capacity in bloated sectors, but wants to avoid any risk of mass layoffs or a blow to economic growth. China will prevent the loss of state assets, deepen reforms of state firms and develop a mixed-ownership economy, President Xi Jinping said at the opening of the twice-a-decade congress on Wednesday. Sinochem<65>s IPO plans have been pushed ahead by Ning, who joined the firm last year from food group COFCO, where he was well known for aggressive restructuring and M&A, said two of the people. Under his leadership, several Sinochem units have been given more leeway in their expansion plans and more support for tapping capital markets for fundraising, said another person. Beijing-based Sinochem controls the 240,000 barrel-per-day Quanzhou refinery in the coastal province of Fujian, a major source of group profits in the past two years. Sinochem has said it wants to boost investment at the refinery to diversify into petrochemicals. It also runs nearly 10 crude and oil products terminals, and more than 700 retail stations across China, its website showed. The group<75>s annual turnover of crude and products is about 150 million tons, while the combined annual capacity of its three refineries is nearly 25 million tons. In 2011, Sinochem Corp, in which Sinochem Group holds a 98 percent stake, planned to raise up to $5.3 billion via a Shanghai IPO, and use the proceeds to fund the Quanzhou refinery. The plan was dropped due to unfavorable market conditions. The group currently controls three listed units, including Sinochem International Corp ( 600500.SS ), Sinofert Holdings Ltd ( 0297.HK ) and China Jinmao Holdings Group ( 0817.HK ). Reporting by Chen Aizhu, Julie Zhu, Matt Miller
'b3a18c4de47490d792cb2f8e5466f7672ec89d7b'|'Nestle accelerates restructuring as sales growth stays tepid'|'Reuters TV United States October 19, 2017 / 5:39 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago Nestle accelerates restructuring as sales growth stays tepid Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Kit Kat chocolate bar is seen in this illustration photo taken July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo ZURICH (Reuters) - Nestle ( NESN.S ) said it expected its operating margin to slip by 40 to 60 basis points in 2017 due to higher restructuring costs from a faster overhaul and said full-year organic sales growth should be in line with the 2.6 percent seen in the first nine months. But the world<6C>s biggest food company said its underlying margin, which strips out costs of closing factories and other charges from its revamp, was set to improve. Makers of packaged foods are under pressure to review their business models and brand portfolios to satisfy consumers<72> appetite for fresh, healthy, local foods, while at the same time improving returns to silence increasingly vocal activist investors. The maker of KitKat chocolate bars and Nescafe instant coffee said on Thursday that restructuring was progressing faster than planned, taking overall spending to as much as 1 billion Swiss francs ($1.02 billion) this year. <20>We maintain our guidance for overall restructuring costs of up to 2.5 billion francs until 2020,<2C> Chief Finance Officer Francois-Xavier Roger told reporters on a call. Organic sales growth accelerated to 3.1 percent in the third quarter, from 2.3 percent in the first and 2.4 percent in the second, Nestle said. This matched the forecast in a Reuters poll. In the nine-month period, sales reached 65.272 billion Swiss francs as growth in Asia and Europe picked up, while in the Americas sales growth eased, Nestle said. Organic growth in North America was flat, the company said, citing soft consumer demand, with a decline in sales volumes particularly in confectionery and ice creams. Roger said he still expected the sale of Nestle<6C>s U.S. confectionery business by the end of the year. Nestle shares, which have risen almost 15 percent so far this year, were indicated to open 0.4 percent lower, according to pre-market indications JBPRE01. Reporting by Silke Koltrowitz and John Revill; Editing by Michael Shields 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-nestle-sales/nestle-expects-2017-margin-to-decline-on-higher-restructuring-costs-idUKKBN1CO0GX'|'2017-10-19T09:17:00.000+03:00'
'51571767368d5108edb9b4a5fd78ee430770d8c1'|'South Korea''s Naver invests further 100 mln euros in French tech fund'|'PARIS, Oct 19 (Reuters) - South Korea<65>s Naver Corp is investing a further 100 million euros ($118 million) in French technology fund K-Fund I, marking the latest sign of international interest in the French start-up technology scene, which is vying to rival London.K-Fund I is steered by Korelya Capital, which was founded and is led by former French digital economy minister Fleur Pellerin.Korean-born Pellerin is credited with launching the <20>French Tech<63> initiative in the early years of ex-President Francois Hollande<64>s mandate, which put the country<72>s burgeoning tech scene on the map.Earlier this year, Facebook picked Paris<69> <20>Station F<> mega-campus as the site of its first ever start-ups incubator.$1 = 0.8474 euros Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Gwenaelle Barzic; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/france-tech-naver/south-koreas-naver-invests-further-100-mln-euros-in-french-tech-fund-idINP6N1M901H'|'2017-10-19T03:16:00.000+03:00'
'5f381b523773d0dd0d43e134eff8b24c0c4e3f78'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Mexico peso falls again amid uncertainty about NAFTA talks'|'October 18, 2017 / 10:31 PM / in 16 hours EMERGING MARKETS-Mexico peso falls again amid uncertainty about NAFTA talks Reuters Staff 4 Min Read MEXICO CITY, Oct 18 (Reuters) - The Mexican peso slipped on Wednesday, continuing its volatile gyrations as talks to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) deteriorate. The Mexican peso has seesawed as investors puzzle over what the contentious talks mean for the nation''s future, dipping almost 0.5 percent on Wednesday. A day earlier, the United States, Canada and Mexico wrapped up the latest round of NAFTA renegotiations in Washington, D.C., trading barbs. "We think the (Mexican peso) could remain very volatile as the market continues to digest the results of the fourth round of NAFTA negotiations," Nomura analysts Mario Castro, David Wagner and Benito Berber wrote in a note to investors. The losses came after the peso rose about 1.5 percent on Wednesday on news that trade ministers from the United States, Canada and Mexico would extend a deadline to finish talks. The jump marked the currency''s biggest one-day gain in about 4-1/2 months. Before its rebound, the peso had shed close to 5 percent this month on concerns that talks to revamp the 23-year-old North American trade accord could founder. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to leave the pact, crying foul over the United States'' trade deficit with Mexico. Mexico''s government is not worried about the movements in the country''s peso, which have been orderly, Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade said on Wednesday. NAFTA is a critical pillar of the Mexican economy, which sends nearly 80 percent of its exports to the United States. Meanwhile, Brazil''s benchmark Bovespa stock index edged up 0.5 percent as investors remained cautious amid a corruption scandal that has embroiled President Michael Temer and could doom his market-friendly reforms. Latin American stock indexes and currencies at 21:00 GMT: Stock indexes Latest Daily YTD pct pct change change MSCI Emerging Markets 1,126.90 0.11 30.69 MSCI LatAm 2,952.59 0.73 26.14 Brazil Bovespa 76,591.09 0.51 27.17 Mexico IPC 49,938.98 -0.4 9.41 Chile IPSA 5,517.97 0.63 32.92 Chile IGPA 27,649.69 0.6 33.35 Argentina MerVal 26,213.15 -1.54 54.94 Colombia IGBC 11,012.49 -0.16 8.73 Venezuela IBC 559.96 -0.32 -98.23 (Reporting by Julia Love, Michael O''Boyle and Noe Torres; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/emerging-markets-latam/emerging-markets-mexico-peso-falls-again-amid-uncertainty-about-nafta-talks-idUSL2N1MT28M'|'2017-10-19T01:30:00.000+03:00'
'd493a0493519082ba3fcd4d2c7db847e8d94d329'|'Asia stocks edge up, await China GDP, dollar rises as yields spike'|'October 19, 2017 / 1:00 AM / in 5 minutes Stocks dip but off session lows, U.S. Treasury yields fall Chuck Mikolajczak , Stephanie Kelly 4 Min Read The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote NEW YORK (Reuters) - World stock markets slipped from a record high on Thursday after a flurry of tepid corporate earnings reports but were off session lows as Wall Street pared losses, while demand for safe-haven assets pushed U.S. Treasury yields lower. Signs of poor demand for Apple<6C>s iPhone 8 dragged each of the major Wall Street indexes down a day after the Dow Industrials cracked the 23,000 barrier for the first time. Shares of Apple ( AAPL.O ) fell 2.5 percent to $155.78. <20>Clearly, Apple is one of the biggest contributors every year when it comes to earnings, so you have to keep an eye on it,<2C> said Andres Garcia-Amaya, CEO at Zoe Financial in New York. <20>More important, one of the things I am going to be keeping an eye on this season is the breadth of earnings beats. In other words, is it just coming from one sector or is it coming from across a number of sectors.<2E> Of the 11 major S&P sector groups, technology .SPLRCT, off 0.52 percent, was the biggest drag. Traders were marking 30 years to the day since the 1987 Black Monday stock market crash, although many market participants considered another such crash unlikely. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 19.61 points, or 0.08 percent, to 23,137.99, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 1.56 points, or 0.06 percent, to 2,559.7 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 30.59 points, or 0.46 percent, to 6,593.64. European shares notched their largest drop in two months on concerns over political upheaval in Spain and after disappointing results from large companies such as Unilever, France<63>s Publicis and Germany<6E>s Kion. Spain<69>s central government said it would suspend Catalonia<69>s autonomy and impose direct rule after the region<6F>s leader threatened to go ahead with a formal declaration of independence if Madrid refused to hold talks. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 lost 0.60 percent and MSCI''s gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD PUS shed 0.10 percent. Madrid''s IBEX .IBEX ended down 0.74 percent, after dropping as much as 1 percent. Also putting a damper on risk appetite was data from China, which showed economic growth cooled slightly to 6.8 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, compared with the second quarter<65>s 6.9 percent. Other data showed China<6E>s industrial output rose a stronger-than-expected 6.6 percent in September, while retail sales also outperformed. But property sales fell for the first time in over two years. In addition, People<6C>s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan spoke of the risks of a <20>Minsky moment<6E> in the economy, referring to a sudden collapse in asset prices sparked by debt or currency pressures. The dollar index .DXY fell 0.15 percent after touching a six-day low of 93.055, with the euro EUR= up 0.41 percent to $1.1835. Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR last rose 6/32 in price to yield 2.3196 percent, from 2.339 percent late on Wednesday. Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Nick Zieminski 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asia-stocks-edge-up-await-china-gdp-dollar-rises-as-yields-spike-idUKKBN1CO037'|'2017-10-19T03:53:00.000+03:00'
'8db5100aa332daf3f584832c8abdf30ea80c927b'|'Facebook general counsel to testify before Congress Nov. 1'|'October 19, 2017 / 2:26 PM / in 11 minutes U.S. lawmakers want crackdown on Facebook, Twitter political ads Patricia Zengerle , Dustin Volz 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Facebook logo is seen at a start-up companies gathering at Paris'' Station F in Paris, France on January 17, 2017. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers, alarmed that foreign entities used the internet to influence last year<61>s election, introduced legislation on Thursday to extend rules governing political advertising on television, print and radio to also cover social media like Facebook Inc ( FB.O ). Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner and Republican John McCain introduced the <20>Honest Ads Act,<2C> one of the strongest efforts in Congress yet to address allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. The legislation would expand existing election law covering television and radio outlets to apply to paid internet and digital advertisements on platforms like Facebook, Twitter Inc ( TWTR.N ) and Alphabet Inc<6E>s ( GOOGL.O ) Google. <20>Our laws have failed to keep up with evolving technology and the capabilities of our foreign adversaries,<2C> Klobuchar told a news conference. The measure would also require digital platforms with at least 50 million monthly views to maintain a public file of all electioneering communications purchased by anyone spending more than $500. And it would require online platforms to make <20>all reasonable efforts<74> to ensure that foreign individuals and entities are not buying political advertisements to influence the U.S. electorate. Companion legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives by Republican Representative Mike Coffman and Democrat Derek Kilmer. Social media companies have become an increasing focus of congressional investigations into allegations that Russia sought to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election on behalf of Republican candidate Donald Trump, something now-President Trump and Moscow deny. Warner, who was a technology executive before entering politics, said $150,000 of ads paid for in rubles may be only the <20>tip of the iceberg<72> in terms of how many political advertisements were bought by foreign firms. He said advertisements could have been purchased using dollars, euros or pounds. U.S. law bars foreigners from spending money to attempt to influence American elections. Warner and Klobuchar acknowledged that the companies have resisted the legislation. But Warner said, <20>It<49>s our hope that the social media companies and platform companies will work with us.<2E> WILL IT PASS? It was not immediately clear how much support the act would receive in Congress or when it might come up for a vote. Social media companies have begun a lobbying campaign to at least influence, if not prevent, the bill. The companies said they are open to working with Congress and have been turning over information, but are legally obligated to protect their users<72> privacy. Facebook has turned over thousands of ads to congressional investigators and its chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, met with members of Congress last week. Google said it was look at steps it could take on its various platforms and would work closely with Congress, the Federal Election Commission and the industry to come up with solutions. <20>We support efforts to improve transparency, enhance disclosures and reduce foreign abuse,<2C> Google spokeswoman Riva Sciuto said in an emailed statement. Klobuchar and Warner said it was possible the measure could be offered an amendment to another larger piece of legislation. Warner is vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of the congressional panels investigating the alleged Russian hacking and the possibility that Trump<6D>s campaign colluded with Moscow. Klobuchar is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, which helps oversee elections. And McCain is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. They said they would like it to become law
'77cbd0f03fa9f65b34bbc1f0a99ba48d0978b983'|'Air Berlin deal to lift Eurowings sales above 5 billion euros in 2018'|'October 17, 2017 / 11:42 AM / a few seconds ago Air Berlin deal to lift Eurowings sales above 5 billion euros in 2018 Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: German carrier Air Berlin aircrafts are pictured at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt/File Photo DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) - A deal to buy large parts of Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ) should boost annual revenues at Lufthansa<73>s ( LHAG.DE ) budget unit Eurowings to more than 5 billion euros ($5.88 billion), Eurowings Chief Executive Thorsten Dirks said on Tuesday. That compares with an expected 4 billion euros this year. Dirks also said that Alitalia<69>s [CAITLA.UL] short-haul business could be integrated at Eurowings, should Lufthansa succeed in striking a deal to buy a part of Italy<6C>s ailing carrier. Lufthansa is among two of seven companies that have bid for Italy<6C>s ailing flag carrier. It has said it was interested in parts of Alitalia<69>s global network traffic and its European and domestic point-to-point business. Reporting by Matthias Inverardi; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Arno Schuetze 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-alitalia-sale-lufthansa-eurowings/air-berlin-deal-to-lift-eurowings-sales-above-5-billion-euros-in-2018-idUKKBN1CM1KZ'|'2017-10-17T14:27:00.000+03:00'
'9b7d7d061db034179cc51e06ea9f640e71032496'|'Exclusive - China offers to buy 5 percent of Saudi Aramco directly: sources'|'October 16, 2017 / 1:47 PM / in 4 minutes Exclusive - China offers to buy 5 percent of Saudi Aramco directly: sources Rania El Gamal , Alex Lawler 6 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Visitors are seen at the Saudi Aramco stand at the Middle East Process Engineering Conference & Exhibition in Manama, Bahrain, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/File photo DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) - China is offering to buy up to 5 percent of Saudi Aramco directly, sources said, a move that could give Saudi Arabia the flexibility to consider various options for its plan to float the world<6C>s biggest oil producer on the stock market. Chinese state-owned oil companies PetroChina ( 0857.HK ) and Sinopec ( 0386.HK ) have written to Saudi Aramco in recent weeks to express an interest in a direct deal, industry sources told Reuters. The companies are part of a state-run consortium including China<6E>s sovereign wealth fund, the sources say. Saudi Arabia<69>s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said last year the kingdom was considering listing about 5 percent of Aramco in 2018 in a deal that could raise $100 billion (<28>75.2 billion), if the company is valued at about $2 trillion as hoped. <20>The Chinese want to secure oil supplies,<2C> one of the industry sources said. <20>They are willing to take the whole 5 percent, or even more, alone.<2E> PetroChina and Sinopec declined to comment. The initial public offering (IPO) of Saudi Aramco is the centrepiece of an economic reform plan to diversify the Saudi economy beyond oil and it would also provide a welcome boost to the kingdom<6F>s budget which has been hit by low oil prices. But the IPO plan has created public misgivings that Riyadh is relinquishing its crown jewels to foreigners cheaply at a time of low oil prices. Some Aramco employees would like the whole idea to be shelved, sources say. Internal disagreements between what some advisers recommend and what the crown prince wants have delayed several key decisions about the IPO, industry sources said. The sources also point to disagreements between senior government officials, with some pushing only to list Aramco locally or to delay the IPO beyond 2018 when they hope oil prices will have stabilised at $55 to $60 a barrel. <20>A range of options, for the public listing of Saudi Aramco, continue to be held under active review. No decision has been made and the IPO process remains on track,<2C> said a Saudi Aramco spokesman. Industry sources said the sale of a significant stake to Chinese firms was one of several options being considered by the kingdom as it weighs the benefits of a public listing. One option includes selling some stock immediately to so-called cornerstone investors, such as China, and then selling shares on the local bourse as well as an international stock exchange, with New York, London and Hong Kong in the running. CORNERSTONE INVESTOR Visitors are seen at the Saudi Aramco stand at the Middle East Process Engineering Conference & Exhibition in Manama, Bahrain, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed Two senior industry sources said Riyadh was keen on China, its biggest buyer of oil, becoming a cornerstone investor in Aramco. But no decision has yet been taken on whether to accept China<6E>s offer, or how much stock could be offered to cornerstone investors, the sources said. China is creating a consortium made up of state-owned oil firms, banks and its sovereign wealth fund to act as a cornerstone investor in the IPO, people with knowledge of the discussions told Reuters in April. Sources told Reuters on Friday that Saudi Aramco was now evaluating a private placement of shares to a Chinese investor as a precursor to an international IPO, which could be delayed beyond 2018. But allowing China to buy 5 percent would effectively mean cancelling the IPO altogether, which is an unlikely outcome, one of the sources said. Sources said postponing the listing would be the least preferred option, given the preparations that have been already done and the
'b58734d6c997d0fe4be88e587188834644339366'|'Nasdaq, SGX in pact to woo firms interested in listing on both boards'|'October 19, 2017 / 7:05 AM / in 19 minutes Nasdaq, SGX in pact to woo firms interested in listing on both boards Elzio Barreto 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Nasdaq logo is displayed at the Nasdaq Market site in New York September 2, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo (Reuters) - Singapore Exchange Ltd (SGX) ( SGXL.SI ) and Nasdaq Inc ( NDAQ.O ) said on Wednesday they were teaming up to woo fast-growing Asian tech firms interested in listing on both their exchanges, as they look to better compete for mid-sized IPOs. The tie-up, which comes as the two exchanges grapple with a decline in new listings, would help Asian companies first list in Singapore as a springboard and then ease smoothly to the Nasdaq as they expand globally. <20>This would be a very good East-West bridge for companies at different stages of growth to accelerate going public by choosing Singapore first or if they want to have a dual class regime, go to the U.S. but still have a secondary listing in Singapore concurrently,<2C> Chew Sutat, head of equities and fixed income at SGX, said in an interview. While global IPO volumes have jumped about 32 percent to $126.3 billion so far in 2017, according to Thomson Reuters data, much of that business is going to exchanges in China and the New York Stock Exchange. FILE PHOTO: An SGX sign is pictured at Singapore Stock Exchange July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo By contrast, Nasdaq has seen a 2.3 percent decline while SGX has seen a fall of 2.7 percent. Several Asian technology companies have sought listings in New York because of the size of the market and number of fund managers more familiar with investing in unprofitable startups. Asian companies aiming to list in the United States include Singaporean online games maker Sea Ltd, which is looking to raise nearly $700 million with its IPO, Thomson Reuters publication IFR has reported. Chew said there was strong case for many companies to start off in Asia first. <20>Many regional Southeast Asian or Chinese companies have their businesses predominantly in Asia and if they<65>re not of the size and scale that makes them attractive in a big market like the U.S., they could get lost,<2C> he said. Additional reporting by Susan Mathew in Bengaluru; Editing by Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-sgx-nasdaq-partnership/nasdaq-sgx-in-pact-to-woo-firms-interested-in-listing-on-both-boards-idUKKBN1CO0QV'|'2017-10-19T10:04:00.000+03:00'
'7a59b69e40086c016670d735e3a190573567c10c'|'German business morale buoyed by flush order books'|'October 17, 2017 / 10:42 AM / in 7 minutes German business morale buoyed by flush order books Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A man carries a shopping bag in the colours of the German national flag in downtown Hanover June 26, 2012. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer BERLIN (Reuters) - Flush order books and strong output figures boosted morale among German businesses in October, the ZEW research institute said on Tuesday, suggesting a strong phase of growth in Europe<70>s biggest economy has further to run. The Mannheim-based institute<74>s monthly economic sentiment index rose to 17.6 from 17.0 in September. While that missed analysts<74> expectations, the ZEW said the fact that inflation had risen and was expected to rise further was a positive signal. <20>(This)... equally points towards a positive economic development in Germany,<2C> said ZEW President Achim Wambach. Rising price pressures also made a change in the European Central Bank<6E>s ultra-loose monetary policy more likely, he said. The ECB is due to decide in October whether to extend its stimulus programme into next year. Sources have told Reuters it was likely to extend the purchases but reduce their size. But its President Mario Draghi cautioned on Friday that the euro zone continued to need substantial monetary stimulus as inflation had not yet risen sufficiently. Thomas Gitzel, chief economist of VP Bank Group, said the ZEW data suggested that flush industrial order books were underpinning ever more broad-based German growth. The economy should expand by more than 2 percent this year, he said. <20>Assuming there is no external shock, the current economic cycle still has time to run.<2E> Analysts polled by Reuters had expected the sentiment indicator to come in at 20.0. Another gauge, measuring investors<72> assessment of current economic conditions, also undershot expectations, edging down to 87.0 from 87.9. Analysts had expected 89.0. Reporting by Thomas Escritt and Michelle Martin; Editing by Madeline Chambers and John Stonestreet 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-economy-zew/german-business-morale-buoyed-by-flush-order-books-idUKKBN1CM1BG'|'2017-10-17T13:41:00.000+03:00'
'ef40817fbb2cc20710aa171872a3c60fac313e39'|'British annual retail sales growth slows to weakest since 2013 in third quarter'|'October 19, 2017 / 8:33 AM / in 10 hours UK third-quarter retail sales growth weakest in four years as inflation bites 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Shoppers walk along Oxford Street in London, Britain December 18, 2016. REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - British retail sales slowed unexpectedly sharply in September, dragging quarterly growth to its weakest annual rate since 2013 and suggesting consumer demand remains uncertain as the Bank of England nears its first rate rise in a decade. Retail sales volumes fell 0.8 percent in September, the Office for National Statistics said on Thursday, reversing a jump in August and undershooting all economists<74> forecasts in a Reuters poll. Third-quarter growth slowed to its lowest year-on-year rate since the second quarter of 2013 at 1.5 percent. Last month the Bank said it was likely to raise interest rates in the coming months if the economy and inflation pressures strengthen as expected, but in recent days a few investors have begun to doubt if the Bank will move as soon as next month. Markets see a roughly 80 percent chance of a rate rise on Nov. 2 after the Bank<6E>s next meeting, but sterling fell to a one-week low of $1.3126 after the data on Thursday as rate futures pared back the odds of further rate increases in 2018. <20>Uncomfortable questions have been raised about just where UK growth is going to emerge from in Q4,<2C> said Jeremy Cook, chief economist at foreign exchange services company WorldFirst. <20>We will find out in the coming months whether this is consumers holding off on purchases in preparation for Christmas, or whether the Bank of England<6E>s messaging on interest rate rises has been enough to keep some hands in pockets.<2E> BoE policymakers said in September that consumer demand was showing signs of improving after weakness earlier in the year, though it was too soon to tell if it would compensate for weak business investment. The ONS said Thursday<61>s figures pointed to retail sales adding 0.03 percentage points to economic growth in the third quarter, compared with 0.09 percentage points in Q2. The Bank and most economists expect economic growth of around 0.3 percent. FILE PHOTO: Shoppers carry bags in London, Britain August 25, 2016. REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo LESS FOR THEIR MONEY The rising cost of goods in stores - which are now increasing at their fastest since March 2012 - meant the amount British shoppers were getting for their money was growing more slowly than the amount they spent, the ONS said. <20>The slump in retail sales in September was driven by retailers implementing large price rises,<2C> Samuel Tombs of Pantheon Macroeconomics said. However, he and other economists cautioned against drawing too strong conclusions about the overall health of consumer demand from trends in retail sales. Compared with a year earlier, sales volumes in September alone were up 1.2 percent versus the average forecast in a Reuters poll of a 2.1 percent rise. Consumer price inflation hit a five-year high of 3.0 percent in September, largely reflecting the fall in the pound pushing up the cost of imports since last year<61>s Brexit vote. Pay has not kept up. Official data on Wednesday showed that regular pay in the three months to August was 0.4 percent lower in real terms than in 2016 - the sixth consecutive month of falls and the longest such run in almost three years. Some shoppers are tightening their belts, as industry data on Tuesday showed the market share of Britain<69>s four biggest supermarkets falling in response to growing sales at German discount chains Aldi and Lidl. Relatively cheap online fashion retailer ASOS ( ASOS.L ) also revised up growth forecasts on Tuesday, in part due to stronger demand after it froze its prices despite higher import costs following last year<61>s fall in the pound. Editing by Gareth Jones'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-retai
'aebc57bbd38fffb736a9bb97d11522fe5218e2ce'|'EU watchdogs to study costs, performance of mutual funds'|'October 17, 2017 / 8:12 AM / in 27 minutes EU watchdogs to study cost, performance of mutual funds Reuters Staff 2 Min Read European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium June 14, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir PARIS (Reuters) - European Union financial watchdogs will conduct a large-scale study into the cost and performance of mutual funds, a top regulator said on Tuesday. Steven Maijoor, chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), told a conference in Paris that regulators would look at both passive and active funds. Passive investing, where funds typically charge the cheapest fees for tracking a stock index, has grown enormously. Active funds charge more for their services, but some have been accused by critics of being <20>closet<65> trackers, meaning they track an index by stealth rather than - as they advertise - using their expertise to pick investments. Regulators in Europe have become more focussed on fees charged by investment funds in order to encourage people to invest more in their own retirement, rather than relying on the state. Maijoor said ESMA and the European Banking Authority would assess the reporting of costs and past performance of retail investment products, in order to <20>increase investors<72> awareness of the net return of these products, and the impact of fees and charges.<2E> The regulators will obtain more data on costs and charges under new EU securities rules known as MiFID II that come into force in January, Maijoor said. Valdis Dombrovskis, vice president of the EU<45>s executive European Commission, told the conference that Brussels would publish proposals to remove obstacles to the cross-border sales of funds regulated under EU law. <20>This would ... broaden the offer of fund products across the EU,<2C> Dombrovskis said. Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Maya Nikolaeva and Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-funds-regulations/eu-watchdogs-to-study-costs-performance-of-mutual-funds-idUKKBN1CM0SU'|'2017-10-17T11:12:00.000+03:00'
'b3f7fca6055bbee91d81d5d8d47fcff0424443a4'|'Airbus to take majority stake in Bombardier''s C-Series programme'|'October 16, 2017 / 10:31 PM / Updated 20 minutes ago Airbus takes control of Bombardier CSeries in rebuff to U.S. threat Allison Lampert , Tim Hepher 7 Min Read An Airbus A320neo aircraft and a Bombardier CSeries aircraft are pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau MONTREAL/PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus SE has agreed to buy a majority stake in Bombardier Inc<6E>s CSeries jetliner program, giving a powerful boost to the Canadian plane and train maker in its costly trade dispute with Boeing Co. The deal, which would come at no cost for Europe<70>s largest aerospace group, would give Airbus a 50.01 percent interest in CSeries Aircraft Limited Partnership (CSALP), which manufactures and sells the jets, the companies said. While Bombardier will lose control of a plane program developed at a cost of $6 billion, it gives the CSeries improved economies of scale, a better sales network and, crucially, could change the power balance in the trade dispute with Boeing. The 110-to-130 seat plane, which has not secured a new order in 18 months and is being threatened by a possible 300 percent duty on U.S. imports, would be built for U.S. airlines at Airbus<75>s Alabama assembly plant, circumventing any import penalties in a move that apparently caught Boeing off guard. Bombardier said the partnership should more than double the value of the CSeries program. <20>Bombardier no longer has control of this jet, but then again, it<69>s better to have a 30 percent share of a very successful program than to struggle with a highly risky program that was perhaps too big for them from the start,<2C> said aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia. Canadian Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains, who must decide whether to approve the deal, said in a statement that <20>on the surface, Bombardier<65>s new proposed partnership ... would help position the CSeries for success<73>. Boeing - which is also locked in a separate 13-year trade dispute with Airbus - said it was a <20>questionable deal<61> between two of its subsidized competitors. At 0815 GMT, Airbus shares were up 2.5 percent at 78.96 euros, the biggest rise by a European blue-chip stock. STRATEGIC DECISION Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders said the company, based in Toulouse, France, had offered to assemble some of the narrowbody jets at its U.S. plant in Alabama for orders by U.S. carriers. The U.S. assembly line would mean the jets would not be subject to possible U.S. anti-subsidy and anti-dumping duties of 300 percent, Bombardier Chief Executive Alain Bellemare said on a media conference call. Related Coverage Bombardier confident Airbus deal can resolve U.S tariff issue Bellemare called the deal with Airbus, which was first attempted unsuccessfully in 2015, a <20>strategic<69> decision that is expected to close in the second half of 2018. <20>We<57>re doing this deal here not because of this Boeing petition. We are doing this deal because it is the right strategic move for Bombardier,<2C> Bellemare said, referring to Boeing<6E>s complaint that the Canadian firm received illegal subsidies and dumped CSeries planes at <20>absurdly low<6F> prices. A Boeing spokesman dismissed the agreement as a <20>questionable deal between two state-subsidized competitors<72> to try to skirt a recent U.S. trade finding against the CSeries. In February, the Canadian government announced C$372.5 million ($297 million) in repayable loans for the CSeries and another Bombardier jet program. The Airbus investment does not place any more financial burdens on Ottawa, two sources close to the case said on Monday. The sources, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media, also said the deal would have no effect on a separate dispute between Canada and Boeing over a proposed purchase of 18 Super Hornet jets. An Airbus A320neo aircraft and a Bombardier CSeries aircraft are pictured during a ne
'07c0b2e9078fe2db807e9f0c7aa7a9c1319eb0da'|'China''s Qudian IPO seen priced above range: sources'|'(Reuters) - Online micro-credit provider Qudian Inc<6E>s ( QD.N ) initial public offering could be priced above the expected range of $19-$22 per American depositary share, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.The offering could give the company, backed by Alibaba<62>s ( BABA.N ) banking unit Ant Financial, a market capitalization of more than $7 billion and raise over $825 million.That would make the IPO the biggest U.S.-listing by a Chinese company this year.The offering is expected to be priced after the close of U.S. market on Tuesday, a source said.Qudian operates a website that allows college students and young white-collar workers to buy laptops, smartphones and other consumer electronics on monthly installments.Qudian closed its books a day early for its NYSE IPO due to strong demand, Reuters IFR reported, citing people close to the deal.Credit Suisse, CICC, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and UBS are joint bookrunners on the IPO.Reporting by Roopal Verma in Bengaluru and Elzio Barreto in Hong Kong; Writing by Sweta Singh; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-qudian-ipo-pricing/chinas-qudian-ipo-seen-priced-above-range-sources-idINKBN1CM22Y'|'2017-10-17T12:13:00.000+03:00'
'5c78d936ba63d06ecdf331e4cfcbeb461462d055'|'Eurowings sees $1 billion-plus revenue boost from Air Berlin deal'|'FILE PHOTO: German carrier Air Berlin aircrafts are pictured at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt/File Photo DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) - Eurowings should get a revenue boost of more than 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) a year from parent Lufthansa<73>s ( LHAG.DE ) deal to buy part of Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ), Eurowings Chief Executive Thorsten Dirks said on Tuesday.Lufthansa signed a 210 million euro deal last week to take over 81 of Air Berlin<69>s roughly 130 planes to cement its position in Germany and expand budget brand Eurowings.With the deal, Eurowings<67> fleet will grow to 210 aircraft from 160, and its workforce will increase to about 10,000 people from 7,000, Lufthansa has said.Dirks said the deal should lift Eurowings<67> annual revenues to more than 5 billion euros.But it still needs regulatory approval and the CEO said he expected the European Commission to demand measures to address competition concerns on some routes.Dirks said Eurowings could also absorb Alitalia<69>s [CAITLA.UL] short-haul business if Lufthansa struck a deal to buy parts of the ailing Italian flag carrier.Lufthansa is among seven companies that have bid for Alitalia. It has said it was only interested in parts of the business, not the airline as a whole.Reporting by Matthias Inverardi; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Arno Schuetze and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-alitalia-sale-lufthansa-eurowings/air-berlin-deal-to-lift-eurowings-sales-above-5-billion-euros-in-2018-idINKBN1CM1KZ'|'2017-10-17T09:43:00.000+03:00'
'63fbad4e320616e29765efa8137c8be72008919d'|'Goldman Sachs quarterly bond trading revenue drops 26 percent'|'October 17, 2017 / 11:54 AM / in 10 minutes Goldman Sachs quarterly bond trading revenue drops 26 percent Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of Dow Jones Industrial Average stock market index listed company Goldman Sachs (GS) is seen on the clothing of a trader working at the Goldman Sachs stall on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, United States April 16, 2012. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( GS.N ) reported a decline in quarterly profit, as gains in investment banking were offset by a 26 percent drop in fixed-income trading revenue. Revenue from trading bonds, currencies and commodities (FICC) fell to $1.45 billion (<28>1.1 billion). bit.ly/2gfWdgC Net income applicable to common shareholders was $2.04 billion, or $5.02 per share, for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with $2.10 billion, or $4.88 per share a year ago. Analysts on average had expected earnings of $4.17 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. It was not immediately clear if the reported numbers were comparable. Total revenue, including net interest income, rose 2 percent to $8.33 billion. Goldman<61>s arch rival Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ) reported a higher profit, driven by its investment banking and wealth management businesses. However, fixed-income trading fell 20 percent to $1.2 billion. Reporting By Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru and Olivia Oran in New York; Editing by Bernard Orr 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-goldman-sachs-results/goldman-sachs-quarterly-bond-trading-revenue-drops-26-percent-idUKKBN1CM1N9'|'2017-10-17T14:53:00.000+03:00'
'df09c678d918017cf05533dd746b5f6c9bb6212b'|'Budget airline Wizz Air applies for UK licence ahead of Brexit'|'October 18, 2017 / 9:19 AM / in 27 minutes Budget airline Wizz Air applies for UK licence ahead of Brexit Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A man sits in a Wizz Air plane at Chopin airport in Warsaw, Poland October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel LONDON (Reuters) - Budget airline Wizz Air ( WIZZ.L ) on Wednesday said it was applying for an air operator<6F>s certificate and operating licence in Britain ahead of the country<72>s departure from the European Union. Wizz Air UK, a subsidiary of Hungary-based Wizz Air, will begin operations in March 2018 if its application to the Civil Aviation Authority is successful, it said. Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by Kate Holton 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-wizz-air-hldgs-licence/budget-airline-wizz-air-applies-for-uk-licence-ahead-of-brexit-idUKKBN1CN13U'|'2017-10-18T12:18:00.000+03:00'
'1e53fcde41d05ab77f847282f8274fe894f46a74'|'UK wage growth edges above forecasts, likely to cement BoE rate hike bets'|'October 18, 2017 / 8:36 AM / in 43 minutes UK pay lags inflation again, BoE still seen raising rates William Schomberg , Andy Bruce 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Workers cross London Bridge during the morning rush hour in London, Britain, August 16, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - British pay growth has lagged behind inflation again, official data showed on Wednesday, adding to questions about how quickly the Bank of England will raise interest rates after an initial hike expected on Nov. 2. The British central bank looks on course to deliver its first increase in borrowing costs in a decade, most economists said after the data, reversing last year<61>s rate cut that followed Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union. Britain<69>s jobless rate between June and August held at a 42-year low of 4.3 percent, one reason why the BoE thinks pay is likely to pick up soon. And while overall annual pay growth of 2.2 percent was weaker than inflation - which hit 3 percent in September, its highest level since 2012 - it was slightly above a median forecast of 2.1 percent in a Reuters poll of economists. There was slightly stronger growth for workers in the private sector, the Office for National Statistics said. <20>I can<61>t see anything in these numbers that will alter the Bank of England<6E>s thinking,<2C> Sam Hill, an economist with RBC Capital Markets, said. Related Coverage Factbox - How is the UK economy doing versus Bank of England expectations? However, the stubborn gap between weak wage growth and high inflation meant there was <20>considerable doubt<62> about further rate hikes in 2018, he said. Britain, like the United States and other rich economies, has seen a sharp fall in unemployment which would normally fuel inflation, according to established economic theory. But wages on both sides of the Atlantic have failed to rise in a significant way since the financial crisis a decade ago. WEAK GROWTH Despite a slowdown in Britain<69>s economy this year which has been linked to last year<61>s Brexit vote shock, the Bank is widely expected to return rates to 0.50 percent from 0.25 percent on Nov. 2, at the end of its next meeting. Sterling rose briefly after Wednesday<61>s figures and government bond prices fell slightly before reverting to earlier levels. The Bank expects pay growth to pick up speed soon because the unemployment rate is below the 4.5 percent level it sees as a trigger for inflation pressure in the economy. It also thinks Brexit will increase price growth in Britain. However, comments by two BoE policymakers on Tuesday, who noted the weak growth in wages, were seen by investors as a sign of disagreement at the central bank on rate hikes after an initial increase. The ONS said pay excluding bonuses, earnings rose by 2.1 percent, also a touch stronger than the Reuters poll forecast of 2.0 percent. In August alone, total wages picked up speed to grow by 2.2 percent after a slowdown in July to 1.7 percent. The Bank expects wages to rise by 2 percent this year before picking up to 3 percent in 2018 and 3.25 percent in 2019. The number of people in work rose by 94,000 in the three months to August, about half the increase in the three months to July but still a relatively strong rate of growth. The steady loss of spending power for households is not just a headache for the Bank. Prime Minister Theresa May has promised help for households and has proposed a cap on power tariffs. Chancellor Philip Hammond is under pressure to come up with further measures when he announces his budget plan in November. But he has little margin for error given the still weak state of Britain<69>s public finances. Writing by William Schomberg; Editing by Janet Lawrence 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-jobs/uk-wage-growth-edges-above-forecasts-likely-to-cement-boe-rate-hike-bets-idUKKBN1CN0YW'|'2017-10-18T11:35:00.000+03:00'
'd5f9d9ddf2a1fa16cdd41a3770912fb1d503abe1'|'Duo Security raises $70 million, valuing the company at $1.1 billion'|'(Reuters) - Duo Security said on Wednesday that it has raised $70 million in a Series D financing round from investors including Meritech Capital Partners, Lead Edge Capital and Index Ventures.The deal valued the cyber-security firm at $1.1 billion, according to Duo, which sells cloud-based software that organizations use to authenticate computer users and check the health of devices before they can access corporate networks.Business software maker Workday Inc ( WDAY.O ) will make a strategic investment as part of the round and enter into a technical partnership with Duo, the company said.Duo has more than 500 employees and over 10,000 customers, including Etsy, Facebook, K-Swiss, Paramount Pictures, Random House, Yelp and Zillow.Reporting by Jim Finkle in Toronto; Editing by Leslie Adler'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-duo-security-funding/duo-security-raises-70-million-valuing-the-company-at-1-1-billion-idINKBN1CN1KN'|'2017-10-18T09:34:00.000+03:00'
'6c786384a45e306fb147e12118996eb10ed1e3fd'|'UPDATE 1-Inter Pipeline''s Mid Saskatchewan pipeline loses power due to storms'|'(New throughout, adds Mid Saskatchewan pipeline restart)By Nia WilliamsCALGARY, Alberta, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Two crude oil pipelines in western Canada were shut down temporarily on Wednesday, the day after stormy weather caused power outages in parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan.TransCanada Corp<72>s 590,000 barrel-per-day Keystone pipeline, which delivers crude from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska, was shut down for a few hours and is now back to operating as normal, spokesman Terry Cunha said.Market sources said the Keystone shut down was due to a power outage caused by the weather.Inter Pipeline Ltd<74>s 82,000 bpd Mid Saskatchewan crude oil pipeline, which delivers light and heavy crude into Kerrobert, Saskatchewan, lost power following the storm and restarted on Wednesday afternoon.<2E>Power has been restored to Inter Pipeline<6E>s MidSask system and we have resumed normal operations,<2C> Inter Pipeline spokeswoman Breanne Oliver said.Fierce windstorms across much of Alberta and Saskatchewan on Tuesday caused widespread power outages and fanned fast-moving prairie fires in some areas. (Reporting by Nia Williams; Editing by Marguerita Choy, Tom Brown and David Gregorio)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/canada-crude-pipeline/update-1-inter-pipelines-mid-saskatchewan-pipeline-loses-power-due-to-storms-idINL2N1MT1A2'|'2017-10-18T14:25:00.000+03:00'
'801c510370fbd20cb55613d2d2e1c1aa2f802d66'|'Sears Canada collapse offers silver lining for mall owners'|' 55 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago Sears Canada collapse offers silver lining for mall owners 5 Min Read A Sears sign hangs on a store in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Mark Blinch TORONTO (Reuters) - The collapse of Sears Canada, leaving vacant stores across the country with enough square footage to cover two-thirds of Manhattan Island, could actually boost profits for many mall owners who will be able to replace the retailer with tenants who can afford higher rents. Sears Canada, which begins liquidation sales on Thursday, is the latest casualty in the reeling retail industry, where average operating profit margins have been stuck below 5 percent. The internet and modern technology have punished brick and mortar stores that failed to meet customer demands for convenience. Mall owners have some hope amid the gloom. <20>This is a silver lining for some landlords,<2C> said Craig Patterson, a special projects consultant for the Retail Council of Canada. <20>Sears had a lot of power in the <20>70s and <20>80s, and they put a lot of covenants into their leases which were restrictive for mall owners. They can now rent for more money per square foot.<2E> Many landlords are already lining up new tenants and refitting the nearly 15 million square feet vacated by Sears, according to CBRE data. That accounts for about 2.4 percent of all Canadian shopping centres, based on Jones Lang LaSalle figures. Cominar REIT ( CUF_u.TO ), a Quebec City-based property trust, rented seven stores to Sears, a total of 650,000 square feet, and 1.3 percent of its portfolio, Caroline Lacroix, vice president for communications and marketing told Reuters. Lacroix said the trust is close to confirming tenants for two or three of the stores. <20>It<49>s going to necessitate some investment at the beginning of the process to make sure those spaces are leased,<2C> Lacroix said, adding that Sears has been paying 70 percent below market rents for some stores. <20>At the end of the day, the higher margins we<77>ll make will hopefully compensate for that.<2E> FINDING NEW TENANTS When Target Corp ( TGT.N ) exited Canada in April 2015, shutting 133 stores, Cominar split the space the U.S. discount chain occupied at its Centre Laval in Quebec and found three specialty retailers who pay higher rents, Lacroix said. She envisions a similar outcome for the Sears space. The REIT has also received interest in the Sears stores from non-retail businesses like call centres, whose young employees want to be close to amenities and transport links, she said. REITs will likely need to spend between C$50 and C$175 per square foot to refit the spaces, BMO Capital markets said in a report last week. Despite the expense, Sears<72> exit gives mall owners the opportunity to add <20>more food and beverage options, services and entertainment tenants (that) could help fill space as landlords diversify away from department stores,<2C> the report added. And with the space leased by the chain amounting to less than 2 percent of gross lettable area for its biggest listed landlords, which include H&R ( HR_u.TO ), Cominar and RioCan ( REI_u.TO ), the impact on revenues will be limited, BMO research showed. RioCan, which has Sears as a tenant at nine of its properties, is considering Hudson Bay Co<43>s ( HBC.TO ) Saks Off Fifth store for nearly 40 percent of the 104,000 square feet vacated by Sears Canada in a southern Ontario mall, which the REIT co-owns with HBC, it said in a statement this month. Sears<72> lease agreement had development restrictions, and its exit allows the owners to pursue such work, RioCan said in the statement. The company said it is in talks with other retailers to fill the rest of the space. A RioCan spokesman declined to comment further, and a Sears Canada spokesman declined to comment. Smaller malls in more rural areas will find it more challenging, especially those that still have not managed to find tenants for space vacated by Target, said Sally Seston, managing director of Retail Categ
'8e4088cd7f35a5f599db70cb7447021578ed6428'|'UPDATE 1-Foreign investment in Canadian securities slows in Aug'|'(Adds details from report)OTTAWA, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Foreign investors slowed their acquisition of Canadian securities in August, with purchases concentrated in the Canadian bond market, data from Statistics Canada showed on Monday.International investors bought C$9.85 billion ($7.85 billion in Canadian securities after buying an upwardly revised C$23.97 billion in July.August<73>s purchases were below the monthly average investment of C$17.71 billion seen over this year from January to July, the statistics agency said.Acquisitions were driven by the purchase of C$8.15 billion in Canadian bonds, particularly federal and provincial government bonds on the secondary market.At the same time, Canadians resumed their purchases on international securities, buying C$12.04 billion in assets after divesting C$1.78 billion in July.Canadians bought C$4.9 billion in foreign bonds, the largest amount since February 2016. Purchases were driven by U.S. corporate bonds, as well as U.S. Treasuries and non-U.S. foreign bonds.Canadians also bought C$7.2 billion in foreign equities, largely in U.S. stocks as markets edged up in August. ($1=$1.2544 Canadian)Reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/canada-economy-securities/update-1-foreign-investment-in-canadian-securities-slows-in-aug-idINL2N1MR0FA'|'2017-10-16T10:41:00.000+03:00'
'813c6efe85bd9decea568b0b1eacff4cf8c4ff52'|'British estate agent Foxtons third-quarter revenue revenue slips 6 percent'|' 33 AM / in 9 minutes British estate agent Foxtons third-quarter revenue slips 6 percent Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A Foxtons estate agent sign is seen outside a branch in north London, Britain September 3, 2013. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett/File Photo (Reuters) - British estate agent Foxtons ( FOXT.L ) said on Wednesday that its third-quarter revenue fell 6.4 percent, hit by lower sales commissions. The company, which floated in late 2013, has been warning since as early as 2014 that double-digit price rises and strong demand in London were cooling, hitting its profits. The firm, known for its fleet of Mini cars and coffee shop-style outlets, said it would improve profitability by targeting higher-volume, higher-value residential property markets in London. Letting revenues remained stable at 22.5 million pounds ($29.64 million). The company said commissions from property sales fell to 10.3 million pounds, from 12.3 million pounds a year ago. Group revenue fell to 35.1 million pounds in the quarter, from 37.5 million last year. ($1 = 0.7592 pounds) Reporting By Justin George Varghese in Bengaluru. Editing by Jane Merriman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-foxtons-group-outlook/british-estate-agent-foxtons-third-quarter-revenue-revenue-slips-6-percent-idUKKBN1CN0M9'|'2017-10-18T09:33:00.000+03:00'
'bb730e12cb767a07b8c58f8fa19def694366e683'|'Kobe Steel to hold bidding for real estate unit on Friday - Bloomberg'|'October 18, 2017 / 7:57 AM / in 13 minutes Kobe Steel to hold bidding for real estate unit on Friday - Bloomberg Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of Kobe Steel is seen at the group''s Tokyo headquarters building in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese steelmaker Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ), embroiled in a data falsification scandal that has roiled global supply chains, will hold a first round of bidding on Friday in the planned sale of a real estate unit, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday. Japan<61>s No.3 steelmaker has hired Mizuho Securities, the brokerage arm of Mizuho Financial Group Inc ( 8411.T ), as an advisor for the sale of more than two-thirds of Shinko Real Esate, Bloomberg said, citing unidentified sources. The news agency didn<64>t say how much the asset might be worth. Both Kobe Steel and Mizuho Securities declined to comment. Kobe Steel has said about 500 companies received falsely certified products. A person with knowledge of the matter told Reuters that data tampering on products went on for more than a decade. Reporting by Sam Nussey; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-kobe-steel-scandal/kobe-steel-to-hold-bidding-for-real-estate-unit-on-friday-bloomberg-idUKKBN1CN0VA'|'2017-10-18T10:57:00.000+03:00'
'7e0a39740f55ebdba794e0d10998e2aacba47ba1'|'UPDATE 1-Flybe warns on first-half profit, blames higher maintenance costs'|'October 18, 2017 / 6:40 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago UPDATE 2-Higher costs prompt Flybe profit warning in tough year for airlines Reuters Staff * Regional airline warns that interim profit to fall * Higher maintenance costs weigh on performance * Flybe is latest example of tough airline market (Adds share price, analyst reaction) LONDON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - British regional airline Flybe warned on Wednesday that first-half profit would be lower than expected, sending shares tumbling as higher maintenance costs compounded a tough airline market. Flybe said it would review its maintenance strategy with the aim of improving aircraft performance and costs. It would attempt to enhance the reliability of the Bombardier Q400 turboprop in particular. Shares fell as much as 18 percent after a warning which comes against a backdrop of intense competition in the sector that has kept prices low and put several larger companies out of business. Flybe said it now expected a first-half adjusted profit before tax in the range of 5-10 million pounds ($6.6-$13.2 million), down from 15.9 million pounds in the first half of its 2016-17 year. <20>While half-year profits are lower than expected, I am confident that we are still on a clear sustainable path to profitability in line with our stated plan,<2C> CEO Christine Ourmieres-Widener said in a statement. <20>The increased maintenance costs are disappointing, but we are already addressing these in the second half and remain focused on improving our cost base and reliability performance.<2E> This year has been a tough one for the airline sector, with Air Berlin, Alitalia and Monarch all going into administration. They struggled to stay competitive as rivals laid on more seats to vie for market share, hitting fares. Analysts at house broker Liberum said that the announcement was a <20>clear disappointment<6E> in the short term, and that overcapacity in the industry could also weigh on the stock. <20>Until there is greater clarity on maintenance costs, along with further evidence of capacity cuts supporting better unit revenue trends, we believe the shares will struggle to perform,<2C> the analysts at Liberum said in a note. Flybe said it would provide further information in its interim results on November 9. ($1 = 0.7586 pounds) (Reporting by Alistair Smout and James Davey; editing by Kate Holton/Keith Weir) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/flybe-outlook/update-1-flybe-warns-on-first-half-profit-blames-higher-maintenance-costs-idUSL8N1MT0ZH'|'2017-10-18T09:40:00.000+03:00'
'2b78ca6c057bd65ee69ed3e0618c5975e3436a87'|'UK''s RWS Holdings agrees $320 million deal to buy Czech firm Moravia'|'October 18, 2017 / 12:20 PM / in 7 minutes UK''s RWS Holdings agrees $320 million deal to buy Czech firm Moravia Reuters Staff 1 Min Read PRAGUE (Reuters) - British translation and intellectual property services company RWS Holdings ( RWS.L ) will buy Czech translation service provider Moravia for $320 million (<28>243.2 million), the companies said on Wednesday. The deal is expected to close by November, the groups said in separate statements. RWS said it would finance the acquisition with a share placement worth 185 million pounds and a $160 million term loan. U.S. private equity firm Clarion Capital Partners acquired a majority stake in Moravia in 2015. Since then, Moravia has lifted its revenue to $159.2 million in 2016, from $100.3 million in 2014. Reporting by Jason Hovet; Editing by Adrian Croft 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-moravia-m-a-rws-hldgs/uks-rws-holdings-agrees-320-mln-deal-to-buy-czech-firm-moravia-idUKKBN1CN1P7'|'2017-10-18T15:21:00.000+03:00'
'9bf64d0f99ce7ad24c81fdd17d7a907ce1b01014'|'UPDATE 1-Travel company TUI plans extra flight capacity after Monarch failure'|'* TUI laid on more flights after Monarch collapse* Tunisia holidays unlikely to resume until next winter -MD* Thomson rebranded as TUI UK (Adds details of competitors, context)By Alistair SmoutLONDON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Europe<70>s largest tour operator TUI is putting on extra flights to make up for capacity lost after this month<74>s collapse of Monarch, TUI<55>s UK and Ireland boss said on Wednesday.The company<6E>s UK and Ireland Managing Director Nick Longman said it had already laid on extra flights and was looking to add more.<2E>There will be an opportunity to look at putting some new routes on to the market. We<57>ve already done that a little for this winter,<2C> Longman told Reuters. He also said that TUI was also looking at more routes for next summer.Unlike British Airways owner IAG and budget airline easyJet, TUI is not interested in acquiring Monarch slots at British airports, Longman said, adding that extra capacity could be obtained from TUI<55>s existing slot base and by working with other airline partners.A spokesman for Thomas Cook, a rival of TUI, said the company was also adding capacity, starting flights from Leeds Bradford airport and increasing capacity at Luton to add a total of 230,000 seats for next summer.Shares of leading travel companies and airlines rose after Monarch went bust, with investors betting that intense competition in the sector could ease.Last week, Willie Walsh said that capacity in Monarch<63>s slots at Gatwick would likely be replaced, but slots at smaller airports might stay vacant.Monarch fell victim to an intense price war in the airline sector after security concerns disrupted travel to the Middle East and North Africa and resulted in increased competition on popular destinations in the western Mediterranean.TUI has said that it is looking at restoring holidays to Tunisia. All holidays there were halted after an Islamist attack on a resort in Sousse killed 30 Britons who had booked their holidays through TUI.Thomas Cook has already restarted its Tunisian holidays after Britain changed its travel advice.<2E>If there is sufficient consumer demand ... then we will introduce a programme to Tunisia. We<57>ll possibly look at it for summer, but more likely it will be next winter,<2C> Longman said.On Wednesday, TUI rebranded its British business as TUI UK, bringing an end to the famous travel brand Thomson. Founded in 1965, Longman said that Thomson had a strong brand but has become outdated as travel habits have moved away from traditional package holidays towards city and long-haul breaks.<2E>Thomson conjures up great nostalgia for many people. But that can also be a bit limiting, and the types of holidays people want are changing,<2C> he said.Reporting by Alistair Smout; Editing by David Goodman and Jane Merriman'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-tui-flights/update-1-travel-company-tui-plans-extra-flight-capacity-after-monarch-failure-idINL8N1MT4GP'|'2017-10-18T12:12:00.000+03:00'
'cae708694b84facb45668c9504c01e6f9cc5e126'|'Oil jumps on fears of new Iran sanctions, Iraq conflict'|'October 16, 2017 / 12:45 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Oil jumps on fears of new Iran sanctions, Iraq conflict Henning Gloystein 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A pump jack is seen at sunrise near Bakersfield, California October 14, 2014. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil markets jumped on Monday on concerns over potential renewed U.S. sanctions against Iran as well as conflict in Iraq, while a falling U.S. rig count supported prices there. Brent crude futures LCOc1, the international benchmark for oil prices, were at $57.82 at 0156 GMT, up 65 cents, or 1.1 percent, from the previous close. Traders said that worries over renewed U.S. sanctions against Iran were pushing prices up. U.S. President Donald Trump struck a blow against the 2015 Iran nuclear deal on Friday, defying both U.S. allies and adversaries by refusing to formally certify that Tehran is complying with the accord even though international inspectors say it is. Under U.S. law, the president must certify every 90 days to Congress that Iran is complying with the deal. The U.S. Congress will now have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose economic sanctions on Tehran that were lifted under the pact. During the previous round of sanctions against Iran, some 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil supplies were cut off global markets. While analysts said they did not expect renewed sanctions to have such a big impact again, especially as the United States would likely act alone, they did warn that such a move would be disruptive. <20>If Iran (were) found breaching their nuclear agreement and had their trade agreement revoked, (that) would be the biggest catalyst for upward momentum on crude prices,<2C> said Shane Chanel, equities and derivatives adviser at ASR Wealth Advisers. There were also concerns about the stability of Iraq, the second biggest oil producer within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) behind Saudi Arabia. Iraqi forces on Sunday began moving towards oil fields and an important air base held by Kurdish forces near the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, Iraqi and Kurdish officials said. Greg McKenna, chief market strategist at futures brokerage AxiTrader said that <20>Trump<6D>s reopening of the Iran nuclear issue, (and) the ongoing threat of the Kurdish pipeline being cut off<66> were the main factors pushing up oil prices. U.S. RIG COUNT DROPS Within the United States, crude prices were also up as drillers cut back the number of rigs tapping new production. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were trading at $51.86 per barrel, up 41 cents, or 0.8 percent. Drillers cut five oil rigs in the week to Oct. 13, bringing the total count up to 743, the lowest since early June, General Electric Co<43>s ( GE.N ) Baker Hughes energy services firm said in its closely followed report late on Friday. RIG-OL-USA-BHI Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Joseph Radford and Sonali Paul 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-oil/oil-prices-jump-on-fear-of-new-u-s-sanctions-against-iran-idUKKBN1CL01K'|'2017-10-16T05:01:00.000+03:00'
'9e13bf616e5b83209be41a075b7fd256c37e08c1'|'S&P''s says Italian banks most exposed to ECB''s new bad loan proposal'|'October 16, 2017 / 9:58 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago S&P says Italian banks most exposed to ECB''s bad loan plan Reuters Staff 2 Min Read MILAN (Reuters) - New European Central Bank rules on impaired debts could hit Italian banks hard and lead them to cut lending to companies, credit rating agency Standard & Poor<6F>s said on Monday. The ECB has faced criticism for proposals that would force euro zone<6E>s banks to set aside money to cover 100 percent of a loan turning sour within two years if unsecured, or seven years if backed by collateral. The ECB is trying to find a way to tackle European banks<6B> bad loans, which stand at around $1 trillion (<28>752.8 billion). But the latest proposals could raise the amount some banks have to set aside against bad loans. Italian officials have warned it risks hurting corporate credit in a country where companies are mostly small and reliant on bank financing. <20>We see Italian banks becoming increasingly less keen to lend to domestic corporations,<2C> S&P<>s said in a report looking at the effects of the ECB<43>s proposal. S&P singled out Italian, Greek and Portuguese banks as the most affected. The rating agency said loans to firms in Italy were up 0.5 percent year-on-year in June net of disposals, after dropping by around 20 percent a year since 2008. <20>Overall, we think Italian banks are potentially most exposed among eurozone banks to the new proposal by the ECB because of the very long workout periods in the country,<2C> S&P said. S&P forecast 100-120 billion euros in problem loan sales in Italy by 2019 and said offloading large amounts of impaired debts at current prices could force banks in Italy and Portugal to take capital strengthening measures. Reporting by Valentina Za. Editing by Jane Merriman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-italy-banks-s-p/sps-says-italian-banks-most-exposed-to-ecbs-new-bad-loan-proposal-idUKKBN1CL13P'|'2017-10-16T12:58:00.000+03:00'
'ef4fe8b2c542ad067a8bdf4810adcae49182b2da'|'Two investors join rebellion against $2.4 billion M&C hotels takeover'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Two fund management firms have joined an investor revolt against the planned 1.8 billion pound ($2.4 billion) takeover of Britain<69>s Millennium & Copthorne Hotels (M&C) ( MLC.L ) by City Developments Limited (CDL) ( CTDM.SI ), its majority shareholder.International Value Advisers (IVA) and MSD Partners, which own 7 percent and 1.9 percent respectively of London-listed M&C, have sent a letter to the hotel company<6E>s independent directors to criticize them for supporting the 552.5 pence per share takeover proposal from Singapore<72>s CDL, which is part of billionaire Kwek Leng Beng<6E>s Hong Leong Group.They join Aberdeen Standard Investments and Fidelity International, two other minority shareholders reportedly unhappy with the terms of the deal.CDL, which already owns 65.2 percent of the hotelier, and the independent directors announced the possible deal on Oct. 9, when the directors said they unanimously intended to recommend the bid.<2E>If the CDL proposal is implemented, M&C shareholders would, under your stewardship and the advice of Credit Suisse, be asked to approve massive value destruction of a company with a premium London Stock Exchange listing,<2C> said the Oct. 17 letter signed by Charles de Vaulx of IVA and Jonathan Esfandi of MSD and reviewed by Reuters. <20>This is not acceptable.<2E>Swiss bank Credit Suisse ( CSGN.S ) is corporate broker and adviser to M&C and advised the independent directors.M&C has 130 hotels across the world including in London and New York. CDL is aiming to buy the 34.8 percent of the hotelier it does not own for 624.3 million pounds, valuing the company as a whole at about 1.8 billion pounds.The CDL proposal implies a 32.5 percent discount to M&C&rsquo;s 820 pence per share balance sheet net asset value at the end of June, according to the letter.<2E>Furthermore, we believe the current value of the assets, in existing use, is significantly higher than book value, as the figure used for the vast majority of the hotels is at 2003 valuations,<2C> the letter said.IVA and MSD said in the letter they <20>will, on advice, be exploring all potential options available to us in order to protect our interests.<2E>They added a valuation of the hotelier<65>s property portfolio should be carried out to help minority investors assess the CDL proposal.M&C could not be reached for comment out of regular business hours.($1 = 0.7579 pounds)Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-mill-cop-hotels-m-a-city-development/two-investors-join-rebellion-against-2-4-billion-mc-hotels-takeover-idINKBN1CN2UM'|'2017-10-18T17:45:00.000+03:00'
'57ceb01b1ca97a9ae95105a1766b51878f0cd9c0'|'Norway oil fund warns on proposed UK stock-market rule changes'|'October 18, 2017 / 8:01 AM / Updated 24 minutes ago Norway''s wealth fund objects to UK relaxing share listing rules for state firms Simon Jessop , Gwladys Fouche 3 Min Read LONDON/OSLO (Reuters) - Norway<61>s $1 trillion (<28>758.73 billion) sovereign wealth fund has urged Britain<69>s financial markets regulator to rethink proposed changes to its share listing rules to allow a new category of listing for state-backed firms which give smaller investors less say on corporate governance. The world<6C>s largest sovereign fund and one of the biggest investors in UK stocks joins the growing ranks of investors unhappy about the possible changes, seen aimed at attracting oil giant Saudi Aramco [IPO-ARMO.SE] to London for its proposed listing. The concerns threaten to hinder the London Stock Exchange<67>s ( LSE.L ) campaign to win a slice of Aramco<63>s initial public offering, which could raise up to $100 billion, and forced British rulemakers to defend their plans. In July the UK<55>s Financial Conduct Authority proposed creating a new category of <20>premium<75> listings for state-backed firms, which would see them exempt from certain rules and limit the ability of minority investors to have any influence over the company. Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which manages assets on behalf of Norway<61>s fund, said the changes would give a controlling shareholder the freedom to take decisions that may not be in the interests of the company or other investors. <20>Ultimately, investors expect today<61>s high standards of shareholder protection to apply to the premium listing category, whether controlled by a sovereign state or private investors,<2C> the fund wrote in a letter to the FCA dated Oct. 13. <20>We believe the FCA should consider a more balanced approach that takes into consideration the interests of all stakeholders in the listing environment.<2E> Among specific concerns were planned changes to the rules on related-party transactions and controlling shareholders, which would limit smaller shareholders<72> ability to prevent the misuse of company assets and elect independent directors to the board. <20>These rules were introduced to provide the necessary checks and balances to protect the interests of minority shareholders from potential abuse,<2C> it wrote. The fund said it has around 44 billion pounds invested in London-listed stocks. It owns shares in most top British companies, with large stakes in Shell ( RDSa.L ), HSBC ( HSBA.L ) and Prudential ( PRU.L ), and holds 8.5 billion pounds in UK government bonds. It co-owns Regent Street, one of London<6F>s premier shopping areas. Britain was the fund<6E>s second-largest investment location after the United States at the end of 2016, accounting for 9.1 percent of its fund value. Among others to formally respond to the FCA<43>s proposals, the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA), Britain<69>s leading pensions industry body, said last week it was concerned the changes could damage the UK market<65>s reputation. Reporting by Simon Jessop; Editing by Rachel Armstrong, Greg Mahlich 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-norway-funds-britain-letter/norway-oil-fund-warns-on-proposed-uk-stock-market-rule-changes-idUKKBN1CN0VJ'|'2017-10-18T11:01:00.000+03:00'
'66f67cead7413b8f8be4421fb835176d28da5740'|'Turkey''s Turkven sees IPO of Medical Park in 2018, CEO says'|'ISTANBUL, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Turkish private equity firm Turkven aims to hold a public offering for nearly 50 percent of healthcare firm Medical Park Group next year, Turkven<65>s chief executive said, a listing that could be worth around $1 billion.In an interview with Reuters late on Tuesday, CEO Seymur Tari said Turkven aimed for three to four acquisitions of $50-400 million each in 2018 and aimed to start a new fund of more than $1 billion in one or two years.Turkven completed an initial public offering (IPO) of jeans retailer Mavi in June, a 1.17 billion lira ($334 million) floatation widely seen as a test of international demand for Turkish equities following last year<61>s coup attempt and a widespread political crackdown since.<2E>The Medical Park offering will be three times the size of Mavi<76>s,<2C> Tari said, adding that the listing would be next year.Medical Park Group is the largest private hospital chain in Turkey, with more than 15,000 employees and 5,000 beds in 29 hospitals, according to Turkven.Funds managed by Turkven hold a 53.4 percent stake in the firm. (Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/turkey-turkven/turkeys-turkven-sees-ipo-of-medical-park-in-2018-ceo-says-idINL8N1MT2GH'|'2017-10-18T09:24:00.000+03:00'
'f94b2f847ede55ce16719100f1ce4ee9459ed53b'|'ECB to set targets for banks dragging feet on bad loans - Nouy'|'October 18, 2017 / 12:11 PM / in 4 minutes ECB to set targets for banks dragging feet on bad loans - Nouy Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Daniele Nouy, chair of the Supervisory Board of the European Central Bank, speaks at a Thomson Reuters newsmaker event at Canary Wharf in London November 28, 2014. REUTERS/Neil Hall FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank will give <20>additional quantitative guidance<63> to banks that are failing to cut their pile of bad loans fast enough, the ECB<43>s chief bank supervisor said on Wednesday. <20>Our supervisory teams have engaged with banks carrying too high levels of NPE (non-performing exposure) to review and challenge the banks own plans and ensure that they address the issue in a both ambitious and realistic fashion,<2C> she said in a speech in Basel. <20>For those banks that are lagging behind, we intend to come up with additional quantitative guidance.<2E> Reporting By Francesco Canepa; Editing by Balazs Koranyi 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ecb-banks-loans/ecb-to-set-targets-for-banks-dragging-feet-on-bad-loans-nouy-idUKKBN1CN1OM'|'2017-10-18T15:10:00.000+03:00'
'06415c5d18505e1d2d60d0ac1841dc2168073d71'|'China third quarter GDP growth likely to cool as property, debt curbs bite'|'October 18, 2017 / 11:20 PM / Updated 2 hours ago China''s central bank warns of ''Minsky moment'' as economy powers ahead Kevin Yao , Elias Glenn 6 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s central bank chief on Thursday issued a stark warning about asset bubbles in the world<6C>s second-largest economy, which looks set to clock its first acceleration in annual growth since 2010, driven by public spending and record bank lending. Speaking on the sidelines of the closely-watched, twice-a-decade Communist Party Congress, People<6C>s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan spoke of the risks of a <20>Minsky moment<6E> in the economy, referring to a sudden collapse in asset prices after long periods of growth, sparked by debt or currency pressures. Zhou<6F>s comments refer to a theory on prices derived by American economist Hyman Minsky and follow official data that showed China<6E>s economic growth slowed in the third quarter from a year earlier, as expected, but remained on track to post the first full-year pickup in seven years. Coming on the 30th anniversary of the Black Monday Wall Street crash, the comments from the governor, who is likely to retire soon, echo concerns expressed in the past by international economic bodies about relative levels of corporate and household debt in the economy. But while hedge funds sometimes refer to Minsky in warnings about a China credit bubble threatening the global economy, China has so far proven doomsayers wrong. <20>I would doubt they really think China is in for a Minsky Moment, but maybe he is tying to impress (other leaders in Beijing) on the need to start reining in credit growth,<2C> said Louis Kuijs, head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics in Hong Kong. <20>It<49>s not really up to (the central bank)... We would have to look at what the leadership says about these things.<2E> Recent efforts to curb financial risks and cool the property market are beginning to weigh. While the economy grew a solid 6.8 percent from the previous year in the third quarter as expected, growth in new construction slowed and property sales dropped for the first time in more than two-and-half years in September. In all, growth was still on track to comfortably beat the government<6E>s target of around 6.5 percent for this year and 2016<31>s rate of 6.7 percent, which was a 26-year low. <20>URGENT<4E> REFORM NEEDED Analysts and global economic bodies such as the International Monetary Fund warn Beijing is stimulating credit too heavily in its aim to meet fixed growth targets. Rating agencies estimate the overall debt burden at almost three times economic output. Data on Saturday showed Chinese banks extended more loans than expected in September, backed by demand from home buyers and companies. While household loans accounted for a smaller percentage of total new loans, their value jumped more than 10 percent to 734.9 billion yuan last month from August, according to Reuters calculations. <20>China<6E>s high debt burden is an area where reform is most urgently needed but progress has been the slowest,<2C> said Chi Lo, senior economist at BNP Paribas Asset Management. FILE PHOTO: New properties are seen near a square in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China, September 23, 2016. REUTERS/Yawen Chen/File Photo There are, however, signs that policymakers are making needed changes in other parts of the economy. Beijing<6E>s push to consolidate and restructure its industrial sector has paid dividends as factory output beat expectations, while strong fiscal spending and sustained public investment helped boost domestic demand. The economy slowed slightly from 6.9 percent in the second quarter, however, and analysts say it could ease further due to an expected softening in property investment and construction as more cities try to cool housing prices, while a government campaign against riskier lending pushes up borrowing costs. <20>Unequivocally, the property boom has peaked,<2C> said Rosealea Yao, a property analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics. China<6E>s economy h
'6270491fd63778cc1f144f24718911bfbd6d86ee'|'Bombardier exploring options for aerospace businesses: Bloomberg'|'FILE PHOTO: A plane flies over a Bombardier plant in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on January 21, 2014. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi/File Photo (Reuters) - Canadian train-and-plane maker Bombardier Inc ( BBDb.TO ) is exploring options for its aerospace businesses, including a sale of some operations, Bloomberg reported on Sunday.The company is considering disposal of assets including its Q400 turboprop and CRJ regional-jet unit, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. bloom.bg/2gdycXFBombardier is also looking at partnerships with other aerospace companies, Bloomberg reported. According to the report, Europe<70>s Airbus SE ( AIR.PA ) is among the prospective buyers.Bombardier declined to comment on the report. Airbus said it did not comment on market rumors.Bombardier, which is now in the middle of a five-year turnaround plan after considering bankruptcy in 2015, has previously weighed strategic options for parts of its aerospace division.In 2015, it held talks with Airbus for a majority stake in the company''s CSeries jet but those discussions were called off, Reuters reported in October 2015. tinyurl.com/yd79r76aAviation industry sources Reuters spoke with on Sunday, however, cast doubt over Airbus<75> interest in the Q400. The European planemaker is a stakeholder in ATR, which already controls 75 percent of the turboprop market and such a deal would likely raise anti-trust concerns.Bombardier<65>s aerospace division, nevertheless, has been under pressure because of lackluster demand for its turboprops and regional jets, and more recently because of a trade dispute with U.S. planemaker Boeing Co. ( BA.N ) over the CSeries narrow-body jets.Earlier this month, the U.S. Commerce Department notched up proposed trade duties on the 110 to 130 seat CSeries jet to nearly 300 percent, following Boeing<6E>s complaint that the Canadian company received illegal subsidies and sold the planes to American carriers for <20>absurdly low<6F> prices.While Bombardier is now in a stronger financial position than it was in 2015, the company has held informal talks in recent months with potential Chinese companies with the goal of delivering an investment in the CSeries jets and improving the aircraft<66>s sales through better access to the fast-growing Chinese aviation market, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this fall.But those talks have been complicated, among other reasons, by the agendas of various stakeholders, including the Quebec provincial government, which owns a 49 percent stake in the plane program.<2E>There are a lot of conditions that have to be met for these things to work,<2C> said one of the sources. <20>Logic doesn<73>t win always.<2E>The sources declined to be identified because the talks are private.Reporting by Kanishka Singh, Allison Lampert and Tim Hepher; Writing by Denny Thomas; Editing by Andrew Hay and Mary Milliken'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-bombardier-divestiture/bombardier-exploring-options-for-aerospace-businesses-bloomberg-idINKBN1CK0W8'|'2017-10-15T19:25:00.000+03:00'
'bd04a9b50b13ad606c7cdf50022ddedd7b63636c'|'Netflix subscriber adds beat estimates as original shows lure viewers'|'October 16, 2017 / 8:41 PM / Updated 5 hours ago Netflix adds more subscribers than expected, shares hit record Lisa Richwine , Aishwarya Venugopal 4 Min Read (Reuters) - Netflix Inc ( NFLX.O ) added more subscribers than expected around the world in the third quarter and projected growth in line with Wall Street forecasts, saying it had a head start on rivals as internet television explodes globally. Shares of the world<6C>s leading online video streaming service touched a record high on Monday and rose a further 1.2 percent after hours to $205.07. They are up about 64 percent this year. For the third quarter, Netflix added 5.3 million subscribers in all its markets, compared with Wall Street<65>s target of 4.5 million, according to FactSet. Netflix forecast 6.3 million additions for the current quarter, just above analysts<74> average estimate of 6.25 million, which would bring its global customer base to nearly 115.6 million. The company known for original TV shows such as <20>House of Cards<64> is spending heavily to produce and acquire content as it races to dominate streaming television in international markets, which now account for the majority of its subscriber growth. In its quarterly letter to shareholders, Netflix said it would boost its content budget to between $7 billion and $8 billion in 2018. <20>As we move into 2018, we aim to achieve steady improvement in international profitability and a growing operating margin as our success in many large markets helps fund investments throughout Asia and the rest of the world,<2C> the letter said. Investors have been bullish on Netflix<69>s ability to keep signing up customers around the world despite new rivals. Netflix recently traded at 101 times expected earnings for the next 12 months, versus Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ) at 144 times earnings and Time Warner Inc ( TWX.N ) at 16 times earnings, according to Thomson Reuters data. FILE PHOTO: The Netflix logo is pictured on a television remote in this illustration photograph taken in Encinitas, California, U.S., on January 18, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo The company faces increasing competition from streaming services such as Amazon.com<6F>s Prime Video, plus moves by traditional media companies. Walt Disney Co ( DIS.N ) decided to yank its first-run movies from Netflix in the United States starting in 2019, and to launch its own online offering. Netflix, in its investor letter, said Disney<65>s decision underlined the need to keep building its slate of exclusive original content. <20>We have a good head start but our job is to improve Netflix as rapidly as possible,<2C> the company said. But Hastings said on a webcast it was <20>extremely unlikely<6C> that Netflix would bid on The Weinstein Company if the opportunity arose. The film production company is in talks to sell the bulk of its assets to Colony Capital following the firing of co-founder Harvey Weinstein. Netflix distributes some Weinstein Company movies and TV shows on its streaming service but the business is not material, Netflix Chief Creative Officer Ted Sarandos said on the webcast. Netflix<69>s 5.3 million additional subscribers in the third quarter included 4.45 million in international markets and 850,000 in the United States. Wall Street had expected 4.5 million overall, with 3.69 million overseas and 810,000 in the United States, according to FactSet. Revenue rose about 30 percent to $2.99 billion in the third quarter. Net income rose to $130 million, or 29 cents per share, in the latest quarter from $52 million, or 12 cents per share, a year earlier. Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; Editing by Bill Rigby and Richard Chang 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/netflix-results/netflix-subscriber-adds-beat-estimates-as-original-shows-lure-viewers-idINKBN1CL2WA'|'2017-10-16T23:39:00.000+03:00'
'd48dcf3f19844d1b6cbdd4edca91850625ba72c9'|'Nasdaq, Singapore Exchange sign pact for collaborative listings'|'October 18, 2017 / 3:28 PM / Updated 5 minutes ago Nasdaq, Singapore Exchange sign pact for collaborative listings Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A view of the exterior of the Nasdaq market site in Times Square after the Nasdaq breached the 6,000 mark for the first time ever on Tuesday, in New York City, NY, U.S. April 25, 2017. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton (Reuters) - Singapore Exchange Ltd ( SGXL.SI ) and Nasdaq Inc ( NDAQ.O ) announced a pact on Wednesday that will allow firms to tap the capital markets possibly simultaneously under the two exchange operators<72> namesake exchanges. The tie-up would help fast-growing Asian companies to list on the SGX and subsequently pursue a Nasdaq listing as they expand globally, SGX Chief Executive Loh Boon Chye said in a statement. SGX and U.S.-based Nasdaq - which are also in a long-term market technology partnership - are gauging interest among companies that could seek a concurrent or sequential listing on both the SGX and the Nasdaq, the exchange operators said. Reporting by Susan Mathew in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sgx-nasdaq-partnership/nasdaq-singapore-exchange-sign-pact-for-collaborative-listings-idUSKBN1CN2A9'|'2017-10-18T18:28:00.000+03:00'
'88b2bd392c89796dfadfab73e6a1b0b9dad0c991'|'Australia''s Crown hit by accusations of poker machine-fixing, shares tumble'|'October 18, 2017 / 3:51 AM / in 10 hours Australia''s Crown hit by accusations of poker machine-fixing, shares tumble Byron Kaye 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of Australian casino giant Crown Resorts Ltd adorns the hotel and casino complex in Melbourne, Australia, June 13, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia<69>s Crown Resorts Ltd was accused of tampering with poker machines on Wednesday when a lawmaker tabled a video of whistleblowers in parliament, sending shares in the casino firm sliding. The allegations, which Crown has denied, prompted gambling authorities in the state of Victoria, where its flagship casino is located, to say they would launch an investigation. Independent lower house member and anti-gambling campaigner Andrew Wilkie used parliamentary privilege, which lets lawmakers make sensitive allegations without legal repercussions, to make the video public. The accusations present a fresh headache for Crown, which is nearly half-owned by billionaire James Packer, after the arrest of more than a dozen employees in China caused it to retreat from an ambitious global expansion plan. On the recording, unidentified people whose faces were heavily pixelated accuse Crown<77>s casino in Melbourne of fixing poker machines by removing built-in controls designed to regulate gambling rates. They also allege that Crown encouraged customers to disguise their identities to avoid detection by anti-money-laundering agency AUSTRAC, and that the casino failed to stop drug use and domestic violence on its premises. <20>If the allegations are true, it does suggest that there is a systemic problem rather than a rogue individual,<2C> Wilkie told a news conference. He added that he had verified the identities pf the people on the video as former employees of Crown but declined to say how the video came to be made. A former intelligence official, Wilkie has long campaigned for a crackdown on slot machines. Crown said in a statement that it rejected the allegations and that Wilkie should <20>immediately provide to the relevant authorities all information relating to the matters alleged<65>. Shares in Crown fell 4 percent on Wednesday to give the biggest listed casino operator outside China a market value of A$7.7 billion ($6 billion). <20>Some kind of investigation into this, that has some powers to compel evidence, is really what will be needed to get to the bottom of this,<2C> said Francis Markham, a researcher at Australian National University who specializes in poker machines. The Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation, which oversees Crown<77>s Melbourne casino, said in a statement it took claims <20>of this type extremely seriously and they will be thoroughly investigated<65>. The state agency added it was currently conducting a routine review of Crown<77>s casino license - one that it conducted every five years. An AUSTRAC spokesman said the agency <20>takes all allegations of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing non-compliance seriously and will be examining these allegations further<65>. After the arrests of employees in China on suspicion of selling casino holidays in violation of that country<72>s gambling ban, Crown quit the island of Macau and Las Vegas to focus on Australia. It recently received final government approval to expand beyond the cities of Melbourne and Perth and build a A$2 billion resort on the Sydney waterfront. The company<6E>s renewed focus on Australia has offered an appealing strategy for shareholders but it has stoked criticism from anti-gambling campaigners worried that Australia has less than one percent of the world<6C>s population but more than a fifth of its slot machines. Additional reporting by Colin Packham and Tom Westbrook; Editing by Jane Wardell and Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crown-resorts-scandal/australias-crown-hit-by-accusations-of-poker-machine-fi
'ea226c5110fd8eb8c71ca8cd79e5651c6e4bd89c'|'EU-U.S. data transfer pact to pass first annual review'|'October 18, 2017 / 4:43 AM / a minute ago EU-U.S. data transfer pact to pass first annual review Julia Fioretti 3 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A year-old pact underpinning billions of dollars of transatlantic data transfers will get the green light from the European Union on Wednesday after the first review to ensure Washington protects Europeans<6E> data stored on U.S. servers. The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield was agreed last year after everyday cross-border data transfers were plunged into limbo when the EU<45>s top court struck down a previous data transfer pact in 2015 because it allowed U.S. spies excessive access to people<6C>s data. The European Commission last month conducted its first annual review of the framework as it seeks to ensure the United States lives up to its promises to better protect Europeans<6E> data when they are transferred across the Atlantic - failing which it could suspend the Privacy Shield. The EU executive however is satisfied that the framework continues to ensure adequate protection of Europeans<6E> personal data although it will address a number of recommendations to Washington, an EU source told Reuters. The conclusion will come as a relief to the over 2,400 companies signed up to the scheme including Alphabet Inc<6E>s Google, Facebook and Microsoft. The source said the practical implementation of the Privacy Shield could be improved by, for example, a tougher monitoring of the compliance of companies with its privacy rules. Companies wanting to transfer Europeans<6E> personal data outside the bloc have to comply with tough EU data protection rules which forbid them from transferring personal data to countries deemed to have inadequate privacy protections unless they have special legal contracts in place. The Privacy Shield allows firms to move data across the Atlantic without relying on such contracts, known as model clauses, which are more cumbersome and expensive. EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova told reporters last month she wanted the United States to appoint a fully-fledged privacy ombudsperson - a new office that was created as part of the Privacy Shield to deal with complaints from EU citizens about U.S. spying. She also said she was concerned about potential changes to a controversial portion of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which needs to be reauthorised before the end of the year. <20>Of course we are very concerned about what the new version of this act will mean for Privacy Shield. I was very clear about our position that we do not want to see any changes which will go to the detriment of the protection of private data of Europeans so we will be watching this very closely in the coming weeks and months,<2C> she said. Reporting by Julia Fioretti; Editing by Adrian Croft 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-dataprotection-usa/eu-u-s-data-transfer-pact-to-pass-first-annual-review-idUKKBN1CN0DY'|'2017-10-18T07:34:00.000+03:00'
'410cef29301063180f49ef608d8d1e91e9babfe9'|'MOVES-Bfinance names new London portfolio solutions head'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:19 AM / in 7 minutes MOVES-Bfinance names new London portfolio solutions head Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 17 (Reuters) - Independent investment consultant bfinance appointed Malcolm Hunt head of portfolio solutions to its London team. Most recently, Hunt worked at U.S. index provider MSCI Inc , overseeing client support across EMEA. (Reporting by Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/bfinance-moves-malcolm-hunt/moves-bfinance-names-new-london-portfolio-solutions-head-idUSL4N1MS322'|'2017-10-17T12:15:00.000+03:00'
'35e7c9001e583b2937b17af56184588b526d73b4'|'Petroleum, food boost U.S. import prices in September'|' 59 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago Petroleum, food boost U.S. import prices in September Reuters Staff 2   An employee checks prices of lemons at a 365 by Whole Foods Market grocery store ahead of its opening day in Los Angeles, U.S., May 24, 2016. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. import prices for September recorded their biggest increase in more than a year amid rising petroleum and food costs, but underlying imported inflation remained modest. The Labor Department said on Tuesday that import prices jumped 0.7 percent last month, the biggest gain since June 2016, after an unrevised 0.6 percent rise in August. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast import prices increasing 0.5 percent in September. In the 12 months through September, import prices climbed 2.7 percent after advancing 2.1 percent in August. The year-on-year rise in import prices peaked at 4.7 percent in February, which was the biggest advance in five years. U.S. financial markets were little moved by the data. Last month, prices for imported petroleum increased 4.5 percent after rising 5.0 percent in August. Food prices surged 1.8 percent, the largest gain since July 2016, after edging up 0.2 percent in August. Import prices excluding petroleum rose 0.3 percent after a similar gain in August. They increased 1.2 percent in the 12 months through September. The increase in import prices excluding petroleum has remained moderate despite the dollar weakening more than 6 percent against the currencies of the United States<65> main trading partners this year. The cost of imported goods from China was unchanged in September after slipping 0.1 percent in August. Prices for imports from China fell 0.7 percent on a year-on-year basis. The report also showed export prices rose 0.8 percent in September, the largest increase since June 2016, after gaining 0.7 percent in August. Export prices were boosted by an increase in prices for nonagricultural commodities, which offset a decline in the cost of agricultural exports. Export prices increased 2.9 percent year-on-year in September after rising 2.4 percent in August. Reporting By Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Andrea Ricci 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-economy/petroleum-food-boost-u-s-import-prices-in-september-idUKKBN1CM1TY'|'2017-10-17T15:58:00.000+03:00'
'540bf131ad76b40eabd1514ef40346f23dcd5e2a'|'Abu Dhabi''s oil company ADNOC considering IPO in some services - CEO'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:06 AM / in 2 minutes Abu Dhabi''s oil company ADNOC considering IPO in some services - CEO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Cars are seen an ADNOC petrol station in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates July 10, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer LONDON (Reuters) - Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is considering an initial public offering of minority stakes in some of its services, its chief executive Ahmed Al Jaber said on Tuesday. <20>Strategic partnerships are key to optimising our entire value chain and growing market share,<2C> he said at the Oil and Money conference in London. <20>We are considering potentially an IPO of minority stakes in our services ... ADNOC will remain wholly owned by one single shareholder, the Abu Dhabi government.<2E> Reporting by Julia Payne and Ron Bousso; Editing by Dale Hudson 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-emirates-adnoc-ipo/abu-dhabis-oil-company-adnoc-considering-ipo-in-some-services-ceo-idUKKBN1CM0YO'|'2017-10-17T12:06:00.000+03:00'
'c66cc85e51655491f061f0256ad0bc7e88e36a32'|'Bombardier confident Airbus deal can resolve U.S tariff issue'|' 39 AM / in 13 minutes Bombardier confident Airbus deal can resolve U.S tariff issue Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TOULOUSE, France, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Airbus SE<53>s acquisition of a majority stake in Bombardier Inc<6E>s CSeries jetliner means the aircraft can be made   and should enable the Canadian plane maker to skirt U.S. trade tariffs, Bombardier<65>s CEO said on Tuesday. <20>Assembly in the U.S. can resolve the issue,<2C> Bombardier Chief Executive Alain Bellemare told a joint news conference in Toulouse. Bellemare said the two companies would now work on a 6-12 month timeline for finalising the deal. (Reporting by Tim Hepher; Writing by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Richard Lough) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/bombardier-airbus-cseries-tariffs/bombardier-confident-airbus-deal-can-resolve-u-s-tariff-issue-idUSP6N1M9017'|'2017-10-17T12:37:00.000+03:00'
'357735baa313ff651bfcef3cc46d65ac519ad7aa'|'Airbus to take majority stake in Bombardier''s C-Series program'|'October 16, 2017 / 10:32 PM / in 42 minutes Airbus takes control of Bombardier CSeries in rebuff to U.S. threat Allison Lampert , Tim Hepher 6 Min Read MONTREAL/TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) - Airbus ( AIR.PA ) has agreed to take a majority stake in Bombardier<65>s ( BBDb.TO ) troubled CSeries jetliner programme, securing the plane<6E>s future and giving the Canadian firm a possible way out of a damaging trade dispute with Boeing ( BA.N ). Shares in Bombardier leapt more than 20 percent on Tuesday after news of the deal with Europe<70>s biggest aerospace group. Airbus will get a 50.01 percent stake in an entity recently carved out of Bombardier to produce and market the CSeries, four years after it first flew with a goal to enter the $125 billion (<28>94.8 billion) a year market for large jets. But in a move emblematic of the huge risks of aerospace competition, Bombardier will get just one dollar for the majority stake in exchange for Airbus<75>s purchasing and marketing power to support an aircraft that has won fans for its fuel efficiency but few recent orders due to doubts over its future. In reality, the terms of the deal mean Bombardier could pay Airbus to take over by agreeing to underwrite $700 million of risks related to cost overruns in coming years. <20>It<49>s an unexpected move by Airbus but indicates they see good market potential for the CSeries. Neither they nor Boeing currently offer an aircraft in the regional jet market,<2C> said aerospace consultant John Strickland of JLS Consulting. Airbus shares rose around 5 percent. The deal is similar to one that Airbus walked away from in 2015 when it decided the investment in a plane that had not yet entered service was too risky - with one major difference: that some of the jets will be produced in the United States. That could change the power balance in Bombardier<65>s costly trade dispute with Boeing, though it is not the main reason why the two former rivals have come together, executives said. The U.S. Commerce Department has threatened a possible 300 percent duty on CSeries jet imports after backing Boeing<6E>s complaint that Bombardier received illegal subsidies and dumped the planes at low prices. Related Coverage Factbox - Winners and losers in Bombardier/Airbus CSeries deal The deal with Airbus now means CSeries jets can be built at Airbus<75> Alabama assembly plant, which according to the two companies would exempt them from import duties. <20>Assembly in the U.S. can resolve the (tariff) issue because it then becomes a domestic product,<2C> Bombardier<65>s chief executive, Alain Bellemare, told reporters at Airbus<75>s headquarters in Toulouse. Airbus CEO Tom Enders hailed the tie-up as <20>a win for Canada ... a win for the UK,<2C> referring to Bombardier<65>s wing-making factory in Northern Ireland whose future had been threatened by the distant trade war. He said it would also create new U.S. jobs. The deal appeared to catch Boeing off guard. Locked in a separate 13-year trade dispute with Airbus, Boeing called it a <20>questionable deal<61> between two of its subsidized competitors. Bellemare said he hoped the deal would be approved within 6-12 months. Canadian Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains, who must officially decide whether to green-light the deal, said it looked like <20>Bombardier<65>s new proposed partnership ... would help position the CSeries for success<73>. An Airbus A320neo aircraft and a Bombardier CSeries aircraft are pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau Bombardier, which had not secured a new order in 18 months for the 110-130 seat plane, said the partnership should more than double the value of the CSeries programme. While it will lose control of a project developed at a cost of $6 billion, the deal gives the CSeries improved economies of scale and a better sales network. For Airbus, the deal strengthens the bottom end of its
'ea65f9c539419a3793084a6ec929b869166cdabe'|'A geopolitical row with China damages South Korean business further'|'IN A cosmetics emporium in central Seoul, rows of snail-slime face-masks sit untouched. Not long ago, visiting Chinese tourists would snap these up as avidly as a designer handbag in New York or anything from London featuring the Queen. Yet now their rejuvenating properties are failing to lure the country<72>s shoppers. Seo Sung-hae, a salesman, says business has slowed to a snail<69>s pace, because of a drop in the number of Chinese visitors. <20>We used to have 100 customers a day, but after THAAD, there are almost none,<2C> he says. THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defence, is an American missile-defence system designed to guard against North Korea that was installed in South Korea starting in March. Chinese authorities protest that its radar could be used to spy on its territory. Chinese newspapers have encouraged consumers to boycott South Korean goods. The plan was to <20>bully<6C> Korea into ditching THAAD, says Han Suk-hee of Yonsei University, who until April was South Korea<65>s consul-general in Shanghai.Latest updates Germany<6E>s coalition talks begin Kaffeeklatsch 34 minutes ago Not   4   4   5   5 hours ago Annie Baker is a master of loaded silences Prospero 6   Seven months on, the campaign has fallen short of that goal but has claimed a big corporate victim. On October 12th Lotte, a South Korean conglomerate, confirmed that it hopes to sell its Chinese hypermarkets by the end of the year. That marks a significant retreat for the firm, which had been trying to crack the market since 2008. The group employs about 20,000 people<6C>a third of its overseas staff<66>in China, and in 2015 registered 3trn won ($2.65bn) of sales there. It became a target after signing a deal in February with the South Korean government that allowed the defence ministry to use one of its golf courses as a base for the THAAD launchers. (Shin Dong-bin, its chairman, later said he had no choice but to comply). Chinese officials then closed 77 of the 99 Lotte Mart stores in China on pretexts such as breaches of fire-safety rules. The firm itself shut another 13 stores when customers stayed away. Sales in the second quarter slumped to 21bn won ($18.5m), down from 284bn won in the same period last year.South Korean cars, beauty products and even confectionery have been affected. Sales at Beijing Hyundai, jointly owned by the South Korean conglomerate and Chinese manufacturer BAIC Motor, dropped by two-fifths in the first eight months of the year. AmorePacific, a cosmetics firm in South Korea, reported a 58% dip in its second-quarter operating profits. The country<72>s tourism industry, too, has felt the pinch since group tours from China were banned in March. There were 87% fewer Chinese tourists on Jeju, a pretty island south of the peninsula, during this year<61>s harvest festival than in 2016. Korean businesses will lose $15.6bn of tourism revenue if the slump continues until next March, according to the Hyundai Research Institute, a think-tank funded by the conglomerate. Korean industries other than tourism could lose $8.3bn over the row, says the Korea Development Bank. Yet the boycott is being applied selectively. It favours some Chinese firms by penalising their South Korean competitors, while leaving manufacturers on the mainland free to continue importing the parts on which their businesses rely from other South Korean firms, notes Choi Pae-kun, an economist at Konkuk University in Seoul. Korean exports to China jumped by 23% in September compared with the same month last year, driven in part by surging demand for memory chips, many of which are made by Samsung.The row with China may obscure some failings of South Korean business. Carmakers<72> share of the Chinese market fell from 9% in 2014 to 7% in 2016, before the row. Partly due to competition from online retailers, Lotte Mart has been losing money in China since 2011. But the events of March were undoubtedly a turning point. Beijing Hyundai<61>s sales rose in January and February, but plunged by
'4fd03366701aff2bd7d8895897b2deab15a7904b'|'Microsoft expands rural U.S. campaign with Green Bay Packers tie-up'|'October 19, 2017 / 6:29 PM / in 2 hours Microsoft expands rural U.S. campaign with Green Bay Packers tie-up Salvador Rodriguez 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A sign marks the Microsoft office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. on January 25, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp ( MSFT.O ) has teamed up with the National Football League<75>s Green Bay Packers in a $10 million partnership intended to spur tech innovation in Wisconsin, the software company said on Thursday. The partnership is part of a trend by tech companies to connect with the U.S. Midwest following last November<65>s surprise election of Donald Trump as U.S. president. Trump was carried largely by rural states that embraced his criticisms of globalization and admonishments of Silicon Valley for what he described as an overreliance on immigrant workers. For Microsoft, the outreach efforts serve as a way to connect with folks across the United States, said Brad Smith, the tech company<6E>s chief legal officer. <20>We are probably not going to find the technology breakthrough for the future of farming in downtown San Francisco,<2C> Smith told Reuters. <20>We<57>re much more likely to find it in Green Bay, Wisconsin.<2E> Through the partnership, known as TitletownTech, the Packers and Microsoft will each contribute $5 million to invest in startups from around Wisconsin. This is part of a larger initiative by Microsoft called TechSpark to form similar partnerships in North Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming. Microsoft in July also committed itself to use television broadcast spectrum to bring broadband internet to 2 million rural Americans within five years. <20>For communities like ours in the manufacturing belt, this is going to get us to where we need to be in order to be competitive well into the future,<2C> Ed Policy, Green Bay Packers general counsel, said in an interview on Wednesday. TechSpark is a long-term strategy Microsoft hopes will yield new customers, new employees and benefit more Americans, Smith said. The origins of what became TechSpark occurred the day after Trump<6D>s Nov. 8 election win, when Smith wrote a blog post saying Microsoft needed to <20>promote inclusive economic growth that helps everyone move forward.<2E> Microsoft is not alone in its outreach efforts to the American heartland. So far in 2017, Facebook Inc ( FB.O ) Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has traveled to U.S. states he had not previously visited. Similarly, Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) CEO Tim Cook in April spoke to his alma mater Auburn University in Alabama, and the iPhone maker has said it will invest $1.3 billion in Des Moines, Iowa, to build a new data center and an additional $1 billion to expand its data center in Reno, Nevada. Apple in May also announced a $1 billion fund for U.S. manufacturing programs. Meanwhile, Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ) in September announced plans to open a second headquarters away from Seattle, promising to bring $5 billion in investments to the chosen community. <20>The 2016 presidential election was a wake-up call for many Americans, especially those in the <20>bubble<6C> of coastal cities,<2C> said Jessica Alter, co-founder of Tech for Campaigns, a nonprofit formed to promote tech worker participation in progressive and moderate political campaigns in local U.S. elections. <20>For big companies like Microsoft and Facebook that means connecting with people outside of their headquarter cities,<2C> Alter said on Wednesday. TechSpark comes as more regulators and lawmakers around the globe turn a sharper eye toward Silicon Valley and question the way companies like Microsoft, Facebook and Google are regulated. <20>We have a responsibility to be reaching out to every part of the country,<2C> Smith said. Reporting by Salvador Rodriguez; Editing by Matthew Lewis 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-midwest/microsoft-expands-rural-u-s-campaign-with-green-bay-packers-tie-up-idUSK
'c448f88ad612b6dcfed0dd2124097e2b07927063'|'Nissan says to suspend all Japanese car production'|'FILE PHOTO - Logo of the Nissan Motor Co. is displayed at the 44th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan, November 2, 2015. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co Ltd ( 7201.T ) is suspending domestic production of vehicles for the Japanese market for at least two weeks to address misconduct in its final inspection procedures that led to a major recall, it said on Thursday. The issue has tarnished Nissan<61>s brand at home, and along with a data falsification scandal at compatriot Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ), has raised questions about compliance and quality control at Japanese manufacturers. The country<72>s second-largest automaker said it would stop production of domestic market vehicles at all six of its Japanese assembly plants to consolidate their inspection lines to comply with the country<72>s transport ministry requirements. Nissan produced roughly 79,300 passenger and commercial vehicles in Japan in August. Around 27,600 of these were made for the domestic market, representing around 6 percent of its global production. The automaker admitted that uncertified technicians performed final checks for domestic market models because some inspection steps had been transferred to other inspection lines, in violation of ministry rules. Checks by uncertified inspectors continued even after Nissan had said it had strengthened control of its inspection processes when the issue first came to light late last month. <20>Our emergency measures were not enough. We were unable to change our bad habits,<2C> CEO Hiroto Saikawa said at a briefing at its headquarters. He added it appeared that a focus on increasing the efficiency of the inspection process had contributed to the issue, while poor communication between plant managers and foremen also may have been a factor. The misconduct has already forced Nissan to recall all 1.2 million new passenger cars sold in Japan over the past three years for re-inspection. The company said on Thursday that around 34,000 additional cars would be re-inspected, probably expanding the recall by around 4,000 units. Japan<61>s transport ministry said this month it had discovered that uncertified technicians at plants producing Nissan vehicles were using the stamps of certified technicians to sign off on final vehicle inspections, in violation of ministry guidelines. Nissan will continue to produce vehicles for export in Japan, including its popular Rogue SUV crossover model and the battery-electric Leaf, as the certification process for final inspections does not apply to vehicles shipped overseas. At 1415 GMT, shares in Nissan<61>s alliance partner Renault ( RENA.PA ) were down 2.3 percent at 84.36 euros. While Nissan has said the misconduct has no impact on the quality of its vehicles, it has raised questions about how closely rules are followed at its production plants, while also highlighting compliance issues at Japanese manufacturers. Kobe Steel, Japan<61>s third-biggest steelmaker, admitted this month it had falsified specifications on the strength and durability of aluminum, copper and steel products, misconduct that may have stretched back more than 10 years. Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Mark Potter and David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nissan-recall/nissan-says-to-suspend-all-japanese-car-production-idUSKBN1CO1FW'|'2017-10-19T13:47:00.000+03:00'
'e9aefbdaced1c08a9e1e8de7556ff8f31168af28'|'As China''s leaders gather, market reform hopes fade'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:49 AM / Updated 10 hours ago As China''s leaders gather, market reform hopes fade Michael Martina , Kevin Yao 7 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Men sit outside a steel factory in Wu''an, Hebei province, China, February 23, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo BEIJING (Reuters) - President Xi Jinping<6E>s rule in China has been marked by a muscular stance in many areas <20> from corruption to foreign policy - but investors and business leaders hoping that the nation<6F>s most powerful leader in decades will drive market reforms are girding for disappointment. As he gears up for his second term, hoped-for market liberalisation is increasingly being viewed as secondary to Xi<58>s state-centered approach to economic policy and his focus on stability. The Communist Party Congress beginning on Wednesday in Beijing is expected to see Xi consolidate his power and is unlikely to see a change in his priorities. Party spokesman Tuo Zhen told reporters at a briefing on Tuesday that China will persist with opening up and expanding market access. But foreign executives and analysts question whether these kinds of comments will mean a lot on the ground. <20>I don<6F>t see market opening coming. It<49>s all about discipline and control,<2C> said one senior China-based American executive, who declined to be identified. China<6E>s State Council Information Office referred questions on market reforms to the country<72>s economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, which did not respond to a faxed request for comment. Some Chinese policy insiders said that they don<6F>t expect any significant speeding up. <20>We will not rush on reforms. The pace of changes will not change dramatically,<2C> said one advisor to the Chinese government who was speaking on condition of anonymity. EARLY HOPES DASHED Xi<58>s sweeping anti-corruption campaign and his move to personally take charge of economic policymaking had initially been seen by China analysts as early signs that he would use his consolidated power to push tough reforms through entrenched bureaucracies. The party<74>s 2013 pledge under Xi<58>s then-new administration to let the market play a decisive role in the economy had also given hope to those pushing for reform. But many analysts and business leaders now see Xi<58>s faith in markets as tenuous, and that 2013 reform pledge as a mere holdover from his predecessors. A lack of follow-through over the past several years on repeated State Council vows to open markets to the world have left foreign businesses with <20>promise fatigue<75>, as the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China put it last month. Those delays coincide with the passage of a raft of new national security and cyber security laws and regulations that China<6E>s trading partners complain will put them at a disadvantage. <20>For the past 20 or 30 years it was economic development at all costs, and I think we are seeing a new paradigm now where national security is dominant and economic issues are channelled through that lens,<2C> said Jude Blanchette, who studies the party at The Conference Board<72>s China Center for Economics and Business in Beijing. Blanchette said true market reforms in Xi<58>s second term would mean walking back much of the control he has fought to acquire, an unlikely prospect. STABILITY WINS Other painful reforms that many economists say are needed have also moved slowly under Xi. They include overhauling China<6E>s debt-laden state sector, fixing the fiscal system to tackle local government debt, bringing in new property taxes to ward off housing bubbles, and allowing farmers to sell their land more freely. Capital controls, including restrictions on some outbound investment deals, have helped stabilise the yuan CNY=CFXS , but at the cost of hampering China''s ambition to internationalise the currency. Chinese reform advocates say the government has been avoiding potentially disruptive changes due to concerns over economic and social stability and resistance from vested interests, such
'88e08887e6b742a2b8e5209a499c3c12d62c7311'|'UPDATE 1-FCC chairman rejects Trump suggestion on broadcast licenses'|'Ajit Pai, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, testifies before a Senate Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 20, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission<6F>s chairman said Tuesday the agency does not have authority to revoke broadcast licenses, despite suggestions from President Donald Trump. Ajit Pai, a Republican who was named chairman of the telecommunications regulator in January, broke days of silence by rejecting Trump<6D>s tweet that the FCC could challenge the license of NBC after stories Trump declared were not true. <20>Under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content,<2C> Pai said at a forum. <20>The FCC under my leadership will stand for the First Amendment.<2E> The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Democrats had been pushing Pai to denounce Trump<6D>s suggestion that broadcast licenses could be threatened following reports by NBC News that his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, had called him a <20>moron<6F> after a discussion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. <20>With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!<21> Trump tweeted on Wednesday. Trump and his supporters have repeatedly used the term <20>fake news<77> to cast doubt on media reports critical of his administration, often without providing any evidence to support their case that the reports were untrue. Any move to challenge media companies<65> licenses, however, would likely face significant hurdles. The FCC, an independent federal agency, does not license broadcast networks, but issues them to individual broadcast stations that are renewed on a staggered basis for eight-year periods. Comcast Corp, which owns NBC Universal, also owns 11 broadcast stations, including outlets in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Dallas and Chicago. When reviewing licenses the FCC must determine if a renewal is in the public interest. Courts have held that a station exercising its First Amendment rights is not adequate grounds to challenge a license. The agency does not issue similar licenses for cable networks such as CNN and MSNBC, or regulate internet news or other websites. In the early 1970s, then-President Richard Nixon and his top aides discussed using the FCC<43>s license renewal process as a way of punishing The Washington Post for its coverage of the Watergate burglary that ultimately brought down his presidency. Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Jonathan Oatis'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-nbc-pai/fcc-chairman-rejects-trump-suggestion-on-broadcast-licenses-idUSKBN1CM28W'|'2017-10-17T18:32:00.000+03:00'
'0145d53c9d68b5e98325e5b529af3a9aed875565'|'NAFTA trade ministers to square off over hard-line U.S. demands'|'October 17, 2017 / 5:04 AM / in an hour Mexico, Canada poised to push back over U.S. NAFTA demands David Lawder , David Ljunggren 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Canada''s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland (C) addresses the media with Mexico''s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo (L) and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer at the close of the third round of NAFTA talks involving the United States, Mexico and Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Wattie/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Trade ministers from the United States, Canada and Mexico on Tuesday wrap up a contentious round of NAFTA negotiations dominated by aggressive U.S. demands including a sunset clause that Canadian and Mexican officials say will be rejected. The Trump administration<6F>s proposals to reshape the North American Free Trade Agreement to help shrink U.S. trade deficits have clouded the talks to modernize the 23-year pact, leaving some participants and analysts wondering how an impasse can be avoided. Washington<6F>s demands, previously identified as red lines by its neighbors, include forcing renegotiations every five years, reserving the lion<6F>s share of automotive manufacturing for the United States and making it easier to pursue import barriers against some Canadian and Mexican goods. Mexican and Canadian officials at the talks, currently being held in Washington and expected to resume in Mexico City later this month, have said those proposals are unacceptable while stressing their governments will not walk away from the table. Describing some of the demands as <20>ridiculously extreme<6D>, Moises Kalach, head of the international negotiating arm of Mexico<63>s powerful CCE business lobby, said the U.S. government knew that it would not be able to push them through. <20>The key is to remain calm and see if the American government is ready to negotiate,<2C> he told Mexican radio. One person close to the process said there was now a possibility negotiations to modernize NAFTA, which underpins some $1.2 trillion in annual trade between the three countries, could even extend into March. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland are scheduled to meet and take stock of the talks before issuing statements at a joint event at 3 p.m. (1900 GMT) in Washington. They later plan to separately brief media. Lighthizer says his hard negotiating line reflects U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s desire to claw back lost manufacturing jobs and shrink U.S. goods trade deficits amounting to $64 billion with Mexico and $11 billion with Canada last year. Financial markets have taken notice of the acrimony. FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House in Washington, U.S. on October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo Mexico''s peso MXN=D2 is trading at its lowest level in almost five months against the dollar, while the Canadian dollar CAD=D4 hit a one-week low against the greenback on Tuesday. <20>NORMAL PROCESS<53> Trump, who made trade a centerpiece of his 2016 presidential campaign as he promised to reinvigorate the U.S. manufacturing sector, has continued his attacks on NAFTA during the talks and repeatedly threatened to terminate it if Mexico and Canada will not agree to changes. U.S. negotiators opened a new front over the weekend with a proposal that Canada dismantle its system of protections for the dairy and poultry sectors, a move that Ottawa will reject, a source briefed on the matter said on Monday. The Trump administration has also set out proposals that could impose fresh restrictions on long haul trucking from Mexico, according to a person familiar with the matter. That too is likely to meet stiff resistance, Mexican officials say. U.S. opposition to NAFTA<54>s dispute resolution mechanisms, plans to restrict outside access to government contracts and attacks on Canadian dairy and s
'a6a74d5660f6876da2af8e948f2ae87d2505ad70'|'Keep close to the EU after Brexit or face long-term decline, OECD warns UK'|'The Treasury has flatly rejected calls for a second EU referendum after the west<73>s leading economic thinktank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, said reversing the decision to leave would significantly benefit the economy.<2E>We are leaving the EU and there will not be a second referendum,<2C> the Treasury said in a terse statement that reflected the government<6E>s unhappiness with the OECD<43>s intervention.The Paris-based group, which has 35 of the world<6C>s richest countries as members, said it would revise the gloomy forecasts it made in its annual health check were Britain to stay in the EU.<2E>In case Brexit gets reversed by political decision (change of majority, new referendum, etc), the positive impact on growth would be significant,<2C> the report said.No 10 joined the chancellor, Philip Hammond , in rejecting the OECD<43>s analysis, though a spokeswoman for the prime minister would not be drawn on whether the statement was irresponsible or on whether the UK<55>s <20>10m-a-year membership contribution to the thinktank was well spent.<2E>The OECD are a respected international body but what we should bear in mind is that it<69>s based on a no-deal situation, which is not what we are looking for. We are confident we are going to strike a good deal,<2C> she said.Leave campaigners were more critical of the OECD, which receives most of its funds from other EU member states.The Change Britain chair and former Labour MP Gisela Stuart said: <20>It is laughable that the EU-funded OECD, at a time that is the most helpful possible for Brussels, has the gall to intervene in our negotiations and call for Brexit to be reversed.<2E>These EU elites refuse to accept that 17.4 million people voted to take back control, and meant it. The British public didn<64>t believe the OECD<43>s scaremongering before, and nor should they start now.<2E>Angel Gurr<72>a, the OECD<43>s secretary general, insisted that the thinktank respected the decision of the referendum and sources at the organisation sought to play down the <20>second referendum<75> call, saying it was merely sketching out alternative scenarios.However, the OECD said Britain must secure <20>the closest possible economic relationship<69> with the EU after Brexit to prevent the economy suffering a long-term decline.Gurr<72>a said Brexit would be as harmful as the second world war blitz and the British would need to act on the propaganda maxim to keep calm and carry on.The deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats said it was clear from the OECD report that a second vote was needed to prevent the harm caused by Brexit.Jo Swinson said: <20>Brexit has already caused the UK to slip from top to bottom of the international growth league for major economies.<2E>This will only get worse if the government succeeds in dragging us out of the single market and customs union, or we end up crashing out of Europe without a deal.<2E>The thinktank, which has predicted the UK<55>s growth rate will fall to 1% next year , said a <20>disorderly<6C> exit from the EU single market and customs union in 2019 would hurt trading relationships and reduce long-term growth.Entering the debate over Brexit at a crucial stage in negotiations, the OECD added that steep falls in the UK<55>s productivity performance relative to other major economies, allied with the failure of its export industries to grab a slice of expanding world trade, have left the country in a weak position to operate outside the EU.Q&A Why is the UK keen to discuss a future trading relationship with the EU? Show HideBritain wants to discuss its future trading relationship with the EU because 44% of UK exports go to, and 53% of imports come from, the EU 27 countries . Post-Brexit conditions of trade could, therefore, have a major effect on Britain<69>s economy.The World Bank estimates UK trade with the EU in goods and services could fall by 50% and 62% respectively if no trade deal is agreed after Brexit, against 12% and 16% if the UK stays in the single market through a Norway-style agreement.C
'd87d8a12a27734033157fd6356256700465d71b4'|'Copper miner explores standalone energy options in Australia'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:25 AM / Updated 19 minutes ago Copper miner explores standalone energy options in Australia James Regan 3 Min Read SYDNEY (Reuters) - Oz Minerals ( OZL.AX ) could build standalone renewable power plants to ensure uninterrupted electrical supplies to its copper mines, managing director Andrew Cole said on Tuesday, a move that would protect it from blackouts of the type seen last year. Cole said he was open to developing independent sources of energy - solar, wind and thermal - to mitigate the uncertainty in price and availability of electricity in South Australia state, which is notorious for sudden power outages. <20>We<57>re certainly looking at those technologies for our current operations, our projects and future projects,<2C> Cole told Reuters. <20>It makes more sense to use a combination of techniques to give you a sustainable supply of power,<2C> he said. Oz Minerals is not the only one in Australia weighing standalone renewable power sources for industrial sites. Fellow copper miner Sandfire Resources ( SFR.AX ) last year installed Australia<69>s largest off-grid solar and battery storage facility in the country, while Sun Metals invested A$183 million ($143 million) to build a solar farm to run its zinc refinery. Besides worries about power failure such as September 2016<31>s statewide blackout, Oz Minerals<6C> contract with an energy provider to supply power for its flagship Prominent Hill mine expires at the end of 2018. It has also yet to sign a supply contract to deliver power to a second mine under development. Last year<61>s blackout cut power for nearly 24 hours after a series of storms and lightning strikes, halting production at BHP<48>s Olympic Dam copper mine for nearly two weeks and forcing Oz Minerals to stockpile copper ore at its Prominent Hill mine. BHP Billiton ( BHP.AX ), which lost $105 million as a result of the outage, has since told Oz Minerals it would not renew an agreement allowing Oz Minerals to use power lines that connect the Olympic Dam site to the state<74>s power grid. Power makes up about 10 percent of operating costs for Oz Minerals, much lower than for BHP, which in addition to mining, operates a smelter at Olympic Dam. Australia<69>s government on Tuesday rejected calls to set a clean energy target, instead scrapping aid for renewable projects and adopting a fuel-neutral energy policy it said could keep the country<72>s lights on and cut power prices. ($1 = 1.2762 Australian dollars) Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Tom Hogue 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-oz-minerals-australia-interview/copper-miner-explores-standalone-energy-options-in-australia-idUKKBN1CM10S'|'2017-10-17T12:25:00.000+03:00'
'e819c6951ac992ebe483a6689e6b951af4dd1a38'|'Boeing calls CSeries deal a bid to escape U.S. import fees'|'PARIS, Oct 17 (Reuters) - U.S. planemaker Boeing dismissed a deal between Airbus and Bombardier to partner on Canada<64>s CSeries jet, calling it an attempt to sidestep import duties recommended by the U.S. Commerce Department following a Boeing trade complaint.<2E>This looks like a questionable deal between two heavily state-subsidised competitors to skirt the recent findings of the U.S. government,<2C> a Boeing spokesman said.<2E>Our position remains that everyone should play by the same rules, for free and fair trade to work.<2E>Bombardier earlier said it would sell control of its CSeries programme to Europe<70>s Airbus under a deal that would see some of the jets produced in the United States, where local airlines would therefore not have to pay the proposed import penalties.The Quebec government, through its financing arm, took a 49 percent stake in the CSeries program in 2015 for $1 billion. Quebec<65>s share, most recently 38 percent, will slip to 19 percent following the deal with Airbus. (Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Sandra Maler)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bombardier-airbus-cseries-boeing/boeing-calls-cseries-deal-a-bid-to-escape-u-s-import-fees-idINL8N1MS00V'|'2017-10-16T22:42:00.000+03:00'
'603a4ab3d829ecd36080d1284a11a33427e15676'|'Brexit talks uncertainty factored in to UK rating - S&P Global analyst'|'October 18, 2017 / 11:20 AM / Updated 22 minutes ago Brexit talks uncertainty factored in to UK rating - S&P Global analyst Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Pedestrians cross London Bridge during the commute to work in the City of London June 22, 2012. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor LONDON (Reuters) - The uncertainty surrounding Brexit talks is largely factored in to the UK<55>s credit rating, S&P Global said on Wednesday, but it had worries about the country<72>s economic prospects. <20>We really have genuine concerns about the economic performance over the next few years,<2C> Frank Gill, one of S&P<>s top sovereign analysts, told Reuters on the sidelines of conference hosted by the firm. Reporting by Marc Jones; editing by John Stonestreet 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-ratings-s-p/brexit-talks-uncertainty-factored-in-to-uk-rating-sp-global-analyst-idUKKBN1CN1IB'|'2017-10-18T14:20:00.000+03:00'
'994194bd77d7bacc5c6f0a8cbcd4d17ff7a4c56b'|'Tesla to raise pay by 30 percent at German division - works council'|' 12 PM / Updated 26 minutes ago Tesla to raise pay by 30 percent at German division - works council Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A robotic arm changes the tyre of a Tesla car at the world''s biggest industrial fair, "Hannover Fair", in Hanover, Germany April 24, 2017. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer/File Photo HAMBURG (Reuters) - Luxury electric car maker Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ) and labour leaders at its German engineering unit have agreed a new pay structure that will raise workers<72> salaries by about 30 percent from current levels, the division<6F>s works council said. <20>We will now get to a competitive wage level,<2C> a spokesman for the works council said on Wednesday after a staff gathering at Tesla Grohmann Automation GmbH, based in western Germany. <20>The workforce was informed today that we will introduce a pay structure<72> at Grohmann, which has about 650 workers, he said, without elaborating. In an emailed statement, Tesla said the new remuneration structure, retroactively effective from Oct. 1, guarantees staff <20>a fair and competitive salary<72> and will include a pay raise for apprenticeships, but it did not confirm the 30 percent figure. In April, Tesla pledged a 5-year job guarantee for all Grohmann employees up to at least 2022. Workers also received a 10,000-euro (<28>8,940) grant each of Tesla stock and an additional bonus of 1,000 euros with their April pay and a monthly salary increase of 150 euros, it said. Tesla faces higher wage costs in Germany as it wrestles with what Chief Executive Elon Musk has described as <20>production hell<6C> in launching its new Model 3 sedan, which Tesla hopes will make it a mass-market producer. The company warned earlier this month that production bottlenecks had left the company behind with its planned ramp-up for the Model 3. German daily newspaper Die Welt reported the wage pact earlier on Wednesday. Before being bought by Tesla last year, Grohmann, based in the town of Pruem near the Luxembourg border, helped clients build highly automated and efficient factories, including battery assembly lines for electric cars. The U.S. carmaker is counting on Grohmann<6E>s automation and engineering expertise to help it ramp up production to 500,000 cars per year by 2018 through the design of ultra-efficient factories. Reporting by Jan Schwartz. Writing by Andreas Cremer,; Editing by Douglas Busvine and Adrian Croft 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tesla-germany-wages/tesla-to-raise-pay-by-30-percent-at-german-division-works-council-idUKKBN1CN283'|'2017-10-18T18:11:00.000+03:00'
'bb6e6fe7770eb085f300c4f450a49eab331f5a53'|'Italy approves using golden power on Piaggio aerospace businesses'|'ROME (Reuters) - The Italian government said it would use its so-called <20>golden power<65>, which allows it to veto or set conditions on asset sales deemed of strategic national importance, over the planned sale of Piaggio Aerospace<63>s executive jet business.In a statement after a cabinet meeting on Thursday, the government said it would impose conditions over the sale of the business to a foreign company it named as PAC Investment SA <20>given the relevance of the transaction for national defense and security interests.<2E>The statement did not detail those conditions, but said the government would check that they would be respected. Piaggio Aerospace had no immediate comment.A source familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this month that Italy was considering blocking the sale of Piaggio Aerospace<63>s executive-jet business to a Chinese state-backed consortium, amid concerns over the transfer of sensitive technology and potential loss of jobs.The business produces the P180 turbojet which shares design and technology features with surveillance drones made by Piaggio Aerospace<63>s defense and security arm.Piaggio Aerospace is owned by Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, which is also seeking to sell the firm<72>s engine and maintenance businesses.The source familiar with the matter had told Reuters that the Rome government is also worried that Mubadala<6C>s planned break-up of Piaggio Aerospace would leave the company in a weaker position and make it more vulnerable to competition.Rome can veto or set conditions for asset sales and takeovers in the strategic defense sector, even if the asset being sold is not a defense business but uses dual-use technology.The planned sale of Piaggio Aerospace<63>s executive-jet business comes at a sensitive time for Chinese investments in the European Union, with the head of the European Commission recently proposing to limit state-backed foreign takeovers in hi-tech manufacturing, among other industries.Reporting By Gavin Jones and Silvia Aloisi; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-piaggio-m-a-government/italy-approves-using-golden-power-on-piaggio-aerospace-businesses-idINKBN1CO2U5'|'2017-10-19T17:17:00.000+03:00'
'0d8b52b0a14b0fb197b0a90fa7be290b03a4e09d'|'Turkey''s CMS Group mandates HSBC for stake sale - sources'|'October 19, 2017 / 12:20 PM / in 9 minutes Turkey''s CMS Group mandates HSBC for stake sale - sources Ebru Tuncay , Can Sezer 2 Min Read ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish car wheel manufacturer CMS Group is looking to sell a stake in itself, possibly a majority stake, and has mandated HSBC ( HSBA.L ) to advise on a potential transaction, two people familiar with the matter said. Privately held CMS supplies wheels for 22 automobile brands including BMW ( BMWG.DE ), Ford ( F.N ), Toyota ( 7203.T ) and Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ). CMS says it is Turkey<65>s largest manufacturer of aluminium alloy wheels and Europe<70>s third-largest. <20>HSBC has been mandated. The buyer may be a fund,<2C> one of the sources told Reuters. Both of the sources declined to be identified because the information has not been made public. CMS and HSBC both declined to comment. <20>The company needs to have a foreign partner in order to grow, to be able to compete with big players,<2C> said an automotive sector source who is not related to the deal. CMS revenues, mostly exports, amounted to 1.2 billion lira (<28>248.7 million) in 2016 and the company expects revenues to rise to 1.4 billion lira this year. CMS produces 9 million aluminium alloy wheels per year at its current production facility in Izmir, western Turkey, and plans to increase production to 12 million by 2022. Writing by Ezgi Erkoyun; Editing by David Dolan and Daren Butler 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-cms-m-a/turkeys-cms-group-mandates-hsbc-for-stake-sale-sources-idUKKBN1CO1QF'|'2017-10-19T15:19:00.000+03:00'
'20247ff7c90381c1bf82af749f81617942c4968d'|'IMF team in Cairo next week to review third instalment of $12-billion loan'|'Reuters TV United States  43 PM / in 2 minutes IMF team in Cairo next week to review third installment of $12-billion loan Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Products are displayed at a vegetable market in Cairo, Egypt, October 11, 2017. . REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany CAIRO (Reuters) - A delegation from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will arrive in Cairo next Tuesday to review Egypt<70>s progress on economic reforms before it disperses the third installment of a $12-billion loan program, the Finance Ministry said. The IMF said last month Egypt should receive a third loan installment of around $2 billion after a second check of progress at the end of this year, but indicators pointed to progress and consolidated economic growth. Egypt agreed a three-year, $12 billion IMF loan program last November that is tied to sweeping reforms such as spending cuts and tax hikes. They are designed to help revive an economy hard hit by a shortage of foreign currency and investment in the turmoil that followed its 2011 uprising. Reporting by Amina Ismail; Editing by Gareth Jones 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-economy-imf/imf-team-in-cairo-next-week-to-review-third-installment-of-12-billion-loan-idUKKBN1CO1ZE'|'2017-10-19T16:40:00.000+03:00'
'6bbc13bce558dc4e1fcc96ccee79c353c60821bd'|'LSE''s French boss Xavier Rolet says it''s time to go. But why? - Business'|'T he London Stock Exchange would like everyone to know it will choose a successor to the chief executive, Xavier Rolet, in a smooth and orderly manner and, since the boss<73>s last lap of the track could extend until the end of next year, there will be <20>many opportunities<65> to celebrate his <20>remarkable achievements<74>. It<49>s nice to know there<72>ll be a knees-up, but it would be more useful to hear why Rolet has chosen to go.Neither the company nor the man himself bothered to explain. We<57>re just supposed to assume that, with a decade or so on the clock, nothing could be more natural than quitting at the age of only 57. But, if a decade-and-out is somehow an unwritten rule for FTSE bosses, nobody has told Simon Wolfson (16 years at Next), Willie Walsh (12 at British Airways and parent IAG), let alone Sir Martin Sorrell (31 at WPP).One assumes Rolet has something up his sleeve since he was prepared to go to make way for his counterpart if the merger with Deutsche B<>rse had happened (a move into French politics was a rumour). But he<68>ll be a loss for the LSE. As chairman Donald Brydon says, the record is impressive. The share price has improved from 500p to <20>39 and Rolet<65>s expansionary ambition has paid off in spades.A decade ago, the LSE was concentrated in equities and being perpetually sized up for takeover. These days it is a <20>14bn company also running indices, clearing over-the-counter derivatives and in control of operations that extend well beyond London and Europe. Almost nobody mourns the collapse of the Deutsche deal . The LSE<53>s share price has improved by almost 30% since March, shouting confidence in the group<75>s ability to withstand whatever Brexit brings.On the Brexit front, Rolet<65>s extended goodbye thankfully allows time for him to continue as the City<74>s most effective speaker on two critical points. First, that a transitional deal is desperately needed <20> and soon. Second, that the EU would be silly to attempt to dismantle London<6F>s dominance in clearing euro-denominated trades: the disruption would create unnecessary financial risks for everybody. The latter argument sounds so much better from a Frenchman <20> Rolet should keep banging the drum.'|'theguardian.com'|'https://www.theguardian.com/uk/business'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2017/oct/19/lses-french-boss-xavier-rolet-says-its-time-to-go-but-why'|'2017-10-19T18:40:00.000+03:00'
'b45125bd7d5a6eb5c20bfe8f3ab23238710077ce'|'Zeitfracht, Nayak poised to buy some Air Berlin assets - sources'|'October 19, 2017 / 9:24 AM / in 14 minutes Zeitfracht, Nayak poised to buy some Air Berlin assets - sources Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Lufthansa airliner taxis next to the Air Berlin aircraft at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke/File Photo BERLIN (Reuters) - A consortium of family-owned Zeitfracht and maintenance group Nayak is close to striking a deal to buy Air Berlin<69>s ( AB1.DE ) cargo marketing platform and its maintenance business, several people familiar with the matter told Reuters. <20>They are on the home stretch,<2C> one of the sources said. A spokesman for Zeitfracht said that talks were promising and had reached an advanced stage. Air Berlin declined to comment. Air Berlin, which has struggled to turn a profit over the last decade, filed for insolvency on Aug. 15. A government loan has kept its planes aloft while its administrator negotiated with prospective buyers for parts of the business. Lufthansa has agreed to buy large parts of Air Berlin, but talks for its remaining assets are ongoing. Reporting by Klaus Lauer; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Douglas Busvine 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-air-berlin-lufthansa-zeitfracht/zeitfracht-nayak-poised-to-buy-some-air-berlin-assets-sources-idUKKBN1CO151'|'2017-10-19T12:23:00.000+03:00'
'b8b0893b0d9b5a6ec4b904b3a9580eb6b317084a'|'Nissan to suspend domestic production of cars for Japan market'|'Reuters TV United States October 19, 2017 / 10:49 AM / in 36 minutes Nissan to suspend domestic production of cars for Japan market Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Logo of the Nissan Motor Co. is displayed at the 44th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan, November 2, 2015. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co Ltd ( 7201.T ) is suspending domestic production of vehicles for the Japanese market for at least two weeks to address misconduct in its inspection procedures that led to a major recall, it said on Thursday. Japan<61>s second-largest automaker said it would stop production of domestic market vehicles at all six of its Japanese plants to reconfigure their inspection lines. That came after Nissan admitted uncertified technicians had continued to perform final vehicle checks even after it had said it had strengthened control of its inspection processes when the issue first came to light late last month. The misconduct has already forced Nissan to recall all 1.2 million new passenger cars sold in Japan over the past three years, and the company said on Thursday that around 34,000 additional cars would be re-inspected, probably expanding the recall by around 4,000 units. The issue has tarnished Nissan<61>s brand at home, and along with a data falsification scandal at compatriot Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ), has raised questions about compliance and quality control at Japanese manufacturers. Japan<61>s transport ministry said this month it had discovered that uncertified technicians at plants producing Nissan vehicles were using the stamps of certified technicians to sign off on final vehicle inspections, in violation of ministry guidelines. As a result, Nissan has recalled vehicles to re-do final inspections on issues including steering radius and braking and acceleration capabilities, at a cost of around 25 billion yen ($222 million). While Nissan has said the misconduct has no impact on the quality of its vehicles, it has raised questions about how closely rules are followed at its production plants, while also dealing a blow to its reputation at home. At 1220 GMT, shares in Nissan<61>s alliance partner Renault ( RENA.PA ) were down 2.7 percent at 84 euros. Nissan will continue to produce vehicles for export in Japan, including its popular Rogue SUV crossover model and the battery-electric Leaf, as the certification process for final inspections does not apply to vehicles shipped overseas. Kobe Steel, Japan<61>s third-biggest steelmaker, admitted this month it had falsified specifications on the strength and durability of aluminum, copper and steel products, misconduct that may have stretched back more than 10 years. Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-nissan-recall/nissan-says-to-suspend-all-japanese-car-production-idUKKBN1CO1FW'|'2017-10-19T15:38:00.000+03:00'
'43b6d9ffa371b68409f44dc87beec27f8430d9fe'|'Oil markets firm on tighter US market, expected extension of OPEC supply cuts'|'October 19, 2017 / 12:55 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Oil slips from recent gains, though Middle East tensions remain high Bryan Sims 3 Min Read An oil refinery of Essar Oil, which runs India''s second biggest private sector refinery, is pictured in Vadinar in the western state of Gujarat, India, October 4, 2016. REUTERS/Amit Dave/File Photo HOUSTON (Reuters) - Oil prices slipped on Thursday, pressured by larger-than-expected product inventories in the United States, and some profit-taking after a recent run-up in oil benchmarks. Ongoing tension in the Middle East has kept a bid under the market, however, as reduced flows from the Iraqi Kurdish pipeline through Turkey have raised worries about supply. Brent crude fell 64 cents to $57.52 a barrel from Wednesday<61>s mid-week high of $58.15 a barrel by 1135 EDT (1535 GMT). The global benchmark is still about 30 percent above its mid-year levels. U.S. light crude lost 45 cents to $51.59, and is still almost 25 percent higher than June<6E>s lows. Analysts said they have seen some profit-taking after two weeks of gains as upward momentum in prices appears to be waning. Energy equities were also weaker, falling to three-and-a-half week lows. <20>There seems to be a macro selloff across the board with energy stocks also coming down,<2C> said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital LLC. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday that U.S. crude inventories fell by 5.7 million barrels in the week to Oct. 13. U.S. output slumped by 11 percent from the previous week to 8.4 million barrels per day (bpd), lowest since June 2014, as production was shut in by Hurricane Nate. U.S. distillate and gasoline inventories rose, however, even as refining activity fell. Instability in the Middle East is increasing risks to supply from key oil-producing areas. <20>Anything that happens in the Middle East seems to put a little premium on oil prices,<2C> said Ryan Kelbrants, energy market analyst at CHS Hedging LLC in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota. Iraqi Kurdistan<61>s oil exports more than halved to 200,000 bpd on Wednesday as the Iraqi military retook some of the biggest fields from Kurdistan<61>s Peshmerga forces. However, Iraq said Thursday that it expects to restore Kirkuk<75>s oil production to last week<65>s levels by Sunday. U.S. President Donald Trump last week refused to certify Iran<61>s compliance with a nuclear deal, leaving Congress 60 days to decide further action against Tehran. That could imply the resumption of sanctions against Iran, which reduced supply by about 1 million bpd during the previous round. However, it is unlikely the United States will get the same level of cooperation from other countries as it did when it previously sanctioned Iran. Analysts say crude supply should keep tightening if the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and partners, including Russia, agree an expected extension to their deal to curb production. Additional reporting by Christopher Johnson in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Alistair Bell 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-oil/oil-markets-firm-on-tighter-us-market-expected-extension-of-opec-supply-cuts-idINKBN1CO02M'|'2017-10-19T03:52:00.000+03:00'
'12ba7204bade35ddcd94527acef6d7a49bc436a0'|'China''s Meituan-Dianping raises $4 billion, valuing firm at $30 billion'|'October 19, 2017 / 4:08 AM / Updated 14 hours ago China''s Meituan-Dianping raises $4 billion, valuing firm at $30 billion Reuters Staff 3 Min Read The Meituan logo is seen in this illustration photo October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration BEIJING (Reuters) - Meituan-Dianping on Thursday said it has raised $4 billion in a funding round that values China<6E>s largest on-demand services provider at $30 billion, as part of a strategy to compete with the country<72>s leading e-commerce firms in offline retail. Meituan-Dianping in a statement said the round was led by existing investor Tencent Holdings Ltd ( 0700.HK ), with participants including Sequoia Capital Ltd, Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte Ltd [GIC.UL] and Tiger Global Management LLC. Reuters reported in August that Meituan-Dianping was considering raising up to $5 billion. Earlier this year, Meituan-Dianping announced plans to invest in offline services and artificial intelligence technology (AI), amid a push by China<6E>s top tech firms into brick-and-mortar retail. The Dianping logo is seen in this illustration photo October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration Often compared to services from Yelp Inc ( YELP.N ) and Groupon Inc ( GRPN.O ), Meituan-Dianping is an online platform for a range of services including movie ticketing, food delivery, restaurant bookings, beauty services, travel and luxury goods. Its biggest rivals include e-commerce pair Alibaba Group Holding Ltd ( BABA.N ) and JD.com Inc ( JD.O ), both of which have championed a shift into offline stores in recent years, spurred by developments in cloud computing and big data technology. Meituan-Dianping<6E>s plans include opening a chain of offline stores, beginning in Beijing earlier this year, as well as developing technology in logistics and AI. In July, Meituan-Dianping<6E>s vice-president of strategy told Reuters the firm was not considering an initial public offering until it had established infrastructure for services including offline retail, and had roughly $3 billion in cash reserves remaining from a previous funding round. Meituan-Dianping said it has 280 million users and serves as a platform for roughly 5 million businesses. Reporting by Cate Cadell; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Christopher Cushing 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-meituan-dianping-funding/chinas-meituan-dianping-raises-4-billion-valuing-firm-at-30-billion-idINKBN1CO0C5'|'2017-10-19T02:08:00.000+03:00'
'ebade89825f7d8cbb88d7d58067ea46e9ebd06ff'|'Glencore to swap Rusal stake for shares in Russia''s En+'|' 51 PM / in 17 minutes Glencore to swap Rusal stake for shares in Russia''s En+ Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company''s headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann MOSCOW (Reuters) - Glencore ( GLEN.L ) will convert its 8.75 percent stake in Russian aluminium giant Rusal ( 0486.HK ) to shares in En+ Group, an aluminium and hydropower group controlled by tycoon Oleg Deripaska, En+ said on Wednesday. En+ said the swap will occur after it completes its initial public offering, which is due later this year. En+ currently owns 48.13 percent of Rusal<61>s shares. Glencore will be entitled to appoint its chief executive to the board of directors of En+ after the share swap. The price has yet to be determined. En+<2B>s stake in Rusal, one of the world<6C>s largest aluminium producers, will increase to 56.88 percent as a result of the conversion. En+ is looking to raise as much as $1.5 billion (<28>1.1 billion) from the sale of new and existing shares. Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh and Maria Kiselyova; editing by Polina Devitt and Larry King 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-en-ipo-glencore/glencore-to-swap-rusal-stake-for-shares-in-russias-en-idUKKBN1CN2IM'|'2017-10-18T19:50:00.000+03:00'
'fef75e29a8c5bbdcd3291d46f824742cd77a1668'|'Investors holding over 50 pct of Abertis back Atlantia''s bid-Italian sources'|'MILAN, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Investors holding more than 50 percent of Abertis<69> shares have expressed non-binding support for a takeover bid on the Spanish toll road operator launched by Italian rival Atlantia, two Italian sources said on Wednesday.However, one of the sources said that Abertis<69> top investor Criteria Caixa - the financial arm of a politically connected and powerful banking foundation - has not yet committed to taking up Atlantia<69>s offer, which started last week and will end on Oct. 24.Atlantia and Criteria Caixa were not immediately available for comment.German construction group Hochtief, controlled by Spain<69>s ACS, is expected to present a counterbid for Abertis later on Wednesday, people close to the matter told Reuters. (Reporting by Paola Arosio, writing by Silvia Aloisi, editing by Francesca Landini)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/abertis-ma-atlantia-investors/investors-holding-over-50-pct-of-abertis-back-atlantias-bid-italian-sources-idINI6N1MF013'|'2017-10-18T07:34:00.000+03:00'
'4218c8cb6c8c330237a6fa3038e3a6cd15e9dcce'|'UK''s Hilton Food to enter chilled-fish market with Seachill buy'|' 51 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago UK''s Hilton Food to enter chilled-fish market with Seachill buy Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Processed meat supplier Hilton Food Group ( HFG.L ) said it agreed to buy chilled-fish processor Seachill for a cash consideration of 80.8 million pounds ($106.5 million), in a move to enter the UK fish market. Hilton Food said it would look to raise up to 55.9 million pounds via a share placement to partly fund the acquisition. The acquisition of Seachill, the second biggest player in the UK fish market, is expected to add to earnings in the first full year, Hilton said on Wednesday. ($1 = 0.7588 pounds) Reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hilton-food-deals-seachill/uks-hilton-food-to-enter-chilled-fish-market-with-seachill-buy-idUKKBN1CN0OH'|'2017-10-18T09:50:00.000+03:00'
'2f56a4c08b22cebdfabbe8e25b66f9497c71a644'|'UPDATE 1-Travel company TUI plans extra flight capacity after Monarch failure'|'October 18, 2017 / 2:12 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago UPDATE 1-Travel company TUI plans extra flight capacity after Monarch failure Reuters Staff * TUI laid on more flights after Monarch collapse * Tunisia holidays unlikely to resume until next winter -MD * Thomson rebranded as TUI UK (Adds details of competitors, context) By Alistair Smout LONDON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Europe<70>s largest tour operator TUI is putting on extra flights to make up for capacity lost after this month<74>s collapse of Monarch, TUI<55>s UK and Ireland boss said on Wednesday. The company<6E>s UK and Ireland Managing Director Nick Longman said it had already laid on extra flights and was looking to add more. <20>There will be an opportunity to look at putting some new routes on to the market. We<57>ve already done that a little for this winter,<2C> Longman told Reuters. He also said that TUI was also looking at more routes for next summer. Unlike British Airways owner IAG and budget airline easyJet, TUI is not interested in acquiring Monarch slots at British airports, Longman said, adding that extra capacity could be obtained from TUI<55>s existing slot base and by working with other airline partners. A spokesman for Thomas Cook, a rival of TUI, said the company was also adding capacity, starting flights from Leeds Bradford airport and increasing capacity at Luton to add a total of 230,000 seats for next summer. Shares of leading travel companies and airlines rose after Monarch went bust, with investors betting that intense competition in the sector could ease. Last week, Willie Walsh said that capacity in Monarch<63>s slots at Gatwick would likely be replaced, but slots at smaller airports might stay vacant. Monarch fell victim to an intense price war in the airline sector after security concerns disrupted travel to the Middle East and North Africa and resulted in increased competition on popular destinations in the western Mediterranean. TUI has said that it is looking at restoring holidays to Tunisia. All holidays there were halted after an Islamist attack on a resort in Sousse killed 30 Britons who had booked their holidays through TUI. Thomas Cook has already restarted its Tunisian holidays after Britain changed its travel advice. <20>If there is sufficient consumer demand ... then we will introduce a programme to Tunisia. We<57>ll possibly look at it for summer, but more likely it will be next winter,<2C> Longman said. On Wednesday, TUI rebranded its British business as TUI UK, bringing an end to the famous travel brand Thomson. Founded in 1965, Longman said that Thomson had a strong brand but has become outdated as travel habits have moved away from traditional package holidays towards city and long-haul breaks. <20>Thomson conjures up great nostalgia for many people. But that can also be a bit limiting, and the types of holidays people want are changing,<2C> he said. Reporting by Alistair Smout; Editing by David Goodman and Jane Merriman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-tui-flights/update-1-travel-company-tui-plans-extra-flight-capacity-after-monarch-failure-idUSL8N1MT4GP'|'2017-10-18T22:12:00.000+03:00'
'52ccd892782d8d54a2dba1dbb75510171488068a'|'Mitsubishi Motors checking how Kobe Steel parts affected by false data'|'Reuters TV United States October 18, 2017 / 7:44 AM / Updated 24 minutes ago Mitsubishi Motors checking how Kobe Steel parts affected by false data Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Mitsubishi Motors Corp''s President and CEO Osamu Masuko speaks at a news conference at company headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon TOKYO (Reuters) - Mitsubishi Motors Corp ( 7211.T ) is investigating how components from suppliers containing Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ) parts have been affected by the steelmaker<65>s falsified data on product quality, the chief executive of the carmaker said on Wednesday. <20>The number of parts from suppliers which we<77>ve been told have been affected by the Kobe Steel issue has been increasing, and this is increasing our workload,<2C> Mitsubishi Motors CEO Osamu Masuko told a briefing. <20>We are working with our parts suppliers to get a full picture of the impact,<2C> he said. Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Michael Perry 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal-mitsubishimotors/mitsubishi-motors-checking-how-kobe-steel-parts-affected-by-false-data-idUKKBN1CN0U2'|'2017-10-18T10:36:00.000+03:00'
'e117d6b95033e74b34502df9d41477270f89df9a'|'U.S. FCC extends comment period for Sinclair Tribune deal'|'October 18, 2017 / 10:40 PM / Updated 17 hours ago U.S. FCC extends comment period for Sinclair Tribune deal David Shepardson 4 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday it would allow the public to submit additional comments on Sinclair Broadcast Group<75>s ( SBGI.O ) proposed $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media Co ( TRCO.N ) that has drawn fire from across the political spectrum. The FCC said it was pausing its self-imposed, 180-day shot-clock deadline on merger reviews by 15 days until Nov. 2. Sinclair, which owns more than 170 U.S. television stations, announced plans in May to acquire Tribune<6E>s 42 TV stations in 33 markets as well as cable network WGN America and digital multicast network Antenna TV, extending its reach to 72 percent of American households. The merger has been opposed by many including Dish Network Corp ( DISH.O ), conservative media, trade and liberal advocacy groups. Opponents of the deal say it will raise prices while narrowing content and news viewing choices for millions of Americans. A group of opponents to the deal, including the American Cable Association, Competitive Carriers Association, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, One America News Network and Dish, said on Wednesday the firms <20>have failed to provide adequate justification that this merger is in the public interest.<2E> Sinclair said in August the deal <20>will advance the public interest by helping to shore up an industry buffeted by well-known economic challenges.<2E> The merger would allow the company to <20>invest deeply in the free over-the-air delivery of local news, sports, and entertainment.<2E> Some opponents argue the proposed deal would give Sinclair too much influence over local news content. Sinclair would control far more stations than any of its competitors if the Tribune deal goes forward. Last week, Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said she was concerned the tie-up <20>will do harm to the time-tested principles of diversity, localism, and competition.<2E> The Maryland-based company has drawn criticism for favoring conservative political candidates. Sinclair in April hired a former Trump campaign adviser, Boris Epshteyn, as a commentator after he briefly served in the Trump White House. Newsmax Media Chief Executive Chris Ruddy told Reuters on Wednesday that <20>the Sinclair deal will lead to a massive consolidation of the television industry, and a centralization of news that will be bad for everyone in this country.<2E> He said <20>this merger will pave the way for major networks like NBC, CBS and ABC to do the same and begin owning stations all across the country.<2E> Sinclair would have to divest stations in Seattle, St. Louis, Salt Lake City and Oklahoma City as part of the Tribune acquisition under current rules. But it could reverse course if regulators change media ownership regulations. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in April he would launch a <20>comprehensive review<65> of media regulations and overhaul rules that restrict consolidation among media companies, but has not yet launched a formal proceeding. Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Phil Berlowitz 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-tribune-media-m-a-sinclair-ma/u-s-fcc-extends-comment-period-for-sinclair-tribune-deal-idINKBN1CN37B'|'2017-10-18T20:40:00.000+03:00'
'2d1b7d8c45b273615f71e331f02baff85bf83fec'|'UPDATE 1-Lufthansa bids for Alitalia as European deals take off'|'* Lufthansa seeks planes, airport slots, flight staff* Govt likely to reject offer due to envisaged 6,000 layoffs (Adds Lufthansa confirming offer)ROME, Oct 16 (Reuters) - German airline Lufthansa has submitted an offer for parts of Alitalia and a plan to reshape Italy<6C>s ailing national carrier just days after agreeing to buy some of Air Berlin<69>s assets.Lufthansa<73>s offer is not for the whole Italian airline, but only for parts of its network, meaning it may not find favour with Rome, which wants to sell Alitalia in one package and avoid a split of its aviation and ground service activities.Possible job cuts are also likely to stoke resistance to the Lufthansa approach.Italy had on Friday delayed the sale process, extending to April 30 a deadline to improve the bids which had previously been set for Nov. 5.The German carrier did not provide details of its offer but said it included plans for what it termed a new Alitalia.<2E>The offer includes a concept for a newly structured Alitalia with a focused business model (<28>NewAlitalia<69>), which could develop long-term economic prospects,<2C> it said.Earlier, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported Lufthansa was offering 500 million euros ($590 million) to acquire the planes, airport runway slots and air crew.Citing three anonymous sources, the paper said Lufthansa has also proposed halving Alitalia<69>s workforce of 12,000 employees and reducing its short- and medium-range flights.The paper said the offer was likely to be rejected by the state commissioners who are managing the carrier while it is being sold.LUFTHANSA SPREADS WINGS The offer from Lufthansa, which also owns Brussels Airlines, Swiss, Austrian and Eurowings, comes after it agreed a deal last week for large parts of Air Berlin, which will see its Eurowings budget unit grow to 210 aircraft from 160.Cut-throat competition on short-haul routes in Europe has pressured several airlines, with British leisure carrier Monarch also collapsing this month, on top of the administration processes for Air Berlin and Alitalia.Carriers such as British Airways parent IAG and Norwegian Air Shuttle have said they would be interested in some Monarch airport slots, while easyJet said it is in talks for 25 Air Berlin planes at Berlin Tegel airport.Alitalia, which has made a profit only a few times in its 70-year history, filed for special administration this year after staff rejected a plan to cut jobs and salaries.Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said last week he was only interested if a new Alitalia could be created.Ryanair had also been interested in making a bid, provided Alitalia could be drastically restructured. However, it pulled out to focus on its rostering issues.On Friday the Italian government also passed an emergency decree to add a further 300 million euros to the loan of 600 million euros it made to the loss-making carrier in May and extend the repayment deadline. ($1 = 0.8481 euros) (Reporting by Valentina Za in Milan and Victoria Bryan in Berlin; Editing by Greg Mahlich/Keith Weir)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/alitalia-sale-lufthansa/update-1-lufthansa-bids-for-alitalia-as-european-deals-take-off-idINL8N1MR4XU'|'2017-10-16T13:11:00.000+03:00'
'73507d7230b4533609bf62dd03db03fa3073223a'|'UBS loses appeal against derivatives contracts ruling'|'UBS loses appeal against derivatives contracts ruling UK court says Swiss bank cannot enforce contracts against German utility KWL Read next Play audio for this article Pause This is an experimental feature. Give us your feedback. Thank you for your feedback. What do you think? I<>ll use it in the future I don<6F>t think I<>ll use it Please tell us why (optional) Send Feedback UBS has failed to overturn a legal ruling over complex derivatives contracts sold to a German water utility before the financial crisis. The Court of Appeal in London on Monday dismissed the Swiss bank<6E>s appeal and said that the Leipzig municipal water company could set aside controversial contracts with UBS on the grounds of bribery and conflict of interest. The dispute was the subject of a High Court trial in 2014 that included allegations of corruption, a trip to visit strippers in New York and an African safari. Mr Justice Males, the trial judge, was highly critical of UBS<42>s conduct, describing it as <20> a case study in how not to conduct investment banking in an honest and fair way<61>. UBS had sought to overturn the ruling in the latest appeal, which turns on whether the Swiss bank is owed $140m from complex derivatives contracts sold to Kommunale Wasserwerke Leipzig (KWL), a supplier of water and sewerage services. KWL had claimed the deal was invalid because Steven Bracy, a former UBS banker, had had an <20>improper<65> relationship with Value Partners, a Swiss consultancy advising the utility on the derivatives contracts. The utility had claimed that a $3m bribe was paid by Value Partners to KWL<57>s managing director, Klaus Heninger, and money was also <20>secretly appropriated<65> by Berthold Senf and Juergen Blatz, two partners at Value Partners. KWL told the 2014 trial that Value Partners had invited Mr Bracy to go on safari to discuss business deals and that he spent an evening in New York with Senf and Blatz where $7,000 was paid for strippers. Heninger, Blatz and Senf have since been convicted and given jail terms in Germany. The Court of Appeal ruled on Monday by a majority of two judges to one that it would be <20>inequitable<6C> for UBS to enforce the contracts against KWL. It found that KWL was not liable under the derivative contracts and concluded that UBS bore the consequences of a bribe paid by the water utility<74>s corrupt advisers to one of KWL<57>s managing directors to enter into the transactions <20> even though UBS did not know of the bribe itself. The court said UBS had entered into an arrangement with Value Partners where the Swiss consultancy would steer municipal clients towards complex derivative contracts with the bank regardless of the clients<74> interests. <20>Here UBS set out dishonestly to assist Value Partners in the very course of abusive conduct which led to the making of the transaction and the payment of the bribe in order to facilitate it,<2C> Lord Briggs and Lord Hamblen said in the ruling. However the third Court of Appeal judge, Lady Justice Gloster, said she would have allowed UBS<42>s appeal. She said it was <20>commercially unreal<61> to effectively make UBS legally responsible for the bribery carried out by Value Partners. Lady Gloster said it was one thing for UBS to know that Value Partners had a conflict of interest <20>but another thing entirely for UBS to know that Value Partners was engaged in a deliberate, calculated bribery of the counterparty KWL<57>. UBS said in a statement that it was <20>disappointed<65> with the decision and said it intended to lodge a further appeal. <20>We note that this decision was not unanimous, with a strong dissenting judgment in favour of UBS, and we intend to appeal to the Supreme Court,<2C> it said. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2017. All rights reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don''t copy articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/content/d68b6318-b268-11e7-aa26-bb002965bce8'|'2017-10-16T15:50:00.000+03:00'
'436a4488e83662d0033e44fd873263e3b03aa4ed'|'SpringerNature prepares 2018 stock market listing: sources'|'FRANKFURT (Reuters) - SpringerNature, the publisher of science magazines Nature and Scientific American, is preparing a 2018 stock market listing valuing the company at up to 4 billion euros ($4.7 billion), people close to the matter said.The company has recently asked investment banks to pitch for roles in the initial public offering that is expected to take place as early as the June or July 2018, as one of its owners seeks to cash out in buoyant equity markets, the people said.The SpringerNature joint venture is 53-percent owned by German publisher Holtzbrinck, with buyout group BC Partners holding the rest.It was formed in 2015 through the merger of Holtzbrinck<63>s Macmillan Science and Education unit with BC Partners<72> Springer business, which publishes scientific, technical and medical books and journals. At the time, the company was valued at more than 5 billion euros ($5.87 billion) including debt.BC Partners declined to comment, while Holtzbrinck was not immediately available for comment.Holtzbrinck may seek to keep a majority in the company following a stock market flotation, one of the people said, adding that the company could contribute other parts of its digital activities to the joint venture to avoid having to inject cash to stay above a 50 percent shareholding.The creation of SpringerNature was designed to make it easier for the SpringerNature to compete with the likes of RELX ( REL.L ) and Wolters Kluwer ( WLSNc.AS ), as publishers move more and more into digital content and readers increasingly use smartphones and tablets to access information.SpringerNature posted 1.62 billion euros in sales last year and employs 13,000 staff. It publishes roughly 3,000 scientific magazines as well as 12,000 new books every year.It is expected to post earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of 480 million euros next year and may be valued at up to 6.5-7 billion euros including its 3 billion euros in debt, one of the people said.That would equate to 15-16 times its core earnings excluding capital expenditure, the person added.In 2015, BC Partners said that it targeted a stock market listing of the business within two to three years.SpringerNature is a separate company from German publisher Axel Springer ( SPRGn.DE ).Reporting by Arno Schuetze, editing by Emma Thomasson and Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-springer-nature/springernature-prepares-2018-stock-market-listing-sources-idINKBN1CM2LL'|'2017-10-17T15:43:00.000+03:00'
'd8c6ca1c834adf1e98b1df99c5689a162a2405f2'|'UK unemployment report expected to show pay lagging inflation <20> business live'|'Close Skip to main content switch to the UK edition switch to the US edition switch to the Australia edition Current Edition: International edition The Guardian - Back to home become a supporter subscribe find a job jobs sign in news opinion sport arts life All sections news headlines world news UK news science cities global development tech business environment obituaries opinion opinion home the guardian view columnists cartoons opinion videos letters sport sport home football rugby union cricket tennis cycling F1 golf US sports arts culture home books music tv & radio art & design film games classical stage life lifestyle home fashion food recipes love & sex health & fitness home & garden women family travel money What term do you want to search? Search with google become a supporter subscribe Sign in/up my account Comment activity Edit profile Email preferences Change password Sign out International edition switch to the UK edition switch to the US edition switch to the Australia edition jobs dating holidays the guardian app video podcasts pictures newsletters today''s paper the observer digital archive crosswords Facebook Twitter jobs dating holidays business economics banking money markets eurozone b2b more sign in Comment activity Edit profile Email preferences Change password Sign out become a supporter subscribe search jobs dating more from the guardian: dating jobs change edition: switch to the UK edition switch to the US edition switch to the AU edition International edition switch to the UK edition switch to the US edition switch to the Australia edition The Guardian - Back to home home <20> business <20> economics banking retail markets eurozone home UK world sport football opinion culture business selected lifestyle fashion environment tech travel browse all sections close Business Business live UK wage squeeze continues, as jobless rate remains at 42-year low <20> as it happened All the day<61>s economic and financial news, including the latest UK labour force statisticsBREAKING: Pay still lagging behind inflation Basic pay rose by just 2.1% in the last year CHART: Real wages back at 2006 levels Jobless rate remains at 4.3%, the lowest since 1975 Unemployment has fallen again Yesterday, inflation rose to 3% Updated A job recruitment centre in central London. Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email View more sharing options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Google+ Share on WhatsApp Share on Messenger Close Graeme Wearden Wednesday 18 October 2017 14.00 BST First published on Wednesday 18 October 2017 08.11 BST Key events Show 2.00pm BST 14:00 Larry Elliott: No immediate end in sight to wage 11.17am BST 11:17 Revealed: Who''s suffering worst from the pay squeeze 10.39am BST 10:39 Unemployment: the key charts 10.23am BST 10:23 Resolution: Average pay is back at 2006 levels 10.07am BST 10:07 ING: Pay squeeze will continue 10.01am BST 10:01 Government: We''re making ''great progress'' 9.36am BST 09:36 UK JOBS DATA RELEASED Live feed Show 2.00pm BST 14:00 Larry Elliott: No immediate end in sight to wage And finally.... here<72>s our economics editor Larry Elliott on today<61>s labour market report : Firstly, it is clear that the economy is great at creating jobs but hopeless at generating pay rises. Employment is up by more than 300,000 over the past year but average earnings growth at 2.2% is slightly lower than it was in the summer of 2016.Secondly, while employment has been a lot stronger than was feared in the run-up to the Brexit referendum, the pace of growth eased in the three months ending in August.Finally, there is no immediate end in sight for the fall in real (inflation-adjusted) wages which have now fallen for a sixth successive month. The Resolution Foundation notes that real average earnings are no higher now than they were in 2016.The UK pay gap Photograph: Resolution Foundation Larry adds:It will be well into 2018 before pay gr
'cdc5301d1a65fddf33ff7b95ea7abb063a6fb2ed'|'UK wage growth weak but likely to keep BoE on track for rate hike'|'October 18, 2017 / 9:19 AM / Updated 3 hours ago UK pay lags inflation again, BoE still seen raising rates William Schomberg , Andy Bruce 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British pay growth has lagged behind inflation again, official data showed on Wednesday, adding to questions about how quickly the Bank of England will raise interest rates after an initial hike expected on Nov. 2. The British central bank looks on course to deliver its first increase in borrowing costs in a decade, most economists said after the data, reversing last year<61>s rate cut that followed Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union. Britain<69>s jobless rate between June and August held at a 42-year low of 4.3 percent, one reason why the BoE thinks pay is likely to pick up soon. And while overall annual pay growth of 2.2 percent was weaker than inflation - which hit 3 percent in September, its highest level since 2012 - it was slightly above a median forecast of 2.1 percent in a Reuters poll of economists. There was slightly stronger growth for workers in the private sector, the Office for National Statistics said. <20>I can<61>t see anything in these numbers that will alter the Bank of England<6E>s thinking,<2C> Sam Hill, an economist with RBC Capital Markets, said. However, the stubborn gap between weak wage growth and high inflation meant there was <20>considerable doubt<62> about further rate hikes in 2018, he said. Britain, like the United States and other rich economies, has seen a sharp fall in unemployment which would normally fuel inflation, according to established economic theory. But wages on both sides of the Atlantic have failed to rise in a significant way since the financial crisis a decade ago. WEAK GROWTH FILE PHOTO: A member of staff works in the cockpit of an aircraft on the Eurofighter Typhoon production line at BAE systems Warton plant near Preston, Britain, September 7, 2012. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo Despite a slowdown in Britain<69>s economy this year which has been linked to last year<61>s Brexit vote shock, the BoE is widely expected to return rates to 0.50 percent from 0.25 percent on Nov. 2, at the end of its next meeting. Sterling rose briefly after Wednesday<61>s figures and government bond prices fell slightly before reverting to earlier levels. The BoE expects pay growth to pick up speed soon because the unemployment rate is below the 4.5 percent level it sees as a trigger for inflation pressure in the economy. It also thinks Brexit will increase price growth in Britain. However, comments by two BoE policymakers on Tuesday, who noted the weak growth in wages, were seen by investors as a sign of disagreement at the central bank on rate hikes after an initial increase. The ONS said pay excluding bonuses, earnings rose by 2.1 percent, also a touch stronger than the Reuters poll forecast of 2.0 percent. In August alone, total wages picked up speed to grow by 2.2 percent after a slowdown in July to 1.7 percent. The BoE expects wages to rise by 2 percent this year before picking up to 3 percent in 2018 and 3.25 percent in 2019. The number of people in work rose by 94,000 in the three months to August, about half the increase in the three months to July but still a relatively strong rate of growth. The steady loss of spending power for households is not just a headache for the BoE. Prime Minister Theresa May has promised help for households and has proposed a cap on power tariffs. Finance minister Philip Hammond is under pressure to come up with further measures when he announces his budget plan in November. But he has little margin for error given the still weak state of Britain<69>s public finances. Writing by William Schomberg; Editing by Janet Lawrence 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-jobs/uk-wage-growth-weak-but-likely-to-keep-boe-on-track-for-rate-hike-idUKKBN1CN13S'|'2017-10-18T12:17:00.000+03:00'
'20a11bddbb0aa1770e50ff284b17484f6887ff9b'|'Australia shuns clean energy target in policy overhaul'|'October 17, 2017 / 3:46 AM / in 25 minutes Australia shuns clean energy target in policy overhaul Sonali Paul 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A solar array, a linked collection of solar panels, can be seen in front of a residential apartment block in the Sydney suburb of Chatswood in Australia, July 28, 2017. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australia<69>s government on Tuesday rejected calls to set a clean energy target, instead scrapping aid for renewable projects and adopting a fuel-neutral energy policy that it said could keep the country<72>s lights on and cut power prices. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull won support from his Conservative party for a plan to end subsidies for renewable energy after 2020, while requiring energy retailers to guarantee an energy mix that would bring both reliable power and lower carbon emissions. Turnbull set out to overhaul energy policy a year ago to end a decade of political strife over carbon targets - amid rising power prices for domestic consumers - and stabilise the nation<6F>s grid after a huge storm blacked out the country<72>s most wind power-dependent state. <20>These guarantees will ensure there is a place for all power sources in the nation<6F>s future energy mix - solar, wind, coal, gas, batteries, pumped hydro,<2C> Turnbull said, announcing the plan in a video posted on social media. <20>Our plan has no subsidies, no certificates and no tax.<2E> Turnbull had faced a revolt from right-wing members of his party, led by former prime minister Tony Abbott, who do not believe climate change is a threat, and back coal while opposing subsidies for renewable energy. Australia<69>s energy supply woes have grown as states promoted rooftop solar and wind power over the past 10 years in the absence of a consistent national policy on carbon emissions. At the same time, coal- and gas-fired power plants have been shut, reducing crucial back-up for wind and solar, while costs have risen. Household power prices in eastern Australia have soared 63 percent over the past nine years, the nation<6F>s consumer watchdog said in a report on Monday. FILE PHOTO: A cloud rises from the Port Kembla steelworks behind an electricity pole in Wollongong, south of Sydney, Australia, February 21, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo Spurning a recommendation for a clean energy target from the country<72>s chief scientist, the new policy will allow energy retailers to decide what sources of power to use. It could result in an extension of the lives of some ageing coal-fired plants if needed to help back up intermittent wind and solar power. Australia<69>s biggest power retailers - Origin Energy ( ORG.AX ), AGL Energy ( AGL.AX ), and EnergyAustralia, owned by Hong Kong<6E>s CLP Holdings ( 0002.HK ) - are also the country<72>s biggest generators of electricity. FILE PHOTO: The Liddell coal-fired power station is pictured in the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney, Australia, April 9, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo Trading in their shares was mixed, but AGL Chief Executive Andy Vesey welcomed the plan as a first step. <20>With bipartisan support, it will provide investment certainty,<2C> he said on social media. Still, the opposition Labor Party joined wind and solar advocates in saying the decision not to adopt a clean energy target was a mistake. <20>Labor<6F>s position is clear: Australia should have at least 50 per cent of its electricity delivered by renewable energy by 2030,<2C> shadow energy minister Mark Butler told reporters. The power industry fears that if Labor does not back the plan and wins the next election - due in late 2018 or early 2019 - policy could be overhauled yet again, leaving no certainty for investors. <20>The clean energy target was the best opportunity in years to lock in the long-term bipartisan energy policy needed to encourage investment in cleaner energy,<2C> Clean Energy Council chief executive Kane Thornton said in a statement. Reporting by Sonali Paul; Additional reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Kenneth Ma
'35f6c7be3934fe3e53a43fa940e992182a0f9aff'|'Brexit transition deal likely to be too late for some banks, says TheCityUK'|'October 16, 2017 / 11:17 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Brexit transition deal likely to be too late for some banks, says TheCityUK Huw Jones 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Any binding Brexit transition agreement is unlikely before the first quarter of next year, too late to stop some banks in London from pressing the <20>relocate<74> button, a British financial services lobby group said on Tuesday. Britain<69>s financial sector is concerned that, with EU divorce talks bogged down by failure to agree the UK<55>s exit bill, time is running out for a transition deal that would be of any use to businesses. TheCityUK, which promotes Britain<69>s financial services sector abroad, said the value of such a deal is disappearing by the day and agreement would be needed in the first quarter of next year for financial businesses to reap any benefit and avoid fragmenting markets. <20>If they haven<65>t done so already, most will be ready to press <20>go<67> on their contingency plans in the New Year,<2C> said Miles Celic, chief executive of TheCityUK. <20>They can still take their foot off the accelerator if a transitional deal is agreed, but without progress soon, it may be too late,<2C> Celic said. Once businesses start moving, there is no reverse gear and the risk is that jobs and investment will head to Europe, he said. A transition period of at least two years -- the preferred option for Britain<69>s banks -- should entail as close to full European market access as possible, he added. EU leaders meet on Thursday and Friday to discuss Brexit and a draft communique showed they won<6F>t adopt guidelines on possible transitional arrangements until December. Meanwhile, some pro-Brexit lawmakers have said that Britain should not be subject to European Court of Justice rulings and that no new EU rules should be implemented during any transition period. A UK financial industry official said there is no time to negotiate a bespoke transition deal to meet such demands. <20>If you are going to be in the club, you can only have the set menu,<2C> he said. The Bank of England has said that a transition deal is needed by Christmas, given the time it takes to approve new licences for the continuation of cross-border banking after Brexit in March 2019. If a political deal on transition is agreed between the EU and Britain, regulators would also need to give banks assurances that they would respect it when it comes to assessing risks, TheCityUK said. The Bank of England has said it would decide by year-end whether London branches of EU banks must become subsidiaries if there is no transition deal in sight. Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by David Goodman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-banks/brexit-transition-deal-likely-to-be-too-late-for-some-banks-says-thecityuk-idINKBN1CL34C'|'2017-10-17T02:03:00.000+03:00'
'332e777cba8a06b01f3af5eb6c4fc2e5039244e0'|'British government proposes new M&A rules to protect national security'|'FILE PHOTO: A view of the City of London and Canary Wharf. July 7, 2017. REUTERS/John Sibley/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Britain wants more say over deals in its military and technology sectors, as the government tries to prevent homegrown companies in sensitive industries from falling into foreign hands.The proposals, announced on Tuesday as part of a broader consultation on potential changes to takeover rules, mark a shift for a country which has traditionally been one of the most open to foreign buyout deals.That emphasis has changed, with a string of acquisitions by Chinese companies across the world fuelling security concerns in countries including Germany and the United States.<2E>At first sight we have concerns that these proposals will have a chilling effect - the opposite of the <20>UK open for business<73> message which accompanies them,<2C> said Angus Coulter, partner at law firm Hogan Lovells.The weakening of the pound since Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union has also made UK companies cheaper for foreign buyers.Theresa May, who became prime minister after the Brexit vote, said last September that her government would take a more cautious approach to foreign investments after approving a $24 billion plan for a Chinese-backed nuclear power plant in southwest England.Since then though there have been a number of other high profile foreign takeovers in Britain, particularly in the technology sector.In September, Canyon Bridge Capital Partners - a China-backed buyout fund that was barred a week earlier by U.S. President Donald Trump from buying a U.S. chipmaker - agreed to buy British chip designer Imagination Technologies ( IMG.L ), sparking criticism from some politicians and media of the UK<55>s relaxed rules..<2E>It is the first duty of government to make sure that we are protected from hostile threats,<2C> Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark said at a Q&A session after his parliamentary statement.<2E>It is right to periodically upgrade our systems for scrutiny and .... smaller companies have the potential to carry a threat to national security and these measures respond to that.<2E>The proposals include lowering the turnover threshold at which the government can scrutinize deals to companies with annual revenues of at least 1 million pounds ($1.3 million), from 70 million previously.The proposed changes would apply to companies in the military sector and those involved in the design of computer chips and quantum technology.<2E>This will mean that investment from certain countries will be looked at much more closely and inevitably when politicians are involved in transactions, it will increase uncertainty and a lack of predictability and, depending on how the system works, maybe a question mark over transparency,<2C> said Nigel Parr, partner at law firm Ashurst.BUYOUT BRITAIN The world<6C>s fifth-largest economy is trying to balance the need to remain open for investment after the Brexit vote while upholding a pledge by Prime Minister Theresa May to intervene when big foreign investments concern critical assets.Since the Brexit vote in June 2016, Britain has remained a busy market for mergers and acquisitions, with the value of deals up 26 percent so far this year to $125 billion, Thomson Reuters data shows.Some lawyers said these new proposals would not have made much difference to this recent pick-up in deals though, questioning the long-term need for them.<2E>We are not aware of a significant number of <20>problem<65> transactions which the government has been unable to review under existing rules. There is a general question of whether there is a need to impose extra cost on business and government, and whether now is the right time to do so,<2C> Hogan Lovell<6C>s Coulter said.The government also said it would open a twelve-week consultation period on longer-term reform proposals, including an expanded version of the <20>call in<69> power that allows the government to scrutinize a broader range of transactions for national securit
'31567018fbf2bd17256790b3e3426514312427a8'|'Cement maker ACC''s September-quarter profit more than doubles'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:30 AM / in 5 hours Cement maker ACC''s September-quarter profit more than doubles Reuters Staff 1 Min Read A labourer takes a nap on the stacked cement sacks of ACC company on the outskirts of Allahabad June 22, 2012. REUTERS/Jitendra Prakash/Files REUTERS - Cement maker ACC Ltd<74>s ( ACC.NS ) quarterly profit more than doubled, beating analysts<74> expectations, helped by strong cement sales volume growth. Profit rose to 1.82 billion rupees ($28.0 million) in third quarter ended Sept. 30, from 897.1 million rupees a year earlier. ( bit.ly/2goduYv ) Cement sales volume rose about 18 percent to 5.96 million tonnes in the quarter. Sales volume growth was aided by capacity stabilization of the Jamul plant in Chhattisgarh and the Sindri plant in Jharkhand, the company said on Tuesday. Analysts on average had expected the company to post a profit of 1.66 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters data. ($1 = 64.9000 Indian rupees) Reporting by Vishal Sridhar and Arnab Paul in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair and Amrutha Gayathri 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/acc-results/cement-maker-accs-september-quarter-profit-more-than-doubles-idINKBN1CM0ZU'|'2017-10-17T07:30:00.000+03:00'
'9614bf3621fdd70da6356c6ea2b6b9a2b4dc2048'|'Carriers in America are doubling down on budget airfares'|'GLEN HAUENSTEIN, the president of Delta, is optimistic about the future of basic economy. On a conference call this week, he boasted that the stripped-down airfares actually act as an incentive for passengers to upgrade to the more expensive standard economy tickets. Despite Mr Hauenstein describing it as a product that <20>people don<6F>t really want<6E>, the airline says it will expand the revenue-boosting basic-fares system in 2018.Delta was the first carrier to roll out basic economy fares<65>sometimes called <20> last class <20><>in America in 2012. Since then the model has caught on. Both American and United quickly introduced similar services on some domestic routes. By taking away a perk here and adding another there, each airline has created a unique version of the same miserable experience. The new fare system is not without its critics. Many have pointed out that it is just a clever way to raise the price of standard economy fares. Others noted the problems with hastily designed pricing algorithms, which sometimes led to regular economy seats being on offer for less than basic economy ones.For a while, such criticism slowed expansion. In August, United<65>s aggressive roll out of last class unexpectedly stalled. In a cryptic statement the airline declared that it had <20>under-appreciated that incremental revenue from buy-up would be more than offset by share loss to legacy carriers without similar basic economy offering.<2E> In other words, customers had started to shop elsewhere.However, other carriers have not been so hesitant. Some are expanding basic economy fares into international routes. American Airlines announced that the fare would be on offer on flights from the United States to the Caribbean and Central America<63>a first for that carrier. Delta, too, is now planning to take basic economy overseas. It is likely that other carriers will soon follow suit and that last class will spread across the world. For business travellers, this paints a bleak picture of a future in which booked flights will have to be carefully managed to avoid the pitfalls of basic economy fares.But for airlines, the outlook is bright. Recently Warren Buffett invested heavily in them. Other investors are flocking to the legacy carriers too, as strong quarterly reports continue to roll in. Doug Parker, the boss of American, captured the industry<72>s jubilant mood in a meeting with investors in late September when he said: <20>I don<6F>t think we<77>re ever going to lose money again.<2E> It is not clear whether Mr Parker will come to regret such a bold statement, but it certainly looks like basic economy is here to stay.Previous More airlines are offering free Wi-Fi for messaging services Next Airlines are trying to cram ever more seats onto planes'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/10/lasting-class?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-13T23:37:00.000+03:00'
'ce6efb5e6d385b50320dbd1a2a287c5a9cb2a6d7'|'China factories grapple with soaring prices as pollution crackdown bites'|' 27 AM / Updated 30 minutes ago China factories grapple with soaring prices as pollution crackdown bites James Pomfret , Venus Wu 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Chinese national flags are flying near a steel factory in Wu''an, Hebei province, China, February 23, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo GUANGZHOU, China (Reuters) - Chinese exporters at the country<72>s biggest trade fair are more optimistic about global demand now than six months ago but Beijing<6E>s crackdown on pollution is ramping up costs and product prices, hurting smaller factories and foreign buyers. At the Canton Fair where some 25,000 manufacturers are showcasing products from industrial engines to egg-cracking machines, the mood is sanguine. The world<6C>s second-largest economy has defied expectations for a slowdown this year and import and export growth in September suggests factory activity remains in high gear. In a survey of 102 exporters at the Guangzhou-based trade fair, 77 percent of the mostly small- to medium-sized Chinese manufacturers expect orders to increase next year, compared with 70 percent during the previous event in April. But many manufacturers, especially smaller ones, complained about currency fluctuations and China<6E>s stepped up anti-pollution drive pushing costs up as firms scramble to invest in new equipment or costly processes to meet more stringent emissions standards. <20>The environmental regulations are hitting everyone. I<>d say thirty percent of factories are affected,<2C> said Lynn Chen, a director of Masda, a Pearl River Delta manufacturer of antennas with around 20 million yuan ($3 million) in sales annually. Larger factories were weathering the anti-pollution blitz better but many small factories were being forced out of business including small aluminium tube makers in eastern Zhejiang province, Chen said, noting that the costs of sourcing such components for antennas had risen 20 percent. Price rallies across the commodities complex have accelerated in recent months as the government has ramped up environmental inspections and factories prepare for the most stringent ever smog-busting measures across the north this winter. Some 28 cities have been ordered to slash output of heavy industry from aluminium and steel to cement for four months from Nov. 15. PRICE OF CLEAN AIR David Li of Guangzhou Light Holdings that makes karaoke speakers with pulsing disco lights said plants with metal plating, dyeing, or spray painting processes had been badly hit, raising production costs by 5 to 10 percent. A virtual ban on waste paper imports on environmental grounds, was also creating a shortage of generic cardboard packaging, driving paper prices up more than 60 percent in some cases, four exporters said. <20>The changes are good, but they<65>re being pushed through too fast,<2C> said Li. Of the 102 exporters polled by Reuters, production cost was the biggest concern. While online sourcing has partially supplanted marquee trade events such as the Canton Fair, which began in 1957, the event continues to draw tens of thousands of Chinese factories and foreign buyers, making it a useful barometer of China trade. Some foreign businessmen said they were shocked by the jump in prices for some products. <20>It<49>s really scary. How could the price change so much?<3F> said Lagos-based Maxwell Akabuogu who has cut the number of containers he sends monthly to Nigeria from 12 to 3, with prices of lead batteries, his staple product, having surged 30 percent over the past four months. <20>I<EFBFBD>m starting to buy from South Korea now. It<49>s more reliable and the price is steady,<2C> he said. Venee Wen, a regional sales manager for the Guangzhou Tiger Head Battery Group, that makes the popular <20>555<35> brand, said lead battery prices had jumped 20 to 30 percent since April given a surge in costs for the base metal. <20>China<6E>s long-term policies on the environment are good but there is a short-term impact ... the bad (polluting) companies have died,<2C> she told Reuters. <20>The buyer
'8c5711facb28cc393e0a1dc373c0b5a7d9e09f57'|'Newest outpost for U.S. crude exports: India'|' 35 AM / in 4 hours Newest outpost for U.S. crude exports: India Julia Simon , Nidhi Verma 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Sample bottles of crude oil are seen in this illustration photo June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo NEW YORK/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India is set to emerge as a key market for American crude exports in coming months, as refineries in that country are ramping up <20>test<73> purchases of U.S. grades to diversify their imports. U.S. exports recently set a weekly record with nearly 2 million barrels of crude a day sent overseas. But shipments to India have been rare, with just a few deliveries since the U.S. lifted its ban on crude exports in late 2015. Indian refineries are starting to increase purchases as the country seeks to secure more supply from outside the Middle East. Refiners are testing both U.S. sweet and sour crudes in their facilities, a common practice when importing crude from new sources. <20>A lot of these (Indian refiners) want to see what it<69>s like if they run it,<2C> said one Houston-based oil broker. <20>They want to get a taste of U.S. crude.<2E> Those refiners are taking advantage of a wide spread between U.S. oil and other global benchmarks, which has created an attractive discount on American crude grades. Foreign refiners, including those in India, have bid up those physical grades against the U.S. crude benchmark to multi-year highs, traders and brokers said. That includes onshore grades from the Permian Basin in West Texas and the Eagle Ford further east, as well as offshore U.S. Gulf grades including Mars Sour and Southern Green Canyon. In June, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Donald Trump met and discussed energy exports to India. Since then the Modi administration has been encouraging more crude imports by waiving some shipping requirements. Indian refiners Indian Oil Corp, Bharat Petroleum Corp and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited were given a special permission by the shipping ministry to import oil from the United States until March. <20>They<65>ve been stepping up to be a sizeable importer; they<65>re looking to diversify away from the Middle East,<2C> said John Kilduff, partner at energy hedge fund Again Capital LLC in New York. The executive of India<69>s state-owned Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd said in August the company was assessing whether U.S. crude could replace Nigerian barrels; it made its first buy of U.S. oil in September. One supertanker carrying nearly 2 million barrels discharged in India earlier this month, according to Eikon shipping data, while two other vessels carrying a combined 3 million barrels are set to arrive in November. Prior to this, U.S. crude rarely went to India, with only one month this year - February - showing deliveries, according to U.S. EIA data through July. In August, IOC bought 950,000 barrels of light sweet Eagle Ford shale oil and 950,000 barrels of heavy sour Mars crude for end-October delivery from trading firm Trafigura. In October the company bought 1 million barrels each of U.S. Southern Green Canyon (SGC) and WTI Midland crude. In October, India<69>s Reliance Industries Ltd, the world<6C>s largest refining complex, purchased 1 million barrels of Midland and a similar-sized cargo of Eagle Ford crude for November delivery. Reporting by Julia Simon in New York;   Florence Tan in Singapore and Nidhi Verma in New Delhi; Editing by Matthew Lewis 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-exports-india/newest-outpost-for-u-s-crude-exports-india-idINKBN1CM0V3'|'2017-10-17T08:04:00.000+03:00'
'228044635ef12c2e3a6b19dd3e97a54d2e148487'|'Brexit transition period can create certainty for businesses - Hammond'|'October 17, 2017 / 11:24 AM / Updated an hour ago Brexit transition period can create certainty for businesses - Hammond Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Companies in Britain and the European Union will benefit from the certainty of a time-limited transition period during Brexit, British Chancellor Philip Hammond said on Tuesday. <20>(By) delivering a time-limited transition period, avoiding a disruptive cliff-edge exit from the EU, we can provide greater certainty for businesses up and down the UK, and across the European Union,<2C> Hammond said at the presentation of an OECD report on Britain. Hammond said Britain would consider the report and act where it could. Reporting by Andy Bruce and Alistair Smout; Editing by Alison Williams 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-oecd-hammond/brexit-transition-period-can-create-certainty-for-businesses-hammond-idUKKBN1CM1IG'|'2017-10-17T14:24:00.000+03:00'
'4681e1d61f704e6445179e8a3c3e55d7c6a4e2d0'|'Harley''s retail sales misses estimates, margins slide'|'October 17, 2017 / 1:18 PM / Updated 2 hours ago Harley says gaining traction with buyers even as retail sales fall 3 Min Read A Harley-Davidson bike is displayed in their office in Singapore October 13, 2016. REUTERS/Edgar Su/Files (Reuters) - Harley-Davidson Inc ( HOG.N ) reported weaker-than-expected quarterly retail sales as low prices for used motorcycles in the United States dampened demand for new ones. Harley shares rose 4 percent, rebounding from an early 3 percent drop, after executives on the company<6E>s earnings call said it was making progress toward attracting new riders. Harley<65>s loyal, but aging, customers are selling their motorcycles and few millennials are taking up motorcycling. And Harley<65>s more efficient models rolled out over the past year are pressuring prices of older motorcycles. Year-to-date sales of used Harley motorbikes have risen through August, but retail prices increased as well after falling for 12 straight quarters, narrowing the price gap with new bikes, Chief Financial Officer John Olin said. The weaker dollar, which is expected to limit the ability of Harley<65>s international rivals to offer discounts could also help, Olin said. The company maintained its full-year shipment forecast of 241,000 to 246,000 motorcycles. Harley shares rose 0.6 percent to $46.29 at mid-afternoon. They have lost a quarter of their value this year, compared with a 14.2 percent increase in the S&P 500 index .SPX . Analysts remained cautious. Aegis Capital analyst Rommel Dionisio said he would look for signs of an industrywide rebound in retail sales, or more market share gains by Harley, before getting more bullish on the stock. Shipments slid 14.3 percent in the third quarter ended Sept. 24. Harley said it had cut production in the second half of 2017 to match demand. Global retail sales, by dealers to customers, fell 6.9 percent, almost double the 3.2 percent expected by Consensus Metrix. U.S. retail sales fell 8.1 percent instead of the 5.6 percent drop expected. Third-quarter operating margin slid 8 points to 2 percent, hurt partly by more sales of mid-priced cruiser motorcycles. Shipments of costlier touring motorcycles slumped 37 percent. Harley said it expected to ship more higher-margin bikes in the current quarter. The company has been investing to attract new buyers and Chief Executive Matthew Levatich said on Tuesday that initiatives such as courses to teach motorcycling were starting to pay off. Profit plunged nearly 40 percent to 40 cents per share, beating the average analyst estimate by 1 cent. Revenue from motorcycles and related products fell to $962.1 million, beating analysts<74> estimate of $953.3 million according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru and Sayantani Ghosh in New York; Additional reporting by Rachit Vats; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Richard Chang 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/harley-davidson-results/harleys-retail-sales-misses-estimates-margins-slide-idINKBN1CM1W8'|'2017-10-17T11:18:00.000+03:00'
'397f86721eb4d7a898d88422a07d42bea08a5528'|'New Bank of England deputy says not ready to vote for rate hike'|'October 17, 2017 / 12:08 PM / in 5 hours New Bank of England deputy says not ready to vote for rate hike David Milliken , William Schomberg 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A pedestrian walks past the Bank of England in the City of London, Britain April 19, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England<6E>s new deputy governor distanced himself from the central bank<6E>s majority view that interest rates probably need to rise soon, and another newcomer said her support for that position was <20>very contingent on the data<74>. Sterling and government bond yields fell as investors took the comments from Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden and policymaker Silvana Tenreyro as a sign that even if the BoE raises rates in November, further increases are unlikely to happen quickly. Ramsden said he was not part of the majority of BoE policymakers who believe a rate hike is likely to be needed <20>in the coming months<68> because he saw little sign of inflation pressure building in Britain<69>s labour market. <20>Despite continued robust growth in employment, there is no sign of second-round effects onto wages from higher recent inflation,<2C> he told a committee of British lawmakers in his first public comments on monetary policy. Ramsden joined the BoE last month after serving as the British finance ministry<72>s top economic adviser. Tenreyro, an external member of the Monetary Policy Committee, said she might back a rate hike <20>in the coming months<68> if inflation pressure builds in the labour market, but she was keeping a close eye on how the economy performs. <20>My view is that we are approaching a tipping point at which it would be necessary or justified to remove some of that stimulus,<2C> she said, also making her first policy comments to parliament<6E>s Treasury Committee. <20>However that is very contingent on the data.<2E> Tenreyro, a professor at the London School of Economics, said raising rates too soon would be a costly mistake. CARNEY SEES CONTINUED GROWTH-INFLATION TRADE-OFF Britain<69>s economy has slowed this year, hurt by the rise in inflation since the 2016 Brexit vote and uncertainty about the country<72>s future trading ties with the European Union. Even so, the BoE said last month that most of its rate-setters expected to increase borrowing costs in the coming months, partly because Brexit would lead to higher inflation. Financial markets now see a roughly 80 percent chance that a first hike will come on Nov. 2, after the BoE<6F>s next policy meeting. <20>The debate is now about what message the BoE will send alongside the first hike. We expect the BoE to strike a cautious tone in November, while indicating that further tightening will still probably be required next year,<2C> JP Morgan economist Allan Monks said. BoE Governor Mark Carney told the committee on Tuesday that the central bank still had to balance the need to support job creation and growth with an inflation rate that is running above target. Data on Tuesday showed British inflation hit 3 percent in September, its highest level in more than five years and above the BoE<6F>s 2 percent target. But much of the increase has been caused by the fall in the value of the pound since the Brexit vote, which is likely to be a temporary driver of price increases. Sterling lost half a cent against the U.S. dollar and British government bond yields fell to their lowest since immediately after last month<74>s surprise comment from the BoE that a rate hike could come soon. Neil Jones, Mizuho<68>s head of currency sales for hedge funds in London, said Tuesday<61>s BoE comments <20>signalled a dovish and cautious stance among policymakers<72>. Writing by William Schomberg; Editing by Stephen Addison 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-boe/new-bank-of-england-deputy-says-not-ready-to-vote-for-rate-hike-idINKBN1CM1OF'|'2017-10-17T15:07:00.000+03:00'
'a434cf0d2640e37935538be23ecf401a66906518'|'Top of the rocks: world<6C>s most expensive handbag goes on sale'|'A diamond-encrusted handbag billed as the most expensive in the world has been put up for sale.Officially known as the Mouawad 1001 Nights Diamond Purse, the one-off accessory holds the Guinness World Record for being the most valuable handbag ever produced, with an original price of $3.8m in 2010.The statement piece, designed by the jeweller Robert Mouawad, is handcrafted from 18-karat gold and covered with more than 4,500 diamonds. Facebook Twitter Pinterest The heart-shaped Mouawad bag is displayed in its presentation case at a Christie<69>s auction preview in Hong Kong. Photograph: Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty The rocks are mostly colourless but 105 yellow and 56 pink diamonds have also been incorporated into the design. The sheer volume of bling means the bag weighs in at 381.92 carats <20> even before any belongings have been stowed in it.Handbags have become a sought-after investment for high net-worth individuals. Last year Christie<69>s auction house sold a Herm<72>s Birkin bag for <20>155,000 .The intricate diamond work took artisans more than 8,800 hours to create, according to Christie<69>s, which is handling the private sale. To drum up interest in what it described as a <20>bejewelled masterpiece<63>, the auction house is showing the piece to potential buyers in Hong Kong before embarking on a tour that will visit Geneva and London next month. Mouawad also holds a number of other world records, including for creating the most expensive bra in the world. The $11m Very Sexy Fantasy Bra, which was modelled by Heidi Klum in a Victoria<69>s Secret Fashion Show in 2003, was covered with 2,800 diamonds, sapphires and amethysts and weighed 2,200 carats.Topics Luxury goods sector Gold Commodities Women news'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/17/top-of-the-rocks-worlds-most-expensive-handbag-goes-on-sale'|'2017-10-18T02:08:00.000+03:00'
'045295b7843088652e4fbd764e6279aaa7a3c578'|'Startup Magic Leap raises half a billion in new funding'|'Oct 17 (Reuters) - Magic Leap, a well-funded and secretive startup, said on Tuesday it has raised $502 million in a new capital funding round led by Temasek Holdings, an investment firm owned by the government of Singapore.New investors in the latest series D funding also include EDBI, a Singapore-based global fund, Grupo Globo from Brazil, and Janus Henderson Investors, Magic Leap said in a statement. ( bit.ly/2zvsF74 )The new financing round comes as Magic Leap readies a long-awaited debut product, a headset that shows images overlaid against the real world, known as augmented reality.According to a corporate filing earlier this month, the Florida-based startup was seeking to raise up to $1 billion in fresh funding.Magic Leap said some existing investors were also part of the latest funding. They included Alibaba Group Holding Ltd , Fidelity Management and Research Co, Google LLC, J.P. Morgan Investment Management and T. Rowe Price Group Inc .Bloomberg reported last month that Temasek was considering to participate in a new financing round of more than $500 million, valuing Magic Leap close to $6 billion. ( bloom.bg/2eWEObZ ) (Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/magicleap-funding/startup-magic-leap-raises-half-a-billion-in-new-funding-idINL4N1MS4Z1'|'2017-10-17T17:43:00.000+03:00'
'c30506d32e52134cd9edb18e98ead906ae1ddf8e'|'Morgan Stanley''s profit rises despite trading slump'|'October 17, 2017 / 11:04 AM / Updated 9 hours ago Morgan Stanley smashes estimates on strength in wealth management Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The corporate logo of financial firm Morgan Stanley is pictured on the company''s world headquarters in New York, New York January 20, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ) posted a much higher-than-expected quarterly profit on Tuesday as record revenue from its wealth management business helped offset the blow from a slump in trading activity. Revenue from the bank<6E>s wealth business rose 8.7 percent to $4.22 billion and generated pretax margin of 26.5 percent, above Chief Executive James Gorman<61>s target range of 23-25 percent. Morgan Stanley<65>s shares rose 1.4 percent in premarket trading. The results provided some evidence of what management has been promising for nearly nine years: the decision to buy Smith Barney at the height of the 2007-2009 financial crisis has given the smallest of the Wall Street banks a cushion to weather downturns the way some larger rivals do. <20>Our third quarter results reflected the stability our wealth management, investment banking and investment management businesses bring when our Sales and Trading business faces a subdued environment,<2C> Gorman said in a statement. Return on equity was 9.6 percent for the quarter, within Gorman<61>s goal of 9 percent to 11 percent by the end of the year. The bank<6E>s bond trading revenue, however, fell 20 percent to $1.2 billion, mirroring declines across the sector. Citigroup Inc ( C.N ), JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM.N ) and Bank of America Corp ( BAC.N ) have all reported steep declines in fixed income trading activity due to a slump in volatility. Revenue from equities trading, a business in which Morgan Stanley is typically strong, remained flat at $1.9 billion. Net income rose 11 percent to $1.69 billion. Earnings per share rose to 93 cents from 81 cents. Adjusted earnings was 88 cents per share and topped estimates of 81 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Revenue rose 3 percent to $9.20 billion from a year earlier versus the average estimate of $9.01 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Investment banking revenue rose 12.7 percent to $1.38 billion. Arch rival Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( GS.N ) reported a decline in quarterly profit as gains in investment banking were offset by a 26 percent drop in fixed-income trading revenue. Reporting by Sweta Singh in Bengaluru and Olivia Oran in New York; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-morgan-stanley-results/morgan-stanleys-profit-rises-despite-trading-slump-idUSKBN1CM1FB'|'2017-10-17T14:03:00.000+03:00'
'fff0e7624d202603693c03abfd88fa116c12949a'|'Midnight in Toulouse: How CSeries deal shook status quo'|'October 17, 2017 / 8:17 AM / Updated 4 hours ago Midnight in Toulouse: How CSeries deal shook status quo Tim Hepher 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A worker inspects a C Series aeroplane wing in the Bombardier factory in Belfast, Northern Ireland September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne/File Photo TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) - Two years ago, Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders halted negotiations to buy Canada<64>s CSeries program at midnight after the talks with Bombardier leaked to Reuters. On Tuesday, he performed a U-turn by backing a similar deal after all - again at dead of night. The nocturnal gymnastics by Europe<70>s largest aerospace group stunned the aircraft industry which had been riveted for weeks by a trade dispute between Boeing and Bombardier that threatened to hit the CSeries with large U.S. import fees. Now, the 110-130-seat jet will be built for U.S. airlines at Airbus<75>s Alabama assembly plant, circumventing any import penalties in a move that apparently caught Boeing off guard. Analysts say that potentially turns the CSeries from an attack on U.S. jobs, as portrayed in Boeing<6E>s complaint, to a job creator in a key Republican state, though Boeing termed the move a <20>questionable deal<61> between two of its subsidized competitors. The deal also signals the end of Airbus efforts to promote the A319, its smallest jet which has not posted a sale in years. <20>The stunning Airbus-Bombardier partnership for the CSeries program guarantees the future of the new airplane, kills off the A319 and thrusts a big stick up Boeing<6E>s tailpipe,<2C> Leeham Co analyst Scott Hamilton wrote. Strategically, however, the move extends well beyond the noise of Boeing<6E>s spat with Bombardier and could trigger a riposte from other planemakers, including Boeing itself. Commercial aerospace has four main powers dominated by Airbus and Boeing, which share the market above 150 seats. Brazil<69>s Embraer and Canada<64>s Bombardier compete between 100 and 150 seats as well as in the market for smaller regional jets. But China and Russia lead a field of new entrants vying to break into the $125 billion a year commercial market, along with smaller regional players such as Japan. BOEING-EMBRAER ALLIANCE? Tuesday<61>s deal starts to rearrange the deck in a move that many have been expecting since former Airbus head Louis Gallois warned six years ago that the market was getting too crowded. In particular, it could drive Boeing closer to Embraer, with which it already cooperates. Embraer<65>s E2 jet is one of the main potential losers from the CSeries deal. <20>The world has two top-tier airframers, and two second-tier airframers,<2C> said Teal Group analyst Richard Aboulafia. <20>Airbus and Bombardier are now allies. This greatly increases the likelihood of a stronger Boeing-Embraer alliance as a response.<2E> FILE PHOTO: The logo of Airbus Group is seen on the company''s headquarters building in Toulouse, Southwestern France, April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo Such a move has long been contemplated in private. The CSeries benefits from a new type of efficient engine. Its launch in 2008 eventually prompted Airbus to put the same generation of engine on its own A320 to protect its main profit source. That in turn forced Boeing to dump plans for an all-new single-aisle plane in 2011 and opt for a makeover of its best-selling 737 with similar engines, to be known as 737 MAX. But sitting in Boeing<6E>s filing cabinets are designs for an all-new jet that would have involved intense collaboration with Embraer, according to two people familiar with the project. A template for closer co-operation therefore already exists. Boeing and Embraer declined to comment. The two companies already work on projects including runway safety and alternative jet fuels. Their partnership has intensified in recent years to include Boeing<6E>s commitment to joint sales and support of Embraer<65>s KC-390 military aircraft. The Airbus-Bombardier deal also marks a pause in strategic advances made by China, wid
'908f8de420c0e2915df5a993e9278fbdf33026f3'|'Toymaker Hornby to shun discounting, warns of lower revenue'|' 55 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago Toymaker Hornby to shun discounting, warns of lower revenue Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - British toymaker Hornby Plc ( HRN.L ) warned on Tuesday that its full-year profitability would be hit by lower revenue and said it would no longer offer large quantities of stock at a discount after a review by its new CEO Lyndon Charles Davies. The maker of Thomas & Friends model train sets said year-to-date trading was below expectations and that a fall in revenue would have a material impact on profitability for the year. Reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hornby-outlook/toymaker-hornby-to-shun-discounting-warns-of-lower-revenue-idUKKBN1CM0KU'|'2017-10-17T09:54:00.000+03:00'
'b600159b65fccf577a402cc15af4dd30d670db7b'|'Norway''s Helly Hansen buys British sailing brand Musto'|'October 19, 2017 / 9:53 AM / in 29 minutes Norway''s Helly Hansen buys British sailing brand Musto Reuters Staff 2 Min Read OSLO (Reuters) - Norwegian outdoor clothing company Helly Hansen has agreed to buy British sports brand Musto from Phoenix Equity Partners and other shareholders for an undisclosed sum, it said on Thursday. The Musto acquisition would help further its ambitions to grow in the British market and reinforce its position as a sailing clothes specialist, Helly Hansen said. Musto was set up in the 1960s by Olympic sailor Keith Musto. <20>Our focus will be to expand Musto internationally as an iconic British lifestyle brand with deep technical sailing credentials alongside Helly Hansen,<2C> Helly Hansen Chief Executive Paul Stoneham said in a statement. Musto CEO Peter Smith will continue to run the business and report to Stoneham, who will become executive chairman of Musto. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the deal could be valued at around 50 million pounds, citing an anonymous source. A Helly Hansen company spokesman told Reuters he would not confirm the price. Helly Hansen, founded in Norway in 1877, is majority owned by the Ontario Teachers<72> Pension Plan, one of Canada<64>s largest pension funds. Reporting by Camilla Knudsen; Editing by Gwladys Fouche/Keith Weir 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-musto-m-a-hellyhansen/norways-helly-hansen-buys-british-sailing-brand-musto-idUKKBN1CO18P'|'2017-10-19T12:53:00.000+03:00'
'3245ad33d5e3078b51552e7ec9d4c3ee9c6df1e7'|'UPDATE 1-Amazon Web Services resolves connectivity issues in Oregon region'|'(Updates to say company resolved the connectivity issue)Oct 18 (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc<6E>s web services unit said on Wednesday that it resolved connectivity issues that affected its Direct Connect customers in the Oregon region in the United States.Amazon Web Services (AWS) said some Direct Connect locations using the US-WEST-2 Region experienced connectivity issues for about 30 minutes. amzn.to/2imkVAeDirect Connect service allows users to establish a dedicated network connection between their network and one of AWS<57> locations. (Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/amazoncom-aws-oregon/update-1-amazon-web-services-resolves-connectivity-issues-in-oregon-region-idINL4N1MT5EX'|'2017-10-18T20:00:00.000+03:00'
'eb3d467f7353148a0f0d24756aa5211d86a8f306'|'Romania - Factors to watch on Oct. 19'|'Oct 19 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Thursday.DEBT TENDER Debt managers plan to sell 300 million lei ($77.05 million)worth of March 2022 treasury bonds at tender.JUDICIARY BILLS Romania has put the finishing touches to a plan to overhaul the judiciary that critics say erodes judicial independence and which will have to be discussed with the European Union.PAY PROTESTS About 8,000 workers from the health sector are expected to rally in downtown Bucharest on Thursday in a pay protest.2018 BUDGET Romania<69>s ruling coalition said next year<61>s budget will target a consolidated deficit of under 3.0 percent of gross domestic product and a nominal GDP of 901 billion lei ($230.86 billion), co-leader Calin Tariceanu said on Wednesday.RAYTHEON MEMORANDUM Romania<69>s Aerostar SA on behalf of the economy ministry and U.S. company Raytheon International Defence System signed memorandum regarding cooperation on equipment and components for the multi-level air defence integrated system.CEE MARKETS The Czech crown hit a four-year high and the zloty tested 3-month highs against the euro on Wednesday as Polish retail and industrial data confirmed robust economic growth in Central Europe.For the long-term Romanian diary, click onFor emerging markets economic events, click onFor an index of all diaries, click onFor other related news, double click on: Romanian equities RO-E E.Europe equities .CEE Romanian money RO-M Romanian debt RO-D Eastern Europe EEU All emerging markets EMRG Hot stocks HOT Stock markets STX Market debt news DBT Forex news FRX For real-time index Quote: s, double click on: Bucharest BETI Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/romania-factors/romania-factors-to-watch-on-oct-19-idUSL8N1MT5O8'|'2017-10-19T07:10:00.000+03:00'
'bdfd40805a9c16e3e58d6ec8da70217a66c1b64e'|'German, French prompt prices down on anticipated wind power influx'|'October 19, 2017 / 7:33 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago German, French prompt prices down on anticipated wind power influx Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Power-generating windmill turbines are pictured at the ''Amrum Bank West'' offshore windpark in the northern sea near the island of Amrum, Germany September 4, 2015. REUTERS/Morris Mac Matzen FRANKFURT (Reuters) - European spot power prices in the wholesale market on Thursday lost ground as bearish wind power output projections coincided with lower demand ahead of the weekend. German day-ahead baseload electricity was down 18 percent at 37.75 euros ($44.60) a megawatt hour (MWh) TRDEBD1 while the equivalent French contract was down 6.8 percent at 51.75 euros TRFRBD1. Thomson Reuters forecasts for German wind power output were for levels of 11 gigawatts (GW) day-on-day to Friday, double the production volume expected for Thursday, and ahead of high weekend levels and probably high volumes again next working week. Power demand on Friday will likely fall in the two interconnected power markets of Germany and France by 600 megawatts (MW), the data also showed. ($1 = 0.8465 euros) Reporting by Vera Eckert; Editing by Greg Mahlich 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europepower-spot-prices/german-french-prompt-prices-down-on-anticipated-wind-power-influx-idUKKBN1CO0T2'|'2017-10-19T10:32:00.000+03:00'
'0f929e42982ef08c50bc9ecd79bed2e3673495b4'|'Saudi needs Aramco billions as recession slows austerity drive'|'October 19, 2017 / 1:08 PM / Updated an hour ago Saudi needs Aramco billions as recession slows austerity drive Andrew Torchia 6 Min Read A vehicle drives past the King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia<69>s plans to sell state assets - including a stake in energy giant Saudi Aramco - are becoming even more important to its finances as a recession slows Riyadh<64>s effort to close a budget deficit caused by low oil prices. Last December, Riyadh released a plan to abolish the deficit by 2020, cutting it from $79 billion (<28>60 billion) or 12.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2016 via steps such as domestic energy price hikes and tax rises. The plan eased investor fears about Saudi Arabia<69>s fiscal stability and reduced pressure on its currency. But in recent weeks, it has become clear from official statistics that the 2020 target is much too optimistic, economists said. Austerity measures so far have pushed the economy into recession, with GDP shrinking for a second straight quarter in the April-June period. The slump is a threat to ambitious economic reforms announced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who wants to boost private sector growth and develop non-oil industries. So the government has delayed further austerity steps that could hurt businesses or consumers. Riyadh is reconsidering the speed at which it imposes austerity to avoid pushing up unemployment, the International Monetary Fund said this month. Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan told Bloomberg television in Washington last week that the government would not rush to lift domestic energy prices further. The result may be a fresh emphasis on raising money from the Aramco sale and other privatisation exercises, until the economy recovers enough to let Riyadh proceed at full speed with austerity, economists in the region said. <20>The austerity measures have a cumulative impact on economic momentum -- each stage becomes even harder,<2C> said Monica Malik, chief economist at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank. <20>If oil stays at $50 to $60 a barrel, we expect to see deficits way beyond 2020.<2E> The government faces a chicken-and-egg problem: it needs to spend more to boost growth, but finding more funds to spend is hard when growth is low. By obtaining tens of billions of dollars in funds from abroad, the privatisation programme could be a way out of this dilemma, Malik said. Sources told Reuters this month that China was offering to buy up to 5 percent of Aramco directly. Consultancy Eurasia Group said it would be tempting for Riyadh to accept such a proposal in advance of a public offer and international listing of Aramco shares, which could occur in late 2018 or 2019. <20>An immediate cash injection through a private placement could prove too attractive to turn down,<2C> Eurasia said. An Aramco spokesman said a range of options for a public listing of Aramco remained under active review. <20>No decision has been made and the IPO process remains on track,<2C> the spokesman said without elaborating. Labourers work at a construction site of Riyadh Metro in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser Saudi spending, revenue and reserves - tmsnrt.rs/2qaFbqM DEFICIT Many economists expect the government to hit its deficit target of $53 billion or roughly 8 percent of GDP this year, helped by higher oil prices. Shrinking the gap further will be a slow and painful process, however, they say. Slideshow (2 Images) One austerity step, imposing a 5 percent value-added tax, looks likely to go ahead in January; an IMF official said official preparations for it were proceeding well. VAT may raise around $13 billion in annual revenues, the IMF has estimated. But VAT will be a heavy drag on the economy, equal to about 2 percent of GDP. Growth of the non-oil sector of the economy has already dropped near zero, so there may be little room for Riyadh to introduce more austerity over the n
'28b2c4227ab677c28eaf345a3b8ed3b6c3263720'|'Target CEO says small-format stores twice as productive as traditional'|'FILE PHOTO: Brian Cornell, Chairman and CEO of the Target Corp., listens to testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee on tax reform on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., May 23, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sales per square foot at Target Corp<72>s ( TGT.N ) 44 small-format stores are <20>easily double<6C> that at traditional stores, Target Chief Executive Brian Cornell said on Thursday, after the retailer announced 11 new small-format stores opening this week.Target said it recorded an average of $300 in sales per square foot across its stores, compared with at least $600 in sales per square foot from its small-format stores.In a turnaround bid announced in February, the retailer vowed to double the number of small-format centers, remodel its stores, invest heavily in e-commerce, aggressively promote its products and keep grocery prices low to compete with Wal-Mart ( WMT.N ), Amazon ( AMZN.O ) and supermarket chain Kroger Co ( KR.N ).Target<65>s more than 70 newly remodeled stores have seen an average 2-4 percent increase in sales since being renovated, Cornell said at a news briefing on Thursday to launch the latest small-format store opposite the Macy<63>s Inc ( M.N ) headquarters in Manhattan, New York.He added, however, that the unexpected success of the small-format and renovated stores would not affect previously announced full-year expected adjusted earnings of $4.34-$4.54 a share, saying these stores still represented a small percentage of overall sales.Cornell said Target aims to operate 130 small-format stores by the end of 2019.Like other retailers, Target has struggled in recent years to boost traffic amid changing consumer habits and competition from e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ).Still, Target shares have surged more than 10 percent since August, when it reported an increase in second-quarter comparable-store sales after four straight negative quarters, driven by improved online traffic and demand across all businesses except groceries.The retailer has since slashed prices on thousands of items, from cereal to baby formula, and pledged to increase its minimum hourly wage this year by a dollar to $11.<2E>The fact that we<77>re investing while others are backing away, it<69>s hard to put into a forecast, but I know it<69>s improving team engagement,<2C> Cornell said.Retailers, including Sears Holdings Inc ( SHLD.O ) and Macy<63>s, have announced plans this year to close hundreds of stores as they struggle with increasing competition from Amazon.com and fast-fashion retailers such as Forever 21.Reporting by Richa Naidu; Editing by Bernadette Baum'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-target-smallformat/target-ceo-says-small-format-stores-twice-as-productive-as-traditional-idUSKBN1CO2NK'|'2017-10-19T20:27:00.000+03:00'
'f73f64105b1c6a4ea812e9d7c11595281a14b2ef'|'Nestle expects 2017 margin to decline on higher restructuring costs'|'October 19, 2017 / 5:36 AM / Updated 5 hours ago Nestle speeds up overhaul to counter slowest growth in decades Silke Koltrowitz , John Revill 4 Min Read ZURICH (Reuters) - Nestle ( NESN.S ), the world<6C>s biggest packaged food group, is doubling spending on its restructuring this year to up to 1 billion Swiss francs ($1 billion) to cope with its weakest sales growth in more than two decades. Europe<70>s largest company by market value is under pressure to improve returns from activist investor Daniel Loeb, whose Third Point hedge fund revealed a $3.5 billion stake in June. It must also review its business model and brand portfolio to ensure its products stay appealing to consumers who often prefer fresh, local foods to Nestle<6C>s Maggi soups or KitKat chocolate bars. Organic sales rose 3.1 percent in the third quarter, up from 2.4 percent in the second, in line with analysts<74> expectations in a Reuters poll. Performance was helped by improved trading in Europe and Asia. Still, Nestle forecast growth for the full year around the 2.6 percent it generated for the first nine months, implying a slowdown in the fourth quarter and the year as a whole. Last year<61>s sales rose 3.2 percent. <20>Going forward, everyone is well advised to be cautious and you see that reflected in our expectations for the fourth quarter,<2C> Chief Executive Mark Schneider said on Thursday. Finance chief Francois-Xavier Roger cautioned that Europe and Asia might not be able to repeat the good performance over the final three months, but confirmed Nestle<6C>s goal of returning to mid-single-digit organic growth by 2020. Nestle said it would spend up to 1 billion Swiss francs this year on restructuring, double its initial plan, as it seeks to cut structural costs, such as by closing factories, boosting efficiency and sourcing globally. FILE PHOTO: A Kit Kat chocolate bar is seen in this illustration photo taken July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo Yet its overall forecast for restructuring costs of 2.5 billion francs between 2016 and 2020 remained unchanged. The acceleration will reduce this year<61>s operating margin by 0.4 to 0.6 percentage point, while the underlying margin -- before restructuring costs -- is expected to rise by at least 0.2 percentage point in constant currency, Nestle said. Nestle last month set a target for the underlying margin to reach 17.5-18.5 percent by 2020, up from 16.0 percent in 2016. Slowing growth rates at packaged food groups have sparked the interest of activist investors, with Procter & Gamble ( PG.N ) also becoming a target recently. Unilever ( ULVR.L ) ( UNc.AS ) reported lower-than-expected third-quarter sales on Thursday, losing market share to smaller competitors and dampening hopes that an aborted takeover offer from Kraft Heinz ( KHC.O ) would spark a swift improvement. Nestle shares were 0.8 percent lower at 1530 GMT, slightly lagging the European sector .SX3P. They have gained 16 percent so far this year and are trading at 28.3 times forward earnings, according to Reuters data, at a premium to Danone at 24.2 times and Unilever at 25.8 times. Analysts said Nestle<6C>s performance was disappointing when compared to Danone that saw strong baby food sales in China boost growth in the third quarter to 4.7 percent. ($1 = 0.9740 Swiss francs) Editing by Michael Shields and David Evans 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nestle-sales/nestle-expects-2017-margin-to-decline-on-higher-restructuring-costs-idUSKBN1CO0GX'|'2017-10-19T08:35:00.000+03:00'
'9f0d1e127b424dcd50b7a8b65ad2062be6f68cfd'|'Synchronoss to sell cloud software unit to Siris in $1 billion deal'|'(Reuters) - Software maker Synchronoss Technologies Inc said private equity firm Siris Capital Partners would buy its Intralinks Holding unit in a deal worth about $1 billion, higher than it previous offer.Siris, already Synchronoss<73> top shareholder, will also invest $185 million in the company in the form of convertible preferred equity, equal to a stake of nearly 20 percent in the software maker.Synchronoss shares were up nearly 11 percent at $15.23 in premarket trading on Tuesday.The company said Siris will pay it about $977 million for Intralink, a cloud-based business software provider, and an additional contingent payment of up to $25 million.Siris had in June offered to buy Intralink for nearly $835 million in cash, but pulled its offer in September, and a month later Synchronoss said it got better offers from multiple parties.Siris and Synchronoss resumed talks on a potential deal worth up to $915 million on Oct. 6. ( bit.ly/2y44qie )Synchronoss had bought Intralinks for $821 million in 2016.Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee and Sonam Rai in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D''Silva and Savio D''Souza'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-synchronoss-tech-m-a-sirius/synchronoss-to-sell-unit-to-siris-capital-for-1-billion-idINKBN1CM1QP'|'2017-10-17T10:27:00.000+03:00'
'7ad62806c928c24af2ad9122231b8ba83897cf66'|'Elliott urges Ocean Rig to hire advisers to review opportunities'|'(Reuters) - Ocean Rig UDW<44>s ( ORIG.O ) top investor Elliott Management on Monday urged the offshore driller to hire advisers to review opportunities including possible strategic deals.Elliott said it planned to rope in Ocean Rig<69>s second-biggest investor, BlueMountain Capital, in the efforts.The activist hedge fund disclosed a 20.4 stake in the company earlier this month, while BlueMountain held a 10.86 percent stake as per Thomson Reuters data.Ocean Rig completed restructuring its business in September after filing for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in March, weighed down by major oil companies withdrawing from deep water projects amid plunging oil prices.Ocean Rig<69>s stock had gained nearly 10 percent since the company completed the restructuring on Sept. 22.Reporting by John Benny in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-ocean-rig-udw-elliott/elliott-urges-ocean-rig-to-review-opportunities-including-strategic-deals-idINKBN1CL30E'|'2017-10-16T19:57:00.000+03:00'
'401a87337ed4bc727dc28d15d0afc4bf9571099d'|'UPDATE 1-Brazil''s JBS shuts 7 plants after $230 mln asset freeze'|'(New throughout, adds comments from ranchers and consultancy)SAO PAULO, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Brazilian meatpacker JBS SA shut down seven slaughterhouses in Mato Grosso do Sul after a court-ordered asset freeze affected its operations in Brazil<69>s second largest cattle-producing state, a press representative said on Wednesday.The world<6C>s largest meatpacking company said in an emailed statement that the plants would stay closed until the matter is resolved.The asset freeze, which affects JBS SA and the group<75>s holding company J&F Investimentos, is related to an investigation into alleged tax irregularities. According to JBS financial statements, the case revolves around tax benefits given to the company by the state of Mato Grosso do Sul.Shares of JBS fell as much as 3.6 percent during the day following news of the plant closures, but bounced back to 8.15 reais, a 1.45 percent drop from Tuesday<61>s close.The company, whose owners face corruption and insider trading charges, said a combined 730 million reais ($230.64 million) had been frozen by a lower court in the state.JBS said it was working to restore operations and maintain 15,000 direct and 60,000 indirect jobs in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. It will continue paying employees normally, the statement said.Laucidio Coelho Neto, president of cattle ranchers association Acrissul, said there would be oversupply in the state as other meatpackers there are not big enough to purchase the available animal stock.Still, he did not expect the shutdown to affect beef flows to export markets, explaining Brazil was a large supplier and production can be redirected, including by JBS, to plants in other states.Brothers Wesley and Joesley Batista, owners of JBS, were arrested last month in connection with insider trading and other offenses related to their plea deal.Wesley, the elder of the brothers and also JBS<42>s former chief executive, quit his position and has been replaced by his father Jos<6F> Batista Sobrinho.With the plant closures, the price of the arroba (15 kg) fell to around 130 reais, 4 percent lower from the levels earlier in the week, said Lygia Pimentel, a director at consultancy Agrifatto.$1 = 3.1556 reais Reporting by Roberto Samora; Writing by Ana Mano; Editing by Bill Trott and David Gregorio'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/jbs-operations/update-1-brazils-jbs-shuts-7-plants-after-230-mln-asset-freeze-idINL2N1MT1VP'|'2017-10-18T19:10:00.000+03:00'
'db61a7911f409a4214ecef0cdd6297bb0585eae8'|'An Indian aviation visionary runs into bureaucratic turbulence'|'ALL great aviation ventures start with mavericks willing to defy both the laws of physics and the scepticism of their peers. William Boeing, Oleg Antonov and Howard Hughes are some of the best-known examples. Next, perhaps, is Amol Yadav, who for much of the past decade has been building aeroplanes on the roof of the Mumbai flat he shares with 18 family members, and battling the Indian authorities to let him fly them.Admittedly, only experts would be able to distinguish the six-seater propeller plane (pictured) Mr Yadav has designed from scratch from a run-of-the-mill Cessna. But his plane is the only one in decades with wholly Indian credentials, he says. Much larger outfits have tried but struggled to get an indigenous craft certified for production, including National Aerospace Laboratories, one of several state-owned aviation mastodons.Latest updates Germany<6E>s coalition talks begin Kaffeeklatsch 35 minutes ago Not   4   4   5   5 hours ago Annie Baker is a master of loaded silences Prospero 6   Self-identified visionaries are commonplace in business. But politicians have fallen over themselves to support Mr Yadav. His plane was the surprise star of a <20>Make in India<69> jamboree in 2016 to promote manufacturing in the country. The chief minister of Maharashtra, the state Mumbai is in, has promised not only government backing but land for Mr Yadav to develop and build his follow-up act, a 19-seater that is currently taking up space in his improvised domestic hangar. He has spent about 50m rupees ($800,000) of friends<64> and family<6C>s money to pursue his goal. Helping him is a staff of ten full-time aeroplane builders, assisted by a group of volunteers.Even Narendra Modi, the prime minister, has been briefed on Mr Yadav<61>s rooftop activities, and directed officials to help him. But Indian bureaucrats are unmoved. The continued development of the 19-seater hinges on the smaller plane being certified as airworthy by the civil aviation authority. It has been so long since its officials have had to sign off on a new plane design that they seem to have forgotten how. Inspecting the six-seater plane had been on its to-do list since 2011. Mr Yadav complains that repeated rule changes have been designed to block him. Even entreaties from the prime minister<65>s office have failed to sway the regulator.Having been hoisted off its rooftop hangar, the smaller plane is now languishing on the tarmac of Mumbai airport as if lashed to the ground by red tape. Whether Mr Yadav<61>s aircraft are airworthy is unproven. He says they are, and might know, given his day job as a captain for Jet Airways, a private airline. Mr Yadav wants America<63>s Federal Aviation Administration to certify his planes<65>he will soon apply to it<69>and India<69>s bureaucrats to accept its verdict.Private backers want to invest in his budding aviation venture, Mr Yadav says, but that might alter its destiny as a future national champion. No aircraft-maker anywhere has thrived without state backing, he notes, usually through defence contracts. He also has blueprints for a fighter jet, development of which would cost half the $250m or so India pays to buy a single jet from Dassault, a French manufacturer<65>if only bureaucrats would grasp his vision, that is.This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline "Winging it"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/rss/business_rss.xml'|'https://www.economist.com/news/business/21730465-amol-yadavs-six-seater-plane-still-lashed-ground-red-tape-indian-aviation?fsrc=rss%7Cbus'|'2017-10-19T22:56:00.000+03:00'
'03042412a1409f5edb9d8185e4d7b2cb10834442'|'Apple shares drop on iPhone 8 demand worries'|'October 19, 2017 / 10:34 AM / in 28 minutes ''Anemic'' iPhone 8 demand drags Apple lower Supantha Mukherjee 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: An iPhone 8 is displayed at the Apple Orchard Shop in Singapore September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su (Reuters) - Signs of poor demand for the iPhone 8 fueled more market questions over Apple Inc<6E>s double 2017 iPhone release strategy, sending its shares down as much as 2.6 percent on Thursday. The chief executive of Canada<64>s largest mobile network Rogers Communication said appetite for the latest iPhone had been <20>anemic<69>, adding to a series of hints that sales of the first of two new phones Apple releases this year is poor. A number of sector analysts played down the concerns, which have dogged Apple since it announced the plans on Sept. 12, saying that overall phone production looks broadly in line with their earlier expectations. But the debate - and hints from some analysts and a Taiwan media report of a cut in iPhone 8 production - was enough to push Apple shares down 2.3 percent at the open in New York. <20>The Street is hyper-sensitive to any speed bumps around this next iPhone cycle and (that) speaks to the knee-jerk reaction we are seeing in shares this morning,<2C> said Daniel Ives, chief strategy officer with investment research house GBH Insights in New York. He said his own checks showed that only 20-25 percent of iPhones sold over the next 12-18 months would be iPhone 8s or 8 Plus, an argument that meant investors should look past cool demand in the first month of its launch. <20>iPhone 8 demand has been naturally soft out of the gates with the main event being the iPhone X launch in early November,<2C> he said. <20>This is the early innings of what we believe is the biggest iPhone product cycle with X leading the way.<2E> Apple no longer gives regular updates on sales numbers but indications from supply channels, phone operators and analysts who track the sector have fueled talk of poor sales for the latest update of the smartphone. When Apple announced the plan to release both phones before the end of 2017, fans were disappointed mainly due to the delay in the launch of the iPhone X until November. But there are also concerns that the more expensive phone may not get so many takers. Rogers Communications CEO Joe Natale said anticipation was high for the iPhone X but also noted that inventory would be limited and that - at Apple<6C>s starting price of $999 - it was an expensive device. U.S. wireless carrier AT&T also said last week its third-quarter postpaid handset upgrades were fewer by nearly 900,000 from a year ago. KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst John Vinh reported earlier this week that a carrier store survey suggested the iPhone 7 was outselling its successor just a month after the latter<65>s launch. That suggests buyers are more price sensitive and goes against the history of iPhone releases, which traditionally sees fans queueing for the new device. The iPhone X will go on sale from Nov. 3. Deutsche Bank analysts were among those playing down the importance of any cut in iPhone 8 production in favor of iPhone X. <20>We think the market could have over-focused on the production swing in different SKUs, but overlooked that the overall iPhone production is largely on track,<2C> they wrote in a client note. Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru and Alastair Sharp in Toronto; Editing by Patrick Graham and Arun Koyyur 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphone/apple-shares-drop-on-iphone-8-demand-worries-idUKKBN1CO1E7'|'2017-10-19T13:29:00.000+03:00'
'c3c0384e0806c3d91b6dd76389a851d55f8bc355'|'Jurors to weigh fraud charges against ex-HSBC executive'|' 49 PM / Updated 3 minutes ago Jurors to weigh fraud charges against ex-HSBC executive Brendan Pierson 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Mark Johnson, a British citizen who at the time of his arrest was HSBC''s global head of foreign exchange cash trading, exits following a hearing at the U.S. Federal Court in Brooklyn, New York, U.S. on August 29, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - Closing arguments in the U.S. trial of former HSBC Holdings Plc ( HSBA.L ) executive Mark Johnson came to an end Wednesday, with a lawyer for the government urging jurors to convict Johnson of defrauding a client. Prosecutors have claimed Johnson, the former head of HSBC<42>s global foreign exchange cash trading desk, schemed with others at HSBC to ramp up the price of British pounds before executing a $3.5 billion currency trade for Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy Plc( CNE.L ) in 2011, making millions at Cairn<72>s expense. <20>The bottom line is they hacked up the price so they could take advantage of that confidential information they had,<2C> Carol Sipperly, a lawyer for the government, told jurors on Wednesday. Sipperly<6C>s argument was a rebuttal to John Wing, a lawyer for Johnson, who spent much of Wednesday arguing that his client was innocent. Wing said there was no way to do a massive currency transaction like the one HSBC did without affecting the price, but that Johnson and his colleagues had tried to get a fair price for Cairn and even given Cairn a rebate. <20>Why are they giving money back to the client?<3F> Wing asked. <20>What kind of fraudsters are these?<3F> The closing arguments had begun Tuesday, with government lawyer Brian Young summarizing the case prosecutors sought to build over more than three weeks of testimony. Cairn hired HSBC in 2011 to convert $3.5 billion into British pounds sterling in connection with the sale of an Indian subsidiary, according to court filings. Young told jurors that Johnson and another HSBC executive who is also facing charges, Stuart Scott, devised a scheme to drive up the price of pounds by executing a series of trades before completing the trade for Cairn. Young played jurors a phone call recorded after the deal in which Scott and Johnson told Cairn and its financial advisor that a <20>Russian buyer<65> had been responsible for a spike in the price of pounds. That, Young said, was a lie. Johnson is the first banker to be tried in the United States on currency rigging charges, following worldwide investigations into the roughly $5.1 trillion-a-day market. The probes have led to about $10 billion in fines against several banks and the firing of dozens of traders. Scott, HSBC<42>s former head of cash trading for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, was arrested in June in Britain. U.S. authorities want him extradited. Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Andrew Hay 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-usa-crime/jurors-to-weigh-fraud-charges-against-ex-hsbc-executive-idUKKBN1CN37R'|'2017-10-19T01:48:00.000+03:00'
'd553e09749c3d8debbc600f490614215eab8d3c1'|'Trump names Washington insiders to head antitrust, consumer protection agency'|'WASHINGTON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - The White House formally announced on Thursday the president will nominate Washington antitrust lawyer Joseph Simons to the Federal Trade Commission, along with Rohit Chopra, a former official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Once the two are confirmed by the Senate, Simons will be named to chair the agency, which works with the Justice Department to enforce antitrust law and investigates allegations of deceptive behavior by companies. The FTC has five seats, and no more than three can be from one party.The president is also expected to nominate Noah Phillips, chief counsel for U.S. Senator John Cornyn, to fill an empty Republican seat, although that was not announced on Thursday.The agency is currently reviewing a number of big mergers in industries where there are already few players.One is a deal to merge industrial gases companies Praxair Inc and Linde AG, and another is fertilizer maker Potash Corp<72>s deal for Agrium Inc. It will also decide if lens maker Essilor International SA will be allowed to merge with dominant frame-maker Luxottica Group SpA.The agency has been operating with just Acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen, a Republican, and Democrat Terrell McSweeny, the only other commissioner. The president has long been expected to name a Republican as the permanent chair and fill the empty commission seats.Simons, a partner at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, was a director of the FTC<54>s Bureau of Competition from 2001 to 2003.To fill an empty Democratic seat on the commission, the president tapped Chopra, a financial services expert who is a veteran of the CFPB and is currently at the advocacy group Consumer Federation of America.Noah Phillips graduated from Stanford Law School in 2005. He is also a veteran of the law firms Steptoe & Johnson LLP and Cravath, Swaine & Moore. (Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Dan Grebler)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-ftc/trump-names-washington-insiders-to-head-antitrust-consumer-protection-agency-idINL2N1MT1VH'|'2017-10-19T13:11:00.000+03:00'
'f3996f57ec1ec2b1a502f63a7bdd99e02ab1839a'|'LSE CEO Rolet to step down by end of 2018'|'October 19, 2017 / 6:26 AM / in 8 minutes London Stock Exchange CEO Rolet to step down by end of 2018 Noor Zainab Hussain , Huw Jones 4 Min Read CEO of the London Stock Exchange Xavier Rolet speaks at the Qatar UK Business and Investment Forum in London, Britain March 27, 2017 REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON (Reuters) - Xavier Rolet, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange Group ( LSE.L ), will step down at the end of next year, just under a decade after he took charge and transformed the company with a string of deals. Rolet has broadened the exchange<67>s focus beyond share trading into derivatives and data through these acquisitions, including clearing house LCH and global indexes firm Russell. Under his leadership, the LSE<53>s market value has risen from less than 1 billion pounds to almost 14 billion pounds, helped by the diversification. But his efforts to push through the exchange<67>s third attempt to merge with Deutsche Boerse ( DB1Gn.DE ) to create a global markets<74> behemoth ended in failure. Rolet, who joined the group from Lehman Brothers, said last year that he would leave if a merger with Deutsche Boerse went through. But the collapse of that deal in March meant he opted to stay on for longer. <20>At times we took risks, we made a few moves, sometimes they could be qualified as bold moves in order to broaden the spectrum of our products, achieve global relevance,<2C> Rolet told an analyst call on the LSE<53>s third-quarter results, published on Thursday. The Frenchman, at the helm of what had been a quintessentially English club in the City of London for much of its 300-year history, said he was <20>completely committed<65> to ensuring a smooth transition to a new CEO by the time he leaves in December 2018. The London Stock Exchange is seen attached to the building London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall One critical area remains what Rolet called an <20>inherited weakness<73> - the lack of a major futures trading footprint, leaving it trailing rivals CME ( CME.O ), ICE ( ICE.N ) and Deutsche Boerse in this area. But Rolet is seen as being shrewd in making sure his main customers, the big investment banks, are always listened to. When the LSE took over cross-border trading platform Turquoise and later on LCH, the investment banks remained shareholders. Rolet, a former investment banker himself, ensured that the banks had a large minority stake in LCH and a say in its running, a model that led to strong growth in volumes and one that rival Deutsche Boerse is now trying to mimic. <20>Overall his legacy is one of many good deals which entirely transformed LSE as a group, albeit with the concern that he never really integrated any of his purchases adequately,<2C> exchanges expert Patrick Young said. Rolet took over at LSE from Clara Furse in May 2009, ending a prolonged period of fending off takeover attempts and questions about the exchange<67>s future. His banking background made him a popular choice among the exchange<67>s largest customers. LSE said in a separate statement on Thursday that group income for the quarter ended Sept rose 17 percent to 1.66 billion pounds, with revenue up 14 percent to 486 million pounds as its clearing and FTSE Russell businesses grew strongly. Thirteen analysts had forecast total income of 477.5 million pounds, according to consensus estimates provided by the company. Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Jane Merriman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lse-ceo/lse-ceo-rolet-to-step-down-by-end-of-2018-idUKKBN1CO0M2'|'2017-10-19T09:25:00.000+03:00'
'5a0c2642cff81482f52389db21efbbc6a6a91e0b'|'BRIEF-Tong Oil Tools to acquire a controlling stake in Cutters Group Management'|'October 19, 2017 / 1:12 PM / Updated 5 minutes ago BRIEF-Tong Oil Tools to acquire a controlling stake in Cutters Group Management Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 19 (Reuters) - Tong Oil Tools Co Ltd * Says it plans to acquire a controlling stake in Cutters Group Management Inc, whose 100 percent stake is valued at $72.38 million Source text in Chinese: bit.ly/2in8YdH   (Reporting by Hong Kong newsroom) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-tong-oil-tools-to-acquire-a-contro/brief-tong-oil-tools-to-acquire-a-controlling-stake-in-cutters-group-management-idUSL4N1MU4PA'|'2017-10-19T16:10:00.000+03:00'
'd8753f3e92eec60580b559e3c906b20d3365b4ea'|'Toyota says aluminium plates from Kobe Steel meet standards'|'October 19, 2017 / 3:05 AM / in an hour Toyota says aluminium plates from Kobe Steel meet standards Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the signboard of Kobe Steel at the group''s Tokyo headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ) on Thursday said that it had confirmed that aluminium plates supplied by Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ) with falsified quality data which were used in parts for some of the Japanese automaker<65>s vehicles had met safety and durability standards. In a statement, Toyota said that it was working to identify whether non-aluminium products supplied by Kobe Steel, which are used in the automakers<72> Toyota- and Lexus-branded vehicles, will also meet the standards. Kobe Steel earlier this month admitted that it had falsified data on product quality and specifications for goods supplied to around 500 customers, rocking supply chains around the world in a fresh blow to Japan<61>s reputation as a high-quality manufacturer. Related Coverage Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Christian Schmollinger 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-kobesteel-scandal-toyota/toyota-says-aluminium-plates-from-kobe-steel-meet-standards-idUKKBN1CO08Y'|'2017-10-19T06:24:00.000+03:00'
'a4103b77b89922623d916829eade74f3423a7bf2'|'Lyft says Alphabet leads latest $1 billion round of funding'|'October 19, 2017 / 3:45 PM / in 4 minutes Alphabet''s CapitalG leads Lyft''s latest $1 billion funding Heather Somerville , Arjun Panchadar 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: An illuminated sign appears in a Lyft ride-hailing car in Los Angeles, California, U.S. September 21, 2017. Picture taken September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Helgren (Reuters) - Lyft Inc has raised $1 billion in fresh financing, the ride-services company said on Thursday, in a round led by one of Alphabet Inc<6E>s ( GOOGL.O ) investment funds, further complicating the convoluted world of ride-hailing alliances and dealing a blow to rival Uber Technologies Inc. The round was led by CapitalG, the growth investment fund of Alphabet that has also backed large tech companies such as home-renting platform Airbnb and payments firm Stripe. Six months ago, Lyft raised a $600 million from a conglomeration of investors. Lyft said the latest round boosts its valuation to $11 billion from $7.5 billion. Reuters in September reported investment talks between the companies. CapitalG partner David Lawee will join the company''s board, Lyft said, bringing it to a total of 10 directors. ( lft.to/2zB1NCw ) <20>Ridesharing is still in its early days and we look forward to seeing Lyft continue its impressive growth,<2C> Lawee said in a statement. Lyft, which runs a distant second to Uber [UBER.UL] in both size and valuation, has pushed expansion this year, adding more than 100 new cities since January. It says it is available across 41 states and is completing more than a million rides a day. Lyft and Alphabet already have a relationship through a partnership Lyft struck with Waymo, Alphabet<65>s self-driving car unit, in May. The two companies are collaborating on bringing autonomous vehicle technology to market, but they have not provided many details. Spokespeople for Lyft and Alphabet have said the latest investment will not have any bearing on the Waymo partnership. Alphabet also has ties to Uber through its second investment arm, GV, which backs young startups. GV invested in Uber in 2013 but has since had a strained relationship with the ride-hailing company, as Uber began to develop autonomous cars and compete directly with Alphabet. Last year, Alphabet executive David Drummond stepped down from the Uber board as the relationship soiled. <20>It is another punch by Alphabet at Uber,<2C> said Erik Gordon, an entrepreneurship expert at the University of Michigan<61>s Ross School of Business. Lyft is close to hiring an initial public offering advisory firm, in the first concrete step by the company to become publicly listed, Reuters reported in September. This funding round may delay Lyft<66>s IPO plans, as the capital will allow Lyft to continue growing its business privately. <20>We will go public when it<69>s right for us,<2C> said Lyft spokeswoman Alexandra LaManna. Reporting by Heather Somerville in Los Angeles and Arjun Panchadar and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr and David Gregorio 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-lyft-ipo-investors/lyft-says-alphabet-leads-latest-1-billion-round-of-funding-idUKKBN1CO2BZ'|'2017-10-19T18:44:00.000+03:00'
'112516fec170af0b335abda6e88dd0652f1b2a00'|'Airbus A330neo successfully takes off on maiden flight'|'Reuters TV United States October 19, 2017 / 8:14 AM / in 29 minutes Airbus A330neo successfully takes off on maiden flight Reuters Staff 2 Min Read An Airbus A330neo aircraft lands during its maiden flight event in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) - Airbus ( AIR.PA ) on Thursday began the maiden flight of its A330neo jetliner, an upgraded version of its profitable A330 family designed to sharpen competition with the Boeing ( BA.N ) 787 Dreamliner. The wide-bodied, long-distance jet took off from the planemaker<65>s Toulouse headquarters under overcast skies, watched by top executives from Airbus and Britain<69>s Rolls Royce ( RR.L ), which supplies the engines. In service since the 1990s, the A330 family is Airbus<75>s biggest-selling wide-body jet but the arrival of Boeing<6E>s composite-body Dreamliner has eroded that advantage. Airbus hopes the A330neo refreshed design will help it defend its position in the lucrative 250-300 seat market. Chief Operating Officer Fabrice Bregier said Airbus had decided to improve the plane<6E>s maximum take-off weight by around 4 percent to 251 tonnes so that the A330neo can serve longer routes like Kuala Lumpur to London. Related Coverage Reporting by Tim Hepher; Writing by Richard Lough 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-airbus-a330neo/airbus-a330neo-plane-successfully-takes-off-on-maiden-flight-idUKKBN1CO0X9'|'2017-10-19T11:57:00.000+03:00'
'737f71ba9858a0a10924e5a70bfe1b9c47ac6164'|'U.S. jobless claims drop to more than 44-year low'|'October 19, 2017 / 12:36 PM / in 4 hours U.S. jobless claims hit 44-1/2-year low; mid-Atlantic factories humming Lucia Mutikani 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A man looks over employment opportunities at a jobs center in San Francisco, California, U.S, February 4, 2010. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits dropped to its lowest level in more than 44-1/2 years last week, pointing to a rebound in job growth after a hurricane-related decline in employment in September. The labor market outlook was also bolstered by another report on Thursday showing a measure of factory employment in the mid-Atlantic region racing to a record high in October. The signs of labor market strength could cement expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in December. <20>It doesn<73>t take one hundred PhD economists at the Fed to figure out that the labor market is on the tight side of normal,<2C> said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York. <20>At this point, we would expect a sharp bounce-back in employment growth in October.<2E> Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 22,000 to a seasonally adjusted 222,000 for the week ended Oct. 14, the lowest level since March 1973, the Labor Department said. But the decrease in claims, which was the largest since April, was probably exaggerated by the Columbus Day holiday on Monday. Claims are declining as the impact of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma washes out of the data. The hurricanes, which lashed Texas, Florida and the Virgin Islands, boosted claims to an almost three-year high of 298,000 at the start of September. A Labor Department official said claims for the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico continued to be impacted by Irma and Hurricane Maria, which destroyed infrastructure. As a result the Labor Department was estimating claims for the islands. Nonfarm payrolls dropped by 33,000 jobs in September as Hurricanes Irma and Harvey left more than 100,000 restaurant workers temporarily unemployed. The Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico are not included in nonfarm payrolls. Economists had forecast claims slipping to 240,000 in the latest week. The dollar briefly pared losses against a basket of currencies after the data. Stocks on Wall Street fell as investors booked profits after a recent rally that lifted shares to record highs. Prices for U.S. Treasuries rose. LABOR MARKET TIGHTENING Last week marked the 137th consecutive week that claims remained below the 300,000 threshold, which is associated with a robust labor market. That is the longest such stretch since 1970, when the labor market was smaller. Improvements in the labor market have been largely due to a recovery that started during former President Barack Obama<6D>s first term. While U.S. stocks have risen in anticipation of President Donald Trump<6D>s tax plans, the administration has yet to enact any significant new economic policies. The labor market is near full employment, with the jobless rate at a more than 16-1/2-year low of 4.2 percent. Tightening labor market conditions likely keep the Fed on track to raise interest in December for a third time this year, even as inflation remains moderate. The four-week moving average of initial claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, fell 9,500 to 248,250 last week. The claims data covered the survey week for October nonfarm payrolls. The four-week average of claims fell 20,500 between the September and October survey periods, supporting views of a rebound in job growth this month. <20>The data suggest that the underlying trend in employment growth remains more than strong enough to keep the unemployment rate declining,<2C> said Jim O<>Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York. In a separate report on Thursday, the Philadelphia Fed said its measure of factory employment in the mid-Atlantic region soared 24 points to a reco
'280072ac8c8b814f426b959abbee97010e29fe6b'|'Analysis: Could the 1987 stock market crash happen again?'|'October 19, 2017 / 5:26 AM / Updated 10 hours ago Analysis: Could the 1987 stock market crash happen again? John McCrank , Chuck Mikolajczak 5 Min Read U.S. flags hang at the New York Stock Exchange in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., December 21, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly NEW YORK (Reuters) - On the 30th anniversary of the 1987 stock market crash, U.S. stocks are at a record high and investors are concerned that steep valuations may mean a correction is overdue, despite healthy corporate earnings and economic growth. But could a repeat of <20>Black Monday<61> happen today? Modern trading technology, changes to the way stock exchanges operate and in the way investor funds are managed should make a repeat of the 1987 crash unlikely. Yet cautious traders refuse to rule it out. <20>We have learned a lot from the mistakes of the past in terms of the reaction or over reaction,<2C> said Ken Polcari, director of the NYSE floor division at O<>Neil Securities in New York. On Monday Oct. 19, 1987, following large declines on Asian and European markets the previous week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 508 points, or 22.6 percent, for the biggest-ever single day decline in percentage terms by the blue-chip benchmark. A decline of up to 20 percent in one day is possible today, but it would likely be a more orderly process, said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities in New York. <20>We have the ability to shut things down for a period of time and reassess and try to ascertain what is the best way to get back in business and take a calmer look at things,<2C> he said. In response to the 1987 crash, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission mandated the creation of market-wide <20>circuit breakers<72> that call a temporary halt to trading after the Dow declines 10, 20 and 30 percent. Only one market-wide halt has been triggered since then, in 1997. The circuit breakers were adjusted in 2012, lowering the thresholds needed to trigger a trading pause, with the Dow replaced by the S&P 500 stock index as the benchmark index. Under current rules, if the broader S&P 500 index falls more than 7.0 percent before 3:25 p.m. New York time, trading is paused for 15 minutes. If the decline continues once trading resumes, and it is still before 3:25 p.m., the market is again paused at 13 percent. If the decline happens after 3:25 p.m, trading continues. But if the decline reaches 20 percent, trading is suspended for the session, regardless of the time of day. A statue of George Washington stands across from the New York Stock Exchange in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., December 21, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly <20>The industry has come an awfully long way from <20>87,<2C> said Larry Tabb, who heads capital markets advisory firm TABB Group. <20>The regulators have done a good job at implementing rules that help the markets ensure that they stay stable at a time when there is not a reason for them not to be stable.<2E> Many of the current measures aimed at taming market chaos were implemented after the May 2010 <20>flash crash,<2C> when the Dow Jones Industrial Average careened nearly 1,000 points, around 9.0 percent, in a matter of minutes before mostly rebounding in a similarly short period. The SEC approved a regulation in 2012 called <20>Limit-Up Limit-Down,<2C> which prevents stocks from trading outside of a specific range based on recent prices, pausing trading in the stocks in question when prices run afoul of the bands. The U.S. regulator and exchanges were forced to readjust the bands again, and the re-opening procedures for paused stocks, after a chaotic trading session in August 2015. Then, concerns over the health of the Chinese economy led to panic-selling and a dearth of buyers, spurring a record intra-day drop in the Dow. On that day more than 1,250 trading halts in 455 individual stocks and exchange-traded funds spawned confusion that may have compounded the problem and led to some investors getting worse prices than they otherwise would have. <20>Anything 
'ddcd74d9d0d7ca40e08f3026668bb1b15260ab44'|'Nissan Motor says CEO Saikawa to brief on uncertified inspection issue'|'  a few seconds ago Nissan Motor says CEO Saikawa to brief on uncertified inspection issue Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The Nissan logo is seen at the 2017 New York International Auto Show in New York City, U.S. April 12, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan Mcdermid TOKYO (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co Ltd ( 7201.T ) said Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa will hold at news conference 1000 GMT on Thursday to brief on its uncertified inspection scandal. The news conference comes a day after Nissan admitted uncertified vehicle checks had continued even after it revealed final vehicle checks for the domestic market were not performed by certified technicians. The misconduct has forced Japan<61>s second-largest automaker to recall all 1.2 million new cars it sold in domestically over the past three years. Reporting by Sam Nussey; Editing by Stephen Coates 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nissan-recall/nissan-motor-says-ceo-saikawa-to-brief-on-uncertified-inspection-issue-idUSKBN1CO0OL'|'2017-10-19T09:51:00.000+03:00'
'8d0d3bb3077d862cd931aced45b558a99e8f9c13'|'HomeServe steps up U.S. push with Dominion Energy deal'|'October 19, 2017 / 8:10 AM / a few seconds ago HomeServe steps up U.S. push with Dominion Energy deal Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British home repairs provider HomeServe is stepping up its expansion in the United States by buying Dominion Energy<67>s home services unit, which has 500,000 customers across 16 states. The company said it would raise up to 125 million pounds ($165 million) in a share placing to fund the deal, which has an enterprise value of $143 million. That also gives it the firepower to do more, with opportunities in the United States, its European markets and in new regions such as Latin America. <20>It gets us closer to our medium-term target, which is to be marketing to 80 million households (in the U.S.), and to get 10 percent of those signed up to cover,<2C> Chief Executive Richard Harpin said in an interview. The deal gives HomeServe access to 7.1 million additional households in 16 states in the mid-Atlantic region, he said. Harpin said its U.S. operations could achieve a 20 percent net profit margin, generating $160 million of profit a year in the medium term, which is more money than the whole group made last year. He said the group could have funded the deal from its existing finances and debt, but it was raising equity because it had <20>a really exciting pipeline<6E> of acquisition opportunities in the United States, Britain and France, and could potentially enter markets such as Latin America. HomeServe said it had a good first six months of the year and it remained on track to deliver further strong growth for the full financial year. Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Keith Weir 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-dominion-inc-m-a-homeserve/homeserve-steps-up-u-s-push-with-dominion-energy-deal-idUKKBN1CO0WV'|'2017-10-19T11:06:00.000+03:00'
'8991aabd45746e858f8ba15de648bc958a1bf732'|'Toshiba investigated by Japan''s securities watchdog - Nikkei'|' 04 AM / in 5 minutes Toshiba investigated by Japan''s securities watchdog: Nikkei Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A logo of Toshiba Corp is seen on a printed circuit board in this photo illustration taken in Tokyo July 31, 2012. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s securities watchdog is investigating Toshiba Corp<72>s accounting practices for the last business year to see if it properly handled the losses incurred by its U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse, the Nikkei business daily reported on Thursday. The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission is examining the process of how Toshiba created the financial report for the 2016/17 business year, which was released in August, the Nikkei said. The report was originally due at the end of June but Toshiba and its auditor had a conflict of opinion over when the Japanese company came to know about the losses at Westinghouse, the Nikkei said. The auditor, PriceWaterhouseCoopers Aarata LLC, in August gave a <20>qualified opinion<6F> on Toshiba<62>s financial results, meaning it broadly vouched for books that contained minor problems. But in a rare move, it also issued a separate <20>adverse opinion<6F> on corporate governance, saying Toshiba was late in booking Westinghouse losses. The securities watchdog will examine exchanges between Toshiba and its auditor and aims to see what led to the auditor<6F>s decision, and why reports from previous years were postponed repeatedly, the Nikkei reported. The investigation was not due to any new discoveries or allegations, according to the Nikkei. A Toshiba spokesman declined to comment on the report. Reporting by Kaori Kaneko; Editing by Chris Gallagher and Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting/toshiba-investigated-by-japans-securities-watchdog-nikkei-idUKKBN1CO03D'|'2017-10-19T04:01:00.000+03:00'
'75378da155a576a4df487f747b6a7ec1f634bb14'|'OPEC''s Barkindo says balanced oil market is in sight'|'October 19, 2017 / 9:18 AM / Updated 3 minutes ago OPEC seeking consensus on oil supply cut extension before meeting Alex Lawler 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo attends a meeting of the 4th OPEC-Non-OPEC Ministerial Monitoring Committee in St. Petersburg, Russia July 24, 2017. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov - LONDON (Reuters) - Oil producers are working to build consensus on extending their deal to reduce supplies, OPEC<45>s secretary general said on Thursday, with the potential for continuation throughout 2018 forming a basis for talks. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus Russia and nine other producers, are cutting oil output by about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) until March 2018 in an attempt to eradicate a supply glut that has weighed on prices. The deal has supported prices, which are trading within sight of a two-year high, but an overhang of stored oil has yet to be fully eradicated and producers are considering extending the deal at their next meeting on Nov. 30. OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo, in a briefing with reporters on Thursday, said that Russian President Vladimir Putin<69>s suggestion this month that the deal could be extended to the end of 2018 were being taken <20>seriously<6C>. Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih, the OPEC president, and Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak <20>are taking cue from the open statement of President Putin and engaging the rest of the participating countries ... to build consensus before Nov. 30<33>, Barkindo said. Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing OPEC sources, that producers are leaning towards extending the deal for a further nine months, though the decision could be postponed until early next year depending on the market. Barkindo said it wasn<73>t yet clear if the decision would be made on Nov.30 and, asked whether another meeting could be held in early 2018, said that Falih and Novak would consult and decide. <20>It<49>s difficult to say at the moment what will be decided in November,<2C> Barkindo said. <20>It will depend on a number of factors, chief among which is how far are we from achieving our objective of a convergence of supply and demand.<2E> Falih and Novak are also talking to producers not currently participating in the supply cut, Barkindo added. BALANCED MARKET IN SIGHT Earlier in the day Barkindo said the supply pact was helping to speed the balancing of the crude market. <20>There is no doubt that this market is rebalancing at an accelerating pace,<2C> he said in a speech at the Oil & Money conference in London. <20>Stability is steadily returning and there is far more light at the end of the dark tunnel we have been traveling down for the past three years.<2E> Oil prices, trading above $57 on Thursday, are half their level of mid-2014, prompting energy companies to cut back on exploration and producers to curb production. The supply pact is aimed at reducing oil stocks in OECD industrialized countries to their five-year average. Stock levels in September were about 160 million barrels above that average, Barkindo said, down from January<72>s 340 million barrels above the five-year average. Editing by Jason Neely and David Goodman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-oil-opec-barkindo/opecs-barkindo-says-balanced-oil-market-is-in-sight-idUKKBN1CO140'|'2017-10-19T12:46:00.000+03:00'
'edbb16a0ee1b63da8160865c9b46cb55946adc6f'|'Banks line up approximately 5 billion euro debt for Unilever spreads sale'|'October 19, 2017 / 1:05 PM / Updated an hour ago Banks line up approximately 5 billion euro debt for Unilever spreads sale Claire Ruckin 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The company logo for Unilever is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., February 17, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Bankers are working on debt financings of up to 5 billion euro (<28>4.5 billion) to back a potential sale of the margarine and spreads business of Anglo-Dutch consumer group Unilever ( ULVR.L ), banking sources said. The sale of the business, which makes Flora and Stork margarines, officially kicked off in late September with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading the process. First round bids are due this week for the business that could fetch <20>6bn. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Mizuho have provided a staple financing that will be offered to potential buyers, in an effort to give bidders comfort that liquidity is available for funding the potential buyout, the sources said. The staple totals around <20>4bn, or 5.25 times the Ebitda of Unilever<65>s spreads business that is approximately <20>700m-<2D>750m, the sources said. Other bankers are working on more aggressive financing packages totalling up to 7.0 times debt to Ebitda, the sources said. Unilever did not respond to an email requesting comment on the financing. Any financing is expected to comprise a combination of senior and subordinated leveraged loans and high-yield bonds, denominated in euros, dollars and sterling, the sources said. <20>It is a massive deal and every bank is around it. It will need to tap into as many liquidity pools as possible,<2C> a senior banker said. The leverage levels banks are willing to put on the business are wide ranging -- anywhere from 5.25-7.0 times -- due to differing assumptions on Ebitda adjustments, market growth potential and the costs of turning it into a standalone business. <20>There are lots of different factors at play and that will impact how comfortable a financing bank will get with leveraging up the asset,<2C> a second senior banker said. International investors have teamed up in three rival consortiums consisting of Bain Capital and Clayton Dubilier & Rice as part of one group, Blackstone ( BX.N ) and CVC Capital Partners as part of a rival group, and KKR joining forces with Singapore<72>s sovereign wealth fund GIC. US investment fund Apollo is looking to bid alone, Reuters reported previously. In its bid to exit from the shrinking margarine business, Unilever agreed last month to exchange its spreads unit in South Africa for Remgro<72>s ( REMJ.J ) 26% stake in Unilever<65>s South African subsidiary, a deal worth US$900m. Last month, Unilever agreed to buy cosmetics firm Carver Korea for <20>2.27bn from Goldman Sachs, Bain Capital and the company<6E>s founder as it expands its beauty and personal care business. Editing by Christopher Mangham'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-unilever-leveraged-loans/banks-line-up-approximately-5-billion-euro-debt-for-unilever-spreads-sale-idUKKBN1CO1V1'|'2017-10-19T16:04:00.000+03:00'
'08c7a3feeaad3a3730bd1fb5e73ffdebada92486'|'GM to settle state ignition claims for $120 million'|'Reuters TV United States October 19, 2017 / 4:24 PM / a minute ago GM to settle state ignition claims for $120 million Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The GM logo is seen at the General Motors Lansing Grand River Assembly Plant in Lansing, Michigan October 26, 2015. Photo taken October 26. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook WASHINGTON (Reuters) - General Motors Co ( GM.N ) on Thursday agreed to pay $120 million to resolve claims from 49 U.S. states and the District of Columbia over faulty ignition switches, state attorneys general said. The largest U.S. automaker had previously paid about $2.5 billion in penalties and settlements over faulty ignition switches that could cause engines to stall and prevent airbags from deploying in crashes. The defect has been linked to 124 deaths and 275 injuries, and prompted a recall that began in February 2014. GM did not immediately comment on Thursday. Reporting by David Shepardson'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-gm-ignition/gm-to-settle-state-ignition-claims-for-120-million-idUKKBN1CO2FU'|'2017-10-19T19:19:00.000+03:00'
'58732559017387ba5c98cfcfb7ab2bbc3c5b6fd6'|'WPP hit by problems at rival Publicis and client Unilever'|'October 19, 2017 / 3:00 PM / Updated 7 minutes ago WPP hit by problems at rival Publicis and client Unilever Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Shares in WPP ( WPP.L ) fell more than three percent on Thursday on a triple whammy of bad news for the world<6C>s biggest advertising group, less than two months after it issued a major profit warning. WPP, run by high-profile executive Martin Sorrell, sent shockwaves through the industry in August when it cut its sales target after consumer goods giants curbed spending, prompting its shares to fall 11 percent and record their worst day of trading in 19 years. The British company<6E>s stock fell 3 percent on Thursday after smaller rival Publicis ( PUBP.PA ) posted third-quarter sales below forecasts and said the market remained challenging, sending its shares down 7 percent. Also on Thursday, WPP<50>s client Unilever ( ULVR.L )( UNc.AS ) reported lower-than-expected third-quarter sales after losing market share to smaller competitors. And European pay-TV group Sky ( SKYB.L ) said it would review its media and buying accounts for the first time in 13 years, work that has largely been provided by WPP, showing the level of competition in the sector. <20>(Rival) Omnicom had good results recently but they also had a good Q2, so they<65>re slightly out of sync with the others,<2C> Numis analyst Paul Richards said. <20>They<65>ve had a good new business rate of late and they<65>re underweight on consumer goods clients, unlike WPP.<2E> Richards said that the Sky account was not one of the biggest held by WPP, but he said the combined news of the weakness at Publicis and Unilever would weigh on the stock. WPP is more exposed than its peers to consumer goods groups like Unilever and Procter & Gamble ( PG.N ) who have cut marketing spend this year. It reports third-quarter trading on Oct. 31. Reporting by Kate Holton. Editing by Jane Merriman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-wpp-stocks/wpp-hit-by-problems-at-rival-publicis-and-client-unilever-idUKKBN1CO27J'|'2017-10-19T17:59:00.000+03:00'
'38586fc9c43b4337c9b27e1710042432a9c4cd1d'|'Reckitt cuts full-year outlook after third quarter sales fall'|'October 18, 2017 / 6:24 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago Reckitt to reshape as sales growth evaporates Martinne Geller 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Products made by Reckitt Benckiser stand on a shelf in a store in Brighton, England, July 21, 2010. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s Reckitt Benckiser ( RB.L ) will split its business into two divisions -- consumer healthcare and home and hygiene products -- to try to revive sales that are set to stall this year. The change follows the group<75>s sixth straight quarter of weak results. It hopes to improve performance in its newly expanded health business, while bringing greater focus and accountability to its slower-growth home and hygiene business. Reckitt, whose products range from Durex condoms to Lysol disinfectant, has blamed fallout from a cyber attack, a failed product launch and a safety scandal in South Korea for its lacklustre sales. The sales fell 1 percent in the third quarter, missing analysts<74> expectations for growth of 0.6 percent. The company is now targeting only flat like-for-like sales for the full year in its base business, down from a previous target of 2 percent growth. That goal was already cut from 3 percent, due to a June cyber attack that hobbled its operations. Reckitt, whose profit margins are among the sector<6F>s best, had for years enjoyed a reputation for setting the pace for sales growth. Including Wednesday<61>s share price decline, the stock has fallen more than 14 percent since June because of concerns over its performance. TWO HEADS Reckitt will operate from two business units from the start of 2018. Rob de Groot, who currently runs Reckitt<74>s business in Europe and North America, will head the home and hygiene business. He will report to Rakesh Kapoor, who will remain the group<75>s CEO and also have charge of the healthcare operations, which account for two-thirds of the company. The decision was made after the $16 billion (<28>12.1 billion) purchase of baby milk maker Mead Johnson gave it greater scale in consumer health, Kapoor told Reuters. Some analysts saw the restructuring as a precursor to parting with home and hygiene, as Reckitt did with its pharmaceutical business in 2014 and when it sold its North American food business in August. <20>In our view, the new structure may be a prelude to a split of the business or a sale of RB Hygiene Home, particularly if an attractive asset such as Pfizer<65>s consumer health division becomes available,<2C> Liberum analysts said. Pfizer ( PFE.N ) said this month it was weighing options including a sale of that business, home to Advil and Chapstick. Kapoor denied any intention to exit health and hygiene, saying the move was to improve each business over the long term. But he said he was interested in the Pfizer business. <20>If one of those options (being considered) is going to be a sale, we are going to look at that. But we should not try and pre-guess,<2C> he said. He declined to comment on potential interest in the consumer health business Merck ( MRCG.DE ) is selling. Analysts have questioned whether Reckitt has the financial and managerial capacity to buy the Pfizer business so soon after the purchase of Mead Johnson. CREDIBILITY QUESTIONED Reckitt<74>s shares were down 1.8 percent at 6,911 pence at 1150 GMT, having dropped as much as 2.7 percent earlier in the session as investors digested the disappointing quarterly sales and a bigger than expected cut to its full-year sales forecast. <20>Management credibility will take yet another blow with a second LFL sales warning in 2017,<2C> Bernstein analysts said, adding that the new forecast for zero growth was below expectations for a cut to 1 percent growth. Investec analysts said the new structure reflected the growing importance of the consumer health unit. Even though the separate units will make Reckitt more expensive to run, due to some duplicated costs, Kapoor said it made sense to separate the units as their products are marketed and sold differentl
'0e194dbc27394cefb868abb4a54f8401d044f002'|'Domino''s German JV to buy independent chain Hallo Pizza'|' 36 AM / in 32 minutes Domino''s German JV to buy independent chain Hallo Pizza Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The Domino''s logo is seen in Golden, Colorado United States July 25, 2017. REUTERS/Rick Wilking (Reuters) - Domino<6E>s Pizza Group Plc ( DOM.L ) said its German joint venture, in which it owns a third of the stake, would buy Germany<6E>s largest independent pizza chain, Hallo Pizza, to expand its business in the country. Domino<6E>s Pizza, a master franchisee of U.S.-based Domino<6E>s Pizza Inc ( DPZ.N ), said the deal worth 32 million euros ($37.8 million) on a cash-and-debt-free basis, would add Hallo<6C>s 170 stores to its business. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2018, Britain<69>s biggest pizza delivery firm said on Thursday. ($1 = 0.8472 euros) Reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-dominos-piza-grp-deals-hallo-pizza/dominos-german-jv-to-buy-independent-chain-hallo-pizza-idUKKBN1CO0NB'|'2017-10-19T09:36:00.000+03:00'
'3df6010f04f3d1eecedb48d7acc88e44e794ed25'|'Glencore says may raise stake in Rosneft in future'|'October 19, 2017 / 12:03 PM / in 11 minutes Glencore says may raise stake in Rosneft in future Reuters Staff 1 Min Read The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company''s headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann VERONA (Reuters) - Commodities trader Glencore ( GLEN.L ) may raise its share in Russian oil major Rosneft ( ROSN.MM ) in the future, Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg said on Thursday, adding that he saw the stake in Russia<69>s largest oil producer as a long-term investment. Glencore will retain the 0.5 percent stake in Rosneft after Chinese conglomerate CEFC buys a 14.16 percent stake in the company from a consortium of Glencore and the Qatar Investment Authority. Reporting by Oksana Kobzeva, writing by Denis Pinchuk, editing by Dmitry Solovyov 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-russia-rosneft-glencore/glencore-says-may-raise-stake-in-rosneft-in-future-idUKKBN1CO1OR'|'2017-10-19T15:02:00.000+03:00'
'27cc175517239d247fd56eedf63ff8ba5991e992'|'BRIEF-Seven Stars Cloud Group announces new joint venture'|'October 19, 2017 / 1:07 PM / in 10 minutes BRIEF-Seven Stars Cloud Group announces new joint venture Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 19 (Reuters) - Seven Stars Cloud Group Inc * Seven Stars Cloud announces new JV, BBD digital finance group, with BBD, Asia<69>s leader in artificial intelligence-based big data solutions * Deal to establish JV, BBD Digital Finance Group with management partners Tiger Sports Media Limited and Seasail Ventures Source text for Eikon:   0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-seven-stars-cloud-group-announces/brief-seven-stars-cloud-group-announces-new-joint-venture-idUSFWN1MU0UR'|'2017-10-19T16:05:00.000+03:00'
'22b031f5d86e80c7113b897b5c52fb984a80ac1a'|'Facebook buys teen app tbh'|'October 16, 2017 / 9:32 PM / Updated 8 hours ago Facebook buys teen app tbh Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Facebook logo is seen at a start-up companies gathering at Paris'' Station F in Paris, France on January 17, 2017. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer/File Photo (Reuters) - Facebook Inc ( FB.O ) has acquired tbh, an app popular among teens, as the world<6C>s largest social network looks to attract more users. The app, an acronym for <20>To be Honest<73>, allows users to anonymously answer multiple choice questions about friends, who then receive the poll results as compliments. Over 5 million people have downloaded the app and sent over a billion messages in the past few weeks, tbh said on Monday. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Reporting by Laharee Chatterjee; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-tbh-m-a-facebook/facebook-buys-teen-app-tbh-idINKBN1CL2YU'|'2017-10-16T19:32:00.000+03:00'
'6debf046a7a1476f9f262554105e9d8dfa24b2df'|'Exclusive: Woodside delays Myanmar gas drilling as early results disappoint - sources'|'October 17, 2017 / 12:52 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Exclusive: Woodside delays Myanmar gas drilling as early results disappoint - sources Shoon Naing , Antoni Slodkowski 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The Woodside Petroleum gas plant is seen at sunset in Burrup, in the Pilbarra region of Western Australia, April 18, 2011. REUTERS/Daniel Munoz/File Photo YANGON (Reuters) - Australia<69>s Woodside Petroleum ( WPL.AX ) and its partners have deferred gas exploration plans in Myanmar until 2018 after some disappointing drilling results, according to four people familiar with the situation. Woodside and its partner, French oil and gas major Total TOTF.SA, have targeted Myanmar as a key source of growth. The country is rich in gas and sits next to rapidly growing markets, including Thailand and China. Woodside said in August it planned to drill wells in two exploration blocks off the coast of Myanmar in the second half of this year. It said both blocks could hold <20>multi-trillion cubic feet<65> of gas. But the Australian company cancelled a tender for seismic work 10 days ago, after drilling at Blocks A-6 and AD-7 did not hit as much gas as hoped, the sources said. <20>They drilled (in A-6)... and found the gas but had to stop now because the company needs to evaluate commercial viability of the project... The results from two wells are not sufficient to decode whether the project is commercially viable or not,<2C> said a senior government official in Myanmar. The official said Woodside <20>didn<64>t find the gas<61> they had expected in Block AD-7, so decided to re-appraise the situation and decide on further action next year. Woodside said the drilling had been completed, but declined to comment on whether a seismic tender had been cancelled. The company is due to give a quarterly update on Thursday. <20>Woodside has completed all of its planned drilling for 2017 and is continuing planning for 2018 activities, consistent with the advice provided in Woodside<64>s 2017 half-year report,<2C> a Woodside spokeswoman said. Woodside Chief Executive Peter Coleman had told analysts in August the company expected to know after drilling in Block A6 that month whether the field was commercial. <20>We<57>ve already had some initial discussions on it, but assuming a success case on the current well in Block A6, we<77>ll be ready to be inputting development proposals in front of government as to the pathway forward,<2C> Coleman said at the time. A person involved in bidding to carry out seismic exploration work said Woodside had sent a letter in early October cancelling the tender as it had failed to receive joint venture approval, and was deferring the work to the second or third quarter of 2018. The person declined to be named as the tender process is confidential. Woodside<64>s partners in Block A-6 off Myanmar<61>s southwest coast are France<63>s Total and local firm MPRL E&P. Total did not respond to requests for comment. Its partner in Block AD-7 is South Korea<65>s Posco Daewoo Corp. Posco Daewoo said there had been no change to plans for AD-7. TROUBLED ENVIRONMENT The sources said the delays were unrelated to the violent refugee crisis of Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar, for which the government has come under international criticism. Yet analysts said the political crisis may have been a factor. <20>The worsening Rohingya crisis is an additional factor in an overall quite problematic operating environment now,<2C> said Jan Zalewski, head of Asia at risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft. <20>Aside from challenging fiscal and commercial contexts for energy majors, regulatory capacity constraints, growing resource regionalism and unclear energy and economic policies create uncertainty,<2C> he added. The terms include income tax royalties on income and production, research and development payments and profit sharing with local companies. The delay is a potential blow to Myanmar<61>s ambitious plans to develop its nascent energy sector, which struggles to keep up with demand. Energy co
'2ab2494a026999918a7073f2882091a0876ed264'|'Riboud to stand down as Danone chairman - Le Monde'|' 53 AM / in 27 minutes Riboud to stand down as Danone chairman - Le Monde Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Danone food company Chairman Franck Riboud attends the official opening ceremony of the the new Evian water bottling plant in Publier near Evian-les-Bains, France September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse PARIS (Reuters) - Franck Riboud is to stand down as chairman of French food group Danone ( DANO.PA ) with chief executive Emmanuel Faber due to take up the chairman<61>s functions as well, Le Monde newspaper reported. Officials at Danone could not be immediately reached for comment on the report. Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Dominique Vidalon 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-danone-management/riboud-to-stand-down-as-danone-chairman-le-monde-idUKKBN1CM15M'|'2017-10-17T12:52:00.000+03:00'
'67bde8325535865772c0edfef806f7ee3dd8cae9'|'GE to make payments to U.S. government over delayed Baker Hughes divestiture'|'October 17, 2017 / 3:49 PM / Updated 25 minutes ago GE to make payments to U.S. government over delayed Baker Hughes divestiture Reuters Staff 1 Min Read WASHINGTON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - General Electric has agreed to make payments to the U.S. government after failing to divest a subsidiary as quickly as agreed following a merger approval, the Justice Department said on Tuesday. The department, which did not say how big the payments are, said that they are to begin on Jan. 1 and continue <20>until the divestitures in each international jurisdiction are completed,<2C> the department said. General Electric won U.S. antitrust approval to merge its oil and gas business with Baker Hughes Inc to form a new publicly traded company in June. The deal was approved on condition that GE sell its Water & Process Technologies business to the French waste and water group Suez. In its release, the department said the delays were due to <20>various administrative challenges.<2E> (Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Paul Simao) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/ge-baker-hughes-antitrust/ge-to-make-payments-to-u-s-government-over-delayed-baker-hughes-divestiture-idUSL2N1MS10O'|'2017-10-17T18:47:00.000+03:00'
'567e97e9fc9c2c71bd6abcb023fb5d2c75c5e9f6'|'Uber loses another senior figure as European policy chief quits - FT'|'October 17, 2017 / 10:52 AM / in 16 minutes Uber loses another senior figure as European policy chief quits Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A photo illustration shows the Uber app on a mobile telephone, as it is held up for a posed photograph in central London, Britain September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Uber<65>s European policy chief Christopher Burghardt is quitting to join the electric vehicle charging network company Chargepoint, the companies said on Tuesday, becoming latest senior figure to leave the taxi app. Burghardt, the head of policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, departs after one year with Uber and will become managing director for Chargepoint in Europe in November, he told Reuters. Earlier this month, Uber<65>s top boss in Britain also quit the Silicon Valley company, which was told last month by London<6F>s transport regulator (TfL) that its license to operate in the British capital would not be renewed. It is appealing that decision. Uber has suffered a tumultuous few months which has seen former CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick being forced out after a series of boardroom controversies and other regulatory battles in multiple U.S. states and around the world. The firm<72>s new global chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi flew to London earlier this month to meet TfL bosses and offer an apology for Uber<65>s mistakes. <20>I<EFBFBD>m still a great believer in what Uber does,<2C> Burghardt told the Financial Times newspaper. <20>Dara really has vision that will take the company into a bright future.<2E> Reporting by Michael Holden and Eric Auchard; editing by Stephen Addison 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-uber-burghardt/ubers-european-policy-chief-quits-ft-says-idUKKBN1CM1CP'|'2017-10-17T14:12:00.000+03:00'
'9c32dc2ab89a5d3988e90fa82442eb6c8002497a'|'Gold prices hold steady amid firm dollar'|'October 17, 2017 / 1:32 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Gold prices fall as dollar extends gains Apeksha Nair 3 Min Read A salesperson attends to a customer (not pictured) inside a jewellery showroom, during Akshaya Tritiya, a major gold-buying festival, in Mumbai, India April 28, 2017. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade REUTERS - Gold prices fell on Tuesday, pressured by a firmer dollar but worries over geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and on the Korean peninsula kept further losses in check. Spot gold was down 0.4 percent at $1,289.20 an ounce, as of 0706 GMT, while U.S. gold futures for December delivery slipped 0.9 percent to $1,291.70 per ounce. The dollar edged up against its peers on Tuesday, supported by a rise in Treasury yields following a report that U.S. President Donald Trump was favouring a policy hawk as the next head of the Federal Reserve. Trump will meet with Fed Chair Janet Yellen on Thursday as part of his search for a new candidate for her position, a source familiar with the planned meeting said. The Fed will probably need to raise interest rates in December and then three of four times <20>over the course of next year<61>, assuming the U.S. unemployment rate continues to fall and inflation rises, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said. <20>On the bearish side, a resilient dollar and rising interest rates (and stocks) are all impacting gold negatively, while the fragile geopolitical mosaic is offering an element of support,<2C> INTL FCStone analyst Edward Meir said in a note. Higher U.S. interest rates tend to boost the dollar and push up bond yields, putting pressure on greenback-denominated gold. <20>A lot of the price drivers that are clouding gold prices are really geopolitical tensions rather than fundamentals,<2C>said OCBC analyst Barnabas Gan. <20>Geopolitical tensions are a crucial and unquantifiable factor when it comes to affecting prices, so it (gold) is just all over the place now.<2E> Iraqi government forces captured the major Kurdish-held oil city of Kirkuk on Monday, responding to a Kurdish referendum on independence with a bold lightning strike that transforms the balance of power in the oil-producing country. The United States is not ruling out the eventual possibility of direct talks with North Korea, Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan said on Tuesday, hours after Pyongyang warned nuclear war might break out at any moment. Spot gold may drop to $1,281 per ounce, as it failed to break resistance at $1,305, said Reuters technicals analyst Wang Tao. In other precious metals, silver fell 0.6 percent to $17.08 an ounce. Platinum was unchanged at $928.60 an ounce while palladium edged 0.3 percent higher to $975.50, after hitting its best since February 2001 in the previous session. Reporting by Apeksha Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Joseph Radford and Sherry Jacob-Phillips 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-precious/gold-prices-hold-steady-amid-firm-dollar-idINKBN1CM04D'|'2017-10-17T04:30:00.000+03:00'
'463caac8e0b0d7c0d0067f79b3f2d300b8661ee8'|'UPDATE 1-Elliott urges Ocean Rig to hire advisers to review opportunities'|'October 16, 2017 / 10:13 PM / in a few seconds UPDATE 1-Elliott urges Ocean Rig to hire advisers to review opportunities Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Adds BlueMountain<69>s statement, shares) Oct 16 (Reuters) - Ocean Rig UDW<44>s top investor Elliott Management on Monday urged the offshore driller to hire advisers to review opportunities including possible strategic deals. Elliott said it planned to rope in Ocean Rig''s second-biggest investor, BlueMountain Capital, in the efforts. ( bit.ly/2yuqv9N ) The activist hedge fund disclosed a 20.4 stake in the company earlier this month, while BlueMountain held a 10.86 percent stake as per Thomson Reuters data. Ocean Rig completed restructuring its business in September after filing for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in March, weighed down by major oil companies withdrawing from deep water projects amid plunging oil prices. Ocean Rig<69>s stock had gained nearly 10 percent since the company completed the restructuring on Sept. 22. (Reporting by John Benny in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/ocean-rig-udw-elliott/update-1-elliott-urges-ocean-rig-to-hire-advisers-to-review-opportunities-idUSL4N1MR5W8'|'2017-10-17T01:10:00.000+03:00'
'976ae52dd22bb17456e70576a37b611980b3b659'|'No Brexit deal would raise UK household bills by 260 pounds a year: report'|'October 16, 2017 / 11:17 PM / in 6 hours No Brexit deal would raise UK household bills by 260 pounds a year: report David Milliken 3 Min Read A Union Jack flag flutters next to European Union flags ahead of a visit of Britain''s Prime Minister Theresa May and Britain''s Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union David Davis at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium October 16, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir LONDON (Reuters) - British households would have to pay an average of 260 pounds ($345) a year more for food, clothing and transport if their government fails to strike a post-Brexit free trade deal with the European Union, a research paper showed on Tuesday. Britain<69>s government has said it would levy World Trade Organization tariffs on goods imported from the EU if it leaves the bloc without a settlement, a probability which some economists put at roughly 25 percent. That would mean tariffs of up to 45 percent on some dairy imports while some meat would face a 37 percent levy, researchers from the University of Sussex and the Resolution Foundation, a think tank focused on the low-paid, said. A typical middle-income household would pay an extra 260 pounds a year, even taking into account a partial shift to cheaper and British-produced goods, they said. That was equivalent to an extra 0.9 percent in household spending. The poorest 10 percent of households would see their bills rise by 1.0 percent, and the richest 10 percent by 0.8 percent. <20>A <20>no-deal<61> scenario ... will increase the cost of essential goods, such as food and clothes, which will impact most adversely on those households who already struggle to get food on the table,<2C> Sussex researcher Ilona Serwicka said. The actual cost rise would vary significantly depending on individual spending patterns and some less well-off households could see their costs go up by more than 500 pounds a year. British finance minister Philip Hammond said on Monday he did not think there was a rising danger of failure to reach a Brexit deal before Britain leaves the EU in March 2019, despite concern among many investors. Some Brexit supporters have said Britain would benefit from scrapping all tariffs on goods imports after it leaves the EU, regardless of what the bloc does for UK exports. Tuesday<61>s report said this could save the average household 130 pounds a year, or 0.5 percent of typical spending. But the researchers said some industries, such as meat processing, and the rural parts of England where they are concentrated would suffer a big hit in the face of cheap imports and scrapping tariffs immediately would make it harder to get tariff-free access for British exports in future. ($1 = 0.7528 pounds) Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by William Schomberg 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-tariffs/no-brexit-deal-would-raise-uk-household-bills-by-260-pounds-a-year-report-idINKBN1CL342'|'2017-10-17T02:07:00.000+03:00'
'e74ea6c130f60fd0437311d8c2d6cd6e349a34b1'|'Ukraine allows Glencore to own stake in alumina plant of Russia''s Rusal'|'October 19, 2017 / 4:08 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago Glencore gains approval to buy into Rusal''s Ukrainian alumina plant Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company''s headquarters in the Swiss town of Baar November 20, 2012. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine<6E>s anti-monopoly committee has given commodities trader Glencore ( GLEN.L ) the green light to take a stake in Ukraine<6E>s Mykolaiv plant, the second-largest alumina asset of Russia<69>s Rusal ( 0486.HK ). The decision means Glencore can acquire shares in Aluminium of Ukraine and Guardon Ukraine, which own the Mykolaiv plant and are themselves controlled by Rusal, one of the world<6C>s largest aluminium producers. <20>The anti-monopoly committee has granted the relevant permits,<2C> it said on Wednesday. With annual output of 1.6 million tonnes, Mykolaiv is Ukraine<6E>s largest producer of alumina, used in aluminium production. Rusal, which produced 7.5 million tonnes of alumina globally in 2016, did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Ukraine has imposed economic and other restrictions on Russian companies, including those with Ukrainian assets, after Russia<69>s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ensuing pro-Russian separatist uprising in the east. Last October Ukraine imposed extra sanctions on Rusal, accusing the company of actions that threatened Ukrainian national security and assets. Rusal said the move was unwarranted. Glencore has previously said it is particularly keen on assets relevant to the expected boom in electric vehicles, which could include aluminium. The Mykolaiv deal follows Wednesday<61>s announcement that Glencore will convert its 8.75 percent stake in Rusal to shares in En+ Group, an aluminium and hydropower group controlled by tycoon Oleg Deripaska. Reporting by Natalia Zinets; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Mark Potter and David Goodman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ukraine-glencore-rusal/ukraine-allows-glencore-to-own-stake-in-alumina-plant-of-russias-rusal-idUKKBN1CO2DT'|'2017-10-19T19:07:00.000+03:00'
'd0155b952e3dc7f8b06eb278b66dea1130f0fb43'|'Exclusive: T-Mobile, Sprint aim to announce merger without asset divestitures - sources'|'(Reuters) - T-Mobile U.S. Inc ( TMUS.O ) and Sprint Corp ( S.N ) plan to announce a merger agreement without any immediate asset sales, as they seek to preserve as much of their spectrum holdings and cost synergies as they can before regulators ask for concessions, according to people familiar with the matter.While it is common for companies not to unveil divestitures during merger announcements, T-Mobile<6C>s and Sprint<6E>s approach shows that the companies plan to enter what could be challenging negotiations with U.S. antitrust and telecommunications regulators without having made prior concessions.Reuters reported last week that some of the U.S. Justice Department<6E>s antitrust staff were skeptical about the deal, which would combine the third and fourth largest U.S. wireless carriers. However, regulators can only begin reviewing a corporate merger once it has been agreed to and announced.T-Mobile and Sprint are preparing a negotiating strategy to tackle demands from regulators regarding asset sales, including the divestment of some of their spectrum licenses after their deal is announced, the sources said.The companies<65> announcement of a merger agreement, currently expected to come either in late October or early November, will focus on the potential benefits of the deal for U.S. consumers, including the advancement of next-generation 5G wireless technology, which requires considerable investment, the sources added.The sources asked not to be identified because the deliberations are confidential. T-Mobile and Sprint declined to comment.<2E>It is better for Sprint and T-Mobile to listen and learn the concerns of regulators first, and see whether there is anything that can be done to address those concerns,<2C> MoffettNathanson research analyst Craig Moffett said.A combination of T-mobile and Sprint would create a business with more than 130 million U.S. subscribers, just behind Verizon Communications Inc ( VZ.N ) and AT&T Inc ( T.N ).Companies often chose not to make any pre-emptive announcements on divestitures when they announce mergers. For example, when U.S. health insurers Anthem Inc ( ANTM.N ) and Aetna Inc ( AET.N ) separately announced deals two years ago to acquire peers Cigna Corp ( CI.N ) and Humana Inc ( HUM.N ), they did not reveal which assets they would be willing to divest. U.S. federal judges shot down both mergers on antitrust grounds earlier this year.Some media and telecommunications deals in recent years have been announced with divestitures, such as U.S. cable operator Comcast Corp<72>s ( CMCSA.O ) proposed takeover of Time Warner Cable in 2014, which was later called off after regulatory pushback. When U.S. TV station owner Sinclair Broadcast Group ( SBGI.O ) announced its acquisition of peer Tribune Media Co ( TRCO.N ) in May, it said it might sell certain stations to comply with regulators.FILE PHOTO: Smartphones with the logos of T-Mobile and Sprint are seen in this illustration taken September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Companies often also choose to place caps in their merger agreements on the size of divestitures they would be willing to accept in their negotiations with regulators. T-Mobile and Sprint have not yet agreed to include such a cap in their merger agreement, though it is possible they will do so, one of the sources said.SPECTRUM HOLDINGS UBS research analyst John Hodulik said in a research note earlier this month that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission will likely force T-Mobile and Sprint to make some divestitures of spectrum, since the combined company would have the most airwaves in its sector with more than 300 MHz, putting it ahead of Verizon<6F>s and AT&T&rsquo;s holdings.T-Mobile spent $8 billion in a government auction of airwaves earlier this year. Sprint stayed out of the auction, touting its holdings of high-band spectrum, which it says can move large volumes of information at high speeds.Having access to a lot of spect
'795fa1113d01a18135ab5c948acf0c8055023ae9'|'Bombardier raises hopes Airbus deal could save 1,000 jobs in Belfast - Business - The Guardian'|'Bombardier Bombardier raises hopes Airbus deal could save 1,000 jobs in Belfast European group challenges US rival Boeing by taking stake in Canadian group<75>s C-Series programme to help it avoid tariffs An Airbus A320 and a Bombardier C-Series plane after the announcement of the deal. Photograph: P Pigeyre/Airbus/EPA Bombardier Bombardier raises hopes Airbus deal could save 1,000 jobs in Belfast European group challenges US rival Boeing by taking stake in Canadian group<75>s C-Series programme to help it avoid tariffs View more sharing options Tuesday 17 October 2017 17.04 BST First published on Tuesday 17 October 2017 16.16 BST Bombardier has raised hopes of safeguarding 1,000 jobs in Belfast, saying it was confident a deal for Airbus to take a majority stake in the C-Series jet programme would help it avoid punishing US import tariffs. The two companies hope to circumvent the 300% import tariff by assembling the C-Series passenger jets destined for US customers at Airbus<75>s factory in Alabama. Should the deal proceed, the manufacture of wings for the C-Series is expected to remain in Belfast , where 1,000 people are employed on the programme. Bombardier employs a further 3,000 people in Belfast on other projects. Saving Bombardier jobs needs more than fluffy words, union tells May Read more <20>Bombardier remains committed to our Northern Ireland operations,<2C> a spokesperson for the company said. <20>This deal allows us to continue to support the jobs associated with the C-Series in Belfast and gives us more stability.<2E> The Canadian company<6E>s share price was up by nearly 20% in early trading on the Toronto stock exchange on Tuesday after the announcement of the Airbus deal. It is the latest twist in a bitter trade row between Bombardier and Boeing , the American aircraft maker which complained that aid from the Canadian and UK governments amounted to illegal subsidy, allowing Bombardier to sell its C-Series jets at <20>absurdly low<6F> prices in the US. The complaint was upheld by the US Department of Commerce, which slapped the huge tariff on the Montreal-based company, putting a contract with US airline Delta and the whole C-Series programme at risk. <20>Assembly in the US can resolve the issue,<2C> said Alain Bellemare, the chief executive of Bombardier , of the steep import levy in the US, adding that the two companies hoped to finalise the deal within six to 12 months. However, Boeing warned that its two rivals should <20>think again<69> if they believed the deal would allow them to avoid the levy. Phil Musser, Boeing<6E>s senior vice-president of communications, tweeted: Phil Musser (@pmusser) October 17, 2017 Boeing added in a separate statement: <20>This looks like a questionable deal between two heavily state-subsidised competitors to skirt the US government findings. Everyone should play by the same rules for free and fair trade to work.<2E> Unite, the UK<55>s largest union, welcomed the partnership between Bombardier and Airbus but cautioned it was not 100% satisfied that jobs in Northern Ireland were secure. <20>This news gives us cause to have some hope, but we are far from out of the woods and there is still much work to do to secure Bombardier jobs in Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK,<2C> said Steve Turner, assistant general secretary at Unite with responsibility for aerospace. <20>The deal could take a year or so to get through the relevant competition authorities while Boeing in the US is unlikely to sit idly by. During this period there is a danger that tariffs will be imposed and the C-Series will be effectively locked out of aviation<6F>s largest market.<2E> The business secretary, Greg Clark, said the partnership was <20>a very big step forward<72> in safeguarding Bombardier jobs in Belfast . <20>Not only has Airbus committed to Belfast being the home of the wing manufacturer for the C-Series, but they are pointing to the possibility of expanding the output and the order book,<2C> he said. Clark added that he would cont
'8a83737dfb2436feae62ceaa92a190f045debb25'|'Air Berlin and EasyJet said to announce deal on Friday - reports'|'October 19, 2017 / 2:18 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago Air Berlin and EasyJet said to announce deal on Friday - reports Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: German carrier Air Berlin aircrafts are pictured at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt/File Photo BERLIN (Reuters) - The insolvent German carrier Air Berlin and EasyJet are expected to announce a deal on Friday for the purchase of up to 25 A320 aircraft, German media reported on Thursday. The British budget airline said in September it had bid for parts of Air Berlin<69>s short haul business. BZ and Bild, citing multiple people involved in the negotiations, reported an announcement would come Friday. Air Berlin and EasyJet declined to comment. Reporting by Klaus Lauer in Berlin and Alistair Smout in London; Writing by Tom Sims; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-air-berlin-easyjet/air-berlin-and-easyjet-said-to-announce-deal-on-friday-reports-idUKKBN1CO23F'|'2017-10-19T17:19:00.000+03:00'
'2299dbae4a4915cfef48e12d7492203ab54d8862'|'Rail operator CSX reduces locomotives in maintenance program'|'October 18, 2017 / 10:07 PM / in 18 hours Rail operator CSX reduces locomotives in maintenance program Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A CSX coal train (R) moves past an idling CSX engine at the switchyard in Brunswick, Maryland October 16, 2012. REUTERS/Gary Cameron (Reuters) - CSX Corp ( CSX.O ), the No. 3 U.S. railroad operator, will slash the number of locomotives served by a long-term maintenance agreement, a move that cuts service bills under the agreement by some $3.3 billion, company filings showed on Wednesday. CSX said it exercised <20>certain rights<74> this past August under a maintenance program contract in place though 2031 that allowed it to sharply reduce the locomotives in the program, according to the company<6E>s 10-Q. As a result, the remaining payments decreased from about $5 billion at the end of December 2016 to an estimated $1.7 billion at the end of September, CSX<53>s filing said. <20>Expected future costs may change as required maintenance schedules are revised and locomotives are placed into or removed from service,<2C> the company said. Company spokesman Rob Doolittle did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It was unclear who was losing the maintenance business and how the locomotives taken out of the program would be serviced in the future, or whether they would be moved into storage. The decision frees CSX from service obligations under the contract but it was unclear how much money the company<6E>s changes would save. The changes are part of a broader overhaul underway at the Jacksonville, Florida-based operator since March under newly appointed Chief Executive Officer Hunter Harrison. Harrison, who has vowed to cut costs and boost efficiency with his <20>precision scheduled railroading<6E> strategy, has mothballed locomotives, closed rail yards, lengthened trains, and slashed overtime pay and hundreds of jobs. Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by David Gregorio 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-csx-maintenance/rail-operator-csx-reduces-locomotives-in-maintenance-program-idUSKBN1CN35N'|'2017-10-19T01:06:00.000+03:00'
'aca34751142c890f96e029e4574eb92ffa7d6da3'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Brazil stocks hit one-week low as commodities fall'|'October 19, 2017 / 3:02 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago EMERGING MARKETS-Brazil stocks hit one-week low as commodities fall Reuters Staff 4 Min Read By Bruno Federowski SAO PAULO, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Brazilian stocks fell to a one-week low on Thursday as concerns over global demand drove prices of base metals sharply lower, hammering shares of miners and steelmakers. The benchmark Bovespa stock index fell 1.2 percent, slipping further away from all-time highs reached earlier this month. Shares of Vale SA, the world''s largest iron ore miner, dropped for a third straight day, tracking a slump in China-listed iron ore futures. Steel mills in the northern part of China are expected to cut output by up to half during the winter on government orders to limit pollution, dampening demand for the metal. State-controlled oil company Petr<74>leo Brasileiro SA also followed crude prices lower. Investors booked profits from a two-week string of gains in oil futures triggered by expectations of output cuts. The decline in Brazilian stocks came even after President Michel Temer escaped corruption charges in a lower house committee vote, potentially supporting his efforts to streamline the nation''s costly social security system. The full lower house still needs to vote on the matter. "Once the charges are rejected, Congress will devote its attention to issues related to the fiscal adjustment, but the government''s position to negotiate seems weaker," analysts at Coinvalores brokerage wrote in a report. The Brazilian real seesawed, in tandem with other Latin American currencies. The Mexican peso firmed as much as 0.4 percent but gave up some gains after stronger-than-expected U.S. jobs figures cemented expectations of a December interest rate hike. Higher U.S. rates could reduce the allure of high-yielding assets. Key Latin American stock indexes and currencies at 1445 GMT: Stock indexes daily % YTD % change change Latest MSCI Emerging Markets 1115.66 -1 30.69 MSCI LatAm 2930.30 -0.75 26.14 Brazil Bovespa 75657.62 -1.22 25.62 Mexico S&P/BVM IPC 49834.17 -0.21 9.18 Chile IPSA 5474.65 -0.78 31.88 Chile IGPA 27450.97 -0.72 32.39 Argentina MerVal 26406.17 0.74 56.08 Colombia IGBC 10979.22 -0.3 8.40 Venezuela IBC 572.08 2.16 -98.20 Currencies daily % YTD % change change Latest Brazil real 3.1674 -0.09 2.58 Mexico peso 18.8065 0.28 10.30 Chile peso 625.6 0.16 7.21 Colombia peso 2924.64 -0.09 2.63 Peru sol 3.236 0.00 5.50 Argentina peso (interbank) 17.3800 0.23 -8.66 Argentina peso (parallel) 17.98 0.39 -6.45 (Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Dan Grebler) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/emerging-markets-latam/emerging-markets-brazil-stocks-hit-one-week-low-as-commodities-fall-idUSL2N1MU0ZR'|'2017-10-19T18:00:00.000+03:00'
'c05d2238cc9ead4f374a0c547bdbf803cf8d49fb'|'Rio Tinto, former top executives, charged with fraud - U.S. SEC'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:22 PM / in 10 minutes Rio Tinto, former top executives, charged with fraud - U.S. SEC Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The Rio Tinto mining company''s logo is photographed at their annual general meeting in Sydney, Australia, May 4, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Reed WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it charged mining company Rio Tinto Plc ( RIO.L ) and two of its former top executives on Tuesday with fraud for inflating the value of coal assets acquired for $3.7 billion (2.81 billion pounds) and sold a few years later for $50 million. The SEC complaint, filed in federal court in Manhattan, alleges that Rio Tinto, its former chief executive Thomas Albanese, and its former chief financial officer Guy Elliott failed to follow accounting standards and company policies to accurately value and record its assets. Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by Mohammad Zargham 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-rio-tinto-plc-fraud/rio-tinto-former-top-executives-charged-with-fraud-u-s-sec-idUKKBN1CM31S'|'2017-10-18T00:21:00.000+03:00'
'7dc754a72e445b771bad8885f8c0ed97eeb90679'|'Iraqi oil minister asks BP to develop Kirkuk oilfields, oil ministry says'|'October 18, 2017 / 6:27 AM / a few seconds ago Iraqi oil minister asks BP to develop Kirkuk oilfields, oil ministry says Reuters Staff 1 Min Read An oil field is seen in Dibis area on the outskirts of Kirkuk, Iraq October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi has asked BP ''<27>to quickly make plans to develop the Kirkuk oifields,<2C><> an oil ministry statement said on Wednesday. Iraqi government forces on Monday took control of the oil-rich region of Kirkuk from Kurdish peshmerga fighters who had occupied the area in 2-14, in the course of the war on Islamic State. BP says on its website it has provided technical assistance in the past to the Iraqi state-owned North Oil Company to aid the redevelopment of the Kirkuk field. Kirkuk is estimated to have around 9 billion barrels of recoverable oil remaining, according to BP. Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli. Editing by Jane Merriman 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-oil/iraqi-oil-minister-asks-bp-to-develop-kirkuk-oilfields-oil-ministry-says-idUSKBN1CN0KQ'|'2017-10-18T09:21:00.000+03:00'
'0ae7da44227a2d553b68513443bf9146e48b37ca'|'Nigeria selling 134 bln naira treasury bills on Wednesday -traders'|'LAGOS, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Nigeria was to sell 133.78 billion naira worth of treasury bills at an auction on Wednesday, traders said on Wednesday.The central bank is offering 32.4 billion naira in three-month paper, 35 billion naira in six-month bill and 66.38 billion naira in one-year note.The bank issues treasury bills twice a month to help the government to finance its budget deficit, curb money supply growth and provide an avenue for lenders to manage liquidity.The Debt Management Office plans to sell 100 billion naira in five and 10-year bonds on Oct 25. ($1 = 314.5000 naira) (Reporting by Chijioke Ohuocha Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/nigeria-treasury/nigeria-selling-134-bln-naira-treasury-bills-on-wednesday-traders-idINL8N1MT4SP'|'2017-10-18T12:35:00.000+03:00'
'a02c0447247e455241548cd69841837000f02ab2'|'Exclusive - Greek banks plan record sale of bad loans as pressure mounts'|'October 19, 2017 / 5:11 PM / Updated 3 minutes ago Exclusive: Greek banks plan record sale of bad loans as pressure mounts George Georgiopoulos 5 Min Read ATHENS (Reuters) - Three of Greece<63>s largest lenders plan to sell up to 5.5 billion euros ($6.5 billion) in bad loans by early next year, sources said, as the country<72>s central bank chief called on the creaking banking sector to act faster to tackle its bad-debt problem. Greek banks are saddled with 103 billion euros in bad loans, equal to almost 60 percent of the economy, after years of financial crisis and crippling recession. The European Central Bank wants that reduced by 38 billion euros by the end of 2019. Greece<63>s largest lender, Piraeus Bank, as well as peers National Bank (NBG) and Alpha Bank plan to take a major step toward that goal with a record series of sales to be completed by the end of March, the banking sources said. They are responding to growing regulatory pressure to tackle the bad-debt problem, which restricts banks<6B> ability to expand credit and undermines Greece<63>s tentative economic recovery and efforts to end its reliance on European Union bailout funds. Greece<63>s central bank chief told Reuters on Wednesday that he wanted to see faster progress. <20>Banks need to be more ambitious on their bad loan reduction targets and speed up the sales of NPLs,<2C> Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras he said by telephone. Bankers describe bad debts as <20>the elephant in the room<6F>, a huge problem often overshadowed by years of tense bailout negotiations between Athens and its EU lenders. If Piraeus, peers National Bank and Alpha sell up to 5.5 billion euros combined as planned, overall NPL sales would reach 7 billion euros, or around 18 percent of the task set by the ECB. However, the sales are mostly of loans already written down heavily on bank balance sheets and unlikely to result in any substantial further losses. The bigger challenge comes when they must deal with the bulk of their secured bad loans. <20>Outright sales of unsecured NPLs will be the ones to start the dance,<2C> a senior Alpha banker said. There have been concerns, particularly at the International Monetary Fund, that collateral underpinning many secured bad loans, such as property, may be worth less than implied in banks<6B> books. If so, lenders could face more writedowns and may need to raise more capital. The ECB has rejected the IMF<4D>s push for a fresh quality check of Greek banking assets but is bringing forward plans for its own stress test of Greek lenders scheduled for next year. That test is likely to be finalised as early as May, a source told Reuters last month, so Greece would still have time to address any capital shortfalls before the country is due to emerge from its third EU bailout. MAKING A START Eurobank launched Greece<63>s first major sale of bad debts this month, shifting loans with a face value of 1.5 billion euros to Sweden<65>s Intrum, which paid 45 million euros or just 3 percent of the nominal value. [nL8N1MG1JR] The banking sources did not name likely buyers for the upcoming sales. Acquirers in similar auctions in Italy and Spain have included Pimco, Fortress, Cerberus, Apollo Global Management, Anacap Financial Partners and Bain Capital Credit. Piraeus Bank plans to sell 3.0 billion euros in bad debt, half in the form of unsecured consumer loans, a senior banker involved in the process said. The rest would include 1.5 billion euros of business loans with collateral. <20>We are looking at our options and have engaged resources to evaluate NPL sales. UBS is advising us on the secured part of the pool of NPLs we plan to sell,<2C> the banker said. Piraeus Bank<6E>s NPLs, defined as loans overdue by more than 90 days, represented 37.1 percent of its total loan book in June. On a broader measure, including restructured loans deemed likely to go bad, that ratio rises to 52 percent. National Bank (NBG), Greece<63>s second-largest lender, plans to sell up to 1.5 billion euros in un
'feef8ceea83da4ce1d6ed546c0b7d8cb0971bcd6'|'Nissan says to suspend all Japanese car production'|'October 19, 2017 / 10:44 AM / in 14 minutes Nissan to suspend domestic production of cars for Japan market Naomi Tajitsu 3 Min Read Nissan Motor Co. Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa bows at a news conference at the company headquarters in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo October 19, 2017. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS TOKYO (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co Ltd is suspending domestic production of vehicles for the Japanese market for at least two weeks to address misconduct in its final inspection procedures that led to a major recall, it said on Thursday. The issue has tarnished Nissan<61>s brand at home, and along with a data falsification scandal at compatriot Kobe Steel Ltd, has raised questions about compliance and quality control at Japanese manufacturers. The country<72>s second-largest automaker said it would stop production of domestic market vehicles at all six of its Japanese assembly plants to consolidate their inspection lines to comply with the country<72>s transport ministry requirements. Nissan produced roughly 79,300 passenger and commercial vehicles in Japan in August. Around 27,600 of these were made for the domestic market, representing around 6 percent of its global production. The automaker admitted that uncertified technicians performed final checks for domestic market models because some inspection steps had been transferred to other inspection lines, in violation of ministry rules. Checks by uncertified inspectors continued even after Nissan had said it had strengthened control of its inspection processes when the issue first came to light late last month. <20>Our emergency measures were not enough. We were unable to change our bad habits,<2C> CEO Hiroto Saikawa said at a briefing at its headquarters. FILE PHOTO: People look at Nissan Motor Co''s Note compact car at its showroom in Tokyo, Japan February 9, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo He added it appeared that a focus on increasing the efficiency of the inspection process had contributed to the issue, while poor communication between plant managers and foremen also may have been a factor. The misconduct has already forced Nissan to recall all 1.2 million new passenger cars sold in Japan over the past three years for re-inspection. The company said on Thursday that around 34,000 additional cars would be re-inspected, probably expanding the recall by around 4,000 units. Japan<61>s transport ministry said this month it had discovered that uncertified technicians at plants producing Nissan vehicles were using the stamps of certified technicians to sign off on final vehicle inspections, in violation of ministry guidelines. Nissan will continue to produce vehicles for export in Japan, including its popular Rogue SUV crossover model and the battery-electric Leaf, as the certification process for final inspections does not apply to vehicles shipped overseas. At 1415 GMT, shares in Nissan<61>s alliance partner Renault were down 2.3 percent at 84.36 euros. While Nissan has said the misconduct has no impact on the quality of its vehicles, it has raised questions about how closely rules are followed at its production plants, while also highlighting compliance issues at Japanese manufacturers. Kobe Steel, Japan<61>s third-biggest steelmaker, admitted this month it had falsified specifications on the strength and durability of aluminium, copper and steel products, misconduct that may have stretched back more than 10 years. Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Mark Potter and David Evans 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nissan-recall/nissan-says-to-suspend-all-japanese-car-production-idUKKBN1CO1FH'|'2017-10-19T13:53:00.000+03:00'
'd30635a743b5ce855f58aa2499284a658d0287fe'|'Moody''s warns UK consumers are vulnerable to BoE rate hike'|'October 19, 2017 / 11:02 AM / Updated 5 hours ago Moody''s warns UK consumers are vulnerable to BoE rate hike Reuters Staff 3 Min Read People walk past the Bank of England in London, Britain, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay LONDON (Reuters) - British consumers are vulnerable to a hike in interest rates, ratings agency Moody<64>s said on Thursday, two weeks before the Bank of England is widely expected to hike borrowing costs for the first time in more than a decade. British household debt levels are high and still growing, Moody<64>s noted in a report on the outlook for securities tied to the consumer economy. The ratings agency<63>s comments came a day after the Financial Conduct Authority regulator said over four million Britons were having difficulty paying their monthly bills -- especially younger consumers and renters. <20>As real income declines, UK consumers are vulnerable to an economic downturn and any increases in inflation or interest rates could cause problems for household finances, especially for those on lower incomes,<2C> said Annabel Schaafsma, managing director of structured finance for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Moody<64>s. The Bank looks on course to deliver its first increase in borrowing costs in a decade, according to most economists polled by Reuters, reversing last year<61>s rate cut that followed Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union. [BOE/INT] But a majority also said they thought now was not the right time to raise rates, citing an absence of evidence that growth in the economy or wages are about to pick up significantly ahead of Britain<69>s divorce from the EU. Consumer credit -- which until recently was expanding at an annual rate of 10 percent -- is still outpacing household income by a wide margin. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said on Tuesday this was a <20>major financial stability risk<73> -- a starker assessment than the BoE<6F>s. The British central bank has said there is no overall debt bubble in Britain but has expressed concern about areas of consumer debt, such as car loans. Moody<64>s said it expected the performance of securitisation deals linked to the consumer economy to weaken. It also said residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) based on the buy-to-let rental market were <20>very sensitive<76> to a weaker economy and that both occupancy rates and rent were expected to decline. The outlook for the prime RMBS sector -- covering the top end of the residential market -- was better because borrowers were in good financial shape, Moody<64>s added. Reporting by Andy Bruce; Editing by Catherine Evans 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-moody-s/moodys-warns-uk-consumers-are-vulnerable-to-boe-rate-hike-idUKKBN1CO1HP'|'2017-10-19T14:01:00.000+03:00'
'5a5d54b318989a4bc8f6663ccf5cfecb79cf85a2'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX turns positive shortly after open'|' 47   CANADA STOCKS-TSX turns positive shortly after open Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TORONTO, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index turned positive shortly after the open on Thursday as energy stocks reversed opening losses, while financial stocks and Teck Resources led declines. The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index rose 2.08 points, or 0.01 percent, to 15,784.24. Half of the index<65>s 10 key sectors advanced. Reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks-open/canada-stocks-tsx-turns-positive-shortly-after-open-idUSL2N1MU0SZ'|'2017-10-19T16:43:00.000+03:00'
'96e604c318fe7228abca11673ee2bf914078616b'|'Labour demands review into City of London role in money-laundering'|'Labour demands review into City of London role in money-laundering Call from shadow chancellor John McDonnell comes amid continuing fallout from the Gupta scandal in South Africa Banks at Canary Wharf in London. Photograph: Charles Bowman/Getty Images/Robert Harding World Imagery Labour demands review into City of London role in money-laundering Call from shadow chancellor John McDonnell comes amid continuing fallout from the Gupta scandal in South Africa View more sharing options   13.57 BST Last modified on   19.16 BST The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, has called for an inquiry into London<6F>s role in global money-laundering, amid concern about UK banks<6B> exposure to a corruption investigation into ties between South Africa<63>s wealthy Gupta family and President Jacob Zuma . Who are the Gupta brothers? Show Hide Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta are Indian-born entrepreneurs at the centre of a corruption investigation in South Africa. The brothers, who moved to South Africa in 1993, have denied a string of allegations about alleged corruption. The key allegation levelled against them is that they have used their ties to Jacob Zuma, the country<72>s president, to advance their own business interests. The scandal has already claimed the scalp of UK public relations firm Bell Pottinger. It went into administration after it was accused of deliberately stirring up racial tensions in South Africa while working for a Gupta holding company, Oakbay Investment. Was this helpful? Thank you for your feedback. The warning comes after the Guardian revealed that the chancellor, Philip Hammond, has asked UK authorities to look into whether HSBC and Standard Chartered were involved in transactions related to the Guptas. Standard Chartered said on Thursday it had closed bank accounts in 2014 due to concerns about potential links to the scandal. HSBC has yet to comment. The potential involvement of UK banks was first raised by former Labour cabinet minister Peter Hain , who grew up in South Africa and was a prominent anti-apartheid activist. Lord Hain called on the chancellor last month to ask UK authorities to examine transactions involving 27 people and 14 companies, including Zuma and Gupta family members. John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA He followed up his concerns on Thursday by asking in the House of Lords for an update on the government<6E>s progress in investigating bank accounts <20>suspected to have been set up for the purposes of transnationally laundering an estimated <20>400m [...] of their illicit proceeds<64>. Hain said UK banks <20>must have been conduits for the corrupt proceeds of money stolen from [South African] taxpayers and laundered through Dubai and Hong Kong<6E>. Speaking after Hain<69>s question, Lord Davies warned the government it must act fast to ensure the UK<55>s reputation as a financial centre is not affected. <20>It<49>s quite clear that a number of British banks have got clear and significant interests in South Africa,<2C> Lord Davies said. <20>It<49>s important now that action is taken to make sure these banks are clear of this corruption and, if not, that action is taken against them. <20>It will not do Britain<69>s reputation any good at all to be tardy on this very significant issue.<2E> Speaking on behalf of the government, Conservative life peer Lord Bates said: <20>We<57>re taking this very seriously because we realise the consequence of not doing so for the reputation of the City of London and the UK.<2E> In a statement following Hain<69>s intervention in the House of Lords, McDonnell called on the government to consider a wide-ranging review into the role of UK financial institutions in global corruption. <20>This is the third high-profile money-laundering scandal to involve major British banks this year, and London has become notorious as a global centre for money laundering,<2C> he said <20>There are many hardworking people in our banking sector who will feel frustrated and dismayed by such stories, but they are let down 
'896f069b6a02117e8a6b74dc17883f42b7a366ea'|'ASOS raises 2018 sales guidance after strong year'|' 27 AM / in 29 minutes ASOS raises 2018 sales guidance after strong year Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: An employee organises photographs of models at the ASOS headquarters in London April 1, 2014. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - British online fashion retailer ASOS ( ASOS.L ) increased its outlook for sales growth in its 2018 financial year to 25-30 percent after it met market expectations with a 27 percent rise in retail sales in the year to end-August. The company, which targets fashion-conscious twentysomethings in Britain and abroad, reported full-year retail sales of 1.8 billion pounds ($2.38 billion), and pretax profit of 80 million pounds, up 145 percent. ($1 = 0.7548 pounds) Reporting by Paul Sandle, editing by James Davey 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-asos-results/asos-raises-2018-sales-guidance-after-strong-year-idUKKBN1CM0I4'|'2017-10-17T09:26:00.000+03:00'
'af7244d5fdac812870d594d98358e26daece6d29'|'LSE''s Rolet says shift in euro clearing would bump up costs'|'October 17, 2017 / 8:26 AM / in 4 minutes LSE''s Rolet says shift in euro clearing would bump up costs Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Pedestrians leave and enter the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON   Union plans to scrutinise clearing of euro denominated derivatives outside the bloc could fragment markets and cost EU customers 20 billion euros a year, London Stock Exchange ( LSE.L ) Chief Executive Xavier Rolet said on Tuesday. The LSE owns LCH in London, the dominant clearing house for interest rate swaps in Europe denominated in euros. The EU plans to propose joint supervision of foreign clearing houses that serve the bloc<6F>s customers. As a last resort, the clearing would have to move to inside the EU. <20>The potential proposal to fragment and separate the clearing of euro denominated derivatives would lead to a deteriorating execution price of somewhere in the region of 20 billion euros in additional cost to EU based investors... per annum,<2C> Rolet told a conference organised by EU securities watchdog ESMA. Reporting by Huw Jones and Maya Nikolaeva 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-markets-clearing/lses-rolet-says-shift-in-euro-clearing-would-bump-up-costs-idUKKBN1CM0U4'|'2017-10-17T11:25:00.000+03:00'
'2c85f21cb4c6a22d218b39e51a17a2075a59327d'|'Airbus to take majority stake in Bombardier CSeries jet programme'|'October 16, 2017 / 10:39 PM / Updated 20 minutes ago Airbus to take majority stake in Bombardier CSeries jet programme Allison Lampert , Tim Hepher 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A Bombardier CS300 aicraft takes off to participate a flying display as an Airbus A380, the world''s largest jetliner, waits on the taxiway during the 51st Paris Air Show at Le Bourget airport near Paris, June 15, 2015. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol/File Photo MONTREAL/PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus SE ( AIR.PA ) agreed on Monday to buy a majority stake in Bombardier Inc<6E>s ( BBDb.TO ) CSeries jetliner programme, grabbing control of a struggling competitor at the second attempt and giving the Canadian plane-and-train-maker an unexpected boost in its costly trade dispute with Boeing Co ( BA.N ). The deal, which would come at no cost for Airbus, would give the European planemaker a 50.01 percent interest in CSeries Aircraft Limited Partnership (CSALP), which manufactures and sells the jets, the companies said. Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders said the company has offered to assemble some of the narrowbody jets at its U.S. plant in Alabama for orders by American carriers. The U.S. assembly line would mean the 110-to-130-seat jets would not be subject to possible U.S. anti-subsidy and anti-dumping duties of 300 percent, Bombardier Chief Executive Alain Bellemare said on a media conference call. <20>This is a strategic decision. We<57>re doing this deal here not because of this Boeing petition. We are doing this deal because it is the right strategic move for Bombardier. And it makes good strategic sense for Airbus,<2C> Bellemare said. A Boeing spokesman immediately dismissed the agreement as a <20>questionable deal between two state-subsidized competitors<72> to try to skirt a recent U.S. trade finding against the CSeries. The Boeing-Bombardier dispute has snowballed into a bigger multilateral trade dispute, with British Prime Minister Theresa May wading into the debate and asking U.S. President Donald Trump to intervene in order save British jobs. Bombardier is the largest manufacturing employer in Northern Ireland, which is the poorest of the United Kingdom<6F>s four nations and remains mired in political sensitivities after emerging from decades of armed sectarian conflict. BOOST FOR BELFAST On Monday, the leader of the Northern Irish party propping up Britain<69>s minority government said Airbus<75>s deal with Bombardier was <20>incredibly significant news<77> for Belfast. FILE PHOTO - The logo of Airbus is seen on a Beluga transport plane belonging to Airbus in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo Talks for the deal between Airbus and Bombardier first started in August. Enders said the deal was different from an earlier round of talks in 2015, when he abruptly ordered an end to negotiations. He said the CSeries<65> performance had now been certified and entered service and was performing well. <20>It<49>s an entirely different situation,<2C> he said. Delta Air Lines Inc ( DAL.N ) said after the announcement of the deal that it looked forward to introducing the CSeries jet into its fleet. Under the deal, Bombardier will own about 31 percent, while Investissement Qu<51>bec, the investment arm of the province of Quebec, will hold 19 percent once the deal closes. Quebec<65>s largest pension fund, which holds a 30 percent stake in Bombardier<65>s rail division, said the decision <20>strengthens the company, improves its prospects for growth, and makes the company more robust over the long term.<2E> The Quebec government, through its financing arm, took a 49 percent stake in the CSeries program in 2015 for $1 billion. Quebec<65>s share, most recently worth 38 percent, slipped to 19 percent following the deal with Airbus. The deal also provides Airbus warrants exercisable to acquire up to 100 million Class B Shares of Bombardier. Airbus will provide procurement, sales and marketing, and customer support expertise to CSALP, the companies said. There will be no cash con
'49df3735edf7a02fb9c87e36a3845960f69275cb'|'Activist Investor RBR Capital Advisors confirms talks with Credit Suisse'|'October 17, 2017 / 5:46 AM / in 18 minutes Activist RBR courts fellow investors for Credit Suisse break-up John Revill , Oliver Hirt , Joshua Franklin 5 Min Read The logo of of Swiss bank Credit Suisse is seen at an office building in Zurich''s Oerlikon suburb, Switzerland July 27, 2017. Picture taken July 27, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann ZURICH (Reuters) - Activist investor RBR Capital Advisors has launched a campaign to break up Credit Suisse ( CSGN.S ), hoping to capitalise on investor unrest after Switzerland<6E>s second-biggest bank lost about a quarter of its value since 2015. However, the Swiss hedge fund led by Rudolf Bohli, 48, has taken only taken a small stake in Credit Suisse and faces a steep challenge to rally the support needed to succeed. <20>With a 0.2 percent stake, Bohli can<61>t make much progress,<2C> Zuercher Kantonalbank analyst Javier Lodeiro and Michael Kunz, who rate Credit Suisse<73>s stock <20>overweight<68>, wrote in a note. The campaign comes roughly two years into Credit Suisse Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam<61>s three-year plan to focus on wealth management and less on investment banking. RBR, which has been in contact with Credit Suisse<73>s management, wants to divide the company into an investment bank, an asset management group and a wealth manager accommodating the Zurich-based bank<6E>s retail and corporate banking operations, an RBR spokesman said. The strategy, which will be outlined at the JP Morgan Robin Hood Investor Conference in New York on Friday, could see the revival of the old First Boston brand, the name of the U.S. investment bank Credit Suisse took control of in 1988. Thiam<61>s restructure suffered an early blow when $1 billion in trading losses prompted him to make even deeper cuts to the investment bank in early 2016. With the value of the stock diluted by two capital raisings totalling around 10 billion Swiss francs (<28>7.7 billion), shareholders are still awaiting the first fruits of the painful overhaul. Although shares had gained almost 10 percent this year, the performance reflected only a partial rebound from a feeble 2016 where they fell nearly a third. <20>There are enough frustrated shareholders who would do everything to raise the share price,<2C> said one Zurich trader. BOUTIQUE HEDGE FUND Credit Suisse shares traded 1.3 percent higher at 0955 GMT. RBR, partly named after Bohli, was set up in 2003 as a boutique Swiss hedge fund and has around 250 million francs in assets under management. Based in the small lakeside town of Kuensnacht, near Zurich, it rose to prominence through high-profile but ultimately unsuccessful campaigns against asset manager GAM ( GAMH.S ) last year and airline catering company Gategroup in 2016. Although its stake is relatively small, RBR said it has also signed non-disclosure agreements with around 100 other investors, including some shareholders in Credit Suisse. RBR has recruited Gael de Boissard, a former Credit Suisse investment bank co-head who left the bank in Thiam<61>s restructure, to support its campaign. Credit Suisse on Tuesday said it remained focused on its strategy. <20>While we welcome the views of all our shareholders, our focus is on the implementation of our strategy and of our three-year plan, which is well on track and which we believe will unlock considerable value for our clients and shareholders,<2C> a Credit Suisse spokesman said. RBR<42>s is the second activist investor campaign involving a big Swiss bank in recent years after Knight Vinke unsuccessfully pushed for UBS ( UBSG.S ) to make more drastic cuts to its investment bank. Credit Suisse has argued keeping an investment bank is vital to cater for the more sophisticated needs of wealth management clients whose assets stretch into the billions of dollars. But while analysts doubted Bohli<6C>s break-up plan would gain the necessary traction with other investors, some agreed that Credit Suisse could still pare back its investment bank even further. <20>You have a comparative advantage in the mark
'09d15ff23a443c0297d66e5a1fb6a6fb327050d3'|'Boeing invests in autonomous flight tech provider Near Earth Autonomy'|'October 19, 2017 / 2:14 PM / Updated 23 minutes ago Boeing invests in autonomous flight tech provider Near Earth Autonomy Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Boeing logo is seen at their headquarters in Chicago, April 24, 2013. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo (Reuters) - Boeing Co said on Thursday it invested in Near Earth Autonomy, a Pittsburgh-based firm that develops technologies enabling autonomous flight such as drones. In addition to the undisclosed investment, Boeing said the two companies will also explore products and applications for emerging markets such as urban mobility. It was the first investment in autonomous technologies by Boeing<6E>s venture capital arm, Boeing HorizonX, since it was established in April of this year, Boeing said. Near Earth Autonomy, a spin-off from the Carnegie Mellon University<74>s Robotics Institute, develops technologies including sensor suites, three dimensional mapping and survey, and collision detection and avoidance that enables aircraft to operate autonomously. Earlier this month, Boeing said it would buy Aurora Flight Sciences Corp to help it advance the development of autonomous, electric-powered and long-flight-duration aircraft for its commercial and military businesses. ( reut.rs/2hPdLQZ ) Manassas, Virginia-based Aurora has designed, produced and flown more than 30 unmanned air vehicles since its inception and has collaborated with Boeing on prototyping of aircraft and structural assemblies for military and commercial applications during the last decade. Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-near-earth-autonomy/boeing-invests-in-autonomous-flight-tech-provider-near-earth-autonomy-idUKKBN1CO22H'|'2017-10-19T17:09:00.000+03:00'
'03ef6a6962c8b552650628479712da5ae2214d7e'|'Pay-TV group Sky launches advertising review'|'October 19, 2017 / 9:57 AM / in 5 minutes Pay-TV group Sky launches advertising review Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Workers remove the advertising of Sky TV provider after the German Bundesliga second leg relegation playoff soccer match between Karlsruhe SC and Hamburg SV in Karlsruhe, Germany June 1, 2015. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - European pay-TV group Sky ( SKYB.L ) has launched a review of how it places and plans advertising, its first review in 13 years that could shake up which agencies it employs. Sky, one of the biggest ad spenders in the industry, currently works with several companies, including agencies within the WPP ( WPP.L ) group. <20>Sky<6B>s business, the media landscape and the media buying market have evolved considerably since our last review,<2C> Sky said. <20>As one of Europe<70>s largest advertisers we feel it is simply good business practice to review our communications planning and media buying relationships.<2E> Reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Greg Mahlich 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-sky-advertising/pay-tv-group-sky-launches-advertising-review-idUKKBN1CO193'|'2017-10-19T12:58:00.000+03:00'
'416ecfbe186961dba01b5c5ffb2e0497f52c8670'|'European shares dip as new batch of Q3 earnings unveils disappointments'|'(ADVISORY- Follow European and UK stock markets in real time on the Reuters Live Markets blog on Eikon - see cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarkets)* FTSEurofirst 300 // XX pct, Euro STOXX 50 // pctLONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - European shares edged down across most bourses and sectors on Thursday as a new batch of third-quarter results brought in some disappointments to investors, notably forecast misses from France<63>s Publicis, Dutch-British Unilever and Germany<6E>s Kion.By 0715 GMT, the pan-European STOXX 600 <.STOXX index> was down 0.2 percent, London<6F>s FTSE slid 0.3 percent, Paris<69>s CAC 40 retreated 0.1 percent and Frankfurt<72>s DAX was just slightly in the red with a 0.1 decrease.Madrid<69>s IBEX was flat as Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is expected to impose direct rule in Catalonia unless the region<6F>s leader Carles Puigdemont retracts by 0800 GMT an ambiguous declaration of independence made last week.Shares in advertising group Publicis fell more than 5 percent after third-quarter sales were below market forecasts, while German forklift truck and robotics maker Kion was down 9.2 percent after it cut its 2017 guidance.Unilever fell 3.2 percent as its underlying sales growth missed analysts<74> consensus. (Reporting by Julien Ponthus; Editing by Georgina Prodhan)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/europe-stocks/european-shares-dip-as-new-batch-of-q3-earnings-unveils-disappointments-idINL8N1MU1IB'|'2017-10-19T05:36:00.000+03:00'
'8efb250270a1a5944b69741cb976c5b826d3f6f8'|'Wal-Mart near deal to give Lord & Taylor website space: WSJ'|'File Photo: Shopping carts are seen outside a new Wal-Mart Express store in Chicago July 26, 2011. REUTERS/John Gress/Files (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc ( WMT.N ) is near a deal to give department store chain Lord & Taylor dedicated space on its walmart.com website, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.Retailers including Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ) and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd ( BABA.N ) offer dedicated space to brands on their website. Such arrangements allow companies to increase traffic to their e-commerce platforms and let retailers boost their online assortment.Financial terms of such a deal could not be ascertained, the newspaper said. Wal-Mart did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.Lord & Taylor will continue to operate its own website, but shoppers at lordandtaylor.com will be able to pick up and return items at Wal-Mart<72>s 4,700 U.S. retail stores, the WSJ reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.Reporting by Nandita Bose in Chicago and Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza and Jeffrey Benkoe'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-lord-taylor-m-a-walmart/wal-mart-near-deal-to-give-lord-taylor-website-space-wsj-idINKBN1CO1MA'|'2017-10-19T09:36:00.000+03:00'
'e687a47b439dac76a16168f5c505bc77531d4f04'|'U.S. FCC extends comment period for Sinclair Tribune deal'|'October 18, 2017 / 10:41 PM / Updated 15 hours ago U.S. FCC extends comment period for Sinclair Tribune deal David Shepardson 4 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday it would allow the public to submit additional comments on Sinclair Broadcast Group<75>s ( SBGI.O ) proposed $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media Co ( TRCO.N ) that has drawn fire from across the political spectrum. The FCC said it was pausing its self-imposed, 180-day shot-clock deadline on merger reviews by 15 days until Nov. 2. Sinclair, which owns more than 170 U.S. television stations, announced plans in May to acquire Tribune<6E>s 42 TV stations in 33 markets as well as cable network WGN America and digital multicast network Antenna TV, extending its reach to 72 percent of American households. The merger has been opposed by many including Dish Network Corp ( DISH.O ), conservative media, trade and liberal advocacy groups. Opponents of the deal say it will raise prices while narrowing content and news viewing choices for millions of Americans. A group of opponents to the deal, including the American Cable Association, Competitive Carriers Association, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, One America News Network and Dish, said on Wednesday the firms <20>have failed to provide adequate justification that this merger is in the public interest.<2E> Sinclair said in August the deal <20>will advance the public interest by helping to shore up an industry buffeted by well-known economic challenges.<2E> The merger would allow the company to <20>invest deeply in the free over-the-air delivery of local news, sports, and entertainment.<2E> Some opponents argue the proposed deal would give Sinclair too much influence over local news content. Sinclair would control far more stations than any of its competitors if the Tribune deal goes forward. Last week, Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said she was concerned the tie-up <20>will do harm to the time-tested principles of diversity, localism, and competition.<2E> The Maryland-based company has drawn criticism for favoring conservative political candidates. Sinclair in April hired a former Trump campaign adviser, Boris Epshteyn, as a commentator after he briefly served in the Trump White House. Newsmax Media Chief Executive Chris Ruddy told Reuters on Wednesday that <20>the Sinclair deal will lead to a massive consolidation of the television industry, and a centralization of news that will be bad for everyone in this country.<2E> He said <20>this merger will pave the way for major networks like NBC, CBS and ABC to do the same and begin owning stations all across the country.<2E> Sinclair would have to divest stations in Seattle, St. Louis, Salt Lake City and Oklahoma City as part of the Tribune acquisition under current rules. But it could reverse course if regulators change media ownership regulations. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in April he would launch a <20>comprehensive review<65> of media regulations and overhaul rules that restrict consolidation among media companies, but has not yet launched a formal proceeding. Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Phil Berlowitz 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tribune-media-m-a-sinclair-ma/u-s-fcc-extends-comment-period-for-sinclair-tribune-deal-idUSKBN1CN37B'|'2017-10-19T06:41:00.000+03:00'
'4d1833ebf7a83f14dd41e585af6c1e9006b480df'|'StanChart closed accounts linked to S.Africa''s Gupta family in 2014'|' 47 AM / Updated 28 minutes ago StanChart closed accounts linked to S.Africa''s Gupta family in 2014   LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Standard Chartered closed some bank accounts linked to the Gupta family in South Africa in 2014, a spokeswoman for the bank said on Thursday. <20>We are not able to comment on the details of client transactions, but can confirm that after an internal investigation, accounts were closed by us by early in 2014,<2C> the spokeswoman said by email. The Gupta family, a trio of Indian-born businessmen, are under scrutiny for their close ties to South African President Jacob Zuma. Britain<69>s Financial Conduct Authority separately said it is in contact with StanChart and HSBC following reports in British newspapers that Britain<69>s finance minister has asked regulators to investigate the lenders<72> possible ties to the Gupta family and Zuma. <20>The FCA is already in contact with both banks named and will consider carefully further responses received,<2C> the regulator said. The FBI in the U.S. is also investigating the matter . HSBC declined to comment. (Reporting By Lawrence White; Editing by Rachel Armstrong) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/safrica-politics-banks/stanchart-closed-accounts-linked-to-s-africas-gupta-family-in-2014-idUSL9N1HY00V'|'2017-10-19T11:44:00.000+03:00'
'ee8badb01b32761e94015e7f39090cf2d8f7d32c'|'London Stock Exchange CEO Rolet to step down by end of 2018'|'CEO of the London Stock Exchange Xavier Rolet speaks at the Qatar UK Business and Investment Forum in London, Britain March 27, 2017 REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON (Reuters) - Xavier Rolet, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange Group, will step down at the end of next year, just under a decade after he took charge and transformed the company with a string of deals.Rolet has broadened the exchange<67>s focus beyond share trading into derivatives and data through these acquisitions, including clearing house LCH and global indexes firm Russell.Under his leadership, the LSE<53>s market value has risen from less than 1 billion pounds to almost 14 billion pounds, helped by the diversification.But his efforts to push through the exchange<67>s third attempt to merge with Deutsche Boerse to create a global markets<74> behemoth ended in failure.Rolet, who joined the group from Lehman Brothers, said last year that he would leave if a merger with Deutsche Boerse went through. But the collapse of that deal in March meant he opted to stay on for longer.<2E>At times we took risks, we made a few moves, sometimes they could be qualified as bold moves in order to broaden the spectrum of our products, achieve global relevance,<2C> Rolet told an analyst call on the LSE<53>s third-quarter results, published on Thursday.The Frenchman, at the helm of what had been a quintessentially English club in the City of London for much of its 300-year history, said he was <20>completely committed<65> to ensuring a smooth transition to a new CEO by the time he leaves in December 2018.One critical area remains what Rolet called an <20>inherited weakness<73> - the lack of a major futures trading footprint, leaving it trailing rivals CME, ICE and Deutsche Boerse in this area.But Rolet is seen as being shrewd in making sure his main customers, the big investment banks, are always listened to. When the LSE took over cross-border trading platform Turquoise and later on LCH, the investment banks remained shareholders.Rolet, a former investment banker himself, ensured that the banks had a large minority stake in LCH and a say in its running, a model that led to strong growth in volumes and one that rival Deutsche Boerse is now trying to mimic.<2E>Overall his legacy is one of many good deals which entirely transformed LSE as a group, albeit with the concern that he never really integrated any of his purchases adequately,<2C> exchanges expert Patrick Young said.Rolet took over at LSE from Clara Furse in May 2009, ending a prolonged period of fending off takeover attempts and questions about the exchange<67>s future.His banking background made him a popular choice among the exchange<67>s largest customers.LSE said in a separate statement on Thursday that group income for the quarter ended Sept rose 17 percent to 1.66 billion pounds ($2.19 billion), with revenue up 14 percent to 486 million pounds as its clearing and FTSE Russell businesses grew strongly.Thirteen analysts had forecast total income of 477.5 million pounds, according to consensus estimates provided by the company.($1 = 0.7569 pounds)Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Jane Merriman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/lse-ceo/london-stock-exchange-ceo-rolet-to-step-down-by-end-of-2018-idINKBN1CO1A4'|'2017-10-19T13:17:00.000+03:00'
'ad19f398f473f583e2cfa66e36f1f3da7c6f64bf'|'Gold prices steady amid firm dollar'|'A woman tries on a gold earring inside a jewellery showroom at a market in Mumbai September 11, 2014. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade LONDON (Reuters) - Gold prices recovered on Thursday from the more-than-one-week low they had reached overnight as a rally in both the dollar and equities ran out of steam, but the precious metal remained vulnerable to further declines.The dollar index fell against a basket of major currencies, ending a four-session winning run after 10-year Treasury yields dipped 2 basis points as investors returned to the safety of bonds.Global stocks stumbled after setting a record high, with European shares tumbling by their most in almost two months after a batch of disappointing third-quarter results.<2E>There<72>s technical reasons why we<77>ve stabilised, stocks have come off, (but overall) people are not finding much value investing in gold at the moment,<2C> said Fawad Razaqzada, an analyst at FOREX.com<6F>The lack of safe-haven demand combined with expectations of higher interest rates is weighing. If gold remains below $1,300, there<72>s a risk of a deeper correction in the coming days or weeks.<2E>Spot gold was up 0.5 percent to $1,287.39 an ounce at 1402 GMT after earlier hitting its lowest since Oct. 9 at $1,276.22. Gold has lost 6 percent since Sept. 8.U.S. gold futures for December delivery rose 0.5 percent to $1,289.The current term of Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen ends in February, and investors are waiting to see who will pick as her replacement. The White House said a decision would be announced in <20>coming days<79><73>Depending on how the dollar goes, we might look at $1,250-60 as the next stop for gold to trade down. We don<6F>t see an immediate upward catalyst for gold except for North Korea,<2C> said Richard Xu, a fund manager at China<6E>s biggest gold exchange-traded fund, HuaAn Gold.Higher interest rates tend to boost the dollar and push up bond yields, putting pressure on gold by increasing the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion.U.S. interest rates futures saw modest losses on Wednesday after the release of the Fed<65>s Beige Book, but traders still saw an 80 percent chance the Fed will raise rates in December.<2E>Looks like fundamentally the (U.S.) economy is doing pretty well, so that will also put downward pressure on gold,<2C> Xu said.Silver rose 0.4 percent to $17.05 an ounce, platinum rose 0.7 percent to $924.90 and palladium was flat at $952.90.Platinum and palladium hit one-week lows overnight.Palladium rallied to a 16-year high this week and may spike further on rising auto sales in China and as consumers replace vehicles damaged by hurricanes in the United States. Apeksha Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Larry King'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-precious/gold-prices-steady-amid-firm-dollar-idINKBN1CO046'|'2017-10-19T04:11:00.000+03:00'
'7c4bd7cb2f6e4ca84e7fd8deafa26e1771fd7d78'|'Sinochem taps banks for Hong Kong IPO of oil assets: sources'|'BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) - China<6E>s Sinochem Group has tapped three banks, including Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ), to work on the possible Hong Kong listing of its key oil assets, as it seeks to raise capital and revive the company, said four people with knowledge of the matter.Citic Securities ( 600030.SS ) and BOC International are also advising China<6E>s fourth-largest oil company on the planned initial public offering, which will likely take place in the second half of next year, the people said.No formal mandate for the IPO has been awarded yet, they said, adding preparations for the market float are at an early stage, and unlisted Sinochem has yet to decide the size of the public offering.The IPO plan also comes amid Beijing<6E>s latest push to revive its bloated state-owned enterprise sector via the so-called mixed-ownership reforms by injecting private capital into state enterprises.<2E>Our people are preparing for it (IPO) ... but it<69>s still far away,<2C> Sinochem Chairman Ning Gaoning told Reuters on the sidelines of the Communist Party Congress.The planned listing will likely include Sinochem<65>s refining, fuel marketing, trading and storing assets, but not its struggling upstream business - mostly overseas oil and gas production - three of the people said.<2E>These assets are considered the best under the company,<2C> said one person who was briefed by Sinochem management, referring to the businesses likely to be part of the listing.<2E>Sinochem is looking to offload its upstream business to the government rather than to investors.<2E>All the people declined to be named as details of the listing process are not yet public. Sinochem did not respond to a request for comment. Morgan Stanley, Citic and BOCI declined to comment.Hit by low oil prices, Sinochem has aimed to shift from oil exploration and production to the more value-added refining and retailing businesses. It has been looking to sell a stake in Brazil<69>s Peregrino offshore oilfield.MIXED-OWNERSHIP Beijing has been working towards creating bigger, stronger state firms, and building enterprises capable of competing globally. It is also weeding out excessive capacity in bloated sectors, but wants to avoid any risk of mass layoffs or a blow to economic growth.China will prevent the loss of state assets, deepen reforms of state firms and develop a mixed-ownership economy, President Xi Jinping said at the opening of the twice-a-decade congress on Wednesday.Sinochem<65>s IPO plans have been pushed ahead by Ning, who joined the firm last year from food group COFCO, where he was well known for aggressive restructuring and M&A, said two of the people.Under his leadership, several Sinochem units have been given more leeway in their expansion plans and more support for tapping capital markets for fundraising, said another person.Beijing-based Sinochem controls the 240,000 barrel-per-day Quanzhou refinery in the coastal province of Fujian, a major source of group profits in the past two years. Sinochem has said it wants to boost investment at the refinery to diversify into petrochemicals.It also runs nearly 10 crude and oil products terminals, and more than 700 retail stations across China, its website showed.The group<75>s annual turnover of crude and products is about 150 million tons, while the combined annual capacity of its three refineries is nearly 25 million tons.In 2011, Sinochem Corp, in which Sinochem Group holds a 98 percent stake, planned to raise up to $5.3 billion via a Shanghai IPO, and use the proceeds to fund the Quanzhou refinery. The plan was dropped due to unfavorable market conditions.The group currently controls three listed units, including Sinochem International Corp ( 600500.SS ), Sinofert Holdings Ltd ( 0297.HK ) and China Jinmao Holdings Group ( 0817.HK ).Reporting by Chen Aizhu, Julie Zhu, Matt Miller and Kane Wu; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Ian Geoghegan'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-sinochem-ipo/si
'bd30a3dfa11082c7ec92e62130f5ed0bd0cfee5e'|'PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 19'|'October 19, 2017 / 4:52 AM / Updated 36 minutes ago PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 19 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 19 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - Kenneth I. Chenault, one of the longest-serving executives in finance and one of corporate America''s few black top leaders, will retire next year as the chairman and chief executive of American Express. nyti.ms/2ytoiMg - Hearst, the publisher of magazines like Cosmopolitan and Esquire, announced on Wednesday that it had agreed to acquire Rodale, which owns Runner''s World and Men''s Health nyti.ms/2yt7rt2 - Nielsen, the 94-year-old company that for decades has had an effective monopoly on measuring television ratings in the United States, has announced that it has found a way into the great unknown of Netflix Inc''s viewership. nyti.ms/2ys7NQl - Anthem Inc, one of the nation''s major health insurance companies, said on Wednesday that it planned to start its own business to manage prescription drug plans by partnering with CVS Health, the large pharmacy benefit manager and drugstore chain. nyti.ms/2yrFaCW Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-nyt/press-digest-new-york-times-business-news-oct-19-idUSL4N1MU2FM'|'2017-10-19T07:51:00.000+03:00'
'a3da6ec26d11211c976e8d9c56f938450186e29c'|'Airbus A330neo plane successfully takes off on maiden flight'|'October 19, 2017 / 8:53 AM / in 8 minutes Airbus A330neo takes off on maiden flight Tim Hepher 2 Min Read A scale model of an Airbus A330neo aircraft is pictured during its maiden flight event in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) - Airbus ( AIR.PA ) on Thursday began the maiden flight of its A330neo jetliner, an upgraded version of its profitable A330 line designed to sharpen competition with the latest version of Boeing<6E>s ( BA.N ) 787 Dreamliner. The wide-bodied, long-distance jet took off from the planemaker<65>s Toulouse headquarters under overcast skies, watched by top executives from Airbus and Britain<69>s Rolls-Royce ( RR.L ), which supplies the engines. In service since the 1990s, the A330 family is Airbus<75>s biggest-selling wide-body jet but the arrival of Boeing<6E>s composite-body Dreamliner has eroded that advantage. Airbus hopes the A330neo<65>s refreshed design will help it defend its position in the lucrative 250-300 seat market. Chief Operating Officer Fabrice Bregier said Airbus had decided to improve the plane<6E>s maximum take-off weight by around 4 percent to 251 tonnes so the A330neo can serve longer routes such as Kuala Lumpur to London. Separately, Bregier said the company still expected to deliver around 200 A320neo aircraft in 2017, but added that reaching the target would be tough in the wake of delayed engine deliveries. Bregier said Pratt & Whitney ( UTX.N ), whose industrial problems have delayed deliveries of jets at Airbus plants, was testing re-designed parts for its engines and expected to start delivering the modified version at the end of this year. The majority of the jets are destined for airlines that have selected Pratt & Whitney<65>s new Geared Turbofan engine. CFM International, co-owned by General Electric ( GE.N ) and Safran ( SAF.PA ), is also supplying engines for the A320neo. Related Coverage Reporting by Tim Hepher; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by David Holmes 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-airbus-a330neo/airbus-a330neo-plane-successfully-takes-off-on-maiden-flight-idUKKBN1CO0WZ'|'2017-10-19T11:52:00.000+03:00'
'ea4250163a77d81707989f2239ad3e5bd5fa6491'|'Technology stocks set to weigh on Wall Street'|'A street sign for Wall Street is seen outside the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., December 28, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo (Reuters) - Losses in Apple stalled Wall Street<65>s record run on Thursday as worries over slack demand for iPhone 8 sent its shares down 2.5 percent.Shares of the world<6C>s biggest company by market capitalization were headed for their worst day in more than two months as doubts about its double 2017 iPhone release strategy weighed on investor minds.A bunch of weak corporate earnings also added to the weak sentiment.<2E>Apple has its impact across the board,<2C> said Phil Blancato, head of Ladenburg Thalmann Asset Management in New York.<2E>The marketing plan here was not a lot to be desired, considering you have two phones and the next one is just two weeks away from release. If it<69>s going to be a significant upgrade, it did not make any sense to me.<2E>There is also profit-taking in the tech sector, Blancato said. Technology sector has had a strong run so far, gaining more than 30 percent and helping the three major indexes scale record highs.The other high-flying FAANG stocks - Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet and Netflix - were down about 1 percent.At 12:42 p.m. ET (1642 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 42.26 points, or 0.18 percent, at 23,115.34, the S&P 500 was down 5.89 points, or 0.23 percent, at 2,555.37 and the Nasdaq Composite was down 46.19 points, or 0.7 percent, at 6,578.04.The retreat from record levels comes on a day that marks the 30th anniversary of the 1987 Black Monday stock market crash.Six of the 11 major S&P indexes were lower, led by technology and financials index.The financial index dropped 0.46 percent, led by losses in Bank of New York Mellon and KeyCorp.United Airlines tumbled 11.4 percent, weighing on other airlines stocks and the Dow Jones Transport index, after the third largest U.S. carrier<65>s profit fell due to flight cancellations during the hurricane season.Healthcare stocks gained, boosted by a 5.4 percent rise in the shares of medical equipment maker Danaher.Verizon jumped 2 percent on strong quarterly earnings, lifting telecom stocks.Among the few gainers in the tech sector was Adobe, which jumped more than 11 percent after the Photoshop maker gave a strong 2018 profit forecast.Declining issues outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by 1,793 to 1,027. On the Nasdaq, 1,971 issues fell and 856 advanced.Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza and Arun Koyyur'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-stocks/technology-stocks-set-to-weigh-on-wall-street-idINKBN1CO1XG'|'2017-10-19T16:21:00.000+03:00'
'6b21ad22086ac0d967ec1926c9b34764cf21fab5'|'FIMI fund in talks to invest in Israel Aerospace subsidiary'|'TEL AVIV, Oct 19 (Reuters) - State-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) said on Thursday it is holding talks to bring in the FIMI private equity fund as an investor in one of its subsidiaries.A spokeswoman for IAI declined to name the subsidiary but the Calcalist financial newspaper said it was ImageSat, a commercial provider of satellite imagery services.According to Calcalist, Israel<65>s FIMI fund is in talks to invest 150 million shekels ($43 million) in exchange for a 55 percent stake in ImageSat.<2E>If an agreement is signed, the company will report on the details of the transaction and its effect on (financial) results,<2C> IAI said in a statement to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. ($1 = 3.5004 shekels) (Reporting by Tova Cohen, Editing by Ari Rabinovitch)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/il-aerospace-ind-ma/fimi-fund-in-talks-to-invest-in-israel-aerospace-subsidiary-idINL8N1MU1N2'|'2017-10-19T05:11:00.000+03:00'
'2100b6d2737b2c3489d0710734cfe19cf2a5d7f9'|'Lyft says Alphabet leads latest $1 billion round of funding'|'FILE PHOTO: An illuminated sign appears in a Lyft ride-hailing car in Los Angeles, California, U.S. September 21, 2017. Picture taken September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Helgren (Reuters) - Lyft Inc has raised $1 billion in fresh financing, the ride-services company said on Thursday, in a round led by one of Alphabet Inc<6E>s ( GOOGL.O ) investment funds, further complicating the convoluted world of ride-hailing alliances and dealing a blow to rival Uber Technologies Inc.The round was led by CapitalG, the growth investment fund of Alphabet that has also backed large tech companies such as home-renting platform Airbnb and payments firm Stripe. Six months ago, Lyft raised a $600 million from a conglomeration of investors. Lyft said the latest round boosts its valuation to $11 billion from $7.5 billion.Reuters in September reported investment talks between the companies.CapitalG partner David Lawee will join the company''s board, Lyft said, bringing it to a total of 10 directors. ( lft.to/2zB1NCw )<29>Ridesharing is still in its early days and we look forward to seeing Lyft continue its impressive growth,<2C> Lawee said in a statement.Lyft, which runs a distant second to Uber [UBER.UL] in both size and valuation, has pushed expansion this year, adding more than 100 new cities since January. It says it is available across 41 states and is completing more than a million rides a day.Lyft and Alphabet already have a relationship through a partnership Lyft struck with Waymo, Alphabet<65>s self-driving car unit, in May. The two companies are collaborating on bringing autonomous vehicle technology to market, but they have not provided many details.Spokespeople for Lyft and Alphabet have said the latest investment will not have any bearing on the Waymo partnership.Alphabet also has ties to Uber through its second investment arm, GV, which backs young startups. GV invested in Uber in 2013 but has since had a strained relationship with the ride-hailing company, as Uber began to develop autonomous cars and compete directly with Alphabet. Last year, Alphabet executive David Drummond stepped down from the Uber board as the relationship soiled.<2E>It is another punch by Alphabet at Uber,<2C> said Erik Gordon, an entrepreneurship expert at the University of Michigan<61>s Ross School of Business.Lyft is close to hiring an initial public offering advisory firm, in the first concrete step by the company to become publicly listed, Reuters reported in September.This funding round may delay Lyft<66>s IPO plans, as the capital will allow Lyft to continue growing its business privately.<2E>We will go public when it<69>s right for us,<2C> said Lyft spokeswoman Alexandra LaManna.Reporting by Heather Somerville in Los Angeles and Arjun Panchadar and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr and David Gregorio'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-lyft-ipo-investors/lyft-says-alphabet-leads-latest-1-billion-round-of-funding-idINKBN1CO2BZ'|'2017-10-19T13:46:00.000+03:00'
'316a93d595cb05427bc1070ef415266235855c56'|'Danone board to meet Wednesday over management issues - source'|'Reuters TV United States  44 AM / in 4 minutes Danone board to meet Wednesday over management issues: source Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Yoghurt by French foods group Danone are seen in this photo illustration shot in Strasbourg, April 15, 2015. REUTERS/Vincent Kessler/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - Danone<6E>s ( DANO.PA ) board will meet on Wednesday afternoon to discuss senior management issues, said a source close to the matter who declined to give further details, amid media reports that its chairman will stand down. French newspaper Le Monde reported on Tuesday that chairman Franck Riboud, 61, would stand down and hand over to chief executive Emmanuel Faber, 53, who will become both chairman and CEO. Danone declined to comment on the report. Danone, the world<6C>s largest yoghurt maker, is the latest consumer goods company to come under investor pressure to improve results and needs to deliver on profit margins and sales growth targets it recently set. Riboud, who took over from his late father Antoine in 1996, handed the CEO role to Faber in 2014 to prepare his succession at a time when Danone was facing weak sales and criticism from U.S. activist investor Nelson Pelz. Riboud stayed on as chairman and took on some further responsibilities such as focusing on the group<75>s long-term strategy, but those roles were expected to end sometime this year. Le Monde said Riboud would hand full responsibility for Danone to Faber, who is increasingly focusing Danone on health-oriented products. On Tuesday, Danone beat third-quarter sales forecasts, driven by a strong rise in baby milk formula in China. Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Jason Neely 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-danone-management/danone-board-to-meet-wednesday-over-management-issues-source-idUKKBN1CN16F'|'2017-10-18T12:41:00.000+03:00'
'84c2953f49ed2540eebc99801821019c4fb46b2f'|'Toyota to test self-driving, talking cars by about 2020'|'Reuters TV United States October 16, 2017 / 10:04 AM / a minute ago Toyota to test self-driving, talking cars by about 2020 Reuters Staff 3 Min Read Toyota logos are seen at City Toyota in Daly City, California, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ) on Monday said it would begin testing self-driving electric cars around 2020, which will use artificial intelligence (AI) to engage with drivers, as the company competes with tech firms to develop new vehicles. The car, whose concept model was unveiled earlier this year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, will be able to converse with drivers, while building up knowledge of users<72> preferences, habits and emotions through deep learning, the company said. <20>By using AI technology, we want to expand and enhance the driving experience, making cars an object of affection again,<2C> said Makoto Okabe, general manager of Toyota<74>s EV business planning division. Facing competition from rival automakers and tech companies to produce self-driving, intelligent cars, Toyota has committed $1 billion through 2020 to develop advanced automated driving and AI technology. The Concept-i model, a battery-electric car which will have a cruising range of 300 kilometers (180 miles) on a single charge, will be able to estimate the emotions and alertness of drivers by reading their expressions, actions and tone of voice. Using this information, the vehicle will be able to take over driving responsibilities when necessary -- after assessing the driver is too tired to drive safely, for example -- and also interact with the driver and passengers. Facing a future where car ownership may be overtaken by new mobility services, automakers are ramping up investment to develop AI capabilities to enhance the driving experience. Ford Motor Co ( F.N ) earlier this year invested $1 billion in Argo AI, a start-up set up by former employees of Uber Technologies<65> self-driving car development team, to develop an on-demand self-driving car service. General Motors Co ( GM.N ) has also been investing in AI start-ups. Honda Motor Co 7267.T. and Softbank Corp ( 9984.T ) announced last year that they were teaming up to use humanoid robotic technology in cars to enable them to communicate with drivers. Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Christian Schmollinger 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-toyota-strategy/toyota-to-test-self-driving-talking-cars-by-about-2020-idUKKBN1CL14Y'|'2017-10-16T13:01:00.000+03:00'
'1bb3f3a1b53c7e2295da32f003549f004d41fcee'|'EBay''s adjusted profit forecast disappoints, shares fall'|'October 18, 2017 / 8:50 PM / Updated 15 hours ago EBay''s profit forecast disappoints, shares fall Aishwarya Venugopal , Jeffrey Dastin 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: An eBay sign is seen at an office building in San Jose, California, U.S. on May 28, 2014. REUTERS/Beck Diefenbach/File Photo (Reuters) - EBay Inc ( EBAY.O ) warned Wall Street on Wednesday that profit this quarter could fall below analysts<74> estimates as it invests in marketing and a revamped website to attract more shoppers, sending shares down more than 5 percent in after-hours trade. The online marketplace is making a big push to catch up to Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ) with three-day guaranteed delivery and a more user-friendly website, hoping to distinguish itself as a haven for specialty items rather than commodity products. It said marketing expenses rose by nearly 5 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, as it got that message across to potential customers. Factoring in the higher costs, eBay forecast fourth-quarter adjusted profit, excluding some costs, of between 57 cents and 59 cents per share. On that basis, analysts on average were expecting a profit of 59 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. For all of 2017, it narrowed its forecast for adjusted profit, now expecting $1.99 to $2.01 per share. In a sign the investments may be paying off, gross merchandise volume (GMV) - the value of goods sold on eBay websites - rose 8 percent to $21.7 billion in the just-ended third quarter. That is the fastest growth eBay has reported in three years. <20>Our customers are responding to the significant product enhancements we have been making, and this is reflected in our results,<2C> Chief Executive Devin Wenig said in a statement. Revenue in the quarter increased 8.7 percent to $2.41 billion, edging past analysts<74> estimate of $2.37 billion. Net income rose 27 percent to $523 million. Despite this growth, the San Jose, California-based company said its operating profit margin decreased slightly to 24 percent in the quarter, from 24.4 percent a year earlier. <20>Technology investments are partly responsible, but I<>m guessing the market is also concerned that there<72>s more to the story,<2C> said Morningstar analyst R.J. Hottovy. StubHub, the company<6E>s marketplace for tickets, also raised a <20>potential <20>yellow flag,''<27> Baird Equity Research analyst Colin Sebastian said in a note. The unit<69>s 2 percent growth in GMV lagged the rest of the business, and CEO Wenig said a tough events landscape would pressure results further this year. EBay reported nearly 2 million more active buyers in the third quarter to reach 168 million, excluding customers in India. Active buyers tallied at 171 million in the second quarter, before eBay sold its India business to Flipkart in August. Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru and Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; editing by Bill Rigby and Cynthia Osterman 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/ebay-results/ebays-adjusted-profit-forecast-disappoints-shares-fall-idINKBN1CN30N'|'2017-10-18T18:50:00.000+03:00'
'd8fe4f58784d815fc6ca4d7c2eab9e511ea77cce'|'Thirty years ago this week, Wall Street slid into the abyss'|' 08 AM / in 5 minutes Thirty years ago this week, Wall Street slid into the abyss Chuck Mikolajczak 6 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is pictured in New York City, New York, U.S., August 2, 2017. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - Thirty years ago, before heading to work at the New York Stock Exchange, Peter Kenny left his home in lower Manhattan and made a detour to the nearby Our Lady of Victory church to pray to St. Jude, the Roman Catholic patron saint of desperate and lost causes. The reason was the stock market crash known as <20>Black Monday<61> on October 19, 1987. <20>Blessed mother get me through this,<2C> he prayed. Kenny, now senior market strategist at Global Markets Advisory Group in New York, was a newly minted member of the New York Stock Exchange, having joined the exchange in February that year. He was stunned by the events that unfolded the previous day, the worst trading day in U.S. history. <20>I don<6F>t think anyone was prepared for what actually transpired in the overseas markets, which led to the bloodbath on Monday,<2C> said Kenny. (For graphic click: here ) When it was over, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI had lost 22.6 percent in one day, equivalent to a drop of about 5,200 points in the index today. The benchmark U.S. S&P 500 index .SPX plunged 20.5 percent on Black Monday, equal to a drop of over 520 points today, and the Nasdaq dropped 11.4 percent, comparable to a drop of about 750 points. Related Coverage Could the 1987 stock market crash happen again? In 1987 U.S. stock prices had climbed steadily all year, as they have in 2017, with each of the three major U.S. indexes hitting record highs in late August. But September turned into a difficult month, with each index falling more than 2.0 percent, though not by enough to raise alarm bells among investors. But as the calendar flipped to October, the selling in U.S. equity markets intensified. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI and S&P 500 .SPX fell more than 9.0 percent in the week before Black Monday. On the morning of Monday, October 19, 1987, Art Hogan, then a floor broker at the Boston Stock Exchange, expected a possible rebound for stock prices. Nothing had prepared him for what was to unfold. <20>It was clear in that first hour... this was going to be as bad as we<77>ve seen in our lifetimes,<2C> said Hogan, now chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities in New York. FILE PHOTO: A Pinterest banner hangs on the facade of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo Many describe the events of Black Monday as the first instance of computer trading gone haywire, caused by the use of portfolio insurance, a hedging strategy against market declines that involves selling short in stock index futures. The prior week<65>s fall in U.S. stocks led to selling by investors in Asian markets to limit losses. Those losses then signaled investors in Europe to sell, which caused increased selling by the time U.S. markets were to open on Black Monday. <20>It was like nobody wanted to question the computer,<2C> said Ken Polcari, director of the NYSE floor division at O<>Neil Securities in New York, who was a 26-year-old in his second year as a member of the NYSE. <20>Then what happens is it feeds on itself because as the prices got worse the risk management software kept spitting out a new message - You need to sell more,<2C> said Polcari. FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., August 16, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo Portfolio insurance, the short selling of stock index futures to protect against a decline in value, caused computerized program trading to issue sell orders as a safeguard against more losses. Instead, losses intensified, causing even more sell orders in a feedback loop. With computer trading in its infancy, the floor of the NYSE was filled with more members than today, with trades exec
'0a22790c0bf7df8d824abc37daf5d7143298a5b6'|'Factbox: China c.bank warns of ''Minsky moment''; what does it mean?'|'October 19, 2017 / 10:21 AM / in an hour Factbox: China c.bank warns of ''Minsky moment''; what does it mean? Reuters Staff 6 Min Read HONG KONG (Reuters) - China<6E>s central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, warned on Thursday of the risks of a <20>Minsky moment,<2C> citing relatively high corporate debt and saying household lending was rising too quickly. On the sidelines of a key, twice-a-decade Communist Party Congress, Zhou pledged to fend off such risks. But what did he mean? DEFINITION The term, coined after American economist Hyman Minsky, refers to a sudden collapse of asset prices after a long period of growth, sparked by debt or currency pressures. In the <20>The Financial Instability Hypothesis<69> (1992), Minsky outlined how risks from debt can build up during periods of growth until they become excessive in an economy that otherwise appears to be stable. <20>In particular, over a protracted period of good times, capitalist economies tend to move from a financial structure dominated by hedge finance units to a structure in which there is large weight to units engaged in speculative and Ponzi finance.<2E> OTHER HIGH-PROFILE MENTIONS The term <20>Minsky moment<6E> is credited to U.S. economist Paul McCulley, who initially used it during the Russian financial crisis of 1998, around two years after Minsky died. Minksy<73>s theories were again <20>rediscovered<65> during the global financial crisis of 2008. In a 2009 speech, current U.S. Federal Reserve chief Janet Yellen, who was then San Francisco Fed president, spoke on the lessons that Minsky offered central bankers, saying <20>the dramatic events of the past year and a half are a classic case of the kind of systemic breakdown that he - and relatively few others - envisioned.<2E> <20>One of the critical features of Minsky<6B>s world view is that borrowers, lenders, and regulators are lulled into complacency as asset prices rise.<2E> WHO IS MINSKY Hyman Minksy was born in Chicago in 1919. He earned a bachelor of science in mathematics from the University of Chicago, and master of public administration and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard. He taught at Carnegie Tech, Brown University and the University of California, Berkley. From 1965 to 1990 he was professor of economics at Washington University in St Louis. He was then a distinguished scholar at Levy Institute from 1990 until his death, aged 77, in 1996. Minsky considered himself to be a Keynesian economist, but differed with mainstream economists on how to interpret the works of English economist John Maynard Keynes. His theories on financial crises did not gain public prominence during his life, but in the aftermath of the global financial crisis they became widely cited. ZHOU<4F>S WARNING <20>If there are too many pro-cyclical factors in the economy, cyclical fluctuations are magnified and there is excessive optimism during the period, accumulating contradictions that could lead to the so-called Minsky Moment.<2E> <20>We should focus on preventing a dramatic adjustment.<2E> For a full story, click HOW MUCH DEBT DOES CHINA HAVE? A lot, but accounting is opaque and relatively little is held by foreign investors who could suddenly flee for the exits. The government says debt levels are generally under control and manageable, and notes the personal savings rate is high. It has embarked on a campaign this year to contain risks from debt, but officials have been careful -- some critics say too careful -- not to tighten the screws too much and hit economic growth. Zhou has said there is no quick fix and it could take years to bring down high debt down to more manageable levels. Corporate debt has climbed rapidly since China unveiled a massive stimulus programme to cushion the economy during the global financial crisis. But much is held by state-run firms. The state also controls much of the banking system and can be heavily influential in financial markets, where the first hints of trouble often arise. The International Monetary Fund said in August it expected Chi
'ae3e028620d1962f930a044efcba2339c1e1e7db'|'Canadian steel maker Stelco faces headwinds for planned IPO'|'VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Canadian steel maker Stelco Holdings Inc<6E>s planned IPO could be a tough sell as it faces the twin headwinds of slowing North American auto sales and the uncertain impact of trade talks, even as it looks to cash in on a rebound in steel prices.Stelco also needs to regain investor confidence just months after emerging from its second bankruptcy in 13 years, analysts and investors said, as its new owner seeks to raise $150 million by selling a stake in the restructured, almost debt-free company.Stelco, now owned by U.S. private equity group Bedrock Industries, filed in late September for the initial public offering and is now marketing it.If the effort is successful, it would be the world<6C>s biggest steel IPO since 2010, when Indonesia<69>s Krakatau Steel ( KRAS.JK ) raised $300 million in its offering, according to Thomson Reuters data. Krakatau<61>s stock has nearly halved since then.While global steel prices SRBcv1 have jumped 160 percent since end-2015 as China, both the world<6C>s top steel producer and consumer, shut capacity in an environmental crackdown, sales of North American automobiles have been mostly weak this year.Stelco, which operates two steel-processing facilities in Ontario, is targeting the auto sector for growth with plans to lift production of lightweight, higher-strength steels that automakers are increasingly seeking for better fuel economy, it said in its prospectus.But high automobile inventory levels and record consumer discounts, are signs that North American auto sales could slow.<2E>That is not good for steel mills,<2C> said Gordon Johnson, an analyst at Axiom Capital Management.The automotive market absorbs around 40 percent of North American-produced steel sheet, Stelco<63>s chief product, said KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Philip Gibbs.AUTOMOTIVE MARKET Competition for auto business is stiff, with the likes of ArcelorMittal B.V. ( MT.AS ), the world<6C>s biggest steelmaker, also chasing this higher-margin business. Last year, sales to automotive customers made up only 3 percent of Stelco<63>s sales, down from 37 percent in 2006.<2E>What you do have now is every steel company really trying to figure out how to capture more and more of that market,<2C> said Clarksons Platou analyst Lee McMillan.Stelco and Bedrock both declined to comment. In its IPO filing, Stelco said its competitive strengths included being one of North America<63>s lowest-cost producers and being near customers and suppliers.Meanwhile, the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement adds a layer of uncertainty for investors in steel companies in Canada and Mexico as U.S. protectionism increases under the Trump administration.<2E>Trying to predict what this current administration is going to do is extremely difficult,<2C> said Johnson.Rising steel prices have lifted steel companies<65> profits and shares. Stelco made a C$61 million ($49 million) operating profit in the six months to end-June compared with a C$36 million loss in the same period last year.ArcelorMittal<61>s stock is up 170 percent, United States Steel Corp ( X.N ) is 240 percent higher and Nucor Corp ( NUE.N ) 30 percent firmer, gains that make it too late to invest in steel stocks, some investors say.<2E>You buy these companies when they are losing money. Once they are making money, to me investors have missed a large part of the cycle,<2C> said Lorne Steinberg, president of Lorne Steinberg Wealth Management.($1 = 1.2479 Canadian dollars)Reporting by Nicole Mordant in Vancouver; Additional reporting by Susan Taylor in Toronto; Editing by Denny Thomas and Leslie Adler'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-stelco-ipo-funds/canadian-steel-maker-stelco-faces-headwinds-for-planned-ipo-idINKBN1CN30R'|'2017-10-18T18:50:00.000+03:00'
'dc9812c5e84ffa48362a4723d61e676f5fd2cd89'|'RPT-Rio Tinto, former top executives, charged with fraud -U.S. SEC'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:50 PM / Updated 13 minutes ago RPT-Rio Tinto, former top executives, charged with fraud -U.S. SEC Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Repeats to add meta data) WASHINGTON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it charged mining company Rio Tinto Plc and two of its former top executives on Tuesday with fraud for inflating the value of coal assets acquired for $3.7 billion and sold a few years later for $50 million. The SEC complaint, filed in federal court in Manhattan, alleges that Rio Tinto, its former chief executive Thomas Albanese, and its former chief financial officer Guy Elliott failed to follow accounting standards and company policies to accurately value and record its assets. (Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by Mohammad Zargham) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/rio-tinto-plc-fraud/rpt-rio-tinto-former-top-executives-charged-with-fraud-u-s-sec-idUSL2N1MS29N'|'2017-10-18T00:49:00.000+03:00'
'db1fc7a4638943ca19441e379a14f027a7ced912'|'Owner of Sandro, Maje fashion labels valued at $2 billion in Paris listing'|'The logo of ready-to-wear Sandro brand is seen on a fashion shop storefront in Paris, France, March 29, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau PARIS (Reuters) - France<63>s SMCP ( IPO-SMCP.PA ) will price its stock market flotation at 22 euros per share, it said on Thursday, giving the fashion firm behind the Sandro and Maje labels a market value of around 1.7 billion euros ($2 billion).The group, which also houses clothing brand Claudie Pierlot, will remain around 51 percent owned by China<6E>s Shandong Ruyi following the initial public offering, while private equity firm KKR will sell its 10 percent holding.Paris-based Sandro, Maje and Claudie Pierot (SMCP), which is using proceeds from the listing to back its expansion and pay down debt, touts itself as an <20>affordable luxury<72> company.SMCP<43>s clothes - such as dresses priced in the $200-$400 range - are more expensive than high-street retailers but it also operates a nimble production model more akin to the world of fast-fashion that of the top-end luxury labels.SMCP is looking to grow more in China, where recovering demand from middle-class consumers is giving retailers a lift, and like many peers it also wants to develop online sales.The IPO raised around 541 million euros for the company and selling shareholders, and SMCP said this could increase to 623 million euros if over-allotment options are exercised on the back of strong demand.Some of SMCP<43>s managers - the founders had around 8 percent of the firm before the IPO - banked 5.9 million euros from selling shares, the company said, while KKR took home 148 million euros. Shandong Ruyi raised 261 million euros and said the funds would be used to buy the Chinese government<6E>s stake in its Yinchuan Ruyi textile factory.The company, which aims to open between 80 to 90 stores a year between 2018 and 2020, also raised 127 million euros from issuing new stock. It will have a free float of 33.1 percent.Shares in SMCP will start trading in Paris on Friday in the form of <20>promesses d<>actions<6E>, or a type of share right.Reporting by Sarah White; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-smcp-ipo/owner-of-sandro-maje-fashion-labels-valued-at-2-billion-in-paris-listing-idINKBN1CO2PG'|'2017-10-19T16:07:00.000+03:00'
'6678ab3ed94725da9c3b5e3d6cb9646001c4ca51'|'Canada''s Roots Corp prices IPO at C$12'|'(Reuters) - Canadian apparel company Roots Corp said on Wednesday it priced its initial public offering at C$12 ($9.63) per share, raising about C$200 million.The company, known for its trademark beaver logo, is set to make its debut seven months after Canada Goose Holdings Inc ( GOOS.TO ) had its high-flying IPO. [nCCNmY0dna]The company had previously set a price range of C$14 to C$16 per share, according to a term sheet of the deal seen by Reuters.The offering is being co-led by TD Securities Inc, Credit Suisse Securities (Canada) Inc and BMO Capital Markets together with Jefferies Securities Inc, RBC Dominion Securities Inc and Scotia Capital Inc, as joint bookrunners, and CIBC World Markets Inc, Canaccord Genuity Corp and National Bank Financial Inc, as underwriters.Roots will not receive any proceeds from the offering, it said in a statement.($1 = C$1.25) Reporting by Taenaz Shakir in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-roots-corp-ipo/canadas-roots-corp-prices-ipo-at-c12-idUSKBN1CN2WU'|'2017-10-19T04:11:00.000+03:00'
'6f76a8791a7e2e2e36317b2f25918315e5c98f92'|'South Korea''s Naver invests further 100 mln euros in French tech fund'|'October 19, 2017 / 5:13 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago South Korea''s Naver invests further 100 mln euros in French tech fund Reuters Staff 1 Min Read PARIS, Oct 19 (Reuters) - South Korea<65>s Naver Corp is investing a further 100 million euros ($118 million) in French technology fund K-Fund I, marking the latest sign of international interest in the French start-up technology scene, which is vying to rival London. K-Fund I is steered by Korelya Capital, which was founded and is led by former French digital economy minister Fleur Pellerin. Korean-born Pellerin is credited with launching the <20>French Tech<63> initiative in the early years of ex-President Francois Hollande<64>s mandate, which put the country<72>s burgeoning tech scene on the map. Earlier this year, Facebook picked Paris<69><73>Station F<> mega-campus as the site of its first ever start-ups incubator. $1 = 0.8474 euros Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Gwenaelle Barzic; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/france-tech-naver/south-koreas-naver-invests-further-100-mln-euros-in-french-tech-fund-idUSP6N1M901H'|'2017-10-19T08:12:00.000+03:00'
'e49cc999931bf139bb799ae4b79114ef628acd7b'|'UPDATE 1-Brazil''s Temer escapes corruption charges in committee vote'|'October 18, 2017 / 10:36 PM / Updated 14 minutes ago UPDATE 1-Brazil''s Temer escapes corruption charges in committee vote Reuters Staff (Adds details of debate, implications for economic policy) By Maria Carolina Marcello BRASILIA, Oct 18 (Reuters) - A congressional committee voted 39-26 on Wednesday to reject charges against Brazilian President Michel Temer stemming from a corruption case involving the world<6C>s largest meatpacker. The full lower house of Brazil<69>s Congress still must vote on the charges but is expected to shelve them next week, sparing Temer from trial by the Supreme Court for alleged obstruction of justice and membership in a criminal organization. Temer was accused of taking bribes and condoning the payment of hush money to a jailed politician in testimony by meatpacker Joesley Batista. Temer has denied any wrongdoing and his lawyers argued that the case against him was flawed because it was based on an inconclusive recording that Batista secretly made of a conversation with the president. The lower chamber decides whether a Brazilian president can be put on trial. Two-thirds of its members must vote to approve a charge for it to move forward, a hurdle his opponents are not expected to clear. Temer survived an earlier corruption charge in the lower house in August in connection with the same graft scheme in which prosecutors accused him of arranging to receive a total of 38 million reais ($11.8 million) in bribes from JBS SA . In committee debates on Wednesday, opposition Congressman Alessandro Molon, of the center-left party called Sustainability Network, said Temer was part of a criminal organization that collected bribes. He accused the president of taking part in decisions on how the money was distributed. Workers Party lawmakers called for Temer to stand trial, saying the charges against him were more serious than those leveled at his predecessor Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached last year for a lesser crime of violating budget rules. But Temer<65>s allies argued that the charges should be thrown out because the country needs Temer to serve out his mandate through the end of 2018 for political and economic stability. They said Temer has recovered Brazil from its worst recession, brought inflation under control, restored the purchasing power of Brazilian consumers and should stay in office to recover investor confidence. Presidential aides said Temer will now be able to get on with his economic policy agenda focused on boosting weak growth and bringing a bulging government budget deficit under control. The political capital and time Temer has spent defending himself, however, has delayed approval of a crucial overhaul of the pension system, the main cause of the fiscal deficit that cost Brazil<69>s its investment-grade credit rating in 2015. Temer will be hard pressed to get the unpopular pension bill approved before the 2018 election year starts and promised reform of Brazil<69>s burdensome tax system might is now unlikely. (Reporting by Anthony Boadle and Maria Carolina Marcello; Writing by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Leslie Adler) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brazil-corruption-temer/update-1-brazils-temer-escapes-corruption-charges-in-committee-vote-idUSL2N1MT2BM'|'2017-10-19T06:36:00.000+03:00'
'dadbac267b54c4f97c46416796f5292a3a10bc15'|'Shadow banking grows while lending trails'|'October 19, 2017 / 10:19 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago Shadow banking grows while lending trails John O''Donnell 2 Min Read A woman walks past a board showing the length and annual yield rates of finance products, outside a shop in Shanghai, China, November 18, 2015. REUTERS/Aly Song DUBLIN (Reuters) - Banks gave less cross-border credit globally in the second quarter of this year while the shadow banking sector, which includes hedge funds, continued to grow, new data published on Thursday showed. The Bank for International Settlements<74> data shows the continued trend of cautious banks retreating to national boundaries since the financial crash, while private equity funds and others win more credit and clout. Cross-border bank credit shrank by $91 billion (<28>69.1 billion) between the end of March and end of June after strong growth at the start of the year. During this time, the BIS calculated that the stock of cross-border loans and deposits totalled roughly $19 trillion compared to a peak of more than $26 trillion before the banking collapse. The amount of cross-border credit given to <20>non-banks<6B>, a broad group that includes funds, special purpose vehicles, private equity and hedge funds, has more than doubled since the end of 2013 to over $5 trillion now. James Stewart, an expert in shadow banking with Ireland<6E>s Trinity College, said the data highlighted the need for tighter supervision of the sector. <20>The whole focus of regulation is on the banking system and not the shadow banks,<2C> he said. <20>There are systemic risks but we don<6F>t know what they are because they depend on the links to mainstream finance.<2E> The research by the Basel-based group that is owned by central banks also found that cross-border lending to China rose for the third quarter in a row, up $78 billion, taking its annual growth to 25 percent. To find the statistics, click on: here Reporting By John O''Donnell, editing by Pritha Sarkar 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-finance-globe-growth/shadow-banking-grows-while-lending-trails-idUKKBN1CO1C4'|'2017-10-19T13:19:00.000+03:00'
'b6fc7bda020e171395c3dfdbfc0fd1b1ebd194f9'|'Japan carmakers vouch for safety of some Kobe Steel parts; company future uncertain'|'October 19, 2017 / 3:25 AM / in an hour Japan carmakers vouch for safety of Kobe Steel''s aluminium parts Kazuhiko Tamaki , Naomi Tajitsu 6 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Kobe Steel logo is seen in this illustration photo taken October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Four Japanese automakers on Thursday said they found no safety issues with aluminium parts supplied by Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ), allaying some concerns that falsified quality data on products from the steelmaker had compromised their vehicles. Kobe Steel shares surged after the car makers<72> statements, but the steelmaker still has to contend with a U.S. Justice Department probe, while checks continue at hundreds of companies involved in complex supply chains spanning the globe. Japan<61>s third-biggest steelmaker admitted earlier this month it falsified specifications on the strength and durability of aluminium, copper and steel products, along with materials for optical disks. The falsifications stretch back for more than 10 years, a senior executive told Reuters this week. Since then, global automakers, aircraft companies and other manufacturers have scrambled to identify potential hazards in their products. Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ), Honda Motor Co ( 7267.T ), Nissan Motor Co ( 7201.T ) and Mazda Motor Co ( 7261.T ) said that hoods and other exterior parts used in their cars which were made from aluminium directly supplied by Kobe Steel were safe. Kobe Steel shares ended the day nearly 7 percent higher but are still down by more than a third since it announced the data falsification. Automakers are still making checks on other parts, including those that they received through their parts suppliers. <20>We confirmed that the materials satisfy applicable statutory standards, and our own internal standard, for key safety and durability requirements for vehicles,<2C> Toyota said in a statement. Toyota, one of the world<6C>s largest automakers, identified aluminium plates supplied by Kobe Steel for the hoods and rear hatches of Toyota and Lexus brand vehicles. Though outside the automaker<65>s specifications, they were still safe to use. Related Coverage While Subaru ( 7270.T ) and other carmakers said they were still investigating the issue, the announcements by Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Mazda suggest that Kobe Steel<65>s cheating scandal may have a limited impact on product safety. <20>SERIOUS SITUATION<4F> Nonetheless, the company<6E>s fate hangs in the balance while checks are being carried out. It must report to Japan<61>s industry ministry by around the end of next week on any safety concerns and provide a more extensive account of the problems a fortnight later. Industry leaders have reached a consensus that Kobe Steel is in a <20>serious situation,<2C> a senior Japanese manufacturing executive told Reuters. <20>For a manufacturer, quality control is the most important thing and they were cheating for many years. This was a shock to their customers, who can no longer trust Kobe Steel,<2C> the executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, said. This was the view of Japanese industry leaders, even though no safety issues have so far been identified, the executive said. Kobe Steel customers will seek compensation for the cost of replacements and checks but <20>I do not think they are leaning toward lawsuits,<2C> he said, adding that as far as he had heard there will be no recalls. Overseas customers, especially those in the United States, present more of a threat though, in light of the Justice Department investigation. <20>I would think there will demands for quite a bit of compensation (from U.S. companies),<2C> he said. In Europe, aviation safety authorities earlier this week issued a directive advising aircraft manufacturers to avoid using Kobe Steel products if they can until checks are completed. There was no manual providing guidance to staff on cheating product specifications, a senior Kobe Steel executive told reporters, on condition
'def9aafb38f9c25cdfdff53a2151d0ead72b789b'|'UK financial services watchdog to investigate debt management firms'|'October 19, 2017 / 12:37 PM / in 3 minutes UK financial services watchdog to investigate debt management firms Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s Financial Conduct Authority has begun its second in-depth review of firms that help people repay their debts, saying it has refused to authorise some of them due to poor practise. Debt management firms typically offer to draw up plans to consolidate debt repayments, with the borrower paying a firm who then passes on the money to the creditors. The move coincides with a sharp rise in consumer credit, raising concerns among regulators as the Bank of England looks set to raise interest rates in the coming months, making the servicing of loans more expensive. <20>Debt management remains a priority for us as poor practise by debt management firms poses a high risk to consumers, particularly those in vulnerable circumstances,<2C> the FCA said in a statement on Thursday. The watchdog had already told firms in the sector in 2014 that they needed to <20>raise their game<6D> if they wanted to continue operating, after uncovering poor quality advice. <20>Since then we have refused authorisation to a number of providers while others have left the market,<2C> the FCA said. <20>We will take appropriate supervisory action if we find that firms are falling short of the standards that we expect.<2E> The FCA said on Wednesday that over 4 million people in Britain are having difficulties paying their monthly bills. Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Greg Mahlich 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-credit-regulator/uk-financial-services-watchdog-to-investigate-debt-management-firms-idUKKBN1CO1S1'|'2017-10-19T15:36:00.000+03:00'
'dcd745ef03c1331e09bdbb280a1d86166ad28934'|'Unilever sales disappoint as competition bites big brands'|'October 19, 2017 / 6:29 AM / in an hour Unilever sales disappoint as competition bites big brands Martinne Geller 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The company logo for Unilever is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., February 17, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Unilever ( ULVR.L ) ( UNc.AS ) reported lower-than-expected third-quarter sales, losing market share to smaller competitors and dampening hopes that an aborted takeover offer from Kraft Heinz ( KHC.O ) would spark a swift improvement. Underlying sales rose only 2.6 percent, Unilever said on Thursday. That was below the 3.9 percent growth expected by analysts in a company-supplied consensus, and below the 3 percent seen in the first half of the year. Unilever<65>s shares were down 4 percent at 0828 GMT, having risen by about a third since Kraft<66>s unsuccessful $143 billion takeover bid for the maker of Magnum ice cream and Dove soap in February. The company blamed poor weather in Europe, hurricanes in the United States and earthquakes in Mexico for disrupting its sales. But it also cited the growing threat from local competitors in markets such as U.S. ice cream and Southeast Asian personal care. Unilever lifted its profitability target in July and there was some concern that lower spending on marketing was having a negative impact on sales. <20>Our competitiveness has dropped off a little,<2C> Chief Financial Officer Graeme Pitkethly said. The company is only gaining market share in about half of its business, he said, down from about 60 percent in previous years. Swiss rival Nestle ( NESN.S ) reported accelerated third-quarter sales on Thursday, but said increased restructuring costs would weigh on margins. <20>Life is becoming more difficult for the consumer goods giants, as competition from smaller, nimbler players intensifies and consumer preferences shift toward niche and alternative brands,<2C> said Charlie Higgins, fund manager at Hargreaves Lansdown, which owns Unilever shares. <20>To succeed in the long term Unilever will need to adapt its business model, becoming more agile and responsive to changing trends.<2E> FILE PHOTO: Two bottles of Dove''s Deep Moisture body wash are displayed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 8, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo FALLING SHORT Pitkethly said the quarter came up about 150 million euros, or about one day<61>s worth of sales, short of internal hopes. <20>We<57>re not happy with that in aggregate. In fact, we feel we left some runs in the field,<2C> Pitkethly said. Hurricanes caused about a week<65>s worth of lost sales in Texas and Florida, its biggest U.S. markets, he said. Unilever<65>s ice cream business, which also includes Ben & Jerry<72>s and Wall<6C>s, saw double-digit declines in Europe, hurt by poor weather, and suffered market share losses in the United States at the hands of a new brand, Halo Top. Unilever had reduced its advertising and marketing spending by 130 basis points in the first half of the year, in an effort to cut costs in the wake of Kraft<66>s bid, and one analyst said that may have hurt its sales now. <20>In our view, the seeds of Q3<51>s poor performance versus expectations were planted with the reduction in advertising and promotional spend in the first half,<2C> said RBC Capital Markets analyst James Edwardes Jones. <20>While natural disasters doubtless played a part, the fact is that Unilever<65>s Q3 performance came in below expectations in all geographies.<2E> Turnover fell by 1.6 percent, hurt by a 5.1 percent hit from foreign exchange rates, the company said. Excluding its up-for-sale margarine and spreads business, for which tentative takeover bids are due on Thursday, sales rose 2.8 percent. The company stood by its full-year forecast for sales growth of 3 to 5 percent, an improvement in underlying operating margin of at least 100 basis points and strong cash flow. Reporting by Martinne Geller; editing by Jason Neely/Keith Weir 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.r
'5655d995101944e48a7486fa8cb7f83ad616e926'|'Toshiba investigated by Japan''s securities watchdog - source'|'October 19, 2017 / 2:44 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Toshiba investigated by Japan''s securities watchdog: source Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Shoppers look at Toshiba Corp''s Regza television at an electronics store in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, June 25, 2013. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s securities watchdog is investigating Toshiba Corp<72>s ( 6502.T ) accounting practices for the last business year to see if it properly handled the losses incurred by its U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission is examining the process involved in creating the financial report for the 2016/17 business year, said the source, who was not authorized to speak to the media and declined to be identified. A Toshiba spokesman declined to comment. Reporting by Takahiko Wada; Writing by Kaori Kaneko; Editing by Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-results/toshiba-investigated-by-japans-securities-watchdog-source-idUKKBN1CO082'|'2017-10-19T05:42:00.000+03:00'
'4b35b19e208d76ff15a366daa77533d619a62413'|'Activist RBR wants Credit Suisse to float asset management unit, investment bank -presentation'|'ZURICH, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Activist investor RBR Capital Advisors wants Credit Suisse to float its asset management business and investment bank, according to a presentation reviewed by Reuters.The Swiss hedge fund went public this week with a campaign to break up Switzerland<6E>s second-biggest bank into an investment bank, an asset management group and a wealth manager accommodating its retail and corporate banking operations.In the presentation dated October 2017, RBR estimated a divided up Credit Suisse would be worth at least double the bank<6E>s current market capitalisation of around 40 billion Swiss francs ($40.9 billion).The fund sees potential valuations of Credit Suisse<73>s independent wealth management arm at 62.5 billion francs, the investment bank at 15.6 billion and the asset management business at 6.8 billion.A spokesman for RBR declined to comment and said the fund will outline its strategy for Credit Suisse at the JP Morgan Robin Hood Investor Conference in New York on Friday.Credit Suisse has said it welcomes the views of shareholders but its focus is on the implementation of its current strategy.Credit Suisse is roughly two years into Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam<61>s three-year plan to focus on wealth management and rely less on investment banking.A demand to float the asset management business has not previously been reported, nor had the individual valuation estimates of the three Credit Suisse businesses.The Financial Times, which first reported the activist campaign on Monday, said RBR was seeking to float Credit Suisse<73>s investment bank.RBR wants Credit Suisse to list the investment bank, which it dubs First Boston 2.0, in either New York or London, according to the presentation seen by Reuters. Credit Suisse took control of U.S. investment bank First Boston in 1988.RBR, which is led by Rudolf Bohli, has taken a stake of only around 0.2 percent in Credit Suisse and faces a steep challenge to muster the backing needed to succeed in its campaign. ($1 = 0.9778 Swiss francs) (Editing by Rachel Armstrong/Keith Weir)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/creditsuisse-rbr/activist-rbr-wants-credit-suisse-to-float-asset-management-unit-investment-bank-presentation-idINL8N1MU2WO'|'2017-10-19T09:21:00.000+03:00'
'c4e0b728b5c494b72473c44ec2b57e864f3402ac'|'In oil-producing Iran, renewables are booming'|'October 19, 2017 / 10:23 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago In oil-producing Iran, renewables are booming Lefteris Karagiannopoulos 3 Min Read OSLO (Reuters) - Renewable energy is booming in Iran, where installed capacity is expected to grow at least sevenfold over the next five years, despite U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s more confrontational attitude towards Tehran. Iran<61>s latest deal was signed on Tuesday, when Norway<61>s Saga Energy concluded a $2.9 billion (<28>2.2 billion) deal to build solar power plants in the oil-producing country . That gives Iran agreements with 124 companies, most of them European, to install 2,380 megawatts (MW) in renewable capacity, in addition to the 340 MW currently in place, according to data from Iran<61>s Energy Ministry. They range from wind power to solar farms and hydropower dams to burning biomass and waste to heat homes. Iran is a signatory of the 2015 Paris climate agreement committing 195 nations to limit their carbon emissions. <20>Iran is trying to increase the share of renewable energy in the energy mix of the country and also (honour) our international environmental commitments,<2C> Fareeh Bahrami, an official at SATBA, the state agency promoting renewables under the authority of Iran<61>s Energy Ministry, told Reuters. Iran<61>s ambitions is to install 5 gigawatts of renewables by 2022, he said. Among the companies engaged is Polish investment fund Quercus ( QRS.WA ), which will help build the world<6C>s sixth-largest solar farm in central Iran, investing over half a billion euros. Dutch energy firm Global Renewables Investments (GRI) plans to build up solar and wind farms that could produce up to 1.7 GW of electricity. To finance the projects, the companies have used European export credit agencies, private equity and Asian financial institutions. <20>We have been approached by a number of finance providers, especially from the Far East, including China, proposing various options for construction and financing,<2C> Quercus CEO Diego Biasi told Reuters. However, the United States is taking a harder tone towards Iran lately. Trump said on Friday he may ultimately terminate the 2015 nuclear deal, which could mean some international sanctions may be restored. As a result, some companies already invested in Iran said they would be taking a <20>wait-and-see<65> approach, such as Greek conglomerate Mytilineos Holdings ( MYTr.AT ), which built a 10 MW solar farm in Iran. <20>We are monitoring developments before making any new project plans,<2C> spokeswoman Antigoni Fakou told Reuters. Others said they would continue with their investments, including Quercus and GRI. <20>We won<6F>t change our strategy on Iran,<2C> GRI co-founder Gerben Pek told Reuters. Editing by Gwladys Fouche, Larry King 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-iran-renewables/in-oil-producing-iran-renewables-are-booming-idUKKBN1CO1CH'|'2017-10-19T13:22:00.000+03:00'
'69644f601bdcb1b4310b5207b735012d742bc577'|'PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 19'|'Oct 19 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.- Kenneth I. Chenault, one of the longest-serving executives in finance and one of corporate America''s few black top leaders, will retire next year as the chairman and chief executive of American Express. nyti.ms/2ytoiMg- Hearst, the publisher of magazines like Cosmopolitan and Esquire, announced on Wednesday that it had agreed to acquire Rodale, which owns Runner''s World and Men''s Health nyti.ms/2yt7rt2- Nielsen, the 94-year-old company that for decades has had an effective monopoly on measuring television ratings in the United States, has announced that it has found a way into the great unknown of Netflix Inc''s viewership. nyti.ms/2ys7NQl- Anthem Inc, one of the nation''s major health insurance companies, said on Wednesday that it planned to start its own business to manage prescription drug plans by partnering with CVS Health, the large pharmacy benefit manager and drugstore chain. nyti.ms/2yrFaCWCompiled by Bengaluru newsroom'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/press-digest-nyt/press-digest-new-york-times-business-news-oct-19-idINL4N1MU2FM'|'2017-10-19T02:56:00.000+03:00'
'595f5fb1b993fda82eaeec2e6a8b71ef3a824652'|'Bank of England''s Cunliffe sees muted domestic inflation pressure'|'October 19, 2017 / 4:51 PM / Updated 6 minutes ago Bank of England''s Cunliffe - no clear case for rate hike soon Reuters Staff 3 Min Read Britain''s Deputy Governor of the Bank of England Jon Cunliffe speaks during the Bank of England''s financial stability report at the Bank of England in the City of London, Britain June 27, 2017. REUTERS/ Jonathan Brady/Pool LONDON (Reuters) - Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe said on Thursday it was not clear that interest rates needed to rise soon, showing at least two of the central bank<6E>s nine policymakers are unlikely to vote for a hike in November. Cunliffe told BBC radio he did not see signs of sustained upward inflation pressure. On Tuesday, one his new colleagues Dave Ramsden said he was not part of the majority of BoE rate-setters who thought that a rate hike was likely to be needed in the coming months. Another member of the Monetary Policy Committee, Silvana Tenreyro, said on Tuesday her support for that position was <20>very contingent on the data<74>. Cunliffe said the British economy was growing and unemployment was falling. <20>But we are not seeing pay pressure and for me we are not seeing sustained signs of domestic inflation pressure,<2C> he said in an interview on BBC Radio Wales. <20>The inflation we have is coming from abroad from that depreciation (of sterling after the Brexit vote).<2E> Sterling extended losses against the U.S. dollar after Cunliffe<66>s comments. He said the Bank<6E>s August forecasts were for economic growth to continue over the next three years and for pay to start to increase over the period, putting upward domestic pressure on inflation. <20>If that forecast - it was our best assessment in August - came to pass, I am very clear interest rates will need to rise slowly and gradually over the period. When that process should actually start, I think, is a more open question,<2C> he said. Britain<69>s economy has slowed this year, hurt by the rise in inflation since the 2016 Brexit vote and uncertainty about the country<72>s future trading ties with the European Union. Even so, the Bank said last month that most of its rate-setters expected to increase borrowing costs in the coming months, partly because Brexit would lead to higher inflation. As of Thursday<61>s close in British fixed income markets, investors were pricing in a roughly 80 percent chance that a first 25 basis-point hike will come on Nov. 2, after the Bank<6E>s next policy meeting. Most economists polled by Reuters last month said they expected a rate hike in November, but a majority also said it would be a mistake to raise borrowing costs at this time. George Buckley, an economist with Nomura bank, said on Thursday he had surveyed 80 of its clients. Forty-two percent said a BoE hike now would probably be a mistake, against 58 percent who thought it would not. Reporting by Andy Bruce, editing by William Schomberg 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-boe-cunliffe/bank-of-englands-cunliffe-sees-muted-domestic-inflation-pressure-idUKKBN1CO2IY'|'2017-10-19T19:51:00.000+03:00'
'eac59d7511c3d4ef3d5494a136a372d8b0654eea'|'Chinese ''white knight'' to hike stake in Grammer: source'|'MUNICH (Reuters) - China<6E>s Ningbo Jifeng Auto Parts Co ( 603997.SS ) wants to increase its stake in German automotive interiors maker Grammer AG ( GMMG.DE ) to more than 25 percent, a source with knowledge of the situation told Reuters on Tuesday.Grammer has been at the center of a power struggle between Bosnia<69>s Hastor family and Ningbo Jifeng, which each holding about 20 percent in the company.Ningbo Jifeng wants to increase its stake by buying shares on the open market, the source said. Earlier on Tuesday, Ningbo Jifeng said in a regulatory filing that it planned to increase its stake in the next 12 months, without giving details.Grammer<65>s management has welcomed Ningbo Jifeng, another supplier of vehicle interior components, as a potential white knight in its conflict with Hastor.Last year a contract dispute between Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ) and two of its suppliers controlled by the Hastor family, CarTrim and ES Automobilguss, briefly halted production at more than half of the carmaker<65>s German plants.Cascade Investment International GmbH, a company controlled by the Hastor family, has accused Grammer<65>s management of market manipulation to help Ningbo Jifeng build a stake.Grammer has denied the allegation but said the company would see business suffer if the Bosnians increased their influence.Earlier this month, shares in Grammer tumbled after it said it expects orders to fall well short of its annual target as the power struggle discouraged car manufacturers from placing orders.($1 = 0.8427 euros)Reporting by Irene Preisinger and Alexander Huebner, writing by Emma Thomasson; Editing by Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-grammer-shareholder/chinese-white-knight-to-hike-stake-in-grammer-source-idINKBN1CM2OA'|'2017-10-17T16:23:00.000+03:00'
'af6aea1f8b5354b37a13280b38932215a23f9bba'|'UPDATE 2-Owner of failed airline Monarch should contribute to customer repatriation -UK transport minister'|'(Adds Greybull Capital comment)LONDON, Oct 16 (Reuters) - The owner of failed British airline Monarch should, in principle, foot some of the bill for a massive repatriation effort co-ordinated by the country<72>s aviation authority, British transport minister Chris Grayling said on Monday.Monarch collapsed two weeks ago, wrecking the holiday plans of hundreds of thousands of Britons, a year after owner Greybull Capital secured a bailout for the struggling airline.Asked by lawmakers whether Greybull Capital should contribute to the costs of returning tourists to Britain, Grayling said that if the investment firm ends up with a gain after the administration process, a payment towards repatriation costs would demonstrate goodwill.<2E>There<72>s no formal legal mechanism that we can use, but in terms of the principle I completely agree,<2C> Grayling told a panel of lawmakers.<2E>I would hope that if any of the creditors end up with money in pocket, whether they might indeed consider doing that.<2E>He also said it could take weeks to determine how much money might be recovered from credit card companies and insurers.The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) on Monday said that it had completed its programme to repatriate the 110,000 Monarch customers who were abroad when the airline went bust, which is estimated to have cost the government around 60 million pounds ($79.49 million).However Grayling said that any contribution from Greybull Capital could depend on how the administration process played out.<2E>We agree with (Grayling) that it is too early in the administration process for anyone to know the outcome for creditors,<2C> a spokesman for Greybull Capital said in a statement, adding the investment firm had provided <20>significant capital<61> to Monarch since it took over the airline in 2014.<2E>We remain deeply sorry and saddened by the failure of Monarch despite the best efforts of so many to turn around the company. ... We have acted responsibly and with integrity throughout the process.<2E> ($1 = 0.7548 pounds)Reporting by Alistair Smout; Editing by Andy Bruce, David Goodman and Jonathan Oatis'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/monarch-airlines-licence-grayling/update-1-owner-of-failed-airline-monarch-should-contribute-to-customer-repatriation-uk-transport-minister-idINL8N1MR5RY'|'2017-10-16T14:58:00.000+03:00'
'00cd41b20a3f29c1c46e3d6c8cd1fbed622c5c9b'|'Greece, in recession again last year, eyes recovery in 2017-18'|'A woman visits the ancient Temple of Zeus during the European Heritage Days in Athens, Greece September 24, 2017. REUTERS/Costas Baltas/Files ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece fell into recession again last year, confounding its international creditors who had predicted some growth after years of budget austerity and bailouts.The country<72>s leading economic think tank, meanwhile, said there would be growth this year - but not as much as the government expects.The economy contracted by 0.2 percent in 2016, statistics service ELSTAT said on Tuesday, releasing its revised estimate of full-year gross domestic product.ELSTAT<41>s estimate, based on seasonally unadjusted data, was based on lower than previously estimated household consumption, suggesting that the euro zone<6E>s largest unemployment rate is still holding back broader recovery.It said gross domestic product in volume terms and measured at constant prices was 175.9 billion euros last year, down from 178.1 billion euros in 2015. Consumption dropped by an annual 0.3 percent, versus a 0.6 percent rise estimated by the agency in March.<2E>It<49>s a small change that has minor impact on other indices and on fiscal figures. It is a slightly weaker depiction of the real economy in 2016 due to the downwardly revised consumption expenditure,<2C> said National Bank economist Nikos Magginas.He said that the registered trend in consumption would also be a challenge for 2017.Years of austerity imposed by the International Monetary Fund and euro zone lenders in exchange for bailouts have made many Greeks far poorer and shrunk consumption accordingly.The European Commission, in its winter forecast published in February, projected GDP growth of 0.3 percent in 2016 while the International Monetary Fund<6E>s upwardly revised estimate saw GDP growth of 0.4 percent.Greece<63>s leading IOBE think tank said on Tuesday the economy will expand by <20>slightly below<6F> 1.5 percent this year and pick up to around 2 percent in 2018.<2E>The Greek economy<6D>s growth rate in 2017 will be in the area of 1.3 percent, slower than was previously projected. Next year, growth will most likely accelerate to 2.0 percent or slightly higher,<2C> IOBE said in its quarterly review.The think tank<6E>s projections are below government forecasts. The government, which faces a third review to its international bailout this autumn, has cut this year<61>s economic growth estimate to 1.8 percent from 2.7 percent in May.The Commission has also cut its forecast to 2.1 percent from 2.7 percent. Greece<63>s central bank sees gross domestic product growing by 1.7 percent this year and picking up to 2.4 percent in 2018.Economic recovery will be key to bringing down a jobless rate of 21 percent, the highest in the euro zone, and attaining a primary budget surplus of 1.75 percent - excluding debt servicing outlays - this year as demanded by Greece<63>s creditors.Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas and George Georgiopoulos Additional reporting Renee Maltezou and Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Karolina Tagaris/Jeremy Gaunt'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/greece-economy/greece-in-recession-again-last-year-eyes-recovery-in-2017-18-idINKBN1CM1R0'|'2017-10-17T15:27:00.000+03:00'
'bb1b04d977ab74666ad6eaea9783a5eab8e9219d'|'UK''s RWS Holdings agrees $320 mln deal to buy Czech firm Moravia'|'October 18, 2017 / 12:21 PM / Updated 4 hours ago UK''s RWS Holdings agrees $320 mln deal to buy Czech firm Moravia Reuters Staff 1 Min Read PRAGUE, Oct 18 (Reuters) - British translation and intellectual property services company RWS Holdings will buy Czech translation service provider Moravia for $320 million, the companies said on Wednesday. The deal is expected to close by November, the groups said in separate statements. RWS said it would finance the acquisition with a share placement worth 185 million pounds ($244 million) and a $160 million term loan. U.S. private equity firm Clarion Capital Partners acquired a majority stake in Moravia in 2015. Since then, Moravia has lifted its revenue to $159.2 million in 2016, from $100.3 million in 2014. $1 = 0.7591 pounds Reporting by Jason Hovet; Editing by Adrian Croft 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/moravia-ma-rws-hldgs/uks-rws-holdings-agrees-320-mln-deal-to-buy-czech-firm-moravia-idUSL8N1MT3L4'|'2017-10-18T20:21:00.000+03:00'
'd5bae84ff6b7b69fc7b6d8a3a913b21f3b4d2e04'|'Investcorp agrees to acquire Kee Safety'|' 35 AM / in 8 minutes Investcorp agrees to acquire Kee Safety   DUBAI (Reuters) - Bahrain-listed Investcorp INVB.BH said on Wednesday it has agreed to acquire Kee Safety Ltd, a supplier of safety products, from Dunedin LLP and LDC for an enterprise value of 280 million pounds ($370 million). Established in the United Kingdom in 1934 and headquartered in Birmingham, Kee Safety is the leading global provider of products associated with working at height, Investcorp said in a statement. It employs 480 people and has established operations in 10 countries, including the Unites States and China. Investcorp, a private equity and alternative asset company, told Reuters this month that it aims to more than double investments to $50 billion in five years by expanding existing businesses and through acquisitions in areas such as infrastructure. ($1 = 0.7589 pounds) Reporting by Saeed Azhar; editing by Jason Neely 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-kee-m-a-investcorp-bank/investcorp-agrees-to-acquire-kee-safety-idUKKBN1CN0MK'|'2017-10-18T09:35:00.000+03:00'
'87b000dad3d1e5aea663f3c2e8e1675252c08703'|'Special Report - Backroom battle imperils $230 million cryptocurrency venture'|' 07 PM / in 5 minutes Backroom battle imperils $230 million cryptocurrency venture Anna Irrera , Steve Stecklow , Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi 21 Min Read Photo illustration shows copies of Bitcoins seen in front of Tezos logo, October 10, 2017. Picture taken October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/lllustratio ZUG, Switzerland/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Just three months ago, a tech project called Tezos raised $232 million (175.69 million pounds) online in a wildly successful <20>initial coin offering,<2C> in which new digital currency is parceled out to buyers. At the time, it was the most money ever raised from the public in the white-hot cryptocurrency sector. But the venture is now in danger of falling apart because of a battle for control playing out behind the scenes, Reuters has learned. The acrimonious dispute pits Tezos<6F> two young founders <20> Arthur and Kathleen Breitman <20> against Johann Gevers, the president of a Swiss foundation the couple helped establish to handle the coin offering and promote and develop the Tezos computer network. Under Swiss law, the foundation is supposed to be independent. It holds all of the funds raised, which have mushroomed to more than $400 million in value because the contributions were made in two cryptocurrencies <20> bitcoin and ether <20> that have appreciated sharply. But the Breitmans, who still control the Tezos source code through a Delaware company, are seeking to oust the head of the foundation. An attorney for the Breitmans sent a 46-page letter on Sunday to the two other members of the foundation<6F>s three-person board, calling for Gevers<72> prompt removal and seeking to give the couple a <20>substantial role<6C> in a new structure that would limit the foundation<6F>s responsibilities. The document accuses Gevers of <20>self-dealing, self-promotion and conflicts of interest.<2E> According to Gevers, the two board members later suggested via email that he step aside for a month while they investigate. Gevers told Reuters he is not stepping down. <20>As Arthur has done to others before me,<2C> Gevers said, <20>this is attempted character assassination. It<49>s a long laundry list of misleading statements and outright lies.<2E> He said the other two board members <20>are attempting an illegal coup.<2E> The Breitmans have been trying to control the foundation as if it were their own private entity, Gevers said, by bypassing the foundation<6F>s legal structure and interfering with management and operations. This has resulted in costly delays in developing and launching the Tezos network and new currency, he said. <20>They<65>re unnecessarily putting the project at risk,<2C> he said. In a written statement sent to Reuters, the Breitmans reiterated their accusations against Gevers and said they acted <20>in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.<2E> They said their priority <20>remains the successful launch of the Tezos network.<2E> Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake: The Tezos digital coins, called <20>Tezzies,<2C> are already priced at a hefty premium in futures trading even though they don<6F>t yet exist. The launching of the Tezos network, which will trigger the coins<6E> release, has been delayed. Until the network launches <20> and no date is set <20> contributors to the fundraiser will receive nothing. Under the terms of the Tezos coin offering, there<72>s no guarantee participants will ever receive a single Tez. Participants agreed to accept the risk that the project <20>may be abandoned.<2E> Despite the feud, Gevers said he remains committed to resolving the feud so that <20>this project succeeds.<2E> The tale of how two young entrepreneurs raised a fortune for a project barely out of the starting blocks is reported here in detail for the first time. It highlights the risks inherent in the current frenzy for ICOs, in which tech startups issue new cryptocurrencies to raise capital. Reuters reported last month that cryptocurrency exchanges <20> where virtual currencies are bought, sold and stored <20> have become magnets for fraud and deception. More 
'3e358dc5f022e1f3b148f983beb8bdc434632f30'|'Verizon quarterly revenue tops estimates as subscribers rise'|'Reuters TV United States October 19, 2017 / 11:50 AM / Updated 4 minutes ago Verizon quarterly revenue tops estimates as subscribers rise Anjali Athavaley 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The Verizon logo is seen on the side of a truck in New York City, U.S., October 13, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo NEW YORK (Reuters) - Verizon Communications Inc<6E>s ( VZ.N ) quarterly revenue topped Wall Street analyst estimates on Thursday and the company added more phone subscribers than expected, sending shares of the No. 1 U.S. wireless carrier up in pre-market trading. The company said that it added 274,000 phone subscribers who pay a monthly bill on a net basis. Wells Fargo analysts had said in a note on Monday that they expected net additions of 185,000. Shares, part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI , rose 1.9 percent to $49.55 in pre-market trading. Net income attributable to Verizon was $3.62 billion, or 89 cents per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, flat from the year earlier period. Excluding items, earnings per share was 98 cents. Total revenue rose to $31.72 billion from $30.94 billion a year earlier. According to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S, analysts had expected adjusted earnings per share of 98 cents and revenue of $31.45 billion. Reporting by Anjali Athavaley; Editing by Nick Zieminski 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-verizon-results/verizon-quarterly-profit-meets-estimates-as-subscribers-rise-idUKKBN1CO1NQ'|'2017-10-19T15:09:00.000+03:00'
'd90467c98e9222039d3f6c7db302d708993c63db'|'UPDATE 2-Unilever sales disappoint as competition bites big brands'|'* Q3 sales up 2.6 pct, miss estimates of 3.9 pct* Company stands by full-year forecast* Shares fall 4 percent (Adds comments from CFO, analyst, share activity)By Martinne GellerLONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Unilever reported lower-than-expected third-quarter sales, losing market share to smaller competitors and dampening hopes that an aborted takeover offer from Kraft Heinz would spark a swift improvement.Underlying sales rose only 2.6 percent, Unilever said on Thursday. That was below the 3.9 percent growth expected by analysts in a company-supplied consensus, and below the 3 percent seen in the first half of the year.Unilever<65>s shares were down 4 percent at 0828 GMT, having risen by about a third since Kraft<66>s unsuccessful $143 billion takeover bid for the maker of Magnum ice cream and Dove soap in February.The company blamed poor weather in Europe, hurricanes in the United States and earthquakes in Mexico for disrupting its sales. But it also cited the growing threat from local competitors in markets such as U.S. ice cream and Southeast Asian personal care.Unilever lifted its profitability target in July and there was some concern that lower spending on marketing was having a negative impact on sales.<2E>Our competitiveness has dropped off a little,<2C> Chief Financial Officer Graeme Pitkethly said. The company is only gaining market share in about half of its business, he said, down from about 60 percent in previous years.Swiss rival Nestle reported accelerated third-quarter sales on Thursday, but said increased restructuring costs would weigh on margins.<2E>Life is becoming more difficult for the consumer goods giants, as competition from smaller, nimbler players intensifies and consumer preferences shift toward niche and alternative brands,<2C> said Charlie Higgins, fund manager at Hargreaves Lansdown, which owns Unilever shares.<2E>To succeed in the long term Unilever will need to adapt its business model, becoming more agile and responsive to changing trends.<2E>FALLING SHORT Pitkethly said the quarter came up about 150 million euros, or about one day<61>s worth of sales, short of internal hopes.<2E>We<57>re not happy with that in aggregate. In fact, we feel we left some runs in the field,<2C> Pitkethly said. Hurricanes caused about a week<65>s worth of lost sales in Texas and Florida, its biggest U.S. markets, he said.Unilever<65>s ice cream business, which also includes Ben & Jerry<72>s and Wall<6C>s, saw double-digit declines in Europe, hurt by poor weather, and suffered market share losses in the United States at the hands of a new brand, Halo Top.Unilever had reduced its advertising and marketing spending by 130 basis points in the first half of the year, in an effort to cut costs in the wake of Kraft<66>s bid, and one analyst said that may have hurt its sales now.<2E>In our view, the seeds of Q3<51>s poor performance versus expectations were planted with the reduction in advertising and promotional spend in the first half,<2C> said RBC Capital Markets analyst James Edwardes Jones.<2E>While natural disasters doubtless played a part, the fact is that Unilever<65>s Q3 performance came in below expectations in all geographies.<2E>Turnover fell by 1.6 percent, hurt by a 5.1 percent hit from foreign exchange rates, the company said.Excluding its up-for-sale margarine and spreads business, for which tentative takeover bids are due on Thursday, sales rose 2.8 percent.The company stood by its full-year forecast for sales growth of 3 to 5 percent, an improvement in underlying operating margin of at least 100 basis points and strong cash flow. (Reporting by Martinne Geller; editing by Jason Neely/Keith Weir)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/unilever-outlook/update-1-unilever-blames-poor-weather-for-slowing-growth-idINL8N1MU1BP'|'2017-10-19T04:56:00.000+03:00'
'4d23cf2f09bcceaff7ff36ff7a294ecd381da728'|'Nissan Motor says CEO Saikawa to brief on uncertified inspection issue'|'TOKYO, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co Ltd said Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa will hold at news conference 1000 GMT on Thursday to brief on its uncertified inspection scandal.The news conference comes a day after Nissan admitted uncertified vehicle checks had continued even after it revealed final vehicle checks for the domestic market were not performed by certified technicians.The misconduct has forced Japan<61>s second-largest automaker to recall all 1.2 million new cars it sold in domestically over the past three years.Reporting by Sam Nussey; Editing by Stephen Coates'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/nissan-recall/nissan-motor-says-ceo-saikawa-to-brief-on-uncertified-inspection-issue-idINT9N1KW02O'|'2017-10-19T04:51:00.000+03:00'
'412196046507684cd282ec8044ad6f4ca75bac5e'|'BNY Mellon''s profit beat fails to impress, shares slide'|'The Bank of New York Mellon Corp. building at 1 Wall St. is seen in New York''s financial district March 11, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo REUTERS - Bank of New York Mellon Corp<72>s better-than-expected profit in the third quarter failed to impress investors, who focused instead on the bank<6E>s lower foreign exchange trading revenue.Shares of the world<6C>s largest custodian bank fell 3.7 percent in morning trading on Thursday.BNY Mellon said its foreign exchange revenue slipped 9.7 percent to $158 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30, the first full quarter under new Chief Executive Charles Scharf.The slide limited BNY Mellon<6F>s revenue growth overall to just 2 percent.<2E>They<65>re not producing the revenue growth that we<77>re seeing in State Street or Northern Trust,<2C> said Marty Mosby, an analyst with Vining Sparks.While BNY Mellon rival State Street Corp<72>s revenue climbed 11 percent in its latest quarter, Northern Trust Corp generated an almost 10 percent increase.BNY Mellon<6F>s foreign exchange revenue has been on a downtrend in recent quarters, hurt mainly by lower depositary receipts revenue, stymieing growth in total revenue.Results from that unit overshadowed an 8.4 percent increase in the bank<6E>s net interest revenue to $839 million, driven by higher interest rates and helping BNY Mellon post a slightly higher third-quarter profit from a year earlier.The bank expects the slide in depositary receipts revenue to continue, forecasting a nearly $80 million quarter-over-quarter decline in the fourth quarter on a call with analysts.Total adjusted expenses for the full year are expected to rise about 1 percent, BNY Mellon added.The company<6E>s third-quarter net income applicable to common shareholders rose about 1 percent to $983 million.Earnings per share was 94 cents per share, topping analysts<74> average estimate of 92 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Fees and other revenue - the biggest contributor to earnings - rose half a percentage point to $3.17 billion.Reporting By Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bony-mellon-results/bny-mellons-profit-beat-fails-to-impress-shares-slide-idINKBN1CO2AL'|'2017-10-19T14:51:00.000+03:00'
'297c9f3ba197db2b4d6abb07d5096dc0a61a4d54'|'Surging wages lead to monetary tightening in Central Europe'|' 40 AM / in 3 minutes Surging wages lead to monetary tightening in Central Europe Krisztina Than 5 Min Read BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Mounting labor shortages and surging wages across Central Europe are nudging inflation higher, prompting some central banks in the fast-growing region to tighten policy after years of monetary easing. The Czech central bank already delivered a first small rate hike in August and markets expect a further increase next month, with unemployment at an all-time low of 3.8 percent and inflation the fastest in five years. The Polish and Romanian central banks are also forecast to start raising interest rates next year, especially if the European Central Bank soon scales back its bond purchase program and starts tightening policy as expected. [nL8N1MK3UD] The outlier in the eastern corner of the European Union is the National Bank of Hungary, which has pledged to keep its base rate unchanged at a record low 0.9 percent until at least 2020 - and even flagged further possible easing. The bank, run by a strong ally of Prime Minister Viktor Orban who faces elections in 2018, will wait until the last possible moment to take borrowing rates higher as boosting growth is an important government target. Besides, the forint has firmed to 5-week highs against the euro this week, helped by Hungary<72>s good economic outlook. Many investors believe the central bank wants to avoid excessive forint gains even though it has denied targeting the exchange rate. <20>I believe the NBH is trying to buy time and its goal is to somehow stay behind the ECB (tightening curve),<2C> said Gyula Mark Pleschinger, head of treasury sales at MKB Bank in Budapest. <20>The big question is how long the credibility of the NBH<42>s communication can be maintained when possibly next year European QE stops, and we will start talking about tightening.<2E> The Hungarian bank cut its overnight rate further into negative territory in September and said it was ready to loosen monetary policy further with unconventional, targeted tools to drive longer government bond yields lower. Deputy governor Marton Nagy said on Friday that the 3-month BUBOR interbank market rate could stay at its current levels near zero until early 2019 and real interest rates -- adjusted for inflation -- could <20>stay negative for the next seven years.<2E> The bank sees inflation reaching its target of 3 percent, plus or minus 1 percentage point, only in 2019. Headline annual inflation was at 2.5 percent in September. But more wage hikes are coming and the NBH<42>s laid-back approach carries certain risks, analysts said. <20>If inflation were to turn soft again, the forint should be stable; but (Czech) rate hikes will result in sharp Czech crown appreciation,<2C> Commerzbank said in a note. <20>If inflation were to accelerate, (the crown) should be stable, but the forint could depreciate sharply.<2E> TIGHTENING ON THE WAY In Central European economies, years of heavy emigration to western Europe and falling unemployment have created labor shortages that make it tough for businesses of all kinds to recruit. This has driven up wages sharply. [nL8N1C30HM] In Romania, the central bank has flagged upside risks to inflation and in effect began tightening monetary conditions earlier this month by narrowing the interest rate corridor. As the budget deficit widens and wages continue to grow, the bank is expected to start hiking its 1.75 percent rate next year, lifting it to 2.0-3.5 percent by the end of 2018, according to a Reuters poll. In Poland, mounting labor shortages are also seen intensifying price pressures via rising wages down the line, some analysts said. Consumer inflation accelerated to a 7-month high of 2.2 percent in September as corporate sector wages were growing at their fastest pace in more than five years. The Polish central bank targets inflation at 2.5 percent. Even though its Governor Adam Glapinski has said interest rates should probably stay at their current all-time lows until the end of 
'cff484a395ca62745782c84d240dd05f749ae9a2'|'Twitter toughens guidelines on harassment -report'|'October 18, 2017 / 1:40 PM / in 23 minutes Twitter looks to toughen rules on online harassment, abuse Angela Moon , Arjun Panchadar 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Twitter Inc plans to toughen its rules on online sexual harassment and impose stronger penalties for misconduct, according to an email it sent to a group of safety advocates, academics and researchers that helps the social media service set its policies. The new rules, which will likely be introduced in the next few weeks, are aimed at tackling one of Twitter<65>s biggest and long-lasting problems. They follow a series of tweets by Chief Executive Jack Dorsey on Friday announcing plans to act more aggressively to limit the number of bullies and harassers using Twitter. The new guidelines include immediate and permanent suspensions of any account Twitter identifies as the original poster or source of non-consensual nudity. The site<74>s definition of non-consensual nudity will also be expanded to include what it called <20>upskirt imagery, creep shots and hidden camera content.<2E> The rules were set out in a letter, which was seen by Reuters, to Twitter<65>s Trust and Safety Council from Twitter<65>s head of safety policy. The micro-blogging platform is also looking to allow bystanders to report unwanted sexual advances, which previously had to be reported by users directly involved in the situation. FILE PHOTO: People holding mobile phones are silhouetted against a backdrop projected with the Twitter logo in this illustration picture taken September 27, 2013. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/File Photo It also promised to publish more details on a change in policy which would include hate symbols and imagery in its definition of sensitive media. Dorsey<65>s pledge to revamp Twitter<65>s guidelines came after some users boycotted the service for suspending actress Rose McGowan, who spoke out against Harvey Weinstein, the producer who faces allegations that he sexually harassed or assaulted a number of women over three decades in the film business. Weinstein has denied having non-consensual sex with anyone. Twitter also faces scrutiny from lawmakers investigating allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Last week, Twitter gave Senate investigators the profile names of 201 accounts it had determined were linked to an effort by Moscow to sow discord and divisiveness during and after the campaign, according to a source familiar with the matter. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference, previously called Twitter<65>s cooperation as <20>frankly inadequate.<2E> Reporting by Angela Moon in New York and Arjun Panchadar in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington DC; editing by Patrick Graham 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-abuse/twitter-toughens-guidelines-on-harassment-report-idUSKBN1CN1Y9'|'2017-10-18T16:36:00.000+03:00'
'ba097aefb7d45944e17810077125b4a908d6877d'|'OPEC leans towards 9-month extension of oil supply cut - sources'|'October 18, 2017 / 12:54 PM / Updated 8 hours ago OPEC leans towards 9-month extension of oil supply cut - sources Rania El Gamal , Alex Lawler 4 Min Read A flag with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) logo is seen during a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-OPEC producing countries in Vienna, Austria September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) - OPEC is leaning towards extending a deal with Russia and other non-members to cut oil supply for a further nine months, four OPEC sources said, although stronger-than-expected demand growth may allow the group to delay a decision until early next year. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus Russia and nine other producers are cutting oil output by about 1.8 million barrels per day until March 2018, in an attempt to eradicate a supply glut that has weighed on prices. After slow initial progress, OPEC is more confident the cut is working. Oil prices are near a two-year high, supported by falling stocks, strong global demand, a slowdown in U.S. shale output and high overall adherence to producers<72> supply pledges. Three OPEC sources said keeping the curbs in place until the end of 2018 was a likely outcome, while a fourth said an extension of six to nine months would be needed to remove all excess oil in storage. <20>If demand growth is performing very well, then the decision might be postponed till early next year,<2C> one of the four OPEC sources said. <20>But there is still a big chance for it to be taken in November.<2E> Discussions among producers are continuing in the run-up to the next OPEC meeting to set oil policy on Nov. 30 in Vienna. Before then, OPEC<45>s board of governors, who do not decide policy, will meet in Vienna on Oct. 23-24 and are likely informally to discuss options and scenarios, OPEC sources said. If a decision is not announced in November, OPEC and its allies could meet in early 2018, two OPEC sources said. Usually, OPEC holds each year<61>s first policy-setting meeting in May or June. OPEC wants to reduce the level of oil stocks in developed economies to the five-year average. The latest figures show this is in progress but not yet complete. In August, OPEC said such stocks stood at 2.996 billion barrels, 171 million barrels above the five-year average, reducing the excess from 340 million barrels in January. DEEPER CUT UNLIKELY Deepening the cut, which OPEC decided against when it last met in May, is not considered likely this time, two OPEC sources said, since some producers would struggle to reduce output further. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Oct. 4 the deal could be extended to the end of 2018, although OPEC ministers have not given specific commitments on doing so. A strengthening of the oil market has reduced the urgency of further measures. With Brent crude trading at $58 a barrel, it is within sight of the $60 mark that Saudi Arabia considers a good level. OPEC and other forecasters have been raising their projections for growth in global oil demand. The latest monthly OPEC report pointed to a supply deficit on the world market next year if OPEC keeps output at September<65>s level. Kuwait<69>s oil minister said on Sunday the market was moving in the right direction and it was too early to decide on extending the supply cut. But OPEC sources say prolonging the agreement, with nine months as the timeframe, is likely. <20>My belief is that the ministers will renew until stocks go back to normal,<2C> another of the four OPEC sources said. Editing by Dale Hudson'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/opec-oil/opec-leans-towards-9-month-extension-of-oil-supply-cut-sources-idINKBN1CN1SL'|'2017-10-18T15:51:00.000+03:00'
'374ce1deb0b4581637be1d51026b241331377008'|'LPC-SpringerNature to extend <20>3.2bn of loans'|'Oct 18 (Reuters) - German publishing group SpringerNature is looking to extend the maturity of <20>3.2bn-equivalent of loans by two years, banking sources said on Wednesday.JP Morgan is sole bookrunner on the deal and a call is set to take place with lenders on October 20, with commitments due October 26, the sources said.The amend and extend request comes as SpringerNature prepares a stock market listing for mid-2018, valuing the company at up to <20>4bn.SpringerNature is looking to extend a US$1.292bn term loan, a <20>1.895bn term loan and a <20>250m revolving credit facility to 2022, from 2020, the sources said.It is also seeking to raise an additional <20>84m of leveraged loans that will be split between dollars and euros, to repay existing private high yield bonds, the sources said.Lenders have been offered a 12.5bp consent fee or OID on the request and 101 soft-call for six months, the sources said.Pricing however remains unchanged so the dollar term loan still pays 350bp over Libor with a 1% floor and the euro term loan pays 325bp over Euribor, with a 0.5% floor. The RCF pays 325bp over Euribor, with a 0% floor.SpringerNature is issuing the debt through Springer Science+Business Media Deutschland GmbH. Expected corporate and facility ratings are B2/B.SpringerNature has an expected Ebitda of <20>480m for 2018.It was formed in 2015 through the merger of Holtzbrinck<63>s Macmillan Science and Education unit with BC Partners<72> Springer business, which publishes scientific and medical books and journals. At the time, the company was valued at more than <20>5bn, including debt.The joint venture is 53% owned by German publisher Holtzbrinck, the rest by buyout group BC Partners.Holtzbrinck may look to retain its majority shareholding in Springer following the flotation, according to Reuters, potentially contributing further business assets to the joint venture instead of making a cash injection. (Editing by Claire Ruckin)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/springer-leveraged-loans/lpc-springernature-to-extend-3-2bn-of-loans-idINL8N1MT5QC'|'2017-10-18T14:50:00.000+03:00'
'4fa251c2a485ae8f6c5504dec3c148100e01a71d'|'Off-the-cliff Brexit would not derail German economic upturn - DIHK'|'October 19, 2017 / 8:27 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago Off-the-cliff Brexit would not derail German economic upturn - DIHK Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Failure in reaching a Brexit agreement in time would not stifle Germany<6E>s economic upswing, but such a scenario would be a huge political setback, Germany<6E>s DIHK Chambers of Industry and Commerce said on Thursday after raising its growth forecasts. <20>Our projections are based on the assumption that the people in charge are dealing with the (Brexit) matter in a way so that there won<6F>t be a crash,<2C> DIHK managing director Martin Wansleben said on Thursday. Asked whether a breakdown of talks between Brussels and London had the potential to derail Germany<6E>s economic upturn, Wansleben said: <20>The upswing wouldn<64>t be halted, but this would be a very bad signal, politically.<2E> Reporting by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Madeline Chambers 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-economy-brexit/off-the-cliff-brexit-would-not-derail-german-economic-upturn-dihk-idUKKBN1CO0YI'|'2017-10-19T11:27:00.000+03:00'
'81d7f551ba138143835d15615c02a58c60a7fd49'|'British stocks fall as profit warnings bruise IWG, Interserve'|'October 19, 2017 / 9:22 AM / in 6 minutes British stocks fall as profit warnings bruise IWG, Interserve Helen Reid 4 Min Read A sign displays the crest and name of the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON (Reuters) - Britain''s main share index .FTSE fell 0.3 percent on Thursday as a weak third-quarter update from Unilever weighed, while mid- and small-cap trading was marred by profit warnings from IWG and Interserve which slashed their market value by a third. Disappointing retail sales figures sent sterling to a one-week low before recovering, helping the internationally-exposed FTSE reduce earlier losses slightly. Fresh from a record close, the FTSE 250 .FTMC ended 0.6 percent lower as workspace group IWG ( IWG.L ) plummeted 32.2 percent after warning on profit. It cited natural disasters and weakness in London trading as contributing factors. The firm said it now expected its profits to be 160 to 170 million pounds, against their previous estimate of 216 million, sending shares to a 22-month low. <20>There has been a strong sales uplift in October, but only time will tell if this converts to revenue performance,<2C> Stifel analysts wrote in a note. <20>Caution is warranted.<2E> Although mid-caps have hit fresh highs, investor sentiment has softened into third-quarter results, with analysts revising down their expectations for earnings. Investors have grown cautious around UK equities since Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, sending the pound plunging and sparking uncertainty around the path of divorce talks. Britain<69>s FTSE 100 has gained 5.3 percent this year against a 7.7 percent gain for the broader pan-European STOXX 600 index. <20>I<EFBFBD>m not surprised that UK companies that derive the majority of their revenues from within the UK are starting to miss earnings forecasts,<2C> said Christopher Peel, chief investment officer at Tavistock Wealth. <20>The UK has become a relatively unattractive country to be invested in (bonds and equities) compared to continental Europe, Asia and the U.S.,<2C> he said. British companies were likely to underperform global counterparts for the foreseeable future as a result, he added. A 16.2 percent jump in battered Acacia Mining ( ACAA.L ) was a bright spot, however, after shareholder Barrick Gold reached an agreement with the Tanzanian government over an export ban. On the FTSE 100, Unilever ( ULVR.L ) weighed, falling 5.5 percent after the consumer goods giant<6E>s third-quarter results missed consensus expectations. Unilever blamed poorer weather in Europe for slower than expected sales this summer, particularly impacting ice cream sales. Support services and construction firm Interserve ( IRV.L ) sank 27.2 percent on the small-cap index .FTSC following a warning that it may breach covenants after a further deterioration in trading. The group warned profits would be weaker than it had expected in September, suggesting profit in the second half would be half that of last year, Stifel analysts wrote, putting their target price and forecasts for the stock under review. Carillion ( CLLN.L ), which also provides support services to the construction industry, had plummeted earlier this summer after a string of profit warnings. <20>We have plenty of support services firms that are doing OK, so I do think it<69>s specific to the companies like Carillion and the markets they serve, rather than an issue for support services in general,<2C> said Colin McLean, director at SVM Asset Management. Reporting by Helen Reid and Kit Rees, editing by Pritha Sarkar 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-stocks/british-stocks-fall-as-profit-warnings-bruise-iwg-interserve-idUKKBN1CO14J'|'2017-10-19T12:21:00.000+03:00'
'1115f76e1ee22153748e02c9e288a57e39e16bd3'|'PRESS DIGEST- British Business - Oct 19'|'Oct 19 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.The Times- Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc has issued its second sales warning this year and unveiled plans for another corporate shake-up. bit.ly/2yUhisp- The board of Revolution Bars Group Plc on Wednesday announced the abrupt exit of its Chief Executive Mark McQuater. bit.ly/2ySxEleThe Guardian- UK chancellor has asked UK enforcement agencies to look into whether British banking groups HSBC Holdings Plc and Standard Chartered are linked to South Africa''s corruption inquiry into alleged ties between the wealthy Gupta family and President Jacob Zuma. bit.ly/2yTxutQ- European Union leaders at a crunch summit dinner are set to rebuff Theresa May''s appeal for trade talks in the Brexit negotiations because they fear that the prime minister''s domestic weakness will leave her unable to make vital concessions on Britain''s divorce bill. bit.ly/2yTxsCeThe Telegraph- Richard Hill, acting for 6,000 shareholders suing Lloyds Banking Group Plc for 600 million pounds ($792.42 million), said in court that Lloyds "mugged" shareholders by withholding vital information about the "catastrophic" financial state of HBOS, prior to its takeover during the financial crisis. bit.ly/2yT1xBS- Hearst, the magazine giant behind titles including Elle, Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping, has agreed to buy a raft of titles from Rodale, as print advertising revenue continues to be squeezed in the industry. bit.ly/2yT1tC8Sky News- Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc is in talks to offload its long-held stake in Euroclear, a financial markets infrastructure group that plays a central role in settling hundreds of trillions of euros-worth of trades. bit.ly/2yU4QsG- A battle for control of the publisher of The Scotsman and i newspapers will be ignited this week when a top shareholder unveils a plan to unseat the majority of its board - including its chief executive and finance director, Sky News reported. bit.ly/2yUhacsThe Independent- Real wages across the UK declined for a sixth consecutive month. Data showed that basic wage growth was 2.1 percent during the three months to the end of August, marginally higher than the 2 percent pencilled in by analysts, but well below inflation. ind.pn/2ySSjpf- Domino''s Pizza Inc has called for the National Curriculum to develop leadership skills in young people because of fears that Brexit could leave the company short of international workers. ind.pn/2yT2F8u$1 = 0.7572 pounds Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom;'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-press-business/press-digest-british-business-oct-19-idINL2N1MU00B'|'2017-10-18T22:25:00.000+03:00'
'1b6dc07f070a92fbc5ad0157469375ea62eafdcc'|'UPDATE 1-After Mavi IPO, Turkven sets sights on bigger Medical Park listing'|'(Adds details, background, Quote: s)By Ebru Tuncay and Can SezerISTANBUL, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Turkish private equity firm Turkven plans to hold a public offering next year for nearly half of healthcare provider Medical Park Group, Turkven<65>s chief executive said, a stake that might be worth close to $1 billion.In an interview with Reuters, CEO Seymur Tari also said Turkven aimed for three to four acquisitions of $50 million to $400 million each in 2018 and hoped to start a new fund of more than $1 billion in one or two years.Turkven completed an initial public offering of jeans brand Mavi in June, a 1.17 billion-lira ($334 million) floatation widely seen as a test of international demand for Turkish equities after last year<61>s abortive coup attempt and the widespread political crackdown that followed.<2E>We opened a door with Mavi,<2C> Tari told Reuters. <20>This will be the biggest IPO the market has seen in the recent years. We<57>ll attract a lot of foreign investors to Turkey.<2E>Foreign investor interest in Turkey has taken a beating in recent years, hit by concerns about President Tayyip Erdogan<61>s growing authoritarianism and persistent security fears.Since the failed coup, more than 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended from the civil service, private sector and military. Some 50,000 people have been detained, infuriating rights groups and some of Turkey<65>s Western allies.BIG DEAL Since its June listing, shares of Mavi - a high-end jeans brand worn by celebrities such as Richard Branson and Kendall Jenner - have surged some 33 percent.<2E>The Medical Park offering will be three times the size of Mavi<76>s,<2C> Tari said. That would put the floatation at around $1 billion, potentially the sixth-largest Turkish IPO in history, just behind the $1.1 billion listing of Vakif Bank in November 2004, according to Thomson Reuters data.Medical Park Group is the largest private hospital chain in Turkey, with more than 15,000 employees and 4,900 beds in 29 hospitals. Funds managed by Turkven hold a 53.4 percent stake in the company.Turkven, which was founded in 2000, now manages more than $2 billion in assets. In addition to Mavi, the company this year listed DP Eurasia in London. It operates Domino<6E>s Pizza franchises in Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.<2E>We are less afraid of Turkey<65>s risks than foreign investors,<2C> Tari said. <20>So, we make better offers to companies. We<57>ve come to know Turkey better as we continued to invest.<2E>He said the high growth of the companies Turkven invested in helped to mitigate chronic weakness in the lira currency, pointing to both of Turkven<65>s recent listings.<2E>Mavi and DP are good examples of this,<2C> he said. <20>If you invest in the correct companies, you multiply your investment by eight or nine, so the Turkish lira in itself doesn<73>t constitute a problem.<2E> (Writing by Daren Butler and Ali Kucukgocmen; Editing by David Dolan, Larry King)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/turkey-turkven/update-1-after-mavi-ipo-turkven-sets-sights-on-bigger-medical-park-listing-idINL8N1MT52N'|'2017-10-18T14:10:00.000+03:00'
'8f6707e94763b0713f8ca0df79d5edae9222b2e7'|'ECB''s Hansson says should consider corrections to bond-buying programme'|' 42 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago ECB''s Hansson says should consider corrections to bond-buying programme   Estonian bank governor Ardo Hansson listens during a news conference following the Governing Council meeting in Tallinn, Estonia, June 8, 2017. Picture taken June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins BERLIN (Reuters) - Given that people are feeling brighter about the economy, the European Central Bank should consider tweaking its bond-buying programme, Governing Council member Ardo Hansson told newspaper Handelsblatt. <20>People are much more optimistic about the economic development and in this situation it is appropriate to think about small corrections,<2C> he said, adding it was his personal view that bond buys should be reduced. Asked if the ECB had enough room for maneuver in its monetary policy, Hansson said: <20>I think so. If the question is whether we have done all we can, the answer is no,<2C> he added. Reporting by Michelle Martin; Editing by Madeline Chambers 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ecb-policy-hansson/ecbs-hansson-says-should-consider-corrections-to-bond-buying-programme-idUKKBN1CN0NE'|'2017-10-18T09:42:00.000+03:00'
'e16b3fe140b683f2e6e28181efa6506bbfa068ed'|'Merck cyber attack may cost insurers $275 mln -Verisk''s PCS'|'A man holds a laptop computer as cyber code is projected on him in this illustration picture taken on May 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration NEW YORK (Reuters) - Insurers could pay $275 million to cover the insured portion of drugmaker Merck & Co<43>s loss from a cyber attack in June, according to a forecast by Verisk Analytics Inc<6E>s Property Claim Services (PCS) unit.Merck, however, has not disclosed the magnitude of its uninsured losses from the <20>NotPetya<79> attack, which disrupted production of some Merck medicines and vaccines.The company was among dozens of firms worldwide hit in the June 27 attack, which began in Ukraine, then rapidly spread through corporate networks of multinationals with operations or suppliers in Eastern Europe.<2E>Merck has not yet fully quantified its losses, much less given any of its insurers an estimate of the total amount of those losses,<2C> Merck spokeswoman Claire Gillespie said in a statement.She reiterated that Merck has insurance that would cover some costs, but declined to elaborate or say how much Merck expects to have to pay on its own.The drugmaker said in July that it had suffered a worldwide disruption of its operations as a result of the malware. It was still in the process of restoring its manufacturing operations a month later.Merck said then that it was confident it would be able to maintain a continuous supply of its top-selling and life-saving drugs, but warned of temporary delays in delivering some other products.NotPetya is a destructive virus that spread quickly across computer networks, crippling computers by encrypting hard drives so that machines cannot run. The attacks caused massive disruptions to industrial networks that rely on computers because businesses must individually replace damaged drives, a labor-intensive process.Cyber insurance can be expensive to buy and is not widely used outside the United States, with one insurer previously describing the cost as $100,000 for $10 million in data breach insurance.Policies typically cover expenses stemming from a data breach, such as forensics and data restoration, among other costs. Coverage also helps pay for business interruption expenses when a breach or malware attack shuts down a company<6E>s website.Some companies without cyber insurance have used their policies covering kidnap, ransom and extortion to recoup losses caused by ransomware viruses.Risk modeling companies like PCS estimate a wide variety of insured losses, ranging from damages caused by hacks to hurricanes and wildfires.Reporting by Michael Erman in New York and Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; editing by Jim Finkle and G Crosse'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merck-co-cyber-insurance/merck-cyber-attack-may-cost-insurers-275-million-verisks-pcs-idUSKBN1CO2NP'|'2017-10-19T20:29:00.000+03:00'
'37cc7e6e6e72b937fe1f301ba591052890b8d90a'|'UPDATE 1-Publicis advertises stronger growth in H2 after further pick-up in U.S.'|'Reuters TV United States October 19, 2017 / 5:58 AM / Updated 10 hours ago Advertiser Publicis''s shares slide after sales miss forecasts Gw<47>na<6E>lle Barzic 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of Publicis Groupe is seen at the company''s headquarters in Paris, France, February 6, 2017. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - Advertising agency Publicis ( PUBP.PA ), facing fierce new competition from the growth in online advertising, posted third-quarter sales on Thursday that missed market forecasts and sent its shares lower. The world<6C>s third-largest advertising group behind WPP ( WPP.L ) and Omnicom ( OMC.N ) said sales had risen 1.2 percent on a like-for-like basis to 2.264 billion euros ($2.67 billion). However, this came in below an average forecast for 2.34 billion euros from analysts polled by Reuters. Publicis''s shares slid 6.6 percent to 58.09 euros in mid-session trading, making the stock the worst performer on France''s benchmark CAC-40 index .FCHI . Shares in industry leader WPP ( WPP.L ) also fell 2.7 percent. Publicis<69>s new boss Arthur Sadoun said the market for advertisers remained challenging - something that was further highlighted on Thursday when Sky ( SKYB.L ) said it was launching a review of its advertising budget. Publicis<69>s relatively weak performance followed a sales warning from WPP in August that had sent WPP shares down by more than 10 percent. Sadoun took a swipe at WPP for blaming cutbacks in advertising spending by consumer goods giants for the woes of advertising companies. <20>I think it<69>s a dangerous mistake to blame the problems of our industry on challenges that our customers could be facing,<2C> said Sadoun. CHALLENGES FROM CONSULTANCIES AND TECH FIRMS Publicis and its peers are under pressure to overcome changes in consumer behavior, with Internet titans such as Google ( GOOGL.O ) and Facebook ( FB.O ) having transformed the industry by using data to better target advertising. Sadoun has followed on from his predecessor, company veteran Maurice Levy, in focusing on more digital consulting to compete with consultancies such as Accenture ( ACN.N ) and IBM ( IBM.N ). Digital consultancy entails advising companies on how their websites and mobile platforms look, and on their Internet advertising and marketing strategies. Rival Omnicom reported a drop in third-quarter revenue this week, due in part to competition from the likes of Accenture and IBM, although its numbers topped estimates. Sadoun has not endorsed Levy<76>s previous financial performance targets for 2018 which included an operating profit margin of 17.3 to 19.3 percent. Publicis<69>s first-half operating margin stood at 13.2 percent. Publicis has already been reorganized over the last 18 months under a project dubbed <20>The Power of One<6E>, aimed at fostering greater cooperation between its myriad agencies. <20>Publicis<69>s below-forecast organic revenue growth may check the more positive sentiment on the agencies that had been seen post-Omnicom<6F>s Q3 results, which beat expectations in North America,<2C> analysts at brokerage Liberum wrote in a note. Writing by Matthias Blamont; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Greg Mahlich and Adrian Croft 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-publicis-results/publicis-advertises-stronger-growth-in-second-half-after-further-pick-up-in-u-s-idUSKBN1CO0IT'|'2017-10-19T08:51:00.000+03:00'
'1028dc6b6f5f1951a2844983f4af584bbc215366'|'ACS''s Hochtief set to make bid for Abertis on Wednesday: sources'|'Toll booths are seen on a toll road operated by Abertis near Barcelona, Spain, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Albert Gea DUESSELDORF/MILAN (Reuters) - German construction group Hochtief ( HOTG.DE ), controlled by Spain<69>s ACS ( ACS.MC ), is holding a supervisory board meeting on Wednesday morning to discuss and likely give the go-ahead for a takeover bid for toll road operator Abertis ( ABE.MC ), people close to the matter told Reuters.<2E>The possibility of Hochtief deciding against an Abertis counter offer is only theoretical,<2C> one of the people said.Sources told Reuters last week that Italian toll-road operator Atlantia ( ATL.MI ) is ready to raise its takeover offer for Abertis to up to about 17.8 billion euros ($21 billion) should a rival offer by ACS materialize.Hochtief<65>s offer was expected to be roughly half in cash and the rest in newly issued Hochtief shares, people close to the matter had said last week.Editing by Ludwig Burger'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-abertis-m-a-acs-es/acss-hochtief-set-to-make-bid-for-abertis-on-wednesday-sources-idINKBN1CN0WA'|'2017-10-18T06:09:00.000+03:00'
'18e1ca30939197134b28b99269cdeec87fbf4feb'|'Sexual harassment allegations spark review, meeting at Fidelity - WSJ'|'October 22, 2017 / 4:04 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago Sexual harassment allegations spark review, meeting at Fidelity - WSJ Reuters Staff 2 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Fidelity Investments has hired a consulting firm to review employee behaviour amid allegations of sexual harassment at the U.S. money manager stretching back years, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. FILE PHOTO: A sign marks a Fidelity Investments office in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. September 21, 2016. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo Brian Hogan, president of Fidelity<74>s stock-picking division, held an emergency meeting on Monday afternoon with his staff to stress the company<6E>s <20>zero-tolerance policy<63> for inappropriate workplace conduct, including sexual harassment, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the meeting. <20>Fidelity<74>s policies specifically prohibit harassment in any form,<2C> spokesman Vincent Loporchio said in a statement on Sunday. <20>When allegations of these sorts are brought to our attention, we investigate them immediately and take prompt and appropriate action.<2E> Earlier this month, the Journal reported that Gavin Baker, a well-known stock picker at Fidelity, was fired for allegedly sexually harassing a junior female employee. Baker, through a spokesman, denied the allegations. (on.wsj.com/2yHLXsF) Privately held Fidelity is one of the world<6C>s biggest investment managers, with more than 40,000 employees and about $2.5 trillion in assets under management. It is best known for its stable of actively managed mutual funds that include the $100-billion-plus Contrafund ( FCNTX.O ). Reporting by Carmel Crimmins; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-fidelity-conduct/sexual-harassment-allegations-spark-review-meeting-at-fidelity-wsj-idUKKBN1CR0PY'|'2017-10-22T19:03:00.000+03:00'
'99407be00f8d241b6e1d69d9c5e16bf0ff80a727'|'Hudson''s Bay reassures German workers after Kaufhof CEO quits'|' 09 PM / in an hour Hudson''s Bay reassures German workers after Kaufhof CEO quits Reuters Staff 2 Min Read DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) - Canadian retailer Hudson<6F>s Bay Co (HBC)( HBC.TO ) sought to ease concern that the abrupt resignation of its chief executive could herald cuts at its struggling German department store chain Kaufhof. FILE PHOTO: A woman holds a Hudson''s Bay shopping bag in front of the Hudson''s Bay Company (HBC) flagship department store in Toronto January 27, 2014. REUTERS/Mark Blinch HBC said on Friday that outgoing CEO Gerald Storch was stepping down from Nov. 1 to return to his advisory firm Storch Advisors but did not disclose the reasons for his departure. <20>I still firmly believe in the future of the department stores,<2C> interim CEO Richard Baker said in a memo to staff seen by Reuters. <20>And of course we are sticking with our investment and growth strategy in Europe. Storch<63>s departure comes at a time when the company is under pressure from activist shareholder Jonathan Litt to take steps to improve stock performance. It has said in the past that it was committed to its European investments and would keep investing in Kaufhof even as the store chain heads for another annual loss. Hudson<6F>s Bay bought Kaufhof for 2.8 billion euros (<28>2.5 billion) from German retailer Metro ( B4B.DE ) in 2015 but has struggled to turn it around. Two people familiar with the matter told Reuters in July that Euler Hermes had cut back its trade credit insurance for suppliers of Kaufhof. The store chain is seeking to negotiate a new wage deal that it has said will make its cost structure more competitive and help to safeguard about 21,500 jobs. Reporting by Matthias Inverardi; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by David Goodman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hudson-s-bay-ceo-kaufhof/hudsons-bay-reassures-german-workers-after-kaufhof-ceo-quits-idUKKBN1CR0H0'|'2017-10-22T15:08:00.000+03:00'
'2020aafc9e9a47f530d92346acb9621c2592d13a'|'Saudi Aramco asks FTI Consulting to halt IPO investor relations work - sources'|'October 17, 2017 / 9:08 AM / in 9 minutes Saudi Aramco asks FTI Consulting to halt IPO investor relations work - sources Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Logo of Saudi Aramco is seen at the 20th Middle East Oil & Gas Show and Conference (MOES 2017) in Manama, Bahrain, March 7, 2017. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/File Photo KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia/DUBAI (Reuters) - State-owned Saudi Aramco has asked FTI Consulting ( FCN.N ) to suspend its investor relations advisory work related to the oil company<6E>s planned initial public offering, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Aramco brought in Brunswick to advice on media relations and appointed FTI Consulting to manage investor relations. It was not immediately clear why FTI was asked to suspend its work for Aramco, but one of the sources said the latest decision could broaden Brunswick<63>s role beyond media relations. FTI has been reporting to Aramco head of investor relations Fergus MacLeod, a former group head of strategic planning at BP. FTI and Brunswick declined to comment on Aramco<63>s move. Saudi Aramco did not respond to a request for immediate comment. China is offering to buy up to 5 percent of Saudi Aramco directly, Reuters reported this week citing sources, a move that could give Saudi Arabia more flexibility in floating the world<6C>s biggest oil producer on the stock market. Reporting by Reem Shamseddine, Stephen Kalin and Hadeel El Sayegh; additional reporting by Rania El Gamal; editing by Jason Neely 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-saudi-aramco-ipo-fti-consulting/saudi-aramco-asks-fti-consulting-to-halt-ipo-investor-relations-work-sources-idUKKBN1CM0YQ'|'2017-10-17T12:08:00.000+03:00'
'77767fce7f156390105cb044deab7fae64432e53'|'No Brexit deal would raise UK household bills by 260 pounds a year - report'|'October 16, 2017 / 11:13 PM / in 26 minutes No Brexit deal would raise UK household bills by 260 pounds a year - report David Milliken 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A shopper carries a basket in a supermarket in London, Britain April 11, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON (Reuters) - British households would have to pay an average of 260 pounds a year more for food, clothing and transport if their government fails to strike a post-Brexit free trade deal with the European Union, a research paper showed on Tuesday. Britain<69>s government has said it would levy World Trade Organization tariffs on goods imported from the EU if it leaves the bloc without a settlement, a probability which some economists put at roughly 25 percent. That would mean tariffs of up to 45 percent on some dairy imports while some meat would face a 37 percent levy, researchers from the University of Sussex and the Resolution Foundation, a think tank focused on the low-paid, said. A typical middle-income household would pay an extra 260 pounds a year, even taking into account a partial shift to cheaper and British-produced goods, they said. That was equivalent to an extra 0.9 percent in household spending. The poorest 10 percent of households would see their bills rise by 1.0 percent, and the richest 10 percent by 0.8 percent. <20>A <20>no-deal<61> scenario ... will increase the cost of essential goods, such as food and clothes, which will impact most adversely on those households who already struggle to get food on the table,<2C> Sussex researcher Ilona Serwicka said. The actual cost rise would vary significantly depending on individual spending patterns and some less well-off households could see their costs go up by more than 500 pounds a year. British finance minister Philip Hammond said on Monday he did not think there was a rising danger of failure to reach a Brexit deal before Britain leaves the EU in March 2019, despite concern among many investors. Some Brexit supporters have said Britain would benefit from scrapping all tariffs on goods imports after it leaves the EU, regardless of what the bloc does for UK exports. Tuesday<61>s report said this could save the average household 130 pounds a year, or 0.5 percent of typical spending. But the researchers said some industries, such as meat processing, and the rural parts of England where they are concentrated would suffer a big hit in the face of cheap imports and scrapping tariffs immediately would make it harder to get tariff-free access for British exports in future. Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by William Schomberg 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-tariffs/no-brexit-deal-would-raise-uk-household-bills-by-260-pounds-a-year-report-idUKKBN1CL33X'|'2017-10-17T02:13:00.000+03:00'
'1ff5573ac1587fa3ee52679563c278c484a1cb7e'|'Kobe Steel plants faked quality data for decades - Nikkei'|'October 16, 2017 / 10:21 PM / in 3 hours Habitual cheat: Kobe Steel faked product data for more than 10 years - source Yoshiyasu Shida 6   A man walks past the signboard of Kobe Steel at the group''s Tokyo headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - When cheating becomes habitual, the consequences could be costly. Embattled Kobe Steel Ltd said on Tuesday the U.S. Justice Department is asking the steelmaker to provide documents related to its data falsification scandal. That came after a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters late on Monday that data tampering on products went on for more than a decade, deepening the crisis that has sliced off about $1.6 billion off its market value in just over a week. And that could be just the tip of the iceberg, legal experts have said, given the potential financial and legal fallout as compensation for even a small number of the 500-odd companies engulfed in the scandal could prove costly. Japan<61>s No.3 steelmaker is still trying to nail down the extent of the tampering, said the source, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. According to an unsourced Nikkei report, the cheating at the firm went on for decades with the knowledge of plant and quality control managers, well over the 10 years that Kobe Steel had acknowledged last week <20>We cannot confirm the Nikkei report as our investigation is ongoing,<2C> a Kobe Steel spokesman said. The revelations on Oct. 8 that the firm had falsified data on product quality and specifications have sent a chill through supply chains around the world in a fresh blow to Japan<61>s reputation as a high-quality manufacturing destination. The scandal has ensnared companies from operators of Japan<61>s iconic bullet trains to the world<6C>s biggest aircraft maker, Boeing Co,. The Justice Department is seeking documents related to products the firm has sold to U.S. companies, Kobe Steel said. While the company has not fully identified the extent of the cheating, it told analysts and investors on Monday it had nearly 368 billion yen ($3.3 billion) on hand in cash, short-term securities and unused credit from banks. It is also seeking to generate cash by cutting working capital or selling assets. <20>Kobe Steel faces a serious governance issue and management should be replaced - which would open the possibility to spin off non-core businesses,<2C> Thanh Ha Pham, an analyst at Jefferies wrote in a note on Tuesday. <20>We calculate that, broken apart, Kobe Steel is worth 860.5 billion yen or 2,375.5 yen a share,<2C> Thanh said, based on an assumption the cheating scandal will cost it 100 billion yen ($892 million). FILE PHOTO: The logo of Kobe Steel is seen on the group''s Tokyo headquarter building in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo Kobe Steel shares rose for a second day, gaining 3.1 percent to close at 853 yen, but still way below the pre-crisis level of 1,368 yen. The Nikkei 225 ended 0.4 percent higher. The company will have no problem paying off a 20 billion yen bond due on Oct. 27, the source told Reuters. The firm has forecast a profit for the year through March 2018 after two successive annual losses, but the outlook has been clouded by the potential fallout from the scandal. FACING RISKS Kobe Steel Chief Executive Hiroya Kawasaki who said earlier the firm<72>s credibility had plunged to <20>zero<72>, disclosed on Friday that about 500 companies had received its falsely certified products, more than double its earlier count. No safety problems have surfaced as Kobe Steel attempts to confirm the extent of the data tampering. The government has ordered the company to address safety concerns within about two weeks and report on how the misconduct occurred in a month. Most of the problems have occurred in the company<6E>s aluminum and copper business, where many of the products are made to specifications required by automakers and other companies. But cases of falsi
'fa3cd6e97017c23e4401fbcef4354c52e33a9d86'|'U.S. SEC charges Rio Tinto, former top executives with fraud'|'October 18, 2017 / 4:09 AM / in 5 hours U.S. SEC charges Rio Tinto, former top executives with fraud Jonathan Barrett , Brendan Pierson 4 Min Read SYDNEY/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday charged mining company Rio Tinto Plc and two of its former top executives with fraud, saying they inflated the value of coal assets in Mozambique and concealed critical information while tapping the market for billions of dollars. The U.K.<2E>s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) also said on Tuesday it had reached a settlement with Rio Tinto under which the company would pay a fine of <20>27 million ($35.6 million) to settle claims that it breached accounting rules in connection with the Mozambique assets. The Mozambican coal business, which relied on barging the product down the Zambezi River to port, was acquired for $3.7 billion in 2011 from Riversdale Mining and sold a few years later for $50 million. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court in Manhattan, the SEC said Rio Tinto, former Chief Executive Officer Thomas Albanese, and former Chief Financial Officer Guy Elliott failed to follow accounting standards and company policies to accurately value and record the assets. The SEC said that soon after the deal was completed, Rio Tinto learned that the acquisition would yield less coal, and of a lower quality, than expected. The global miner could only transport and sell a fraction of the coal it had originally assumed, the SEC said. By making misleading public statements, Rio Tinto and the executives were able to raise $5.5 billion from U.S. investors, the SEC said. They continued to solicit the investments even after executives of the Mozambique subsidiary told Albanese and Elliott that the unit was likely worth negative $680 million, according to the SEC. <20>There is no truth in any of these charges,<2C> Albanese said in a statement. Christina Mills, a spokeswoman for Elliott, said Elliott would vigorously contest the charges. Rio Tinto said it would defend itself vigorously against the SEC<45>s allegations. The company said the U.K. FCA had <20>made no findings of fraud, or of any systemic or widespread failure by Rio Tinto<74>. HOW IT UNFOLDED FILE PHOTO: A sign adorns the building where mining company Rio Tinto has their office in Perth, Western Australia, November 19, 2015. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo The SEC allegations are contained in court documents that also request a jury trial. The SEC said the rapid and dramatic decline in value of the coal business was concealed, in part because Rio Tinto had already disclosed huge losses in connection with its 2007 acquisition of Alcan. <20>The Mozambique acquisition was expected to restore the market<65>s confidence in Albanese<73>s deal-making acumen, but on-the-ground realities in Mozambique quickly undermined that narrative,<2C> the SEC said. The SEC said the company knew its barging assumptions were unrealistic and railway capacity severely limited by the end of 2011, just months after securing the Riversdale assets. <20>Defendants concealed the nature and extent of these adverse developments from Rio Tinto<74>s Board of Directors, Audit Committee, independent auditors, and the market,<2C> the SEC said. The SEC said that if it had been disclosed, the developments would have triggered an impairment analysis. An impairment analysis would measure the difference in the expected cash flow from an asset and the value the company has booked the asset at. By May 2012, Albanese and Elliott were informed of the negative $680 million valuation, although the company carried the assets on its books at more than $3 billion while also promoting its prospects to the market. The SEC said the fraud continued until January 2013, when another executive discovered accounting irregularities. Albanese subsequently resigned and the value of the Mozambique assets were lowered by more than $3 billion. The SEC is seeking to have Albanese and Elliott barred from acting as officers or directors
'b3d94eb8698bcc82ce4f45d62ac00b386495c0a2'|'Advent to sell 45 percent stake in Spanish explosives firm Maxam: sources'|'MADRID (Reuters) - Private equity company Advent has hired Morgan Stanley to sell its 45 percent stake in Spanish explosives manufacturer Maxam, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday.The transaction could value the company, founded in 1872 by Alfred Nobel, at up to 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion), the sources said.Advent plans to raise up to 675 million euros from the sale of its stake, equivalent to a multiple of 8 to 10 times Maxam<61>s core profit (EBITDA), based on the valuations of other comparable companies in the sector, they said.Advent and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.Listed competitors such as Australia<69>s Oryca ( ORI.AX ) trade at a multiple of about 8.5 times 2016 EBITDA. When Advent first bought a stake in Maxam in 2011, the Spanish manufacturer booked core profit of 113 million euros, which rose to 146 million euros in 2016.<2E>The sale aims to attract financial and industrial investors,<2C> the source said, adding the company<6E>s managing team and owner, the Sanchez Junco family, would remain major shareholders.The market had recently been speculating about an initial public offering (IPO) but key shareholders were not in favor, the sources said.Maxam has industrial facilities in more than 45 countries, 6,500 employees and made 1.05 billion euros in revenue in 2016.($1 = 0.8491 euros)Reporting by Andr<64>s Gonz<6E>lez; Writing by Jes<65>s Aguado; Editing by Isla Bennie and mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-spain-advent-maxam/advent-to-sell-45-percent-stake-in-spanish-explosives-firm-maxam-sources-idINKBN1CN2QI'|'2017-10-18T16:35:00.000+03:00'
'4c6dd733c910b52ee7015778da6d55b190fafdb5'|'Sexual harassment allegations spark review, meeting at Fidelity: WSJ'|'October 22, 2017 / 4:02 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Sexual harassment allegations spark review, meeting at Fidelity: WSJ Reuters Staff 2 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Fidelity Investments has hired a consulting firm to review employee behavior amid allegations of sexual harassment at the U.S. money manager stretching back years, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. A sign marks a Fidelity Investments office in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. September 21, 2016. REUTERS/Brian Snyder - Brian Hogan, president of Fidelity<74>s stock-picking division, held an emergency meeting on Monday afternoon with his staff to stress the company<6E>s <20>zero-tolerance policy<63> for inappropriate workplace conduct, including sexual harassment, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the meeting. <20>Fidelity<74>s policies specifically prohibit harassment in any form,<2C> spokesman Vincent Loporchio said in a statement on Sunday. <20>When allegations of these sorts are brought to our attention, we investigate them immediately and take prompt and appropriate action.<2E> Earlier this month, the Journal reported that Gavin Baker, a well-known stock picker at Fidelity, was fired for allegedly sexually harassing a junior female employee. Baker, through a spokesman, denied the allegations. (on.wsj.com/2yHLXsF) Privately held Fidelity is one of the world<6C>s biggest investment managers, with more than 40,000 employees and about $2.5 trillion in assets under management. It is best known for its stable of actively managed mutual funds that include the $100-billion-plus Contrafund ( FCNTX.O ). Reporting by Carmel Crimmins; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fidelity-conduct/sexual-harassment-allegations-spark-review-meeting-at-fidelity-wsj-idUSKBN1CR0PW'|'2017-10-22T19:02:00.000+03:00'
'2f8a268cef6b71b9f11db4bad31ccfece494f044'|'Nestle speeds up overhaul to counter slowest growth in decades'|'FILE PHOTO: The Nestle logo is pictured on the company headquarters entrance building in Vevey, Switzerland February 18, 2016. REUTERS/Pierre Albouy/File Photo ZURICH (Reuters) - Nestle, the world<6C>s biggest packaged food group, is doubling spending on its restructuring this year to up to 1 billion Swiss francs ($1 billion) to cope with its weakest sales growth in more than two decades.Europe<70>s largest company by market value is under pressure to improve returns from activist investor Daniel Loeb, whose Third Point hedge fund revealed a $3.5 billion stake in June.It must also review its business model and brand portfolio to ensure its products stay appealing to consumers who often prefer fresh, local foods to Nestle<6C>s Maggi soups or KitKat chocolate bars.Organic sales rose 3.1 percent in the third quarter, up from 2.4 percent in the second, in line with analysts<74> expectations in a Reuters poll. Performance was helped by improved trading in Europe and Asia.Still, Nestle forecast growth for the full year around the 2.6 percent it generated for the first nine months, implying a slowdown in the fourth quarter and the year as a whole. Last year<61>s sales rose 3.2 percent.<2E>Going forward, everyone is well advised to be cautious and you see that reflected in our expectations for the fourth quarter,<2C> Chief Executive Mark Schneider said on Thursday.Finance chief Francois-Xavier Roger cautioned that Europe and Asia might not be able to repeat the good performance over the final three months, but confirmed Nestle<6C>s goal of returning to mid-single-digit organic growth by 2020.Nestle said it would spend up to 1 billion Swiss francs this year on restructuring, double its initial plan, as it seeks to cut structural costs, such as by closing factories, boosting efficiency and sourcing globally.Yet its overall forecast for restructuring costs of 2.5 billion francs between 2016 and 2020 remained unchanged.The acceleration will reduce this year<61>s operating margin by 0.4 to 0.6 percentage point, while the underlying margin -- before restructuring costs -- is expected to rise by at least 0.2 percentage point in constant currency, Nestle said.Nestle last month set a target for the underlying margin to reach 17.5-18.5 percent by 2020, up from 16.0 percent in 2016.Slowing growth rates at packaged food groups have sparked the interest of activist investors, with Procter & Gamble also becoming a target recently.Unilever reported lower-than-expected third-quarter sales on Thursday, losing market share to smaller competitors and dampening hopes that an aborted takeover offer from Kraft Heinz would spark a swift improvement.Nestle shares were 0.8 percent lower at 1530 GMT, slightly lagging the European sector.They have gained 16 percent so far this year and are trading at 28.3 times forward earnings, according to Reuters data, at a premium to Danone at 24.2 times and Unilever at 25.8 times.Analysts said Nestle<6C>s performance was disappointing when compared to Danone that saw strong baby food sales in China boost growth in the third quarter to 4.7 percent.($1 = 0.9740 Swiss francs)Editing by Michael Shields and David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/nestle-sales/nestle-speeds-up-overhaul-to-counter-slowest-growth-in-decades-idINKBN1CO2LT'|'2017-10-19T20:20:00.000+03:00'
'55ab1866379e673b79d764b38070006e8445e7a8'|'Saudi''s Almarai third-quarter profit flat, warns of adverse market conditions'|'October 22, 2017 / 6:36 AM / Updated 13 hours ago Saudi''s Almarai third-quarter profit flat, warns of adverse market conditions Reuters Staff 2 Min Read DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia<69>s Almarai, the Gulf<6C>s largest dairy company, reported a flat third-quarter net profit on Sunday, and warned it remained cautious on the year due to adverse market conditions. Dairy products produced by Almarai are seen at a grocery in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia June 2, 2016. REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser/Files Almarai made a profit of 667 million riyals ($178 million) in the three months to Sept. 20, compared to a revised quarterly profit of 664.3 million riyals in the year-earlier period, according to a bourse statement. Four analysts polled by Reuters had forecast on average that Almarai would make 620.75 million riyals. Revenue was down 4.5 percent to 3.37 billion riyals from the same period a year earlier. Almarai said tough market conditions continued into the third quarter and that its end of year outlook remains cautious, citing reasons such as higher operating costs, devaluation of the Egyptian pound and lower exports. Almarai has lost access to the Qatari market since June after Saudi Arabia severed trade and travel links with its neighbour in the Gulf<6C>s most severe diplomatic split in years. Almarai said on Oct. 15 that Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia<69>s top sovereign wealth fund, had increased its share capital in the company to 16.32 percent. ($1 = 3.7502 riyals)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/almarai-results/saudis-almarai-third-quarter-profit-flat-warns-of-adverse-market-conditions-idINKBN1CR065'|'2017-10-22T09:34:00.000+03:00'
'1a0f6466b7ac7f0368a8a6628efadc4cedf9ebb6'|'UPDATE 1-Bain defends Asatsu-DK bid as shareholder opposition grows'|'FILE PHOTO: A reporter raises his hand to ask a question during a news conference by Bain Capital LP Managing Director Yuji Sugimoto (not in the picture) in Tokyo, Japan October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung/File Photo HONG KONG/TOKYO (Reuters) - Bain Capital defended its $1.35 billion offer to buy Asatsu-DK Inc ( 9747.T ) on Wednesday as shareholder opposition to the deal grew, saying the offer is <20>fully priced<65>.Hong Kong-based activist hedge fund Oasis Management Company and other shareholders of Japan<61>s third-largest advertising agency have said the offer is too low.Asatsu-DK<44>s two largest shareholders, global advertising giant WPP ( WPP.L ) and London-based fund manager Silchester International, have also said the offer significantly undervalues the company and they have called for competing bids.The dispute between Bain and the shareholders marks the second time in about a month that a private equity firm squared off against shareholders for a Japanese asset, after U.S. hedge fund Elliott Management Corp put pressure on KKR & Co LP ( KKR.N ) to raise its bid for Hitachi Kokusai Electric ( 6756.T ) in a deal valuing the firm at some $2.3 billion.Asatsu-DK shares closed at 3,790 yen on Wednesday, 3.6 percent higher than Bain<69>s offer price of 3,660 yen. Asatsu-DK shares have risen 19 percent since Bain announced its offer to buy Asatsu-DK.<2E>The offer is fully priced and provides shareholders with an opportunity to realize attractive value,<2C> Bain said in a statement on Wednesday.Asatsu-DK spokeswoman Kaori Nakajima reiterated on Wednesday the company<6E>s statement issued on Monday that Bain<69>s proposal is the most feasible among other choices and best serves shareholders.Oasis and other investors disagree.<2E>We believe there is lot of potential growth in earnings by ADK through expanding its digital strategy and animation. Bain is attempting to buy a steady, consistent platform with large untapped potential,<2C> Seth Fischer, chief investment officer of Oasis, said on Tuesday.<2E>We, as long-term shareholders, want to get paid a fair price for our shares, which we think is at a premium to the current market price.<2E>WPP owns about 24 percent of Asatsu-DK, while Silchester International has about 17 percent. Asatsu-DK<44>s Nakajima said Oasis<69>s holding is less than 5 percent.Bain has said it will cancel the buyout unless it secures at least 50.1 percent of Asatsu-DK. Typically, private equity firms adopt a higher threshold of about 67 percent.The tender offer, which started on Oct. 3, will remain open until Nov. 15.Reporting by Elzio Barreto in HONG KONG and Junko Fujita in TOKYO: Editing by Neil Fullick'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asatsu-dk-m-a/opposition-grows-to-bains-bid-for-japanase-ad-agency-asatsu-dk-idUSKBN1CM2K8'|'2017-10-18T13:08:00.000+03:00'
'93bf78ce34e729ff83e3a62e094b9f246507909d'|'Japan to offer $10 billion to back Asia LNG infrastructure push'|'October 18, 2017 / 1:52 AM / in 30 minutes Japan to offer $10 billion to back Asia LNG infrastructure push Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Japan''s Minister of Economy,Trade and Industry Hiroshige Seko arrives at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe''s official residence in Tokyo, Japan August 3, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan will offer $10 billion (<28>7.58 billion) in support in joint private enterprise and government projects to supply liquefied natural gas (LNG) or build LNG infrastructure in Asia, the country<72>s trade minister said on Wednesday. The finance will be go towards upstream, midstream and downstream LNG projects in developing countries in Asia and other countries to help spur LNG demand, said Hiroshige Seko, speaking at the annual LNG Producer-Consumer Conference in Tokyo. Seko also said that Japanese government and private firms would offer training, based on requests from other countries, to develop a workforce of about 500 people for projects in gas producing and consuming countries. The initiative comes after Seko and U.S. energy secretary Rick Perry agreed in June that the two countries would work together to expand the LNG market in Asia, the minister said. Expansion of LNG markets in Asia helps create demand for U.S. LNG, which has been rising rapidly. Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, said on Wednesday that over the next five years, about 40 pct of the world<6C>s gas production growth will come from the United States alone. Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lng-japan-meti/japan-to-offer-10-billion-to-back-asia-lng-infrastructure-push-idUKKBN1CN05K'|'2017-10-18T04:52:00.000+03:00'
'7db55c387edceef0ed517599bc53988f1a46bd93'|'EXCLUSIVE - China''s Orient Hontai in deal to take control of Spain''s Imagina'|'MADRID - China<6E>s Orient Hontai has agreed to buy a majority stake in Spanish sports rights group Imagina for $1 billion, the latest deal from deep-pocketed Chinese investors to transform the Asian country into a global soccer powerhouse.Imagina, usually just known as Mediapro after the name of one of its subsidiaries, has the rights to distribute the La Liga soccer championship, Europe<70>s third-richest league.The Chinese private equity firm had reached a preliminary deal with three of Imagina<6E>s shareholders to buy a 54 percent stake, Imagina founder and chairman Jaume Roures told Reuters in an interview.Roures said the deal still had to be authorised by the Chinese government, which has cracked down on overseas football investments in recent months, though he hoped the operation could be closed in early 2018.<2E>The deal has been made. We hope to close it during the first quarter of 2018,<2C> Roures said.Chinese investors have been snapping up sports and entertainment assets abroad.The acquisitions range from Swiss sports marketing firm Infront Sports & Media AG to Italian sports media rights company MP & Silva or soccer clubs Inter Milan and AC Milan.Orient Hontai entered into exclusive talks with Imagina<6E>s shareholders in May, scooping a dozen other bidders, including French media group Vivendi, Chinese real estate and entertainment firm Dalian Wanda Group Co or U.S. media company Liberty Media.The selling shareholders are Spanish private equity firm Torreal, which holds 23 percent of the share capital, Mexican broadcaster Televisa, which owns 19 percent, and one of the firm<72>s founders Gerard Romy, who has 12 percent.Imagina, Torreal and Romy declined to comment. It was not immediately possible to contact Televisa and Orient Hontai for comment.The deal was made at a multiple of 10 times 2016 core profit (EBITDA) and values the company at 1.6 billion euros ($1.9 billion), Roures said.Under a shareholders<72> pact with Orient Hontai, Roures and Tatxo Benet, who are the other two founders of Imagina with Romy and still each own a 12 percent stake, will remain at the helm of the company.<2E>The shareholders<72> pact does not have any expiration date,<2C> Roures said.$1 = 0.8510 euros'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/hontai-imagina/exclusive-chinas-orient-hontai-in-deal-to-take-control-of-spains-imagina-idINKBN1CN17V'|'2017-10-18T07:59:00.000+03:00'
'c93054c524fce82556c71d01bd4fb842fdc8f54c'|'PRESS DIGEST- Financial Times - Oct 18'|'October 17, 2017 / 11:56 PM / Updated 40 minutes ago PRESS DIGEST- Financial Times - Oct 18 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 18 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Financial Times. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Headlines Home Office seeks 1,200 workers before Brexit to register millions of EU citizens ( on.ft.com/2hMKir4 ) New Bank of England members not ready for rate rise ( on.ft.com/2xMFVSI ) Sainsbury''s to axe 2,000 UK jobs in major cost cutting drive ( on.ft.com/2yqoQCy ) UK faces jump in Islamist terror threats, says MI5 head ( on.ft.com/2x4bW9m ) Overview Britain will need a total of 1,200 government officials to help register millions of European Union citizens living in the country after the country leaves the bloc in 2019, interior minister Amber Rudd said on Tuesday. The Bank of England<6E>s new deputy governor Dave Ramsden distanced himself from the central bank<6E>s majority view that interest rates probably need to rise soon, and another newcomer said her support for that position was <20>very contingent on the data<74>. Sainsbury<72>s, Britain<69>s second biggest supermarket group behind Tesco, is seeking to cut up to 2,000 jobs, mainly in its payroll and human resources departments, a company spokesman said on Tuesday. Britain faces the most acute threat ever from Islamist militants seeking to inflict mass attacks, often with spontaneous plots that take just days to bring to execution, the head of the MI5 domestic intelligence agency, Andrew Parker, said on Tuesday. Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Peter Cooney 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-press-ft/press-digest-financial-times-oct-18-idUSL4N1MS5W9'|'2017-10-18T02:55:00.000+03:00'
'64136835b2b2f492ccc5ed203792e2890d332bf1'|'Australia''s competition watchdog to probe Accor buyout of Mantra'|'A sign bearing the logo of the Mantra Group Ltd is displayed on the wall of a hotel in central Sydney, Australia, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/David Gray SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia<69>s competition regulator said on Wednesday it will review French hotelier Accor SA<53>s ( ACCP.PA ) planned $920 million buyout of Australian hotel operator Mantra Group Ltd ( MTR.AX ).The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said it is monitoring the transaction and a <20>public review will be commenced in due course once certain information is provided by Accor and Mantra<72>.The deal, a takeover of Australia<69>s second-largest hotelier by its bigger rival, would create the biggest hotel group in the country, with about 50,000 rooms and roughly 11 percent of the market, according to IBISWorld statistics.The buyout requires the approval of the ACCC, as well as approval from Australia<69>s Foreign Investment Review Board.Analysts expect a green light as the market is quite fragmented and particularly if regulators regard newer rivals such as Airbnb as competitors in the sector.But some doubt is priced in to the market and there are concerns that divestments could be required in towns where the two hoteliers are the only players..The ACCC announcement was made after market hours on Wednesday. Mantra shares had closed flat at A$3.89 below the offer price of A$3.96 per share.The broader S&P/ASX 200 index was also flat, while Accor shares were flat in early trade in Paris.Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-mantra-group-m-a-accor/australias-competition-watchdog-to-probe-accor-buyout-of-mantra-idINKBN1CN0O2'|'2017-10-18T04:49:00.000+03:00'
'c133650ca65d6086d1b7da0631e30eeff017404c'|'Lloyds shareholders ''mugged'' by 2008 HBOS takeover, high court told - Business'|'Shareholders in Lloyds Banking Group were <20>mugged<65> by the bank and five of its former directors during the takeover of HBOS in 2008, the high court has heard.On the first day of a case which is expected to require former Lloyds chairman Sir Victor Blank and ex-chief executive Eric Daniels to give evidence, the court heard the deal took place amid intervention from the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, to avoid nationalisation of HBOS in September 2008.The court was told that HBOS might not have been able to open its doors on Monday 29 September 2008 without the emergency loans that the shareholders bringing the claim argue were not properly disclosed at the time they voted through the takeover in November 2008.Lloyds and five former directors <20> including Blank and Daniels <20> are contesting the case brought by almost 6,000 private investors who claim they were not provided with the full details about the financial health of HBOS nine years ago.HBOS timeline: the countdown to collapse Read more Richard Hill QC, acting for the shareholders, told the court on Wednesday that HBOS had been <20>facing catastrophe<68> and that Lloyds had been told the rival bank would have had to be nationalised if it did not agree to step in, just days after Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008. By October, HBOS was effectively bust, he claimed, after a <20>massive haemorrhaging of cash<73>.<2E>We are saying shareholders were mugged in this acquisition and should never have been kept in the dark ,<2C> said Hill.As well as Blank and Daniels, former finance director Tim Tookey, former head of retail Helen Weir and former head of wholesale banking Truett Tate are named in the case and are scheduled to give evidence . The case is expected to run until March.Lloyds announced the takeover of HBOS on 18 September 2008. The government eventually took a 43% stake in the enlarged Lloyds Banking Group but no longer owns any shares after selling its final tranche in May .At the time of the deal, it emerged that Brown had discussed the deal with Blank at a Citibank drinks party just days before it was announced to the market. <20>The government was encouraging Lloyds to buy HBOS and to relieve the government of the burden of nationalising HBOS,<2C> said Hill, adding that this left Lloyds shareholders with <20>catastrophic losses<65>.He said that by the end of September, days after the deal was first announced, <20>HBOS was bust and would have had to close its doors unless it could find an emergency bail out<75>.Hill told Mr Justice Norris that Lloyds had been bullied into taking over HBOS by being told that it would need a <20>7bn bailout in October 2008 <20> when the government announced plan to rescue the sector <20> if it did not carry through with the deal.In correspondence Hill read out in court, a Lloyds banker is said to have described the HBOS deal as <20>transferring the monkey from theirs to our shoulders<72>.Lloyds is scheduled to outline its defence on Thursday and said: <20>The group<75>s position remains that we do not consider there to be any merit to these claims and we will robustly contest this legal action.<2E>The case continues.Topics Lloyds Banking Group HBOS Banking Financial crisis Financial sector news'|'theguardian.com'|'http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/business/uk-edition/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/18/llyods-shareholders-mugged-by-2008-hbos-takeover-high-court-told'|'2017-10-18T03:00:00.000+03:00'
'8e88dc9d1e31f07576a9fde8a79551300f6e3035'|'Top Credit Suisse investor says activist plan needs be looked into: FT'|'The logo of of Swiss bank Credit Suisse is seen at an office building in Zurich''s Oerlikon suburb, Switzerland July 27, 2017. Picture taken July 27, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann ZURICH (Reuters) - Credit Suisse<73>s ( CSGN.S ) largest shareholder wants the bank<6E>s management to consider parts of the break-up plan proposed by an activist investor, including shifting the group<75>s investment banking unit to the United States from Switzerland, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.However, Harris Associates said it did not support the overall direction of the activist plan put forward by RBR Capital Advisors, according to the paper.Harris Associates owns 5.03 per cent of Credit Suisse, according to Thomson Reuters Eikon data.But David Herro, Harris<69>s international chief investment officer, said some points in RBR<42>s plan <20>require a second thought,<2C> FT reported.Swiss hedge fund RBR is seeking to rally support for a campaign to break up Credit Suisse, hoping to capitalize on unrest after Switzerland<6E>s second-biggest bank lost about a quarter of its value since 2015.It wants to divide Credit Suisse into an investment bank, an asset management group and a wealth manager accommodating the Zurich-based bank<6E>s retail and corporate banking operations.<2E>I don<6F>t really think there<72>s a lot of merit (in the break-up plan),<2C> Herro was Quote: d in the FT article that was published online. <20>We would just prefer to see management execute the plan that they<65>ve developed.<2E>But the plan should not be automatically dismissed by Credit Suisse<73>s management, the report Quote: d Herro as saying.Credit Suisse was not immediately available for comment.Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-creditsuisse-activist/top-credit-suisse-investor-says-activist-plan-needs-be-looked-into-ft-idUSKBN1CN0IY'|'2017-10-18T08:58:00.000+03:00'
'e692d93e47a3d7257578677a03287d7791efd8ac'|'Russia''s Gazprom Neft eyes cooperation with Saudi Aramco in hard-to-recover oil'|'October 18, 2017 / 10:37 AM / Updated 3 minutes ago Russia''s Gazprom Neft eyes cooperation with Saudi Aramco in hard-to-recover oil Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A sign displaying the logo of Russia''s Gazprom Neft oil company is seen at the company''s office in the West Siberian city of Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, January 28, 2016. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin/File Photo MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia<69>s Gazprom Neft ( SIBN.MM ) will jointly work with the world<6C>s largest oil producer Saudi Aramco in hard-to-recover oil production and on a technology known as hydraulic fracturing, Gazprom Neft<66>s head Alexander Dyukov said on Wednesday. Earlier this month, both companies have signed an agreement on technological cooperation during a state visit to Russia by Saudi King Salman. Dyukov also told reporters that Gazprom Neft expects its borrowings to rise to between 200 billion roubles and 210 billion roubles (<28>2.6 billion - <20>2.7 billion) next year without possible new funds for Messoyakha greenfield. Reporting by Olesya Astakhova; writing by Vladimir Soldatkin; editing by Polina Devitt 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-russia-gazpromneft-aramco/russias-gazprom-neft-eyes-cooperation-with-saudi-aramco-in-hard-to-recover-oil-idUKKBN1CN1CX'|'2017-10-18T13:36:00.000+03:00'
'ac5886ab25cee42929aaad9338974bc7af31a865'|'Mexico''s Pemex fires warehouse workers for oil theft - Reuters'|'MEXICO CITY, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Mexican state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) said on Tuesday it would rescind contracts held by several workers at a warehouse and distribution center in the central state of Guanajuato as part of a strategy to combat oil theft.A Pemex official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that four workers were let go for links to oil theft from the center in the city of Salamanca, where Pemex also has a refinery that can process 245,000 barrels per day of crude.In its statement, Pemex said it would file criminal complaints against the workers and investigate workers at others sites.<2E>Without exception, any employee linked to crime will be removed immediately,<2C> the company said.Mexico<63>s government has estimated that oil theft by criminal groups costs Pemex at least $1 billion a year. (Reporting by Christine Murray and Ana Isabel Martinez; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mexico-pemex-crime/mexicos-pemex-fires-warehouse-workers-for-oil-theft-idINL2N1MT03E'|'2017-10-18T01:39:00.000+03:00'
'09619a9cc3d8fafbc394d7ea24fa92203169f716'|'Akzo Nobel warns operating profit will not grow this year'|'Reuters TV United States October 18, 2017 / 5:26 AM / in 34 minutes Akzo Nobel warns operating profit will not grow this year Toby Sterling 4 Min Read Dulux paint cans are filled on the production line inside AkzoNobel''s new paint factory in Ashington, Britain September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch Akzo Nobel ( AKZO.AS ), which fended off a 26 billion euro takeover approach from PPG Industries ( PPG.N ) in May, warned on Wednesday that operating profit would not grow this year, the second downgrade to its forecast in the past two months. The maker of Dulux paint reported lower than expected third-quarter operating earnings of 383 million euros ($451 million) and pointed to <20>headwinds<64> at its marine coatings business and margin pressures from rising raw material costs. It said earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) for the year would now be about flat on 2016. In the first nine months of 2017, EBIT is 5 million euros lower than it was last year. In July the company had said it was on track to meet a goal of 100 million euros in EBIT growth it had promised as part of its rationale for rejecting a deal with Pittsburgh-based PPG. However, the company warned last month that it would not hit that figure, citing cost inflation and currency factors. Akzo shares traded 1.9 percent lower at 76.89 euros at 0712 GMT, well short of PPG<50>s 95 euro proposal. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected third-quarter EBIT of 432 million euros, down from 442 million euros in the same period a year ago. MANAGEMENT CHANGES Akzo has struggled since refusing PPG<50>s advances, seeing both its CEO and CFO resign for health reasons. New CEO Thierry Vanlancker cited <20>adverse foreign exchange, ongoing industry specific headwinds and supply chain disruptions, including the adverse impact of Hurricane Harvey in the US,<2C> in the earnings release. Vanlancker told reporters on a conference call that he expects no further reduction in forecasts this year, although rising pigment costs will continue to squeeze paint margins for the coming 5-6 months as the company passes on cost increases to customers. He said the company<6E>s original EBIT forecast made by previous CEO Ton Buechner in the heat of the takeover battle in April, which was immediately dismissed by many analysts as impossible to achieve, had been serious. <20>If we didn<64>t think it was, we wouldn<64>t have said it,<2C> he said. He added the company was <20>absolutely<6C> holding to financial targets for 2020, which include reaching a 15 percent return on sales, though analysts have also been skeptical of that. Akzo said on Wednesday that two other promises to shareholders -- a special dividend of 1 billion euros before the end of the year and the sale or IPO of its Specialty Chemicals arm by early next year -- were still on track. Vanlancker said the company has received interest from both strategic and private equity buyers for Specialty Chemicals, which represents around a third of sales and profits and is expected to fetch around 10 billion euros. He added it was too early to say how serious strategic buyers may be. Reuters reported this month that only private equity buyers are interested in buying the division. After PPG walked away from buying Akzo on June 1, it is restricted from approaching the company again until December, though it has indicated it is no longer interested in Akzo after its spring bid faced opposition from the company<6E>s boards, employee unions and Dutch politicians. Akzo on Wednesday scheduled an extraordinary shareholders meeting for Nov. 30 to approve the sale of the chemicals unit and appointment of Maarten de Vries as CFO. Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Sunil Nair and Keith Weir 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-akzo-nobel-results/akzo-nobel-third-quarter-operating-profit-misses-analysts-estimates-idUKKBN1CN0H1'|'2017-10-18T10:32:00.000+03:00'
'1a739786bfe1f7e125f67fc499d7645240585f6c'|'ACS''s Hochtief makes 17.1 billion euro counterbid for Abertis'|'October 18, 2017 / 1:51 PM / in 6 minutes ACS''s Hochtief makes 17.1 billion euro counterbid for Abertis 4 Min Read A view of the Hochtief AG headquarters in Essen October 4, 2010. REUTERS/Ina Fassbender DUESSELDORF/MILAN (Reuters) - German builder Hochtief ( HOTG.DE ), controlled by Spain<69>s ACS ( ACS.MC ), made 17.1 billion euro (<28>15.3 billion) bid for Spanish toll road operator Abertis ( ABE.MC ) on Wednesday, topping a rival offer from Italy<6C>s Atlantia ( ATL.MI ). Hochtief is offering 18.76 euros in cash, or 0.1281 Hochtief shares, for each Abertis share and has set a minimum acceptance threshold of 50 percent plus one share. Builder ACS is launching the bid via cash-positive Hochtief to protect its credit rating and avoid having to raise equity itself, though Hochtief<65>s plan to issue up to 24.8 million shares would dilute ACS<43>s 72 percent stake in the German firm. The move creates a dilemma for Abertis, which has also received a cash and shares offer from Atlantia worth around 15.7 billion euros on a comparable basis, according to analysts. A tie-up between Atlantia, controlled by the Benetton family, and Abertis would create the world<6C>s biggest toll-roads operator and help both companies in their drive to branch out from their home markets. However, a source close to ACS - whose chairman Florentino Perez also heads Real Madrid football club - has told Reuters that its bid has the backing of the Spanish government, which may be reluctant to see Abertis<69>s politically sensitive motorways concessions in Spain fall into foreign hands. A previous deal between Atlantia and Abertis fell through in 2006 due to opposition from the Italian government. Atlantia launched its cash and shares bid in May, and people familiar with the matter told Reuters last week it was prepared to raise it if ACS - as expected - triggered a takeover battle. Toll road operator Abertis<69>headquarters is seen in Barcelona, Spain, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard <20>Hochtief<65>s offer is very competitive, but we would expect Atlantia to fight for Abertis as this is a once in a lifetime opportunity,<2C> a Milan-based trader said. At 1430 GMT, Abertis shares were up 7.1 percent at 18.89 euros. ACS<43>s were up 4.6 percent at 32.88 euros, Hochtief<65>s up 2.5 percent at 153.3 euros and Atlantia<69>s down 1.4 percent at 26.86 euros. ON HOLD Hochtief said Abertis would complement its business by adding the operation and maintenance of infrastructure to its developing and building operations, allowing it to <20>generate value throughout the entire infrastructure project life cycle.<2E> Hochtief has secured financing of 15 billion euros at a 2 percent interest rate and is planning to pay out up to 90 percent of its profit to shareholders after a successful Abertis bid, it said. Atlantia<69>s bid has cleared all regulators and, according to two Italian sources, has the non-binding backing of investors representing more than 50 percent of Abertis<69>s capital. But one of the sources said Abertis<69> top investor, Criteria Caixa - the financial arm of a politically connected and powerful banking foundation - had not committed to taking up Atlantia<69>s offer. Criteria has a 22.3 percent stake in Abertis. Hochtief<65>s bid puts Atlantia<69>s offer, which began on Oct. 10 and was due to run through Oct. 24, on hold. Spanish market watchdog CNMV now has to examine Hochtief<65>s offer and decide whether it can go ahead. Additional reporting by Pamela Barbaglia and Francesca Landini in Milan; Editing by Larry King and Mark Potter 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-abertis-m-a-acs/acss-hochtief-launches-counter-bid-for-abertis-idUKKBN1CN1ZM'|'2017-10-18T18:03:00.000+03:00'
'666bfb8cef69e547a0afa1b3db68f31fb2049a0f'|'Travis Perkins to meet expectations after step-up in growth'|' 27 AM / Updated 19 minutes ago Travis Perkins to meet expectations after step-up in growth Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Bricks are seen at the Vauxhall depot of building material supplier Travis Perkins in London, Britain, October 25, 2013. REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - Travis Perkins ( TPK.L ), Britain<69>s biggest supplier of building materials, said it was on track to achieve full year expectations as it reported a step-up in underlying sales growth in its latest quarter. The group, which trades from over 20 businesses includingTravis Perkins, Wickes, BSS, Toolstation and Tile Giant, said like-for-like sales rose 4.1 percent in the third quarter of 2017, having increased 2.7 percent in the first half. Total sales growth was maintained at 3.5 percent. However, the group said it remained cautious on the market outlook and continued to carefully manage its underlying cost base. Travis Perkins<6E> customers include local authorities, big building firms, traders such as plumbers and kitchen fitters and regular consumers, with its fortunes closely tied to housing transactions and consumer confidence. It said volumes were broadly flat in the quarter with inflation driven price increases the main component of like-for-like growth. <20>Trading conditions in our markets continue to be mixed, with consumer discretionary spending under pressure from rising inflation and on-going uncertainty in the UK economy,<2C> said Chief Executive John Carter. Prior to Thursday<61>s update analysts<74> average forecast for adjusted operating profit in 2017 was 386 million pounds ($510 million), down from 409 million pounds in 2016. That outcome would be a second straight fall in profit. Shares in Travis Perkins, flat over the last year, closed Wednesday at 1,472 pence, valuing the business at 3.7 billion pounds. ($1 = 0.7576 pounds) Reporting by James Davey, Editing by Paul Sandle 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-travis-perkins-outlook/travis-perkins-to-meet-full-year-expectations-as-growth-accelerates-idUKKBN1CO0MA'|'2017-10-19T09:45:00.000+03:00'
'6e15410904e23eeeb617e8b9bc78bd5ca4adff8c'|'Nissan Motor says CEO Saikawa to brief on uncertified inspection issue'|' 59 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago Nissan Motor says CEO Saikawa to brief on uncertified inspection issue Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Nissan Motor Co''s President and CEO Hiroto Saikawa speaks during a news conference at the company''s headquarters in Yokohama, Japan May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai TOKYO (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co Ltd ( 7201.T ) said Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa will hold at news conference 1000 GMT on Thursday to brief on its uncertified inspection scandal. The news conference comes a day after Nissan admitted uncertified vehicle checks had continued even after it revealed final vehicle checks for the domestic market were not performed by certified technicians. The misconduct has forced Japan<61>s second-largest automaker to recall all 1.2 million new cars it sold in domestically over the past three years. Reporting by Sam Nussey; Editing by Stephen Coates 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nissan-recall/nissan-motor-says-ceo-saikawa-to-brief-on-uncertified-inspection-issue-idUKKBN1CO0PB'|'2017-10-19T09:58:00.000+03:00'
'4316582f803b62b20e882a06bcb7ea5dde0f0b04'|'RPT-UK annual retail sales growth slows to weakest since 2013 in Q3'|'October 19, 2017 / 8:47 AM / in 8 minutes RPT-UK annual retail sales growth slows to weakest since 2013 in Q3 Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Repeats with no changes to text) LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - British retail sales suffered an unexpectedly sharp slowdown in September, dragging quarterly growth to its weakest annual rate since 2013, suggesting consumer demand remains uncertain as the Bank of England nears its first rate rise in a decade. Retail sales volumes fell 0.8 percent in September, the Office for National Statistics said on Thursday, reversing a jump in August and undershooting all economists'' forecasts in a Reuters poll. Third-quarter growth slowed to a year-on-year rate of 1.5 percent, its lowest since the second quarter of 2013. Last month the BoE said it was likely to raise interest rates in the coming months if the economy and inflation pressures strengthen as expected. Markets see a roughly 80 percent chance of a move on Nov. 2 after the BoE''s next meeting. Its policymakers had said consumer demand was showing signs of improving after weakness earlier in the year, though it was too soon to tell if it would compensate for weak business investment. Rising goods prices meant that the amount British shoppers was spending was rising faster than the volume of goods they received for their money. "There is a continuation of the underlying trend of steady growth in sales volumes following a weak start to the year, and a background of generally rising prices," ONS statistician Kate Davies said. Compared with a year earlier, sales volumes are up 1.2 percent versus expectations of a 2.1 percent rise. Rising inflation has eaten into British consumers'' disposable income this year, causing a very weak first quarter for retail sales as the fall in the pound after last year''s Brexit vote pushed up the cost of the imports. Official data on Wednesday showed that regular pay in the three months to August was 0.4 percent lower in real terms than in 2016 - the sixth consecutive month of falls and the longest such run in almost three years. Some shoppers are tightening their belts, as industry data on Tuesday showed the market share of Britain''s four biggest supermarkets falling in response to growing sales at German discount chains Aldi and Lidl. Relatively cheap online fashion retailer ASOS also revised up growth forecasts on Tuesday, in part due to stronger demand after it froze its prices despite higher import costs following last year''s fall in the pound. Private-sector figures had given a fairly upbeat message on retail spending in September. The Confederation of British Industry reported the strongest growth in two years, while the British Retail Consortium said spending grew last month at a faster pace than for most of 2017. The BoE expects inflation to peak at just over 3 percent in October, compared with 3.0 percent in September, and then fall slowly. (Reporting by David Milliken and Alistair Smout) (Reporting by Andy Bruce) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-economy-retail/rpt-uk-annual-retail-sales-growth-slows-to-weakest-since-2013-in-q3-idUSL8N1MU2EQ'|'2017-10-19T11:44:00.000+03:00'
'9c303138ad0a089c1b8a064e5068001cce6fdb55'|'Rentokil reports 13.7 percent rise in third-quarter revenue'|'October 19, 2017 / 6:25 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago Rentokil reports 13.7 percent rise in third-quarter revenue Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - British support services company Rentokil Initial Plc ( RTO.L ) reported a 13.7 percent rise in ongoing third-quarter revenue on Thursday boosted by its pest control unit. Revenue from ongoing operations grew to 579.5 million pounds at constant currency rates. Organic growth including revenue from sales to the Haniel JV rose 4.6 percent, said the company, which offers services such as pest control, hygiene and work wear supply. Reporting by Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-rentokil-outlook/rentokil-reports-13-7-percent-rise-in-third-quarter-revenue-idUKKBN1CO0LU'|'2017-10-19T09:24:00.000+03:00'
'bfa542241d7910cdcb971c5d5395711f78d33a19'|'China''s central bank warns of ''Minsky moment'' as economy powers ahead'|'October 19, 2017 / 2:12 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago China''s central bank warns of ''Minsky moment'' as economy powers ahead Kevin Yao , Elias Glenn 6 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Workers survey the construction site of the terminal for the Beijing New Airport in Beijing''s southern Daxing District, China October 10, 2016. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s central bank chief on Thursday issued a stark warning about asset bubbles in the world<6C>s second-largest economy, which looks set to clock its first acceleration in annual growth since 2010, driven by public spending and record bank lending. Speaking on the sidelines of the closely-watched, twice-a-decade Communist Party Congress, People<6C>s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan spoke of the risks of a <20>Minsky moment<6E> in the economy, referring to a sudden collapse in asset prices after long periods of growth, sparked by debt or currency pressures. Zhou<6F>s comments refer to a theory on prices derived by American economist Hyman Minsky and follow official data that showed China<6E>s economic growth slowed in the third quarter from a year earlier, as expected, but remained on track to post the first full-year pickup in seven years. Coming on the 30th anniversary of the Black Monday Wall Street crash, the comments from the governor, who is likely to retire soon, echo concerns expressed in the past by international economic bodies about relative levels of corporate and household debt in the economy. But while hedge funds sometimes refer to Minsky in warnings about a China credit bubble threatening the global economy, China has so far proven doomsayers wrong. <20>I would doubt they really think China is in for a Minsky Moment, but maybe he is tying to impress (other leaders in Beijing) on the need to start reining in credit growth,<2C> said Louis Kuijs, head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics in Hong Kong. <20>It<49>s not really up to (the central bank)... We would have to look at what the leadership says about these things.<2E> Recent efforts to curb financial risks and cool the property market are beginning to weigh. While the economy grew a solid 6.8 percent from the previous year in the third quarter as expected, growth in new construction slowed and property sales dropped for the first time in more than two-and-half years in September. In all, growth was still on track to comfortably beat the government<6E>s target of around 6.5 percent for this year and 2016<31>s rate of 6.7 percent, which was a 26-year low. Related Coverage Factbox - China central bank warns of ''Minsky moment''; what does it mean? <20>URGENT<4E> REFORM NEEDED Analysts and global economic bodies such as the International Monetary Fund warn Beijing is stimulating credit too heavily in its aim to meet fixed growth targets. Rating agencies estimate the overall debt burden at almost three times economic output. Data on Saturday showed Chinese banks extended more loans than expected in September, backed by demand from home buyers and companies. While household loans accounted for a smaller percentage of total new loans, their value jumped more than 10 percent to 734.9 billion yuan (<28>84.2 billion) last month from August, according to Reuters calculations. <20>China<6E>s high debt burden is an area where reform is most urgently needed but progress has been the slowest,<2C> said Chi Lo, senior economist at BNP Paribas Asset Management. A labourer rests at a construction site in Beijing, China July 20, 2017. Picture taken July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee There are, however, signs that policymakers are making needed changes in other parts of the economy. Beijing<6E>s push to consolidate and restructure its industrial sector has paid dividends as factory output beat expectations, while strong fiscal spending and sustained public investment helped boost domestic demand. The economy slowed slightly from 6.9 percent in the second quarter, however, and analysts say it could ease further due to an expected softening in prope
'9a36cfadd0a7c28490314522bf8e75af4292f9ac'|'South Korea''s Naver invests further 100 million euros in French tech fund'|' 14 AM / in 7 minutes South Korea''s Naver invests further 100 million euros in French tech fund Reuters Staff 1 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - South Korea<65>s Naver Corp ( 035420.KS ) is investing a further 100 million euros ($118 million) in French technology fund K-Fund I, marking the latest sign of international interest in the French start-up technology scene, which is vying to rival London. K-Fund I is steered by Korelya Capital, which was founded and is led by former French digital economy minister Fleur Pellerin. Korean-born Pellerin is credited with launching the <20>French Tech<63> initiative in the early years of ex-President Francois Hollande<64>s mandate, which put the country<72>s burgeoning tech scene on the map. Earlier this year, Facebook ( FB.O ) picked Paris<69><73>Station F<> mega-campus as the site of its first ever start-ups incubator. [nL8N1JC16B] ($1 = 0.8474 euros) Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Gwenaelle Barzic; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-france-tech-naver/south-koreas-naver-invests-further-100-million-euros-in-french-tech-fund-idUKKBN1CO0FN'|'2017-10-19T08:14:00.000+03:00'
'7023532b17eceeae0aefee97c683fe2fd0fad0bb'|'Millions of Britons in financial difficulty'|'October 18, 2017 / 11:58 AM / in 7 hours Millions of Britons in financial difficulty 3 Min Read Shoppers walk through a market in Elephant and Castle south London, Britain October 5, 2015. REUTERS/Neil Hall LONDON (Reuters) - Over four million people in Britain are having difficulties paying their monthly bills, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said on Wednesday, at a time when inflation is rising and interest rates may follow. The financial regulator said that younger consumers and renters were among the most financially stretched, with those in difficulty defined as having failed to pay bills in three or more of the last six months and most likely to be in the 25-34 age range. The survey of 13,000 people, showed that nearly half of renters said they would struggle to meet a rent rise of less than a hundred pounds a month. This comes at a time when consumer credit has grown at rates that have raised regulatory concerns, and the Bank of England has signalled that an interest rate rise may be on the cards as inflation climbs to 5-1/2 year highs. Wage growth in Britain continues to lag behind inflation, eroding consumers<72> ability to pay rising bills. <20>We are in a situation where it<69>s fair to say that there is a significant group of people who have never experienced a rise in interest rates,<2C> said Chris Woolard, the FCA<43>s executive director of strategy and competition. FILE PHOTO: Smiling Union Jack piggy banks are lined up for sale in the window of a souvenir store on Oxford Street in central London January 20, 2014. REUTERS/Andrew Winning/File Photo <20>It does expose the scale of those in difficulties in the younger generation.<2E> The <20>Financial Lives<65> survey said that half of UK consumers, or 25.6 million people, were potentially vulnerable to any personal financial shock. <20>These findings confirm the scale of the financial issues that millions of people in the UK face, with 27 percent of UK adults just <20>surviving<6E> and at risk of falling into difficulty if their circumstances change,<2C> said Joanna Elson, chief executive of Money Advice Trust, which runs a national debt helpline. The FCA has been tasked with tackling high interest rates charged on some consumer credit loans, and is due to propose changes. <20>This is a story half done. There is still more for us to do, more for industry to do,<2C> Woolard said. The FCA will use information from the survey to shape rules in consumer credit, mortgages and other sectors. Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-financial-consumers/millions-of-britons-in-financial-difficulty-idUKKBN1CN1NC'|'2017-10-18T14:58:00.000+03:00'
'7b50edbf21821a72d85f78a5d601909f30af4d37'|'Cash-poor Alaska eyes foreign capital to jump-start energy projects'|'HOUSTON (Reuters) - Alaska is pursuing foreign investors for its oil and gas industry, hoping to advance recent discoveries while struggling to compete with lower-cost shale projects and reverse a decades-long output decline.FILE PHOTO: The sun sets behind an oil drilling rig in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska on March 17, 2011. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo Sovereign wealth funds, banks and state-owned energy companies have met with Alaskan officials, John Hendrix, chief energy adviser to Alaska Governor Bill Walker said in an interview. China Investment Corp (CIC) and state-owned Chinese energy company Sinopec held talks with state officials last month, he said.Alaskan crude production has fallen by three-quarters since 1988, a decline that has contributed to budget deficits and jeopardized the operation of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline, which runs from the North Slope to the southern port of Valdez. This year, a state budget shortfall led the state to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars owed to small oil explorers.The nascent investment push is mostly focused on Asian firms, which Alaskan officials believe could take roles in a proposed natural gas pipeline and in individual energy projects, said Hendrix, a former energy executive.<2E>It<49>s a wide, full-court press,<2C> he said.But oil companies operating in Alaska say the state should fully fund its explorer-incentive payments that along with crude prices around $50 have put at risk projects on the North Slope and in the National Petroleum Reserve. Chinese capital for energy development also faces federal reviews that could block the state<74>s effort.<2E>It<49>s a challenging sell,<2C> Hendrix said, adding that the proximity to Asian markets will boost the projects<74> appeal to energy importers. <20>When you talk about (exporting) to the Far East, we<77>re closer than California.<2E>CIC and Sinopec expressed interest in an 800-mile proposed natural gas pipeline that would run from Prudhoe Bay to a southern port, as well as oil and gas production projects, he said.FILE PHOTO: A mooring station for oil tankers can be seen at the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Marine Terminal in Valdez, Alaska on August 8, 2008. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo Sinopec is talking with Alaska about a potential investment in the gas pipeline, said a source in China with knowledge of the discussions. Sinopec and CIC declined to comment.Caelus, which disclosed a 6 billion-barrel North Slope oil discovery a year ago, delayed its drilling plans this summer, in part over the lack of incentive payments.<2E>It<49>s hard to plan when you don<6F>t know the rules,<2C> Caelus spokesman Casey Sullivan said.FILE PHOTO: A field of 14 storage tanks that each hold 510,000bbls of oil can be seen at the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Marine Terminal in Valdez, Alaska on August 8, 2008. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo The state previously paid small companies for some costs of exploring and developing oil and gas projects, which are higher than in many other regions. This year, the state gave those companies only a portion, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars unpaid.Alaska<6B>s fiscal uncertainty helps create more risk than in other U.S. regions and could discourage sovereign wealth funds from investing, said Wood Mackenzie analyst Alison Wolters.The reason small companies are struggling to attract outside capital is the decline in state incentive payments, said Kara Moriarty, CEO of trade group Alaska Oil and Gas Association.Foreign investment can be reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to ensure that it does not pose national security risks.CFIUS reviews have halted energy deals involving foreign investment and the Trump administration appears skeptical of Chinese investment, said two CFIUS experts who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect business relationships.<2E>I think it<69>s going to be very difficult for Chinese to make significant investments in energy in the United States,<2C> one expert said.Reporting by Rod Nicke
'9989209a7ff7c1d096399452322be6f8e486062b'|'Kobe Steel crisis deepens as plant inspected for breach of industrial law'|'Reuters TV United States October 20, 2017 / 4:35 AM / Updated 22 minutes ago Kobe Steel crisis deepens as plant inspected for breach of industrial law Reuters Staff 4 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - One of Kobe Steel Ltd<74>s ( 5406.T ) copper plants was being inspected for a possible breach of industrial standards, the government said on Friday, while the company said it was investigating reports it continued shipping products after discovering widespread tampering of product data. An aerial view shows Kobe Steel''s Kobe Works steel plant in Kobe, western Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo May 25, 2013. Picture taken May 25, 2013. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS The inspection by the Japan Quality Assurance Organization started on Thursday, a company spokesman told Reuters by phone. The industry ministry said the inspection was being carried out at a copper tube plant at Hatano, southwest of Tokyo. If the company<6E>s products fail to meet industrial standards set by the government, it would be a breach of law, deepening the crisis at Japan<61>s embattled third-largest steelmaker. Until now, the company had said products it sold with falsified data met safety and other standards but did not meet contract specifications agreed with customers. Kobe Steel said it would hold a news conference later on Friday on the falsification. Japan<61>s third-largest steelmaker said on Oct. 8 that it found widespread falsification of data on the strength and durability of products sent to customers. The falsifications stretch back for more than 10 years, a senior executive told Reuters this week. The company is now subject to a U.S. Justice Department probe while checks continue at hundreds of its clients involved in complex supply chains spanning the globe. Global automakers, aircraft companies and other manufacturers have scrambled to identify potential hazards in their products because of the falsification. The company has said no illegality had been found related to the data fabrication and no safety issues have yet been reported. Kobe Steel is also checking into a Nikkei report that it continued shipping products with falsified data after discovering the cheating in August, the company spokesman said. Government ministers waded into the fray on Friday, with one saying the government would take an active role in getting to the bottom of a scandal that is tarnishing the image of Japanese manufacturers. An aerial view shows Kobe Steel''s Kobe Works steel plant in Kobe, western Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo May 25, 2013. Picture taken May 25, 2013. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS <20>This is a problem between companies, but we want to be actively involved in the issues,<2C> Hiroshige Seko, minister of economy, trade and industry, told a news conference. Transport Minister Keiichi Ishii also urged the company to investigate the falsifications and take proper prevention measures. <20>It was extremely regrettable,<2C> Ishii told a news conference. FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the signboard of Kobe Steel at the group''s Tokyo headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo No safety problems have surfaced as Kobe Steel attempts to confirm the extent of the data tampering. But in Europe, aviation safety authorities earlier this week issued a directive advising aircraft manufacturers to avoid using Kobe Steel products if they can until checks are completed. Four Japanese automakers said on Thursday they found no safety issues with aluminum parts supplied by Kobe Steel, allaying some concerns that falsified quality data on products from the steelmaker had compromised their vehicles. Nonetheless, the company<6E>s fate hangs in the balance while checks are being carried out. It must report to Japan<61>s industry ministry by around the end of next week on any safety concerns and provide a more extensive account of the problems a fortnight later. Kobe Steel shares fell 1.6 percent on Friday. They have fallen nearly 40 pe
'5901615dce5b3d00c7803ae91dba64453f0e35af'|'Potlatch nears all-stock acquisition of Deltic Timber: sources'|'(Reuters) - U.S. forest products company Potlatch Corp ( PCH.O ) is nearing an all-stock deal to acquire smaller peer Deltic Timber Corp ( DEL.N ), people familiar with the matter said on Sunday.The deal could offer Potlatch more scale to cope with price volatility in the lumber market. Even before Hurricanes Harvey and Irma struck this year, U.S. residential construction had almost stagnated because of shortages of land and skilled labor, as well as rising costs of building materials.Deltic had said in August that it would work with investment bank Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( GS.N ) and law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP to review its options after activist shareholder Southeastern Asset Management Inc pressured it to explore a sale.The companies could announce a deal as early as Monday, the sources said, requesting anonymity because the negotiations are confidential.The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news, cited sources as saying Potlatch would offer 1.8 of its common shares for each Deltic share.Shareholders of Potlatch, which is organized as a real estate investment trust, would as a result own about 65 percent of the combined company, with Deltic stockholders holding the rest.Potlatch and Deltic did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Potlatch has about 1.4 million acres of timberland in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Minnesota and Mississippi. Its market capitalization is $2.2 billion.Deltic, which has a $1.1 billion market value and is based in El Dorado, Arkansas, owns about 530,000 acres of timberland, operates two sawmills and a medium-density fiberboard plant, and develops real estate.Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-deltictimber-m-a-potlatch/potlatch-nears-all-stock-acquisition-of-deltic-timber-sources-idINKBN1CR0VH'|'2017-10-22T17:57:00.000+03:00'
'33632de90446ac0d7849013578e02692cf5e36aa'|'Travel company TUI plans extra flight capacity after Monarch failure'|'* TUI laid on more flights after Monarch collapse* Tunisia holidays unlikely to resume until next winter -MD* Thomson rebranded as TUI UKBy Alistair SmoutLONDON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Europe<70>s largest tour operator TUI is putting on extra flights to make up for capacity lost after this month<74>s collapse of Monarch, TUI<55>s UK and Ireland boss said on Wednesday.Shares of leading travel companies and airlines rose after Monarch went bust, with investors betting that intense competition in the sector could ease.At an event to announce TUI<55>s rebranding of its UK operation to TUI UK from Thomson, the company<6E>s UK and Ireland Managing Director Nick Longman said it had already laid on extra flights and is looking to add more.<2E>There will be an opportunity to look at putting some new routes on to the market. We<57>ve already done that a little for this winter,<2C> Longman told Reuters, adding that TUI is also looking at more routes for next summer.Unlike British Airways owner IAG and budget airline easyJet, TUI is not interested in acquiring Monarch slots at UK airports, Longman said, adding that extra capacity could be obtained from TUI<55>s existing slot base and by working with other airline partners.Monarch fell victim to an intense price war in the airline sector after security concerns disrupted travel to the Middle East and North Africa and resulted in increased competition on popular destinations in the western Mediterranean.TUI has said that it is looking at restoring holidays to Tunisia. All holidays there were halted after an Islamist attack on a resort in Sousse killed 30 Britons who had booked their holidays through TUI.Rival Thomas Cook has already restarted its Tunisian holidays after Britain changed its travel advice.<2E>If there is sufficient consumer demand ... then we will introduce a programme to Tunisia. We<57>ll possibly look at it for summer, but more likely it will be next winter,<2C> Longman said.Another destination that has been disrupted is the Carribean after a particularly violent hurricane season.Longman said that while some ports, such as in Dominica, would be out of action into next year, he does not expect a long-term impact on travel to the region.The rebranding exercise brings the end of a famnous British travel brand in Thomson, which was founded in 1965. Longman said that Thomson had a strong brand but has become outdated as travel habits have moved away from traditional package holidays towards city and long-haul breaks.<2E>Thomson conjures up great nostalgia for many people. But that can also be a bit limiting, and the types of holidays people want are changing,<2C> he said.Reporting by Alistair Smout; Editing by David Goodman'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-tui-flights/travel-company-tui-plans-extra-flight-capacity-after-monarch-failure-idINL8N1MS64I'|'2017-10-17T21:01:00.000+03:00'
'ab8c15420efc6dc3effe76ed3ee2fd41f97c60c1'|'PRESS DIGEST- British Business - Oct 18'|'Oct 18 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.The Times- An attempt by the UK government to keep secret documents about the financial crisis during the 600-million-pound lawsuit over Lloyds Banking Group Plc''s acquisition of HBOS has been thwarted, as the judge refused a request by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to suppress full publication of documents that contain the views of the government compiled at the height of the crisis in 2008. bit.ly/2hN0WXE- The UK Civil Aviation Authority has defended its actions over the collapse of Monarch Airlines, saying that it was not to blame for the carrier going into administration. bit.ly/2hORXF0The Guardian- The UK treasury has rejected calls for a second EU referendum after the west''s leading economic think tank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, said reversing the decision to leave would significantly benefit the economy. bit.ly/2hNBp0c- Bombardier Inc has raised hopes of safeguarding 1,000 jobs in Belfast, saying it was confident a deal for Airbus SE to take a majority stake in the C-Series jet programme would help it avoid punishing U.S. import tariffs. bit.ly/2hMP8EtThe Telegraph- Rio Tinto Plc has been charged with fraud in the U.S. and handed down a 27.4-million-pound ($36.14-million) fine in the UK over its handling of its coal assets in Mozambique. bit.ly/2hMW44A- UK Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark has proposed new laws aimed at enabling the government to intervene in deals in certain sectors, such as companies making military products as the government is hoping to tighten its grasp on merger and takeover deals in the interest of national security. bit.ly/2hNVinRSky News- Sainsbury Plc on Tuesday unveiled plans to cut up to 2,000 UK jobs as part of its programme to save hundreds of millions of pounds in costs. bit.ly/2hMVXWI- The UK government is exerting pressure on developers to prevent so-called "landbanking" and boost house building, the UK Communities Secretary has signalled. bit.ly/2hMdSg4The Independent- Christopher Burghardt, Uber Technologies Inc''s head of policy for Europe, Middle East and Africa has quit the company to join electric vehicle charging network firm Chargepoint. ind.pn/2hNk0VJ- Bank of England Governor Mark Carney told MPs on Tuesday that inflation has not yet peaked, and that the Bank''s Monetary Policy Committee expects inflation to remain above the Treasury''s 2 percent target for three years. ind.pn/2hNBMYO$1 = 0.7582 pounds Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Sandra Maler'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-press-business/press-digest-british-business-oct-18-idINL2N1MT00H'|'2017-10-17T22:29:00.000+03:00'
'12838469e7756974a86e5da6c421611f45a4cada'|'Air Berlin seeks damages from Etihad - Rheinische Post'|'FRANKFURT, Oct 21 (Reuters) - German airline Air Berlin is demanding damages from its part-owner Etihad Airways for letting it become insolvent and it hopes for payment of at least 10 million euros ($11.8 million), Air Berlin<69>s administrator told a German newspaper.<2E>We are in negotiations with Etihad and hope to reach a general settlement soon. We are hoping for a two-digit million euro sum,<2C> daily Rheinische Post on Saturday Quote: d administrator Frank Kebekus as saying.Air Berlin, Germany<6E>s second-biggest airline after Lufthansa, filed for bankruptcy in August after Etihad, the owner of almost 30 percent of Air Berlin, withdrew funding following years of losses.Etihad was not immediately available for comment.The Abu Dhabi-based carrier has been reviewing its European investments after they failed to yield the profits expected. Alitalia, another of Etihad<61>s investments, is also in administration and is seeking bidders.Air Berlin<69>s planes have been kept in the air by a 150 million euro government loan, which Kebekus said the carrier could repay with the proceeds from a sale of assets to larger rival Lufthansa agreed last week.<2E>We will in all likelihood repay the loan including interest of around 10 percent,<2C> Kebekus said.Holders of more than 600 million euros worth of outstanding Air Berlin bonds will meanwhile likely lose out, he said, as their claims would only be considered after many others, including Air Berlin<69>s staff, had been paid.Air Berlin is due to cease operating flights by Oct. 28 at the latest, and Kebekus said that around 4,000 workers could then lose their jobs unless a transfer company was set up that would temporarily employ them until they found work elsewhere.$1 = 0.8487 euros Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Additional reporting by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Stephen Powell '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/air-berlin-lufthansa-etihad/air-berlin-seeks-damages-from-etihad-rheinische-post-idINL8N1MW091'|'2017-10-21T09:09:00.000+03:00'
'b31c9d1cc8a291b9731b2022b499b96085e4263f'|'Stock market''s future in Trump''s hands as Federal Reserve chair pick looms'|'October 20, 2017 / 7:57 PM / Updated a day ago Stock market''s future in Trump''s hands as Federal Reserve chair pick looms Rodrigo Campos 7 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors awaiting the nomination of the next Federal Reserve chair are hoping whoever is nominated pursues the same monetary policy that has supported rising stock prices for the past nine years. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Led by Janet Yellen since 2014, the Fed is about to allow its $4.5 trillion portfolio of securities to shrink, and in late 2015 it began raising interest rates from the low levels seen after the 2008 financial crisis. A new Fed chair who argues for tightening monetary policy more aggressively is seen putting economic growth at risk, along with corporate earnings, and the long stock market rally. A faster rise in short-term interest rates would likely flatten the yield curve, narrowing the gap between short and long term debt yields, which could crimp bank profits and strengthen the U.S. dollar, hurting exporters<72> sales. U.S. President Donald Trump has selected a pool of five candidates from which to choose the next Fed chair: current Fed Chair Janet Yellen; Trump<6D>s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn; former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh; current Fed Governor Jerome Powell, and Stanford University economist John Taylor. Cohn and Powell are the two most likely to follow current Fed policy, while Taylor and Warsh are seen likely to push for raising interest rates at a faster clip and to argue for a quicker run-down in the bond portfolio accumulated after the 2008 crisis. Most important to stock investors is the continuation of the so-called <20>Fed put<75>, or the expectation of easy monetary policy as stock prices fall that first came into prominence under former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan. For years investors in stocks have assumed the Fed granted them a put option, effectively providing insurance against a market fall, by flooding money markets with cash and buying government bonds to keep interest rates low whenever economic growth slumped or geopolitical risks rose. Under Bernanke, the Fed helped to navigate the economy out of the 2008 financial crisis until 2014 when he was succeeded by Yellen. During that time the U.S. benchmark S&P 500 stock index .SPX rose nearly 40 percent. Since Yellen took over from him in February 2014, the index has gained a further 45 percent. <20>I think in their hearts every modern Fed chair knows that the institution<6F>s mandate has to include stock prices,<2C> said Nicholas Colas, co-founder at DataTrek Research in New York. President Trump has praised the record highs in U.S. stock prices, perhaps making it less likely that he would nominate someone who would deviate markedly from current Fed policy. Following is a summary of possible markets reactions to the nomination of each name in Trump<6D>s shortlist (in alphabetical order): GARY COHN A Cohn nomination would <20>be met positively,<2C> said Walter Todd, chief investment officer at Greenwood Capital Associates in Greenwood, South Carolina. <20>The perception is that he is market friendly.<2E> Cohn is currently director of the White House National Economic Council and is a former president of investment bank Goldman Sachs. <20>If (Cohn) were to reach that position I think the market would trade the dollar lower and you<6F>d see a steepening of 5-30s in the U.S. yield curve, because he<68>d be viewed as having the biggest impact on inflation expectations moving forward,<2C> said Kay Mirza, global head of FX trading at Goldman Sachs. JEROME POWELL A governor on the Federal Reserve board since 2012, Powell has yet to cast a dissenting vote against the Federal Open Market Committee<65>s decisions on monetary policy. His appointment would remove uncertainty and would likely see Fed policy continue little changed. FILE PHOTO: Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen speaks during a news c
'884cc9c227eab335c842f3a9e1587b4072f9bddd'|'China economy on track to hit 2017 growth target - state planner'|'October 21, 2017 / 7:40 AM / in 5 hours China still on track to hit growth target despite winter smog war - state planner Kevin Yao , Meng Meng 4 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s economy is on track to meet its official growth target for 2017, the head of the state planning agency said on Saturday, despite a punishing war on pollution which is expected to slash industrial output over the winter months. He Lifeng, Chairman of China''s National Development and Reform Commission, attends the China Development Forum in Beijing, China, March 19, 2017. REUTERS/Shu Zhang China has forced 28 cities in smog-prone northern regions to reduce emissions of airborne particles known as PM2.5 by at least 15 percent from October to March 2017, with some cities expected to cut steel production by as much as 50 percent. But officials with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said the world<6C>s second-largest economy will remain on track. <20>We expect to achieve the full-year growth target of about 6.5 percent,<2C> He Lifeng, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), told a briefing on the sidelines of China<6E>s Communist Party Congress. Most economists believe China<6E>s actual growth should easily beat the target. The economy grew 6.8 percent in the third quarter of the year, and 6.9 percent in the first half. Last year<61>s growth rate of 6.7 percent was a 26-year low. China<6E>s economy has surprised global markets and investors with robust growth so far this year, driven by a renaissance in its long-ailing <20>smokestack<63> industries such as steel and stronger demand from Europe and the United States. But economists with Societe Generale said in a recent note that the winter output cuts could slash industrial production growth by 0.6-0.8 percentage points and GDP growth by 0.2-0.25 percentage points in the next six months. Industrial growth slowed to 6.3 percent in the third quarter, from 6.6 percent in the previous period, data showed last week, with the services sector taking up much of the slack. Prices of commodities like steel, copper and iron ore have turned wildly volatile in China and in global markets recent weeks on fears of possible winter shortages. China<6E>s steel output dropped 3.7 percent in September from a record high the previous month as mills reduced production in line with Beijing<6E>s campaign, and analysts predict further declines as winter curbs set in. However, Zhang Yong, vice-chairman of the NDRC, told reporters that the direct impact was likely to be limited. <20>Measures to fight pollution don<6F>t have a big impact on economic growth,<2C> he said. <20>Measures to treat pollution have a positive impact on economic development in the long term.<2E> The government has been pushing a restructuring programme designed to <20>upgrade<64> its heavy industrial economy, cut pollution and tackle profit-sapping capacity gluts in sectors like steel and coal. China says it has cut annual crude steel capacity by as much as 110 million tonnes over the last five years, with coal capacity slashed by as much as 400 million tonnes, though some analysts say much of the outdated, inefficient plants are merely being replaced with leaner, cleaner ones. Ning Jizhe, vice head of the NDRC and also head of China<6E>s National Bureau of Statistics, said the country would continue to crack down on steel overcapacity, prevent obsolete plants from restarting and promote more mergers in the sector. Reporting by Kevin Yao and Meng Meng; Writing by David Stanway; Editing by Kim Coghill and Tom Hogue'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-economy/china-economy-on-track-to-hit-2017-growth-target-state-planner-idUKKBN1CQ070'|'2017-10-21T10:39:00.000+03:00'
'cfbaa8718b59887adaa3e343300123af2b65abca'|'Workers are not switching jobs more often'|'EVERYBODY knows<77>or at least thinks he knows<77>that a millennial with one job must be after a new one. Today<61>s youngsters are thought to have little loyalty towards their employers and to be prone to <20>job-hop<6F>. Millennials (ie, those born after about 1982) are indeed more likely to switch jobs than their older colleagues. But that is more a result of how old they are than of the era they were born in. In America at least, average job tenures have barely changed in recent decades.Data from America<63>s Bureau of Labour Statistics show workers aged 25 and over now spend a median of 5.1 years with their employers, slightly more than in 1983 (see chart). Job tenure has declined for the lower end of that age group, but only slightly. Men between the ages of 25 and 34 now spend a median of 2.9 years with each employer, down from 3.2 years in 1983. 11 15 It is middle-aged men whose relationship with their employers has changed most dramatically. Partly because of a collapse in the number of semi-skilled jobs and the decline of labour unions, the median job tenure for men aged 45-54 in America has fallen from 12.8 years in 1983 to 8.4. That decline has been offset by women staying longer in their jobs and higher retirement ages, which is why the overall numbers have barely changed.American workers are also now less likely to move home to find new work (see article ). Fewer than 12% moved home last year, down from 20% in the 1950s. This pattern is true of younger workers, too: only a fifth of Americans between the ages of 25 and 35 moved last year; for past generations the fraction was closer to a quarter.One place where millennials probably are switching jobs more often is western Europe. Data from the OECD, a think-tank, show that since 1992 in each of France, Germany, Italy and Spain, the average job tenure for workers has increased overall. But it has shortened for younger workers. However, it is far from clear that this is by the young workers<72> choice. Labour-market restrictions in Europe have forced a growing share of workers into temporary <20>gigs<67>. Over half of workers aged 15 to 24 in those four countries are on fixed-term contracts.Data on Britain, which has looser labour-market regulations than continental Europe, tell a more complicated tale. OECD statistics show that average job tenures have fallen for young Brits. But research from the Resolution Foundation, another think-tank, finds that millennials are actually less likely to leave jobs voluntarily than the previous generation. Britons are also moving home less often. Between 2001 and 2016, the share of workers moving home to change jobs fell from around 0.7% to 0.5%. The number of workers doing so for work in Britain has risen again in recent years, but is still below its 2001 peak.Some workers are indeed hopping from startup to startup every six months, or working as quasi-freelancers for Uber. But they are the exceptions. A drastic increase in job-switching rates would probably require a correspondingly drastic increase in labour demand. Those who fret that millennials are fickle may have too rosy a view of the labour market.This article appeared in the Finance and economics section of the print edition under the headline "Staying put"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21730440-millennials-it-turns-out-are-loyal-and-boring-previous?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-19T22:56:00.000+03:00'
'02bdfeec858c553bc1c92864761404c377fc6293'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX futures higher on US tax reform move'|'October 20, 2017 / 11:29 AM / in 4 minutes CANADA STOCKS-TSX futures higher on US tax reform move Reuters Staff 3 Min Read Oct 20 (Reuters) - Stock futures for Canada<64>s main stock index edged higher on Friday after the U.S. Senate approved a budget blueprint that paves the way for tax cuts, raising speculation on the return of the <20>Trumpflation trade<64>, and ahead of inflation data. December futures on the S&P TSX index were up 0.23 percent at 7:15 a.m. ET. CPI inflation data for September and retail sales data for August are due at 08:30 a.m. ET. Canada<64>s main stock index rose on Thursday as financial and industrial shares climbed, while lower oil prices weighed on energy stocks. Dow Jones Industrial Average e-mini futures were up 0.39 percent at 7:15 a.m. ET, while S&P 500 e-mini futures were up 0.22 percent and Nasdaq 100 e-mini futures were up 0.24 percent. (Morning News Call newsletter here ; The Day Ahead newsletter here ) TOP STORIES British Business Secretary Greg Clark will hold talks in Canada on Friday to discuss Airbus SE<53>s plans to buy a majority stake in Bombardier<65>s C-Series jetliner program aimed at helping it avoid high U.S. import tariffs. Thailand<6E>s PTT has put off plans to develop its Mariana oil sands project in Canada due to weak oil prices, and booked its third impairment on the project in three years, taking total writedowns on it to $1.8 billion. ANALYST RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS Kinross Gold Corp: Canaccord Genuity raises price target to C$8 from C$7.75 Sandstorm Gold Ltd: Canaccord Genuity cuts price target to C$9.50 from C$10 COMMODITIES AT 7:15 a.m. ET Gold futures: $1279.6; -0.57 percent US crude: $50.83; -0.9 percent Brent crude: $56.84; -0.68 percent LME 3-month copper: $7039; +1.03 percent U.S. ECONOMIC DATA DUE ON FRIDAY 1000 Existing home sales for Sep: Expected 5.30 mln; Prior 5.35 mln 1000 Existing Home sales percentage change for Sep: Expected -1.0 pct; Prior -1.7 pct 1030 ECRI Weekly Index: Prior 145.2 1030 ECRI weekly annualized: Prior 1.2 pct FOR CANADIAN MARKETS NEWS, CLICK ON CODES: TSX market report Canadian dollar and bonds report Reuters global stocks poll for Canada Canadian markets directory ($1 = C$1.25) (Reporting by Pathikrit Bandyopadhyay in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D<>Silva)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks/canada-stocks-tsx-futures-higher-on-us-tax-reform-move-idUSL4N1MV3FT'|'2017-10-20T14:24:00.000+03:00'
'e28d21303744f08004fba163476bcbbf527050aa'|'Exclusive: Iberdrola demands change at Siemens Gamesa as problems mount'|'MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish utility Iberdrola ( IBE.MC ) used its influence to change the management of Siemens Gamesa ( SGREN.MC ) on Friday after the wind-power joint venture suffered two profit warnings in less than three months.FILE PHOTO: A model of a wind turbine with the Siemens Gamesa logo is displayed outside the annual general shareholders meeting in Zamudio, Spain, June 20, 2017. REUTERS/Vincent West/File Photo Germany<6E>s Siemens ( SIEGn.DE ) has a controlling stake of 59 per cent in Spanish-based Siemens Gamesa but Iberdrola, with an 8 percent stake, has a say in some governance matters thanks to a deal signed when Siemens Wind agreed to merge with Gamesa last year.Iberdrola demanded change at a board meeting on Friday, people with knowledge of the situation said, prompted by a second profit warning from the joint venture last week [nL8N1MR1LJ].Siemens Gamesa, which vies with Denmark<72>s Vestas as the world<6C>s biggest wind turbine maker, announced a management reshuffle shortly after the board meeting.The changes include a new chief financial officer and new CEO for the rapidly growing offshore division. Miguel Angel Lopez will replace Andrew Hall after only six months as CFO.Iberdrola, Siemens and Siemens Gamesa declined to comment on the changes.Siemens Gamesa is also delaying to February the Capital Markets Day where it was going to announce a new strategy.CULTURE CLASH The clash at the joint venture highlights the problems that can emerge when former cross-border rivals with contrasting business cultures merge and establish new chains of command.<2E>The relationship with Iberdrola had been difficult from day one<6E>, one of the sources said.<2E>Siemens Gamesa is now a German elephant. Every single important decision must be approved by the Germans. It has lost Gamesa<73>s agility,<2C> said another source.Since the merger Gamesa Siemens<6E> shares have tumbled more than 44 per cent as it repeatedly cut its forecasts for profitability. On Friday, its shares hit the bottom of the Stoxx 600 index losing 4 percent.The wider industry has suffered from stiff competition and a winding down of state subsidies, but Danish rival Vesta<74>s ( VWS.CO ) shares have fallen by just 4.9 percent during the same period.One reason for Siemens Gamesa<73>s underperformance is its exposure to the Indian market, which is in transition from a subsidized market to an auction-led one leading to more competition and pressure on wind turbine prices.<2E>The shift in the Indian wind market to an auction system has resulted in a significant slowdown in installations in 2017 ... partially affecting Siemens Gamesa<73>s 2017 earnings<67>, said Goldman Sachs in a recent report.Meanwhile, Siemens has announced another joint venture with French Alstom to create a European champion in the railway sector.Additional reporting by Alexander Huebner in Munich; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer and Elaine Hardcastle '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-siemensgamesa-management-exclusive/exclusive-iberdrola-demands-change-at-siemens-gamesa-as-problems-mount-idUSKBN1CP1TO'|'2017-10-20T17:00:00.000+03:00'
'9157e6063ebb020f5b0cc57ff1cd7d6f66706427'|'Global Economy: High noon for the ECB, Draghi at the QE Corral'|'FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Not for the first time, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is facing a tricky balancing act.FILE PHOTO: European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi waits to address the European Parliament''s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee in Brussels, Belgium September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir - File Photo With the euro zone economic recovery well into its fifth year, the time has come to cut stimulus. Yet, overly ambitious tightening could choke off the very growth Draghi has fostered, threatening to undo years of work.Draghi also has to find common ground between policy hawks, who argue the ECB has spent its firepower so any further stimulus has negligible effect, and doves, who point to persistently weak inflation as evidence the bank has not met its price-stability mandate.The compromise is likely to be a cut in bond purchases at Thursday<61>s policy meeting, twinned with a lengthy extension of stimulus and a commitment to keep rates low for many years to come.Such a move would ensure that easy policy persists while also reducing the ECB<43>s reliance on unconventional tools and potentially paving the way to exit bond purchases.The problem is that while growth is on its best run in a decade, unemployment remains high, wage growth is barely visible and inflation will probably not rise back to the ECB<43>s target before the end of the decade.The bond purchases have depressed borrowing costs but the ECB is slowly running out of debt to buy so it either takes a step towards the exit or redraws the rules of the programme, a potentially controversial move that may send the wrong signal.A Reuters poll of economists concluded the ECB Central Bank it will start trimming its monthly asset purchases to 40 billion euros from 60 billion euros in January.It was mostly split on whether the programme would last six or nine more months after that. [ECILT/EU]Sources close to the ECB<43>s pre-meeting discussions say the a nine-month extension seems likely with debate over monthly volumes between 25 and 40 billion euros a month. [nL8N1MO0YM]But the real issue will be whether to keep the asset buys open ended, making another extension possible, or signal an eventual end of bond purchases, as demanded by hawks, including powerhouse Germany.While this debate is still open, sources speaking to Reuters said it is more likely the bank would maintain the flexibility and even signal a willingness to increase asset buys if the outlook sours.That, says UBS, is crucial: <20>We view the duration of the extension in net asset purchases as more important than the monthly size in ensuring the ECB<43>s ability to manage the expectations around its future policy.<2E>New bond purchases will add little to inflation. But they will buy the ECB some time as it waits for growth to finally translate into inflation.In a glimmer of hope for policymakers, Germany<6E>s largest trade union recently asked for a 6 percent wage hike for nearly 4 million workers, an ambitious move, which could lift wages across the board as many employee groups look to IG Metall to set the trend.Euro zone inflation - currently at 1.5 percent - remains well below the ECB<43>s target of almost 2 percent and expectations are for it to stay that way at least until 2019.HURRICANES While the euro zone enjoys its growth run, the United States, the world<6C>s biggest economy, probably suffered a major hit last quarter, mostly due to the disruptions from hurricanes.An advance release of third quarter data at the end of the coming week is likely to show growth slowing to 2.6 percent from 3.1 percent with a decline in retail sales, industrial production, homebuilding and home sales blamed on Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.Rebuilding efforts are, however, expected to boost GDP growth in the fourth quarter and in early 2018, suggesting that the dip is temporary and will be mostly compensated for in the coming quarters.<2E>Damages from the hurricanes will likely total around $150 billion
'7f75585b8ef8634bb2ed0287469fce30a88fc194'|'Saudi Oil Minister Falih arrives in Baghdad, Sumariya TV says'|'Reuters TV United States #Oil report October 21, 2017 / 8:54 AM / in a few seconds SAUDI OIL MINISTER FALIH ADDRESSES BAGHDAD INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, FIRST SAUDI OFFICIAL TO MAKE PUBLIC SPEECH IN IRAQ FOR SEVERAL DECADES Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SAUDI OIL MINISTER FALIH ADDRESSES BAGHDAD INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, FIRST SAUDI OFFICIAL TO MAKE PUBLIC SPEECH IN IRAQ FOR SEVERAL DECADES'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/saudi-oil-minister-falih-addresses-baghd/saudi-oil-minister-falih-addresses-baghdad-international-exhibition-first-saudi-official-to-make-public-speech-in-iraq-for-several-decades-idINMT1ALTL8N1MW0483'|'2017-10-21T11:09:00.000+03:00'
'34c033f2adb2609b1df677cd3c229bab966c06b4'|'UK company profit warnings jump in third quarter - EY'|'October 21, 2017 / 11:05 PM / Updated 6 hours ago UK company profit warnings jump in third quarter - EY Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The number of profit warnings issued by British companies jumped to 75 in the third quarter, the biggest quarterly rise in almost six years as economic pressures weighed on retailers and support service companies, business services group EY said on Sunday. A traffic sign is pictured in front of the skyline of the the Canary Wharf financial district in London October 21, 2010. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor The spike came straight after one of the biggest falls recorded in the previous quarter, when there were 45 warnings, and is significantly ahead of the average of 62 in the third quarter, EY said. <20>Summer brought more mixed fortunes for UK plc with the contrast between accelerating overseas markets and the slowing UK economy increasing,<2C> said EY<45>s head of restructuring Alan Hudson. <20>Many businesses besieged by pricing pressures before Brexit are also now feeling the brunt of rising domestic uncertainty and rising costs.<2E> Retailer Dixons Carphone ( DC.L ) and construction and support service firm Carillion ( CLLN.L ) were two of the biggest companies to warn in the period. The warnings have showed no sign of slowing in October, with park operator Merlin Entertainments ( MERL.L ), engineer GKN ( GKN.L ), workspace group IWG ( IWG.L ) and another support services company, Interserve ( IRV.L ), all downgrading forecasts. Reporting by Paul Sandle, editing by David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-profitwarnings/uk-company-profit-warnings-jump-in-third-quarter-ey-idUKKBN1CQ0UU'|'2017-10-22T02:05:00.000+03:00'
'16b120b6c4b81f46f16c119bd7bb20a08a21f6c5'|'UPDATE 1-Creditors request delay of Oi assembly -sources'|'(Updates with details on the creditors<72> request)BRASILIA/SAO PAULO, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Creditors including state-controlled lender Banco do Brasil SA, development bank BNDES and groups representing bondholders on Thursday requested the delay of Monday<61>s creditors assembly of Brazilian phone company Oi SA, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.Oi<4F>s revised restructuring plan proposed by management last week has been publicly rejected by the steering committees of key bondholder groups and most export credit agencies.Creditors want the company to revise the restructuring plan once more. Banco do Brasil declined to comment. BNDES and representatives for the steering committees of Oi<4F>s two largest bondholder groups did not immediately comment.$1 = 3.17 reais Reporting by Leonardo Goy in Brasilia and Tatiana Bautzer in Sao Paulo; Editing by Sandra Maler '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/oi-sa-restructuring/update-1-creditors-request-delay-of-oi-assembly-sources-idINL2N1MV01C'|'2017-10-19T23:02:00.000+03:00'
'56c29e20ba5ca93ee8868e522c03460f023c3604'|'Exclusive: PDVSA blocked from using NuStar terminal over unpaid bills'|'HOUSTON (Reuters) - Venezuela<6C>s state-run petroleum firm PDVSA has been barred from using a NuStar Energy ( NS.N ) oil storage terminal in the Caribbean over $26 million in unpaid bills, according to documents reviewed by Reuters, halting delivery of a cargo to an oil trader.FILE PHOTO: The corporate logo of the state oil company PDVSA is seen at a gas station in Caracas, Venezuela, August 30, 2017. REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares/File Photo The suspension was triggered when PDVSA missed a payment for use of NuStar<61>s Statia facility on the island of St. Eustatius, according to company documents viewed by Reuters.<2E>We should not load this cargo,<2C> wrote NuStar Vice President James Calvert in response to a loading request, according to one document.NuStar<61>s refusal to retrieve the oil over what amounts to nearly a year<61>s worth of monthly fees shows how recurring legal and trade disputes are disrupting PDVSA<53>s ability to deliver its oil to foreign customers, which generate more than 90 percent of the country<72>s export revenue.Shipping delays and quality concerns also are jeopardizing the OPEC-member country<72>s crude sales, the lifeblood of its troubled economy.The suspension comes months after PDVSA had expanded its NuStar storage contract following a payment dispute with Buckeye Partners ( BPL.N ) over a Bahamas storage facility. Both U.S. firms operate key transit hubs for companies that move oil through the Caribbean.NuStar declined to comment. PDVSA did not respond to a request to comment.NuStar<61>s refusal and other details of PDVSA<53>s payment problems emerged after trader Trafigura [TRAFG.UL] sought to load a cargo of Venezuelan oil held at Statia. Trafigura was the winner of a court-ordered auction of the heavy crude intended to help resolve a separate billing dispute between PDVSA and units of Russian state-run conglomerate Sovcomflot ( IPO-SKF.MM ).Trafigura declined to comment on the auction or whether it expects to receive the cargo. Sovcomflot also declined to comment.NuStar first sought fees for the stored oil from PDVSA. On Oct. 10, after receiving no response from the Venezuelan firm, NuStar sent a $287,500 invoice to Sigma Navigation, a unit of Sovcomflot. NuStar offered to allow the oil to be loaded by Oct. 20 if payment was made before that date.That request led to a series of exchanges between representatives of the three companies. In one, a law firm representing Sigma alerted PDVSA<53>s lawyers that its client was willing to pay the NuStar bill but reserved the right to seek repayment as part of the broader claim, according to documents.Sigma<6D>s lawyers also revealed in emails that, according to its talks with NuStar, the U.S. firm was claiming PDVSA owed it another $26 million for accumulated unpaid Statia storage fees.LONG TRIP The tangled story of the oil cargo at the heart of the dispute began a year ago, when PDVSA sent 550,000 barrels of crude oil to St. Eustatius on tanker NS Columbus rented from Sovcomflot. The oil had been sold to Norway<61>s Statoil ( STL.OL ), which planned to retrieve it at Statia.Before it could get there, Sovcomflot had a St. Maarten court freeze the delivery in hopes of collecting partial payment for shipping fees unpaid by PDVSA. Five months after crossing the Caribbean, the court ordered the tanker to discharge its cargo at Statia.Trafigura<72>s attempts to obtain the oil first were delayed due to force majeure declared by NuStar due to Hurricane Irma, and later over the unpaid bills between PDVSA and NuStar.<2E>We are facing a delay in the payment for the use of such facilities and related services contracted there. PDVSA is doing its best to catch up with outstanding debts, but has not made any special arrangements to cover the storage costs of the relevant tank,<2C> a PDVSA official wrote in an email in October.The PDVSA official explained that <20>since June no payment has been made to NuStar,<2C> but also said that a payment schedule was proposed to the U.S. firm in a meeting in
'b778908ff8f9c2c756b9f1a02549c45e5652e5cb'|'UPDATE 1-Airbus CSeries deal could boost Belfast jobs -UK minister'|'(Adds Quote: s from business secretary in Montreal)LONDON/MONTREAL Oct 20 (Reuters) - A deal giving Airbus SE a controlling stake in Bombardier Inc<6E>s CSeries jets should lead to extra work for the Canadian planemaker<65>s factory in Northern Ireland, UK Business Secretary Greg Clark said on Friday after meeting with executives from both companies.<2E>We<57>ll have more detailed discussions as the deal progresses but there was great optimism that work generally for Belfast would increase,<2C> said Clark in an interview at Bombardier<65>s plant in Montreal.Airbus<75> investment this week in the Montreal-based plane and train maker<65>s CSeries jets is expected to reduce costs and increase sales of the narrow-body jets.It gives Bombardier a possible way out of a trade dispute with Boeing Co in which the U.S. Commerce Department has threatened to impose 300 percent import duties, threatening thousands of jobs in Canada, the United States and Northern Ireland.Clark said he would expect work to increase at the Belfast plant because of the growth in sales.<2E>Obviously, if demand increases then some decisions will need to be taken as to where the future capacity can be located,<2C> Clark said. <20>And I would expect Belfast to be a good contender for that.<2E>Bombardier makes the CSeries CS100 and CS300 carbon wings at a plant in Belfast.Under the deal, Airbus would take a 50.01 percent stake in the CSeries and add an assembly line for the plane in Alabama. Thus it would be a U.S.-made product and avoid anti-subsidy and anti-dumping duties.Bombardier is the largest manufacturing employer in Northern Ireland, which is the poorest of the United Kingdom<6F>s four nations and remains mired in political sensitivities after emerging from decades of armed sectarian conflict.Clark and Northern Irish politicians had welcomed the Airbus deal and promised to work with the companies to protect the workforce in the province. (Reporting By Andrew MacAskill, Costas Pitas in London and Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Michael Holden) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bombardier-airbus-britain/update-1-airbus-cseries-deal-could-boost-belfast-jobs-uk-minister-idINL8N1MV5QQ'|'2017-10-20T18:58:00.000+03:00'
'7eca8d273d667ef29209e3b155b1a104294e82b6'|'Workers at Deutsche Bank''s Postbank may strike in wage row - union'|'October 22, 2017 / 11:02 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago Workers at Deutsche Bank''s Postbank may strike in wage row - union Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Workers at Deutsche Bank<6E>s ( DBKGn.DE ) retail arm Postbank are threatening to stage a strike over a wage dispute, labour union Verdi said on Sunday, ahead of a round of negotiations due to start on Monday. FILE PHOTO: A giant figure is held by employees of Postbank, members of German union Verdi, during a warning strike in front of the headquarters of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, April 24, 2015. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach <20>If there is no agreement there could be open-ended strikes,<2C> Verdi<64>s chief negotiator Jan Duscheck said in a statement, adding that 97.7 percent of balloted workers had voted in favour of industrial action. Postbank is currently being integrated into Deutsche Bank after Germany<6E>s biggest lender unsuccessfully tried to sell the business, which labour bosses worry could lead to painful cuts. Verdi is demanding that Postbank extend job guarantees until 2022 and pay around 18,000 workers at Postbank and related units 5 percent more. Postbank has so far offered an extension of guarantees until 2019 and a 2.5 percent pay hike in two steps. Talks had collapsed last month, but Verdi said earlier this week that Postbank<6E>s management had signalled it would present an improved offer when talks resume on Monday. Postbank has declined to comment on whether it planned to make a new offer. Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Toby Chopra'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-deutsche-bank-unions/workers-at-deutsche-banks-postbank-may-strike-in-wage-row-union-idUKKBN1CR0EO'|'2017-10-22T14:01:00.000+03:00'
'0bdb6becab75ec168c39ac695c60eff9dbc7490c'|'Let<65>s move to Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland: it<69>s delightful - Money'|'W hat<61>s going for it? Walls and borders are so 2017, sadly, thanks to Trump, Brexit and the world<6C>s current miseries. There has never been any escaping them in Berwick, mind you. This is the frontier town, the most fought-over in Europe, scrapped over by the English and the Scots, and it has the town walls to prove it. Elizabeth I built them (not herself, obvs), with her eye on the Scots<74> Auld Alliance with the French. The Union of the Crowns rendered them superfluous a few decades later, although people have long memories round here; the Scottish Borders tourist board offered <20>8,000 for the place in 2002 and Berwick might have become a border town once more, had the Scottish referendum turned out differently. All that back and forth has left this beautiful, stern, pragmatic place a muddied patch. The townsfolk<6C>s accent hovers between Borders and Northumbrian burr, and, trivia geeks, Berwick Rangers are the only English football team who play in a Scottish league. Fact.The case against A little isolated, so it<69>s a good job it<69>s so delightful. I suspect the economy could do with more people staying, fewer passing through.Well connected? Trains: twice-hourly to Edinburgh Waverley (40-49 mins); hourly, sometimes twice-hourly, to Newcastle (45-50 mins). Driving: Edinburgh and Newcastle 75 mins; 40 mins to Kelso; 25 mins to Coldstream.Schools Primaries: Berwick St Mary<72>s C of E First , Berwick Middle , Holy Trinity C of E First , Tweedmouth West First and Spittal Community First , are all <20>good<6F>, says Ofsted. Secondaries: Berwick Academy , alas, <20>requires improvement<6E>.Hang out at<61> The Curfew , a delightful micropub.Where to buy Inside those hefty walls is a beautiful town, a little stony and stern, but full of 18th- and 19th-century architecture, centred on the gentrifying Bridge Street and Hide Hill. Ravensdowne is delightful. Just outside the walls are old stone terraces near the station around Brucegate and town houses on the water at Pier Road. For suburbia (why?) and beaches (ah!), head south of the Tweed to Tweedmouth and Spittal. Large detacheds and town houses, <20>350,000-<2D>750,000. Detacheds and smaller town houses, <20>225,000-<2D>350,000. Semis, <20>85,000-<2D>260,000. Terraces and cottages, <20>75,000-<2D>250,000. Flats, <20>70,000-<2D>175,000. Few rentals: one-bed, maybe <20>400pcm; a three-bed house, <20>500pcm.Bargain of the week Seven-bedroom Georgian town house, former B&B, needs work; <20>280,000 with aitchisons.co .From the streetsLet<65>s move to the Kintyre peninsula, Argyll and Bute: <20>Gorgeous, isn<73>t it?<3F> Read moreRob Lambourn <20>The finest Elizabethan ramparts in Europe, lovely Georgian architecture and an excellent weekly traditional music session at the totally unspoilt Pilot Inn.<2E>Nolan Dalrymple <20>The High Street leaves a bit to be desired, but West Street and Bridge Street are lovely, with great independent shops.<2E>Live in Berwick-upon-Tweed? Join the debate below<6F> Do you live in Stamford, Lincolnshire? Do you have a favourite haunt or a pet hate? If so, email lets.move@theguardian.com by 17 October.Topics Property Let''s move to ... Homes features'|'theguardian.com'|'https://www.theguardian.com/uk/business'|'https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/oct/20/lets-move-to-berwick-upon-tweed-northumberland'|'2017-10-20T18:30:00.000+03:00'
'b594cb52cfc7d53c5a88f9164220ae7c3db234de'|'Fed''s Mester calls for balance on bank regulation rethink'|'October 20, 2017 / 6:10 PM / Updated 17 hours ago Fed''s Mester calls for balance on bank regulation rethink Reuters Staff 2 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank President Loretta Mester on Friday laid out a set of guiding principles by which to approach changes to U.S. banking regulations, emphasizing the need to tailor rules to risk, to boost cooperation across borders, and to aim for simplicity but not over-simplification. FILE PHOTO: Loretta Mester, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, speaks during an interview in Manhattan, New York, U.S., August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton Mester<65>s comments come against a backdrop of intense interest at the Trump administration and in the U.S. Congress in undoing many of the banking regulations imposed after the 2007-2009 financial crisis that the banking industry views as onerous, capricious and overly complex. Nodding to such concerns, Mester told an audience at Columbia University that banking regulators need a framework that allows them to reduce the burden on small banks while maintaining higher standards for systemically risky banks. <20>For large banks, the combination of risk-based capital requirements, a leverage ratio requirement as a backstop, liquidity requirements, and annual stress testing is appropriate,<2C> Mester said, echoing a sentiment expressed by many other U.S. central bankers, including Fed Chair Janet Yellen. International coordination, she said, is also important, leading to <20>more effective regulatory regimes rather than (forcing) movement to the lowest common denominator.<2E> And finally, simplifying regulations, Mester said, is a good goal, except when doing so makes them less effective. Breaking up large banks, she said, is an example of an apparently simple solution to the <20>too-big-to-fail<69> problem that <20>would cause unintended and counterproductive consequences.<2E> Yellen, who on Thursday met with President Donald Trump as he considers whether to retain or replace her when her term ends next February, has said that banking regulation has not hurt economic growth and has urged that only modest changes to banking rules be considered. Mester did not address the outlook for the economy or monetary policy in her prepared remarks. Related Coverage '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-mester/feds-mester-calls-for-balance-on-bank-regulation-rethink-idUSKBN1CP2G3'|'2017-10-20T21:10:00.000+03:00'
'7743feedf9fb84994c498ccec11321abb316def0'|'Bangladesh signs gasoil import deal with India'|'October 22, 2017 / 3:06 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Bangladesh signs gasoil import deal with India Ruma Paul 3 Min Read DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh on Sunday signed a long-term sales and purchase agreement with an Indian refiner to import gasoil to meet the country<72>s energy demand, officials said. The deal between Bangladesh Petroleum Corp (BPC) and Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) was signed in presence of India<69>s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who arrived in Dhaka on Sunday on a two-day visit to discuss bilateral issues. Her visit comes as Bangladesh is struggling to cope with an influx of almost 600,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar since Aug. 25 when the U.N. says the Myanmar army began a campaign of <20>ethnic cleansing<6E> following insurgent attacks. The deal with NRL, which is majority owned by refiner Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL), is the country<72>s first long-term agreement with any Indian supplier. Under the deal, BPC will take up to 250,000 tonnes of gasoil each year from NRL for the first three years of the deal to the BPC<50>s northern fuel depot via a 131-km (79 mile) pipeline, which will be built by India. The import volume will be increased in line with demand, a senior BPC official said, adding the deal would come into effect when the pipeline is built. BPC will pay a premium of $5.50 per barrel over Middle East quotes under the 15-year deal, up from the current premiums of $2.20 a barrel for gasoil cargoes it receives by tanker through the country<72>s southeastern port of Chittagong, the official said. <20>The premium is cost-effective as there is no added cost as the supply will be delivered to the deport in the northern part,<2C> the BPC official said. NRL already supplies a small volume to state-owned BPC for the country<72>s northern region. The refinery, located in the eastern Indian state of Assam, will supply around 22,000 tonnes of gasoil with a sulphur content of 500 parts per million (ppm) between October and December by railroad, BPC officials said. BPC received its first batch this month under the three-month agreement. Bangladesh typically ships in around 3.2 million tonnes of diesel and 2.5 million tonnes of fuel oil annually. Sellers include Kuwait Petroleum Corp, Malaysia<69>s Petroliam Nasional Berhad, Emirates National Oil Company, Philippines National Oil Co, Vietnam<61>s Petrolimex, Thailand<6E>s PTT, Indonesia<69>s Bumi Siak Pusako and Zhenhua Oil. Reporting by Ruma Paul, editing by David Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bangladesh-diesel-india/bangladesh-signs-gasoil-import-deal-with-india-idINKBN1CR0M8'|'2017-10-22T18:04:00.000+03:00'
'74a90dd9107612b153da2481b6e82117287dda9e'|'Singapore Airlines to finalise $13.8 billion Boeing order next week'|'Reuters TV United States October 20, 2017 / 1:55 AM / Updated 18 hours ago Singapore Airlines to finalize $13.8 billion Boeing order next week Jamie Freed 3 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore Airlines Ltd ( SIAL.SI ) said on Friday it will finalize an order for 39 Boeing Co ( BA.N ) aircraft worth $13.8 billion at list prices when Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong visits Washington D.C. next week. FILE PHOTO - The new Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner taxis past the Final Assembly Building at Boeing South Carolina in North Charleston, South Carolina, United States, March 31, 2017. REUTERS/Randall Hill/File Photo The airline said in February it would order 20 777-9 and 19 787-10 widebodies as part of plans to modernize its fleet over the next decade, but the deal is yet to be finalised and placed in Boeing<6E>s order book as a Singapore Airlines order. The deal was viewed as a major blow to Airbus SE ( AIR.PA ) as it battles against Boeing in the widebody market. Airbus has lagged Boeing in net orders in the first nine months of the year, with 271 at the end of September versus 498 for its U.S. rival. Lee told CNBC television on Thursday that he hoped an agreement would be signed with Boeing to buy more aircraft for Singapore Airlines during his U.S. visit from Oct. 22 to 26. More details about the order would be revealed after the signing ceremony in Washington, a Singapore Airlines spokesman said. FILE PHOTO - A man walks past a Singapore Airlines signage at Changi Airport in Singapore May 11, 2016. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo The airline in February said it had also acquired options to order six more aircraft of each type. Slideshow (2 Images) Boeing in June booked orders for 20 777Xs and 19 787-10 aircraft for an unidentified customer or customers, making it possible the Singapore Airlines aircraft are already counted in this year<61>s net orders. Boeing declined to comment. Singapore Airlines is investing in modern, fuel efficient aircraft while at the same time undertaking a strategic review designed to help cut costs amid growing competition from Chinese and Middle Eastern rivals. While the Boeing order is worth $13.8 billion at list prices, airlines typically get discounts on jet orders. Jefferies in February estimated the deal<61>s value at closer to $6.5 billion, or about a tenth of the U.S. plane maker<65>s annual volume. Singapore Airlines is the launch customer for the 787-10, a stretch version of the Dreamliner, having made 30 firm orders in addition to the 19 announced in February. Boeing completed final assembly of the airline<6E>s first 787-10 earlier this month ahead of delivery in the first half of 2018. Reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by Stephen Coates '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-air-boeing/singapore-airlines-to-finalize-13-8-billion-boeing-order-next-week-idUKKBN1CP047'|'2017-10-20T05:15:00.000+03:00'
'9e0c84edfd27d6a4a5637b6ad182cc371f47d09e'|'South Korea''s Ssangyong Motor reconsiders China joint venture due to political row'|'Reuters TV United States  34 AM / Updated 2 minutes ago South Korea''s Ssangyong Motor reconsiders China joint venture due to political row Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea<65>s Ssangyong Motor Co Ltd ( 003620.KS ) on Friday said it is reconsidering establishing a joint venture in China due to diplomatic tension between Seoul and Beijing over the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system. The logo of Ssangyong Motor is seen during the 2017 Seoul Motor Show in Goyang, South Korea, March 31, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji Ssangyong last year signed a letter of intent to build cars in China with Shaanxi Automobile Group Co Ltd [SHAANN.UL], headquarters in Xian. But the Chinese automaker has not pushed for the project since Seoul<75>s decision to deploy the system met with anti-Korean protests in China, Ssangyong said. The system is intended to deter any attack from North Korea, but Beijing objects to the potential reach of the system<65>s radar into Chinese territory. <20>We are considering outsourcing and other ways to make cars in China,<2C> a Ssangyong spokesman told Reuters. Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Christopher Cushing'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ssangyong-motor-china/south-koreas-ssangyong-motor-reconsiders-china-joint-venture-due-to-political-row-idUKKBN1CP11L'|'2017-10-20T12:33:00.000+03:00'
'14dd0e6fdba9b1b5a654de54bceee83cad91b6bf'|'Merck to cut 1,800 U.S. sales jobs, add 960 jobs in chronic care'|'October 20, 2017 / 4:16 PM / Updated 38 minutes ago Merck to cut 1,800 U.S. sales jobs, add 960 in chronic care Deena Beasley 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Drugmaker Merck & Co Inc ( MRK.N ), moving to a new sales team structure in the United States, plans to cut 1,800 sales positions, while adding 960 jobs to a new chronic care sales force, the company said on Friday. The logo of Merck is pictured in this illustration photograph in Cardiff, California April 26, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/Illustration/File Photo Three of Merck<63>s U.S. sales teams will be cut: primary care, disease-focused endocrinology and hospital chronic care, spokeswoman Claire Gillespie said in an emailed statement. The aim is <20>to better support changes in our business in the United States,<2C> she said. The spokeswoman said Merck<63>s new chronic care team will focus on diabetes drug Januvia, as well as other primary care products such as sleep medication Belsomra, and products for respiratory conditions and women<65>s health. She noted that Merck<63>s pipeline also has potential new candidates in primary care - for Alzheimer<65>s disease, asthma, chronic cough and heart failure. Merck<63>s stock was little changed in midday trading on the New York Stock Exchange, at $63.78. Earlier this month, Merck said it would not seek regulatory approval for once-promising cholesterol drug anacetrapib after disappointing trial results. Last month, the drugmaker discontinued developing an experimental drug combination for chronic hepatitis C, as competition rises and patient population shrinks. The company has previously written off an earlier hepatitis C program. Other pharmaceutical companies have also downsized. Eli Lilly & Co ( LLY.N ) earlier this month said it would lay off about 8 percent of its employees as the drugmaker, which has suffered setbacks over the past year in the development of two potential blockbuster drugs, works to cut costs. Merck said none of the jobs being eliminated are being moved outside of the United States. Reporting By Deena Beasley; Editing by Dan Grebler'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-merck-layoffs/merck-to-cut-1800-u-s-sales-jobs-add-960-jobs-in-chronic-care-idUKKBN1CP26S'|'2017-10-20T19:11:00.000+03:00'
'64c88003144ad357d912f4f00b28db07174e3f47'|'UPDATE 1-Creditors of debt-laden Brazilian firm Oi request meeting delay'|'October 20, 2017 / 6:05 PM / Updated 21 hours ago UPDATE 3-Brazil judge gives creditors more time to work out Oi restructuring Reuters Staff (Recasts after judge orders postponement of assembly) By Tatiana Bautzer and Gram Slattery SAO PAULO, Oct 20 (Reuters) - The judge overseeing phone carrier Oi SA<53>s bankruptcy case agreed on Friday to give creditors and the company more time to reconcile competing restructuring proposals, 16 months into Brazil<69>s largest in-court reorganization. The judge, Fernando Viana, acted on a request filed on Thursday by several creditor groups including state-owned banks and bondholders, court documents showed. A creditors<72> meeting to vote on a Oi restructuring plan had been scheduled for Monday, but Viana postponed it until Nov. 6. If the quorum is insufficient on that date, the meeting will be rescheduled for Nov. 27, according to the documents. The International Bondholders Committee was among those who asked the delay. Others, all holding claims on debt-laden Oi, included the Ad Hoc Group of Oi Bondholders, Banco do Brasil , state development bank BNDES and Caixa Economica Federal. Oi Chief Executive Officer Marco Schroeder told journalists in Brasilia the carrier would take advantage of any additional time to continue negotiations. Oi wants to restructure 65.4 billion reais ($20.5 billion) in debt by offering bondholders a 25 percent equity stake, a move that would imply a 73 percent haircut for creditors, according to an independent analysis by Banco Itau BBA. Major bondholder groups represented by restructuring firms G5 Evercore and Moelis & Co, which hold about $22 billion reais in Oi<4F>s debt, have put forth a counter-offer which would give them 88 percent of Oi<4F>s equity. While bondholders have publicly condemned Oi<4F>s offer, they are also trying to avoid a liquidation at all costs, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. Oi<4F>s assets are worth 40.8 billion reais, according to independent auditor Ernst & Young. That amount could drop to 17.9 billion reais, or less than 30 percent of the value of debt under renegotiation, in a forced sale, according to the auditor. As a class of creditors, bondholders are ranked behind workers and BNDES, so they would stand to lose more in a liquidation than if the company<6E>s terms were accepted, the people said. Oi said in a statement on Friday that 33,000 small creditors had accepted the company<6E>s offer to restructure individual debts of less than 50,000 reais ($15,685). Preferred and ordinary shares in Oi fell about 2 percent in Friday afternoon trading. $1 = 3.19 Brazilian reais Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer and Gram Slattery; Additional reporting by Marcela Ayres in Brasilia; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Tom Brown'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/oi-sa-restructuring/update-1-creditors-of-debt-laden-brazilian-firm-oi-request-meeting-delay-idUSL2N1MV143'|'2017-10-20T21:02:00.000+03:00'
'36f5dde7689710ad0d62929dce674873dd4ea65c'|'China says unemployment at 3.95 percent, lowest in years'|'October 22, 2017 / 2:20 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago China says jobless rate lowest in years, but challenges persist Reuters Staff 3 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s unemployment rate has hit its lowest rate in multiple years at 3.95 percent by the end of September, but employment and social security still face challenges as the economy pushes ahead with structural reforms. FILE PHOTO: People work at an office recruiting people for jobs in suburbs of Beijing, China February 24, 2016. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo The ministry of human resources and social security said in a statement on Sunday that 10.97 million new jobs had been created in China from January to September this year, a growth of 300,000 compared with the previous year. The figure represents having essentially fulfilled the ministry<72>s year-end target, the ministry said in a pre-prepared statement given to reporters. Premier Li Keqiang said in March that China added 13.14 million new urban jobs in 2016 and aims to add another 11 million this year while keeping the registered unemployment rate below 4.5 percent. Despite being ahead of schedule, Yin Weimin, head of the ministry, told reporters that employment and social security in China sill face difficulties and challenges. He did not elaborate. The announcement was made as a part of a once-ever-five-years congress of the ruling Communist Party, which opened on Wednesday and runs until next Tuesday. At the congress, the Party sets broad policy directions and reshuffles top leaders. As China<6E>s economy slows, Beijing has made increasing efforts to stave off mass unemployment that may spark social unrest. China<6E>s official unemployment rate has remained generally stable as economic growth has dipped to a 26-year low and the government forges ahead with ambitious plans to cut back on industrial capacity. Many analysts say, however, that the government figure is an unreliable indicator of national employment conditions. On an annual basis, the official unemployment rate was last below 4 percent in 2001, when it was 3.6 percent, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. The rate ended 2016 at 4.02 percent after not budging from 4.1 percent from 2010-2015. The government has said that some sectors, especially those targeted by capacity cuts, such as coal and steel, still show signs of unresolved employment challenges. The ministry of human resources in April said that China would need to resettle about half a million workers that lose jobs in the coal and steel sectors this year and will speed up development of a <20>black list<73> system for firms with wage arrears. Reporting by Yawen Chen; Writing by Christian Shepherd; Editing by Jacqueline Wong'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-economy-jobs/china-says-unemployment-at-3-95-percent-lowest-in-years-idUKKBN1CR01D'|'2017-10-22T05:19:00.000+03:00'
'dd60b802d8b85e01b5e2882f348894b0916de5b8'|'Eurowings offers stranded Air Berlin travellers discounts'|'BERLIN, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Lufthansa<73>s budget airline Eurowings will offer steep discounts to holidaymakers left stranded abroad after insolvent Air Berlin stops flying next week, Eurowings<67> chief executive said on Friday.Air Berlin filed for insolvency in August and has said its flights will cease by Oct. 28 at the latest.Lufthansa has agreed to take over 81 of Air Berlin<69>s roughly 130 planes in a 210 million euro ($248 million) deal to cement its position in Germany and expand Eurowings.Thorsten Dirks, Eurowings chief executive, said on Friday holidaymakers who were due to return home on an Air Berlin flight between Oct. 28 and Nov. 15 may be able to get a Eurowings ticket home at half the normal price.<2E>We will fly these people back, so long as we have enough capacity,<2C> Dirks told journalists.The offer only applies to tickets to destinations outside Germany that were booked before Air Berlin filed for insolvency.German Justice Minister Heiko Maas called on Lufthansa this week to accept Air Berlin tickets on routes it was taking over from the insolvent airline as part of its deal to buy planes.<2E>It should be in Lufthansa<73>s own interest to be accommodating toward customers and accept Air Berlin tickets,<2C> he told Funke Mediengruppe on Thursday.$1 = 0.8483 euros Reporting by Klaus Lauer; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by David Holmes '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/air-berlin-lufthansa-discounts/eurowings-offers-stranded-air-berlin-travellers-discounts-idINL8N1MV4G1'|'2017-10-20T13:01:00.000+03:00'
'5ee389a3cabd9a4fa7e75f55cc8f617abadee77a'|'Germany to cut pension contributions, free up 1.3 billion euros - sources'|' 50 AM / in 13 minutes Germany to cut pension contributions, free up 1.3 billion euros - sources Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany plans to reduce the combined pension contributions it takes from employers and employees by a total of 1.3 billion euros (<28>1.1 billion) in 2018 due to record-high employment and a rising level of reserves, government sources said on Friday. An elderly couple sit on a bench next crocus flowers in a park in Duesseldorf March 17, 2010. REUTERS/Ina Fassbender The contributions for 2018 that both employers and employees pay into the public pension system will be lowered by 0.1 percentage points to 18.6 percent of the total wage package, government officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity. That means employers and employees, who roughly share the contribution, will have about 1.3 billion euros more next year, the government officials said. The exact figures will be agreed after the government has published its updated tax revenue estimates due on Nov. 9, the officials said. The cabinet could then formally agree the reduction on Nov. 22. According to calculations thus far, pension contributions were meant to remain stable at 18.7 percent until 2021 and then rise to 18.9 percent in 2022 due to Germany<6E>s rapidly ageing society. Despite a recent rise in the birth rate and the arrival of more than a million migrants, experts estimate the working age population, whose pension contributions support the growing number of retirees, will shrink massively in the next decade. Employers in Europe<70>s biggest economy often complain about the high level of pension contributions and regularly urge the government to lower the level. A survey of Germany<6E>s DIHK Chambers of Industry and Commerce showed on Thursday that companies view rising labour costs as one of the principle risks for future growth. Reporting by Holger Hansen; Writing by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Hugh Lawson'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-politics-pensions/germany-to-cut-pension-contributions-free-up-1-3-billion-euros-sources-idUKKBN1CP1BH'|'2017-10-20T13:49:00.000+03:00'
'd35c6ad488c1b83bef8d9e468aba648f705d21f4'|'FCA reports surge in suspicious transactions'|'FCA reports surge in suspicious transactions Data indicate possible market abuse after tighter EU rules introduced Read next new Sunday, 22 October, 2017 The regulator uses raw data to pinpoint unusual patterns that could point to insider trading <20> Charlie Bibby/FT by Caroline Binham in London Listen to this article Play audio for this article Pause This is an experimental feature. Give us your feedback. Thank you for your feedback. What do you think? I<>ll use it in the future I don<6F>t think I<>ll use it Please tell us why (optional) Send Feedback The number of suspicious transactions indicating possible market abuse reported to the UK<55>s financial regulator has soared after tighter European rules were introduced in July last year. Data show that a record 3,730 suspicious transaction reports have been filed to the Financial Conduct Authority in the first nine months of 2017 alone. This represents a 24 per cent leap on the whole of 2016, which was already the highest year on record. In 2015, the figure stood at just 1,831 reports. The regulator uses the raw data to pinpoint unusual patterns that could indicate insider trading. Essential stories related to this article FCA urged to strengthen fund board independence Monday, 2 October, 2017 The FCA has previously said the introduction of European market abuse rules has had a disproportionate effect on the number of suspect deal reports it receives. Mark Steward, the head of the FCA<43>s enforcement division responsible for cracking down on insider dealers and scammers, said last month that the watchdog had experienced a 77 per cent increase in reports since the Market Abuse Regime was introduced in July 2016. The rules require companies such as banks and brokers to report more data to the regulator, especially concerning suspicious transactions, over a wider range of markets. It also requires publicly traded companies to flag information sooner that could cause a spike or slump in their shares. Listed companies have to notify the watchdog if they choose to delay publishing the information. The timeliness and accuracy of disclosures by public companies <20> particularly those beyond financial services <20> has recently been a hot topic for the FCA, with companies such as Mitie and Cobham disclosing FCA investigations. Last week, the FCA levied its highest penalty for a listing-rules breach, fining Rio Tinto <20>27.4m for breaching disclosure and transparency rules over a coal deal in Mozambique. The fine was a co-ordinated move with US authorities, which charged the company and its former chief executive and former chief financial officer with civil fraud. Cleveland & Co, the legal advisory business, said the new regime<6D>s requirement to report even cancelled or incomplete transactions could be behind the spike in suspicious reports. <20>It is important to note that the compliance costs in dealing with suspicious transaction reports has grown and the increased costs are also being borne by businesses that have an impeccable record in this area,<2C> said Emma Cleveland, managing director at Cleveland. Mr Steward warned that the regime <20> combined with other sweeping rules from Brussels that take effect in January known as Mifid II and which also require extensive reporting by the industry <20> will present a <20>sea change<67> in the data that the FCA is able to scrutinise. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2017. All rights reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don''t copy articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/content/e5e23782-b5c0-11e7-aa26-bb002965bce8'|'2017-10-22T19:08:00.000+03:00'
'f6f1ba8b06fa3d67ef17a71fa9349912d600082d'|'Exclusive - Iberdrola demanded change at Siemens Gamesa as problems mounted'|'Reuters TV United States October 20, 2017 / 2:01 PM / Updated 19 minutes ago Exclusive: Iberdrola demanded change at Siemens Gamesa as problems mounted Jose El<45>as Rodr<64>guez , Andr<64>s Gonz<6E>lez 3 Min Read MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish utility Iberdrola ( IBE.MC ) used its influence to change the management of Siemens Gamesa ( SGREN.MC ) on Friday after the wind-power joint venture suffered two profit warnings in less than three months. FILE PHOTO: A model of a wind turbine with the Siemens Gamesa logo is displayed outside the annual general shareholders meeting in Zamudio, Spain, June 20, 2017. REUTERS/Vincent West/File Photo Germany<6E>s Siemens ( SIEGn.DE ) has a controlling stake of 59 per cent in Spanish-based Siemens Gamesa but Iberdrola, with an 8 percent stake, has a say in some governance matters thanks to a deal signed when Siemens Wind agreed to merge with Gamesa last year. Iberdrola demanded change at a board meeting on Friday, people with knowledge of the situation said, prompted by a second profit warning from the joint venture last week [nL8N1MR1LJ]. Siemens Gamesa, which vies with Denmark<72>s Vestas as the world<6C>s biggest wind turbine maker, announced a management reshuffle shortly after the board meeting. The changes include a new chief financial officer and new CEO for the rapidly growing offshore division. Miguel Angel Lopez will replace Andrew Hall after only six months as CFO. Iberdrola, Siemens and Siemens Gamesa declined to comment on the changes. Siemens Gamesa is also delaying to February the Capital Markets Day where it was going to announce a new strategy. CULTURE CLASH The clash at the joint venture highlights the problems that can emerge when former cross-border rivals with contrasting business cultures merge and establish new chains of command. <20>The relationship with Iberdrola had been difficult from day one<6E>, one of the sources said. <20>Siemens Gamesa is now a German elephant. Every single important decision must be approved by the Germans. It has lost Gamesa<73>s agility,<2C> said another source. Since the merger Gamesa Siemens<6E> shares have tumbled more than 44 per cent as it repeatedly cut its forecasts for profitability. On Friday, its shares hit the bottom of the Stoxx 600 index losing 4 percent. The wider industry has suffered from stiff competition and a winding down of state subsidies, but Danish rival Vesta<74>s ( VWS.CO ) shares have fallen by just 4.9 percent during the same period. One reason for Siemens Gamesa<73>s underperformance is its exposure to the Indian market, which is in transition from a subsidized market to an auction-led one leading to more competition and pressure on wind turbine prices. <20>The shift in the Indian wind market to an auction system has resulted in a significant slowdown in installations in 2017 ... partially affecting Siemens Gamesa<73>s 2017 earnings<67>, said Goldman Sachs in a recent report. Meanwhile, Siemens has announced another joint venture with French Alstom to create a European champion in the railway sector. Additional reporting by Alexander Huebner in Munich; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer and Elaine Hardcastle'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-siemensgamesa-management-exclusive/exclusive-iberdrola-demands-change-at-siemens-gamesa-as-problems-mount-idUKKBN1CP1TO'|'2017-10-20T19:47:00.000+03:00'
'4a62b2493eb2c67b815834dc583f6e757e55681a'|'Mediclinic approaches Spire about takeover - source'|'October 22, 2017 / 12:47 PM / Updated 6 hours ago Mediclinic approaches Spire about takeover - source Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - South African private hospitals operator Mediclinic International ( MDCM.L ) has approached Spire Healthcare ( SPI.L ) about a deal to take full control of Britain<69>s second-largest healthcare company, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mediclinic owns 29.9 percent of FTSE 250-listed Spire, a stake it bought for about 430 million pounds from private equity firm Cinven in 2015. The company, which is listed in Johannesburg and London, is now considering a deal to buy the rest of Spire, the person said. Spire could issue a statement about the Mediclinic approach as soon as Sunday, the source said. The potential deal was first reported by The Sunday Times, which said a takeover could value Spire at 1.3 billion pounds. Spire shares closed at 261.3 pence on Friday, having climbed 5.8 percent on the day amid speculation that Mediclinic was examining an approach and giving the British company a market capitalisation of about 1 billion pounds. The potential offer comes amid growing scrutiny by the British government of foreign takeovers of UK companies. Last week, the government announced proposals that will give it more say over deals in the defence and technology sectors and will allow it to examine deals involving much smaller British companies. Reporting by Ben Martin; editing by Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-spire-m-a-mediclinic/mediclinic-approaches-spire-about-takeover-source-idUKKBN1CR0HT'|'2017-10-22T15:47:00.000+03:00'
'315798fbd384177439f6c8742707939684049812'|'Tesla moves closer to deal to build cars in China'|'October 22, 2017 / 2:54 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago Tesla moves closer to deal to build cars in China Joseph White , Norihiko Shirouzu 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Electric car maker Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ) said on Sunday it is talking with the Shanghai municipal government to set up a factory in the region and expects to agree on a plan by the end of the year. FILE PHOTO: Tesla Model 3 cars are seen as Tesla holds an event at the factory handing over its first 30 Model 3 vehicles to employee buyers at the company<6E>s Fremont facility in California, U.S. on July 28, 2017. Courtesy Tesla/Handout via REUTERS China levies a 25 percent duty on sales of imported vehicles and has not allowed foreign automakers to establish wholly owned factories in the country, the world<6C>s largest automaker. Those are problems for Tesla, which wants to expand its presence in China<6E>s growing electric vehicle market without compromising its independence or intellectual property. China<6E>s government has considered allowing foreign automakers to set up wholly owned factories in free trade zones in part to encourage more production of electric and hybrid vehicles - which the government calls <20>new energy vehicles<65> - to meet ambitious sales quotas. Tesla would still have to pay a 25 percent duty on cars built in a free trade zone, but it could lower its production costs. <20>Tesla is working with the Shanghai Municipal Government to explore the possibility of establishing a manufacturing facility in the region to serve the Chinese market. As we<77>ve said before, we expect to more clearly define our plans for production in China by the end of the year,<2C> a Tesla spokesperson said in a statement emailed to Reuters. Tesla said in June it was beginning talks with Shanghai. The Wall Street Journal reported that Tesla and the Shanghai government have already reached a deal in that city<74>s free trade zone. Shanghai is China<6E>s de facto automotive capital and a significant market for luxury vehicles of all kinds. Chinese internet company Tencent Holdings Ltd( 0700.HK ) has a five percent stake in Tesla and is seen as a potential ally for Tesla<6C>s efforts to enter the Chinese market. It was unclear if the Chinese government will conclude a deal with Tesla to coincide with U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s visit next month. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has said the company eventually will need vehicle and battery manufacturing centers in Europe and Asia. Tesla is wrestling with production problems at its sole factory, in Fremont, California. It is trying to accelerate output of its new Model 3 sedan, but conceded earlier this month that production bottlenecks had held third-quarter production to just 260 vehicles, well short of the 1,500 previously planned. Reporting by Joe White and Nori Shirouzu; Editing by Dan Grebler'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-china-factory/tesla-moves-closer-to-deal-to-build-cars-in-china-idUKKBN1CR0ME'|'2017-10-22T17:50:00.000+03:00'
'461f92f39e8ef883f508444bdee88bea1de08388'|'PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 20'|'Oct 20 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.- U.S. Senate Republicans adopted a budget for the next fiscal year, clearing a critical hurdle in the GOP push to overhaul the tax code. on.wsj.com/2gpoOQM- U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson described how he seeks to manage an often-fraught relationship with President Donald Trump, saying he tries to deliver short-term victories to an impatient commander-in-chief while focusing on a longer horizon himself. on.wsj.com/2gn2XcB- The Federal Bureau of Investigation has joined the investigation into how a group of militants thought to be Islamists killed four American soldiers in Niger two weeks ago, a move that comes as U.S. officials face criticism over their struggle to answer questions about the incident. on.wsj.com/2goQ3uI- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is near a deal to add Lord & Taylor to its website, part of a broader effort by the retail giant to build an online shopping destination that can compete with Amazon.com Inc. on.wsj.com/2gpp6ak- A federal judge sentenced Thomas C. Davis, the former chairman of Dean Foods Co, to two years in prison for engaging in a long-running insider trading scheme with legendary Las Vegas gambler William "Billy" Walters. on.wsj.com/2gp0Chv- Personal-shopping service Stitch Fix has filed for an initial public offering, revealing that the six-year-old startup''s annual sales have zoomed to nearly $1 billion at a time when traditional clothing retailers are struggling. on.wsj.com/2gnXlieCompiled by Bengaluru newsroom'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/press-digest-wsj/press-digest-wall-street-journal-oct-20-idINL4N1MV1W4'|'2017-10-20T02:27:00.000+03:00'
'272bdb2cd5fef02257378d24f3eb493882eac0b7'|'Workers at Tata Steel''s Dutch arm oppose Thyssenkrupp merger'|'October 20, 2017 / 12:57 PM / Updated 10 hours ago Workers at Tata Steel''s Dutch arm oppose Thyssenkrupp merger Reuters Staff 2 Min Read AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The works council of Tata Steel Netherlands said on Friday it opposed preliminary plans by Tata Steel and Thyssenkrupp to combine their European steelmaking operations into a joint venture (JV) and would fight to block it if necessary. FILE PHOTO: A Tata Steel sign is seen outside the Tata steelworks near Rotherham, Britain, March 30, 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo Works council chairman Frits van Wieringen said that, after viewing the two companies<65> memorandum of understanding, he was concerned they intend to dissolve the Dutch subsidiary, which would strip away legal protections, and then lay off workers. <20>They are talking about 10 percent of jobs being lost, but we think it will be much more than that,<2C> he told Reuters. In September the two companies announced plans to merge their European steelmaking operations. The JV would have 42,000 employees, with 10,000 in the Netherlands. The companies said last month the deal would help tackle over-capacity in Europe<70>s steel market, which faces cheap imports, subdued construction demand and inefficient legacy plants. The merger would also result in up to 4,000 job cuts, or about 8 percent of the joint workforce, they said. Thyssenkrupp''s logo is seen close to the elevator test tower in Rottweil, Germany, September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle Works councils in the Netherlands and Germany have significant powers and their approval is required for a change of corporate structure to be carried out, Van Wieringen said. <20>Make no mistake, the Germans are also opposed to this as it stands,<2C> he said. He said the works council expects to hear more detailed plans from Tata and Thyssenkrupp early next year. For now it has notified the supervisory and management boards of Tata Steel Netherlands that it will oppose the JV. Hans Fischer, CEO of Tata Steel<65>s European operations, said: <20>We have also held a number of meetings with groups representing our employees. These discussions are a priority for us as we seek their support for the joint venture.<2E> <20>We have now entered a period of due diligence with Thyssenkrupp. Tata Steel will follow due process in consultation with all relevant stakeholders as we progress in the transaction,<2C> he said in a statement. Additional reporting by Maytaal Angel in London; Editing by Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tata-steel-thyssenkrupp-netherlands/workers-at-tata-steels-dutch-arm-oppose-thyssenkrupp-merger-idUKKBN1CP1ND'|'2017-10-20T15:57:00.000+03:00'
'277c4fee28e3ebbbbd95287b4da8fff322e4f207'|'Vitol close to acquiring Noble''s oil liquids business: sources'|'SINGAPORE/LONDON (Reuters) - The world<6C>s largest oil trader Vitol Group is nearing a deal to buy Noble Group<75>s ( NOBG.SI ) global oil liquids business, which analysts had valued at about $1 billion, three people familiar with the matter said on Friday.One of the sources said an announcement of the deal could come as early as Monday.Shares of Noble Group were halted in the afternoon, pending the <20>announcement of a major transaction,<2C> the company said.Vitol and an external spokeswoman for Noble declined to comment on the Reuters story.Reuters reported in August that trading firms including Mercuria Group and Vitol were among the suitors for the oil unit.Reporting by Anshuman Daga and Dmitry Zhdannikov in LONDON; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and David Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-noble-grp-m-a-vitol/vitol-close-to-acquiring-nobles-oil-liquids-business-sources-idINKBN1CP1GP'|'2017-10-20T09:53:00.000+03:00'
'5f04744c2b2564965649b2b9f5e90e3c03eff1ed'|'Hotelier IHG says hurricanes hit revenue growth in Americas'|'October 20, 2017 / 6:30 AM / in 23 minutes Hotelier IHG says hurricanes hit revenue growth in Americas Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) ( IHG.L ) reported a slowdown in revenues in its Americas business on Friday, due to the affects of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma on the regional business. Revenue per available room (RevPAR), a key industry measure, at its Americas business rose 0.8 percent in the three months ended Sept. 30, compared with a 1.1 percent rise in the second quarter and 1.9 percent a year earlier. In the United States, the largest market for the company in terms of room numbers, RevPAR was up 0.4 percent, which compared with a rise of 1.4 percent a year ago. <20>Hurricanes Harvey and Irma had a mixed impact; displacement activity together with the relief and reconstruction efforts benefited our franchise business. But performance across the managed estate was negatively impacted by the cancellation of group bookings at some hotels,<2C> the company said. The company, which runs over 5,000 hotels in about 100 countries under brands such as Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and InterContinental, said RevPAR in Mexico was flat due to the earthquake in Mexico City. However, global comparable RevPAR in the third quarter was up 2.3 percent, compared with a growth of 1.3 percent last year, helped by recovery in its European business. <20>Markets previously impacted by terrorist attacks grew strongly, including RevPAR growth of 6 percent in France, and double-digit growth in Belgium and Turkey,<2C> IHG said. Separately, IHG said Elie Maalouf, it<69>s chief executive for the Americas, would join the main board as an executive director with effect from Jan. 1, 2018. Reporting by Esha Vaish and Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-intercontinental-outlook/hotelier-ihg-reports-revenue-growth-slowdown-in-americas-after-hurricanes-idUKKBN1CP0I6'|'2017-10-20T10:14:00.000+03:00'
'c10b2b3634dbd5debf4a4e3c397a67761cc308eb'|'Japan''s Kobe Steel says violated statutory standards, losing customers'|'October 20, 2017 / 12:00 PM / in 28 minutes Japan''s Kobe Steel says violated statutory standards, losing customers Yuka Obayashi , Taiga Uranaka 4 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ) sank deeper into crisis on Friday as the embattled company said it had lost some customers to competitors because of widespread data falsification that had extended to its mainstream steel sheet business. Kobe Steel Executive Vice President Naoto Umehara (C) bows with the company senior officials at a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato Japan<61>s third-largest steelmaker, which supplies the world<6C>s top airline and automobile manufacturers, also said it had violated statutory standards set by the industry ministry, not just specifications agreed with customers. Until now, the 112-year-old company had said products it sold with falsified data met safety and other standards but did not meet contract specifications agreed with customers. It had also said the problem was mainly with aluminium and copper products. Kobe Steel Executive Vice President Naoto Umehara told a news conference that the company had found a breach of industrial standards at its Hatano copper plant southwest of Tokyo, along with a new case of falsification of data at a unit that cuts and processes steel plate. Some customers are switching orders to competitors, Umehara said, although he did not give details. The company also did not specify what industrial standards it had violated at the Hatano plant. Kobe Steel initially said that it found widespread falsification of data on the strength and durability of copper and aluminium products sent to customers. The falsifications stretch back for more than 10 years, a senior executive told Reuters this week. The company is now subject to a U.S. Justice Department probe while checks continue at hundreds of its clients involved in complex supply chains spanning the globe. Global automakers, aircraft companies and other manufacturers have scrambled to identify potential hazards in their products because of the falsification. The company has said no safety issues have yet been reported. Government ministers waded into the fray on Friday, with one saying the government would take an active role in getting to the bottom of a scandal that is tarnishing the image of Japanese manufacturers. Kobe Steel Executive Vice President Naoto Umehara attends a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato <20>This is a problem between companies, but we want to be actively involved in the issues,<2C> Hiroshige Seko, minister of economy, trade and industry, told a news conference. Transport Minister Keiichi Ishii also urged the company to investigate the falsifications and take proper prevention measures. <20>It was extremely regrettable,<2C> Ishii told a separate news conference. No safety problems have surfaced as Kobe Steel attempts to confirm the extent of the data tampering. But in Europe, aviation safety authorities earlier this week issued a directive advising aircraft manufacturers to avoid using Kobe Steel products if they can until checks are completed. Slideshow (5 Images) IN THE BALANCE Four Japanese automakers said on Thursday they found no safety issues with aluminium parts supplied by Kobe Steel, allaying some concerns that falsified quality data on products from the steelmaker had compromised their vehicles. Nonetheless, the company<6E>s fate hangs in the balance while checks are being carried out. It must report to Japan<61>s industry ministry by around the end of next week on any safety concerns and provide a more extensive account of the problems a fortnight later. Kobe Steel shares fell 1.6 percent on Friday. They have fallen nearly 40 percent since it revealed the problems on Oct. 8, wiping about $1.60 billion (<28>1.2 billion) off its market value. Kobe Steel has an extensive role in global supply chains - the company produces engine valve springs found in half th
'8fdfa3f2cd02ff847a18b7ab521a95f04b1ff343'|'INSIGHT-Short on staff: Nursing crisis strains U.S. hospitals'|'MORGANTOWN, West Virginia, Oct 20 (Reuters) - A shortage of nurses at U.S. hospitals hit West Virginia<69>s Charleston Area Medical Center at the worst possible time.The non-profit healthcare system is one of the state<74>s largest employers and sits in the heart of economically depressed coal country. It faces a $40 million deficit this year as it struggles with fewer privately insured patients, cuts in government reimbursement and higher labor costs to attract a shrinking pool of nurses.To keep its operations intact, Charleston Medical is spending this year $12 million on visiting or <20>travel<65> nurses, twice as much as three years ago. It had no need for travel nurses a decade ago.<2E>I<EFBFBD>ve been a nurse 40 years, and the shortage is the worst I<>ve ever seen it,<2C> said Ron Moore, who retired in October from his position as vice president and chief nursing officer for the center. Charleston Area Medical<61>s incentives include tuition reimbursement for nursing students who commit to work at the hospital for two years.<2E>It<49>s better to pay a traveler than to shut a bed,<2C> he said.Hospitals nationwide face tough choices when it comes to filling nursing jobs. They are paying billions of dollars collectively to recruit and retain nurses rather than risk patient safety or closing down departments, according to Reuters interviews with more than 20 hospitals, including some of the largest U.S. chains.In addition to higher salaries, retention and signing bonuses, they now offer perks such as student loan repayment, free housing and career mentoring, and rely more on foreign or temporary nurses to fill the gaps.The cost nationwide for travel nurses alone nearly doubled over three years to $4.8 billion in 2017, according to Staffing Industry Analysts, a global advisor on workforce issues.The burden falls disproportionately on hospitals serving rural communities, many of them already straining under heavy debt like the Charleston Area Medical Center.These hospitals must offer more money and benefits to compete with facilities in larger metropolitan areas, many of them linked to well-funded universities, interviews with hospital officials and health experts show.Along West Virginia<69>s border with Pennsylvania, university-affiliated J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown is spending $10.4 million in 2017 compared with $3.6 million a year earlier to hire and retain nurses.But these costs are part of the facility<74>s expansion this year, including adding more than 100 beds as it grows programs and takes over healthcare services from smaller rural providers that have scaled back or closed.J.W. Ruby, the flagship hospital for WVU Medicine, offers higher pay for certain shifts, tuition reimbursement, $10,000 signing bonuses and free housing for staff who live at least 60 miles away.Next year, the hospital is considering paying college tuition for the family members of long-time nurses to keep them in West Virginia.<2E>We<57>ll do whatever we need to do,<2C> said Doug Mitchell, vice president and chief nursing officer of WVU Medicine-WVU Hospitals.NOT LIKE OTHER SHORTAGES Nursing shortages have occurred in the past, but the current crisis is far worse. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there will be more than a million registered nurse openings by 2024, twice the rate seen in previous shortages.A major driver is the aging of the baby boomer generation, with a greater number of patients seeking care, including many more complex cases, and a new wave of retirements among trained nurses.Industry experts, from hospital associations to Wall Street analysts, say the crisis is harder to address than in the past. A faculty shortage and too few nursing school slots has contributed to the problem.Hospitals seek to meet a goal calling for 80 percent of nursing staff to have a four-year degree by 2020, up from 50 percent in 2010. They also face more competition with clinics and insurance companies that may offer more flexible hours.Healthcare experts warn that the 
'dc89271007ef2e81bb10c1822a7a0a93126da421'|'Why Airbus<75>s tie-up with Bombardier is so damaging for Boeing'|'LIKE an airliner in service, Bombardier<65>s C-Series programme has had multiple highs and lows. In 2008 the Canadian firm began its attempt to break Airbus and Boeing<6E>s duopoly on smaller jets, spooking the pair into upgrading their own models. Costs and delays pushed it near bankruptcy in 2015, followed by a bail-out from the Quebec government worth C$2.8bn ($2.2bn). The next year an order for 75 C-Series jets from Delta, the world<6C>s third-biggest carrier, kept the programme aloft. But decisions in September and October by America<63>s Commerce Department to agree to demands by Boeing, an aerospace giant, to impose a total tariff of 300% on importing those planes into America risked the C-Series project crashing once and for all.On October 16th came a surprise surge. Bombardier said it would hand over half the project to Airbus, a European aerospace firm, free of charge. Bombardier and Investissement Qu<51>bec, the province<63>s investment arm, will own about 31% and 19% respectively. Aviation Week , a trade journal, called it <20>the deal of the century<72>. For Bombardier, whose shares rose 16% on news of the deal, it rescued the C-Series from a premature demise, and pulled the firm clear of a financial cliff.  an hour   2 hours ago Quebec<65>s   Airbus had first looked at buying into the C-Series in 2015 but did not invest, worried about the technical risks in its development. But now the C-Series is in service, so the tie-up makes more sense. Bombardier, for its part, lacked sales expertise for big jets or a global maintenance network, which was putting off buyers, but Airbus thinks it can fix these problems by sharing its marketing skills and servicing system.The latter<65>s shares rose by 5% this week<65>Airbus now owns a controlling stake in a new aircraft, admired for its fuel efficiency, for which most development costs have already been paid. <20>This is a win-win-win situation for everyone<6E>, crowed Airbus<75>s chief executive, Tom Enders. But not for Boeing, Airbus<75>s arch-rival. The deal is aimed at sidestepping the tariff imposed at the American firm<72>s behest. Airbus plans to assemble Delta<74>s jets<74>half the components of which are American<61>at its existing factory in Alabama. It hopes that will result in the C-Series being classed as a domestic product.But overturning the tariffs may be easier said than done. Jennifer Hillman of Georgetown University, who was a commissioner at America<63>s International Trade Commission (USITC), thinks that the deal comes too late to affect the decision to impose anti-dumping or anti-subsidy duties against the C-Series (although the USITC may strike down the duties anyway). Boeing has insisted that any duties should be <20>paid on any imported C-Series airplane or part<72>. It could also argue that not enough value was added in assembly, and that Airbus therefore should still face the duties. Airbus and Bombardier<65>s manoeuvre <20>looks like a questionable deal between two heavily state-subsidised competitors to skirt the recent findings of the US government<6E>, Boeing said.It is right to fear the new combination. Although Airbus has lost ground in <20>widebody<64> jets recently as it refreshes its range, the European giant has already grabbed half the market for <20>narrowbodies<65> such as the C-Series. Analysts think the tie-up will further tighten Airbus<75>s grip. Boeing may now have to spend tens of billions of dollars launching a new narrowbody jet to compete, much sooner than planned.And by pushing for tariffs on the C-Series, Boeing has annoyed customers, from Delta to the governments of Canada and Britain, which are threatening to tear up future military contracts. News of the tie-up was greeted warmly not only in Canada but also in Northern Ireland, where the C-Series<65> wings are made. The Democratic Unionist Party, the province<63>s largest party, which supports the government of Theresa May, the British prime minister, said it was <20>thrilled<65> with the deal.For Boeing, <20>the wounds are self-inflicted<65>, says Adam Pilarski, th
'59befe3f7432fed3ac8b4c0b0b0a581553c13aa2'|'A rash of bankruptcies hits Chinese lenders backed by state firms'|'THE Communist Party dominates China<6E>s economy and uses state-run companies, which it controls with an iron fist, to enforce its diktats. Or so the theory goes. Reality is messier: the party often struggles to monitor state-owned enterprises (SOEs), let alone to get them to toe its line. As it convenes its five-yearly congress, one of the financial system<65>s dodgiest corners has served up a reminder of the limits to its power.In the past two months at least seven online lenders backed by SOEs have collapsed. It was a business none should have been in, far removed from the industries they were supposed to focus on. The money potentially lost is trivial<61>roughly 1bn yuan ($150m), compared with government assets worth more than 100trn yuan. Still, these cases highlight how hard it is for the party to stamp its authority on the vast state sector.  2 hours   2 hours ago Quebec<65>s   The troubled SOEs include distant subsidiaries of the national nuclear company, an aviation company and a big energy company in Shanxi, a northern province. They had acquired stakes, from as little as 20% up to 100%, in online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms.They were <20>marriages of convenience<63>, says Joe Zhang, chairman of China Smartpay, a financial-services company. The P2P firms got instant credibility; SOEs, many of them struggling, eyed quick profits. Some will have done well from the P2P boom: industry-wide loans have increased more than 30-fold since January 2014, to 1.1trn yuan. Yet this frenzied activity has also left problems in its wake. On average more than 100 P2P firms have failed each month since early 2015, some because of mismanagement, others victims of outright fraud.Investors imagined SOE-backed platforms would be safer. Jinsu Online, a P2P lender backed by a subsidiary of the China National Nuclear Corporation, said its backer would guarantee all its funds. Lala Wealth, backed by a subsidiary of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, vowed that its SOE shareholders would make it stronger. Both went into default last month. In the former case, the SOE had denied any involvement before the collapse; in the latter the SOE said it, too, was a victim.The body that regulates China<6E>s state firms warned them last year to stay clear of P2P, fearing that online lenders would exploit their reputations. But industry data show an increase in the number of P2P firms with SOE shareholders since then of a third, to nearly 200.It seems odd that the government has such weak control over SOEs, given President Xi Jinping<6E>s tightening grip on China<6E>s economy. But more than 100,000 companies technically count as SOEs. Most are owned by local governments. Moreover, as many as five layers of ownership have separated those that invested in P2P lenders from their parent groups; many also include private businesses as large shareholders. An optimistic conclusion is that these collapses might teach investors to think twice before assuming that the state always stands behind SOEs, however risky. A worrying one is that many still rely on such support.This article appeared in the Finance and economics section of the print edition under the headline "Failing state"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21730441-government-struggles-control-firms-it-owns-rash-bankruptcies-hits?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-19T22:56:00.000+03:00'
'd60e1e0f85602da605c2b83214de88e0ad7389b5'|'Airbus CEO says expects to sell thousands of CSeries jets'|'MONTREAL, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders said on Friday he believes aerospace analysts are underestimating demand for Bombardier Inc<6E>s CSeries planes and said the company would sell <20>thousands<64> of the 110-to-130 seat jets.Airbus, which is taking a majority stake in the CSeries program, knows <20>how to sell single-aisle aircraft,<2C> Enders told a breakfast hosted by Montreal<61>s chamber of commerce.<2E>I think we will sell many more of these planes,<2C> he said. <20>I think we will sell thousands.<2E>Airbus on Monday agreed to take a majority stake in the CSeries program, securing the plane<6E>s future and giving the Canadian firm a possible way out of a damaging trade dispute with Boeing and U.S. regulators. (Reporting By Allison Lampert, Editing by Franklin Paul) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bombardier-airbus-jets/airbus-ceo-says-expects-to-sell-thousands-of-cseries-jets-idINL2N1MV0NY'|'2017-10-20T11:13:00.000+03:00'
'bbf42400bfbab3c1cd78df4a37ea6e8fae0bd931'|'Tesla moves closer to deal to build cars in China'|'October 22, 2017 / 2:43 PM / in 3 hours Tesla moves closer to deal to build cars in China Joseph White , Norihiko Shirouzu 3 Min Read Oct 22 (Reuters) - Electric car maker Tesla Inc said on Sunday it is talking with the Shanghai municipal government to set up a factory in the region and expects to agree on a plan by the end of the year. China levies a 25 percent duty on sales of imported vehicles and has not allowed foreign automakers to establish wholly owned factories in the country, the world<6C>s largest automaker. Those are problems for Tesla, which wants to expand its presence in China<6E>s growing electric vehicle market without compromising its independence or intellectual property. China<6E>s government has considered allowing foreign automakers to set up wholly owned factories in free trade zones in part to encourage more production of electric and hybrid vehicles - which the government calls <20>new energy vehicles<65> - to meet ambitious sales quotas. Tesla would still have to pay a 25 percent duty on cars built in a free trade zone, but it could lower its production costs. <20>Tesla is working with the Shanghai Municipal Government to explore the possibility of establishing a manufacturing facility in the region to serve the Chinese market. As we<77>ve said before, we expect to more clearly define our plans for production in China by the end of the year,<2C> a Tesla spokesperson said in a statement emailed to Reuters. Tesla said in June it was beginning talks with Shanghai. The Wall Street Journal reported that Tesla and the Shanghai government have already reached a deal in that city<74>s free trade zone. Shanghai is China<6E>s de facto automotive capital and a significant market for luxury vehicles of all kinds. Chinese internet company Tencent Holdings Ltd has a five percent stake in Tesla and is seen as a potential ally for Tesla<6C>s efforts to enter the Chinese market. It was unclear if the Chinese government will conclude a deal with Tesla to coincide with U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s visit next month. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has said the company eventually will need vehicle and battery manufacturing centers in Europe and Asia. Tesla is wrestling with production problems at its sole factory, in Fremont, California. It is trying to accelerate output of its new Model 3 sedan, but conceded earlier this month that production bottlenecks had held third-quarter production to just 260 vehicles, well short of the 1,500 previously planned. (Reporting by Joe White and Nori Shirouzu; Editing by Dan Grebler)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/tesla-china-factory/tesla-moves-closer-to-deal-to-build-cars-in-china-idUSL2N1MX0A9'|'2017-10-22T17:40:00.000+03:00'
'0aa2592e432775c5ecad1d776e753993a8bcad37'|'China regulator fines hospital owner 100 million yuan for insider trading'|'October 22, 2017 / 9:46 AM / in 10 hours China regulator fines hospital owner 100 million yuan for insider trading Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s securities regulator has imposed a fine of more than 100 million yuan ($15.11 million) on the owner of a hospital for insider trading, and confiscated a further 34 million yuan of his illegal gains. Liu Yuejun, the actual controller of the Red Cross Hospital in southwest China<6E>s Sichuan Province, had bought shares in Shenzhen-listed Hangkeng Medical Group Co Ltd knowing that his hospital would be selling a treatment center to the company, China<6E>s Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) said in a statement on its website on Friday. Having purchased more than 7.6 million shares, Liu made over 30 million yuan on the trade, CSRC said. Reuters could not reach Liu for comment. Two other traders were also fined after they profited from stock they bought on the basis of inside information about Hengkang<6E>s purchases, CSRC said. <20>By engaging in insider trading they have severely damaged market order...and the CSRC has severely punished them for this in accordance with the law,<2C> the statement said. <20>The CSRC will from start to finish strictly control and crack down on such behavior, and not allow any opportunities or profits for people who knowingly violate the law,<2C> it said. In the first eight months of 2017, the CSRC imposed fines worth nearly 7 billion yuan on companies and individuals, a 141 percent increase from the year before, according to state media reports. In April, Liu Shiyu, the chairman of the CSRC, said that the stock exchange overseers must <20>brandish the sword<72> to combat any activities that disturb market order. ($1 = 6.6185 Chinese yuan)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-china-csrc-insidertrading/china-regulator-fines-hospital-owner-100-million-yuan-for-insider-trading-idINKBN1CR09X'|'2017-10-22T12:33:00.000+03:00'
'f24c66b471efcf2c1ea2251df293c29c51b45774'|'UPDATE 2-Airbus sees CSeries jets grabbing major global market share -CEO'|'October 20, 2017 / 6:01 PM / in 20 hours Airbus sees CSeries jets grabbing major global market share: CEO Allison Lampert 3 Min Read MONTREAL (Reuters) - Airbus SE ( AIR.PA ) expects to sell <20>thousands<64> of Bombardier Inc<6E>s ( BBDb.TO ) new CSeries aircraft, capturing half the global market for smaller single-aisle commercial jets, Chief Executive Tom Enders said on Friday. Alain Bellemare (4th L), president and chief executive officer of Bombardier Inc., Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders (4th R) and Quebec premier Philippe Couilard (3rd R) give a thumbs up with other dignitaries and executives in front of a Bombardier C Series plane at Bombardier''s plant in Mirabel, Quebec Canada, October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi Speaking at a business event in Montreal, he also said the lightweight, carbon-composite jets, which seat 110-to-130 people, would create new jobs in Canada and the United States. Europe<70>s largest planemaker on Monday agreed to take a majority stake in the CSeries program for $1, a move expected to reduce costs while bolstering the plane<6E>s sales and giving Canada<64>s Bombardier a possible way out of a damaging trade dispute with Boeing Co ( BA.N ) and U.S. regulators. <20>I see no reason why we should not be able to capture 50 percent of that market,<2C> Enders said. <20>I think we will sell thousands.<2E> The jets, which cost $6 billion to develop, have won performance accolades but failed to secure a sale in 18 months. On Thursday, the head of a major U.S. airplane leasing company said the Airbus deal boosted confidence in the CSeries program, but was unlikely to drive a flurry of immediate sales. The leasing executive said potential customers were likely to remain cautious until the trade dispute is closer to being resolved and the venture with Airbus closes in late 2018. The CSeries faces a potentially crippling 300 percent duty on sales to U.S. customers due to a complaint from Boeing that the plane was unfairly subsidized and sold below cost in a 2016 deal with Delta Air Lines Inc ( DAL.N ). Alain Bellemare, president and chief executive officer of Bombardier Inc., walks off a C Series plane at Bombardier''s plant in Mirabel, Quebec Canada, October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi The case will be decided by U.S. trade officials early next year, but Airbus has said any CSeries jets intended for the U.S. market would be built at its production facility in Alabama, potentially allowing the planes to avoid punitive duties. Enders said the deal between Bombardier and Airbus should be supported by the U.S. government because it would create more American jobs. Slideshow (5 Images) <20>That<61>s what President (Donald) Trump wants. How can he be against it?<3F> Enders said. Some analysts have suggested that Airbus<75>s 50.01 percent stake in the CSeries could reverberate throughout the aerospace industry, triggering a competitive response from other planemakers, including Boeing itself. Commercial aerospace has four main powers dominated by Airbus and Boeing, which share the market above 150 seats. Brazil<69>s Embraer ( EMBR3.SA ) and Canada<64>s Bombardier compete in the market between 100 and 150 seats as well as in the market for smaller regional jets. Enders, who addressed Montreal<61>s business leaders with Bombardier Chief Executive Alain Bellemare, said the CSeries deal could foster other new partnerships but did not elaborate. <20>New alliances will be formed,<2C> he said. Editing by Bernadette Baum and Tom Brown '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bombardier-airbus-jets/airbus-sees-cseries-jets-grabbing-major-global-market-share-ceo-idUSKBN1CP1PA'|'2017-10-20T20:48:00.000+03:00'
'c511708e6d1f50a5221ff486b6671426e7246801'|'Wells Fargo scrutinized by regulator for auto insurance program - NYT'|'October 20, 2017 / 4:03 PM / in 21 hours Wells Fargo regulatory woes continue in autos, forex: reports Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co ( WFC.N ) is facing fresh regulatory scrutiny in both its consumer and institutional businesses, according to reports in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal on Friday, as the third-largest U.S. bank continues to work through a prolonged scandal over its sales practices. A Wells Fargo branch is seen in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, U.S. February 10, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) criticised Wells Fargo in a nonpublic regulatory report for enrolling borrowers in auto insurance policies they did not request, according to the Times. It said the bank may have underestimated costs related to reimbursing them. Separately, regulators are looking into Wells<6C> foreign exchange trading business over a matter that caused the departure of four employees, according to the Journal. Until now, Wells<6C> sales issues have been confined to its consumer-facing operations, where employees created as many as 3.5 million accounts in customers<72> names without their permission and enrolled borrowers in products they did not want. These ranged from auto insurance to mortgage rate locks. News of the forex departures suggested the problems may extend further. The Journal said the four were fired as part of a review the bank is conducting across all of its businesses. Wells Fargo spokeswoman Elise Wilkinson confirmed that employees named in the story <20> Simon Fowles, Bob Gotelli, Jed Guenther and Michael Schauffler <20> are no longer with the bank, but declined to comment further. Wells is trying to help any customers who were wrongly charged for car insurance, bank spokeswoman Catherine Pulley said. OCC spokeswoman Stephanie Collins said the agency does not comment on individual banks or ongoing supervision. Reporting by Dan Freed in New York, Patrick Rucker in Washington and Nikhil Subba and Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; Editing by Lauren LaCapra and Cynthia Osterman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/wellsfargo-accounts/wells-fargo-scrutinized-by-regulator-for-auto-insurance-program-nyt-idINKBN1CP25X'|'2017-10-20T19:02:00.000+03:00'
'266843cf597a6cdf79e17c84317db5d06f0feaf4'|'Workers are not switching jobs more often'|'EVERYBODY knows<77>or at least thinks he knows<77>that a millennial with one job must be after a new one. Today<61>s youngsters are thought to have little loyalty towards their employers and to be prone to <20>job-hop<6F>. Millennials (ie, those born after about 1982) are indeed more likely to switch jobs than their older colleagues. But that is more a result of how old they are than of the era they were born in. In America at least, average job tenures have barely changed in recent decades.Data from America<63>s Bureau of Labour Statistics show workers aged 25 and over now spend a median of 5.1 years with their employers, slightly more than in 1983 (see chart). Job tenure has declined for the lower end of that age group, but only slightly. Men between the ages of 25 and 34 now spend a median of 2.9 years with each employer, down from 3.2 years in 1983.  2 hours   2 hours ago Quebec<65>s   It is middle-aged men whose relationship with their employers has changed most dramatically. Partly because of a collapse in the number of semi-skilled jobs and the decline of labour unions, the median job tenure for men aged 45-54 in America has fallen from 12.8 years in 1983 to 8.4. That decline has been offset by women staying longer in their jobs and higher retirement ages, which is why the overall numbers have barely changed.American workers are also now less likely to move home to find new work (see article ). Fewer than 12% moved home last year, down from 20% in the 1950s. This pattern is true of younger workers, too: only a fifth of Americans between the ages of 25 and 35 moved last year; for past generations the fraction was closer to a quarter.One place where millennials probably are switching jobs more often is western Europe. Data from the OECD, a think-tank, show that since 1992 in each of France, Germany, Italy and Spain, the average job tenure for workers has increased overall. But it has shortened for younger workers. However, it is far from clear that this is by the young workers<72> choice. Labour-market restrictions in Europe have forced a growing share of workers into temporary <20>gigs<67>. Over half of workers aged 15 to 24 in those four countries are on fixed-term contracts.Data on Britain, which has looser labour-market regulations than continental Europe, tell a more complicated tale. OECD statistics show that average job tenures have fallen for young Brits. But research from the Resolution Foundation, another think-tank, finds that millennials are actually less likely to leave jobs voluntarily than the previous generation. Britons are also moving home less often. Between 2001 and 2016, the share of workers moving home to change jobs fell from around 0.7% to 0.5%. The number of workers doing so for work in Britain has risen again in recent years, but is still below its 2001 peak.Some workers are indeed hopping from startup to startup every six months, or working as quasi-freelancers for Uber. But they are the exceptions. A drastic increase in job-switching rates would probably require a correspondingly drastic increase in labour demand. Those who fret that millennials are fickle may have too rosy a view of the labour market.This article appeared in the Finance and economics section of the print edition under the headline "Staying put"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21730440-millennials-it-turns-out-are-loyal-and-boring-previous?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-19T22:56:00.000+03:00'
'f9734b0eb708118be6bf939ab7f1cba8349d5dc0'|'British debt collector Cabot launches 1 billion sterling London IPO'|'October 20, 2017 / 10:03 AM / in 20 hours British debt collector Cabot launches 1 billion sterling London IPO Noor Zainab Hussain 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Cabot Credit Management ( IPO-CAB.L ), Britain<69>s biggest debt collector said on Friday it would list on the London Stock Exchange, targeting a 1 billion-pound ($1.32 billion) market capitalization, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. The firm, which is owned by U.S. debt recovery business Encore Capital Group and private equity group JC Flowers, said it aimed to raise around 195 million pounds in fresh capital adding to a flurry of floats on London<6F>s main stock market since the start of October. Admission is expected to take place in Nov., Cabot said, adding that it would have a free float of at least 25 percent. Cabot had hoped to announce its intention to float in September, but postponed it after Peter Crook, the former chief executive of Provident Financial ( PFG.L ), stepped down from its board. The debt collector, which had planned to appoint Crook as its chairman in preparation for the London listing, said on Friday that Andy Haste who is also chairman of British lender Wonga, would be its chairman elect. Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ), Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ), Jefferies and Numis ( NUM.L ) are managing the float of Cabot. Editing by Anjuli Davies '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-cabot-credit-ipo/british-debt-collector-cabot-launches-1-billion-sterling-london-ipo-idINKBN1CP14G'|'2017-10-20T08:03:00.000+03:00'
'e878ad66e6ab82904d3e3bf7cd3f16b46e8ccad5'|'Air Berlin carve-up talks to continue over weekend'|'October 20, 2017 / 1:11 PM / Updated 4 minutes ago Air Berlin carve-up talks to continue over weekend Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Talks over Air Berlin<69>s ( AB1.DE ) remaining assets will continue over the weekend, with the goal of presenting a proposal to the insolvent German carrier<65>s creditors on Tuesday, Air Berlin Chief Executive Thomas Winkelmann said. FILE PHOTO: A Lufthansa airliner taxis next to the Air Berlin aircraft at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke Air Berlin filed for insolvency in August and is being carved up among several buyers. Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) has already agreed to buy large parts of Air Berlin. The group had set a Friday deadline for exclusive talks to sell up to 25 A320 aircraft to Britain<69>s easyJet ( EZJ.L ) as well as to find a buyer for Air Berlin<69>s cargo marketing businesses and aircraft maintenance businesses. Several people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday that family-owned firm Zeitfracht and maintenance group Nayak were together poised to strike a deal to buy the cargo marketing platform and maintenance units. Lufthansa said on Friday that it may remain a major customer to the maintenance business after it has been sold, which is positive news for any possible buyer. <20>If there is a buyer, we will of course try to continue booking capacity at Air Berlin Technik or its successor organization as much as possible,<2C> Lufthansa board member Thorsten Dirks said. Dirks, who is also chief executive of Lufthansa<73>s budget unit Eurowings, said the group had discussed the matter with parties interested in the maintenance business as well as with Air Berlin<69>s administrator. The maintenance unit has around 850 full-time equivalent positions, or around 1,200 staff. Reporting by Klaus Lauer; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Tom Sims/Jeremy Gaunt'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-lufthansa/air-berlin-carve-up-talks-to-continue-over-weekend-ceo-idUKKBN1CP1OU'|'2017-10-20T17:05:00.000+03:00'
'b08d3d229360e277f30d9f0cfa352d6b322c3aaa'|'GE''s quarterly revenue rises 14.4 percent'|'October 20, 2017 / 10:44 AM / Updated 2 minutes ago GE vows $20 billion asset sales, ''sweeping change'' as profit falls Alwyn Scott 4 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - General Electric Co<43>s ( GE.N ) new chief executive vowed on Friday to shed more than $20 billion worth of assets and hold executives accountable for failing to deliver profits after what he called <20>horrible<6C> results in the third quarter. FILE PHOTO: The logo of General Electric Co. is pictured at the Global Operations Center in San Pedro Garza Garcia, neighbouring Monterrey, Mexico, on May 12, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril GE badly missed Wall Street expectations and slashed its full-year forecast, sending shares down as much as 6 percent early in the day. But the stock rebounded and was up 0.4 percent at $23.65 after new Chief Executive John Flannery said he will focus the company on delivering profit and cash to investors. Investors are pushing for big change after more than a decade of frustration at poor returns from the 125-year-old maker of power plants, jet engines, medical devices and other industrial equipment. Even before the stock<63>s decline on Friday, GE<47>s total return - share appreciation plus reinvested dividends - was just 0.64 percent over the last 16 years. A $1,000 investment on the day former CEO Jeff Immelt started his tenure would be worth $1,006.38 today. Immelt stepped down Aug. 1. Flannery said he would change GE<47>s culture to hold managers more accountable, demand better performance from the businesses and reduce the complexity of GE<47>s portfolio. GE<47>s good businesses are being held back by others that <20>drain investment and management resources without the prospect for a substantial reward,<2C> Chief Executive John Flannery said on a conference with analysts. <20>We will have a simpler, more focused portfolio<69> in coming months, he said. <20>We are driving sweeping change.<2E> Flannery declined to say what is on the chopping block, details he is due to unveil on Nov. 13. Immelt also shook up GE<47>s portfolio, shedding plastics, NBCUniversal and most of GE Capital. He made acquisitions to build its power and oil and gas businesses. He also poured money into 3-D printing and a digital-industrial unit. Flannery voiced support for both on Friday. Flannery also suggested GE would do what it could to sustain its dividend, but that it had to balance paying investors with investing to build its businesses. Analysts had clear ideas about what pieces GE could do without: <20>GE will likely sell transportation, lighting and about anything else that isn<73>t nailed down and very core,<2C> analyst Scott Davis at Melius Research wrote in a note on Friday. As proof of GE<47>s new approach to performance, outgoing CFO Jeff Bornstein took blame for the poor results during the conference call, his last as CFO. <20>Accountability has to start with me,<2C> he said. <20>We are not living up to our own standards or those of investors, and the buck stops with me.<2E> GE<47>s poor third-quarter results showed the depth of problems confronting Flannery, and he voiced eagerness to shake up GE<47>s highest levels. A board seat recently given to Ed Garden, a founding partner at activist investor Trian Fund Management, would spark <20>robust dialogue,<2C> he said, and shedding some of the 18 directors was <20>being examined.<2E> GE reported adjusted profit of 29 cents a share, missing by a wide margin the 49 cents analysts had expected, according to a consensus of estimates from Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. GE cut its profit forecast for the full year to $1.05 to $1.10 a share, from $1.60 to $1.70 previously, and said it would generate only about $7 billion in cash from operations, down from $12 billion to $14 billion it had forecast earlier. It left its dividend unchanged. Weak performance in GE<47>s power and oil and gas businesses, goodwill impairment and higher-than-expected restructuring costs were the main causes of the profit decline. Profit at the GE power business, which makes power plants and related equipment, fell 51 percent in 
'494e49375716d02522e9e752957388d93681531f'|'Hotels are employing fewer concierges'|'IF BUSINESS travellers need to reserve a table at a restaurant, they may use OpenTable, a website. If they wish to find a nearby museum, a Google search will probably be their first port of call. And if they want transport into town, they can easily hail an Uber. Given that so many services are just one swipe away, is there a need for a hotel concierge anymore?Increasingly hoteliers think that there is not. The share of American hotels with concierges has fallen from 27% in 2010 to 20% last year, according to a report by the American Hotel and Lodging Association , a trade group. Since 2014 the number of luxury hotels that employ a concierge has declined by 20%.  an hour   2 hours ago Quebec<65>s   Though concierges are not extinct quite yet, those that remain tend to work in upmarket establishments. In America 82% of luxury hotels employ concierges, as do 76% of <20>upper upscale<6C> hotels, the second most glamourous category. After that concierges are a much rarer sight. Just 16% of <20>upscale<6C> hotels have them. For <20>midscale<6C> chains, that figure is now only 3%.One reason that travellers tend to prefer technology is that it can harness the wisdom of crowds. Several hotel-goers told WHYY, a Philadelphia radio station, that it is pointless to rely on a single person<6F>s advice when the recommendations of thousands of people are just a few clicks away.Another reason is that many people would rather interact with their smartphones than hotel staff. In July a survey found that half of business travellers said they prefer to avoid human contact altogether when on the road.Unsurprisingly, concierges still think they have an important role to play. They argue that many people still prefer the human touch to a life conducted on screens, as WHYY reported. They tell stories of great feats of valour, using their knowledge and connections to, for example, rescue a bride<64>s dress from a closed dry cleaner on the day of the wedding. And, increasingly, they are turning to technology themselves. With a tablet in hand, some concierges approach guests, seeking to guide them with their internet research.Some hotels are turning to more novel approaches to try to keep concierges relevant. In July the Park Hyatt hotel in Melbourne hired a blonde labrador called Mr Walker as a canine concierge. His duties include greeting guests in the lobby and attending client meetings. Cuteness is one characteristic that smartphone apps cannot compete with.Next Private jets are getting cheaper'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'https://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/10/help-unwanted-0?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-20T23:41:00.000+03:00'
'fecb1f6a009f434476f32b219172e6a35244b5e2'|'PSA chief signals possible cost cuts at Opel unit - Die Welt'|'October 20, 2017 / 2:27 PM / in an hour PSA chief signals possible cost cuts at Opel unit - Die Welt Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - PSA Group ( PEUP.PA ) Chief Executive Carlos Tavares has signalled possible cost cuts at its Opel unit, noting in a newspaper interview that production costs were at least 50 percent higher than at the company<6E>s French factories. FILE PHOTO: Chairman of the Managing Board of French carmaker PSA Group Carlos Tavares smiles during the Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt, Germany September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski <20>My impression is that many problems are due to the fact that things are out of proportion at Opel, that they consume too much energy, that processes are not efficient enough,<2C> Tavares said in an interview published on Friday in Die Welt. <20>We have to become much more efficient, everywhere, and in all functions. The car industry is still a place where there is a lot of waste,<2C> Tavares said. PSA is in the process of integrating Opel after buying it from General Motors ( GM.N ), a task which analysts say will lead to sweeping job cuts. PSA, which has already said it will use its own technology and vehicle platforms for future Opel models, will fund programmes planned for the unit<69>s headquarters in Ruesselsheim, Germany, only when convinced they will make money, Tavares added. Existing development plans in place at Opel were simply not enough to make the company successful. <20>A strategy has been pursued that simply did not work. And now we are facing the danger that Opel will not be able to meet the emissions ceilings that will come into force in 2020. This is extremely serious and extremely dangerous for the company,<2C> Tavares was quoted saying. PSA has already said it would cut about 400 jobs at the Ellesmere Port plant of Vauxhall, the British brand also acquired along with Opel from GM. Reporting by Tom Sims in Frankfurt and Laurence Frost in Paris; Editing by David Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-peugeot-opel/psa-chief-signals-possible-cost-cuts-at-opel-unit-die-welt-idUKKBN1CP1WV'|'2017-10-20T17:26:00.000+03:00'
'e68d66148bebd888386aabaddad0e2ab1a47b26d'|'Ash Grove approves sale to CRH after Summit drop out'|'October 20, 2017 / 10:23 PM / in 19 hours Ash Grove approves sale to CRH after Summit drop out Reuters Staff 2 Min Read DUBLIN (Reuters) - A majority of Ash Grove Cement<6E>s ( ASHG.PK ) shareholders approved the sale of the U.S. cement maker to Ireland<6E>s CRH ( CRH.I ) on Friday after a rival bid from Summit Materials ( SUM.N ) failed to materialize. Summit, a U.S. construction firm set up in 2009 by former CRH executives, attempted to outbid their former colleagues earlier this month with a preliminary bid valued at $3.7-$3.8 billion, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. Kansas-based Ash Grove, whose board had already unanimously approved CRH<52>s $3.5 billion bid, did not name the rival suitor when it extended the period during which it was able to look for other potential buyers to Oct. 20. However it named Summit on Friday, saying that it provided confidential information to the Denver building materials group following its unsolicited offer but that Summit did not submit a definitive proposal by the 2100 GMT deadline. That automatically triggered the approval of 63.4 percent of shareholders who had delivered written consents approving the transaction when the CRH deal was announced, Ash Grove said in a statement. The deal, which is expected to close in late 2017 or early 2018, pending regulatory approval, will further strengthen CRH<52>s grip in North America where it is the biggest maker of concrete products and second largest supplier of aggregate materials for construction. CRH, the world<6C>s third-largest building materials supplier, is adding the fifth largest cement manufacturer in the United States in family-owned Ash Grove which has extensive readymixed concrete, aggregates and logistics assets across the U.S. Midwest. Reporting by Padraic Halpin '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-ash-grove-cement-m-a-crh/ash-grove-approves-sale-to-crh-after-summit-drop-out-idINKBN1CP2S5'|'2017-10-20T20:23:00.000+03:00'
'c832981eb6f8802418e64dc227acacdda462cbb8'|'UPDATE 1-Hudson''s Bay CEO Gerald Storch to step down'|'(Updates with shareholder and retail industry comments, background)By Solarina Ho and John TilakOct 20 (Reuters) - The chief executive of Canadian retailer Hudson<6F>s Bay Co, Gerald Storch, abruptly resigned on Friday, at a time when the department store company is in the middle of a strategic review and struggling to turn around sales.Storch will step down effective Nov. 1 to return to his advisory firm Storch Advisors, Hudson<6F>s Bay (HBC) said in a statement. It did not give further details on the reasons for his leaving.Storch<63>s departure comes at a time when the company is under pressure from activist shareholder Jonathan Litt to take steps to improve stock performance. He has suggested various options to extract value out of the company<6E>s $10 billion worth of real estate assets.Reuters reported in August that HBC was planning to review its options, including going private.<2E>The CEO exit creates uncertainty around the company<6E>s plan at a time when shareholders need more answers than questions,<2C> said Joshua Varghese, a fund manager at CI Investments, HBC<42>s sixth-largest shareholder.<2E>It<49>s extremely abrupt. It<49>s further evidence that shareholders need to see a strategic plan,<2C> he added.Hudson<6F>s Bay could not immediately be reached for comment.Storch<63>s move follows a number of senior departures this year. Paul Beesley left his role as chief financial officer in May, Brian Pall, the long-time chief of real estate, left in June, while the head of international business, Don Watros, left in September.The retailer, which owns the Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor chains, reported a bigger-than-expected loss in its second quarter.Storch, who previously headed Toys R Us, joined HBC as CEO in January 2015, just before HBC bought German department store Galeria Kaufhof.<2E>I have great confidence in the company and the executive leadership team<61>s ability to take the right actions to position HBC for leadership in the retail industry,<2C> said Storch in the statement.Former HBC CEO Richard Baker, now the executive chairman, will serve as the interim CEO while the company searches for a replacement for Storch, said the company.Baker was <20>a hands-on chair,<2C> said Maureen Atkinson, a senior partner at retail consultant JC Williams Group. He would likely <20>have his own ideas about how things should be run<75>, she added.Reporting by Solarina Ho and John Tilak in Toronto, and John Benny in Bengaluru; editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Rosalba O''Brien '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/hudsons-bay-ceo/update-1-hudsons-bay-ceo-gerald-storch-to-step-down-idUSL4N1MV51G'|'2017-10-20T23:47:00.000+03:00'
'cbe88129164e456e5aa214924c8c0deb15151970'|'PRESS DIGEST-New York Times business news - Oct 20'|'Oct 20 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.- Lyft has begun to explore going public in 2018 and is trying to strengthen its position by raising more capital, including $1 billion in new financing led by CapitalG, an investment arm of Google''s parent company Alphabet Inc . nyti.ms/2gpvI8E- Sean Penn and Netflix Inc are fighting over a documentary series "The Day I Met El Chapo: The Kate del Castillo Story" that will become available early Friday, with a lawyer for Penn saying in a letter to the streaming service that it is "hereby on notice that blood will be on their hands if this film causes bodily harm." nyti.ms/2gn0ChC- U.S. President Trump has picked Joseph Simons to lead the Federal Trade Commission, the White House said Thursday. nyti.ms/2gp954d- Senator John McCain and two Democratic senators moved on Thursday to force Facebook Inc, Google and other internet companies to disclose who is purchasing online political advertising, after revelations that Russian-linked operatives bought deceptive ads in the run-up to the 2016 election with no disclosure required. nyti.ms/2gnaZlECompiled by Bengaluru newsroom '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/press-digest-nyt/press-digest-new-york-times-business-news-oct-20-idINL4N1MV21R'|'2017-10-20T03:22:00.000+03:00'
'3777d2e6a13879877fb8271367c06733bd7cd153'|'SunTrust Banks'' profit rises 12 pct on higher interest rates'|'Oct 20 (Reuters) - U.S. regional lender SunTrust Banks Inc<6E>s profit rose 12 percent in the third quarter, as interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve drove higher net interest income.The Atlanta-based bank said on Friday net income available to its common shareholders climbed to $512 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30, from $457 million a year earlier.Earnings per share rose to $1.06 from 91 cents. (Reporting by Roopal Verma in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/suntrust-banks-inc-results/suntrust-banks-profit-rises-12-pct-on-higher-interest-rates-idINL4N1MV3DH'|'2017-10-20T08:08:00.000+03:00'
'4bc11d31d7a81edb0d6af1c01601d3c3670255e0'|'Southern Copper says Q3 profit doubled, expects Tia Maria permit'|'LIMA (Reuters) - Southern Copper Corp ( SCCO.N ) said on Friday that its net profit doubled to $401.8 million in the third quarter from the same period a year earlier as sales surged on higher copper prices.The Arizona-based company, controlled by Grupo Mexico ( GMEXICOB.MX ), added that it expects Peru<72>s government to issue a construction permit for its stalled $1.4 billion Tia Maria project in the first quarter of next year.Southern Copper suspended Tia Maria in 2015 to quell deadly protests by farmers worried about its environmental impacts.The company has said support for the project in the southern region of Arequipa has since grown. It has called for the government of President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to issue the construction license for the mine, which would produce 120,000 tonnes of copper per year.<2E>We are working jointly with the Peruvian government to obtain the construction license ... we expect the license to be issued in the first quarter,<2C> Southern Copper said in its earnings statement.Peru<72>s energy and mines ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Southern Copper operates mines in Peru and Mexico and is one of the world<6C>s largest copper producers. It produced 675,759 tonnes in the first nine months of 2017, down 2.1 percent from the same period last year.An expansion at its Toquepala mine in Peru will likely wrap up in the second quarter, the company said, allowing it to add 100,000 tonnes to annual output.Southern Copper shares were up 0.7 percent in morning trading.Reporting By Mitra Taj; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southern-copper-results/southern-copper-says-third-quarter-profit-doubled-expects-tia-maria-permit-idUSKBN1CP1S2'|'2017-10-20T16:45:00.000+03:00'
'677f0529c14a5fcc6aeaffaa183371b018386e97'|'Japan government wants to get actively involved in Kobe Steel issue - trade minister'|'October 20, 2017 / 2:03 AM / Updated 10 minutes ago Japan government wants to get actively involved in Kobe Steel issue - trade minister Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the signboard of Kobe Steel at the group''s Tokyo headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - The Japanese government wants to get actively involved in the issue of Kobe Steel<65>s ( 5406.T ) data fabrications, Hiroshige Seko, the minister of economy, trade and industry, said on Friday. Kobe Steel, Japan<61>s third-biggest steelmaker, admitted earlier this month that it had falsified specifications on the strength and durability of its products. The falsifications stretch back for more than 10 years, a senior executive told Reuters. Reporting by Ami Miyazaki; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-kobe-steel-scandal-seko/japan-government-wants-to-get-actively-involved-in-kobe-steel-issue-trade-minister-idUKKBN1CP04L'|'2017-10-20T05:03:00.000+03:00'
'f317d129b1bbf73ef00a5cd03e4f6887f3e42f70'|'U.S. regulator clears Nutella maker''s acquisition of Ferrara Candy Co'|'MILAN, Oct 21 (Reuters) -* The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has cleared the acquisition of Illinois-based Ferrara Candy Co by Italian confectionary group Ferrero, the regulator said in its website.* Nutella maker Ferrero on Thursday agreed to buy Ferrara Candy Company, the third-largest U.S. non-chocolate confectionary company, from private equity firm L Catterton for an undisclosed amount.* In January, when private equity firm Onex Corp failed to reach a deal to acquire Ferrara Candy Co, people familiar with the matter said the transaction had a value close to $1.3 billion, including debt.* The deal, on which Lazard acted as Ferrero<72>s adviser, is expected to close by the end of the year* Italy<6C>s Ferrero said the acquisition would allow it to strengthen its distribution and commercial capabilities in the U.S. market, while adding gummy and seasonal candies to its specialties Nutella hazelnut spread, Ferrero Rocher pralines and Tic Tac candies. (Reporting by Francesca Landini; Editing by Ros Russell) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/ferrara-candy-company-ma-ferrero-regulat/u-s-regulator-clears-nutella-makers-acquisition-of-ferrara-candy-co-idINL8N1MW04Z'|'2017-10-21T07:39:00.000+03:00'
'29f02e63c00bc8e48c08abdb0ffdce69010c0aef'|'A geopolitical row with China damages South Korean business further'|'IN A cosmetics emporium in central Seoul, rows of snail-slime face-masks sit untouched. Not long ago, visiting Chinese tourists would snap these up as avidly as a designer handbag in New York or anything from London featuring the Queen. Yet now their rejuvenating properties are failing to lure the country<72>s shoppers. Seo Sung-hae, a salesman, says business has slowed to a snail<69>s pace, because of a drop in the number of Chinese visitors. <20>We used to have 100 customers a day, but after THAAD, there are almost none,<2C> he says. THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defence, is an American missile-defence system designed to guard against North Korea that was installed in South Korea starting in March. Chinese authorities protest that its radar could be used to spy on its territory. Chinese newspapers have encouraged consumers to boycott South Korean goods. The plan was to <20>bully<6C> Korea into ditching THAAD, says Han Suk-hee of Yonsei University, who until April was South Korea<65>s consul-general in Shanghai.  2 hours   2 hours ago Quebec<65>s   Seven months on, the campaign has fallen short of that goal but has claimed a big corporate victim. On October 12th Lotte, a South Korean conglomerate, confirmed that it hopes to sell its Chinese hypermarkets by the end of the year. That marks a significant retreat for the firm, which had been trying to crack the market since 2008. The group employs about 20,000 people<6C>a third of its overseas staff<66>in China, and in 2015 registered 3trn won ($2.65bn) of sales there. It became a target after signing a deal in February with the South Korean government that allowed the defence ministry to use one of its golf courses as a base for the THAAD launchers. (Shin Dong-bin, its chairman, later said he had no choice but to comply). Chinese officials then closed 77 of the 99 Lotte Mart stores in China on pretexts such as breaches of fire-safety rules. The firm itself shut another 13 stores when customers stayed away. Sales in the second quarter slumped to 21bn won ($18.5m), down from 284bn won in the same period last year.South Korean cars, beauty products and even confectionery have been affected. Sales at Beijing Hyundai, jointly owned by the South Korean conglomerate and Chinese manufacturer BAIC Motor, dropped by two-fifths in the first eight months of the year. AmorePacific, a cosmetics firm in South Korea, reported a 58% dip in its second-quarter operating profits. The country<72>s tourism industry, too, has felt the pinch since group tours from China were banned in March. There were 87% fewer Chinese tourists on Jeju, a pretty island south of the peninsula, during this year<61>s harvest festival than in 2016. Korean businesses will lose $15.6bn of tourism revenue if the slump continues until next March, according to the Hyundai Research Institute, a think-tank funded by the conglomerate. Korean industries other than tourism could lose $8.3bn over the row, says the Korea Development Bank. Yet the boycott is being applied selectively. It favours some Chinese firms by penalising their South Korean competitors, while leaving manufacturers on the mainland free to continue importing the parts on which their businesses rely from other South Korean firms, notes Choi Pae-kun, an economist at Konkuk University in Seoul. Korean exports to China jumped by 23% in September compared with the same month last year, driven in part by surging demand for memory chips, many of which are made by Samsung.The row with China may obscure some failings of South Korean business. Carmakers<72> share of the Chinese market fell from 9% in 2014 to 7% in 2016, before the row. Partly due to competition from online retailers, Lotte Mart has been losing money in China since 2011. But the events of March were undoubtedly a turning point. Beijing Hyundai<61>s sales rose in January and February, but plunged by 65% in May. Lotte Mart<72>s overseas losses are predicted to rise from 124bn won in 2016 to 250bn won this year. <20>It can<61>t be 100
'221c1da285b9f79b3921c5c7896a65a3d454977b'|'A Lloyd<79>s report urges insurers to ask <20>what if?<3F>'|'ON JULY 7th disaster was narrowly averted when an Air Canada passenger plane, trying to land on a full taxiway at San Francisco airport, pulled up just in time. Five seconds longer, and it might have crashed into fully loaded planes and killed over 500 people, in potentially the deadliest aviation disaster ever. Instead, the incident became a non-event<6E>not just in collective memory but also in insurance. With no losses, there was nothing to log. Yet ignoring such near-misses, argues a report published this week by Lloyd<79>s of London, an insurance market, and RMS, a risk-modeller, is a missed opportunity.Counterfactual <20>what if<69> thinking may be an enjoyable pastime for historians<6E><73>What if Hitler had been assassinated?<3F> being one favourite<74>but is not common among underwriters. They prefer to base estimates of future risk<73>and hence premiums<6D>on hard data of what happened in the past, eg, the number of aeroplanes that crashed and the total losses incurred. Since actual aviation losses have been light this year compared with previous years, they may well conclude that such risks are falling. Particularly in a weak market for insurance, where pressure on prices is constant, the temptation to lower premiums merely because losses have been low can be dangerous, warns RMS<4D>s Gordon Woo, a <20>catastrophist<73> (ie, specialist in the mathematical modelling of extreme risks).Latest updates <20>The Death of Stalin<69> is a precarious comedic experiment Prospero an hour ago Why do women still earn a lot less than men? The Economist explains an hour ago Jeff Flake<6B>s anti-Trump manifesto could cost him his job Democracy in America 18 hours ago The   19   21   21 hours ago See all updates For common perils, such as car crashes or burglaries, plenty of data are available, allowing confident predictions based on the past. But for unusual, emerging or extreme risks<6B>such as natural catastrophes, cyber-threats or terrorism<73>the lack of precedents means such methods can be inadequate. This leaves underwriters with blanks to fill in, particularly around how frequently a rare event<6E>a tsunami, say, or an epidemic<69>might occur and what the maximum losses could be. Models which run hundreds of thousands of loss simulations can help fill in such blanks but are not perfect. And the lack of real-life data makes accurately underwriting an event that has never happened very hard.To make up for such shortcomings, the report calls on the industry to keep an alternative-claims book in which they record hypothetical losses from near-misses (such as the Air Canada plane) and could-have-been-worses (<28>suppose Hurricane Irma had hit Miami<6D>), multiplied by their probability. They could then use this as an underwriting aid. By this logic, because the chance of Irma<6D>s striking Miami was roughly 20%, and it would have increased estimated maximum losses by $100bn, this would be recorded as an additional potential loss of $20bn. Besides deepening the data pool on which underwriters base risk assessments, such calculations could help regulators submit catastrophe models to stress tests.Adding a layer of what-if analysis may well increase premiums, as insurers realise they need to be more cautious about certain risks than losses suggest. But it could also reduce some premiums, particularly for emerging perils that underwriters tend to overprice so long as they lack data. <20>We are most scared about things we don<6F>t understand,<2C> says Jonathon Gascoigne of Willis Towers Watson, an insurance broker. Launching an in-depth investigation into every near-miss would be costly. It might make more sense for several insurers to pool resources. Better still, says Trevor Maynard from Lloyd<79>s, if other bodies also joined in, from municipalities and governments to capital providers. They too share an interest in preparing for disaster.Today it is hard for insurers to raise premiums, though this may change once hurricane-season claims come in. Many struggle to stay profitable; around a third of the London ma
'9b448c1e7d253c47fe7b7264a645aa9abf36b47f'|'Blacklisted by Brazil, Dublin funds find new ways to invest'|'October 20, 2017 / 12:00 PM / Updated 30 minutes ago Blacklisted by Brazil, Dublin funds find new ways to invest Sujata Rao 7 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Brazil has provided investors with some of the best returns in the world this year but investment funds based in Ireland have been forced to adopt new strategies to get their money<65>s worth. FILE PHOTO: A woman walks past a sign on the Central Bank in the financial services area of Dublin, Ireland July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne/File Photo Brazil blacklisted Ireland as a tax haven in September 2016 because of its low corporate tax rates, so investment funds in Dublin now pay higher tax on returns from Brazilian bonds and shares than funds in some rival centres such as Luxembourg. In a fiercely competitive industry, Dublin-based investment funds have been faced with having to accept lower returns from Brazil, reducing their exposure to the country, or finding ways to keep pace with rival funds elsewhere subject to lower taxes. <20>It is an important issue because for some reason Luxembourg is not treated in the same way, so the asset managers who are set up there are advantaged over Dublin, in principle,<2C> said Rob Drijkoningen, head of emerging debt at Neuberger Berman, an investment manager with more than 30 funds listed in Dublin. Brazil is the world<6C>s ninth biggest economy, after Italy and ahead of Canada, so it typically accounts for a significant chunk of global or emerging market investment portfolios. The country<72>s debt makes up a 10th of the local currency debt benchmark, the JPMorgan Government Bond Index-Emerging Markets .JGEGDCM. Brazilian shares account for 7.6 percent of the MSCI Emerging Markets equity index .MSCIEF. So far this year, bonds denominated in the Brazilian real BRL= have returned 20 percent while the local Bovespa stock market index .BVSP has surged almost 30 percent, making it hard for investors searching for higher yields to ignore. But since the tax haven ruling, Brazilian transactions by Dublin-based funds have been subject to 25 percent withholding tax on interest, royalties and capital gains - up from 15 percent previously. NEW STRATEGIES Steve O<>Hanlon, chief investment officer at Rubrics Asset Management, which has its six fixed-income funds domiciled in Dublin, said following the tax change he was using similar strategies to those used in 2010 when Brazil slapped a levy on foreign purchases of domestic securities to curb so-called hot money flows. Then, many investors turned to securities listed offshore, such as American Depositary Receipts, that mirrored a direct exposure to Brazil but sidestepped the tax. O<>Hanlon said this time he was buying instruments such as total return swaps which offered exposure to Brazilian assets, and any gains, without having to own the underlying securities. Neuberger Berman<61>s Drijkoningen said he was now investing in Brazil using derivative instruments such as interest rate swaps, credit default swaps and currency forwards, and his emerging market debt portfolio had not suffered from the tax changes. The derivative trades effectively replicate an investment in an actual bond but are not usually subject to local taxes because they are done offshore, he said. For Ireland, losing any tax advantage is a major blow and the government has been lobbying Brazil for more than a year to reverse its decision, but with little success. At the end of 2016, funds based in Ireland managed almost 3 trillion euros (<28>2.69 trillion) of assets, according to research house Monterey Insight, making it the second most popular home for investment funds in Europe after Luxembourg. Out of that total, emerging market funds managed $121 billion and another $1.3 billion was held in Latin America products, Monterey estimated. HEADACHE Some fund managers said the Brazilian tax issue had been little more than a headache so far. Greg Saichin, head of emerging debt at Allianz Global Investors, said some clients might be more expo
'43ccff083c9f3ced05b98cec27e1d66c3be65f5c'|'Too much sun. Hair too dry - L''Oreal adds Paris to digital beauty start-up cities'|' 57 PM / in 11 minutes Too much sun. Hair too dry - L''Oreal adds Paris to digital beauty start-up cities Sarah White 3 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - L<>Oreal ( OREP.PA ), the world<6C>s biggest cosmetics company wants to see more beauty tech like sensory hair brushes that tell you how to care for your hair, and skin patches that let you know how much sun you are getting. Founder of French broadband Internet provider Iliad Xavier Niel and Jean-Paul Agon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of cosmetics company L''Oreal, pose after a news conference at the startup incubator "Station F" in Paris, France, October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer So it said on Friday it was launching a programme of start-up collaborations in Paris as it ramps up digital investments and seeks out new beauty products like its <20>smart<72> hairbrushes. L<>Oreal makes an ever greater slice of sales online and has rolled out services and items for tech-savvy consumers, such as a phone app for virtual make-up tests. The French group said it was looking to develop more inventions at a site for start-up companies in Paris, where 10 to 12 firms will work on projects with L<>Oreal every year. <20>The world of beauty has already become very digitalised ... this will allow us go even further than what we do today,<2C> L<>Oreal Chairman and Chief Executive Jean-Paul Agon said, at a reconverted 1920s railway depot in Paris that now houses a start-up campus. Known as <20>Station F<> and launched by billionaire businessman Xavier Niel, it will now have a L<>Oreal workshop. Agon did not say how much L<>Oreal had invested so far in start-up ventures and online development, but said the group<75>s budget for all things digital was growing fast. Jean-Paul Agon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of cosmetics company L''Oreal, poses after a news conference at the startup incubator "Station F" in Paris, France, October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer L<>Oreal now spends 35 percent of its media budget on digital campaigns and had recruited 1,700 people to work in this area, he said. Five years ago staffing in this section was closer to 150. L<>Oreal derives about 7 percent of its revenues - which totalled 13.4 billion euros (<28>12 billion) in the first half of the year - from online sales, up from just over 5 percent in 2015. It has not disclosed online growth targets. Slideshow (5 Images) The company has already invested in London<6F>s Founders Factory, a so-called start-up incubator, last year, and it has its own innovation programme in San Francisco. Products developed there include an electronic UV skin patch that measures exposure to the sun. Aside from seeking new technology, such as developments in artificial intelligence or voice recognition software, L<>Oreal will also work with start-ups developing new beauty products, be it creams or make-up, the company said. L<>Oreal<61>s push comes as Paris seeks to overtake London as a leading European tech centre for investors and inventors, in a <20>start-up nation<6F> championed by France<63>s pro-business President Emmanuel Macron. <20>We<57>re also happy to be contributing to that project,<2C> Agon said. L<>Oreal is France<63>s fourth-largest listed company. Reporting by Sarah White; Editing bu Dominique Vidalon/Jeremy Gaunt'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-loreal-digital/too-much-sun-hair-too-dry-loreal-adds-paris-to-digital-beauty-start-up-cities-idUKKBN1CP1SQ'|'2017-10-20T16:58:00.000+03:00'
'dcd0290e8db0cf764def9142d062df8e48eb6d42'|'Asian shares edge higher, Fed chief speculation tempers appetite'|'October 20, 2017 / 1:09 AM / Updated 10 minutes ago U.S. tax plan hopes lift stocks, strengthen dollar Chuck Mikolajczak 4 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - World stocks and bond yields rose and the U.S. dollar strengthened on Friday, as investors anticipated President Donald Trump could make progress on his fiscal plans after the U.S. Senate approved a budget blueprint that paves the way for tax cuts. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid U.S. Republican Senator Rand Paul appeared to back the administration<6F>s sweeping tax cut plan, saying he was <20>all in<69> for massive tax cuts, even as the Senate passed a key budget measure without his support one day earlier. Equities rose on Wall Street, with financials .SPSY, which are expected to benefit from the administration<6F>s proposed policies, up 1.16 percent as the best performer of 11 major S&P sectors. <20>It clearly is a positive and has added to the sentiment,<2C> said Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis. <20>Any legislative action that promotes economic growth, clearly will be additive to not only sentiment but presumably earnings.<2E> Housing stocks .HGX also moved higher, up 0.73 percent, after data from the National Association of Realtors showed U.S. home resales unexpectedly increased in September. But gains were curbed by declines in Celgene ( CELG.O ), off 10.04 percent after the company said it would abandon drug trials for a Crohn<68>s disease treatment. General Electric ( GE.N ) also lagged, down 0.30 percent after its third-quarter results and forecast cut. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 134.39 points, or 0.58 percent, to 23,297.43, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 11.47 points, or 0.45 percent, to 2,573.57 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 33.14 points, or 0.5 percent, to 6,638.20. The dollar index .DXY, tracking the greenback against a basket of major currencies, rose 0.44 percent, with the euro EUR= down 0.6 percent to $1.1779. Bets that Trump<6D>s planned tax cuts, infrastructure spending and other pro-business measures would push up growth and inflation had been behind a reflation trade that propelled the dollar to 14-year highs earlier this year. European shares rebounded from their worst day in two months, also helped by well-received earnings reports for Volvo and Ericsson and high German producer-price inflation numbers. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 rose 0.24 percent. MSCI''s world equity index .MIWD PUS, which tracks shares in 47 countries, gained 0.10 percent, just shy of a record intraday high. The Senate budget resolution also sent U.S. Treasury yields higher, with two-year yields reaching a near nine-year high, as investors reduced bond holdings on worries about more inflation and federal borrowing. Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR were last down 17/32 in price to yield 2.3809 percent, from 2.321 percent late on Thursday. The increased risk appetite also sent gold lower. Spot gold XAU= dropped 0.8 percent to $1,279.08 an ounce. U.S. gold futures GCcv1 fell 0.74 percent to $1,280.50 an ounce. U.S. crude CLcv1 rose 0.23 percent to $51.63 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $57.49, up 0.45 percent. Still, oil was set for a weekly loss as investors sought to book profit, despite tensions in the Middle East that have slashed supplies of crude. Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar; Editing by James Dalgleish'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-markets/asian-shares-edge-higher-fed-chief-speculation-tempers-appetite-idUKKBN1CP02U'|'2017-10-20T04:14:00.000+03:00'
'715947df0e5f3c079659170f81489326ee1686af'|'Italian regulator does not fine Ryanair for flight cancellation for now'|'October 19, 2017 / 1:57 PM / in 20 minutes Italian regulator does not fine Ryanair for flight cancellation for now Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Ryanair commercial passenger jet lands in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau MILAN (Reuters) - Italy<6C>s civil aviation authority ENAC will not impose fines on Irish carrier Ryanair ( RYA.I ) for now over its recent flight cancellations, a spokesman for the regulator said. Ryanair announced last month a wave of flight cancellations caused by a shortage of pilots. It is expected to affect more than 700,000 passengers over the coming months. ENAC Chairman Vito Riggio and Managing Director Alessio Quaranta met with Ryanair Chief Executive Michael O<>Leary and Chief Commercial Officer David O<>Brien on Thursday to discuss how the carrier handled the cancellations, ENAC said in a statement. Reporting by Francesca Landini, editing by Steve Scherer 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ryanair-cancellation-italy/italian-regulator-does-not-fine-ryanair-for-flight-cancellation-for-now-idUKKBN1CO213'|'2017-10-19T16:56:00.000+03:00'
'7eae4c6193101c50ff84eaf0e2e6ace948372090'|'Backroom battle imperils $230 million cryptocurrency venture'|'Photo illustration shows copies of Bitcoins seen in front of Tezos logo, October 10, 2017. Picture taken October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/lllustratio ZUG, Switzerland/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Just three months ago, a tech project called Tezos raised $232 million online in a wildly successful <20>initial coin offering,<2C> in which new digital currency is parcelled out to buyers. At the time, it was the most money ever raised from the public in the white-hot cryptocurrency sector.But the venture is now in danger of falling apart because of a battle for control playing out behind the scenes, Reuters has learned.The acrimonious dispute pits Tezos<6F> two young founders <20> Arthur and Kathleen Breitman <20> against Johann Gevers, the president of a Swiss foundation the couple helped establish to handle the coin offering and promote and develop the Tezos computer network.Under Swiss law, the foundation is supposed to be independent. It holds all of the funds raised, which have mushroomed to more than $400 million in value because the contributions were made in two cryptocurrencies <20> bitcoin and ether <20> that have appreciated sharply. But the Breitmans, who still control the Tezos source code through a Delaware company, are seeking to oust the head of the foundation.An attorney for the Breitmans sent a 46-page letter on Sunday to the two other members of the foundation<6F>s three-person board, calling for Gevers<72> prompt removal and seeking to give the couple a <20>substantial role<6C> in a new structure that would limit the foundation<6F>s responsibilities. The document accuses Gevers of <20>self-dealing, self-promotion and conflicts of interest.<2E> According to Gevers, the two board members later suggested via email that he step aside for a month while they investigate.Gevers told Reuters he is not stepping down. <20>As Arthur has done to others before me,<2C> Gevers said, <20>this is attempted character assassination. It<49>s a long laundry list of misleading statements and outright lies.<2E> He said the other two board members <20>are attempting an illegal coup.<2E>The Breitmans have been trying to control the foundation as if it were their own private entity, Gevers said, by bypassing the foundation<6F>s legal structure and interfering with management and operations. This has resulted in costly delays in developing and launching the Tezos network and new currency, he said.<2E>They<65>re unnecessarily putting the project at risk,<2C> he said.In a written statement sent to Reuters, the Breitmans reiterated their accusations against Gevers and said they acted <20>in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.<2E> They said their priority <20>remains the successful launch of the Tezos network.<2E>Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake: The Tezos digital coins, called <20>Tezzies,<2C> are already priced at a hefty premium in futures trading even though they don<6F>t yet exist. The launching of the Tezos network, which will trigger the coins<6E> release, has been delayed. Until the network launches <20> and no date is set <20> contributors to the fundraiser will receive nothing.Under the terms of the Tezos coin offering, there<72>s no guarantee participants will ever receive a single Tez. Participants agreed to accept the risk that the project <20>may be abandoned.<2E> Despite the feud, Gevers said he remains committed to resolving the feud so that <20>this project succeeds.<2E>The tale of how two young entrepreneurs raised a fortune for a project barely out of the starting blocks is reported here in detail for the first time. It highlights the risks inherent in the current frenzy for ICOs, in which tech startups issue new cryptocurrencies to raise capital.Reuters reported last month that cryptocurrency exchanges <20> where virtual currencies are bought, sold and stored <20> have become magnets for fraud and deception. More than 980,000 bitcoins <20> the most popular virtual currency <20> have been stolen since 2011. Today they would be worth about $5.5 billion.Similar large sums are pouring into initial coin offerings. From Ja
'c9aaad8420214e3198e38307817e4c7068fce6bd'|'Paris wants to regulate Asian bike-share operators'|'October 20, 2017 / 2:12 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago Paris wants to regulate Asian bike-share operators Geert De Clercq 4 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - Paris does not want Asian bike-sharing operators to burst into the city the way Airbnb and Uber did and plans to introduce regulation to ensure an orderly rollout of new bicycle schemes, a top city official told Reuters. Launched just last week, Hong Kong<6E>s Gobee.bike has already spread its bikes all over Paris and Chinese giants Ofo and Mobike, as well as Singapore startup oBike, see entering the French capital as a key step in their plans to conquer Europe<70>s city centers. Armed with hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital, the Asian bike-sharing firms, which have revolutionized urban transport in China, have already launched their colorful dockless bikes in a string of European cities like Milan and London, some with local authority blessing, some not. Some cities fear that the uncontrolled introduction of thousands of bicycles will bring chaos on roads and sidewalks, as has happened in China. Dockless bikes can be found and unlocked with mobile apps and parked anywhere. Paris deputy mayor for urban planning Jean-Louis Missika, told Reuters the city wants to control the bike schemes and does not want to see them to break into an unregulated Paris market the way U.S. ride-hailing firm Uber and short-term rental firm Airbnb have in recent years. <20>We will ask the government to give the city the power to regulate under the form of a license,<2C> Missika said on the sidelines of urban mobility conference Autonomy. He added that bike share operators will have to respect rules about using public space and may have to pay a license. <20>We do not have the required regulatory framework, just like it was with Airbnb ... and Uber before legislators created a license,<2C> Missika said. In July, Paris made it mandatory for apartments rented through Airbnb to be registered. Missika said Paris is in favor of bike-sharing, which it has pioneered with its dock-based Velib scheme, but added he was not too happy with the way Gobee.bike had started operations. <20>They saw a gap in the regulation and they jumped in. We cannot blame them, but that does not mean we will leave it at that,<2C> he said. Ofo - which operates 10 million bikes in China and has launched thousands in Milan, Vienna, Valencia and London - told Reuters last week it plans to launch its bikes in Paris around year-end. Missika said several operators have contacted the city to discuss introducing their bike schemes, including Ofo<66>s big Chinese competitor Mobike. Singapore startup oBike, which has launched its bikes in London, Munich, Madrid and Zurich, already has a team in Paris. <20>We hope to get bikes on the ground in Paris in the next few weeks,<2C> oBike<6B>s Amber Huang told Reuters. The company has also started talks with several other French cities including Avignon, Marseilles and Strasbourg. Last month, Brussels mobility minister Pascal Smet said oBike had launched there without contacting regional authorities and said he was looking into establishing a legal framework. <20>We<57>d be happy to work with local authorities,<2C> Huang said. Florian Bohnert, head of global partnerships at Shanghai-based Mobike, declined to comment on the firm<72>s plans for Paris and Europe but said the firm always negotiates with local governments before launch. <20>Some other players tend to act first and talk later, put 500 bikes in a city, have a press announcement, then a few months later their bikes are being impounded,<2C> he said. Mobike operates 7 million bikes worldwide, mostly in China. In May, it raised $600 million from China<6E>s Internet giant Tencent Holdings and several private equity firms, which will be partly used for foreign expansion. In recent months it has launched thousands of bikes in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Japan<61>s Sapporo and Fukuoka, in Washington DC and in Europe it has launched in London, Manchester and Newcastle, in Milan and Florence. Reportin
'79a73ba0fd16157a9f383bcd24c27a922efe5524'|'U.S. regulator clears Nutella maker''s acquisition of Ferrara Candy Co'|'October 21, 2017 / 9:37 AM / Updated 11 hours ago U.S. regulator clears Nutella maker''s acquisition of Ferrara Candy Co Reuters Staff 2 Min Read MILAN, Oct 21 (Reuters) - * The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has cleared the acquisition of Illinois-based Ferrara Candy Co by Italian confectionary group Ferrero, the regulator said in its website. * Nutella maker Ferrero on Thursday agreed to buy Ferrara Candy Company, the third-largest U.S. non-chocolate confectionary company, from private equity firm L Catterton for an undisclosed amount. * In January, when private equity firm Onex Corp failed to reach a deal to acquire Ferrara Candy Co, people familiar with the matter said the transaction had a value close to $1.3 billion, including debt. * The deal, on which Lazard acted as Ferrero<72>s adviser, is expected to close by the end of the year * Italy<6C>s Ferrero said the acquisition would allow it to strengthen its distribution and commercial capabilities in the U.S. market, while adding gummy and seasonal candies to its specialties Nutella hazelnut spread, Ferrero Rocher pralines and Tic Tac candies. (Reporting by Francesca Landini; Editing by Ros Russell)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/ferrara-candy-company-ma-ferrero-regulat/u-s-regulator-clears-nutella-makers-acquisition-of-ferrara-candy-co-idUSL8N1MW04Z'|'2017-10-21T12:36:00.000+03:00'
'd9ce2e574a05c7934c558555f17a40829a64ee75'|'Take Five - World markets themes for the week ahead'|'October 20, 2017 / 2:20 PM / Updated a day ago Take Five - World markets themes for the week ahead Reuters Staff 8 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Following are five big themes likely to dominate thinking of investors and traders in the coming week and the Reuters stories related to them. Gordon Charlop, a managing director at Rosenblatt Securities, speaks during an interview on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid 1/ TAPER TIME After weeks of speculation, the European Central Bank is set to sketch out plans on Thursday to scale back its 2.3 trillion euro stimulus scheme, probably from the start of next year. Economists polled by Reuters expect Mario Draghi and co will cut their monthly purchases of mainly government bonds to 40 billion euros from 60 billion although the reduction could be larger. The bigger haggling point is whether to keep the plan open ended by putting a nine or six months time frame on the reduction rather than a potential date at when it ends altogether. There have also been hints at altering the ECB''s forward guidance to make clear a rate rise remains some time away. It<49>s a scenario that should cheer bond investors -- they<65>ve already pushed euro zone bond yields to 5-week lows in anticipation of what would effectively be a prolonged tapering. The euro has backed off recent 2-1/2 year highs and regional stock markets are trading near four-month peaks. A divergence in rate views in the U.S. and Europe meanwhile have pushed the gap between short-dated bond yields in the U.S. and Germany to around 229 basis points, the widest in 17 years. 2/ FAANGTASTIC The high-flying <20>FAANG<4E> stocks -- Facebook Inc ( FB.O ), Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ), Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) , Netflix Inc ( NFLX.O ) and Alphabet Inc ( GOOGL.O ) -- have risen strongly since mid-July. The exception is Amazon.com, known as the 800-pound gorilla of the group. While revenue growth remains stellar, Amazon has been in big spending mode, which is weighing on profits. In August, Whole Foods shareholders and federal regulators approved Amazon<6F>s $13.7 billion acquisition of the organic grocer. Amazon shares, which have posted total returns of about 32 percent so far this year versus Netflix<69>s 58 percent, could surprise on the upside next week as it announces its third quarterly report on Oct. 26 and against the backdrop of how Amazon stock has underperformed over the past three months. Indeed, Netflix reported a strong third quarter, beating analyst expectations in terms of revenue and subscriber growth. The company reported $2.99 billion in revenue and 5.3 million new subscribers, a record for third quarter growth. 3/ ABENOMICS LIVES ANOTHER DAY? Japan goes to the polls for a snap election on Sunday, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe''s ruling bloc expected to win around a two-thirds majority. A victory of that scale would likely provide Abe with a strong endorsement to stay on, which would make him Japan''s longest-serving post-war prime minister. The yen has weakened in the run-up to the election, hitting a more-than-three-month low against the dollar on Friday JPY= . That''s helped the Nikkei stock index, which recorded its longest run of daily gains in over half a century, after a 14-day winning streak . Those share-price gains signal that markets have become less worried about domestic political risks and that Abe<62>s gamble to take advantage of a weak opposition may pay off. If Abe does wins a convincing victory, the yen is likely to strengthen modestly, analysts say, which could in turn weigh on the Nikkei. But a continuation of Abenomics means a continuation of ultra-loose monetary policy, spelling downward pressure on Japanese bond yields and the yen and further fuel for stocks. 4/ MINSKY MOMENT China''s central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan gave an unprecedented warning on the 30th anniversary of the Black Monday Wall Street crash: the world''s second largest economy must avoid the
'ec46ad0bd3aff8abfad5c35e44a2c803f9cdb66c'|'High noon for the ECB, Draghi at the QE Corral'|' 15 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago High noon for the ECB, Draghi at the QE Corral Balazs Koranyi 5 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Not for the first time, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is facing a tricky balancing act. FILE PHOTO: Governor of the Bank of Japan Haruhiko Kuroda, United States Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi walk after posing for a photo opportunity during the annual central bank research conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, U.S. August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Jade Barker/File Photo With the euro zone economic recovery well into its fifth year, the time has come to cut stimulus. Yet, overly ambitious tightening could choke off the very growth Draghi has fostered, threatening to undo years of work. Draghi also has to find common ground between policy hawks, who argue the ECB has spent its firepower so any further stimulus has negligible effect, and doves, who point to persistently weak inflation as evidence the bank has not met its price-stability mandate. The compromise is likely to be a cut in bond purchases at Thursday<61>s policy meeting, twinned with a lengthy extension of stimulus and a commitment to keep rates low for many years to come. Such a move would ensure that easy policy persists while also reducing the ECB<43>s reliance on unconventional tools and potentially paving the way to exit bond purchases. The problem is that while growth is on its best run in a decade, unemployment remains high, wage growth is barely visible and inflation will probably not rise back to the ECB<43>s target before the end of the decade. The bond purchases have depressed borrowing costs but the ECB is slowly running out of debt to buy so it either takes a step towards the exit or redraws the rules of the programme, a potentially controversial move that may send the wrong signal. A Reuters poll of economists concluded the ECB Central Bank it will start trimming its monthly asset purchases to 40 billion euros from 60 billion euros in January. It was mostly split on whether the programme would last six or nine more months after that. [ECILT/EU] Sources close to the ECB<43>s pre-meeting discussions say the a nine-month extension seems likely with debate over monthly volumes between 25 and 40 billion euros a month. [nL8N1MO0YM] But the real issue will be whether to keep the asset buys open ended, making another extension possible, or signal an eventual end of bond purchases, as demanded by hawks, including powerhouse Germany. FILE PHOTO: Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde introduces Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney for the Michel Camdessus Central Banking Lecture at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, U.S., September 18, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo While this debate is still open, sources speaking to Reuters said it is more likely the bank would maintain the flexibility and even signal a willingness to increase asset buys if the outlook sours. That, says UBS, is crucial: <20>We view the duration of the extension in net asset purchases as more important than the monthly size in ensuring the ECB<43>s ability to manage the expectations around its future policy.<2E> New bond purchases will add little to inflation. But they will buy the ECB some time as it waits for growth to finally translate into inflation. In a glimmer of hope for policymakers, Germany<6E>s largest trade union recently asked for a 6 percent wage hike for nearly 4 million workers, an ambitious move, which could lift wages across the board as many employee groups look to IG Metall to set the trend. FILE PHOTO: People ride on an escalator at a subway station in Tokyo, Japan, October 14, 2015. Japanese manufacturers'' confidence worsened for the second straight month and is expected to fade going forward, a Reuters poll showed, adding to lingering fears of a recession and keeping policymakers under pressure to deploy fresh stimulus. Picture taken October 14, 2015.
'13e4880a47e910a1b6c6b24f941e8953d32e87eb'|'UPDATE 1-Acacia seeks clarification on Barrick-Tanzania deal'|'(Updates with Tanzania deal, adds detail, analyst)LONDON, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Gold miner Acacia Mining said on Friday it would need to approve a deal struck by majority owner Barrick Gold and the Tanzanian government and that it sought further clarification on the agreement.Barrick Gold on Thursday said Acacia had agreed to pay Tanzania $300 million and hand the government a 16 percent stake in three of its gold mines.Tanzania introduced a ban on exports of unprocessed gold and copper and introduced laws that increase its ownership of mines as it believes it is not getting a fair share of its minerals.<2E>Acacia continues to seek further clarification and as yet no formal proposal has been put to Acacia for consideration,<2C> the miner said in a statement.London-listed Acacia was not directly involved in negotiations. Its shares in London edged up 2 percent in early trade.As a result of the March export ban, Acacia reported on Friday that its core earnings or EBITDA fell 60 percent to $50 million. The company also cut spending by 33 percent.Its cash balance at the end of September was $95 million, down nearly 70 percent from a year earlier, Acacia said.Tanzania<69>s largest gold miner said gold production for the quarter fell to 191,203 ounces, down 8.3 percent quarter on quarter, as it had reported on Oct. 12.Jefferies analysts said in a note that EBITDA came below its estimates and consensus expectations but that investors would mainly <20>focus on gaining more clarity following yesterday<61>s announcements regarding a potential solution to the Tanzanian export ban<61>.Reporting by Zandi Shabalala in London and Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru; editing by Greg Mahlich and Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/acacia-mining-results/update-1-acacia-seeks-clarification-on-barrick-tanzania-deal-idINL8N1MV15X'|'2017-10-20T05:42:00.000+03:00'
'a5a698b4c88b931f06caabb2a2f578d8009037de'|'Meal box firm HelloFresh sets IPO price range'|'October 22, 2017 / 4:16 PM / in 21 minutes Meal box firm HelloFresh sets price range for November 2 IPO Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Loss-making German meal-kit-delivery group HelloFresh is offering shares worth up to 357 million euros (<28>319.3 million)in its stock market flotation, the company said on Sunday. HelloFresh is planning to sell up to about 31 million new shares including an overallotment option for 9 to 11.50 euros apiece, implying a valuation of the company of up to 1.5 billion euros excluding debt. HelloFresh, majority-owned by German e-commerce investor Rocket Internet ( RKET.DE ), decided to go ahead with its renewed listing despite a 50 percent decline in shares in U.S. rival Blue Apron ( APRN.N ) since the group<75>s June IPO. Two years ago, HelloFresh cancelled a planned IPO after investors rejected a higher valuation. It said on Sunday its stock would start trading on the Frankfurt stock exchange on Nov. 2. If the overallotment is fully used, HelloFresh will have a free float of about 19 percent. HelloFresh<73>s largest market is the United States, where it is spending heavily on discounts and advertising to compete with rivals like Blue Apron and Plated. <20>We have seen tremendous success and market share gains in the U.S. in the last few quarters. We now intend to use the proceeds from the IPO to continue expanding our market share and become the clear No. 1 player on the U.S. market in 2018,<2C> Chief Executive Dominik Richter said in Sunday<61>s statement. The HelloFresh announcement is a boost for Rocket Internet, which listed in 2014 with a pledge to be a launch pad for flotations of start-ups. Volatile markets meant it had to wait until this year for its first success, with takeaway firm Delivery Hero ( DHER.DE ). HelloFresh, which delivers meal ingredients and recipes in 10 countries, reiterated its goal of breaking even on an operating level (adjusted EBITDA) within the next 15 months. Its net loss stood at 56.7 million euros in the first half of 2017 on revenues of 435 million euros. Reporting by Arno Schuetze and Maria Sheahan; Editing by David Evans, Larry King'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hellofresh-ipo/meal-box-firm-hellofresh-sets-ipo-price-range-idUKKBN1CR0Q9'|'2017-10-22T19:16:00.000+03:00'
'a95eff4f78aae6bc0b018a71ee4e85b8b878d7cb'|'Tesla reaffirms effort to build cars in China; mum on deal report'|'October 22, 2017 / 2:51 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Tesla reaffirms effort to build cars in China; mum on deal report Joseph White , Norihiko Shirouzu 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Electric car maker Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ) reaffirmed on Sunday it is talking with the Shanghai municipal government to set up a factory in the region and expects to agree on a plan by the end of the year, but declined to comment on a report that a deal has been reached. A Tesla charging station is seen in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S. September 28, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson China levies a 25 percent duty on sales of imported vehicles and has not allowed foreign automakers to establish wholly owned factories in the country, the world<6C>s largest auto market. Those are problems for Tesla, which wants to expand its presence in China<6E>s growing electric vehicle market without compromising its independence or intellectual property. China<6E>s government has considered allowing foreign automakers to set up wholly owned factories in free trade zones in part to encourage more production of electric and hybrid vehicles - which the government calls <20>new energy vehicles<65> - to meet ambitious sales quotas. Tesla would still have to pay a 25 percent duty on cars built in a free trade zone, but it could lower its production costs. Tesla on Sunday pointed to a statement it made in June that the company <20>is working with the Shanghai Municipal Government to explore the possibility of establishing a manufacturing facility in the region to serve the Chinese market. As we<77>ve said before, we expect to more clearly define our plans for production in China by the end of the year.<2E> A Tesla spokesperson in the United States declined to comment further beyond referring to the June statement. The Wall Street Journal reported that Tesla and the Shanghai government have reached a deal in that city<74>s free trade zone. Shanghai is China<6E>s de facto automotive capital and a significant market for luxury vehicles of all kinds. Chinese internet company Tencent Holdings Ltd( 0700.HK ) has a five percent stake in Tesla and is seen as a potential ally for Tesla<6C>s efforts to enter the Chinese market. It was unclear if the Chinese government will conclude a deal with Tesla to coincide with U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s visit next month. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has said the company eventually will need vehicle and battery manufacturing centres in Europe and Asia. Tesla is wrestling with production problems at its sole factory, in Fremont, California. It is trying to accelerate output of its new Model 3 sedan, but conceded earlier this month that production bottlenecks had held third-quarter production to just 260 vehicles, well short of the 1,500 previously planned. Reporting by Joe White and Nori Shirouzu; Editing by Dan Grebler '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tesla-china-factory/tesla-moves-closer-to-deal-to-build-cars-in-china-idUKKBN1CR0MG'|'2017-10-22T18:51:00.000+03:00'
'25f7c01bd746276e3c0c85152ab890bc4c1188f5'|'Hotels are employing fewer concierges'|'IF BUSINESS travellers need to reserve a table at a restaurant, they may use OpenTable, a website. If they wish to find a nearby museum, a Google search will probably be their first port of call. And if they want transport into town, they can easily hail an Uber. Given that so many services are just one swipe away, is there a need for a hotel concierge anymore?Increasingly hoteliers think that there is not. The share of American hotels with concierges has fallen from 27% in 2010 to 20% last year, according to a report by the American Hotel and Lodging Association , a trade group. Since 2014 the number of luxury hotels that employ a concierge has declined by 20%. 16 Though concierges are not extinct quite yet, those that remain tend to work in upmarket establishments. In America 82% of luxury hotels employ concierges, as do 76% of <20>upper upscale<6C> hotels, the second most glamourous category. After that concierges are a much rarer sight. Just 16% of <20>upscale<6C> hotels have them. For <20>midscale<6C> chains, that figure is now only 3%.One reason that travellers tend to prefer technology is that it can harness the wisdom of crowds. Several hotel-goers told WHYY, a Philadelphia radio station, that it is pointless to rely on a single person<6F>s advice when the recommendations of thousands of people are just a few clicks away.Another reason is that many people would rather interact with their smartphones than hotel staff. In July a survey found that half of business travellers said they prefer to avoid human contact altogether when on the road.Unsurprisingly, concierges still think they have an important role to play. They argue that many people still prefer the human touch to a life conducted on screens, as WHYY reported. They tell stories of great feats of valour, using their knowledge and connections to, for example, rescue a bride<64>s dress from a closed dry cleaner on the day of the wedding. And, increasingly, they are turning to technology themselves. With a tablet in hand, some concierges approach guests, seeking to guide them with their internet research.Some hotels are turning to more novel approaches to try to keep concierges relevant. In July the Park Hyatt hotel in Melbourne hired a blonde labrador called Mr Walker as a canine concierge. His duties include greeting guests in the lobby and attending client meetings. Cuteness is one characteristic that smartphone apps cannot compete with.Next Private jets are getting cheaper'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/10/help-unwanted-0?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-20T23:41:00.000+03:00'
'f57566c49f8fec2cd96ac84a0e9878079271c3c2'|'Singapore online gaming firm Sea raises about $890 million in U.S. IPO: IFR'|'(Reuters) - Singapore-based online gaming and e-commerce firm Sea Ltd has raised about $884 million in its U.S IPO after pricing the offering above expectations, the company said on Friday.Supported by strong demand, the shares were sold at $15 each, more than its marketed range of $12 to $14, and the company also boosted the original offer size of 49.69 million shares by 18.7 percent. ( bit.ly/2yw5T16 )The deal also includes a greenshoe option for 7.45 million shares, which could lift the value of the offering to $1 billion.Reporting by S Anuradha of IFR; Writing and additional reporting by Aradhana Aravindan, additional reporting by Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru; Editing by Edwina Gibbs '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-sea-ipo/singapore-online-gaming-firm-sea-raises-about-890-million-in-u-s-ipo-ifr-idINKBN1CP0LB'|'2017-10-20T04:57:00.000+03:00'
'303414c837371b4c3425f84e95aca769d189915b'|'Crude or condensate? The dilemma over Nigeria''s oil-cut exemption'|'October 20, 2017 / 6:11 AM / Updated 19 minutes ago Crude or condensate? The dilemma over Nigeria''s oil-cut exemption Libby George 6 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - When OPEC agreed to exempt Nigeria from its oil production-restraint deal last year, it knew the country faced a huge challenge in recouping output lost due to militant unrest. A floating fuel filling station belonging to Nigeria<69>s state oil firm Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) sits idle on a river in the oil rich southeastern Delta state, Nigeria June 18, 2017. REUTERS/Tife Owolabi As tensions subside and the country pumps closer to normal levels, another dilemma looms for the producer group as it continues efforts to eradicate a price-sapping oil glut - how to count Nigeria<69>s crude output without mixing in condensates. The answer could determine when <20> and indeed if ever <20> Nigeria has to cut or curtail oil production, its key source of foreign currency. While Nigeria promised to cap at 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) once production <20>stabilizes<65>, that limit exempts all of the West African nation<6F>s condensates. And no one seems to agree on how much of that ultra-light oil it pumps. <20>Previously, due to the whole issue of militancy, quotas were not an issue,<2C> said Gail Anderson, research director at consultancy Wood Mackenzie. But now, <20>if you start thinking about OPEC cuts, then the definition of crude and condensate becomes quite important<6E>. Nigeria, along with OPEC peer Libya, was exempt from cuts due to militancy in its Delta region that slashed output from 2.2 million bpd to as low as 1.2 million bpd last year. The attacks have abated, with no major incidents since January. Nigeria<69>s output has also rebounded, and secondary sources such as consultancies and price-reporting agencies quoted by OPEC said it edged above 1.8 million bpd in August and September - reinstating the country as Africa<63>s largest oil exporter. But Nigeria has said some of that total included condensates, an ultra-light oil that is not counted as part of its promise to cap. Oil minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu told Reuters in July that condensates contributed 450,000 bpd to Nigeria<69>s production that month. The figure exceeds external estimates for condensate production ranging from 200,000 to 250,000 bpd and suggests Nigeria<69>s own condensate definition could keep it out of any cap. <20>Definition matters and all producers are playing with definitions,<2C> said Ehsan Ul-Haq, director of crude oil and refined products at Resource Economist Ltd, a consultancy. Neither Nigeria<69>s state oil company, NNPC, nor its Ministry of Petroleum, responded to Reuters requests for comment on its production or definition of condensate. WHAT<41>S IN A NAME? Oil exists in many types of quality <20> from heavy, sulfur-rich Canadian oil sands to ultra-light shale oil. Condensates are liquefied once extracted from high-pressure reservoirs, where they exist as a gas. Nearly all oilfields produce some condensates, usually in small amounts. Once it becomes a liquid, there is no widely agreed way to differentiate condensate from crude. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries does not publish a figure, reporting only the crude output of its 14 members, and NNPC also publishes no condensate numbers. Asked how OPEC would define condensate if it needed to determine Nigerian production volumes, a spokesman for the producer group said the definition was based on <20>international standards<64> such as those of the American Petroleum Institute. But those standards focus on whether the oil was a gas when extracted. Once liquefied, there is no widely agreed rule. Often <20> including in Nigeria <20> condensates are blended into crude exports, and not tracked carefully. The issue briefly flared when the U.S. shale revolution led to a spike in oil production, and more would-be exporters sought to send oil abroad as condensate, circumventing a ban on exports of crude. [ reut.rs/2yzrJA8 ] Washington lifted its e
'7712077d7d09aeccb035e2815acccd898011bf64'|'Asian shares edge higher, Fed chief speculation tempers appetite'|'October 20, 2017 / 1:14 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago U.S. tax plan hopes lift stocks, dollar strengthens Chuck Mikolajczak 4 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - World stocks advanced, bond yields rose and the U.S. dollar strengthened on Friday on increased hopes President Donald Trump could make progress on his fiscal plans after the U.S. Senate approved a budget blueprint that paves the way for tax cuts. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid U.S. Republican Senator Rand Paul appeared to back the administration<6F>s sweeping tax cut plan, saying he was <20>all in<69> for massive tax cuts, even as the Senate passed a key budget measure without his support one day earlier. Equities rose on Wall Street, with financials .SPSY, which are expected to benefit from the administration<6F>s proposed policies, up 1.16 percent as the best performer of 11 major S&P sectors. <20>It<49>s just a reaction to the thought that just maybe there might be something coming from Congress in the way of tax reform,<2C> said Paul Nolte, portfolio manager at Kingsview Asset Management in Chicago. <20>Everybody had kind of given up hope, and after the comments over the last 24 hours, people are like, shoot, this may actually happen.<2E> Housing stocks .HGX also moved higher, up 0.70 percent, after data from the National Association of Realtors showed U.S. home resales unexpectedly increased in September. But gains were curbed by declines in Celgene ( CELG.O ), off 10.76 percent after the company said it would abandon drug trials for a Crohn<68>s disease treatment. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 165.59 points, or 0.71 percent, to 23,328.63, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 13.1 points, or 0.51 percent, to 2,575.2 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 23.99 points, or 0.36 percent, to 6,629.05. Pedestrians leave and enter the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall For the week, the Dow climbed 2 percent, the S&P gained 0.9 percent and the Nasdaq gained 0.4 percent. The dollar index .DXY, tracking the greenback against a basket of major currencies, rose 0.49 percent, its biggest daily gain in a month, with the euro EUR= down 0.69 percent to $1.1768. Bets that Trump<6D>s planned tax cuts, infrastructure spending and other pro-business measures would push up growth and inflation had been behind a reflation trade that propelled the dollar to 14-year highs earlier this year. European shares rebounded from their worst day in two months, also helped by well-received earnings reports for Volvo and Ericsson and high German producer-price inflation numbers. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 rose 0.24 percent. MSCI''s world equity index .MIWD PUS, which tracks shares in 47 countries, gained 0.09 percent, just shy of a record intraday high. The Senate budget resolution also sent U.S. Treasury yields higher, with two-year yields reaching a near nine-year high, as investors reduced bond holdings on worries about more inflation and federal borrowing. Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR were last down fell 18/32 in price to yield 2.3845 percent, from 2.321 percent late on Thursday. The increased risk appetite also sent gold lower. Spot gold XAU= dropped 0.7 percent to $1,280.65 an ounce. U.S. gold futures GCcv1 fell 0.60 percent to $1,282.30 an ounce. U.S. crude CLcv1 settled up 0.35 percent at $51.47 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $57.75, up 0.91 percent on the day, ending the week up on support from a sharp decline in Iraqi crude exports due to tensions in the Kurdistan region after contending with weak demand data. Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by James Dalgleish and Nick Zieminski'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asian-shares-edge-higher-fed-chief-speculation-tempers-appetite-idUKKBN1CP02Y'|'2017-10-20T04:14:00.000+03:00'
'9b8df55b8131ef480b06353a3967a35f980c8727'|'Firms that burn up $1bn a year are sexy but statistically doomed'|'YVES SAINT LAURENT, Lady Gaga, David Bowie. Some people do not operate by the same rules as everyone else. Might the same be true of companies? Most bosses complain of being slaves to short-term profit targets. Yet a few flout the orthodoxy in flamboyant fashion. Consider Tesla, a maker of electric cars. This year, so far, it has missed its production targets and lost $1.8bn of free cashflow (the money firms generate after capital investment has been subtracted). No matter. If its founder Elon Musk muses aloud about driverless cars and space travel, its shares rise like a rocket<65>by 66% since the start of January. Tesla is one of a tiny cohort of firms with a licence to lose billions pursuing a dream. The odds of them achieving it are similar to those of aspiring pop stars and couture designers.Investing today for profits tomorrow is what capitalism is all about. Amazon lost $4bn in 2012-14 while building an empire that now makes money. Nonetheless, it is rare for big companies to sustain heavy losses just to expand fast. If you examine the members of the Russell 1000 index of large American firms, only 25 of them, or 3.3%, lost over $1bn of free cashflow in 2016 (all figures exclude financial firms and are based on Bloomberg data). In 2007 the share was 1.4% and in 1997, under 1%. Most billion-dollar losers today are energy firms temporarily in the doldrums as they adjust to a recent plunge in oil prices. Their losses are an accident. 17 But a few firms love life in the fast lane. Netflix, Uber and Tesla are tech companies that say their (largely unproven) business models will transform industries. Two others stand out for the sheer persistence of their losses. Chesapeake Energy, a fracking firm at the heart of America<63>s shale revolution, has lost at least $1bn of free cashflow a year for an incredible 14 years in a row. Nextera Energy, a utility that runs wind and solar plants, and which investors value highly, has managed 12 years on the trot.Collectively these five firms have burned $100bn in the past decade, yet they boast a total market value of about $300bn. Combining punchy valuations with massive losses means taking the entrepreneurial art form to a dizzying extreme. Steve Jobs, Apple<6C>s co-founder, was said to have a <20>reality distortion field<6C> that allowed him to bend the perception of others (although Apple itself was fairly timorous, losing just $874m in its worst year, in 1993). The experience of the five suggests that bending reality today has three elements: a vision, fast growth, and financing.Take the vision thing first. A charismatic leader with a world-changing plan is de rigueur . For its first 23 years Chesapeake was led by Aubrey McClendon, a cocky Oklahoman who pioneered the process of blasting rocks to extract gas and oil (he died last year in a high-speed car crash). Reed Hastings at Netflix plans to destroy the conventional TV industry by selling films and shows over the internet. Like Mr Musk, Travis Kalanick, Uber<65>s tarnished former boss, dreams of changing how humans travel. Nextera is led by technocrats but their aim is grandiose<73>to usher in a new generation of energy technology.The vision needs to be validated by runaway growth. Often firms emphasise a flattering operating measure, such as oil and gas pumped from the ground, the number of rides hailed and so on. Investors need to believe in a high <20>terminal value<75>, a point in the future when high, stable profits will arrive. So it helps to show that, hypothetically, profits would gush if breakneck growth were to stop. Uber says it is profitable in cities where it has operated longest, such as San Francisco. Nextera says that if it stopped investing in new capacity, it would make $6bn of free cashflow a year. Netflix amortises the cost of content over periods of up to five years, so reports an accounting profit even as it bleeds cash.The third element is financing to pay for huge cumulative losses. Each of the five firms has been a f
'1492f1d7b65eeada58c4e87175e5808ffa05f4bf'|'IBM lags in cloud computing and AI. Can tech<63>s great survivor recover?'|'TECHNOLOGY giants are a bit like dinosaurs. Most do not adapt successfully to a new age<67>a <20>platform shift<66> in the lingo. A few make it through two and even three. But only a single company spans them all: IBM, which is more than a century old, having started as a maker of tabulating machines that were fed with punch cards.Yet after 21 quarters with falling year-on-year revenues (see chart), doubts had been growing about whether IBM would manage the latest big shifts: the move into the cloud, meaning computing delivered as an online service; and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), which is a label for all kinds of digital offerings based on insights extracted from reams of data. In May Warren Buffett, chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a holding company, announced that his firm had sold a third of its total stake in IBM, then valued at $13.5bn, saying that <20>I don<6F>t value IBM the same way I did six years ago when I started buying.<2E> Analysts were starting to wonder how long Ginni Rometty, the firm<72>s boss (pictured), would remain at the helm.  an hour   2 hours ago Quebec<65>s   On October 17th, however, IBM<42>s quarterly results suggested that sceptics might just be wrong. Revenues slipped again, to $19.2bn, but they did so less than expected. The firm indicated that it could see growth return in the next quarter and its shares rose on October 18th by 8.9%, the biggest one-day gain since 2009. Could Big Blue, still one of the world<6C>s largest information technology (IT) firms with nearly 390,000 employees, have turned the corner?If big IT firms often fail to adapt to such shifts, it is because these changes require more than adopting new technology. They also force companies to question what they stand for, according to Michael Cusumano, a business professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The brand, the technical skills, how products and services are sold, must all be examined. Many firms choose to defend their existing domains instead.After a near-death experience in the early 1990s, when sales of its mainframes collapsed, IBM seemed to have found a formula to stay ahead in technology. Under Louis Gerstner and Sam Palmisano, its former bosses, it quickly adapted to the internet and was one of the first big IT firms to back open-source software. It ditched businesses about to become commodities, such as personal computers and low-end servers. And it stuck to a financial <20>road map<61> telling investors how profitable it intended to be over the next five years. Nor did it hesitate to spend billions buying back stock to lift its earnings per share.Yet this fixation on financial metrics (a stance that predated Ms Rometty) is a big reason why IBM had a late start in the cloud<75>a trend it had spotted earlier than many competitors. As a result, it is now an also-ran in cloud computing, at least in the part of it called the <20>public cloud<75>, or networks of big data centres shared by many firms. IBM is number three at best; Amazon and Microsoft lead the pack by some distance, benefiting from the growing number of firms moving applications into the cloud, rather than running them on their own computer systems. More than 40% of IBM<42>s revenues come from products and services that directly compete with public-cloud offerings, says Steve Milunovich of UBS, an investment bank.IBM has tried to avoid the problem, being, for example, the first tech giant that went big on AI. Building on a technology called Watson, which in 2011 won <20>Jeopardy!<21>, an American quiz show, the firm two years later launched a new line of business to help organisations make predictions from patterns in their data. It promoted the effort heavily and invested billions, particularly in health care, for example to help hospitals to use patient data to gauge health risks. Yet progress has proved slow, mainly because it is often hard to make sense of patient records. The M.D. Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston earlier this year cancelled a Wats
'd6c85762eade023c104b720677e217bf0f17fc78'|'RWE looking at Uniper''s gas and coal-fired plants: source'|'DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) - RWE ( RWEG.DE ) is casting its eye over rival energy utility Uniper<65>s ( UN01.DE ) gas and coal-fired power plants in Germany, the Benelux countries and in Britain, a person familiar with the matter said.A logo of the German energy utility company Uniper SE is pictured at their headquarters in Duesseldorf, Germany April 19, 2016. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski Investors and M&A sources said last week that RWE was likely to buy the plants from Fortum ( FORTUM.HE ), which is planning to take control at Uniper with a proposed 8.05 billion-euro ($9.5 billion) offer, rather than launch a counterbid.While Fortum has said it has no plans for a restructuring, it is seen being mainly interested in Uniper<65>s assets in Sweden and Russia and less in its more polluting gas and coal fired power plants, which would be a better fit for RWE.RWE and Uniper declined to comment on Monday.German daily Handelsblatt on Friday Quote: d Fortum Chief Executive Pekka Lundmark as saying that the Finnish company was not currently in talks to sell parts of Uniper.Reporting by Tom Kaeckenhoff; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Kathrin Jones, Greg Mahlich '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-uniper-m-a-fortum-oyj-rwe/rwe-looking-at-unipers-gas-and-coal-fired-plants-source-idINKBN1CP0XX'|'2017-10-20T07:08:00.000+03:00'
'1d6b0f5d3e8995ac139b03846073c7ed25d271e1'|'Whole Foods says hacking incident resolved'|'October 20, 2017 / 6:47 PM / Updated 40 minutes ago Whole Foods says hacking incident resolved Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc<6E>s ( AMZN.O ) Whole Foods Market said on Friday it had replaced affected point-of-sale systems at venues located within some stores where payment card information had been stolen. FILE PHOTO: The Whole Foods Market in Superior, Colorado, United States July 26, 2017. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo The upscale grocer last month disclosed card information had been stolen from taprooms, restaurants and other venues located within some of its stores. Whole Foods, which Amazon recently purchased for $13.7 billion, said transactions on Amazon.com had not been impacted. The investigation found unauthorized software was present on the point-of-sale systems at certain venues, the company said. Reporting by Karina Dsouza in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-cyber/whole-foods-says-hacking-incident-resolved-idUSKBN1CP2HC'|'2017-10-20T21:46:00.000+03:00'
'30b035d75787563c328d8789b0bc0e8f4efb67d1'|'BMW confirms inspection by EU antitrust officials'|'MUNICH/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - BMW<4D>s ( BMWG.DE ) headquarters were raided by European Union officials investigating an alleged cartel among German carmakers, it said on Friday, as rival Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ) claimed whistleblower status in an effort to avoid fines. FILE PHOTO: A BMW logo is seen at the 2017 New York International Auto Show in New York City, U.S. April 13, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson - HP1ED4D13JXHH EU staff had <20>conducted an inspection<6F> at BMW<4D>s Munich offices this week, the premium carmaker said in a statement, adding that it is <20>assisting the European Commission in its work<72>. The EU<45>s Brussels executive said its antitrust officials had swooped unannounced on <20>a carmaker in Germany<6E> on Monday Oct. 16 in the first confirmed raid related to allegations that several German automakers had engaged in an illegal cartel. The competition watchdog said in July that it was investigating collusion among German carmakers in response to a tip-off after Der Spiegel magazine reported that Daimler, BMW, Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ) and its Audi and Porsche arms conspired to fix prices in diesel and other technologies over decades. <20>The BMW Group wishes to make clear the distinction between potential violations of antitrust law on the one hand and illegal manipulation of exhaust gas treatment on the other,<2C> the company said. <20>The BMW Group has not been accused of the latter.<2E> Brussels has yet to initiate formal antitrust proceedings against any of the carmakers. However, the allegations have begun to spawn U.S. lawsuits, adding to strains on an industry already struggling with the reputational fallout from widespread diesel emissions-test manipulation exposed in the wake of VW<56>s dieselgate scandal. Daimler said on Friday that it had <20>filed an application for immunity from fines with the European Commission some time ago<67>, effectively claiming to have blown the whistle on what Chief Financial Officer Bodo Uebber described as <20>possible antitrust agreements<74> with rival manufacturers. Daimler sees no need to set aside any funds for possible antitrust fines, Uebber added. To gain immunity, the EU<45>s antitrust website says, a company that participated in a cartel must be the first to inform the Commission of an undetected cartel by providing sufficient information to justify inspections. The Commission has declined to identify the original source of the tip-off, saying this is to avoid compromising its investigation. <20>Daimler is cooperating with the Commission under its leniency programme,<2C> an EU representative said on Friday. Volkswagen could also benefit from leniency after sharing information, according to earlier reports. Even after an initial alert, other cartel participants can reduce EU fines -- by up to 50 percent for the first to step forward with material evidence. VW offices have not been subject to EU raids in relation to the cartel investigation, a spokesman for the Wolfsburg-based car giant said on Friday, declining further comment. Additional reporting by Irene Preisinger, Jan Schwartz, Tom Sims and Foo Yun Chee; Writing by Laurence Frost; Editing by David Goodman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-antitrust-bmw/bmw-confirms-inspection-by-eu-antitrust-officials-idUSKBN1CP1QU'|'2017-10-20T16:32:00.000+03:00'
'bff35fafd62f182f37ae396c1e06fd8cf9334d18'|'Ackman urges ADP to consider acquiring Ceridian amid proxy fight'|'October 20, 2017 / 2:13 AM / Updated 26 minutes ago Ackman urges ADP to consider acquiring Ceridian amid proxy fight Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO - William Ackman, chief executive of Pershing Square walks on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, New York, U.S. on November 10, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo BOSTON (Reuters) - Activist investor William Ackman, currently battling for board seats at Automatic Data Processing Inc ( ADP.O ), on Thursday said the human resource software company should buy rival Ceridian, in a move that could woo customers with a better product. Ackman said Minnesota-based Ceridian could be acquired for roughly $4 billion, adding, <20>This may be a case where a larger-than-typical acquisition makes a lot of sense.<2E> Ackman was interviewed by Sanford C. Bernstein & Co investment analyst Lisa Ellis in a web-cast. Ellis also spoke with Ackman-backed board nominees Veronica Hagen and Paul Unruh as the trio sought to lay out how they would improve operations at ADP should they be elected to the 10-person board on Nov. 7. Ackman<61>s hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management invested in Ceridian a decade ago before the company was bought by a private equity firm, Thomas H. Lee Partners. ADP buying Ceridian would deliver a <20>best in class product<63> to ADP and help win back hundreds of customers who have recently defected, Ackman said. Neither ADP nor Thomas H. Lee Partners were immediately available for comment after normal business hours. <20>They need to think outside the box,<2C> Ackman said, noting that an acquisition like this would let ADP put its resources behind a better product. ADP has characterized the 51-year-old investor as an aggressive risk and its chief executive, Carlos Rodriguez, told Reuters on Wednesday that the hedge fund manager<65>s plans for beefing up profit could be realized only by laying off roughly 30 percent of ADP<44>s workforce. Ackman said previously in an investor webinar that he is not calling for massive layoffs. Ackman also pushed back on Thursday on the way Rodriguez describes him, saying his takeover plan is not a <20>swing for the fences<65> strategy. <20>It may be the lowest-risk solution to acquire a viable product that has significant market acceptance,<2C> he said. Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Lisa Shumaker 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-adp-ackman/ackman-urges-adp-to-consider-acquiring-ceridian-amid-proxy-fight-idUKKBN1CP058'|'2017-10-20T05:13:00.000+03:00'
'3b00c600af3c5c831944c00b37d28647b923d5ea'|'Business Secretary travels to Canada for talks on Bombardier deal'|'October 20, 2017 / 8:58 AM / Updated 8 hours ago Business Secretary travels to Canada for talks on Bombardier deal Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British Business Secretary Greg Clark will hold talks in Canada on Friday to discuss Airbus SE<53>s plans to buy a majority stake in Bombardier<65>s C-Series jetliner program aimed at helping it avoid high U.S. import tariffs. A Bombardier CSeries aircraft is pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau Clark will meet with Canadian government officials and executives from the two manufacturers, according to a spokeswoman for the ministry for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. A deal announced earlier this week gives Airbus ( AIR.PA ) a controlling stake in the Canadian manufacturer<65>s troubled C-Series jets, which are partly made in Northern Ireland. The tie up gives Bombardier ( BBDb.TO ) a possible way out of a damaging trade dispute with Boeing ( BA.N ), in which the U.S. Commerce Department has threatened to impose 300 percent import duties, potentially threatening thousands of jobs in Northern Ireland. Under the deal, Airbus would take a 50.01 percent stake in the C Series and add an assembly line for the plane in Alabama, thus becoming a U.S.-made product so it can avoid anti-subsidy and anti-dumping duties. The Boeing-Bombardier dispute has snowballed into a bigger multilateral trade dispute, with British Prime Minister Theresa May wading into the debate and asking U.S. President Donald Trump to intervene in order save British jobs. Bombardier is the largest manufacturing employer in Northern Ireland, which is the poorest of the United Kingdom<6F>s four nations and remains mired in political sensitivities after emerging from decades of armed sectarian conflict. Clark and Northern Irish politicians had welcomed the Airbus deal and promised to work with the firms to protect the workforce in the province. Bombardier makes the C-Series CS100 and CS300 state-of-the-art carbon wings at a plant in Belfast. Reporting By Andrew MacAskill and Costas Pitas; editing by Michael Holden'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bombardier-airbus-britain/business-secretary-travels-to-canada-for-talks-on-bombardier-deal-idUKKBN1CP0XB'|'2017-10-20T11:58:00.000+03:00'
'a8591c7fbe69d5a90102a17e7460e5c63e825f91'|'Activist investor RBR wants to build $1 billion stake in Credit Suisse'|'October 20, 2017 / 6:59 PM / Updated 9 hours ago Activist investor RBR wants to build $1 billion stake in Credit Suisse Joshua Franklin , Oliver Hirt 4 Min Read ZURICH (Reuters) - Activist investor RBR Capital Advisors wants to expand its stake in Credit Suisse ( CSGN.S ) to 1 billion Swiss francs (769.83 million pounds), as the hedge fund pushes to spin off the Swiss lender<65>s investment bank and asset management business. FILE PHOTO - Logo of Swiss bank Credit Suisse is seen at a branch office in Luzern, Switzerland October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann RBR has so far invested almost half its 250 million francs in assets to buy roughly 0.2 percent of Credit Suisse, which it believes would be worth twice as much if the bank focused solely on wealth management and its Swiss business. RBR Chief Executive Rudolf Bohli is trying to drum up fresh cash to take a larger position in Credit Suisse, Switzerland<6E>s second-biggest bank. <20>Currently the RBR fund has invested 100 million,<2C> Bohli told Reuters in a telephone interview. <20>We aim to raise an additional 900 (million).<2E> The boutique Swiss hedge fund went public this week with its campaign to split up Credit Suisse into three parts: an investment bank, an asset management group and a wealth manager accommodating its Swiss retail and corporate banking operations. Success hinges on winning support from other investors, with Bohli saying his firm has signed non-disclosure agreements with 150 investors, mainly non-Credit Suisse shareholders. RBR, which has had mixed success in previous activist campaigns against asset manager GAM ( GAMH.S ) and airline catering company Gategroup, has not set a timeframe for its campaign. However, Bohli said the fund would abandon the effort if shareholders are not receptive to the proposals. <20>BANKS ARE DINOSAURS<52> In a presentation prepared for the JP Morgan Robin Hood Investor Conference in New York, Bohli also pushed for Credit Suisse to completely overhaul its IT infrastructure. <20>Overall, banks are dinosaurs,<2C> Bohli said in the interview before the conference. RBR argues Credit Suisse<73>s IT platform should be abandoned in favour of a new, yet-to-be built system. RBR does not have an estimate for how much the new system would cost. Investors and analysts have so far taken a sceptical view on the chances of success for RBR, which has received input from Gael de Boissard, a former Credit Suisse investment bank co-head who left the bank in 2015. In response to RBR<42>s campaign, the bank has said it is focused on implementing its current strategy, which emphasises wealth management, particularly in Asia Pacific, supported by two investment banking divisions. Credit Suisse is around two years into CEO Tidjane Thiam<61>s painful three-year restructure, which has yet to bear fruit. RBR believes Credit Suisse is worth more split up into three separate businesses and wants to float the investment bank operations which sit in London and New York, and the asset management division. The core of Credit Suisse would then be the wealth management business and its Swiss universal bank, which houses retail, corporate and investment banking operations. Bohli said the fund<6E>s plan <20>has the potential<61> to double Credit Suisse<73>s share price within 18 to 24 months. Credit Suisse<73>s current market capitalisation is around $40 billion. Editing by David Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-creditsuisse-rbr/activist-investor-rbr-wants-to-build-1-billion-stake-in-credit-suisse-idUKKBN1CP2IK'|'2017-10-20T21:58:00.000+03:00'
'8640a2c9c3afb8614677ee898d97c39150901ab2'|'Exclusive - Tech companies to lobby for immigrant ''Dreamers'' to remain in U.S.'|'October 20, 2017 / 1:53 AM / in 4 hours Tech companies to lobby for immigrant ''Dreamers'' to remain in U.S. Salvador Rodriguez , Jeffrey Dastin 4 Min Read SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Nearly two dozen major companies in technology and other industries are planning to launch a coalition to demand legislation that would allow young, illegal immigrants a path to permanent residency, according to documents seen by Reuters. The Coalition for the American Dream intends to ask Congress to pass bipartisan legislation this year that would allow these immigrants, often referred to as <20>Dreamers,<2C> to continue working in the United States, the documents said. Alphabet Inc<6E>s Google ( GOOGL.O ), Microsoft Corp ( MSFT.O ), Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ), Facebook Inc ( FB.O ), Intel Corp ( INTC.O ), Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL], IBM Corp ( IBM.N ), Marriott International Inc ( MAR.O ) and other top U.S. companies are listed as members, one of the documents shows. Reuters was first to report the news. Amazon, Intel, Uber and Univision Communications Inc [UVN.UL] confirmed their membership, but the other companies did not immediately comment. It is possible that plans to launch the group could change. <20>We<57>re pleased to join with other organizations in urging Congress to pass legislation to protect Dreamers,<2C> Intel spokesman Will Moss said in a statement. Matthew Wing, a spokesman for Uber, said, <20>Uber joined the Coalition for the American Dream because we stand with the Dreamers. We<57>ve also held town halls, provided legal support and launched an online Dreamer Resource Center for any of our drivers.<2E> The push for this legislation comes after President Donald Trump<6D>s September decision to allow the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme to expire in March. That programme, established by former President Barack Obama in 2012, allows approximately 900,000 illegal immigrants to obtain work permits. FILE PHOTO: Alliance San Diego and other Pro-DACA supporters hold a protest rally, following U.S. President Donald Trump''s DACA announcement, in front of San Diego County Administration Center in San Diego, California, U.S., September 5, 2017. REUTERS/John Gastaldo/File Photo Some 800 companies signed a letter to Congressional leaders after Trump<6D>s decision, calling for legislation protecting Dreamers. That effort was spearheaded by a pro-immigration reform group Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg co-founded in 2013 called FWD.us. Many of the companies that endorsed that letter are named as joining the new coalition. The group has planned to take out ads in news publications, though this is subject to change, according to an email last week seen by Reuters. <20>Dreamers are part of our society, defend our country, and support our economy,<2C> said one of the coalition documents, which is being shared by the group to recruit additional companies. Slideshow (6 Images) A signup form for the group said 72 percent of the top 25 Fortune 500 companies employ DACA recipients. Trump campaigned for president on a pledge to toughen immigration policies and build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. He has left the fate of DACA up to Congress. Action may come in December, when Congress must pass a spending bill to keep the U.S. government open. Democrats have considered insisting on help for the Dreamers as their price for providing votes that may be required to prevent a government shutdown. <20>No politician wants to go home for the holidays and read stories about how this is going to be DACA recipients<74> last holidays in the U.S.,<2C> said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, in an interview on Thursday. He declined to comment on the new coalition. <20>You will see this continue to escalate until the end of the year,<2C> he said. Reporting by Salvador Rodriguez and Jeffrey Dastin; Additional reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Lisa Shumaker'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'ht
'0bbdf271223049dad23ffac47c728fc225eb5550'|'UPDATE 1-Creditors of debt-laden Brazilian firm Oi request meeting delay'|'(Recasts after judge orders postponement of assembly)By Tatiana Bautzer and Gram SlatterySAO PAULO, Oct 20 (Reuters) - The judge overseeing phone carrier Oi SA<53>s bankruptcy case agreed on Friday to give creditors and the company more time to reconcile competing restructuring proposals, 16 months into Brazil<69>s largest in-court reorganization.The judge, Fernando Viana, acted on a request filed on Thursday by several creditor groups including state-owned banks and bondholders, court documents showed.A creditors<72> meeting to vote on a Oi restructuring plan had been scheduled for Monday, but Viana postponed it until Nov. 6. If the quorum is insufficient on that date, the meeting will be rescheduled for Nov. 27, according to the documents.The International Bondholders Committee was among those who asked the delay. Others, all holding claims on debt-laden Oi, included the Ad Hoc Group of Oi Bondholders, Banco do Brasil , state development bank BNDES and Caixa Economica Federal.Oi Chief Executive Officer Marco Schroeder told journalists in Brasilia the carrier would take advantage of any additional time to continue negotiations.Oi wants to restructure 65.4 billion reais ($20.5 billion) in debt by offering bondholders a 25 percent equity stake, a move that would imply a 73 percent haircut for creditors, according to an independent analysis by Banco Itau BBA.Major bondholder groups represented by restructuring firms G5 Evercore and Moelis & Co, which hold about $22 billion reais in Oi<4F>s debt, have put forth a counter-offer which would give them 88 percent of Oi<4F>s equity.While bondholders have publicly condemned Oi<4F>s offer, they are also trying to avoid a liquidation at all costs, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.Oi<4F>s assets are worth 40.8 billion reais, according to independent auditor Ernst & Young. That amount could drop to 17.9 billion reais, or less than 30 percent of the value of debt under renegotiation, in a forced sale, according to the auditor.As a class of creditors, bondholders are ranked behind workers and BNDES, so they would stand to lose more in a liquidation than if the company<6E>s terms were accepted, the people said.Oi said in a statement on Friday that 33,000 small creditors had accepted the company<6E>s offer to restructure individual debts of less than 50,000 reais ($15,685).Preferred and ordinary shares in Oi fell about 2 percent in Friday afternoon trading.$1 = 3.19 Brazilian reais Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer and Gram Slattery; Additional reporting by Marcela Ayres in Brasilia; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Tom Brown '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/oi-sa-restructuring/update-1-creditors-of-debt-laden-brazilian-firm-oi-request-meeting-delay-idINL2N1MV143'|'2017-10-20T16:03:00.000+03:00'
'25ad66801d2fcbe7c0e95c7bea39563328d3cfab'|'Rio Tinto charged with fraud in US and fined <20>27.4m in UK - Business - The Guardian'|'Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto has been charged with fraud in the US and fined <20>27.4m in the UK after being accused of overstating the value of African coal assets.The FTSE 100 company and two of its top former executives were charged in the US of hiding losses by inflating the value of assets in Mozambique, which Rio bought in 2011 for $3.7bn ($2.8bn) and sold a few years later for $50m.America<63>s financial regulator, the Securities and and Exchange Commission, filed a complaint in federal court in Manhattan. It alleges that Rio Tinto , its former chief executive, Tom Albanese, and its former chief financial officer, Guy Elliott, failed to follow accounting standards and company policies to accurately value and record its assets.As the project began to suffer setbacks, resulting in the rapid decline of the value of the coal assets, Albanese and Elliott sought to hide or delay disclosure of the nature and extent of the adverse developments from Rio Tinto<74>s board of directors, auditors, and investors, the SEC alleges .<2E>Rio Tinto and its top executives allegedly failed to come clean about an unsuccessful deal that was made under their watch. They tried to save their own careers at the expense of investors by hiding the truth,<2C> said Steven Peikin, co-director of the SEC<45>s enforcement division.The miner said it intends to <20>vigorously defend itself<6C> against the allegations.<2E>Rio Tinto believes that the SEC case is unwarranted and that, when all the facts are considered by the court, or if necessary by a jury, the SEC<45>s claims will be rejected,<2C> the company said in a statement .Shell announced that Elliott was immediately leaving his position as a non-executive director at the Anglo-Dutch oil company as a result of his involvement in the legal case.<2E>We sincerely hope he satisfactorily resolves those proceedings and, that in that event, he would like to be considered for rejoining the board,<2C> said Charles Holliday, Shell<6C>s chairman. Rio Tinto was separately fined <20>27.4m by the UK<55>s financial watchdog for breaching disclosure and transparency rules over its handling of the Mozambique mining assets. It is the largest fine imposed by the Financial Conduct Authority on a company for a breach of rules relating to a firm<72>s official listing.The Financial Conduct Authority said the fine would have been bigger at <20>39.1m but the penalty was reduced because Rio Tinto agreed to settle at an early stage. Rio failed to carry out an impairment test and to recognise an impairment loss on the value of mining assets, which should have been disclosed in 2012 half-year results, the FCA said.<2E>The UK listing regime requires listed companies to adhere to high standards of disclosure and transparency,<2C> said Mark Steward, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA. <20>Rio Tinto should have been aware of its obligation to carry out the impairment test and the resulting material impairment should have been reported to the market at its half year results in 2012.<2E>Topics Rio Tinto Mining Securities and Exchange Commission Financial Conduct Authority FTSE Stock markets news'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/18/rio-tinto-charged-with-in-us-and-fined-274m-in-uk'|'2017-10-18T17:04:00.000+03:00'
'0750379fb903a6e18b945659daca823e8f9a3b55'|'Ride hailing firm Grab secures up to $700 million in debt facilities'|'October 20, 2017 / 5:41 AM / Updated 41 minutes ago Ride hailing firm Grab secures up to $700 million in debt facilities Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Grab, the main Southeast Asian rival of Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL], said on Friday it had secured debt facilities of up to $700 million to help it create the largest car rental programme in southeast Asia. The company also said it had signed a partnership with Singaporean public transport operator SMRT, which will give it exclusive access to SMRT<52>s taxi and private car fleet management capabilities, along with its network of taxis and Strides private-hire cars. It also said it would have the largest car rental fleet in Southeast Asia by the fourth quarter of 2018. Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan; Editing by Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-grab-debt/ride-hailing-firm-grab-secures-up-to-700-million-in-debt-facilities-idUKKBN1CP0DS'|'2017-10-20T08:40:00.000+03:00'
'43eb614cf60cacb94786c87a07259bc1135b13ee'|'Top Abertis investor backs Atlantia bid despite higher ACS offer'|'Toll booths are seen on a toll road operated by Abertis near Barcelona, Spain, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Albert Gea MADRID (Reuters) - The board of Abertis ( ABE.MC ) wants Atlantia ( ATL.MI ) to improve its offer for the Spanish toll road group although the Italians have the backing of a key shareholder in a takeover battle.Trumping Atlantia<69>s bid, German builder Hochtief ( HOTG.DE ), controlled by Spain<69>s ACS ( ACS.MC ), made a 17.1 billion euro ($20 billion) offer for Abertis on Wednesday.Atlantia<69>s bid, worth around 15.7 billion euros on a comparable basis, would create the world<6C>s biggest toll-roads operator, helping both companies in their drive to branch out from their home markets.Abertis said its board saw several <20>industrial and strategic<69> advantages in Atlantia<69>s offer but added that the price could be higher given the rival bid.<2E>The bigger size and a complementary geographical presence would make the new group more competitive, extending the average duration of concessions compared to Abertis<69> current situation, strengthening the asset portfolio and boosting growth,<2C> Abertis said in a statement on Thursday.Atlantia CEO Giovanni Castellucci was Quote: d as saying in the Italian press on Thursday that the group would assess all options regarding possible changes to its bid.Atlantia, controlled by the Benetton family, is offering 16.5 euros in cash or 0.697 Atlantia shares for every Abertis share.Abertis said shareholder Criteria Caixa was ready <20>as of today<61> to take up Atlantia<69>s offer, accepting in exchange for its 15.08 percent stake shares in the Italian toll road operator.LONG ROAD AHEAD Banking foundation la Caixa is the biggest investor in Abertis through the 15 percent held by Criteria, which it manages, and another 7.2 percent holding owned by Inversiones Autopistas.Also nine of Abertis<69> 15 board members, including the chairman and the chief executive, favor Atlantia<69>s bid, the company said.The Catalan group also said it was not planning to tender under Atlantia<69>s bid treasury shares worth 7.96 percent of its capital and added the board would give its opinion in due time over Hochtief<65>s bid.Hochtief expects the takeover process to extend into next year, Chief Executive Marcelino Fernandez Verdes told staff in a memo.<2E>The submission of an Abertis offer is only the start,<2C> he said.Hochtief is offering 18.76 euros in cash, or 0.1281 Hochtief shares, for each Abertis share and has set a minimum acceptance threshold of 50 percent plus one share.Reporting by Jose Elias Rodriguez in Madrid, Valentina Za in Milan and Matthias Inverardi/Arno Schuetze in Frankfurt; Editing by Keith Weir'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-abertis-m-a/top-abertis-investor-backs-atlantia-bid-despite-higher-acs-offer-idINKBN1CO0R7'|'2017-10-19T05:11:00.000+03:00'
'fb53405d68db0c4dbf504460feb02503ba6bf4df'|'Nestle CEO praised by Third Point but hedge fund still wants more'|'October 20, 2017 / 7:33 PM / in 19 hours Nestle CEO praised by Third Point but hedge fund still wants more Martinne Geller , Svea Herbst-Bayliss 4 Min Read LONDON/BOSTON (Reuters) - Nine months into leading the world<6C>s biggest packaged food company, Nestle SA ( NESN.S ) Chief Executive Mark Schneider got a tentative thumbs-up from a prominent investor, who praised his early steps on Friday but said there was more work to be done. FILE PHOTO: Nestle CEO Ulf Mark Schneider speaks during the Nestle shareholders meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, April 6, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse Billionaire hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, whose firm Third Point made a $3.5 billion investment in Nestle in June, told his clients that he was pleased but not satisfied in a letter viewed by Reuters. Loeb commended how the new CEO had shifted the tone, saying Schneider <20>has set a new course for Nestle<6C> but <20>there is much more opportunity to unlock value.<2E> Nestle declined to comment. The positive review suggested Schneider, a German who moved to Switzerland to become Nestle<6C>s first external leader in nearly a century, was for now safe from an activist-inspired challenge. Such showdowns at large U.S. corporations have cost eight CEOs their jobs this year. Third Point was especially complimentary about Schneider<65>s presentation at an investor seminar in London last month, saying it showed <20>a new approach of greater investor responsiveness.<2E> Loeb was at the meeting but kept a low profile, without asking questions of the CEO or answering journalists<74> questions on the sidelines. However, there have been plenty of private conversations, with frequent phone calls between New York and Vevey, a person familiar with them said. By staying in the background, for now, Loeb is giving Schneider time to steer Europe<70>s most valuable company through its weakest growth in more than two decades, as consumers ditch processed foods for fresher, healthier options. That may not last forever. Loeb<65>s sharply worded letters to CEOs are legendary and he has agitated for ousters of leaders at companies such as Yahoo and Sotheby<62>s ( BID.N ). This year alone, CEOs at General Electric Co ( GE.N ), Pandora, Tiffany & Co ( TIF.N ), Buffalo Wild Wings Inc ( BWLD.O ) and CSX Corp ( CSX.O ) lost their jobs amid pressure from other activist investors. Third Point spelled out its demands for Nestle months ago and reiterated them in Friday<61>s letter: specific margin targets, a faster pace of share buybacks, a reshaped portfolio and the sale of Nestle<6C>s stake in cosmetics giant L<>Oreal ( OREP.PA ). Schneider has delivered on some of those goals. Nestle - home to Gerber baby food, Kit Kat bars and Nespresso coffee - set a margin target for the first time last month, following similar moves from rivals Unilever PLC ( ULVR.L ) and Danone SA ( DANO.PA ). Nestle has also been buying back stock nearly every day since the September meeting as part of a $21 billion repurchase plan, and is selling its U.S. confectionery business and buying niche brand Blue Bottle. On Third Point<6E>s wish list is a sale of the 23 percent stake Nestle owns in French cosmetics company L<>Oreal. When L<>Oreal<61>s heiress Liliane Bettencourt died last month, speculation mounted about the companies<65> future relationship, which dates back 40 years. Separately on Friday, L<>Oreal Chief Executive Officer Jean-Paul Agon said he foresaw no changes in the company<6E>s shareholding in the near future. Reporting by Martinne Geller in London and Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Boston; Editing by Lauren Tara LaCapra and Andrew Hay '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nestle-ceo-hedgefunds/nestle-ceo-praised-by-third-point-but-hedge-fund-still-wants-more-idUSKBN1CP2KI'|'2017-10-20T22:31:00.000+03:00'
'5e388abe72534211805df1a45ed8d96ec003af56'|'Banks benefit when they employ more women at the top'|'Banks benefit when they employ more women at the top There is ample evidence that gender diversity is good for profits Economists<74> association sets out anti-misogyny plans Saturday, 21 October, 2017 Studies have found that companies with at least one woman on their board significantly outperformed those with none <20> Bloomberg Play audio for this article Pause This is an experimental feature. Give us your feedback. Thank you for your feedback. What do you think? I<>ll use it in the future I don<6F>t think I<>ll use it Please tell us why (optional) Send Feedback Nicky Morgan , chair of the UK<55>s Treasury select committee, last week warned the Bank of England about its lack of gender diversity at the top. In doing so, she was continuing the efforts of policymakers and governance experts over many years to extol the advantages of gender diversity. As Harriet Harman, then deputy leader of the Labour party, put it back in 2009, Lehman Brothers might not have gone bust if it had been Lehman Sisters. As a stale, pale male I bristled at those comments at the time. But might there have been something in what Ms Harman was saying? Did Lehman Brothers<72> demise at least in part stem from its male-dominated culture? While Ms Harman<61>s comments were not strictly about diversity <20> she seemed to be suggesting that a female-dominated investment bank would work better than a male-dominated one <20> underlying her remarks was a view of the potential benefits that would accrue from women playing a larger role in leadership. In the banking sector, in particular, there is a growing recognition of the importance of diversity; just last month the European Banking Authority <20> in conjunction with the European Securities and Markets Authority <20> published guidelines arguing for greater gender diversity. Putting aside the wider benefits of gender diversity, there is clear evidence that it leads to higher profits. A 2012 Credit Suisse study found that companies with at least one woman on their board significantly outperformed those with none <20> a finding echoed by a 2015 report by consultant McKinsey . Yet banks <20> widely viewed as citadels of capitalism, with a laser-like focus on profit maximising <20> are among the least diversified industries, with barely a fifth of senior managers at European banks being female. And with current profits still well below their pre-crisis levels, banks<6B> craving to find new ways to boost profits has rarely been greater. And it is not just higher profits that banks appear to be forfeiting through their male-dominated leadership. There is also academic evidence suggesting gender diversity improves risk management, something that Lehman Brothers clearly fell short on. So embracing diversity in the risk functions of banks may also help them avoid some of the traps that alpha male risk managers tend to fall into. This behaviour from banks is clearly perplexing; apparently even the prospect of making more money with less risk does not seem to have been enough to incentivise the industry towards more aggressively embracing diversity. So what is the solution? If there is one thing banks defer to even more than the profit motive, it is their regulator. In writing the rule book, bank regulators have the power to change behaviour and outcomes. And perhaps the most effective rule book of all relates to capital, the amount of reserves banks need to hold for when things go wrong. So here<72>s a suggestion: regulators should reward or penalise gender diversity at banks through the amount of capital they require a bank to hold. Banks that have embraced gender diversity <20> especially in risk management <20> are proven to be more likely to make higher profits and avoid risk. And with capital there to cushion the bank against losses, it follows that a bank that lowers its risk of losses can run with less capital. And, of course, vice versa. Regulators would likely balk at such an intervention, and might even fear that they would be portrayed as driving a socia
'3c0eb50acc5de946bf4d0c1bc3cd4cdab3c17076'|'China''s state firms to benefit from stronger Party - state asset head'|'October 21, 2017 / 8:02 AM / in 8 hours China''s state firms to benefit from stronger Party - state asset head Reuters Staff 3 Min Read SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Strengthening the role of the Communist Party in the governance of China<6E>s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) will improve their performance and not hurt private investors, the head of the state-asset regulator told reporters. Xiao Yaqing, Chairman, State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), attends the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, January 18, 2017. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich China is in the midst of reforms aimed at shaking up ownership structures and injecting private capital into its bloated and debt-ridden state sector, with the ultimate aim of creating more efficient and globally competitive companies. But leaders have repeatedly stressed that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) must also continue to fulfil their <20>strategic<69> functions under the strengthened leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, raising fears that political factors will be prioritised. Xiao Yaqing, chairman of the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), insisted the two aims were not contradictory, and that stronger party leadership would give SOEs an advantage. Asked whether party-building provisions would hurt the interests of small shareholders in the listed subsidiaries of state firms, Xiao said late on Friday that the party <20>has always reflected the interests of the overwhelming majority of the people and does not have its own interests<74>. "Consolidating Party leadership and strengthening Party construction will be a political advantage for state-owned enterprises and play an important role in improving their quality, efficiency and competitiveness," he added, according to a notice posted on SASAC''s website ( www.sasac.gov.cn ). China has sought to streamline its state sector through mergers and asset restructuring. Since SASAC was established in 2003, the number of firms under its administration has halved, from 196 to 98. Many economists, however, say much more needs to be done, noting the government still keeps major loss-making <20>zombie<69> companies on <20>life support<72> to avoid the risk of mass layoffs and massive debt defaults which could strain the financial system. Xiao said SOEs would continue to be exposed to competition and subject to a process of <20>survival of the fittest<73>, but debt restructuring would still be handled with caution, with the interests of employees and creditors treated with due consideration. Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Kim Coghill'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-soe-reform/chinas-state-firms-to-benefit-from-stronger-party-state-asset-head-idUKKBN1CQ07H'|'2017-10-21T11:01:00.000+03:00'
'90690001308db0c4cacc35be0858d0c07c2bb15a'|'Exclusive - Vitol set to acquire Noble Group''s oil liquids business: sources'|' 21 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago Vitol set to acquire Noble Group''s oil liquids business: sources Anshuman Daga , Dmitry Zhdannikov 2 Min Read SINGAPORE/LONDON (Reuters) - The world<6C>s largest oil trader Vitol Group is nearing a deal to buy Noble Group<75>s ( NOBG.SI ) global oil liquids business, which analysts had valued at about $1 billion, three people familiar with the matter said on Friday. One of the sources said an announcement of the deal could come as early as Monday. Shares of Singapore-listed Noble Group were halted earlier on Friday, pending the <20>announcement of a major transaction,<2C> Noble said. FILE PHOTO - A Noble Group sign is pictured at a meet-the-investors event in Singapore August 17, 2015. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo The sources declined to be identified as Vitol<6F>s purchase of Noble<6C>s unit has not been made public. Details of the transaction were unavailable. Vitol and an external spokeswoman for Noble declined to comment on the Reuters story. Once Asia<69>s biggest commodities trading house, Noble is slashing jobs and selling assets to shrink its debt. In July it agreed to sell its North American gas and power business to Mercuria. Hong Kong-based Noble flagged earlier this month it expects to sell the capital-intensive oil liquids business by the end of December, pushing back the timeline by a few months. Reuters reported in August that trading firms including Mercuria and Vitol were among the suitors for Noble<6C>s oil unit. Reporting by Anshuman Daga in SINGAPORE and Dmitry Zhdannikov in LONDON; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-noble-group-restructuring/vitol-set-to-acquire-noble-groups-oil-liquids-business-sources-idUKKBN1CP0DM'|'2017-10-20T15:19:00.000+03:00'
'bd79cbd32f39995745aa9404c8739f2adf95d739'|'An Indian aviation visionary runs into bureaucratic turbulence'|'ALL great aviation ventures start with mavericks willing to defy both the laws of physics and the scepticism of their peers. William Boeing, Oleg Antonov and Howard Hughes are some of the best-known examples. Next, perhaps, is Amol Yadav, who for much of the past decade has been building aeroplanes on the roof of the Mumbai flat he shares with 18 family members, and battling the Indian authorities to let him fly them.Admittedly, only experts would be able to distinguish the six-seater propeller plane (pictured) Mr Yadav has designed from scratch from a run-of-the-mill Cessna. But his plane is the only one in decades with wholly Indian credentials, he says. Much larger outfits have tried but struggled to get an indigenous craft certified for production, including National Aerospace Laboratories, one of several state-owned aviation mastodons. Self-identified visionaries are commonplace in business. But politicians have fallen over themselves to support Mr Yadav. His plane was the surprise star of a <20>Make in India<69> jamboree in 2016 to promote manufacturing in the country. The chief minister of Maharashtra, the state Mumbai is in, has promised not only government backing but land for Mr Yadav to develop and build his follow-up act, a 19-seater that is currently taking up space in his improvised domestic hangar. He has spent about 50m rupees ($800,000) of friends<64> and family<6C>s money to pursue his goal. Helping him is a staff of ten full-time aeroplane builders, assisted by a group of volunteers.Even Narendra Modi, the prime minister, has been briefed on Mr Yadav<61>s rooftop activities, and directed officials to help him. But Indian bureaucrats are unmoved. The continued development of the 19-seater hinges on the smaller plane being certified as airworthy by the civil aviation authority. It has been so long since its officials have had to sign off on a new plane design that they seem to have forgotten how. Inspecting the six-seater plane had been on its to-do list since 2011. Mr Yadav complains that repeated rule changes have been designed to block him. Even entreaties from the prime minister<65>s office have failed to sway the regulator.Having been hoisted off its rooftop hangar, the smaller plane is now languishing on the tarmac of Mumbai airport as if lashed to the ground by red tape. Whether Mr Yadav<61>s aircraft are airworthy is unproven. He says they are, and might know, given his day job as a captain for Jet Airways, a private airline. Mr Yadav wants America<63>s Federal Aviation Administration to certify his planes<65>he will soon apply to it<69>and India<69>s bureaucrats to accept its verdict.Private backers want to invest in his budding aviation venture, Mr Yadav says, but that might alter its destiny as a future national champion. No aircraft-maker anywhere has thrived without state backing, he notes, usually through defence contracts. He also has blueprints for a fighter jet, development of which would cost half the $250m or so India pays to buy a single jet from Dassault, a French manufacturer<65>if only bureaucrats would grasp his vision, that is. "Winging it"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/news/business/21730465-amol-yadavs-six-seater-plane-still-lashed-ground-red-tape-indian-aviation?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-19T22:56:00.000+03:00'
'ba0baf2fa03f140afcc476acbecc4c2061a03f75'|'Multilateral lenders vow openness about their carbon footprints'|'THE World Bank gets a lot of flak. Developing countries clamour for a bigger role in its management. President Donald Trump<6D>s administration lambasts it for lending too much to China. Employees are in open rebellion against their boss, Jim Yong Kim. Now the embattled institution faces criticism from a traditionally friendlier quarter: environmentalists. They accuse it and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) of not being upfront about their true carbon footprint.That must hurt. After all, MDBs pioneered climate-friendly finance. Ten years ago the European Investment Bank issued the world<6C>s first green bond to bolster renewables and energy-efficiency schemes. The World Bank has not backed a coal-fired plant since 2010. In 2011-16 it and the five big regional lenders in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe offered developing countries a total of $158bn to help combat climate change and adapt to its effects. They disclose the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by their day-to-day operations, from lighting offices to flying bankers around the world. But many greens point out they have been more coy about their continued support of dirtier development.Latest updates New Zealand<6E>s Labour Party turns defeat into triumph Asia 2 hours ago <20>The Death of Stalin<69> is a precarious comedic experiment Prospero 3 hours ago Why do women still earn a lot less than men? The Economist explains 4 hours ago Jeff Flake<6B>s anti-Trump manifesto could cost him his job Democracy in America 21 hours ago The flow of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh shows no sign of abating Graphic detail a day ago A better way to search through scientific papers Science and technology a day ago See all updates Oil Change International, an advocacy group, estimates that, excluding low-carbon but disruptive projects such as large hydropower plants, for every dollar invested in the past three years in green energy such as solar or wind farms, MDBs funnelled 99 cents to the fossil-fuelled sort (see chart). Helena Wright of E3G, a think-tank in London, says that about $1.5bn in <20>green<65> lending between 2013 and 2015 looks, closer up, distinctly brownish. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), for example, counted 9% of a <20>200m ($222m) loan to build a port terminal in Morocco as climate finance, although the facility would handle and store crude oil and coal.The banks dispute such findings. Many of the supposedly brown loans go through national treasuries or financial intermediaries. They can choose to finance fossil-fuel projects from general expenditure, not the MDBs<42> cash specifically. Other <20>brown<77> loans bankroll cleaner alternatives to grubby coal plants, such as gas-fired ones. The EBRD explains that the Moroccan loan is to adapt the port to rising sea levels.Yet many development bankers concede that their institutions could be more forthcoming about the greenhouse-gas emissions embedded in their portfolios. Some private-sector financial firms such as AXA, a giant French insurer, and public-sector pension funds in America and Britain have been reporting such totals for several years now. Among the MDBs, only the Inter-American Development Bank and the EBRD do so comprehensively.Others are belatedly piling in. At the World Bank<6E>s annual jamboree in Washington this month Mr Kim vowed to report total carbon dioxide produced and avoided by bank-funded projects. A framework for monitoring net emissions should be ready next year. The Europeans are refining their approaches. So was their African counterpart, before an administrative overhaul last year put the initiative on hold. Last month the Asian Development Bank pledged to gauge and reduce its portfolio<69>s net contribution to global warming.Chinese-led newcomers to development banking also look keen, at least on paper. The New Development Bank focuses on <20>sustainable infrastructure<72> and dedicated its first batch of loans entirely to clean-energy projects. In June the vice-president of 
'7cdaa3cbab93f40f8937faca456f3ba922beef51'|'Japan''s Mitsubishi, U.S. partner to invest $1.8 billion in data centres - media'|'October 21, 2017 / 3:24 AM / in 6 hours Japan''s Mitsubishi, U.S. partner to invest $1.8 billion in data centres - media Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese trading house Mitsubishi Corp plans to set up a joint venture with U.S. data centre operator Digital Realty Trust and build around 10 data centres in Japan by 2022 for 200 billion yen (<28>1.36 billion), the Nikkei said on Saturday. The signboard of Mitsubishi Corp is pictured at its head office in Tokyo, Japan August 2, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon - RC1720CB7530 Tokyo-based Mitsubishi expects the centres to help meet growing demand for information storage from customers of California-based Digital Realty and generate sales of around 20 billion yen to 30 billion yen in 2022, the business daily reported, without citing sources. The two companies could invest an additional 300 billion yen in the medium term, the Nikkei reported. Mitsubishi could not be reached for comment. Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Tom Hogue'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-mitsubishi-digital-realty/japans-mitsubishi-u-s-partner-to-invest-1-8-billion-in-data-centres-media-idUKKBN1CQ02Y'|'2017-10-21T06:23:00.000+03:00'
'0f07924e352392dcdf0cbde6b7c2484663ba9cc3'|'Linde passes important 50 percent threshold in Praxair tender'|'October 20, 2017 / 3:08 PM / Updated 39 minutes ago Linde passes important 50 percent threshold in Praxair tender Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German industrial gases group Linde ( LING.DE ) has passed an important threshold in its exchange offer for the planned $80 billion (<28>60.6 billion) merger with U.S. peer Praxair ( PX.N ). Linde Chief Executive Officer Aldo Belloni (L-R) and Praxair Chief Executive Officer Steve Angel shake hands at a news conference in Munich, Germany June 2, 2017. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle Linde said on Friday that shareholders representing 50.85 percent of its capital have accepted the offer, as an Oct. 24 deadline approaches to reach 75 percent acceptance. Passing the 50 percent threshold paves the way for passive funds, such as exchanged-traded funds replicating Germany<6E>s blue chip DAX index, to also tender their shares. Roughly 10-13 percent of Linde<64>s shares are held by such funds and one UK fund already tendered its shares on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter. Reporting by Arno Schuetze and Alexander H<>bner, editing by David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-linde-m-a-praxair/linde-passes-important-50-percent-threshold-in-praxair-tender-idUKKBN1CP212'|'2017-10-20T18:07:00.000+03:00'
'9cc0dd2d532db7e96d21d7d71f5bfe12dcc38cfb'|'Exclusive - Iberdrola demanded change at Siemens Gamesa as problems mounted'|'October 20, 2017 / 2:01 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago Exclusive - Iberdrola demanded change at Siemens Gamesa as problems mounted Jose El<45>as Rodr<64>guez , Andr<64>s Gonz<6E>lez 3 Min Read MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish utility Iberdrola ( IBE.MC ) used its influence to change the management of Siemens Gamesa ( SGREN.MC ) on Friday after the wind-power joint venture suffered two profit warnings in less than three months. FILE PHOTO: A model of a wind turbine with the Siemens Gamesa logo is displayed outside the annual general shareholders meeting in Zamudio, Spain, June 20, 2017. REUTERS/Vincent West/File Photo Germany<6E>s Siemens ( SIEGn.DE ) has a controlling stake of 59 per cent in Spanish-based Siemens Gamesa but Iberdrola, with an 8 percent stake, has a say in some governance matters thanks to a deal signed when Siemens Wind agreed to merge with Gamesa last year. Iberdrola demanded change at a board meeting on Friday, people with knowledge of the situation said, prompted by a second profit warning from the joint venture last week. Siemens Gamesa, which vies with Denmark<72>s Vestas as the world<6C>s biggest wind turbine maker, announced a management reshuffle shortly after the board meeting. The changes include a new chief financial officer and new CEO for the rapidly growing offshore division. Miguel Angel Lopez will replace Andrew Hall after only six months as CFO. Iberdrola, Siemens and Siemens Gamesa declined to comment on the changes. Siemens Gamesa is also delaying to February the Capital Markets Day where it was going to announce a new strategy. CULTURE CLASH The clash at the joint venture highlights the problems that can emerge when former cross-border rivals with contrasting business cultures merge and establish new chains of command. <20>The relationship with Iberdrola had been difficult from day one<6E>, one of the sources said. <20>Siemens Gamesa is now a German elephant. Every single important decision must be approved by the Germans. It has lost Gamesa<73>s agility,<2C> said another source. Since the merger Gamesa Siemens<6E> shares have tumbled more than 44 per cent as it repeatedly cut its forecasts for profitability. On Friday, its shares hit the bottom of the Stoxx 600 index losing 4 percent. The wider industry has suffered from stiff competition and a winding down of state subsidies, but Danish rival Vesta<74>s ( VWS.CO ) shares have fallen by just 4.9 percent during the same period. One reason for Siemens Gamesa<73>s underperformance is its exposure to the Indian market, which is in transition from a subsidised market to an auction-led one leading to more competition and pressure on wind turbine prices. <20>The shift in the Indian wind market to an auction system has resulted in a significant slowdown in installations in 2017 ... partially affecting Siemens Gamesa<73>s 2017 earnings<67>, said Goldman Sachs in a recent report. Meanwhile, Siemens has announced another joint venture with French Alstom to create a European champion in the railway sector. Additional reporting by Alexander Huebner in Munich; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer and Elaine Hardcastle'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-siemensgamesa-management-exclusive/exclusive-iberdrola-demands-change-at-siemens-gamesa-as-problems-mount-idUKKBN1CP1TL'|'2017-10-20T21:34:00.000+03:00'
'042d6aef897fde20119d719005fb51353c15aa4b'|'EU leaders want proposals on taxing online giants early next year'|' 29 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago EU leaders want proposals on taxing online giants early next year Julia Fioretti 3 Min Read BRUSSELS, Oct 19 (Reuters) - European Union leaders said on Thursday they looked forward to seeing proposals on taxing online giants by early 2018 but in a nod to concerns from countries like Ireland said EU efforts had to be in line with work under way at a global level. European countries are split over whether online companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon should pay more tax, with smaller EU members such as Ireland and Luxembourg - which host many online businesses - worried that taxes would hurt their competitiveness without a global solution. Countries like Italy and France on the other hand are frustrated by the low tax rates online giants pay by re-routing profits through low-rate countries and insist the EU should go it alone if the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which includes the United States and Japan, is unable to reach an agreement on a global solution. Meeting for an EU summit, the leaders said in their conclusions that they looked forward to <20>appropriate (European) Commission proposals by early 2018.<2E> However they referred to the need to ensure a <20>global level-playing field in line with the work currently under way at the OECD<43>, a change from earlier draft summit conclusions which did not mention <20>global<61> or link the OECD work to EU efforts. An EU diplomat said French President Emmanuel Macron - who has led the charge for more taxation of digital giants - was told to wait for OECD proposals in April 2018. Last month the European Commission outlined three options for taxing internet companies: taxing the turnover rather than the profits of digital firms, putting a levy on online ads and imposing a withholding tax on payments to internet firms. In the longer term the EU wants to change existing taxation rights to make sure digital firms with large operations but no physical presence in a given country pay taxes there instead of being allowed to re-route their profits to low-tax jurisdictions. The EU wants member states to reach a compromise by December, will then base its proposals on what they agree to, and will also send those proposals to the OECD. However, the EU faces the prospect of countries opposed to the measures blocking the move as states have a veto on tax matters. The Commission has raised the possibility of stripping members of their veto rights on tax issues, a move Ireland has said it will resist. (Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Phil Berlowitz) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/eu-summit-tax/eu-leaders-want-proposals-on-taxing-online-giants-early-next-year-idUSL8N1MU7I8'|'2017-10-20T00:29:00.000+03:00'
'253abc7920c0ecf8478e5af6c68311f07cf071be'|'GE''s quarterly revenue rises 14.4 percent'|'October 20, 2017 / 10:48 AM / Updated 17 minutes ago GE''s quarterly profit misses estimates, stock drops Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - General Electric Co ( GE.N ) on Friday reported a steep drop in profit, missing consensus estimates by 20 cents per share and sending its stock sharply lower in pre-market trading. FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the Global Operations Center of General Electric Co. in San Pedro Garza Garcia, neighbouring Monterrey, Mexico, May 12, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril/File Photo GE reported adjusted profit of 29 cents a share compared with the 49 cents a share analysts had expected, according to a consensus of estimates from Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. GE shares were down 4.6 percent at $22.50 in premarket trading. GE said weak performance in its power and oil and gas businesses, goodwill impairment and higher-than-expected restructuring costs under new chief executive John Flannery were the main causes of the profit decline. GE<47>s <20>solid<69> performance in other businesses <20>was offset by a decline in power performance in a difficult market,<2C> Flannery said. Industrial cash flow from operations fell mainly <20>because of lower power volume, resulting in lower earnings and higher inventory.<2E> Profit at GE<47>s power business, which makes power plants and related equipment, fell 51 percent in the quarter. Excluding items, industrial cash flows from operating activities was $1.74 billion (<28>1.32 billion) in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, down from $2.90 billion, a year earlier. The company reported a 14.4 percent rise in revenue to $33.47 billion, boosted by the acquisition of oilfield services provider Baker Hughes ( BHGE.N ). Unadjusted earnings per share from continuing operations fell to $1.80 billion, or 22 cents a share, from $1.99 billion, or 24 cents, the company said. Reporting by Alwyn Scott in New York and Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto and Nick Zieminski'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ge-results/ges-quarterly-revenue-rises-14-4-percent-idUKKBN1CP1BE'|'2017-10-20T13:48:00.000+03:00'
'945df739b056442307db6741434603101a9f3786'|'Futures up after Senate clears a hurdle to tax cuts'|'October 20, 2017 / 11:43 AM / in 18 minutes Wall Street rises along with tax-cut hopes Reuters Staff 1 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Friday after the Senate passed a budget resolution, lifting hopes that President Donald Trump<6D>s tax-cut plan may move forward. FILE PHOTO: The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is pictured in New York City, New York, U.S., August 2, 2017. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 165.32 points, or 0.71 percent, to 23,328.36, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 13.07 points, or 0.51 percent, to 2,575.17 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 23.99 points, or 0.36 percent, to 6,629.05. Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Nick Zieminski'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/futures-up-after-senate-clears-a-hurdle-to-tax-cuts-idUSKBN1CP1G7'|'2017-10-20T14:41:00.000+03:00'
'f8e95fe07a922bea87e5853f17058aca40a90065'|'Air Berlin plane grounded in Iceland over unpaid charges'|'October 20, 2017 / 11:20 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago Air Berlin plane grounded in Iceland over unpaid charges Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - An Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ) airliner was grounded at Iceland<6E>s Keflavik airport late on Thursday because the insolvent German carrier had not paid its airport charges, Keflavik operator Isavia said in a statement. FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A330-223 aircraft of German carrier AirBerlin takes off towards New York, U.S., from Duesseldorf airport, Germany, September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo It said the unpaid charges had been incurred before Air Berlin, which has struggled to turn a profit over the last decade, filed for insolvency on Aug. 15. According to German magazine Stern, the Airbus A320 landed at Keflavik at 10:35 p.m. local time on Thursday and was due to depart for Duesseldorf just after midnight. Air Berlin was not available for immediate comment. Air Berlin<69>s flights have been kept aloft by a government loan since the airline<6E>s insolvency filing, giving the carrier time to negotiate with prospective buyers for its assets. It has said flights will cease by Oct. 28 at the latest. Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) has agreed to buy large parts of Air Berlin. Talks with other possible buyers including Britain<69>s easyJet ( EZJ.L ) are continuing. Reporting by Maria Sheahan; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-air-berlin-lufthansa-iceland/air-berlin-plane-grounded-in-iceland-over-unpaid-charges-idUKKBN1CP1E5'|'2017-10-20T14:19:00.000+03:00'
'fefe7e07cf584a14d8c5f2a58441d325e8885277'|'REFILE-Banco do Brasil requests delay of Oi creditors assembly -sources'|'(Refiles to add missing word in first paragraph)BRASILIA/SAO PAULO, Oct 19 (Reuters) - State-controlled lender Banco do Brasil SA has asked to delay an assembly of creditors of Brazilian phone company Oi SA scheduled for Monday, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Thursday.Oi<4F>s revised restructuring plan proposed by management last week has been publicly rejected by the steering committees of key bondholder groups and most export credit agencies. Banco do Brasil, which is owed 4.4 billion reais ($1.4 billion) in Oi<4F>s bankruptcy, declined to comment.$1 = 3.17 reais Reporting by Leonardo Goy in Brasilia and Tatiana Bautzer in Sao Paulo; Editing by Sandra Maler'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/oi-sa-restructuring/banco-do-brasil-requests-delay-of-oi-creditors-assembly-sources-idINE6N1ML00B'|'2017-10-19T21:12:00.000+03:00'
'6b2783c943e88d7ea3a98a67047954b0157472f5'|'An Indian aviation visionary runs into bureaucratic turbulence'|'ALL great aviation ventures start with mavericks willing to defy both the laws of physics and the scepticism of their peers. William Boeing, Oleg Antonov and Howard Hughes are some of the best-known examples. Next, perhaps, is Amol Yadav, who for much of the past decade has been building aeroplanes on the roof of the Mumbai flat he shares with 18 family members, and battling the Indian authorities to let him fly them.Admittedly, only experts would be able to distinguish the six-seater propeller plane (pictured) Mr Yadav has designed from scratch from a run-of-the-mill Cessna. But his plane is the only one in decades with wholly Indian credentials, he says. Much larger outfits have tried but struggled to get an indigenous craft certified for production, including National Aerospace Laboratories, one of several state-owned aviation mastodons.Latest updates New Zealand<6E>s Labour Party turns defeat into triumph Asia 2 hours ago <20>The Death of Stalin<69> is a precarious comedic experiment Prospero 4 hours ago Why do women still earn a lot less than men? The Economist explains 5 hours ago Jeff Flake<6B>s anti-Trump manifesto could cost him his job Democracy in America 21 hours ago The   a day   a day ago See all updates Self-identified visionaries are commonplace in business. But politicians have fallen over themselves to support Mr Yadav. His plane was the surprise star of a <20>Make in India<69> jamboree in 2016 to promote manufacturing in the country. The chief minister of Maharashtra, the state Mumbai is in, has promised not only government backing but land for Mr Yadav to develop and build his follow-up act, a 19-seater that is currently taking up space in his improvised domestic hangar. He has spent about 50m rupees ($800,000) of friends<64> and family<6C>s money to pursue his goal. Helping him is a staff of ten full-time aeroplane builders, assisted by a group of volunteers.Even Narendra Modi, the prime minister, has been briefed on Mr Yadav<61>s rooftop activities, and directed officials to help him. But Indian bureaucrats are unmoved. The continued development of the 19-seater hinges on the smaller plane being certified as airworthy by the civil aviation authority. It has been so long since its officials have had to sign off on a new plane design that they seem to have forgotten how. Inspecting the six-seater plane had been on its to-do list since 2011. Mr Yadav complains that repeated rule changes have been designed to block him. Even entreaties from the prime minister<65>s office have failed to sway the regulator.Having been hoisted off its rooftop hangar, the smaller plane is now languishing on the tarmac of Mumbai airport as if lashed to the ground by red tape. Whether Mr Yadav<61>s aircraft are airworthy is unproven. He says they are, and might know, given his day job as a captain for Jet Airways, a private airline. Mr Yadav wants America<63>s Federal Aviation Administration to certify his planes<65>he will soon apply to it<69>and India<69>s bureaucrats to accept its verdict.Private backers want to invest in his budding aviation venture, Mr Yadav says, but that might alter its destiny as a future national champion. No aircraft-maker anywhere has thrived without state backing, he notes, usually through defence contracts. He also has blueprints for a fighter jet, development of which would cost half the $250m or so India pays to buy a single jet from Dassault, a French manufacturer<65>if only bureaucrats would grasp his vision, that is.  Business   "Winging it"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'https://www.economist.com/news/business/21730465-amol-yadavs-six-seater-plane-still-lashed-ground-red-tape-indian-aviation?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-19T22:56:00.000+03:00'
'04ea0e24270ac66e0d99a02e52378ec7ae861541'|'China property sales will slow in fourth quarter, prices stable-housing minister'|'October 22, 2017 / 3:57 AM / Updated 6 hours ago China property sales will slow in fourth quarter, prices stable-housing minister Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s property sales will slow in the fourth quarter but prices will remain stable, the housing minister said on Sunday, Apartment blocks are seen in smog on the outskirts of Tianjin, China, October 11, 2017. Picture taken on October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee as more signs emerge that the country<72>s nearly two-year housing boom has peaked. Property sales in China dropped for the first time in over two-and-half years in September, while housing starts slowed sharply as cooling measures started to bite, according to Reuters calculations based on official data on Thursday. Real estate, which directly effects many other business sectors, is a crucial driver for China<6E>s economy but also poses significant policy risks as the government tries to tamp down soaring prices while avoiding a crash and an ensuing blow to confidence and economic growth. Wang Menghui, head of China<6E>s housing ministry, told reporters at an briefing in Beijing that <20>the national growth rate of transitions for commercial housing will slow in the fourth quarter.<2E> The rapid rise of property prices has been contained and the government will keep measures consistent and not loosen control, Wang said, adding that the market was healthy and stable. Apartment blocks are seen in smog on the outskirts of Tianjin, China, October 11, 2017. Picture taken on October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee <20>We will firmly maintain our position that houses are for living in, not for speculation,<2C> he said. The remarks were made as part of a once-every-five-years congress of the ruling Communist Party, which opened on Wednesday and runs until next Tuesday. At the congress, the party sets broad policy directions and reshuffles top leaders. China will release September home price data on Monday. The softening in property activity appeared to drag on broader growth in the third quarter, as many economists had predicted. China<6E>s economy grew 6.8 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, easing from 6.9 percent in the second quarter. Further slowing is expected in coming months, but the head of the state planning agency said on Saturday that the economy is still on track to meet the official full-year growth target of around 6.5 percent. Reporting by Yawen Chen; Writing by Christian Shepherd; Editing by Kim Coghill'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-economy-property/china-property-sales-will-slow-in-fourth-quarter-prices-stable-housing-minister-idUKKBN1CR02T'|'2017-10-22T07:59:00.000+03:00'
'f42b04d054dabea1ebb4c3ac8290a58bc9fda6dd'|'Airbus turmoil overshadows bid to rescue CSeries'|'October 22, 2017 / 12:09 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Airbus turmoil overshadows bid to rescue CSeries Tim Hepher 4 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus<75>s ( AIR.PA ) coup in buying a $6 billion Canadian jetliner project for a dollar stunned investors and took the spotlight off a growing ethics row last week, but internal disarray has raised questions over how smoothly it can implement the deal. FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A320neo aircraft and a Bombardier CSeries aircraft are pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. Picture taken October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo The European planemaker secured the deal for Bombardier<65>s ( BBDb.TO ) CSeries program by pledging to throw its marketing might behind the loss-making jets, just as the Airbus sales machine reels from falling sales and internal and external corruption investigations. Chief Executive Tom Enders has urged staff to keep calm in the face of French reports describing payments to intermediaries and growing concern over fallout from the investigations. But the mood at the group<75>s Toulouse offices remains grim. <20>Bombardier asked for an ambulance and Airbus sent a hearse,<2C> said one person with close ties to the company. French media attention on the growing scandal helped to camouflage talks to buy the CSeries. Rumors circulated in late August that Enders and a colleague were visiting Paris to meet investigators. In fact, they were holding the first of several secret dinner meetings with Bombardier. But the same affair, which first came to light in 2016, has begun to cloud sales momentum. In the first nine months of the year Airbus accounted for only 35 percent of global jet sales in its head-to-head battle with U.S. rival Boeing ( BA.N ). The Airbus sales operation is demoralized and in disarray, multiple aerospace and airline industry sources said, with some blaming Enders for turning the company against itself. Two people said the situation is so tense that some employees have begun to shy away from selling in problematic countries, rather than risk being drawn into the investigation. Soon-to-retire sales chief John Leahy has been asked to stay until the end of the year to help steady the operation, but his successor has not been officially confirmed, adding a sense of vacuum that has also sapped morale. FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A320neo aircraft and a Bombardier CSeries aircraft are pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. Picture taken October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo Leahy designated his deputy Kiran Rao as his successor earlier this year but the chaos engulfing Airbus means now is not considered the right time for major new announcements. POST-BOOM SLOWDOWN A spokesman for Airbus, which has long predicted a slower year after an order boom, dismissed reports of instability. <20>We have a great sales team ... but it is fully understood that they cannot repeat records every year; and the year is not over,<2C> he said. Slideshow (2 Images) Enders has strongly defended his decision in 2016 to report flawed paperwork to UK authorities, which prompted UK and French investigations focusing on a system of sales agents run by a separate Paris department that has since been disbanded. Airbus says no evidence of corruption has been uncovered, but Enders has pledged to continue the overhaul of sales practices historically shared between Toulouse and Paris. A source close to Bombardier acknowledged disruption at Airbus but predicted things would settle down by the time the deal for Airbus to sell the CSeries closes next year. At that point Airbus will face a second challenge in marketing the CSeries, which for years it dismissed as a weak upstart. Now it must offer the aircraft side by side with th
'40968ac95157728f7ab62a8d02abd35386d76ce0'|'Ericsson, Volvo lead European stocks in earnings driven session'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Ericsson and Volvo led European shares higher on Friday with well-received earnings reports during a session where financials and tech stocks also outperformed.The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote The pan-European STOXX 600 was up 0.2 percent with most European bourses ending the day in positive territory.Mobile network gear maker Ericsson soared 8 percent as it said it detected signs of improvement after its restructuring efforts.Swedish truck maker Volvo was a close second with a 7 percent rise, hitting a record high after beating expectations.<2E>We<57>ve had very strong results from Volvo. The main reason for that was from construction and I would say that<61>s a leading economic indicator, so seeing such strength is very supportive for Europe<70>, said Rachel Winter, senior investment manager for Killik & CO.European third quarter earnings are expected to grow 4.5 percent from the same period in 2016, an increase of 1.3 percent excluding the energy sector, according to estimates from Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Financials were the biggest support to the STOXX, with banks up 1.2 percent and shares from the technology sector rising an average of 0.6 percent.News that the U.S. Senate passed a budget blueprint which would pave the way for tax cuts also fueled optimism on the market and gave a boost to cyclical shares, such as chemicals up 0.6 percent and basic materials, which rose 0.4%.<2E>Maybe with tax cuts now coming back onto the path in terms of possibly coming into being, that<61>s an additional boost and should actually underpin markets going into the end of the year,<2C> City Index<65>s analyst Ken Odeluga wrote in a note to his clients.Additional reporting by Helen Reid,; editing by Elaine Hardcastle and Peter Graff '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/europe-stocks/ericsson-volvo-lead-european-stocks-in-earnings-driven-session-idINKBN1CP2AS'|'2017-10-20T20:01:00.000+03:00'
'843b87860a40425e80346f4a7e72a60049a58ca0'|'Vitol close to acquiring Noble''s oil liquids business - sources'|' 51 AM / a few seconds ago Vitol close to acquiring Noble''s oil liquids business: sources Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SINGAPORE/LONDON (Reuters) - The world<6C>s largest oil trader Vitol Group is nearing a deal to buy Noble Group<75>s ( NOBG.SI ) global oil liquids business, which analysts had valued at about $1 billion, three people familiar with the matter said on Friday. One of the sources said an announcement of the deal could come as early as Monday. Shares of Noble Group were halted in the afternoon, pending the <20>announcement of a major transaction,<2C> the company said. Vitol and an external spokeswoman for Noble declined to comment on the Reuters story. Reuters reported in August that trading firms including Mercuria Group and Vitol were among the suitors for the oil unit. Reporting by Anshuman Daga and Dmitry Zhdannikov in LONDON; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-noble-grp-m-a-vitol/vitol-close-to-acquiring-nobles-oil-liquids-business-sources-idUKKBN1CP1GP'|'2017-10-20T14:48:00.000+03:00'
'b01c4fac8d4484be862ba13704b934b4bd24a9a4'|'Banks hired for 1 bln euro sale of Euroports -sources'|'LONDON, Oct 20 (Reuters) - A consortium of investors has appointed Citi and Goldman Sachs to sell Euroports, which could be valued at about 1 billion euros ($1.18 billion), sources familiar with the process said.One of the sources said the company, which has turnover of 550 million euros, was difficult to value because it had stakes in a diverse range of ports and there was little information available.The European ports operator is owned by Brookfield Asset Management, Antin Infrastructure Partners and Arcus Infrastructure Partners and has 22 terminals in Europe and three in China.Brookfield and the banks declined to comment. The company and the other investors did not respond immediately to requests for comment.Euroports handles about 46 million tonnes a year, with a strong focus on general cargo and dry bulk. Sources said that Chinese investors typically preferred container ports but could still consider the asset as part of an aggressive acquisition drive in the sector.China agreed to take a multibillion-dollar 70 percent stake in a strategically important sea port in Myanmar, an official said this week, as part of China<6E>s ambitious <20>Belt and Road<61> infrastructure investment programme to deepen links with economies throughout Asia and beyond.Unveiled in 2013, the project is aimed at building a modern-day <20>Silk Road<61>, connecting China by land and sea to Southeast Asia, Pakistan and Central Asia, and beyond to the Middle East, Europe and Africa. ($1 = 0.8465 euros) (Editing by David Goodman) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/euroports-sale/banks-hired-for-1-bln-euro-sale-of-euroports-sources-idINL8N1MV3BE'|'2017-10-20T11:38:00.000+03:00'
'70e0c00d541698b2efaddee51aa33a59c9539b45'|'Hudson''s Bay CEO Gerald Storch to step down'|'Oct 20 (Reuters) - Canadian retailer Hudson<6F>s Bay Co said on Friday Chief Executive Gerald Storch will step down, effective Nov. 1, to return to his advisory firm Storch Advisors.The company has retained an executive search firm to recruit a new CEO. (Reporting by John Benny in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/hudsons-bay-ceo/hudsons-bay-ceo-gerald-storch-to-step-down-idUSL4N1MV515'|'2017-10-20T23:37:00.000+03:00'
'b0206575a6720abd46b1c5c15925dc5ce16dc629'|'DBV Technologies peanut allergy drug fails key study'|'October 20, 2017 / 9:00 PM / Updated 17 hours ago DBV Technologies peanut allergy drug fails key study Tamara Mathias 3 Min Read (Reuters) - DBV Technologies SA said on Friday its peanut allergy treatment did not meet the main goal in a highly anticipated late-stage study, sending its U.S.-listed shares sharply down. Nasdaq-listed shares of the French drug developer plunged 60.5 percent to $19 in extended trading. The trial, which tested a 250 microgram stick-on patch called Viaskin Peanut, in 356 children between the ages of 4-11, missed the main goal of achieving a certain tolerance to peanut protein. ( bit.ly/2xbQD5H ) Shares of rival Aimmune Therapeutics Inc, which is developing an oral peanut allergy pill, soared about 40 percent to $35.65 after market. Aimmune is expected to announce results of its late-stage trial early next year. Preliminary results of DBV<42>s trial show 12 months of the treatment resulted in 35.3 percent of patients achieving a certain tolerance, versus a higher-than-expected 13.6 percent response from a placebo group. However, DBV said the results showed a statistically significant response with a favorable tolerability profile. Plans to submit a marketing application for the patch to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) next year remain unchanged, the company said. DBV is also testing a similar patch to treat cow milk-related allergies in a mid-stage trial, the results of which are expected early next year. Leerink analyst Dae Gon Ha estimated DBV<42>s peak sales, including the peanut and milk allergy patches, of about 1.8 billion euros ($2.12 billion) in 2027. There are currently no U.S. regulator-approved treatments for peanut allergies, the leading cause of death from food-induced allergic reactions in the United States. The market is desperate for recourse, experts say, as peanut allergies have more than doubled in children from 1997 to 2008, and affect about two percent American children. Those afflicted risk potentially fatal anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction, even if exposed to trace amounts of peanut protein. Viaskin Peanut, which must be replaced daily, delivers peanut protein to patients<74> immune systems via the skin, desensitizing them to small doses of the allergen over time. Unlike an oral drug, the patch avoids contact with the blood stream, lessening the risk of adverse reactions, DBV told Reuters. Earlier this month, Aimmune said it planned to test its pill in a mid-stage trial with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc<6E>s and Sanofi<66>s drug dupilumab. Reporting by Tamara Mathias in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dbv-tech-study/dbv-technologies-peanut-allergy-drug-fails-key-study-idUSKBN1CP2O2'|'2017-10-20T23:49:00.000+03:00'
'99b6af7074c04573fdd18722d0c951983a71bc15'|'RWE looking at Uniper''s gas and coal-fired plants - source'|' 21 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago RWE looking at Uniper''s gas and coal-fired plants - source Reuters Staff 2 Min Read DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) - RWE ( RWEG.DE ) is casting its eye over rival energy utility Uniper<65>s ( UN01.DE ) gas and coal-fired power plants in Germany, the Benelux countries and in Britain, a person familiar with the matter said. A logo of the German energy utility company Uniper SE is pictured at their headquarters in Duesseldorf, Germany April 19, 2016. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski Investors and M&A sources said last week that RWE was likely to buy the plants from Fortum ( FORTUM.HE ), which is planning to take control at Uniper with a proposed 8.05 billion-euro ($9.5 billion) offer, rather than launch a counterbid. While Fortum has said it has no plans for a restructuring, it is seen being mainly interested in Uniper<65>s assets in Sweden and Russia and less in its more polluting gas and coal fired power plants, which would be a better fit for RWE. RWE and Uniper declined to comment on Monday. German daily Handelsblatt on Friday quoted Fortum Chief Executive Pekka Lundmark as saying that the Finnish company was not currently in talks to sell parts of Uniper. Reporting by Tom Kaeckenhoff; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Kathrin Jones, Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-uniper-m-a-fortum-oyj-rwe/rwe-looking-at-unipers-gas-and-coal-fired-plants-source-idUKKBN1CP0ZM'|'2017-10-20T12:21:00.000+03:00'
'e3f63866939202bc8a2ec4076a25851837142470'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX opens broadly higher, near eight-month high'|'October 20, 2017 / 1:49 PM / in 24 minutes CANADA STOCKS-TSX opens broadly higher, near eight-month high Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TORONTO, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index opened higher on Friday, touching its strongest level in nearly eight months as financials led the broad-based gains. The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index rose 52.52 points, or 0.33 percent, to 15,870.52 shortly after the open. Consumer staples was the lone declining sector among the index<65>s 10 main groups. (Reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks-open/canada-stocks-tsx-opens-broadly-higher-near-eight-month-high-idUSL2N1MV0TJ'|'2017-10-20T16:47:00.000+03:00'
'02f9d95331855839891ae192b46e31d123a79803'|'Saudi Aramco<63>s IPO is a mess'|'THE proposal to sell shares in Saudi Aramco, the world<6C>s biggest oil company, stunned the financial markets last year. Muhammad bin Salman, now Saudi Arabia<69>s crown prince, promised that it would be the biggest initial public offering (IPO) of all time, valuing Aramco at $2trn. It was to be the centrepiece of his plan to transform the Saudi economy, reducing its dependence on oil. It was meant to foster financial transparency and accountability in one of the world<6C>s most hermetic kingdoms. Above all, it would cement the young prince<63>s image as a bold moderniser soon to inherit the throne.Alas, youthful impatience appears to have got the better of him. His tendency to micromanage the IPO and vacillate over where Aramco should be listed has caused delay and confusion. Matters came to a head this week when advisers, speaking anonymously, and company executives doing the same, gave conflicting reports, suggesting a mutinous atmosphere.  an hour   2 hours ago Quebec<65>s   The kingdom<6F>s advisers say privately that the decision to list in New York or London has been postponed, and that the plan <20>for now<6F> is to issue shares on Riyadh<64>s puny Tadawul exchange, with a private placement possibly to Chinese investors. But Khalid al-Falih, the oil minister and Aramco<63>s chairman, insisted the IPO would go ahead at home and abroad next year as originally planned. Company officials scorn the idea of listing only on the Tadawul, which would be swamped by an Aramco IPO.The confusion appears to have originated from the royal palace. From the outset, MBS, as the crown prince is known, has insisted that the firm should be valued at no less than $2trn, and that the IPO should happen next year. He had not fully appreciated either the threat of lawsuits related to the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 that could result from listing on the New York Stock Exchange, or the complexities of issuing shares on the London Stock Exchange, where institutional investors are angry about efforts to water down listing rules for Aramco. He wrongly assumed that, given the huge fees promised to bankers and advisers, other actors in the world of finance would bend the knee.Listing initially on the Tadawul only, as well as doing a private placement, may be a misguided attempt by MBS to skirt some of these difficulties, advisers say. It is seen as a way to promote the Saudi capital markets, and avoid the impression of selling off the family silver to foreigners. But with a limited pool of capital in the kingdom, some say a listing there could never raise the $100bn that MBS needs for his so-called Public Investment Fund to bankroll non-oil investments in the country.Advisers say the kingdom is also considering recent expressions of interest by Chinese oil companies and other Asian investors, who are keen to take up to a 5% stake in Aramco. The attraction is that it would further cement ties between the world<6C>s biggest producer and huge consumers of oil. But it would be unlikely to give the crown prince the $2trn valuation he wants, unless he guarantees large supplies of cheap oil as a side deal.The confusion is uncomfortable for Aramco, which, as national oil companies go, should be an attractive bet for investors. It has 15 times more reserves of oil and gas than ExxonMobil, its biggest private competitor, higher production, fewer employees and lower costs per barrel. It also has an abundance of young (including many female) engineers, and technology that can almost visualise the sea of oil beneath the desert sands. Its executives say that efficiencies inherited from the days that it was American-owned persist. Many Aramcons, as company officials are known, appear to view the IPO as an unwelcome distraction, but are at least mollified by the prestige they think an international listing would confer.To achieve that goal, MBS may need to reflect further on what an IPO means. His government is Aramco<63>s only shareholder and should, of course, have the final say. But unless he is prepared 
'e2821959d6f6610bd755b14fcb4fcbf1340e2489'|'Britain''s Interserve wins 227 million pound government contract'|'October 20, 2017 / 7:17 AM / Updated 20 minutes ago Britain''s Interserve wins 227 million pound government contract Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - British construction and services company Interserve ( IRV.L ) said on Friday it had won a five-year facilities management contract worth 227 million pounds ($298 million) for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), a day after the company warned it could breach its financing tests. The company said it would provide the DWP estate with mechanical, electrical and building maintenance, along with cleaning, catering and waste disposal services to more than 700 buildings. Interserve said on Thursday it could breach its financing tests, after a further deterioration in trading in its British construction and support services businesses in the third quarter triggered another profit warning. The company<6E>s shares crashed more than 50 percent last month after it issued a profit warning. It said then it was looking at options to maximise cash generation from the business in the short and medium term. Interserve has struggled with cost overruns in its energy-to-waste business and delays in a Glasgow contract. ($1 = 0.7630 pounds)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-interserve-contract/britains-interserve-wins-227-million-pound-government-contract-idUKKBN1CP0MR'|'2017-10-20T10:16:00.000+03:00'
'd9bbdf440022e24f589276ad3f9514c0e8515462'|'Schlumberger quarterly profit up on North America drilling'|'(Reuters) - The world<6C>s top two oilfield service firms on Friday warned slower producer spending and weakness in offshore exploration may weigh on current-quarter earnings, but said activity could improve in the longer term as the global crude market comes into balance. FILE PHOTO: The exterior of the Schlumberger Corporation headquarters building is pictured in the Galleria area of Houston January 16, 2015. REUTERS/Richard Carson/File Photo The outlook drove shares in both companies lower, with Schlumberger NV ( SLB.N ) hitting a 21-month low and Baker Hughes ( BHGE.N ) touching a 16-month low before retracing some losses. Schlumberger, the world<6C>s largest oilfield service company, warned that Wall Street estimates for fourth-quarter earnings may be too high, with customer investments in North American production moderating due to investor pressure for improved shareholder returns. But global oil supply and demand is becoming more balanced and recent spending cutbacks on U.S. production could eventually boost crude prices, Schlumberger Chief Executive Paal Kibsgaard said. A current lack of production investments outside North America should benefit producers as inventories fall, Kibsgaard said. Baker Hughes<65> CEO Lorenzo Simonelli was more pessimistic, saying the oilfield services industry continues to be volatile and describing the business environment as <20>challenging<6E> with customers pushing out some equipment purchases. <20>We have seen some improvement in activity but we have not seen meaningful increases in customer capital commitments,<2C> he said. Schlumberger was last down 3.3 percent at $62.33 and Baker Hughes off less than 1 percent at $33.08. U.S. oil producers are under pressure to boost shareholder returns after ramping up spending earlier this year while oil prices remained flat, knocking share prices back after a sharp run up in 2016. Brent crude prices LCOc1 have barely budged this year and the U.S. crude benchmark CLc.1 has remained mostly below $55 a barrel. This summer, U.S. producers Anadarko Petroleum Corp ( APC.N ), ConocoPhillips ( COP.N ) and Hess Corp ( HES.N ) cut second-half capital spending plans, including on oilfield services activities. Crude<64>s sub-$60 prices have also weighed on offshore exploration and driven a fresh round of consolidation among those drillers in a bid to tame excess capacity. <20>In the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, activity continued to weaken in the third quarter, and the outlook remains bleak for this region based on current customer plans,<2C> Schlumberger<65>s Kibsgaard said. Baker Hughes, in its first report to include GE Co<43>s ( GE.N ) oil and gas business since their merger, reported a third-quarter profit that missed analysts estimates by a wide margin. Schlumberger, however, matched analysts<74> profit estimates and posted a 43 percent jump in business from North America. Shares in Halliburton Co ( HAL.N ), due to report third-quarter results on Monday, were little changed. Reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru, and Gary McWillams in Houston; Editing by Savio D''Souza and Meredith Mazzilli '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-schlumberger-results/schlumberger-quarterly-profit-up-on-north-america-drilling-idUSKBN1CP1D9'|'2017-10-20T14:07:00.000+03:00'
'5abec36626f4447a7dc45275e0483e26e5b6a210'|'Asian shares edge higher, Fed chief speculation tempers appetite'|'October 20, 2017 / 1:13 AM / Updated 4 minutes ago U.S. tax plan hopes lift stocks, dollar strengthens Chuck Mikolajczak 4 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - World stocks advanced, bond yields rose and the U.S. dollar strengthened on Friday on increased hopes President Donald Trump could make progress on his fiscal plans after the U.S. Senate approved a budget blueprint that paves the way for tax cuts. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid U.S. Republican Senator Rand Paul appeared to back the administration<6F>s sweeping tax cut plan, saying he was <20>all in<69> for massive tax cuts, even as the Senate passed a key budget measure without his support one day earlier. Equities rose on Wall Street, with financials .SPSY, which are expected to benefit from the administration<6F>s proposed policies, up 1.16 percent as the best performer of 11 major S&P sectors. <20>It<49>s just a reaction to the thought that just maybe there might be something coming from Congress in the way of tax reform,<2C> said Paul Nolte, portfolio manager at Kingsview Asset Management in Chicago. <20>Everybody had kind of given up hope, and after the comments over the last 24 hours, people are like, shoot, this may actually happen.<2E> Housing stocks .HGX also moved higher, up 0.70 percent, after data from the National Association of Realtors showed U.S. home resales unexpectedly increased in September. But gains were curbed by declines in Celgene ( CELG.O ), off 10.76 percent after the company said it would abandon drug trials for a Crohn<68>s disease treatment. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 165.59 points, or 0.71 percent, to 23,328.63, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 13.1 points, or 0.51 percent, to 2,575.2 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 23.99 points, or 0.36 percent, to 6,629.05. Pedestrians leave and enter the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall For the week, the Dow climbed 2 percent, the S&P gained 0.9 percent and the Nasdaq gained 0.4 percent. The dollar index .DXY, tracking the greenback against a basket of major currencies, rose 0.49 percent, its biggest daily gain in a month, with the euro EUR= down 0.69 percent to $1.1768. Bets that Trump<6D>s planned tax cuts, infrastructure spending and other pro-business measures would push up growth and inflation had been behind a reflation trade that propelled the dollar to 14-year highs earlier this year. European shares rebounded from their worst day in two months, also helped by well-received earnings reports for Volvo and Ericsson and high German producer-price inflation numbers. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 rose 0.24 percent. MSCI''s world equity index .MIWD PUS, which tracks shares in 47 countries, gained 0.09 percent, just shy of a record intraday high. The Senate budget resolution also sent U.S. Treasury yields higher, with two-year yields reaching a near nine-year high, as investors reduced bond holdings on worries about more inflation and federal borrowing. Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR were last down fell 18/32 in price to yield 2.3845 percent, from 2.321 percent late on Thursday. The increased risk appetite also sent gold lower. Spot gold XAU= dropped 0.7 percent to $1,280.65 an ounce. U.S. gold futures GCcv1 fell 0.60 percent to $1,282.30 an ounce. U.S. crude CLcv1 settled up 0.35 percent at $51.47 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $57.75, up 0.91 percent on the day, ending the week up on support from a sharp decline in Iraqi crude exports due to tensions in the Kurdistan region after contending with weak demand data. Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by James Dalgleish and Nick Zieminski'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asian-shares-edge-higher-fed-chief-speculation-tempers-appetite-idUSKBN1CP02Y'|'2017-10-20T04:13:00.000+03:00'
'c037960dd609e2efd357b685093386f4b0353a48'|'ACS''s Hochtief offers $20.1 billion for Spain''s Abertis'|'FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Hochtief ( HOTG.DE ), controlled by Spain<69>s ACS ( ACS.MC ), said it was offering a total of around 17.1 billion euros ($20.1 billion) in cash and shares for Spanish toll road operator Abertis ( ABE.MC ).It also said it aimed to increase its dividend payout ratio toward 90 percent of the net profit of a combined group of Hochtief and Abertis.Hochtief<65>s bid complicates a rival 17 billion euro offer by Italy<6C>s Atlantia ( ATL.MI ) launched in May. People close to the matter said last week that Atlantia was prepared to raise its offer to about 17.8 billion to top an expected rival approach.Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Douglas Busvine'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-abertis-m-a-hochtief-price/acss-hochtief-offers-20-1-billion-for-spains-abertis-idINKBN1CN1Y4'|'2017-10-18T11:40:00.000+03:00'
'ac47f36b3cb8318a2538fd43b1036cc50bb280f8'|'Leaders to agree on EU, euro zone reform calendar'|'October 18, 2017 / 4:37 PM / in 18 minutes Leaders to agree on EU, euro zone reform calendar Jan Strupczewski 3 Min Read A Union Jack flag flutters next to European Union flags ahead of a visit of Britain''s Prime Minister Theresa May and Britain''s Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union David Davis at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium October 16, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders are to agree on Friday on a calendar until the middle of 2019 detailing when to tackle various changes to the bloc, including deeper euro zone integration, to strengthen the EU after Britain leaves. The calendar, called the <20>Leaders<72> Agenda<64> sets out a timetable for discussions on migration, defense, the next seven- year budget, European parliament composition, trade, top EU jobs and deepening the economic and monetary union. The discussions are inspired by French President Emmanuel Macron, who last month offered an ambitious vision for European renewal as a counterweight to the negative impact of Britain<69>s exit from the EU in 2019, officials said. Macron<6F>s ideas, however, put strong emphasis on the further development of the euro zone, now encompassing 19 countries, which some officials say creates the risk of alienating the EU<45>s eight remaining members. <20>The trick is how to use Macron and his energy without deepening divisions, but rather to push forward the whole flock of 27,<2C> one senior official said. According to the leaders<72> calendar, they will kick off the discussion on the reform of the euro zone and completing their banking union at a euro summit in the middle of December. Among the main ideas for a deeper integration of the single currency area are a separate euro zone budget, managed by a euro zone finance minister who would be responsible before a euro zone parliament. There are also ideas of transforming the euro zone bailout fund into a European Monetary Fund, creating a euro zone unemployment insurance scheme or a rainy day fund as well as setting up a sovereign insolvency mechanism. The calendar sets the summit on June 28-29 next year as the time when concrete decisions on such reforms must be taken. To complete the banking union, leaders need to agree that the euro zone bailout fund is the financial backstop for the euro zone<6E>s single resolution fund for banks, in case it runs out of money. This could be agreed already in December, officials said. But the key element still mission from the banking union -- a pan-European scheme to protect deposits -- is likely to be more difficult because Germany is strongly against it, fearing its banking system might be called upon to pay off depositors of failing banks in other euro zone countries. The calendar sets March 21-22 in 2019, a week before Britain leaves the EU, as the time when leaders should take any further decisions on euro zone reform. Reporting by Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Alison Williams 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-summit-calendar/leaders-to-agree-on-eu-euro-zone-reform-calendar-idUKKBN1CN2HN'|'2017-10-18T19:34:00.000+03:00'
'a0349541c3ca6f36fbcecfd9be7451e4fc55c2eb'|'BOJ''s Sakurai says need to stick with current easing framework'|'October 18, 2017 / 1:58 AM / Updated 17 minutes ago BOJ''s Sakurai says need to stick with current easing framework Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: Bank of Japan''s (BOJ) board member Makoto Sakurai speaks during an interview with Reuters at the BOJ headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, September 1, 2016. REUTERS/Toru Hanai (Reuters) - Bank of Japan board member Makoto Sakurai said on Wednesday it is important for the central bank to stick with its current framework for monetary easing because its effects will become stronger over time. Sakurai also said the BOJ should not easily change its 2 percent inflation target, because it is also used by other central banks. Sakurai made the comments in a speech to business leaders in Hakodate, northern Japan, according to a text posted on the BOJ<4F>s website. The BOJ has had to push back the timing for reaching its price target six times since it deployed its massive stimulus program in 2013. It now hopes consumer inflation will hit the 2 percent target by March 2020, but core consumer prices rose only 0.7 percent year-on-year in August. The BOJ<4F>s policy board next meets on Oct. 30-31, when it will update its consumer price forecasts. Reporting by Stanley White in Tokyo; Editing by Chris Gallagher 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-boj/bojs-sakurai-says-need-to-stick-with-current-easing-framework-idUKKBN1CN05W'|'2017-10-18T04:57:00.000+03:00'
'daa7ed8fa54a2c90ac7601f77590bfef4b765252'|'Australia''s competition watchdog to probe Accor buyout of Mantra'|'October 18, 2017 / 6:47 AM / in 33 minutes Australia''s competition watchdog to review Accor''s planned buyout of Mantra Reuters Staff 2 Min Read A sign bearing the logo of the Mantra Group Ltd is displayed on the wall of a hotel in central Sydney, Australia, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/David Gray SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia<69>s competition regulator said on Wednesday it will review French hotelier Accor SA<53>s ( ACCP.PA ) planned $920 million buyout of Australian hotel operator Mantra Group Ltd ( MTR.AX ). The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said it is monitoring the transaction and a <20>public review will be commenced in due course once certain information is provided by Accor and Mantra<72>. The deal, a takeover of Australia<69>s second-largest hotelier by its bigger rival, would create the biggest hotel group in the country, with about 50,000 rooms and roughly 11 percent of the market, according to IBISWorld statistics. The buyout requires the approval of the ACCC, as well as approval from Australia<69>s Foreign Investment Review Board. Analysts expect a green light as the market is quite fragmented and particularly if regulators regard newer rivals such as Airbnb as competitors in the sector. But some doubt is priced in to the market and there are concerns that divestments could be required in towns where the two hoteliers are the only players.. The ACCC announcement was made after market hours on Wednesday. Mantra shares had closed flat at A$3.89 below the offer price of A$3.96 per share. The broader S&P/ASX 200 index was also flat, while Accor shares were flat in early trade in Paris. ($1 = 1.2749 Australian dollars) Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mantra-group-m-a-accor/australias-competition-watchdog-to-probe-accor-buyout-of-mantra-idUKKBN1CN0O8'|'2017-10-18T09:47:00.000+03:00'
'39f97e6cf3c688853439b0ba8dbecd5b284b395c'|'Russia''s En+ names former UK energy minister as chairman ahead of IPO'|'October 18, 2017 / 7:11 AM / Updated 30 minutes ago Russia''s En+ names former UK energy minister as chairman ahead of IPO Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Russia<69>s En+ Group, the aluminium and hydropower group controlled by tycoon Oleg Deripaska, has named former UK energy minister Gregory Barker as chairman ahead of its London listing next month. The listing of En+ is the first major London IPO of a Russian company since Russia annexed Ukraine<6E>s Crimea region in 2014, making it a big test of international investor appetite for Russian assets three years after Western countries imposed sanctions on Moscow. Barker served as energy and climate change minister in Britain between 2010 and 2014 under then Prime Minister David Cameron before stepping down as an elected lawmaker in 2015. He now sits in Britain<69>s second parliamentary chamber, the House of Lords. He has experience in Russia, having worked in communications for the Anglo-Siberian Oil Company and for Roman Abramovich<63>s Sibneft oil company. En+ chief executive Maxim Sokov said Barker<65>s appointment <20>reinforces En+ Group<75>s commitment to best standards of corporate governance<63>. En+ is looking to raise up to $1.5 billion from the sale of new and existing shares in November. Singapore<72>s AnAn Group, a strategic partner of China<6E>s CEFC, has agreed to purchase global depository receipts (GDRs) during the IPO for $500 million. Reporting by Rachel Armstrong and Polina Devitt, editing by Anjuli Davies 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-en-ipo-chairman/russias-en-names-former-uk-energy-minister-as-chairman-ahead-of-ipo-idUKKBN1CN0QA'|'2017-10-18T10:11:00.000+03:00'
'12e5f0764500c361b01ec54a39c5d728583b0566'|'Snap lays off 18 employees in recruiting division'|'October 20, 2017 / 9:32 PM / Updated 21 minutes ago Snap lays off 18 employees in recruiting division Reuters Staff 2 Min Read SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Social media company Snap Inc ( SNAP.N ) said on Friday it had laid off 18 people in its recruiting division, an unusual move for a young company with ambitious growth plans and a likely reflection of tough competition from Facebook Inc ( FB.O ). FILE PHOTO - A woman stands in front of the logo of Snap Inc. on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) while waiting for Snap Inc. to post their IPO, in New York City, New York, U.S. on March 2, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo Venice, California-based Snap, the parent company of messaging app Snapchat, declined to comment beyond its statement confirming the job cuts, which were first reported by Business Insider. Snap Chief Executive Evan Spiegel told employees in an email last month that the company would hire at a <20>slower rate<74> in 2018, and that managers would be asked to make <20>hard decisions<6E> about employees who are not performing well, Business Insider reported. Snapchat is popular among people under 30 who like decorating their pictures with bunny faces and other filters. But since Snap<61>s $3.4 billion IPO in March, investor concerns have mounted that the company might never become profitable. Facebook has introduced similar features to its suite of apps, including Instagram, challenging Snapchat for users and for advertising dollars. Snap shares closed up 2 percent on Friday to $15.56 (11.80 pounds). Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Leslie Adler and Andrew Hay'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-snap-layoffs/snap-lays-off-18-employees-in-recruiting-division-idUKKBN1CP2Q3'|'2017-10-21T00:31:00.000+03:00'
'ae027bd08bbd63487c3aff5f7e255f197d7400b3'|'Noble Group seeks stock trading halt, pending major transaction'|'October 20, 2017 / 5:36 AM / Updated 35 minutes ago Noble Group seeks stock trading halt, pending major transaction Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore-listed commodity merchant Noble Group ( NOBG.SI ) has requested an immediate halt to trading on Singapore Exchange (SGX), the company said on Friday. FILE PHOTO - A Noble Group sign is pictured at a meet-the-investors event in Singapore August 17, 2015. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo Noble said the reason for the trading halt was a <20>pending announcement of a major transaction.<2E> The company has in the past said that it planned to sell its U.S. oil and gas business. Noble, once Asia<69>s biggest commodity trading house, has in the past year come under fire for its accounting methods, and its share prices have collapsed by over 95 percent from their peak in 2011 to below 40 Singapore cents. Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-noble-group-restructuring/noble-group-seeks-stock-trading-halt-pending-major-transaction-idUKKBN1CP0DK'|'2017-10-20T08:35:00.000+03:00'
'44fe84b5cecb8e7f31afba0ae20d15b025b1f04c'|'Wells Fargo fires forex bankers, investigates unit: WSJ'|'October 20, 2017 / 5:30 PM / Updated 30 minutes ago Wells Fargo fires forex bankers, investigates unit: WSJ Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co ( WFC.N ), the third-largest U.S. bank by assets, has fired four foreign-exchange bankers amid an investigation into that business by both the bank and regulators, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter and the bank. FILE PHOTO: A Wells Fargo bank sign is pictured in downtown Los Angeles, California, U.S. August 10, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo The foreign-exchange investigation now shows there is also trouble in Wells Fargo''s investment-banking arm, the WSJ reported. ( on.wsj.com/2yCUaNF ) Wells Fargo did not respond immediately to a Reuters request for comment. Reporting by Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D''Silva'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wells-fargo-accounts/wells-fargo-fires-forex-bankers-investigates-unit-wsj-idUSKBN1CP2D0'|'2017-10-20T20:29:00.000+03:00'
'911c608a08e946dc23296e9eec0ba6e49cf92387'|'Why Airbus<75>s tie-up with Bombardier is so damaging for Boeing'|'LIKE an airliner in service, Bombardier<65>s C-Series programme has had multiple highs and lows. In 2008 the Canadian firm began its attempt to break Airbus and Boeing<6E>s duopoly on smaller jets, spooking the pair into upgrading their own models. Costs and delays pushed it near bankruptcy in 2015, followed by a bail-out from the Quebec government worth C$2.8bn ($2.2bn). The next year an order for 75 C-Series jets from Delta, the world<6C>s third-biggest carrier, kept the programme aloft. But decisions in September and October by America<63>s Commerce Department to agree to demands by Boeing, an aerospace giant, to impose a total tariff of 300% on importing those planes into America risked the C-Series project crashing once and for all.On October 16th came a surprise surge. Bombardier said it would hand over half the project to Airbus, a European aerospace firm, free of charge. Bombardier and Investissement Qu<51>bec, the province<63>s investment arm, will own about 31% and 19% respectively. Aviation Week , a trade journal, called it <20>the deal of the century<72>. For Bombardier, whose shares rose 16% on news of the deal, it rescued the C-Series from a premature demise, and pulled the firm clear of a financial cliff.Latest updates Quebec<65>s ban on face-coverings risks inflaming inter-communal tensions Erasmus 37 minutes ago New 3 5 a day ago The See all updates Airbus had first looked at buying into the C-Series in 2015 but did not invest, worried about the technical risks in its development. But now the C-Series is in service, so the tie-up makes more sense. Bombardier, for its part, lacked sales expertise for big jets or a global maintenance network, which was putting off buyers, but Airbus thinks it can fix these problems by sharing its marketing skills and servicing system.The latter<65>s shares rose by 5% this week<65>Airbus now owns a controlling stake in a new aircraft, admired for its fuel efficiency, for which most development costs have already been paid. <20>This is a win-win-win situation for everyone<6E>, crowed Airbus<75>s chief executive, Tom Enders. But not for Boeing, Airbus<75>s arch-rival. The deal is aimed at sidestepping the tariff imposed at the American firm<72>s behest. Airbus plans to assemble Delta<74>s jets<74>half the components of which are American<61>at its existing factory in Alabama. It hopes that will result in the C-Series being classed as a domestic product.But overturning the tariffs may be easier said than done. Jennifer Hillman of Georgetown University, who was a commissioner at America<63>s International Trade Commission (USITC), thinks that the deal comes too late to affect the decision to impose anti-dumping or anti-subsidy duties against the C-Series (although the USITC may strike down the duties anyway). Boeing has insisted that any duties should be <20>paid on any imported C-Series airplane or part<72>. It could also argue that not enough value was added in assembly, and that Airbus therefore should still face the duties. Airbus and Bombardier<65>s manoeuvre <20>looks like a questionable deal between two heavily state-subsidised competitors to skirt the recent findings of the US government<6E>, Boeing said.It is right to fear the new combination. Although Airbus has lost ground in <20>widebody<64> jets recently as it refreshes its range, the European giant has already grabbed half the market for <20>narrowbodies<65> such as the C-Series. Analysts think the tie-up will further tighten Airbus<75>s grip. Boeing may now have to spend tens of billions of dollars launching a new narrowbody jet to compete, much sooner than planned.And by pushing for tariffs on the C-Series, Boeing has annoyed customers, from Delta to the governments of Canada and Britain, which are threatening to tear up future military contracts. News of the tie-up was greeted warmly not only in Canada but also in Northern Ireland, where the C-Series<65> wings are made. The Democratic Unionist Party, the province<63>s largest party, which supports the government of Theresa May, the British prime mi
'64008c4edab7bee2c74a2d00ce3fc5c92a9c850f'|'Factbox - Impact on banks from Britain''s vote to leave the EU'|'October 20, 2017 / 9:48 AM / Updated 28 minutes ago Factbox - Impact on banks from Britain''s vote to leave the EU Reuters Staff 12 Min Read (Reuters) - Banks have said they could move thousands of jobs out of Britain to prepare for the country<72>s planned exit from the European Union. FILE PHOTO: A view of the City of London and Canary Wharf. July 7, 2017. REUTERS/John Sibley/File Photo Financial service companies need a regulated subsidiary in an EU country to offer products across the bloc, which could prompt some to move some operations out of Britain if it loses access to the European single market. If this happens, almost 10,000 finance jobs could move overseas, a Reuters survey found. Following are related stories about top banks (in alphabetical order): ASSOCIATION OF FOREIGN BANKS IN GERMANY The association expects 3,000 to 5,000 new jobs in Frankfurt over the next two years, its head Stefan Winter, of UBS, told Welt am Sonntag in June. He said he expected 12 to 14 major banks to expand their Frankfurt sites significantly or build new ones. BANK OF AMERICA CORP Bank of America ( BAC.N ) has picked Dublin as a new base for its EU operations. The bank said in August that its businesses and results could be adversely affected and it may have to incur additional costs if Brexit limited the ability of its UK entities to conduct business in the EU. BARCLAYS Barclays ( BARC.L ) has signed a lease agreement for more office space in Dublin as it prepares to expand its operations there to cope with the impact of Brexit. Chief Executive Jes Staley has said that the group will keep the bulk of its activities in Britain and any changes to how the bank operates would be small and manageable. BNP PARIBAS BNP Paribas ( BNPP.PA ) may move up to 300 London investment bank staff because of Brexit, depending how clients adapt and the French bank<6E>s efforts to win new UK business, a source said. The company had 3,123 staff in its corporate and institutional bank in Britain at end-2016, down from 3,294 a year earlier, internal documents seen by Reuters showed. CITIGROUP Citigroup ( C.N ) said its private bank is to set up a booking centre in Luxembourg to ensure it can continue to serve EU clients after Britain leaves the bloc in 2019. The U.S. bank has said it may need to create 150 new jobs in the EU and confirmed it would headquarter its EU trading operations in Frankfurt. It had previously said it would move a <20>couple of hundred<65> jobs outside London. The company<6E>s chief executive for Europe, the Middle East & Africa told a French newspaper that the bank was applying for a licence to conduct sales and trading activities in France. CREDIT AGRICOLE Credit Agricole ( CAGR.PA ), France<63>s third-biggest listed bank, could relocate about 100 employees from its London hub to France out of 1,000 based there in the case of a <20>hard<72> Brexit, its chief executive said. The group is to move its European government bonds trading platform from London to Paris in September 2017, a spokeswoman told Reuters. CREDIT SUISSE Credit Suisse<73>s ( CSGN.S ) Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam said in September that his bank is relatively well placed to deal with Brexit and that only 15-20 percent of volumes in the investment bank would be affected. DAIWA SECURITIES GROUP Daiwa Securities Group ( 8601.T ) said it will set up a subsidiary in Frankfurt, which its head had previously touted as its favoured destination as London-based staff could easily be transferred to ots investment banking branch in the German city. Japan<61>s No. 2 brokerage has said it would still keep staff in London even after Brexit. It has 450 staff working in the EU now, mostly in the British capital. DEUTSCHE BANK Deutsche Bank ( DBKGn.DE ) is beefing up its presence in Frankfurt. Chief Executive John Cryan said the German lender expected to add new jobs in Frankfurt, where it will replicate a structure that is interchangeable with its London operations and evolve as Brexit negotiations un
'142ade9b2e12c4a7b0d589f2b1d6886adf0bdb34'|'JGB yields inch up after U.S. Senate passes budget blueprint'|'TOKYO, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Japanese government bond yields inched up on Friday after the U.S. Senate approved a budget blueprint for the 2018 fiscal year that will pave the way for Republicans to pursue a tax-cut package without Democratic support.The yield on the 10-year JGBs rose 1.0 basis point to 0.070 percent, while the 10-year JGB futures price dropped 0.07 point to 150.31.The 20-year yield rose 1.0 basis point to 0.605 percent.The five-year bond yield rose 1.0 basis point to minus 0.080 percent, partly because the Bank of Japan<61>s buying in that maturity was a bit on the weaker side.Most investors expect Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe<62>s ruling coalition to win the general election on Sunday, allowing Abe to appoint an advocate of massive monetary easing to head the Bank of Japan after current chief Haruhiko Kuroda<64>s term expires next April.But should there be an upset in the election, JGBs could come under pressure as investors consider the possibility that the BOJ<4F>s easing would be scaled back after Kuroda leaves. (Reporting by Tokyo Markets Team; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/japan-bonds/jgb-yields-inch-up-after-u-s-senate-passes-budget-blueprint-idINL4N1MV2GN'|'2017-10-20T04:57:00.000+03:00'
'82347c5cc5e74585d093eedf4566b90d11d98b6d'|'Bentley picks former JLR strategy boss as next CEO'|'October 20, 2017 / 11:51 AM / Updated 25 minutes ago Bentley picks former JLR strategy boss as next CEO Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - British luxury carmaker Bentley Motors has hired Adrian Hallmark, former head of strategy at British rival Jaguar Land Rover ( TAMO.NS ) to become its new chief executive, it said. A Bentley Mulsanne Speed, a Bentley Flying Spur, and a Bentley GTC Speed (L-R) are lined up in the courtyard of a hotel in central London January 7, 2015. REUTERS/Andrew Winning Hallmark, who served at Bentley before as sales chief and also held management positions in the past at parent Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ) and Porsche, will become CEO in February, replacing Wolfgang Duerheimer, the carmaker said on Friday. Duerheimer, a former top manager at VW<56>s Audi ( NSUG.DE ) and Porsche brands, will retire from Bentley but continue to advise VW on motorsport matters. His departure marks a wider reshuffle at the Crewe, England-based ultra-luxury division with four changes in senior positions, including Porsche manager Werner Tietz replacing Rolf Frech as Bentley engineering chief. Duerheimer will also resign from his position as president of Bugatti and in January be replaced by Stephan Winkelmann, a former CEO of Lamborghini and currently head of Audi<64>s ( NSUG.DE ) motorsport division, Bugatti said in a separate statement. Reporting by Andreas Cremer, editing by David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bentley-ceo/bentley-picks-former-jlr-strategy-boss-as-next-ceo-idUKKBN1CP1GT'|'2017-10-20T14:51:00.000+03:00'
'f4496d429df547e7b5121b9ed601dbc98b022612'|'Cloud services company Fusion courts banks for Birch merger financing'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - US cloud communications services company Fusion Telecommunications is in the process of selecting banks to arrange financing for its acquisition of Birch Communications<6E> cloud and business services unit, after inking a merger agreement with the US telecommunications company in August without committed financing in place, according to two sources familiar with the matter.A broadly syndicated loan deal could be brought to the market as soon as November, and will be supported by new and existing lenders, which were conferred with during negotiations leading up to the acquisition announcement and provided strong reverse inquiry thereafter.Fusion management was confident that demand was deep enough and the runway until closing was long enough to enter the deal without a commitment, ensuring time to review financing proposals from several banks and choose candidates that are best suited to support its future strategic plans, one of the sources said. Closing, expected by the end of the year, is subject to financing.<2E>There is strong interest in this transaction, as the market increasingly recognizes Fusion<6F>s unique and compelling single-source cloud strategy,<2C> said Matt Rosen, CEO of Fusion. <20>Fusion<6F>s acquisition of Birch is expected to create one of the largest North American cloud services providers.<2E>Publicly traded Fusion said August 28 it would buy Birch<63>s cloud and business services unit in an all-stock deal valuing the equity at US$280m. The deal would give Birch<63>s private equity owner Birch Equity Partners 75% of the combined company and Fusion shareholders the remaining 25%.While the purchase would not include Birch<63>s legacy competitive local exchange carrier business, it would result in the assumption of Birch<63>s outstanding debt. The debt includes a US$418m term loan B due in 2020 that pays 750bp over Libor with a 1% floor and US$40m drawn under a US$50m revolver that also matures in 2020, according to two of the sources. Fusion<6F>s own debt load stands at around US$100m, regulatory filings show.Proceeds from the potential deal will be used to take out both companies<65> existing debt.Pro forma the transaction, leverage at the combined company would sit at around 3.7 times, based on US$150m of last 12 months<68> combined adjusted Ebitda including US$20m of synergies and roughly US$558m of debt. On a standalone basis, Birch is currently levered around 4.4 times, based on US$100m-US$110m of last 12 months<68> Ebitda, while Fusion is levered around nine times, based on roughly US$11m of last 12 months<68> Ebitda.Based on the equity purchase price for the Birch business and ownership split, the combined company<6E>s enterprise value multiple would stand around six times.The financing could feature a first- and second-lien structure, versus the all first-lien structures under which both companies currently operate, in order to provide a junior capital cushion.LOAN GAINS Quote: s on Birch<63>s term loan have climbed around 20 points since the acquisition was announced, to 91-93.5 on Friday from 72-74 on August 18, reflecting investor confidence the acquisition will occur, two other sources said.Declining earnings at Birch<63>s legacy business in part pressured the loan prior to the acquisition announcement, the sources said.Birch Equity Partners did not respond to requests for comment.<2E>It<49>s not an easily financeable deal,<2C> one of the sources said. <20>But the market is very strong right now, and as it gets stronger, the chances of it happening are growing.<2E>Reporting by Andrew Berlin; Editing By Michelle Sierra and Leelo Parker Deo '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-fusion-birchmerger/cloud-services-company-fusion-courts-banks-for-birch-merger-financing-idINKBN1CP2IT'|'2017-10-20T17:03:00.000+03:00'
'3ad9274623f24d7363e3199ecd362a3282e7961c'|'British debt collector Cabot launches 1 billion pound London IPO'|'October 20, 2017 / 10:02 AM / Updated 28 minutes ago British debt collector Cabot launches 1 billion pound London IPO Noor Zainab Hussain 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Cabot Credit Management ( IPO-CAB.L ), Britain<69>s biggest debt collector said on Friday it would list on the London Stock Exchange, targeting a 1 billion-pound market capitalisation, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. The firm, which is owned by U.S. debt recovery business Encore Capital Group and private equity group JC Flowers, said it aimed to raise around 195 million pounds in fresh capital adding to a flurry of floats on London<6F>s main stock market since the start of October. Admission is expected to take place in Nov., Cabot said, adding that it would have a free float of at least 25 percent. Cabot had hoped to announce its intention to float in September, but postponed it after Peter Crook, the former chief executive of Provident Financial ( PFG.L ), stepped down from its board. The debt collector, which had planned to appoint Crook as its chairman in preparation for the London listing, said on Friday that Andy Haste who is also chairman of British lender Wonga, would be its chairman elect. Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ), Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ), Jefferies and Numis ( NUM.L ) are managing the float of Cabot. Editing by Anjuli Davies'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-cabot-credit-ipo/british-debt-collector-cabot-launches-1-billion-pound-london-ipo-idUKKBN1CP14S'|'2017-10-20T13:01:00.000+03:00'
'dec2baf59a92e54ee9ac97d7e27e9b54722cafaf'|'Qantas flight to San Francisco turns back after ''technical issue'''|'SYDNEY, Oct 21 (Reuters) - A Qantas jumbo jet bound for San Francisco was forced to return to Australia on Saturday after a <20>technical issue<75> 90 minutes into its flight, the airline said.Engineers were inspecting the Boeing 747 after it landed at Sydney<65>s Kingsford Smith airport, a Qantas spokeswoman said, declining to say how many people were aboard. No injuries were reported.<2E>We understand delays can be frustrating for our passengers but we<77>ll always put safety ahead of schedule and our teams are doing everything they can to get passengers back on their way,<2C> she said.Passengers were told that flight QF 73, which departed at 2.10 pm local time, had been turned back because the autopilot wasn<73>t working, a passenger told Australia<69>s ABC News.<2E>The flight got ridiculously bumpy, and the seatbelt sign never got switched off,<2C> the passenger said. (Reporting by Benjamin Cooper; Editing by Kim Coghill) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/australia-airplane-qantas/qantas-flight-to-san-francisco-turns-back-after-technical-issue-idINL4N1MW04D'|'2017-10-21T04:34:00.000+03:00'
'da856c018b8de5c8aba3ac91281c8ab78f3963a5'|'An Indian aviation visionary runs into bureaucratic turbulence'|'ALL great aviation ventures start with mavericks willing to defy both the laws of physics and the scepticism of their peers. William Boeing, Oleg Antonov and Howard Hughes are some of the best-known examples. Next, perhaps, is Amol Yadav, who for much of the past decade has been building aeroplanes on the roof of the Mumbai flat he shares with 18 family members, and battling the Indian authorities to let him fly them.Admittedly, only experts would be able to distinguish the six-seater propeller plane (pictured) Mr Yadav has designed from scratch from a run-of-the-mill Cessna. But his plane is the only one in decades with wholly Indian credentials, he says. Much larger outfits have tried but struggled to get an indigenous craft certified for production, including National Aerospace Laboratories, one of several state-owned aviation mastodons.Latest updates Quebec<65>s ban on face-coverings risks inflaming inter-communal tensions Erasmus 32 minutes ago New 3 5 a day ago The See all updates Self-identified visionaries are commonplace in business. But politicians have fallen over themselves to support Mr Yadav. His plane was the surprise star of a <20>Make in India<69> jamboree in 2016 to promote manufacturing in the country. The chief minister of Maharashtra, the state Mumbai is in, has promised not only government backing but land for Mr Yadav to develop and build his follow-up act, a 19-seater that is currently taking up space in his improvised domestic hangar. He has spent about 50m rupees ($800,000) of friends<64> and family<6C>s money to pursue his goal. Helping him is a staff of ten full-time aeroplane builders, assisted by a group of volunteers.Even Narendra Modi, the prime minister, has been briefed on Mr Yadav<61>s rooftop activities, and directed officials to help him. But Indian bureaucrats are unmoved. The continued development of the 19-seater hinges on the smaller plane being certified as airworthy by the civil aviation authority. It has been so long since its officials have had to sign off on a new plane design that they seem to have forgotten how. Inspecting the six-seater plane had been on its to-do list since 2011. Mr Yadav complains that repeated rule changes have been designed to block him. Even entreaties from the prime minister<65>s office have failed to sway the regulator.Having been hoisted off its rooftop hangar, the smaller plane is now languishing on the tarmac of Mumbai airport as if lashed to the ground by red tape. Whether Mr Yadav<61>s aircraft are airworthy is unproven. He says they are, and might know, given his day job as a captain for Jet Airways, a private airline. Mr Yadav wants America<63>s Federal Aviation Administration to certify his planes<65>he will soon apply to it<69>and India<69>s bureaucrats to accept its verdict.Private backers want to invest in his budding aviation venture, Mr Yadav says, but that might alter its destiny as a future national champion. No aircraft-maker anywhere has thrived without state backing, he notes, usually through defence contracts. He also has blueprints for a fighter jet, development of which would cost half the $250m or so India pays to buy a single jet from Dassault, a French manufacturer<65>if only bureaucrats would grasp his vision, that is. "Winging it"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/rss/business_rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/news/business/21730465-amol-yadavs-six-seater-plane-still-lashed-ground-red-tape-indian-aviation?fsrc=rss%7Cbus'|'2017-10-19T22:56:00.000+03:00'
'd705e9f00d912dd5ef7ea60ab03b444b65ff7b34'|'Saudi Aramco<63>s IPO is a mess'|'THE proposal to sell shares in Saudi Aramco, the world<6C>s biggest oil company, stunned the financial markets last year. Muhammad bin Salman, now Saudi Arabia<69>s crown prince, promised that it would be the biggest initial public offering (IPO) of all time, valuing Aramco at $2trn. It was to be the centrepiece of his plan to transform the Saudi economy, reducing its dependence on oil. It was meant to foster financial transparency and accountability in one of the world<6C>s most hermetic kingdoms. Above all, it would cement the young prince<63>s image as a bold moderniser soon to inherit the throne.Alas, youthful impatience appears to have got the better of him. His tendency to micromanage the IPO and vacillate over where Aramco should be listed has caused delay and confusion. Matters came to a head this week when advisers, speaking anonymously, and company executives doing the same, gave conflicting reports, suggesting a mutinous atmosphere.Latest updates Quebec<65>s ban on face-coverings risks inflaming inter-communal tensions Erasmus 32 minutes ago New 3 5 a day ago The See all updates The kingdom<6F>s advisers say privately that the decision to list in New York or London has been postponed, and that the plan <20>for now<6F> is to issue shares on Riyadh<64>s puny Tadawul exchange, with a private placement possibly to Chinese investors. But Khalid al-Falih, the oil minister and Aramco<63>s chairman, insisted the IPO would go ahead at home and abroad next year as originally planned. Company officials scorn the idea of listing only on the Tadawul, which would be swamped by an Aramco IPO.The confusion appears to have originated from the royal palace. From the outset, MBS, as the crown prince is known, has insisted that the firm should be valued at no less than $2trn, and that the IPO should happen next year. He had not fully appreciated either the threat of lawsuits related to the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 that could result from listing on the New York Stock Exchange, or the complexities of issuing shares on the London Stock Exchange, where institutional investors are angry about efforts to water down listing rules for Aramco. He wrongly assumed that, given the huge fees promised to bankers and advisers, other actors in the world of finance would bend the knee.Listing initially on the Tadawul only, as well as doing a private placement, may be a misguided attempt by MBS to skirt some of these difficulties, advisers say. It is seen as a way to promote the Saudi capital markets, and avoid the impression of selling off the family silver to foreigners. But with a limited pool of capital in the kingdom, some say a listing there could never raise the $100bn that MBS needs for his so-called Public Investment Fund to bankroll non-oil investments in the country.Advisers say the kingdom is also considering recent expressions of interest by Chinese oil companies and other Asian investors, who are keen to take up to a 5% stake in Aramco. The attraction is that it would further cement ties between the world<6C>s biggest producer and huge consumers of oil. But it would be unlikely to give the crown prince the $2trn valuation he wants, unless he guarantees large supplies of cheap oil as a side deal.The confusion is uncomfortable for Aramco, which, as national oil companies go, should be an attractive bet for investors. It has 15 times more reserves of oil and gas than ExxonMobil, its biggest private competitor, higher production, fewer employees and lower costs per barrel. It also has an abundance of young (including many female) engineers, and technology that can almost visualise the sea of oil beneath the desert sands. Its executives say that efficiencies inherited from the days that it was American-owned persist. Many Aramcons, as company officials are known, appear to view the IPO as an unwelcome distraction, but are at least mollified by the prestige they think an international listing would confer.To achieve that goal, MBS may need to reflect further on what an IPO means. H
'9b4e6dd5129def91d3db66baa89167429b8c5db2'|'A property billionaire rescues Harvey Weinstein<69>s studio'|'AS DISTRESSED assets go, the Weinstein Company (TWC) is uniquely distressing. Much of its value was bound up in the brands of its eponymous founding brothers, one of whom, Harvey Weinstein, has been accused of sexual harassment and of assault by dozens of women in the film industry in America and elsewhere. Amazon Studios, Apple and some television networks have hastened to cut ties with the studio, unwind production deals and remove Mr Weinstein<69>s name from credits. Mr Weinstein<69>s accusers may well sue the company. It was already heavily indebted after a recent string of box-office flops.Who would see an opportunity? Aside from TWC<57>s particular troubles, independent films are a tough business, and the studio has had to haggle with creditors. But for a vulture investor some of the studio<69>s assets hold value. On October 16th Thomas Barrack (pictured above), chairman of Colony Capital, a private-equity firm, said he would immediately put an undisclosed sum of cash into TWC and look at buying part or all of it. Mr Barrack, a 70-year-old property investor who is a friend of President Donald Trump and who has served as the chairman of Mr Trump<6D>s inaugural committee, has experience swooping in for high-profile distressed assets. In 2008 his firm acquired Michael Jackson<6F>s Neverland ranch. Colony also put up millions to rescue Annie Leibovitz, a photographer known for her work with celebrities, from financial trouble.Latest updates Quebec<65>s ban on face-coverings risks inflaming inter-communal tensions Erasmus 37 minutes ago New 3 5 a day ago The See all updates Still, some see the potential acquisition as a bail-out for the Weinsteins, who own more than two-fifths of the studio. Harvey Weinstein, who was fired from running the company on October 8th, has now given up his board seat, and Bob Weinstein, who now faces a single accusation of sexual harassment (and denies the allegation), may be on his way out. Making no direct reference to the scandal engulfing the studio, Mr Barrack said Colony would help return TWC to <20>its rightful iconic position in the independent film and television industry<72>.He is certainly familiar with TWC<57>s assets, which comprise its film library as well as a slate of films and television projects. In 2010 his firm participated in the purchase of Miramax Films, the Weinstein brothers<72> predecessor film company, from Disney for $660m. According to a Hollywood producer familiar with both firms, Miramax<61>s new owners could not develop projects based on many of their successful old titles, like <20>Shakespeare in Love<76> and <20>Bad Santa<74>, without the consent of the Weinstein brothers, who had produced them. Miramax and TWC entered into complicated development agreements, but little of significance has come from them thus far (<28>Bad Santa 2<> was made, and flopped on its release last year, failing to earn back its budget). The two also share production rights to some television properties, including Project Runway, a reality competition around fashion.Combining Miramax and TWC into one entity would clear up rights issues for both companies. Mr Barrack no longer has a stake in Miramax, as Colony and its fellow investors sold the studio last year to beIN Media Group, a sports media company based in Qatar, for an undisclosed sum. Mr Barrack may buy TWC as a short-term salvage job in order to sell it to Miramax<61>s current owner, or he could break the company into pieces, splitting off, for example, the television production business, and sell them off individually. Whatever happens to the business now, the Weinstein name will not be on it. "Into the frame"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/rss/business_rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/news/business/21730476-tom-barrack-has-promised-restore-weinstein-company-its-rightful-iconic-position?fsrc=rss%7Cbus'|'2017-10-19T22:56:00.000+03:00'
'334c0966b31b017dbeb4e12e213e4aa88991d707'|'Aso says Japan firms'' piling up of internal reserves has gone too far'|'October 20, 2017 / 2:16 AM / Updated 23 minutes ago Aso says Japan firms'' piling up of internal reserves has gone too far Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Finance Minister Taro Aso on Friday criticised Japanese companies for piling up their internal reserves too much, and said the government needed to take steps to encourage them to increase spending on wages and business investment. Aso, speaking to reporters after a cabinet meeting, also brushed aside some media reports that said the United States had strongly demanded talks on a bilateral free trade agreement during an economic dialogue this week. Aso, who doubles as deputy prime minister, met Vice president Mike Pence for the dialogue in Washington. Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Chris Gallagher 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-economy-aso/aso-says-japan-firms-piling-up-of-internal-reserves-has-gone-too-far-idUKKBN1CP05E'|'2017-10-20T05:15:00.000+03:00'
'91c9a04effea2acee01095b4f15b81f8e2a3e291'|'Kobe Steel data fabrication continued after misconduct discovered: Nikkei'|'October 20, 2017 / 4:33 AM / in 5 minutes Japan''s Kobe Steel says violated statutory standards, losing customers Yuka Obayashi , Taiga Uranaka 5 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ) sank deeper into crisis on Friday as the embattled company said it had lost some customers to competitors because of widespread data falsification that had extended to its mainstream steel sheet business. Japan<61>s third-largest steelmaker, which supplies the world<6C>s top airline and automobile manufacturers, also said it had violated statutory standards set by the industry ministry, pushing the scandal beyond failure to meet specifications agreed with customers. Until now, the 112-year-old company had said products it sold with falsified data met safety and other standards but did not meet contract specifications agreed with customers. It had also said the problem was mainly with aluminium and copper products. Kobe Steel has an extensive role in global supply chains - the company produces engine valve springs found in half the world<6C>s cars, according to its website. Kobe Steel Executive Vice President Naoto Umehara said the company had found a breach of industrial standards at its Hatano copper plant southwest of Tokyo, along with a new case of falsification of data at a unit that cuts and processes steel plate. <20>There has been also some impact on our business as we have lost credibility,<2C> Umehara told a news conference, citing cases that the company lost orders and customers switched to its competitors. <20>But we can<61>t quantify the impact at the moment.<2E> He said the Hatano plant did not meet Japanese Industrial Standards for quality management after it faked data on tensile strength and other properties of copper and copper-alloy piping. Kobe Steel has stopped shipping about 43 percent of copper products from the plant over the problems with the statutory standards, a company spokeswoman said. Two certification companies said on Thursday they were investigating whether the plant is in line with a global standard on quality control. They could suspend or cancel the <20>ISO9001<30> certification of the plant if it doesn<73>t meet the standard, which could affect its business as many global buyers require suppliers to use the benchmark. Kobe Steel said it also found, as the result of a whistleblower, that a plant in western Japan had been <20>obstructing company<6E>s voluntary inspection<6F> by concealing data. After getting a tip that workers at the Chofu plant failed to report data falsification on aluminium extrusion products, the company decided to set up a panel of outsiders, replacing an in-house panel led by the company<6E>s president. Kobe Steel Executive Vice President Naoto Umehara attends a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato The Ministry of Trade and Industry believes <20>the data concealment by its employees has hurt the credibility of Kobe Steel<65>s voluntary investigation,<2C> said Yasuji Komiyama, director of the industry ministry<72>s metal industries division. The ministry ordered the company on Friday to expedite its probes and report results as soon as possible. Kobe Steel previously said that it found widespread falsification of data on the strength and durability of copper and aluminium products sent to customers. The falsifications stretch back for more than 10 years, a senior executive told Reuters this week. JUSTICE PROBE Slideshow (6 Images) Global automakers, aircraft companies and other manufacturers have scrambled to identify potential hazards in their products because of the falsification, although four Japanese carmakers said on Thursday they have found no safety issues with aluminium parts supplied by Kobe Steel. The company is now subject to a U.S. Justice Department probe while checks continue at hundreds of its clients involved in complex supply chains spanning the globe. No safety problems have surfaced as Kobe Steel attempts to confirm the extent of the data tampering. But in
'b8a8ccce598d0298bf41c3dfa8dfeba5f7ab25b2'|'SoftBank''s big checks are stalling tech IPOs'|'October 20, 2017 / 12:03 AM / Updated 43 minutes ago SoftBank''s big checks are stalling tech IPOs Heather Somerville 5 Min Read FILE PHOTO - The logo of SoftBank Group Corp is displayed at SoftBank World 2017 conference in Tokyo, Japan, July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. (Reuters) - Big cash infusions for startups from an ever-expanding group of financiers, led by SoftBank Group Corp and Middle East sovereign wealth funds, have extinguished hopes that the technology IPO market would bounce back this year. These deep-pocketed financiers, which have traditionally invested in the public markets but are seeking better returns from private tech companies, have enabled startups to raise more money, stay private longer and spurn the regulatory hassles of an IPO even as they become larger than many public companies. At The Wall Street Journal D.Live conference this week in Southern California, a number of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, IPO experts and dealmakers spoke with Reuters about the surprisingly low number of IPOs and pointed to investors such as SoftBank for changing the business of startup financing. <20>It<49>s not surprising if these companies get 10 term sheets,<2C> said Nicole Quinn, an investing partner with Lightspeed Venture Partners, referring to formal offers of investment. The result is a protracted IPO slump that has contributed to a 50 percent drop in the number of U.S. public companies over the last two decades, according to the Nasdaq. IPOs have fallen especially precipitously since 2014 - the year public market investors, including mutual funds, ramped up investment in private tech companies. There are some signs of a more active fall for IPOs. Tech companies Switch, MongoDB and Roku have gone public in the past few weeks, with debuts from ForeScout and Zscaler ahead. CORRECTION AHEAD? Yet many investors are bracing for a market tumble after a sustained rally, raising questions about IPO opportunities for 2018. Just 12 venture capital-backed tech companies went public in the United States in the first three quarters this year, compared to 27 for the same time period in 2014, according to IPO investment adviser Renaissance Capital. The drought continues even though both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite are up more than 26 percent in the last year and market volatility is low, normally ideal conditions for an IPO. Wall Street stock indexes have posted a string of record highs in recent weeks, and the Dow closed above 23,000 for the first time on Wednesday. [.N] But Barry Diller, a longtime dealmaker and chairman of InterActiveCorp and Expedia Inc, said the huge funding rounds had eliminated the traditional reason for an IPO. <20>There is no reason to be public unless you need capital, and almost all these companies do not need capital,<2C> Diller said. SOFTBANK-UBER DEAL EYED Increasingly, the big checks are coming from SoftBank, which in May closed a $93 billion investment fund. So far this year, it has announced at least 14 investments in technology companies globally, including a $500 million deal with fintech company Social Finance and a $3 billion investment in shared workspace company WeWork, both private and already worth billions of dollars. SoftBank is in the next week expected to finalize a highly anticipated deal with Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] in which it, along with other investors, would purchase as much as $10 billion in Uber shares, most of them from employees and existing investors in a so-called secondary offering. <20>This is the third liquidity option,<2C> said Larry Albukerk, who runs secondary market firm EB Exchange and spoke to Reuters by phone. <20>It used to be IPO or acquisition.<2E> SoftBank<6E>s deals are causing venture capitalists to <20>prepare for more M&A exits,<2C> and fewer IPOs over the long term, said Jenny Lee, managing partner at GGV Capital. Meanwhile, Nasdaq<61>s private market business, set up in 2014, facilitated more than $1 billion in secondary market trans
'17fe0d90dff686089c09f979cb438e14b7f48c74'|'Romania - Factors to watch on Oct. 20'|'Oct 20 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Friday.DEBT TENDER Romania<69>s finance ministry rejected all bids at a tender aimed at selling March 2022 treasury bonds on Thursday, the fifth consecutive failed auction this month, central bank data showed.EIB European Investment Bank vicepresident Andrew McDowell said on Thursday he expected financing for Romania to rise this year to at least 1.3 billion euros ($1.54 billion) worth of signed loan contracts, up from roughly 1 billion euros last year.TAX Romanian employers will pay a 2 percent tax on their overall wage fund from 2018, the finance minister was Quote: d as saying on Thursday by state news agency Agerpres, the latest in a series of tax plans that have caused concerns for investors.CEE MARKETS The zloty and forint edged lower on Thursday, pausing for breath after recent strong gains as investors began positioning for expected changes to the European Central Bank<6E>s stimulus programme.WORLD BANK FORECASTS For a table of revised economic growth forecasts released by the World Bank clickBAD LOANS Raiffeisen Bank Romania aims to sell a package of non-performing retail and corporate loans worth 250-270 million euros by the end of the year, financial daily Ziarul Financiar said quotting market sources. Ziarul FinanciarFor the long-term Romanian diary, click onFor emerging markets economic events, click onFor an index of all diaries, click onFor other related news, double click on: Romanian equities RO-E E.Europe equities .CEE Romanian money RO-M Romanian debt RO-D Eastern Europe EEU All emerging markets EMRG Hot stocks HOT Stock markets STX Market debt news DBT Forex news FRX For real-time index Quote: s, double click on: Bucharest BETI Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/romania-factors/romania-factors-to-watch-on-oct-20-idINL8N1MV0L6'|'2017-10-20T03:32:00.000+03:00'
'd9403d61eef26e8527aaa1bbf1b3637d5c76df7a'|'Telecom Italia''s network should be spun off and listed - minister'|'October 20, 2017 / 11:05 AM / Updated 10 minutes ago Telecom Italia''s network should be spun off and listed - minister Reuters Staff 1 Min Read ROME (Reuters) - Italian Industry Minister Carlo Calenda said on Friday that Telecom Italia<69>s fixed line network should be spun off from the rest of the company and listed. FILE PHOTO: A Telecom Italia tower is pictured in Rome, Italy, March 22, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini/File Photo <20>Yes, yes, it should be separated and put on the stock market ... that way the market can make its judgements,<2C> Calenda said in a radio interview when asked if this would be the best option for the company. Reporting By Gavin Jones'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-telecome-italia-network-minister/telecom-italias-network-should-be-spun-off-and-listed-minister-idUKKBN1CP1CP'|'2017-10-20T14:04:00.000+03:00'
'c27b0ae4853cbb3717a8e12d658757efb1ee8ca9'|'Multilateral lenders vow openness about their carbon footprints'|'THE World Bank gets a lot of flak. Developing countries clamour for a bigger role in its management. President Donald Trump<6D>s administration lambasts it for lending too much to China. Employees are in open rebellion against their boss, Jim Yong Kim. Now the embattled institution faces criticism from a traditionally friendlier quarter: environmentalists. They accuse it and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) of not being upfront about their true carbon footprint.That must hurt. After all, MDBs pioneered climate-friendly finance. Ten years ago the European Investment Bank issued the world<6C>s first green bond to bolster renewables and energy-efficiency schemes. The World Bank has not backed a coal-fired plant since 2010. In 2011-16 it and the five big regional lenders in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe offered developing countries a total of $158bn to help combat climate change and adapt to its effects. They disclose the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by their day-to-day operations, from lighting offices to flying bankers around the world. But many greens point out they have been more coy about their continued support of dirtier development.  an hour   an hour ago Quebec<65>s   Oil Change International, an advocacy group, estimates that, excluding low-carbon but disruptive projects such as large hydropower plants, for every dollar invested in the past three years in green energy such as solar or wind farms, MDBs funnelled 99 cents to the fossil-fuelled sort (see chart). Helena Wright of E3G, a think-tank in London, says that about $1.5bn in <20>green<65> lending between 2013 and 2015 looks, closer up, distinctly brownish. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), for example, counted 9% of a <20>200m ($222m) loan to build a port terminal in Morocco as climate finance, although the facility would handle and store crude oil and coal.The banks dispute such findings. Many of the supposedly brown loans go through national treasuries or financial intermediaries. They can choose to finance fossil-fuel projects from general expenditure, not the MDBs<42> cash specifically. Other <20>brown<77> loans bankroll cleaner alternatives to grubby coal plants, such as gas-fired ones. The EBRD explains that the Moroccan loan is to adapt the port to rising sea levels.Yet many development bankers concede that their institutions could be more forthcoming about the greenhouse-gas emissions embedded in their portfolios. Some private-sector financial firms such as AXA, a giant French insurer, and public-sector pension funds in America and Britain have been reporting such totals for several years now. Among the MDBs, only the Inter-American Development Bank and the EBRD do so comprehensively.Others are belatedly piling in. At the World Bank<6E>s annual jamboree in Washington this month Mr Kim vowed to report total carbon dioxide produced and avoided by bank-funded projects. A framework for monitoring net emissions should be ready next year. The Europeans are refining their approaches. So was their African counterpart, before an administrative overhaul last year put the initiative on hold. Last month the Asian Development Bank pledged to gauge and reduce its portfolio<69>s net contribution to global warming.Chinese-led newcomers to development banking also look keen, at least on paper. The New Development Bank focuses on <20>sustainable infrastructure<72> and dedicated its first batch of loans entirely to clean-energy projects. In June the vice-president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Thierry de Longuemar, affirmed that the bank will not finance coal-fired power plants. <20>We will not consider any proposals if we are concerned about the environmental and reputational impacts,<2C> asserts a spokeswoman. Their Western-led forebears can tell them how closely critics will monitor that promise.This article appeared in the Finance and economics section of the print edition under the headline "How green is my value?"'|'economist.com'|'http
'b83baf76bb3cbe8229dfeeef1e0b6f2b8523f7a2'|'Tencent-backed Sea Ltd jumps in debut, but soon reverses course - Reuters'|'(Reuters) - Sea Ltd ( SE.N ), a Singapore-based online gaming and e-commerce company backed by Tencent ( 0700.HK ), rose 13 percent their debut on Friday, giving the company a market valuation of $5.39 billion.The company saw strong demand for its offering. It sold 59 million shares, 18.7 percent more than it had originally planned to, for $15 apiece, above its indicative range of $12 to $14.Sea Ltd<74>s shares, which debuted at about 11:10 a.m. ET, had given up their gains within 20 minutes to trade down about 3.5 percent at $14.47, with trading volumes of 18.6 million making them the sixth most actively traded stock in the United States.Sea Ltd is the biggest Asian online gaming company to list in the United States to date. It is also the 12th Asian company to list in the United States in 2017, which has been a very active year for initial public offerings.U.S. exchanges are set to record their busiest year for IPOs from Asian firms since 2010 and may sustain the pace in 2018, as startups from Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam join a flurry of Chinese firms that have already listed in the country. reut.rs/2gToFWrChinese online micro-credit provider Qudian Inc ( QD.N ), the biggest-ever U.S. listing by a Chinese fintech firm, also debuted this week and saw its shares surging nearly 50 percent in the first hour of trading.Sea Ltd<74>s net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders was $165.14 million for the six months ended June 30, nearly doubling from the year-ago period.Asian tech-giant Tencent, which owns WeChat, will have a stake of around 35 percent in Sea Ltd after the offering, retaining its seat as the company<6E>s biggest shareholder.Sea Ltd was formed in 2009 and operates three main brands <20> Garena for online games, Shopee for e-commerce and AirPay for digital financial services.Reporting By Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-sea-ipo/tencent-backed-sea-ltd-jumps-in-debut-but-soon-reverses-course-idINKBN1CP24G'|'2017-10-20T13:48:00.000+03:00'
'1878e0ee3c71b1cd2fe9faf76a8ea12d725929bb'|'Trump sees momentum for tax cuts after Senate OKs budget'|'October 20, 2017 / 12:23 PM / Updated 8 minutes ago Trump tax cuts gain momentum as Rand Paul goes ''all in'' Reuters Staff 3 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican senator Rand Paul on Friday appeared to back the Trump administration<6F>s sweeping tax cut plan, saying he was <20>all in<69> for massive tax cuts even as the Senate passed a key budget measure without his support one day earlier. On Thursday, the Republican-controlled Senate approved the budget resolution for the 2018 fiscal year, with Paul casting the lone Republican vote against it. That approval paves the way for their tax-cut proposal that would add up to $1.5 trillion (<28>1.13 trillion) to the federal deficit over the next decade to pay for the cuts. U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday signalled optimism for passage of the cuts, saying Paul would back the proposed tax measure when it comes up for a vote. <20>The Budget passed late last night, 51 to 49. We got ZERO Democrat votes with only Rand Paul (he will vote for Tax Cuts) voting against,<2C> Trump wrote on Twitter. <20>This now allows for the passage of large scale Tax Cuts (and Reform), which will be the biggest in the history of our country!<21> Paul responded with his own tweet, saying, <20>I<EFBFBD>m all in for tax cuts @realDonaldTrump. The biggest, boldest cuts possible - and soon!<21> The Kentucky Republican had said he would not vote for the budget measure unless it in kept in line with previously enacted federal budget spending caps. FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (2nd L), Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (2nd R), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (R) and other congressional leaders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S. on September 6, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo Republicans are still hammering out their tax legislation after releasing an initial outline. The administration has said it would deliver up to $6 trillion in tax cuts to businesses and individuals. Republicans, who also control the U.S. House of Representatives and the White House, are under pressure to succeed on tax reform after failing to make good on another key agenda item, their years-long pledge to scrap Obamacare, the signature healthcare law of Democratic former President Barack Obama. U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), Senator John Thune (R-SD) and Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) speak to reporters after meeting with President Trump about their planned changes in the U.S. tax code, at the White House in Washington, U.S. October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst Trump is also seeking his first major legislative victory since taking office in January amid a tumultuous tenure overshadowed by ongoing investigations into Russia<69>s alleged interference in the 2016 election, as well as a series of the president<6E>s comments that have sparked controversy. Democrats remained united in their opposition to the budget bill and are unlikely to support the Republicans<6E> tax plan, arguing it would benefit the wealthy, raise taxes on some middle-class Americans and widen the federal deficit. Still, Trump made clear his preference for a bipartisan tax bill while meeting with members of the Senate Finance Committee from both parties on Wednesday, Republican Senator John Cornyn told reporters. The Senate<74>s budget must be reconciled with a markedly different version passed by the House, a process lawmakers have said could take up to two weeks. Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Bill Rigby'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-tax/trump-sees-momentum-for-tax-cuts-after-senate-oks-budget-idUKKBN1CP1KN'|'2017-10-20T15:23:00.000+03:00'
'595b198f44fdf60f9fbae90637e155fec9f8380a'|'SoftBank''s big checks are stalling tech IPOs'|'October 20, 2017 / 12:00 AM / in 12 minutes SoftBank''s big checks are stalling tech IPOs Heather Somerville 6 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of SoftBank Group Corp is displayed at SoftBank World 2017 conference in Tokyo, Japan, July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File photo LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. (Reuters) - Big cash infusions for startups from an ever-expanding group of financiers, led by SoftBank Group Corp ( 9984.T ) and Middle East sovereign wealth funds, have extinguished hopes that the technology IPO market would bounce back this year. These deep-pocketed financiers, which have traditionally invested in the public markets but are seeking better returns from private tech companies, have enabled startups to raise more money, stay private longer and spurn the regulatory hassles of an IPO even as they become larger than many public companies. At The Wall Street Journal D.Live conference this week in Southern California, a number of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, IPO experts and dealmakers spoke with Reuters about the surprisingly low number of IPOs and pointed to investors such as SoftBank for changing the business of startup financing. <20>It<49>s not surprising if these companies get 10 term sheets,<2C> said Nicole Quinn, an investing partner with Lightspeed Venture Partners, referring to formal offers of investment. The result is a protracted IPO slump that has contributed to a 50 percent drop in the number of U.S. public companies over the last two decades, according to the Nasdaq. IPOs have fallen especially precipitously since 2014 - the year public market investors, including mutual funds, ramped up investment in private tech companies. There are some signs of a more active fall for IPOs. Tech companies Switch ( SWCH.N ), MongoDB ( MDB.O ) and Roku ( ROKU.O ) have gone public in the past few weeks, with debuts from ForeScout and Zscaler ahead. CORRECTION AHEAD? Yet many investors are bracing for a market tumble after a sustained rally, raising questions about IPO opportunities for 2018. Just 12 venture capital-backed tech companies went public in the United States in the first three quarters this year, compared to 27 for the same time period in 2014, according to IPO investment adviser Renaissance Capital. The drought continues even though both the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI and Nasdaq Composite .IXIC are up more than 26 percent in the last year and market volatility is low, normally ideal conditions for an IPO. Wall Street stock indexes have posted a string of record highs in recent weeks, and the Dow closed above 23,000 for the first time on Wednesday. [.N] But Barry Diller, a longtime dealmaker and chairman of InterActiveCorp and Expedia Inc ( EXPE.O ), said the huge funding rounds had eliminated the traditional reason for an IPO. <20>There is no reason to be public unless you need capital, and almost all these companies do not need capital,<2C> Diller said. SOFTBANK-UBER DEAL EYED Increasingly, the big checks are coming from SoftBank, which in May closed a $93 billion investment fund. So far this year, it has announced at least 14 investments in technology companies globally, including a $500 million deal with fintech company Social Finance and a $3 billion investment in shared workspace company WeWork, both private and already worth billions of dollars. SoftBank is in the next week expected to finalize a highly anticipated deal with Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] in which it, along with other investors, would purchase as much as $10 billion in Uber shares, most of them from employees and existing investors in a so-called secondary offering. <20>This is the third liquidity option,<2C> said Larry Albukerk, who runs secondary market firm EB Exchange and spoke to Reuters by phone. <20>It used to be IPO or acquisition.<2E> SoftBank<6E>s deals are causing venture capitalists to <20>prepare for more M&A exits,<2C> and fewer IPOs over the long term, said Jenny Lee, managing partner at GGV Capital. Meanwhile, Nasdaq<61>s private market business, set up i
'16e88a46c9b243c8b45c6c9d1243999914216b98'|'Britain''s Renishaw first-quarter revenue jumps on strong demand in Far East'|' 41 AM / in 11 minutes Britain''s Renishaw first-quarter revenue jumps on strong demand in Far East Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Precision engineering group Renishaw Plc ( RSW.L ) posted a 26 percent rise in first-quarter revenue on Friday as demand for its precision measuring devices increased in manufacturing hubs like the Far East. The company, which supplies products and services used in jet engines, wind turbines, dentistry and brain surgery, said revenue rose to 142.3 million pounds from 112.8 million pounds a year ago. Pre-tax profit from continuing operations, on an adjusted basis, rose to 35.8 million pounds in the three months ended Sept. 30 from 15.1 million pounds a year earlier. Renishaw said it remains confident of <20>good growth<74> in profit and revenue this financial year, it said in a statement. In May, the company hiked its full-year revenue forecast to 520 million to 535 million pounds, from 500 million to 530 million pounds. Reporting By Justin George Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-renishaw-results/britains-renishaw-first-quarter-revenue-jumps-on-strong-demand-in-far-east-idUKKBN1CP1AD'|'2017-10-20T13:40:00.000+03:00'
'8324a2d9c420ad5bbd6452e2b6b51a1d01955d9e'|'Zeitfracht, Nayak poised to buy some Air Berlin assets: sources'|'A Lufthansa airliner taxis next to the Air Berlin aircraft at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke BERLIN (Reuters) - A consortium of family-owned Zeitfracht and maintenance group Nayak is close to striking a deal to buy Air Berlin<69>s ( AB1.DE ) cargo marketing platform and its maintenance business, several people familiar with the matter told Reuters.<2E>They are on the home stretch,<2C> one of the sources said.A spokesman for Zeitfracht said that talks were promising and had reached an advanced stage. Air Berlin declined to comment.Air Berlin, which has struggled to turn a profit over the last decade, filed for insolvency on Aug. 15. A government loan has kept its planes aloft while its administrator negotiated with prospective buyers for parts of the business.Lufthansa has agreed to buy large parts of Air Berlin, but talks for its remaining assets are ongoing.Reporting by Klaus Lauer; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Douglas Busvine'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-lufthansa-zeitfracht/zeitfracht-nayak-poised-to-buy-some-air-berlin-assets-sources-idINKBN1CO14V'|'2017-10-19T07:26:00.000+03:00'
'82f5e3fc24c4fdf8724826128f0575b1c8f79c1f'|'EU agrees measure to safeguard carbon market from Brexit'|'October 18, 2017 / 9:29 PM / in 4 minutes EU agrees measure to safeguard carbon market from Brexit Julia Fioretti 4 Min Read FILE PHOTO: General view of a coking plant in the city of Bytom Silesia November 22, 2012. REUTERS/Peter Andrews BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU lawmakers and member states have agreed ways to safeguard the carbon market if Britain leaves the emissions trading scheme as a result of Brexit. The deal seeks to prevent a mass selloff in the carbon market if British companies suddenly find themselves out of it. Britain is the EU<45>s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and its utilities are among the largest buyers of carbon permits. Carbon permits issued by Britain will be voided from 2018 if it leaves the market. Under the EU<45>s Emission Trading System (ETS), which charges power plants and factories for the carbon dioxide they emit, the EU would void permits issued by a country leaving the bloc from January 2018 onward. But having had a say in how the ETS is shaped, most analysts believe Britain will remain part of the system, following a similar path to Norway. Despite not being an EU member, Norway has companies that participate in the scheme. Slow progress in Brexit talks has increased the possibility of a messy break-up that could leave British businesses with little legal clarity on emissions. <20>We very much hope that we find a good agreement with the British government and especially in climate and energy policy, for us, it would be the preferred option that the UK continues participation in EU polices,<2C> Peter Liese, a lawmaker from the European<61>s Parliament biggest group who helped steer the file, said. The International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), which represents global participants in emissions trading schemes such as banks, utilities and industrials, said its preferred scenario would be for Britain and the EU to agree on continued participation by UK companies in the ETS until the end of 2020 at a minimum. <20>A hard Brexit scenario poses a risk of approximately 220 million allowances issued by the United Kingdom to be offloaded onto the market between 1 January 2018 and 29 March 2019,<2C> the lobby group said. INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS UNDER THE RADAR The EU lawmakers and member states also agreed to extend an exemption of international flights from the bloc<6F>s charges for carbon emissions until the end of 2023, under a deal agreed late on Wednesday. This gives a United Nations agreement on curbing airline emissions time to come into force. Under Wednesday<61>s agreement, flights into and out of the EU will continue to be exempted from the ETS until the end of 2023, so that the EU can assess if the UN deal is effective enough. In 2012, the European Commission ordered carriers to buy credits for foreign flights under the ETS but backtracked when countries said it violated their sovereignty and China threatened to cancel plane orders from Airbus Group. As a result, the Commission agreed to exempt international flights until 2017 so the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) could reach a deal on a global market-based measure for offsetting airline emissions. After a deal was clinched last October, the Commission proposed extending the exemption for an indefinite period. EU lawmakers have criticized the ICAO deal for not doing enough to curb aviation emissions and had initially pushed for the exemption to only be extended until 2021, when the ICAO deal comes into effect. <20>Stalling European climate action in the aviation sector because of a weak international deal doesn<73>t do justice to the climate,<2C> said Kelsey Perlman, Aviation Policy Officer at Carbon Market Watch. <20>This is especially alarming since the industry<72>s efforts are nowhere near enough what is needed to stay below 1.5 degrees warming.<2E> Wednesday<61>s agreement needs a final confirmation from member states. Additional reporting by Susanna Twidale in London; editing by Jeremy Gaunt, Lisa Shumaker, G Crosse and Jane Merriman 0 : 0'|'re
'5fdd49b705e82af2d479999503f5ff8d8718d091'|'China''s Meituan-Dianping raises $4 billion, valuing firm at $30 billion'|'October 19, 2017 / 5:22 AM / in 14 minutes China''s Meituan-Dianping raises $4 billion, valuing firm at $30 billion Reuters Staff 3 Min Read The Meituan logo is seen in this illustration photo October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration BEIJING (Reuters) - Meituan-Dianping on Thursday said it has raised $4 billion in a funding round that values China<6E>s largest on-demand services provider at $30 billion, as part of a strategy to compete with the country<72>s leading e-commerce firms in offline retail. Meituan-Dianping in a statement said the round was led by existing investor Tencent Holdings Ltd ( 0700.HK ), with participants including Sequoia Capital Ltd, Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte Ltd [GIC.UL] and Tiger Global Management LLC. Reuters reported in August that Meituan-Dianping was considering raising up to $5 billion. Earlier this year, Meituan-Dianping announced plans to invest in offline services and artificial intelligence technology (AI), amid a push by China<6E>s top tech firms into brick-and-mortar retail. The Dianping logo is seen in this illustration photo October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration Often compared to services from Yelp Inc ( YELP.N ) and Groupon Inc ( GRPN.O ), Meituan-Dianping is an online platform for a range of services including movie ticketing, food delivery, restaurant bookings, beauty services, travel and luxury goods. Its biggest rivals include e-commerce pair Alibaba Group Holding Ltd ( BABA.N ) and JD.com Inc ( JD.O ), both of which have championed a shift into offline stores in recent years, spurred by developments in cloud computing and big data technology. Meituan-Dianping<6E>s plans include opening a chain of offline stores, beginning in Beijing earlier this year, as well as developing technology in logistics and AI. In July, Meituan-Dianping<6E>s vice-president of strategy told Reuters the firm was not considering an initial public offering until it had established infrastructure for services including offline retail, and had roughly $3 billion in cash reserves remaining from a previous funding round. Meituan-Dianping said it has 280 million users and serves as a platform for roughly 5 million businesses. Reporting by Cate Cadell; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Christopher Cushing 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-meituan-dianping-funding/chinas-meituan-dianping-raises-4-billion-valuing-firm-at-30-billion-idUKKBN1CO0GJ'|'2017-10-19T08:22:00.000+03:00'
'fdb5cf55ee771156251b59309d72ae695324716d'|'Chinese fintech firm Qudian impresses in U.S. market debut'|'(Reuters) - Shares of Qudian Inc ( QD.N ) rose as much as 48 percent in their market debut on Wednesday, valuing the online micro-credit firm at about $11.67 billion in the biggest U.S. listing by a Chinese company this year.Qudian<61>s initial public offering was priced at $24 per American depository share (ADS) - topping its expected $19 to $22 per ADS range - and raised $900 million.U.S. exchanges are set to record their busiest year for IPOs from Asian companies since 2010, as startups from Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam join a flurry of Chinese firms that have already listed in the country.Qudian, backed by Alibaba Group ( BABA.N ) affiliate Ant Financial, runs a mobile platform that allows college students and young workers to borrow amounts as low as $60 to buy apparel, concert tickets or smartphones.The company targets hundreds of millions of young Chinese who need access to small credit, but cannot go to traditional financial institutions, mainly for lack of traditional credit data.Founded in 2014 by Min Luo, Qudian became profitable last year. It provided $5.6 billion of credit in the first half of 2017 to 7 million active borrowers, according to its IPO paperwork with U.S. regulators. ( bit.ly/2yO324r )Qudian<61>s profit jumped almost eight times to $144 million in the six months ended June 30, while its revenue rose near five-fold to $270 million.Qudian sold 35.63 million new shares, while shareholders including Kunlun Group ( 300418.SZ ) and board directors Li Du and Yi Cao sold 1.88 million existing shares.The company plans to use the IPO proceeds on advertising to sign up more borrowers, as well as on potential acquisitions and general corporate purposes.Citigroup, China International Capital Corp, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and UBS worked as joint bookrunners on the IPO.Reporting by Roopal Verma in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-qudian-ipo/chinese-fintech-firm-qudian-impresses-in-u-s-market-debut-idINKBN1CN275'|'2017-10-18T13:05:00.000+03:00'
'b8362cec074493b075999054afc3f76133df58b8'|'PayPal tops profit estimates, lifts target on mobile payments growth'|'October 19, 2017 / 8:57 PM / in a day PayPal tops profit estimates, lifts target on mobile payments growth Anna Irrera , Diptendu Lahiri 4 Min Read (Reuters) - Sharp growth in mobile payments led PayPal Holdings Inc ( PYPL.O ) to report a better-than-expected third-quarter profit on Thursday and lift its guidance for earnings through the rest of the year. The PayPal app logo seen on a mobile phone in this illustration photo October 16, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration The San Jose, California-based payments company has been working hard in recent years to expand its reach to new customers through partnerships and acquisitions, particularly in mobile payments. Those deals are clearly starting to bear fruit, analysts said. <20>It was just a very strong quarter across the board,<2C> said A.B. Mendez, an analyst and fund manager at Frost Investment Advisors. PayPal shares were up 3.9 percent at $69.89 in after-hours trading following the results. Since separating from online marketplace eBay Inc ( EBAY.O ) in 2015, PayPal has reshaped itself from a company that mostly processed transactions for its parent to a payments giant that handles money transfers between other companies and customers, as well as friends, roommates, overseas relatives and small businesses. It has partnered with household names like Mastercard Inc ( MA.N ), Visa Inc ( V.N ), JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM.N ), Alphabet Inc<6E>s ( GOOG.O ) Google, Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ), Facebook Inc ( FB.O ) and Microsoft Corp<72>s ( MSFT.O ) Skype, and acquired startups like online lender Swift Financial and remittances company Xoom. It also owns Venmo, the mobile payments app that is popular with young adults, and still handles transactions for eBay. In a call with analysts, Chief Executive Officer Dan Schulman characterized the third quarter as possibly the best since its split from eBay and said PayPal is on the hunt for more acquisitions. <20>We have very strong balance sheet, and it<69>s a potential weapon for us as we think about competing going forward,<2C> he said. The company<6E>s adjusted profit rose 32 percent during the third quarter to $560 million, or 46 cents per share, beating the average analyst estimate of 43 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Revenue rose 21.4 percent to $3.24 billion. PayPal lifted its full-year adjusted earnings forecast to a range of $1.86 to $1.88 per share from $1.80 per share to $1.84 per share. It expects 50 cents to 52 cents per share in earnings during the fourth quarter, compared with an average analyst estimate of 51 cents. Much of the gains have come from PayPal<61>s aggressive effort to pick up market share in the fast-growing mobile payments space. Its mobile payments volume jumped 54 percent during the third quarter compared with the year-ago period, to about $40 billion. Total payments volume rose 31 percent to $114 billion. Venmo, which allows individuals in the United States to send each other money through a mobile app, more than doubled its payments volumes. Earlier this week, PayPal said it would soon allow more than 2 million merchant customers to start accepting payments through the platform. Reporting by Anna Irrera in New York and Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Cynthia Osterman '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/paypal-hldg-results/paypal-quarterly-profit-beats-on-higher-mobile-transaction-volume-idINKBN1CO31V'|'2017-10-19T18:57:00.000+03:00'
'2b51c3050647d51685d29d0314c407074eebeddc'|'Bank of England''s "unreliable boyfriend" needs to get message right'|'October 20, 2017 / 6:06 AM / Updated 3 minutes ago Bank of England''s ''unreliable boyfriend'' needs to get message right William Schomberg 6 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - For the Bank of England, the hard bit about finally raising interest rates will be getting borrowers to heed the message it is likely to send: that they should not fear many more hikes any time soon. People walk past the Bank of England in London, Britain, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay Britons have not seen their debt costs rise since July 2007, shortly before the financial crisis which pushed the world<6C>s fifth-biggest economy into its deepest recession in decades. Now, eight years into the recovery, the BoE is saying it is likely to raise rates <20>in the coming months<68>. Investors mostly say that means as soon as Nov. 2, after its next policy meeting. At one level, increasing Bank Rate to 0.5 percent from 0.25 percent would represent only a reversal of last year<61>s emergency rate cut after the shock Brexit vote. But many British businesses are worried it might have an outsized impact on the mindset of consumers. <20>When I have been around the country, businesses have been asking a lot about the Bank of England,<2C> said Rain Newton-Smith, chief economist at the Confederation of British Industry. <20>There is nervousness about the psychological impact of the first increase.<2E> The messaging challenge could be all the harder after several failed attempts in recent years by Governor Mark Carney and the BoE to signal when rates were likely to rise. The guidance was repeatedly knocked off course by surprises in the economy, prompting one lawmaker to call Carney an <20>unreliable boyfriend<6E> in 2014, an epithet that has stuck. In June, sterling fell and then rose as Carney made two speeches in eight days in which he seemed to change the emphasis of his message away from being in no hurry to consider a rate hike to saying one might become necessary. It remains unclear if the BoE will pull the trigger in November. Most economists polled by Reuters last month said the time was not right for a hike, yet they still expected the BoE to press on. British inflation is at a five-year high of 3 percent, above the BoE<6F>s 2 percent target. But the economy is facing deep uncertainty about Britain<69>s departure from the European Union and is growing at half the pace of the euro zone. NOT THAT BIG A DEAL? Paul Fisher, a BoE rate-setter until 2014, said raising rates once by 25 basis points was <20>not that big a deal<61>. <20>The key thing is what they say alongside it,<2C> he said. <20>The Bank has been out of the game ... in terms of affecting ordinary people<6C>s lives. It might suddenly become part of their consciousness again, especially the people who pay a mortgage.<2E> The BoE has said repeatedly that it expects to raise rates in a <20>limited and gradual<61> way, echoing the caution among many other central banks about the fragility of their economies. Economists say it will probably continue to send that cautious message after its first move. Financial markets expect the BoE to make only one 25-basis point rate hike in 2018 after a first increase next month. It remains to be seen whether British consumers, the main drivers of the economy, see it that way too. <20>On the occasions when the Bank has tried to signal quite clearly that they<65>re making just a one-off hike, households haven<65>t listened to the nuanced guidance,<2C> Samuel Tombs, an economist with Pantheon Macroeconomics, said. <20>They see their mortgage rates going up and they prepare for more increases in that direction.<2E> When the BoE last raised rates in 2007, it said it had made no judgment on its next move. But the balance of households expecting a hike over the next 12 months stood at double the historical average a month later and consumer confidence fell, Tombs said. BoE officials, like their peers around the world, have tried increasingly to find the best way to speak to borrowers. In contrast to the days when central banks operat
'72104e2790ef7b76b8242d203aced75d8fc44052'|'Linde passes important 50 percent threshold in Praxair tender'|'FRANKFURT, Oct 20 (Reuters) - German industrial gases group Linde has passed an important threshold in its exchange offer for the planned $80 billion merger with U.S. peer Praxair.Linde said on Friday that shareholders representing 50.85 percent of its capital have accepted the offer, as an Oct. 24 deadline approaches to reach 75 percent acceptance.Passing the 50 percent threshold paves the way for passive funds, such as exchanged-traded funds replicating Germany<6E>s blue chip DAX index, to also tender their shares.Roughly 10-13 percent of Linde<64>s shares are held by such funds and one UK fund already tendered its shares on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter. (Reporting by Arno Schuetze and Alexander H<>bner, editing by David Evans) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/linde-ma-praxair/brief-linde-says-50-85-percent-of-shares-tendered-for-planned-praxair-merger-idINF9N1LL02Q'|'2017-10-20T10:43:00.000+03:00'
'd78eb0924b96e8a76cb55ac77f1f2166bc57b961'|'UPDATE 3-Kansas City Southern overcomes hurricane to beat on revenue'|'(Adds comments from CEO on NAFTA)By Eric M. JohnsonOct 20 (Reuters) - Regional U.S. railroad Kansas City Southern posted a better-than expected quarterly profit on Friday despite disruptions from Hurricane Harvey but may be impacted by the NAFTA negotiations as more than a quarter of its revenue comes from shipments between Mexico and the United States.The fourth-largest U.S. railroad reported a higher quarterly net profit and record third-quarter operating income on year-over-year growth at all of its six business units.Operating income of $234 million represented a 17 percent increase from the same quarter a year ago, even as it took a $19 million to $23 million hit from Hurricane Harvey, which devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast in August.<2E>Despite the severity of the storm and widespread flooding, we recovered quickly from the extended service outage, delivering record third quarter operating income, operating ratio and adjusted earnings per share,<2C> Chief Executive Pat Ottensmeyer said.After adjustments for one-time items, the railroad earned $1.35 per share, versus the $1.31 analysts expected.The results sent Kansas City Southern<72>s shares up nearly 3 percent in early morning trading before they gave up some of their gains; by late morning the shares were up about 1.7 percent at $105.55.Less positively, the Kansas City, Missouri-based operator said it expects a decline in shipments of vehicles, coal and sand used for hydraulic fracturing in the fourth quarter.It also faces uncertainty over the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), as U.S., Canadian and Mexican governments work to renegotiate the 23-year-old trade pact.<2E>We are still hopeful and confident that NAFTA will be modernized. And even if things don<6F>t turn out the way we would hope, North American trade will continue, and we will continue to play a role in those supply chains,<2C> Ottensmeyer said.The railroad reported third quarter revenue of $657 million, beating the $650.5 million analysts expected, on strength of shipments of cars, coal, chemicals and petroleum.Carload volumes increased 3 percent from the third quarter of 2016, it said.The railroad also said it reported a record third quarter operating ratio - a measure of operating costs as a percentage of revenue - of 64.4 percent, a 2.5 percentage point improvement over third quarter 2016. The lower the operating ratio, the more efficiently the railroad is running.It posted third-quarter net income of $130 million, or $1.23 per share, up from $121 million, or $1.12 per share, a year earlier. (Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Phil Berlowitz) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/kansascitysouthern-results/update-1-higher-freight-volumes-lift-kansas-city-southern-quarterly-profit-idINL2N1MV0KL'|'2017-10-20T10:33:00.000+03:00'
'8c8901c8fa80081aeb9b11b36ebb4c9767bc5b65'|'RWE looking at Uniper''s gas and coal-fired plants: source'|'DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) - RWE ( RWEG.DE ) is casting its eye over rival energy utility Uniper<65>s ( UN01.DE ) gas and coal-fired power plants in Germany, the Benelux countries and in Britain, a person familiar with the matter said.A logo of the German energy utility company Uniper SE is pictured at their headquarters in Duesseldorf, Germany April 19, 2016. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski Investors and M&A sources said last week that RWE was likely to buy the plants from Fortum ( FORTUM.HE ), which is planning to take control at Uniper with a proposed 8.05 billion-euro ($9.5 billion) offer, rather than launch a counterbid.While Fortum has said it has no plans for a restructuring, it is seen being mainly interested in Uniper<65>s assets in Sweden and Russia and less in its more polluting gas and coal fired power plants, which would be a better fit for RWE.RWE and Uniper declined to comment on Monday.German daily Handelsblatt on Friday Quote: d Fortum Chief Executive Pekka Lundmark as saying that the Finnish company was not currently in talks to sell parts of Uniper.Reporting by Tom Kaeckenhoff; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Kathrin Jones, Greg Mahlich '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uniper-m-a-fortum-oyj-rwe/rwe-looking-at-unipers-gas-and-coal-fired-plants-source-idUSKBN1CP0XX'|'2017-10-20T17:05:00.000+03:00'
'a5b65bd4af24935100a58691f8cc2688b4fda114'|'Gold prices hold firm as dollar sags'|'October 20, 2017 / 1:22 AM / Updated 14 hours ago Gold falls as hopes of U.S. tax reform boost riskier assets Peter Hobson 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Gold prices fell on Friday after the U.S. Senate approved a budget blueprint that paves the way for tax cuts, causing stocks, the dollar and bond yields to rise. A salesman arranges gold ornaments, on a display board inside a jewellery showroom in Kochi, April 28, 2017. REUTERS/Sivaram V The Republican-controlled Senate voted by 51-to-49 late on Thursday for the measure, clearing a hurdle for tax cuts that would add up to $1.5 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade. Investors betting on faster economic growth as a result bought riskier assets while bond holders reduced their positions on worries that inflation and federal borrowing could rise. Higher bond yields increase pressure on bullion because gold does not offer a yield, while a stronger dollar makes it more expensive for holders of other currencies. Investors may also see tax cuts as a cause for higher U.S. interest rates, said INTL FCStone analyst Edward Meir. Higher rates would push up bond yields and the dollar. Spot gold was down 0.6 percent at $1,282.33 an ounce at 1422 GMT, taking losses this week to 1.7 percent. U.S. gold futures for December delivery were 0.5 percent lower at $1,283.60 an ounce. <20>We seem to once again be ready to test technical support around $1,275-$1,270,<2C> said Mitsubishi analyst Jonathan Butler. <20>If we look at the chart, it<69>s a classic head and shoulders pattern here and the danger is we<77>ll break lower to a level at $1,250 or even below.<2E> Analysts at Commerzbank said gold<6C>s failure to remain above $1,300 could prompt speculative investors betting on higher prices to exit their positions, pushing prices lower. The net long position of money managers in Comex gold has fallen from a peak in early September but is still at an elevated level. Meanwhile, Trump could announce his choice for the next chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve as early as next week after he interviewed five candidates including current chief Janet Yellen. A report on Thursday suggested Trump was leaning towards Fed Governor Jerome Powell, perceived as a less hawkish candidate. The European Central Bank is expected to say on Oct. 26 it will start trimming its monthly asset purchases to 40 billion euros from 60 billion euros in January, a Reuters poll showed. In other precious metals, silver was down 0.2 percent at $17.16 an ounce, taking its fall this week to around 1 percent. Platinum was flat at $921.20 an ounce and palladium was up 1.7 percent at $975. Both metals were down on the week. Additional reporting by Apeksha Nair in Bengaluru, editing by David Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-precious/gold-prices-hold-firm-as-dollar-sags-idINKBN1CP038'|'2017-10-20T04:20:00.000+03:00'
'5643d9a8f3aa8bf1615895b0508e33314a3492a9'|'Telecom Italia and Vivendi''s Canal+ agree content joint venture'|'MILAN (Reuters) - The board of Telecom Italia (TIM) has approved the creation of a joint venture with French media group Vivendi<64>s pay-TV unit Canal+, strengthening the link between the Italian phone group and its biggest shareholder.FILE PHOTO: A Telecom Italia tower is pictured in Rome, Italy, March 22, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini/File Photo Pooling resources will allow Canal+ and TIM to drive a harder bargain in the content war with bigger rivals such as Netflix and Amazon.It will also step up the convergence between TV content and distribution that is at the heart of the strategy pursued by Vivendi, which holds a 24 percent stake in TIM, to create a southern European media empire.<2E>The joint venture with Canal+ will in fact allow us to seize new opportunities for growth in a market undergoing continuous evolution through a commercial offer of fiber connectivity combined with premium video content,<2C> TIM Chief Executive Amos Genish said in a statement.TIM will have a 60 percent stake in the joint venture, with Vivendi<64>s Canal+ holding the remaining 40 percent. The venture<72>s board will have five members, three appointed by TIM and two by Canal+, while its chief executive will be chosen from among the TIM-appointed directors.One source close to the matter told Reuters last week that Mediaset could become part of the joint venture at a later stage, also as a way to help to settle a dispute between the Italian broadcaster and Vivendi.Vivendi and Mediaset have been at loggerheads since July last year, when Vivendi pulled out of an 800 million euro ($942 million) contract that would have given it full control of Mediaset<65>s pay-TV arm Premium, saying the unit<69>s business plan was unrealistic.The French group also received the strongest sign yet that Rome intends to rein in Vivendi<64>s growing influence over former state phone monopoly TIM, announcing this week that it wants a say in TIM<49>s decisions regarding assets of national interest.TIM said on Friday that, while it shared Rome<6D>s worries about the protection of national security and defense interests, it would examine the government<6E>s decisions and measures it is asked to implement in greater depth.The company plans, <20>irrespective of any further evaluation in legal terms, to engage in all useful discussions with a spirit of full collaboration<6F>, it added.Reporting by Agnieszka Flak and Francesca Landini; Editing by David Goodman '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-telecomitalia-vivendi-canal/telecom-italia-and-vivendis-canal-agree-content-joint-venture-idINKBN1CP2GY'|'2017-10-20T16:18:00.000+03:00'
'310b0f3fe463e7ed2d91e3fd5799db1e81aee304'|'Burger King operator BK Brasil files for IPO'|'BRASILIA/SAO PAULO (Reuters) - BK Brasil Opera<72><61>o e Assessoria a Restaurantes SA, operator of the Burger King fast-food chain in Brazil, will list an undisclosed amount of new shares on the country<72>s stock exchange, the latest in a year-long wave of initial public offerings.According to a regulatory filing, controlling shareholders Vinci Partners Investimentos Ltda and BRL Trust Investimentos may sell shares in the offering, as may minority shareholder Sommerville Investments BV.The investment banking unit of Ita<74> Unibanco Holding SA ( ITUB4.SA ) will be the lead underwriter, the filing said.BK Brasil also hired the investment banking units of Bank of America Corp ( BAC.N ), Banco BTG Pactual SA BBTG11.SA, Banco Bradesco SA ( BBDC4.SA ) and JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM )N> to help underwrite the issue.BK Brasil will use the proceeds from the sale of new shares to fund expansion of its chain of 492 restaurants in the country.The transaction underlines how a stock market rally has turned companies<65> attention back to the equities market after a years-long drought of IPOs.Vinci Partners, which has controlled BK Brasil since 2013, is seeking to cash in on the outlook for accelerating economic growth after the nation<6F>s harshest recession in a century.Economists expect household spending to lead the recovery as low interest rates curb debt spending and slow inflation boosts purchasing power.BK Brasil is controlled by a group of investors led by Vinci and U.S.-based fund Capital International Inc. Restaurant Brands International Inc ( QSR.TO ), which controls the Burger King chain in the United States, and Singapore<72>s sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings Ltd each hold a 15 percent stake.Net revenue at BK Brasil, which is the master franchiser of Burger King in the country, rose 28 percent in the first nine months this year from the same period in 2016.Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Bernadette Baum '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-bk-brasil-ipo/burger-king-operator-bk-brasil-files-for-ipo-idINKBN1CP1SM'|'2017-10-20T11:53:00.000+03:00'
'f4e2f3b03a16cac0147320aa0d6119a6fe9e2172'|'Airbus expects to sell ''thousands'' of CSeries jets - CEO'|'MONTREAL (Reuters) - Airbus SE ( AIR.PA ) expects to sell <20>thousands<64> of Bombardier Inc<6E>s ( BBDb.TO ) new CSeries aircraft, capturing half the global market for smaller single-aisle commercial jets, Chief Executive Tom Enders said on Friday.The logo of Airbus is pictured at the company''s headquarters in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/Files Speaking at a business event in Montreal, he also said the lightweight, carbon-composite jets, which seat 110-to-130 people, would create new jobs in Canada and the United States.Europe<70>s largest planemaker on Monday agreed to take a majority stake in the CSeries program for $1, a move expected to reduce costs while bolstering the plane<6E>s sales and giving Canada<64>s Bombardier a possible way out of a damaging trade dispute with Boeing Co ( BA.N ) and U.S. regulators.<2E>I see no reason why we should not be able to capture 50 percent of that market,<2C> Enders said. <20>I think we will sell thousands.<2E>The jets, which cost $6 billion to develop, have won performance accolades but failed to secure a sale in 18 months.On Thursday, the head of a major U.S. airplane leasing company said the Airbus deal boosted confidence in the CSeries program, but was unlikely to drive a flurry of immediate sales.The leasing executive said potential customers were likely to remain cautious until the trade dispute is closer to being resolved and the venture with Airbus closes in late 2018.The CSeries faces a potentially crippling 300 percent duty on sales to U.S. customers due to a complaint from Boeing that the plane was unfairly subsidized and sold below cost in a 2016 deal with Delta Air Lines Inc ( DAL.N ).The case will be decided by U.S. trade officials early next year, but Airbus has said any CSeries jets intended for the U.S. market would be built at its production facility in Alabama, potentially allowing the planes to avoid punitive duties.Enders said the deal between Bombardier and Airbus should be supported by the U.S. government because it would create more American jobs.<2E>That<61>s what President (Donald) Trump wants. How can he be against it?<3F> Enders said.Some analysts have suggested that Airbus<75>s 50.01 percent stake in the CSeries could reverberate throughout the aerospace industry, triggering a competitive response from other planemakers, including Boeing itself.Commercial aerospace has four main powers dominated by Airbus and Boeing, which share the market above 150 seats.Brazil<69>s Embraer ( EMBR3.SA ) and Canada<64>s Bombardier compete in the market between 100 and 150 seats as well as in the market for smaller regional jets.Enders, who addressed Montreal<61>s business leaders with Bombardier Chief Executive Alain Bellemare, said the CSeries deal could foster other new partnerships but did not elaborate.<2E>New alliances will be formed,<2C> he said.Editing by Bernadette Baum and Tom Brown '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bombardier-airbus-jets/airbus-expects-to-sell-thousands-of-cseries-jets-ceo-idINKBN1CP26J'|'2017-10-20T19:07:00.000+03:00'
'54a4bbe755c2b9636321fc2772ba424f170a08f5'|'A Lloyd<79>s report urges insurers to ask <20>what if?<3F>'|'ON JULY 7th disaster was narrowly averted when an Air Canada passenger plane, trying to land on a full taxiway at San Francisco airport, pulled up just in time. Five seconds longer, and it might have crashed into fully loaded planes and killed over 500 people, in potentially the deadliest aviation disaster ever. Instead, the incident became a non-event<6E>not just in collective memory but also in insurance. With no losses, there was nothing to log. Yet ignoring such near-misses, argues a report published this week by Lloyd<79>s of London, an insurance market, and RMS, a risk-modeller, is a missed opportunity.Counterfactual <20>what if<69> thinking may be an enjoyable pastime for historians<6E><73>What if Hitler had been assassinated?<3F> being one favourite<74>but is not common among underwriters. They prefer to base estimates of future risk<73>and hence premiums<6D>on hard data of what happened in the past, eg, the number of aeroplanes that crashed and the total losses incurred. Since actual aviation losses have been light this year compared with previous years, they may well conclude that such risks are falling. Particularly in a weak market for insurance, where pressure on prices is constant, the temptation to lower premiums merely because losses have been low can be dangerous, warns RMS<4D>s Gordon Woo, a <20>catastrophist<73> (ie, specialist in the mathematical modelling of extreme risks). For common perils, such as car crashes or burglaries, plenty of data are available, allowing confident predictions based on the past. But for unusual, emerging or extreme risks<6B>such as natural catastrophes, cyber-threats or terrorism<73>the lack of precedents means such methods can be inadequate. This leaves underwriters with blanks to fill in, particularly around how frequently a rare event<6E>a tsunami, say, or an epidemic<69>might occur and what the maximum losses could be. Models which run hundreds of thousands of loss simulations can help fill in such blanks but are not perfect. And the lack of real-life data makes accurately underwriting an event that has never happened very hard.To make up for such shortcomings, the report calls on the industry to keep an alternative-claims book in which they record hypothetical losses from near-misses (such as the Air Canada plane) and could-have-been-worses (<28>suppose Hurricane Irma had hit Miami<6D>), multiplied by their probability. They could then use this as an underwriting aid. By this logic, because the chance of Irma<6D>s striking Miami was roughly 20%, and it would have increased estimated maximum losses by $100bn, this would be recorded as an additional potential loss of $20bn. Besides deepening the data pool on which underwriters base risk assessments, such calculations could help regulators submit catastrophe models to stress tests.Adding a layer of what-if analysis may well increase premiums, as insurers realise they need to be more cautious about certain risks than losses suggest. But it could also reduce some premiums, particularly for emerging perils that underwriters tend to overprice so long as they lack data. <20>We are most scared about things we don<6F>t understand,<2C> says Jonathon Gascoigne of Willis Towers Watson, an insurance broker. Launching an in-depth investigation into every near-miss would be costly. It might make more sense for several insurers to pool resources. Better still, says Trevor Maynard from Lloyd<79>s, if other bodies also joined in, from municipalities and governments to capital providers. They too share an interest in preparing for disaster.Today it is hard for insurers to raise premiums, though this may change once hurricane-season claims come in. Many struggle to stay profitable; around a third of the London market expects to lose money from underwriting in 2017, according to PwC, a consultancy. Low interest rates and weak capital returns mean few can count on investment income to make up for lousy business. In this context, some might be tempted to undercharge for risk, says Mr Woo, adding that now more than eve
'32d10658fadf9513f9d885e11a02f2347714421d'|'Nissan''s inappropriate inspections started at least 20 years ago - NHK'|'October 20, 2017 / 3:32 AM / in 32 minutes Nissan''s inappropriate inspections started at least 20 years ago - NHK Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Logo of the Nissan Motor Co. is displayed at the 44th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan, November 2, 2015. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo TOKYO (Reuters) - Inappropriate inspection practices at Nissan Motor Co ( 7201.T ) had been going for at least 20 years, Japanese national broadcaster NHK reported on Friday, in a new revelation that could further roil Japan<61>s second-biggest automaker. Nissan said late on Thursday it was suspending domestic production of vehicles for the Japanese market for at least two weeks to address misconduct in its final inspection procedures, which it first revealed last month. The scandal has led to a recall of all 1.2 million cars it sold in Japan over the past three years. A Nissan spokesman declined to directly confirm or deny the NHK report, referring to CEO Hiroto Saikawa<77>s comments on Thursday, when he said Nissan<61>s training system for certifying vehicle inspection staff had not changed for 20 years. Saikawa added that that was a separate issue from how long the misconduct had been going on. Related Coverage Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nissan-recall/nissans-inappropriate-inspections-started-at-least-20-years-ago-nhk-idUKKBN1CP08O'|'2017-10-20T06:31:00.000+03:00'
'293fb5a347234e84a6ad3bfaa4aa5d7e3993f0ee'|'Burger King operator BK Brasil files for IPO'|'BRASILIA/SAO PAULO (Reuters) - BK Brasil Opera<72><61>o e Assessoria a Restaurantes SA, operator of the Burger King fast-food chain in Brazil, will list an undisclosed amount of new shares on the country<72>s stock exchange, the latest in a year-long wave of initial public offerings.According to a regulatory filing, controlling shareholders Vinci Partners Investimentos Ltda and BRL Trust Investimentos may sell shares in the offering, as may minority shareholder Sommerville Investments BV.The investment banking unit of Ita<74> Unibanco Holding SA ( ITUB4.SA ) will be the lead underwriter, the filing said.BK Brasil also hired the investment banking units of Bank of America Corp ( BAC.N ), Banco BTG Pactual SA BBTG11.SA, Banco Bradesco SA ( BBDC4.SA ) and JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM )N> to help underwrite the issue.BK Brasil will use the proceeds from the sale of new shares to fund expansion of its chain of 492 restaurants in the country.The transaction underlines how a stock market rally has turned companies<65> attention back to the equities market after a years-long drought of IPOs.Vinci Partners, which has controlled BK Brasil since 2013, is seeking to cash in on the outlook for accelerating economic growth after the nation<6F>s harshest recession in a century.Economists expect household spending to lead the recovery as low interest rates curb debt spending and slow inflation boosts purchasing power.BK Brasil is controlled by a group of investors led by Vinci and U.S.-based fund Capital International Inc. Restaurant Brands International Inc ( QSR.TO ), which controls the Burger King chain in the United States, and Singapore<72>s sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings Ltd each hold a 15 percent stake.Net revenue at BK Brasil, which is the master franchiser of Burger King in the country, rose 28 percent in the first nine months this year from the same period in 2016.Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Bernadette Baum '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bk-brasil-ipo/burger-king-operator-bk-brasil-files-for-ipo-idUSKBN1CP1SM'|'2017-10-20T16:47:00.000+03:00'
'19faf4f160bd99ca91f6712c4ba288f8f3cc9a31'|'Lufthansa offers 500 mln euro for Alitalia''s planes and staff -paper'|'* Deadline to submit bids for ailing carrier expires on Monday* Lufthansa offers to buy planes, airport slot, flight staff* Govt likely to reject offer due to envisaged 6,000 layoffsROME, Oct 16 (Reuters) - German airline Lufthansa has offered 500 million euros ($590 million) to acquire the planes, airport runway slots and air crew of Italy<6C>s ailing national carrier Alitalia, the newspaper Corriere della Sera said on Monday.Citing three anonymous sources, the paper said Lufthansa has also proposed halving Alitalia<69>s workforce of 12,000 employees and reducing its short- and medium-range flights.The paper said the offer was likely to be rejected by the state commissioners who are managing the carrier while it is being sold. Lufthansa declined to comment on the report.The deadline for suitors to submit binding bids for Alitalia is 1700 GMT on Monday. However, on Friday Italy<6C>s government extended to April 30 a deadline to improve the bids which had previously been set for Nov. 5.Rome wants to sell the whole of Alitalia in one package and avoid a split of its aviation and ground service activities.On Friday the government also passed an emergency decree to add a further 300 million euros to the loan of 600 million euros it made to the loss-making carrier in May.It also extended the deadline for the repayment of the loan, which was due in November this year, to Sept. 30, 2018. ($1 = 0.8481 euros) (Reporting by Valentina Za; Editing by Greg Mahlich)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/alitalia-sale-lufthansa/lufthansa-offers-500-mln-euro-for-alitalias-planes-and-staff-paper-idINL8N1MR2BD'|'2017-10-16T08:36:00.000+03:00'
'8d8930f406eb1b41091715bc657a4d9f2b47a25d'|'Hotelier IHG reports revenue growth slowdown in Americas after hurricanes'|'BoE''s "unreliable boyfriend" needs to get message right commentary Time to slay the free market-myth monster Merkel sends positive signal to May on Brexit talks Reuters TV United States October 20, 2017 / 6:34 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago Hotelier IHG reports revenue growth slowdown in Americas after hurricanes Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) ( IHG.L ) reported a slowdown in revenues in its Americas business on Friday, due to the affects of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma on the regional business. FILE PHOTO: Hotel Intercontinental is pictured in Vienna, Austria, May 6, 2016. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo Revenue per available room (RevPAR), a key industry measure, at its Americas business rose 0.8 percent in the three months ended Sept. 30, compared with a 1.1 percent rise in the second quarter and 1.9 percent a year earlier. In the United States RevPAR was up 0.4 percent, which compared with a rise of 1.4 percent a year ago. <20>Hurricanes Harvey and Irma had a mixed impact; displacement activity together with the relief and reconstruction efforts benefitted our franchise business. But performance across the managed estate was negatively impacted by the cancellation of group bookings at some hotels,<2C> the company said. Reporting by Esha Vaish and Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-intercontinental-outlook/hotelier-ihg-reports-revenue-growth-slowdown-in-americas-after-hurricanes-idUKKBN1CP0I8'|'2017-10-20T09:30:00.000+03:00'
'2f56b9c16a868f6099eb2038f2739b3bf3b6f0f2'|'Mediclinic approaches Spire about takeover: source'|'October 22, 2017 / 12:41 PM / Updated 2 hours ago Mediclinic approaches Spire about takeover: source Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - South African private hospitals operator Mediclinic International ( MDCM.L ) has approached Spire Healthcare ( SPI.L ) about a deal to take full control of Britain<69>s second-largest healthcare company, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mediclinic owns 29.9 percent of FTSE 250-listed Spire, a stake it bought for about 430 million pounds ($567 million) from private equity firm Cinven in 2015. The company, which is listed in Johannesburg and London, is now considering a deal to buy the rest of Spire, the person said. Spire could issue a statement about the Mediclinic approach as soon as Sunday, the source said. The potential deal was first reported by The Sunday Times, which said a takeover could value Spire at 1.3 billion pounds. Spire shares closed at 261.3 pence on Friday, having climbed 5.8 percent on the day amid speculation that Mediclinic was examining an approach and giving the British company a market capitalization of about 1 billion pounds. The potential offer comes amid growing scrutiny by the British government of foreign takeovers of UK companies. Last week, the government announced proposals that will give it more say over deals in the defense and technology sectors and will allow it to examine deals involving much smaller British companies. ($1 = 0.7583 pounds) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-spire-m-a-mediclinic/mediclinic-approaches-spire-about-takeover-source-idINKBN1CR0HP'|'2017-10-22T10:41:00.000+03:00'
'66bb82cad8ac4b70045336b003d72f977ac4a76f'|'Whole Foods says hacking incident resolved'|'Oct 20 (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc<6E>s Whole Foods Market said on Friday it had replaced affected point-of-sale systems at venues located within some stores where payment card information had been stolen.The upscale grocer last month disclosed card information had been stolen from taprooms, restaurants and other venues located within some of its stores.Whole Foods, which Amazon recently purchased for $13.7 billion, said transactions on Amazon.com had not been impacted.The investigation found unauthorized software was present on the point-of-sale systems at certain venues, the company said. (Reporting by Karina Dsouza in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/amazoncom-cyber/whole-foods-says-hacking-incident-resolved-idINL4N1MV4JS'|'2017-10-20T16:28:00.000+03:00'
'91f4de427ab27066437740f8b35024600e90431b'|'P&G''s profit rises on higher sales of home care products'|'October 20, 2017 / 11:19 AM / in 3 minutes Gillette weakens P&G report after Peltz row Siddharth Cavale 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble Co ( PG.N ) disappointed Wall Street with sales on Friday, hurt by continuing weakness in its Gillette business, a week after it claimed to have fought off hedge-fund manager Nelson Peltz<74>s move to muscle onto the board. P&G, which spent millions battling Peltz<74>s charges of bureaucratic and ineffective management, reported higher sales of beauty and home care products. But a third straight quarter of declines in the grooming business that sells Gillette razors and Braun epilators weakened overall growth. Net sales in the firm<72>s first quarter results rose just 1 percent to $16.65 billion, missing analysts<74> expectations of $16.69 billion and driving shares 3.5 percent lower in afternoon trading in New York. The stock had been up 9 percent so far this year. <20>The quarter was a little bit more challenging. ..than we would have expected going in with the run up of commodity cost and the impact of the natural disasters,<2C> P&G Chief Financial Officer Jon Moeller said on a call with analysts pointing to higher shipping costs in many geographies. The world<6C>s biggest household products maker has been losing market share to upstarts like Unilever<65>s ( ULVR.L ) Dollar Shave Club and has cut prices to try and shore up its men<65>s personal care business. FILE PHOTO: A display of Pampers diapers are seen on sale in Denver February 16, 2017. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo <20>Grooming was especially weak,<2C> RBC Capital markets analyst Nik Modi said noting that was steeper than his own estimate of a 2 percent decline. Moeller said price cuts that have averaged at about 12 percent, caused the weakness in the value of sales in grooming. Weakness in Brazil also had a big impact, as consumers spent less amid an ongoing recession. Stagnant sales are one of the issues Peltz had with P&G in his contentious and very public proxy fight for a seat on the company<6E>s 11-member board. Preliminary voting results show he lost the fight - the biggest and most expensive in U.S. corporate history - by a hair. His New York-based Trian Fund Management have said they will contest the vote and would not concede until an independent arbiter had certified the count. P&G said it was maintaining its full-year organic sales and adjusted profit forecast. But it also said it expects a $300 million hit from commodity costs, in part due to the hurricanes that battered the southern U.S. this year. Net income attributable to the company rose 5 percent to $2.85 billion or $1.06 per share in the first quarter ended Sept. 30. Excluding items, the company earned $1.09 per share, beating analysts<74> average estimates by 1 cent. Reporting by Siddharth Cavale in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr and Patrick Graham'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-proctergamble-results/pgs-profit-rises-on-higher-sales-of-home-care-products-idUSKBN1CP1DZ'|'2017-10-20T14:18:00.000+03:00'
'4cc24ba1026d60df7368ecba80d3734dfd15c31f'|'BMW raided in cartel investigation as Daimler claims immunity'|'Reuters TV United States October 20, 2017 / 1:32 PM / Updated 4 minutes ago BMW raided in cartel investigation as Daimler claims immunity Andreas Cremer , Alissa de Carbonnel 3 Min Read MUNICH/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - BMW<4D>s ( BMWG.DE ) headquarters were raided by European Union officials investigating an alleged cartel among German carmakers, it said on Friday, as rival Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ) claimed whistleblower status in an effort to avoid fines. FILE PHOTO: A BMW logo is seen at the 2017 New York International Auto Show in New York City, U.S. April 13, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson - HP1ED4D13JXHH EU staff had <20>conducted an inspection<6F> at BMW<4D>s Munich offices this week, the premium carmaker said in a statement, adding that it is <20>assisting the European Commission in its work<72>. The EU<45>s Brussels executive said its antitrust officials had swooped unannounced on <20>a carmaker in Germany<6E> on Monday Oct. 16 in the first confirmed raid related to allegations that several German automakers had engaged in an illegal cartel. The competition watchdog said in July that it was investigating collusion among German carmakers in response to a tip-off after Der Spiegel magazine reported that Daimler, BMW, Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ) and its Audi and Porsche arms conspired to fix prices in diesel and other technologies over decades. <20>The BMW Group wishes to make clear the distinction between potential violations of antitrust law on the one hand and illegal manipulation of exhaust gas treatment on the other,<2C> the company said. <20>The BMW Group has not been accused of the latter.<2E> Brussels has yet to initiate formal antitrust proceedings against any of the carmakers. However, the allegations have begun to spawn U.S. lawsuits, adding to strains on an industry already struggling with the reputational fallout from widespread diesel emissions-test manipulation exposed in the wake of VW<56>s dieselgate scandal. Daimler said on Friday that it had <20>filed an application for immunity from fines with the European Commission some time ago<67>, effectively claiming to have blown the whistle on what Chief Financial Officer Bodo Uebber described as <20>possible antitrust agreements<74> with rival manufacturers. Daimler sees no need to set aside any funds for possible antitrust fines, Uebber added. To gain immunity, the EU<45>s antitrust website says, a company that participated in a cartel must be the first to inform the Commission of an undetected cartel by providing sufficient information to justify inspections. The Commission has declined to identify the original source of the tip-off, saying this is to avoid compromising its investigation. <20>Daimler is cooperating with the Commission under its leniency programme,<2C> an EU representative said on Friday. Volkswagen could also benefit from leniency after sharing information, according to earlier reports. Even after an initial alert, other cartel participants can reduce EU fines -- by up to 50 percent for the first to step forward with material evidence. VW offices have not been subject to EU raids in relation to the cartel investigation, a spokesman for the Wolfsburg-based car giant said on Friday, declining further comment.   Irene Preisinger, Jan Schwartz, Tom Sims and Foo Yun Chee; Writing by Laurence Frost; Editing by David Goodman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-antitrust-bmw/bmw-confirms-inspection-by-eu-antitrust-officials-idUKKBN1CP1QU'|'2017-10-20T19:13:00.000+03:00'
'f4bd66e40f8a2a27ebe97b9dc7bbf8707deb3645'|'Sovereign funds'' corporate deals halve in third-quarter, Asians stay active'|'October 20, 2017 / 9:40 AM / in 41 minutes Sovereign funds'' corporate deals halve in third-quarter, Asians stay active Claire Milhench 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The value of corporate deals with sovereign wealth fund (SWF) participation halved in the third quarter as oil-driven funds continued to take a back seat. FILE PHOTO: People pass the skyline of Singapore October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su - File Photo Asian funds GIC of Singapore and CIC of China made all the running. According to Thomson Reuters data, SWFs participated in deals worth just $14.1 billion (<28>10.7 billion), down from a revised $28.3 billion April-June, even though the number of deals rose to 38 from 31 quarter-on-quarter. The second quarter<65>s total, however, was swollen by China Investment Corp<72>s (CIC) whopping $13.7 billion acquisition of warehouse firm Logicor, Europe<70>s biggest ever private equity real estate deal. In a continuation of the previous quarter<65>s trend, CIC and GIC remained the most acquisitive funds, with CIC involved in 14 deals and GIC 10. <20>The sovereign funds that are active are those that are generating current account trade surpluses,<2C> said Michael Power, a strategist at Investec Asset Management. In contrast, the oil-backed funds have been less acquisitive in recent quarters, reflecting the constraints imposed by persistent low oil prices. Markus Massi, a senior partner at Boston Consulting Group, said another reason for the dominance of the Asian funds was that they had specialist teams looking for deals. FILE PHOTO: People pass the skyline of Singapore October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su - File Photo <20>The Asians are actively going out and scouting. If you<6F>re a private equity company and you want to close a deal, it<69>s easier to go to someone who already has the knowledge and capability on the other side.<2E> GIC participated in the top three deals, the largest being a $6.4 billion offer for Danish payments processor Nets by newly-formed company Evergood 5. The deal was backed by a consortium that included GIC, led by private equity firm Hellman & Friedman. The second largest was the $1.6 billion acquisition of Hong Kong-based insurer MassMutual Asia by another investor group that included GIC. The rise in the number of consortium deals has gone hand-in-hand with ballooning deal sizes. <20>There is so much firepower available at the moment, you can go hunting for larger assets,<2C> said Massi. GIC also led a $220 million funding round for Chinese peer-to-peer lending platform Dianrong. Power said the barriers to entry for most financial services were falling so sovereign funds needed to protect their portfolios by diversifying into the new players. <20>It<49>s the tech-driven disruptors that are starting to redefine what financial services means,<2C> he said. Eight of CIC<49>s investments were in healthcare, a hotly-sought after area, and two in real estate. This followed last quarter<65>s Logicor buy and CIC<49>s involvement in the consortium that bought InterPark, the largest owner-operator of parking infrastructure in the United States. This time GIC clinched the biggest real estate deal, taking a stake in the property rental unit of India<69>s DLF. Reporting by Claire Milhench Editing by Jeremy Gaunt'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-emerging-swf-investment/sovereign-funds-corporate-deals-halve-in-third-quarter-asians-stay-active-idUKKBN1CP123'|'2017-10-20T12:40:00.000+03:00'
'4ba79e99af76716a7bcc7952ba0603a4c8768747'|'Uber opens up Paris travel database to help city planners'|'October 20, 2017 / 11:52 AM / Updated 35 minutes ago Uber opens up Paris travel database to help city planners Reuters Staff 3 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Uber [UBER.UL] said on Friday it would open up its trove of travel data in Paris to the public to help city officials and urban planners better understand transportation needs, as the company seeks to woo national authorities. FILE PHOTO: An advertisement for the Uber car and ride-sharing service Uber is seen on a bus stop in Paris, France, March 11, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau The U.S. ride-hailing app collects huge amounts of data from the billions of trips taken by customers which it uses to improve its services and has recently started to make it available for a number of cities including Washington D.C., Sydney and Boston. <20>We get asked all the time <20>Is there any way you can share more data? We<57>d love to see where people are traveling in our city<74>,<2C> Adam Gromis, who is responsible for environmental sustainability at Uber, told Reuters. The service, called Uber Movement, shows how long it takes to make a journey between two points in a city at different times of the day. Uber is making the data available via a free website which can be accessed by anyone with an Uber account, but it is aimed particularly at city planners. (movement.uber.com) To respect users<72> privacy, Uber Movement uses only aggregated anonymised data. Uber, which launched in Paris in 2011, has had a rocky relationship with regulators across Europe who have accused it of flouting their traditional licensing rules. Protests by taxi drivers against the smartphone app turned violent in 2015 when Paris cabbies overturned cars and burned tyres. Uber has suffered a tumultuous few months that led to former CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick being forced out after a series of boardroom controversies and regulatory battles in a number of U.S. states and around the world. Uber<65>s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has struck a less confrontational approach than his predecessor - particularly in London where Uber is challenging a decision by the transport regulator to strip it of its operating license in the city. <20>As a technology company we can play a role in helping cities make data-driven decisions for the benefit of the environment and its citizens,<2C> Alexandre Droulers, Uber<65>s general manager for new mobility in western Europe, said. Transport planning usually relies on expensive household travel surveys which are conducted on average every 10 years in the Paris region, making Uber<65>s data a lot more up to date. Reporting by Julia Fioretti; Editing by Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-uber-france/uber-opens-up-paris-travel-database-to-help-city-planners-idUKKBN1CP1GX'|'2017-10-20T14:52:00.000+03:00'
'c07061b275e697da44ebc903b8e17106aed45654'|'Owner of Sandro, Maje fashion labels valued at $2 billion in Paris listing'|'PARIS (Reuters) - France<63>s SMCP ( IPO-SMCP.PA ) will price its stock market flotation at 22 euros per share, it said on Thursday, giving the fashion firm behind the Sandro and Maje labels a market value of around 1.7 billion euros ($2 billion).The logo of ready-to-wear Sandro brand is seen on a fashion shop storefront in Paris, France, March 29, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau The group, which also houses clothing brand Claudie Pierlot, will remain around 51 percent owned by China<6E>s Shandong Ruyi following the initial public offering, while private equity firm KKR will sell its 10 percent holding.Paris-based Sandro, Maje and Claudie Pierot (SMCP), which is using proceeds from the listing to back its expansion and pay down debt, touts itself as an <20>affordable luxury<72> company.SMCP<43>s clothes - such as dresses priced in the $200-$400 range - are more expensive than high-street retailers but it also operates a nimble production model more akin to the world of fast-fashion that of the top-end luxury labels.SMCP is looking to grow more in China, where recovering demand from middle-class consumers is giving retailers a lift, and like many peers it also wants to develop online sales.The IPO raised around 541 million euros for the company and selling shareholders, and SMCP said this could increase to 623 million euros if over-allotment options are exercised on the back of strong demand.Some of SMCP<43>s managers - the founders had around 8 percent of the firm before the IPO - banked 5.9 million euros from selling shares, the company said, while KKR took home 148 million euros. Shandong Ruyi raised 261 million euros and said the funds would be used to buy the Chinese government<6E>s stake in its Yinchuan Ruyi textile factory.The company, which aims to open between 80 to 90 stores a year between 2018 and 2020, also raised 127 million euros from issuing new stock. It will have a free float of 33.1 percent.Shares in SMCP will start trading in Paris on Friday in the form of <20>promesses d<>actions<6E>, or a type of share right.Reporting by Sarah White; Editing by Mark Potter '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-smcp-ipo/owner-of-sandro-maje-fashion-labels-valued-at-2-billion-in-paris-listing-idUSKBN1CO2PG'|'2017-10-20T02:08:00.000+03:00'
'1b0fe7229e859cba26391f0d21948f3f2df64828'|'Air Berlin carve-up talks to continue over weekend - CEO'|'October 20, 2017 / 1:11 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Air Berlin carve-up talks to continue over weekend Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Talks over Air Berlin<69>s ( AB1.DE ) remaining assets will continue over the weekend, with the goal of presenting a proposal to the insolvent German carrier<65>s creditors on Tuesday, Air Berlin Chief Executive Thomas Winkelmann said. FILE PHOTO: A Lufthansa airliner taxis next to the Air Berlin aircraft at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke/File Photo Air Berlin filed for insolvency in August and is being carved up among several buyers. Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) has already agreed to buy large parts of Air Berlin. The group had set a Friday deadline for exclusive talks to sell up to 25 A320 aircraft to Britain<69>s easyJet ( EZJ.L ) as well as to find a buyer for Air Berlin<69>s cargo marketing businesses and aircraft maintenance businesses. Several people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday that family-owned firm Zeitfracht and maintenance group Nayak were together poised to strike a deal to buy the cargo marketing platform and maintenance units. Lufthansa said on Friday that it may remain a major customer to the maintenance business after it has been sold, which is positive news for any possible buyer. <20>If there is a buyer, we will of course try to continue booking capacity at Air Berlin Technik or its successor organisation as much as possible,<2C> Lufthansa board member Thorsten Dirks said. Dirks, who is also chief executive of Lufthansa<73>s budget unit Eurowings, said the group had discussed the matter with parties interested in the maintenance business as well as with Air Berlin<69>s administrator. The maintenance unit has around 850 full-time equivalent positions, or around 1,200 staff. Related Coverage'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-air-berlin-lufthansa/air-berlin-carve-up-talks-to-continue-over-weekend-ceo-idUKKBN1CP1OY'|'2017-10-20T16:10:00.000+03:00'
'303dc67f48171de57ac737775d8ad74f3b509182'|'Laptops could be banned from checked airline bags due to fire risk - Oct. 20, 2017'|'Laptops could be banned from checked bags on planes due to fire risk by Chris Isidore @CNNTech  48 PM ET Aviation experts worry large electronics ban increases risk of fire Laptops could be banned from checked baggage on planes due to a fire risk under a proposal being recommended by an international air safety panel. According to a report, an overheating laptop battery could cause a significant fire in a cargo hold that fire fighting equipment aboard the plane would not be able to extinguish. That could "lead to the loss of the aircraft," according to the proposal. The ban will be considered by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations organization, at its meeting this month. Even if the organization endorses the proposal from its Dangerous Goods Panel, which is making the recommendation, it would be up to regulators in individual nations to pass rules to enforce it. The U.S. FAA has no comment on the proposal. But it is represented on the panel that is supporting the ban, and its research on the risk of fires from laptops is included in the proposal. Specifically, the FAA''s report raises concerns if a laptop battery were to catch fire in a bag that also holds aerosol cans, it could cause the kind of catastrophic fire that could bring down a plane. One of the fears is that by being in the cargo hold, the fire could build past the point where it can be extinguished before it could be detected by the plane''s crew. The good news is that the FAA found that there is a relatively low frequency of laptops being checked in baggage. Most people prefer to carry the laptops with them in the cabin, where any problem can be quickly detected and a fire put out before it spreads. Related: Researchers create battery with built-in fire extinguisher The concern that lithium batteries pose a fire hazard on planes isn''t new. There have been studies on the risk of fires on planes posed by lithium batteries going back years. In 2015 U.S. airlines banned hoverboards from their planes due to concerns about the fire risk posed by their lithium batteries. The fear that terrorists could try to hide explosives in laptops prompted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to ban laptops from the cabin of planes coming from certain international airports earlier this year. That prompted more people to check the laptops in their bags. At that time some argued the rule posed its own safety problems due the risk of fires from those laptops Those rules banning laptops from cabins have been removed for most of those airports due to new screening procedures.  48 PM ET'|'cnn.com'|'http://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_technology.rss'|'http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/20/technology/laptops-ban-checked-luggage/index.html'|'2017-10-20T20:48:00.000+03:00'
'0124a823453b13bbb3c71c2c56fb09cd7d1fd49b'|'IBM lags in cloud computing and AI. Can tech<63>s great survivor recover?'|'TECHNOLOGY giants are a bit like dinosaurs. Most do not adapt successfully to a new age<67>a <20>platform shift<66> in the lingo. A few make it through two and even three. But only a single company spans them all: IBM, which is more than a century old, having started as a maker of tabulating machines that were fed with punch cards.Yet after 21 quarters with falling year-on-year revenues (see chart), doubts had been growing about whether IBM would manage the latest big shifts: the move into the cloud, meaning computing delivered as an online service; and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), which is a label for all kinds of digital offerings based on insights extracted from reams of data. In May Warren Buffett, chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a holding company, announced that his firm had sold a third of its total stake in IBM, then valued at $13.5bn, saying that <20>I don<6F>t value IBM the same way I did six years ago when I started buying.<2E> Analysts were starting to wonder how long Ginni Rometty, the firm<72>s boss (pictured), would remain at the helm.Latest updates New 3 5 a day ago The A better way to search through scientific papers Science and technology a day ago See all updates On October 17th, however, IBM<42>s quarterly results suggested that sceptics might just be wrong. Revenues slipped again, to $19.2bn, but they did so less than expected. The firm indicated that it could see growth return in the next quarter and its shares rose on October 18th by 8.9%, the biggest one-day gain since 2009. Could Big Blue, still one of the world<6C>s largest information technology (IT) firms with nearly 390,000 employees, have turned the corner?If big IT firms often fail to adapt to such shifts, it is because these changes require more than adopting new technology. They also force companies to question what they stand for, according to Michael Cusumano, a business professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The brand, the technical skills, how products and services are sold, must all be examined. Many firms choose to defend their existing domains instead.After a near-death experience in the early 1990s, when sales of its mainframes collapsed, IBM seemed to have found a formula to stay ahead in technology. Under Louis Gerstner and Sam Palmisano, its former bosses, it quickly adapted to the internet and was one of the first big IT firms to back open-source software. It ditched businesses about to become commodities, such as personal computers and low-end servers. And it stuck to a financial <20>road map<61> telling investors how profitable it intended to be over the next five years. Nor did it hesitate to spend billions buying back stock to lift its earnings per share.Yet this fixation on financial metrics (a stance that predated Ms Rometty) is a big reason why IBM had a late start in the cloud<75>a trend it had spotted earlier than many competitors. As a result, it is now an also-ran in cloud computing, at least in the part of it called the <20>public cloud<75>, or networks of big data centres shared by many firms. IBM is number three at best; Amazon and Microsoft lead the pack by some distance, benefiting from the growing number of firms moving applications into the cloud, rather than running them on their own computer systems. More than 40% of IBM<42>s revenues come from products and services that directly compete with public-cloud offerings, says Steve Milunovich of UBS, an investment bank.IBM has tried to avoid the problem, being, for example, the first tech giant that went big on AI. Building on a technology called Watson, which in 2011 won <20>Jeopardy!<21>, an American quiz show, the firm two years later launched a new line of business to help organisations make predictions from patterns in their data. It promoted the effort heavily and invested billions, particularly in health care, for example to help hospitals to use patient data to gauge health risks. Yet progress has proved slow, mainly because it is often hard to make sen
'45da63c945b5b8267c2372a6f5648f2436bf8732'|'Creditors win closely watched appeal in Momentive bankruptcy'|'WILMINGTON, Del., Oct 20 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court in New York on Friday ruled in favor of senior creditors who had contested interest rates imposed on them during the bankruptcy of silicone maker Momentive Performance Materials, reversing a decision that had sparked alarm among lenders.The ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, New York, erred by not using market rates to determine the interest paid on new notes Momentive forced on holders of about $1.25 billion of secured notes.The replacement notes carried much lower rates, which were set by the court using a formula developed in a consumer bankruptcy case involving a subprime loan for a used truck.Secured creditors opposed getting notes with below-market interest and argued they were not getting the full value of their claim. Their appeal led to Friday<61>s ruling.Lenders and bankruptcy lawyers had warned that the lower court ruling ramped up the risk in financing distressed companies. They also argued it gave struggling companies more leverage when negotiating with lenders because they could essentially threaten to impose new loans on them with below-market rates.Momentive, owned by Apollo Global Management, filed for bankruptcy in 2014. Apollo continues to own 40 percent of the company, according to securities filings, and the case bolstered Apollo<6C>s reputation as a savvy investor that is willing to test legal boundaries.The case now goes back to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain, who was directed to determine if a market interest rate exists for the replacement notes, and if it does, to apply that rate.The Loan Syndications and Trading Association, which urged the Appeals Court to overturn the Momentive ruling, welcomed the decision.A Momentive spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Momentive filed for an initial public offering in September and said in a securities filing that a loss on the interest rate issue in the 2nd Circuit could reduce its liquidity and could increase interest costs.Holders of the secured notes had said a market rate would have led to an additional payment from Momentive of at least $150 million, according to the Appeals Court opinion.Following the ruling, Momentive<76>s notes due 2021 traded to a record high of 104.75 cents on the dollar on Friday, up over 2 points from their latest trade on Wednesday, according to MarketAxess data. (Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Additional reporting by Davide Scigliuzzo in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/momentive-bankruptcy-ruling/creditors-win-closely-watched-appeal-in-momentive-bankruptcy-idINL2N1MV1J2'|'2017-10-20T18:13:00.000+03:00'
'b92e7221b045ff5e7b83961df7d25df990c4c531'|'German metals recycler Befesa sets IPO price range'|'FRANKFURT, Oct 20 (Reuters) - German metals recycling group Befesa is planning to sell shares worth up to 625 million euros ($738 million) in its Frankfurt stock market listing, it said in a statement on Friday.The company is offering 14.3 million shares in a price range of 28 to 38 euros apiece, plus up to 2.1 million additional shares in an overallotment, making it the largest initial public offering (IPO) in Germany this year after online takeaway food delivery group Delivery Hero.The stock is slated to start trading on Nov. 3. ($1 = 0.8471 euros) (Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Douglas Busvine) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/befesa-ipo/german-metals-recycler-befesa-sets-ipo-price-range-idINF9N1LL02E'|'2017-10-20T04:12:00.000+03:00'
'e2126f3812aa02ccb0f0ae04e9a19315b81fc3c8'|'Rio Tinto opens books to over half-dozen possible suitors for Australia coal mines: sources'|'October 20, 2017 / 7:24 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago Rio opens books to over half-dozen possible suitors for Australia coal mines <20> sources James Regan 4 Min Read SYDNEY (Reuters) - Global miner Rio Tinto ( RIO.AX ) ( RIO.L ) has opened its books to more than a half-dozen potential buyers of its remaining two Australian coal mines as it winds down the sales process, two people familiar with the sale process said on Friday. FILE PHOTO: A sign adorns the building where mining company Rio Tinto has their office in Perth, Western Australia on November 19, 2015. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo The Kestrel and Hail Creek coking coal mines on the block have attracted some of Australia<69>s established coal miners, as well as private equity firms attracted to the positive outlook for selling metallurgical coal to Asian steel mills at robust prices, according to the people. The mines could fetch around $2 bln, the sources said, in a sale that if successful would complete Rio<69>s plan to finalise its exit from the sector and focus on iron ore, copper and aluminium, where it maintains greater market share. Credit Suisse is advising Rio on the sale. Rio this year sold its Coal & Allied mining division to Yancoal Australia ( YAL.AX ) for $2.69 billion, and before that its 40 percent interest in the Bengalla coal mine to New Hope Corp Ltd ( NHC.AX ) for $616.7 million. Whitehaven Coal ( WHC.AX ), South32 ( S32.AX ) and possibly Anglo American ( AAL.L ), are among the interested parties, according to one of the people familiar with the process. Both sources spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the process. South32 in an email to Reuters declined to comment beyond saying the company continued <20>to focus on identifying new opportunities outside our portfolio to compete for capital<61>. Rio and Anglo American declined to comment. Whitehaven did not immediately respond to telephone and email requests for comment. People familiar with the matter previously told Reuters investors including buyout firm Apollo and pension fund Canada Pension Plan (CPP) are among the bidders for the mines. Parties have been invited to submit tentative offers by Dec. 8. A sale would end Rio<69>s exposure to coal and open the door to investment by large funds that do not buy stock in companies exploiting fossil fuels, such as Norway<61>s $1 trillion wealth fund, according to UBS analyst Glyn Lawcock. Rio in 2011 made a disastrous $3.7 billion investment to develop metallurgical coal assets in Mozambique and propel itself to the upper ranks of global suppliers, only to write off more than $3 billion on the deal two years later due to logistical problems. It was divested in 2014 for $50 million. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday charged Rio and two former executives with fraud, saying they inflated the value of Mozambique coal assets and concealed critical information while tapping the market for billions of dollars. Rio and the two former executives deny the charges. <20>Had the Mozambique strategy played out, they would be a significant player in the metallurgical coal market, and I think they would probably stay in the market,<2C> UBS analyst Lawcock said. <20>But to only have two small mines doesn<73>t make a lot of sense.<2E> Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-rio-tinto-coal-divestiture/rio-tinto-opens-books-to-over-half-dozen-possible-suitors-for-australia-coal-mines-sources-idUKKBN1CP0NU'|'2017-10-20T10:23:00.000+03:00'
'e0773e9dca3aa61821f88656ff8768ab756c8a1c'|'M&C Hotels directors defend bid in face of investor unrest'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Board directors at Millennium & Copthorne Hotels (M&C) PLC ( MLC.L ) defended their decision to back a takeover offer valuing the firm at 1.8 billion-pounds ($2.4 billion) from the London-listed company<6E>s majority shareholder, after other investors criticized the deal.The independent non-executive directors of the FTSE 250 hotelier said on Thursday that they had <20>taken into account both the potential growth and the risks inherent in the continued execution of M&C&rsquo;s strategy, as well as the underlying assets of M&C&rdquo; when deciding to back the bid from City Developments Limited (CDL).They also said they had rejected two previous proposals from CDL <20> the first pitched at 510 pence a share <20> before the Singaporean group offered 552.5 pence in cash, which was announced to the stock market on Oct. 9.The statement comes after minority shareholders in M&C, including Fidelity International, criticized the bid from CDL, which is part of billionaire Kwek Leng Beng<6E>s Hong Leong Group, as being too low, arguing it does not account for the value of the hotelier<65>s property assets. M&C has 137 hotels in 27 countries, including sites in London and New York.The independent directors, in a joint statement with CDL, said that historically the stock market has not tended to focus on M&C<>s underlying property assets when valuing the company.<2E>Whilst an assessment of the underlying assets of M&C is a relevant reference point, it is important to note that M&C has traded, and continues to be valued by the market, primarily on an earnings basis,<2C> the independent directors said. <20>It is not M&C&rsquo;s strategy to realize value through the sale or repurpose of its assets.<2E>CDL has previously said that it does not intend to sell off any of M&C&rsquo;s London or New York hotels if the takeover is successful and that it plans to continue running the company as a hotel owner and operator.The directors confirmed on Thursday that this constituted a so-called post-offer intention statement under Britain<69>s Takeover Code.While such statements are not binding, the Code stipulates that such statements must be accurate and made on reasonable grounds.CDL already owns 65.2 percent of M&C and its bid comes at a 21.4 percent premium to the hotelier<65>s share price before the takeover proposal was made public.The offer would see the Singaporean group acquire the 34.8 percent of M&C that it does not already own for 624.3 million pounds and values the hotelier in its entirety at about 1.8 billion pounds.Reporting by Ben Martin; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mill-cop-hotels-m-a/mc-hotels-directors-defend-bid-in-face-of-investor-unrest-idUSKBN1CO2UP'|'2017-10-20T03:18:00.000+03:00'
'bc29332e25f65de82737d947802bf698e8a9c540'|'Japan government says needs to spur firms to spend cash pile on capex, wages'|'October 20, 2017 / 2:16 AM / in 20 minutes Japan government says needs to spur firms to spend cash pile on capex, wages Tetsushi Kajimoto 2 Min Read Japan''s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his party''s lawmakers including Taro Aso (L) raise their fists as they pledge to win in the upcoming lower house election, at their party headquarters in Tokyo, Japan September 28,   Finance Minister Taro Aso on Friday criticized Japanese companies for sitting on too much cash, and said the government needed to take steps to encourage them to increase spending on wages and business investment. Internal reserves, or retained earnings including cash, at Japanese firms have increased by 101 trillion yen over the past four years to some 400 trillion yen ($3.53 trillion), while many firms are wary of boosting business expenditures, Aso said. <20>The situation went much too far, we must think of ways for that money to be spent on capital spending and wages,<2C> he added. However, Aso said it would be difficult to tax internal reserves, which has been proposed by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike<6B>s new Party of Hope, as that causes <20>double taxation<6F> on companies that pay the corporate tax. Japanese policymakers hope that a sustained economic recovery will boost wages and in turn household spending, though many analysts expect inflation to remain distant from the central bank<6E>s 2 percent target. Aso, speaking to reporters after a cabinet meeting, also brushed aside some media reports that said the United States had strongly demanded talks on a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) during an economic dialogue this week. Aso, who doubles as deputy prime minister, met Vice President Mike Pence for the dialogue in Washington, in which Japan and the United States remained at odds over U.S. demands for FTA talks. <20>I don<6F>t recall the U.S. strongly demanded a bilateral FTA. There was just a mention once or twice,<2C> Aso said. <20>We<57>ve already told them that we are going to start TPP 11 (Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks) and that it would contribute to our national interests if the United States join,<2C> he added. The United States has withdrawn from the TPP earlier this year under President Trump<6D>s <20>America First<73> policy, raising concerns about a rising protectionism around the world. Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Chris Gallagher and Kim Coghill 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-aso/aso-says-japan-firms-piling-up-of-internal-reserves-has-gone-too-far-idUKKBN1CP05A'|'2017-10-20T05:57:00.000+03:00'
'9ae3aff1319afca60cbf6c9b21f525c670672aaa'|'Brexit makes a nonsense of Nigel Lawson<6F>s struggle against inflation - Business - The Guardian'|'A few years ago I shared a platform with my old friend Lord Lawson at a conference on our membership of the European Union . This was some time before the infamous referendum. The event was good-tempered, and it will come as no surprise to readers that Lawson was, in a term yet to be coined, a <20>Leaver<65>, and your correspondent was not.What surprised me over subsequent coffee and drinks was the number of successful, and obviously intelligent, people in the audience who thanked Lawson and me for having covered the history of the EU. It turned out some of the audience had only the vaguest idea why, to use the original title, the European Economic Community was set up in the first place.Decades have passed since the foundation of a group of nations that were bound together in the hope that, after centuries of conflict, they should not go to war among themselves again. And, of course, the <20>community<74> has evolved into (at present) 28 nations.Although, as an economics commentator, I concentrate principally on the needless economic harm threatened by Brexit <20> indeed, it is already happening <20> I nevertheless find it baffling that politicians as intelligent and experienced as Lawson should want to risk disrupting a Europe that is faced by such large and powerful global forces as those reigned over by presidents Vladimir Putin on one side and Donald Trump on the other.When it comes to the economic debate, Lawson placed hopes then <20> as others, such as the Brexit secretary David Davis, do now <20> on the prospect of some magical transformation of our commercial prospects. This would come about by abandoning membership of the vast and highly beneficial European customs union and single market, and arranging trade deals with the likes of Trump. Can this be the same Trump whose regime wanted to impose penal tariffs of 300% on imports of Bombardier<65>s C-Series aircraft ?This smacks more of a trade war than a trade <20>deal<61>. It is hoped that Airbus will come to the rescue <20> in his memoirs, Kenneth Clarke hails Airbus as a wonderful example of cooperation within the EU to create a rival to Boeing, and confesses that he was wrong to oppose it at first.It puzzles some people why Nigel Lawson should be so anti-European when he spent much of his time as chancellor (1983-89) in a succession of abortive attempts to persuade Margaret Thatcher to agree to putting the pound into the European exchange rate mechanism (ERM).Of course, when, after Lawson<6F>s resignation in disgust, Thatcher was finally worn down by the fashionable establishment view at the time, our brief membership of the ERM<52> 1990 to 1992 <20> ended in political disaster for what was by then the Major government. Unfortunately it emboldened the eurosceptics in the Conservative party <20> or <20>septics<63>, as Sir Edward Heath liked to call them <20> and they nagged away until they got their referendum.However, it was for counter-inflationary, not pro-European, reasons that Lawson preached the virtues of entry to the ERM. Monetarism had proved a dismal failure, and he hoped that an ERM dominated by the Deutschmark would offer a safer counter-inflationary anchor.So what have Lawson and his fellow Brexiters (I have decided that the extra <20>e<EFBFBD> in Brexiteers makes the unruly gang sound far too romantic) achieved? Yes, the 15% devaluation the financial markets have imposed on the UK <20> in wise anticipation of economic disruption to come <20> has produced an outburst of, ironically, Lawson<6F>s old enemy: inflation.Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chancellor Philip Hammond at an OECD press conference. Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA The impact of rising prices is everywhere in the shops. The familiar squeeze on real incomes has become more pronounced. The governor of the Bank of England drops stronger and stronger hints that, in the face of referendum-induced inflation, monetary policy is going to be tightened. The justification is an acceleration of inflation in an atmosphere of near-full emp
'8f0a08f0f1ff4c4fdf3badd22ab0da82da6f1c5d'|'China says jobless rate lowest in years, but challenges persist'|'October 22, 2017 / 2:19 AM / Updated 3 hours ago China says jobless rate lowest in years, but challenges persist Reuters Staff 4 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s unemployment rate has hit its lowest point in multiple years at 3.95 percent by the end of September, but employment still face challenges as the economy pushes ahead with structural reforms, China<6E>s labor ministry said on Sunday. A job seeker fills in application forms during a job fair at Shanghai Stadium February 4, 2012. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo The ministry of human resources and social security said in a statement that 10.97 million new jobs had been created in China from January to September this year, a growth of 300,000 compared with the previous year. The figure represents having essentially fulfilled the ministry<72>s year-end target, the ministry said in a pre-prepared statement given to reporters. Despite being ahead of schedule, Yin Weimin, head of the ministry, told reporters that <20>raising the capacity to employ workers overall still faces large pressures.<2E> <20>We need to create 15 million jobs per year,<2C> Yin said, singling out China<6E>s more than 8 million new university graduates that enter the job market each year as one group in need of additional employment. Yin also said the low unemployment rate in the face of an overall slowdown in the economy was largely due to the new internet economy and entrepreneurship, adding that the ministry would actively support startups to help them <20>thrive<76>. From 2015 to 2020 every one percent increase in GDP is expected to equal roughly 1.8 million new jobs, Yin said. Chinese Human Resources and Social Security Minister Yin Weimin attends a news conference during the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, October 22, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter Premier Li Keqiang said in March that China added 13.14 million new urban jobs in 2016 and aims to add another 11 million this year while keeping the registered unemployment rate below 4.5 percent. The labor ministry<72>s announcement was made as part of a once-ever-five-years congress of the ruling Communist Party, which opened last Wednesday and runs until Tuesday. At the congress, the Party sets broad policy directions and reshuffles top leaders. As China<6E>s economy slows, Beijing has made increasing efforts to stave off mass unemployment that may spark social unrest. China<6E>s official unemployment rate has remained generally stable as economic growth has dipped to a 26-year low and the government forges ahead with ambitious plans to cut back on industrial capacity. Many analysts say, however, that the government figure is an unreliable indicator of national employment conditions as it measures only employment in urban areas and also doesn<73>t take into account the millions of migrant workers that form the bedrock of China<6E>s labor force. On an annual basis, the official unemployment rate was last below 4 percent in 2001, when it was 3.6 percent, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. The rate ended 2016 at 4.02 percent after not budging from 4.1 percent from 2010-2015. The government has said that some sectors, especially those targeted by capacity cuts, such as coal and steel, still show signs of unresolved employment challenges. The ministry of human resources in April said that China would need to resettle about half a million workers that lose jobs in the coal and steel sectors this year and will speed up development of a <20>black list<73> system for firms with wage arrears. Reporting by Yawen Chen and Christian Shepherd, Additional reporting by Meng Meng; Editing by Jacqueline Wong'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-jobs/china-says-unemployment-at-3-95-percent-lowest-in-years-idUKKBN1CR01F'|'2017-10-22T06:28:00.000+03:00'
'ba3586585612e9a18e386e4d8d74506123d6cb8b'|'Airbus turmoil overshadows bid to rescue CSeries'|'October 22, 2017 / 12:09 PM / in 2 hours Airbus turmoil overshadows bid to rescue CSeries Tim Hepher 4 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus<75>s ( AIR.PA ) coup in buying a $6 billion Canadian jetliner project for a dollar stunned investors and took the spotlight off a growing ethics row last week, but internal disarray has raised questions over how smoothly it can implement the deal. FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A320neo aircraft and a Bombardier CSeries aircraft are pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. Picture taken October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo The European planemaker secured the deal for Bombardier<65>s ( BBDb.TO ) CSeries program by pledging to throw its marketing might behind the loss-making jets, just as the Airbus sales machine reels from falling sales and internal and external corruption investigations. Chief Executive Tom Enders has urged staff to keep calm in the face of French reports describing payments to intermediaries and growing concern over fallout from the investigations. But the mood at the group<75>s Toulouse offices remains grim. <20>Bombardier asked for an ambulance and Airbus sent a hearse,<2C> said one person with close ties to the company. French media attention on the growing scandal helped to camouflage talks to buy the CSeries. Rumors circulated in late August that Enders and a colleague were visiting Paris to meet investigators. In fact, they were holding the first of several secret dinner meetings with Bombardier. But the same affair, which first came to light in 2016, has begun to cloud sales momentum. In the first nine months of the year Airbus accounted for only 35 percent of global jet sales in its head-to-head battle with U.S. rival Boeing ( BA.N ). The Airbus sales operation is demoralized and in disarray, multiple aerospace and airline industry sources said, with some blaming Enders for turning the company against itself. Two people said the situation is so tense that some employees have begun to shy away from selling in problematic countries, rather than risk being drawn into the investigation. Soon-to-retire sales chief John Leahy has been asked to stay until the end of the year to help steady the operation, but his successor has not been officially confirmed, adding a sense of vacuum that has also sapped morale. FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A320neo aircraft and a Bombardier CSeries aircraft are pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. Picture taken October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo Leahy designated his deputy Kiran Rao as his successor earlier this year but the chaos engulfing Airbus means now is not considered the right time for major new announcements. POST-BOOM SLOWDOWN A spokesman for Airbus, which has long predicted a slower year after an order boom, dismissed reports of instability. <20>We have a great sales team ... but it is fully understood that they cannot repeat records every year; and the year is not over,<2C> he said. Slideshow (2 Images) Enders has strongly defended his decision in 2016 to report flawed paperwork to UK authorities, which prompted UK and French investigations focusing on a system of sales agents run by a separate Paris department that has since been disbanded. Airbus says no evidence of corruption has been uncovered, but Enders has pledged to continue the overhaul of sales practices historically shared between Toulouse and Paris. A source close to Bombardier acknowledged disruption at Airbus but predicted things would settle down by the time the deal for Airbus to sell the CSeries closes next year. At that point Airbus will face a second challenge in marketing the CSeries, which for years it dismissed as a weak upstart. Now it must offer the aircraft side by side with the older A
'eade04364f51a70c5233c695fe983d4a2bca29b9'|'Air Berlin seeks damages from Etihad - Rheinische Post'|'October 21, 2017 / 11:14 AM / Updated 25 minutes ago Air Berlin seeks damages from Etihad - Rheinische Post Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German airline Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ) is demanding damages from its part-owner Etihad Airways for letting it become insolvent and it hopes for payment of at least 10 million euros (<28>8.94 million), Air Berlin<69>s administrator told a German newspaper. FILE PHOTO: German carrier Air Berlin aircrafts are pictured at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt <20>We are in negotiations with Etihad and hope to reach a general settlement soon. We are hoping for a two-digit million euro sum,<2C> daily Rheinische Post on Saturday quoted administrator Frank Kebekus as saying. Air Berlin, Germany<6E>s second-biggest airline after Lufthansa, filed for bankruptcy in August after Etihad, the owner of almost 30 percent of Air Berlin, withdrew funding following years of losses. Etihad was not immediately available for comment. The Abu Dhabi-based carrier has been reviewing its European investments after they failed to yield the profits expected. Alitalia [CAITLA.UL], another of Etihad<61>s investments, is also in administration and is seeking bidders. Air Berlin<69>s planes have been kept in the air by a 150 million euro government loan, which Kebekus said the carrier could repay with the proceeds from a sale of assets to larger rival Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) agreed last week. <20>We will in all likelihood repay the loan including interest of around 10 percent,<2C> Kebekus said. Holders of more than 600 million euros worth of outstanding Air Berlin bonds will meanwhile likely lose out, he said, as their claims would only be considered after many others, including Air Berlin<69>s staff, had been paid. Air Berlin is due to cease operating flights by Oct. 28 at the latest, and Kebekus said that around 4,000 workers could then lose their jobs unless a transfer company was set up that would temporarily employ them until they found work elsewhere. Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Additional reporting by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Stephen Powell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-air-berlin-lufthansa-etihad/air-berlin-seeks-damages-from-etihad-rheinische-post-idUKKBN1CQ0E9'|'2017-10-21T14:13:00.000+03:00'
'ac6e7b111bed1fbcf61d13e38a56025f02aafa39'|'This week in sports: The Dodgers clinch World Series berth - Reuters'|'Listen to this week<65>s Keeping Score podcast:Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Enrique Hernandez (14) reacts as he rounds the bases after hitting a two-run home run against the Chicago Cubs in the 9th inning in game five of the 2017 NLCS playoff baseball series at Wrigley Field. Mandatory Credit: Jim Young-USA TODAY Sports California dreamin<69>: The Los Angeles Dodgers clinched the National League Championship title this week, officially punching their ticket to the Major League Baseball World Series. They will face either the Houston Astros or the New York Yankees <20> a fate decided tonight or tomorrow.Trump won<6F>t take kneeling sitting down: President Donald Trump this week continued his crusade against NFL players kneeling during the anthem to protest racism. Trump launched a petition asking for <20>a list of supporters who stand for the National Anthem,<2C> after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell rejected the president<6E>s calls to punish players who kneel during the traditional pre-game performance of the <20>Star-Spangled Banner.<2E>Snapping up an Olympics deal: Snapchat, a social media platform known for its blink-and-you-miss-it posts and loyal Millennial base, signed a deal this week to present Winter Olympics content from the Pyeongchang games. Snapchat will carry curated stories drawing on content sent by users and also <20>Publisher Stories.<2E>And finally, sports business marketing expert Rick Horrow got a behind-the-scenes look at the new Atlanta Falcons Mercedes-Benz Stadium and spoke to team President and CEO Rich McKay, among others. Watch the videos here: '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-weekinsports-20oct2017/this-week-in-sports-the-dodgers-clinch-world-series-berth-idUSKBN1CP2Q4'|'2017-10-21T05:35:00.000+03:00'
'09f63af78442e306282ebe88e9957a01ef8201b9'|'Truckmaker Volvo third-quarter core profit beats forecast'|'October 20, 2017 / 5:45 AM / Updated 12 minutes ago Volvo lifts market outlook as profit, order intake shine in Q3 Reuters Staff 3 Min Read STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden<65>s AB Volvo ( VOLVb.ST ) reported a bigger-than-expected rise in quarterly core earnings on Friday, as a broad upturn in demand for heavy trucks more than offset costs stemming from a strained supply chain. FILE PHOTO: A Volvo hybrid car is seen connected to a charging point in London, Britain September 1, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo Sweden<65>s biggest manufacturer by sales also raised its outlook for truck markets on both sides of the North Atlantic this year and forecast a further strong recovery in industry-wide sales of commercial vehicles in North America in 2018. Volvo and rivals in the truck industry such as Germany<6E>s Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ) and Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ) have hit a sweet spot this year with rising or already robust demand in all major commercial vehicles markets. Yet the buoyant demand has also come at a cost, with strained supply chains leading components maker SAF-Holland to scale back its 2017 margin outlook this month, while Volvo<76>s profitability was dented already in the second quarter. Volvo said stretched components supply had continued to have its impact in the third quarter, but with a 13 percent rise in truck deliveries and sharply higher earnings in its construction equipment arm, this was easily shrugged off. Adjusted third-quarter operating profit at Volvo rose to 7.02 billion Swedish crowns ($861 million) from 4.85 billion crowns in the year-ago period and beat a mean forecast of 6.20 billion crowns seen in a poll of analysts. Volvo has begun reaping the benefits of a completed 10 billion crown cost-cutting drive and set a target in August to reach its highest profitability since the sale of its car making arm to Ford ( F.N ) nearly two decades ago, spurring further gains in a stock that has gained 45 percent this year. Gothenburg-based Volvo said order intake of trucks at the group, which also includes brands such as Mack, Renault and UD Trucks in its stable, grew 32 percent in the quarter, beating the 15 percent rise seen by analysts. ($1 = 8.1513 Swedish crowns)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-volvo-results/truckmaker-volvo-third-quarter-core-profit-beats-forecast-idUKKBN1CP0E4'|'2017-10-20T08:45:00.000+03:00'
'efc35cfe604be30eb4061ff84f6edbbb29421f4f'|'Acacia says can''t pay $300 million upfront that deal with Tanzania calls for'|'October 20, 2017 / 1:06 PM / in 16 minutes Acacia says can''t pay $300 million upfront that deal with Tanzania calls for Zandi Shabalala , Sanjeeban Sarkar 4 Min Read LONDON/BENGALURU (Reuters) - Acacia Mining ( ACAA.L ) said it could not immediately pay the $300 million (<28>227.6 million) that its majority shareholder agreed to hand the government of Tanzania to settle a dispute that has crippled the company<6E>s operations in the east African country. Acacia<69>s majority owner, Barrick Gold ( ABX.TO ), said on Thursday it had agreed with Tanzania for Acacia to hand over the money and a 16 percent stake in three of its mines and to split the <20>economic benefits<74> from those operations]. The agreement appeared to be the first step towards a resolution of a months-long stand-off that began in March, when the government banned exports of unprocessed minerals. In July, Acacia was served with a $190 billion bill for unpaid taxes, penalties and interest. But Acacia<69>s executives managers said on Friday that they had not been presented with any formal proposal and were seeking more clarity on the agreement. <20>... The first comment I would make is that Barrick is equally aware of our balance sheet as we are,<2C> said Acacia<69>s chief financial officer, Andrew Wray, on a call with analysts. <20>We don<6F>t have the ability to make an upfront $300 million payment,<2C> he said, adding that a Barrick and government working group would need to come up with a solution. Acacia shares traded in London tumbled 7 percent to 198 pence by 1218 GMT, partly erasing a 16 percent gain on Thursday after the agreement was announced. The shares have fallen over 60 percent since the disputes broke out. Tanzania<69>s largest gold miner, Acacia has been hurt by the country<72>s sweeping changes in the industry. Those range from a ban on exports of unprocessed gold and copper to laws that increase state ownership of mines, based on the government<6E>s belief that it is not getting a fair share of Tanzania<69> mineral wealth. As a result of the March export ban, Acacia reported on Friday that its core earnings, or EBITDA, fell 60 percent to $50 million in the third quarter. The company also cut spending by 33 percent and hopes to return to cash generation in early 2018. Net cash in the third quarter slid 88 percent to $24 million from a year ago and its cash balance at the end of September was $95 million, down nearly 70 percent from a year earlier. In an effort to stanch the flow of cash, Acacia shut underground operations at its Bulyanhulu mine, changed the mine plan at Buzwagi mine to produce more processed ore and bought put options on its gold. Acacia, which was not directly involved in the talks with the government, said it would need to approve the deal with Barrick. Acacia Chief Executive Brad Gordon said it was also agreed that a Tanzanian operating company would be formed and that a working group would start work to resolve Acacia<69>s $190 billion tax bill, the export ban and flesh out how the $300 million would be paid. <20>It is still very early in the process. There is a long way to go before any proposal is made to Acacia,<2C> Gordon said. Acacia said gold production for the third quarter fell to 191,203 ounces, down 8.3 percent quarter on quarter, as it had reported on Oct. 12. Full-year production was maintained at 750,000 ounces, at a cost of $880 to 920 ounces. Jefferies analysts said in a note that EBITDA came in below its estimates and consensus expectations, but investors would <20>focus on gaining more clarity following yesterday<61>s announcements regarding a potential solution to the Tanzanian export ban<61>. Reporting by Zandi Shabalala in London and Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru; editing by Larry King'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-acacia-mining-results/acacia-says-cant-pay-300-million-upfront-that-deal-with-tanzania-calls-for-idUKKBN1CP1OT'|'2017-10-20T16:06:00.000+03:00'
'e35a31e6331e9c7109888b27434b758f825b56cc'|'A geopolitical row with China damages South Korean business further'|'IN A cosmetics emporium in central Seoul, rows of snail-slime face-masks sit untouched. Not long ago, visiting Chinese tourists would snap these up as avidly as a designer handbag in New York or anything from London featuring the Queen. Yet now their rejuvenating properties are failing to lure the country<72>s shoppers. Seo Sung-hae, a salesman, says business has slowed to a snail<69>s pace, because of a drop in the number of Chinese visitors. <20>We used to have 100 customers a day, but after THAAD, there are almost none,<2C> he says.THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defence, is an American missile-defence system designed to guard against North Korea that was installed in South Korea starting in March. Chinese authorities protest that its radar could be used to spy on its territory. Chinese newspapers have encouraged consumers to boycott South Korean goods. The plan was to <20>bully<6C> Korea into ditching THAAD, says Han Suk-hee of Yonsei University, who until April was South Korea<65>s consul-general in Shanghai. Seven months on, the campaign has fallen short of that goal but has claimed a big corporate victim. On October 12th Lotte, a South Korean conglomerate, confirmed that it hopes to sell its Chinese hypermarkets by the end of the year. That marks a significant retreat for the firm, which had been trying to crack the market since 2008. The group employs about 20,000 people<6C>a third of its overseas staff<66>in China, and in 2015 registered 3trn won ($2.65bn) of sales there.It became a target after signing a deal in February with the South Korean government that allowed the defence ministry to use one of its golf courses as a base for the THAAD launchers. (Shin Dong-bin, its chairman, later said he had no choice but to comply). Chinese officials then closed 77 of the 99 Lotte Mart stores in China on pretexts such as breaches of fire-safety rules. The firm itself shut another 13 stores when customers stayed away. Sales in the second quarter slumped to 21bn won ($18.5m), down from 284bn won in the same period last year.South Korean cars, beauty products and even confectionery have been affected. Sales at Beijing Hyundai, jointly owned by the South Korean conglomerate and Chinese manufacturer BAIC Motor, dropped by two-fifths in the first eight months of the year. AmorePacific, a cosmetics firm in South Korea, reported a 58% dip in its second-quarter operating profits. The country<72>s tourism industry, too, has felt the pinch since group tours from China were banned in March. There were 87% fewer Chinese tourists on Jeju, a pretty island south of the peninsula, during this year<61>s harvest festival than in 2016. Korean businesses will lose $15.6bn of tourism revenue if the slump continues until next March, according to the Hyundai Research Institute, a think-tank funded by the conglomerate. Korean industries other than tourism could lose $8.3bn over the row, says the Korea Development Bank.Yet the boycott is being applied selectively. It favours some Chinese firms by penalising their South Korean competitors, while leaving manufacturers on the mainland free to continue importing the parts on which their businesses rely from other South Korean firms, notes Choi Pae-kun, an economist at Konkuk University in Seoul. Korean exports to China jumped by 23% in September compared with the same month last year, driven in part by surging demand for memory chips, many of which are made by Samsung.The row with China may obscure some failings of South Korean business. Carmakers<72> share of the Chinese market fell from 9% in 2014 to 7% in 2016, before the row. Partly due to competition from online retailers, Lotte Mart has been losing money in China since 2011. But the events of March were undoubtedly a turning point. Beijing Hyundai<61>s sales rose in January and February, but plunged by 65% in May. Lotte Mart<72>s overseas losses are predicted to rise from 124bn won in 2016 to 250bn won this year. <20>It can<61>t be 100% THAAD,<2C> says Kim Soo-min, a lawmake
'f14ad8c50351584aa25a4552867f8408222c805b'|'Danone board to meet Wednesday over management issues: source'|'FILE PHOTO: Yoghurt by French foods group Danone are seen in this photo illustration shot in Strasbourg, April 15, 2015. REUTERS/Vincent Kessler/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - Danone<6E>s ( DANO.PA ) board will meet on Wednesday afternoon to discuss senior management issues, said a source close to the matter who declined to give further details, amid media reports that its chairman will stand down. French newspaper Le Monde reported on Tuesday that chairman Franck Riboud, 61, would stand down and hand over to chief executive Emmanuel Faber, 53, who will become both chairman and CEO. Danone declined to comment on the report. Danone, the world<6C>s largest yoghurt maker, is the latest consumer goods company to come under investor pressure to improve results and needs to deliver on profit margins and sales growth targets it recently set. Riboud, who took over from his late father Antoine in 1996, handed the CEO role to Faber in 2014 to prepare his succession at a time when Danone was facing weak sales and criticism from U.S. activist investor Nelson Pelz. Riboud stayed on as chairman and took on some further responsibilities such as focusing on the group<75>s long-term strategy, but those roles were expected to end sometime this year. Le Monde said Riboud would hand full responsibility for Danone to Faber, who is increasingly focusing Danone on health-oriented products. On Tuesday, Danone beat third-quarter sales forecasts, driven by a strong rise in baby milk formula in China. Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-danone-management/danone-board-to-meet-wednesday-over-management-issues-source-idUSKBN1CN16F'|'2017-10-18T12:43:00.000+03:00'
'6becda451f3a3ef807c61094594669516dec2f03'|'UPDATE 1-Abbott tops profit estimates on strong medical device sales'|'(Adds estimates, medical devices sales numbers, forecast, shares)Oct 18 (Reuters) - Diversified healthcare company Abbott Laboratories<65> profit beat analysts<74> estimates, driven by strong sales in its medical devices business.Abbott<74>s shares rose 1.7 percent to $56 before the bell on Wednesday.The company<6E>s medical devices unit, Abbott<74>s largest business, continued to reap the benefits of its St. Jude Medical acquisition, with sales rising 6.5 percent to $2.60 billion in the third quarter ended Sept. 30.Excluding items, the company reported a profit of 66 cents per share.Net sales rose to $6.83 billion from $5.30 billion.Analysts on average expected earnings of 65 cents per share, on revenue of $6.72 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Net earnings rose to $603 million, or 34 cents per share, in the quarter, from a loss of $329 million, or 22 cents per share, a year earlier.Abbott also forecast full-year adjusted 2017 profit from continuing operations of $2.48-$2.50 per share. It had earlier expected $2.43-$2.53 per share. (Reporting by Manas Mishra and Akankshita Mukhopadhyay in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D<>Couto)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/abbott-results/update-1-abbott-tops-profit-estimates-on-strong-medical-device-sales-idINL4N1MT3W5'|'2017-10-18T10:24:00.000+03:00'
'6c188124d5dba45c5023c1880af6aceac3217588'|'Tesla to raise pay by 30 pct at German division - works council'|'October 18, 2017 / 3:07 PM / Updated 37 minutes ago Tesla to raise pay by 30 pct at German division - works council Reuters Staff 3 Min Read HAMBURG, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Luxury electric car maker Tesla Inc and labour leaders at its German engineering unit have agreed a new pay structure that will raise workers<72> salaries by about 30 percent from current levels, the division<6F>s works council said. <20>We will now get to a competitive wage level,<2C> a spokesman for the works council said on Wednesday after a staff gathering at Tesla Grohmann Automation GmbH, based in western Germany. <20>The workforce was informed today that we will introduce a pay structure<72> at Grohmann, which has about 650 workers, he said, without elaborating. In an emailed statement, Tesla said the new remuneration structure, retroactively effective from Oct. 1, guarantees staff <20>a fair and competitive salary<72> and will include a pay raise for apprenticeships, but it did not confirm the 30 percent figure. In April, Tesla pledged a 5-year job guarantee for all Grohmann employees up to at least 2022. Workers also received a 10,000-euro ($11,800) grant each of Tesla stock and an additional bonus of 1,000 euros with their April pay and a monthly salary increase of 150 euros, it said. Tesla faces higher wage costs in Germany as it wrestles with what Chief Executive Elon Musk has described as <20>production hell<6C> in launching its new Model 3 sedan, which Tesla hopes will make it a mass-market producer. The company warned earlier this month that production bottlenecks had left the company behind with its planned ramp-up for the Model 3. German daily newspaper Die Welt reported the wage pact earlier on Wednesday. Before being bought by Tesla last year, Grohmann, based in the town of Pruem near the Luxembourg border, helped clients build highly automated and efficient factories, including battery assembly lines for electric cars. The U.S. carmaker is counting on Grohmann<6E>s automation and engineering expertise to help it ramp up production to 500,000 cars per year by 2018 through the design of ultra-efficient factories. ($1 = 0.8490 euros) (Reporting by Jan Schwartz. Writing by Andreas Cremer,; Editing by Douglas Busvine and Adrian Croft) 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/tesla-germany-wages/tesla-to-raise-pay-by-30-pct-at-german-division-works-council-idUSL8N1MT3XZ'|'2017-10-18T18:07:00.000+03:00'
'be8ff1ac08eb50f605e40ed843f50bf12e604693'|'Tesla raises borrowing capacity under warehouse agreements to $1.1 billion'|'October 20, 2017 / 9:40 PM / in 21 hours Tesla raises borrowing capacity for car leases to $1.1 billion Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ) said on Friday it has increased its borrowing capacity for a car lease program to $1.1 billion from $600 million. FILE PHOTO: Tesla introduces one of the first Model 3 cars off the Fremont factory''s production line during an event at the company''s facilities in Fremont, California, U.S. on July 28, 2017. REUTERS/Alexandria Sage/File Photo The move comes as the electric car maker spends heavily to fix production bottlenecks of its new Model 3 sedan. The company increased the borrowing capacity under certain warehouse agreements, the company said in a filing. ( bit.ly/2yx2P58 ) A spokesman said it was related to Tesla''s car lease program. In August, Tesla said it would raise about $1.5 billion through its first-ever offering of junk bonds as it seeks fresh sources of cash to ramp up production of its new Model 3 sedan. Reporting by Laharee Chatterjee in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Peter Henderson; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Cynthia Osterman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-offering/tesla-raises-borrowing-capacity-under-warehouse-agreements-to-1-1-billion-idUSKBN1CP2QK'|'2017-10-21T00:40:00.000+03:00'
'4140c5d75d6c397a28429eb6e4d0a328a786cbea'|'Airbus turmoil overshadows bid to rescue CSeries'|'PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus<75>s coup in buying a $6 billion Canadian jetliner project for a dollar stunned investors and took the spotlight off a growing ethics row last week, but internal disarray has raised questions over how smoothly it can implement the deal.FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A320neo aircraft and a Bombardier CSeries aircraft are pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. Picture taken October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo The European planemaker secured the deal for Bombardier<65>s CSeries programme by pledging to throw its marketing might behind the loss-making jets, just as the Airbus sales machine reels from falling sales and internal and external corruption investigations.Chief Executive Tom Enders has urged staff to keep calm in the face of French reports describing payments to intermediaries and growing concern over fallout from the investigations.But the mood at the group<75>s Toulouse offices remains grim.<2E>Bombardier asked for an ambulance and Airbus sent a hearse,<2C> said one person with close ties to the company.French media attention on the growing scandal helped to camouflage talks to buy the CSeries. Rumours circulated in late August that Enders and a colleague were visiting Paris to meet investigators. In fact, they were holding the first of several secret dinner meetings with Bombardier.But the same affair, which first came to light in 2016, has begun to cloud sales momentum. In the first nine months of the year Airbus accounted for only 35 percent of global jet sales in its head-to-head battle with U.S. rival Boeing.The Airbus sales operation is demoralised and in disarray, multiple aerospace and airline industry sources said, with some blaming Enders for turning the company against itself.Two people said the situation is so tense that some employees have begun to shy away from selling in problematic countries, rather than risk being drawn into the investigation.Soon-to-retire sales chief John Leahy has been asked to stay until the end of the year to help steady the operation, but his successor has not been officially confirmed, adding a sense of vacuum that has also sapped morale.Leahy designated his deputy Kiran Rao as his successor earlier this year but the chaos engulfing Airbus means now is not considered the right time for major new announcements.POST-BOOM SLOWDOWN A spokesman for Airbus, which has long predicted a slower year after an order boom, dismissed reports of instability.<2E>We have a great sales team ... but it is fully understood that they cannot repeat records every year; and the year is not over,<2C> he said.Enders has strongly defended his decision in 2016 to report flawed paperwork to UK authorities, which prompted UK and French investigations focusing on a system of sales agents run by a separate Paris department that has since been disbanded.Airbus says no evidence of corruption has been uncovered, but Enders has pledged to continue the overhaul of sales practices historically shared between Toulouse and Paris.A source close to Bombardier acknowledged disruption at Airbus but predicted things would settle down by the time the deal for Airbus to sell the CSeries closes next year.At that point Airbus will face a second challenge in marketing the CSeries, which for years it dismissed as a weak upstart. Now it must offer the aircraft side by side with the older A320.Airbus plans to refresh the A320 further after adding new engines and this will bring it closer to the smaller CSeries in performance, two people close to the plans said. It may also make some CSeries features more compatible with its own A320s.That comes on top of plans to enhance the larger A321neo in response to Boeing<6E>s launch of a new mid-market plane, which industry sources expect to happen next year.Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by David GoodmanOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Tru
'bc2ce60fd031518c89c03ede0ae0437a6ccb435d'|'ArcelorMittal offers EU concessions over Ilva'|'FILE PHOTO: A red-hot steel plate passes through a press at the ArcelorMittal steel plant in Ghent, Belgium, July 7, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir/File Photo BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Luxembourg-based steelmaker ArcelorMittal ( MT.AS ) has offered concessions in a bid to allay EU antitrust concerns over its planned takeover of Italian steel plant Ilva, a filing on the European Commission website showed on Thursday.The world<6C>s largest steelmaker submitted its proposal earlier on Thursday.The EU competition authority, which did not provide details in line with its policy, extended the deadline for its decision to Nov. 13 from Oct. 26.The Italian government has backed the deal between ArcelorMittal and Europe<70>s biggest capacity steel plant, which has a serious pollution issue.Reporting by Foo Yun Chee'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ilva-m-a-arcelormitta-eu/arcelormittal-offers-eu-concessions-over-ilva-idUSKBN1CO2GK'|'2017-10-20T00:32:00.000+03:00'
'f55f797f2d3a267a57ca7a2b0eb4cb3feeae5c31'|'Airbus CEO says expects to sell ''thousands'' of CSeries jets'|'October 20, 2017 / 1:13 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago Airbus expects to sell ''thousands'' of CSeries jets - CEO Allison Lampert 3 Min Read MONTREAL (Reuters) - Airbus ( AIR.PA ) Chief Executive Tom Enders said on Friday he believed Bombardier Inc<6E>s ( BBDb.TO ) CSeries planes would capture half the market for smaller single-aisle aircraft with the sale of <20>thousands<64> of the 110-to-130 seat jets. A Bombardier CSeries aircraft is pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau <20>I see no reason why we should not be able to capture 50 percent of that market,<2C> Enders said in Montreal at a breakfast organised by the city<74>s chamber of commerce. <20>I think we will sell thousands.<2E> Europe<70>s largest aerospace group on Monday agreed to take a majority stake in the CSeries programme for $1 (75p), a move expected to reduce costs while bolstering the plane<6E>s sales and giving Canada<64>s Bombardier a possible way out of a damaging trade dispute with Boeing Co ( BA.N ) and U.S. regulators. The lightweight, carbon-composite jet, which costs $6 billion to develop, has won performance accolades but failed to secure a sale in 18 months. On Thursday, the head of a major U.S. airplane leasing company said the deal boosts confidence in the CSeries programme, but is unlikely to drive a flurry of immediate sales. Customers will likely remain cautious until the trade dispute is closer to being resolved and the venture with Airbus closes in late 2018. Some analysts have suggested that Airbus<75>s 50.01 percent stake in the CSeries could reverberate throughout the aerospace industry, triggering a riposte from other planemakers, including Boeing itself. Commercial aerospace has four main powers dominated by Airbus and Boeing, which share the market above 150 seats. Brazil<69>s Embraer ( EMBR3.SA ) and Canada<64>s Bombardier compete in the market between 100 and 150 seats as well as in the market for smaller regional jets. Enders, who addressed Montreal<61>s business leaders with Bombardier Chief Executive Alain Bellemare, said the industry-changing venture would have a ripple effect, but didn<64>t specify what he meant further. <20>New alliances will be formed,<2C> he said. Editing by Franklin Paul and Bernadette Baum'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bombardier-airbus-jets/airbus-ceo-says-expects-to-sell-thousands-of-cseries-jets-idUKKBN1CP1P6'|'2017-10-20T16:13:00.000+03:00'
'fd8a9475e01186c11135305b6fe2c6f59cb23dbc'|'UPDATE 1-Activist RBR wants Credit Suisse to float asset management unit, investment bank'|'* Investment bank, asset management worth over $20 bln - RBR* Credit Suisse management thinks projections misleading - source (Adds detail from presentation, source close to Credit Suisse)By Joshua Franklin and Oliver HirtZURICH, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Activist investor RBR Capital Advisors wants Credit Suisse to float its asset management business and investment bank, valuing them at more than 20 billion Swiss francs ($20.5 billion) when split from the rest of the bank, according to a presentation reviewed by Reuters.The Swiss hedge fund went public this week with a campaign to break up Switzerland<6E>s second-biggest bank into an investment bank, an asset management group and a wealth manager accommodating its retail and corporate banking operations.In the presentation dated October 2017, RBR estimated a divided up Credit Suisse would be worth at least double the bank<6E>s current market capitalisation of around 40 billion francs.The fund sees potential valuations of Credit Suisse<73>s independent wealth management arm at 62.5 billion francs, the investment bank at 15.6 billion and the asset management business at 6.8 billion.Credit Suisse<73>s management views RBR<42>s projections as misleading and believes the fund has taken the incorrect peers to build its valuations, a source close to the bank said.Management also feels splitting out the investment bank would destroy value given that many of its richest clients, whose wealth can top $1 billion, use services at the investment bank, the source said.<2E>The whole growth story of the private bank would fall apart,<2C> the source said.The bank is roughly two years into Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam<61>s three-year plan to focus on wealth management and rely less on investment banking.A spokesman for RBR declined to comment and said the fund will outline its strategy for Credit Suisse at the JP Morgan Robin Hood Investor Conference in New York on Friday.DUSTING OFF OLD NAMES RBR<42>s plan to float the asset management business has not previously been reported, nor had the individual valuation estimates of the three Credit Suisse businesses.The Financial Times, which reported the activist campaign on Monday, said RBR was seeking to float Credit Suisse<73>s investment bank.RBR wants Credit Suisse to list the investment bank, which it dubs First Boston 2.0, in either New York or London, according to the presentation seen by Reuters. Credit Suisse took control of U.S. investment bank First Boston in 1988.In the presentation, RBR names the wealth management and corporate business SKA 2.0 - a nod to Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (SKA), Credit Suisse<73>s name at the time of its founding - and the asset management business as Suisse Asset Management.RBR also suggests moving First Boston 2.0 out of Switzerland, which sets tougher capital standards than the regulatory minimum, to a jurisdiction with less burdensome requirements.However, the source close to Credit Suisse questioned the savings from this given that the most important financial centres had requirements that went beyond the minimum global rules set by the Basel Committee of bank supervisors.RBR, led by Rudolf Bohli, has taken a stake of only around 0.2 percent in Credit Suisse and faces a steep challenge to muster the backing needed to succeed in its campaign.Analysts and other investors, including the bank<6E>s biggest shareholder Harris Associates, have been sceptical about the plan to break up the bank, which RBR calls Project Parade 2.0.Credit Suisse has said it welcomes the views of shareholders but its focus is on implementing its current strategy.$1 = 0.9745 Swiss francs Editing by Rachel Armstrong/Keith Weir'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/creditsuisse-rbr/update-1-activist-rbr-wants-credit-suisse-to-float-asset-management-unit-investment-bank-idINL8N1MU40D'|'2017-10-19T11:01:00.000+03:00'
'9fae799e9bced3d36d83bc02f39ce1a65bb3390e'|'Nestle expects 2017 margin to decline on higher restructuring costs'|'October 19, 2017 / 6:09 AM / in 5 minutes Nestle expects 2017 margin to decline on higher restructuring costs Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A Kit Kat chocolate bar is seen in this illustration photo taken July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo ZURICH (Reuters) - Food group Nestle ( NESN.S ) said it expected its operating margin to slip by 40 to 60 basis points in 2017 due to higher restructuring costs and said full-year organic sales growth should be in line with the 2.6 percent seen in the first nine months. Its underlying margin was set to improve. Makers of packaged foods are under pressure to review their business models and brand portfolios to satisfy consumers<72> appetite for fresh, healthy, local foods, while at the same time improving returns to silence increasingly vocal activist investors. <20>Our structural savings initiatives are progressing faster than originally planned, leading to an additional increase of 400-500 million Swiss francs in restructuring and related expenses in 2017,<2C> the maker of KitKat chocolate bars and Nescafe instant coffee said in a statement on Thursday. Reporting by Silke Koltrowitz; Editing by Michael Shields 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nestle-sales/nestle-expects-2017-margin-to-decline-on-higher-restructuring-costs-idUKKBN1CO0K4'|'2017-10-19T09:08:00.000+03:00'
'2c27d3302cc2a25e36b76591851a39d44d67004c'|'Jobs-rich, wages-poor economy raises big questions - BoE''s Haldane'|'October 19, 2017 / 9:33 AM / in 13 minutes Jobs-rich, wages-poor economy raises big questions - BoE''s Haldane Reuters Staff 1 Min Read People walk past the Bank of England in London, Britain, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay LONDON (Reuters) - Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane said on Thursday that Britain<69>s strong employment growth but weak wage increases raised questions about what was happening in the economy with implications for monetary police. Haldane said Britain<69>s recent economic growth had been rich in jobs but poor in terms of wages <20>which begs all sorts of questions about what<61>s going on...<2E> Haldane was speaking at a seminar organised by Britain<69>s Office for National Statistics. He has previously said he was among the majority of BoE rate-setters who, at a meeting last month, felt that an interest rate hike might be needed <20>in the coming months.<2E> Investors expect a hike on Nov. 2, after BoE<6F>s next policy meeting. Writing by William Schomberg, editing by Andy Bruce 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-boe-haldane/jobs-rich-wages-poor-economy-raises-big-questions-boes-haldane-idUKKBN1CO166'|'2017-10-19T12:32:00.000+03:00'
'34d51a49c191e0886327a9cd960150a9562358da'|'ArcelorMittal offers EU concessions over Ilva'|'FILE PHOTO: A red-hot steel plate passes through a press at the ArcelorMittal steel plant in Ghent, Belgium, July 7, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir/File Photo BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Luxembourg-based steelmaker ArcelorMittal ( MT.AS ) has offered concessions in a bid to allay EU antitrust concerns over its planned takeover of Italian steel plant Ilva, a filing on the European Commission website showed on Thursday.The world<6C>s largest steelmaker submitted its proposal earlier on Thursday.The EU competition authority, which did not provide details in line with its policy, extended the deadline for its decision to Nov. 13 from Oct. 26.The Italian government has backed the deal between ArcelorMittal and Europe<70>s biggest capacity steel plant, which has a serious pollution issue.Reporting by Foo Yun Chee'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-ilva-m-a-arcelormitta-eu/arcelormittal-offers-eu-concessions-over-ilva-idINKBN1CO2GK'|'2017-10-19T14:31:00.000+03:00'
'ea6863a0f7f8330017f9cdc59295f5a647180054'|'Saudi oil minister makes high profile Iraq visit, calls for economic cooperation'|'October 21, 2017 / 8:17 PM / in 3 hours Saudi oil minister makes high profile Iraq visit, calls for economic cooperation Maher Chmaytelli 4 Min Read BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saudi Oil Minister Khalid al-Falih made a high profile visit to Iraq on Saturday, calling for increased economic cooperation and praising existing coordination to boost crude oil prices. Saudi Arabia''s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud welcomes Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia October 21, 2017. Bandar Algaloud/Courtesy of Saudi Royal Court/Handout via REUTERS In a speech at the opening of the Baghdad International Exhibition, Falih said cooperation between Iraq and Saudi Arabia contributed to <20>the improvement and stability we are seeing in the oil market<65> Falih is the first Saudi official to make a public speech in Baghdad for decades. The two countries began taking steps towards detente in 2015 after 25 years of troubled relations starting with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Tension remained high after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which toppled Saddam Hussein. The American occupation of Iraq empowered political parties representing Iraq<61>s Shi<68>ite majority, close to Saudi Arabia<69>s regional rival Iran. With a thaw in relations, Falih said a joint committee is <20>working on measures to speed up the establishment of an economic partnership and to reactivate cooperation and economic complementarity.<2E> Iraq is seeking economic benefits from closer ties with Riyadh while Saudi Arabia hopes a stronger relationship with Baghdad would help rollback Iran<61>s influence in the region. Iraq lies on the fault line between Shi<68>ite Muslim power Iran and the Sunni-ruled countries that are its regional arch-rivals, chief among them Saudi Arabia. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi left Baghdad on Saturday for a visit to Saudi Arabia, his second to the kingdom this year, his office said in a statement. His talks with Saudi officials will focus on efforts to rebuild Iraq after the war on Islamic State and fostering economic and trade cooperation, the statement said. Abadi will visit other Middle Eastern countries after the kingdom, it said. <20>The best example of the importance of cooperation between our two countries is the improvement and stability trend seen in the oil market,<2C> said Falih, to applause from the audience of Iraqi ministers, senior officials and businessmen. Saudi Arabia and Iraq are respectively the biggest and second biggest producers of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The Iraqi oil ministry said Falih and his Iraqi counterpart, Jabar al-Luaibi, would cooperate in implementing decisions by oil exporting countries to curb global supply in order to lift crude prices. OPEC, Russia and several other producers agreed a pact at the start of 2017 to cut production in order to boost oil prices. The cutbacks should continue until March 2018. Falih called for increased economic cooperation between the two countries at all levels, saying Saudi Arabia is implementing measures to facilitate the flow of goods and services between the neighbors. A Saudi commercial airplane, operated by Flynas, arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday for the first time in 27 years. In August, the two countries said they planned to open the Arar land border crossing for trade for the first time since 1990. Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Ros Russell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-saudi/saudi-oil-minister-makes-high-profile-iraq-visit-calls-for-economic-cooperation-idUKKBN1CQ0TM'|'2017-10-21T22:44:00.000+03:00'
'6613a639ba95f1fa1d27b1f13d66c4f116d65f74'|'Henkel may make U.S. acquisitions: CEO in newspaper'|'October 22, 2017 / 1:05 PM / Updated 2 hours ago Henkel may make U.S. acquisitions: CEO in newspaper Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German consumer goods group Henkel ( HNKG_p.DE ) may further expand its business in the United States via acquisitions, Chief Executive Hans van Bylen told Welt am Sonntag in an interview. Hans Van Bylen, chief executive officer of German consumer goods group Henkel is seen next to the company''s logo at the annual general shareholders'' meeting in Duesseldorf, Germany, April 11, 2016. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay <20>If there are opportunities for acquisitions, we will take a look at whether they are a good fit in terms of strategy and price. In the United States we are for instance not yet a leading seller of beauty care products,<2C> he said. Henkel<65>s beauty care brands include Syoss and Schwarzkopf hair care products as well as Dial soap. He also said that there was opportunities around the world for purchases in the laundry care, detergents and adhesives sectors. Acquisitions are a key part of Henkel<65>s strategy. Earlier this year it made a binding offer to buy sealant maker Darex Packaging Technologies for $1.05 billion (<28>0.8 billion). Last year, it spent $3.6 billion to buy North American detergent maker Sun Products, known for its Snuggle brand. Van Bylen also told Welt am Sonntag that profit margins at Henkel<65>s U.S brands Purex, Dial and Sun had been improving. <20>Henkel will have a very successful 2017 in the United States. That will also be reflected at the group level,<2C> he said. Henkel is due to publish third-quarter financial results on Nov. 14. Reporting by Maria Sheahan Editing by Jeremy Gaunt'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-henkel-ag-acquisitions/henkel-may-make-u-s-acquisitions-ceo-in-newspaper-idUKKBN1CR0IN'|'2017-10-22T16:05:00.000+03:00'
'bf358b1bbb645a2810df8a0444b4888681db171b'|'Malaysia Airlines appoints group CEO to replace Bellew'|' 35 PM / in 6 minutes Malaysia Airlines appoints group CEO to replace Bellew Reuters Staff 1 Min Read KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia Airlines Berhad on Friday appointed Captain Izham Ismail as group chief executive officer designate with immediate effect following the departure of Peter Bellew after just over a year in the job. FILE PHOTO: Men watch Malaysia Airlines aircraft at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia, in this picture taken March 2, 2016. REUTERS/Olivia Harris/File Photo Izham, who has served as chief operating officer since last November, will be the third person to take the CEO job in two years. The airline said in a statement that Izham will officially assume the post on Dec. 1, after Bellew completes administrative leave. Izham has also been appointed as executive director of the airline. Reporting by Joseph Sipalan; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-malaysiaairlines-ceo/malaysia-airlines-appoints-group-ceo-to-replace-bellew-idUKKBN1CP1LD'|'2017-10-20T15:35:00.000+03:00'
'56d037788ad044034c3d9b3e9b5f321b4c4ffa5d'|'Henkel may make U.S. acquisitions: CEO in newspaper - Reuters'|'October 22, 2017 / 5:06 AM / Updated 4 hours ago Henkel may make U.S. acquisitions: CEO in newspaper Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German consumer goods group Henkel ( HNKG_p.DE ) may further expand its business in the United States via acquisitions, Chief Executive Hans van Bylen told Welt am Sonntag in an interview. Hans Van Bylen, chief executive officer of German consumer goods group Henkel is seen next to the company''s logo at the annual general shareholders'' meeting in Duesseldorf, Germany, April 11, 2016. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay <20>If there are opportunities for acquisitions, we will take a look at whether they are a good fit in terms of strategy and price. In the United States we are for instance not yet a leading seller of beauty care products,<2C> he said. Henkel<65>s beauty care brands include Syoss and Schwarzkopf hair care products as well as Dial soap. He also said that there was opportunities around the world for purchases in the laundry care, detergents and adhesives sectors. Acquisitions are a key part of Henkel<65>s strategy. Earlier this year it made a binding offer to buy sealant maker Darex Packaging Technologies for $1.05 billion. Last year, it spent $3.6 billion to buy North American detergent maker Sun Products, known for its Snuggle brand. Van Bylen also told Welt am Sonntag that profit margins at Henkel<65>s U.S brands Purex, Dial and Sun had been improving. <20>Henkel will have a very successful 2017 in the United States. That will also be reflected at the group level,<2C> he said. Henkel is due to publish third-quarter financial results on Nov. 14. Reporting by Maria Sheahan Editing by Jeremy Gaunt '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-henkel-ag-acquisitions/henkel-may-make-u-s-acquisitions-ceo-in-newspaper-idINKBN1CR04L'|'2017-10-22T03:06:00.000+03:00'
'65a36ca28d88fac0e44d6f7277d91072c62618f3'|'Singapore to halt car population growth from next year'|'October 23, 2017 / 10:16 AM / a few seconds ago Singapore to halt car population growth from next year Reuters Staff 2 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore, one of the world<6C>s most expensive places to own a vehicle, will not allow any growth in its car population from February, citing the small city-state<74>s land scarcity and billions of dollars in planned public transport investments. FILE PHOTO - People look at cars on display at a mall in Singapore April 28, 2016. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo The Land Transport Authority (LTA) said it was cutting the permissible vehicle growth rate in the city-state to 0 percent from the current 0.25 percent per annum for cars and motorcycles. The rate will be reviewed in 2020. Singapore tightly controls its vehicle population by setting an annual growth rate and through a system of bidding for the right to own and use a vehicle for a limited number of years. It is one of the most densely populated nations on the planet and already has an extensive public transport system. Currently, 12 percent of Singapore<72>s total land area is taken up by roads, the LTA said. <20>In view of land constraints and competing needs, there is limited scope for further expansion of the road network,<2C> it said. Singapore, whose total population has risen nearly 40 percent since 2000 to about 5.6 million now, counted more than 600,000 private and rental cars on its roads as of last year. These include cars used by drivers that work with ride-hailing services such as Grab and Uber [UBER.UL], which are becoming increasingly popular. A mid-range car in Singapore can typically cost four times the price in the United States. Singapore has expanded its rail network length by 30 percent and has added new routes and capacity in its bus network. The government will continue to invest S$20 billion ($14.7 billion) in new rail infrastructure, S$4 billion to renew, upgrade and expand rail operating assets, and another S$4 billion in bus contracting subsidies over the next five years, the LTA said. The LTA will keep the growth rate for goods vehicles and buses at 0.25 per cent until the first quarter of 2021. Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-singapore-autos/singapore-to-halt-car-population-growth-from-next-year-idUKKBN1CS160'|'2017-10-23T13:00:00.000+03:00'
'b20cd031c04c1b9ce398c48b71cd6cae2dc94f60'|'Industry continues driving German growth - Bundesbank'|'October 23, 2017 / 10:06 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago Industry continues driving German growth - Bundesbank Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Growth in Germany, Europe<70>s biggest economy, likely held up at a high level in the third quarter, driven by superb industrial orders even as construction activity levelled off and private consumption dipped, the Bundesbank said in a monthly report. A man looks at BMW engines displayed during the Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt, Germany September 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach <20>Industry, supported by buoyant export demand, is likely to retain its role as a main pillar of a strong economy,<2C> the central bank said on Monday. <20>The order situation of industrial firms is excellent.<2E> Germany, boasting the euro zone<6E>s lowest jobless rate, has roared ahead this year, lifting confidence across the currency bloc and giving the European Central Bank the biggest reason yet to curb extraordinary stimulus. Car manufacturing appears to have moved past a rough patch in the quarter and orders, particularly from outside the euro zone, were excellent, the report noted. Construction on the other hand probably did not contribute to overall growth, maintaining a relatively high level of output, and poor retail sales suggest that consumption likely eased, the Bundesbank added. <20>Against the backdrop of very good consumer sentiment and favourable labour market and income prospects, no lasting deterioration in consumption is to be expected,<2C> the bank noted. Consumer prices on the other hand are likely dip towards the end of the year as high year earlier figures get knocked out from the time series. Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Francesco Canepa'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-economy-bundesbank/industry-continues-driving-german-growth-bundesbank-idUKKBN1CS154'|'2017-10-23T13:06:00.000+03:00'
'd84d4ab3887122de54cfc42c8af09b7e8572bfb4'|'Australia''s ANZ in last-minute settlement with regulator over rate rigging'|'Reuters TV United States October 23, 2017 / 2:45 AM / Updated 17 minutes ago Australia''s ANZ in last-minute settlement with regulator over rate rigging Paulina Duran 3 Min Read SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd has reached a last-minute agreement to settle a case brought by the country<72>s securities regulator accusing it of manipulating the bank bill swap rate. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ) is pictured on a local branch in Sydney in this April 30, 2014 file photo. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo Australia<69>s third-largest lender, which had previously said it would defend itself against the allegations, did not give a reason for its decision to settle or disclose financial terms. It said it would make a more detailed statement in two days time after more progress had been made on the agreement. The deal could open ANZ to possible class action lawsuits from shareholders and also throws the spotlight on Westpac Banking Corporation and National Australia Bank which are facing similar allegations that they rigged a benchmark rate used to price financial products. <20>Any settlement was likely premised on them admitting that they<65>ve done the wrong thing, which does open the way up for class actions,<2C> said CLSA banking analyst Brian Johnson, although he added that the settlement sum with ASIC was likely to be immaterial in size. ANZ said the financial impact would be reflected in the bank<6E>s annual earnings due later this week. The court hearings had been due to start on Monday but have now been adjourned until Wednesday at the request of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). Westpac said it had no immediate comment on Monday. A representative for NAB was not immediately available for comment. They have previously said they would defend themselves in court. ASIC<49>s allegations that the three lenders were involved in rigging the bank bill swap reference rate (BBSW) is only one of several scandals engulfing Australia<69>s banking sector in which lenders have also been accused of widespread abuses at their financial advice and insurance units. Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the nation<6F>s No. 1 lender, is not part of ASIC<49>s lawsuit. But it has been taken to court by anti-money-laundering agency AUSTRAC which has accused it of more 50,000 breaches of anti-money laundering rules. ASIC has also launched its own investigation into the matter. CBA has not disputed that it processed tens of thousands of illicit transfers but argues the breaches were largely caused by a software glitch and contests its level of responsibility. Australia<69>s four major lenders control 80 percent of the country<72>s lending market and have posted record profits for years. The BBSW is the primary interest rate benchmark used in Australian financial markets to price home loans, credit cards and other financial products. The method used to calculate the BBSW was changed in 2013. ANZ shares were 0.1 percent higher in afternoon trade, lagging the broader market which was up 0.7 percent. Additional reporting by Byron Coates in Sydney and by Shashwat Pradhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Stephen Coates and Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-australia-banks-court/australias-anz-in-last-minute-settlement-with-regulator-over-rate-rigging-idUKKBN1CS064'|'2017-10-23T05:42:00.000+03:00'
'd76876294f0f315deebd4d0356ba9d43e5c3d22b'|'TomTom''s sales fall as growth in services fails to offset satnav drop'|'October 20, 2017 / 6:19 AM / Updated an hour ago TomTom''s sales fall as services fail to offset satnav drop Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Dutch satellite navigation and digital mapping company TomTom ( TOM2.AS ) reported a bigger than expected drop in third-quarter revenue on Friday, as growth in its automotive services businesses failed to offset weakness in its consumer products division. TomTom navigation are seen in front of TomTom displayed logo in this illustration taken July 28, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic The company is betting big on services, such as the sale of maps and software to car makers, fleet management systems and technology for self-driving cars, as the popularity of portable navigation devices continues to wane. The Amsterdam-based company<6E>s revenue for the third quarter dropped by 9 percent to 218 million euros ($257.4 million). Analysts on average expected 225 million euros. It reported a net loss of 5.3 million euros for the quarter, hit by a one-off restructuring charge of 15.4 million euros related to its consumer sports division, which includes running and golf watches. The shares were down 1.5 percent at 9.18 euros by 0728 GMT. The company also lowered its revenue forecast for the full year to about 900 million euros following the reorganisation of Consumer Sports. It had earlier expected revenue to come in at about 925 million euros. Separately, TomTom announced its telematics arm -- one of its fastest-growing business lines -- has won a deal with Netherlands-based LeasePlan [LEASP.UL], the world<6C>s largest vehicle-leasing firm, to provide software and services. Financial terms were not disclosed, although TomTom said the partnership would have no material impact on this year<61>s results. Under the deal LeasePlan customers will be able to use TomTom<6F>s cloud-based telematics and fleet management software, which helps businesses gather and analyse data on where their vehicles are, what services they need, planning routes and other logistics. ($1 = 0.8470 euros)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tomtom-results/tomtoms-sales-fall-as-growth-in-services-fails-to-offset-satnav-drop-idUKKBN1CP0GR'|'2017-10-20T09:19:00.000+03:00'
'1dc1471b5ce0e1a359f72e4b8057d8d63a13759e'|'Schlumberger, Baker Hughes warn of weak fourth quarter'|'(Reuters) - The world<6C>s top two oilfield service firms on Friday warned slower producer spending and weakness in offshore exploration may weigh on current-quarter earnings, but said activity could improve in the longer term as the global crude market comes into balance.FILE PHOTO: The exterior of the Schlumberger Corporation headquarters building is pictured in the Galleria area of Houston January 16, 2015. REUTERS/Richard Carson/File Photo The outlook drove shares in both companies lower, with Schlumberger NV ( SLB.N ) hitting a 21-month low and Baker Hughes ( BHGE.N ) touching a 16-month low before retracing some losses.Schlumberger, the world<6C>s largest oilfield service company, warned that Wall Street estimates for fourth-quarter earnings may be too high, with customer investments in North American production moderating due to investor pressure for improved shareholder returns.But global oil supply and demand is becoming more balanced and recent spending cutbacks on U.S. production could eventually boost crude prices, Schlumberger Chief Executive Paal Kibsgaard said.A current lack of production investments outside North America should benefit producers as inventories fall, Kibsgaard said.Baker Hughes<65> CEO Lorenzo Simonelli was more pessimistic, saying the oilfield services industry continues to be volatile and describing the business environment as <20>challenging<6E> with customers pushing out some equipment purchases.<2E>We have seen some improvement in activity but we have not seen meaningful increases in customer capital commitments,<2C> he said.Schlumberger was last down 3.3 percent at $62.33 and Baker Hughes off less than 1 percent at $33.08.U.S. oil producers are under pressure to boost shareholder returns after ramping up spending earlier this year while oil prices remained flat, knocking share prices back after a sharp run up in 2016.Brent crude prices LCOc1 have barely budged this year and the U.S. crude benchmark CLc.1 has remained mostly below $55 a barrel.This summer, U.S. producers Anadarko Petroleum Corp ( APC.N ), ConocoPhillips ( COP.N ) and Hess Corp ( HES.N ) cut second-half capital spending plans, including on oilfield services activities.Crude<64>s sub-$60 prices have also weighed on offshore exploration and driven a fresh round of consolidation among those drillers in a bid to tame excess capacity.<2E>In the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, activity continued to weaken in the third quarter, and the outlook remains bleak for this region based on current customer plans,<2C> Schlumberger<65>s Kibsgaard said.Baker Hughes, in its first report to include GE Co<43>s ( GE.N ) oil and gas business since their merger, reported a third-quarter profit that missed analysts estimates by a wide margin.Schlumberger, however, matched analysts<74> profit estimates and posted a 43 percent jump in business from North America.Shares in Halliburton Co ( HAL.N ), due to report third-quarter results on Monday, were little changed.Reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru, and Gary McWillams in Houston; Editing by Savio D''Souza and Meredith Mazzilli '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/schlumberger-results/schlumberger-baker-hughes-warn-of-weak-fourth-quarter-idINKBN1CP2FG'|'2017-10-20T20:59:00.000+03:00'
'9a594439c886ff3c5e146c912cd3eccb737d3479'|'Chevron approves new tech investment to raise output at North Sea field'|' 39 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago Chevron approves new tech investment to raise output at North Sea field Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - U.S. oil major Chevron ( CVX.N ) has approved an investment to increase output from its Captain oilfield by using a new water-injection technology for the first time in the North Sea, the company said on Friday. FILE PHOTO: A Chevron gas station sign is seen in Del Mar, California, in this April 25, 2013 file photo. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo Six long-reach horizontal wells will be drilled in the 20-year-old field, around 90 miles northeast of Aberdeen. They are expected to raise the recovery rate 5 to 7 percent. Polymerised water will be injected into the field<6C>s oil reservoir, a new technique to tap oil reserves that are hard to reach with conventional drilling methods. It will be the first time the technology has been applied on this scale in the North Sea. The polymer injection wells will come on stream from 2018 to 2021, a spokeswoman said. She declined to disclose how much they would cost. Approving the investment for the first phase of project <20>is an important milestone in the development of the technology, which we believe will improve the recovery rate from older fields and help extend the life of assets,<2C> said Greta Lydecker, managing director of Chevron<6F>s European upstream division. Chevron is the operator of the field and owns 85 percent of it. Dana Petroleum [KOILCD.UL] holds a 15 percent stake. Oil and gas output from Britain<69>s part of the North Sea has dropped since the turn of the century as old fields are depleted and investment in new projects dwindles. However, some oil companies, like Chevron, are investing in new technologies to reach resources that were previously unavailable, helping British oil and gas production to rise slightly over the past two years. Reporting by Karolin Schaps, editing by Larry King'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-chevron-northsea-captain/chevron-approves-new-tech-investment-to-raise-output-at-north-sea-field-idUKKBN1CP1A4'|'2017-10-20T13:38:00.000+03:00'
'e0cad9c07ef82c85d7691e547cf6e6458b627dae'|'Firms that burn up $1bn a year are sexy but statistically doomed'|'YVES SAINT LAURENT, Lady Gaga, David Bowie. Some people do not operate by the same rules as everyone else. Might the same be true of companies? Most bosses complain of being slaves to short-term profit targets. Yet a few flout the orthodoxy in flamboyant fashion. Consider Tesla, a maker of electric cars. This year, so far, it has missed its production targets and lost $1.8bn of free cashflow (the money firms generate after capital investment has been subtracted). No matter. If its founder Elon Musk muses aloud about driverless cars and space travel, its shares rise like a rocket<65>by 66% since the start of January. Tesla is one of a tiny cohort of firms with a licence to lose billions pursuing a dream. The odds of them achieving it are similar to those of aspiring pop stars and couture designers.Investing today for profits tomorrow is what capitalism is all about. Amazon lost $4bn in 2012-14 while building an empire that now makes money. Nonetheless, it is rare for big companies to sustain heavy losses just to expand fast. If you examine the members of the Russell 1000 index of large American firms, only 25 of them, or 3.3%, lost over $1bn of free cashflow in 2016 (all figures exclude financial firms and are based on Bloomberg data). In 2007 the share was 1.4% and in 1997, under 1%. Most billion-dollar losers today are energy firms temporarily in the doldrums as they adjust to a recent plunge in oil prices. Their losses are an accident. 12 15 16 hours ago Hotels 16 17 hours ago See all updates But a few firms love life in the fast lane. Netflix, Uber and Tesla are tech companies that say their (largely unproven) business models will transform industries. Two others stand out for the sheer persistence of their losses. Chesapeake Energy, a fracking firm at the heart of America<63>s shale revolution, has lost at least $1bn of free cashflow a year for an incredible 14 years in a row. Nextera Energy, a utility that runs wind and solar plants, and which investors value highly, has managed 12 years on the trot.Collectively these five firms have burned $100bn in the past decade, yet they boast a total market value of about $300bn. Combining punchy valuations with massive losses means taking the entrepreneurial art form to a dizzying extreme. Steve Jobs, Apple<6C>s co-founder, was said to have a <20>reality distortion field<6C> that allowed him to bend the perception of others (although Apple itself was fairly timorous, losing just $874m in its worst year, in 1993). The experience of the five suggests that bending reality today has three elements: a vision, fast growth, and financing.Take the vision thing first. A charismatic leader with a world-changing plan is de rigueur . For its first 23 years Chesapeake was led by Aubrey McClendon, a cocky Oklahoman who pioneered the process of blasting rocks to extract gas and oil (he died last year in a high-speed car crash). Reed Hastings at Netflix plans to destroy the conventional TV industry by selling films and shows over the internet. Like Mr Musk, Travis Kalanick, Uber<65>s tarnished former boss, dreams of changing how humans travel. Nextera is led by technocrats but their aim is grandiose<73>to usher in a new generation of energy technology.The vision needs to be validated by runaway growth. Often firms emphasise a flattering operating measure, such as oil and gas pumped from the ground, the number of rides hailed and so on. Investors need to believe in a high <20>terminal value<75>, a point in the future when high, stable profits will arrive. So it helps to show that, hypothetically, profits would gush if breakneck growth were to stop. Uber says it is profitable in cities where it has operated longest, such as San Francisco. Nextera says that if it stopped investing in new capacity, it would make $6bn of free cashflow a year. Netflix amortises the cost of content over periods of up to five years, so reports an accounting profit even as it bleeds cash.The third element is financing to pay for huge
'21f452206d6672b532376f1a53c2dfea2ebb0746'|'Russia''s Rosneft to take control of Iraqi Kurdish pipeline amid crisis'|' 44 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago Russia''s Rosneft to take control of Iraqi Kurdish pipeline amid crisis Dmitry Zhdannikov , Vladimir Soldatkin 5 Min Read LONDON/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia<69>s biggest oil company, Rosneft ( ROSN.MM ), has agreed to take control of Iraqi Kurdistan<61>s main oil pipeline, boosting its investment in the autonomous region to $3.5 billion (<28>2.6 billion) despite Baghdad<61>s military action sparked by a Kurdish vote for independence. FILE PHOTO: A logo of Russian state oil firm Rosneft is seen at its office in Moscow, October 18, 2012. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo The move appears to be part of a strategy by President Vladimir Putin to boost Moscow<6F>s Middle Eastern political and economic influence, which was weakened by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Rosneft<66>s investment comes amid a crisis in Kurdistan<61>s relations with the central government in Baghdad since the region held an independence referendum last month, which angered neighbours Iran and Turkey. The United States called the referendum a provocation but Moscow has effectively supported the vote, saying it understood Kurdish aspirations for independence. Rosneft said it would own 60 percent of the pipeline, with current operator KAR Group retaining 40 percent. Sources familiar with the deal said Rosneft<66>s investment in the project was expected to total about $1.8 billion. That comes on top of $1.2 billion that the Russian firm, which has struggled to raise Western loans due to U.S. sanctions, lent Kurdistan earlier this year to help fill holes in its budget. Rosneft also agreed to invest another $400 million in five exploration blocks. <20>I plead with you not to forget Kurdistan,<2C> the region<6F>s resources minister Ashti Hawrami told an industry conference in Verona, Italy, on Thursday, hours before signing the pipeline deal with Rosneft boss Igor Sechin, one of Putin<69>s top allies. Sechin called on Baghdad and Erbil to settle their differences. But with Rosneft effectively becoming a controlling stakeholder in Kurdish oil infrastructure, the move should help shield Erbil from pressure from Baghdad and its neighbours. <20>The calculation here is that the presence of Rosneft and the Kremlin will boost the sense of security,<2C> one industry source close to Erbil said. <20>Having fought and defeated Islamic State, Erbil felt abandoned and threatened by Iran.<2E> The most prominent Iranian figure in Iraq, Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of foreign operations for Iran<61>s elite Revolutionary Guards, is believed to have helped coordinate Iraq<61>s military operation in Kurdistan in recent days. EXPORTS DISRUPTED Kurdish oil exports face the worst disruption in months and are running at only a third of capacity, threatening repayments to Rosneft and other major creditors, including top trading houses such as Glencore ( GLEN.L ) and Vitol. Kurdistan has borrowed around $4 billion from Rosneft, traders and Turkey, guaranteed by future oil sales. As exports have dropped to around 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) this week from usual volumes of 600,000 bpd, traders have become jittery about the billions of dollars at stake. <20>We are monitoring the situation as there could be payment delays,<2C> Glencore Chief Executive Ivan Glasenberg said on Thursday. Exports were disrupted after the Iraqi military took over the oil-rich Kirkuk area from Kurdish Peshmerga forces this week, resulting in production disruptions from local fields. Baghdad has also threatened to re-route a big chunk of oil flows towards an old oil pipeline, which has been out of operation for several years since Kurdistan built its own infrastructure to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Industry experts have said the plan was unrealistic as the pipeline was old and rusty and needed major investments. Baghdad also asked oil major BP ( BP.L ) to return to Kirkuk and help it revive production there, signalling it was determined to deprive Erbil of a big chunk of revenues. It also
'fc1513f49005591e2993918b6209d663bcacf680'|'Bank of England''s "unreliable boyfriend" needs to get message right'|'October 20, 2017 / 6:02 AM / in 7 hours Bank of England''s ''unreliable boyfriend'' needs to get message right William Schomberg 6   For the Bank of England, the hard bit about finally raising interest rates will be getting borrowers to heed the message it is likely to send: that they should not fear many more hikes any time soon. FILE PHOTO - The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, speaks at the Bank of England conference ''Independence 20 Years On'' at the Fishmonger''s Hall in London, Britain September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde Britons have not seen their debt costs rise since July 2007, shortly before the financial crisis which pushed the world<6C>s fifth-biggest economy into its deepest recession in decades. READ: Bank of England''s Cunliffe says no clear case for rate hike soon Now, eight years into the recovery, the BoE is saying it is likely to raise rates <20>in the coming months<68>. Investors mostly say that means as soon as Nov. 2, after its next policy meeting. At one level, increasing Bank Rate to 0.5 percent from 0.25 percent would represent only a reversal of last year<61>s emergency rate cut after the shock Brexit vote. But many British businesses are worried it might have an outsized impact on the mindset of consumers. <20>When I have been around the country, businesses have been asking a lot about the Bank of England,<2C> said Rain Newton-Smith, chief economist at the Confederation of British Industry. <20>There is nervousness about the psychological impact of the first increase.<2E> READ: MPs voice worry over Bank of England''s lack of diversity The messaging challenge could be all the harder after several failed attempts in recent years by Governor Mark Carney and the BoE to signal when rates were likely to rise. The guidance was repeatedly knocked off course by surprises in the economy, prompting one lawmaker to call Carney an <20>unreliable boyfriend<6E> in 2014, an epithet that has stuck. In June, sterling fell and then rose as Carney made two speeches in eight days in which he seemed to change the emphasis of his message away from being in no hurry to consider a rate hike to saying one might become necessary. It remains unclear if the BoE will pull the trigger in November. Most economists polled by Reuters last month said the time was not right for a hike, yet they still expected the BoE to press on. British inflation is at a five-year high of 3 percent, above the BoE<6F>s 2 percent target. But the economy is facing deep uncertainty about Britain<69>s departure from the European Union and is growing at half the pace of the euro zone. NOT THAT BIG A DEAL? Paul Fisher, a BoE rate-setter until 2014, said raising rates once by 25 basis points was <20>not that big a deal<61>. People walk past the Bank of England in London, Britain, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay <20>The key thing is what they say alongside it,<2C> he said. <20>The Bank has been out of the game ... in terms of affecting ordinary people<6C>s lives. It might suddenly become part of their consciousness again, especially the people who pay a mortgage.<2E> The BoE has said repeatedly that it expects to raise rates in a <20>limited and gradual<61> way, echoing the caution among many other central banks about the fragility of their economies. Economists say it will probably continue to send that cautious message after its first move. Financial markets expect the BoE to make only one 25-basis point rate hike in 2018 after a first increase next month. It remains to be seen whether British consumers, the main drivers of the economy, see it that way too. <20>On the occasions when the Bank has tried to signal quite clearly that they<65>re making just a one-off hike, households haven<65>t listened to the nuanced guidance,<2C> Samuel Tombs, an economist with Pantheon Macroeconomics, said. <20>They see their mortgage rates going up and they prepare for more increases in that direction.<2E> When the BoE last raised rates in 2007, it said it had made no judgement on its next move. But the bal
'1e1ce3e5c69b0b3fdecee04e2437d7d577ccc59f'|'Brazil''s Anatel to meet Monday on Oi fine-for-investment swap -source'|'BRASILIA, Oct 19 (Reuters) - The board of Brazilian telecoms regulator Anatel will meet on Monday morning to analyze a request by indebted carrier Oi SA to swap billions of reais in regulatory fines for new investments, a source with knowledge of the situation said Thursday.The board will decide on the fate of almost 5 billion reais ($1.58 billion) in fines the company has accumulated, said the source, who requested anonymity as the matter is private.The board of Anatel was originally due to meet on the proposed fine-for-investment swap earlier in the month, but delayed the decision at the request of Anatel councilor Igor de Freitas.The meeting is scheduled on the same day as an Oi creditors<72> assembly in Rio de Janeiro, in which creditors will have the opportunity to vote on a restructuring plan put forth by the troubled company that aims to take the carrier out of bankruptcy protection.In September, a Brazilian court authorized a proposal by Oi competitor Telefonica Brasil to swap 2 billion reais in regulatory fines for new investments. ($1 = 3.17 reais) (Reporting by Leonardo Goy; Writing by Gram Slattery; Editing by David Gregorio)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/oi-sa-restructuring-anatel/brazils-anatel-to-meet-monday-on-oi-fine-for-investment-swap-source-idINL2N1MU27Y'|'2017-10-19T20:17:00.000+03:00'
'bec7ff173072c52863d5943e0743558e63e68c79'|'Ackman, ADP board nominees to discuss plans for company Thursday'|'October 18, 2017 / 1:02 AM / in 17 hours Ackman, ADP board nominees to discuss plans for company Thursday Reuters Staff 2 Min Read William ''Bill'' Ackman, CEO and Portfolio Manager of Pershing Square Capital Management, speaks during the Sohn Investment Conference in New York City, U.S., May 8, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (Reuters) - Activist investor William Ackman<61>s dissident director candidates for board seats at Automatic Data Processing Inc will answer questions about their plans for the company on Thursday ahead of November<65>s proxy vote. Sanford C Bernstein & Co investment analyst Lisa Ellis will interview director candidates Veronica Hagen and Paul Unruh as well as Ackman at an event organized by Bernstein, Ackman<61>s hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management said. The event will be streamed live online on Thursday at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT) at adpascending.com/ . The event comes before the Nov. 7 vote where Ackman is vying for three seats on ADP<44>s 10-member board. While the 51-year-old investor has been giving public presentations since August, his two candidates have stayed largely out of sight. Ackman is pushing ADP to cut bureaucracy, consolidate its real estate holdings and enhance technology, all to boost earnings. Ellis published a research note last week that said a survey of shareholders commissioned by her firm many applauded Pershing Square<72>s push for change at ADP. <20>The survey results, in our view, increase the likelihood that Pershing will win meaningful support in the Nov. 7 shareholder vote, although we still consider it unlikely the activist wins seats,<2C> Ellis said in the note. Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Boston; Addiytional reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Cynthia Osterman 0 : 0 '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-adp-ackman-ellis/ackman-adp-board-nominees-to-discuss-plans-for-company-thursday-idUSKBN1CN03G'|'2017-10-18T04:02:00.000+03:00'
'044925e2d0545832bd6682b7b9f5e86c5fa163e4'|'ECB under pressure to soften crackdown on bad loans - sources'|'Reuters TV United States October 20, 2017 / 1:25 PM / Updated 2 minutes ago ECB under pressure to soften crackdown on bad loans: sources Francesco Canepa , Balazs Koranyi 5 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - European Central Bank supervisors are having to rethink their proposals for dealing with the euro zone<6E>s huge pile of legacy bad loans after complaints from Italy that it would hinder the country<72>s recovery, four senior central bank sources told Reuters. FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: The euro sign landmark is seen at the headquarters (R) of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt September 2, 2013. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo The ECB<43>s Single Supervisory Mechanism is due to come up with a new set of rules by March for how much money banks should set aside against their stock of bad loans, a thorny issue in Italy, where lenders are sitting on more than a quarter of the euro zone<6E>s 865 billion euros ($1.0 trillion) unpaid loans. But the sources said the strong Italian backlash against the SSM<53>s latest proposals on how lenders should deal with new bad loans meant supervisors were having to reassess their approach to tackling already soured debts. <20>There is a serious risk that the SSM<53>s coming proposal will be too soft,<2C> said one of the sources, all of whom are close to or on the ECB<43>s decision making body. The ECB declined to comment. The main worry for Italy is that its banks, if asked to set aside more money, will curb lending. Some may need to raise capital - a task that has eluded Monte dei Paschi di Siena and two regional lenders in recent months, triggering state interventions. With the new guidelines not due out until the first quarter of next year, no proposal has yet been sent to the ECB<43>s supervisory board. But SSM staff have been working on four scenarios modeled on the current guidelines on new non-performing loans (NPLs), which give banks seven years to provide for credit backed by collateral and two years for unsecured debt, another source said. One of these options would require banks to start building up provisions for their legacy loans straight away, albeit gradually. A more generous one would stop the clock for one or two years, effectively giving banks until 2021 and 2026 for hitting their targets. They are now all in jeopardy. <20>Now even the most generous scenario might appear too strict,<2C> the source said. <20>It<49>s all in flux.<2E> The ECB<43>s guidelines will also be influenced by a legislative proposal that the European Commission is preparing in parallel and could include measures on provisions, the sources said. This is to avoid any risk of clashing with Brussels after the Italian head of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, openly questioned the ECB<43>s authority on the matter and raised the specter of an unprecedented dispute between the institutions. In a most extreme outcome, which one source said the SSM is likely to resist, supervisors would stop short of setting rules for all banks in the euro zone, merely publishing criteria that could be applied differently across firms and countries. SEEKING SUPPORT The publicity received by the backlash meant any new proposal was set to be subject to extra scrutiny by the ECB<43>s Governing Council, which includes national central bank governors and approves SSM<53>s decisions. Here Italy hopes to receive support from other countries with heavy bad loan burdens such as Greece, Portugal and Spain. The sources said that will not be easy as these countries had spent or were saving political capital at the ECB for domestic issues, such as Greece<63>s latest bailout review, Portugal<61>s sale of state-owned Novo Banco and risks associated with the Catalan government<6E>s independence push, the sources said. <20>They are not keen to make any fuss,<2C> one of the sources said. While the co-ordinated backlash by Tajani, the Italian government, central bank and banking lobby was also likely to result in some changes to the guidelines on new bad loans, under consultation until Dec
'e285cc2633be072bb72e97513dad2b30f94c3b7c'|'IBM lags in cloud computing and AI. Can tech<63>s great survivor recover?'|'TECHNOLOGY giants are a bit like dinosaurs. Most do not adapt successfully to a new age<67>a <20>platform shift<66> in the lingo. A few make it through two and even three. But only a single company spans them all: IBM, which is more than a century old, having started as a maker of tabulating machines that were fed with punch cards.Yet after 21 quarters with falling year-on-year revenues (see chart), doubts had been growing about whether IBM would manage the latest big shifts: the move into the cloud, meaning computing delivered as an online service; and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), which is a label for all kinds of digital offerings based on insights extracted from reams of data. In May Warren Buffett, chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a holding company, announced that his firm had sold a third of its total stake in IBM, then valued at $13.5bn, saying that <20>I don<6F>t value IBM the same way I did six years ago when I started buying.<2E> Analysts were starting to wonder how long Ginni Rometty, the firm<72>s boss (pictured), would remain at the helm. On October 17th, however, IBM<42>s quarterly results suggested that sceptics might just be wrong. Revenues slipped again, to $19.2bn, but they did so less than expected. The firm indicated that it could see growth return in the next quarter and its shares rose on October 18th by 8.9%, the biggest one-day gain since 2009. Could Big Blue, still one of the world<6C>s largest information technology (IT) firms with nearly 390,000 employees, have turned the corner?If big IT firms often fail to adapt to such shifts, it is because these changes require more than adopting new technology. They also force companies to question what they stand for, according to Michael Cusumano, a business professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The brand, the technical skills, how products and services are sold, must all be examined. Many firms choose to defend their existing domains instead.After a near-death experience in the early 1990s, when sales of its mainframes collapsed, IBM seemed to have found a formula to stay ahead in technology. Under Louis Gerstner and Sam Palmisano, its former bosses, it quickly adapted to the internet and was one of the first big IT firms to back open-source software. It ditched businesses about to become commodities, such as personal computers and low-end servers. And it stuck to a financial <20>road map<61> telling investors how profitable it intended to be over the next five years. Nor did it hesitate to spend billions buying back stock to lift its earnings per share.Yet this fixation on financial metrics (a stance that predated Ms Rometty) is a big reason why IBM had a late start in the cloud<75>a trend it had spotted earlier than many competitors. As a result, it is now an also-ran in cloud computing, at least in the part of it called the <20>public cloud<75>, or networks of big data centres shared by many firms. IBM is number three at best; Amazon and Microsoft lead the pack by some distance, benefiting from the growing number of firms moving applications into the cloud, rather than running them on their own computer systems. More than 40% of IBM<42>s revenues come from products and services that directly compete with public-cloud offerings, says Steve Milunovich of UBS, an investment bank.IBM has tried to avoid the problem, being, for example, the first tech giant that went big on AI. Building on a technology called Watson, which in 2011 won <20>Jeopardy!<21>, an American quiz show, the firm two years later launched a new line of business to help organisations make predictions from patterns in their data. It promoted the effort heavily and invested billions, particularly in health care, for example to help hospitals to use patient data to gauge health risks. Yet progress has proved slow, mainly because it is often hard to make sense of patient records. The M.D. Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston earlier this year cancelled a Watson project after spending $60m bec
'd274124a3057bf40e47b6c65cc9911f9033d49c0'|'Why Airbus<75>s tie-up with Bombardier is so damaging for Boeing'|'LIKE an airliner in service, Bombardier<65>s C-Series programme has had multiple highs and lows. In 2008 the Canadian firm began its attempt to break Airbus and Boeing<6E>s duopoly on smaller jets, spooking the pair into upgrading their own models. Costs and delays pushed it near bankruptcy in 2015, followed by a bail-out from the Quebec government worth C$2.8bn ($2.2bn). The next year an order for 75 C-Series jets from Delta, the world<6C>s third-biggest carrier, kept the programme aloft. But decisions in September and October by America<63>s Commerce Department to agree to demands by Boeing, an aerospace giant, to impose a total tariff of 300% on importing those planes into America risked the C-Series project crashing once and for all.On October 16th came a surprise surge. Bombardier said it would hand over half the project to Airbus, a European aerospace firm, free of charge. Bombardier and Investissement Qu<51>bec, the province<63>s investment arm, will own about 31% and 19% respectively. Aviation Week , a trade journal, called it <20>the deal of the century<72>. For Bombardier, whose shares rose 16% on news of the deal, it rescued the C-Series from a premature demise, and pulled the firm clear of a financial cliff. Airbus had first looked at buying into the C-Series in 2015 but did not invest, worried about the technical risks in its development. But now the C-Series is in service, so the tie-up makes more sense. Bombardier, for its part, lacked sales expertise for big jets or a global maintenance network, which was putting off buyers, but Airbus thinks it can fix these problems by sharing its marketing skills and servicing system.The latter<65>s shares rose by 5% this week<65>Airbus now owns a controlling stake in a new aircraft, admired for its fuel efficiency, for which most development costs have already been paid. <20>This is a win-win-win situation for everyone<6E>, crowed Airbus<75>s chief executive, Tom Enders. But not for Boeing, Airbus<75>s arch-rival. The deal is aimed at sidestepping the tariff imposed at the American firm<72>s behest. Airbus plans to assemble Delta<74>s jets<74>half the components of which are American<61>at its existing factory in Alabama. It hopes that will result in the C-Series being classed as a domestic product.But overturning the tariffs may be easier said than done. Jennifer Hillman of Georgetown University, who was a commissioner at America<63>s International Trade Commission (USITC), thinks that the deal comes too late to affect the decision to impose anti-dumping or anti-subsidy duties against the C-Series (although the USITC may strike down the duties anyway). Boeing has insisted that any duties should be <20>paid on any imported C-Series airplane or part<72>. It could also argue that not enough value was added in assembly, and that Airbus therefore should still face the duties. Airbus and Bombardier<65>s manoeuvre <20>looks like a questionable deal between two heavily state-subsidised competitors to skirt the recent findings of the US government<6E>, Boeing said.It is right to fear the new combination. Although Airbus has lost ground in <20>widebody<64> jets recently as it refreshes its range, the European giant has already grabbed half the market for <20>narrowbodies<65> such as the C-Series. Analysts think the tie-up will further tighten Airbus<75>s grip. Boeing may now have to spend tens of billions of dollars launching a new narrowbody jet to compete, much sooner than planned.And by pushing for tariffs on the C-Series, Boeing has annoyed customers, from Delta to the governments of Canada and Britain, which are threatening to tear up future military contracts. News of the tie-up was greeted warmly not only in Canada but also in Northern Ireland, where the C-Series<65> wings are made. The Democratic Unionist Party, the province<63>s largest party, which supports the government of Theresa May, the British prime minister, said it was <20>thrilled<65> with the deal.For Boeing, <20>the wounds are self-inflicted<65>, says Adam Pilarski, the former chief economist of McDonn
'd836519e4f9efe74d218185afdd379f8527592aa'|'China says will guide private capital into higher growth areas'|'October 21, 2017 / 8:07 AM / in 8 hours China says will guide private capital into higher growth areas Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China will introduce measures aimed at guiding private investment into areas that have a higher growth potential, a senior official with the state planning agency said on Saturday. Employees work at a production line inside a factory of Saic GM Wuling, in Liuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China, June 19, 2016. REUTERS/Norihiko Shirouzu - S1AETQJGBJAA China also would take steps to lower the investment threshold for private investors, said Zhang Yong, the vice-head of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), during a briefing on the sidelines of China<6E>s Communist Party Congress. The manufacturing industry as well as the property market, which have been driving private investment, are now quite weak, Zhang said. <20>Now we want to attract investment in sectors with growth potential such as subway projects.<2E> Reporting by Kevin Yao and Meng Meng; Writing by David Stanway; Editing by Kim Coghill'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-investment/china-says-will-guide-private-capital-into-higher-growth-areas-idUSKBN1CQ07O'|'2017-10-21T11:06:00.000+03:00'
'3027d6062e1ff08a29b81a7652f1d22dee0cf0d6'|'Saudi oil minister makes high profile visit to Iraq, calls for oil supply cooperation'|' 32 PM / Updated 35 minutes ago Saudi oil minister makes high profile Iraq visit, calls for economic cooperation Maher Chmaytelli 4 Min Read BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saudi Oil Minister Khalid al-Falih made a high profile visit to Iraq on Saturday, calling for increased economic cooperation and praising existing coordination to boost crude oil prices. The Iraqi and the Saudi oil ministers Jabar al-Luaibi and Khalid al-Falih open the Baghdad International Exhibition, in Baghdad, Iraq October 21, 2017. REUTERS/Khalid al-Mousily In a speech at the opening of the Baghdad International Exhibition, Falih said cooperation between Iraq and Saudi Arabia contributed to <20>the improvement and stability we are seeing in the oil market<65> Falih is the first Saudi official to make a public speech in Baghdad for decades. The two countries began taking steps towards detente in 2015 after 25 years of troubled relations starting with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Tension remained high after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which toppled Saddam Hussein. The American occupation of Iraq empowered political parties representing Iraq<61>s Shi<68>ite majority, close to Saudi Arabia<69>s regional rival Iran. With a thaw in relations, Falih said a joint committee is <20>working on measures to speed up the establishment of an economic partnership and to reactivate cooperation and economic complementarity.<2E> Iraq is seeking economic benefits from closer ties with Riyadh while Saudi Arabia hopes a stronger relationship with Baghdad would help rollback Iran<61>s influence in the region. Iraq lies on the fault line between Shi<68>ite Muslim power Iran and the Sunni-ruled countries that are its regional arch-rivals, chief among them Saudi Arabia. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi left Baghdad on Saturday for a visit to Saudi Arabia, his second to the kingdom this year, his office said in a statement. Saudi Oil Minister Khalid al-Falih signs the guest visitors book during the opening of Baghdad International Exhibition, Baghdad, Iraq October 21, 2017. REUTERS/Khalid al-Mousily His talks with Saudi officials will focus on efforts to rebuild Iraq after the war on Islamic State and fostering economic and trade cooperation, the statement said. Abadi will visit other Middle Eastern countries after the kingdom, it said. <20>The best example of the importance of cooperation between our two countries is the improvement and stability trend seen in the oil market,<2C> said Falih, to applause from the audience of Iraqi ministers, senior officials and businessmen. Slideshow (4 Images) Saudi Arabia and Iraq are respectively the biggest and second biggest producers of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The Iraqi oil ministry said Falih and his Iraqi counterpart, Jabar al-Luaibi, would cooperate in implementing decisions by oil exporting countries to curb global supply in order to lift crude prices. OPEC, Russia and several other producers agreed a pact at the start of 2017 to cut production in order to boost oil prices. The cutbacks should continue until March 2018. Falih called for increased economic cooperation between the two countries at all levels, saying Saudi Arabia is implementing measures to facilitate the flow of goods and services between the neighbours. A Saudi commercial airplane, operated by Flynas, arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday for the first time in 27 years. In August, the two countries said they planned to open the Arar land border crossing for trade for the first time since 1990. Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Ros Russell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-iraq-saudi/saudi-oil-minister-makes-high-profile-visit-to-iraq-calls-for-oil-supply-cooperation-idUKKBN1CQ0IP'|'2017-10-21T16:32:00.000+03:00'
'684d0d08800675f92f79dbe65921695e54c50f1c'|'Saudi Oil Minister Falih arrives in Baghdad, Sumariya TV says'|'October 21, 2017 / 8:42 AM / in an hour Saudi oil minister makes high profile visit to Iraq, calls for oil supply cooperation Maher Chmaytelli 3 Min Read BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saudi Oil Minister Khalid al-Falih made a high profile visit to Iraq on Saturday, calling for increased economic cooperation and praising existing coordination to boost crude oil prices. FILE PHOTO: Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih waits before a meeting with Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak and OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo in Moscow, Russia, May 31, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov In a speech at the opening of the Baghdad International Exhibition, Falih said cooperation between Iraq and Saudi Arabia contributed to <20>the improvement and stability we are seeing in the oil market<65>. Falih is the first Saudi official to make a public speech in Baghdad for several decades. The two countries began taking steps towards detente in 2015 after 25 years of troubled relations starting with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Tension remained high after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which toppled Saddam Hussein. The American occupation of Iraq empowered political parties representing Iraq<61>s Shi<68>ite majority, close to Saudi Arabia<69>s regional rival Iran. Iraq is seeking economic benefits from the thaw with Riyadh while Saudi Arabia hopes closer ties would help rollback Iran<61>s influence in the region. <20>The best example of the importance of cooperation between our two countries is the improvement and stability trend seen in the oil market,<2C> said Falih, to applause from the audience of Iraqi ministers, senior officials and businessmen. Falih and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir held talks earlier this year in Baghdad, paving the way for visits to Saudi Arabia by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and popular Shi<68>ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Saudi Arabia and Iraq are respectively the biggest and second biggest producers of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The Iraqi oil ministry said Falih and his Iraqi counterpart, Jabar al-Luaibi, agreed to cooperate in implementing decisions by oil exporting countries to curb global supply in order to lift crude prices. OPEC, Russia and several other producers have reduced production by about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) since the start of 2017, helping to boost oil prices. The cutbacks should continue until March 2018. Falih called for increased economic cooperation between the two countries at all levels, saying Saudi Arabia is implementing measures to facilitate the flow of goods and services between the two countries. A Saudi commercial airplane, operated by Flynas, arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday for the first time in 27 years. In August, the two countries said they planned to open the Arar land border crossing for trade for the first time since 1990. Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Ros Russell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-iraq-saudi-oil-opec/saudi-arabia-iraq-to-cooperate-on-reducing-crude-oil-supply-level-idUKKBN1CQ094'|'2017-10-21T11:22:00.000+03:00'
'fada36613953a6091e790addfb611a8542e62cba'|'Brazil''s JBS to resume operations at 7 plants in Brazil'|'SAO PAULO, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Brazilian meatpacker JBS SA will resume operations on Tuesday at seven slaughterhouses in Mato Grosso do Sul state that had been shut since Wednesday following a court-ordered asset freeze, a media representative said on Saturday.JBS, whose owners are ensnared in a broad corruption and insider trading investigation in Brazil, had decided to stop operations at the plants after a local court blocked it and controlling holding company J&F from having access to about 730 million reais ($228.68 million) due to allegations of tax irregularities in the state.The world<6C>s largest meatpacking company said in an emailed statement that it had reached an agreement with local authorities in Mato Grosso do Sul to reopen the plants, but it was not clear if its resources would be unblocked.Representatives for cattle ranchers in the state were worried that the closures would lead to oversupply in the local market, since other companies would not be able to make up for the idled JBS installations.$1 = 3.1923 reais Reporting by Marcelo Teixeira; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/jbs-operations/brazils-jbs-to-resume-operations-at-7-plants-in-brazil-idINL8N1MW0HJ'|'2017-10-21T11:55:00.000+03:00'
'a793f9d674cd3f5bd319e3335362c373ef9d70bf'|'Ericsson posts bigger than expected third-quarter loss, warns on network sales'|'BoE''s "unreliable boyfriend" needs to get message right Breakingviews Time to slay the free market myth monster Merkel sends positive signal to May on Brexit talks Reuters TV United States October 20, 2017 / 5:49 AM / in 4 minutes Ericsson posts bigger than expected third-quarter loss, warns on network sales Reuters Staff 2 Min Read STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Ericsson ( ERICb.ST ) fell to a larger-than-expected third-quarter operating loss on Friday and warned its quarter-on-quarter sales growth would underperform, adding to an already bleak outlook for the mobile telecom equipment maker. FILE PHOTO: The exterior of an Ericsson building is seen in Stockholm April 30, 2009. REUTERS/Bob Strong/File Photo Competition from China<6E>s Huawei and Finland<6E>s Nokia ( NOKIA.HE ) as well as weak emerging markets and falling spending by telecoms operators has hurt Ericsson while demand for next-generation 5G technology is still several years away. Once the clear sector leader, it is also having to restructure after an ill-judged attempt to diversify its customer base outside the telecom market to include sectors such as the media and utilities. Ericsson posted its fourth consecutive losing quarter, slipping to a operating loss of 4.8 billion crowns ($588.7 million), compared to a mean forecast for a loss of 3.5 billion in a Reuters poll of analysts. Sales at Ericsson, one of the top global mobile networks equipment makers, were 47.8 billion crowns versus a consensus forecast of 47.5 billion, Its gross margin excluding restructuring charges came in at 30.0 percent versus the 29.8 percent seen by analysts. Restructuring weighed on the quarter as the company repeated it aimed to reduce costs by at least 10 billion Swedish crowns from the middle of next year. It is also renegotiating or exiting unprofitable service contracts in its networks unit as it aims to double its operating margin to 12 percent after 2018 from 6 percent in 2016, a target analysts see as unlikely. The market remains tough and its network unit<69>s sales would be impacted in the fourth quarter, it said. <20>Sequential sales increase between Q3 and Q4 is expected to be lower than normal seasonality driven by decreased 4G investments levels in mainland China, primarily impacting Networks,<2C> the company said in a statement. Reporting by Olof Swahnberg and Simon Johnson; editing by Niklas Pollard and Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ericsson-results/ericsson-posts-bigger-than-expected-third-quarter-loss-says-market-still-tough-idUKKBN1CP0EG'|'2017-10-20T09:47:00.000+03:00'
'55b0d79cda533fb1a6df87a794a6acd94d072e09'|'Acacia Mining cuts Q3 spending on Tanzania export ban'|' 44 AM / in 11 minutes Acacia Mining cuts Q3 spending on Tanzania export ban Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Gold miner Acacia Mining said on Friday it had cut spending by 33 percent in the third quarter of the year compared with a year ago as it adapted to the ban on its gold and copper exports in Tanzania. The London-listed company, Tanzania<69>s largest gold miner, said capital expenditure fell to $35.6 million in the three months to September. The company said gold production for the quarter fell 8.3 percent to 191,203 ounces compared to the previous quarter, as it reported on Oct. 12. On Thursday Acacia<69>s Canadian parent Barrick Gold said Acacia had agreed to pay Tanzania $300 million and split <20>economic benefits<74> from operations with the government under a deal proposed to resolve the dispute. (Reporting by Zandi Shabalala in London and Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru; Editing by Greg Mahlich)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/acaciamining-results/acacia-mining-cuts-q3-spending-on-tanzania-export-ban-idUSL8N1MU7JT'|'2017-10-20T09:41:00.000+03:00'
'12b2d04c9a34c54d831015b707a6e463e3192a07'|'Leicester will fight back, says former boss Shakespeare'|'October 20, 2017 / 8:16 AM / Updated 38 minutes ago Leicester will fight back, says former boss Shakespeare Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Former Leicester City manager Craig Shakespeare has backed the Premier League club to regain their best form and climb out of the relegation zone. Soccer Football - Premier League - Leicester City vs West Bromwich Albion - King Power Stadium, Leicester, Britain - October 16, 2017 Leicester City manager Craig Shakespeare before the match Action Images via Reuters/Andrew Boyers Shakespeare took over from Claudio Ranieri on an interim basis in February and was handed a permanent deal in June after Leicester finished 12th in the league and reached the Champions League quarter-finals. The 53-year-old was sacked on Tuesday after last weekend<6E>s 1-1 draw with West Bromwich Albion dropped the club to 18th in the table after just one win in eight league games. <20>My sincere thanks to the players, who have always been a pleasure to work with,<2C> Shakespeare said in a statement to the League Managers Association. <20>I have every confidence that, given time and once at full strength, this squad will pull away from its current Premier League position, and soon deliver the high levels of performance they have demonstrated over the past three seasons.<2E> Assistant coach Michael Appleton has been appointed caretaker manager and will oversee his first match when Leicester travel to Swansea City on Saturday. Reporting by Aditi Prakash in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Rutherford'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-soccer-england-lei-shakespeare/leicester-will-fight-back-says-former-boss-shakespeare-idUKKBN1CP0SD'|'2017-10-20T11:15:00.000+03:00'
'4d04d78d4607cb9e26987307e78099137f2fe053'|'Kiwi hits five-month low, pressured by policy uncertainty'|'October 20, 2017 / 2:01 AM / Updated 18 minutes ago Kiwi hits five-month low, pressured by policy uncertainty Masayuki Kitano 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO: A New Zealand Dollar note is seen in this picture illustration June 2, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The New Zealand dollar hit a five-month low on Friday, dogged by uncertainty over the new government<6E>s economic policies, while the dollar held firm as traders awaited President Donald Trump<6D>s decision on the next Federal Reserve chair. The New Zealand dollar fell 0.7 percent to $0.6983 NZD=D3 . It touched a low of $0.6980 at one point, its weakest level since May. The kiwi had slid 1.7 percent on Thursday for its biggest one-day percentage loss since June 2016. New Zealand<6E>s next prime minister will be Jacinda Ardern, whose Labour party won the support of the small, nationalist New Zealand First Party on Thursday to form the government, spelling big changes for the country<72>s economy. The Labour party has said it wants to add employment to the central bank<6E>s mandate, which would mark a big change for the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. While the Labour party and New Zealand First Party have floated some different ideas regarding monetary policy, the overall direction seems to be a possible preference for a weaker New Zealand dollar, said Teppei Ino, analyst for Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ in Singapore. <20>The common thread seems to be a preference for New Zealand dollar weakness,<2C> Ino said, adding that monetary policy of New Zealand<6E>s central bank may turn more dovish than before. The U.S. dollar edged higher against the yen and the euro, with the euro slipping 0.2 percent to $1.1830 EUR= . On Thursday the euro had gained a lift as U.S. Treasury yields slipped back and as the dollar weakened following a report that President Donald Trump was leaning toward Jerome Powell as the next chair of the Federal Reserve. Powell, a Federal Reserve governor, is favoured by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a story from Politico said. He is considered less hawkish than other choices on Trump<6D>s short list like former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh and economist John Taylor. Still, traders are reluctant to bet too aggressively in one direction until they see Trump<6D>s decision, said Satoshi Okagawa, senior global markets analyst for Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation in Singapore. <20>It<49>s not as if this is a done deal and it<69>s hard to bet 100 percent on it,<2C> Okagawa said, referring to the Politico report. Against the yen, the dollar rose 0.4 percent to 113.00 yen. JPY= Reporting by Masayuki Kitano; Editing by Sam Holmes 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-forex/kiwi-hits-five-month-low-pressured-by-policy-uncertainty-idUKKBN1CP04J'|'2017-10-20T04:57:00.000+03:00'
'b33e9babe0d603c161701fa7595fcfe153609c62'|'Former Rio Tinto CFO Elliott resigns from Britain''s Takeover Panel'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Former Rio Tinto ( RIO.L )( RIO.AX ) chief financial officer Guy Elliott has stepped down from Britain<69>s Takeover Panel following fraud charges brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) related to his time at the miner.FILE PHOTO: Chief Financial Officer of Rio Tinto, Guy Elliott, speaks during Russian Business Week 2011 at the London School of Economics in London February 18, 2011. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth/File Photo Elliott, who worked as CFO of Rio Tinto between 2002 and 2013, also stood down as a non-executive director of Royal Dutch Shell ( RDSa.L ).He was charged by the SEC this week alongside Rio Tinto Plc and former Rio CEO Tom Albanese accused of inflating the value of coal assets in Mozambique and concealing critical information while tapping the market for billions of dollars.Elliott has vowed to vigorously contest the charges.The SEC is seeking to have Elliott and Albanese barred from acting as officers or directors of any public company.Reporting by Clara Denina; editing by Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rio-tinto-plc-fraud-elliott/former-rio-tinto-cfo-elliott-resigns-from-britains-takeover-panel-idUSKBN1CP112'|'2017-10-20T12:31:00.000+03:00'
'69284bb82639f3fb7c0fa65ee220543a81641483'|'UK Court of Appeal refuses Libyan SWF right to appeal in Goldman case'|'October 20, 2017 / 1:53 PM / Updated 17 minutes ago UK Court of Appeal refuses Libyan SWF right to appeal in Goldman case Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s Court of Appeal has refused Libya<79>s $67 billion (<28>50.8 billion) sovereign wealth fund the right to appeal against the 2016 judgement handed down by Britain<69>s High Court in the fund<6E>s $1.2 billion case against Goldman Sachs. FILE PHOTO: A trader works at the Goldman Sachs stall on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, New York, U.S. on April 16, 2012. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo The Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) lost the 2016 case, which related to nine equity derivatives investments carried out in 2008 that turned out to be worthless. In the trial, the fund had argued that it was too unsophisticated to understand what it was buying, and that Goldman had abused its position as a trusted adviser. But the trial judge dismissed these claims. The LIA subsequently sought permission to appeal, but in the court order seen by Reuters and obtained from the Court of Appeal, Judge Launcelot Henderson refused the request. A spokesman for the LIA said the fund was <20>considering its options<6E>. Goldman Sachs declined to comment. One of the grounds the LIA had cited as the basis for an appeal related to an internship offered by Goldman Sachs to Haitem Zarti, the younger brother of Mustafa Zarti, a key LIA decision-maker at the time the trades were carried out. However, Judge Henderson said the LIA<49>s arguments in this regard had <20>no real prospect of success<73>. He added that it was not open to the LIA to advance a new case that the offer of the internship constituted a bribe as a matter of law. Reporting by Claire Milhench, editing by Pritha Sarkar'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-libya-swf-litigation/uk-court-of-appeal-refuses-libyan-swf-right-to-appeal-in-goldman-case-idUKKBN1CP1SW'|'2017-10-20T16:52:00.000+03:00'
'4837094713fceeaac74fa8bbe48cafcf54c35a8d'|'Wall St Weekahead-Recent hurricanes take toll on quarterly earnings'|' 15 PM / a few seconds ago Recent hurricanes take toll on quarterly earnings Noel Randewich 6 Min Read SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - After raging over the southern United States and Puerto Rico, remnants of hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria are now dampening U.S. corporate profits. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid While the deadly storms in August and September slammed insurers who are now on the hook for billions of dollars in damaged property, many retailers, manufacturers and banks are also feeling the pain. Over half of S&P 500 companies reporting third-quarter results in recent weeks, including Harley-Davidson ( HOG.N ), Delta Airlines and Costco ( COST.O ), have said on conference calls with investors that the storms harmed their businesses to some degree, according to a Thomson Reuters analysis. <20>We estimate the impact of the hurricanes accounted for approximately 1.5 to 2 percentage points of Harley-Davidson<6F>s retail sales decline during the quarter,<2C> the motorcycle maker<65>s Chief Financial Officer, John Olin, told investors on Tuesday after reporting a decline in quarterly profit per share. The hurricanes were part of the worst Atlantic hurricane season in over a decade, destroying or damaging homes, businesses and public infrastructure, killing over 200 people and paralyzing normal economic activity. Senior executives of least 48 S&P 500 companies have told investors on quarterly conference calls that their businesses had been negatively affected by the storms. At least 12 companies, including U.S. Bancorp ( USB.N ) and Abbott Laboratories ( ABT.N ), also said their businesses were hurt by a September earthquake that killed 369 people in Mexico, a major market for U.S. firms. American International Group ( AIG.N ) has estimated pretax losses of about $1 billion each from Harvey and Irma, up to $700 million from Maria and additional catastrophe losses, including Mexico<63>s earthquake, of about $150 million. Travelers Cos Inc said on Thursday it recorded $700 million in catastrophe losses from the destruction wrought by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, although its quarterly profit fell less than Wall Street feared. S&P 500 companies on average are expected to have increased their non-GAAP earnings per share by 4.2 percent in the third quarter, the slowest growth in a year, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Excluding insurers, which are expected to have suffered a 63.3-percent decline in quarterly profits, S&P 500 earnings are expected to be up 6.9 percent. The lingering effects of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma hobbled activity at factories in September and blunted a rebound in U.S. industrial production, the Federal Reserve said on Tuesday Still, the storms have not stopped the stock market<65>s record advance. Up 15 percent in 2017, the benchmark S&P 500 is trading at 18 times expected earnings, a multiple not seen since 2002, according to Thomson Reuters Datastream. The S&P 500 property and casualty index .SPLRCINPC on Friday hit a record high, more than recovering from a selloff that coincided with the Harvey<65>s destruction. Many investors believe that insurers will raise premiums to make up for losses, and that those higher premiums will become permanent. Dover ( DOV.N ) Chief Executive Robert Livingston said overtime and other related expenses to get back up to speed had cost the manufacturing company as much as 2 cents per share in the quarter after Harvey forced it to close its Texas factories for four or five days. Hand tool maker Snap-On ( SNA.N ) said the storms cost it about $8 million in sales in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. <20>Timing of both further disruption and rebuilding are unclear,<2C> Snap-On Chief Executive Nicholas Pinchuk told analysts on Thursday. Waiving late fees and increasing reserves for customer credit cost PayPal Holdings ( PYPL.O ) about 1 cent per share in the past quarter, leaving its non-GA
'5e06ced08d6d60dfddf07d20b71df4a04235c33a'|'Brazil''s CSN expects to issue bonds by year-end, CEO says'|'SAO PAULO, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Brazilian steelmaker Companhia Sider<65>rgica Nacional SA plans to sell bonds on international markets in an effort to improve its debt profile, Benjamin Steinbruch, chief executive officer, said on Friday.The executive also said CSN believes there is momentum for non-core asset sales. Steinbruch said the outlook is good for future increases in steel prices. <20>This may help cut our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio to 3.5,<2C> Steinbruch added. (Reporting by Aluisio Alves; Writing by Ana Mano; Editing by James Dalgleish) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/siderurgica-naci-outlook/brazils-csn-expects-to-issue-bonds-by-year-end-ceo-says-idINE6N1L0012'|'2017-10-20T16:23:00.000+03:00'
'e98cd982275728502d4cf8409ea0a3d0dd1c4455'|'China urges EU to terminate anti-dumping measures on Chinese e-bikes'|'Reuters TV United States October 20, 2017 / 8:49 AM / Updated 2 minutes ago China urges EU to terminate anti-dumping measures on Chinese e-bikes Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s commerce ministry urged the European Union on Friday to terminate anti-dumping measures on Chinese electronic bikes (e-bikes) as soon as possible. China hopes the EU<45>s investigation on Chinese e-bikes imports would not be a new case for protectionism, according to a statement posted on the commerce ministry<72>s website. Reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk; Editing by Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-china-bicycles/china-urges-eu-to-terminate-anti-dumping-measures-on-chinese-e-bikes-idUKKBN1CP0W9'|'2017-10-20T11:46:00.000+03:00'
'dac55dc179e7fbd764d45e4fa719d359aecdf5aa'|'Toyota to halt operations at all Japan plants as typhoon precaution'|'Reuters TV United States October 22, 2017 / 8:50 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Toyota to halt operations at all Japan plants as typhoon precaution Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ) will suspend operations at all of its assembly plants in Japan, including those of its subsidiaries, from Monday morning as a precautionary measure as a powerful typhoon approaches Japan<61>s mainland, a spokesman said. A logo of Toyota Motor Corp is seen at the company''s showroom in Tokyo, Japan June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo Tens of thousands across Japan were advised to evacuate, hundreds of flights were canceled and rail services disrupted on Sunday as heavy rain and wind lashed a wide swathe of the country. Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Jacqueline Wong'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-typhoon-toyota/toyota-to-halt-operations-at-all-japan-plants-as-typhoon-precaution-idUKKBN1CR09B'|'2017-10-22T11:38:00.000+03:00'
'4084be11c2c02b7fba4b7125d52936cd792e3be9'|'Women the mystery ingredient in Australia''s jobs feast'|'October 22, 2017 / 1:10 AM / Updated 10 hours ago Women the mystery ingredient in Australia''s jobs feast Swati Pandey , Wayne Cole 4 Min Read SYDNEY (Reuters) - Women coming into Australia<69>s workforce provide the answer to an economic puzzle that analysts and policymakers alike have been struggling to solve this year. Workers in an ice-cream shop stand together as they wait for customers in central Sydney, Australia, March 29, 2017. REUTERS/Steven Saphore While the country<72>s employment has been surging beyond all expectations, the jobless rate hardly budged. The explanation seems to be that tax breaks on childcare and the launch of a disability insurance scheme have prompted a surge in new jobs in the healthcare sector in roles dominated by women. The result is that the proportion of women in the workforce has reached a record high of 60 percent, which analysts say is a big positive for the economy. But the optimism is tempered shorter-term by the fact that most other sectors of the economy have seen limited or no jobs growth this year. New jobs rose 2.7 percent in the year to August, the latest quarterly figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show, much faster than the 1.6 percent growth in the population. Still, unemployment stuck at around 5.6 percent. A Reuters analysis of the data shows that more than a third of the 329,000 net jobs created in Australia in the year to August were in healthcare, outstripping even the booming construction industry. Annual jobs growth in healthcare was a scorching 8.7 percent, and it is easily the single biggest employer with 1.6 million workers, ahead of retail and construction. Childcare and social assistance make up the bulk of the new jobs, a breakdown of the healthcare data shows, both sectors where women tend to be active participants. And as they enter the workforce, many in turn are hiring carers for their own children, thus creating more jobs. The upsurge in healthcare has happened relatively recently, and corresponds closely to the timing of tax breaks for childcare and the launch of a government-mandated, tax-payer funded National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Office workers and shoppers walk through Sydney''s central business district in Australia, September 7, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Reed Healthcare created just 4,000 new positions in the 12 months to August 2016. But in the six months to last August, it added 106,000 and the figures are set to rise. The federal government estimates that demand for care providers due to the NDIS will double to 163,000 full-time equivalent positions in 2020 from 73,000 in 2013. The shift to more care workers is one that more rich nations will have to consider as populations age. And, like in Australia, increased participation in the workforce by women is vital to counter shrinking working-age populations. The proportion of men in the workforce in Australia, for example, has been in long-term decline and is currently at 70.7 percent, down from above 79 percent in 1978. <20>Rising female participation in the economy is good for growth as it will boost the workforce and a more gender diverse workforce is good for productivity,<2C> said Shane Oliver, head of investment strategy at AMP Capital. LESS IMPRESSIVE? However, the increase in the overall jobs numbers this year is not as flattering for the economy as the headline figures might suggest, analysts said. Just three of 19 industry sectors - healthcare, construction, education - accounted for the vast bulk of the job gains this year, illustrating how narrowly based the revival has been. That has left some slack in the labour market, which is restraining wage growth and consumer prices and keeping the central bank from lifting record-low interest rates of 1.50 percent. <20>The 2017 acceleration in aggregate employment all but disappears in the ex-healthcare numbers,<2C> said JP Morgan analyst Ben Jarman. <20>Employment growth in the cyclical, bellwether sectors such as manufacturing, real
'a1d34275ef4f9a19d7468786ea38255f3cd3e03f'|'EU must be ready for any Brexit cliff edge for UK banks - BaFin'|'October 24, 2017 / 8:26 AM / Updated 5 hours ago German bank regulator urges EU to be ready for Brexit cliff edge Huw Jones 4   European Union regulators need temporary fixes in place to prevent market distortions in case banks based in Britain face a Brexit without a deal, Germany<6E>s financial watchdog said. FILE PHOTO: Felix Hufeld, President of Germany''s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority BaFin (Bundesanstalt fuer Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht) visits Thomson Reuters office in Frankfurt, Germany, September 22, 2016. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo Britain<69>s EU departure in 2019 <20>certainly won<6F>t be a piece of cake<6B> and given that five rounds of divorce talks have not made enough progress, regulators must assume a <20>cliff edge situation<6F>, Felix Hufeld, president of BaFin, said. <20>It<49>s crystal clear in my mind that whatever the outcome of Brexit, it will cost a price both for British and EU27 consumers. The cost of doing business will go up,<2C> Hufeld said. Regulators will need temporary solutions to avoid dangerous <20>distortions<6E> in markets while entering the post-Brexit world, Hufeld said at an event in London. Frankfurt is emerging among the winners in a battle between EU financial centres to attract banks in London who want to open new hubs in the bloc to continue serving customers there. Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ) Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein said last week after a meeting with Hufeld that he will be spending <20>a lot more time<6D> in Germany<6E>s financial centre. New hubs being set up by UK-based lenders must not be empty shells, Hufeld said. Some <20>20ish<73> banks have applied for licences - all in Frankfurt, with one small insurer in Munich - but none have been approved so far. <20>Banks that are planning a comprehensive division of work between offices in London and the EU need to transplant and split up their entire ecosystem established over the years <20> that means IT infrastructures, knowledge, processes and people.<2E> To avoid disruption, they will be allowed to continue using capital models approved by UK regulators <20>for a limited time period<6F>. Banks that want to save costs by managing in London risks from trades undertaken at new EU hubs, known as back-to-back, must have <20>adequately<6C> trained risk management staff in case this model is no longer possible. There was also a need to find the right balance for outsourcing hub activities to London, he added. <20>What is not allowed is for the subsidiary in the EU not to have an adequate control system on-site, and to therefore be dependent on the sister or parent company in London in order to fulfil the necessary control functions,<2C> Hufeld said. Germany<6E>s Deutsche Bank ( DBKGn.DE ) is among the branches of EU banks in London that may have to become a subsidiary, a costly exercise, but Hufeld said this was not the only solution and pointed to the trust between UK and EU supervisors. DON<4F>T SCREW UP U.S. regulators and financial services firms are worried that measures taken by the EU to curb euro clearing and asset managers in Britain after Brexit will hit them too. Hufeld said Britain and the EU27 need to be aware of the implications of Brexit measures on the United States and Asia. <20>If we screw up, then maybe others will pick up the bits and pieces and both the UK and EU are paying the bill, which I would hate to see happening. Let<65>s just be prudent,<2C> Hufeld said. Over 95 percent of euro denominated interest rate swaps, widely used by companies to insure themselves against adverse moves in borrowing costs, are cleared by the London Stock Exchange<67>s ( LSE.L ) LCH arm. The EU has proposed a law that would, as a last resort, force a UK clearing house handled large amounts of euro swaps, to relocate to the EU if it still wanted to serve customers based there after Brexit. It was out of the question that the EU should not have supervisory access to the LCH, but Hufeld cautioned about <20>jumping to seemingly easy solutions<6E> like relocation without first understanding the conseque
'd697b3cf480af336b68c78a6e9f763b60a901cce'|'UPDATE 1-Brazil''s Petrobras could bid on more blocks in pre-salt auction-CEO'|'October 24, 2017 / 3:12 PM / in 18 minutes UPDATE 1-Brazil''s Petrobras could bid on more blocks in pre-salt auction-CEO Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Adds CEO quotes, auction details, background) RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Petroleo Brasileiro SA could bid on more blocks in an auction of Brazil<69>s pre-salt offshore area this week, taking advantage of its preemptive rights to add to the three it has already flagged, the oil company<6E>s chief executive said. Speaking on the sidelines of an oil conference in Rio de Janeiro, Pedro Parente said state-controlled Petrobras would bid <20>not necessarily on just the three<65> but he added that the indebted company had to be selective. <20>The company<6E>s situation demands that we make bids only on the areas that may have greater potential,<2C> Parente told reporters, declining to comment on potential bidding partners. On Friday, Brazil will hold its first auction of blocks in its coveted pre-salt offshore area -- where oil is trapped under a thick layer of salt beneath the ocean floor -- since 2013, when tough regulations deterred many bidders. To entice more investment, congress eliminated a rule requiring Petrobras to be the sole operator in all pre-salt blocks but gave it a preemptive right to pre-select blocks. Ahead of Friday<61>s auctions, Petrobras exercised those rights for the Sapinho<68>, Peroba and Alto de Cabo Frio Central blocks, meaning it would become operator and likely take a minimum 30 percent stake in any consortium to win those blocks. Parente also said the company would maintain its goal of $21 billion in divestments by the end of 2018, despite legal challenges that have hampered the process so far. <20>That causes a delay, but does not make the divestments impossible,<2C> he said. (Reporting by Marta Nogueira; Writing by Alexandra Alper; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Susan Thomas)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/petrobras-auction/update-1-brazils-petrobras-could-bid-on-more-blocks-in-pre-salt-auction-ceo-idUSL2N1MZ0QN'|'2017-10-24T18:11:00.000+03:00'
'821f416eb260f227080df59e3931a24898993178'|'Amazon rivals turn to legal fine print to stem Whole Foods strategy'|'October 24, 2017 / 5:12 AM / a few seconds ago Amazon rivals turn to legal fine print to stem Whole Foods strategy Jeffrey Dastin 8 Min Read SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Whole Foods Market met a new foe this summer during talks to lease a top retail space in a San Francisco mall: the Target next door. The Stonestown Galleria, where Target raised concern that rival Amazon might open a store where Macy''s currently stands, is seen in San Francisco, California, U.S. on September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Jeffrey Dastin As City Center mall<6C>s largest tenant, Target Corp had a say over changes to the property. According to people familiar with the lease discussions, Target balked at sharing the mall with Whole Foods because it feared competition from the grocery chain<69>s new owner, Amazon.com Inc. Early attempts to persuade Target failed, and Whole Foods may now have to concede certain Amazon initiatives - such as lockers where customers can pick up goods ordered online - if it wants the location, the people said. Talks are ongoing. A Reuters examination of real estate agreements and interviews with 20 retail landlords, lawyers and brokers show that the strings attached to operating in malls like City Center present an emerging and little-scrutinized challenge to Amazon<6F>s quest to re-shape Whole Foods. Across the United States, large retailers including Target, Bed Bath & Beyond Inc and Best Buy Co Inc have legal rights in many lease agreements that allow them to limit what Amazon can do with nearby Whole Foods stores, and where it can open new ones. Documents reviewed by Reuters show bans on Amazon lockers and delivery operations near a Target store in Illinois and also in Florida, where a new Whole Foods is set to open. Lockers for retrieving online orders are a way for Amazon to spur sales through the grocery chain. In Manhattan and other locations, the leases of Whole Foods<64> big box neighbors bar it from selling a range of goods that Amazon has in its massive online inventory, from electronics to toys and linens. Even Whole Foods stores that do not share space with major rivals can face constraints imposed by local governments. A city council resolution in White Plains, New York, restricted the hours when Whole Foods can use a loading dock prior to the grocer locating in the mall. Amazon declined to answer questions about how these restrictions across the country impact its plans. In a statement, Target said it is <20>focused on what<61>s best for the company and delivering on the reasons our guests love Target. Our more than 1,800 stores across the country are a strategic asset and a vital part of Target<65>s future.<2E> The company did not discuss details of the restrictions reported by Reuters, but said, <20>It<49>s inaccurate to characterize lease agreements as our corporate strategy.<2E> Reuters could not determine the full extent of limits on Whole Foods stores because lease deals vary from mall to mall, and many are not public. While restricting how neighbors operate is a standard practice in retail, Amazon is new to feeling the heat. Some mall owners and real estate brokers say Whole Foods will still find landlords who are eager to have the high-profile tenant driving traffic in their malls, and see rivals trying to keep Whole Foods out as short-sighted. But with nearly all of Whole Foods<64> 473 stores subject to lease agreements and plans to add up to 85 stores, according to regulatory filings, Amazon has launched into brick-and-mortar with more constraints and entrenched enemies than in the online world it dominates. <20>Many people assume this big, 800-pound gorilla is going to come and beat up all of these retailers,<2C> said Terrison Quinn, a senior vice president at brokerage SRS Real Estate Partners. <20>I just don<6F>t think that<61>s going to be the case.<2E> DOZENS OF RESTRICTIONS Amazon wasted no time in making changes when the $13.7 billion Whole Foods deal closed in August. The world<6C>s largest online retailer cut grocery prices, started sell
'b4c8b7ac636a68c53dda62a303cd46662ef86a63'|'Wall Street stalls as industrials lag'|'October 23, 2017 / 6:23 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago Wall Street retreats from record as industrials, tech lag Chuck Mikolajczak 4 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks declined on Monday as each of the major Wall Street indexes retreated from a record, weighed down by a drop in technology and industrial shares. FILE PHOTO - Morning commuters are seen outside the New York Stock Exchange, July 30, 2012. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo General Electric ( GE.N ), down 6.3 percent, suffered its biggest one-day percentage decline in more than six years after a host of brokerages cut their price targets on the stock, citing higher chances of a dividend cut at the industrial conglomerate. After holding near the unchanged mark for most of the session, losses accelerated late in the session on downturn in technology .SPLRCT, off 0.40 percent. Last week, the Dow and S&P managed to close at a record high all five days, after a strong start to third-quarter earnings and on hopes President Donald Trump<6D>s tax plans move forward after the Senate<74>s approval of a budget resolution on Friday. <20>On the one hand, the market is very extended, overbought, on the other hand so far earnings have come through,<2C> said Andrew Slimmon, portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management in Chicago. <20>The question becomes what happens if tax reform doesn<73>t happen in 2017, does the market sell off into the year-end?<3F> Investors are also waiting for news on the next Federal Reserve chief. Trump told reporters on Monday he is <20>very, very close<73> to making his decision on who should chair the Fed. Of the 97 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 73.2 percent have topped expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data, versus the 72-percent average for the past four quarters. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 54.25 points, or 0.23 percent, to 23,274.38, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 10.19 points, or 0.40 percent, to 2,565.02 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 42.23 points, or 0.64 percent, to 6,586.83. Industrials .SPLRCI, were off 0.8 percent as one of the biggest drags to the S&P of the 11 major sectors. Aside from GE, the group was also pulled lower by a 10.4-percent tumble in Arconic ( ARNC.N ) after the specialty metals maker missed profit estimates and announced a new chief executive. The energy index .SPNY stumbled 0.59 percent, driven by losses in Schlumberger ( SLB.N ), Baker Hughes ( BHGE.N ) and Halliburton ( HAL.N ), which reported results on Monday. Hasbro ( HAS.O ) plunged 8.6 percent after the toymaker<65>s forecast for the holiday season fell below estimates as Toys<79>R<EFBFBD>Us bankruptcy began to hurt its operations. Shares of peer Mattel ( MAT.O ) fell 3.2 percent. The S&P 500 posted 91 new 52-week highs and 6 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 104 new highs and 41 new lows. About 5.84 billion shares changed hands in U.S. exchanges, compared with the 5.83 billion daily average over the last 20 sessions. Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Nick Zieminski'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-stocks/wall-street-stalls-as-industrials-lag-idINKBN1CS2GJ'|'2017-10-23T16:23:00.000+03:00'
'0a679f8bdbd9721bab8da03140cedbbf8598981c'|'UPDATE 1-Bitcoin is ''Enron in the making'', Saudi Prince Alwaleed says'|'(Adds Quote: s and details on other companies, Aramco)RIYADH, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who owns investment firm Kingdom Holding, expressed skepticism about cryptocurrencies in an interview with CNBC on Monday, warning that bitcoin was like <20>Enron in the making<6E>.Prince Alwaleed, whose company invests in major U.S. companies such as Citigroup and Twitter, said a lack of regulation made such cryptocurrencies risky.<2E>I just don<6F>t believe in this bitcoin thing. I think it<69>s going to implode one day. It<49>s Enron in the making,<2C> he said, referring to the U.S. energy company that filed for bankruptcy in 2001 after revelations of a widespread accounting fraud.<2E>This thing does not make sense. It<49>s unregulated. It<49>s not under the control of the U.S. Federal Reserve or any other central bank,<2C> he added.Bitcoin is a virtual currency that has gained more than 500 percent this year, more than any other tradable asset class.Prince Alwaleed also said the valuation of electric car maker Tesla Inc was <20>too exuberant<6E> for him to invest.<2E>I would rather not comment on that because maybe some people think the valuation is right, but it<69>s not for me to enter that price obviously. It<49>s too exuberant for me right now.<2E>He added that U.S. ride services company Lyft had been better priced than rival Uber when his investment firm bought into it.He said he was <20>very happy<70> with his investment in Citigroup and saw potential for the share price to rise above $100. It has been trading at around $73.SAFETY VALVE Prince Alwaleed also said he was not considering merging AccorHotels and Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, in which Kingdom Holding owns stakes.On the initial public offering of Saudi Aramco, which its CEO reiterated would take place next year, Prince Alwaleed said the transaction would act as a <20>safety valve<76> for Saudi Arabia.<2E>If you go 5 percent, there<72>s nothing that prohibits you from going another 5 percent next year, and 5 percent the third year and fourth year, and so forth, depending on the situation.<2E>Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said last year the country was considering listing about 5 percent of Aramco in a deal that could raise $100 billion, if the company is valued at about $2 trillion as hoped.CEO Nasser on Monday brushed off reports about China emerging as a frontrunner in a possible plan to delay the IPO and sell shares to sovereign funds.<2E>I<EFBFBD>m not a member of the government but I read these reports, and I will not be surprised if China will be looking at this opportunity,<2C> Prince Alwaleed said.<2E>China depends on oil and will depend on oil for a long time to come. And Saudi Arabia is an anchor exporter of oil to China.<2E> (Reporting by Katie Paul, Maha El Dahan, Alexander Cornwell and Reem Shamseddine; Writing by Sylvia Westall; Editing by David Holmes) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/saudi-kingdom-holding-bitcoin/update-1-bitcoin-is-enron-in-the-making-saudi-prince-alwaleed-says-idUSL8N1MY411'|'2017-10-23T18:11:00.000+03:00'
'058f228384ae8334e73a7425cac3b7d5cfe10549'|'France probing possible Fiat obstruction over ''Dieselgate'' affair - document'|'Reuters TV United States October 23, 2017 / 10:31 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago France probing possible Fiat obstruction over ''Dieselgate'' affair: document Reuters Staff 1 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - Carmaker Fiat Chrysler ( FCHA.MI ) is subject of a French judicial inquiry over suspected obstruction of a French inquiry into the <20>Dieselgate<74> affair, concerning devices used to cheat on tests over emissions, according to a document obtained by Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A Fiat logo is seen at a car dealership in Vienna, Austria, May 30, 2017. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader/File Photo Fiat declined to comment on the matter when contacted for comment. Volkswagen<65>s ( VOWG_p.DE ) diesel emissions-test cheating exposed by U.S. regulators in 2015 triggered global public outrage, dozens more investigations into test-rigging by the wider industry and a push by some lawmakers to ban diesel and eventually all combustion engines. Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry and Agnieszka Flak; Writing by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Brian Love'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-fiat-chrysler-emissions/france-probing-possible-fiat-obstruction-over-dieselgate-affair-document-idUKKBN1CS181'|'2017-10-23T13:30:00.000+03:00'
'c05bb4c05eb1f002dfe1fd5780afcf8dc06bd793'|'Britain backs GSK''s gene therapy for ''bubble boy'' syndrome'|'October 22, 2017 / 11:25 PM / Updated 8 hours ago Britain backs GSK''s gene therapy for ''bubble boy'' syndrome Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline<6E>s gene therapy for the so-called <20>bubble boy<6F> disease was approved by Britain<69>s healthcare cost watchdog NICE, despite a price tag of almost 600,000 euros ($700,000). FILE PHOTO: The GlaxoSmithKline building is pictured in Hounslow, west London June 18, 2013. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor/File Photo Gene therapy is designed to deliver a one-off cure for the patient and drugmakers are typically asking a hefty price that is comparable to the combined costs of alternative life-long treatment. Britain<69>s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said in draft guidance published on Friday that Strimvelis gene therapy used against adenosine deaminase deficiency, or ADA-SCID, improves overall survival compared with standard stem cell transplant therapy. The inherited condition disables the immune system and without treatment, children with ADA-SCID need to be kept in isolation to avoid infections <20> hence it has become known as the <20>bubble baby<62> or <20>bubble boy<6F> syndrome. <20>Strimvelis represents an important development in the treatment of ADA-SCID, offering the potential to cure the immune aspects of the condition and avoid some of the disadvantages of current treatments,<2C> NICE said. <20>Costing 594,000 euros, the treatment is usually given once only and the effects are thought to be life-long,<2C> it added. The draft guidance marks the first time NICE has applied its new cost effectiveness limits for treatments for very rare conditions. Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-gsk-bubbleboy-nice/britain-backs-gsks-gene-therapy-for-bubble-boy-syndrome-idUKKBN1CR0YM'|'2017-10-23T02:24:00.000+03:00'
'fe9cd63863a25e5b6d00cea890d8d204a74134e7'|'Iraq asks BP to boost oil production from Kirkuk - spokesman'|'October 23, 2017 / 12:02 PM / Updated 7 minutes ago Iraq asks BP to boost oil production from Kirkuk - spokesman   BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi met with a senior BP executive on Monday to discuss developing and boosting production from Kirkuk oilfield, a ministry spokesman said. The logo of BP is seen at a petrol station in Kloten, Switzerland October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann Luaibi, who met with Michael Townshend, BP<42>s president in the Middle East, has asked the British oil major to help increase output from Kirkuk oilfield to more than 700,000 barrels per day, the spokesman said. <20>The minister is very keen to rehabilitate the Kirkuk oilfield and raise production from there as soon as possible,<2C> spokesman Asim Jihad told Reuters. Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; writing by Rania El Gamal; editing by Susan Fenton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-iraq-oil-bp-kirkuk/iraq-asks-bp-to-boost-oil-production-from-kirkuk-spokesman-idUKKBN1CS1IH'|'2017-10-23T15:01:00.000+03:00'
'6e4f4b2d657353e564e4a6da28f483d586bc5bc3'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX rises with banks, energy stocks; Eldorado slumps'|' 40 PM / in 8 minutes CANADA STOCKS-TSX rises with banks, energy stocks; Eldorado slumps Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TORONTO, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index made slight gains in early trade on Monday, with its biggest banks and heavyweight energy sector providing support while Eldorado Gold Corp fell sharply after lowering production guidance for a gold mine in Turkey. The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index was up 37.35 points, or 0.24 percent, at 15,894.57 shortly after the open. Eight of its 10 main secrtors were higher. (Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks-open/canada-stocks-tsx-rises-with-banks-energy-stocks-eldorado-slumps-idUSL2N1MY0LE'|'2017-10-23T16:39:00.000+03:00'
'0186bc5ddc1efab897762c43a90aa26ca2ff20ff'|'Britain''s small firms struggling to hire in face of Brexit - survey'|'October 23, 2017 / 2:34 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago Britain''s small firms struggling to hire in face of Brexit - survey Reuters Staff 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Recruiting and keeping staff is having a bigger negative impact on smaller businesses in Britain than the post-Brexit vote fall in the pound or a weakening economy, a survey has found. People walk through the financial district of Canary Wharf, London, Britain 28 September 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde Firms are divided over what Britain<69>s exit from the European Union will entail and crave certainty as they deal with higher costs since the vote to leave the bloc last year, a survey of more than 1,000 small and medium sized enterprises said. The survey by Bibby Financial Services found that 41 percent of those firms polled cited finding and keeping good quality staff as among the biggest headaches facing them. Smaller businesses can be more exposed to uncertainty over staff turnover, especially if they invest in training employees only to see them leave. Another survey by the Confederation of British Industry showed a dip in business confidence, and said concern over hiring unskilled labour was at its highest since 2004. SMEs are already feeling the effects of the vote to leave the EU, which prompted an 11 percent fall in the pound. The Bibby survey found that 34 percent of SMEs identified the increased cost of imports as a major impact to their business since the vote. However, while 22 percent said they had seen declining domestic sales, 21 percent said that domestic sales had increased since the referendum in June last year. London Mayor Sadiq Khan joined with Britain<69>s bigger business in warning that companies would start moving jobs and investment out of the country if they do not get a transition deal soon. Companies surveyed were roughly split on whether they expected there to be a transition deal before Brexit. <20>Despite the clock counting down to March 2019, there are almost as many unanswered questions facing UK SMEs as on the day the EU referendum result was known,<2C> said Edward Winterton, UK Chief Executive Officer at Bibby Financial Services. <20>Right now businesses need to start planning ahead. The UK and EU simply must agree a new trade deal, reducing the current state of uncertainty UK business finds itself in.<2E> (This version of the story corrects <20>exports<74> to <20>imports<74> in paragraph seven). Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by Alexander Smith/David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-business-survey/britains-small-firms-struggling-to-hire-in-face-of-brexit-survey-idUKKBN1CS1XK'|'2017-10-23T17:33:00.000+03:00'
'b578e14482b86c5d4d4e39fd86a8dc86a4d933ec'|'Norway''s Seadrill gets two rival debt restructuring proposals'|'October 23, 2017 / 12:05 PM / Updated 28 minutes ago Norway''s Seadrill gets two rival debt restructuring proposals Reuters Staff 2 Min Read OSLO, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Offshore rig company Seadrill has received two additional non-binding proposals from bondholders for a debt restructuring after the Norwegian firm filed for U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September, court documents show. The two indications of interest came from bondholders seeking alternatives to the firm<72>s own plan, Seadrill said in documents submitted late on Friday. The company<6E>s own plan is backed by holders of 99 percent of Seadrill<6C>s bank loans and 40 percent of its bonds, and was submitted by its main shareholder, Norwegian-born billionaire John Fredriksen, and a group of hedge funds. It offered holders of $2.3 billion of Seadrill<6C>s unsecured bonds a 14.3 percent stake in the restructured firm after dilution, and only a 1.9 percent stake for current shareholders. As a way to show the U.S. bankruptcy court that there was no better plan, Seadrill<6C>s advisors have contacted 94 investors, including 15 oil rig companies, 45 financial investors and seven bondholders. The two indications of interest received so far came from bondholders, and still required substantial impairment of unsecured creditors, Seadrill said. <20>The market indicates that there is no viable restructuring transaction under which holders of Seadrill Limited unsecured claims will receive anything close to full recovery,<2C> the company added. Seadrill didn<64>t name the bondholders behind the alternative proposals, but it was previously reported that two groups of bondholders were preparing to challenge the official plan. The company was not immediately available for comment. (Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis; Editing by Terje Solsvik and Adrian Croft) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/seadrill-bankruptcy/norways-seadrill-gets-two-rival-debt-restructuring-proposals-idUSL8N1MY2WR'|'2017-10-23T15:03:00.000+03:00'
'b0998ee3f01295ae1836aa17c365f794638b4c13'|'At least three buyout groups seen advancing in Unilever spreads auction: sources'|'LONDON (Reuters) - At least three bidders are expected to be shortlisted for the second round of an auction for Unilever<65>s ( ULVR.L ) ( UNc.AS ) margarine and spreads business while two other private equity groups are no longer in the fray, sources told Reuters.The company logo for Unilever is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., February 17, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Buyout funds Blackstone ( BX.N ) and CVC Capital Partners [CVC.UL], who were teaming up on a joint offer, are no longer in the running for the business which could be worth more than $7 billion, the sources said on Tuesday.BC Partners, which bid on its own, has not made it through to the second stage of the auction which is led by Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ) and Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ), according to the sources.A team comprising Bain Capital and Clayton Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) is expected to move to the second round of bidding along with private equity rivals KKR ( KKR.N ) and Apollo ( APO.N ), the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the process is private.Unilever, Bain and Apollo declined to comment. Blackstone, CVC, BC Partners, CD&R and KKR were not immediately available to comment.Unilever put the business up for sale after many years of declining sales, following an unsolicited $143 billion takeover bid by Kraft Heinz ( KHC.O ) in February that jolted the Anglo-Dutch group into a series of actions to improve its returns.The business - home to Flora, Stork and Country Crock - has high profit margins but is shrinking as Western consumers eat less bread and margarine.The consortium of Bain and CD&R could emerge as a frontrunner, sources said, since one of CD&R&rsquo;s partners is Vindi Banga, a 33-year veteran of Unilever.But Apollo has also gained significant experience in buying businesses from large conglomerates and turning them around, one of the sources said, adding that they will play hard to secure control of Unilever<65>s spreads products.In December, Apollo clinched a $1.5 billion cash deal to buy car lighting and LED components firm Lumileds from Philips and in 2015 it won control of Saint-Gobain<69>s glass bottle division Verallia with a bid worth almost 3 billion euros.Sources say the Unilever process could be wrapped up by the end of the year.It is not clear on Tuesday whether any industry players had submitted bids for regional pieces of the business, which operates in dozens of countries.Unilever has already struck a $900 million deal with South African investor Remgro ( REMJ.J ) for the spreads business in southern Africa.Unilever has repeatedly said it will spin off the business if it fails to generate a satisfactory price through an auction.($1 = 0.8501 euros)Editing by Jane Merriman '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-unilever-nv-spreads/at-least-three-buyout-groups-seen-advancing-in-unilever-spreads-auction-sources-idINKBN1CT2QG'|'2017-10-24T16:50:00.000+03:00'
'7f281c7307756a0db645883b3275b0ff96ce4050'|'UPDATE 1-Fox signed O''Reilly again knowing of new harassment settlement -report'|'(Adds response from O<>Reilly spokesman)NEW YORK, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Bill O<>Reilly, the Fox News commentator forced to resign in April, agreed to a $32 million sexual harassment settlement in January, and the network<72>s parent knew about the deal when it gave him a new contract the next month, the New York Times reported on Saturday.The previously undisclosed agreement, at least the sixth involving O<>Reilly or the company related to harassment charges against him, was <20>extraordinarily large<67> for such cases, according to the newspaper, which cited two people <20>briefed on the matter<65> as its sources.Twenty-First Century Fox Inc acknowledged that it had been aware of O<>Reilly<6C>s settlement with Lis Wiehl, a former Fox News legal analyst, when it signed a contract extension with <20>The O<>Reilly Factor<6F> host in February.The company <20>was informed by Mr. O<>Reilly that he had settled the matter personally, on financial terms that he and Ms. Wiehl had agreed were confidential and not disclosed to the company,<2C> 21st Century Fox said in a statement emailed by spokesman Nathaniel Brown.The Times report was strongly disputed by O<>Reilly spokesman Mark Fabiani, who called it a malicious smear aimed at harming the conservative talk show host<73>s career.<2E>In its latest diatribe against Bill O<>Reilly, the Times printed leaked information provided by anonymous sources that is out of context, false, defamatory, and obviously designed to embarrass Bill O<>Reilly and to keep him from competing in the marketplace,<2C> Fabiani said in a statement emailed to Reuters.Wiehl could not be immediately reached for comment. But Fabiani provided Reuters with a copy of what he said was an affidavit from her, saying she had settled her differences with both O<>Reilly and Fox News, and had no claims against either one of them.<2E>At the end of 2016, I hired counsel who prepared a draft complaint asserting claims against Bill O<>Reilly,<2C> the notarized document said. <20>We have since resolved all of our issues. I would no longer make the allegations contained in the draft complaint.<2E>According to the Times, top executives of 21st Century Fox, including Rupert Murdoch and his two sons, Lachlan and James, decided in January to retain O<>Reilly despite being made aware of the fresh complaints, the Times reported. The next month, the company gave O<>Reilly a contract extension worth $25 million a year.The disclosures follow allegations reported earlier this month by The New York Times and The New Yorker that Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted a number of women in incidents dating back to the 1980s. Reuters was unable to independently confirm any of the allegations, and Weinstein, 65, has denied having non-consensual sex with anyone.The allegations have set off a wave of anger and soul-searching over the issue of sexual harassment and abuse. Millions of women across the world have been sharing their experiences in an online campaign using the hashtag #MeToo on Twitter and with rolling posts on Facebook.Twenty-First Century Fox said on Saturday it had added language to the new contract related to harassment, stipulating that O<>Reilly faced dismissal if fresh allegations emerged or new information about existing allegations came to light. In April, after advertisers began to flee O<>Reilly<6C>s show, the company parted ways with O<>Reilly, ending the popular commentator<6F>s two-decade Fox News career.In its statement on Saturday, 21st Century said it acted in April <20>based on the terms of this contract,<2C> referring to the deal signed in February.The Times reported on April 1 Fox or O<>Reilly had paid five women a total of $13 million to settle harassment claims, before news of the sixth deal emerged. The women either worked for the host or appeared as guests on his program, the paper reported.O<>Reilly said in a statement at the time that he had settled only to spare his children from the controversy.<2E>The O<>Reilly Factor<6F> was the top-rated s
'ece55fd6dba3f7054a9f9e9bfbdb5b9c455f0032'|'Airbus turmoil overshadows bid to rescue CSeries'|'PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus<75>s ( AIR.PA ) coup in buying a $6 billion Canadian jetliner project for a dollar stunned investors and took the spotlight off a growing ethics row last week, but internal disarray has raised questions over how smoothly it can implement the deal.Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders waves to employees followed by chairman of the board of Bombardier Inc., Pierre Beaudoin after touring a Bombardier CSeries plane at Bombardier''s plant in Mirabel, Quebec Canada, October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi The European planemaker secured the deal for Bombardier<65>s ( BBDb.TO ) CSeries program by pledging to throw its marketing might behind the loss-making jets, just as the Airbus sales machine reels from falling sales and internal and external corruption investigations.Chief Executive Tom Enders has urged staff to keep calm in the face of French reports describing payments to intermediaries and growing concern over fallout from the investigations.But the mood at the group<75>s Toulouse offices remains grim.<2E>Bombardier asked for an ambulance and Airbus sent a hearse,<2C> said one person with close ties to the company.French media attention on the growing scandal helped to camouflage talks to buy the CSeries. Rumors circulated in late August that Enders and a colleague were visiting Paris to meet investigators. In fact, they were holding the first of several secret dinner meetings with Bombardier.But the same affair, which first came to light in 2016, has begun to cloud sales momentum. In the first nine months of the year Airbus accounted for only 35 percent of global jet sales in its head-to-head battle with U.S. rival Boeing ( BA.N ).The Airbus sales operation is demoralized and in disarray, multiple aerospace and airline industry sources said, with some blaming Enders for turning the company against itself.Two people said the situation is so tense that some employees have begun to shy away from selling in problematic countries, rather than risk being drawn into the investigation.Soon-to-retire sales chief John Leahy has been asked to stay until the end of the year to help steady the operation, but his successor has not been officially confirmed, adding a sense of vacuum that has also sapped morale.Leahy designated his deputy Kiran Rao as his successor earlier this year but the chaos engulfing Airbus means now is not considered the right time for major new announcements.POST-BOOM SLOWDOWN A spokesman for Airbus, which has long predicted a slower year after an order boom, dismissed reports of instability.<2E>We have a great sales team ... but it is fully understood that they cannot repeat records every year; and the year is not over,<2C> he said.Enders has strongly defended his decision in 2016 to report flawed paperwork to UK authorities, which prompted UK and French investigations focusing on a system of sales agents run by a separate Paris department that has since been disbanded.Airbus says no evidence of corruption has been uncovered, but Enders has pledged to continue the overhaul of sales practices historically shared between Toulouse and Paris.A source close to Bombardier acknowledged disruption at Airbus but predicted things would settle down by the time the deal for Airbus to sell the CSeries closes next year.At that point Airbus will face a second challenge in marketing the CSeries, which for years it dismissed as a weak upstart. Now it must offer the aircraft side by side with the older A320.Airbus plans to refresh the A320 further after adding new engines and this will bring it closer to the smaller CSeries in performance, two people close to the plans said. It may also make some CSeries features more compatible with its own A320s.That comes on top of plans to enhance the larger A321neo in response to Boeing<6E>s launch of a new mid-market plane, which industry sources expect to happen next year.(Story refiles to add dropped word <20>Airbus<75> in fourth paragraph.)Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by David Goodman '|'reute
'ddf8225dfbe00d41b908a8fb3a731cb0111c767c'|'UK engineer GKN considers split into two - Sunday Times'|'October 21, 2017 / 10:00 PM / Updated an hour ago UK engineer GKN considers split into two - Sunday Times Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British engineering group GKN ( GKN.L ) is considering splitting into two listed companies comprising its aerospace and auto component divisions, the Sunday Times reported, without citing sources. The company, which supplies components for Airbus and Boeing planes and carmakers including Volkswagen and Fiat Chrysler, is in the early stages of considering the plan, the newspaper said. A spokesman for the FTSE 100-listed company declined to comment on the report. Reporting by Andy Bruce; Editing by James Dalgleish'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-gkn-m-a/uk-engineer-gkn-considers-split-into-two-sunday-times-idUKKBN1CQ0UG'|'2017-10-22T01:00:00.000+03:00'
'c0504954db81dbad9c78cf70f09bcf1c0dcb630c'|'Meal box firm HelloFresh sets price range for Nov. 2 IPO'|'October 22, 2017 / 4:17 PM / in 2 hours Meal box firm HelloFresh sets price range for Nov. 2 IPO Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Loss-making German meal-kit-delivery group HelloFresh is offering shares worth up to 357 million euros ($421 million) in its stock market flotation, the company said on Sunday. HelloFresh is planning to sell up to about 31 million new shares including an overallotment option for 9 to 11.50 euros apiece, implying a valuation of the company of up to 1.5 billion euros excluding debt. HelloFresh, majority-owned by German e-commerce investor Rocket Internet ( RKET.DE ), decided to go ahead with its renewed listing despite a 50 percent decline in shares in U.S. rival Blue Apron ( APRN.N ) since the group<75>s June IPO. Two years ago, HelloFresh cancelled a planned IPO after investors rejected a higher valuation. It said on Sunday its stock would start trading on the Frankfurt stock exchange on Nov. 2. If the overallotment is fully used, HelloFresh will have a free float of about 19 percent. HelloFresh<73>s largest market is the United States, where it is spending heavily on discounts and advertising to compete with rivals like Blue Apron and Plated. <20>We have seen tremendous success and market share gains in the U.S. in the last few quarters. We now intend to use the proceeds from the IPO to continue expanding our market share and become the clear No. 1 player on the U.S. market in 2018,<2C> Chief Executive Dominik Richter said in Sunday<61>s statement. The HelloFresh announcement is a boost for Rocket Internet, which listed in 2014 with a pledge to be a launch pad for floatations of start-ups. Volatile markets meant it had to wait until this year for its first success, with takeaway firm Delivery Hero ( DHER.DE ). HelloFresh, which delivers meal ingredients and recipes in 10 countries, reiterated its goal of breaking even on an operating level (adjusted EBITDA) within the next 15 months. Its net loss stood at 56.7 million euros in the first half of 2017 on revenues of 435 million euros. ($1 = 0.8487 euros) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-hellofresh-ipo/meal-box-firm-hellofresh-sets-ipo-price-range-idINKBN1CR0Q4'|'2017-10-22T14:17:00.000+03:00'
'70811a5b9e2e039910899aa455e43a03e6c5fa2c'|'Ex-divs to take 2.4 points off FTSE 100 on Oct 26'|'October 23, 2017 / 9:59 AM / in 9 minutes Ex-divs to take 2.4 points off FTSE 100 on Oct 26   LONDON, Oct   FTSE 100 companies will go ex-dividend on Thursday, after which investors will no longer qualify for the latest dividend payout. According to Reuters calculations at current market prices, the effect of the resulting adjustment to prices by market-makers would take 2.42 points off the index. COMPANY (RIC) DIVIDEND STOCK OPTION IMPACT (pence) Barratt Developments 34.4 1.34 Ferguson 73.33 0.72 ITV 2.52 0.36 Among FTSE 250 companies going ex-dividend are: COMPANY (RIC) DIVIDEND (pence) Bankers Investment Trust Plc 4.7 Booker Group 0.69 Coats Group 0.44 (USc) Dechra Pharmaceuticals 15.33 GCP Infrastructure Investments Limited 1.9 Galliford Try 64 J D Wetherspoon 8 JPMorgan Emerging Markets Investment Trust 11 Provident Financial 43.2 Sequoia Economic Infrastructure Income Fund Limited 1.5 William Hill 4.26 (Reporting by Helen Reid, Editing by Kit Rees)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-stocks-exdiv/ex-divs-to-take-2-4-points-off-ftse-100-on-oct-26-idUSL8N1MY28N'|'2017-10-23T12:56:00.000+03:00'
'0d653d4c026c6515f9b61bcd68b1d5896573f3e5'|'UK CBI factory order growth slows to 11-month low'|'October 23, 2017 / 10:04 AM / in 6 hours UK factory orders grow at slowest rate in 11 months - CBI David Milliken 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Growth in British factory orders slowed to its weakest in almost a year this month, a monthly survey from the Confederation of British Industry showed on Monday, though firms were working at their closest to full capacity in 20 years. FILE PHOTO: Cars are inspected at the end of the production line at the Toyota factory in Derby, central England, March 7, 2011. REUTERS/Darren Staples/File Photo The CBI<42>s factory order book balance unexpectedly fell this month to -2, its lowest since November 2016, from +7 in September, below all expectations in a Reuters poll that on average forecast it would rise to +9. Output expectations fell to +19 from +28, the lowest since April, while export orders grew at the weakest since July - though both these still pointed to above-average growth. <20>We<57>ve seen a general softening in manufacturing activity over the past three months, with the outlook for investment becoming more subdued,<2C> the CBI<42>s chief economist, Rain Newton-Smith, said. However, the Bank of England is likely to home in on the fact that firms said they were working at their closest to full capacity since October 1997, as it considers whether to raise interest rates next week. <20>While October<65>s survey was disappointingly weak, it doesn<73>t change the picture of the manufacturing sector on course for a better performance than in recent years,<2C> Andrew Wishart of Capital Economics said. The Bank fears domestic inflation pressures are likely to increase due to capacity constraints - partly due to the effect of Brexit on immigration - and the CBI said firms reported the biggest shortage of unskilled labour since July 2004. Earlier on Monday, it emerged that the CBI and four other major business organisations are drafting a letter urging Britain<69>s government to secure urgently a Brexit transition deal or risk losing jobs and investment. Quarterly data published by the CBI alongside the monthly factory orders figures showed businesses plan to invest in new buildings at the slowest rate since July 2009. However, plans for investment in machinery, research and development and staff training were at or above past average levels. Overall, optimism about the business situation was its weakest since just after last year<61>s Brexit vote. Reporting by David Milliken'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-manufacturing-cbi/uk-cbi-factory-order-growth-slows-to-11-month-low-idUKKBN1CS14U'|'2017-10-23T13:03:00.000+03:00'
'2d32237bd679e595f434ecd409a7b8d5c7aa0b57'|'Oil stable on slightly tighter market, strong demand'|'October 23, 2017 / 1:04 AM / Updated an hour ago Oil stable on slightly tighter market, strong demand Henning Gloystein 4 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices were stable on Monday, supported by supply concerns in the Middle East and declining U.S. drilling activity, although analysts warned that the United States market may not be tightening by as much as expected. A rainbow is seen over a pumpjack during sunset outside Scheibenhard, near Strasbourg, France, October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann Brent crude futures LCOc1 were at $57.75 at 0710 GMT, unchanged from their last close. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 was at $51.92 per barrel, up 8 cents, or 0.14 percent. <20>Oil prices are holding comfortably above $50 as possible supply disruptions in the Kurdish region of Iraq support prices,<2C> said William O<>Loughlin, analyst at Rivkin Securities. <20>U.S. production was also recently impacted by a hurricane for the second time in as many months and the number of U.S. drilling rigs declined for the third week in a row,<2C> O<>Loughlin said. The amount of U.S. oil rigs drilling for new production fell by seven to 736 in the week to Oct. 20, the lowest level since June, energy services firm Baker Hughes said on Friday. RIG-OL-USA-BHI Some analysts warned, however, that the U.S. market may not be tightening by as much as expected. <20>The decline in drilling should only be temporary as oil prices have risen significantly since June. And the fall in actual production was also temporary due to hurricanes,<2C> said Carsten Fritsch of Germany<6E>s Commerzbank. Outside the United States, flows from Iraq were reduced due to fighting between government forces and Kurdish groups while production is being withheld as part of a pact between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-OPEC producers to tighten the market. Going forward, traders said much will depend on demand. China<6E>s oil demand remains voracious, hitting a January to September average of 8.5 million barrels per day (bpd). <20>Three main factors are driving China<6E>s insatiable appetite for crude: declining domestic production, increased access to imports and exports for independent refiners, and building up the strategic petroleum reserve,<2C> Britain<69>s Barclays bank said. In India, September oil imports hit a record 4.83 million barrels per day (bpd), up 4.2 percent from this time last year and about 19 percent more than in August, ship-tracking data from industry sources and Thomson Reuters Analytics showed. Given the tightening oil market conditions, many analysts expect prices to rise further. <20>We will see oil prices higher by 10 percent by the end of the year. We have started to accumulate strong positions within the oil sector,<2C> said Shane Chanel, equities and derivatives adviser at ASR Wealth Advisers. Despite the tightening market and recent price rises, market volatility has been low. The crude oil volatility index .OVX, which measures market expectations for 30-day price volatility, fell to levels similar of 2014 last Friday. < GRAPHIC: U.S. oil rig count reut.rs/2xWLanL GRAPHIC: Crude Oil Volatility Index (OVX) reut.rs/2l6GXb4'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-oil/oil-prices-rise-on-tightening-supply-strong-demand-idUKKBN1CS036'|'2017-10-23T10:19:00.000+03:00'
'cd8860da18e0a59c76b5f1cfccb23a385e37410b'|'Solar costs to fall further, powering global demand - Irena'|'SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Solar power costs will fall by another 60 percent over the next decade giving an already booming market another boost, the head of the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) said on Monday.FILE PHOTO: A solar installer from Baker Electric installs a solar panel on the roof of a residential home in Scripps Ranch, San Diego, California, U.S. October 14, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo Solar power is in the midst of boom because of sharp drops in costs and efficiency improvements, pushing global capacity from virtually zero at the start of the century to 300 gigawatt (GW) by the end of 2016, a figure expected to rise again by 2020.Irena expects 80 to 90 GW of new solar capacity, enough to power more than 8 billion LED light bulbs, to be added globally each year over the next 5 to 6 years, Adnan Amin, the director general of Irena told Reuters, exceeding a forecast of 73 GW from the International Energy Agency (IEA).<2E>This could easily accelerate as costs decline in the future,<2C> said Amin. <20>China alone can do 50 GW a year.<2E><>In the next decade, the cost of (utility scale) solar could fall by 60 percent or more,<2C> he said in Singapore on Monday.That growth will mark China as the world<6C>s biggest and fastest growing solar market as Beijing relies on renewable power to cut air pollution from coal-fired power plants.While Amin said that India would also see sharp solar growth in coming years, he expected Southeast Asia to be more mixed.<2E>There is a target of 23 percent (power generation) in ASEAN for renewables by 2025. We think it<69>s ambitious but it<69>s achievable,<2C> he said.The solar power share of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations<6E> (ASEAN) 10 members is currently negligible.Amin said improvements in solar technology were especially expected from thin films, which can be applied on windows. While this is already possible, it remains prohibitively expensive.Irena also expects the cost of batteries, key to back up a technology that relies on daytime, to fall by 60 percent to 70 percent in the next decade.Despite its boom, Amin said potential U.S. trade barriers would only make solar energy more costly for the world<6C>s largest oil consumer.U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to announce by early next year whether to take measures to limit imports after the U.S. International Trade Commission found in September that domestic panel makers had been harmed by cheap imports.<2E>It<49>s not always the best strategy to try to protect your industry and have high prices. Because in the long-term what you want to do is drive down the cost of energy,<2C> Amin said.Reporting by Florence Tan; Editing by Henning Gloystein and Christian Schmollinger '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/singapore-energy-solar/solar-costs-to-fall-further-powering-global-demand-irena-idINKBN1CS13C'|'2017-10-23T12:48:00.000+03:00'
'851b3e980836e23986282990204006444c95f2bc'|'SoFi held sale talks, but bidders balked at $8 billion price - newspaper'|'October 22, 2017 / 9:35 PM / in an hour SoFi held sale talks, but bidders balked at $8 billion price: newspaper Alwyn Scott 2 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Social Finance Inc discussed a potential sale earlier this year, including with financial services company Charles Schwab Corp ( SCHW.N ), but the talks fell apart over the $8 billion price the online lender sought, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter. The San Francisco-based company known as SoFi began sales talks after a foreign bank made a $6 billion <20>indicative offer,<2C> the newspaper said, citing two sources. The offer came shortly after a $500 million funding round in February led by investment firm Silver Lake, the newspaper said. The round valued SoFi at about $4.3 billion, ranking it among the most valuable private tech startups in the United States. SoFi then held talks with other potential buyers, seeking a price between $8 billion and $10 billion, but the bidders were not willing to meet that price, the newspaper said. SoFi declined to comment. Schwab did not immediately respond to a request for comment. SoFi Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Mike Cagney resigned last month after the company began investigating allegations that employees were sexually harassed at work. A series of top-level executives have left SoFi this year, including Chief Financial Officer Nino Fanlo, Chief Revenue Officer Michael Tannenbaum and Chief Technology Officer June Ou. Earlier this month SoFi said it would withdraw its application for a bank license following the senior leaders<72> departures. The license had been part of the company<6E>s efforts to expand beyond its core business of student loans and unsecured personal loans. Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-sofi-talks/sofi-held-sale-talks-but-bidders-balked-at-8-billion-price-newspaper-idUKKBN1CR0W7'|'2017-10-23T00:33:00.000+03:00'
'3d2d46ef32a9c268cf97f469e599c73c07565c71'|'Smiths Group agrees 207 million stg pension scheme insurance deal'|'October 20, 2017 / 6:40 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago Smiths Group agrees 207 million pound pension scheme insurance deal Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Engineering company Smiths Group ( SMIN.L ) said on Friday it had agreed a deal to insure 207 million pounds of its pension scheme with Canada Life. Under the so-called <20>buy-in bulk annuity<74> deal, the insurer will take on some of the risk of the pension scheme, which remains with the company. <20>Our sustained focus... on de-risking the company<6E>s pension liabilities has reduced volatility and has led to significantly lower funding obligations going forward - freeing up capital for Smiths to invest in growth opportunities,<2C> Chief Financial Officer Bill Seeger said. Across Smiths Group<75>s two main UK schemes about 1.5 billion pounds of liabilities have now been insured, it said. Smiths Group is the latest of several British companies to announce bulk annuity deals which cut the risk of them struggling to fund their employees<65> retirement schemes. Publisher Pearson ( PSON.L ) said on Tuesday it had agreed a deal to insure a third of its pension scheme liabilities totalling 1.2 billion pounds with Legal & General ( LGEN.L ) and Aviva ( AV.L ). Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Rachel Armstrong'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-smiths-group-pensions/smiths-group-agrees-207-million-stg-pension-scheme-insurance-deal-idUKKBN1CP0IZ'|'2017-10-20T09:39:00.000+03:00'
'8bac1fddff41708992593c88d11d3573100a0402'|'AIA Group''s new business climbs 20 percent helped by China, Hong Kong'|'Reuters TV United States October 19, 2017 / 11:54 PM / in 3 minutes AIA Group''s new business climbs 20 percent helped by China, Hong Kong Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FILE PHOTO: The logo of AIA is displayed at its office in Hong Kong, China February 24, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo (Reuters) - AIA Group Ltd ( 1299.HK ), the world<6C>s third-largest life insurer by market value, clocked a 20 percent increase in new business in the third quarter aided by strong sales in its main markets of China and Hong Kong. China and Hong Kong together account for about half of new business growth globally at AIA, originally founded in Shanghai nearly 100 years ago and the first foreign insurer to be granted a license in China. AIA said the value of new business, which measures expected profits from new premiums and is a key gauge for future growth, rose to $824 million in the quarter, just ahead of an average estimate of $813 million from three analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Shares in AIA were, however, down 2.3 percent in Hong Kong morning trade, bucking the broader rising market. The stock has gained as much as 32 percent in the last three quarters. FILE PHOTO: A ferry sails at Victoria Harbour in front of the financial Central district, featuring AIA Central (C) and Cheung Kong Center behind it, in Hong Kong, China February 17, 2016. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo The Hong Kong insurer last month agreed to buy the insurance unit of Commonwealth Bank of Australia ( CBA.AX ) for $3.1 billion, in the biggest Asian buyout of an Australian financial firm. The acquisition will help AIA, which had free surplus cash of nearly $11 billion as of end May, diversify its main markets with Hong Kong and China together accounting for about half of new business growth now at the insurer. The insurer<65>s regional business presence also includes Thailand Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea. AIA, which listed in Hong Kong in 2010 after a spin-off from bailed-out U.S. insurer AIG, said China continued to be the insurer<65>s fastest growing business in the third quarter while Hong Kong delivered double-digit new business growth. Asia is a battleground for insurers such as AIA, Sun Life Financial ( SLF.TO ) and a host of local players attracted by the region<6F>s lower insurance penetration levels and faster growth rates for insurance premiums than in the Western markets. Reporting by Shashwat Pradhan in Bengaluru and Sumeet Chatterjee in Hong Kong; Editing by Stephen Coates and Edwina Gibbs 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-aia-results/aia-groups-new-business-climbs-20-percent-idUKKBN1CO3BR'|'2017-10-20T05:16:00.000+03:00'
'3970fecaf724ddf22d9a990ab4e4b71793d6fa33'|'UK business minister travels to Canada for talks on Bombardier deal'|'LONDON (Reuters) - British Business Secretary Greg Clark will hold talks in Canada on Friday to discuss Airbus SE<53>s plans to buy a majority stake in Bombardier<65>s C-Series jetliner program aimed at helping it avoid high U.S. import tariffs.A Bombardier CSeries aircraft is pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau Clark will meet with Canadian government officials and executives from the two manufacturers, according to a spokeswoman for the ministry for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.A deal announced earlier this week gives Airbus ( AIR.PA ) a controlling stake in the Canadian manufacturer<65>s troubled C-Series jets, which are partly made in Northern Ireland.The tie up gives Bombardier ( BBDb.TO ) a possible way out of a damaging trade dispute with Boeing ( BA.N ), in which the U.S. Commerce Department has threatened to impose 300 percent import duties, potentially threatening thousands of jobs in Northern Ireland.Under the deal, Airbus would take a 50.01 percent stake in the C Series and add an assembly line for the plane in Alabama, thus becoming a U.S.-made product so it can avoid anti-subsidy and anti-dumping duties.The Boeing-Bombardier dispute has snowballed into a bigger multilateral trade dispute, with British Prime Minister Theresa May wading into the debate and asking U.S. President Donald Trump to intervene in order save British jobs.Bombardier is the largest manufacturing employer in Northern Ireland, which is the poorest of the United Kingdom<6F>s four nations and remains mired in political sensitivities after emerging from decades of armed sectarian conflict.Clark and Northern Irish politicians had welcomed the Airbus deal and promised to work with the firms to protect the workforce in the province. Bombardier makes the C-Series CS100 and CS300 state-of-the-art carbon wings at a plant in Belfast.Reporting By Andrew MacAskill and Costas Pitas; editing by Michael Holden '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-bombardier-airbus-britain/uk-business-minister-travels-to-canada-for-talks-on-bombardier-deal-idINKBN1CP0WV'|'2017-10-20T06:58:00.000+03:00'
'4125b625c94ffc5d9b75cf66b29b9bb4d2a79440'|'A property billionaire rescues Harvey Weinstein<69>s studio'|'AS DISTRESSED assets go, the Weinstein Company (TWC) is uniquely distressing. Much of its value was bound up in the brands of its eponymous founding brothers, one of whom, Harvey Weinstein, has been accused of sexual harassment and of assault by dozens of women in the film industry in America and elsewhere. Amazon Studios, Apple and some television networks have hastened to cut ties with the studio, unwind production deals and remove Mr Weinstein<69>s name from credits. Mr Weinstein<69>s accusers may well sue the company. It was already heavily indebted after a recent string of box-office flops.Who would see an opportunity? Aside from TWC<57>s particular troubles, independent films are a tough business, and the studio has had to haggle with creditors. But for a vulture investor some of the studio<69>s assets hold value. On October 16th Thomas Barrack (pictured above), chairman of Colony Capital, a private-equity firm, said he would immediately put an undisclosed sum of cash into TWC and look at buying part or all of it. Mr Barrack, a 70-year-old property investor who is a friend of President Donald Trump and who has served as the chairman of Mr Trump<6D>s inaugural committee, has experience swooping in for high-profile distressed assets. In 2008 his firm acquired Michael Jackson<6F>s Neverland ranch. Colony also put up millions to rescue Annie Leibovitz, a photographer known for her work with celebrities, from financial trouble. Still, some see the potential acquisition as a bail-out for the Weinsteins, who own more than two-fifths of the studio. Harvey Weinstein, who was fired from running the company on October 8th, has now given up his board seat, and Bob Weinstein, who now faces a single accusation of sexual harassment (and denies the allegation), may be on his way out. Making no direct reference to the scandal engulfing the studio, Mr Barrack said Colony would help return TWC to <20>its rightful iconic position in the independent film and television industry<72>.He is certainly familiar with TWC<57>s assets, which comprise its film library as well as a slate of films and television projects. In 2010 his firm participated in the purchase of Miramax Films, the Weinstein brothers<72> predecessor film company, from Disney for $660m. According to a Hollywood producer familiar with both firms, Miramax<61>s new owners could not develop projects based on many of their successful old titles, like <20>Shakespeare in Love<76> and <20>Bad Santa<74>, without the consent of the Weinstein brothers, who had produced them. Miramax and TWC entered into complicated development agreements, but little of significance has come from them thus far (<28>Bad Santa 2<> was made, and flopped on its release last year, failing to earn back its budget). The two also share production rights to some television properties, including Project Runway, a reality competition around fashion.Combining Miramax and TWC into one entity would clear up rights issues for both companies. Mr Barrack no longer has a stake in Miramax, as Colony and its fellow investors sold the studio last year to beIN Media Group, a sports media company based in Qatar, for an undisclosed sum. Mr Barrack may buy TWC as a short-term salvage job in order to sell it to Miramax<61>s current owner, or he could break the company into pieces, splitting off, for example, the television production business, and sell them off individually. Whatever happens to the business now, the Weinstein name will not be on it. "Into the frame"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/news/business/21730476-tom-barrack-has-promised-restore-weinstein-company-its-rightful-iconic-position?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-19T22:56:00.000+03:00'
'8854138287b5d8abfd92c405a882f9daf18442b4'|'John Lewis winning in challenging market, boss says'|'October 20, 2017 / 4:46 PM / in 16 minutes John Lewis winning in challenging market, boss says James Davey 3 Min Read OXFORD, England (Reuters) - John Lewis, Britain<69>s largest department store operator, is outperforming a challenging market as it approaches the key Christmas trading period, its boss said on Friday. Clothing is displayed inside the new John Lewis store in Westgate shopping centre in Oxford, Britain, October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Eddie Keogh British consumers<72> discretionary spending is under pressure from rising inflation, subdued wage growth and ongoing uncertainty in the UK economy. <20>Consumer confidence is in quite a challenged place ... It is not a market for the faint-hearted at the moment,<2C> said Paula Nickolds, the company<6E>s managing director. <20>But I think we are really well-placed and believe we are outperforming.<2E> Speaking at a media preview tour of John Lewis<69> new Oxford location, the chain<69>s 49th store, Nickolds said official UK retail sales data for October would look <20>pretty grim<69>. UK retail sales volumes fell 0.8 percent in September, worse than economists expected. <20>We believe we<77>re trading about a couple of (percentage) points higher than the market,<2C> she said. John Lewis said on Tuesday its sales rose 2.7 percent in the 11 weeks to Oct. 14, which analysts estimated equated to a like-for-like rise of about 1.5 percent. John Lewis typically makes more than 40 percent of its annual profit in the five weeks until Christmas. Nickolds said the company was <20>really well set up<75> for that period. Clothing is displayed inside the new John Lewis store in Westgate shopping centre in Oxford, Britain, October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Eddie Keogh Nickolds, a John Lewis veteran and the first woman to run the 152-year-old, employee-owned chain, succeeded Andy Street as managing director in January. <20>In my 25 years in retail I<>ve never seen the pace of change and the level of transformation and disruption that we<77>re experiencing at the moment,<2C> she said. Slideshow (3 Images) She is increasingly focusing on adding more experiences and services to John Lewis stores. The Oxford store, which opens on Tuesday, devotes a fifth of its 120,000 square feet of floorspace to services and experiences, ranging from travel advice to eye tests and children<65>s car-fitting advice. John Lewis has invested 18 million pounds in the store. Nickolds also added her voice to business leaders<72> calls for clarity over Britain<69>s exit from the European Union in 2019. <20>I would like us to have clarity because it would definitely help us to plan,<2C> she said. <20>We are preparing for every eventuality. It<49>s not clear what <20>no deal<61> really means any more than it<69>s clear what a deal might mean.<2E> Editing by Larry King'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-john-lewis-outlook/john-lewis-winning-in-challenging-market-boss-says-idUKKBN1CP29U'|'2017-10-20T19:50:00.000+03:00'
'beb83eef394e1051cecce0fec330054ecadacc25'|'EU opens investigation into Chinese e-bike imports'|' 17 AM / Updated 4 minutes ago EU opens investigation into Chinese e-bike imports Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission on Friday launched an investigation into the import of electronic bikes (e-bikes) from China after European producers complained that they are being sold at excessively low prices with the help of unfair subsidies. The European Bicycle Manufacturers Association (EBMA) lodged its complaint in September, saying that Chinese companies were flooding the EU market at prices sometimes below the cost of production. The Commission, which oversees trade policy among the EU<45>s 28 member states, said in a filing in the EU<45>s official journal there was sufficient evidence to justify the start of an anti-dumping investigation. It would be concluded within 15 months. The EBMA is also preparing a related complaint alleging illegal subsidies and asking for registration of Chinese e-bike imports, which could allow eventual duties to be backdated. Such an investigation would be the latest in a string of probes into Chinese exports ranging from solar panels to steel and could raise trade tensions with Beijing, particularly with a subsidy inquiry into the support provided by the Chinese state. China<6E>s commerce ministry said it would defend its companies<65> interests and urged the EU to respect World Trade Organization rules, telling the EU not to let its investigation lead to protectionism. Bicycles have already been a flashpoint. The EU accused China last December for scuttling a global environmental trade deal by insisting that bicycles be included as a tariff-free green product. Chinese conventional bicycles have been subject to EU anti-dumping duties since 1993. The EBMA said more than 430,000 Chinese e-bikes were sold in the EU in 2016, a 40 percent increase on the previous year, and forecasts the figure will rise to around 800,000 in 2017. The group said European companies had pioneered the pedal-assist technology that e-bikes use and had invested about 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) last year, but was risking losing its industry to China. Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; editing by Mark Heinrich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-china-bicycles/eu-opens-investigation-into-chinese-e-bike-imports-idUKKBN1CP17F'|'2017-10-20T13:15:00.000+03:00'
'4c4b3ed7f9224f0d9586fa2cb913353b5d88bd37'|'China to step up regulations on micro-credit industry - media'|'October 21, 2017 / 7:06 AM / Updated 8 hours ago China to step up regulations on micro-credit industry - media Reuters Staff 2 Min Read SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China is considering tightening controls over the <20>pay-day<61> loan industry amid concerns that unscrupulous operators may charge millions of borrowers excessive interest rates, the official Securities Daily reported. The successful initial public offering (IPO) of Chinese online micro-credit provider Qudian Inc ( QD.N ), which raised about $900 million (<28>682.43 million) in New York, has encouraged many such platforms to plan their own IPOs on Wall Street, the newspaper reported. The firm, backed by Alibaba Group ( BABA.N ) affiliate Ant Financial, runs a mobile platform that allows college students and young workers to borrow amounts as low as $60 to buy clothes, concert tickets or smartphones. But the paper said many operators have taken advantage of regulatory loopholes to charge excessively high interest rates. Citing industry insiders, it said new industry rules could emerge within six months. Household debt has emerged as one of China<6E>s biggest challenges, and was estimated to have reached around 50 percent of its gross domestic product last year, more than doubling in less than a decade. Reporting by Luoyan Liu and David Stanway; Editing by Kim Coghill'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-debt/china-to-step-up-regulations-on-micro-credit-industry-media-idUKKBN1CQ06B'|'2017-10-21T10:05:00.000+03:00'
'9c769e8c1cc89cbb9cd6a1a8b29978604445e0b4'|'Air Berlin carve-up talks to continue over weekend: CEO'|'BERLIN (Reuters) - Talks over Air Berlin<69>s ( AB1.DE ) remaining assets will continue over the weekend, with the goal of presenting a proposal to the insolvent German carrier<65>s creditors on Tuesday, Air Berlin Chief Executive Thomas Winkelmann said.FILE PHOTO: A Lufthansa airliner taxis next to the Air Berlin aircraft at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke Air Berlin filed for insolvency in August and is being carved up among several buyers. Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) has already agreed to buy large parts of Air Berlin.The group had set a Friday deadline for exclusive talks to sell up to 25 A320 aircraft to Britain<69>s easyJet ( EZJ.L ) as well as to find a buyer for Air Berlin<69>s cargo marketing businesses and aircraft maintenance businesses.Several people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday that family-owned firm Zeitfracht and maintenance group Nayak were together poised to strike a deal to buy the cargo marketing platform and maintenance units.Lufthansa said on Friday that it may remain a major customer to the maintenance business after it has been sold, which is positive news for any possible buyer.<2E>If there is a buyer, we will of course try to continue booking capacity at Air Berlin Technik or its successor organization as much as possible,<2C> Lufthansa board member Thorsten Dirks said.Dirks, who is also chief executive of Lufthansa<73>s budget unit Eurowings, said the group had discussed the matter with parties interested in the maintenance business as well as with Air Berlin<69>s administrator.The maintenance unit has around 850 full-time equivalent positions, or around 1,200 staff.Reporting by Klaus Lauer; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Tom Sims/Jeremy Gaunt '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-lufthansa/air-berlin-carve-up-talks-to-continue-over-weekend-ceo-idINKBN1CP1OU'|'2017-10-20T11:13:00.000+03:00'
'05828d82fd1f4dac8183023b11d6dd699b316f05'|'Saudi Aramco<63>s IPO is a mess'|'THE proposal to sell shares in Saudi Aramco, the world<6C>s biggest oil company, stunned the financial markets last year. Muhammad bin Salman, now Saudi Arabia<69>s crown prince, promised that it would be the biggest initial public offering (IPO) of all time, valuing Aramco at $2trn. It was to be the centrepiece of his plan to transform the Saudi economy, reducing its dependence on oil. It was meant to foster financial transparency and accountability in one of the world<6C>s most hermetic kingdoms. Above all, it would cement the young prince<63>s image as a bold moderniser soon to inherit the throne.Alas, youthful impatience appears to have got the better of him. His tendency to micromanage the IPO and vacillate over where Aramco should be listed has caused delay and confusion. Matters came to a head this week when advisers, speaking anonymously, and company executives doing the same, gave conflicting reports, suggesting a mutinous atmosphere. The kingdom<6F>s advisers say privately that the decision to list in New York or London has been postponed, and that the plan <20>for now<6F> is to issue shares on Riyadh<64>s puny Tadawul exchange, with a private placement possibly to Chinese investors. But Khalid al-Falih, the oil minister and Aramco<63>s chairman, insisted the IPO would go ahead at home and abroad next year as originally planned. Company officials scorn the idea of listing only on the Tadawul, which would be swamped by an Aramco IPO.The confusion appears to have originated from the royal palace. From the outset, MBS, as the crown prince is known, has insisted that the firm should be valued at no less than $2trn, and that the IPO should happen next year. He had not fully appreciated either the threat of lawsuits related to the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 that could result from listing on the New York Stock Exchange, or the complexities of issuing shares on the London Stock Exchange, where institutional investors are angry about efforts to water down listing rules for Aramco. He wrongly assumed that, given the huge fees promised to bankers and advisers, other actors in the world of finance would bend the knee.Listing initially on the Tadawul only, as well as doing a private placement, may be a misguided attempt by MBS to skirt some of these difficulties, advisers say. It is seen as a way to promote the Saudi capital markets, and avoid the impression of selling off the family silver to foreigners. But with a limited pool of capital in the kingdom, some say a listing there could never raise the $100bn that MBS needs for his so-called Public Investment Fund to bankroll non-oil investments in the country.Advisers say the kingdom is also considering recent expressions of interest by Chinese oil companies and other Asian investors, who are keen to take up to a 5% stake in Aramco. The attraction is that it would further cement ties between the world<6C>s biggest producer and huge consumers of oil. But it would be unlikely to give the crown prince the $2trn valuation he wants, unless he guarantees large supplies of cheap oil as a side deal.The confusion is uncomfortable for Aramco, which, as national oil companies go, should be an attractive bet for investors. It has 15 times more reserves of oil and gas than ExxonMobil, its biggest private competitor, higher production, fewer employees and lower costs per barrel. It also has an abundance of young (including many female) engineers, and technology that can almost visualise the sea of oil beneath the desert sands. Its executives say that efficiencies inherited from the days that it was American-owned persist. Many Aramcons, as company officials are known, appear to view the IPO as an unwelcome distraction, but are at least mollified by the prestige they think an international listing would confer.To achieve that goal, MBS may need to reflect further on what an IPO means. His government is Aramco<63>s only shareholder and should, of course, have the final say. But unless he is prepared to loosen the reins, allow the IPO
'933ce3167a1b7f5efe6ac0b5f94cde2e164f8ac9'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX near eight-month high on broad-based gains'|' 59 PM / in 8 minutes CANADA STOCKS-TSX near eight-month high on broad-based gains Reuters Staff * TSX up 58.21 points, or 0.37 percent, to 15,876.21 * Consumer staples the only declining sector on the index TORONTO, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index was broadly higher on Friday, touching its strongest level in nearly eight months, as rail companies, banks and miners led gains. At 10:38 a.m. ET (1438 GMT), the Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index rose 58.21 points, or 0.37 percent, to 15,876.21. It reached as high as 15,879.34, the highest level since Feb. 23. Consumer staples, home to grocers and other food producers, was the only declining group among the index<65>s 10 key sectors, slipping 0.2 percent. The retreat in consumer staples stocks come as retail sales data for August showed an unexpected fall, led by a 2.5 percent drop at food and beverage stores. Financial stocks, which make up about a third of the index<65>s weight and can drive direction even when individual stock moves are modest, gained 0.5 percent. Canada<64>s four largest banks were among the top 10 most influential advancing stocks, with most making gains under 0.6 percent. Canadian Pacific Railway extended its gains this week after reporting better than expected third-quarter profit late on Tuesday, and was up another 2.0 percent to C$225.35. Canadian National Railway advanced 0.7 percent to C$103.38. The overall industrials sector rose 0.8 percent. The materials group, which includes mining and other resource firms, added 0.8 percent as nickel prices hit a six-week high and copper prices remained above $7,000 a tonne. Teck Resources Ltd rallied 3.5 percent to C$28.76. New Gold Inc jumped 5 percent to C$4.685 after Canaccord Genuity raised its rating and target price. On the down side, Klondex Mines Ltd fell 8.9 percent to C$4.01 after the company reported third quarter production results. DHX Media Ltd plunged 11.3 percent to C$4. Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the TSX by 159 to 83, for a 1.92-to-1 ratio on the upside. The index was posting 15 new 52-week highs and 5 new lows. (Reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks/canada-stocks-tsx-near-eight-month-high-on-broad-based-gains-idUSL2N1MV0Y9'|'2017-10-20T22:59:00.000+03:00'
'80ecab62a70b4807dfbfc80e48e9d8e1b15053ef'|'Airbus CSeries deal unlikely to spur quick boost in sales -Air Lease CEO'|'Reuters TV United States October 19, 2017 / 8:55 PM / in 5 hours Airbus CSeries deal unlikely to spur quick boost in sales: Air Lease CEO Allison Lampert 3 Min Read A Bombardier CSeries aircraft is pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau MONTREAL (Reuters) - Airbus SE<53>s deal with Bombardier ( BBDb.TO ) boosts confidence in the CSeries jet program but may not spur many new sales until it is finalized and a U.S. trade dispute is resolved, the head of a major aircraft leasing firm said on Thursday. Airbus ( AIR.PA ) on Monday agreed to take a majority stake in the CSeries program, securing the plane<6E>s future and giving the Canadian firm a possible way out of a damaging trade dispute with Boeing ( BA.N ) and U.S. regulators. The lightweight, carbon-composite jet, which cost $6 billion to develop, has won performance accolades but failed to secure a sale in 18 months. <20>People are feeling better about the CSeries but it<69>s all on the expectation that Airbus concludes the transaction,<2C> said John Plueger, the chief executive officer of Air Lease Corp ( AL.N ). The deal is subject to Canadian government approval. Bombardier is counting on the agreement to help trim costs and boost CSeries sales. Its strategy to remove the <20>cloud<75> of uncertainty that has weighed on CSeries orders, is dependent in part on making jets for American customers like Delta Air Lines ( DAL.N ) at Airbus<75>s Alabama production facility, instead of in Canada where Bombardier is based. That could avoid potentially punitive duties stemming from its dispute with Boeing over alleged unfair trade practices. <20>That cloud is still there until the transaction concludes.(but) that cloud is perhaps not as dark or as ominous,<2C> Plueger said. He declined to say whether Air Lease Corp, which has total assets of $15 billion, would now consider buying the CSeries. But he noted that leasing companies would likely hold off until the CSeries had enough orders to ensure strong resale value for the plane. <20>Part of the life and blood measurement of any airplane is how deep is the operator base,<2C> Plueger said in a phone interview from New York. Plueger also said the deal with Airbus may drive Boeing to take another look at the 100 to 149 seat space and at least contemplate an alliance with an existing planemaker, to ratchet up competition. Brazil<69>s Embraer ( EMBR3.SA ) which competes with Bombardier in the smaller regional jets market, is one strong possibility, he said. <20>The question is does Boeing rethink Embraer?<3F> Plueger asked. <20>It will depend upon their assessment of how much additional market presence this brings to Airbus.<2E> Reporting by Allison Lampert; Editing by Tom Brown 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-bombardier-airbus-boeing/airbus-cseries-deal-unlikely-to-spur-quick-boost-in-sales-air-lease-ceo-idUKKBN1CO31H'|'2017-10-19T23:51:00.000+03:00'
'019ac996f0ffffb85e637f3f7e4555ec53f776ae'|'A geopolitical row with China damages South Korean business further'|'IN A cosmetics emporium in central Seoul, rows of snail-slime face-masks sit untouched. Not long ago, visiting Chinese tourists would snap these up as avidly as a designer handbag in New York or anything from London featuring the Queen. Yet now their rejuvenating properties are failing to lure the country<72>s shoppers. Seo Sung-hae, a salesman, says business has slowed to a snail<69>s pace, because of a drop in the number of Chinese visitors. <20>We used to have 100 customers a day, but after THAAD, there are almost none,<2C> he says.THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defence, is an American missile-defence system designed to guard against North Korea that was installed in South Korea starting in March. Chinese authorities protest that its radar could be used to spy on its territory. Chinese newspapers have encouraged consumers to boycott South Korean goods. The plan was to <20>bully<6C> Korea into ditching THAAD, says Han Suk-hee of Yonsei University, who until April was South Korea<65>s consul-general in Shanghai.Latest updates Quebec<65>s ban on face-coverings risks inflaming inter-communal tensions Erasmus 37 minutes ago New 3 5 a day ago The See all updates Seven months on, the campaign has fallen short of that goal but has claimed a big corporate victim. On October 12th Lotte, a South Korean conglomerate, confirmed that it hopes to sell its Chinese hypermarkets by the end of the year. That marks a significant retreat for the firm, which had been trying to crack the market since 2008. The group employs about 20,000 people<6C>a third of its overseas staff<66>in China, and in 2015 registered 3trn won ($2.65bn) of sales there.It became a target after signing a deal in February with the South Korean government that allowed the defence ministry to use one of its golf courses as a base for the THAAD launchers. (Shin Dong-bin, its chairman, later said he had no choice but to comply). Chinese officials then closed 77 of the 99 Lotte Mart stores in China on pretexts such as breaches of fire-safety rules. The firm itself shut another 13 stores when customers stayed away. Sales in the second quarter slumped to 21bn won ($18.5m), down from 284bn won in the same period last year.South Korean cars, beauty products and even confectionery have been affected. Sales at Beijing Hyundai, jointly owned by the South Korean conglomerate and Chinese manufacturer BAIC Motor, dropped by two-fifths in the first eight months of the year. AmorePacific, a cosmetics firm in South Korea, reported a 58% dip in its second-quarter operating profits. The country<72>s tourism industry, too, has felt the pinch since group tours from China were banned in March. There were 87% fewer Chinese tourists on Jeju, a pretty island south of the peninsula, during this year<61>s harvest festival than in 2016. Korean businesses will lose $15.6bn of tourism revenue if the slump continues until next March, according to the Hyundai Research Institute, a think-tank funded by the conglomerate. Korean industries other than tourism could lose $8.3bn over the row, says the Korea Development Bank.Yet the boycott is being applied selectively. It favours some Chinese firms by penalising their South Korean competitors, while leaving manufacturers on the mainland free to continue importing the parts on which their businesses rely from other South Korean firms, notes Choi Pae-kun, an economist at Konkuk University in Seoul. Korean exports to China jumped by 23% in September compared with the same month last year, driven in part by surging demand for memory chips, many of which are made by Samsung.The row with China may obscure some failings of South Korean business. Carmakers<72> share of the Chinese market fell from 9% in 2014 to 7% in 2016, before the row. Partly due to competition from online retailers, Lotte Mart has been losing money in China since 2011. But the events of March were undoubtedly a turning point. Beijing Hyundai<61>s sales rose in January and February, but plunged by 65% in May. Lotte
'c0e71a38430c59cb35f7d0645838a7e42e32acb9'|'Rosneft''s Sechin says no watershed in oil market, U.S. shale oil a risk'|'October 19, 2017 / 10:59 AM / in 8 hours Rosneft''s Sechin says no watershed in oil market, U.S. shale oil a risk Oksana Kobzeva 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - Rosneft Chief Executive Igor Sechin attends a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia on June 2, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin/File Photo VERONA, Italy (Reuters) - A global deal to cut oil output has not led to a breakthrough on high inventory levels, while an expected rise in U.S. shale oil output may destabilize the market in 2018, the head of Russia<69>s Rosneft, Igor Sechin, said on Thursday. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other leading global oil producers led by Russia have agreed to cut their combined output by almost 1.8 million barrels per day to remove excessive oil from inventories and prop up prices. <20>The analysis shows that the announced goal of inventories stabilization has not been fully implemented and it is too early to talk about a watershed in the global market,<2C> Sechin told an industry forum in Verona on Thursday. Sechin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is known for his scepticism about OPEC<45>s ability to regulate the world oil market. Related Coverage Rosneft''s Sechin says no plans to buy rival Lukoil That global pact is aimed at reducing oil stock levels in leading industrialized countries to their five-year average. According to OPEC, stocks in September were about 160 million barrels above that average, which is down from 340 million in January. Oil prices have fallen by 50 percent since mid-2014, prompting energy companies to cut back on exploration and producers to curb production. The prices have stabilized above $50 per barrel, the level seen as <20>fair<69> by many producers. Sechin said the rebalancing of supply and demand is <20>fragile<6C> as U.S. shale oil production next year may significantly increase if oil prices stay relatively firm. <20>That<61>s why I think, we shouldn<64>t expect a jump in oil prices in nearest future,<2C> Sechin said. He also said that the global efforts to stabilize oil market are complicated by the lack of reliable information on inventories as well as on the oil supply and demand balance. <20>The key task here is to create a unified system of inventory measurement and removal of stock overhang,<2C> Sechin said. He said the expected initial public offering of Saudi Aramco may not be a <20>fully fledged international listing<6E> to due legal risks, but he did not elaborate. One option includes selling some stock immediately to so-called cornerstone investors, such as China, and then selling shares on the local bourse as well as an international stock exchange, with New York, London and Hong Kong in the running. <20>The scenarios of private share placement of local listing, which are being discussed today, unfortunately will not achieve the goals, which the organizers had initially set out,<2C> he said. Reporting by Oksana Kobzeva; Writing by Vladimir Soldatkin and Denis Pinchuk; Editing by Polina Devitt/Andrew Osborn/David Evans 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-rosneft-sechin/rosnefts-sechin-says-no-watershed-in-oil-market-u-s-shale-oil-a-risk-idUSKBN1CO1HD'|'2017-10-19T13:58:00.000+03:00'
'6c04c46fe8f2a30fde023bea9094cfacd2931fc3'|'ECB should decide next week to take foot off gas on QE - Nowotny'|'Reuters TV United States  30 AM / Updated 2 minutes ago ECB should decide next week to take foot off gas on QE: Nowotny Reuters Staff 1 Min Read VIENNA (Reuters) - The European Central Bank is likely to decide next week to ease its asset purchases while avoiding an abrupt cut in their volume, ECB policymaker Ewald Nowotny said on Friday. European Central Bank (ECB) Governing Council member and OeNB governor Ewald Nowotny addresses a news conference in Vienna, Austria, June 9, 2017. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger The ECB<43>s asset purchases are due to expire at the end of the year, and policymakers are set to decide on Oct. 26 whether to prolong them. They will have to reconcile the bloc<6F>s best growth run in a decade with an inflation rate expected to undershoot the bank<6E>s target of almost 2 percent for years. <20>The question (next week) will be whether the program should be continued at the current intensity or whether hitting the brakes is called for,<2C> Nowotny told an investment conference. <20>I think it would be dangerous to abruptly slam on the brakes. But I also think the ECB will slowly take its foot off the gas.<2E> Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Catherine Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-policy-nowotny/ecb-should-decide-next-week-to-take-foot-off-gas-on-qe-nowotny-idUKKBN1CP10M'|'2017-10-20T12:26:00.000+03:00'
'2e59f33e7815f0fe9bb2b6895c4492774b6d09e3'|'Chancellor asked to address lack of diversity at Bank of England - Business - The Guardian'|'Bank of England Chancellor asked to address lack of diversity at Bank of England Philip Hammond may be called to appear before Treasury select committee to tackle problem among Bank<6E>s senior staff The Bank of England has come under fire for a lack of gender and ethnic diversity among its senior staff. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA Bank of England Chancellor asked to address lack of diversity at Bank of England Philip Hammond may be called to appear before Treasury select committee to tackle problem among Bank<6E>s senior staff View more sharing options Friday 20 October 2017 09.45 BST First published on Friday 20 October 2017 06.01 BST The chancellor, Philip Hammond, may be called in front of an influential group of MPs to address concerns over a lack of diversity among the Bank of England <20>s most senior staff. Nicky Morgan , who chairs the Treasury select committee, has written to Hammond asking for confirmation that everything is being done to encourage gender and ethnic diversity among applicants for roles on the Bank<6E>s policy committees. <20>The Treasury must make all efforts to encourage as diverse range of candidates for the Bank<6E>s policy committees as possible,<2C> Morgan said. She raised the concerns as the committee confirmed the appointments of the two newest recruits to the Bank<6E>s rate-setting monetary policy committee, Silvana Tenreyro and Sir David Ramsden. Tenreyro is the only female member of the nine-strong committee. <20>We have approved both appointments,<2C> Morgansaid in the letter. <20>However, in considering these appointments, the committee discussed its wider concerns about the composition of the policy committees, and in particular about diversity at the most senior levels of the Bank of England . <20>The committee would be interested in taking evidence from you (or the most appropriate minister or senior official) on this shortly.<2E> There are no women among the 11 members on the Bank<6E>s financial policy committee, which is responsible for monitoring financial stability; only one woman is on the the Bank<6E>s 12-strong prudential regulation committee. Responding to Morgan<61>s letter to the chancellor, a spokesperson for the Treasury said: <20>We are pleased the Treasury committee has agreed to the appointments of Prof Silvana and Sir Dave. Our recruitment process is fair and open for senior appointments to the Bank of England but we recognise there is still more to do to improve diversity.<2E> Hammond is expected to write back to the Treasury committee in due course. The Bank of England declined to comment. At a Treasury committee hearing earlier this week , Mark Carney, the Bank<6E>s governor, said that when he arrived at Threadneedle Street, it took him <20>about five minutes<65> to figure out there were a lot more men than women in senior positions. He said the Bank was in the middle of a strategy to address that. The Treasury select committee has launched a separate inquiry into the barriers to women entering and progressing in the financial services industry. <20>More women than men are employed in the financial services sector, but female representation at senior levels has been historically low,<2C> Morgan said. <20>Gender diversity across job grades and functions delivers benefits to firms, society and the wider economy.<2E> Topics'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/20/chancellor-philip-hammond-asked-address-lack-of-diversity-bank-of-england'|'2017-10-20T13:01:00.000+03:00'
'cc84eb5153210097ec5de62317c09b2e44b6126a'|'London Mayor joins business demands for Brexit transition deal'|'October 23, 2017 / 8:20 AM / Updated 35 minutes ago London Mayor joins business demands for Brexit transition deal Kate Holton 4   London Mayor Sadiq Khan joined Britain<69>s business leaders in warning that companies would start moving jobs and investment out of the country if they do not get a transition deal soon, saying businesses were not bluffing with their concerns. Union Flags and European Union flags fly near the Elizabeth Tower, housing the Big Ben bell, during the anti-Brexit ''People''s March for Europe'', in Parliament Square in central London, Britain September 9, 2017. REUTERS/Tolga Akmen The boss of Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ) tweeted last week that he was looking forward to spending more time in Frankfurt after Brexit, and Britain<69>s five leading business organizations warned on Monday that the threat to the economy was becoming critical. <20>Just left Frankfurt. Great meetings, great weather, really enjoyed it. Good, because I<>ll be spending a lot more time there. #Brexit,<2C> CEO Lloyd Blankfein tweeted last Thursday. Khan, a member of the opposition Labour Party, said Blankfein<69>s comment reflected a wider thinking in the business community and warned that others would follow suit if a transition deal was not quickly agreed with Brussels. <20>He<48>s articulating publicly what many CEOs and investors who love working in London have been saying privately, which is that unless they have certainty about what happens after March 29, 2019, they have got to make a plan B,<2C> he said. <20>He<48>s not bluffing. When I speak to businesses each day, they<65>re not bluffing.<2E> Prime Minister Theresa May has promised to retain full access to the EU<45>s single market for two years after Brexit to limit the disruption for companies who do not know how they will trade with their neighbors in the future. However, leading Brexit campaigners have started to call on May to walk out of the talks if Brussels does not agree quickly to move on to discuss Britain<69>s future trading relationship, weighing on sterling and spooking businesses. May won a brief respite on Friday when EU leaders signaled they were ready to move the negotiations forward in the coming months. With tensions mounting, the five business groups which speak on behalf of companies employing millions of workers, have drawn up a letter to Brexit minister David Davis, warning that time is running out for companies which need to make investment decisions at the beginning of next year. <20>Agreement (on a transition) is needed as soon as possible, as companies are preparing to make serious decisions at the start of 2018, which will have consequences for jobs and investment in the UK,<2C> the draft letter says, according to a person familiar with the situation. <20>And the details of any transitional arrangement matter: the economic relationship the UK and EU has during this time-limited period must match as close as possible the status quo.<2E> The letter is due to be sent from Britain<69>s five leading business groups, the CBI, the British Chambers of Commerce, the Institute of Directors, the Federation of Small Businesses and the manufacturing group, the EEF. In a separate quarterly survey from the CBI, optimism about the business situation was shown to be at its weakest since just after last year<61>s Brexit vote. A spokeswoman from the Department for Exiting the European Union said the prime minister had said that an implementation period would help minimize disruption. <20>We are making real and tangible progress in a number of vital areas in negotiations,<2C> the department said. Reporting by Kate Holton,; Editing by Toby Chopra and Ed Osmond'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-business/uk-businesses-urge-government-to-reach-brexit-transition-deal-idUKKBN1CS0TK'|'2017-10-23T14:21:00.000+03:00'
'6903eb25d24fbdf7aed9d3b441151946675535a5'|'Tencent unit China Literature launches up to $1.1 billion HK IPO'|'October 23, 2017 / 3:12 AM / in 29 minutes Tencent unit China Literature launches up to $1.1 billion HK IPO Elzio Barreto 2 Min Read HONG KONG (Reuters) - China Literature Ltd, China<6E>s largest online publishing and e-book company, launched an initial public offering for up to $1.1 billion on Monday, seeking funds for acquisitions and to expand its digital publishing business. Tencent Holdings Ltd ( 0700.HK ) controls China Literature with a 62 percent stake. Private equity firm Carlyle Group LP ( CG.O ) owns 12.2 percent while Trustbridge Partners, a private equity firm founded by Shujun Li, the former CFO of Shanda Interactive, holds 6 percent. According to a term sheet for the IPO seen by Reuters, China Literature and some of its shareholders are offering 151.37 million shares in an indicative range of HK$48 to HK$55 each. The new shares will be equivalent to 16.7 percent of China Literature<72>s enlarged share capital, with its market capitalisation expected to be up to $6.4 billion. Tencent and China Literature did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment on the IPO terms. The China Literature IPO is the latest in a series of high-profile technology listings in Hong Kong. Last month, ZhongAn Online Property & Casualty Insurance Co<43>s ( 6060.HK ) hit the market with a $1.5 billion IPO. And in coming days, Razer Inc, a gaming hardware maker backed by Intel Corp ( INTC.O ) and Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, is set to launch an IPO for up to $600 million. China Literature has a business akin to Amazon.com Inc<6E>s ( AMZN.O ) Kindle Store, operating a platform with 9.6 million literary works from 6.4 million authors. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley were hired as sponsors for the IPO, with China International Capital Corp Ltd (CICC) and JPMorgan also working as joint global coordinators. Additional reporting by Fiona Lau of IFR; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tencent-holdings-china-literature-ipo/tencent-unit-china-literature-launches-up-to-1-1-billion-hk-ipo-idUKKBN1CS02M'|'2017-10-23T06:11:00.000+03:00'
'dda73dc996cf84977c4b1ff5f697e9485deae2f2'|'P&G''s profit rises on higher sales of home care products'|'Reuters TV United States October 20, 2017 / 11:19 AM / Updated 29 minutes ago P&G''s profit beats Wall Street on higher sales of beauty, home care Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble Co ( PG.N ), which recently declared victory in an historic proxy fight with activist investor Nelson Peltz, reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Friday but sales slightly missed Wall Street estimates. FILE PHOTO: A display of Pampers diapers are seen on sale in Denver February 16, 2017. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo The company, which houses more than 60 brands, saw higher sales of beauty products, fabric softeners and laundry detergents. The beauty business, which has the Olay brand, rose 5 percent helped by the rising popularity of its ultra-premium SK-II skincare products in Asia. Strong demand for Tide detergents and Febreze fragrances boosted sales at its Fabric and Home Care business by two percent. The unit is the largest contributor to sales. The company said it was maintaining its full-year organic sales and adjusted profit forecast, despite taking a $100 million hit from hurricanes that battered the southern United States. P&G expects organic sales to rise two to three percent for its fiscal year ending June 30, while it estimates core earnings per share growth of five to seven percent. Net income attributable to the company rose to $2.85 billion or $1.06 per share in the first quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with $2.71 billion, or 96 cents per share, a year ago. Excluding items, the company earned $1.09 per share, beating analysts<74> average estimates by 1 cent, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Net sales rose to $16.65 billion from $16.52 billion a year earlier, but were marginally below analysts<74> expectations of $16.69 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The Gillette razor maker<65>s shares were down about 0.8 percent in premarket trading on Friday, after rising nearly 9 percent this year. Reporting by Siddharth Cavale in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-proctergamble-results/pgs-profit-rises-on-higher-sales-of-home-care-products-idUKKBN1CP1DZ'|'2017-10-20T14:15:00.000+03:00'
'3e4bc0916b35e0af8d416f9a3ee5e49f5ef288e0'|'Pioneer to quadruple oil exports as shale surges - CEO'|'October 19, 2017 / 8:57 AM / in 12 minutes Pioneer to quadruple oil exports as shale surges - CEO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Pioneer Natural Resources will quadruple oil exports within a year, reflecting an expected surge in U.S. exports as shale output rises, Chief Executive Tim Dove said on Thursday. Pioneer, one of the largest oil producers in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico, exported three cargoes of 500,000 barrels of oil in the third quarter and is expected to ship four in the fourth quarter. The number is expected to rise to 13 cargoes by the same time next year, Dove told the Oil & Money conference. <20>As you look forward to the growth in the production of the light sweet (shale) oil, it will in fact all be exported,<2C> Dove said. Reporting by Ron Bousso; editing by Jason Neely 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-pioneer-natl-rsc-exports/pioneer-to-quadruple-oil-exports-as-shale-surges-ceo-idUKKBN1CO122'|'2017-10-19T11:57:00.000+03:00'
'b2f1516b31a1c2b9818d0ef7903a88e4fb6c4d7a'|'United Airlines shares tumble as fourth quarter guidance underwhelms'|'FILE PHOTO: A United Airlines jet takes off from Washington National Airport in Washington, DC, U.S. on August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo (Reuters) - United Airlines ( UAL.N ) shares fell sharply on Thursday, losing as much as 11.5 percent in midday trading as investors sold the carrier<65>s shares after it released disappointing forecasts for the fourth quarter. Shares of the third-largest U.S. airline were trading at around $60.10 following United<65>s quarterly earnings call, where executives faced pointed questions on the carrier<65>s forecast performance in the current quarter. <20>We have dug ourselves in a hole from a competitive perspective,<2C> Chief Executive Officer Oscar Munoz said in response to a grilling on the call with media and investors. The Chicago-based airline said it expects passenger revenue per available seat mile, a closely-watched measurement of an airline<6E>s performance, to decline by 1 percent to 3 percent in the current quarter, while many investors and analysts had expected growth. The carrier forecast its pre-tax margin would come in between 3 percent and 5 percent, falling below what many on Wall Street had predicted based on the fourth-quarter guidance of rival carrier Delta Air Lines ( DAL.N ). United<65>s fourth-quarter financials are up against a number of hurdles, including some holiday travel demand shifting from December to January, increased competition from ultra-low-cost carriers in some of their hubs, and finding equilibrium in capacity growth. United has had to sharply discount fares in some of its key markets because of creeping competition from low-cost rivals like Spirit Airlines ( SAVE.O ), Frontier Airlines and others. United on Wednesday said its third-quarter net income fell slightly less than investors had feared as the airline was hit by $185 million in pretax losses caused by canceled flights during the particularly severe Atlantic hurricane season. [nL2N1MT212] Higher fuel costs, a rocky rollout of the carrier<65>s tiered fare program and the lingering effects of hurricane season have also weighed on United<65>s bottom line, worrying investors and complicating the carrier<65>s financial outlook over the next few months. Reporting by Alana Wise, editing by G Crosse'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ual-stocks/united-airlines-shares-tumble-as-fourth-quarter-guidance-underwhelms-idUSKBN1CO2H0'|'2017-10-19T19:37:00.000+03:00'
'dccac42d7bfdae967df61b729f618d858fc877e1'|'Oil prices rise on tightening supply, strong demand'|'* U.S. oil rig count drops to lowest levels since June* Iraq supplies cut amid fighting between govt. forces, Kurds* India imports hit a new record in SeptemberBy Henning GloysteinSINGAPORE, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Oil prices rose on Monday over supply concerns in the Middle East and as the U.S. market showed further signs of tightening while demand in Asia keeps rising.Brent crude futures, the international benchmark for oil prices, were at $57.84 at 0056 GMT, up 9 cents, or 0.16 percent, from their last close.U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $52.03 per barrel, up 19 cents, or 0.37 percent.<2E>Oil prices are holding comfortably above $50 as possible supply disruptions in the Kurdish region of Iraq support prices,<2C> said William O<>Loughlin, investment analyst at Rivkin Securities.<2E>U.S. production was also recently impacted by a hurricane for the second time in as many months and the number of U.S. drilling rigs declined for the third week in a row,<2C> O<>Loughlin said.The amount of U.S. oil rigs drilling for new production fell by seven to 736 in the week to Oct. 20, the lowest level since June, General Electric Co<43>s Baker Hughes energy services firm said on Friday. RIG-OL-USA-BHIMuch will depend on demand to guide prices, with the U.S. market tightening, flows from Iraq reduced due to fighting between government forces and Kurdish militant groups, and production still being withheld as part of a pact between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-OPEC producers to tighten the market.In the main growth areas of Asia, consumption remains strong especially in China and India, the world<6C>s number one and three importers.India imported a record 4.83 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil in September as several refiners resumed operations after extensive maintenance to meet rising local fuel demand.The country<72>s September imports stood 4.2 percent above this time last year and about 19 percent more than in August, ship-tracking data from industry sources and Thomson Reuters Analytics showed.Given the tightening oil market conditions, many analysts expect prices to rise further.<2E>We will see oil prices higher by 10 percent by the end of the year. We have started to accumulate strong positions within the oil sector,<2C> said Shane Chanel, equities and derivatives adviser at ASR Wealth Advisers.Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/global-oil/oil-prices-rise-on-tightening-supply-strong-demand-idUSL4N1MY07U'|'2017-10-23T08:59:00.000+03:00'
'f1eace18b7bd89216ae9021b07380431a5a22b25'|'Apple sees its mobile devices as platform for artificial intelligence'|'October 23, 2017 / 2:05 PM / Updated 6 hours ago Apple sees its mobile devices as platform for artificial intelligence Jess Macy Yu 4 Min Read TAIPEI (Reuters) - Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) sees its mobile devices as a major platform for artificial intelligence in the future, Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams said on Monday. An Apple employee showcases the augmented reality on an iPhone 8 Plus at the Apple Orchard Shop in Singapore September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su Later this week, Apple is set to begin taking pre-orders for its new smartphone, the iPhone X <20> which starts at $999 and uses artificial intelligence (AI) features embedded in the company<6E>s latest A11 chips. The phone promises new facial recognition features such as Face ID that uses a mathematical model of a person<6F>s face to allow the user to sign on to their phones or pay for goods with a steady glance at their phones. <20>We think that the frameworks that we<77>ve got, the <20>neural engines<65> we<77>ve put in the phone, in the watch ... we do view that as a huge piece of the future, we believe these frameworks will allow developers to create apps that will do more and more in this space, so we think the phone is a major platform,<2C> Williams said. He was speaking at top chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company<6E>s ( 2330.TW ) 30th anniversary celebration in Taipei, which was attended by global tech executives. Williams said technological innovations, especially involving the cloud and on-device processing, will improve life without sacrificing privacy or security. <20>I think we<77>re at an inflection point, with on-device computing, coupled with the potential of AI, to really change the world,<2C> he said. He said AI could be used to change the way healthcare is delivered, an industry he sees as <20>ripe<70> for change. Williams said Apple<6C>s integration of artificial intelligence wouldn<64>t be just limited to mobile phones. <20>Some pieces will be done in data centers, some will be on the device, but we are already doing AI in the broader sense of the word, not the <20>machines thinking for themselves<65> version of AI,<2C> he said referring to the work of Nvidia Corp ( NVDA.O ), a leader in AI. Global tech firms such as Facebook ( FB.O ), Alphabet Inc ( GOOGL.O ), Amazon, and China<6E>s Huawei are spending heavily to develop and offer AI-powered services and products in search of new growth drivers. Softbank Group Corp ( 9984.T ), which has significantly invested in artificial intelligence, plans a second Vision Fund that could be about $200 billion in size, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. At Monday<61>s event, TSMC Chairman Morris Chang described his company<6E>s relationship with Apple as <20>intense.<2E> Williams said the relationship started in 2010, the year Apple launched the iPhone 4, with both parties taking on substantial risk. He credited Chang for TSMC<4D>s <20>huge<67> capital investment to ramp up faster than the pace the industry was used to at the time. Apple decided to have 100 percent of its new iPhone and new iPad chips for application processors sourced at TSMC, and TSMC invested $9 billion to bring up its Tainan fab in a record 11 months, he said. Reporting by Jess Macy Yu, additional reporting by Eric Auchard, Editing by Miyoung Kim and Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-taiwan-tsmc/apple-sees-its-mobile-devices-as-platform-for-artificial-intelligence-idUSKBN1CS1TZ'|'2017-10-23T16:59:00.000+03:00'
'5b757b490f87f7aee5ac60a87d21ffda219efb0c'|'Lloyd''s of London estimates net claims for Hurricane Maria of $900 million'|'October 23, 2017 / 1:39 PM / Updated 4 hours ago Lloyd''s of London estimates Maria claims of $900 million, cuts Harvey, Irma estimates Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Lloyd<79>s of London estimated net claims of $900 million (<28>683 million) for Hurricane Maria, which caused devastation in Puerto Rico last month, the specialist insurance market said on Monday. Buildings damaged by Hurricane Maria are seen in Lares, Puerto Rico, October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson Lloyd<79>s also revised down its net claims estimates for hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which hit the United States in recent weeks, to $3.9 billion from initial estimates of $4.5 billion. Insurers and reinsurers are counting the costs of the three hurricanes, which together with earthquakes in Mexico and wildfires in California, are adding up to a heavy year for natural catastrophe losses. Lloyd<79>s said it had already paid $900 million in claims for the three hurricanes. <20>We are experiencing one of the most active hurricane seasons this century,<2C> Jon Hancock, Lloyd<79>s performance management director said. <20>While it is clear that these catastrophes will bear a heavy toll, the claims are spread across the entire Lloyd<79>s market, which has total net financial resources of 28 billion pounds ($36.92 billion).<2E> Hancock said that while Lloyd<79>s was cutting its earlier estimates for Harvey and Irma, <20>this is a developing situation and there continues to be a high degree of uncertainty around any claims estimate<74>. Reporting by Carolyn Cohn; editing by Maiya Keidan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-insurance-hurricane/lloyds-of-london-estimates-net-claims-for-hurricane-maria-of-900-million-idUKKBN1CS1SF'|'2017-10-23T16:39:00.000+03:00'
'71f9758f8c33b7845a9aa77ee513a633530af848'|'Cisco nears deal to acquire BroadSoft - source'|' 55 AM / Updated 3 minutes ago Cisco nears deal to acquire BroadSoft - source Liana B. Baker 3 Min Read SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Cisco Systems Inc ( CSCO.O ), the world<6C>s largest networking gear manufacturer, is nearing a deal to buy U.S. telecommunications software firm BroadSoft Inc ( BSFT.O ) for close to $2 billion (<28>1.51 billion), a person familiar with the matter said on Sunday. FILE PHOTO - The logo of Cisco is seen at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 27, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard/File Photo The deal, which comes after Reuters first reported in August that BroadSoft was exploring a sale, would allow Cisco to further diversify away from its stagnating switches and routers business by giving it a stronger foothold in selling unified communications software to big telecommunications firms. If deal negotiations are completed successfully, Cisco<63>s agreement to buy BroadSoft could be announced as early as Monday, the source said, asking not to be identified because the deal discussions are confidential. Cisco   BroadSoft did not immediately return a request for comment. Bloomberg News reported earlier on Sunday that Cisco was close to a deal to acquire BroadSoft. With its traditional business of making switches and routers seeing revenue declines, Cisco, like other legacy technology firms, has been focusing on high-growth areas such as security, the Internet of Things and cloud computing. The BroadSoft deal would be Cisco<63>s second major acquisition this year following the $3.7 billion acquisition of privately-held AppDynamics Inc in March. BroadSoft shares had closed at $54.90 on Friday, giving the company a market capitalisation of $1.67 billion. Based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, BroadSoft provides software and services that enable mobile, fixed-line and cable service providers to offer unified communications over their internet protocol networks. BroadSoft has historically sold its products to large telecommunications companies such as Verizon Communications Inc ( VZ.N ) and AT&T Inc T.N., which then resell the software to their business customers. BroadSoft has recently tried to revamp its business model to sell directly to these customers, a move that risks its relationships with its telecommunications partners, according to a Barclays Plc research report. New York-based hedge fund P2 Capital Partners LLC owned a 4.6 percent stake in BroadSoft as of the end of June, according to Thomson Reuters data. P2 has often behaved as an activist shareholder and has even offered to buy companies in which it has invested. Another BroadSoft shareholder with a history of acquisitions is buyout firm KKR & Co LP, which is BroadSoft<66>s 13th-largest shareholder, according to Thomson Reuters data. Reporting by Liana B. Baker in San Francisco; editing by Diane Craft'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-broadsoft-m-a-cisco-systems/cisco-nears-deal-to-acquire-broadsoft-source-idUKKBN1CS02S'|'2017-10-23T03:55:00.000+03:00'
'50bc1de9dc3c94cf3956fcc739e2960fa7043a81'|'China''s economy seen growing 6.8 percent in 2017 and 6.4 percent in 2018 - Reuters Poll'|'October 24, 2017 / 5:13 AM / in 19 minutes China''s economy seen growing 6.8 percent in 2017 and 6.4 percent in 2018: Reuters poll Kevin Yao 4 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s economy will likely grow 6.8 percent in 2017, topping the state target and accelerating for the first time in seven years, a Reuters poll showed, as Beijing walks a tightrope by containing debt and property risks without stunting economic growth. FILE PHOTO: Workers survey the construction site of the terminal for the Beijing New Airport in Beijing''s southern Daxing District, China October 10, 2016. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo Still, growth in the world<6C>s second-largest economy is projected to slow to 6.4 percent in 2018, the Reuters poll of more than 65 economists showed, as the property curbs and efforts to deal with debt risks are expected to gain more traction. China<6E>s property investment and construction are seen slowing as more cities try to curb surging housing prices, while a government campaign against riskier lending pushes up borrowing costs and a crackdown on pollution hurts some factories. Chinese economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2017 is expected to cool to 6.7 percent from a year earlier, but the full-year growth is expected at 6.8 percent, according to the poll. In 2016, China<6E>s economic growth slowed to a 26-year low of 6.7 percent. The growth pace has inched down every year since 2011. China<6E>s annual economic growth rate eased to 6.8 percent in July-September from 6.9 percent in the second quarter as the property sector cooled while a government campaign against riskier lending pushes up borrowing costs. <20>As overall GDP growth still remains above the government<6E>s target of <20>around 6.5 percent<6E>, we expect policy makers to maintain a tightening bias,<2C> analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a note. <20>Looking ahead, we expect to see weaker growth, mainly on the investment front, as the impact of tighter financial conditions start to emerge.<2E> The forecasts for this year and in 2018 were both more optimistic than the polling results in July. GRADUAL SLOWDOWN China<6E>s economy has defied expectations of a marked slowdown this year due to a improving global demand for its goods, sustained state infrastructure spending and stronger corporate earnings boosted by soaring factory price rises, analysts said. In the opening speech of a key, twice-a-decade Communist Party Congress this week, President Xi Jinping said China will deepen economic and financial reforms and further open its markets to foreign investors as it looks to move from high-speed to high-quality growth. Analysts are looking to the annual Central Economic Work Conference, which is usually held in December, for signals on the 2018 growth target and policy initiatives. Bank of America Merrill Lynch expects China to keep its annual growth target at around 6.5 percent in 2018. Analysts believe the PBOC will keep benchmark lending rates unchanged at 4.35 percent through at least the second quarter of 2019, the Reuters poll showed. They have pushed back their expectations on a cut in the amount of cash that banks are required hold as reserves, or the reserve requirement ratio (RRR). The central bank is expected to cut the RRR for all banks by 50 basis points (bps) in the second quarter of 2018 to 16.5 percent, versus the July poll<6C>s prediction for the 50 bps cut in the first quarter of next year. In late September, the central bank cut the amount of cash that some banks must hold as reserves (RRR) for the first time since February 2016. The move, effective in January, offers an earnings boost to banks if they lend more to struggling smaller firms and the private sector. Analysts expect annual consumer inflation to be more muted at 1.6 percent in 2017, down from last year<61>s 2 percent due to weak food inflation. But the rate could pick up to 2.2 percent in 2018, the poll showed. Polling by Khushboo Mittal, Shaloo Shrivastava in
'48a2c06c2d56009cc6989373734dc008aaf3f411'|'Exclusive: Hedge fund Baupost snaps up claims against Toshiba - sources'|'October 24, 2017 / 12:33 AM / Updated an hour ago Exclusive: Hedge fund Baupost snaps up claims against Toshiba - sources Jessica DiNapoli , Tom Hals 4 Min Read (Reuters) - Hedge fund The Baupost Group LLC has acquired the biggest chunk of a $2.2 billion claim that two South Carolina utilities had against Toshiba Corp following the bankruptcy of its nuclear power subsidiary, people familiar with the matter said on Monday. The investment is a bet by Baupost<73>s chief executive, Seth Klarman, that Toshiba, which has been rocked by accounting scandals as well as the financial demise of its bankrupt U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse Electric Corp, will stand by its pledge to pay out these claims. Baupost bought the claims after utilities SCANA Corp and Santee Cooper decided they did not want to wait for Toshiba to make the payments, which were owed to them as penalty for Westinghouse<73>s failure to complete a contract to design and build a nuclear power plant in South Carolina. By selling the claims, the utilities got cash upfront instead of having to wait for installments over the next five years and face the risk that Toshiba might not pay. Like other hedge funds that invested in the claims, Baupost paid about 92 cents on the dollar, the sources said. Boston-based Baupost has shown appetite for assets in financial distress before. It also owns about $1 billion in bonds backed by sales tax revenue from Puerto Rico, the U.S. territory struggling to service its more than $70 billion in debt. The exact amount that Baupost invested in the claims owed by Toshiba could not be learned. Other investors in the claims included private equity firm Blackstone Group LP<4C>s credit arm GSO Capital Partners LP, according to the sources. The sources asked not to be identified because the trades were carried out on a confidential basis. Baupost, Toshiba, Blackstone, Westinghouse and SCANA declined to comment. Toshiba is also on the hook to cover some of the cost overruns at another unfinished nuclear project known as Vogtle in Georgia. Georgia Power, an affiliate of Southern Co, plans to conduct a similar auction of its rights to collect $3.7 billion from Toshiba for the problems at the project over the next several years for an immediate cash payment as soon as this month, the people said. When the Georgia and South Carolina projects were approved a decade ago, they were seen as the dawn of a new era in nuclear power plant construction, but Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy in March in part because of the escalating costs at the plants. A Georgia Power spokesman said the utility is continuing to <20>explore options of monetization of the parent guarantee<65> with regards to the Vogtle project. Much of Westinghouse<73>s business is currently up for sale and expected to fetch as much as $4 billion, Reuters reported last month. Blackstone has partnered with private equity firm Apollo Global Management LLC in a bid for that business, Reuters has reported. Funds from the sale of the Westinghouse business will help Toshiba offset some of the payments it owes to the utilities due to Westinghouse<73>s not completing its projects. Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York and Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Leslie Adler '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/toshiba-baupost/exclusive-hedge-fund-baupost-snaps-up-claims-against-toshiba-sources-idINKBN1CT01D'|'2017-10-24T03:37:00.000+03:00'
'693748083f5fecda9277c40bbb05d7e2ece0c442'|'Brazil''s Petrobras could bid on additional blocks in pre-salt auction-CEO'|'October 24, 2017 / 1:52 PM / Updated 14 minutes ago Brazil''s Petrobras could bid on additional blocks in pre-salt auction-CEO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 24 (Reuters) - The chief executive officer of Petroleo Brasileiro SA said on Tuesday the Brazilian state oil giant did not rule out bidding on blocks at auctions this week beyond the three it had already flagged, taking advantage of its preemptive rights. Speaking on the sidelines of an oil conference in Rio de Janeiro, Pedro Parente said Petrobras would bid <20>not necessarily on just the three<65> but he added that the company would be selective and pick only the areas with greatest potential. Reporting by Marta Nogueira; Writing by Alexandra Alper; Editing by Daniel Flynn'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/petrobras-auction/brazils-petrobras-could-bid-on-additional-blocks-in-pre-salt-auction-ceo-idUSE6N1LE013'|'2017-10-24T16:50:00.000+03:00'
'a1d9a99cb11a8053188a379cbc3e2ba56c66af44'|'Heineken bets on motor racing for Asian payout'|'October 24, 2017 / 4:16 AM / Updated 18 minutes ago Heineken bets on motor racing for Asian payout Philip Blenkinsop 6 Min Read MONZA, Italy (Reuters) - Heineken ( HEIN.AS ) is betting on Formula One to help it reclaim the title of leading global lager from Budweiser, a strategy that depends on broadening the sport<72>s appeal in Asia and persuading fans to pay more for their beer. A photo illustration of a bucket with Heineken beers at a pub in Singapore October 4, 2017. Picture taken October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su Heineken has grown strongly in Asia over the past five years, but the sales boost was driven by its cheaper Singapore-based Tiger beer brand rather than its higher-margin namesake lager, which it promotes at the Grand Prix. Asian drinkers have also turned to its cheaper rivals Budweiser and Tuborg. Heineken brand sales have grown more slowly in the region than globally for the past three years and fell 7.1 percent in the first half of 2017. The Dutch brewer, Budweiser<65>s Belgian owner Anheuser-Busch InBev ( ABI.BR ) and Danish Carlsberg ( CARLb.CO ), which makes Tuborg, need regions like Asia to cut reliance on lower-margin Europe, or North America, where craft brewers are muscling in. Heineken has ruled out an all-out scrap for market share, leaving it vulnerable to rivals selling <20>premium<75> products at a lower price. Formula One presents a risky choice in a region where some countries have dropped the race, although Asia had as many races as the sport<72>s heartland Europe in 2017. The world<6C>s second largest brewer says the sponsorship, which it launched in September last year to supplement the Champions League soccer sponsorship it has had since 2005, will bring 200 million extra television viewers, many in Asia. <20>For us in Formula One, every race with this level of hospitality is like a final,<2C> Heineken brand director Gianluca Di Tondo told Reuters at the Italian Grand Prix, where Asian customers were among its guests. The Heineken Chinese Grand Prix in April, one of only three races to bear the Heineken name and extra branding, was designed to make a mark in the world<6C>s biggest market, of which Heineken has only a very small slice. Heineken costs 10-25 percent more in China than Budweiser, which is also marketed as high-end, but the Dutch brewer believes consumers will ultimately pay a little more for the cachet of drinking its 150-year-old namesake brand. <20>We are a world brand, we are everywhere and we tend to have price points that are a bit higher and a bit more premium and we want to keep it like that,<2C> Heineken chief executive Jean-Francois van Boxmeer said. CHINA It was largely growth in China that helped Budweiser end a 30-year stretch for Heineken as the number one global lager last year, beer consultants Plato Logic said, in a ranking excluding sales in home markets. Chinese brands are the biggest overall. <20>We need to fix China and Vietnam,<2C> Di Tondo said in the interview at the Grand Prix in Monza, where Heineken posters plastered the stands. Still, Heineken sold 17.9 percent more beer in Asia last year than in 2015, compared with declines of 3 percent for Carlsberg and 1.1 percent for AB InBev. Its shares have outshone rivals this year. Olivier Dubost, head of Carlsberg<72>s sales and marketing in Asia, said he saw bigger growth potential in southeast Asia for less expensive lagers. Carlsberg<72>s Tuborg is priced more in line with Tiger than Heineken and sales have more than tripled since 2013. A bartender serves Heineken beer at a pub that shows football matches at Boat Quay in Singapore October 4, 2017. Picture taken October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su Carlsberg chief executive Cees t<>Hart said it would focus on China, India and Vietnam, where a million people reach the legal drinking age every year, 90 percent of alcohol consumption is beer and pricier lagers are showing fastest growth. Vietnam has begun the process of selling majority stakes in two state-controlled breweries in which Carlsberg and Heineken re
'a028a7ae5e23ee8c596c27b967d9b613e7929c19'|'World wine output set to fall to lowest since 1961 - OIV'|'October 24, 2017 / 10:44 AM / Updated 30 minutes ago World wine output set to fall to lowest since 1961 - OIV Gus Trompiz 3 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - Global wine production this year is set to fall to its lowest level since 1961 after harsh weather in western Europe damaged vineyards in the world<6C>s largest production area, international wine body OIV said on Tuesday. A sommelier pours a glass of red wine in Nipozzano, Italy, September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Isla Binnie Global output is expected to fall to 246.7 million hectolitres in 2017, down 8 percent from last year, the Paris-based International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) said in its first estimates for the year. A hectolitre represents 100 litres, or the equivalent of just over 133 standard 75 cl wine bottles. The global decline reflects a plunge in output in the European Union, where the world<6C>s top three producers -- Italy, France and Spain -- are each projected to see a sharp drop. The European Commission, the EU<45>s executive, estimates the bloc<6F>s wine grape harvest will shrink to a 36-year low in 2017 as adverse weather from spring frosts and summer heatwaves takes its toll. In France, the weather has affected most of the main growing regions including Bordeaux and Champagne, and the government has projected production will sink to its lowest in decades. The OIV<49>s projections, which exclude juice and must (new wine), put Italian wine production down 23 percent at 39.3 million hectolitres, French output down 19 percent at 36.7 million and Spanish production down 15 percent at 33.5 million. Reduced global production may erode a surplus over demand seen in recent years, when consumption was curbed by the effects of a world financial crisis in 2008. The OIV said it was initially assuming a consumption range of 240.5 to 245.8 million hectolitres based on medium and longer-term trends, but did not yet have firm demand data for 2017. However, the impact of reduced production on actual market supply and prices depends on levels of stocks from previous years and the quality of wine in landmark regions. In France, the world<6C>s leading exporter by value, producers have pointed to the prospect of good quality wine. Outside Europe, the United States, the world<6C>s fourth-largest producer and the biggest consumer, was expected to see output remain little changed at 23.3 million hectolitres, down 1 percent, the OIV said. Production in Australia was expected to rise 6 percent to 13.9 million hectolitres while Argentina was projected to post a 25 percent jump to 11.8 million after a weather-hit 2016, the OIV said. The preliminary world estimates lacked data from some countries, notably China, for which the OIV provisionally assumed stable production compared with last year at 11.4 million hectolitres. Editing by Luke Baker and Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-wine-production-oiv/world-wine-output-set-to-fall-to-lowest-since-1961-oiv-idUKKBN1CT1D6'|'2017-10-24T13:43:00.000+03:00'
'db2ae8e192bcdfc35a5241cd2a300af6ac36d9ca'|'China shoppers rein in spending on cookies to pop drinks: survey'|'October 24, 2017 / 10:41 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago China shoppers rein in spending on cookies to pop drinks: survey Adam Jourdan 3 Min Read SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Growth in sales of consumer goods ranging from biscuits and candies to toothpaste and shampoo has slowed in China to a five-year low, a survey shows, in a major challenge for global firms seeking to attract buyers in the world<6C>s most populous nation. FILE PHOTO: An empty shopping cart is seen at a branch store of Wal-Mart in Beijing, China, October 15, 2015. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo Demand for fast-moving consumer goods has waned in the world<6C>s No.2 economy, with sales growing 2 percent in the first half of 2017 versus year-ago levels, a report from consultancies Kantar Worldpanel and Bain & Co shows. That is the weakest half-year growth since 2012, according to the report based on a survey of 40,000 households. While sales rose 3.6 percent in the third quarter, it is still a far cry from a near 20 percent growth just over half a decade ago. The data gives a gauge of how China<6E>s consumers are spending their money - key as Beijing<6E>s leaders, global investors, and brands such as Nestle ( NESN.S ), Pampers owner Procter & Gamble ( PG.N ) or Coca-Cola ( KO.N ) look to tap the spending power of the country<72>s near 1.4 billion potential shoppers. <20>The type of consumption people enjoy now is very different - travel, lifestyle, entertainment are all growing strongly,<2C> said Bruno Lannes, Shanghai-based partner at Bain. <20>(This is) where people are spending, and it<69>s taking money away from fast-moving consumer goods.<2E> A boom in cheap food delivery - luring huge investment into firms like Meituan-Dianping - has also hit grocery sales as people cook less often at home, Lannes added. But not all products did badly. While chocolate, chewing gum and candy saw double-digit drops in sales volume in the first six months, health-focused products like yoghurt and bottled water and some personal care products fared far better. The Kantar-Bain report offers detailed insights into consumer spending patterns beyond broader official retail sales. The latter also includes data from segments like cars and oil products and showed a rise of 10.3 percent for September. China - amid a twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle - has posted strong economic growth this year, but this is expected to slow in coming months as higher financing costs and measures to cool the heated property market start to weigh on activity. The annual Kantar-Bain report also underlined how politics was hitting consumer markets. Sales of South Korean skin care and makeup products in China fell 4.8 percent in the first half amid a diplomatic stand-off over Seoul<75>s decision to deploy an anti-missile system. For 2017, sales of fast-moving consumer goods in China is expected to be <20>slightly<6C> better than last year<61>s 2.9 percent rise, which was the slowest in a decade, Kantar<61>s China General Manager Jason Yu said. <20>We did see some recovery in the third quarter,<2C> said Yu. <20>Really important now is how the fourth quarter performs.<2E> Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Himani Sarkar'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-retail/china-shoppers-rein-in-spending-on-cookies-to-pop-drinks-survey-idUKKBN1CT1CS'|'2017-10-24T13:40:00.000+03:00'
'11bfafd59307cdd10ab2a292bb6b7621d5e658ee'|'How will higher Bank of England rates affect Britain''s economy?'|'October 24, 2017 / 12:01 PM / Updated an hour ago How will higher Bank of England rates affect Britain''s economy? David Milliken 7 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England is widely expected to raise interest rates for the first time in more than 10 years on Nov. 2, after the next meeting of its Monetary Policy Committee. A man holds his mobile phone outside the Bank of England in London, Britain, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay Most economists polled by Reuters are not persuaded a rate rise is necessary, and its symbolic value is likely to overshadow its fairly modest effect on the economy. [ECILT/GB] Following is a set of best guesses from economists in academia, the private sector and at the Bank of England on what a quarter point increase in rates to 0.5 percent will do, based on models of how the economy has performed in the past. PUBLIC REACTION This cannot be calculated precisely. The British public could take fright at a first rate increase since 2007, especially at a time of weak growth as the country prepares to leave the European Union. While the BoE has ruled out returning rates to their pre-crisis level of about 5 percent, public or market expectations that this rate hike would be the first of many could also give it a disproportionate public impact. WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO GROWTH? Britain<69>s economy is growing at around 0.3 percent a quarter this year, half its long-run average and a slowdown from 2017 after its weakest start to the year since 2012. A BoE research paper from 2014 - which represents the views of its authors, not an official BoE position - estimates that raising rates by 1 percent reduces output by 0.6 percent over a 2-3 year period. A quarter point rise would trim a modest 0.15 percent from GDP - equivalent to six weeks<6B> growth at current rates. Other estimates are slightly higher. Amit Kara, a forecaster at the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) sees an effect of around 0.2 percent from a quarter point rise, while Martin Beck of consultants Oxford Economics says it could be up to 0.3 percent after three years. <20>Arguably a rise now could have a magnified effect,<2C> Beck said, pointing to headwinds from Brexit uncertainty and public spending restraint, as well as a possible shock factor. Credit Suisse economists think a quarter point rate rise could boost the chance by around 5 percent of the UK economy tipping into recession, based on an analysis of factors that have contributed to downturns since the 1970s. HOW WILL STERLING REACT? Sterling gained 4 cents against the U.S. dollar in the 24 hours after the BoE said last month it was likely to raise rates in the coming months, taking it above $1.36. Currency strategists say a November rate rise is now almost entirely priced into sterling, so the pound is likely to rise only slightly on Nov. 2 if the BoE acts as expected. <20>Whether that<61>s sustained or not depends on whether there<72>s an indication that there could be more steps to follow,<2C> said Ian Gunner, portfolio manager at the Altana Hard Currency Fund in London. WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO INFLATION? The main aim of a rate rise is to curb inflation, which hit a five-and-a-half year high of 3.0 percent in September. The BoE research paper estimates a 1 percent rate rise would lower the inflation rate by 1 percentage point after 3 years, so a quarter point rise would only put on modest downward pressure. The current inflation overshoot is due to a one-off hit from sterling<6E>s sharp fall after last year<61>s Brexit vote, which the BoE thinks will soon start to fade. Instead, a BoE rate rise now is insurance against its concern that the economy cannot grow as fast it used to without generating excess inflation from an overheating labour market. Most economists are more doubtful that wages are set to grow strongly, even with unemployment at a 42-year low. There is also less conviction that a small rate rise has much effect on inflation. NIESR<53>s Kara said a 0.25 perce
'755863b81f7831e4cdbd23c073db5fd395b8fb10'|'EU Commission aims move to reduce governments'' veto powers on tax'|'October 24, 2017 / 4:43 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago EU Commission aims move to reduce governments'' veto powers on tax Francesco Guarascio 3 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission will propose measures that could reduce EU small states<65> veto powers, a document showed - a move meant to overcome resistance to tax reforms as the bloc aims to increase levies on digital multinationals. FILE PHOTO: European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, in this file picture taken October 28, 2015. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir/Files EU rules demand the backing of all 28 EU states to proceed to taxation overhauls, a requirement that has long allowed low-tax states like Luxembourg, Ireland or Malta to hamper reforms. To overcome this hurdle, the Commission said it would present a document next year outlining how to use a clause in the EU<45>s 2009 Lisbon Treaty that allows decision-making by <20>qualified majority<74> in sectors where unanimity is usually the rule. The so-called <20>passerelle<6C> clause, enshrined in Article 48 of the treaty, could be used for <20>internal market matters,<2C> the EU executive said in its work program for next year. Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in September that this clause should be applied to decisions on <20>fair taxes of the digital industry<72>. The EU is considering measures to increase taxes on Google ( GOOGL.O ), Facebook ( FB.O ), Amazon ( AMZN.O ) and other tech giants that are accused of paying too little in Europe by re-routing their profits to the bloc<6F>s low-tax states. In its 2018 work program, the commission said that by March it will make legislative proposals for a fair taxation of the digital economy. The move follows the EU government leaders<72> endorsement last week of a proposal on the issue. Although the move is likely to irk smaller, low-tax states, it still leaves them a way out as the use of the <20>passerelle<6C> clause would need to be decided unanimously at EU summits and could be blocked by the parliament of one member state. Only if agreed by all 28 EU leaders, who usually hold general debates and are more inclined to strike political deals, the clause could then be applied to decisions by a qualified majority at councils of EU ministers who discuss more technical issues. Juncker, a former prime minister of Luxembourg, has so far avoided proposing the use of another clause, based on article 116 of the treaty, which would strip countries of their veto powers straight away. This could be applied to solve distortions of the internal market, like those allegedly caused by internet firms that compete unfairly with brick-and-mortar rivals by paying less tax. The commission<6F>s vice president, Valdis Dombrovskis, told reporters in September that there was a debate on whether to remove veto powers for certain tax decisions. Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; editing by Mark Heinrich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-tax-digital/eu-commission-aims-move-to-reduce-governments-veto-powers-on-tax-idUKKBN1CT2FC'|'2017-10-24T19:39:00.000+03:00'
'9a830b1002b71681aaeba71d01acf337738ddd60'|'Investor urges Power Corp to sell C$10 billion in assets'|' 17 PM / Updated 27 minutes ago Investor urges Power Corp to sell C$10 billion in assets John Tilak 2 Min Read TORONTO, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Diversified holding company Power Corp of Canada should offload a number of non-core assets that could fetch about C$10 billion ($7.9 billion), a shareholder told Reuters late on Monday, in a move to unlock shareholder value. Graeme Roustan, who owns less than 1 percent of Power Corp, said in a letter to the company chairman that the group should sell assets including its interests in Pargesa Holding SA , renewable energy unit Power Energy and asset manager China AMC, among others. The letter, which was reviewed by Reuters, did not mention the value of the assets to be offloaded. <20>(The non-financial services) investments represent an important element of our long-term diversification strategy,<2C> Power Corp spokesman St<53>phane Lemay said, adding that the value of these investments had increased to C$3.2 billion at the end of 2016 from C$1.8 billion at the end of 2011. Montreal-based Power Corp<72>s businesses span the insurance, asset management, renewable energy and media industries. Roustan, the former chairman of Performance Sports Group Ltd, has in the past called for changes at Canadian drugmaker Aeterna Zentaris Inc. $1 = 1.2637 Canadian dollars Reporting by John Tilak; Editing by Susan Thomas'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/powercorp-shareholders/investor-urges-power-corp-to-sell-c10-billion-in-assets-idUSL2N1MY1WO'|'2017-10-24T16:16:00.000+03:00'
'39c4fd5582c2d2d1b693f364ec6ac12919e84d0e'|'UK financial watchdog investigates Equifax hacking'|'October 24, 2017 / 11:45 AM / Updated 22 minutes ago UK financial watchdog investigates Equifax hacking Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s markets watchdog said it has opened an investigation into the hacking of U.S. credit reporting agency Equifax ( EFX.N ), which affected nearly 700,000 UK citizens. FILE PHOTO: Credit reporting company Equifax Inc. corporate offices are pictured in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Tami Chappell/File Photo <20>The Financial Conduct Authority announces today that it is investigating the circumstances surrounding a cybersecurity incident that led to the loss of UK customer data held by Equifax Ltd on the servers of its U.S. parent,<2C> the watchdog said in a statement on Tuesday. <20>This statement is made given the public interest in these matters.<2E> The announcement follows a letter from Nicky Morgan, chair of the House of Commons<6E> Treasury Committee to the watchdog, asking if Equifax had violated terms of its licence to operate in the country, and whether the regulator had the power to compel the company to provide compensation to UK consumers. Equifax has said that 15.2 million records on British citizens were involved in the breach, including sensitive data on what it said were 693,665 individuals, for whom credit protection services were offered. The UK data accessed by unknown hackers included credit accounts, user credentials, partial credit card details and driver licence numbers. The remaining 14.5 million records contained names and birth dates of UK consumers were <20>potentially compromised<65>, the company disclosed. Equifax first revealed in September it had been the target of a massive data breach which hit around 143 million people, mostly in the United States. Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-equifax-regulator/uk-financial-watchdog-investigates-equifax-hacking-idUKKBN1CT1L6'|'2017-10-24T14:48:00.000+03:00'
'0fce684fc086bbcdef9f71d643e8db34cf76c8cb'|'China''s CEFC, Russia''s VTB may close $5 bln loan deal by year-end - source'|' 17 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago China''s CEFC, Russia''s VTB may close $5 bln loan deal by year-end - source   MOSCOW (Reuters) - CEFC China Energy is in talks with Russian state bank VTB ( VTBR.MM ) to raise around $5 billion (<28>3.78 billion) in loan to finance acquisition of a stake in Russia<69>s largest oil firm Rosneft VTBRT.MM, a banking source familiar with the talks told Reuters. A CEFC logo is seen at CEFC China Energy''s Shanghai headquarter in Shanghai, China September 14, 2016. REUTERS/ Aizhu Chen The source added that VTB and CEFC might close the loan transaction by year-end. Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; writing by Katya Golubkova; editing by Dmitry Solovyov'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-cefc-rosneft-oil-loans-vtb/chinas-cefc-russias-vtb-may-close-5-bln-loan-deal-by-year-end-source-idUKKBN1CT0WQ'|'2017-10-24T11:16:00.000+03:00'
'9eb3aa661ec7b50c5ee4cadf0ffaf6ad6bf3138b'|'Airbus turmoil overshadows bid to rescue CSeries'|'October 22, 2017 / 12:14 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago Airbus turmoil overshadows bid to rescue CSeries Tim Hepher 4 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus<75>s coup in buying a $6 billion(<28>4.55 billion) Canadian jetliner project for a dollar stunned investors and took the spotlight off a growing ethics row last week, but internal disarray has raised questions over how smoothly it can implement the deal. FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A320neo aircraft and a Bombardier CSeries aircraft are pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo The European planemaker secured the deal for Bombardier<65>s CSeries programme by pledging to throw its marketing might behind the loss-making jets, just as the Airbus sales machine reels from falling sales and internal and external corruption investigations. Chief Executive Tom Enders has urged staff to keep calm in the face of French reports describing payments to intermediaries and growing concern over fallout from the investigations. But the mood at the group<75>s Toulouse offices remains grim. <20>Bombardier asked for an ambulance and Airbus sent a hearse,<2C> said one person with close ties to the company. French media attention on the growing scandal helped to camouflage talks to buy the CSeries. Rumours circulated in late August that Enders and a colleague were visiting Paris to meet investigators. In fact, they were holding the first of several secret dinner meetings with Bombardier. But the same affair, which first came to light in 2016, has begun to cloud sales momentum. In the first nine months of the year Airbus accounted for only 35 percent of global jet sales in its head-to-head battle with U.S. rival Boeing. The Airbus sales operation is demoralised and in disarray, multiple aerospace and airline industry sources said, with some blaming Enders for turning the company against itself. Two people said the situation is so tense that some employees have begun to shy away from selling in problematic countries, rather than risk being drawn into the investigation. Soon-to-retire sales chief John Leahy has been asked to stay until the end of the year to help steady the operation, but his successor has not been officially confirmed, adding a sense of vacuum that has also sapped morale. FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A320neo aircraft and a Bombardier CSeries aircraft are pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo Leahy designated his deputy Kiran Rao as his successor earlier this year but the chaos engulfing Airbus means now is not considered the right time for major new announcements. POST-BOOM SLOWDOWN A spokesman for Airbus, which has long predicted a slower year after an order boom, dismissed reports of instability. <20>We have a great sales team ... but it is fully understood that they cannot repeat records every year; and the year is not over,<2C> he said. Slideshow (2 Images) Enders has strongly defended his decision in 2016 to report flawed paperwork to UK authorities, which prompted UK and French investigations focussing on a system of sales agents run by a separate Paris department that has since been disbanded. Airbus says no evidence of corruption has been uncovered, but Enders has pledged to continue the overhaul of sales practices historically shared between Toulouse and Paris. A source close to Bombardier acknowledged disruption at Airbus but predicted things would settle down by the time the deal for Airbus to sell the CSeries closes next year. At that point Airbus will face a second challenge in marketing the CSeries, which for years it dismissed as a weak upstart. Now it must offer the aircraft side by side with the older A320. Airbus plans to refresh the A320 further after adding new eng
'205c8eff5aae76b87b9f726772b68775c64579dd'|'China''s Baowu Steel will consider other M&A opportunities'|'BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s top steel maker Baowu Steel Group Co, formed in a mega merger last year, will consider other merger and acquisition opportunities amid a government drive to consolidate the market and cut overcapacity.<2E>We will track and do research on M&A opportunities and actively participate in these opportunities as market player,<2C> President of Baowu Steel Ma Guoqiang said in an email reply to Reuters on Sunday.China<6E>s steel producers will not expand their production capacities in the future but will aim to improve efficiency of the sector and pursue higher quality products, he said.Baowu is seen as a potential bidder for loss-making Chongqing Iron & Steel Co ( 601005.SS ), according to a report from Chinese business magazine Caixin On Oct. 2.The top producer with more than 70 million tonnes in annual production capacity said it looks to improve production at its Baoshan plant, Qingshan plant, Meishan plant and Zhanjiang plant, Ma said.Baowu Steel was formed by a merger between Baoshan Iron and Steel Group (Baosteel) and its smaller rival Wuhan Iron and Steel, which was formally completed in December last year.China<6E>s state planner repeated its pledge to continue to reduce overcapacity in the debt-ridden steel sector and promote mergers among them at a news briefing on Saturday.The government is driving a major campaign to rationalize its sprawling state sector from steel to energy as it looks to reduce overcapacity and increase state control of key markets.Reporting by Muyu Xu, Meng Meng and Josephine Mason; Editing by Jacqueline Wong '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-china-baowusteel/chinas-baowu-steel-says-will-consider-other-ma-opportunities-idINKBN1CR06D'|'2017-10-22T05:01:00.000+03:00'
'590a7fa9b8ef9c8384197609c7d44da766754622'|'UPDATE 1-Petra Diamonds revenue takes hit from Tanzania crackdown'|'October 23, 2017 / 8:30 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago UPDATE 1-Petra Diamonds revenue takes hit from Tanzania crackdown Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Adds Tanzania mining ban details, background) Oct 23 (Reuters) - Petra Diamonds Ltd<74>s first quarter revenue fell by 17 percent after the government of Tanzania last month seized a consignment of diamonds from its Williamson mine. The owner of the Cullinan mine in South Africa has been hit by a crackdown on mining firms in Tanzania, where the government is attempting to secure more revenue from the sector. The Tanzanian government confiscated a consignment of diamonds from the Williamson mine, which is majority-owned by Petra, alleging the company had under-declared the value of the stones by about half. Petra has denied the charge. The London-listed company said on Monday its revenue was $78.7 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30, while net debt rose to $614 million, from $555 million as of June 30. Shares in Petra rose as much as 4 percent, before paring gains to trade up 2.75 percent at 84 pence by 0801 GMT. Petra maintained its full-year production guidance of between 4.8 million carats and 5.0 million carats. Petra has also faced strikes in South Africa over pay, rent and housing allowances and demands for medical expenses. (Reporting by Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu and Alexander Smith)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/petra-diamonds-outlook/update-1-petra-diamonds-revenue-takes-hit-from-tanzania-crackdown-idUSL4N1MY2WH'|'2017-10-23T11:30:00.000+03:00'
'6972f29bb7914e4312ca9f6c1967b48e66de7a6b'|'UPDATE 1-Equatorial Guinea signs contract with Kosmos Energy for offshore blocks'|'October 23, 2017 / 8:39 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago UPDATE 1-Equatorial Guinea signs contract with Kosmos Energy for offshore blocks Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Adds block details) CAPE TOWN, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Equatorial Guinea has signed three new production-sharing contracts with Kosmos Energy for offshore blocks, the first such contracts for Kosmos in the West African country, the ministry of mines and hydrocarbons said on Monday. In June Equatorial Guinea, Sub-Saharan Africa<63>s third largest oil producer, signed a similar contract for offshore block EG-11 with U.S. oil major ExxonMobil at the conclusion of its 2016 licensing round. <20>We look forward to working with Kosmos as we continue to push the boundaries in oil and gas exploration,<2C> Gabriel Obiang Lima, the minister of mines and hydrocarbons, said in a statement. Obiang Lima said block EG-21 was offered for tender during last year<61>s licensing round, while block S and block W, previously operated by China<6E>s CNOOC and PanAtlantic Energy respectively, were negotiated directly with Kosmos. In each of the three blocks, Kosmos will hold an 80 percent stake and national oil firm GEPetrol the remaining minority. (Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Editing by James Macharia) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/africa-oil-kosmos/update-1-equatorial-guinea-signs-contract-with-kosmos-energy-for-offshore-blocks-idUSL8N1MY1RM'|'2017-10-23T11:39:00.000+03:00'
'c2a99d46910f6525b0102030688eec6f0c4fdfb1'|'Boeing signs $13.8 billion deal with Singapore Airlines'|'October 23, 2017 / 5:06 PM / Updated 17 minutes ago Boeing signs $13.8 billion deal with Singapore Airlines Reuters Staff 1 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing Co ( BA.N ) on Monday signed a previously announced deal with Singapore Airlines Ltd ( SIAL.SI ) to sell it 39 aircraft worth $13.8 billion (<28>10.4 billion) at list prices during a White House event with Singapore<72>s prime minister. U.S. President Donald Trump and Singapore''s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong join Singapore Airlines CEO Goh Choon Phong and Boeing''s commercial airplanes CEO Kevin McAllister as they sign a sales contract for planes in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, U.S. October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst The airline ( SIAL.SI ) said last week it would finalise the order during the visit as part of its bid to modernize its fleet over the next decade. Airlines typically receive discounts on jet orders, and the deal is estimated to be closer to $6.5 billion in value. Reporting by Steve Holland; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Tim Ahmann'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-singapore-air-boeing/boeing-signs-13-8-billion-deal-with-singapore-airlines-idUKKBN1CS2BW'|'2017-10-23T20:05:00.000+03:00'
'17114c7b6c1108e3a7693a1aa6b6b0aafc89864d'|'RBS keeps compensation pot for restructuring claims at 400 million pounds'|' 18 PM / in 43 minutes FCA weighs further action over RBS small business treatment Huw Jones , Emma Rumney 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s financial watchdog is considering further action against Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) ( RBS.L ) for its treatment of struggling companies during and after the financial crisis. The logo of RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) bank is seen reflected in the windows of a branch of the bank in the City of London financial district in London September 4, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville The Financial Conduct Authority FCA on Monday published a detailed summary of a report into RBS<42>s Global Restructuring Group (GRG), after clashing with lawmakers over the disclosure of its full contents. Customers have accused the GRG of pushing ailing firms into bankruptcy to pick up their assets on the cheap. The report outlined numerous failings and the FCA said it was investigating further, suggesting a problem that has spawned years of lawsuits and public criticism of RBS from former customers could drag on even longer. <20>Far from drawing a line under this affair, today<61>s report is just the start of the long journey to justice for GRG<52>s victims,<2C> said a spokesman for the GRG Action Group, which represents more than 500 former RBS business customers. Some of the bank<6E>s conduct amounted to a systematic failure to manage its customers<72> and its own conflicting interests, the report said, in one of the strongest official condemnations yet of RBS<42>s behaviour. The report however stopped short of saying RBS had systematically and deliberately pushed companies into bankruptcy, as alleged in a previous report in 2013 and repeated by some former RBS customers in the years since. The bank focused too heavily on pricing increases and debt reduction to the detriment of customers<72> long-term viability, and did not adopt adequate safeguards or procedures to ensure customers were fairly treated, the report continued. Just 10 percent of the companies placed into the GRG, which handled 12,000 troubled firms between 2007 and 2012, emerged intact and returned to the main RBS bank, the BBC reported in August, citing a leaked copy of the full report. <20>RBS has accepted that it did not meet the standards it set for itself which impacted on how it treated some of its SME customers,<2C> FCA Chief Executive Andrew Bailey said on Monday. <20>We are investigating the matters arising from the ... Report and are focusing on whether there is any basis for further action within our powers. We cannot comment any further on this,<2C> Bailey said. SERIOUS ALLEGATIONS RBS welcomed the FCA<43>s confirmation that the most serious allegations against it had not been upheld, and that the measures it had taken to compensate customers were appropriate. <20>There would be nothing better than for us to see the end of this on behalf of our customers and behalf of the bank,<2C> Chief Executive Ross McEwan told reporters by telephone. A barrister hired by parliament<6E>s Treasury Select Committee, which has pressured the FCA to publish the report, still needs to check the detailed summary is faithful to its full contents. The FCA said a final version of the detailed summary would be published once the barrister has reported back. The watchdog has rejected calls from MPs to publish the full report. The detailed summary reiterated that the full report has identified other concerns about the treatment of small firms. Treasury Committee Chairwoman Nicky Morgan said on Monday it had taken the watchdog too long to publish the summary. <20>When its independent adviser reports back later this week, the Committee will consider whether further steps are required,<2C> Morgan said. Bailey is due to be questioned on the report by the Treasury Committee on Oct. 31. Scottish police are also investigating complaints made against RBS in relation to the GRG, British newspapers reported last weekend. McEwan said the bank would cooperate with investigations by both police and the FCA,
'172bcd262d7bccb1b70f6bf6483b3d0a5d3393b7'|'Phones4U tycoon John Caudwell claims former partner is ''amazing liar'' - Business'|'Phones4U billionaire John Caudwell has accused his former business partner and prot<6F>g<EFBFBD> of being an <20>amazing liar<61> who presided over a <20>reign of terror<6F> at the wealth management firm they co-founded before their close relationship soured .Caudwell told the high court on Monday that he had <20>loved<65> his former business partner, Nathalie Dauriac, but lost faith in her after allegedly discovering that she falsified <20>33,000 worth of expenses claims, including a personal trip to M<>laga and gifts for her family.Dauriac, a former Coutts banker, claims she was wrongly dismissed in 2014 from Signia Wealth, the financial management company that she co-founded with Caudwell, and should have received at least <20>12m for her stake in the business.Caudwell disputed Dauriac<61>s claim that he manipulated her out of her job as boss of Signia Wealth and forced her to sell her 49% stake in the business worth <20>12m to him for just <20>2.Both parties deny the allegations made against them.<2E>Ms Dauriac is the most amazing liar I<>ve ever met in my life,<2C> said Caudwell. <20>She<68>s Machiavellian and the vast majority of everything she says is a complete fabrication.<2E>He also accused Dauriac of making claims against him in court to ensure they would be publicly reported without risk of a defamation lawsuit.  Nathalie Dauriac is claiming wrongful dismissal by Phones 4u billionaire founder John Caudwell. Photograph: Ben Cawthra/Rex/Shutterstock Caudwell said he had since been told by staff at Signia Wealth that she <20>wielded a reign of terror<6F> in which she threatened to smear people who crossed her with allegations about <20>drugs [and] illicit sex<65>.Thomas Plewman QC, acting for Dauriac, questioned Caudwell<6C>s claims that he had become concerned about her as early as 2013 after she alleged that a mutual business acquaintance had threatened to break her fingers.Caudwell said he found this hard to believe and was also concerned about her role as chief executive of Signia because of poor financial performance.Plewman pointed out that Caudwell increased the amount of his money held at the company from about <20>350m to more than <20>750m between 2013 and 2014, despite his apparent concerns.Caudwell said he had continued backing Dauriac out of <20>misguided friendship<69>.Plewman said Caudwell was <20>making it up to suit your case<73>, adding testimony that was not included in his witness statement.The entrepreneur and philanthropist, who banked more than <20>1.2bn in 2006 after selling the Phones4U business he started , previously told the court that his memory may be affected as he suffers from Lyme disease.Plewman told the court that trips that Dauriac and Caudwell took to the Seychelles and ski resort Vail, Colorado were not merely holidays as friends but also involved business discussions.He said this meant that some of Dauriac<61>s expenses claimed for the trips were legitimate expenses incurred working for Signia, which is 51% owned by Caudwell and which also manages his personal wealth.Caudwell said he had invited Dauriac on holiday as a friend and had not wanted to talk business but that Dauriac could be <20>quite forceful<75>.Plewman said Dauriac would rather have spent holidays with her family but instead went abroad with Caudwell for business reasons that warranted the expense claims. Caudwell responded: <20>Then why did she tell me that she loved me?<3F>Dauriac has previously said that she believes Caudwell ordered an investigation into her only after she raised concerns that he used false invoices to avoid VAT. Caudwell, a vocal critic of tax avoidance, strongly denies this. He also said that he believed his former prot<6F>g<EFBFBD> had been trying to damage his reputation <20>all over London<6F>. He said a friend had reported her as saying: <20>What<61>s that arsehole John Caudwell doing stealing [Dauriac<61>s] shares?<3F>The case continues.Topics UK news'|'theguardian.com'|'https://www.theguardian.com/uk/business'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/23/phones4u-tycoon-john-caudwell-
'd0bb46e209193a45e249b95d3a3383fbe75e7a89'|'Oil prices rise on tightening supply, strong demand'|'October 23, 2017 / 2:22 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Oil steady, supported by Iraq disruptions and drop in U.S. rigs Devika Krishna Kumar 4 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices were little changed on Monday as supply disruptions in Iraq dented exports out of OPEC<45>s second largest producer and amid signs of a decline in U.S. drilling rates. A oil pump is seen at sunset outside Scheibenhard, near Strasbourg, France, October 6, 2017 . REUTERS/Christian Hartmann/Files Oil exports from southern Iraq have fallen by 110,000 barrels per day this month, according to shipping data and an industry source, adding to the drop in flows caused by a shortfall from the northern Kirkuk fields. Brent crude was trading at $57.39 a barrel by 12:28 p.m. EDT (1628 GMT), down 36 cents. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was down 1 cent at $51.83 a barrel. <20>It seems like there<72>s an awful lot of competing drivers ... and crude seems confused,<2C> said Stewart Glickman, head of energy research at CFRA Research in New York. <20>Volatility has actually been tame and there<72>s no sustained trend lately that can break us out of this $45-$55 a barrel range.<2E> The number of U.S. rigs drilling for new oil fell by seven to 736 in the week to Oct. 20, the lowest level since June, energy services firm Baker Hughes said on Friday. But analysts said the reduction in drilling rigs in the United States could prove temporary as activity had been restrained by hurricane threats and as efficiencies improve. <20>We think the fall in shale oil activity is an indication of rising costs, higher break-evens outside of geological sweet-spots, falling initial well productivity and cash-flow constraints at unsustainably low prices,<2C> Standard Chartered said in a note. <20>However, the turn down in drilling has yet to temper the optimism of most forecasts of U.S. output growth in 2018.<2E> Prices have been supported over the past few sessions by supply disruptions in northern Iraq, where tensions have been running high since the Kurdistan region<6F>s vote in favour of independence last month. Crude oil exports through the Iraqi Kurdistan controlled-pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan had risen to 288,000 bpd on Monday afternoon, from 255,000 bpd earlier in the day, a shipping source told Reuters. [nL8N1MY51B] Typically, the pipeline transports about 600,000 bpd. Security sources told Reuters that Iraqi forces were deploying tanks and artillery near a Kurdish-held area of northern Iraq where a section of the Kurdish oil export pipeline is located. Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi said on Saturday oil exports were increasing from the southern Basra region by 200,000 bpd to make up for a shortfall from the northern Kirkuk fields. In a landmark visit to Iraq, Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih praised the two countries<65> collaboration within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to cut production in an effort to prop up prices. Iraq said the two countries would continue to cooperate in implementing decisions by oil exporting countries. The remarks come just over a month ahead of the group<75>s next scheduled meeting, at which the oil exporters are expected to announce further decisions on their production-curbing deal. Potential further steps by OPEC, rising global oil demand and the reduction in U.S. drilling and its crude oil stocks are some of the factors that could lead oil prices higher in the short term, said Frank Schallenberger, head of commodity Research at Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg. <20>I wouldn<64>t be surprised to see WTI going up to $55 a barrel and Brent to $60 a barrel before the beginning of November,<2C> he said. Additional reporting by Karolin Schaps in Amsterdam and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Edmund Blair '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-oil/oil-prices-rise-on-tightening-supply-strong-demand-idINKBN1CS05C'|'2017-10-23T05:21:00.000+03:00'
'25db5548f154412d090b1bf49fe535866098c343'|'EU raids Daimler and VW in widening cartel inquiry'|'Reuters TV United States October 23, 2017 / 12:56 PM / Updated 7 minutes ago EU raids Daimler and VW in widening cartel inquiry Jan Schwartz , Andreas Cremer 3 Min Read HAMBURG/BERLIN (Reuters) - European Union and German antitrust officials searched the offices of Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ) and Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ) on Monday, widening an inquiry into alleged collusion. FILE PHOTO: The Mercedes star logo of an E Coupe is pictured before the annual news conference of Daimler AG in Stuttgart, Germany, February 2, 2017. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo The EU competition watchdog said in July that it was investigating several German carmakers on suspicion they had conspired to fix prices in diesel and other technologies over several decades. Daimler unexpectedly revealed on Friday that it had claimed whistleblower status to avoid any fines, while Munich-based rival BMW ( BMWG.DE ) said EU officials searched its offices. By Monday, investigators were searching offices at Daimler and examining documents at Volkswagen<65>s (VW) headquarters in Wolfsburg and at its Audi ( NSUG.DE ) luxury brand in the southern German city of Ingolstadt, spokespeople at Daimler and VW said. German magazine Der Spiegel reported in July that Volkswagen, its units Porsche and Audi, Daimler<65>s Mercedes and BMW may have used industry committee meetings to fix the size of tanks for AdBlue, a liquid used to treat nitrogen oxide in diesel emissions. A giant logo of Volkswagen is pictured on the wall of its production facility in Wolfsburg, Germany, April 28, 2016. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch/File Photo The EU Commission has declined to provide details on its investigation, saying only it had <20>concerns that several German car manufacturers may have violated EU antitrust rules prohibiting cartels and restrictive business practices.<2E> It said the searches were an early step in its investigation and did not mean that any of the companies it had inspected had been found guilty of anti-competitive behavior. Media reports had said that Volkswagen had also raised the issue of collusion with cartel authorities, although this has not been confirmed by the carmaker. Strategic cooperation among German carmakers is not unusual, but companies found guilty of breaching EU cartel rules face fines of as much as 10 percent of their global turnover. Recent examples of cooperation include BMW, Mercedes and Audi buying digital mapping company HERE, a former subsidiary of Nokia, and last year entering a joint venture to invest in thousands of charging sites across Europe to boost public acceptance of electric cars. The industry has been hit with billion-euro fines on both sides of the Atlantic in recent years for cartels related to parts including lighting systems, engine coolers and bearings. Reporting by Jan Schwartz and Andreas Cremer; Editing by Douglas Busvine/Maria Sheahan/Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-antitrust-volkswagen/volkswagen-offices-raided-in-eu-cartel-investigation-sources-idUKKBN1CS1OK'|'2017-10-23T18:07:00.000+03:00'
'bb5dfcc9003da8693b1b8799bf81eb49ab73fb4b'|'Daimler says EU staff checking premises amid cartel probe'|'October 23, 2017 / 12:40 PM / Updated an hour ago Daimler, VW raided by EU staff in widening cartel searches Reuters Staff 2 Min Read HAMBURG/BERLIN (Reuters) - European Union antitrust officials widened an investigation of alleged collusion between Germany<6E>s top carmakers on Monday, with both Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ) and Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ) becoming the latest targets of the inspections. FILE PHOTO: The Mercedes star logo of an E Coupe is pictured before the annual news conference of Daimler AG in Stuttgart, Germany, February 2, 2017. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo The EU<45>s competition watchdog said in July that it was investigating an alleged cartel among Germany<6E>s top automakers on suspicion they conspired to fix prices in diesel and other technologies over decades. Stuttgart-based passenger-car and trucks manufacturer Daimler had said last week it had claimed whistleblower status to avoid fines. It said on Monday that European Commission officials had started a search of its premises. Volkswagen said investigators on Monday examined documents at its headquarters in Wolfsburg and its premium carmaker Audi<64>s offices in the southern German city of Ingolstadt. <20>The inspections are related to Commission concerns that several German car manufacturers may have violated EU antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and restrictive business practices,<2C> the European Commission said in a statement. Last Friday, BMW ( BMWG.DE ) said Brussels-based investigators had searched its headquarters as part of an inspection, adding it was assisting the Commission in its work. Reporting by Jan Schwartz and Andreas Cremer; Editing by Douglas Busvine and Maria Sheahan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-daimler-searches/daimler-says-eu-staff-checking-premises-amid-cartel-probe-idUKKBN1CS1LV'|'2017-10-23T15:24:00.000+03:00'
'7c7af5fe89120c4bb27492c4a9bab3ecde1ce734'|'Exclusive - China''s Primavera, CITIC PE to raise dollar funds worth $5 billion: sources'|'October 23, 2017 / 10:27 AM / in 11 minutes Exclusive - China''s Primavera, CITIC PE to raise dollar funds worth $5 billion: sources Kane Wu , Julie Zhu 5 Min Read HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese firms Primavera Capital Group and CITIC Private Equity plan to raise new dollar-denominated funds totalling around $5 billion (<28>3.8 billion) in a bid to bolster their firepower for offshore investments, six sources told Reuters. Fred Hu, Chairman of Primavera Capital Group, poses for a photo ahead of a Reuters interview in Beijing, China, January 10, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee Over the past year, private-equity (PE) firms have become increasingly active in overseas dealmaking, enjoying greater flexibility with offshore fundraising abilities versus the more domestically-focused firms that have been hit by Beijing<6E>s measures to curb a rampant outflow of capital. Primavera, run by former Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ) Greater China Chairman Fred Hu, aims to raise around $2.8 billion in its third fund and has started tapping prospective investors, known as limited partners (LPs), one of the sources said. The official fundraising has not been launched and the fund size is yet to be finalised, another source said. CITICPE, the investment arm of China<6E>s top brokerage CITIC Securities ( 600030.SS ), is looking to raise around $2 billion and is targeting an early 2018 first close - an important milestone indicating the fund has crossed a minimum threshold and can begin making investments, another source said. CITICPE confirmed the fundraising plan, saying the fund was officially launched in September 2017. The fund, which has a hard cap set at $2.2 billion, is significantly oversubscribed and targeting a final close in the first half of next year, it told Reuters in an email. Primavera declined to comment. The two firms will join a slew of Chinese PE companies, such as Hony Capital, FountainVest Partners and China Media Capital, that have raised dollar funds since last year, according to data provider Preqin. As of August, Greater China-based PE firms had targeted to raise $25.9 billion in 26 buyout funds, and an aggregate of $48.3 billion in 42 growth funds, Preqin data shows. Acquisitions made by Chinese PE firms amounted to $21.5 billion as of Monday, with the number of outbound deals jumping over 50 percent from a year ago, Thomson Reuters data shows. <20>For minority stake deals, we prefer investing together with a strategic player for overseas M&A,<2C> said Dasong Wang, CITICPE<50>s managing director and head of the pharmaceuticals investment team. <20>But we<77>d only acquire overseas companies that have synergy with China.<2E> CITICPE<50>S PLANS CITICPE said it would use the new fund to pursue growth and buyout opportunities across five core sectors - technology and internet, industrial and energy, financial and business services, consumer and leisure, and healthcare. The fund will likely attract Singapore<72>s state investors GIC [GIC.UL] and Temasek [TEM.UL] as investors, said one of the sources. GIC did not respond to a request for comment. Temasek declined to comment. All six sources, with direct knowledge of the fundraising plans by Primavera and CITICPE, declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak to media. Founded in 2008, CITICPE has nearly 100 billion yuan (<28>11.4 billion) worth of assets under management and has invested in more than a 100 companies, its website shows. It counts global sovereign wealth funds and state pension funds as investors. Its portfolio firms include biotechnology company 3SBio Inc ( 1530.HK ), ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing, bike-sharing startup Ofo and food delivery app Ele.me. For Primavera, top deals include its role as a pre-listing investor in Alibaba Group Holding ( BABA.N ) and stakes in Alibaba units, including Ant Financial and logistics arm Cainiao. It also teamed up with Ant Financial last year to buy a stake in Yum Brands<64> ( YUM.N ) spunoff China business for $460 million. I
'bcd6a7c43f785d0d56632f9eef266fad2035ee24'|'Bitcoin is ''Enron in the making'', Saudi Prince Alwaleed says'|'October 23, 2017 / 3:14 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Bitcoin is ''Enron in the making'', Saudi Prince Alwaleed says Reuters Staff 3 Min Read RIYADH (Reuters) - Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who owns investment firm Kingdom Holding ( 4280.SE ), expressed scepticism about cryptocurrencies in an interview with CNBC on Monday, warning that bitcoin was like <20>Enron in the making<6E>. Saudi Arabian Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal arrives at the Elysee palace in Paris, France, to attend a meeting with French President, September 8 , 2016. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer Prince Alwaleed, whose company invests in major U.S. companies such as Citigroup ( C.N ) and Twitter ( TWTR.N ), said a lack of regulation made such cryptocurrencies risky. <20>I just don<6F>t believe in this bitcoin thing. I think it<69>s going to implode one day. It<49>s Enron in the making,<2C> he said, referring to the U.S. energy company that filed for bankruptcy in 2001 after revelations of a widespread accounting fraud. <20>This thing does not make sense. It<49>s unregulated. It<49>s not under the control of the U.S. Federal Reserve or any other central bank,<2C> he added. Bitcoin is a virtual currency that has gained more than 500 percent this year, more than any other tradable asset class. Prince Alwaleed also said the valuation of electric car maker Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ) was <20>too exuberant<6E> for him to invest. <20>I would rather not comment on that because maybe some people think the valuation is right, but it<69>s not for me to enter [at] that price obviously. It<49>s too exuberant for me right now.<2E> He added that U.S. ride services company Lyft had been better priced than rival Uber [UBER.UL] when his investment firm bought into it. FILE PHOTO: A Bitcoin sign is seen in a window in Toronto, Canada, May 8, 2014. REUTERS/Mark Blinch/File Photo He said he was <20>very happy<70> with his investment in Citigroup ( C.N ) and saw potential for the share price to rise above $100. It has been trading at around $73. SAFETY VALVE Prince Alwaleed also said he was not considering merging AccorHotels ( ACCP.PA ) and Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, in which Kingdom Holding owns stakes. On the initial public offering of Saudi Aramco, which its CEO reiterated would take place next year, Prince Alwaleed said the transaction would act as a <20>safety valve<76> for Saudi Arabia. <20>If you go 5 percent, there<72>s nothing that prohibits you from going another 5 percent next year, and 5 percent the third year and fourth year, and so forth, depending on the situation.<2E> Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said last year the country was considering listing about 5 percent of Aramco in a deal that could raise $100 billion, if the company is valued at about $2 trillion as hoped. CEO Nasser on Monday brushed off reports about China emerging as a frontrunner in a possible plan to delay the IPO and sell shares to sovereign funds. <20>I<EFBFBD>m not a member of the government but I read these reports, and I will not be surprised if China will be looking at this opportunity,<2C> Prince Alwaleed said. <20>China depends on oil and will depend on oil for a long time to come. And Saudi Arabia is an anchor exporter of oil to China.<2E> Reporting by Katie Paul, Maha El Dahan, Alexander Cornwell and Reem Shamseddine; Writing by Sylvia Westall; Editing by David Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-saudi-kingdom-holding-bitcoin/bitcoin-is-enron-in-the-making-saudi-prince-alwaleed-says-idUKKBN1CS1K5'|'2017-10-23T18:13:00.000+03:00'
'4e1cff43229548064faeab2de1aeda6de90af760'|'Air Berlin plane grounded in Iceland over unpaid charges'|'FRANKFURT, Oct 20 (Reuters) - An Air Berlin airliner was grounded at Iceland<6E>s Keflavik airport late on Thursday because the insolvent German carrier had not paid its airport charges, Keflavik operator Isavia said in a statement.It said the unpaid charges had been incurred before Air Berlin, which has struggled to turn a profit over the last decade, filed for insolvency on Aug. 15.According to German magazine Stern, the Airbus A320 landed at Keflavik at 10:35 p.m. local time on Thursday and was due to depart for Duesseldorf just after midnight.Air Berlin was not available for immediate comment.Air Berlin<69>s flights have been kept aloft by a government loan since the airline<6E>s insolvency filing, giving the carrier time to negotiate with prospective buyers for its assets. It has said flights will cease by Oct. 28 at the latest.Lufthansa has agreed to buy large parts of Air Berlin. Talks with other possible buyers including Britain<69>s easyJet are continuing. (Reporting by Maria Sheahan; editing by Jason Neely) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/air-berlin-lufthansa-iceland/air-berlin-plane-grounded-in-iceland-over-unpaid-charges-idINL8N1MV2QS'|'2017-10-20T09:13:00.000+03:00'
'ece99dc3fedd17d824567386ca83f5f750445fb9'|'Britain posts smallest September deficit for 10 years in boost for Hammond'|'October 20, 2017 / 8:39 AM / Updated 40 minutes ago UK posts narrowest September deficit for 10 years in boost for Hammond Andy Bruce , Alistair Smout 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s budget deficit narrowed last month to its lowest level for any September in the past 10 years, in a boost for embattled Chancellor Philip Hammond ahead of next month<74>s annual budget. Britain''s Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond attends a joint press conference with the Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Jose Angel Gurria at the Treasury in London, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Matt Dunham/Pool September<65>s deficit stood at 5.902 billion pounds, down almost 11 percent from the same month last year, the Office for National Statistics said on Friday, citing figures that exclude state-controlled banks. The shortfall was much smaller than the median forecast of 6.5 billion pounds in a Reuters poll of economists. With the first half of the 2017/18 financial year complete, government borrowing is down 7.2 percent on a the same period a year ago, even though the prospect of Britain<69>s departure from the European Union has weighed on the overall economy. But the strong performance of the public finances so far this financial year probably overstates how much official borrowing forecasts are likely to be revised down next month, the body which compiles the forecasts said on Friday. Still, the figures will likely cheer Hammond, who has been told his job is at risk by supporters of Britain<69>s departure from the European Union, who think he is too negative and is starving other ministers of funds needed to prepare for Brexit. Hammond has also come under broader pressure from within the ruling Conservative Party as well as from the opposition Labour Party to loosen his grip on public spending when he presents his annual budget next month. But his ability to relax his grip on spending looks limited after Britain<69>s budget forecasters said this month they were likely to cut their productivity growth forecasts, suggesting slower economic growth, and tax revenues, in the future. <20>We suspect the Chancellor will find the funds he needs to deal with the most pressing demands, albeit without throwing the task of fiscal consolidation completely out of the window,<2C> Investec economist Victoria Clarke said of the Nov. 22 budget. For now, tax revenues remain healthy. Receipts from value-added tax on the sale of goods and services, income tax and the stamp duty property tax were higher than a year ago. But corporation tax revenues were down slightly. Scotiabank economist Alan Clarke warned the second half of the financial year is set to be tougher, given self-assessed income tax receipts around the turn of the year will likely show a deterioration compared with 2016/17. The finance ministry said on Friday it had made great progress in cutting the budget deficit by over two-thirds since 2010, but borrowing was still too high at over 150 million pounds a day. INTEREST PAYMENTS RISE Britain paid out 3.7 billion pounds in government debt interest payments, up 11.4 percent compared with a year ago and pushed up by a rise in inflation. Around a third of British government bonds are linked to inflation. A move by the Bank of England to raise interest rates in the coming months -- something it signalled in September was likely -- could push up debt payments further. Britain has been struggling to fix its public finances since the budget deficit surged to around 10 percent of gross domestic product in 2010 after the global financial crisis. Since then it has been cut steadily to 2.3 percent of GDP in the 2016/17 financial year which ended in March, its smallest since before the global financial crisis. Editing by Catherine Evans and Hugh Lawson'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-budget/britain-posts-smallest-september
'f93f087718e719f15faae43913a442a5734fb5b8'|'London the starting line as Adidas laces up robotic shoe run'|'October 20, 2017 / 12:54 PM / in 7 hours London the starting line as Adidas laces up robotic shoe run Scarlett Cvitanovich 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Adidas has launched the first of six planned city-themed running shoe models in London as it capitalizes on its first Speedfactory, which it has opened in Germany and equipped with time-saving robotics. A sample AM4LDN shoe is displayed, at the launch of Adidas'' new shoe line, made in a factory largely operated by robots, in London, Britain October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner Adidas plans to use the factory - and another due to open soon in Atlanta, Georgia, to produce small batches designed for particular markets, and ultimately for individual consumers, in contrast to mass production runs ordered months in advance. The idea is to respond faster to fashion trends and offer more customization. After London it plans shoe models inspired by Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Shanghai. <20>It is an opportunity for us to disrupt with brand new technologies and bring that as fast as possible to consumers,<2C> David Drury, director of development for footwear sourcing, told Reuters. A staff member displays a shoe, at the launch of Adidas'' new shoe line, made in a factory largely operated by robots, in London, Britain October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner Adidas relies on more than one million workers in factories in Asia, particularly in China and Vietnam, to produce about 600 million pairs of shoes and items of clothing and accessories per year. But it is shifting some production closer to its major markets so it can deliver new styles quicker, and counter rising wages in Asia and hefty shipping costs. Slideshow (12 Images) It currently takes Adidas up to 18 months to design, produce and deliver most products, but it wants to cut that to as little as 45 days. Its customized shoes will also command premium prices. The AM4LDN shoe aimed at the London market will go on sale next week for 169.95 pounds ($222.74) or 219.95 euros ($259.85). Rival Nike has also announced plans to shorten product development times and last month launched a studio in New York where customers can select the color and pattern of their shoes and have them ready in less than 90 minutes. Writing by Emma Thomasson; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-adidas-robot-shoe/london-the-starting-line-as-adidas-laces-up-robotic-shoe-run-idUSKBN1CP1MZ'|'2017-10-20T15:46:00.000+03:00'
'77d19850d4acfd3d865b5dea757a04dd2a79ce0f'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX opens broadly higher, near eight-month high'|'TORONTO, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index opened higher on Friday, touching its strongest level in nearly eight months as financials led the broad-based gains.The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index rose 52.52 points, or 0.33 percent, to 15,870.52 shortly after the open.Consumer staples was the lone declining sector among the index<65>s 10 main groups. (Reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks-open/canada-stocks-tsx-opens-broadly-higher-near-eight-month-high-idINL2N1MV0TJ'|'2017-10-20T11:48:00.000+03:00'
'9dfc72da30681fcb98b7b7a205e064ff564bb9de'|'GE''s quarterly profit misses estimates, stock drops'|'Reuters TV United States October 20, 2017 / 10:44 AM / Updated 3 minutes ago GE stock drops as profit misses, CEO cuts forecast Alwyn Scott 3 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - General Electric Co<43>s ( GE.N ) third-quarter profit missed Wall Street estimates by a wide margin on Friday and the industrial conglomerate slashed its earnings forecast, sending the year<61>s worst-performing Dow stock down another 6 percent. FILE PHOTO: The logo of General Electric Co. is pictured at the Global Operations Center in San Pedro Garza Garcia, neighbouring Monterrey, Mexico, on May 12, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril The results signaled the depth of problems confronting new Chief Executive John Flannery as he tries to make the 125-year-old company more consistently profitable. GE recently gave a board seat to activist investor Trian Fund Management, and Flannery is due to reveal his restructuring plan and reset financial targets on Nov. 13. <20>We<57>re still waiting for his blueprint,<2C> said Deane Dray, analyst at RBC Capital Markets. He said GE<47>s financials will take a back seat to cost cutting, dividends, earnings quality and portfolio changes expected to be part of Flannery<72>s plan. GE reported adjusted profit of 29 cents a share compared with the 49 cents a share analysts had expected, according to a consensus of estimates from Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. GE cut its profit forecast for the full year to $1.05 to $1.10 a share, from $1.60 to $1.70 previously, and said it would generate about $7 billion in cash from operations, down from $12 billion to $14 billion it had forecast earlier. It left its dividend unchanged. GE shares, part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI , were down 6.7 percent at $22.00 in premarket trading. GE said weak performance in its power and oil and gas businesses, goodwill impairment and higher-than-expected restructuring costs were the main causes of the profit decline. GE<47>s <20>solid<69> performance in other businesses <20>was offset by a decline in power performance in a difficult market,<2C> Flannery said. Industrial cash flow from operations fell mainly <20>because of lower power volume, resulting in lower earnings and higher inventory.<2E> Profit at GE<47>s power business, which makes power plants and related equipment, fell 51 percent in the quarter. Excluding items, industrial cash flows from operating activities was $1.74 billion in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, down from $2.90 billion, a year earlier. The company reported a 14.4-percent rise in revenue to $33.47 billion, boosted by the acquisition of oilfield services provider Baker Hughes ( BHGE.N ). Reporting by Alwyn Scott in New York and Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto and Nick Zieminski'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ge-results/ges-quarterly-revenue-rises-14-4-percent-idUKKBN1CP1AO'|'2017-10-20T14:30:00.000+03:00'
'de8b4d889d6869332163cf998956641e1122fb1f'|'Italy market watchdog seen approving Monte dei Paschi prospectus next week'|'October 20, 2017 / 3:15 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago Monte dei Paschi''s return to stock market delayed - source Reuters Staff 2 Min Read MILAN (Reuters) - Shares in bailed-out Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena are expected to resume trading on the Milan bourse in the week of Oct. 30, a source familiar with the matter said, a few days later than expected. The entrance of Monte Dei Paschi di Siena is seen in San Gusme near Siena, Italy, September 29, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini Monte dei Paschi<68>s shares have not traded in Milan since December 2016, when the bank failed to raise capital from investors and had to seek help from the state ahead of an 8 billion euro (<28>7.1 billion) rescue. The source said Italy<6C>s market watchdog Consob would likely approve the prospectus for the re-listing of Monte dei Paschi<68>s shares in the second half of next week, paving the way for the stock to resume trading the following week. By then the bank will have published its nine-month results, which the board meets to approve on Oct. 27. In August, the Italian government paid 6.49 euro a share to inject 3.85 billion euros into the bank, gaining a 52.2 percent stake. Last month, the stock was valued at 4.28 euros during an auction held to determine the payment due to investors who bought insurance against Monte dei Paschi<68>s default. The 4.28 euro price entails a paper loss of 1.3 billion euros for Italian taxpayers. Reporting by Elisa Anzolin and Valentina Za, editing by Luca Trogni and David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-italy-banks-monte-dei-paschi/italy-market-watchdog-seen-approving-monte-dei-paschi-prospectus-next-week-idUKKBN1CP21S'|'2017-10-20T18:14:00.000+03:00'
'48ad1b44e16bd4a9cca1ffcb85505b1bac420ed7'|'In Kuroda''s face - researchers find ways to predict central bank changes'|'October 20, 2017 / 6:21 AM / in 19 minutes In Kuroda''s face - researchers find ways to predict central bank changes Tomo Uetake 4 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - For decades, economists have tried to guess central bank policy direction by studying subtle changes in official language -- now, researchers are finding new clues on policy, not in the words of central banker but in their faces. FILE PHOTO: Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda attends a news conference at the BOJ headquarters in Tokyo, Japan November 1, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo In Japan, two artificial intelligence researchers, one from Nomura Securities and the other from Microsoft, are using software to analyze split-second changes in the facial expressions of Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda at his post-meeting press conferences. Their study found that Kuroda showed fleeting signs of <20>anger<65> and <20>disgust<73> at news conferences that preceded two recent major policy changes -- the January 2016 introduction of negative interest rates and the adoption of the so-called <20>yield curve control<6F> policy September last year. The implication is that Kuroda was beginning to sense the constraints of existing policies about six or seven weeks before the central bank<6E>s board actually decided to change them, the researchers concluded. The research was presented last weekend to a subcommittee meeting of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI). At press briefings that took place immediately after the changes were announced, Kuroda<64>s face registered less <20>sadness<73>, they found. This could become a powerful tool in predicting policy changes, said Yoshiyuki Suimon, a researcher at Nomura<72>s Financial & Economic Research Centre and the lead author of the study. <20>We<57>d like to analyze (Fed chair Janet) Yellen and (ECB Gov. Mario) Draghi next,<2C> Suimon said. Suimon and Daichi Isami, a Microsoft researcher, had studied together at the University of Tokyo<79>s Graduate School of Frontier Sciences and came up with this idea around the beginning of this year. FILE PHOTO: Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda attends a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, April 28, 2016. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo Working on their own time, the pair took screenshots of Kuroda<64>s face every half-second from video footage. Then they analyzed those images with a program developed by Microsoft called <20>Emotion API<50> that uses a visual recognition algorithm to break down human emotions into eight categories: happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, fear, contempt, disgust and neutral. Most of the time Kuroda<64>s expression was judged to be neutral. But the algorithm also detected subtle expressions of other emotions that could be interpreted in various ways. FILE PHOTO: Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda touches his face during a news conference at the BOJ headquarters in Tokyo, Japan July 15, 2015. REUTERS/Yuya Shino/File Photo The study appears to be the first attempt to decipher policy implications from facial expressions of a central bank chief, said Kiyoshi Izumi, professor of the University of Tokyo, who specializes in financial data mining and artificial market simulation. <20>Their findings offer a fresh approach to analyzing policymakers<72> inner world and minds,<2C> said Izumi, also a member of the JSAI. <20>I think it<69>s possible to build up data on other key people globally, quantify it to predict what comes next.<2E> The analysis uses images that are traditionally considered subjective and not measurable as a new source of information, he said. Suimon said he has already received inquiries from institutional investors about his research. Their study was conducted earlier this year and did not include the BOJ<4F>s last post-policy meeting conference in September. The next meeting takes place Oct 30-31 at which market participants expect no change to policy. A BOJ spokesman said the bank was not in a position to comment on the study. Reporting by Tomo Uetake; Edit
'ce724631187c1488563e8086b2e4a92db2af8c81'|'UPDATE 1-Singapore Airlines to finalise $13.8 bln Boeing order next week'|'* Order for 20 777-9 and 19 787-10 widebodies* Deal announced in February, not in Boeing order book under airline<6E>s name* Boeing leads Airbus in order race in first 9 months of year (Adds more information on Boeing order book)By Jamie FreedSINGAPORE, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Singapore Airlines Ltd said on Friday it will finalise an order for 39 Boeing Co aircraft worth $13.8 billion at list prices when Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong visits Washington D.C. next week.The airline said in February it would order 20 777-9 and 19 787-10 widebodies as part of plans to modernise its fleet over the next decade, but the deal is yet to be finalised and placed in Boeing<6E>s order book as a Singapore Airlines order.The deal was viewed as a major blow to Airbus SE as it battles against Boeing in the widebody market. Airbus has lagged Boeing in net orders in the first nine months of the year, with 271 at the end of September versus 498 for its U.S. rival.Lee told CNBC television on Thursday that he hoped an agreement would be signed with Boeing to buy more aircraft for Singapore Airlines during his U.S. visit from Oct. 22 to 26.More details about the order would be revealed after the signing ceremony in Washington, a Singapore Airlines spokesman said.The airline in February said it had also acquired options to order six more aircraft of each type.Boeing in June booked orders for 20 777Xs and 19 787-10 aircraft for an unidentified customer or customers, making it possible the Singapore Airlines aircraft are already counted in this year<61>s net orders. Boeing declined to comment.Singapore Airlines is investing in modern, fuel efficient aircraft while at the same time undertaking a strategic review designed to help cut costs amid growing competition from Chinese and Middle Eastern rivals.While the Boeing order is worth $13.8 billion at list prices, airlines typically get discounts on jet orders. Jefferies in February estimated the deal<61>s value at closer to $6.5 billion, or about a tenth of the U.S. plane maker<65>s annual volume.Singapore Airlines is the launch customer for the 787-10, a stretch version of the Dreamliner, having made 30 firm orders in addition to the 19 announced in February. Boeing completed final assembly of the airline<6E>s first 787-10 earlier this month ahead of delivery in the first half of 2018.Reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by Stephen CoatesOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/singapore-air-boeing/update-1-singapore-airlines-to-finalise-13-8-bln-boeing-order-next-week-idINL4N1MV1TP'|'2017-10-20T02:32:00.000+03:00'
'7061a22274c19caa310ca601a0b696b34c3e68df'|'A property billionaire rescues Harvey Weinstein<69>s studio'|'AS DISTRESSED assets go, the Weinstein Company (TWC) is uniquely distressing. Much of its value was bound up in the brands of its eponymous founding brothers, one of whom, Harvey Weinstein, has been accused of sexual harassment and of assault by dozens of women in the film industry in America and elsewhere. Amazon Studios, Apple and some television networks have hastened to cut ties with the studio, unwind production deals and remove Mr Weinstein<69>s name from credits. Mr Weinstein<69>s accusers may well sue the company. It was already heavily indebted after a recent string of box-office flops.Who would see an opportunity? Aside from TWC<57>s particular troubles, independent films are a tough business, and the studio has had to haggle with creditors. But for a vulture investor some of the studio<69>s assets hold value. On October 16th Thomas Barrack (pictured above), chairman of Colony Capital, a private-equity firm, said he would immediately put an undisclosed sum of cash into TWC and look at buying part or all of it. Mr Barrack, a 70-year-old property investor who is a friend of President Donald Trump and who has served as the chairman of Mr Trump<6D>s inaugural committee, has experience swooping in for high-profile distressed assets. In 2008 his firm acquired Michael Jackson<6F>s Neverland ranch. Colony also put up millions to rescue Annie Leibovitz, a photographer known for her work with celebrities, from financial trouble.Latest updates New Zealand<6E>s Labour Party turns defeat into triumph Asia 2 hours ago <20>The Death of Stalin<69> is a precarious comedic experiment Prospero 4 hours ago Why do women still earn a lot less than men? The Economist explains 5 hours ago Jeff Flake<6B>s anti-Trump manifesto could cost him his job Democracy in America 21 hours ago The   a day   a day ago See all updates Still, some see the potential acquisition as a bail-out for the Weinsteins, who own more than two-fifths of the studio. Harvey Weinstein, who was fired from running the company on October 8th, has now given up his board seat, and Bob Weinstein, who now faces a single accusation of sexual harassment (and denies the allegation), may be on his way out. Making no direct reference to the scandal engulfing the studio, Mr Barrack said Colony would help return TWC to <20>its rightful iconic position in the independent film and television industry<72>.He is certainly familiar with TWC<57>s assets, which comprise its film library as well as a slate of films and television projects. In 2010 his firm participated in the purchase of Miramax Films, the Weinstein brothers<72> predecessor film company, from Disney for $660m. According to a Hollywood producer familiar with both firms, Miramax<61>s new owners could not develop projects based on many of their successful old titles, like <20>Shakespeare in Love<76> and <20>Bad Santa<74>, without the consent of the Weinstein brothers, who had produced them. Miramax and TWC entered into complicated development agreements, but little of significance has come from them thus far (<28>Bad Santa 2<> was made, and flopped on its release last year, failing to earn back its budget). The two also share production rights to some television properties, including Project Runway, a reality competition around fashion.Combining Miramax and TWC into one entity would clear up rights issues for both companies. Mr Barrack no longer has a stake in Miramax, as Colony and its fellow investors sold the studio last year to beIN Media Group, a sports media company based in Qatar, for an undisclosed sum. Mr Barrack may buy TWC as a short-term salvage job in order to sell it to Miramax<61>s current owner, or he could break the company into pieces, splitting off, for example, the television production business, and sell them off individually. Whatever happens to the business now, the Weinstein name will not be on it.  Business   "Into the frame"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'https://www.economist.com/news/business/21730476-tom-bar
'2190776e52a427c35efe74f1ded8d2c9dbf18b91'|'Former Bertling unit employees sentenced in Angola bribery case'|'October 20, 2017 / 12:05 PM / Updated 25 minutes ago Former Bertling unit employees sentenced in Angola bribery case Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Three former employees of a former UK division of German logistics and freight company Bertling were sentenced by a London court for bribing an agent of Sonangol, the Angolan state oil group, Britain<69>s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said. Joerg Blumberg, Dirk Juergensen and Marc Schweiger were sentenced, fined and disqualified as company directors following their convictions for conspiracy to make corrupt payments earlier this year, the SFO said on Friday. ( bit.ly/2gwwrbQ ) The three former employees were each given a 20-month sentence, suspended for two years, fined 20,000 pounds fine, and disqualified from being company directors for five years, the SFO said. Six former senior managers and employees of F.H. Bertling Ltd, and F.H. Bertling Ltd itself, have pleaded guilty to bribery in Angola between Jan 2004 and Dec 2006. Giuseppe Morreale, Stephen Emler and F.H. Bertling Ltd (UK) - once part of 150-year-old, Hamburg-based Bertling Group - will be sentenced later. Ralf Petersen, who also pleaded guilty, is now deceased. Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-court-angola-corruption/former-bertling-unit-employees-sentenced-in-angola-bribery-case-idUKKBN1CP1IK'|'2017-10-20T15:05:00.000+03:00'
'aed01bb91d8d6a0442ad21ef32f370b1de0f8d01'|'UPDATE 1-UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Oct. 20'|'(Adds futures, company news items)Oct 20 (Reuters) - Britain<69>s FTSE 100 index is expected to open 30 points higher at 7,553 on Friday, with futures up 0.43 percent ahead of the cash market open.* ACACIA: Gold miner Acacia Mining said on Friday it had cut spending by 33 percent in the third quarter of the year compared with a year ago as it adapted to the ban on its gold and copper exports in Tanzania.* SMITHS GROUP: Engineering company Smiths Group said on Friday it had agreed a deal to insure 207 million pounds ($271.38 million) of its pension scheme with Canada Life.* IHG: InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) reported a slowdown in revenues in its Americas business on Friday, due to the affects of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma on the regional business.* GLENCORE: Ukraine<6E>s anti-monopoly committee has allowed commodities trader Glencore to own a stake in a major Ukrainian alumina refinery controlled by Russia<69>s Rusal , the committee said in a statement on Wednesday.* BHP: The new chairman of BHP,, the world<6C>s biggest miner, threw his weight behind his CEO on Thursday after attacks from activist investor Elliott Advisors prompted speculation that the end of Andrew Mackenzie<69>s tenure was imminent.* BOE: Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe said on Thursday he did not see signs of sustained upward inflation pressure, and described the timing of possible future interest rate increases as an <20>open question<6F>.* GOLD: Gold prices turned lower on Friday as the dollar regained ground after the U.S. Senate approved a budget blueprint for the 2018 fiscal year that will pave the way for Republicans to pursue a tax-cut package without Democratic support. Spot gold had declined by 0.4 percent to $1,284.60 an ounce by 0355 GMT. It was down 1.6 percent for the week.* COPPER: Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange was modestly firmer at $6,980 a tonne by 0152 GMT, mostly erasing losses from the previous session.* Britain<69>s main share index fell 0.3 percent on Thursday as a weak third-quarter update from Unilever weighed, while mid- and small-cap trading was marred by profit warnings from IWG and Interserve which slashed their market value by a third. Disappointing retail sales figures sent sterling to a one-week low before recovering, helping the internationally-exposed FTSE reduce earlier losses slightly.* For more on the factors affecting European stocks, please click on: cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarketsTODAY<41>S UK PAPERS> Financial Times> Other business headlines Multimedia versions of Reuters Top News are now available for: * 3000 Xtra : visit topnews.session.rservices.com * For Top News : topnews.reuters.com (Reporting by Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-stocks-factors/update-1-uk-stocks-factors-to-watch-on-oct-20-idUSL4N1MV2G8'|'2017-10-20T09:56:00.000+03:00'
'2aac05b4a400b3ef3e4c67fcdf81dcea06bc22b1'|'UK business minister travels to Canada for talks on Bombardier deal'|'LONDON (Reuters) - British Business Secretary Greg Clark will hold talks in Canada on Friday to discuss Airbus SE<53>s plans to buy a majority stake in Bombardier<65>s C-Series jetliner program aimed at helping it avoid high U.S. import tariffs. A Bombardier CSeries aircraft is pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau Clark will meet with Canadian government officials and executives from the two manufacturers, according to a spokeswoman for the ministry for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. A deal announced earlier this week gives Airbus ( AIR.PA ) a controlling stake in the Canadian manufacturer<65>s troubled C-Series jets, which are partly made in Northern Ireland. The tie up gives Bombardier ( BBDb.TO ) a possible way out of a damaging trade dispute with Boeing ( BA.N ), in which the U.S. Commerce Department has threatened to impose 300 percent import duties, potentially threatening thousands of jobs in Northern Ireland. Under the deal, Airbus would take a 50.01 percent stake in the C Series and add an assembly line for the plane in Alabama, thus becoming a U.S.-made product so it can avoid anti-subsidy and anti-dumping duties. The Boeing-Bombardier dispute has snowballed into a bigger multilateral trade dispute, with British Prime Minister Theresa May wading into the debate and asking U.S. President Donald Trump to intervene in order save British jobs. Bombardier is the largest manufacturing employer in Northern Ireland, which is the poorest of the United Kingdom<6F>s four nations and remains mired in political sensitivities after emerging from decades of armed sectarian conflict. Clark and Northern Irish politicians had welcomed the Airbus deal and promised to work with the firms to protect the workforce in the province. Bombardier makes the C-Series CS100 and CS300 state-of-the-art carbon wings at a plant in Belfast. Reporting By Andrew MacAskill and Costas Pitas; editing by Michael Holden '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bombardier-airbus-britain/uk-business-minister-travels-to-canada-for-talks-on-bombardier-deal-idUSKBN1CP0WV'|'2017-10-20T11:55:00.000+03:00'
'792806613f50ee6c779ced1ff1ee57bc0dfdec84'|'Delivery company DX Group sees earnings tumble 60 percent'|'October 20, 2017 / 6:59 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago Delivery company DX Group sees earnings tumble 60 percent Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Britain<69>s DX Group ( DXDX.L ) reported a 60 percent plunge in annual core earnings on Friday and the mail, parcels and courier services company warned the start of its new financial year had been <20>especially challenging<6E>. For the year that ended June 30, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and exceptional items fell to 7.2 million pounds ($9.44 million) from 18 million pounds. Revenue rose 1.3 percent to 291.9 million pounds. ($1 = 0.7630 pounds)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-dx-results/delivery-company-dx-group-sees-earnings-tumble-60-percent-idUKKBN1CP0LI'|'2017-10-20T09:58:00.000+03:00'
'3afbb109cc1aadb8c164ca08f8adfc2b772c8684'|'Saudi Arabia''s IDB plans blockchain-based financial inclusion product'|'October 20, 2017 / 3:58 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago Saudi Arabia''s IDB plans blockchain-based financial inclusion product Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - The research arm of the Islamic Development Bank [ISDBA.UL] plans to use blockchain technology to develop sharia-compliant products, aiming to support financial inclusion efforts across its member countries. The Jeddah-based Islamic Research and Training Institute said it had signed an agreement with local firm Ateon and Belgium-based SettleMint, with the first stage to focus on a technical feasibility study. The agreement is the latest effort to combine blockchain technology to tap demand from Muslim investors, with firms from Indonesia to Canada having already received sharia-compliant certification for their products. Involvement of the IDB, a multilateral development institution, could also encourage other fintech firms to incorporate Islamic finance to tap markets across the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Islamic finance follows religious principles such as a ban on gambling and outright speculation, but until now the sector has focussed on traditional retail banking services. Blockchain involves a shared electronic ledger that allows all parties to track information through a secure network, removing the need for third-party verification. The IDB said such features would allow for instantaneous clearing and settlement of transactions and asset exchanges, while helping eliminate counterparty risk. Reporting by Bernardo Vizcaino; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-islamic-finance-fintech/saudi-arabias-idb-plans-blockchain-based-financial-inclusion-product-idUKKBN1CP090'|'2017-10-20T06:58:00.000+03:00'
'6d62b2f2287f5afc225ea1cc004e621fe6d33d42'|'Daimler third-quarter profit falls on diesel costs, special items'|'October 20, 2017 / 6:26 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Daimler third-quarter profit falls on diesel costs, special items Reuters Staff 3 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Daimler<65>s ( DAIGn.DE ) third-quarter operating profit declined, as the cost of making diesel engine cars run cleaner and other special items outweighed record sales of Mercedes-Benz luxury models. FILE PHOTO: The Mercedes star logo of an E Coupe is pictured before the annual news conference of Daimler AG in Stuttgart, Germany, February 2, 2017. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo Earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) at the German automotive group plunged 14 percent to 3.46 billion euros ($4.08 billion) in the July-to-September period, Daimler said on Friday, in line with the 3.43 billion-euro consensus forecast in a Reuters poll of banks and brokerages. Daimler last quarter spent 223 million euros to update over 3 million current and older Mercedes diesel models in Europe to curb pollution and help avert driving bans. A recall of more than 1 million passenger cars and sport-utility vehicles worldwide to address potential unintended air bag deployments announced this week will add another 230 million euros in costs, it said. The cars and trucks manufacturer stuck with its guidance for a significant increase in group EBIT this year. It said it now expected EBIT at its trucks division to also significantly exceed year-ago levels, having previously guided for flat EBIT. Earnings at Daimler Trucks, the group<75>s second-largest unit by revenue, jumped by a third to 614 million euros, benefiting from strong momentum in North America where heavy-truck orders rose to the highest in over two years in September. Daimler said it expects EBIT at its financial services division to significantly beat year-earlier levels, having previously guided for earnings to rise only slightly. Third-quarter deliveries of Mercedes luxury cars rose 7.9 percent to a record 573,026 models, powered by strong demand for sport-utility vehicles such as the GLA and GLC models and the E-Class. That beats the 1.2 percent gain to 499,467 autos at rival BMW ( BMWG.DE ), which Mercedes last year eclipsed as the world<6C>s biggest premium automaker by sales, and the 3.6 percent rise to 471,850 cars at Volkswagen<65>s ( VOWG_p.DE ) Audi brand. Reporting by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Maria Sheahan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-daimler-results/daimler-third-quarter-profit-falls-on-diesel-costs-special-items-idUKKBN1CP0HP'|'2017-10-20T09:25:00.000+03:00'
'd6649850749d6f822a23f3d84b65cadd8f167b6b'|'IBM lags in cloud computing and AI. Can tech<63>s great survivor recover?'|'TECHNOLOGY giants are a bit like dinosaurs. Most do not adapt successfully to a new age<67>a <20>platform shift<66> in the lingo. A few make it through two and even three. But only a single company spans them all: IBM, which is more than a century old, having started as a maker of tabulating machines that were fed with punch cards.Yet after 21 quarters with falling year-on-year revenues (see chart), doubts had been growing about whether IBM would manage the latest big shifts: the move into the cloud, meaning computing delivered as an online service; and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), which is a label for all kinds of digital offerings based on insights extracted from reams of data. In May Warren Buffett, chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a holding company, announced that his firm had sold a third of its total stake in IBM, then valued at $13.5bn, saying that <20>I don<6F>t value IBM the same way I did six years ago when I started buying.<2E> Analysts were starting to wonder how long Ginni Rometty, the firm<72>s boss (pictured), would remain at the helm.Latest updates A better way to search through scientific papers Science and technology 10 minutes ago Germany<6E>s coalition talks begin Kaffeeklatsch 42 minutes ago Not   4   4   5   5   On October 17th, however, IBM<42>s quarterly results suggested that sceptics might just be wrong. Revenues slipped again, to $19.2bn, but they did so less than expected. The firm indicated that it could see growth return in the next quarter and its shares rose on October 18th by 8.9%, the biggest one-day gain since 2009. Could Big Blue, still one of the world<6C>s largest information technology (IT) firms with nearly 390,000 employees, have turned the corner?If big IT firms often fail to adapt to such shifts, it is because these changes require more than adopting new technology. They also force companies to question what they stand for, according to Michael Cusumano, a business professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The brand, the technical skills, how products and services are sold, must all be examined. Many firms choose to defend their existing domains instead.After a near-death experience in the early 1990s, when sales of its mainframes collapsed, IBM seemed to have found a formula to stay ahead in technology. Under Louis Gerstner and Sam Palmisano, its former bosses, it quickly adapted to the internet and was one of the first big IT firms to back open-source software. It ditched businesses about to become commodities, such as personal computers and low-end servers. And it stuck to a financial <20>road map<61> telling investors how profitable it intended to be over the next five years. Nor did it hesitate to spend billions buying back stock to lift its earnings per share.Yet this fixation on financial metrics (a stance that predated Ms Rometty) is a big reason why IBM had a late start in the cloud<75>a trend it had spotted earlier than many competitors. As a result, it is now an also-ran in cloud computing, at least in the part of it called the <20>public cloud<75>, or networks of big data centres shared by many firms. IBM is number three at best; Amazon and Microsoft lead the pack by some distance, benefiting from the growing number of firms moving applications into the cloud, rather than running them on their own computer systems. More than 40% of IBM<42>s revenues come from products and services that directly compete with public-cloud offerings, says Steve Milunovich of UBS, an investment bank.IBM has tried to avoid the problem, being, for example, the first tech giant that went big on AI. Building on a technology called Watson, which in 2011 won <20>Jeopardy!<21>, an American quiz show, the firm two years later launched a new line of business to help organisations make predictions from patterns in their data. It promoted the effort heavily and invested billions, particularly in health care, for example to help hospitals to use patient data to gauge health risks. Yet progress has proved
'9f99e0015444b6b72a0e6749c11264d2a63b9cb2'|'UK fintech investment set for record-breaking year in 2017'|'October 18, 2017 / 11:06 PM / in 32 minutes UK fintech investment set for record-breaking year in 2017 Polina Ivanova , Jemima Kelly 3 Min Read FILE PHOTO - A man uses a laptop in the Level39 FinTech hub based in the One Canada Square tower of the Canary Wharf district of London, Britain, August 5, 2016. REUTERS/Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - British fintech companies are expected to see record-breaking investment this year and to far outstrip their European competitors, data showed on Thursday, adding to signs that Brexit is so far having no big impact on the fast-growing sector. Financial technology firms have been chipping away at traditional banking by offering services ranging from mobile payment apps to digital currencies like bitcoin, and the government regards the sector as a key source of growth. Investors have pumped more than 825 million pounds into British fintech start-ups since the start of 2017, double the amount seen in the same period last year, research commissioned by the London Mayor<6F>s office found. London attracted 90 percent of that investment, and over the past five years has pulled in more than five times the amount of any other European city, the research found. Some had worried that Britain<69>s vote last June to leave the European Union would see a drop-off in international investment into UK fintech. But Kevin Chong, co-head of emerging companies at Investec, which invests in a number of fintech start-ups across the world, said that over the past 12 months he had seen an increase in international investors, and in the number of those who had never previously invested in the sector. <20>A lot of it is to do with the fact that we have such a high concentration of financial service players in London in such a tight geography,<2C> he said. <20>And fintech, unlike some of the other technology sectors, is one of those areas where you can<61>t avoid having to partner with or have some sort of relationship with the established players.<2E> Despite London<6F>s dominance in Europe, it still lags investment in Silicon Valley, whose fintech sector pulled in almost $6.5 billion in the past five years, as well as Beijing and New York. Chong said that although budgets were bigger in Silicon Valley, start-ups had less access to major banks and other financial services firms there, and this was a reason that New York and London were growing quickly. <20>Clearly Brexit poses major challenges, but London<6F>s position as a global financial centre and world-class technology hub...cannot be replicated anywhere else,<2C> said London<6F>s Deputy Mayor for Business, Rajesh Agrawal, in a statement. <20>This highlights the need for a Brexit which enables London to maintain its place at the heart of the single market, as the continent<6E>s financial capital.<2E> Reporting by Polina Ivanova and Jemima Kelly; Editing by Hugh Lawson 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-fintech-investment/uk-fintech-investment-set-for-record-breaking-year-in-2017-idUKKBN1CN38J'|'2017-10-19T02:19:00.000+03:00'
'd57686ce1208c9e7a7fc210d8720c9d71c968da9'|'Australia''s Westpac to refund 200,000 customers holding ''packaged'' accounts'|'October 19, 2017 / 4:29 AM / in 32 minutes Australia''s Westpac to refund 200,000 customers holding ''packaged'' accounts Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Westpac Bank CEO Brian Hartzer listens to a question from the Australian government''s Economics Committee at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, October 11, 2017. AAP/Lukas Coch/via REUTERS (Reuters) - Australia<69>s Westpac Banking Corp ( WBC.AX ) said on Thursday it will provide refunds to about 200,000 customers holding <20>packaged<65> accounts, or accounts with additional benefits, and book an after-tax charge of A$45 million ($35.33 million) in fiscal 2017. <20>Some customers did not receive discounts on ancillary products such as home and contents insurance and term deposits. The packages have since been simplified and all benefits are now automated,<2C> the bank said in a statement. ($1 = 1.2739 Australian dollars) Reporting by Rushil Dutta in BENGALURU 0 : 0'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-australia-banks-westpac/australias-westpac-to-refund-200000-customers-holding-packaged-accounts-idUKKBN1CO0D2'|'2017-10-19T07:28:00.000+03:00'
'5b6c0b14a43f37049fe6d787c167838d7828015a'|'MOVES-TPG Capital names former Ford CEO Mark Fields as senior adviser'|'Oct 17 (Reuters) - TPG Capital said on Tuesday former Ford Motor Co Chief Executive Mark Fields has joined the private equity firm as a senior adviser.Fields, who was at Ford for 28 years, will be working with TPG<50>s industrials team, according to the company.TPG, which recently invested in logistics company Transplace, expects to further invest in areas including outsourced services and mobility.Fields, 56, was abruptly dismissed from Ford earlier this year, after less than three years at the helm. (Reporting by Tamara Mathias in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/tpg-capital-moves/moves-tpg-capital-names-former-ford-ceo-mark-fields-as-senior-adviser-idINL4N1MS5LX'|'2017-10-17T20:43:00.000+03:00'
'f19530bc240a65406ea7a514ea54e82d59820259'|'UPDATE 1-State Street''s profit rises 24 pct, driven by higher interest rates'|'(Reuters) - State Street Corp<72>s ( STT.N ) adjusted expenses rose 4 percent in the third quarter, overshadowing a better-than-expected profit and sending the bank<6E>s shares down 4 percent on Monday.The company<6E>s higher expenses come at a time when many U.S. banks have sharpened focus on cost-cutting efforts to boost profits in a low interest rate environment and amid sluggish loan growth.The faster-than-expected increase in Boston-based State Street<65>s operating costs is likely to concern investors, Sandler O<>Neill analyst Jeffery Harte said.On an adjusted basis, State Street<65>s expenses rose 4.1 percent to $1.99 billion in the quarter ended Sept. 30, one percentage point higher than Sandler O<>Neill<6C>s estimate.The company said costs rose in part due to higher performance-based incentives paid to its employees.Still, State Street<65>s net income attributable to common shareholders rose 24 percent to $629 million, benefiting from higher interest rates.On an adjusted basis, State Street earned $1.71 per share and topped analysts<74> average expectation of $1.62, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.The bank<6E>s net interest income climbed 12.3 percent to $603 million, reflecting the market impact of the three rises in official Federal Reserve interest rates since last year.State Street, which generates revenue mainly by managing and servicing investments, trading and providing research services, said its total fee income rose 7.8 percent to $2.24 billion.For the full year, the bank said it expects total fee revenue on an operating basis to rise 6 percent to 7 percent.Shares of State Street, the company that funded Wall Street<65>s <20>Fearless Girl<72> sculpture, were down 3.3 percent at $95.81 in morning trading on Monday. The stock was the biggest drag on the S&P 500 financial index .SPSY.State Street<65>s bigger rival, BNY Mellon ( BK.N ), posted a 1 percent rise in adjusted noninterest expenses last week.Reporting By Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin RavikumarOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-state-str-results/state-streets-profit-rises-24-percent-in-third-quarter-idUSKBN1CS1DH'|'2017-10-23T14:20:00.000+03:00'
'c4f5c102f0dc6785c1462f3ff88c162572f014a3'|'Big money stays away from booming bitcoin'|' 10 AM / in 16 minutes Big money stays away from booming bitcoin Jemima Kelly , Maiya Keidan 7   Bitcoin is booming, digital currency hedge funds are sprouting at the rate of two a week and the value of all cryptocurrencies has surged tenfold this year to more than $170 billion. FILE PHOTO: A Bitcoin and dollar note are seen in this illustration picture taken September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Yet for all the hype, mainstream institutional investors are steering clear of the nascent market, taking the view that it is too lightly regulated, too volatile and too illiquid to risk investing other people<6C>s money in. Bitcoin, the biggest and most well-known cryptocurrency, has outperformed all the world<6C>s traditional currencies each year since 2011, except for 2014. But many investors still view it as an opaque, esoteric instrument used by gun-runners and drug-dealers on the Dark Web that should be avoided. This year, though, a flood of new hedge funds focused on cryptocurrencies has offered institutional investors who might be unfamiliar with the market a potential route into the world of digital currencies. According to Autonomous NEXT, a financial technology research house, 84 so-called crypto hedge funds have been launched this year, taking the total to 110 with about $2.2 billion in assets altogether. But the fact most of the funds are relatively small with a limited track record - and that cryptocurrency price swings have been so pronounced - means the world<6C>s pension funds, insurance companies and large mutual funds are staying away. <20>While cryptocurrencies are probably here to stay, they are difficult to analyze, wildly volatile and some may be prone to fraud,<2C> said Trevor Greetham at Royal London Asset Management (RLAM), part of the Royal London life insurance company. <20>Diversification is a good thing but that doesn<73>t mean investing in everything just because it<69>s there. We favor assets with a long track record in producing returns or reducing risks,<2C> said Greetham, who heads RLAM<41>s multi asset team. For a graphic on top cryptocurrencies, click tmsnrt.rs/2gWgyLc Autonomous NEXT partner Lex Sokolin said there were probably only a couple of funds worth several hundred million dollars with most in the $5 million to $20 million range - well below the threshold most institutional investors would consider. <20>For many institutional, discretionary fund managers, those funds wouldn<64>t get cleared because the big question would be around liquidity,<2C> said James Butterfill, head of investment strategy at ETF Securities in London. <20>BUBBLES, BOOMS AND BUSTS<54> One way mainstream money managers could get exposure is by investing in a basket of hedge funds that includes a crypto fund. But the head of hedge funds at a major European bank that invests in more than 100 hedge funds said there were no crypto funds in his portfolio. <20>It<49>s a very controversial proposition,<2C> said the banker, who declined to be named. <20>It<49>s unlikely that the most established hedge funds will make big bets on this because you could put your core business at risk.<2E> Determining the value of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is tricky. There are almost 17 million bitcoins in existence now but the total supply is limited to 21 million, and that won<6F>t be reached until the next century. Bitcoin<69>s total value, or market capitalization, is close to $100 billion, bigger than U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley. At the start of the year it was just $15 billion. Ethereum, the second-biggest cryptocurrency, is now worth almost $30 billion. <20>If the supply is truly fixed then the price of these securities are determined purely by demand which, in turn, is determined largely by sentiment,<2C> said Ken Dickson, investment director, money markets and FX at Aberdeen Standard Investments. <20>This means huge price swings with bubbles, booms and busts. Unless the supply processes of these instruments are reformed then it is unlikely that they will play any part of an invest
'c6a9c06bf26d2f875f9393bfef4e43afae9bcf87'|'Asian shares hover near recent highs; China Congress eyed'|'October 24, 2017 / 12:52 AM / Updated 2 minutes ago Asian shares hover near recent highs; NZ$ at five-month lows Swati Pandey 4 Min Read SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian shares held near recent decade highs on Tuesday and major currencies kept to narrow ranges, while the New Zealand dollar stumbled to five-month lows as the incoming Labour coalition<6F>s policies unsettled investors. Passersby are reflected in an electronic stock quotation board outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato Prime Minister-designate Jacinda Ardern<72>s tough stance on foreign investment in housing and on immigration could prove negative for the New Zealand dollar, given the country runs a current account deficit. In addition, Ardern said on Tuesday her government plans to review and reform the Central Bank Act to possibly include employment, alongside inflation, as a dual target. The kiwi, the world<6C>s 11th most-traded currency, duly shed all its early gains to be down 0.5 percent to $0.6930, a level not seen since May 19. <20>The announcement...put NZD under broad pressure once more,<2C> said Matt Simpson, Singapore-based senior analyst at Faraday Research. <20>This may or may not necessarily turn out to be a bad thing but investors are focused on the uncertainty and are shorting the kiwi.<2E> The currency has fallen in four out of the last five sessions on fears a slowdown in foreign investment under the new government could hurt the broader economy and force the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to keep rates at current record lows for longer. MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was 0.1 percent weak at 548.49 points, not far from a 10-year high of 554.63 set last week. Japan<61>s Nikkei extended its 16-day winning streak to a 21-year peak while China<6E>s blue-chip CSI300 index jumped to the highest in more than two years. <20>Whether the gains can continue this week is obviously yet to be seen. I remain a bull, but of the view that these markets are tired, fatigued and need new information to fuel the beast,<2C> said Chris Weston, chief strategist at IG Markets. European futures pointed to a weak start with the STOXX 50 down 0.2 percent as Spain<69>s separatist crisis entered another week. Madrid took the unprecedented step of dismissing the government of Catalonia on Saturday in a last-resort effort to thwart its push for independence. Catalan leaders called for civil disobedience in response. Germany<6E>s DAX futures edged 0.1 percent lower ahead of a Bundestag meeting where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is set to clash with other parties over its nomination for a senior parliamentary post. The political tensions have weighed on the euro which hovered near two-week lows at $1.1760. The market is on edge ahead of a European Central Bank meeting on Thursday where it is expected to announce some form of policy tapering. Investors were also biting their nails as suspense builds over who might be the next chair of the Federal Reserve after Janet Yellen<65>s term expires in February. U.S. President Donald Trump has indicated an announcement is expected <20>very shortly.<2E> The market is betting on Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell as the likely choice while Trump is also weighing on Stanford University economist John Taylor and current Fed chief Yellen. The dollar index inched lower to 93.796 but stayed in sight of a recent two-month peak. In commodities, base metals were stronger with copper futures up 1.5 percent. Spot gold edged 0.1 percent lower to $1280.60 an ounce. Brent crude slipped 4 cents to $57.33, while U.S. crude added 4 cents to $51.92 a barrel. Reporting by Swati Pandey; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Eric Meijer'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asian-shares-hover-near-recent-highs-china-congress-eyed-idUKKBN1CT02K'|'2017-10-24T03:49:00.000+03:00'
'53dbab9bba6eddddd42053ca67b819f780e86655'|'Britain''s financial watchdog fines Merrill Lynch 34.5 mln pounds'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s financial watchdog has fined Bank of America<63>s ( BAC.N ) Merrill Lynch investment banking arm 34.5 million pounds ($45.5 million) for its third transaction reporting failure in just over a decade.A man speaks on his mobile while standing in front of the Merrill Lynch building in New York, May 7, 2012. REUTERS/Keith Bedford The Financial Conduct Authority said the bank failed to have adequate oversight arrangements, undertake testing or allocate enough staff to properly meet reporting obligations for derivatives trading between February 2014 and February 2016.The bank agreed to settle at an early stage in the investigation and received a 30 percent cut in the overall fine of 49.32 million pounds, the FCA said in a statement on Monday.European Union regulators toughened reporting requirements in the derivatives market following the 2007-09 financial crisis, which left them unable to see easily which banks were exposed to large, risky positions, creating uncertainty in markets.Banks now have to report their derivatives trades in a timely way so that regulators can spot uncontrolled risks building up.It was the first enforcement action against a firm for failing to report details of derivatives traded on an exchange under the EU<45>s European Markets Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), the FCA said.<2E>It is vital that reporting firms ensure their transaction reporting systems are tested as fit for purpose, adequately resourced and perform properly. There needs to be a line in the sand,<2C> said Mark Steward, the FCA<43>s executive director for enforcement.<2E>We will continue to take appropriate action against any firm that fails to meet requirements.<2E>Bank of America Merrill Lynch said it was wholly committed to complying with all applicable regulatory requirements.<2E>When we discovered that certain trades had not been fully reported to a trade repository, as required following the introduction of EMIR, we immediately reported the matter to the FCA,<2C> the bank said.No customers suffered losses, it added.The bank was fined 13.28 million pounds in April 2015 for failing to accurately report transactions between 2007 and 2014. In August 2006, the watchdog fined Merrill Lynch 150,000 pounds for share trading reporting failures.Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru and Huw Jones in London; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Adrian Croft '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bank-of-america-fine-britain/britains-financial-watchdog-fines-merrill-lynch-34-5-million-pounds-idUSKBN1CS115'|'2017-10-23T12:22:00.000+03:00'
'913405f4bf27c8badef29b0cea9a1ef3ac49c917'|'Air France KLM reaches pensions deal for KLM staff'|'October 23, 2017 / 5:52 AM / a minute ago Air France KLM reaches pensions deal for KLM staff Reuters Staff 1 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - Air France KLM ( AIRF.PA ) has struck a pensions scheme deal for its KLM pilot and cabin staff unions, in changes that the airline said would have a 311 million euros (<28>277 million) impact in the third quarter. FILE PHOTO - A KLM commercial passenger jet takes off in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau The airline said that in future, the KLM pensions scheme would qualify as a collective defined contribution scheme, and yearly pension contributions would have a limited volatility. KLM would make a one-off lump sum payment of 194 million euros to the pension fund, it said. Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-air-france-klm-pensions/air-france-klm-reaches-pensions-deal-for-klm-staff-idUKKBN1CS0H7'|'2017-10-23T08:51:00.000+03:00'
'a65e1bf4d305615972f648a6ad29a43047846470'|'Fidelity Chairman''s video to employees - no tolerance for harassment'|'October 23, 2017 / 3:58 PM / in 18 minutes Fidelity Chairman''s video to employees - no tolerance for harassment Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BOSTON (Reuters) - Fidelity Investments Chairman Abigail Johnson on Monday delivered a direct message to more than 40,000 employees at the asset management company: There<72>s no tolerance for harassment. Fidelity Chairman and CEO Abigail Johnson interviews former New York City Mayor and founder of Bloomberg L.P. Michael Bloomberg about innovation at the Boston-based HubWeek in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder <20>Today, I<>d like to remind everyone that we have no tolerance at our company for any type of harassment,<2C> Johnson said, according to a person who saw the chairman<61>s video message. <20>We simply will not, and do not tolerate this type of behaviour, from anyone.<2E> Johnson<6F>s remarks come after recent published reports that Fidelity dismissed at least two money managers after they were accused of sexual harassment. Reporting By Tim McLaughlin'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-funds-fidelity-harassment/fidelity-chairmans-video-to-employees-no-tolerance-for-harassment-idUKKBN1CS26J'|'2017-10-23T18:57:00.000+03:00'
'7a90056c6f97b34c10b0a38cf3b89d70a0aea98b'|'AT&T extends deadline to close Time Warner deal'|' 11 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago AT&T extends deadline to close Time Warner deal Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - AT&T Inc ( T.N ) said on Monday it had extended by a <20>short period<6F> the deadline to close its proposed deal to acquire Time Warner Inc ( TWX.N ), to buy time to get the required regulatory approvals for the deal. FILE PHOTO - An AT&T logo is seen at a AT&T building in New York City, October 23, 2016. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith/File Photo The deal had a termination date of Oct. 22. AT&T<>s $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner is expected to give it control of cable TV channels HBO and CNN, film studio Warner Bros and other coveted media assets. Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-time-warner-m-a-at-t/att-extends-deadline-to-close-time-warner-deal-idUKKBN1CS1JO'|'2017-10-23T15:08:00.000+03:00'
'5e58b1c4b0b57ae079586f847a2099f432a0a350'|'MOVES-Chubb hires new global government and industry affairs head'|'October 20, 2017 / 1:39 PM / Updated 19 minutes ago MOVES-Chubb hires new global government and industry affairs head Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 20 (Reuters) - The world<6C>s largest listed property and casualty insurer Chubb Ltd named Jodi Bond senior vice president of its global government and industry affairs unit. Bond will be based in Washington, D.C., and her appointment is effective Nov. 1. Reporting by Ahmed Farhatha in Bengaluru'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/chubb-ltd-ch-moves-jodi-bond/moves-chubb-hires-new-global-government-and-industry-affairs-head-idUSL4N1MV42U'|'2017-10-20T16:35:00.000+03:00'
'706d3bd3be2ae0c5ee58903c2b1354c03d5c5517'|'Euro zone inflation expectations hit seven-month high'|'October 24, 2017 / 12:08 PM / Updated 4 hours ago Euro zone inflation expectations hit seven-month high Dhara Ranasinghe , John Geddie 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Investor expectations for long-term inflation in the euro zone rose to a seven-month high on Tuesday, an encouraging sign for the   as it prepares to step back from its extraordinary monetary stimulus. A picture illustration shows Euro banknotes in Zenica January 26, 2015. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic Strong business and bank lending surveys on Tuesday provided more evidence the ECB is likely to announce at its meeting on Thursday that it will cut back its monthly bond purchases. Europe<70>s benchmark German 10-year bond yield, sensitive to changes in inflation expectations, rose 4 basis points to its highest in nearly three weeks at 0.48 percent DE10YT=TWEB. All other euro zone yields were 2 to 5 bps higher on the day. U.S. Treasury yields US10YT=RR hit their highest in over five months. The five-year, five-year breakeven forward rate, a euro zone inflation measure closely tracked by the ECB, rose to 1.6571 percent EUIL5YF5Y=R, the highest since March. That is still below the ECB<43>s inflation target of just under 2 percent, but up from lows around 1.50 percent set in June. <20>Inflation (expectations) had some bearing on the market, but how much is it going to affect the ECB meeting?<3F> said Antoine Bouvet, a rates strategist at Mizuho. <20>The ECB has come to terms with the fact the economy is moving in the right direction ... as seen with the PMI data this morning,<2C> he added. The ECB faces technical constraints in its asset-purchase scheme and is looking for signs of both stronger growth and inflation to start scaling back its 2.3 trillion-euro asset- purchase programme. Recent indications from policymakers have fanned speculation it will opt for a reduction in monthly asset purchases to 30 billion euros from 60 billion euros from January for nine months. <20>The ECB is signalling that it will do all that<61>s needed to push inflation higher and an expectation of a soft exit from its stimulus scheme is also supporting inflation expectations,<2C> said Commerzbank strategist Rainer Guntermann, referring to business activity surveys. There are some other encouraging signs. The euro has weakened almost 3 percent from recent 2 1/2- year highs above $1.20 EUR= . However, the five-year, five-year forward rate was creeping higher before that, in defiance of euro strength. Data earlier this month showed prices at the factory gate in the euro zone rose a stronger-than-expected 2.5 percent year-on-year in August. Jonathan Baltora,   AXA Investment Managers, said a rise in oil prices in recent months was a key reason for the pick-up in inflation expectations. Oil prices, a key component of inflation indexes, have risen about 30 percent from 2017 lows hit in June. LCOc1 <20>I think that the ECB is going to welcome the move,<2C> said Baltora, referring to the pick up in market inflation expectations. <20>Euro zone inflation had flirted with zero in the past two years, but if you look at core inflation that is now rising and we think it will continue to rise.<2E> Additional reporting by Fanny Potkin; Graphic by Ritvik Carvalho; Editing by Pritha Sarkar, Larry King'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-bonds-inflation/euro-zone-inflation-expectations-hit-seven-month-high-idUKKBN1CT1OJ'|'2017-10-24T15:07:00.000+03:00'
'e4a2f7f4b5a572eceb780e0f5c4351cb1715d0bb'|'Swiss elevator maker Schindler''s third-quarter up on China orders'|'October 24, 2017 / 5:49 AM / Updated 6 hours ago Swiss elevator maker Schindler''s third-quarter up on China orders Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Elevator and escalator maker Schindler ( SCHP.S ) on Tuesday posted a 7 percent rise in third-quarter net profit, helped by strong performance in all regions, with Chinese orders contributing the most. The company''s logo is seen on a test tower at Swiss elevator maker Schindler''s components factory in the town of Ebikon Switzerland May 31, 2016. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann While the Chinese market for new installations remained challenging, order flow was boosted by several infrastructure projects, the company said. Second-quarter net profit of 229 million Swiss francs (176.02 million pounds) beat the average forecast of 221 million francs in an analyst poll. Orders for July-September climbed 5.6 percent to 2.74 billion francs, over double the poll average of 2.68 billion francs. For the third quarter, sales rose 7.5 percent to 2.59 billion francs, compared to the poll average of 2.52 billion. The company reaffirmed its full-year outlook of revenue growth of 3 percent to 5 percent and net profit in the 840 million to 880 million francs range. ($1 = 0.9847 Swiss francs) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-schindler-results/swiss-elevator-maker-schindlers-third-quarter-up-on-china-orders-idUKKBN1CT0ID'|'2017-10-24T08:50:00.000+03:00'
'e9e48e4afb1d8491843bc6df50611c8b33193588'|'Britain''s EU bank capital could be locked up for decades after Brexit - official'|'October 24, 2017 / 11:32 AM / Updated 7 hours ago Britain''s EU bank capital could be locked up for decades after Brexit - official Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Britain could wait more than three decades to recover billions of euros in capital once it ceases to be a shareholder in the European Investment Bank on its departure from the European Union, the boss of the bank said. European Investment Bank (EIB) President Werner Hoyer talks during a news conference in Nicosia, Cyprus October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou In an interview with German business daily Handelsblatt, Werner Hoyer also said the loss of the 16 percent of shareholder capital that Britain holds would force the bank to rein in its lending unless other member states stepped up to compensate. The EIB, owned by the EU<45>s member states, uses their capital deposits as security to fund loans for research, infrastructure and environmental projects in Europe and around the world. Hoyer said that the need to unwind positions in an orderly fashion meant that Britain would only see its cash allocation to the bank - a total of 3.5 billion euros (<28>3.1 billion) - in 2054, 35 years after the expected March 2019 exit date. <20>As things stand, repayment will come only when the current loan portfolio, in which the British are participants, is fully recovered,<2C> he told Handelsblatt. A final decision on a further allocation of about 36 billion euros in capital from Britain, which was not paid in cash, has yet to be taken, but Hoyer said that under a proposal by lead Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, a British deposit could take the place of the shareholder capital, also until 2054. <20>That strikes me as a fair position that does both sides justice,<2C> he told the paper. Britain must choose from a range of existing off-the-peg models for its relationship to the European Union when it leaves the bloc, Barnier told a group of newspapers separately. Reporting By Thomas Escritt; Editing by Hugh Lawson'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-eib/britains-eu-bank-capital-could-be-locked-up-for-decades-after-brexit-official-idUKKBN1CT1K7'|'2017-10-24T14:33:00.000+03:00'
'4b66042f17d864128a66d995fd46f3176a5811be'|'CWA union to oppose Sprint, T-Mobile deal over job losses'|'October 24, 2017 / 6:57 PM / Updated 38 minutes ago CWA union to oppose Sprint, T-Mobile deal over job losses Reuters Staff 3 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The 700,000-member Communications Workers of America (CWA) union said on Tuesday it would oppose a deal to merge wireless carriers Sprint ( S.N ) and T-Mobile, arguing that such a move would cost tens of thousands of jobs in the United States. A Sprint sign is seen on top of a Sprint retail store in Manhattan, New York, U.S., September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky The companies are expected to announce an agreement in the first half of November to create a company that would have more than 130 million U.S. subscribers, just behind Verizon Communications Inc ( VZ.N ) and AT&T Inc ( T.N ). The deal would have to be approved by the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department<6E>s Antitrust Division. The union cited a 2016 study by Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson Research which showed that some 20,000 people could lose their jobs if a deal went through. <20>Allowing Sprint and T-Mobile to merge guarantees the loss of tens of thousands of U.S. jobs that would result from store closures and the consolidation of administrative work,<2C> Shelton said. <20>One of the FCC<43>s responsibilities is to ensure that mergers and other corporate actions are in the public interest. The massive job loss that this merger would cause is not in the public interest,<2C> he said. The CWA also estimated that T-Mobile has 10,000 people working in 17 U.S. call centers whose jobs could move overseas if a deal is approved, union spokeswoman Candice Johnson said. The FCC may take job losses into consideration when reviewing a merger. Job losses are not considered in an antitrust review. Sprint declined to comment while T-Mobile did not respond to a request for comment. The two companies had contemplated a merger in early 2014 but scrapped the idea after initial meetings with high-level officials at the FCC and Justice Department, who had said it was unapproveable. Many of the staffers who were in the Justice Department<6E>s Antitrust Division in 2014 remain in place, and will be skeptical of the tie-up this time, sources have told Reuters. But the final decision will be made by political appointees who have changed since President Donald Trump took office. Japan<61>s SoftBank Group Corp ( 9984.T ) controls Sprint while T-Mobile<6C>s majority owner is Deutsche Telekom AG ( DTEGn.DE ). Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Paul Simao'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sprint-corp-m-a-t-mobile-us/cwa-union-to-oppose-sprint-t-mobile-deal-over-job-losses-idUSKBN1CT2QY'|'2017-10-24T21:55:00.000+03:00'
'16a2da334dce0ebcb9ed3a6b8f6d38407843aa9e'|'Delphi to buy self-driving tech startup nuTonomy for $450 million'|'(Reuters) - Delphi Automotive Plc said on Tuesday it will buy self-driving car software startup nuTonomy for $450 million, helping to put automated vehicles using its technology into commercial use in 2019, a year earlier than planned.Delphi and nuTonomy have been testing automated vehicles in Singapore, where regulators announced plans on Monday to halt growth in its vehicle population to ease traffic congestion. The city-state has been at the forefront of promoting self-driving cars. [nL4N1MY2T1]Automakers and suppliers are investing in self-driving cars and ride services in part as insurance against such moves by the world<6C>s largest cities to limit private, petroleum-fueled car use.London on Monday said it would charge an additional 10 pound tax on older diesel cars entering certain parts of the city.General Motors Co has been testing its self-driving cars in San Francisco and will begin testing in New York City.<2E>As cities get more crowded, infrastructure has trouble keeping up,<2C> nuTonomy Chief Executive Karl Iagnemma told Reuters on Tuesday. Ride services using autonomous vehicles could meet transportation needs with fewer cars on the road, he said.<2E>Cities like Singapore and London are going to show the rest of the world what<61>s possible,<2C> he said.The nuTonomy acquisition will double Delphi<68>s self-driving team to more than 200 engineers and scientists, said Glen DeVos, Delphi<68>s chief technology officer.The initial application of the auto supplier<65>s self-driving cars will be in on-demand passenger and logistics fleets. Those vehicles, DeVos said, will be heavily automated and used in pre-mapped areas in cities.Delphi said it plans to have 60 self-driving test cars on the road in three continents by year-end. The nuTonomy deal is expected to close before then.Morgan Stanley was exclusive adviser to nuTonomy. GCA Advisors LLC and Goldman Sachs & Co advised Delphi.Reporting by Paul Lienert; editing by Susan Thomas and Tom Brown '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-nutonomy-m-a-delphi/delphi-buys-self-driving-technology-firm-nutonomy-for-450-million-idINKBN1CT239'|'2017-10-24T12:45:00.000+03:00'
'1583ee6ec59557f59562f200ef6454f4c380a7c8'|'Google''s latest iPhone rival off to a rocky start'|'SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The launch of Alphabet Inc<6E>s ( GOOGL.O ) second-generation Google Pixel smartphones has been hampered by display screen problems and pricing and shipping issues, prompting the company to open an investigation and issue multiple apologies to customers.FILE PHOTO: Google''s Pixel 2 phone is displayed during a launch event in San Francisco, California, U.S. on October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam/File Photo The Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, which start at $649 and debuted in stores on Thursday, are the lynchpin of Google<6C>s efforts to take on Apple Inc<6E>s ( AAPL.O ) iPhone directly.Early Pixel 2 users have voiced frustration with mishaps, including a potentially serious problem with the screen.Google said on Sunday it is investigating whether graphics are burning into the display of the Pixel 2, following a report on the AndroidCentral blog detailing the issue after a week of use. Burn-in, which usually becomes a problem only after several years of activity, can make it difficult to see information on the display.Google likely would need to halt production if there is problem, said Ryan Reith, a mobile device analyst at research firm IDC.<2E>We take all reports of issues very seriously, and our engineers investigate quickly,<2C> Mario Queiroz, Google<6C>s vice president for Pixel product management, said in an emailed statement to Reuters. <20>We will provide updates as soon as we have conclusive data.<2E>The investigation follows Google<6C>s acknowledgement that it may introduce new software to respond to users<72> concern about a blue tint to the Pixel 2 XL<58>s 6-inch screen. The device incorporates new OLED display technology, which Google described as offering <20>a more natural and accurate rendition of colours.<2E>Reviewers and users in online support forums have also reported a clicking noise during calls and poor Bluetooth connections between the Pixel 2 and other devices. Google did not immediately comment on the issues.On Friday, the company vowed to reimburse an undisclosed number of people who were charged $30 extra for the Pixel 2 by a Verizon Wireless ( VZ.N ) reseller operating at Google pop-up stores in the United States.The surcharge <20>was an error,<2C> Google said in its apology.Prior complaints led Google to drop the price of an adapter used to connect headphones to $9 from $20, matching the price of a comparable iPhone adapter.Google also sent emails over the weekend to buyers advising that delivery of their Pixel 2 may be delayed as much as one month, to late November, according to the AndroidPolice news blog and users<72> postings on Reddit forums. Customers said Google offered a free smartphone case, which otherwise starts at $40. Google did not immediately comment.Google made a significant bet on the smartphone business last month, agreeing to acquire an HTC Corp hardware development team for $1.1 billion.Shares of Google fell 1.9 percent to $985.54 at Monday<61>s close.Reporting by Paresh Dave; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Dan GreblerOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/google-pixel/googles-latest-iphone-rival-off-to-a-rocky-start-idINKBN1CS2P5'|'2017-10-24T00:04:00.000+03:00'
'fdb0d129deb62287b7920bdc79061f30b3006717'|'Union demands VW workers in Germany get 6 percent pay rise'|'October 24, 2017 / 2:51 PM / Updated 13 minutes ago Union demands VW workers in Germany get 6 percent pay rise Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany<6E>s biggest labour union called on Tuesday for a 6 percent pay rise for Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ) workers in the carmaker<65>s home market. FILE PHOTO - A Volkswagen logo is seen at Serramonte Volkswagen in Colma, California, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam/File Photo The wage demand for more than 120,000 staff at Volkswagen<65>s (VW) German plants and its financial services division matches the increase IG Metall is seeking for about 3.9 million engineering and metalworking staff in Europe<70>s largest economy. Growing profit and vehicle sales at the world<6C>s largest automaker justify calls for strong wage gains even as VW faces billions of costs for its diesel emissions test scandal and a strategic shift to electric cars, IG Metall said. <20>Despite the emissions scandal the employees have gone the extra mile over the last two years,<2C> Bernd Osterloh, head of VW<56>s works council, said in an emailed statement. Nine-month sales of VW<56>s core brand rose 2.7 percent to 4.49 million vehicles, with growth in China, the Americas and Central Europe offsetting a 3.1 percent drop in Western Europe. But VW<56>s management is expected to push for a lower pay deal as it struggles to restore customer confidence in Germany, where brand sales have fallen 7.4 percent this year. IG Metall said it will also seek an entitlement for individual employees to temporarily shortened working hours in pay negotiations due to start in December. VW<56>s current in-house wage contract for German staff expires at the end of January 2018. In the previous 2016 wage round, labour leaders at the Wolfsburg-based automaker had sought a 5 percent pay increase over 12 months, before settling for a 4.8 percent raise in two stages over 20 months. Reporting by Andreas Cremer; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-volkswagen-pay/union-demands-vw-workers-in-germany-get-6-percent-pay-rise-idUKKBN1CT249'|'2017-10-24T17:50:00.000+03:00'
'6e38c9709e02e2eb094bd6a8da56d8e351722fd8'|'Saudi Aramco IPO never been linked to oil market: CEO tells TV'|'DUBAI (Reuters) - Plans for an initial public offering (IPO) in state-owned energy giant Saudi Aramco have never been linked to developments in the oil market, its chief executive told Al Arabiya television on Tuesday.FILE PHOTO: Logo of Saudi Aramco is seen at the 20th Middle East Oil & Gas Show and Conference (MOES 2017) in Manama, Bahrain, March 7, 2017. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/File Photo Aramco is preparing to list about 5 percent of its shares in local and international stock markets in 2018.<2E>The offering since the beginning was never linked to the market or the condition of the market,<2C> CEO Amin Nasser said.<2E>There is no doubt, oil market stability is very important and Saudi Arabia has a leading position in the oil market.<2E>He added that plans for the IPO emerged when crude prices were <20>in the $40s range or lower, it was not linked back then that the price should reach a certain level.<2E>Benchmark Brent is now trading above $57 a barrel, although it remains half its mid-2014 level.Speaking during a major investment conference in Riyadh, Nasser also said Aramco planned to double its petrochemicals investments.<2E>We have a diversity of investments and we are looking at doubling our petrochemicals investments and industries based on petrochemicals,<2C> Nasser said, giving a figure for doubling production of chemicals by 2030.Aramco<63>s petrochemicals output is about 30 million tonnes a year from plants it owns and joint ventures in Saudi Arabia and abroad.The firm had about 5 million barrels per day (bpd) of refining capacity and planned to expand that to 8 million-10 million bpd, Nasser said, repeating previously announced figures.Saudi Aramco has been integrating refineries with petrochemicals plants to maximise revenues and take advantage of every barrel of oil to produce value-added products.Reporting by Reem Shamseddine; Writing by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Edmund Blair '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/saudi-economy-aramco-ipo/saudi-aramco-ipo-never-been-linked-to-oil-market-ceo-tells-tv-idINKBN1CT20I'|'2017-10-24T17:19:00.000+03:00'
'7eea48f787c1946f0e64dea0a00e6c12b227feec'|'Caterpillar sets up Dow for record open'|'(Reuters) - U.S. stock indexes rose on Tuesday, led by the Dow, as stronger-than-expected results and forecasts from companies including 3M, Caterpillar and General Motors fuelled optimism about strength in the economy.Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid 3M ( MMM.N ) and Caterpillar ( CAT.N ) gave the Dow its biggest boost. The index hit another intraday record high and was on track to post its biggest intraday percentage gain since Sept. 11.3M jumped 7.2 percent and Caterpillar 4.7 percent after the two companies reported quarterly results and gave upbeat forecasts. The S&P industrial sector .SPLRCI, up 0.6 percent, also hit a record high.<2E>It has been encouraging to see some of these industrial names report solid numbers and raise their guidance,<2C> said Lindsey Bell, investment strategist at CFRA Research in New York.<2E>Looking at some the earnings we got yesterday and the ones today, you<6F>re seeing strength domestically here in the U.S.<2E>General Motors ( GM.N ) rose 2.9 percent. The No.1 U.S. automaker reported stronger-than-expected earnings, reaffirmed its full-year earnings forecast and promised to slash stocks of unsold vehicles.But the financial index .SPSY, up 0.9 percent, gave the S&P 500 its biggest boost, followed by technology .SPLRCT, up 0.5 percent.The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 200.03 points, or 0.86 percent, to 23,473.99, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 6.5 points, or 0.25 percent, to 2,571.48 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 23.42 points, or 0.36 percent, to 6,610.25.McDonald<6C>s ( MCD.N ), another Dow component, also rose following results. The stock was last up 0.8 percent.Strong earnings and optimism about President Donald Trump<6D>s tax plans helped the Dow and S&P close at a record high on all five trading days last week.Offsetting some of the day<61>s gains, Biogen ( BIIB.O ) slipped 3.4 percent after disappointing U.S. sales of a potential blockbuster drug, Spinraza.Whirlpool ( WHR.N ) tumbled 10.8 percent after the home appliances maker reported profit and sales below estimates and lowered full-year earnings guidance.Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.36-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.44-to-1 ratio favoured advancers.Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D''Silva and Nick Zieminski '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-stocks/caterpillar-sets-up-dow-for-record-open-idINKBN1CT1TS'|'2017-10-24T16:10:00.000+03:00'
'ce66cc30d99ac12b6e7220458e387222f333669c'|'Double trouble - Australia wheat farmers face dry weather, bloated global stocks'|' 26 AM / in 11 minutes Double trouble - Australia wheat farmers face dry weather, bloated global stocks Naveen Thukral , Colin Packham 3 Min Read SINGAPORE/SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia<69>s wheat farmers face a double whammy this year as dry weather slashes local production at a time when bloated global inventories are dragging on international prices for the grain. FILE PHOTO: Wheat grows on a farm at sunset in the flooded midwestern New South Wales town of Forbes, Australia September 27, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Reed The world<6C>s fourth largest wheat exporter is set for its smallest crop in a decade after hot, dry weather parched fields. But with international stocks at all-time highs of over 250 million tonnes, global prices have fallen to near their lowest in two months. <20>They have stiff competition in the market, Black Sea suppliers have already eaten into Australia<69>s market share,<2C> said a Singapore-based trader, declining to be identified as he was not authorized to speak with media. <20>Australian wheat has to be at competitive prices if it is to find business.<2E> Australian wheat prices have dropped to around $245 a tonne, free on board at ports in Western Australia, the country<72>s biggest exporting state. That is down from $255 a tonne being quoted two weeks ago before harvesting had really picked up pace. This time last year, farmers were getting $280 for a similar variety of wheat. Australian wheat crop yields are forecast to decline to 1.72 tonnes per hectare in the 2017/18 season, according to estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, down 36 percent from the previous year<61>s record 2.7 tonnes per hectare. Although recent rains across the scorched farms of New South Wales, which produce high-protein hard wheat, are likely to help improve yields, analysts said. <20>These rains are not likely make or break for the crop, but I think showers will be helpful in southern and central New South Wales, but for northern parts of the state it is too late,<2C> said Phin Ziebell, an agribusiness economist at National Australia Bank in Melbourne. Winter 2017 was not only the warmest in Australia since records began more than a century ago, but was also among the top 10 driest seasons ever, data from the country<72>s weather bureau shows. Australia<69>s wheat output is expected to drop to 20.15 million tonnes in 2017/18, 7 percent below the official outlook of 21.64 million tonnes and more than 40 percent lower than last year<61>s all-time high of 35.56 million tonnes, according to a Reuters poll. The country will still have close to 17-18 million tonnes of surplus to export in 2017/18 with domestic consumption at around 7-8 million tonnes and last year<61>s closing stocks at 6 to 7 million tonnes, two Singapore-based traders estimated. The USDA has forecast Australian exports at 20 million tonnes. Reporting by Naveen Thukral in Singapore and Colin Packham in Sydney; Editing by Joseph Radford'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-australia-wheat-prices/double-trouble-australia-wheat-farmers-face-dry-weather-bloated-global-stocks-idUKKBN1CT0XT'|'2017-10-24T11:25:00.000+03:00'
'903a74bb39a1e6b9350db079f4b6f5bd09454f6c'|'Hess Corp to sell its interests in offshore Equatorial Guinea'|'(Reuters) - Oil producer Hess Corp ( HES.N ) said on Monday it would sell its interests in offshore Equatorial Guinea to Kosmos Energy ( KOS.N ) and Trident Energy for $650 million.The company, which reached a $200 million tax settlement with Equatorial Guinea earlier in the day, said net production from the assets averaged 28,000 barrels of oil per day.Hess holds an 85 percent interest and is the operator of the Ceiba and Okume fields.Tullow Oil ( TLW.L ) holds a 15 percent interest and Equatorial Guinea holds a 5 percent carried interest.Reporting by Taenaz Shakir in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-hess-corp-divestiture/hess-corp-to-sell-its-interests-in-offshore-equatorial-guinea-idINKBN1CS2S1'|'2017-10-23T19:49:00.000+03:00'
'ddfa5ceaa9bcbd6a70a2065161ff9407bb28b05d'|'Trump''s policies ''a risk'' for German car makers, Daimler CEO says'|'STUTTGART (Reuters) - The economic and trade policies of U.S. President Donald Trump are a risk for German car makers, the chief executive of Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ) said on Tuesday.Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche arrives for the Laureus World Sports Awards 2016 in Berlin, Germany, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke Picture Supplied by Action Images <20>So far there has been no negative effect on our business,<2C> CEO Dieter Zetsche said at a conference. <20>But of course it is a risk.<2E>Trump, hoping to protect U.S. car makers, has criticized the import of cars into the United States as unfair trade.Trump has also thrown the North America Free Trade Agreement with Mexico into question. Mexico plays an important role in production of German cars that are sold in the United States.Separately, Zetsche addressed a new cartel investigation by European authorities, saying such cooperation with other car makers was for the good of customers and had not harmed them.<2E>At the end of the day, it isn<73>t my call. I am an engineer and not a cartel expert,<2C> Zetsche said. <20>But I know that it was first and foremost about standards and similar issues that in the end helped customers because it increased efficiencies.<2E>Zetsche said that prominent cartel specialists are of the opinion that there was no cartel behavior.On Monday, European Union and German antitrust officials searched the offices of Daimler and Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ), widening an inquiry into alleged collusion.The EU competition watchdog said in July that it was investigating several German car makers on suspicion they had conspired to fix prices in diesel and other technologies over several decades.Daimler unexpectedly revealed on Friday that it had claimed whistleblower status to avoid any fines, while Munich-based rival BMW ( BMWG.DE ) said EU officials searched its offices.Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach; Writing by Tom Sims; Editing by Alison Williams and Jane Merriman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-daimler-trump/trumps-policies-a-risk-for-german-car-makers-daimler-ceo-says-idUSKBN1CT2S1'|'2017-10-25T03:18:00.000+03:00'
'ea843886b8deae1a21841199089b46db2dee4e57'|'Abolishing German air travel tax would boost economy - PwC study'|'October 23, 2017 / 11:29 AM / Updated an hour ago Abolishing German air travel tax would boost economy - PwC study Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Abolishing Germany<6E>s air passenger tax would boost the country<72>s economy by 67 billion euros (<28>59.7 billion) in total over the next 12 years, a study by consultancy PwC showed on Monday. People stroll along the embankment of the Elbe river in Dresden, December 22, 2014. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke The report, commissioned by aviation lobby group A4E, said that scrapping the tax would make Germany a more attractive travel destination, generating 1.08 billion euros a year via indirect taxes, more than making up for the lost revenues. Germany introduced an air passenger tax in 2011 to raise about 1 billion euros a year, as part of tens of billions of euros of budget measures amid the global financial crisis. <20>Removing all air passenger levies would add more than 24.6 million passengers by 2020, with more than half being tourists,<2C> A4E Managing Director Thomas Reynaert said. That would help create thousands of new jobs and raise Germany<6E>s gross domestic product by 3.7 billion euros in 2018. That figure would rise to 6.9 billion a year by 2030, PwC said. German GDP totalled 3.1 trillion euros in 2016. Germany is one of a number of European countries that charge an air travel tax, including Britain, France and Greece. Germany<6E>s Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries said in an interview in August, after the country<72>s No. 2 airline Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ) filed for insolvency, that she favoured scrapping the air passenger tax to strengthen the aviation sector. <20>We have to create conditions for German airlines under which they can compete,<2C> she told German daily Handelsblatt at the time. Whether the tax is scrapped will depend on the makeup of a new government. Chancellor Angela Merkel won a narrow general election victory last month and her conservative party will try to build a coalition government with the Free Democrats and Green parties, a process that could take weeks or even months. Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Douglas Busvine and Susan Fenton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-airlines/abolishing-german-air-travel-tax-would-boost-economy-pwc-study-idUKKBN1CS1FF'|'2017-10-23T14:28:00.000+03:00'
'a0ac7b6d011ceea164161cf905612b6a6500626e'|'Saudi Arabia joins Islamic finance body, could boost cross-border deals'|'October 23, 2017 / 2:16 AM / Updated 14 minutes ago Saudi Arabia joins Islamic finance body, could boost cross-border deals Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia<69>s central bank has joined an international standard-setting body for Islamic finance, a move that could help standardise industry practices and ease cross-border transactions in the Kingdom. The Bahrain-based Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) said in a statement late on Sunday it had admitted the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) as an institutional member. Islamic products represent around half of banking system assets in the Kingdom, but the regulator doesn<73>t distinguish between Islamic or conventional banks and applies the same prudential standards to all of them. Islamic finance follows religious principles such as bans on gambling and outright speculation, with interest-bearing products deemed off-limits. SAMA confirmed the move in a separate statement, without specifying whether it planned to make AAOIFI standards enforceable or if it would adopt all or some of them. Saudi-based Islamic banks include Al Rajhi Bank ( 1120.SE ) and Alinma Bank ( 1150.SE ), while National Commercial Bank ( 1180.SE ) is in the process of converting into a full-fledged Islamic lender. Saudi lenders remain domestically focused, but adopting AAOIFI standards could help them venture into other majority-Muslim countries. The Saudi government has also taken steps to tap into Islamic finance, issuing debut Islamic bonds earlier this year denominated in both riyals and U.S. dollars. Reporting by Bernardo Vizcaino; Editing by Eric Meijer'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-islamic-finance-saudi/saudi-arabia-joins-islamic-finance-body-could-boost-cross-border-deals-idUKKBN1CS058'|'2017-10-23T05:15:00.000+03:00'
'8a3659c4707effbcf793e02b67030affbfacc372'|'Commerzbank hires advisers amid interest of European peers: sources'|'October 24, 2017 / 9:28 AM / Updated 24 minutes ago Commerzbank hires advisers amid interest of European peers: sources Reuters Staff 3 Min Read MUNICH/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Commerzbank is working with two investment banks to prepare itself for the event of a takeover bid from a European rival, several people close to the matter said. FILE PHOTO: A Commerzbank logo is pictured in Frankfurt, Germany, February 12, 2016. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo Germany<6E>s second-largest lender has hired Goldman Sachs and Rothschild to evaluate its options, including a possible defence scenario, they said. Commerzbank, Goldman Sachs and Rothschild all declined to comment. Commerzbank has been restructuring ever since an ill-timed acquisition of Dresdner Bank for 9.8 billion euros ($11.53 billion) in 2008. The move forced Commerzbank to take a government bailout, slash jobs, close hundreds of retail branches and rein in its investment banking. But its strong corporate lending business - Commerzbank specializes in financing Germany<6E>s prized Mittelstand of medium-sized companies - makes it an attractive target for European peers eyeing a stronger footprint in Europe<70>s largest economy. Italy<6C>s UniCredit recently told Berlin it is interested in eventually merging with Commerzbank, people familiar with the matter told Reuters last month. The bank has also caught the eye of other European peers. But the German government, which still holds a 15.6 percent stake, last month denied a report that it favoured a merger of Commerzbank with France<63>s BNP Paribas. Berlin has said it would be willing to eventually sell the stake but it needs to get at least 18 euros per share in any sale to avoid a loss on its investment. Shares in Commerzbank, which has a market capitalisation of 14.4 billion euros ($16.93 billion), were up 2.5 percent at 11.71 euros by 0800 GMT. While a foreign peer may eventually succeed in buying the lender, a consolidation within Germany is also on the cards. Top executives at Commerzbank and bellwether Deutsche Bank held unsuccessful talks on a combination last year, a person with knowledge of the matter said at the time. Regardless of the outcome, private equity firm Cerberus stands to gain from any deal after recently becoming Commerzbank<6E>s second-largest investor with a 5 percent stake. Goldman Sachs had been in contact with Commerzbank for months, but the mandate was formalised after Cerberus<75> investment in the summer, a person close to the matter said. The bank mandates were earlier reported by the Financial Times. Reporting by Alexander Huebner and Arno Schuetze; editing by Mark Heinrich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-commerzbank-m-a/commerzbank-hires-advisers-amid-interest-of-european-peers-sources-idUKKBN1CT13U'|'2017-10-24T12:27:00.000+03:00'
'c957166588ad137b83ca437019c0ffa451f5b1e3'|'Kobe Steel plant is under inspection by Japan ministry: Kyodo'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese authorities are conducting safety checks at a Kobe Steel Ltd aluminium plant that supplied components for a domestically built aircraft and seeking to inspect other plants owned by the embattled company.FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the signboard of Kobe Steel at the group''s Tokyo headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo Kobe Steel<65>s revelations of widespread tampering in the specifications of its products have sent a chill through global supply chains for cars, trains, airplanes and other equipment. While no safety issues have been identified, the company is the subject of a U.S. Department of Justice inquiry and has said it is losing customers.The inspection of Kobe Steel<65>s Daian plant in central Japan was focusing on the safety of components being used in Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ) passenger aircraft being developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, Transport Minister Keiichi Ishii told reporters on Tuesday.<2E>As a country of design and manufacturing, we have an unmistakable commitment to safety,<2C> Ishii said. <20>We want to be absolutely sure of product safety as the MRJ heads towards mass production.<2E>The repeatedly delayed MRJ is central to the Japanese government<6E>s plans to revive an aerospace industry dismantled after World War Two. The aircraft has yet to enter service.Products with fabricated data have been used in the aircraft, a spokeswoman for Mitsubishi Heavy said on Tuesday, adding no safety issues have been found. There is no impact on testing schedules for the MRJ, she said.MORE CHECKS Japan<61>s industry minister also said on Tuesday he was seeking checks on other plants run by Japan<61>s third-largest steelmaker to see whether they were in compliance with statutory industrial standards.Industry minister Hiroshige Seko told reporters he asked companies that certify whether manufacturers comply with Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS) to consider rechecking all Kobe Steel plants that have the certification.Twenty Kobe Steel plants, including some overseas, are certified under JIS, an industry ministry official told Reuters by phone. The ministry can carry out its own inspections if Kobe Steel does not open its plants to the certification companies, he said.A Kobe Steel spokesman said on Tuesday the company is cooperating with the transport ministry inspection and will allow certification companies to carry out their checks if requested.One of the plants is already being checked, Kobe Steel said on Friday, when it revealed it had found more data fabrication and an attempt to cover up tampering.Kobe Steel admitted this month it falsified specifications on the strength and durability of aluminium, copper and steel products, along with materials for optical disks.The falsifications stretch back for more than 10 years, and the company last week said it had lost some customers to competitors because of the widespread tampering.Kobe Steel may drop its earnings forecast when it announces its first-half results next week, a senior executive told reporters late on Monday.The company is forecasting net profit of 35 billion yen for the year through March, 2018, after two consecutive annual losses. It is due to announce earnings for the April-September half on Oct 30.The company is considering dropping the forecast or revising it to take into account the known impact of the scandal, the executive said.Kobe Steel shares, which have fallen nearly 40 percent since the scandal broke, closed up 0.9 percent on Tuesday. The main Nikkei index was up 0.5 percent.Additional reporting by Ritsuko Shimizu, Kentaro Hamada and Ami Miyazaki; Writing by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Stephen Coates and Raju Gopalakrishnan '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/kobe-steel-scandal/kobe-steel-plant-is-under-inspection-by-japan-ministry-kyodo-idINKBN1CT00V'|'2017-10-24T03:25:00.000+03:00'
'cc5e5d984ec6e584c8f0b6886b4a106d26d306cf'|'YOUR MONEY-Old-fashioned retirement advice still works'|'NEW YORK, Oct 24 (Reuters) - What is the best way to boost savings in workplace retirement plans?In addition to <20>robo<62> tactics such as auto-enrollment and auto-escalation, there is an old-fashioned solution that seems to work: talking to employees.For one 401(k) consultant whose team of 18 fans out across the country talking to workers about their retirement plan options and savings targets, participation jumped from 45 percent to 78 percent after in-person meetings. Contribution rates more than doubled, to 9 percent of salary from 4 percent.<2E>These sessions can be like therapy. The stories you hear about from people, it<69>s amazing,<2C> said Nathan Fisher, managing director of Fisher Investments 401(k) Solutions, which compiled this data for Reuters from more than 4,500 meetings over two years.Fisher decided to focus on in-person meetings after a session with a receptionist at a medical practice in Michigan. It was the dead of winter and snowing, and she came in on her day off with her 2-year-old.At the end of the session, she said that nobody had ever talked to her about her retirement before. <20>That was my aha moment,<2C> said Fisher. <20>So many American people feel that way. This is what people need.<2E>REACHING OUT Getting people to engage on retirement topics is not always easy. For Sylvia Francis, the total rewards manager for the Regional Transportation District in Denver, trying to boost the participation of the 3,000 employees in her domain is a constant battle.Francis uses myriad strategies, including home mailings and visits 12 times a year by an investment adviser to employee locations. Much of the time, though, it comes down to her answering her phone. Whenever she speaks about retirement planning at a company event, the attendees always have additional questions.<2E>Every year, I<>m reaching people. I honestly get passionate about it,<2C> said Francis.For Tyler Tiemann, a project manager in Houston, who met with Fisher Investments earlier this year, the personal touch definitely worked. The 27-year-old had no access to a retirement plan at previous employers, and he did not know much about the process.<2E>I always had it in the back of my mind, like, I should get on that, but I didn<64>t know how to start, honestly,<2C> Tiemann said.After meeting Fisher, Tiemann signed up for a Roth 401(k) plan and now does not miss the dollars he contributes from his paycheck.Human resources departments focus on new hires, but there are other effective times to reach people. Ronnie Charcalla, vice president of workplace individual solutions at Prudential Retirement, said that some companies reach out to people on their birthdays, work anniversary or when they receive an annual raise.GIVING MORE Most retirement plans offer savings rates of 3 percent to 6 percent of annual salaries, but that is not enough to build a proper nest egg. Retirement experts say 10 percent is closer to ideal.Sam Otting, a 27-year-old branch manager for a cleaning company in Ohio was convinced to go for 8 percent after meeting with Fisher, jumping from 6 percent. His company matches up to 7 percent of contributions.<2E>We talked about it, because I wanted to do a little more than the match. They made recommendations, but they were not telling us what to do,<2C> say Otting.A recent study from Voya Financial found that companies can push the envelope on suggested employee contributions through 10 percent, and participation does not go down, according to Rick Mason, head of the Behavioral Finance Institute at Voya.This is also what Robyn Credico, a senior consultant for Willis Towers Watson, which specializes in benefit design, finds with her clients, and even her own company<6E>s employees.Her strategy is to bump up the options - so instead of 3 percent, 5 percent or 7 percent, one would offer 5, 7 or 9. In a workplace filled with actuaries, most went for the middle option, not the lowest number, she found.<2E>The most important thing is to save enough, and then figure out how to invest,<2C> sai
'35bebd40c5af61eb4c824403657cdae004b9ffb2'|'Euro zone business growth slowed in October but stayed strong - PMI'|' 48 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago Euro zone business growth slowed in October but stayed strong - PMI Jonathan Cable 3 Min Read LONDON, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Private sector growth across the euro zone slowed more sharply than predicted this month, a survey showed on Tuesday, but stayed strong even though firms increased prices at the steepest rate in over six years. A picture illustration taken with the multiple exposure function of the camera shows a one Euro coin and a map of Europe, January 9, 2013. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach IHS Markit<69>s euro zone Flash Composite Purchasing Managers<72> Index for October, seen as a good guide to economic growth, fell to 55.9 from September<65>s 56.7, still comfortably above the 50 level that separates growth from contraction. October<65>s reading was below all expectations in a Reuters poll, which had forecast a more modest dip to 56.5, but was still much higher than it has averaged in recent years. <20>It<49>s a carrying on of the recent story where everything is going along quite nicely, it<69>s more positive news for the euro zone economy,<2C> said Andrew Harker, an associate director at IHS Markit. <20>France and Germany were both the growth drivers. Outside of that the rate of expansion eased off a bit but was still solid.<2E> Harker said the PMI, if maintained, pointed to fourth quarter economic growth of 0.6-0.7 percent, faster than the 0.5 percent a recent Reuters poll predicted. The robust growth came as firms jacked up prices. An output price index climbed to 53.3 from 52.7, its highest reading since June 2011. Inflation has stubbornly refused to reach the European Central Bank<6E>s 2 percent target ceiling but a recent Reuters poll predicted policymakers will say on Thursday they plan to start trimming monthly asset purchases in January. A PMI covering the bloc<6F>s dominant service industry sank to 54.9 from 55.8, missing all expectations in a Reuters poll that predicted a reading of 55.6. But suggesting firms think the slowdown won<6F>t last, they hired staff at the second fastest rate in over nine years. The employment index rose to 54.3 from 53.7 and has only been higher once -- in March -- since early 2008. Manufacturing growth accelerated and the PMI came in at 58.6 compared to September<65>s 58.1, its highest since February 2011. It was forecast at 57.8 and was better than anyone polled by Reuters predicted. An index measuring output, which feeds into the composite PMI, dipped to 58.7 from 59.2. Indicating the momentum might continue, new orders picked up. The sub index was 58.7 compared to September<65>s 58.5, matching a more than six-year high set in June. Editing by Catherine Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-economy-pmi/euro-zone-business-growth-slowed-in-october-but-stayed-strong-pmi-idUKKBN1CT16X'|'2017-10-24T12:47:00.000+03:00'
'6ffddd3e92373ca1b136114e477aba7183c4fbbe'|'Broadcaster CME posts core profit rise in third quarter'|' 36 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago Broadcaster CME posts core profit rise in third quarter Reuters Staff 2 Min Read PRAGUE, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Broadcaster Central European Media Enterprises (CME) posted a 30 percent rise in core profit in the third quarter, boosted by growing television advertising revenue, it said on Tuesday. The results, from continuing operations after the company announced the planned sale of its Croatian and Slovenian operations earlier this year, showed operating income before depreciation and amortisation (OIBDA) at $25.1 million. Revenue increased 11 percent to $119.4 million. <20>Our strong momentum from the first half of 2017 continued through the third quarter, positioning us very well as we head into the final months of the year, and providing a very solid base as we look to grow further in 2018,<2C> co-Chief Executive Michael Del Nin said in a statement. <20>As a result of strong gains in OIBDA and unlevered free cash flow, we are able to raise our guidance for the full year, and with our net leverage ratio now below 6 times, we will see our average borrowing cost decline by 125 basis points to 6.0 percent, its lowest level in eight years.<2E> The company plans to use proceeds from its sale of stations in Croatia and Slovenia to pay down its large debts and it said its borrowing cost would decrease further to 4.5 percent after the deal closes by the end of 2017 or early 2018. CME said it recorded revenue growth in all its four remaining markets, including a more than 9 percent increase in the Czech Republic and Romania, its largest profit drivers. (Reporting by Jason Hovet; Editing by David Holmes)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/central-euro-results/broadcaster-cme-posts-core-profit-rise-in-third-quarter-idUSL8N1MZ1AR'|'2017-10-24T09:32:00.000+03:00'
'fc5d669ccaaf0867a0779265d6fa348cdf5192db'|'Potlatch to buy Deltic Timber in all-stock deal'|'(Reuters) - U.S. forest products company Potlatch Corp ( PCH.O ) confirmed on Monday it would buy smaller peer Deltic Timber Corp ( DEL.N ) in an all-stock deal that will boost its lumber capacity.The equity value of the offer is about $1.16 billion, based on 12.1 million Deltic<69>s diluted shares outstanding at June 30.Potlatch<63>s offer values Deltic at $95.4 per share, representing a premium of about 7 percent.The combined company will have capacity of 1.2 billion board feet with capacity heavily weighted towards high-margin southern yellow pine lumber.The combined company is expected to have a pro-forma market cap of about $3.3 billion and a total enterprise value of more than $4 billion, including about $700 million in net debt, the companies said.After the deal, Potlatch shareholders would own about 65 percent of the combined company, which would be named PotlatchDeltic Corp, while Deltic shareholders would own the rest.Reuters had reported the deal on Sunday. The deal could offer more scale to cope with price volatility in the market.Deltic Chief Executive Officer John Enlow would be the combined company<6E>s vice chairman, while Potlatch Chief Executive Officer Mike Covey would continue in the role.Potlatch increased its annual dividend to $1.60 per share from $1.50.BofA Merrill Lynch was the financial adviser for Potlatch, while Goldman Sachs & Co LLC was advising Deltic.Deltic<69>s shares were up 7 percent at $95.39 in premarket trading.Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-deltictimber-m-a-potlatch/potlatch-to-buy-deltic-timber-in-all-stock-deal-idINKBN1CS1FB'|'2017-10-23T09:28:00.000+03:00'
'defa7a119f1ca3484edac59bf0b7e3ef161fc89d'|'Trump says will decide on Federal Reserve chair ''very shortly'''|'October 23, 2017 / 11:13 AM / in 9 hours Trump says will decide on Federal Reserve chair ''very shortly'' Reuters Staff 1 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said he would make his choice to lead the Federal Reserve soon and was still weighing at least three people: Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell, Stanford University economist John Taylor and current Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen. U.S. President Donald Trump returns to the White House after an afternoon of golf in Washington, U.S., October 22, 2017. REUTERS/Mary F. Calvert <20>I will make my decision very shortly, pretty shortly,<2C> he told Fox Business Network in an interview that aired on Monday. Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Toby Chopra'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-trump-fed-nominees/trump-says-will-decide-on-federal-reserve-chair-very-shortly-idINKBN1CS1AF'|'2017-10-23T14:12:00.000+03:00'
'6e20b8f338290856763ce5726e408061f3a8e4bc'|'BRIEF-Eiger announces positive phase 2 data with pegylated interferon lambda in hepatitis delta virus infection at the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases meeting'|'Reuters TV United States #Market News  21 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago BRIEF-Eiger announces positive phase 2 data with pegylated interferon lambda in hepatitis delta virus infection at the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases meeting Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 23 (Reuters) - Eiger Biopharmaceuticals Inc * Eiger announces positive phase 2 interim 24-week data with pegylated interferon lambda in hepatitis delta virus (HDV) infection at the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) meeting  '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-eiger-announces-positive-phase-2-d/brief-eiger-announces-positive-phase-2-data-with-pegylated-interferon-lambda-in-hepatitis-delta-virus-infection-at-the-american-association-for-the-study-of-liver-diseases-meeting-idUSFWN1MY0S5'|'2017-10-23T15:20:00.000+03:00'
'397d16645af2a4507516826117e72a0a84c22c9c'|'Ex-HSBC executive found guilty of fraud in $3.5 billion currency trade'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. jury on Monday found a former HSBC Holdings Plc( HSBA.L ) executive guilty of defrauding Cairn Energy Plc ( CNE.L ) in a $3.5 billion currency trade in 2011.FILE PHOTO: Mark Johnson, a British citizen who at the time of his arrest was HSBC''s global head of foreign exchange cash trading, exits following a hearing at the U.S. Federal Court in Brooklyn, New York, U.S. on August 29, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo U.S. prosecutors have said that Mark Johnson, formerly head of HSBC<42>s global foreign exchange cash trading desk, schemed to ramp up the price of British pounds before executing a trade for Cairn, making millions for HSBC at Cairn<72>s expense.<2E>They<65>ve convicted an innocent man,<2C> John Wing, a lawyer for Johnson, told reporters as he left the courtroom in Brooklyn federal court, where Johnson was on trial for nearly four weeks.Johnson, a 51-year-old British citizen, was the first banker to be tried in the United States as a result of worldwide investigations into the multi-trillion-dollar per day currency market.The probes have led to about $10 billion in fines against several banks and the firing of dozens of traders.According to court filings, Cairn hired HSBC in 2011 to convert $3.5 billion into British pounds sterling in connection with the sale of an Indian subsidiary.Prosecutors said that Johnson and another former HSBC executive who is also facing charges, Stuart Scott, devised a scheme to drive up the price of pounds by executing a series of trades before carrying out the trade for Cairn.Such trading in advance of a client<6E>s order to make a profit is known as <20>front-running.<2E>During the trial, jurors heard numerous tape recorded phone calls between Johnson and others discussing the trade.In one call, Scott and Johnson told Cairn and its financial advisor after the trade that a <20>Russian buyer<65> had been responsible for a spike in the price of pounds. Prosecutors said that was a lie.In his closing argument last week, Wing told jurors there was no way to do a massive currency transaction like the one HSBC did without affecting the price. He said that Johnson and his colleagues had tried to get a fair price for Cairn and even given Cairn a rebate.A lawyer for Scott, who is in Britain and fighting extradition to the United States to face charges, declined to comment. Scott was HSBC<42>s former head of cash trading for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.A HSBC spokesman in London declined to comment. HSBC spokesman Robert Sherman said before the trial that Johnson left HSBC earlier this year, and Scott left in 2014.Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Marguerita Choy '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-usa-crime/ex-hsbc-executive-found-guilty-of-fraud-in-3-5-billion-currency-trade-idUSKBN1CS295'|'2017-10-23T19:36:00.000+03:00'
'f331821f29462a18fdf98540eb8508825cf8fa6c'|'At least three buyout groups seen advancing in Unilever spreads auction - sources'|'October 24, 2017 / 6:49 PM / Updated 3 minutes ago At least three buyout groups seen advancing in Unilever spreads auction: sources Martinne Geller , Pamela Barbaglia 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - At least three bidders are expected to be shortlisted for the second round of an auction for Unilever<65>s ( ULVR.L ) ( UNc.AS ) margarine and spreads business while two other private equity groups are no longer in the fray, sources told Reuters. The company logo for Unilever is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., February 17, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Buyout funds Blackstone ( BX.N ) and CVC Capital Partners [CVC.UL], who were teaming up on a joint offer, are no longer in the running for the business which could be worth more than $7 billion, the sources said. BC Partners, which bid on its own, has not made it through to the second stage of the auction which is led by Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ) and Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ), according to the sources. A team comprising Bain Capital and Clayton Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) is expected to move to the second round of bidding along with private equity rivals KKR ( KKR.N ) and Apollo ( APO.N ), the sources told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity because the process is private. Bain and Apollo declined to comment. Unilever, Blackstone, CVC, BC Partners, CD&R and KKR were not immediately available to comment. ($1 = 0.8501 euros)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-unilever-nv-spreads/at-least-three-buyout-groups-seen-advancing-in-unilever-spreads-auction-sources-idUKKBN1CT2QG'|'2017-10-24T22:02:00.000+03:00'
'b1a9b58fdbe5a305f07d8d310c9a46b636f05f5a'|'China''s CEFC, Russia''s VTB may close $5 billion loan deal by year-end: source'|'MOSCOW (Reuters) - CEFC China Energy is in talks with Russian state bank VTB to raise around $5 billion in loan to finance acquisition of a stake in Russia<69>s largest oil firm Rosneft, a banking source familiar with the talks told Reuters.A CEFC logo is seen at CEFC China Energy''s Shanghai headquarter in Shanghai, China September 14, 2016. REUTERS/ Aizhu Chen The source added that VTB and CEFC might close the loan transaction by year-end.Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; writing by Katya Golubkova; editing by Dmitry Solovyov '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cefc-rosneft-oil-loans-vtb/chinas-cefc-russias-vtb-may-close-5-billion-loan-deal-by-year-end-source-idUSKBN1CT0WE'|'2017-10-24T16:16:00.000+03:00'
'98b55dd24b26aecaddc4c6a30a12a07bf8698d5a'|'Net shorts on U.S. longer-dated bonds rise -JPMorgan'|' 17 PM / Updated 8 minutes ago Net shorts on U.S. longer-dated bonds rise -JPMorgan Reuters Staff 3 Min Read NEW YORK, Oct 24 (Reuters) - The margin of investors who said they had fewer longer-dated Treasuries than their benchmarks over those who held more longer-dated bonds than their benchmarks grew in the latest week, JPMorgan Chase & Co.''s latest client survey showed Tuesday. Investors reduced their holdings of longer-dated government debt on speculation President Donald Trump might nominate a Federal Reserve chair who favors a faster pace of interest rate increases, analysts said. There were also renewed worries about a jump in government borrowing after the Senate passed a budget resolution last Thursday. The move has been seen as paving the way for Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress to enact a tax-cut package that would widen the federal deficit by up to $1.5 trillion over the next decade. The share of investors who said they were "short" longer-dated Treasuries rose to 40 percent from 30 percent on Oct 16. The share of them who said they were "long" slipped to 13 percent from 15 percent last week. The net shorts rose to 27 percent from 15 percent the prior week, JP Morgan said. Among active clients which include market makers and hedge funds, 40 percent said they were short longer-dated U.S. bonds, up from 10 percent last week, while 10 percent of them said they were long, unchanged from a week earlier. At 9:01 a.m. (1301 GMT), the 10-year yield was 2.410 percent, up 3.5 basis points from late on Monday. Earlier Tuesday, it reached 2.414 percent, the highest level since May 11, Reuters data showed. A week ago, the 10-year yield closed at 2.298 percent. JPMorgan surveyed clients including bond fund managers, central banks and sovereign wealth funds, as well as market makers and hedge funds. The chart below displays the latest survey results of JPMorgan''s Treasury clients: All clients Long Neutral Shorts Net Position Oct. 23 13 47 40 -27 Oct. 16 15 55 30 -15 Oct. 10 15 43 42 -27 Oct. 2 5 51 44 -39 Sept. 25 11 59 30 -19 Sept. 18 16 61 23 -7 Sept. 11 9 64 27 -18 Active clients Oct. 23 10 50 40 -30 Oct. 16 10 80 10 0 Oct. 11 10 40 50 -40 Oct. 2 0 30 70 -70 Sept. 25 20 50 30 -10 Sept. 18 10 70 20 -10 Sept. 11 0 90 10 -10 * NOTE: Positive value denotes net long, negative value denotes net short (Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/treasuries-jpmorgan/net-shorts-on-u-s-longer-dated-bonds-rise-jpmorgan-idUSL2N1MZ0M5'|'2017-10-24T16:15:00.000+03:00'
'5d39b4edcf497ab7ef9b6d5e98fe263241852c32'|'SKF to close a U.S. industrial seals plant'|'October 24, 2017 / 3:09 PM / in 15 minutes SKF to close a U.S. industrial seals plant Reuters Staff 1 Min Read STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden<65>s SKF, the world<6C>s biggest maker of industrial bearings, said on Tuesday it would close a U.S. industrial seals manufacturing plant in Seneca, Kansas. <20>Production will be transferred to other sites in North America (including) the development and manufacturing facility in Salt Lake City, where investments are being made in increasing technical capabilities and capacity,<2C> SKF said in a statement. The transfer will take place over the next 18 months with the expected loss of 170 jobs, the company said. Reporting by Anna Ringstrom; Editing by Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-skf-manufacturing/skf-to-close-a-u-s-industrial-seals-plant-idUSKBN1CT25V'|'2017-10-24T18:07:00.000+03:00'
'871e5b3789d6173433ccb506a3f35711af527639'|'Ryanair delays plans limiting carry on bags until January'|'October 24, 2017 / 10:27 AM / Updated 6 hours ago Ryanair delays plans limiting carry on bags until January Reuters Staff 2 Min Read DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ryanair ( RYA.I ) will delay plans forcing non-priority customers to place any second larger carry-on bags in the hold to allow passengers <20>more time to familiarise themselves with the changes,<2C> it said on Tuesday. Passengers prepare to board a Ryanair flight at Stansted Airport, Britain, October 12, 2017. Picture taken October 12, 2017 REUTERS/Hannah McKay The Irish airline, which sparked outrage in recent weeks by cancelling 20,000 flights, was due to introduce the changes aimed at speeding up boarding and eliminating delays from next week but will instead implement them from Jan. 15. Ryanair cut its checked bag fees to 25 euros (<28>22.3) from 35 euros - at a cost of 50 million euros per year - and increased checked bag allowance to 20kg from 15kg when it announced the changes in September in a bid to reduce the volume of carry-on bags. It said at the time that too many customers were availing of changes introduced in 2014 - when the airline moved to rid itself of a reputation for poor service - which permitted two carry-on bags free of charge. Priority customers who pay an additional five to six euros per flight will still be able to bring two carry-on bags on board from January. More than 700,000 passengers due to fly between September and March were hit by the wave of Ryanair flight cancellations after it said it did not have enough standby pilots to operate its schedule without significant delays. Europe<70>s largest airline by passenger numbers, which reports its second-quarter financial results next week, said in late September that average fares were expected to be slightly lower over the following two months as it promoted seat sales. Ryanair shares were 2.4 percent lower at 1020 GMT and have fallen by over 8 percent since the first cancellations were announced in mid-September. Reporting by Padraic Halpin, editing by David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ryanair-bags/ryanair-delays-plans-limiting-carry-on-bags-until-january-idUKKBN1CT1BD'|'2017-10-24T13:31:00.000+03:00'
'46439f9500c07d6bf10fd769e5aacef7c40634cd'|'Lam Research CFO says done with major M&A'|'(Reuters) - Last year<61>s failed $10 billion bid for KLA-Tencor Corp ( KLAC.O ) likely marks the end of efforts at any major acquisitions by Lam Research Corp ( LRCX.O ) and other booming producers of equipment for chipmakers, Lam<61>s chief financial officer has told Reuters.Speaking by phone from California, Doug Bettinger also said the producer of industrial equipment for chipmakers - whose market value has doubled to $33 billion in the past year - would likely top the $1 billion it spent on research last year in fiscal 2018.He said the window for big mergers or acquisitions in his hi-tech manufacturing sector seemed to have closed after Applied Materials Inc ( AMAT.O ) own $10 billion bid for Tokyo Electron Ltd ( 8035.T ) was blocked by regulators in 2015.He said, however, that he was not opposed to one or two smaller deals, pointing to Lam<61>s purchase of 3D circuit modeling firm Coventor in August as an example.<2E>I think large scale M&A is perhaps behind us,<2C> Bettinger said.<2E>It doesn<73>t mean that there might not be a tuck in or two left out there, but ... the last two really big deals that the industry tried to do, didn<64>t clear the regulatory process.<2E>Lam, whose products are used to make chips for mobile phones, PCs and wearable devices, walked away from buying KLA-Tencor in October after opposition from the U.S. Justice Department on antitrust grounds.Lam has raised its investment in research and development by nearly 60 percent in the last four years as it adjusts to changing technology trends and stiffer competition in a sector where a handful of firms are now valued at between $30 billion and $76 billion by market capitalization.<2E>Five years ago, we saw the evolutions in the industry that are happening today and pretty dramatically increased our R&D spending,<2C> Bettinger said.<2E>R&D for us is north of a billion (in 2018).<2E>Lam, which reported over $8 billion in revenue for fiscal 2017, includes Micron Technology Inc ( MU.O ), Samsung Electronics Co Ltd ( 005930.KS ) and SK Hynix Inc ( 000660.KS ) as major customers.Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-lam-research-m-a/lam-research-cfo-says-done-with-major-ma-idINKBN1CS27O'|'2017-10-23T14:13:00.000+03:00'
'8ad2b997c5fc8cf445379c41409bb847d046907a'|'Oil prices rise on tightening supply, strong demand'|'October 23, 2017 / 1:11 AM / Updated 35 minutes ago Oil prices rise on tightening supply, strong demand Henning Gloystein 3 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices rose on Monday over supply concerns in the Middle East and as the U.S. market showed further signs of tightening while demand in Asia keeps rising. Crude oil is dispensed into a bottle in this illustration photo June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration Brent crude futures LCOc1, the international benchmark for oil prices, were at $57.84 at 0056 GMT, up 9 cents, or 0.16 percent, from their last close. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were at $52.03 per barrel, up 19 cents, or 0.37 percent. <20>Oil prices are holding comfortably above $50 as possible supply disruptions in the Kurdish region of Iraq support prices,<2C> said William O<>Loughlin, investment analyst at Rivkin Securities. <20>U.S. production was also recently impacted by a hurricane for the second time in as many months and the number of U.S. drilling rigs declined for the third week in a row,<2C> O<>Loughlin said. The amount of U.S. oil rigs drilling for new production fell by seven to 736 in the week to Oct. 20, the lowest level since June, General Electric Co<43>s ( GE.N ) Baker Hughes energy services firm said on Friday. RIG-OL-USA-BHI Much will depend on demand to guide prices, with the U.S. market tightening, flows from Iraq reduced due to fighting between government forces and Kurdish militant groups, and production still being withheld as part of a pact between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-OPEC producers to tighten the market. In the main growth areas of Asia, consumption remains strong especially in China and India, the world<6C>s number one and three importers. India imported a record 4.83 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil in September as several refiners resumed operations after extensive maintenance to meet rising local fuel demand. The country<72>s September imports stood 4.2 percent above this time last year and about 19 percent more than in August, ship-tracking data from industry sources and Thomson Reuters Analytics showed. Given the tightening oil market conditions, many analysts expect prices to rise further. <20>We will see oil prices higher by 10 percent by the end of the year. We have started to accumulate strong positions within the oil sector,<2C> said Shane Chanel, equities and derivatives adviser at ASR Wealth Advisers. Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil/oil-prices-rise-on-tightening-supply-strong-demand-idUKKBN1CS03K'|'2017-10-23T04:02:00.000+03:00'
'edb9c0f11c25f727cb0def9b3134c611d79214ac'|'Linde lowers acceptance threshold for Praxair merger to 60 percent'|'FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Industrial gases group Linde ( LING.DE ) has cut the approval threshold and extended a deadline for accepting its $80 billion tie-up with Praxair ( PX.N ), while pushing on with plans to get a green light from regulators.Linde Group logo is seen at a company building in Munich-Pullach, Germany August 16, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo The planned merger between Linde and U.S. group Praxair, agreed in June, will create a global leader in industrial gases to overtake France<63>s Air Liquide ( AIRP.PA ) with combined revenue of $28.7 billion and 88,000 staff.To pave the way for the deal, Linde has cut the acceptance threshold to 60 percent from 75 percent of shareholders, and the period of the exchange offer, due to expire on Tuesday, has been extended to Nov. 7, Linde said on Monday.From late-November, Linde and Praxair will then have 12 months to close the deal, during which they will need to convince regulators that the transaction does not hamper competition.People close to the matter said the companies were preparing to sell assets with core earnings of 650-750 million euros and enterprise value of about 6.5-7.5 billion ($7.6-$8.8 bln). The assets up for sale have combined sales of more than 2.7 billion euros, the bulk of which is located in the United States.Industrial gases are usually driven to customers within a 100 to 250-mile radius of production facilities, and regulators therefore examine regional rather than national markets in their reviews.The sources said Linde and Praxair were planning to send out information packages on the assets to prospective buyers around Christmas, of which assets with 1.5-2 billion euros in sales are based in North America.European assets - mostly Germany, but also in Spain, Italy and elsewhere - with 700-900 million euros in sales will also be offered. South American assets - mainly Brazil-based - with 500 million in sales are also included, the sources said.Several private equity groups have started work on potentially snapping up the whole bundle, they said, adding that CVC [CVC.UL] has tied up with small Linde rival Messer for a potential offer, while Blackstone ( BX.N ) and Carlyle ( CG.O ) are preparing bids.A number of other buyout firms such as Advent, Bain and KKR ( KKR.N ) are also in talks to form consortia, with some also considering tie-ups with large pension funds to join the bidding.Some of the investors are also participating in the auction of Dutch paint maker Akzo Nobel<65>s ( AKZO.AS ) 9 billion euro speciality chemicals business. But it is unlikely that both the Linde and the Akzo assets will land in the same hands, the sources said.Industrial gases groups such as Air Products ( APD.N ) and Air Liquide ( AIRP.PA ) will also evaluate any assets that Linde and Praxair would seek to divest, the sources said.Linde and Praxair declined to comment on the volume and timing of the divestitures, while the potential bidders declined to comment or were not immediately available to comment.Linde<64>s offer to shareholders to exchange their stock for shares in the merged company reached the 50 percent acceptance threshold on Friday. That paved the way for passive funds, such as exchanged-traded funds replicating Germany<6E>s blue chip DAX index, to tender their stock.Roughly 10 to 13 percent of Linde<64>s shares are held by such funds, which typically tender in such situations and now have more time to do so, people familiar with the matter said.Linde estimates that retail investors own about 5 to 6 percent of its shares. Chairman Wolfgang Reitzle told Reuters in June that tracking them down would be tough.The companies still expect to get the merger done in its originally intended form.<2E>We have confidence in reaching an acceptance level of 75 percent or more at the end of the exchange offer process, which is required for the success of the transaction as it avoids an adverse tax event,<2C> Linde said.Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ) and Deutsche Bank ( DBKGn.D
'1ed94f6286420b95e6086feffc285a4cb46d19fa'|'Japan''s Kobe Steel considering withdrawing its full year earnings forecast: Kyodo'|'October 23, 2017 / 8:50 AM / in 2 hours Japan''s Kobe Steel considering withdrawing its full year earnings forecast: Kyodo Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Kobe Steel Ltd is considering withdrawing its earnings forecast for this fiscal year as it struggles to quantify the impact of its data falsification scandal, Kyodo reported on Monday. FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the signboard of Kobe Steel at the group''s Tokyo headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo Japan<61>s No. 3 steelmaker has forecast a profit for the year through March 2018 after two successive annual losses, but the outlook has been clouded by the potential fallout from the falsification scandal that has sent shockwaves along global supply chains. On Friday the company admitted that it has lost some customers to competitors as it revealed widespread data falsification has extended to its mainstream steel sheet business. A Kobe Steel spokesman said the report did not come from the company. <20>We are making preparations for our earnings announcement and can<61>t make any further comment,<2C> he said. The steelmaker is due to report its first-half results on Oct. 30. Related Coverage'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal/japans-kobe-steel-considering-withdrawing-its-full-year-earnings-forecast-kyodo-idUSKBN1CS0XD'|'2017-10-23T11:49:00.000+03:00'
'dbdf967ca9b8880ba97a5a049c9f5ff9c2127590'|'MIDEAST STOCKS-NCB, Mobily hit Saudi, Emaar still weighs on Dubai'|'October 23, 2017 / 1:45 PM / in 3 hours MIDEAST STOCKS-NCB, Mobily hit Saudi, Emaar still weighs on Dubai Reuters Staff * Alinma Bank loses 2.1 percent in heavy trade * Mobily sinks 7.3 percent on Q3 loss * Emaar falls another 2.3 percent * Losses in Dubai mitigated by DSI By Aziz El Yaakoubi DUBAI, Oct 23 (Reuters) - National Commercial Bank (NCB) and telecom stocks dragged down Saudi Arabia<69>s main index on Monday while Emaar Properties weighed on Dubai<61>s stock market for the second day in a row. The Saudi index fell 1.3 percent to 6,886 points on the back of the banking and insurance sectors, as NCB reported an 8.4 percent rise in third-quarter net profit, or around 5 percent below analysts<74> estimates. It fell 4.8 percent. Bank Aljazira fell 1.0 percent, although it reported a 41 percent rise in third-quarter net profit to 228 million riyals. Alawwal Bank also sank 3.4 percent. Alinma Bank was the most heavily traded stock and lost 2.1 percent. Most Saudi insurers also fell: Metlife AIG ANB Cooperative Insurance fell 1.7 percent and Malath Insurance lost 3.7 percent. <20>NCB is one of the first stocks to affect the Saudi index, all the other banks and insurers just followed,<2C> said Jassim al Jubran, equity researcher at Aljazira Capital in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia<69>s Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) sank 7.3 percent after it reported a third-quarter loss on Monday, blaming a rule introduced last year requiring fingerprints be registered with SIM cards for shrinking the telecom market. <20>Retail investors represent almost 90 percent of the market, so they tend to react immediately to the news,<2C> Al Jubran added. The Dubai index lost 0.7 percent as Emaar fell another 2.3 percent, after losing 2.1 percent on Sunday, after it said it expects to sell 20 percent of its local property development unit Emaar Development LLC next month in an initial public offering. Previously, Emaar had said it would offer up to 30 percent of the business, distributing funds raised as dividends to shareholders in the parent company. It did not say on Sunday why the sale was expected to be only 20 percent. GFH Financial slipped 3.5 percent in heavy trade after rising on Sunday, when the United Arab Emirates securities regulator approved the listing of Bahrain<69>s Khaleeji Commercial Bank, subject to approval by the Bahrain central bank. GFH owns 47 percent of Khaleeji, and has long been aiming to list the bank in Dubai. The losses in Dubai were mitigated by Drake & Scull International, which gained 2.5 percent and was the most heavily traded stock. Qatar<61>s index was down 0.5 percent after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who arrived in Doha on Sunday, said there was little chance of a swift breakthrough to resolve a blockade imposed on the Gulf state by Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies. Qatar National Bank, the biggest bank in the Middle East, lost 1.1 percent. Ahli Bank sank 7.7 percent. In Egypt, the index surged 1.2 percent as Juhayna Food Industries gained 4.2 percent after it reported a 12 percent rise in third-quarter consolidated net profit attributable to shareholders. In the first half of the year, its profits had dropped. HIGHLIGHTS * The index fell 1.7 percent to 6,886 points. DUBAI * The index dropped 0.7 percent to 3,618 points. ABU DHABI * The index was flat at 4,499 points. QATAR * The index fell 0.5 percent to 8,158 points. EGYPT * The index rose 1.2 percent to 13,870 points. KUWAIT * The index edged down 0.4 percent to 6,622 points. BAHRAIN * The index added 0.3 percent to 1,287 points. OMAN * The index dropped 0.3 percent to 5,033 points. (Reporting By Aziz El Yaakoubi, editing by Larry King) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/mideast-stocks/mideast-stocks-ncb-mobily-hit-saudi-emaar-still-weighs-on-dubai-idUSL8N1MY44F'|'2017-10-23T16:44:00.000+03:00'
'c09571957b39618849d551a11497b54149a0d9b1'|'Airbnb''s China head exits, a week after co-founder named unit''s chair'|'BEIJING (Reuters) - The head of Airbnb Inc<6E>s China business has resigned four months after taking the role, the company confirmed on Tuesday, the latest leadership change for the unit which operates in an country where residency and movement are regulated.A woman talks on the phone at the Airbnb office headquarters in the SOMA district of San Francisco, California, U.S., August 2, 2016. REUTERS/Gabrielle Lurie Hong Ge, who previously worked for Google Inc and Facebook Inc, left to pursue another role and the firm is yet to name a successor, said Airbnb in a short statement on Tuesday.Reuters was unable to reach Ge for comment on Tuesday morning.Kum Hong Siew, the firm<72>s current regional director for the Asia Pacific region, will take over the role in an interim capacity.Airbnb faces tough regulatory challenges in China, where movement between cities is closely monitored and people are required to register temporary stays with local police.Last week, the company announced that co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk would become chairman of Airbnb<6E>s China arm, which goes under the name of <20>Aibiying<6E> and competes against local services Tujia.com and Xiaozhu.com.Airbnb in that announcement also said it has plans to double the number staff in China over the next year and introduce new quality standards.This month Chinese authorities banned listings on all short-term rental apps in central Beijing during the 19th Congress, a high-profile political event where police increase scrutiny of illegal movement and people who fail to register their residences.Airbnb, which has roughly 120,000 listing in China, has also had to comply with a national cyber law introduced in 2016 that requires private user data to be stored locally.(This version of the story corrects title of Kum Hong Siew to Airbnb<6E>s regional director for APAC in paragraph 4)Reporting by Cate Cadell; Editing by Christopher Cushing '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-airbnb/airbnbs-china-head-exits-a-week-after-co-founder-named-units-chair-idUSKBN1CT0CD'|'2017-10-24T07:29:00.000+03:00'
'652fa38c9970aca9a81a838341ce84ec314b78b6'|'Q&A: How will higher Bank of England rates affect Britain''s economy?'|'LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England is widely expected to raise interest rates for the first time in more than 10 years on Nov. 2, after the next meeting of its Monetary Policy Committee.A man holds his mobile phone outside the Bank of England in London, Britain, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay Most economists polled by Reuters are not persuaded a rate rise is necessary, and its symbolic value is likely to overshadow its fairly modest effect on the economy. [ECILT/GB]Following is a set of best guesses from economists in academia, the private sector and at the Bank of England on what a quarter point increase in rates to 0.5 percent will do, based on models of how the economy has performed in the past.PUBLIC REACTION This cannot be calculated precisely. The British public could take fright at a first rate increase since 2007, especially at a time of weak growth as the country prepares to leave the European Union.While the BoE has ruled out returning rates to their pre-crisis level of about 5 percent, public or market expectations that this rate hike would be the first of many could also give it a disproportionate public impact.WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO GROWTH? Britain<69>s economy is growing at around 0.3 percent a quarter this year, half its long-run average and a slowdown from 2017 after its weakest start to the year since 2012.A BoE research paper from 2014 - which represents the views of its authors, not an official BoE position - estimates that raising rates by 1 percent reduces output by 0.6 percent over a 2-3 year period.A quarter point rise would trim a modest 0.15 percent from GDP - equivalent to six weeks<6B> growth at current rates.Other estimates are slightly higher. Amit Kara, a forecaster at the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) sees an effect of around 0.2 percent from a quarter point rise, while Martin Beck of consultants Oxford Economics says it could be up to 0.3 percent after three years.<2E>Arguably a rise now could have a magnified effect,<2C> Beck said, pointing to headwinds from Brexit uncertainty and public spending restraint, as well as a possible shock factor.Credit Suisse economists think a quarter point rate rise could boost the chance by around 5 percent of the UK economy tipping into recession, based on an analysis of factors that have contributed to downturns since the 1970s.HOW WILL STERLING REACT? Sterling gained 4 cents against the U.S. dollar in the 24 hours after the BoE said last month it was likely to raise rates in the coming months, taking it above $1.36.Currency strategists say a November rate rise is now almost entirely priced into sterling, so the pound is likely to rise only slightly on Nov. 2 if the BoE acts as expected.<2E>Whether that<61>s sustained or not depends on whether there<72>s an indication that there could be more steps to follow,<2C> said Ian Gunner, portfolio manager at the Altana Hard Currency Fund in London.WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO INFLATION? The main aim of a rate rise is to curb inflation, which hit a five-and-a-half year high of 3.0 percent in September.The BoE research paper estimates a 1 percent rate rise would lower the inflation rate by 1 percentage point after 3 years, so a quarter point rise would only put on modest downward pressure.The current inflation overshoot is due to a one-off hit from sterling<6E>s sharp fall after last year<61>s Brexit vote, which the BoE thinks will soon start to fade.Instead, a BoE rate rise now is insurance against its concern that the economy cannot grow as fast it used to without generating excess inflation from an overheating labour market.Most economists are more doubtful that wages are set to grow strongly, even with unemployment at a 42-year low.There is also less conviction that a small rate rise has much effect on inflation. NIESR<53>s Kara said a 0.25 percentage point rate rise would probably trim inflation by just 0.1 percentage points.HOW MUCH MORE WILL MORTGAGES BORROWING COST? The first impact many Briton
'd2ab5bfb1e81bf2401bf372dec9b56f4e6eea83a'|'Trump''s policies ''a risk'' for German car makers, Daimler CEO says'|'October 24, 2017 / 7:14 PM / Updated 19 minutes ago Trump''s policies ''a risk'' for German car makers, Daimler CEO says Reuters Staff 2 Min Read STUTTGART (Reuters) - The economic and trade policies of U.S. President Donald Trump are a risk for German car makers, the chief executive of Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ) said on Tuesday. Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche arrives for the Laureus World Sports Awards 2016 in Berlin, Germany, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke Picture Supplied by Action Images <20>So far there has been no negative effect on our business,<2C> CEO Dieter Zetsche said at a conference. <20>But of course it is a risk.<2E> Trump, hoping to protect U.S. car makers, has criticized the import of cars into the United States as unfair trade. Trump has also thrown the North America Free Trade Agreement with Mexico into question. Mexico plays an important role in production of German cars that are sold in the United States. Separately, Zetsche addressed a new cartel investigation by European authorities, saying such cooperation with other car makers was for the good of customers and had not harmed them. <20>At the end of the day, it isn<73>t my call. I am an engineer and not a cartel expert,<2C> Zetsche said. <20>But I know that it was first and foremost about standards and similar issues that in the end helped customers because it increased efficiencies.<2E> Zetsche said that prominent cartel specialists are of the opinion that there was no cartel behavior. On Monday, European Union and German antitrust officials searched the offices of Daimler and Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ), widening an inquiry into alleged collusion. The EU competition watchdog said in July that it was investigating several German car makers on suspicion they had conspired to fix prices in diesel and other technologies over several decades. Daimler unexpectedly revealed on Friday that it had claimed whistleblower status to avoid any fines, while Munich-based rival BMW ( BMWG.DE ) said EU officials searched its offices. Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach; Writing by Tom Sims; Editing by Alison Williams and Jane Merriman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-daimler-trump/trumps-policies-a-risk-for-german-car-makers-daimler-ceo-says-idUKKBN1CT2S1'|'2017-10-24T22:07:00.000+03:00'
'aef192941828a0c0a37e3b6e7b8b86d53c862751'|'HSBC forex trial, Commerzbank and Alphasense'|'Banks HSBC forex trial, Commerzbank and Alphasense Martin Arnold and guests discuss the trial of ex-HSBC forex trader Mark Johnson and its potential repercussions for the foreign exchange markets, Commerzbank as it prepares for potential takeover bids, and the impact of AI on the way professional research is done. With special guest Jack Kokko, chief executive of Alphasense. Save to myFT Presented by Martin Arnold and produced by Martin Arnold and Jack Kokko Editor<6F>s Choice'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/video/7bd8c533-0c77-4e2e-bc77-0356d0ae05c3'|'2017-10-24T22:10:00.000+03:00'
'e1009d07afb34d5e3c83928c2c47d8c52f79e032'|'Linde lowers acceptance threshold for Praxair merger to 60 percent'|'October 23, 2017 / 9:01 AM / Updated an hour ago Linde cuts threshold for $80 billion Praxair deal, prepares asset sales Arno Schuetze 5 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Industrial gases group Linde ( LING.DE ) has cut the approval threshold and extended a deadline for accepting its $80 billion tie-up with Praxair ( PX.N ), while pushing on with plans to get a green light from regulators. Linde Group logo is seen at a company building in Munich-Pullach, Germany August 16, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo The planned merger between Linde and U.S. group Praxair, agreed in June, will create a global leader in industrial gases to overtake France<63>s Air Liquide ( AIRP.PA ) with combined revenue of $28.7 billion and 88,000 staff. To pave the way for the deal, Linde has cut the acceptance threshold to 60 percent from 75 percent of shareholders, and the period of the exchange offer, due to expire on Tuesday, has been extended to Nov. 7, Linde said on Monday. From late-November, Linde and Praxair will then have 12 months to close the deal, during which they will need to convince regulators that the transaction does not hamper competition. People close to the matter said the companies were preparing to sell assets with core earnings of 650-750 million euros and enterprise value of about 6.5-7.5 billion ($7.6-$8.8 bln). The assets up for sale have combined sales of more than 2.7 billion euros, the bulk of which is located in the United States. Industrial gases are usually driven to customers within a 100 to 250-mile radius of production facilities, and regulators therefore examine regional rather than national markets in their reviews. The sources said Linde and Praxair were planning to send out information packages on the assets to prospective buyers around Christmas, of which assets with 1.5-2 billion euros in sales are based in North America. European assets - mostly Germany, but also in Spain, Italy and elsewhere - with 700-900 million euros in sales will also be offered. South American assets - mainly Brazil-based - with 500 million in sales are also included, the sources said. Several private equity groups have started work on potentially snapping up the whole bundle, they said, adding that CVC [CVC.UL] has tied up with small Linde rival Messer for a potential offer, while Blackstone ( BX.N ) and Carlyle ( CG.O ) are preparing bids. A number of other buyout firms such as Advent, Bain and KKR ( KKR.N ) are also in talks to form consortia, with some also considering tie-ups with large pension funds to join the bidding. Some of the investors are also participating in the auction of Dutch paint maker Akzo Nobel<65>s ( AKZO.AS ) 9 billion euro speciality chemicals business. But it is unlikely that both the Linde and the Akzo assets will land in the same hands, the sources said. Industrial gases groups such as Air Products ( APD.N ) and Air Liquide ( AIRP.PA ) will also evaluate any assets that Linde and Praxair would seek to divest, the sources said. Linde and Praxair declined to comment on the volume and timing of the divestitures, while the potential bidders declined to comment or were not immediately available to comment. Linde<64>s offer to shareholders to exchange their stock for shares in the merged company reached the 50 percent acceptance threshold on Friday. That paved the way for passive funds, such as exchanged-traded funds replicating Germany<6E>s blue chip DAX index, to tender their stock. Roughly 10 to 13 percent of Linde<64>s shares are held by such funds, which typically tender in such situations and now have more time to do so, people familiar with the matter said. Linde estimates that retail investors own about 5 to 6 percent of its shares. Chairman Wolfgang Reitzle told Reuters in June that tracking them down would be tough. The companies still expect to get the merger done in its originally intended form. <20>We have confidence in reaching an acceptance level of 75 percent or more at the end of the exchange of
'f637762bfb3ade10a82fdd678b234c529a5fcc11'|'Dollar climbs to three-month high against yen on Abe election win'|'October 23, 2017 / 12:24 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago Dollar climbs to three-month high against yen on Abe election win Shinichi Saoshiro 5 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - The dollar touched a three-month high against the yen on Monday, with an emphatic election victory for Japan<61>s ruling party keeping yen-weakening stimulus measures at the heart of government policy. FILE PHOTO: Japan Yen and U.S. Dollar notes are seen in this June 22, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo Prime Minister Shinzo Abe<62>s ruling party scored a big win in Sunday<61>s election with his coalition keeping its two-thirds <20>super majority<74> in the lower house, local media said. Abe<62>s victory eased fears that the economic steps implemented under his leadership - such as the Bank of Japan<61>s super easy monetary policy - would be disrupted and halt the yen<65>s depreciation against the dollar. <20>An LDP win did not come as a surprise, but it still helped clear uncertainty that had been preventing participants from buying the dollar,<2C> said Yukio Ishizuki, senior currency strategist at Daiwa Securities. <20>Overcoming deflation with the BOJ easing is at the crux of the Abe administration<6F>s policies and this will now be allowed to continue indefinitely. It<49>s relief over the BOJ policies, rather than hopes for fresh fiscal stimulus, that is weakening the yen.<2E> The U.S. currency was up 0.25 percent at 113.79 JPY= , losing a bit of momentum after earlier touching 114.10, its highest since July 11. Masashi Murata, senior currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman in Tokyo, said dollar/yen-supportive election elation was likely to peter out relatively quickly, with market focus returning to U.S. factors like tax reform efforts. <20>The election outcome means the Abe administration will retain the status quo, making no changes, and continue with its policies,<2C> Murata said. <20>It will find little need for fresh steps when the GDP has registered six quarters of growth, unemployment is under 3 percent and the Nikkei is above 21,000.<2E> The greenback had already gained about 0.9 percent on Friday after the U.S. Senate approved a budget blueprint for the 2018 fiscal year, clearing a critical hurdle for Republicans to pursue a tax-cut package without Democratic support. The dollar was supported as U.S. yields rose, with the two-year yield hitting a nine-year high, as the progress in tax reforms boosted expectations of increased U.S. Government borrowing and a possible pickup in inflation. [US/] Another focal point for the dollar was who U.S. President Donald Trump would appoint as the next Federal Reserve chief. Investors are hoping whoever is nominated pursues the same monetary policy that has supported rising stock prices for the past nine years. The euro was 0.15 percent lower at $1.1769 EUR= , extending losses from Friday when it lost 0.6 percent. The common currency has drifted lower from a 2-1/2-year peak of $1.2092 scaled on Sept. 8, as hopes for the European Central Bank to take a more hawkish stance have been tempered by speculation that it is not be in a hurry to taper its easy policy. The ECB holds a policy meeting on Thursday, at which policymakers are seen cutting bond purchases but voting for an extension in stimulus. The political situation in Europe has also been a drag for the euro, with the Spanish government having taken desperate steps over the weekend to thwart Catalonia<69>s bid for independence. According to calculations by Reuters and Commodity Futures Trading Commission data released on Friday, speculators trimmed their net long euro positions in the week to Oct. 17 to $13.303 billion from the previous week<65>s $14.474 billion, which was the highest since 2011. The dollar index against a basket of six major currencies rose to 93.872, its highest since Oct. 6, before pulling back to 93.767, up 0.05 percent on the day. The New Zealand dollar, battered last week by a change in government, slipped to a five-month low of $0.6932 NZ
'59f902516bb2247de35a9b69033811bfbd21a8b2'|'Once derided as leeches, private firms see new hope in Belarus'|' 10 AM / in 8 minutes Once derided as leeches, private firms see new hope in Belarus Matthias Williams , Andrei Makhovsky 7 Min Read MINSK (Reuters) - Belarus<75>s reputation as a hard place for private entrepreneurs to succeed is starting to fade as the Soviet-style economy frays and the president who once denounced them as <20>leeches<65> tries to woo them. Employees work at the ADANI company in Minsk, Belarus October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko The former Soviet republic, squeezed between Russia and the European Union, is still dominated by the state, weighed down by bureaucracy and dependent on Russian money and subsidies. Its record on human rights and democracy has been widely criticised. But President Alexander Lukashenko, who has faced protests over unemployment and low living standards, plans to sign a series of business-friendly decrees shortly to build on other reforms he has launched to encourage private companies. The private sector accounts for less than a third of gross domestic product. But some private firms are blossoming and say Belarus is a good place to do business because it has a cheap, educated workforce, competition is not fierce and corruption is less rife than in some neighbouring countries. <20>Belarus is a blue ocean for investment. Not all Western investors realise this, but this is also one of our advantages,<2C> said Sergey Riabuhin, deputy director of Zubr Capital, which launched the country<72>s first private equity fund last year. Zubr Capital<61>s portfolio includes online retailer 21vek.by. Launched with a small stock room by three law students in 2004, it is now the market leader in Belarus, has more than 500 employees and expects revenues to rise by more than 50 percent this year from $48 million in 2016. <20>I believe that, in the European Union and in the USA, they overestimate the barriers and the troubles small businesses and middle-sized businesses may have in Belarus,<2C> said Ivan Pliuhachou, 21vek.by<62>s 34-year-old business development manager. The company<6E>s headquarters has modern Belarussian art on the walls and a hoverboard on the floor near the entrance. But outside, streets are still named after Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, the founders of modern communism, and a statue of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin stands on the capital Minsk<73>s main Independence Square. Although Minsk also now has some smart Western shops and McDonald<6C>s fast-food restaurants, the contrast underlines how far Belarus has to go to shake off its image abroad as being stuck in a time warp. STREET PROTESTS Lukashenko, 63, has ruled the country of 9.5 million people since 1994, brooks little dissent. With the economy propped up by Russian subsidies, he has avoided carrying out liberal market reforms on the same scale as some other ex-Soviet republics. But with financial help from Moscow declining as Russia faces its own economic problems, and the Belarussian economy hit by recession in 2015 and 2016, unemployment has grown, salaries have dropped in real terms and public discontent has mounted. Street protests earlier this year, against a <20>parasite tax<61> levied on the unemployed to compensate the state for lost taxes, were the biggest anti-government protests for years. Lukashenko has increased support for private companies, though without reforming state firms -- a way of boosting the economy and potentially averting more unrest. One decree he signed has cut red tape for starting a tiny business such as a hair salon or a bakery. He has also tightened regulations for the inspection of companies and made it illegal to halt a company<6E>s operations without a court order. Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko speaks during a joint news conference with his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro following their meeting at the Independence Palace in Minsk, Belarus October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko Decrees in the works will cut the number of licences firms need, reduce state interference in the private sector
'b7fd00a902b4a042fc45025d18bef35fef0a962e'|'Apple sees its mobile devices as platform for artificial intelligence'|'October 23, 2017 / 2:06 PM / in a few seconds Apple sees its mobile devices as platform for artificial intelligence Jess Macy Yu 4 Min Read TAIPEI (Reuters) - Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) sees its mobile devices as a major platform for artificial intelligence in the future, Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams said on Monday. An Apple employee showcases the augmented reality on an iPhone 8 Plus at the Apple Orchard Shop in Singapore September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su Later this week, Apple is set to begin taking pre-orders for its new smartphone, the iPhone X <20> which starts at $999 and uses artificial intelligence (AI) features embedded in the company<6E>s latest A11 chips. The phone promises new facial recognition features such as Face ID that uses a mathematical model of a person<6F>s face to allow the user to sign on to their phones or pay for goods with a steady glance at their phones. <20>We think that the frameworks that we<77>ve got, the <20>neural engines<65> we<77>ve put in the phone, in the watch ... we do view that as a huge piece of the future, we believe these frameworks will allow developers to create apps that will do more and more in this space, so we think the phone is a major platform,<2C> Williams said. He was speaking at top chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company<6E>s ( 2330.TW ) 30th anniversary celebration in Taipei, which was attended by global tech executives. Williams said technological innovations, especially involving the cloud and on-device processing, will improve life without sacrificing privacy or security. <20>I think we<77>re at an inflection point, with on-device computing, coupled with the potential of AI, to really change the world,<2C> he said. He said AI could be used to change the way healthcare is delivered, an industry he sees as <20>ripe<70> for change. Williams said Apple<6C>s integration of artificial intelligence wouldn<64>t be just limited to mobile phones. <20>Some pieces will be done in data centers, some will be on the device, but we are already doing AI in the broader sense of the word, not the <20>machines thinking for themselves<65> version of AI,<2C> he said referring to the work of Nvidia Corp ( NVDA.O ), a leader in AI. Global tech firms such as Facebook ( FB.O ), Alphabet Inc ( GOOGL.O ), Amazon, and China<6E>s Huawei are spending heavily to develop and offer AI-powered services and products in search of new growth drivers. Softbank Group Corp ( 9984.T ), which has significantly invested in artificial intelligence, plans a second Vision Fund that could be about $200 billion in size, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. At Monday<61>s event, TSMC Chairman Morris Chang described his company<6E>s relationship with Apple as <20>intense.<2E> Williams said the relationship started in 2010, the year Apple launched the iPhone 4, with both parties taking on substantial risk. He credited Chang for TSMC<4D>s <20>huge<67> capital investment to ramp up faster than the pace the industry was used to at the time. Apple decided to have 100 percent of its new iPhone and new iPad chips for application processors sourced at TSMC, and TSMC invested $9 billion to bring up its Tainan fab in a record 11 months, he said. Reporting by Jess Macy Yu, additional reporting by Eric Auchard, Editing by Miyoung Kim and Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-apple-taiwan-tsmc/apple-sees-its-mobile-devices-as-platform-for-artificial-intelligence-idUKKBN1CS1TZ'|'2017-10-23T17:05:00.000+03:00'
'aa07948db6aa2be543cb31f8defff6e58590ff41'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Emerging FX feel dollar pinch, Turkish assets rattled'|'LONDON, Oct 23 (Reuters) - A stronger dollar increased pressure on some emerging currencies on Monday with the Turkish lira and stocks suffering as the latest concerns over Ankara<72>s relationship with Washington compounded the weaker global backdrop.The dollar sailed to the highest level in more than two weeks, still enjoying a boost from U.S. President Donald Trump and Republicans clearing a hurdle on tax reforms last week and speculation over who will take over at the helm of the Federal Reserve.<2E>We are seeing increasing pressure on emerging market currencies and that is likely to continue over the near term as we still have a lot of speculation regarding who will succeed Janet Yellen at the Fed,<2C> said Phoenix Kalen at Societe Generale.<2E>That is weighing on investors<72> minds, alongside the strength of the dollar that<61>s coming from expectations of fiscal and tax reform.<2E>The Chinese yuan fell against the U.S. dollar after a weaker midpoint fixing while Mexico<63>s peso weakened 0.2 percent.But Turkey<65>s lira and South Africa<63>s rand - both seen as vulnerable to U.S. interest rate rises due to current account deficits - were the hardest hit, weakening for a second straight session.Losses in the lira of more than 1 percent came after Turkey<65>s banking regulator urged the public on Saturday to ignore rumours about financial institutions in an apparent dismissal of a report that some banks face billions of dollars of U.S. fines over alleged violations of Iran sanctions.<2E>Given the level of tensions with the U.S., the market is still sceptical about this denial,<2C> said Inan Demir at Nomura.<2E>The numbers mentioned are large...the largest fine mentioned was $5 billion and that would be a very large fine in comparison to any bank<6E>s equity in Turkey.<2E>Relations between NATO allies Washington and Ankara have been strained by a series of diplomatic rows. Meanwhile U.S. authorities have hit global banks with billions of dollars in fines over violations of sanctions with Iran and other countries in recent years.Adding to the woes was data on consumer confidence, which showed an increasingly pessimistic outlook.Turkish stocks also took a tumble, slipping 0.8 percent while MSCI<43>s emerging market benchmark was flat on the day.Meanwhile in Argentina, candidates allied with President Mauricio Macri enjoyed sweeping victories in Sunday<61>s mid-term election, strengthening his position in Congress while dimming prospects for a political comeback by his predecessor Cristina Fernandez.Investors have said they want to see Macri push through labour and tax reforms aimed at lowering business costs in Latin America<63>s third-biggest economy. But they have been worried about a political resurgence by Fernandez, loved by millions of low-income Argentines helped by generous social spending during her administrations.For GRAPHIC on emerging market FX performance 2017, see tmsnrt.rs/2e7eoml For GRAPHIC on MSCI emerging index performance 2017, see tmsnrt.rs/2dZbdP5For CENTRAL EUROPE market report, seeFor TURKISH market report, seeFor RUSSIAN market report, see)Emerging Markets Prices from Reuters Equities Latest Net Chg % Chg % Chgon yearMorgan Stanley Emrg Mkt Indx 1118.54 -1.15 -0.10 +29.72Czech Rep 1056.24 -0.37 -0.04 +14.61Poland 2484.09 +18.58 +0.75 +27.53Hungary 0.00 +0.00 +0.00 -100.00Romania 7919.00 -14.48 -0.18 +11.77Greece 743.20 -6.03 -0.80 +15.47Russia 1130.49 -3.96 -0.35 -1.90South Africa 51807.55 +206.89 +0.40 +18.01Turkey 07700.54 -788.15 -0.73 +37.83China 3382.27 +3.62 +0.11 +8.98India 32447.30 +57.34 +0.18 +21.86Currencies Latest Prev Local Localclose currency currency% change % changein 2017Czech Rep 25.68 25.65 -0.10 +5.18Poland 4.23 4.23 -0.01 +3.99Hungary 308.13 307.92 -0.07 +0.22Romania 4.60 4.60 +0.01 -1.34Serbia 119.10 119.08 -0.02 +3.57Russia 57.47 57.48 +0.02 +6.60Kazakhstan 336.11 335.72 -0.12 -0.73Ukraine 26.54 26.53 -0.04 +1.73South Africa 13.74 13.63 -0.77 -0.07Kenya 103.60 103.40 -0.19 -1.19Israel 3.49 3.49 -0.07 +10.27Tur
'8d5207ca9aa5712a05dcd36746a6dd2a81864e68'|'Boeing, Mitsubishi Heavy reach deal to cut costs of 787 wing production'|'Oct 23 (Reuters) - Boeing Co and Japan<61>s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (MHI) said on Monday they had agreed on steps to reduce the cost of producing the wings of the 787 Dreamliner.The pair will also study advanced aerostructure technologies for future generation commercial aircraft, they said in a joint statement.MHI manufactures 787 composite wings at its factory in Nagoya. Under the new agreement, MHI will pursue increased efficiency in its production system and supply-chain through lean production methods, automation and other activities. (Reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/boeing-mhi-dreamliner/boeing-mitsubishi-heavy-reach-deal-to-cut-costs-of-787-wing-production-idINL4N1MY2AE'|'2017-10-23T03:52:00.000+03:00'
'2ea9f4d57c5bac83a4a3c437762b9dad6f255e4b'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX ends barely lower, as Eldorado and energy stocks weigh'|'TORONTO, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index ended barely lower on Monday, as a plunge in Eldorado Gold Corp and losses for energy stocks were offset by gains among big banks, miners, lumber companies and others.The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index unofficially closed down 1.46 points, or 0.01 percent, to 15,855.76. (Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Peter Cooney) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks-close/canada-stocks-tsx-ends-barely-lower-as-eldorado-and-energy-stocks-weigh-idINL2N1MY1FY'|'2017-10-23T18:08:00.000+03:00'
'00bc32d77c52bb2cd58708a8a6d2297ae36bde1b'|'SocGen awaits more clarity on Brexit before moving staff - CEO'|' 11 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago SocGen awaits more clarity on Brexit before moving staff - CEO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read DUBAI (Reuters) - France<63>s Societe Generale ( SOGN.PA ) will wait to for more clarity on Brexit before deciding whether to move staff away from London, the bank<6E>s chief executive told reporters in Dubai on Monday. A view shows the logo on the headquarters of French bank Societe Generale at the financial and business district of La Defense near Paris, France, September 6, 2017. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes Frederic Oudea has previously said that the bank was considering moving 400 corporate and investment banking jobs from London as part of its Brexit plans, relocating most of the positions to Paris. The bank has 2,000 jobs in investment banking in London, Oudea said in July. Reporting by Tom Arnold; Writing by Davide Barbuscia; Editing by David Goodman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-societe-generale-britain/socgen-awaits-more-clarity-on-brexit-before-moving-staff-ceo-idUKKBN1CS162'|'2017-10-23T13:11:00.000+03:00'
'319a309e609ce79a11fb9d92a457654a8241659f'|'Australia examines tougher penalties for white collar crime'|'October 23, 2017 / 6:45 AM / Updated 22 minutes ago Australia examines tougher penalties for white collar crime Paulina Duran 2 Min Read SYDNEY (Reuters) - The Australian government is planning to increase penalties and lengthen prison terms for financial crimes in a bid to strengthen the enforcement powers of the corporate regulator following a series of scandals. FILE PHOTO: Pedestrians walk past the Reserve Bank of Australia building in central Sydney, Australia, March 7, 2017. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo Penalties for financial crimes should be more than doubled, fraudulent gains of companies and banks should be seized, and maximum prison terms lengthened, an interim report released by the government on Monday recommended. The government is seeking to improve public confidence in the financial system and give more power to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), which has been criticised for lacking clout amid a series of corporate scandals. Companies and banks including the Commonwealth Bank of Australia ( CBA.AX ) and Tabcorp Holdings ( TAH.AX ) have this year been accused of breaching anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing laws. The government is accepting submissions on its proposed changes until mid-November, before making its final policy decision. Financial Services Minister Kelly O<>Dwyer said the changes would give ASIC the <20>right tools to combat corporate and financial sector misconduct and to protect consumers<72>. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), which alongside the prudential regulator, oversees the strength of the financial system, this month acknowledged cultural problems and poor internal controls at the banks, resulting in misconduct and loss of public trust. The proposals include increasing maximum civil penalties for individuals to A$525,000 ($411,023) from A$200,000, and A$2.63 million for corporations from A$2.1 million; and giving ASIC powers to deal with a wider range of offences. ($1 = 1.2773 Australian dollars)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-australia-regulation/australia-examines-tougher-penalties-for-white-collar-crime-idUKKBN1CS0LF'|'2017-10-23T09:45:00.000+03:00'
'9917568e6822b6a6e5cf6abf5f4af4abe9a9a332'|'Fiat Chrysler sues shippers over alleged price fixing'|'WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV has lodged a complaint with a U.S. regulator seeking <20>reparations<6E> from a group of shipping companies from Asia, Europe and South America that admitted to fixing prices for shipping vehicles, according to documents made public on Monday. A woman walks past a logo of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) in Turin March 31, 2014. REUTERS/Giorgio Perottino The automaker wants the Federal Maritime Commission to order payments from Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics AS ( WWLO.OL ) and its sister company EUKOR Car Carriers Inc [EUKOR.UL], Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha ( 9101.T ), Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd ( 9104.T ), Compania Sud Americana de Vapores VAP.SN, Hoegh Autoliners AS and affiliated companies. Fiat Chrysler filed its complaint on Oct. 17. The auto maker said it and its corporate predecessors have purchased <20>hundreds of millions of dollars<72> in delivery services and none of the firms have compensated it or other victims <20>of their illegal activities.<2E> All but one of the shippers sued by Fiat Chrysler pleaded guilty and admitted to price fixing as part of a Justice Department investigation. The remaining firm, Hoegh, agreed last month to plead guilty and pay a $21 million criminal fine. To date, four shipping executives have also pleaded guilty in the government<6E>s probe, which began in 2012 Fiat Chrysler said the companies and <20>unnamed conspirators have conspired since 1997 to suppress competition<6F> in shipping cargo. The Italian-American automaker said they entered into contracts that resulted in Fiat Chrysler <20>paying far more<72> than if there were a competitive market and that the shipping companies made illegal agreements to <20>allocate customers and routes, rig bids, and fix, stabilize, and maintain<69> prices. The companies failed to disclose these agreements to the Maritime Commission as a 1984 law requires, FCA said. Other companies, including auto and truck dealers, sued shippers in 2016 before the Maritime Commission but those cases are also pending. A number of lawsuits, including from General Motors Co ( GM.N ), were filed under a different legal theory in federal courts starting in 2013. But a federal appeals court ruled in January that the shippers were immune from antitrust lawsuits under the 1984 law. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case earlier this month. Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Dan Grebler '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fiat-chrysler-shipping/fiat-chrysler-sues-shippers-over-alleged-price-fixing-idUSKBN1CS2J1'|'2017-10-23T21:59:00.000+03:00'
'b662ef7ee9a1e73d0a6ab5f38ed1e6df2a6d77f7'|'Saudi Aramco CEO says considering New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong for listing'|'October 24, 2017 / 8:24 AM / Updated 5 hours ago Saudi Aramco CEO says considering New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong for listing Reuters Staff 1 Min Read DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Aramco<63>s chief executive said on Tuesday that domestic and international exchanges such as New York, London, Tokyo, and Hong Kong have been looked at for a partial listing of the state oil giant. Amin Nasser, President and Chief Executive Officer of Aramco arrives to the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed <20>All detailed information is currently being reviewed by our shareholder and in due course a decision will be made about the listing venue,<2C> Aramco CEO Amin Nasser told reporters at an investment conference in Riyadh. The company has said it plans to list in 2018. Asked if a listing of the share in 2019 was a scenario under consideration, Nasser said no. Reporting by Reuters team, writing by Alexander Cornwell; editing by Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-aramco-ipo/saudi-aramco-ceo-says-considering-new-york-london-tokyo-hong-kong-for-listing-idINKBN1CT0XG'|'2017-10-24T06:24:00.000+03:00'
'ba1d86539874e1e4a9de040658b302933474bed4'|'Air Berlin in talks with Condor, not just easyJet: source'|'BERLIN (Reuters) - Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ) is in talks with Thomas Cook ( TCG.L ) airline Condor, as well as Britain<69>s easyJet ( EZJ.L ) over the sale of some of its remaining assets, as time runs out for a deal to be done, a source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.FILE PHOTO: German carrier Air Berlin aircraft are pictured at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt/File Photo Air Berlin had been in exclusive talks with Lufthansa and easyjet, but while a deal was agreed with Lufthansa for large parts of its business, talks with easyJet continued over the weekend.<2E>Air Berlin is in talks with two bidders - easyjet and Condor. The race is wide open,<2C> the source said.EasyJet has said it is interested in operations covering about 25 planes, predominantly at Berlin<69>s Tegel airport. EasyJet currently flies only from Berlin Schoenefeld and analysts say a deal could allow it to build its share in Berlin and possibly offer domestic routes within Germany.Condor had expressed interest in Air Berlin when the carrier filed for insolvency back in August, however the creditors chose to negotiate with Lufthansa and easyJet.Time is ticking for a deal to be done, however. The last Air Berlin flight is due to take place on Friday.The airline had hoped to be able to present deals for remaining assets to a creditor committee today, but instead was only able to present a deal for its cargo marketing unit Leisure Cargo.Condor and easyJet declined to comment. Air Berlin referred to a statement from Friday, when CEO Thomas Winkelmann said that the period of exclusivity had ended.Reporting by Klaus Lauer; Writing by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Alexander Ratz and Tom Sims '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-lufthansa-condor/air-berlin-in-talks-with-condor-not-just-easyjet-source-idINKBN1CT294'|'2017-10-24T18:31:00.000+03:00'
'831ca74211500ff73d45454680a07650c76ea72b'|'Monte dei Paschi shares to resume trading after 10-month halt'|'October 24, 2017 / 8:52 AM / Updated 23 minutes ago Monte dei Paschi shares to resume trading after 10-month halt Reuters Staff 3 Min Read MILAN (Reuters) - Monte dei Paschi di Siena shares will resume trading on Wednesday, after a failed attempt by Italy<6C>s fourth-largest bank to raise capital triggered a 10-month suspension. The entrance of Monte Dei Paschi di Siena is seen in San Gusme near Siena, Italy, September 29, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini The world<6C>s oldest bank had to turn to Rome for help in December 2016 after failing to find buyers for a 5 billion euro ($6 billion) share issue needed to keep it afloat. Weakened by mismanagement, a derivatives scandal and bad loans, Monte dei Paschi was at the center of Italy<6C>s banking crisis and its rescue removed the biggest threat to the country<72>s financial system. Monte dei Paschi said on Tuesday that Italy<6C>s market watchdog had approve a prospectus for the re-listing. The bank<6E>s stock is seen trading below the 6.49 euro price paid by the state in August, when it injected 3.85 billion euros for a 52.2 percent stake. Traders have said the stock may well fall below the 4.28 euro level at which it was valued last month during an auction held to set the payment due to investors who bought insurance against the bank<6E>s default. Italy<6C>s stock exchange said there would be no initial reference price and orders without price limits would be banned. At 4.28 euros per share, Italian taxpayers would be looking at a paper loss of 1.3 billion euros, while the potential loss is even larger for former junior bondholders, whose debt has been converted into equity due to European rules that require investors to take some losses before the state can step in. Monte dei Paschi raised 4.47 billion euros through the conversion, in which shares were priced at 8.65 euros each. A price of 3.5 euros would value Monte dei Paschi at 0.41 times its assets, broadly comparable to that at which rivals such as Banco BPM and Popolare Emilia trade. Retail bondholders hit by the conversion are being compensated by the state, which is buying their shares in exchange for Monte dei Paschi<68>s senior debt. The bank said the exchange offer was expected to run from Oct. 30 to Nov. 17. To clear the bailout, Monte dei Paschi agreed with European authorities a restructuring plan that envisages cutting 5,500 job and selling 26 billion euros in bad debts to reach a net profit of more than 1.2 billion euros in 2021. Reporting by Valentina Za and Stephen Jewkes; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-montepaschi-stocks/monte-dei-paschi-shares-to-resume-trading-after-10-month-halt-idUKKBN1CT10L'|'2017-10-24T11:52:00.000+03:00'
'891317cbd520c5c7716b27a9ddf1584667b73d27'|'Platinum miner Lonmin to cut over 1,000 jobs in South Africa - union'|'October 23, 2017 / 2:53 PM / in 28 minutes Platinum miner Lonmin to cut over 1,000 jobs in South Africa - union Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Platinum miner Lonmin ( LMI.L ) plans to cut over 1,000 jobs before Christmas, South Africa<63>s Solidarity union said on Monday, due to persistently low commodity prices and rising costs. FILE PHOTO: Miners look on at the end of their night shift at the Lonmin mine in Rustenburg, northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa, June 26, 2015. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko/File Photo <20>Because of these cost pressures, Lonmin has decided to place a number of its marginal shafts under care and maintenance and that is the reason why the 1,139 workers will be affected,<2C> Solidarity, which represents mainly skilled workers, said. London-listed Lonmin, whose mines are all in South Africa, is also battling a strengthening South African currency and numerous operational issues. Reporting by Zandi Shabalala; Editing by Susan Fenton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/lonmin-employment/platinum-miner-lonmin-to-cut-over-1000-jobs-in-south-africa-union-idUKKBN1CS1ZL'|'2017-10-23T17:53:00.000+03:00'
'8cf6b1a5615046e5380957f77c42e565b71a5d08'|'EU mergers and takeovers (Oct 23)'|'BRUSSELS, Oct 23 (Reuters) - The following are mergers under review by the European Commission and a brief guide to the EU merger process:APPROVALS AND WITHDRAWALS -- U.S. private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners to acquire UK legal services provider CPA Global Group (approved Oct. 20)NEW LISTINGS -- Japanese company Mitsui and Malaysian conglomerate Sime Darby to set up a joint venture (notified Oct. 20/deadline Nov. 28/simplified)-- French insurer Axa and Dutch insurer NN Group to acquire joint control of a newly created Spanish joint venture (notified Oct. 17/deadline Nov. 23/simplified)EXTENSIONS AND OTHER CHANGES NoneFIRST-STAGE REVIEWS BY DEADLINE OCT 25 -- Jacobs Engineering Group to acquire technical consulting services provider CH2M Hill Companies (notified Sept. 20/deadline Oct. 25/simplified)OCT 27 -- German chemicals company Evonik and Dutch peer DSM to set up a joint venture (notified Sept. 22/deadline Oct. 27/simplified)OCT 30 -- British company CRH plc to acquire XI (RMAT) Holdings GmbH, the German holding company of limestone producer Fels-Werke GmbH which is part of Xella International (notified Sept. 25/deadline Oct. 30)NOV 7 -- Special purpose vehicle ShaMrock Wind to acquire 60 percent of Irish wind farm operator Evalair, which is jointly owned by Luricawne, Fixarra and Luricawne (notified Sept. 29/deadline Nov. 7/simplified)NOV 8 -- Private equity firms Carlyle Group, CVC and China Investment Corp to acquire joint control of French energy company Engie<69>s holding company for oil and gas exploration and production business (notified Oct. 2/deadline Nov. 8/simplified)-- Private equity-backed Neptune Oil & Gas to acquire majority stake in French utility Engie<69>s exploration and production business (notified Oct.2/deadline Nov.8/simplified)NOV 10 -- German auto components supplier Bosch and Chinese counterpart Hasco to acquire electric power steering products maker ASCN (notified Oct. 4/deadline Nov. 10/simplified)NOV 11 -- Medical device maker Avantor, which is controlled by private equity firm New Mountain Capital, to acquire laboratory equipment distributor VWR (notified Oct. 11/deadline Nov. 17/withdrawn Oct. 9/refiled Oct. 11)NOV 13 -- Luxembourg-based steelmaker ArcelorMittal to acquire Italian steel plant (notified Sept. 21/deadline eztended to Nov. 13 from Oct. 26 after ArcelorMittal offered concessions)NOV 14 -- French insurer Axa and Dutch property developer Unibail-Rodamco to jointly acquire a shopping centre in Leipzig, Germany (notified Oct. 6/deadline Nov. 14)NOV 15 -- France<63>s CNP Assurances, Australian investment bank Macquarie and French insurer Predica, which is a unit of French bank Credit Agricole, to acquire joint control of French petroleum product storage company Pisto (notified Oct. 9/deadline Nov. 15/simplified)-- China<6E>s Legend Holdings to acquire 90 percent of Banque Internationale a Luxembourg (BIL) from Qatari investment vehicle Precision Capital (notified Oct. 9/deadline Nov. 15/simplified)Nov 16-- Public pension fund provider ATP and Canadian teachers<72> pension fund OTPP to jointly acquire Danish airport operator Copenhagen airports (notified Oct. 10/deadline Nov. 16/simplified)-- West Midland Holdings Ltd, which is a joint venture between Dutch rail operator Abellio Transport Holding BV, East Japan Railway Co and Mitsui Co, to acquire the West Midlands franchise from London & Birmingham Railway Ltd (notified Oct. 10/deadline Nov. 16/simplified)NOV 20 -- U.S. private equity firm Hellman & Friedman to acquire Danish payments provider Nets (notified Oct. 12/deadline Nov. 20/simplified)NOV 21 -- Private equity firm Apollo Management to acquire insurer Aegon Ireland (notified Oct. 13/deadline Nov. 21/simplified)NOV 22 -- Private equity firms CVC and Blackstone to jointly acquire online payuments processing provider Paysafe Group (notified Oct. 16/deadline Nov. 22)-- Techno Polymer Co. Ltd, a unit of Japanese chemicals company JSR Corp, and UMG ABS Ltd, which is jointly controlled by Mitsubishi Che
'30bd8b264e4f6fc190020d9b8cc1a66d8b3ee5da'|'Cisco nears deal to acquire BroadSoft: source'|'October 23, 2017 / 12:57 AM / Updated 25 minutes ago Cisco buys BroadSoft for $1.71 bln in software push Liana B. Baker , Munsif Vengattil 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Cisco Systems Inc ( CSCO.O ) will buy software company BroadSoft Inc ( BSFT.O ) for $1.71 billion, it said on Monday, in a deal that boosts Cisco<63>s collaboration tools and helps the company diversify its offerings away from switching and routing. Shares in BroadSoft, which specializes in software used by major cable and telecommunications networks, rose 1.35 percent after Cisco offered $55 per share for the company, giving shareholders a premium of 2 percent to last Friday<61>s closing share price. The offer price is more than 25 percent higher than where BroadSoft shares were trading before Reuters reported on Aug. 30 that the company was exploring a potential sale. The purchase gives Cisco a stronger foothold in selling products to big telecom firms which can then provide integrated mobile, video, voice and other forms of electronic communications to their small and medium-size business customers. Rob Salvagno, Cisco<63>s vice president of corporate development, said in an interview that BroadSoft<66>s products, which are delivered over the cloud, or the Internet, will improve Cisco<63>s collaboration portfolio. Cisco<63>s current products in that unit such as WebEx, are based on premise, which means they are installed on devices. Cisco shares also rose about 1 percent. <20>This is a smart acquisition that gives Cisco more firepower to sell into its massive installed base over the coming years,<2C> said Daniel Ives, chief strategy officer at research firm GBH Insights. A newly installed phone made by Cisco is shown in San Diego, California, U.S., April 17, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake The deal, valued at $1.9 billion including debt, is expected to close during the first quarter of 2018, the companies said in a statement. After the deal, BroadSoft employees will join Cisco<63>s unified communications technology group. Cisco, like other large technology companies, has been focusing on high-growth areas such as security, the Internet of Things and cloud computing. BroadSoft provides software and services that enable mobile, fixed-line and cable service providers to offer so-called unified communications over their internet protocol networks. BroadSoft has historically sold its products to large telecommunications companies such as Verizon Communications Inc ( VZ.N ) and AT&T Inc ( T.N ), which then resell the software to their business customers. Cisco and BroadSoft share a lot of customers, Salvagno added. The BroadSoft deal is Cisco<63>s second major acquisition this year following a $3.7 billion deal for privately held AppDynamics Inc in March. <20>With BroadSoft, Cisco will be able to cover a wider swath of the market,<2C> Drexel Hamilton analyst Brian White wrote in a note. Jefferies and Qatalyst Partners advised BroadSoft on the deal while Bank of America ( BAC.N ) advised Cisco. Additional reporting by Arjun Panchadar in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham and Susan Thomas '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-broadsoft-m-a-cisco-systems/cisco-nears-deal-to-acquire-broadsoft-source-idINKBN1CS02Q'|'2017-10-22T22:57:00.000+03:00'
'89015e58a8056cf95252af12c4b12b794fb522b4'|'Air Berlin finds buyer for cargo marketing unit'|'BERLIN, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Family-owned Zeitfracht has agreed a deal to buy Air Berlin<69>s cargo marketing platform Leisure Cargo for an undisclosed price, the insolvent airline said on Tuesday.Air Berlin filed for insolvency on Aug. 15 and a government loan has kept its planes in the air while administrators seek investors for parts of the business. Zeitfracht also remains in talks with a consortium for the airline<6E>s maintenance unit and said in the statement it hoped these talks could be concluded soon.Several people familiar with the matter told Reuters last week that Zeitfracht and maintenance group Nayak were together poised to strike a deal to buy the cargo marketing platform and maintenance units.Lufthansa is buying a large part of Air Berlin assets, and talks with easyJet over other airline operations, predominantly at Berlin<69>s Tegel airport, are ongoing. (Reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Christoph Steitz) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/air-berlin-lufthansa-leisure-cargo/air-berlin-finds-buyer-for-cargo-marketing-unit-idINFWN1MZ0QA'|'2017-10-24T10:28:00.000+03:00'
'847cb452889040025c696a98101f4e4bf38201cb'|'PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 24'|'October 24, 2017 / 6:21 AM / in 6 minutes PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 24 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 24 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - The U.S. Department of Justice will limit its use of secrecy orders that prevent internet providers from telling people when the government has obtained a warrant to read their email during an investigation, according to a department memo issued last week. nyti.ms/2zzcmFD - Amazon.com Inc said on Monday it got a total of 238 proposals from cities and regions across North America that want to be the home of its proposed second headquarters. nyti.ms/2z3ysUq - Starting on Monday, drivers in London whose cars do not meet European Union emissions standards had to pay an additional daily penalty. nyti.ms/2i1vkxh - U.S. President Donald Trump said he would oppose a cap on contributions to the popular tax-deferred retirement plans, effectively killing one GOP plan to help pay for a $1.5 trillion tax cut. nyti.ms/2yLFE6O - A report by the Government Accountability Office, Congress'' auditing arm, urges the Trump administration to take climate change risks seriously and begin formulating a response. nyti.ms/2lbqrH2 (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Sunil Nair)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-nyt/press-digest-new-york-times-business-news-oct-24-idUSL4N1MZ2FZ'|'2017-10-24T09:18:00.000+03:00'
'e6233582adfb0ce3280db63d768b03f8f615cdee'|'Sinochem to re-evaluate oil exploration business, expand fine chemicals - Chairman'|'October 24, 2017 / 5:17 AM / in 11 minutes Sinochem to re-evaluate oil exploration business, expand fine chemicals - Chairman Chen Aizhu 2 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s Sinochem Group is reviewing its struggling oil exploration business and plans expansions into material and life sciences over the next decade in major strategy shift, the chairman of the state-run conglomerate said. FILE PHOTO: A logo of Sinochem is seen outside an office building of Sinochem in Beijing, China, February 21, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo Last week, Reuters reported that Sinochem had retained three banks to work on a possible listing of its oil refining, fuel marketing, and trading and storage assets while the upstream oil business might be sold to the government. <20>Based on current market conditions, we are re-evaluating our strategy in the upstream oil and gas business,<2C> Ning said in an email to Reuters in response to interview questions sent on Monday as part of the 19th Communist Party Congress taking place in Beijing this week. Sinochem has tapped Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ), Citic Securities ( 600030.SS ) and BOC International to work on the possible Hong Kong listing to raise capital and revive the company, Reuters reported. Sinochem aims to build itself into a conglomerate using petrochemicals as the foundation but led by material science and life sciences, a change from previously <20>scattered resource allocation and lack of focus in core businesses,<2C> said Ning. The new business strategy comes as Sinochem is anticipated to merge with China National Chemicals Corp, or ChemChina, under a state-orchestrated restructuring to join the companies. Reporting by Chen Aizhu; Editing by Christian Schmollinger'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-congress-sinochem/sinochem-to-re-evaluate-oil-exploration-business-expand-fine-chemicals-chairman-idUKKBN1CT0G0'|'2017-10-24T08:17:00.000+03:00'
'58e7a499176a3ebfdf54955be50116ef89e4893a'|'PRESS DIGEST- British Business - Oct 24'|' 11 AM / in 9 minutes PRESS DIGEST- British Business - Oct 24 Reuters Staff 3 Min Read Oct 24 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. The Times - Hector Sants, former head of the financial regulator, will give evidence behind closed doors at the High Court in a 600 million pounds ($792.12 million) lawsuit brought by shareholders against Lloyds Banking Group Plc over its acquisition of HBOS in 2008. bit.ly/2z3ynjx - Aluminium and hydroelectricity producer En+ Group will have a market capitalization of up to $10 billion after it floats on the London Stock Exchange next month. bit.ly/2z2LWjh The Guardian - Phones 4U billionaire John Caudwell has accused his former business partner and protege of being an "amazing liar" who presided over a "reign of terror" at the wealth management firm Signia Wealth. bit.ly/2z34G2b - President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker has rushed to salvage relations with UK at a dangerous point in the Brexit negotiations by denying claims that the Prime Minister Theresa May had begged for help at a recent private dinner, instead insisting she had been in "good shape" and "fighting". bit.ly/2z3xWFV The Telegraph - Private hospitals group Spire Healthcare on Monday said it has rejected a takeover by rival Mediclinic that valued the firm at around 1.2 billion pounds ($1.58 billion). bit.ly/2z2hS7q - Britain''s TV and radio company Arqiva has signalled plans for a stock market debut to raise 1.5 billion pounds and pay off some of its heavy debt pile. bit.ly/2z1dVje Sky News - UK''s Labour MP Jared O''Mara has resigned from Parliament''s women and equalities select committee after historical comments he posted online re-surfaced. bit.ly/2z3xgjR - UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is assessing whether it can take "further action" over Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc''s controversial treatment of small businesses, after an independent review. bit.ly/2z2lne1 The Independent - Mark Johnson, former HSBC Holdings Plc banker, has been found guilty by a U.S. jury of defrauding UK-headquartered Cairn Energy Plc in a $3.5 billion currency trade. ind.pn/2z3a0m6 $1 = 0.7575 pounds Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Cynthia Osterman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-press-business/press-digest-british-business-oct-24-idUSL2N1MZ002'|'2017-10-24T03:10:00.000+03:00'
'b6c3292725f2bf28677ac7a54b11ef15d77adf28'|'Russia''s VTB may lend 5 billion euros to CEFC to buy Rosneft stake'|'MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia<69>s VTB Bank ( VTBR.MM ) may provide a loan of about 5 billion euros ($5.9 billion) to CEFC China Energy for its purchase of a stake in Russia<69>s largest oil producer Rosneft ( ROSN.MM ), VTB chief Andrey Kostin told reporters on Tuesday.A banking source familiar with the matter had told Reuters earlier on Tuesday that CEFC China Energy could raise around $5 billion from VTB, Russia<69>s second-biggest lender, for the Rosneft stake acquisition.Kostin<69>s first deputy, Yuri Soloviev, who was also speaking to reporters, added that the size of the loan was subject to changes in Rosneft<66>s share price and the rouble currency rate against the dollar. The loan may be granted in dollars or in euros, Soloviev said.CEFC<46>s purchase of the Rosneft stake does not depend on whether VTB provides financing to the Chinese group, Kostin said earlier on Tuesday, speaking on Rossiya-24 TV channel.VTB is only one of several banks which were lined up to provide financing for the deal and it will issue the credit if it is profitable for the bank, he added.<2E>The Chinese side would like to raise a bridge loan and then replace it with financing from Chinese banks on better terms,<2C> Kostin said. He expects the deal to close in a month or a month and a half.CEFC plans to buy a 14.16 percent stake in the Russian oil major from a consortium of Glencore ( GLEN.L ) and the Qatar Investment Authority, strengthening energy ties between Moscow and Beijing.Reporting by Oksana Kobzeva and Polina Devitt; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by David Holmes '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-cefc-rosneft-oil-vtb-loans/russias-vtb-may-lend-5-billion-euros-to-cefc-to-buy-rosneft-stake-idINKBN1CT265'|'2017-10-24T13:15:00.000+03:00'
'bd95e5df27b58027c491a71fa1d84c82641c441d'|'China shoppers rein in spending on cookies to pop drinks -survey'|'SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Growth in sales of consumer goods ranging from biscuits and candies to toothpaste and shampoo has slowed in China to a five-year low, a survey shows, in a major challenge for global firms seeking to attract buyers in the world<6C>s most populous nation.FILE PHOTO: Shoppers ride on a travelator at a supermarket in Beijing, China, October 15, 2015. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo Demand for fast-moving consumer goods has waned in the world<6C>s No.2 economy, with sales growing 2 percent in the first half of 2017 versus year-ago levels, a report from consultancies Kantar Worldpanel and Bain & Co shows.That is the weakest half-year growth since 2012, according to the report based on a survey of 40,000 households. While sales rose 3.6 percent in the third quarter, it is still a far cry from a near 20 percent growth just over half a decade ago.The data gives a gauge of how China<6E>s consumers are spending their money - key as Beijing<6E>s leaders, global investors, and brands such as Nestle ( NESN.S ), Pampers owner Procter & Gamble ( PG.N ) or Coca-Cola ( KO.N ) look to tap the spending power of the country<72>s near 1.4 billion potential shoppers.<2E>The type of consumption people enjoy now is very different - travel, lifestyle, entertainment are all growing strongly,<2C> said Bruno Lannes, Shanghai-based partner at Bain.<2E>(This is) where people are spending, and it<69>s taking money away from fast-moving consumer goods.<2E>A boom in cheap food delivery - luring huge investment into firms like Meituan-Dianping - has also hit grocery sales as people cook less often at home, Lannes added.But not all products did badly.While chocolate, chewing gum and candy saw double-digit drops in sales volume in the first six months, health-focused products like yoghurt and bottled water and some personal care products fared far better.The Kantar-Bain report offers detailed insights into consumer spending patterns beyond broader official retail sales. The latter also includes data from segments like cars and oil products and showed a rise of 10.3 percent for September.China - amid a twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle - has posted strong economic growth this year, but this is expected to slow in coming months as higher financing costs and measures to cool the heated property market start to weigh on activity.The annual Kantar-Bain report also underlined how politics was hitting consumer markets.Sales of South Korean skin care and makeup products in China fell 4.8 percent in the first half amid a diplomatic stand-off over Seoul<75>s decision to deploy an anti-missile system.For 2017, sales of fast-moving consumer goods in China is expected to be <20>slightly<6C> better than last year<61>s 2.9 percent rise, which was the slowest in a decade, Kantar<61>s China General Manager Jason Yu said.<2E>We did see some recovery in the third quarter,<2C> said Yu. <20>Really important now is how the fourth quarter performs.<2E>Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Himani Sarkar '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-retail/china-shoppers-rein-in-spending-on-cookies-to-pop-drinks-survey-idUSKBN1CT1CQ'|'2017-10-24T13:32:00.000+03:00'
'81fec38b30b8e5df5bc16e9b4f072b04c33adfed'|'Bombardier reviewing CSeries deliveries after UTC engine fixes'|'October 24, 2017 / 3:30 PM / Updated 24 minutes ago Bombardier reviewing CSeries deliveries after UTC engine fixes Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Bombardier Inc ( BBDb.TO ) said it was reviewing delivery plans for its CSeries jets for 2017, after U.S. engine parts maker United Tech said it was resolving issues with its geared turbofan (GTF) engines to make them more durable. A Bombardier CSeries aircraft is pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau United Technologies Corp ( UTX.N ), the maker of Pratt & Whitney jet engines, held back some shipments of GTF engines to plane makers and offered spares to airlines, which had faced problems with engines already in service. <20>Bombardier is working closely with Pratt & Whitney to evaluate and mitigate any potential impact on its customers and will provide a full update on November 2, when it issues its Q3 results,<2C> spokeswoman Nathalie Siphengphet said on Tuesday. Montreal-based Bombardier has forecast deliveries of about 30 CSeries jets this year, but has only delivered 12 so far. Reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bombardier-deliveries-utc/bombardier-reviewing-cseries-deliveries-after-utc-engine-fixes-idUKKBN1CT28X'|'2017-10-24T18:30:00.000+03:00'
'd523bcad799ce23792dd458148a7da631f39e024'|'Saudi Aramco CEO says considering New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong for listing'|' 24 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago Saudi Aramco CEO says considering New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong for listing Reuters Staff 1 Min Read DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Aramco<63>s chief executive said on Tuesday that domestic and international exchanges such as New York, London, Tokyo, and Hong Kong have been looked at for a partial listing of the state oil giant. FILE PHOTO: Logo of Saudi Aramco is seen at the 20th Middle East Oil & Gas Show and Conference (MOES 2017) in Manama, Bahrain, March 7, 2017. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/File Photo <20>All detailed information is currently being reviewed by our shareholder and in due course a decision will be made about the listing venue,<2C> Aramco CEO Amin Nasser told reporters at an investment conference in Riyadh. The company has said it plans to list in 2018. Asked if a listing of the share in 2019 was a scenario under consideration, Nasser said no. Related Coverage'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-saudi-aramco-ipo/saudi-aramco-ceo-says-considering-new-york-london-tokyo-hong-kong-for-listing-idUKKBN1CT0XK'|'2017-10-24T11:26:00.000+03:00'
'a1208f55ad1a0d7da4b6ff92f2d54d29ec362472'|'U.S. 2-year note sold at highest yield in nine years'|'NEW YORK, Oct 24 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday sold $26 billion of two-year government notes at a yield of 1.596 percent, the highest yield at auction for this debt maturity in nine years, Treasury data showed.The ratio of bids to the amount of two-year Treasuries offered was 2.74, down from 2.88 at the prior two-year auction in September. This measure of overall auction demand was the lowest since March. (Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by David Gregorio) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-treasury-auction/u-s-2-year-note-sold-at-highest-yield-in-nine-years-idINL2N1MZ1BI'|'2017-10-24T15:15:00.000+03:00'
'625e51dae2628588cccfae478dd72f5932d977e3'|'UPDATE 1-U.S. law firm files class suit against Rio Tinto over Mozambique coal'|'* 1st publicly announced class action vs Rio on Mozambique deal* Follows SEC fraud charges vs Rio, executives (Adds lead plaintiff details, background)By James ReganSYDNEY, Oct 24 (Reuters) - A U.S. law firm has filed a class action suit against mining giant Rio Tinto , which is facing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fraud charges stemming from an ill-fated investment in Mozambique coal mining.Seattle-based Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP said in a statement released in Australia on Tuesday it filed the suit on behalf of purchasers of Rio Tinto American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) between Oct. 23, 2012 and Feb. 15, 2013 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.The law firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Rio Tinto declined to comment on the filing, the first publicly announced class action suit involving the coal asset.The SEC last week charged Rio Tinto and two of its former top executives with fraud, saying they inflated the value of Mozambique coal assets and concealed critical information while tapping the market for billions of dollars.The assets were acquired for $3.7 billion in 2011 from an Australian company, Riversdale Mining, but sold a few years later for $50 million.Rio Tinto and the two executives, Tom Albanese, chief executive at the time, and former chief financial officer Guy Elliott, have denied the charges.The filing names as lead plaintiff Anton Colbert of Cook County, Illinois. The document states Colbert acquired Rio Tinto ADRs between Feb. 28, 2011 and Sept. 16, 2013 worth $41,319.84, according to Reuters<72> calculations based on the filing.In a class action, a lead plaintiff represents other participants, which the filing lodged by Hagens Berman states believes could number <20>hundreds or thousands of members in the proposed class<73>.In its charges, the SEC said that soon after the Mozambique asset deal was completed, Rio Tinto learned that the acquisition would yield less coal, and of a lower quality, than expected. The global miner could only transport and sell a fraction of the coal it had originally assumed, the SEC said.By making misleading public statements, Rio Tinto, Albanese and Elliott were able to raise $5.5 billion from U.S. investors, the SEC said.They continued to solicit the investments even after executives of the Mozambique subsidiary told Albanese and Elliott that the unit was likely worth negative $680 million, according to the SEC.Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/rio-tinto-fraud-classaction/update-1-u-s-law-firm-files-class-suit-against-rio-tinto-over-mozambique-coal-idINL4N1MZ20A'|'2017-10-24T04:14:00.000+03:00'
'354014742f9cc065bcf07a4fefe7b717f4a04843'|'Aker BP chairman says dividend may rise further in case of new deals'|'OSLO, Oct 24 (Reuters) -** Chairman in Aker BP Oeyvind Eriksen says the announced increase in dividend after the acquisition of Hess Norge for $2 billion is consistent with guidance and dividend policy from Aker BP** Aker BP raises annual dividend to $350 million from current $250 million** <20>When we announced the $250 mln policy we said we will consider to increase nominal annual dividend paid when and if Aker BP does new acquisitions. In addition we said we expect another step change when Johan Sverdrup comes on stream in 2019.<2E>** Eriksen said Aker BP will stick to dividend policy and continue to do adjustments and increase dividend when and if we announce new transactions like the one we announced today** Aker BP expects to close Hess Norge deal in current quarter and also announce first dividend for new company which will be paid out in Q1 2018 (Reporting By Ole Petter Skonnord, editing by Terje Solsvik) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/hess-ma-aker-bp-dividend/aker-bp-chairman-says-dividend-may-rise-further-in-case-of-new-deals-idINL8N1MZ1FF'|'2017-10-24T05:00:00.000+03:00'
'da009bfe860b912985b813dfd6cc3c243c12f6b8'|'U.S. industrial shares hit record high as earnings shine'|'October 24, 2017 / 3:40 PM / in 4 hours U.S. industrial shares hit record high as earnings shine Lewis Krauskopf 3 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. industrial sector roared to a record high on Tuesday following strong financial results from stalwarts 3M Co ( MMM.N ) and Caterpillar Inc ( CAT.N ), even as shares of General Electric Co ( GE.N ) continued to struggle. FILE PHOTO - The logo of Down Jones Industrial Average stock market index listed company 3M is shown in Irvine, California April 13, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo The S&P 500 industrials index .SPLRCI rose 0.7 percent, leading all major groups. Other sectors that are particularly dependent on economic growth, such as financials .SPSY and materials .SPLRCM, also gained. Results showed a rebound for industrial companies whose shares have been under pressure the past couple of years as many of their key markets, such as energy, mining and agriculture, have struggled, said Edward Jones industrials analyst Matt Arnold. <20>What we are seeing in 2017 is a significant snap back in demand. It is driving higher sales at a time when these companies have done a lot to lean themselves out and tighten their belts,<2C> Arnold said. <20>What all this means is these companies are translating the sales snap-back into significant earnings growth and it is driving the stocks,<2C> he said. Shares of diversified manufacturer 3M and heavy machinery maker Caterpillar led the sector<6F>s gains, with both rising more than 5 percent after their results both easily topped Wall Street<65>s estimates for sales and earnings. FILE PHOTO: A Caterpillar logo is pictured on the skid-steer loader at the construction site In Warsaw, Poland June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel The two stocks also propelled the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI to a record high. Caterpillar<61>s results helped boost shares of agriculture equipment maker Deere & Co ( DE.N ), while shares of Stanley Black & Decker ( SWK.N ) climbed about 4 percent after the power tool maker<65>s results. General Motors Co ( GM.N ) shares meanwhile rose more than 1 percent after the automaker<65>s profit topped estimates. GM<47>s stock is part of the consumer discretionary sector .SPLRCD but its results are seen as an indicator of the health of industrial manufacturing. Tuesday<61>s gains for the cyclical sectors signaled a potential rotation in the stock market. Shares of technology and healthcare companies, whose profits are more resistant to economic downturns, have led this year<61>s market rally. Not all industrial stocks gained on Tuesday. Lockheed Martin Corp ( LMT.N ) shares fell 2 percent after the weapons supplier<65>s results, while United Technologies<65> ( UTX.N ) shares were little changed after the conglomerate<74>s report. Notably, shares of GE, the largest publicly traded industrial company, were down 1 percent, continuing their slide after the conglomerate reported earnings that fell far short of Wall Street expectations on Friday. Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-industrials-stocks/u-s-industrial-shares-hit-record-high-as-earnings-shine-idUSKBN1CT29O'|'2017-10-24T18:40:00.000+03:00'
'7081a6728fc3e0912c2a282da972c39310bb926c'|'Supreme Court bans use of dirtier coal alternative in New Delhi'|'NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Tuesday banned the use of petroleum coke, a dirtier alternative to coal, in and around New Delhi in a bid to clean the air in one of the world<6C>s most polluted cities.A view of the Indian Supreme Court building is seen in New Delhi December 7, 2010. REUTERS/B Mathur/Files The court, which recently banned the sale of firecrackers in the New Delhi area, also ordered a ban on the sale and use of furnace oil - another dirty refinery by-product - in and around the capital and ordered implementation of strict emission norms by the end of December.<2E>It is a big win for clean air,<2C> Sunita Narain, an environmental activist and a member of a committee set up by the government which recommended the ban of such fuels around the Indian capital, told Reuters.The order comes after the Environment Protection Authority (EPCA), a government-appointed body, in April recommended to the court that it ban the fuels due to high sulphur levels.India is the world<6C>s biggest consumer of petroleum coke, a dark solid composed mainly of carbon, which emits 11 percent more greenhouse gases than coal, according to the Carnegie<69>Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. Burning it also emits several times more sulphur dioxide, which causes lung diseases and acid rain.Annual demand for the fuel, which is more energy efficient than coal, has nearly doubled over the past four years to more than 27 million tonnes.India tops deaths from pollution globally, according to The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, with 2.5 million Indians dying early in 2015 because of pollution. ( reut.rs/2zyeKMV )Indian health ministry data shows that respiratory issues killed about 10 people per day in the year ended March 2017 in the National Capital Region - a rapidly urbanizing and polluted area around New Delhi that is a third the size of New York state, but houses 2.5 times more people.Those deaths could be the result of pollution from many sources, including coal, or have other causes.The ban on the sale and use of petcoke, which will be effective from Nov. 1, could hit the country<72>s small and medium scale industries, which employ millions of workers and operate on thin margins.Sulphur-heavy petcoke and other cheap, highly polluting fuels such as furnace oil are widely used by cement factories, dyeing units, paper mills, brick kilns and ceramics businesses.Puneet Gupta, founder of online coal and petcoke marketplace CoalShastra, said <20>per-unit delivered energy for petcoke is much cheaper when compared to the next alternate, coal,<2C> making it attractive for buyers. Users say they also prefer the fuel over coal because of its assured supply.Such companies say banning cheap fuel might stunt their ability to expand and hire more staff, just as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to create jobs.Petcoke demand fell in August after Hurricane Harvey hit shipments from the United States, the biggest exporter to India, but analysts and traders say consumption is likely to recover and continue growing, unless there is a country-wide ban.Reporting by Sudarshan Varadhan; Additional reporting by Suchitra Mohanty; Editing by Susan Fenton '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-petcoke/supreme-court-bans-use-of-dirtier-coal-alternative-in-new-delhi-idINKBN1CT1N6'|'2017-10-24T15:01:00.000+03:00'
'e96048f7e88546f4d6b46e5e69f782c1dbc6f7fe'|'Essilor confirms 2017 outlook, expects further progress on Luxottica deal'|'October 24, 2017 / 4:59 AM / Updated 21 minutes ago Essilor confident on Luxottica deal despite EU probe Matthias Blamont 4 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - French eyewear group Essilor ( ESSI.PA ) said on Tuesday it was confident of securing European Union approval for its $54 billion merger with Italian peer Luxottica ( LUX.MI ) after the EU launched a full-scale probe into its impact on competition. Lens producers Essilor'' s logo is seen in an optician shop in Paris, France, March 15, 2016. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer The world<6C>s biggest optical lenses manufacturer, also confirmed its 2017 outlook after posting stronger third quarter revenues that were broadly in line with expectations. The company had cut its annual revenue growth target in July, citing snags in China and Brazil, but its shares rose on Tuesday in response to higher sales and the general outlook. Essilor Chief Operating Officer Laurent Vacherot said on a call with analysts that the group viewed the European Commission<6F>s in-depth probe into the planned merger with Luxottica, launched last month, <20>with serenity and confidence<63>. Chief Executive Hubert Sagnieres said in a statement Essilor planned to build on its third-quarter momentum between now and the end of this year <20>while also making major strides in its proposed combination with Luxottica.<2E> EU antitrust regulators opened a full-scale investigation into the Luxottica deal in September, saying the deal could reduce competition in the ophthalmic lenses and eyewear market. Their conclusions are expected by the end of February. Luxottica and Essilor had declined to offer concessions during a preliminary EU review. Vacherot told analysts substantial work had already been done on the merger. <20>Authorities need time do to a quality job. The teams are very active and step by step we are preparing and progressing with confidence,<2C> he said. Essilor shares were up 4.21 percent at 105.25 euros at 1005 GMT, making the stock the best performer on France''s benchmark CAC-40 index .FCHI . <20>Performance in U.S and EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) has sequentially improved in each quarter and guidance suggests a similar development in the fourth quarter,<2C> analysts at investment bank Jefferies wrote in a note to clients. CREATING GLOBAL LEADER Essilor and Luxottica, the maker of Ray-Ban sunglasses, agreed in January on a 46 billion euro ($54 billion) merger to create a global eyewear giant with annual revenue of more than 15 billion euros. The merger has been approved by competition authorities in several countries including India, Japan and New Zealand but still needs clearance in North America and Europe. A key regulatory concern for the EU is the possibility that the merged company might persuade opticians to buy eyewear and lenses as a package, leveraging Luxottica<63>s strong brand portfolio which also includes Persol as well as licensed names such as Chanel and Armani. Competition lawyers have said that, to win clearance, the two companies may have to offer commitments to Brussels that the markets for lenses and frames will remain open to their rivals. Given the Feb. 26 deadline set by the European Commission, the merger is not expected to be finalised before 2018 but Vacherot said the group was sticking to an initial target of closing the transaction <20>around the end of the year.<2E> Essilor said sales in the quarter ended September were up 2.5 percent on an organic basis to 1.75 billion euros. Analysts polled by Reuters had on average been expecting revenues of 1.77 billion euros. Sales in North America were up 2.3 percent to 658 million euros despite the ravages in September of hurricanes such as Irma which led to several shop closures in the United States. Luxottica reported weaker-than-expected third-quarter sales on Tuesday after it was forced to close some 570 shops in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBus
'2fc5d3be0d5c979d9aa4c14e8c3509b37a458512'|'Nigeria''s Oando gets court order to halt share suspension, audit -court paper'|'  Updated 8 minutes ago Nigeria''s Oando gets court order to halt share suspension, audit -court paper Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LAGOS, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Nigeria<69>s Oando has obtained a court order to halt the suspension of trading in its shares and a forensic audit planned by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), court documents seen by Reuters showed on Tuesday. Shares in Oando Plc were frozen at 5.99 naira on Monday until further notice, the stock exchange said after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ordered a forensic audit into the company. The SEC suspended trading in the stock for 48 hours last week, saying it was investigating complaints about insider trading and discrepancies in its ownership structure. (Reporting by Chijioke Ohuocha; Editing by Alexis Akwagyiram and David Evans)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/nigeria-oando/nigerias-oando-gets-court-order-to-halt-share-suspension-audit-court-paper-idUSL8N1MZ4KP'|'2017-10-24T15:10:00.000+03:00'
'd20c97bb4c8ba87506f01b53c1aee0c78f993b5c'|'LPC-FCA to extend Ombudsman service to UK middle market firms'|'Oct 24 (Reuters) - The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is considering widening the Ombudsman service to small and medium-sized UK companies (SME) in its interim report that highlights the mistreatment of customers by Royal Bank of Scotland<6E>s Global Restructuring Group (GRG).The Financial Ombudsman Service is a statutory body that handles disputes between companies that provide financial services and their customers. It can hand out fines of up to <20>150,000.The service is restricted to companies with a maximum turnover of <20>2m that employ less than 10 people, which made it inaccessible to bigger companies that claimed to have been badly treated by RBS at the height of the financial crisis.GRG was the division at RBS that was responsible for turning around companies that were showing signs of financial distress. It was closed down in 2014 amid mounting controversy.The FCA<43>s interim report, which was published on October 23, looked at 207 cases of businesses that were transferred to GRG.According to the report, 86% were on the receiving end of <20>inappropriate treatment<6E> by RBS and 16% of the sample, which were viable businesses, became increasingly distressed as a result of GRG<52>s intervention.The businesses had debt ranging from <20>250,000 to <20>20m and <20>did not receive the support they could have reasonably expected in a period of extreme financial stress<73>, the report said.This has encouraged the FCA to consider broadening access to the Ombudsman.<2E>The Ombudsman is available as a dispute resolution option for some smaller businesses, and we are seeking to broaden its scope to provide more SME customers with access to it,<2C> FCA chief executive Andrew Bailey said in the report.The FCA held a consultation in 2015 that considered whether expanding access would give SMEs more confidence. Implementing a wider service would require legislative approval by Parliament.<2E>We<57>re aware that our role could be widened, but that<61>s ultimately a decision for the FCA. However we<77>re a flexible organization that<61>s used to managing a large caseload.<2E> a spokesperson for the Ombudsman said.An initial report in 2013 by Dr Lawrence Tomlinson concluded that RBS engineered defaults of SMEs in order to funnel them into its more profitable GRG division.The FCA<43>s interim report rejected some of these claims, but said that RBS failed to comply with its own standards of communication to businesses transferred to the GRG and failed to support SME businesses <20>in a manner consistent with good turnaround practice<63>.RBS has introduced an official complaints procedure for SME customers, which is overseen by retired high court judge Sir William Blackburne, as well as a refund mechanism for charges relating to monitoring fees, late information and asset sales. (Editing by Tessa Walsh) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/fca-loan/lpc-fca-to-extend-ombudsman-service-to-uk-middle-market-firms-idINL8N1MZ67M'|'2017-10-24T14:30:00.000+03:00'
'4d5f0a4f16bb248350ca3a08bdab12c769c2925a'|'Hammond eyes ''measured'' approach to November budget'|'October 24, 2017 / 11:18 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Hammond eyes ''measured'' approach to November budget David Milliken , Andy Bruce 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will continue with a <20>measured and balanced<65> approach to reducing public borrowing in next month<74>s budget, chancellor Philip Hammond said on Tuesday, seeking to contain any expectations of big surprises. Britain''s Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond attends a joint press conference with the Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Jose Angel Gurria at the Treasury in London, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Matt Dunham/Pool Hammond is under pressure from pro-Brexit MPs who dislike his relatively pro-European views, and on Monday the Times newspaper reported that allies of Prime Minister Theresa May were upset at reports that he wanted a <20>bold<6C> budget. Britain<69>s economy has slowed sharply this year, partly due to higher inflation caused by the pound<6E>s plunge after last year<61>s Brexit vote. But Hammond told parliament on Tuesday, in his last major appearance there before the budget, that the economy was fundamentally strong and did not need extra stimulus. Asked by one lawmaker about housing minister Sajid Javid<69>s suggestion that the government borrow more to fund house-building, Hammond appeared unenthusiastic. <20>Increasing activity in the construction sector is a very good way of creating jobs but ... at (a jobless rate of) 4.3 percent, our economy is approaching full employment, the output gap is extremely small,<2C> he told parliament. Hammond will set out his annual budget on Nov. 22, and official forecasts from March showed borrowing as a share of the economy was on course to rise this year for the first time since his Conservative Party entered office in 2010. Hammond has not committed to balance the budget until the middle of the next decade, giving him some flexibility to slow the pace of deficit reduction if needed to support the economy as Britain leaves the European Union. <20>We will continue with the plans that we have announced to reduce the deficit in a measured and balanced way, to ensure that debt is falling as a share of GDP,<2C> he told parliament. March<63>s forecasts showed public sector net debt as a share of GDP is forecast to peak at 88.8 percent this financial year, as the budget deficit rises to 2.9 percent, before falling in 2018/19. So far this year Britain has borrowed less than forecast, and September<65>s deficit was the lowest since 2007. But official forecasters have warned this may not last and economists fear ongoing weak productivity will prompt the government agency to downgrade its long-term outlook. Ratings agency Moody<64>s cut Britain<69>s sovereign credit rating by one notch to Aa2 last month, saying the government<6E>s plans to bring down its debt load had been knocked off course and Brexit would weigh on the economy. Within these spending constraints, Hammond will be keen not to be forced into another U-turn like after his first budget in March. Then, he had to drop a plan to raise taxes on the self-employed, as it broke one of his party<74>s 2015 election promises. Following this, May had been widely expected to sack Hammond until she lost the government<6E>s parliamentary majority in a snap election in June. But earlier this month one of Hammond<6E>s predecessors, Nigel Lawson, renewed calls for him to go. Additional reporting by William James; Editing by Robin Pomeroy'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-budget/hammond-says-will-continue-plans-to-cut-deficit-idUKKBN1CT1HI'|'2017-10-24T20:07:00.000+03:00'
'f43c06218e82d6dc12ce863b8c9aedc65d893bea'|'GRAPHIC- Taper time: Five questions for the ECB'|'October 24, 2017 / 9:47 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago GRAPHIC- Taper time: Five questions for the ECB Dhara Ranasinghe , Ritvik Carvalho 4 Min Read LONDON, Oct 24 (Reuters) - The European Central Bank is likely to decide the fate of its 2.3 trillion euro stimulus scheme on Thursday in one of the ECB<43>s most keenly anticipated policy meetings for months. Solid economic growth means the days of extraordinary stimulus are numbered, although anaemic inflation supports the case for dragging out asset purchases for as long as possible. The balancing act facing the ECB has become a focal point for markets trying to assess just what shape a scaling-back or <20>tapering<6E> of stimulus is likely to take. Here are the main questions investors want answered: 1. How much will the ECB trim its asset purchases by? Many analysts expect the ECB to announce a cut in monthly purchases to 30 billion euros from 60 billion euros from January for nine months, following recent source-based stories suggesting ratesetters favour a <20>lower for longer<65> scenario. A bigger point of contention is whether to keep the scheme open-ended by putting a nine- or six-month time frame for the reduced purchases or give a final end-date for the scheme, which is currently set to expire in December. Analysts do not rule out a 12-month extension at an even lower pace of 20-25 billion euros a month. 2. Will the ECB change its forward guidance? The language in the ECB<43>s statement about policy rates remaining low until <20>well past<73> the end of quantitative easing is expected to stay in place. The longer the ECB keeps monetary stimulus in place, the further back investors are likely to push expectations for a rate rise. Money markets no longer anticipate a rate rise in 2018 and many economists do not expect a hike until 2019. The ECB could also reaffirm that it will reinvest the proceeds of maturing bonds, sending a clear signal that it will remain active in bond markets for some time. 3. Is the ECB still worried about the euro? The single currency has declined almost 3 percent from a more than a 2-1/2-year peak above $1.20 since the last ECB meeting in early September, but concerns about currency strength remain on policymakers<72> minds. Market data indicates that investors still expect more gains in the currency, with weekly CFTC positioning numbers showing long euro positions near their highest on record while long-term investors such as central banks and sovereign wealth funds are still underweight the single currency. The phrase <20>exchange rate<74> appeared 25 times during ECB chief Mario Draghi<68>s last press conference, the most of any conference held by Draghi or former ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet, according to Nomura analysis. 4. What about bond market scarcity? A scarcity of eligible government debt for ECB stimulus strengthens the case for tapering. The ECB is likely to be questioned about its technical constraints although analysts say more details on this are more likely to come in December. One view is that the ECB could avoid hitting self-imposed limits by scaling back purchases of corporate bonds more slowly than those of government debt. To make up for shortages of government bonds in much of the bloc including Germany, the ECB has been skewing asset purchases towards Italy and France. That helps explain why Italian bonds, in particular, have benefited from recent talk that ECB tapering is likely to be a drawn-out process. 5. Is the banking sector strong enough for tapering? While macro-economic indicators may be reassuring policymakers that they can tighten financial conditions, there is still a large cloud hanging over the bloc<6F>s banking sector. For that reason, investors will be listening closely to what Draghi has to say about tackling the stockpile of bad loans in places like Italy. The ECB faces the dilemma of making sure banks set aside money to deal with this legacy problem but still have enough to lend out. Policymakers need to be sure that the private sector wil
'bef0a84be4faff80a00912f79c6ce2a61d4c11e8'|'Doing the heavy lifting - investors eye tech-tonic shifts for Europe<70>s industrials'|'October 24, 2017 / 5:04 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Doing the heavy lifting - investors eye tech-tonic shifts for Europe<70>s industrials Kit Rees 7 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Investment funds seeking to invest at the intersection of Europe and technology are finding rich pickings in places that some may find surprising: sprawling industrials like trains-to-turbines Siemens ( SIEGn.DE ) and engineering group ABB ( ABBN.S ). FILE PHOTO: Siemens AG headquarters in Munich, Germany June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo Building on their traditional expertise in factory automation, the conglomerates<65> digital divisions are adding cutting-edge software and systems that help customers design, build and test their products faster and more cheaply. In so doing they bring new value to companies historically linked mainly to customers in the power, energy and mining sectors that have had to slash spending in the past few years due to a precipitous drop in commodity prices. Not only is the divisions<6E> growth outstripping that of legacy fossil-fuel businesses, but a trend towards breaking out their earnings separately in company reports allows investors to see value that was previously buried. <20>Your industrial company today is not your dirty factory bending metals and producing simple and large objects,<2C> said Andreas Fruschki, director of equity research, Europe at AllianzGI. <20>It<49>s a more high-tech, nimble assembly site.<2E> Their efforts are attracting the attention of investors looking for less obvious technology plays as the tide turns against U.S. stocks like Facebook ( FB.O ), Apple ( AAPL.O ), Netflix ( NFLX.O ) and Google ( GOOGL.O ), due to their uncomfortably lofty valuations. Meanwhile in Asia the soaring market capitalisation of a handful of companies such as China<6E>s Alibaba ( BABA.N ) and Tencent ( 0700.HK ) means investors in exchange traded funds (ETFs) who want exposure to a range of companies are finding themselves increasingly exposed to a single sector. The growth opportunities in European industrials are still limited by legacy businesses, however, said Neil Campling, head of global TMT research at Northern Trust Capital Markets. The oil & gas and mining sectors have cut capital expenditure to $706 billion in 2016 from $1.29 trillion in 2013, according to figures from S&P Global, which added that a slight recovery is expected in 2017. <20>But you<6F>re certainly seeing that factory automation, machine vision, automation, industry 4.0, improvements in supply chain systems, all these kinds of things ... (are) enjoying very strong growth,<2C> Campling added. INDUSTRIAL SOFTWARE FILE PHOTO: The logo of Swiss engineering group ABB is seen at a plant in Zurich, Switzerland October 4, 2016. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo Siemens<6E> Digital Factory, widely seen as the global leader in industrial software, only started reporting separate results in the German company statements in 2015. The 13 percent of 2016 revenue it contributed is still small fry compared with the power and energy divisions<6E> 40 percent. But while sales in Siemens<6E> power and gas segment declined 11 percent in the fiscal third quarter, digital saw 11 percent growth and accounted for more than a fifth of total profits. Swiss power grids maker ABB is also winning investors<72> attention thanks to its robotics segment, although oil & gas, mining and other industries still account for more than 40 percent of company revenues. ABB Ability, a digital software and services platform that can connect to robots for remote monitoring and diagnostics, which partners with Microsoft ( MSFT.O ) and IBM ( IBM.N ), is starting to contribute to growth, ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer said in a press release after the company released results for the second quarter that ended June 30. Robotics orders jumped 12 percent year-on-year in the quarter to more than 25 percent of the company<6E>s total. While some technology assets have been developed in-house or through c
'5e29a5a200d11080cc8ddd1c85262f4ce981b045'|'Hedge fund Marcato sues Deckers in Delaware over meeting date'|'BOSTON (Reuters) - Marcato Capital Management sued Deckers Outdoor Corp on Monday to force the maker of UGG boots to hold its annual meeting and classify the hedge fund<6E>s board nominees so the company could avoid millions of dollars in financial penalties.The lawsuit filed in Delaware Chancery Court heightens tensions between Deckers and the hedge fund, which has proposed replacing the company<6E>s entire 10-member board.In the lawsuit, Marcato asked the court to force the company to lock in its annual meeting date for Dec. 14 and to take an administrative step to disable a provision in its credit and employment agreements.Because Deckers has refused to approve the Marcato nominees, their election could trigger a change in control that could force financial penalties. In the lawsuit, the hedge fund said this could result in more than $120 million in accelerated debt, equity awards and compensation.The company and its board could eliminate the problem by simply acknowledging Marcato<74>s nominees as <20>continuing directors,<2C> the lawsuit said. Such a step would not suggest that the company is endorsing the dissidents.Marcato, which has an 8.4 percent stake in Deckers, said the board held its last annual meeting in September 2016.Deckers expressed concern earlier this month about engaging in a proxy contest during the winter shopping season, suggesting to the hedge fund that the meeting could be delayed.<2E>Our Annual Meeting of Stockholders is already scheduled for December 14, 2017. Marcato<74>s lawsuit is unnecessary, a distraction from our successful transformation, and a self-serving attempt to advance its own interests at the expense of all other stockholders,<2C> a spokeswoman, Kore Busath-Haedt, said in a statement.Marcato, in a statement, described Deckers<72> posture as a <20>scorched-earth defense.<2E> It is requesting a trial in Delaware in early December.<2E>Deckers<72> board must be held accountable for violating the core principles of corporate democracy by preventing shareholders from exercising their right to vote without suffering entirely avoidable, value-destroying consequences,<2C> the statement said.Marcato founder Mick McGuire has been pushing Deckers to sell pieces of its footwear business, buy back shares and overhaul executive compensation. Earlier this month, he said the share price could double by 2020 if the company takes those actions.The stock dipped 0.9 percent to $65.49 on Monday. It has traded between $44 and $72.72 in the last 52 weeks.As of mid-October, Marcato<74>s main fund had returned 14 percent this year, while its smaller Encore fund was up 24 percent. The average activist fund returned 5.7 percent through the end of September, according to research firm HFRI.Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Lisa Von AhnOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-deckers-outdoor-marcato/hedge-fund-marcato-sues-deckers-in-delaware-over-meeting-date-idUSKBN1CS22L'|'2017-10-23T18:17:00.000+03:00'
'81963a8f26b4542d7018a251801d1edafa04b4fa'|'Italy''s Giorgio Armani details succession plans, sees five percent fall in revenues'|'Take Five - World markets themes for the week ahead business Analyst fees under scrutiny as EU rules loom - thinktank EU script to help May settle Brexit bill Reuters TV United States October 23, 2017 / 6:15 AM / a few seconds ago Italy''s Giorgio Armani details succession plans, sees 5 percent fall in revenues Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MILAN (Reuters) - Italian veteran designer Giorgio Armani said that under his succession plans part of his fashion empire will be transferred to a foundation he has recently created in his name and that his heirs will hold the remaining stakes of the group. Italian designer Giorgio Armani arrives at the "Green carpet Fashion Awards" event during the Milan Fashion Week in Milan, Italy, September 24, 2017. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini In an interview with Corriere della Sera daily published on Monday, Armani said it took 5 years to figure out <20>the right architecture<72> for his succession, but still did not say who would replace him at the helm of the company. The 83-year old entrepreneur said that sales at the group, Italy<6C>s second biggest fashion house after Prada, will fall by 5 percent both this year and next and will start growing again from 2019. Reporting by Giulia Segreti'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-italy-fashion-armani-succession/italys-giorgio-armani-details-succession-plans-sees-5-percent-fall-in-revenues-idUKKBN1CS0IN'|'2017-10-23T09:10:00.000+03:00'
'78bf637ce864475fd5f32eae2f2e8be002d53868'|'No future(s): Asian financial coal trading dries up as Noble declines, Glencore rules'|' 50 AM / in 16 minutes No future(s): Asian financial coal trading dries up as Noble declines, Glencore rules Henning Gloystein , Vera Eckert 7 Min Read SINGAPORE/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Financial trading of thermal coal has virtually ceased in Asia as a result of the woes at one major trading house and the growing dominance of another, despite the region being by far the world<6C>s biggest consumer of the fuel. FILE PHOTO: Workers unload coal at a storage site along a railway station in Hefei, Anhui province October 27, 2009. REUTERS/Jianan Yu/File Photo Asia gobbles up some 70 percent of all coal used for power generation, and the unprecedented demise of its futures market poses significant risks for utilities in particular. With coal prices rising sharply this year, power generators would usually hedge or protect themselves by taking positions in related derivatives markets. <20>With Asia<69>s futures pretty much gone, that greatly increases our risk for supplies in that region. It may mean that we source less from there going forward,<2C> said a risk manager with a big European utility, declining to be named as he was not authorized to speak publicly about company risk. Data from several exchanges shows that since its heyday in 2015, Asia coal futures trading activity has declined by over 90 percent. Two senior coal brokers and six senior traders at merchant houses, utilities and miners spoken to by Reuters pointed to the shrinking role of Singapore-listed commodity merchant Noble Group ( NOBG.SI ) as the single most important factor in the decline of Asian coal futures volumes. Noble has sold-off assets and slashed trading operations following allegations from Iceberg Research in 2015 that it had overstated its assets by billions of dollars, sending its share price tumbling. <20>Noble is a massive loss to the market. Its troubles seriously dented liquidity,<2C> one merchant trader said. Noble declined to comment for this article, but said in a letter to Singapore Exchange in May <20>very thin trading liquidity<74> in hedging instruments had contributed to its first quarter losses. GLENCORE DOMINANCE Many traders also see a link between declining Asian coal futures and the growing dominance of a single company in supplying physical Asian coal. Swiss-based, London-listed Glencore ( GLEN.L ) is the world<6C>s biggest producer of thermal coal, exporting well over 50 million tonnes from Australia alone in 2016, a quarter of the country<72>s shipments. Physical Newcastle coal prices, which act as Asia<69>s key futures benchmark, have jumped from around $70 to over $100 per tonne this year. Glencore, which owns a dozen thermal coal mines in Australia,   But market participants say the firm is not as active in coal futures trading as many of its peers, instead preferring bilateral supply deals with customers. <20>Doubts over deliberate intervention on the supply side for Australian coal linger, which kills any enthusiasm to trade the (financial) product,<2C> said Georgi Slavov, head of research at commodity brokerage Marex Spectron. Glencore<72>s control and knowledge of actual coal output in Australia and the influence this has on derivatives contracts means it is difficult for outsiders to predict price movements, scaring off traders. <20>If you don<6F>t know what Glencore<72>s mines are up to, it<69>s very hard to trade Australian coal futures,<2C> said one trader with a large European utility. <20>It<49>s not Glencore<72>s wrongdoing, just the way it is.<2E> Glencore has previously said it is as vulnerable as any other market participant to commodity price swings, and in the past has also used derivatives to hedge its own production. The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company''s headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann STEEP DECLINE The decline in Asian coal futures volumes stands in stark contrast to booming oil and natural gas futures. The amount traded in front-month Australian coal futures on 
'8717fb24a267a44d7309a64ed9ef2913c3c563d2'|'China''s aluminium demand growth to stay ahead of GDP - Chinalco chairman'|' 36 AM / in 3 minutes China''s aluminium demand growth to stay ahead of GDP - Chinalco chairman Tom Daly 3   China<6E>s biggest state-run aluminium producer said consumption of the metal is set to increase by 9-10 percent this year on the back of strong downstream demand, and keep growing at a faster rate than the country<72>s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018. FILE PHOTO: An Aluminium Corp of China (Chinalco) company flag and the Chinese national flag are seen outside its headquarters in Beijing, China March 19, 2010. REUTERS/Christina Hu/File Photo Ge Honglin, chairman of Aluminum Corp of China, known as Chinalco, told Reuters in an emailed answers to questions that consumption was expected to come in at 26.25 million tonnes in the first three quarters of 2017, up 9 percent year on the year, with peak end-year demand yet to come. The executive, a delegate at China<6E>s 19th Communist Party congress, said Chinalco expects national aluminium consumption growth <20>will continue to be higher than GDP in 2018, and the huge consumer demand will remain the ballast for the healthy development of the global aluminium industry<72>. China, which is targeting GDP growth of around 6.5 percent this year, has not yet set a 2018 goal. The International Monetary Fund sees China<6E>s GDP climbing by 6.5 percent in 2018. Some of Chinalco<63>s rivals, such as China Hongqiao Group, are facing restrictions on smelting this winter for environmental reasons. But asked how his company would be affected, Ge mentioned only cutbacks in Shandong and Henan processing of alumina, a substance used to produce aluminium. Rising prices of alumina, carbon and power have pushed up primary aluminium production costs by 14 percent this year, Ge said. Aluminium demand from China<6E>s packaging sector was up by 20 percent in January-September, according to Ge, while demand from real estate, transportation and electronic products grew by 8 percent and the power sector by 5 percent, he said. Asked about Chinalco<63>s proposed purchase of another 46.6 percent stake in its Simandou iron ore project in Guinea from Rio Tinto - a deal that has still not closed despite being agreed a year ago - Ge said only that his company<6E>s projects in the country were <20>progressing smoothly<6C>. Chinalco<63>s listed arm, known as Chalco, in September agreed to invest $500 million in a project to process bauxite, used to produce aluminium, in Guinea. Trading in Chalco<63>s Shanghai-listed shares has been suspended since Sept. 12 pending an event that a filing to the bourse stated may constitute a material asset restructuring. Ge said further announcements would be made in due course. Reporting by Tom Daly; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-congress-aluminium/chinas-aluminium-demand-growth-to-stay-ahead-of-gdp-chinalco-chairman-idUKKBN1CT0D6'|'2017-10-24T07:36:00.000+03:00'
'10fecaf9426862c99d33c18df5a1ef87da09a0c7'|'International Paper to combine unit with Graphic Packaging'|'(Reuters) - International Paper Co ( IP.N ) has agreed to combine its North America consumer packaging business with Graphic Packaging Holding Co ( GPK.N ) in a deal that values the International Paper division at $1.8 billion, the companies said on Tuesday.Graphic Packaging will own 79.5 percent of the partnership and will be sole operator, and International Paper will own the remainder. The partnership is valued at $6 billion and will assume $660 million of International Paper debt, the companies said.International Paper<65>s North America consumer packaging business produces solid bleached sulfate paperboard and paper-based foodservice products. It is projected to generate adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $210 million in 2017.The deal is projected to be accretive to earnings in its first year and generate $75 million in synergies by the end of its third year, the companies said. Graphic Packaging said it will not change its board of directors as a result of the partnership.Bank of America Corp ( BAC.N ) and Alston & Bird LLP advised Graphic Packaging.Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-graphic-pack-intl-paper/international-paper-to-combine-unit-with-graphic-packaging-idINKBN1CT1HE'|'2017-10-24T09:20:00.000+03:00'
'21613edee300d88ee841c7a6e624a5bd56ed7a9c'|'Public-relations woes may be catching up with Uber'|'UBER has had a tough year. It has fired staff on the back of sexual-harassment allegations and faced reports of a hostile workplace culture. It has been sued for allegedly stealing self-driving-car technology. It lost customers when it flouted a New York taxi boycott in protest of President Donald Trump<6D>s travel ban. And, amid all the turmoil, its boss resigned. But despite all this, the company continued to win more and more customers, including business travellers.Now, however, there are signs that the tide may be turning. Certify, an expense-management software company, has released its latest quarterly report on business-travel spending in America. And for the first time since it started collecting data in 2013, Uber has seen a decline in use among business travellers. 3 Uber and other ride-hailing apps still dominate the business-travel market for ground transport, accounting for around two-thirds of it. And they are growing at the expense of traditional services. The market share of taxis and rental cars declined by one percentage point to 7% and 28%, respectively, in the third quarter of the year.But even as ride-hailing continued to grow, Uber saw its share inch down, from 55% to 54% in the latest quarter. By contrast, the market share of Lyft, a competitor, jumped three percentage points to 11%.Uber<65>s position in the market may seem enviable, but it reveals risks in the company<6E>s strategy. Uber has made consistent losses, with the aim of capturing a huge market share and then being able to raise prices. But that will only work if it remains the most-dominant player in the ride-hailing world and keeps rivals at bay.Other data from the Certify report show the value of dominating a market. The most popular spot for travellers to expense both lunch and dinner in America, for instance, is McDonald<6C>s. Though it is hardly anyone<6E>s idea of a hearty business meal, its ubiquity bolsters its popularity.But even McDonald<6C>s cannot raise prices without losing business. That is because it has so many competitors snapping at its heels. Uber hoped to transcend this issue by capturing a vast market share. But if the latest report is a sign of a real trend, Uber<65>s dominance may be waning.Next Hotels are employing fewer concierges'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'https://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/10/starting-stall?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-24T15:08:00.000+03:00'
'12fedd4819c781903567df2b7c01b302fe9c3d21'|'India drags feet on GM mustard permit amid powerful opposition'|' 53 AM / a few seconds ago India drags feet on GM mustard permit amid powerful opposition Krishna N. Das 3 Min Read NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India has frozen requests to commercially release a locally developed genetically modified mustard, an environment ministry document released on Tuesday showed, amid stiff opposition to lab-altered food from domestic activists and politicians. FILE PHOTO: An Indian scientist points to a patch of genetically modified (GM) rapeseed crop under trial in New Delhi, India February 13, 2015. REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee/File Photo The mustard variety would have been the first transgenic food crop to be allowed for commercial cultivation. But the environment ministry''s Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) has deferred approval despite a panel the ministry supervises giving the genetically modified (GM) mustard technical clearance last year. ( bit.ly/2cnUOkZ ) "Subsequent to receipt of various representations from different stakeholders, matters related to environmental release of transgenic mustard are kept pending for further review," the GEAC said in minutes of a meeting released on the environment ministry''s website marked "confidential and restricted circulation". ( bit.ly/2yJrRLU ) Cotton is the only GM crop currently allowed to be sold in the world<6C>s second most populous country where arable land is shrinking. U.S. company Monsanto Co dominates the cotton seed market in India, and often faces resistance from local companies over its position. The environment ministry told parliament on July 31 that GM mustard had been recommended by GEAC to it for "consideration for environmental release and cultivation". ( bit.ly/2gCNc54 ) FILE PHOTO: An Indian scientist points to a patch of genetically modified (GM) rapeseed crop under trial in New Delhi, India February 13, 2015. REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee/File Photo An environment ministry spokesman directed Reuters to GEAC head Amita Prasad, whose office said she was not available. Another GEAC official named on the ministry<72>s website, Madhumita Biswas, did not respond to requests for comment. The decision on the mustard represents a setback for Deepak Pental and his colleagues at the Delhi University, who worked on developing and testing the variety for years. Pental, who earlier acknowledged that getting a go-ahead for GM food would be difficult, declined to comment on Tuesday. GM food has been opposed by activists and politicians in India due to fears that it could compromise food safety and biodiversity. Some experts have also questioned claims that GM crops are more productive than normal varieties. Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh - Hindi for "national volunteer organization" and the ideological parent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi''s ruling party - also opposes GM food and instead wants to promote local varieties. ( reut.rs/2y1iytL ) Even the previous government, led by the current opposition Congress party, in 2010 placed a moratorium on GM eggplant, also after an experts panel had given its clearance - effectively bringing the regulatory system to a deadlock before Modi revived it. ( reut.rs/2gxTMGr ) ( reut.rs/2yFBgXi ) Reporting by Krishna N. Das; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-india-gmo/india-drags-feet-on-gm-mustard-permit-amid-powerful-opposition-idUKKBN1CT0TN'|'2017-10-24T10:46:00.000+03:00'
'fc04c32998297dd8ca86c38834b2d1f1aa18d8ca'|'BlackRock opposes banning companies from indexes over voting rights'|'Reuters TV United States October 23, 2017 / 11:07 AM / Updated an hour ago BlackRock opposes banning companies from indexes over voting rights Trevor Hunnicutt 3 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - BlackRock Inc ( BLK.N ), the world''s largest asset manager, is lambasting the architects of market indexes like the S&P 500 .SPX for ostracizing companies that deny equal voting rights to shareholders, saying that doing so could limit the opportunities of investors in index funds. The BlackRock sign is pictured in the Manhattan borough of New York, in this October 11, 2015 file photo. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/Files Snap Inc ( SNAP.N ), the parent company of messaging app Snapchat, made waves when it went public in a $3.4 billion offering last March with a class of common stock granting no voting rights, and it was later excluded from some market indexes. BlackRock has said it supports all shareholders getting an equal vote. Yet, in a report published on the company<6E>s website on Monday, the manager of nearly $6 trillion in assets said it is up to regulators to set corporate-governance policies, not index providers. BlackRock said that, without regulatory changes, corporations should seek shareholders<72> approval of capital structures that deprive some of voting rights, and that they should let shareholders exercise equal voting rights on specific topics, such as executive pay, that pose a conflict of interest. <20>While we understand entrepreneurs<72> desire to maintain control of their company following an initial public offering, we believe that shareholders should have a say in critical decisions,<2C> the BlackRock report said. <20>However, we disagree with index providers<72> recent decisions to exclude certain companies from broad market indices due to governance concerns. Those decisions could limit our index-based clients<74> access to the investable universe of public companies and deprive them of opportunities for returns.<2E> FTSE Russell and S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC said in July they would exclude Snap and companies with similar structures from certain stock indexes, citing concerns over their lack of voting rights. MSCI Inc ( MSCI.N ) in June proposed a plan that would exclude Snap and companies like it, and invited feedback. BlackRock<63>s opinion on the role of index providers in resolving the fraught corporate governance debate, which has not previously been reported, carries special weight because the company is a top provider of funds that track indexes. Vanguard Group, with $4.5 trillion in assets, has also said it believes companies like Snap should not <20>be excluded solely on the basis of voting limitations at this time.<2E> BlackRock and Vanguard are top shareholders in companies around the world, and they vote proxy ballots that can change company directors and influence management policies. An MSCI spokeswoman said the company is still consulting with clients and will make a decision based on what clients think. S&P and FTSE Russell declined to comment on BlackRock<63>s views. Snap also declined to comment. Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in New York; Additional reporting by Ross Kerber in Boston and David Ingram in San Francisco; Editing by Jennifer Ablan and Leslie Adler '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-blackrock-governance/blackrock-opposes-banning-companies-from-indexes-over-voting-rights-idUKKBN1CS1CQ'|'2017-10-23T14:06:00.000+03:00'
'9c7657c8438367f622b3e93646eca6c474d1c2c2'|'Canada''s Stelco IPO to price between C$16 to C$18'|'Oct 23 (Reuters) - Canadian steel maker Stelco Holdings Inc expects its initial public offering to be priced between C$16 to C$18 per share, raising about C$200 million ($158 million) at the mid-point.The company, owned by U.S. private equity group Bedrock Industries, plans to offer between 11.11 million and 12.50 million of common shares. ( bit.ly/2hYIVFy )Stelco, which is emerging from its second bankruptcy in 13 years, will list on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol <20>STLC<4C>.Stelco operates two steel-processing facilities in Ontario and is targeting the auto sector for growth with plans to increase production of lightweight, higher-strength steels that automakers are increasingly seeking for better fuel economy, according to the company<6E>s IPO filings.Goldman Sachs Canada Inc, BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc Capital Markets, Credit Suisse Securities (Canada) Inc, J.P. Morgan Securities Canada Inc, Scotia Capital Inc, TD Securities Inc, National Bank Financial Inc and Oppenheimer & Co Inc are the underwriters to the offering. ($1 = 1.27 Canadian dollars) (Reporting by Taenaz Shakir in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/stelco-ipo-pricing/canadas-stelco-ipo-to-price-between-c16-to-c18-idINL4N1MY52R'|'2017-10-23T17:08:00.000+03:00'
'e9fdc0f6b16f96233a1a8c23b944fc12767c8c61'|'Consumer goods firms harness online data to tap SE Asia e-commerce boom'|'October 22, 2017 / 11:16 PM / Updated 4 hours ago Consumer goods firms harness online data to tap SE Asia e-commerce boom Aradhana Aravindan , Chayut Setboonsarng 6 Min Read SINGAPORE/BANGKOK (Reuters) - When diaper maker DSG International (Thailand) wants to know what its customers are thinking, it often turns to Lazada, an e-commerce firm majority-owned by Alibaba Group Holding ( BABA.N ). Employees work at RedMart''s fulfillment centre in Singapore September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su <20>From (their) data, we know mothers sometimes browse at night, so we can offer flash sales when we know customers are browsing,<2C> says Ambrose Chan, the Thai company<6E>s CEO. Southeast Asia is the world<6C>s fastest-growing internet market, home to 600 million consumers from Vietnam to Indonesia via Singapore, many of them tech- and social media-savvy. They are rapidly spending more time and money online. A Nielsen study in 2015 estimated Southeast Asia<69>s middle-class will hit 400 million by 2020, doubling from 2012. Gross merchandise value of ecommerce in Southeast Asia will balloon to $65.5 billion (<28>49.68 billion) by 2021, from $14.3 billion last year, predicts consultancy Frost & Sullivan. Research firm Euromonitor forecasts internet retailing in Indonesia, for example, will more than double to $6.2 billion by 2021, and Thailand will increase 85 percent to $2.8 billion. Consumer goods firms, such as Unilever ( UNc.AS ) and Japanese cosmetics firm Shiseido ( 4911.T ), say the e-commerce boom allows them to push deeper into markets that can otherwise be difficult to understand and tough to penetrate due to poor retail networks and infrastructure. <20>Data from Lazada has been used to position certain products where consumer preferences are different. For example, Thai customers like to buy diapers in special cartons, while Malaysians prefer multiple packs,<2C> says Chan. To reach more customers and get a better handle on their online behaviour, consumer goods companies are forging partnerships with e-commerce firms like Lazada and fashion website Zalora. POWERFUL, INSIGHTFUL A customer who clicked on a 50 millilitre product may instead buy a smaller 30 ml product, said Pranay Mehra, vice president, digital and e-commerce at Shiseido Asia Pacific, noting that data and online selling experience can help firms bundle offers, decide on packaging and distribution, and influence where to set up a physical presence. <20>This data is very powerful and very insightful, if used properly,<2C> Mehra added. Unilever, whose products range from Hellmann<6E>s mayonnaise to Dove soap, said it is seeing more demand from rural consumers in developing markets like Indonesia and Vietnam. <20>With all our e-commerce partners, we<77>re using data to help us find innovative solutions to unlock key barriers of high cost delivery and poor credit card penetration in remote areas,<2C> said Anusha Babbar, e-commerce director at Unilever Southeast Asia and Australasia. Employees work at RedMart''s fulfillment centre in Singapore September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su The conglomerate, which works with the likes of Singapore online grocer RedMart, Indonesia<69>s Blibli and Vietnam<61>s Tiki, said it introduced its St Ives skincare brand on Lazada after seeing a trend towards natural products and shopper search data. (For a graphic on Southeast Asia internet sales, click bit.ly/2xYzXye ) DATA AND LOGISTICS <20>Traditional retailers will struggle to see customer behaviour,<2C> said Lazada Thailand<6E>s CEO, Alessandro Piscini. <20>We can tell if a customer is pregnant from their search behaviour.<2E> Slideshow (16 Images) Lazada, he said, plans to use data science to help its merchants customise offers for specific customer groups based on age, gender and other preferences. Zalora, which sells clothing and accessories online in markets including Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, said it was working on ad-hoc projects with some brands to help them understand their customers based on data. Lazada and Zal
'e337578f167339ace2795dffde353c0cbd05d0d1'|'AT&T extends deadline to close Time Warner deal'|'(Reuters) - AT&T Inc ( T.N ) said on Monday it had extended by a <20>short period<6F> the deadline to close its proposed deal to acquire Time Warner Inc ( TWX.N ), to buy time to get the required regulatory approvals for the deal.FILE PHOTO - An AT&T logo is seen at a AT&T building in New York City, October 23, 2016. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith/File Photo The deal had a termination date of Oct. 22.AT&T&rsquo;s $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner is expected to give it control of cable TV channels HBO and CNN, film studio Warner Bros and other coveted media assets.Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-time-warner-m-a-at-t/att-extends-deadline-to-close-time-warner-deal-idINKBN1CS1JO'|'2017-10-23T10:13:00.000+03:00'
'3f86b127daed3e4b84f7206a14e5a83babad2bb5'|'CORRECTED-Target gears up for holidays with free shipping and gifts under $15'|'(Corrects paragraph 2 to show the 1,400 toys are separate from the 1,700 gifting products)By Richa NaiduNEW YORK, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Target Corp said on Monday it would start free shipping beginning in November and that most of its gift assortment had been priced at under $15, as the retailer gets ready to take on Amazon.com and Wal-Mart in the most crucial shopping season of the year.Target, which has promised about 1,700 gifting products and more than 1,400 toys including <20>Star Wars,<2C> LEGO and Netflix merchandise and hundreds of $1 stocking stuffers, said it would offer promotional deals during weekends for the last two months of the year.The retailer is also rolling out a service that allows online customers to send friends and family electronic gift boxes that let them make changes to items or select entirely different gifts before they ship.Several industry surveys have indicated that shoppers will spend more on holiday gifting this year, helped by higher online sales and a strong labor market.The Minneapolis-based retailer said in September it was hiring 100,000 temporary holiday workers, up from the 70,000 workers it hired in each of the previous four years.That month, Target also lowered prices on thousands of essential items, from cereal to baby formula, making good its vow from earlier in the year to compete with rivals by aggressively clamping down on prices.Target said its holiday assortment would include more than 1,400 toys, including L.O.L. Surprise! Big Surprise and items from popular Netflix Inc show <20>Stranger Things<67> and the next <20>Star Wars<72> installment, <20>The Last Jedi.<2E><>Star Wars<72> was the U.S. toy industry<72>s top-selling property for 2015 and 2016, with $1.5 billion in sales over the two years, according to research firm NPD.Wal-Mart, the world<6C>s largest retailer, is also counting on <20>Star Wars<72> toy sales this holiday, and has added a large assortment of <20>Star Wars<72> products to its holiday layaway program, which allows shoppers to put aside holiday merchandise and make payments in installments. (Reporting by Richa Naidu; Editing by Peter Cooney) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/target-holiday/target-gears-up-for-holidays-with-free-shipping-and-gifts-under-15-idINL2N1MY02O'|'2017-10-23T03:02:00.000+03:00'
'1de733b5f9bf4aa113557cb4e1ef0d621d21391f'|'Morning News Call - India, October 23'|'To access the newsletter, click on the link: here If you would like to receive this newsletter via email, please register at: here FACTORS TO WATCH 9:00 am: Indian Energy Exchange lists on exchanges in Mumbai. 11:00 am: Minister for Petroleum & Natural Gas and Skill Development & Entrepreneurship Dharmendra Pradhan at inauguration of Skill Development Centre in New Delhi. 11:30 am: Mahindra & Mahindra MD Pawan Goenka and Energy Efficiency Services Ltd. MD Saurabh Kumar to announce public-private partnership to adopt energy efficiency measures in Mumbai. LIVECHAT- JAPAN ELECTIONS A victory is widely expected for Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party in Sunday''s election, but Japan watchers are curious how voters react to Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike and her new Party of Hope. Reuters chief political correspondent Linda Sieg in Tokyo will discuss the implications of election outcome at 9:00 am IST. To join the conversation, click on the link: here INDIA TOP NEWS <20> India says ready for stronger U.S. ties after Tillerson endorsement India stood ready to further strengthen ties with the United States, the government said on Friday, after U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson vowed to dramatically expand cooperation as a way to counter China''s influence in Asia. <20> RBI says linking national ID number to bank accounts mandatory The Reserve Bank of India on Saturday dismissed media reports that it was not necessary to link national identity card numbers, known as Aadhaar numbers, to bank accounts. <20> Workers at Tata Steel''s Dutch arm oppose Thyssenkrupp merger The works council of Tata Steel Netherlands said on Friday it opposed preliminary plans by Tata Steel and Thyssenkrupp to combine their European steelmaking operations into a joint venture (JV) and would fight to block it if necessary. <20> RBI worried about rise in inflation - minutes Worry that rising consumer prices will threaten the Indian central bank<6E>s inflation target of 4 percent led the majority of the Reserve Bank of India<69>s monetary policy committee to vote to keep rates steady, according to minutes issued on Wednesday. <20> India''s tightened consumer goods standards could hurt China imports India is tightening quality controls for consumer and capital goods, officials say, a move that follows calls to curb cheap imports from China amid diplomatic tensions between the world''s two most populous nations over their shared border. <20> India tightens gold import norms for export houses India tightened gold import norms for export houses by restricting them from importing the yellow metal only for export purposes and not for selling in the domestic market, the government said in a circular on Wednesday. <20> Bangladesh set to sign 15-year gasoil import deal with India Bangladesh Petroleum Corp is set to sign a 15-year deal with Indian oil refiner Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd to import gasoil to meet the country''s energy demand, two company officials with the direct knowledge of the matter said. GLOBAL TOP NEWS <20> Abe to push reform of Japan''s pacifist constitution after election win Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe''s ruling bloc scored a big win in Sunday''s election, bolstering his chance of becoming the nation''s longest-serving premier and re-energising his push to revise the pacifist constitution. <20> Noble Group to sell oil liquids business to Vitol, flags big Q3 loss Struggling commodities trader Noble Group agreed to sell its Americas-focused oil liquids business to Vitol for about $580 million as part of a debt-cutting strategy, and warned of a big loss for its third quarter. <20> Spain urges Catalonia secessionists to obey Madrid The Spanish government has urged Catalans to accept Madrid''s decision to dismiss their secessionist leadership and to take control of the restive region, as the nation''s biggest political crisis in decades enters a decisive week. LOCAL MARKETS OUTLOOK (As reported by NewsRise) <20> The SGX Nifty Futures were trading at 10,181.50, trading up 0.14 percent from its previo
'5d370446084f8c9c99ddd520ff53727235026d6e'|'U.S. regulators approve fix for VW 3.0-liter diesel SUVs -- letter'|'WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. and California regulators have approved a fix for about 38,000 Volkswagen AG ( VOWG_p.DE ) 3.0-liter vehicles with potential excess emissions, a decision that could save the automaker more than $1 billion, according to a letter made public on Monday.FILE PHOTO - A Volkswagen logo is seen at Serramonte Volkswagen in Colma, California, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam/File Photo The approval means the German automaker will not need to buy back luxury 2013-2016 model-year diesel Porsche Cayenne, Volkswagen Touareg and 2013-2015 Audi Q7 sport utility vehicles. Under a settlement approved by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in May, VW would have been forced to offer to buy back the vehicles if it had not won government approval for a fix.In the May settlement, VW had agreed to spend at least $1.22 billion to fix or buy back nearly 80,000 vehicles with 3.0-liter engines. As part of that settlement, VW agreed to pay owners of vehicles who obtain fixes between $8,500 and $17,000.Volkswagen, the best-selling automaker worldwide in 2016, could have been forced to pay up to $4.04 billion if the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California Air Resources Board failed to approve fixes for all 3.0-liter vehicles.Some models will need hardware and software fixes, while newer models will get only a software upgrade.The company is still awaiting approval for fixes for 3.0-liter diesel passenger cars. The company previously agreed to buy back about 20,000 older 3.0-liter diesel vehicles.Volkswagen said it was pleased with approval and added it is working with regulators to develop fixes for other 3.0-liter vehicles <20>as quickly as possible.<2E>Last year, Breyer approved a separate settlement for Volkswagen worth up to $14.7 billion, requiring it to buy back 475,000 polluting vehicles with 2.0-liter engines.In total, VW has now agreed to spend up to $25 billion in the United States to address claims from owners, environmental regulators, U.S. states and dealers and to make buyback offers.In April, Volkswagen, which admitted to circumventing the emissions control system in U.S. diesel vehicles, was sentenced to three years<72> probation after pleading guilty to three felony counts.EPA posted the letter publicly after Reuters disclosed the approval earlier Monday.Last month, VW said it was taking another $3 billion charge to fix diesel engines in the United States, lifting the total bill for its emissions-test cheating scandal to around $30 billion.The company is still working to put the two-year-old <20>Dieselgate<74> scandal behind it, and seeking to transform itself into a maker of mass-market electric cars.Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Cynthia Osterman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions/u-s-regulators-approve-fix-for-vw-3-0-liter-diesel-suvs-letter-idUSKBN1CS231'|'2017-10-23T18:20:00.000+03:00'
'584a2d34533f62f5356a438617912ec9ad0323af'|'Take global action on big firms'' tax, German pro-business party urges'|'October 23, 2017 / 7:58 AM / Updated 14 minutes ago Take global action on big firms'' tax, German pro-business party urges Reuters Staff 4 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - International corporate giants like Apple ( AAPL.O ) should pay more tax, the leader of Germany<6E>s most pro-business party said, calling for deeper cooperation within the European Union and in the group of 20 leading economies to bring this about. FILE PHOTO: The Apple logo is seen on the facade of the new Apple Store in Paris, France, January 5, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo Best known as an advocate of tax cuts, the Free Democrats (FDP) are in talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel about forming a coalition government with her conservatives and the Greens. The ability of international companies to minimise their tax liabilities by booking profits in lower-tax jurisdictions has come under the spotlight in recent years as cash-strapped states struggle to finance expanding social and security liabilities. The concession by FDP chief Christian Lindner opens up possible common ground with the Greens, whose call for increased environmental and infrastructure spending is at odds with the FDP<44>s calls for strict fiscal discipline. <20>I can imagine tax increases,<2C> Lindner told the paper. <20>For companies like Apple. On a European level and in the G20 the structuring of their taxes must be right at the top of the agenda.<2E> While he restated his opposition to tax hikes for the highest earners, the proposal to go after companies<65> tax management practices creates more space for the unprecedentedly tricky three-way deal, forced on Merkel by her conservatives<65> losses in a national election this month. It could also free up funding for other priorities. Merkel<65>s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) estimated in an internal paper that various proposals put forward in the coalition talks would cost up to 100 billion euros, Die Welt newspaper reported on Monday. That is more than three times the amount that CDU experts project is available for new projects over the next four years, and four times the amount included in the 23-billion euro coalition contract signed with the Social Democrats in 2013. <20>A balanced budget and constitutional debt limits ... require a clear prioritisation of the proposals to be decided,<2C> the CDU paper said, according to the newspaper report. It said it would cost 41 billion euros to abolish the solidarity tax as proposed by the FDP, while a <20>mothers<72> pension<6F> suggested by the Bavarian CSU would cost around 28 billion euros. A <20>family budget<65> proposed by the Greens would cost 48 billion euros, and the CDU itself has already suggested tax cuts that would trim the budget by 15 billion euros. Lindner maintained the hard line on Greece that his party is known for, saying that any country that took a debt haircut would need to leave the euro zone, suggesting an FDP finance minister would be likely to continue the hard line of outgoing finance chief Wolfgang Schaeuble. <20>There cannot be any debt cuts within the euro zone,<2C> he said. <20>In this case, Greece would have to leave the euro zone.<2E> Formal coalition talks between the three camps began on Friday and are expected to continue at least until the end of the year. Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt, a member of the CSU, told Bild newspaper that immigration limits, social benefits and the future of Europe remained big areas of conflict. Reporting By Thomas Escritt and Andrea Shalal; Editing by Toby Chopra'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-politics-tax/take-global-action-on-big-firms-tax-german-pro-business-party-urges-idUKKBN1CS0RQ'|'2017-10-23T10:57:00.000+03:00'
'a2ee12e3ee5912d68d9793b825f9402ba2e40fc3'|'Brazil''s Petrobras loses tax income case, will appeal'|'October 23, 2017 / 11:18 AM / Updated 23 minutes ago Brazil''s Petrobras loses tax income case, will appeal Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil<69>s Petr<74>leo Brasileiro SA ( PETR4.SA ) said a federal court ruled against the oil firm in a 8.8 billion real (<28>2.1 billion) case over income tax payment in platform leasing contracts, the company said in a statement on Monday. Tanks of Brazil''s state-run Petrobras oil company are seen in Brasilia, Brazil, August 31, 2017. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino Petrobras, as the company is known, said it would appeal the ruling made by the third group of the Federal Regional Court of the 2nd Region (TRF2), based in Rio de Janeiro. Reporting by Silvio Cascione'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-petrobras-court/brazils-petrobras-loses-tax-income-case-will-appeal-idUKKBN1CS1E6'|'2017-10-23T14:17:00.000+03:00'
'51c0800017809a89d269c0b4625d5cdd0e8ee5d8'|'UPDATE 1-Interpublic cuts organic growth forecast, shares slide'|'Reuters TV United States October 24, 2017 / 11:17 AM / in 34 minutes Interpublic slashes organic growth forecast, shares fall Arjun Panchadar 4 Min Read (Reuters) - U.S. advertising company Interpublic Group ( IPG.N ) slashed its annual forecast for organic revenue growth and reported disappointing third-quarter earnings on Tuesday, as many of its biggest clients cut back on spending. Shares of Interpublic, one of the world<6C>s <20>Big Four<75> advertising groups, fell nearly 5 percent to $19.59 in morning trading. Interpublic, like its peers, is under pressure to adapt to an industry transformed by Google and Facebook ( FB.O ), which dominate online advertising - a channel that helps advertisers target consumers better. Consulting firms such as Accenture ( ACN.N ) and IBM ( IBM.N ) have also taken market share away from traditional ad groups in recent years by expanding their marketing divisions through aggressive acquisitions. <20>Organic revenue was negatively impacted by broader trends that are being felt throughout much of the industry,<2C> Interpublic Chief Executive Michael Roth said in a statement. Shares of Interpublic<69>s rival <20>Big Four<75> firms - Britain<69>s WPP ( WPP.L ), France<63>s Publicis ( PUBP.PA ) and New York-based Omnicom ( OMC.N ) - all fell 2 to 3 percent on Tuesday. While Publicis<69>s ( PUBP.PA ) third-quarter sales missed market forecasts last week, hurt by fierce competition in online ads, WPP in August cut its sales target, as consumer goods giants curbed spending. Omnicom, however, reported better-than-expected third-quarter revenue last week, benefiting from surprisingly strong demand in North America. New York-based Interpublic, which counts Microsoft and Coca-Cola among its clients, now expects full-year organic revenue growth of 1 to 2 percent, down from the previously expected 3 to 4 percent range. The company<6E>s third-quarter revenue and earnings fell short of analysts<74> estimates, led by a 1.3 percent decline in international revenue to $746.6 million. Interpublic said revenue from the United States, which makes up more than 60 percent of total revenue, fell 0.8 pct. The company saw a <20>significant<6E> cutback in spending from consumer goods companies, Roth said on a call with analysts. Analysts have raised concerns about ad agencies<65> exposure to the consumer goods industry, which is facing pressure from Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ) and other technology platforms. <20>Several of our largest clients continue to defer or cancel projects spending, which particularly weighed on the growth of our digital and marketing services disciplines,<2C> Roth added. Interpublic<69>s net income rose 13.7 percent to $146.2 million or 37 cents per share. Excluding one-time items, it earned 31 cents per share. Total revenue dipped 1 percent to $1.9 billion. Analysts had expected a profit of 33 cents per share and revenue of $1.96 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Reporting by Arjun Panchadar and Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-interpublic-grp-results/ad-firm-interpublics-revenue-slips-in-third-quarter-idUSKBN1CT1HB'|'2017-10-24T14:31:00.000+03:00'
'c96826790fdfabf7486125b097ece9192d5c5f2e'|'Whirlpool to stop selling private label brands at Sears'|'October 24, 2017 / 2:03 PM / Updated 2 hours ago Whirlpool to stop selling big-name brands at Sears Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Whirlpool Corp ( WHR.N ) said on Tuesday it would continue to supply several of its products to Sears Holdings Corp ( SHLD.O ) and discontinue only the supply of brands including Maytag fridges, KitchenAid products and Jenn-Air appliances. FILE PHOTO: The Whirlpool logo is seen at their plant in Apodaca, Monterrey, Mexico January 27, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril - RC161D0071F0 Whirlpool shares were trading down 10 percent, while Sears rose marginally. The U.S. appliance giant on Monday reported third-quarter profit and sales below analysts<74> estimates, hurt by higher raw material prices which are expected to rise through 2018. On a post-earnings call, Whirlpool said it had informed Sears in May that it would no longer supply its brand products to the appliance retailer as the companies were unable to agree on terms. <20>The Sears business is about 3 percent of our global revenue base,<2C> Whirlpool CEO Marc Bitzer said on the call, adding that the brand business is a very small portion. The comments followed a Wall Street Journal report on Monday that said Sears would no longer sell Whirlpool appliances following a pricing dispute. ( on.wsj.com/2z4jTjs ) (The story removes incorrect reference to private label products in headline and first paragraph) Reporting by Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-whirlpool-sears/whirlpool-to-stop-selling-private-label-brands-at-sears-idUSKBN1CT1Z9'|'2017-10-24T17:03:00.000+03:00'
'1fcf919f364f95b03cacd3d2c7c045e97d272510'|'Kobe Steel plant is under inspection by Japan ministry: Kyodo'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - One of the Kobe Steel Ltd plants at the heart of a product data cheating scandal is being inspected by Japan<61>s transport ministry, Kyodo News reported on Tuesday.FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the signboard of Kobe Steel at the group''s Tokyo headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo Ministry officials started the checks on Monday at Kobe Steel<65>s Daian plant in Mie prefecture west of Tokyo, Kyodo reported, citing a source close to the matter.The plant produces aluminum used in a passenger aircraft being developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, according to the Kyodo report. Mitsubishi Heavy has said there are no concerns over safety with aluminum parts supplied by Japan<61>s third-largest steelmaker, Kyodo reported.Kobe Steel sent shocks through global supply chains with its admission earlier this month that it had shipped products used in cars, trains, planes and other equipment with fabricated data on customer specifications.The company sank deeper into crisis on Friday when said it had lost some customers to competitors because of the widespread cheating and had violated statutory standards set by Japan<61>s industry ministry. [nL4N1MV3TO]Reporting by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Stephen Coates '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal/kobe-steel-plant-is-under-inspection-by-japan-ministry-kyodo-idUSKBN1CT00P'|'2017-10-24T03:12:00.000+03:00'
'245680842b00852ffcabd1e40da8b8153e7daa3e'|'Qatar says would support output cut extension if needed - minister'|' 13 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago Qatar says would support output cut extension if needed - minister   DOHA (Reuters) - Qatar energy minister Mohammed al-Sada said on Tuesday his country would support an extension of global oil output cuts if needed. FILE PHOTO - Qatar''s Minister of Energy Mohammed al-Sada gestures as he speaks to the media in Doha, Qatar February 8, 2017. REUTERS/Naseem Zeitoon A decision on whether to extend the cuts <20>will be reviewed critically and if the conference sees the benefit of an extension, Qatar will support it,<2C> Sada told Reuters at an event in Doha, referring to a Nov. 30 OPEC meeting. Sada said compliance with agreed production cuts totalling 1.8 million barrels per day stood at 120 percent. <20>That shows how committed OPEC and non-OPEC countries are towards implementing the agreement,<2C> he said, adding that the market was rebalancing. Reporting by Eric Knecht; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-oil-opec-qatar/qatar-says-would-support-output-cut-extension-if-needed-minister-idUKKBN1CT0VX'|'2017-10-24T11:12:00.000+03:00'
'9605a75ef998bae594cd6ac67d491cfc3aa037e8'|'Eli Lilly says profit falls, to mull sale of animal health business'|'Oct 24 (Reuters) - Eli Lilly and Co, one of the world<6C>s top insulin makers, on Tuesday reported a 28.5 percent drop in quarterly profit and said it was reviewing options, including a sale or an IPO, for its Elanco Animal Health business.The company said its net income fell to $555.6 million, or 53 cents per share, in the third quarter ended Sep. 30, from $778 million, or 73 cents per share, a year earlier.Revenue rose nearly 9 percent to $5.66 billion. (Reporting by Tamara Mathias in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D<>Souza) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/lilly-results/eli-lilly-says-profit-falls-to-mull-sale-of-animal-health-business-idINL4N1MZ40F'|'2017-10-24T08:34:00.000+03:00'
'41471aaa0af914990af1eeff7e3ec62bd2bfd66f'|'Brazil''s Petrobras loses tax income case, will appeal'|'October 23, 2017 / 11:15 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago Brazil''s Petrobras loses tax income case, will appeal Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BRASILIA, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Brazil<69>s Petr<74>leo Brasileiro SA said a federal court ruled against the oil firm in a 8.8 billion real ($2.76 billion) case over income tax payment in platform leasing contracts, the company said in a statement on Monday. Petrobras, as the company is known, said it would appeal the ruling made by the third group of the Federal Regional Court of the 2nd Region (TRF2), based in Rio de Janeiro. $1 = 3.1933 reais Reporting by Silvio Cascione'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/petrobras-court/brazils-petrobras-loses-tax-income-case-will-appeal-idUSE4N1IY028'|'2017-10-23T14:11:00.000+03:00'
'84dc27473a82283bb4e9c631d761a97efa741ce3'|'Saudi Aramco CEO says listing on track for 2018 - CNBC'|'October 23, 2017 / 9:49 AM / in 35 minutes Saudi Aramco CEO says listing on track for 2018 - CNBC   DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Aramco<63>s initial public offering will take place in 2018 as planned and the listing venue will be revealed in due course, the company<6E>s chief executive said in a CNBC interview broadcast on Monday. Visitors are seen at the Saudi Aramco stand at the Middle East Process Engineering Conference & Exhibition in Manama, Bahrain, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed <20>We have always said that we will be listing in 2018, and to be more specific, in the second half of 2018,<2C> CEO Amin Nasser said, later adding: <20>The IPO is on track. The listing venue will be discussed and shared in due course.<2E> Aramco is preparing to list about 5 percent of its shares in local and international stock markets next year and has yet to choose an overseas market. Nasser rejected a report that China was emerging as a frontrunner in a possible plan to delay the IPO and sell shares to sovereign wealth funds, CNBC said. Reporting by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Dale Hudson'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-saudi-aramco-ipo/saudi-aramco-ceo-says-listing-on-track-for-2018-cnbc-idUKKBN1CS137'|'2017-10-23T12:48:00.000+03:00'
'81d0f727670b118373632a4339079ce811bce4ee'|'Listeria risk prompts Meijer to recall produce in 6 U.S. states'|'NEW YORK, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Retailer Meijer Inc said it was recalling packaged vegetables in six U.S. states due to possible contamination from Listeria monocytogenes bacteria, which can cause fatal food poisoning in young children, pregnant women and elderly or frail people.The recall affects 35 products and includes vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower and asparagus as well as party trays sold in Meijer-branded plastic or foam packaging in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Wisconsin between Sept. 27 and Oct. 20, the company said on Saturday.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimated that 1,600 people develop a serious form of infection known as listeriosis each year, and 260 die from the disease, making it the third most-deadly form of food poisoning in the United States.<2E>The infection is most likely to sicken pregnant women and their newborns, adults aged 65 or older and people with weakened immune systems,<2C> the CDC said on its website. Symptoms include fever and diarrhea and can start the same day of exposure or as much as 70 days later.Meijer, based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, said there were no illnesses reported as of Saturday. A company spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for information on Sunday. (Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/meijer-recall/listeria-risk-prompts-meijer-to-recall-produce-in-6-u-s-states-idUSL2N1MX0ES'|'2017-10-22T21:09:00.000+03:00'
'493465a56d3baeb5a886e7787731c8e017d2d657'|'UPDATE 1-Nigeria''s new 650,000 bpd Dangote refinery seen online end 2019'|'October 24, 2017 / 12:07 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago UPDATE 2-Nigeria''s 650,000 bpd Dangote refinery seen onstream by end 2019 Reuters Staff 3 Min Read * Nigeria working to end reliance on refined product imports * OPEC member aims to lift oil output to 1.8 mln bpd by Jan (Adds comments on output, OPEC) By Wendell Roelf CAPE TOWN, Oct 24 (Reuters) - A refinery with capacity to process 650,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil being built in Nigeria is due to come onstream by the end of 2019, the oil minister said on Tuesday. <20>That should be enough to meet local needs,<2C> Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu told an oil and conference in Cape Town, referring to the Dangote refinery. State oil firm NNPC last year launched bidding to find partners to overhaul its ailing refineries, which hardly produce any petrol due to decades of mismanagement and widespread graft, leaving OPEC member Nigeria reliant on imported oil products. Kachikwu said Nigeria was close to finalising the process for private partners to revamp three existing refineries, adding a total of 450,000 bpd, part of the effort by Africa<63>s biggest economy to reduce its reliance on imports. Kachikwu said 26 firms had indicated their interest in the revamp projects that will require investment of $2 billion. <20>We are almost at a threshold of finalising the process of selection,<2C> he said, adding that it could announce its selection by January or February. The government has previously said it was in talks with Chevron, Total and ENI. Kachikwu told reporters that Nigeria aimed to lift oil output in January to 1.8 million bpd from about 1.6 million to 1.7 million bpd now, but would not breach a ceiling agreed with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. <20>If we get to 1.8 (million), then we need to say <20>hey, close off the taps, because we need to comply,<2C> he said. He also said oil prices were now encouraging but OPEC had not ruled out further cuts to shore up the market. <20>The market is balancing fast .... But do we need to see more cuts? We<57>ll see,<2C> he said. OPEC, Russia and other producers cut oil output by about 1.8 million bpd since January. The pact runs to March 2018, but they are considering extending it. (Additional reporting by Ed Stoddard; Editing by James Macharia and Edmund Blair)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/africa-oil-nigeria/update-1-nigerias-new-650000-bpd-dangote-refinery-seen-online-end-2019-idUSL8N1MZ478'|'2017-10-24T15:05:00.000+03:00'
'fa6c9017980f5af4ef79a2519c450b7c9ac703ab'|'MOVE-Citi names Regniez co-head of France investment banking'|'October 24, 2017 / 1:52 PM / in 14 minutes MOVE-Citi names Regniez co-head of France investment banking Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON, Oct 24 (IFR) - Citigroup has named Emmanuel Regniez as co-head of investment banking in France, alongside Nicolas Desombre. Regniez will continue to cover global asset managers in France, which he has focused on since joining the US bank two years ago. His additional responsibilities will include expanding coverage of several major corporate clients. Regniez and Desombre will both report to Luigi de Vecchi, chairman of continental Europe. (Reporting by Steve Slater)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/move-citi-names-regniez-co-head-of-franc/move-citi-names-regniez-co-head-of-france-investment-banking-idUSL8N1MZ5MG'|'2017-10-24T16:50:00.000+03:00'
'156c186767e72cd5b0a9c85b6c076a58432002d0'|'Boeing, Mitsubishi Heavy reach deal to cut costs of 787 wing production'|'(Reuters) - Boeing Co and Japan<61>s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (MHI) announced they have agreed on steps to reduce the cost of producing the wings of the 787 Dreamliner.FILE PHOTO: Workers at South Carolina Boeing work on a 787 Dreamliner for Air India at the plant''s final assembly building in North Charleston, South Carolina December 19, 2013. REUTERS/Randall Hill/File Photo MHI is the sole supplier of the 787 composite wings and manufactures them at its factory in Nagoya. The deal with MHI fits with Boeing<6E>s company-wide drive of reducing its cost structure.Under the new agreement announced in a joint statement on Monday, MHI will pursue increased efficiency in its production system and supply-chain through lean production methods, automation and other activities.The pair will also study advanced aerostructure technologies for future generation commercial aircraft.MHI said last year Boeing was seeking a new round of lower prices and changes in payment terms as the U.S. manufacturer stepped up efforts to conserve cash.Delays in the 787 development and delivery, due in part to difficulties of managing a global supply chain, prompted Boeing to produce more of the upcoming 777X widebody, including the wings, at home despite MHI<48>s attempts to keep the work in Japan.Japanese participation in the production of 777X parts will fall to 21 percent from 35 percent of the 787. MHI will however produce fuselage sections for the 777X program.Reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-mhi-dreamliner/boeing-mitsubishi-heavy-reach-deal-to-cut-costs-of-787-wing-production-idUSKBN1CS0HD'|'2017-10-23T08:55:00.000+03:00'
'b9afba132139b55e532fcbd78e4281c228ac69f0'|'Russia''s En+ sets IPO price range at $14-17 per GDR'|'MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia<69>s En+ Group, which manages tycoon Oleg Deripaska<6B>s aluminum and hydropower businesses, has set a price range for a planned stock market flotation that will test investor appetite for Russian assets three years after the Ukraine crisis.En+ expects to raise a total of $1.5 bln through the IPO and plans to use the bulk of the proceeds to cut debt, in particular, to the state bank VTB.The initial public offering (IPO), to be carried out in London and Moscow, will be the first major float of a Russian company in London since 2014, when Russia<69>s annexation of Ukraine<6E>s Crimea region provoked western sanctions.It could also provide a boost to London<6F>s IPO pipeline, which has slowed following Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union.En+ acknowledged the political issues it faces. <20>The sanctions package may have a material adverse effect on the Russian financial markets and investment climate and the Russian economy generally and could, in particular, materially adversely affect the group<75>s business, results of operations, financial position and prospects,<2C> it said in its IPO prospectus.The price range was set at between $14 and $17 per Global Depositary Receipt (GDR), with the company<6E>s stock market value expected in a range of $7 billion to $8.5 billion on a <20>pre-money<65> basis, ignoring cash raised in the IPO. En+ said it expects to set the final sale price on Nov. 3.The offering will represent 15.8 to 18.8 percent of En+<2B>s issued share capital excluding an over-allotment option.INTERIM DIVIDEND En+ owns assets in metals and energy, including a 48 percent stake in Hong Kong-listed aluminum producer Rusal, which is a big consumer of hydroelectricity produced by companies owned by En+.En+ said in early October it aimed to raise $1.5 billion from its IPO and the intention of Singapore<72>s AnAn Group, a strategic partner of China<6E>s CEFC, to purchase GDRs during the deal for $500 million.Since then, En+ also approved an interim dividend of $125 million to be paid in December and agreed a swap deal with Glencore, another shareholder of Rusal.Glencore will swap its 8.75 percent stake in Rusal for shares in En+ after the IPO. En+<2B>s stake in Rusal will rise to 56.88 percent as a result of the conversion.The IPO comes as prices for aluminum have risen 28 percent on the London Metal Exchange so far this year. On Monday, Rusal said its aluminum production rose 1.1 percent in the third quarter from the previous three months.Rusal shares are up around 60 percent since the start of 2017, and En+<2B>s 48 percent stake in the company has a market value of almost $5 billion, according to Reuters data.Shares in Rusal came under pressure earlier in October after two of its other shareholders - tycoons Mikhail Prokhorov and Viktor Vekselberg - sold a 3 percent stake in the company for $315 million.Glencore<72>s upcoming stake swap with En+ also put pressure on shares of Rusal, which said in a statement on Friday that the swap would not result in any changes to its public status.Additional reporting by Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber in Moscow and Dasha Afanasyeva in London; Writing by Polina Devitt and Katya Golubkova; Editing by Jason Neely and David Holmes '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-en-ipo/russias-en-sets-ipo-price-range-at-14-17-per-gdr-idINKBN1CS0QS'|'2017-10-23T05:48:00.000+03:00'
'e008c94d6c7ed553abd4d043a440f9b38e399396'|'Tensions ease over Pratt engine supplies to Airbus - sources'|'Reuters TV United States October 23, 2017 / 5:36 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago Tensions ease over Pratt engine supplies to Airbus: sources Tim Hepher 3 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus ( AIR.PA ) is more confident in the ability of Pratt & Whitney ( UTX.N ) to speed up delayed engine shipments, two people familiar with the matter said on Monday, in a sign that supply-chain gridlock affecting European aircraft deliveries may soon reach its peak. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Airbus Group is seen on the company''s headquarters building in Toulouse, Southwestern France, April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders said in July that Pratt & Whitney<65>s performance was <20>unsatisfactory<72> but a person familiar with the situation said on Monday the company had seen evidence the engine maker was overcoming its technical difficulties. <20>The level of confidence is improving,<2C> a person close to Airbus said. Airbus declined comment ahead of Oct. 31 earnings. Its shares closed up 0.8 percent. Pratt & Whitney declined comment. Pratt & Whitney<65>s Geared Turbofan engine is one of two types of powerplant offered on the A320neo and its fuel-saving performance is tied to the sale of more than 5,000 Airbus jets. A trio of technical problems has left over two dozen semi-completed jetliners parked without engines in Toulouse, driving Airbus profits down sharply at mid-year. Pratt & Whitney has fixed two of the problems - concerning fan blades and an oil seal - and may report progress on a third one related to the combustion chamber on Tuesday when its parent reports quarterly earnings, industry sources said. Airbus planemaking chief Fabrice Bregier said last week he expected engines with redesigned parts and a full service life to be delivered from end-year. He said Airbus<75>s 2017 target of 200 A320neo deliveries was reachable but tough. Any breakthrough would not come in time to help Airbus<75>s third-quarter earnings, however. Total Airbus deliveries fell 1.7 percent in the first nine months but those of single-aisle aircraft like the A320neo, which generate most Airbus profit and cash, fell 7.9 percent. <20>We expect a weak third-quarter update with slow progress on the A320neo the key driver,<2C> Berenberg analysts said. Pratt & Whitney has repeatedly reaffirmed its target to build 350-400 engines this year. But within that total, more engines than expected have been diverted from airplane production to a pool of spares for airlines needing to swap engines for premature checks. The problem has been especially severe in India. Airlines can also choose engines from CFM International, co-owned by General Electric ( GE.N ) and France<63>s Safran ( SAF.PA ). Airbus can alter the mix of aircraft powered by each type of engine on its production line, but needs four months<68> notice to decide which engines go on which airframe, meaning it has been left with aircraft for Pratt & Whitney customers but no engines. Reporting by Tim Hepher, editing by David Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-airbus-engines/tensions-ease-over-pratt-engine-supplies-to-airbus-sources-idUKKBN1CS2DX'|'2017-10-23T20:29:00.000+03:00'
'c25a2ccb9e09e474aaebb8377bb0689f119c779e'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX rises with financial stocks; Eldorado slumps'|'October 23, 2017 / 3:00 PM / in 7 minutes CANADA STOCKS-TSX rises with financial stocks; Eldorado slumps Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Adds details about financial, mining sectors; updates prices) TORONTO, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index edged higher on Monday, with a gain in the financial sectors offset by a selloff in shares of Eldorado Gold Corp. Eldorado fell 15.6 percent to C$2.31 after lowering production guidance for a gold mine in Turkey. The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index was up 30.97 points, or 0.2 percent, at 15,888.19. Eight of its 10 main sectors were higher. The financial sector added 0.2 percent. Royal Bank of Canada rose 0.3 percent to C$101.54, and Bank of Nova Scotia gained 0.4 percent to C$81.29. Weakness in bullion prices weighed on the gold-mining sector. Goldcorp Inc gave back 0.5 percent to C$16.46. Yamana Gold Inc slipped 1.5 percent to C$3.36. Hudson<6F>s Bay Co shares dropped 3.4 percent to C$11.55 after the company said late on Friday that Chief Executive Gerald Storch would leave the company. Activist investor Jonathan Litt said on Monday he is considering seeking the removal of several directors at a special shareholder meeting. (Reporting by Alastair Sharp and John Tilak; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Meredith Mazzilli)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks-open/canada-stocks-tsx-rises-with-financial-stocks-eldorado-slumps-idUSL2N1MY0PZ'|'2017-10-23T17:57:00.000+03:00'
'ba1d3d6ae8a6d4cdf83a1d2749e2a4dea49ba0f2'|'Aker BP in $2 billion deal to buy Norway unit of Hess'|'October 24, 2017 / 5:59 AM / in an hour Aker BP buys Hess'' Norway unit for $2 billion Reuters Staff 4 Min Read OSLO (Reuters) - Aker BP ( AKERBP.OL ) will add the Norwegian operations of U.S. oil company Hess ( HES.N ) to its expanding exploration and production portfolio under a $2 billion deal announced on Tuesday. Under billionaire investor Kjell Inge Roekke, who controls a 40 percent stake, the Norwegian company has made eight acquisitions since 2014 including a merger with BP<42>s Norway operations in mid-2016. The Hess operations will bolster Aker<65>s production by about 17 percent, or 24,000 barrels of oil equivalents per day (boepd), the company said, adding it also saw significant potential for expansion. <20>Aker BP has a clear ambition to be the leading independent offshore exploration and production (E&P) company. This transaction is an important step in that direction,<2C> Chief Executive Karl Johnny Hersvik said in a statement. Norway<61>s biggest oil company is state-controlled Statoil ( STL.OL ). To help fund the deal Aker said it would raise $500 million in new equity in a share issue fully underwritten by its top shareholders, investment firm Aker ASA ( AKER.OL ) which holds a 40 percent stake, and BP ( BP.L ), which owns 30 percent. The price per share will be determined via a book building auction, with the minimum set at 155 Norwegian crowns, slightly above Monday<61>s close of 154.8 crowns in Oslo. Following the deal, Aker BP plans to raise its dividend payout to $350 million per year from $250 million, with the first increase planned for its fourth-quarter dividend. Aker shares were up 6.85 percent at 165.4 Norwegian crowns. The transaction raises Aker BP<42>s stakes to 100 percent in Norway<61>s Valhall and Hod fields, where it sees significant value creation potential through increased oil recovery and developing adjacent resources, it said. The company plans to submit a development plan for the Valhall Flank West expansion project by the end of this year. <20>Aker BP will subsequently seek to sell or swap a minority interest in the fields to partners who want to work together with Aker BP to proactively target the upside potential in the area,<2C> it said. <20>Aker BP will also assume Hess Norge<67>s tax positions, which include a tax loss carry forward with a net nominal after-tax value of $1.5 billion, as booked in Hess Norge<67>s 2016 annual accounts,<2C> the company said. Hess is the latest global oil company to abandon or scale back its presence in Norway, following partial divestment by BP ( BP.L ) and Exxon Mobil ( XOM.N ) in 2016 and 2017, respectively. Exxon Mobil and BP decided to no longer be field operators in Norway, though Exxon retains direct stakes in several fields and BP remains involved via its stake in Aker BP. Hess separately announced a cost cutting program and said it also plans to sell its 61.5 percent stake in Denmark<72>s South Arne field. <20>With the continued success of our asset sale program, we are focusing on higher return assets and reducing our breakeven oil price,<2C> Chief Executive John Hess said in a statement. Reporting by Terje Solsvik, additional reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis; editing by Subhranshu Sahu and Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-hess-m-a-aker-bp/aker-bp-in-2-billion-deal-to-buy-norway-unit-of-hess-idINKBN1CT0J3'|'2017-10-24T03:59:00.000+03:00'
'5e363aa018ca15b7ce590ff631bf3b1e59dd81d3'|'Investor urges Power Corp to sell C$10 billion in assets'|'TORONTO (Reuters) - Power Corp of Canada ( POW.TO ) should offload a number of non-core assets that could fetch about C$10 billion ($7.9 billion), a shareholder told Reuters late on Monday, in a move he said would unlock shareholder value at the diversified holding company.FILE PHOTO: Power Corp. of Canada''s executives leave their office to attend the company''s annual shareholders'' meeting in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on May 10, 2007. Power Corp''s stock hit an all-time high in 2007. Power Corp shares are off about 16 percent in the last ten years. REUTERS/Shaun Best/File Photo Graeme Roustan, who owns less than 1 percent of Power Corp, said in a letter to the company chairman that the group should sell assets including its interests in Pargesa Holding SA ( PARG.S ), renewable energy unit Power Energy and asset manager China AMC, among others.The letter, which was reviewed by Reuters, did not mention the value of the assets to be offloaded.Roustan said in his letter that Power Corp is invested in too many unrelated sectors, with some portfolio holdings increasing risk rather than diversifying it.Montreal-based Power Corp, whose businesses span the insurance, asset management, renewable energy and media industries, told Reuters it planned to stick to its current diversification plan.<2E>(The non-financial services) investments represent an important element of our long-term diversification strategy,<2C> Power Corp spokesman St<53>phane Lemay said, adding that the value of these investments has risen 78 percent to C$3.2 billion in five years to the end of 2016.Lemay said the company received Roustan<61>s letter and has responded to him.Canadian companies are regularly being pushed for change by investors in a country that is seen as conducive for shareholder activism. Investors can call for a special meeting by acquiring a 5 percent stake.Roustan, the former chairman of Performance Sports Group Ltd, has in the past called for changes at Canadian drugmaker Aeterna Zentaris Inc ( AEZS.TO ). Power Corp, controlled by the Desmarais family, should form a special committee and hire an investment bank for the asset sales, said Roustan, who has also asked for a board seat.Power Corp, which has a C$13.6 billion market value, should use the asset sales proceeds to acquire companies in its core financial services sector, buy back shares or pay out a special dividend, Roustan said.Alongside its financial, energy and media investments, Power Corp also owns stakes in Great-West Lifeco ( GWO.TO ) and asset manager Mackenzie Investments via its unit Power Financial Corp ( PWF.TO ).The stock, which was little changed on Tuesday, has gained 9.5 percent since the start of the year, while the benchmark TSX has added 3.7 percent in the same period.Activists are increasingly seeking change even with small stakes. Last week, activist investor RBR Capital Advisors wanted Credit Suisse ( CSGN.S ) to float its asset management business and investment bank. RBR owned about 0.2 percent of Credit Suisse shares. ($1 = 1.2637 Canadian dollars)Reporting by John Tilak; Editing by Susan Thomas and Bill Rigby '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-powercorp-shareholders/investor-urges-power-corp-to-sell-c10-billion-in-assets-idINKBN1CT1UR'|'2017-10-24T15:15:00.000+03:00'
'c137b9b8eca8bf26e1cf4a50d5839aa36a9cfa04'|'Deals of the day- Mergers and acquisitions'|'(Adds Unilever, Intercontinental Exchange, Eli Lilly, Total,Engie, Shanghai Electric Group, Cargill, Delphi)Oct 24 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 2000 GMT on Tuesday:** At least three bidders are expected to be shortlisted for the second round of an auction for Unilever<65>s, margarine and spreads business while two other private equity groups are no longer in the fray, sources told Reuters.** The Intercontinental Exchange has paid 275 million euros ($323.5 million) for a <20>strategic<69> stake in Euroclear, Europe<70>s biggest settlement house for securities, stealing a march on rival London Stock Exchange.** Eli Lilly and Co said it is considering the sale of its Elanco animal health business and expressed optimism that its rejected rheumatoid arthritis drug would pass muster with U.S. regulators when it resubmits its application.** French oil and gas major Total confirmed that it was among companies in discussions with French energy group Engie over Engie<69>s global liquefied natural gas (LNG) assets.** Brazil<69>s electricity regulator Aneel approved transferring to Shanghai Electric Group Co Ltd a power transmission project that will require investments of 3.3 billion reais ($1.01 billion).** Global commodities trader Cargill Inc said it was buying a natural animal feed maker, another in a string of deals to capitalize on rising demand for higher-margin natural foods and antibiotic-free meat and dairy products.** Delphi Automotive Plc will buy self-driving car software startup nuTonomy for $450 million, the company said helping to put automated vehicles using its technology into commercial use in 2019, a year earlier than planned.** Swiss drugmaker Novartis is moving closer to spinning off the ailing Alcon eyecare business it bought from Nestle for $50 billion in 2010, but said a final decision would depend on the unit<69>s continued sales growth.** Toshiba Corp said it is considering various measures in case the $18 billion sale of its chip unit does not close by the end of the financial year and leaves the embattled conglomerate short of funds needed to ensure it stays listed.** France<63>s eyewear group Essilor said it was hoping to make further progress on its tie-up with Italian peer Luxottica, a $54 billion transaction currently being investigated by the European Commission over competition concerns.** Aker BP has agreed to buy the Norwegian unit of U.S. oil firm Hess in a $2 billion deal, the companies said.** State-controlled Polish banks Pekao and Alior are considering merging, to bolster their positions as lenders struggle with regulatory pressure and ultra-low interest rates.** Struggling commodities trader Noble Group agreed to sell its Americas-focused oil trading business to Vitol for about $580 million as part of a debt-cutting strategy, and warned of a big loss for its third quarter.** Agricultural chemicals maker Nufarm Ltd said it would buy a range of European crop protection product lines for $490 million to strengthen its position in Europe where it generates its highest crop protection margins. (Compiled by Taenaz Shakir and Akankshita Mukhopadhyay in Bengaluru) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/deals-day/deals-of-the-day-mergers-and-acquisitions-idINL4N1MZ3DZ'|'2017-10-24T08:04:00.000+03:00'
'd20b8520216efe16af2238a564155684fc008bf2'|'PRESS DIGEST- Financial Times - Oct 24'|'October 24, 2017 / 12:17 AM / Updated 2 hours ago PRESS DIGEST- Financial Times - Oct 24 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 24 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Financial Times. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Headlines UK watchdog publishes review of alleged abuses by RBS unit on.ft.com/2yIs565 May awaits EU decision on post-Brexit links with UK on.ft.com/2yJNxYs Bank of England blog indicates mounting concern over inflation on.ft.com/2yJatGU Yorkshire Water to close Cayman Island subsidiaries on.ft.com/2yL4JyE Overview UK<55>s Financial Conduct Authority is considering further action against Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc as it published a review into the bank<6E>s alleged mistreatment of business customers after weeks of political pressure for disclosure. Prime Minister Theresa May said in the House of Commons on Monday that she is waiting for the European Union<6F>s decision on the future of the relationship it wants with the UK, following reports that May is trying to postpone a cabinet showdown over the shape of any post-Brexit trade deal until next year. Inflation in the UK is likely to stay above target with a squeeze on living standards for years to come following sterling<6E>s sharp depreciation since the Brexit vote, according to research by blog by Bank of England staff published ahead of next week<65>s monetary policy meeting. Yorkshire Water, one of Britain<69>s biggest water companies, is reviewing the Jersey registration of its holding company, and will close three subsidiary companies in the Cayman Islands, after conceding that the industry faces a crisis of public trust. (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Sandra Maler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-press-ft/press-digest-financial-times-oct-24-idUSL4N1MZ01Q'|'2017-10-24T03:16:00.000+03:00'
'd1b5710d83e21c9db742e58ef74f0aefc30a8e77'|'Taper time - Five questions for the ECB'|'October 24, 2017 / 9:51 AM / Updated an hour ago Taper time - Five questions for the ECB Dhara Ranasinghe , Ritvik Carvalho 6 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The European Central Bank is likely to decide the fate of its 2.3 trillion euro (<28>2.05 trillion) stimulus scheme on Thursday in one of the ECB<43>s most keenly anticipated policy meetings for months. FILE PHOTO - European Central Bank (ECB) headquarters building is seen in Frankfurt, Germany July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo Solid economic growth means the days of extraordinary stimulus are numbered, although anaemic inflation supports the case for dragging out asset purchases for as long as possible. The balancing act facing the ECB has become a focal point for markets trying to assess just what shape a scaling-back or <20>tapering<6E> of stimulus is likely to take. Here are the main questions investors want answered: 1. How much will the ECB trim its asset purchases by? Many analysts expect the ECB to announce a cut in monthly purchases to 30 billion euros from 60 billion euros from January for nine months, following recent source-based stories suggesting ratesetters favour a <20>lower for longer<65> scenario. A bigger point of contention is whether to keep the scheme open-ended by putting a nine- or six-month time frame for the reduced purchases or give a final end-date for the scheme, which is currently set to expire in December. Analysts do not rule out a 12-month extension at an even lower pace of 20-25 billion euros a month. 2. Will the ECB change its forward guidance? The language in the ECB<43>s statement about policy rates remaining low until <20>well past<73> the end of quantitative easing is expected to stay in place. The longer the ECB keeps monetary stimulus in place, the further back investors are likely to push expectations for a rate rise. Money markets no longer anticipate a rate rise in 2018 and many economists do not expect a hike until 2019. The ECB could also reaffirm that it will reinvest the proceeds of maturing bonds, sending a clear signal that it will remain active in bond markets for some time. 3. Is the ECB still worried about the euro? The single currency has declined almost 3 percent from a more than a 2-1/2-year peak above $1.20 since the last ECB meeting in early September, but concerns about currency strength remain on policymakers<72> minds. Market data indicates that investors still expect more gains in the currency, with weekly CFTC positioning numbers showing long euro positions near their highest on record while long-term investors such as central banks and sovereign wealth funds are still underweight the single currency. The phrase <20>exchange rate<74> appeared 25 times during ECB chief Mario Draghi<68>s last press conference, the most of any conference held by Draghi or former ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet, according to Nomura analysis. 4. What about bond market scarcity? A scarcity of eligible government debt for ECB stimulus strengthens the case for tapering. The ECB is likely to be questioned about its technical constraints although analysts say more details on this are more likely to come in December. One view is that the ECB could avoid hitting self-imposed limits by scaling back purchases of corporate bonds more slowly than those of government debt. To make up for shortages of government bonds in much of the bloc including Germany, the ECB has been skewing asset purchases towards Italy and France. That helps explain why Italian bonds, in particular, have benefited from recent talk that ECB tapering is likely to be a drawn-out process. 5. Is the banking sector strong enough for tapering? While macro-economic indicators may be reassuring policymakers that they can tighten financial conditions, there is still a large cloud hanging over the bloc<6F>s banking sector. For that reason, investors will be listening closely to what Draghi has to say about tackling the stockpile of bad loans in places like Italy. The ECB faces the dilemma of making sure banks set asid
'075abae0183a0359a307c7cc5bd7805cfa02bb68'|'Fortum to file $9.5 billion Uniper bid with German regulators'|'HELSINKI/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Finnish power utility Fortum ( FORTUM.HE ) will officially submit its 8.05 billion euro ($9.46 billion) bid for German peer Uniper ( UN01.DE ) to German regulators on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the company said.FILE PHOTO: A general view of the Fortum headquarters in Espoo, Finland August 18, 2017. REUTERS/Lefteris Karagiannopoulos/File Photo She said Fortum would not release details about the offer, to be filed with Germany<6E>s financial watchdog BaFin, until it has been reviewed and approved by mid-November.Fortum last month clinched a deal to buy E.ON<4F>s ( EONGn.DE ) remaining 46.65 percent stake in Uniper in early 2018, triggering a bid for all shares due to German rules. Uniper is considering Fortum<75>s approach as hostile.<2E>We expect BaFin to thoroughly review the filing,<2C> a said spokesman for Uniper, which fears the group might be broken up if a deal should succeed.<2E>We also trust that the guarantees and agreements between Fortum and E.ON, which have been frequently mentioned but not made public so far, will be taken into account. Until now, we only know of the plans as statements of intent from the media.<2E>Fortum has said in the case of a successful takeover it would not cause Uniper to implement forced redundancies or change the location of its headquarters in Duesseldorf.Shares in Uniper, which was spun off from E.ON last year, are currently trading at around 24 euros, above Fortum<75>s 22 euro per share offer.Reporting by Tuomas Forsell, Christoph Steitz and Tom Kaeckenhoff; Editing by Jussi Rosendahl and David Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uniper-m-a-fortum-oyj/fortum-to-file-official-bid-for-uniper-with-german-regulators-idUSKBN1CT0WO'|'2017-10-24T16:16:00.000+03:00'
'25d22bc2da6bfb3c38b5f0a5546f7a82c0bcb4df'|'Global Markets: Bond yields grind higher, Caterpillar smashes forecasts'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - European shares ended mixed at their close on Tuesday in anticipation of this week<65>s European Central Bank meeting, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average remained near record highs, buoyed by a surge in industrial sector shares.Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Although the German, French, Italian and Spanish indexes all rose, the pan-European STOXX 600 closed down 0.4 percent.<2E>The market is anticipating that the ECB highlights some kind of inclination towards lower for longer, and that<61>s supportive for equities,<2C> said Pierre Bose, head of European equity strategy at Credit Suisse. <20>If they were a bit more hawkish that could take a bit of the steam out of the rally we<77>ve seen.<2E>The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 lost 0.30 percent and MSCI''s gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD PUS gained 0.04 percent.Apple supplier and chipmaker AMS ( AMS.S ) jumped 21.8 percent after reporting third-quarter sales just under expectations. Analysts said strong fourth-quarter guidance from the iPhone supplier offset the miss.Strong profits from Spain''s Caixabank ( CABK.MC ) also lifted the IBEX .IBEX 0.4 percent after its Catalonia-related underperformance.Earnings were top-of-mind in U.S. trading, raising the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI 192.26 points, or 0.83 percent, to 23,466.22.The world<6C>s largest construction and mining equipment maker, Caterpillar Inc ( CAT.N ), beat third-quarter profit and sales estimates and raised its full-year forecasts. The Peoria, Illinois company expects revenue in its construction business to surge about 20 percent and its mining business to jump 30 percent. The company<6E>s stock was up 4.6 percent.3M ( MMM.N ), another Dow component, which makes a range of products from autoparts to office supplies, reported upbeat results, helping its stock gain 7.2 percent.Earnings have gotten off to a strong start, with 73 percent of 120 S&P companies beating profit expectations as of Tuesday.The S&P 500 .SPX gained 5.29 points, or 0.21 percent, to 2,570.27 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 21.12 points, or 0.32 percent, to 6,607.95.U.S. 10-year Treasury yields remained close to a more than five-month peak. Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR last fell 9/32 in price to yield 2.4063 percent, from 2.375 percent late on Monday.The 30-year U.S. Treasury bond US30YT=RR last fell 21/32 in price to yield 2.9234 percent, from 2.89 percent late on Monday.Japan''s Nikkei .N225 had extended its 16-day winning streak to a 21-year peak overnight following the weekend election win for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.The New Zealand dollar NZD= hit a five-month low after the incoming Labour-led coalition government said it plans to review and reform the Central Bank Act to include employment, alongside inflation, as a dual target.The dollar index .DXY rose 0.05 percent as the wait continued for President Donald Trump to name the next head of the U.S. central bank after he said on Monday a decision was <20>very, very close.<2E> Hopes for the passage of a tax cut plan also buoyed the greenback.Spot gold XAU= dropped 0.4 percent to $1,276.63 an ounce, remaining near a two-week low.U.S. crude CLcv1 rose 1.1 percent to $52.47 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $58.30, up 1.62 percent.Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; Additional reporting by Julien Ponthus, Helen Reidin and Marc Jones in London, Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss in New York; Editing by Daniel Bases and James Dalgleish '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-markets/global-markets-bond-yields-grind-higher-caterpillar-smashes-forecasts-idINKBN1CT1PX'|'2017-10-24T10:29:00.000+03:00'
'f2b94c49442ca6427beed58ee42568fc0d7fd1b8'|'Toshiba says considering measures in case chip unit sale uncompleted by March'|'October 24, 2017 / 3:14 AM / Updated 9 hours ago Toshiba weighing options in case chip unit sale not completed by March Makiko Yamazaki 4 Min Read CHIBA CITY, Japan (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp ( 6502.T ) said it is considering various measures in case the $18 billion sale of its chip unit does not close by the end of the financial year and leaves the embattled conglomerate short of funds needed to ensure it stays listed. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Toshiba is seen as a shareholder arrives at Toshiba''s extraordinary shareholders meeting in Chiba, Japan March 30, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo The deal needs to close by end-March or Toshiba will likely report negative net worth - where liabilities exceed assets - for a second year running. That could trigger an automatic delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. <20>Nothing has been decided, but it<69>s true that we are considering potential measures,<2C> CEO Satoshi Tsunakawa said at an extraordinary general meeting where shareholders approved the sale to a consortium led by Bain Capital LP. Proceeds from the sale are crucial to cover billions of dollars in liabilities arising from the conglomerate<74>s now bankrupt U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse. But a deal was only agreed last month after a long and contentious auction, and chances are high that it will not receive regulatory approvals by end-March as such reviews usually take at least six months. Tsunakawa did not elaborate on what measures Toshiba may take but his comments follow the Tokyo Stock Exchange<67>s decision this month to remove the firm from a special watchlist which had prevented it from issuing new shares on the market. Analysts believe, however, that ordinary investors are unlikely to get behind a firm that lurched from a 2015 accounting scandal to a full-blown financial meltdown last year. <20>It may issue preferred shares worth several hundreds of billions of yen to investors such as Bain Capital or it might ask its banks for debt-to-equity swaps,<2C> said Kentaro Harada, a credit analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities. The sale of the unit - the world<6C>s No. 2 producer of NAND semiconductors - is also facing legal challenges from Toshiba<62>s chip joint venture partner Western Digital ( WDC.O ), which opposes any deal without its consent and has sought an injunction with the International Court of Arbitration. Toshiba said in a statement on Tuesday that it <20>remains fully determined to resolving the issue through the arbitration process.<2E> Harada said that if Western Digital did gain an injunction order, that could harm banks<6B> willingness to provide Toshiba with any further financial support. In addition to the chip unit sale, shareholders also approved Toshiba<62>s earnings report for the past business year and the appointment of 10 executives to the board, including Tsunakawa and seven other incumbent board members. The earnings report has been controversial. Filed in August after months of delays, it received an unusual <20>qualified opinion,<2C> or limited endorsement, from Toshiba<62>s auditor, which said it thought Toshiba was late in booking losses at its Westinghouse unit. Proxy advisory firms Glass Lewis and ISS had recommended this month that Toshiba<62>s shareholders should not give their approval given the auditor<6F>s mixed review. Japan<61>s securities watchdog is also investigating accounting in its earnings report to see if it properly handled losses incurred by its U.S. nuclear unit, a source with knowledge of the matter has said. Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting/toshiba-says-considering-measures-in-case-chip-unit-sale-uncompleted-by-march-idINKBN1CT08S'|'2017-10-24T01:14:00.000+03:00'
'482c6799e8431c1109c21bc234cc6e13bad2a2b0'|'UPDATE 1-Biogen profit beats Wall Street view on Spinraza sales'|'Reuters TV United States October 24, 2017 / 11:22 AM / in 31 minutes Biogen dives as Spinraza U.S. sales miss estimates Akankshita Mukhopadhyay , Manas Mishra 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Biogen Inc<6E>s ( BIIB.O ) shares dived 8 percent on Tuesday after U.S. sales of Spinraza, a potential blockbuster drug it is banking on to offset slowing sales of multiple sclerosis drugs, fell short of Wall Street estimates in the latest quarter. Spinraza, a spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) drug, generated $197.6 million in U.S. sales in the third quarter, lagging analysts<74> average estimate of $242 million, according to broker SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. The shortfall was due to the dosing regimen of the drug, which was approved in December, as fewer patients took the more frequent <20>loading<6E>, or initial, dose, Biogen Chief Executive Michel Vounatsos said on an earnings call. The treatment starts with four loading doses, followed by maintenance doses once every four months. The first three loading doses are taken at 14 day intervals and the last 30 days after the third, meaning all four can be taken in one quarter. Many patients who took the loading doses in the second quarter did not get a loading dose in the latest quarter and instead took a maintenance dose, Vounatsos said. He estimated that the impact of the dosing schedule likely means that Spinraza<7A>s revenue growth in the current quarter would be driven mostly by non-U.S. markets. Spinraza costs $750,000 for the first year and $375,000 a year after that to treat SMA, a rare disorder that is the leading genetic cause of death in infants. Biogen is banking on Spinraza to offset slowing growth of its bestselling multiple sclerosis (MS) drug, Tecfidera, which is facing stiff competition from Roche AG<41>s ( ROG.S ) Ocrevus and Sanofi SA<53>s ( SASY.PA ) Aubagio. Vounatsos estimated Ocrevus would have a <20>modest net negative impact<63> on Biogen<65>s MS portfolio, which also includes Tysabri, for the rest of 2017. Separately, Biogen said it would pay Neuimmune Holding AG $150 million to reduce the royalty payment on potential sales of its experimental Alzheimer<65>s disease treatment, aducanumab. The move would improve Biogen<65>s economics in its Alzheimer<65>s pipeline, analysts said. Tecfidera<72>s sales dipped 3.5 percent to $1.07 billion in the quarter, and also missed analysts<74> estimates of $1.09 billion. Biogen<65>s profit rose 18.7 percent to $1.23 billion in the quarter ended Sept. 30. Excluding one-time items, it earned $6.31 per share. Total revenue climbed 4.1 percent to $3.08 billion. Analysts on average had estimated a profit of $5.73 per share and revenue of $3.04 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Biogen<65>s shares fell as much as 8.1 percent, before easing to trade 3.3 percent lower at $317.84. Reporting by Akankshita Mukhopadhyay and Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto, Sai Sachin Ravikumar and Savio D''Souza'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-biogen-results/biogen-posts-18-7-percent-jump-in-quarterly-profit-idUSKBN1CT1HM'|'2017-10-24T14:25:00.000+03:00'
'eb2c4c93f9e6a715f2f7b3fd6ddf28dee83e4e6c'|'Exclusive: Hedge fund Baupost snaps up claims against Toshiba - sources'|'October 24, 2017 / 12:12 AM / in 7 hours Exclusive: Hedge fund Baupost snaps up claims against Toshiba - sources Jessica DiNapoli , Tom Hals 4 Min Read (Reuters) - Hedge fund The Baupost Group LLC has acquired the biggest chunk of a $2.2 billion claim that two South Carolina utilities had against Toshiba Corp following the bankruptcy of its nuclear power subsidiary, people familiar with the matter said on Monday. FILE PHOTO: A logo of Toshiba Corp is seen on a printed circuit board in this photo illustration taken in Tokyo July 31, 2012. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao/File Photo The investment is a bet by Baupost<73>s chief executive, Seth Klarman, that Toshiba, which has been rocked by accounting scandals as well as the financial demise of its bankrupt U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse Electric Corp, will stand by its pledge to pay out these claims. Baupost bought the claims after utilities SCANA Corp and Santee Cooper decided they did not want to wait for Toshiba to make the payments, which were owed to them as penalty for Westinghouse<73>s failure to complete a contract to design and build a nuclear power plant in South Carolina. By selling the claims, the utilities got cash upfront instead of having to wait for installments over the next five years and face the risk that Toshiba might not pay. Like other hedge funds that invested in the claims, Baupost paid about 92 cents on the dollar, the sources said. Boston-based Baupost has shown appetite for assets in financial distress before. It also owns about $1 billion in bonds backed by sales tax revenue from Puerto Rico, the U.S. territory struggling to service its more than $70 billion in debt. The exact amount that Baupost invested in the claims owed by Toshiba could not be learned. Other investors in the claims included private equity firm Blackstone Group LP<4C>s credit arm GSO Capital Partners LP, according to the sources. The sources asked not to be identified because the trades were carried out on a confidential basis. Baupost, Toshiba, Blackstone, Westinghouse and SCANA declined to comment. Toshiba is also on the hook to cover some of the cost overruns at another unfinished nuclear project known as Vogtle in Georgia. Georgia Power, an affiliate of Southern Co, plans to conduct a similar auction of its rights to collect $3.7 billion from Toshiba for the problems at the project over the next several years for an immediate cash payment as soon as this month, the people said. When the Georgia and South Carolina projects were approved a decade ago, they were seen as the dawn of a new era in nuclear power plant construction, but Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy in March in part because of the escalating costs at the plants. A Georgia Power spokesman said the utility is continuing to <20>explore options of monetization of the parent guarantee<65> with regards to the Vogtle project. Much of Westinghouse<73>s business is currently up for sale and expected to fetch as much as $4 billion, Reuters reported last month. Blackstone has partnered with private equity firm Apollo Global Management LLC in a bid for that business, Reuters has reported. Funds from the sale of the Westinghouse business will help Toshiba offset some of the payments it owes to the utilities due to Westinghouse<73>s not completing its projects. (This story has been refiled to replace <20>stand up to<74> with <20>stand by<62> in second paragraph) Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York and Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Leslie Adler'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-baupost/exclusive-hedge-fund-baupost-snaps-up-claims-against-toshiba-sources-idUSKBN1CT00A'|'2017-10-24T03:18:00.000+03:00'
'c14e5dc0e6b8a59664f51cd8321ce3481c488126'|'Doing the heavy lifting: investors eye tech-tonic shifts for Europe<70>s industrials'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Investment funds seeking to invest at the intersection of Europe and technology are finding rich pickings in places that some may find surprising: sprawling industrials like trains-to-turbines Siemens and engineering group ABB.FILE PHOTO: Siemens AG headquarters in Munich, Germany June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo Building on their traditional expertise in factory automation, the conglomerates<65> digital divisions are adding cutting-edge software and systems that help customers design, build and test their products faster and more cheaply.In so doing they bring new value to companies historically linked mainly to customers in the power, energy and mining sectors that have had to slash spending in the past few years due to a precipitous drop in commodity prices.Not only is the divisions<6E> growth outstripping that of legacy fossil-fuel businesses, but a trend toward breaking out their earnings separately in company reports allows investors to see value that was previously buried.<2E>Your industrial company today is not your dirty factory bending metals and producing simple and large objects,<2C> said Andreas Fruschki, director of equity research, Europe at AllianzGI.<2E>It<49>s a more high-tech, nimble assembly site.<2E>Their efforts are attracting the attention of investors looking for less obvious technology plays as the tide turns against U.S. stocks like Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google, due to their uncomfortably lofty valuations.Meanwhile in Asia the soaring market capitalization of a handful of companies such as China<6E>s Alibaba and Tencent means investors in exchange traded funds (ETFs) who want exposure to a range of companies are finding themselves increasingly exposed to a single sector.The growth opportunities in European industrials are still limited by legacy businesses, however, said Neil Campling, head of global TMT research at Northern Trust Capital Markets.The oil & gas and mining sectors have cut capital expenditure to $706 billion in 2016 from $1.29 trillion in 2013, according to figures from S&P Global, which added that a slight recovery is expected in 2017.<2E>But you<6F>re certainly seeing that factory automation, machine vision, automation, industry 4.0, improvements in supply chain systems, all these kinds of things ... (are) enjoying very strong growth,<2C> Campling added.INDUSTRIAL SOFTWARE Siemens<6E> Digital Factory, widely seen as the global leader in industrial software, only started reporting separate results in the German company statements in 2015.The 13 percent of 2016 revenue it contributed is still small fry compared with the power and energy divisions<6E> 40 percent. But while sales in Siemens<6E> power and gas segment declined 11 percent in the fiscal third quarter, digital saw 11 percent growth and accounted for more than a fifth of total profits.FILE PHOTO: The logo of Swiss engineering group ABB is seen at a plant in Zurich, Switzerland October 4, 2016. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo Swiss power grids maker ABB is also winning investors<72> attention thanks to its robotics segment, although oil & gas, mining and other industries still account for more than 40 percent of company revenues.ABB Ability, a digital software and services platform that can connect to robots for remote monitoring and diagnostics, which partners with Microsoft and IBM, is starting to contribute to growth, ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer said in a press release after the company released results for the second quarter that ended June 30.Robotics orders jumped 12 percent year-on-year in the quarter to more than 25 percent of the company<6E>s total.While some technology assets have been developed in-house or through collaboration, others have come from acquisitions.Siemens has spent more than $5 billion in the past 18 months acquiring industrial software companies while shedding legacy businesses like hearing aids and household appliances and preparing to list its giant healthcare unit.ABB thi
'6fad2c560e5e41d351af1bcef9581e11f8a485b2'|'PRESS DIGEST- British Business - Oct 24'|'Oct 24 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.The Times- Hector Sants, former head of the financial regulator, will give evidence behind closed doors at the High Court in a 600 million pounds ($792.12 million) lawsuit brought by shareholders against Lloyds Banking Group Plc over its acquisition of HBOS in 2008. bit.ly/2z3ynjx- Aluminium and hydroelectricity producer En+ Group will have a market capitalization of up to $10 billion after it floats on the London Stock Exchange next month. bit.ly/2z2LWjhThe Guardian- Phones 4U billionaire John Caudwell has accused his former business partner and protege of being an "amazing liar" who presided over a "reign of terror" at the wealth management firm Signia Wealth. bit.ly/2z34G2b- President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker has rushed to salvage relations with UK at a dangerous point in the Brexit negotiations by denying claims that the Prime Minister Theresa May had begged for help at a recent private dinner, instead insisting she had been in "good shape" and "fighting". bit.ly/2z3xWFVThe Telegraph- Private hospitals group Spire Healthcare on Monday said it has rejected a takeover by rival Mediclinic that valued the firm at around 1.2 billion pounds ($1.58 billion). bit.ly/2z2hS7q- Britain''s TV and radio company Arqiva has signalled plans for a stock market debut to raise 1.5 billion pounds and pay off some of its heavy debt pile. bit.ly/2z1dVjeSky News- UK''s Labour MP Jared O''Mara has resigned from Parliament''s women and equalities select committee after historical comments he posted online re-surfaced. bit.ly/2z3xgjR- UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is assessing whether it can take "further action" over Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc''s controversial treatment of small businesses, after an independent review. bit.ly/2z2lne1The Independent- Mark Johnson, former HSBC Holdings Plc banker, has been found guilty by a U.S. jury of defrauding UK-headquartered Cairn Energy Plc in a $3.5 billion currency trade. ind.pn/2z3a0m6$1 = 0.7575 pounds Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Cynthia Osterman '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-press-business/press-digest-british-business-oct-24-idINL2N1MZ002'|'2017-10-23T22:14:00.000+03:00'
'0911f831c01aa3f8926218386c1576ce666b8c74'|'Women do most of the housework and other surprising census figures - Greg Jericho'|'T he latest release of data from the 2016 census reveals the ageing population has seen a shift in the makeup of our workforce with more people employed as community and personal service workers than ever before. The census data also confirms previous data suggesting that the cutting of interest rates has made servicing a mortgage easier over the past five year. But while the shift in work has seen an increase in carers and domestic cleaners, the census also reveals that women continue to the do bulk of the housework.It will probably not come as a shock to anyone that the electorate with the highest median mortgage is that held by our prime minister. The latest batch of census data released yesterday revealed than in 2016, the median monthly mortgage in the seat of Wentworth was $3,000 <20> some $30 a month higher than the second most expensive electorate to have a mortgage <20> that of Warringah, held by the previous prime minister Tony Abbott.Boom and bust: five census maps that show how Australia has changed Read moreThe census data however reveals that while Warringah comes in second for highest mortgage payments, it comes in first on incomes, with the highest median household income in the land of $2,384 a week (or $123,968 a year). But don<6F>t feel too bad for the good voters of Wentworth <20> they come in second on the household income scale with a median weekly income of $2,380.Both Sydney suburbs sit a long way above the poorest electorate by income <20> that of Hinkler in Queensland, which has a median household income of $946. But on this score, the figures can be misleading. Hinkler is not so much poor as it is old. The median age of Hinkler is 46, compared to the national median of 38. Similarly, the second poorest electorate by income is the mid NSW costal electorate of Lyne <20> it is even older, with a median age of 50.So when comparing incomes there always needs to be a bit of care.Only three non-Sydney electorates are in the top 15 most expensive <20> Julie Bishop<6F>s seat of Curtin in Perth, Tim Wilson<6F>s seat of Josh Frydenberg<72>s seat of Kooyong also in Melbourne.But an expensive mortgage does not necessarily mean high levels of mortgage stress <20> because generally a high median mortgage also means you live in an area with high median household incomes.Where it becomes tough is those areas where the mortgage prices are high, but the median income is not so. And for that, a good place to look is western Sydney.While in Wentworth the median monthly mortgage is equivalent to 31.5% of the median income, in the seat of Blaxland, the median mortgage payments take up 39.9% of the median household income <20> making it the toughest electorate in the nation to pay off a mortgage.When we exclude the electorates with high numbers of pensioners, we see western Sydney seats such Watson, Fowler and McMahon where the median mortgage payments are well above the national average of 30.5% of median household income.To find the place where it is easiest to service a mortgage you need to look to the national capital. The seats of Canberra and Fenner have the lowest ratio of median mortgage to median income. In the seat of Canberra, the median mortgage payment is worth just 24.7% of the median household income and in the northern Canberra seat of Fenner, it is just 25.2% <20> a consequence of both seats being in the top 35 for size of mortgages, but in the top 15 for size of household income:Map: mortgage payments as a percentage of household income Mortgage as a percent of income by electorate Overall however the data shows that the size of mortgages payments relative to household income has fallen in the past years in all states, and in NSW, Victoria and Queensland it is even lower than it was in 2006:Given when the 2011 census was held the standard variable mortgage rate was 7.8%, and when it was held last year it was down to 5.25%, it is not a surprise that mortgages are easier to service <20> but such figures say nothing a
'a2820899ae785fb6a401a2a101913d3dd81c3707'|'Hess Corp to sell its interests in offshore Equatorial Guinea'|' 51 PM / a minute ago Hess Corp to sell its interests in offshore Equatorial Guinea Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Oil producer Hess Corp ( HES.N ) said on Monday it would sell its interests in offshore Equatorial Guinea to Kosmos Energy ( KOS.N ) and Trident Energy for $650 million. The company, which reached a $200 million tax settlement with Equatorial Guinea earlier in the day, said net production from the assets averaged 28,000 barrels of oil per day. Hess holds an 85 percent interest and is the operator of the Ceiba and Okume fields. Tullow Oil ( TLW.L ) holds a 15 percent interest and Equatorial Guinea holds a 5 percent carried interest. Reporting by Taenaz Shakir in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hess-corp-divestiture/hess-corp-to-sell-its-interests-in-offshore-equatorial-guinea-idUSKBN1CS2S1'|'2017-10-24T00:45:00.000+03:00'
'4fc5fa792dab2a7cd2d4bddb0cff502afd6a2675'|'Asian shares hover near recent highs; China Congress eyed'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - European shares ended mixed at their close on Tuesday in anticipation of this week<65>s European Central Bank meeting, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average remained near record highs, buoyed by a surge in industrial sector shares.FILE PHOTO: The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is pictured in New York City, New York, U.S., August 2, 2017. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo Although the German, French, Italian and Spanish indexes all rose, the pan-European STOXX 600 closed down 0.4 percent.<2E>The market is anticipating that the ECB highlights some kind of inclination towards lower for longer, and that<61>s supportive for equities,<2C> said Pierre Bose, head of European equity strategy at Credit Suisse. <20>If they were a bit more hawkish that could take a bit of the steam out of the rally we<77>ve seen.<2E>The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 lost 0.30 percent and MSCI''s gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD PUS gained 0.04 percent.Apple supplier and chipmaker AMS ( AMS.S ) jumped 21.8 percent after reporting third-quarter sales just under expectations. Analysts said strong fourth-quarter guidance from the iPhone supplier offset the miss.Strong profits from Spain''s Caixabank ( CABK.MC ) also lifted the IBEX .IBEX 0.4 percent after its Catalonia-related underperformance.Earnings were top-of-mind in U.S. trading, raising the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI 192.26 points, or 0.83 percent, to 23,466.22.The world<6C>s largest construction and mining equipment maker, Caterpillar Inc ( CAT.N ), beat third-quarter profit and sales estimates and raised its full-year forecasts. The Peoria, Illinois company expects revenue in its construction business to surge about 20 percent and its mining business to jump 30 percent. The company<6E>s stock was up 4.6 percent.3M ( MMM.N ), another Dow component, which makes a range of products from autoparts to office supplies, reported upbeat results, helping its stock gain 7.2 percent.Earnings have gotten off to a strong start, with 73 percent of 120 S&P companies beating profit expectations as of Tuesday.The S&P 500 .SPX gained 5.29 points, or 0.21 percent, to 2,570.27 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 21.12 points, or 0.32 percent, to 6,607.95.U.S. 10-year Treasury yields remained close to a more than five-month peak. Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR last fell 9/32 in price to yield 2.4063 percent, from 2.375 percent late on Monday.The 30-year U.S. Treasury bond US30YT=RR last fell 21/32 in price to yield 2.9234 percent, from 2.89 percent late on Monday.Japan''s Nikkei .N225 had extended its 16-day winning streak to a 21-year peak overnight following the weekend election win for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.The New Zealand dollar NZD= hit a five-month low after the incoming Labour-led coalition government said it plans to review and reform the Central Bank Act to include employment, alongside inflation, as a dual target.The dollar index .DXY rose 0.05 percent as the wait continued for President Donald Trump to name the next head of the U.S. central bank after he said on Monday a decision was <20>very, very close.<2E> Hopes for the passage of a tax cut plan also buoyed the greenback.Spot gold XAU= dropped 0.4 percent to $1,276.63 an ounce, remaining near a two-week low.U.S. crude CLcv1 rose 1.1 percent to $52.47 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $58.30, up 1.62 percent.Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; Additional reporting by Julien Ponthus, Helen Reidin and Marc Jones in London, Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss in New York; Editing by Daniel Bases and James Dalgleish '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asian-shares-hover-near-recent-highs-china-congress-eyed-idINKBN1CT02K'|'2017-10-24T03:51:00.000+03:00'
'14bc6e1d1c0f7f5c7f1ce0f2f12ef8b619f306cf'|'Air Berlin in talks with Condor, not just easyJet - source'|' 33 PM / Updated 19 minutes ago Air Berlin in talks with Condor, not just easyJet: source Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ) is in talks with Thomas Cook ( TCG.L ) airline Condor, as well as Britain<69>s easyJet ( EZJ.L ) over the sale of some of its remaining assets, as time runs out for a deal to be done, a source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. FILE PHOTO: German carrier Air Berlin aircraft are pictured at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt/File Photo Air Berlin had been in exclusive talks with Lufthansa and easyjet, but while a deal was agreed with Lufthansa for large parts of its business, talks with easyJet continued over the weekend. <20>Air Berlin is in talks with two bidders - easyjet and Condor. The race is wide open,<2C> the source said. EasyJet has said it is interested in operations covering about 25 planes, predominantly at Berlin<69>s Tegel airport. EasyJet currently flies only from Berlin Schoenefeld and analysts say a deal could allow it to build its share in Berlin and possibly offer domestic routes within Germany. Condor had expressed interest in Air Berlin when the carrier filed for insolvency back in August, however the creditors chose to negotiate with Lufthansa and easyJet. Time is ticking for a deal to be done, however. The last Air Berlin flight is due to take place on Friday. The airline had hoped to be able to present deals for remaining assets to a creditor committee today, but instead was only able to present a deal for its cargo marketing unit Leisure Cargo. Condor and easyJet declined to comment. Air Berlin referred to a statement from Friday, when CEO Thomas Winkelmann said that the period of exclusivity had ended. Reporting by Klaus Lauer; Writing by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Alexander Ratz and Tom Sims'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-lufthansa-condor/air-berlin-in-talks-with-condor-not-just-easyjet-source-idUKKBN1CT294'|'2017-10-24T18:31:00.000+03:00'
'e7e0f0205f43618c3d012a69ecc019522c469c04'|'U.S. lawmakers ask DOJ if terrorism law covers pipeline activists'|' 41 PM / Updated 7 minutes ago U.S. lawmakers ask DOJ if terrorism law covers pipeline activists Timothy Gardner 3 Min Read WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (Reuters) - U.S. representatives from both parties asked the Department of Justice on Monday whether the domestic terrorism law would cover actions by protesters that shut oil pipelines last year, a move that could potentially increase political rhetoric against climate change activists. Ken Buck, a Republican representative from Colorado, said in a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, that damaging pipeline infrastructure poses risks to humans and the environment. The letter, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, said <20>operation of pipeline facilities by unqualified personnel could result in a rupture - the consequences of which would be devastating.<2E> It was signed by 84 representatives, including at least two Democrats, Gene Green and Henry Cuellar, both of Texas. The move by the lawmakers is a sign of increasing tensions between activists protesting projects including Energy Transfer Partners LP<4C>s Dakota Access Pipeline and the administration of President Donald Trump, which is seeking to make the country <20>energy dominant<6E> by boosting domestic oil, gas, and coal output. Last year activists in several states used bolt cutters to break fences and twisted shut valves on several cross border pipelines that sent about 2.8 million barrels per day of crude to the United States from Canada, equal to roughly 15 percent of daily U.S. consumption. The letter asks Sessions whether existing federal laws arm the Justice Department to prosecute criminal activity against energy infrastructure. It also asks whether attacks on energy infrastructure that pose a threat to human life fall within the department<6E>s understanding of domestic terrorism law. The Department of Justice acknowledged receiving the letter and is reviewing it, a spokesman said. A terrorism expert said it was ironic the lawmakers referred to the law, which defines <20>domestic terrorism<73> as acts dangerous to human life intended to intimidate civilians, but does not offer a way to prosecute anyone under it. David Schanzer, a homeland security and terrorism expert at Duke University, said the lawmakers<72> request of Sessions <20>won<6F>t have any legal ramifications, but possibly could be used for rhetorical value.<2E> A Minnesota court is considering charges against several protesters suspected of turning the valves on the pipelines last year. District Court Judge Robert Tiffany has allowed the defendants to present a <20>necessity defense.<2E> That means they will admit shutting the valves, but may call witnesses, such as scientific experts, to offer testimony about the urgency of what they say is a climate crisis, activists said. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner; editing by Diane Craft)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-pipelines-activism/u-s-lawmakers-ask-doj-if-terrorism-law-covers-pipeline-activists-idUSL2N1MY1RR'|'2017-10-24T02:38:00.000+03:00'
'aba5102ff7584a68c25f3ace09c26a38bb644f29'|'Oi creditors meeting put off again by bankruptcy judge'|'SAO PAULO, Oct 23 (Reuters) - The judge overseeing phone carrier Oi SA<53>s bankruptcy protection case has agreed again to postpone the creditors assembly that was originally scheduled for Monday until Friday Nov. 10, the company said in a securities filing.The judge had already postponed the meeting until Nov. 6.The debt-laden company sustained a new setback on Monday when Brazilian telecoms regulator Anatel rejected its request to swap billions of reais in regulatory fines for new investments.Reporting by Leonardo Goy; Writing by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Peter Cooney '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/oi-sa-restructuring/oi-creditors-meeting-put-off-again-by-bankruptcy-judge-idINL2N1MY1US'|'2017-10-23T20:54:00.000+03:00'
'0a247b7f96e28c081d587a7af7d5c996b863d054'|'UPDATE 1-Citi''s Asia insurance investment banking head joining Ping An fund - sources'|'* Lacey to become COO of Global Voyager Fund* Ping An has said fund to mainly invest in fin & healthcare tech (Updates with Ping An<41>s response)By Anshuman Daga and Kane WuSINGAPORE, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Citigroup<75>s Asia head of insurance investment banking Donald Lacey is leaving the bank to become the chief operating officer of Ping An Insurance Group Co of China<6E>s Global Voyager Fund, sources familiar with the situation said.Lacey, who joined Citi roughly 10 years ago, will start in his new job in a few months, one of the sources told Reuters.Citi and Ping An declined to comment. The sources did not want to be identified as they were not authorised to talk to the media.Ping An said in May it was launching its first overseas fund to primarily invest in financial and healthcare technology worldwide. The initial size of the fund is $1 billion and it is led by Jonathan Larsen, an 18-year stalwart of Citigroup who joined Ping An as its chief innovation officer. (Reporting by Anshuman Daga in SINGAPORE and Kane Wu in HONG KONG; Additional reporting by Julie Zhu; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/ping-an-ins-moves-citigroup/update-1-citis-asia-insurance-investment-banking-head-joining-ping-an-fund-sources-idINL4N1MZ3LB'|'2017-10-24T07:44:00.000+03:00'
'a07132e964c90a669bee1fa831893585ab9fdf17'|'Lockheed Martin sales, profit miss Wall Street estimates'|'(Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp<72>s ( LMT.N ) quarterly profit and sales missed Wall Street estimates on Tuesday and the Pentagon<6F>s No. 1 weapons provided a tepid profit forecast for 2018, sending shares down more than two percent.Lockheed Martin''s logo is seen during Japan Aerospace 2016 air show in Tokyo, Japan, October 12, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon Despite the first profit miss after five quarters in a row of beating estimates, Lockheed raised its full-year sales forecast, set a higher dividend and forecast sales would grow another 2 percent next year.Analysts noted that Lockheed<65>s 2-percent growth forecast for 2018 was conservative given the market<65>s expectations of higher defence spending under U.S. President Donald Trump.During a conference call with Wall Street analysts, Bruce Tanner, Lockheed<65>s CFO, was upbeat about the company<6E>s growth prospects and record $104-billion orders backlog, but he was cautious about the speed of the company<6E>s growth projections. <20>It just doesn<73>t happen overnight and especially if you will allow me to call 2018 overnight,<2C> he said.During the quarter, operating profit from Lockheed<65>s Space Systems business unit halved to $218 million, partly due to a non-recurring pre-tax gain that had occurred in the third quarter of 2016 as well as slightly lower sales volume in two government satellite programs.Tanner said <20>we expect this timing-related shortfall will be more than made up for during the fourth quarter.<2E>The aeronautics division, which makes the F-35 fighter jet, was the only Lockheed business unit to increase profitability from last year.Lockheed<65>s net earnings from operations fell 13.8 percent to $939 million, or $3.24 per share, from $1.1 billion, or $3.61 per share. Increased sales of $12.2 billion from $11.6 billion a year ago, were below Wall Street<65>s expectations.Analysts had expected $3.26 per share on revenue of $12.81 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Still, the Bethesda, Maryland-based company increased its full-year 2017 sales forecast to $51.2 billion, from $50 billion, citing its continued focus on operational performance and $200 million worth of property sales.During the quarter, Lockheed had notable wins on several large programs.The U.S. Air Force awarded one of two $900-million contracts to continue development work on a replacement for the air-launched nuclear cruise missile. And the U.S. State Department approved the possible sale of a THAAD anti-missile defence system to Saudi Arabia at an estimated cost of $15 billion.Lockheed said that it was in the process of hiring 1,000 engineers for programs won in 2017.Still, the company<6E>s raised sales outlook for 2018 came with caveats as it included a drop in projected cash flow compared with 2017. The company said materials costs for the F-35 multi-year <20>block buy<75> would go up in 2018 and capital investments would be made in facilities for the Space Systems division.The company sees 2017 ending with diluted higher earnings per share between $12.85 and $13.15, up from its previous estimate of $12.30 to $12.60 per share. In addition, Lockheed said it would raise its quarterly dividend rate by 10 percent to $2.00 per share.Lockheed shares were down 2.7 percent at $312.15 in afternoon trading. Despite Tuesday<61>s drop, Lockheed shares trade near record highs and have more than tripled in the last five years.Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington, DC; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Chris Sanders '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/lockheed-results/lockheed-martin-sales-profit-miss-wall-street-estimates-idINKBN1CT1Y9'|'2017-10-24T16:47:00.000+03:00'
'7ef47fc79a0e2140958dca6bec228fe28e71c3fd'|'China''s Sinochem says has no plans to bid for stake in Chilean lithium producer SQM'|'October 24, 2017 / 1:59 AM / Updated 2 hours ago China''s Sinochem says no plans to bid for stake in Chilean lithium producer SQM Tom Daly 2 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s state-owned Sinochem Group on Tuesday appeared to deny a media report that it was bidding for a stake in Chilean lithium producer SQM being sold by Canada<64>s PotashCorp. <20>Up until now, neither Sinochem Group nor our subsidiaries have had such intentions or plans,<2C> the company said in response to a request for comment from Reuters. The Financial Times reported on Monday that Sinochem, a Beijing-based chemicals and oil conglomerate, was among four Chinese bidders for a $4 billion stake in Chile<6C>s Sociedad Quimica Y Minera (SQM), one of the world<6C>s largest lithium producers. It cited people familiar with the process. Lithium is a key raw material for batteries in electric vehicles, which are enjoying a massive rise in popularity in China. The other Chinese bidders named by the Financial Times were Ningbo Shanshan, Tianqi Lithium and GSR Capital. Ningbo Shanshan also said that it was not participating in a bid to acquire equity in SQM, while Tianqi Lithium and GSR Capital did not respond to requests for comment. Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc was in September reported to have hired Goldman Sachs and BofA Merrill Lynch to explore selling its 32 percent stake in SQM. Reporting by Tom Daly; Editing by Joseph Radford '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-china-metals-lithium/chinas-sinochem-says-has-no-plans-to-bid-for-stake-in-chilean-lithium-producer-sqm-idINKBN1CT05X'|'2017-10-23T23:59:00.000+03:00'
'6e8f13b820eec6738332119efc96f72a39c0eb3e'|'McDonald''s quarterly U.S. comp sales beat estimates'|'October 24, 2017 / 12:08 PM / in 2 hours McDonald''s sales strong as cheap drinks, new burgers lure back diners Lisa Baertlein , Sruthi Ramakrishnan 5 Min Read (Reuters) - McDonald<6C>s Corp ( MCD.N ) reported strong restaurant sales on Tuesday, as $1 sodas and build-your-own burgers helped it draw in more customers and beat back rivals in an intense battle for market share. The world<6C>s largest restaurant chain by revenue has been working to boost flagging traffic at its U.S. restaurants, where it gets most of its profit, after customers defected to fast-food rivals and pricier fast-casual options like Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc ( CMG.N ). In the past year, McDonald<6C>s has introduced cook-to-order, fresh beef Quarter Pounders and new items with a variety of buns and sauces like the Signature Sriracha sandwich, along with mobile ordering and delivery. <20>We served more customers, more often,<2C> Chief Executive Officer Steve Easterbrook said on a conference call to discuss third-quarter earnings. <20>The U.S. business regained its stride.<2E> Some analysts on the call expressed concern that new efforts, including table service and made-to-order burgers, would mean longer wait times that would annoy diners, but executives said customer satisfaction was higher and any service issues would be quickly ironed out. Global sales at restaurants open at least 13 months rose 6 percent for the quarter, posting the third straight quarterly traffic increase and beating the 4.5 percent gain expected by analysts polled by research firm Consensus Metrix. Those sales rose a better-than-expected 4.1 percent in the United States, where traffic improved for the second quarter in a row after more than four straight years of declines. China, the UK and Canada also turned in strong performances. <20>Given that the fast food and casual dining segments as a whole struggled over the third quarter, this is an encouraging set of results which suggests McDonald<6C>s is gaining both market and customer share,<2C> GlobalData Retail<69>s Managing Director Neil Saunders said. McDonald<6C>s shares were up 1 percent at $165 in midday trading, flirting with their record high on Friday. Aggressive U.S. promotions included $1 any-size soft drinks, $2 McCafe smoothies and espresso drinks and McPick 2 offers of two items for $5. The changes, part of a turnaround plan under CEO Easterbrook, came as McDonald<6C>s catches up with Chipotle, Wendy<64>s Co ( WEN.O ) and other chains that raised the bar for what consumers can expect from quick-serve restaurants. McDonald<6C>s shares have climbed 65 percent since Easterbrook was named CEO in March 2015, well ahead of Wendy<64>s 37 percent gain and nearly triple the S&P 500<30>s rise over the same period. The logo of a McDonald''s Corp <MCD.N> restaurant is seen in Los Angeles, California, U.S. October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson Chipotle shares meanwhile have plunged 52 percent following a string of food safety lapses in 2015. McDonald<6C>s shares may have more scope for gains, as the company<6E>s price-to-earnings ratio is still far below many peers, according to Thomson Reuters data. Many fast-casual chains have fallen short of expectations following a wave of initial public offerings in recent years. Shares in Zoe<6F>s Kitchen Inc ( ZOES.N ) and Noodles & Co ( NDLS.O ) are trading below their IPO prices, while Shake Shack Inc ( SHAK.N ) is far below its record high of nearly $93 in May 2015. Lower priced fast-food chains seem to be benefiting from last year<61>s sharp slowdown in customer traffic to fast-casual chains, Bernstein analyst Sara Senatore said in a recent report. <20>I think it<69>s safe to say that the reports of fast food<6F>s death were greatly exaggerated,<2C> said Senatore, who added that fast-food chains have posted the best fundamental results and stock returns of the broader industry since late 2015. During the call, analysts called out concerning trends in service times and U.S. labor costs. Executives said service speeds initially slow slightly, roughly 5 sec
'9305f975e5b7221d721bc34970b48cbca0c5d864'|'"Swiss-made" helped Switzerland weather currency storm'|' 30 AM / Updated 10 minutes ago "Swiss-made" helped Switzerland weather currency storm John Revill 3 Min Read ZURICH (Reuters) - The Swiss-made trademark on products from watches to chocolates helped export-reliant Switzerland tackle a currency shock which risked dragging it into a recession, according to a government report published on Tuesday. A waitress presents a plate with various Swiss Franc coins and notes in this picture illustration in a restaurant in Zurich, Switzerland, May 21, 2013. REUTERS/Michael Buholzer/Illustration/File Photo Swiss manufacturers invested in advertising, branding and product development so they retained customers even as prices rose when the safe-haven Swiss franc surged in January 2015, researchers from the Zurich University for Applied Sciences said. The improved products trend was particularly marked in industries like matchmaking and machinery where research and development, branding and promotional spending were especially important, the researchers said. The findings were part of a series of reports written to examine the aftermath of the so-called Swiss franc shock, triggered when the Swiss National Bank ditched its longstanding floor of 1.20 francs to the euro nearly three years ago. That decision made Swiss exports 10 percent more expensive overnight and reduced Swiss economic growth to 0.6 percent in 2015 from 1.8 percent a year earlier, although the country dodged a recession which many economists had predicted. Switzerland<6E>s economy withstood the crisis <20>surprisingly well<6C>, wrote researchers from the University of Basel in another study which was also prepared for the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). They added the 2015 currency shock, and an earlier one in 2011, had also made the Swiss exporters more resilient. This meant that Swiss exports were only 1.4 percent lower than without an overvaluation of the currency, said BAK Economics, a research institute. <20>The goods exporters in Switzerland are more resilient than in other countries,<2C> they wrote. <20>But on the other hand the resilience to currency effects of the service industry is lower.<2E> Although Swiss unemployment rose slightly since the franc shock to an average rate of 3.2 percent in 2015 and 3.3 percent in 2016, it has since dropped back to 3.0 percent in September this year. Still industrial companies have borne the brunt of the job cuts, the studies showed, with average industrial company reduced its workforce by 4.6 percent in the two years after the currency shock, wrote researchers from ETH Zurich, a university. Companies remained cautious about increasing their staff despite the recent weakening of the franc, the researchers said. Going forward, the sustained profit squeeze has meant many companies are investing less in their businesses, a trend which could damage their long term competitiveness, said one group of researchers from the BSS Economic Consultants and ETH. <20>Because the manufacturing sector is exposed to an above average extent, a long period of overvaluation could lead to an acceleration of deindustrialisation,<2C> they wrote. Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-swiss-franc-effect/swiss-made-helped-switzerland-weather-currency-storm-idUKKBN1CT0YF'|'2017-10-24T11:29:00.000+03:00'
'ca77c742780431cbde6be3de8bd29c306f38c799'|'Air Berlin finds buyer for cargo marketing unit'|'October 24, 2017 / 12:29 PM / in 8 minutes Air Berlin finds buyer for cargo marketing unit Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Family-owned Zeitfracht has agreed a deal to buy Air Berlin<69>s ( AB1.DE ) cargo marketing platform Leisure Cargo for an undisclosed price, the insolvent airline said on Tuesday. FILE PHOTO: A Lufthansa airliner taxis next to the Air Berlin aircraft at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke/File Photo Air Berlin filed for insolvency on Aug. 15 and a government loan has kept its planes in the air while administrators seek investors for parts of the business. Zeitfracht also remains in talks with a consortium for the airline<6E>s maintenance unit and said in the statement it hoped these talks could be concluded soon. Several people familiar with the matter told Reuters last week that Zeitfracht and maintenance group Nayak were together poised to strike a deal to buy the cargo marketing platform and maintenance units. Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) is buying a large part of Air Berlin assets, and talks with easyJet ( EZJ.L ) over other airline operations, predominantly at Berlin<69>s Tegel airport, are ongoing. Reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Christoph Steitz'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-air-berlin-lufthansa-leisure-cargo/air-berlin-finds-buyer-for-cargo-marketing-unit-idUKKBN1CT1QL'|'2017-10-24T15:29:00.000+03:00'
'6ad6f828ed507e8ce1ab6e8954704952e7d284a4'|'Asian Paints second-quarter profit up 21 percent'|'October 24, 2017 / 9:49 AM / in an hour Asian Paints second-quarter profit up 21 percent Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - India<69>s Asian Paints Ltd posted a 21 percent rise in second-quarter profit on Tuesday, beating estimates. Profit rose to 5.76 billion rupees ($88.58 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30, from 4.76 billion rupees a year earlier, the Mumbai-headquartered company said. bit.ly/2gzlm6g Analysts on average had expected a profit of 5.17 billion rupees, Thomson Reuters data showed. Revenue from operations rose 2.3 percent to 42.74 billion rupees. Shares of the company were up 4.6 percent as of 0932 GMT. ($1 = 65.0225 Indian rupees)'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/asian-paints-results/asian-paints-second-quarter-profit-up-21-percent-idINKBN1CT16J'|'2017-10-24T07:49:00.000+03:00'
'b80e56d284587b6ebf894e95a87fc6e97d3c6a01'|'Low inflation could slow Fed, but fiscal stimulus unnecessary - Reuters poll'|'October 23, 2017 / 1:01 PM / in 4 minutes Low inflation could slow Fed, but fiscal stimulus unnecessary: Reuters poll Indradip Ghosh , Shrutee Sarkar 4 Min Read BENGALURU (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in December and twice next year, according to a Reuters poll of economists, who now worry that the central bank will slow its tightening because of expectations that inflation will remain low. Most respondents expected the nation<6F>s economy to determine future rate hikes, but a change in regime at the Fed could also affect monetary policy. U.S. President Donald Trump could decide this week whether to reappoint Fed Chair Janet Yellen, whose term ends in February, since he has concluded interviews with five candidates for that post. <20>There is a greater-than-usual degree of uncertainty around monetary policy next year, with the Fed<65>s leadership up in the air,<2C> wrote RBC economist Josh Nye. A Reuters poll of economists published last week showed Fed Board Governor Jerome Powell getting the top job, although most said reappointing Yellen would be the best option. Still, a vast majority of the more than 100 economists in the latest poll expect rate hikes to depend largely on how the U.S. economy performs. <20>Despite intense speculation about the next Fed chair, the path of policy rates is still likely to be driven primarily by the data, regardless of who is nominated,<2C> said Christian Keller, head of economics research at Barclays. Forty of the 50 economists who answered an extra question also said the U.S. economy, which is on a steady growth path, did not need a big fiscal stimulus in the form of sweeping tax cuts. The dollar rose on Friday after the Senate approved a budget proposal for the 2018 fiscal year that cleared a critical hurdle for a tax-cut package. But the need for such a large stimulus to boost the U.S. economy at this late stage of its cycle, when the jobless rate is at more than a 16-year low, remains questionable. <20>The U.S. needs to return to a sustainable fiscal path, and I have little faith that sweeping tax cuts will generate enough growth to put us on that path,<2C> said Bank of the West economist Scott Anderson. While recent U.S. economic data has improved, the closely watched core PCE inflation measure has been below its medium-term target of 2 percent for more than five years, despite strong employment growth. The latest poll, taken Oct. 16-23, showed scant expectations of economic growth lifting off from its current trend or of inflation reaching the Fed<65>s target before 2019. That has divided Fed policymakers and raised doubts about the pace of further rate hikes, according to minutes from the Sept. 19-20 meeting. Still, economists predicted the Fed would raise rates 25 basis points to 1.25-1.50 percent in December. All 100 economists polled expect it to keep policy on hold at its next meeting. The central bank is projecting three more rate increases in 2018, while economists expect only two next year, which would take the fed funds rate to 1.75-2.00 percent. But about two-thirds of 52 economists who answered an extra question said risks to those forecasts were skewed more toward a slower pace of rate hikes. Fifteen of those respondents suspected there could be fewer than two increases next year. The remaining 17 economists said there was a greater chance of faster rate hikes. Economic growth probably took a hit from the devastation caused by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. The consensus in the latest Reuters poll was for an annualized expansion of 2.4 percent in the third quarter, down from 2.6 percent in last month<74>s survey. Growth expectations for this quarter remained at 2.5 percent. The median full-year forecast was 2.2 percent for 2017 and 2.3 percent for next year. Predictions for core PCE inflation have not changed much from last month, with the consensus now in a 1.4-1.9 percent range through the end of next year even though the jobless rate has falle
'8aa13c65d1386eebd5521d8bb9cfa3a96de42caa'|'Insight: China''s recyclers eye looming electric vehicle battery mountain'|'SHANGHAI (Reuters) - After years of dismantling discarded televisions and laptops, a Shanghai recycling plant is readying itself for a new wave of waste: piles of exhausted batteries from the surge of electric vehicles hitting China<6E>s streets.Batteries for electric vehicles are manufactured at a factory in Dongguan, China September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip The plant has secured licences and is undergoing upgrades to handle a fast-growing mountain of battery waste, said Li Yingzhe, a manager at the facility, run by the state-owned Shanghai Jinqiao Group.<2E>We believe there will be so much growth in the number of electric vehicles in the future,<2C> he said.Shanghai Jinqiao will be entering a market that includes Chinese companies like Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium and GEM Co. Ltd, whose share prices have risen as they invest in battery recycling facilities of their own. That confidence comes even as companies face considerable hurdles launching battery recycling businesses, including high operating costs.The growth of China<6E>s electric vehicle industry - and the ambitions of recycling companies - is underpinned by a government drive to eventually phase out gasoline-burning cars, part of a broader effort to improve urban air quality and ease a reliance on overseas oil.Led by companies like BYD and Geely, sales of electric vehicles in China reached 507,000 in 2016, up 53 percent over the previous year. The government is targeting sales of 2 million a year by 2020 and 7 million five years later, amounting to a fifth of total car production by 2025.According to the International Energy Agency, China accounted for more than 40 percent of global electric car sales in 2016, followed by the European Union and the United States. It also overtook the United States as the market with the greatest number of electric vehicles.Production in China of the lithium batteries that power those cars has also soared. In the first eight months of 2017, Chinese manufacturers produced 6.7 billion batteries, up 51 percent from the year-earlier period, according to industry ministry data.All that activity could put China in pole position for dominating the global electric car industry, as well as related businesses like batteries and recycling.China began promoting electric vehicles in 2009, and as the first of those cars reach the end of their lifespan, lithium battery waste could be as much as 170,000 tonnes next year, industry experts estimate. The figure is likely to keep multiplying in tandem with car sales.Dealing with all that waste poses huge problems for China. Lithium batteries are not yet classified as hazardous waste and are therefore not subject to stringent disposal controls. Battery waste includes heavy metals like cobalt and nickel, as well as toxic residues that could end up in waterways and the soil if not handled properly.Despite the challenges, battery waste also represents a significant opportunity for the country<72>s growing recycling industry.The China Automobile Innovation Centre, an industry think tank, estimates the recycling market could be worth 31 billion yuan ($4.68 billion) by 2023.Wang Chuanfu, president of BYD Co Ltd, China<6E>s leading electric carmaker, last month described the lithium, copper and cobalt extracted from spent batteries as <20>treasures<65>.Larger companies with high-tech recycling operations are already reaping the benefits, including Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium , Sinolink Securities, a local brokerage, said in a note to investors. The company<6E>s share price has surged more than 200 percent this year. Sinolink also cited GEM , a self-proclaimed <20>urban miner<65> that runs China<6E>s largest automated battery dismantling facility in Shenzhen. GEM<45>s shares have risen more than 60 percent since January.RECYCLING CHALLENGES Still, the industry faces numerous obstacles.Batteries for electric vehicles are manufactured at a factory in Dongguan, China September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip Recycling lithium batteries ca
'9075f283c8d655e0569a6f68a01dc0be0b13cb55'|'Fiat emissions probe centres on several models - letter'|'October 23, 2017 / 10:30 AM / in 29 minutes Fiat emissions probe centres on several models - letter Emmanuel Jarry 3 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - A French judicial inquiry into Fiat Chrysler ( FCHA.MI ) over suspected emissions-test cheating centres on whether the carmaker misled buyers of Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Jeep and Lancia cars about emissions levels, according to a letter seen by Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A Fiat logo is seen at a car dealership in Vienna, Austria, May 30, 2017. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader/File Photo The letter, dated Oct. 17 and sent by the magistrate leading the investigation to people involved in the probe, also says that French investigators suspect that attempts were made to hinder the work of one of the investigators, an official whose job is to note breaches of France<63>s consumer laws. Fiat declined to comment on the matter when contacted. French prosecutors opened a formal investigation into Fiat Chrysler in March over allegations that the carmaker cheated in diesel emission tests. The precise nature of that inquiry has been vague. In the letter, the head of the investigation says the suspected emissions cheating dated back to as early as September 2009 and involved brands including Fiat, Alpha Romeo and Jeep but did not say over which period. The letter says investigators also suspect <20>obstruction of the work of an official tasked with registering breaches of the consumer code<64>. Fiat shares were down by around 1 percent in Milan in mid-session trading on Monday. The inquiry into Fiat Chrysler came in the wake of Volkswagen<65>s ( VOWG_p.DE ) diesel emissions-test cheating, exposed by U.S. regulators in 2015 and known as Dieselgate, which triggered dozens more investigations into possible test-rigging by other carmakers. Dieselgate also prompted a push by some lawmakers to ban diesel engines and eventually all combustion engines. In May, the U.S. Justice Department sued Fiat Chrysler, accusing the company of illegally using software that led to excess emissions in nearly 104,000 U.S. diesel vehicles sold since 2014. It also faces numerous lawsuits from owners of those vehicles. The European Union has also launched legal action against Italy for failing to police allegations of emissions-test cheating by Fiat Chrysler properly, following the Volkswagen Dieselgate scandal. Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry and Agnieszka Flak; Writing by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Brian Love and Susan Fenton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-fiat-chrysler-emissions/france-probing-possible-fiat-obstruction-over-dieselgate-affair-document-idUKKBN1CS18A'|'2017-10-23T16:16:00.000+03:00'
'319bbe21c1e5f71b3f7321ed1fa2c2d2ad9a43fc'|'UPDATE 1-Ghana to open bids for energy bonds worth 6 bln cedis ($1.36 bln)'|'(Adds Quote: s, details)ACCRA, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Ghana will start receiving bids on Tuesday for domestic bonds worth 6 billion cedis ($1.36 billion) to settle energy sector debts that have accumulated over the past decade, lead arrangers said on Monday. The 7-year and 10-year bonds to be priced on Thursday form part of the government<6E>s plans to raise a total of 10 billion cedis to settle debts owed by state power utilities to banks and bulk oil distributors.The government in June named Standard Chartered Bank and local lender Fidelity as lead managers for the bond, that is open to foreign and local investors and is backed by the Energy Sector Levy Act, which is a vehicle set up to issue government-sponsored debt to clear the debts.The advisers are expected to release pricing guidance on Tuesday but markets say the yield could range between 18 and 20 percent. Settlement is due for Monday, Xorse Godzi, global markets at Standard Chartered Bank Ghana told reporters.He said 2.4 billion cedis would be issued for 7 years and the remaining 3.6 billion would have a 10-year maturity.<2E>It is going well so far and we<77>ve seen a tremendous interest from investors, driven by the government<6E>s commitment to transparency in the process,<2C> Godzi said at the end of an investor meeting in Accra. ($1 = 4.38 cedis) (Reporting by Kwasi Kpodo; Writing by Emma Farge; Editing by Alison Williams) '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/ghana-bond-energy/update-1-ghana-to-open-bids-for-energy-bonds-worth-6-bln-cedis-idUSL8N1MY4N8'|'2017-10-23T23:10:00.000+03:00'
'd413492bd9538fedfe8a99d244ee19dd2cd0d3bb'|'Britain''s financial watchdog fines Merrill Lynch 34.5 million pounds'|' 30 AM / in 14 minutes Britain''s financial watchdog fines Merrill Lynch 34.5 million pounds Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Britain<69>s financial watchdog said it had fined Bank of America<63>s Merrill Lynch 34.5 million pounds ($45.5 million) for failing to report 68.5 million exchange traded derivative transactions between February 2014 and 2016. <20>This is the first enforcement action against a firm for failing to report details of trading in exchange traded derivatives, under the European Markets Infrastructure Regulation and reflects the importance the FCA puts on this type of reporting,<2C> the Financial Conduct Authority said in a statement. Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Rachel Armstrong'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-bank-of-america-fine-britain/britains-financial-watchdog-fines-merrill-lynch-34-5-million-pounds-idUKKBN1CS115'|'2017-10-23T12:33:00.000+03:00'
'c600f43bce974eae81bbe9ca7e4d0c438e52e27a'|'Noble Group to sell oil liquids unit to Vitol, flags $1.2 billion loss'|'October 22, 2017 / 11:59 PM / Updated 20 minutes ago Noble Group to sell oil liquids unit to Vitol, flags $1.2 billion loss Anshuman Daga 4 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Struggling commodities trader Noble Group ( NOBG.SI ) agreed to sell its Americas-focused oil liquids business to Vitol for about 439.43 million pounds as part of a debt-cutting strategy, and warned of a big loss for its third quarter. FILE PHOTO - A Noble Group sign is pictured at a meet-the-investors event in Singapore August 17, 2015. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo Monday<61>s move came after Reuters reported late on Friday that Vitol, the world<6C>s largest oil trader, was nearing a deal to buy Singapore-listed Noble<6C>s oil liquids unit. Once Asia<69>s biggest commodities trading house, Noble is slashing jobs and selling assets to reduce its debt and win support from its lenders after a crisis-wracked two years. In July it agreed to sell its smaller gas and power business to Mercuria as it focuses on its core Asian coal trading and LNG businesses. Annisa Lee, Nomura<72>s head of Asia ex-Japan<61>s flow credit analysis, said the asset sale was expected and the <20>longer-term concern<72> was the ongoing operating losses. <20>I guess the question is when are they going to basically turn around their business, which is quite key. If they can actually provide more details, what sort of assets they can still sell, that would be great,<2C> she said. Hong Kong-based Noble was plunged into crisis in February 2015 when Iceberg Research questioned its accounts, and then the company was hit by a commodities downturn. While Noble has stood by its accounts, the upheaval triggered a share price collapse, credit downgrades, a series of writedowns, as well as fund raising and management changes. Noble<6C>s market value has plummeted to less than $400 million from $6 billion in February 2015. Noble warned of a total net loss of $1.1 billion to $1.25 billion in the three months ending September, citing non-cash losses and underlying trading results. This follows a $1.75 billion net loss reported in April-June. In July, it announced an up-to-$1 billion disposal plan for assets outside North America over the next two years as Chairman Paul Brough, a restructuring specialist appointed in May, sought to tackle Noble<6C>s more than $3 billion of debt. <20>Conservative liquidity management and constraints placed on the group<75>s access to trade finance lines led to disruption costs and prevented the group from taking advantage of profitable trading opportunities,<2C> the company said. Its stock fell 10 percent on Monday, extending losses to 80 percent this year. NEGOTIATIONS WITH LENDERS Noble has been locked in negotiations with its core lenders to support a $2 billion credit facility, secured on its inventories and working capital. <20>Whilst no assurance can be given as to the outcome of these discussions, the group believes that these are open and constructive, and are moving forward,<2C> it said. Noble said the gross proceeds from the proposed sale of its oil liquids business would be $1.4 billion, and after deducting indebtedness of about $836 million, the cash proceeds would be about $580 million. In August, ratings agencies S&P and Moody<64>s cut their credit ratings on Noble, citing high default risks. Noble is a big player in the global physical oil market, trading crude and refined products. But its operations shrank this year due to higher prices and liquidity constraints. The company has blending and wholesale capabilities in North America and the Caribbean, alongside long-term storage leases globally. A purchase of Noble<6C>s oil liquids business will reinforce Vitol<6F>s position as a leading oil trader. Reporting by Anshuman Daga; Editing by Stephen Coates'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-noble-grp-restructuring/noble-group-to-sell-global-oil-liquids-business-to-vitol-idUKKBN1CR0ZL'|'2017-10-23T07:57:00.000+03:00'
'4afab1bef278c3aa0fc859d05fc5ddb6f632941d'|'Costa coffee owner Whitbread''s interim profit rises on expansion'|' 31 AM / in 5 minutes Costa coffee owner Whitbread''s profit rises on expansion drive Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Whitbread Plc ( WTB.L ), Britain<69>s biggest hotel and coffee shop operator, said first-half pretax profit rose 6.7 percent as it added more Premier Inn rooms and opened more Costa coffee outlets. A cup of espresso is pictured on a table at a branch of Costa Coffee near Manchester, Britain May 5, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble Underlying pretax profit in the six months to Aug. 31 was 328 million pounds ($433 million) while revenue rose 7.4 percent to 1.67 billion pounds, it said on Tuesday. In Britain, it opened over 2,000 new Premier Inn rooms and added 21 more Costa stores during the first half. At Premier Inn, UK revenue per available room (RevPAR) rose 1.8 percent to 53.46 million pounds. The business was on track to have 85,000 rooms by 2020 from 70,120 rooms at the end of the half year, the company said. Costa UK revenue rose 8.3 percent to 542 million pounds driven by good response to its breakfast and lunch ranges and addition of 108 net new stores. ($1 = 0.7571 pounds)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-whitbread-results/costa-coffee-owner-whitbreads-interim-profit-rises-on-expansion-idUKKBN1CT0M6'|'2017-10-24T09:42:00.000+03:00'
'81927ca8c7514b6cdfa4d5757398f7374f62cf29'|'Infosys posts surprise 3.3 percent rise in Q2 profit'|'BENGALURU (Reuters) - Software services company Infosys Ltd reported a larger-than-expected quarterly profit but trimmed its revenue forecast for the year, sending its U.S.-listed shares tumbling as much as 5 percent in early trade on Tuesday.The Infosys logo is seen at the SIBOS banking and financial conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada October 19, 2017. Picture taken October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Helgren The results are the first since Vishal Sikka quit as chief executive in August after a long row between the board and the company founders that frazzled investors and saw the return of Nandan Nilekani, a co-founder and a former CEO, as chairman.Nilekani had said at the time he would prioritise finding a CEO, reconstituting the board and shaping future strategy. The company said the search for a new CEO is <20>progressing well<6C> and it plans to stay the course on its future strategy.<2E>The management team along with the board of directors undertook a comprehensive review of our strategy ... Our current strategy continues to be relevant and we just need to accelerate the execution,<2C> said U.B. Pravin Rao, interim CEO.The Infosys board also reaffirmed that an internal investigation into alleged improprieties related to the acquisition of automation firm Panaya found no evidence of wrongdoing.The company also said it would not make all findings of the investigation public. This drew criticism from some, who felt it leaves investors in the dark, especially as the founders, led by Narayana Murthy, had faulted Sikka and former chair R. Seshasayee for not releasing all the findings previously.<2E>Investors will be left wondering as to the reasons why there was a need for a change of board in August,<2C> said Shriram Subramanian, founder of shareholder advisory firm InGovern.Sikka, Seshasayee and two others resigned from the board in August, ending a protracted battle with the founders, who accused the board of corporate governance lapses.Days after their exit, Murthy, in a conference call with investors, expressed concerns about the previous board<72>s corporate governance practices, including the <20>excessive<76> severance paid to a former finance chief.FILE PHOTO: An employee walks past a signage board in the Infosys campus at the Electronics City IT district in Bangalore, February 28, 2012. REUTERS/Vivek Prakash/File Photo <20>I stand by every question on poor governance raised in my speech to Infosys investors,<2C> Murthy said in an emailed statement late on Tuesday after the results.<2E>The fact remains that none of these questions have been answered by the Infosys board with the transparency it deserves,<2C> he said, expressing disappointment.OUTLOOK CUT Infosys cut its expected full-year revenue growth to 5.5 percent-6.5 percent in constant currency, compared with its previous guidance of a 6.5-8.5 percent increase.Profit after tax rose 3.3 percent to 37.26 billion rupees ($573 million) in the second quarter, beating the average analysts<74> estimate of 35.23 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters data.Bengaluru-based Infosys said its revenue from operations rose 1.5 percent to 175.67 billion rupees in the second quarter. Revenue from the financial services segment rose marginally to 47.18 billion rupees.Harit Shah, research analyst at Reliance Securities, said he had expected a trimming in the revenue growth forecast but had hoped for a smaller cut.<2E>The churn of top management and these board-related issues could have meant an impact in terms of clients freezing their programmes,<2C> said Shah.Infosys<79>s ADRs were trading down 3.5 percent at 1550 GMT after earlier dipping nearly 5 percent.($1 = 65.0225 Indian rupees)Additional reporting by Jessica Kuruthukulangara; Writing by Aditi Shah; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Susan Fenton and Adrian Croft '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/infosys-results/infosys-posts-surprise-3-3-percent-rise-in-q2-profit-idINKBN1CT1BU'|'2017-10
'aaec2c62723b0d28f8d6073e3542423f73696740'|'Can an interest rate rise halt UK inflation? Experts debate the data'|'David Blanchflower P rofessor of economics at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and member of the Bank of England<6E>s monetary policy committee (MPC) from June 2006 to May 2009 Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Blanchflower. Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images The big news this month was the mea culpa from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that they had got it all wrong for years. They admitted the 16 forecasts they had done since they were set up had under-estimated the impact of austerity on output. In each of the disastrous 16 they predicted that productivity would rise like a rocket when in fact it has remained as flat as a pancake. Despite the fact that growth never happened they continued to forecast each successive time that output per man would follow exactly the same path; so there was no learning. Output per man hour today is essentially unchanged ever since the austerity was imposed by the coalition too effect.Q&A What is inflation and why does it matter? Show Hide Inflation is when prices rise. Deflation is the opposite <20> price decreases over time <20> but inflation is far more common.If inflation is 10%, then a <20>50 pair of shoes will cost <20>55 in a year''s time and <20>60.50 a year after that.Inflation eats away at the value of wages and savings <20> if you earn 10% on your savings but inflation is 10%, the real rate of interest on your pot is actually 0%.A relatively new phenomenon, inflation has become a real worry for governments since the 1960s.As a rule of thumb, times of high inflation are good for borrowers and bad for investors.Mortgages are a good example of how borrowing can be advantageous <20> annual inflation of 10% over seven years halves the real value of a mortgage.On the other hand, pensioners, who depend on a fixed income, watch the value of their assets erode.The government''s preferred measure of inflation, and the one the Bank of England takes into account when setting interest rates, is the consumer price index (CPI).The retail prices index (RPI) is often used in wage negotiations.Was this helpful? Thank you for your feedback. This means the OBR<42>s next forecast which will come in November for the budget will inevitably mean their predictions for growth will have to be slashed by at least half. As a consequence, the public finances are in much worse shape than the chancellor has claimed, given there is likely much less growth. It remains unclear whether the OBR are just incompetent or are the government<6E>s poodle. The public pays for this nonsense.Fears of Brexit continue to have a major negative effect on the economy. The fall in the pound, which picked up recently, has had a major impact on inflation, which hit 3% this month. Inflation will likely fall back in 2018 as these one-off effects drop out of the calculations which means this is no time for a rate rise as the economy slows.How has the Brexit vote affected the UK economy? October verdict Read more While the jump in inflation will damage the spending power of consumers, the September figures will prove a boost to pensioners as they are used to set the increase in pension payments for next year. Workers continue to be hit hard as real wages fall, because prices are rising faster than wages. Both the OBR and MPC have also been much too optimistic on wage growth wrongly expecting 4% with outcomes around 2% for the last six years. Consequently, high street sales also slumped in September, pushing the British retail sector to its lowest growth rate in four years. The economy continues to slow. Oh dear.Andrew Sentance Senior economic adviser at the PwC consultancy and member of the Bank<6E>s MPC from October 2006 to May 2011 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andrew Sentance. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian The past month has seen a further surge in inflation, while the data on economic growth has been relatively subdued. The main drag on the UK economy at present is consumer spending, with retail sales volumes recor
'2f9c44aafaf62a0a45924c5f8b1df464a950da76'|'BRIEF-CAI International enters into sales agreement'|' 56 PM / in 7 minutes BRIEF-CAI International enters into sales agreement Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 23 (Reuters) - CAI International Inc * CAI International - entered into sales agreement, relating to which may from time to time offer and sell up to 2 million shares of common stock Source text: ( bit.ly/2y0CDjV )  '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-cai-international-enters-into-sale/brief-cai-international-enters-into-sales-agreement-idUSFWN1MY10S'|'2017-10-23T23:55:00.000+03:00'
'45af83518f32814e83f9181fdc9caf317b1e2ea9'|'UK mobile masts group Arqiva launches 1.5 billion pound IPO'|'October 23, 2017 / 6:21 AM / Updated 10 minutes ago British masts group Arqiva broadcasts 1.5 billion pound IPO plan Dasha Afanasieva 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British broadcast and mobile masts company Arqiva IPO-ARGL.L plans to raise around 1.5 billion pounds in the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in London so far in 2017. Private equity owned Arqiva, which carried the BBC<42>s first television broadcast in 1936, said on Monday it will use the proceeds from next month<74>s listing to pay down debt. After 2.6 billion pounds worth of debt held by shareholders is converted into equity, Arqiva<76>s implied enterprise value, which includes debt, could be around 6 billion pounds, a source told Reuters following the announcement. Sources familiar with the deal had said Arqiva<76>s owners had wanted to sell it in one go but were pushing ahead with a flotation after failing to agree a deal with potential suitors. Arqiva is likely enter the FTSE 100 index .FTSE and its flotation comes amid a quickening pace in British IPOs. Ready meals supplier Bakkavor, business services firm TMF and credit services provider Cabot Credit Management are among those that have said they are planning to list in recent weeks. Proceeds from IPOs on the London markets as of Oct. 10 considerably outpaced the same period in 2016, but are still short of the peaks of 2013-2015. The listing of at least 25 percent of Arqiva is expected to be the largest in terms of proceeds in London so far this year, according to Thomson Reuters data, although its shareholders, including CPP Investment Board and Macquarie Infrastructure Fund, only intend to sell shares through an over-allotment option of up to 15 percent. Arqiva said that in the year ending June 30, it posted revenue of 944 million pounds; earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of 467 million pounds and an overall loss of 427 million pounds. A source said the closest publicly traded comparables were real estate investment trusts American Towers ( AMT.N ) and Crown Castle ( CCI.N ), and Spanish Cellnex ( CLNX.MC ). Cellnex is trading at an enterprise value to EBITDA ratio of around 16 times for the next twelve months, amounting to a potential enterprise valuation of 8 billion pounds for the British masts giant. <20>Following the IPO, the group<75>s balance sheet will be appropriate for an asset rich infrastructure company with long term contracts, blue-chip clients and strong cash flows,<2C> Mike Parton, Arqiva<76>s independent non-executive chairman, said. Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ), HSBC ( HSBA.L ) and J.P. Morgan ( JP.N ) are acting as joint global co-ordinators and joint bookrunners on the IPO. Reporting by Dasha Afanasieva; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-arqiva-ipo/uk-mobile-masts-group-arqiva-launches-1-5-billion-pound-ipo-idUKKBN1CS0JC'|'2017-10-23T09:21:00.000+03:00'
'458b802169ecfee416c4acb49b029ec4eb7e5115'|'Boris Johnson calls for creativity in Brexit talks'|' 41 AM / Updated 4 minutes ago Boris Johnson calls for creativity in Brexit talks Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Monday urged <20>friends and partners<72> in Brussels to advance Brexit talks to focus on their future trade relationship, adding that both sides now needed to think creatively to find a solution. Boris Johnson, Britain''s Foreign Secretary, arrives in Downing Street for a cabinet meeting in London, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah Mckay <20>I suggest humbly to our friends and partners in Brussels to get on with it,<2C> he said after giving a speech in London. <20>They should grip it, go and get on with it and start thinking about the future. I am sure we can both think very creatively and very positively about how to come to arrangements that suit both our constituents on both sides of the channel.<2E> Reporting by Andrew MacAskill; writing by Kate Holton; editing by David Milliken'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-johnson/boris-johnson-calls-for-creativity-in-brexit-talks-idUKKBN1CS12W'|'2017-10-23T12:38:00.000+03:00'
'51c06c597477f7350203ef73172585196f70bb16'|'Southeast Asian oil demand to keep growing until at least 2040 - IEA'|'October 24, 2017 / 3:44 AM / in 2 hours IEA sees Southeast Asia oil demand growing until at least 2040 Florence Tan 3 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Southeast Asian demand for oil will keep growing until at least 2040 as emerging nations there rely on the fossil fuel to transport their rapidly growing populations, ship goods and make plastics, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday. FILE PHOTO: An employee pumps petrol into a car at a petrol station in Hanoi, Vietnam December 20, 2016. REUTERS/Kham/File Photo Oil usage in the region will expand to around 6.6 million barrels per day by 2040 from 4.7 million bpd now, with the number of road vehicles increasing by two-thirds to around 62 million, the agency said in a report. It did not make any forecasts beyond 2040. A global push to replace combustion engines in vehicles with electric-powered ones to fight climate change has raised concerns in the oil industry that demand for the commodity could peak in the next 10-20 years. But oil will continue to meet around 90 percent of transport-related demand in Southeast Asia, especially for trucks and ships, Keisuke Sadamori, the IEA<45>s director of energy markets and security, said at the Singapore International Energy Week. <20>Unless there are any drastic technological changes that can decarbonize these areas, we do not expect oil demand to fall,<2C> he said. Oil demand from the petrochemicals sector, one of the largest users of the fossil fuel, will also grow fairly substantially, Sadamori said. Oil can be used as a raw material for plastics and textiles. The IEA expects electricity to account for only 1 percent of transport energy demand in 2040, saying there will be only about 4 million electric cars in a total passenger vehicle stock of 62 million. Meanwhile, Southeast Asia<69>s overall energy demand is expected to climb nearly 60 percent by 2040 from now, led by power generation, as rising incomes in the region spur more people to buy electric appliances including air conditioners, the IEA said. The region will have universal access to electricity in the early 2030s and is expected to install more than 565 gigawatts (GW) of power-generation capacity in 2040, from 240 GW today, the agency said. Coal and renewables account for almost 70 percent of new output, it added. Coal alone will account for almost 40 percent of the growth while renewables will quadruple by 2040 to become the second largest source of electricity after coal, overtaking gas, IEA forecasts showed. Southeast Asia will become a key driver for energy demand globally as its economy triples in size and its total population grows by a fifth, the IEA said. But the region<6F>s net energy import bill is also climbing as oil production declines, raising concerns over energy security. Southeast Asia will have to fork out more than $300 billion in 2040 for net energy imports, equivalent to about 4 percent of the region<6F>s total gross domestic product, the IEA said. <20>Apart from the mounting import bill, the region<6F>s increasing dependence on imported energy raises significant energy security concerns,<2C> the agency said. Reporting by Florence Tan; Additional reporting by Gavin Maguire; Editing by Joseph Radford '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-asia-energy-iea/southeast-asian-oil-demand-to-keep-growing-until-at-least-2040-iea-idINKBN1CT03R'|'2017-10-24T06:28:00.000+03:00'
'9d0e603894fdda8dcf67b431db43ce0d9a820bcc'|'Kobe Steel plant is under inspection by Japan ministry - Kyodo'|'Reuters TV United States October 24, 2017 / 12:17 AM / Updated an hour ago Kobe Steel plant is under inspection by Japan ministry: Kyodo Reuters Staff 2 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - One of the Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ) plants at the heart of a product data cheating scandal is being inspected by Japan<61>s transport ministry, Kyodo News reported on Tuesday. FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the signboard of Kobe Steel at the group''s Tokyo headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo Ministry officials started the checks on Monday at Kobe Steel<65>s Daian plant in Mie prefecture west of Tokyo, Kyodo reported, citing a source close to the matter. The plant produces aluminum used in a passenger aircraft being developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, ( 7011.T ) according to the Kyodo report. Mitsubishi Heavy has said there are no concerns over safety with aluminum parts supplied by Japan<61>s third-largest steelmaker, Kyodo reported. Kobe Steel sent shocks through global supply chains with its admission earlier this month that it had shipped products used in cars, trains, planes and other equipment with fabricated data on customer specifications. The company sank deeper into crisis on Friday when said it had lost some customers to competitors because of the widespread cheating and had violated statutory standards set by Japan<61>s industry ministry. [nL4N1MV3TO] Reporting by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Stephen Coates'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal/kobe-steel-plant-is-under-inspection-by-japan-ministry-kyodo-idUKKBN1CT00P'|'2017-10-24T03:07:00.000+03:00'
'44bc1b1bab44f1b7a622bf2d451f48defed1f261'|'Nissan''s domestic sales drop after inspection scandal: Nikkei'|'October 23, 2017 / 10:38 PM / in 6 hours Nissan''s domestic sales drop after inspection scandal: Nikkei Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co Ltd<74>s ( 7201.T ) domestic sales for the Oct. 1 to Oct. 20 period plummeted 20 percent following recent allegations of misconduct in its inspection procedures, the Nikkei said. FILE PHOTO - Logo of the Nissan Motor Co. is displayed at the 44th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan, November 2, 2015. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo The Yokohama-based automaker''s domestic sales fell to 12,300 units during the period, the newspaper reported. ( s.nikkei.com/2lc9nAm ) Last week, the country<72>s second-largest automaker said it would halt production of domestic market vehicles at all six of its Japanese assembly plants to consolidate their inspection lines to comply with the country<72>s transport ministry requirements. The inspection scandal was expected to end the company<6E>s 11-month streak of year-on-year domestic sales growth through September, the business daily said. The company could not immediately reached for comment. Reporting by Sumeet Gaikwad in Bengaluru; Editing by Andrew Hay '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/nissan-recall/nissans-domestic-sales-drop-after-inspection-scandal-nikkei-idINKBN1CS2U7'|'2017-10-24T01:37:00.000+03:00'
'22fb58031865d15a163319f5f530d400bd8e3add'|'UPDATE 1-Nigeria''s senate to probe Etisalat Nigeria loan default'|'October 24, 2017 / 12:47 PM / Updated 22 minutes ago UPDATE 1-Nigeria''s senate to probe Etisalat Nigeria loan default Reuters Staff (Recasts with vote in favour, adds details) By Camillus Eboh and Paul Carsten ABUJA, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Nigeria<69>s Senate voted in favour on Tuesday of launching an investigation into the default on a $1.2 billion loan earlier this year by Etisalat Nigeria and into how the funds were used. Etisalat Nigeria, now called 9mobile, took out a syndicated loan from 13 Nigerian banks but failed to make repayments earlier this year. <20>The Senate is aware of allegations that the loans had been diverted to other uses not related to the business, as there was no evidence of what the company did with the loans,<2C> the upper house said in an order paper published on Twitter. The vote mandates the Senate Committee on Banking and National Security to launch an investigation, which, if required, will pass its findings on to regulators including the financial crimes agency. In its order paper the Senate also raised questions over the Abu-Dhabi listed parent company Etisalat, which subsequently terminated its management agreement with its Nigerian business and gave up its 45 percent stake. <20>The decision of the core investors to pull out of Nigeria raises issues of suspicion, on the intent of a company in obtaining a loan facility, defaulting and then pulling out of the country, hoping that their shares would be used to write off the debts,<2C> the document said, without naming Etisalat. Etisalat declined to comment. The motion said that, as of 2016, Etisalat Nigeria had started defaulting on its $1.2 billion loan obligations leading to a few bailouts from its parent company in Abu Dhabi. The document also said it was understood that about 42 percent of the loan has been repaid, <20>remaining an outstanding debt of $696 million representing 58 percent of its capital, which Etisalat has failed to serve since 2016<31>. Bukola Saraki, the Senate president, said after the vote that it was important to launch an investigation. <20>We must protect jobs, corporate governance, investment climate in the country. I implore the committee to do a thorough job in the interest of the economy and the country,<2C> he said. Nigerian lenders have picked Barclays to try to find new investors for 9mobile, two banking sources told Reuters last week. (Additional reporting by Lagos newsroom and Stanley Carvalho in Abu Dhabi; Writing by Chijioke Ohuocha and Alexis Akwagyiram in Lagos; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/nigeria-9mobile/update-1-nigerias-senate-to-probe-etisalat-nigeria-loan-default-idUSL8N1MZ3ST'|'2017-10-24T20:47:00.000+03:00'
'e42adec5beac0e8dfe6bfb1faa9609816211e1ae'|'Japan''s Kobe Steel considering withdrawing its full year earnings forecast - Kyodo'|'Reuters TV United States  50 AM / a few seconds ago Japan''s Kobe Steel considering withdrawing its full year earnings forecast: Kyodo Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Kobe Steel Ltd is considering withdrawing its earnings forecast for this fiscal year as it struggles to quantify the impact of its data falsification scandal, Kyodo reported on Monday. FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the signboard of Kobe Steel at the group''s Tokyo headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo Japan<61>s No. 3 steelmaker has forecast a profit for the year through March 2018 after two successive annual losses, but the outlook has been clouded by the potential fallout from the falsification scandal that has sent shockwaves along global supply chains. On Friday the company admitted that it has lost some customers to competitors as it revealed widespread data falsification has extended to its mainstream steel sheet business. A Kobe Steel spokesman said the report did not come from the company. <20>We are making preparations for our earnings announcement and can<61>t make any further comment,<2C> he said. The steelmaker is due to report its first-half results on Oct. 30. Reporting by Sam Nussey and Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Christian Schmollinger'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal/japans-kobe-steel-considering-withdrawing-its-full-year-earnings-forecast-kyodo-idUKKBN1CS0XD'|'2017-10-23T11:47:00.000+03:00'
'd0888708a8d359570d589acc52e21c8e309620b3'|'UPDATE 2-Hudson''s Bay to sell Lord & Taylor Fifth Ave building, shares jump'|'(Updates with share price in 3rd paragraph, details throughout)By Nichola Saminather and Yashaswini SwamynathanOct 24 (Reuters) - Canadian department store operator Hudson<6F>s Bay Co agreed to sell its Lord & Taylor building for $850 million to SoftBank-backed WeWork Cos and shrink the flagship store on New York<72>s Fifth Avenue to a quarter of its current size, HBC said on Tuesday.HBC also reaffirmed a commitment to its European operations despite opposition from activist investor Jonathan Litt, who is considering seeking the removal of some directors.HBC shares jumped as much as 8.7 percent in Toronto, their biggest intraday gain in two months.Hudson<6F>s Bay also said private equity firm Rhone Capital will invest $500 million in HBC, with the transactions reducing its debt by C$1.6 billion ($1.3 billion) and increasing liquidity by C$1.1 billion.<2E>As we<77>ve said and done in the past multiple times, if there<72>s an opportunity for someone to give us a very high valuation on one of our assets, we<77>d be willing to sell it,<2C> Richard Baker, HBC executive chairman and interim chief executive officer, told Reuters.He added that WeWork, which provides shared workspace for entrepreneurs and startups, is paying a 30 percent premium to the Lord & Taylor building<6E>s last appraised value.The Lord & Taylor store in New York will operate through the 2018 holiday season, then be reduced in size to 150,000 square feet from the current 650,000 square feet, with the building converted to WeWorks<6B> headquarters.HBC, which also owns the Saks Fifth Avenue chain, faces pressure to extract more value from its real estate assets at a time when brick-and-mortar retailers lose market share to more nimble online operators.Litt, founder of hedge fund Land & Buildings, has valued HBC<42>s real estate at C$35 a share, and has called for HBC to sell some stores, convert them to alternate uses or go private.He said on Monday he would call a special shareholder meeting to potentially remove directors. The abrupt departure of CEO Gerald Storch, announced on Friday, was an attempt by the board to <20>buy time and placate investors to address underperformance and undervaluation,<2C> he said.Land & Buildings holds about 5 percent of HBC shares.Following the CEO announcement, Baker sought to ease concerns about potential cuts at its struggling German department store chain Kaufhof.<2E>We<57>re very committed to our HBC Europe enterprise, we<77>ve no interest, no discussion, no need of changing our strategy in any way, or selling the business to anybody,<2C> he said on Tuesday.WeWork will also lease space at Hudson<6F>s Bay stores in Toronto and Vancouver and Galeria Kaufhof in Frankfurt. It could also add 20 WeWork locations in HBC businesses around the world, Baker said.WeWork Cos said on Aug. 24 it received an additional $3 billion investment from Japan<61>s SoftBank Group and its Vision Fund to ramp up its expansion globally. SoftBank had already invested $1.4 billion to fund expansion in China, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere in southeast Asia. ($1 = 1.2640 Canadian dollars) (Reporting by Nichola Saminather in Toronto and Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr and Jeffrey Benkoe) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/hudsons-bay-investment/update-2-hudsons-bay-to-sell-lord-taylor-fifth-ave-building-shares-jump-idINL4N1MZ4WW'|'2017-10-24T12:55:00.000+03:00'
'27558e83d6efd17e51710274b211cd52bba8807a'|'Deal between CEFC and Russia''s Rosneft does not hinge on VTB financing: VTB'|'MOSCOW (Reuters) - A deal between CEFC China Energy and Russian oil giant Rosneft ( ROSN.MM ) does not depend on whether VTB ( VTBR.MM ) provides financing to CEFC, VTB CEO Andrei Kostin said on Tuesday.Kostin was speaking on the Rossiya-24 TV channel.CEFC China Energy is in talks with VTB to raise around $5 billion in loans to finance the acquisition of a stake in Rosneft ( ROSN.MM ), a banking source familiar with the talks told Reuters on Tuesday.Reporting by Polina Devitt; Writing by Dmitry Soloyov; Editing by Andrew Osborn '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-cefc-rosneft-oil-funding/deal-between-cefc-and-russias-rosneft-does-not-hinge-on-vtb-financing-vtb-idINKBN1CT1U6'|'2017-10-24T11:15:00.000+03:00'
'deacfa90a711f89637dc42ef9702ea4d9b28ee0e'|'UPDATE 1-Hasbro says Toys''R''Us collapse will hit holiday sales'|'October 23, 2017 / 11:15 AM / in 8 minutes UPDATE 1-Hasbro says Toys''R''Us collapse will hit holiday sales Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Adds details, share price) Oct 23 (Reuters) - Hasbro Inc warned on Monday of weaker holiday-season sales due to the bankruptcy of its largest customer Toys<79>R<EFBFBD>Us, while reporting higher-than-expected quarterly results on demand for My Little Pony and Transformers toys. The company said its revenue for the current quarter will increase 4 percent to 7 percent over last year<61>s $1.63 billion. That translates to $1.7 billion to $1.74 billion, below the average analyst estimate of $1.82 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Toys<79>R<EFBFBD>Us, the largest toy retail chain in the United States, filed for bankruptcy in September with $5 billion due to creditors such as Mattel and Hasbro. The bankruptcy raised fears that the toymakers would be unable to sell inventories during the key holiday season. Hasbro said its third-quarter revenue and operating profit were already affected by the bankruptcy, but still posted a 3 percent increase in profit and a 7 percent rise in revenue. The company reported a profit of $265.6 million, or $2.09 per share, for the quarter and revenue of $1.79 billion, helped by strong demand for games such as Monopoly and Magic: The Gathering and toys based on its successful My Little Pony franchise. Analysts on average had expected sales of $1.78 billion and a profit of $1.94 per share. (Reporting by Gayathree Ganesan; editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/hasbro-results/update-1-hasbro-says-toysrus-collapse-will-hit-holiday-sales-idUSL4N1MY3T8'|'2017-10-23T14:15:00.000+03:00'
'b58937fd94e1107f576d268efb8fa9e87d4d3415'|'Ex-HSBC executive found guilty of fraud in $3.5 billion currency trade'|'October 23, 2017 / 4:35 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago Ex-HSBC executive found guilty of fraud in $3.5 billion currency trade Reuters Staff 1 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. jury on Monday found a former HSBC Holdings Plc( HSBA.L ) executive guilty of defrauding Cairn Energy Plc( CNE.L ) in a $3.5 billion (<28>2.6 billion) currency trade in 2011. FILE PHOTO: Mark Johnson, a British citizen who at the time of his arrest was HSBC''s global head of foreign exchange cash trading, exits following a hearing at the U.S. Federal Court in Brooklyn, New York, U.S. on August 29, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo The verdict was read in federal court in Brooklyn, where Mark Johnson was on trial for nearly four weeks. U.S. prosecutors have said that Johnson, formerly head of HSBC<42>s global foreign exchange cash trading desk, schemed to ramp up the price of British pounds before executing a trade for Cairn, making millions for HSBC at Cairn<72>s expense. Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hsbc-usa-crime/ex-hsbc-executive-found-guilty-of-fraud-in-3-5-billion-currency-trade-idUKKBN1CS296'|'2017-10-23T19:42:00.000+03:00'
'2502d4a82c688ceb6bfc5cc84fe24b43b1ddae72'|'Boeing, Mitsubishi Heavy reach deal to cut costs of 787 wing production'|'Take Five - World markets themes for the week ahead business Analyst fees under scrutiny as EU rules loom - thinktank EU script to help May settle Brexit bill Reuters TV United States October 23, 2017 / 5:56 AM / in 4 minutes Boeing, Mitsubishi Heavy reach deal to cut costs of 787 wing production Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Boeing Co ( BA.N ) and Japan<61>s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (MHI) ( 7011.T ) said on Monday they had agreed on steps to reduce the cost of producing the wings of the 787 Dreamliner. FILE PHOTO: Workers at South Carolina Boeing work on a 787 Dreamliner for Air India at the plant''s final assembly building in North Charleston, South Carolina December 19, 2013. REUTERS/Randall Hill/File Photo The pair will also study advanced aerostructure technologies for future generation commercial aircraft, they said in a joint statement. MHI manufactures 787 composite wings at its factory in Nagoya. Under the new agreement, MHI will pursue increased efficiency in its production system and supply-chain through lean production methods, automation and other activities. Reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-mhi-dreamliner/boeing-mitsubishi-heavy-reach-deal-to-cut-costs-of-787-wing-production-idUKKBN1CS0HD'|'2017-10-23T08:53:00.000+03:00'
'b64873c70be49a29dc3ce6f4eaa38e01893b4035'|'Singapore to halt car population growth from next year'|'October 23, 2017 / 10:01 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Singapore to halt car population growth from next year Reuters Staff 2 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore, one of the world<6C>s most expensive places to own a vehicle, will not allow any growth in its car population from February, citing the small city-state<74>s land scarcity and billions of dollars in planned public transport investments. FILE PHOTO - People look at cars on display at a mall in Singapore April 28, 2016. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo The Land Transport Authority (LTA) said it was cutting the permissible vehicle growth rate in the city-state to 0 percent from the current 0.25 percent per annum for cars and motorcycles. The rate will be reviewed in 2020. Singapore tightly controls its vehicle population by setting an annual growth rate and through a system of bidding for the right to own and use a vehicle for a limited number of years. It is one of the most densely populated nations on the planet and already has an extensive public transport system. Currently, 12 percent of Singapore<72>s total land area is taken up by roads, the LTA said. <20>In view of land constraints and competing needs, there is limited scope for further expansion of the road network,<2C> it said. Singapore, whose total population has risen nearly 40 percent since 2000 to about 5.6 million now, counted more than 600,000 private and rental cars on its roads as of last year. These include cars used by drivers that work with ride-hailing services such as Grab and Uber [UBER.UL], which are becoming increasingly popular. A mid-range car in Singapore can typically cost four times the price in the United States. Singapore has expanded its rail network length by 30 percent and has added new routes and capacity in its bus network. The government will continue to invest S$20 billion ($14.7 billion) in new rail infrastructure, S$4 billion to renew, upgrade and expand rail operating assets, and another S$4 billion in bus contracting subsidies over the next five years, the LTA said. The LTA will keep the growth rate for goods vehicles and buses at 0.25 per cent until the first quarter of 2021. Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-autos/singapore-to-halt-car-population-growth-from-next-year-idUSKBN1CS14K'|'2017-10-23T13:00:00.000+03:00'
'5f0634356dce5230fd57abacbb38459c920f882e'|'Apple, Samsung face new iPhone damages trial - U.S. judge'|'October 23, 2017 / 2:11 PM / in a few seconds Apple, Samsung face new iPhone damages trial: U.S. judge Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - A U.S. judge has ordered a new trial to determine how much Samsung Electronics Co ( 005930.KS ) should pay Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) for copying the look of the iPhone. FILE PHOTO: A Samsung logo and a logo of Apple are seen in this September 23, 2014 illustration photo. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California issued an order late on Sunday, 10 months after the U.S. Supreme Court set aside a $399 million award against Samsung for mimicking the iPhone<6E>s look for its Galaxy and other devices. The Supreme Court said damages could be based only on parts of a device that may have infringed patents, not necessarily the entire device. Koh said the jury instructions at the Apple-Samsung trial <20>did not accurately reflect the law<61> and may have prejudiced Samsung by preventing jurors from considering whether any infringement covered <20>something other than the entire phone.<2E> The $399 million is part of a $548 million payment that Samsung made to Apple in December 2015. Apple had argued that no new trial was warranted, and that the $399 million award should be confirmed. It did not immediately respond on Monday to requests for comment. Samsung, in a statement, said it welcomed Koh<6F>s order. Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Bill Rigby'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-apple-iphone/apple-samsung-face-new-iphone-damages-trial-u-s-judge-idUKKBN1CS1VF'|'2017-10-23T17:08:00.000+03:00'
'ac683301671e4dc09529b62b2b41746e348e3f1c'|'Deals of the day- Mergers and acquisitions'|'(Adds Shanghai Electric Group, Eletrobras, Munich Re, UBS; Updates Cisco)Oct 23 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 2000 GMT on Monday:** A unit of China<6E>s Shanghai Electric Group Co Ltd is near closing a deal to take over a power transmission project in southern Brazil owned by a subsidiary of Eletrobras, an official at electricity regulator Aneel told Reuters.** Reinsurer Munich Re<52>s asset management unit MEAG said that it has agreed to buy a 49 percent stake in Steag<61>s district heating business for the Ruhr Basin.** Bank UBS and France<63>s Caisse des Depots have sold their stake in Norway<61>s offshore gas pipeline system after years of litigation with the government over tariffs, according to the firm they sold, Njord Gas Infrastructure.** AT&T Inc said it had extended by a <20>short period<6F> the deadline to close its proposed deal to acquire Time Warner Inc, to buy time to get the required regulatory approvals for the deal.** Cisco Systems Inc will buy software company BroadSoft Inc BSFT.O for $1.71 billion, in a deal that boosts Cisco<63>s collaboration tools and helps the company diversify its offerings away from switching and routing.** U.S. forest products company Potlatch Corp confirmed it would buy smaller peer Deltic Timber Corp in an all-stock deal that will boost its lumber capacity.** The German government has approved the sale of three Thyssenkrupp submarines to Israel and will provide financial support for the purchase, government spokesman Steffen Seibert told a regular news conference.** Blackstone, KKR and some Chinese investors are among potential bidders shortlisted by Link Real Estate Investment Trust to buy some of its Hong Kong retail assets valued at about $2 billion, three sources said.** Hartford Financial said it would buy health insurer Aetna Inc<6E>s U.S. group life and disability business for $1.45 billion cash in a move that will expand its insurance portfolio and spur its digital technology plans.** Industrial gases group Linde has cut the approval threshold and extended a deadline for accepting its $80 billion tie-up with Praxair, while pushing on with plans to get a green light from regulators.** The board of Mediaset has not yet received a draft for a potential agreement with France<63>s media group Vivendi over a failed pay-TV deal, a board member of the Italian private broadcaster said.** The EEX European power bourse is seeking a partnership with Chinese peer CBEEX to help develop the Chinese market for emissions trading.** Engie is seeking a partner for its liquefied natural gas (LNG) division, the French utility said, after one publication reported that Total might buy the business.** France<63>s Engie SA has pressed for higher bids for its Loy Yang B coal-fired power plant in Australia following the release of a national energy security plan that encourages the use of coal.** Struggling commodities trader Noble Group agreed to sell its Americas-focused oil trading business to Vitol for about $580 million as part of a debt-cutting strategy, and warned of a big loss for its third quarter.** Social Finance Inc discussed a potential sale earlier this year, including with financial services company Charles Schwab Corp, but the talks fell apart over the $8 billion price the online lender sought, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.** U.S. forest products company Potlatch Corp is nearing an all-stock deal to acquire smaller peer Deltic Timber Corp, people familiar with the matter said on Sunday.** Britain<69>s Spire Healthcare has rejected a full takeover offer from South African private hospitals operator Mediclinic International, which already owns nearly 30 percent of its stock.** Emaar Properties expects to sell a 20 percent stake in its real estate development business next month in an initial public offering, it said on Sunday, with the smaller than anticipated sale sending its shares down by more than 2 percent. (Compiled b
'2cad21df32b5b25aa038699c06f4b8958c89bc62'|'Fortum to file official bid for Uniper with German regulators'|'HELSINKI/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Finnish power utility Fortum ( FORTUM.HE ) will officially submit its 8.05 billion euro ($9.46 billion) bid for German peer Uniper ( UN01.DE ) to German regulators on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the company said.FILE PHOTO: A general view of the Fortum headquarters in Espoo, Finland August 18, 2017. REUTERS/Lefteris Karagiannopoulos/File Photo She said Fortum would not release details about the offer, to be filed with Germany<6E>s financial watchdog BaFin, until it has been reviewed and approved by mid-November.Fortum last month clinched a deal to buy E.ON<4F>s ( EONGn.DE ) remaining 46.65 percent stake in Uniper in early 2018, triggering a bid for all shares due to German rules. Uniper is considering Fortum<75>s approach as hostile.<2E>We expect BaFin to thoroughly review the filing,<2C> a said spokesman for Uniper, which fears the group might be broken up if a deal should succeed.<2E>We also trust that the guarantees and agreements between Fortum and E.ON, which have been frequently mentioned but not made public so far, will be taken into account. Until now, we only know of the plans as statements of intent from the media.<2E>Fortum has said in the case of a successful takeover it would not cause Uniper to implement forced redundancies or change the location of its headquarters in Duesseldorf.Shares in Uniper, which was spun off from E.ON last year, are currently trading at around 24 euros, above Fortum<75>s 22 euro per share offer.Reporting by Tuomas Forsell, Christoph Steitz and Tom Kaeckenhoff; Editing by Jussi Rosendahl and David Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-uniper-m-a-fortum-oyj/fortum-to-file-official-bid-for-uniper-with-german-regulators-idINKBN1CT0WO'|'2017-10-24T06:19:00.000+03:00'
'63bc82dea51581a42b174543d3a77ca5f6af34fd'|'Eurowings to withdraw Austria''s Niki brand'|'October 24, 2017 / 3:01 PM / in 20 minutes Eurowings to withdraw Austria''s Niki brand Reuters Staff 3 Min Read VIENNA (Reuters) - Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) plans to scrap the brand name of Austrian airline Niki as it integrates the carrier into its Eurowings budget business, a board member said on Tuesday. FILE PHOTO - Planes of German air carrier Lufthansa AG are seen on the tarmac at Fraport airport in Frankfurt, Germany, June 7, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo Lufthansa signed a 210 million euro ($247 million) deal this month to take over insolvent Air Berlin<69>s ( AB1.DE ) Niki and LG Walter units, plus some short-haul planes, to cement its position as Germany<6E>s biggest carrier and expand its Eurowings budget brand. Eurowings aims to sell flights on current Niki routes under its own brand as soon as antitrust proceedings are completed, Eurowings Chief Executive Thorsten Dirks told journalists in Vienna, adding that he hoped for approval by year-end. Dirks, who is also a Lufthansa board member, said Lufthansa would apply for regulatory clearance at the European Commission early next month. Austrian competition authorities have said they will voice concerns in Brussels because they believe Lufthansa, which also owns Austrian Airlines, would be too dominant in Vienna if it also owned Niki. The German cartel office has said it expects the Commission to take a close look and that it would follow the process closely. Dirks expects the Commission<6F>s approval to be subject to conditions. <20>This can mean that we will have to return slots or reduce capacity on certain routes,<2C> he said. Leisure travel airline Niki, which flies 21 A320 family jets and employs 840 staff, will continue operating as an independent unit fulfilling current collective agreements, Dirks said. He refused to give any details regarding future route planning as it would depend on the European Commission<6F>s conditions. Air Berlin filed for insolvency in August and is being carved up among several buyers. Family-owned Zeitfracht agreed a deal to buy Air Berlin<69>s cargo marketing platform Leisure Cargo for an undisclosed price on Tuesday. With the Air Berlin deal, Eurowings<67> workforce will increase to about 10,000 people from 7,000, Lufthansa has said. Eurowings hopes for a revenue boost of more than 1 billion euros. Reporting by Kirsti Knolle; Editing by Susan Fenton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-air-berlin-lufthansa-eurowings/eurowings-to-withdraw-austrias-niki-brand-idUKKBN1CT24T'|'2017-10-24T18:00:00.000+03:00'
'a8d2ae42eefc96e1d6eba2ae8b02ebc58da837dd'|'Executives spooked as hopes for early Brexit transition deal fade'|'October 24, 2017 / 4:53 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago Executives spooked as hopes for early Brexit transition deal fade Andrew MacAskill , Anjuli Davies 5 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Executives at some of Britain<69>s largest companies have reacted with alarm to Prime Minister Theresa May<61>s statement that the details of any transitional arrangements with the European Union may not be known until a broader trade deal has been agreed. FILE PHOTO: Britain''s Prime Minister Theresa May addresses a news conference during a European Union leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium, October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir/File Photo Already rattled by the slow progress of Brexit talks, businesses operating in the world<6C>s fifth largest economy have been pressing for months for details about what any transitional EU trade deal will actually look like. May had promised to retain full access to the EU<45>s single market for two years after Brexit and told executives from leading British companies two weeks ago they should consider a transition period as assured. But the prime minister surprised many on Monday when she told parliament that any transition deal would be part of a wider trade agreement - meaning companies may not have specific details about interim trade arrangements for some time. Britain is due to leave the EU in March 2019 and many companies say they need to know the terms of any transition deal at least a year beforehand to reap any benefits while some banks have already triggered contingency plans. <20>The difficulty is timing,<2C> Barclays Plc ( BARC.L ) Chairman John McFarlane told Reuters. <20>We can avoid material dislocation if we know by the end of the first quarter next year, although real money is likely to be spent if uncertainty persists.<2E> McFarlane said he believed Brussels was open to a transition deal that gave businesses and the British government time to adjust to the post-Brexit world, but an agreement needed to be reached as soon as possible. A spokesman for May tried to provide more clarity on Tuesday saying Britain hoped to agree a broad framework for its transitional trade agreement quickly, but declined to say when such a deal might be reached. <20>It is incredibly disheartening,<2C> said Catherine McGuinness, the political leader of the City of London<6F>s municipal body. <20>Clarification around a transition so late in the day will be like closing the stable doors once the horse has bolted.<2E> Reuters spoke to seven senior executives at leading companies in Britain on Tuesday as well as five business organizations to get their reaction to May<61>s comments. TIMING PROBLEMS Concern about Brexit arrangements had been growing even before May<61>s comments on Monday spooked executives further. The country<72>s five leading business organizations warned on Monday that companies would start moving jobs and investment out of Britain if they do not get a transition deal soon. An executive at a company in the FTSE 100 index of blue-chips said its management had spent much of Tuesday morning trying to establish if May had misspoken in parliament, or whether her statements had been incorrectly reported. <20>I can understand it politically and from a negotiation point of view, but from a business point of view, this is going to cause problems,<2C> the executive, who declined to be named, said. Executives at some other FTSE 100 companies were also confused by May<61>s statement on Monday, saying it was the latest example of a lack of coherence from the government about its Brexit plans, and that they needed hard details. Several opposition lawmakers pressed the prime minister in parliament on Monday to clarify what her negotiating stance meant for businesses. <20>The issue of an implementation period is about practical arrangements to reach the future partnership, and you do not know what those practical arrangements are until you know what that future partnership is,<2C> May told lawmakers. Companies have become increasingly vocal in recent weeks abou
'c73509ce42c1e7195268a5eb9126995b3542a81a'|'U.S. law firm files class suit against Rio Tinto over Mozambique coal'|'October 24, 2017 / 2:22 AM / Updated 12 minutes ago U.S. law firm files class suit against Rio Tinto over Mozambique coal Reuters Staff 2 Min Read SYDNEY (Reuters) - A U.S. law firm has filed a class action suit against mining giant Rio Tinto ( RIO.AX ) ( RIO.L ), which is facing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fraud charges stemming from an ill-fated investment in Mozambique coal mining. FILE PHOTO: A sign adorns the building where mining company Rio Tinto has their office in Perth, Western Australia on November 19, 2015. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo Seattle-based Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP said in a statement released in Australia on Tuesday it filed the suit on behalf of purchasers of Rio Tinto American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) between Oct. 23, 2012 and Feb. 15, 2013 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Hagens Berman did not specify the purchasers, nor disclose financial details of the suit. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Rio Tinto declined to comment on the filing, the first publicly announced class action suit involving the coal asset. The SEC last week charged Rio Tinto and two of its former top executives with fraud, saying they inflated the value of Mozambique coal assets in Mozambique acquired for $3.7 billion and concealed critical information while tapping the market for billions of dollars. Rio Tinto and the two former executives have denied the charges. Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-rio-tinto-fraud-classaction/u-s-law-firm-files-class-suit-against-rio-tinto-over-mozambique-coal-idUKKBN1CT074'|'2017-10-24T05:21:00.000+03:00'
'16de274995279ba6f1b0ddabe2f57e92ebf0d266'|'Pilot recruiter Longreach scraps Hong Kong roadshow, citing "roadblocks"'|'October 24, 2017 / 10:52 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago Pilot recruiter Longreach scraps Hong Kong roadshow, citing "roadblocks" Reuters Staff * Comes amid reports of Cathay pilots mulling moves * Longreach said was advised to cancel * Cathay says has no knowledge of development HONG KONG, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Recruiter Longreach Aviation has been forced to cancel a Hong Kong roadshow that scores of Cathay Pacific pilots had planned to attend, and is seeking legal advice how to get around its <20>roadblocks<6B>, according to two emails seen by Reuters. The move comes amid media reports, citing recuitment agencies, that about 200 pilots of Hong Kong<6E>s dominant airline are weighing up job options with mainland Chinese carriers as it embarks on a major cost-cutting drive that has hit benefits. <20>At the 11th hour, roadblocks were put in our way and although we have been advised that we are compliant with HK law, we have also been advised it is better to cancel, rather than proceed, until the issues have been resolved,<2C> Longreach China told a Cathay pilot in one of the emails. <20>We have received legal advice today and unfortunately we are unable to proceed with the events as planned,<2C> Longreach China said in another email. <20>We have had no option other than to cancel.<2E> It was not clear what issues the legal advice was related to, or in what way the roadshow may have been illegal. The emails to Cathay Pacific pilots could not immediately be verified and Longreach China did not respond to a request for comment. Cathay said it had <20>no knowledge of such development<6E>. Cathay has cut 600 jobs as part of a review aimed at cutting HK$4 billion ($512 million) in costs over three years, its biggest headcount reduction in almost two decades, as it seeks to return to profitability in an industry battered by falling ticket prices. <20>It<49>s not only mainland carriers,<2C> said a senior Cathay captain who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the topic. <20>Pilots within Cathay are looking right across the spectrum. I know junior pilots have had job offers with Qantas and Air New Zealand and will be returning to those countries in the coming months.<2E> In recent years, Cathay has seen its market share on international routes eroded by aggressively expanding mainland Chinese and Gulf airlines. This has hurt its competitiveness, coupled with poor fuel hedges and its lack of a budget arm. In comparison, to ease an acute shortage of pilots, mainland Chinese carriers have been offering lucrative salaries. China<6E>s flying schools produce just over 1,000 new pilots each year, far fewer than the 110,000 pilots U.S. planemaker Boeing predicts the country will need by 2035. For example, a position advertised on Longreach<63>s website for a Boeing-737 captain at Air Changan offers a yearly income of up to $294,000. A comparison for Cathay was not available. (Reporting by Anne Marie Roantree; Additional reporting by Brenda Goh in SHANGHAI; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/longreach-hongkong/pilot-recruiter-longreach-scraps-hong-kong-roadshow-citing-roadblocks-idUSL4N1MZ2WM'|'2017-10-24T13:51:00.000+03:00'
'885b4db1f943afb260d2bc4ede657d6ae5dce654'|'Essilor expects further progress on Luxottica deal by year-end'|'October 24, 2017 / 5:44 AM / Updated 4 hours ago Essilor confident on Luxottica deal despite EU probe Matthias Blamont 4 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - French eyewear group Essilor ( ESSI.PA ) said on Tuesday it was confident of securing European Union approval for its $54 billion merger with Italian peer Luxottica ( LUX.MI ) after the EU launched a full-scale probe into its impact on competition. Lens producers Essilor'' s logo is seen in an optician shop in Paris, France, March 15, 2016. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer The world<6C>s biggest optical lenses manufacturer, also confirmed its 2017 outlook after posting stronger third quarter revenues that were broadly in line with expectations. The company had cut its annual revenue growth target in July, citing snags in China and Brazil, but its shares rose on Tuesday in response to higher sales and the general outlook. Essilor Chief Operating Officer Laurent Vacherot said on a call with analysts that the group viewed the European Commission<6F>s in-depth probe into the planned merger with Luxottica, launched last month, <20>with serenity and confidence<63>. Chief Executive Hubert Sagnieres said in a statement Essilor planned to build on its third-quarter momentum between now and the end of this year <20>while also making major strides in its proposed combination with Luxottica.<2E> EU antitrust regulators opened a full-scale investigation into the Luxottica deal in September, saying the deal could reduce competition in the ophthalmic lenses and eyewear market. Their conclusions are expected by the end of February. Luxottica and Essilor had declined to offer concessions during a preliminary EU review. Vacherot told analysts substantial work had already been done on the merger. <20>Authorities need time do to a quality job. The teams are very active and step by step we are preparing and progressing with confidence,<2C> he said. Essilor shares were up 4.21 percent at 105.25 euros at 1005 GMT, making the stock the best performer on France''s benchmark CAC-40 index .FCHI . <20>Performance in U.S and EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) has sequentially improved in each quarter and guidance suggests a similar development in the fourth quarter,<2C> analysts at investment bank Jefferies wrote in a note to clients. CREATING GLOBAL LEADER Essilor and Luxottica, the maker of Ray-Ban sunglasses, agreed in January on a 46 billion euro ($54 billion) merger to create a global eyewear giant with annual revenue of more than 15 billion euros. The merger has been approved by competition authorities in several countries including India, Japan and New Zealand but still needs clearance in North America and Europe. A key regulatory concern for the EU is the possibility that the merged company might persuade opticians to buy eyewear and lenses as a package, leveraging Luxottica<63>s strong brand portfolio which also includes Persol as well as licensed names such as Chanel and Armani. Competition lawyers have said that, to win clearance, the two companies may have to offer commitments to Brussels that the markets for lenses and frames will remain open to their rivals. Given the Feb. 26 deadline set by the European Commission, the merger is not expected to be finalised before 2018 but Vacherot said the group was sticking to an initial target of closing the transaction <20>around the end of the year.<2E> Essilor said sales in the quarter ended September were up 2.5 percent on an organic basis to 1.75 billion euros. Analysts polled by Reuters had on average been expecting revenues of 1.77 billion euros. Sales in North America were up 2.3 percent to 658 million euros despite the ravages in September of hurricanes such as Irma which led to several shop closures in the United States. Luxottica reported weaker-than-expected third-quarter sales on Tuesday after it was forced to close some 570 shops in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Adrian Croft '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.re
'1a1c0673c0a5e15eea6aeb74706cadf94e152393'|'U.S. Midwest oil refiners boost output, cut region''s dependence on Gulf Coast'|' 11 AM / Updated 14 minutes ago U.S. Midwest oil refiners boost output, cut region''s dependence on Gulf Coast Jarrett Renshaw 6   U.S. refineries from Ohio to Minnesota are capitalizing on access to cheap crude from Western Canada and North Dakota oilfields, helping their region break a historic dependence on fuel from the Gulf Coast while redrawing oil trade maps. Since the early 2000s, crude and fuel flows from the Gulf Coast into the U.S. heartland have been cut in half, as crude coming from Canada and North Dakota has pushed U.S. Midwest refining activity to record levels. In 2016, Midwest refining capacity rose to 3.9 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude, the highest annual volume on record. Midwest refiners such as Marathon Petroleum Corp, Phillips 66, BP PLC and Husky Energy have invested billions of dollars on new units capable of turning sludgy crude from Canada into gasoline and diesel. Investments in the Dakota Access Pipeline and other avenues have helped bring in shale oil from North Dakota. <20>Ten years ago, we were 1 million barrels per day short on products, with the Gulf Coast supplying the product. Today, the midcontinent is flush with products,<2C> Marathon Petroleum Chief Executive Gary Heminger said in a recent Reuters interview at the company<6E>s Findlay, Ohio, headquarters. Yet analysts warned that weakening U.S. gasoline demand will make it challenging for Midwest refiners to sell their growing output. The Midwest is land-locked, making it hard to get products to new markets, especially as rival refiners defend their turf. Philadelphia area refiners are currently fighting efforts to reverse a pipeline so Midwest companies can move fuel to western Pennsylvania. (Graphic: Midwest Breaks Free of Gulf, Looks North Instead: tmsnrt.rs/2jZ07Pt ) CHANGING FLOWS For years, Gulf refiners with access to cheaper crudes could underprice their Midwest rivals in Chicago, Indianapolis and other cities in the region. Traders made easy money sending gasoline north in the summer. Now, Midwest plants can compete more effectively thanks to booming production in western Canada and North Dakota of crude that routinely sells at a discount against the U.S. benchmark price. <20>The Midwest is well positioned to supply its region and parts of southern Canada, and will even have excess supplies to send to the East Coast. It<49>s in a good spot,<2C> said Mark Routt, chief economist at KBC Advanced Technologies. At the turn of the century, the Midwest received 3.4 million bpd of crude and refined products from the Gulf. In 2016, that figure was halved. Chicago gasoline peaked at a premium of 14 cents a gallon versus the future contract this summer, much less than the summer premiums of nearly 40 cents in 2014 and 2015. <20>The trade was as slow as I<>ve ever seen it,<2C> said one scheduler who sends barrels along the line. Hurricane Harvey knocked out half of the Gulf<6C>s capacity, while Midwest refiners processed a record 4.06 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil in late August and early September, 12 percent more than the 2016 average. The Rockies, which includes Bakken oil fields, sent 550,000 bpd to the Midwest last year. That is triple the volumes seen in 2010 before Dakota Access opened. Phillips 66 and Marathon Petroleum are minority partners in the line, which opened in 2017 and can pump as much as 525,000 bpd. Canada has sent an average of 2.1 million bpd of crude through June of this year, more than triple the rate from two decades ago, according to EIA data. SPENDING ON UPGRADES Midwest refiners invested billions of dollars to handle the heavier Canadian crude. For instance, Marathon and BP spent over $6 billion to install new coking units to handle the heaviest parts of the Canadian oil. Marathon<6F>s 144,000 bpd Detroit refinery nearly tripled its usage of Canadian crude last year, hitting a record high of 137,400 bpd, EIA data showed. BP<42>s 430,000 bpd Whiting, Indiana, refinery can now process up to 85 perce
'53cb71c42ebf0a9ef59ef229fc3dda636abdb637'|'Engie in talks over possible LNG gas unit sale to Total: report'|'SINGAPORE/PARIS (Reuters) - French gas utility Engie is in discussions with Total and other unnamed companies as it reviews parts of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) businesses, it said on Monday, raising the prospect of a possible sale.FILE PHOTO: The logo of French gas and power group Engie is seen at the CRIGEN, the Engie Group research and operational expertise center, in Saint-Denis near Paris, France, Saint-Denis, France, February 29, 2016. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen/File Photo In a statement Engie said it had launched a strategic review of its upstream and midstream LNG units - which include the liquefaction, transport and trading of LNG - though downstream activities such as regasification was not included.Financial newsletter La Lettre de l<>Expansion had reported that Engie was in talks over a possible sale of its LNG division to Total and a deal could be reached in coming weeks.<2E>At this stage, there can be no certainty as to whether the discussions with the counterparties, including Total, will lead to any agreement,<2C> Engie said.Engie Executive Vice-President Didier Holleaux confirmed to Reuters Engie is looking for a partner for parts of the business. <20>To make LNG profitable, we need to be as big as possible. So we<77>re looking for a partner,<2C> Holleaux said at a conference in Singapore.Officials at Total could not be reached for immediate comment.Engie Chief Executive Isabelle Kocher is in the midst of a restructuring that includes 15 billion euros ($18 billion) worth of asset sales and 22 billion euros of investment.Total plans to start retailing gas and power in France by the end of this year and aims to win about 2 million customers.Reporting by Florence Tan, Sudip Kar-Gupta, Pascale Denis and Sarah White; Editing by Jason Neely and David Holmes '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-engie-m-a-total/engie-in-talks-over-possible-lng-gas-unit-sale-to-total-report-idINKBN1CS0KM'|'2017-10-23T04:33:00.000+03:00'
'd7e2df1e63332884ebb9721f09bc8de10434d136'|'African Rainbow Minerals fires KPMG as auditor'|' 08 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago African Rainbow Minerals fires KPMG as auditor Reuters Staff 1 Min Read JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African miner African Rainbow Minerals ( ARIJ.J ) dropped KPMG as its auditor on Monday, joining a host of other local companies breaking ties with the firm caught up in an influence-peddling scandal. FILE PHOTO: The offices of auditors KMPG are seen in Cape Town, South Africa, September 19, 2017. Picture taken September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings/File Photo KPMG has been losing clients after its own investigation last month found flaws in work it did for the tax collection agency and the Gupta family, wealthy businessmen accused of using their friendship with President Jacob Zuma to win government contracts. The Guptas and Zuma deny wrongdoing and say they are victims of a politically motivated witch-hunt. Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Editing by James Macharia'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-kpmg-safrica/african-rainbow-minerals-fires-kpmg-as-auditor-idUKKBN1CS1D8'|'2017-10-23T14:06:00.000+03:00'
'55cfa51aac401077e844be313a4f78f2ba15418a'|'UK watchdog fines Merrill Lynch 34.5 million pounds for reporting failure'|'October 23, 2017 / 9:26 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago UK watchdog fines Merrill Lynch 34.5 million pounds for reporting failure Reuters Staff 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s financial watchdog has fined Bank of America<63>s ( BAC.N ) Merrill Lynch investment banking arm 34.5 million pounds for its third transaction reporting failure in just over a decade. A worker washes windows high atop the Merrill Lynch building in downtown San Diego, California September 1, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Blake The Financial Conduct Authority said the bank failed to have adequate oversight arrangements, undertake testing or allocate enough staff to properly meet reporting obligations for derivatives trading between February 2014 and February 2016. The bank agreed to settle at an early stage in the investigation and received a 30 percent cut in the overall fine of 49.32 million pounds, the FCA said in a statement on Monday. European Union regulators toughened reporting requirements in the derivatives market following the 2007-09 financial crisis, which left them unable to see easily which banks were exposed to large, risky positions, creating uncertainty in markets. Banks now have to report their derivatives trades in a timely way so that regulators can spot uncontrolled risks building up. It was the first enforcement action against a firm for failing to report details of derivatives traded on an exchange under the EU<45>s European Markets Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), the FCA said. <20>It is vital that reporting firms ensure their transaction reporting systems are tested as fit for purpose, adequately resourced and perform properly. There needs to be a line in the sand,<2C> said Mark Steward, the FCA<43>s executive director for enforcement. <20>We will continue to take appropriate action against any firm that fails to meet requirements.<2E> Bank of America Merrill Lynch said it was wholly committed to complying with all applicable regulatory requirements. <20>When we discovered that certain trades had not been fully reported to a trade repository, as required following the introduction of EMIR, we immediately reported the matter to the FCA,<2C> the bank said. No customers suffered losses, it added. The bank was fined 13.28 million pounds in April 2015 for failing to accurately report transactions between 2007 and 2014. In August 2006, the watchdog fined Merrill Lynch 150,000 pounds for share trading reporting failures. Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru and Huw Jones in London; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bank-of-america-fine-britain/britains-financial-watchdog-fines-merrill-lynch-34-5-million-pounds-idUKKBN1CS10T'|'2017-10-23T13:22:00.000+03:00'
'20aef21d1991147b44170e3604a3e4cae00cfdb8'|'easyJet to open new base in Bordeaux'|'October 23, 2017 / 12:06 PM / in 11 minutes easyJet to open new base in Bordeaux   LONDON (Reuters) - British budget airline easyJet ( EZJ.L ) plans to open a new base in Bordeaux as part of its French growth strategy, the company said on Monday. EasyJet Commercial passenger aircraft takes off in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau EasyJet said it would operate three A320 ( AIR.PA ) aircraft from the Bordeaux base, its sixth in France, when it opens in spring 2018. The carrier plans to offer new routes from the base for both business and leisure travel, CEO Carolyn McCall said in a statement. Reporting by Alistair Smout; Editing by David Goodman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-easyjet-base-bordeaux/easyjet-to-open-new-base-in-bordeaux-idUKKBN1CS1IT'|'2017-10-23T15:05:00.000+03:00'
'f837fa31b3519cda4dadfbc562d5186f82353e93'|'Fidelity Chairman''s video to employees: no tolerance for harassment'|'BOSTON (Reuters) - Fidelity Investments Chairman Abigail Johnson on Monday delivered a direct message to more than 40,000 employees at the asset management company: There<72>s no tolerance for harassment.FILE PHOTO: Fidelity Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Abigail Johnson interviews founder of Bloomberg L.P. and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg about innovation at the Boston-based HubWeek in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder <20>Today, I<>d like to remind everyone that we have no tolerance at our company for any type of harassment,<2C> Johnson said, according to a person who saw the chairman<61>s video message. <20>We simply will not, and do not tolerate this type of behavior, from anyone.<2E>Johnson<6F>s remarks come after recent published reports that Fidelity dismissed at least two money managers after they were accused of sexual harassment.Reporting By Tim McLaughlin '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-funds-fidelity-harassment/fidelity-chairmans-video-to-employees-no-tolerance-for-harassment-idUSKBN1CS25V'|'2017-10-23T18:53:00.000+03:00'
'60b442cc76a8cbb39007bf975ca2435933233433'|'Lam Research CFO says done with major M&A'|'(Reuters) - Last year<61>s failed $10 billion bid for KLA-Tencor Corp ( KLAC.O ) likely marks the end of efforts at any major acquisitions by Lam Research Corp ( LRCX.O ) and other booming producers of equipment for chipmakers, Lam<61>s chief financial officer has told Reuters.Speaking by phone from California, Doug Bettinger also said the producer of industrial equipment for chipmakers - whose market value has doubled to $33 billion in the past year - would likely top the $1 billion it spent on research last year in fiscal 2018.He said the window for big mergers or acquisitions in his hi-tech manufacturing sector seemed to have closed after Applied Materials Inc ( AMAT.O ) own $10 billion bid for Tokyo Electron Ltd ( 8035.T ) was blocked by regulators in 2015.He said, however, that he was not opposed to one or two smaller deals, pointing to Lam<61>s purchase of 3D circuit modeling firm Coventor in August as an example.<2E>I think large scale M&A is perhaps behind us,<2C> Bettinger said.<2E>It doesn<73>t mean that there might not be a tuck in or two left out there, but ... the last two really big deals that the industry tried to do, didn<64>t clear the regulatory process.<2E>Lam, whose products are used to make chips for mobile phones, PCs and wearable devices, walked away from buying KLA-Tencor in October after opposition from the U.S. Justice Department on antitrust grounds.Lam has raised its investment in research and development by nearly 60 percent in the last four years as it adjusts to changing technology trends and stiffer competition in a sector where a handful of firms are now valued at between $30 billion and $76 billion by market capitalization.<2E>Five years ago, we saw the evolutions in the industry that are happening today and pretty dramatically increased our R&D spending,<2C> Bettinger said.<2E>R&D for us is north of a billion (in 2018).<2E>Lam, which reported over $8 billion in revenue for fiscal 2017, includes Micron Technology Inc ( MU.O ), Samsung Electronics Co Ltd ( 005930.KS ) and SK Hynix Inc ( 000660.KS ) as major customers.Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lam-research-m-a/lam-research-cfo-says-done-with-major-ma-idUSKBN1CS27O'|'2017-10-24T00:15:00.000+03:00'
'5f62a23610eaa3b62fce890634f9a6ddd0cb685a'|'Lloyd''s of London estimates net claims for Hurricane Maria of $900 mln'|'October 23, 2017 / 1:43 PM / Updated an hour ago Lloyd''s of London estimates Maria claims of $900 mln, cuts Harvey, Irma estimates Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Lloyd<79>s of London estimated net claims of $900 million for Hurricane Maria, which caused devastation in Puerto Rico last month, the specialist insurance market said on Monday. Buildings damaged by Hurricane Maria are seen in Lares, Puerto Rico, October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson Lloyd<79>s also revised down its net claims estimates for hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which hit the United States in recent weeks, to $3.9 billion from initial estimates of $4.5 billion. Insurers and reinsurers are counting the costs of the three hurricanes, which together with earthquakes in Mexico and wildfires in California, are adding up to a heavy year for natural catastrophe losses. Lloyd<79>s said it had already paid $900 million in claims for the three hurricanes. <20>We are experiencing one of the most active hurricane seasons this century,<2C> Jon Hancock, Lloyd<79>s performance management director said. <20>While it is clear that these catastrophes will bear a heavy toll, the claims are spread across the entire Lloyd<79>s market, which has total net financial resources of 28 billion pounds ($36.92 billion).<2E> Hancock said that while Lloyd<79>s was cutting its earlier estimates for Harvey and Irma, <20>this is a developing situation and there continues to be a high degree of uncertainty around any claims estimate<74>. Reporting by Carolyn Cohn; editing by Maiya Keidan '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-insurance-hurricane/lloyds-of-london-estimates-net-claims-for-hurricane-maria-of-900-million-idUSKBN1CS1SH'|'2017-10-23T16:36:00.000+03:00'
'596624219a5fbb55269589909d137297bdc5e1a3'|'BOJ warns of structural woes hurting private banks'' profits'|'Reuters TV United States  40 AM / a minute ago BOJ warns of structural woes hurting private banks'' profits Leika Kihara 3 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese banks lag behind their global counterparts in boosting profitability as they compete for dwindling lending opportunities in a shrinking market, the country<72>s central bank said on Monday. FILE PHOTO - A man runs past the Bank of Japan (BOJ) building in Tokyo, Japan, July 29, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo Prolonged ultra-loose monetary policy has squeezed margins of financial institutions in many advanced economies including Japan, where its central bank caps borrowing costs at zero percent through aggressive money printing to reflate growth. But structural factors are also behind declining profits at Japanese banks which, if left unaddressed, could destabilize the banking system, the Bank of Japan said. <20>Financial institutions in advanced economies with low interest rates are all facing falling profitability. But global comparisons show profitability is particularly low in Japan,<2C> the central bank said in a semi-annual report analyzing the banking system. <20>Japanese banks may be saddled with an excess of employees and outlets, which is intensifying competition within the industry and hurting profitability,<2C> it said. Many regional banks lack major sources of revenue beyond lending, as they struggle to charge transaction and advisory fees to customers unaccustomed to paying money for such services, the report said. Financial services fees make up just 0.01 percentage point of Japan<61>s consumer price index, far less than 0.23 of a percentage point in the United States and 1.20 of a percentage point in Britain, the report showed. Faced with low inflation and tepid economic growth, many central banks like the BOJ, the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, have adopted unconventional monetary easing steps since the global financial crisis in 2008. While the measures were necessary to revive growth, the resulting plunge in interest rates has hurt profits at financial institutions by narrowing their margins. The problem is more acute in Japan, where just over 100 regional banks compete in an overcrowded market that is shrinking amid a rapidly aging population. BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda offered a rare warning in February that low profitability at financial institutions could sow the seeds of a new financial crisis, adding that mergers and consolidation may be among future options. Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Sam Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-boj/boj-warns-of-structural-woes-hurting-private-banks-profits-idUKKBN1CS127'|'2017-10-23T12:31:00.000+03:00'
'f3a0c5cbb18eddc2f1e33940710480b67cc041ed'|'Noble Group to sell oil liquids business to Vitol for $580 million'|'October 22, 2017 / 11:55 PM / Updated 26 minutes ago Noble Group to sell global oil liquids business to Vitol Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Struggling Noble Group ( NOBG.SI ) agreed to sell its Americas-focused oil liquids business to Vitol for a gross consideration of $1.4 billion, as part of its strategy to shrink its businesses to cut debt. The company logo of Noble Group is displayed at its office in Hong Kong, China January 22, 2016. REUTERS/Bobby Yip Singapore-listed Noble also said it expected to report a loss in its third quarter, primarily due to non-cash losses resulting from the sale of certain assets and businesses. Reporting by Anshuman Daga; Editing by Stephen Coates'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-noble-grp-restructuring/noble-group-to-sell-global-oil-liquids-business-to-vitol-idUKKBN1CR0ZH'|'2017-10-23T03:15:00.000+03:00'
'd1e3f42057eb30a5a323406925e1e4b501dd89c6'|'European shares open sideways, Spain underperforms again'|'October 23, 2017 / 7:50 AM / Updated 17 minutes ago European shares open sideways, Spain underperforms again Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - European shares opened sideways on Monday, with Madrid<69>s bourse underperforming its peers for another session as the ongoing crisis in Catalonia continued to take its toll. The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote The pan-European STOXX 600 was up 0.1 percent while Spain<69>s benchmark IBEX fell 0.5 percent, with banks, such as BBVA down 1.2 pct and Banco Santander down 0.8 percent, taking the most points off the index. Other European bourses traded in different directions with London<6F>s FTSE 100 retreating 0.1 percent and Paris<69>s CAC 40 and Germany<6E>s DAX broadly flat. Securitas was the top performer of the STOXX with a 4.2 percent rise after it reported third-quarter earnings, followed by British engineering group GKN, up 3.3 percent, after a report it was considering splitting into two listed companies. A profit warning sent British car dealership chain Pendragon 19 percent lower. The number of profit warnings issued by British companies jumped to 75 in the third quarter, the biggest quarterly rise in almost six years as economic pressures weighed on retailers and support service companies, business services group EY said on Sunday. Reporting by Julien Ponthus, Editing by Helen Reid'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-europe-stocks/european-shares-open-sideways-spain-underperforms-again-idUKKBN1CS0QY'|'2017-10-23T10:34:00.000+03:00'
'385fa62b206f4dc56efa9f9da8cb258075be9b03'|'Brazil telecoms regulator rejects Oi''s proposed fine-for-investment swap'|'SAO PAULO, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Brazilian telecoms regulator Anatel has rejected a request by debt-laden carrier Oi SA to swap billions of reais in regulatory fines for new investments, the regulator said in a statement on Monday, a fresh setback for the company<6E>s ongoing judicial reorganization.In the statement, Anatel said the <20>unsatisfactory<72> progress of Oi<4F>s reorganization, now in its sixteenth month, raised doubts about the company<6E>s ability to honor investment commitments resulting from a fine-for-investment swap. (Reporting by Leonardo Goy; Writing by Gram Slattery) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/oi-sa-restructuring-anatel/brazil-telecoms-regulator-rejects-ois-proposed-fine-for-investment-swap-idINE6N1JV029'|'2017-10-23T10:13:00.000+03:00'
'6fc51f22960464ad60ccb191d5300841cbcd9d16'|'MOVES-Ramesh set to join Jefferies'|'LONDON, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Bala Ramesh is set to join Jefferies syndicate team, banking sources said.Ramesh will join the London office in January from HSBC, where he held various roles between 2004-2017, most recently as director in leveraged credit syndicate.Jefferies has been looking to make hires to its leveraged finance team for some time, holding talks with a team from Barclays earlier this year, although nothing materialised from that. (Editing by Christopher Mangham) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/move-jefferies-ramesh/moves-ramesh-set-to-join-jefferies-idINL8N1MY4OH'|'2017-10-23T12:38:00.000+03:00'
'48e2ac5403677ce1e4ceae65d3a6359ec5cbbe16'|'Smith & Nephew to buy Rotation Medical for up to $210 million'|' 23 PM / Updated 31 minutes ago Smith & Nephew to buy Rotation Medical for up to $210 million   LONDON (Reuters) - Medical technology group Smith & Nephew ( SN.L ), which has been urged by activist investor Elliott Management to shed some operations according to media reports, has agreed to buy a U.S. tissue repair business for up to $210 million (<28>159.4 million). The British company, best known for its replacement hips and knees, said on Monday it would pay an initial $125 million to acquire unlisted Rotation Medical and up to $85 million over the next five years if certain financial targets are hit. Reporting by Ben Hirschler; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-rotationmedical-m-a-smith-nephew/smith-nephew-to-buy-rotation-medical-for-up-to-210-million-idUKKBN1CS1RJ'|'2017-10-23T16:23:00.000+03:00'
'd0c11d597e4be3fa9885371bcecffdedad13ce91'|'Deutsche Boerse board to consider Kengeter''s fate on Thursday: source'|'FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Boerse<73>s ( DB1Gn.DE ) supervisory board will meet on Thursday to consider the fate of Carsten Kengeter, a source said on Tuesday, after the embattled CEO suffered a court setback in an insider trading investigation. FILE PHOTO: Carsten Kengeter, CEO of Deutsche Boerse, attends the initial public offering of Scale at the Frankfurt stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, March 1, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo A court blocked a settlement deal that would have ended the probe, leading supervisory board chairman Joachim Faber to break off a trip to China and return early to Germany<6E>s financial capital, added the source, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. Deutsche Boerse is due to report quarterly results on the same day. Reporting by Hans Seidenstuecker; Writing by Douglas Busvine, editing by David Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-deutsche-boerse-ceo-board/deutsche-boerse-board-to-consider-kengeters-fate-on-thursday-source-idUSKBN1CT1SJ'|'2017-10-24T15:50:00.000+03:00'
'0d29c4ce4ba0417000bcd95bbba6f99c1c411086'|'VW CEO says unaware of price fixing in cartel investigation'|'Reuters TV United States October 25, 2017 / 8:50 AM / in 16 minutes VW CEO says unaware of price fixing in cartel investigation Reuters Staff 1 Min Read STUTTGART, Germany (Reuters) - Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ) has no information that price fixing was part of the alleged collusion between German carmakers, chief executive Matthias Mueller said. FILE PHOTO: Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller attends the opening of the Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt, Germany September 11, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach The European Commission on Monday widened an investigation and searched the premises of Volkswagen (VW) and Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ) on suspicion they had conspired to fix prices in diesel and other technologies over several decades. The alleged secret committees set up by German carmakers discussed standardization issues, Mueller said on Thursday at an auto-industry conference hosted by Germany<6E>s Handelsblatt newspaper in Stuttgart. Separately, Mueller said VW can live well with a Chinese compromise on electric vehicle quotas. To combat air pollution, China wants electric and hybrid cars to make up at least a fifth of the country<72>s auto sales by 2025 and plans to loosen joint-venture regulations to achieve its aim. Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach. Writing by Andreas Cremer'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-cartel/vw-ceo-says-unaware-of-price-fixing-in-cartel-investigation-idUKKBN1CU0YR'|'2017-10-25T11:48:00.000+03:00'
'3a17ca0a3fd0e2fa1255123d52c3cd5669d14411'|'Businesses urge government to reach Brexit transition deal'|'October 23, 2017 / 8:17 AM / Updated 26 minutes ago Transition to be agreed with Brexit trade deal - May Kate Holton , William James 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May signalled on Monday that any Brexit transition deal would be put together as part of a wider trade agreement - potentially stripping companies of the time they need to prepare to leave the European Union. A view of the City of London, Canary Wharf and the Shard, Britain July 7, 2017. REUTERS/John Sibley International businesses have become increasingly vocal in recent weeks over fears that Britain could crash out of the world<6C>s biggest trading bloc without a deal, sending shockwaves through global markets and fracturing intricate supply chains. May has promised to retain full access to the EU<45>s single market for two years after Brexit to limit the disruption for companies. But she told parliament on Monday the full terms of any transition, or implementation period, would be agreed at the same time as the country agrees a new trade deal. That needs to be completed this time next year, just six months before Britain is due to leave the EU in March 2019. <20>An implementation period is about a period which is adjusting to the future relationship,<2C> May said. <20>That<61>s the basis on which I put it forward to the European Union, and that<61>s the basis on which we<77>ll be negotiating an agreement on it.<2E> May<61>s spokesman said the government position was as set out in the prime minister<65>s speech in Florence, responding during a daily briefing session to repeated questions about when companies would see a final transition deal. <20>We<57>re looking to finalise a deal all in one go,<2C> her spokesman said. Several opposition lawmakers also asked the prime minister to clarify what the stance would mean for businesses. Concern over Britain<69>s future trading relationship has been growing for weeks. The country<72>s five leading business organisations warned on Monday that companies would start moving jobs and investment out of the country if they do not get a transition deal soon. An anti Brexit protester adjusts his EU flags outside the Houses of Parliament in London, Britain October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls In a draft letter to Brexit minister David Davis, they warned that time was running out for companies that need to make investment decisions at the beginning of next year. <20>Agreement (on a transition) is needed as soon as possible, as companies are preparing to make serious decisions at the start of 2018, which will have consequences for jobs and investment in the UK,<2C> the draft letter from the five groups says, according to a person familiar with the situation. <20>And the details of any transitional arrangement matter: the economic relationship the UK and EU have during this time-limited period must match as close as possible the status quo.<2E> The letter is due to be sent from Britain<69>s five leading business groups, the CBI, the British Chambers of Commerce, the Institute of Directors, the Federation of Small Businesses and the manufacturing group EEF. Their intervention follows a tweet from the boss of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, who said last week that he was looking forward to spending more time in Frankfurt after Brexit. <20>Just left Frankfurt,<2C> he said. <20>Great meetings, great weather, really enjoyed it. Good, because I<>ll be spending a lot more time there. #Brexit,<2C> he tweeted. London Mayor Sadiq Khan, a member of the opposition Labour Party who campaigned to remain in the EU, said Blankfein<69>s comment reflected a wider thinking in the business community and warned that others could follow suit. <20>He<48>s articulating publicly what many CEOs and investors who love working in London have been saying privately, which is that unless they have certainty about what happens after March 29, 2019, they have got to make a plan B,<2C> he said. <20>He<48>s not bluffing. When I speak to businesses each day, they<65>re not bluffing.<2E> Editing by Larry King'|'reuters.com'|
'cba3d477ec02dd3d2787b6aeb19e69e6b6b4da4c'|'JPMorgan reaches beyond its branches with new mobile account app'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - In its first offering of online bank accounts, JPMorgan Chase & Co on Monday launched a new smartphone app that it hopes will attract new depositors, many of whom are young and may live far from any of its branch offices.The app, named Finn by Chase, allows people to use a phone to open a bank account, make deposits, issue checks, track spending and set up savings plans, bank officials told Reuters last week. Finn debit cards will come by mail for access to cash from 29,000 ATMs.The bank is starting with an initial test of the app account for Apple phone users with ZIP codes in St. Louis, where Chase has no branches, which might influence the trial.The bank, the biggest in the United States, with $2.56 trillion in assets, plans to market Finn in other U.S. cities and for Android phones next year. Later this year it will offer mobile enrollment nationwide for its standard checking and savings accounts.<2E>Finn lets us reach new customers and new markets,<2C> Thasunda Duckett, chief executive of Chase Consumer Banking, said in an interview. The app account, she said, <20>was built by millennials for millennials.<2E>Bankers across the industry want to court millennials as their next generation of customers.Catering to them is seen as way to keep from losing business to big Internet and computer companies and financial rivals, such as Facebook Inc, Apple Inc and PayPal Holdings Inc.At JPMorgan, the app could also show Chief Executive Jamie Dimon how he can take the bank<6E>s consumer deposit business well beyond the 23 states where it has branches.FILE PHOTO: People pass the JP Morgan Chase & Co. Corporate headquarters in the Manhattan borough of New York City, May 20, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo Dimon has repeatedly postponed his years-long dream to expand into new states by opening a cluster of branches to gather more customers. That would be expensive, would require approval of regulators and could be especially risky when people use branches less often.JPMorgan is too big to win government approval to buy another bank to reach more depositors, Dimon has acknowledged.Duckett<74>s team developed the Finn app after interviews with about 250 potential millennial customers since July 2016. It found that many yearn for a lower-stress way to control their spending than trying to set budgets that they often fail to obey.The interviews led Chase to build the app with simple ways for people to sort their spending with emojis tagging what made them feel good or bad, as well as what was necessary or just desired.For example, the bank found millennials generally do not want the app to display on the same screen as spending account balances that show how much money they have in their savings accounts, lest they spend that, too.About two-thirds of Chase customers continue to visit branches at least once every three months. <20>This is for a different set of customers,<2C> said Melissa Feldsher, head of Finn.Some of the features are similar to those that have been produced by fintech companies, such as Moven, which has supplied money management software for TD Bank to offer its depositors. But such efforts have not resulted in strictly online accounts of the scale that JPMorgan imagines.Duckett said JPMorgan designed Finn from scratch, without relying on what fintech companies have created. <20>We always look at what is going on, but we lead with what customers were telling us,<2C> Duckett said.In contrast, JPMorgan has used outside firms as it has developed for applications for auto, mortgage and small business lending.Reporting by David Henry in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jpmorgan-accounts-finn/jpmorgan-reaches-beyond-its-branches-with-new-mobile-account-app-idUSKBN1CS0AH'|'2017-10-23T07:02:00.000+03:00'
'853a69ef094c0ea475a780f4c45397efa8c98273'|'Futures higher after Abe election victory'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks declined on Monday as each of the major Wall Street indexes retreated from a record, weighed down by a drop in technology and industrial shares. FILE PHOTO: The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is pictured in New York City, New York, U.S., August 2, 2017. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo General Electric ( GE.N ), down 6.3 percent, suffered its biggest one-day percentage decline in more than six years after a host of brokerages cut their price targets on the stock, citing higher chances of a dividend cut at the industrial conglomerate. After holding near the unchanged mark for most of the session, losses accelerated late in the session on downturn in technology .SPLRCT, off 0.40 percent. Last week, the Dow and S&P managed to close at a record high all five days, after a strong start to third-quarter earnings and on hopes President Donald Trump<6D>s tax plans move forward after the Senate<74>s approval of a budget resolution on Friday. <20>On the one hand, the market is very extended, overbought, on the other hand so far earnings have come through,<2C> said Andrew Slimmon, portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management in Chicago. <20>The question becomes what happens if tax reform doesn<73>t happen in 2017, does the market sell off into the year-end?<3F> Investors are also waiting for news on the next Federal Reserve chief. Trump told reporters on Monday he is <20>very, very close<73> to making his decision on who should chair the Fed. Of the 97 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 73.2 percent have topped expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data, versus the 72-percent average for the past four quarters. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 54.25 points, or 0.23 percent, to 23,274.38, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 10.19 points, or 0.40 percent, to 2,565.02 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 42.23 points, or 0.64 percent, to 6,586.83. Industrials .SPLRCI, were off 0.8 percent as one of the biggest drags to the S&P of the 11 major sectors. Aside from GE, the group was also pulled lower by a 10.4-percent tumble in Arconic ( ARNC.N ) after the specialty metals maker missed profit estimates and announced a new chief executive. The energy index .SPNY stumbled 0.59 percent, driven by losses in Schlumberger ( SLB.N ), Baker Hughes ( BHGE.N ) and Halliburton ( HAL.N ), which reported results on Monday. Hasbro ( HAS.O ) plunged 8.6 percent after the toymaker<65>s forecast for the holiday season fell below estimates as Toys<79>R<EFBFBD>Us bankruptcy began to hurt its operations. Shares of peer Mattel ( MAT.O ) fell 3.2 percent. The S&P 500 posted 91 new 52-week highs and 6 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 104 new highs and 41 new lows. About 5.84 billion shares changed hands in U.S. exchanges, compared with the 5.83 billion daily average over the last 20 sessions. (The story removes extraneous punctuation in paragraph 5) Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Nick Zieminski '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/futures-higher-after-abe-election-victory-idUSKBN1CS1G1'|'2017-10-23T14:33:00.000+03:00'
'07b6da9b10087cc50fefe674994bf113dca9e890'|'Tencent unit China Literature launches up to $1.1 billion Hong Kong IPO: IFR'|'October 23, 2017 / 12:52 AM / Updated 36 minutes ago Tencent unit China Literature launches up to $1.1 billion HK IPO Elzio Barreto 2 Min Read HONG KONG (Reuters) - China Literature Ltd, China<6E>s largest online publishing and e-book company, launched an initial public offering for up to $1.1 billion on Monday, seeking funds for acquisitions and to expand its digital publishing business. Tencent Holdings Ltd controls China Literature with a 62 percent stake. Private equity firm Carlyle Group LP owns 12.2 percent while Trustbridge Partners, a private equity firm founded by Shujun Li, the former CFO of Shanda Interactive, holds 6 percent. According to a term sheet for the IPO seen by Reuters, China Literature and some of its shareholders are offering 151.37 million shares in an indicative range of HK$48 to HK$55 each. The new shares will be equivalent to 16.7 percent of China Literature<72>s enlarged share capital, with its market capitalization expected to be up to $6.4 billion. Tencent and China Literature did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment on the IPO terms. The China Literature IPO is the latest in a series of high-profile technology listings in Hong Kong. Last month, ZhongAn Online Property & Casualty Insurance Co<43>s hit the market with a $1.5 billion IPO. And in coming days, Razer Inc, a gaming hardware maker backed by Intel Corp and Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, is set to launch an IPO for up to $600 million. China Literature has a business akin to Amazon.com Inc<6E>s Kindle Store, operating a platform with 9.6 million literary works from 6.4 million authors. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley were hired as sponsors for the IPO, with China International Capital Corp Ltd (CICC) and JPMorgan also working as joint global coordinators. Additional reporting by Fiona Lau of IFR; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-tencent-holdings-china-literature-ipo/tencent-unit-china-literature-launches-up-to-1-1-billion-hong-kong-ipo-ifr-idINKBN1CS02O'|'2017-10-22T22:52:00.000+03:00'
'74ce7552b56e7479c6241a010af6c76cbba66652'|'FTSE edges up but profit warnings sink Pendragon, Dialight'|'October 23, 2017 / 9:05 AM / Updated 27 minutes ago FTSE steadies but profit warnings sink Pendragon, Dialight Helen Reid , Kit Rees 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Declines among British banks and Mediclinic ( MDCM.L ) shares kept gains in check on the UK''s main share index .FTSE on Monday, though engineering group GKN ( GKN.L ) was a bright spot. A worker shelters from the rain under a Union Flag umbrella as he passes the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain, October 1, 2008. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo The FTSE 100 closed flat at 7,524.45 points, while the FTSE 250 .FTMC index of mid-range stocks, which hit a record high last week, retreated 0.1 percent. Profit warnings in the UK market have multiplied in recent weeks, and the latest to cut expectations were car dealership Pendragon ( PDG.L ) and lighting products maker Dialight ( DIAL.L ), sending their shares down 15 to 18 percent. Banks were the biggest weight among large-caps, with HSBC ( HSBA.L ), Standard Chartered ( STAN.L ), RBS ( RBS.L ) and Barclays ( BARC.L ) all down 0.1 to 1 percent, tracking a slide in European bank stocks as political uncertainty over Catalonia weighed. Engineering group GKN led large-cap gainers, however, up more than 5 percent after a report the company was considering splitting its aerospace and auto component divisions into two separately listed firms. The firm was also boosted by an upgrade to <20>hold<6C> from <20>sell<6C> by Liberum analysts, who said disposals, a declining pension deficit and new management improving free cash flow could all push GKN<4B>s shares higher. Construction firm CRH ( CRH.L ) gained 1 percent after U.S.-based Ash Grove Cement ( ASHG.PK ) approved its $3.5 billion (<28>2.6 billion) bid for the firm. <20>Confirmation of Ash Grove<76>s approval means that CRH will now acquire the fifth-largest U.S. cement producer,<2C> said Davy Research analysts. <20>The deal is a real coup for CRH,<2C> they added, saying it would reduce CRH<52>s dependence on third-party providers. BIGGEST GAIN Among mid-caps, Spire Healthcare ( SPI.L ) soared more than 15 percent, its biggest-ever one-day gain, after it rebuffed a full takeover offer from its largest shareholder Mediclinic. The South African private healthcare provider fell 2.7 percent, the top FTSE 100 faller. Car dealership chain Pendragon plummeted more than 18 percent after saying full-year profit would not meet previous guidance, blaming falling demand for new cars creating a price correction in the used car market. Shares in rival car dealerships Inchcape ( INCH.L ) and Lookers ( LOOK.L ) were down 2.6 and 8.1 percent respectively. Industrial lighting products maker Dialight also sank, closing 15.3 percent lower after it cut its full-year earnings expectations, citing short-term production challenges. Profit warnings for UK companies have jumped to 75 in the third quarter, the biggest quarterly rise in nearly six years, consultancy EY reported. Pierre Bose, head of European equity strategy at Credit Suisse, said more profit warnings from UK companies were to be expected if the economy<6D>s growth continued to deteriorate. <20>We need results on the Brexit talks because from a corporate perspective, for investment spending, you need better clarity,<2C> Bose added. In a note, Credit Suisse said that despite the UK market benefiting from a global cyclical upturn, it faces significant economic and political challenges. The bank remains neutral on UK equities. <20>The UK is obviously that much more sentiment driven, Brexit focused and currency focused,<2C> said Bose, pointing to slower economic growth, inflation and an absence of wage growth weighing on the market. Reporting by Kit Rees; Editing by David Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-stocks/ftse-edges-up-but-profit-warnings-sink-pendragon-dialight-idUKKBN1CS0YF'|'2017-10-23T12:06:00.000+03:00'
'a441ba276ed072657b53fcb96d0d2ebef279578f'|'JPMorgan reaches beyond its branches with new mobile account app'|' 10 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago JPMorgan reaches beyond its branches with new mobile account app David Henry 4   In its first offering of online bank accounts, JPMorgan Chase & Co on Monday launched a new smartphone app that it hopes will attract new depositors, many of whom are young and may live far from any of its branch offices. FILE PHOTO: People pass the JP Morgan Chase & Co. Corporate headquarters in the Manhattan borough of New York City, May 20, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo The app, named Finn by Chase, allows people to use a phone to open a bank account, make deposits, issue checks, track spending and set up savings plans, bank officials told Reuters last week. Finn debit cards will come by mail for access to cash from 29,000 ATMs. The bank is starting with an initial test of the app account for Apple phone users with ZIP codes in St. Louis, where Chase has no branches, which might influence the trial. The bank, the biggest in the United States, with $2.56 trillion in assets, plans to market Finn in other U.S. cities and for Android phones next year. Later this year it will offer mobile enrollment nationwide for its standard checking and savings accounts. <20>Finn lets us reach new customers and new markets,<2C> Thasunda Duckett, chief executive of Chase Consumer Banking, said in an interview. The app account, she said, <20>was built by millennials for millennials.<2E> Bankers across the industry want to court millennials as their next generation of customers. Catering to them is seen as way to keep from losing business to big Internet and computer companies and financial rivals, such as Facebook Inc, Apple Inc and PayPal Holdings Inc. At JPMorgan, the app could also show Chief Executive Jamie Dimon how he can take the bank<6E>s consumer deposit business well beyond the 23 states where it has branches. Dimon has repeatedly postponed his years-long dream to expand into new states by opening a cluster of branches to gather more customers. That would be expensive, would require approval of regulators and could be especially risky when people use branches less often. JPMorgan is too big to win government approval to buy another bank to reach more depositors, Dimon has acknowledged. Duckett<74>s team developed the Finn app after interviews with about 250 potential millennial customers since July 2016. It found that many yearn for a lower-stress way to control their spending than trying to set budgets that they often fail to obey. The interviews led Chase to build the app with simple ways for people to sort their spending with emojis tagging what made them feel good or bad, as well as what was necessary or just desired. For example, the bank found millennials generally do not want the app to display on the same screen as spending account balances that show how much money they have in their savings accounts, lest they spend that, too. About two-thirds of Chase customers continue to visit branches at least once every three months. <20>This is for a different set of customers,<2C> said Melissa Feldsher, head of Finn. Some of the features are similar to those that have been produced by fintech companies, such as Moven, which has supplied money management software for TD Bank to offer its depositors. But such efforts have not resulted in strictly online accounts of the scale that JPMorgan imagines. Duckett said JPMorgan designed Finn from scratch, without relying on what fintech companies have created. <20>We always look at what is going on, but we lead with what customers were telling us,<2C> Duckett said. In contrast, JPMorgan has used outside firms as it has developed for applications for auto, mortgage and small business lending. Reporting by David Henry in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-jpmorgan-accounts-finn/jpmorgan-reaches-beyond-its-branches-with-new-mobile-account-app-idUKKBN1CS0B2'|'2017-10-23T07:09:00.000+03:0
'ba1796b9018a4145552303112be9d203ffcb6cee'|'Loan insurance still dominates UK financial complaints'|' 14 PM / in 11 minutes Loan insurance still dominates UK financial complaints Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Payment protection insurance (PPI) remains the most complained about financial product in Britain, forcing firms to pay more than a billion pounds in compensation in the first half of 2017, the Financial Conduct Authority said on Monday. FILE PHOTO: A view of the City of London and Canary Wharf. July 7, 2017. REUTERS/John Sibley/File Photo PPI is Britain<69>s costliest financial scandal with complaints increasing by 24 percent to 1.1 million in the first six months of this year, up from 899,000 in the second half of 2016. The watchdog launched a publicity campaign in August featuring an animatronic head of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger to urge people to make compensation claims for mis-sold PPI by an August 2019 deadline. Total complaints against financial services firms totalled 3.32 million, up from 3.04 million. Financial businesses have had to report complaints in a new way since June last year, which has increased the number reported, the FCA said in a statement. Redress to consumers totalled 1.99 billion pounds in the first half of 2017, 82 percent of which was for mis-sold PPI. The total paid out for PPI complaints is heading towards the 30 billion pound mark. Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by David Goodman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-banks-complaints/loan-insurance-still-dominates-uk-financial-complaints-idUKKBN1CS1JX'|'2017-10-23T15:13:00.000+03:00'
'30ab4c4f2e4ab8a153398d9a9c762130c2af2548'|'UPDATE 1-Express Scripts CFO Eric Slusser resigns'|'October 24, 2017 / 8:57 PM / in 2 hours UPDATE 1-Express Scripts CFO Eric Slusser resigns Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Adds details on Anthem contract; analysts<74> estimates) Oct 24 (Reuters) - Express Scripts Holding Co on Tuesday said its Chief Financial Officer Eric Slusser has resigned and named James Havel as his successor, effective Oct 25. The news comes a week after the pharmacy benefit manager<65>s top client and health insurer Anthem Inc decided to launch its own pharmacy business and signed a new contract with drug retailer CVS Health Corp from 2020. Anthem, which accounted for about 19 percent of Express Scripts<74> total revenue in the second quarter, sued the pharmacy benefit manager in 2016 over claims of being overcharged by $3 billion annually. Express Scripts said on Tuesday Slusser is leaving to pursue other opportunities, but would remain with the company through the first quarter of 2018 to ensure a smooth transition. The company said net profit attributable to Express Scripts rose to $841.7 million, or $1.46 per share, in the third-quarter ended Sept. 30, from $722.9 million, or $1.15 per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company earned $1.90 per share, in line with analysts<74> expectations, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The pharmacy benefit manager<65>s revenue fell about 3 percent to $24.68 billion, below the analyst average estimate of $25.64 billion. The company increased the lower end of its full-year adjusted earnings per share forecast by 2 cents to $6.97 and kept the higher end unchanged at $7.05. Reporting by Divya Grover in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/express-scripts-moves-james-havel/update-1-express-scripts-cfo-eric-slusser-resigns-idUSL4N1MZ5QV'|'2017-10-24T23:55:00.000+03:00'
'23a145b52e3bfd10ce9cf83c254584bae1388021'|'Exclusive: Siemens mandates banks for IPO of Healthineers medtech unit'|'FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany<6E>s Siemens AG ( SIEGn.DE ) has mandated Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan as global coordinators for an initial public offering of shares in its Healthineers unit, sources familiar with the matter said on Monday.Siemens confirmed it had awarded mandates to banks to float the medical equipment unit, but declined to name them. Analysts say the share offering, expected to take place in the first half of 2018, could be one of the largest by a German firm in years.Reporting by Arno Schuetze and Alexander Huebner; Writing by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Christoph Steitz '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-siemens-healthineers-exclusive/exclusive-siemens-mandates-banks-for-ipo-of-healthineers-medtech-unit-idUSKBN1CT1PG'|'2017-10-24T20:22:00.000+03:00'
'd52ab76cfda091e5e1b9f5a65c31e5dc41c9ea0e'|'Amazon rivals turn to legal fine print to stem Whole Foods strategy'|'SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Whole Foods Market met a new foe this summer during talks to lease a top retail space in a San Francisco mall: the Target next door.As City Centre mall<6C>s largest tenant, Target Corp ( TGT.N ) had a say over changes to the property. According to people familiar with the lease discussions, Target balked at sharing the mall with Whole Foods because it feared competition from the grocery chain<69>s new owner, Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ).Early attempts to persuade Target failed, and Whole Foods may now have to concede certain Amazon initiatives - such as lockers where customers can pick up goods ordered online - if it wants the location, the people said. Talks are ongoing.A Reuters examination of real estate agreements and interviews with 20 retail landlords, lawyers and brokers show that the strings attached to operating in malls like City Centre present an emerging and little-scrutinized challenge to Amazon<6F>s quest to re-shape Whole Foods.Across the United States, large retailers including Target, Bed Bath & Beyond Inc ( BBBY.O ) and Best Buy Co Inc ( BBY.N ) have legal rights in many lease agreements that allow them to limit what Amazon can do with nearby Whole Foods stores, and where it can open new ones.Documents reviewed by Reuters show bans on Amazon lockers and delivery operations near a Target store in Illinois and also in Florida, where a new Whole Foods is set to open. Lockers for retrieving online orders are a way for Amazon to spur sales through the grocery chain.In Manhattan and other locations, the leases of Whole Foods<64> big box neighbours bar it from selling a range of goods that Amazon has in its massive online inventory, from electronics to toys and linens.Even Whole Foods stores that do not share space with major rivals can face constraints imposed by local governments. A city council resolution in White Plains, New York, restricted the hours when Whole Foods can use a loading dock prior to the grocer locating in the mall.Amazon declined to answer questions about how these restrictions across the country impact its plans.In a statement, Target said it is <20>focused on what<61>s best for the company and delivering on the reasons our guests love Target. Our more than 1,800 stores across the country are a strategic asset and a vital part of Target<65>s future.<2E>The company did not discuss details of the restrictions reported by Reuters, but said, <20>It<49>s inaccurate to characterize lease agreements as our corporate strategy.<2E>Reuters could not determine the full extent of limits on Whole Foods stores because lease deals vary from mall to mall, and many are not public. While restricting how neighbours operate is a standard practice in retail, Amazon is new to feeling the heat.Some mall owners and real estate brokers say Whole Foods will still find landlords who are eager to have the high-profile tenant driving traffic in their malls, and see rivals trying to keep Whole Foods out as short-sighted.But with nearly all of Whole Foods<64> 473 stores subject to lease agreements and plans to add up to 85 stores, according to regulatory filings, Amazon has launched into brick-and-mortar with more constraints and entrenched enemies than in the online world it dominates.<2E>Many people assume this big, 800-pound gorilla is going to come and beat up all of these retailers,<2C> said Terrison Quinn, a senior vice president at brokerage SRS Real Estate Partners. <20>I just don<6F>t think that<61>s going to be the case.<2E>DOZENS OF RESTRICTIONS Amazon wasted no time in making changes when the $13.7 billion Whole Foods deal closed in August. The world<6C>s largest online retailer cut grocery prices, started selling its Echo home speaker in stores and disclosed plans to add lockers to some locations and Whole Foods items to Prime Now, its two-hour delivery program.The Stonestown Galleria, where Target raised concern that rival Amazon might open a store where Macy''s currently stands, is seen in San Francisco, California, U.S. on 
'8f44f9fc99e93dd197f70398a42742a29cac6d4d'|'U.S. companies act on climate despite Trump - survey'|'October 23, 2017 / 11:01 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago U.S. companies act on climate despite Trump - survey Reuters Staff * U.S. firms make up a fifth of environmental <20>A list<73> * Unilever, L<>Oreal top global performers - CDP survey OSLO, Oct 24 (Reuters) - U.S. companies are still among the most ambitious in setting targets to combat global warming despite President Donald Trump<6D>s plans to quit the 195-nation Paris climate agreement, a 2017 survey showed on Tuesday. U.S.-based firms made up a fifth of those in a 2017 <20>A list<73> of 159 companies judged to have ambitious policies on limiting climate change and protecting water resources and forests, according to London-based non-profit CDP. This made U.S. firms the biggest single national group and was similar to levels in 2016, according to CDP, which tracks companies<65> environmental performance and was formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project. <20>We don<6F>t see U.S. companies faring worse in our analysis<69> since Trump took office, said Marcus Norton, chief partnerships officer and general counsel at CDP. <20>The business case for climate action remains despite a lack of support in the federal level,<2C> he told Reuters. Trump has said he will pull out of the 2015 Paris deal and instead bolster the U.S. fossil fuel industry. The U.S. president doubts mainstream findings that climate change will cause more floods, droughts, wildfires, heatwaves and rising sea levels. U.S. companies on the 2017 list include Philip Morris International, Microsoft, Bank of America and Biogen Inc. Norton said the criteria for inclusion on the CDP list were made tougher each year. Separately, CDP said French cosmetics giant L<>Oreal and Anglo-Dutch consumer goods group Unilever were the top performers on the global ranking, scoring straight <20>A<EFBFBD>s on a scorecard that rates corporate policies on preventing climate change, ensuring water security and protecting forests. The two demonstrated <20>how business can reduce carbon dioxide emissions, increase water security and tackle deforestation while making a profit,<2C> CDP said. The two firms have often scored highly. Overall, CDP said 89 percent of companies in a wider survey of more than 1,000 companies had some form of carbon emissions targets, up from 85 percent in 2016. And 14 percent were committed to aligning their goals with climate science, which requires deep cuts in emissions to achieve Paris agreement goals, up from 9 percent last year. (Reporting By Alister Doyle; Editing by Edmund Blair)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/climatechange-companies/u-s-companies-act-on-climate-despite-trump-survey-idUSL8N1MV4AB'|'2017-10-24T02:01:00.000+03:00'
'ada726bd4332f96e35544861b7ef200849739af5'|'Lender IPF evaluates changes to Polish operations'|' 47 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago Lender IPF evaluates changes to Polish operations Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - International Personal Finance ( IPF.L ) (IPF) said it is evaluating possible changes to its Polish operations as it tries to reduce the impact of changes to Poland<6E>s corporate tax rate. The company, which provides small personal loans to borrowers in Europe and Mexico, said on Tuesday that it issued 5 percent more credit in the third quarter. However it is facing challenges in a number of its main markets, with possible tax changes in Poland and disruption in Mexico due to the recent earthquakes. IPF said it had continued to engage with various Polish government ministries to encourage a <20>positive solution<6F> regarding possible tax changes. On Oct 4 the company said that if the proposals went through in their current form, their 2016 tax bill would be between 12 million pounds to 14 million pounds higher. The consumer credit lender said it now expects to see <20>slightly slower<65> rates of full-year credit growth in its Mexican business, which accounts for around 25 percent of the company<6E>s earnings according to Thomson Reuters data. Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Rachel Armstrong'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-intl-prsnl-fin-outlook/lender-ipf-evaluates-changes-to-polish-operations-idUKKBN1CT0N1'|'2017-10-24T09:46:00.000+03:00'
'd562daa247a36d3caed51be4b3fb3221544ceed4'|'Doing the heavy lifting - investors eye tech-tonic shifts for Europe<70>s industrials'|' 17 AM / in 31 minutes Doing the heavy lifting: investors eye tech-tonic shifts for Europe<70>s industrials Kit Rees 6 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Investment funds seeking to invest at the intersection of Europe and technology are finding rich pickings in places that some may find surprising: sprawling industrials like trains-to-turbines Siemens and engineering group ABB. FILE PHOTO: Siemens AG headquarters in Munich, Germany June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo Building on their traditional expertise in factory automation, the conglomerates<65> digital divisions are adding cutting-edge software and systems that help customers design, build and test their products faster and more cheaply. In so doing they bring new value to companies historically linked mainly to customers in the power, energy and mining sectors that have had to slash spending in the past few years due to a precipitous drop in commodity prices. Not only is the divisions<6E> growth outstripping that of legacy fossil-fuel businesses, but a trend toward breaking out their earnings separately in company reports allows investors to see value that was previously buried. <20>Your industrial company today is not your dirty factory bending metals and producing simple and large objects,<2C> said Andreas Fruschki, director of equity research, Europe at AllianzGI. <20>It<49>s a more high-tech, nimble assembly site.<2E> Their efforts are attracting the attention of investors looking for less obvious technology plays as the tide turns against U.S. stocks like Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google, due to their uncomfortably lofty valuations. Meanwhile in Asia the soaring market capitalization of a handful of companies such as China<6E>s Alibaba and Tencent means investors in exchange traded funds (ETFs) who want exposure to a range of companies are finding themselves increasingly exposed to a single sector. The growth opportunities in European industrials are still limited by legacy businesses, however, said Neil Campling, head of global TMT research at Northern Trust Capital Markets. The oil & gas and mining sectors have cut capital expenditure to $706 billion in 2016 from $1.29 trillion in 2013, according to figures from S&P Global, which added that a slight recovery is expected in 2017. <20>But you<6F>re certainly seeing that factory automation, machine vision, automation, industry 4.0, improvements in supply chain systems, all these kinds of things ... (are) enjoying very strong growth,<2C> Campling added. INDUSTRIAL SOFTWARE Siemens<6E> Digital Factory, widely seen as the global leader in industrial software, only started reporting separate results in the German company statements in 2015. The 13 percent of 2016 revenue it contributed is still small fry compared with the power and energy divisions<6E> 40 percent. But while sales in Siemens<6E> power and gas segment declined 11 percent in the fiscal third quarter, digital saw 11 percent growth and accounted for more than a fifth of total profits. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Swiss engineering group ABB is seen at a plant in Zurich, Switzerland October 4, 2016. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo Swiss power grids maker ABB is also winning investors<72> attention thanks to its robotics segment, although oil & gas, mining and other industries still account for more than 40 percent of company revenues. ABB Ability, a digital software and services platform that can connect to robots for remote monitoring and diagnostics, which partners with Microsoft and IBM, is starting to contribute to growth, ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer said in a press release after the company released results for the second quarter that ended June 30. Robotics orders jumped 12 percent year-on-year in the quarter to more than 25 percent of the company<6E>s total. While some technology assets have been developed in-house or through collaboration, others have come from acquisitions. Siemens has spent more than $5 billion in the past 18 months acquiring industrial softwar
'7a4e8218bd49fdd7a45642a77546239ae5c9263f'|'Microsoft to drop lawsuit after U.S. government revises data request rules'|'Reuters TV United States  52 AM / a few seconds ago Microsoft to drop lawsuit after U.S. government revises data request rules Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said it will drop a lawsuit against the U.S. government after the Department of Justice (DOJ) changed data request rules on alerting internet users about agencies accessing their information. FILE PHOTO - A sign marks the Microsoft office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. January 25, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo The new policy limits the use of secrecy orders and calls for such orders to be issued for defined periods, Microsoft Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said in a blog post on Monday. "As a result of the issuance of this policy, we are taking steps to dismiss our lawsuit," Smith said. bit.ly/2gE3kDp The company expects the changes to end the practice of indefinite secrecy orders. Microsoft filed the lawsuit in April 2016 arguing that the U.S. government was violating the constitution by preventing the company from informing its customers about government requests for their emails and other documents. reut.rs/2zLIjv0 The suit argued that the government<6E>s actions were in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which establishes the right for people and businesses to know if the government searches or seizes their property, and the company<6E>s First Amendment right to free speech. The changes will ensure that secrecy order requests are <20>carefully and specifically tailored to the facts in the case,<2C> Smith said. <20>This is an important step for both privacy and free expression. It is an unequivocal win for our customers, and we<77>re pleased the DOJ (Department of Justice) has taken these steps to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans,<2C> the statement said. While Microsoft has agreed to drop its lawsuit, Smith said the company is renewing its call to Congress for the amendment of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act which was adopted in 1986. The DOJ did not respond to request for comment outside regular business hours. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the Trump administration<6F>s appeal of a lower court<72>s ruling preventing federal prosecutors from obtaining emails stored in Microsoft computer servers in Dublin, Ireland in a drug trafficking investigation. Government lawyers argued the lower court ruling threatened national security and public safety. Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-usa/microsoft-to-drop-lawsuit-after-u-s-government-revises-data-request-rules-idUKKBN1CT0I4'|'2017-10-24T08:45:00.000+03:00'
'1a1e810684d4cba2426b2eb7bd7a521ca0cf3865'|'Thousands of Bogota taxi drivers protest Uber, Cabify and higher costs'|'October 23, 2017 / 11:01 PM / Updated 2 hours ago Thousands of Bogota taxi drivers protest Uber, Cabify and higher costs Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BOGOTA (Reuters) - Thousands of taxi drivers in Colombia<69>s capital Bogota began an indefinite strike on Monday to protest private transport services like Uber [UBER.UL], snarling traffic for much of the day as drivers blocked roads and clashed with police. Taxi drivers protest against Uber in Bogota, Colombia, October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Jaime Saldarriaga Taxis drivers complain that services such as Uber and Cabify, which are unregulated in Colombia, take custom away and have an advantage because they are not obliged to pay insurance and other levies. Yellow cabs are also protesting a decision by the city government that would require them to replace taxi meters with software applications to collect fares. They argue the technology is costly and make them more vulnerable to robbery. <20>We want the government to stop Uber, Cabify and any other applications that try to come here,<2C> said William Trivino, a 38-year-old taxi driver in downtown Bogota. <20>Protect taxi drivers who...pay taxes and don<6F>t allow someone with a private vehicle and a cell phone to become a taxi.<2E> Protesters blocked roads and attacked colleagues that did not join the strike. Police threw tear gas to disperse them. There are some 480,000 registered taxis in Colombia, with 53,000 in Bogota, a city of about 8 million people. Uber and Cabify operate in a legal vacuum in Colombia, with the Technology, Information and Communication Ministry saying it cannot block them, while the Transport Ministry says they operate illegally but cannot be closed down. Uber said in a statement that it is a safe and reliable alternative for thousands of users. Cabify said that taxi drivers and app-based services can coexist to provide quality service. Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Helen Murphy; Editing by Cynthia Osterman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-colombia-taxi/thousands-of-bogota-taxi-drivers-protest-uber-cabify-and-higher-costs-idUSKBN1CS2VB'|'2017-10-24T01:52:00.000+03:00'
'bf28ae3f06baee47f9d552f2422ce3074cea4d47'|'Israel''s Hapoalim hires Citi to lead sale of credit card unit'|'JERUSALEM, Oct 24 (Reuters) -* Bank Hapoalim, Israel<65>s largest lender, said on Tuesday it had hired Citi to lead its sale of credit card unit Isracard to either an investor or in the capital market.* Hapoalim<69>s board in April had instructed management to explore options for selling off Isracard, Israel<65>s largest credit card company.* The move comes following new regulation meant to increase competition in the sector by prohibiting the country<72>s top two banks from owning credit card companies. Number two Bank Leumi will have to do the same.* Hapoalim is looking into three options - selling shares of Isracard to the public, selling it to an investor or group of investors, or distributing its shares as a dividend to Hapoalim stakeholders.* The bank has three years to sell the unit - or four years if it sells Isracard to the public. (Reporting by Steven Scheer) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bank-hapoalim-isracard-citigroup/israels-hapoalim-hires-citi-to-lead-sale-of-credit-card-unit-idINL8N1MZ1K4'|'2017-10-24T04:59:00.000+03:00'
'bacb4d13fd74935b9be7306e5f7cb7215371b95f'|'Commerzbank hires advisers amid interest of European peers: sources'|'MUNICH/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Commerzbank is working with two investment banks to prepare itself for the event of a takeover bid from a European rival, several people close to the matter said.FILE PHOTO: A Commerzbank logo is pictured in Frankfurt, Germany, February 12, 2016. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo Germany<6E>s second-largest lender has hired Goldman Sachs and Rothschild to evaluate its options, including a possible defense scenario, they said. Commerzbank, Goldman Sachs and Rothschild all declined to comment.Commerzbank has been restructuring ever since an ill-timed acquisition of Dresdner Bank for 9.8 billion euros ($11.53 billion) in 2008. The move forced Commerzbank to take a government bailout, slash jobs, close hundreds of retail branches and rein in its investment banking.But its strong corporate lending business - Commerzbank specializes in financing Germany<6E>s prized Mittelstand of medium-sized companies - makes it an attractive target for European peers eyeing a stronger footprint in Europe<70>s largest economy.Italy<6C>s UniCredit recently told Berlin it is interested in eventually merging with Commerzbank, people familiar with the matter told Reuters last month.The bank has also caught the eye of other European peers. But the German government, which still holds a 15.6 percent stake, last month denied a report that it favored a merger of Commerzbank with France<63>s BNP Paribas.Berlin has said it would be willing to eventually sell the stake but it needs to get at least 18 euros per share in any sale to avoid a loss on its investment.Shares in Commerzbank, which has a market capitalization of 14.4 billion euros ($16.93 billion), were up 2.5 percent at 11.71 euros by 0800 GMT.While a foreign peer may eventually succeed in buying the lender, a consolidation within Germany is also on the cards.Top executives at Commerzbank and bellwether Deutsche Bank held unsuccessful talks on a combination last year, a person with knowledge of the matter said at the time.Regardless of the outcome, private equity firm Cerberus stands to gain from any deal after recently becoming Commerzbank<6E>s second-largest investor with a 5 percent stake.Goldman Sachs had been in contact with Commerzbank for months, but the mandate was formalized after Cerberus<75> investment in the summer, a person close to the matter said.The bank mandates were earlier reported by the Financial Times.Reporting by Alexander Huebner and Arno Schuetze; editing by Mark Heinrich '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-commerzbank-m-a/commerzbank-gives-defense-mandate-to-goldman-sachs-source-idINKBN1CT0MG'|'2017-10-24T04:39:00.000+03:00'
'a6c8f3f1d0b1221f79099c45c36247c3c2975964'|'International Paper to combine unit with Graphic Packaging'|'(Reuters) - International Paper Co ( IP.N ) has agreed to combine its North America consumer packaging business with Graphic Packaging Holding Co ( GPK.N ) in a deal that values the International Paper division at $1.8 billion, the companies said on Tuesday.Graphic Packaging will own 79.5 percent of the partnership and will be sole operator, and International Paper will own the remainder. The partnership is valued at $6 billion and will assume $660 million of International Paper debt, the companies said.International Paper<65>s North America consumer packaging business produces solid bleached sulfate paperboard and paper-based foodservice products. It is projected to generate adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $210 million in 2017.The deal is projected to be accretive to earnings in its first year and generate $75 million in synergies by the end of its third year, the companies said. Graphic Packaging said it will not change its board of directors as a result of the partnership.Bank of America Corp ( BAC.N ) and Alston & Bird LLP advised Graphic Packaging.Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-graphic-pack-intl-paper/international-paper-to-combine-unit-with-graphic-packaging-idUSKBN1CT1HE'|'2017-10-24T19:22:00.000+03:00'
'f64e754017fdcc71db51178cd92882139dd9ff32'|'Australia''s Nufarm to buy European crop protection products for $490 mln'|'October 23, 2017 / 11:46 PM / Updated an hour ago Australia''s Nufarm to buy European crop protection portfolio for $490 milliom Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Agricultural chemicals maker Nufarm Ltd ( NUF.AX ) said it would buy a range of European crop protection product lines for $490 million to strengthen its position in Europe where it generates its highest crop protection margins. Nufarm said it would buy the product portfolio, which includes more than 50 crop protection formulations, from Adama Agricultural Solutions Ltd ( ADAM.N ) and Syngenta AG ( SYNN.S ). The acquisition is expected to be mid-to-high single digit earnings per share accretive in fiscal 2019, the company said in a statement. The portfolio is also expected to generate revenues of about A$250 million ($195.28 million) and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of about A$95 million to A$100 million in the 2019 financial year, Nufarm added. Nufarm said the deal will be funded by a capital raising of about A$446 million and existing debt facilities. The company would also buy existing product inventory for about $50 million after completing the deal, it said. The company had requested for a halt in trading of its shares earlier in the day ahead of the announcement. ($1 = 1.2802 Australian dollars) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nufarmltd-deals/australias-nufarm-to-buy-european-crop-protection-products-for-490-million-idUSKBN1CS2XZ'|'2017-10-24T02:42:00.000+03:00'
'62a68e44bd531d92b45226e32cb8dc6f71be2959'|'St. James''s Place says third quarter funds boosted by pension demand'|' 19 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago St. James''s Place says third quarter funds boosted by pension demand   LONDON (Reuters) - British wealth manager St. James<65>s Place ( SJP.L ) on Tuesday posted a 3.2 percent rise in funds under management in the three months to the end of September, boosted by inflows into pension products. Total funds at the end of September were 85.7 billion pounds ($113.19 billion), it said in a statement, up from 83 billion pounds at the start of the quarter. Net inflows were 2.4 billion pounds, of which 1.4 billion went into pension products. ($1 = 0.7571 pounds)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-st-james-s-place-trading/st-jamess-place-says-third-quarter-funds-boosted-by-pension-demand-idUKKBN1CT0L0'|'2017-10-24T09:19:00.000+03:00'
'3690b09a554b9cd44ddcfcbf3c4a880552e8d5b3'|'Firms not bluffing when they threaten to shift away from London: mayor'|'October 23, 2017 / 7:40 AM / Updated an hour ago Firms not bluffing when they threaten to shift away from London- mayor Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Companies are not bluffing when they threaten to move business from London due to uncertainty over Britain<69>s departure from the European Union, mayor Sadiq Khan said on Monday, adding a transition deal would allow them to make plans more securely. An anti Brexit protester adjusts his EU flags outside the Houses of Parliament in London, Britain October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls Asked about Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein<69>s tweet that he would spend more time in Frankfurt due to Brexit, Khan told BBC radio: <20>He<48>s articulating publicly what many CEOs and investors who love working in London have been saying privately, which is that unless they have certainty about what happens after March 29, 2019, they have got to make a plan B.<2E> <20>He<48>s not bluffing. When I speak to businesses each day, they<65>re not bluffing,<2C> Khan said Reporting by Alistair Smout, editing by Estelle Shirbon '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-london/firms-not-bluffing-when-they-threaten-to-shift-away-from-london-mayor-idUKKBN1CS0PW'|'2017-10-23T10:39:00.000+03:00'
'074411c48e54df11c2f3e0abf909d05ad3822317'|'Enel leads group tapped as Ethiopia solar project preferred bidder'|'MILAN, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Enel<65>s green power unit leads a consortium selected as preferred bidder to build a 100 megawatt solar farm in Ethiopia, the Italian utility said on Monday, in its first foray in the country.Enel, the biggest private renewable energy player in Africa, said the consortium would invest around $120 million in the project.The consortium includes Ethiopian infrastructure company Orchid Business Group, it said.<2E>Ethiopia has all the potential to become a key market for Enel<65>s strategy in Africa,<2C> Enel Green Power boss Antonio Cammisecra said.Ethiopia, Africa<63>s most populous state after Nigeria, has an annual economic growth rate of around 10 percent but still has one of the lowest electrification rates on the continent.Enel, which controls Spain<69>s Endesa, is keen to expand in Africa where it already operates in Zambia, Morocco, Kenya, Senegal and South Africa.Reporting by Stephen Jewkes; editing by Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/enel-ethiopia/enel-leads-group-tapped-as-ethiopia-solar-project-preferred-bidder-idINL8N1MY4GJ'|'2017-10-23T12:13:00.000+03:00'
'83920e7b597b1925c90b9a1a8f22392713d9a583'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Emerging FX feel dollar pinch, Turkish assets rattled'|' 15 AM / Updated 21 minutes ago EMERGING MARKETS-Emerging FX feel dollar pinch, Turkish assets rattled Karin Strohecker 5 Min Read LONDON, Oct 23 (Reuters) - A stronger dollar increased pressure on some emerging currencies on Monday with the Turkish lira and stocks suffering as the latest concerns over Ankara<72>s relationship with Washington compounded the weaker global backdrop. The dollar sailed to the highest level in more than two weeks, still enjoying a boost from U.S. President Donald Trump and Republicans clearing a hurdle on tax reforms last week and speculation over who will take over at the helm of the Federal Reserve. <20>We are seeing increasing pressure on emerging market currencies and that is likely to continue over the near term as we still have a lot of speculation regarding who will succeed Janet Yellen at the Fed,<2C> said Phoenix Kalen at Societe Generale. <20>That is weighing on investors<72> minds, alongside the strength of the dollar that<61>s coming from expectations of fiscal and tax reform.<2E> The Chinese yuan fell against the U.S. dollar after a weaker midpoint fixing while Mexico<63>s peso weakened 0.2 percent. But Turkey<65>s lira and South Africa<63>s rand - both seen as vulnerable to U.S. interest rate rises due to current account deficits - were the hardest hit, weakening for a second straight session. Losses in the lira of more than 1 percent came after Turkey<65>s banking regulator urged the public on Saturday to ignore rumours about financial institutions in an apparent dismissal of a report that some banks face billions of dollars of U.S. fines over alleged violations of Iran sanctions. <20>Given the level of tensions with the U.S., the market is still sceptical about this denial,<2C> said Inan Demir at Nomura. <20>The numbers mentioned are large...the largest fine mentioned was $5 billion and that would be a very large fine in comparison to any bank<6E>s equity in Turkey.<2E> Relations between NATO allies Washington and Ankara have been strained by a series of diplomatic rows. Meanwhile U.S. authorities have hit global banks with billions of dollars in fines over violations of sanctions with Iran and other countries in recent years. Adding to the woes was data on consumer confidence, which showed an increasingly pessimistic outlook. Turkish stocks also took a tumble, slipping 0.8 percent while MSCI<43>s emerging market benchmark was flat on the day. Meanwhile in Argentina, candidates allied with President Mauricio Macri enjoyed sweeping victories in Sunday<61>s mid-term election, strengthening his position in Congress while dimming prospects for a political comeback by his predecessor Cristina Fernandez. Investors have said they want to see Macri push through labour and tax reforms aimed at lowering business costs in Latin America<63>s third-biggest economy. But they have been worried about a political resurgence by Fernandez, loved by millions of low-income Argentines helped by generous social spending during her administrations. For GRAPHIC on emerging market FX performance 2017, see tmsnrt.rs/2e7eoml For GRAPHIC on MSCI emerging index performance 2017, see tmsnrt.rs/2dZbdP5 For CENTRAL EUROPE market report, see For TURKISH market report, see For RUSSIAN market report, see) Emerging Markets Prices from Reuters Equities Latest Net Chg % Chg % Chg on year Morgan Stanley Emrg Mkt Indx 1118.54 -1.15 -0.10 +29.72 Czech Rep 1056.24 -0.37 -0.04 +14.61 Poland 2484.09 +18.58 +0.75 +27.53 Hungary 0.00 +0.00 +0.00 -100.00 Romania 7919.00 -14.48 -0.18 +11.77 Greece 743.20 -6.03 -0.80 +15.47 Russia 1130.49 -3.96 -0.35 -1.90 South Africa 51807.55 +206.89 +0.40 +18.01 Turkey 07700.54 -788.15 -0.73 +37.83 China 3382.27 +3.62 +0.11 +8.98 India 32447.30 +57.34 +0.18 +21.86 Currencies Latest Prev Local Local close currency currency'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/emerging-markets/emerging-markets-emerging-fx-feel-dollar-pinch-turkish-assets-rattled-idUSL8N1MY0WK'|'2017-10-23T12
'6b3d0c6074316a4b547091ed138884edd3f286a7'|'Four UK power firms call for carbon price floor extension'|'October 22, 2017 / 11:30 PM / Updated 41 minutes ago Four UK power firms call for carbon price floor extension Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Four British energy companies have urged the government to extend Britain<69>s carbon floor price to be extended into the 2020s, putting them at odds with industrial groups who want it scrapped. UK power generators pay the floor on top of their obligations under EU<45>s Emissions Trading System, which forces companies to surrender one carbon permit for every tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) they emit. The UK floor price is set at 18 pounds ($24) per tonne until 2021. The EU carbon price is around 7 euros ($8) a tonne. British power companies pay the difference between the EU price and the UK price, currently almost 12 pounds per tonne. Drax ( DRX.L ), SSE ( SSE.L ), VPI Immingham and InterGen wrote to the British Chancellor Philip Hammond on Monday, asking for more clarity on what will happen to the tax after 2021 in his Autumn budget statement on Nov. 22. They asked for the same before the Autumn budget last year. <20>At the moment the industry only has sight of the carbon price to April 2021,<2C> the companies said in the letter. <20>This is welcome but we now need to understand the trajectory of the UK<55>s carbon price into the 2020s, particularly as without it generators have less clarity as they seek to deliver a new generation of efficient gas plants in the next capacity market auction in February 2018,<2C> they added. Most British power companies support the carbon price floor, which they say encourages them to invest in low-carbon power generation. But industrial groups have called for abolishing it, saying it has made electricity prices in Britain uncompetitive. Other countries such as France and the Netherlands are looking at replicating Britain in having a carbon price. Reporting by Nina Chestney'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-utilities-carbon/four-uk-power-firms-call-for-carbon-price-floor-extension-idUKKBN1CR0YQ'|'2017-10-23T02:30:00.000+03:00'
'1a30fbc62e101e4ba1db414e2c7644dddd1efaed'|'Banks work out <20>400 million of debt for possible Pure Gym sale'|'October 23, 2017 / 11:40 AM / Updated 30 minutes ago Banks work out <20>400 million of debt for possible Pure Gym sale Claire Ruckin 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Bankers are working on debt financings totalling up to <20>400 million to back a potential sale of Britain<69>s largest chain of health and fitness clubs, Pure Gym IPO-PGYM.L, banking sources said. Pure Gym<79>s major shareholder CCMP Capital Advisors has controlled the chain since 2013 and a sale comes over a year after it announced, and later cancelled, a <20>190m initial public offer of shares due to <20>challenging IPO market conditions<6E>. Harris Williams and Jefferies are advising on a sale process and final round bids are due on November 2, following a first round in September, the sources said. The sale has attracted a number of interested parties including Goldman Sachs Private Equity, Leonard Green, Pamplona and Providence, the sources said. CCMP Capital Advisors and all the other private equity firms were not immediately available to comment. Bankers are working on debt financings of up to 5.5x Pure Gym<79>s approximate <20>70 million Ebitda, via senior and subordinated loans or bonds or under 5.0 times debt to Ebitda on an all-senior basis, the sources said. Leverage levels are being compressed somewhat as bankers are cautious around gyms after difficulties involving a number of other gym chains including Fitness First and David Lloyd, the sources said. <20>Lenders hate gyms as they<65>ve had a poor experience with them previously such as Fitness First and David Lloyd. Having said that, Pure Gym is quite good and a liked credit,<2C> a senior banker said. Founded in 2009, Pure Gym has over 180 gyms nationwide. It offers its facilities with no fixed contracts, according to CCMP<4D>s website. Editing by Christopher Mangham'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-gym-leveraged-loans/banks-work-out-400-million-of-debt-for-possible-pure-gym-sale-idUKKBN1CS1GF'|'2017-10-23T14:40:00.000+03:00'
'e52a3a546ac90f947f1c420fab46136c851bc2b3'|'Deals of the day- Mergers and acquisitions'|'(Adds Shanghai Electric Group, Eletrobras, Munich Re, UBS; Updates Cisco)Oct 23 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 2000 GMT on Monday:** A unit of China<6E>s Shanghai Electric Group Co Ltd is near closing a deal to take over a power transmission project in southern Brazil owned by a subsidiary of Eletrobras, an official at electricity regulator Aneel told Reuters.** Reinsurer Munich Re<52>s asset management unit MEAG said that it has agreed to buy a 49 percent stake in Steag<61>s district heating business for the Ruhr Basin.** Bank UBS and France<63>s Caisse des Depots have sold their stake in Norway<61>s offshore gas pipeline system after years of litigation with the government over tariffs, according to the firm they sold, Njord Gas Infrastructure.** AT&T Inc said it had extended by a <20>short period<6F> the deadline to close its proposed deal to acquire Time Warner Inc, to buy time to get the required regulatory approvals for the deal.** Cisco Systems Inc will buy software company BroadSoft Inc BSFT.O for $1.71 billion, in a deal that boosts Cisco<63>s collaboration tools and helps the company diversify its offerings away from switching and routing.** U.S. forest products company Potlatch Corp confirmed it would buy smaller peer Deltic Timber Corp in an all-stock deal that will boost its lumber capacity.** The German government has approved the sale of three Thyssenkrupp submarines to Israel and will provide financial support for the purchase, government spokesman Steffen Seibert told a regular news conference.** Blackstone, KKR and some Chinese investors are among potential bidders shortlisted by Link Real Estate Investment Trust to buy some of its Hong Kong retail assets valued at about $2 billion, three sources said.** Hartford Financial said it would buy health insurer Aetna Inc<6E>s U.S. group life and disability business for $1.45 billion cash in a move that will expand its insurance portfolio and spur its digital technology plans.** Industrial gases group Linde has cut the approval threshold and extended a deadline for accepting its $80 billion tie-up with Praxair, while pushing on with plans to get a green light from regulators.** The board of Mediaset has not yet received a draft for a potential agreement with France<63>s media group Vivendi over a failed pay-TV deal, a board member of the Italian private broadcaster said.** The EEX European power bourse is seeking a partnership with Chinese peer CBEEX to help develop the Chinese market for emissions trading.** Engie is seeking a partner for its liquefied natural gas (LNG) division, the French utility said, after one publication reported that Total might buy the business.** France<63>s Engie SA has pressed for higher bids for its Loy Yang B coal-fired power plant in Australia following the release of a national energy security plan that encourages the use of coal.** Struggling commodities trader Noble Group agreed to sell its Americas-focused oil trading business to Vitol for about $580 million as part of a debt-cutting strategy, and warned of a big loss for its third quarter.** Social Finance Inc discussed a potential sale earlier this year, including with financial services company Charles Schwab Corp, but the talks fell apart over the $8 billion price the online lender sought, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.** U.S. forest products company Potlatch Corp is nearing an all-stock deal to acquire smaller peer Deltic Timber Corp, people familiar with the matter said on Sunday.** Britain<69>s Spire Healthcare has rejected a full takeover offer from South African private hospitals operator Mediclinic International, which already owns nearly 30 percent of its stock.** Emaar Properties expects to sell a 20 percent stake in its real estate development business next month in an initial public offering, it said on Sunday, with the smaller than anticipated sale sending its shares down by more than 2 percent. (Compiled b
'4611c3e1e4f7538526d6d2a54b14ec3d17c53260'|'Toys''R''Us collapse to hit Hasbro holiday sales'|'(Reuters) - Hasbro Inc warned of holiday season fallout from the Toys<79>R<EFBFBD>Us bankruptcy, issuing a weaker-than-expected forecast on Monday that sent the toy maker<65>s shares down 10 percent.Hasbro, which gets about 9 percent of its revenue from Toys<79>R<EFBFBD>Us, said the Chapter 11 filing raised uncertainty about the timing and amount of toys it would ship to the retailer in the fourth quarter.The surprise filing last month underscored the Amazon-fueled shift away from brick-and-mortar retailing, and bodes ill for the entire toy industry.Hasbro<72>s warning hit rivals - shares of Mattel Inc and Jakks Pacific Inc were down 4 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively.Toys<79>R<EFBFBD>Us, once the largest toy retail chain in the United States, still owes creditors $5 billion in debt with Hasbro exposed to the tune of $60 million in unsecured claims for payment.Chief Executive Brian Goldner said the bankruptcy had created a <20>fluid environment<6E> for the company<6E>s shipments, but downplayed its long-term effect saying it would not hurt 2018 results.FILE PHOTO: A Jenga game by Hasbro Gaming is seen in this illustration photo August 13, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo The second biggest U.S. toymaker said it expects fourth quarter revenue to increase 4 percent to 7 percent, or $1.70-$1.74 billion. Analysts on average had expected $1.82 billion.Morning Star analyst Jaime Katz said the concerns over Toys<79>R<EFBFBD>Us were <20>overblown<77> as its debtor-in-possession financing would help it cover most of its payments to toy makers.Meanwhile, Katz said, Hasbro and Mattel will have more time to find alternate channels to distribute their products.The toymaker said it had reached an agreement with Toys<79>R<EFBFBD>Us last week over account receivables - outstanding receipts the company is owed from its customers - but there would be a two-day delay in receiving payments over the current cycle.Hasbro<72>s outlook follows Jakks Pacific<69>s warning in September that it would post a loss in 2017 because of the bankruptcy.Hasbro on Monday also reported third-quarter profit of $265.6 million, or $2.09 per share and a 7 percent rise in revenue to $1.79 billion.Analysts on average had expected sales of $1.78 billion and a profit of $1.94 per share.Reporting by Gayathree Ganesan and Siddharth Cavale; editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/hasbro-results/toysrus-collapse-to-hit-hasbro-holiday-sales-idINKBN1CS1JV'|'2017-10-23T15:14:00.000+03:00'
'c0f3e383239deb04a879d21aef6434360e6e3e70'|'United Tech''s quarterly profit slumps 8 pct'|'(Reuters) - United Technologies Corp<72>s ( UTX.N ) quarterly profit topped analysts<74> estimates, driven by higher sales in its Pratt & Whitney business, prompting it to raise its 2017 adjusted profit forecast for the second time this year. FILE PHOTO: United Technologies logo is displayed on a screen at the post where it''s stock is traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., September 5, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Shares of the company, which also makes Otis Elevators, were up 1.7 percent at $122.90 before the bell on Tuesday. United Tech raised its 2017 adjusted earnings per share forecast to $6.58-$6.63 from $6.45-$6.60. The company also increased the lower end of its sales forecast range to $59.0 billion from $58.5 billion, and kept the top end unchanged at $59.5 billion. Sales in the company<6E>s UTC climate, controls and security business, its largest unit, which makes Carrier air conditioners and fire detection systems rose 6.2 percent. United Tech<63>s second-biggest business, Pratt & Whitney, which makes aircraft engines, saw a 10.6 percent jump in revenue. However, the company<6E>s profit margins narrowed as it continues to face slowing sales of Otis Elevators in China, due to excess market supply. United Tech is also spending on accelerating production of its fuel-saving geared turbofan aircraft engines that power Airbus SE<53>s ( AIR.PA ) newest narrow-body jet, the A320neo. The company said its segment operating profit margin fell to 14.5 percent in the third quarter ended Sept. 30 from 15.9 percent, a year earlier. United Tech<63>s income from continuing operations attributable to shareholders fell to $1.33 billion, or $1.67 per share, from $1.44 billion, or $1.74 per share, a year earlier. On an adjusted basis, the company<6E>s earnings per share rose to $1.73 from $1.76. Net sales jumped about 5 percent to $15.06 billion. Analysts on average were expecting third-quarter earnings of $1.69 per share and revenue of $14.98 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-utc-results/united-techs-quarterly-profit-slumps-8-percent-idUSKBN1CT1GG'|'2017-10-24T14:02:00.000+03:00'
'844fca713f2ca49a9008c040807641f260704121'|'Airbnb''s China head exits, a week after co-founder named unit''s chair'|'October 24, 2017 / 4:17 AM / in 5 minutes Airbnb''s China head exits, a week after co-founder named unit''s chair Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BEIJING, Oct 24 (Reuters) - The head of Airbnb Inc<6E>s China business has resigned four months after taking the role, the company confirmed on Tuesday, the latest leadership change for the unit which operates in an country where residency and movement are regulated. Hong Ge, who previously worked for Google Inc and Facebook Inc, left to pursue another role and the firm is yet to name a successor, said Airbnb in a short statement on Tuesday. Reuters was unable to reach Ge for comment on Tuesday morning. Kum Hong Siew, the current president of China operations will take over the role in an interim capacity. Airbnb faces tough regulatory challenges in China, where movement between cities is closely monitored and people are required to register temporary stays with local police. Last week, the company announced that co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk would become chairman of Airbnb<6E>s China arm, which goes under the name of <20>Aibiying<6E> and competes against local services Tujia.com and Xiaozhu.com. Airbnb in that announcement also said it has plans to double the number staff in China over the next year and introduce new quality standards. This month Chinese authorities banned listings on all short-term rental apps in central Beijing during the 19th Congress, a high-profile political event where police increase scrutiny of illegal movement and people who fail to register their residences. Airbnb, which has roughly 120,000 listing in China, has also had to comply with a national cyber law introduced in 2016 that requires private user data to be stored locally. (Reporting by Cate Cadell)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/china-airbnb/airbnbs-china-head-exits-a-week-after-co-founder-named-units-chair-idUSL4N1MZ1VB'|'2017-10-24T07:17:00.000+03:00'
'99ef4ebb2d9eae4db9d6aff7f36ef517f6c8fced'|'Homebuilder PulteGroup''s profit rises 38 percent'|'Reuters TV United States October 24, 2017 / 10:47 AM / Updated 18 minutes ago Pulte bullish on housing demand, shares at more than 10-year high Arunima Banerjee 3 Min Read (Reuters) - PulteGroup Inc ( PHM.N ), the No. 3 U.S. homebuilder, reported a quarterly profit that edged past estimates on Tuesday and remained upbeat on housing demand despite hurricanes that curtailed operations, sending its shares to a more than 10-year record. While hurricanes Harvey and Irma caused significant slowdown in the quarter, demand remained robust, Chief Executive Ryan Marshall said on an earnings. He said demand rebounded <20>quite nicely<6C> in Houston and Florida, which were particularly hard hit. <20>Going forward, we expect that the ongoing job and wage growth, high consumer confidence and historically low-interest rate environment can support the continued growth of housing demand,<2C> Marshall added. Pulte<74>s shares rose as much as 3.7 percent to $28.92 - a more than 10-year high. During the quarter orders, a key metric of future revenue for homebuilders, rose 11 percent to 5,300 units, beating FactSet<65>s estimate of 5,107 units. Earlier this month, bigger rival Lennar Corp ( LEN.N ) was also optimistic about the housing market after its quarterly results trumped estimates. Pulte, which mainly sells single-family homes, said the average selling price increased 6.7 percent to $399,000, but missed a FactSet estimate of $407,000. Atlanta, Georgia-based Pulte<74>s number of homes sold rose 2.3 percent to 5,151 units in the quarter ended Sept. 30, but it was its slowest growth in eight quarters. The figure also missed the estimate of 5,433 units, according to FactSet. FACING HIGHER COSTS Pulte expects gross margin in the current quarter at the lower end of its previous forecast of 23.6-24.1 percent, as it pays higher prices for labor and materials after the hurricanes. It expects to deliver 6,400-6,700 homes in the current quarter, up from 6,197 homes in the fourth quarter last year. Scarce labor is being pulled toward rebuilding efforts and materials are bid higher, constraining supply of homes in the United States further. The company expects the higher costs to subside over time but increasing lumber prices could have a longer-lasting effect due to wildfires in Canada and tariffs by the United States. The company<6E>s net income rose 38.2 percent to $177.5 million, or 58 cents per share, in the quarter. Pulte earned 60 cents per share on an adjusted basis, beating estimates of 59 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Revenue rose 9.6 percent to $2.13 billion, but missed the average analyst estimate of $2.30 billion. Up to Monday<61>s close, Pulte<74>s shares had risen 51.8 percent this year. Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr and Maju Samuel'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pultegroup-results/homebuilder-pultegroups-profit-rises-38-percent-idUSKBN1CT1DN'|'2017-10-24T13:37:00.000+03:00'
'db1e6cc247db76b2b6fa58f5f595f2131b836933'|'Asian shares hover near recent highs; NZ dollar slips'|'October 24, 2017 / 12:49 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago Dow closes high on earnings; dollar flat after Fed chair report Stephanie Kelly 4 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index closed higher on Tuesday, driven by solid earnings from industrial companies, while the dollar index was little changed after reports of Republican senators<72> support for John Taylor as Federal Reserve chair. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid The dollar index rose 0.01 percent, up from an earlier low, as a Bloomberg report on support for Taylor offset diminished hopes for a passage of a major tax cut. Optimism for a tax overhaul slipped after a CNBC report, citing an aide of Senate leader Mitch McConnell, that three GOP Senators may not back the Republican tax bill. The Bloomberg report also pushed 10-year U.S. Treasury note yields to a more than five-month high. Benchmark 10-year notes last fell 13/32 in price to yield 2.4226 percent, from 2.375 percent late on Monday. The 30-year U.S. Treasury bond last fell 28/32 in price to yield 2.9348 percent, from 2.89 percent late on Monday. Earnings from Caterpillar Inc and 3M helped push the Dow Industrials up 167.8 points, or 0.72 percent, to 23,441.76. The world<6C>s largest construction and mining equipment maker, Caterpillar Inc, beat third-quarter profit and sales estimates and raised its full-year forecasts. The Peoria, Illinois company expects revenue in its construction business to surge about 20 percent and its mining business to jump 30 percent. The company<6E>s stock gained 5.0 percent. 3M, another Dow component, which makes a range of products such as autoparts and office supplies, reported upbeat results, helping its stock rise 5.9 percent. Earnings have gotten off to a strong start, with 73 percent of 120 S&P companies beating profit expectations as of Tuesday. The S&P 500 gained 4.15 points, or 0.16 percent, to 2,569.13 and the Nasdaq Composite added 11.60 points, or 0.18 percent, to 6,598.43. Passersby walk past an electronic board showing market indices outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato European shares ended mixed at their close on Tuesday in anticipation of Thursday<61>s European Central Bank meeting. <20>While the ECB is widely expected to announce a reduction, the size and duration of it are still unknown, which could cause a lot of volatility on the day and determine how the euro reacts,<2C> said Craig Erlam, a senior market analyst for OANDA in London, in an email. Although the German, French, Italian and Spanish indexes all rose, the pan-European STOXX 600 closed down 0.4 percent. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index lost 0.30 percent and MSCI<43>s gauge of stocks across the globe gained 0.03 percent. Apple supplier and chipmaker AMS jumped 21.8 percent after reporting third-quarter sales just under expectations. Analysts said strong fourth-quarter guidance from the iPhone supplier offset the miss. Strong profits from Spain<69>s Caixabank also lifted the IBEX 0.4 percent after its Catalonia-related underperformance. Japan<61>s Nikkei had extended its 16-day winning streak to a 21-year peak overnight following the weekend election win for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The New Zealand dollar hit a five-month low after the incoming Labour-led coalition government said it plans to review and reform the Central Bank Act to include employment, alongside inflation, as a dual target. Spot gold dropped 0.4 percent to $1,276.82 an ounce, remaining near a two-week low. U.S. crude rose 1.08 percent to $52.46 per barrel and Brent was last at $58.34, up 1.69 percent. Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; Additional reporting by Julien Ponthus, Helen Reidin and Marc Jones in London, Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss and Richard Leong in New York; Editing by Daniel Bases and James Dalgleish'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews
'9045c0b9ee14c6d0a36d17ca26dcf1333356406f'|'Philips growth spurred by toothbrush demand in China'|' 34 AM / Updated 17 minutes ago Philips growth spurred by toothbrush demand in China Bart H. Meijer 3 Min Read AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Strong demand for its electric toothbrushes in China helped Dutch healthcare technology company Philips to a 4 percent rise in sales in the third quarter, on track to hit its full-year target, the company said on Monday. FILE PHOTO: A Philips logo is seen at Philips headquarters in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, January 28, 2014. REUTERS/Toussaint Kluiters/United Photos/File Photo Philips, which spun off its lighting division last year to focus on medical devices and healthcare products, recorded double-digit growth in China, which made up for flat sales in North America and a 6 percent decline in Western Europe. <20>We had a particularly strong quarter in China<6E>, Chief Executive Frans van Houten told reporters, as he singled out the strong demand for electric toothbrushes and the emergence of private healthcare in the world<6C>s second-largest economy as drivers of present and future growth. <20>We are very optimistic about our opportunities in China,<2C> Van Houten said. <20>Our toothbrushes continue to sell very well, while the growth of private hospitals diminishes the risk of government preferring domestic suppliers.<2E> Philips recorded total sales of 4.1 billion euros in the July-September period, while core profits increased 12 percent to 532 million euros ($626 million) CONNECTED CARE Overall, sales growth slowed at the company<6E>s main divisions, which sell consumer products, including toothbrushes, and high-end medical equipment, such as scanners and imaging tools used in surgery. The connected care and informatics business, which offers patient monitoring systems and software used by hospitals to gather and analyse data, was a notable exception, with sales growth picking up to 8 percent after stagnating in the second quarter. Total sales growth in the third quarter put Philips on the right path towards its goal for the whole year, Van Houten said. <20>We have achieved average growth of 4 percent this year, and we believe the fourth quarter will be stronger. That will comfortably lift us to the 4-6 percent range targeted for 2017.<2E> Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes and amortisation (EBITA) in the third quarter were in line with analyst expectations, but sales growth fell short of the 4.5 percent forecast in a Reuters poll. Philips shares traded down 0.3 percent at 35.30 euros at 0812 GMT. Reporting by Bart Meijer; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath and Ralph Boulton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-philips-results/philips-growth-spurred-by-toothbrush-demand-in-china-idUKKBN1CS0UT'|'2017-10-23T11:33:00.000+03:00'
'c8aead3b6fc411d86b36ab539b77acbd5b5e4d64'|'HSBC names Jayant Rikhye as India CEO'|'October 23, 2017 / 7:42 AM / Updated 23 minutes ago HSBC names Jayant Rikhye as India CEO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - HSBC ( HSBA.L ) has named company veteran Jayant Rikhye as the new chief executive of its India operations, effective Dec. 1. FILE PHOTO: HSBC headquarters is seen at the financial Central district in Hong Kong, China September 6, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo Rikhye, who has been with the bank for 28 years in various roles, will replace Stuart Milne who will move to a new role after leading India operations for five years, the company said. Rikhye, who started his career with HSBC in India in 1989, is currently head of international, Asia-Pacific, responsible for 11 markets in the region, according to a statement on Monday. He also heads strategy and planning for the bank in Asia-Pacific. Europe<70>s biggest bank earlier this month named insider John Flint, who runs its retail and wealth management business, as the new chief executive to take over from February next year. Reporting By Arnab Paul in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hsbc-india-ceo/hsbc-names-jayant-rikhye-as-india-ceo-idUKKBN1CS0QM'|'2017-10-23T10:42:00.000+03:00'
'ef46a0dc1b25c1b0a3165e74d659ebb4facba6c8'|'Cisco to buy BroadSoft in $1.9 bln deal'|'Oct 23 (Reuters) - Cisco Systems Inc, the world<6C>s largest networking gear manufacturer, said it will buy U.S. telecommunications software company BroadSoft Inc in a deal valued at about $1.9 billion, including debt.Cisco said it would offer $55 per share, a premium of 2 percent to BroadSoft<66>s last close.The deal, which comes after Reuters first reported in August that BroadSoft was exploring a sale, would allow Cisco to further diversify from its stagnating switches and routers business by giving it a stronger foothold in selling unified communications software to big telecommunications firms. (Reporting by Munsif Vengattil and Arjun Panchadar in Bengaluru; Editing by Supriya Kurane) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/broadsoft-ma-cisco-systems/cisco-to-buy-broadsoft-in-1-9-bln-deal-idINL4N1MY3SR'|'2017-10-23T10:08:00.000+03:00'
'ce7753cd5ab73d72283234ba2876afde67bd060a'|'Activist mulls next step after failed Johnston Press board ousting'|'October 23, 2017 / 11:25 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago Activist mulls next step after failed Johnston Press board ousting Maiya Keidan , Rahul B 3 Min Read LONDON/BENGALURU (Reuters) - Activist investor Custos Group is considering its next steps after discovering a clause in a bondholder deal that hindered its attempt to oust Johnston Press ( JPR.L ) top management. Custos Group, run by fund manager Christen Ager-Hanssen, had lined up four directors to be nominated to the Johnston Press board before finding out this weekend it would not be possible to proceed due to a so-called <20>dead hand proxy put<75>. The proxy inserted into Johnston Press<73>s bondholder agreements when it refinanced its 220 million pound debt pile three years ago means that only the existing board can approve a new director. <20>We are now considering all type of options we have; of course we will talk to all stakeholders in the company,<2C> said Ager-Hanssen, who is the second-largest shareholder in Johnston Press with a 12.57 percent stake. <20>We don<6F>t think the board or the CEO have done anything to build up the company.<2E> He added that he would delay his plan to seek a management rejig at the company. Shares in Johnston Press, which publishes British dailies such as the Scotsman and i newspaper, fell more than 18 percent by midsession on Monday after The Telegraph reported on Saturday that Ager-Hanssen had been forced to delay a call for a shareholders<72> meeting. In August, Johnston Press reported a 30.9 percent fall in half-year adjusted pretax profit and warned trading conditions for regional newspapers in the UK continue to be difficult. The newspaper industry has been hard hit in recent years as advertisers have followed readers to online platforms, forcing print publishers, such as Trinity Mirror ( TNI.L ) and Daily Mail and General Trust ( DMGOa.L ), to cut costs drastically. Johnston Press had a net debt of 203.9 million pounds at Dec. 31, according to its latest annual report. Last year, Crystal Amber Fund CRS.L, an activist investor and largest shareholder in Johnston Press, had offered help to the company to avoid a poor debt restructuring deal. <20>Despite the speculation and press comment, at the moment, there<72>s no proposal from Custos,<2C> Crystal Amber fund manager Richard Bernstein told Reuters. <20>If and when there is, we<77>ll assess it.<2E> In an emailed statement, Ager-Hanssen told Reuters: <20>The board is doing no more than rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. They literally have no clue as to how create shareholder value.<2E> He declined to say what other options he was considering. Johnston Press was not immediately available for comment. Its shares were trading down 18.1 percent at 14.08p by 1220 GMT. Reporting by Radhika Rukmangadhan and Rahul B in Bengaluru, with Maiya Keidan in London; Editing by David Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-johnston-press-shareholders/activist-mulls-next-step-after-failed-johnston-press-board-ousting-idUKKBN1CS1F8'|'2017-10-23T14:25:00.000+03:00'
'd3ba8fe4913b2e5d835815c68b3389148ca9d7db'|'Russia''s MTS to purchase Ericsson equipment for 400 mln euros'|'MOSCOW, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Russia<69>s largest telecoms operator MTS said on Monday it would purchase equipment from Sweden<65>s Ericsson for 400 million euros ($470.16 million) to modernise its network.The modernisation is aimed at preparing the network for 5G, a new generation of wireless services, and the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, which connects household devices to the internet. ($1 = 0.8508 euros) (Reporting by Anastasia Teterevleva; Writing by Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/russia-telecom-mts-ericsson/russias-mts-to-purchase-ericsson-equipment-for-400-mln-euros-idINR4N1MS02K'|'2017-10-23T05:53:00.000+03:00'
'b5e40378e3b90d75de3f17bb9246bf9fe66a39ec'|'Singapore to halt car population growth from next year'|'SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore, one of the world<6C>s most expensive places to own a vehicle, will not allow any growth in its car population from February, citing the small city-state<74>s land scarcity and billions of dollars in planned public transport investments.FILE PHOTO - People look at cars on display at a mall in Singapore April 28, 2016. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo The Land Transport Authority (LTA) said it was cutting the permissible vehicle growth rate in the city-state to 0 percent from the current 0.25 percent per annum for cars and motorcycles. The rate will be reviewed in 2020.Singapore tightly controls its vehicle population by setting an annual growth rate and through a system of bidding for the right to own and use a vehicle for a limited number of years. It is one of the most densely populated nations on the planet and already has an extensive public transport system.Currently, 12 percent of Singapore<72>s total land area is taken up by roads, the LTA said. <20>In view of land constraints and competing needs, there is limited scope for further expansion of the road network,<2C> it said.Singapore, whose total population has risen nearly 40 percent since 2000 to about 5.6 million now, counted more than 600,000 private and rental cars on its roads as of last year. These include cars used by drivers that work with ride-hailing services such as Grab and Uber, which are becoming increasingly popular.A mid-range car in Singapore can typically cost four times the price in the United States.Singapore has expanded its rail network length by 30 percent and has added new routes and capacity in its bus network. The government will continue to invest S$20 billion ($14.7 billion) in new rail infrastructure, S$4 billion to renew, upgrade and expand rail operating assets, and another S$4 billion in bus contracting subsidies over the next five years, the LTA said.The LTA will keep the growth rate for goods vehicles and buses at 0.25 per cent until the first quarter of 2021.($1 = 1.3618 Singapore dollars)Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/singapore-autos/singapore-to-halt-car-population-growth-from-next-year-idINKBN1CS182'|'2017-10-23T13:26:00.000+03:00'
'4b98fbce292d3445a9b62c3f7daeb3d385ddae40'|'Engie in talks over possible LNG gas unit sale to Total - report'|'October 23, 2017 / 6:33 AM / Updated 31 minutes ago Engie in talks over possible LNG gas unit sale to Total - report Reuters Staff 1 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - French utility Engie ( ENGIE.PA ) is in talks over the possible sale of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) division to Total ( TOTF.PA ), financial newsletter La Lettre de l<>Expansion reported on Monday. Engie, the new name and logo of French utility GDF Suez, is seen on a screen during the group''s shareholders general meeting in Paris, France, April 28, 2015. The French gas and power group GDF Suez is changing its name to "Engie". REUTERS/Benoit Tessier A deal could be reached in the coming weeks, La Lettre de l<>Expansion said in a report which did not identify its source. It did not give a value regarding the possible sale. Officials at Engie and Total could not be reached for immediate comment. Engie Chief Executive Isabelle Kocher is in the midst of a restructuring plan that includes 15 billion euros ($17.7 billion) worth of asset sales and 22 billion euros of investment. Total has said it will start retailing gas and power in France by the end of this year and aims to win about two million customers. ($1 = 0.8496 euros)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-engie-m-a-total/engie-in-talks-over-possible-lng-gas-unit-sale-to-total-report-idUKKBN1CS0KO'|'2017-10-23T09:33:00.000+03:00'
'8e57d910066fc0b83d8cbb53cd997f4f29419afc'|'India approves $32.4 billion state bank recapitalization plan'|'NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India<69>s cabinet approved a $32.43 billion plan on Tuesday to recapitalise its state banks over the next two years, in a bid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to tackle a major drag on the economy that has frustrated his attempts to boost growth.FILE PHOTO: An India Rupee note is seen in this illustration photo June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo Once the world<6C>s fastest-growing major economy, India has seen its growth rate plummet to the lowest in three years, far below levels needed to create enough jobs to absorb the million Indians joining the work force every month.Modi<64>s government has tried to respond by stepping up public spending, but the slowdown has stressed its finances, making it imperative that private investment picks up the slack.Officials privately admit they have struggled to revive private investment because state-owned banks, which provide much of the credit in the economy, are saddled with a mountain of bad debt that has crimped their ability to extend new credit.The huge capital injection into the banks is meant to clear that bottleneck, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said at a press conference in New Delhi.<2E>The decision to recapitalise public sector banks with 2.11 trillion rupees will address the bank balance sheet problem and push growth forward,<2C> Jaitley said.By some estimates, banks need as much as $65 billion in additional capital by March 2019 to fill the hole left by soured loans and to meet new regulatory requirements.The official announcement, which was followed by a series of tweets from government ministers holding it up as <20>unprecedented<65>, comes after a flurry of activity in the government over the past few weeks, driven by the prime minister<65>s office.Modi, who swept to power in a landslide victory for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014 promising a reform agenda to revive economic growth, faces state elections later this year and a re-election bid by 2019.He has faced criticisms after a surprise scrapping of high-value bank notes last November and a new goods and services tax effected earlier this year disrupted businesses across the country.People close to Modi have previously told Reuters he wants to control the political damage and ensure the economic slowdown remains temporary.Mohan Guruswamy, an economist in New Delhi, said the government should have taken action three years ago to revive the banking sector.<2E>Now it<69>s more expensive, and we will not see results soon,<2C> Guruswamy said.FILE PHOTO: India''s Finance and Defence Minister Arun Jaitley attends a two-day meeting of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, comprising federal and state finance ministers, in Srinagar May 18, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Ismail/File Photo FISCAL CONSOLIDATION Finance ministry officials said the bank recapitalisation would be followed by a series of reforms in the sector. They said the details would come later.Of the planned 2.11 trillion rupees sum, recapitalisation bonds will account for 1.35 trillion rupees, while about 580 billion rupees is estimated to come from share sales by banks, the ministry said. The government will also use 180 billion rupees left from its previously budgeted recapitalisation fund.It was not immediately clear what the impact will be on the country<72>s fiscal deficit, which Jaitley aims to keep at 3.2 percent of GDP for the current fiscal year to March and at 3 percent in the next financial year.<2E>India<69>s banking was the weakest link in the revival of the economy,<2C> said N.R. Bhanumurthy, an economist at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, a Delhi-based think-tank partly funded by the finance ministry. <20>The government should complete the process as early as possible.<2E>Bhanumurthy added that the move might have an impact on the government<6E>s fiscal deficit target this year.Major rating agencies welcomed the move, as did the chairman of top lender State Bank of India, Rajnish Kumar, who called it <20>bold and courage
'97c94c78153ac60654c5df5d7c8d2c53b053b4e2'|'Oil prices inch up, drop in southern Iraq exports supports'|'October 24, 2017 / 1:58 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago Oil prices inch up, drop in southern Iraq exports supports Reuters Staff 2 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Oil prices inched up on Tuesday, supported by declining exports from southern Iraq. A oil pump is seen at sunset outside Scheibenhard, near Strasbourg, France, October 6, 2017 . REUTERS/Christian Hartmann Oil exports from southern Iraq have fallen by 110,000 barrels per day this month, according to shipping data and an industry source, adding to the drop in flows caused by a shortfall from the northern Kirkuk fields when Iraqi forces retook control from Kurdish fighters who had been there since 2014. The drop in northern Iraqi shipments has supported global oil prices in recent days. But southern exports, the outlet for most of the country<72>s crude, have been stable in recent months, making the decline unexpected. London Brent crude for December delivery LCOc1 was up 6 cents at $57.43 a barrel by 0055 GMT after settling down 38 cents on Monday. U.S. crude for December delivery CLc1 was up 3 cents at $51.93, having settled up 6 cents. Crude oil exports through the Iraqi Kurdistan controlled-pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan rose 13 percent to 288,000 barrels per day (bpd) on Monday afternoon, less than half the normal levels, a shipping source told Reuters. U.S. crude inventories likely fell by 2.5 million barrels last week, while gasoline and distillate stockpiles also probably fell by at least 1.5 million barrels, a preliminary Reuters poll showed on Monday ahead of data by the Industry group the American Petroleum Institute later in the day. [EIA/S] [API/S] Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Joseph Radford'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-oil/oil-prices-inch-up-drop-in-southern-iraq-exports-supports-idUKKBN1CT05Z'|'2017-10-24T04:58:00.000+03:00'
'8b95f50688b98b7cc2175c5e50cf96406a45cda3'|'What are they smoking? Analyst fees under scrutiny as EU rules loom - thinktank'|'October 22, 2017 / 11:22 PM / in 4 hours What are they smoking? Analyst fees under scrutiny as EU rules loom - thinktank Huw Jones 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Banks charging thousands of pounds for top analyst briefings exemplify an over-expensive and opaque model of paying for stock tips that will be challenged by forthcoming European Union rules, a thinktank found on Monday. A computer screen showing stock graphs is reflected on glasses in this illustration photo taken in Bordeaux, France, March 30, 2016. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau Under EU rules coming into force in January, banks will have to itemise research and trading fees so asset managers know what they are paying for, making them more mindful about the quality of stock analysis and triggering a price war, a report from the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation (CSFI) noted. It was unclear how research will be priced under the EU<45>s MiFID II regime, but some could go behind a <20>paywall<6C> and not be distributed freely to the media, while the high fees charged by <20>rock star<61> analysts at banks for chats about their views may be harder to justify. <20>Some are asking 4,000 to 5,000 an hour in pounds, dollars or euros for an analyst<73>s time. What are they smoking?<3F> CSFI quoted one asset manager as saying, while another said an hour<75>s chat with top law firm Freshfields was better value at 1,500 pounds. The report said an over-supply of research, and asset managers<72> desire to cut costs, will spark a price war in the short term. <20>Incomplete pricing information and imperfect ways to assess value are causing anxiety about predatory pricing and unfair competition,<2C> the report, authored by CSFI co-director Jane Fuller, said. Over time a more normal market for research should emerge, allowing asset managers to weigh up price versus quality. But in the meantime the environment would be harsh. Banks are shedding analysts to restore profitability, asset managers face criticisms for fees they charge investors, and many investors increasingly favour <20>passive<76> investing or tracking an index, rather than taking active bets on selected stocks. Most industry participants interviewed by CSFI expect asset managers to spend less on research in the next year or two because they are under pressure to absorb the cost. One estimate is for a 25 percent to 30 percent drop in the number of analysts at banks, the report said. While there is disagreement over how chaotic the next year or two will be, capacity needs to be cut before the market can stabilise and grow again, the report said. Losers could be <20>closet tracker<65> funds that mimic benchmarks but charge higher fees than passive funds. Independent research firms could be among the winners if they can demonstrate their worth to asset managers, the report said, though The European Association of Independent Research Providers (Euro IRP), which helped fund the CSFI report, said the playing field in research may not be level for some time. Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by David Holmes '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-markets-research/what-are-they-smoking-analyst-fees-under-scrutiny-as-eu-rules-loom-thinktank-idUKKBN1CR0YG'|'2017-10-23T02:21:00.000+03:00'
'2c01b2f3f95ccdfed6eef7379a041f1eba01dee7'|'Toshiba sees annual loss of almost $1 billion after tax related to chip unit sale'|'October 23, 2017 / 7:40 AM / Updated 32 minutes ago Toshiba sees annual loss of almost $1 billion after tax related to chip unit sale Reuters Staff 2 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Embattled Japanese conglomerate Toshiba Corp said on Monday it now expects to slide to a net loss of nearly $1 billion this business year after calculating taxes related to the sale of its prized chip unit. FILE PHOTO : A logo of Toshiba Corp is seen on a printed circuit board in this photo illustration taken in Tokyo July 31, 2012. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao/File Photo Toshiba, which separated out the unit in April as a prelude to a sale, said it was being taxed on the basis of assets and liabilities of the transferred business at the time of the split. The latest forecasts, however, do not reflect expected gains from the 2 trillion yen ($17.6 billion) sale as the deal has yet to receive regulatory approval. Toshiba said that due to the tax impact, it expects a loss of 110 billion yen ($970 million) in the year to March, instead of its previously forecast profit of 230 billion yen. It kept its annual revenue and other profit forecasts unchanged. Toshiba, desperate for funds to cover liabilities arising from it U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse, agreed last month to sell the unit - the world<6C>s second biggest producer of NAND flash memory chips - to a group led by Bain Capital. A highly contentious auction meant that a decision on the buyer took much longer than expected, and Toshiba has run the risk of not getting anti-trust clearance before the end of the financial year in March as regulatory reviews usually take at least six months. If it doesn<73>t get the deal done in time, it could end the year in negative net worth for a second year in a row, putting pressure on the Tokyo Stock Exchange to delist it. Reporting by Junko Fujita; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim and Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting/toshiba-sees-annual-loss-of-almost-1-billion-after-tax-related-to-chip-unit-sale-idUKKBN1CS0QA'|'2017-10-23T10:37:00.000+03:00'
'dc82a234fd2cfa6efdb5f560c25fecb5d993c748'|'JPMorgan partners with data start-up to boost fixed-income trading'|'October 23, 2017 / 12:34 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago JPMorgan partners with data start-up to boost fixed-income trading Anna Irrera 3 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co has partnered with data analytics start-up Mosaic Smart Data to help its fixed-income sales and trading business become more profitable. FILE PHOTO - A JPMorgan Chase & Co logo is seen in New York City, U.S. on January 10, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith/File Photo The bank, whose fixed-income trading revenue slumped last quarter, has signed a multi-year deal to use Mosaic Smart Data<74>s technology division globally, the companies said in a joint statement released on Sunday. The London-based start-up has developed technology that aggregates and analyses vast amounts of data from the fixed-income trading division of investment banks to help them make more informed decisions and gain a competitive edge. That includes helping traders decide which clients to focus on in a given day or enabling management to assess which trader, or trading desk has been performing better. The partnership underscores the growing demand by banks for technology that can help them gain greater insight from the large quantity of data they produce and store. <20>One of the key things the banks are starting to realise is that some of their biggest competitive advantages are locked within their data,<2C> said Matthew Hodgson, Mosaic Smart Data<74>s founder and chief executive. Banks are seeking solutions to deal with a liquidity crunch in fixed-income markets. Stricter capital requirements imposed after the 2008 financial crisis have made it more expensive for banks to act as market makers in corporate bonds, leading their fixed-income divisions to slump. JP Morgan<61>s fixed-income markets revenue fell 27 percent in the three months ended in September, compared with the same period last year. Troy Rohrbaugh, global head of macro at JPMorgan, said in a statement that Mosaic Smart Data<74>s technology could make the bank<6E>s teams <20>quickly make better informed decisions.<2E> Mosaic Smart Data is the first company to complete JPMorgan<61>s <20>In-Residence<63> programme for fintech start-ups, which was launched in 2016. The programme gives young fintech companies support in helping commercialise their products and services. Hodgson said the idea for the company came from his own experience heading trading at large banks. <20>The problem banks face is how do you run your business and understand everything in real time, whether it is research or inventory, and be able to anticipate rather than react to client needs,<2C> he said. Reporting by Anna Irrera; Editing by Peter Cooney'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-jpmorgan-mosaic-bonds/jpmorgan-partners-with-data-start-up-to-boost-fixed-income-trading-idUKKBN1CS01N'|'2017-10-23T03:34:00.000+03:00'
'340c76250578b1f6f65f65ab2b05891d275c0ff1'|'UPDATE 1-Citi''s Asia insurance investment banking head joining Ping An fund - sources'|'October 24, 2017 / 9:42 AM / Updated 19 minutes ago UPDATE 1-Citi''s Asia insurance investment banking head joining Ping An fund - sources Reuters Staff 2 Min Read * Lacey to become COO of Global Voyager Fund * Ping An has said fund to mainly invest in fin & healthcare tech (Updates with Ping An<41>s response) By Anshuman Daga and Kane Wu SINGAPORE, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Citigroup<75>s Asia head of insurance investment banking Donald Lacey is leaving the bank to become the chief operating officer of Ping An Insurance Group Co of China<6E>s Global Voyager Fund, sources familiar with the situation said. Lacey, who joined Citi roughly 10 years ago, will start in his new job in a few months, one of the sources told Reuters. Citi and Ping An declined to comment. The sources did not want to be identified as they were not authorised to talk to the media. Ping An said in May it was launching its first overseas fund to primarily invest in financial and healthcare technology worldwide. The initial size of the fund is $1 billion and it is led by Jonathan Larsen, an 18-year stalwart of Citigroup who joined Ping An as its chief innovation officer. (Reporting by Anshuman Daga in SINGAPORE and Kane Wu in HONG KONG; Additional reporting by Julie Zhu; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/ping-an-ins-moves-citigroup/update-1-citis-asia-insurance-investment-banking-head-joining-ping-an-fund-sources-idUSL4N1MZ3LB'|'2017-10-24T12:42:00.000+03:00'
'9b5ac772901eb29d39da2ef83268165c9a4035aa'|'As scandal widens, Japan''s Kobe Steel faces key debt test'|'October 23, 2017 / 10:56 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago As scandal widens, Japan''s Kobe Steel faces key debt test Sumeet Chatterjee , Umesh Desai 6 Min Read HONG KONG (Reuters) - As Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ) becomes increasingly embroiled in a data falsification scandal, concerns are growing about its outstanding liabilities despite the Japanese company<6E>s sizable cash reserves. FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the signboard of Kobe Steel at the group''s Tokyo headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo Japan<61>s third-biggest steelmaker, which posted losses in the last two years, admitted this month it falsified specifications on the strength and durability of aluminium, copper and steel products, along with materials for optical disks. The falsifications stretch back for more than 10 years, and the company last week said it had lost some customers to competitors because of the widespread data falsification. Kobe has nearly $3.3 billion (<28>2.5 billion) cash in hand, investments in short-term securities and unused credit lines from banks, it said last week. That compares with outstanding debt of $7.01 billion as of end-March, as per its latest annual report. Investors and analysts said the company was unlikely to face a severe liquidity crunch in the coming months, but the spectre of a potentially bruising financial and legal fallout could weigh heavily on its balance sheet in the year ahead. <20>This will surely have a very big impact on Kobe<62>s balance sheet going ahead, it<69>s really difficult to quantify now,<2C> said a Tokyo-based portfolio manager at a mid-sized fund house that has investments in Kobe and some blue-chip Japanese companies. The portfolio manager did not want to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media on company specific issues. <20>The cash flow hasn<73>t been very strong in the last two years. The liabilities as a result of this scandal could be quite big, and that will come on top of the existing debt,<2C> he said. <20>That<61>s my worry.<2E> Kobe Steel<65>s free cash flow has plummeted to 3.9 billion yen (<28>26 million) in the year ended March 2017 from a high of 132.2 billion yen in 2014, according to the annual report. The company is considering withdrawing its earnings forecast for this fiscal year as it struggles to quantify the impact of its data falsification scandal, Kyodo reported on Monday. In terms of its near-term repayment obligations, Kobe has bonds worth $178 million maturing on Oct 27, which, analysts say, will hardly be a challenge for the company given its current internal cash reserves. The bigger test for the company would, however, begins next year when a total debt of $1.1 billion, both in bank loans and bonds, comes up for repayment, according to the latest Thomson Reuters data. Underscoring investors concerns, the cost of insuring against default on Kobe Steel<65>s five-year yen debt through credit default swaps (CDS) were last quoted at 261 basis points. That is down from last week<65>s high of 368 basis points, but is still significantly higher than where it was trading, around 54 basis points, just before the company admitted data fabrication. The CDS curve has inverted which means investors anticipate a credit event in the near term hence it is more expensive to insure for the short term than the long term. Kobe<62>s bond prices have tumbled, and some investors rushed to sell the 20-30 billion yen of the debt to the Bank of Japan last week when the central bank conducted a corporate bond-buying operation in the market, traders said. The BOJ declined to comment. A Kobe Steel spokesman in Tokyo said last week: <20>It<49>s unclear how this crisis will affect our financial performance,<2C> and declined to comment on questions regarding the company<6E>s ability to repay its debts or on investor concerns. POTENTIAL LIABILITIES Although there is no indication of creditors piling pressure on Kobe any time soon, investor concerns have been stoked by potential liabilities arising from a wid
'd7d2e610d1e430ffbef5a5203821a93a6eadd36b'|'Monte dei Paschi shares trade below bailout price in market return'|'October 25, 2017 / 7:20 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago Monte dei Paschi rises on market return, shy of bailout price Reuters Staff 3 Min Read MILAN (Reuters) - Monte dei Paschi di Siena ( BMPS.MI ) shares rose sharply on their market return after a 10-month hiatus, but were well below the price Italy paid to bail out its fourth-largest bank. The entrance of Monte Dei Paschi di Siena is seen in San Gusme near Siena, Italy, September 29, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini The world<6C>s oldest bank<6E>s shares last traded in Milan in December 2016 when Monte dei Paschi had to turn to Rome for help after failing to find buyers for a 5 billion euro (<28>4.57 billion) share issue needed to keep it afloat. Shares in the Tuscan bank opened on Wednesday at 4.10 euros, which will constitute the reference price for the session, and then rose to as much as 4.73 euros, up 15 percent on the day. That price is above the 4.28 euro level at which the stock was valued last month during an auction held to set the payment due to investors who bought insurance against the bank<6E>s default. It is, however, well below the 6.49 euros paid by the state in August when it injected 3.85 billion euros into Monte dei Paschi, implying a large paper loss for the country<72>s taxpayers. The loss is even bigger for Monte dei Paschi<68>s junior bondholders, including insurer Assicurazioni Generali ( GASI.MI ), who were hit by a mandatory debt-to-equity swap due to European Union rules that require investors in a bank to bear losses before any state aid. The stock was priced at 8.65 euros in the conversion and the bank raised 4.47 billion euros through it. The state is compensating some retail bondholders by buying out their shares in exchange for Monte dei Paschi<68>s senior debt, thus raising its stake to 68 percent and the average price paid to around 7 euros a share. <20>After balance sheet de-risking and de-leveraging, the bank will try in the coming years to rebuild confidence and reach decent profitability,<2C> Milan-based broker Banca Akros said in a note resuming coverage of the stock with a <20>neutral<61> rating and a target price of 4.6 euros. To gain approval for the bailout, Monte dei Paschi agreed to a restructuring plan with EU authorities that envisages cutting 5,500 jobs and selling 26 billion euros in bad debts to reach a net profit of more than 1.2 billion euros in 2021. Reporting by Valentina Za; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-italy-banks-monte-dei-paschi/monte-dei-paschi-shares-trade-below-bailout-price-in-market-return-idUKKBN1CU0P8'|'2017-10-25T10:20:00.000+03:00'
'83deea28e1c34bc4e9c5a914b4af088a225133a8'|'VW CEO says unaware of price fixing in cartel investigation'|'October 25, 2017 / 8:49 AM / Updated 10 hours ago Volkswagen CEO denies price fixing by German carmakers Reuters Staff 2 Min Read STUTTGART, Germany (Reuters) - German carmakers being investigated over possible collusion did not engage in price fixing or an illegal cartel, Volkswagen<65>s ( VOWG_p.DE ) chief executive Matthias Mueller said on Wednesday. FILE PHOTO: Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller attends the opening of the Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt, Germany September 11, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach European Union antitrust staff have raided Volkswagen, Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ) and BMW ( BMWG.DE ) as part of an investigation into whether they conspired to fix prices in diesel and other technologies over several decades. <20>I have no knowledge of price fixing,<2C> Mueller said at a conference in Stuttgart. <20>We very much respect the cartel law.<2E> Mueller<65>s comment chimes with remarks made by his counterpart at Daimler, Dieter Zetsche, who told the conference late on Tuesday that cooperation among German rivals was for the good of customers and had not harmed them. The EU<45>s competition watchdog said in July that it was investigating German carmakers in response to a tip-off after Der Spiegel magazine reported that Daimler, BMW, VW and its Audi ( NSUG.DE ) and Porsche arms had colluded to the detriment of customers and foreign rivals. Mueller said the German carmakers had cooperated on standardization issues under the leadership of Germany<6E>s VDA industry lobby, without being more specific. Also on Wednesday, Mueller said VW could live with a Chinese compromise on electric vehicle quotas to combat air pollution. Beijing wants electric and hybrid cars to make up at least a fifth of China<6E>s auto sales by 2025 and plans to loosen joint-venture regulations to achieve its aim. Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach; Writing by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Alexander Smith '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-cartel/vw-ceo-says-unaware-of-price-fixing-in-cartel-investigation-idUSKBN1CU0YR'|'2017-10-25T11:49:00.000+03:00'
'e70f9cfb58709ef654ec9ba4d327480f55704d50'|'China speculators target ''Huning'' elevator firm on political namesake''s promotion'|'October 25, 2017 / 9:16 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago China speculators target ''Huning'' elevator firm on political namesake''s promotion Reuters Staff 3 Min Read SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A little-known Chinese elevator maker saw its Shenzhen-listed shares surge the maximum 10 percent on Wednesday. China''s Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Huning attends a plenary session of China''s National People''s Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China March 8, 2017. Picture taken March 8, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee The reason? The company<6E>s name resembles that of Wang Huning, a Chinese Communist Party theoretician who was elevated on Wednesday to China<6E>s apex of power. The frenzied buying in Hangzhou Huning Elevator Parts Co ( 300669.SZ ), whose business has nothing to do with Wang, offers the latest example of the enduring influence of short-term speculators, despite regulators<72> stepped-up campaign against <20>pump and dump<6D> trading. The government is introducing more foreign institutional investors, hoping they can help improve the trading culture in the country<72>s stock market - sometimes likened to a casino. U.S. index publisher MSCI will include China A-shares in its global indexes next year. But Wednesday<61>s surge in Huning Elevator shows that many investors still pick stocks merely by name, not fundamentals. <20>This is pure speculation, spurred by irrational euphoria. It has nothing to do with fundamentals,<2C> said Yang Hai, analyst at Kaiyuan Securities. <20>Heady investors who chased the stock will be burnt.<2E> Trading in Huning Elevator was calm in the morning, but that changed after the Communist Party revealed around midday its new Politburo Standing Committee, the country<72>s top policy-making body. The seven-man unit included Wang, a one-time law professor from Shanghai who has risen steadily up the party<74>s ranks but mostly operated behind the scenes. When the stock resumed trading in the afternoon, a buying spree pushed it up the maximum 10 percent. It gave up some gains in afternoon trading and closed up 6 percent. The elevator maker, which cannot be immediately reached for comment, forecast roughly flat nine-month profit on Oct. 13. Name-based stock-picking is not uncommon in China, especially during major political events. Last November, when news headlines pointed to a likely presidential election win for Donald Trump, shares in Wisesoft Co Ltd ( 002253.SZ ) - whose Chinese name sounds like <20>Trump<6D>s big win<69> - surged, while Yunan Xiyi Industrial ( 002265.SZ )- whose Chinese name bears resemblance to <20>Aunt Hillary<72> - slumped. And when Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential election in 2008, speculators piled into home appliances maker Aucma Co Ltd ( 600336.SS ), which sounds roughly like the Chinese pronunciation of Obama. Some listed firms in China even took advantage of speculators<72> preference for sexy names. In 2015, property developer Shanghai Duolun Industry ( 600696.SS ) changed its name to P2P Financial Information Services Co, in an apparent attempt to tap into investors<72> mania toward fin tech at the time, triggering a surge in its shares, before the bubble burst. Reporting by Samuel Shen and John Ruwitch; Editing by Sam Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-congress-stock-speculation/china-speculators-target-huning-elevator-firm-on-political-namesakes-promotion-idUKKBN1CU120'|'2017-10-25T12:15:00.000+03:00'
'58fd246778d880e32c265837e9cc10fce07642ce'|'Peruvians take Glencore to court over police abuse allegations'|'October 25, 2017 / 12:23 AM / Updated 20 minutes ago Peruvians take Glencore to court over police abuse allegations Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Peruvian villagers suing miner Glencore ( GLEN.L ) will argue in London<6F>s High Court next week that the company should be held liable over their allegations they were abused by Peruvian police, the law firm representing them said on Tuesday. FILE PHOTO - The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company''s headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann The allegations, to be presented in a 10-day hearing that starts on Monday, illustrates potential legal risks for mining companies that sign pacts with Peruvian police for the provision of security services at their operations. The lawsuit by 22 Peruvians said that Xstrata, acquired by Glencore in 2013, failed to take reasonable steps to prevent abuses by police in deadly protests at the Tintaya copper mine in 2012, said London law firm Leigh Day. Xstrata paid, fed and provided lodging for police and knew or should have known that Peru<72>s police tend to use excessive force, Leigh Day said. Glencore said Xstrata was not responsible for actions taken by the Peruvian National Police (PNP) in policing the protests and noted that the lawsuit does not allege that Xstrata or the mine<6E>s private security force harmed anyone. Xstrata <20>appealed to the PNP to respect the human rights of protesters before and during the protest,<2C> Glencore said in a statement. Like many mining companies in Peru, Xstrata had signed an agreement with Peru<72>s national police for the provision of security services at Tintaya, which stopped operating in 2013. The agreements, which usually include payment for police, have long been criticized by activists who say it creates a police force loyal to companies instead of the broader public. Defenders of the agreements say that they allow companies to pay for their policing needs in poor, remote regions where they tend to operate alongside villages that lack basic services. Leigh Day law firm said that a Peruvian villager believed to have been shot by police in the 2012 unrest will attend the hearing. The case will be determined under Peruvian law, the firm said. Reporting By Mitra Taj in Santiago; editing by Grant McCool'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-glencore-lawsuit-peru/peruvians-take-glencore-to-court-over-police-abuse-allegations-idUKKBN1CU00P'|'2017-10-25T03:22:00.000+03:00'
'79e1f55b7b75b76c091337b9a7b836518866a3b8'|'Cargill to buy feed maker in high-margin natural foods push'|'CHICAGO (Reuters) - Global commodities trader Cargill Inc [CARG.UL] on Tuesday said it was buying a natural animal feed maker, another in a string of deals to capitalize on rising demand for higher-margin natural foods and antibiotic-free meat and dairy products.Privately held Cargill<6C>s recent push, including Tuesday<61>s deal for Iowa-based Diamond V, has centered on its animal nutrition and protein unit, with expansions in feed production and aquaculture and divestitures of its U.S. pork business and cattle feedlots.Cargill and rivals like Archer Daniels Midland Co ( ADM.N ), Bunge Ltd ( BG.N ) and Louis Dreyfus Co [LOUDR.UL], known as the ABCD quartet of global grain trading giants, have moved to diversify amid a global grains glut that has weighed on margins and dragged profits.The deal, expected to close in January, is Cargill<6C>s latest investment in its animal nutrition and protein segment, which has posted higher profits in five straight quarters and is a major focus of the company<6E>s long-term growth strategy.<2E>We anticipate that we will continue to invest in this space,<2C> Chuck Warta, president of Cargill<6C>s premix and nutrition business told Reuters.Cargill invested in feed additive company Delacon in July, bought the animal feed business of U.S. farm cooperative Southern States in August and expanded feed milling in Thailand in September.<2E>This space of micronutrition and feed additives around the world, that<61>s about a $20 billion market. Delacon and Diamond V are our initial investments into this,<2C> Warta said.Cargill did not disclose terms of the Diamond V deal, but said it was among the five largest acquisitions in the company<6E>s 152-year history.Among those deals were a $1.5 billion acquisition of Norwegian fish feed company EWOS and a $1.2 billion deal in 2008 for starch manufacturer Cerestar.Diamond V is also privately held and does no disclose its revenue. The deal includes Diamond V<>s human health business Embria Health Sciences, which produces ingredients for dietary supplements.Additional reporting by Anirban Paul in Bengaluru; Editing by Supriya Kurane and David Gregorio '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-diamond-v-m-a-cargill-inc/cargill-buys-diamond-v-to-expand-animal-nutrition-business-idINKBN1CT1ZP'|'2017-10-24T12:05:00.000+03:00'
'f829548dac554e582c6b0b359371b2cdbf959e18'|'Rihanna creations help lift Puma sportswear sales'|' 39 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago Rihanna creations help lift Puma sportswear sales Reuters Staff 3 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - A new collection from singer Rihanna helped drive sales growth at German sportswear company Puma ( PUMG.DE ), which last week raised its outlook for 2017 sales and operating earnings. FILE PHOTO - The logo of German sports goods firm Puma is seen at the entrance of one of its stores in Vienna, Austria, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo Puma said third-quarter sales rose a currency-adjusted 23 percent in Europe, Middle East and Africa, 16 percent in the Americas and 10 percent in Asia/Pacific. Like its German rival Adidas ( ADSGn.DE ), which reports results on Nov. 9, Puma has been enjoying a revival in the U.S. market, as shoppers snap up its retro styles instead of basketball shoes, hurting Under Armour ( UAA.N ) and Nike ( NKE.N ). Puma, which was bought by French luxury goods company Kering ( PRTP.PA ) in 2007, had been struggling for years, but analysts expect Kering could seek to sell its stake in the course of 2018 now that the German brand is performing well again. Puma shares, which had jumped last week after the company hiked its outlook, were down 0.6 percent at 0705 GMT. Its market capitalisation is now 5.3 billion euros, back at the level at which Kering bought it. Kering is expected to pursue a dual track initial public offering-auction to spin off Puma next year, not before, the Business of Fashion website reported, citing investment bankers in Paris and London. Puma said growth had been driven in particular by footwear, with sales up a currency adjusted 23 percent, and accessories, which rose 24 percent, while sales of apparel were up 8 percent. Puma said its retro <20>Basket Heart<72> sneakers and <20>Ignite Limitless<73> running shoes were particularly popular and women<65>s sales were helped by a Rihanna collection launched in September as well as a partnership with singer and actress Selena Gomez. Puma named Rihanna as its women<65>s creative director in 2014 as sportswear firms seek to tap into the booming market for female leisure gear, which helped drive the rise of the likes of yogawear chain Lululemon Athletica Inc ( LULU.O ). Reporting by Emma Thomasson; Editing by Christoph Steitz and Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-puma-de-results/rihanna-creations-help-lift-puma-sportswear-sales-idUKKBN1CT0SK'|'2017-10-24T10:38:00.000+03:00'
'076c6332c76feff1530ffb33941047bf15d36e5d'|'Kobe Steel plant under inspection: transport minister'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese authorities are conducting safety checks at a Kobe Steel Ltd aluminum plant that supplied components for a domestically built aircraft and seeking to inspect other plants owned by the embattled company.FILE PHOTO: The logo of Kobe Steel is seen at the group''s Tokyo headquarters building in Tokyo, Japan October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo Kobe Steel<65>s revelations of widespread tampering in the specifications of its products have sent a chill through global supply chains for cars, trains, airplanes and other equipment. While no safety issues have been identified, the company is the subject of a U.S. Department of Justice inquiry and has said it is losing customers.The inspection of Kobe Steel<65>s Daian plant in central Japan was focusing on the safety of components being used in Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ) passenger aircraft being developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, Transport Minister Keiichi Ishii told reporters on Tuesday.<2E>As a country of design and manufacturing, we have an unmistakable commitment to safety,<2C> Ishii said. <20>We want to be absolutely sure of product safety as the MRJ heads towards mass production.<2E>The repeatedly delayed MRJ is central to the Japanese government<6E>s plans to revive an aerospace industry dismantled after World War Two. The aircraft has yet to enter service.Products with fabricated data have been used in the aircraft, a spokeswoman for Mitsubishi Heavy said on Tuesday, adding no safety issues have been found. There is no impact on testing schedules for the MRJ, she said.MORE CHECKS Japan<61>s industry minister also said on Tuesday he was seeking checks on other plants run by Japan<61>s third-largest steelmaker to see whether they were in compliance with statutory industrial standards.Industry minister Hiroshige Seko told reporters he asked companies that certify whether manufacturers comply with Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS) to consider rechecking all Kobe Steel plants that have the certification.Twenty Kobe Steel plants, including some overseas, are certified under JIS, an industry ministry official told Reuters by phone. The ministry can carry out its own inspections if Kobe Steel does not open its plants to the certification companies, he said.A Kobe Steel spokesman said on Tuesday the company is cooperating with the transport ministry inspection and will allow certification companies to carry out their checks if requested.One of the plants is already being checked, Kobe Steel said on Friday, when it revealed it had found more data fabrication and an attempt to cover up tampering.Kobe Steel admitted this month it falsified specifications on the strength and durability of aluminum, copper and steel products, along with materials for optical disks.The falsifications stretch back for more than 10 years, and the company last week said it had lost some customers to competitors because of the widespread tampering.Kobe Steel may drop its earnings forecast when it announces its first-half results next week, a senior executive told reporters late on Monday.The company is forecasting net profit of 35 billion yen for the year through March, 2018, after two consecutive annual losses. It is due to announce earnings for the April-September half on Oct 30.The company is considering dropping the forecast or revising it to take into account the known impact of the scandal, the executive said.Kobe Steel shares, which have fallen nearly 40 percent since the scandal broke, closed up 0.9 percent on Tuesday. The main Nikkei index was up 0.5 percent.Additional reporting by Ritsuko Shimizu, Kentaro Hamada and Ami Miyazaki; Writing by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Stephen Coates and Raju Gopalakrishnan '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal-minister/kobe-steel-plant-under-inspection-transport-minister-idUSKBN1CT06L'|'2017-10-24T05:09:00.000+03:00'
'ef9738bd57d8d3df09057a4b8603de2fd15a7b8f'|'India raises 2018 local wheat purchase price by 6.8 percent'|'NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India will raise the price at which the government will buy new-season wheat from local farmers in 2018 by 110 rupees ($1.69), or 6.8 percent, the minister of agriculture said on Tuesday, to boost local wheat output.Workers load wheat onto a cargo ship at Mundra port in Gujarat, September 24, 2012. REUTERS/Amit Dave/Files The revised purchase price of 1,735 rupees ($26.66) per 100 kg compares with 1,625 rupees a year ago, Radha Mohan Singh said in a tweet.India, the world<6C>s second-biggest rice and wheat producer, buys the grain from local farmers at state-set prices to build stocks to run a major food welfare programme which covers about 75 percent of its 1.3 billion people.($1 = 65.0800 Indian rupees)Reporting by Aditi Shah. Editing by Jane Merriman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-wheat/india-raises-2018-local-wheat-purchase-price-by-6-8-percent-idINKBN1CT2MN'|'2017-10-24T20:57:00.000+03:00'
'00af332954484d3442af0450d1a6b94a1cf46c9d'|'Monte dei Paschi shares to resume trading after 10-month halt'|'October 24, 2017 / 8:50 AM / in 18 minutes Monte dei Paschi shares to resume trading after 10-month halt Valentina Za , Stephen Jewkes 4 Min Read MILAN (Reuters) - Monte dei Paschi di Siena ( BMPS.MI ) shares will resume trading on Wednesday 10 months after they were suspended when Italy<6C>s fourth-largest bank failed to raise capital to bolster its finances. The entrance of Monte Dei Paschi di Siena is seen in San Gusme near Siena, Italy, September 29, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini Monte dei Paschi said on Tuesday that Italy<6C>s market watchdog had approved a prospectus for its re-listing. The bank<6E>s stock is expected to trade below the 6.49 euro price paid by the state in August when it injected 3.85 billion euros into Monte dei Paschi, implying a large paper loss for the country<72>s taxpayers. Traders have said the stock may fall below the 4.28 euro level at which it was valued last month during an auction held to set the payment due to investors who bought insurance against the bank<6E>s default. <20>The share price will be strongly influenced by investors<72> emotive reaction (to losses suffered),<2C> Roberto Russo, CEO of broker Assiteca SIM, said. <20>It<49>ll take months for the valuation to reflect mainly the bank<6E>s financial performance.<2E> At 4.28 euros per share, Italian taxpayers would be looking at a paper loss of 1.3 billion euros. The world<6C>s oldest bank had to turn to Rome for help in December 2016 after failing to find buyers for a 5 billion euro ($6 billion) share issue needed to keep it afloat. Weakened by mismanagement, a derivatives scandal and bad loans, Monte dei Paschi was at the center of Italy<6C>s banking crisis and its rescue removed the biggest threat to the country<72>s financial system. The potential loss is even larger for former junior bondholders, whose debt has been converted into equity due to European rules that require investors to take some losses before the state can step in. Monte dei Paschi raised 4.47 billion euros through the debt to equity conversion which priced shares at 8.65 euros each. The state is compensating some retail bondholders by buying up shares they received in the conversion for up to 1.5 billion euros and offering in exchange Monte dei Paschi<68>s senior debt. Consumer group ADUC on Tuesday urged retail shareholders who did not qualify for the swap to sell their shares. The exchange offer, due to run from Oct. 30 to Nov. 17, will lift the Treasury<72>s stake in the bank to 67.8 percent. Russo calculated it will also increase the average price paid by the state to around 7 euros. A share price of 3.5 euros would value Monte dei Paschi at 0.41 times its assets, broadly comparable to that at which rivals such as Banco BPM ( BAMI.MI ) and BPER Banca ( EMII.MI ) trade. To gain approval for the bailout, Monte dei Paschi agreed a restructuring plan with European authorities that envisages cutting 5,500 jobs and selling 26 billion euros in bad debts to reach a net profit of more than 1.2 billion euros in 2021. Italy<6C>s stock exchange said when the shares resume trading orders without price limits will be banned and the opening price will be the reference price for the day. Price limits aim to curb volatility. Reporting by Valentina Za and Stephen Jewkes, additional reporting by Gianluca Semeraro.; Editing by Alexander Smith and Jane Merriman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-montepaschi-stocks/monte-dei-paschi-shares-to-resume-trading-after-10-month-halt-idUSKBN1CT105'|'2017-10-24T11:49:00.000+03:00'
'f3659db4737054721417dc08a7638d9b12e77e76'|'AstraZeneca among backers as Swiss cancer biotech raises $200 million'|'October 23, 2017 / 11:57 AM / Updated 8 hours ago AstraZeneca among backers as Swiss cancer biotech raises $200 million Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - An unlisted Swiss biotech company focused on developing <20>armed antibodies<65> to fight cancer has raised $200 million in a funding round backed by AstraZeneca and other private backers. FILE PHOTO: The logo of AstraZeneca is seen on medication packages in a pharmacy in London, Britain April 28, 2014. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth /File Photo The new money will allow ADC Therapeutics (ADCT) to advance two experimental drugs into clinical trials next year, which could be used to seek regulatory approval, as well as funding earlier-stage research. ADCT specializes in developing so-called antibody drug conjugates that combine an antibody with a killer toxin to attack tumors. Roche<68>s breast cancer drug Kadcyla is a well-known example of this new type of medicine. The latest financing means ADCT has raised a total of $455 million since its inception in 2012, when it was founded by Auven Therapeutics. ADCT is headed by Chief Executive Chris Martin, who previously led British-based cancer specialist Spirogen, which was bought by AstraZeneca in October 2013. The British drugmaker took a $20 million equity investment in ADCT at that time. Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by David Goodman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-adc-therapeutics-astrazeneca/astrazeneca-among-backers-as-swiss-cancer-biotech-raises-200-million-idUKKBN1CS1HR'|'2017-10-23T14:53:00.000+03:00'
'20dea5840c651828350ad54687af1406ff6e7a62'|'China''s Shanghai Electric near deal for Brazil transmission project'|'October 23, 2017 / 8:08 PM / Updated 30 minutes ago China''s Shanghai Electric near deal for Brazil transmission project Luciano Costa , Jake Spring 3 Min Read SAO PAULO/BRASILIA (Reuters) - A unit of China<6E>s Shanghai Electric Group Co Ltd 601627.SS is near closing a deal to take over a power transmission project in southern Brazil owned by a subsidiary of Eletrobras ( ELET6.SA ), an official at electricity regulator Aneel told Reuters. A cleaner works next to the shells of a wind turbine tower outside the assembly workshop in The Shanghai Electric Windpower Equipment Co., Ltd. in Shanghai, April 20, 2012. REUTERS/Aly Song The project in Rio Grande do Sul state requires roughly 3.3 billion reais ($1.0 billion) in investment and had originally been awarded to the Eletrobras unit Eletrosul Centrais Eletricas SA, or Eletrosul. Closure of the deal depends on Shanghai Electric accepting conditions imposed by Aneel, said Director Jos<6F> Jurhosa, who heads the agency<63>s unit overseeing the case. <20>They made a proposal and we<77>re analysing it ... point by point. We agree with some, not with others,<2C> Jurhosa said. <20>It will depend whether they accept what we are imposing.<2E> State-controlled Eletrobras, Eletrosul and Shanghai Electric did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Eletrobras, or Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA, said in a securities filing in June that the companies had reached a non-binding agreement. Aneel is set to review Eletrosul<75>s request to allow the takeover at a meeting of the regulator<6F>s board of directors on Tuesday. Jurhosa said he will suggest at the meeting that the other directors conditionally approve the deal because the transmission lines in question are key to the electrical grid and any re-bidding for contracts could delay their completion. According to a person with knowledge of the matter, representatives of Shanghai Electric have planned a trip to Brazil to sign a binding memorandum of understanding for its unit Shanghai Electric Power Transmission and Distribution Engineering to take control of the project. A second source close to the deal said the negotiations indicated the deal provides that Shanghai Electric will transfer a roughly 25 percent stake in the projects to Eletrosul in the future. The China-controlled CLAI fund is also expected to take a 25 percent to 35 percent stake in the project, the source said. The deal follows a spree of Chinese acquisitions in the Brazilian power sector. State Grid Corp of China has become Brazil<69>s second largest electricity transmission company while China Three Gorges Corp is the country<72>s No. 2 private power generation firm, according to China<6E>s embassy in Brasilia. Reporting by Luciano Costa and Jake Spring; Editing by Leslie Adler'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/eletrobras-divestiture-shanghaielectric/chinas-shanghai-electric-near-deal-for-brazil-transmission-project-idINKBN1CS2MC'|'2017-10-23T23:07:00.000+03:00'
'2ad269446f446093254829ad9855f7de08e3e756'|'Harry Potter still casting his spell over Bloomsbury revenues'|'Reuters TV United States October 24, 2017 / 9:57 AM / in a few seconds Harry Potter still casting his spell over Bloomsbury revenues Reuters Staff 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Harry Potter is continuing to work his magic for publisher Bloomsbury ( BLPU.L ) 20 years after his debut, with special editions of his first adventure helping revenue rise 15 percent. FILE PHOTO: Copies of the book of the play of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child parts One and Two are displayed at a bookstore in London, Britain July 31, 2016. REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo Bloomsbury released new editions of J.K. Rowling<6E>s <20>Harry Potter and the Philosopher<65>s Stone<6E> with covers dedicated to wizarding school Hogwarts<74> houses Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw to mark the anniversary in June. The new designs helped Bloombury<72>s children<65>s trade division deliver what it said was <20>another outstanding<6E> performance, increasing revenue by a third in its first half. Revenue from Harry Potter grew 40 percent in the period, the company said on Tuesday, and the young wizard and his magical world will feature strongly in the publisher<65>s assault on the important Christmas market. <20>We have a strong second-half list including the illustrated edition of <20>Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,<2C> the illustrated edition of <20>Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them<65> and two major books to accompany the British Library<72>s Harry Potter exhibition,<2C> said Chief Executive Nigel Newton. FILE PHOTO: A woman holds copies of the book of the play of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child parts One and Two at a bookstore in London, Britain July 31, 2016. REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo The robust performance from Bloomsbury reflects a wider improvement in the British book market, where special editions featuring vintage covers and new artwork have helped draw readers back to print formats. Print revenue was more than nine times as big as e-book revenue, the company said, with the rate of growth identical for both at 16 percent. The company, which also published 2017 Man Booker prize-winner George Saunders<72><73>Lincoln in the Bardo<64>, reported revenue of 72.1 million pounds ($95 million) and adjusted pretax profit of 2.5 million pounds in the six months to end-August, up 74 percent. Shares in the group were trading up 4 percent at 167 pence at 0836 GMT. Analyst Steve Liechti at Investec said Bloomsbury<72>s second-half list looked strong, with cookery titles from Paul Hollywood, Tom Kerridge and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall as well as the new Harry Potter editions. He has a <20>buy<75> rating on the stock and a pretax profit forecast of 12 million pounds for the full year. Reporting by Paul Sandle; editing by Stephen Addison'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-bloomsbury-pubg-results/harry-potter-still-casting-his-spell-over-bloomsbury-revenues-idUKKBN1CT182'|'2017-10-24T12:29:00.000+03:00'
'33608e5baa852e691aecb33d6a57f1d0f963f2d5'|'The jobs market is strong. Here''s asterisk. 26,'|'The jobs market is strong. Here''s the asterisk. by Christine Romans @CNNMoney October 26, 2017: 5:42 AM ET Why the job market isn''t as good as it seems The jobless rate at a 16-year low. A record 6 million open jobs. Weekly jobless claims below 300,000 for the longest stretch since the 1970s. By nearly every headline measure, the American jobs market is roaring. But something is missing -- meaningful wage growth. Companies are hiring and layoffs are down, but paychecks aren''t growing as they should. Before the Great Recession, wages grew around 3% each year. A healthy labor market should generate fatter paychecks to the tune of 3% to 3.5%. Those higher wages help workers keep up with inflation and keep the consumer-driven economy strong. Since the recession, wage growth has been stubbornly weak, an asterisk in the job market recovery. There was a glimmer of hope in September, when wages rose 2.9% from the year before, the strongest in eight years. It''s too early to know whether that was temporary, a statistical blip because of the hurricanes, or the beginning of long-repressed wage inflation. Related: Romans'' Numeral: Is it too late to buy stocks? Another asterisk: Geography. Unemployment is still high in some places, like Alaska, New Mexico, and Washington, D.C. And then there''s this: A record 6 million jobs are open in the United States, and at the same time 6 million people are looking for work. So why can''t those unemployed people fill those jobs? Employers say they can''t find workers who have the right training. It''s been a problem for years. Other factors that could be holding down wage growth are automation, which is eliminating some jobs, and competition from overseas. But until wage growth improves, it''s holding the economy back from an even stronger recovery. CNNMoney (New York) First published October 26, 2017: 5:42 AM ET '|'cnn.com'|'http://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_news_economy.rss'|'http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/26/news/economy/romans-numeral-job-market/index.html'|'2017-10-26T13:42:00.000+03:00'
'50570cb5cc583e919f00c76b4eb5e3b45b82c564'|'PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 24'|'October 24, 2017 / 6:16 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Oct 24 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 24 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - Amazon.com Inc''s open competition for its second headquarters triggered an extraordinary response, with the tech giant saying 238 cities and regions had bid for the project it expects to cost $5 billion over nearly 20 years. on.wsj.com/2yKARk0 - A murder trial started Monday for a Mexican man named Jose Ines Garcia Zarate who set off a national immigration debate after he shot and killed a woman two years ago on a popular San Francisco pier. on.wsj.com/2yHk1lP - New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened an investigation into the Weinstein Company to determine whether its handling of allegations of sexual misconduct against company co-founder Harvey Weinstein violated state or city laws. on.wsj.com/2yJzu4O - U.S. President Donald Trump pledged Monday to protect a popular retirement-savings program, promising to leave it untouched in the forthcoming GOP plan to overhaul taxes. on.wsj.com/2yJd6Zr - Iowa is withdrawing its application for an ambitious program to reshape the Affordable Care Act after federal officials laid out tough conditions for its approval, a decision that signals limits to states'' efforts to alter parts of the health law. on.wsj.com/2yKBlGQ (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-wsj/press-digest-wall-street-journal-oct-24-idUSL4N1MZ2CH'|'2017-10-24T09:16:00.000+03:00'
'8643e767884a8ea057de4cd9937211ef0c05cd29'|'BRIEF-Argonaut Gold announces commercial production at San Agustin'|' 31 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago BRIEF-Argonaut Gold announces commercial production at San Agustin Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 23 (Reuters) - Argonaut Gold Inc * Argonaut Gold announces commercial production at San Agustin; project delivered on schedule and under budget in excess of 20 pct Source text for Eikon:  '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-argonaut-gold-announces-commercial/brief-argonaut-gold-announces-commercial-production-at-san-agustin-idUSFWN1MY10Y'|'2017-10-24T00:26:00.000+03:00'
'21ffe7b15338eb3a498a8f354fb8664d26302081'|'China shoppers rein in spending on cookies to pop drinks: survey'|'SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Growth in sales of consumer goods ranging from biscuits and candies to toothpaste and shampoo has slowed in China to a five-year low, a survey shows, in a major challenge for global firms seeking to attract buyers in the world<6C>s most populous nation.A consumer chooses soft drinks at a supermarket in Shanghai, China, March 10, 2016. China''s consumer inflation accelerated faster-than-expected in February due to rising food prices but another fall in upstream prices is likely to add to concerns about growing deflationary pressures, which could trigger further policy easing. REUTERS/Aly Song Demand for fast-moving consumer goods has waned in the world<6C>s No.2 economy, with sales growing 2 percent in the first half of 2017 versus year-ago levels, a report from consultancies Kantar Worldpanel and Bain & Co shows.That is the weakest half-year growth since 2012, according to the report based on a survey of 40,000 households. While sales rose 3.6 percent in the third quarter, it is still a far cry from a near 20 percent growth just over half a decade ago.The data gives a gauge of how China<6E>s consumers are spending their money - key as Beijing<6E>s leaders, global investors, and brands such as Nestle, Pampers owner Procter & Gamble or Coca-Cola look to tap the spending power of the country<72>s near 1.4 billion potential shoppers.<2E>The type of consumption people enjoy now is very different - travel, lifestyle, entertainment are all growing strongly,<2C> said Bruno Lannes, Shanghai-based partner at Bain.<2E>(This is) where people are spending, and it<69>s taking money away from fast-moving consumer goods.<2E>A boom in cheap food delivery - luring huge investment into firms like Meituan-Dianping - has also hit grocery sales as people cook less often at home, Lannes added.But not all products did badly.While chocolate, chewing gum and candy saw double-digit drops in sales volume in the first six months, health-focused products like yoghurt and bottled water and some personal care products fared far better.The Kantar-Bain report offers detailed insights into consumer spending patterns beyond broader official retail sales. The latter also includes data from segments like cars and oil products and showed a rise of 10.3 percent for September.China - amid a twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle - has posted strong economic growth this year, but this is expected to slow in coming months as higher financing costs and measures to cool the heated property market start to weigh on activity.The annual Kantar-Bain report also underlined how politics was hitting consumer markets.Sales of South Korean skin care and makeup products in China fell 4.8 percent in the first half amid a diplomatic stand-off over Seoul<75>s decision to deploy an anti-missile system.For 2017, sales of fast-moving consumer goods in China is expected to be <20>slightly<6C> better than last year<61>s 2.9 percent rise, which was the slowest in a decade, Kantar<61>s China General Manager Jason Yu said.<2E>We did see some recovery in the third quarter,<2C> said Yu. <20>Really important now is how the fourth quarter performs.<2E>Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Himani SarkarOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/china-retail/china-shoppers-rein-in-spending-on-cookies-to-pop-drinks-survey-idINKBN1CT1DV'|'2017-10-24T13:56:00.000+03:00'
'4f20e027cf8641f7c0f61a3a4123f3900d8b3b3b'|'UPDATE 2-Pulte''s revenue misses as growth in home sales slows'|'* Q3 profit edges past estimate, rev misses* Home sales up 2.3 pct, slowest growth in 8 qtrs* Orders jump 11 pct* Shares slip 1.4 pct premarket (Adds FactSet estimates, share move and background)Oct 24 (Reuters) - PulteGroup Inc, the No. 3 U.S. homebuilder, reported lower-than-expected quarterly revenue as growth in its home completions slowed at a time when hurricanes ravaged thousands of homes in the country.Atlanta, Georgia-based Pulte<74>s number of homes sold rose 2.3 percent to 5,151 units in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, but it was its slowest growth in eight quarters. The figure also missed the estimate of 5,433 units, according to FactSet.Pulte, which mainly sells single-family homes, said the average selling price increased 6.7 percent to $399,000, missing FactSet estimate of $407,000.Pulte<74>s shares were down 1.4 percent at $27.50 in premarket trading on Tuesday.While bigger rival Lennar Corp said last month that it expected hundreds of home deliveries and orders to be hurt by the recent hurricanes and No. 1 U.S. homebuilder D.R. Horton Inc slashed its 2017 forecast for cash flow from operations, Pulte has not yet disclosed any details on how the hurricanes impacted its operations.<2E>We remain optimistic about the strength of future housing demand...,<2C> Pulte Chief Executive Ryan Marshall said in a statement on Tuesday.Orders, a key metric of future revenue for homebuilders, rose 11 percent to 5,300 units in the quarter despite the recent hurricanes, beating FactSet<65>s estimate of 5,107 units.While demand for housing remains robust, there is an acute shortage of homes for sale, partly constrained by a lack of labor.Harvey and Irma could worsen the housing shortage as scarce labor is being pulled toward the rebuilding efforts and materials are bid higher.Pulte<74>s home sale gross margin was 23.9 percent, down 80 basis points from a year earlier.In July, the homebuilder said it was pressured by higher lumber prices following wildfires in Canada, which are expected to weigh on costs in the second half of the year as well.The company<6E>s net income rose 38.2 percent to $177.5 million, or 58 cents per share, in the quarter.The company earned 60 cents per share on an adjusted basis, edging past estimates of 59 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Revenue rose 9.6 percent to $2.13 billion, but missed the average analyst estimate of $2.30 billion.Up to Monday<61>s close, Pulte<74>s shares had risen 51.8 percent this year. (Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr and Maju Samuel) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/pultegroup-results/update-1-pultegroups-profit-edges-past-estimates-as-prices-sales-rise-idINL4N1MZ420'|'2017-10-24T08:59:00.000+03:00'
'9432199b67fb637832e752db8d606c8b110cb6bf'|'Toshiba says considering measures in case chip unit sale uncompleted by March'|'October 24, 2017 / 3:33 AM / in 4 hours Toshiba considering measures in case chip unit sale not completed by March Makiko Yamazaki 2 Min Read CHIBA CITY, Japan (Reuters) - Japan<61>s embattled Toshiba Corp said on Tuesday it is considering various measures in case it cannot complete the $18 billion sale of its prized flash memory chip unit by the end of March. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Toshiba is seen as a shareholder arrives at Toshiba''s extraordinary shareholders meeting in Chiba, Japan March 30, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo The sale needs to close by the end of the financial year in March or Toshiba will likely report negative net worth - where liabilities exceed assets - for a second year running - which may trigger an automatic delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. <20>We must think about various measures in accordance with changes in circumstances,<2C> Toshiba CEO Satoshi Tsunakawa said at an extraordinary general meeting where shareholders approved the sale of unit a consortium led by Bain Capital LP. <20>Nothing has been decided, but it<69>s true that we are considering potential measures,<2C> he added, but did not elaborate on what those measures might be. Proceeds from the sale are crucial to cover billions of dollars in liabilities arising from the conglomerate<74>s now bankrupt U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse. But a deal was only agreed last month after a long and contentious auction, and chances are high that it will not receive regulatory approvals by end-March as such reviews usually take at least six months. Toshiba is also facing legal challenges from its chip joint venture partner Western Digital, which opposes any deal without its consent and has sought an injunction with the International Court of Arbitration. Some analysts say Toshiba may move to raise fresh capital now that the Tokyo Stock Exchange has removed it from a special watchlist, which had prevented it from issuing new shares. At the meeting, shareholders also approved its earnings report for the past business year and the appointment of 10 executives to the board, including Tsunakawa and seven other incumbent board members. Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Edwina Gibbs '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/toshiba-accounting/toshiba-says-considering-measures-in-case-chip-unit-sale-uncompleted-by-march-idINKBN1CT09O'|'2017-10-24T06:30:00.000+03:00'
'8e20aed269d4d38567682ffad0a65304196b2382'|'China''s Sinochem says no plans to bid for stake in Chilean lithium producer SQM'|'October 24, 2017 / 2:35 AM / Updated an hour ago China''s Sinochem says no plans to bid for stake in Chilean lithium producer SQM Tom Daly 2 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s state-owned Sinochem Group [SINOC.UL] on Tuesday appeared to deny a media report that it was bidding for a stake in Chilean lithium producer SQM ( SQMa.SN ) being sold by Canada<64>s PotashCorp ( POT.TO ). <20>Up until now, neither Sinochem Group nor our subsidiaries have had such intentions or plans,<2C> the company said in response to a request for comment from Reuters. The Financial Times reported on Monday that Sinochem, a Beijing-based chemicals and oil conglomerate, was among four Chinese bidders for a $4 billion stake in Chile<6C>s Sociedad Quimica Y Minera (SQM), one of the world<6C>s largest lithium producers. It cited people familiar with the process. Lithium is a key raw material for batteries in electric vehicles, which are enjoying a massive rise in popularity in China. The other Chinese bidders named by the Financial Times were Ningbo Shanshan ( 600884.SS ), Tianqi Lithium and GSR Capital. Ningbo Shanshan also said that it was not participating in a bid to acquire equity in SQM, while Tianqi Lithium ( 002466.SZ ) and GSR Capital did not respond to requests for comment. Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc was in September reported to have hired Goldman Sachs and BofA Merrill Lynch to explore selling its 32 percent stake in SQM. Reporting by Tom Daly; Editing by Joseph Radford'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-metals-lithium/chinas-sinochem-says-no-plans-to-bid-for-stake-in-chilean-lithium-producer-sqm-idUKKBN1CT07M'|'2017-10-24T05:34:00.000+03:00'
'a6e0355ac9a096e3192f904490f5fc0c92154974'|'PRESS DIGEST- Canada- Oct 23'|'October 23, 2017 / 11:30 AM / Updated 26 minutes ago PRESS DIGEST- Canada- Oct 23 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 23 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories from selected Canadian newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. THE GLOBE AND MAIL ** India''s competition regulator agreed to the merger of Potash Corp of Saskatchewan Inc and Agrium Inc , provided Potash sells its stakes in Arab Potash Co Plc , Israel Chemicals Ltd and Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile SA within 18 months. The companies can close their deal before divesting the assets, which are estimated to be worth more than $5 billion. tgam.ca/2iu7Pkz ** British Columbia''s NDP government is facing controversy over liquefied natural gas as environmental groups warn that a project led by Royal Dutch Shell Plc will derail the province''s efforts to transition to a low-carbon economy. tgam.ca/2iujgZi ** As Ottawa overhauls its cultural policies, Canadian record labels are pleading for the federal government to revise copyright laws in favour of artists, hoping to offset internet-driven losses to both musicians and the businesses that support them. tgam.ca/2iumpZ6 NATIONAL POST ** Canada is selling its last inshore coastal surveyor ship, the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Matthew, in an auction that closes on Friday with a minimum bid of C$1 million ($791,891). bit.ly/2iqTXHz $1 = C$1.26 Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-canada-oct-23/press-digest-canada-oct-23-idUSL4N1MY3S1'|'2017-10-23T14:26:00.000+03:00'
'6394f217ad6948c2787ccbf19abad11a5a3dd0c0'|'Electra says market conditions do not support new investment'|'Oct 23 (Reuters) - Electra Private Equity, one of Britain<69>s oldest private equity firms, said it will not be making any new investments for the time being due to market conditions.<2E>The board considers that current market conditions do not support new investment. However, should conditions change the board will consider further investment,<2C> Electra said in a statement on Monday.It added that it plans to pay shareholders a special dividend of 350 million pounds ($462 million).Electra is undergoing a strategic review after separating from its investment manager, which is now known as Epiris, earlier this year.The firm said it would now take actions to simplify its corporate and underlying partnership structures to cut costs and increase efficiency, as part of the second phase of the review.Electra also said it would update its investment policy to reflect a focus on shareholder returns and explore options for the reclassification of its current listing.The company, which has focused on private equity for over 25 years, said it will hold a general meeting where shareholders could vote on proposals, including dropping <20>Private Equity<74> from its name. ($1 = 0.7567 pounds) (Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru)Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/electra-pvt-eqty-restructuring/electra-says-market-conditions-do-not-support-new-investment-idINL8N1MY0YR'|'2017-10-23T04:32:00.000+03:00'
'ab2bc5fb5bac5d2b49ca6052b49240713d325d9b'|'Spire rejects 1.2 billion pound Mediclinic takeover bid'|'October 23, 2017 / 6:29 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago Spire rejects 1.2 billion pound Mediclinic takeover bid Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Spire Healthcare ( SPI.L ) has rejected an approach by South African private hospitals operator Mediclinic International ( MDCM.L ) on a deal to take full control of Britain<69>s second-largest healthcare company. The proposal comprised 150 pence in cash and 0.232 new Mediclinic shares per Spire share and valued Spire shares at 298.6 pence, Spire said on Monday. Spire reviewed the proposal and decided that it significantly undervalues Spire and its prospects, it added. The offer values Spire at 1.2 billion pounds ($1.59 billion). Mediclinic already owns 29.9 pct of Spire, Thomson Reuters data shows. ($1 = 0.7569 pounds)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-spire-healthcare-m-a-mediclinic-intl/spire-rejects-1-2-billion-pound-mediclinic-takeover-bid-idUKKBN1CS0K4'|'2017-10-23T09:28:00.000+03:00'
'8f366814e3dae43f41ada0d8caa851cd75ee9e72'|'UK watchdog bans high-living debt management husband and wife for deception'|'October 23, 2017 / 11:02 AM / Updated 8 hours ago UK watchdog bans high-living debt management husband and wife for deception Huw Jones 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - A husband and wife debt management duo paid for luxury hotels and cars by deceiving more than 4,000 customers who lost in excess of 6 million pounds, Britain<69>s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said on Monday. The logo of the new Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is seen at the agency''s headquarters in the Canary Wharf business district of London April 1, 2013. REUTERS/Chris Helgren The watchdog said it banned Adrian and Christine Whitehurst from any involvement in regulated financial services activity. The two were former directors of now-dissolved debt management firm First Step Finance Ltd. Their lawyer had no immediate comment. The ban is the strongest action the FCA can take, as the misconduct took place in the six years before responsibility for regulating consumer credit was handed to the watchdog in 2014. The FCA has also referred the Whitehursts to the City of London Police, who are considering the matter, the watchdog said. City of London police had no immediate comment. The firm<72>s customers won<6F>t be able to recover their money because the losses are not covered by Britain<69>s Financial Services Compensation Scheme. <20>The Whitehursts were trusted by their customers, who were extremely vulnerable, to help them with their debt problems,<2C> FCA Executive Director for Enforcement Mark Steward said. <20>They abused this trust, living a luxury lifestyle at the expense of people who could not afford to lose their money.<2E> The FCA said First Step<65>s customers were largely vulnerable people who went to the firm for help to pay off their debts. The firm said it would build up a pot of money for each customer from monthly contributions to pay off creditors. Instead, the Whitehursts spent over 500,000 pounds on holidays, bars and restaurants, including stays at five-star luxury hotels in Marbella, Venice, Vienna and Greece, the FCA said. Over 200,000 pounds was spent on luxury cars, including a Bentley, a Range Rover and a Ducati, with significant sums on goods from Hermes and Louis Vuitton, the FCA said. Last week the FCA began an in-depth investigation into the debt management sector after uncovering poor practices. Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by David Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-fca-whitehurst/uk-watchdog-bans-high-living-debt-management-husband-and-wife-for-deception-idUKKBN1CS1C6'|'2017-10-23T14:02:00.000+03:00'
'484c0f1dc4b7534be64d08e15f9d12aeab60299d'|'CEE MARKETS-Forint weakens on policy easing risk as central bank meets'|'* Hungarian central bank meets, unlikely to change rates * Some market participants see policy easing risk, forint weakens By Sandor Peto BUDAPEST, Oct 24 (Reuters) - The forint led an easing of Central European currencies against the euro on Tuesday on some expectations that the Hungarian central bank (NBH) may cut its overnight deposit rate further at its meeting later in the day. Hungarian markets reopened after Monday''s national holiday. "There are some outlier forecasts that there will be a further rate cut," one Budapest-based trader said. "Also, Moody''s did not improve the (Hungarian debt rating) outlook on Friday despite some expectations." The forint and the zloty eased 0.2-0.3 percent against the euro by 0839 GMT. Only 1 out of 12 analysts projected a cut in the Hungarian overnight deposit rate in a Reuters poll last week, and analysts in the survey agreed that the base rate would not change either. The base rate, which is also the 3-month deposit rate, has lost most of its significance this year as the NBH has limited the funds that commercial banks can keep in the deposits. Liquidity management through fx swap tenders has become more significant. A surprise cut in the overnight deposit rate delivered last month has pushed interbank interest rates lower. Most analysts said the NBH would not announce further easing, waiting for the European Central Bank''s Thursday meeting. A shift towards more hawkish ECB policy could weaken Central European currencies and bonds, making them relatively less attractive and pointing to increased inflation risks in Europe. "We expect the EURPLN rate to decline towards the technical support of 4.20 (from 4.2355) in the rest of the week. We hope that a dovish statement from the ECB will strengthen the flow of capital into CEE markets," ING bank Slaski said in a note. The Czech central bank (CNB), worried over a rise in inflation, already lifted its rates in August. The crown eased 0.1 percent to 25.675 against the euro on Tuesday. Expectations for further CNB hikes keep it close to the 4-year highs reached on Monday, setting aside any immediate concern that billionaire Andrej Babis'' ANO party, which won last weekend''s election, may run into trouble in its search for coalition partners. The Romanian leu eased slightly, but stayed on the firm side of 4.6 against the euro, with market participants convinced "of the central bank''s determination to curb leu weakening beyond 4.60/euro," ING analysts said in a note. In stock markets, the shares of O2 firmed 3.3 percent, after the Czech telecoms firm reported higher than expected third-quarter profits. State-controlled Polish banks Pekao and Alior shed 3.6 and 2.7 percent, respectively, after saying that they were considering cooperation or a merger. CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1039 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.663 25.646 -0.07% 5.24% 0 0 Hungary 308.50 308.02 -0.16% 0.10% forint 00 00 Polish zloty 4.2355 4.2231 -0.29% 3.98% Romanian leu 4.5985 4.5967 -0.04% -1.38% Croatian 7.5085 7.5065 -0.03% 0.62% kuna Serbian 119.38 119.27 -0.09% 3.33% dinar 00 00 Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1051.7 1048.2 +0.33 +14.1 4 5 % 2% Budapest 39085. 39132. -0.12% +22.1 10 62 3% Warsaw 2463.5 2473.4 -0.40% +26.4 0 2 7% Bucharest 7893.7 7900.5 -0.09% +11.4 7 8 1% Ljubljana 803.35 803.93 -0.07% +11.9 5% Zagreb 1845.8 1849.4 -0.19% -7.47% 5 4 Belgrade 728.46 728.25 +0.03 +1.55 % % Sofia 665.72 667.48 -0.26% +13.5 2% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs change Bund in Czech spread Republic 2-year 0.332 0.106 +104b +9bps ps 5-year 0.746 0 +101b -3bps ps 10-year 1.635 -0.046 +117b -7bps ps Poland 2-year 1.685 0.011 +239b -1bps ps 5-year 2.688 0.012 +295b -1bps ps 10-year 3.383 0.008 +292b -2bps ps FORWARD RATE AGREEMENT 3x6 6x9 9x12 3M interb ank Czech Rep <PR 0.85 0.99 1.12 0 IBOR=> Hu
'3b4bfa3f101cb4d766f0430ea770355ef779d166'|'U.S. law firm files class suit against Rio Tinto over Mozambique coal'|'October 24, 2017 / 2:12 AM / Updated 4 hours ago U.S. law firm files class suit against Rio Tinto over Mozambique coal James Regan 3 Min Read SYDNEY (Reuters) - A U.S. law firm has filed a class action suit against mining giant Rio Tinto, which is facing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fraud charges stemming from an ill-fated investment in Mozambique coal mining. FILE PHOTO: A sign adorns the building where mining company Rio Tinto has their office in Perth, Western Australia on November 19, 2015. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo Seattle-based Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP said in a statement released in Australia on Tuesday it filed the suit on behalf of purchasers of Rio Tinto American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) between Oct. 23, 2012 and Feb. 15, 2013 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The law firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Rio Tinto declined to comment on the filing, the first publicly announced class action suit involving the coal asset. The SEC last week charged Rio Tinto and two of its former top executives with fraud, saying they inflated the value of Mozambique coal assets and concealed critical information while tapping the market for billions of dollars. The assets were acquired for $3.7 billion in 2011 from an Australian company, Riversdale Mining, but sold a few years later for $50 million. Rio Tinto and the two executives, Tom Albanese, chief executive at the time, and former chief financial officer Guy Elliott, have denied the charges. The filing names as lead plaintiff Anton Colbert of Cook County, Illinois. The document states Colbert acquired Rio Tinto ADRs between Feb. 28, 2011 and Sept. 16, 2013 worth $41,319.84, according to Reuters<72> calculations based on the filing. In a class action, a lead plaintiff represents other participants, which the filing lodged by Hagens Berman states believes could number <20>hundreds or thousands of members in the proposed class<73>. In its charges, the SEC said that soon after the Mozambique asset deal was completed, Rio Tinto learned that the acquisition would yield less coal, and of a lower quality, than expected. The global miner could only transport and sell a fraction of the coal it had originally assumed, the SEC said. By making misleading public statements, Rio Tinto, Albanese and Elliott were able to raise $5.5 billion from U.S. investors, the SEC said. They continued to solicit the investments even after executives of the Mozambique subsidiary told Albanese and Elliott that the unit was likely worth negative $680 million, according to the SEC. Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rio-tinto-fraud-classaction/u-s-law-firm-files-class-suit-against-rio-tinto-over-mozambique-coal-idUSKBN1CT06N'|'2017-10-24T05:11:00.000+03:00'
'7fbfbdc6f8ede5f911245640eae194ccc2d75d52'|'Insight: Amazon rivals turn to legal fine print to stem Whole Foods strategy'|'October 24, 2017 / 5:14 AM / a few seconds ago Amazon rivals turn to legal fine print to stem Whole Foods strategy Jeffrey Dastin 8 Min Read SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Whole Foods Market met a new foe this summer during talks to lease a top retail space in a San Francisco mall: the Target next door. The Stonestown Galleria, where Target raised concern that rival Amazon might open a store where Macy''s currently stands, is seen in San Francisco, California, U.S. on September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Jeffrey Dastin As City Center mall<6C>s largest tenant, Target Corp had a say over changes to the property. According to people familiar with the lease discussions, Target balked at sharing the mall with Whole Foods because it feared competition from the grocery chain<69>s new owner, Amazon.com Inc. Early attempts to persuade Target failed, and Whole Foods may now have to concede certain Amazon initiatives - such as lockers where customers can pick up goods ordered online - if it wants the location, the people said. Talks are ongoing. A Reuters examination of real estate agreements and interviews with 20 retail landlords, lawyers and brokers show that the strings attached to operating in malls like City Center present an emerging and little-scrutinized challenge to Amazon<6F>s quest to re-shape Whole Foods. Across the United States, large retailers including Target, Bed Bath & Beyond Inc and Best Buy Co Inc have legal rights in many lease agreements that allow them to limit what Amazon can do with nearby Whole Foods stores, and where it can open new ones. Documents reviewed by Reuters show bans on Amazon lockers and delivery operations near a Target store in Illinois and also in Florida, where a new Whole Foods is set to open. Lockers for retrieving online orders are a way for Amazon to spur sales through the grocery chain. In Manhattan and other locations, the leases of Whole Foods<64> big box neighbors bar it from selling a range of goods that Amazon has in its massive online inventory, from electronics to toys and linens. Even Whole Foods stores that do not share space with major rivals can face constraints imposed by local governments. A city council resolution in White Plains, New York, restricted the hours when Whole Foods can use a loading dock prior to the grocer locating in the mall. Amazon declined to answer questions about how these restrictions across the country impact its plans. In a statement, Target said it is <20>focused on what<61>s best for the company and delivering on the reasons our guests love Target. Our more than 1,800 stores across the country are a strategic asset and a vital part of Target<65>s future.<2E> The company did not discuss details of the restrictions reported by Reuters, but said, <20>It<49>s inaccurate to characterize lease agreements as our corporate strategy.<2E> Reuters could not determine the full extent of limits on Whole Foods stores because lease deals vary from mall to mall, and many are not public. While restricting how neighbors operate is a standard practice in retail, Amazon is new to feeling the heat. Some mall owners and real estate brokers say Whole Foods will still find landlords who are eager to have the high-profile tenant driving traffic in their malls, and see rivals trying to keep Whole Foods out as short-sighted. But with nearly all of Whole Foods<64> 473 stores subject to lease agreements and plans to add up to 85 stores, according to regulatory filings, Amazon has launched into brick-and-mortar with more constraints and entrenched enemies than in the online world it dominates. <20>Many people assume this big, 800-pound gorilla is going to come and beat up all of these retailers,<2C> said Terrison Quinn, a senior vice president at brokerage SRS Real Estate Partners. <20>I just don<6F>t think that<61>s going to be the case.<2E> DOZENS OF RESTRICTIONS Amazon wasted no time in making changes when the $13.7 billion Whole Foods deal closed in August. The world<6C>s largest online retailer cut grocery prices, sta
'f442bcebb47bd4d59db7a7ceadc1597ee274c727'|'U.S. SEC to require greater transparency around company audits'|'WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Securities and Exchange Commission will now require companies participating in audits to disclose remarks and inquiries made by independent auditors, the main U.S. financial regulator said on Monday.FILE PHOTO: The seal of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission hangs on the wall at SEC headquarters in Washington, DC, U.S. on June 24, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo The move was urged by transparency advocates who argued that disclosure would help investors better understand potential risks and determine how auditors are interacting with the companies they review.The new rule, which takes effect immediately and which was created by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and approved by the SEC, will require auditors to disclose discussions held with companies and information about how the auditor reached conclusions about individual companies.The rule would allow auditors to say more about their reviews of a company<6E>s finances, beyond just giving the books a <20>pass<73> or <20>fail<69> grade.It requires auditors provide more colorful commentary about <20>critical audit matters<72> detected in vetting a company<6E>s books.<2E>I strongly support the objective of the rule to provide investors with meaningful insights into the audit from the auditor,<2C> SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said in a statement.The new rules had been opposed by some critics as creating a new layer of reporting that could increase the risk of litigation and potentially chill the relationship between auditors and board audit committees.<2E>I would be disappointed if the new audit reporting standard, which has the potential to provide investors with meaningful incremental information, instead resulted in frivolous litigation costs, defensive, lawyer-driven auditor communications, or antagonistic auditor-audit committee relationships,<2C> Clayton said in a statement.Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by James Dalgleish '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-sec-accounts/u-s-sec-to-require-greater-transparency-around-company-audits-idUSKBN1CS2VF'|'2017-10-24T02:02:00.000+03:00'
'9e8030d89463470d0838a465edeb0fb2051ae45a'|'SoftBank to work with Saudi Arabia on new city'|'October 24, 2017 / 1:13 PM / in a few seconds SoftBank to work with Saudi Arabia on new city Reuters Staff 1 Min Read RIYADH (Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp ( 9984.T ) will work with Saudi Arabia on the development of <20>Neom<6F>, a new business and industrial city announced on Tuesday. Softbank Group CEO Masayoshi Son said at an investment conference in Riyadh on Tuesday that Saudi<64>s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had asked him to get involved. <20>I think Neom is a fantastic opportunity,<2C> Son said, adding that the SoftBank Vision Fund would invest in Saudi Electricity Co (SEC). [nL8N1MZ3CP] Reporting by Reuters team, writing by Alexander Cornwell; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-economy-neom/softbank-to-work-with-saudi-arabia-on-new-city-idUSKBN1CT1TK'|'2017-10-24T16:01:00.000+03:00'
'2a51813eba2ba950c75b08cabdc0165f308256a8'|'PBOC to inject 250 bln yuan via reverse repos - traders'|'October 24, 2017 / 2:00 AM / Updated 39 minutes ago PBOC to inject 250 bln yuan via reverse repos - traders Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China<6E>s central bank will inject 250 billion yuan ($37.66 billion) into money markets on Tuesday, traders said. The People<6C>s Bank of China (PBOC) is injecting 130 billion yuan through seven-day reverse bond repurchase agreements, and 120 billion yuan through 14-day reverse repos, they said. On a net basis, the People<6C>s Bank of China (PBOC) will inject 140 billion yuan into the market via open market operations for the day, with 110 billion yuan worth of reverse repos due to mature on Tuesday. The PBOC injected a net 560 billion yuan into the money market last week. ($1 = 6.6380 Chinese yuan)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-openmarket-repo/pboc-to-inject-250-bln-yuan-via-reverse-repos-traders-idUKKBN1CT063'|'2017-10-24T04:59:00.000+03:00'
'd1441eeecaadb50e8d07c7aa9282103f7de479d0'|'Saudi Arabia considers selling stake in utility SEC to SoftBank Vision Fund'|'KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia will consider selling a large stake in Saudi Electricity Co to SoftBank Vision Fund, but the Saudi government would retain a controlling shareholding, the utility said on Tuesday.Saudi Arabia<69>s Public Investment Fund, which holds a 74 percent stake in Saudi Electricity Co (SEC), signed a memorandum of understanding with SoftBank Vision Fund, the world<6C>s largest private equity fund, on Monday for SEC to develop 3 gigawatts of solar energy in 2018, SEC said in a statement.No financial details of the agreement were made public.The statement said <20>the parties<65> would also evaluate the possibility of SoftBank Vision Fund, which is backed by Japan<61>s SoftBank Group ( 9984.T ) and Saudi Arabia<69>s main sovereign wealth fund, acquiring a big stake in Saudi Electricity Co.The Saudi government would retain a controlling stake, it said.SEC<45>s assets are estimated to be $100 billion. The Saudi government has been considering privatizing the company for years. It is not clear how the possible transaction will affect those plans.Oil giant Saudi Aramco currently owns nearly 7 percent of Saudi Electricity Co while the rest is held by the public.The Public Investment Fund and SoftBank Vision Fund will also build manufacturing and storage solar facilities and create jobs in the kingdom.Due diligence will be completed by the end of February next year, the company said.SoftBank Vision Fund has raised over $93 billion to invest in technology sectors such as artificial intelligence and robotics.Reporting by Reem Shamseddine; Editing by Adrian Croft '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-electricity-softbank-group/saudi-arabia-considers-selling-stake-in-utility-sec-to-softbank-vision-fund-idINKBN1CT1LP'|'2017-10-24T09:45:00.000+03:00'
'2a254801246e9d719f890446cdf9ce1e527aaa6e'|'Monte dei Paschi shares to re-list on Oct. 25'|' 11 AM / in 41 minutes Monte dei Paschi shares to re-list on Oct. 25 Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MILAN, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Italy<6C>s Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena said on Tuesday its shares would resume trading on October 25 after the market regulator approved a document for their relisting. Monte dei Paschi<68>s shares have not traded in Milan since December 2016, when the bank failed to raise capital from investors and had to seek help from the state ahead of an 8 billion euro rescue. The bank also said third-quarter results would be submitted to the board for approval on November 7 instead of October 27. Reporting by Stephen Jewkes, editing by Valentina Za'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/montepaschi-stocks/monte-dei-paschi-shares-to-re-list-on-oct-25-idUSI6N1MF02D'|'2017-10-24T08:09:00.000+03:00'
'a2c3b9515d06a5a0f11c9835b4039e340169ba7c'|'Caterpillar posts 25 percent jump in revenue; raises forecast'|'(Reuters) - Caterpillar Inc ( CAT.N ) blew past Wall Street<65>s profit and revenue estimates for the third quarter, driven by surprisingly strong demand for its construction equipment in North America and robust sales in China.Caterpillar Inc. equipment is on display for sale at a retail site in San Diego, California, U.S., March 3, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake The company<6E>s shares rose as much as 7 percent to a record high of $140.44, helping push the Dow Jones Industrial Average to an all-time high.The bellwether for the industrial sector posted strong growth across its key businesses, signalling a resurgence in its construction, energy and mining markets.The company also raised its full-year forecasts for sales and earnings, expecting revenue in its construction business to surge about 20 percent, and mining business to jump 30 percent.<2E>Caterpillar continues to post results that far outpace expectations,<2C> said Stifel analyst Stanley Elliott, adding that the recovery in the company<6E>s business now seemed to be in full swing.Profit beat expectations for the sixth straight quarter even after analysts had raised their estimates for July-September period by nearly 30 percent in the past three months. Revenue beat estimates for the third straight quarter.The construction industry in North America is turning around after years of slow demand, fuelled by a steady housing recovery, an improving labour market and higher spending by oil and gas companies.Sales in North America, Caterpillar<61>s biggest market, jumped 27 percent in the third quarter ended Sept 30. Construction revenue in the region rose 31 percent, building upon a 3 percent rise in the second quarter after eight quarters of declines.Sales in Asia-Pacific jumped 57 percent, their seventh quarter of growth, helped by construction demand in China.While China has been the bright spot for Caterpillar, the pace of growth in the country<72>s property sector cooled in the third quarter, potentially hurting demand for the company<6E>s iconic yellow earth-moving equipment in the near future.Excluding restructuring costs, Caterpillar earned $1.95 per share, compared with the average analyst estimate of $1.27 per shares, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Total revenue rose to $11.41 billion, ahead of market estimates of $10.65 billion.The company said it now expects 2017 sales and revenue of $44 billion, up from its previous forecast of $42 billion to $44 billion. It expects adjusted earnings of $6.25 per share, up from the $5.00.The company is coming out of a trough and will have to show earnings of $10 per share annually for any further stock price appreciation, Jefferies analyst Stephen Volkmann said.<2E>So far, however, it<69>s fair to say that CAT is providing plenty of reason to keep that dream alive.<2E>Caterpillar''s shares pared some gains to trade up 5 percent at $138.37. The stock has risen 42 percent this year, up to Monday''s close, compared with an 18 percent increase in the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI .Reporting by Rachit Vats and Sweta Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Sayantani Ghosh '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/caterpillar-results/caterpillar-posts-25-percent-jump-in-revenue-raises-forecast-idINKBN1CT1LV'|'2017-10-24T14:47:00.000+03:00'
'bd40c52219544f6ac7d4e5338a8a00a2a15fafcf'|'Trump''s quest to kill Obamacare is going to hurt the middle class'|'Trump''s quest to kill Obamacare hurts the middle class by Tami Luhby @Luhby October 26, 2017: 7:58 AM ET How Trump is upending Obamacare Dave McDonald is no fan of Obamacare. The health reform law has prevented the 59-year-old from saving as much for his golden years as he would like. A retired mining engineer, McDonald and his wife, Lorraine, now run a bed-and-breakfast in Dutch John, Utah, and healso works as a fishing guide on the Green River. Both jobs help cover the extra $11,000 a year the couple has to pay in health insurancepremiums. "When the cost of health care more than doubles, you have to do something," said McDonald, whose premiums went from $350 a month in 2013 to $1,320 a month this year. He calculates he has to work 45 days on the river just to pay for their additional health care expenses. McDonald, who earns too much to qualify for the federal subsidies that would lower his premiums, could very well have to shell out even more for policies next year. Rates in Utah will soar an average of 39% for 2018, in part because carriers are looking to shield themselves from the uncertainty emanating from Washington D.C. Dave McDonald and his wife pay $11,000 a year in premiums. Like their peers in many states around the nation, Utah''s insurers are steeply hiking rates for next year in partbecause they anticipated President Trump would stop funding a key set of Obamacare subsidies that help lower-income enrollees afford health care. Trump lived up to his vowearlier this month when he announced that he would end the cost-sharing payments. Whom will this move hurt the most? The middle class, who aren''t protected from the rate hikes like those of more modest means. Nearly seven million people who buy individual policies don''t qualify for premium subsidies. These include the roughly 1.6 million Obamacare enrollees who earn more than $47,500asan individual or $97,200 asa family of four this year, and the 5.1 million who buy individual coverage outside of the Obamacare exchange. These middle class folks will bear the full brunt of the premium increases, unlike the 8.7 million enrollees who receive federal assistance to keep their premiums to less than 10% of their annual income. They were the Americans that Trump and congressional Republicans promised to help by repealing and replacing Obamacare. Instead, they will be hit the hardest. Related: Trump kills key Obamacare subsidy payments: What it means After seeing her premiums rise 33% this year, Chicago resident Heather Tamburo is frustrated that her premiums will likely soar again. The stay-at-home mom and her husband, a self-employed photographer, are already paying $1,200 a month to cover themselves and their daughter. The couplemakes too much toqualify for subsidies and expect their rates to rise again for 2018. The average premium for the lowest-cost silver plan in Illinois will rise 35%, while the cheapest bronze plan will go up 20% on average. The Tamburos have already been told that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois won''t offer their same bronze plan next year. Heather and Ted Tamburo pay $1,200 a month to cover themseves and their daughter, Tea "Next year, we''ll have to switch to doctors we''ve never seen and to a plan we''ve never heard of and will have to pay more," said Tamburo, 53, who preferred the policy she had on the individual market prior to Obamacare because it had smaller annual rate increases. For Laurie Ryan, the answer may be to leave the country. Ryan and her husband, Randall, have bought insurance on the individual market since they started their music and voice over production studio in Austin, Texas, more than two decades ago. When the Obamacare exchanges first opened in 2014, their rates went down. But now they pay $816 a month, about $150 to $200 more than they did before Obamacare, for a plan with a $13,000 deductible. Her insurer, Sendero Health Plans, requested a premium hike of 26%, on average, for next year. Laurie R
'd1d2ef6212c4185a2e062e0b957be2afae33bb01'|'Husky Energy swings to Q3 adjusted profit'|'Oct 26 (Reuters) - Canadian oil and gas producer Husky Energy Inc posted an adjusted profit for the third quarter, compared with a year-ago loss, helped by higher oil prices and an increase in its refining capacity.The company reported a net profit of C$136 million ($106 million) for the three months ended Sept. 30, compared with an adjusted loss of C$100 million in the year-ago quarter.Husky posted a net profit of C$1.39 billion a year earlier, which included nearly C$1.5 billion in gains related to asset sales. ($1 = C$1.28) (Reporting by Karan Nagarkatti; Editing by Savio D<>Souza) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/husky-energy-results/husky-energy-swings-to-q3-adjusted-profit-idUSL4N1N14GN'|'2017-10-26T19:29:00.000+03:00'
'8e4cbac1085828de7b1fb3bd89503c8e0e5641f7'|'Many investors want Libor to stay with improvements - Bank of America survey'|'October 26, 2017 / 1:52 PM / in 5 minutes Many investors want Libor to stay with improvements - Bank of America survey Reuters Staff 1 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Many investors would like to see the Libor global interest rate benchmark to remain with improvements and to co-exist with a risk-free alternative, a Bank of America Merrill Lynch survey released late Wednesday showed. Nearly 80 percent of the 164 respondents, consisting largely of asset managers and banks, said they believe the London interbank offered rate (Libor) should continue with a <20>more robust methodology,<2C> the bank said in a note on its survey results. Libor is a benchmark for $350 trillion(<28>265.34 trillion) worth of financial products worldwide including $150 trillion in derivatives. Libor has been in regulators<72> crosshairs since its credibility was tarnished by a rate-rigging scandal emerging from the 2007-2009 financial crisis. About a dozen global banks collectively have paid tens of billions of dollars in fines to settle the matter. Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-libor-survey-bankofamerica/many-investors-want-libor-to-stay-with-improvements-bank-of-america-survey-idUKKBN1CV27A'|'2017-10-26T16:51:00.000+03:00'
'b20e5e8212246f54f003a63d72dbd05a4dea0f5e'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX extends gains, rises broadly as CN Rail leads'|'October 24, 2017 / 2:57 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago CANADA STOCKS-TSX extends gains, rises broadly as CN Rail leads Reuters Staff (Updates throughout with index and stock moves) * TSX up 46.82 points, or 0.3 percent, to 15,902.58 * Eight of the TSX<53>s 10 main groups up TORONTO, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index extended its recent gains, rising broadly on Tuesday, with Canadian National Railway and financial stocks leading some of the advance. At 10:28 a.m. ET (1428 GMT), the Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index was up 46.82 points, or 0.3 percent, to 15,902.58. The index, which notched its sixth straight week of gains last week, rose as high as 15,922.19 earlier in the session, putting it within striking distance of the index<65>s record of 15,943.09, reached on Feb. 21. Of the index<65>s 10 main groups, eight were on positive ground, with utilities and healthcare the only declining groups. CN, Canada<64>s largest rail operator, added 1.4 percent to C$104.89 ahead of its earnings, due after markets close. The overall industrials sector added 0.7 percent. Canadian Natural Resources rose 1.6 percent to C$41.79, while the broader energy group climbed 0.4 percent. Oil prices were higher after top exporter Saudi Arabia said it was determined to end a supply glut and forecasters were expecting a further drop in U.S. crude inventories. U.S. crude prices were up 0.6 percent to $52.23 a barrel, while Brent crude added 0.5 percent to $57.63. Banks and other financial services was up 0.4 percent, with some Canada<64>s top banks marking influential, but modest gains. The materials group, which includes precious and base metals miners and fertilizer companies, added 0.1 percent. Fertilizer maker, Potash Corp rose 1.7 percent to C$24.825, while Agrium Inc also advanced 1.7 percent to C$138.55. First Quantum Minerals Ltd was up 1 percent to C$15.07 after Barclays raised its target price on the company. Hudson<6F>s Bay Co shares, which surged as much as 8.7 percent after the company announced an investment deal and the sale of a 5th Ave property, pared earlier gains to trade up 2.1 percent at C$12.00. Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the TSX by 135 to 108, for a 1.25-to-1 ratio on the upside. The index was posting 13 new 52-week highs and 1 new low. (Reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by Nick Zieminski)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks/canada-stocks-tsx-extends-gains-rises-broadly-as-cn-rail-leads-idUSL2N1MZ0VZ'|'2017-10-24T17:56:00.000+03:00'
'1199683f71569904dce57c71f8353911e4768010'|'Sweden''s Pandox eyes bid for Jurys Inn hotel chain: sources'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Swedish hotelier Pandox ( PANDXb.ST ) is among a group of bidders preparing binding offers for UK-focused hotel chain Jurys Inn in a deal worth about $1 billion, sources familiar with the matter said.Private equity firm Lone Star, which has owned Jurys Inn since 2015, hired Credit Suisse ( CSGN.S ) and Eastdil Secured to manage an auction process earlier this year.Stockholm-listed Pandox, which has a market value of around $1.5 billion, has emerged as one of the suitors for the group of 36 hotels and is looking to make a binding bid ahead of a deadline in November, according to the sources.The chain is worth about 800 million pounds ($1 billion), one of the sources said.A spokesman for Pandox declined to comment while Lone Star was not immediately available to comment.If successful, a deal for Jurys Inn would mark a significant expansion in Britain for Pandox, which bought its first hotel in the country in July for 80 million pounds.When announcing the purchase of the hotel, at Heathrow Airport, Pandox chief executive Anders Nissan said Britain was a <20>prioritized market<65>.The sale by Lone Star comes as the UK<55>s hospitality sector braces for the impact of Britain<69>s vote last year to leave the European Union.Sterling<6E>s plunge following the vote has boosted interest in <20>staycations<6E> and made Britain more appealing to foreign visitors. But the vote has also raised concerns that hospitality companies, heavily reliant on EU workers, may face staff shortages.The Jurys Inn chain, which forms part of Lone Star-owned Amaris Hospitality, is mainly focused on UK city and town centers but also includes properties in Ireland and a site in Prague in the Czech Republic.Pandox currently has 122 hotels spanning 11 countries, including Norway, Finland and Denmark, which together total about 27,000 rooms.Lone Star bought Jurys Inn for 680 million pounds in 2015, when the chain consisted of 31 sites.Editing by Jane Merriman '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-pandox-m-a-jurys-inn/swedens-pandox-eyes-bid-for-jurys-inn-hotel-chain-sources-idINKBN1CT2VF'|'2017-10-24T18:00:00.000+03:00'
'804cc9ce3be64430f4697e44fdf6ccdc33e085c5'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX flat as declines in Eldorado, energy offset financials'' gains'|'October 23, 2017 / 9:01 PM / in 10 minutes CANADA STOCKS-TSX flat as declines in Eldorado, energy offset financials'' gains Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Updates to close) TORONTO, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index ended little changed on Monday, as a plunge in Eldorado Gold Corp and losses for energy stocks offset gains in the financial and mining sectors. Eldorado dropped 27.8 percent to C$1.97 after lowering production guidance for a gold mine in Turkey. With Brent crude oil prices slipping, shares of energy companies declined. Canadian Natural Resources Ltd gave back 1.3 percent to C$41.14. The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index closed down 1.46 points, or 0.01 percent, to 15,855.76. Seven of its 10 main sectors were positive. The financial sector edged higher. Royal Bank of Canada rose 0.2 percent to C$101.42, and Bank of Nova Scotia gained 0.4 percent to C$81.26. A rise in bullion prices helped fuel a gain in the materials sector. Barrick Gold Corp added 1 percent to C$20.42. However, Yamana Gold Inc slipped 2 percent to C$3.34. Hudson<6F>s Bay Co<43>s shares fell 1.8 percent to C$11.75 after the company said late on Friday that Chief Executive Gerald Storch would leave the company. Activist investor Jonathan Litt said on Monday he is considering seeking the removal of several directors at a special shareholder meeting. (Reporting by Alastair Sharp and John Tilak; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli and James Dalgleish)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks/canada-stocks-tsx-flat-as-declines-in-eldorado-energy-offset-financials-gains-idUSL2N1MY1JS'|'2017-10-23T23:59:00.000+03:00'
'be86df5e63b89eea7bf1b229a4bf3ea21fe89fdc'|'Australia''s Nufarm to buy European crop protection portfolio for $490 milliom'|'(Reuters) - Agricultural chemicals maker Nufarm Ltd ( NUF.AX ) said it would buy a range of European crop protection product lines for $490 million to strengthen its position in Europe where it generates its highest crop protection margins.Nufarm said it would buy the product portfolio, which includes more than 50 crop protection formulations, from Adama Agricultural Solutions Ltd ( ADAM.N ) and Syngenta AG ( SYNN.S ).The acquisition is expected to be mid-to-high single digit earnings per share accretive in fiscal 2019, the company said in a statement.The portfolio is also expected to generate revenues of about A$250 million ($195.28 million) and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of about A$95 million to A$100 million in the 2019 financial year, Nufarm added.Nufarm said the deal will be funded by a capital raising of about A$446 million and existing debt facilities.The company would also buy existing product inventory for about $50 million after completing the deal, it said.The company had requested for a halt in trading of its shares earlier in the day ahead of the announcement.($1 = 1.2802 Australian dollars)Reporting by Christina Martin in Bengaluru; Editing by Stephen Coates and Eric Meijer '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-nufarmltd-deals/australias-nufarm-to-buy-european-crop-protection-products-for-490-million-idINKBN1CS2XZ'|'2017-10-23T21:44:00.000+03:00'
'6ff94ae4ea147c61a27aa1e826660d5057000a44'|'European shares swing sideways as third-quarter earnings keep rolling in'|'October 24, 2017 / 7:44 AM / Updated an hour ago European shares swing sideways as third-quarter earnings keep rolling in Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - European bourses and indexes were trading sideways at the opening of markets on Tuesday, as a new set of third-quarter earnings pulled companies<65> stocks sharply in different directions. FILE PICTURE: Company stock price information, including that for LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, is displayed on screens as they hang above the Paris stock exchange, operated by Euronext NV, in La Defense business district in Paris, France, December 14, 2016. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier The pan-European STOXX 600 was broadly flat, up 0.02 percent, with London<6F>s FTSE 100 retreating 0.1 percent, Paris<69>s CAC 40 rising 0.3 percent and Germany<6E>s DAX flat. Apple supplier AMS made a spectacular jump after it reported its earnings, rising close to 20 percent in the first minutes of trading before settling around 15 percent higher. <20>While Q3 is a miss on revenues, the revised guidance for Q4 is way ahead of consensus<75>, Morgan Stanley said in a research note. Peers exposed to the iPhone X ramp also rose, with Dialog Semiconductor up 3.3 percent and STMicroelectronics up 0.5 percent. Spain<69>s Caixabank lifted the IBEX with a 2.3 percent rise after posting a 53 percent jump in nine-month net profit, ahead of analysts<74> forecasts. After lagging behind its peers on Monday due to the Catalan crisis, the IBEX bounced back with a 0.4 percent increase. In Sweden, mining company Boliden disappointed investors with its trading update and fell more than 9 percent, while on the other hand defence firm Saab rose 5.5 percent after it reported order bookings and profits above market forecasts. Reporting by Julien Ponthus; Editing by Georgina Prodhan '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-stocks/european-shares-swing-sideways-as-third-quarter-earnings-keep-rolling-in-idUKKBN1CT0T0'|'2017-10-24T10:43:00.000+03:00'
'0c03520c94cc02fa0ef77efbba166288150892ee'|'Polish banks Pekao, Alior explore potential merger'|'WARSAW (Reuters) - State-controlled Polish banks Bank Pekao SA and Alior Bank are considering cooperation or a merger, in a bid to strengthen their positions in a market where banks struggle with super-low rates and regulatory pressure.Both banks belong to Central Europe<70>s biggest insurer PZU. The banks signed a letter of intent (Lol) on Monday regarding their potential cooperation.<2E>LoI is aimed at enabling an analysis of feasibility study and assessing different forms of potential cooperation or merger of both entities,<2C> a statement from Pekao said.State-run PZU bought stakes in Alior Bank and Bank Pekao in 2015 and 2017, respectively. In June, the Puls Biznesu daily carried a report stating that PZU was considering four options for managing its banks portfolio, including a merger.While PZU chief Pawel Surowka had then said the news was just speculation, he did not dismiss the idea completely. Also, Pawel Borys, head of PFR, a state fund which bought Pekao along with PZU, had said the banks do not need to be merged.Officials from Pekao were not immediately available for further comment, while spokesman for Alior said he would not comment beyond what was already said in the statement.A merger would cement Pekao<61>s position as the second-largest player in the Polish market with the combined assets of both banks standing at 230.5 billion zloty ($64.13 billion), after state-run PKO BP leading with assets of 286.4 billion zloty.Reporting by Marcin Goclowski; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-alior-bank-m-a-pekao/polish-banks-pekao-alior-explore-potential-merger-idINKBN1CT0L6'|'2017-10-24T04:24:00.000+03:00'
'dfa3d6e2cafb607a5df7de3257f07d5332478852'|'Nigeria Senate to vote on motion to probe Etisalat Nigeria loans'|'ABUJA, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Nigeria<69>s parliament plans to vote on a motion to investigate the use of $1.2 billion in loans taken out by telecoms firm Etisalat Nigeria, now called 9mobile, a Senate order paper seen by Reuters showed on Tuesday.The motion if passed would mandate a Senate committee on banking and national security to handle the investigation, which it says would seek to forestall the impact of the debt crisis on foreign investment and hold defaulting parties liable. (Reporting by Paul Carsten, Camillus Eboh, Chijioke Ohuocha and Alexis Akwagyiram in Lagos; editing by Jason Neely) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/nigeria-9mobile/nigeria-senate-to-vote-on-motion-to-probe-etisalat-nigeria-loans-idINL8N1MZ3P0'|'2017-10-24T08:49:00.000+03:00'
'0f6af65aa232bc6ff8af032af79a50a0e727684d'|'Britain''s Lloyds launches 500 million pounds fund for small companies'|'October 23, 2017 / 11:06 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Britain''s Lloyds launches 500 million pounds fund for small companies Reuters Staff 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Lloyds Banking Group ( LLOY.L ) opened a 500 million pound fund to help British businesses finance equipment on Tuesday, targeting small and medium-sized companies which banks froze out of credit following the financial crisis. FILE PHOTO - A man walks past a Lloyds Bank branch in central London, Britain February 25, 2016. REUTERS/Paul Hackett The bank said the fund will deliver quick access to finance by allowing companies to spread the cost of assets over their lifetime, enabling big investments that don<6F>t eat into working capital. The government sees small- and medium-sized companies as key to unlocking higher productivity, which has fallen back to below pre-crisis levels this year, and to the success of the UK economy post-Brexit. These businesses have struggled to invest in the decade since the financial crisis as banks have shied away from lending to smaller businesses. The Lloyds fund will be open to businesses of all sizes, but the bank said it would be of particular benefit to SMEs and mid-market companies in sectors with high and regular requirements for expensive assets, such as manufacturing and agriculture. The bank is trying to boost its support for start-ups, smaller firms and productivity, including by increasing its net lending to SMEs by 2 billion pounds in 2017 - a target it missed last year by around 400 million pounds last year. Out of more than 40 participating banks and building societies, it has drawn by far the most under an extended Bank of England scheme to encourage more lending, with the extension from 2014 until January 2018 focused on boosting lending to SMEs. According to BoE data published in September, Lloyds had drawn 23 billion pounds under the extension followed by Santander, with 3.18 billion pounds. But HSBC ( HSBA.L ) and CYBG ( CYBGC.L ), which do not participate in the BoE<6F>s scheme, launched larger funds solely for SMEs this year, worth 10 billion pounds and 6 billion pounds, respectively. A government drive to increase small businesses<65> access to credit has seen improvements, but many still report difficulties. In a survey of over 3,000 SMEs globally, published by American Express ( AXP.N ) in February, 57 percent of UK respondents said they struggled to access the finance needed to grow their business. Reporting by Emma Rumney, editing by Alex Smith and David Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lloyds-smes/britains-lloyds-launches-500-million-pounds-fund-for-small-companies-idUKKBN1CS2VJ'|'2017-10-24T02:05:00.000+03:00'
'787136c17164c4f0efaa434d07493a2aac0aeffc'|'Essilor expects further progress on Luxottica deal by year-end'|'October 24, 2017 / 5:48 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Essilor expects further progress on Luxottica deal by year-end Matthias Blamont 3 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - France<63>s eyewear group Essilor said on Tuesday it was hoping to make further progress on its tie-up with Italian peer Luxottica, a $54 billion transaction currently being investigated by the European Commission over competition concerns. Lens producers Essilor'' s logo is seen in an optician shop in Paris, France, March 15, 2016. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer Essilor, the world<6C>s biggest opthalmic lenses manufacturer, also confirmed its 2017 outlook after posting stronger third quarter revenues, broadly in line with expectations. It had cut its annual revenue growth target in July, citing snags in China and Brazil. <20>Essilor intends to build on the momentum of the third quarter between now and the end of this year while also making major strides in its proposed combination with Luxottica,<2C> Chief Executive Hubert Sagnieres said in a statement. The company gave no other details. Essilor and Luxottica, the maker of Ray-Ban sunglasses, agreed in January on a 46 billion euro ($54.11 billion) merger to create a global eyewear powerhouse with annual revenue of more than 15 billion euros. EU antitrust regulators opened a full-scale investigation related to the transaction in September, saying the deal could reduce competition in the ophthalmic lenses and eyewear market. Their conclusions are expected by the end of February next year. The move came after Luxottica and Essilor declined to offer concessions in a preliminary review. The merger has been approved by competition authorities in several countries including India, Japan and New Zealand but still needs clearance in North America and Europe. Essilor said sales in the quarter ended September were up 2.5 percent on an organic basis to 1.75 billion euros ($2.1 billion). Analysts polled by Reuters had on average been expecting revenues of 1.77 billion euros. Sales in North America were up 2.3 percent to 658 million euros despite the passage in September of hurricanes such as Irma which led to several shop closures in the United States. Luxottica reported weaker-than-expected third-quarter sales on Tuesday after it was forced to close some 570 shops in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. (This story has been refiled to fix typographical error in first paragraph) Reporting by Matthias Blamont; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-essilor-results/essilor-expects-further-progress-on-luxottica-deal-by-year-end-idUKKBN1CT0HX'|'2017-10-24T08:40:00.000+03:00'
'192c67000e903c5d0d44372dbce587514740f8c8'|'Ex-HSBC forex trader guilty of fraud'|'Financials Ex-HSBC forex trader guilty of fraud The US jury rejected Mark Johnson<6F>s defence that <20>pre-hedging<6E> was standard industry practice, Caroline Binham, the FT''s financial regulation correspondent tells Martin Arnold, banking editor. Music by Kevin MacLeod Save to myFT Presented by Martin Arnold and produced by Martin Arnold, Caroline Binham, and Kevin MacLeod Editor<6F>s Choice Lex on need for challengers to break up oligopolies, lift productivity Tuesday, 24 October, 2017 Alibaba and Tencent rank among world<6C>s top 10 companies by market cap Monday, 23 October, 2017 Leading tech companies are set to report quarterly earnings Sunday, 22 October, 2017 Lancet study finds most fatalities in China and India Friday, 20 October, 2017 The US jury rejected Mark Johnson<6F>s defence that <20>pre-hedging<6E> was standard industry practice, Caroline Binham, the FT''s financial regulation correspondent tells Martin Arnold, banking editor. Music by Kevin MacLeod new HSBC forex trial, Commerzbank and Alphasense Martin Arnold and guests discuss the trial of ex-HSBC forex trader Mark Johnson and its potential repercussions for the foreign exchange markets, Commertzbank as it prepares for potential takeover bids, and the impact of AI on the way professional research is done. With special guest Jack Kokko, chief executive of Alphasense. new'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/video/943d9470-d583-42ea-a757-5cf7d81868ab'|'2017-10-24T22:46:00.000+03:00'
'40c28b533f73648bd4146fa15b2506a51ef07518'|'Toys ''R'' Us says most top vendors have resumed shipments'|'October 24, 2017 / 9:08 PM / Updated an hour ago Toys ''R'' Us says most top vendors have resumed shipments Tracy Rucinski 3 Min Read NEW YORK, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Vendors to Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us have resumed shipping top products, a bankruptcy lawyer said on Tuesday, allowing the retailer to stock its shelves ahead of the all-important holiday season. <20>Inventory is on the shelves,<2C> Joshua Sussberg, an attorney with the company<6E>s law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, said at a U.S. Bankruptcy Court hearing in Richmond, Virginia, adding that the company was well-stocked with the <20>latest and greatest<73> in toys. Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us generates roughly 40 percent of total revenues in the fourth quarter, and industry experts have expressed concern over the big-box retailer<65>s ability to retain vendors and customers after its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on Sept. 19. At the time of the filing, nearly 40 percent of its trade base had stopped shipments. Now, 100 percent of merchandise vendors that supply the top 20 products are actively shipping, followed by 49 of the top 50 vendors and 91 of the top 100, Sussberg said. However, Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us still owes creditors $5 billion, and at least two major toymakers, Hasbro Inc and Jakks Pacific, have warned that the bankruptcy would hurt their business this year. Some smaller toymakers have decided to stop shipments. Wayne, New Jersey-based Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us, which also owns the Babies <20>R<EFBFBD> Us chain, is among dozens of traditional brick-and-mortar retailers that have struggled under high debt as more consumers shop online. Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us is saddled with debt from a $6.6-billion buyout in 2005 by KKR & Co LP, Bain Capital LP and real estate investment trust Vornado Realty Trust. As part of its plan to restructure and entice customers, it wants to add event space, hands-on product demonstrations and combine its flagship and Babies <20>R<EFBFBD> Us stores. Some investors were skeptical over the outlook for big-box retailers. <20>The opportunity for Toys is difficult given the amount of leverage it had when it entered bankruptcy, as well as its current operating trends,<2C> said George Schultze, distressed specialist and head of Schultze Asset Management. <20>The outlook in retail is terrible, even for big companies like Toys, so there isn<73>t a lot of new capital available for that industry.<2E> Meanwhile, the unsecured creditors committee, which includes Mattel Inc, LEGO Systems and Simon Property Group Inc , plans to investigate financial transactions made before the Chapter 11 filing, lawyer Kenneth Eckstein said on Tuesday. (Reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by David Gregorio)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/toys-r-us-bankruptcy/toys-r-us-says-most-top-vendors-have-resumed-shipments-idUSL2N1MZ045'|'2017-10-25T00:07:00.000+03:00'
'e5beb1d8652fe5db1cfb3acd68a62b995b8078ba'|'GE CEO sees more partnerships ahead for digital business'|'October 25, 2017 / 4:38 PM / Updated 23 minutes ago GE CEO sees more partnerships ahead for digital business Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 25 (Reuters) - General Electric Co will use partnerships to build its digital-industrial business in coming years, Chief Executive Officer John Flannery said at a conference on Wednesday. The comments come as GE has said it plans to scale back its investment in its GE Digital business in 2018, from about $2.1 billion this year, and as Flannery is due unveil expanded partnership with Microsoft Corp on Wednesday. (Reporting by Alwyn Scott)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/ge-digital-presentation/ge-ceo-sees-more-partnerships-ahead-for-digital-business-idUSL2N1N01KE'|'2017-10-25T19:36:00.000+03:00'
'0db0fb52683b5ef21235280f6d085846f782bd19'|'Pendragon warns on profit, blames weak demand for new cars'|'October 23, 2017 / 6:56 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago Pendragon warns on profit, blames weak demand for new cars Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British car dealership chain Pendragon ( PDG.L ) on Monday warned on full-year profit, blaming a decline in demand for new cars and the consequent price correction in the used car market. Pendragon also said Chairman Mel Egglenton has stepped down for personal reasons, with immediate effect, and has been replaced by Chris Chambers, a non-executive director since 2013. The group said it now expected a pretax profit of 60 million pounds ($79.3 million) in 2017 versus previous expectations of 75.2 million pounds, according to Reuters data, and 75.4 million pounds made in 2016. Pendragon said it expected to return to profit growth in 2018. Following a strategic review the firm will now focus on developing its software and online technologies to fulfil customers<72> vehicle and servicing needs. <20>During the quarter (to Sept. 30) as consumer confidence waned we experienced significant market pressure,<2C> said the firm. It expects the new car market to continue to decline this year and the first half of 2018 as car manufacturers continue to adjust to the reduced level of demand for new cars. Pendragon said its business was underpinned by stable aftersales profitability and said it expected its used car volumes would continue to grow. Its like-for-like revenue grew by 3.7 percent in the three months to Sept. 30, while underlying like for like pretax profit was break even. Shares in Pendragon, down 7 percent so far this year, closed Friday at 29 pence, valuing the business at 413 million pounds ($546 million). ($1 = 0.7567 pounds)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-pendragon-outlook/pendragon-warns-on-profit-blames-weak-demand-for-new-cars-idUKKBN1CS0MV'|'2017-10-23T09:56:00.000+03:00'
'995fd357582451799341662a001f6e2935b205d0'|'Dollar/yen hits three-month high, Abe election win adds to bullish mood'|'October 23, 2017 / 12:25 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago Dollar/yen hits three-month high, Abe election win adds to bullish mood Shinichi Saoshiro 3 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - The dollar edged up to a three-month high against the yen on Monday, with an emphatic election victory for Japan<61>s ruling party keeping yen-weakening reflationary measures at the heart of government policy. A U.S. one-hundred dollar bill (C) and Japanese 10,000 yen notes are spread in Tokyo, in this February 28, 2013 picture illustration. REUTERS/Shohei Miyano The election outcome added extra lift to a dollar already on a bullish footing thanks to progress on U.S. tax reform. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe<62>s ruling party scored a big win in Sunday<61>s election with his coalition keeping its two-thirds <20>super majority<74> in the lower house, local media said. Abe<62>s victory eased fears that the economic steps implemented under his leadership - such as the Bank of Japan<61>s super easy monetary policy - would be disrupted and halt the yen<65>s depreciation against the dollar. <20>An LDP win did not come as a surprise, but it still helped clear uncertainty that had been preventing participants from buying the dollar,<2C> said Yukio Ishizuki, senior currency strategist at Daiwa Securities. <20>Overcoming deflation with the BOJ easing is at the crux of the Abe administration<6F>s policies and this will now be allowed to continue indefinitely. It<49>s relief over the BOJ policies, rather than hopes for fresh fiscal stimulus, that is weakening the yen.<2E> The U.S. currency was up 0.45 percent at 114.05 after touching 114.10, its highest since July 11. The greenback had already gained about 0.9 percent on Friday after the U.S. Senate approved a budget blueprint for the 2018 fiscal year, clearing a critical hurdle for Republicans to pursue a tax-cut package without Democratic support. The dollar was supported as U.S. yields rose, with the two-year yield hitting a nine-year high, as the progress in tax reforms boosted expectations of increased U.S. Government borrowing and a possible pickup in inflation. [US/] The euro was 0.25 percent lower at $1.1757 EUR= , extending losses from Friday when it lost 0.6 percent. The dollar index against a basket of six major currencies rose to 93.872, its highest since Oct. 6. The New Zealand dollar, battered last week by a change in government, slipped to a five-month low of $0.6939 NZD=D4 against the broadly stronger U.S. currency. The kiwi shed about 3 percent last week. The Australian dollar edged down 0.1 percent to $0.7807 AUD=D4 . Reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro; Editing by Eric Meijer'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-forex/dollar-yen-hits-three-month-high-abe-election-win-adds-to-bullish-mood-idUKKBN1CS00Y'|'2017-10-23T03:23:00.000+03:00'
'ee9d86f5aa2cbad83c92eb6866a145b24f8cfdf0'|'Noble Group to sell global oil liquids business to Vitol - Reuters'|'October 22, 2017 / 11:57 PM / Updated 37 minutes ago Noble Group to sell oil liquids unit to Vitol, flags $1.2 billion loss Anshuman Daga 4 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Struggling commodities trader Noble Group agreed to sell its Americas-focused oil trading business to Vitol for about $580 million as part of a debt-cutting strategy, and warned of a big loss for its third quarter. The company logo of Noble Group is displayed at its office in Hong Kong, China January 22, 2016. REUTERS/Bobby Yip Monday<61>s move came after Reuters reported late on Friday that Vitol, the world<6C>s largest oil trader, was nearing a deal to buy Singapore-listed Noble<6C>s oil liquids unit. Noble, whose founder Richard Elman took advantage of a commodities bull run to build it into one of the world<6C>s biggest traders after starting it in 1986, is shrinking to an Asian-centric company focused on its core coal trading, LNG and freight businesses. It is slashing jobs and selling assets to reduce debt and win support from lenders after a crisis-wracked two years. In July it agreed to sell its smaller gas and power business to Mercuria. <20>I guess the question is when are they going to basically turn around their business, which is quite key. If they can actually provide more details, what sort of assets they can still sell, that would be great,<2C> said Annisa Lee, Nomura<72>s head of Asia ex-Japan<61>s flow credit analysis. Hong Kong-based Noble was plunged into crisis in February 2015 when Iceberg Research questioned its accounts, and then the company was hit by a commodities downturn. While Noble has stood by its accounts, the upheaval triggered a share price collapse, credit downgrades, a series of writedowns, as well as fund raising and management changes. Noble<6C>s market value has plummeted to less than $400 million from $6 billion in February 2015. Noble said gross proceeds from the sale of its oil liquids business would be $1.4 billion, and after deducting debt of about $836 million, cash proceeds would be about $580 million. <20>It gives the company some positive momentum going into a liability management exercise and it likely raises recovery realizations under a restructuring scenario modestly,<2C> said Todd Schubert, fixed income analyst at Bank of Singapore. In July, Noble announced an up-to-$1 billion disposal plan for assets outside North America over the next two years as Chairman Paul Brough, a restructuring specialist appointed in May, sought to tackle Noble<6C>s more than $3 billion of debt. <20>Conservative liquidity management and constraints placed on the group<75>s access to trade finance lines led to disruption costs and prevented the group from taking advantage of profitable trading opportunities,<2C> the company said on Monday. Its stock fell 10 percent on Monday, extending losses to 80 percent this year. In a one-line statement, Vitol U.S. Holding Co. confirmed it had agreed to acquire Noble Americas Corp subject to certain conditions precedent and referred to Noble<6C>s statement on the deal. Noble bonds due 2020 were higher by two points at 39/41 cents on the dollar. As recently as April, the 2020s were trading around 97 cents on the dollar. BILLION DOLLAR LOSS Noble warned of a total net loss of $1.1 billion to $1.25 billion in the three months ending September, citing non-cash losses and underlying trading results. This follows a $1.75 billion net loss reported in April-June. Noble has been locked in negotiations with its core lenders to support a $2 billion credit facility, secured on its inventories and working capital. <20>Whilst no assurance can be given as to the outcome of these discussions, the group believes that these are open and constructive, and are moving forward,<2C> it said. In August, ratings agencies S&P and Moody<64>s cut their credit ratings on Noble, citing high default risks. Noble is a big player in the global physical oil market, trading crude and refined products. But its operations shrank this year due to higher prices and liqui
'09486f83b2daef424e99150e18c747def5b993fb'|'Asian shares flat, Nikkei aims for 17th straight gain'|'October 25, 2017 / 1:01 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Dollar lifted by Fed leadership talk, shares tread water Ritvik Carvalho 5 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The dollar got a lift on Wednesday after a report that Republican senators were leaning towards John Taylor to be the next Federal Reserve chief, while share markets turned flat after a run of highs. A woman walks in strong wind caused by Typhoon Lan, past an electronic board showing the graphs of the recent movements of Japan''s Nikkei average outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato Sterling got a boost after data showed Britain<69>s economy picked up speed in the third quarter, bolstering the case for the Bank of England to raise UK interest rates next week for the first time in more than a decade. On Tuesday, a source familiar with the matter said U.S. President Donald Trump had polled Republicans on whether they would prefer Stanford University economist John Taylor or current Fed Governor Jerome Powell to be the next U.S. central bank chief, and more senators preferred Taylor. That helped send the index that measures the dollar against a basket of peers up 0.3 percent, even though it had gone flat on the day against the yen at 113.92 JPY= . The dollar also got support from the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury. It was at 2.42 percent having finally broken above the long-standing 2.4 percent barrier this week. US10YT=TWEB For Fed-focused traders, Taylor is seen as someone who could quicken the pace of interest rate increases compared with Fed Chair Janet Yellen, whose term expires next February. <20>Anything that reduces the probability of Yellen being reappointed necessarily means the Fed looks more hawkish than it would otherwise,<2C> said the RBC<42>s head of currency strategy Adam Cole, in London. <20>The general perception is that there<72>s no one more dovish than Yellen,<2C> he said. Elsewhere in currencies, the Australian dollar skidded 0.7 percent to $0.7718 AUD=D4 , touching its lowest levels since mid-July after weak consumer price figures prompted investors to pare expectations of further tightening from the Reserve Bank of Australia. The MSCI world equity index .MIWD PUS, which tracks shares in 47 countries, was flat as a muted open in Europe counterbalanced earlier gains in Asia. MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS ended the session up 0.1 percent as India, South Korea and Indonesia all hit record highs. But a 0.5 fall for Japan''s Nikkei stock index .N225 saw it snap out of a record 16 straight sessions of gains. That had continued after the victory of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe''s coalition in Sunday''s election fuelled hopes of more cheap money policies designed to keep the yen weak. Despite Wednesday<61>s share weakness, Abe<62>s victory should reassure overseas investors who had been concerned about policy continuity, and therefore <20>new money should come into the Tokyo market,<2C> said Akio Yoshino, chief economist at Amundi Japan Ltd. <20>The strength of corporate earnings should continue to support the Tokyo equity market<65> in the coming weeks, Yoshino said. The pan-European STOXX 600 was down 0.1 percent, while euro zone blue chips gained 0.2 percent. France''s CAC 40 .FCHI rose 0.1 percent. Britain''s FTSE 100 index fell 0.4 percent. .FTSE Emerging market stocks .MSCIEF rose 0.3 percent. Euro zone banks .SX7E were up 0.5 percent, building on the previous session<6F>s gains as investors anticipated Thursday<61>s European Central Bank meeting for the next catalyst for financials, which benefit from a rising rate environment. Recent indications from policymakers have fanned speculation it will opt for a reduction in monthly asset purchases to 30 billion euros from January from 60 billion euros at present. Bets are also that it will keep that in place for 6-9 months. German business confidence unexpectedly rose to a record high in October after falling for two months in a row, a survey showed on Wednesday. Crude oil fut
'b16fba6f689f077d41dccc51b3720eb8073dd959'|'Cerberus shows interest in troubled Alitalia - FT'|'October 25, 2017 / 5:50 AM / Updated 2 minutes ago Cerberus shows interest in troubled Alitalia: FT Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - U.S. private equity group Cerberus Capital Management has approached Alitalia [CAITLA.UL] with an offer that would allow the carrier to remain independent, the Financial Times reported, citing sources. An airplane of Alitalia approaches to land at Fiumicino international airport in Rome, central Italy, May 3, 2017. REUTERS/Max Rossi Cerberus told Alitalia that it was still interested in buying the airline if it could be comprehensively restructured, the FT said, citing sources. on.ft.com/2yOxFpw Germany<6E>s Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) and British budget airline easyJet ( EZJ.L ) were among the seven bidders for Alitalia, in a formal sale process last week. Both Lufthansa and easyJet had said they were only interested in parts of the carrier. New York-based Cerberus had decided against submitting its own offer as it considered the terms of the public tender too restrictive, the newspaper said. Cerberus suggested it would be willing to invest funds worth somewhere in the <20>low nine-digits<74>, or between 100 million euros and 400 million euros, to gain control of Alitalia, the FT added. It also planned to ask the Italian government to retain a stake in the airline, with trade unions benefiting from some form of <20>profit sharing<6E>, the FT said. Cerberus has also offered to <20>step in<69> to get a <20>head start<72> on reorganizing Alitalia without charging any fee, even before making its investment, the newspaper said. Alitalia and Cerberus Capital Management could not be immediately reached for comment outside regular business hours. The ailing airline, which has made a profit only a few times in its 70-year history, was put under special administration earlier this year after its staff rejected a plan to cut jobs and salaries. Reporting by Sangameswaran S in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-alitalia-sale-cerberus-capital/cerberus-shows-interest-in-troubled-alitalia-ft-idUKKBN1CU0GC'|'2017-10-25T08:47:00.000+03:00'
'aed9d3bac9e82615c6bb36ee38a865111781f7fd'|'China''s CEFC, Russia''s VTB may close $5 billion loan deal by year-end: source'|'MOSCOW (Reuters) - CEFC China Energy is in talks with Russian state bank VTB to raise around $5 billion in loan to finance acquisition of a stake in Russia<69>s largest oil firm Rosneft, a banking source familiar with the talks told Reuters.A CEFC logo is seen at CEFC China Energy''s Shanghai headquarter in Shanghai, China September 14, 2016. REUTERS/ Aizhu Chen The source added that VTB and CEFC might close the loan transaction by year-end.Related Coverage Deal between CEFC and Russia''s Rosneft does not hinge on VTB financing: VTBReporting by Andrey Ostroukh; writing by Katya Golubkova; editing by Dmitry SolovyovOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-cefc-rosneft-oil-loans-vtb/chinas-cefc-russias-vtb-may-close-5-billion-loan-deal-by-year-end-source-idINKBN1CT0WE'|'2017-10-24T06:14:00.000+03:00'
'0afa26fd151590667f837aa41279825f8b45e015'|'Toshiba says considering measures in case chip unit sale uncompleted by March'|'October 24, 2017 / 3:19 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago Toshiba weighing options in case chip unit sale not completed by March Makiko Yamazaki 4 Min Read CHIBA CITY, Japan (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp said it is considering various measures in case the $18 billion sale of its chip unit does not close by the end of the financial year and leaves the embattled conglomerate short of funds needed to ensure it stays listed. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Toshiba is seen as a shareholder arrives at Toshiba''s extraordinary shareholders meeting in Chiba, Japan March 30, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo The deal needs to close by end-March or Toshiba will likely report negative net worth - where liabilities exceed assets - for a second year running. That could trigger an automatic delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. <20>Nothing has been decided, but it<69>s true that we are considering potential measures,<2C> CEO Satoshi Tsunakawa said at an extraordinary general meeting where shareholders approved the sale to a consortium led by Bain Capital LP. Proceeds from the sale are crucial to cover billions of dollars in liabilities arising from the conglomerate<74>s now bankrupt U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse. But a deal was only agreed last month after a long and contentious auction, and chances are high that it will not receive regulatory approvals by end-March as such reviews usually take at least six months. Tsunakawa did not elaborate on what measures Toshiba may take but his comments follow the Tokyo Stock Exchange<67>s decision this month to remove the firm from a special watchlist which had prevented it from issuing new shares on the market. Analysts believe, however, that ordinary investors are unlikely to get behind a firm that lurched from a 2015 accounting scandal to a full-blown financial meltdown last year. <20>It may issue preferred shares worth several hundreds of billions of yen to investors such as Bain Capital or it might ask its banks for debt-to-equity swaps,<2C> said Kentaro Harada, a credit analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities. The sale of the unit - the world<6C>s No. 2 producer of NAND semiconductors - is also facing legal challenges from Toshiba<62>s chip joint venture partner Western Digital, which opposes any deal without its consent and has sought an injunction with the International Court of Arbitration. Toshiba said in a statement on Tuesday that it <20>remains fully determined to resolving the issue through the arbitration process.<2E> Harada said that if Western Digital did gain an injunction order, that could harm banks<6B> willingness to provide Toshiba with any further financial support. In addition to the chip unit sale, shareholders also approved Toshiba<62>s earnings report for the past business year and the appointment of 10 executives to the board, including Tsunakawa and seven other incumbent board members. The earnings report has been controversial. Filed in August after months of delays, it received an unusual <20>qualified opinion,<2C> or limited endorsement, from Toshiba<62>s auditor, which said it thought Toshiba was late in booking losses at its Westinghouse unit. Proxy advisory firms Glass Lewis and ISS had recommended this month that Toshiba<62>s shareholders should not give their approval given the auditor<6F>s mixed review. Japan<61>s securities watchdog is also investigating accounting in its earnings report to see if it properly handled losses incurred by its U.S. nuclear unit, a source with knowledge of the matter has said. Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-toshiba-accounting/toshiba-says-considering-measures-in-case-chip-unit-sale-uncompleted-by-march-idUKKBN1CT096'|'2017-10-24T06:18:00.000+03:00'
'c36ecbcb9692a9e1cdfc1e7430b9e0d05f807677'|'China Sinochem to re-evaluate oil business, expand fine chemicals: chairman'|'BEIJING (Reuters) - China<6E>s Sinochem Group is reviewing its struggling oil exploration business and plans expansions into material and life sciences over the next decade in major strategy shift, the chairman of the state-run conglomerate said.FILE PHOTO: A logo of Sinochem is seen outside an office building of Sinochem in Beijing, China, February 21, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo Last week, Reuters reported that Sinochem had retained three banks to work on a possible listing of its oil refining, fuel marketing, and trading and storage assets while the upstream oil business might be sold to the government.<2E>Based on current market conditions, we are re-evaluating our strategy in the upstream oil and gas business,<2C> Ning said in an email to Reuters in response to interview questions sent on Monday as part of the 19th Communist Party Congress taking place in Beijing this week.Sinochem has tapped Morgan Stanley, Citic Securities and BOC International to work on the possible Hong Kong listing to raise capital and revive the company, Reuters reported.Sinochem aims to build itself into a conglomerate using petrochemicals as the foundation but led by material science and life sciences, a change from previously <20>scattered resource allocation and lack of focus in core businesses,<2C> said Ning.The new business strategy comes as Sinochem is anticipated to merge with China National Chemicals Corp, or ChemChina, under a state-orchestrated restructuring to join the companies.Reporting by Chen Aizhu; Editing by Christian Schmollinger '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-china-congress-sinochem/china-sinochem-to-re-evaluate-oil-business-expand-fine-chemicals-chairman-idINKBN1CT0AR'|'2017-10-24T01:59:00.000+03:00'
'51139ae7367cb20f1ed69df92d69564095c73d99'|'Slovenia may offer to pay penalty to EU to avoid NLB sale -sources'|'LJUBLJANA, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Slovenia may offer to pay a penalty to the European Commission to avoid having to sell off a stake in state-owned Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB), sources close to the matter said on Wednesday.Slovenia had agreed to sell a 50 percent stake in NLB, the country<72>s largest bank, this year in exchange for the Commission<6F>s approval of the bank<6E>s rescue in 2013 in which the government gave the bank 1.55 billion euros in state aid.But in June the government cancelled a planned sale of 50 percent of the bank, saying the suggested price, which valued the whole bank at a minimum of 1.1 billion euros, was too low.Slovenia<69>s finance minister Mateja Vranicar Erman is due to meet European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager on Oct. 26 to discuss delaying the sale. The government hopes it could delay the sale by three years.The sources said Slovenia might propose that NLB pays a penalty of some 365 million euros to try to gain the Commission<6F>s approval for the bank to stay in state hands indefinitely.Slovenian finance ministry declined to comment. The European Commission<6F>s spokesman also declined to comment but said the Commission was <20>in constructive contact with the Slovenian authorities.<2E>Sources said the Commission might ask Slovenia to sell NLB<4C>s businesses in the Balkans if the sale of a 50 percent stake in the bank does not go ahead.Slovenia has been reluctant to sell off its major banks and the government still controls about 44 percent of the banking sector. It plans to sell the second largest bank, Abanka, by the middle of 2019.The third largest bank Nova KBM was sold to US investment firm Apollo Global Management and the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) in 2015. Both, NKBM and Abanka, also received state help four years ago when the country managed to only narrowly avoid an international bailout. ($1 = 0.8466 euros) (Reporting By Marja Novak. Editing by Jane Merriman) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/slovenia-nlb/slovenia-may-offer-to-pay-penalty-to-eu-to-avoid-nlb-sale-sources-idINL8N1N06JM'|'2017-10-25T14:16:00.000+03:00'
'1c1f07978d0c9ac49a2eba37d4d655cffa13ae43'|'Bombardier reviewing CSeries deliveries due to UTC engine fixes'|'October 24, 2017 / 8:44 PM / Updated 20 minutes ago Bombardier reviewing CSeries deliveries due to UTC engine fixes Allison Lampert 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Bombardier Inc ( BBDb.TO ) on Tuesday said it was reviewing 2017 delivery plans for its CSeries jets, after U.S. engine parts maker United Technologies said it was resolving issues with its geared turbofan (GTF) engines to make them more durable. FILE PHOTO - A logo of jet manufacturer Bombardier is pictured on their booth during the European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (EBACE) in Geneva, Switzerland on May 22, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo United Technologies Corp ( UTX.N ), the maker of Pratt & Whitney jet engines, held back some GTF shipments to plane makers and offered spares to airlines, which had faced problems with engines already in service. <20>Bombardier is working closely with Pratt & Whitney to evaluate and mitigate any potential impact on its customers and will provide a full update on November 2, when it issues its Q3 results,<2C> spokeswoman Nathalie Siphengphet said by email. Both Bombardier and Airbus SE ( AIR.PA ) have faced delayed deliveries of separate GTF engines. Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders said recently that Pratt<74>s engine has <20>tremendous potential<61> despite initial <20>teething problems.<2E> The European plane maker is taking a majority stake in the CSeries program for $1. <20>Pratt is working very hard to iron these out for our A320 family as well as for the CSeries,<2C> he told Reuters in Montreal. Montreal-based Bombardier has forecast deliveries of about 30 CSeries jets this year, but has only delivered 12 so far, raising questions about its ability to meet its guidance. <20>We<57>ve got some supplier challenges so you know, we<77>ll see how the ramp up goes,<2C> Bombardier Commercial Aircraft President Fred Cromer told Reuters on Friday. He did not provide names of suppliers. Korean Air Lines Co Ltd ( 003490.KS ), which in August forecast it would receive five CSeries jets this year, expects to get <20>hopefully one<6E> by the end of 2017 and six more in the first half of 2018, President Walter Cho said on Wednesday. Pratt & Whitney was delayed in producing a corrected engine liner required for the deliveries, he told Reuters on the sidelines of an industry conference in Taipei. <20>But I want to be clear I still have full confidence in Pratt & Whitney,<2C> Cho said. <20>They have been our choice of power plant for over 30 years and I have no doubt they will fix the problem and it will be a good airplane for our fleet.<2E> In April, Bombardier said Pratt would issue the liners for the engines in Korean<61>s order for delivery this past summer. At the time, Bombardier instructed CSeries operators Swiss International Air Lines and airBaltic to inspect their engine combustion liners after 2,000 flight hours. Pratt & Whitney said it had added a combustor lining inspection to its regularly scheduled maintenance of the engine. Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal and Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Jamie Freed in Taipei and Hyunjoo Jin in Seoul; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar, Tom Brown and Himani Sarkar'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-bombardier-deliveries-utc/bombardier-reviewing-cseries-deliveries-due-to-utc-engine-fixes-idUKKBN1CT29J'|'2017-10-25T08:31:00.000+03:00'
'db9a01d5bb83e93771e4597bcff60df5559a027f'|'America Movil reports net loss of 9.55 billion pesos in third quarter'|'MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim<69>s America Movil ( AMXL.MX ) on Tuesday reported a net loss of 9.55 billion pesos ($525 million) for the third quarter, with its results dragged down by a costly Colombian arbitration panel ruling.FILE PHOTO - The logo of America Movil is pictured on the wall of a reception area in the company''s corporate offices in Mexico City, Mexico, May 18, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido/File Photo The flagship company of Slim<69>s business empire registered a profit of 2.12 billion pesos in the same quarter a year earlier. Revenues of 244.2 billion pesos for the quarter were down from 249.7 billion pesos during the same period last year.While the peso<73>s depreciation took a toll, the company said the biggest factor in its loss was an 18.5 billion peso payment made as a result of the July ruling by the arbitration panel.The Colombian panel said America Movil and Spain<69>s Telefonica ( TEF.MC ) failed to return installed telecommunication networks and infrastructure as part of agreements to provide cellular phone service in Colombia more than a decade ago.America Movil is challenging the ruling. Were it not for the payment, the company said it would have registered a net profit of 2.5 billion pesos.Natural disasters in Mexico and Puerto Rico hurt revenues, America Movil said. Services revenues plunged 17.4 percent in the quarter in Puerto Rico, which was battered by Hurricane Maria in September, knocking out power and phone lines.Analysts said the performance reflected America Movil<69>s tough circumstances during the quarter, rather than underlying weakness in the business.<2E>The quarter was charged with non-recurring effects, namely the payment in Colombia, foreign exchange losses, a harder comparison base and the natural disasters in Mexico and Puerto Rico,<2C> said Gerardo Cevallos, an analyst with brokerage Vector.America Movil touted progress in nudging its business toward mobile data, widely viewed as a key engine of growth. Revenue from mobile data climbed 24.3 percent from the previous year in Latin America, with an 8.5 percent increase in Mexico.<2E>In Latin America, mobile data revenues led the way,<2C> the company said in a statement accompanying its results.Shares in America Movil have been on the rise since the Mexico Supreme Court ruled in August that the company should not be barred by law from charging its competitors certain fees.Stemming from the 2014 telecommunications reform, the ban on charging rivals for network usage has been a significant drag on America Movil<69>s profits.Mexico<63>s telecommunications regulator is discussing a proposal that would allow Slim to charge 0.03686 pesos for calls on its network, almost a third of what competitors can charge, Reuters reported on Tuesday.One of America Movil<69>s chief rivals in Mexico, AT&T ( T.N ), detailed its progress in the market on Tuesday.The company said it closed the quarter with 13.8 million subscribers in Mexico, up 29 percent from the previous year, as revenue climbed 20 percent in local currency.($1 = 18.1785 pesos as of Sept. 30)America Movil closed at 18.19 pesos a share on Tuesday. The company released results after the market closed.Additional reporting by Sheky Espejo; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Peter Cooney '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-americamovil-results/america-movil-reports-net-loss-of-9-55-billion-pesos-in-third-quarter-idUSKBN1CT344'|'2017-10-25T01:26:00.000+03:00'
'5cd0d96b48d623e4c9d3da93bd79861b89383369'|'Keppel-KBS US REIT launches $448 mln Singapore listing'|'SINGAPORE, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Keppel-KBS US REIT has launched its $448 million initial public offering in Singapore at $0.88 a unit, according to a prospectus filed with the central bank on Wednesday.The real estate investment trust, whose initial portfolio will comprise 11 office properties in the United States, is sponsored by a unit of Singaporean conglomerate Keppel Corp and U.S.-based investment firm KBS Pacific Advisors.Cornerstone investors, including Affin Hwang Asset Management Bhd and Hillsboro Capital, will buy 246.4 million units of the 509.1 million units on offer, the prospectus showed.The listing would be Singapore<72>s largest since July, when NetLink NBN Trust raised $1.7 billion in its IPO, which propelled listings in the city-state to a multi-year high. (Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan; Editing by Nick Macfie) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/keppel-ipo-reit/keppel-kbs-us-reit-launches-448-mln-singapore-listing-idINL4N1N03TQ'|'2017-10-25T07:51:00.000+03:00'
'aeac2e728a26a061111276c657af4df303f3c177'|'CEE MARKETS-Czech bond yields set multi-year highs on rate hike bets'|'* Czech bond yields rise further, highest since 2014 * Hampl comments underpin rate hike bets, says no big hike needed * Czech, Polish bond sales draw sound demand despite hike bets * Hungarian bonds firm, MOL boosts Budapest stocks to record high (Adds auction results, Polish rate hike expectations, Budapest stocks) By Sandor Peto and Jason Hovet BUDAPEST/PRAGUE, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Czech bond yields rose to their highest levels since 2014 on Wednesday after expectations for a Czech central bank (CNB) interest rate hike next month were reinforced by comments from a policymaker. CNB Vice-Governor Mojmir Hampl said that rates should go up and that the crown remained overbought. The crown reached four-year highs on Tuesday after rate setter Tomas Nidetzky said that it had not firmed enough to prevent a tightening and that the bank could consider tripling its main rate to 0.75 percent when it meets on Nov. 2. The currency steadied at 25.588 per euro by 1308 GMT after Hampl said he preferred a standard, 25 basis-point hike rather than a bigger step up in borrowing costs. The mid-yields on Czech government were at their highest levels since 2014 according to Reuters data. Foreigners bought tens of billions of euros worth of crowns before the CNB removed its cap keeping the currency weaker than 27 per euro for years. Analysts said it will be a tough balancing act for the CNB to manage its rate hike cycle without discouraging expectations for more hikes and kicking out a key leg supporting the crown''s strength. "Whereas we see more CZK (crown) appreciation potential, given that CZK still remains somewhat undervalued against the euro, the current speed of appreciation in our view increases the risks for setbacks," Raiffeisen analysts said in a note. "Such a setback could occur when rate hike speculation loses momentum, or if foreign investors see the scope for additional CZK appreciation diminishing," the note said. Expectations for a central bank rate hike have also been strengthening in Poland in recent weeks. By Wednesday, forward rate agreements (FRA''s) were pricing in an 84 percent chance of a 25 basis point hike in nine months. Even though higher rates cut the value of bond investments, Prague''s and Warsaw''s government bond auctions drew solid demand, with the Czech sale also helped by a relatively low offered amount. Polish yields rose slightly after the auction amid concern that the European Central Bank may shift towards a policy of less monetary stimulus at its meeting on Thursday, Pekao SA analyst Arkadiusz Urbanski said. Hungarian yields dropped by 1-5 basis points, mainly at the long end of the curve, after dovish comments on Tuesday from the Hungarian central bank. Budapest''s main equities index hit a record low, boosted by a 2.1 percent rise in MOL after the European Commission cleared 131 million euros of investment aid to the oil group from the Hungarian government. CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1508 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.588 25.595 +0.03 5.55% 0 5 % Hungary 310.00 310.30 +0.10 -0.38% forint 00 00 % Polish zloty 4.2340 4.2457 +0.28 4.01% % Romanian leu 4.5969 4.5967 +0.00 -1.35% % Croatian 7.5160 7.5137 -0.03% 0.52% kuna Serbian 119.48 119.55 +0.06 3.24% dinar 00 00 % Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1063.7 1051.4 +1.17 +15.4 6 6 % 2% Budapest 39913. 39411. +1.27 +24.7 36 36 % 2% Warsaw 2458.7 2448.4 +0.42 +26.2 1 5 % 2% Bucharest 7852.9 7890.9 -0.48% +10.8 7 0 4% Ljubljana 804.82 803.99 +0.10 +12.1 % 6% Zagreb 1882.5 1888.8 -0.33% -5.63% 7 1 Belgrade 727.55 727.18 +0.05 +1.42 % % Sofia 652.30 652.55 -0.04% +11.2 3% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs change Bund in Czech spread Republic 2-year 0.409 0.048 +111b +5bps ps 5-year 0.832 0.047 +107b +3bps ps 10-year 1.699 0.018 +120b -1bps ps Poland 2-year 1.685 -0.019 +239b -2bps ps 5-y
'1be1ee42fbb32f54f35057432dcb2ad262c90e66'|'Trump''s policies ''a risk'' for German car makers, Daimler CEO says'|'October 24, 2017 / 6:34 PM / in 18 minutes Trump''s policies ''a risk'' for German car makers, Daimler CEO says Reuters Staff 1 Min Read STUTTGART (Reuters) - The economic and trade policies of U.S. President Donald Trump are a risk for German car makers, the chief executive of Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ) said on Tuesday. FILE PHOTO - Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche arrives for the Laureus World Sports Awards 2016 in Berlin, Germany, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke Picture Supplied by Action Images <20>So far there has been no negative effect on our business,<2C> CEO Dieter Zetsche said at a conference. <20>But of course it is a risk.<2E> Trump, hoping to protect U.S. car makers, has criticised the import of cars into the United States as unfair trade. The president has also thrown the North America Free Trade Agreement with Mexico into question. Mexico plays an important role in production of German cars that are sold in the United States. Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach; Writing by Tom Sims; Editing by Alison Williams'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-daimler-trump/trumps-policies-a-risk-for-german-car-makers-daimler-ceo-says-idUKKBN1CT2PE'|'2017-10-24T21:34:00.000+03:00'
'1c4db3d1af01d26dd15836d8475c103dca7e46a1'|'Commerzbank gives defense mandate to Goldman Sachs -source'|'MUNICH/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Commerzbank is working with two investment banks to prepare itself for the event of a takeover bid from a European rival, several people close to the matter said.FILE PHOTO: A Commerzbank logo is pictured in Frankfurt, Germany, February 12, 2016. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo Germany<6E>s second-largest lender has hired Goldman Sachs and Rothschild to evaluate its options, including a possible defense scenario, they said. Commerzbank, Goldman Sachs and Rothschild all declined to comment.Commerzbank has been restructuring ever since an ill-timed acquisition of Dresdner Bank for 9.8 billion euros ($11.53 billion) in 2008. The move forced Commerzbank to take a government bailout, slash jobs, close hundreds of retail branches and rein in its investment banking.But its strong corporate lending business - Commerzbank specializes in financing Germany<6E>s prized Mittelstand of medium-sized companies - makes it an attractive target for European peers eyeing a stronger footprint in Europe<70>s largest economy.Italy<6C>s UniCredit recently told Berlin it is interested in eventually merging with Commerzbank, people familiar with the matter told Reuters last month.The bank has also caught the eye of other European peers. But the German government, which still holds a 15.6 percent stake, last month denied a report that it favored a merger of Commerzbank with France<63>s BNP Paribas.Berlin has said it would be willing to eventually sell the stake but it needs to get at least 18 euros per share in any sale to avoid a loss on its investment.Shares in Commerzbank, which has a market capitalization of 14.4 billion euros ($16.93 billion), were up 2.5 percent at 11.71 euros by 0800 GMT.While a foreign peer may eventually succeed in buying the lender, a consolidation within Germany is also on the cards.Top executives at Commerzbank and bellwether Deutsche Bank held unsuccessful talks on a combination last year, a person with knowledge of the matter said at the time.Regardless of the outcome, private equity firm Cerberus stands to gain from any deal after recently becoming Commerzbank<6E>s second-largest investor with a 5 percent stake.Goldman Sachs had been in contact with Commerzbank for months, but the mandate was formalized after Cerberus<75> investment in the summer, a person close to the matter said.The bank mandates were earlier reported by the Financial Times.Reporting by Alexander Huebner and Arno Schuetze; editing by Mark Heinrich '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-commerzbank-m-a/commerzbank-gives-defense-mandate-to-goldman-sachs-source-idUSKBN1CT0MG'|'2017-10-24T09:35:00.000+03:00'
'3bdadcf21ae7bcaffa53cb7cc4eacaf040e00701'|'CEE MARKETS-Central bank comments boost Czech crown, hit forint'|'* Crown hits 4-year high on central banker Nidetzky comments * Nidetzky says Czech bank may discuss 50 bp hike in Nov * Hungarian central bank does not cut rates further * Forint, zloty down on caution ahead of ECB meeting (Recasts, adding Czech rate setter comments, Hungarian central bank decision) By Sandor Peto and Bartosz Chmielewski BUDAPEST/WARSAW, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Hawkish comments from the Czech central bank (CNB) boosted the crown to a four-year high, while dovish remarks from the National Bank of Hungary knocked the forint to a two-week low on Tuesday. The CNB may consider a 50 basis points hike, which would triple its main rate, at its meeting on Nov. 2, board member Tomas Nidetzky told Reuters. The crown breached the 25.6 line against the euro. Trading at 25.58 at 1311 GMT, it was firmer by 0.3 percent, while the forint and the zloty weakened by half a percent. Czech markets set aside any immediate concern that billionaire Andrej Babis'' ANO party, which won last weekend''s election, may run into trouble in its search for coalition partners.. Nidetzky''s comments boosted expectations, which have lifted the crown by two percent since July, that the CNB would fight a rise in inflation by increasing rates further, after a hike in early August. The crown has not firmed enough to prevent more hikes, Nidetzky said. "(The firming) is a slow reaction as markets might think 50 basis points is still less likely," a dealer said, adding that the debate was no more about whether a rate hike would happen, but by how much. Most regional currencies have been buoyed by robust economic figures in the past months. But concerns have grown ahead of Thursday''s European Central Bank meeting that the world''s big central banks may shift towards more hawkish policies. "The ECB comments may not prove positive to emerging market currencies," one Budapest-based dealer said. Hungary''s central bank kept rates on hold as expected on Tuesday, but its dovish comments deepened the forint''s losses. It said that it was examining unconventional tools to ease policy further, after a cut in its overnight deposit rate last month and liquidity injections to the market through its fx swap tenders. It said the ECB is expected to retain loose monetary conditions. Others, like PKO BP strategist Jaroslaw Kosaty were less optimistic over the international sentiment. "The zloty should remain under the influence of global factors, which are unfavourable," he said. Poland''s central bank, which will publish the minutes of its latest meeting on Thursday, has remained relatively dovish despite a rise in inflation. But forward rate agreements (FRAs) have priced in a rate hike to come earlier than most analysts projected in a Reuters poll four weeks ago. The FRAs see 26-basis points of monetary tightening over the next 12 months, the biggest scale priced in since February. For a recent analysis on monetary policy in Central Europe, click on: CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1511 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.580 25.646 +0.26 5.58% 0 0 % Hungary 309.50 308.02 -0.48% -0.22% forint 00 00 Polish zloty 4.2421 4.2231 -0.45% 3.81% Romanian leu 4.6027 4.5967 -0.13% -1.47% Croatian 7.5100 7.5065 -0.05% 0.60% kuna Serbian 119.50 119.27 -0.19% 3.22% dinar 00 00 Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1051.7 1048.2 +0.34 +14.1 9 5 % 3% Budapest 39229. 39132. +0.25 +22.5 60 62 % 8% Warsaw 2456.6 2473.4 -0.68% +26.1 8 2 2% Bucharest 7873.2 7900.5 -0.35% +11.1 4 8 2% Ljubljana 803.99 803.93 +0.01 +12.0 % 4% Zagreb 1858.0 1849.4 +0.47 -6.86% 4 4 % Belgrade 727.18 728.25 -0.15% +1.37 % Sofia 655.87 667.48 -1.74% +11.8 4% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs change Bund in Czech spread Republic 2-year 0.391 0.164 +109b +14bp ps s 5-year 0.831 0.085 +109b +6bps ps 10-year 1.667 -0.015 +120b -5bps ps Poland 2-year 1.7 0.016 +2
'a16a4a5be8697e62a4aaee83a5e1c36b83f7ae83'|'Nigerian court freezes bank accounts for money laundering checks'|'October 23, 2017 / 2:00 PM / Updated 14 minutes ago Nigeria court orders bank account freezes to check money laundering Camillus Eboh 2 Min Read ABUJA (Reuters) - A Nigerian court has ordered a temporary freeze on millions of bank accounts with incomplete identification documents and the forfeiture of funds in those accounts as the government seeks to ensure compliance with money laundering rules. In a court order seen by Reuters on Monday, the government asked banks to disclose details of millions of personal and business accounts where holders have not provided biometric information and asked the court to stop the accounts operating. The government is seeking account holders<72> names, outstanding balances and any investments made with funds from the accounts, held with all the country<72>s 19 commercial lenders and the central bank. The case was filed on Sept. 28. The court granted a 14-day period for owners of affected accounts to indicate interest and explain why their funds should not be permanently forfeited to the government. Twelve banks contacted by Reuters declined to comment. The government introduced a biometric system for account registrations with banks in 2014 as part of a drive to create unique identifiers for customers and tackle corruption. In 2015 President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the merger of over 10,000 state accounts into one account at the central bank to curb theft and a practise whereby the government borrowed back its own funds from lenders at an interest. According to Nigeria<69>s Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS), around 52 million accounts had biometric identification by February, up from 31 million a year earlier and 2.71 million in 2015 when the campaign was launched. Nigeria has 98 million bank accounts, of which 67 million are active, according to NIBSS. Additional reporting and writing by Chijioke Ohuocha; Editing by Catherine Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nigeria-court-banks/nigerian-court-freezes-bank-accounts-for-money-laundering-checks-idUKKBN1CS1TY'|'2017-10-23T17:00:00.000+03:00'
'6df1c7e07451a8d70368ca92554be27e41e6dbf8'|'BT to cut around 130 jobs in Germany - Frankfurter Allgemeine'|'October 23, 2017 / 5:58 PM / Updated 5 minutes ago BT to cut around 130 jobs in Germany - Frankfurter Allgemeine Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - BT, Britain<69>s biggest telecoms group, plans to cut about 130 jobs in Germany, Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung reported, citing Germany chief Stefan Hirscher. The BT communication tower is seen from Primrose Hill in London April 9, 2013. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett Two thirds of the affected positions will be shifted to lower-cost Hungary and a third will be scrapped entirely, the German newspaper said in a preview of an article to be published in Tuesday<61>s edition. The British group employs about 850 people in Europe<70>s largest economy, according to Frankfurter Allgemeine. BT said in May it would cut 4,000 jobs from its Global Services division, group functions and technology operations after an accounting scandal in Italy and a profit warning. A spokesman for BT<42>s Germany operations said management and labour representatives were in talks about a package of measures, including job cuts, but final decisions have not yet been taken. Reporting by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Susan Fenton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bt-group-germany-jobs/bt-to-cut-around-130-jobs-in-germany-frankfurter-allgemeine-idUKKBN1CS2F5'|'2017-10-23T21:05:00.000+03:00'
'56c741552a3855fe5d578e28f52f13ed1f37fefc'|'Blackstone, KKR, others shortlisted for Link REIT''s $2 bln Hong Kong assets -sources'|'October 23, 2017 / 11:15 AM / in 8 minutes Blackstone, KKR, others shortlisted for Link REIT''s $2 bln Hong Kong assets -sources Reuters Staff * Chinese investors, Gaw Capital also shortlisted * Bids for assets are due by end of November * Link<6E>s portfolio includes shopping centres, office buildings By Carol Zhong and Kane Wu HONG KONG/SHANGHAI, Oct 23 (REUTERS) - Blackstone, KKR and some Chinese investors are among potential bidders shortlisted by Link Real Estate Investment Trust to buy some of its Hong Kong retail assets valued at about $2 billion, three sources said. Gaw Capital Partners, a Hong Kong-based private equity real estate firm focused on Greater China and Asia, is also on the shortlist for Link REIT<49>s shopping centers in the Asian financial hub, the people who had knowledge of the matter said. Bids for the assets are due by the end of November, one of the people said. The asset sale comes against the backdrop of Chinese firms aggressively buying land in Hong Kong, one of the world<6C>s most expensive real estate markets, gobbling up 29 percent of the land sold in 2015 and 2016. That trend has continued in 2017. Link REIT, Asia<69>s largest REIT by market capitalisation, owned assets in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou as of end-March. Its portfolio includes shopping centres, office buildings, car parks, wet markets and cooked food stalls. Buyers of commercial real estate in Hong Kong are betting on a sustained recovery in the city<74>s retail economy, helped by robust local consumption and a pickup in tourist numbers. Real estate services firm Colliers said last week it expects leasing activity in Hong Kong to pick up further and rents to start to recover in 2018. The $2 billion sale is attractive to private equity firms as the portfolio would provide stable cash flows, one of the sources said. Hong Kong<6E>s property market is at an elevated level at this point, said Phillip Zhong, senior equity analyst at Morningstar. <20>The disposed assets are valued at a higher price in the physical property market than being part of the REIT. So the company can sell lower cap rate Hong Kong assets and re-deploy cash to acquire higher yield assets in China.<2E> Link REIT said in July it intended to conduct a strategic review of its portfolio and appointed HSBC and UBS as financial advisers and DTZ Cushman & Wakefield as real estate adviser. The properties being put on sale are shopping centres in public housing estates located in older urban districts in Hong Kong, according to one of the people. Such type of community-based shopping centres account for 80 percent of the firm<72>s portfolio, according to an October Morningstar report. A Link REIT spokesman referred to the company<6E>s July announcement when contacted by Reuters, adding <20>the strategic review is ongoing, which may or may not lead to and result in any transaction<6F>. Blackstone, Gaw Capital, KKR, UBS and HSBC declined to comment. The people did not want to be named as the information is confidential. Link REIT has made asset disposals and acquisitions over the past three years as part of an attempt to revamp its business model. It sold 28 Hong Kong properties, including shopping centres and car parks, for a total of HK$11.97 billion ($1.53 billion) since July 2014, according to the data compiled by Reuters based on the company<6E>s stock exchange filings. (Reporting by Carol Zhong and Kane Wu; Additional reporting by Prakash Chakravarti and Clare Jim; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Muralikumar Anantharaman)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/link-reit-ma-privateequity/blackstone-kkr-others-shortlisted-for-link-reits-2-bln-hong-kong-assets-sources-idUSL4N1MV319'|'2017-10-23T14:14:00.000+03:00'
'0d69d7dd88dff7e13815282080ae14b95b58312c'|'UPDATE 1-Saudi Aramco CEO says listing on track for 2018 - CNBC'|'October 23, 2017 / 10:29 AM / Updated 19 minutes ago UPDATE 1-Saudi Aramco CEO says listing on track for 2018 - CNBC Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Adds quotes) DUBAI, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Saudi Aramco<63>s initial public offering will take place in 2018 as planned and the listing venue will be revealed in due course, the company<6E>s chief executive said in a CNBC interview broadcast on Monday. <20>We have always said that we will be listing in 2018, and to be more specific, in the second half of 2018,<2C> CEO Amin Nasser said, later adding: <20>The IPO is on track. The listing venue will be discussed and shared in due course.<2E> Aramco is preparing to list about 5 percent of its shares in local and international stock markets. It has yet to choose an overseas market. Nasser rejected a report that China was emerging as a frontrunner in a possible plan to delay the IPO and sell shares to sovereign wealth funds, CNBC said. <20>Saudi Aramco are not talking, as I said, to the Chinese or others,<2C> he said. Regarding the IPO process and possible venues for the listing, Nasser said all was still being considered. <20>All of that analysis is being reviewed in detail ... to make a decision at a certain stage, and we<77>re not going to be pushed, you know, by a journalist saying this needs to be talked about or not.<2E> Reuters reported last week that China was offering to buy up to 5 percent of Saudi Aramco directly. The Financial Times reported earlier this month that the company was considering shelving IPO plans in favour of a private share sale to world sovereign funds and institutional investors. Nasser also said Aramco will <20>meet all the requirements of that market in terms of reserve assessment<6E> and other rules of the country where it chooses to list. He said Saudi Arabia was largely operating in line with its closest peers, such as Exxon Mobil and BP. <20>I can say Aramco has always been run like a publicly traded company,<2C> he said. <20>If you look at our governance, we have independent board members. Everything that has been done in the company is similar to any international oil company in terms of the way we do business.<2E> Saudi Arabia<69>s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said last year the country was considering listing about 5 percent of Aramco in 2018 in a deal that could raise $100 billion, if the company is valued at about $2 trillion as hoped, (Reporting by Sylvia Westall. Editing by Dale Hudson and Jane Merriman)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/saudi-aramco-ipo/update-1-saudi-aramco-ceo-says-listing-on-track-for-2018-cnbc-idUSL8N1MY29X'|'2017-10-23T13:28:00.000+03:00'
'0c0a40ab56797be43aa0b5103fed6795ca1c9384'|'Britain''s Lloyds launches 500 million sterling fund for small companies'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Lloyds Banking Group ( LLOY.L ) opened a 500 million pound ($658 million) fund to help British businesses finance equipment on Tuesday, targeting small and medium-sized companies which banks froze out of credit following the financial crisis.A sign hangs outside a Lloyds Bank branch in London, Britain, February 21, 2017. Picture taken February 21, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville The bank said the fund will deliver quick access to finance by allowing companies to spread the cost of assets over their lifetime, enabling big investments that don<6F>t eat into working capital.The government sees small- and medium-sized companies as key to unlocking higher productivity, which has fallen back to below pre-crisis levels this year, and to the success of the UK economy post-Brexit.These businesses have struggled to invest in the decade since the financial crisis as banks have shied away from lending to smaller businesses.The Lloyds fund will be open to businesses of all sizes, but the bank said it would be of particular benefit to SMEs and mid-market companies in sectors with high and regular requirements for expensive assets, such as manufacturing and agriculture.The bank is trying to boost its support for start-ups, smaller firms and productivity, including by increasing its net lending to SMEs by 2 billion pounds in 2017 - a target it missed last year by around 400 million pounds last year.Out of more than 40 participating banks and building societies, it has drawn by far the most under an extended Bank of England scheme to encourage more lending, with the extension from 2014 until January 2018 focused on boosting lending to SMEs.According to BoE data published in September, Lloyds had drawn 23 billion pounds under the extension followed by Santander, with 3.18 billion pounds.But HSBC ( HSBA.L ) and CYBG ( CYBGC.L ), which do not participate in the BoE<6F>s scheme, launched larger funds solely for SMEs this year, worth 10 billion pounds and 6 billion pounds, respectively.A government drive to increase small businesses<65> access to credit has seen improvements, but many still report difficulties.In a survey of over 3,000 SMEs globally, published by American Express ( AXP.N ) in February, 57 percent of UK respondents said they struggled to access the finance needed to grow their business.Reporting by Emma Rumney, editing by Alex Smith and David Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/lloyds-smes/britains-lloyds-launches-500-million-sterling-fund-for-small-companies-idINKBN1CT01T'|'2017-10-24T03:41:00.000+03:00'
'd68a56460848222377551b745cac492a44f52064'|'Apple, Volkswagen, BMW warn EU over patent fees guidelines'|'October 26, 2017 / 11:35 AM / Updated 7 hours ago Apple, Volkswagen, BMW warn EU over patent fees guidelines Foo Yun Chee 4 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Apple ( AAPL.O ), Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ), BMW ( BMWG.DE ) and Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ) have warned EU regulators that adopting patent fee guidelines which favor Qualcomm ( QCOM.O ) and Ericsson ( ERICb.ST ) could hurt consumers and hinder innovation. FILE PHOTO: An Apple logo hangs above the entrance to the Apple store on 5th Avenue in the Manhattan borough of New York City, July 21, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo The companies<65> lobbying group, the Fair Standards Alliance (FSA), voiced their concerns in a letter dated Oct. 16 to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, Industry Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska and their colleagues. The move comes as the EU executive ponders whether a fridge maker should pay a different rate for crucial patents than a carmaker, or whether a flat, fixed rate would be fairer, with trillions of dollars in sales at stake. Sources say the latest Commission draft favors the patent fee model used by world No. 1 smartphone chip designer Qualcomm and Ericsson, which predominates in the tech industry and is based on how much value a technology adds to a product. It is opposed by Apple, Google ( GOOGL.O ) and others in Silicon Valley, who favor fixed fees. Bienkowska<6B>s officials, who are leading the drive, are now seeking feedback from other units in the Commission and aim to finalize the guidelines by the end of November. <20>The European Commission risks jeopardizing Europe<70>s potential to be a world leader in the Internet of Things by supporting a patent licensing system which rewards a few entrenched patent-holding companies at the expense of innovative companies and ultimately consumers,<2C> the FSA said in the letter seen by Reuters. Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler said the issue was of particular concern for their industry where cars increasingly resemble digital devices because of the use of wireless technologies. <20>We are now faced with components that are not licensed, and for which we receive claims or requests to engage in licensing discussions, even though these technologies are completely implemented at the component or module level,<2C> the letter said. <20>We do not have the applicable technical expertise to fully evaluate whether a license is needed or what a fair price for such technology might be.<2E> The Commission, which is doing a broader push to set new rules of the road for internet-connected devices beyond just computers and smartphones to cover cars, home automation and energy devices in the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) era, said it was acting in the interests of Europeans. <20>To make the licensing framework work and play a lead role in global technological innovation, all actors need to work together to strike a balance between patent holders and implementers,<2C> spokeswoman Lucia Caudet said in an email. The non-binding guidelines could provide a basis for future EU rules. FSA members include Alphabet unit Google, Intel ( INTC.O ), Dell, Deutsche Telekom ( DTEGn.DE ), Hyundai ( 011760.KS ), Tesla ( TSLA.O ) and Cisco ( CSCO.O ). Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Philip Blenkinsop '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-patents-carmakers/apple-volkswagen-bmw-warn-eu-over-patent-fees-guidelines-idUSKBN1CV1O1'|'2017-10-26T19:35:00.000+03:00'
'd5d727ac70570c2cba251a60bac8177e32a244fe'|'RBS to pay more than $44 million to settle U.S. trading fraud probe'|' 33 PM / Updated 26 minutes ago RBS to pay $44 million to settle U.S. charges it defrauded customers Jonathan Stempel 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc ( RBS.L ) agreed to pay more than $44 million(<28>33.38 million) and enter a non-prosecution agreement to settle a U.S. Department of Justice criminal probe of traders accused of defrauding customers on bond prices. FILE PHOTO - A logo at a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland is seen reflected in a window in the City of London December 16, 2014. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo The settlement with RBS Securities Inc was announced on Thursday by U.S. Attorney Deirdre Daly in Connecticut. RBS will pay a $35 million fine, plus at least $9.09 million to more than 30 customers, including Pacific Investment Management Co, Soros Fund Management and affiliates of Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Prosecutors said that from 2008 to 2013, RBS cheated customers by lying about bond prices, charging commissions it did not earn and concealing the fraud in an effort to boost profit at the customers<72> expense. Some victims had received federal bailout money through the Troubled Relief Asset Program. <20>For years, RBS fostered a culture of securities fraud,<2C> Daly said in a statement. <20>By entering into this agreement, RBS has admitted the seriousness of its past criminal conduct and made a clean break.<2E> The settlement arose from a five-year federal crackdown on deceptive bond trading in which eight traders, including two from RBS, have been criminally charged. According to settlement papers, RBS admitted and accepted responsibility for its misconduct. Daly said RBS<42><53>voluntary self-reporting and extraordinary cooperative efforts<74> were the reason it avoided criminal charges. U.S. authorities sometimes use non-prosecution agreements to encourage cooperation. The criminal probe of individuals associated with RBS<42> trading will continue. <20>RBS has zero tolerance for market misconduct,<2C> the bank said in a statement. <20>We are pleased to be able to resolve this issue as we continue to build a simpler, stronger bank that is fully focussed on serving our customers well.<2E> RBS<42> improper activity was conducted mainly in Stamford, Connecticut, through the bank<6E>s U.S. asset-backed securities, mortgage-backed securities and commercial mortgage-backed securities trading group, which was shut down in 2015. Adam Siegel, RBS<42> former co-head of U.S. ABS, MBS and CMBS trading, and Matthew Katke, a former RBS trader, both pleaded guilty in 2015 to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and have been cooperating with the government. Of the eight traders who were criminally charged, two were convicted, two were acquitted of various charges, three pleaded guilty and one pleaded not guilty. Two other traders were also hit with civil charges. Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Dan Grebler'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-rbs-settlement/rbs-to-pay-more-than-44-million-to-settle-u-s-trading-fraud-probe-idUKKBN1CV2M3'|'2017-10-26T18:34:00.000+03:00'
'6285cdaf48fbe6e36ec74ca4f32f380dec935dbb'|'Deutsche Bank sets course for higher bonuses - source'|'October 26, 2017 / 1:27 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago Deutsche Bank sets course for higher bonuses - source Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FRANKFURT, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank plans to bolster bonus payments in 2017 after a sharp cut last year, one person with knowledge of the matter said. The ultimate pool is still to be decided and will largely depend on how the bank fares through the end of the year as well being influenced by the pay of competitors. Additional reporting by Arno Schuetze in Frankfurt; Editing by Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/deutsche-bank-results-bonuses/deutsche-bank-sets-course-for-higher-bonuses-source-idUSL8N1N02YC'|'2017-10-26T16:26:00.000+03:00'
'4d67c8be0ebe78841467b21b6e09bd339bb95db1'|'Consumer groups join conservatives against AT&T deal for Time Warner'|'October 26, 2017 / 12:08 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Consumer groups join conservatives against AT&T deal for Time Warner Reuters Staff 2 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seven groups ranging from the Tea Party Patriots to liberal consumer groups warned against AT&T<>s ( T.N ) plan to buy Time Warner ( TWX.N ) in a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, saying the deal could give one company too much power over what Americans see on television. FILE PHOTO: People walk past the AT&T store in New York''s Times Square, New York, U.S., June 17, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo The letter is signed by officials from the more liberal Public Knowledge and Consumer Federation of America as well as Tea Party Patriots and American Family Association, which opposes homosexuality. <20>While the undersigned groups<70> opinions diverge significantly on many policy issues, we are united in our desire to ensure that free expression is not threatened by an increasingly limited number of companies that dominate U.S. media,<2C> the groups said in the letter. AT&T, the No. 2 wireless carrier which already owns satellite television service DirecTV, is in the process of buying Time Warner Inc for $85.4 billion in an effort to turn itself into a media powerhouse that can bundle mobile service with video. It has said it expects the deal to close by the end of the year. Owning DirecTV makes AT&T the top pay-TV firm. Combining that clout with Time Warner, which owns HBO, CNN and the movie studio Warner Brothers, would make AT&T even more powerful, the seven groups warned. The groups expressed concern in particular that AT&T could create incentives for its customers to only watch its shows by not counting AT&T content against data caps. Or, the groups said, AT&T could relegate channels it does not own to undesirable channel locations. Signatories also include officials from Americans for Limited Government, Frontiers of Freedom and Writers Guild of America West. Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Andrea Ricci '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-time-warner-m-a-at-t/consumer-groups-join-conservatives-against-att-deal-for-time-warner-idINKBN1CV1T0'|'2017-10-26T10:08:00.000+03:00'
'106476eaee7570b80556056ef18dc5e7a34c1131'|'BOJ shouldn''t be criticised for missing inflation goal - Japan PM''s aide'|'October 26, 2017 / 3:07 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago BOJ shouldn''t be criticised for missing inflation goal - Japan PM''s aide Leika Kihara 3 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - The Bank of Japan should not be overly criticised for failing to achieve its inflation target as its ultra-easy monetary policy has helped the economy and created jobs, an economic adviser to premier Shinzo Abe said on Thursday. FILE PHOTO - A man runs past the Bank of Japan (BOJ) building in Tokyo, Japan, July 29, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo <20>The reason we need an inflation target is because it is easier to achieve the basic needs<64> of the population, such as low unemployment, by setting one, Koichi Hamada said. <20>It is wrong to over-criticize the monetary authorities for not achieving their inflation target,<2C> Hamada, cabinet adviser and emeritus professor of economics at Yale University, said in a seminar. The comments by Hamada, considered among architects of the premier<65>s <20>Abenomics<63> stimulus policies, underscore a growing view among analysts and government officials that the BOJ should not be so concerned about meeting its price target quickly. Sayuri Shirai, a former BOJ board member, told the same seminar that it was <20>not easy<73> for Japan to achieve the central bank<6E>s 2 percent inflation target over the next few years. <20>It<49>s very clear monetary policy didn<64>t have an effective result in generating demand-driven inflation,<2C> she said. <20>I don<6F>t think the BOJ needs to abandon its 2 percent target but it needs to take a more flexible approach,<2C> she said, adding that the key to the outlook would be how the central bank steers a smooth exit from its ultra-loose monetary policy. Japan<61>s economy expanded at an annualized 2.5 percent in the second quarter as consumer and corporate spending picked up, with steady growth likely to be sustained in coming quarters. But core consumer prices rose just 0.7 percent in August from a year earlier, well below the BOJ<4F>s target, and wage growth remains slow despite a tightening job market. The BOJ is expected to largely maintain its price forecasts at a policy meeting next week and blame stagnant inflation on factors like corporate efforts to boost productivity, signalling that it will hold off on expanding stimulus. The central bank has postponed the time frame for achieving its 2 percent inflation target six times since deploying its massive monetary stimulus in 2013, as its huge money printing failed to nudge up price and wage growth. Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim and Kim Coghill'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-economy-boj/boj-shouldnt-be-criticized-for-missing-inflation-goal-japan-pms-aide-idUKKBN1CV08E'|'2017-10-26T06:07:00.000+03:00'
'0dece621cc63d86fd6342268469bddad6d6014bd'|'Global investors race for rare China sovereign bond, orders top $22 billion'|'October 26, 2017 / 4:03 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago Global investors race for rare China sovereign bond, orders top $22 billion Umesh Desai 4 Min Read HONG KONG (Reuters) - International investors piled into a rare global bond offering from China, boosting orders to over $22 billion(<28>16.69 billion), which allowed the issuer to price it at lower spreads than initially indicated on Thursday. China, which last sold a global bond in 2004, priced a $1 billion, 5-year bond at 15 basis points over US Treasuries and a $1 billion, 10-year bond at 25 bps over. That compares with the initial guidance of 30-40 bps and 40-50 bps respectively. The bonds are unrated. <20>Everyone wants to get their hands on this bond. These are tight levels but we are interested as there is little risk of repeated issuance in the same maturity bucket,<2C> said Edmund Goh, fund manager at Aberdeen Standard Investments. The sovereign debt sale is expected to serve as a pricing benchmark for China<6E>s state-owned firms which are among Asia<69>s most active issuers in the offshore bond market. <20>Sovereign bonds set the benchmark and create velocity for capital markets to deepen,<2C> said Henrik Raber, Standard Chartered debt capital market head. <20>We expect to see continued robust primary bond issuance activity across Asia, and in particular, from China.<2E> Existing bonds from these issuers have seen spreads narrow in anticipation of tight pricing of the underlying sovereign. Export Import Bank of China<6E>s bonds have rallied 10 bps since the sovereign debt plan was announced earlier this month. <20>It will re-price the China (state-owned enterprise) curve across the board particularly higher-rated bonds like CNOOC, Sinopec, Petrochina,<2C> said Raymond Lee of Kapstream Capital adding that he would prefer investing via credit default swaps - insurance-like contracts that protect against defaults. <20>I would prefer to go long the CDS if I want exposure to a China sovereign, which is providing an extra around 20 bps of carry and also considered liquid. In recent times it<69>s uncommon for the CDS to trade tighter than the bond, and it tells us that the technical bid is very strong for the new deal.<2E> This demand for China<6E>s CDS has pushed it to levels below higher-rated sovereigns such as South Korea. Investors say that infrequent, high profile issuers such as China can get away with pricing the bonds tightly even though the bonds are unrated. Last month, S&P cut China<6E>s long-term sovereign credit ratings by one notch to A+ from AA-, after a downgrade from Moody<64>s in May. The move put S&P<>s ratings in line with those of Fitch and Moody<64>s. Both S&P and Moody<64>s cited risks from a rapid build-up in debt. China<6E>s finance ministry has described the S&P downgrade as <20>a wrong decision<6F> that ignored the economic fundamentals and development potential of the world<6C>s second-largest economy. President Xi Jinping said at the Communist Party Congress last week that China will deepen economic and financial reforms and further open its markets to foreign investors as it looks to move from high-speed to high-quality growth. Bank of China ( 601988.SS ), Bank of Communications ( 601328.SS ), Agricultural Bank of China ( 601288.SS ), China Construction Bank ( 601939.SS ), CICC ( 3908.HK ), Citigroup ( C.N ), Deutsche Bank ( DBKGn.DE ), HSBC ( HSBA.L ), ICBC ( 601398.SS ) and Standard Chartered Bank ( STAN.L ) have been hired to manage the deal. Reporting by Umesh Desai; editing by Kim Coghill, Jacqueline Wong and Peter Graff'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-debt-global/global-investors-race-for-rare-china-sovereign-bond-orders-top-22-billion-idUKKBN1CV2Q6'|'2017-10-26T19:02:00.000+03:00'
'98c907a6b25e3b02cd92c37ed753864ee9ed7fb7'|'BP Midstream Partners'' IPO priced below proposed range: source'|'(Reuters) - BP Midstream Partners<72> initial public offering was priced at $18 per share, according to a source close to the matter, below the expected price range of $19 to $21 each.The 42.5 million share offering raised about $765 million and the company is scheduled to debut on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol <20>BPMP<4D> on Thursday.At $18, BP Midstream, a unit of British energy company BP Plc ( BP.L ), has a market value of about $1.9 billion.BP Midstream is a master limited partnership (MLP) formed by London-based BP''s U.S. pipeline unit and transports crude oil, refined products and diluents to customers under long-term agreements. ( bit.ly/2ge6biF )An MLP is a tax-advantaged structure often used by pipeline and other capital-intensive companies to distribute excess cash to investors in the form of tax-deferred dividends.BP Midstream, which operates in Midwestern United States and in the Gulf of Mexico, posted net income attributable of $63 million for the six months ended June 30, on a pro forma basis.Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays are among the top underwriters to the IPO.Reporting by Nikhil Subba in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-ipo-bpmidstream/bp-midstream-partners-ipo-priced-below-proposed-range-source-idINKBN1CU36Z'|'2017-10-25T20:26:00.000+03:00'
'32a90af6eb797f0bf69c5768c93183211be2ab93'|'UAW files complaint against Tesla representing terminated workers'|'October 26, 2017 / 3:28 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago UAW files complaint against Tesla for terminated workers Reuters Staff 2   The United Auto Workers (UAW) International Union said on Thursday it filed a complaint against electric carmaker Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ) on behalf of the company<6E>s terminated workers. FILE PHOTO: A Tesla charging station is seen in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S. September 28, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson The unfair labor practice (ULP) charges were filed at the National Labor Relations Board<72>s (NLRB) Oakland office, the union said. Tesla in October fired about 400 employees including associates, team leaders and supervisors, Reuters reported, citing a former employee. Performance reviews can result in promotions and occasionally in employee departures and no action was taken based on their feelings on unionization, Tesla said in an email to Reuters on Thursday. Roughly 20,000 ULPs are filed with the NLRB by unions like the UAW as an organizing tactic, the company said. UAW said in February it will greet Tesla<6C>s Fremont, California, assembly plant workers with <20>open arms<6D> in a bid to unionize the factory. NLRB, the U.S. agency in charge of enforcing labor law, in late August filed a complaint against Tesla, saying it found merit to workers<72> complaints about unfair labor practices. Reporting by Munsif Vengattil and Laharee Chatterjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-labor/uaw-files-complaint-against-tesla-representing-terminated-workers-idUSKBN1CV2L3'|'2017-10-26T18:27:00.000+03:00'
'19d4b981290d1e27887b86affe81d02f24f2f00e'|'Chipotle''s same-store sales misses estimates'|' 13 PM / in 23 minutes Chipotle''s sales disappoint, shares dive 6 percent Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc ( CMG.N ) reported a smaller-than-expected rise in sales at established restaurants, hurt by mixed reviews of its new queso side dish and a Norovirus outbreak that forced the brief closure of a Virginia restaurant in July. FILE PHOTO: Chipotle Mexican Grill is seen in uptown Washington, U.S., February 8, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo Shares of Chipotle fell nearly 6 percent in after-hours trade. Chipotle said it would open fewer stores than usual next year, after a management shakeup and millions of dollars in free food giveaways failed to revive business following a bruising string of food safety lapses in 2015. Sales at Chipotle restaurants open at least 13 months rose 1 percent for the third quarter ended Sept. 30. Analysts, on average, expected a rise of 1.2 percent, according to Consensus Metrix. Net profit rose to $19.6 million, or 69 cents per diluted share, from $7.8 million, or 27 cents per share, a year earlier while revenue rose 8.8 percent to $1.13 billion. Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, Peter Henderson in San Francisco and Uday Sampath in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Lisa Shumaker'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chipotle-results/chipotles-same-store-sales-misses-estimates-idUSKBN1CT2W2'|'2017-10-24T23:13:00.000+03:00'
'99bc1784dccbc3ed06409682c3bbc610506e9c55'|'Saudi crown prince: oil demand will increase in 2030-2040'|'October 24, 2017 / 1:43 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago Saudi crown prince: oil demand will increase in 2030-2040 Reuters Staff 1 Min Read RIYADH (Reuters) - Demand for oil will increase between 2030 to 2040 because there will be a need from petrochemical and other industries, not just for energy production, Saudi Arabia<69>s crown prince said on Tuesday. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attends the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed <20>I do not think demand for oil will decline but will increase between 2030 and 2040,<2C> Prince Mohammed bin Salman told a major investment conference in Riyadh. Reporting by Stephen Kalin and Katie Paul, Writing by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Catherine Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-saudi-economy-oil-demand/saudi-crown-prince-oil-demand-will-increase-in-2030-2040-idUKKBN1CT1XZ'|'2017-10-24T16:42:00.000+03:00'
'25ad39cdb2e4e44d5eb5151758b72e1d6749b682'|'UPDATE 1-U.S. to seek "good faith" agreements with China -Commerce Secretary'|'October 25, 2017 / 4:33 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago UPDATE 1-U.S. to seek "good faith" agreements with China -Commerce Secretary Reuters Staff (Adds details on NAFTA, background on China) By Trevor Hunnicutt NEW YORK, Oct 25 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will seek <20>tangible<6C> agreements on trade with China when he visits the country next month, but results on key issues such as market access may take longer, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Wednesday. Ross said the United States is seeking <20>immediate<74> results, like the deals American companies GE and Boeing Co struck in Saudi Arabia in May, as <20>a sign of good faith.<2E> But, speaking at the Paley International Council Summit in New York, Ross said questions on market access, intellectual property rights and tariffs are more complex and will take a longer time to negotiate. Trump administration efforts on trade continue on multiple fronts, with U.S. negotiators grappling with Canada and Mexico on updating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Trump will head to Asia from Nov. 3 to 14 to visit Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines for talks that will include discussions on trade. Ross on Wednesday described Chinese President Xi Jinping as a <20>Mao-like<6B> figure after a week-long Communist Party conclave after which the country unveiled on Wednesday a new leadership line-up without naming a clear successor. The Trump administration is seeking agreements with China on market access, respect for intellectual property rights and to resolve what he said is an imbalance in tariffs on automobiles, among other issues, according to Ross. Despite Trump<6D>s fierce criticism of China<6E>s trade practices during the presidential campaign, he has mostly held off on any major trade action while his administration works with Beijing on issues including conflict with North Korea. On NAFTA, Ross said <20>we<77>re just now getting to the really hard issues,<2C> and said talks would likely continue past an initial year-end deadline, to March. He did not outline which issues were sticking points. Trump, who blamed NAFTA for shifting U.S. manufacturing jobs to Mexico during his election campaign last year, has repeatedly vowed to scrap the treaty unless it can be renegotiated on terms more favorable to the United States. (Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and James Dalgleish)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-trade-ross/update-1-u-s-to-seek-good-faith-agreements-with-china-commerce-secretary-idUSL2N1N01DW'|'2017-10-25T19:31:00.000+03:00'
'7c13b090d768b6e729364d18478fe8fb1825d881'|'Oil hovers near four-week high on Saudi pledge to end glut'|'October 25, 2017 / 1:47 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Oil eases but still near four-week highs after Saudi supply pledge Amanda Cooper 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Oil eased on Wednesday but was still near a four-week high after top exporter Saudi Arabia said it was determined to end a supply glut that has been weighing on the market for three years. A view of Mexico''s national oil company Pemex''s refinery in Salamanca, in Guanajuato state, Mexico, in this February 8, 2016 file photo. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido Brent crude futures LCOc1 were down 20 cents at $58.13 a barrel by 0930 GMT, having closed up 96 cents or 1.7 percent on Tuesday. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude CLc1 was trading down 27 cents at $52.20. Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Tuesday the kingdom was determined to reduce oil inventories stocks in industrialised countries to their five-year average and raised the prospect of prolonged output restraint once an OPEC-led pact to cut supplies ends. There is evidence that global inventory levels are falling and demand is strong, but the price has struggled to break above $60 a barrel, partly due to uncertainty about what will happen to crude supplies after March, when the deal is due to end. <20>We<57>ve got a two-way battle here and at this stage, the bulls are having it,<2C> Saxo Bank senior manager Ole Hansen said. <20>We are in much better shape than we have been for a long time. The million dollar question is - is the market ready and prepared for a go at key resistance above 60? I still feel that is a step too far,<2C> he said. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other producers have cut oil output by about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) since January. The pact runs to March 2018, but they are considering extending it. <20>OPEC is holding a line on the production cuts,<2C> said Tony Nunan, oil risk manager at Mitsubishi Corp in Tokyo. <20>Even though shale (output) is now rebounding, the stocks are drawing, and now we<77>re heading into the winter season, so the market is strong.<2E> Data from the American Petroleum Institute on Tuesday showed U.S. crude stocks rose by 519,000 barrels last week, compared with analysts<74> expectations for a decline of 2.6 million barrels. [API/S] [EIA/S] Gasoline inventories fell by 5.8 million barrels, compared with analysts<74> expectations for a 17,000 barrel decline. The U.S. Energy Information Administration will release official government inventory data later on Wednesday. Disruptions to exports from Iraq, OPEC<45>s second-largest producer, amid tensions between Baghdad and the autonomous northern Kurdish region have supported oil prices. The Kurdish authorities offered on Wednesday to suspend their independence drive. Additional reporting by Osamu Tsukimori in Tokyo; Editing by Edmund Blair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-oil/oil-hovers-near-4-week-high-on-saudi-pledge-to-end-glut-idUKKBN1CU03U'|'2017-10-25T07:49:00.000+03:00'
'3b2915c73feb56e8257890b130864e56e0bdba3b'|'China cancer specialist Chi-Med plans $262 mln share offering'|'LONDON, Oct 25 (Reuters) - China-based cancer and immunology drug specialist Hutchison China MediTech, or Chi-Med, said it aimed to offer $262 million of American Depositary Shares, subject to market conditions, to help fund development of its pipeline.The plan comes amid growing investor enthusiasm for Chinese biotech companies, driven by hopes for their drugs and recent reforms to China<6E>s regulatory system that should speed up drug approvals. (Reporting by Ben Hirschler; editing by Jason Neely) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/chi-med-issue/china-cancer-specialist-chi-med-plans-262-mln-share-offering-idINL8N1N01LT'|'2017-10-25T04:45:00.000+03:00'
'27df81ad2afbe8a438cc17f6aa19858fe55e399a'|'Saudi Aramco, SABIC receive bids for oil-to-chemicals project'|'KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Saudi Aramco and Saudi Basic Industries Corp have received project management consultancy bids for a planned joint venture oil-to-chemicals project, industry sources said.Logo of Saudi Aramco is seen at the 20th Middle East Oil & Gas Show and Conference (MOES 2017) in Manama, Bahrain, March 7, 2017. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed The two partners are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop the complex in mid-November.The $20 billion plus project would be the first major scheme involving the two companies and is part of Saudi Aramco<63>s plans to expand in petrochemicals.Bidders include KBR, Fluor, Jacobs Engineering, WorleyParsons and Amec Foster Wheeler.Bids were submitted mid-October for project management consultancy (PMC) of the whole project including pre-front end engineering and design work (pre-FEED) and FEED, sources familiar with the matter said.Sources expect the award of the contract to be made early 2018 while commissioning of the complex is seen by the end of 2024.Saudi Aramco<63>s CEO Amin Nasser said on Tuesday he expects a final decision to be made by the end of the year.<2E>The two companies are working on a memorandum of understanding that is expected to be signed mid-November,<2C> said one of the sources who declined to be identified as the information is not public.Asked about the bidding process, Saudi Aramco said it does not comment on its on-going business transactions.Reporting by Reem Shamseddine; editing by Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-aramco-sabic-otc/saudi-aramco-sabic-receive-bids-for-oil-to-chemicals-project-idINKBN1CU13K'|'2017-10-25T07:26:00.000+03:00'
'8c465dc5c4df32b32c398b52fc13343fa2852c9c'|'Exxon, Chevron third-quarter profits jump on rising commodity prices'|'October 27, 2017 / 1:48 PM / Updated 9 hours ago Exxon, Chevron results linked to oil price, not cost cuts Ernest Scheyder 3 Min Read HOUSTON (Reuters) - Rising oil and natural gas prices boosted third-quarter profits at Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp by about 50 percent, underscoring how reliant they remain on commodity markets for their financial futures than better technology or cost cuts. FILE PHOTO: An airplane comes in for a landing above an Exxon sign at a gas station in the Chicago suburb of Norridge, Illinois, U.S., October 27, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo Despite deep capital spending cuts and a refocusing on projects that can generate faster paybacks in recent years, the results on Friday showed the pair, neither of whom hedge oil output, are still at the mercy of price gyrations. Exxon and Chevron have pointed to aggressive plans for boosting low-cost U.S. shale production. But in recent quarters total output at both has atrophied and shale is unlikely to deliver a marked lift until the next decade, based on corporate projections. <20>Both are trying to be disciplined and show growth,<2C> said Brian Youngberg, an oil industry analyst with Edward Jones. <20>But it<69>s a little bit of a transition, especially as they<65>re trying to increase shale (output).<2E> The pair reported the same day as French rival Total SA posted a 29 percent jump in its third-quarter net profit as project ramp-ups and new investments lifted production. Exxon, which reported a better-than-expected quarterly, said its Permian oil production will grow 45 percent each year through 2020, to more than 400,000 barrels per day. The company also has a large shale position in North Dakota<74>s Bakken shale formation. Still, Exxon said higher prices contributed $860 million to its earnings while volume increases added only $20 million to the latest quarter<65>s exploration profit. Exxon<6F>s total output in the quarter was the lowest this year. FILE PHOTO - The logo of Dow Jones Industrial Average stock market index listed company Chevron (CVX) is seen in Los Angeles, California, United States, April 12, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo Also on Friday Exxon, part of a consortium with Norway<61>s Statoil and Portugal<61>s Petrogal, a unit of Galp Energia, won one of four blocks in Brazil<69>s coveted pre-salt oil region in an auction. Exxon stock edged up 0.1 percent to $83.53 on Friday afternoon. At Chevron, a writedown of its Bangladesh operations and a drop in U.S. production weighed on results, which missed Wall Street estimates by a wide margin. Chevron<6F>s stock slid 4.5 percent to $113.15, a drop that surprised Chief Executive Officer John Watson, he said during an investors conference call. The San Ramon, California, company, which has been one of the Permian<61>s largest acreage holders since the 1930s, has only recently begun to aggressively develop its oil reserves there. Watson told Reuters earlier this year the Permian is <20>very important<6E> in the company<6E>s portfolio. While the company has yet to forecast 2018 production goals for the Permian, Watson said on Friday that Chevron will grow aggressively in the region. Chevron<6F>s overall average daily output was up 8 percent over a year ago, but that was largely due to the start of giant natural-gas projects. U.S. oil production at Chevron fell overall, as aging field output offset a jump in Permian production. The loss in U.S. oil production narrowed sharply as the price received for its crude rose 13.5 percent over a year earlier. Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-results/exxon-chevron-third-quarter-profits-jump-on-rising-commodity-prices-idUSKBN1CW1XT'|'2017-10-27T16:48:00.000+03:00'
'b5abbaa0a542407b09eb27e137e212b007ea3d6e'|'Exclusive - OPEC''s head says Saudi, Russia statements ''clear fog'' before November 30 meeting'|'Reuters TV United States October 27, 2017 / 2:38 PM / in a minute Exclusive: OPEC''s head says Saudi, Russia statements ''clear fog'' before November 30 meeting Alex Lawler 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The fog has been cleared ahead of OPEC<45>s next policy meeting by Saudi Arabia and Russia declaring their support for extending a global deal to cut oil supplies for another nine months, OPEC<45>s secretary general told Reuters on Friday. FILE PHOTO: OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo attends a meeting of the 4th OPEC-Non-OPEC Ministerial Monitoring Committee in St. Petersburg, Russia July 24, 2017. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus Russia and nine other producers, have cut output by about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) to get rid of a supply glut. The pact runs to March 2018 and they are considering extending it. Saudi Arabia<69>s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman said this week he was in favor of extending the term of the agreement for nine months, following on from similar remarks by Russian made by President Vladimir Putin on Oct 4. <20>OPEC welcomes the clear guidance from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia on the need to achieve stable oil markets and sustain it beyond the first quarter of 2018,<2C> OPEC<45>s Mohammad Barkindo told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference. <20>Together with the statement expressed by President Putin this clears the fog on the way to Vienna on Nov. 30.<2E> <20>It<49>s always good to have this high-level feedback and guidance,<2C> Barkindo added, when asked if the crown prince<63>s comments suggested a nine-month extension of the pact looked more likely. Reuters reported on Oct. 18, citing OPEC sources, that producers were leaning towards extending the deal for nine months, though the decision could be postponed until early next year depending on the market. Discussions are continuing in the run-up to the Nov. 30 meeting, which oil ministers from OPEC and the participating non-OPEC countries will attend. The deal has supported the oil price, which on Friday reached $59.91 a barrel, the highest level since July 2015, but a backlog of stored oil has yet to be run down and prices are still at half the level of mid-2014. The supply pact is aimed at reducing oil stocks in OECD industrialized countries to their five-year average, and the latest figures suggest producers are just over half way there. Stock levels in September stood at about 160 million barrels above that average, according to OPEC data, down from January<72>s 340 million barrels above the five-year average. Editing by Dmitry Zhdannikov, Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-opec-oil-exclusive/exclusive-opecs-head-says-saudi-russia-statements-clear-fog-before-november-30-meeting-idUKKBN1CW22Y'|'2017-10-27T17:32:00.000+03:00'
'e9a042e466423f74774d60e09a3d78d2ee1c40c2'|'Barclays bank boss defends strategy as share price tumbles'|'Barclays Barclays bank boss defends strategy as share price tumbles Embattled chief executive Jes Staley declares bank restructuring complete but share price falls 7% as profits plunge at investment arm Profits fell 15% at Barclays<79> investment arm. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images Barclays Barclays bank boss defends strategy as share price tumbles Embattled chief executive Jes Staley declares bank restructuring complete but share price falls 7% as profits plunge at investment arm View more sharing options Thursday 26 October 2017 11.13 BST Last modified on Thursday 26 October 2017 16.45 BST The boss of Barclays has been forced to defend his strategy amid falling profits at the investment banking arm and a tumbling share price. Jes Staley, who is under investigation by City regulators over his attempts to unmask a whistleblower , said at a briefing on the third-quarter results on Thursday that his two-year restructuring of the bank was now complete and he could focus on generating returns to shareholders. Investors were not convinced, with the share price falling more than 7% <20> the biggest one-day drop since the vote for Brexit in June 2016 <20> even though the bank reported a 19% rise in nine-month profits to <20>3.4bn. Brexit fears grip UK car industry as production tumbles <20> business live Read more The focus centred on the 15% fall in profits at Barclays<79> international arm <20> primarily its investment bank. This was driven by lower profits at the bank<6E>s markets business, which trades foreign exchange, bonds and currencies. <20>The third quarter was clearly a difficult one for our markets business <20> A lack of volatility in [foreign exchange, bonds and currencies] hit markets revenues hard across the industry and we were no exception to this trend,<2C> Staley said. The bank has reduced the amount set aside for bonuses in the third quarter of the year by 25%. Bankers receive their payouts after the full year. Jes Staley. Photograph: Debra Hurford Brown/Barclays/PA Staley, an American banker who took the top job in December 2015, gave no update on the investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority, the Bank of England and US regulators into attempts to unmask a whistleblower who made allegations about a long-term associate of Staley that he had brought to work at the bank. Staley told investors the bank<6E>s dividend would be reviewed with the full-year results in February. He cut the payout to investors for two years while he implemented his restructuring plan to sell off its African arm and its retail banking outside the UK, which has led to a 60,000-strong fall in headcount during his tenure. <20>The third quarter of 2017 was particularly significant for Barclays as it was the first for many years in which we have not been in some state of restructuing,<2C> said Staley. Analysts were not convinced. <20>Barclays investors have already endured a torrid time in 2017, and today<61>s [statement] offers no relief at all,<2C> said Ian Gordon, analyst at Investec. <20>Whilst we have been a seller this year, we had thought Barclays would struggle to disappoint [on] low Q3 expectations. It looks like they have succeeded,<2C> analysts at brokers KBW said. The bank, which owns the UK<55>s biggest credit card company, Barclaycard, has been charged with fraud by the Serious Fraud Office over the way it raised cash during the financial crisis. It is also fighting charges by the Department of Justice in the US over the way it sold mortgage bonds a decade ago . There were no updates on either of these inquiries but the bank announced it had settled a long-running case with the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for $105m (<28>80m). It could have faced a bill of at least $470m for allegedly manipulating power prices in California between 2006 and 2008. Staley said: <20>Whilstworking to put our remaining conduct issues behind us, we remain focused as a management team, on being in a position to distribute the returns that these plan will generate ... to shareholders
'39dca90ea10985894dff312cd368da71b9a8713b'|'Small mining companies shun London market after IPO flops'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Lacklustre performances by small mining companies on the London Stock Exchange are driving rivals in need of cash to find alternative ways to raise capital, either by merging or turning to other markets such as Toronto.FILE PHOTO: Pedestrians leave and enter the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo Six small miners have listed in London this year, up from two last year, but four of those are now trading below their offer price despite a rally in metals, led by a 27 percent jump in copper and aluminum prices and a 10 percent rise for gold.London hosts the world<6C>s biggest mining companies, including Rio Tinto ( RIO.L ) ( RIO.AX ) and BHP Billiton ( BLT.L ) ( BHP.AX ), but the poor performance of newly listed miners and other small miners trading in London is pushing some to change their plans.On Tuesday, Condor Gold ( CNDR.L ), a Nicaraguan gold miner whose share price is down 10 percent this year, said it had received conditional approval for a secondary listing in Toronto, where it hopes valuations will be higher. <20>London is not a great place to be listed as a junior explorer. There is not a clear understanding of what we do,<2C> said Mark Child, the company<6E>s chairman and chief executive.Metal development company Phoenix Global Mining ( PGMH.L ), which listed in London at the end of June, will also consider North American listings at a future date, its CEO Dennis Thomas said.Toro Gold, which operates in Africa, started preparing for a London listing with the help of Bank of Montreal (BMO) and corporate advisor Numis Securities earlier this year but has shelved its plans, sources said.Toro Gold, Numis and BMO were not immediately available for a comment. <20>It is still a difficult time to raise money through IPOs for the mining sector ... because the price recovery is in its reasonably early stages,<2C> said Lee Downham, head of EY<45>s global mining & metals transaction advisory services.Small mining companies, which are often betting on exploiting valuable resources in a few concessions, can eventually enjoy far bigger stock market price increases than major firms with sometimes limited opportunities for growth.But in the early years, they may struggle to balance the heavy spending needed to get mines up and running with a lack of revenue, meaning some need regular capital injections.London<6F>s big institutional investors, however, are seen as more risk averse than those in major mining centers such as Canada and Australia, particularly when it comes to relatively illiquid shares they cannot get out of quickly, bankers say.Besides Russia<69>s Polyus ( PLZLq.L ), which has agreed to sell a 10 percent stake to a consortium led by China<6E>s Fosun International ( 0656.HK ), and Rainbow Rare Earths ( RBWR.L ), which mines rare earth materials, the other four miners that listed in London this year are down.Polyus on Thursday issued a statement saying the Fosun stake sale had a completion deadline of February 2018, versus a previous target of the end of the year, and would be completed <20>as soon as the Chinese government gives its approval<61>. [L8N1N18G2]M&A INSTEAD Condor Gold<6C>s Child says figures from RBC Capital Markets show some emerging gold producers listed in Toronto can be valued at roughly three times as much as in London, based on their estimated gold reserves.Canada, like Australia, has a strong base of retail and institutional investors interested in resources companies.The Toronto stock exchange, which is home to more than half the world<6C>s public mining companies, has seen a flurry of listings this year, with many taking advantage of a doubling in zinc prices since late 2015.Brazil-based zinc producer Nexa Resources and at least three other zinc miners are planning listings on the Toronto Stock Exchange or the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V) market for start-ups, according to company filings, on top of six other small mining companies that have listed already this y
'ab07f40d12c023dca50c05c6ee98d9c1370d04c7'|'Suncor reports better-than-expected third quarter profit'|'CALGARY, Alberta, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Suncor Energy Inc , Canada<64>s second-largest energy producer, reported a higher-than-expected third-quarter profit on Wednesday due to record oil sands production and strong refinery output.The Calgary-based company reported net earnings of C$1.289 billion ($1.01 billion), or 78 Canadian cents per share in the three months ended Sept. 30. In the year-prior quarter net earnings were C$392 million, or 24 Canadian cents per share.Suncor<6F>s operating profit, which excludes one-time items, was C$867 million, or 52 Canadian cents per share, in the third quarter, from C$346 million, or 21 Canadian cents per share, in the year-ago period.Analysts had predicted earnings of 36 Canadian cents per share, according to Reuters data.Suncor produced a quarterly record of 739,900 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the third quarter of 2017, up from 728,100 boepd in the same period a year earlier.Refinery throughput was 466,800 barrels per day, compared to 465,600 bpd in the year-prior quarter. ($1 = 1.2800 Canadian dollars) (Reporting by Nia Williams; Editing by Sandra Maler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/suncor-energy-results/suncor-reports-better-than-expected-third-quarter-profit-idINL2N1N100Q'|'2017-10-25T22:22:00.000+03:00'
'5fcb8d899fb07ef76b1d3719ecf4cd59dabdf8d7'|'Electra says market conditions do not support new investment'|'October 23, 2017 / 6:35 AM / Updated 21 minutes ago Electra to pay 350 million pound special dividend after strategic review Noor Zainab Hussain 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Electra Private Equity ( ELTA.L ), under pressure to improve shareholder returns from an activist investor, will pay a multi-million pound special dividend and has suspended new investments after a strategic review. The company, one of Britain<69>s oldest private equity firms, said in a statement on Monday that due to current market conditions it would not be making any new investments for the time being and that shareholders would get a special payout of 350 million pounds, or 914 pence per share. Electra, whose investments include restaurant chain TGI Fridays and online photo printing company Photobox, is also proposing to remove the words <20>private equity<74> from its name. The company, which earlier this year split from its investment manager Electra Partners, now renamed Epiris, is reorganising its structure. It had been the subject of a long campaign by activist investor Edward Bramson to overhaul the group. Electra shares were up 3.5 percent at 1,786 pence, making it the third-largest gainer on the FTSE Midcap Index .FTMC . For now, the company is planning to focus on increasing the value of its investments and raising payouts to shareholders. A source familiar with the strategy said it was looking to move away from the traditional private equity model of always putting money into new investments every time an asset is sold. The source added the change in investment model would reduce management fees and strip away the requirement for Electra to continuously seek new investments, reducing costs and freeing up cash. The special dividend, to be paid on Dec. 1 to shareholders on the register at the close of business on Nov. 3, means it will have paid shareholders about 1.9 billion pounds since resuming dividends in 2015. Electra said it would update its investment policy to reflect its focus on shareholder returns and explore options for the reclassification of its stock market listing. Shareholders will be asked to vote on its proposed changes, including the name change. The firm also said it would also take actions to simplify its corporate and underlying partnership structures to cut costs and increase efficiency, as part of the second phase of the review. Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by David Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-electra-pvt-eqty-restructuring/electra-says-market-conditions-do-not-support-new-investment-idUKKBN1CS0KS'|'2017-10-23T09:35:00.000+03:00'
'229649fe59568cbe866fbda668657b41bb10d808'|'Hong Kong, Singapore to link up trade finance blockchain platforms'|'October 25, 2017 / 7:07 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago Hong Kong, Singapore to link up trade finance blockchain platforms Elzio Barreto 2 Min Read HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong and Singapore<72>s de facto central banks unveiled plans on Wednesday to link trade finance platforms they are developing with blockchain technology, to reduce potential fraud and errors in the multi-trillion-dollar funding of international trade. FILE PHOTO: A security guard walks past a directory board of Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) in Hong Kong December 20, 2012. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) together with banks including HSBC Holdings PLC ( HSBA.L ) and Standard Chartered PLC ( STAN.L ) tested late in 2016 the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT), also known as blockchain, to build a trade finance platform. Singapore is also developing a platform. Linking the two is part of a broader plan between HKMA and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to collaborate in blockchain and other financial technology (fintech) projects, the pair said in a joint statement. <20>This interface is likely to be the first of its kind in the world in the application of DLT in solving the century-old problem arising from the inefficiency of the paper-based trade finance system,<2C> HKMA head Norman Chan said at a fintech conference. The move also comes as banks including HSBC and Bank of America Merrill Lynch and government agencies such as the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore look to use technology to make trade finance more efficient and reduce the risk of fraud in letters of credit (LOC) and other transactions. Letters of credit are one of the most widely used ways of reducing risk between importers and exporters, helping guarantee more than $2 trillion worth of transactions, but the process creates a long paper trail and is time-consuming. Chan said Hong Kong<6E>s project can digitise trade documents, automate processes, allow sharing of required documentation among authorized participants, and reduce human errors and the risk of fraud. The HKMA and consortium of banks are now in the process of hiring a developer to create and commercialise their platform, Chan said. Reporting by Elzio Barreto; Editing by Christopher Cushing'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hongkong-singapore-fintech/hong-kong-singapore-to-link-up-trade-finance-blockchain-platforms-idUKKBN1CU0O2'|'2017-10-25T10:07:00.000+03:00'
'54e1c358031a13cf781a90d1468d76953660cff9'|'UPDATE 3-Chipotle shares fall as store openings scaled back, profit disappoints'|'(Adds opening fewer stores, hiking menu prices, analyst comment)By Lisa BaertleinOct 24 (Reuters) - Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc will open fewer restaurants to get <20>fundamentals right<68> and posted disappointing quarterly sales and earnings on Tuesday, as the company struggles to recover from a bruising string of food safety lapses.Shares in the burrito chain were down 9.5 percent in extended trading after executives reported slightly weaker-than-expected sales at established restaurants despite introducing a queso cheese dip in September. Chipotle also announced it would raise prices by roughly 5 percent in almost 900 stores in November.Chipotle tempered its 2017 forecast to call for new restaurant openings slightly below the low end of the previously disclosed range of 195 to 210. It also said it would open only 130 to 150 new stores next year.<2E>We<57>re going to slow down just a little bit, but this is a temporary slowdown for 12 to 18 months,<2C> founder and Chief Executive Steve Ells said in an interview. <20>You have to get the fundamentals right first. Looking inward and understanding where you made mistakes in the past helps you set up for change.<2E>The news was a drag on the share price.<2E>When you reduce the expectations of what the future unit growth could be, it certainly is a negative on the stock,<2C> said Evercore analyst Matthew McGinley.Sales at Chipotle restaurants open at least 13 months rose 1 percent for the third quarter ended Sept. 30. Analysts, on average, expected a rise of 1.2 percent, according to Consensus Metrix.Executives said those sales were down more than 2 percent prior to the debut of queso, which is sold as a standalone dip or a sauce for entrees, after an employee-caused norovirus outbreak at a Virginia restaurant in July hurt sales.Costs included 64 cents related to a data security incident, 19 cents from a spike in avocado prices and 13 cents due to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Analysts on average had expected nearly a dollar per share more in earnings, with the consensus target of $1.63, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Chipotle is doubling down on training and menu experimentation after management changes, a board shake up and millions of dollars in free food giveaways failed to revive business following E. coli, salmonella and norovirus outbreaks in 2015.Chipotle<6C>s stock is down 53 percent from the start of 2015, versus the 75 percent jump for McDonald<6C>s Corp and the S&P 500<30>s 25 percent gain.More than 18 percent of Chipotle<6C>s float, or shares available for trade, have been sold short. With more than $1.68 billion at risk betting against the shares, it remains the No. 1 short in the restaurant sector, said Matthew Unterman, director at financial analytics firm S3 Partners.Chipotle has a small menu compared with other chains and it cut spicy chorizo to make room for queso. The chain<69>s simple, limited menu underpins the fast service that initially attracted customers and Wall Street, but it also carries the risk of diner burnout as the novelty wears off.Net profit rose to $19.6 million, or 69 cents per diluted share, from $7.8 million, or 27 cents per share, a year earlier while revenue rose 8.8 percent to $1.13 billion.Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, Peter Henderson in San Francisco and Uday Sampath in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/chipotle-results/update-1-chipotles-sales-disappoint-shares-dive-6-percent-idINL4N1MZ5PE'|'2017-10-24T18:25:00.000+03:00'
'5f44f172ba8bf247ce42c1b9f00a1316c6506fa0'|'Airlines need clear view of Brexit by Oct 2018 at latest - IATA'|' 47 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago Airlines need clear view of Brexit by October 2018 at latest - IATA Reuters Staff 2 Min Read TAIPEI (Reuters) - Airlines need a clear view of how Britain<69>s exit from the European Union will affect aviation by October next year at the latest, the head of a leading airline industry body said on Wednesday. Union Flags and European Union flags fly near the Elizabeth Tower, housing the Big Ben bell, during the anti-Brexit ''People''s March for Europe'', in Parliament Square in central London, Britain September 9, 2017. REUTERS/Tolga Akmen <20>Brexit is not good news for aviation,<2C> Alexandre de Juniac, head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), told reporters in Taipei. De Juniac said IATA flagged immediately that aviation was a key sector and that talks had to be done quickly, but expressed concern that negotiations had not begun. <20>We sell the tickets one year in advance, we put the programme in place six months in advance, so at the latest we should have a clear vision of what is going to happen in October 2018,<2C> he said. Flying rights are currently governed by EU-wide deals and because it is not part of the World Trade Organization, the aviation sector has no natural fallback arrangement to protect flights if there is no deal between Britain and the EU. De Juniac also said he had warned Britain it would not be an easy process, because some countries may want to restrict access of its carriers. <20>I told them if I were you, I wouldn<64>t be very comfortable because if I were the guy from France or Germany seeing that the UK based companies had problems,<2C> he said. <20>Frankly it is good for Air France KLM ( AIRF.PA ) and Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) seeing if easyJet ( EZJ.L ) has problems with access.<2E> EasyJet has applied for an operating licence in Austria in order to protect its ability to fly between EU destinations once Britain leaves the bloc, while Hungary-based Wizz Air ( WIZZ.L ) has conversely applied for a UK licence. However, de Juniac added he felt the British authorities were now more pragmatic and open to a sensible deal. Reporting by Jamie Freed; Writing by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-airlines/airlines-need-clear-view-of-brexit-by-oct-2018-at-latest-iata-idUKKBN1CU1Z0'|'2017-10-25T16:46:00.000+03:00'
'30418f850f3fbd9d32b59620e5dd1de0b14a4342'|'HIV pills and new lung drugs keep GSK on track in third-quarter'|'October 25, 2017 / 11:11 AM / Updated 36 minutes ago GSK may bid for Pfizer consumer unit, stoking dividend fears Ben Hirschler 5 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline ( GSK.L ) will look at acquisition options to bulk up its consumer health business as rivals like Pfizer ( PFE.N ) and Merck KGaA ( MRCG.DE ) quit the field, its chief executive said on Wednesday. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) CEO, Emma Walmsley, arrives for a meeting in Downing Street in central London, Britain October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville Emma Walmsley said her top priority was still to bolster GSK<53>s prescription drugs division, but the prospect of a consumer deal worth some $15 billion (<28>11.3 billion) sparked investor fears of a dividend cut, sending the shares down more than 5 percent. GSK sees itself as a <20>consolidator<6F> in a fragmented consumer health sector, where scale and geographic reach are crucial and more businesses are likely to merge, Walmsley told reporters. <20>We would look at these assets and really look at them carefully in terms of their complementarity ... but it is a question of looking at them and making sure we stay focused on returns,<2C> she said. <20>Our first priority is focused on improving our largest business, the core pharma business, and R&D within that.<2E> Pfizer<65>s decision to consider selling its consumer health business poses a dilemma for GSK, since top-selling brands like painkiller Advil and Centrum multivitamins would fit well with the British group<75>s operations. But the Pfizer business is expected to carry a price tag of around $15 billion, or possibly more, and buying it would deplete GSK<53>s financial firepower at a time when Walmsley is seeking to bolster the pivotal pharmaceutical division. She has made boosting the drug line-up and focusing on fewer, bigger new medicines her signature goal since becoming CEO in April. GSK has lagged rivals in producing multibillion-dollar blockbusters in recent years and the new approach may well involve acquisitions. GSK also needs cash available to buy the minority stake in its consumer health joint venture with Novartis ( NOVN.S ), if its Swiss partner opts to sell up next year. Analysts estimate that could cost around $10 billion. German Merck<63>s consumer health business is smaller and would not move the dial so much, but it is also of potential interest, Walmsley said. Such large deals could strain GSK<53>s ability to pay a dividend that is an important lure for many shareholders. <20>Investors remain focused on the safety of the dividend,<2C> said Leerink analyst Seamus Fernandez. Other possible bidders for the Pfizer and Merck businesses could include Reckitt Benckiser ( RB.L ), Procter & Gamble ( PG.N ) and Nestle ( NESN.S ). COST CUTTING Walmsley<65>s remarks came as GSK announced a 4 percent increase in third-quarter sales, with cost cuts keeping it on track to deliver on full-year financial targets. Adjusted earnings per share rose 3 percent to 32.5 pence on sales of 7.84 billion pounds. Analysts, on average, had forecast 31.8p and 7.88 billion pounds, according to Thomson Reuters data. <20>These are very much a <20>business as usual<61> set of numbers,<2C> said Steve Clayton, manager of the HL Select UK Income Shares fund, who holds GSK stock. At constant exchange rates, GSK<53>s preferred measure, the group reiterated that 2017 earnings were expected to grow by between 3 and 5 percent. The failure of generic companies to win U.S. approval so far for copies of ageing lung inhaler Advair helped in the quarter, although Walmsley said U.S. generics were <20>probable<6C> in 2018. GSK has benefited since June 2016 from a weaker pound, which has inflated overseas income. However, the currency boost dissipated in the third quarter with the passing of the first anniversary of the Brexit referendum. The company now expects to see a 7 percent benefit to earnings from currency factors in the full year, down from 8 percent previously. GSK<53>s near-term focus is the launch of a trio of new products. The first 
'93204786ed8c6f20abca50cebce42a064d9b5f1e'|'UPDATE 1-U.S. health insurer Anthem''s quarterly profit beats estimates'|'October 25, 2017 / 10:33 AM / a minute ago UPDATE 1-U.S. health insurer Anthem''s quarterly profit beats estimates Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Adds details) Oct 25 (Reuters) - Anthem Inc reported better-than-expected quarterly profit as the No. 2 U.S. health insurer added more members in its commercial and specialty business and increased its premium rates. The company, which has significantly reduced its presence in the Obamacare markets, raised its 2017 adjusted earnings forecast to $11.90 to $12.00 per share, up from its previous expectation of earnings of greater than $11.70. Anthem said net income rose to $746.9 million, or $2.80 per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, from $617.8 million, or $2.30 per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company earned $2.65 per share. Total revenue rose nearly 5 percent to $22.43 billion. Analysts on average had expected earnings of $2.42 per share and revenue of $22.05 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Anthem<65>s benefit expense ratio, a metric that measures an insurer<65>s expenditure on claims against the premiums it earns, came in at 87 percent, up from 85.5 percent in the year-ago period. The lower the ratio, the better it is for insurers. This increase was largely driven by the impact of the one year waiver of the health insurance tax in 2017, the company said. (Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Supriya Kurane)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/anthem-results/update-1-u-s-health-insurer-anthems-quarterly-profit-beats-estimates-idUSL4N1N03Z0'|'2017-10-25T13:31:00.000+03:00'
'ed254d26142046123f8999fa23b56531f5bf956b'|'Deutsche Boerse CEO to step down amid insider trading probe'|'October 26, 2017 / 1:42 PM / in 12 minutes Deutsche Boerse CEO to step down amid insider trading probe Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Boerse<73>s ( DB1Gn.DE ) embattled chief executive Carsten Kengeter is stepping down amid continuing allegations of insider trading, the German exchange operator announced on Thursday. Carsten Kengeter, CEO of Deutsche Boerse attends the initial public offering of Scale at the Frankfurt stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany March 1, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski The decision came at an extraordinary meeting of the supervisory board. No successor was named, and Kengeter will stay on until there<72>s a transition plan. Deutsche Boerse said that the resignation was <20>in order to allow the company to focus its energy back onto clients, business and growth and to avoid further burdens caused by the ongoing investigation<6F>. Kengeter and Deutsche Boerse have been dogged by an insider trading investigation since early this year. The probe stems from shares Kengeter bought in December 2015, just months before formal merger talks with London Stock Exchange ( LSE.L ) were announced. The shares soared and investigators have been looking into whether Kengeter was already in merger talks before he bought his shares. The merger eventually failed. Kengeter and Deutsche Boerse have denied wrongdoing. Kengeter<65>s position became more tenuous earlier this week when a Frankfurt court ruled against a settlement that would have helped him and Deutsche Boerse put the case behind them. The resignation means two top exchanges will be seeking new chiefs. Last week, Xavier Rolet, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange Group, said he would step down at the end of next year. Deutsche Boerse and LSE, which had sought to merge, are now competing for market share in the run-up to Britain<69>s exit from the European Union. Reporting by Tom Sims; Editing by Victoria Bryan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-deutsche-boerse-insidertrading/deutsche-boerse-ceo-to-step-down-amid-insider-trading-probe-idUKKBN1CV25Z'|'2017-10-26T16:41:00.000+03:00'
'20a437d5f523ce0d0072e51d9bbdf1e35933678b'|'Exclusive - Atlantia intends to sweeten Abertis offer in due course: sources'|'October 26, 2017 / 1:35 PM / Updated 6 minutes ago Exclusive - Atlantia intends to sweeten Abertis offer in due course: sources Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MILAN/MADRID (Reuters) - Italy<6C>s Atlantia ( ATL.MI ) plans to improve its offer for Spain<69>s Abertis ( ABE.MC ) to trump a 17.1 billion euros (<28>15.22 billion) rival bid from ACS<43> German subsidiary Hochtief ( HOTG.DE ), two sources close to the matter said on Thursday. Toll road operator Abertis<69>headquarters is seen in Barcelona, Spain, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard Infrastructure group Atlantia is studying a rejigged cash-and-share bid but wants to wait for Spain<69>s market watchdog to first approve Hochtief<65>s offer before making a move, the sources said. ACS-Hochtief unveiled their proposal last week but they are still looking for investors who want to team up to acquire Abertis, one of the sources said. They are also considering selling some Abertis assets, including a minority stake in French motorway group Sanef, should their bid on the Spanish toll-road operator be successful, three sources said. Atlantia, Hochtief and Sanef all declined to comment on the issues. Reporting by Francesca Landini and Paola Arosio in Milan, Andres Gonzalez in Madrid, Matthias Inverardi in Duesseldorf, Dominque Vidalon in Paris, editing by Valentina Za'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-abertis-m-a-atlantia-exclusive/exclusive-atlantia-intends-to-sweeten-abertis-offer-in-due-course-sources-idUKKBN1CV257'|'2017-10-26T16:34:00.000+03:00'
'59254384d3d07f656e38bb7dbd70a850d15c2d5d'|'Essentra expects second-half margin decline at its biggest business'|'October 23, 2017 / 6:48 AM / in 16 minutes Essentra expects second-half margin decline at its biggest business Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Essentra ( ESNT.L ) expects operating margins at its health and personal care packaging business to decline slightly in the second half of the year after two of its Puerto Rico sites were hit by hurricane Maria last month. The speciality plastics and packaging company said on Monday that partial operations had resumed at the unit<69>s affected sites on Oct. 2. Reporting By Justin George Varghese and Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru; Editing by David Goodman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-essentra-outlook/essentra-expects-second-half-margin-decline-at-its-biggest-business-idUKKBN1CS0LY'|'2017-10-23T09:48:00.000+03:00'
'9e616757d37c2e854b2c50ae828c5162509b2f0a'|'Toyota seeks clarity over Brexit ''fog'' amid fears over Derbyshire plant - Business - The Guardian'|'Toyota has warned the government to <20>lift the fog<6F> surrounding Brexit negotiations and secure a deal that would safeguard the competitiveness of its Derbyshire factory.The Japanese carmaker said uncertainty over the UK<55>s post-Brexit trading relationship with the EU was hindering its ability to plan for the future of its business in the UK, where it employs about 3,000 people.<2E>The UK government should <20> understand that we cannot stay in this kind of fog when we don<6F>t know what will be the output of the negotiation,<2C> said Didier Leroy, executive vice-president at Toyota .<2E>As quick as we can get clarity on that, better will be the way we can prepare [for] the future.<2E>Speaking at the Tokyo motor show, Leroy said any new import levy imposed on the cars made at its factory in Burnaston, Derbyshire, would have a profound impact on its business.<2E>Today they [Burnaston] export 80-85% of their production to continental Europe, so if we move to something like an import tax, trade tax or any kind of additional penalty, it will create a big negative impact in terms of competitiveness for this plant,<2C> he said.Leroy<6F>s comments, reported by the Financial Times , reflect the rising anxiety among Britain<69>s business leaders over the lack of clarity on Brexit , more than seven months after Theresa May triggered article 50.Multinational companies including banks have signalled a willingness to relocate jobs from the UK to other European towns and cities where they can be certain of continued access to the single market.As well as the Burnaston plant, where about 180,000 vehicles roll off the production line every year, Toyota makes engines at a factory in Deeside, north Wales.This year, Toyota announced plans to invest <20>240m to upgrade equipment and systems Burnaston , where it makes the Auris hatchback and Avensis family car. It warned at the time that tariff-free access from the UK to the continent was vital to the future success of the plant.In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, the rival Japanese carmaker Nissan also pledged to invest more in its UK plant in Sunderland by building new versions of its Qashqai and X-Trail, but only after its chief executive received private assurances from the government about the UK<55>s withdrawal from the EU.Topics Toyota Automotive industry Brexit Manufacturing sector news'|'theguardian.com'|'http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/business/uk-edition/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/25/toyota-seeks-clarity-over-brexit-fog'|'2017-10-25T03:00:00.000+03:00'
'35168b5acd21a3b99ea199eaf8948363897afa6b'|'Oi creditors meeting put off again by bankruptcy judge'|'October 23, 2017 / 10:56 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago Oi creditors meeting put off again by bankruptcy judge Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SAO PAULO, Oct 23 (Reuters) - The judge overseeing phone carrier Oi SA<53>s bankruptcy protection case has agreed again to postpone the creditors assembly that was originally scheduled for Monday until Friday Nov. 10, the company said in a securities filing. The judge had already postponed the meeting until Nov. 6. The debt-laden company sustained a new setback on Monday when Brazilian telecoms regulator Anatel rejected its request to swap billions of reais in regulatory fines for new investments. Reporting by Leonardo Goy; Writing by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Peter Cooney'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/oi-sa-restructuring/oi-creditors-meeting-put-off-again-by-bankruptcy-judge-idUSL2N1MY1US'|'2017-10-24T01:54:00.000+03:00'
'ecebf82654eca901e1fd9f27375e7f8d4efc8ff8'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX opens higher in broad-based gains, HBC jumps'|'October 24, 2017 / 1:42 PM / Updated 8 minutes ago CANADA STOCKS-TSX opens higher in broad-based gains, HBC jumps Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TORONTO, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index rose shortly after the open with across-the-board gains led by financial stocks, while Hudson<6F>s Bay Co shares jumped after the company announced the sale of its Lord & Taylor flagship building and an investment deal. The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index rose 45.78 points, or 0.29 percent, to 15,901.54. All 10 of the index<65>s key sectors advanced. (Reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks-open/canada-stocks-tsx-opens-higher-in-broad-based-gains-hbc-jumps-idUSL2N1MZ0ON'|'2017-10-24T16:39:00.000+03:00'
'988f95cc406dbd433cee1aa9c74004a348289e30'|'Saudi determined to end oil glut, sees smooth exit for OPEC pact'|'October 24, 2017 / 11:10 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago Saudi determined to end oil glut, sees smooth exit for OPEC pact Rania El Gamal 3 Min Read RIYADH (Reuters) - The world<6C>s top oil exporter Saudi Arabia is determined to reduce inventories further through an OPEC-led deal to cut crude output and raised the prospect of prolonged restraint once the pact ends to prevent a build up in excess supplies. Saudi Oil Minister, Khalid al-Falih, arrives at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih, speaking during an investment conference in Riyadh, said on Tuesday the focus remained on reducing the level of oil stocks in OECD industrialised countries to their five-year average. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus Russia and nine other producers, have cut oil output by about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) since January. The pact runs to March 2018, but they are considering extending it. <20>We are very flexible, we are keeping our options open. We are determined to do whatever it takes to bring global inventories down to the normal level which we say is the five-year average,<2C> Falih told Reuters. The market has been concerned that, once the supply cut deal comes to an end, producers will ramp up supplies again, causing prices to fall. But Falih raised the prospect of continued output restraint to prevent this. <20>When we get closer to that (five-year average) we will decide how we smoothly exit the current arrangement, maybe go to a different arrangement to keep supply and demand closely balanced so we don<6F>t have a return to higher inventories.<2E> The oil price LCOc1 has recovered from below $30 a barrel at the start of 2016 to trade above $57 on Tuesday, and rose after Falih<69>s comments. Oil remains, however, at half its price in mid-2014. Reuters reported last week, citing OPEC sources, that producers were leaning towards extending the deal for nine months, although any decision could be postponed until early next year depending on the market. Falih did not comment on an extension but said the cuts had reduced the supply overhang in storage by half. <20>We have reduced the inventories by over 180 million barrels and we still have about 160 million barrels according to numbers I have seen last,<2C> he told Reuters. <20>The intent is to keep our hands on the wheel between now and until we get to a balanced market and beyond, we are not going to do anything that is going to disrupt the path we are on,<2C> he added. Falih said oil investment had returned after the OPEC-led pact began at the start of the year and helped by a global economic recovery. The minister said there was consensus to continue the cuts until targets were reached to balance the market but said shocks to the market by reducing more than needed should be avoided. Reporting by Rania El Gamal; writing by Alex Lawler; editing by Jason Neely and Edmund Blair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-oil-opec-saudi/saudi-determined-to-end-oil-glut-sees-smooth-exit-for-opec-pact-idUKKBN1CT1G8'|'2017-10-24T14:09:00.000+03:00'
'b201bc9587060893ae0faf4967a91583224fe4ad'|'Exclusive: Siemens mandates banks for IPO of Healthineers medtech unit'|'FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany<6E>s Siemens AG ( SIEGn.DE ) has mandated Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan as global coordinators for an initial public offering of shares in its Healthineers unit, sources familiar with the matter said on Monday.Siemens confirmed it had awarded mandates to banks to float the medical equipment unit, but declined to name them. Analysts say the share offering, expected to take place in the first half of 2018, could be one of the largest by a German firm in years.Reporting by Arno Schuetze and Alexander Huebner; Writing by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Christoph Steitz '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-siemens-healthineers-exclusive/exclusive-siemens-mandates-banks-for-ipo-of-healthineers-medtech-unit-idINKBN1CT1PG'|'2017-10-24T10:20:00.000+03:00'
'fe94b6c436cc1f32bd9d357d6d5301c57a03f8a3'|'Exclusive: Pfizer to launch consumer health sale in November - sources'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Pfizer ( PFE.N ) plans to kick off an auction process for its consumer healthcare business in November, paving the way for a potential $15 billion-plus sale of the headache pill to lip balm business, sources close to the matter told Reuters.FILE PHOTO: The Pfizer logo is seen at their world headquarters in New York, U.S. April 28, 2014. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo Several global companies, including GlaxoSmithKline ( GSK.L ) and Reckitt Benckiser ( RB.L ), have expressed interest in bidding for the unit, which had sales of about $3.4 billion in 2016.The prospective sale, which is being led by Centerview Partners, Guggenheim Securities and Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ), was first mooted on Oct. 10, when Pfizer said it was considering strategic options for the unit.But preliminary discussions with interested parties including Reckitt have already taken place, one of the sources said, adding the U.S. drugmaker wants to get the ball rolling before the end of this year.GSK Chief Executive Emma Walmsley confirmed on Wednesday she would look <20>carefully<6C> at the business.Three people familiar with the situation said the British drugmaker had hired Citi ( C.N ) to represent it in the auction. GSK declined to comment while Citi was not immediately available.Other possible bidders could include Procter & Gamble ( PG.N ), Sanofi ( SASY.PA ), Johnson & Johnson ( JNJ.N ) and Nestle ( NESN.S ), several sources said.Pfizer plans to send out financial information about the consumer unit to prospective buyers in around three weeks time, one of the sources said.The process is expected to heat up early next year as bids come in and a deal could be sealed around the middle of 2018, the source said.Germany<6E>s Merck KGaA ( MRCG.DE ) is also looking to divest its consumer health business and has hired JP Morgan ( JPM.N ) to sell the unit, best known for making Seven Seas vitamins.Some banking and industry sources said Merck could put the divestment on hold since the sale, estimated to be worth around $4.5 billion, risked being eclipsed by the Pfizer auction.One source said Pfizer believed keen competition would allow it to raise at least $20 billion from the sale of the business, whose well-known brands include painkiller Advil, Centrum multivitamins and lip balm Chapstick.As aging populations and health-conscious consumers drive demand for self-medication, the consumer health sector has proved a fertile ground for deal-making in recent years.But the industry remains fragmented and GSK<53>s Walmsley said she expected more merger activity, with GSK in a strong position to act as a <20>consolidator<6F>.Although consumer remedies sold over the counter have lower margins than prescription drugs, they are typically very long-lasting brands with loyal customers.Pfizer Chief Executive Ian Read said he was considering the sale of consumer healthcare because it was not integral to the core prescription drug business and might be worth more outside the group.GSK has taken a different view, opting to retain a diverse portfolio in which consumer health offers a hedge against riskier prescription drugs.For Reckitt, meanwhile, over-the-counter medicines offer higher-margin growth than its household business. Chief Executive Rakesh Kapoor, who last week announced plans to separate Reckitt into health and home and hygiene divisions, said he would weigh a bid if Pfizer<65>s strategic review resulted in a sale.Nestle could also enter the fight and use the Pfizer consumer business as a platform to expand the intersection of food and healthcare, sources said. The Swiss group has previously identified consumer healthcare as a sector of interest.Reporting By Pamela Barbaglia; Editing by Susan Fenton '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-pfizer-divestiture-exclusive/exclusive-pfizer-to-launch-consumer-health-sale-in-november-sources-idINKBN1CU2RW'|'2017-10-25T16:36:00.000+03:00'
'57229ec217421c65bee61806fc6a38dfb230c0d0'|'Boeing ups forecasts, takes further air tanker charge'|'October 25, 2017 / 12:11 PM / in 2 hours Boeing ups forecasts, takes further air tanker charge Ankit Ajmera , Rachit Vats 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Boeing Co ( BA.N ) racked up a further $329 million charge for its troubled KC-46 aerial refuelling tanker programme in quarterly results on Wednesday, paring gains in profit margins compared with a year ago and prodding its shares lower. The world<6C>s biggest maker of jetliners raised its full-year earnings and cash flow forecasts as it beat third-quarter earnings estimates and reported higher margins in its main commercial airlines segment and overall business. But the new charge on the air tanker, which some analysts had speculated could return to haunt Boeing despite assurances to the contrary in April, meant the programme has now lopped a total of about $1.9 billion off the company<6E>s net income after tax. The company<6E>s shares, which have soared almost 70 percent this year, fell as much as 4.5 percent to $254.50 in afternoon trade in New York. Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg played down concerns related to the tanker programme, saying the charges were not <20>unusual<61>. <20>The challenges we<77>re having right now are related to just implementing final detail changes on the aircraft to get them to a final certification standard,<2C> Muilenburg said. Boeing is moving into the production phase on the KC-46 and expects to deliver the first 18 tankers in 2018. The logo of Dow Jones Industrial Average stock market index listed company Boeing (BA) is seen in Los Angeles, California, United States, April 22, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/Files The company<6E>s commercial aircraft business could face a new challenge as Montreal-based Bombardier Inc<6E>s ( BBDb.TO ) potential deal with France<63>s Airbus SE ( AIR.PA ) may give the two companies an edge over Boeing in the market for narrow-body aircraft. <20>We<57>ll put our product lines up against any competitor. We want to compete on a fair and level playing field,<2C> Muilenburg said, adding that the company would stick with its strategy of investing in its own product lines. Boeing, which is ahead of Airbus on new orders amid strong demand for air travel, said it would consider increasing production for its most popular narrowbody 737 jets from 47 per month currently and beyond the 57 jets planned for 2019. Core operating margin rose to 9.8 percent in the third quarter, from 9.2 percent a year earlier, and the company raised its forecast for operating cash flow for the full year to $12.5 billion from a previous $12.25 billion. Boeing said it now expects 2017 core earnings per share of $9.90-$10.10, compared with its previous forecast of $9.80-$10.00, due to a lower-than-expected tax rate. A year ago Boeing included a tax gain of 98 cents per share in the third quarter, driving a dip in core earnings for the same period this year to $2.72 per share from $3.51 per share. <20>We think Boeing is operating well, but see its valuation restricting upside to the shares beyond the overall market over the next year,<2C> CFRA Research analyst Jim Corridore wrote in a note. Reporting by Ankit Ajmera and Rachit vats in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Patrick Graham '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/boeing-results/boeing-ups-forecasts-takes-further-air-tanker-charge-idINKBN1CU1OX'|'2017-10-25T15:11:00.000+03:00'
'a0df7b2568fe9e69f3cfa581dd65f08d1361da14'|'UPDATE 1-UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Oct 26'|'(Adds company news items and futures)Oct 26 (Reuters) - Britain<69>s FTSE 100 index is seen opening up 16 points at 7,463.5 on Thursday, according to financial bookmakers, with futures up 0.2 percent ahead of the cash market open.* BARCLAYS: Barclays reported a worse-than-expected profit before tax for the third quarter of 1.1 billion pounds ($1.46 billion) as a weak trading performance in its investment bank dragged down group results.* DEBENHAMS: British department store chain Debenhams reported a 17 percent fall in profit on Thursday in what it said was a volatile trading environment on the high street.* INCHCAPE: Car dealership chain Inchcape said its third-quarter revenue rose 14.6 percent to 2.3 billion pounds ($3.1 billion), driven by strong growth in Singapore and helped by an acquisition in South America.* GLAXOSMITHKLINE: The committee responsible for U.S. vaccination schedules has given a preferential recommendation to GlaxoSmithKline<6E>s newly approved shingles vaccine Shingrix over Merck & Co<43>s established product Zostavax.* GSK/RB: Pfizer to kick off auction process for its consumer healthcare business in November, paving the way for a potential $15 billion-plus sale of the unit, sources close to the matter told Reuters. Companies, including GlaxoSmithKline and Reckitt Benckiser, have expressed interest in bidding for the unit.* BARCLAYS: Uber Technologies Inc and a unit of Barclays plc are teaming up to offer a rewards-enriched credit card in the United States through the ride-service company<6E>s mobile phone app.* BP: BP Midstream Partners<72> said on Wednesday its initial public offering was priced at $18 per unit, below the expected range of $19 to $21, raising about $765 million.[BP Midstream Partners<72> said on Wednesday its initial public offering was priced at $18 per unit, below the expected range of $19 to $21, raising about $765 million.* ACACIA MINING: Barrick Gold Corp said on Wednesday it would work with the government of Tanzania to find a way for a gold export ban to be lifted on its Acacia Mining unit and was aiming for a final agreement in the first half of 2018.* GOLD: Gold prices inched up on Thursday, after hitting a two-and-a-half-week low in the previous session, as the dollar eased ahead of a key European Central Bank meeting later in the day.* OIL: U.S. oil prices extended declines on Thursday after government data showed a surprise climb in U.S. crude inventories.* EX-DIVS: Barratt Developments, Ferguson and ITV will trade without entitlement to their latest dividend pay-out on Thursday, trimming 2.42 points off the FTSE 100 according to Reuters calculations.* The UK blue chip FTSE 100 index closed at 7,447.21 points, down 1.05 percent, was knocked out to a three-weeks low on Wednesday when better than expected economic growth triggered a surge in the pound and as shares in heavy-weight GlaxoSmithKline suffered their worst fall in nearly a decade.* For more on the factors affecting European stocks, please click on: cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarketsTODAY<41>S UK PAPERS> Financial Times> Other business headlines Multimedia versions of Reuters Top News are now available for: * 3000 Xtra : visit topnews.session.rservices.com * For Top News : topnews.reuters.com (Reporting by Siju Varghese) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-stocks-factors/update-1-uk-stocks-factors-to-watch-on-oct-26-idINL4N1N12L5'|'2017-10-26T04:32:00.000+03:00'
'da549018ac00c64cf81b98363efa5ed340ca878c'|'Puerto Rico bankruptcy judge forbids disaster funds for credit repayment'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain granted a motion on Wednesday that forbids Puerto Rico from using disaster relief money to repay creditors who are owed roughly $72 billion in debt repayments.The motion, filed by the government of Puerto Rico earlier this month, sought to ensure the money distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the wake of Hurricane Maria would be reserved for cleanup.Swain granted the motion from the bench during a hearing in New York on Wednesday, according to court documents.FEMA funds will be used <20>solely for their intended and required purposes, will be deposited into segregated and non-commingled accounts, and will not be subject to any existing creditor or third-party claims,<2C> the motion said.The storm hit on Sept. 20, causing billions in damage, and cut power to the entire island, leaving its 3.4 million U.S. citizens in the dark. As of Monday, just 18 percent of the island had electrical power, according to U.S. Department of Energy data. Prior to the storm, the island had been suffering through a decade-long recession, a 45 percent poverty rate and rapidly increasing emigration to the U.S. mainland.Reporting by Daniel Bases and Nick Brown; Editing by Richard Chang '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-puertorico-debt-fema/puerto-rico-bankruptcy-judge-forbids-disaster-funds-for-credit-repayment-idUSKBN1CU392'|'2017-10-26T07:05:00.000+03:00'
'75a348fef23a038d2c6e3127d17608d0bb63032b'|'Invest in us Macron urges finance titans at Elysee dinner'|'* Some 21 investment fund leaders invited at Elysee dinner* Macron presents past and future reforms* Funds say underweight French asset status no longer justifiedBy Michel RosePARIS, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Some of the world<6C>s largest investment funds told President Emmanuel Macron they were impressed with his drive to reform France and could inject billions of dollars into the economy as a result, officials said on Thursday.Macron, a former investment banker, invited close to two dozen international financiers to dinner at the Elysee palace on Wednesday and reminded them that he had delivered on a promise of pro-business reforms.<2E>The feedback we had was that investors were rather blown away by the president<6E>s vision,<2C> an adviser to Macron said, asking not to be Quote: d by name.<2E>These are international investors who manage hundreds of billions, who travel around the world and are used to be cajoled. But we pulled off a beautiful event and they liked it.<2E><>We need you<6F> was in essence Macron<6F>s message to the 21 executives from sovereign wealth, asset management and pension funds, the adviser said. The president<6E>s presentation was followed by a lively Q&A session, he added.A spokeswoman for BlackRock, the world<6C>s largest asset manager, whose chairman and CEO Larry Fink was at the table of the Elysee<65>s glass-roofed Winter Garden room, confirmed the positive feeling among investors.<2E>Yesterday<61>s session was beneficial to the investors present and reinforced the view that the opportunities in France are the strongest they have been in two decades,<2C> she said.The presidential adviser said several managers were now convinced the underweight status of French assets in their portfolios, inherited from years of fiscal instability, missed targets and sluggish growth, was no longer justified.<2E>Investors told us that France was rather underweight historically in their asset portfolios and that, with a UK which is now a risk area with Brexit, they<65>ll reinvest in France,<2C> the adviser said.The positive view also contrasted with the cautious welcome Macron had received after his election, as investors were initially doubtful he could defy street protests and pass his reforms in full through a largely untested parliament majority, the adviser said.A presentation on Station F, the world<6C>s largest startup incubator which opened its doors in Paris earlier this year, was particularly appreciated by those present, he said.The new investments were likely to benefit small- to mid-sized companies where international investors were less present than in the blue-chip CAC 40 or well-known startups.<2E>They left with the impression that the French economy is moving, we know that, but also that there are opportunities beyond the big groups and unicorns such as BlaBlaCar,<2C> he said.Additional reporting by Maya Nikolaeva; editing by Luke Baker and Richard Balmforth '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/france-reform-investors/invest-in-us-macron-urges-finance-titans-at-elysee-dinner-idINL8N1N18GT'|'2017-10-26T13:33:00.000+03:00'
'2d9e5cc5428579459a9996069d787a107f768d93'|'U.S. October new vehicle sales seen down 4 pct on year: J.D. Power and LMC'|'October 26, 2017 / 1:06 PM / Updated 8 hours ago U.S. October new vehicle sales seen down 4 pct on year: J.D. Power and LMC Nick Carey 3 Min Read DETROIT (Reuters) - U.S. auto sales in October likely fell close to 4 percent from the same month in 2016, though automakers<72> sales were buoyed by replacement of storm-damaged vehicles and record-high consumer discounts, industry consultants J.D. Power and LMC Automotive said on Thursday. FILE PHOTO -- Automobiles are shown for sale at a car dealership in Carlsbad, California, U.S. May 2, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo LMC maintained its full-year forecast for new vehicle sales in 2017 of 17.1 million units. October U.S. new vehicle sales will be about 1.32 million units, a drop of almost 3.7 percent from 1.37 million units a year earlier, the consultancies said. The forecast was based on the first 17 selling days of October. Automakers will release U.S. sales results for the month on Nov. 1. Major automakers<72> U.S. new vehicle sales climbed to a monthly high for the year in September as consumers replaced flood-damaged cars after Hurricane Harvey hit southeast Texas in late August.[nL2N1ME0SD] The seasonally adjusted annualized rate for October will be 17.6 million vehicles, down more than 1 percent from 17.8 million units in the same month in 2016, the consultancies said. Retail sales to consumers, which do not include multiple fleet sales to rental agencies, businesses and government, were also set to decline more than 4 percent in October. U.S. sales of new cars and trucks hit a record high of 17.55 million units in 2016. But a saturated market, thanks partly to a glut of nearly new used vehicles, has forced automakers to hike discounts to entice consumers to buy. Consumer discounts hit a monthly record of $3,901, above the previous record of $3,835 set in October 2016. <20>While incentives have declined from the record high set last month, the need to reduce inventory could push spending to a new all-time high level in the final months of the year,<2C> said Thomas King, J.D. Power<65>s senior vice president for data and analytics. Discounts as a percentage of the manufacturer<65>s recommended sale price hit 10.5 percent in October, as they have for 15 of the last 16 months. Consumer discounts of more than 10 percent are considered unhealthy for automakers in the long term as they undermine resale values. Despite the lofty consumer discounts, the average new vehicle sold in October spent 75 days in inventory. This was the longest since July 2009, during the height of the Great Recession. Editing by Bernadette Baum '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autos/u-s-october-new-vehicle-sales-seen-down-4-pct-on-year-j-d-power-and-lmc-idUSKBN1CV20A'|'2017-10-26T16:04:00.000+03:00'
'5e8ef01cfe86d287a4378fe27bab0195abce61f0'|'Unilever to settle Dutch preference shares buyout'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Consumer goods maker Unilever ( ULVR.L )( UNc.AS ) announced on Thursday that its offer to buy back the bulk of its Dutch preference shares for about 450 million euros had been declared unconditional, marking a step toward its goal of simplifying its capital structure.FILE PHOTO: The company logo for Unilever is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., February 17, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo The maker of Dove soap and Ben & Jerry<72>s ice cream said that as of Wednesday, about 99 percent of the issued and outstanding preference shares had been tendered, and that remaining shares could be tendered until November 2 when the buyout will be settled.The company announced in August that it had agreed to buy back the bulk of those shares, fresh from defending itself against an unsolicited $143 billion takeover offer from Kraft Heinz ( KHC.O ).Reporting by Martinne Geller; editing by Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-unilever-buyback/unilever-to-settle-dutch-preference-shares-buyout-idINKBN1CV0PP'|'2017-10-26T05:17:00.000+03:00'
'e9aeb56761c635c264a8b83016a904c86b57f3c5'|'UPDATE 1-Lockheed Martin sales, profit miss Wall St estimates'|'Reuters TV United States October 24, 2017 / 1:48 PM / in 33 minutes Lockheed Martin sales, profit miss Wall St. estimates Mike Stone 4 Min Read (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp<72>s ( LMT.N ) quarterly profit and sales missed Wall Street estimates on Tuesday and the Pentagon<6F>s No. 1 weapons provided a tepid profit forecast for 2018, sending shares down more than two percent. FILE PHOTO: Lockheed Martin''s logo is seen during Japan Aerospace 2016 air show in Tokyo, Japan, October 12, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon Despite the first profit miss after five quarters in a row of beating estimates, Lockheed raised its full-year sales forecast, set a higher dividend and forecast sales would grow another 2 percent next year. Analysts noted that Lockheed<65>s 2-percent growth forecast for 2018 was conservative given the market<65>s expectations of higher defense spending under U.S. President Donald Trump. During a conference call with Wall Street analysts, Bruce Tanner, Lockheed<65>s CFO, was upbeat about the company<6E>s growth prospects and record $104-billion orders backlog, but he was cautious about the speed of the company<6E>s growth projections. <20>It just doesn<73>t happen overnight and especially if you will allow me to call 2018 overnight,<2C> he said. During the quarter, operating profit from Lockheed<65>s Space Systems business unit halved to $218 million, partly due to a non-recurring pre-tax gain that had occurred in the third quarter of 2016 as well as slightly lower sales volume in two government satellite programs. Tanner said <20>we expect this timing-related shortfall will be more than made up for during the fourth quarter.<2E> The aeronautics division, which makes the F-35 fighter jet, was the only Lockheed business unit to increase profitability from last year. Lockheed<65>s net earnings from operations fell 13.8 percent to $939 million, or $3.24 per share, from $1.1 billion, or $3.61 per share. Increased sales of $12.2 billion from $11.6 billion a year ago, were below Wall Street<65>s expectations. Analysts had expected $3.26 per share on revenue of $12.81 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Still, the Bethesda, Maryland-based company increased its full-year 2017 sales forecast to $51.2 billion, from $50 billion, citing its continued focus on operational performance and $200 million worth of property sales. During the quarter, Lockheed had notable wins on several large programs. The U.S. Air Force awarded one of two $900-million contracts to continue development work on a replacement for the air-launched nuclear cruise missile. And the U.S. State Department approved the possible sale of a THAAD anti-missile defense system to Saudi Arabia at an estimated cost of $15 billion. Lockheed said that it was in the process of hiring 1,000 engineers for programs won in 2017. Still, the company<6E>s raised sales outlook for 2018 came with caveats as it included a drop in projected cash flow compared with 2017. The company said materials costs for the F-35 multi-year <20>block buy<75> would go up in 2018 and capital investments would be made in facilities for the Space Systems division. The company sees 2017 ending with diluted higher earnings per share between $12.85 and $13.15, up from its previous estimate of $12.30 to $12.60 per share. In addition, Lockheed said it would raise its quarterly dividend rate by 10 percent to $2.00 per share. Lockheed shares were down 2.7 percent at $312.15 in afternoon trading. Despite Tuesday<61>s drop, Lockheed shares trade near record highs and have more than tripled in the last five years. Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington, DC; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Chris Sanders'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lockheed-results/lockheed-martin-sales-profit-miss-wall-street-estimates-idUSKBN1CT1Y5'|'2017-10-24T16:41:00.000+03:00'
'013c378d39336a34dedbd3836af472f0b349f95b'|'Mexichem, Aeromexico board members fined in Mexico for insider trading'|'October 24, 2017 / 6:38 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago Mexichem, Aeromexico board members fined in Mexico for insider trading Christine Murray 4 Min Read MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico<63>s financial regulator has fined board members at Mexican chemicals maker Mexichem and airline Aeromexico among others for insider trading, according to government data, in a rare move against powerful business interests. In August and September, 15 people were fined as individuals, not as representatives for any company, for insider trading in 2012 and 2013, a database on the website of Mexican banking and securities regulator CNBV showed. The fines, which totaled 22.3 million pesos ($1.18 million) are an unusual instance of high-level Mexican business people being cited by the regulator. CNBV has only given out three fines under insider trading laws since the beginning of 2015, the database showed, making this case with 15 fines unusual. Reuters was unable to obtain further details on why this case merited action. The individuals were fined under a clause in Mexico<63>s Securities Market Law that prohibits people from ordering or carrying out trades in company shares or debt using price-sensitive privileged information. CNBV spokeswoman Maria Lanzagorta said the fines were all for the same case involving trading in one company, but declined to provide details or say what the case entailed. She said the cases were administrative, not criminal. Reuters looked at the data after newspapers El Financiero and Reforma reported the fines. Among those fined were Ignacio del Valle Ruiz, a board member of industrial company Mexichem, and Rafael Tricio Haro, a board member of Mexican airline Aeromexico. It was not known if they traded in the companies on which they sit as directors, and both companies said they had not been involved in the administrative process. Neither Del Valle Ruiz nor Tricio Haro responded to requests for comment. Mexichem ( MEXCHEM.MX ) said through communications adviser Francisco Galindo that it had not received any information request from the CNBV and therefore had no comment. The company declined to address any questions regarding the fines. Aeromexico ( AEROMEX.MX ) said through communications adviser Giovanna Mej<65>a that it was not involved in the CNBV process and had no comment. It also declined to address any questions regarding the fines. According to Mexichem<65>s 2016 annual report, Del Valle Ruiz owns 5.81 percent of the shares. He paid a fine to the CNBV of around 4.3 million pesos ($224,000), the data showed. His brother Antonio, one of the country<72>s richest and most influential businessmen, is the company<6E>s honorary chairman and was not fined. Reuters found company filings that showed at least seven of the 15 people that were fined now work or have worked at Mexichem, which also makes plastic pipes. Those included former chief executive officer, Rafael Davalos Sandoval, who left in 2012. Davalos Sandoval did not respond to a request for comment. Maria del Pilar Carmen Dolores Haro Martin, who owned almost 10 percent of Aeromexico in 2016, according to a Department of Transportation filing, received the largest fine, 6 million pesos ($315,756). Aeromexico would not confirm whether Haro Martin was still a shareholder or whether it had passed questions to Haro Martin. Reuters could not reach her. Aeromexico<63>s $22 billion market capitalization would make a near 10 percent stake worth more than $2 billion. At current valuations, Ignacio del Valle Ruiz<69>s 5.8 percent stake is worth more than $5 billion. Del Valle is the only one of the 15 who has already paid his fine, the data shows. The fines are open to appeal, according to the CNBV data. ($1 = 19.0020 Mexican pesos)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-insidertrading/mexichem-aeromexico-board-members-fined-in-mexico-for-insider-trading-idUSKBN1CT2PK'|'2017-10-24T21:32:00.000+03:00'
'd50f5f476d3cbfbecd7d42c783a4b064ac1a9350'|'China Everbright, VC firm Walden launch $500 mln semiconductor fund'|'HONG KONG, Oct 26 (Reuters) - China Everbright Limited and venture capital firm Walden International are launching a $500 million fund to invest in the semiconductor and industrial information technology, amid Beijing<6E>s ambition to be a global leader in the sector.The Walden CEL Global Fund I will focus on semiconductor and electronic information firms globally, including those in microchip, artificial intelligence and hardware, at the growth and maturity stages, the companies said in a statement on Thursday.The companies plan to import the high-end technology of the fund<6E>s future portfolio companies into the Chinese market in a bid to boost the country<72>s semiconductor industry. (Reporting by Julie Zhu; Editing by Himani Sarkar) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/china-privateequity-fundraising/china-everbright-vc-firm-walden-launch-500-mln-semiconductor-fund-idINL8N1N13Z1'|'2017-10-26T07:52:00.000+03:00'
'9d94e01b2dc091556af615338f95eb7bb76aa6e3'|'''Golden Arches'': McDonald''s gets new China name following unit sale'|'October 26, 2017 / 5:31 AM / in 14 minutes ''Golden Arches'': McDonald''s gets new China name following unit sale Reuters Staff 2 Min Read SHANGHAI (Reuters) - U.S. fast food giant McDonald<6C>s Corp ( MCD.N ) is getting a name change in China - at least on paper. FILE PHOTO - A McDonald''s sign is displayed outside its outlet, the first one which opened in China in 1990, at the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen neighbouring Hong Kong, March 18, 2013. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo The firm will change its registered business name to <20>Golden Arches (China) Co Ltd<74>, a spokeswoman confirmed to Reuters on Thursday, adding though that its brand name in China - a transliteration of McDonald<6C>s - would be unchanged. The shift comes after the chain agreed earlier in the year to sell most of its China and Hong Kong business to CITIC Ltd ( 0267.HK ) and Carlyle Group ( CG.O ). The business plans to nearly double the number of its outlets in mainland China to 4,500 by 2022. <20>It will still be clearly <20>McDonald<6C>s<EFBFBD> when diners come to our stores,<2C> the chain said on its official China microblog. <20>Our restaurant name will remain the same, the change is only at business license level,<2C> spokeswoman Regina Hui added in emailed comments to Reuters. She declined to comment further on the reason for the change. McDonald<6C>s in China and Hong Kong is 52 percent owned by CITIC, while Carlyle has a 28 percent stake. McDonald<6C>s itself retains a 20 percent interest in the business. The structure is aimed at improving sales at existing stores and expanding outlets. Fast-food firms including McDonald<6C>s and rival Yum China<6E>s ( YUMC.N ) KFC are bouncing back from a series of food-supply scandals in China that had dented performance. McDonald<6C>s reported robust sales on Tuesday, including better-than-expected growth in the United States and strong performances in Canada, Britain and China. Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Christopher Cushing'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mcdonalds-china/golden-arches-mcdonalds-gets-new-china-name-following-unit-sale-idUKKBN1CV0FK'|'2017-10-26T08:30:00.000+03:00'
'ad2f9a2c4a83f91651fc7242d82f26092aead608'|'Bombardier to lay off 280 UK staff as part of global cuts'|'Belfast, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Bombardier Inc will cut 280 non-production jobs at its Belfast plant in Northern Ireland as part of 7,500 layoffs worldwide announced last year, the Canadian plane manufacturer said on Thursday.The jobs of the 4,200 workers at Bombardier<65>s cutting-edge Belfast wing factory have been put under threat in recent weeks by a trade dispute with U.S. rival Boeing Co that led the United States to move to impose a potential 300 percent duty on Bombardier<65>s CSeries next-generation passenger jet.However, Airbus<75> deal this month to buy a majority stake in the CSeries gave the Canadian firm a possible way out of the trade row.Bombardier Belfast said in a statement the cuts in its support personnel were part of plans laid out last year to reduce its workforce by 10 percent through 2018, with most of the layoffs slated for its rail operations.The cuts on Thursday follow 95 redundancies announced at Bombardier<65>s Northern Ireland operations last month.<2E>This highlights our concerns that the Airbus agreement secured in the last fortnight has not provided any long-term guarantees to Northern Ireland workers,<2C> Davy Thompson, who represents the plant<6E>s workers for the Unite trade union, said in a statement. (Reporting by Padraic Halpin and Amanda Ferguson; Editing by Mark Potter) '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/bombardier-belfast/bombardier-to-lay-off-280-uk-staff-as-part-of-global-cuts-idUSL8N1N15CD'|'2017-10-26T19:09:00.000+03:00'
'67a8f568a2b51d11d6c4fe9d008912bb6f25e943'|'U.S. earnings calls zero in on automation, lose Trump focus'|'By David Randall NEW YORK, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Judging by conference calls from the latest earnings season, U.S. companies and analysts have dropped their preoccupation with Washington and shifted their focus to automation aimed at defending record profit margins. Executives or analysts brought up automation on 48 third-quarter earnings calls, according to a Reuters analysis of transcripts since Oct. 1., compared with just 8 calls mentioning U.S. President Donald Trump. Mentions of Trump on earnings calls have declined for the year, from a high of 126 calls between April and May, while discussions of automation have increased. The focus on automation reflects growing concern among executives and analysts about rising labor costs, fund managers said, with jobless claims this month hitting their lowest level since March 1973. After Trump''s November 2016 election victory, hopes ran high among corporate executives that his campaign promises aimed at benefiting U.S. companies would turn into reality soon after he took office in late January. But the Trump Administration has yet to pass healthcare, infrastructure or corporate tax cut bills that analysts had predicted would be in place by the end of this year. "You''ve got a situation where companies are more confident in investing in technology rather than human capital because they know it will come with a fixed cost and may do the job just as well, if not better," said Steve Chiavarone, a portfolio manager at Federated Investors in New York. Even years after the 2007-2009 financial crisis, executives are still reluctant to make investments that will eat into their profit margins, Chiavarone added. The profit margin of the benchmark S&P 500 hit a record of nearly 11 percent in the second quarter, the highest since at least 1993, according to Yardeni Research. Companies across industries have highlighted investments in automation this quarter that aim to defend or improve their margins. Shoemaker Skechers USA Inc told analysts that it had already bought land for a new distribution center but was still planning what kind of automation it will use there. Clearwater Paper Corp said that an automation project at its Elwood, Illinois facility was saving the company approximately $18 million a year. And SunTrust Banks Inc said that it was testing automation in more aspects of its business. That investment focus has also prompted investors to pile into the companies that develop the automations themselves. The $1.5 billion ROBO Global Robotics and Automation Index ETF , which holds companies like IPG Photonics Corp , Cognex Corp and Rockwell Automation Inc , has gained nearly 40 percent for the year to date, compared with a 14.2 percent gain in the S&P 500. Barry James, co-portfolio manager of the $3.1 billion James Golden Rainbow fund , said his expectations for meaningful U.S. legislation passing this year or next has narrowed with Trump and some members of his own Republican Party increasingly at odds. Given the climate in Washington, it makes sense for companies to invest more in areas like automation that will increase productivity without posing much risk, James said. "You could say that we have a divided government now, even though there''s ''Republican'' behind the names of all the people who run it," James said. "Washington looks like it is going to be less of a factor moving forward." (Reporting By David Randall; Editing by Jennifer Ablan and Meredith Mazzilli) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-results-automation/u-s-earnings-calls-zero-in-on-automation-lose-trump-focus-idINL2N1N11HC'|'2017-10-26T15:53:00.000+03:00'
'522f4e1e0bbe34f4345350a7b7b5cc1c3e6d351c'|'Barrick Gold''s Tanzania deal may set expensive precedent - shareholders'|'VANCOUVER, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Some mining investors are criticizing Barrick Gold for agreeing to Tanzanian demands in its proposed settlement of a dispute between its Acacia Mining unit and the Tanzanian government, saying this could embolden other host nations to press for bigger concessions from miners.Several shareholders said this week that by agreeing to hand Tanzania 50 percent of the <20>economic benefits<74> from Acacia<69>s three gold mines in the East African country, Barrick may have set the baseline for what nations may demand from global mining companies, possibly slowing mine development.Barrick, which owns 63.9 percent of Acacia, reached a framework deal last week with Tanzania under which Acacia would hand the state a 16 percent stake in each of its three in-country mines, part of the economic benefits, including taxes and royalties, that would go to the government. Acacia would also pay the government $300 million.<2E>The 50 percent is not a good precedent by any means for a very risky business,<2C> said Chris Mancini, an analyst at Gabelli Gold Fund, which owns shares in Barrick.Miners would generally want more than half the profits from mines to give them the incentive to build operations in geopolitically risky parts of the world, Mancini said.<2E>They are disincentivising development. Barrick<63>s really imperiling the rest of their operations. They are imperiling the industry,<2C> he said.Barrick, which is the world<6C>s biggest gold producer and has operations on five continents, said the proposed agreement complies with Tanzania<69>s new mining law, which requires the government to hold a stake in mining operations.<2E>That is not a concession, that is complying with the law,<2C> Barrick spokesman Andy Lloyd said.Tanzania was long seen as one of Africa<63>s brightest mining prospects but new laws have slowed fresh investment amid government efforts to claim a larger slice of the pie.It has accused Acacia of understating its gold shipments, serving it with a $190 billion bill for unpaid taxes and halting most of its exports.Barrick <20>are showing a willingness to cave to ridiculous demands,<2C> said another Barrick shareholder who declined to be identified due to company policy.Lloyd said the alternative to an agreement, which requires Acacia<69>s approval, would be lengthy international arbitration. Barrick believed a partnership with the government would <20>deliver better outcomes and greater stability for shareholders in the long run,<2C> he said.Barrick also owns mines in the Dominican Republic and Papua New Guinea, considered higher risk by investors. It has been teaming up with partners, as seen at its Veladero mine in Argentina and the Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea, to reduce risks.The settlement with Tanzania comes at a time of rising so-called <20>resource nationalism,<2C> notably in countries such as Indonesia and Tanzania, in which host governments seek a bigger financial cut from mines.Some Barrick investors voiced confidence in the company.Barrick would likely walk away from a deal if it was too onerous or set an <20>unwanted<65> precedent, said Joe Foster, portfolio manager at Van Eck Associates, Barrick<63>s biggest shareholder. <20>The company has shown a discipline to the bottom line that I believe they will respect,<2C> Foster said.And some investors said both mining companies and shareholders should get used to such demands from host nations.<2E>Some of the richest deposits are in some of the more difficult jurisdictions. It is something you have to be able to deal with and handicap as an investor,<2C> said Dan Denbow, senior portfolio manager at USAA Investments, another Barrick shareholder.He added that handing over 40 percent to 50 percent of economic benefits to a host government <20>is not that unusual.<2E> (Reporting by Nicole Mordant in Vancouver; Editing by Frances Kerry) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/barrick-gold-acacia-shareholders/barrick-golds-tanzania-deal-may-set-expensive-
'fc3e596f631020778c4a2917d2b8fdf03c59994f'|'Huge Saudi fund to be conservative borrower, chief says'|'Economy gains pace, puts rate hike on track Special Report Reuters Investigates - The Body Trade Reuters buys human remains, and learns a donor''s tragic story UK aims for Brexit transition deal by first quarter 2018 Reuters TV United States October 25, 2017 / 3:55 PM / a minute ago Huge Saudi fund to be conservative borrower, chief says Andrew Torchia 3 Min Read RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia<69>s Public Investment Fund will be a conservative borrower when it enters international debt markets to obtain leverage for its expansion, the fund<6E>s managing director Yasir al-Rumayyan said on Wednesday. The PIF, with assets of $224 billion, is being built into a key instrument of Saudi policy, investing at home to develop the economy and abroad to increase returns on the kingdom<6F>s oil wealth. It aims to expand to $400 billion by 2020. In addition to obtaining capital injections and assets from the government, plus retained earnings, it plans to fund itself with loans, bonds or a combination of the two - raising the prospect of a big new debt issuer in international markets. But Rumayyan told Reuters that the PIF would take a disciplined approach, basing its borrowing on specific assets that it intended to finance, rather than on the total value of its portfolio. <20>We achieve two things with this approach - we limit our risk, and we increase our returns,<2C> said Rumayyan, who took his post in September 2015 after serving as chief executive of investment bank Saudi Fransi Capital. The PIF is still studying the level of leverage which it wants to accept and expects to make a decision in two or three months, he added. The fund has set targets for long-term returns that seem ambitious to some money managers in an era of low interest rates. For example, it expects an annual return of 8.5 percent from its Saudi equity holdings and 6.5 percent from a diversified pool of international assets. Rumayyan argued that the targets were very much achievable because of a shift in the PIF<49>s business model. In the years after it was established in 1971, it made low-interest loans to industries which Saudi Arabia wanted to develop, such as oil refining and petrochemicals. Now the responsibility for such loans is being transferred to another organization, the Saudi Industrial Development Fund, and the PIF is winding down the business, Rumayyan said. <20>We were lending money at less than 100 basis points...Now we are no longer doing that, it gives us room to increase our equity investments,<2C> he said. The PIF<49>s historical returns on Saudi equity investments have in any case not been far from 8.5 percent, he added. Over the last two years, Rumayyan has been building up the PIF<49>s staff for its new role by hiring financial professionals from around the world. The fund now has over 200 staff and expects eventually to have over 1,000, he said. Reporting by Andrew Torchia, editing by Alister Doyle'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-economy-funds-borrowing/huge-saudi-fund-to-be-conservative-borrower-chief-says-idUKKBN1CU2CY'|'2017-10-25T18:48:00.000+03:00'
'38685020babaea3923fe5130def2581b6fe642b5'|'Apple reduced Face ID accuracy to ease production - Bloomberg'|'October 25, 2017 / 10:30 AM / in 6 hours Apple reduced Face ID accuracy to ease production: Bloomberg Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) recently allowed its suppliers to reduce the accuracy of the iPhone X''s facial recognition system to speed up production of the smartphone, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the situation. ( bloom.bg/2i3E8CZ ) FILE PHOTO: Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller, introduces the iPhone x during a launch event in Cupertino, California, U.S. September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam/File Photo The Face ID system - among the $999 iPhone X<>s most talked about features - uses a mathematical model of users<72> faces to allow them to sign on to their phones or pay for goods with a steady glance at their phones. Apple could not immediately be reached for comment outside regular business hours. Apple has been facing a slew of issues with its latest set of phones that it launched on Sept. 12, with the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus facing muted demand, and news and analyst reports suggesting reduced shipment plans for the iPhone X. The iPhone X is set to be released on Nov. 3. Reporting by Arjun Panchadar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphone/apple-reduced-face-id-accuracy-to-ease-production-bloomberg-idUKKBN1CU1AV'|'2017-10-25T13:28:00.000+03:00'
'5e1535ba6d915c21c558e4c59816c586b90c35f9'|'Australian Q3 inflation surprisingly soft, rate hike more distant'|'October 25, 2017 / 4:45 AM / in 44 minutes Australian Q3 inflation surprisingly soft, rate hike more distant Wayne Cole , Swati Pandey 3 Min Read SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian consumer prices were surprisingly tame last quarter while core inflation stayed below target for almost a second full year, leading investors to pare back the already slim chance of a rate hike for months to come. FILE PHOTO - Pedestrians walk past people sitting in the sun outside a retail store displaying a sale sign in central Sydney, Australia, April 27, 2016. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo The local dollar skidded to a 4-1/2 month trough as the consumer price index (CPI) rose 1.8 percent for the year to September, below market forecasts of 2.0 percent. Underlying inflation averaged around 1.85 percent, again missing estimates and actually a touch slower than in the second quarter. This was the seventh straight quarter that core inflation has undershot the Reserve Bank of Australia<69>s (RBA) long-term target band of 2 percent to 3 percent, reinforcing the case for keeping interest rates at record lows of 1.5 percent. The Australian dollar slid 0.6 percent to $0.7722, its lowest since mid-July. Interest rate futures moved to further push out the likely timing of any hike. A rise in rates is now not fully priced in until November next year. <20>We<57>re of the view that the Reserve Bank will be on hold in 2018. They are not in a position to hike rates in the medium-term and these numbers confirm that,<2C> said JP Morgan economist Henry St John. TAX ON CONSUMERS The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported its headline CPI rose 0.6 percent in the third quarter, from the second quarter when it edged up just 0.2 percent. That missed market forecasts for a 0.8 percent increase, with vegetables, petrol and telecoms all falling in price. Energy prices saw the single biggest increase, rising 8.9 percent in the third quarter and adding 0.25 percentage points to the overall increase in CPI. Economists see that trend as more of a tax on consumer spending than a sign of overheating demand, greatly lessening the need for an interest rate response by the RBA. <20>This is the wrong type of inflation, in that the increases are in non-discretionary, regulatory type components,<2C> said Su-Lin Ong, Sydney-based senior economist at RBC Capital. <20>You might say core inflation has probably troughed but it is showing little signs of momentum. The odds are that it will stay around these levels for some time.<2E> The inexorable rise of electricity costs is largely a function of policy failure and has become a major political headache for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. After months of prevarication, the government recently outlined a plan for a national energy guarantee that essentially put the onus on utilities to fix the problem. So far, the plan has been long on aspirations and short on detail and analysts suspect energy prices will continue to rise in the near term. Indeed, policy makers have repeatedly stressed they will look through the impact of energy on inflation and that any move in rates is still <20>some time<6D> away. Reporting by Wayne Cole and Swati Pandey; Editing by Eric Meijer'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/australia-economy-inflation/australian-q3-inflation-surprisingly-soft-rate-hike-more-distant-idINKBN1CU0BW'|'2017-10-25T07:40:00.000+03:00'
'888eedb27d3c004e9234f3461c1f2dfa3a751fc9'|'CEE MARKETS-Currencies ease on fear of big ECB asset buying cut'|'October 26, 2017 / 8:54 AM / Updated 7 hours ago CEE MARKETS-Currencies ease on fear of big ECB asset buying cut Reuters Staff 6 Min Read * Forint leads currency easing, weakest in more than two weeks * Concerns is ECB may cut asset buying by more than expected * Crown firming could continue after hiccup on rate hike bets By Sandor Peto and Robert Muller BUDAPEST/PRAGUE, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Central European currencies and government bonds eased slightly amid some worries that the European Central Bank (ECB) may signal faster than expected cuts in its asset buying programme on Thursday. The asset buying in the euro zone has indirectly helped currencies and government bonds in the European Union''s eastern members, too. According to a Reuters poll of economist, the ECB will say that it will start trimming the purchases to 40 billion euros from 60 billion euros in January. The yield on some Hungarian and Polish government bonds rose by 2-3 basis points, with Poland''s 10-year bonds trading at 3.437, the highest level since Oct. 10. In currency markets, the forint led the weakening, and touched its weakest levels in more than two weeks against the euro. It shed 0.2 percent, to trade at 311 at 0812 GMT, and technical factors have opened the way for it towards 312, Erste analysts said in a note. "All eyes are on the ECB, and euro zone economic figures have moved expectations towards a hawkish message," one Budapest-based fixed income trader said. "The dovish policy of the Hungarian central bank is keeping yields here down... The question is whether ammunition remains for the bank if (ECB chief Mario) Draghi is hawkish today," the trader added. The zloty and the Czech crown eased 0.1 percent against the euro, while the leu got stuck at the 4.6 line which some market participants believe is defended by the central bank. The crown retreated after a rally which boosted it to four-year highs earlier this week, supported by hawkish comments from Czech central bank (CNB) rate setters. The comments from Vice-Governor Mojmir Hampl and rate setter Tomas Nidetzky underpinned expectations that the CNB will continue to increase its interest rates at its meeting on Nov. 2, and will indicate that more tightening will come. The crown''s strengthening can continue, market participants said. "It seems the CNB is still counting on the overboughtness of the crown and therefore it won''t have to constrain its policy tightening with regards to the cautious ECB," CSOB analysts said in a note. Equities were mostly rangebound in the region. The key exception was Polish refiner Lotos which gained 6 percent after reporting 63 percent surge in third-quarter net profit. CEE MARKETS SNAPSHOT AT 1012 CET CURRENCIES Latest Previous Daily Change bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.6470 25.6200 -0.11% 5.30% Hungary 311.0000 310.3100 -0.22% -0.70% forint Polish zloty 4.2451 4.2427 -0.06% 3.74% Romanian leu 4.5985 4.5985 +0.00% -1.38% Croatian 7.5145 7.5155 +0.01% 0.54% kuna Serbian 119.3000 119.5700 +0.23% 3.39% dinar Note: daily calculated previous close at 1800 CET change from STOCKS Latest Previous Daily Change close change in 2017 Prague 1060.48 1064.10 -0.34% +15.07% Budapest 39724.33 39840.92 -0.29% +24.13% Warsaw 2461.76 2449.89 +0.48% +26.38% Bucharest 7888.93 7880.70 +0.10% +11.35% Ljubljana 803.62 804.82 -0.15% +11.99% Zagreb 1886.01 1883.42 +0.14% -5.46% Belgrade 728.19 727.55 +0.09% +1.51% Sofia 653.97 654.37 -0.06% +11.52% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs Bund change in Czech spread Republic 2-year 0.382 0.154 +109bps +15bps 5-year 0.83 0.004 +108bps +0bps 10-year 1.706 0.008 +122bps +1bps Poland 2-year 1.661 -0.015 +237bps -2bps 5-year 2.708 0.01 +296bps +1bps 10-year 3.443 0.015 +296bps +1bps FORWARD RATE AGREEMENT 3x6 6x9 9x12 3M interbank Czech Rep <PRIB 0.89 1.08 1.23 0 OR=> Hungary <BUBO 0.075 0.105 0.14 0.03 R=> Poland <WIBO 1.7775 1.855 1.93 1.73 R=> Note: FRA are for ask quotes prices (Additional reporting by Agni
'eed5bfe8b357811007c0317056dff440628afcbd'|'UPDATE 2-American Airlines 3rd-qtr profit beats Street, shares rise'|'(Adds details, stock price)By Ankit Ajmera and Alana WiseOct 26 (Reuters) - American Airlines Group Inc, the No. 1 U.S. airline, reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Thursday on higher demand for business and leisure travel, even as its operations were significantly disrupted by severe hurricanes.For the current fourth quarter, American said it expects revenue per available seat mile, a closely watched metric that compares sales to flight capacity, to rise between 2.5 percent and 4.5 percent from a year ago.Shares rose 3.1 percent to $52.60.American<61>s operating expenses swelled by 5.3 percent to $9.6 billion, primarily from increases in the cost of fuel and labor, which have caused expenses to spike across the industry.Earlier this year, American, the top U.S. airline in terms of passenger traffic, said it had offered an unexpected mid-contract pay increase to its pilots and flight attendants, which will cost the airline an additional $230 million for 2017 and $350 million for 2018 and 2019.The pretax margin, excluding special items, is forecast between 4.5 percent and 6.5 percent for the period.Earlier this month, smaller rival Delta Air Lines Inc reported a better-than-expected profit as disruptions caused by Atlantic hurricanes cost the airline less than investors had feared.American said it canceled nearly 8,000 flights due to the hurricanes, reducing pretax earnings by about $75 million.<2E>Despite the significant operational challenges posed by three hurricanes, our team delivered solid financial results,<2C> Chief Executive Officer Doug Parker said in a statement.Net income fell by 15 percent to $624 million, or $1.28 per share, from $737 million, or $1.40 per share, a year earlier.On an adjusted basis, American earned $1.42 per share.Operating revenue rose to $10.88 billion from $10.59 billion.Analysts, on average, expected quarterly profit of $1.40 per share on revenue of $10.88 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. (Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru and Alana Wise in New York; Editing by Bernard Orr and Jeffrey Benkoe) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/american-airline-results/update-1-american-airlines-profit-beats-on-strong-demand-for-air-travel-idINL4N1N14W9'|'2017-10-26T10:27:00.000+03:00'
'1cfc493874a14a70f0da8d3668c75b7afaede3c0'|'Orders for rare $2 bln China sovereign bond issue top $20 bln - bankers'|'HONG KONG, Oct 26 (Reuters) - A rare sovereign bond issue from China has attracted orders in excess of $20 billion ahead of its pricing later on Thursday, banking sources said, as global investors scramble for a part of the $2 billion deal.The sovereign<67>s first offshore bond offering since 2004 has a 5-year and a 10-year tranche, each of $1 billion. Bankers said orders so far were evenly split between the two tranches.Bank of China, Bank of Communications , Agricultural Bank of China, China Construction Bank, CICC,Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ICBC, Standard Chartered Bank, have been hired to manage the deal. (Reporting by Umesh Desai; Editing by Kim Coghill) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/china-debt-orderbook-update/orders-for-rare-2-bln-china-sovereign-bond-issue-top-20-bln-bankers-idUSL4N1N13DF'|'2017-10-26T11:35:00.000+03:00'
'eeb75c30ff3cd6515d2f7e80c2395eb57134511f'|'Barrick Gold aims for final Tanzania deal by mid - 2018'|'October 25, 2017 / 9:19 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago Barrick Gold aims for final Tanzania deal by mid - 2018 Nicole Mordant 3 Min Read VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Barrick Gold Corp ( ABX.TO ) said on Wednesday it would work with the government of Tanzania to find a way for a gold export ban to be lifted on its Acacia Mining ( AAL.L ) unit and was aiming for a final agreement in the first half of 2018. FILE PHOTO - A bulldozer operates inside an open pit at Barrick Gold Corp''s Veladero gold mine in Argentina''s San Juan province, April 26, 2017. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci/File Photo The comments came in an earnings report from Barrick, which showed slightly weaker-than-expected third-quarter earnings due to lower production and gold prices as well as the impact of Acacia<69>s halted exports. The Canadian miner, which owns 63.9 percent of Acacia, lowered the top-end of its 2017 production forecast range and raised the bottom-end of its cost outlook. Barrick<63>s stock dipped to $15.65 (11.81 pounds)in New York, from a closing price of $15.75. Barrick last Thursday said it had reached a framework deal to end a months-long dispute between Acacia and the Tanzanian government, which included the government getting a payment of $300 million from Acacia and a 16 percent stake in Acacia<69>s three in-country gold mines. Barrick said on Wednesday the $300 million would be paid out of Acacia<69>s <20>ongoing cash flows<77> meaning payment would depend on Acacia<69>s ability to resume exports. Barrick and the east African country would look at setting up joint oversight and verification of concentrate shipments, the company said. The government accuses Acacia of understating its gold shipments. Acacia has denied the allegations. The government in March banned unprocessed mineral exports as part of a push to reap greater rewards from the country<72>s resources. Acacia<69>s operations affected by the ban account for about 6 percent of Barrick<63>s 2017 gold production forecast. Barrick said it expects to produce between 5.3 million and 5.5 million ounces of gold this year at all-in sustaining costs of between $740 and $770 per ounce. It had previously expected to produce 5.3 million ounces to 5.6 million ounces of gold at all-in sustaining costs of $720 to 770 per ounce. Barrick<63>s adjusted earnings declined to $186 million, or 16 cents a share, in the third quarter, slightly below analysts<74> estimates of 17 cents. Earnings were $278 million, or 24 cents a share, in the same quarter last year. Earnings were hurt by Barrick making a tax provision of $172 million for outstanding claims against Acacia. Barrick said it had reduced its total debt by nearly $1.5 billion this year, beating its 2017 target. Additional reporting by Susan Taylor in Toronto; editing by Diane Craft and Andrew Hay'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-barrick-gold-results/barrick-gold-reports-net-loss-tanzania-export-ban-hurts-idUKKBN1CU334'|'2017-10-26T01:46:00.000+03:00'
'f9231e4f99a595be32fd9c8de9cba51874079c4a'|'VW CEO says unaware of price fixing in cartel investigation'|'STUTTGART, Germany, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Volkswagen has no information that price fixing was part of the alleged collusion between German carmakers, chief executive Matthias Mueller said.The European Commission on Monday widened an investigation and searched the premises of Volkswagen (VW) and Daimler on suspicion they had conspired to fix prices in diesel and other technologies over several decades.The alleged secret committees set up by German carmakers discussed standardization issues, Mueller said on Thursday at an auto-industry conference hosted by Germany<6E>s Handelsblatt newspaper in Stuttgart.Separately, Mueller said VW can live well with a Chinese compromise on electric vehicle quotas.To combat air pollution, China wants electric and hybrid cars to make up at least a fifth of the country<72>s auto sales by 2025 and plans to loosen joint-venture regulations to achieve its aim. (Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach. Writing by Andreas Cremer) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/volkswagen-cartel/vw-ceo-says-unaware-of-price-fixing-in-cartel-investigation-idINF9N1MO00X'|'2017-10-25T06:45:00.000+03:00'
'00bbd688457af8453ab2593708f7c8e26716e4a9'|'Exclusive - Canada pushed for Airbus deal as Bombardier courted China'|'October 25, 2017 / 5:09 AM / in 5 hours Exclusive: Canada pushed for Airbus deal as Bombardier courted China Allison Lampert , Tim Hepher 6 Min Read MONTREAL/PARIS (Reuters) - The Canadian government encouraged Bombardier to make a deal with Airbus SE for its CSeries planes to thwart a potential venture with Chinese investors, according to five sources familiar with the matter. FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A320neo aircraft and a Bombardier CSeries aircraft are pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo It signaled its preference for Airbus after Bombardier failed to reach an agreement with Boeing Co earlier this year that would have given the U.S. company a stake in the CSeries jetliners, according to the sources. The Canadian government<6E>s role has not been previously reported. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau<61>s administration took a calculated risk in steering Bombardier toward Airbus, according to the sources. It helped save a key product for Bombardier and likely resolved a brewing trade dispute with the United States, but potentially set back efforts to improve trade and economic ties with China. The deal with Airbus came at a critical time for Bombardier. Its $6 billion CSeries program, already losing money, had become the subject of a trade dispute in which Boeing charged in a complaint to U.S. authorities that the jetliners benefited from Canadian government subsidies and unfair pricing. Bombardier had considered a Chinese partnership as early as 2015, after talks about a possible merger with Airbus became public and fell apart. This year, as negotiations with Boeing over a CSeries partnership faltered and concerns about the future of the program mounted, Bombardier<65>s interest in a deal with China intensified, two sources said. The prospect of such a deal raised concern within the Canadian government, two of the sources said, where officials believed jobs or technology could be <20>siphoned away<61> to China. They also expressed uneasiness about what some saw as inadequate Chinese safeguards against intellectual property theft. In a series of calls with Bombardier in August and September, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains and Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, as well as senior officials in Trudeau<61>s office, urged Bombardier to contact the European company, the two sources said. <20>From the federal government<6E>s point of view, anything was better than a link-up with China,<2C> according to an Ottawa source. The source said the government suggested to Bombardier that Chief Executive Alain Bellmare reach out to his counterpart at Airbus, Tom Enders. The government<6E>s efforts eventually helped pave the way for an Oct. 16 agreement in which Airbus took a majority stake in the narrow-body, medium-range CSeries jets for one dollar. But they also came at a time when Ottawa is pushing for closer economic ties with Beijing. Canada, concerned about Washington<6F>s threats to scrap the NAFTA trade deal, wants to bolster relations with China in order to cut its heavy dependence on exports to the United States. Talks between Ottawa and Beijing are ongoing. Bombardier declined to discuss its CSeries negotiations. Representatives of Bains, Champagne and Trudeau declined to comment. Beijing officials declined to comment. Boeing also declined to comment. Asked whether Airbus had stepped in because of concerns about China obtaining a stake in the CSeries, Airbus CEO Enders said: <20>We were obviously not privy to these discussions.<2E> AN IMPERFECT PARTNER Bombardier<65>s most recent discussions about a Chinese tie-up centered on Comac, a Chinese state-owned firm developing passenger jets, according to a source familiar with the Canadian company<6E>s thinking. Financial terms of any potential deal were not known. Comac did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Source
'6ea5a52d769476b881dea3e3c2ede07d19b2a6f2'|'Japanese carmakers warm to EVs, but still see role for hydrogen'|'October 25, 2017 / 1:40 PM / Updated 18 minutes ago Japanese carmakers warm to EVs, but still see role for hydrogen Naomi Tajitsu , Norihiko Shirouzu 4 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese automakers are finally embracing electric cars, showcasing concepts ranging from compact sportscars to all-wheel-drive mini SUVs at this week<65>s Tokyo Motor show, although they haven<65>t given up on alternative technologies. A model riding Honda ChairMobi Concept presents Ai-miimo, Honda''s concept model of AI-installed lawn mower, during media preview of the 45th Tokyo Motor Show. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon After years of investing in hydrogen fuel cells and electric-gasoline hybrids, Japanese manufacturers are talking up all-battery electric vehicles (EVs) at the annual gathering. Many are looking to catch up with global rivals amid rapidly tightening global emissions regulations and improving technology that may make EV batteries a price-competitive option to gasoline engines in the coming years. <20>As far as green cars go, vehicle powertrain electrification is a must,<2C> said Soichiro Okudaira, president of Daihatsu Motor Co, a fully owned subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corp, which showed its concept of the <20>Pro Cargo<67> multi-use mini electric van at the show<6F>s first media day on Wednesday . <20>EV (technology) is a great match with small cars people use everyday to commute, go shopping, because it<69>s easy to charge and maintain.<2E> Even Toyota, the country<72>s largest automaker which set up an EV development team just a year ago, said pure EVs would be one of the <20>key solutions<6E> for cleaner vehicles in the near future. Still, the maker of the Mirai fuel cell vehicle (FCV) is sticking to its view that the hydrogen fuel cell is the ultimate <20>green car<61> technology. Analysts say FCVs can refuel faster than an EV can recharge and can travel longer distances, making them a potentially attractive option for larger vehicles - though the cost and limited refuelling infrastructure pose challenges. Students from Aichi Highschool of Technology and Engineering pose next to their developed electric vehicle named Collapse during media preview of the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai Underlining its point, Toyota introduced two new FCVs at the show: the six-seater <20>Fine-Comfort Ride<64> concept car, and the <20>Sora<72> fuel-cell bus, which will be launched next year. TIPPING POINT Honda Motor Co on Wednesday announced it would launch a compact EV in Japan in 2020, following Nissan Motor Co, long a proponent of EVs and maker of the Leaf, the world<6C>s best-selling battery electric car launched in 2010. Slideshow (8 Images) As advances in lithium ion battery technology improve charging times and lower production costs, some automakers and suppliers expect increased demand will boost EV sales within the next decade, lowering their price towards gasoline vehicles. <20>We see this tipping point happening around 2025. By then for the customer to buy petrol or EV it will be practically same cost,<2C> Nissan Executive Vice President Daniele Schillaci said. <20>And then ... if you have the same price for EVs and petrol why would you buy traditional technology?<3F> While global automakers acknowledge the internal combustion engine may become obsolete in the coming decades, smaller automaker Mazda Motor Corp continues to squeeze more efficiency out of gasoline engines, developing its spark-ignition compression engine which it says could improve fuel economy by as much as 30 percent. Others argue that reports of the death of the gasoline engine have been greatly exaggerated. <20>Many in the media appear to be saying that EVs are going to take over the world, but given ongoing technology and cost limitations, it will be difficult for that to happen anytime soon,<2C> Subaru Corp CEO Yasuyuki Yoshinaga said. Additional reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuter
'4d63e31053a585d740808029cfdaad07e5181e42'|'UPDATE 1-Brazil congressional committees vote on reforms helping small miners'|'(Rewrites with outcome of committee meetings, adds legislator comment)By Jake SpringBRASILIA, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Brazilian congressional committees approved one plank of sweeping mining reforms on Tuesday, amending President Michel Temer<65>s proposals to favor smaller miners, with votes on the two other measures delayed to Wednesday.Temer proposed the policies raising royalties, overhauling regulations and creating a new government agency in three separate decrees in July as part of a market-friendly agenda aimed at attracting foreign investment. The decrees require the approval of Congress to become law.The committee considering the creation of the new mining agency passed that proposal, which could go to a vote in the lower house of Congress as soon as next week.The committees that postponed votes now face the challenge of reaching quorum as Congress turns to a vote scheduled for Wednesday on corruption charges leveled against Temer, which could dominate the legislative agenda for the rest of the week.The reforms could miss a November deadline for full approval before Temer<65>s decrees lapse if not passed by committees by the end of next week, said Israel Lacerda de Araujo, a legislative expert who advises the Senate on mining.Among the policies still being debated, the committee has amended Temer<65>s proposal on mining royalties so that companies would face an automatic 4 percent royalty for iron ore, although miners could apply for a rate as low as 2 percent if they show a lack of profitability because of small operations, poor quality ore or certain other factors.The rates proposed by Temer had varied between 2 percent and 4 percent for all miners based on the market prices for iron ore prior to the amendment, added to the committee report last week.The move would result in miners such as Vale SA that operate on a larger scale with higher quality ore paying more than smaller miners, Araujo said.<2E>The majors have the capacity to pay (the 4 percent) but the smaller ones would need to close their mines. This lets them keep their mines,<2C> he said.A Vale representative did not respond to a request for comment.Also helping smaller miners, the committee on newly proposed mining regulator ANM adjusted agency fees to factor in the size of the company and the area affected by a mine, with larger enterprises and projects paying more.Deputy Leonardo Quintao, who oversaw amendments for the agency committee, said that while an estimated 61 larger miners will pay more, about 30,000 smaller miners seen as larger job creators will pay less.<2E>We found an equation where we<77>re socializing the tax,<2C> Quintao said.Companies will also pay more for holding on to mining titles, encouraging them to put areas into production or give up the title, he said.To fund expansion, more small Brazilian miners are preparing to list themselves on capital markets.Ero Copper Corp, which runs the Vale do Cura<72><61> mine in Brazil, raised $110 million in its initial public offering earlier this month, while Nexa Resources SA, which mines zinc and other metals, filed for a $651 million IPO. (Reporting by Jake Spring; editing by Grant McCool) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brazil-mining-regulation/update-1-brazil-congressional-committees-vote-on-reforms-helping-small-miners-idUSL2N1MZ1QS'|'2017-10-24T23:44:00.000+03:00'
'f91bee631ed6f1203d3801b2c91ff65271e22da8'|'BOJ sees less to fret about low inflation, policy on hold'|'October 25, 2017 / 3:31 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago BOJ sees less to fret about low inflation, policy on hold Leika Kihara 4 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s central bank is set to roughly maintain its price forecasts at its policy meeting next week and blame stagnant inflation on factors like corporate efforts to boost productivity, signalling that it will hold off on expanding stimulus for the time being. FILE PHOTO - A man runs past the Bank of Japan (BOJ) building in Tokyo, Japan, July 29, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda is also likely to stress that the bank is nowhere near dialling back its massive stimulus program, with inflation distant from its 2 percent target. The rate review comes in the wake of premier Shinzo Abe<62>s victory in a weekend election, which heightened expectations the BOJ<4F>s ultra-loose policy - a key pillar of his <20>Abenomics<63> stimulus policies - will be sustained regardless of who succeeds Kuroda when his term ends next April. <20>There<72>s a strong chance Kuroda will be reappointed, which means the BOJ<4F>s policy framework won<6F>t change much,<2C> said Hiroshi Ugai, chief Japan economist at JPMorgan. <20>The BOJ<4F>s next move could be to raise its long-term yield target, but that won<6F>t happen at least until late next year.<2E> At the two-day meeting ending on Tuesday, the BOJ is set to keep intact a pledge to guide short-term interest rates at minus 0.1 percent and the 10-year bond yield around zero percent. The market<65>s focus would be on whether Goushi Kataoka, a board newcomer who voted against keeping policy steady last month, will propose expanding stimulus. While any such proposal is likely to be voted down by others who see no need to ramp up monetary support amid a strengthening economy, it may expose a fresh rift in the board on the future direction of monetary policy. FILE PHOTO: A Japanese flag flutters atop the Bank of Japan building under construction in Tokyo, Japan, September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo STRUCTURAL FACTORS In a quarterly review of its projections due on Tuesday, the BOJ is seen slightly trimming its inflation forecast for the current year ending in March 2018 from an estimate of 1.1 percent made in July, said sources familiar with its thinking. The bank is seen roughly maintaining its price forecasts for fiscal 2018 and 2019, as well as its view that inflation will hit its target by March 2020, they said. The BOJ currently projects inflation to hit 1.5 percent in fiscal 2018, well above a Reuters poll of 0.8 percent, and 1.8 percent the following year. With the economy in good shape, BOJ officials have recently explained slow inflation as being the result of companies<65> efforts to avert wage hikes by automating and streamlining operations. While such efforts may weigh on prices in the short-term, they would eventually boost inflation and Japan<61>s long-term growth potential by enhancing productivity, they say. <20>We shouldn<64>t be too negative about the fact wage and inflation growth remains subdued,<2C> BOJ board member Makoto Sakurai said last week, a view Kuroda is likely to echo in his post-meeting news conference. Japan<61>s economy expanded at an annualised 2.5 percent in the second quarter as consumer and corporate spending picked up, with steady growth likely to be sustained in coming quarters. But core consumer prices rose just 0.7 percent in August from a year earlier, well below the BOJ<4F>s target, keeping the bank under pressure to maintain ultra-easy policy even as its U.S. and European peers begin to dial back stimulus. Editing by Sam Holmes; Editing by Sam Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-economy-boj/boj-sees-less-to-fret-about-low-inflation-policy-on-hold-idUKKBN1CU08C'|'2017-10-25T06:31:00.000+03:00'
'96655f7bd187885bef621761edc90a1b748b2de4'|'Amgen quarterly profit tops expectations despite sales decline'|'October 25, 2017 / 8:13 PM / Updated 20 minutes ago Amgen quarterly profit tops expectations despite sales decline Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Amgen Inc ( AMGN.O ) reported higher-than-expected third quarter profit on Wednesday as lower research and other costs and higher operating margins helped offset sales declines in some of its biggest established products. FILE PHOTO - An Amgen sign is seen at the company''s office in South San Francisco, California, U.S. on October 21, 2013. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith/File Photo The world<6C>s largest biotechnology company also raised its full-year adjusted earnings forecast to $12.50 to $12.70 per share from its earlier view of $12.15 to $12.65, despite taking a financial hit to its Puerto Rico operations from Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island last month. Amgen posted third-quarter net profit of $2.02 billion, or $2.76 per share, up from a profit of $2.01 billion, or $2.68 per share, a year ago. Excluding item, Amgen said it earned $3.27 per share. Analysts on average had expected $3.11 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Reporting by Bill Berkrot; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amgen-results/amgen-quarterly-profit-tops-expectations-despite-sales-decline-idUSKBN1CU2YW'|'2017-10-25T23:12:00.000+03:00'
'2cc88ee3dbae4bd121cc6352fdfc4af02e5c1326'|'Apple reduced Face ID accuracy to ease production: Bloomberg'|'October 25, 2017 / 10:27 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Apple disputes Bloomberg report that it reduced Face ID accuracy Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) disputed a report by Bloomberg News on Wednesday that it recently allowed suppliers to reduce the accuracy of the iPhone X<>s facial recognition system to speed output of the phone. FILE PHOTO: Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller, introduces the iPhone x during a launch event in Cupertino, California, U.S. September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam/File Photo In a statement to Reuters, Apple said <20>Bloomberg<72>s claim that Apple has reduced the accuracy spec for Face ID is completely false.<2E> Bloomberg<72>s report, which cited sources close to people familiar with the situation, said Apple relaxed some of the technical specifications for sensors for the Face ID system, making it faster to test the parts. A Bloomberg spokeswoman said the company stood behind its report.( bloom.bg/2i3E8CZ ) Apple shares were down 0.7 percent at $155.99 in midday trading. The Face ID system - among the $999 iPhone X<>s most talked-about features - uses a mathematical model of users<72> faces to allow them to sign on to their phones or pay for goods with a steady glance at their phones. Apple has faced a slew of issues with its latest set of phones launched on Sept. 12, with muted demand for the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, and media and analyst reports suggesting reduced shipment plans for the iPhone X. In its statement, Apple said it expects the iPhone X to go on sale as planned on Nov. 3 with the Face ID feature. <20>The quality and accuracy of Face ID haven<65>t changed. It continues to be 1 in a million probability of a random person unlocking your iPhone with Face ID,<2C> the company said in a statement. Bloomberg<72>s story did not specify whether Apple relaxed its requirements before or after it announced its one-in-a-million accuracy claims for Face ID at a press conference on Sept. 12. Reporting by Arjun Panchadar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar and Bernadette Baum '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphone/apple-reduced-face-id-accuracy-to-ease-production-bloomberg-idUSKBN1CU1AV'|'2017-10-25T13:32:00.000+03:00'
'0f6dde51873e12ea9cfee4a142375b8254429da1'|'Celgene cuts 2020 outlook, Otezla sales disappoint; shares plunge'|'October 26, 2017 / 12:16 PM / in an hour Celgene cuts 2020 outlook, Otezla sales disappoint; shares plunge Bill Berkrot 4 Min Read (Reuters) - Celgene Corp on Thursday reported third-quarter sales of its key psoriasis drug Otezla that badly missed expectations and significantly scaled down its 2020 targets for product sales and earnings, sending its shares tumbling 18 percent. FILE PHOTO: Celgene Executive Chairman Robert Hugin takes part in a panel discussion titled "Accelerating Medical Research" at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California April 27, 2015. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni Celgene, which also missed estimates for quarterly revenue, has seen it shares lose about 30 percent of their value in October alone. Investors have been concerned about patent challenges to its long-time cash cow Revlimid for multiple myeloma and the surprise failure last week of an experimental Crohn<68>s disease drug touted as a future multibillion-dollar product. Celgene shares fell by $23.23, or 19 percent, to $96.33. The stock<63>s decline was the biggest drag on the benchmark S&P 500 equity index and the Nasdaq index. The company said it would initiate immediate share repurchases from $3.8 billion remaining on its authorization. Celgene leadership did not attempt to sugarcoat the situation, but highlighted future pipeline opportunities with a dozen pivotal data readouts expected by the end of 2018. <20>We<57>re very disappointed with the results of the quarter and are committed to rebounding very quickly with respect to Otezla and our overall performance,<2C> Chief Executive Mark Alles said, adding the Crohn<68>s drug failure was <20>a major disappointment.<2E> Otezla sales of $308 million in the quarter missed analyst estimates by over $100 million. The company blamed slowing growth in both the psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis markets in the U.S. due to reimbursement challenges from insurers. The <20>Otezla miss is the biggest story of the quarter,<2C> RBC Capital Markets analyst Brian Abrahams said. The biotechnology company lowered its full-year Otezla sales forecast to $1.25 billion, from a range of $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion. For 2020, Celgene lowered its adjusted earnings forecast to greater than $12.50 per share from greater than $13.00. It slashed its 2020 oncology sales forecast to a range of $1 billion to $1.1 billion, from its prior projection of at least $2.2 billion, suggesting possible concerns about growth of Pomalyst and Abraxane. Long-range targets for inflammation and immunology sales were cut to $2.6 billion to $2.8 billion, from greater than $4 billion, reflecting continuing Otezla challenges and the disappearance of GED-0301, the once-promising Crohn<68>s drug. Celgene signaled high hopes for its experimental multiple sclerosis drug ozanimod, with key data imminent. It also said it would test the medicine for Crohn<68>s, citing a large unmet need in irritable bowel diseases. Revlimid sales for the quarter rose 10 percent to $2.08 billion, shy of analyst estimates of $2.11 billion. But the company maintained its 2017 forecast of up to $8.3 billion. Total revenue rose nearly 11 percent to $3.29 billion, short of analyst<73> estimates of $3.42 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Excluding items, Celgene earned $1.91 per share, topping analysts<74> average forecasts by 4 cents with help from cost controls. It also raised the low end of its 2017 adjusted profit forecast by 5 cents and now expects $7.30 to $7.35 per share. Despite the failure of GED-0301, which came to Celgene via acquisition, the company said it would continue aggressive business development efforts. Executive chairman and former CEO Robert Hugin promised <20>to turn this adversity into opportunity.<2E> <20>There<72>s nothing fundamentally wrong with Celgene,<2C> he said. Reporting by Bill Berkrot and Caroline Humer in New York and Akankshita Mukhopadhyay in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Caroline Humer; Editing by Savio D''Souza and Bernadette Baum'|'reuter
'4a216ee01e76545cd1d6e11182d913575a91d4bf'|'Barclays third-quarter profit hit by weak markets business'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Barclays shares fell sharply on Thursday as investors worried about chief executive Jes Staley<65>s plans to grow the bank<6E>s trading division, its worst-performing business.A couple walks past a Barclays logo in Johannesburg December 16, 2015. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko/Files The bank<6E>s shares fell by 7 percent, their worst single-day fall since the Brexit vote in June 2016, after it reported profit before tax well below analysts<74> expectations and its investment banking unit again underperformed.<2E>We had thought Barclays would struggle to disappoint (on) low Q3 expectations. It looks like they have succeeded,<2C> brokerage KBW said.Barclays<79> markets income fell 14 percent to 3.5 billion pounds ($4.6 billion) in the first nine months of the year compared to the same period in 2016, including a 27 percent drop in macro income - fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC)- mirroring a weak quarter for U.S. banks.Staley has championed investment banking amid calls from some analysts and investors to ditch a business which has in recent years struggled to match the profitability of Barclays<79> more mundane retail and credit card units.The Barclays CEO said he would push ahead with reinvesting in the business, outlining plans to shift some 20 billion pounds in assets from corporate lending to riskier but higher-yielding trading activities.<2E>We<57>ll either get corporate clients to pay us more for the credit we are extending, or take that credit back,<2C> Staley told analysts on a conference call.He said Barclays will also expand its products in the investment bank in a bid to boost returns, including offering more derivatives <20>without reengaging in the aggressive practices of the past<73>.BULLISH ON GROWTH Barclays said profit before tax for the third quarter was 1.1 billion pounds ($1.46 billion), below a 1.43 billion pound average of analysts<74> estimates compiled by the British bank.Staley signalled his confidence in the bank<6E>s ability to increase returns by putting a timeframe on its targets. Barclays said it aims to achieve an overall return on equity above 9 percent in 2019, and above 10 percent by 2020.Barclays<79> current return on equity, excluding costs from the disposal of its Africa unit, is 7.1 percent although its two main divisions of UK and International achieved 9.4 percent and 10 percent respectively.Barclays<79> targets are above the 8 percent return on equity predicted for 2019 by analysts at Jefferies, suggesting the bank<6E>s new deadline is an ambitious one.The decision to set out a deadline is significant after rival HSBC last August abandoned its own timetable for reaching its targeted return on equity of above 10 percent.Barclays, which also set out a new target cost to income ratio of 60 percent or less by 2019, said it had cut bankers<72> bonus pool for the quarter by 25 percent because of the poor performance.Investment banks globally have struggled in recent years to make returns in excess of their cost of capital, as tighter regulations, pressure on fees from automation and low global interest rates combined to squeeze profits.<2E>The third quarter was clearly a difficult one for our markets business within Barclays International. A lack of volume and volatility in FICC hit markets<74> revenues hard across the industry, and we were no exception to this trend,<2C> Staley said.Equities income fell 8 percent to 1.3 billion pounds, while credit was up 3 percent at 954 million pounds.The bank gave no update on a probe by Britain<69>s financial watchdog into Staley<65>s attempts to unmask a whistleblower, which has led to regulatory and investor scrutiny.Staley has admitted he should not have tried to identify a person who was raising concerns to the board.($1 = 0.7538 pounds)Reporting by Lawrence White and Emma Rumney, additional reporting by John Geddie; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Alexander Smith '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/barclays-results/
'177ea1e5995b1ada35b927bf3c06252dda4a537c'|'Toyota: Committed to hydrogen cars despite potential ''game changer'' EV battery'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp said its solid-state battery technology under development could be a <20>game changer<65> for electric vehicles, but that does not mean it is moving away from hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles.Toyota Motor Corp. Executive Vice President Didier Leroy presents the company''s Concept-i series during media preview of the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon Having long touted fuel-cell vehicles and plug-in hybrids as the most sensible technologies to make cars greener, Japan<61>s top-selling automaker surprised industry watchers last year with plans to add full-sized electric vehicles (EVs) to its line-up.In doing so, it joins a rush of global automakers scrambling to develop more EVs, in large part due to China<6E>s push to promote the technology as a way to reduce pollution in the world<6C>s biggest car market.<2E>We believe our solid-state battery technology can be a game changer with the potential to dramatically improve driving range,<2C> Executive Vice President Didier Leroy said at the Tokyo Motor Show, which opened to media on Wednesday.Toyota plans to roll out a new electric vehicle in the early 2020s powered by solid-state batteries, which also promise to reduce the long charging times currently required.Although China has heavily promoted electric cars, Japan has outlined plans to pioneer a hydrogen-fueled society.Leroy noted that Toyota was introducing two new fuel-cell vehicles at the motor show, including the six-seater <20>Fine-Comfort Ride<64> concept car, with a cruising range of about 1,000 km (620 miles).A production version of the second model, the <20>Sora<72> fuel-cell bus, will be launched next year, with more than 100 expected to be sold, mainly in Tokyo, ahead of the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games to be held in the city.Related Coverage Tokyo concept car aims to fend off dents with external airbagsReporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Writing by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Edwina Gibbs '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autoshow-tokyo-toyota/toyota-committed-to-hydrogen-cars-despite-potential-game-changer-ev-battery-idUSKBN1CU00V'|'2017-10-25T03:22:00.000+03:00'
'68e7a52f21e797d6f5c11bd497d3ab1e0f47f3d0'|'Equifax says consumers can still sue after class action law axed'|'(Reuters) - Equifax Inc said on Wednesday the U.S. Senate<74>s move to kill a rule allowing customers to sue financial companies in class actions does not prohibit consumers from taking legal action against the credit reporting firm over its massive cyber breach.FILE PHOTO: Trading information and the company logo are displayed on a screen where the stock is traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo Equifax came under fire for including a forced arbitration clause in a package of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection products it offered consumers after the breach, which compromised sensitive data on 145.5 million people, but it quickly removed the clause saying it was a mistake.Reporting by John McCrank in New York '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-consumers-arbitration-equifax/equifax-says-consumers-can-still-sue-after-class-action-law-axed-idUSKBN1CU2IO'|'2017-10-25T19:44:00.000+03:00'
'56b74f85cbcb7c813559d39fc7bfa09b26623546'|'Turkey''s Yapi Kredi to sell Russian unit to Expobank at RUB 3.30 billion'|'ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish private lender Yapi Kredi ( YKBNK.IS ) said it had agreed to divest its Russian unit, Yapi Kredi Bank Moscow, to Russia-based Expobank LLC in a deal worth 3.3 billion Russian roubles ($57.12 million).The transfer of 477.5 million roubles in nominal value shares will be realized after the necessary legal approvals have been obtained, the company said in a stock exchange filing.($1 = 57.7771 roubles)Writing by Ezgi Erkoyun; editing by Mark Heinrich '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-yapikredi/turkeys-yapi-kredi-to-sell-russian-unit-to-expobank-at-rub-3-30-billion-idINKBN1CU2U1'|'2017-10-25T17:11:00.000+03:00'
'4690cad9713dc9b0c326736398f96767dc82a3aa'|'Japan eyes bigger tax breaks for firms that hike wages - sources'|' 24 AM / Updated 27 minutes ago Japan eyes bigger tax breaks for firms that hike wages - sources Izumi Nakagawa 2 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s government is considering expanding tax incentives for companies to encourage them to raise wages, three people involved in discussions told Reuters, as many firms remain hesitant to spend their cash reserves on salary increases. A worker walks near a factory at the Keihin industrial zone in Kawasaki, Japan February 17, 2016. REUTERS/Toru Hanai The current incentives are set to expire at the end of this fiscal year through March 2018. The government wants to continue them and expand them, said the sources, who declined to be identified because they are not authorised to speak to media about the matter. The government has been urging Japan Inc to hike salaries with the aim of spurring economic activity and inflation. But despite a tight job market, companies are reluctant to raise wages out of concern they will not be able to pass on the costs to customers who are accustomed to two decades of mostly falling prices. Total cash earnings rose a revised 0.7 percent in August compared with the same month last year, labour ministry data shows, but adjusted for inflation they fell 0.1 percent. Public broadcaster NHK reported earlier that the government wants annual wage negotiations next spring between companies and unions to result in a 3 percent wage increase. Reporting by Izumi Nakagawa, writing by Kaori Kaneko, Editing by Chris Gallagher'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-economy-wages/japan-eyes-bigger-tax-breaks-for-firms-that-hike-wages-sources-idUKKBN1CU059'|'2017-10-25T05:24:00.000+03:00'
'ee862e818a1cb5c8e92701e5057c4f77188e1902'|'Whiting Petroleum names Bradley Holly as CEO'|'Oct 24 (Reuters) - Oil producer Whiting Petroleum Corp said it has appointed Bradley Holly as chief executive officer, effective November 1.The move comes a day before it is set to report its third quarter results.Holly, who was previously executive vice president of oil producer Anadarko Petroleum Corp, will replace 70-year-old James Volker, who is retiring and has been at the helm of the company for the past 15 years.Reporting by Taenaz Shakir in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/whiting-petroleum-names-bradley-holly-as/whiting-petroleum-names-bradley-holly-as-ceo-idUSL4N1MZ5UY'|'2017-10-25T00:03:00.000+03:00'
'2a2e27e084731e0ed8b97f94c82bca371b07dcb3'|'''Neck and neck'' between Condor and easyJet for Air Berlin assets'|'October 25, 2017 / 3:20 PM / a few seconds ago "Neck and neck" between Condor and easyJet for Air Berlin assets Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ) is talking to both Britain<69>s easyJet ( EZJ.L ) and Thomas Cook<6F>s ( TCG.L ) German airline Condor about a sale of its remaining assets, a spokesman for the insolvent airline said on Wednesday, with the race tight. An Air Berlin Airbus A320-214 parks at the Keflavik airport near Reykjavik, Iceland October 20, 2018. The insolvent German carrier has not paid its airport charges, as reported in a statement by Keflavik operator Isavia. REUTERS/Gerix <20>We<57>ll see who crosses the line first. It<49>s neck and neck,<2C> he said, confirming a Reuters report from Tuesday. Air Berlin had been in exclusive talks with Lufthansa and easyJet, but while a deal was agreed with Lufthansa for large parts of its business, talks with easyJet continued over the weekend and no agreement has yet been reached. Condor had initially expressed interest in Air Berlin when it filed for insolvency back in August, but the creditors selected Lufthansa and easyJet for exclusive talks. Time is ticking for a deal to be done, with the last Air Berlin flight due to take place on Friday. Lufthansa Chief Executive Carsten Spohr earlier on Wednesday said it would look better to have a second or third partner take some Air Berlin assets. Lufthansa is set to face European Commission scrutiny over the deal, which will see it take on operations comprising 81 planes, and is likely to have to give up some routes to appease anti-trust concerns. Reporting by Klaus Lauer; Additional reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Maria Sheahan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-lufthansa-easyjet/neck-and-neck-between-condor-and-easyjet-for-air-berlin-assets-idUKKBN1CU29C'|'2017-10-25T18:12:00.000+03:00'
'c33e9d7f970973119ede525c210ad72bf1766c1a'|'PSA revenue up 31 percent on Opel acquisition and sales gain'|'Reuters TV United States October 25, 2017 / 5:59 AM / in an hour PSA revenue up 31 percent on Opel acquisition and sales gain   PARIS (Reuters) - French carmaker PSA Group ( PEUP.PA ) said quarterly revenue rose by almost a third, as the Peugeot maker added Opel-Vauxhall sales numbers for the first time and increased deliveries in Europe and a rebounding Latin America. Carlos Tavares, Chairman of the Managing Board of French carmaker PSA Group addresses the media during the 87th International Motor Show at Palexpo in Geneva, Switzerland March 7, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann Revenues rose 31 percent to 15 billion euros ($17.6 billion) in the third quarter from 11.4 billion a year earlier, Paris-based PSA said on Wednesday. Automotive division revenue at its existing Peugeot, Citroen and DS brands rose by a more modest 11.6 percent to 8.42 billion euros. ($1 = 0.8505 euros)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-peugeot-results/psa-revenue-up-31-percent-on-opel-acquisition-and-sales-gain-idUKKBN1CU0H6'|'2017-10-25T08:53:00.000+03:00'
'd44fa4e32eabf1f33a8265bf90658efd26fac4e8'|'GSK ready to build drug testing in EU as Brexit looms'|'October 25, 2017 / 2:08 PM / Updated 3 minutes ago GSK ready to build drug testing in EU as Brexit looms Ben Hirschler 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s biggest drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline ( GSK.L ) is moving ahead with Brexit contingency planning <20>right now<6F>, including preparing a system to test drugs in the European Union if Britain crashes out of the bloc without a trade deal. Drugmakers are particularly affected by Brexit because of the highly regulated nature of their business. Chief Executive Emma Walmsley said drug companies needed clarity on future relations with the EU as soon as possible to minimise disruption to medicine supplies and repeated her earlier plea for a transition period of at least two years. Although the impact of Brexit on GSK<53>s overall business will not be material, as Britain accounts for only 4 percent of sales, GSK needs fall-back arrangements, including a way to retest UK-manufactured batches of drugs shipped to Europe. <20>It is mainly related to the construction of new testing facilities across Europe and potential preparations for licence changes as well,<2C> Walmsley said of the company<6E>s contingency planning. <20>All of that work is underway in the detailed planning group, and we will be ready for it as necessary.<2E> She made her comments to reporters after announcing quarterly results on Wednesday. Britain has a large pharmaceuticals sector and produces many medicines used in Europe and other countries. A disorderly exit from the EU in March 2019 with no system in place to ensure drug supplies would threaten those supply lines. Drug companies want to remain within the European regulatory system as far as possible, even as the London-based European Medicines Agency prepares to relocate to another city inside the EU as a result of Brexit. Brexit minister David Davis said on Wednesday he was aiming for an outline Brexit transition deal by the first quarter of 2018. Businesses across all sectors are anxious to see the details of such a deal as they draw up investment plans for the year ahead. Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-gsk/gsk-ready-to-build-drug-testing-in-eu-as-brexit-looms-idUKKBN1CU222'|'2017-10-25T17:07:00.000+03:00'
'96d5be210e4f6696ff0efa2ade00b2d59edd5b66'|'Subaru would consider investment in Toyota-Mazda EV firm if asked: CEO'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - Subaru Corp ( 7270.T ) Chief Executive Yasuyuki Yoshinaga said on Wednesday his company would <20>consider positively<6C> investing in a Toyota-Mazda electric vehicle company if it were approached.Subaru Corp''s President and CEO Yasuyuki Yoshinaga presents during a media preview of the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai Last month, Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ) and Mazda Motor Corp ( 7261.T ) announced a new venture to develop electric vehicle technology, seeking to catch up with rivals in a race to produce more battery-powered cars.Subaru, which formed a capital alliance with Toyota in 2006, is sending several engineers to the new venture, the company said.Yoshinaga was speaking to reporters at the Tokyo Motor Show.Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Writing by Chris Gallagher; Editing by Christopher Cushing '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autoshow-tokyo-subaru/subaru-would-consider-investment-in-toyota-mazda-ev-firm-if-asked-ceo-idUSKBN1CU07M'|'2017-10-25T11:22:00.000+03:00'
'8791a4b14b96fd40b2eb7ab873df9a79c0efc0a7'|'RBS to pay $44 million to settle U.S. claims it defrauded customers'|'October 26, 2017 / 4:04 PM / in 14 minutes RBS to pay $44 million to settle U.S. charges it defrauded customers Jonathan Stempel 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc ( RBS.L ) agreed to pay more than $44 million and enter a non-prosecution agreement to settle a U.S. Department of Justice criminal probe of traders accused of defrauding customers on bond prices. FILE PHOTO - A logo at a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland is seen reflected in a window in the City of London December 16, 2014. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo The settlement with RBS Securities Inc was announced on Thursday by U.S. Attorney Deirdre Daly in Connecticut. RBS will pay a $35 million fine, plus at least $9.09 million to more than 30 customers, including Pacific Investment Management Co, Soros Fund Management and affiliates of Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Prosecutors said that from 2008 to 2013, RBS cheated customers by lying about bond prices, charging commissions it did not earn and concealing the fraud in an effort to boost profit at the customers<72> expense. Some victims had received federal bailout money through the Troubled Relief Asset Program. <20>For years, RBS fostered a culture of securities fraud,<2C> Daly said in a statement. <20>By entering into this agreement, RBS has admitted the seriousness of its past criminal conduct and made a clean break.<2E> The settlement arose from a five-year federal crackdown on deceptive bond trading in which eight traders, including two from RBS, have been criminally charged. According to settlement papers, RBS admitted and accepted responsibility for its misconduct. Daly said RBS<42><53>voluntary self-reporting and extraordinary cooperative efforts<74> were the reason it avoided criminal charges. U.S. authorities sometimes use non-prosecution agreements to encourage cooperation. The criminal probe of individuals associated with RBS<42> trading will continue. <20>RBS has zero tolerance for market misconduct,<2C> the bank said in a statement. <20>We are pleased to be able to resolve this issue as we continue to build a simpler, stronger bank that is fully focused on serving our customers well.<2E> RBS<42> improper activity was conducted mainly in Stamford, Connecticut, through the bank<6E>s U.S. asset-backed securities, mortgage-backed securities and commercial mortgage-backed securities trading group, which was shut down in 2015. Adam Siegel, RBS<42> former co-head of U.S. ABS, MBS and CMBS trading, and Matthew Katke, a former RBS trader, both pleaded guilty in 2015 to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and have been cooperating with the government. Of the eight traders who were criminally charged, two were convicted, two were acquitted of various charges, three pleaded guilty and one pleaded not guilty. Two other traders were also hit with civil charges. Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Dan Grebler'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rbs-settlement/rbs-to-pay-44-million-to-settle-u-s-claims-it-defrauded-customers-idUSKBN1CV2QD'|'2017-10-26T19:02:00.000+03:00'
'1c6358d595334d56d00b8d74498ef8d5660557e5'|'Debt-laden Carillion agrees new credit facilities'|' 26 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago Debt-laden Carillion agrees new credit facilities   (Reuters) - Carillion ( CLLN.L ), the debt-laden construction and services group that has issued two profit warnings this year, said it had agreed new credit facilities and deferrals on some debt repayments. A Carillion sign can be seen in Manchester, Britain July 13, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble The group said it had agreed to two facilities totalling 140 million pounds ($185 million) and deferrals on certain pension contributions, and on the repayment of private placement notes due in November and September 2018. Together these would improve its <20>headroom<6F> in 2018 by between 170 million pounds and 190 million. Carillion, which in September said it intended to exit its UK healthcare business, also said it had head-of-terms agreement to sell a large part of the business to outsourcing company Serco Group ( SRP.L ) for 50.1 million pounds. ($1 = 0.7571 pounds)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-carillion-debt/debt-laden-carillion-agrees-new-credit-facilities-idUKKBN1CT0LS'|'2017-10-24T09:26:00.000+03:00'
'5712178d6dc4f94ebc1610fc8e0f9fdbafc805e8'|'Aker BP in $2 bln deal to buy Norway unit of Hess'|'October 24, 2017 / 6:01 AM / Updated 18 minutes ago Aker BP buys Hess'' Norway unit for $2 billion Reuters Staff 4 Min Read OSLO (Reuters) - Aker BP ( AKERBP.OL ) will add the Norwegian operations of U.S. oil company Hess ( HES.N ) to its expanding exploration and production portfolio under a $2 billion deal announced on Tuesday. Under billionaire investor Kjell Inge Roekke, who controls a 40 percent stake, the Norwegian company has made eight acquisitions since 2014 including a merger with BP<42>s Norway operations in mid-2016. The Hess operations will bolster Aker<65>s production by about 17 percent, or 24,000 barrels of oil equivalents per day (boepd), the company said, adding it also saw significant potential for expansion. <20>Aker BP has a clear ambition to be the leading independent offshore exploration and production (E&P) company. This transaction is an important step in that direction,<2C> Chief Executive Karl Johnny Hersvik said in a statement. Norway<61>s biggest oil company is state-controlled Statoil ( STL.OL ). To help fund the deal Aker said it would raise $500 million in new equity in a share issue fully underwritten by its top shareholders, investment firm Aker ASA ( AKER.OL ) which holds a 40 percent stake, and BP ( BP.L ), which owns 30 percent. The price per share will be determined via a book building auction, with the minimum set at 155 Norwegian crowns, slightly above Monday<61>s close of 154.8 crowns in Oslo. Following the deal, Aker BP plans to raise its dividend payout to $350 million per year from $250 million, with the first increase planned for its fourth-quarter dividend. Aker shares were up 6.85 percent at 165.4 Norwegian crowns. The transaction raises Aker BP<42>s stakes to 100 percent in Norway<61>s Valhall and Hod fields, where it sees significant value creation potential through increased oil recovery and developing adjacent resources, it said. The company plans to submit a development plan for the Valhall Flank West expansion project by the end of this year. <20>Aker BP will subsequently seek to sell or swap a minority interest in the fields to partners who want to work together with Aker BP to proactively target the upside potential in the area,<2C> it said. <20>Aker BP will also assume Hess Norge<67>s tax positions, which include a tax loss carry forward with a net nominal after-tax value of $1.5 billion, as booked in Hess Norge<67>s 2016 annual accounts,<2C> the company said. Hess is the latest global oil company to abandon or scale back its presence in Norway, following partial divestment by BP ( BP.L ) and Exxon Mobil ( XOM.N ) in 2016 and 2017, respectively. Exxon Mobil and BP decided to no longer be field operators in Norway, though Exxon retains direct stakes in several fields and BP remains involved via its stake in Aker BP. Hess separately announced a cost cutting program and said it also plans to sell its 61.5 percent stake in Denmark<72>s South Arne field. <20>With the continued success of our asset sale program, we are focusing on higher return assets and reducing our breakeven oil price,<2C> Chief Executive John Hess said in a statement. Reporting by Terje Solsvik, additional reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis; editing by Subhranshu Sahu and Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hess-m-a-aker-bp/aker-bp-in-2-billion-deal-to-buy-norway-unit-of-hess-idUSKBN1CT0J3'|'2017-10-24T08:56:00.000+03:00'
'cfad6d884a7705d56ac633a9661280583c7a2261'|'Gold slips on nerves ahead of Fed chair decision'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Gold dipped on Tuesday as investors nervously awaited news on the new head of the U.S. central bank while strong share markets and a calmer geopolitical environment sapped safe-haven demand.A machine engraves information on an ingot of 99.99 percent pure gold at the Krastsvetmet non-ferrous metals plant, one of the world''s largest producers in the precious metals industry, in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin <20>The hawkish speculation about a new Fed chair has added some downside pressure,<2C> said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank in Copenhagen.President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday he is <20>very, very close<73> to making his decision on who should chair the U.S. Federal Reserve.A hawkish candidate would be expected to favour higher interest rates, boosting the value of the dollar and making the greenback-denominated metal more expensive for holders of other currencies.Spot gold slipped 0.3 percent to $1,277.51 an ounce by 1250 GMT, after hitting its lowest since Oct. 6 at $1,271.86 in the previous session.U.S. gold futures for December delivery fell 0.2 percent to $1,278.90 per ounce.Spot gold has shed 6 percent since touching a 1-year high of $1,357.54 on Sept. 8, largely due to a rebound in the dollar on expectations that the Fed will boost interest rates in December.The Fed will raise rates in December and twice next year, according to a Reuters poll of economists, who now worry that the central bank will slow its tightening because of expectations that inflation will remain low.<2E>Stocks, even though we had a correction yesterday, are holding near record highs, removing some of the demand on that front. Geopolitics have faded a bit recently and that has added to the downwards move,<2C> Hansen added.MSCI<43>s 47-country world share index hovered near its recent all-time highs after a drop in General Electric shares on Wall Street had seen the ViX volatility index spike up.<2E>I<EFBFBD>m very surprised we<77>re up here. Risk is still on if you look at stock markets. Generally gold should be lower ... I was expecting gold to drift down to $1,260 area,<2C> said the Hong Kong-based trader.<2E>We<57>ll probably consolidate around $1,275-$1,285 until some Fed news comes out.<2E>In other precious metals, silver fell 0.5 percent to $16.96 an ounce after hitting its lowest since Oct. 9 in the previous session.Platinum gained 0.1 percent to $922.30 an ounce while palladium dipped 0.1 percent to $958 an ounce.<2E>I think there<72>s still belief in the market that palladium can continue to outperform,<2C> Hansen said.<2E>If we see the (palladium-platinum) spread widen above $50 then we could probably see another extension up towards the $75 area.<2E>Palladium has more than doubled in value since touching a 5-1/2 year low in January last year while platinum has only gained 15 percent in the same period.Additional reporting by Apeksha Nair in Bengaluru, editing by David EvansOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-precious/gold-slips-on-nerves-ahead-of-fed-chair-decision-idINKBN1CT20M'|'2017-10-24T17:19:00.000+03:00'
'5b854c391e3043ac779902144f65d82aa7dfa138'|'UPDATE 1-VC firm DFJ probes sexual harassment charges against founding partner'|'(Changes sourcing after company confirms probe)Oct 24 (Reuters) - Venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), which has invested in Tesla Inc<6E>s SpaceX, said it is independently probing sexual harassment allegations against its founding partner Steve Jurvetson.The company came to know about <20>indirect and second-hand allegations<6E> against Jurvetson earlier this summer, a DFJ spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.<2E>We immediately opened an independent investigation, which is ongoing at this time,<2C> the spokeswoman said.Technology news website The Information earlier reported that the Menlo Park, California-based firm has hired an external law firm to investigate charges against Jurvetson and had started the probe in August after rumors on his conduct with women. bit.ly/2yPuDkYJurvetson was not immediately available for comment. (Reporting by Kanishka Singh; Additional reporting by Rama Venkat Raman; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/dfj-probe/update-1-vc-firm-dfj-probes-sexual-harassment-charges-against-founding-partner-idINL4N1N01UZ'|'2017-10-25T01:55:00.000+03:00'
'd35b37d3821ff8043ce33cd5a1f523313d0ad9b6'|'Oil hovers near 4-week high on Saudi pledge to end glut'|'October 25, 2017 / 1:54 AM / Updated 17 minutes ago Oil hovers near four-week high on Saudi pledge to end glut Reuters Staff 2 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Oil prices were largely steady in early Asian trade on Wednesday, hovering near a four-week high hit a day earlier after top exporter Saudi Arabia said it was determined to end a supply glut. FILE PHOTO - A general view of a crude oil importing port in Qingdao, Shandong province, in this November 9, 2008 file photo. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo Brent crude, the global benchmark, was up 10 cents at $58.43 a barrel by 0103 GMT, after settling on Tuesday up 96 cents, or 1.7 percent. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was trading down 4 cents at $52.43 a barrel, having risen 57 cents on Tuesday. Saudi Arabia<69>s energy minister said the focus remained on reducing oil stocks in industrialized countries to their five-year average and raised the prospect of prolonged output restraint once an OPEC-led supply-cutting pact ends. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus Russia and nine other producers, have cut oil output by about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) since January. The pact runs to March 2018, but they are considering extending it. <20>We are very flexible, we are keeping our options open. We are determined to do whatever it takes to bring global inventories down to the normal level which we say is the five-year average,<2C> Falih told Reuters. U.S. crude stocks fell by 519,000 barrels last week, industry group the American Petroleum Institute said on Tuesday after settlement. That compared with analysts<74> expectations for a decline of 2.6 million barrels. [API/S] [EIA/S] Gasoline stocks fell by 5.8 million barrels, compared with analysts<74> expectations in a Reuters poll for a 17,000-barrel decline. Distillate fuels stockpiles, which include diesel and heating oil, fell by 4.9 million barrels, compared with expectations for a 860,000-barrel drop, the API data showed. The U.S. government<6E>s Energy Information Administration releases its report later in the day. Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Joseph Radford'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil/oil-hovers-near-four-week-high-on-saudi-pledge-to-end-glut-idUKKBN1CU040'|'2017-10-25T04:46:00.000+03:00'
'a4b450ccfc9a102a560d21c6b9f334f3184bc372'|'Virgin''s Branson says he accepts Saudi city board role'|'October 26, 2017 / 2:24 PM / Updated an hour ago Virgin''s Branson says he accepts Saudi city board role Reuters Staff 1 Min Read RIYADH (Reuters) - Virgin Group<75>s Richard Branson said on Thursday he has accepted a board position on large development projects in Saudi Arabia. FILE PHOTO: Virgin Group founder Richard Branson speaks at a press event in Sydney, September 9, 2015. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo <20>I will invest. I<>ve been asked to be ... on the board of one or two of your city projects <20> your Red Sea Project <20> and am delighted to accept,<2C> he told an investment conference in the capital Riyadh. Saudi Arabia announced on Tuesday a $500 billion cross-border city development project on the Red Sea. The kingdom also plans tourism developments on a number of Red Seea islands. Reporting by Katie Paul, writing by Alexander Cornwell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-saudi-economy-branson/virgins-branson-says-he-accepts-saudi-city-board-role-idUKKBN1CV2CZ'|'2017-10-26T17:23:00.000+03:00'
'486b9491336a59b5b70edaa1ed353cfe9cdcd8b5'|'London comes to Macau as Las Vegas Sands revamps casino resort'|'HONG KONG (Reuters) - Las Vegas Sands, the casino behemoth owned by U.S. billionaire Sheldon Adelson, said on Wednesday it plans to spend $1.1 billion on new projects in the world<6C>s largest gambling hub, including building a London-themed attraction.FILE PHOTO - Fireworks explode over Parisian Macao as part of the Las Vegas Sands development during its opening ceremony in Macau, China September 13, 2016. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo Sands, which owns five properties in the Chinese territory of Macau via its subsidiary Sands China, said it would renovate and rebrand Sands Cotai Central as The Londoner Macao by 2020.Sands Cotai Central has been one of the company<6E>s weakest properties, analysts said, due to its lack of character and tourist appeal when compared with Sands<64> gondola-filled Venetian or its Parisian property that features a replica Eiffel Tower.The timing of the Cotai renovation comes as operators in the former Portuguese colony of Macau such as MGM Resorts and SJM Holdings race to finish their planned resorts before casino licenses start to expire in 2020.Authorities have been pushing Macau<61>s casino operators to diversify away from gambling because of their dependence on the industry which accounts for over 80 percent of government revenues.FILE PHOTO: The Sands Cotai Central logo is seen in front of its hotel in Macau September 20, 2012. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu Sands, which completed the Parisian in 2016, has now turned to revamping existing properties to further boost its appeal. The company said it would add new suites and rooms to its St Regis and Four Seasons properties and renovate VIP areas at the Venetian and Plaza Macau.Sands, which reported earnings in line with analyst expectations on Wednesday, said net revenue for the third quarter was $3.2 billion.Adelson, the first mover into Macau<61>s Cotai strip - once a dusty stretch of reclaimed land which now teems with glitz and cavernous gambling halls - said the market in Macau was continuing to recover.<2E>While we have invested over $13 billion in Macao since 2002... we see tremendous future opportunity in the Macao market as it continues to grow and evolve,<2C> he said in a statement.Analysts were mostly positive on the announcement although cautioned the renovations would bring some disruption over the next two years.<2E>In the long run should be value additive to the company. However dividend growth may be limited over next few years as FCF (free cash flow)is redirected to capital expenditure,<2C> said Vitaly Umansky, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in Hong Kong.Reporting by Farah Master '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-macau-sands/london-comes-to-macau-as-las-vegas-sands-revamps-casino-resort-idUSKBN1CV07W'|'2017-10-26T05:57:00.000+03:00'
'199979190dad6f2841baa026006c92a70af0b3b1'|'BP Midstream Partners'' prices IPO at $18 per unit'|'(Reuters) - BP Midstream Partners<72> said on Wednesday its initial public offering was priced at $18 per unit, below the expected range of $19 to $21, raising about $765 million.The unit of British energy company BP Plc ( BP.L ), which sold 42.5 million units, is scheduled to debut on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol <20>BPMP<4D> on Thursday, it said in a statement.The offering values BP Midstream at about $1.9 billion.The master limited partnership (MLP) was formed by London-based BP''s U.S. pipeline unit to transport crude oil, refined products and diluents to customers under long-term agreements. ( bit.ly/2ge6biF )An MLP structure is often used by pipeline and other capital-intensive companies to distribute excess cash to investors in the form of tax-deferred dividends.BP Midstream, which operates in the U.S. Midwest and the Gulf of Mexico, posted net income of $63 million for the six months ended June 30, on a pro forma basis, the company said in a filling. ( bit.ly/2xoemj9 )Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays are among the top underwriters of the IPO.Reporting by Nikhil Subba in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Parikshit Mishra; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Richard Chang '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-bp-midstream-ipo/bp-midstream-partners-prices-ipo-at-18-per-unit-idINKBN1CU3BH'|'2017-10-25T21:47:00.000+03:00'
'7389df0a10340829ce054a8f4958aaec8c50a1fb'|'UPDATE 1-Lyondell weighs building $2 billion chemical plant -media report'|'October 25, 2017 / 4:56 PM / in a few seconds Lyondell weighs building $2 billion chemical plant: media report Reuters Staff 1 Min Read HOUSTON (Reuters) - LyondellBasell Industries ( LYB.N ) is considering building a new chemical plant that would cost $2 billion, the Houston Chronicle reported on Wednesday. A decision to build a new plant that would provide chemicals and propylene for growing markets is a year away, Lyondell Chief Executive Bob Patel said, according to the report. Lyondell did not immediately reply to a request for comment. <20>It<49>ll take us a good part of about 12 months before we get to the point where we make a final decision,<2C> Patel said, according to the report. <20>But, yes, PDH (propane dehydrogenation) and polypropylene is the next project. It<49>ll likely be somewhere along the Gulf Coast.<2E> Lyondell has a plastics plant under construction in LaPorte, Texas, and is getting underway with building a $2.4 billion complex in Pasadena and Channelview, Texas, according to the Chronicle. The company is scheduled to report third-quarter earnings on Friday. Reporting by Erwin Seba; Editing by Paul Simao'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lyondell-plant/lyondell-weighs-building-2-billion-chemical-plant-media-report-idUSKBN1CU2IG'|'2017-10-25T19:48:00.000+03:00'
'1e0d4fce4740a77d49e6b99f58b83a309a47afb2'|'COLUMN-In class action policy war, data backs big business: Frankel'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - (The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.)One of the critical junctures in the U.S. Senate<74>s late-night dismantling of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule shielding consumers<72> right to band together to sue financial institutions was, according to The New York Times, an Oct. 23 Treasury Department report that used the CFPB<50>s own data to criticize the bureau<61>s rule.EPIC REPORT In 2015, after a three-year study, the CFPB issued an epic report contrasting consumers<72> recovery in class actions with their results in individual arbitration against banks and credit card companies.The bureau considered its study unequivocal proof that class actions against financial institutions deliver vastly more money to vastly more people than arbitration. With the study as its justification, the CFPB issued a rule in July 2017 that prohibited the institutions it regulates from imposing mandatory arbitration on their customers.The Treasury Department pulled different numbers from the CFPB study to conclude that class actions deliver a lot of money to plaintiffs<66> lawyers but little benefit to aggrieved consumers.Only 13 percent of the cases result in classwide recovery, Treasury said, and few affected consumers <20> on average, just 4 percent <20> bother to claim their share. That<61>s not surprising, Treasury said, since the CFPB data show the average claim from class settlements to be about $32.Plaintiffs<66> lawyers, meanwhile, collect an average of more than $1 million per case.<2E>Based on the bureau<61>s own data, it is far more likely that the rule will generate massive economic costs <20> borne by businesses and consumers alike <20> that dwarf the speculative benefits of the bureau<61>s theorized increase in compliance,<2C> Treasury said.Nothing in the Treasury report is news to class action lawyers, whether they sue corporations or defend them. Low claims rates and high transaction costs are always the first resort for class action critics. But the outcome of the Senate vote shows the power of those data points.BUT CONSUMERS DON<4F>T USE ARBITRATIONClass action proponents, meanwhile, don<6F>t have equally provocative numbers to counter critics<63> data.There<72>s plenty of data to prove arbitration does not compensate consumers victimized by systemic corporate misconduct. For the most part, as the CFPB study proved, consumers don<6F>t bother to bring individual arbitration claims against financial institutions. Millions of consumers were members in class actions against financial institutions during the time period covered in the CFPB study. By contrast, the CFPB found, fewer than 500 a year filed individual claims <20> and most of them lost their cases. (In a forthcoming law review article on the impact of mandatory arbitration provisions in employment litigation, New York University law professor Cynthia Estlund crunched the available data to conclude that 98 percent of employees covered by mandatory arbitration do not bother to assert claims.) Business groups continue to tout arbitration as a fast, low-cost vehicle for redress. Maybe, but consumers aren<65>t using it.WHY PROPONENTS LACK EQUIVALENT DATA But there are two big reasons why class action proponents don<6F>t have data to show the benefits of group litigation outweigh the costs. One is a matter of procedure. The other involves the very purpose of class actions.First, there<72>s no way to prove how many consumers, by percentage or in the aggregate, receive compensation from class actions because no one has collected that information. Once federal judges grant final approval of class actions and legal fees, the cases usually fall out of sight. Settlement administrators typically send out notices and process claims without anyone asking for a final accounting of how much money has been sent to class members. Occasionally a judge will demand information about claims rates and disbursements, but those are exceptions. The CFPB made a determined effort to ana
'cd71e9dcb6ee070c68c42380dd893d0af81fcd5f'|'Fears that Xi Jinping is bad for private enterprise are overblown'|'FOR a moment it seemed China was reverting to Maoist economic management. On the sidelines of the Communist Party congress this month, an official told Xi Jinping that her village distillery sells baijiu , a potent spirit, for 99 yuan ($15) a bottle. Mr Xi, China<6E>s most powerful leader since Mao, remarked that this seemed a bit dear. The chastened official thanked him and pledged to follow his guidance. But Mr Xi gestured her to stop. <20>This is a market decision,<2C> he chuckled. <20>Don<6F>t cut the price to 30 yuan just because I said so.<2E> The audience, perhaps relieved that Mr Xi had no intention of dictating the price of booze, broke into laughter.This rare spot of levity at the dreary five-yearly congress was telling. The occasion cemented Mr Xi<58>s unrivalled position at China<6E>s apex. For companies, the question is what he will do with it. His vision can seem ominous. <20>North, south, east and west<73>the party is leader of all,<2C> he intoned in a speech laying out his plans. 17 17 On his watch the party has already reasserted control over state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and sought influence in private ones. It has called on entrepreneurs to be patriotic. And regulators have cowed swashbuckling businessmen, from Wang Jianlin, a property mogul formerly China<6E>s richest man, to Wu Xiaohui, an insurance magnate who fancied himself the next Warren Buffett.It might seem as if Mr Xi is turning the screws on private enterprise. But <20>socialism with Chinese characteristics<63> has long had a contradiction at its heart. Across much of the economy, Communist officials preside over rumbustious capitalism. Mr Xi<58>s pledge of a <20>new era<72> probably means more of the same rather than a relapse to central planning.Take the clampdown on moguls. Regulators have chosen four of China<6E>s most acquisitive companies for extra scrutiny: Anbang, an insurance firm; HNA, an aviation-to-tourism group; Wanda, a property developer; and Fosun, an industrial conglomerate. As a result, their frenetic overseas investments have slowed sharply this year. Wanda has sold many hotel assets. Anbang<6E>s founder has been detained.Yet this is not the assault on entrepreneurs that some make it out to be. Of the 2,130 people on the Hurun rich list, a guide to China<6E>s ultra-wealthy, just five fell foul of the law last year (see chart). By comparison, Mr Xi<58>s anti-corruption campaign has ensnared nearly 10% of the party<74>s 205-member central committee in five years.Restrictions on the four high-flying companies are best seen as a by-product of stricter financial regulation, says Joe Ngai of McKinsey, a consultancy. Belatedly, officials have taken a hard line on risky funding, especially for overseas acquisitions. At the same time, the fortunes of tycoons with businesses geared to the domestic market<65>in tech, property or manufacturing<6E>have soared. Wealth on the Harun list has more than doubled under Mr Xi.Another concern is tightened control of the technology sector. The Wall Street Journal reported this month that internet regulators might take 1% stakes in social-media giants, including Youku, Alibaba<62>s YouTube-like platform, and Weibo, China<6E>s answer to Twitter. But the government already has a good handle on its tech superstars. None can get far in China if it angers the party or turns down data requests from state security. And they already serve up party-pleasing products. Some are lighthearted, like Tencent<6E>s game for WeChat, its ubiquitous mobile app, letting users compete in <20>applauding<6E> Mr Xi<58>s speech by tapping their phone screens. Others look more sinister, such as techniques to monitor users, which can help authorities keep tabs on citizens.The notion that Mr Xi is stifling innovation is belied by a flourishing of enterprise. Only America has more, and more valuable, startups. Media focused on the party instruction for entrepreneurs to be patriotic, but the directive mostly spelled out how the government can support them. Gary Liu, president of the China Financial Refo
'0af01e1868562264792449329ad2f4f9452329c4'|'Bayer hints at shrinking cash call for Monsanto takeover funding'|'FRANKFURT, Oct 26 (Reuters) - German drugmaker Bayer on Thursday flagged it might reduce the size of its planned rights issue to fund the planned $66 billion takeover of Monsanto, citing proceeds from an antitrust-related asset sale to rival BASF<53>We will also use the net proceeds from the announced divestiture to BASF to refinance the Monsanto acquisition,<2C> Chief Executive Werner Baumann said in prepared remarks published ahead of a conference call for journalists.<2E>As part of the detailed planning ahead of us, we will examine whether and to what extent the equity component of the financing will change as a result,<2C> he said.He also reiterated that the planned capital increase would take place via a rights issue to avoid watering down stakes held by existing investors.Bayer has agreed to sell seed and herbicide businesses for 5.9 billion euros ($7 billion) to BASF, which analysts have said was richly priced.So far this year Bayer has also grossed about 4.7 billion euros from selling blocks of share in Covestro, the plastics business with which it is severing ties. (Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by Maria Sheahan) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bayer-results-capital/bayer-hints-at-shrinking-cash-call-for-monsanto-takeover-funding-idINF9N0NT01W'|'2017-10-26T06:12:00.000+03:00'
'7d91e6c21a3e11155f0561c6e969778d39e90894'|'UPDATE 3-AB InBev takes hurricane hit in United States'|'* Q3 core profit $5.73 bln vs Reuters consensus $5.76 bln* U.S. beer deliveries suffer partly due to hurricanes* Brazil returns to profit growth after nearly two years (Updates with CFO, shares)By Philip BlenkinsopBRUSSELS, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world<6C>s largest brewer, sold less beer than expected in the third quarter, hit particularly by hurricanes and market share losses in its largest market, the United States.The maker of Budweiser, Corona and Stella Artois said on Thursday it sold 1.5 percent less beer than a year earlier in North America, Brazil, Europe and Asia, with the steepest fall in the United States.The Belgium-based company said profits slipped there as hurricanes ripping into Florida and Texas hampered its shipping, although the company<6E>s market share also slipped.AB InBev said U.S. core profit (EBITDA) declined by 0.7 percent in the third quarter compared to a year ago, with the negative hurricane impact estimated at 2 percentage points.While it can expect to recover some of the hurricane hit at the end of 2017, there was no clear fix for its two major U.S. brands, Budweiser and Bud Light, both suffering as drinkers shift to higher-priced craft beer as well as cheaper lagers.Heineken, reporting on Wednesday, also had lower sales of its Heineken brand and Mexican lagers in the United States, although Lagunitas, the U.S. craft brand it now fully owns, outperformed the market.AB InBev has bought 10 U.S. craft breweries in the past six years, but their gains could not prevent an overall share loss.AB InBev shares were down 2.7 percent at 100.30 euros at 0845 GMT. Its shares trade at a premium to peers Heineken and Carlsberg due to its success to date with acquisitions and sharp focus on costs.<2E>Our view remains that unless and until AB InBev can get volumes growing sustainably the business model will remain under significant pressure,<2C> James Edwardes Jones, analyst at RBC Capital markets, said.Bernstein Securities said it could not remember a quarter so bad for the company<6E>s U.S. sales.AB InBev did increase profit in Brazil, its second biggest market, for the first time in almost two years in the July-Sept period, with overall volumes down 4 percent, but prices per litre 13.1 percent higher. Heineken had reported higher beer sales in Brazil.<2E>In Brazil we remain cautiously optimistic about the economy overall with good progress made so far. We remain confident about our commercial plans and therefore we expect a very strong fourth quarter,<2C> Dutra said. <20>Yes, Brazil is coming back as one of the growth engines.<2E>Latin America<63>s largest economy is emerging unevenly and slowly from its worst recession in more than a century.Profit grew in its other large markets of Mexico, Colombia, South Africa and China, although beer sales only increased in Mexico.Overall, third-quarter core profit (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) was up 13.8 percent on a like-for-like basis to $5.73 billion, just below the median forecast in a Reuters poll of $5.76 billion.Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek and Jane Merriman '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/abinbev-results/update-1-ab-inbev-brings-an-end-to-profit-decline-in-brazil-idINL8N1N10WA'|'2017-10-26T03:47:00.000+03:00'
'f5bde33082e6edad0b70c9cda72eb0590e01ad29'|'Akzo Nobel approaches Axalta about possible merger: sources'|'FRANKFURT/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dutch paints and coatings giant Akzo Nobel NV ( AKZO.AS ) has approached U.S. rival Axalta Coating Systems Ltd ( AXTA.N ) to discuss a possible merger that would create a global coatings giant, according to sources familiar with the matter.FILE PHOTO: Akzo Nobel''s logo is seen in Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 16, 2012. REUTERS/Robin van Lonkhuijsen/United Photos/File Photo Akzo Nobel<65>s move indicates that its new CEO Thierry Vanlancker is continuing to look for big deals as a way to buttress the company, after it managed to fend off a takeover approach by PPG Industries ( PPG.N ) earlier this year.Philadelphia-based Axalta is in the early stages of considering a deal with Akzo Nobel, and there is no certainty that the two companies will agree to a merger, one of the sources said on Friday.The sources asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential. Akzo Nobel and Axalta did not respond to requests for comment.Shares in Axalta soared nearly 22 percent on the news and were last up 18 percent at $33.27 in early afternoon trading, giving the company a market capitalization of $8.1 billion. Akzo Nobel<65>s shares had finished flat in Amsterdam, valuing it at 19.5 billion euros.Earlier this year, the Dutch maker of Dulux rejected a 26-billion euro acquisition offer from U.S. rival PPG. As an alternative transaction, Akzo Nobel has announced it plans to sell or spin off its specialty chemicals division, which represents about a third of sales and profits.Such a divestiture will concentrate Akzo on coatings, and so a tie-up with Axalta, the No. 1 supplier to the North American heavy truck market, would round out its business to include vehicle coatings.PPG CEO Michael McGarry said on the company<6E>s third-quarter earnings call earlier this month that, when it came to Akzo Nobel, PPG had <20>moved on.<2E> A PPG spokesman declined to comment on Friday on how the company will respond to Akzo Nobel<65>s merger discussions with Axalta.A tie-up with Axalta, the former car paint unit of DuPont, is be the major first merger being pursued by Vanlancker, who took over as Akzo Nobel CEO when Ton Buechner resigned for health reasons in July.Vanlancker has cut Buechner<65>s profit goals, made in the heat of the takeover battle, twice in the space of six weeks, blaming disruption caused by hurricane Harvey, rising raw materials costs and <20>headwinds<64> at its marine coatings business.He has also focused on trying to cultivate Akzo Nobel<65>s investor base. Having won a court case in which activist investor Elliott Advisors sought but failed to get the removal of president Antony Burgmans, Akzo Nobel pledged to mend its relationship with shareholders.Private equity firm Carlyle Group LP ( CG.O ), Axalta<74>s former owner, had considered selling the company to Akzo in 2014 before taking it public.Additional reporting by Pamela Barbaglia in London and Arno Schuetze in Frankfurt; Editing by Nick Zieminski '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-axalta-akzonobel/akzo-nobel-approaches-axalta-about-possible-merger-sources-idINKBN1CW2FO'|'2017-10-27T14:40:00.000+03:00'
'2b9704d3b946d6fd4ff36d151b8f7cf4002241cd'|'France''s Total third quarter net profit lifted by strong output and cost savings'|'October 27, 2017 / 6:06 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago France''s Total third quarter net profit lifted by strong output and cost savings Reuters Staff 2 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - French oil and gas major Total ( TOTF.PA ) said its net adjusted profit rose 29 percent in the third quarter, in line with expectations, thanks to increased output and high refining margins, while cost reductions exceeded its target for the year. The logo of Total oil company is pictured in Abuja, Nigeria October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde Total<61>s oil production rose 6 percent in the quarter, while adjusted net operating income from its upstream exploration and production branch soared 84 percent compared with the same period a year ago, buoyed by a 14 percent rise in the Brent crude oil price. <20>The group took full advantage of the favourable environment thanks to the performance of its integrated model and its strategy to reduce its breakeven point,<2C> Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanne said in a statement. Total said its net adjusted profit for the quarter hit $2.7 billion, in line with a Reuters poll of analysts<74> forecasts. The company said its cost reduction target for the year will be more than $3.6 billion compared with the $3.5 billion it had previously expected, as it continued to drive down costs. It added that the cost of production was now below $5 per barrel for the past three months, ahead of the target of $5.5 per barrel for the year. Reporting by Bate Felix; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-total-results/frances-total-third-quarter-net-profit-lifted-by-strong-output-and-cost-savings-idUKKBN1CW0JD'|'2017-10-27T09:05:00.000+03:00'
'1d633b06afbd35a6cc83b5b7336e0f1e12389b06'|'Chevron third-quarter profit soars 52 percent on higher oil, natgas prices'|'October 27, 2017 / 12:42 PM / in 8 hours Chevron profit misses estimates on output decline; shares dip Ernest Scheyder 2 Min Read HOUSTON (Reuters) - Chevron Corp ( CVX.N ) reported a lower-than-expected quarterly profit on Friday as U.S. production slipped, offsetting a rise in oil and natural gas prices. FILE PHOTO: A Chevron gas station sign is shown in Cardiff, California, in this January 25, 2016 photo. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo Shares of the San Ramon, California-based company fell 1.2 percent to $117 in premarket trading. The stock has gained less than 1 percent this year. Net income in the third quarter was $1.95 billion, or $1.03 per share, compared with $1.28 billion, or 68 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, Chevron earned 85 cents per share. By that measure, analysts expected earnings of 98 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Despite the miss, Chevron said its results were moving in the right direction, with spending on large projects being scaled back. <20>We continue to see improvement in the underlying pattern of earnings and cash flow,<2C> said Chief Executive John Watson, who will retire early next year. Chevron<6F>s operations were largely not affected by Hurricane Harvey, which tore through the western U.S. Gulf Coast region in August. Production grew 8 percent to 2.7 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. In the United States, Chevron said its rising Gulf of Mexico and Permian Shale output was offset by natural declines in wells elsewhere. Production increased outside the United States. Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Bernadette Baum '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chevron-results/chevron-third-quarter-profit-soars-52-percent-on-higher-oil-natgas-prices-idUSKBN1CW1PT'|'2017-10-27T15:40:00.000+03:00'
'7537cdc6ade74eeb78b85c7e7d48a6fd62d89b16'|'Australia''s ANZ bank profit rises 18 percent on cost cuts'|'October 25, 2017 / 9:07 PM / Updated 17 minutes ago Cost cuts boost ANZ Bank''s annual profit by 18 percent Paulina Duran 3 Min Read SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia<69>s No. 3 lender Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd ( ANZ.AX ) on Thursday posted an 18 percent jump in annual cash profit, bouncing back from the previous year<61>s slump as it offset soft revenue with cost cuts and improvement in bad debts. FILE PHOTO - The logo of the ANZ Banking Group is displayed in the window of a newly opened branch in central Sydney, Australia, Aprl 30, 2016. REUTERS/David Gray/FIle Photo Cash profit, which excludes various one-off items, was A$6.94 billion (4.03 billion pounds) for the year ended Sept. 30, compared with A$5.89 billion in the prior year. The bank<6E>s statutory net profit rose 12 percent to A$6.41 billion, slightly below the A$6.87 billion average estimate of nine analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The profit report was <20>compositionally a weaker-than-expected result, with soft revenues offset by low bad debts,<2C> Credit Suisse analysts said in a note to clients. <20>Soft revenue is a negative read-through for the sector, but also made worse by ANZ-specific factors,<2C> they added. Operating income fell 1 percent for the year, to A$20.48 billion, while expenses fell 9 percent, ANZ said. In the prior-year period, the bank recorded its weakest profit in five years as a result of A$1.1 billion in restructuring charges and a spike in bad debts. On Thursday, the bank said its final dividend would be flat, at 80 cents per share. <20>For the industry, the first thing people want to focus on at this part of the cycle is revenue growth or the lack thereof,<2C> ANZ Chief Executive Officer Shayne Elliott said in an internal interview published by the ASX. <20>The reality is it is hard out there (and) revenue growth is a little bit harder to come by,<2C> he added. ANZ said last week it sold a stake in Philippines-based Metrobank Card Corporation to Metrobank, and split its wealth management business to sell the pension unit to IOOF Holdings ( IFL.AX ) for A$975 million. Those moves came amid a broader trend of Australian banks quitting non-core and scandal-hit divisions to boost capital. ANZ<4E>s common equity Tier-1 capital ratio at the end of September rose to 10.6 percent from 9.6 percent a year earlier, marginally above the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority<74>s target of at least 10.5 percent. The net interest margin, or the difference between what a bank pays to borrow money and what it charges customers for loans, slipped by eight percentage points, weighed by a new mortgage tax. Additional reporting by Shashwat Pradhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Byron Kaye, G Crosse and James Dalgleish'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-anz-bank-results/australias-anz-bank-profit-rises-18-percent-on-cost-cuts-idUKKBN1CU328'|'2017-10-26T00:06:00.000+03:00'
'90775f03de05ab9ad50aa1ef81f03108c1eb8938'|'Activist investor takes Clariant stake above 20 percent - source'|'October 26, 2017 / 4:20 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago Activist investor takes Clariant stake above 20 percent - source Reuters Staff 1 Min Read ZURICH (Reuters) - Activist investors seeking to block specialty chemical maker Clariant<6E>s ( CLN.S ) $20 billion(<28>15.19 billion) merger with Huntsman Corp ( HUN.N ) have boosted their stake in the Swiss group above 20 percent, triggering an official disclosure filing, a source familiar with the matter said. The logo of Swiss specialty chemicals company Clariant is seen at the company''s headquarters in Pratteln, Switzerland August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann The White Tale consortium has repeatedly declined to respond to Reuters enquiries about its plans. The activists had told a Swiss newspaper this month they had <20>significantly more<72> than 15 percent of Clariant shares and wanted to increase their stake. Reporting by Oliver Hirt, Editing by Michael Shields'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-clariant-huntsman/activist-investor-takes-clariant-stake-above-20-percent-source-idUKKBN1CV2SM'|'2017-10-26T19:19:00.000+03:00'
'df670f5b7e1d9fbd8081b36d79ca6566fd1e57c7'|'RPT-INSIGHT-Fear of Iranian general left Iraqi Kurdish oil fields deserted'|'(Repeats story, no changes to text)* Iraqi engineers struggle to restart oil fields* Talks focus on the return of Kurdish engineers who fled* Exodus due to fears of army, Shi<68>ite militia, Iranian general* Kurdish oil exports plunge* Debt repayment major concern to global trading housesBy Ahmed Rasheed and Dmitry ZhdannikovBAGHDAD/LONDON, Oct 25 (Reuters) - When the Iraqi army and Iranian-backed Shi<68>ite militia entered a key oil processing facility in Iraq<61>s north to retake it from Kurdish Peshmerga forces last week, the installation was deserted and its alarm bells ringing.Engineers and workers on the facility, which processes oil from two major fields in the Kirkuk area of predominantly Sunni Kurdistan, had fled, fearing the military advance.<2E>No one wanted to risk their life and decided to evacuate as stories about the Shi<68>ite militia and Qassem Soleimani were spreading fast,<2C> said a senior Kurdish oil industry source, referring to the head of foreign operations for Iran<61>s elite Revolutionary Guards. The source declined to be identified.Iraqi engineers arrived to the sound of alarm bells warning about system malfunctions, prompting them to immediately shut down wells. Now, they need passwords and expertise from their Kurdish counterparts to restore oil output fully.The loss of control of Kirkuk oil fields is likely to starve the KRG of vital oil revenue and cause deep concern to global trading houses such as Vitol and Glencore, which have granted the semi-autonomous government billions of dollars in loans against future oil sales.Baghdad<61>s lightning military offensive into northern Iraq came after the Kurdistan Regional Government held an independence referendum last month.Major-General Soleimani, one of the most influential military figures in the Middle East, with reach in Syria and Lebanon, issued tough warnings to Kurdish leaders ahead of the Iraqi military advance.<2E>We went inside the oilfield facilities after Kurdish workers fled and we found overalls and safety boots thrown on the ground,<2C> said an engineer from the Baghdad-run North Oil Company, who declined to be named because he was ordered not to speak publicly about the issue.<2E>It seems that workers took them off and escaped very quickly.<2E>RINGING ALARMS NOC crews entered oil facilities in the Bai Hassan and Avana fields on Oct. 17 for the first time since 2014, when Peshmerga forces drove Islamic State from the area and found all crude oil stations unmanned. Peshmerga fighters had also withdrawn.<2E>After we discovered that some of the key equipment was missing and the control panel was ringing alarms of crude processing malfunction, we immediately shut down oil wells,<2C> the NOC engineer said.A week after the operation, Iraqi engineers are still struggling to resume Kirkuk<75>s oil production, saying they had yet to understand how to operate the equipment processing some 350,000 barrels per day.The military offensive more than halved Kurdistan<61>s oil output and cut its exports to global markets via Turkey by two thirds.The drop in exports has deprived the region of more than $200 million in revenues over the past week, a Kurdish oil industry source familiar with loadings told Reuters.It has also dealt a further blow to the region<6F>s finances already stretched by a fight against Islamic State and a budget crisis caused by a fall in oil prices. The United States has called on both sides to resume dialogue, saying the tensions hamper efforts to fight Islamic State.Resuming normal oil production and exports will be challenging and will take at least another week and will only succeed if Iraqi and Kurdish engineers agree to cooperate, according to both sides.On Tuesday, NOC officials asked Kurdish engineering firm Kar Group to send back its workers, according to sources on both sides. Iraqi engineers need guidance on how to operate recently installed equipment at Bai Hassan and Avana, the sources said.The pumping and operational stations for both oil fiel
'676d9ddeb22bd04cfa0bafaadbbbdbd9392d05bc'|'Subaru would consider investment in Toyota-Mazda EV firm if asked: CEO'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - Subaru Corp ( 7270.T ) Chief Executive Yasuyuki Yoshinaga said on Wednesday his company would <20>consider positively<6C> investing in a Toyota-Mazda electric vehicle company if it were approached.Subaru Corp''s President and CEO Yasuyuki Yoshinaga presents during a media preview of the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai Last month, Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ) and Mazda Motor Corp ( 7261.T ) announced a new venture to develop electric vehicle technology, seeking to catch up with rivals in a race to produce more battery-powered cars.Subaru, which formed a capital alliance with Toyota in 2006, is sending several engineers to the new venture, the company said.Yoshinaga was speaking to reporters at the Tokyo Motor Show.Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Writing by Chris Gallagher; Editing by Christopher Cushing '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-autoshow-tokyo-subaru/subaru-would-consider-investment-in-toyota-mazda-ev-firm-if-asked-ceo-idINKBN1CU07M'|'2017-10-25T01:25:00.000+03:00'
'a7b14ce743049c89993bdd2c6a6b90d0762ab270'|'State-run GIC Re falls on market debut after $1.72 billion IPO'|'REUTERS - State-run General Insurance Corp of India (GIC Re) slumped as much as 14.5 percent on market debut on Wednesday after raising 111.76 billion rupees ($1.72 billion) in the country<72>s biggest initial public offering in seven years.A broker reacts while trading at his computer terminal at a stock brokerage firm in Mumbai, India, February 26, 2016. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade/Files Concerns about valuations have marred the debuts for some of recent insurance IPOs in India, including ICICI Lombard General Insurance, which fell on its first day of trading last month.GIC Re was fairly priced relative to its domestic rivals but was more expensive than global peers, analysts said.The country<72>s top reinsurer was priced at a price-to-book value of 1.5 to 1.6 times, more than Swiss Re and Munich Re, according to financial firm Sushil Finance. Swiss Re and Munich Re were trading at around 0.9 times, Thomson Reuters data showed.<2E>A good rally would have been if it were priced at 1.2 times its book value. As per our valuations, the issue price was already expensive by about 30 percent,<2C> said Vatsal Shah, head of wealth management at Sushil Finance.GIC Re was trading at 801 rupees at 0759 GMT, down about 12 percent from its IPO issue price of 912 rupees. It fell as low as 780 rupees in early trade.The falls came even as indexes hit record highs, buoyed by the government<6E>s $32 billion state bank recapitalisation plan.Still, analysts say the outlook for India<69>s insurance sector remains attractive given that it remains relatively under-penetrated compared to other countries, and would likely benefit from rising income levels.Crisil estimates reinsurance premiums in India will rise at an average annual rate of 11-14 percent over the next five years to reach 700 billion rupees by March 2022.GIC Re<52>s IPO was fully subscribed on the last day of the offer, with the Indian government, which fully owned the reinsurer before the IPO, raising 96.34 billion rupees by selling some of its shares.($1 = 65.1400 Indian rupees)Reporting by Samantha Kareen Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/gen-insurance-india-listing/state-run-gic-re-falls-on-market-debut-after-1-72-billion-ipo-idINKBN1CU0Y7'|'2017-10-25T11:44:00.000+03:00'
'0556ab392b72b40b0755964c2336b7ec262b320a'|'Refresco agrees to 1.6 billion euro take-over offer from PAI'|'AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Refresco ( RFRG.AS ) has agreed to a 1.6 billion euro ($1.9 billion) offer from a consortium led by French private equity firm PAI Partners, which would delist the Dutch bottling company less than three years after its flotation.Having in April rejected a lower bid from PAI, Refresco on Wednesday said the firm<72>s latest offer represented a fair price. It had already said earlier this month it would take the offer into consideration.PAI and partner British Columbia Investment Management Corp aim to buy all 81.2 million Refresco shares at 20 euros each, ending the short-lived listing on the Amsterdam stock exchange.Private equity firms have typically preferred to target unlisted firms in part to avoid disclosure rules demanded in bids for listed stocks. But high valuations have prompted more private equity buyers to chase listed firms seen as undervalued.<2E>The ownership structure has never been a goal in itself,<2C> CEO Hans Roelofs told reporters. <20>We were able to flourish in the public domain, but that also led to others knocking at our door with a higher valuation than the market offered.<2E>Roelofs said the new investors supported the company<6E>s <20>buy and build<6C> strategy of expanding through acquisitions, and that the takeover would have no impact on its employees. <20>PAI is willing to accelerate our growth, which is music to our ears.<2E>The bid already has the support of shareholders representing 26.5 percent of Refresco shares and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2018. Refresco shares were up 2.4 percent at 19.76 euros by 0910 GMT.SHARE ISSUE UNNECESSARY After rejecting PAI<41>s initial offer, Refresco reached agreement in July to buy the bottling activities of Canada-based Cott Corp ( BCB.TO ) for $1.25 billion.At the time Roelofs said the purchase was intended to boost its U.S. presence and was not a defensive move to ward off a private equity takeover.The company had planned to issue 200 million euros worth of new shares to finance the deal, which won<6F>t be necessary when the deal with PAI goes through.Private equity<74>s typically relatively short horizon on investments could lead to a comeback of Refresco on the stock market within a few years, Roelofs said. <20>PAI has a good plan to take us to the next level. But we have to be honest, of course they will then think about an exit.<2E>Refresco was founded in 1999 and floated in March 2015 by its owners including private equity firm 3i at 14.50 euros per share. It makes and bottles fruit juices and soft drinks for retailers and brands in Europe and the United States.The company employs 5,500 people and has production sites in the Benelux countries, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Britain and the United States. In 2016, it reported a net profit of 81.5 million euros on revenue of 2.1 billion.Reporting by Bart Meijer '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-refresco-deal/refresco-agrees-to-1-6-billion-euro-take-over-offer-from-pai-idINKBN1CU0HA'|'2017-10-25T04:00:00.000+03:00'
'21be95ee57f3ae7b6989fdbb588ce4c697a97976'|'UPDATE 3-Repricing boosts yields on Illinois'' $4.5 bln of bonds'|'(Adds overall borrowing cost, upcoming bond sale)By Karen PierogCHICAGO, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Illinois completed a big debt issuance on Wednesday to pay off overdue bills, selling $4.5 billion of bonds to investors who demanded hefty yields from the lowest-rated U.S. state.After an initial pricing, a team of underwriters repriced the tax-exempt general obligation bonds, boosting yields by 3 to 15 basis points, according to a pricing scale seen by Reuters. The top yield rose to 3.77 percent for bonds due in 2028 with a 5 percent coupon from a preliminary 3.74 percent. For bonds due in 2020, the yield climbed by 15 basis points to 2.53 percent.The deal was the second part of a $6 billion debt issuance by the nation<6F>s fifth-largest state to raise money to help pay off a huge pile of overdue bills accruing late payment penalties of as much as 12 percent annually. Last week, Illinois sold $1.5 billion of bonds in competitive bidding with mixed results.The state locked in a combined borrowing cost of 3.5 percent for the $6 billion of bonds, according to Governor Bruce Rauner<65>s office.The $4.5 billion of bonds were offered at aggressively low yields before they were repriced, said Nicholos Venditti, a portfolio manager at Thornburg Investment Management, who did not participate in the deal.<2E>I think for Illinois this is still incredibly cheap money,<2C> he said, adding that the bonds should have fetched even fatter yields given the state<74>s ongoing financial problems. An impasse between the Republican governor and Democrats who control the legislature left Illinois without complete budgets for an unprecedented two fiscal years and caused the bill backlog to balloon to record levels. As of Tuesday, it totaled $16.5 billion.In July, the legislature enacted a fiscal 2018 budget that included the bond authorization, as well as an income tax hike, over Rauner<65>s vetoes.Wednesday<61>s sale of bonds due in 2020 through 2028 widened Illinois<69> so-called credit spread over Municipal Market Data<74>s benchmark triple-A yield scale for shorter-term debt and narrowed the spread for longer-term bonds, according to MMD. For bonds due in 2028, the spread eased to 164 basis points over the scale from 170 basis points.Illinois<69> bonds were rated one notch above junk at Baa3 and BBB-minus by Moody<64>s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings, and two notches above junk at BBB by Fitch Ratings.The state will be back in the municipal market by year-end with $750 million of GO bonds. (Reporting by Karen Pierog; Editing by David Gregorio and Matthew Lewis) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/illinois-bonds/update-2-repricing-boosts-yields-on-illinois-4-5-bln-of-bonds-idINL2N1N00YT'|'2017-10-25T18:06:00.000+03:00'
'4c6172c35703d4dce8b243b914163ab2e94a389a'|'London comes to Macau as Las Vegas Sands revamps casino resort'|'UK aims for transition outline by early 2018 Special Report Reuters Investigates - The Body Trade Reuters buys human remains, and learns a donor''s tragic story UK retailers cut jobs at fastest rate since 2008 Reuters TV United States October 26, 2017 / 3:01 AM / a few seconds ago London comes to Macau as Las Vegas Sands revamps casino resort Farah Master 3 Min Read HONG KONG (Reuters) - Las Vegas Sands, the casino behemoth owned by U.S. billionaire Sheldon Adelson, said on Wednesday it plans to spend $1.1 billion on new projects in the world<6C>s largest gambling hub, including building a London-themed attraction. FILE PHOTO: The Sands Cotai Central logo is seen in front of its hotel in Macau September 20, 2012. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu Sands, which owns five properties in the Chinese territory of Macau via its subsidiary Sands China, said it would renovate and rebrand Sands Cotai Central as The Londoner Macao by 2020. Sands Cotai Central has been one of the company<6E>s weakest properties, analysts said, due to its lack of character and tourist appeal when compared with Sands<64> gondola-filled Venetian or its Parisian property that features a replica Eiffel Tower. The timing of the Cotai renovation comes as operators in the former Portuguese colony of Macau such as MGM Resorts and SJM Holdings race to finish their planned resorts before casino licenses start to expire in 2020. Authorities have been pushing Macau<61>s casino operators to diversify away from gambling because of their dependence on the industry which accounts for over 80 percent of government revenues. Sands, which completed the Parisian in 2016, has now turned to revamping existing properties to further boost its appeal. The company said it would add new suites and rooms to its St Regis and Four Seasons properties and renovate VIP areas at the Venetian and Plaza Macau. Sands, which reported earnings in line with analyst expectations on Wednesday, said net revenue for the third quarter was $3.2 billion. Adelson, the first mover into Macau<61>s Cotai strip - once a dusty stretch of reclaimed land which now teems with glitz and cavernous gambling halls - said the market in Macau was continuing to recover. <20>While we have invested over $13 billion in Macao since 2002... we see tremendous future opportunity in the Macao market as it continues to grow and evolve,<2C> he said in a statement. Analysts were mostly positive on the announcement although cautioned the renovations would bring some disruption over the next two years. <20>In the long run should be value additive to the company. However dividend growth may be limited over next few years as FCF (free cash flow)is redirected to capital expenditure,<2C> said Vitaly Umansky, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in Hong Kong. Reporting by Farah Master'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-macau-sands/london-comes-to-macau-as-las-vegas-sands-revamps-casino-resort-idUKKBN1CV07W'|'2017-10-26T05:54:00.000+03:00'
'4a90c94a1eaa4953834567f7b1b27008a337ff8e'|'Indian banks, shares surge on govt''s $32.4 bln recapitalisation plan'|'October 25, 2017 / 4:04 AM / in 6 hours Indian banks, shares surge on govt''s $32.4 bln recapitalisation plan Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MUMBAI, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Indian banking shares soared on Wednesday, sending indexes to record highs after the cabinet approved a $32.43 billion plan to recapitalise its state banks over the next two years, although bonds fell given the injection will be funded with debt. State Bank of India, the biggest lender, rose more than 20 percent, while Punjab National Bank, the second biggest state-run lender, surged more than 33 percent. The benchmark NSE index rose as much as 1.3 percent to a record high of 10,340.55, while the BSE index climbed as much as 1.6 percent to a record high of 33,117.33. Bonds fell, with the benchmark 10-year bond yield up 3 basis points to 6.81 percent from its previous close. $1 = 65.0800 Indian rupees Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Richard Borsuk '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/india-economy-banks/indian-banks-shares-surge-on-govts-32-4-bln-recapitalisation-plan-idUSL4N1N01Y0'|'2017-10-25T07:03:00.000+03:00'
'33c7692e9c08903f393cbe02aebc585f25b2fac0'|'Skybox Security raises $150 mln in funding led by CVC'|'JERUSALEM, Oct 25 (Reuters) - U.S.-Israeli cybersecurity management firm Skybox Security said on Wednesday it signed an agreement to receive a $150 million investment led by CVC Capital Partners<72> Growth Fund.CVC will invest $100 million in Skybox, while private equity firm Pantheon will add another $50 million.The funding round will go towards accelerating investment in sales and marketing, customer care and research and development. It will also be used for potential mergers and acquisitions, to capitalize on a $10 billion market opportunity in cybersecurity management, Skybox said.Skybox builds cybersecurity management software, which uses analytics to prioritize an organization<6F>s risk exposures and recommend action to address those exposures.The company said it has a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46 percent and positive cash flow between 2014 and 2016.In the first half of 2017, Skybox posted a 62 percent increase in sales, it said. (Reporting by Steven Scheer) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/cyber-skybox-fundraising/skybox-security-raises-150-mln-in-funding-led-by-cvc-idINL8N1N05KY'|'2017-10-25T11:11:00.000+03:00'
'4b056b7b1a7c9d104b60b74451a72e5fdd66fe89'|'With new technology, Mazda gives spark to gasoline engine'|'October 24, 2017 / 11:20 PM / Updated 31 minutes ago With new technology, Mazda gives spark to gasoline engine Naomi Tajitsu , Norihiko Shirouzu 6 Min Read HIROSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) - In the high-stakes, high-cost battle among global automakers to develop ever more efficient vehicles, one of the biggest breakthroughs in internal combustion engine technology in years looks to be coming from one of the industry<72>s smaller players. A model of Mazda Motor''s newly developed SKYACTIV-X engine is seen at the company''s proving ground in Mine, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Naomi Tajitsu Japan<61>s Mazda Motor Corp ( 7261.T ) has zoomed past its larger global rivals to develop an engine which ignites gasoline using combustion ignition technology, a fuel-saving process considered something of a holy grail of efficient gasoline engines. As global emissions regulations get tougher, not only could Mazda<64>s technology prolong the life of internal combustion engines, it could also improve <20>greener<65> engines as they can be used to produce more efficient gasoline hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles. Mazda will showcase the Skyactiv-X technology at the Tokyo Motor Show this week. When it launches the engine in 2019, the automaker says it will deliver as much as 30 percent fuel efficiency over its Skyactiv-G engine, already one of the most fuel efficient gasoline engines on the market. <20>Our resources are limited, so unlike bigger automakers, we don<6F>t have the array of options in which to invest our R&D funds,<2C> said Mitsuo Hitomi, managing executive officer at Mazda who oversees engine development. <20>That<61>s why we<77>re betting on this technology ... We were determined that no matter what, we would develop this engine,<2C> Hitomi told Reuters in an interview at the company<6E>s headquarters in Hiroshima. Churning out around 1.6 million in annual vehicle sales, Mazda accounts for only a sliver of global car sales, and its R&D budget is roughly a tenth that of automaking giant Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ). Many automakers with big spending budgets have invested heavily in developing a host of new powertrain technologies, including gasoline hybrids, battery electric cars and fuel cell vehicles, as fuel efficient alternatives to gasoline and diesel vehicles. But Mazda believes fuel-sipping engines are a better way to reduce carbon emissions than cars powered by fossil fuel-generated electricity, focusing on the Skyactiv-G high-compression gasoline engine, and its diesel cousin, the Skyactiv-D. Its latest technology is a variant of homogeneous charge combustion ignition (HCCI) technology, which marries the clean-burning qualities of gasoline engines and the fuel economy and grunt of diesel engines to produce an efficient, powerful engine. PRECISE TIMING REQUIRED Mazda<64>s engineering team began developing the engine around the time it completed developing its Skyactiv-G engine, which came out in 2011. From the start, solving the multiple variables required to balance performance with successful compression ignition was a challenge so complex and frustrating that there were <20>countless times<65> the team wanted to throw in the towel, Hitomi said. Engineers at General Motors ( GM.N ), Honda Motor Co ( 7267.T ) and other automakers have also pondered how to develop a cost-effective way to control the HCCI process, which requires precise timing inside the engine chamber to achieve efficient ignition. Mazda Motor President Masamichi Kogai poses with a model of its newly developed SKYACTIV-X engine at the company''s proving ground in Mine, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Naomi Tajitsu Hitomi and his team came up with a relatively simple solution <20> to facilitate sparkless ignition, use a spark plug to light a high-pressure <20>fireball<6C> inside the chamber to compress the super-lean mix of fuel and air. The process is controlled by precisely monitoring each movement in the combustion chamber, enabling visibility of when the in
'63929d877fbecbefcfebc587a615a39419db4d4b'|'Apple acquires New Zealand wireless charging company'|'SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Apple, which recently said it was including wireless charging in its latest iPhone X and iPhone 8 smartphones, has acquired New Zealand firm PowerbyProxi that designs wireless power products for consumers and industry.A broken iPhone is seen in this illustration picture, October 21, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel An Apple spokesman confirmed the acquisition, which was earlier reported in New Zealand media. Both companies declined to provide details of the purchase.Wireless charging allows users to recharge devices by placing them on a pad or other surface rather than inserting them in a cradle or attaching a cable.Apple has been slow to adopt the technology, lagging behind its biggest rival Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and other mobile phone companies that have offered wireless charging in some of their devices for several years.Apple joined the industry body that develops the Qi wireless charging standard, the Wireless Power Consortium, in February. The iPhone 8 and X both support the standard.Apple<6C>s interest in PowerbyProxi may be driven by the latter<65>s other products, some of which can support transferring up to 150 watts through any non-metallic material, for wirelessly charging industrial machinery and medical equipment, said Jake Saunders, Asia Pacific vice president of ABI Research.This could allow Apple to offer much larger pads that could quickly charge multiple consumer devices, including laptops and even electric scooters, he added.For consumers, charging a single device on one pad may not be that appealing, <20>but when you get into multiple device charging it starts to get attractive<76>, Saunders said.Apple recently announced its own AirPower accessory which it said would simultaneously charge up to three devices, including new versions of the Apple Watch, iPhone and AirPod charging case.PowerbyProxi was founded in 2007 as a spin-out of the University of Auckland. Samsung Ventures, global investment arm of Samsung Group, invested $4 million in the company in 2013.PowerbyProxi will continue its <20>growth in Auckland and contribute to the great innovation in wireless charging coming out of New Zealand<6E>, its founder and CEO, Fady Mishriki, said in a statement.Reporting By Jeremy Wagstaff; Editing by Himani Sarkar '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-apple-wirelesscharging/apple-acquires-new-zealand-wireless-charging-company-idINKBN1CU0X7'|'2017-10-25T06:41:00.000+03:00'
'17ffc8381c0573f61da45316e4ed736ddc5467e9'|'Oil and gas producer Hess posts bigger quarterly loss'|'October 25, 2017 / 11:44 AM / in 4 minutes Hess shares fall after fourth-quarter forecast slashed Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Reuters) - U.S. oil and gas producer Hess Corp ( HES.N ) cut its fourth-quarter production forecast on Wednesday after reporting lower-than-expected output in its largest area of operations, sending its shares down more than 5 percent. The weak results and guidance comes as Hess tries to refocus its operations on the United States and Guyana after selling its workhorse North Sea and Equatorial Guinea operations earlier this week, sales that shrink the company<6E>s portfolio. Executives vowed on a Wednesday conference call with investors to use most of the $2.65 billion from the asset sales to invest in Guyana, where Hess has partnered with Exxon Mobil Corp ( XOM.N ) to develop deposits estimated to contain more than 500 million barrels. The Guyana expansion <20>positions our company for a decade plus of visible reserve and production growth with outstanding returns,<2C> Chief Executive John Hess told investors. Still, Hess is dependent on Exxon to decide how and when to tap that offshore acreage, a position that limits the company<6E>s growth prospects in the near term. That uncertainty is also preventing a dividend increase or more share buybacks, executives said. Shares of the New-York based company fell 5.7 percent in afternoon trading to $41.54 per share. The company cut its fourth-quarter production forecast by 6 percent. In North Dakota, the company<6E>s largest area of operations, oil production in the third quarter missed forecasts due to inclement weather. Both disappointed Wall Street analysts. The company also reported a quarterly loss that nearly doubled due to changes in tax accounting. Hess had said in September that the downtime due to fall hurricanes caused the loss of production of several thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) in the quarter. On Wednesday, the company said production in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico dipped 3.3 percent to 59,000 boepd during the quarter. Total quarterly production, excluding Libya, fell 4.8 percent in the third quarter. Total revenue rose to $1.67 billion in the third quarter due to a 13.3 percent jump in average realized selling prices of crude oil. However, net loss attributable to Hess was $624 million, or $2.02 per share, in the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with a loss of $339 million, or $1.12 per share, a year earlier. Hess said third-quarter results included an impairment charge of $2.5 billion related to how it accounts for taxes. Reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru and Ernest Scheyder in Houston; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli and Cynthia Osterman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hess-results/oil-and-gas-producer-hess-posts-bigger-quarterly-loss-idUSKBN1CU1L3'|'2017-10-25T14:38:00.000+03:00'
'4819e6c0f991238fe34f9ac0e2614c50510b9524'|'Kering shares touch record highs after luxury group posts higher Q3 sales'|'PARIS (Reuters) - Shares in luxury goods group Kering surged to touch record highs on Wednesday after Kering beat sales forecasts in the third quarter.FILE PHOTO: The logo of Kering is seen during the company''s 2015 annual results presentation in Paris, France, February 19, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo Kering shares were up 6 percent to 384.45 euros in early session trading, with the stock at one point touching a record high of 390 euros. Kering shares have risen some 80 percent since the start of 2017, among the top performers in France and Europe.Shares in rival luxury group LVMH climbed by around 1 percent to also touch a record high.Kering<6E>s revenue reached 3.9 billion euros ($4.6 billion) in the third quarter, up 23.3 percent on a non-organic basis, as the company<6E>s Gucci brand showed strong growth during the quarter.JP Morgan analysts raised their price target on Kering shares to 400 euros from 370 euros, while keeping an <20>overweight<68> rating on Kering.<2E>Gucci posted impressive 49 percent organic sales growth in Q3,<2C> JP Morgan<61>s analysts wrote in a research note.($1 = 0.8499 euros)Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Leigh Thomas '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/kering-results-stocks/kering-shares-touch-record-highs-after-luxury-group-posts-higher-q3-sales-idINKBN1CU166'|'2017-10-25T07:45:00.000+03:00'
'5e7f19658e9b275372e8aa598fd6d7140d8843f0'|'Public-relations woes may be catching up with Uber'|'UBER has had a tough year. It has fired staff on the back of sexual-harassment allegations and faced reports of a hostile workplace culture. It has been sued for allegedly stealing self-driving-car technology. It lost customers when it flouted a New York taxi boycott in protest of President Donald Trump<6D>s travel ban. And, amid all the turmoil, its boss resigned. But despite all this, the company continued to win more and more customers, including business travellers.Now, however, there are signs that the tide may be turning. Certify, an expense-management software company, has released its latest quarterly report on business-travel spending in America. And for the first time since it started collecting data in 2013, Uber has seen a decline in use among business travellers. Uber and other ride-hailing apps still dominate the business-travel market for ground transport, accounting for around two-thirds of it. And they are growing at the expense of traditional services. The market share of taxis and rental cars declined by one percentage point to 7% and 28%, respectively, in the third quarter of the year.But even as ride-hailing continued to grow, Uber saw its share inch down, from 55% to 54% in the latest quarter. By contrast, the market share of Lyft, a competitor, jumped three percentage points to 11%.Uber<65>s position in the market may seem enviable, but it reveals risks in the company<6E>s strategy. Uber has made consistent losses, with the aim of capturing a huge market share and then being able to raise prices. But that will only work if it remains the most-dominant player in the ride-hailing world and keeps rivals at bay.Other data from the Certify report show the value of dominating a market. The most popular spot for travellers to expense both lunch and dinner in America, for instance, is McDonald<6C>s. Though it is hardly anyone<6E>s idea of a hearty business meal, its ubiquity bolsters its popularity.But even McDonald<6C>s cannot raise prices without losing business. That is because it has so many competitors snapping at its heels. Uber hoped to transcend this issue by capturing a vast market share. But if the latest report is a sign of a real trend, Uber<65>s dominance may be waning.Next Hotels are employing fewer concierges'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/10/starting-stall?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-24T15:08:00.000+03:00'
'3bf6f00d7cb5b40f0f918684e2cf6edca8402ee4'|'Irish banks lay out timetables to compensate mortgage customers'|'October 25, 2017 / 4:03 PM / in 10 minutes Ireland lays out potential penalties for bank overcharging Padraic Halpin 4 Min Read DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland<6E>s finance minister laid out a range of penalties the government could slap on the country<72>s banks if they do not meet targets agreed on Wednesday to compensate thousands of mortgage customers who they overcharged. FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: Irish Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe speaks during an interview with Reuters at the Ministry of Finance in Dublin, Ireland September 22, 2016. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne/File Photo A Central Bank investigation that began in 2015 found that 20,000 borrowers were likely to have been affected and that they should have been given the option of a cheaper mortgage. The scandal has risen to the top of the political agenda after a number of customers gave evidence in parliament of the problems it caused them. The government had already threatened to penalise the banks last week. Paschal Donohoe said these actions could include an increase in its annual bank levy, amending tax law, introducing stricter reporting or shareholder activist actions if insufficient progress on compensating customers was made by an initial deadline of mid-December. <20>I hope not to have to pursue these options but if the central bank cannot indicate that the issues are resolved, these are actions that I will take,<2C> Donohoe told a news conference, adding that further work was needed by the banks to see if more customers were affected. Donohoe also mandated the country<72>s central bank to prepare a report on current bank culture and behaviour. The Central Bank said it shared the government<6E>s view that <20>significant and deep-rooted cultural issues<65> still existed in some banks. FILE PHOTO: Irish Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe speaks during an interview with Reuters at the Ministry of Finance in Dublin, Ireland September 22, 2016. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne/File Photo Donohoe said he would not consider amending laws limiting pay in the sector until the issue was dealt with. These were introduced during a banking crisis a decade ago that required the largest state rescue in the euro zone. The five main retail banks - majority state-owned Allied Irish Banks ( ALBK.I ) and permanent tsb ( IL0A.I ), part state-owned Bank of Ireland ( BIRG.I ) and KBC Bank Ireland ( KBC.BR ) and RBS<42> Ulster Bank ( RBS.L ), laid out varying timetables on Wednesday detailing compensation plans at the behest of the government. The central bank investigation has identified customers who should have been given the option of a cheaper <20>tracker<65> mortgage or kept on a better rate years ago. It ordered lenders to repay the difference and offer compensation. Another 7,000 tracker mortgage customers received redress and compensation separately before the central bank stepped in and widened the probe throughout the sector. Tracker mortgages, which follow the European Central Bank rate, were sold in Ireland prior to the financial crisis and have proven significantly cheaper than variable or fixed rate mortgages as ECB rates have long been at record lows. This meant some customers were left paying hundreds of euros extra a month at the height of Ireland<6E>s financial crisis and one borrower told lawmakers earlier this month that he suffered a stroke and his wife had a nervous breakdown as a result. Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Susan Fenton and Jane Merriman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ireland-banks/irish-banks-lay-out-timetables-to-compensate-mortgage-customers-idUKKBN1CU2E8'|'2017-10-25T19:02:00.000+03:00'
'dfb50dc53dbbe508059f78333b804a05d0917b89'|'Sovereign wealth funds eye disruptive technologies, more co-investments'|'Reuters TV United States  34 AM / a minute ago Sovereign wealth funds eye disruptive technologies, more co-investments Reuters Staff 2 Min Read RIYADH (Reuters) - Sovereign wealth funds holding hundreds of billions of dollars are increasingly investing in private companies that disrupt businesses and doing more co-investments to generate better returns, Middle Eastern and Asian funds said on Wednesday. Jeffrey Jaensubhakij, Chief Investment Officer of GIC, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, CEO of Mubadala, Khalid Al-Rumaihi, CEO of Economic Development Board and Chairman of Mumtalakat Investment Committee, Kirill Dmitriev, Chief Executive Officer of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, and Yasir al-Rumayyan, Chief Executive and Managing Director of Saudi Arabia<69>s Public Investment Fund, attend the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed <20>Our view is that the market cap indices tend to focus on what have been winners of the past,<2C> said Jeffrey Jaensubhakij, group chief investment officer of Singapore<72>s GIC Ltd. <20>If there are disruptions that are creating winners of the future they won<6F>t be in the indices,<2C> he said on the sidelines of an investment conference in the Saudi capital. GIC has in recent years stepped up investments directly in unlisted firms as low yields spur fund managers to adopt a more hands-on attitude in their search for higher returns. Speaking on a panel attended by Gulf and Russian sovereign funds, Jaensubhakij said in the past sovereign wealth funds used to operate like endowment funds, focusing on the right allocation between equities, fixed income and other assets. This worked <20>wonderfully well<6C> during the 1980s and 1990s when global interest rates were higher, but has changed in recent years as interest rates dropped and equity valuations went up, he said. <20>For us it is very important to have an eye out on what is being disrupted,<2C> Jeffrey Jaensubhakij said. Khaldoon Al Mubarak, chief executive of Abu Dhabi state investor Mubadala said technology was an area where sovereign wealth funds have also been co-investing in, citing investments in Softbank ( 9984.T ). He said it teamed up in Russia with the Russian Direct Investment Fund for projects. Mubadala agreed this year to co-invest in Softbank<6E>s $100 billion technology fund, alongside the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia<69>s sovereign fund. Reporting by Saeed Azhar and Hadeel Al Sayegh; Editing by Edmund Blair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-economy-swf/sovereign-wealth-funds-eye-disruptive-technologies-more-co-investments-idUKKBN1CU1B2'|'2017-10-25T13:28:00.000+03:00'
'b7148987009a439e789ba34e7f0a0e1992bdf617'|'US regional banks look to Fed to book further gains'|'Oct 25 (Reuters) - Higher interest rates and a tight lid on costs helped U.S. regional banks report profits above Wall Street expectations in the third quarter, but lack of further rate increases from the Federal Reserve could limit gains.Three large regional banks - Dallas-based Comerica Inc , Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks Inc, and Cleveland-based KeyCorp - together earned $2.93 billion in net interest income in the July-September period, an increase of 15 percent from a year earlier.Wall Street analysts had reckoned that these banks would earn $2.95 billion among them, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Third-quarter net interest margins, the difference between interest paid and earned, and a key indicator of profitability, increased by 6 basis points on average across most banks, from the second quarter, according to Instinet.Net interest margins have benefited from the three interest rate increases since the second quarter of last year.The Fed is expected to raise rates again in December. The odds of a December move stand at 96.7 percent, compared with 87.8 percent a week ago, according to CME Group<75>s FedWatch tool.If there is no rate hike in December, it will have <20>some negative impact<63> on margin outlook for 2018, D.A. Davidson analyst Gary Tenner said.But higher interest rates cut both ways: boosting profits even as they push up borrowing costs, capping loan growth.KeyCorp on Thursday cut its fourth-quarter loan-growth forecast to the lower-end of its previously given range of $87 billion to $88 billion range. PNC Financial Services Group Inc said on Oct 13 it expects modest loan growth in the current quarter, compared with the third quarter when it reported a 1 percent growth.<2E>Banks have been operating in a slow growth/low interest rate environment for a long time and have spent time bringing down expenses. Control what you can control has been the message,<2C> Stephens analyst Terry McEvoy said.<2E>I think that will continue to be the case if we don<6F>t get more rate hikes.<2E>SunTrust said on Friday that third-quarter non-interest expenses, which include most operating and overhead costs, declined 1.3 percent to $1.39 billion. Comerica<63>s non-interest expense fell 6.1 percent in the same period, the company said on Oct 17.Several of the regional banks raised provisions for loan losses mainly to deal with possible bad loans coming after hurricanes Harvey and Irma.Pittsburg-based PNC saw a $32 million rise in provisions, out of which $10 million were related to hurricanes. SunTrust, which has more than 400 branches in Florida, reported a $23 million rise in provisions.Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp on Oct. 18 said it raised provisions for loan losses by 11 percent.Reporting By Aparajita Saxena and Roopal Verma in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Nikhil Subba; Writing by Sweta Singh; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-banks-results/us-regional-banks-look-to-fed-to-book-further-gains-idINL4N1MY4V1'|'2017-10-25T16:36:00.000+03:00'
'da383ea4a22cd2fc750373e6ad59baa365080c7f'|'Lufthansa sees Air Berlin deal lifting results in 2019'|'October 25, 2017 / 8:22 AM / in 13 minutes Lufthansa sees Air Berlin deal lifting results in 2019 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) expects to see a positive impact on its results in 2019 from a deal to take over large parts of insolvent rival Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ), after work next year to integrate the operations, managers said on Wednesday. FILE PHOTO - A Lufthansa airliner parks next to the Air Berlin aircraft at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke Lufthansa is investing 1.5 billion euros (<28>1.37 billion) in total in the project, which will see it take on 81 additional aircraft and grow its Eurowings budget brand. <20>It will be a major operating challenge for Eurowings,<2C> Chief Executive Carsten Spohr said. Air Berlin will cease operations on Friday, and Spohr said that Lufthansa hoped to fly around three quarters of Air Berlin<69>s passengers over the coming months. Lufthansa has announced plans to temporarily use wide-body planes on some short-haul routes to meet the additional demand created by Air Berlin<69>s collapse. Finance chief Ulrik Svensson said he expected project costs of around 50 million euros next year for items such as repainting planes and re-training staff. Reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Maria Sheahan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lufthansa-results-air-berlin/lufthansa-sees-air-berlin-deal-lifting-results-in-2019-idUKKBN1CU0V5'|'2017-10-25T11:21:00.000+03:00'
'cfb07e0d0b6825ffe3707c82029019c2d7e9335a'|'Euphoric German businesses brush off Brexit, coalition blues'|'October 25, 2017 / 9:29 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago Euphoric German businesses brush off Brexit, coalition blues Joseph Nasr 3 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - A euphoric mood among German constructors and manufacturers drove business confidence to an all-time high in October, a survey showed, reflecting optimism that an upswing in Europe<70>s largest economy has further to run. FILE PHOTO - People walk through the Mall of Berlin shopping centre during its opening night in Berlin, September 24, 2014. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File photo The Munich-based Ifo economic institute said on Wednesday its business climate index, based on a monthly survey of some 7,000 firms, rose to 116.7 from an upwardly revised 115.3 in September. Ifo said a continuing recovery in the euro zone was helping German exporters feel more positive. This was especially true for capital goods manufacturers and mechanical engineering firms. <20>Companies are very optimistic about the months ahead. They also upwardly revised their very favourable assessments of the current business situation,<2C> Ifo chief Clemens Fuest said in a statement. <20>Germany<6E>s economy is powering ahead.<2E> Ifo economist Klaus Wohlrabe said the economy was unfazed by complex coalition talks that Chancellor Angela Merkel has embarked on with two other parties after her conservative bloc lost ground in a national election last month. The record high reading, which came after two consecutive monthly falls, beat a Reuters consensus forecast of 115.2. Wohlrabe added that companies also appeared to be taking in their stride Britain<69>s scheduled departure from the European Union, a standoff between the Spanish government and the region of Catalonia and U.S. tax reforms. <20>ECB DRIVING GROWTH<54> If the Ifo indicator rose again in November, a change in the growth forecast for Europe<70>s largest economy could be needed, Wohlrabe said. Leading German economic institutes this year raised its 2017 forecast to 1.9 percent, from 1.5 percent previously. A survey published by His Markit this week showed Germany<6E>s private sector posted the highest increase in new orders in 6-1/2 years in October. Record-high employment, rising real wages and ultra-low borrowing costs are driving a consumer-led upswing that helped Merkel win a fourth term in office on Sept. 24. Commerzbank chief economist Joerg Kraemer said the positive cycle in Germany should continue thanks to the ultra-low interest rate environment created by the European Central Bank. <20>We are not in a normal economic cycle,<2C> he wrote in a note to clients. <20>There are no disruptions (expected) as the monetary policy of the ECB, which is too loose for Germany, will push the economy forward for another couple of years.<2E> Additional reporting by Joern Poltz and Michelle Martin; editing by John Stonestreet'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-economy-ifo/euphoric-german-businesses-brush-off-brexit-coalition-blues-idUKKBN1CU14D'|'2017-10-25T12:28:00.000+03:00'
'da38660d37fea15c6e27e2cfaf2ec28857f11d65'|'M&S clothing & beauty director Jenkins to head White Stuff'|'October 25, 2017 / 8:20 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago M&S clothing & beauty director Jenkins to head White Stuff Reuters Staff 1   Marks & Spencer<65>s ( MKS.L ) director of clothing and beauty Jo Jenkins has resigned to join private clothing chain White Stuff as chief executive, the British retailer said on Wednesday. FILE PHOTO: A man leaves a Marks & Spencer store in London, Britain in this January 7, 2016 file photo. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo A Marks & Spencer spokesman said the company was delighted for Jenkins, whose talent was reflected in the progress she had made both professionally and for the business. <20>Becoming CEO at a company like White Stuff is a natural next step for her,<2C> he said. Reporting by Paul Sandle and James Davey; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-m-s-director/ms-clothing-beauty-director-jenkins-to-head-white-stuff-idUKKBN1CU0V2'|'2017-10-25T11:19:00.000+03:00'
'2343d625bc2114403d17b7b158209a8732c91bf3'|'Chinese tourists drive rise in 2017 European tax free shopping'|'October 25, 2017 / 10:56 AM / in 8 minutes Chinese tourists drive rise in 2017 European tax free shopping Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MILAN (Reuters) - Chinese tourists helped drive an 11 percent rise in tax-free shopping in Europe during the first nine months of 2017, reversing a fall last year, tax-refund firm Global Blue said. A woman from China stands with a shopping trolley in front of a Duty Free store at the Fraport airport in Frankfurt November 14, 2012. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner Many tourists buy high-end products shoes, clothes and handbags when travelling and reclaim the local taxes, making such shoppers an important market for retailers. Chinese duty free customers accounted for 28 percent of total sales, while Russians represented 9 percent. British sales were up by 22 percent and Spain<69>s by 18 percent with better global economic conditions, more people travelling to Europe and higher spending driving growth, Global Blue said in a statement on Wednesday. More than 80 percent of all tax-free shopping in Europe was concentrated in France, Britain, Italy, Germany and Spain, Global Blue said, adding that this was likely to continue and the last three months of the year looked positive for sales. Reporting by Giulia Segreti; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-tourism-shopping/chinese-tourists-drive-rise-in-2017-european-tax-free-shopping-idUKKBN1CU1EH'|'2017-10-25T13:55:00.000+03:00'
'f17d3c04be4945fec12d06fa73fa91069fc387a3'|'Virgin Money says in talks to name ex-HSBC executive as chairwoman'|'October 25, 2017 / 6:51 AM / Updated 23 minutes ago Virgin Money targets rare female leadership team Noor Zainab Hussain , Esha Vaish , Emma Rumney 4 Min Read (Reuters) - Virgin Money ( VM.L ) is paving the way for the only female chair and chief executive team among Britain<69>s top 350 listed companies with plans to hire former HSBC ( HSBA.L ) executive Irene Dorner as its chairwoman. FILE PHOTO: HSBC Bank USA President and Chief Executive Officer Irene Dorner testifies before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in Washington July 17, 2012. REUTERS/Gary Cameron Britain<69>s top four lenders all have male chief executives and chairmen and Virgin Money<65>s announcement on Wednesday comes after its chief executive Jayne-Anne Gadhia highlighted <20>pervading sexism<73> in the financial services industry. Gadhia told MPs on Tuesday of examples of inappropriate behaviour by men that she was aware of during her career, and said that while things were improving, women continue to face numerous barriers to progress in the industry. A vocal advocate for greater representation of women in senior roles in the financial services sector, Gadhia highlighted one incident while she was running Royal Bank of Scotland<6E>s ( RBS.L ) mortgage division in the early 2000s. <20>There was a very male culture... and undoubtedly there was a sort of pervading sexism where I remember a very senior woman being very upset one day telling me that she was expected to sleep with her boss<73> Gadhia said. <20>That sort of thing of course means that there are issues for women in progressing through financial services.<2E> A spokeswoman for RBS said the bank encouraged people to come forward in confidence to report inappropriate behaviour. <20>These allegations are shocking and are clearly unacceptable no matter how historic they may be,<2C> she said. Signage is see outside a branch of Virgin Money in Manchester, Britain September 21, 2017. Picture taken September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble RARE FEMALE PARTNERSHIP If Dorner gets regulatory approval she will take over from Glen Moreno, who intends to retire in 2018, and join Gadhia who is the first female CEO of a listed British bank. Dorner, 62, held many roles at HSBC, including chief executive of HSBC USA, and has also been a non-executive director at French insurer AXA ( AXAF.PA ) and British engineering group Rolls Royce ( RR.L ). Women directors are still relatively few in Britain despite government efforts to encourage companies to appoint more and Dorner<65>s appointment would make Virgin Money the only FTSE 350 company to have an all female duo at the helm.. Nearly two-thirds of Britain<69>s 350 biggest listed companies failed to reach a target of having 25 percent of female board members last year, and four-fifths had two or fewer women on their boards, an inquiry by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission into fairness, transparency and diversity found. A report commissioned by Virgin Money and the British government found that although the number of women on FTSE 100 boards across financial services and other sectors has risen to 26.1 percent, only 9.6 percent of them hold executive positions. Last year Gadhia oversaw the drawing up of the government<6E>s Women in Finance Charter which had 141 signatories as of July, including Bank of America Merrill Lynch ( BAC.N ) and Deutsche Bank ( DBKGn.DE ), although she said on Tuesday that some firms were still to sign up to the 10-point plan. Theresa May, who became only the second female British prime minister after Margaret Thatcher, has criticised the finance industry for failing to promote and retain women. Other women in senior executive roles include Ana Botin, who is executive chairman of Santander ( SAN.MC ) and Inga Beale, who is CEO of Lloyd<79>s of London [SOLYD.UL]. Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain and Esha Vaish in Bengaluru; Editing by Jane Merriman and Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=
'46a4147938051af1fd55025317eb89a8bcd74bf9'|'Exclusive: Energy, not tech or finance, in CEO line-up for Trump''s China visit'|'October 27, 2017 / 11:22 AM / in 14 hours Exclusive: Energy, not tech or finance, in CEO line-up for Trump''s China visit Michael Martina 8 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. energy and commodities firms will make up a major part of a business delegation visiting Beijing at the same time as U.S. President Donald Trump goes to China in November, according to an initial list seen by Reuters. FILE PHOTO - The Qualcomm logo is seen on one of its buildings in San Diego, California, U.S., November 2, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo Prominent technology and financial companies are mostly absent from the list, reflecting the slow progress Washington has made in opening up China in those sectors. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who will lead the 29 companies that have been approved to travel on the trade mission starting on Nov. 8, said they will be looking for <20>immediate results<74> and <20>tangible agreements<74>. But, speaking at the Paley International Council Summit in New York on Wednesday, he acknowledged that market access, intellectual property rights, and tariffs are more complex and will take a longer time to negotiate. Some major industrial companies - General Electric Co, Honeywell International Inc and Boeing Co - are among the companies on the current list. Whether executives from all the named companies end up attending could be subject to agreements or deals being negotiated in time for the visit, according to multiple sources whose companies are involved. One of the few tech companies going with Trump is Qualcomm, which earns about half of its global revenue in China and faces a series of tricky legal issues there, including a lawsuit with Apple and the Chinese government<6E>s review of its pending $38 billion merger with NXP Semiconductors. Qualcomm said its CEO, Steve Mollenkopf, planned to attend. An industry source told Reuters tech firms were reluctant to go, given China market access issues, the unpredictability of the Trump administration, and a <20>Section 301<30> U.S. trade investigation alleging Chinese abuses of intellectual property. <20>(These) issues are extremely sensitive for tech companies said another source in the U.S. business community. <20>Very few want to stick their heads up and be perceived as complaining directly, and even fewer trust this White House to do anything helpful on their issues,<2C> he said. Particularly galling to foreign tech firms are a slate of new national security and cyber security regulations, which mandate companies store crucial data within China and pass security reviews they argue could put business secrets at risk. TESTY RELATIONSHIP Trump, a real estate magnate who had never before held public office, has had a sometimes testy relationship with corporate America since taking office in January. He disbanded two high-profile business advisory councils in August after several chief executives quit in protest over his controversial remarks on racist violence in Charlottesville. U.S. industry sources say it has been years since a major business delegation has gone to China during a U.S. presidential visit. Calls for such a delegation during Trump<6D>s visit originated in the China-based U.S. business community, according to several sources, who saw a need to match growing efforts by Germany, France and Britain to promote their nation<6F>s firms in China. Trump, who has frequently cited the substantial U.S. trade deficit with China as a reason why Washington should take more protectionist measures, was an easy sell on incorporating a group of executives into the visit, according to the sources. Nonetheless, some trade analysts say China has done a good job of taming Trump<6D>s combative trade impulses. They worry the U.S. administration will be willing to paper over market access concerns during the visit in its focus on getting Beijing to take action against North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs. FILE PHOTO - A Honeywell logo is pictured on the company booth dur
'4990a9b68ff83f00885fc7dd92bbbb326e515daa'|'Clariant merger foe boosts stake to 20 percent: stock exchange'|'ZURICH (Reuters) - Activist investors who oppose Swiss specialty chemicals maker Clariant<6E>s proposed $20 billion merger with U.S.-based Huntsman have boosted their stake to 20 percent, the Swiss stock exchange said on Friday, after Reuters reported the increased holding on Thursday.The logo of Swiss specialty chemicals company Clariant is seen at the company''s headquarters in Pratteln, Switzerland August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann White Tale, the investment vehicle formed by hedge fund manager Keith Meister and New York City-based investment fund 40 North to amass Clariant shares, increased its stake beyond the 15 percent reported last month as it intensifies efforts to scuttle the deal.Reporting by John Miller; Editing by Michael Shields '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-clariant-huntsman/clariant-merger-foe-boosts-stake-to-20-percent-stock-exchange-idINKBN1CW0DD'|'2017-10-27T02:44:00.000+03:00'
'bd369c8cc8efbaea224ffcc74a94b6382fc74e4f'|'Apple should shrink its finance arm before it goes bananas'|'IT IS fashionable to say that tech firms will conquer the financial services industry. Yet in the case of Apple, it seems that the opposite is happening and finance is taking over tech by stealth. Since the death of Steve Jobs, its co-founder, in 2011, the world<6C>s biggest firm by market value has sold hundreds of millions of phones with bionic chips and know-it-all digital assistants. But it has also grown a financial operation that is already, on some measures, roughly half the size of Goldman Sachs.Apple does not organise its financial activities into one subsidiary, but Schumpeter has lumped them together. The result<6C>call it <20>Apple Capital<61><6C>has $262bn of assets, $108bn of debt, and has traded $1.6trn of securities since 2011. It appears to be run fairly cautiously and is part of a thriving firm, but it still deserves scrutiny. Companies have a history of being hurt by their financial arms; think General Electric (GE) or General Motors (GM). Apple Capital has lots of responsibilities but three stand out. It invests the firm<72>s mountain of surplus profits, mainly in <20>highly rated<65> instruments (this task seems to fall to Braeburn Capital, a subsidiary in Nevada, which uses some external fund managers). Apple Capital also uses derivatives in order to protect the firm against currency and interest-rate gyrations. And it manages America<63>s fifth-biggest corporate-debt pile by issuing Apple bonds as part of an elaborate strategy to limit tax bills.Apple Capital has become important to its parent. Since Jobs died, its assets have risen by 221%, twice as fast as the company<6E>s sales, reflecting Apple<6C>s huge build-up of profits. Its investments are worth 32% of Apple<6C>s market value, and its profits (investment income, plus gains on derivatives, less interest costs) have been 7% of Apple<6C>s pre-tax profits so far this year. It is also sizeable compared with other financial firms. Consider four measures: assets, debt, credit exposure and profits. Depending on the yardstick, Apple Capital is 30-85% as big as Goldman Sachs. It is 22-42% as large as GE Capital was at its peak in 2007, just before things went down the tubes during the subprime crisis.Apple Capital is different from these firms in important ways. It does not take deposits and has much lower leverage. In their prime Goldman and GE Capital were run by hard-charging financiers, and made lots of loans. By contrast, Apple Capital does not make loans, and is not meant to be a profit centre in its own right. Nonetheless, it has become riskier, in three ways.First, Apple Capital is investing in racier assets, which involves taking credit risk. In 2011 a majority of its assets were <20>risk-free<65>: cash or government bonds. Today 68% are invested in other kinds of securities, mainly corporate bonds, which Apple says are generally investment grade. The shift may explain why Apple<6C>s annual interest rate earned on its portfolio (2%) is now higher than that of the four other Silicon Valley firms with money mountains, Microsoft, Alphabet, Cisco and Oracle. In total, they still have 66% of their portfolios squirrelled away in risk-free assets.Second, Apple<6C>s derivatives book has got much bigger. Since 2011 its notional size<7A>the face value of its contracts<74>has risen by 425%, to $124bn. This is still much smaller than big banks<6B> positions, but is the third-largest book of any non-financial firm in America, after GE and Ford. For every dollar of foreign sales, Apple has 89 cents of derivatives, compared with 57 cents for the other four tech giants. At points these derivatives have yielded big rewards. In 2015 they contributed $4bn, or 6% of Apple<6C>s profits. But they have dangers, too. Apple says that its <20>value-at-risk<73> (VAR), a statistical measure of the maximum likely loss in an average day, is $434m. That is huge: similar to the combined VAR of the world<6C>s top ten investment banks. In theory losses on derivatives would be offset by gains in the value of Apple<6C>s underlying business. But 
'b70ed6df399f32261a6e9f140f9e1c861e7e9e8f'|'Asian shares flat, Nikkei aims for 17th straight gain'|'October 25, 2017 / 1:01 AM / in 4 hours Fed leadership talk lifts dollar, shares tread water Ritvik Carvalho 6 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The dollar got a lift on Wednesday after a report that Republican senators were leaning towards John Taylor to be the next Federal Reserve chief, while share markets turned flat after a run of highs. FILE PHOTO: U.S. one hundred dollar bills are seen in this picture illustration, August 2, 2013. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/Illustration/File Photo On Tuesday, a source familiar with the matter said U.S. President Donald Trump had polled Republicans on whether they would prefer Stanford University economist John Taylor or current Fed Governor Jerome Powell to be the next U.S. central bank chief, and more senators preferred Taylor. That helped send the dollar up to a three-month high against the yen at 114.24 JPY=EBS , while the index that measures its broader strength rose 0.1 percent. .DXY The dollar was also supported by the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury. It was at 2.42 percent having finally broken above the long-standing 2.4 percent barrier this week. US10YT=TWEB For Fed-focused traders, Taylor is seen as someone who could quicken the pace of interest rate increases compared with Fed Chair Janet Yellen, whose term expires next February. <20>The greenback remains firm, but the overhanging questions provide two-way risks over the coming few weeks <20> less so the FOMC (Federal Open Markets Committee) which looks locked in for a December rate hike, than on the progress of tax reform through Congress and the Fed Chair nomination,<2C> said Saxo Bank<6E>s head of FX strategy John Hardy. Elsewhere in currencies, the Australian dollar dropped 1 percent to $0.7700 AUD=D4 , touching its lowest levels since mid-July after weak inflation numbers prompted investors to pare expectations of further tightening from the Reserve Bank of Australia. The MSCI world equity index .MIWD PUS, which tracks shares in 47 countries, was flat as a muted gains in Europe counterbalanced earlier gains in Asia. Wall street futures were set to open lower. ESc1 MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS ended the session up 0.1 percent as India, South Korea and Indonesia all hit record highs. Sterling got a boost after data showed Britain''s economy picked up speed in the third quarter, bolstering the case for the Bank of England to raise UK interest rates next week for the first time in more than a decade. The pound rose almost 1 percent to $1.3255. GBP=D3 Fabrice Theveneau, head of Global Equities at Lyxor Asset Management, told Reuters: <20>I still believe the British economy will be on the verge of a recession at the end of 2018.<2E> The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote He said that the figures were better than he had foreseen but that it did not change his views that the effects of Brexit on capital expenditure and a drop in EU immigration would gradually take their toll. The pan-European STOXX 600 was up 0.3 percent. France''s CAC 40 .FCHI rose 0.3 percent, while Britain''s FTSE 100 index fell 0.2 percent as sterling''s strength weighed. .FTSE . Germany''s DAX .GDAXI rose 0.1 percent. MSCI''s benchmark emerging stocks index .MSCIEF rose 0.35 percent after two days of losses, with South Korean .KS11 , Indonesian .JKSE and Indian bourses .NSEI hitting all-time highs. The latter was helped by a surge in banking shares such as State Bank of India ( SBI.NS ), Punjab National Bank ( PNBK.NS ) and Bank of Baroda ( BOB.NS ) after the cabinet approved a $32.4 billion bank recapitalization plan. Euro zone banks .SX7E were up 1 percent, building on the previous session<6F>s gains as investors anticipated Thursday<61>s European Central Bank meeting for the next catalyst for financials, which benefit from a rising rate environment. Recent indications from policymakers have fanned speculation it will opt for a reduction in monthly
'37d16c90abba27ad6fe2c361a62520b138a6eff5'|'Monte dei Paschi welcomed back by market but below rescue price'|'October 25, 2017 / 2:20 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago Monte dei Paschi welcomed back by market but below rescue price Valentina Za 3 Min Read MILAN (Reuters) - Monte dei Paschi di Siena ( BMPS.MI ) shares soared on their market return after a 10-month hiatus, but remained well below the price Italy paid to bail out its fourth-largest bank. FILE PHOTO: The entrance of Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank''s headquarters is seen in downtown Siena July 1, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini/File Photo The world<6C>s oldest bank<6E>s shares last traded in Milan in December 2016 when Monte dei Paschi had to turn to Rome for help after failing to find buyers for a 5 billion euro ($6 billion) share issue needed to keep it afloat. Weakened by mismanagement, a derivatives scandal and bad debts, Monte dei Paschi has long been at the heart of Italy<6C>s banking crisis and its rescue removed the biggest threat to the country<72>s financial system. Shares in the bank opened on Wednesday at 4.10 euros, which became the reference price for the session, and then rose to as much as 5.26 euros, up 28 percent. That price translates to a paper loss of 1.3 billion euros for Italian taxpayers, who are set to hold 68 percent of the Tuscan bank, which was central to public and private finances in Siena and the surrounding region. Italy<6C>s government paid 6.49 euros a share in August, when it pumped 3.85 billion euros into Monte dei Paschi, and is spending another 1.5 billion euros to shield some of the bank<6E>s junior bondholders, whose debt was converted into equity. Monte dei Paschi<68>s shares were priced at 8.65 euros each in the 4.47 billion euro debt swap, implying a bigger paper loss for junior bondholders, including insurer Generali ( GASI.MI ), now the bank<6E>s second-biggest investor. Three traders said not all the shares issued in the conversion were available when trading resumed on Wednesday, curbing selling orders. However, an adviser at consumer association ADUC, which on Tuesday advised retail shareholders to sell the stock, said their clients had been in possession of the shares derived from the swap since August. To gain EU approval for the bailout, Monte dei Paschi agreed to a restructuring plan that envisages cutting 5,500 jobs and selling 26 billion euros in bad debts to reach a net profit of more than 1.2 billion euros in 2021. Bank documents published ahead of the re-listing said that new European Central Bank rules requesting automatic writedowns of bad debts may put its targets at risk. The new rules, due to apply from next year only to newly-classified soured loans, may force it to set aside more money than expected against potential loan losses, it said. Setting a share target price of 4.3 euros, Equita analyst Giovanni Razzoli said he expected Monte dei Paschi to fall short of its 2019 profit goal due to lower-than-expected deferred tax assets. By 1318 GMT the stock was suspended from trading after rising 17 percent to 4.79 euros. Monte dei Paschi traded at 16 euros a share in December last year before the halt.($1 = 0.8506 euros) Additional reporting by Andrea Mandala, editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eurozone-banks-italy-monte-dei-paschi/monte-dei-paschi-welcomed-back-by-market-but-below-rescue-price-idUKKBN1CU23E'|'2017-10-25T17:15:00.000+03:00'
'5f8bffcce6398ce5e7dfc61e87e7dbe68f6f27ef'|'Cerberus shows interest in troubled Alitalia: FT'|'(Reuters) - U.S. private equity group Cerberus Capital Management has approached Alitalia [CAITLA.UL] with an offer that would allow the carrier to remain independent, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing sources.An airplane of Alitalia approaches to land at Fiumicino international airport in Rome, central Italy, May 3, 2017. REUTERS/Max Rossi Cerberus told Alitalia that it was still interested in buying the airline if it could be comprehensively restructured, the FT said, citing sources. on.ft.com/2yOxFpwGermany<6E>s Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) and British budget airline easyJet ( EZJ.L ) were among the seven bidders for Alitalia, in a formal sale process last week. Both Lufthansa and easyJet had said they were only interested in parts of the carrier.New York-based Cerberus had decided against submitting its own offer as it considered the terms of the public tender too restrictive, the newspaper said.Cerberus suggested it would be willing to invest funds worth somewhere in the <20>low nine-digits<74>, or between 100 million euros and 400 million euros, to gain control of Alitalia, the FT added.It also planned to ask the Italian government to retain a stake in the airline, with trade unions benefiting from some form of <20>profit sharing<6E>, the FT said.Cerberus has also offered to <20>step in<69> to get a <20>head start<72> on reorganizing Alitalia without charging any fee, even before making its investment, the newspaper said.Alitalia could not be immediately reached for comment outside regular business hours.A Cerberus Capital spokesperson declined to comment.The ailing airline, which has made a profit only a few times in its 70-year history, was put under special administration earlier this year after its staff rejected a plan to cut jobs and salaries.Reporting by Sangameswaran S in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-alitalia-sale-cerberus-capital/cerberus-shows-interest-in-troubled-alitalia-ft-idINKBN1CU0GC'|'2017-10-25T03:50:00.000+03:00'
'd9c62e17a2cda5ffc8ab412cc3316e1b5e5d2244'|'Macron to promote France with investors over Elysee dinner'|'October 25, 2017 / 11:18 AM / in 14 minutes Macron to promote France with investors over Elysee dinner Reuters Staff 2 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron will treat close to two dozen leaders of international investment funds to dinner at his Elysee palace premises on Wednesday to promote France as an investment destination, officials said. French President Emmanuel Macron attends a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (not seen) at the Elysee Palace, in Paris, France, October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer For Macron, who worked for a spell as an investment banker, it is a way to show investors he has delivered on his first batch of pro-business reforms, including one of the labour market and one scrapping a wealth tax, they said. <20>We have passed the first hurdles, on the labour market reform or the vote on the budget. It<49>s the good moment to do it,<2C> an advisor to Macron said. <20>International investors feel like Europe is back and that France holds the leadership,<2C> the advisor said. Some 21 global heads of sovereign funds, investment and pension funds from North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East will attend the dinner in the Winter Garden, a glass-roofed room of the Elysee Palace, with Macron. They are set to meet France<63>s finance and economy ministers and advisors before the meal with Macron. Representatives of BlackRock, the world<6C>s largest asset manager, will attend, a spokeswoman for the U.S. fund told Reuters. The presidential advisor, who requested anonymity, said Britain<69>s exit from the European Union was also an opportunity to promote France as a destination at the heart of the European single market. <20>It<49>s clear we<77>re going towards a hard Brexit,<2C> the advisor said. <20>It<49>s an opportunity for continental Europe, and we<77>re also playing our card because we have political and economic momentum,<2C> he said. Additional reporting by Maya Nicolaeva; Editing by Brian Love'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-france-reform-investors/macron-to-promote-france-with-investors-over-elysee-dinner-idUKKBN1CU1HX'|'2017-10-25T14:30:00.000+03:00'
'73f3d527c1d4180a1139725d5ea73e8578ba1d60'|'UK banks report mortgage approvals up 7 percent year-on-year in September'|'October 25, 2017 / 8:57 AM / Updated 8 hours ago UK banks report mortgage approvals up 7 percent year-on-year in September Reuters Staff 1   British banks reported on Wednesday that they approved 7 percent more mortgages for house purchase last month than they had in September 2016, and that momentum in the housing market was recovering. Apartment buildings are backdropped by skyscrapers of banks at Canary Wharf in London, Britain October 30, 2015. Picture taken October 30, 2015. REUTERS/Reinhard Krause Trade body UK Finance said banks approved 41,584 mortgages on a seasonally adjusted basis in September, down marginally from 41,762 in August but up from 37,593 a year earlier, when demand was weak in the aftermath of the Brexit vote. <20>As we near the end of 2017, our data is showing that housing market activity has built up modest momentum since the start of the year, helped by an increase in first-time buyer numbers,<2C> UK Finance economist Mohammad Jamei said. <20>Businesses remain cautious about the future amidst an uncertain economic environment, reflected by their growing deposit activity and a dip in their borrowing growth rate,<2C> he added. Reporting by David Milliken, editing by Estelle Shirbon'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-lending/uk-banks-report-mortgage-approvals-up-7-percent-year-on-year-in-september-idUKKBN1CU0ZR'|'2017-10-25T11:57:00.000+03:00'
'2341a610c287a41b92fc0fe9a21cc424d4a5b3f1'|'Asian shares flat, Nikkei aims for 17th straight gain'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. and European stock markets fell on Wednesday amid some concerns over corporate earnings and U.S. tax reform plans, a day before the European Central Bank was set to decide its next monetary policy move.Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid The MSCI world equity index .MIWD PUS, which tracks shares in 47 countries, fell 0.35 percent.Republicans have struggled to deliver on a number of President Trump<6D>s promises in Congress and financial investors worry tax cuts promised by the president to support growth will see a similar fate.Traders cited a Wall Street Journal report suggesting, in contrast to comments by President Donald Trump, that Republicans were still considering limiting the deductibility of 401(k) plan retirement contributions, as one reason for the downturn in U.S. equities. The plans, for decades, have helped American workers save for retirement.<2E>The 401k issue is causing some confusion because it is directly contradicting the President and the market doesn<73>t like confusion,<2C> said Michael Antonelli, managing director of institutional sales trading at Robert W. Baird in Milwaukee.Disappointing earnings from AT&T ( T.N ) sent shares in the United States<65> second largest wireless carrier down 3.6 percent, pulling down other telecom stocks Verizon ( VZ.N ) and CenturyLink ( CTL.N ).The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 109.85 points, or 0.47 percent, to 23,331.91, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 12.77 points, or 0.50 percent, to 2,556.36 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 38.76 points, or 0.59 percent, to 6,559.67.European shares closed down, with a mixed batch of company results sparking profit-taking a day before the ECB<43>s policy meeting. The central bank is expected to signal a reduction in its bond-buying scheme, gradually withdrawing post-crisis stimulus.The pan-European STOXX 600 closed at its lowest level in nearly four weeks, down 0.6 percent. The FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 lost 0.61 percent.BOND YIELDS U.S. long-dated Treasury yields trimmed gains Wednesday afternoon, but remained at multi-month highs after a strong U.S. durable goods report.The upcoming announcement of President Donald Trump<6D>s nominee to head the Federal Reserve has kept investors on edge over the direction monetary policy could take depending on whom he nominates.Benchmark 10-year note yields US10YT=RR last fell 10/32 in price to yield 2.4426 percent, from 2.406 percent late on Tuesday.The 30-year bond yield, US30YT=RR last lost 21/32 in price to yield 2.9559 percent, from 2.923 percent late on Tuesday.The U.S. dollar dipped against of basket of key world currencies as the wait continued for President Trump to name the next head of the U.S. central bank.The dollar index .DXY fell 0.06 percent, with the euro EUR= up 0.4 percent to $1.1806.The Japanese yen strengthened 0.11 percent versus the greenback at 113.79 per dollar, while Sterling GBP= was last trading at $1.3248, up 0.87 percent on the day.MSCI''s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS closed 0.02 percent higher, while Japan''s Nikkei .N225 lost 0.45 percent.U.S. crude CLcv1 fell 0.67 percent to $52.12 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $58.27, down 0.1 percent on the day.Spot gold XAU= added 0.1 percent to $1,276.81 an ounce.Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; additional reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss and Richard Leong in New York, Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru, Danilo Masoni and Helen Reid in Milan and London; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Daniel Bases '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asian-shares-flat-nikkei-aims-for-17th-straight-gain-idUSKBN1CU02G'|'2017-10-25T03:59:00.000+03:00'
'3c620bc61187f09fa817e6128083af35350eddec'|'British medicine app Echo raises 7 million stg to fund expansion'|'October 25, 2017 / 6:08 AM / Updated 28 minutes ago British medicine app Echo raises 7 million stg to fund expansion   LONDON (Reuters) - British start-up Echo said on Wednesday it had raised 7 million pounds ($9.2 million) in a funding round led by White Star Capital to expand use of its app that helps people manage their medicine to treat conditions like asthma. The mobile app, which already has 50,000 users, lets people order repeat prescriptions from their doctor for delivery, the company said. It also reminds patients to take their medication and when they are going to run out. Other participants in the funding round included MMC Ventures, LocalGlobe, Global Founders Capital, Rocket Internet and Public.io, Echo said. The company received 1.8 million pounds in seed funding from LocalGlobe, Global Founders Capital and Rocket Internet in 2016. ($1 = 0.7620 pounds)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-echo-fundraising/british-medicine-app-echo-raises-7-million-stg-to-fund-expansion-idUKKBN1CU0HS'|'2017-10-25T09:07:00.000+03:00'
'ee04bb7d6efbb8fecc8a2ad315d039fe21099ff6'|'Small mining companies shun London market after IPO flops'|'October 25, 2017 / 2:48 PM / Updated 7 minutes ago Small mining companies shun London market after IPO flops Clara Denina , Barbara Lewis 6 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Lacklustre performances by small mining companies on the London Stock Exchange are driving rivals in need of cash to find alternative ways to raise capital, either by merging or turning to other markets such as Toronto. FILE PHOTO: Pedestrians leave and enter the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo Six small miners have listed in London this year, up from two last year, but four of those are now trading below their offer price despite a rally in metals, led by a 27 percent jump in copper and aluminium prices and a 10 percent rise for gold. London hosts the world<6C>s biggest mining companies, including Rio Tinto ( RIO.L ) ( RIO.AX ) and BHP Billiton ( BLT.L ) ( BHP.AX ), but the poor performance of newly listed miners and other small miners trading in London is pushing some to change their plans. On Tuesday, Condor Gold ( CNDR.L ), a Nicaraguan gold miner whose share price is down 10 percent this year, said it had received conditional approval for a secondary listing in Toronto, where it hopes valuations will be higher. <20>London is not a great place to be listed as a junior explorer. There is not a clear understanding of what we do,<2C> said Mark Child, the company<6E>s chairman and chief executive. Metal development company Phoenix Global Mining ( PGMH.L ), which listed in London at the end of June, will also consider North American listings at a future date, its CEO Dennis Thomas said. Toro Gold, which operates in Africa, started preparing for a London listing with the help of Bank of Montreal (BMO) and corporate advisor Numis Securities earlier this year but has shelved its plans, sources said. Toro Gold, Numis and BMO were not immediately available for a comment. <20>It is still a difficult time to raise money through IPOs for the mining sector ... because the price recovery is in its reasonably early stages,<2C> said Lee Downham, head of EY<45>s global mining & metals transaction advisory services. Small mining companies, which are often betting on exploiting valuable resources in a few concessions, can eventually enjoy far bigger stock market price increases than major firms with sometimes limited opportunities for growth. But in the early years, they may struggle to balance the heavy spending needed to get mines up and running with a lack of revenue, meaning some need regular capital injections. London<6F>s big institutional investors, however, are seen as more risk averse than those in major mining centres such as Canada and Australia, particularly when it comes to relatively illiquid shares they cannot get out of quickly, bankers say. Besides Russia<69>s Polyus ( PLZLq.L ), which has China<6E>s Fosun International ( 0656.HK ) as its cornerstone investor, and Rainbow Rare Earths ( RBWR.L ), which mines rare earth materials needed for renewable energy storage, the miners that listed in London this year are down 13 percent on average. Precious metals specialist Jangada Mines ( JANJ.L ) is down more than 20 percent. M&A INSTEAD Condor Gold<6C>s Child says figures from RBC Capital Markets show some emerging gold producers listed in Toronto can be valued at roughly three times as much as in London, based on their estimated gold reserves. Canada, like Australia, has a strong base of retail and institutional investors interested in resources companies. The Toronto stock exchange, which is home to more than half the world<6C>s public mining companies, has seen a flurry of listings this year, with many taking advantage of a doubling in zinc prices since late 2015. Brazil-based zinc producer Nexa Resources and at least three other zinc miners are planning listings on the Toronto Stock Exchange or the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V) market for start-ups, according to company filings, on top of six other small mining companies that have listed
'278986c72145ed3f8c0d3119179c4f7a8f22ba6b'|'Beginning of the end for Europe''s loose money? ECB to curb stimulus'|'October 25, 2017 / 10:04 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago Baby step but no big bang - ECB warily starts pulling back from loose money Balazs Koranyi , Francesco Canepa 6 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank on Thursday took a step towards weaning the euro zone off loose money on Thursday but promised years of stimulus and even left the door open to backtracking. European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi holds a news conference following the governing council''s interest rate decision at the ECB headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach It said it would cut its bond purchases in half from January but also extend the buying programme until the end of next September. ECB President Mario Draghi said the euro zone economy was recovering but still needed support. <20>Domestic price pressures are still muted overall and the economic outlook and the path of inflation remain conditional on continued support from monetary policy,<2C> he told a news conference. <20>Therefore, an ample degree of monetary stimulus remains necessary.<2E> Designed nearly three years ago, the bond buys worth more than 2 trillion euros depressed borrowing costs and lifted growth but failed to raise inflation to the ECB<43>s target of almost 2 percent. That forced the bank to hedge its bets with what some investors described as <20>dovish policy tightening<6E>. The ECB will now cut its bond buys in half to 30 billion euros a month from January given robust growth, it kept the option to raise or extend buys and promised to reinvest maturing funds for years to come. It also promised banks ample liquidity and said the bond buys would not end suddenly, suggesting that another extension, even if only to gradually wind down purchases, is likely. <20>This is not tapering, it<69>s just a down-size,<2C> Draghi said, using the market term for beginning to exit a stimulus programme. <20>The decision today is for an open-ended programme ... it<69>s not going to stop suddenly,<2C> he added. <20>There is still a large amount of uncertainty.<2E> The cautious move may also have reflected policymakers'' concern about the euro''s appreciation against the dollar EUR= this year and their aim to keep the currency stable after its surge over the summer. The euro fell nearly 0.8 percent on the day even as Draghi omitted a now customary reference about the need to monitor the currency. <20>Today<61>s decision is the first real baby step towards a very gentle exit from the ECB<43>s crisis mode, but it is definitely not a big-bang u-turn,<2C> ING Economist Carsten Brzeski said. <20>In fact, the ... recalibration illustrates the ECB wants to start the exit as cautiously as possible, ideally without seeing the euro appreciate or bond yields increase.<2E> DILEMMA European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi holds a news conference following the governing council''s interest rate decision at the ECB headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach The biggest debate appeared to be about whether to keep asset buys open ended, with Draghi highlighting dissent from hawks, who wanted the ECB pave the way to the exit. Still, Draghi said there was a large majority for an open-ended programme while other issues were supported by consensus or near consensus. Hawks such as Germany and the Netherlands have argued that growth is now above trend and more purchases do next to nothing for inflation, so keeping the programme open ended is not justified. Doves on the bloc<6F>s periphery, however, warned that a quick exit could tighten financial conditions, undoing years of work. <20>The fact that the ECB made the tapering decision look as dovish as possible because of the weak inflation causes a risk of a later move in rates than in our forecast,<2C> Nordea economist Tuuli Koivu said. <20>The possible first rate hike <20> even if only a cosmetic in nature - that we expect to see in the first quarter of 2019 may come later,<2C> he added. Slideshow (5 Images) The ECB<43>s probl
'b157480331c3ac98574e677d581202907fe472f2'|'Barclays shares stumble as Staley targets trading growth'|'Reuters TV United States October 26, 2017 / 6:22 AM / Updated an hour ago Barclays shares stumble as Staley targets trading growth Lawrence White , Emma Rumney 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Barclays ( BARC.L ) shares fell sharply on Thursday as investors worried about chief executive Jes Staley<65>s plans to grow the bank<6E>s trading division, its worst-performing business. FILE PHOTO - A Barclays bank building is seen at Canary Wharf in London, Britain May 17, 2017. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth/File Photo The bank<6E>s shares fell by 7 percent, their worst single-day fall since the Brexit vote in June 2016, after it reported profit before tax well below analysts<74> expectations and its investment banking unit again underperformed. <20>We had thought Barclays would struggle to disappoint (on) low Q3 expectations. It looks like they have succeeded,<2C> brokerage KBW said. Barclays<79> markets income fell 14 percent to 3.5 billion pounds ($4.6 billion) in the first nine months of the year compared to the same period in 2016, including a 27 percent drop in macro income - fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC)- mirroring a weak quarter for U.S. banks. Staley has championed investment banking amid calls from some analysts and investors to ditch a business which has in recent years struggled to match the profitability of Barclays<79> more mundane retail and credit card units. The Barclays CEO said he would push ahead with reinvesting in the business, outlining plans to shift some 20 billion pounds in assets from corporate lending to riskier but higher-yielding trading activities. <20>We<57>ll either get corporate clients to pay us more for the credit we are extending, or take that credit back,<2C> Staley told analysts on a conference call. He said Barclays will also expand its products in the investment bank in a bid to boost returns, including offering more derivatives <20>without reengaging in the aggressive practices of the past<73>. BULLISH ON GROWTH Barclays said profit before tax for the third quarter was 1.1 billion pounds ($1.46 billion), below a 1.43 billion pound average of analysts<74> estimates compiled by the British bank. Staley signaled his confidence in the bank<6E>s ability to increase returns by putting a timeframe on its targets. Barclays said it aims to achieve an overall return on equity above 9 percent in 2019, and above 10 percent by 2020. Barclays<79> current return on equity, excluding costs from the disposal of its Africa unit, is 7.1 percent although its two main divisions of UK and International achieved 9.4 percent and 10 percent respectively. Barclays<79> targets are above the 8 percent return on equity predicted for 2019 by analysts at Jefferies, suggesting the bank<6E>s new deadline is an ambitious one. The decision to set out a deadline is significant after rival HSBC ( HSBA.L ) last August abandoned its own timetable for reaching its targeted return on equity of above 10 percent. Barclays, which also set out a new target cost to income ratio of 60 percent or less by 2019, said it had cut bankers<72> bonus pool for the quarter by 25 percent because of the poor performance. Investment banks globally have struggled in recent years to make returns in excess of their cost of capital, as tighter regulations, pressure on fees from automation and low global interest rates combined to squeeze profits. <20>The third quarter was clearly a difficult one for our markets business within Barclays International. A lack of volume and volatility in FICC hit markets<74> revenues hard across the industry, and we were no exception to this trend,<2C> Staley said. Equities income fell 8 percent to 1.3 billion pounds, while credit was up 3 percent at 954 million pounds. The bank gave no update on a probe by Britain<69>s financial watchdog into Staley<65>s attempts to unmask a whistleblower, which has led to regulatory and investor scrutiny. Staley has admitted he should not have tried to identify a person who was raising concerns to the board. Reporting by Lawrence White and Emma 
'a129c7bff02daa82d5a4096ee7668def466142df'|'UPDATE 2-Mexico''s Cemex posts better-than-expected 3rd qtr profit'|'October 26, 2017 / 10:41 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago UPDATE 4-Cemex posts better-than-expected profit amid storms, quakes Reuters Staff (Recasts with storms, quakes, adds financial details, updates share price) By Daina Beth Solomon and Gabriel Stargardter MEXICO CITY, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Mexican cement producer Cemex shrugged off earthquakes and hurricanes in its top markets to post a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Thursday, helped by a lower tax burden and lower financial costs. Cemex<65>s third-quarter profit rose to $289.2 million from $285.6 million in the same period a year earlier, it said, prompting shares to rise nearly 2 percent. Sales rose to $3.55 billion from $3.47 billion a year earlier, the company said. Analysts surveyed by Reuters expected $3.48 billion in revenue and $181 million in net income. Cemex, which has been divesting assets to help cut debt and regain its investment grade rating, said it generated some of its third-quarter profit from its $168 million sale of shares in Mexican cement maker Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua in September. Cemex, which has operations in more than 50 countries, had to contend with natural disasters in key markets. Chief Executive Fernando Gonzalez told investors on a conference call that storms, heavy rains and quakes affected demand. In Mexico, which suffered two major earthquakes last month, quarterly sales volumes dropped across Cemex<65>s main products, including a 10 percent fall in domestic gray cement. Still, Cemex said it had higher prices in the region. Gonzalez said reconstruction efforts after the quakes will likely require 500,000 tonnes of cement over the next 12 to 18 months. In the United States, where net sales were down 3 percent for the quarter, Cemex said in its report that cement volumes increased 2 percent<6E>despite significant precipitation and two hurricanes - Harvey that impacted Houston, and Irma that impacted Florida, Georgia and Tennessee.<2E> Cemex executives said that operations stalled in those regions for about a week during hurricane season, but did not estimate how much cement would be needed for reconstruction efforts in hard-hit Texas and Florida. In an online presentation on Thursday, Cemex revised its estimate of growth in 2017 cement sales to 0 percent from the 1 to 3 percent announced last quarter. Cemex shares were up nearly 2 percent at 15.78 pesos on Thursday morning. ($1 = 19.0439 Mexican pesos) (Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon and Noe Torres; Editing by Frances Kerry and Matthew Lewis)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/cemex-results/update-1-mexicos-cemex-quarterly-sales-rise-2-percent-profit-slightly-higher-idUSL4N1N1435'|'2017-10-26T16:25:00.000+03:00'
'f204c65e822f3feadef3d2ff8f5fe8f69b70291a'|'Subaru says improper inspections conducted for Japan cars'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Subaru Corp ( 7270.T ) said on Friday that it had failed to follow proper inspection procedures for vehicles destined for the domestic market.A man walks past the logo of Subaru Corp at the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon The automaker said in a statement that uncertified workers had conducted final inspections of new vehicles.Subaru said that it may recall the affected vehicles and that it would report details on its findings to the transport ministry on Monday.Reporting by Chris Gallagher and Naomi Tajitsu '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-subaru-scandal-announcement/subaru-says-improper-inspections-conducted-for-japan-cars-idUSKBN1CW0XC'|'2017-10-27T16:22:00.000+03:00'
'278d34871983fbd9f77dce78e5d57345b564cde8'|'Asian shares gain after upbeat earnings from U.S. tech titans'|'October 27, 2017 / 12:51 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago Wall Street higher on earnings results; euro down after Catalonia vote, ECB news Stephanie Kelly 5 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Nasdaq Composite had its best day in nearly a year on Friday, boosted by strong corporate earnings, while the euro posted its worst week of 2017 after the European Central Bank decided to prolong its bond buying to keep interest rates low. People celebrate after the Catalan regional parliament declares the independence from Spain in Barcelona, Spain, October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Juan Medina The Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 144.49 points, or 2.2 percent, to 6,701.26, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 20.67 points, or 0.81 percent, to 2,581.07, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 33.33 points, or 0.14 percent, to 23,434.19. Gains were led by robust corporate results and upbeat third-quarter U.S. GDP data. The U.S. economy grew at a 3.0 percent annual rate from July to September, showing resilience even as recent storms hurt consumer spending. Google-parent Alphabet ( GOOGL.O ) gain 4.3 percent and Microsoft ( MSFT.O ) advance 6.4 percent, which drove up the S&P technology index .SPLRCT. The index notched its best day since March 1, 2016 and is up nearly 35 percent on the year versus the 15-percent gain in the S&P 500. Amazon ( AMZN.O ), up 13.2 percent, was responsible for the biggest boost to the S&P 500 after reporting a quarterly sales surge. Its gains helped lift the consumer discretionary sector 1.60 percent to its best daily performance since Dec. 7. <20>Anyone who is drawing parallels to the tech bubble of 1999 has to at least consider that this rally in those large names is really fueled in large part by earnings, not just hope,<2C> said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago. Chevron ( CVX.N ) weighed on the Dow, with its shares dropping 4.1 percent after missed profit estimates. A report about President Donald Trump favoring Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell as the head of the U.S. central bank also provided support for stocks. Powell is seen likely to maintain the Fed<65>s current monetary policy. The White House said later on Friday that the president will announce his pick for chairman next week. MSCI<43>s gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD PUS gained 0.41 percent. European shares reached a five-month high overall on Friday, also buoyed by strong earnings. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 rose 0.54 percent. Spain''s IBEX .IBEX was the worst-performing major index on the day, losing 1.5 percent after the Catalan parliament declared its independence from Spain on Friday following a secret ballot. The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote Following the declaration, Spain sacked Catalonia<69>s regional government, dissolved the Catalan parliament and called a snap election to draw a line under Spain<69>s worst political crisis in 40 years. MSCI''s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS closed 0.18 percent higher, while Japan''s Nikkei .N225 rose 1.24 percent. CURRENCIES The euro marked its biggest weekly loss of the year following the Catalan independence vote and the ECB<43>s decision on Thursday to extend its bond purchases into September 2018 while reducing its monthly purchases by half to 30 billion euros starting in January. <20>The dovish surprise from the ECB was its openness to extend the duration of its bond purchase program,<2C> said Omer Esiner, chief market strategist at Commonwealth Foreign Exchange in Washington. The euro EUR= dropped 0.38 percent to $1.1606, while the dollar index .DXY rose 0.22 percent. The stronger-than-expected U.S. third-quarter GDP data helped bolster the dollar. U.S. Treasury note yields fell on the Catalonia developments and the speculation surrounding Powell at the Fed. Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR last rose 11/32 in price to yield 2.4137 per
'0304d18c993fc2e16191b2437c138cdee7cd20f4'|'Maruti Suzuki second-quarter profit rises 3 percent, beats estimates'|'October 27, 2017 / 8:29 AM / in 8 hours Maruti Suzuki says will have to move to electric cars Aditi Shah , Arnab Paul 3 Min Read NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Maruti Suzuki India, the country<72>s biggest carmaker, said on Friday it planned to build electric cars as the government strives to electrify all new vehicles by 2030, though it didn<64>t give a timeline for the process. A worker is reflected on the body of a Maruti Suzuki car as he locks the door of another car at a Maruti Suzuki stockyard on the outskirts of Ahmedabad May 2, 2014. REUTERS/Amit Dave/Files Maruti Suzuki<6B>s chairman said there was still no clear roadmap on how the government aimed to achieve its target and a lot would depend on that. <20>We will make electric cars but I can<61>t give you the date just now because it is all very much a work in progress,<2C> R.C. Bhargava told reporters, after the company posted a 3 percent rise in quarterly profit, beating analysts<74> estimates. India is working on a new auto policy that promotes the use of electric cars, and a draft is likely to be made public before the end of the year. This is a shift from an earlier policy that promoted hybrid and electric vehicles. Sales of electric cars in India remain negligible, however, mainly due to the high cost of batteries which make the vehicles expensive and out of reach for many buyers in a country where cars are as cheap as 250,000 rupees ($3,800). A lack of charging stations also makes the whole proposition unviable for now. Maruti<74>s parent, Suzuki Motor Corp, has electric car technology which it can provide, Bhargava said, adding the Japanese company was also in talks with Toyota Motor Corp to form an alliance which may include sharing technologies like hybrid and electric. Maruti dominates the small car market in India and has been launching more premium vehicles as competition heats up with newer and planned entrants such as Kia Motors and SAIC Motor Corp. Maruti also manufactures hybrid cars, demand for which has taken a beating after the government raised sales taxes on them to as much as 43 percent. Bhargava said the future of hybrid cars in India would depend on the level of taxes and the company was in talks with the government to lower them. GROWTH SLOWING Bhargava said that while the company continued to expect double digit sales growth over the remainder of fiscal 2018, it would slow from the 18 percent posted in the second quarter. Earlier on Friday, Maruti reported a profit of 24.84 billion rupees ($381.86 million) for the second quarter ended Sept. 30, versus 24.02 billion rupees a year ago, helped by higher sales of compact and utility vehicles. ( bit.ly/2xtLHZZ ) Analysts, on average, had expected a profit of 22.29 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters data. Maruti, which provides the bulk of Suzuki Motor<6F>s revenues, sold a total of 492,118 vehicles during the quarter, up about 18 percent from a year ago. Sales of compact vehicles, which include the Swift and Baleno, rose 43.5 percent, while sales of utility vehicles like the Ertiga and Vitara Brezza climbed 27.6 percent. Maruti shares closed slightly higher at 8,114.45 rupees. ($1 = 65.0350 Indian rupees) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/maruti-suzuki-in-results/maruti-suzuki-second-quarter-profit-rises-3-percent-beats-estimates-idINKBN1CW0Y7'|'2017-10-27T06:29:00.000+03:00'
'85a5e5776a53ebcb9e720fbc3987b1776406b11f'|'American Airlines CEO disappointed by black rights group''s warning'|'NEW YORK, Oct 26 (Reuters) - American Airlines Chief Executive Doug Parker said on Thursday that a move by the leading U.S. black civil rights group to warn black travelers off the airline was <20>obviously a disappointment.<2E>The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on Tuesday recommended black travelers avoid the airline after what it called a pattern of racially biased incidents.<2E>Discrimination, exclusion and unconscious biases are enormous problems that no one has mastered,<2C> Parker said on the airline<6E>s quarterly earnings call on Thursday.Parker said American Airlines has made efforts to contact the NAACP and he expects the two to work together <20>in the very near term.<2E> (Reporting by Alana Wise; Editing by Bill Rigby) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/american-airlines-naacp/american-airlines-ceo-disappointed-by-black-rights-groups-warning-idINL2N1N119G'|'2017-10-26T13:03:00.000+03:00'
'e5337a8ac4aa42385afe7de67aa9a8330587da08'|'Canada''s Teck Resources Q3 profit surges on higher coal, metal prices'|'Oct 26 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s Teck Resources Ltd , the world<6C>s second-biggest exporter of steelmaking coal, said its third-quarter profit more than doubled from a year ago, lifted by higher coal and metal prices.Teck, which also mines copper, zinc and gold, said attributable profit rose to C$600 million ($468.64 million), or C$1.04 per share in the three months to end-September from C$234 million, or 41 Canadian cents per share in the same year-ago period.$1 = 1.2803 Canadian dollars Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/teck-resources-results/canadas-teck-resources-q3-profit-surges-on-higher-coal-metal-prices-idINL4N1N12X0'|'2017-10-26T05:22:00.000+03:00'
'878c11f3ff2633a03b492e86b5195dbc5a2b871e'|'Gold seen flatlining next year, silver forecasts cut again: Reuters poll'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Gold is likely to flatline for another year in 2018 as rising U.S. interest rates clip momentum, a Reuters poll showed on Thursday, while silver forecasts were cut again after the metal lagged forecasts in the third quarter.An employee casts 99.99 percent pure gold at the Krastsvetmet non-ferrous metals plant, one of the world''s largest producers in the precious metals industry, in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin/Files A poll of 34 analysts and traders conducted over the last two weeks returned an average gold price forecast for this year of $1,260 an ounce, in line with its year-to-date average of $1,255 and little changed from last year<61>s level.Next year the metal is expected to edge slightly higher, but only to an average $1,300 an ounce, just 3 percent above this year<61>s predicted level. Annual average gold prices fluctuated by between 8 and 26 percent between 2010 and 2016.A $1,300 average would represent gold<6C>s strongest year since 2013, when prices slumped after 12 straight years of gains, but will disappoint bulls hoping for a bigger bounce after receding expectations for a U.S. rate hike and concerns over North Korea sent the metal to its highest in over a year last month.<2E>Global risks remain high and a flare-up of the tensions between the United States and North Korea could send prices higher,<2C> Capital Economics analyst Simona Gambarini said.<2E>That said, markets are being overly sanguine over the prospects for Federal Reserve tightening and we expect that the Fed will continue to hike rates, which is negative for gold.<2E>Banks have again scaled back their silver price forecasts for this year and next after the metal underperformed expectations in the third quarter.Silver, which has a dual role as both an investment vehicle like gold, and an industrial metal widely used in electronics, has lagged gains in both gold and copper this year as investors sought better returns elsewhere.The poll returned an average silver price forecast of $17.12 an ounce for 2017, down from an average view of $17.32 in a similar poll conducted three months ago.Silver averaged just $16.68 an ounce in the third quarter, below expectations for $17 an ounce in the July poll. An ounce of gold currently buys 75 ounces of silver, compared to just 71 ounces at the start of the year.<2E>While the ratio did improve marginally, we expect no major reversal in the current trend,<2C> Harish Gallipelli, head of commodity and currency at Inditrade Capital, said.<2E>While silver is likely to outperform gold in the medium to long term, we suspect that the move may not happen in the current calendar year. 2018 may be the year where we can see better rallies in silver.<2E>The metal, which has averaged $17.14 an ounce in the year to date, is currently at $16.90 an ounce.In 2018 poll respondents expect silver to average $17.90 an ounce, down from an expectation for $18.30 an ounce in July.Reporting by Jan Harvey in London and Arpan Varghese in Bengaluru; editing by David Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/precious-poll-gold/gold-seen-flatlining-next-year-silver-forecasts-cut-again-reuters-poll-idINKBN1CV1UF'|'2017-10-26T16:12:00.000+03:00'
'bcb8827a90166ab62d91a0a2f184a84fd5316a0d'|'PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 26'|'Oct 26 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.- The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday announced plans to eliminate decades-old media ownership rules meant to protect local coverage and diversity in media voices. nyti.ms/2h9Vwq5- On Wednesday, David Rubenstein and the other two co-founders of Carlyle Group LP - William Conway Jr. and Daniel D''Aniello - said they were handing over daily management of the private equity firm to their chosen successors. nyti.ms/2izR6wi- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said on Wednesday he had rebuffed a request for help last year from the head of a data firm, Cambridge Analytica, that worked for Donald Trump and is now facing congressional scrutiny. nyti.ms/2y6aSWT- U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday loosened some rules for commercial drones, including for package deliveries, by allowing broader testing by companies like Amazon.com Inc and Wing, a part of Alphabet Inc. nyti.ms/2gJY55lCompiled by Bengaluru newsroom '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/press-digest-nyt/press-digest-new-york-times-business-news-oct-26-idINL4N1N121W'|'2017-10-26T02:42:00.000+03:00'
'83f4db5ea74179ef8b9c7e774f8ff2b760ce8958'|'Colony Capital''s bid to acquire Weinstein Co hits snag - WSJ'|'October 26, 2017 / 1:57 AM / Updated 31 minutes ago Colony Capital''s bid to acquire Weinstein Co hits snag - WSJ Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Colony Capital, the private equity arm of real estate investment trust Colony NorthStar Inc ( CLNS.N ), is facing hurdles in its talks to buy The Weistein Company because the company is seeking higher bidders, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people close to the discussions. Colony Capital, which has about $20 billion in assets under management, was in talks to buy all or a significant portion of The Weinstein Company<6E>s assets, the private equity firm said last week. The period of exclusivity ends in the middle of next week and the film company could start talking to other parties that have expressed interest if an agreement is not reached, the Wall Street Journal reported. on.wsj.com/2xouSjg Neither company was immediately available for a comment. Reporting by Philip George'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-weinstein-colony-northstar/colony-capitals-bid-to-acquire-weinstein-co-hits-snag-wsj-idUKKBN1CV05Z'|'2017-10-26T04:56:00.000+03:00'
'c99a9cfab8e15de580a60797c1da7eab9b6bd6c8'|'UPDATE 1-Imperial Oil misses Q3 profit estimates as costs weigh'|'October 27, 2017 / 12:18 PM / Updated 4 minutes ago Imperial Oil misses third-quarter profit estimates as costs weigh Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Canadian oil producer and refiner Imperial Oil Ltd on Friday posted a smaller-than-expected quarterly profit as higher costs and a marginal drop in production offset an increase in realized crude prices. Imperial<61>s realized crude oil price of C$49.03 per barrel was C$9 higher for the latest quarter, but total expenses rose 6.4 percent to C$6.7 billion, and production dipped to average 390,000 gross oil-equivalent barrels per day from 393,000 boepd a year earlier. Still, Imperial realized an 18 percent increase in production from the second quarter of 2017, returning it to profitability. Production in the first half of the year had been negatively affected by factors including a fire at the Syncrude Mildred Lake upgrader. <20>Imperial Oil<69>s operations are very attractive, in our view, and should support healthy growth over the long term, although in the nearer term it will mostly focus on improving existing operations,<2C> Edward Jones analysts said in a note to clients. The company reported a net profit of C$371 million ($287.80 million), or 44 Canadian cents per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 30. Analysts on average were expecting a profit of 46 Canadian cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. North American oil producers have been gaining from a rise in world crude prices as a production cut led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and a rebound in demand erode a global glut. [O/R] Imperial Oil posted a C$1 billion profit in the year-ago quarter due to a C$716 million gain from the sale of some of its retail sites. In its refining business, Imperial Oil<69>s throughput averaged 385,000 barrels per day, lower than the 407,000 barrels per day in the year-earlier quarter. Total revenue and other income fell to C$7.16 billion from C$7.44 billion. Exxon Mobil Corp, which has a majority stake in Imperial Oil, reported a 50 percent jump in profit to $3.97 billion in its third quarter. ($1 = C$1.29) Reporting by Karan Nagarkatti in Bengaluru and Ethan Lou in Calgary, Alberta; editing by Arun Koyyur, Savio D''Souza and G Crosse'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-imperial-oil-results/imperial-oil-posts-smaller-quarterly-profit-idUSKBN1CW1N9'|'2017-10-27T15:49:00.000+03:00'
'aeb548a94e35412d78b7ecd138e908620c072185'|'Equis Energy agrees to be sold to global investors for $5 billion'|' 29 AM / Updated 14 minutes ago Equis Energy agrees to be sold to global investors for $5 billion Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) and other investors including a Canadian pension fund and a unit of China Investment Corp have agreed to buy Equis Energy, Asia<69>s largest independent renewable energy firm, for $5 billion. FILE PICTURE: A general view of Equis Energy''s 30 Megawatt solar asset in Aomori Prefecture, Japan in this undated handout photo released July 25, 2017. Courtesy of Equis Energy/Handout via Reuters The deal value includes assumed liabilities of $1.3 billion, Equis Pte Ltd and GIP said in a statement. <20>The transaction is the largest renewable energy generation acquisition in history and positions GIP as a dominant renewable energy developer in the key OECD growth markets of Australia and Japan, as well as across India and South-East Asia,<2C> the statement said. Equis and GIP signed a binding deal for the sale of 100 percent of Equis Energy to GIP and co-investors. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2018. Reporting by Anshuman Daga; Editing by Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-equis-m-a-globalinfra/equis-energy-agrees-to-be-sold-to-global-investors-for-5-billion-idUKKBN1CU05F'|'2017-10-25T05:29:00.000+03:00'
'127e030aa4b2766f3ac96dcbfa0d64d62655b4a1'|'Kering shares touch record highs after luxury group posts higher third-quarter sales'|'October 25, 2017 / 7:20 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago Kering shares touch record highs after luxury group posts higher third-quarter sales Reuters Staff 2 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - Shares in luxury goods group Kering ( PRTP.PA ) surged to touch record highs on Wednesday after Kering beat sales forecasts in the third quarter. FILE PHOTO: A model displays a creation from the Gucci Spring/Summer 2018 show at the Milan Fashion Week in Milan, Italy, September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini/File Photo Kering shares were up 6 percent to 384.45 euros in early session trading, with the stock at one point touching a record high of 390 euros. Kering shares have risen some 80 percent since the start of 2017, among the top performers in France and Europe. Shares in rival luxury group LVMH ( LVMH.PA ) climbed by around 1 percent to also touch a record high. Kering<6E>s revenue reached 3.9 billion euros ($4.6 billion) in the third quarter, up 23.3 percent on a non-organic basis, as the company<6E>s Gucci brand showed strong growth during the quarter. JP Morgan analysts raised their price target on Kering shares to 400 euros from 370 euros, while keeping an <20>overweight<68> rating on Kering. <20>Gucci posted impressive 49 percent organic sales growth in Q3,<2C> JP Morgan<61>s analysts wrote in a research note. Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Leigh Thomas'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-kering-results-stocks/kering-shares-touch-record-highs-after-luxury-group-posts-higher-third-quarter-sales-idUKKBN1CU0PH'|'2017-10-25T10:20:00.000+03:00'
'97c9ae424828ebc1de30a58aa8aa573d4b6420c4'|'Lufthansa sees Air Berlin deal lifting results in 2019'|'October 25, 2017 / 7:48 AM / Updated 14 minutes ago Lufthansa sees Air Berlin deal lifting results in 2019 Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BERLIN, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Lufthansa expects to see a positive impact on its results in 2019 from a deal to take over large parts of insolvent rival Air Berlin, after work next year to integrate the operations, managers said on Wednesday. Lufthansa is investing 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in total in the project, which will see it take on 81 additional aircraft and grow its Eurowings budget brand. <20>It will be a major operating challenge for Eurowings,<2C> Chief Executive Carsten Spohr said. Air Berlin will cease operations on Friday, and Spohr said that Lufthansa hoped to fly around three quarters of Air Berlin<69>s passengers over the coming months. Lufthansa has announced plans to temporarily use wide-body planes on some short-haul routes to meet the additional demand created by Air Berlin<69>s collapse. Finance chief Ulrik Svensson said he expected project costs of around 50 million euros next year for items such as repainting planes and re-training staff. $1 = 0.8506 euros Reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Maria Sheahan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/lufthansa-results-air-berlin/lufthansa-sees-air-berlin-deal-lifting-results-in-2019-idUSL8N1N01NT'|'2017-10-25T10:45:00.000+03:00'
'705384b0579a14361d65bae674948b19ec1c98e3'|'Equifax, reeling from hack, still has no earnings report date'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - Equifax Inc ( EFX.N ) is running out of time to schedule its first quarterly results report since the massive breach that exposed sensitive data on 145.5 million people and erased more than $4 billion of the credit reporting firm<72>s market value. FILE PHOTO: Credit reporting company Equifax Inc. corporate offices are pictured in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Tami Chappell/File Photo The company has yet to announce a date for its third-quarter earnings and management''s first conference call with Wall Street analysts since it disclosed the breach last month. That is a departure from its normal practice of scheduling earnings by mid-October. Cyber Risk Top executives and government officials are convening in Toronto, Washington, Moscow and Tel Aviv from October 23 to November 2 for the Reuters Cyber Security Summit. Equifax has until Nov. 9 to release its results or seek an extension from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which gives large companies 40 days after the close of a quarter to report their financials to investors. Company representatives declined to say when the results will be issued. Equifax is struggling to recover from one of the worst cyber attacks in history. Its shares are down about 24 percent from Sept. 7, when it announced the breach, which prompted outrage from U.S. lawmakers and consumers and the departure of its chief executive. State and federal probes into the incident are underway. <20>A significant amount of uncertainty remains regarding the financial and operational impacts from Equifax<61>s breach,<2C> RBC Capital Markets analyst Gary Bisbee said in a note on Monday, as he cut his recommendation on the stock to <20>hold<6C> from <20>buy.<2E> Lingering questions include how the incident might hurt earnings of the Atlanta-based company, the impact on Equifax<61>s market share and the likelihood of the U.S. government tightening regulation of the credit reporting industry, Bisbee said. Equifax<61>s shares were down 0.8 percent at $107.90 on Wednesday, having rebounded from a more than two-and-a-half-year low of $89.59 on Sept. 14. The average analyst price target on the stock is now $124.62, down from $153.25 before the breach, according to Thomson Reuters data. Still, 11 of the 15 analysts tracked by Thomson Reuters who cover the company have a <20>buy<75> or <20>strong buy<75> recommendation on the stock. Four others have hold ratings. Equifax, one of the big three credit reporting bureaus along with Experian Plc ( EXPN.L ) and TransUnion ( TRU.N ), is expected to report earnings of $1.49 per share, not including one-time items, for the third quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. That has dropped 2.1 percent over the past month, but is still above the $1.44 the company reported for the same period last year. SEEKING CLARITY The chief near-term risk for Equifax is how the breach will weigh on its workforce solutions unit, which provides payroll and human-resources services to companies, said Morningstar analyst Brett Horn. That unit made up about 20 percent of Equifax<61>s $3.1 billion in total revenue last year. The breach may cause businesses to question whether they should provide sensitive employee information to Equifax, Horn said. Earlier this month, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service temporarily suspended a contract worth more than $7 million it recently awarded to Equifax following another security issue with Equifax<61>s website. Horn said Equifax may not be ready to provide investors with financial details about how much the incident will cost to clean up and how it will affect future earnings. That may depend on how much of the post-breach expenses will be paid by insurers and how much the free credit monitoring and identity theft services the company is offering consumers as a result of the breach will ultimately cost. When it finally does report earnings and talk to analysts, investors are eager for an update on the company<6E>s search for a new chief executive, 
'32cfe257a88747646038bec74eddc1e9dbc4d596'|'UPDATE 2-Popular takes shine off Brazil-driven Santander profit'|'October 26, 2017 / 6:31 AM / in 6 hours UPDATE 3-Popular takes shine off Brazil-driven Santander profit Reuters Staff * Q3 net profit down 14 pct on extraordinary charges * Q3 underlying profit up 17 pct * Ends Q3 with NPLs of 4.24 pct vs 5.37 pct in Q2 (Adds comments from CEO on situation in Catalonia) By Jes<65>s Aguado MADRID, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Banco Santander<65>s net profit was hit by one-off restructuring costs from its acquisition of troubled Banco Popular, which offset otherwise solid underlying third quarter results from Spain<69>s biggest lender. Santander<65>s shares were up 0.7 percent on Thursday, against a 0.5 percent drop on the European STOXX banking index, after it reported a net profit of 1.46 billion euros ($1.73 billion). Analysts, who on average had forecast a net profit of 1.85 billion euros, had expected Santander to begin booking costs related to Popular in the last quarter of 2017. However, Santander consolidated Popular into its accounts for the entire third quarter after taking it over in June for a nominal one euro after European authorities stepped in to avert a collapse following a run on the bank. Santander has said it expects total restructuring costs of around 1.3 billion euros related to the deal. In the third quarter, the absorption hit net profit by 122 million euros. The bank was not expecting to book further restructuring costs this year apart from 300 million euros incurred in the third quarter, chief executive officer, Jose Antonio Alvarez, said in a conference call to analysts. Excluding extraordinary charges, Santander<65>s underlying net profit rose 17 percent, boosted by its main market, Brazil, where net profit jumped 35 percent. Brazil outperformed the bank<6E>s other units, including Britain where net profit grew almost 4 percent. Analysts at Deutsche Bank highlighted that the lender had booked revenue growth in eight of its ten core markets. As with its recent positive strategy update - when it slightly lifted its 2018 profitability targets - the bank<6E>s quarterly results are expected to be partially overshadowed by the independence stand-off in Catalonia, where Santander has a 13 market share of deposits. In an attempt to calm deposit holders following a banned Oct. 1 vote for independence in the region, Caixabank and Banco Sabadell, the most exposed to Catalonia, moved their legal headquarters out of the region Santander<65>s CEO said the situation in Catalonia was not good for business throughout Spain, though it was still too early to assess the impact on activity. Santander<65>s net interest income (NII) - a measure of earnings on loans minus deposit costs - was 8.7 billion euros in the quarter, up 11.3 percent from last year but up just 0.9 percent against the previous quarter. Like European rivals, Santander is struggling to lift earnings from loans in Spain as interest rates hover at historic lows and rising competition erodes margins. In the Spanish home market, NII was down 0.3 percent from last year. Santander ended September with a core tier-1 fully loaded ratio of 10.80 percent, compared to 10.72 percent in July. It also reiterated it was on track to meet financial targets, including double digit earnings per share growth by 2018. The bank cut its non-performing loan ratio to 4.24 percent of total loans at end-September from 5.37 percent in June after sold a majority stake in a 30 billion euros property portfolio inherited from Popular. ($1 = 0.8451 euros) (Reporting by Jes<65>s Aguado; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Alexander Smith) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/santander-results/update-1-santander-q3-net-profit-drops-as-popular-costs-drag-idUSL8N1N10TB'|'2017-10-26T11:24:00.000+03:00'
'938270062bbe40a2c3364c781dba218fb9c2d515'|'Oil markets tighten, Brent approaches $60 per barrel'|'October 27, 2017 / 1:16 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Oil up 2 percent, Brent hits $60/bbl on support for extending curbs Devika Krishna Kumar 5 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices jumped about 2 percent on Friday, with global benchmark Brent crude rising above $60 (45.72 pounds) per barrel, on support among the world<6C>s top producers for extending a deal to rein in output and as the dollar retreated from three-month peaks. A rainbow is seen over a pumpjack during sunset outside Scheibenhard, near Strasbourg, France, October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann Saudi Arabia and Russia declared their support for extending an OPEC-led deal to cut supplies for another nine months, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries<65> secretary general said ahead of the group<75>s next policy meeting on Nov. 30. The pact currently runs to March 2018. Brent futures LCOc1 rose $1.14, or 1.9 percent, to settle at $60.44 a barrel after hitting a session peak of $60.53, the highest since July 2015 and more than 35 percent above 2017 lows touched in June. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude oil (WTI) CLc1 ended the session up $1.26, or 2.4 percent, at $53.90 after reaching a session peak of $53.98 a barrel, the highest since early March. For the week, Brent was 4.6 percent higher, notching its third straight weekly gain. U.S. crude rose 4.7 percent for the week. U.S. crude<64>s gains have lagged the global benchmark amid rising domestic output. Oil prices have been hovering near their highest levels for this year amid signs of a tightening market, renewed support this week of an extension of production cuts and tensions in Iraq. However, the announcement on Friday of a ceasefire between Iraqi forces and the Peshmerga from the country<72>s autonomous northern Kurdish region eased some concerns. <20>What is interesting is that the pop in WTI futures moved above the Sept. 28 high,<2C> said David Thompson, executive vice president at Powerhouse, an energy-specialized commodities broker in Washington. <20>So even though the dollar is giving back some of its move, crude may now be trading off of a new driver, the technical breakthrough to a new high.<2E> The dollar trimmed its earlier gains versus a basket of currencies .DXY following a Bloomberg report that U.S. President Donald Trump is leaning toward Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell as his pick to head the U.S. central bank. A weaker dollar makes greenback-denominated commodities, including oil, cheaper for holders of other currencies. <20>I think the combination of short-covering and Chevron and Exxon both missing their production guidance for the third quarter has resulted in the market strength today,<2C> said Scott Shelton, energy futures broker with ICAP in Durham, North Carolina. TransCanada Corp ( TRP.TO ) said in a filing on Thursday that it is seeking to raise the temporary discounted spot rate for light crude on its 700,000 barrel-per-day Marketlink pipeline. That sent WTI<54>s discount to global marker Brent WTCLc1-LCOc1 to the widest in a month. OPEC and other major producers including Russia have pledged to reduce production by around 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) to drain a global supply glut. <20>If OPEC and their non-OPEC partners can agree to extend their production curtailments through 2018, then we estimate the oil market will remain in modest under-supply until 2019,<2C> U.S. investment bank Jefferies said. Rising U.S. crude production remains an issue for OPEC as it strives to clear a global supply overhang. Government data showed that U.S. crude production rose 1.1 million bpd last week to 9.5 million bpd after a decline due to Hurricane Nate, while U.S. oil exports hit a new record four-week average of 1.7 million bpd. [EIA/S] U.S. drillers added one oil rig in the week to Oct. 27, but the rig count, an indicator of future production, fell by 13 for the month, the biggest such decline since May 2016, data showed. Hedge funds and other money managers raised their bullish wagers on U.S. crude
'c8dab3efdc80839ec31fcf943dcece240be6ac86'|'Fiat Chrysler suspends Maserati Levante output for nine more days - union'|' 45 PM / Updated 20 minutes ago Fiat Chrysler suspends Maserati Levante output for nine more days - union   MILAN (Reuters) - Fiat Chrysler ( FCHA.MI ) will halt production of Maserati Levante sport utility vehicles at its plant in northern Italy for another nine days between Nov. 22 and Dec. 7, the FIOM union said in a statement on Friday. A screen displays the trading information for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV at the post where it''s traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., January 12, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid These shutdowns come on top of cuts FCA announced over the past two months for the Levante, the Alfa Romeo Stelvio SUV, and the Giulia sedan. At the time, the company told unions new import rules in China were hurting sales and were the reason for the temporary suspensions. <20>Are we sure this is a temporary situation because of the Chinese market or is this pointing to a structural drop in volumes?,<2C> said Federico Bellono, the union<6F>s regional secretary general in Turin. FCA declined to comment. Asked about the issue during a call with analysts on Tuesday, FCA Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne said the company needed to work on improving its distribution network for Alfa Romeo in China, but as far as Maserati was concerned, there were <20>no structural issues in China<6E>. Reporting by Stefano Rebaudo and Agnieszka Flak, editing by Steve Scherer'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-fiatchrysler-maserati/fiat-chrysler-suspends-maserati-levante-output-for-9-more-days-union-idUKKBN1CW1XZ'|'2017-10-27T16:48:00.000+03:00'
'77afd20cc2414c2a84a127878353d32d4774ff21'|'Puerto Rico, Whitefish defend controversial power contract'|'Oct 24 (Reuters) - Puerto Rico and Whitefish Energy Holdings on Tuesday defended their $300 million contract for the small Montana company to repair the U.S. territory<72>s hurricane-ravaged power grid after the deal was criticized by U.S. lawmakers.The back-and-forth comes as Puerto Rico struggles to restore power to more than 80 percent of the island a month after Hurricane Maria made landfall.Whitefish last month signed a deal with Puerto Rico<63>s quasi-public power utility, PREPA, to help fix a grid that was nearly destroyed by Maria, the strongest storm to hit Puerto Rico in 90 years.Whitefish was awarded the deal without a competitive bidding process, and despite the facts that it had just two full-time employees and was established only two years ago. That drew criticism from legislators who suggested cheaper options might have been available.In a statement on Tuesday, Governor Ricardo Rossello said his administration would review PREPA<50>s contracting practices and forward findings to the island<6E>s comptroller.Rossello defended the deal, saying it was necessary to ensure Puerto Rico would have workers in place quickly.<2E>Of those (contractors) who met the requirements and aggressive schedules to bring brigades, one was asking for a substantial amount of money - which PREPA had no liquidity for - and another did not require it,<2C> Rossello said. <20>That other one is Whitefish.<2E>Already in bankruptcy to shed $72 billion of debt, Puerto Rico was in financial straits even before the storm. As the island grapples to get back on its feet, power restoration is a key challenge - and one of keen interest to contractors and lawmakers alike.Maria cut power to all of Puerto Rico when it made landfall on Sept. 20. As of Monday, only 18 percent had been restored, according to U.S. Department of Energy data.Rossello<6C>s comments followed criticism from lawmakers like Democrat Raul Grijalva, the ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources, who said in a statement on Tuesday that <20>Congress needs to understand why the Whitefish contract was awarded and whether other, more cost-effective options were available.<2E>In a telephone interview Tuesday evening, Whitefish spokesman Ken Luce called the criticism unfounded, saying <20>Washington<6F>s got it backwards.<2E>U.S. lawmakers should be admiring Whitefish for getting up and running quickly, <20>while the U.S. government was still assessing what to do,<2C> Luce said in a telephone interview.The firm has been working in Puerto Rico since Oct. 2, Luce added.Whitefish, named for its hometown of Whitefish, Montana, has hired dozens of workers, largely through subcontracts, as it ramps up operations in Puerto Rico.FLUOR ENTERS THE MIX Meanwhile, the Department of Defense said on Tuesday the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a similar power grid repair contract to a subsidiary of Fluor Corp.Greenville, South Carolina-based Fluor Enterprises Inc beat out another undisclosed bidder for a $240 million construction contract set to run through next April, the DOD said in a statement.Others working on power restoration include JEA, a Jacksonville, Florida-based utility, and representatives from the New York Power Authority.Fixing Puerto Rico<63>s power grid is an enormous task. Maria would have seriously damaged a healthy grid, but Puerto Rico<63>s was hanging by a thread after years without maintenance. PREPA has struggled with heavy management turnover and a $9 billion debt load, which landed it in bankruptcy in July.PREPA has set aggressive goals for fixes, saying it wants 95 percent of power back by mid-December, a schedule viewed as ambitious. (Reporting by Nick Brown; additional reporting by David Gaffen) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-puertorico-power/puerto-rico-whitefish-defend-controversial-power-contract-idINL2N1MZ2DW'|'2017-10-24T22:54:00.000+03:00'
'ee62d9ef69b6c9e9b13ffd7f1a941989dc7d758b'|'Confidence in UK house price outlook hits five-year low - Halifax'|'October 26, 2017 / 11:09 PM / Updated 13 hours ago Confidence in UK house price outlook hits five-year low - Halifax Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Public confidence in the outlook for British house prices has dropped to its lowest in nearly five years, weighed by pessimism about the economy rather than the prospect of higher interest rates, a survey showed on Friday. New residential homes are seen at a housing estate in Aylesbury, Britain, February 7, 2017. REUTERS/Eddie Keogh Mortgage lender Halifax<61>s house price optimism balance dropped to 30 points in October, down from 44 points in the previous survey published in April and marking the weakest reading since December 2012. British house price inflation has slowed to an annual rate of 5.0 percent of August from around 8 percent just before last year<61>s Brexit vote, according to official figures, and an industry survey earlier this month showed property valuers have the gloomiest outlook since June 2016. <20>Housing market optimism has declined significantly over the past year, with almost half of people expecting a general slowdown in the market,<2C> said Russell Galley, managing director of Halifax Community Bank. Potential home-buyers listed a lack of money for a deposit and worries about job security as the top barriers. Although most economists polled by Reuters expect the Bank of England will raise interest rates next week for the first time in more than a decade, only 15 percent of those surveyed saw this as a major barrier to buying a house. Given this, Galley said Halifax does not expect a rise to have a significant effect on demand for property. As with other housing market surveys, the Halifax report picked out London as Britain<69>s weak spot. Halifax<61>s survey was conducted by pollster Ipsos MORI between Sept. 22 and Oct. 1. Its separate monthly gauge of British house prices published earlier this month showed momentum picked up in September, although economists were sceptical that it marked the start of a sustained upturn. Reporting by Andy Bruce, editing by David Milliken '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-houseprices/confidence-in-uk-house-price-outlook-hits-5-year-low-halifax-idUKKBN1CV3NE'|'2017-10-27T02:25:00.000+03:00'
'824ef24351f9cf68f9d69104e3438dd4b2563ab6'|'China''s Sept industrial profits surge most in nearly six years'|'October 27, 2017 / 2:44 AM / in 21 minutes China''s September industrial profits surge most in nearly six years Lusha Zhang , Sue-Lin Wong 5 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - Profits for China<6E>s industrial powerhouses surged the most in nearly six years in September as a government crackdown on air pollution sparked fears of winter supply shortages and sent prices of finished goods like steel and copper sharply higher. An employee works at an assembly line of bulldozers at a factory in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, China October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer Sustained earnings growth will give China<6E>s policymakers more room to restructure bloated and often inefficient state-owned enterprises, which dominate the industrial landscape and account for a hefty portion of the country<72>s corporate debt. Industrial profits in September rose 27.7 percent from a year earlier to 662.18 billion yuan ($99.46 billion), accelerating from a 24 percent jump in August, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on its website on Friday. That was the sharpest monthly gain since December 2011, when profits leapt 31.5 percent. The NBS attributed the September surge to stronger growth in production and sales and higher prices for manufactured goods, as well as a pick-up in earnings in sectors such as electricity, alcohol and electronics. <20>We predict the industrial sector will remain on a steady, improving trajectory in the fourth quarter,<2C> Zheng Lixin, a spokesman for the industry ministry, told a media briefing. For the first nine months of the year, the firms notched up profits of 5.58 trillion yuan, a 22.8 percent jump from the same period last year and up a touch from January-August. Industrial firms<6D> liabilities increased 6.7 percent in September on-year, compared with a rise of 6.4 percent in the first eight months of the year. While a year-long construction boom is starting to show signs of fatigue, still robust industrial earnings will be good news for the country<72>s leaders who gathered for a key Communist Party Congress over the past week to set political and economic priorities for the next five years. President Xi Jinping opened the gathering stressing the need to move from high-speed to high-quality growth. While reiterating a commitment to give market forces freer rein in the world<6C>s second-largest economy, Xi also said the government would strengthen the role of state firms, raising questions about whether Beijing will pursue painful reforms in the sector which some analysts say are long overdue. PRICES KEY TO PROFIT OUTLOOK Market watchers had expected solid September earnings after producer prices rose by a higher-than-forecast 6.9 percent on-year, boosted by strong demand for building materials. Most analysts have maintained those price gains and industrial profits would start to moderate in coming months as measures to cool China<6E>s heated housing market and a government crackdown on riskier lending starts to bite. But commodity prices got a fresh leg up in recent weeks as the government pressed ahead with efforts to reduce notorious winter smog, urging major northern industrial cities to slash steel output ahead of the official winter heating season. That has spurred fears of shortages and pushed up steel prices, but is having the opposite effect on steelmaking raw materials such as iron ore and coking coal, which are sliding on worries about a supply glut. China<6E>s steel output dropped in September from a record high in August as mills cut production in line with Beijing<6E>s campaign for clearer skies. Beijing was already in the midst of a multi-year campaign to shutter older, inefficient plants and reduce profit-draining industrial overcapacity, though many analysts say they are merely being replaced with newer, cleaner factories and the country<72>s excess capacity issue have not been fully addressed. Aluminum Corp of China Ltd ( 601600.SS ) announced a plan on Thursday to bring up to 16 billion yuan of investment into some su
'599d959b1378f7a8bf3fc733f0b698a8515fdb01'|'Dovish ECB, earnings, lift European shares to five-month high'|'October 27, 2017 / 12:53 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Euro headed for worst week of year; earnings boosts stocks Stephanie Kelly 6 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - The euro was on track for its worst week in 2017, undermined by the Catalan parliament<6E>s independence vote and the European Central Bank<6E>s decision to prolong its bond purchases to keep interest rates low, while robust corporate earnings helped world equity markets advance. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid The benchmark U.S. S&P500 index .SPX was up 0.8 percent late Friday, on track for it''s biggest one day gain since Sept. 11 this year. The Catalan parliament<6E>s declaration of independence from Spain, made after a secret ballot, is now likely to be ruled illegal by Spain<69>s constitutional court. <20>There<72>s no doubt that Catalonia, the issue has been weighing on the euro,<2C> said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial in New Jersey. Stronger-than-expected U.S. third-quarter GDP data helped bolster the dollar. The U.S. economy grew at a 3.0 percent annual rate from July to September, showing resilience even as recent storms hurt consumer spending. The euro had its worst day against the U.S. dollar in 16 months on Thursday after the European Central Bank said it would cut its bond purchases in half to 30 billion euros a month from January, maintaining an easy money policy well into next year. <20>The dovish surprise from the ECB was its openness to extend the duration of its bond purchase program,<2C> said Omer Esiner, chief market strategist at Commonwealth Foreign Exchange in Washington. The U.S. dollar index .DXY, which measures the greenback against a basket of major currencies, rose 0.41 percent, with the euro EUR= down 0.56 percent to $1.1585. Gains in the dollar were pared briefly after a Bloomberg report that said U.S. President Donald Trump was leaning toward Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell as the next U.S. central bank chairman. Powell is seen likely to maintain the Fed<65>s current monetary policy. U.S. Treasury note yields remained lower, following the Catalan news and the Bloomberg report. Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR last rose 7/32 in price to yield 2.4301 percent, from 2.454 percent late on Thursday. The 30-year bond US30YT=RR last rose 13/32 in price to yield 2.9397 percent, from 2.961 percent late on Thursday. Gold prices edged higher on Friday, after the Catalonian parliament<6E>s independence declaration from Spain led investors to seek safety from political upheaval. Spot gold XAU= added 0.3 percent to $1,271.02 an ounce. EARNINGS MSCI<43>s gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD PUS gained 0.44 percent. On Wall Street, gains were led by robust corporate earnings and the third-quarter GDP growth, both of which lifted investor sentiment. <20>In many ways, we<77>re seeing the strong getting stronger,<2C> said Eric Wiegand, senior portfolio manager at the Private Client Reserve at U.S. Bank in New York. <20>While valuations are full, it certainly becomes imperative on them to deliver solid operating results and that<61>s something that we did see.<2E> The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 29.99 points, or 0.13 percent, to 23,430.85, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 20.38 points, or 0.80 percent, to 2,580.78 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 143.84 points, or 2.19 percent, to 6,700.61. Google-parent Alphabet ( GOOGL.O ) gained 5.5 percent and Microsoft ( MSFT.O ) advanced 7.1 percent, which drove up the S&P technology index .SPLRCT. The sector has surged about 30 percent this year, twice the advance in the broader S&P index. Healthy results also helped Amazon ( AMZN.O ) rise 13.4 percent. Chevron ( CVX.N ) weighed on the Dow, with its shares dropping 4.2 percent after missed profit estimates. Spain''s IBEX .IBEX was the worst-performing major index on the day, losing 1.5 percent after the Catalan declaration. The gap between Spanish and German 10-year governm
'13df65427c0302f66ab45b304c922d6161e6ba95'|'Neck and neck between Condor and easyJet for Air Berlin assets'|'BERLIN (Reuters) - Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ) is talking to both Britain<69>s easyJet ( EZJ.L ) and Thomas Cook<6F>s ( TCG.L ) German airline Condor about a sale of its remaining assets, a spokesman for the insolvent airline said on Wednesday, with the race tight.An Air Berlin Airbus A320-214 parks at the Keflavik airport near Reykjavik, Iceland October 20, 2018. The insolvent German carrier has not paid its airport charges, as reported in a statement by Keflavik operator Isavia. REUTERS/Gerix <20>We<57>ll see who crosses the line first. It<49>s neck and neck,<2C> he said, confirming a Reuters report from Tuesday.Air Berlin had been in exclusive talks with Lufthansa and easyJet, but while a deal was agreed with Lufthansa for large parts of its business, talks with easyJet continued over the weekend and no agreement has yet been reached.Condor had initially expressed interest in Air Berlin when it filed for insolvency back in August, but the creditors selected Lufthansa and easyJet for exclusive talks.Time is ticking for a deal to be done, with the last Air Berlin flight due to take place on Friday.Lufthansa Chief Executive Carsten Spohr earlier on Wednesday said it would look better to have a second or third partner take some Air Berlin assets.Lufthansa is set to face European Commission scrutiny over the deal, which will see it take on operations comprising 81 planes, and is likely to have to give up some routes to appease anti-trust concerns.Reporting by Klaus Lauer; Additional reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Maria Sheahan '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-lufthansa-easyjet/neck-and-neck-between-condor-and-easyjet-for-air-berlin-assets-idUSKBN1CU29C'|'2017-10-25T23:18:00.000+03:00'
'6e473d4f2f7bacfe97b45510dc2856d9d98b64ce'|'GrubHub beats profit estimates as acquisitions provide boost'|'Reuters TV United States October 25, 2017 / 1:09 PM / Updated 4 minutes ago GrubHub still hungry for deals to stave off Amazon, Uber Munsif Vengattil 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Online food delivery company GrubHub Inc ( GRUB.N ) forecast current-quarter revenue above estimates and said it would look at buying smaller rivals to reach more customers and add restaurants to its network. Shares of the company, which reported better-than-expected quarterly results, rose as much as 10 percent Wednesday morning. GrubHub, which now has a restaurant base of nearly 75,000, said it expects revenue of $197 million to $205 million for the current quarter ending December, above analysts<74> estimate of $183.8 million. CEO Matt Maloney told Reuters that the most intelligent way to grow the online food delivery business was by acquiring smaller properties. <20>We are always looking for opportunities to do this, when it financially makes sense.<2E> GrubHub has been on an acquisition spree to boost its restaurant network and has lapped up Foodler Inc, OrderUp and Yelp Inc<6E>s ( YELP.N ) food delivery platform Eat24. Investors are focusing on GrubHub<75>s ability to integrate its acquired businesses and how quickly it can make them <20>meaningfully profitable<6C>, Stifel analyst John Egbert said. Eat24 will start contributing to GrubHub<75>s revenue from the current quarter and will start adding significantly to earnings from the third quarter of next year, CFO Adam DeWitt told Reuters. The online food delivery business has heated up since technology giants Uber [UBER.UL] and Amazon.com ( AMZN.O ) forayed into that market. While Uber and Amazon are tuning up their takeout services, GrubHub is forging partnerships. <20>We are early on a lot of partnerships: Facebook, TripAdvisor, Yelp and Groupon,<2C> Maloney said on a conference call with analysts. Facebook launched a service earlier this month that would allow users to order food from restaurants such as Papa John<68>s and delivery services such as GrubHub and Amazon-partner Olo. <20>We<57>re still trying to figure out how to change hungry Facebook diners into GrubHub or hungry Facebook users into GrubHub diners,<2C> he said. While the partnerships are still work-in-progress, GrubHub had 9.81 million active diners in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, up nearly 28 percent from a year earlier. Active diners is a metric that tracks the number of unique customer accounts from which an order has been placed in the past twelve months. GrubHub said third-quarter net income attributable to common stockholders slipped to $13 million or 15 cents per share, from $13.2 million or 15 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company earned 28 cents per share, on revenue of $163.1 million, beating analysts<74> expectations. Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar and Supriya Kurane'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-grubhub-results/grubhub-beats-profit-estimates-as-acquisitions-provide-boost-idUSKBN1CU1UT'|'2017-10-25T16:03:00.000+03:00'
'4c3e06a22606ec1a6741c90b82625e645a2b6ed7'|'T-Mobile, Sprint ready board committees to decide on merger-sources'|'October 25, 2017 / 2:44 PM / Updated 20 minutes ago T-Mobile, Sprint ready board committees to decide on merger-sources Liana B. Baker 4 Min Read (Reuters) - T-Mobile US Inc ( TMUS.O ) and Sprint Corp ( S.N ) are laying the groundwork for special committees of their boards of directors to decide on a merger between the third and fourth largest U.S. wireless carriers, according to people familiar with the matter. A pedestrian uses her smart phone as she passes a T-Mobile retail store in Manhattan, New York, U.S., September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Darren Ornitz These board committees are important for the merger because T-Mobile and Sprint are majority owned by Germany<6E>s Deutsche Telekom AG ( DTEGn.DE ) and Japan<61>s SoftBank Group Corp ( 9984.T ) respectively, and could be left vulnerable to potential lawsuits from minority shareholders if they don<6F>t establish independent mechanisms to review the deal. Both T-Mobile and Sprint have formed committees comprising independent board directors to decide on whether the deal should be signed once the merger agreement has been finalised, which is expected in the next three weeks, the sources said. The companies<65> special board committees have also hired financial advisers to help them deliver fairness opinions, the sources added. As with many all-stock mergers, T-Mobile and Sprint have decided there is no need to give their minority shareholders a vote on the deal, the sources said. An alternative would have been to make the merger subject to approval by a majority of their minority shareholders. However, the companies<65> advisers have determined this is not legally necessary, and could even jeopardise the deal were minority shareholders to organise against it, according to the sources. A Sprint sign is seen on top of a Sprint retail store in Manhattan, New York, U.S., September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky Some T-Mobile minority shareholders believe Sprint should not be offered any premium for its shares, the sources said. However, T-Mobile and Sprint have tentatively agreed on a range for a stock exchange ratio which, even at its low end, would offer Sprint a modest premium to where its shares are trading currently, the sources added. This could result in SoftBank and other Sprint shareholders holding close to 40 percent of the combined company based on where the shares are currently trading, the sources added. The exact share exchange ratio will be determined by looking at the volume-weighted average stock price of the companies over the last few months, one of the sources added. T-Mobile<6C>s and Sprint<6E>s due diligence on each other is almost complete, and much of their focus now is on working out a business plan for the combined company, as well as an integration strategy, according to the sources. Deutsche Telekom and SoftBank plan to accept the same terms in a merger as the other shareholders, the sources said. Sprint, T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom declined to comment, while SoftBank did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The sources asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential. Sprint shares rose as much as 3 percent in New York on Wednesday morning, giving the company a market capitalisation of around $28.5 billion (<28>21.5 billion) , after it also reported a narrower quarterly loss than most analysts had estimated, and it added subscribers. T-Mobile shares were down 0.5 percent at $61.95 in New York, giving the company a market capitalisation of $51.5 billion. Reporting by Liana B. Baker in San Francisco; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Susan Thomas'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-sprint-corp-m-a-t-mobile-us/t-mobile-sprint-ready-board-committees-to-decide-on-merger-sources-idUKKBN1CU264'|'2017-10-25T17:43:00.000+03:00'
'e9d6b56bec5ff5d4aabb523be3e21ce07cbaacc8'|'UPS announces U.S. rate hikes, new peak surcharges for 2018'|'October 25, 2017 / 8:39 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago UPS announces U.S. rate hikes, new peak surcharges for 2018 Nick Carey 3 Min Read DETROIT (Reuters) - United Parcel Service Inc ( UPS.N ) said on Wednesday it would raise rates across many of its U.S. services by 4.9 percent later this year, with surcharge increases for next year<61>s peak season focused mainly on residential addresses. FILE PHOTO - A United Parcel Service (UPS) truck on delivery is pictured in downtown Los Angeles, California October 29, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo The rise of e-commerce and online retailers like Amazon ( AMZN.O ) has posed challenges for the shipping industry. The costs associated with delivering packages to residential addresses are higher than to businesses, which receive more packages and so bring more revenue per stop. Shipping firms are scrambling to reduce that extra cost. UPS, the world<6C>s largest package delivery company, said its 4.9 percent increase would go into effect on Dec. 24 and apply to UPS Ground, UPS Air and International services, plus UPS Air Freight Rates in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. The company<6E>s main rival FedEx Corp ( FDX.N ) said last month that rates at its FedEx Express unit will go up by an average of 4.9 percent for U.S. domestic, export and import services as of Jan. 1. Atlanta-based UPS also said it would raise surcharges for most residential packages for the 2018 peak season - the busy season leading up to the holidays in December - <20>by a few pennies.<2E> For instance, the surcharge for UPS Next Day Air packages will rise to 84 cents in 2018 from 81 cents this year, while the peak surcharge for UPS Ground packages will increase to 28 cents from 27 cents. UPS will also apply a new 2018 peak season surcharge for additional handling of large or awkward packages of $3.15. As of July 8 2018 the company will also raise the additional handling cost for packages weighing over 70 pounds (32 kg) to $19 from $12 and raise the additional handling charge for large packages delivered to a residential address to $90 from $80. Investors have expressed frustration that UPS and FedEx have had to invest heavily in network expansion to handle soaring lower margin e-commerce volumes. UPS has unveiled a number of new surcharges in recent years, which are seen as a way not only to manage the higher costs associated with e-commerce but also to encourage retailers that ship excessively large, heavy or unwieldy packages to seek alternative shipping methods. Reporting By Nick Carey, Editing by Rosalba O''Brien'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ups-prices/ups-announces-u-s-rate-hikes-new-peak-surcharges-for-2018-idUSKBN1CU30I'|'2017-10-25T23:37:00.000+03:00'
'2b614515f7e301aff6f217692e3944fcb95925ca'|'Administrators seek court approval to sell Monarch airport slots'|'October 26, 2017 / 2:05 PM / Updated 8 minutes ago Administrators seek court approval to sell Monarch airport slots Alistair Smout   The administrators of failed British airline Monarch are seeking clarification in court about whether or not they have the right to sell Monarch<63>s airport slots, potentially the most valuable remaining part of the business. Monarch airplanes are seen parked on the runway after the airline went into administration at Newquay airport, Newquay, Britain, October 26, 2017, REUTERS/Toby Melville The status of Monarch<63>s airport slots has been ambiguous since the airline went bust at the start of October. Administrators at KPMG have maintained they have the right to sell the slots, reportedly worth 60 million pounds ($79 million), and said on Thursday they wanted to establish that right in court. <20>Given the complexity of the slot exchange process, we are seeking a judicial review on this particular matter,<2C> Blair Nimmo, partner at KPMG and joint administrator, said in a statement. <20>We believe this to be in the wider public interest, with the intention of resolving this matter quickly and with the greatest chance of maximising the continued use of the slots.<2E> Monarch<63>s owner Greybull Capital declined to comment. The chief executives of British Airways owner IAG ( ICAG.L ) and Norwegian Air Shuttle ( NWC.OL ) have both told Reuters they are interested in using the slots, even though the process by which they might be acquired was unclear. Monarch went bust at the start of this month, and it was immediately grounded, meaning Britain<69>s Civil Aviation Authority had to repatriate thousands of passengers who were overseas at the time. Airport slots are assigned to airlines twice each year by Airport Coordination Limited (ACL), with the initial co-ordination for the schedule for summer 2018 occurring at the end of October. A briefing paper by the British parliament in June said <20>there is conjecture about who has legal ownership of airport slots,<2C> but they can be bought and sold between airlines in a secondary market, as happens at Heathrow, where slots are in short supply but high demand. SAS ( SAS.ST ) sold two slot pairs at Heathrow to American Airlines for $75 million earlier this year. They can also be taken on by carriers in the event of a takeover, such as has happened with Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) buying large parts of insolvent rival Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ). ACL was not immediately available for comment. ($1 = 0.7572 pounds)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-monarch-airlines-licence/administrators-seek-court-approval-to-sell-monarch-airport-slots-idUKKBN1CV29I'|'2017-10-26T17:04:00.000+03:00'
'fe8a50b5d2903a239421c52844e4461bd587a9a9'|'SAP revises sales practices as it faces U.S. probe on S. Africa'|'October 26, 2017 / 9:03 AM / Updated an hour ago SAP faces U.S. probe into South Africa kickback allegations Eric Auchard , Joe Brock 5 Min Read LONDON/JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - SAP ( SAPG.DE ), Europe<70>s biggest software company, is making sweeping changes to its sales practices around the world after saying it faces a U.S. corruption probe over sales commissions paid to win South African government contracts. FILE PHOTO: SAP headquarters in Walldorf, Germany, January 24, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo Adaire Fox-Martin, SAP executive board member in charge of global customer operations, told Reuters on Thursday an ongoing probe by its law firm, Baker McKenzie, had uncovered wrongdoing related to sales commissions paid to entities linked to South Africa<63>s powerful Gupta family to win deals dating back to 2014. The Gupta family are friends of President Jacob Zuma who have been accused of unduly influencing the awarding of state tenders. The family has denied any wrongdoing and says it is a victim of a politically-driven witch hunt. SAP said in a statement it paid $7.7 million in commissions to Gupta-related companies between December 2014 and November 2016 in connection with contracts worth $48 million to sell software to South African state firms, Transnet and Eskom. <20>We are disappointed SAP has let down South Africa: its communities, our employees, the partners we work with in South Africa and, importantly, our customers here,<2C> Fox-Martin said by phone from Johannesburg. It said preliminary findings from the probe had led SAP to take disciplinary action against three top managers whom it originally put on leave in July after media reports alleged SAP paid kickbacks to win government contracts. The probe found no evidence SAP paid bribes to government officials. South Africa<63>s opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) said it had filed a criminal complaint against SAP<41>s local unit for alleged money laundering and corruption. <20>Following SAP<41>s admission today, the police have an obligation to investigate fully and to leave no stone unturned,<2C> the Democratic Alliance<63>s Shadow Minister of Public Enterprises Natasha Mazzone said in a statement. Mazzone called on SAP to aid the police: <20>It is high time that those who have been involved in selling our country to the highest bidder are brought to book. SAP must hand over any and all information that may have bearing on the investigation.<2E> U.S. PROBE; SOUTH AFRICA FALLOUT SAP also said on Thursday the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had opened a new investigation of the company under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) related to South Africa. The probe began after Baker McKenzie contacted U.S. authorities in July, SAP said, adding it was cooperating with the U.S. investigation. Fox-Martin said a separate internal probe by the company had found loopholes in its compliance and due diligence controls over how it conducts sales in South Africa and other countries. SAP operates in more than 180 countries, selling business planning software that many of the world<6C>s top multinationals rely on. It is a big supplier of corporate compliance software designed to control sales practices, among its various products. In response, SAP said it had stopped paying sales commissions on all public sector deals in countries such as Brazil, China, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia and South Africa. The company said its government sales commission ban would apply to any country rated below 50 in Transparency International<61>s annual Corruption Perceptions Index. There were 122 countries in the activist group<75>s 2016 report with high-risk ratings, though SAP does not necessarily operate in all of them. The response comes after SAP was hit last year with a $3.9 million fine by the U.S. SEC, which found it failed to maintain internal controls to prevent a bribery scheme by a former sales executive who won lucrative contracts from the Panaman
'e308e5d4fb68b3b8ddbcb3164456eeca104582d3'|'India slaps anti-dumping duty on some stainless steel imports'|'October 25, 2017 / 11:56 AM / in 8 hours India slaps anti-dumping duty on some stainless steel imports Reuters Staff 1 Min Read NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India imposed anti-dumping duty on some cold-rolled flat products of stainless steel from China, the United States, South Korea and the European Union, to curb the influx of cheaper imports and help local producers. A worker cuts a metal pipe inside a steel furniture production factory in Ahmedabad, February 2, 2015. REUTERS/Amit Dave/Files The duty, which will be in effect until Dec. 10, 2020, exempts certain grades of stainless steel, an official notification said. The government has allowed import of the product as long as the end use of the import is in the same form, it said. bit.ly/2i3e2Qv Earlier this month, the government imposed an anti-dumping duty on the import of some flat steel products from China and the European Union for five years. Last month, the government imposed an additional 18.95 percent countervailing duty on some hot-rolled and cold-rolled stainless steel flat products, a first such levy on a steel product. Reporting by Neha Dasgupta; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-stainlessteel-dumping/india-slaps-anti-dumping-duty-on-some-stainless-steel-imports-idINKBN1CU1ML'|'2017-10-25T14:53:00.000+03:00'
'b505f2fb1baaeeddcdaec4c4c0a19b191dd555cd'|'Tokyo concept car aims to fend off dents with external airbags'|'October 25, 2017 / 1:04 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago Tokyo concept car aims to fend off dents with external airbags Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - A concept car equipped with external airbags to protect against fender benders is raising eyebrows at the Tokyo Motor Show. A model presents the Flesby, a one-seater mobility concept car exhibited by Japan''s auto parts maker Toyoda Gosei, during a media preview of the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon The body panels of the Flesby II ultra-compact vehicle are covered by a soft, next-generation rubber that can absorb the impact of a collision. <20>We put airbags, which are mainly employed inside the car, on its exterior, such as its hood or fender, to protect the entire body,<2C> Takashi Ishikawa, managing officer of Toyoda Gosei Co, said on Wednesday. Toyoda Gosei, a manufacturer of rubber and plastic automotive parts and LEDs, came up with the idea for the concept car in 2013. The company said on its website the rubber is able to move with electric power and change the shape of the car body. LED lights projected onto the rubber also allow the driver to communicate with pedestrians and other vehicles, the company said. <20>In the event of contact with a pedestrian, the soft body serves a safety function in absorbing the impact,<2C> the company said. Reporting by Reuters Televison, editing by Darren Schuettler'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-autoshow-tokyo-bouncy/tokyo-concept-car-aims-to-fend-off-dents-with-external-airbags-idUKKBN1CU1U6'|'2017-10-25T16:03:00.000+03:00'
'f27a0b8c1e3fe22328023efe5655a4f71074df26'|'LG Display says third quarter operating profit rose on year to $519 million'|'SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea<65>s LG Display Co Ltd booked an 80 percent surge in quarterly profits just ahead of expectations, helped by strong demand for its screens used in high-end TV sets as well as mobile devices ahead of the year-end holidays.A 77-inch LG Signature W OLED television is displayed during the 2017 CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., January 5, 2017. REUTERS/Steve Marcus The world<6C>s largest maker of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) also forecast shipments of screens would increase by <20>a mid-single digit percent<6E> in the current quarter.Analysts have warned, however, that hefty investments into into organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays as well as some price declines for screens could begin to weigh on profits.Operating profit for July-September for the Apple Inc supplier came in at 586 billion won ($519 million), better than an average analyst estimate of 567 billion won. Revenue rose 3.7 percent.<2E>Mobile LCD panel sales have been supported, partly due to the release of the latest iPhone. And although large-size panel prices have been falling, LG has been able to hold its ground well on the strength of its premium products,<2C> said Kim Yang-jae, an analyst at KTB Investment & Securities.He added that demand for screens for notebook and PCs had been better than expected, remaining flat after years of declines.Asked to comment on any signs of weak demand for mobile LCD screens, Chief Financial Officer Don Kim said only that demand from clients continued to be strong. Concerns about sluggish demand for Apple<6C>s iPhone 8, which uses LCD screens, had pushed Apple<6C>s shares lower last week.While robust demand for TVs spurred a spike in panel prices last year, helping LG Display log record profits in the first quarter of 2017, declines in prices this year are a concern for the industry.According to data provider WitsView, prices of television LCD panels larger than 43 inches began falling in May, with the pace of declines tending to accelerate from the end of the second quarter.LG Display said, however, it expects overall price erosion to slow in the fourth quarter.Shares in LG Display were up 0.5 percent in afternoon trade compared with a 0.2 percent climb for the broader market.($1 = 1,129.5100 won)Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Edwina Gibbs '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/lg-display-results/lg-display-says-third-quarter-operating-profit-rose-on-year-to-519-million-idINKBN1CU00M'|'2017-10-24T22:25:00.000+03:00'
'4748873cfb095fac8c82ae6603ca1e17b9a03bff'|'Chinese and millennial shoppers drive rebound in luxury goods sales - Bain'|'Reuters TV United States October 25, 2017 / 8:09 AM / a few seconds ago Chinese and millennial shoppers drive rebound in luxury goods sales: Bain Sarah White , Giulia Segreti 4 Min Read PARIS/MILAN (Reuters) - Worldwide sales of luxury goods such as high-end handbags, shoes and jewelry are growing faster than expected this year thanks to thriving demand from Chinese customers and young shoppers, according to consultancy Bain & Co. FILE PHOTO: The logo of French luxury group Louis Vuitton is seen on a handbag at a store in Paris, France, January 26, 2017. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen/File Photo After stalling in 2016, revenues from personal luxury goods are set to rise 6 percent at constant exchange rates in 2017 to 262 billion euros ($308 bln), Bain forecast in an annual report released on Wednesday, compiled with Italy<6C>s Altagamma. That trumped an earlier projection for 2 to 4 percent growth. The rosy outlook tallies with stronger earnings at many luxury retailers, such as France<63>s LVMH ( LVMH.PA ), owner of jeweler Bulgari and fashion house Louis Vuitton, or Italy<6C>s Brunello Cucinelli ( BCU.MI ). A spate of security threats in Europe had curbed tourist spending in the region in recent years while a Chinese economic slowdown had rattled the luxury sector. But visitors to Europe are splashing out again and demand from middle class Chinese has rebounded quickly, helping to offset a more muted U.S. market. Retailers<72> attempts to connect with younger buyers and bridge a price divide between Europe and more expensive Asia were also paying off, Bain said. <20>Luxury goods companies have rethought strategies and are now regaining the trust they lost from customers,<2C> said Federica Levato, a partner at Bain and a co-author of the report. The growth this year is <20>healthier<65>, driven by a rise in volumes rather than in prices and is balanced between tourist purchases and local buyers, Levato added. Chinese buyers made up 32 percent of the luxury goods market in 2017 - more than any other nationality - thanks to both rising purchases in their home market and abroad. The industry as a whole could notch up annual growth rates of 4 to 5 percent until 2020, Bain projected, at a time when online sales, once a more peripheral channel for luxury brands wanting to project an air of exclusivity, are growing steadily. They are forecast to reach a quarter of all sales by 2025, up from 9 percent at present. GENERATION Z Millennials, born between the early 1980s and mid-90s and who already represent a third of the market, and the later <20>generation Z<>, which grew up with smartphones, are starting to make a dent in the luxury market, Bain said. Brands have been increasingly turning to social media or pairing up with popstars and so-called influencers, making sure their products chime with younger tastes and branching into casualwear and streetwear, with t-shirts, sneakers and denim. These efforts come at a cost, however. While 65 percent of luxury firms will experience sales growth in 2017, only 35 percent will manage to increase their operating profit, Bain found. Young buyers are notoriously fickle, happily jumping from one brand to the other and keeping retailers on their toes. <20>It raises the bar in how companies are thinking about their marketing strategies. It was traditionally just beautiful pictures in a landscape with a beautiful product, this is not the case any more,<2C> Levato said. Additional reporting by Pascale Denis in Paris Editing by Susan Fenton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-luxury-outlook-bain/chinese-and-millennial-shoppers-drive-rebound-in-luxury-goods-sales-bain-idUKKBN1CU0TW'|'2017-10-25T11:04:00.000+03:00'
'fffa4553d242198e6bfb8eccba2c856c7badc886'|'Chinese firms eye U.S.-based Learning Care valued at up to $1.6 billion: sources'|'October 25, 2017 / 10:41 AM / in 10 hours Chinese firms eye U.S.-based Learning Care valued at up to $1.6 billion: sources Julie Zhu , Kane Wu 5 Min Read HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese suitors have indicated their interest in buying U.S. child care provider Learning Care Group (LCG) that has been put on the block by its private equity owner and could fetch up to $1.6 billion, said people with knowledge of the matter. The second largest for-profit early education and care provider in North America has drawn interest from venture capital firm IDG Capital and Bright Scholar Education Holdings ( BEDU.N ), which is backed by property tycoon Yeung Kwok-keung, said one of the people. Buyout firm American Securities LLC, which controls Michigan-headquartered LCG, has hired Morgan Stanley as an adviser for the divestment of its stake, two of the people told Reuters, adding the second round of bids are due in mid-November. A successful bid for the asset would help a Chinese buyer take the brand back home and tap into the booming demand for early education and child care services in the world<6C>s second-largest economy, said one of the people. While a source said IDG had participated in the first round of bidding, it was not known if Bright Scholar too had already submitted a bid. It was not immediately clear if there are other suitors in the fray or what level of regulatory scrutiny a Chinese bid may attract. American Securities, IDG and Morgan Stanley declined to comment. LCG and Bright Scholar did not respond to requests for comment. Chinese firms<6D> interest in LCG comes against the backdrop of a sharp rise in birth rates tied to the end of the country<72>s decade-long controversial one-child policy in 2015, as well as growth of urbanization and an affluent middle class. China<6E>s education market catering for children from nursery to end of secondary school will grow 8 percent annually to become a 3 trillion yuan ($451.50 billion) business by 2020, according to Morgan Stanley. To benefit from that growth, companies in China are looking to snap up leading learning brands overseas to make Western-style education accessible to the children of the rapidly growing ranks of affluent parents. LCG, a provider of care services to children aged between six weeks and 12 years, is likely to be valued at around 10-12 times its expected 2018 core earnings of about $130 million, said one of the people. The deal terms for LCG are not yet finalized and there is no certainty that the two Chinese companies would participate in any further bidding rounds, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are private. HIGH-QUALITY EDUCATION IDG Capital manages more than 10 funds and has assets under management estimated at over $7 billion. Its portfolio companies include Meitu Inc, a mobile hardware and app maker, and internet search provider Baidu Inc ( BIDU.O ). Founded in 1994 with backing from Yeung, chairman of Chinese property developer Country Garden Holdings ( 2007.HK ), Bright Scholar went public in New York in May and currently operates more than 50 international and bilingual schools across China. Fifty-year-old LCG operates more than 900 schools mainly in the United States, and has the capacity to serve about 130,000 children, according to its website. <20>There will be a lot of room for LCG to expand its business in China, where the demand for high-quality schools and educational services is growing rapidly,<2C> said one of the people. American Securities bought LCG from Morgan Stanley<65>s private equity unit in 2014. Financial terms of that deal were not disclosed, but sources told Reuters at the time that the deal valued LCG significantly higher than the $700 million valuation that Morgan Stanley had assigned on the company in 2008. ( reut.rs/2z1ys7t ) According to Moody<64>s Investors Service Inc, LCG generated $25 million to $40 million of free cash flow per year over the last few years, and $864 million of rev
'b8c1e5a317f958946947c529cde894153c17aeb9'|'Exclusive: Pfizer to launch consumer health sale in November - sources'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Pfizer ( PFE.N ) plans to kick off an auction process for its consumer healthcare business in November, paving the way for a potential $15 billion-plus sale of the headache pill to lip balm business, sources close to the matter told Reuters. FILE PHOTO: The Pfizer logo is seen at their world headquarters in New York, U.S. April 28, 2014. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo Several global companies, including GlaxoSmithKline ( GSK.L ) and Reckitt Benckiser ( RB.L ), have expressed interest in bidding for the unit, which had sales of about $3.4 billion in 2016. The prospective sale, which is being led by Centerview Partners, Guggenheim Securities and Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ), was first mooted on Oct. 10, when Pfizer said it was considering strategic options for the unit. But preliminary discussions with interested parties including Reckitt have already taken place, one of the sources said, adding the U.S. drugmaker wants to get the ball rolling before the end of this year. GSK Chief Executive Emma Walmsley confirmed on Wednesday she would look <20>carefully<6C> at the business. Three people familiar with the situation said the British drugmaker had hired Citi ( C.N ) to represent it in the auction. GSK declined to comment while Citi was not immediately available. Other possible bidders could include Procter & Gamble ( PG.N ), Sanofi ( SASY.PA ), Johnson & Johnson ( JNJ.N ) and Nestle ( NESN.S ), several sources said. Pfizer plans to send out financial information about the consumer unit to prospective buyers in around three weeks time, one of the sources said. The process is expected to heat up early next year as bids come in and a deal could be sealed around the middle of 2018, the source said. Germany<6E>s Merck KGaA ( MRCG.DE ) is also looking to divest its consumer health business and has hired JP Morgan ( JPM.N ) to sell the unit, best known for making Seven Seas vitamins. Some banking and industry sources said Merck could put the divestment on hold since the sale, estimated to be worth around $4.5 billion, risked being eclipsed by the Pfizer auction. One source said Pfizer believed keen competition would allow it to raise at least $20 billion from the sale of the business, whose well-known brands include painkiller Advil, Centrum multivitamins and lip balm Chapstick. As aging populations and health-conscious consumers drive demand for self-medication, the consumer health sector has proved a fertile ground for deal-making in recent years. But the industry remains fragmented and GSK<53>s Walmsley said she expected more merger activity, with GSK in a strong position to act as a <20>consolidator<6F>. Although consumer remedies sold over the counter have lower margins than prescription drugs, they are typically very long-lasting brands with loyal customers. Pfizer Chief Executive Ian Read said he was considering the sale of consumer healthcare because it was not integral to the core prescription drug business and might be worth more outside the group. GSK has taken a different view, opting to retain a diverse portfolio in which consumer health offers a hedge against riskier prescription drugs. For Reckitt, meanwhile, over-the-counter medicines offer higher-margin growth than its household business. Chief Executive Rakesh Kapoor, who last week announced plans to separate Reckitt into health and home and hygiene divisions, said he would weigh a bid if Pfizer<65>s strategic review resulted in a sale. Nestle could also enter the fight and use the Pfizer consumer business as a platform to expand the intersection of food and healthcare, sources said. The Swiss group has previously identified consumer healthcare as a sector of interest. Reporting By Pamela Barbaglia; Editing by Susan Fenton '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pfizer-divestiture-exclusive/exclusive-pfizer-to-launch-consumer-health-sale-in-november-sources-idUSKBN1CU2RW'|'2017-10-2
'e1aaf65c73bf003749800c6305d983e59146e6a8'|'Carlyle Group unveils new leadership as founders step back'|'October 25, 2017 / 11:02 AM / Updated an hour ago Carlyle Group unveils new leadership as founders step back Greg Roumeliotis 5 Min Read (Reuters) - Carlyle Group LP ( CG.O ) said on Wednesday that Glenn Youngkin and Kewsong Lee would become its co-chief executives, in the U.S. private equity firm<72>s biggest shakeup since it was founded by David Rubenstein, William Conway and Daniel D<>Aniello 30 years ago. The move makes Carlyle the latest buyout firm to take steps toward a generational change, after peer KKR & Co LP ( KKR.N ) said in July it would promote Joseph Bae and Scott Nuttall to co-presidents and co-chief operating officers, setting them up as successors to its founders Henry Kravis and George Roberts. Unlike with KKR, however, Carlyle is giving Youngkin and Lee, aged 50 and 52 respectively, its top jobs, making it the first among the private equity industry<72>s publicly traded pioneers, that also include Blackstone Group LP ( BX.N ) and Apollo Global Management LLC ( APO.N ), to hand over the reins. Rubenstein and Conway, both 68, will give up their roles as Carlyle co-CEOs to become co-executive chairmen of the Washington, D.C.-based firm<72>s board, while D<>Aniello, 71, will transition from chairman to chairman emeritus, Carlyle said in a statement. The changes will become effective in January. <20>Glenn and Kewsong will work together on all issues related to leading Carlyle, and will have full responsibility, authority and accountability for the firm<72>s performance,<2C> Rubenstein, Conway and D<>Aniello said in a statement. Youngkin is currently Carlyle<6C>s president and chief operating officer. A 23-year veteran of the firm, he is credited with building many of Carlyle<6C>s businesses, including its energy investing practice and its fund-of-funds division. Lee, currently Carlyle<6C>s deputy chief investment officer for private equity and head of its global market strategies segment, joined Carlyle just four years ago from Warburg Pincus LLC, another private equity firm, where he led investments in the consumer, industrial and services sectors. Lee beat other Carlyle insiders for the top job thanks to his reputation as a problem solver, having helped rebuilt Carlyle<6C>s credit investing business after several missteps. The transition takes place after Carlyle reshaped its portfolio to exit from unprofitable businesses, such as hedge funds. Its shares are now hovering around a two-year high thanks to the strong performance of its private equity funds, which have been buoyed by a stock market rally and are returning on average 2.2 times its investors<72> money. FILE PHOTO: David Rubenstein, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of the Carlyle Group, speaks at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 2, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo MORE DIVERSE FIRM Carlyle, whose investments over the years have included car rental company Hertz Global Holdings Inc ( HTZ.N ), photo agency Getty Images Inc and consumer headphones maker Beats Electronics LLC, is a much more diverse and global investment firm since its launch in 1987. Rubenstein, Conway and D<>Aniello, worth about $2.9 billion each according to Forbes, have built it into a manager of more than $170 billion of assets across almost 300 funds and investment vehicles, spanning private equity, credit investments and real estate. It employs more than 1,550 people in 31 offices across six continents. FILE PHOTO: Kewsong Lee, Managing Director for Carlyle Group attends the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York City, U.S., September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo Even though they have been serving in senior roles already, Youngkin and Lee will have big shoes to fill, as the three founders are identified closely in the minds of many fund investors and Carlyle shareholders with the firm<72>s investment acumen and strategy. Conway, a prolific dealmaker, will retain his role as Carlyle<6C>s chief investment officer. He will be joined by Peter Clare, who
'687cdd99cb2cfdfcfbb8085fe4c9cef55568accd'|'M&S clothing & beauty director Jenkins to head White Stuff'|'October 25, 2017 / 8:00 AM / Updated 6 hours ago M&S clothing & beauty director Jenkins to head White Stuff Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Marks & Spencer<65>s ( MKS.L ) director of clothing and beauty Jo Jenkins has resigned to join private clothing chain White Stuff as chief executive, the British retailer said on Wednesday. FILE PHOTO: A shopper carries a Marks and Spencer bag in central London, Britain, May 20, 2015. REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo A Marks & Spencer spokesman said the company was delighted for Jenkins, whose talent was reflected in the progress she had made both professionally and for the business. <20>Becoming CEO at a company like White Stuff is a natural next step for her,<2C> he said. Jenkins<6E> resignation will come as a blow to Chief Executive Steve Rowe, who is trying to revive clothing sales at the 133-year-old retailer by simplifying ranges, improving product and availability and reducing promotions. He has poached Jill McDonald from car-parts and bicycles retailer Halfords to run the clothing business, but she enters the business this autumn with no track record in the fashion industry. Rowe said in July a second quarterly rise in full-price clothing sales showed his strategy was starting to work, although like-for-like sales of clothing and homeware still fell 1.2 percent in the quarter. Shares in Marks & Spencer traded down 1 percent at 341 pence at 0844 GMT. Reporting by Paul Sandle and James Davey; editing by Jason Neely and David Evans '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-m-s-director/ms-clothing-beauty-director-jenkins-to-head-white-stuff-idUSKBN1CU0TH'|'2017-10-25T12:16:00.000+03:00'
'65be87745400e7197457d7acf0bd4a7132e1d629'|'UPDATE 1-Kloeckner CEO says parts of Thyssenkrupp Materials would be good fit'|'October 25, 2017 / 12:53 PM / in 10 minutes UPDATE 1-Kloeckner CEO says parts of Thyssenkrupp Materials would be good fit Reuters Staff * Analysts expect Thyssenkrupp might put unit up for sale * Unit is twice as large as Kloeckner & Co * Kloeckner shares down 5.5 pct after Q3 results (Adds CEO quote, details on M&A, Thyssenkrupp, shares) FRANKFURT/DUESSELDORF, Oct 25 (Reuters) - German steel distributor Kloeckner & Co sees parts of Thyssenkrupp<70>s Materials Services unit as a good strategic fit, but has not been approached about buying some of its assets, its chief executive said. Analysts expect that Thyssenkrupp could at some point decide to sell its Materials Services business, which made 11.9 billion euros ($14 billion) of sales in its 2015/2016 fiscal year, more than twice the 5.7 billion Kloeckner generated in 2016. <20>The unit is twice as big compared to our company,<2C> Kloeckner CEO Gisbert Ruehl told journalists after presenting third-quarter results on Wednesday. <20>But it<69>s certainly clear that it could be interesting for us in some way.<2E> About two thirds of Materials Services<65> sales, or 7.7 billion euros, come from Thyssenkrupp<70>s materials distribution business, whose rivals include Kloeckner, Salzgitter and U.S.-listed Reliance Steel & Aluminum. Thyssenkrupp declined to comment on Ruehl<68>s remarks. Analysts expect that as Thyssenkrupp plans to merge its European steel operations with those of Tata Steel, Materials Services will no longer be part of Thyssen<65>s core business and might be put up for sale at some point. Last month, Thyssenkrupp CEO Heinrich Hiesinger said the group was in no hurry to make any strategic decisions with regard to its Materials Services unit, adding it was currently focused on the steel tie-up with Tata Steel. Both groups, which are also Kloeckner & Co<43>s two biggest suppliers of flat steel, last month announced plans to merge their European steel operations to create the continent<6E>s second-largest player after ArcelorMittal. Ruehl said that any form of consolidation was good for the sector. <20>We expect our good working relationship to continue going forward,<2C> he said. Shares in Kloeckner were down 5.5 percent, the biggest decliners among German smallcaps, after its results on Wednesday, with analysts pointing to the prospect of weak fourth-quarter core earnings after the group kept its outlook. The firm still expects earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) to grow by at least 10 percent in 2017, which would bring it to at least 216 million euros. After nine months, EBITDA already stood at 187 million euros, suggesting the group might earn less than 30 million in the last three months of 2017, far below the 44 million Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S estimate. $1 = 0.8496 euros Reporting by Christoph Steitz and Tom Kaeckenhoff; Editing by Susan Fenton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/kloeck-co-results-ma/update-1-kloeckner-ceo-says-parts-of-thyssenkrupp-materials-would-be-good-fit-idUSL8N1N05EL'|'2017-10-25T15:51:00.000+03:00'
'2fa1a159006d86bee15720e9ffb7528d3204942d'|'Trump leaning toward Powell as next Fed chair: Bloomberg'|'WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is leaning toward nominating Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell to be the next head of the U.S. central bank, two sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.FILE PHOTO: Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell attends a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington August 3, 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo The sources cautioned that while Powell had emerged as the leading candidate from a short list of five, Trump had not made a final decision and could always change his mind.Bloomberg News reported earlier on Friday that Trump was leaning toward nominating Powell, citing three sources.Trump has said he has been considering Powell, as well as Stanford University economist John Taylor, for the post. He also has said he has not ruled out renominating current Fed Chair Janet Yellen, whose term expires in February.He is expected to announce his pick, which would need to win Senate approval, before he departs on a trip to Asia on Nov. 3.White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Friday Trump would make the announcement next week.Trump had been working from a short list of five candidates that included his top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, and former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh.A senior administration official said on Wednesday that Trump was unlikely to nominate Cohn given the importance of his role in helping to lead efforts to enact a big tax cut package. Warsh<73>s star also has faded, according to media accounts.Trump has also privately voiced a desire to put his own stamp on the central bank, which has dimmed prospects of him giving a new term to Yellen, another source said.In an interview with Fox Business Network last Friday, Trump indicated he could nominate both Powell and Taylor for top jobs at the central bank. A vice chair post is currently open.Reporting by Steve Holland, Tim Ahmann, and Jeff Mason; Editing by Andrea Ricci '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-trump-fed/trump-leaning-toward-powell-as-next-fed-chair-bloomberg-idINKBN1CW24I'|'2017-10-27T12:49:00.000+03:00'
'55d4359fed350e93323fa602eff02e798c7d898f'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Contagion danger as reeling rand hits 11-mth low'|'* Rand hit lowest in 11-months, bonds slide on downgrade fears* Turkish lira falls to weakest in three weeks* Nigeria stocks spared MSCI index relegation* Stocks set for 2nd week of falls as dollar flexes muscleBy Marc JonesLONDON, Oct 27 (Reuters) - A emerging market sell off was in danger of snowballing on Friday, as South Africa<63>s budget woes sent the rand to an 11-month low, Turkey<65>s lira dropped for a sixth day and emerging bond and stock markets racked up a second week of losses.Worries that South Africa could soon lose its remaining investment grade credit ratings knocked another 0.3 percent off the rand before it eventually steadied, taking its slump to more than 4.5 percent since the government ramped up deficit forecasts on Wednesday.That was set to be its second worst week of the year and the country<72>s bonds were also on the ropes as yields climbed to their highest in 18 months.The yield on the benchmark 2026 bond rose as far as 9.3 percent before it too began to recover, having started the month at 8.5 percent.<2E>Our base case is that they (South Africa) don<6F>t get downgraded until next year. But we will be keeping a close eye on the politics,<2C> said Yacov Arnopolin, portfolio manager for emerging markets portfolios at Pimco.<2E>We are currently neutral local currency debt in South Africa, and that<61>s worked out nicely in the last couple of days.<2E>Turkey, another traditionally volatile EM performer, also remained under pressure, hit by concerns about monetary policy and Ankara<72>s souring relations with key allies.Turkey<65>s central bank kept key interest rates steady as expected on Thursday, resisting calls to tighten policy after core inflation spiked to a 13-year high last month.The lira fell 0.4 percent against the dollar, dipping to its weakest level since end of January, whilst the benchmark 10-year bond yield went as high as 12.15 percent.<2E>We have known the Turkish problems for the while,<2C> said Credit Agricole strategist Guillaume Tresca. <20>But the fact is the market was very long the lira to catch the carry, and now the pressure is gradually rising and some people are unwinding their positions.<2E>Russia<69>s rouble tumbled 1.4 percent to its weakest since end-August after the central bank cut rates by 25 basis points to 8.25 percent and said it would consider lowering rates further in the coming months.The Kremlin expressed concern about possible new U.S. sanctions against Russia, but Moscow shares remained in positive territory, up 0.7 percent.MSCI<43>s benchmark emerging stocks index was trading flat, but set to end the week down over 1 percent.Venezuela<6C>s state oil firm PDVSA began the process of making payments on the 2020 bonds due on Friday, arresting some of the price falls seen on Thursday amid concerns the payments would be missed.The Russian finance ministry also said it had agreed to restructure $3 billion of Venezuela<6C>s debts to Moscow.Kenyan bonds fell as a low turnout from voters in its re-run presidential elections fanned fears of public unrest from opposition supporters.In other Africa news, influential index provider MSCI said it was no longer considering relegating Nigerian stocks from its widely-tracked frontier market index.Its central bank head also said he expected inflation rates to fall at a faster pace and hit high-single digit rates by the middle of next year.For GRAPHIC on emerging market FX performance 2017, see tmsnrt.rs/2e7eoml For GRAPHIC on MSCI emerging index performance 2017, see tmsnrt.rs/2dZbdP5For CENTRAL EUROPE market report, seeFor TURKISH market report, seeFor RUSSIAN market report, see) Emerging Markets Prices from Reuters Equities Latest Net Chg % Chg % Chgon yearMorgan Stanley Emrg Mkt Indx 1108.17 +0.01 +0.00 +28.52Czech Rep 1060.39 +3.69 +0.35 +15.06Poland 2485.43 +29.26 +1.19 +27.59Hungary 39912.78 +23.18 +0.06 +24.72Romania 7862.82 -16.71 -0.21 +10.98Greece 742.72 +2.92 +0.39 +15.39Russia 1107.13 -11.06 -0.99 -3.92South Africa 52306.49 +32.97 +0.06 +19.14Turkey 0784
'15fd664474939200e123f6c67c8d9667493f17d5'|'Exxon Mobil''s profit jumps 50 percent on higher oil, natgas prices'|'October 27, 2017 / 12:15 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago Exxon Mobil''s profit jumps 50 percent on higher oil, natgas prices Reuters Staff 1 Min Read HOUSTON (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp ( XOM.N ), the world<6C>s largest publicly-traded oil producer, said on Friday its quarterly profit jumped 50 percent on higher crude and natural gas prices. The Exxon Mobil gas station in Denver, Colorado United States July 28, 2017. REUTERS/Rick Wilking The company posted net income of $3.97 billion(<28>3.03 billion), or 93 cents per share, in the third quarter, compared to $2.65 billion, or 63 cents per share, in the year-ago period. Exxon said Hurricane Harvey, which tore through the U.S. Gulf Coast region in August, dented quarterly earnings by 4 cents per share. Production rose about 2 percent to 3.9 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Paul Simao'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-exxon-results/exxon-mobils-profit-jumps-50-percent-on-higher-oil-natgas-prices-idUKKBN1CW1N1'|'2017-10-27T15:14:00.000+03:00'
'aac087a3338e1a2ab4e9bd13e27757695364b27d'|'Kremlin: Possible new U.S. sanctions against Russia cause for concern'|'October 27, 2017 / 9:33 AM / Updated 8 hours ago Kremlin hits at Twitter''s ''prejudiced'' move against two Russian media outlets Reuters Staff 3 Min Read MOSCOW (Reuters) - Twitter<65>s ban on adverts from Russian media was motivated by Washington<6F>s <20>deep prejudices<65> against Moscow and was setting a worrying precedent for the company to treat its clients unequally, the Kremlin said on Friday. Twitter Inc on Thursday accused Russian media outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik of interfering in the 2016 U.S. election and banned them from buying ads on its network, after criticism in the United States that the social network had not done enough to deter international meddling. <20>We regret this. We regret that, first and foremost, this company (Twitter) is most probably falling victim to deep prejudices about our mass media,<2C> Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters. <20>We also regret that the company is actually creating a precedent of unequal treatment of its clients which ... is likely to alarm and worry other users of this network.<2E> In April, Reuters reported that RT and Sputnik were part of a plan by Russian President Vladimir Putin to swing the U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters<72> faith in the American electoral system, according to three current and four former U.S. officials. The Kremlin has strongly denied U.S. accusations of meddling in the polls. <20>We still hope that in the end the company will deem it necessary to analyze this situation in detail and in the end will come to a conclusion that the work of free mass media, which RT and Sputnik are certainly part of, should in no way be qualified as meddling in the electoral process of the U.S.A. or any other country,<2C> Peskov said. He also said that possible new U.S. sanctions against Russia were a cause for concern and a reflection of Washington<6F>s <20>unfriendly and even hostile attitude towards our country<72>. The U.S. State Department said on Thursday it had belatedly begun informing Congress and others about groups associated with the Russian intelligence and defense sectors as required under a 2017 law tightening sanctions on Russia. Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Richard Balmforth '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-kremlin/kremlin-possible-new-u-s-sanctions-against-russia-cause-for-concern-idUSKBN1CW15A'|'2017-10-27T12:30:00.000+03:00'
'2597d9f47a72a8aa2be44b13ea9273ca34dd6a57'|'Air Berlin administrator sees easyJet, Condor talks concluding soon'|' 43 AM / in 15 minutes Air Berlin administrator sees easyJet, Condor talks concluding soon Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - The administrator of insolvent German airline Air Berlin expects talks with easyJet and Thomas Cook<6F>s German airline Condor to reach a conclusion in the coming days, he said on Friday. German carrier Air Berlin aircraft is pictured at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt Air Berlin has already agreed a deal to sell a large part of its assets to German rival Lufthansa. <20>We are in talks with a second and third bidder. I expect that we can hopefully reach a deal in the coming days, so that we can possibly save a thousand more jobs,<2C> Frank Kebekus said on German TV program Morgenmagazin, broadcast by channels ARD and ZDF. Reporting by Klaus Lauer; Writing by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Maria Sheahan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-lufthansa/air-berlin-administrator-sees-easyjet-condor-talks-concluding-soon-idUKKBN1CW0MB'|'2017-10-27T09:38:00.000+03:00'
'0842c33d36e95282f8b7aeac72c2b67af8481f21'|'Wall Street set to open slightly higher amid earnings rush'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks advanced on Thursday to recover some declines from the prior session, after a round of positive corporate earnings, although gains were curbed by a drop in the healthcare sector.Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) shortly after the opening bell in New York, NY, U.S. December 14, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/Files As third-quarter earnings season nears the half-way mark, 74 percent of companies have topped expectations, above the 72 percent beat rate for the past four quarters.However, earnings growth for the quarter is currently 5.3 percent, well below the double-digit growth rates of the prior two quarters. With major U.S. indexes at record levels, earnings have been scrutinized to see if they warrant stretched valuations.DowDuPont ( DWDP.N ) was up 3.5 percent as the biggest boost to the S&P 500. It forecast third-quarter profit well above Wall Street<65>s expectations ahead of the combined company<6E>s first earnings report next week.Twitter ( TWTR.N ) jumped 18.8 percent after the company said it could turn its first-ever profit in the fourth quarter, helped by cost cuts and new sources of revenue.<2E>It<49>s not terribly popular to be saying it makes sense the markets are hitting new highs, but I look and I see a good economic backdrop, I see earnings growth and I see central banks basically managing quite well on the exit,<2C> said Ron Temple, Head of US Equities and Co-Head of Multi Asset Investing at Lazard Asset Management in New York.<2E>So what could go wrong - the single biggest factor that is hard to predict is who is the new Fed chair.<2E>Trump<6D>s search has narrowed down to Fed Governor Jerome Powell and Stanford University economist John Taylor, according to a Politico report. A White House official told Reuters that no final decision had been made.In a step towards enacting Trump<6D>s tax cut plan, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to clear a procedural path forward for the tax bill, which is expected to be unveiled next week.The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 98.56 points, or 0.42 percent, to 23,428.02, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 7.65 points, or 0.30 percent, to 2,564.8 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 7.80 points, or 0.12 percent, to 6,571.70.The healthcare sector, off 1.01 percent, held gains in check, led lower by a 19.6-percent plunge in Celgene ( CELG.O ), the biggest drag on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq. The company reported lower-than-expected sales for its psoriasis drug Otezla and lowered its overall 2020 sales outlook.A fall of 4.5 percent in Bristol-Myers Squibb ( BMY.N ) also weighed on the sector after its quarterly profit fell short of estimates due to higher costs and an inventory write-off. In addition, AbbVie ( ABBV.N ) dropped 2.4 percent after reporting deaths in psoriasis studies.Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.22-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.14-to-1 ratio favoured advancers.Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Nick ZieminskiOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-stocks/wall-street-set-to-open-slightly-higher-amid-earnings-rush-idINKBN1CV20J'|'2017-10-26T16:04:00.000+03:00'
'13d39aa12f10d7632ed27f938ce33b87ad432561'|'EU opens state aid probe into UK tax scheme for multinationals'|'October 26, 2017 / 9:51 AM / Updated an hour ago EU opens state aid probe into UK tax scheme for multinationals Julia Fioretti 3 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission is investigating whether a British scheme exempting certain transactions by multinational companies from British measures targeting tax avoidance amounts to illegal state aid, the EU<45>s competition commissioner said. FILE PHOTO: European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager holds a news conference at the EU Commission''s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir At stake is an exemption introduced in 2013 to the British Controlled Foreign Company (CFC) rules which exempts interest payments received from loans of multinational groups active in Britain from tax. <20>Rules targeting tax avoidance cannot go against their purpose and treat some companies better than others,<2C> EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said. <20>This is why we will carefully look at an exemption to the UK<55>s anti<74>tax avoidance rules for certain transactions by multinationals, to make sure it does not breach EU state aid rules,<2C> she said in a statement. Vestager has crusaded against what she calls unfair tax benefits granted to some firms in EU countries, notably ordering Ireland to recover up to 13 billion euros from Apple. CFC rules aim to prevent British companies avoiding British taxation through use of subsidiaries based in a low- or no-tax jurisdictions by allowing British tax authorities to reallocate back to the British parent company all profits that were artificially shifted to the offshore subsidiary. But the so-called Group Financing Exemption means that financing income received by the offshore subsidiary from another foreign group company will not be reallocated to the British parent, shielding it from Britain<69>s tax. The Commission said it had doubts whether the exemption complies with EU state aid rules forbidding preferential treatment of some companies over others. A spokeswoman for UK Prime Minister Theresa May said Britain does not believe its tax laws are incompatible with EU rules, but would cooperate with the Commission. A Commission spokesman said it was too early to say how much Britain might be asked to recover from the companies benefiting from the exemption, and would not be drawn in on the possible impact of Brexit on the investigation. The state aid investigation could drag on past the day Britain will exit the EU in March 2019, but Alexander Winterstein said that as long as the UK remained part of the EU it had to abide by the rules. <20>As long as a member state is a member of the single market, it is subject to EU competition rules including those on state aid, and everything else will be part of the negotiations which are ongoing so I will not enter into speculation on this,<2C> he said at a daily briefing. Reporting by Julia Fioretti; editing by Mark Heinrich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-taxavoidance-britain/eu-opens-state-aid-investigation-into-british-tax-scheme-for-multinationals-idUKKBN1CV18A'|'2017-10-26T14:28:00.000+03:00'
'fcc26130a2c18c2ccadddb07c24511f10fbcfb1f'|'Chinese construction group to buy Canada''s Aecon'|'(Reuters) - China<6E>s CCCC International Holding Ltd will buy Canadian construction company Aecon Group Inc ( ARE.TO ) for C$1.51 billion ($1.18 billion), including debt, in a deal that would require Canadian government approval.Shares in Aecon, which helped build Toronto<74>s iconic CN Tower and the Vancouver Sky Train, surged 20 percent to C$19.82 on the news, but traded below CCCI<43>s C$20.37 per shareoffer price.CCCI, the overseas investment and financing arm of engineering and construction company China Communications Construction Company Ltd (CCCC), is paying 42 percent premium to Aecon<6F>s share price on Aug. 24, a day before the Canadian company said it had engaged two financial advisers to explore a potential sale.CCCC is a publicly traded company in Hong Kong ( 1800.HK ) and in Shanghai ( 601800.SH ) and has more 118,000 employees. In 2015, CCCI acquired Australia engineering firm John Holland.China<6E>s acquisition of Canadian targets hit an annual record of $21.2 billion in 2012, helped by state-owned oil firm CNOOC<4F>s ( 0883.HK ) purchase of Nexen Energy for $17.9 billion that year, according to Thomson Reuters data.Since then, Chinese acquisition of Canadian companies has slowed after some members of the then-governing Conservative Party had misgivings about the CNOOC-Nexen deal. The government then said the CNOOC-Nexen was the last deal of its kind that it would approve, drawing a line in the sand against state-controlled companies taking any further majority stakes in the oil sands.While Aecon does not operate in a sensitive sector, the deal needs regulatory approvals under the Investment Canada Act, the Canadian Competition Act and from relevant authorities in China, the companies said.CCCI has agreed to keep Aecon headquartered in Canada and retention of Aecon<6F>s Canada-based employees.The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2018, which would rank as the ninth biggest Chinese acquisition of a Canadian company, the data showed.The transaction will help Aecon get access to capital to take up more larger and complex projects in Canada, the company said.CCCI has developed several large and medium-sized ports and navigation channels along China<6E>s coast and inland rivers and has actively participated in and competed for projects under external assistance and the international contracting projects.BMO Capital Markets and TD Securities are acting as joint financial advisors to Aecon. Barclays is acting as financial advisor to CCCI.($1 = C$1.28) Reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Denny Thomas in Toronto; Editing by Savio D''Souza and Marguerita Choy '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-aecon-group-m-a-ccci/canadas-aecon-group-to-be-sold-to-chinas-ccci-idINKBN1CV1DS'|'2017-10-26T08:32:00.000+03:00'
'1f83604b7a090cb7bdadd99c81890c5aa9ed362c'|'UPDATE 1-Barrick Gold earnings just miss forecast on Tanzania hit'|'(Recasts with other financial details, market forecasts)VANCOUVER, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Barrick Gold Corp, the world<6C>s largest gold miner by production, reported slightly weaker-than-expected third-quarter earnings on Wednesday, reflecting lower production and gold prices as well as the impact of an export ban on its Tanzanian unit.The Canadian miner, which also produces copper, lowered the top-end of its 2017 production forecast range and raised the bottom-end of its cost outlook.Barrick said it now expects to produce between 5.3 million and 5.5 million ounces of gold this year at all-in sustaining costs of between $740 and $770 per ounce.It said previously that it expected to produce 5.3 million ounces to 5.6 million ounces at all-in sustaining costs of $720 to 770 per ounce.Barrick<63>s adjusted earnings declined to $186 million, or 16 cents a share, in the quarter from $278 million, or 24 cents a share. Analysts, on average, were expecting adjusted earnings of 17 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Earnings were hurt by a tax provision of $172 million related to a proposed framework for its Acacia Mining Plc unit<69>s operations in Tanzania. Barrick last week reached a tentative deal with the East African country, which has halted most of Acacia<69>s exports. (Reporting by Nicole Mordant in Vancouver; editing by Grant McCool and Diane Craft) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/barrick-gold-results/update-1-barrick-gold-earnings-just-miss-forecast-on-tanzania-hit-idINL2N1N02MN'|'2017-10-25T19:36:00.000+03:00'
'928d5c6d5f2ad092bce47cb849ed5185ffbde7ca'|'Military and civil-aviation bosses are stepping up their efforts to recruit new pilots'|'FOR MANY people, the Hollywood blockbuster <20>Top Gun<75> captures the allure of becoming a pilot. In it, fighter-pilot trainees don aviator sunglasses and flight suits, and zipp about the skies to a soaring 1980s soundtrack. But despite such pop-culture appeal, America<63>s Air Force is struggling to capture the imagination of would-be recruits. This year it will be short of around 900 new airmen.To counter this, the Air Force is stepping up its efforts to recruit new cadets. This month they introduced a $35,000 signing-on bonus for newly hired military airmen, the first new incentive of its kind since 1999. Commercial carriers, too, are trying to entice more newcomers with better financial rewards. The average pay for new pilots in that sector has nearly tripled from $20,000 to $59,000 in the past three years. 38 an hour One of the main barriers for would-be pilots is training. To become a pilot requires an investment of $200,000, often more than student loans will cover. In addition trainees are required by law to fly 1,500 hours before being hired by a commercial airline. This delays the moment of fully paid employment and is another cost that student loans do not finance. The shortfall is most severely felt by regional carriers which experienced a steep hiring drop between 2014 and 2016.Another part of the problem is that an aging workforce is coupled with a mandatory retirement age. Over the next ten years, 42% of civil-aviation pilots will have to retire at 65. Boeing estimates that 117,000 new pilots will have to be hired to offset this and accommodate the future growth of the industry.Pilot shortfalls are already having an effect, particularly on regional carriers. Short-distance flights operated by regional airlines are often more expensive than longer routes run by well-staffed major carriers. For example, a quick check of flight prices shows that a five-hour trip from Seattle to New York is only $30 more expensive than a 50-minute jaunt from Seattle to Bellingham in Washington.More concerning, however, are the increased service disruptions. Between 2013 and 2016, 23% of all American airports experienced a reduction of scheduled services of at least 20%, according to figures from OAG, a data provider. Much of this is because of pilot shortages, argues the Regional Airline Association, a trade group. Though the largest carriers have been less disrupted, regional airlines have been forced to cut flights to more-remote destinations.Military leaders and commercial-airline bosses are already lobbying congress to alter the rules that govern flying. High on their wishlist are changes like student loans tailored for those pursuing a career in aviation and easier ways for pilots to clock up more flying hours. In the past being a pilot was considered a glamorous job. Though some of that appeal still lingers, today public policymakers just need to focus on making it financially feasible.Next India<69>s new aviation policies are breathing life into a once-ailing sector'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/10/flyer-hires?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-27T18:34:00.000+03:00'
'0170b8eaf4838b8bf3d4f48ca2fc43f95457d254'|'Extent of Volkswagen emissions cheating discussed earlier than known - Spiegel'|' 55 PM / Updated 13 minutes ago Extent of Volkswagen emissions cheating discussed earlier than known - Spiegel   FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ) engineers told top managers that diesel emissions manipulations went far beyond issues in the United States two days before the carmaker made a public announcement to that effect in 2015, Der Spiegel reported on Friday. A man uses phone under a Volkswagen logo at the Shanghai Auto Show, in Shanghai, China April 20, 2017. REUTERS/Aly Song Volkswagen (VW) admitted on Sept. 20, 2015, to installing secret software in hundreds of thousands of U.S. diesel cars to cheat exhaust emissions tests and make them appear cleaner than they were on the road. The news wiped billions of euros off its market value, but its stock price took another hit when it said two days later, on Sept. 22, 2015, that the issue affected not only vehicles in the United States but rather around 11 million cars worldwide. German securities law requires firms to publish any market sensitive news in a timely fashion. A probe by German prosecutors includes investigating whether VW disclosed the possible financial damage to its investors promptly. VW said in a statement it believed its management fulfilled its obligations under German disclosure rules. It declined to comment further, citing the prosecutors<72> ongoing investigation. Der Spiegel said, without citing sources, that former Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn and finance chief Hans Dieter Poetsch were told by engineers in a meeting on Sept. 20 that the emissions manipulation was a global issue. It said the participants of that meeting also discussed whether VW was obliged to inform the public under German disclosure rules. Winterkorn, who resigned shortly after the diesel scandal broke, has told a government committee that he informed Germany<6E>s Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt on Sept. 21, a day before the public statement, that VW<56>s problems were global. Der Spiegel quoted a document drawn up by VW<56>s lawyers as saying the company did not have reliable numbers on the possible damage until the evening of Sept. 21. Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Additional reporting by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-volkswagen-emissions-disclosure/extent-of-volkswagen-emissions-cheating-discussed-earlier-than-known-spiegel-idUKKBN1CW1Z9'|'2017-10-27T16:54:00.000+03:00'
'9fed8359f8fedaff22277a40813d003e2afd45db'|'Exclusive: Energy, not tech or finance, in CEO line-up for Trump''s China visit'|'October 27, 2017 / 11:34 AM / Updated 9 hours ago Exclusive: Energy, not tech or finance, in CEO line-up for Trump''s China visit Michael Martina 8 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. energy and commodities firms will make up a major part of a business delegation visiting Beijing at the same time as U.S. President Donald Trump goes to China in November, according to an initial list seen by Reuters. U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) shake hands prior to a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, July 8, 2017. REUTERS/Saul Loeb/Pool/Files Prominent technology and financial companies are mostly absent from the list, reflecting the slow progress Washington has made in opening up China in those sectors. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who will lead the 29 companies that have been approved to travel on the trade mission starting on Nov. 8, said they will be looking for <20>immediate results<74> and <20>tangible agreements<74>. But, speaking at the Paley International Council Summit in New York on Wednesday, he acknowledged that market access, intellectual property rights, and tariffs are more complex and will take a longer time to negotiate. Some major industrial companies - General Electric Co, Honeywell International Inc and Boeing Co - are among the companies on the current list. Whether executives from all the named companies end up attending could be subject to agreements or deals being negotiated in time for the visit, according to multiple sources whose companies are involved. One of the few tech companies going with Trump is Qualcomm, which earns about half of its global revenue in China and faces a series of tricky legal issues there, including a lawsuit with Apple and the Chinese government<6E>s review of its pending $38 billion merger with NXP Semiconductors. Qualcomm said its CEO, Steve Mollenkopf, planned to attend. An industry source told Reuters tech firms were reluctant to go, given China market access issues, the unpredictability of the Trump administration, and a <20>Section 301<30> U.S. trade investigation alleging Chinese abuses of intellectual property. <20>(These) issues are extremely sensitive for tech companies said another source in the U.S. business community. <20>Very few want to stick their heads up and be perceived as complaining directly, and even fewer trust this White House to do anything helpful on their issues,<2C> he said. Particularly galling to foreign tech firms are a slate of new national security and cyber security regulations, which mandate companies store crucial data within China and pass security reviews they argue could put business secrets at risk. TESTY RELATIONSHIP Trump, a real estate magnate who had never before held public office, has had a sometimes testy relationship with corporate America since taking office in January. He disbanded two high-profile business advisory councils in August after several chief executives quit in protest over his controversial remarks on racist violence in Charlottesville. U.S. industry sources say it has been years since a major business delegation has gone to China during a U.S. presidential visit. Calls for such a delegation during Trump<6D>s visit originated in the China-based U.S. business community, according to several sources, who saw a need to match growing efforts by Germany, France and Britain to promote their nation<6F>s firms in China. Trump, who has frequently cited the substantial U.S. trade deficit with China as a reason why Washington should take more protectionist measures, was an easy sell on incorporating a group of executives into the visit, according to the sources. Nonetheless, some trade analysts say China has done a good job of taming Trump<6D>s combative trade impulses. They worry the U.S. administration will be willing to paper over market access concerns during the visit in its focus on getting Beijing to take action against North Korea over its nuclear and missile programmes. Comm
'fbd822081b59424616e41200e2af1b483d673d6d'|'U.S. economy likely slowed by hurricanes in third quarter'|'October 27, 2017 / 5:16 AM / in 6 minutes Inventories, trade shield U.S. economy from hurricane headwinds Lucia Mutikani 6 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy unexpectedly maintained a brisk pace of growth in the third quarter as an increase in inventory investment and a smaller trade deficit offset a hurricane-related slowdown in consumer spending and a decline in construction. Gross domestic product increased at a 3.0 percent annual rate in the July-September period, also supported by strong business spending on equipment, the Commerce Department said on Friday. With inventories, goods yet to be sold, contributing almost three-quarters of a percentage point to growth last quarter, the increase in GDP overstates the economy<6D>s health. Excluding inventory investment, the economy grew at a 2.3 percent rate, slowing from the second quarter<65>s 2.9 percent pace. A measure of domestic demand also decelerated to a 2.2 percent growth rate from the April-June period<6F>s 3.3 percent pace. <20>This is a positive report for an economy that was battered by two hurricanes late in the quarter but it is not as strong as the headline 3.0 percent growth might suggest,<2C> said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York. The economy grew at a 3.1 percent pace in the second quarter. It was the first time since 2014 that it experienced growth of 3 percent or more for two quarters in a row. Economists had forecast GDP increasing at a 2.5 percent rate in the third quarter. The government said while it was impossible to estimate the overall impact of hurricanes Harvey and Irma on third-quarter GDP, preliminary estimates showed that the back-to-back storms had caused losses of $121.0 billion in privately owned fixed assets and $10.4 billion(<28>7.93 billion) in government-owned fixed assets. Harvey and Irma struck parts of Texas and Florida in late August and early September. Hurricane Maria, which destroyed infrastructure in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, had no impact on third-quarter GDP growth as the islands are not included in the United States<65> national accounts. Post-hurricane labour market, retail sales and industrial production data already show an acceleration in underlying economic activity. Economists expect the Federal Reserve will increase interest rates for a third time this year in December. <20>Fed officials will be encouraged by both the overall performance and the composition of growth in the third quarter, which confirms the U.S. economic expansion remains on solid ground,<2C> said Michelle Girard, chief U.S. economist at NatWest Markets in Stamford, Connecticut. The dollar rose to a three-month high against a basket of currencies on the data. Prices for U.S. Treasuries fell, with the yield on the interest rate sensitive two-year note touching a fresh nine-year high. U.S. stocks were trading mostly higher. The economic recovery since the 2007-2009 recession is now in its eighth year and showing little signs of fatigue. The economy is being powered by a tightening labour market, which has largely maintained a strong performance that started during former President Barack Obama<6D>s first term. Though U.S. stocks have risen in anticipation of President Donald Trump<6D>s tax reform, the administration has yet to enact any significant new economic policies. Trump wants big tax cuts and fewer regulations to boost annual GDP growth to 3 percent. A construction worker works on the side of a hill along a highway construction project in Encinitas, California, U.S., October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake INVENTORY BOOST Businesses accumulated inventories at a $35.8 billion pace in the third quarter, leading to inventory investment adding 0.73 percentage point to third-quarter GDP growth. Inventories contributed just over a tenth of a percentage point to output in the prior period. Economists expect a modest boost from inventories in the fourth quarter. Though export growth slowed in the last quarter, that was eclipsed by the 
'a4419561147231ec4211d29e264639964dd73170'|'BA-owner IAG beats profit expectations in third quarter'|'October 27, 2017 / 6:25 AM / Updated 14 minutes ago BA-owner IAG lags Lufthansa on revenue trend, shares fall Alistair Smout 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British Airways owner IAG ( ICAG.L ) said it expected profits to rise by nearly 20 percent this year thanks to strong travel demand and lower costs, but its shares dropped over concerns that revenue trends were weaker than those of rivals. FILE PHOTO: British Airways planes are parked at Heathrow Terminal 5 in London, Britain May 27, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ), Britain<69>s Monarch [MONA.UL] and Alitalia [CAITLA.UL] have all gone into administration this year due to tough competition. The industry shakeout could help Europe<70>s stronger carriers, such as IAG, by giving them opportunities to grow and relieving some of the pressure on ticket prices. IAG, which has been bullish on revenue trends this year, said on Friday it had seen passenger unit revenue - a closely watched figure - rise 2.2 percent. It forecast another rise in the measure for the final months of this year. However, the figure was below the 4.5 percent improvement reported by rival Lufthansa for the key summer months on Wednesday. IAG<41>s shares dropped 5 percent, having hit an all-time high on Wednesday, as analysts focussed on the passenger unit revenue trend and transatlantic routes, where British Airways faces competition from low cost carriers. Shares in the group, which also owns Iberia, Aer Lingus and Vueling, are up nearly 50 percent this year. Level, IAG<41>s new low-cost, long-haul unit, and Aer Lingus have rapidly added capacity, especially to transatlantic routes, diluting the group<75>s revenues per passenger and mile flown. <20>We consider the results to be broadly encouraging, but there may be an adverse short-term reaction to the unit revenue trend,<2C> Liberum analysts said in a note. CEO Willie Walsh told analysts that stripping out Aer Lingus, Level and three new BA transatlantic routes, unit revenue had grown by slightly over 1 percent on the North Atlantic routes. <20>We see this as a solid performance,<2C> he said, adding that transatlantic demand was good. By comparison, Lufthansa said its North America unit revenue rose 3.9 percent in the third quarter. Unit costs across IAG fell, helped by a drop in the fuel price. However, it added a further 65 million euros(<28>57.63 million) in costs related to a computer system failure at British Airways that stranded 75,000 people over a May bank holiday weekend. Bernstein analysts said the cost cut added a sheen to results that were less impressive at an underlying level, with a growth rate that seemed to imply it was losing market share. Walsh said recent consolidation left opportunities for more efficient players such as IAG to grow, and slammed Italy<6C>s government for continuing to prop up ailing Alitalia with loans. He said Vueling could expand in Germany and Italy. Walsh confirmed IAG<41>s interest in acquiring Monarch<63>s airport slots at London Gatwick, whether via the administrators or the usual slot distribution process. Monarch<63>s administrators are seeking court approval to sell the slots. IAG said third-quarter operating profit before exceptional items rose 20.7 percent to 1.46 billion euros ($1.70 billion), slightly ahead of a company-compiled analyst consensus of 1.4 billion euros. The airline group said it expected operating profit for the full year to be 3 billion euros before exceptional items, up 18.3 percent on last year. It previously said it expected a double-digit rise for the full year. Additional reporting by Helen Reid and Victoria Bryan; editing by Kate Holton, Alexander Smith and Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-iag-results/ba-owner-iag-beats-profit-expectations-in-third-quarter-idUKKBN1CW0L3'|'2017-10-27T09:24:00.000+03:00'
'c2a178e5bbf8a9205bd31ec4e4ca574e064e9ab1'|'Exclusive - Akzo Nobel approaches Axalta about possible merger: sources'|'October 27, 2017 / 4:39 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago Exclusive - Akzo Nobel approaches Axalta about possible merger: sources Ludwig Burger , Greg Roumeliotis 3 Min Read FRANKFURT/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dutch paints and coatings giant Akzo Nobel NV ( AKZO.AS ) has approached U.S. rival Axalta Coating Systems Ltd ( AXTA.N ) to talk about a possible merger that would create a global coatings group, according to sources familiar with the matter. Empty Dulux paint cans wait to be filled inside AkzoNobel''s new paint factory in Ashington, Britain September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble Philadelphia-based Axalta is in the early stages of considering a deal and there is no certainty that the two companies will agree to a merger, one of the sources said on Friday. The sources asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential. Neither company immediately responded to requests for comment. Shares in Axalta soared nearly 22 percent after the merger talks were revealed and were last up 18 percent at $33.27 in early afternoon trading, valuing the car-paint company at $8 billion(<28>6.1 billion). Akzo Nobel<65>s shares had finished flat in Amsterdam, valuing it at 19.5 billion euros. Earlier this year, the Dutch maker of Dulux rejected a 26 billion euro takeover offer from U.S. rival PPG Industries ( PPG.N ). Instead, the company plans to sell its Speciality Chemicals division, which represents about a third of sales and profits. Such a sale will concentrate Akzo on coatings and a tie-up with Axalta, the No. 1 supplier to the North American heavy truck market, would round out its business to include vehicle coatings. A tie-up with the former car paint unit of DuPont would be the first major strategic move by new AkzoNobel CEO Thierry Vanlancker, who took over when Ton Buechner resigned for health reasons in July. Vanlancker has cut Buechner<65>s profit goals, made in the heat of the takeover battle, twice in the space of six weeks, blaming disruption caused by hurricane Harvey, rising raw materials costs and <20>headwinds<64> at its marine coatings business. Vanlancker has stuck to longer-term financial targets made by Buechner, including an operating profit (EBIT) margin of 15 percent by the year 2020. That margin is currently below 12 percent. Private equity firm Carlyle, Axalta<74>s former owners, considered selling the company to Akzo in 2014 after filing for its IPO, according to media reports at the time. Additional reporting by Pamela Barbaglia in London; Editing by Nick Zieminski'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-axalta-akzonobel-exclusive/exclusive-akzo-nobel-approaches-axalta-about-possible-merger-sources-idUKKBN1CW2GA'|'2017-10-27T19:39:00.000+03:00'
'56802d9be324041543684c5a7f691c4a76c73263'|'Mexico''s Banorte values Interacciones deal at 26.6 billion pesos: presentation'|'MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico<63>s Grupo Financiero Banorte sees the total value of its deal to buy smaller peer Grupo Financiero Interacciones is 26.557 billion pesos ($1.40 billion), the group said in an investor presentation obtained by Reuters on Thursday.The cash and shares deal values a share in Interacciones at the equivalent of around 98.4 pesos with the deal expected to close mid-2018 if all approvals are obtained, the presentation said.Reporting by Christine Murray '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-banorte-interacciones/mexicos-banorte-values-interacciones-deal-at-26-6-billion-pesos-presentation-idINKBN1CV2FM'|'2017-10-26T12:43:00.000+03:00'
'59f9b0faa2c82dbfaa4d4bb0b244d2325ab878ac'|'RBS to pay more than $44 mln to settle U.S. trading fraud probe'|'Oct 26 (Reuters) - A unit of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc has agreed to pay more than $44 million and enter a non-prosecution agreement to settle a U.S. criminal probe into fraudulent trading through a now-defunct bond trading group.The settlement was announced on Thursday by U.S. Attorney Deirdre Daly in Connecticut.RBS Securities Inc will pay a $35 million fine, plus at least $9.09 million of restitution to affected customers, including recipients of federal bailout money, Daly said. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/rbs-settlement/rbs-to-pay-more-than-44-mln-to-settle-u-s-trading-fraud-probe-idINL2N1N11FO'|'2017-10-26T13:28:00.000+03:00'
'89957a3229ee4663e58fc87488a758b76955d32c'|'BA delayed my luggage for four days and it spoiled my holiday - Money - The Guardian'|'BA delayed my luggage for four days and it spoiled my holiday Am I entitled to compensation for all the stress it caused? View more sharing options Anna Tims Thursday 26 October 2017 07.00 BST In August my family and I flew with British Airways to Toulouse, but my suitcase didn<64>t arrive. I was given a number to ring and an operator, who struggled to speak either English or French, assured me that it would be delivered to my lodgings (90 minutes<65> drive away) the following day, which was a Sunday. I spent most of the first day of my holiday waiting for it. It turned out that the delivery service employed by BA does not work on Sunday, and that the call centre was based in Madrid, hence the language barrier. I called back on the Monday and was sent a text confirming that the case, containing all my clothes and my camera, would be delivered that day. It wasn<73>t. On Tuesday, I got through to lost luggage at the airport and was told that Monday had been a public holiday and the courier service did not operate. It took them four full days to restore my missing luggage. I filed a complaint with BA and received no response, so I wrote to the CEO. Three weeks passed with no reply. I then rang and, after hanging on the line for 50 minutes, was told I would be reimbursed for the clothing but that there was no question of compensation for my spoiled holiday. Do you agree that I have a right to that? AC, London A moral right, possibly. But a legal right? No, unfortunately. If it had been you who had been delayed you would have been entitled to a statutory payout under European regulations to make up for the stress and inconvenience. But the stress and inconvenience of four days without clean underwear is not recognised. Airlines are expected to pay for emergency essentials such as toiletries and for expenses if you have to return to the airport to collect delayed luggage. They don<6F>t have to compensate you for lost hours of your holiday, or even a missed onward connection if the missing luggage delays you. Nor will they countenance buying new fashion wear to replace old clothes, or replacements of valuable items if your bag goes astray. This why it<69>s important to buy decent travel insurance. The airline should, however, reunite bags with passengers as quickly as possible. <20>When bags are delayed our teams do everything they can to reunite customers with their belongings as quickly as possible,<2C> says BA. <20>We also provide help with essentials while customers are waiting for their bags to arrive.<2E> It has now refunded you the <20>190 you spent to tide you over. For any more you would have to approach your travel insurer if you took out a policy. If you need help email Anna Tims at your.problems@observer.co.uk or write to Your Problems, The Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Include an address and phone number. Topics'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/oct/26/british-airways-delayed-luggage-entitlement-compensation'|'2017-10-26T14:00:00.000+03:00'
'67c2ebb407e745a99c88214e56db0f369afc89e0'|'Firms should make more information about salaries public'|'SWEDES discuss their incomes with a frankness that would horrify Britons or Americans. They have little reason to be coy; in Sweden you can learn a stranger<65>s salary simply by ringing the tax authorities and asking. Pay transparency can be a potent weapon against persistent inequities. When hackers published e-mails from executives at Sony Pictures, a film studio, the world learned that some of Hollywood<6F>s most bankable female stars earned less than their male co-stars. The revelation has since helped women in the industry drive harder bargains. Yet outside Nordic countries transparency faces fierce resistance. Donald Trump recently cancelled a rule set by Barack Obama requiring large firms to provide more pay data to anti-discrimination regulators. Even those less temperamentally averse to sunlight than Mr Trump balk at what can seem an intrusion into a private matter. That is a shame. Despite the discomfort that transparency can cause, it would be better to publish more information.There is a straightforward economic argument for making pay public. A salary is a price<63>that of an individual worker<65>s labour<75>and markets work best when prices are known. Public pay data should help people make better decisions about which skills to acquire and where to work. Yet experiments with transparency are motivated only rarely by a love of market efficiency, and more often by worry about inequality. In the early 1990s, it was outrage at soaring executive salaries which led American regulators to demand more disclosure of CEOs<4F> pay. Such transparency does not always work as intended. Compensation exploded in the 1990s, as firms worried that markets would interpret skimpy pay-packets as an indicator of the quality of executive hires.  8   12   15   Despite this, bosses tend to oppose transparency, for understandable reasons. Firms have an easier time in pay negotiations when they know more about salaries than workers do. What is more, shining a light on pay gaps can poison morale, as some workers learn that they earn substantially less than their peers. A study of employees at the University of California, for instance, found that when workers were given access to a database listing the salary of every public employee, job satisfaction among those on relatively low wages fell. In industries in which competition for talented workers is intense, the pernicious effects on morale of unequal pay create an incentive to split the high-wage parts of the business from the rest. Research published in 2016 concluded that diverging pay between firms (as opposed to within them) could account for most of the increase in American inequality in recent decades. That divergence in turn resulted from increased segregation of workers into high- and low-wage firms.Yet transparency increases dissatisfaction not because it introduces information where there was none before, but because it corrects misperceptions. Surveys routinely find that workers overestimate their performance and pay relative to their peers<72>. This is true across economies as well as within firms. In 2001, tax records in Norway were put online, allowing anyone to see easily what other Norwegians had earned and paid in tax. Reported happiness among the rich rose significantly, while the well-being of poorer people fell as they learned their true position on the economic ladder. Better information changes behaviour. Low-paid workers at the University of California became more likely to seek new jobs after salary data became public. In Norway the poor became more likely to support redistribution.Transparency might threaten the function of capitalist economies if people were implacably opposed to pay gaps, but they are not. A study published in 2015 of factory workers in India, for instance, found that unequal pay worsened morale and led to reduced effort when workers could not see others<72> contributions, but not when productivity differences were easily observable.Yet in the modern economy, 
'b1808229fa3f7e8b984124af38d55a101c621d35'|'CVS-Aetna deal gets Wall Street thumbs up amid Amazon entry fears'|'(Reuters) - U.S. pharmacy operator CVS Health Corp<72>s move to buy health insurer Aetna Inc will broaden their reach in the industry and could spark another round of dealmaking in a sector dreading Amazon<6F>s arrival, analysts said.FILE PHOTO: The CVS logo is seen at one of their stores in Manhattan, New York, U.S., August 1, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo Shares of Aetna, the third-largest U.S. health insurer, were marginally up in early trading on Friday, after closing 12 percent higher on Thursday following reports of the deal. CVS Health was down about 1 percent.CVS Health has made an offer to acquire No. 3 U.S. health insurer Aetna for more than $200 per share, or over $66 billion, making it the biggest deal of the year, Reuters reported on Thursday.<2E>A potential combination would diversify CVS profit streams ahead of an Amazon entry and set the stage for a new healthcare-retail delivery model,<2C> Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note.Amazon.com Inc<6E>s speculated entry has hit shares of most drugstore operators on fears that the online retailer would leverage its vast ecommerce platform to take market share from traditional pharmacies.<2E>We believe CVS does need to respond to the potential threat and strike a different path,<2C> Cowen & Co analyst Charles Rhyee said in a note.A deal would make CVS-Aetna a one-stop shop for customers<72> health care needs - ranging from employer healthcare and government plans to managing benefits and running drug stores.The vertical integration of retail pharmacy, PBM, and insurers fits with broader healthcare themes of expanded access, consumerism and cost reduction, Jefferies analysts said, adding that the deal chatter was not a complete surprise.<2E>It would address each company<6E>s need for a fresh script.<2E>Some analysts said the deal could also trigger a wave of consolidation across the industry.It could be a possible catalyst for higher health insurance sector valuation, BMO Capital Markets analyst Matt Bosch said, adding that WellCare Health Plans, Humana and Centene could be possible acquisition targets.Aetna earlier this year closed the door on a deal with rival insurer Humana Inc after antitrust regulators said that the combination and a rival deal between Anthem Inc and Cigna Corp were anti-competitive.Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-aetna-m-a-cvs-health-research/cvs-aetna-deal-gets-wall-street-thumbs-up-amid-amazon-entry-fears-idINKBN1CW1YC'|'2017-10-27T11:49:00.000+03:00'
'9a9a2ce20eaa034484327769775897254ae113f6'|'Deutsche Boerse aims to find CEO ''ideally before year end'' - CFO'|'October 27, 2017 / 1:00 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago Deutsche Boerse aims to find CEO ''ideally before year end'' - CFO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The search is already on for a new chief of Deutsche Boerse ( DB1Gn.DE ) with the aim of finding a candidate by the end of the year, the company<6E>s finance chief told analysts on Friday. The plaque of the Deutsche Boerse AG is pictured at the entrance of the Frankfurt stock exchange February 1, 2012. REUTERS/Alex Domanski/File Photo Gregor Pottmeyer, chief financial officer, said the goal was to reach a <20>decision as soon as possible, ideally before year end.<2E> Reporting by Tom Sims; Editing by Victoria Bryan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-deutsche-boerse-ceo/deutsche-boerse-aims-to-find-ceo-ideally-before-year-end-cfo-idUKKBN1CW1SC'|'2017-10-27T16:00:00.000+03:00'
'b4cbb1f09d57ac635a84a0391a95ba9cec3bea82'|'Merck tops profit estimates on Keytruda sales'|'October 27, 2017 / 10:59 AM / in an hour Merck profit beat clouded by NotPetya attack, shares dip Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Merck & Co ( MRK.N ) reported profit ahead of Street estimates on strong sales of its cancer drug Keytruda but total revenue fell in the quarter from disruptions due to the NotPetya cyber attack and loss of market share for many of its older drugs.   logo and trading information for Merck, pharmaceutical company   (NYSE) in New York, U.S., August 14, 2017.   Sales of Keytruda more than doubled to $1.05 billion(<28>0.8 billion) in the third quarter, but were not enough to boost Merck<63>s total revenue, which fell about 2 percent to $10.33 billion. Merck<63>s shares were trading down 2.4 percent at $60.50 before the bell on Friday. Total sales were also hurt by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which had borrowed Merck<63>s Gardasil vaccine after the NotPetya cyber attack in the second quarter. <20>The sales reflect a loss of market exclusivity for several products,<2C> Guggenheim Securities analyst Tony Butler said in a client note. Rheumatoid arthritis drug Remicade<64>s sales fell 39 percent in the second quarter and 34 percent in the first quarter on a year-over-year basis. Sales of Zetia, Merck<63>s cholesterol therapy, declined 45 percent in the second quarter and 35 percent in the first quarter. Merck on Friday also narrowed and raised its full-year adjusted earnings per share forecast to $3.91-$3.97 from $3.76-$3.88. Net loss attributable to the drugmaker was $56 million, or 2 cents per share, in the third quarter, compared with a year-ago profit of $2.18 billion, or 78 cents per share. Merck had a $2.35 billion charge related to its collaboration with AstraZeneca Plc ( AZN.L ) for cancer drug Lynpraza, which it had announced in July. Excluding items, the company earned $1.11 per share, beating   $1.03,   Analysts had expected total revenue of $10.54 billion. Reporting by Manas Mishra   Martina D''Couto'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-merck-co-results/merck-posts-quarterly-loss-versus-year-ago-profit-idUKKBN1CW1EH'|'2017-10-27T14:25:00.000+03:00'
'17d34308f8b690aa58287fd84c9b24ead7864888'|'UK insurer Hastings reports rise in 9-month gross written premiums'|' 23 AM / Updated 3 minutes ago UK insurer Hastings reports rise in 9-month gross written premiums Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - British insurer Hastings Group Holdings Plc ( HSTG.L ) reported a rise in nine-month gross written premiums, as legal changes drove up the cost of motor insurance and policies rose. The company, which mainly operates in the British motor market, said gross written premiums rose 25 percent to 714.3 million pounds ($938 million) for the nine months which ended Sept. 30. Policies grew 14 percent to 2.60 million from a year earlier, while net revenue rose 22 percent to 538.3 million pounds in the period. Hastings<67> market share of UK private car insurance stood at 7.2 percent at the end of September, up from 6.4 percent a year earlier. Hastings, which sells most of its policies via price comparison websites, has reaped gains as higher premiums lead to more customers using such websites. The average price of motor insurance in Britain jumped 10 percent in the third quarter, taking premiums to their highest level since 2012, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) said on Friday. A government decision this year to cut the personal injury discount rate contributed to a increase in the size of payouts, denting insurers<72> profits and lifting premiums to record highs. However, Britain announced plans last month to change the rate for calculating personal injury payments, a move expected to reduce the size of the payments. ($1 = 0.7615 pounds)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hastings-grp-outlook/uk-insurer-hastings-reports-rise-in-9-month-gross-written-premiums-idUKKBN1CW0KX'|'2017-10-27T09:22:00.000+03:00'
'f56d4a3d93cbd21dca875ebd723f6cfdd76d37ad'|'Embraer warns of weaker 2018 due to E2 transition'|'October 27, 2017 / 10:52 AM / in 8 minutes Embraer warns of weaker 2018 due to E2 transition Reuters Staff 3 Min Read SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilian planemaker Embraer SA ( EMBR3.SA ) said on Friday that revenue and profits could suffer next year during the transition to a new generation of commercial aircraft, known as E2, which is likely to slow deliveries and consume cash. FILE PHOTO: Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer unveils its new E190-E2 in Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil, February 25, 2016. REUTERS/Nacho Doce Embraer<65>s first 2018 performance outlook came as the company reported third-quarter net income of $110 million(<28>83.99 million), beating a Thomson Reuters consensus of $72 million. Earnings recovered from a net loss of $34 million a year earlier, when the company booked one-time costs related to staff cuts, used aircraft writedowns and a corruption settlement in the United States and Brazil. The world<6C>s third-largest commercial planemaker said its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation more than doubled to $140 million, falling short of an average estimate of $184 million. The challenging outlook for 2018 highlights how much is riding on Embraer<65>s re-engined family of 70- to 130-seat passenger jets, the largest of which will face down a new Airbus SA ( AIR.PA ) and Bombardier Inc ( BBDb.TO ) joint venture selling the rival CSeries. <20>Embraer expects 2018 to be a transition year due to the entry into service of the first E2 model, the E190-E2,<2C> the company said in its earnings release, adding that the market for executive jets and defence products looked to be <20>flattish.<2E> The company projected stable business jet demand would result in another 105 to 125 deliveries in 2018. Embraer forecast a slip in commercial jet deliveries to between 85 and 95 aircraft, down from 97 to 102 commercial jet deliveries forecast this year. The additional cost of ramping up output of a new model is also seen weighing on profitability, Embraer said, forecasting earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) would equal between 5 percent and 6 percent of revenue in 2018. This year<61>s so-called EBIT margin is forecast between 8 percent and 9 percent. Embraer said it expects to burn as much as $150 million of cash this year, in line with its 2017 outlook. Reporting by Brad Haynes; editing by Jason Neely and Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-embraer-results/embraer-warns-of-weaker-2018-due-to-e2-transition-idUKKBN1CW1DG'|'2017-10-27T13:51:00.000+03:00'
'272167d802141e35c0372c9a9cc9fbf736ae23be'|'Irish retail sales up 1.2 percent in year to September'|'October 27, 2017 / 10:16 AM / Updated 2 minutes ago Irish retail sales up 1.2 percent in year to September Reuters Staff 1 Min Read DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish retail sales volumes increased by 1.2 percent in the year to September but grew by 7.7 percent when Brexit-hit car sales are excluded, data from the Central Statistics Office showed on Friday. FILE PHOTO: A concierge stands outside a shop that is having a summer sale in Dublin, Ireland July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne On a monthly basis, retail sales declined 2.4 percent, but increased 1.3 percent with auto sales excluded. New car sales have fallen this year as some motorists have preferred to import cars from Britain due to the sharp fall in the value of sterling against the euro. Reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Robin Pomeroy'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ireland-economy-retail/irish-retail-sales-up-1-2-percent-in-year-to-september-idUKKBN1CW1AI'|'2017-10-27T13:16:00.000+03:00'
'96d3ab32cefb73e292bf1643febb24395a3e5fe9'|'Twitter nears first profitable quarter as it slashes expenses, shares jump'|'(Reuters) - Twitter Inc ( TWTR.N ) said on Thursday it may become profitable for the first time next quarter after slashing expenses over the past year and ramping up deals to sell its data to other companies, which could help to break its reliance on advertising for revenue.Shares of Twitter soared more than 16 percent to $20.04 in afternoon trading. The company also said user growth resumed in the third quarter after stalling in the prior three months.Twitter has never had a profitable quarter based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), but said it <20>will likely be GAAP profitable<6C> in the fourth quarter if it hits the high end of its estimates.The social media company has struggled to convert its appeal among celebrities and public figures such as U.S. President Donald Trump to attract users and advertisers amid fierce competition from Facebook Inc ( FB.O ) and Snap Inc<6E>s ( SNAP.N ) Snapchat. It has worked in recent months to sign live-streaming deals and make other changes to improve user experience.Revenue from data licensing and other sources in the third quarter was $87 million, Twitter said, up 22 percent from a year earlier. That helped cushion an 8 percent decrease in advertising revenue.Twitter said it signed a <20>significant number<65> of enterprise deals in the third quarter, which would help stabilize its revenue flow. The company did not name the companies it had inked deals with.Twitter reported quarterly revenue of $590 million, down 4 percent from a year earlier, attributing much of the decrease to a previously announced decision to wind down its TellApart advertising product.Analysts on average had expected revenue of $587 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.San Francisco-based Twitter also disclosed that it had discovered an error in how it had measured its user base since 2014 and revised its estimates downward, but said the difference amounted to less than 1 percent.The company reported 330 million monthly active users in the quarter ended on Sept. 30, up 4 million from a quarter earlier, helped by email and push notifications.In the United States, where growth had stalled earlier this year, the number of users rose to 69 million from 68 million.Analysts on average expected 330.4 million monthly active users worldwide and 69 million in the United States, according to financial data and analytics firm FactSet.Twitter said that in past estimates it had wrongly counted people who logged into applications associated with the company<6E>s Fabric software platform, which Twitter sold this year to Alphabet Inc<6E>s ( GOOGL.O ) Google.Unlike Facebook, Twitter does not disclose daily active users, but says that number is less than half the monthly figure.The decline in quarterly revenue was the third since Twitter<65>s debut as a public company in 2013 and raised concerns about growth among some analysts.FILE PHOTO: The Twitter logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., September 28, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo <20>Yes, they grew 4 million MAU sequentially, which is good enough for the stock to stay at current levels, but revenue growth remains a problem,<2C> said Michael Pachter, managing director, equity research at Wedbush Securities.<2E>It<49>s great that they are controlling expenses and generating EBITDA growth, but investors want to see faster MAU growth and some revenue growth,<2C> Pachter said.Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said on a conference call that the company was trying out ways to attract and engage more users.<2E>We<57>re playing a lot with better matching people with their interests and with topics they care about. This is an area of experimentation,<2C> he said.Also on Thursday, Twitter said it banned advertisements from accounts owned by Russian media outlets Russia Today and Sputnik, citing allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that the outlets tried to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election.The comp
'136fc3989716b35aeffba2ae72bf4dd4ece214a5'|'U.S. jobless claims rise modestly as labor market tightens'|'October 26, 2017 / 12:35 PM / in 5 hours U.S. jobless claims rise modestly as labor market tightens Lucia Mutikani 5 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits increased less than expected last week, suggesting the labor market continued to tighten after recent hurricane-related disruptions. FILE PHOTO: A man looks over employment opportunities at a jobs center in San Francisco, California, U.S, February 4, 2010. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith/File Photo Other reports on Thursday, however, offered a less favorable look at the economy. The goods trade deficit widened in September and retail inventories fell, prompting the Atlanta Federal Reserve to trim its third-quarter GDP growth estimate. In addition, signed contracts to buy previously-owned homes were unchanged last month. <20>Firms remain unwilling to release labor. The labor market is very tight,<2C> said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 233,000 for the week ended Oct. 21, the Labor Department said. Claims fell to 223,000 in the prior week, which was the lowest level since March 1973. Economists had forecast claims rising to 235,000 in the latest week. They have declined from the almost three-year high of 298,000 hit at the start of September in the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which ravaged parts of Texas and Florida. The impact of Harvey and Irma has largely dropped out of the claims data for the mainland United States. But Irma and Hurricane Maria continue to impact claims for the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, now virtually isolated because of the destruction of infrastructure due to the storms. A Labor Department official said claims data for the islands had continued to be estimated. Last week marked the 138th straight week that claims remained below the 300,000 threshold, which is associated with a strong labor market. That is the longest such stretch since 1970, when the labor market was smaller. The labor market is near full employment, with the jobless rate at more than a 16-1/2-year low of 4.2 percent. The four-week moving average of initial claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, fell 9,000 to 239,500 last week. That suggests a sharp rebound in job growth in October after nonfarm payrolls dropped by 33,000 jobs in September. LABOR MARKET SLACK DIMINISHING The claims report also showed the number of people still receiving benefits after an initial week of aid declined 3,000 to 1.90 million in the week ended Oct. 14, the lowest level since December 1973. The four-week moving average of the so-called continuing claims fell 4,500 to 1.90 million, the lowest reading since January 1974. The continuing claims data covered the week of the household survey from which October<65>s unemployment rate will be derived. The four-week average of continuing claims fell 40,500 between the September and October survey weeks, suggesting a further improvement in the unemployment rate as labor market slack continues to diminish. The job market strength supports the view that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in December. U.S. financial markets were little moved by the data as investors digested the European Central Bank<6E>s announcement that it would extend its bond purchases at a reduced rate. The dollar .DXY rose against a basket of currencies, while prices for U.S. Treasuries were largely unchanged. Stocks on Wall Street rose. In a separate report on Thursday, the Commerce Department said the goods trade deficit rose 1.3 percent to $64.1 billion in September. Exports of goods increased $0.9 billion to $129.6 billion. Goods imports gained $1.7 billion to $193.7 billion amid a surge in capital and consumer goods imports, which likely reflects the economy<6D>s underlying strength. The Commerce Department also said wholesale inventories increased 0.3 
'54fcf696b6ca7c8932d23529daaa9d3a7900e542'|'UK retail sales plunge at fastest rate since 2009 - CBI'|'October 26, 2017 / 10:05 AM / in an hour UK retail sales plunge at fastest rate since 2009 - CBI Andy Bruce 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British retail sales plummeted in October at the fastest pace since early 2009 when the country was last in recession, according to a survey that could deepen economists<74> doubts about the wisdom of raising interest rates next week. Two shoppers sit with their bags on Oxford Street in London, Britain, September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde With the economy having perked up slightly in the third quarter, it looks very likely that the Bank of England will in a week<65>s time deliver Britain<69>s first rate hike in more than a decade. [BOE/INT] However, more than two-thirds of economists in a Reuters poll published on Tuesday said now was not the time for a hike. That majority view was bolstered by Thursday<61>s data from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), which said its monthly retail sales gauge fell to -36 this month from a two-year high of +42 in September, marking its lowest level since March 2009. The reading was far below even the lowest forecast in a Reuters poll of economists, most of whom expected a reasonably modest slowdown in growth. While the CBI survey is extremely volatile from month to month, the three-month average balance for reported retail sales sank to -1 from +18 in September - a 13-month low. Despite Wednesday<61>s encouraging third quarter GDP reading, the outlook for the economy in coming months is mixed at best, and further complicated by uncertainty around the Brexit process. JPMorgan economist Allan Monks said he tended to take Britain<69>s array of monthly retail surveys with a pinch of salt, but added that Thursday<61>s CBI survey raised concerns about momentum in the consumer economy. <20>We don<6F>t think this changes the BoE decision next week. But it could influence the degree of caution the (Monetary Policy Committee) expresses about the near term outlook,<2C> he said in a note to clients. The volume of orders that retailers placed with their suppliers also contracted at the fastest rate since 2009, the CBI said. In the past this measure has linked well with the monthly IHS Markit/CIPS gauge of activity among consumer goods manufacturers. <20>It<49>s clear retailers are beginning to really feel the pinch from higher inflation,<2C> said Rain Newton-Smith, the CBI<42>s chief economist. <20>While retail sales can be volatile from month to month, the steep drop in sales in October echoes other recent data pointing to a marked softening in consumer demand.<2E> The Brexit vote in June 2016 led to a big fall in the value of sterling, which has pushed up inflation, gnawing at consumers<72> disposable income this year. Earlier on Thursday the British Retail Consortium reported that retailers cut jobs over the past three months at the fastest rate since comparable records began in 2008. It cited a combination of technological change and government policies that pushed up employment costs as the main reasons for the fall. editing by John Stonestreet'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-retail/uk-retail-sales-slide-in-october-at-fastest-rate-since-2009-cbi-idUKKBN1CV19U'|'2017-10-26T15:00:00.000+03:00'
'86b9ce494f77f980bad85e3d5cae19e75b8e37a1'|'LCH flags swapping London for New York if euro clearing departs'|' 39 PM / in 8 minutes LCH flags swapping London for New York if euro clearing departs Huw Jones 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Moving clearing to a European Union country from London after Brexit is not a <20>fait accompli<6C> and the business could be transferred to New York, the CEO of London Clearing House said. A general view of the Canary Wharf financial district in London, Britain October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Coombs The EU has proposed that foreign clearing houses of <20>systemic<69> importance to the bloc should, as a last resort, relocate euro-denominated clearing for EU-based customers to the bloc. But while 14 percent of LCH<43>s rates swaps business comes from EU entities, far more is generated by U.S. customers, newly appointed LCH CEO Daniel Maguire said on Wednesday. Interest rates swaps are contracts used by companies to insure against adverse moves in borrowing costs. LCH already has operations in New York and would therefore not have to start from scratch, making any move less costly. <20>So then you have to contemplate the movement of the entire business, and New York is clearly a potential destination as well,<2C> Maguire told a House of Lords committee. LCH, part of the London Stock Exchange Group ( LSE.L ), clears more than 90 percent of euro-denominated interest rate swaps. Under the proposals, if Brussels felt that joint EU-UK supervision of a foreign clearing house proved insufficient it could require the euro-denominated clearing to be moved to an EU centre. Britain is due to leave the EU in March 2019 and UK-based clearing houses would therefore become <20>foreign<67>. <20>When you start to consider location, the answer isn<73>t necessarily relocation to Europe. It could be a relocation going the other way to the States,<2C> Maguire said, While the EU law has yet to be approved, LCH is already facing pressure from Deutsche Boerse ( DB1Gn.DE ), which is offering a <20>Brexit proof<6F> programme to make clearing euro rate swaps more attractive at its Eurex operation in Frankfurt. Maguire said if euro clearing were to be forcibly moved to the EU, other countries might want clearing in their currency repatriated from London. LCH clears over 90 percent of dollar denominated rate swaps in London. LONDON NOT OPTIMAL Maguire said the EU should take a product-by-product approach to determine if clearing needed to be relocated. <20>One could consider debt markets and repo markets of the euro zone being cleared in London having a different systemic risk profile, especially at a time of crisis in the euro zone,<2C> Maguire said. <20>Going through the portfolio, you can see different solutions, different options around that... maybe London is not the optimal place,<2C> Maguire added. The European Central Bank has been a key driver for relocation of euro clearing, and Maguire said euro repos and government bonds were more relevant than rate swaps to the central bank as they form part of its monetary policy transmission channel. Some clearing industry officials say LCH<43>s euro repo and euro government bond clearing in London could shift to its Paris unit to soften the ECB<43>s stance, in a bid to leave euro rate swaps clearing intact in the UK capital. Reporting by Huw Jones; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-clearing/lch-flags-swapping-london-for-new-york-if-euro-clearing-departs-idUKKBN1CU1YD'|'2017-10-25T16:38:00.000+03:00'
'f0d3d6d53beeeb9c04d0a2cb7a9edde20cb8d50a'|'Japan Abe''s election win to boost his hand on pro-growth policies - Fitch'|' 51 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago Japan Abe''s election win to boost his hand on pro-growth policies - Fitch Reuters Staff 3 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - The victory of premier Shinzo Abe<62>s ruling bloc in a weekend election should strengthen his hand in adopting pro-growth economic policies and his pledge to proceed with a scheduled sales tax will help reduce debt, Fitch Ratings said on Tuesday. Japan''s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is also leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), attends a news conference at LDP headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai But prospects for structural reform remain limited, as there is still <20>little sign<67> Abe is making a breakthrough necessary to boost Japan<61>s long-term growth, the rating agency said. Abe<62>s ruling coalition scored a landslide victory at a general election on Sunday, boosted by his campaign promises to invest more heavily on education and childcare. <20>(The victory) gives Abe a mandate to continue the <20>Abenomics<63> economic strategy launched in early 2013 that aims to revive growth and end deflation through the three <20>arrows<77> of loose monetary policy, fiscal flexibility and structural reforms,<2C> Fitch said in a report. <20>Importantly, Abe will now be able to re-appoint Haruhiko Kuroda as Bank of Japan governor when Kuroda<64>s term ends in April 2018, or choose a successor supportive of accommodative policies.<2E> Abe<62>s win means a twice-delayed sales tax hike to 10 percent from 8 percent now looks more likely to be implemented in 2019, which could have a positive effect in reining in Japan<61>s huge public debt, Fitch said. The ratings agency said it had previously calculated that the sales tax hike could reduce Japan<61>s fiscal deficit by around 0.8 percentage point per year in the medium term, if the proceeds were used predominantly for debt consolidation. But Abe has said 2 trillion yen (<28>13.3 billion) of the projected 5 trillion yen raised from the tax hike would be spent on education and childcare. This would dampen but not eliminate the positive effect of the hike on debt dynamics, it said. <20>The government was due to review its fiscal strategy during the fiscal year ending 2019, and we expect more clarity once the review is complete,<2C> it said. Abe had earlier said his plan to divert some proceeds from the tax hike away from debt payment meant it would be impossible to meet the government<6E>s pledge to balance the primary budget -- excluding debt-servicing and new bond sales -- by the year ending in March 2021. Fitch revised its outlook for Japan<61>s single A sovereign debt rating to stable from negative in April, citing an improved economic outlook that would drive up tax revenues. Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Jacqueline Wong'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-election-fitch/japan-abes-election-win-to-boost-his-hand-on-pro-growth-policies-fitch-idUKKBN1CT0NM'|'2017-10-24T09:50:00.000+03:00'
'738991f8c1cdb0264e6d4302a5055dd0d1a7f95f'|'Oil prices inch up, drop in southern Iraq exports supports'|'October 24, 2017 / 1:22 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago Oil prices inch up, support from drop in southern Iraq exports Osamu Tsukimori 3 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Oil prices inched up on Tuesday, getting support from a decline in oil exports from OPEC<45>s second-biggest producer Iraq and a projected extended fall in U.S. commercial oil stocks. Pump jacks pump oil at an oil field on the shores of the Caspian Sea in Baku, Azerbaijan, October 5, 2017. Picture taken October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Grigory Dukor London Brent crude for December delivery was up 5 cents at $57.42 a barrel by 0258 GMT after settling down 38 cents on Monday. U.S. crude for December delivery was up 5 cents at $51.95. Iraqi oil exports have fallen more than 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) so far this month, as shipments from both north and south of the country declined. <20>The market is currently weighing supportive materials more, such as the Kurdistan situation, the slowdown in shale-related (U.S.) rig counts and the possible extension in OPEC (output) cuts,<2C> said Tomomichi Akuta, senior economist at Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting in Tokyo. Crude oil exports through the Iraqi Kurdistan controlled-pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan rose 13 percent to 288,000 barrels per day (bpd) on Monday afternoon, but that was still less than half normal levels due to tensions in the region, a shipping source told Reuters. Iraq could still boost southern exports in the rest of October and plans to do so. Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi said on Saturday southern exports were increasing by 200,000 bpd to make up for the northern shortfall. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan region on Monday to resolve their conflict over Kurdish self-determination and disputed territories through dialogue. The drop in supplies from Iraq comes as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other producers are cutting output by about 1.8 million bpd until March 2018 in an effort to drain a glut and support prices. In September OPEC and non-OPEC countries achieved the highest compliance on planned cuts since the deal kicked off in January - at a rate of 120 percent - helping reduce oil stocks further at Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development nations, OPEC said. Meanwhile U.S. crude inventories likely fell by 2.5 million barrels last week, while gasoline and distillate stockpiles each probably fell by at least 1.5 million barrels, a preliminary Reuters poll showed on Monday ahead of data by the Industry group the American Petroleum Institute later in the day. The U.S. oil rig count fell seven to 736 in the week to Oct. 20, the lowest level since June, Baker Hughes data showed on Friday. Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Joseph Radford and Kenneth Maxwell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil/oil-prices-inch-up-drop-in-southern-iraq-exports-supports-idUKKBN1CT04P'|'2017-10-24T04:58:00.000+03:00'
'3e808d9cbb266ae295f73a8e0c0a60526ef5eb08'|'UPDATE 1-BAWAG IPO orders below 48 eur/shr risk missing out - bookrunner'|'(Adds details on deal valuation)VIENNA, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Orders below 48 euros ($56.39) per share for the initial public offering of Austrian lender BAWAG risk missing out on the float, with the books closing at 1200 GMT, one of the bookrunners said on Tuesday.A revised, narrower price range of 48 euros to 49 euros per share was announced on Oct. 20 for BAWAG, which is majority owned by U.S. private equity group Cerberus Capital Management .At that range BAWAG plans to raise up to 1.97 billion euros in its offering, which would be the biggest IPO in Austrian history. The deal values the bank at up to 4.9 billion euros.BAWAG had originally planned to raise up to 2.1 billion euros in its offering, valuing the bank at up to 5.2 billion euros. ($1 = 0.8513 euros) (Reporting by Shadia Nasralla and Joshua Franklin, Editing by Michael Shields) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bawag-ipo/update-1-bawag-ipo-orders-below-48-eur-shr-risk-missing-out-bookrunner-idINL8N1MZ26P'|'2017-10-24T06:09:00.000+03:00'
'8174d21b12eee85059920001e761001ed51d5bb6'|'Anglo production third quarter output up 6 percent output, platinum cut'|'October 24, 2017 / 6:30 AM / Updated 14 minutes ago Anglo American third quarter output up 6 percent, platinum cut Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Anglo American ( AAL.L ) on Tuesday reported a 6 percent rise in output for the third quarter and raised its guidance on iron ore for a second time, but said it had removed <20>unprofitable ounces<65> from its platinum mines. The Anglo American logo is seen in Rusternburg October 5, 2015. Picture taken October 5, 2015. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko/File Photo Platinum miners in South Africa face an array of obstacles, including very deep, narrow seams along with a stubbornly low platinum price of around $930 an ounce XPT=. Union leaders on Monday said platinum miner Lonmin ( LMI.L ) planned to cut more than 1,000 jobs before Christmas because of persistently low commodity prices and rising costs. Anglo American lowered its production guidance for platinum to 2.30-to-2.35 million from 2.35-to-2.40 million ounces following the closure of unprofitable production at the Bokoni mine, which was placed on care and maintenance in the quarter. CEO Mark Cutifani said the reduction in platinum guidance signalled the company<6E>s determination to remove <20>unprofitable ounces from production as we focus on value over volume<6D>. Analysts said the results overall were positive and earnings forecasts could also be exceeded. <20>Good result all up with production generally in-line to moderately ahead of our forecasts,<2C> Hunter Hillcoat, analyst at Investec, said. Citing productivity gains, Anglo American raised guidance for iron ore output at South African<61>s Kumba unit again to 42 to 44 million tonnes following a previous update in July. Copper production increased by 5 percent in the third quarter to 147,300 tonnes, reflecting higher grades. Reporting by Barbara Lewis in London and Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely and John Stonestreet'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-anglo-american-outlook/anglo-production-third-quarter-output-up-6-percent-output-platinum-cut-idUKKBN1CT0LY'|'2017-10-24T09:29:00.000+03:00'
'065ae28a7b4d0852108437540f48968579283273'|'Airbnb''s China head exits, a week after co-founder named unit''s chair'|' 31 AM / in 8 minutes Airbnb''s China head exits, a week after co-founder named unit''s chair Reuters Staff 2   The head of Airbnb Inc<6E>s China business has resigned four months after taking the role, the company confirmed on Tuesday, the latest leadership change for the unit which operates in an country where residency and movement are regulated. A man walks past a logo of Airbnb after a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, November 26, 2015. REUTERS/Yuya Shino/File Photo Hong Ge, who previously worked for Google Inc ( GOOGL.O ) and Facebook Inc ( FB.O ), left to pursue another role and the firm is yet to name a successor, said Airbnb in a short statement on Tuesday. Reuters was unable to reach Ge for comment on Tuesday morning. Kum Hong Siew, the current president of China operations will take over the role in an interim capacity. Airbnb faces tough regulatory challenges in China, where movement between cities is closely monitored and people are required to register temporary stays with local police. Last week, the company announced that co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk would become chairman of Airbnb<6E>s China arm, which goes under the name of <20>Aibiying<6E> and competes against local services Tujia.com and Xiaozhu.com. Airbnb in that announcement also said it has plans to double the number staff in China over the next year and introduce new quality standards. This month Chinese authorities banned listings on all short-term rental apps in central Beijing during the 19th Congress, a high-profile political event where police increase scrutiny of illegal movement and people who fail to register their residences. Airbnb, which has roughly 120,000 listing in China, has also had to comply with a national cyber law introduced in 2016 that requires private user data to be stored locally. Reporting by Cate Cadell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-airbnb/airbnbs-china-head-exits-a-week-after-co-founder-named-units-chair-idUKKBN1CT0CH'|'2017-10-24T07:31:00.000+03:00'
'7aedfb65f5858f72ffe80bb08404761dd234c15d'|'Brazil congressional committees ready reforms helping small miners'|' 01 AM / in 9 minutes Brazil congressional committees ready reforms helping small miners Jake Spring 3 Min Read BRASILIA, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Brazilian congressional committees are scheduled to vote on sweeping mining reforms on Tuesday, likely amending President Michel Temer<65>s proposals to favor smaller miners before putting them to a broader vote. Temer proposed the policies raising royalties, overhauling regulations and creating a new government agency in three separate decrees in July as part of a market-friendly agenda aimed at attracting foreign investment. The decrees require the approval of Congress to become law. The committee on mining royalties has amended Temer<65>s proposal so that companies would face an automatic 4 percent royalty for iron ore, although miners could apply for a rate as low as 2 percent if they show a lack of profitability because of small operations, poor quality ore or certain other factors. The rates proposed by Temer had varied between 2 percent and 4 percent for all miners based on the market prices for iron ore prior to the amendment, added to the committee report last week. The move would result in miners such as Vale SA that operate on a larger scale with higher quality ore paying more than smaller miners, said Israel Lacerda de Araujo, a legislative expert who advises the Senate on mining. <20>The majors have the capacity to pay (the 4 percent) but the smaller ones would need to close their mines. This lets them keep their mines,<2C> he said. A Vale representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Also helping smaller miners, the committee on newly proposed mining regulator ANM adjusted agency fees to factor in the size of the company and the area affected by a mine, with larger enterprises and projects paying more. To fund expansion, more small Brazilian miners are preparing to list themselves on capital markets. Ero Copper Corp, which runs the Vale do Cura<72><61> mine in Brazil, raised $110 million in its initial public offering earlier this month, while Nexa Resources SA, which mines zinc and other metals, filed for a $651 million IPO. The three committees face pressure to vote through the reforms a day before Congress turns to a vote scheduled for Wednesday on corruption charges leveled against Temer, which could dominate the legislative agenda for the rest of the week. Delaying the committee votes could lead the reforms to miss a November deadline for full approval before Temer<65>s decrees lapse. (Reporting by Jake Spring)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brazil-mining-regulation/brazil-congressional-committees-ready-reforms-helping-small-miners-idUSL4N1MY5PD'|'2017-10-24T07:00:00.000+03:00'
'65db2e04361d526d232e0db9adbefebc02dfe6b3'|'British union tests Ryanair pilot support for industrial action'|'October 26, 2017 / 1:55 PM / Updated 17 minutes ago British union tests Ryanair pilot support for industrial action Reuters Staff   A British union is asking Ryanair ( RYA.I ) pilots pushing for better working conditions at the Irish budget airline whether they would be willing to take industrial action. Ryanair commercial passenger jet takes off in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau Europe<70>s largest airline by passenger numbers has cancelled around 20,000 flights, citing a shortage of standby pilots to ensure the smooth operation of its fleet of 400 planes. The crunch has prompted Ryanair to curb its growth plans for next summer and launch a drive to hire hundreds of new pilots and convince those who remain not to leave. But its retention efforts, including the offer of large pay rises with conditions attached, have so far not been well received by many pilots, who want better working conditions. A majority of pilots at Stansted, Ryanair<69>s largest base, last week rejected an offer of higher pay. Many Ryanair pilots are employed via third-party agencies and the BALPA union said in a statement on Thursday it was also asking them whether they would support a group legal action to establish employee or worker rights. <20>The desire amongst pilots to change Ryanair for the better is real,<2C> BALPA General Secretary Brian Strutton said. <20>They tell us they are fed up with the way they are treated and that<61>s why they are saying no to big pay rises that have been offered by Ryanair management,<2C> he said. Ryanair, which does not recognise unions, has so far resisted moves by pilots for a new approach to industrial relations, saying it already has structures in place for them to negotiate with management. It says it is offering pilots better wages and conditions than many rivals. The issue has highlighted competition among carriers in Europe for staff, although the recent collapses of Monarch and Air Berlin has made experienced pilots available. Norwegian Air Shuttle ( NWC.OL ) said it expected pay levels to rise for pilots as it seeks to compete with rivals for the additional air crew needed to expand its network. Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) is also looking for new pilots as it expands its Eurowings budget operation and has received applications not just from Air Berlin, but from other airlines. <20>It<49>s probably a good position to be in right now as an employer in the German market when it comes to pilots,<2C> Lufthansa<73>s chief executive Carsten Spohr said on Wednesday. <20>I think the pilot shortage is happening on the lowest end of the pay scheme and those who don<6F>t treat their people fairly.<2E> Analysts will be looking for more information from Ryanair when it reports results on Tuesday. The airline has recruited the CEO of Malaysia Airlines, Peter Bellew, to help tackle the problem. Reporting by Alistair Smout; additional reporting by Victoria Bryan and Conor Humphries; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ryanair-pilots/british-union-tests-ryanair-pilot-support-for-industrial-action-idUKKBN1CV27P'|'2017-10-26T16:54:00.000+03:00'
'4b849749ae71e70ca9469e8c94f8b0e1016ca576'|'GE explores divesting its transportation, healthcare IT businesses-sources'|'October 26, 2017 / 3:46 PM / in an hour GE explores divesting its transportation, healthcare IT businesses: sources Carl O''Donnell , Greg Roumeliotis 3 Min Read (Reuters) - General Electric Co ( GE.N ) is exploring divesting its transportation and healthcare information technology businesses, as it seeks to reshape its portfolio under new Chief Executive John Flannery, people familiar with the matter said. FILE PHOTO: The ticker and logo for General Electric Co. is displayed on a screen at the post where it is traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S. on June 30, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo Such a move would help GE to meet more than half of its stated goal of shedding more than $20 billion worth of assets, the sources said this week. There is no certainty that GE will proceed with these divestitures, the sources added. The sources asked not to be identified because the deliberations are confidential. GE declined to comment. The move would make GE the latest U.S. industrial conglomerate to go ahead with asset divestitures after Honeywell International Inc ( HON.N ) announced earlier this month it would part with some of its businesses by creating two new publicly listed companies. Ed Garden, a founding partner at activist investor Trian Fund Management who was recently given a board seat at GE, has also acted as a catalyst for change. GE is looking to bounce back after what Flannery earlier this month called horrible results in the third quarter. He has argued that GE<47>s strong businesses are being held back by others that <20>drain investment and management resources without the prospect for a substantial reward.<2E> GE<47>s transportation business, which generated revenue of $4.7 billion in 2016, manufactures freight and passenger trains, marine diesel engines and mining equipment, among other products. GE<47>s healthcare information technology business, which would likely have to be broken up into separate chunks in the event of a sale, assists with electronic medical records, healthcare workforce management, and hospital revenue cycle management. Some of its better known brands include API Healthcare, which it acquired in 2014, and Centricity EMR. The business is part of GE<47>s sprawling healthcare business, which had revenue last year of $18.3 billion and spans magnetic imaging, medical diagnostics and drug discovery. GE has taken several actions to prune its portfolio over the years, shedding plastics, NBCUniversal and most of its GE Capital business. It also combined its oilfield services business with Baker Hughes ( BHGE.N ). Last week, GE cut its profit forecast for the full year to $1.05 to $1.10 a share, from $1.60 to $1.70 previously, and said it would generate only about $7 billion in cash from operations, down from $12 billion to $14 billion it had forecast earlier. It left its dividend unchanged. Weak performance in GE<47>s power and oil and gas businesses, goodwill impairment and higher-than-expected restructuring costs were the main causes of the profit decline. Reporting by Carl O''Donnell and Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Additional reporting by Alwyn Scott in San Francisco; Editing by Phil Berlowitz'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ge-divestitures/ge-explores-divesting-its-transportation-healthcare-it-businesses-sources-idUSKBN1CV2NU'|'2017-10-26T18:45:00.000+03:00'
'5358c6919c34ae025c303a02172c9bc5a179d76f'|'Europe''s stimulus program is slimming down'|'Europe''s massive stimulus program is slimming down by Alanna Petroff @AlannaPetroff October 26, 2017: 9:45 AM ET Will Trump reappoint Fed Chair Janet Yellen? Europe''s massive stimulus program is slimming down. The European Central Bank announced Thursday that it will reduce the scale of its bond buying program in January 2018. As part of the program, which began in March 2015 , the ECB has been purchasing <20>60 billion ($71 billion) worth of government bonds and other assets each month. Starting next year, the buys will be slashed to <20>30 billion ($35 billion) per month. However, the central bank also said the purchases would continue at that pace deep into 2018. The bank indicated the program would run at its reduced level until at least September -- but longer if needed. The program -- a form of quantitative easing -- has helped support the economy by keeping borrowing costs low for households and businesses. That, in turn, has increased spending and helped spur economic growth. Investors reacted to the bank''s announcement by pushing the euro lower. Stock markets remained in positive territory. "The announcement has been well signaled by the central bank ... with the aim of causing as little disturbance as possible for the markets," said Mihir Kapadia, CEO of financial services firm Sun Global Investments. A range of quantitative easing programs were put into action after the global financial crisis. The Federal Reserve purchased $4.5 trillion in investments over the years to support the U.S. economy. Central banks in the U.K. and Japan deployed similar measures of their own. European economies have stabilized since the stimulus program was launched. The average annual growth rate in the eurozone hit 2.3% in the latest quarter, and formerly troubled Spain and Portugal are now growing at around 3%. Related: Europeans really want to work at Google Draghi said in a news conference that he was pleased by "unabated growth momentum" in Europe, but noted that it was the result of the central bank''s "ample" support. He said that continuing the bond-buying program -- without a definitive end date -- would help keep the economy on track. The ECB boss has other issues to worry about: inflation remains below the central bank''s 2% target at 1.5%. Unemployment is also stubbornly high. The jobless rate in Greece is above 20% and Spanish unemployment sits just above 17%. CNNMoney (London)   26, 2017: 8:28 AM ET'|'cnn.com'|'http://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_news_economy.rss'|'http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/26/news/economy/ecb-taper-stimulus-bonds-interest-rates/index.html'|'2017-10-26T16:28:00.000+03:00'
'18cbc84dbab51ffde9517a0e217c8cef4124ac63'|'Mexico open to NAFTA accord against forex manipulation - minister'|'October 24, 2017 / 11:39 PM / in 5 minutes Mexico open to NAFTA accord against forex manipulation: minister Anthony Esposito 3 Min Read MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico has no objection to any pledge with its NAFTA partners aimed at preventing currency manipulation, as long as it does not affect domestic monetary policy, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said on Tuesday. Mexico''s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo is pictured attends the delivery of a report to the Economic Commission of the Chamber of Deputies at National Congress in Mexico City, Mexico, October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido Mexico, the United States and Canada are in the midst of tough talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), with the latest round of formal discussions scheduled to take place in Mexico City next month. The U.S. Trade Representative<76>s office wants a provision to deter currency manipulation as part of the NAFTA renegotiation. In a hearing at Mexico<63>s lower house of Congress, Guajardo said his government had <20>no problem<65> with that proposal. <20>However, that can<61>t affect the conduct of monetary policy,<2C> Guajardo told lawmakers. The minister later told reporters Mexico needed to define its positions for the next session of talks after the United States made a series of proposals that were met with stiff resistance during the previous round in Washington. <20>Mexico must set out all its proposals and respond to the ambitions of our trade partners on every issue,<2C> he said. Mexico''s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo speaks with an assessor during the delivery of a report to the Economic Commission of the Chamber of Deputies at National Congress in Mexico City, Mexico, October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of the accord if he cannot renegotiate it to the advantage of the United States, arguing it has cost U.S. manufacturing jobs and caused a goods trade deficit of over $60 billion with Mexico. However, the Mexican government has repeatedly said a reworked NAFTA must also be in the interests of Mexico, and that the country will walk away from the talks if Trump triggers the process of exiting the 23-year-old agreement. Slideshow (2 Images) Guajardo said if NAFTA did unravel, farm produce and petrochemicals would be the most affected imports into Mexico, and that the country needed to be clear about what alternative markets it could tap if necessary to face the challenge. Last week negotiators from Mexico, Canada and the United States agreed to extend the NAFTA talks into the first quarter of 2018. After that period, formal campaigning to elect Mexico<63>s next president will begin in the run-up to a July vote. If NAFTA was on the agenda of the early presidential hopefuls, it was healthy for Mexico, Guajardo added. Turning to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a Pacific region trade deal finalized in 2016 that Trump pulled out of after taking office, Guajardo said it was important that the remaining 11 signatories laid the foundations for the accord in case a future U.S. president had a change of mind about it. Editing by Dave Graham and Lisa Shumaker'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-trade-nafta-mexico/mexico-ok-with-any-nafta-vow-to-stop-forex-manipulation-minister-idUKKBN1CT37Y'|'2017-10-25T04:49:00.000+03:00'
'b222d24f1b9a836a01e3e5edb7047f3e87ddc6b0'|'Lufthansa eyes improving revenue trends after profit jump'|'October 25, 2017 / 5:36 AM / Updated 10 minutes ago Lufthansa eyes improving revenue trends after profit jump Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - German carrier Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) stuck to its profit target for the year even as it reported improvements in ticket pricing trends and a 32 percent rise in third-quarter profit. FILE PHOTO - Planes of German air carrier Lufthansa AG are seen on the tarmac at Fraport airport in Frankfurt, Germany, June 7, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo Lufthansa said it expected unit revenues, a measure of pricing, to rise slightly in the fourth quarter after a 4.5 percent increase in the third quarter. Lufthansa expects 2017 profit to be above last year<61>s record 1.75 billion euros (<28>1.56 billion). CEO Carsten Spohr has said this year is shaping up to be significantly better than 2016. Analysts on average expect Lufthansa to report 2017 adjusted EBIT of 2.6 billion euros. Reporting by Victoria Bryan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lufthansa-results/lufthansa-eyes-improving-revenue-trends-after-profit-jump-idUKKBN1CU0FJ'|'2017-10-25T08:35:00.000+03:00'
'44a6302a684109962e24f4f2f619709db2d4a45d'|'Heineken beer sales rise on strength outside Europe, U.S.'|'October 25, 2017 / 7:12 AM / Updated 5 hours ago Heineken beer sales rise on strength outside Europe, U.S Philip Blenkinsop 3 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Heineken NV ( HEIN.AS ), the world<6C>s second-largest brewer, reported an increase in third-quarter beer sales on Wednesday, with growth in all regions except Europe, where poor summer weather reduced demand, and in the United States. Sales in the July-Sept period rose 2.5 percent excluding the impact of acquisitions to 60.0 million hectolitres, a little ahead of the average 57.9 million average expectation in a Reuters poll. The share price was down 2.2 percent at 83 euros at 0905 GMT, making the shares one of the weakest performers in Europe<70>s FTSEurofirst index <0#.FTEU3>. Analysts said the weakness in Europe and a sharper than predicted impact from changes in foreign currency exchange rates were behind the fall. Heineken has already warned of a negative translational impact from foreign exchange rates, but estimated on Wednesday that for the full year it would be 75 million euros at net profit level, against the 60 million euro figure it gave in July. A photo illustration of a bucket with Heineken beers at a pub in Singapore October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su The Dutch brewer, the top seller in Europe, said very strong growth in Asia Pacific, outside China, led to a 12.2 percent increase in beer volumes, while strength in South Africa, Ethiopia and Russia led to an 8.8 percent rise in sales to Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Growth in the Americas was more muted, as lower sales in the United States partly offset growth in Mexico and Brazil, where Heineken acquired Kirin<69>s ( 2503.T ) business earlier this year. In Europe, sales were down due to a cooler summer in France and the Netherlands as well as weakness in Poland and Britain, where supermarket Tesco ( TSCO.L ) has pulled some Heineken brands from its shelves over planned price increases. The company said it retained its full year expectations that revenue and profit would grow and that its operating margin would increase by about 40 basis points, excluding acquisitions concluded this year. The company reported a net profit of 1.49 billion euros ($1.75 billion) for the first nine months, 1 percent higher than a year earlier when an impairment taken last year for the Democratic Republic of Congo is taken into account. ($1 = 0.8501 euros) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-heineken-nl-results/heineken-beer-sales-rise-on-strength-outside-europe-u-s-idUKKBN1CU0OQ'|'2017-10-25T10:12:00.000+03:00'
'3fe95e58e6f8c6624a7d09445a28c3e796d1cf2f'|'Nikkei edged higher, underpinned by earnings'|'* Japanese shares shrug off Wall Street weakness* Daiwa Securities, Fanuc among gainersBy Lisa TwaroniteTOKYO, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Nikkei share average edged up on Thursday, lifted by shares backed by strong earnings and shrugging off Wall Street weakness.The Nikkei was 0.2 percent higher at the end of morning trading at 21,742.98.On Wednesday, the Nikkei ended lower, snapping an unprecedented 16-day rising streak.<2E>Japanese stocks had such a rapid ascent in October that it<69>s normal for some adjustment to the pace of gains, even if investors believe there is further upside,<2C> said Ayako Sera, senior market economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust.Against the yen, the dollar stuck to recent ranges, down 0.2 percent at 113.53 yen, below a three-month high of 114.245 yen touched on Wednesday.On Wednesday, U.S. stocks slipped, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 suffering their worst day in seven weeks, on a batch of soft quarterly earnings and a rise in U.S. Treasury yields to seven-month highs.Fanuc Corp was up 2.3 percent after hitting more than two-year highs. The industrial robot maker posted upbeat earnings and said on Wednesday it expects to post net profit of 164.90 billion yen ($1.45 billion) in the full year through March 31, 2018, up from its previous estimate of 131.50 billion yen.Panasonic Corp shares rose 1.8 percent to touch more than two-year highs. The electronics giant will simultaneously increase its lithium battery production in Japan, China, and the United States, Nikkei reported.Daiwa Securities Group jumped 4.9 percent after posting higher operating and recurring half-year profit and announcing a share buyback.That helped boost the securities subindex 2.3 percent.But Advantest Corp skidded 4.1 percent after the chip-making equipment maker cut its net profit outlook for the fiscal year ending March 2018 to 14.5 billion yen from 15 billion yen.The broader Topix edged up 0.1 percent to 1,752.79, while the JPX-Nikkei Index 400 also rose 0.1 percent to 15,522.93. (Reporting by Lisa Twaronite; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/japan-stocks-midday/nikkei-edged-higher-underpinned-by-earnings-idUSL4N1N11ME'|'2017-10-26T05:58:00.000+03:00'
'00db6ac4422e2cdf30b327998e7db16f60682bc7'|'Exclusive: Evoqua snubs Xylem''s $2.5 billion bid for IPO - sources'|'(Reuters) - Evoqua Water Technologies Corp plans to proceed with an initial public offering next week despite an all-cash acquisition offer by Xylem Inc ( XYL.N ) that values it at close to $2.5 billion, including debt, according to people familiar with the matter.The majority owner of Evoqua, private equity firm AEA Investors LP, rejected Xylem<65>s bid because it believes the stock market will assign a higher valuation on the company, the sources said this week.Xylem<65>s offer valued Evoqua at 13 times its projected 12-month earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), but AEA believes the company is worth at least a multiple of 14, according to the sources. Xylem currently trades at 14 times EBITDA.Xylem remains interested in Evoqua, and it is possible that it will approach AEA with a new offer before or after the IPO, the sources added. They asked not to be identified because the negotiations were confidential.Evoqua, Xylem and AEA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.AEA<45>s stance illustrates the impact that the U.S. stock market<65>s rally has had on the valuation expectations of many private equity firms. They traditionally have opted for the certainty of a quick sale of a portfolio company if it comes at a fair price. AEA paid $730.6 million to acquire Evoqua in 2014.Evoqua is the largest North American provider of water treatment solutions. Based in Pittsburg, it makes filtration products used for removing impurities from water, rather than neutralizing them through the addition of chemicals.Evoqua has benefited from several global trends as a growing population, increasing levels of urbanization and more stringent regulations drive demand for cleaner and sustainable waste streams.The company has scheduled to price a $527 million IPO next week. AEA owns 58.5 percent of Evoqua<75>s common stock and plans to own between 43 percent and 40 percent after the IPO.Based in Rye Brook, New York, Xylem is a water technology company with a market capitalization of $11.6 billion.Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-evoqua-m-a-xylem/exclusive-evoqua-snubs-xylems-2-5-billion-bid-for-ipo-sources-idINKBN1CV38O'|'2017-10-26T17:38:00.000+03:00'
'd2a3e4ab4503f90dff5f820b6b8b1ee36e0b41a2'|'MRPL says coker unit to operate at full capacity in three weeks'|'October 25, 2017 / 9:35 AM / in 23 minutes MRPL says coker unit to operate at full capacity in three weeks Reuters Staff 2 Min Read NEW DELHI (Reuters) - State-run Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd ( MRPL.NS ) hopes its 3 million tonne per annum coker unit at southern India refinery will start full-scale operations in about three weeks, its head of refinery said on Wednesday. <20>There is some issue with one of the heaters linked to the coker.... We hope this will be fixed in 20 days,<2C> M. Venkatesh told Reuters. The coker plant at the 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) coastal Mangalore refinery has been operating at half its capacity after a technical glitch hit the unit about a month ago, he said. Venkatesh said his firm<72>s fuel oil production, however, has gone up due to the lower operation at the coker unit. MRPL, which is a subsidiary of state-owned explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp Ltd ( ONGC.NS ), recently issued a rare tender to export low sulphur fuel oil (LSFO). Venkatesh said his company<6E>s LSFO production has gone up due to higher processing of locally produced low sulphur and waxy Mangla crude, which is produced at the western offshore field of Cairn India Ltd ( CAIL.NS ) in Rajasthan. MRPL aims to double the processing of Mangla crude to 2 million tonnes in the 2017/18 fiscal year compared with a year ago. Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Malini Menon'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-mrpl/mrpl-says-coker-unit-to-operate-at-full-capacity-in-three-weeks-idINKBN1CU158'|'2017-10-25T12:34:00.000+03:00'
'27e88f46d618f0899fa4d0a00b786c36b415381a'|'A Bristol house with a Banksy <20> in pictures - Money - The Guardian'|'I t<>s no oil painting from the front <20> but a hidden early mural by elusive street artist Banksy could push up the price of this end-of-terrace, two-bedroom semi in Bristol when it comes up for auction with a guide price of <20>250,000-<2D>300,000.Back in 1999, Banksy was a friend of the then owner of this property who let the artist hand paint his Slick on Brick artwork, depicting a monkey plunging a detonator to blow the door off a safe, on the outside wall of his garage/workshop.Facebook Twitter Pinterest Banksy<73>s original artwork painted in 1999A year later the mural was covered over in magnolia paint by a disapproving neighbour who claimed the picture frightened his young daughter. After the plain wall attracted less desirable street-art tags, the current owner, Christine Prior, decided that a large mural would solve the problem of unwanted graffiti as well as please children attending the school.Facebook Twitter Pinterest The existing mural designed by Bristol artist 3DPrior set up the community project and commissioned Bristol street artist Robert del Naja, known as 3D, to design an artwork. Del Naja, credited with being the spiritual leader of the street art scene in Bristol, is a founding member of the band Massive Attack and has been an active street artist since his teenage years alongside other members of The Wild Bunch crew.Children from the nearby Felix Road Adventure Playground scheme were invited to help the colour blind 3D paint in his mural, which features cartoon characters including Rastamouse and Kung Fu Panda. This mural is now starting to peel away revealing the Banksy work underneath.Facebook Twitter Pinterest The garden is spacious and well tendedPrior is now selling the home which, mural or no mural, is expected to fetch at least <20>250,000 given that it is in good decorative order, has a well-stocked pretty garden and sits on a sizeable plot with room for expansion.But with the rising value of Banksy<73>s work, art experts have estimated his hidden painting alone could be worth about <20>400,000 if it is restored in the way other examples of his work have been.Only recently one of Banksy<73>s most iconic works, Snorting Copper , which appeared in Shoreditch in east London 12 years ago, was painstakingly restored. Soon after its initial appearance the infamous piece of street art, which shows a police officer bent over to sniff a line of cocaine, was jet painted over by the local council who deemed it to be vandalism, and later hidden behind plywood.Facebook Twitter Pinterest The house is in good decorative orderThought to have been lost forever, it was rediscovered a decade later. The restoration involved extracting the two-ton wall in one section and transporting it for analysis, plus 12 weeks of work by a team of 11 people to remove layers of paint and repair the damage, before reinstating it in its original spot. The fact it had been painted and covered over had ironically preserved and protected it, according to the restorers. The same may be true for Slick on Brick if anyone is up for restoring the original.Facebook Twitter Pinterest There<72>s scope to extend to the side and rearIt will be interesting to see how many bidders at next week<65>s auction are there for the house and how many are willing to push up the price to secure the hidden artwork. But one dilemma facing the latter will be whether to destroy 3D<33>s mural in order to get at the Banksy, especially as there are those in the art world who subscribe to the theory that 3D and Banksy are one and the same man.Facebook Twitter Pinterest Will anyone destroy 3D<33>s mural to reveal Banksy<73>s Slick on Brick. All photographs: Auction HouseThe house in Normanby Road, Easton, Bristol, is up for auction by Auction House at 7.00pm on Thursday 2 November 2017 at Ashton Gate Stadium, Bristol.Topics Property Surreal estate features'|'theguardian.com'|'https://www.theguardian.com/uk/business'|'https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/oct/25/bristol-house-with-a-
'b01280353f4d18034087e6286485d2f43f2ae65b'|'Gold inches down as dollar gains amid Fed chair speculation'|'October 25, 2017 / 1:20 AM / Updated 5 hours ago Talk of Fed succession pushes gold to 2-1/2 week low Peter Hobson 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Gold fell to a 2-1/2 week low on Wednesday after reports that Republican senators favoured John Taylor to become the next head of the U.S. Federal Reserve drove the dollar and U.S. bond yields higher. A salesman shows gold bangles to a customer at a jewellery showroom in Kolkata, October 28, 2016. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri Taylor, a Stanford University economist, is seen as someone who could put the Fed on a path of faster interest rate increases compared with current Fed Chair Janet Yellen, whose term expires next February. U.S. 10-year Treasury yields rose to their highest since March. Higher interest rates push up bond yields and tend to strengthen the dollar, which reduces the appeal of non-yielding bullion and makes dollar-denominated gold more expensive for holders of other currencies. Spot gold was down 0.2 percent at $1,273.76 an ounce at 1143 GMT after hitting $1,271.45, the lowest since Oct. 6. U.S. gold futures for December delivery were 0.3 percent lower at $1,274.70 an ounce. <20>If he (U.S. President Donald Trump) does indeed choose Taylor, gold is likely to fall sharply,<2C> Commerzbank analysts said in a note. The market was pricing in one rate increase in December and one more next year, while the Fed itself envisaged three rate hikes in 2018 and was likely to move more rapidly than previously expected under Taylor, they said. On the technical side, gold slipped below its 100-day moving average, currently at around $1,275. <20>If we close below the 100-day moving average we are set for $1,260 or lower, maybe $1,250,<2C> said Robin Bhar, head of metals research at Societe Generale. Higher interest rates and hopes of tax cuts in the United States were pushing investors to riskier assets, said Bhar. <20>You<6F>ve got equities at record levels, the dollar creeping up, bond yields moving higher and tax cuts perhaps giving a tailwind to the U.S. economy, all of which has to be negative for gold,<2C> he said. Infighting on Tuesday among Republican senators however dampened hopes of quick progress on tax reform, while Commerzbank analysts warned that a sharp rise in interest rates could knock the stock market. Elsewhere, the European Central Bank is expected to announce on Thursday a trimming of its monthly bond purchases, with data on Wednesday showing German business confidence at a record high. In other precious metals, silver was down 0.3 percent at $16.89 an ounce. Platinum was 1 percent lower at $911.05 an ounce and palladium was down 0.2 percent at $960.45 an ounce. Additional reporting by Apeksha Nair in Bengaluru, editing by David Evans and Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-precious/gold-inches-down-as-dollar-gains-amid-fed-chair-speculation-idINKBN1CU034'|'2017-10-25T04:17:00.000+03:00'
'74debb13cabd8157379458bcbf9f6e03cb81f520'|'Business stresses in PM Modi''s backyard spur India''s bank rescue'|'NEW DELHI/MUMBAI (Reuters) - For three years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had avoided the one step that everybody from central bank officials to credit rating agencies had implored him to take to fix the country<72>s banking woes - a massive injection of cash.India''s Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses his supporters during a public rally at Bhaat village on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India October 16, 2017. REUTERS/Amit Dave So financial markets were stunned this week when the government unveiled a plan to pump a larger-than-expected $32.4 billion into state-run lenders, sending Indian equity markets soaring to record highs.A tough political calendar and an economic downturn that threatens his party<74>s electoral prospects had, in the end, left Modi little choice but to act.The tipping point, according to a source close to the prime minister, came close to home: growing evidence that small and medium sized business in Gujarat, a core constituency in the state that elected Modi chief minister and propelled him on to the national stage in 2014, were being starved of credit.<2E>Gujarat is not a poor state, we cannot just dole some benefits: business has to be up and running in Gujarat,<2C> the Modi aide said.Modi was already facing criticism from some businesses for the disruption to the economy caused by the shock removal of higher-value bills from circulation last year and the roll-out of a new national goods and services tax (GST).Compounding the woes, business owners in his home state were telling Modi they could not get credit from banks, the aide said, a problem being felt throughout the country as state-run lenders struggle to tackle a record $145 billion in sour loans.Gujarat will hold state elections in December.ELECTORAL TESTS The warnings from Gujarat crystallised the political reality facing Modi - in the months ahead 12 Indian states go to the polls, and the outcomes will set the stage for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party<74>s (BJP) bid for re-election in 2019.The series of electoral tests comes as the economy has slowed to its slackest pace of growth in three years.While many analysts praise the Modi government<6E>s economic reforms, they say it has been less successful in creating jobs - a key consideration in a country where millions of young people join the workforce each year - as small businesses that create the bulk of employment have been hit hard.The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a Mumbai-based think-tank, estimates about 2 million jobs have been lost in 2017, after the cash ban and the rollout of GST.<2E>There is negative attitude around the onslaught of reforms that have been rolled out in the last year,<2C> said Sunil Parekh, a strategic adviser to large industrial groups in Gujarat, adding that <20>resentment is very high in the state<74>.FILE PHOTO - An India rupee note is seen in this illustration photo June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo <20>The bank recapitalisation is not stimulus for micro, medium and small enterprises, but what it does is it eases their stress and gives banks a fresh opportunity to lend to distressed firms, as they try to improve their business.<2E>Finance ministry spokesman D.S. Malik said there was no connection between the bank recapitalisation plan and any state election.<2E>This package is not for one state and is for the long-term benefit of the economy,<2C> he said.NO SILVER BULLET The $32.4 billion capital infusion is a step Modi<64>s government had long been reluctant to take, despite pressure from economists and the Reserve Bank of India to act.Modi has made prudent fiscal stewardship a key plank of his platform after the previous Congress-led government<6E>s inability to curb spending was widely seen contributing to India<69>s worst economic crisis in more than two decades in 2013.The government, according to the aide, was also reluctant to be seen as rewarding banks for reckless lending.But the move carries risks for the government, since there is no guarantee t
'5d69c0d2924aed6c0cadf602d22b43918d08f9e6'|'Column: OPEC''s options for extending production pact'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Senior officials from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies are already discussing an extension of their production accord beyond its scheduled expiry at the end of March 2018.People walk past the logo of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in front of its headquarters in Vienna, Austria September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/Files Current production limits have already been extended once, from the end of June 2017 to give more time for the oil market to rebalance.Ministers and officials are now discussing lengthening the agreement again, possibly until the end of 2018 (<28>OPEC seeking consensus on oil supply cut extension before meeting<6E>, Reuters, Oct. 19).OECD crude oil inventories were still almost 160 million barrels above their five-year average in September, though the surplus has already narrowed by nearly 180 million barrels since the start of the year.On current trends, inventories will not have normalised by the end of March, and OPEC is keen to reassure traders that production limits will be extended until the process is completed.OPEC and its allies have been engaged in a form of forward guidance, borrowing from the central banking sector, pledging to do <20>whatever it takes<65> to bring inventories down to the five-year average.MEETING SCHEDULE In the past, OPEC has held multiple ordinary and extraordinary ministerial conferences each year to review and change production policy.In recent years, however, the organisation has restricted itself to the two ministerial conferences annually required by its statute.Conferences have typically been held towards the middle and end of each year, normally in May/June and November/December.And OPEC has generally waited until a production agreement is close to expiry before deciding whether to extend or adjust the deal to preserve the organisation<6F>s flexibility to respond to changing market conditions.The problem is that the current production agreement expires in March 2018, which is midway between the already scheduled meeting in November 2017 and the next one likely in May or June 2018.OPEC ministers could agree to meet again in March 2018 to review the agreement and decide on whether to extend or modify it, which would maximise their flexibility.But they are under pressure from political leaders and oil traders to extend the agreement beyond March to complete the process of inventory normalisation.The most important participants in the negotiation, Saudi Arabia and Russia, have already signalled their interest in extending the agreement beyond March.So the questions are (1) how long to extend the agreement for and (2) whether to make it explicitly or implicitly conditional on some form of interim review.EXTENSION OPTIONS The simplest strategy would be to extend the agreement for three months until the end of June 2018, which would allow it to be reviewed again at the next regular ministerial conference.The upside of a three-month extension is that it would maximise OPEC<45>s flexibility as the oil market gets close to balance, and align production limits with OPEC<45>s regular meeting cycle.But it would risk disappointing traders and hedge funds who expect OPEC to do <20>whatever it takes<65> and are hoping for a bolder and longer commitment to production restraint.A second strategy is to extend the pact for a full nine months, until the end of December 2018, which would also align the accord with the regular meeting cycle.A nine-month extension would be bold, underscoring OPEC<45>s commitment to cutting stocks, but it would limit the organisation<6F>s flexibility significantly.In effect, OPEC would be committing to hold production unchanged for 12 months (the three unexpired months of the existing agreement and then nine months of extension).With oil inventories declining steadily, the oil market moving from contango to backwardation, and spot prices on a rising trend, OPEC would risk losing control of the rebalan
'b2a0437476f12254d423f2a2d5452c2bcd243c2b'|'India''s 25 billion pounds bank recapitalisation plan lifts shares, raises questions'|' 40 AM / Updated 24 minutes ago India''s 25 billion pounds bank recapitalisation plan lifts shares, raises questions Devidutta Tripathy 4 Min Read MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian banking shares soared on Wednesday, sending indexes to record highs after the cabinet approved a 24.68 billion pounds plan to recapitalise its state banks over the next two years, although uncertainty remains about how the injections will be structured. A NSE (National Stock Exchange) building is seen in Mumbai, India, July 11, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui The gains come after India<69>s cabinet late on Tuesday cleared a plan to inject 2.11 trillion rupees ($32.4 billion) into state-run lenders over the next two years. With the plan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is bidding to tackle a major drag on the economy that has frustrated his attempts to boost growth. Investors welcomed the news, sending shares of State Bank of India ( SBI.NS ), the biggest lender, up as much as 25 percent to its highest since January 2015. The benchmark NSE index .NSEI rose as much as 1.3 percent, touching a record high. But details of how New Delhi will fund the injections remain unclear. Also, questions remain about whether it would add to the country<72>s fiscal deficit at a time markets are already doubtful India can meet its 3.2 percent target of gross domestic product for the year ending in March 2018. The planned injection also still falls short of some estimates, including from credit rating agencies, of what<61>s required. Fitch Ratings estimates Indian banks need $65 billion of additional capital by March 2019 to meet Basel III global banking rules. For now, analysts said the long-awaited actions are positive, as India was widely seen as dragging its feet in resolving issues in a banking sector saddled with $145 billion in soured loans after years of almost indiscriminate lending. Once the world<6C>s fastest-growing major economy, India has seen its growth rate plummet to the lowest in three years. A key factor has been the lack of private investment as state banks, which provide most of the credit in the economy, hold the largest amount of bad debt. <20>At the end of the day, a good dose of the medicine that is required is being provided,<2C> said Jobin Jacob, associate director of financial institutions at Fitch Ratings. <20>How the medicine is being sourced could have its own implications on the macro picture, but as far as the banking sector is concerned, it is helpful,<2C> he said. Of the planned 2.11 trillion rupees sum, so-called recapitalisation bonds will account for 1.35 trillion rupees, while about 580 billion rupees is estimated to come from share sales by banks, the ministry said on Tuesday. BIGGER STATE EQUITY STAKES? The government will also use 180 billion rupees left from its previously budgeted recapitalisation fund. Analysts predict recapitalisation bonds would likely involve selling debt to lenders, with the government then injecting the capital back into state-owned banks, potentially in exchange for increased equity stakes in the sector. The government could also seek to avoid adding to its fiscal deficit by funding the injections through state-owned bodies rather than directly, an accounting sleight-of-hand that could allow New Delhi not to count the expenditure as part of its budget. Details will matter. Concerns about how the recapitalisation bonds will be structured sent the benchmark 10-year bond yield IN067927G=CC up 3 basis points to 6.81 percent from its previous close. The Indian rupee INR=D2 weakened slightly to 65.15 from its previous close of 65.0925 Investors warned that India also needed to announce reforms to the banking sector, to prevent moral hazard and impose more credit discipline on lenders. Policymakers <20>should impose targets on these banks in terms of profitability, credit quality and efficiency. This has to be carefully managed,<2C> said David Marshall, Singapore-based analyst with CreditSights. Reporting by Devidutt
'a57cc7cef243a391957a17de482de824bca21c4f'|'AUTOSHOW-Toyota: Committed to hydrogen cars despite potential game changer EV battery'|'* Toyota introducing 2 fuel-cell concept vehicles at motor show* Japan wants to pioneer a hydrogen-fuelled society* Toyota planning long-range EV in early 2020s (Adds details on battery tech, fuel-cell concepts)By Naomi TajitsuTOKYO, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp said its solid-state battery technology under development could be a <20>game changer<65> for electric vehicles, but that does not mean it is moving away from hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles.Having long touted fuel-cell vehicles and plug-in hybrids as the most sensible technologies to make cars greener, Japan<61>s top-selling automaker surprised industry watchers last year with plans to add full-sized electric vehicles (EVs) to its line-up.In doing so, it joins a rush of global automakers scrambling to develop more EVs, in large part due to China<6E>s push to promote the technology as a way to reduce pollution in the world<6C>s biggest car market.<2E>We believe our solid-state battery technology can be a game changer with the potential to dramatically improve driving range,<2C> Executive Vice President Didier Leroy said at the Tokyo Motor Show, which opened to media on Wednesday.Toyota plans to roll out a new electric vehicle in the early 2020s powered by solid-state batteries, which also promise to reduce the long charging times currently required.Although China has heavily promoted electric cars, Japan has outlined plans to pioneer a hydrogen-fuelled society.Leroy noted that Toyota was introducing two new fuel-cell vehicles at the motor show, including the six-seater <20>Fine-Comfort Ride<64> concept car, with a cruising range of about 1,000 km (620 miles).A production version of the second model, the <20>Sora<72> fuel-cell bus, will be launched next year, with more than 100 expected to be sold, mainly in Tokyo, ahead of the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games to be held in the city. (Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Writing by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Edwina Gibbs) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/autoshow-tokyo-toyota/autoshow-toyota-committed-to-hydrogen-cars-despite-potential-game-changer-ev-battery-idINL4N1N0036'|'2017-10-25T00:25:00.000+03:00'
'f687bfbf5db84412889aebfb0e7bf13495d28beb'|'MOVES-Citi names new private banker to super-rich in Phoenix'|'Oct 25 (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc appointed Chris Klecka as a wealth manager for super-rich individuals in the south-western United States.Klecka, who was previously chief financial officer for a private family office, will be based in Phoenix, Citi Private Bank said. (Reporting by Taenaz Shakir in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/citigroup-moves-chrisklecka/moves-citi-names-new-private-banker-to-super-rich-in-phoenix-idINL4N1N05O9'|'2017-10-25T15:46:00.000+03:00'
'a91cc6fb5d3e3654899e626c6f37d1165d0dc327'|'Deutsche Bank to bolster asset management with Sal. Oppenheim ops: source'|'FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank ( DBKGn.DE ) plans to integrate parts of its Sal. Oppenheim subsidiary into its asset management division ahead of that division<6F>s planned spin-off, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.FILE PHOTO: The headquarters of Germany''s Deutsche Bank is seen early evening in Frankfurt, Germany, January 26, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo German daily Handelsblatt reported earlier that 40 to 50 staff from Sal. Oppenheim<69>s institutional client business would switch to Deutsche Asset Management.Deutsche Bank declined to comment.Sources told Reuters last week that Deutsche Bank has asked banks to pitch for work on an initial public offering (IPO) of its asset management business that could raise around 2 billion euros ($2.4 billion).($1 = 0.8472 euros)Reporting by Andreas Framke and Hans Seidenstuecker; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Kathrin Jones and Mark Potter '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-deutsche-bank-asset-management-sal-op/deutsche-bank-to-bolster-asset-management-with-sal-oppenheim-ops-source-idUSKBN1CU2I0'|'2017-10-25T19:48:00.000+03:00'
'1ca2e7e7189dc67577bb998477f9fb460cb8c181'|'Has Saudi defused the first oil ''taper tantrum''?'|'October 25, 2017 / 12:23 PM / Updated 8 minutes ago Has Saudi defused the first oil ''taper tantrum''? Amanda Cooper 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia<69>s renewed pledge to do whatever it takes to cut the global overhang of unused oil has helped head off a reversal in price premiums in Brent crude futures as the end of an OPEC-led deal to cut crude production looms in March. Saudi Oil Minister, Khalid al-Falih, arrives to the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Tuesday he was determined to reduce oil inventories in OECD industrialised countries to their five-year average. <20>When we get closer to that (level) we will decide how we smoothly exit the current arrangement, maybe go to a different arrangement to keep supply and demand closely balanced so we don<6F>t have a return to higher inventories,<2C> he told Reuters. His remarks lifted the December 2017 contract LCOc1, raising the premium over January LCOc2 to 20 cents and the premium over December 2018, known as the Dec/Dec spread, LCOZ8 to $2.12 (<28>1.6). The price boost reflected easing concern about what happens once the OPEC-led deal on cutting supplies ends. The deadline is now March although Saudi Arabia and others have indicated that it could be extended. Investors have been worried that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other producers, which cut output by about 1.8 million barrels per day since January, would hike production rapidly as soon as restraints are lifted. Until the Saudi minister<65>s remarks, the market had been twitchy about whether OPEC had a plan for tapering any rise. <20>Tapering<6E>, a phrase borrowed from the world of monetary policy, refers to a central bank<6E>s strategy of winding up a quantitative easing programme used to purchase government debt and other assets to keep borrowing costs low. Until Tuesday, the premium of the December contract over January had shrunk to as little as 8 cents a barrel, the narrowest in six weeks, from closer to 45 cents a week ago. Further out, the move was even more dramatic. The premium of December 2017 futures over December 2018 contracted to around $1.59, compared with $2.45 just a few days previously. The smaller the premium, or backwardation, of the front month over future months, the weaker the belief among market participants that demand was overtaking supply. The physical markets are also showing tentative signs of tightening supply, but Falih<69>s words seem to have been a more powerful antidote to oil<69>s first threat of a taper tantrum. Brent crude spreads recover after Saudi comments - reut.rs/2lg8Kps How the shape of the Brent futures curve has changed - reut.rs/2y3B4S8 Reporting by Amanda Cooper; Editing by Edmund Blair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-oil-structure/has-saudi-defused-the-first-oil-taper-tantrum-idUKKBN1CU1Q1'|'2017-10-25T15:23:00.000+03:00'
'37f8ad68c292e31d8838eaf5f29b4026048987b9'|'CSX postpones investor conference amid leadership shakeup'|'(Reuters) - CSX Corp ( CSX.O ), the third-largest U.S. railroad operator, said on Wednesday it was postponing an Oct. 30 investor conference to a later date, and said its board approved a $1.5 billion share buyback program.A CSX coal train (R) moves past an idling CSX engine at the switchyard in Brunswick, Maryland October 16, 2012. REUTERS/Gary Cameron CSX<53>s decision came hours after it announced the appointment of Jim Foote as its new chief operating officer.CSX has been undergoing a major overhaul under new Chief Executive Hunter Harrison. The 72-year-old railroading executive, famous for turning around Canadian railroads, was appointed in March to great investor fanfare.But rapid-fire changes to operations and cost cuts, and ensuing service delays, have drawn ire from customers and scrutiny from rail regulators and raised questions about how long it could take for his <20>precision scheduled railroading<6E> strategy to fully take root.<2E>The Board<72>s action to expand the repurchase program demonstrates our confidence in CSX<53>s long term future and ability to generate substantial free cash flow,<2C> Harrison said in a written statement.Shareholders had been expecting to get more details on the railroad<61>s operating strategy and, perhaps, on Harrison<6F>s succession plans, at the now-postponed Oct. 30 conference.Foote is due to take on the responsibilities of current Chief Operating Officer Cindy Sanborn and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Fredrik Eliasson, both of whom plan to resign effective Nov. 15, the Jacksonville, Florida-based company said on Wednesday.Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Phil Berlowitz '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-csx-moves/csx-postpones-investor-conference-amid-leadership-shakeup-idUSKBN1CU35K'|'2017-10-26T01:03:00.000+03:00'
'bf17d9317c24ad59721bcd7ade5956bd73f2f3c2'|'Japan industry minister Seko - Kobe Steel, Nissan ''unique problems'''|'October 26, 2017 / 2:17 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago Japan industry minister Seko - Kobe Steel, Nissan ''unique problems'' Reuters Staff 2 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko said on Thursday the recent scandals at Kobe Steel ( 5406.T ) and Nissan Motor ( 7201.T ) were <20>unique problems<6D> and did not represent manufacturers<72> stance on corporate governance in his country. Japan''s Minister of Economy,Trade and Industry Hiroshige Seko arrives at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe''s official residence in Tokyo, Japan August 3, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai <20>We<57>ve continued to undertake reforms on corporate governance and various changes are already taking place. The government hopes to continue promoting steps to enhance corporate governance,<2C> Seko said in a seminar. Seko made the comments when asked about the scandals, which involve data falsification at Kobe Steel and inspection cheating at Nissan. Japanese authorities, including Seko<6B>s ministry, are conducting safety checks at Kobe Steel<65>s plants after revelations of widespread tampering in the specification of its products. Nissan is also suspending domestic production of vehicles for the Japanese market to address misconduct in its final inspection procedures that has led to a major recall. Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-economy-governance/japan-industry-minister-seko-kobe-steel-nissan-unique-problems-idUKKBN1CV06H'|'2017-10-26T05:16:00.000+03:00'
'8ae3c12c717259e6894ee9d44ba88dc947f86d4d'|'Italy''s Mossi Ghisolfi draws interest for troubled U.S. assets: sources'|'FRANKFURT/MILAN (Reuters) - Italian plastics multinational Mossi Ghisolfi has attracted interest from a series of buyers, including plastics maker Indorama ( IVL.BK ), for its U.S. assets placed under Chapter 11 restructuring, sources close to the situation said.The assets, which include one of the world<6C>s largest plastic bottle production plant projects, could fetch up to $1 billion, though a sale could take some time, one of the sources said.Rothschild is running the proceedings, the sources said.Mossi Ghisolfi, founded by the Ghisolfi family in 1953, is famous for introducing PET, a plastic used for soft drink bottles, in Italy and across Europe.In 2013, it considered listing its M&G Chemicals business in Hong Kong but then pulled plans as market conditions worsened.The unexpected death of former managing director Guido Ghisolfi in 2015 and big cost overruns at its Corpus Christi PET plant in the United States have hit business.Last year, M&G Finanziaria, the holding company owned by the Ghisolfi family, had a 90 percent fall in operating profits to 6.9 million euros ($8 million) on revenues of 1.7 billion euros. Debt stood at around 2.5 billion euros.<2E>Indorama, Reliance Industries and Alpek are interested,<2C> one of the sources said. The source said no Chinese names had expressed interest since they preferred to build their own plants at home.Another source said the replacement value of the company<6E>s U.S. assets, or what it would cost to build them from scratch, was in the range of $2-3 billion.<2E>It<49>s going to be a drawn-out process with some debt being cut off,<2C> the source said.Mossi Ghisolfi (M&G) declined to comment. Indorama, Reliance Industries ( RELI.NS ) and Alpek ( ALPEKA.MX ) were not immediately available for comment.M&G -- which in Italy owns Beta Renewables, the first plant in the world to produce second-generation ethanol -- recently said it had filed for creditor protection for units in Italy.<2E>The companies are studying a proposal for an arrangement that will allow their overall activities to continue as a going concern, although they cannot exclude alternative solutions at the end of the ongoing technical assessments,<2C> the company said on its website.Italian investment bank Mediobanca is leading the process in Italy, a different source said, adding a series of private equity and industrial players had expressed early interest.The source declined to say how much the Italian operations could be worth but said it could be <20>several hundred millions<6E>.($1 = 0.8462 euros)Reporting by Arno Schuetze and Stephen Jewkes. Editing by Jane Merriman '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-mossighisolfi-m-a-usa/italys-mossi-ghisolfi-draws-interest-for-troubled-u-s-assets-sources-idINKBN1CV10W'|'2017-10-26T07:07:00.000+03:00'
'920ca066c00729e6c896d8680e587e4b2007c479'|'American business schools dominate our MBA ranking'|'American business schools dominate The Economist <20>s 2017 Which MBA? ranking, taking 16 of the top 20 places. Northwestern University<74>s Kellogg School of Management returns to the top spot for the first time since 2004. Kellogg students praise its facilities and collaborative culture. Their career opportunities are among the best, thanks in part to one of the largest alumni networks in the world; 97% of students find a job within three months of graduation, pocketing a 72% pay bump. All of the top ten slots in the ranking are now occupied by large, prestigious American schools, for which students are happy to pay extra. Their average tuition fee is $134,600, and has risen quickly in recent years. Employers, too, are willing to shell out for the best students. Their average basic salary was $127,300, a 70% increase on their pre-MBA pay cheques. But life, like rankings, isn<73>t just about money. So we weight data according to what students tell us is important. The four categories covered are: opening new career opportunities (35%), personal development and educational experience (35%), better salary (20%) and networking potential (10%).See the full ranking and methodology . 38 an hour This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline "The best MBA courses"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'http://www.economist.com/news/business/21730637-first-institution-outside-united-states-ranks-15th-american-business-schools-dominate?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-28T07:00:00.000+03:00'
'3fd68421b472f2fc1b176642eef9843ec13a754b'|'Clariant, Huntsman abandon $20 billion merger as opposition intensifies'|'ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss specialty chemicals maker Clariant and U.S. group Huntsman abandoned their $20 billion merger on Friday, notching a win for activist investors who fought the deal for months on the grounds it would destroy shareholder value.The logo of Swiss specialty chemicals company Clariant is seen at the company''s headquarters in Pratteln, Switzerland August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann White Tale, the investment vehicle of hedge fund manager Keith Meister and New York-based fund 40 North, had raised its Clariant stake to above 20 percent, Reuters reported on Thursday ahead of the announcement the tie-up was dead.White Tale<6C>s rising stake, coupled with other Clariant shareholders who came out against the deal, left the Swiss company doubtful of mustering the two-thirds support necessary for the merger to go through.The successful revolt comes amid a wave of investor activism in Switzerland, where Credit Suisse is under attack and Nestle faces demands for change.Chief Executive Hariolf Kottmann said Clariant still has options to explore after further talks with White Tale.<2E>To do a merger of equals ... is one option, to make a large transformational transaction is another option, to continue to stand alone is a third option,<2C> Kottmann told reporters on a call where he vowed to remain CEO.<2E>There are four or five of these options, and they have all pros and cons.<2E>Clariant shares had risen about 38 percent this year before Friday<61>s announcement but were still more cheaply rated than rivals, trading at a multiple of 18.7 times forecast earnings against an average 21.3 ratio of peers in the chemicals industry, according to Starmine data.The stock was down 6.3 percent by 0840 GMT on Friday.Scepticism that the deal would succeed had been mounting as even supporters sold down their stakes. <20>I thought it was a fantastic deal,<2C> said one investor who built up a stake before selling it on fear White Tale was gaining the upper hand. <20>I think White Tale want something more short term.<2E>Some analysts say Clariant will likely re-emerge as prey for other chemicals companies eager to beef up their portfolios.<2E>Clariant is again the No. 1 takeover target,<2C> said Markus Mayer, a Baader Helvea analyst who said potential buyers may wait to make an approach until Clariant<6E>s share price falls even further, or until White Tale is able to install management that is more favorable to a takeover.POTENTIAL INTEREST A source familiar with the acquisition strategy of Germany<6E>s Evonik said it would potentially be interested in acquiring portions of Clariant should the Swiss company be broken up. Evonik declined comment.Two years ago, Evonik held talks with buyout group CVC over a potential joint offer for Clariant, although Kottmann has said he never received a formal bid.<2E>There were never serious discussions with another peer, where we were asked if we would divest ourselves, shop the company and be taken over,<2C> Kottmann said.Huntsman CEO Peter Huntsman said separately he was disappointed the transaction did not go through.Clariant and Huntsman, which said its third-quarter costs linked to the merger were $18 million, agreed to forego breakup fees. Clariant had faced a potential $210 million hit from walking away from the deal, and a $60 million fee if Clariant shareholders failed to approved the transaction.Clariant, which had hired Goldman Sachs to rescue the merger, makes aircraft de-icer, retardant for wildfires, plastics colorings, chemicals to help oil drillers separate oil from water and ingredients for shampoos.Clariant and Huntsman in May struck the pact that would have given Clariant 52 percent of the combined entity, saying the combination would produce around $400 million in annual cost synergies and create the world<6C>s second-biggest specialty chemicals maker behind Evonik.In fighting the Huntsman tie-up, Meister and 40 North<74>s David Winter and David Millstone contended the merger would not deliver enough benefi
'f551271771d774d2dff90284635b18e623a27f14'|'Global growth? Sure. But still not much inflation pressure - Reuters poll'|'October 26, 2017 / 4:06 AM / in an hour Global growth? Sure. But still not much inflation pressure - Reuters poll Anu Bararia , Hari Kishan 5 Min Read BENGALURU (Reuters) - The global economy is on its best roll in years and set to do better in 2018, but economists in Reuters polls around the world mostly said synchronous growth is not about to spawn significant price pressures. FILE PHOTO - Consumers shop for food at a market in Sao Paulo, Brazil January 11, 2017. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker/File Photo Indeed, while several major central banks have shifted their bias away from ultra-easy monetary policy, with a few notable exceptions, inflation remains below their targets and is generally set to stay that way in the year ahead. <20>It is becoming a familiar refrain. Another quarter, another set of upward revisions to our global growth forecasts, another downward revision to our global inflation forecasts,<2C> said Janet Henry, global chief economist at HSBC. <20>But for developed world central banks, the task is getting ever harder. Tackling both low inflation and rising financial stability risks will demand a delicate balancing act by central banks and a more nuanced approach to inflation targeting if the global expansion is to be sustained.<2E> In Reuters surveys taken Oct 3-24 of more than 500 economists across Asia, Europe and the Americas, 2017 and 2018 growth forecasts for nearly three-quarters of the 48 economies polled were raised or left unchanged. Global economic growth as a whole is forecast at 3.5 percent this year, steady compared with a poll published three months ago but a tad lower than the recently upgraded view from the International Monetary Fund. While the consensus forecast for 2018 also remained steady at 3.6 percent, a majority who answered an additional question said the risk to their forecasts were skewed more to the upside. However, respondents cut their 2017 inflation forecasts for nearly two-thirds of the economies surveyed. Around 40 percent of the 134 economists who answered an extra question said global inflation pressures won<6F>t pick up until 2019 or beyond while a quarter said they were unlikely to rebound at all. The rest said they will before end-2018. Erik Nelson, a strategist at Wells Fargo in New York, said for their global growth forecasts, which are roughly in line with the Reuters consensus, inflation picking up faster than expected is the number one risk. <20>If inflation picks up a lot more than we are expecting, either in the United States or other economies, and central banks have to tighten a little more aggressively than we currently think, then there is probably some downside risk for those forecasts,<2C> Nelson said. CHALLENGE FOR CENTRAL BANKS Global central banks are at different stages in removing monetary policy accommodation, with persistently weak inflation nearly everywhere complicating decision-making. <20>Low inflation expectations may have become self-fulfilling, so low inflation is likely more persistent than what central banks think,<2C> said Mikael Milhoj, senior analyst at Danske Bank. The U.S. Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates in December and twice next year, according to economists who largely said risks were skewed more to a slower pace of hikes. Uncertainty over who U.S. President Donald Trump will choose to head the Fed when Chair Janet Yellen<65>s term ends on Feb. 1 has also clouded the outlook. One of the candidates Trump has interviewed and is seriously considering according to reports, former Treasury undersecretary John Taylor, was deemed in a Reuters poll as likely to adopt the most radical change to current policy were he to be appointed. After more than two years of purchases worth over 2 trillion euros in total, the European Central Bank is expected to announce at its meeting on Thursday that it will trim asset purchases to 40 billion euros a month from January and continue buying securities for another six or nine months. The rising risk 
'c23e1b396e41c1dd2ca20c806840b8a3b56e1f5b'|'Brazil''s EMS SA offers 16 mln euros for Serbia''s Galenika'|'October 26, 2017 / 1:09 PM / in 6 minutes Brazil''s EMS SA offers 16 mln euros for Serbia''s Galenika Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BELGRADE, Oct 26 (Reuters) - An affiliate of Brazilian pharmaceuticals company EMS SA has offered 16 million euros ($18.8 million) for a 93.7 percent stake in Serbian drugmaker Galenika, the Balkan country<72>s economy ministry said on Thursday. Belgrade wants to sell Galenika as part of a drive to rid itself of unprofitable state-run companies under a 1.2 billion euro ($1.4 billion) deal with the International Monetary Fund, but the drugmaker<65>s debts have so far put off investors. In a statement, the ministry said the tender commission had recommended that Luxembourg-based Aelius, an affiliate of EMS, should be declared winner of the tender. <20>The buyer will have to repay a 25 million euros debt to banks and pay a compensation of 200 euro per every year in service to employees who opted for a voluntary redundancy plan,<2C> it said. So far, 250 out of 1,400 Galenika employees have joined the redundancy plan. Under the terms of the tender, Belgrade offered its entire stake in Galenika at a starting price of a nominal one euro plus payment of the company<6E>s debt. The ministry<72>s statement also said the winning bidder would have to invest 5.525 million euros in Galenika over the next two years and keep a workforce of 900 employees <20>for an indefinite period of time.<2E> Last week, the government said another bidder, Switzerland-based Amicus, had failed to provide the required documentation. In August, the government and state-run gas retailer Srbijagas took on a combined 14.7 billion dinars ($144.8 million) of Galenika<6B>s debt in exchange for an 8 percent stake, increasing their total share in the drugmaker to around 93 percent. The remainder belongs to small shareholders. In 2013, Belgrade attempted to privatise Galenika but the sole bidder, Canada<64>s Valeant, pulled out, citing the hostility of local unions as a factor. $1 = 0.8508 euros Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/galenika-ma-ems/brazils-ems-sa-offers-16-mln-euros-for-serbias-galenika-idUSL8N1N178M'|'2017-10-26T16:07:00.000+03:00'
'03d89b2c412ed16aec481dc01a20662baf4bfda3'|'Colony Capital''s bid to acquire Weinstein Co hits snag: WSJ'|'(Reuters) - Colony Capital, the private equity arm of real estate investment trust Colony NorthStar Inc ( CLNS.N ), is facing hurdles in its talks to buy The Weistein Company because the company is seeking higher bidders, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people close to the discussions.Colony Capital, which has about $20 billion in assets under management, was in talks to buy all or a significant portion of The Weinstein Company<6E>s assets, the private equity firm said last week.The period of exclusivity ends in the middle of next week and the film company could start talking to other parties that have expressed interest if an agreement is not reached, the Wall Street Journal reported. on.wsj.com/2xouSjgNeither company was immediately available for a comment.Reporting by Philip George '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-weinstein-colony-northstar/colony-capitals-bid-to-acquire-weinstein-co-hits-snag-wsj-idINKBN1CV05M'|'2017-10-25T23:52:00.000+03:00'
'4e8f0451222c019efad211849ea8f797da462bd4'|'Apple should shrink its finance arm before it goes bananas'|'IT IS fashionable to say that tech firms will conquer the financial services industry. Yet in the case of Apple, it seems that the opposite is happening and finance is taking over tech by stealth. Since the death of Steve Jobs, its co-founder, in 2011, the world<6C>s biggest firm by market value has sold hundreds of millions of phones with bionic chips and know-it-all digital assistants. But it has also grown a financial operation that is already, on some measures, roughly half the size of Goldman Sachs.Apple does not organise its financial activities into one subsidiary, but Schumpeter has lumped them together. The result<6C>call it <20>Apple Capital<61><6C>has $262bn of assets, $108bn of debt, and has traded $1.6trn of securities since 2011. It appears to be run fairly cautiously and is part of a thriving firm, but it still deserves scrutiny. Companies have a history of being hurt by their financial arms; think General Electric (GE) or General Motors (GM). 38 an hour Apple Capital has lots of responsibilities but three stand out. It invests the firm<72>s mountain of surplus profits, mainly in <20>highly rated<65> instruments (this task seems to fall to Braeburn Capital, a subsidiary in Nevada, which uses some external fund managers). Apple Capital also uses derivatives in order to protect the firm against currency and interest-rate gyrations. And it manages America<63>s fifth-biggest corporate-debt pile by issuing Apple bonds as part of an elaborate strategy to limit tax bills.Apple Capital has become important to its parent. Since Jobs died, its assets have risen by 221%, twice as fast as the company<6E>s sales, reflecting Apple<6C>s huge build-up of profits. Its investments are worth 32% of Apple<6C>s market value, and its profits (investment income, plus gains on derivatives, less interest costs) have been 7% of Apple<6C>s pre-tax profits so far this year. It is also sizeable compared with other financial firms. Consider four measures: assets, debt, credit exposure and profits. Depending on the yardstick, Apple Capital is 30-85% as big as Goldman Sachs. It is 22-42% as large as GE Capital was at its peak in 2007, just before things went down the tubes during the subprime crisis.Apple Capital is different from these firms in important ways. It does not take deposits and has much lower leverage. In their prime Goldman and GE Capital were run by hard-charging financiers, and made lots of loans. By contrast, Apple Capital does not make loans, and is not meant to be a profit centre in its own right. Nonetheless, it has become riskier, in three ways.First, Apple Capital is investing in racier assets, which involves taking credit risk. In 2011 a majority of its assets were <20>risk-free<65>: cash or government bonds. Today 68% are invested in other kinds of securities, mainly corporate bonds, which Apple says are generally investment grade. The shift may explain why Apple<6C>s annual interest rate earned on its portfolio (2%) is now higher than that of the four other Silicon Valley firms with money mountains, Microsoft, Alphabet, Cisco and Oracle. In total, they still have 66% of their portfolios squirrelled away in risk-free assets.Second, Apple<6C>s derivatives book has got much bigger. Since 2011 its notional size<7A>the face value of its contracts<74>has risen by 425%, to $124bn. This is still much smaller than big banks<6B> positions, but is the third-largest book of any non-financial firm in America, after GE and Ford. For every dollar of foreign sales, Apple has 89 cents of derivatives, compared with 57 cents for the other four tech giants. At points these derivatives have yielded big rewards. In 2015 they contributed $4bn, or 6% of Apple<6C>s profits. But they have dangers, too. Apple says that its <20>value-at-risk<73> (VAR), a statistical measure of the maximum likely loss in an average day, is $434m. That is huge: similar to the combined VAR of the world<6C>s top ten investment banks. In theory losses on derivatives would be offset by gains in the value of Apple<6C>s underlying bus
'a880876efed70323c1fc5280f8a35fcdd12e8e1a'|'As Trump tax comes to floor, failure could spell stocks selloff'|'October 27, 2017 / 11:04 AM / Updated an hour ago As Trump tax comes to floor, failure could spell stocks selloff David Randall , Caroline Valetkevitch 4 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors are increasingly pricing in the effect of a corporate tax cut into the shares of U.S. companies, leaving the market primed for a steep sell-off if the Republican-controlled Congress fails to pass one of President Donald Trump<6D>s top priorities. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid The benchmark S&P 500 .SPX is up nearly 6 percent from its August lows as the Trump administration has rolled out its tax reform proposal, which would cut corporate taxes to 20 percent from the current 35 percent and allow companies to bring back some of the $2.6 trillion(<28>1.98 trillion) in cash currently held offshore at reduced rates. Bank of America Merrill Lynch said that a positive boost from taxes <20>had been priced out of stocks<6B> in July but <20>has been making a solid comeback.<2E> Yet there are signs that the Trump administration has little room for error as it gets ready to introduce its tax legislation next week. The House of Representatives narrowly passed a budget measure on Thursday necessary for a vote on a tax bill, with Republicans from such high-tax states as New York and New Jersey among the opponents out of concerns that a bill would eliminate the deduction of state and local taxes. Trump must also stem potential revolts over a proposal to scale back the level of tax-deferred contributions to 401(k) retirement savings plans, which many middle-class Americans rely on for their retirement. <20>The nature of the rally over the last two months has been tax-cut led. If we don<6F>t get a cut then the market is going down<77> several percentage points, said Edward Perkin, chief equity investment officer at Eaton Vance. Such a decline would be the first significant sell-off of the year, he said, but would not likely be near the 20 percent decline that signifies the start of a bear market. A collapse in the tax measure would likely send the S&P 500 down 5 percent or more, Goldman Sachs said in an Oct. 20 note. <20>Tax reform will determine the direction of the S&P 500<30>s next 100 points,<2C> the report said. Over the last 30 days, roughly 75 companies - ranging from delivery service United Parcel Service Inc ( UPS.N ) to hotel operator Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc ( HLT.N ) - have discussed how they would benefit from a corporate tax cut on conference calls with analysts, according to a Reuters analysis of earnings call transcripts, a sign that Wall Street is increasingly focussed on the tax bill. The White House<73>s plan would boost 2018 S&P 500 adjusted earnings per share by 12 percent, to $156, Goldman Sachs estimates, while leading to an additional $75 billion in stock buybacks. Peter Tuz, president of Chase Investment Counsel in Charlottesville, Virginia, said that Trump<6D>s clashes over the last week with members of his own party could threaten the tax bill<6C>s success because it could alienate other Republicans. Because Republicans hold only a slim 52-48 seat advantage in the Senate, Trump can afford to lose only two votes. <20>When the possibility of a defection of some Republican senators increases, that kind of puts the whole tax reform thing in jeopardy. He needs them all,<2C> Tuz said. At the same time, the 14.4 percent year-to-date rally in the S&P 500 leaves the index primed for a decline of at least 5 percent, said Barry James, a co-portfolio manager of the $3.1 billion James Balanced Golden Rainbow fund ( GLRBX.O ). The S&P 500 trades at a trailing price-to-earnings ratio of 22.6, and a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 19.5, both well above their historical norms. <20>We<57>re at levels today that are historically very risky for stocks and we<77>re primed for a correction,<2C> James said. <20>If there<72>s not the tax cut that everyone is expecting, then the correction could be a wh
'b0813d8f73c7acf1d5541eee034e6628df7adcff'|'Elliott makes first public buyout with Gigamon in $1.6 bln deal'|'October 26, 2017 / 11:23 PM / in 11 hours Elliott makes first public buyout with Gigamon in $1.6 bln deal Liana B. Baker 3 Min Read SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Elliott Management Corp, best known as an activist investor, announced its first agreement to buy a public company on Thursday, a $1.6 billion acquisition of network software firm Gigamon Inc ( GIMO.N ). The deal for Gigamon was struck by Elliott<74>s private equity arm, Evergreen Coast Capital Partners, about six months after the hedge fund bought a 15.3 percent stake in the company and pushed it to explore a sale. Elliott said it would pay $38.50 per share for Gigamon, a 7 percent premium to Thursday<61>s closing price. The deal is expected to close in early 2018. Shares rose 4.43 percent in after-hours trading to $37.75. While activists have made offers for companies in the past and investors such as Carl Icahn have acquired companies before, New York-based Elliott, with assets of more than $33 billion, is one of the few hedge funds with a dedicated team chasing buyouts. Elliott launched Evergreen in Menlo Park, California in 2015 and owns assets such as Dell<6C>s software unit that it bought along with private equity firm Francisco Partners for more than $2 billion. Elliott<74>s private equity push, spearheaded by partner Jesse Cohn, could capture a lot of value for the firm if it successfully exits its acquisitions in the future, but it also involves bigger risks. Owning the majority of a company that fails to live up to its potential can hurt a fund<6E>s bottom line and its reputation far more than a minority stake that underperforms. It also creates potential confusion for CEOs and corporate boards wondering which path Elliott will take when it shows up as a shareholder. Santa Clara, California-based Gigamon makes software used in large data centers to boost the flow of traffic and prevent bottlenecks. Isaac Kim, Evergreen<65>s managing director, said in a statement that his team, including operating executives it has hired, will help the company develop products and explore acquisitions to boost growth. The company had held on and off talks for several months with Gigamon. Talks had broken off in early October, Reuters previously reported, over price disagreements. They heated up in mid-October after Gigamon<6F>s third-quarter results came in, according to a source familiar with the matter. Gigamon reported on Thursday that its revenue in the third quarter declined 5.1 percent to $79.2 million. Gigamon was advised by Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ) while Elliott<74>s Evergreen was advised by Jefferies, Bank of America and Macquarie. (In first, third and 11th paragraphs, corrects day to Thursday from Wednesday) Reporting by Liana B. Baker in San Francisco; Editing by Cynthia Osterman '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-gigamon-m-a/elliott-makes-first-public-buyout-with-gigamon-in-1-6-billion-deal-idINKBN1CV3NY'|'2017-10-26T21:23:00.000+03:00'
'246590a159ef0857d375c9fd6cb0d688e222dbfa'|'BRIEF-Constellation Software Inc reports Q3 earnings $2.56/shr'|'Oct 26 (Reuters) - Constellation Software Inc* Constellation Software Inc. Announces results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2017 and declares quarterly dividend* Q3 adjusted earnings per share $5.45* Q3 earnings per share $2.56* Q3 revenue $637 million versus I/B/E/S view $623.9 million* Q3 earnings per share view $5.89 -- Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S Source text for Eikon: '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-constellation-software-inc-reports/brief-constellation-software-inc-reports-q3-earnings-2-56-shr-idUSASB0BP9O'|'2017-10-27T00:50:00.000+03:00'
'1bfa68c9f4ff0ef6b3504702f221c33595e2edbb'|'UK debt agency names banks to launch new 2048 index-linked gilt'|'LONDON, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Britain<69>s government debt agency named BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS to handle the launch next month of a new index-linked gilt maturing in 2048.The four banks will act as joint bookrunners on the syndication, which is expected to raise several billion pounds for the new issue, which will pay an inflation-linked coupon of 0.125 percent.The sale is due to take place in the week starting Nov. 6. (Reporting by David Milliken; editing by Costas Pitas) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-bonds-2048/uk-debt-agency-names-banks-to-launch-new-2048-index-linked-gilt-idINL8N1N22A1'|'2017-10-27T05:19:00.000+03:00'
'81a80c13423de65bb4ea95dd81c7c0994af06378'|'UPDATE 1-White Tale takes Clariant stake above 20 pct- source'|'(Adds further details and background)By Oliver HirtZURICH, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Activist investors seeking to block Clariant<6E>s $20 billion merger deal with Huntsman Corp have increased their stake in the Swiss specialty chemical maker to above 20 percent, triggering a disclosure filing, a source close to the matter said.White Tale Holdings, which is backed by two hedge funds, had told a Swiss newspaper earlier this month it had <20>significantly more<72> than 15 percent of Clariant shares and wanted to increase its stake.<2E>We already own more than 15 percent and we<77>re not done buying,<2C> White Tale investors David Millstone and David Winter had told Finanz und Wirtschaft in a joint interview.White Tale, the biggest investor in Clariant, has repeatedly declined to respond to Reuters enquiries about its plans.After years of mutual approaches, Clariant and Huntsman struck the deal in May that would give Clariant 52 percent of the combined entity and targets around $400 million in annual cost synergies.But doubts have been growing among some of Clariant<6E>s investors over whether it will be able to get the deal done in the face of White Tale<6C>s opposition.Baader Helvea analyst Markus Mayer has written that a 20 percent stake would be enough to derail the deal given that only around 80 percent of Clariant shares have in the past been registered with the company, making them eligible to vote.The deal needs two-thirds majority support from Clariant shareholders to go through.Clariant declined to comment, reiterating only that a large majority of shareholders still backed the deal.Calling themselves <20>long term-oriented investors<72> who are <20>here to stay<61>, Millstone and Winter oppose the planned merger that they say significantly undervalues Clariant and overvalues Huntsman.The Swiss chemical manufacturer should instead sell its plastics and coatings business, they have said, and reinvest the proceeds in acquisitions within the higher-margin specialty chemicals businesses. (Additonal reporting by John Miller; Editing by Michael Shields, Greg Mahlich) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/clariant-huntsman/update-1-white-tale-takes-clariant-stake-above-20-pct-source-idINL8N1N1993'|'2017-10-26T14:48:00.000+03:00'
'03c944361afbf99694c8494f55397eaa3c2adddd'|'London comes to Macau as Las Vegas Sands revamps casino resort'|'HONG KONG, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Las Vegas Sands, the casino behemoth owned by U.S. billionaire Sheldon Adelson, said on Wednesday it plans to spend $1.1 billion on new projects in the world<6C>s largest gambling hub, including building a London-themed attraction.Sands, which owns five properties in the Chinese territory of Macau via its subsidiary Sands China, said it would renovate and rebrand Sands Cotai Central as The Londoner Macao by 2020.Sands Cotai Central has been one of the company<6E>s weakest properties, analysts said, due to its lack of character and tourist appeal when compared with Sands<64> gondola-filled Venetian or its Parisian property that features a replica Eiffel Tower. The timing of the Cotai renovation comes as operators in the former Portuguese colony of Macau such as MGM Resorts and SJM Holdings race to finish their planned resorts before casino licenses start to expire in 2020.Authorities have been pushing Macau<61>s casino operators to diversify away from gambling because of their dependence on the industry which accounts for over 80 percent of government revenues.Sands, which completed the Parisian in 2016, has now turned to revamping existing properties to further boost its appeal. The company said it would add new suites and rooms to its St Regis and Four Seasons properties and renovate VIP areas at the Venetian and Plaza Macau.Sands, which reported earnings in line with analyst expectations on Wednesday, said net revenue for the third quarter was $3.2 billion.Adelson, the first mover into Macau<61>s Cotai strip - once a dusty stretch of reclaimed land which now teems with glitz and cavernous gambling halls - said the market in Macau was continuing to recover. <20>While we have invested over $13 billion in Macao since 2002... we see tremendous future opportunity in the Macao market as it continues to grow and evolve,<2C> he said in a statement.Analysts were mostly positive on the announcement although cautioned the renovations would bring some disruption over the next two years.<2E>In the long run should be value additive to the company. However dividend growth may be limited over next few years as FCF (free cash flow)is redirected to capital expenditure,<2C> said Vitaly Umansky, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in Hong Kong.Reporting by Farah Master '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/macau-sands/london-comes-to-macau-as-las-vegas-sands-revamps-casino-resort-idINL4N1N11DT'|'2017-10-26T00:52:00.000+03:00'
'5b8d8d458fa7697eef0aa33743756e3db4a3b751'|'Deutsche Bank sets course for higher bonuses - source'|'October 26, 2017 / 1:53 PM / Updated 17 minutes ago Deutsche Bank sets course for higher bonuses - source John O''Donnell , Tom Sims 4 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank ( DBKGn.DE ), which is struggling to keep pace with Wall Street firms, will pay higher bonuses in 2017 after a sharp cut last year, one person with knowledge of the plan said. FILE PHOTO: Flags with the logo of Deutsche Bank are seen at the headquarters ahead of the bank''s annual general meeting in Frankfurt, Germany May 18, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski The final bonus <20>pool<6F> will largely depend on how Europe<70>s most prominent investment bank fares through the end of the year as well as what its competitors pay. A resumption of big bonuses is not a sign of a turnaround at the once high-flying investment bank, but an effort to prevent defections. Deutsche Bank will have to tread carefully on its payout levels because credit rating agencies are keeping close tabs on them and shareholders are frustrated by its slow turnaround. But a return to bigger bonuses would be a relief for bankers at Deutsche Bank where total bonus payments dropped from 2.4 billion euros in 2015 to 546 million euros last year after a multi-billion dollar legal fine for the sale of toxic debt. <20>We want to return to the usual bonus system this year,<2C> one person with direct knowledge of the matter said. John Cryan, Deutsche Bank<6E>s chief executive, conceded that a recovery would take time in a letter to staff on Thursday. The still fragile state of Germany<6E>s biggest bank was underlined when it reported a drop of almost 25 percent in third quarter investment bank revenues and a drop of more than a third in its bond trading division. Deutsche Bank lagged Wall Street rivals, where investment banking revenue rose by 8 percent, according to Barclays, and bond trading fell by a less dramatic 22 percent. A spokesman for Deutsche Bank said its bond trading dip had been 24 percent when calculated in the same way as U.S. rivals, although investors were nonetheless disappointed. <20>Deutsche Bank is losing market share in investment banking. This is the third disappointing quarter running. A turnaround cannot be expected soon,<2C> said Helmut Hipper of Union Investment, a shareholder in the bank. Cryan, however, now intends to make good on a pledge made in January 2017 at the time of the cutbacks to <20>return to our normal compensation programmes<65>. European rival Barclays ( BARC.L ) responded to a dip in its trading income on Thursday by cutting the bonus pool. RETURN TO NORMAL Deutsche Bank<6E>s once hot-shot investment banking division has dropped in rankings and market share in recent years, partly by design as it aims for a leaner approach focussed on Europe and enabling German companies to tap international finance. But bank executives acknowledge clients went elsewhere as it battled a barrage of law suits and had to raise more capital. In the first half of this year, Deutsche Bank<6E>s investment bank maintained its sixth place ranking in global league tables compiled by Coalition, but it slipped one notch to eighth in the Americas and one notch to fourth in Asia. It has been pushing to regain lost ground, for instance, in advising large companies and refocusing on Germany, but expects its turnaround to take some years. For the ratings agencies which evaluate the risks to firms such as Deutsche Bank, bonuses will have to fit tight cost constraints. <20>Deutsche has a hard total cost target of 22 billion euros. But they have ways to go there still and the picture is blurry and bonuses have to fit into that,<2C> Peter Nerby of rating agency Moody<64>s told Reuters. <20>Costs are too high and more needs to be done there,<2C> said Richard Barnes, who oversees the bank<6E>s rating at S&P, adding that Deutsche Bank<6E>s revamp could see it lose ground to rivals. <20>There<72>s a danger that they become very inwardly focussed on their restructuring while rivals banks are on the front foot.<2E> Additional reporting by Arno Schuetze in 
'4775cf6a47ee1f7f65b813779d6282a76baa40cc'|'Cloud computing drives massive growth for big U.S. tech firms'|'October 27, 2017 / 1:52 AM / Updated an hour ago Cloud computing drives massive growth for big U.S. tech firms Salvador Rodriguez 5 Min Read SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O ), Microsoft Corp ( MSFT.O ), Alphabet Corp<72>s ( GOOGL.O ) Google and Intel Corp ( INTC.O ) are all putting their chips on the cloud computing business, and it is booming. FILE PHOTO: The Microsoft logo is shown on the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles, California, U.S. on June 13, 2017. REUTERS/ Mike Blake/File Photo All four companies posted stellar quarterly earnings on Thursday, showing the strength of the shift in corporate computing away from company-owned data centers and to the cloud. Microsoft<66>s Azure business nearly doubled, with year-over-year growth of 90 percent. The company does not break out revenue figures for Azure, but research firm Canalys estimates it generated $2 billion for Microsoft. <20>The move to the cloud was one we felt Microsoft could always benefit from, and they<65>re showing us that they can,<2C> said Kim Forrest, vice president and senior equity analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group, a portfolio management firm. Highlighting the quarter for Microsoft was a deal securing retailer Costco ( COST.O ) as an Azure customer. That came just two months after the close of Amazon<6F>s acquisition of grocery chain Whole Foods, which has heightened unease among retail and e-commerce companies about working with Amazon, said Ed Anderson, an analyst with Gartner. Tim Green, analyst with the Motley Fool, said Amazon could find it needs to make changes at some point at Amazon Web services. <20>Spinning off AWS at some point down the road might become necessary to prevent an exodus of customers,<2C> he said. Amazon Web Services is still delivering far more revenue than any of its peers. For the quarter, AWS raked in nearly $4.6 billion -- a year-over-year increase of 42 percent. AWS may have missed out on Costco, but the company secured deals with Hulu, Toyota Racing Development, and most notably, General Electric. Google Cloud Platform landed deals with the likes of department store retailer Kohl<68>s and payments processor PayPal. Like Microsoft, Alphabet does not break out revenue for Google Cloud Platform, but Canalys estimates the business generated $870 million in the quarter, up 76 percent year-over-year. FILE PHOTO - The logo of Amazon is seen at the company logistics center in Lauwin-Planque, northern France, February 20, 2017. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol/File Photo Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said Google Cloud Platform is a top-three priority for the company. He said Google plans to continue expanding its cloud sales force. Canalys estimates the cloud computing market at $14.4 billion for the third quarter of 2017, up 43 percent from a year prior. Amazon holds 31.8 percent of the market, followed by Microsoft at 13.9 percent and Google with 6 percent, according to Canalys<79> estimates. The <20>cloud market will keep growing faster than most of the traditional information technology segment, as the market is still in the developing stage,<2C> said Daniel Liu, research analyst with Canalys. FILE PHOTO - The Google logo is pictured atop an office building in Irvine, California, U.S. August 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo Reflecting the overall growth of the market was the strong performance by Intel, which sells processors and chips to cloud vendors. In July, Intel launched its new Xeon Scalable Processors, which drove 7 percent year-to-year growth for the company<6E>s data center group. The big three cloud vendors also benefit from the decision by many enterprises to build their applications using more than one cloud vendor. Retailers Home Depot Inc ( HD.N ) and Target Corp ( TGT.N ), for example, told Reuters they use a combination of cloud providers. <20>Our philosophy here is to be cloud agnostic, as much as we can,<2C> said Stephen Holmes, a spokesman for Home Depot, which uses both Azure and Google Cloud Platform. Some a
'8824b282eaa6851c04a5ef8cb255ec4e9935c436'|'ECB can and should avoid state defaults in euro zone: Nowotny'|'Reuters TV United States October 27, 2017 / 11:33 AM / a minute ago ECB can and should avoid state defaults in euro zone: Nowotny Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank can and should avoid the default of states that form part of the euro zone in order to preserve the unity of the currency bloc, ECB policymaker Ewald Nowotny said on Friday. FILE PHOTO: European Central Bank (ECB) Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny listens during a news conference in Vienna, Austria, March 30, 2017. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader <20>This (redenomination to other currencies) is a kind of risk that the ECB cannot and should not accept,<2C> Nowotny, who is Austria<69>s central bank governor, said. <20>The risk of a sovereign default... is something that the ECB has the power to avoid and should use its power to avoid,<2C> he added. <20>Because this is part of the mandate,<2C> the outspoken policymaker said. Reporting By Francesco Canepa; Editing by Balazs Koranyi'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-bailout-nowotny/ecb-can-and-should-avoid-state-defaults-in-euro-zone-nowotny-idUKKBN1CW1IR'|'2017-10-27T14:28:00.000+03:00'
'7cda9ebe6aaa5c7ef9a982d85651793bef723a95'|'Tesla cuts Model 3 part orders to Taiwan supplier Hota -report'|'October 27, 2017 / 5:43 AM / Updated 20 minutes ago Tesla cuts Model 3 part orders to Taiwan supplier Hota: report Reuters Staff 2 Min Read TAIPEI (Reuters) - Luxury electric carmaker Tesla ( TSLA.O ) plans to slash by 40 percent its orders for parts for the new Model 3 mass-market sedan from Taiwanese auto component maker Hota Industrial Mfg. Co ( 1536.TW ) from December, according to a media report. Tesla Model 3 cars are seen as Tesla holds an event at the factory handing over its first 30 Model 3 vehicles to employee buyers at the company''s Fremont facility in California, U.S., July 28, 2017. Courtesy Tesla/Handout via REUTERS Shares of the parts maker dropped nearly 9 percent after the Economic Daily News reported, citing Hota Chairman Shen Kuo-jung, that Tesla had told the firm orders would be cut to 3,000 sets per week from 5,000 sets starting December, due to a <20>bottleneck<63> in the production of Model 3. Tesla may delay scheduled weekly shipments of 10,000 parts in March by a few weeks until May or June, the report added. Hota, which makes gears and axles for vehicles, and Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier this month, Tesla said production bottlenecks had left the company behind its planned ramp-up for the new Model 3 sedan. It began production of the model in July. Hota shares were down 7.6 percent at 0530 GMT. Reporting by Jess Macy Yu, Editing by Miyoung Kim and Himani Sarkar'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-taiwan-hota/tesla-cuts-model-3-part-orders-to-taiwan-supplier-hota-report-idUKKBN1CW0H4'|'2017-10-27T08:41:00.000+03:00'
'df00f25dd84297a108457d4eb69f1679c87e7366'|'UPDATE 1-Oi creditors negotiate restructuring plan with management'|'October 27, 2017 / 12:48 PM / in 23 minutes UPDATE 3-Oi creditors offer more capital for restructuring -sources Reuters Staff (Adds company response, Oi no comment) By Tatiana Bautzer and Gram Slattery SAO PAULO, Oct 27 (Reuters) - The two largest groups of Oi SA bondholders have agreed to inject more cash into a proposed restructuring of the Brazilian telecom<6F>s debt, two people   Friday, in the latest twist in Latin America<63>s biggest-ever bankruptcy. The International Bondholders Committee and the Ad Hoc Group of Oi Bondholders said in a Friday statement that proposed changes, which it did not specify, could draw support from other creditors and provide enough new capital to make the restructuring plan <20>viable.<2E> A third source with knowledge of the situation said Oi was analyzing the proposal. The sources requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. Oi declined to comment. The additional funding could help the groups fend off a rival restructuring plan by influential shareholder Nelson Tanur<75> and a smaller group of bondholders known as the G6. The two main credit groups had previously committed to injecting 3 billion reais ($920 million) the restructuring in court of Oi<4F>s 65 billion reais of debt. Both groups and export credit agencies are owed a combined 22.6 billion reais by Oi. The bankruptcy<63>s resolution has been stalled by growing tensions between the board, management, shareholders, bondholders and the government. Brazilian telecom watchdog Anatel on Thursday urged Oi shareholders and board members to keep Chief Executive Marco Schroeder at the helm of the carrier. The regulator had threatened to intervene in the company, after news reports said management was being threatened with dismissal from investors linked to Tanur<75>, sources told Reuters. A working group in Brazil<69>s government has been preparing suggestions for the restructuring of the carrier, which filed for bankruptcy protection in June 2016. Creditors are scheduled to vote on the revised restructuring proposal at a Nov. 10 meeting. If they cannot reach a consensus, the company would be liquidated, wiping out much of their investments. One source said private equity fund TPG Capital Management LP and China Telecom Corp Ltd were looking at Oi<4F>s business for a possible takeover bid but have not drafted any concrete proposal. TPG declined to comment. $1 = 3.26 reais Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer and Gram Slattery in Sao Paulo; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn; Additional reporting by Leonardo Goy and Silvio Cascione in Brasilia; editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Richard Chang'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/oi-sa-restructuring/update-1-oi-creditors-negotiate-restructuring-plan-with-management-idUSL2N1N20JH'|'2017-10-27T15:48:00.000+03:00'
'c93505f0a3109b027c96c7c8284bc2ba4e29674f'|'Oil up 1 percent, Brent hits $60 a barrel on support for deal extension'|'October 27, 2017 / 1:17 AM / in 2 minutes Oil up 1 percent, Brent hits $60 a barrel on support for deal extension Devika Krishna Kumar 4 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices rose more 1 percent on Friday on support among the world<6C>s top producers for extending a deal to cut output and as the dollar retreated from three-month peaks. Pump jacks pump oil at an oil field on the shores of the Caspian Sea in Baku, Azerbaijan, October 5, 2017. Picture taken October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Grigory Dukor Brent LCOc1 rose 59 cents to $58.89 a barrel by 10:51 a.m. ET, after rising to a session high of $60.08, the highest since July 2015 and more than 35 percent above its 2017 lows touched in June. U.S. light crude oil CLc1 was up 78 cents, or 1.48 percent at $53.42 after rising to a session high of $53.52 a barrel. U.S. crude prices have been capped by rising U.S. production. Ahead of OPEC<45>s next policy meeting, Saudi Arabia and Russia declared their support for extending a global deal to cut oil supplies for another nine months, OPEC<45>s secretary general told Reuters on Friday. The pact runs to March 2018. Saudi Arabia<69>s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman told Reuters on Thursday the kingdom would support extending the output cut in a bid to stabilize oil demand and supply. Oil prices have been hovering near their highest levels for this year amid recent signs of a tightening market, talk of an extension of production cuts and tensions in Iraq. Friday<61>s announcement of a ceasefire between Iraqi forces and the Peshmerga from the country<72>s autonomous northern Kurdish region eased some concerns. <20>What is interesting is that the pop in WTI futures moved above the Sept. 28 high,<2C> said David Thompson, executive vice president at Powerhouse, an energy-specialized commodities broker in Washington, D.C. <20>So even though the dollar is giving back some of its move, crude may now be trading off of a new driver, the technical breakthrough to a new high.<2E> The dollar trimmed its earlier gains on Friday versus a basket of currencies following a Bloomberg report that U.S. President Donald Trump is said to be leaning toward Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell as his pick to head the U.S. central bank. A weaker dollar makes greenback-denominated commodities including oil cheaper for holders of other currencies. <20>I think the combination of short covering and Chevron and Exxon both missing their production guidance for the third quarter has resulted in the market strength today,<2C> said Scott Shelton, energy futures broker with ICAP in Durham, North Carolina. TransCanada Corp ( TRP.TO ) said in a filing on Thursday that it is seeking to raise the temporary discounted spot rate for light crude on its 700,000 barrel-per-day Marketlink pipeline. The news sent U.S. crude benchmark<72>s discount to global marker Brent WTCLc1-LCOc1 to the widest in a month. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and some non-OPEC producers including Russia have pledged to reduce production by around 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) until the end of March 2018 to drain a global supply glut. <20>If OPEC and their non-OPEC partners can agree to extend their production curtailments through 2018, then we estimate the oil market will remain in modest under-supply until 2019,<2C> U.S. Investment bank Jefferies said. OPEC is expected to discuss extending that agreement at a meeting in Vienna on Nov. 30. Rising U.S. crude production remains an issue for OPEC as it strives to clear a global overhang. U.S. crude production C-OUT-EIA rose by 1.1 million bpd to 9.5 million bpd in the week ended Oct. 20, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data. Additional reporting by Christopher Johnson, Julia Payne and Dmitry Zdhannikov in London, Jane Chung in Seoul and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Edmund Blair and Susan Thomas'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil
'd9af1e72db27a010b76cadcf7f758ac25cb700cc'|'Indian shares pause after record-setting run; Yes Bank drags'|'* NSE index down 0.11 pct, BSE index 0.11 pct higher* Liquor stocks gain* IOC, ICICI Bank fall ahead of resultsBy Tanvi MehtaOct 27 (Reuters) - Indian shares traded flat on Friday, after hitting record highs earlier in the session, as Yes Bank Ltd slumped on concerns over bad loans, while investors booked profits in recent gainers.The NSE index and BSE index were set to gain more than 1.9 percent each for the week after the federal cabinet<65>s decision to inject $32.4 billion into state-run lenders over the next two years boosted sentiment.Analysts said markets may take a breather as investors digest corporate results. Indian Oil Corporation, down 1.5 percent, and ICICI Bank Ltd, down 3.4 percent, will report their numbers later in the day.<2E>Markets are looking at consolidating before moving,<2C> said Arun Kejriwal, founder, Kejriwal Research & Investment Services, an advisory firm.The broader NSE index was down 0.11 percent at 10,332.35 as of 0558 GMT, and was headed for its biggest weekly gain in three.The benchmark BSE index was 0.11 percent higher at 33,183.65, and was headed for its fourth consecutive weekly gain.Shares of Yes Bank dropped as much as 9.9 percent to their lowest since July 5 and were the biggest drag on the NSE index after the lender<65>s bad loan ratio jumped to 1.82 percent at end-Sept, while the classification of an additional 63.55 billion rupees ($978.03 million) as bad loans also raised concerns.United Spirits Ltd surged as much as 17 percent to its highest since January 2016 after strong performance in the second-quarter. Its peers United Breweries Ltd, GM Breweries Ltd and Radico Khaitan Ltd also gained between six-ten percent. ($1 = 64.9775 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Tanvi Mehta in Bengaluru; Editing by Vyas Mohan) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/india-stocks/indian-shares-pause-after-record-setting-run-yes-bank-drags-idINL4N1N22HC'|'2017-10-27T04:29:00.000+03:00'
'3144418a22a2a9508d771d8e6eaa83f828bd9a8f'|'Draghi''s term to end without ECB rate rise, markets predict'|'October 27, 2017 / 12:10 PM / in 11 hours Draghi''s term to end without ECB rate rise, markets predict John Geddie , Abhinav Ramnarayan 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - President Mario Draghi will go his whole eight year tenure at the helm of the European Central Bank without ever having raised interest rates, money market pricing suggests. European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi holds a news conference following the governing council''s interest rate decision at the ECB headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach The ECB on Thursday extended its landmark bond-buying stimulus programme until at least September 2018, and said rates will remain at record lows until well after the scheme ends. Investors appear to have all but ruled out the chance that any rate hike will come before the Italian leaves the ECB in October 2019, making him one of only a handful of major central bank chiefs not to lift rates in the modern era. Even Ben Bernanke, the ultra-dovish former Federal Reserve Chairman who unleashed three QE programmes worth over $2 trillion in response to the 2008 crisis, raised rates. Not just once, but three times. And with Britain battling rising inflation caused by a currency crash after its vote to leave the EU, Bank of England governor Mark Carney is expected next week to raise UK rates for the first time in a decade. <20>This would be fairly unprecedented for a modern policymaker but at the same time the implementation and the reasons for quantitative easing (QE) in the euro zone are also unprecedented for modern monetary policy,<2C> Rabobank strategist Matt Cairns said. The majority of economists polled by Reuters expect the ECB to wait until 2019 before raising interest rates and only a handful of economists expect that to happen as early as next year. The difference between overnight Eonia bank-to-bank rates and forward Eonia rates, as shown in the below chart, is a broader measure of investor expectations for upcoming hikes. At the end of Draghi<68>s term in two year<61>s time, that difference is just 2 basis points, equating to a 20 percent chance of a 10 basis point rise in the ECB<43>s deposit rate - the minimum it is likely to hike. A full 10 basis point hike is not priced until the middle of 2020, with further hikes roughly every year after that. But Andrew Bosomworth of the world<6C>s largest bond fund PIMCO said in keeping policy too loose, Draghi could leave his successor scrambling. <20>It is incumbent on the President to set a path for tightening and to avoid a situation where Draghi does nothing and the next president has to get policy normalisation back on track,<2C> he said. The ECB last raised rates in 2011, under former President Jean-Claude Trichet, to pre-empt what turned out to be a phantom threat of inflation. Among other major developed economies, a couple of Bank of Japan governors have refrained from raising rates as that country grappled with the threat of deflation over several decades; most notably Satoshi Sumita in the 1980s. But BoJ ratesetters tend to serve for a shorter five year term compared to eight at the ECB and 10 at the Bank of England. Reporting by John Geddie and Abhinav Ramnarayan '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-moneymarkets-ecb/draghis-term-to-end-without-ecb-rate-rise-markets-predict-idUKKBN1CW1ML'|'2017-10-27T15:12:00.000+03:00'
'42c8585207605b3009879b22f3546108174f13a5'|'Eyeing $400 billion, Saudi wealth fund aims to nearly double size by 2020'|'October 25, 2017 / 9:25 AM / Updated 4 hours ago Eyeing $400 billion, Saudi wealth fund aims to nearly double size by 2020 Katie Paul 3 Min Read RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia<69>s main sovereign wealth fund wants to increase its financial clout to 1.5 trillion riyals ($400 billion) by 2020 as part of the kingdom<6F>s efforts to boost private-sector growth and wean itself off oil export dependence. Saudi Arabia''s Public Investment Fund (PIF) managing director Yasir al-Rumayyan speaks at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York City, U.S., September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/Files The assets-under-management goal, laid out by the Public Investment Fund (PIF) on Wednesday, came on the second day of an international conference in Riyadh. It was accompanied by publication of PIF<49>s first comprehensive business programme, outlining targets for investments and returns for 2018-2020. PIF, which is expected to receive proceeds from the planned sale of 5 percent of state oil company Saudi Aramco<63>s shares, has currently around $230 billion worth of assets under management. It plans to create 20,000 direct domestic jobs, and 256,000 construction jobs by 2020. This will increase PIF<49>s contribution to Saudi Arabia<69>s gross domestic product from 4.4 percent to 6.3 percent, it said in a statement on Wednesday. Investments will be in sectors such as real estate and infrastructure as well as in new areas of activity in the Saudi economy through the establishment of companies such as the Saudi Arabian Military Industries company and the Saudi Real Estate Refinancing Company. One of the biggest tasks facings PIF will be the delivery of a $500 billion plan to build a business and industrial zone extending into Jordan and Egypt, announced at the start of the conference on Tuesday. PIF also set a new target to increase total shareholder return to 4-5 percent between now and 2020 from 3 percent, it said on Wednesday. <20>The PIF Program represents a vital milestone as we work towards realising Vision 2030,<2C> Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al-Saud, the economic reform plan<61>s architect, said in a statement. The 96-page programme said PIF will structure its investments in six areas: Saudi equity holdings, sector development, real estate and infrastructure, mega projects, international strategic investments and a <20>diversified pool<6F> across global asset classes. It said <20>long-term<72> average annual return from these areas would be between 6.5 to 9 percent. Outside of Saudi Arabia, PIF<49>s investments will be in a number of assets such as fixed-income, public equity, private equity and debt, real estate, infrastructure and alternative investments such as hedge funds, the fund said. PIF Managing Director Yasir Al Rumayyan said the fund was open to investing in more big ticket items such as U.S. ride services company Uber. It also outlined its four major sources of funding to include capital injections from the government, government asset transfers, loans and debt instruments as well as retained earnings from investments. ($1 = 3.7498 riyals) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/saudi-economy-funds/eyeing-400-billion-saudi-wealth-fund-aims-to-nearly-double-size-by-2020-idINKBN1CU12P'|'2017-10-25T12:22:00.000+03:00'
'c5f31e7b49276d5ff8e76d47f74d0c94c39ed387'|'Credit Suisse no comment on repurchase option for pricey CoCo bonds'|'October 25, 2017 / 10:07 AM / Updated 10 minutes ago Credit Suisse no comment on repurchase option for pricey CoCo bonds Reuters Staff 2 Min Read ZURICH (Reuters) - Credit Suisse ( CSGN.S ) declined comment on whether it will exercise an option next year to repurchase so-called CoCo bonds on which it pays out around $550 million (<28>416 million) each year, after a Swiss newspaper highlighted the possibility. Logo of Swiss bank Credit Suisse is seen at a branch office in Luzern, Switzerland October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann The Swiss bank sold roughly 6 billion Swiss francs (<28>4.5 billion) in CoCos, short for contingent convertible bonds, to Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and Saudi Arabian conglomerate Olayan Group in 2011 and 2012. The bonds, which convert into equity if the bank<6E>s core capital ratio dips below a certain level, were issued in an effort to meet tougher Swiss capital rules. Credit Suisse pays approximately 550 million francs a year to QIA and Olayan to cover the 9 to 9.5 percent interest rates, higher borrowing costs than the bank would likely pay today. The first optional redemption date on the bonds is October 2018, according to the bank<6E>s previous financial disclosures. The schedule for potential repurchases was flagged by Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung earlier on Wednesday. A stated plan to repurchase the CoCos would mean they no longer qualify as additional Tier 1 capital. A repurchase which cuts the bank<6E>s payments on such bonds could boost the bank<6E>s efforts to cut its cost base to 17 billion francs by the end of 2018. The CoCos convert into equity if Credit Suisse<73>s core capital ratio dips below 7 percent. At the end of the second quarter its ratio was 13.3 percent. Reporting by Joshua Franklin; Editing by David Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/credit-suisse-gp-cocos/credit-suisse-no-comment-on-repurchase-option-for-pricey-coco-bonds-idUKKBN1CU18K'|'2017-10-25T13:07:00.000+03:00'
'78792bf44275f874b22dbd12707f3c57c507cc7a'|'Coca-Cola beats on higher U.S. sales of Sprite, non-soda drinks'|'October 25, 2017 / 12:27 PM / in 17 minutes Coca-Cola beats on higher U.S. sales of Sprite, non-soda drinks Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Coca-Cola Co ( KO.N ) reported better-than-expected profit and revenue for the third quarter as North America sales rose 3 percent on higher demand for Sprite, tea and coffee. The wall of the Coca Cola bottling plant is seen in Los Angeles, California, U.S. October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson The company said it was gaining marketshare against rivals, echoing sector analysts<74> views ahead of the results that it was eating into the sales of arch rival PepsiCo Inc ( PEP.N ). While the Coca-Cola<6C>s overall volume sales in North America remained flat in the third quarter, Sprite sales rose in the mid-single digits and tea and coffee sales increased in the low-single digits. Diet Coke sales were down. PepsiCo this month reported a drop in quarterly beverage sales in North America for the first time in two years, hit by weak demand for Gatorade and marketing missteps. A woman walks past the Coca Cola bottling plant in Los Angeles, California, U.S. October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson Coca-Cola is gaining share from rival Pepsi due to better performance in the territories it has franchised to bottlers and a more aggressive push in the non-carbonated drink business, RBC Capital Markets analyst Nik Modi wrote in a pre-earnings note. Coca-Cola has also been cutting costs, including by the refranchising of its low-margin bottling operations and reducing workforce. Cost of goods sold fell 18 percent in the quarter, and general and selling expenses dropped 20 percent. Net income attributable to Coca-Cola<6C>s shareholders rose to $1.45 billion (<28>1.1 billion), or 33 cents per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 29, from $1.05 billion, or 24 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company earned a profit of 50 cents per share, beating the average analyst estimate of 49 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Revenue fell 14.6 percent to $9.08 billion as the company refranchised some bottling operations, but beat the average estimate of $8.72 billion. Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-coca-cola-results/coca-cola-beats-on-higher-u-s-sales-of-sprite-non-soda-drinks-idUKKBN1CU1R4'|'2017-10-25T15:27:00.000+03:00'
'ada1e8f48826e39b0ed8a7961441ce6710c75168'|'Boeing revenue rises 1.7 percent'|'Reuters TV United States October 25, 2017 / 11:49 AM / a few seconds ago Boeing revenue rises 1.7 percent Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Boeing Co ( BA.N ) reported a 1.7 percent rise in quarterly revenue and raised its full-year forecasts for operating cash flow and profit. FILE PHOTO - The new Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner taxis on the runway during it''s first flight at the Charleston International Airport in North Charleston, South Carolina, United States March 31, 2017. REUTERS/Randall Hill/File Photo The world<6C>s biggest maker of jetliners raised its operating cash flow forecast for the full year to about $12.5 billion from its previous forecast of $12.25 billion. Boeing also increased its 2017 core earnings per share forecast to $9.90-$10.10, from $9.80-$10.00, previously. Revenue rose to $24.31 billion in the third quarter ended Sept. 30 from $23.90 billion. Reporting by Ankit Ajmera and Rachit vats in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-results/boeing-revenue-rises-1-7-percent-idUKKBN1CU1LO'|'2017-10-25T14:41:00.000+03:00'
'de071711857ab1d4db27585ddf5c97fa87dc1092'|'Italy''s Mossi Ghisolfi draws interest for troubled U.S. assets - sources'|'FRANKFURT/MILAN (Reuters) - Italian plastics multinational Mossi Ghisolfi has attracted interest from a series of buyers, including plastics maker Indorama ( IVL.BK ), for its U.S. assets placed under Chapter 11 restructuring, sources close to the situation said.The assets, which include one of the world<6C>s largest plastic bottle production plant projects, could fetch up to $1 billion, though a sale could take some time, one of the sources said.Rothschild is running the proceedings, the sources said.Mossi Ghisolfi, founded by the Ghisolfi family in 1953, is famous for introducing PET, a plastic used for soft drink bottles, in Italy and across Europe.In 2013, it considered listing its M&G Chemicals business in Hong Kong but then pulled plans as market conditions worsened.The unexpected death of former managing director Guido Ghisolfi in 2015 and big cost overruns at its Corpus Christi PET plant in the United States have hit business.Last year, M&G Finanziaria, the holding company owned by the Ghisolfi family, had a 90 percent fall in operating profits to 6.9 million euros ($8 million) on revenues of 1.7 billion euros. Debt stood at around 2.5 billion euros.<2E>Indorama, Reliance Industries and Alpek are interested,<2C> one of the sources said. The source said no Chinese names had expressed interest since they preferred to build their own plants at home.Another source said the replacement value of the company<6E>s U.S. assets, or what it would cost to build them from scratch, was in the range of $2-3 billion.<2E>It<49>s going to be a drawn-out process with some debt being cut off,<2C> the source said.Mossi Ghisolfi (M&G) declined to comment. Indorama, Reliance Industries ( RELI.NS ) and Alpek ( ALPEKA.MX ) were not immediately available for comment.M&G -- which in Italy owns Beta Renewables, the first plant in the world to produce second-generation ethanol -- recently said it had filed for creditor protection for units in Italy.<2E>The companies are studying a proposal for an arrangement that will allow their overall activities to continue as a going concern, although they cannot exclude alternative solutions at the end of the ongoing technical assessments,<2C> the company said on its website.Italian investment bank Mediobanca is leading the process in Italy, a different source said, adding a series of private equity and industrial players had expressed early interest.The source declined to say how much the Italian operations could be worth but said it could be <20>several hundred millions<6E>.($1 = 0.8462 euros)Reporting by Arno Schuetze and Stephen Jewkes. Editing by Jane Merriman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mossighisolfi-m-a-usa/italys-mossi-ghisolfi-draws-interest-for-troubled-u-s-assets-sources-idUSKBN1CV10W'|'2017-10-26T11:58:00.000+03:00'
'0fc0f4797595e5519482addb85810db6d0f7ff60'|'LPC-Banks line up <20>2.4bn Refresco loan as part of wider debt package'|'LONDON, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Banks have lined up <20>2.6bn of debt financing to back Refresco<63>s <20>1.6bn offer from a consortium led by French private equity firm PAI Partners, banking sources said on Wednesday.The take-over financing is split between senior and junior debt, as well as undrawn tranches, the sources said.BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse and JP Morgan are involved in the financing alongside a number of other banks, the sources added. The companies announced on Wednesday that banks have committed around <20>2.4bn of term debt.PAI declined to comment on the financing details.PAI and partner British Columbia Investment Management Corp aim to buy all 81.2m Refresco shares at <20>20 each, ending a short-lived listing on the Amsterdam stock exchange of less than three-years.Refresco rejected PAI<41>s initial offer and afterwards agreed in July to buy the bottling activities of Canada-based Cott Corp for US$1.25bn, backed with a <20>2bn-equivalent leveraged loan financing.That <20>2bn-equivalent leveraged loan financing was completed and allocated on September 27. JP Morgan led the deal with bookrunners ABN Amro, BNP Paribas and Rabobank. Commerzbank, HSBC, MUFG, Mizuho and Societe Generale also joined as mandated lead arrangers, according to Thomson Reuters LPC.That loan does not have portability and not all the banks involved in it will be involved in the new financing backing PAI<41>s buyout, the sources said.There will be some attempt made to enable investors in the existing loan to roll over into the new one, but given that leverage levels will be considerably higher, not all investors will want to be involved in the new financing, the sources said.The PAI consortium<75>s bid already has the support of shareholders representing 26.5% of Refresco shares and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2018.Refresco was founded in 1999 and floated in March 2015 by its owners including private equity firm 3i at <20>14.50 per share. It makes and bottles fruit juices and soft drinks for retailers and brands in Europe and the United States.The company employs 5,500 people and has production sites in the Benelux countries, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Britain and the US. In 2016, it reported a net profit of <20>81.5m on revenue of <20>2.1bn. (Editing by Christopher Mangham) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/refresco-leveraged-loan/lpc-banks-line-up-2-4bn-refresco-loan-as-part-of-wider-debt-package-idINL8N1N05DI'|'2017-10-25T12:16:00.000+03:00'
'febf5c13f1f5f88e5614a7c8c34a7b1e72165708'|'RPT-UPDATE 1-At least three buyout groups seen advancing in Unilever spreads auction - sources'|'(Repeats OCT 24 report with no changes to text)* Blackstone/CVC team, BC Partners no longer in race - sources* Bain/CD&R, KKR and Apollo seen in second round - sources* Unilever will spin off unit if sale unsuccessful - CFOBy Martinne Geller and Pamela BarbagliaLONDON, Oct 24 (Reuters) - At least three bidders are expected to be shortlisted for the second round of an auction for Unilever<65>s margarine and spreads business while two other private equity groups are no longer in the fray, sources told Reuters.Buyout funds Blackstone and CVC Capital Partners , who were teaming up on a joint offer, are no longer in the running for the business which could be worth more than $7 billion, the sources said on Tuesday.BC Partners, which bid on its own, has not made it through to the second stage of the auction which is led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, according to the sources.A team comprising Bain Capital and Clayton Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) is expected to move to the second round of bidding along with private equity rivals KKR and Apollo, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the process is private.Unilever, Bain and Apollo declined to comment. Blackstone, CVC, BC Partners, CD&R and KKR were not immediately available to comment.Unilever put the business up for sale after many years of declining sales, following an unsolicited $143 billion takeover bid by Kraft Heinz in February that jolted the Anglo-Dutch group into a series of actions to improve its returns.The business - home to Flora, Stork and Country Crock - has high profit margins but is shrinking as Western consumers eat less bread and margarine.The consortium of Bain and CD&R could emerge as a frontrunner, sources said, since one of CD&R&rsquo;s partners is Vindi Banga, a 33-year veteran of Unilever.But Apollo has also gained significant experience in buying businesses from large conglomerates and turning them around, one of the sources said, adding that they will play hard to secure control of Unilever<65>s spreads products.In December, Apollo clinched a $1.5 billion cash deal to buy car lighting and LED components firm Lumileds from Philips and in 2015 it won control of Saint-Gobain<69>s glass bottle division Verallia with a bid worth almost 3 billion euros.Sources say the Unilever process could be wrapped up by the end of the year.It is not clear on Tuesday whether any industry players had submitted bids for regional pieces of the business, which operates in dozens of countries.Unilever has already struck a $900 million deal with South African investor Remgro for the spreads business in southern Africa.Unilever has repeatedly said it will spin off the business if it fails to generate a satisfactory price through an auction.$1 = 0.8501 euros Editing by Jane Merriman '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/unilever-nv-spreads/rpt-update-1-at-least-three-buyout-groups-seen-advancing-in-unilever-spreads-auction-sources-idINL8N1N021B'|'2017-10-25T05:25:00.000+03:00'
'19b64c9610430c9824b6db71c911a71a9ff18d71'|'May says will continue fight against U.S. tariffs on Bombardier CSeries planes'|'Reuters TV United States October 25, 2017 / 12:10 PM / Updated 28 minutes ago UK PM May says will continue fight against U.S. tariffs on Bombardier CSeries planes Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said she would continue to fight against a decision by the United States to impose tariffs on Bombardier<65>s CSeries planes after a competition complaint by Boeing Britain''s Prime Minister Theresa May leaves 10 Downing Street, London, Britain, October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville <20>I am very happy to give that commitment,<2C> May said in parliament on Wednesday after she was asked by a lawmaker if she would continue to work to ensure the threat of tariffs on the CSeries is removed. Reporting by William James, writing by Alistair Smout; editing by Stephen Addison'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-politics-may-bombardier/uk-pm-may-says-will-continue-fight-against-u-s-tariffs-on-bombardier-cseries-planes-idUKKBN1CU1OF'|'2017-10-25T15:08:00.000+03:00'
'5d13c7b1c3bf64536c818296799d42831bc2f109'|'''Golden Arches'': McDonald''s gets new China name following unit sale'|'October 26, 2017 / 5:32 AM / Updated 10 hours ago ''Golden Arches'': McDonald''s gets new China name following unit sale Reuters Staff 2 Min Read SHANGHAI (Reuters) - U.S. fast food giant McDonald<6C>s Corp ( MCD.N ) is getting a name change in China - at least on paper. FILE PHOTO - A McDonald''s sign is displayed outside its outlet, the first one which opened in China in 1990, at the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen neighbouring Hong Kong, March 18, 2013. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo The firm will change its registered business name to <20>Golden Arches (China) Co Ltd<74>, a spokeswoman confirmed to Reuters on Thursday, adding though that its brand name in China - a transliteration of McDonald<6C>s - would be unchanged. The shift comes after the chain agreed earlier in the year to sell most of its China and Hong Kong business to CITIC Ltd ( 0267.HK ) and Carlyle Group ( CG.O ). The business plans to nearly double the number of its outlets in mainland China to 4,500 by 2022. <20>It will still be clearly <20>McDonald<6C>s<EFBFBD> when diners come to our stores,<2C> the chain said on its official China microblog. <20>Our restaurant name will remain the same, the change is only at business license level,<2C> spokeswoman Regina Hui added in emailed comments to Reuters. She declined to comment further on the reason for the change. McDonald<6C>s in China and Hong Kong is 52 percent owned by CITIC, while Carlyle has a 28 percent stake. McDonald<6C>s itself retains a 20 percent interest in the business. The structure is aimed at improving sales at existing stores and expanding outlets. Fast-food firms including McDonald<6C>s and rival Yum China<6E>s ( YUMC.N ) KFC are bouncing back from a series of food-supply scandals in China that had dented performance. McDonald<6C>s reported robust sales on Tuesday, including better-than-expected growth in the United States and strong performances in Canada, Britain and China. Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Christopher Cushing '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-mcdonalds-china/golden-arches-mcdonalds-gets-new-china-name-following-unit-sale-idINKBN1CV0FB'|'2017-10-26T03:32:00.000+03:00'
'59d68549dca9ffa26d6b42bd1d2ac70f1f8052ff'|'Fed chair choice down to Powell, Taylor, one source tells Politico'|'October 26, 2017 / 12:42 PM / Updated 29 minutes ago Fed chair choice down to Powell, Taylor, one source tells Politico Reuters Staff 1 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump<6D>s search for the next chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve has come down to Fed Governor Jerome Powell and Stanford University economist John Taylor, Politico on Friday cited one source as saying, while another counselled caution. FILE PHOTO: Jerome H. Powell, a governor on the board of the Federal Reserve System, prepares to testify to the Senate Banking Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 22, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts Trump has said he was considering both Powell and Taylor, but that he also liked Yellen very much. Politico cited an unnamed source who talks regularly to Trump as saying the only finalists were Powell and Taylor. Another unnamed senior source Politico described as very close to the process said it was not safe to assume Trump will nominate Powell or Taylor for the top spot at the central bank, saying he <20>changes his mind about it every day.<2E> Reporting by Tim Ahmann; Editing by David Alexander'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trump-fed/fed-chair-choice-down-to-powell-taylor-one-source-tells-politico-idUKKBN1CV1Y1'|'2017-10-26T15:41:00.000+03:00'
'51fe980a42bd670f5f5b54712b259422b514b0df'|'Russia''s economic recovery not enough for higher rating: Moody''s'|'MOSCOW (Reuters) - Economic recovery in Russia is not strong enough to convince Moody<64>s rating agency to upgrade its sovereign credit rating as the country still lacks sufficient structural reform, a senior vice president at Moody<64>s Investor Service said on Thursday.A Russian national flag flies over the Central Bank headquarters in Moscow, Russia, May 17, 2016. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin/Files Moody<64>s downgraded Russia<69>s rating to below investment grade in early 2015 as Russia<69>s economy slipped into recession amid a rapid drop in oil prices and Western sanctions imposed on Moscow over its role in the Ukrainian crisis.Moody<64>s confirmed the Ba1 rating two years later, in February this year, when it also revised its rating outlook to stable from negative.In an interview with Reuters, Kristin Lindow said Moody<64>s rating outlook has a time horizon of 12-18 months before the agency may consider the next rating action.In Russia<69>s case it is likely to be closer to 18 months, said Lindow, who is in charge of the country<72>s sovereign ratings.<2E>We<57>re looking for those structural reforms that have been delayed by the political cycle over the last several years to begin to be implemented in order to move upward with the rating.<2E>Moody<64>s improved the outlook to stable as Russia was proceeding with structural reforms. The central bank convinced the market the rouble will remain a free-floating currency, while the finance ministry this year started buying dollars for its reserves when prices for oil, Russia<69>s key exports, stay above $40 per barrel.Lindow said the latest economic crisis in Russia <20>was not wasted<65> in the sense that it helped Russia to undertake reforms that might not have taken in good times.<2E>The mix of policies, monetary, fiscal, the exchange rate policy, reduce the dependence on high oil prices, reduce the volatility of that income and therefore diminish the inherent volatility of the economy,<2C> Lindow said.But without further reforms, such as a reduction of state ownership in the economy and higher retirement age, the Russian economy is seen growing by only around 1.5 percent a year over the next several years, Lindow said.Moody<64>s economic forecasts are worse than expectations voiced by the Russian authorities. The Russian central bank said last month it revised gross domestic product growth for 2017 to up to 2.2 percent, up from 1-1.5 percent expected in early 2017.Lindow said a stronger GDP growth this year could be a one-off.<2E>Growth of 2 percent plus is not expected to be sustained. The economy may pay for higher growth this year with lower growth next year.<2E>Even if the Russian economy is getting more stable and grows further, it would not be enough to meaningfully reduce poverty and curtail income differentials among households, Lindow said.Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; editing by Richard Balmforth '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/russia-ratings-moody-s/russias-economic-recovery-not-enough-for-higher-rating-moodys-idINKBN1CV2BT'|'2017-10-26T17:19:00.000+03:00'
'8f3e59fec9ab74effc819ed5870a6269db8db7e8'|'Harvey drives U.S. refiner margins, helps beat profit estimates'|'(Reuters) - Higher prices for gasoline and diesel in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey drove up margins for two big U.S. refiners, and led them to post quarterly profits that flew past Wall Street estimates.Trucks are loaded with gasoline at the Puma Energy petrochemical facility after the island was hit by Hurricane Maria in San Juan, Puerto Rico September 28, 2017. REUTERS/Alvin Baez/Files Marathon Petroleum Corp said refining and marketing gross margins rose to $14.14 per barrel from $10.67 last year, while Valero Energy Corp<72>s refining margins rose 25.5 percent. Its refineries ran at 92 percent capacity.Industrywide margins to produce diesel fuel rose to a more than two-and-a-half year high of $26.95 a barrel, while gasoline margins hit a two-year high in early September, after Hurricane Harvey struck Texas.The hurricane sapped demand for crude and created long lines for gasoline in parts of the U.S. Southeast and Midwest.<2E>We are encouraged by domestic and global economic growth, and we expect low oil prices and solid product demand to continue into 2018,<2C> said Joe Gorder, Chief Executive Officer of San Antonio, Texas-based Valero.For the quarter ended Sept. 30, Marathon earned $1.77 per share, easily topping analysts<74> expectations by 29 cents, while Valero<72>s profit of $1.91 per share beat estimates of $1.83, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Shares of Marathon were down slightly at $56.28, while Valero<72>s shares fell to $76.38 on the New York Stock Exchange.Reporting by Ahmed Farhatha and John Benny in Bengaluru, writing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee; Editing by Bernard Orr '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/valero-energy-results/harvey-drives-u-s-refiner-margins-helps-beat-profit-estimates-idINKBN1CV29U'|'2017-10-26T12:08:00.000+03:00'
'5d8aedec949d697c141741e25759e315b96c888b'|'EU court annuls Commission''s approval of 2014 Dutch cable merger'|'AMSTERDAM, Oct 26 (Reuters) - The European Commission needs to take another look at how it approved the merger between Dutch cable companies UPC and Ziggo in 2014, an EU court ordered on Thursday, in a case brought by the companies<65> rival, the former state telecoms monopoly KPN.The Commission failed to properly explain the effects of the merger on competition in its October 2014 decision, specifically on the market for pay TV sports channels, the court said.The merger of Ziggo and UPC, owned by Liberty Global, brought together the two largest cable network operators in the Netherlands.Liberty Global last year merged the combined entity with Vodafone<6E>s Dutch subsidiary to create VodafoneZiggo after being vetted by the competition regulators.VodafoneZiggo said the court<72>s decision would have no effect on its operations.<2E>We are confident we will still get approval for the merger<65>, spokesman Gradus Vos said. <20>The court<72>s objections strictly relate to the procedure the Commission followed, not to the reasons for approval.<2E>KPN, however, said it was pleased with the decision.<2E>It is now up to the European Commission to decide what they will do with it<69>, said spokesman Stefan Simons.The Commission, which can appeal against the ruling at the European Court of Justice, said it would <20>carefully analyse<73> the judgment. (Reporting by Bart Meijer; Editing by Greg Mahlich) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/eu-ziggo-merger/eu-court-annuls-commissions-approval-of-2014-dutch-cable-merger-idINL8N1N14V7'|'2017-10-26T09:37:00.000+03:00'
'd4dae4152d63b0f94b276cd3f0ad27a065dad18e'|'UPDATE 2-RBS to pay $44 mln to settle U.S. charges it defrauded customers'|'(Adds U.S. Attorney comments, traders<72> guilty pleas, details of alleged misconduct, byline)By Jonathan StempelOct 26 (Reuters) - Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc agreed to pay more than $44 million and enter a non-prosecution agreement to settle a U.S. Department of Justice criminal probe of traders accused of defrauding customers on bond prices.The settlement with RBS Securities Inc was announced on Thursday by U.S. Attorney Deirdre Daly in Connecticut.RBS will pay a $35 million fine, plus at least $9.09 million to more than 30 customers, including Pacific Investment Management Co, Soros Fund Management and affiliates of Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.Prosecutors said that from 2008 to 2013, RBS cheated customers by lying about bond prices, charging commissions it did not earn and concealing the fraud in an effort to boost profit at the customers<72> expense. Some victims had received federal bailout money through the Troubled Relief Asset Program.<2E>For years, RBS fostered a culture of securities fraud,<2C> Daly said in a statement. <20>By entering into this agreement, RBS has admitted the seriousness of its past criminal conduct and made a clean break.<2E>The settlement arose from a five-year federal crackdown on deceptive bond trading in which eight traders, including two from RBS, have been criminally charged.According to settlement papers, RBS admitted and accepted responsibility for its misconduct. Daly said RBS<42> <20>voluntary self-reporting and extraordinary cooperative efforts<74> were the reason it avoided criminal charges.U.S. authorities sometimes use non-prosecution agreements to encourage cooperation. The criminal probe of individuals associated with RBS<42> trading will continue.<2E>RBS has zero tolerance for market misconduct,<2C> the bank said in a statement. <20>We are pleased to be able to resolve this issue as we continue to build a simpler, stronger bank that is fully focused on serving our customers well.<2E>RBS<42> improper activity was conducted mainly in Stamford, Connecticut, through the bank<6E>s U.S. asset-backed securities, mortgage-backed securities and commercial mortgage-backed securities trading group, which was shut down in 2015.Adam Siegel, RBS<42> former co-head of U.S. ABS, MBS and CMBS trading, and Matthew Katke, a former RBS trader, both pleaded guilty in 2015 to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and have been cooperating with the government.Of the eight traders who were criminally charged, two were convicted, two were acquitted of various charges, three pleaded guilty and one pleaded not guilty. Two other traders were also hit with civil charges. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Dan Grebler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/rbs-settlement/update-1-rbs-to-pay-44-mln-to-settle-u-s-claims-it-defrauded-customers-idINL2N1N11GW'|'2017-10-26T14:03:00.000+03:00'
'cdbb89d0700a715ac694f1533e2f08ac6570503d'|'Exclusive - Vedanta, Adani may bid for $9 billion Indian diamond mine left by Rio'|'October 26, 2017 / 5:07 PM / Updated 5 minutes ago Exclusive - Vedanta, Adani may bid for $9 billion Indian diamond mine left by Rio Neha Dasgupta , Mayank Bhardwaj 5 Min Read NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian resources conglomerates Adani and Vedanta are considering bidding for a $9 billion(<28>6.83 billion) diamond project in the country that was abandoned by global miner Rio Tinto ( RIO.AX ) ( RIO.L ) this year, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter. FILE PHOTO: A bird flies by the Vedanta office building in Mumbai August 16, 2010.REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui The central state of Madhya Pradesh was likely to invite bids in the first week of November to explore the deposit, which is estimated to hold around 32 million carats of diamonds, a senior state government official said. <20>We<57>re advertising only for that area in which (Rio Tinto) have prospected and established availability of diamonds,<2C> Manohar Lal Dubey, Madhya Pradesh<73>s top mineral resources official, told Reuters by phone. An auction would be held around 40 days after the notice inviting bids was published, he said. Rio Tinto <20>gifted<65> the Bunder deposit, about 500 km (300 miles) southeast of New Delhi and discovered by the company in 2004, to Madhya Pradesh in February after saying last year that it was pulling out to conserve cash and cut costs. The company spent around $90 million over 14 years on Bunder, located in a forested area important to tiger and wildlife habitats, with the plan to invest up to $500 million. The project had been hampered by delays in obtaining environmental permissions. Small teams from both Vedanta Resources ( VED.L ), controlled by London-based Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, and fellow billionaire Gautam Adani<6E>s Adani Group visited the site in recent months, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. Madhya Pradesh official Dubey said two company executives had met him over the project, but declined to identify the companies or share more details. An Adani executive informally approached the federal environment ministry regarding Bunder ahead of Rio<69>s exit announcement in February, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. Spokespeople for Vedanta, Adani Group and the environment ministry did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment. Rio Tinto<74>s decision to withdraw from the project, after legal fights with green activists, came at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi<64>s government was seeking the help of the company and its rivals, such as Anglo American, to explore for diamonds and gold to make India a major mineral producer. TIGER RESERVE Volcan Investments, the family trust of Vedanta<74>s Agarwal, is the second biggest stakeholder in Anglo American ( AAL.L ), which controls the world<6C>s biggest diamond producer, De Beers Group. Agarwal told Reuters in March he bought the stake in Anglo to cut India<69>s dependence on imports of precious commodities. <20>My vision is to reduce the import bill of India. We import all the diamonds, we import all the gold, and platinum,<2C> Agarwal said. <20>Anglo has the technology. India doesn<73>t have that technology. I have made an investment to bring the technology. This will be a good bridge.<2E> An Anglo spokesman declined to comment. For the new round of bidding for Bunder, the Madhya Pradesh government has more than halved the mining area to 364 hectares. Only firms with a minimum net worth of 25 billion rupees ($384.67 million), or 4 percent of the estimated value of the diamond reserves, will be eligible to bid, said Vineet Kumar Austin, another senior Madhya Pradesh mining official. The state, however, has yet to finalise the commercial terms of the auction, such as royalty sharing, one of the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity as the details are not yet public. Bidders can also expect protests from environmentalists given that the area is, according to the environment ministry, a corridor between the Panna Tige
'ab10fd412e4f3b55b083ce785912b920cb942edd'|'Senate narrowly kills rule on arbitration, class-action lawsuits'|'October 25, 2017 / 2:46 AM / Updated 15 hours ago Republicans, Wall Street score victory in dismantling class-action rule Lisa Lambert 5 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Banks, credit card issuers and other financial companies will be able to block customers from banding together to sue over disputes, after the U.S. Senate on Tuesday narrowly killed a rule banning the firms from using <20>forced arbitration<6F> clauses. The U.S. Capitol building is seen at sunset in Washington, U.S. May 17, 2017. REUTERS/Zach Gibson Republican Vice President Mike Pence appeared on the Senate floor at 10:11 p.m. EDT (0211 GMT) to cast the tie-breaking vote as the chamber<65>s president and approve the most significant roll-back of Obama-era financial policy since President Donald Trump took office vowing to loosen the leash on Wall Street. The final count was 51 to 50. The Republican-dominated House of Representatives has already passed the resolution repealing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rule released in July. The resolution also bars regulators from instituting a similar ban in the future. After a signature from Trump, expected soon, the resolution will abruptly end a years-long fight that has included multiple federal regulators, consumer advocacy groups, and financial lobbyists. CFPB Director Richard Cordray, a Democrat appointed by former President Barack Obama, rarely comments on congressional action but on Tuesday night said <20>Wall Street won and ordinary people lost.<2E> <20>This vote means the courtroom doors will remain closed for groups of people seeking justice and relief when they are wronged by a company,<2C> he added. Customers must agree to the clauses as a condition of opening accounts, saying they will take any disputes to closed-door arbitration instead of joining class-action lawsuits, where complainants band together to share litigation costs. The clauses are used for nearly every U.S. consumer product and service since the Supreme Court ruled them legal in 2011. Victims of the Equifax Inc. ( EFX.N ) hack were outraged last month when the company included forced arbitration fine print in offering them free credit monitoring. The company later removed the clauses. At the same time, Wells Fargo & Co ( WFC.N ) customers whose identities were used in last year<61>s phony accounts scandal have had difficulty suing the bank because they are bound by arbitration clauses in contracts they signed for legitimate accounts. The CFPB rule, set to go into effect next spring, was not retroactive and would not have helped Equifax or Wells customers. Members of Trump<6D>s administration have relentlessly assailed the regulation, and on Monday the Treasury Department laid out arguments against it in a special report. Acting Comptroller of the Currency Keith Norieka said on Tuesday the Senate<74>s action stopped a rule <20>that would have likely increased the cost of credit for hardworking Americans and made it more difficult for small community banks to resolve differences with their customers.<2E> Meanwhile, major bank lobbying groups who sued last month to block the rule cheered the resolution<6F>s passage. One of the groups, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said congress had reined in the <20>overgrown and unaccountable<6C> CFPB, an independent agency created to protect individuals<6C> finances that conservatives say consistently reaches beyond its authority in its rulemaking. Critics of the rule had said class actions only benefit trial lawyers and arbitration generally wins larger settlement awards for customers. Supporters said forced arbitration harms customers by putting companies in control of the process and taking away the right to sue enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The CFPB created its rule after conducting a five-year study that found customers struggle to have banks open arbitration cases about their complaints, but that those few cases have led to slightly higher individual awards than class actions. <20>The Senate today prevented a cash 
'2828105077161c718317832d43280aabf1965b67'|'UPDATE 3-Freeport CEO sees some progress in mine deal talks with Indonesia'|'(Adds executive<76>s comments from conference call on negotiations, joint venture partner Rio Tinto, ownership stakes)By Susan Taylor and Nicole MordantTORONTO/VANCOUVER, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Freeport-McMoRan Inc is encouraged by talks to finalize an agreement for its massive Grasberg copper and gold mine in Indonesia this year, though it has not made as much progress as hoped, Chief Executive Richard Adkerson said on Wednesday.Despite expressing some disappointment with the headway made so far, Adkerson said Freeport would push on with its talks with the government, which introduced new mining rules this year to gain greater control over the nation<6F>s mineral resources.<2E>But I can tell you that we are working positively and amicably with the representatives of the government,<2C> he said on a conference call from Indonesia<69>s capital, Jakarta.<2E>At the same time, we are going to be relentless in representing the interest of our shareholders.<2E>Arizona-based Freeport, the world<6C>s second-biggest copper miner, said it wants to avoid arbitration to deal with a new Indonesian policy that requires miners to divest a 51 percent stake, relinquish arbitration rights and pay new taxes and royalties.But with few clear advances since a framework agreement on Grasberg was announced in August, Freeport shares dropped 3.3 percent on Wednesday to $14.73, reversing initial gains on better-than-expected financial results.<2E>Negotiations in Indonesia matter more than anything else for now,<2C> Jefferies analyst Christopher LaFemina said in a note to clients.<2E>While we are encouraged by Freeport<72>s operational performance, progress (or lack thereof) in the company<6E>s ongoing negotiations with the government of Indonesia is clearly critical to the FCX investment case.<2E>Progress has stalled on the valuation, timing and structure of divestment, which also affects Freeport<72>s joint venture partner Rio Tinto . Rio has held talks with Indonesia about exiting the venture, according to media reports.Freeport said its stake in the Indonesian operation would drop first to 49 percent and then to 29 percent under the divestment and joint venture plan.<2E>While our interest in the participation in Grasberg would be reduced, we would be receiving cash from that interest, which would reduce our exposure to Indonesia,<2C> Adkerson said. <20>There<72>s positive and negatives to that.<2E>Freeport earlier reported a third-quarter profit of 34 cents a share and revenue of $4.3 billion, bettering analyst expectations of 31 cents and $4.08 billion, respectively.Average realized copper prices rose to $2.94 per pound from $2.19.Copper prices charged through a three-year high last week, underpinned by improving manufacturing profits in China, the world<6C>s top user of metals.Freeport maintained its 2017 sales forecast of 3.7 billion pounds of copper and 1.6 million ounces of gold, after twice lowering it this year. (Reporting by Susan Taylor in Toronto and Nicole Mordant in Vancouver; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Paul Simao) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/freeport-mcmoran-results/update-1-freeport-profit-tops-expectations-as-copper-price-pops-idINL2N1N00LD'|'2017-10-25T10:51:00.000+03:00'
'6a8fa88c672f0674975f310fc8080cdb722ba829'|'Gaming firm Razer to launch up to $550 million HK IPO on Monday: IFR'|'October 27, 2017 / 4:52 AM / Updated 22 minutes ago Gaming firm Razer to launch up to $550 million HK IPO on Monday: IFR Reuters Staff 2 Min Read HONG KONG (Reuters) - Razer Inc, a gaming hardware maker backed by Intel Corp ( INTC.O ) and Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, plans to launch on Monday an up to $550 million Hong Kong initial public offering, IFR reported on Friday, citing people close to the deal. The company, which is based in Singapore and the United States, will offer shares in an indicative range of HK$2.93 to HK$4.00 each, added IFR, a Thomson Reuters publication. Razer has secured $150 million in commitments from cornerstone investors, including a $20 million investment from Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte Ltd [GIC.UL], IFR said. Razer declined to comment, while GIC did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment. The company was founded in 2005 by Min-Liang Tan and Robert Krakoff and has grown from producing a gaming mouse as its initial product to manufacturing laptops worth almost $4,000. In 2016 it bought assets from a company previously known as THX Ltd, which was founded by George Lucas, and this year it acquired certain assets and intellectual property from mobile phone manufacturer Nextbit Systems. The acquisitions are expected to help the company launch new products in coming years, including a mobile gaming device, a person familiar with Razer<65>s plans previously told Reuters. Reporting by Fiona Lau of IFR; Writing by Elzio Barreto; Editing by Stephen Coates'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-razer-ipo/gaming-firm-razer-to-launch-up-to-550-million-hk-ipo-on-monday-ifr-idUKKBN1CW0DX'|'2017-10-27T07:51:00.000+03:00'
'b5b6acf28d53fd506dac653f83bae019e4ae8a0d'|'UPDATE 2-DowDuPont set to beat quarterly estimates as new company'|'Reuters TV United States October 26, 2017 / 10:46 AM / Updated 20 minutes ago DowDuPont set to beat quarterly estimates as new company Nivedita Bhattacharjee 3 Min Read (Reuters) - DowDuPont ( DWDP.N ), formed by the merger of chemical giants Dow Chemical and DuPont, revealed third-quarter profit estimates on Thursday that were much higher than Wall Street<65>s expectations ahead of the combined company<6E>s first earnings report next week. Shares of the world<6C>s largest chemical maker rose 2 percent, hitting their highest since they started trading on Sept. 1. The preliminary figures offered investors an early look into the performance of the combination, which brought together an array of businesses that make chemicals for industries including automobiles, cosmetics and agriculture. DowDuPont said it expects to have earned 55 cents per share on an adjusted pro forma basis in the third quarter, up 10 percent from last year. Analysts are currently expecting 40 cents per share on average. The merger has been seen by analysts as a way to streamline the companies<65> sprawling operations by combining overlapping businesses. <20>Improving culture within the companies is helping topline growth,<2C> analyst Jonas Oxgaard of Bernstein said. Dow and DuPont had both been struggling with growth before they made the decision to merge in 2015. The company said the quarter benefited from higher prices for its products and strong demand for chemicals used by the consumer sector, offsetting hurricanes and weak crop planting conditions in Brazil. Overall sales rose 8 percent on a proforma basis to $18.3 billion. The results were more positive than it looks, given the company had already factored in hurricanes and troubles in Brazil, said Laurence Alexander, chemical sector analyst with Jefferies. The company had earlier said its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization would be reduced about $250 million due to Hurricane Harvey. Dow and DuPont completed their $130 billion merger in September. It then made changes to operations in the three units it plans to create, under pressure from investors to run the business more efficiently. Reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee, additional reporting by Karan Nagarkatti; Editing by Supriya Kurane and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dowdupont-results/dowdupont-sees-third-quarter-earnings-sales-rise-as-new-company-idUSKBN1CV1GZ'|'2017-10-26T16:24:00.000+03:00'
'a109a81b30eb9f4cfaad31a9136b8903b5a6f1c7'|'BNDES agrees to return an additional 17 bln reais to Brazil gov''t'|'October 26, 2017 / 1:29 PM / in 9 minutes BNDES agrees to return an additional 17 bln reais to Brazil gov''t Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SAO PAULO, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Brazilian development bank BNDES has agreed to repay an additional 17 billion reais ($5.3 billion) to the National Treasury in a boost to policymaker efforts to curb public debt. BNDES had already agreed in September to settle 33 billion reais worth of debt with the federal government this year. The board of BNDES will assess whether to conduct additional repayments in 2018, according to a Thursday statement. $1 = 3.23 reais Reporting by Marcela Ayres; Writing by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brazil-bndes-debt/bndes-agrees-to-return-an-additional-17-bln-reais-to-brazil-govt-idUSE6N1M3011'|'2017-10-26T16:27:00.000+03:00'
'2d7454eca37dc35e90d7f496c6a10b6cb0817cf0'|'Deutsche Bank says integration of Postbank retail unit on track'|'October 26, 2017 / 5:29 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago Deutsche Bank says integration of Postbank retail unit on track Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank ( DBKGn.DE ) said on Thursday that it was making progress integrating its Postbank retail unit with its own in-house consumer bank. A Postbank sign is seen in Munich, Germany, August 1, 2017. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle In a 15-page presentation to journalists, the bank reiterated that it was on track to realize more than 900 million euros ($1.1 billion) in cost synergies by 2020 with an investment of 1.9 billion euros. Deutsche Bank said that the two retail banks were likely to merge as a single legal entity by the second quarter of 2018, pending regulatory approval. The combined retail unit is a major pillar of the German lender<65>s turnaround plan announced in March. Until then, Deutsche Bank had planned to sell Postbank to raise capital. Labour unions have already threatened strikes because Deutsche Bank plans to cut an unspecified number of jobs and close some bank branches. ($1 = 0.8470 euros)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-deutsche-bank-postbank/deutsche-bank-says-integration-of-postbank-retail-unit-on-track-idUKKBN1CV0F5'|'2017-10-26T08:28:00.000+03:00'
'30503ca013da2e981a628a93eddea997e6e7875b'|'Santander Brasil posts 17.1 percent ROE, significantly above guidance'|'October 26, 2017 / 1:06 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago Santander Brasil posts 17.1 percent ROE, significantly above guidance Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BRASILIA/SAO PAULO, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Banco Santander Brasil SA has beat its target for return over equity significantly this quarter, Chief Financial Officer Angel Santodomingo told analysts on Thursday. The Brazilian unit of Spain<69>s Banco Santander SA posted a 17.1 ROE on the third quarter, above the 15.8 percent target set for 2018, with its loan book growing faster than expected as Latin America<63>s largest economy starts growing again after a harsh recession. Preferred shares are up 0.8 percent, at 13.21 reais on Thursday morning, extending this year<61>s gains to 42.5 percent. (Reporting by Bruno Federowski and Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/santander-brasil-results/santander-brasil-posts-17-1-percent-roe-significantly-above-guidance-idUSE6N1M300Z'|'2017-10-26T16:06:00.000+03:00'
'912ecca3a4fcfd60fa8452133faff2fce3934523'|'GE explores divesting its transportation, healthcare IT businesses: sources'|'(Reuters) - General Electric Co ( GE.N ) is exploring divesting its transportation and healthcare information technology businesses, as it seeks to reshape its portfolio under new Chief Executive John Flannery, people familiar with the matter said.FILE PHOTO: The ticker and logo for General Electric Co. is displayed on a screen at the post where it is traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S. on June 30, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo Such a move would help GE to meet more than half of its stated goal of shedding more than $20 billion worth of assets, the sources said this week. There is no certainty that GE will proceed with these divestitures, the sources added.The sources asked not to be identified because the deliberations are confidential. GE declined to comment.The move would make GE the latest U.S. industrial conglomerate to go ahead with asset divestitures after Honeywell International Inc ( HON.N ) announced earlier this month it would part with some of its businesses by creating two new publicly listed companies.Ed Garden, a founding partner at activist investor Trian Fund Management who was recently given a board seat at GE, has also acted as a catalyst for change.GE is looking to bounce back after what Flannery earlier this month called horrible results in the third quarter. He has argued that GE<47>s strong businesses are being held back by others that <20>drain investment and management resources without the prospect for a substantial reward.<2E>GE<47>s transportation business, which generated revenue of $4.7 billion in 2016, manufactures freight and passenger trains, marine diesel engines and mining equipment, among other products.GE<47>s healthcare information technology business, which would likely have to be broken up into separate chunks in the event of a sale, assists with electronic medical records, healthcare workforce management, and hospital revenue cycle management. Some of its better known brands include API Healthcare, which it acquired in 2014, and Centricity EMR.The business is part of GE<47>s sprawling healthcare business, which had revenue last year of $18.3 billion and spans magnetic imaging, medical diagnostics and drug discovery.GE has taken several actions to prune its portfolio over the years, shedding plastics, NBCUniversal and most of its GE Capital business. It also combined its oilfield services business with Baker Hughes ( BHGE.N ).Last week, GE cut its profit forecast for the full year to $1.05 to $1.10 a share, from $1.60 to $1.70 previously, and said it would generate only about $7 billion in cash from operations, down from $12 billion to $14 billion it had forecast earlier. It left its dividend unchanged.Weak performance in GE<47>s power and oil and gas businesses, goodwill impairment and higher-than-expected restructuring costs were the main causes of the profit decline.Reporting by Carl O''Donnell and Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Additional reporting by Alwyn Scott in San Francisco; Editing by Phil Berlowitz '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-ge-divestitures/ge-explores-divesting-its-transportation-healthcare-it-businesses-sources-idINKBN1CV2NU'|'2017-10-26T15:08:00.000+03:00'
'1365b2ad971d5c0c5d1db3944aa2f6bf05592f49'|'Place your bets for the Brexit rate hike'|'October 27, 2017 / 12:56 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Place your bets for the Brexit rate hike Jeremy Gaunt 5 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - To hear some economists talk, the Bank of England is about to make a big mistake - raise interest rates just as the economy heads into what could be a major storm. People walk past the Bank of England in London, Britain, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay If all goes as scripted, the bank will hike borrowing costs in the coming week for the first time in more than 10 years. But is the country really ready? The consensus is for rise to 0.5 percent from 0.25 percent. That 0.25 percent was where the BoE put Bank Rate just over a year ago, shortly after British voters elected to leave the European Union. And there<72>s the rub: the uncertainty the vote triggered is still there. A Reuters poll published in the past week showed more than 70 percent of economists believe now is not the time to raise rates -- though slightly more than that said it would happen anyway. [BOE/INT] BoE Governor Mark Carney has made it clear a hike is in the offing, if not specifically saying at this coming meeting. His concern is that low unemployment means Britain<69>s economy has little spare capacity and, accordingly, faces upward inflation pressure. Added to that are moves by other major central banks to rein in loose monetary policy, which could also push inflation higher by weakening the pound further. The U.S. Federal Reserve has raised rates four times since late 2015 and is expected to do so again. The European Central Bank is cutting back on its bond buying, albeit gently. So the BoE needs to concern itself with a pressured pound and high employment driving up inflation that, at 3 percent, is already well above target and the highest in the Group of Seven industrialized nations. But ranged against that is huge political and economic uncertainty over how Britain<69>s withdrawal from the EU will play out. Companies are unclear about what to plan for, ranging from little short-term change to a complete revolution in how they do business. Consumers too are wary as, while Britain<69>s economy has by no means not gone over a cliff, it has had some wobbles. Retail sales, for example, contracted on a monthly basis in September and were up 1.2 percent year-on-year versus 4.1 percent a year earlier. Preliminary third-quarter growth figures in the past week, meanwhile, were slightly better than expected. But at 1.5 percent year-on-year they are well below pre-Brexit vote levels and significantly lag both the United States and the euro zone. This had prompted some economists to suggest Carney and the BoE are about to <20>do a Trichet<65> -- mirroring then-ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet<65>s raising of rates in 2008 just as the financial crisis was hitting. Former BoE policymaker Danny Blanchflower - who voted against the BoE<6F>s last hike in 2007, and has been regularly critical of suggestions to tighten policy since - has been scathing about the idea of a UK hike now. <20>Nothing in data whatsoever says there should be a rate rise,<2C> he tweeted. (NOT) RISING SUN The BoE is not the only central bank discussing policy. The Bank of Japan will announce its decisions on Tuesday. Deflation -- Japan<61>s biggest economic problem for much of the past 20 years -- is over, but inflation is far from entrenched, limping along at just 0.7 percent year-on-year. The economy too is somewhat off the pace, with the International Monetary Fund predicting 1.5 percent growth this year, though that is an improvement from 2016. The biggest issue among economists with regard to the BoJ is whether it should reveal its plans to exit its ultra-loose monetary policy. <20>We are anticipating few major changes in monetary policy,<2C> Katsunori Kitakura, lead strategist at SuMi TRUST, wrote in a note. <20>The medium-term outlook for the Japanese economy is largely unchanged since the last policy meeting so the BoJ is likely to maintain the status quo.<2E> Underlining this, Reuters polls suggest th
'0b6485d26fbaa74ef1267fb88f46d7db223da97c'|'Exclusive: OPEC''s head says Saudi, Russia statements "clear fog" before Nov. 30 meeting'|'LONDON (Reuters) - The fog has been cleared ahead of OPEC<45>s next policy meeting by Saudi Arabia and Russia declaring their support for extending a global deal to cut oil supplies for another nine months, OPEC<45>s secretary general told Reuters on Friday.The logo of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is pictured at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/Files The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus Russia and nine other producers, have cut output by about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) to get rid of a supply glut. The pact runs to March 2018 and they are considering extending it.Saudi Arabia<69>s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman said this week he was in favour of extending the term of the agreement for nine months, following on from similar remarks by Russian made by President Vladimir Putin on Oct 4.<2E>OPEC welcomes the clear guidance from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia on the need to achieve stable oil markets and sustain it beyond the first quarter of 2018,<2C> OPEC<45>s Mohammad Barkindo told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference.<2E>Together with the statement expressed by President Putin this clears the fog on the way to Vienna on Nov. 30.<2E><>It<49>s always good to have this high-level feedback and guidance,<2C> Barkindo added, when asked if the crown prince<63>s comments suggested a nine-month extension of the pact looked more likely.Reuters reported on Oct. 18, citing OPEC sources, that producers were leaning towards extending the deal for nine months, though the decision could be postponed until early next year depending on the market.Discussions are continuing in the run-up to the Nov. 30 meeting, which oil ministers from OPEC and the participating non-OPEC countries will attend.The deal has supported the oil price, which on Friday reached $59.91 a barrel, the highest level since July 2015, but a backlog of stored oil has yet to be run down and prices are still at half the level of mid-2014.The supply pact is aimed at reducing oil stocks in OECD industrialised countries to their five-year average, and the latest figures suggest producers are just over half way there.Stock levels in September stood at about 160 million barrels above that average, according to OPEC data, down from January<72>s 340 million barrels above the five-year average.Editing by Dmitry Zhdannikov, Greg Mahlich '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/opec-oil/exclusive-opecs-head-says-saudi-russia-statements-clear-fog-before-nov-30-meeting-idINKBN1CW274'|'2017-10-27T18:06:00.000+03:00'
'b4d794cb9c83d4a5d7363143ae4466702b7b80fe'|'Kobe Steel sent products with tampered data to second nuclear company'|' 02 AM / in 4 minutes Kobe Steel sent products with tampered data to second nuclear company Reuters Staff 4 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ) supplied parts with false specifications for nuclear equipment owned by Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd (JNFL), JNFL said on Friday, adding that the products were not used. The logo of Kobe Steel (Kobelco) is seen at the company headquarters in Kobe, western Japan October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White The parts were destined for use in centrifuges to enrich uranium, a JNFL spokesman said by phone. Citing security reasons, he declined to provide further details. Kobe Steel has not told JNFL whether there are any safety issues with the parts, the spokesman said. A Kobe Steel spokesman confirmed the firm fabricated data about specialised coatings used on the parts and had not identified any safety issues. JNFL is the second company in the nuclear power industry to receive components affected by the steelmaker<65>s data tampering. Tokyo Electric Power Co ( 9501.T ) said this month it had taken delivery of pipes from Kobe Steel that were not checked properly. Japan<61>s atomic regulator has asked nuclear operators to check whether they are using Kobe Steel products at nuclear plants, it said on Wednesday, adding it had received no reports that Kobe Steel<65>s data tampering scandal had affected safety. No deadline has been given for nuclear operators to report back to the Nuclear Regulation Authority, a spokesman said by phone on Friday. The unfolding data tampering scandal has spread from Kobe Steel<65>s copper and aluminium business to most areas of the company and sent companies at the end of complex supply chains across the world scrambling to check whether the safety or performance of their products has been compromised. While no safety issues have been identified, Japan<61>s third-largest steelmaker is likely to face claims for replacement parts and other costs. Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd ( 7012.T ) would ask Kobe Steel to cover any costs for replacement of parts or other expenses related to the data tampering, President Yoshinori Kanehana told reporters on Friday at an earnings briefing. The company earlier said affected materials were used in aircraft parts and in engine components. On Friday, Kanehana said it was still checking with customers receiving aircraft, engine and train parts, declining to comment further. Japanese industry ministry officials have also said Kobe Steel materials were used in some defence equipment made by Kawasaki Heavy. Asked about the fabrications, Kanehana said <20>as a company also based in Kobe, this is very regrettable and something that should not have been allowed to happen.<2E> He said Kawasaki Heavy <20>will consider whether to continue doing business with Kobe Steel after we have seen the results of their investigation into the causes and preventative measures.<2E> Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp, ( 5401.T ) Japan<61>s biggest steelmaker, said on Friday it would maintain an alliance it has with Kobe Steel. The alliance involves cooperating on steel supplies during shortages or maintenance of factories, while Nippon Steel has a 2.95 percent stake in Kobe Steel, with the latter holding 0.71 percent of its bigger rival<61>s shares. Kobe Steel said on Thursday 88 out of 525 affected customers had yet to confirm its products were safe in the light of widespread tampering of specifications, but that it had not received any requests for recalls. Japan<61>s third-largest steelmaker supplies manufacturers of cars, planes, trains and other products across the world and the data tampering has spiralled into one of Japan<61>s biggest industrial scandals. Kobe Steel shares, which are down about 35 percent since the scandal broke, rose 0.6 percent on Friday, while the Nikkei 225 .225 rose 1.3 percent. Reporting by Sam Nussey, Osamu Tsukimori, Taiga Uranaka and Yuka Obayashi; Writing by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.r
'5d05893a97eabc3c7e6b927979f220a83458881b'|'Australia''s NAB reaches agreement with regulator over rate rigging'|'SYDNEY (Reuters) - National Australia Bank ( NAB.AX ), the country<72>s No.3 lender by market value, on Friday said it had reached an agreement worth A$50 million ($38 million) with the corporate watchdog to settle a case over alleged manipulation of a key interest rate.FILE PHOTO: The logo of the National Australia Bank is displayed outside their headquarters building in central Sydney, Australia August 4, 2017. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo The Australian Securities & Investment Commission (ASIC) had filed a lawsuit last year, alleging three of Australia<69>s top lenders had rigged the bank bill swap rate (BBSW) for profit between 2010 and 2012.The BBSW is the primary interest rate benchmark used in Australian markets to price home loans, credit cards and other financial products.As part of the settlement, NAB has agreed to a A$10 million penalty, A$20 million in costs to the ASIC and a A$20 million donation to a financial consumer protection fund.The impact of the settlement, which is subject to court approval, will be reflected in NAB<41>s 2017 financial year results, it said in a statement.<2E>We accept that we did not meet the high standards of professional conduct that ASIC, the community and NAB expects of itself, in that market during that period,<2C> NAB Chief Executive Officer Andrew Thorburn said in a statement.The settlement involves NAB admitting that on 12 occasions in 2010 and 2011, its employees attempted to engage in <20>unconscionable conduct<63> in breach of the ASIC Act while trading in the BBSW market.NAB will also acknowledge breaches of its license obligations and agree to a so called <20>Enforceable Undertaking<6E> with ASIC, the lender added.NAB and ASIC will make an application to the Federal Court for approval of the settlement, which may take a number of weeks to finalize.Rival Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd ( ANZ.AX ), which faced similar allegations, reached a settlement earlier this week, leaving Westpac Banking Corp ( WBC.AX ) to slug it out with ASIC.Commonwealth Bank of Australia ( CBA.AX ), the nation<6F>s No. 1 lender, is not part of ASIC<49>s lawsuitReporting by Swati Pandey; Editing by Himani Sarkar '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-nab-court/australias-nab-reaches-agreement-with-regulator-over-rate-rigging-idUSKBN1CW14Q'|'2017-10-27T12:28:00.000+03:00'
'3408a76beebf24791bf7bd23b535e24aa3448a67'|'CORRECTED-UPDATE 1-Canada''s Saputo to buy Aussie dairy firm Murray Goulburn for $488 mln'|'October 27, 2017 / 1:22 AM / Updated 4 hours ago CORRECTED-UPDATE 1-Canada''s Saputo to buy Aussie dairy firm Murray Goulburn for $488 mln Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Corrects equity value of the deal in headline and paragraph 1) Oct 27 (Reuters) - Murray Goulburn Co-operative, Australia<69>s largest milk processor, on Friday said it agreed to a buyout from Canadian dairy company Saputo Inc worth up to A$637.8 million ($488 million). Murray Goulburn (MG) said Saputo would pay between A$1.10 and A$1.15 per share, compared to its A$2.10 issue price when it listed in 2015. A total buyout value of A$1.3 billion would include the company<6E>s debts and liabilities. Murray Goulburn, reeling from an ill-fated Asian expansion, said in August it was considering approaches from suitors who were interested in buying the cooperative as a whole or some of its assets. Rival Bega Cheese Ltd on Thursday said it had pulled out of the race to buy Murray Goublurn, leaving the dairy processor to choose from a string of international investors, including Fonterra and Saputo. <20>MG has reached a position where, as an independent company, its debt was simply too high given the significant milk loss,<2C> Chairman John Spark said in Friday<61>s statement. Saputo, which already owns Australia<69>s Warrnambool Cheese Butter, said in a statement the buyout will complement its existing Australian portfolio. It will fund the deal with a new bank loan. $1 = 1.3057 Australian dollars Reporting by Christina Martin in Bengaluru; Editing by G Crosse and Grant McCool'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/mg-unit-tr-ma-saputo/corrected-update-1-canadas-saputo-to-buy-aussie-dairy-firm-murray-goulburn-for-488-mln-idUSL4N1N217Q'|'2017-10-27T09:22:00.000+03:00'
'b279c33552788d64a903f668ab8ac636442e7ffd'|'Exclusive: Pfizer to launch consumer health sale in November: sources'|'October 25, 2017 / 7:51 PM / Updated 39 minutes ago Exclusive: Pfizer to launch consumer health sale in November: sources Pamela Barbaglia , Martinne Geller , Ben Hirschler 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Pfizer ( PFE.N ) plans to kick off an auction process for its consumer healthcare business in November, paving the way for a potential $15 billion-plus sale of the headache pill to lip balm business, sources close to the matter told Reuters. The Pfizer logo is seen at their world headquarters in New York April 28, 2014. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File photo Several global companies, including GlaxoSmithKline ( GSK.L ) and Reckitt Benckiser ( RB.L ), have expressed interest in bidding for the unit, which had sales of about $3.4 billion in 2016. The prospective sale, which is being led by Centerview Partners, Guggenheim Securities and Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ), was first mooted on Oct. 10, when Pfizer said it was considering strategic options for the unit. But preliminary discussions with interested parties including Reckitt have already taken place, one of the sources said, adding the U.S. drugmaker wants to get the ball rolling before the end of this year. GSK Chief Executive Emma Walmsley confirmed on Wednesday she would look <20>carefully<6C> at the business. Three people familiar with the situation said the British drugmaker had hired Citi ( C.N ) to represent it in the auction. GSK declined to comment while Citi was not immediately available. Other possible bidders could include Procter & Gamble ( PG.N ), Sanofi ( SASY.PA ), Johnson & Johnson ( JNJ.N ) and Nestle ( NESN.S ), several sources said. Pfizer plans to send out financial information about the consumer unit to prospective buyers in around three weeks time, one of the sources said. The process is expected to heat up early next year as bids come in and a deal could be sealed around the middle of 2018, the source said. Germany<6E>s Merck KGaA ( MRCG.DE ) is also looking to divest its consumer health business and has hired JP Morgan ( JPM.N ) to sell the unit, best known for making Seven Seas vitamins. Some banking and industry sources said Merck could put the divestment on hold since the sale, estimated to be worth around $4.5 billion, risked being eclipsed by the Pfizer auction. One source said Pfizer believed keen competition would allow it to raise at least $20 billion from the sale of the business, whose well-known brands include painkiller Advil, Centrum multivitamins and lip balm Chapstick. As ageing populations and health-conscious consumers drive demand for self-medication, the consumer health sector has proved a fertile ground for deal-making in recent years. But the industry remains fragmented and GSK<53>s Walmsley said she expected more merger activity, with GSK in a strong position to act as a <20>consolidator<6F>. Although consumer remedies sold over the counter have lower margins than prescription drugs, they are typically very long-lasting brands with loyal customers. Pfizer Chief Executive Ian Read said he was considering the sale of consumer healthcare because it was not integral to the core prescription drug business and might be worth more outside the group. GSK has taken a different view, opting to retain a diverse portfolio in which consumer health offers a hedge against riskier prescription drugs. For Reckitt, meanwhile, over-the-counter medicines offer higher-margin growth than its household business. Chief Executive Rakesh Kapoor, who last week announced plans to separate Reckitt into health and home and hygiene divisions, said he would weigh a bid if Pfizer<65>s strategic review resulted in a sale. Nestle could also enter the fight and use the Pfizer consumer business as a platform to expand the intersection of food and healthcare, sources said. The Swiss group has previously identified consumer healthcare as a sector of interest. Reporting By Pamela Barbaglia; Editing by Susan Fenton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'h
'301824a1f5c62529e147a16bd1db174486613d72'|'Latin American IPO boomlet gathers steam, led by Brazil, Argentina'|' 00 PM / in 10 minutes Latin American IPO boomlet gathers steam, led by Brazil, Argentina Dion Rabouin 5 Min Read Oct 25 (Reuters) - Recovery hopes in two of Latin America<63>s largest economies, Brazil and Argentina, have triggered a surge in initial public offerings, with companies in mining, food, construction and fuel distribution set to test the markets in coming months. More than 25 Latin American companies could go public within the next year, banking, exchange and market sources say, potentially adding greater heft to stock markets in regional economies where publicly traded companies have traditionally been underrepresented. Latin American IPOs have so far pulled in $6.14 billion this year, or an elevenfold increase from the same period last year. Companies such as Petrobras<61> fuel distribution unit BR Distribuidora, Brazilian zinc miner Votorantim Metais, Argentine foodmaker Molinos Canuelas and cement maker Loma Negra are expected to go public by December. The year has already seen IPOs from such high-profile names as retailer Grupo Carrefour Brasil SA, Mexican tequila maker Jose Cuervo and Brazil-based airline Azul. <20>We would consider the increased number of IPOs to be more of an indicator of improving sentiment and both macro- and company-level fundamentals, not a sign of greed that signals a market top,<2C> said Eric Sprow, managing director of equities at AllianceBernstein. The IPO boomlet has coincided with a wider rally in emerging markets, helped in Latin America by governments in Argentina and Brazil that have sought to ease regulations to turbocharge economic growth. The amounts being raised are still a fraction of that seen in more developed markets. U.S. social media company Snap Inc on its own raised $3.9 billion, equivalent to more than half the total for all of Latin America<63>s IPOs to date in 2017. Argentina<6E>s market capitalization represented just 11.7 percent of its gross domestic product in 2016, according to the World Bank, down from 27.4 percent in 2003. In 2016, Brazil<69>s market cap was 42.2 percent of GDP and Mexico<63>s was just 33.5 percent. That compared with 147 percent for the U.S. But the trend is rising. In Brazil, sales of new stock have already topped their best year since 2013. Including follow-on offerings, equity sales could reach 40 billion reais ($12.3 billion), said a banker at a large global firm in Brazil, who asked not be named. A top executive at one underwriter in Brazil, who asked not to be named, said he expects about nine more IPOs and secondary offerings in what he called a <20>very important year<61> for Brazil. At least five Argentine companies are likely coming to market in the next 12 months, according to Marcos Wentzel, managing director of investment bank and brokerage firm Puente. <20>The climate is heating up and it<69>s very positive for companies who are looking to catch the moment,<2C> Wentzel said, during an interview in New York ahead of Argentina<6E>s midterm elections. Business-friendly President Mauricio Macri<72>s coalition cruised to victory in those elections, seen as another bullish sign. Wentzel cited the recent IPO of Argentine online travel company Despegar.com Corp, which raised $332 million after being priced at the top of the forecast range. Even in Mexico, where the stock market has underperformed compared to Brazil and Argentina, as many as 10 companies could list by year-end, sources from Mexico<63>s exchange told Reuters in September. In Peru, state-run oil firm Petroperu aims to list shares after it secures financing for its $5.4 billion Talara refinery project, although the timetable for that is unclear. Rising demand from investors outside of Latin America could spark more IPOs, said Wentzel. Despegar<61>s CEO Damian Scokin told Reuters, after the company<6E>s New York Stock Exchange debut last month, that he <20>sensed a strong desire to invest<73> in companies that provided access to the region<6F>s consumers. <20>Certainly we feel that there<72>s going to be a lot of capita
'5b9d6a38edaa084a596c73ac0792fb70d7aec05c'|'Metro Bank profit jumps as lending and customer numbers rise'|'October 25, 2017 / 7:05 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago Metro Bank profit jumps as lending and customer numbers rise Noor Zainab Hussain 3 Min Read (Reuters) - British lender Metro Bank Plc ( MTRO.L ) posted a jump in third-quarter profit, driven by strong growth in residential mortgages and commercial lending and a rise in customer numbers. The company, which was the first new retail bank in 100 years to establish a presence in UK town centres, said underlying profit before tax reached 7.2 million pounds in the quarter ended Sept. 30. The bank, which said it added 79,000 customers in the quarter, reported profit of 600,000 pounds a year earlier. Chief Executive Craig Donaldson said he expected mortgage lending to hold up even with the 25 basis point rise in interest rates that is expected to be announced by the Bank of England. <20>It (interest rates) only came down 25 basis points 12 months ago and therefore the 25 basis points rise will not create shocks and I am not concerned,<2C> Donaldson told Reuters. Most economists polled by Reuters predict the Bank of England will raise borrowing costs for the first time in more than a decade on Nov. 2. Metro<72>s residential mortgages rose 72 percent to 5.50 billion pounds in the quarter amidst signs that housing market activity is slowing. The number of mortgages approved for house purchase fell to 66,580 in August from 68,452 in July, according to Bank of England data. Metro Bank, one of several <20>challenger<65> banks offering UK consumers an alternative to established lenders such as Lloyds ( LLOY.L ) and Barclays ( BARC.L ), also said it would bid for funds available to challenger banks under a so-called <20>alternative remedies<65> package from Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) ( RBS.L ). The funds, intended to boost lending to small and medium size businesses (SMEs), were agreed by RBS as part of a state aid settlement as an alternative to the spinoff of its Williams & Glyn brand. <20>We<57>re a proven challenger... and we think it<69>s very important that the Williams & Glyn money is used to continue to create challenge and not to reinforce the big five,<2C> Donaldson said, adding that Metro would use the 120 million pounds it would bid for to create jobs and move into new areas. Analysts at Jefferies said Metro was likely to take advantage of the package for challenger banks that offer SMEs current or checking accounts. They said it could provide further free funding for the bank. The bank, which had opened 50 branches this year, wants to open five more in 2017 and 12 branches next year. The expansion would create more than 600 jobs, Donaldson said. Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by David Holmes and Edmund Blair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-metro-bank-results/metro-bank-third-quarter-profit-jumps-as-lending-and-customer-numbers-rise-idUKKBN1CU0NU'|'2017-10-25T12:59:00.000+03:00'
'5924310143db99511c31ae57bafb61786512d387'|'Visa quarterly profit rises 11 percent'|'Reuters TV United States October 25, 2017 / 10:14 AM / in 3 minutes Visa quarterly profit rises 11 percent Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Visa Inc ( V.N ), the world<6C>s largest payments network operator, reported an 11 percent increase in fourth-quarter profit on Wednesday, driven by its purchase of Visa Europe and as more people made payments using its network. A Visa credit card is seen on a computer keyboard in this picture illustration taken September 6, 2017. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer/Illustration Net income rose to $2.14 billion in the quarter ended Sept. 30, from $1.93 billion a year ago. Earnings per Class A share rose to 90 cents from 79 cents a year earlier. <20>Visa ended our fiscal year as we began, with strong growth across payments volume, cross-border volume and processed transactions, which was bolstered by the addition of Visa Europe,<2C> Chief Executive Alfred Kelly Jr. said. Visa<73>s shares were up 1.4 percent in premarket trading. The company''s total operating revenue jumped 14 percent to $4.86 billion, reflecting growth in payments volume and processed transactions. bit.ly/2z5EEeA Payments volume rose 9.8 percent to $1.93 trillion on a constant dollar basis, with the United States accounting for about 43 percent of the total. Cross-border volumes <20> the value of transactions made outside of the United States <20> increased 10 percent, on constant dollar basis. Total operating expenses rose marginally to $1.64 billion. Visa<73>s rival, MasterCard ( MA.N ) reports financial results next week. Reporting By Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr and Savio D''Souza'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-visa-results/visa-quarterly-profit-rises-11-percent-idUKKBN1CU19E'|'2017-10-25T13:16:00.000+03:00'
'ae4a4509119e1fa7bac565a945e4e6a2a33a8e05'|'UPDATE 1-T-Mobile, Sprint ready board committees to decide on merger-sources'|'(Adds Sprint<6E>s earnings, share reaction)By Liana B. BakerOct 25 (Reuters) - T-Mobile US Inc and Sprint Corp are laying the groundwork for special committees of their boards of directors to decide on a merger between the third and fourth largest U.S. wireless carriers, according to people familiar with the matter.These board committees are important for the merger because T-Mobile and Sprint are majority owned by Germany<6E>s Deutsche Telekom AG and Japan<61>s SoftBank Group Corp respectively, and could be left vulnerable to potential lawsuits from minority shareholders if they don<6F>t establish independent mechanisms to review the deal.Both T-Mobile and Sprint have formed committees comprising independent board directors to decide on whether the deal should be signed once the merger agreement has been finalized, which is expected in the next three weeks, the sources said.The companies<65> special board committees have also hired financial advisers to help them deliver fairness opinions, the sources added.As with many all-stock mergers, T-Mobile and Sprint have decided there is no need to give their minority shareholders a vote on the deal, the sources said.An alternative would have been to make the merger subject to approval by a majority of their minority shareholders. However, the companies<65> advisers have determined this is not legally necessary, and could even jeopardize the deal were minority shareholders to organize against it, according to the sources.Some T-Mobile minority shareholders believe Sprint should not be offered any premium for its shares, the sources said. However, T-Mobile and Sprint have tentatively agreed on a range for a stock exchange ratio which, even at its low end, would offer Sprint a modest premium to where its shares are trading currently, the sources added.This could result in SoftBank and other Sprint shareholders holding close to 40 percent of the combined company based on where the shares are currently trading, the sources added. The exact share exchange ratio will be determined by looking at the volume-weighted average stock price of the companies over the last few months, one of the sources added.T-Mobile<6C>s and Sprint<6E>s due diligence on each other is almost complete, and much of their focus now is on working out a business plan for the combined company, as well as an integration strategy, according to the sources.Deutsche Telekom and SoftBank plan to accept the same terms in a merger as the other shareholders, the sources said.Sprint, T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom declined to comment, while SoftBank did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The sources asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential.Sprint shares rose as much as 3 percent in New York on Wednesday morning, giving the company a market capitalization of around $28.5 billion, after it also reported a narrower quarterly loss than most analysts had estimated, and it added subscribers.T-Mobile shares were down 0.5 percent at $61.95 in New York, giving the company a market capitalization of $51.5 billion. (Reporting by Liana B. Baker in San Francisco; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Susan Thomas) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/sprint-corp-ma-t-mobile-us/update-1-t-mobile-sprint-ready-board-committees-to-decide-on-merger-sources-idUSL2N1N00WK'|'2017-10-25T22:39:00.000+03:00'
'e12b1161a30716afb86a519865918e2b4be9af2a'|'T-Mobile, Sprint ready board committees to decide on merger: sources'|'October 25, 2017 / 5:40 AM / Updated 5 hours ago T-Mobile, Sprint ready board committees to decide on merger: sources Liana B. Baker 4 Min Read (Reuters) - T-Mobile US Inc ( TMUS.O ) and Sprint Corp ( S.N ) are laying the groundwork for special committees of their boards of directors to decide on a merger between the third and fourth largest U.S. wireless carriers, according to people familiar with the matter. FILE PHOTO: Smartphones with the logos of T-Mobile and Sprint are seen in this illustration taken September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo These board committees are important for the merger because T-Mobile and Sprint are majority owned by Germany<6E>s Deutsche Telekom AG ( DTEGn.DE ) and Japan<61>s SoftBank Group Corp ( 9984.T ) respectively, and could be left vulnerable to potential lawsuits from minority shareholders if they don<6F>t establish independent mechanisms to review the deal. Both T-Mobile and Sprint have formed committees comprising independent board directors to decide on whether the deal should be signed once the merger agreement has been finalized, which is expected in the next three weeks, the sources said. The companies<65> special board committees have also hired financial advisers to help them deliver fairness opinions, the sources added. As with many all-stock mergers, T-Mobile and Sprint have decided there is no need to give their minority shareholders a vote on the deal, the sources said. An alternative would have been to make the merger subject to approval by a majority of their minority shareholders. However, the companies<65> advisers have determined this is not legally necessary, and could even jeopardize the deal were minority shareholders to organize against it, according to the sources. Some T-Mobile minority shareholders believe Sprint should not be offered any premium for its shares, the sources said. However, T-Mobile and Sprint have tentatively agreed on a range for a stock exchange ratio which, even at its low end, would offer Sprint a modest premium to where its shares are trading currently, the sources added. This could result in SoftBank and other Sprint shareholders holding close to 40 percent of the combined company based on where the shares are currently trading, the sources added. The exact share exchange ratio will be determined by looking at the volume-weighted average stock price of the companies over the last few months, one of the sources added. T-Mobile<6C>s and Sprint<6E>s due diligence on each other is almost complete, and much of their focus now is on working out a business plan for the combined company, as well as an integration strategy, according to the sources. Deutsche Telekom and SoftBank plan to accept the same terms in a merger as the other shareholders, the sources said. Sprint, T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom declined to comment, while SoftBank did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The sources asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential. Sprint shares rose as much as 3 percent in New York on Wednesday morning, giving the company a market capitalization of around $28.5 billion, after it also reported a narrower quarterly loss than most analysts had estimated, and it added subscribers. T-Mobile shares were down 0.5 percent at $61.95 in New York, giving the company a market capitalization of $51.5 billion. Reporting by Liana B. Baker in San Francisco; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Susan Thomas '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-sprint-corp-m-a-t-mobile-us/t-mobile-sprint-ready-board-committees-to-decide-on-merger-sources-idINKBN1CU0FN'|'2017-10-25T03:40:00.000+03:00'
'7dcb2d5a3f9f76d12c3741c827e1895277ff4778'|'Boeing revenue rises 1.7 pct'|'October 25, 2017 / 11:48 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Boeing ups forecasts, takes further air tanker charge Ankit Ajmera , Rachit Vats 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Boeing Co ( BA.N ) racked up a further $329 million charge for its troubled KC-46 aerial refueling tanker program in quarterly results on Wednesday, paring gains in profit margins compared with a year ago and prodding its shares lower. The world<6C>s biggest maker of jetliners raised its full-year earnings and cash flow forecasts as it beat third-quarter earnings estimates and reported higher margins in its main commercial airlines segment and overall business. But the new charge on the air tanker, which some analysts had speculated could return to haunt Boeing despite assurances to the contrary in April, meant the program has now lopped a total of about $1.9 billion off the company<6E>s net income after tax. The company<6E>s shares, which have soared almost 70 percent this year, fell as much as 4.5 percent to $254.50 in afternoon trade in New York. Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg played down concerns related to the tanker program, saying the charges were not <20>unusual<61>. <20>The challenges we<77>re having right now are related to just implementing final detail changes on the aircraft to get them to a final certification standard,<2C> Muilenburg said. Boeing is moving into the production phase on the KC-46 and expects to deliver the first 18 tankers in 2018. FILE PHOTO - The new Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner taxis on the runway during it''s first flight at the Charleston International Airport in North Charleston, South Carolina, United States March 31, 2017. REUTERS/Randall Hill/File Photo The company<6E>s commercial aircraft business could face a new challenge as Montreal-based Bombardier Inc<6E>s ( BBDb.TO ) potential deal with France<63>s Airbus SE ( AIR.PA ) may give the two companies an edge over Boeing in the market for narrow-body aircraft. <20>We<57>ll put our product lines up against any competitor. We want to compete on a fair and level playing field,<2C> Muilenburg said, adding that the company would stick with its strategy of investing in its own product lines. Boeing, which is ahead of Airbus on new orders amid strong demand for air travel, said it would consider increasing production for its most popular narrowbody 737 jets from 47 per month currently and beyond the 57 jets planned for 2019. Core operating margin rose to 9.8 percent in the third quarter, from 9.2 percent a year earlier, and the company raised its forecast for operating cash flow for the full year to $12.5 billion from a previous $12.25 billion. Boeing said it now expects 2017 core earnings per share of $9.90-$10.10, compared with its previous forecast of $9.80-$10.00, due to a lower-than-expected tax rate. A year ago Boeing included a tax gain of 98 cents per share in the third quarter, driving a dip in core earnings for the same period this year to $2.72 per share from $3.51 per share. <20>We think Boeing is operating well, but see its valuation restricting upside to the shares beyond the overall market over the next year,<2C> CFRA Research analyst Jim Corridore wrote in a note. Reporting by Ankit Ajmera and Rachit vats in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Patrick Graham '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-results/boeing-revenue-rises-1-7-percent-idUSKBN1CU1LO'|'2017-10-25T14:38:00.000+03:00'
'e3f1f3d32ba2365b41c6bf4aae9aa06581dd3e62'|'British hardware hammers Australia''s Wesfarmers'|'October 25, 2017 / 3:26 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago British hardware hammers Australia''s Wesfarmers Tom Westbrook 3 Min Read SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia<69>s biggest company by revenue, retail-to-coal giant Wesfarmers Ltd ( WES.AX ), posted sluggish first-quarter supermarket sales growth on Wednesday and said earnings from its newly-acquired British hardware stores had plunged. Hit by hard-discounting rivals and a vegetable glut that trimmed produce margins, comparable food sales at Coles, Australia<69>s No. 2 supermarket, grew near their slowest pace since Wesfarmers bought the grocer a decade ago. In Britain and Ireland, sales slumped 17.5 percent at Homebase hardware stores, which Wesfarmers bought for A$705 million (<28>415 million) only last year in a bid to export its cash-cow Bunnings brand to Europe. Wesfarmers shares slid as much as 3.2 percent to A$41.37, their biggest daily drop in a year, as the broader market edged higher. <20>The fresh produce numbers were the weak link,<2C> said James McGlew, executive director of Perth stockbroker Argonaut Ltd, which owns Wesfarmers shares, adding the British hardware numbers were <20>ordinary<72>. Coles, Wesfarmers<72> largest division, is cutting prices to win market share from larger Woolworths Ltd ( WOW.AX ) amid intensifying competition from insurgent German discounter ALDI Inc [ALDIEI.UL]. Similar forces have also rocked Britain<69>s <20>Big Four<75> grocers. Coles<65>s margins were further squeezed by <20>significant<6E> produce price deflation in the September quarter, mostly driven by a bumper vegetable-growing season. Overall Coles sales, including liquor, rose 1.5 percent for the quarter. BRITAIN TO <20>TAKE LONGER<45> Once again, the star performer for Wesfarmers was Australian hardware business Bunnings, which posted 11.5 percent sales growth thanks to demand from commercial and private home-improvement markets. While Wesfarmers did not give any profit figures on Wednesday, strong revenue growth at Bunnings usually augurs well for the conglomerate<74>s bottom line. It will report interim profit in February. But Wesfarmers<72> hopes of repeating its Bunnings success in Britain are on hold as the U.K. hardware business, including 244 Homebase stores not yet rebranded Bunnings, continued to struggle after posting an A$89 million loss in 2017. <20>That<61>s a real concern that suggests a lack of traction,<2C> CMC Markets chief strategist Michael McCarthy told Reuters. Wesfarmers Managing Director Richard Goyder stood by the investment, while conceding it would <20>take longer than we might<68>ve hoped<65>. <20>We still consider the opportunity is a good one,<2C> he said. Wesfarmers attributed falling hardware sales in Britain to large-scale clearance of discontinued stock and <20>difficult trading conditions<6E>, with retail sales weak across the board and wages stagnant. Additional reporting by Chris Thomas; Editing by Stephen Coates'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-wesfarmers-results/british-hardware-hammers-australias-wesfarmers-idUKKBN1CU07Y'|'2017-10-25T06:26:00.000+03:00'
'6df5711310ec8b7467018667d0aea5733c835e97'|'With China dream shattered over missile land deal, Lotte faces costly overhaul'|'October 24, 2017 / 11:04 PM / in 11 hours With China dream shattered over missile land deal, Lotte faces costly overhaul Cynthia Kim , Hyunjoo Jin 6 Min Read SEOUL (Reuters) - Pressed by Seoul into a land swap deal needed for a controversial new missile defense system earlier this year, South Korean conglomerate Lotte Group had good reason to be skeptical. A construction site of a shopping mall of Lotte Group is seen in Shenyang, Liaoning province, China March 3, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer Just eight months after reluctantly agreeing to exchange a golf course in the country<72>s south for a piece of land near Seoul, Lotte<74>s decade-long strategic push into China is now in tatters, raising major doubts about its growth prospects. The retail-to-chemicals giant is the highest profile corporate casualty of a diplomatic spat between Beijing and Seoul over the U.S. THAAD missile defense system. Now shunned in China because of the golf course deal, Lotte is expected to sell its Chinese hypermarket stores for a fraction of what it invested. Its plans for mega shopping complexes are indefinitely suspended and its businesses in South Korea that counted on big-spending Chinese customers, from ice cream to tourism, are struggling, officials and investors say. One Lotte executive said South Korea<65>s fifth largest conglomerate is now looking for acquisition opportunities such as food companies in emerging markets including India and Myanmar. But investors and corporate experts say no other market can easily replace China or the promise it once held. <20>This is one in the eye for Lotte,<2C> said Park Ju-gun, president of corporate watchdog CEO Score in Seoul. <20>The group needs to revamp its strategy. It could squeak through by doing more in Southeast Asia, but China is a tough market to replace for a retailer.<2E> CAN<41>T SAY NO Another Lotte official said the group was trying to boost its chemicals business which currently accounts for a quarter of group sales. But investing heavily on chemicals will make Lotte<74>s earnings much less predictable given the volatility of global commodity prices, said Heo Pil-seok, chief executive officer of Midas International Asset Management Ltd, whose firm manages 9.4 trillion won ($8.32 billion). Embroiled in a high-profile family succession feud and a corruption probe, Lotte agreed to a government proposal in February to provide land for the installation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. <20>We agonized over whether to accept the government<6E>s proposal,<2C> another Lotte official told Reuters on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. <20>But we were not able to say <20>No<4E> because it was related to national security. If we say no to the government, we can<61>t do business in Korea.<2E> A Defense Ministry spokesman said the land deal was done within a legal framework and in consultation with Lotte. WIDENING LOSSES THAAD was installed to counter the missile threat from North Korea but angered Beijing, which says it upsets the regional security balance. A man stands outside a closed Lotte Super in Beijing, China March 17, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer Since the THAAD deployment, tour operators say China has banned groups travelling to South Korea, while cruises have erased Korean ports from their trips and some flights have been cut. Nearly all of the 112 Lotte Mart stores in China were shut for much of the year over alleged fire safety issues, and the group has now put the business on the block. Bankers say it is likely to fetch only a couple of hundred million dollars, a fraction of some 1.9 trillion won ($1.68 billion) Lotte invested in the business. Lotte<74>s construction and financing arms also took a hit after building was indefinitely suspended on multi-billion dollar shopping and entertainment complexes in Shenyang and Chengdu in China. Hotel Lotte, whose mainstay duty free business suffered from a plunge in the number of Chinese travelers, posted its first operating l
'd99dc60f1a911ae92d94103908fcb0ae57c0114f'|'U.S. 5-year note sold at highest yield since 2011'|'NEW YORK, Oct 25 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday sold $34 billion of five-year government notes at a yield of 2.058 percent, the highest yield for this debt maturity at an auction since April 2011 when it was 2.124 percent, Treasury data showed.The ratio of bids to the amount of five-year notes offered came in at 2.44, the lowest in six months. This measure on overall auction demand was 2.52 at the previous five-year auction in September. (Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by David Gregorio) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-auction-5year/u-s-5-year-note-sold-at-highest-yield-since-2011-idINL2N1N01OO'|'2017-10-25T15:26:00.000+03:00'
'cf351cb1bb079ac0c194709d5fdb9265e65ca46e'|'GE CEO sees more partnerships ahead for digital business'|'SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - General Electric Co ( GE.N ) will use alliances to build its digital-industrial business in coming years, Chief Executive Officer John Flannery said at a conference on Wednesday.GE has said it plans to scale back its own investment in its GE Digital business in 2018, from about $2.1 billion this year. Last week, GE announced a partnership with iPhone maker Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ).GE<47>s cloud-based software platform, known as Predix, aims to connect factories, power plants and other industrial equipment to computers that improve performance and predict outages. But Predix<69>s limited capabilities and performance problems have caused GE to lose out to competitors such as Siemens AG ( SIEGn.DE ) and startups such as Uptake and C3IOT.GE also said it was expanding its partnership with Microsoft Corp ( MSFT.O ), allowing it to provide access to Microsoft applications on Predix. But the specifics largely duplicated what the companies said when they first announced a partnership in July 2016.GE said on Wednesday that Predix will be generally available on Azure in the United states on Nov. 30, months later than the original target of the second quarter of this year.<2E>Realizing they can<61>t build their own ecosystem, GE is going to build it with partners so they can implement it quickly,<2C> said Gary Mintchell, chief executive of The Manufacturing Connection, an industrial-internet-focused research and consulting company.Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Leslie Adler '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-ge-digital-presentation/ge-ceo-sees-more-partnerships-ahead-for-digital-business-idINKBN1CU2IC'|'2017-10-25T14:51:00.000+03:00'
'f31a2e8ae157dc6140a01f17bedba421f6a9f9b1'|'LG Display third-quarter profit surges on year-end demand for TVs, mobile devices'|'October 25, 2017 / 4:37 AM / Updated an hour ago LG Display third-quarter profit surges on year-end demand for TVs, mobile devices Joyce Lee 3 Min Read SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea<65>s LG Display Co Ltd ( 034220.KS ) booked an 80 percent surge in quarterly profits just ahead of expectations, helped by strong demand for its screens used in high-end TV sets as well as mobile devices ahead of the year-end holidays. A man walks out of the headquarters of LG Display in Seoul, October 20, 2011. REUTERS/Jo Yong-Hak/File Photo The world<6C>s largest maker of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) also forecast shipments of screens would increase by <20>a mid-single digit percent<6E> in the current quarter. Analysts have warned, however, that hefty investments into organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays as well as some price declines for screens could begin to weigh on profits. Operating profit for July-September for the Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) supplier came in at 586 billion won ($519 million), better than an average analyst estimate of 567 billion won. Revenue rose 3.7 percent. <20>Mobile LCD panel sales have been supported, partly due to the release of the latest iPhone. And although large-size panel prices have been falling, LG has been able to hold its ground well on the strength of its premium products,<2C> said Kim Yang-jae, an analyst at KTB Investment & Securities. He added that demand for screens for notebook and PCs had been better than expected, remaining flat after years of declines. Asked to comment on any signs of weak demand for mobile LCD screens, Chief Financial Officer Don Kim said only that demand from clients continued to be strong. Concerns about sluggish demand for Apple<6C>s iPhone 8, which uses LCD screens, had pushed Apple<6C>s shares lower last week. While robust demand for TVs spurred a spike in panel prices last year, helping LG Display log record profits in the first quarter of 2017, declines in prices this year are a concern for the industry. According to data provider WitsView, prices of television LCD panels larger than 43 inches began falling in May, with the pace of declines tending to accelerate from the end of the second quarter. LG Display said, however, it expects overall price erosion to slow in the fourth quarter. Shares in LG Display were up 0.5 percent in afternoon trade compared with a 0.2 percent climb for the broader market. Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lg-display-results/lg-display-third-quarter-profit-surges-on-year-end-demand-for-tvs-mobile-devices-idUKKBN1CU0BK'|'2017-10-25T07:37:00.000+03:00'
'846374a823f0d0a162951b70d76b7684281c3c73'|'Health insurer Anthem''s quarterly revenue rises 21 percent'|'(Reuters) - Anthem Inc reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings as its Obamacare individual insurance business broke even and forecast a slight 2018 profit for the government plans despite uncertainty about the market<65>s future.FILE PHOTO: The office building of health insurer Anthem is seen in Los Angeles, California February 5, 2015. REUTERS/Gus Ruelas/File Photo Anthem<65>s outlook takes into account President Donald Trump<6D>s efforts to undercut former President Barack Obama<6D>s health reform law, which he has described as <20>dead.<2E>Trump has cut off subsidies that help low-income consumers afford out-of-pocket costs and slashed government outreach on the program ahead of the 2018 enrollment period.Anthem<65>s shares were up 5.8 percent at $206.57 on Wednesday, hitting a record high.The stock rose because the company implied that 2018 earnings forecasts were achievable, despite the uncertain subsidies and the return of an industry-wide health insurance tax of 3 percent next year, Leerink analyst Ana Gupte said.Analysts expect 2018 earnings of $12.98 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Anthem Chief Executive Officer Joseph Swedish said on a conference call that the health of its individual customers was better than expected, contributing to lower medical costs, and it has reset expectations.The company said the percentage of paid premiums that were spent on claims, a key industry measure, rose during the quarter, but would have gone higher if not for improved medical cost performance in the individual and large employer business.Anthem, which runs Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in 14 states, said it had cut in half the number of areas where it will sell individual plans in 2018, which will reduce enrollment by 70 percent next year and help profits.The company raised its 2017 adjusted earnings forecast to $11.90 to $12.00 per share, from more than $11.70.<2E>The big unknown ... is the stability in the individual marketplace. And that is a story that is going to unfold in the coming 12 to 18 months,<2C> Swedish said.It is unclear if the U.S. government will re-establish cost-sharing subsidies, or try to remove the insurance mandates for individuals and employers.The Trump administration also wants to introduce health plans with fewer covered benefits to compete with the more expensive Obamacare plans and has reinstated a 3 percent industrywide health insurance tax that the industry wants to end.Republican and Democratic senators are working on a bill to reinstate subsidies and make other market changes, but Republicans are also mounting a competing effort to change the law.NET INCOME RISES Anthem<65>s net income rose to $746.9 million, or $2.80 per share, in the third quarter, from $617.8 million, or $2.30 per share, a year earlier.Excluding items, the company earned $2.65 per share, ahead of analysts<74> expectation of $2.42 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Total revenue gained nearly 5 percent to $22.43 billion, above analysts<74> estimate of $22.05 billion.Anthem said on Tuesday it will acquire America<63>s 1st Choice, a privately held for-profit Medicare Advantage company, expanding its presence in Florida.Medicare Advantage, an alternative to standard fee-for-service Medicare in which private insurers manage health benefits, is the fastest growing form of government healthcare.Reporting by Caroline Humer in New York and Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Supriya Kurane and Jeffrey BenkoeOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-anthem-results/health-insurer-anthems-quarterly-revenue-rises-21-percent-idUSKBN1CU18Q'|'2017-10-25T13:09:00.000+03:00'
'e4be3ca11c3d74e1411a2b71946343175c51cb99'|'Exclusive: Canada pushed for Airbus deal as Bombardier courted China'|'October 25, 2017 / 5:08 AM / in 12 hours Exclusive: Canada pushed for Airbus deal as Bombardier courted China Allison Lampert , Tim Hepher 6 Min Read MONTREAL/PARIS (Reuters) - The Canadian government encouraged Bombardier to make a deal with Airbus SE for its CSeries planes to thwart a potential venture with Chinese investors, according to five sources familiar with the matter. FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A320neo aircraft and a Bombardier CSeries aircraft are pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo It signaled its preference for Airbus after Bombardier failed to reach an agreement with Boeing Co earlier this year that would have given the U.S. company a stake in the CSeries jetliners, according to the sources. The Canadian government<6E>s role has not been previously reported. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau<61>s administration took a calculated risk in steering Bombardier toward Airbus, according to the sources. It helped save a key product for Bombardier and likely resolved a brewing trade dispute with the United States, but potentially set back efforts to improve trade and economic ties with China. The deal with Airbus came at a critical time for Bombardier. Its $6 billion CSeries program, already losing money, had become the subject of a trade dispute in which Boeing charged in a complaint to U.S. authorities that the jetliners benefited from Canadian government subsidies and unfair pricing. Bombardier had considered a Chinese partnership as early as 2015, after talks about a possible merger with Airbus became public and fell apart. This year, as negotiations with Boeing over a CSeries partnership faltered and concerns about the future of the program mounted, Bombardier<65>s interest in a deal with China intensified, two sources said. The prospect of such a deal raised concern within the Canadian government, two of the sources said, where officials believed jobs or technology could be <20>siphoned away<61> to China. They also expressed uneasiness about what some saw as inadequate Chinese safeguards against intellectual property theft. In a series of calls with Bombardier in August and September, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains and Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, as well as senior officials in Trudeau<61>s office, urged Bombardier to contact the European company, the two sources said. <20>From the federal government<6E>s point of view, anything was better than a link-up with China,<2C> according to an Ottawa source. The source said the government suggested to Bombardier that Chief Executive Alain Bellmare reach out to his counterpart at Airbus, Tom Enders. The government<6E>s efforts eventually helped pave the way for an Oct. 16 agreement in which Airbus took a majority stake in the narrow-body, medium-range CSeries jets for one dollar. But they also came at a time when Ottawa is pushing for closer economic ties with Beijing. Canada, concerned about Washington<6F>s threats to scrap the NAFTA trade deal, wants to bolster relations with China in order to cut its heavy dependence on exports to the United States. Talks between Ottawa and Beijing are ongoing. Bombardier declined to discuss its CSeries negotiations. Representatives of Bains, Champagne and Trudeau declined to comment. Beijing officials declined to comment. Boeing also declined to comment. Asked whether Airbus had stepped in because of concerns about China obtaining a stake in the CSeries, Airbus CEO Enders said: <20>We were obviously not privy to these discussions.<2E> AN IMPERFECT PARTNER Bombardier<65>s most recent discussions about a Chinese tie-up centered on Comac, a Chinese state-owned firm developing passenger jets, according to a source familiar with the Canadian company<6E>s thinking. Financial terms of any potential deal were not known. Comac did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Source
'13391df7d5e1ef7a04849d866bf8ae1d9341c51a'|'Lloyds paid ''appropriate'' price for HBOS, former finance chief tells court'|' 53 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago Lloyds paid ''appropriate'' price for HBOS, former finance chief tells court Kirstin Ridley 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The former finance director of Lloyds Banking Group ( LLOY.L ) denied on Wednesday that the bank had been compelled to rescue British rival HBOS during the financial crisis nine years ago and said the price it paid for HBOS was <20>appropriate<74>. A pedestrian is seen passing the head office of the Lloyds Banking Group in central London in this August 5, 2009 file photograph. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth/Files Tim Tookey, cross-examined in London<6F>s High Court by a lawyer representing 6,000 shareholders claiming around 550 million pounds in damages over the deal, said he knew HBOS had had funding difficulties and that its shares were gyrating. But he denied that Lloyds could have avoided paying a premium, or even the market price, for the struggling bank after the collapse of Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers in September 2008 left markets in turmoil. <20>We, as the board, felt it was an appropriate price to pay,<2C> he said. A shareholder group alleges that Tookey, four other former Lloyds directors and the bank concealed crucial information about HBOS<4F>s <20>parlous<75> financial state and breached their duties by recommending the reverse takeover in 2008. Lloyds, Britain<69>s largest retail bank, and the individual defendants, who include former chief executive Eric Daniels, ex chairman Victor Blank, Helen Weir, the former head of retail and Truett Tate, one-time former head of wholesale banking, deny any wrongdoing. The former directors, who left Lloyds between 2009 and 2012, have been described by the bank as highly distinguished and experienced. Investors allege Lloyds<64> failure to divulge a 10 billion- pound HBOS loan and billions more in British and U.S. central bank emergency support meant investors did not know HBOS <20>had failed<65> and <20>was worthless<73>. They allege the HBOS takeover, that valued the bank at around 5.9 billion pounds, wiped billions off the enlarged bank<6E>s market value. Lloyds itself then had to be rescued with a 20.5 billion-pound government bailout in 2009. The bank has called the HBOS deal a <20>unique opportunity<74> to boost market share and realise cost-savings while the government, desperate to shore up plunging shares and investor and depositor confidence after the Lehman collapse, swept aside competition hurdles in return for an urgent deal. Tookey said he had not been aware that HBOS faced nationalisation if Lloyds had walked away from a deal. <20>I did not hear the nationalisation word,<2C> Tookey said, adding that Daniels, the former chief executive, had led the discussions on the price to pay for HBOS. Much of the shareholder case hinged on <20>myth<74> and <20>hindsight<68> about the depth of the financial and unfolding economic crisis, which could not have been foretold, a lawyer for the bank has told the court. The trial, which began a week ago, continues. Editing by Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-trial-lloyds-shareholders/lloyds-paid-appropriate-price-for-hbos-former-finance-chief-tells-court-idUKKBN1CU1ZG'|'2017-10-25T16:52:00.000+03:00'
'cd515a0d8fa37495a18b06cbbe56c31765a1775d'|'UK short-run inflation expectations rise to four-year high - Citi/YouGov'|'October 25, 2017 / 1:03 PM / in 3 hours UK short-run inflation expectations rise to four-year high - Citi/YouGov Reuters Staff 2   The British public<69>s expectations for inflation over the coming 12 months are the highest in four years, a monthly YouGov poll showed on Wednesday, after Britain<69>s official measure of inflation hit a five-year high in September. FILE PHOTO: A shopper pushes a trolley in a supermarket in London, Britain April 11, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo The YouGov poll, conducted for U.S. bank Citi, showed that the average expectation for inflation over the next 12 months rose to 2.8 percent in October, its highest since October 2013, from 2.5 percent in September. Longer-term inflation expectations for the next five to 10 years edged up to 3.2 percent from 3.1 percent, bringing them in line with the survey<65>s long-run average, Citi said. <20>The rise in inflation expectations will at the margin raise concerns about second-round effects of the currently high actual inflation rates. It may strengthen the (Bank of England<6E>s) resolve to hike Bank Rate ... on 2 November,<2C> Citi economists Christian Schulz and Ann O<>Kelly wrote in a note to clients. YouGov polled 2,126 British adults between Oct. 20 and Oct. 23. Reporting by David Milliken, editing by Andy Bruce'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-inflation/uk-short-run-inflation-expectations-rise-to-four-year-high-citi-yougov-idUKKBN1CU1TY'|'2017-10-25T16:02:00.000+03:00'
'2e20f053b25c580a12589b4baac671b1e00b3e1a'|'Worldwide debt more than triple economic output as central bank shift looms'|' 05 PM / Updated 19 minutes ago Worldwide debt more than triple economic output as central bank shift looms Marc Jones 2   Worldwide debt has risen to a record $226 trillion (<28>170.5 trillion) - more than three times global annual economic output - and firms in more countries are struggling to service loans, a study shows, just as key central banks prepare to end super-cheap credit policies. A vendor gets a five Euro bank note from a customer at the central market in Athens, Greece, July 8, 2015. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann World markets are expected to get confirmation over the next week that normalising global interest rates from the extraordinarily low levels introduced to offset the fallout of the 2009 credit crash is no longer just a U.S. phenomena. The European Central Bank will lay out cuts to its 2-1/2 year-old stimulus programme on Thursday, the Bank of England looks set to raise British interest rates for the first time in a decade, while the Fed is moving towards its third hike of the year. Years of cheap central bank cash has pushed world stock markets to successive record highs. But another side effect has been explosive credit growth as households, companies and governments took advantage of rock-bottom borrowing costs. Global debt now amounts to 324 percent of the world<6C>s annual economic output, the Institute of International Finance (IIF) said in a report on Wednesday. One of the most authoritative trackers of global capital flows, the IIF report also highlighted <20>rollover<65> risks, especially in emerging markets that have borrowed in hard currencies such as euros and dollars. It calculated around $1.7 trillion needs to be refinanced or paid back before the end of 2018 across developing economies. Such debts will become costlier to service if Western interest rates rise and currencies strengthen. While U.S. interest rates have already been raised four times, the prospect of more alongside Europe<70>s shift toward tighter monetary policy, have pushed two-year U.S. borrowing costs to a nine-year highs. The IIF said the rise in indebtedness was largely down to a $3 trillion rise in debt levels across the developing world, which now have debt totalling $59 trillion. Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Hugh Lawson'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-debt-iif/worldwide-debt-more-than-triple-economic-output-as-central-bank-shift-looms-idUKKBN1CU1NZ'|'2017-10-25T15:04:00.000+03:00'
'805fa22bc477c57d39e8953e56e2ce883281d327'|'Boris Johnson - ''now is the time'' to move Brexit talks onto trade'|'October 27, 2017 / 12:57 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago Boris Johnson - ''now is the time'' to move Brexit talks onto trade Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LISBON (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson urged the European Union on Friday to move Brexit talks on to the next phase. Britain''s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson attends a news conference with his Portuguese counterpart Augusto Santos Silva (not pictured) at Necessidades Palace in Lisbon, Portugal October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Pedro Nunes <20>One message I have for our friends and partners in EU: now is the time to get on with these negotiations and move on to second phase so we can sort out citizenship issues. Bang those and get on to discussing our new economic partnership,<2C> Johnson said in Lisbon. Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva told him that closing the issue of citizens<6E> rights would be <20>a game-changer<65> for the Brexit talks. Reporting By Daniel Alvarenga, writing by Andrei Khalip; Editing by Robin Pomeroy'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-johnson/boris-johnson-now-is-the-time-to-move-brexit-talks-onto-trade-idUKKBN1CW1RW'|'2017-10-27T15:56:00.000+03:00'
'8a140b9ab2fa53eb0f0c7a5eaec1d3a74234b8e2'|'Swiss bank UBS posts 946 million Swiss francs in third quarter net profit, up 14 percent'|'October 27, 2017 / 5:01 AM / Updated an hour ago UBS cautions gains from wealthy client activity may not last Joshua Franklin 4 Min Read ZURICH (Reuters) - A pick-up at UBS<42>s ( UBSG.S ) core wealth management business is likely to weaken in the final months of 2017 as clients withdraw money to take part in tax amnesty programmes, the world<6C>s biggest private bank said. FILE PHOTO - The logo of Swiss bank UBS is seen on a branch office in Zurich, Switzerland November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo UBS, which manages more than more than $2 trillion(<28>1.53 trillion) of the world<6C>s wealth, saw continued improvement in the third quarter at its flagship business after a sluggish 2016 in which trading activity by rich clients hit a record low. But finance chief Kirt Gardner said the fourth quarter, traditionally a seasonally slow three months, would be hit by an estimated 8 billion Swiss francs ($8 billion) in withdrawals as wealthy customers participate in government programmes to declare offshore assets. <20>We would expect that after the outflows in the fourth quarter you will see a drop-off in recurring revenue as a consequence and also reduction in margin,<2C> he said in a call with analysts on Friday. Gardner added UBS expected to see a recovery by the second quarter of 2018. The bank, which also has investment banking, asset management, and Swiss retail and corporate divisions, said political and monetary policy uncertainty made it cautious too. Third-quarter group net profit came in at 946 million francs, lagging the average forecast in a Reuters survey of six analysts but ahead of the Swiss bank<6E>s own poll. UBS shares were down 1.1 percent at 1120 GMT, a steeper drop than the European banking sector index .SX7P. <20>EXPECTING A LOT<4F> Net new money inflows - a closely watched indicator of future earnings in money management - totalled 4.6 billion francs at UBS<42>s international wealth management unit in the third quarter. A bright spot for the unit was the contribution from Asia Pacific, a priority growth region for UBS which has seen its best ever year-to-date performance. UBS<42>s North America brokerage business, which handles just over half the bank<6E>s wealth management assets, saw net outflows of $2.3 billion, a blow to a business investors hope is on an upward curve. <20>The market is expecting a lot from wealth management Americas because of the good economy and the rate increases,<2C> said Mirabaud Securities Limited analyst Andreas Brun, who rates UBS<42>s stock <20>buy<75>. The investment bank, which UBS has scaled back in recent years to free up resources for wealth management, saw adjusted pretax operating profit rise 2.9 percent to 352 million francs. UBS<42>s common equity tier 1 (CET1) capital ratio, an important measure of balance sheet strength which UBS uses to help decide its dividend, rose to 13.7 percent from 13.5 percent in the second quarter. A drop in the second quarter CET1 ratio had been a source of concern for some investors. However, Brun said pending legal cases and the uncertainty over future capital rules under Basel IV regulations meant it was too soon to draw conclusions for the dividend. <20>That ratio is clearly good for all those who want to make a dividend story out of UBS,<2C> said Brun. <20>For me it<69>s still too early to call it a dividend story.<2E> Additional reporting by Angelika Gruber; Editing by Michael Shields, Alexander Smith and Mark Potter '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ubs-group-ag-results/swiss-bank-ubs-posts-946-million-swiss-francs-in-third-quarter-net-profit-up-14-percent-idUKKBN1CW0E5'|'2017-10-27T08:00:00.000+03:00'
'f14e1fbaa8fd0ab39f370e74d50d589c26dac35e'|'Wall Street loves electric cars, America loves trucks'|'October 27, 2017 / 5:48 AM / Updated 18 minutes ago Wall Street loves electric cars, America loves trucks Paul Lienert , Joseph White 5 Min Read DETROIT (Reuters) - Wall Street may love the shares of Silicon Valley electric carmaker Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ), but Americans love big, fuel-thirsty trucks like Ford Motor Co<43>s ( F.N ) bestselling F-Series pickups and are paying ever higher prices to buy them. Joe Hinrichs, Executive VP and President, The Americas for Ford, introduces the 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor pickup truck at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, January 11, 2016. REUTERS/Mark Blinch The auto industry is at a crossroads, with the future of legacy automakers like Ford, General Motors Co ( GM.N ) and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV ( FCHA.MI ) uncertain as governments float proposals to ban internal combustion engines over the next two decades. But in the present, consumer enthusiasm for trucks and sport utility vehicles is strong, especially in the United States. And that is providing Ford, GM and other established automakers with billions in cash to mount a challenge to Tesla. Tesla has ambitions to boost annual sales to 500,000 vehicles a year. But it is wrestling with the sort of production problems that old-line automakers have largely put behind them, and has reported a net loss of $666.7 million through the first six months of 2017. Analysts expect the company to post a third quarter net loss of $380.4 million when it reports results next Wednesday. Electric cars are money losers, which explains why global automakers have been slow to roll them out until now. But regulatory and consumer pressures are forcing established automakers to put more electric vehicles in their fleets over the next several years. In a cash-intensive industry, profits from pickups and SUVs may give them a competitive edge. Ford said on Thursday that the average price of one of its F-series pickups rose $2,800 to an average $45,400 a truck in the third quarter. Sales of F-series trucks, which range from spartan work trucks to Platinum models with the features - and price tags - of a European luxury sedan, were up nearly 11 percent to 658,636 vehicles for the first nine months of this year. GM has driven its share price up nearly 30 percent so far in 2017 as Chief Executive Mary Barra has talked up plans for putting self-driving, electric Chevrolet Bolts into ride services fleets within a few quarters. Barra told investors on Tuesday improved profit margins on trucks were <20>one of the big drivers of the overall 8.3 percent margins<6E> in the automaker<65>s North American business during the latest quarter. GM has forecast free cash flow for the full year of roughly $6 billion. That is $1 billion less than forecast earlier this year, but strong enough to fund the company<6E>s promise to develop 20 more electric vehicles by 2023 and send $7 billion back to shareholders. Tesla Model 3 cars are seen as Tesla holds an event at the factory handing over its first 30 Model 3 vehicles to employee buyers at the company''s Fremont facility in California, U.S., July 28, 2017. Courtesy Tesla/Handout via REUTERS GM, which emerged from a government funded bankruptcy eight years ago, now has $31.4 billion in available funds, including $17.3 billion in cash. Ford lags behind GM in sales of battery electric models, but the company has said it will spend $5 billion developing battery electric and hybrid models. Ford<72>s new Chief Executive Officer Jim Hackett has said the plans include shifting $500 million into electric vehicle development from internal combustion projects. Ford<72>s share price has been flat for the year as the No. 2 U.S. automaker ushered out former CEO Mark Fields. Still, it had $28 billion in cash and marketable securities as of Sept. 30. Automakers also are becoming more confident they can make money on electric cars as battery costs come down. Volkswagen AG<41>s ( VOWG_p.DE ) Audi brand is gearing up a fleet of electric models that the 
'249197c1b01381a6af95ce9d4166ace57af6290f'|'China''s HNA in talks to buy e-commerce firm Dangdang likely valued over $1 billion: sources'|'October 27, 2017 / 7:04 AM / in 5 hours China''s HNA in talks to buy e-commerce firm Dangdang likely valued over $1 billion: sources Kane Wu , Julie Zhu 3 Min Read HONG KONG (Reuters) - China<6E>s HNA Group Co Ltd [HNAIRC.UL] is in talks to buy a controlling stake in E-commerce China Dangdang Inc in a deal that could value the online marketplace at over $1 billion, two people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. FILE PHOTO: The HNA Group logo is seen in this illustration photo June 1, 2017. Picture taken June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo Dangdang, an Amazon Inc ( AMZN.O ) rival in China, is also in talks with other potential investors, said the people, who declined to be identified as the matter was private. Dangdang told Reuters it has been approached by investors and has not accepted any offer. It said, without elaborating, that other details of talks with suitors were inaccurate. HNA declined to comment. The development comes after $50 billion worth of deal-making over the past two years sparked public scrutiny of HNA<4E>s opaque ownership and use of leverage, prompting the conglomerate to slow the pace of acquisitions in recent months. The buying spree has brought HNA business interests as varied as aviation, logistics, hospitality and financial services. The Dangdang talks come as HNA looks to build e-commerce platforms. The latest deal is likely to value Beijing-based Dangdang at 8 billion to 10 billion yuan ($1.2 billion to $1.5 billion), the people said. Financial terms are not yet finalised and the talks could still collapse, they said. HNA aims to own slightly more than 90 percent, one of the people said. The acquisition, if successful, would give HNA access to a major local e-commerce platform that evolved from a leading bookseller to a marketplace of over 14,000 stores selling goods as varied as DVDs, cosmetics, clothes and furniture. China is the world<6C>s largest e-commerce market. Online retail as a percentage of total retail has grown steadily in the last few years, with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd ( BABA.N ) and JD.com Inc ( JD.O ) leading the segment. HNA plans to buy the majority of Dangdang from management, mainly Chairwoman Peggy Yu and Chief Executive Officer Li Guoqing, who founded the firm in 1999, the people said. Dangdang was taken private for $556 million last year, having debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in 2010. HNA is also scouting for co-investors for the deal, said one of the people. HNA and other Chinese conglomerates have come under scrutiny due to the billions of dollars spent on marquee real estate properties and global brands, with the government concerned about the impact of capital outflows on the value of the yuan. HNA has nevertheless completed a number of long-stalled overseas acquisitions in recent weeks. It is set to complete the $1 billion acquisition of Singapore-listed logistics firm CWT Ltd ( CWTD.SI ) next week. The conglomerate also obtained Ministry of Commerce approval this month for the $775 million purchase of 51 percent of the oil products and logistics business of Glencore PLC ( GLEN.L ). Reporting by Kane Wu and Julie Zhu; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Christopher Cushing '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-dangdang-m-a-hna-group/chinas-hna-in-talks-to-buy-e-commerce-firm-dangdang-likely-valued-over-1-billion-sources-idINKBN1CW0O9'|'2017-10-27T05:04:00.000+03:00'
'b2244b1403391f9fcc04cead838f74e040d5eb5e'|'Bank of America CEO still sees no upside from Brexit'|'Johnson says Poles'' post-Brexit rights protected Special Report Reuters Investigates - The Body Trade How a U.S. company made a fortune selling bodies donated to science UK retail sales plunge at fastest rate since 2009 Reuters TV United States October 26, 2017 / 5:01 PM / a minute ago Bank of America CEO still sees no upside from Brexit Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - More than a year after Britons voted to leave the European Union, Bank of America Corp ( BAC.N ) Chief Executive Brian Moynihan said he still sees no potential upside from the decision. FILE PHOTO: Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan looks on during the White House summit on cybersecurity and consumer protection in Palo Alto, California February 13, 2015. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith/File Photo <20>There<72>s no upside here,<2C> Moynihan said in an interview with CNBC Thursday. <20>It<49>s just -- how can we avoid the downside.<2E> Reporting by Dan Freed; Editing by Bernadette Baum'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-bank-of-america-ceo/bank-of-america-ceo-still-sees-no-upside-from-brexit-idUKKBN1CV2WR'|'2017-10-26T19:58:00.000+03:00'
'735432fd743267e2bc9154973be0bc42602022ce'|'Sterling strengthens after UK GDP beats expectations'|'October 25, 2017 / 8:44 AM / in 18 minutes Sterling strengthens after UK GDP beats expectations Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Sterling climbed almost half a cent against the dollar on Wednesday, while Britain<69>s main FTSE 100 stock index slipped, after data showed the economy picked up speed unexpectedly in the third quarter. Pound coins are seen in this photo illustration taken in Manchester, Britain September 6, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble/Illustration Quarterly gross domestic product growth rose to 0.4 percent compared with 0.3 percent growth in the three months to June 2017, the figures showed. That beat expectations for 0.3 percent growth and cemented expectations that the Bank of England will raise interest rates next week. The pound climbed to $1.3171 after the numbers, up from $1.3124 beforehand and leaving the currency up 0.3 percent on the day. Against the euro, sterling strengthened to 89.37 pence EURGBP=D3, also up 0.3 percent on the day. The blue-chip FTSE 100 index .FTSE , whose international focus tends to make it inversely correlated with sterling, extended losses slightly, down 0.3 percent on the day. British two-year and 10-year government bond yields GB2YT=RR GB10YT=RR rose to their highest levels since Oct. 16 after the data, and gilt futures FLGcv1 turned negative and fell more than 20 ticks on the day to a nine-day low. Reporting by Jemima Kelly, Kit Rees and David Milliken; Editing by Polina Ivanova'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-markets-gdp/sterling-strengthens-after-uk-gdp-beats-expectations-idUKKBN1CU0Y4'|'2017-10-25T11:44:00.000+03:00'
'512dd3e16f1aa0289e290ef59b5d5807c604e9d6'|'UPDATE 1-Edwards results fall short of Street estimates; shares tumble'|'(Reuters) - Edwards Lifesciences Corp ( EW.N ) on Tuesday reported slightly lower-than-expected third-quarter profit and revenue and saw a dip in sales of its critically important transcatheter heart valves from the prior quarter, although they grew about 17 percent from a year earlier.Edwards shares, which were up 22 percent this year, fell 6 percent to $107.50.The company maintained its full-year forecast for adjusted 2017 earnings of $3.65 to $3.85 per share and revenue of about $3.4 billion.Edwards reported a net profit of $170.1 million, or 79 cents a share, compared with a profit of $141.4 million, or 65 cents per share, a year ago.Excluding items, Edwards said it earned 84 cents per share. Analysts on average expected 86 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The company said adjusted EPS would have been 88 cents based on a tax benefit related to an accounting change estimated in a previous forecast.Global sales of transcatheter heart valves, by far the company<6E>s most important growth driver, rose 17.3 percent to $481.2 million, but were down from $488 million in the second quarter. Adjusting for an inventory stocking issue in Germany, the transcatheter valve system sales were $498.2 million, the company said.U.S. sales of the transcatheter valves rose 20.1 percent to $311.6 million, slightly below the $316 million reported in the prior quarter.Use of the transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) systems is approved for patients deemed too frail to endure open-heart surgery and those at intermediate risk. Edwards continues to conduct trials aimed at expanding the potential patient population for the minimally invasive procedure to those at lower risk.Surgical heart valve sales edged 2.4 percent higher to $195.6 million for the quarter.Overall revenue for the quarter rose 11 percent to $821.5 million, shy of Wall Street estimates of about $832 million.Edwards said its facility in Puerto Rico, which produces critical care and vascular products, sustained limited flooding from hurricane Maria, which devastated the island last month, and has been able to resume manufacturing operations.<2E>While we are assisting a number of our employees who were personally affected by the recent natural disasters, we were fortunate to have experienced minimal business impact,<2C> Chief Executive Michael Mussallem said in a statement.Reporting by Bill Berkrot; Editing by James Dalgleish and Lisa Shumaker '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-edwards-lifesci-results/edwards-third-quarter-results-short-of-street-estimates-shares-fall-idUSKBN1CT2X1'|'2017-10-24T23:44:00.000+03:00'
'e43d253acba0127ae9108669d2496830d14ee050'|'Equifax says consumers can still sue after class action law axed'|' 50 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago Equifax says consumers can still sue after class action law axed Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Equifax Inc ( EFX.N ) said on Wednesday the U.S. Senate<74>s move to kill a rule allowing customers to sue financial companies in class actions does not prohibit consumers from taking legal action against the credit reporting firm over its massive cyber breach. FILE PHOTO: Trading information and the company logo are displayed on a screen where the stock is traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo Equifax came under fire for including a forced arbitration clause in a package of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection products it offered consumers after the breach, which compromised sensitive data on 145.5 million people, but it quickly removed the clause saying it was a mistake. Reporting by John McCrank in New York'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-consumers-arbitration-equifax/equifax-says-consumers-can-still-sue-after-class-action-law-axed-idUKKBN1CU2IA'|'2017-10-25T19:49:00.000+03:00'
'cd8a1fdf4bacd76dc0599bba03ae67154306f0a0'|'Vistra Energy in talks to buy Dynegy: WSJ'|'(Reuters) - Texas-based electricity producer Vistra Energy Corp ( VST.N ) is in talks to buy Dynegy Inc ( DYN.N ), the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.Dynegy<67>s shares rose about 20 percent, while Vistra<72>s stock inched up 3.6 percent.Dynegy had a market capitalization of $1.21 billion and Vistra of $8.37 billion as of Tuesday close, according to Thomson Reuters data.A deal could be announced as soon as next week, the Journal reported.Vistra and Dynegy were not immediately available for comment.Reporting by Taenaz Shakir in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-dynergy-inc-m-a-vistra-energy/vistra-energy-in-talks-to-buy-dynegy-wsj-idINKBN1CU2XS'|'2017-10-25T18:06:00.000+03:00'
'cd5b82547924e27b558db61e043e360bd9c58cd2'|'UPDATE 1-Slovenia may offer to apply penalty on NLB to avoid sale -sources'|'(Updates to clarify that penalty would be imposed on NLB directly and paid to the Slovenian government)LJUBLJANA, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Slovenia may offer to impose a 365 million euro ($431 million) penalty on state-run Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB) as a concession to the European Commission as the government seeks to avoid having to sell a stake in the bank, sources close to the matter said.Slovenia had agreed to sell a 50 percent stake in NLB, the country<72>s largest bank, this year as a condition of the Commission<6F>s approval in 2013 of a 1.55 billion euro state rescue of the bank.But in June the government cancelled a planned sale of 50 percent of the bank, saying the suggested price, which valued the whole bank at a minimum of 1.1 billion euros, was too low.Slovenia<69>s finance minister Mateja Vranicar Erman is due to meet European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager on Thursday to discuss delaying the sale. The government hopes it could delay the sale by three years.The sources said on Wednesday that Slovenia might propose to the Commission that NLB pays a penalty to the government in order to gain the Commission<6F>s approval for the bank to stay in state hands indefinitely.Slovenian finance ministry declined to comment. The European Commission<6F>s spokesman also declined to comment but said the Commission was <20>in constructive contact with the Slovenian authorities.<2E>Sources said the Commission might ask Slovenia to sell NLB<4C>s businesses in the Balkans if the sale of a 50 percent stake in the bank does not go ahead.Slovenia has been reluctant to sell off its major banks and the government still controls about 44 percent of the banking sector. It plans to sell the second largest bank, Abanka, by the middle of 2019.The third largest bank Nova KBM was sold to U.S. investment firm Apollo Global Management and the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) in 2015. Both, NKBM and Abanka, also received state help four years ago when the country managed to only narrowly avoid an international bailout. ($1 = 0.8470 euros) (Reporting By Marja Novak. Editing by Jane Merriman and Susan Fenton) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/slovenia-nlb/update-1-slovenia-may-offer-to-apply-penalty-on-nlb-to-avoid-sale-sources-idINL8N1N07US'|'2017-10-25T18:21:00.000+03:00'
'ee766b831ce2a5755f2b1a686cddff4df37caed9'|'Cash ban, GST disruptions to cool India''s GDP growth to a 4-year low: Reuters poll'|'October 25, 2017 / 6:05 AM / Updated 15 hours ago Cash ban, GST disruptions to cool India''s GDP growth to a 4-year low: Reuters poll Shaloo Shrivastava 4 Min Read BENGALURU (Reuters) - India<69>s economy will likely grow at its slowest pace in four years this fiscal year, a Reuters poll showed, as a currency ban and the new goods and services tax (GST) have disrupted business activity and dampened consumer demand. Customers shop in a Chinese toy market in Kolkata, India October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri/Files Asia<69>s third-largest economy will grow at 6.7 percent in the fiscal year ending March 2018, the slowest since the new methodology of measuring gross domestic product (GDP) was introduced in the 2014-15 fiscal year, according to the latest poll of 30 economists. The poll was taken on Oct. 12-24, closing just before India announced a $32.43 billion plan to recapitalise state banks, a bid to tackle a major drag on the economy. While the latest poll<6C>s number for this year matches the International Monetary Fund<6E>s toned-down forecast - that was 7.2 percent earlier - it is a sharp decline from 7.3 percent the July Reuters poll showed. But despite the broad and marked slowdown expected in economic activity, India<69>s projected growth rate will be second to the world<6C>s fastest growing major economy - China - if predictions are met. A majority of economists said the risk to their already lower outlook for Indian growth this fiscal year is skewed further to the downside as stressed corporate balance sheets prevent a recovery in private capital spending and mounting bad loans at Indian banks remain a burden. All but three of 23 respondents who answered an extra question said the government had imposed too many sweeping changes for the economy in a short period of time, referring to demonetisation and the GST, and that has lowered growth expectations. <20>Demonetisation was unnecessary and had a huge disruptive effect. Even before the economy could recover from that shock, came (the) GST,<2C> said Kunal Kundu, vice president and India economist at Societe Generale. <20>More importantly, the government was not prepared adequately enough, thereby transmitting further shock to the slowing economy.<2E> Prime Minister Narendra Modi<64>s decision last November to scrap high-value old banknotes wiped out about 86 percent of currency in circulation virtually overnight in an economy which is largely cash-based. An employee rests on a power loom machine inside a partially operational factory at an industrial area on the outskirts of Mumbai, India, October 5, 2017. REUTERS/ Danish Siddiqui That has hurt consumer spending, which powers more than half of the $2 trillion economy. But just when some improvement in data raised hopes that the impact of the cash clampdown had been absorbed, confusion among businesses on pricing goods and services after the July 1 implementation of GST has impacted activity. The economy grew at 5.7 percent annually in the April-June quarter, its lowest level in more than three years and well below expectations. However, nearly three-fourths of 23 respondents who answered an extra question said India does not need a stimulus package and instead should focus on fiscal discipline which is vital for investment from outside the country to flow in. <20>There is limited scope for any stimulus when the budget fiscal deficit projections will anyways be breached on account of revenue shortfall,<2C> said Abhishek Upadhyay, economist at ICICI Securities Primary Dealership. Despite bleak growth expectations, the Reserve Bank of India is forecast to keep key policy rates on hold through mid-2019, focusing on anchoring inflation. The latest Reuters poll predicted retail inflation to average 3.5 percent this fiscal year, unchanged from the July median but below the RBI<42>s medium-term target of 4.0 percent. Inflation was expected to average 4.5 percent in 2018-2019, compared to 4.3 percent in the previous poll. <20>Wit
'6b85f37857c8019aed2954cde0c1b96a34b66229'|'Deutsche Bank to pay $220 million in U.S. Libor probe'|'October 25, 2017 / 4:59 PM / Updated 24 minutes ago Deutsche Bank to pay $220 million in U.S. Libor probe Reuters Staff 2   Deutsche Bank AG ( DBKGn.DE ) has agreed to pay $220 million (<28>116 million) to settle U.S. regulatory charges that it defrauded government and nonprofit entities by manipulating Libor and other benchmark interest rates. FILE PHOTO - The headquarters of Germany''s Deutsche Bank are photographed early evening in Frankfurt, Germany, January 31, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo The settlement between the German bank and attorneys general of 44 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. was announced on Wednesday by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Deutsche Bank is the second bank to settle, joining Britain<69>s Barclays Plc ( BARC.L ), which reached a $100 million settlement in August 2016. Both agreed to cooperate in the multistate probe into several banks, which is continuing. <20>This settlement resolves the bank<6E>s final pending U.S. regulatory inquiry related to Libor,<2C> Deutsche Bank spokesman Troy Gravitt said in a statement. Banks use Libor, or the London Interbank Offered Rate, to set rates on hundreds of trillions of dollars of credit card, mortgage, student loan and other transactions, and to determine the cost of borrowing from one another. The attorneys general said that from as early as 2005 and continuing through the global financial crisis, Deutsche Bank made false or misleading Libor submissions, tried to influence other banks<6B> submissions to benefit its own trading positions, and concealed the deception from customers. According to the settlement agreement, $213.35 million will go to entities eligible for restitution, and the rest will cover costs incurred in the investigation. Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-deutschebank-settlement/deutsche-bank-to-pay-220-mln-in-u-s-libor-probe-idUKKBN1CU2JA'|'2017-10-25T19:59:00.000+03:00'
'204cbb0526b58f2713c77a71e92ed01d873c5e51'|'Denmark''s ATP sees lower returns after strong quarter - CEO'|'COPENHAGEN, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Denmark<72>s largest pension fund expects lower returns in future as central banks tighten liquidity, its chief executive said on Thursday after the fund achieved its highest return in five years in the third quarter.ATP achieved an investment return of 9.93 billion Danish crowns ($1.58 billion) in the third quarter, equivalent to a rate of return of 8.9 percent relative to its investment portfolio, the highest level since 2012.The return was achieved across all asset types, especially equities. Listed Danish equities generated a return of 5.3 billion crowns.<2E>It<49>s an experiment we<77>re seeing now: how do we get back from the very geared balance sheets in the central banks to a more normal level. We don<6F>t know how the markets will react to that,<2C> chief executive Christian Hyldahl said.He talked to Reuters before the European Central Bank, as widely expected, announced that it would cut its monthly asset purchases to 30 billion euros ($35.25 billion) from 60 billion euros starting January.When the liquidity in the market is being reduced the rises in the stock markets cannot continue, Hyldahl said.<2E>That does not mean everything will fall 20 percent, but the returns we<77>ve seen earlier will not continue<75>.ATP, which handles mandatory pension savings for more than 5 million Danes, holds assets worth 758 billion crowns, ranking it among Europe<70>s top-four pension funds, according to British advisory firm Willis Towers Watson. ($1 = 6.3005 Danish crowns) ($1 = 0.8510 euros) (Reporting by Teis Jensen, editing by Alister Doyle) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/denmark-investment/denmarks-atp-sees-lower-returns-after-strong-quarter-ceo-idINL8N1N16P2'|'2017-10-26T10:28:00.000+03:00'
'6bc3e35d98989b7ba20c365a4f6c8f6298d7e226'|'U.S. 7-year notes sold at highest yield since January'|'NEW YORK, Oct 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday sold $28 billion of seven-year government notes at a yield of 2.280 percent, the highest yield for this debt maturity at an auction since January, Treasury data showed.The ratio of bids to the amount offered was 2.39, the weakest reading since August 2016. This measure of overall auction demand was 2.70 at the prior seven-year note sale in September. (Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-treasury-auction/u-s-7-year-notes-sold-at-highest-yield-since-january-idINL2N1N11UV'|'2017-10-26T15:18:00.000+03:00'
'66465eadf8faad7b6c6f02305c822f7d0e131c5b'|'Singapore September factory output beats expectations, up 14.6 percent'|'October 26, 2017 / 7:37 AM / Updated 7 hours ago Singapore September factory output beats expectations, up 14.6 percent Fathin Ungku 3 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore<72>s industrial production in September beat expectations and grew for the fourteenth consecutive month thanks to continued growth in electronics, data showed on Thursday. Cranes move at a public housing construction site in Singapore August 12, 2014. REUTERS/Edgar Su/Files Manufacturing output in September rose higher than expected at 14.6 percent from a year earlier, despite a shock decline in exports in the same month, data from the Singapore Economic Development Board showed. The median forecast in a Reuters survey predicted a 10 percent expansion. On a month-on-month and seasonally adjusted basis, industrial production fell less harshly in September at 0.5 percent, beating analysts<74> call for a contraction of 6.7 percent. <20>Manufacturing came stronger than expected. It<49>s a bit stronger than even the government<6E>s advance estimates as well,<2C> said Nomura economist Brian Tan. Manufacturing output of electronics grew 33.2 percent from the year earlier, surprising analysts as this comes after electronics exports saw its first on-year contraction in almost a year. <20>It<49>s quite interesting that there is a big divergence between the two (exports and manufacturing),<2C> Tan said. <20>Electronic industrial production numbers are more consistent with regional trends, while the export data seem out of sorts,<2C> he added. Singapore has been among a number of export-reliant Asian economies to benefit from a general uptick in global demand the past year, enjoying strong sales of its technology products, but analysts expect the city-state<74>s stellar growth numbers to start moderating. The sudden decline exports had prompted some analysts to raise the prospects of a downward revision in the city-state<74>s third-quarter GDP, which grew faster than expected at 6.3 percent from the previous three months on an annualised basis. <20>All this data is suggesting that manufacturing is still doing well but the real question is what is happening in the broader economy. If there are spillovers to the rest of the economy,<2C> Tan said. Singapore<72>s central bank held monetary policy steady earlier this month, although analysts say its policy statement suggests a cautious view about growth next year. Reporting by Fathin Ungku; Editing by Sunil Nair '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/singapore-economy-manufacturing/singapore-september-factory-output-beats-expectations-up-14-6-percent-idINKBN1CV0RK'|'2017-10-26T05:37:00.000+03:00'
'62317b7113fe1c45c817e381f22093265202c968'|'Aided by Apple, STM results top forecasts as it raises outlook'|'October 26, 2017 / 6:13 AM / Updated 4 minutes ago Aided by Apple, STM results top forecasts as it raises outlook Eric Auchard 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Franco-Italian chipmaker STMicroelectronics ( STM.PA ) reported third-quarter revenue and net profits that topped analysts<74> forecasts, helped by a key customer believed to be Apple ( AAPL.O ), and raised its year-end outlook. STMicro posted net revenue of $2.14 billion, up 18.9 percent year-over-year, putting the diversified chipmaker on track to deliver 18 percent growth in 2017, it said. This will mark the first year it has shown solid double-digit growth since 2010. The company generated double-digit sales growth across all four of its business lines compared to the year-ago quarter. All major regions grew by double digits both compared to a year ago and sequentially between the second and third quarter. The stand out performance came in its imaging business, where sales more than doubled in the last three months to $158 million. Demand in this division began to ramp up for new Time of Flight sensors, which a key customer - which analysts widely agree is Apple ( AAPL.O ) - is buying as a proximity or motion detector to use in its latest iPhones. Third-quarter gross margins rose to 39.5 percent, slightly above the 39 percent target, on average, that the company had set out in July. It said fourth-quarter margins were set to rise to around 39.9 percent, plus or minus 2 percentage points. <20>We see clear opportunities in front of us to continue to drive revenue growth, margin expansion and shareholder value and we are determined to capture this additional potential,<2C> Chief Executive and President Carlo Bozotti said in a statement. Net profit attributable to the parent company more than tripled to $236 million from $71.0 million in the year-ago quarter. That easily topped analysts forecasts which ranged from $210-$220 million, according to a Thomson Reuters poll. Reporting by Eric Auchard; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-stmicroelectron-results/aided-by-apple-stm-results-top-forecasts-as-it-raises-outlook-idUKKBN1CV0J2'|'2017-10-26T09:12:00.000+03:00'
'107c4aedd9a4d5a5da1d3dd9f4f2b626033940b3'|'LPC-CVC<56>s ACR set to launch <20>325m divi recap'|'LONDON, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Bankers are set to launch a <20>325m leveraged loan for two of the four chemical assets CVC acquired from DSM in 2015, that will enable shareholders to take around <20>100m as a dividend, banking sources said.CVC acquired Acrylonitrile and Composite Resins (ACR) from DSM in 2015, along with Caprolactam and Sitech. Collectively the Dutch-headquartered assets are held in a holding company ChemicaInvest.Since its acqusition, ACR has grown with Ebitda now totalling <20>79m, from <20>57m in 2015. Off the back of strong growth, the dividend recapitalisation has launched, the sources said.<2E>The business has performed well since its 2015 acquisition,<2C> one of the sources said.Deutsche Bank, Citi, Rabobank and RBC are holding pre-marketing discussions with investors about raising a <20>325m term loan B, the sources said.It is due to launch for general syndication to a broad group of institutional investors in November, the sources said.As well as paying the dividend, the loan will be used with cash on the balance sheet to refinance around <20>250m of existing debt, the sources said.Leverage following the dividend recapitalisation will stand in the mid-3s, the sources said.ChemicaInvest manufactures polymer intermediates and composite resins for high-growth markets, according to CVC<56>s website. (Editing by Christopher Mangham) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/acr-leveraged-loan/lpc-cvcs-acr-set-to-launch-325m-divi-recap-idINL8N1N18GD'|'2017-10-26T12:43:00.000+03:00'
'0df62f62a0166a18adba29a67a937d3902800130'|'Fresnillo''s third quarter silver production jumps 24.1 percent'|' 54 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago Fresnillo''s third quarter silver production jumps 24.1 percent Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Precious metals miner Fresnillo Plc ( FRES.L ) on Wednesday reported a 24.1 percent rise in third-quarter silver production, boosted by the start of operations at the company<6E>s San Julian phase II facility. Silver production for the third quarter ended Sept.30 rose to 14.6 million ounces. Gold production rose 6.1 percent to 233,000 ounces. Reporting by Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru; Editing by David Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-fresnillo-outlook/fresnillos-third-quarter-silver-production-jumps-24-1-percent-idUKKBN1CU0MF'|'2017-10-25T09:53:00.000+03:00'
'49099e2ed1265d6e6a817dbe092985692d324938'|'Japan Abe''s post-election policy targets wages, delays fiscal reform'|'October 25, 2017 / 9:50 AM / Updated 12 minutes ago Japan Abe''s post-election policy targets wages, delays fiscal reform Leika Kihara , Stanley White 4 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe<62>s economic agenda is shaping up after his landslide election win with a focus on steering firms to hike wages and keeping the economic recovery going with loose fiscal and monetary policies. Japan''s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is also leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), attends a news conference at LDP headquarters in Tokyo, Japan October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai Details emerged on Wednesday of policymakers<72> plans to push businesses to use their huge cash-piles to boost salaries and moves to shift fiscal prudence targets, a sign Abe will continue to prioritise growth over austerity. While the government has no immediate plans for a big spending spree, the Bank of Japan<61>s pledge to keep borrowing costs virtually at zero with ultra-easy policy will allow lawmakers to delay steps to rein in Japan<61>s huge public debt, analysts say. <20>The government wants the BOJ to maintain the status quo and help the economy with ultra-easy policy,<2C> said Hiroshi Shiraishi, senior economist at BNP Paribas Securities. <20>In the meantime, wage hikes would be crucial to generate inflation and a positive economic cycle. The government has had little success so far, but it<69>s not a bad idea to make clear its resolve to boost wages,<2C> he said. With inflation distant from its 2 percent goal, the BOJ is set to keep policy steady at next week<65>s rate review and stress its resolve to keep its money spigot open. FISCAL REFORM ON BACKBURNER Abe<62>s ruling coalition scored a landslide victory at Sunday<61>s general election, boosted by his campaign promises to invest more heavily on education and childcare. To encourage more growth, the government is considering expanding tax breaks for companies that raise salaries to achieve a 3 percent increase in overall salaries, sources have told Reuters. That would be higher than a roughly 2 percent increase in big firms<6D> wages in 2017. The move reflects the government<6E>s frustration over slow wage growth that has weighed on private consumption, even as companies reap record profits thanks to an improving economy. Total cash earnings rose a revised 0.7 percent in August compared with the same month last year, labour ministry data showed, but adjusted for inflation they fell 0.1 percent. <20>The government will continue to shift more spending to policies that directly affect households,<2C> said Norio Miyagawa, senior economist at Mizuho Securities. <20>Companies have a lot of reserves, so it makes sense to try to get them to spend that money on capital expenditure and wages.<2E> More spending for households, however, comes at the expense of further delays in fixing Japan<61>s debt burden which, at twice the size of its economy, is the worst among advanced economies. Abe has pledged to proceed with a twice-delayed sales tax hike to 10 percent from 8 percent in 2019. But he decided to divert more proceeds for spending instead of debt payment, forcing the government to abandon an original deadline of fiscal 2020 for balancing the budget. Some members of the government<6E>s top economic council will on Thursday propose setting no new timeframe for meeting a fiscal goal aimed at fixing Japan<61>s tattered finances, a sign Abe will continue to prioritise growth over fiscal austerity, sources have told Reuters. Delays in fiscal reform have not rattled the bond market yet, but snowballing social security spending for a fast-ageing population could strain government finances and make Japan more vulnerable to a sudden spike in borrowing costs. Abe swept to power in late 2012, pledging to pull Japan<61>s economy, the world<6C>s third largest, out of nearly two decades of deflation and stagnation. His stimulus policies, dubbed <20>Abenomics<63> have helped boost stock prices and bring profits for manufacturers by weakening the 
'd9b55bc4d402cef0042e17fd21256ec4dc576499'|'Toys ''R'' Us says most top vendors have resumed shipments'|'October 24, 2017 / 11:50 PM / Updated 20 hours ago Toys ''R'' Us says most top vendors have resumed shipments Tracy Rucinski 3 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Vendors to Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us have resumed shipping top products, a bankruptcy lawyer said on Tuesday, allowing the retailer to stock its shelves ahead of the all-important holiday season. FILE PHOTO: The Toys R Us logo is seen in this illustration photo September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo <20>Inventory is on the shelves,<2C> Joshua Sussberg, an attorney with the company<6E>s law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, said at a U.S. Bankruptcy Court hearing in Richmond, Virginia, adding that the company was well-stocked with the <20>latest and greatest<73> in toys. Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us generates roughly 40 percent of total revenues in the fourth quarter, and industry experts have expressed concern over the big-box retailer<65>s ability to retain vendors and customers after its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on Sept. 19. At the time of the filing, nearly 40 percent of its trade base had stopped shipments. Now, 100 percent of merchandise vendors that supply the top 20 products are actively shipping, followed by 49 of the top 50 vendors and 91 of the top 100, Sussberg said. However, Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us still owes creditors $5 billion, and at least two major toymakers, Hasbro Inc ( HAS.O ) and Jakks Pacific, have warned that the bankruptcy would hurt their business this year. Some smaller toymakers have decided to stop shipments. Wayne, New Jersey-based Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us, which also owns the Babies <20>R<EFBFBD> Us chain, is among dozens of traditional brick-and-mortar retailers that have struggled under high debt as more consumers shop online. Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us is saddled with debt from a $6.6-billion buyout in 2005 by KKR & Co LP, Bain Capital LP and real estate investment trust Vornado Realty Trust. As part of its plan to restructure and entice customers, it wants to add event space, hands-on product demonstrations and combine its flagship and Babies <20>R<EFBFBD> Us stores. Some investors were skeptical over the outlook for big-box retailers. <20>The opportunity for Toys is difficult given the amount of leverage it had when it entered bankruptcy, as well as its current operating trends,<2C> said George Schultze, distressed specialist and head of Schultze Asset Management. <20>The outlook in retail is terrible, even for big companies like Toys, so there isn<73>t a lot of new capital available for that industry.<2E> Meanwhile, the unsecured creditors committee, which includes Mattel Inc ( MAT.O ), LEGO Systems and Simon Property Group Inc ( SPG.N ), plans to investigate financial transactions made before the Chapter 11 filing, lawyer Kenneth Eckstein said on Tuesday. Reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by David Gregorio '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-toys-r-us-bankruptcy/toys-r-us-says-most-top-vendors-have-resumed-shipments-idUSKBN1CT38I'|'2017-10-25T02:50:00.000+03:00'
'9107ca2c1a3ce93dc28e0dcb2be2a56440cf87cd'|'Extent of VW emissions cheating discussed earlier than known: Spiegel'|'October 27, 2017 / 1:52 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Extent of VW emissions cheating discussed earlier than known: Spiegel Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ) engineers told top managers that diesel emissions manipulations went far beyond issues in the United States two days before the carmaker made a public announcement to that effect in 2015, Der Spiegel reported on Friday. FILE PHOTO: A Volkswagen (VW) logo covered with dust is seen in Grafenwoehr, Germany, October 26, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo Volkswagen (VW) admitted on Sept. 20, 2015, to installing secret software in hundreds of thousands of U.S. diesel cars to cheat exhaust emissions tests and make them appear cleaner than they were on the road. The news wiped billions of euros off its market value, but its stock price took another hit when it said two days later, on Sept. 22, 2015, that the issue affected not only vehicles in the United States but rather around 11 million cars worldwide. German securities law requires firms to publish any market sensitive news in a timely fashion. A probe by German prosecutors includes investigating whether VW disclosed the possible financial damage to its investors promptly. VW said in a statement it believed its management fulfilled its obligations under German disclosure rules. It declined to comment further, citing the prosecutors<72> ongoing investigation. Der Spiegel said, without citing sources, that former Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn and finance chief Hans Dieter Poetsch were told by engineers in a meeting on Sept. 20 that the emissions manipulation was a global issue. It said the participants of that meeting also discussed whether VW was obliged to inform the public under German disclosure rules. Winterkorn, who resigned shortly after the diesel scandal broke, has told a government committee that he informed Germany<6E>s Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt on Sept. 21, a day before the public statement, that VW<56>s problems were global. Der Spiegel quoted a document drawn up by VW<56>s lawyers as saying the company did not have reliable numbers on the possible damage until the evening of Sept. 21. Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Additional reporting by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-disclosure/extent-of-vw-emissions-cheating-discussed-earlier-than-known-spiegel-idUSKBN1CW1YR'|'2017-10-27T16:52:00.000+03:00'
'30ee5ade9c138db4bf20c7f9149605236cd84a91'|'Tullow''s wildcat exploration fails to strike oil in Suriname'|'October 27, 2017 / 7:34 AM / Updated 12 minutes ago Tullow''s wildcat exploration fails to strike oil in Suriname Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Tullow Oil Plc ( TLW.L ) said it had plugged and abandoned an exploration well in offshore Suriname, after not making a commercial discovery. <20>The Araku-1 well was an ambitious wildcat exploration well that was drilled efficiently and at very low cost,<2C> Exploration Director Angus McCoss said. <20>While we have not made a commercial discovery, we are encouraged by recovering gas condensate from the well and remain fully committed to exploration in Suriname and Guyana,<2C> he said. Shares in Tullow were down 3.2 percent at 176.6 pence at 0704 GMT, making it the biggest faller on the STOXX Oil and Gas Index .SXEP. [nL8N1N21YL] The well was drilled in a block where Tullow Oil operates with a 30 percent interest alongside joint venture partners, Statoil ( STL.OL ) and Noble Energy ( NBL.N ), Tullow said. Analysts at Jefferies said that while the Araku-1 exploration well has proved unsuccessful, the result <20>ironically<6C> meant no additional capital expenditure demands on Tullow<6F>s balance sheet. Investec analysts said: <20>The well was also being closely watched by the market with expectations in our view higher than normal given the recent successes of Exxon ( XOM.N ) across the martime border in Guyana.<2E> Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru. Editing by Jane Merriman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tullow-suriname/tullows-wildcat-exploration-fails-to-strike-oil-in-suriname-idUKKBN1CW0RW'|'2017-10-27T10:34:00.000+03:00'
'42676d0a7196fc499c2a73c8bcdcb42a9548db1f'|'UPDATE 1-Linde sales slip as U.S. healthcare struggles'|'* EBITDA up 3 pct to 1.03 bln eur* Merger still seen completing in H2 2018* Shares up 2.4 percent, at top of DAX (Adds shares, CEO and analyst Quote: s, details)By Georgina Prodhan and Alexander H<>bnerLONDON/MUNICH, Oct 27 (Reuters) - German industrial gases maker Linde reported a 3 percent rise third-quarter core profit helped by cost cuts ahead of its planned $80 billion merger with U.S. peer Praxair.Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose to 1.03 billion euros ($1.2 billion), Munich-based Linde said on Friday, versus the 1.02 billion expected by analysts in a Reuters poll.Linde, which supplies gases for refrigeration, air separation and medical treatments, said its all-share merger with Praxair remained on track for the second half of 2018.Its shares were up 2.4 percent in early trading, topping the German blue-chip DAX index which was up 0.4 percent.<2E>There were positive trends in revenue and earnings in the first nine months of 2017 and we are also right on track with our efficiency programme,<2C> Chief Executive Aldo Belloni said in a statement.Linde this week extended the acceptance period for conversion of its shares into shares of the new merged company by two weeks until Nov. 7, and lowered the minimum acceptance level to 60 percent from 75 percent.It aims to reach 74 percent acceptance by Nov. 24, otherwise benefits for the tax inversion following the merger will not happen and the deal is likely to be called off.As of Tuesday, 64.5 percent of its shares had been tendered for exchange.Linde will hold a news conference at 0800 GMT and a call with analysts at 1200 GMT.<2E>Linde presented good Q3 numbers. We hope to get an update on the running (prolonged) tendering process in today<61>s CC at 2:00 pm CET,<2C> Baader analyst Markus Mayer wrote in a note, keeping his <20>buy<75> recommendation on the stock.The merger with Praxair, which would reunite a group split during World War One when Linde was shut out of the United States, would create a global leader that would overtake France<63>s Air Liquide.Air Liquide reported this month that quarterly sales at its biggest division, gas and services, grew by 4 percent - their fastest pace in 18 months - mainly driven by China.Linde<64>s third-quarter sales slipped 1 percent due to price pressure in competitive government tenders at its U.S. healthcare business.Its operating margin rose to 28.3 from 27.2 percent at its main gases division and to 9.2 from 8.7 percent at the smaller engineering business.It cut 103 million euros in sales, general and administration costs in the first nine months.Orders jumped 9 percent at its plant-engineering business, which has suffered from low oil prices that have put customers off investments, as demand increased for liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants.Linde said it had secured anti-trust approval for the Praxair merger from four of the 24 necessary authorities: in Pakistan, Paraguay, Russia and Turkey. <20>The parties concerned are cooperating closely with all the other competition authorities,<2C> it said.Reuters reported this week that the companies were preparing to sell assets with core earnings of 650-750 million euros and an enterprise value of about 6.5-7.5 billion.The assets up for sale have combined sales of more than 2.7 billion euros, the bulk of which are in the United States.$1 = 0.8596 euros Reporting by Alexander Huebner; writing by Georgina Prodhan; editing by Maria Sheahan and Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/linde-results/update-1-linde-sales-slip-as-u-s-healthcare-struggles-idINL8N1N211N'|'2017-10-27T04:19:00.000+03:00'
'0ea9f95127bb7c25bd163d60fa1cbdde4bc7a59c'|'GE''s CEO sees more partnerships ahead for digital business'|'SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - General Electric Co ( GE.N ) will use alliances to build its digital-industrial business in coming years, Chief Executive Officer John Flannery said at a conference on Wednesday.GE has said it plans to scale back its own investment in its GE Digital business in 2018, from about $2.1 billion this year. Last week, GE announced a partnership with iPhone maker Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ).GE<47>s cloud-based software platform, known as Predix, aims to connect factories, power plants and other industrial equipment to computers that improve performance and predict outages. But Predix<69>s limited capabilities and performance problems have caused GE to lose out to competitors such as Siemens AG ( SIEGn.DE ) and startups such as Uptake and C3IOT.GE also said it was expanding its partnership with Microsoft Corp ( MSFT.O ), allowing it to provide access to Microsoft applications on Predix. But the specifics largely duplicated what the companies said when they first announced a partnership in July 2016.GE said on Wednesday that Predix will be generally available on Azure in the United states on Nov. 30, months later than the original target of the second quarter of this year.<2E>Realizing they can<61>t build their own ecosystem, GE is going to build it with partners so they can implement it quickly,<2C> said Gary Mintchell, chief executive of The Manufacturing Connection, an industrial-internet-focused research and consulting company.Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Leslie Adler '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ge-digital-presentation/ge-ceo-sees-more-partnerships-ahead-for-digital-business-idUSKBN1CU2IC'|'2017-10-26T00:51:00.000+03:00'
'd81b33b7355750b21c9b925db889832734ef40fa'|'U.S., European shares drop amid worry over results, reform, ahead of ECB move'|'October 25, 2017 / 1:04 AM / Updated 21 minutes ago U.S., European shares drop amid worry over results, reform, ahead of ECB move Stephanie Kelly 4 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. and European stock markets fell on Wednesday amid some concerns over corporate earnings and U.S. tax reform plans, a day before the European Central Bank was set to decide its next monetary policy move. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid The MSCI world equity index .MIWD PUS, which tracks shares in 47 countries, fell 0.35 percent. Republicans have struggled to deliver on a number of President Trump<6D>s promises in Congress and financial investors worry tax cuts promised by the president to support growth will see a similar fate. Traders cited a Wall Street Journal report suggesting, in contrast to comments by President Donald Trump, that Republicans were still considering limiting the deductibility of 401(k) plan retirement contributions, as one reason for the downturn in U.S. equities. The plans, for decades, have helped American workers save for retirement. <20>The 401k issue is causing some confusion because it is directly contradicting the President and the market doesn<73>t like confusion,<2C> said Michael Antonelli, managing director of institutional sales trading at Robert W. Baird in Milwaukee. Disappointing earnings from AT&T ( T.N ) sent shares in the United States<65> second largest wireless carrier down 3.6 percent, pulling down other telecom stocks Verizon ( VZ.N ) and CenturyLink ( CTL.N ). The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 109.85 points, or 0.47 percent, to 23,331.91, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 12.77 points, or 0.50 percent, to 2,556.36 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 38.76 points, or 0.59 percent, to 6,559.67. European shares closed down, with a mixed batch of company results sparking profit-taking a day before the ECB<43>s policy meeting. The central bank is expected to signal a reduction in its bond-buying scheme, gradually withdrawing post-crisis stimulus. The pan-European STOXX 600 closed at its lowest level in nearly four weeks, down 0.6 percent. The FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 lost 0.61 percent. BOND YIELDS U.S. long-dated Treasury yields trimmed gains Wednesday afternoon, but remained at multi-month highs after a strong U.S. durable goods report. The upcoming announcement of President Donald Trump<6D>s nominee to head the Federal Reserve has kept investors on edge over the direction monetary policy could take depending on whom he nominates. Benchmark 10-year note yields US10YT=RR last fell 10/32 in price to yield 2.4426 percent, from 2.406 percent late on Tuesday. The 30-year bond yield, US30YT=RR last lost 21/32 in price to yield 2.9559 percent, from 2.923 percent late on Tuesday. The U.S. dollar dipped against of basket of key world currencies as the wait continued for President Trump to name the next head of the U.S. central bank. The dollar index .DXY fell 0.06 percent, with the euro EUR= up 0.4 percent to $1.1806. The Japanese yen strengthened 0.11 percent versus the greenback at 113.79 per dollar, while Sterling GBP= was last trading at $1.3248, up 0.87 percent on the day. MSCI''s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS closed 0.02 percent higher, while Japan''s Nikkei .N225 lost 0.45 percent. U.S. crude CLcv1 fell 0.67 percent to $52.12 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $58.27, down 0.1 percent on the day. Spot gold XAU= added 0.1 percent to $1,276.81 an ounce. Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; additional reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss and Richard Leong in New York, Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru, Danilo Masoni and Helen Reid in Milan and London; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Daniel Bases'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asian-shares-flat-nikkei-aims-for-17th-straight-gain-idUKKBN1CU02G'|'2017-
'e4c1f94596f46c7dd52b023d1f34c191e28f9cf1'|'Mexico bank Interacciones to merge with larger peer Banorte: sources'|'MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico<63>s fourth-largest bank Grupo Financiero Banorte and its smaller peer Grupo Financiero Interacciones will shortly announce a merger, two people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.The logo of Grupo Financiero Banorte is pictured at its headquarters in Mexico City, Mexico, August 10, 2017. REUTERS/Ginnette Riquelme The deal would join two lenders whose chairmen are father and son.Rumors of a takeover have circulated since Carlos Hank Gonzalez stepped down as chief executive of Interacciones ( GFINTERO.MX ) three years ago to join the board of Banorte ( GFNORTEO.MX ), where he is now chairman.Shares in Banorte were down 3.9 percent on Wednesday afternoon at 112.5 pesos per share, while Interacciones shares were up 1.8 percent at 106 per share.One of the two people, who declined to be named due to the confidentiality of the matter, said that the deal could be announced later on Wednesday. The deal was first reported on Wednesday by several of Mexico<63>s national newspapers.Banorte did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An Interacciones executive did not reply to a request for comment.The two banks are already intimately entwined as part of the powerful Hank family.Carlos Hank Gonzalez was at Interacciones for 14 years before moving to Banorte. His father Carlos Hank Rhon chairs Interacciones and owns around 40.67 percent of its shares.Banorte<74>s top shareholders are a series of trusts and bank holdings, according to its 2016 annual report. It says no executive or board member directly individually controls more than 1 percent of the shares.When Hank Gonzalez moved to Banorte, Interacciones said that it did not necessarily mean the two groups would merge.Reporting by Sheky Espejo and Noe Torres; Editing by Dave Graham and Cynthia Osterman '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-banorte-interacciones/mexican-bank-interacciones-to-merge-with-larger-peer-banorte-sources-idINKBN1CU2QC'|'2017-10-25T16:06:00.000+03:00'
'6053a2b7533684a1fee06af55098e014c49ec58c'|'Saudi PIF says open to more big ticket investments like Uber'|'October 25, 2017 / 8:04 AM / in a few seconds Saudi PIF says open to more big ticket investments like Uber Reuters Staff 1 Min Read RIYADH (Reuters) - The head of Saudi Arabia<69>s main sovereign wealth fund said on Wednesday that the vehicle was open to investing in more big ticket investments like U.S. ride services company Uber [UBER.UL]. FILE PHOTO: Saudi Arabia''s Public Investment Fund (PIF) managing director Yasir al-Rumayyan speaks at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York City, U.S., September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Asked whether to expect more big ticket investments like this, Public Investment Fund (PIF) Managing Director Yasir Al Rumayyan told reporters: <20>Yes, we are open to everything.<2E> He was speaking on the second day of a major investment conference in the capital Riyadh. Last year PIF invested $3.5 billion in Uber. Reporting by Hadeel Al Sayegh, Writing by Sylvia Westall, Editing by Tom Arnold'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-economy-pif-investment/saudi-pif-says-open-to-more-big-ticket-investments-like-uber-idUSKBN1CU0TB'|'2017-10-25T10:55:00.000+03:00'
'841fb1671e67102d52de0f0831575f8b17390b93'|'Saudi Aramco, SABIC receive bids for oil-to-chemicals project'|'October 25, 2017 / 9:26 AM / Updated 11 hours ago Saudi Aramco, SABIC receive bids for oil-to-chemicals project Reuters Staff 2 Min Read KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Saudi Aramco and Saudi Basic Industries Corp have received project management consultancy bids for a planned joint venture oil-to-chemicals project, industry sources said. Logo of Saudi Aramco is seen at the 20th Middle East Oil & Gas Show and Conference (MOES 2017) in Manama, Bahrain, March 7, 2017. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed The two partners are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop the complex in mid-November. The $20 billion plus project would be the first major scheme involving the two companies and is part of Saudi Aramco<63>s plans to expand in petrochemicals. Bidders include KBR, Fluor, Jacobs Engineering, WorleyParsons and Amec Foster Wheeler. Bids were submitted mid-October for project management consultancy (PMC) of the whole project including pre-front end engineering and design work (pre-FEED) and FEED, sources familiar with the matter said. Sources expect the award of the contract to be made early 2018 while commissioning of the complex is seen by the end of 2024. Saudi Aramco<63>s CEO Amin Nasser said on Tuesday he expects a final decision to be made by the end of the year. <20>The two companies are working on a memorandum of understanding that is expected to be signed mid-November,<2C> said one of the sources who declined to be identified as the information is not public. Asked about the bidding process, Saudi Aramco said it does not comment on its on-going business transactions. Reporting by Reem Shamseddine; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aramco-sabic-otc/saudi-aramco-sabic-receive-bids-for-oil-to-chemicals-project-idUSKBN1CU13K'|'2017-10-25T12:22:00.000+03:00'
'77463383f83f016f13bbb3678ef3b216673669c9'|'Treasury secretary says officials caught off-guard by extent of wages slowdown - Business'|'Australian economy Treasury secretary says officials caught off-guard by extent of wages slowdown John Fraser says economic scars of global financial crisis remain but low wages growth could have bottomed out John Fraser and the finance minister, Mathias Cormann. The Treasury secretary says there are signs Australia<69>s workers could soon have real wages growth. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP Australian economy Treasury secretary says officials caught off-guard by extent of wages slowdown John Fraser says economic scars of global financial crisis remain but low wages growth could have bottomed out View more sharing options Wednesday 25 October 2017 05.50 BST Last modified on Wednesday 25 October 2017 05.51 BST The Treasury secretary, John Fraser, has expressed optimism that Australia<69>s record-low wages growth could have bottomed out as wages pick up in some pockets of the country. But he has admitted Treasury officials were caught off-guard by the extent of the wages slowdown since the global financial crisis, saying the economic <20>scars<72> from the crisis have run deeper than expected in Australia. Nigel Ray, the deputy secretary of Treasury<72>s macroeconomic group, has also revealed that someone has lodged a freedom-of-information request to get their hands on internal Treasury <20>analysis<69> that the treasurer, Scott Morrison, has been promoting in recent weeks but refusing to release publicly. Australia<69>s unemployment rate falls to four-year low of 5.5% Read more Morrison told the Business Council of Australia last month that Treasury had found, in specific analysis, that wages were growing slowly across most industries in the economy, and most regions of the country, which demonstrated that income inequality was not growing in Australia. Excerpts of Morrison<6F>s BCA speech were printed in a story in the Australian newspaper the morning before his speech, along with details from the unreleased Treasury analysis. Ray said on Wednesday that Treasury had not given its analysis to anyone in the media <20> it had only given its analysis to Morrison<6F>s office. Fraser told senators that there were signs Australia<69>s workers could soon enjoy real wages growth, after years of stagnating wages. <20>We would welcome wages growth to get back to something like the longer-term norms,<2C> he said. <20>I<EFBFBD>m encouraged, actually, that there are signs of it. I rely very heavily on the heads of Treasury group and at the meeting we had in Adelaide there were pockets, and I don<6F>t want to over-egg this, there were pockets or signs of wages growth. <20>And in the consultations we did as part of the report for the Council on Federal Financial Relations later this week we saw pockets also where there were increased wages demand <20> in construction in Victoria, there are signs in the semi-skilled area in north-west Sydney and, interestingly, in some of the regional centres for construction workers. <20>As I said, I don<6F>t want to over-egg it but I think it is starting to pick up a little. That has been the experience overseas as well.<2E> Home ownership for under-35s fell by a third since 1989 <20> report Read more Fraser said that, as with business investment, it was clear many workers had been shaken by the experience of the GFC, adding Treasury was caught off-guard by the protracted slowdown in wages growth after the crisis. <20>The scars of the GFC probably run deeper and broader, and rawer, than we expected,<2C> Fraser said. <20>I know a lot of people in the farming sector, for instance, they still feel it. They<65>re worried about that. <20>The construction sector, that<61>s certainly the case with tradies and whatever. We haven<65>t uninvented the business cycle but it<69>s certainly a much longer business cycle that, in my experience, I<>ve ever seen.<2E> Overall, he said the economy was evolving broadly in line with Treasury<72>s expectations in the 2017-18 budget. The International Monetary Fund earlier this month said Australia was among countries with the highest growth i
'8a4933abca5e466784fbd18ce2775cc3832f1366'|'HCL Tech second-quarter net profit rises, beats estimates'|'October 25, 2017 / 3:05 AM / Updated 6 hours ago HCL Tech second-quarter net profit rises, beats estimates Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - HCL Technologies Ltd, India<69>s fourth-largest software services exporter, posted a 9.5 percent rise in second-quarter net profit, helped by higher revenue from its software services sector. People walk in front of the HCL Technologies Ltd office at Noida, on the outskirts of New Delhi April 17, 2013. REUTERS/Mansi Thapliyal/Files Net profit attributable to shareholders rose to 22.07 billion rupees ($339.12 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30, from 20.15 billion rupees in the same period a year earlier, HCL Technologies said on Wednesday. bit.ly/2yNTaqs Analysts on average expected the company to post a profit of 21.59 billion rupees, Thomson Reuters data showed. Revenue from operations rose 8 percent to 124.33 billion rupees. The company maintained its full-year revenue guidance for a growth between 10.5 percent and 12.5 percent in constant currency terms. ($1 = 65.0800 Indian rupees)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/hcl-techno-results/hcl-tech-second-quarter-net-profit-rises-beats-estimates-idINKBN1CU06Z'|'2017-10-25T06:03:00.000+03:00'
'766477e019d861b8636e905e2f395e6f86d2b8b9'|'Barrick Gold''s Tanzania deal may set expensive precedent - shareholders'|'October 25, 2017 / 4:55 PM / in 11 minutes Barrick Gold''s Tanzania deal may set expensive precedent - shareholders Nicole Mordant 4 Min Read VANCOUVER, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Some mining investors are criticizing Barrick Gold for agreeing to Tanzanian demands in its proposed settlement of a dispute between its Acacia Mining unit and the Tanzanian government, saying this could embolden other host nations to press for bigger concessions from miners. Several shareholders said this week that by agreeing to hand Tanzania 50 percent of the <20>economic benefits<74> from Acacia<69>s three gold mines in the East African country, Barrick may have set the baseline for what nations may demand from global mining companies, possibly slowing mine development. Barrick, which owns 63.9 percent of Acacia, reached a framework deal last week with Tanzania under which Acacia would hand the state a 16 percent stake in each of its three in-country mines, part of the economic benefits, including taxes and royalties, that would go to the government. Acacia would also pay the government $300 million. <20>The 50 percent is not a good precedent by any means for a very risky business,<2C> said Chris Mancini, an analyst at Gabelli Gold Fund, which owns shares in Barrick. Miners would generally want more than half the profits from mines to give them the incentive to build operations in geopolitically risky parts of the world, Mancini said. <20>They are disincentivising development. Barrick<63>s really imperiling the rest of their operations. They are imperiling the industry,<2C> he said. Barrick, which is the world<6C>s biggest gold producer and has operations on five continents, said the proposed agreement complies with Tanzania<69>s new mining law, which requires the government to hold a stake in mining operations. <20>That is not a concession, that is complying with the law,<2C> Barrick spokesman Andy Lloyd said. Tanzania was long seen as one of Africa<63>s brightest mining prospects but new laws have slowed fresh investment amid government efforts to claim a larger slice of the pie. It has accused Acacia of understating its gold shipments, serving it with a $190 billion bill for unpaid taxes and halting most of its exports. Barrick <20>are showing a willingness to cave to ridiculous demands,<2C> said another Barrick shareholder who declined to be identified due to company policy. Lloyd said the alternative to an agreement, which requires Acacia<69>s approval, would be lengthy international arbitration. Barrick believed a partnership with the government would <20>deliver better outcomes and greater stability for shareholders in the long run,<2C> he said. Barrick also owns mines in the Dominican Republic and Papua New Guinea, considered higher risk by investors. It has been teaming up with partners, as seen at its Veladero mine in Argentina and the Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea, to reduce risks. The settlement with Tanzania comes at a time of rising so-called <20>resource nationalism,<2C> notably in countries such as Indonesia and Tanzania, in which host governments seek a bigger financial cut from mines. Some Barrick investors voiced confidence in the company. Barrick would likely walk away from a deal if it was too onerous or set an <20>unwanted<65> precedent, said Joe Foster, portfolio manager at Van Eck Associates, Barrick<63>s biggest shareholder. <20>The company has shown a discipline to the bottom line that I believe they will respect,<2C> Foster said. And some investors said both mining companies and shareholders should get used to such demands from host nations. <20>Some of the richest deposits are in some of the more difficult jurisdictions. It is something you have to be able to deal with and handicap as an investor,<2C> said Dan Denbow, senior portfolio manager at USAA Investments, another Barrick shareholder. He added that handing over 40 percent to 50 percent of economic benefits to a host government <20>is not that unusual.<2E> (Reporting by Nicole Mordant in Vancouver; Editing by Frances Kerry)'|'reu
'42e9e699d5a7a9755a0c28b09645d4a504ab60e5'|'UPDATE 1-Saudi Arabia''s PIF aims to manage over $400 bln in assets by 2020'|'(Adds details, background)RIYADH, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia<69>s Public Investment Fund (PIF) aims to increase its assets under management to 1.5 trillion riyals ($400 billion) by 2020 as part of the country<72>s Vision 2030, an economic reform plan aimed at boosting private-sector growth and developing non-oil industries.The country<72>s main sovereign wealth fund, which is expected to receive proceeds from the planned sale of 5 percent of state oil company Saudi Aramco<63>s ( IPO-ARMO.SE ) shares, has currently around $230 billion worth of assets under management.PIF plans to create 20,000 direct domestic jobs, and 256,000 construction jobs by 2020. This will increase PIF<49>s contribution to Saudi Arabia<69>s gross domestic product from 4.4 percent to 6.3 percent, it said in a statement on Wednesday, during a huge investment conference in Riyadh arranged by the fund.Investments will be in sectors such as real estate and infrastructure as well as in new areas of activity in the Saudi economy through the establisment of companies such as the Saudi Arabian Military Industries company and the Saudi Real Estate Refinancing Company.One of the biggest tasks under PIF<49>s responsibility is the delivery of a $500 billion plan to build a business and industrial zone extending into Jordan and Egypt.PIF will also seek to maximise value in the fund<6E>s existing assets, and has set a new target to increase total shareholder return to 4-5 percent from 3 percent, it said on Wednesday.<2E>The PIF Program represents a vital milestone as we work towards realising Vision 2030,<2C> Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al-Saud, the plan<61>s architect, said in a statement.Outside of Saudi Arabia, PIF<49>s investments will be in a number of assets such as fixed-income, public equity, private equity and debt, real estate, infrastructure and alternative investments such as hedge funds, the fund said. ($1 = 3.7498 riyals) (Reporting by Katie Paul; Writing by Davide Barbuscia; Editing by Jason Neely, Greg Mahlich) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/saudi-economy-funds/update-1-saudi-arabias-pif-aims-to-manage-over-400-bln-in-assets-by-2020-idINL8N1N01LQ'|'2017-10-25T05:40:00.000+03:00'
'812499b2767132287f1d11a7f08386ed7e62d165'|'Saudi British Bank meets forecasts with 8.8 percent rise in quarterly profit'|'October 25, 2017 / 1:26 PM / Updated 8 minutes ago Saudi British Bank meets forecasts with 8.8 percent rise in quarterly profit Reuters Staff 2 Min Read DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi British Bank 1060.SE (SABB), the kingdom<6F>s sixth-largest bank by assets, reported an 8.8 percent rise in third-quarter net profit on Wednesday, meeting analysts<74> forecasts. The bank, an affiliate of HSBC Holdings ( HSBA.L ), said it made 1.08 billion riyals (<28>217.4 million) in the three months ending Sept. 30, compared with 995 million riyals in the same period a year earlier, according to a bourse filing. SABB is in merger talks with local peer Alawwal Bank ( 1040.SE ), with central bank governor Ahmed al-Kholifey telling Al Arabiya television on Oct. 15 that the situation regarding the possible merger would be clear by the end of this year. The bank attributed its rise in net profit to a 4.6 percent increase in operating income, propelled by higher net special commission income, gains on non-trading investments and dividend income, in addition to lower provisions for credit losses. After contending with lower state and consumer spending as a result of reduced oil prices, Saudi banks are expected to benefit as the government loosens austerity measures, helping accelerate credit growth. Saudi bank results so far have generally been in line with or better than expectations, with the two largest lenders, National Commercial Bank ( 1180.SE ) and Al Rajhi Bank ( 1120.SE ) reporting profit growth of 8.4 and 12.7 percent, respectively. Loans and advances at the end of September stood at 116.7 billion riyals, falling 7.3 percent on the same point of 2016, while deposits dropped 6.6 percent to 134.6 billion riyals over the same period. Three analysts surveyed by Reuters had on average forecast SABB<42>s third-quarter net profit would come in at 1.08 billion riyals. Reporting By Tom Arnold; Editing by Susan Fenton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-sabb-results/saudi-british-bank-meets-forecasts-with-8-8-pct-rise-in-quarterly-profit-idUKKBN1CU1WW'|'2017-10-25T16:33:00.000+03:00'
'6747f8266c40a3fad321e548afb5a5e8602062b0'|'BRIEF-Danske Bank sells portfolio of Irish mortgage loans to Goldman Sachs fund'|'October 25, 2017 / 11:58 AM / in 7 hours BRIEF-Danske Bank sells portfolio of Irish mortgage loans to Goldman Sachs fund Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 25 (Reuters) - DANSKE BANK<4E>S IRISH UNIT SAYS * CONFIRMS IT HAS ENTERED INTO A BINDING CONTRACT FOR THE SALE OF A PORTFOLIO OF PERFORMING IRISH MORTGAGE LOANS TO PROTEUS FUNDING DAC, AN ENTITY FINANCED BY GOLDMAN SACHS * THE SALE PRICE IS UNDISCLOSED * CUSTOMER AGREEMENTS ARE UNAFFECTED BY THE TRANSFER * THE CENTRAL BANK OF IRELAND HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE TRANSACTION FURTHER COMPANY COVERAGE: (Copenhagen newsroom) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-danske-bank-sells-portfolio-of-iri/brief-danske-bank-sells-portfolio-of-irish-mortgage-loans-to-goldman-sachs-fund-idUSC7N1I302D'|'2017-10-25T14:57:00.000+03:00'
'388c78e490882edaba598cff73f92fbb6e4547fc'|'Exchange operator Nasdaq''s profit rises 30.5 pct'|'Reuters TV United States October 25, 2017 / 10:54 AM / in 33 minutes Exchange operator Nasdaq''s profit beats estimates Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Nasdaq Inc ( NDAQ.O ) reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit as the U.S. exchange operator benefited from an increase in revenue from its market services business that oversees transactions, clearing and settlements. FILE PHOTO: The Nasdaq logo is displayed at the Nasdaq Market site in New York September 2, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo Revenue from market services, the company<6E>s biggest business, rose 4.3 percent to $581 million, benefiting from higher trade volume in European cash equities as well as favorable foreign exchange rates. The company earned more from non-trading operations as well. Revenue from information services unit rose 9.5 percent to $150 million, while its market technology unit revenue rose 5.5 percent to $77 million. Nasdaq has been trying to increase its non-trading related businesses such as information services and market technology to help investors make wiser trading decisions amid weak volumes and stiff competition. The company most recently acquired investment analytics provider eVestment Alliance LLC for $705 million. The company<6E>s net income rose to $171 million, or $1.01 per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, from $131 million, or 77 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, Nasdaq earned $1.06 per share, beating the average analyst estimate of $1.02, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Revenue, excluding transaction-based expenses, rose 3.8 percent to $607 million, while operating expenses fell 2.6 percent to $343 million. Reporting by Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nasdaq-results/exchange-operator-nasdaqs-profit-rises-30-5-percent-idUSKBN1CU1E5'|'2017-10-25T13:46:00.000+03:00'
'b3f7da5461db07bf14708ef9a03d01fda9a8fc46'|'Trump leaning toward Powell as next Fed chair - Bloomberg'|'October 27, 2017 / 2:20 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago Trump leaning toward Powell as next Fed chair - Bloomberg Reuters Staff 1 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is leaning toward nominating Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell to be the next head of the U.S. central bank, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing three unnamed sources. FILE PHOTO: Federal Reserve Board Governor Jerome Powell discusses financial regulation in Washington, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts Trump has said he has been considering Powell, as well as Stanford University economist John Taylor, for the post. He also has said he has not ruled out renominating current Fed Chair Janet Yellen, whose term expires in February. He is expected to announce his pick, which would need to win Senate approval, before he departs on a trip to Asia on Nov. 3. Reporting by Tim Ahmann; Editing by David Alexander'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trump-fed/trump-leaning-toward-powell-as-next-fed-chair-bloomberg-idUKKBN1CW21I'|'2017-10-27T17:20:00.000+03:00'
'755298a7a1da273d49af86cadea23bef216391ab'|'TMF Group ditches London IPO after CVC Capital 1.75 billion euro offer'|'(Reuters) - Doughty Hanson<6F>s business services firm TMF Group said it will be sold to private equity firm CVC Capital Partners for 1.75 billion euros ($2 bln), ending its plans to list on the London Stock Exchange.The sale is expected to complete in the first half of 2018.Netherlands-based TMF Group, which provides financial, legal and administration services for multinationals, said this month it planned to raise 340 million euros from a London share listing in November, aiming to reduce its debt.A source familiar with the matter said that TMF had been expected to have a market valuation of between 1 billion pounds and 1.3 billion pounds ($1.3 bln and $1.7 bln) had the listing proceeded.It would have been one of the biggest initial public offerings on the London exchange this year.TMF Group, which has been owned by DH Private Equity since 2008, has not disclosed its debt level, but it reported a loss of 37.8 million euros for the first half of 2017, up from a loss of 28.7 million euros in the first half of 2016.It said on Friday that the deal with CVC would allow it to capitalize on <20>significant<6E> future growth opportunities.In June CVC Capital raised 16 billion euros for its latest fund for private equity investments in Europe and North America.Low interest rates and cheap debt have contributed to a boom in private equity fundraising since the financial crisis, supported by investors<72> thirst for high-yielding alternative assets.A spokeswoman for TMF said the company had also dropped plans to relocate to London after listing.She declined to comment on when talks began with CVC.TMF Group was advised by Goldman Sachs International and HSBC Bank.Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Esha Vaish in Bengaluru, Bart H. Meijer in Amsterdam and Dasha Afanasieva in London; Editing by Edmund Blair and Susan Fenton '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-tmf-group-m-a-cvc-cap-prtnrs/tmf-group-ditches-london-ipo-after-cvc-capital-1-75-billion-euro-offer-idINKBN1CW19V'|'2017-10-27T08:14:00.000+03:00'
'6184eb535da204e75a89dd40ce6b4a92d90a65d0'|'UPDATE 2-Mexico and Indonesia could be next up for Eni''s asset sales'|'October 27, 2017 / 7:07 AM / in 9 minutes UPDATE 2-Mexico and Indonesia could be next up for Eni''s asset sales Reuters Staff * CFO says 30-40 pct dilution possible in Mexico * Eni selling stakes to fund development and dividends * Q3 adjusted net profit 229 mln euros vs forecast 350 mln (Recasts with CFO comments on disposals, shares) By Stephen Jewkes MILAN, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Italian oil major Eni could sell stakes in its oil and gas fields in Mexico and Indonesia in the next stage of its asset sale strategy, the company said on Friday. <20>Mexico could be the next step ... a 30-40 percent dilution is something that could be achieved,<2C> finance chief Massimo Monduzzi said in a conference call for third-quarter results. Under its so-called <20>dual exploration<6F> strategy, Eni aims to sell down stakes in fields it operates to raise cash to fund future development and support dividends. The state-controlled company, the biggest foreign oil and gas producer in Africa, was the first major to cut its dividend in 2015 after a steep fall in oil prices. Eni expects to cash in 3.7 billion euros this year in disposals after completing the sale of a stake in Mozambique to Exxon Mobil by the end of the year. <20>Indonesia could be the next target (for a sell down),<2C> Monduzzi told analysts. Eni, the world<6C>s most successful explorer in recent years after finding two super-giant fields in Egypt and Mozambique, owns oil fields in Mexico which it considers the next frontier. It is operator in two big fields in Indonesia, including 55 percent-owned Jangkrik which it says will produce 83,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. This year it sold 30 percent of its Shorouk concession in Egypt to Rosneft for $1.1 billion and agreed to sell 25 percent of Mozambique<75>s Area 4 to Exxon for $2.8 billion. <20>We want to maintain operatorship (in Mexico and Indonesia),<2C> Monduzzi added. The group originally planned to sell its retail gas and power division as well as its chemical unit Versalis but has since decided to hang on to them. <20>An IPO of Versalis is not on the table,<2C> Monduzzi said. Earlier on Friday, Eni confirmed its production would grow by 5 percent this year to 1.84 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (mboe/d), while investments would fall 18 percent. Production in the third quarter rose 5 percent to 1.8 mboe/d, lifted in part by the restart of fields in Libya. The group said it expected output to rise to 1.9 mboe/d in the final quarter despite a delay in ramp-up at its giant Kashagan field to next year. Adjusted net profit in the quarter reached 229 million euros ($267 million), compared with an adjusted loss of 484 million last year, Eni said. That was below an analyst consensus provided by the company of 350 million. Adjusted operating cash flow was 1.72 billion euros against 2.28 billion in the second quarter. <20>In 2017 we expect to achieve organic coverage of investments and dividends, entirely paid in cash, at a Brent price of $60 a barrel,<2C> CEO Claudio Descalzi said in a statement. At 1202, Eni shares were down 1.7 percent at 13.69 euros in a European sector up 0.6 percent. $1 = 0.8591 euros Reporting by Stephen Jewkes; Editing by David Holmes and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/eni-results/update-1-eni-swings-to-q3-profit-on-firmer-oil-but-misses-expectations-idUSL8N1N21JO'|'2017-10-27T15:59:00.000+03:00'
'efa907a72e49331c824dbc2ad39063803ff47fb4'|'Miner Cameco posts third-quarter loss'|'Oct 27 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s Cameco Corp on Friday reported a quarterly loss, compared with a year-ago profit, hurt by weak uranium prices.The company, one of the world<6C>s largest uranium producers, reported a net loss attributable to Cameco shareholders of C$124 million ($96 million), or 31 Canadian cents per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with a profit of C$142 million, or 36 Canadian cents per share, a year earlier.Revenue dropped 27.5 percent to C$486 million. ($1 = C$1.29) (Reporting by Anirban Paul in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/cameco-results/miner-cameco-posts-third-quarter-loss-idINL4N1N24OO'|'2017-10-27T09:54:00.000+03:00'
'8661350f691f596ff6b891da94e190fd7f39b036'|'Exxon''s third-quarter profit beats expectations despite Harvey dent'|'October 27, 2017 / 12:14 PM / in 8 hours Exxon''s third-quarter profit beats expectations despite Harvey dent Ernest Scheyder 2 Min Read HOUSTON (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp, the world<6C>s largest publicly traded oil producer, posted a higher-than-expected quarterly profit on Friday as higher crude and natural gas prices more than offset the effects of a major hurricane on U.S. operations. Logos of ExxonMobil are seen in its booth at Gastech, the world''s biggest expo for the gas industry, in Chiba, Japan April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/Files The results highlighted Exxon<6F>s strength in refining as it managed to increase profits at its U.S. downstream operations despite Hurricane Harvey, which shuttered many of the company<6E>s largest U.S. Gulf Coast refineries in late August. Production of oil and gas also increased, even in the United States despite the storm, helped by higher pricing. <20>A 50 percent increase in earnings through solid business performance and higher commodity prices is a step forward in our plan to grow profitability,<2C> Darren Woods, Exxon<6F>s chief executive officer, said in a statement. Third-quarter net income jumped to $3.97 billion, or 93 cents per share, from $2.65 billion, or 63 cents per share, in the year-ago period. Exxon said Harvey dented quarterly earnings by 4 cents per share. Excluding the effects from the storm, Exxon earned 97 cents per share. By that measure, analysts expected 86 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Production rose about 2 percent to 3.9 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. Shares of Texas-based Exxon rose nearly 1 percent to $84.14 in premarket trading. The stock has lost about 8 percent of its value so far this year. Exxon plans to hold a conference call on Friday morning with investors to discuss quarterly results. Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Paul Simao and Jeffrey Benkoe '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/exxon-results/exxon-mobils-profit-jumps-50-percent-on-higher-oil-natgas-prices-idINKBN1CW1MS'|'2017-10-27T10:14:00.000+03:00'
'447d9bd3b6f2287733bf1f02bd2b235033e48be8'|'Self-driving startups race down a narrowing road'|'October 27, 2017 / 5:09 AM / in 9 hours Self-driving startups race down a narrowing road Paul Lienert , Jane Lanhee Lee 7 Min Read DETROIT/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Lei Xu and Justin Song once worked at electric carmaker Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ), one of the hottest companies in Silicon Valley. But with interest and investments in autonomous vehicles mounting, they left to pursue what they see as the next big thing. Their company, Nullmax, is one of more than 240 startups worldwide, including 75 in Silicon Valley, attempting to design software, hardware components and systems for future self-driving cars, according to a Reuters analysis. Xu and Song are bankrolled by corporate money, but unlike many of their fellow entrepreneurs, they skipped funding from Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Founded in August 2016, Nullmax got $10 million from a Chinese firm, Xinmao Science and Technology Co ( 000836.SZ ). By seeking corporate backing in China, the Nullmax founders managed to sidestep an issue facing other startups in the sector: While big automotive and technology companies are pouring billions into the autonomous vehicle space, Silicon Valley investors so far have been fairly restrained in increasing their bets. Headlines have been dominated by old-line players such as General Motors Co ( GM.N ), which jolted the industry last year when it bought a tiny San Francisco software company called Cruise Automation for a reported $1 billion. Just this week, top-tier supplier Delphi Automotive PLC ( DLPH.N ) acquired Boston-based software startup nuTonomy for $450 million. Now, <20>every startup thinks they will get a billion dollars<72> in valuation, said Evangelos Simoudis, a Silicon Valley venture investor and an advisor on corporate innovation. However, investment in untested startup companies remains relatively modest despite all the buzz and lofty expectations. Total funding of self-driving startups from both corporate and private investors has barely topped $5 billion, the Reuters analysis of publicly available data shows. With the notable exceptions of Andreessen Horowitz and New Enterprise Associates, few of the big Valley venture capital firms are heavily invested in the sector. Overall, only seven of the top 30 self-driving startups have received later-stage funding, the Reuters analysis shows, an indication that some venture capitalists are ambivalent about the industry<72>s potential. (For a graphic of venture and corporate funding of self-driving startups, see: tmsnrt.rs/2xOX0jN ) Skeptics note that few of the startups are making money. And established auto and parts companies have not demonstrated a clear path to revenue and profitability in autonomous vehicles despite their big bets in the space. Another sticking point: While the initial wave of self-driving vehicles is expected to begin commercial service in 2019-2020, experts expect the transition from human-driven to automated cars could take a decade or more to roll out. Cautions Sergio Marchionne, chief executive officer of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles ( FCHA.MI ): <20>You can destroy a lot of value by chasing your tail in autonomous driving.<2E> CORPORATE INVESTMENTS All told, U.S. automotive and technology firms likely have invested some $40 billion to $50 billion in self-driving technology in recent years, mainly through acquisitions and partnerships. The full extent is hard to know because big players such as Alphabet Inc ( GOOGL.O ), whose Waymo subsidiary is considered among the front-runners in the arena, have not revealed the full scope of their investments, although it is believed to be in the billions. Among the top corporate investors in the sector are Samsung Group [SAGR.UL], Intel Corp ( INTC.O ), Qualcomm Inc ( QCOM.O ), Delphi and Robert Bosch GmbH [ROBG.UL]. Corporate investors also have backed five of the six self-driving startups with valuations of $1 billion or more. Nullmax CEO Lei Xu drives a Lincoln MKZ sedan equipped with his company''s prototype self-driving har
'af1f5b24051821801542af067e884ddf8c9b6f98'|'US STOCKS-Wall St advances on earnings but healthcare lags'|'October 26, 2017 / 6:38 PM / in 10 hours US STOCKS-Wall St advances on earnings but healthcare lags Reuters Staff * Twitter jumps after signaling profitability in 4th quarter * Celgene tumbles after results, drags on healthcare sector * Yellen, Warsh out of Fed chief race - report * Dow up 0.42 pct, S&P 500 up 0.30 pct, Nasdaq up 0.12 pct (Updates to mid-afternoon, changes byline) By Chuck Mikolajczak NEW YORK, Oct 26 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks advanced on Thursday to recover some declines from the prior session, after a round of positive corporate earnings, although gains were curbed by a drop in the healthcare sector. As third-quarter earnings season nears the half-way mark, 74 percent of companies have topped expectations, above the 72 percent beat rate for the past four quarters. However, earnings growth for the quarter is currently 5.3 percent, well below the double-digit growth rates of the prior two quarters. With major U.S. indexes at record levels, earnings have been scrutinized to see if they warrant stretched valuations. DowDuPont was up 3.5 percent as the biggest boost to the S&P 500. It forecast third-quarter profit well above Wall Street<65>s expectations ahead of the combined company<6E>s first earnings report next week. Twitter jumped 18.8 percent after the company said it could turn its first-ever profit in the fourth quarter, helped by cost cuts and new sources of revenue. <20>It<49>s not terribly popular to be saying it makes sense the markets are hitting new highs, but I look and I see a good economic backdrop, I see earnings growth and I see central banks basically managing quite well on the exit,<2C> said Ron Temple, Head of US Equities and Co-Head of Multi Asset Investing at Lazard Asset Management in New York. <20>So what could go wrong - the single biggest factor that is hard to predict is who is the new Fed chair.<2E> Trump<6D>s search has narrowed down to Fed Governor Jerome Powell and Stanford University economist John Taylor, according to a Politico report. A White House official told Reuters that no final decision had been made. In a step towards enacting Trump<6D>s tax cut plan, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to clear a procedural path forward for the tax bill, which is expected to be unveiled next week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 98.56 points, or 0.42 percent, to 23,428.02, the S&P 500 gained 7.65 points, or 0.30 percent, to 2,564.8 and the Nasdaq Composite added 7.80 points, or 0.12 percent, to 6,571.70. The healthcare sector, off 1.01 percent, held gains in check, led lower by a 19.6-percent plunge in Celgene, the biggest drag on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq. The company reported lower-than-expected sales for its psoriasis drug Otezla and lowered its overall 2020 sales outlook. A fall of 4.5 percent in Bristol-Myers Squibb also weighed on the sector after its quarterly profit fell short of estimates due to higher costs and an inventory write-off. In addition, AbbVie dropped 2.4 percent after reporting deaths in psoriasis studies. Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.22-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.14-to-1 ratio favored advancers. (Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Nick Zieminski) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-stocks/us-stocks-wall-st-advances-on-earnings-but-healthcare-lags-idINL2N1N124M'|'2017-10-26T16:38:00.000+03:00'
'b0b500952a6f21402ea4bf636228dc9f77dbe2eb'|'Tesla''s seat strategy goes against the grain...for now'|'October 26, 2017 / 5:06 AM / in 10 hours Tesla''s seat strategy goes against the grain...for now 7 Min Read SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Elon Musk was fed up. The seats on Tesla Inc<6E>s ( TSLA.O ) new Model X SUV were a mess. An outside contractor was having trouble executing the complicated design, spurring frustration and finger-pointing between Tesla and its supplier. How would Tesla ever pull off mass production of the upcoming Model 3, the car intended to catapult the niche automaker into the big leagues, if it could not deliver on something as fundamental as a seat? Musk made a decision: Tesla would build the seats itself. Tesla<6C>s demanding chief executive vowed years ago to shake up the automotive industry with his line of electric vehicles and a futuristic manufacturing facility in Fremont, Calif. But industry experts say Musk<73>s insistence on performing much of the work in-house is among the reasons Tesla is nowhere close to its stated goal of building 500,000 vehicles annually by next year, most of them Model 3s. The automaker this month revealed it built just 260 of the vehicles between July and September, badly missing its target of 1,500 Model 3s in the third quarter. In a statement, Tesla blamed manufacturing <20>bottlenecks.<2E> It declined to elaborate, but assured investors <20>there are no fundamental issues with the Model 3 production or supply chain.<2E> Tesla has demonstrated a commitment to vertical integration not seen in the auto industry for decades. The company has so far sunk $2 billion into a sprawling Nevada factory to manufacture its vehicles<65> batteries. In-house programmers design the bulk of the complex software that runs the Model 3, which Musk has described as a <20>computer on wheels<6C>. Tesla controls its own retail chain, selling its cars directly to customers and bypassing dealers. But it is Tesla<6C>s 2015 decision to build its own seats that has some industry veterans scratching their heads. Seat making is a low-margin, labor-intensive enterprise that big automakers generally farm out to specialists. Tesla is operating its own seat assembly line inside its factory, and it is hiring engineers and technicians to figure out a way to fully automate the process. <20>Is that really the core competency of an auto company? It is not,<2C> said analyst Maryann Keller, who has been tracking the car industry since the early 1970s. <20>Why would you want to do that?<3F> Tesla declined requests from Reuters to discuss its seat assembly efforts. The company is expected to reveal more about its production issues on Nov. 1, when it announces third-quarter results. There is no indication that the <20>bottlenecks<6B> mentioned previously by the company are associated with seat production. Analyst Keller and others suspect Tesla eventually will be forced to farm out seat assembly to suppliers as the company transitions from a niche producer of pricey, hand-built luxury cars to a mass manufacturer. Seat makers including Germany<6E>s ZF Friedrichshafen AG [ZFF.UL], France<63>s Faurecia SA ( EPED.PA ) and Detroit-based Lear Corp ( LEA.N ) already are trying to win that business. A lot is riding on Tesla<6C>s ability to scale up operations quickly. Starting at $35,000, the Model 3 is Tesla<6C>s attempt to bring its electric technology to a wider audience. More than a half-million customers have already put down deposits. Tesla has never turned an annual profit and it is burning through cash. Yet investors are betting big on its future. It is now the second most valuable U.S. automaker, behind only General Motors Co ( GM.N ). Tesla shares on Wednesday closed at $325.84, down 3.4 percent. FROM STOP-GAP TO STRATEGY Musk has defended Tesla<6C>s hands-on approach as the way to ensure reliability, as well as an opportunity to rethink industry norms. The interior of the Tesla Model 3 sedan is seen in this undated handout image as the car company handed over its first 30 Model 3 vehicles to employee buyers at the company''s Fremont facility in California, U.S., July 28,
'd3c2bc73905a50080ad1d70ca3364b1407de00c5'|'Lloyds posts 38 percent rise in nine month profit'|'October 25, 2017 / 6:04 AM / Updated 4 hours ago Lloyds gives ''resilient'' British economy all clear as profit rises Emma Rumney , Lawrence White 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Lloyds Banking Group ( LLOY.L ) gave an optimistic assessment of Britain<69>s economic health on Wednesday as the bank<6E>s third quarter pre-tax profit jumped despite higher bad loan charges. Britain<69>s biggest mortgage lender played down concerns from economists and authorities that an expected interest rate rise could hit over-extended consumers, saying that it saw no signs of major headwinds. <20>We see no signs of deterioration, not only in impairments which come later in the cycle, but in non-performing loans, in any of our segments,<2C> Chief Executive Antonio Horta-Osorio told a media call following the bank<6E>s results. Lloyds said its statutory pretax profit more than doubled to 1.95 billion pounds, just missing an average analyst forecast of 2 billion pounds according to Thomson Reuters data. However, the bank<6E>s loan impairments rose to 270 million pounds from 204 million a year earlier, which it blamed on a <20>single large corporate exposure<72> as well as the integration of credit card unit MBNA, which it bought this year. Britain<69>s economy picked up speed in the third quarter, data released on Wednesday showed, increasing expectations that the Bank of England will lift interest rates next month. Regulators have warned that this could test the ability of British consumers to repay their loans. Consumer credit in Britain has grown much faster than household income in the last few years, the Bank of England said in June. Dealership car finance has expanded the fastest and accounts for nearly a third of the 198 billion pounds in consumer loans, with Lloyds having the biggest market share. Horta-Osorio said if borrowing costs rise it would only reverse an emergency cut after last year<61>s June Brexit vote, and that consumers are well placed to withstand hikes. People walk past a branch of Lloyds Bank on Oxford Street in London, Britain July 28, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls/File Photo GLOBAL BUSINESS WEEK AHEAD PACKAGE - SEARCH ''BUSINESS WEEK AHEAD 24 OCT'' FOR ALL IMAGES But investors were less convinced and Lloyds shares fell 1.77 percent by 0822 GMT, making them the third worst performer on Britain''s main FTSE index .FTSE . <20>All the dials are pointing in the right direction at Lloyds, but the share price is still being held back by a consensus of angst over Brexit,<2C> Laith Khalaf, senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said. <20>The bank is heavily plugged into the domestic economy, and so could sustain collateral damage if Brexit negotiations prompt a slump in UK growth.<2E> Slideshow (2 Images) CAPITAL BOOST In a sign of its increasing profitability, Lloyds said it would improve the rate at which it generates capital to between 2.25 to 2.4 percentage points a year by the end of 2017. The bank avoided taking fresh provisions for misconduct charges such as the mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI) after it set aside another 700 million pounds of provisions for PPI mis-selling compensation in July. But it said on Wednesday that there has been a rise in PPI claims since Britain<69>s financial watchdog launched a new publicity campaign on the issue in August. Lloyds said its net interest margin - the difference between the interest it gets from borrowers and what it pays savers, a key revenue driver - had widened to 2.9 percent from 2.69 percent a year ago. The bank said the integration of the MBNA credit card business is on track to be completed in the first quarter of 2019, ahead of schedule. Reporting by Emma Rumney and Lawrence White, additional reporting by John Geddie and Kit Rees; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lloyds-results/lloyds-posts-38-percent-rise-in-nine-month-profit-idUKKBN1CU0HI'|'2017-10-25T09:03:00.000+03:00'
'ba20d437cd3fa5154281b29ab560e6eb5d19d00a'|'China to tweak property price methodology to address "new challenges"'|'October 25, 2017 / 8:54 AM / Updated 12 minutes ago China to tweak property price methodology to address "new challenges" Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China will make changes to the methodology for calculating its housing price index as the current system has encountered <20>new challenges<65>, the Statistics Bureau said on Wednesday. Apartment blocks are seen in smog on the outskirts of Tianjin, China, October 11, 2017. Picture taken on October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee Li Xiaochao, deputy director at the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said the current methodology for calculating housing prices has met with <20>new challenges and difficulties<65>, after a work meeting with a visiting German delegation this week, according to a statement posted on the agency<63>s website. Li did not specify what the challenges were, but said China would further improve the housing price statistics system and calculation methodology to <20>better facilitate state macro-control in the property market<65>. He did not give a time table but added the changes would be made as China actively learns from the experiences of the European Union and Germany. China first established the real estate price survey system in 1997 and has since introduced two significant changes in its methodology, including extending the number of cities it covers. The NBS now compiles and publishes every month a property price index that covers 70 large- and medium-sized cities. The country<72>s property prices have soared since late 2015, led by a price surge in its biggest cities which has since spilled into smaller centres. More than 45 major cities have imposed measures to cool overheating since October 2016. Critics have long questioned the reliability of China<6E>s official housing price index, as there has been a considerable discrepancy between the official index and people<6C>s general perception of price increases. Prices for new homes in September rose 6.3 percent from a year earlier, slowing from an 8.3 percent increase in August, as government measures to cool a long property boom take hold. Reporting by Yawen Chen and Kevin Yao; Editing by Jacqueline Wong'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-economy-property/china-to-tweak-property-price-methodology-to-address-new-challenges-idUKKBN1CU0ZH'|'2017-10-25T11:53:00.000+03:00'
'f47ebce04e80baee86313b94d8f64aa3d732ce1c'|'Brazil congressional committee passes higher mining royalties'|'October 25, 2017 / 1:03 PM / Updated 6 minutes ago Brazil congressional committee passes higher mining royalties Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BRASILIA, Oct 25 (Reuters) - A Brazilian congressional committee approved on Wednesday a proposal by President Michel Temer to raise mining royalties, amending it to favor smaller miners and support infrastructure development, before passing it on for full approval. Temer proposed sweeping mining reform in July in three decrees aimed at attracting foreign investment to help the country exit its worst recession on record. The measures, considered by separate committees, must be approved by both houses of Congress by Nov. 28 to become permanent. The proposal to create a new mining regulatory agency passed a committee vote on Tuesday, while the third and final proposal on streamlining mining rules is set for a vote later on Wednesday. The committee on royalties amended Temer<65>s proposal so that miners by default will pay 4 percent rate on iron ore, with a measure that allows exceptions lowering the rate to 2 percent and mainly favors small miners over majors like Vale SA . Originally the decree proposed a rate varying from 2 percent to 4 percent based on the market price of iron ore. The committee also amended the proposal to give 10 percent of the proceeds to municipalities affected by the mining, such as by transport or shipping, rather than only those where mining occurs. <20>It<49>s not a solution for everything but those that got zero will now get around 300 million reais ($92.35 million) for construction of viaducts, railway crossings, to protect the population and minimize the urban impacts of railroads that sometimes have big impact on municipalities,<2C> said Deputy Marcus Pestana, who oversaw amendments for the committee. $1 = 3.2486 reais Reporting by Jake Spring; Editing by Bill Trott'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brazil-mining-regulation/brazil-congressional-committee-passes-higher-mining-royalties-idUSL2N1N00NR'|'2017-10-25T16:00:00.000+03:00'
'552686d60029c61f6412f6c5211861cf155e33e5'|'Goldman plans private equity expansion to help offset trading funk'|'October 25, 2017 / 5:07 AM / in 25 minutes Goldman plans private equity expansion to help offset trading funk Olivia Oran 5 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( GS.N ) is ramping up its private-equity investments and going after smaller, high-growth targets as part of a broad plan to offset recent trading declines, three people familiar with the effort told Reuters. A view of the Goldman Sachs stall on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange July 16, 2013. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Goldman<61>s investment bank, which typically focuses on advising large companies on mergers and raising capital, is now looking to use Goldman<61>s own funds to finance a handful of small, promising companies in the near-term, the people said. The team scouting for deals is led by senior investment banker Kathy Elsesser, who earlier this year took on the project in addition to her role as global chair of consumer, retail and healthcare investment banking. The goal is to repeat Goldman<61>s past success with early-stage investments in tech companies such as Uber Technologies Inc. The latest effort, however, would target industries outside of Silicon Valley, said the people, who declined to be named because the strategy they were discussing was not yet public. It is one of several initiatives Goldman has launched to add $5 billion to annual revenue after a slump in bond trading. Among those are efforts to lend more, come up with creative deals to pitch to big clients, and convince more corporations and investors to trade with Goldman Sachs. The private-equity plan may not be a slam dunk. Investments could be duds, especially because fierce competition has made it more difficult to produce strong returns from private equity. Bankers will also have to be careful not to anger Goldman<61>s investor clients chasing the same deals. Even a successful effort is unlikely to make up for the billions of dollars<72> of trading revenue Goldman has lost since 2009, analysts said. <20>They<65>ve admitted there is a potential problem long-term with revenue growth so they need to do something about it,<2C> said Brian Kleinhanzl, a bank analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. <20>But it<69>s rare for things to move the needle too much with Goldman.<2E> Those involved with the strategy characterized it as one of many ways Goldman is trying to use its own capital to boost returns, even if it is on a small scale. SMALLER COMMITMENTS It is unclear how much capital Goldman will ultimately devote to the effort, but individual investments will be in the tens of millions of dollars, people familiar with the plan said. The capital will come from the investment bank<6E>s allocated balance sheet, they said. Commitments will be much smaller than those made by Goldman<61>s merchant banking arm or the private-equity funds it mostly manages for clients, where investments can top $800 million. Goldman has been reducing its own investments in those funds due to the Volcker rule, which was implemented after the 2007-2009 financial crisis to prevent banks from making big market bets with their own capital. The rule limits commitments to private-equity funds, but not how much banks can invest directly in individual companies through loans or merchant banking-style equity deals. Elsesser<65>s new role showcases the growing importance of Goldman<61>s investment bank, which is central to many of its new revenue initiatives. Under the leadership of co-heads Gregg Lemkau, Marc Nachmann and John Waldron, the business has strengthened its presence in cities such as Atlanta and Dallas, hired more senior dealmakers from Wall Street rivals, created a new team to pitch innovative ideas to big clients, and invested in technology. The new initiative aims to not only profit from investments in the startups, but to make it easier for Goldman to handle public offerings or sales down the line because bankers will already have relationships with management, the people said. It could be difficult, however, for analy
'11b328138fa8cf465eae2301a00c4855c1b83da5'|'Anthem''s individual insurance business turning a profit- CEO'|'October 25, 2017 / 12:53 PM / in 16 minutes Anthem''s individual insurance business turning a profit- CEO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read NEW YORK, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Anthem Inc<6E>s individual insurance plans created under the Affordable Care Act broke even in the third quarter as customer health costs fell and the No. 2 U.S. health insurer said it now expects a slight profit for the business line in 2018. Chief Executive Officer Joseph Swedish said during a conference call with analysts on Wednesday that the company expected enrollment in the business to decline by 70 percent after halving the number of regions where it sells plans. (Reporting by Caroline Humer; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/anthem-results-ceo/anthems-individual-insurance-business-turning-a-profit-ceo-idUSL2N1N00NP'|'2017-10-25T15:53:00.000+03:00'
'1baadf57573e44340de72549ecfa957f53b323f2'|'Mexican bank Banorte agrees to take over peer Interacciones'|'MEXICO CITY, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Mexican bank Grupo Financiero Banorte has signed an accord to acquire peer Grupo Financiero Interacciones in a cash and shares deal that would create the second biggest financial group in Mexico by assets, Interacciones said on Wednesday.If approved, the banking deal would join two lenders whose chairmen are father and son.Rumors of a takeover have circulated since Carlos Hank Gonzalez stepped down as chief executive of Interacciones three years ago to join the board of Banorte , where he is now chairman. (Writing by Dave Graham) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/banorte-interacciones-announcement/mexican-bank-banorte-agrees-to-take-over-peer-interacciones-idINS0N1LF00R'|'2017-10-25T17:16:00.000+03:00'
'81d21d22a3cc343c166185c77f5b9d41dd7af524'|'Mediator picked to resolve Royal Mail pensions row with union'|'October 25, 2017 / 12:51 PM / Updated 6 hours ago Mediator picked to resolve Royal Mail pensions row with union Esha Vaish , Noor Zainab Hussain 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Royal Mail and the Communications Workers Union have appointed Lynette Harris of Britain<69>s Central Arbitration Committee to mediate in a row over plans to replace the company<6E>s defined benefit pension scheme. A Royal Mail postal worker stands in the yard of a sorting office in Altrincham, Britain October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble The talks, which will cover pay, pensions and other issues, will run for seven weeks and could be extended in order to reach a deal, Royal Mail said in a statement on Wednesday. The CWU has been at odds with Royal Mail since April over its plans to save billions of pounds on its pension contributions and has attempted to call a strike. Earlier this month Royal Mail won a High Court injunction that scuppered CWU<57>s plan to call a 48-hour strike during the crucial pre-Christmas delivery period. Royal Mail said that mediation could take up until Christmas, or longer, to complete and that the CWU would still have to give a minimum of two weeks<6B> notice before striking. Uncertainty over the outcome of pensions negotiations have long held back Royal Mail<69>s stock, which is lost about a fifth of its value in the last year, and its shares were down 1.3 percent at 378.3 pence at 1213 GMT. CWU Deputy General Secretary, Postal, Terry Pullinger said in an email that the union, which has more than 100,000 members in Royal Mail, would reconsider striking if mediation failed. <20>Our aim is to reach agreement but we will have no hesitation in naming strike action dates to defend our members and the service they provide if mediation fails,<2C> he said. Royal Mail, which was privatised in 2013, is trying to modernise after years of underinvestment and has taken steps such as reducing layers of management, upgrading its technology and selling off property. However, its domestic parcels business has faced increased competition and uncertainty following Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union has accelerated the rate of decline in its letters business, leaving the business struggling in 2016. The company will report half-year results on Nov. 16. Reporting by Esha Vaish and Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-royal-mail-strike/mediator-picked-to-resolve-royal-mail-pensions-row-with-union-idUKKBN1CU1T2'|'2017-10-25T15:50:00.000+03:00'
'f2c1c187a4b8c60a0d500169643e8843232105ae'|'Japanese carmakers warm to EVs, but still see role for hydrogen'|'October 25, 2017 / 1:37 PM / in 6 hours Japanese carmakers warm to EVs, but still see role for hydrogen Naomi Tajitsu , Norihiko Shirouzu 4 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese automakers are finally embracing electric cars, showcasing concepts ranging from compact sportscars to all-wheel-drive mini SUVs at this week<65>s Tokyo Motor show, although they haven<65>t given up on alternative technologies. Students from Aichi Highschool of Technology and Engineering pose next to their developed electric vehicle named Collapse during media preview of the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai After years of investing in hydrogen fuel cells and electric-gasoline hybrids, Japanese manufacturers are talking up all-battery electric vehicles (EVs) at the annual gathering. Many are looking to catch up with global rivals amid rapidly tightening global emissions regulations and improving technology that may make EV batteries a price-competitive option to gasoline engines in the coming years. <20>As far as green cars go, vehicle powertrain electrification is a must,<2C> said Soichiro Okudaira, president of Daihatsu Motor Co, a fully owned subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corp, which showed its concept of the <20>Pro Cargo<67> multi-use mini electric van at the show<6F>s first media day on Wednesday . <20>EV (technology) is a great match with small cars people use everyday to commute, go shopping, because it<69>s easy to charge and maintain.<2E> Even Toyota, the country<72>s largest automaker which set up an EV development team just a year ago, said pure EVs would be one of the <20>key solutions<6E> for cleaner vehicles in the near future. Still, the maker of the Mirai fuel cell vehicle (FCV) is sticking to its view that the hydrogen fuel cell is the ultimate <20>green car<61> technology. Analysts say FCVs can refuel faster than an EV can recharge and can travel longer distances, making them a potentially attractive option for larger vehicles - though the cost and limited refuelling infrastructure pose challenges. Yamaha displays NIKEN during media preview of the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai Underlining its point, Toyota introduced two new FCVs at the show: the six-seater <20>Fine-Comfort Ride<64> concept car, and the <20>Sora<72> fuel-cell bus, which will be launched next year. TIPPING POINT Honda Motor Co on Wednesday announced it would launch a compact EV in Japan in 2020, following Nissan Motor Co, long a proponent of EVs and maker of the Leaf, the world<6C>s best-selling battery electric car launched in 2010. Slideshow (7 Images) As advances in lithium ion battery technology improve charging times and lower production costs, some automakers and suppliers expect increased demand will boost EV sales within the next decade, lowering their price towards gasoline vehicles. <20>We see this tipping point happening around 2025. By then for the customer to buy petrol or EV it will be practically same cost,<2C> Nissan Executive Vice President Daniele Schillaci said. <20>And then ... if you have the same price for EVs and petrol why would you buy traditional technology?<3F> While global automakers acknowledge the internal combustion engine may become obsolete in the coming decades, smaller automaker Mazda Motor Corp continues to squeeze more efficiency out of gasoline engines, developing its spark-ignition compression engine which it says could improve fuel economy by as much as 30 percent. Others argue that reports of the death of the gasoline engine have been greatly exaggerated. <20>Many in the media appear to be saying that EVs are going to take over the world, but given ongoing technology and cost limitations, it will be difficult for that to happen anytime soon,<2C> Subaru Corp CEO Yasuyuki Yoshinaga said. Additional reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autoshow-tokyo-ev/japanese-carmakers-warm-to-evs-but-s
'9862a3be82bce38469cec01a7f53243a56758ad4'|'Britain''s ready for interest rate rise, says Lloyds boss'|'Britain<69>s borrowers can withstand the impact of the first rise in interest rates in a decade, the chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group said on Wednesday.Ant<6E>nio Horta-Os<4F>rio believes any increase from the current record low of 0.25% would be gradual and said the bank <20> the biggest mortgage lender and savings institution in the UK <20> did not expect rates to reach 1% until 2019.He was speaking as the bank reported a 38% rise in profits in the first nine months of the year, and ahead of next month<74>s meeting of the Bank<6E>s monetary policy committee. The market expects rates to be increased for the first time since July 2007.Horta-Os<4F>rio said a rate rise would not put <20>stress<73> on the economy and would merely be an unwinding of the emergency rate cut <20> from 0.5% <20> made in the immediate aftermath of the vote for Brexit . Prior to that, rates had been at 0.5% since March 2009 .First UK interest rate rise in a decade still likely despite modest growth Read moreWith inflation running at 3%, real interest rates would remain negative, he said.<2E>Asset quality remains strong, reflecting our prudent approach to risk, while the UK economy remains resilient,<2C> Horta-Os<4F>rio said.The bank is back under private ownership after the government sold off the last of its shares in May, after taking a 43% stake during the height of the 2008 crisis. It is focused on the UK market and has started to expand in the credit card market, buying MBNA last year, giving it a market share of 26%. It has a 25% share of current accounts, 22% of retail deposits and 21% of mortgages.It is also a player in the motor finance market but Horta-Os<4F>rio sought to calm concerns about the consumer credit market <20> car loans, credit cards and personal borrowing <20> saying the bank took a conservative approach to its lending.Ratings agency Standard & Poor<6F>s warned on Tuesday that the rise in the UK<55>s consumer debt to <20>200bn was unsustainable . The Bank of England will tell lenders next month how much extra capital they need to hold to counter the risk.The bank did admit it was expecting an increase in its capital requirement but finance director George Culmer said it still expected to pay a dividend for the full year and would consider the use of buy-back or special dividend at the end of the financial year.Lloyds made profits of <20>4.5bn in the first nine months of the year, helped by the absence of provisions for payment protection insurance or fines in the third quarter for the first time since the first quarter of 2015.Claims for PPI, though, are running faster than the bank had expected following an industry-wide advertising campaign featuring The Terminator star, Arnold Schwarzenegger , to raise awareness of the 2019 deadline for making complaints about the mis-sold insurance product.The bank is yet to use <20>2.9bn of its <20>18bn PPI provision <20> the highest in the industry. It received 16,000 complaints a week after the campaign was launched and although this has fallen back to 11,000 a week it is higher than the 9,000 a week it had forecast.Impairment charges for bad loans rose 20% to <20>539m but Culmer said this was not caused by a deterioration in consumers<72> ability to repay loans but a <20>single large corporate<74> running in to trouble.Topics Lloyds Banking Group Banking Interest rates Bank of England Economics Mortgages news'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/25/britains-ready-for-interest-rate-rise-says-lloyds-boss'|'2017-10-25T18:25:00.000+03:00'
'2ab7312cbb4b048927f923c21edef2d48572a996'|'CORRECTED-UPDATE 1-AT&T results miss estimates as video competition rises'|'(Corrects lost subscribers to 89,000 from 85,000 in paragraph four)NEW YORK, Oct 24 (Reuters) - AT&T Inc<6E>s quarterly results missed Wall Street estimates as the U.S. No. 2 wireless carrier lost video subscribers to traditional and online TV competitors and fewer of its existing customers upgraded their devices ahead Apple Inc<6E>s launch of the iPhone X.AT&T is battling industry leader Verizon Communications Inc and smaller rivals Sprint Corp and T-Mobile US Inc for customers in a market where most people already have cell phones.The company, which is in the process of buying Time Warner Inc for $85.4 billion in an effort to turn itself into a media powerhouse, has sought to compete by bundling mobile service with video entertainment. It has said it expects the deal to close by the end of the year.AT&T, which owns satellite television service DirecTV, said it lost 89,000 U.S. video subscribers in the quarter, slightly fewer than the 90,000 it said earlier this month in a regulatory filing, due to intense competition in the traditional pay-TV market and the impact of recent hurricanes.In the same filing, AT&T also reported 900,000 fewer handset equipment upgrades than in the year-ago period, which negatively impacted wireless equipment revenue.Analysts have said many consumers are putting off upgrades until the fourth quarter when Apple<6C>s iPhone X is expected to launch.AT&T reported net income of $3.0 billion, or 49 cents a share, for the quarter ended Sept. 30, down from $3.3 billion, or 54 cents a share, in the year-earlier period.Excluding some items, it reported earnings of 74 cents. On that basis, analysts on average were expecting earnings of 75 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Its shares dipped 1.75 percent to $34.25 in after-hours trading.Revenue was $39.7 billion, down from $40.9 billion in the year-earlier period. Analysts had expected $40.1 billion, on average. (Reporting by Anjali Athavaley; Editing by Bill Rigby) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/att-results/update-1-att-results-miss-estimates-as-video-competition-rises-idUSL2N1MZ1W7'|'2017-10-25T00:18:00.000+03:00'
'5002ca567e1f560465dd358a9e50241b5a74ed3b'|'BRIEF-ICE Clear US lowers sugar margins'|'Oct 24 (Reuters) - ICE Clear US:* ICE Clear US lowers Sugar 11 Futures (SB) margins for speculators by 15 percent to $952 per contract from $1,120* ICE Clear US says changes to margin requirements will be effective beginning with the opening of business on Oct. 26, 2017 (Reporting by Eileen Soreng in Bengaluru) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-ice-clear-us-lowers-sugar-margins/brief-ice-clear-us-lowers-sugar-margins-idUSL4N1MZ600'|'2017-10-25T00:47:00.000+03:00'
'f57a6ff43557d1f630a12127a3c8fc9ea70043fd'|'TMF Group ditches London IPO after CVC Capital 1.75 billion euro offer'|'October 27, 2017 / 10:12 AM / in 20 minutes TMF Group ditches London IPO for $2 billion CVC Capital offer Noor Zainab Hussain 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Doughty Hanson<6F>s business services firm TMF Group said it will be sold to private equity firm CVC Capital Partners for 1.75 billion euros (<28>1.53 billion), ending its plans to list on the London Stock Exchange. The sale is expected to complete in the first half of 2018. Netherlands-based TMF Group, which provides financial, legal and administration services for multinationals, said this month it planned to raise 340 million euros from a London share listing in November, aiming to reduce its debt. A source familiar with the matter said that TMF had been expected to have a market valuation of between 1 billion pounds and 1.3 billion pounds had the listing proceeded. It would have been one of the biggest initial public offerings on the London exchange this year. TMF Group, which has been owned by DH Private Equity since 2008, has not disclosed its debt level, but it reported a loss of 37.8 million euros for the first half of 2017, up from a loss of 28.7 million euros in the first half of 2016. It said on Friday that the deal with CVC would allow it to capitalise on <20>significant<6E> future growth opportunities. In June CVC Capital raised 16 billion euros for its latest fund for private equity investments in Europe and North America. Low interest rates and cheap debt have contributed to a boom in private equity fundraising since the financial crisis, supported by investors<72> thirst for high-yielding alternative assets. A spokeswoman for TMF said the company had also dropped plans to relocate to London after listing. She declined to comment on when talks began with CVC. TMF Group was advised by Goldman Sachs International and HSBC Bank. Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Esha Vaish in Bengaluru, Bart H. Meijer in Amsterdam and Dasha Afanasieva in London; Editing by Edmund Blair and Susan Fenton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tmf-group-m-a-cvc-cap-prtnrs/tmf-group-ditches-london-ipo-after-cvc-capital-1-75-billion-euro-offer-idUKKBN1CW1A5'|'2017-10-27T13:12:00.000+03:00'
'c9c2c37090a9cd55fb8b1d8850929b1a19e75881'|'PRESS DIGEST- Financial Times - Oct 27'|'Oct 27 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Financial Times. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.HeadlinesNHS cyber attack far more extensive than thought, says report on.ft.com/2yUfnmBInsurance watchdog urged to rethink solvency rules on.ft.com/2yUGTjZEx-HSBC forex trader loses extradition case over U.S. fraud charges on.ft.com/2yVBtoPTaxman under fire for failing to probe Uber stance on VAT on.ft.com/2yVhHKnOverviewThe cyber attack that caused disruption at the National Health Service in May was far larger than previously appreciated, according to a report by spending watchdog National Audit Office that lays bare the health service<63>s poor preparation to cope with such a threat.UK <20>may have erred on the side of caution<6F> when putting regulations into practice for the insurance industry, the Treasury select committee said in a report published on Friday on the EU<45>s Solvency II insurance rules.Former HSBC Holdings Plc currency trader Stuart Scott can be extradited to face fraud charges in New York, a UK court has ruled, without deliberating on whether he was guilty or not of the 11 wire-fraud charges he faces and which he strongly denies.British MPs have criticised the UK tax authority for failing to investigate Uber Technologies Inc<6E>s approach to value added tax on its rides, which the ride-hailing firms claims is not its obligation because it only acts as an agent for self-employed drivers, even as a 2016 ruling found that Uber<65>s drivers in London are workers, rather than self-employed contractors. (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Sandra Maler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-press-ft/press-digest-financial-times-oct-27-idINL4N1N201L'|'2017-10-26T22:13:00.000+03:00'
'3e651c691d65654137ea1f7dba793655cc021014'|'Special delivery: Automakers make plug for electric vans'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - In the rush toward electric vehicles, automakers are increasingly sparing a thought for the humble delivery van, an often overlooked segment with big growth potential given tightening pollution restrictions in urban areas.Toyota Auto Body''s LCV D-Cargo concept model is displayed at the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon Given lingering consumer concerns about cost and charging infrastructure, many in the industry expect it will take at least a decade for electric vehicles (EVs) to win over mainstream car owners.But as e-commerce begins to dominate the retail sector and cities clamp down on pollution, more vehicle makers see opportunities for faster take-up of EVs as delivery vehicles, taxis and other business uses in dense, urban areas.At the Tokyo Motor Show which opened to the public on Friday, Nissan Motor Co, an early embracer of EV technology and maker of the Leaf, the world<6C>s top-selling electric car, unveiled a concept model of its e-NV200 electric van with refrigeration capabilities, designed to transport chilled food to restaurants and homes.<2E>Imagine if you have city access challenges, how will you get food delivered to restaurants, and goods to customers?<3F> said Ashwani Gupta, head of the light commercial business at the automaking alliance of Nissan and France<63>s Renault SA.<2E>There<72>s no other option but to go electric.<2E>Nissan plans to launch the refrigeration model in Japan next year, Gupta said. Both Nissan and Renault already market electric vans in Europe.Nissan is also looking to introduce the e-NV200 series in China in the near term as it expects demand will <20>explode<64> as big cities in the country effectively ban gasoline and diesel trucks and vans in an effort to crack down on emissions.Toyota Auto Body''s LCV D-Cargo concept model is displayed at the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon At the moment, the country<72>s electric light commercial vehicle market has yet to be tapped by major foreign automakers, although Ford Motor Co wants to drive its truck-making China partner Jiangling Motors Corp (JMC) more toward electric commercial vans.Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation, majority owned by Germany<6E>s Daimler AG, has also begun selling its eCanter electric light-duty truck in the United States, Europe and Japan, where it targets transport delivery services and convenient stores.Slideshow (2 Images) As increases demand for e-commerce creates more work for delivery services, Toyota Auto Body, a wholly owned subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corp, was thinking about the harried delivery van driver when it designed its LCV D-Cargo concept model.<2E>We set out to make the delivery truck more comfortable for drivers,<2C> said Ichiro Mukai, who worked on the model<65>s design.<2E>In the past home deliveries mainly centered around larger parcels, but recently, a big increase in the number of deliveries has come just as people are getting smaller parcels delivered,<2C> he said, adding that this had increased the workload of drivers.The model<65>s futuristic design is based on Toyota<74>s gasoline-hybrid minivan models marketed in Japan, and can be adapted to operate as an all-battery electric.Removing the passenger seat entirely, the driver<65>s seat configuration - which includes a retractable steering wheel and rounded seat corners - is designed to enable drivers to get in and out of the vehicle more quickly and easily.A removable tablet device in the center of the steering wheel enables drivers to easily locate parcels in the hold, where track shelving units and a wider door opening allows for easy access to parcels from outside the vehicle.Additional reporting by Tom Wilson; Editing by Lincoln Feast '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autoshow-tokyo-deliveryvans/special-delivery-automakers-make-plug-for-electric-vans-idUSKBN1CW0TF'|'2017-10-27T10:54:00.000+03:
'57bdd93e906d4f536efa7fd0e35a27eba9bfd634'|'IDFC Bank Q2 falls about 40'|'Oct 25 (Reuters) - India<69>s IDFC Bank reported a 40 percent fall in second-quarter profit on Wednesday.Net profit fell to 2.34 billion rupees ($35.92 million) in the quarter ended Sept. 30, from 3.88 billion rupees a year earlier, the bank said. bit.ly/2gBnQ3UGross bad loans as a percentage of total loans stood at 3.92 percent at end-September, compared with 4.13 percent in the preceding quarter and 5.96 percent a year earlier. ($1 = 65.1500 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Samantha Kareen Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair and Subhranshu Sahu) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/idfc-bank-results/indias-idfc-bank-q2-profit-falls-about-40-pct-idINL4N1N02YN'|'2017-10-25T07:15:00.000+03:00'
'a48755992483dc7c21f25ec688fe2c92c8836e25'|'Nissan says orders for new Leaf EV beating expectations'|'October 25, 2017 / 6:25 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago Nissan says orders for new Leaf EV beating expectations   TOKYO (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co ( 7201.T ) has received more than 9,000 orders for its new Leaf electric-vehicle (EV) model in Japan, a senior executive said on Wednesday. Visitors are seen at Nissan Motor booth during media preview of the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon The orders for the new Leaf are above the automaker<65>s expectations, Asako Hoshino, senior vice president and head of Japan operations, told reporters at the Tokyo Motor Show, which opened to media on Wednesday. Reporting by Maki Shiraki; Writing by Minami Funakoshi'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-autoshow-tokyo-nissan/nissan-says-orders-for-new-leaf-ev-beating-expectations-idUKKBN1CU0IY'|'2017-10-25T09:24:00.000+03:00'
'696ad67366b3405508a3cd907a13dcb3881a19bc'|'Visa quarterly profit rises 11 percent'|'(Reuters) - Visa Inc ( V.N ) beat Wall Street<65>s quarterly profit expectations on Wednesday helped by more people using its world-wide network to pay for everything from groceries to Uber rides, sending its shares to a record.A Visa credit card is seen on a computer keyboard in this picture illustration taken September 6, 2017. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer/Illustration Visa has seen an uptick of card payments in the U.S. as consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, remains at a healthy clip.The company<6E>s U.S. market share for card payments has climbed steadily as consumers switch from cash and checks.Visa has been tapping into the U.S. market aggressively, offering incentives to use to cards instead of cash on everyday purchases. It recently partnered with Uber that lets riders, whose Uber account is linked to a Visa card, earn ride credits for buying goods at participating merchants.Shares of Visa, a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, rose as much as 2 percent to a record of $110.61.In the latest quarter, the world<6C>s largest payments network operator saw payment volumes rise 9.8 percent to $1.93 trillion, on a constant dollar basis, with the United States accounting for about 43 percent of the total.It expects payment volume growth of high-single digits in 2018, on a constant dollar basis.The company is also making progress with integrating its $23 billion Visa Europe acquisition last year.<2E>Visa ended our fiscal year as we began, with strong growth across payments volume, cross-border volume and processed transactions, which was bolstered by the addition of Visa Europe,<2C> Chief Executive Alfred Kelly Jr said.Earnings rose 11 percent to $2.14 billion in the fourth quarter ended Sept. 30. Earnings per Class A share rose to 90 cents and beat analysts<74> estimates of 85 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Visa has topped estimates for eight straight quarters.Operating expenses rose marginally to $1.64 billion from severance costs related to Visa Europe. Visa expects adjusted operating expenses to be in the mid-single-digit range in 2018.Total operating revenue rose 14 percent to $4.86 billion, beating estimates for the fifth straight quarter. bit.ly/2z5EEeAVisa expects revenue growth of high-single digits in 2018, on a nominal dollar basis.<2E>Overall we see trends as sound, and while some may see net revenue guidance as light, we see another year of strong growth,<2C> Barclays said in a note.The stock has climbed 37.6 percent this year as of Tuesday''s close, outperforming the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index .DJI , which rose 18 percent over the same period.Visa<73>s rival, MasterCard ( MA.N ) reports financial results next week.Reporting By Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D''Souza and Bernard Orr '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-visa-results/visa-quarterly-profit-rises-11-percent-idUSKBN1CU19E'|'2017-10-25T13:14:00.000+03:00'
'3513b37c7eb78cca92c02592918aa801390434e2'|'Britain''s competition watchdog to investigate hotel booking sites'|'October 27, 2017 / 6:45 AM / in an hour Britain''s competition watchdog to investigate hotel booking sites Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s competition regulator said on Friday it would investigate hotel booking websites over its concerns that they did not help people find the best deal and were potentially breaking consumer law. Visitors browse at the stand of global online travel brand Expedia during the International Tourism Trade Fair (ITB) in Berlin, Germany, March 9, 2016. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it was concerned about the clarity, accuracy and presentation of information on sites, which could mislead consumers. Major hotel booking site operators include U.S. companies Expedia ( EXPE.O ), Booking.com,which is owned by The Priceline Group ( PCLN.O ), Hotels.com and Germany<6E>s Trivago, which is majority owned by Expedia. The CMA said it would examine how hotels were ranked, for example whether results were influenced by how much commission a hotel pays over the customer<65>s requirements, and the use of pressure selling, such as claims about how many rooms were left. The logo of online accommodation booking website Booking.com is pictured at the International Tourism Trade Fair (ITB) in Berlin, Germany, March 9, 2016. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch It also had concerns over the discounts advertised for the rooms and hidden charges, including taxes and booking fees. CMA chief executive Andrea Coscelli said around 70 percent of people looking for a hotel last year used the sites and they should all be confident they were getting a good deal. <20>To do this, sites need to give their customers information that is clear, accurate and presented in a way that enables people to choose the best deal for them,<2C> he said. <20>But we are concerned that this is not happening and that the information on sites may in fact be making it difficult for people to make the right choice.<2E> If the CMA finds that sites<65> practices or claims are false or misleading and are breaking consumer law, it can take enforcement action. Reporting by Paul Sandle; editing by Costas Pitas'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-hotels-comparison-sites/britains-competition-watchdog-to-investigate-hotel-booking-sites-idUKKBN1CW0MV'|'2017-10-27T09:44:00.000+03:00'
'59ba54eb23d88dbfbb31342f44b178639783c530'|'Nippon Steel executive says to keep alliance with Kobe Steel'|'October 27, 2017 / 7:19 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago Nippon Steel executive says to keep alliance with Kobe Steel Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp ( 5401.T ), Japan<61>s biggest steelmaker, plans to keep its alliance with Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ), including cross-holding of shares, despite Kobe Steel<65>s admission that it had falsified quality data, an executive said. The logo of Kobe Steel (Kobelco) is seen at the company headquarters in Kobe, western Japan October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White <20>We plan to maintain our alliance with Kobe Steel,<2C> Toshiharu Sakae, Nippon Steel<65>s executive vice president, told a news conference on Friday. <20>It<49>s a general framework under which we collaborate on anything that benefit each other, but we have not made any concrete discussions related to the latest (data fabrication) matter,<2C> he said. Former Nippon Steel, former Sumitomo Metal Industries and Kobe Steel went into an alliance in 2001 to cooperate in supply of steel in case of trouble or maintenance and to cross-hold shares to help defend from any takeover threat. Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Kim Coghill'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-kobe-steel-scandal-nippon-steel/nippon-steel-executive-says-to-keep-alliance-with-kobe-steel-idUKKBN1CW0Q6'|'2017-10-27T10:18:00.000+03:00'
'd667f5abb0c3d82351d5804ab3d18a1feaad9672'|'Clariant, Huntsman abandon $20 billion merger as opposition intensifies'|'ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss specialty chemicals maker Clariant and U.S. group Huntsman abandoned their $20 billion merger on Friday, notching a win for activist investors who fought the deal for months on the grounds it would destroy shareholder value.White Tale, the investment vehicle of hedge fund manager Keith Meister and New York-based fund 40 North, had raised its Clariant stake to above 20 percent, Reuters reported on Thursday ahead of the announcement the tie-up was dead.White Tale<6C>s rising stake, coupled with other Clariant shareholders who came out against the deal, left the Swiss company doubtful of mustering the two-thirds support necessary for the merger to go through.The successful revolt comes amid a wave of investor activism in Switzerland, where Credit Suisse and Nestle both face demands for change.Chief Executive Hariolf Kottmann said Clariant still had options to explore after further talks with White Tale, which had so far not presented the company with an alternative plan.<2E>To do a merger of equals ... is one option, to make a large transformational transaction is another option, to continue to stand alone is a third option,<2C> Kottmann told reporters on a call where he vowed to remain CEO.Some analysts said Clariant could become a bid target, though its shares fell about 5 percent on Friday.<2E>Clariant is again the No. 1 takeover target,<2C> said Baader Helvea analyst Markus Mayer, who said bidders might wait until Clariant<6E>s share price fell further, or to see if White Tale could install management more favorable to a takeover.The collapse of the merger also poses a challenge for Huntsman<61>s founding family, which was set to hold a significant stake in the combined entity but could now struggle to play a role in a consolidating industry without losing influence.<2E>SOMETHING MORE SHORT TERM<52>Clariant and Huntsman in May struck an agreement that would have given Clariant 52 percent of the combined entity, saying the deal would produce around $400 million in annual cost synergies and create the world<6C>s second-biggest specialty chemicals maker behind Evonik.In fighting the Huntsman tie-up, Meister and 40 North<74>s David Winter and David Millstone contended the merger would not deliver enough benefits, while exposing Clariant to Huntsman<61>s debt and volatile commodity chemicals business.Speculation the deal might fail had been mounting as even supporters sold down their stakes.<2E>I thought it was a fantastic deal,<2C> said one investor, who sold out on fears White Tale was gaining the upper hand. <20>I think White Tale want something more short term.<2E>The logo of Swiss specialty chemicals company Clariant is seen at the company''s headquarters in Pratteln, Switzerland August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann Alex Roepers, CEO of the $1.3 billion Atlantic Investment Management group, said he had sold the rest of his Clariant stake on Friday, locking in a 50 percent gain in under a year.<2E>As a stand-alone company, without the potential merger synergies and portfolio optimization, we regard Clariant as fairly valued at the current share price level,<2C> he said, adding he would monitor Clariant for another attractive entry point.Clariant shares had risen about 38 percent this year before Friday<61>s announcement but were still more cheaply rated than rivals, trading at a multiple of 18.7 times forecast earnings against an average 21.3 ratio of peers in the chemicals industry, according to Starmine data.TAKEOVER TARGET A source familiar with the acquisition strategy of Germany<6E>s Evonik said it would potentially be interested in acquiring portions of Clariant should the Swiss company be broken up. Evonik declined to comment.Two years ago, Evonik held talks with buyout group CVC over a potential joint offer for Clariant, although Kottmann has said he never received a formal bid.<2E>There were never serious discussions with another peer, where we were asked if we would divest ourselves, shop the company and be taken over,<2C> Kottmann s
'dceced56b4a5376dec13fa60b8b0cc2cc9f708ab'|'Deutsche Bank in $220 million rate-rigging settlement in U.S.'|'(Reuters) - Deutsche Bank AG ( DBKGn.DE ) has agreed to pay $220 million to settle U.S. regulatory charges that it defrauded government and nonprofit entities by manipulating Libor and other benchmark interest rates.FILE PHOTO - The headquarters of Germany''s Deutsche Bank are photographed early evening in Frankfurt, Germany, January 31, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo The settlement with the German bank was announced on Wednesday by the attorneys general of New York and California, Eric Schneiderman and Xavier Becerra, who led the probe by 44 U.S. states and Washington, D.C.Deutsche Bank is the second bank to settle the multistate probe, following a $100 million settlement by Britain<69>s Barclays Plc ( BARC.L ) in August 2016.Both banks agreed to cooperate in the probe into several other banks, which is continuing.Wednesday<61>s settlement came 2-1/2 years after Deutsche Bank agreed in April 2015 to pay $2.5 billion to settle rate-rigging probes by U.S. and British regulators, and a London-based unit pleaded guilty to criminal wire fraud.The bank has also reached multiple rate-rigging settlements in private U.S. investor lawsuits.<2E>This settlement resolves the bank<6E>s final pending U.S. regulatory inquiry related to Libor,<2C> Deutsche Bank spokesman Troy Gravitt said in a statement about Wednesday<61>s accord.Banks use Libor, or the London Interbank Offered Rate, to set rates on roughly $350 trillion of credit card, mortgage, student loan and other transactions, and to determine the cost of borrowing from one another.Deutsche Bank admitted to allegations that from 2005 to 2009, it made false or misleading Libor submissions, tried to influence other banks<6B> submissions to benefit its own trading positions, and concealed its deception from customers.The settlement agreement included emails and instant messages detailing the alleged manipulation, including one in which a Libor submitter told a trader who sought a particular Quote: : <20>Ok will try to give you a belated Christmas present.<2E>Schneiderman said such conduct can interfere with or undermine confidence in financial markets.<2E>Large financial institutions, like all other market participants, have to abide by the rules,<2C> he said in a statement.Banks have paid roughly $9 billion to settle Libor-rigging probes worldwide.In July, Andrew Bailey, head of the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, said that regulator will phase out Libor by the end of 2021, citing a lack of data underpinning it.Deutsche Bank<6E>s settlement includes $213.35 million for entities that suffered losses from alleged manipulation. The rest will cover costs incurred in the investigation.Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-deutschebank-settlement/deutsche-bank-in-220-million-rate-rigging-settlement-in-u-s-idUSKBN1CU2G4'|'2017-10-25T19:39:00.000+03:00'
'8b583abcf2b5ff194cf6f8fbd8879e237b17837b'|'Green groups pressure automakers on U.S. fuel efficiency rules'|'WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Sierra Club, Greenpeace USA and Public Citizen and other environmental and consumer advocacy groups plan to turn up the pressure on Wednesday in their campaign to stop automakers from lobbying the Trump administration to weaken fuel efficiency requirements.The groups wrote last month to auto executives at Ford Motor Co, General Motors Co, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, Toyota Motor Corp, Volkswagen AG ( VOWG_p.DE ) and others urging them to <20>discontinue any and all efforts to weaken or delay the implementation<6F> of the 2025 fuel efficiency standards.<2E>The auto industry should be leaders in increasing efficiency and clean technology innovation, and now is not the time to go backwards. To do so would be dangerously misguided and have profound consequences,<2C> they wrote.The letters said the groups planned a national campaign to publicize the auto industry<72>s work with the Trump Administration to weaken fuel efficiency standards. The groups planned to kick off the effort Wednesday with a media event with U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse dubbed <20>Forward, Not Backward: Stop the Rollback of Our Clean Car Standards.<2E>The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers said it would not stop trying to convince U.S. regulators to lower fuel efficiency mandates approved in the final weeks of the Obama administration.The carmakers said the costs would be onerous and the standards did not reflect how cheap gasoline was affecting consumer demand. They stopped short of asking for a specific reduction in requirements through 2025.Automakers <20>are dedicated to continued gains in fuel efficiency and carbon reductions<6E> the alliance said in a letter reviewed by Reuters, adding no one should <20>prejudge<67> the review<65>s outcome.Ford wrote the environmental groups on Oct. 5 saying the company shares the goal <20>of reducing greenhouse gas emissions<6E> but did not agree to any specific demands.Automakers have urged changes that would make it easier for them to comply with fuel economy standards, including flexibility in the use of a system of credits under the program.In June, New York state<74>s attorney general and 12 top law enforcement officials from other U.S. states said they would mount a court challenge if the administration tried to roll back vehicle emission rules.The Obama administration finalized rules in 2012 to double the fleetwide average fuel economy to 54.5 mpg by 2025, but the EPA revised it to 51.4 mpg based on a rising number of trucks.Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by David Gregorio '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-emissions/green-groups-pressure-automakers-on-u-s-fuel-efficiency-rules-idUSKBN1CT326'|'2017-10-25T00:47:00.000+03:00'
'd2f1014bcd0c88d723015bd0884c16a9c07beed9'|'Worldwide debt more than triple economic output as central bank shift looms'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Worldwide debt has risen to a record $226 trillion - more than three times global annual economic output - and firms in more countries are struggling to service loans, a study shows, just as key central banks prepare to end super-cheap credit policies.Arrangement of various world currencies including Chinese Yuan, US Dollar, Euro, British Pound, pictured January 25, 2011 REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/Files World markets are expected to get confirmation over the next week that normalising global interest rates from the extraordinarily low levels introduced to offset the fallout of the 2009 credit crash is no longer just a U.S. phenomena.The European Central Bank will lay out cuts to its 2-1/2 year-old stimulus programme on Thursday, the Bank of England looks set to raise British interest rates for the first time in a decade, while the Fed is moving towards its third hike of the year.Years of cheap central bank cash has pushed world stock markets to successive record highs. But another side effect has been explosive credit growth as households, companies and governments took advantage of rock-bottom borrowing costs.Global debt now amounts to 324 percent of the world<6C>s annual economic output, the Institute of International Finance (IIF) said in a report on Wednesday.One of the most authoritative trackers of global capital flows, the IIF report also highlighted <20>rollover<65> risks, especially in emerging markets that have borrowed in hard currencies such as euros and dollars.It calculated around $1.7 trillion needs to be refinanced or paid back before the end of 2018 across developing economies. Such debts will become costlier to service if Western interest rates rise and currencies strengthen.While U.S. interest rates have already been raised four times, the prospect of more alongside Europe<70>s shift toward tighter monetary policy, have pushed two-year U.S. borrowing costs to a nine-year highs.The IIF said the rise in indebtedness was largely down to a $3 trillion rise in debt levels across the developing world, which now have debt totalling $59 trillion.Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Hugh Lawson '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-debt-iif/worldwide-debt-more-than-triple-economic-output-as-central-bank-shift-looms-idINKBN1CU1OC'|'2017-10-25T15:08:00.000+03:00'
'e6077fe520d32dd5540e554c708b13d5e6c37674'|'ABB says strategy shift paying off after third-quarter earnings earnings beat'|'October 26, 2017 / 5:39 AM / in 22 minutes ABB says strategy shift paying off after third-quarter earnings earnings beat John Revill 3 Min Read ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss engineering group ABB ( ABBN.S ) reported third-quarter earnings slightly ahead of expectations on Thursday and said its focus on higher-growing segments like robots for the food and beverage industry was working. The power transmission and automation company said net profit rose 1 percent to $571 million, beating analyst estimates of $553 million in a Reuters poll. Sales rose 6 percent to $8.72 billion, beating estimates of $8.52 billion, while new orders - a signal of future growth - were up 8 percent, in line with expectations at $8.16 billion. The logo of Swiss power technology and automation group ABB is seen in front of a logo of General Electric in Baden, Switzerland September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann Chief Executive Ulrich Spiesshofer said the improvement, which followed a weak performance in the same quarter a year earlier, showed the strategy of focussing on segments like digital technology was having an impact. <20>The combination of a stronger market orientation and a focus on high-growth segments, such as electric vehicle charging, robotics and food and beverage, is paying off,<2C> he said in a statement. ABB kept its assessment of 2017 as a <20>transition year<61>, although it was slightly more optimistic on future demand for its products which range from electrical power grids to circuit breakers. It upgraded its short-term outlook, saying the macroeconomic signs are <20>trending positively<6C> in Europe and the United States, with growth expected to continue in China, an improvement from the mixed global picture it reported in July. The latest figures were boosted by comparisons with the weak third quarter of 2016, when new orders fell by 14 percent as customers stayed on the sidelines amid uncertainty around Brexit, the U.S. presidential elections and problems in Turkey. ABB, the world<6C>s biggest maker of power grids, has been under increased shareholder scrutiny to improve its performance after higher raw materials prices and problems with overcapacity dented earnings during its second quarter. Cevian Capital, ABB<42>s second-largest shareholder with a 5 percent stake according to Thomson Reuters data, has also been keeping a sharp eye on ABB<42>s performance after its call to spin off the low-margin Power Grids business was thwarted last year. Spiesshofer, who has acknowledged shareholders<72> concerns about returning cash, has responded by doubling down on the company<6E>s digital strategy. It aims to sell more sensor-equipped machinery and services to its existing clients, as well as win new customers. He was rewarded with services and software orders rising by 11 percent during the third quarter, while the company<6E>s overall operational EBITA margin improved to 12.9 percent from 12.8 percent a year earlier. Editing by Michael Shields'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-abb-results/abb-says-strategy-shift-paying-off-after-third-quarter-earnings-earnings-beat-idUKKBN1CV0FM'|'2017-10-26T08:39:00.000+03:00'
'afdb744869654ee48e77c6fd854839dca62603aa'|'EU considers tax on digital firms'' global profits'|'October 26, 2017 / 3:52 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago EU considers tax on digital firms'' global profits Francesco Guarascio 3 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is asking its citizens to help decide on a fairer tax regime for large digital corporations that may include a tax on their global profits. Firms such as Amazon Google and Facebook have often been accused of paying too little tax within the bloc by establishing their regional headquarters in low-tax countries such as Luxembourg and Ireland. The executive European Commission has said it will make binding legislative proposals for a fair taxation of the digital economy by March. In a public consultation published on Thursday, it listed new ideas on what such a blueprint might contain. It is seeking responses on a <20>unitary tax<61> that would be levied on a share of digital companies<65> global profits, divided up between the EU countries where they operate. This option has never appeared in EU documents before. It would be a long-term solution, as would a proposed tax using the corporate rate of the countries where the firms<6D> consumers are, rather than where the firms are based. That would eliminate the incentive for multinationals to set their EU headquarters in low-tax states. The commission also sought reactions to the idea of changing the principle of corporate establishment, so that companies could be taxed when they have a <20>digital<61> presence in a country. That was an option listed in a document published in September. Acknowledging that these proposals would take time to be applied, <20>the Commission believes that a two-step approach might be needed,<2C> the document said. In the short term, EU states could impose a tax on revenues from <20>digital activities<65> or services, like the sale of online ads, the document said. They could also consider a withholding tax on digital payments or a <20>digital transaction tax<61> levied on companies selling consumers<72> personal data, like Google or Facebook. The document offers respondents the possibility of proposing alternative measures. The public consultation will run until Jan. 3. <20>EU citizens, businesses and organizations interested in the evolution of the digital economy are welcome to contribute,<2C> the Commission said. The move is set to gauge public support for an initiative that is backed by the EU<45>s big states but opposed by smaller, low-tax countries who fear losing revenues. Tax reforms require the unanimous backing of all 28 EU states to be adopted, although European rules offer chances to strip countries of their veto powers in cases of market distortion, an option that has so far never been tested. Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; editing by John Stonestreet'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-tax-digital/eu-considers-tax-on-digital-firms-global-profits-idUKKBN1CV2OB'|'2017-10-26T18:47:00.000+03:00'
'e7c53de7fa24d3db75785328cbd7d85e3b9a1e87'|'UK retailers cut jobs at fastest rate since 2008 - BRC'|'October 25, 2017 / 11:09 PM / Updated 4 hours ago UK retailers cut jobs at fastest rate since 2008 - BRC David Milliken 3   British retailers cut jobs over the past three months at the fastest rate since comparable records began in 2008, due to technological change and rising employment costs, the British Retail Consortium said on Thursday. FILE PHOTO - Two shoppers sit with their bags on Oxford Street in London, Britain, September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde The BRC, which represents major retailers, said its members employed 3.0 percent fewer staff in the third quarter of this year than during the same time in 2016, and total hours worked fell by 4.2 percent year-on-year. Both were the steepest falls since the BRC started collecting records in 2008, when Britain was in the middle of its sharpest recession in decades. This contrasts with the picture in the broader economy, where the unemployment rate is its lowest since 1975 and job creation has been strong, albeit partly at the expense of wages. Still, the BRC report chimed with a European Commission survey last month that showed British retailers<72> expectations for employment sank to their lowest since late 2011. <20>The pace of job reductions in the retail industry is gathering steam,<2C> BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson said. <20>Behind this shrinking of the workforce is both a technological revolution in retail, which is reducing demand for labour, and government policy, which is driving up the cost of employment,<2C> she added. Retail, which accounts for just under 10 percent of jobs in Britain, has a lot of low-paid jobs that have been affected by rapid rises in the minimum wage in recent years, as well as a new government training levies and pension requirements. High-street retailers also face stiff competition from online stores, which typically need fewer staff, and supermarkets have increasingly been switching to customers scanning their own shopping, supervised by a handful of staff. Sainsbury<72>s ( SBRY.L ), Britain<69>s second biggest supermarket group behind Tesco ( TSCO.L ), said last week it was seeking to cut up to 2,000 jobs, mainly in its payroll and human resources departments. One silver lining of the fall in jobs was an increase in average pay for staff who remained, as productivity improved, the BRC said - a trend at odds with the lacklustre performance on jobs and productivity in other British industries. <20>The challenge for retailers will be in maintaining the pace of productivity improvement as they come up against shortages of the skills needed for a new, digital-dependent industry,<2C> Dickinson said. Reporting by David Milliken'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-retail/uk-retailers-cut-jobs-at-fastest-rate-since-2008-brc-idUKKBN1CU3A5'|'2017-10-26T02:08:00.000+03:00'
'98a1cf1b0395aa6b163616c5ab203cc68fd13052'|'Saudi Exchange aspires to be exclusive venue for Aramco IPO: CEO'|'October 26, 2017 / 5:40 AM / Updated 3 hours ago NYSE not given up on Aramco IPO, as Saudi bourse eyes exclusive role Andrew Torchia , Hadeel Al Sayegh 3 Min Read RIYADH (Reuters) - The head of the New York Stock Exchange has not given up on the initial public offering (IPO) of Saudi Arabian oil company Aramco, even as the kingdom<6F>s bourse operator said it aspired to be the exclusive venue for the listing. Visitors are seen at the Saudi Aramco stand at the Middle East Process Engineering Conference & Exhibition in Manama, Bahrain, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed Thursday<61>s comments add to the mystery about Aramco<63>s listing venues as global exchanges compete to win part of the flotation as it will bring a major boost to trading volumes. Saudi Aramco<63>s chief executive said this week that domestic and international exchanges such as New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong have been examined for a partial listing. The $100 billion IPO is aimed at helping raise the kingdom<6F>s profile in the eyes of overseas investors, a key part of its goal to reform the economy that is reliant on oil revenues. Asked by a reporter whether he had given up, NYSE Group President Thomas Farley replied: <20>No.<2E> Farley, who is attending an investment conference in Riyadh said the NYSE was talking to Saudi authorities about it but declined to elaborate. Khalid al-Hussan, chief executive of the Saudi exchange, known as Tadawul, said earlier his exchange aspired to be the exclusive venue for listing the share sale and could absorb all of it. Khalid al-Hussan, Chief Executive Officer of the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) attends the Euromoney Saudi Arabia Conference 2017 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia May 2, 2017. Picture taken May 2, 2017. REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser Such a listing would dwarf anything else on the bourse. Tadawul was working hard to convince Aramco of the merits of such a move, but the company had not yet decided, he said. FILE PHOTO: A trader stands in front of a screen displaying stock information at the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) in Riyadh June 15, 2015. REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser/File Photo/File Photo <20>Tadawul is the main exchange in the region and as the most liquid among the largest 25 exchanges in the world and among the 10 largest emerging markets, Tadawul aspires to be the exclusive venue,<2C> he said at an investment conference in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia expects to value the state-owned oil producer at a minimum of $2 trillion, in what could be the world<6C>s biggest IPO, the centerpiece of its Vision 2030 plan to diversify the economy away from oil. But some analysts have expressed concern about the risk of the share sale swamping the local market. Tadawul<75>s market capitalization of Tadawul is about $340 billion. Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC) 2010.SE, the largest company listed to date, has a market capitalization of about $78 billion. <20>The exclusive listing of Aramco on the Saudi stock exchange is possible but at a speculated valuation of around $2 trillion it will be too large for Tadawul to solely handle the listing of even a 5 percent stake sale,<2C> said Nitin Garg, senior analyst at SICO Bahrain. <20>The Saudi market does not have sufficient liquidity to absorb such a large initial public offering.<2E> Additional reporting by Saeed Azhar and Tom Arnold; Editing by Edmund Blair '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-economy-tadawul/saudi-exchange-aspires-to-be-exclusive-venue-for-aramco-ipo-ceo-idUSKBN1CV0FW'|'2017-10-26T08:39:00.000+03:00'
'f255448c34ed96e7091a00622c4c047400521394'|'Japanese carmakers warm to EVs, but still see role for hydrogen'|'October 25, 2017 / 1:34 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago Japanese carmakers warm to EVs, but still see role for hydrogen Naomi Tajitsu , Norihiko Shirouzu 4 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese automakers are finally embracing electric cars, showcasing concepts ranging from compact sportscars to all-wheel-drive mini SUVs at this week<65>s Tokyo Motor show, although they haven<65>t given up on alternative technologies. A model riding Honda ChairMobi Concept presents Ai-miimo, Honda''s concept model of AI-installed lawn mower, during media preview of the 45th Tokyo Motor Show. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon After years of investing in hydrogen fuel cells and electric-gasoline hybrids, Japanese manufacturers are talking up all-battery electric vehicles (EVs) at the annual gathering. Many are looking to catch up with global rivals amid rapidly tightening global emissions regulations and improving technology that may make EV batteries a price-competitive option to gasoline engines in the coming years. <20>As far as green cars go, vehicle powertrain electrification is a must,<2C> said Soichiro Okudaira, president of Daihatsu Motor Co, a fully owned subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ), which showed its concept of the <20>Pro Cargo<67> multi-use mini electric van at the show<6F>s first media day on Wednesday . <20>EV (technology) is a great match with small cars people use everyday to commute, go shopping, because it<69>s easy to charge and maintain.<2E> Even Toyota, the country<72>s largest automaker which set up an EV development team just a year ago, said pure EVs would be one of the <20>key solutions<6E> for cleaner vehicles in the near future. Still, the maker of the Mirai fuel cell vehicle (FCV) is sticking to its view that the hydrogen fuel cell is the ultimate <20>green car<61> technology. Analysts say FCVs can refuel faster than an EV can recharge and can travel longer distances, making them a potentially attractive option for larger vehicles - though the cost and limited refuelling infrastructure pose challenges. Students from Aichi Highschool of Technology and Engineering pose next to their developed electric vehicle named Collapse during media preview of the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai Underlining its point, Toyota introduced two new FCVs at the show: the six-seater <20>Fine-Comfort Ride<64> concept car, and the <20>Sora<72> fuel-cell bus, which will be launched next year. TIPPING POINT Honda Motor Co ( 7267.T ) on Wednesday announced it would launch a compact EV in Japan in 2020, following Nissan Motor Co ( 7201.T ), long a proponent of EVs and maker of the Leaf, the world<6C>s best-selling battery electric car launched in 2010. Slideshow (2 Images) As advances in lithium ion battery technology improve charging times and lower production costs, some automakers and suppliers expect increased demand will boost EV sales within the next decade, lowering their price towards gasoline vehicles. <20>We see this tipping point happening around 2025. By then for the customer to buy petrol or EV it will be practically same cost,<2C> Nissan Executive Vice President Daniele Schillaci said. <20>And then ... if you have the same price for EVs and petrol why would you buy traditional technology?<3F> While global automakers acknowledge the internal combustion engine may become obsolete in the coming decades, smaller automaker Mazda Motor Corp ( 7261.T ) continues to squeeze more efficiency out of gasoline engines, developing its spark-ignition compression engine which it says could improve fuel economy by as much as 30 percent. Others argue that reports of the death of the gasoline engine have been greatly exaggerated. <20>Many in the media appear to be saying that EVs are going to take over the world, but given ongoing technology and cost limitations, it will be difficult for that to happen anytime soon,<2C> Subaru Corp ( 7270.T ) CEO Yasuyuki Yoshinaga said. Additional reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.co
'be58da829ef8de314f99863f5983e5e90deccd9e'|'EU delays decision on licence for weedkiller glyphosate'|'October 25, 2017 / 9:43 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago EU delays decision on licence for weedkiller glyphosate Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU countries failed on Wednesday to vote on a licence extension for weedkiller glyphosate, delaying again a politically charged decision on the widely used herbicide that critics say causes cancer. FILE PHOTO: Monsanto''s Roundup weedkiller atomizers are displayed for sale at a garden shop at Bonneuil-Sur-Marne near Paris, France, June 16, 2015. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo The European Commission said in a statement that the relevant committee did not vote at a meeting on Wednesday and that it would announce the date of the next meeting shortly. Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-health-glyphosate/eu-delays-decision-on-licence-for-weedkiller-glyphosate-idUKKBN1CU16A'|'2017-10-25T12:42:00.000+03:00'
'0a8b8005fe573a9d2e8f7ebe990c5f3b4114a2c2'|'Barrick Gold''s Tanzania deal may set expensive precedent - shareholders'|' 57 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago Barrick Gold''s Tanzania deal may set expensive precedent - shareholders Nicole Mordant 4 Min Read VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Some mining investors are criticizing Barrick Gold ( ABX.TO ) for agreeing to Tanzanian demands in its proposed settlement of a dispute between its Acacia Mining ( ACAA.L ) unit and the Tanzanian government, saying this could embolden other host nations to press for bigger concessions from miners. FILE PHOTO: A bulldozer operates inside an open pit at Barrick Gold Corp''s Veladero gold mine in Argentina''s San Juan province, April 26, 2017. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci/File Photo Several shareholders said this week that by agreeing to hand Tanzania 50 percent of the <20>economic benefits<74> from Acacia<69>s three gold mines in the East African country, Barrick may have set the baseline for what nations may demand from global mining companies, possibly slowing mine development. Barrick, which owns 63.9 percent of Acacia, reached a framework deal last week with Tanzania under which Acacia would hand the state a 16 percent stake in each of its three in-country mines, part of the economic benefits, including taxes and royalties, that would go to the government. Acacia would also pay the government $300 million (<28>226.4 million). <20>The 50 percent is not a good precedent by any means for a very risky business,<2C> said Chris Mancini, an analyst at Gabelli Gold Fund, which owns shares in Barrick. Miners would generally want more than half the profits from mines to give them the incentive to build operations in geopolitically risky parts of the world, Mancini said. <20>They are disincentivising development. Barrick<63>s really imperiling the rest of their operations. They are imperiling the industry,<2C> he said. Barrick, which is the world<6C>s biggest gold producer and has operations on five continents, said the proposed agreement complies with Tanzania<69>s new mining law, which requires the government to hold a stake in mining operations. <20>That is not a concession, that is complying with the law,<2C> Barrick spokesman Andy Lloyd said. Tanzania was long seen as one of Africa<63>s brightest mining prospects but new laws have slowed fresh investment amid government efforts to claim a larger slice of the pie. FILE PHOTO: Barrick Gold President Kelvin Dushnisky speaks to shareholders during the company''s annual meeting in Toronto, Ontario, Canada April 25, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo It has accused Acacia of understating its gold shipments, serving it with a $190 billion bill for unpaid taxes and halting most of its exports. Barrick <20>are showing a willingness to cave to ridiculous demands,<2C> said another Barrick shareholder who declined to be identified due to company policy. Lloyd said the alternative to an agreement, which requires Acacia<69>s approval, would be lengthy international arbitration. Barrick believed a partnership with the government would <20>deliver better outcomes and greater stability for shareholders in the long run,<2C> he said. FILE PHOTO: Dump trucks operate at Barrick Gold Corp''s Veladero gold mine in Argentina''s San Juan province, April 26, 2017. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci/File Photo Barrick also owns mines in the Dominican Republic and Papua New Guinea, considered higher risk by investors. It has been teaming up with partners, as seen at its Veladero mine in Argentina and the Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea, to reduce risks. The settlement with Tanzania comes at a time of rising so-called <20>resource nationalism,<2C> notably in countries such as Indonesia and Tanzania, in which host governments seek a bigger financial cut from mines. Some Barrick investors voiced confidence in the company. Barrick would likely walk away from a deal if it was too onerous or set an <20>unwanted<65> precedent, said Joe Foster, portfolio manager at Van Eck Associates, Barrick<63>s biggest shareholder. <20>The company has shown a discipline to the bottom line that I believe they will respect,<2C> Foster said. And
'0c972430916e3ea6f6306cebdc8074cd010af785'|'Nike gives upbeat forecast at investor conference, shares rise'|'October 25, 2017 / 8:05 PM / in 22 minutes Nike gives upbeat forecast at investor conference, shares rise Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Nike Inc ( NKE.N ) said on Wednesday it expects earnings per share to grow in the mid-teens over the next five years, driven by online sales and new product categories, sending its shares up by about three percent. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Nike (NKE) is seen in Los Angeles, California, United States, April 12, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo The stock was the top gainer on the Dow on a day when the broader market was down. Nike Chief Executive Mark Parker said at an investor conference that he expects digital revenues to grow from 15 to 30 percent over five years, while revenue growth would be up in the high-single digits over the same period. The company has already set a target of $50 billion in annual sales by 2020. The sports-wear giant said at the conference it expects about 50 percent of its future sales growth to come from new categories and about 75 percent growth from outside the U.S. Nike posted its weakest quarterly sales growth in nearly seven years in September as it fights to retain market share from rivals like Adidas AG ( ADSGn.DE ). Analysts have remained upbeat on the company<6E>s plans to invest in a variety of different distribution channels but have cautioned that it may come too late as the company struggles with declining revenue in North America. Reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nike-outlook/nike-gives-upbeat-forecast-at-investor-conference-shares-rise-idUSKBN1CU2XW'|'2017-10-25T23:03:00.000+03:00'
'baa85cdb3f3415334efc911d185a0c31c8644a65'|'China will not set target to double GDP from 2021 - party official'|'October 26, 2017 / 2:57 AM / Updated 21 minutes ago China will not set target to double GDP from 2021 - party official Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China will no longer set a target to double gross domestic product (GDP) from 2021, a senior Communist Party official said on Thursday, as top leaders look to high-quality growth in the long term. Chinese deputy minister of the Office of the Central Leading Group for Finance and Economic Affairs Yang Weimin attends a news conference during the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, China October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu The government will not solely pursue economic growth and will emphasise the quality of its growth, Yang Weimin, vice minister of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs, told a news conference. China aims to double GDP and per capita income by 2020 from 2010 levels, and growth is on track to hit those goals. In the opening speech of a key twice-a-decade Communist Party Congress this week, President Xi Jinping said China would deepen economic and financial reforms and further open its markets to foreign investors as it looks to move from high-speed to high-quality growth. Xi set bold long-term goals for China<6E>s development, envisioning it as a <20>basically<6C> modernised socialist country by 2035, and a modern socialist <20>strong power<65> with leading influence on the world stage by 2050. Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Writing by Kevin Yao; Editing by Jacqueline Wong'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-congress-growth/china-will-not-set-target-to-double-gdp-from-2021-party-official-idUKKBN1CV083'|'2017-10-26T05:56:00.000+03:00'
'9b6460ace942994433b5821e6ad37e5a70a704b2'|'Brazil lender Caixa Economica not up for sale: chairwoman'|'BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil<69>s state lender Caixa Econ<6F>mica Federal [CEF.UL] will not be privatized, Caixa chairwoman and Brazil<69>s Treasury secretary Ana Paula Vescovi told journalists on Thursday.Vescovi reiterated the bank<6E>s board is discussing to reform Caixa<78>s bylaws to turn it into an incorporated company, but said that does not mean the government is willing to sell a stake in it. She said Caixa needs additional funds to meet Basel III requirements, which may come from a potential 10-billion-real ($3.05 billion) transfer from a workers<72> severance fund known as FGTS.($1 = 3.2793 reais)Reporting by Silvio Cascione; editing by Diane Craft '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-caixa-ec-federal-privatization/brazil-lender-caixa-economica-not-up-for-sale-chairwoman-idINKBN1CV34B'|'2017-10-26T16:23:00.000+03:00'
'a9522726ec3f5b79f03cec35599cf27bdd0fc2b9'|'RPT-UPDATE 1-At least three buyout groups seen advancing in Unilever spreads auction - sources'|' 24 AM / in 16 minutes RPT-UPDATE 1-At least three buyout groups seen advancing in Unilever spreads auction - sources Reuters Staff (Repeats OCT 24 report with no changes to text) * Blackstone/CVC team, BC Partners no longer in race - sources * Bain/CD&R, KKR and Apollo seen in second round - sources * Unilever will spin off unit if sale unsuccessful - CFO By Martinne Geller and Pamela Barbaglia LONDON, Oct 24 (Reuters) - At least three bidders are expected to be shortlisted for the second round of an auction for Unilever<65>s margarine and spreads business while two other private equity groups are no longer in the fray, sources told Reuters. Buyout funds Blackstone and CVC Capital Partners , who were teaming up on a joint offer, are no longer in the running for the business which could be worth more than $7 billion, the sources said on Tuesday. BC Partners, which bid on its own, has not made it through to the second stage of the auction which is led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, according to the sources. A team comprising Bain Capital and Clayton Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) is expected to move to the second round of bidding along with private equity rivals KKR and Apollo, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the process is private. Unilever, Bain and Apollo declined to comment. Blackstone, CVC, BC Partners, CD&R and KKR were not immediately available to comment. Unilever put the business up for sale after many years of declining sales, following an unsolicited $143 billion takeover bid by Kraft Heinz in February that jolted the Anglo-Dutch group into a series of actions to improve its returns. The business - home to Flora, Stork and Country Crock - has high profit margins but is shrinking as Western consumers eat less bread and margarine. The consortium of Bain and CD&R could emerge as a frontrunner, sources said, since one of CD&R<>s partners is Vindi Banga, a 33-year veteran of Unilever. But Apollo has also gained significant experience in buying businesses from large conglomerates and turning them around, one of the sources said, adding that they will play hard to secure control of Unilever<65>s spreads products. In December, Apollo clinched a $1.5 billion cash deal to buy car lighting and LED components firm Lumileds from Philips and in 2015 it won control of Saint-Gobain<69>s glass bottle division Verallia with a bid worth almost 3 billion euros. Sources say the Unilever process could be wrapped up by the end of the year. It is not clear on Tuesday whether any industry players had submitted bids for regional pieces of the business, which operates in dozens of countries. Unilever has already struck a $900 million deal with South African investor Remgro for the spreads business in southern Africa. Unilever has repeatedly said it will spin off the business if it fails to generate a satisfactory price through an auction. $1 = 0.8501 euros Editing by Jane Merriman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/unilever-nv-spreads/rpt-update-1-at-least-three-buyout-groups-seen-advancing-in-unilever-spreads-auction-sources-idUSL8N1N021B'|'2017-10-25T10:24:00.000+03:00'
'da24cf4cba4fe0ab21c56acb50ada37ec28a6011'|'Safran CEO says Silvercrest engine delay to last months'|'PARIS, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Safran expects the latest development delay in its Silvercrest business-jet engine to last a matter of months, although it is still assessing the precise schedule, Chief Executive Philippe Petitcolin said on Friday.Dassault Aviation said this month that its Falcon 5X jet would be postponed after Safran identified problems with the engine<6E>s high-pressure compressor during flight testing.Petitcolin told reporters Safran was in discussions with Dassault to agree a new schedule. The engine had been due for certification in 2018, but he declined to estimate a new date.Speaking after posting better-than-expected third quarter sales, Petitcolin said a previous round of technical problems, identified when the Silvercrest engine programme was reset two years ago, had all been resolved.He said Safran<61>s key priority remained the ramp-up of production for the LEAP engine, co-developed with General Electric for Airbus and Boeing narrowbody aircraft through their CFM International venture.Safran said earlier that its 2017 operating earnings faced headwinds of 350-400 million euros from the transition to the new engine. Petitcolin said the previous working estimate had been 300-350 million euros.He also said talks continued with Airbus about the future of production of <20>nacelles<65>, or engine housings, for the A320neo.Airbus has said it is bringing in-house work on nacelles made by United Technologies for jets powered by Pratt & Whitney engines, and that it is considering doing the same for nacelles made by Safran for CFM-powered A320neo aircraft.Petitcolin reaffirmed plans to launch a formal offer for Zodiac Aerospace by end-year and to close an agreed deal to buy the seats maker in 2018. (Reporting by Tim Hepher and Cyril Altmeyer; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/safran-results-ceo/safran-ceo-says-silvercrest-engine-delay-to-last-months-idINL8N1N20WV'|'2017-10-27T03:59:00.000+03:00'
'ea85157743ec1049774e872c48ba507582ae1812'|'Big Oil executives jet to Rio for deepwater oil sale'|'October 27, 2017 / 9:12 AM / Updated 10 minutes ago Brazil''s pre-salt oil auction begins after injunction delay Simon Webb , Marta Nogueira 3 Min Read RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazil on Friday inaugurated a long-awaited auction for blocks in its prolific pre-salt offshore oil region after the government successfully appealed a federal judge<67>s injunction against the process. Companies representatives attend the nation''s 14th round of oil fields auctions, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Bruno Kelly The eyes of the global oil industry are on the Latin American country, with senior executives from the world<6C>s biggest energy companies in Rio de Janeiro to bid. The leftist Workers Party, which opposes government reforms in the energy sector, sought the suspension. <20>There are great expectations around this auction,<2C> Mario Faria, Brazil country manager for top oil services provider Schlumberger ( SLB.N ), said before the suspension was lifted. Brazil is slated to auction eight blocks with more than 12 billion barrels of estimated oil reserves. Oil companies will be allowed to operate fields for the first time in a region known as the pre-salt, where hydrocarbons are trapped under thousands of feet of salt beneath the ocean floor of Brazil<69>s deep Atlantic waters. President Michel Temer<65>s government has enacted reforms to make the energy sector more attractive to major oil companies, removing strict local content rules and extending a preferential tax regime to court big money. He has, however, faced opposition from the left. Indigenous groups and environmentalists protested against an auction in September for blocks near the pre-salt region. <20>We know that in Brazil these things happen ... Above all, it is a political act,<2C> said Pedro Parente, chief executive of state-run oil producer Petroleo Brasileiro ( PETR4.SA ), referring to the nearly three-hour delay. The quality of reserves and the reforms have made Brazil an important target for oil majors, even though they have had less appetite for capital-intensive mega projects since crude prices crashed in 2014. Brazil has big hopes for the volume of oil the companies can pump from the blocks. Brazilian oil output could double to more than 5 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2027, compared with the 2.6 million bpd produced in August, regulator ANP said on Thursday. Shell ( RDSa.L ) will participate in the auction and has said it is confident it can pump from the pre-salt fields at below $40 a barrel. Exxon Mobil ( XOM.N ) is also expected to bid, oil industry sources said. The U.S. producer set the stage in September, when it won 10 blocks near the pre-salt in another auction. Writing by Alexandra Alper and Simon Webb; Additional reporting by Luciano Costa and Rodrigo Viga Gaier; Editing by Jane Merriman and Susan Thomas'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-oil-auction/big-oil-executives-jet-to-rio-for-deepwater-oil-sale-idUKKBN1CW12W'|'2017-10-27T12:03:00.000+03:00'
'9b0afa74c9f7e9cb69730b1603f3fc57a9d78c84'|'US STOCKS-Futures jump after strong tech earnings'|'* Futures up: Dow 48 pts, S&P 6.25 pts, Nasdaq 32 ptsBy Sruthi ShankarOct 27 (Reuters) - Solid results from tech titans Amazon and Google-parent Alphabet were seen driving the U.S. stock index futures higher on Friday.* Shares in Amazon, the world<6C>s largest online retailer, jumped 7.61 percent in premarket trading as the company<6E>s sales surged and profit trounced expectations.* Alphabet shares gained 3.07 percent as robust advertising sales boosted the tech major<6F>s revenue.* Microsoft jumped 4.86 percent after the world<6C>s largest software company reported further gains from its cloud computing services.* Tech stocks have rallied this year, with the S&P technology index gaining about 30 percent this year, double the gains in the broader S&P index.* As the third-quarter earnings season nears the halfway mark, 74 percent of the S&P companies topped expectations as of Thursday, above the 72 percent beat rate for the past four quarters.* Data on U.S. economy will likely show that growth slowed in the third quarter as hurricanes Harvey and Irma hurt consumer spending and undercut construction activity. The GDP data is due at 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT).* A final reading of University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index is likely fall to 100.9 for October. The report is due at 10:00 a.m. ET* Oil prices steadied on Friday, with benchmark Brent crude trading just below $60 a barrel, buoyed by comments from Saudi Arabia<69>s crown prince backing the extension of OPEC-led output cuts.* Among other early movers, Intel shares were up 3.34 percent after it raised full-year revenue and profit forecasts.* Mattel plunged 18.28 percent after the toymaker said it would miss its full-year revenue forecast and decided to halt dividend from the fourth quarter.* Expedia was down 13.13 percent after the online travel services company<6E>s profit missed Wall Street<65>s consensus forecast.Futures snapshot at 6:55 a.m. ET:* Dow e-minis were up 48 points, or 0.21 percent, with 23,355 contracts changing hands.* S&P 500 e-minis were up 6.25 points, or 0.24 percent, with 167,062 contracts traded.* Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 32 points, or 0.53 percent, on volume of 37,342 contracts.Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-stocks/us-stocks-futures-jump-after-strong-tech-earnings-idINL4N1N24CJ'|'2017-10-27T09:34:00.000+03:00'
'f448f6cb50332a9d14e3518d70c130477525a6a4'|'Banco Santander in process of selling U.S. unit Totalbank: CEO'|'October 26, 2017 / 11:42 AM / in 8 hours Banco Santander in process of selling U.S. unit Totalbank: CEO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MADRID (Reuters) - Banco Santander ( SAN.MC ) is in the process of selling its U.S. unit Totalbank, Chief Executive Jose Antonio Alvarez said on Thursday. Jose Antonio Alvarez, CEO of Spain''s largest bank Banco Santander, addresses the annual general meeting of shareholders in Santander March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Vincent West <20>We are in a process which could end with the sale of the bank,<2C> Alvarez told a news conference in Madrid. Santander is also considering selling some parts of credit card business Wizink, he added. Spain<69>s biggest lender has paid 200 million euros in compensation to mortgage clients of Banco Popular, which it took over in June, Alvarez said. Reporting by Jesus Aguado, writing by Isla Binnie '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-santander-results-totalbank/banco-santander-in-process-of-selling-u-s-unit-totalbank-ceo-idINKBN1CV1OO'|'2017-10-26T09:42:00.000+03:00'
'17d1168a1fdc7a6ede6b69a7fbaadca05377f690'|'India plans policies to boost foreign participation in oil & gas'|'MUMBAI (Reuters) - India will announce new policies to help global companies participate more in its oil and gas sector, Oil Secretary K.D. Tripathi said on Thursday.FILE PHOTO: Sample bottles of crude oil are seen in this illustration photo June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo India, which imports about 80 percent of its oil needs, wants to boost its local oil output.Reporting by Promit Mukherjee; Editing by Malini Menon '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/oil-gas-auction-india/india-plans-policies-to-boost-foreign-participation-in-oil-gas-idINKBN1CV0KS'|'2017-10-26T04:37:00.000+03:00'
'47626f563117778ec6c9f6a19e6b0cee6567c211'|'Beginning of the end for Europe''s loose money? ECB to curb stimulus'|'October 25, 2017 / 10:10 PM / a minute ago Wary ECB decides to buy fewer bonds, but do it for longer Balazs Koranyi , Francesco Canepa 5 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank on Thursday took its biggest step yet in weaning the euro zone economy off years of stimulus but said the economic outlook was still dependent on its lavish monthly purchases of euro zone bonds. European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi holds a news conference following the governing council''s interest rate decision at the ECB headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach It said it will cut the amount of bonds it will buy each month from January, but hedged its bets by extending the lifespan of the bond-buying program to the end of next September. ECB President Mario Draghi called the changes a <20>recalibration<6F> and indicated that the bank<6E>s work in boosting inflation and ensuring growth was not yet done. The bank will cut its bond buys in half to 30 billion euros a month from January, taking comfort in an economic recovery now in its fifth year and moving in sync with peers like the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, as they also prepare to tighten policy. But bothered by stubbornly low inflation, the ECB twinned the cut with a nine month extension of the program, opting to buy fewer bonds but for a longer period to reassure investors it will provide accommodation for a long time. Indeed, the ECB even maintained its option to increase or extend the bond buying program, an apparent victory for policy doves who argued that they should not commit to ending the buys since possible euro gains could exacerbate weak inflation. Euro zone bond yields fell after the announcement on what traders said was relief over the program<61>s continuation, albeit it with less buying. At a news conference, Draghi said that the euro zone economic outlook had improved but that core inflation had not yet shown any convincing signs of an upwards trend -- the goal of much of the stimulus. <20>Domestic price pressures are still muted overall and the economic outlook and the path of inflation remain conditional on continued support from monetary policy,<2C> he said. <20>Therefore, an ample degree of monetary stimulus remains necessary.<2E> Designed nearly three years ago to fight off the threat of deflation, the bond purchase scheme has cut funding costs, revived borrowing and lifted growth, even if it ultimately failed to raise inflation back to the ECB<43>s target of almost 2 percent. <20>If the outlook becomes less favorable, or if financial conditions become inconsistent with further progress towards a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation, the Governing Council stands ready to increase the asset purchase program in terms of size and/or duration,<2C> the ECB said in a statement. The ECB added that its main refinancing operations and the three-month longer-term refinancing operations will continue to be conducted as fixed rate tender procedures with full allotment for as long as necessary, and at least until the end of the last reserve maintenance period of 2019. FILE PHOTO: Flags in front of the European Central Bank (ECB) before a news conference at the ECB headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, April 27, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo Interest rates were left unchanged as expected and the ECB reaffirmed its guidance to keep them unchanged until well after its bond buys end. DEBATE Draghi told the news conference that there had been some difference of views among the rate-setters but that decisions were taken in a positive attitude. Hawks such as Germany and the Netherlands have wanted a commitment to end bond buys, arguing that growth is now above trend and that more purchases do next to nothing for inflation. FILE PHOTO - European Central Bank (ECB) headquarters building is seen in Frankfurt, Germany July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo Doves on the bloc<6F>s periphery, however, warn th
'ee3b31728fe7c44ecc9aeff0de1352db0f102a78'|'Net loss widens at Canada''s Crescent Point on forex losses, tax payment'|'Reuters TV United States October 26, 2017 / 1:11 PM / in a few seconds Net loss widens at Canada''s Crescent Point on forex losses, tax payment Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Canadian oil and gas producer Crescent Point Energy Corp ( CPG.TO ) said on Thursday its third-quarter net loss more than doubled, driven by tax payments and foreign exchange losses. The company said net loss in the period was C$270.6 million ($211.3 million), or 50 Canadian cents per share, in the quarter ended Sept. 30, more than double the loss of C$108.5 million, or 21 Canadian cents, in the third quarter of 2016. Operating profit, which excludes most one-time items, was C$33.7 million, or 6 cents per share. That comes after a loss of C$22 million, or 4 cents, a year earlier. Crescent Point focuses on producing light and medium oil for the Bakken field of southwest Saskatchewan, as well as elsewhere in Western Canada and the United States. The company<6E>s cash flow, a key indicator of its ability to pay for new acquisitions and drilling, jumped 33 percent to C$437 million. Crescent Point<6E>s production rose 10 percent to 176,069 barrels of oil equivalent per day during the quarter. Reporting by Nia Williams and Nichola Saminather; Editing by Bernadette Baum'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crescent-point-results/net-loss-widens-at-canadas-crescent-point-on-forex-losses-tax-payment-idUSKBN1CV219'|'2017-10-26T16:08:00.000+03:00'
'fd219cda46511cacf1ea670df71f1aee306aa9a5'|'UK pension schemes told to give more detail on investments, costs'|'October 26, 2017 / 12:20 PM / Updated an hour ago UK pension schemes told to give more detail on investments, costs Simon Jessop , Noor Zainab Hussain 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - UK pension schemes should give more information to members about their investments and how much asset managers are charging them to run members<72> money, the government said on Thursday. People walk across Westminster Bridge as the sun sets behind the Houses of Parliament in London, Britain, October 16, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay The move is the latest attempt by the authorities to increase transparency in the market for pensions and investments. The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) said a failure to provide the information could see occupational workplace pension scheme trustees fined up to 50,000 pounds from April, 2018, under the proposed new rules. An annual benefit statement should be given to scheme members detailing the costs and charges associated with their investments and schemes should show how the expenses affect the size of the individual<61>s retirement savings pot. The scheme should also give more detail about the investments made on behalf of members, the DWP said. It will now consult with trustees and fund managers until Dec. 6 on the proposals. <20>Well-run schemes should have nothing to fear from greater transparency on costs and charges,<2C> said former pensions minister Steve Webb, now director of policy at insurer and pensions provider Royal London. <20>Trustees and governance committees will welcome additional information which will help them to ensure that their members<72> money is invested in a way which delivers maximum value-for-money.<2E> Rachel Haworth, policy officer at ShareAction, an investor action group, said it supported the proposed changes, particularly those around better disclosure of the main investments being made on behalf of a scheme<6D>s members. <20>It is right that these savers should be able to find out where and how their money is invested, since they bear the risks and costs of investment. <20>We regularly support pension savers to ask their schemes how their money is being invested, but they often hit a brick wall in trying to get this information.<2E> Editing by Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-pensions/uk-pension-schemes-told-to-give-more-detail-on-investments-costs-idUKKBN1CV1VA'|'2017-10-26T15:19:00.000+03:00'
'd551944bdb5901c8a77cad4a9352fa8dbac4c229'|'Toyota launches new Corolla in Venezuela during recession'|'CARACAS (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ) on Wednesday unveiled a new model of its Corolla vehicle that will be assembled in Venezuela, marking a bright note for a local auto industry struggling to survive amid the country<72>s deep economic recession.A man takes a photo of a Toyota Motor Corp''s Corolla car in Caracas, Venezuela October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Marco Bello Toyota said it was currently producing 20 units per month of the new Corolla, which will be sold only in Venezuela, and expected to raise production in 2018. Company executives acknowledged that demand for cars in Venezuela has fallen steadily with the crisis.<2E>We know the current state of the industry,<2C> said Toyota Venezuela president Hiroyuki Ueda at a press conference to present the new vehicle. <20>However, we have overcome obstacles, we have a new Corolla - and this is for us a reason for celebration.<2E>The once-thriving Venezuelan automotive sector went from selling almost 500,000 units a year in 2007 to about 3,000 vehicles last year, according to the country<72>s auto industry association.Toyota<74>s existing facility in Venezuela employs 1,100 staff and has capacity of 22,000 units per year but is currently assembling only 100 units per month and expects to close out 2017 with output of only 1,200 units.The logo of Toyota Motor Corp. is seen on a steering wheel of the company''s Corolla car in Caracas, Venezuela October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Marco Bello Close to 100 multinationals remain in the country with operations at a minimum due to lack of raw materials, resulting primarily from a shortage of dollars caused a dysfunctional currency control system.Slideshow (6 Images) Several automakers including Toyota sell cars in dollars, a practice the government prohibit for most items but has specifically approved for the auto industry in order to allow them to import assembly parts without going through the exchange controls.Toyota will sell two versions of its Corolla: a family model that sells only in local bolivar currency and a luxury edition that will be sold in a combination of bolivars and dollars at an approximate cost of around $30,000.Wilfredo Valdivia, Toyota<74>s institutional relations manager in Venezuela, said the subsidiary uses revenue from the export of locally-manufactured parts to help maintain operations.<2E>Our priority and philosophy is to maintain production,<2C> Valdivia told Reuters. <20>We are working at very low volumes, but we have made a commitment.<2E>Writing by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Andrew Hay '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-toyota-venezuela/toyota-launches-new-corolla-in-venezuela-during-recession-idUSKBN1CU3CG'|'2017-10-26T02:52:00.000+03:00'
'e514e35b74567bf11596fda49b1d0a5d73e4634f'|'Tullett Prebon to launch electronic trading platform for LME members'|' 58 PM / in 10 minutes Tullett Prebon to launch electronic trading platform for LME members Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Brokerage Tullett Prebon said on Wednesday it would launch an electronic trading platform for members of the London Metal Exchange (LME) to execute carry trades that bridge contracts maturing on different dates. Tullett said its platform, called tpMATCH, would open to LME category 1 and 2 members early next month and make it easier to trade carries in which one or both ends of the trade fall on a date with low liquidity. <20>tpMATCH will help members to manage their broken-dated card risk by centralising liquidity, creating cost efficiencies and maximising volume through algorithmic matching technology,<2C> said Tullett<74>s managing director of risk management Paul Ribbins. The algorithm would match orders twice weekly, Tullett said. <20>We have commitment from a number of traders at larger LME members.<2E> said Gareth Hughes, a business development manager at Tullett Prebon. Tullett, part of TP ICAP ( TCAPI.L ), the world<6C>s largest voice broker, has operated tpMATCH since 2010 in other markets including foreign exchange. Reporting by Peter Hobson; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-metals-trading-tullett/tullett-prebon-to-launch-electronic-trading-platform-for-lme-members-idUKKBN1CU20G'|'2017-10-25T16:57:00.000+03:00'
'030fb85ca1f812190a6465fa1db474946fdbeb26'|'EU delays decision on herbicide glyphosate'|'October 25, 2017 / 9:45 AM / Updated 20 minutes ago EU delays decision on herbicide glyphosate Philip Blenkinsop 2 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU countries failed on Wednesday to vote on a license extension for weedkiller glyphosate, delaying again a decision on the widely used herbicide that critics say could cause cancer. FILE PHOTO: Monsanto''s Roundup weedkiller atomizers are displayed for sale at a garden shop at Bonneuil-Sur-Marne near Paris, France, June 16, 2015. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo The European Commission said in a statement the relevant committee did not hold a vote at a meeting and that it would announce the date of the next meeting shortly. It also failed to vote at a meeting earlier this month. The current license expires at the end of the year. Europe has been stuck over what to do with the chemical, a key ingredient in Monsanto Co<43>s top-selling weedkiller Roundup, after the World Health Organization<6F>s cancer agency concluded in March 2015 it was a substance that probably causes cancer. The classification has led to mass litigation in the United States. The EU passed an 18-month extension in June 2016 pending further scientific study. That research came in the form of a European Chemical Agency conclusion in March that there was no evidence to link glyphosate to cancer in humans. It was the same conclusion as that of the European Food Safety Agency and of regulatory bodies of other countries such as Canada and Japan. In anticipation of a vote, the European Parliament called on Tuesday for the weedkiller to be phased out in the next five years, prompting the Commission to drop its proposal for a 10 year license extension. The Commission then said it would seek to find a consensus around an extension of between five and seven years. Weedkillers containing glyphosate have been in use for more than 40 years. European agriculture group Copa and Cogeca says the product is safe and that removing it would put EU farmers at a competitive disadvantage. Campaign group Greenpeace has questioned the methodology of studies concluding glyphosate is safe and says there are other farming methods, including crop rotation, to reduce weeds. Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-health-glyphosate/eu-delays-decision-on-license-for-weedkiller-glyphosate-idUKKBN1CU160'|'2017-10-25T13:42:00.000+03:00'
'958c88012cc83e3b8dc61b51aa6c0df3c7e33077'|'Petra Diamonds first-quarter revenue falls 17 percent on consignment seizure'|'October 23, 2017 / 6:39 AM / in 9 minutes Petra Diamonds revenue takes hit from Tanzania crackdown Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Petra Diamonds Ltd<74>s ( PDL.L ) first quarter revenue fell by 17 percent after the government of Tanzania last month seized a consignment of diamonds from its Williamson mine. FILE PICTURES: A visitor holds a 17 carat diamond at a Petra Diamonds mine in Cullinan, outside Pretoria, January 22, 2009. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko The owner of the Cullinan mine in South Africa has been hit by a crackdown on mining firms in Tanzania, where the government is attempting to secure more revenue from the sector. The Tanzanian government confiscated a consignment of diamonds from the Williamson mine, which is majority-owned by Petra, alleging the company had under-declared the value of the stones by about half. Petra has denied the charge. The London-listed company said on Monday its revenue was $78.7 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30, while net debt rose to $614 million, from $555 million as of June 30. Shares in Petra rose as much as 4 percent, before paring gains to trade up 2.75 percent at 84 pence by 0801 GMT. Petra maintained its full-year production guidance of between 4.8 million carats and 5.0 million carats. Petra has also faced strikes in South Africa over pay, rent and housing allowances and demands for medical expenses. Reporting by Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu and Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-petra-diamonds-outlook/petra-diamonds-first-quarter-revenue-falls-17-percent-on-consignment-seizure-idUKKBN1CS0KW'|'2017-10-23T09:38:00.000+03:00'
'9ecdca052f51a15d6447b0cb606ec65b8a570976'|'Shell says can pump oil from Brazil''s pre-salt fields below $40/barrel'|'October 25, 2017 / 11:10 AM / in 11 minutes Shell says can pump oil from Brazil''s pre-salt fields below $40/barrel Simon Webb , Alexandra Alper 4 Min Read RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell ( RDSa.L ) will participate in Brazil<69>s deepwater oilfield auction on Friday and is confident it can pump oil from the fields on offer for less than $40 a barrel (<28>30.2), a top Shell executive said. FILE PHOTO: A logo for Shell is seen on a garage forecourt in central London, Britain, March 6, 2014. REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo Brazil will hold its first auction in four years for its pre-salt oilfields on Friday. The eight deepwater blocks on offer hold billions of barrels in reserves, and for the first time, Brazil will allow foreign oil firms to operate the fields in the region. Shell believes it could pump oil from the pre-salt fields below the company<6E>s target breakeven cost of $40 per barrel, Wael Sawan, Executive Vice President for Shell<6C>s deepwater division, told Reuters. The high quality of the reserves and the prolific output volume that the pre-salt wells can produce make them an attractive proposition, he said. <20>I think what Brazil really has going for it is a naturally blessed subsurface that allows it to compete with the best of what<61>s out there in the world,<2C> he said on the sidelines of an oil conference in Rio de Janeiro. Sawan declined to give details on what blocks Shell might be interested in bidding for, or on whether it would bid with partners. Reforms in Brazil enacted under President Michel Temer had made the reserves a more attractive proposition, Sawan said. If Shell was unable to produce the oil at below $40 a barrel, it would not be able to take the blocks on, he added. Like other oil majors, Shell has cut costs since oil prices crashed in 2014, and has reduced participation in higher cost oilfields. Shell is the second-biggest oil producer in Brazil, and Petrobras<61>s no. 1 partner in pre-salt production. Its Libra project, a block Shell won as part of a consortium in the first pre-salt auction in 2013, should produce first oil from a test well in November or December, he said. That was a few months later than the July date originally slated. Brazilian state-run oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro ( PETR4.SA ) is the operator on that project, and France<63>s Total and Chinese companies CNOOC and CNPC are also in the consortium developing the project. GULF OF MEXICO Shell will take a final investment decision on its multi-billion dollar Vito project in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico in 2018, Sawan said. <20>We are well advanced on the design on testing where the market is and ultimately the decision point is going to come in 2018 whether yay or nay,<2C> he said. If Shell goes ahead with the project, Vito would become a production hub for the firm in the region, he said. Shell would also be keen on developing energy projects in the eastern Gulf of Mexico if the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump ends the moratorium on drilling in the area, he said. Trump signed an executive order in April aiming to open up more offshore terrain to oil and gas leasing, prompting a review that could lift drilling bans in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico among other areas. <20>We have appetite and we are interested,<2C> Sawan said. Reporting by Simon Webb and Alexandra Alper, additional reporting by Marta Nogueira; Editing by Andrew Hay'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-brazil-oil-shell/shell-says-can-pump-oil-from-brazils-pre-salt-fields-below-40-barrel-idUKKBN1CU1FW'|'2017-10-25T14:09:00.000+03:00'
'd25e1dd49c52b89f8156bd0a6532b81225034aed'|'Confidence in UK housing market falls to five-year low'|'Confidence in the UK housing market has slipped to its lowest level in five years, sounding renewed warnings over the health of the economy.One in five British adults surveyed by the Halifax bank expect house prices will fall in the next year, in the weakest reading for consumer expectations since October 2012. Young people under the age of 25 and those living in London are found to be least optimistic.Help to buy has mostly helped housebuilders boost profits Read moreThe drop off in confidence comes amid growing concerns over the strength of the economy , with rising inflation and weak wage growth putting pressure on British households. It also comes as the Bank of England prepares to raise interest rates for the first time in a decade from as early as next week.Despite the looming increase in the cost of borrowing, gathering a deposit is viewed as the biggest barrier to buying a home. According to the survey of almost 2,000 British adults, almost two-thirds see this as the main barrier, whereas just 15% worrying about the availability of mortgages or concerns about higher interest rates.Of the 535 mortgage holders questioned in the survey, only a third said they were anxious about rising interest rates affecting their ability to meet repayments. This was down from 42% in 2014.The survey also shows concerns over personal finances rising up the list of potential barriers, while job security was found to be a major worry among those looking to buy a home. The average house price stood at <20>222,293 in August.The lowest levels of unemployment since the mid-70s are still failing to boost the bargaining power of employees in the UK, according to the latest official figures. When taking account of inflation, real wages fell by 0.4% in the three months to August , the sixth consecutive month of negative earnings.London was the only region in the Halifax survey where the balance of people thought it was a bad time to buy, with those in the West Midlands and Wales the most positive. Those aged between 16 and 24 were the only age group with a negative buying outlook, while those over 65 were the most positive. Across the UK about half of those surveyed thought it would be a good time to buy.Russell Galley of Halifax said: <20>Housing market optimism has declined significantly over the past year, with almost half of people expecting a general slowdown in the market.<2E>Topics Housing market Inflation Brexit Interest rates Mortgage rates Mortgages news'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/27/uk-housing-market-confidence-weakens-5-year-low-house-prices'|'2017-10-27T18:52:00.000+03:00'
'd72c218623d785b2a23c57fcf40ef13381133fc0'|'U.S.-based stock funds attract cash for 3rd straight week - Lipper'|'NEW YORK, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Investors poured cash into U.S.-based stocks funds for the third straight week, adding $4.7 billion during the week ended Oct. 25, according to Lipper data released on Thursday.Taxable-bond funds pulled in $3.7 billion during the same period, according to the research service. (Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Sandra Maler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/investment-mutualfunds-lipper/u-s-based-stock-funds-attract-cash-for-3rd-straight-week-lipper-idINN9N1F900P'|'2017-10-26T19:23:00.000+03:00'
'e0da9b06f5730542d31ba515cb5db6186f0cc8cc'|'Subaru says improper inspections conducted for over 30 years'|'October 27, 2017 / 8:49 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago Subaru says improper inspections conducted for over 30 years Naomi Tajitsu , Maki Shiraki 3 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Subaru Corp ( 7270.T ) said on Friday it had failed to follow proper inspection procedures for vehicles destined for the domestic market for more than 30 years, adding to a list of compliance problems at Japanese companies. The logo of Subaru Corp is pictured at the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon The automaker said it had allowed uncertified technicians to conduct final inspections of new vehicles at its main Gunma factory complex, north of Tokyo, which violates requirements set by Japan<61>s transport ministry. As a result it is considering recalling around 255,000 vehicles produced at the complex, the maker of the Legacy and Forester said. Subaru said it would report details of an internal investigation to the transport ministry on Monday. <20>The final inspection process is very important and we acknowledge that we did not meet requirements,<2C> Chief Executive Yasuyuki Yoshinaga told a news conference. <20>We used the same process for more than 30 years without realising that it did not meet ministry requirements.<2E> A man looks around Subaru''s BRZ model at the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon The revelation follows a similar issue at Nissan Motor Co ( 7201.T ) while Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ) has been grappling with a data fabrication scandal, tarnishing Japan Inc<6E>s reputation for strict quality control. Japan<61>s transport ministry instructed domestic automakers to conduct internal investigations after Nissan late last month revealed violations on inspections governing vehicles sold in Japan at its domestic factories. The logo of Subaru Corp on its Legacy Outback model is seen at the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon Nissan has recalled 1.2 million vehicles, including all passenger cars it produced for sale in Japan over the past three years, and suspended production of cars for the domestic market at its Japanese plants. The ministry had set an end-October deadline for submitting the results. Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ) and Honda Motor Co ( 7267.T ) have reported to the ministry that they found no issues with their respective inspections, the two companies said on Friday. Shares of Subaru closed down 2.6 percent on Friday after falling more than 3 percent following media reports of the improper inspections. The broader market rose 1.2 percent .N225 . Reporting by Maki Shiraki; Writing by Chang-Ran Kim and Chris Gallagher; Editing by Christopher Cushing'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-subaru-scandal/subaru-says-improper-inspections-conducted-for-over-30-years-idUKKBN1CW10M'|'2017-10-27T11:48:00.000+03:00'
'119d9080fbf658c9762c087af4f4ea80e3f23737'|'Kobe Steel sent products with tampered data to second nuclear company'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - Kobe Steel Ltd supplied parts with false specifications for nuclear equipment owned by Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd (JNFL), JNFL said on Friday, adding that the products were not used.Kobe Steel President and CEO Hiroya Kawasaki leaves after a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai The parts were destined for use in centrifuges to enrich uranium, a JNFL spokesman said by phone. Citing security reasons, he declined to provide further details.Kobe Steel has not told JNFL whether there are any safety issues with the parts, the spokesman said.A Kobe Steel spokesman confirmed the firm fabricated data about specialized coatings used on the parts and had not identified any safety issues.JNFL is the second company in the nuclear power industry to receive components affected by the steelmaker<65>s data tampering.Tokyo Electric Power Co said this month it had taken delivery of pipes from Kobe Steel that were not checked properly.Japan<61>s atomic regulator has asked nuclear operators to check whether they are using Kobe Steel products at nuclear plants, it said on Wednesday, adding it had received no reports that Kobe Steel<65>s data tampering scandal had affected safety.No deadline has been given for nuclear operators to report back to the Nuclear Regulation Authority, a spokesman said by phone on Friday.The unfolding data tampering scandal has spread from Kobe Steel<65>s copper and aluminum business to most areas of the company and sent companies at the end of complex supply chains across the world scrambling to check whether the safety or performance of their products has been compromised.While no safety issues have been identified, Japan<61>s third-largest steelmaker is likely to face claims for replacement parts and other costs.Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd would ask Kobe Steel to cover any costs for replacement of parts or other expenses related to the data tampering, President Yoshinori Kanehana told reporters on Friday at an earnings briefing.The company earlier said affected materials were used in aircraft parts and in engine components. On Friday, Kanehana said it was still checking with customers receiving aircraft, engine and train parts, declining to comment further.Japanese industry ministry officials have also said Kobe Steel materials were used in some defense equipment made by Kawasaki Heavy.Asked about the fabrications, Kanehana said <20>as a company also based in Kobe, this is very regrettable and something that should not have been allowed to happen.<2E>He said Kawasaki Heavy <20>will consider whether to continue doing business with Kobe Steel after we have seen the results of their investigation into the causes and preventative measures.<2E>Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp, Japan<61>s biggest steelmaker, said on Friday it would maintain an alliance it has with Kobe Steel.The alliance involves cooperating on steel supplies during shortages or maintenance of factories, while Nippon Steel has a 2.95 percent stake in Kobe Steel, with the latter holding 0.71 percent of its bigger rival<61>s shares.Kobe Steel said on Thursday 88 out of 525 affected customers had yet to confirm its products were safe in the light of widespread tampering of specifications, but that it had not received any requests for recalls.Japan<61>s third-largest steelmaker supplies manufacturers of cars, planes, trains and other products across the world and the data tampering has spiraled into one of Japan<61>s biggest industrial scandals.Kobe Steel shares, which are down about 35 percent since the scandal broke, rose 0.6 percent on Friday, while the Nikkei 225 rose 1.3 percent.Reporting by Sam Nussey, Osamu Tsukimori, Taiga Uranaka and Yuka Obayashi; Writing by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal/kobe-steel-sent-products-with-tampered-data-to-second-nuclear-company-idUSKBN1CW0ZW'|'201
'83b03268df59743d41a743de5d72a713854fa340'|'No end in sight for tech giant share gains'|'(Reuters) - The world<6C>s biggest technology companies are only getting bigger and, for now, Wall Street analysts think there<72>s no stopping them.The logo of the web service Amazon is pictured in this June 8, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/Illustration After reporting their results, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Intel added nearly $140 billion to their already massive combined market value on Friday, pushing the broader, tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index .IXIC higher.The companies together generated more than $100 billion in revenue in the September quarter, roughly 2 percent of United States<65> national output.Wall Street analysts scrambled to raise their price targets, with the most bullish pegging the companies<65> stocks to rise between 21 percent and 47 percent in the next 12 months.Google is <20>looking 20 years young,<2C> said Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak, who bumped up his price target on the stock by 9 percent to $1,150.Amazon<6F>s ( AMZN.O ) shares rose as much as 9 percent to a three-month high of $1,063.77. Microsoft ( MSFT.O ), Alphabet and Intel hit their highest in a decade.<2E>I expect markets to close the week on new record highs and a good portion of that should be attributed to the results that came from the tech companies,<2C> said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at First Standard Financial in New York.FILE PHOTO: A sign marks the Microsoft office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. on January 25, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo Amazon, which is winning business from older, big-box rivals, pleased investors with its transparency around Whole Foods, the premium grocer it recently bought.<2E>The Street went into third quarter earnings concerned about lack of disclosure around Whole Foods, and Amazon surprised to the upside here by breaking out Whole Foods contribution,<2C> analysts at JP Morgan said.Amazon<6F>s shares, have risen 30 percent this year through Thursday<61>s close, as its AWS cloud business has stayed ahead of the competition.Alphabet<65>s Google, a relatively smaller player in the cloud business, doesn<73>t break out revenue for Google Cloud Platform, but analysts estimate the business is growing very fast, complementing the company<6E>s core advertising business.The company<6E>s stock is also relatively cheap, trading at 25.8 times forward 12-month earnings, despite its 30 percent run this year, excluding gains on Friday.Microsoft Corp<72>s ( MSFT.O ) revenue rose the most in percentage terms in three years, underscoring the success of Chief Executive Satya Nadella<6C>s turnaround strategy.<2E>Maybe one man has changed the culture of a large organization of over 120,000 people to enable a more creative and innovative mass focused on winning. These results sure seem to indicate so,<2C> Jefferies analysts said.Even old guard Intel Corp ( INTC.O ), which has been struggling with tepid growth, said revenue from its higher-margin data center business rose 7 percent, slightly beating expectations.Reporting by Sweta Singh and Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Bengaluru; Writing by Sayantani Ghosh; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-technology-results-stocks/no-end-in-sight-for-tech-giant-share-gains-idUSKBN1CW1LF'|'2017-10-27T15:00:00.000+03:00'
'd2a2913b6fad190270f19ffe98e838aa7e334b46'|'BAT targets doubling in vapour products revenue in 2018'|'Reuters TV United States October 25, 2017 / 6:29 AM / Updated 17 minutes ago BAT targets doubling in vapour products revenue in 2018 Martinne Geller 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British American Tobacco ( BATS.L ) forecast revenue from its <20>next generation products<74> to double to more than 1 billion pounds next year as it sells vapour devices in more markets. FILE PHOTO - People walk past the British American Tobacco offices in London, Britain October 21, 2016. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth/File Photo Revenue from devices such as e-cigarettes and those that heat tobacco without burning it should exceed 5 billion pounds ($6.6 billion) by 2022, the world<6C>s biggest international tobacco firm said on Wednesday. Although still tiny compared to traditional cigarettes, the vapour business should break even by the end of 2018 and deliver <20>substantial profit<69> by 2022, BAT said ahead of briefings for analysts and investors, helping to send its shares up 2 percent. In Britain, where nearly 3 million people use e-cigarettes, a parliamentary committee launched an inquiry on Wednesday to examine the financial and health implications of the growing market for e-cigarettes, as well as the suitability of current regulations. British charity Action on Smoking and Health welcomed the inquiry but cautioned that evidence must be seen in the context of long-used policies such as taxation and marketing regulations that have been reducing smoking rates for decades. Makers of vapour devices and many scientists say they are less harmful than smoking cigarettes, but long-term studies do not yet exist. Philip Morris International ( PM.N ) is ahead in the segment for tobacco-based products with its iQOS device, but BAT is trying to catch up with a device called glo. Whereas e-cigarettes use nicotine-laced liquid, glo and iQOS heat tobacco to a high enough temperature to create a vapour but not smoke. Philip Morris has applied to U.S. health regulators to have iQOS recognised as having <20>modified risk<73> versus cigarettes. The relative health benefit of heated tobacco products was questioned earlier this year in a study that found that they release chemicals linked to cancer, sometimes in higher concentrations than conventional cigarettes. Shares in Philip Morris had grown 23 percent this year on the strength of iQOS, but then fell 4 percent since weaker-than-expected profit last week highlighted its continued dependence on traditional cigarettes. In Japan, a key testing ground, BAT said glo has cornered 1.8 percent market share in a leading convenience store chain two weeks after its national roll-out. Glo will soon expand into Russia, its fifth country. Philip Morris has said iQOS would be in more than 30 markets by the end of this year. BAT, which makes Lucky Strike and Dunhill cigarettes said it was confident about another year of <20>good<6F> earnings growth at constant currency for the overall company, and at current exchange rates it sees a lift of 6.5 percent on operating profit and 5.5 percent on earnings per share, helped by a weak pound. It said the pricing environment in a number of markets, particularly Russia, has been difficult, but recent developments were encouraging. Jefferies analysts said in a research note that BAT<41>s medium-term estimates seemed <20>a bit light<68> given how fast the so-called vapour market is developing. BAT and rivals Philip Morris, Japan Tobacco International ( 2914.T ) and Imperial Brands ( IMB.L ) are racing to deliver the best alternative to cigarettes as more people try to quit smoking. ($1 = 0.7568 pounds)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-brit-am-tobacco-outlook/british-american-tobacco-sees-next-generation-products-doubling-in-2018-idUKKBN1CU0JC'|'2017-10-25T14:18:00.000+03:00'
'cfb20b297d5c685480e967765579424b51305c31'|'Eyeing $400 billion, Saudi wealth fund aims to nearly double size by 2020'|'October 25, 2017 / 9:20 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago Eyeing $400 billion, Saudi wealth fund aims to nearly double size by 2020 Katie Paul 3 Min Read RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia<69>s main sovereign wealth fund wants to increase its financial clout to 1.5 trillion riyals ($400 billion) by 2020 as part of the kingdom<6F>s efforts to boost private-sector growth and wean itself off oil export dependence. FILE PHOTO: A vehicle drives past the King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser/File Photo The assets-under-management goal, laid out by the Public Investment Fund (PIF) on Wednesday, came on the second day of an international conference in Riyadh. It was accompanied by publication of PIF<49>s first comprehensive business program, outlining targets for investments and returns for 2018-2020. PIF, which is expected to receive proceeds from the planned sale of 5 percent of state oil company Saudi Aramco<63>s ( IPO-ARMO.SE ) shares, has currently around $230 billion worth of assets under management. It plans to create 20,000 direct domestic jobs, and 256,000 construction jobs by 2020. This will increase PIF<49>s contribution to Saudi Arabia<69>s gross domestic product from 4.4 percent to 6.3 percent, it said in a statement on Wednesday. Investments will be in sectors such as real estate and infrastructure as well as in new areas of activity in the Saudi economy through the establishment of companies such as the Saudi Arabian Military Industries company and the Saudi Real Estate Refinancing Company. One of the biggest tasks facings PIF will be the delivery of a $500 billion plan to build a business and industrial zone extending into Jordan and Egypt, announced at the start of the conference on Tuesday. PIF also set a new target to increase total shareholder return to 4-5 percent between now and 2020 from 3 percent, it said on Wednesday. <20>The PIF Program represents a vital milestone as we work toward realizing Vision 2030,<2C> Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al-Saud, the economic reform plan<61>s architect, said in a statement. The 96-page program said PIF will structure its investments in six areas: Saudi equity holdings, sector development, real estate and infrastructure, mega projects, international strategic investments and a <20>diversified pool<6F> across global asset classes. It said <20>long-term<72> average annual return from these areas would be between 6.5 to 9 percent. Outside of Saudi Arabia, PIF<49>s investments will be in a number of assets such as fixed-income, public equity, private equity and debt, real estate, infrastructure and alternative investments such as hedge funds, the fund said. PIF Managing Director Yasir Al Rumayyan said the fund was open to investing in more big ticket items such as U.S. ride services company Uber [UBER.UL]. It also outlined its four major sources of funding to include capital injections from the government, government asset transfers, loans and debt instruments as well as retained earnings from investments. Additional reporting by Alexander Cornwell and Davide Barbuscia; Writing by Sylvia Westall Editing by Jeremy Gaunt'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-saudi-economy-funds/eyeing-400-billion-saudi-wealth-fund-aims-to-nearly-double-size-by-2020-idUKKBN1CU13D'|'2017-10-25T12:19:00.000+03:00'
'64598b2126f9171b8c89f6dbde4b8ca3354b1517'|'CVS makes more than $66 billion bid for Aetna: source'|'October 26, 2017 / 8:28 PM / in 7 hours CVS makes more than $66 billion bid for Aetna: sources Carl O''Donnell , Greg Roumeliotis 5 Min Read (Reuters) - U.S. pharmacy operator CVS Health Corp has made an offer to acquire No. 3 U.S. health insurer Aetna Inc for more than $200 per share, or over $66 billion, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. FILE PHOTO: The CVS logo is seen at one of their stores in Manhattan, New York, U.S., August 1, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo A deal would merge one of the nation<6F>s largest pharmacy benefits managers and pharmacy operators with one of its oldest health insurers, whose far-reaching business ranges from employer healthcare to government plans nationwide. Aetna shares rose more than 11 percent, or $18.48, to $178.60, while CVS shares fell 3 percent, or $2.22, to $73.31, after the Wall Street Journal first reported on the talks earlier on Thursday. Healthcare consolidation has been a popular route for insurers and pharmacies, under pressure from the government and large corporations to lower soaring medical costs. Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) such as CVS negotiate drug benefits for health insurance plans and employers, and have in recent years taken an increasingly aggressive stance in price negotiations with drugmakers. They often extract discounts and after-market rebates from drugmakers in exchange for including their medicines in PBM formularies with low co-payments. A tie-up with Aetna could give CVS more leverage in its price negotiations with drug makers. But it would also subject it to more antitrust scrutiny. The deal could also help counter pressure on CVS<56>s stock following speculation that Amazon.com Inc is preparing to enter the drug prescription market, using its vast e-commerce platform to take market share from traditional pharmacies. CVS made the offer earlier this month, although the two companies have been in discussions about a potential deal for several months, the sources said. These talks were carried out primarily between CVS Chief Executive Officer Larry Merlo and Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, and were aimed at making executives comfortable with the idea of a merger, the sources said. CVS and Aetna started discussing terms only recently, and a deal is not expected for a few weeks, one of the sources added, cautioning that the pace of the talks could accelerate given the publication of the negotiations. The sources did not specify how much of CVS<56> bid is cash versus stock, but given CVS<56>s and Aetna<6E>s market capitalizations of $77 billion and $54 billion, respectively, a substantial stock component is likely in any deal. Aetna and CVS declined to comment. Aetna earlier this year closed the door on a deal with rival insurer Humana Inc after antitrust regulators said that combination and a rival deal between Anthem Inc and Cigna Corp were anti-competitive. UNCERTAIN TIMES AHEAD The deal comes after years of major changes to the U.S. health insurance industry under former President Barack Obama, whose 2010 Affordable Care Act created new ground rules for how insurers operate and expanded insurance to 20 million more Americans. Republican President Donald Trump has promised to turn back many of the Affordable Care Act<63>s facets, but Congress has not been able to agree on a repeal or a replacement. The lack of progress - as well as Trump<6D>s executive order to bring down healthcare costs - has created uncertainty for insurers as they head into 2018. After the deal with Humana fell apart, Bertolini has said that he did not believe large deals were possible in the insurance industry. But analysts have speculated about a tighter partnership between Aetna and CVS since early in the year. CVS and Aetna have a long-term contract in which CVS has provided pharmacy benefits for Aetna customers. <20>Aetna really makes the best sense<73> said Jeff Jonas, a portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds. <20>It<49>s their largest client on the PBM side. They really have similar views as 
'796895e6337e09870299657a13a417a2fa96b47e'|'UK PM May says will continue fight against US tariffs on Bombardier CSeries planes'|'LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said she would continue to fight against a decision by the United States to impose tariffs on Bombardier<65>s CSeries planes after a competition complaint by BoeingBritain''s Prime Minister Theresa May leaves 10 Downing Street, London, Britain, October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville <20>I am very happy to give that commitment,<2C> May said in parliament on Wednesday after she was asked by a lawmaker if she would continue to work to ensure the threat of tariffs on the CSeries is removed.Reporting by William James, writing by Alistair Smout; editing by Stephen Addison '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-politics-may-bombardier/uk-pm-may-says-will-continue-fight-against-u-s-tariffs-on-bombardier-cseries-planes-idUSKBN1CU1OF'|'2017-10-25T15:01:00.000+03:00'
'8b59b504319515acf01c0ab4e63f9d84061e1e20'|'Carlyle Group unveils new leadership as founders step back'|'Oct 25 (Reuters) - Carlyle Group LP said on Wednesday that Glenn Youngkin and Kewsong Lee would become its co-chief executives, in the U.S. private equity firm<72>s biggest shakeup since it was founded by David Rubenstein, William Conway and Daniel D<>Aniello 30 years ago.The move makes Carlyle the latest buyout firm to take steps toward a generational change, after peer KKR & Co LP said in July it would promote Joseph Bae and Scott Nuttall to co-presidents and co-chief operating officers, setting them up as successors to its founders Henry Kravis and George Roberts.Unlike with KKR, however, Carlyle is giving Youngkin and Lee, both aged 51, its top jobs, making it the first among the private equity industry<72>s publicly traded pioneers, that also include Blackstone Group LP and Apollo Global Management LLC, to hand over the reins.Rubenstein and Conway, both 68, will give up their roles as Carlyle co-CEOs to become co-executive chairmen of the Washington, D.C.-based firm<72>s board, while D<>Aniello, 71, will transition from chairman to chairman emeritus, Carlyle said in a statement. The changes will become effective in January.<2E>Glenn and Kewsong will work together on all issues related to leading Carlyle, and will have full responsibility, authority and accountability for the firm<72>s performance,<2C> Rubenstein, Conway and D<>Aniello said in a statement.Youngkin is currently Carlyle<6C>s president and chief operating officer. A 23-year veteran of the firm, he is credited with building many of Carlyle<6C>s businesses, including its energy investing practice and its fund-of-funds division.Lee, currently Carlyle<6C>s deputy chief investment officer for private equity and head of its global market strategies segment, joined Carlyle just four years ago from Warburg Pincus LLC, another private equity firm, where he led investments in the consumer, industrial and services sectors.Lee beat other Carlyle insiders for the top job thanks to his reputation as a problem solver, having helped rebuilt Carlyle<6C>s credit investing business after several missteps.The transition takes place after Carlyle reshaped its portfolio to exit from unprofitable businesses, such as hedge funds. Its shares are now hovering around a two-year high thanks to the strong performance of its private equity funds, which have been buoyed by a stock market rally and are returning on average 2.2 times its investors<72> money.MORE DIVERSE FIRM Carlyle, whose investments over the years have included car rental company Hertz Global Holdings Inc, photo agency Getty Images Inc and consumer headphones maker Beats Electronics LLC, is a much more diverse and global investment firm since its launch in 1987.Rubenstein, Conway and D<>Aniello, worth about $2.9 billion each according to Forbes, have built it into a manager of more than $170 billion of assets across almost 300 funds and investment vehicles, spanning private equity, credit investments and real estate. It employs more than 1,550 people in 31 offices across six continents.Even though they have been serving in senior roles already, Youngkin and Lee will have big shoes to fill, as the three founders are identified closely in the minds of many fund investors and Carlyle shareholders with the firm<72>s investment acumen and strategy.Conway, a prolific dealmaker, will retain his role as Carlyle<6C>s chief investment officer. He will be joined by Peter Clare, who was deputy chief investment officer for private equity alongside Lee and has now been named co-chief investment officer.In total, Rubenstein, a former deputy assistant to U.S. President Jimmy Carter for domestic policy, Conway, a former chief financial officer of U.S. telecommunications company MCI Communications, and D<>Aniello, a former vice president for finance and development at Marriott International Inc, own close to half of Carlyle, which has a market capitalization of $7.9 billion.They said in the statement they would continue to be substantial investors in Carlyle<6C>s funds <20>for ye
'a35b2e76d0ed81c0bd7a88b3ea1f8bea90e10eae'|'EU steel demand to grow 2.3 percent in 2017 - Eurofer'|'October 25, 2017 / 9:37 AM / Updated 14 minutes ago EU steel demand to grow 2.3 percent in 2017 - Eurofer Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - EU steel demand will rise by 2.3 percent this year and continue its gradual recovery next year, but the extent to which local steelmakers will benefit from this is uncertain as import distortions remain, industry body Eurofer said. A worker loads steel bars for export at a port in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province June 4, 2013. REUTERS/Stringer <20>Strengthening investment and robust exports are boosting the performance of steel-using sectors in the EU. However ... foreign supply remains a critical issue for the EU steel sector,<2C> Eurofer said in a statement on Wednesday. The European steel industry, worth about 170 billion euros (<28>151.6 billion) a year, is seen as a gauge of the region<6F>s economic health. Reporting by Maytaal Angel; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-steel-demand-eu/eu-steel-demand-to-grow-2-3-percent-in-2017-eurofer-idUKKBN1CU15E'|'2017-10-25T12:36:00.000+03:00'
'd997ce8d3d7b1658fe9bcd1ee96ea3d39ce0f5d4'|'Toyota says Brexit ''fog'' must clear to safeguard UK plant'|'October 25, 2017 / 10:39 AM / Updated 8 hours ago Toyota says Brexit ''fog'' must clear to safeguard UK plant Reuters Staff 3 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ) needs clarity on the terms of Britain<69>s access to European Union markets after Brexit to secure production at its Burnaston plant in central England, it said on Wednesday. The Toyota logo is seen on a car in a park lot in Sao Paulo, Brazil June 2, 2017. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker The Japanese carmaker<65>s comments echo calls from businesses in both Britain and abroad for the UK government to make progress in talks on future relations with the EU following the country<72>s planned departure from the bloc in March 2019. <20>We cannot stay in this kind of fog when we don<6F>t know what will be the output of the negotiations,<2C> Toyota Executive Vice President Didier Leroy said at the Tokyo Motor Show. <20>The quicker we can get clarity about that, the better it will be (for) the way we can prepare for the future.<2E> Toyota, which employs more than 3,000 people in Britain, builds the Auris hatchback and the family Avensis car at Burnaston. Sources told Reuters this month the company would build the next Auris model at the plant assuming Britain secured a transitional deal with the EU. Toyota said in March it would invest 240 million pounds ($317 million) in the plant, but retaining tariff-free access to the EU<45>s single market was crucial. Leroy reiterated on Wednesday this was <20>absolutely key<65>. <20>Today (Burnaston) exports 80-85 percent of production to the European continent,<2C> he said. <20>If we move to something like import tax or trade tax or any kind of additional penalty, it will create a big negative impact in terms of competitiveness (...) and if competitiveness is not secured, we have to think about what we will do for the future.<2E> He said Brexit talks, currently deadlocked over the divorce bill, needed to move on to future trading relations. <20>If the negotiations are postponed and postponed again, it<69>s clear that it creates some things that are not good for us,<2C> he said. Asked about Toyota<74>s concerns, Britain<69>s finance minister Philip Hammond said he was confident the government would be able to satisfy businesses<65> need for certainty. <20>I think that we stand a very good chance of being able to agree a transition deal with the European Union shortly after the December council,<2C> he told reporters. <20>I can<61>t tell you exactly when it will be, but I think we can expect to make good progress to agreeing a transition deal and to seeing the shape of an end-deal emerging as a political agreement as we go through this process.<2E> Britain said on Wednesday it wanted an outline agreement on a transitional deal by the first quarter of 2018. It is seeking a two-year implementation period after March 2019, during which its access to the EU single market would stay largely unchanged while new arrangements are put in place. There were signs of a potential breakthrough in Brexit talks last week when EU leaders said they would begin preparations to move into <20>phase two<77> in December, a step that would allow London to discuss its future trade relationship with the bloc. ($1 = 0.7579 pounds) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-toyota/toyota-says-brexit-fog-must-clear-to-safeguard-uk-plant-idUKKBN1CU1C4'|'2017-10-25T13:34:00.000+03:00'
'c052fbbda178925f99091e5fded9b95b76437b14'|'Hyundai Motor third-quarter profit down 20 percent on weak China sales, Kia losses'|'October 26, 2017 / 5:12 AM / Updated 29 minutes ago Hyundai Motor third-quarter profit down 20 percent on weak China sales, Kia losses Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea<65>s Hyundai Motor Co ( 005380.KS ) posted a 20 percent drop in net profit for the third quarter, hit by a diplomatic row with China that dragged on sales and losses from affiliate Kia Motors Corp ( 000270.KS ). FILE PHOTO - A Hyundai logo is seen outside a factory in Beijing, China April 8, 2017. REUTERS/Muyu Xu/File Photo Hyundai Motor, which together with Kia is the world<6C>s fifth-biggest automaker, on Thursday reported a net profit of 852 billion won ($758.21 million) for the three months ended September, versus 1.06 trillion won a year ago. However, this was slightly better than an average analysts<74> forecast for a net profit of 849 billion won. Its operating profit rose 13 percent to 1.2 trillion won over the period. Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Himani Sarkar'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hyundai-motor-results/hyundai-motor-third-quarter-profit-down-20-percent-on-weak-china-sales-kia-losses-idUKKBN1CV0EF'|'2017-10-26T08:11:00.000+03:00'
'43bf455d6c2bc0fc477886111a7ea08d8302f03c'|'Deutsche Boerse aims to find CEO ''ideally before year end'': CFO'|'October 27, 2017 / 1:04 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Deutsche Boerse aims to find CEO ''ideally before year end'': CFO Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The search is already on for a new chief of Deutsche Boerse with the aim of finding a candidate by the end of the year, the company<6E>s finance chief told analysts on Friday. The German share prize index (DAX) board and the trading room of Frankfurt''s stock exchange (Boerse Frankfurt) are photographed with a circular fisheye lens during afternoon trading session in Frankfurt, Germany, February 23, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/Files Gregor Pottmeyer, chief financial officer, said the goal was to reach a <20>decision as soon as possible, ideally before year end.<2E> On Thursday, the German exchange operator announced that its embattled chief executive Carsten Kengeter was stepping down amid continuing allegations of insider trading - allegations that both Kengeter and Deutsche Boerse say are unfounded. A search committee was formed on Thursday and had already begun its work, Pottmeyer said. Kengeter, who will stay on as CEO in the interim, is an ambitious ex-investment banker who just months into his short tenure was designing a bold merger with the London Stock Exchange to create a global titan in the industry. The effort failed. Now Deutsche Boerse is competing with LSE, which is also looking for a new chief. <20>Deutsche Boerse needs a CEO who is well networked, but not just in a single industry, and someone who has close relations to state and federal politicians,<2C> said Klaus Nieding of shareholder lobby group DSW. <20>Deutsche Boerse should become the leading European exchange operator after the Brexit decision.<2E> Reporting by Tom Sims; Editing by Victoria Bryan '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/deutsche-boerse-ceo/deutsche-boerse-aims-to-find-ceo-ideally-before-year-end-cfo-idINKBN1CW1SK'|'2017-10-27T16:01:00.000+03:00'
'5dc96e1108f5a321c12a49176d8444cf291df5c1'|'Big Oil''s $1 billion climate fund picks investments, eyes new members'|'LONDON (Reuters) - A $1 billion fund created by top energy companies to curb climate change announced its first three investments on Friday and said two new members could be poised join the scheme.The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) was set up last year and includes Saudi Aramco ( IPO-ARMO.SE ) and Royal Dutch Shell ( RDSa.L ).Pratima Rangarajan, OGCI chief executive, said she expected more companies to join and that Brazil<69>s Petrobras ( PETR4.SA ) and Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) were among those interested.<2E>They are potentially joining and were observing today,<2C> she said in an interview with Reuters.Other participants include BP ( BP.L ), Total ( TOTF.PA ), Eni ( ENI.MI ), Repsol ( REP.MC ), Statoil ( STL.OL ), CNPC, Pemex [PEMX.UL] and Reliance Industries ( RELI.NS ).Together, the 10 firms produce around 20 percent of the world<6C>s oil and gas and last year pledged to invest $1 billion over 10 years on technologies to curb climate change.Rangarajan said new members would be expected to pledge a further $100 million each.In the first investments, U.S. firm Solidia Technologies will receive funding for making cement with carbon dioxide instead of water, potentially lowering emissions by 70 percent and water use by 80 percent, the OGCI said.It will also help U.S.-based Achates Power, which develops vehicle engines that produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, to roll out its technology worldwide.Financial details were not revealed.Neither of the U.S. oil majors, Exxon ( XOM.N ) or Chevron ( CVX.N ), are a part of the initiative. Rangarajan said the location of its members was not a factor in deciding where investments would be made.<2E>We have to be open to looking anywhere in the world for the best ideas,<2C> she said.The OGCI also plans to help design a full-scale gas power plant with carbon capture and storage technology (CCS), although it did not specify where the project would be built, or how much funding would be allocated.The International Energy Association (IEA) said CCS technology is vital if the target to limit a global rise in temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius, as set out in the Paris climate agreement, is to be met.However, CCS project developers have struggled to bring down costs. There are currently fewer than 40 large-scale CCS projects globally and the majority of these are pilot schemes.Additional reporting by Oleg Vukmanovic; Editing by Jason Neely and David Holmes '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-ogci/big-oils-1-billion-fund-backs-new-cement-engine-technologies-idINKBN1CW10Q'|'2017-10-27T06:54:00.000+03:00'
'b2c6a6c8aaf5b9a29abf524be22e78b17a283379'|'Linde CEO says engineering, Lincare units will remain'|'October 27, 2017 / 8:50 AM / in 8 minutes Linde CEO says engineering, Lincare units will remain Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MUNICH, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Linde<64>s engineering and Lincare health businesses will remain part of the group for now, Chief Executive Aldo Belloni said on Friday, pouring cold water on the idea that they could be divested following a planned merger with Praxair. Praxair<69>s finance chief, Matthew White, recently told investors that Praxair<69>s management was reviewing the strategic value of the engineering business and Lincare, German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Thursday, citing an internal report by Deutsche Bank, which was at the investor meeting in September. Belloni said he wanted to <20>very strongly qualify<66> White<74>s comments, saying no decisions had been made on the businesses. (Reporting by Alexander Huebner; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Georgina Prodhan)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/linde-results-praxair/linde-ceo-says-engineering-lincare-units-will-remain-idUSF9N1MO01O'|'2017-10-27T11:49:00.000+03:00'
'621094a1ab08120ad8521604b00223ead5706d72'|'Shire to make genetic disease drug itself to secure supply'|'October 27, 2017 / 3:03 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Shire to make genetic disease drug itself to secure supply Paul Sandle 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Shire will start making a genetic disease medicine itself after it was hit by supply problems, the London-listed firm said on Friday as it reported a sharp rise in profit. FILE PHOTO: Vitamins made by Shire are displayed at a chemist''s in northwest London, Britain July 11, 2014. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett/File Photo <20>We delivered strong growth this quarter with product sales up 7 percent to $3.5 billion despite a Cinryze supply shortage and a Lialda generic entry,<2C> Shire Chief Executive Flemming Ornskov said in a statement. Ornskov said Shire<72>s immunology drugs to treat diseases like Guillain-Barre syndrome performed strongly in the quarter and growth in the franchise it acquired by buying Baxalta last year rose from a historical rate of 6-8 to 21 percent year to date. But a supply failure for Cinryze, which manages hereditary angioedema (HAE), had slowed progress, as had a 68 percent drop in Lialda sales after the July launch of a generic competitor. Although Cinryze manufacturing had resumed and about $100 million of delayed product was shipped in October, Shire will start making the drug at its own facilities by the first quarter of 2018, which would secure supplies, Ornskov said. However, the glitch had handed an advantage to rival CSL Behring, which has launched a competing product called Haegarda. <20>We have seen some loss of new patients initially. But given strong patient loyalty (...) we do not see a major impact and we are very confident we will continue to maintain the majority of our patients,<2C> Ornskov said. A new HAE drug, which will be filed for approval in late 2017 or early 2018, bolstered his confidence in this area. Shares in Shire were trading up 1.2 percent at 35.65 pounds ($46.62). Analysts at Berenberg said Shire<72>s sales in the quarter were a <20>mixed bag that highlights the pushes and pulls in the product portfolio<69>, but the results showed its ability to deliver on cost control to drive earnings. Ornskov said a decision on whether to spin off Spire<72>s neuroscience drugs, which analysts say could be worth up to $8.5 billion, would be made by year-end. The franchise, which mainly addresses attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), achieved growth of 12 percent. It successfully launched Mydayis in August and the once-daily ADHD drug had been prescribed to more than 11,000 patients by Oct. 17, he added. Shire has reviewed its manufacturing portfolio after the Baxalta deal, and Ornskov said it had identified $100 million in annual savings from 2019. The company reported a 20 percent rise in non-GAAP earnings per share, its preferred measure, of $3.81 on total revenue of $3.70 billion, and reiterated its guidance for the year. Editing by Kate Holton and Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-shire-results/shire-to-make-genetic-disease-drug-itself-to-secure-supply-idUKKBN1CW26Q'|'2017-10-27T18:01:00.000+03:00'
'977d5da79600448fd15680dd59c81464bea79491'|'Hong Kong''s storied stock trading hall shuts up shop'|'October 25, 2017 / 8:41 AM / Updated 7 hours ago Hong Kong''s storied stock trading hall shuts up shop Donny Kwok 4 Min Read HONG KONG (Reuters) - The lights go out and screens turn blank in the trading hall of Hong Kong<6E>s stock exchange this week, marking the end of an era for the red-carpeted, cavernous space that was home to more than a thousand floor traders in its heyday. Catherine Cheung, a floor trader since 1994, is hugged by her colleague before leaving the trading hall of the Hong Kong Exchanges in Hong Kong October 19, 2017. Picture taken October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip Opened in 1986 with the merger of four exchanges in the Asian financial hub, the bourse follows in the footsteps of global peers such as Tokyo, Singapore and London, which have all closed their doors amid a shift toward electronic trading in recent years. Floor trading in Hong Kong accounted for more than 20 percent of total turnover in January 2000, when more than a thousand traders dressed in numbered red vests would engage in frenzied buying and selling in the hall of over 900 booths. Fast-forward more than 10 years and the floor trade accounted for just 0.3 percent of total turnover and hosted a meager 30 traders physically present. The loss of a piece of the former British colony<6E>s colorful mercantile heritage comes as the city strives to assert economic relevance in Greater China amid rising competition from mainland cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen. <20>It is sad to see it closing down,<2C> said Catherine Cheung, a floor trader in her mid-50s. <20>It hurts in a way that is worse than suffering a trading loss. We can still earn back a trading loss but we cannot reopen a trading floor after it<69>s closed.<2E> Cheung, who works for a local brokerage with just nine employees, began working as a floor trader in 1994. FILE PHOTO: A general view of original trading hall of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in Hong Kong, China March 3, 1999. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo <20>I<EFBFBD>m now over 50. I will continue to be a trader but in the office,<2C> she said. <20>We won<6F>t quit (trading) as it is a way to keep our blood boiling and our heart beating.<2E> The darkest day for the exchange came in October 1987 when Black Monday, as it became known, started in Hong Kong and quickly spread to markets globally. Stocks plunged, forcing bourse chairman Ronald Li to shut the exchange for four days. Traders have been packing up since mid-October and there will be no traders on the floor after Oct 27. Slideshow (3 Images) It was one of a handful of exchanges globally that still hosted open-floor trading. In Asia, the Philippine Stock Exchange still uses live trading floors. Renovation work will begin at the Hong Kong exchange after Oct. 31, turning the trading hall into a financial services landmark for ceremonies, exhibitions, conferences and investor education. The complex is expected to re-open in February. Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd ( 0388.HK ), Asia<69>s third-biggest equity bourse by market value, which was the world<6C>s No. 1 IPO market in 2015 and 2016, is leveraging its role as a gateway to China<6E>s deep-pocketed investors to boost revenue as competition with other leading global stock listing venues has intensified. There were 2,069 companies listed on the main board and Growth Enterprise Market board in Hong Kong as of end-September, with an average daily turnover of HK$95.2 billion ($12.20 billion) over 21 trading days during the month, according to the Hong Kong bourse. <20>I<EFBFBD>m proud to own my red vest ... I can tell my grandchildren that I was one of the floor traders in those glory days,<2C> Cheung said. Reporting by Donny Kwok; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Sam Holmes '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hkex-closing/hong-kongs-storied-stock-trading-hall-shuts-up-shop-idUSKBN1CU0XM'|'2017-10-25T11:40:00.000+03:00'
'46d2c772c2c6c8ef9985fdd0db6692bff76742c3'|'WeWork''s Lord & Taylor deal heralds demand for co-working space'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - The sale of Lord & Taylor<6F>s flagship Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan is not surprising considering the plight of retailers, but demand for iconic buildings in major cities for conversion into co-working sites is relatively novel and growing.An affiliate of WeWork Cos agreed on Tuesday to pay Canadian department store operator Hudson<6F>s Bay Co ( HBC.TO ) $850 million to make most of the landmark 1914 building that fronts an entire block between 38th and 39th streets its headquarters.Turning a structure built for one business into another use, otherwise known as repositioning, is not new. But the advent of co-working and other forms of flexible workspace is a global phenomenon whose rapid rise has filled the needs of both start-ups and an increasingly mobile workforce of large corporations.A global desire to work and live in highly urbanized areas has put a premium on office space in central business districts. HBC Executive Chairman Richard Baker said WeWork is paying a 30 percent premium to the building<6E>s last appraised value.<2E>This is a reminder that space, particularly in dense, expensive cities, tends to find its highest and best use,<2C> said Jamie Hodari, co-founder and chief executive of Industrious, a leading U.S. co-working company.<2E>The warehouses of yesterday are the apartments of today, and it seems just as reasonable to assume the department stores of today might be the shared workplaces of tomorrow,<2C> he said.The value of central business district office space continues to climb with most major U.S. markets reporting tightening vacancy levels and increasing rents.The Lord & Taylor property was valued at $665 million last year, according to Hudson<6F>s Bay annual report. The space occupied by Lord & Taylor will shrink to 150,000 square feet (13,935 square meters), a quarter of its current size, after the 2018 holiday season, HBC said.The ascendancy of co-working users like WeWork is one of the trends driving office space demand, said Garrick Brown, national retail research director at brokerage Cushman & Wakefield.Many retailers are aware their urban real estate holdings they own may be worth more than their businesses, he said.Macy<63>s has effectively used the sale of property to raise capital, while the deal with WeWork gives Hudson<6F>s Bay the means to weather the challenges facing department stores, he said.The strategy works well for those who want to close stores, shrink them or simply lease them back from the new owners.<2E>Expect more of these types of deals in the future with many of these assets repositioned with a smaller retail footprint, or even no retail footprint, with new office, hotel or even high-end residential taking the place of retail,<2C> Brown said.WeWork, which gained the backing of Japan<61>s SoftBank Group Corp ( 9984.T ) with $4.4 billion in investment earlier this year, has grown to more than 150,000 members in 172 locales worldwide in seven years.The firm has 44 offices in New York City and after the Lord & Taylor acquisition it will occupy more than 4 million square feet, or double the office space in Manhattan used by financial giant Goldman Sachs, according to Colliers International.Reporting by Herbert Lash; Editing by Marguerita Choy '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-usa-property-wework-coworking/weworks-lord-taylor-deal-heralds-demand-for-co-working-space-idINKBN1CU2EY'|'2017-10-25T14:16:00.000+03:00'
'a75bf07de1efa15ca9264c910cf2b32765ad0da9'|'Shower maker Kohler<65>s attempt to back out of guarantee just won<6F>t wash - Money - The Guardian'|'In November 2007 we installed two Kohler Daryl showers and took out lifetime guarantees for each one. As we have a problem with one of the showers, I asked Kohler to investigate under this guarantee. However, Kohler claims the lifetime guarantee is no longer valid because of a company acquisition that took place two-and-a-half years before our guarantees were issued. CF, IpswichThis is a breathtakingly brazen attempt to back out of a legal commitment.Lifetime guarantees can be ambiguous. They might mean the expected lifetime of the product, the trading lifetime of the manufacturer or they might guarantee to see the customer into their grave. The terms and conditions should make it clear which of these applies.The cover letter for your policy promises you a <20>lifetime of satisfaction<6F> and the small print includes no caveats. Kohler Mira bought Daryl Industries in 2005 and your guarantee is branded Kohler Daryl. When you pointed out that it was issued two years after the takeover, Kohler merely repeated in writing that it was now invalid.It changed its tune when The Observer got in touch. It now claims it was merely trying to explain that the product had become obsolete and apologises for being <20>unclear<61>.What its emails meant to convey was that since spare parts are no longer available, it will replace the shower with a similar product of the same value. And because of the stress caused by this lack of clarity, it will install it for free.If you need help email Anna Tims at your.problems@observer.co.uk or write to Your Problems, The Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Include an address and phone number.Topics Consumer rights Your problems with Anna Tims Consumer affairs features'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/oct/25/kohler-lifetime-guarantee-problem-refused'|'2017-10-25T14:00:00.000+03:00'
'71c9fc1dd91ce02d13856772af8ef8311ea1cd50'|'India embarks on $32.4 billion state bank recapitalisation to boost economy'|'October 25, 2017 / 3:15 AM / Updated 6 hours ago India embarks on $32.4 billion state bank recapitalisation to boost economy Devidutta Tripathy 5 Min Read NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India<69>s cabinet approved a $32.43 billion plan on Tuesday to recapitalise its state banks over the next two years, in a bid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to tackle a major drag on the economy that has frustrated his attempts to boost growth. FILE PHOTO: An India Rupee note is seen in this illustration photo June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo Once the world<6C>s fastest-growing major economy, India has seen its growth rate plummet to the lowest in three years, far below levels needed to create enough jobs to absorb the million Indians joining the work force every month. Modi<64>s government has tried to respond by stepping up public spending, but the slowdown has stressed its finances, making it imperative that private investment picks up the slack. Officials privately admit they have struggled to revive private investment because state-owned banks, which provide much of the credit in the economy, are saddled with a mountain of bad debt that has crimped their ability to extend new credit. The huge capital injection into the banks is meant to clear that bottleneck, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said at a press conference in New Delhi. <20>The decision to recapitalise public sector banks with 2.11 trillion rupees will address the bank balance sheet problem and push growth forward,<2C> Jaitley said. By some estimates, banks need as much as $65 billion in additional capital by March 2019 to fill the hole left by soured loans and to meet new regulatory requirements. The official announcement, which was followed by a series of tweets from government ministers holding it up as <20>unprecedented<65>, comes after a flurry of activity in the government over the past few weeks, driven by the prime minister<65>s office. Modi, who swept to power in a landslide victory for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014 promising a reform agenda to revive economic growth, faces state elections later this year and a re-election bid by 2019. He has faced criticisms after a surprise scrapping of high-value bank notes last November and a new goods and services tax effected earlier this year disrupted businesses across the country. People close to Modi have previously told Reuters he wants to control the political damage and ensure the economic slowdown remains temporary. Mohan Guruswamy, an economist in New Delhi, said the government should have taken action three years ago to revive the banking sector. <20>Now it<69>s more expensive, and we will not see results soon,<2C> Guruswamy said. FILE PHOTO: India''s Finance and Defence Minister Arun Jaitley attends a two-day meeting of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, comprising federal and state finance ministers, in Srinagar May 18, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Ismail/File Photo FISCAL CONSOLIDATION Finance ministry officials said the bank recapitalisation would be followed by a series of reforms in the sector. They said the details would come later. Of the planned 2.11 trillion rupees sum, recapitalisation bonds will account for 1.35 trillion rupees, while about 580 billion rupees is estimated to come from share sales by banks, the ministry said. The government will also use 180 billion rupees left from its previously budgeted recapitalisation fund. It was not immediately clear what the impact will be on the country<72>s fiscal deficit, which Jaitley aims to keep at 3.2 percent of GDP for the current fiscal year to March and at 3 percent in the next financial year. <20>India<69>s banking was the weakest link in the revival of the economy,<2C> said N.R. Bhanumurthy, an economist at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, a Delhi-based think-tank partly funded by the finance ministry. <20>The government should complete the process as early as possible.<2E> Bhanumurthy added that the move might have an impact on the g
'8ba5eec7e382f018c4a68f539c0ae519b1d23260'|'Toys ''R'' Us says most top vendors have resumed shipments'|'NEW YORK, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Vendors to Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us have resumed shipping top products, a bankruptcy lawyer said on Tuesday, allowing the retailer to stock its shelves ahead of the all-important holiday season.<2E>Inventory is on the shelves,<2C> Joshua Sussberg, an attorney with the company<6E>s law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, said at a U.S. Bankruptcy Court hearing in Richmond, Virginia, adding that the company was well-stocked with the <20>latest and greatest<73> in toys.Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us generates roughly 40 percent of total revenues in the fourth quarter, and industry experts have expressed concern over the big-box retailer<65>s ability to retain vendors and customers after its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on Sept. 19.At the time of the filing, nearly 40 percent of its trade base had stopped shipments. Now, 100 percent of merchandise vendors that supply the top 20 products are actively shipping, followed by 49 of the top 50 vendors and 91 of the top 100, Sussberg said.However, Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us still owes creditors $5 billion, and at least two major toymakers, Hasbro Inc and Jakks Pacific, have warned that the bankruptcy would hurt their business this year.Some smaller toymakers have decided to stop shipments.Wayne, New Jersey-based Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us, which also owns the Babies <20>R<EFBFBD> Us chain, is among dozens of traditional brick-and-mortar retailers that have struggled under high debt as more consumers shop online.Toys <20>R<EFBFBD> Us is saddled with debt from a $6.6-billion buyout in 2005 by KKR & Co LP, Bain Capital LP and real estate investment trust Vornado Realty Trust.As part of its plan to restructure and entice customers, it wants to add event space, hands-on product demonstrations and combine its flagship and Babies <20>R<EFBFBD> Us stores.Some investors were skeptical over the outlook for big-box retailers.<2E>The opportunity for Toys is difficult given the amount of leverage it had when it entered bankruptcy, as well as its current operating trends,<2C> said George Schultze, distressed specialist and head of Schultze Asset Management. <20>The outlook in retail is terrible, even for big companies like Toys, so there isn<73>t a lot of new capital available for that industry.<2E>Meanwhile, the unsecured creditors committee, which includes Mattel Inc, LEGO Systems and Simon Property Group Inc , plans to investigate financial transactions made before the Chapter 11 filing, lawyer Kenneth Eckstein said on Tuesday. (Reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by David Gregorio) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/toys-r-us-bankruptcy/toys-r-us-says-most-top-vendors-have-resumed-shipments-idINL2N1MZ045'|'2017-10-24T19:09:00.000+03:00'
'e1c47512ed54d37bd211cc667794b215dee9da26'|'UPDATE 1-Suncor says makes progress in oil sands project dispute with Total'|'(Adds CEO Quote: , details on other oil sands operations)By Nia WilliamsCALGARY, Alberta, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Suncor Energy, Canada<64>s second-largest energy producer, said on Thursday it has made progress in resolving a commercial dispute with joint venture partner Total SA over funding for the new Fort Hills oil sands mining project.Calgary-based Suncor is the majority owner and operator of the Fort Hills joint venture in northern Alberta.The plant, which is the last oil sands project to be built from scratch on a massive scale, is expected to be operating at 90 percent of its 190,000 barrel-per-day capacity by this time next year, Suncor Chief Executive Steve Williams said on the company<6E>s third-quarter earnings call.Suncor flagged the dispute to investors in July after Total refused to provide more funding for Fort Hills.Williams said on Thursday the sums involved were not significant and would not affect the timing of oil being produced from Fort Hills later this year. He did not give details on how the dispute was being resolved.Suncor reported better-than-expected third-quarter earnings on Wednesday evening, citing record production and strong refinery output.The company<6E>s shares were last up 2.1 percent at C$43.04 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.Once Fort Hills is complete, Suncor will focus on boosting production at its main oil sands assets in the Fort McMurray region, which include the company<6E>s 350,000 bpd oil sands base plant and the 350,000 bpd Syncrude joint venture, in which Suncor became majority owner in early 2016.<2E>As we go through the next few years we expect to identify some real opportunities between Syncrude and Suncor... some of that<61>s by connectivity into the base plant, and we think there are real opportunities around Fort Hills as well,<2C> Williams said.Suncor got a boost on Wednesday when the Alberta Energy Regulator approved its plan for managing the vast tailings ponds produced by its base plant mining operations.The plan lays out how Suncor will treat and reduce the ponds, which contain often toxic waste products from mining. Some environmental groups have criticized the plan for not being ambitious enough.Reporting by Nia Williams; editing by Marguerita Choy and Dan Grebler '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/suncor-energy-fort-hills/update-1-suncor-says-makes-progress-in-oil-sands-project-dispute-with-total-idINL2N1N11PP'|'2017-10-26T15:48:00.000+03:00'
'fd6f973859916758d051ff9b92e2077f575d10ad'|'Amazon and Alphabet cheer stock markets by smashing forecasts - business live'|'Close Skip to main content switch to the International edition switch to the UK edition switch to the US edition switch to the Australia edition current edition: International edition The Guardian - Back to home become a supporter subscribe find a job jobs sign in my account Comment activity Edit profile Email preferences Change password Sign out news opinion sport arts life All sections news headlines world news UK news science cities global development tech business environment obituaries opinion opinion home the guardian view columnists cartoons opinion videos letters sport sport home football rugby union cricket tennis cycling F1 golf US sports arts culture home books music tv & radio art & design film games classical stage life lifestyle home fashion food recipes love & sex health & fitness home & garden women family travel money What term do you want to search? Search with google become a supporter subscribe Sign in/up my account Comment activity Edit profile Email preferences Change password Sign out International edition switch to the UK edition switch to the US edition switch to the Australia edition jobs dating holidays the guardian app video podcasts pictures newsletters today''s paper the observer digital archive crosswords Facebook Twitter jobs dating holidays business economics banking money markets eurozone b2b more sign in Comment activity Edit profile Email preferences Change password Sign out become a supporter subscribe search jobs dating more from the guardian: dating jobs change edition: switch to the UK edition switch to the US edition switch to the AU edition International edition switch to the UK edition switch to the US edition switch to the Australia edition The Guardian - Back to home home <20> business <20> markets eurozone economics banking retail home UK world sport football opinion culture business selected lifestyle fashion environment tech travel browse all sections close Business Business live US GDP growth beats forecasts; tech giants drive Nasdaq to record high <20> as it happened Rolling coverage of a crucial growth report on the US economy, after strong results from America<63>s tech giants cheer the marketsUS economy grew by 3% (annualised) in Q3. Consumer spending and business investment drove growth Exports also rose, and businesses expanded their inventories Tech rally sends Nasdaq to new record high Amazon and Alphabet smashed forecasts yesterday Updated Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email View more sharing options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Google+ Share on WhatsApp Share on Messenger Close Graeme Wearden Friday 27 October 2017 16.46 BST First published on Friday 27 October 2017 08.32 BST Key events Show 4.46pm BST 16:46 European markets close higher, but Spain slides 4.14pm BST 16:14 Chart: Nasdaq''s record high 3.58pm BST 15:58 Oil hits two-year high 3.41pm BST 15:41 Greek PM faces criticism over F16 fighter deal 2.53pm BST 14:53 Amazon and Alphabet''s shares spike over $1,000 1.48pm BST 13:48 US GDP: Snap reaction 1.40pm BST 13:40 US GDP: The key details Live feed Show 4.46pm BST 16:46 European markets close higher, but Spain slides And finally, European stock markets have closed higher - but Spain has bucked the trend as the Catalan crisis escalates further. Britain<69>s FTSE 100 closed 18 points higher at 7505, while the French CAC and German DAX both gained around 0.7%. Consumer-focused companies did well, as did oil firms following the jump in Brent crude to a two-year high .America<63>s solid growth report reassured investors that the global economy is in decent shape.But, Spain<69>s IBEX closed down 1%, as traders are spooked by this afternoon<6F>s declaration of independence by MPs in Catalonia - which is likely to lead to Madrid imposing direct rule.Spain imposes direct rule after Catalonia votes to declare independence Read more David Madden of CMC Marke
'53e388be3e6b40868e831cc2813fec2d1b28a54c'|'Citigroup names Lo as Asia head of private banking business'|'October 27, 2017 / 3:09 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Citigroup names Lo as Asia head of private banking business Reuters Staff 1 Min Read HONG KONG (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc has appointed veteran Steven Lo as Asia head of its private banking business unit, replacing Bassam Salem who is retiring from that role in February, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters. A woman walks past a Citibank logo displayed outside the Citibank Plaza in Hong Kong July 28, 2014. REUTERS/Bobby Yip Lo joined Citi<74>s private banking business more than 26 years ago as an ultra-high networth banker in Vancouver, and moved to Asia in 2001 and has worked in different roles in the region since then, the staff memo sent on Friday showed. A Citi spokesman in Hong Kong confirmed the content of the memo. Reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee; Editing by Himani Sarkar'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-citigroup-asia-moves/citigroup-names-lo-as-asia-head-of-private-banking-business-idUKKBN1CW08U'|'2017-10-27T06:08:00.000+03:00'
'bcd7b25fa0730a136a033d3d02069a91a8dd916c'|'Microsoft beats profit estimates on gains from cloud services'|'October 26, 2017 / 8:12 PM / Updated 19 minutes ago Microsoft beats profit estimates on gains from cloud services Salvador Rodriguez 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp ( MSFT.O ) reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Thursday as demand for its cloud computing services for companies rose and its personal computer software business stabilized. FILE PHOTO: An promotional video plays behind a window reflecting a nearby building at the Microsoft office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. on May 15, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo Shares of the world<6C>s largest software company rose nearly 4 percent to $81.90 in trading after the bell. Microsoft<66>s focus on fast-growing cloud applications and platforms is helping it beat slowing demand for personal computers that has hurt sales of Windows - the software that powered the company to the top in the 1990s. Under Chief Executive Satya Nadella, Microsoft<66>s cloud business - which includes products such as Office 365, Dynamic 365 and the flagship Azure computing platform - has emerged as a major source of growth. Revenue from Microsoft<66>s intelligent cloud business rose nearly 14 percent to $6.92 billion in Microsoft<66>s fiscal first quarter, ended Sept. 30. Analysts on average had expected $6.70 billion, according to financial data and analytics firm FactSet. Revenue from Azure, which competes with Amazon.com Inc<6E>s ( AMZN.O ) Amazon Web Services and offerings from Alphabet Inc<6E>s ( GOOGL.O ) Google, IBM ( IBM.N ) and Oracle Corp ( ORCL.N ), grew 90 percent compared to a 97 percent growth rate in the preceding quarter. Azure<72>s strong performance helped lift the gross margin at Microsoft<66>s cloud business to 57 percent, said Stephanie Rodriguez, director of investor relations for Microsoft. Microsoft said its commercial cloud annualized revenue run rate reached $20.4 billion in the quarter. In 2015, Nadella set a target of $20 billion in cloud revenue by 2018. Revenue from Microsoft<66>s personal computing division, its largest by revenue, fell 0.2 percent to $9.38 billion but handily beat analysts<74> estimate of $8.81 billion. The unit includes Windows software, Xbox gaming consoles, online search advertising and Surface personal computers. <20>Microsoft is set for an acceleration of growth and bookings with margin concerns that were overblown heading into 2018,<2C> said Daniel Ives at research firm GBH Insights. <20>A slowly improving PC environment is also a modest tailwind for Microsoft with cloud remaining the Trojan horse growth driver for Redmond over the coming years.<2E> The technology company, based in Redmond, Washington, reported net income of $6.58 billion, or 84 cents per share, up from $5.67 billion, or 72 cents per share, a year earlier. ( bit.ly/2lkGlyz ) Revenue rose 12 percent to $24.54 billion. Microsoft''s shares had risen nearly 27 percent this year through Thursday, eclipsing the 14.4 percent gain in the broader S&P 500 .SPX . Reporting by Salvador Rodriguez in San Francisco and Pushkala A in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Bill Rigby'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-results/microsofts-profit-rises-16-percent-idUKKBN1CV3AZ'|'2017-10-27T00:10:00.000+03:00'
'363a23d576d62d1cd0d56d3e5caaca3e3d2a4ba5'|'Bayer cuts Monsanto deal value to $63.5 billion on revised debt'|'October 26, 2017 / 12:07 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Bayer cuts Monsanto deal value to $63.5 billion on revised debt Ludwig Burger 4 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German drugmaker Bayer has cut the value of its takeover of Monsanto by $2.5 billion, which combined with windfalls from asset sales means it may have to raise less than expected from shareholders. The logo of Germany''s largest drugmaker Bayer is pictured in Leverkusen April 26, 2014. REUTERS/Ina Fassbender/Files The Monsanto deal is now valued at $63.5 billion including debt, down from an initial $66 billion, because the U.S. seeds giant had lowered its financial liabilities, Bayer<65>s finance chief said on Thursday. The planned acquisition will boost Bayer<65>s agriculture sales to the same level as its core healthcare business, but the move has not been universally popular among shareholders and has led those with a pharma focus in particular to sell out. Bayer said in September 2016 when the deal was announced that it would raise $19 billion worth of fresh equity capital, some of which would be covered by 4 billion euros in mandatory convertible notes issued in November 2016. Analysts had expected Bayer<65>s cash call to be around $12 billion, but estimates have since dropped below $10 billion. <20>We will examine whether and to what extent the equity component of the financing will change,<2C> Bayer Chief Executive Werner Baumann, the deal<61>s main architect, said on Thursday. Bayer reiterated that the capital increase would take place via a rights issue so as not to water down existing investors and said the transaction would not take place before next year as it awaits antitrust approval for the Monsanto deal. The German firm has agreed to sell seed and herbicide businesses for 5.9 billion euros ($7 billion) to BASF to appease antitrust regulators, and has also been selling down its stake in plastics unit Covestro. Bayer<65>s finance chief Johannes Dietsch said that cutting its stake in Covestro to below 25 percent had grossed about 2.5 billion euros more in proceeds than expected. But Bayer was no longer keen on the idea of using hybrid bonds to fund the Monsanto deal, Dietsch said, meaning that shareholders could be asked to stump up more cash. Earlier this month European regulators pushed back the Jan. 22, 2018 deadline on the Monsanto approval process so that the companies can garner information they have been asked for. WEAK CONSUMER HEALTHCARE Bayer shares dropped 3.1 percent to 110.90 euros at 1034 GMT with some analysts citing weaker-than-expected consumer healthcare revenues after the company reported a 4 percent rise in third-quarter operating earnings, driven by gains in its prescription drug sales. Bayer<65>s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) came in at 2.2 billion euros ($2.6 billion), slightly higher than the average forecast by analysts of 2.12 billion euros, helped by continued growth in prescriptions for anti-clotting drug Xarelto. Adjusted EBITDA at the consumer health unit, owner of brands such as sunscreen Coppertone and allergy remedy Claritin, fell a weaker-than-expected 16.5 percent to 274 million euros. Bayer said U.S. consumers were switching to online purchases, leading to declines in established drugstore footfall which its own e-commerce push was not offsetting fast enough. ($1 = 0.8453 euros) Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by Maria Sheahan and Alexander Smith '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/bayer-results/bayer-cuts-monsanto-deal-value-to-63-5-billion-on-revised-debt-idINKBN1CV1SQ'|'2017-10-26T10:07:00.000+03:00'
'839b57a5793d26933aa90b90021f0bda933b9a38'|'DowDuPont sees third-quarter earnings, sales rise as new company'|'(Reuters) - DowDuPont, formed by the merger of chemical giants Dow Chemical and DuPont, is likely to beat analysts<74> profit estimates by a big margin when it reports its first quarterly results as a combined company next week.The company<6E>s preliminary earnings numbers on Thursday offered investors an early look into the performance of the combination, which brought together an array of businesses that make chemicals for industries ranging from automobiles to cosmetics.DowDuPont said it expects to have earned 55 cents per share on an adjusted pro-forma basis in the third quarter, up 10 percent from last year, its preliminary earnings report showed. Analysts are currently expecting 40 cents per share on average.The quarter benefited from higher prices for its products and strong demand for chemicals used by the consumer sector.Overall sales rose 8 percent on a proforma basis to $18.3 billion.The companies completed their $130 billion merger in September. It then made changes to operations in the three units it plans to create, under pressure from investors to run the business more efficiently.Shares of the company were up 1.6 percent at $72.20 before markets opened on Thursday.Reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee; Editing by Supriya Kurane and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/dowdupont-results/dowdupont-sees-third-quarter-earnings-sales-rise-as-new-company-idINKBN1CV1IT'|'2017-10-26T09:02:00.000+03:00'
'ec5d3047612b600fd2b51ce2a959c7d2f0b47b60'|'Tesla''s seat strategy goes against the grain...for now'|'October 26, 2017 / 5:06 AM / Updated 17 minutes ago Tesla''s seat strategy goes against the grain...for now 7 Min Read SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Elon Musk was fed up. The interior of the Tesla Model 3 sedan is seen in this undated handout image as the car company handed over its first 30 Model 3 vehicles to employee buyers at the company''s Fremont facility in California, U.S., July 28, 2017. Tesla/Handout via REUTERS The seats on Tesla Inc<6E>s ( TSLA.O ) new Model X SUV were a mess. An outside contractor was having trouble executing the complicated design, spurring frustration and finger-pointing between Tesla and its supplier. How would Tesla ever pull off mass production of the upcoming Model 3, the car intended to catapult the niche automaker into the big leagues, if it could not deliver on something as fundamental as a seat? Musk made a decision: Tesla would build the seats itself. Tesla<6C>s demanding chief executive vowed years ago to shake up the automotive industry with his line of electric vehicles and a futuristic manufacturing facility in Fremont, Calif. But industry experts say Musk<73>s insistence on performing much of the work in-house is among the reasons Tesla is nowhere close to its stated goal of building 500,000 vehicles annually by next year, most of them Model 3s. The automaker this month revealed it built just 260 of the vehicles between July and September, badly missing its target of 1,500 Model 3s in the third quarter. In a statement, Tesla blamed manufacturing <20>bottlenecks.<2E> It declined to elaborate, but assured investors <20>there are no fundamental issues with the Model 3 production or supply chain.<2E> Tesla has demonstrated a commitment to vertical integration not seen in the auto industry for decades. The company has so far sunk $2 billion into a sprawling Nevada factory to manufacture its vehicles<65> batteries. In-house programmers design the bulk of the complex software that runs the Model 3, which Musk has described as a <20>computer on wheels<6C>. Tesla controls its own retail chain, selling its cars directly to customers and bypassing dealers. But it is Tesla<6C>s 2015 decision to build its own seats that has some industry veterans scratching their heads. Seat making is a low-margin, labor-intensive enterprise that big automakers generally farm out to specialists. Tesla is operating its own seat assembly line inside its factory, and it is hiring engineers and technicians to figure out a way to fully automate the process. <20>Is that really the core competency of an auto company? It is not,<2C> said analyst Maryann Keller, who has been tracking the car industry since the early 1970s. <20>Why would you want to do that?<3F> Tesla declined requests from Reuters to discuss its seat assembly efforts. The company is expected to reveal more about its production issues on Nov. 1, when it announces third-quarter results. There is no indication that the <20>bottlenecks<6B> mentioned previously by the company are associated with seat production. Analyst Keller and others suspect Tesla eventually will be forced to farm out seat assembly to suppliers as the company transitions from a niche producer of pricey, hand-built luxury cars to a mass manufacturer. Seat makers including Germany<6E>s ZF Friedrichshafen AG [ZFF.UL], France<63>s Faurecia SA ( EPED.PA ) and Detroit-based Lear Corp ( LEA.N ) already are trying to win that business. A lot is riding on Tesla<6C>s ability to scale up operations quickly. Starting at $35,000, the Model 3 is Tesla<6C>s attempt to bring its electric technology to a wider audience. More than a half-million customers have already put down deposits. Tesla has never turned an annual profit and it is burning through cash. Yet investors are betting big on its future. It is now the second most valuable U.S. automaker, behind only General Motors Co ( GM.N ). Tesla shares on Wednesday closed at $325.84, down 3.4 percent. FROM STOP-GAP TO STRATEGY Musk has defended Tesla<6C>s hands-on approach as the way to ensure reliability, as well a
'c02b7987009f3d9a680fbfdee6d55a622cc7ad1e'|'AB InBev increases profit despite selling less beer'|'October 26, 2017 / 5:24 AM / in 7 hours AB InBev takes hurricane hit in United States Philip Blenkinsop 4 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Anheuser-Busch InBev ( ABI.BR ), the world<6C>s largest brewer, sold less beer than expected in the third quarter, hit particularly by hurricanes and market share losses in its largest market, the United States. FILE PHOTO - The logo of Anheuser-Busch InBev is pictured outside the brewer''s headquarters in Leuven, Belgium February 25, 2016. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo The maker of Budweiser, Corona and Stella Artois said on Thursday it sold 1.5 percent less beer than a year earlier in North America, Brazil, Europe and Asia, with the steepest fall in the United States. The Belgium-based company said profits slipped there as hurricanes ripping into Florida and Texas hampered its shipping, although the company<6E>s market share also slipped. AB InBev said U.S. core profit (EBITDA) declined by 0.7 percent in the third quarter compared to a year ago, with the negative hurricane impact estimated at 2 percentage points. While it can expect to recover some of the hurricane hit at the end of 2017, there was no clear fix for its two major U.S. brands, Budweiser and Bud Light, both suffering as drinkers shift to higher-priced craft beer as well as cheaper lagers. Heineken ( HEIN.AS ), reporting on Wednesday, also had lower sales of its Heineken brand and Mexican lagers in the United States, although Lagunitas, the U.S. craft brand it now fully owns, outperformed the market. AB InBev has bought 10 U.S. craft breweries in the past six years, but their gains could not prevent an overall share loss. AB InBev shares were down 2.1 percent at 100.85 euros at 1010 GMT, making them among the weakest in the FTSEurofirst 300 index of leading shares. Its shares trade at a premium to peers Heineken and Carlsberg ( CARLb.CO ) due to its success to date with acquisitions and sharp focus on costs. James Edwardes Jones, analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said the U.S. weakness was not just caused by the weather. <20>Our view remains that unless and until AB InBev can get volumes growing sustainably the business model will remain under significant pressure,<2C> he said. Bernstein Securities said it could not remember a quarter so bad for the company<6E>s U.S. sales. AB InBev did increase profit in Brazil, its second biggest market, for the first time in almost two years in the July-Sept period, with overall volumes down 4 percent, but prices per litre 13.1 percent higher. Heineken had reported higher beer sales in Brazil. <20>In Brazil we remain cautiously optimistic about the economy overall with good progress made so far. We remain confident about our commercial plans and therefore we expect a very strong fourth quarter,<2C> Chief Financial Officer Felipe Dutra said. <20>Yes, Brazil is coming back as one of the growth engines.<2E> Latin America<63>s largest economy is emerging unevenly and slowly from its worst recession in more than a century. Profit grew in its other large markets of Mexico, Colombia, South Africa and China, although beer sales only increased in Mexico. AB InBev also raised its target for cost savings from last year<61>s purchase of largest rival SABMiller. It now sees savings of $3.2 billion from $2.8 billion before, having already achieved $1.75 billion to date. The additional savings were largely to come from better terms for procurement and gains from sharing former AB InBev<65>s greater efficiency in brewing and acquired SABMiller<65>s superiority in packaging, Dutra told a conference call. Overall, third-quarter core profit (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) was up 13.8 percent on a like-for-like basis to $5.73 billion (<28>4.33 billion), just below the median forecast in a Reuters poll of $5.76 billion. Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek and Jane Merriman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-abinbev-resu
'91917ef698d2cc687fbe14571d29b5312f21c945'|'Exclusive: Saudi Aramco IPO on track for 2018 - Saudi crown prince'|'October 26, 2017 / 3:48 PM / Updated 4 hours ago Exclusive: Saudi Aramco IPO on track for 2018 - Saudi crown prince Rania El Gamal , Stephen Kalin 6 Min Read RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Aramco<63>s initial public offering is on track for next year and the national oil giant could be valued at more than $2 trillion, Saudi Arabia<69>s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman told Reuters in an interview. Visitors are seen at the Saudi Aramco stand at the Middle East Process Engineering Conference & Exhibition in Manama, Bahrain, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed The sale of around 5 percent of Aramco [IPO-ARMO.SE] next year is a centrepiece of Vision 2030, an ambitious reform plan to diversify the Saudi economy beyond oil which is championed by Prince Mohammad. Saudi officials have said domestic and international exchanges such as New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong have been looked at for a partial listing of the state-run firm. A decision on which exchange would secure the offering has still not been made, fuelling market speculation that the IPO could be delayed beyond 2018 or even shelved, amid growing concerns about the feasibility of an international listing. <20>We are on track in 2018... but the listing (details) are still under discussion,<2C> Prince Mohammad told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday in Riyadh for release on Thursday. <20>It will be IPO-ed in 2018.<2E> The crown prince declined to discuss specific details of the IPO, which could be the biggest in history and is expected to raise as much as $100 billion. Prince Mohammad, 32, has sweeping powers over defence, energy and the economy and is expected to take the final decision about Aramco<63>s listing venue and the other reforms. Investors have long debated whether Aramco could be valued anywhere close to $2 trillion, the figure announced by the crown prince, who wants to raise cash through the IPO to finance investments aimed at helping wean Saudi Arabia off its dependency on crude oil exports. But Prince Mohammad reiterated that Aramco<63>s estimated valuation would be about $2 trillion. <20>I know that there has been a lot of argument around this topic but at the end of the day the right say is that of the investor. Undoubtedly the biggest IPO in the world must be accompanied by a lot of rumours,<2C> Prince Mohammad said. <20>Aramco would prove itself on the ground on the day of the IPO. Actually when I talked about the valuation, I talk about $2 trillion, it could be more than $2 trillion.<2E> The timing of the IPO will depend on getting legal and regulatory approval from the jurisdictions it opts to list in, industry sources have said. It could also be influenced by the oil price - currently below $60 per barrel - a price Saudi officials have identified as a good level. Listing Aramco is important for the development of Saudi Arabia<69>s capital markets and diversifying the kingdom<6F>s economy. <20>The government should not be in control of the private sector. You create opportunity, you create business, you create development, you hand it to the investor and start creating something new,<2C> Prince Mohammad said. <20>The idea is not to restructure the economy as much as to seize the opportunities available that we didn<64>t address before.<2E> Asked whether the rift with Gulf OPEC producer Qatar has dented investors<72> sentiment ahead of the Aramco IPO, Prince Mohammad dismissed the impact of the political impasse. The Qatar Investment Authority, the Gulf Arab state<74>s acquisitive sovereign wealth fund has a major stake in the London Stock Exchange, one of the venues in the running for the Aramco IPO. <20>Qatar is a very, very, very small issue,<2C> he said. Saudi Arabia and three other Arab states cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism. Doha denies the accusations. SUPPORTING OPEC<45>S <20>HISTORIC<49> PACT OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is leading OPEC and other oil producers such as Russia to restrict oil supplies under a global oil pact to drain global inventories and boost oil 
'b196bd9f934f5a9f4f9e2a8ff900af3b989a9698'|'Germany''s Linde cuts threshold for $80 billion Praxair deal'|'October 23, 2017 / 8:54 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago Germany''s Linde cuts threshold for $80 billion Praxair deal Arno Schuetze 3 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany<6E>s Linde has cut the approval level and extended the acceptance period for its $80 billion (<28>60.7 billion) tie-up with Praxair which will create an industrial gases leader. Praxair Chief Executive Officer Steve Angel (R) poses with Linde Chief Executive Officer Aldo Belloni before a news conference in Munich, Germany June 2, 2017. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle The acceptance threshold for the merger has been lowered to 60 percent from 75 percent of shareholders, while the period of the exchange offer, which was due to expire on Tuesday, has been extended to Nov. 7, Linde said in a statement on Monday. The planned merger between Linde and U.S. group Praxair will create a global leader in industrial gases to overtake France<63>s Air Liquide with a combined revenue of $28.7 billion and 88,000 staff. The offer for Linde<64>s shareholders to exchange their stock for shares in the merged company reached an important 50 percent acceptance threshold on Friday. That paved the way for passive funds, such as exchanged-traded funds replicating Germany<6E>s blue chip DAX index, to tender their stock. Roughly 10 to 13 percent of Linde<64>s shares are held by such funds, which typically tender in such situations and now have more time to do so, people familiar with the matter said. Linde estimates that retail investors own about 5 to 6 percent of its shares. Chairman Wolfgang Reitzle told Reuters in June that tracking them down would be tough. The companies still expect to get the merger done in its originally intended form. <20>We have confidence in reaching an acceptance level of 75 percent or more at the end of the exchange offer process, which is required for the success of the transaction as it avoids an adverse tax event,<2C> Linde said. After an additional two-week acceptance period ends, Linde and Praxair will have 12 months to close the merger, which they will need to convince regulators that the transaction does not hamper competition. The companies have said that they are ready to divest operations with sales of up to 3.7 billion euros (<28>3.3 billion) and core earnings of up to 1.1 billion euros to soothe regulators<72> concerns. People close to the matter said they were actually preparing assets with core earnings of 650 to 750 million euros and an enterprise value of about 6.5 to 7.5 billion euros for a sale which would launch around Christmas. Linde declined to comment on the volume and timing of the divestitures. Reporting by Arno Schuetze; Editing by Maria Sheahan and Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-linde-m-a-praxair/linde-lowers-acceptance-threshold-for-praxair-merger-to-60-percent-idUKKBN1CS0XL'|'2017-10-23T13:02:00.000+03:00'
'342010a73fd83b7f89d7598eba7730d5c48dc0cb'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Argentina markets jump on election boost'|'October 23, 2017 / 3:00 PM / Updated 7 minutes ago EMERGING MARKETS-Argentina markets jump on election boost Reuters Staff 4 Min Read By Bruno Federowski SAO PAULO, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Argentina''s stocks, bonds and currency jumped on Monday as investors bet a strong electoral performance from President Mauricio Macri''s coalition could boost his reform agenda. While "Let''s Change" will remain a minority in the lower house of Congress and the Senate, as expected, its defeat of populist former President Cristina Fernandez in the Senate race in populous Buenos Aires province and strong performance nationwide should help in negotiations with opposition lawmakers, analysts said. Investors expect that momentum will help it pass its 2018 budget, which aims to cut the fiscal deficit by one percentage point to 3.2 percent of gross domestic product, along with tax, labor and capital markets reforms. "A very solid electoral performance by President Macri, which should endow the administration with a stronger mandate to purse his reformist agenda," Goldman Sachs economist Alberto Ramos wrote in a report. "The strong showing by President Macri increases the probability of a reelection in 2019, giving continuity to the current market and investment-friendly set of policies." Argentina''s benchmark Merval index rose 1.9 percent to new all-time highs, while the peso firmed 0.9 percent. Dollar bonds jumped 1.8 percent. Brazilian markets, however, slipped as investors avoided risky bets ahead of a widely-expected vote in the lower house of Congress on whether to put President Michel Temer on trial before the Supreme Court for corruption charges. Traders see Temer dodging the charges but the vote may corrode his political capital, potentially delaying the implementation of a plan to streamline the pensions system seen as key to boosting long-term growth. Common shares in phone carrier Oi SA, which are not part of the benchmark index, slumped 4 percent after regulators rejected a proposal to swap billion of reais in regulatory fines for new investments as part of its debt reorganization plan. Key Latin American stock indexes and currencies at 1720 GMT: Stock indexes daily % YTD % Latest change change MSCI Emerging Markets 1116.73 -0.26 29.85 MSCI LatAm 2904.95 -0.82 25.13 Brazil Bovespa 75905.53 -0.63 26.03 Mexico S&P/BVM IPC 49749.14 -0.48 9.00 Chile IPSA 5523.77 0 33.06 Chile IGPA 27685.59 0.05 33.53 Argentina MerVal 27484.57 1.87 62.46 Colombia IGBC 10941.14 0.34 8.03 Venezuela IBC 621.53 5.59 -98.04 Currencies daily % YTD % change change Latest Brazil real 3.2092 -0.65 1.25 Mexico peso 19.0085 -0.11 9.13 Chile peso 630.35 -0.23 6.40 Colombia peso 2943.3 -0.38 1.98 Peru sol 3.237 0.03 5.47 Argentina peso (interbank) 17.2900 0.87 -8.18 Argentina peso (parallel) 17.93 0.45 -6.19 (Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Nick Zieminski)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/emerging-markets-latam/emerging-markets-argentina-markets-jump-on-election-boost-idUSL2N1MY0RK'|'2017-10-23T17:59:00.000+03:00'
'f1a7a8ef875eadb7ba76c82a7e4fea0a783604d1'|'BoE''s Cunliffe says November rate rise ''open question'' - Western Mail'|'October 23, 2017 / 3:06 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago November rate rise is ''open question'', BoE''s Cunliffe says Reuters Staff 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe again raised doubts about whether he will back an interest rate rise next week, describing it as an <20>open question<6F> in an interview published by a Welsh newspaper on Monday. Britain''s Deputy Governor of the Bank of England Jon Cunliffe speaks during the Bank of England''s financial stability report at the Bank of England in the City of London, Britain June 27, 2017. REUTERS/ Jonathan Brady/Pool Most economists polled by Reuters predict the Bank will raise borrowing costs for the first time in more than a decade on Nov. 2, after the central bank last month said the majority of its policymakers expected rates to rise in the coming months. But Cunliffe and his fellow deputy governor, Dave Ramsden, have made clear over the past week that they are some way from seeing the case to raise rates next week. <20>I am not going to try and anticipate the meeting, but for me the economy has clearly slowed this year,<2C> Cunliffe said in an interview with Wales<65>s Western Mail newspaper. Echoing language he used in an interview with BBC Radio Wales last week, Cunliffe said rates would need to rise if domestic inflation pressures picked up as the Bank predicted, but he had not decided when this process should start. <20>Over the forecast period of three years rates will need to rise. The exact timing of when that starts? Well, that for me is a more open question,<2C> Cunliffe said. Rates would not need to rise as high or as quickly as during tightening cycles before the financial crisis, he added. Britain<69>s economy grew at a quarterly rate of 0.3 percent in the first half of this year, its weakest since 2012 and half its long-run average. Inflation has hit a five-year high of 3 percent, but the Bank says this mostly reflects the effect of the fall in the pound after last year<61>s Brexit vote. But the central bank is concerned that the lowest unemployment since 1975 and possible dislocation from the Brexit process will limit the economy<6D>s ability to grow faster without generating excessive inflation. The legacy of the 2008-09 financial crisis was still bearing down on the economy,<2C> Cunliffe said. <20>We saw investment really dry up in the years after the financial crisis and that<61>s starting to have an impact on productivity now,<2C> he said. Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Alistair Smout and Catherine Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-boe-cunliffe/boes-cunliffe-says-november-rate-rise-open-question-western-mail-idUKKBN1CS217'|'2017-10-23T18:05:00.000+03:00'
'2f4df7bb7d9fd5800dc36303ec7dcf6b1b6d7220'|'Euro zone ready to do more on Greek debt - Dijsselbloem'|' 22 PM / in 33 minutes Euro zone ready to do more on Greek debt - Dijsselbloem   DUBLIN (Reuters) - Greece<63>s bailout programme is back on track and fellow euro zone members stand ready, if necessary, to do more to manage its debt burden if Athens does its part, Eurogroup Chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem said on Monday. An official holds a bag with the euro logo during a eurozone finance ministers meeting in Brussels, Belgium May 22, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir <20>We have managed to help the debt burden, a lot has been done there. We stand ready, if they do their part, to do more if necessary. At the end of the programme, summer next year, we will look again at how sustainable the debt is,<2C> Dijsselbloem said after a speech in Dublin. Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by John Stonestreet'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-greece-dijsselbloem/euro-zone-ready-to-do-more-on-greek-debt-dijsselbloem-idUKKBN1CS1R2'|'2017-10-23T16:22:00.000+03:00'
'f3a8aba86d1008fd74c072b77963baf0fe356c05'|'Brexit drives Belgium to set up English-language commerce court'|'October 27, 2017 / 12:58 PM / in 10 minutes Brexit drives Belgium to set up English-language commerce court Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BRUSSELS, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Belgium will set up an English-language commercial court to deal with disputes between international companies to make the most of Britain<69>s plan to leave the European Union. The Brussels International Business Court (BIBC) will seek to take on cases that are so far handled by British courts or international arbitration tribunals, the Belgian government said on Friday. Cases in Belgium<75>s regular courts are heard in French or Dutch. The government said the demand for arbitration was likely to grow because of Brexit. <20>The same Brexit means moreover that going to a court in London might not be an appropriate option,<2C> it said, without giving a date for the start of the English-language hearings. BIBC will be presided over by sector specialists and parties will have to agree in advance to let the court settle their differences. They will not be able to appeal against the decisions. <20>The development of the European Union cannot be slowed down by Brexit. Our country uses this opportunity to offer a new judicial instrument,<2C> Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said in a statement. Some companies, such as Lloyd<79>s of London, the world<6C>s largest specialty insurance market, have already picked Brussels as their European base in order to retain access to the EU market after Britain leaves the bloc in 2019. (Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek; editing by Philip Blenkinsop and David Stamp)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-eu-belgium-court/brexit-drives-belgium-to-set-up-english-language-commerce-court-idUSL8N1N24VN'|'2017-10-27T15:57:00.000+03:00'
'2d9a221a9151c1a1bfb14ce83bd24dbd9644aefb'|'Shell bets big on Brazil as oil majors snap up offshore blocks'|'October 27, 2017 / 9:04 AM / Updated 8 hours ago Shell bets big on Brazil as oil majors snap up offshore blocks Marta Nogueira , Alexandra Alper 5 Min Read RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Oil major Royal Dutch Shell Plc RDSA.L won half the blocks awarded in Brazil<69>s deepwater oil auction on Friday, while rival BP ( BP.L ) took two blocks and Exxon Mobil Corp ( XOM.N ) one in a historic opening of the pre-salt play to foreign operators. Companies'' representatives attend a deepwater pre-salt oil auction in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares Brazil awarded six of the eight blocks on offer in the auction for the rights to pump oil from the country<72>s coveted pre-salt region, where billions of barrels of oil are trapped below thousands of feet of salt in the country<72>s Atlantic waters. President Michel Temer said development of the blocks would lead to 100 billion reais (23.52 billion pounds)in investment from the winning companies and 130 billion reais in royalties and other revenues for the cash-strapped state. The wins bolster Shell<6C>s position as the largest foreign operator in Brazil<69>s offshore oil sector, second only to state-run oil giant Petroleo Brasileiro (Petrobras) ( PETR4.SA ), adding more than 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles) to its deep-water Brazil portfolio. The Anglo-Dutch oil major won one area in a consortium with France<63>s Total SA ( TOTF.PA ), another with Petrobras and Repsol-Sinopec, and a third with Qatar Petroleum International (QPI) and China<6E>s CNOOC. Shell has said it is confident it can pump oil from the pre-salt fields at below $40 a barrel. <20>These winning bids were submitted after our thorough evaluation and add strategic acreage to our ... global deep-water growth options,<2C> Shell Upstream Director Andy Brown said. Rival BP Plc ( BP.L ), which is active in Brazil but not yet producing oil, took two blocks on Friday. <20>We see the government of Brazil being more supportive of foreign companies entering Brazil,<2C> BP Latin America President Felipe Arbelaez said after the rounds. <20>There are high quality assets. We believe that the assets here will be resilient in any price environment.<2E> Brazil earned 6.15 billion reais ($1.88 billion) in signing bonuses for the six fields that it awarded in the auction. Temer<65>s government has enacted reforms to make the energy sector more attractive to foreign investment, and for the first time international oil firms will be allowed to operate fields in the pre-salt. Lucio Prevatti, representative from Shell, places an offer during a deepwater pre-salt oil auction in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares Countries worldwide sitting on oil and gas reserves are keen to pump it before it becomes less valuable as global policies to address climate change kick in. The opposition in Brazil has pushed back against the reforms and the auction was delayed by three hours on Friday after a federal judge issued an injunction to suspend the process at the behest of the leftist Workers Party, which opposes the privatization of oil production. That left top executives from the world<6C>s largest oil companies milling around in the hotel that hosted the auction, in an upscale seaside neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. EXXON Slideshow (4 Images) U.S. major Exxon Mobil, whose 10-block win in last month<74>s Brazilian auction was seen by many as a prelude to a big play on Friday, took just one block as part of a consortium with Norway<61>s Statoil ASA ( STL.OL ) and Petroleos de Portugal SA[PETP.UL], a unit of Galp Energia SGPS SA ( GALP.LS ). Two blocks got no bids. But Exxon bought a stake in a nearby block from Statoil for $1.3 billion, Statoil said, soon after the round. <20>Our full intent is to get right after the Brazil acreage,<2C> Jeff Woodbury, Exxon<6F>s head of investor relations, said on a conference call following the auction. The quality of reserves and the reforms have made Brazil an important target for oil majors, even though
'86872b342a38035a01d6acb5b638cb2db4ed00c9'|'Exclusive: Evoqua snubs Xylem''s $2.5 billion bid for IPO - sources'|'(Reuters) - Evoqua Water Technologies Corp plans to proceed with an initial public offering next week despite an all-cash acquisition offer by Xylem Inc ( XYL.N ) that values it at close to $2.5 billion, including debt, according to people familiar with the matter.The majority owner of Evoqua, private equity firm AEA Investors LP, rejected Xylem<65>s bid because it believes the stock market will assign a higher valuation on the company, the sources said this week.Xylem<65>s offer valued Evoqua at 13 times its projected 12-month earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), but AEA believes the company is worth at least a multiple of 14, according to the sources. Xylem currently trades at 14 times EBITDA.Xylem remains interested in Evoqua, and it is possible that it will approach AEA with a new offer before or after the IPO, the sources added. They asked not to be identified because the negotiations were confidential.Evoqua, Xylem and AEA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.AEA<45>s stance illustrates the impact that the U.S. stock market<65>s rally has had on the valuation expectations of many private equity firms. They traditionally have opted for the certainty of a quick sale of a portfolio company if it comes at a fair price. AEA paid $730.6 million to acquire Evoqua in 2014.Evoqua is the largest North American provider of water treatment solutions. Based in Pittsburgh, it makes filtration products used for removing impurities from water, rather than neutralizing them through the addition of chemicals.Evoqua has benefited from several global trends as a growing population, increasing levels of urbanization and more stringent regulations drive demand for cleaner and sustainable waste streams.The company has scheduled to price a $527 million IPO next week. AEA owns 58.5 percent of Evoqua<75>s common stock and plans to own between 43 percent and 40 percent after the IPO.Based in Rye Brook, New York, Xylem is a water technology company with a market capitalization of $11.6 billion.(This story corrects spelling of Pittsburgh, paragraph 7.)Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-evoqua-m-a-xylem/exclusive-evoqua-snubs-xylems-2-5-billion-bid-for-ipo-sources-idUSKBN1CV38O'|'2017-10-27T03:34:00.000+03:00'
'a18da635d2d176fa4b9fa6540dba456ae9cf14f7'|'PRESS DIGEST- Wall Street Journal - Oct 30'|'Oct 30 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.- The first defendants in a criminal investigation of Russia''s meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign could be taken into custody as soon as Monday, people familiar with the matter said, though the nature and target of the charges couldn''t be determined over the weekend. on.wsj.com/2yWFg3o- Puerto Rico''s governor said Sunday he would cancel a $300 million reconstruction contract with a little-known Montana energy firm after the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it had "significant concerns" about the deal. on.wsj.com/2yWcjV4- Strayer Education Inc is nearing a deal to merge with Capella Education Co, according to people familiar with the matter, a move that would create a for-profit education company valued at nearly $2 billion. on.wsj.com/2yVYc20- General Electric Co executives didn''t notify the company''s board until this month about its regular flying of a spare business jet for its CEO, and it didn''t tell directors that GE had received an internal complaint about the practice several years ago, according to people familiar with the matter. on.wsj.com/2z3amIwCompiled by Bengaluru newsroom '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/press-digest-wsj/press-digest-wall-street-journal-oct-30-idINL4N1N521L'|'2017-10-30T01:40:00.000+02:00'
'5be7dd4b503e2bbd269fddad64862740d678848d'|'US STOCKS-Solid tech earnings, Apple lift Nasdaq higher'|'* Amazon, Alphabet jumps after reporting results* Apple says iPhone X pre-orders high* Expedia, Mattel plunge on earnings miss* Indexes up: Dow 0.02 pct, S&P 0.51 pct, Nasdaq 1.51 pct (Changes comment, updates prices)By Sruthi ShankarOct 27 (Reuters) - The Nasdaq Composite index surged more than 1 percent on Friday on blowout earnings from Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet and after Apple said demand for its latest iPhone X is <20>off the charts<74>.Microsoft advanced 7.14 percent after the world<6C>s largest software company reported further gains from its cloud computing services.Amazon jumped 10.23 percent and Google-parent Alphabet gained 5.62 percent after results.Apple rose 2.3 percent.The gains drove the S&P technology index up about 2.3 percent. The sector has gained about 30 percent this year, double the gains in the broader S&P index.<2E>In many ways, we<77>re seeing the strong getting stronger,<2C> said Eric Wiegand, senior portfolio manager at the Private Client Reserve at U.S. Bank.<2E>While valuations are full, it certainly becomes imperative on them to deliver solid operating results and that<61>s something that we did see.<2E>Adding to the positive sentiment was the third-quarter GDP data that showed the U.S. economy unexpectedly maintained a brisk pace of growth, despite a hurricane-led drop in consumer spending and construction activities.A report about President Donald Trump favoring Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell as the head of the U.S. central bank also supported the stocks.In Powell<6C>s appointment, investors see a continuation of the current stock market-friendly monetary policy.At 10:56 a.m. ET (1456 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 5.52 points, or 0.02 percent, at 23,406.38, the S&P 500 was up 13.09 points, or 0.51 percent, at 2,573.49 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 99.04 points, or 1.51 percent, at 6,655.82.Energy stocks weighed on the S&P and the Dow.Chevron dipped 3.5 percent after the oil giant<6E>s profit missed estimates as U.S. production slipped.Merck slipped 4.42 percent after the company reported a fall in revenue due to a cyber attack and loss of market share for many of its older drugs.Mattel plunged 14 percent after the toymaker said it would miss its full-year revenue forecast and stop dividend from the fourth quarter.Expedia was slumped 17.8 percent after the online travel services company<6E>s profit missed Wall Street<65>s consensus forecast.Shares of drug distributors tumbled on a report that Amazon gained wholesale pharmacy license in multiple states.CVS Health, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Rite Aid fell between 7 percent and 3.9 percent.Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 1,417 to 1,326. On the Nasdaq, 1,386 issues fell and 1,331 advanced. (Reporting by Sruthi Shankar Arun Koyyur) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-stocks/us-stocks-solid-tech-earnings-apple-lift-nasdaq-higher-idINL4N1N25BA'|'2017-10-27T13:39:00.000+03:00'
'bdcc475bb2e8420bc52ce55d37e4d81628366578'|'German federal budget surplus could reach 14 billion euros - magazine'|'October 28, 2017 / 10:45 AM / Updated 11 hours ago German federal budget surplus could reach 14 billion euros - magazine Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany could post a budget surplus of 14 billion euros (<28>12.38 billion) in 2017, a magazine reported Saturday, providing more negotiating room for Chancellor Angela Merkel<65>s conservative bloc as it tries to forge a new coalition with the Free Democrats and Greens. FILE PHOTO: Angela Merkel, German Chancellor and leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, speaks at the start of the CDU''s election rally for Germany''s general election in Dortmund, Germany August 12, 2017. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay Solid economic growth and growing tax revenues fuelled the new projection, Der Spiegel reported. The Finance Ministry had previously projected a flat budget, although economic institutes last month already forecast record overall government budget surpluses - which also include state governments - for coming years. The new projection is good news for Merkel<65>s conservatives, the pro-business Free Democrats and the environmental Greens, whose combined proposals would add up to some 100 billion euros in new spending over the next four years. The three groups resigned themselves to further talks next week after making little headway on immigration and climate policy during 11 hours of talks on Thursday. Top officials from all parties traded barbs in a series of media interviews, but Manfred Weber, a senior member of the Bavarian conservative CSU, on Friday said his party still aimed to reach agreement by the end of the year. No comment was immediately available from the Finance Ministry, which is due to publish its next tax revenue projections in mid-November. The surplus would allow the government to cover 7 billion in projected costs associated with a landmark nuclear waste deal and 6.7 billion euros in costs for migrants without dipping into a 20-billion-euro reserve account set up during the height of the migrant crisis in 2015. Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Alison Williams'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-budget/german-federal-budget-surplus-could-reach-14-billion-euros-magazine-idUKKBN1CX0AT'|'2017-10-28T13:45:00.000+03:00'
'475b627da6be8b2464b2c14c59e0460ae8ec7bde'|'Exclusive - Energy, not tech or finance, in CEO line-up for Trump''s China visit'|'October 27, 2017 / 11:20 AM / Updated 4 minutes ago Exclusive - Energy, not tech or finance, in CEO line-up for Trump''s China visit Michael Martina 8 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. energy and commodities firms will make up a major part of a business delegation visiting Beijing at the same time as U.S. President Donald Trump goes to China in November, according to an initial list seen by Reuters. U.S. President Donald Trump speaks about administration plans to combat the nation''s opioid crisis in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria Prominent technology and financial companies are mostly absent from the list, reflecting the slow progress Washington has made in opening up China in those sectors. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who will lead the 29 companies that have been approved to travel on the trade mission starting on Nov. 8, said they will be looking for <20>immediate results<74> and <20>tangible agreements<74>. But, speaking at the Paley International Council Summit in New York on Wednesday, he acknowledged that market access, intellectual property rights, and tariffs are more complex and will take a longer time to negotiate. Some major industrial companies - General Electric Co ( GE.N ), Honeywell International Inc ( HON.N ) and Boeing Co ( BA.N ) - are among the companies on the current list. Whether executives from all the named companies end up attending could be subject to agreements or deals being negotiated in time for the visit, according to multiple sources whose companies are involved. One of the few tech companies going with Trump is Qualcomm ( QCOM.O ), which earns about half of its global revenue in China and faces a series of tricky legal issues there, including a lawsuit with Apple ( AAPL.O ) and the Chinese government<6E>s review of its pending $38 billion merger with NXP Semiconductors ( NXPI.O ). Qualcomm said its CEO, Steve Mollenkopf, planned to attend. An industry source told Reuters tech firms were reluctant to go, given China market access issues, the unpredictability of the Trump administration, and a <20>Section 301<30> U.S. trade investigation alleging Chinese abuses of intellectual property. <20>(These) issues are extremely sensitive for tech companies said another source in the U.S. business community. <20>Very few want to stick their heads up and be perceived as complaining directly, and even fewer trust this White House to do anything helpful on their issues,<2C> he said. Particularly galling to foreign tech firms are a slate of new national security and cyber security regulations, which mandate companies store crucial data within China and pass security reviews they argue could put business secrets at risk. TESTY RELATIONSHIP Trump, a real estate magnate who had never before held public office, has had a sometimes testy relationship with corporate America since taking office in January. He disbanded two high-profile business advisory councils in August after several chief executives quit in protest over his controversial remarks on racist violence in Charlottesville. U.S. industry sources say it has been years since a major business delegation has gone to China during a U.S. presidential visit. Calls for such a delegation during Trump<6D>s visit originated in the China-based U.S. business community, according to several sources, who saw a need to match growing efforts by Germany, France and Britain to promote their nation<6F>s firms in China. Trump, who has frequently cited the substantial U.S. trade deficit with China as a reason why Washington should take more protectionist measures, was an easy sell on incorporating a group of executives into the visit, according to the sources. Nonetheless, some trade analysts say China has done a good job of taming Trump<6D>s combative trade impulses. They worry the U.S. administration will be willing to paper over market access concerns during the visit in its focus on getting Beijing to take actio
'101a2a811fc774a2c0ca3f5371eeb44f28ae5a8b'|'Eurowings wins pilot union backing to speed up hiring'|'October 27, 2017 / 2:53 PM / Updated 13 minutes ago Eurowings wins pilot union backing to speed up hiring Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Lufthansa<73>s ( LHAG.DE ) budget unit Eurowings said on Friday it has reached a deal with pilots<74> union Vereinigung Cockpit that will allow it to hire experienced new crew in Germany at short notice, such as from insolvent Air Berlin. The logo of Lufthansa''s low-cost brand Eurowings is seen at Cologne-Bonn airport, Germany, November 2, 2015. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo Eurowings had already reached a similar deal with unions representing cabin crew staff that takes into account applicants<74> previous experience. While Lufthansa is taking on staff as part of a deal to buy Air Berlin units Niki and LGW, it needs around 240 new pilots for a further 24 aircraft. The Air Berlin deal will mainly be used to grow Eurowings. Reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Tom Sims'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-air-berlin-lufthansa-eurowings-unions/eurowings-wins-pilot-union-backing-to-speed-up-hiring-idUKKBN1CW251'|'2017-10-27T17:53:00.000+03:00'
'2f97ac90ccc7672f1808fbc1329aac2b3aecf41e'|'Beginning of the end for Europe''s loose money? ECB to curb stimulus'|'FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank is all but certain to cut back on its bond-buying stimulus on Thursday, taking its biggest step yet in unwinding years of loose monetary policy.But it is likely to be a less-but-longer move, cutting back on how much is bought, but buying for longer.The bank can move because the euro zone<6E>s economic recovery is now well into its fifth year. It also coincides with other major central banks - in the United States and Britain, for example - preparing to raise interest rates.Lending data published on Thursday was likely to strengthen ECB rate setters<72> confidence as it showed bank credit to euro zone companies and households kept growing at the fastest pace since the start of the financial crisis in September.But the ECB is still bothered about low inflation. So it is expected to twin the cut with an extension of the programme.<2E>I<EFBFBD>m convinced that the <20>plan<61> is to go lower in terms of pace of buying, for longer in the hope of pushing out expectations about rate hikes,<2C> Kit Juckes, an analyst at Societe Generale, said.Policymakers from the 19 euro zone countries are seen cutting monthly bond purchases by half in a nod to the rapid growth, a move towards dismantling the unprecedented measures that held the currency bloc together after back-to-back recessions.Yet because inflation, the ECB<43>s single focus, remains far below target, any move is expected to come with a lengthy extension, a signal that support, even if diminished, could continue for years to come.Indeed, sources close to the discussion said the debate was focusing on extending bond purchases by nine months with volumes cut perhaps by half from the current 60 billion euros, while at the same time reaffirming a commitment to keep rates steady until well after the purchases end.The biggest debate is likely to be whether the ECB should signal its intent to exit the scheme, commonly known as quantitative easing, or keep it open ended so its could consider yet another extension next year.Designed nearly three years ago to stave off deflation, the ECB<43>s 2.3 trillion bond buying scheme has cut funding costs, reviving borrowing and spending with the ultimate aim of generating inflation.Hawks like Germany and the Netherlands now want a commitment to end these buys, arguing that more purchases do next to nothing for inflation. Doves on the bloc<6F>s periphery meanwhile warn that a rapid exit could tighten financial conditions, undoing years of work.FILE PHOTO: The headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) are illuminated with a giant euro sign at the start of the "Luminale, light and building" event in Frankfurt, Germany, March 12, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo <20>We think the ECB will keep a bias to buy more and/or for longer, if needed, to respond to any adverse development in the inflation outlook <20> in particular, any unwarranted tightening in monetary conditions stemming from the euro,<2C> Luigi Speranza, an economist at BNP Paribas said.FOCUS SHIFT The broader outlook is as good as it has been since before the global financial crisis. An unbroken growth streak has created 7 million jobs and the expansion is now self-sustaining, driven by domestic consumption.Banks are better capitalised, lending is growing and divergence between the core and the periphery, the biggest failure of currency project, appears to have halted.Yet inflation will miss the ECB<43>s target of almost 2 percent at least through the decade as labour market slack remains large, keeping a lid on wages and supporting the case for continued support.Still, the ECB is slowly running out of bonds to buy in some countries, suggesting that market constraints will play an increasingly large role in the policy debate as a major redesign of rules risked sending the wrong signal when the bank is working on an exit strategy.While a nine-month extension at a reduced pace is viable under current rules, another move could require more creativity as the E
'0780d23ac76428fb5c0a8d058284c87a5bce5ad6'|'UPDATE 1-U.S. pickup truck sales lift Ford''s 3rd-qtr profits'|'(Adds profit details, stock price)By Nick Carey and Paul LienertDETROIT, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co reported a better-than-expected quarterly net profit on Thursday, driven by sales of high-margin pickup trucks and SUVs in the U.S. market and cost-cutting, and raised the low end of its full-year earnings forecast.Ford<72>s results came despite an overall decrease in wholesale vehicle volumes.A large part of the company<6E>s profits came from its F-Series pickup trucks, which have been the best-selling vehicle in North America for decades. Ford said the average transaction price for its trucks rose $2,800 to $45,400.Apart from North America, the only other region that was profitable for Ford was Asia Pacific, driven by sales increases outside China.New Chief Executive Officer Jim Hackett is under pressure to please Wall Street. Following his first 100 days in office, Hackett<74>s overarching message to Wall Street focused on plans to slash $14 billion in costs over the next five years, and shift capital investment away from sedans and internal combustion engines to develop more trucks and electric and hybrid cars.Wall Street was underwhelmed, particularly by Hackett<74>s caveat that most of the savings will not show up on Ford<72>s bottom line until 2019 and 2020.Ford said it had lower engineering, advertising and promotion expenses than in the third quarter.The second largest U.S. automaker posted a quarterly net profit of $1.56 billion, or 39 cents per share, up more than 60 percent from $960 million, or 24 cents, a year earlier.Excluding one-time items, Ford reported earnings per share of 43 cents, above Wall Street expectations of 32 cents.Revenue rose to $36.45 billion from $35.94 billion a year earlier.Ford said it now expects full-year earnings in a range of $1.75 to $1.85 per share. Previously it had looked for $1.65 to $1.85.In premarket trading, Ford shares were up 18 cents at $12.22. (Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/ford-results/update-1-u-s-pickup-truck-sales-lift-fords-3rd-qtr-profits-idUSL2N1N10HB'|'2017-10-26T19:29:00.000+03:00'
'c9005d12468658121dcd28deb4e713f5ce629a13'|'SK Hynix posts record third-quarter profit on surging chip demand'|'SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea<65>s SK Hynix Inc said on Thursday third-quarter operating profit leapt more than five-fold to a record, matching market expectations, on rocketing demand for memory chips for servers and smartphones.FILE PHOTO - The logo of SK Hynix is seen at its headquarters in Seongnam, South Korea, April 25, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo The world<6C>s second-biggest memory chip maker behind Samsung Electronics Co Ltd made a bigger profit in the quarter than it did in all of last year, as a <20>super-cycle<6C> of tight supply and soaring demand drives chip margins.For the current quarter, SK Hynix expected shipment growth in both DRAM and NAND, as data centres demand more server DRAMs, and year-end smartphone demand drives up mobile NAND sales.Next year, SK Hynix said industry-wide DRAM shipments could grow by around 20 percent, while NAND shipments could grow by mid-30 percent.<2E>DRAM supply will not suddenly increase, and investments on artificial intelligence and big data aren<65>t likely to decrease any time soon,<2C> said Lee Seung-woo, analyst at Eugene Investment & Securities.All DRAM product prices have risen for three consecutive quarters, SK Hynix said.Profit for July-September rose to 3.7 trillion won ($3.28 billion) from 726 billion won a year ago, SK Hynix said, compared with a 3.8 trillion won Thomson Reuters StarMine SmartEstimate with 20 analysts surveyed. Revenue rose 91 percent to 8.1 trillion won.SK Hynix is on track for what analysts estimate to be its largest-ever annual operating profit of 13.6 trillion won. Samsung is also expected to book record quarterly profit for the three months through September on Oct. 31.Total industry revenue this year will likely be a record $126 billion, and is set to rise further to $130 billion in 2018 before falling to about $115 billion in 2019, forecasts from research provider Gartner showed.While DRAM supply is expected to remain tight as new production will not be ready until 2019, NAND flash supply-demand will balance in 2018, data provider DRAMeXchange said.TOSHIBA SK Hynix agreed last month to invest 395 billion yen with a consortium led by Bain Capital buying Toshiba<62>s memory chip business, but analysts said the benefits for the South Korean chipmaker were unclear.<2E>Unlike strategic investors such as Western Digital, SK Hynix is not expected to utilise Toshiba<62>s factories for NAND contract manufacturing, while the situation does not makes joint technological development easy,<2C> Samsung Securities analyst MS Hwang said in a note last week.To address anti-trust concerns, Toshiba said SK Hynix would be barred from accessing proprietary information that belonged to the chip unit, and for 10 years would not be permitted to own more than 15 percent of voting rights.SK Hynix shares were down 0.9 percent as investors booked profits, versus a flat benchmark.($1 = 1,126.6600 won)Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Stephen Coates '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/sk-hynix-results/sk-hynix-posts-record-third-quarter-profit-on-surging-chip-demand-idINKBN1CV0D6'|'2017-10-26T02:52:00.000+03:00'
'c96403b10b1e11ac48dd6b241919038be8ebc7f6'|'EU exec - Five countries'' 2018 budget drafts at risk of missing set targets'|'October 27, 2017 / 3:09 PM / Updated 5 hours ago EU exec: five countries'' 2018 budget drafts at risk of missing set targets Jan Strupczewski 5 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission warned Italy, France, Portugal and Belgium on Friday that their 2018 draft budget plans posed risks to meeting EU debt and deficit reduction targets and asked Spain for an updated budget draft that contains more information. FILE PHOTO: European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium June 14, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir In letters addressed to each of the five governments, the Commission pointed out that the reduction in their structural deficits -- the budget balance that strips out business cycle swings in revenue and expenditure and one-off items -- fell short of what EU rules required. The letters are part of the EU<45>s budgetary rules, which give the EU executive arm the right to check if draft national budgets are constructed in line with EU laws that put limits on budget deficit and debt. FRANCE The Commission said France, which is to bring its headline budget deficit down this year to below the EU ceiling of 3 percent of GDP for the first time since 2007, was cutting it close by aiming for a gap of 2.9 percent, rather than the agreed 2.8 percent. <20>The Commission<6F>s preliminary analysis indicates that the correction of the excessive deficit and its sustainability are always subject to risk,<2C> it said in the letter to French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire. The letter said France was planning a cut in the structural deficit next year of <20>marginally greater than zero<72>, while the required cut was 0.6 percent of GDP. Also, public spending would grow faster than allowed by EU rules and public debt would not fall as required. <20>There is a risk of significant deviation from the effort required in 2018. We would therefore like to receive further information on the structural effort envisaged in the draft budget,<2C> the Commission said. The French Finance Ministry said the differences with the Commission<6F>s view were small and that Paris would address the concerns quickly. It said it expected to get out of the EU<45>s budget disciplinary procedure for those whose headline deficits exceed 3 percent of GDP <20>in the coming months<68>. ITALY The Commission said Italy<6C>s draft budget for next year assumed a structural deficit reduction of 0.3 percent of GDP, only half of what was required. And after the Commission checked the Italian calculations, the reduction turned out to be even smaller, 0.2 percent. Planned government spending next year, an election year in Italy, was above EU limits and the structural deficit in 2017 will deteriorate rather than improve by the required 0.6 percent of GDP, the Commission said. It also noted that the draft budget suggested Italy had no intention of public debt reduction targets set by EU rules next year. EU law says that debt must fall annually by 1/20 of the difference between 60 percent of GDP and the actual level. <20>We would welcome your views by 31 October 2017, close of business, to allow the Commission to take these into account in its further analysis,<2C> the Commission said, setting the same deadline as for the other countries except Spain. BELGIUM, PORTUGAL, SPAIN Belgium<75>s planned structural deficit reduction of 0.3 percent of GDP was also only half of what was required. Government spending is growing faster than it should and debt reduction would fall short of the agreed target. <20>We would thus welcome further information on the precise composition of the structural effort envisaged... for the different levels of government,<2C> the Commission said asking also for more information on the effects of a planned reform of corporate income tax. Portugal<61>s planned structural deficit cut of 0.5 percent was in fact 0.4 percent after Commission recalculations. That was below the required 0.6 percent and government spending was planned to grow more than 
'c69d82596ae5ae5e11a62a23e3430973f197bbf2'|'Global Economy: Place your bets for the Brexit rate hike'|'LONDON (Reuters) - To hear some economists talk, the Bank of England is about to make a big mistake - raise interest rates just as the economy heads into what could be a major storm.Euro and Pound banknotes are seen in front of BREXIT letters in this picture illustration taken April 28, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Files If all goes as scripted, the bank will hike borrowing costs in the coming week for the first time in more than 10 years. But is the country really ready?The consensus is for rise to 0.5 percent from 0.25 percent.That 0.25 percent was where the BoE put Bank Rate just over a year ago, shortly after British voters elected to leave the European Union. And there<72>s the rub: the uncertainty the vote triggered is still there.A Reuters poll published in the past week showed more than 70 percent of economists believe now is not the time to raise rates -- though slightly more than that said it would happen anyway.BoE Governor Mark Carney has made it clear a hike is in the offing, if not specifically saying at this coming meeting.His concern is that low unemployment means Britain<69>s economy has little spare capacity and, accordingly, faces upward inflation pressure. Added to that are moves by other major central banks to rein in loose monetary policy, which could also push inflation higher by weakening the pound further.The U.S. Federal Reserve has raised rates four times since late 2015 and is expected to do so again. The European Central Bank is cutting back on its bond buying, albeit gently.So the BoE needs to concern itself with a pressured pound and high employment driving up inflation that, at 3 percent, is already well above target and the highest in the Group of Seven industrialised nations.But ranged against that is huge political and economic uncertainty over how Britain<69>s withdrawal from the EU will play out.Companies are unclear about what to plan for, ranging from little short-term change to a complete revolution in how they do business.Consumers too are wary as, while Britain<69>s economy has by no means not gone over a cliff, it has had some wobbles.Retail sales, for example, contracted on a monthly basis in September and were up 1.2 percent year-on-year versus 4.1 percent a year earlier.Preliminary third-quarter growth figures in the past week, meanwhile, were slightly better than expected. But at 1.5 percent year-on-year they are well below pre-Brexit vote levels and significantly lag both the United States and the euro zone.This had prompted some economists to suggest Carney and the BoE are about to <20>do a Trichet<65> -- mirroring then-ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet<65>s raising of rates in 2008 just as the financial crisis was hitting.Former BoE policymaker Danny Blanchflower - who voted against the BoE<6F>s last hike in 2007, and has been regularly critical of suggestions to tighten policy since - has been scathing about the idea of a UK hike now.<2E>Nothing in data whatsoever says there should be a rate rise,<2C> he tweeted.(NOT) RISING SUN The BoE is not the only central bank discussing policy. The Bank of Japan will announce its decisions on Tuesday.Deflation -- Japan<61>s biggest economic problem for much of the past 20 years -- is over, but inflation is far from entrenched, limping along at just 0.7 percent year-on-year.The economy too is somewhat off the pace, with the International Monetary Fund predicting 1.5 percent growth this year, though that is an improvement from 2016.The biggest issue among economists with regard to the BoJ is whether it should reveal its plans to exit its ultra-loose monetary policy.<2E>We are anticipating few major changes in monetary policy,<2C> Katsunori Kitakura, lead strategist at SuMi TRUST, wrote in a note. <20>The medium-term outlook for the Japanese economy is largely unchanged since the last policy meeting so the BoJ is likely to maintain the status quo.<2E>Underlining this, Reuters polls suggest the BoJ won<6F>t start rolling back its monetary stimulus until late next year at 
'd87a0963f8913071906922116bd0a219016b9161'|'UPDATE 1-Brazil confident of oil auction, appeals injunction'|'(Adds minister<65>s comment, background)By Rodrigo Viga GaierRIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Brazil<69>s government has appealed an injunction suspending a pre-salt oil auction and expects the bidding to go ahead as planned on Friday, the Mining and Energy minister Fernando Coelho Filho told Reuters.A federal judge in the Brazilian state of Amazonas issued an injunction sought by the leftist Workers Party late on Thursday, ordering the suspension of the billion-dollar auctions of pre-salt oil and gas rights.Major oil companies are vying for the blocks in Brazil<69>s offshore pre-salt area, where billions of barrels of oil are trapped under a layer of salt. The Workers Party opposes the privatization of oil production and a reduced role for state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA.<2E>We believe the suspension will not remain in place. We will see a great auction,<2C> Coelho Filho said.The auctions were due to start in Rio de Janeiro at 9 a.m. (1100 GMT) on Friday.Top global oil companies are lined up to bid in the auctions for some of the world<6C>s most prolific deepwater oilfields, a test of their appetite for capital-intensive offshore projects after three years of low oil prices.Firms such as Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell and Total are expected to be compete for the more than 12 billion barrels of estimated oil reserves that Brazil is offering. At current prices, that volume of oil is worth about $600 billion.Several of the blocks were expected to go to companies that are already developing nearby blocks, such as Shell, Norway<61>s Statoil and Petrobras. (Reporting by Rodrigo Viga Gaier. Writing by Silvio Cascione. Editing by Jane Merriman) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/brazil-oilrounds-judge/update-1-brazil-confident-of-oil-auction-appeals-injunction-idINL2N1N20CY'|'2017-10-27T08:04:00.000+03:00'
'41e996a47518f0fcc19db0434732734f2318f588'|'Italy PM has recommended Visco be reconfirmed as cenbank chief - source'|' 20 PM / Updated 8 minutes ago Italy PM has recommended Visco be reconfirmed as cenbank chief - source Reuters Staff 1 Min Read ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni has proposed that Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco be reappointed for a second six-year term, sources with knowledge of the dossier said on Thursday. FILE PHOTO: Governor of the Bank of Italy Ignazio Visco (R) smiles as he leaves the G7 for Financial ministers meeting in the southern Italian city of Bari, Italy, May 12, 2017. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi Visco, whose mandate expires at the end of this month, is a board member of the European Central Bank and is considered a close ally of ECB President Mario Draghi. He has been criticised by parties of all political stripes following the collapse of 10 Italian banks over the past two years. He has blamed a prolonged economic turndown for the banking crisis. Reporting by Francesco Piscioneri, writing by Gavin Jones; Editing by Crispian Balmer'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ecb-italy-visco-gentiloni/italy-pm-has-recommended-visco-be-reconfirmed-as-cenbank-chief-source-idUKKBN1CV2C1'|'2017-10-26T17:19:00.000+03:00'
'2a8c616ea9c8ed3fd61539c097994f2065230931'|'Santander posts 14 percent fall in third-quarter net profit on Popular costs'|'October 26, 2017 / 5:17 AM / in 24 minutes Santander posts 14 percent fall in third-quarter net profit on Popular costs Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MADRID (Reuters) - Banco Santander ( SAN.MC ) posted on Thursday a 14 percent decline in third-quarter net profit from a year earlier after being hit by restructuring costs of 515 million euros ($609 million) due mainly to the integration of Banco Popular. A woman walks past a Banco Popular and Santander banks offices in Barcelona, Spain June 7, 2017. REUTERS/Albert Gea Santander - which consolidate Banco Popular into its accounts for the entire third quarter after taking over the troubled Spanish lender in June - reported net profit of 1.46 billion euros in the period July to September. Not including restructuring costs, underlying net profit in the quarter was up 17 percent boosted by a solid performance in its largest market, Brazil. Spanish banks<6B> reporting season is being partially overshadowed by Catalonia<69>s independence drive and its potential fallout on financial markets. Net interest income, a measure of earnings on loans minus deposit costs, was 8.7 billion euros, up 11.3 percent from the third quarter of last year. ($1 = 0.8557 euros) Reporting By Jes<65>s Aguado; Editing by Paul Day'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-santander-results/santander-posts-14-percent-fall-in-third-quarter-net-profit-on-popular-costs-idUKKBN1CV0EP'|'2017-10-26T08:16:00.000+03:00'
'420895b4295c81d4d293b06cea18bc8114965127'|'Bank of Ireland says mortgage compensation costs manageable'|'October 26, 2017 / 12:48 PM / in 30 minutes Bank of Ireland says mortgage compensation costs manageable Padraic Halpin 3 Min Read DUBLIN (Reuters) - A rise in capital levels mean Bank of Ireland ( BIRG.I ) could cope comfortably if it has to set aside more money to compensate overcharged mortgage customers, it said on Thursday. A man walks past the Central Bank of Ireland in Dublin, Ireland, July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne Irish lenders have been put under pressure to speed up the redress and compensation for some 20,000 borrowers who for years should have had cheaper mortgage, and the government has warned it will impose penalties if progress is not made by December. Bank of Ireland, which has set aside 25 million euros (<28>21.96 million) in provisions to deal with the issue - less than the other four retail banks - has said it will continue to review whether other customers should be included for compensation. <20>To the extent that an additional provision associated with this review is required, the group anticipates this to be manageable in the context of the group<75>s capital position,<2C> it said in a trading update. Bank of Ireland said its core tier 1 capital ratio - a key measure of financial strength - stood at 12.8 percent at the end of September under Basel III industry rules, up from 12.5 percent three months earlier. Owen Callan, an analyst at Investec Ireland, said that would likely more than cover the outer limit of his estimate that additional provisions of 25 to 125 million euros - equivalent to between 5 and 25 basis points of capital - may be required. Investec and Davy Stockbrokers both said the bank<6E>s comments on provisions implied it would not be constrained from resuming dividend payments as planned for the first time since the financial crisis early next year. Bank of Ireland said it had taken a further capital deduction in the third quarter to facilitate a payout. Banking analysts have said they do not see any additional costs as being material for Irish lenders and shares in the sector recovered after the five main retail banks laid out varying timetables for compensation on Wednesday. Shares in Bank of Ireland were 3.5 percent higher at 6.51 euros by 1200 GMT after the bank also said it was trading in line with expectations. New lending rose three percent year-on-year, including a 38 percent jump in the fast-recovering Irish mortgage market. Investors also shrugged off the range of potential penalties Ireland<6E>s finance minister threatened on Wednesday. <20>The threat of political intervention remains, yet we do not anticipate that such measures will ultimately be required,<2C> Davy analysts wrote in a note. Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bankofireland-tradingstatement/bank-of-ireland-says-mortgage-compensation-costs-manageable-idUKKBN1CV1YF'|'2017-10-26T15:47:00.000+03:00'
'ed23f8dcd9fc430c1205966ba1f07a3992c9100f'|'Italy PM recommends Visco for new term as central bank chief, sources say'|'October 26, 2017 / 7:12 AM / in 8 minutes Italy PM recommends Visco for new term as central bank chief, sources say Francesca Piscioneri 3 Min Read ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni has proposed that Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco be re-appointed for a second six-year term, despite widespread criticism of the central banker by political parties, sources said on Thursday. Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco attends a news conference at the end of the ECB Governing Council meeting in Naples October 2, 2014. REUTERS/Remo Casilli Visco, whose mandate expires at the end of this month, is a board member of the European Central Bank and is considered a close ally of ECB President Mario Draghi, who was his predecessor at the Bank of Italy. He has been attacked by parties of all political stripes following the collapse of 10 Italian banks over the past two years, with the most recent broadsides coming from Gentiloni<6E>s main backer, former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who leads the ruling Democratic Party (PD). However, Visco, who has blamed a prolonged economic turndown for the banking crisis, maintained the crucial backing of Gentiloni and President Sergio Mattarella, political sources told Reuters. Renzi said earlier on Thursday that the Bank of Italy had done a poor job of banking oversight under Visco and he would prefer to see him replaced, flanking the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement which has campaigned actively for Visco to go. <20>The Bank of Italy has been a weak point in the system,<2C> Renzi said in a radio interview. <20>If they consider it is worth the effort to reconfirm Ignazio Visco, I hope the next six years will be better. I can<61>t see how they could be worse.<2E> Gentiloni made his recommendation in a letter sent to the Bank of Italy<6C>s ruling body, its Superior Council, three political sources told Reuters. The proposal must now be approved by the council, which will meet on Friday, and then signed off on by Mattarella. Both are expected to give their green light. With a national election due by May next year, the problems at Italian banks have become a focal point of the political battle. In a surprise move that sparked an institutional tug of war with Mattarella, Renzi<7A>s PD tabled a motion in parliament this month criticizing Visco, whose re-appointment had previously been considered almost a formality. Renzi has since continued to criticise Visco, saying the party did not support him, while adding that Gentiloni was free to propose whom he wanted for the job. The PD, as the ruling party, had itself been targeted by the opposition after the bank collapses wiped out the savings of thousands of people who held shares and bonds in the lenders. (Story refiles to cut extraneous <20>s<EFBFBD> off word <20>says<79> in headline.) Additional reporting by Giselda Vagnoni, writing by Gavin Jones; Editing by Larry King'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ecb-italy-visco/italys-renzi-attacks-bank-of-italy-governor-as-re-appointment-nears-idUKKBN1CV0PJ'|'2017-10-26T19:37:00.000+03:00'
'69a0cdccdd0ab544234c569f6b1f39054de69902'|'Carillion brings on construction expert Andrew Davies as CEO'|'October 27, 2017 / 6:27 AM / in 5 hours Carillion picks ex-BAE exec Davies as CEO to drive turnaround Esha Vaish 4 Min Read (Reuters) - British builder Carillion ( CLLN.L ), which has issued two profit warnings this year, named Andrew Davies as its chief executive on Friday, bringing in a former executive of defence company BAE Systems ( BAES.L ) to help turn around its business. A Carillion sign can be seen in Manchester, Britain July 13, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble Davies, currently head of family-owned builder Wates Group, will take over from interim CEO Keith Cochrane on April 2, Carillion said. The appointment comes three months after the small-cap construction and support services company fired its CEO and announced an 845 million pound writedown on construction contracts and a profit warning. It issued a second profit warning in September. Now, 54-year-old Davies<65> biggest task at Carillion will be to reduce its large debt pile, which is expected to reach about 1 billion pounds by the end of the year, analysts say. <20>Sorting out the balance sheet and sorting out the enormous debt Carillion has, that will have to be (Davies<65>) focus and if he can do that, then it will be a very good thing for the company,<2C> Liberum analyst Tom Musson told Reuters. In positive news, Carillion this week agreed to new credit facilities and deferrals on some debt repayments and pension obligations, which together are expected to improve its undrawn credit in 2018. However, the group has said it may need to undertake a share placement. Davies has been CEO at Wates Group since 2014. The company reported a more than 20 percent jump in 2016 turnover to 1.5 billion pounds. Sky News had reported in March that housebuilder Bovis ( BVS.L ) had considered Davies for its top job. The group was then battling a profit warning and facing fire from buyers over the quality of some of its homes. <20>The swift appointment of an experienced CEO with a relevant background might be seen a positive for the stock,<2C> Applied Value analyst Stephen Rawlinson wrote in a note. Carillion<6F>s shares, which have lost about 80 percent of their value since July, were up 4 percent at 45.7 pence at 0832 GMT. SECTOR IN JEOPARDY Many construction and support services companies have come under pressure in the last year, with Interserve ( IRV.L ), Mitie ( MTO.L ) and Capita ( CPI.L ) all issuing profit warnings. Challenges have including rising labour costs and slower demand in Brexit Britain and dispute-hit Middle East. This week, the UK government launched a consultation after finding that 3.2 billion to 5.9 billion pounds are held back by customers from construction companies in the UK each year. bit.ly/2gLZOa3 Carillion, which employs over 48,000 people worldwide, is a major UK government contractor and carries out projects in the Middle East. It was recently awarded construction work on Britain<69>s new high speed rail link and has been contracted to help prepare Qatar for the 2022 Football World Cup. The group is exploring measures to shore up its balance sheet. It has announced a cost savings plan, aims to raise over 300 million pounds by end-2018 through disposals and has been trying to claw back money from clients on older contracts. During his 28-year career with BAE, Davies held many roles, including serving as managing director of its Maritime and Land Systems businesses. Chairman Philip Green said Davies had the <20>ideal combination of commerciality, operational expertise and relevant sector experience<63> that Carillion would need to turn around its business. ($1 = 0.7624 pounds) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-carillion-ceo/carillion-brings-on-construction-expert-andrew-davies-as-ceo-idUKKBN1CW0LL'|'2017-10-27T09:26:00.000+03:00'
'8589fa2eeb3fb036e1a179171a594a54691cd6cc'|'LME fee cuts aim to lure back volumes, but at what cost?'|'October 27, 2017 / 9:49 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago LME fee cuts aim to lure back volumes, but at what cost? Pratima Desai 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Attempts by the London Metal Exchange to claw back lost trading volumes with fee cuts could cost up to 15 percent of its revenues over 12 months if those volumes do not materialise, metal industry sources say. FILE PHOTO: Men walk past the London Metal Exchange (LME) in London, July 22, 2011. REUTERS/Paul Hackett/File Photo Fee cuts are expected to be a subject of hot debate during LME Week, an annual gathering of the metal industry in London next week. The 140-year old exchange has struggled to reverse declining volumes, partly triggered by a steep 31 percent average fee hike at the start of 2015, which persuaded many customers to switch to the over-the-counter (OTC) market. Volumes on the exchange fell 7.7 percent last year to 156 million lots compared with 2015. The drop was also due to an economic slowdown in China, the world<6C>s largest consumer of industrial metals, and subdued activity in the metals sector. The fee cuts are initially for a period of 12 months. <20>We think the cost to the exchange will be in the region of $25 million(<28>19.09 million) to $30 million,<2C> a metal broker said, adding that it was a calculation based on LME volumes. <20>Once people have found a different, possibly cheaper way of doing something, it<69>s difficult to change ... It will also take time, so 12 months is a good call.<2E> Other brokers suggested similar cost estimates, ranging from $25 million to $30 million. <20>Volumes will be up this year anyway because the fundamentals have been better, China demand was much stronger than people were expecting,<2C> a head of a commodity brokerage said, who put the cost at up to $25 million. The LME<4D>s revenues last year totalled more than $200 million compared with nearly $225 million in 2015. That is roughly a 15 percent contribution to total revenues of parent Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing ( 0388.HK ), which paid $2.2 billion for the LME in 2012. <20>We wouldn<64>t be doing this if we didn<64>t expect to win some volume back, we are doing this because our members believe this will stimulate the market,<2C> Matt Chanberlain told the Reuters Commodities Summit said in October. <20>We<57>ve never guided internally or externally that we<77>re going to get all the revenue back. That would be an absolute best case scenario.<2E> Sources said the success of the fee cuts would be judged on the basis of the cost being offset by rising volumes that yielded revenues of about $15 million. The LME cut fees for short-dated trades, those between one and 15 days, from Oct. 1. It will reduce fees for medium-dated trades, where all legs fall within 35 days forward, from Nov. 1. <20>This is a very welcome fee reduction for the clients of the exchange,<2C> said Simon van den Born, global head of metals at Marex Spectron. <20>The challenge will be to bring clients back, having forced so much change in the industry through the pricing policy, we hope there has not been too much structural change.<2E> Structural change is a reference to volumes moving to the OTC market, which sources say could reverse when new European Union rules known as MiFID II become effective in January. MiFID II is aimed at boosting transparency by encouraging OTC trade to move on-exchange, which will help boost volumes and revenues and offset losses from the fee cuts. Chamberlain also said at the Reuters summit that a fee for referencing LME prices would help compensate for loss of revenues from the fee cuts. <20>We<57>re aiming to be back at our historical levels of revenues within two years, with the combination of volumes coming back, the OTC booking fee and new initiatives.<2E> Reporting by Pratima Desai; Editing by Veronica Brown and Edmund Blair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-metals-lmeweek-fees/lme-fee-cuts-aim-to-lure-back-volumes-but-at-what-cost-idUKKBN1CW182'|'2
'376f25f7e7e961ce25ebb07fd9af0962aea58379'|'IOC posts nearly 18 percent jump in Q2 profit, but misses estimates'|'October 27, 2017 / 9:09 AM / in 11 hours IOC posts nearly 18 percent jump in Q2 profit, but misses estimates Reuters Staff 1 Min Read REUTERS - Indian Oil Corp Ltd ( IOC.NS ) reported a nearly 18 percent rise in second-quarter profit, but missed estimates by a wide margin. FILE PHOTO: A logo of Indian Oil is seen on the shirt of an employee at a fuel station in New Delhi, India August 29, 2016. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/File Photo Net profit of the country''s top refiner rose to 36.96 billion rupees ($568.35 million) in the three months through Sept. 30, from 31.22 billion rupees a year earlier. bit.ly/2zaXb9q Analysts on average had expected a profit of 63.45 billion rupees, Thomson Reuters data showed. Revenue from operations climbed about 10 percent to 1.11 trillion rupees, the company said on Friday. Average gross refining margins slipped to $6.08 per barrel in the April-September period from $7.19 per barrel in the same period last year. Shares in IOC were down 5.1 percent as of 0847 GMT, on NSE Nifty, was 0.1 percent higher. ($1 = 65.0300 Indian rupees) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/indian-oil-corpn-results/ioc-posts-nearly-18-percent-jump-in-q2-profit-but-misses-estimates-idINKBN1CW12Y'|'2017-10-27T12:07:00.000+03:00'
'7a39d68d4138101768e76ed536b73a55738e1eff'|'Embraer swings to profit, holds 2017 performance targets'|'October 27, 2017 / 9:35 AM / Updated 35 minutes ago Embraer swings to profit, holds 2017 performance targets Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SAO PAULO, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Brazilian planemaker Embraer SA on Friday posted third-quarter net income of 351 million reais ($107 million) versus a net loss of 111 million a year earlier, a securities filing showed on Friday. The world<6C>s third-largest commercial planemaker reported its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization more than doubled to 454 million reais. $1 = 3.29 reais Reporting by Brad Haynes; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/embraer-results/embraer-swings-to-profit-holds-2017-performance-targets-idUSN9N1J2003'|'2017-10-27T12:32:00.000+03:00'
'5e2169ff3931801280c8bdfaf80e20e67883440d'|'CSX executive shakeup rattles employees, investors; shares drop'|'(Reuters) - The resignation of two prominent female executives at CSX Corp ( CSX.O ) hours before CSX canceled a long-planned investor conference this week rattled employees and investors on Thursday, sending the No. 3 U.S. railroad<61>s shares down 1 percent.FILE PHOTO: Hunter Harrison, CEO of Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, speaks to the economic community at a business luncheon in Toronto, March 2, 2015. REUTERS/Mark Blinch/File Photo The resignations prompted concerns over the health of 72-year-old Chief Executive Hunter Harrison, and fears of deeper turmoil as CSX undergoes a major overhaul.<2E>We think investors suspect there could be something else behind this,<2C> said Cowan & Co analyst Jason Seidl, adding that he received many calls and emails from concerned investors. <20>We do not think the departure of these three people, long-tenured executives at the firm, came on completely amicable terms.<2E>Jim Foote, who worked for Harrison at Canadian National Railway Co ( CNR.TO ) and is well-versed in his <20>precision scheduled railroading<6E> model for driving efficiency, will replace Chief Operating Officer Cindy Sanborn and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Fredrik Eliasson, who both plan to resign next month.CSX said the decision to postpone the investor conference was <20>to allow Mr. Foote to familiarize himself with the company<6E>s operations and the teams he is now leading, so he would be in a better position speak to CSX<53>s future opportunities.<2E>Sanborn, and corporate counsel Ellen Fitzsimmons, who will retire, were likely the two highest-ranking women in the rail industry, said independent rail analyst Anthony Hatch.Harrison praised the departing executives in an internal e-mail seen by Reuters.<2E>Although we will miss the talents of these valued leaders, we are pleased to welcome another highly capable leader to our executive team,<2C> he said.One senior CSX manager who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said Sanborn<72>s resignation was deeply unsettling. Sanborn joined CSX in 1987, is the daughter of a former president of Conrail, acquired by CSX and Norfolk Southern ( NSC.N ) in 1997, and holds $6.47 million in CSX shares.<2E>She is not the kind of person who would automatically resign unless she was forced to,<2C> the manager said.Another Midwest-based employee said the departures suggested Harrison was removing executives who disagreed with his operating philosophy.<2E>Sanborn is a major stockholder, she has a lot of influence with big customers, a lot of influence in Washington,<2C> the employee said.Morningstar analyst Keith Schoonmaker wrote in a client note that changes matched Harrison<6F>s record at Canadian railroads he turned around before taking the helm at CSX in March.<2E>It<49>s hard to argue with his results at Canadian National and Canadian Pacific ( CP.TO ),<2C> Schoonmaker wrote.CSX shares closed down just over 1 percent at $52.35 on Thursday, but are up nearly 46 percent so far this year.Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Dan Grebler '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-csx-moves/csx-executive-shakeup-rattles-employees-investors-shares-drop-idUSKBN1CV3GH'|'2017-10-27T00:18:00.000+03:00'
'0c31bd4e5435a998779539c67744951f5b8fc286'|'RBS supports FTSE as miners, IAG drag on UK index'|'October 27, 2017 / 8:57 AM / in an hour RBS, Sterling supports FTSE as IAG, miners drag on UK index Helen Reid 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British stocks followed European indexes higher on Friday, driven by a weakening pound and a rise in RBS, which helped outweigh falls among mining stocks and British Airways owner IAG. A worker shelters from the rain under a Union Flag umbrella as he passes the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain, October 1, 2008. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo The FTSE 100 .FTSE closed up 0.3 percent with sterling slipping to a three-week low against the dollar as doubts grew that a Bank of England rate rise expected next week would signal the start of a series of hikes. RBS ( RBS.L ) shares were up 1.7 percent after the state-owned bank beat expectations with strong third-quarter profit and a more robust capital ratio. Shore Capital analysts said this provided a buffer to absorb further potential litigation costs, with a dispute with the U.S. Department of Justice over mortgage-backed securities ongoing. <20>Once this has been dealt with it should pave the way for the group to return to statutory profitability (hopefully during 2018) and ultimately recommence dividend payments,<2C> they said. British Airways owner IAG was the top faller, down 6.9 percent, as strong earnings and revenue performance were overshadowed by passenger growth figures. <20>The growth rate is more muted than the wider sector, suggesting a loss of market share,<2C> Bernstein analyst Daniel Roeska said in a note following IAG<41>s results. Liberum analysts noted passenger unit revenue for the carrier grew at a slower rate than at Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ). Shares in rival budget airlines easyJet ( EZJ.L ) and Wizz Air ( WIZZ.L ) also fell 3.2 percent and 2.8 percent respectively. <20>There<72>s been a big disparity between companies with good earnings getting rewarded and then poor earnings and cautious guidance getting slammed,<2C> Rory McPherson, head of investment strategy at Psigma, said. <20>It<49>s a market getting towards pretty lofty levels, so any disappointment is clearly penalised,<2C> he added. Chinese cuts to steel capacity weighed on commodities prices, sending mining stocks Anglo American ( AAL.L ), Antofagasta ( ANTO.L ), BHP Billiton ( BLT.L ), Rio Tinto ( RIO.L ) and Glencore ( GLEN.L ) down between 0.3 percent and 3.1 percent. Mid-cap miners Evraz ( EVRE.L ), Kaz Minerals ( KAZ.L ) and Ferrexpo ( FXPO.L ) also fell 1 percent, 3.8 percent and 4.8 percent respectively. Among mid-caps Tullow Oil ( TLW.L ) shares also dropped 2.4 percent after the group said it plugged and abandoned its Araku-1 well in Suriname after failing to strike oil. Reporting by Helen Reid and Julien Ponthus; editing by Alexander Smith '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-stocks/rbs-supports-ftse-as-miners-iag-drag-on-uk-index-idUKKBN1CW11J'|'2017-10-27T11:57:00.000+03:00'
'e62643b1fdcd461ac9d64e7f32a4b894fa06b0ea'|'Western Digital revenue beats estimates'|'October 26, 2017 / 8:38 PM / Updated 6 hours ago Western Digital forecasts quarterly revenue below estimates Sonam Rai 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Data-storage device maker Western Digital Corp WDC.N on Thursday forecast current-quarter revenue below analysts<74> estimates, and said it would not agree to partner Toshiba<62>s terms to participate in a new chip production unit. A Western Digital office building is shown in Irvine, California, U.S., January 24, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake The company<6E>s shares were down 2.1 percent at $87.50 in after-hours trading. They have surged 31.5 percent this year. Western Digital has sought an injunction against Toshiba Corp<72>s ( 6502.T ) sale of its chip unit to a group led by Bain Capital LP that includes the U.S. company<6E>s rivals Seagate ( STX.O ) and SK Hynix Inc ( 000660.KS ). Toshiba said earlier this month it was discussing joint investment in a new chip production line, Fab 6, with Western Digital as it looks to repair the relationship. However, Western Digital said on Thursday it would not agree to Toshiba<62>s terms of waiving consent rights that will help it block the deal as a condition to participate in the joint investment. <20>At this time, we are not confident that an agreement would be reached on this next investment tranche either,<2C> said Chief Executive Stephen Milligan on a post-earnings call. The wrangling has worried investors over Western Digital<61> s ability to access crucial NAND chips supply. Milligan allayed such concerns during the call. <20>Based on the JV agreements, we remain confident in our planned supply bid growth rate of 35 percent to 45 percent for calendar 2018 and calendar 2019, irrespective of these initial investments in Fab 6,<2C> said Milligan. Western Digital said it expected second-quarter revenue of $5.2 billion to $5.3 billion and adjusted earnings of $3.60 per share to $3.70 per share. Analysts on average were expecting earnings of $3.51 per share and revenue of $5.33 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Western Digital beat analysts<74> estimates for revenue and profit in the first quarter as it benefited from strong demand for its memory chips from smartphone makers and data centre operators as well as higher prices. NAND pricing has been stable for last two months and there would be excess demand at least for the second quarter and that should support margins, said Benchmark Co analyst Mark Miller. Western Digital posted a net income of $681 million, or $2.23 per share, in the first quarter ended Sept. 29, compared with a net loss of $366 million, or $1.28 per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company earned $3.56 cents per share. Net revenue rose 9.9 percent to $5.18 billion. Analysts on average had expected earnings of $3.29 per share and revenue of $5.14 billion. Reporting by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Sriraj Kalluvila '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/western-digital-results/western-digital-revenue-beats-estimates-idINKBN1CV3D6'|'2017-10-26T18:38:00.000+03:00'
'4289173319561e6e338963b7a351a0fdcbfb8071'|'CVS Health in talks to buy health insurer Aetna: WSJ'|'(Reuters) - Drug retailer CVS Health Corp ( CVS.N ) is in talks to buy health insurer Aetna Inc ( AET.N ), the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing sources.A customer waits at the counter of a CVS Pharmacy store in Pasadena, U.S., May 2, 2016. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo Aetna<6E>s shares closed up 11.5 percent at $178.60, after hitting $184.98.CVS Health<74>s stock closed down 2.9 percent at $73.31.Aetna had a market cap of $53.2 billion as of Wednesday<61>s close, according to Thomson Reuters data.Reporting by Divya Grover in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-aetna-m-a-cvs-health/cvs-health-in-talks-to-buy-health-insurer-aetna-wsj-idINKBN1CV3AD'|'2017-10-26T18:13:00.000+03:00'
'45334bd16e3d33808c7ef9d7e25cb94aa909eb9c'|'U.S. investigating forex trading at Wells Fargo: WSJ'|'(Reuters) - Federal prosecutors are investigating foreign-exchange trading at Wells Fargo & Co and have subpoenaed information from the firm, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.FILE PHOTO: A Wells Fargo branch is seen in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, U.S. February 10, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo The investigation, according to the report, relates to a single trade and ensuing dispute with client Restaurant Brands International Inc, owner of Burger King, Tim Horton and Popeye<79>s. An email to the company<6E>s press office was not returned.The investigation, which is in early stages, is being conducted by the U.S. Attorney<65>s Office for the Northern District of California, the Journal reported. A spokeswoman for that office did not respond to inquiries.<2E>Wells Fargo learned of an issue associated with a foreign exchange transaction for a single client. The matter was reviewed, the client was promptly notified regarding the issue and Wells Fargo leadership took steps to hold accountable the individuals who were involved,<2C> bank spokeswoman Elise Wilkinson wrote in an email message to Reuters.Wilkinson said last Friday that four Wells Fargo forex employees, Simon Fowles, Bob Gotelli, Jed Guenther and Michael Schauffler were no longer with the bank.The third-largest U.S. bank has been trying to recover from a sales scandal over as many as 3.5 million fake accounts created by its employees in an effort to meet aggressive sales targets. The lender has since uncovered other problems, including with auto loans, life insurance and mortgages.The forex problems are the first indication Wells Fargo<67>s issues may extend to its institutional businesses, which according to Wells Fargo have seen relatively little impact from the scandal.Reporting by Dan Freed in New York and Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Cynthia Osterman '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wells-fargo-investigation/u-s-investigating-forex-trading-at-wells-fargo-wsj-idUSKBN1CW2DF'|'2017-10-27T19:16:00.000+03:00'
'9db62306203f0957948a5883c26e2549d2ffbb6b'|'Merck posts quarterly loss versus year-ago profit'|'October 27, 2017 / 11:03 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Cyber attack hits Merck results, Keytruda notches new milestone Bill Berkrot 4 Min Read (Reuters) - Merck & Co ( MRK.N ) on Friday said quarterly sales of its Keytruda cancer immunotherapy exceeded $1 billion for the first time, but the cost of a cyber attack that temporarily crippled manufacturing and declines in off-patent products caused overall revenue to fall. The logo of Merck is pictured in this illustration photograph in Cardiff, California April 26, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/Illustration/File Photo Merck<63>s shares fell 4.3 percent to $59.27. For the first time, the company quantified the cost to its operations of the June NotPetya cyber attack. It said sales were reduced by about $240 million as the company had to borrow Gardasil from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<6F>s pediatric vaccine stockpile to meet demand. Gardasil is Merck<63>s vaccine to prevent cancer caused by the human papillomavirus. In addition, revenue fell by about $135 million from lost sales in certain markets and there was another $175 million in costs related to the cyber attack. The company expects a similar impact in the fourth quarter. Keytruda, by far Merck<63>s most important growth driver, saw sales almost triple from a year ago to $1.05 billion. Merck said nearly one in three new lung cancer patients in the United States were starting with Keytruda and that the launch in bladder cancer was going well. Lung cancer is by far the most lucrative oncology market. Despite approvals for numerous cancer types, <20>Keytruda is almost completely reliant on the performance in first-line lung cancer,<2C> said Leerink Partners analyst Seamus Fernandez. <20>They need to identify other growth drivers for the business,<2C> said Fernandez, noting other areas under pressure, such at intense competition for the hepatitis C franchise. Its Zostavax shingles prevention vaccine is also about to face potentially withering competition from GlaxoSmithKline<6E>s ( GSK.L ) just-approved Shingrix, which appears to maintain efficacy far longer. Zostavax sales rose 23 percent to $234 million. Merck cautioned that its Januvia diabetes drug would face continued pricing pressure. It along with the related Janumet saw sales fall 2 percent to $1.52 billion. The company<6E>s recently off-patent cholesterol medicines Zetia and Vytorin saw sales cut in half at $462 million. Chief Executive Ken Frazier said business development was an important priority, but that he would prefer bolt-on deals to enhance innovation rather than a major acquisition. Merck<63>s animal health business reached $1 billion in quarterly sales for the first time. Eli Lilly and Co ( LLY.N ) said this week it was looking at a sale or spinoff of its Elanco animal health business. Merck has no such intentions. <20>We see animal health as a pillar of growth for the company,<2C> Frazier said. Merck now expects full-year adjusted earnings of $3.91 to $3.97 per share, above Wall Street estimates of $3.87, according to Thomson Reuters data. It previously forecast earnings of $3.76 to $3.88. Revenue for the quarter fell 2 percent to $10.33 billion, short of analysts<74> expectations of $10.54 billion. Net loss attributable to the drugmaker was $56 million, or 2 cents per share, in the third quarter, compared with a year-ago profit of $2.18 billion, or 78 cents per share. The net loss was due to a $2.35 billion charge related to its collaboration with AstraZeneca Plc ( AZN.L ) for cancer drug Lynpraza. Excluding items, the company earned $1.11 per share, beating analysts<74> average estimates by 8 cents, with help from cost controls. Merck said it expects research and development costs to rise in 2018. (This version of the story recasts, adds analyst and company comment, cyber attack cost) Reporting by Bill Berkrot in New York and Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto and Phil Berlowitz'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.
'e8835964e58b13d5a8d43e9fae28a1f27ab4511e'|'Gaming firm Razer to launch up to $550 million HK IPO on Monday: IFR'|'HONG KONG (Reuters) - Razer Inc, a gaming hardware maker backed by Intel Corp ( INTC.O ) and Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, plans to launch on Monday an up to $550 million Hong Kong initial public offering, IFR reported on Friday, citing people close to the deal.The company, which is based in Singapore and the United States, will offer shares in an indicative range of HK$2.93 to HK$4.00 each, added IFR, a Thomson Reuters publication.Razer has secured $150 million in commitments from cornerstone investors, including a $20 million investment from Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte Ltd [GIC.UL], IFR said.Razer declined to comment, while GIC did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment.The company was founded in 2005 by Min-Liang Tan and Robert Krakoff and has grown from producing a gaming mouse as its initial product to manufacturing laptops worth almost $4,000.In 2016 it bought assets from a company previously known as THX Ltd, which was founded by George Lucas, and this year it acquired certain assets and intellectual property from mobile phone manufacturer Nextbit Systems.The acquisitions are expected to help the company launch new products in coming years, including a mobile gaming device, a person familiar with Razer<65>s plans previously told Reuters.Reporting by Fiona Lau of IFR; Writing by Elzio Barreto; Editing by Stephen Coates '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-razer-ipo/gaming-firm-razer-to-launch-up-to-550-million-hk-ipo-on-monday-ifr-idINKBN1CW0D7'|'2017-10-27T02:39:00.000+03:00'
'fb45b1e9bed904bc0e986a1e794e65882afb2d14'|'Banks have little time left to prepare for Brexit, ECB says'|'October 23, 2017 / 5:50 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago Banks have little time left to prepare for Brexit, ECB says Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - European and British banks do not have much time left to prepare for Britain<69>s exit from the European Union, the European Central Bank<6E>s top bank supervisor said on Monday. FILE PHOTO - Daniele Nouy, chair of the Supervisory Board of the European Central Bank, speaks at a Thomson Reuters newsmaker event at Canary Wharf in London November 28, 2014. REUTERS/Neil Hall <20>Once the United Kingdom becomes a <20>third country<72> for the EU, banks located there will lose access to the European market, and European banks will lose access to the UK market,<2C> Daniele Nouy told an audience in London. <20>They will have to act, and there is not much time left to do so.<2E> Reporting By Ritvik Carvalho; Writing by Francesco Canepa in Frankfurt; Editing by Alison Williams'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-banks-ecb/banks-have-little-time-left-to-prepare-for-brexit-ecb-says-idUKKBN1CS2EG'|'2017-10-23T20:49:00.000+03:00'
'b840af0de239235ae61776bd7af4d527acb6cbd5'|'Russia''s improving economy leaves privatisation out in the cold'|'October 27, 2017 / 8:57 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago Russia''s improving economy leaves privatization out in the cold Darya Korsunskaya 4 Min Read MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia<69>s improving economy has removed the main impetus for privatizations planned for this year, allowing policymakers who always doubted the wisdom of selling state assets to re-gain the upper hand, according to interviews with multiple officials. A view from the roof of the skyscraper OKO, one of the towers of the Moscow International Business Centre also known as "Moskva-City", shows Moscow, Russia, December 15, 2016. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov Russia<69>s finance ministry initially planned to raise 138 billion roubles ($2.39 billion) from privatization this year, mainly from selling a stake in the shipping company Sovcomflot and reducing its holdings further in VTB ( VTBR.MM ), the country<72>s No.2 bank. At the beginning of the year, the sell-offs were vital to fill state coffers, temporarily silencing those in the government and the Kremlin who do not believe the state should divest its assets. But since then, the price of oil has risen and the finance ministry has raised around 1.4 trillion roubles ($24.2 billion) so far this year on the domestic rouble debt market via its treasury bonds. As a result, the supporters of state ownership -- who have been growing in influence during Vladimir Putin<69>s 17 years in charge -- are back in control, according to people familiar with debates among policy-makers. The privatization of VTB was postponed until after Western sanctions which apply to the bank are lifted, while the stake sale in Sovcomflot was postponed from the middle of the year to an unspecified time. <20>The transfer of property should not be a goal in its own right. The goal should be a proper level of competition,<2C> Russian Economy Minister Maxim Oreshkin told Reuters. <20>There are almost no fiscal reasons left for privatization,<2C> he said. The price of Brent crude oil LCOc1 was over $59 per barrel on Friday, a 7 percent increase from the year-start. In March, prices were falling below $50 per barrel, hitting budget revenues. WINDOW SHUTS Disposing of state assets has for years been a tough sell inside Russia<69>s elite. Since Putin took power in 2001, the opposite trend has dominated, with state-owned national champions such as oil major Rosneft acquiring assets that had been privatized after the collapse of Communism. The need to find cash for the budget, at a time when Western sanctions made it harder for Russia to raise debt on international capital markets, opened a brief window for the pro-market camp. That has now shut. With the imperative of plugging holes in the budget gone, other arguments against privatizations have re-emerged. They include the fact that sanctions drive down the price Russia can command for selling state assets, and a belief that state firms can be just as efficient as private companies. A fresh package of sanctions signed into law by U.S. President Donald Trump has added to investor uncertainty about buying Russian assets. <20>We have companies which mainly are of systemic importance or have a significant influence on the markets... The state can lose the control as a result of the sale,<2C> finance minister Anton Siluanov told Reuters in July. <20>Should we do this now when the (new) sanctions have hung over Russia and the companies are clearly undervalued?<3F> The central bank had to bail out two of Russia<69>s biggest private banks, Otrkitie and B&N Bank, while state-owned banks such as Sberbank ( SBER.MM ) thrive, giving extra ammunition to the pro-state camp. <20>The example of Sberbank ( SBER.MM ) compared to the private banks is clearly showing that in general, the owner is not as important as risk management,<2C> Deputy Finance Minister Vladimir Kolychev told Reuters. Additional reporting by Polina Nikolskaya and Gleb Stolyarov; writing by Katya Golubkova; Editing by Toby Chopra'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'h
'788fd658a66f073dd5dcfcbbd3b7ec9afdf4ff16'|'UK personal insolvencies hit 5-year high in gloomy sign economy'|'LONDON, Oct 27 (Reuters) - The number of people registering as insolvent in England and Wales hit a five-year high in the third quarter, according to figures on Friday that hinted at trouble brewing in Britain<69>s consumer economy.The government<6E>s Insolvency Service said 27,807 people in England and Wales registered as insolvent between July and September, up from 22,389 in the three months to June and marking the biggest total since the third quarter of 2012.On a seasonally adjusted basis, the figure was just short of a three-year high struck in the first quarter of 2017.Personal insolvencies have been rising over the past couple of years, largely due to changes in regulation that have made debt relief for consumers easier to obtain, according to experts in the field.But debt charities and the Institute of Chartered Accounts in England and Wales (ICAEW) warned that the latest sharp increase indicated wider problems in Britain<69>s consumer-led economy.Household budgets have been strained by rising prices caused by the pound<6E>s drop after last year<61>s Brexit vote, and wage growth has failed to keep pace.The insolvency figures are likely to bolster the view of economists who worry that even a small rise in Bank of England interest rates could have an outsized impact on consumers.A clear majority of economists in a Reuters poll published on Tuesday expect the BoE will raise interest rates next Thursday to 0.5 percent from 0.25 percent - although most also said it would be a mistake to act now.<2E>With household debt levels continuing to rise, we are concerned that more families will be pushed into difficulty if circumstances change,<2C> said Jane Tully, director of external affairs at the Money Advice Trust charity.The figures showed the increase in personal insolvency was down to a rise in individual voluntary arrangements - a debt relief measure short of bankruptcy.The ICAEW said the insolvency figures boded poorly for the wider economy.<2E>Consumer insolvencies are a reliable marker of business challenges ahead,<2C> said Clive Lewis, head of enterprise at the ICAEW.<2E>We anticipate a worsening scene for businesses in the forthcoming quarter and would urge all owner-managers to look out for early signs of trouble and act fast to address them.<2E>Lewis said he thought even a small increase in interest rates could persuade consumers that they were not able to afford contracts that they had entered into, citing loans for car purchase as a particular area of concern.The BoE has said there is no overall debt bubble in Britain but it has expressed concern about consumer debt, which had been growing at about 10 percent a year.Earlier this month a BoE survey showed lenders are planning the biggest cutback in new consumer lending in nearly 10 years.Reporting by Andy Bruce; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-economy-insolvency/uk-personal-insolvencies-hit-5-year-high-in-gloomy-sign-for-economy-idINL4N1N24X6'|'2017-10-27T11:29:00.000+03:00'
'987cddb210d0dbbd5d3aaec329a74338f9f6c6cf'|'Self-driving startups race down a narrowing road'|'October 27, 2017 / 5:13 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Self-driving startups race down a narrowing road Paul Lienert , Jane Lanhee Lee 7 Min Read DETROIT/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Lei Xu and Justin Song once worked at electric carmaker Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ), one of the hottest companies in Silicon Valley. But with interest and investments in autonomous vehicles mounting, they left to pursue what they see as the next big thing. Their company, Nullmax, is one of more than 240 startups worldwide, including 75 in Silicon Valley, attempting to design software, hardware components and systems for future self-driving cars, according to a Reuters analysis. Xu and Song are bankrolled by corporate money, but unlike many of their fellow entrepreneurs, they skipped funding from Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Founded in August 2016, Nullmax got $10 million from a Chinese firm, Xinmao Science and Technology Co ( 000836.SZ ). By seeking corporate backing in China, the Nullmax founders managed to sidestep an issue facing other startups in the sector: While big automotive and technology companies are pouring billions into the autonomous vehicle space, Silicon Valley investors so far have been fairly restrained in increasing their bets. Headlines have been dominated by old-line players such as General Motors Co ( GM.N ), which jolted the industry last year when it bought a tiny San Francisco software company called Cruise Automation for a reported $1 billion. Just this week, top-tier supplier Delphi Automotive PLC ( DLPH.N ) acquired Boston-based software startup nuTonomy for $450 million. Now, <20>every startup thinks they will get a billion dollars<72> in valuation, said Evangelos Simoudis, a Silicon Valley venture investor and an advisor on corporate innovation. However, investment in untested startup companies remains relatively modest despite all the buzz and lofty expectations. Total funding of self-driving startups from both corporate and private investors has barely topped $5 billion, the Reuters analysis of publicly available data shows. With the notable exceptions of Andreessen Horowitz and New Enterprise Associates, few of the big Valley venture capital firms are heavily invested in the sector. Overall, only seven of the top 30 self-driving startups have received later-stage funding, the Reuters analysis shows, an indication that some venture capitalists are ambivalent about the industry<72>s potential. (For a graphic of venture and corporate funding of self-driving startups, see: tmsnrt.rs/2xOX0jN ) Skeptics note that few of the startups are making money. And established auto and parts companies have not demonstrated a clear path to revenue and profitability in autonomous vehicles despite their big bets in the space. Another sticking point: While the initial wave of self-driving vehicles is expected to begin commercial service in 2019-2020, experts expect the transition from human-driven to automated cars could take a decade or more to roll out. Cautions Sergio Marchionne, chief executive officer of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles ( FCHA.MI ): <20>You can destroy a lot of value by chasing your tail in autonomous driving.<2E> CORPORATE INVESTMENTS All told, U.S. automotive and technology firms likely have invested some $40 billion to $50 billion in self-driving technology in recent years, mainly through acquisitions and partnerships. The full extent is hard to know because big players such as Alphabet Inc ( GOOGL.O ), whose Waymo subsidiary is considered among the front-runners in the arena, have not revealed the full scope of their investments, although it is believed to be in the billions. Among the top corporate investors in the sector are Samsung Group [SAGR.UL], Intel Corp ( INTC.O ), Qualcomm Inc ( QCOM.O ), Delphi and Robert Bosch GmbH [ROBG.UL]. Corporate investors also have backed five of the six self-driving startups with valuations of $1 billion or more. Nullmax CEO Lei Xu drives a Lincoln MKZ sedan equipped with his company''s prototype self-dr
'0af2d09fc6be96949cbd62b1488f926206bd59bc'|'Earnings and dovish ECB lift European shares to five month high'|'October 27, 2017 / 7:35 AM / in 2 hours Earnings and dovish ECB lift European shares to five month high Danilo Masoni 5 Min Read MILAN (Reuters) - European shares rose near a five-month peak on Friday helped by solid results from companies including Volkswagen and prospects that the ECB would keep policy accommodative for longer. The European Central Bank took a step towards weaning the euro zone off loose money on Thursday but promised years of stimulus and even left the door open to backtracking. While the pan-European STOXX 600 index added 0.4 percent by 0757 GMT, set for a weekly gain of around 0.8 percent after a fall in the previous week, the euro zone STOXX 50 .STOXX50E was set for their ninth straight week of gains. The euro zone blue chip index was very close to close to hitting its highest level since August 2015, while the export oriented Germany blue-chip DAX index .GDAXI rose 0.7 percent to a fresh record high. <20>European equities will benefit from the continuation of ample financial conditions, with strong GDP growth in the fourth quarter expected to help further corporate earnings gains,<2C> said Sandrine Perret, European Strategist at Credit Suisse. <20>Germany could benefit in particular, helped by still buoyant economic growth,<2C> she added. The DAX was supported by gains in Volkswagen, up 1.4 percent after posting results that Jefferies analysts said were <20>strong all around<6E>. The world<6C>s largest automaker lifted its profit guidance for this year after posting forecast-beating group earnings in the third quarter, benefiting from cost cuts at its core autos division. Linde ( LING.DE ) rose 3 percent as the German industrial gases maker reported a 3 percent rise third-quarter core profit helped by cost cuts ahead of its planned $80 billion merger with U.S. peer Praxair ( PX.N ). The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote UBS ( UBSG.S ) rose as much as 2 percent after the world<6C>s biggest private bank posted a 14 percent jump in third-quarter net profit but kept a cautious outlook for the rest of 2017 due to political and monetary policy uncertainty. The stock later pared some gains and was up 0.3 percent. <20>UBS reported relatively solid results, but we also see some shadows. We think that the significant beat on adjusted EBT (earnings before tax) level is of rather low quality and investors might dislike a notable deterioration of net new assets dynamic in WM unit,<2C> said Baader Helvea in a note. Royal Bank of Scotland ( RBS.L ) added 2.7 percent after the UK bank posted a better than expected quarterly profit. Tech stocks .SX8P were strong, up 0.9 percent, following upbeat earnings from U.S. giants Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon.com. In the sector, digital security company Gemalto ( GTO.AS ), which has issued four profit warnings in the last year, rallied 10 percent as results reassured. Top loser on the STOXX was Eutelsat ( ETL.PA ) after the satellite firm reported lower revenues. LafargeHolcim ( LHN.S ) fell 2.3 percent after the cement maker ditched its target of double-digit growth in adjusted core operating profit this year, citing a slowdown during the rest of 2017. Separately, South African peer PPC ( PPCJ.J ) said it had received an expression of interest from LafargeHolcim which is planning a combination of some of its African assets. According to Thomson Reuters data 34 percent of MSCI Europe companies have reported results so far, with earnings beats at 54 percent and misses at 36 percent. Revenue beats were 52 percent and misses 48 percent. Clariant ( CLN.S ) fell 6.5 percent after the Swiss speciality chemicals maker and U.S. group Huntsman ( HUN.N ) abandoned their $20 billion merger on Friday, notching a win for activist investors who fought against the deal for months on the grounds it would destroy shareholder value. Reporting by Danilo Masoni; Editing by Toby Chopra '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reut
'aac668a1653e05554abc6598d2c17db9182d64c7'|'We<57>re starting to fix London<6F>s housing crisis. But the government has to help - Sadiq Khan - Global'|'Friday 27 October 2017 12.08 BST Last modified on Friday 27 October 2017 17.23 BST L ondoners know better than anyone that our city is in the grip of a major housing crisis <20> they live with the consequences every day. It<49>s a serious economic issue <20> the biggest factor in the shocking cost of living in our city and a huge block to improving productivity and increasing growth. And it<69>s also a massive social issue <20> causing poverty, health problems, growing intergenerational inequality and, at its starkest, homelessness and rough sleeping. This isn<73>t a new challenge and it<69>s been decades in the making <20> caused by a systemic government failure to invest enough to build the number of new, genuinely affordable homes that London needs to house our growing population. It has left us needing to build 66,000 homes a year in order to meet the need and deal with the backlog <20> that<61>s almost double the number of new homes currently being built across London every year. And, to add to the challenge, 65% of these need to be genuinely affordable. There''s been systemic government failure to invest enough to build the new, genuinely affordable homes London needs The truth is that the private sector will never be able to deliver this scale of homebuilding. The only way we will ever be able to fix this crisis is with a major and sustained programme of government investment in new affordable housing <20> including tens of thousands of new homes at social rent levels. Councils have a key role to play in making this happen <20> and so government must free them from the restrictions on borrowing so they can start building council houses. When the Conservative government came to power in 2010 it slashed the amount invested in affordable housing in London . It peaked at <20>1.75bn in 2009-10 <20> the last year of the Labour government. It now stands at just <20>500m a year. And new City Hall research shows that the true cost of meeting our targets would be more like <20>2.7bn a year of affordable housing investment <20> more than five times current spending. As if this weren<65>t bad enough, Boris Johnson made things even worse during his time as mayor. The number of homes funded for social rent fell every year after he was given control of affordable housing investment in 2012 <20> from 1,687 in 2012, to just 336 in his final year, and he left a pipeline of zero homes funded for social rent in the year I came into office. He left a record low of just 13% of homes approved through the planning system being affordable toward the end of his term. And rough sleeping in London doubled under his watch. Developer leaves central London housing block empty for seven years Read more Since I became mayor of London 18 months ago, I have been working hard to clear up this dreadful mess. We have had to rebuild London<6F>s housing system from the bottom up <20> using the full range of powers and funding at my disposal. We<57>ve increased the number of genuinely affordable homes in the planning system to 38% of all applications over the first six months of this year. We have agreed investment in 50,000 new, genuinely affordable homes <20> including new homes based on social rent levels. And we<77>ve used all the powers at our disposal to improve the experience of renters in London, to reduce rough sleeping , and to crack down both on rogue landlords and on foreign buyers using London homes as gold bricks. Next month I will publish my draft London Plan, which will introduce more tough new policies to kickstart building and will include a set of ambitious targets for the London boroughs to try to ensure that we meet our city<74>s needs. But this problem is simply too big for me and the councils to fix on our own <20> the government must act. Since the general election the prime minister has repeatedly said that tackling the housing crisis is a top priority. Now she must follow through, with a major and sustained new programme of investment in homebuilding, and by gi
'b37d2b4a3c2fd7b2b4acdc7640bb449506a7e1b7'|'Investor group presses U.S. drug companies on opioid controls'|'October 30, 2017 / 11:06 AM / Updated 7 hours ago Investor group presses U.S. drug companies on opioid controls Ross Kerber 5 Min Read BOSTON (Reuters) - U.S. shareholder activists are addressing a soaring death toll from opioid drug abuse, asking companies that make and distribute the painkillers to review the risks their businesses could face from their role in the sector. FILE PHOTO: A used needle sits on the ground in a park in Lawrence, Massachusetts, U.S., May 30, 2017, where individuals were arrested earlier in the day during raids to break up heroin and fentanyl drug rings in the region, according to law enforcement officials. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo Leaders of a 30-fund group that includes state pension officials and religious and labor organizations plan to reveal on Monday they have begun filing shareholder resolutions at 10 companies, including distributors AmerisourceBergen Corp ( ABC.N ) and Cardinal Health Inc ( CAH.N ) and manufacturers Johnson & Johnson ( JNJ.N ) and Insys Therapeutics ( INSY.O ). In resolutions aimed at annual shareholder meetings to be held in 2018 and in letters to the companies, activists are urging independent directors to review and report on how the boards are managing the legal, financial and reputational risks their enterprises face from their involvement with opioids. They also seek corporate-governance reforms such as allowing more grounds to claw back pay from executives who inappropriately promote the drugs, or creating independent board chairs to provide better oversight. Representatives of Cardinal and Insys did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Johnson & Johnson spokesman Ernie Knewitz said the company was preparing a response to the investors, and that the company had acted responsibly. <20>Opioid abuse is a serious public health issue that must be addressed, and doing so will require collaboration among many stakeholders, and our company is committed to working with federal, state and local officials to help find meaningful solutions,<2C> he said in an emailed statement. In a statement emailed by AmerisourceBergen spokeswoman Keri Mattox, the company said it <20>welcomes a productive dialogue with all shareholders. The issue of opioid abuse is a complex one that spans the full healthcare spectrum, including manufacturers, wholesalers, insurers, prescribers, pharmacists and regulatory and enforcement agencies.<2E> The statement said the company worked closely with officials <20>to combat drug diversion while supporting appropriate access to medications.<2E> At an annual meeting on Nov. 8, Cardinal Health will face a resolution calling for an independent board chair in order to improve oversight. <20>These considerations are especially critical at Cardinal given the potential reputational, legal and regulatory risks Cardinal faces over its role in the nation<6F>s opioid epidemic, including its history of compliance challenges concerning the distribution of controlled substances,<2C> the resolution<6F>s sponsors, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said in a supporting statement. The statement cited Cardinal<61>s payment of tens of millions of dollar to settle various federal and state charges related to opioids. In a securities filing, Cardinal calls the change unnecessary, noting it already has an independent lead director and <20>state-of-the-art controls<6C> over its pain medications. Officials at all levels of government in the United States are struggling to respond to a surge in deaths from opioid abuse, which hit 33,000 in 2015, the last year for which there is complete federal data. In many cases patients prescribed opioid painkillers become addicted to them and then move on to acquiring the drugs illegally, or turn to heroin or fentanyl, a highly potent synthetic opiate. U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday declared the opioid epidemic a national public health emergency. State attorneys general have also taken on opioid manufacturers, with lawsuits ch
'af1ebb8f8e387f13bf5a2dda33a8e1d794985f58'|'Hammond picks hedge fund economist as top adviser'|'October 30, 2017 / 12:41 PM / in an hour Hammond picks hedge fund economist as top adviser Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Chancellor Philip Hammond has named Steffan Ball, previously an economist at U.S. hedge fund Citadel LLC and the U.S. Federal Reserve, as his new top economic adviser, a few weeks before he sets out his annual budget. Britain''s Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond leaves 11 Downing Street in London, October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner Ball recorded his new role on a professional networking website and a Treasury spokeswoman confirmed the appointment on Monday. He succeeds Karen Ward, who formerly worked at HSBC ( HSBA.L ) but left to join J.P. Morgan Asset Management ( JPM.N ) as its chief European market strategist in September. Ball joined the U.S. Federal Reserve at the height of the global financial crisis in September 2008 after completing a doctorate in economics at the University of Cambridge, and focused on the U.S. housing market and consumer spending. He moved to the hedge fund Citadel in 2013, where he worked in New York as a global economist. While at the Federal Reserve, Ball was seconded to the Bank of England in late 2012, where he forecast consumer spending and studied the effect of quantitative easing on growth, according to his personal profile. Ball<6C>s appointment comes as Hammond prepares his Nov. 22 annual budget and is regularly assessing the likely economic consequences of Brexit - an area where pro-Brexit MPs say he is too pessimistic. Although British public borrowing fell to a 10-year low in September, Hammond has little scope to tackle concern about squeezed public spending due to the likelihood that the government<6E>s budget watchdog will adopt gloomier assumptions about long-run productivity growth. Earlier on Monday the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a leading think tank, said downgraded productivity forecasts would render unrealistic Hammond<6E>s goal of returning Britain<69>s public finances to surplus by the mid-2020s. Hammond has said he intends to continue with a <20>measured and balanced<65> approach to reducing Britain<69>s budget deficit. Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Alison Williams'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-politics-ball/hammond-picks-hedge-fund-economist-as-top-adviser-idUKKBN1CZ1HL'|'2017-10-30T14:40:00.000+02:00'
'a93816660667246ef07aeefee25815fe04998376'|'New Akzo Nobel boss pursues $30 billion deal with Axalta'|'AMSTERDAM/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Dutch paints maker Akzo Nobel, seeking to recover after rejecting a takeover offer and issuing two profit warnings, is discussing a merger with smaller U.S. rival Axalta Coating Systems Ltd to create a $30 billion company.Akzo, the maker of Dulux paint, said on Monday it was in <20>constructive talks<6B> about a <20>merger of equals<6C> in what would be the first major deal by Chief Executive Thierry Vanlancker, who took over in July after Akzo spurned a 26 billion euro ($30.2 billion) offer from U.S. rival PPG Industries.Reuters reported on Friday that Akzo had approached Axalta about a possible merger, sending Axalta<74>s shares 17 percent higher. Warren Buffett<74>s Berkshire Hathaway is the largest Axalta investor with a stake of just under 10 percent.<2E>This seems a classic attack-is-the-best-defence strategy,<2C> said a fund manager at one of Akzo<7A>s top-10 investors who asked not to be named.<2E>Akzo overpromised after defending their own company and started to fail to deliver in Q3, so (they) need to do something transformational,<2C> he added.At 19.5 billion euros ($22.7 billion), Akzo<7A>s market value is close to three times that of Axalta at $8.1 billion at Friday<61>s closing price of $33.15.Even after the planned sale of its chemicals divisions, valued at 8-10 billion euros, the Dutch group would tower over its prospective partner, suggesting a lead role that typically results in a premium being offered to the junior partner.Akzo said plans to divest the chemicals unit remained on track and a <20>vast majority<74> of net proceeds from the deal would be returned to shareholders.Axalta<74>s coatings for new vehicles could fill a gap in Akzo<7A>s portfolio, which caters to various other industries including manufacturing, marine and construction, analysts have said.STIRRING THE POT The relatively fragmented global paints and coatings industry has seen a frenzy of deal activity, as buyers seek scale to squeeze their raw materials bill to further bolster already attractive margins.PPG<50>s aborted move for Akzo followed BASF deals last year, selling its industrial coatings business to Akzo and buying Albemarle<6C>s surface-treatment unit Chemetall for $3.2 billion to focus on automotive coatings.Before that, Sherwin-Williams snatched up rival U.S. paint company Valspar in an all-cash deal valued at about $9.3 billion.General view of the outside of AkzoNobel''s new paint factory in Ashington, Britain September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble The mooted combination would make Akzo the second-largest coatings player with a 12 percent market share, ahead of PPG but trailing an enlarged Sherwin Williams, analysts at brokerage Raymond James said.Vanlancker has been forced to cut targets made in the heat of the takeover battle twice in the space of six weeks, blaming disruption caused by hurricane Harvey, rising raw materials costs and <20>headwinds<64> at its marine coatings business.Akzo shares were 0.5 percent higher at 77.89 euros at 1120 GMT, well below a figure of around 96 euros proposed by PPG.PRESSURE TO DELIVER Analyst Joost van Beek of Theodoor Gilissen said that in negotiations over financial terms, Axalta would seek to take advantage of Akzo being under pressure to bulk up.Analysts at Bernstein, in turn, stressed the strategic rationale, saying in a note the Akzo-Axalta merger <20>would improve scale and density in segments and countries where needed while taking out costs, most likely in the fragmented general industrial segment and in Europe<70>.They forecast savings of around 250 million euros from combining operations.Akzo would not comment on how the deal could be structured, though describing it as a merger suggests it would pay mostly with shares.Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday that talks were at an early stage and there was no guarantee the companies would come to an agreement.Akzo has gone through tumultuous times of late.After PPG<50>s approach was fended off, a group of shareholders launched a court case seek
'e8e15f5c1c1da426a5e8d13af0b81ff98a56c035'|'Barclays Africa to cut ties with McKinsey amid South Africa scandal'|'October 30, 2017 / 10:53 AM / Updated 23 minutes ago Barclays Africa to cut ties with McKinsey amid South Africa scandal Reuters Staff 1 Min Read JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Barclays Africa Group ( BGAJ.J ) is ending its relationship with McKinsey, the bank said on Monday, two weeks after the global consultancy apologised for errors it made while working with state power utility Eskom last year. FILE PHOTO - A Barclays logo is pictured outside the Barclays towers in Johannesburg, South Africa, December 16, 2015. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko/File Photo <20>Barclays Africa Group has taken a decision to not contract any new work with McKinsey & Company and is going through a process of winding down existing work,<2C> the company said in an emailed response to questions. Privately-held McKinsey, the world<6C>s largest management consultancy, said it regretted working at Eskom alongside a company owned by the Gupta family, wealthy friends of President Jacob Zuma accused of unduly influencing government contracts. Standard Bank also said on Monday it had stopped working with McKinsey. Reporting by TJ Strydom; Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Louise Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mckinsey-safrica-barclays-group/barclays-africa-to-cut-ties-with-mckinsey-amid-south-africa-scandal-idUKKBN1CZ149'|'2017-10-30T12:53:00.000+02:00'
'12449984a9cadd0487ca6b108f05d458c0bdde0d'|'UPDATE 2-Iraq ups southern oil exports to 3.45 mln bpd after Kirkuk shutdown'|'(Adds comments on Shell, Exxon plans)BEIRUT, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Iraq has increased exports from its southern oilfields to 3.45 million barrels per day (bpd) to make up for a shortfall from the northern Kirkuk fields, Basra Oil Company Director General Ihsan Abdul Jabbar told Reuters on Monday.Output from Kirkuk fell earlier this month when Iraqi forces took back control of fields from Kurdish fighters who had been there since 2014.The oil ministry said on Oct. 21 an extra 200,000 bpd would be shipped from Basra on top of the usual volumes.Exports from Basra had previously averaged 3.23 million bpd, Abdul Jabbar said on the sidelines of the Basra Oil, Gas and Infrastructure conference in Beirut.Abdul Jabbar also said the Basra Oil Company aimed to increase the southern oilfields<64> production capacity to 6 million bpd by 2020.Iraq<61>s total capacity is close to 4.8 million bpd, with most of it coming from the southern region.ExxonMobil should be awarded next year a project to boost output from several southern oilfields, he said. Royal Dutch Shell should hand over the Majnoon field operation which it wants to exit before April 2018, he said. (Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Sarah Dadouch; Editing by Dale Hudson and Edmund Blair) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/iraq-oil-basra/update-1-iraq-ups-southern-oil-exports-to-3-45-mln-bpd-after-kirkuk-shutdown-idUSL8N1N53MJ'|'2017-10-30T16:12:00.000+02:00'
'7447f1925a243caad51b3978459c6de556fb991c'|'China central bank boosting oversight of loans offered on the internet - media'|'October 28, 2017 / 5:25 AM / in 12 hours China central bank boosting oversight of loans offered on the internet - media Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China is stepping up its oversight of cash loans offered through the internet amid growing concerns over rapid growth in the lightly regulated industry, a business media report said on Saturday. FILE PHOTO: A staff member walks in front of the headquarters of the People''s Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, in Beijing, June 25, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo Caixin, in a report on its website, quoted Ji Zhihong of the central bank<6E>s financial markets department as saying it has developed with other authorities a special regulation for controlling online financial risk. According to Caixin, Ji told a seminar the regulation has already achieved some success. Caixin also quoted Ji as saying China will improve regulations for all online financing businesses, and all financing activity should be subject to a basic level of oversight. China<6E>s fast-growing online micro-credit firms have been accused of taking advantage of regulatory loopholes to charge excessively high interest rates. Securities Times, a state-backed media, earlier this month said new rules could emerge within six months to tighten controls on online microcredit firms. This year, the People<6C>s Bank of China has added wealth management products to its regulatory oversight as it seeks to contain risks to the financial system. Reporting by Dominique Patton and Muyu Xu; Editing by Richard Borsuk'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-internet-loans/china-central-bank-boosting-oversight-of-loans-offered-on-the-internet-media-idUSKBN1CX04J'|'2017-10-28T08:24:00.000+03:00'
'ee9f7cf369571ec46cb0f630d222f34786ca0538'|'Banorte shares climb, Interacciones'' plunge after merger deal'|'MEXICO CITY, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Shares in Mexican bank Grupo Financiero Banorte rose more than 5 percent on Thursday, a day after agreeing to buy peer Grupo Financiero Interacciones, whose shares fell nearly 10 percent.The deal would create Mexico<63>s second-biggest financial group.Writing by Daina Beth Solomon '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mexico-banorte/banorte-shares-climb-interacciones-plunge-after-merger-deal-idINL2N1N110G'|'2017-10-26T11:58:00.000+03:00'
'c0f46d161752ceca46d172c6a9fb62426431bd47'|'United Spirits second-quarter profit up about 86 percent'|'REUTERS - India<69>s United Spirits Ltd posted a nearly 86 percent rise in quarterly profit on Thursday, beating estimates.The liquor firm, majority-owned by Diageo PLC, said its profit rose to 1.53 billion rupees ($23.60 million) in the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with 825 million rupees a year earlier. bit.ly/2yLDK6BRevenue from operations rose 3.3 percent to 62.15 billion rupees.Analysts on average had expected a profit of 883.3 million rupees, according to Thomson Reuters data.($1 = 64.8200 Indian rupees)Reporting by Jessica Kuruthukulangara and Aby Jose Koilparambil in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair and Biju Dwarakanath '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/united-spirit-results/united-spirits-second-quarter-profit-up-about-86-percent-idINKBN1CV1SA'|'2017-10-26T10:02:00.000+03:00'
'1fbeab589f74a419371ec82a07057bddd9915aae'|'Exclusive: Hospital operator Tenet Healthcare scraps sale plans - sources'|'(Reuters) - Tenet Healthcare Corp ( THC.N ), one of the largest U.S. hospital operators, has ended a process to try to sell itself, following the departure of its chief executive Trevor Fetter this month, two people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.The decision will allow Tenet to focus its efforts on selecting a permanent chief executive, who can make decisions about the long-term strategic direction of the company, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.The sources asked not to be identified because the deliberations are confidential. Tenet Healthcare did not offer any response when contacted for comment.Reporting by Carl O''Donnell in New York; editing by Susan Thomas '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-tenet-m-a-exclusive/exclusive-hospital-operator-tenet-healthcare-scraps-sale-plans-sources-idINKBN1CV2UB'|'2017-10-26T14:38:00.000+03:00'
'740b2c5585faa7c30c6e5e04d0107145741f2b44'|'Ex-HSBC currency trader to be extradited from UK to face U.S. fraud charge'|'October 26, 2017 / 2:41 PM / Updated 36 minutes ago Ex-HSBC currency trader to be extradited from UK to face U.S. fraud charge Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Former senior HSBC currency trader Stuart Scott will be extradited to the United States to face charges that he defrauded Cairn Energy Plc ( CNE.L ) in a $3.5 billion(<28>2.66 billion) currency trade in 2011, a London court ruled on Thursday. On Monday Scott<74>s former boss Mark Johnson was convicted of fraud in the United States in the same case. <20>We believe the U.S. government<6E>s case to be flawed and materially inaccurate and we also believe that this has led the court to fall into error,<2C> a lawyer representing Scott said. <20>This case is unique in that it is a UK-centric case and represents a far too aggressive an assertion of the U.S. jurisdiction to criminalise conduct,<2C> she said in a statement, adding that Scott would contest the extradition ruling. The pair were charged by the U.S. Department of Justice last year of <20>front running<6E> the Cairn trade, meaning they were alleged to have profited at their client<6E>s expense by trading before they executed Cairn<72>s currency order. Johnson was head of HSBC<42>s global foreign exchange cash trading desk at the time, while Scott was HSBC<42>s head of cash trading for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Johnson, a 51-year-old British citizen, was the first banker to be tried in the United States as a result of worldwide investigations into the multi-trillion-dollar per day currency market. The probes have led to about $10 billion in fines against several banks and the firing of dozens of traders. Reporting By Lawrence White; Editing by Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hsbc-trader/ex-hsbc-currency-trader-to-be-extradited-from-uk-to-face-u-s-fraud-charge-idUKKBN1CV2FK'|'2017-10-26T17:40:00.000+03:00'
'8c9a81cbcd3345b31b30541102fa77e37687c9e5'|'Bombardier to lay off 280 UK staff as part of global cuts'|'October 26, 2017 / 11:40 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Bombardier to lay off 280 UK staff as part of global cuts Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Belfast (Reuters) - Bombardier Inc ( BBDb.TO ) will cut 280 non-production jobs at its Belfast plant in Northern Ireland as part of 7,500 layoffs worldwide announced last year, the Canadian plane manufacturer said on Thursday. A man works on C Series aeroplane wing in the Bombardier factory in Belfast, Northern Ireland September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne The jobs of the 4,200 workers at Bombardier<65>s cutting-edge Belfast wing factory have been put under threat in recent weeks by a trade dispute with U.S. rival Boeing Co ( BA.N ) that led the United States to move to impose a potential 300 percent duty on Bombardier<65>s CSeries next-generation passenger jet. However, Airbus<75> ( AIR.PA ) deal this month to buy a majority stake in the CSeries gave the Canadian firm a possible way out of the trade row. Bombardier Belfast said in a statement the cuts in its support personnel were part of plans laid out last year to reduce its workforce by 10 percent through 2018, with most of the layoffs slated for its rail operations. The cuts on Thursday follow 95 redundancies announced at Bombardier<65>s Northern Ireland operations last month. <20>This highlights our concerns that the Airbus agreement secured in the last fortnight has not provided any long-term guarantees to Northern Ireland workers,<2C> Davy Thompson, who represents the plant<6E>s workers for the Unite trade union, said in a statement. Reporting by Padraic Halpin and Amanda Ferguson; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bombardier-belfast/bombardier-to-lay-off-280-uk-staff-as-part-of-global-cuts-idUKKBN1CV1OS'|'2017-10-26T14:42:00.000+03:00'
'7f25079c2ba49c19269abc32487e71b51caa7e63'|'UPDATE 2-Constellation jumps into pot with Canopy Growth stake'|'October 30, 2017 / 11:27 AM / Updated 22 minutes ago UPDATE 2-Constellation jumps into pot with Canopy Growth stake Reuters Staff (Adds CEO, analyst quote; adds shares) By Siddharth Cavale and Gayathree Ganesan Oct 30 (Reuters) - Constellation Brands Inc has bought a nearly 10 percent stake in Canadian cannabis maker Canopy Growth Corp for about C$245 million ($191 million), the first major wine, beer and spirits producer to invest in legal cannabis. The move by the maker of Corona beer and Svedka vodka comes as Canada and a growing number of U.S. states move to legalise marijuana for recreational use, raising questionmarks over its illegal status at the U.S. Federal level. Constellation shares rose as much as 1 percent in premarket trading in response. <20>We<57>re obviously trying to get first-mover advantage,<2C> Constellation Chief Executive Rob Sands told the Wall Street Journal. He expected the cannabis industry to be legalized nationwide in the United States in coming years. <20>We think that it<69>s highly likely, given what<61>s happened at the state level,<2C> Sands said. Eight states, including California and Nevada, have legalized marijuana for recreational use. At least 22 other states have legalized the plant for medicinal use. A number of drug companies have products that are cannabis derivatives and an index of Canadian marijuana stocks calculated by research house Canaccord Genuity rose 36 percent in the month to Oct. 11. But major firms in other sectors have kept their distance, worried by the connotations of involvement with a banned substance. Constellation said it had no immediate plans to sell cannabis products in the U.S. or any other market unless it was legally permissible to do so at both a state and Federal level. Eight Capital analyst Daniel Pearlstein said the move validated the cannabis industry as both a threat and opportunity for larger established companies in industries including alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceuticals. <20>This move is a complete game changer, not only for Canopy, but also for the entire industry,<2C> he said. Analysts said a more immediate option for Constellation could be to develop non-alcoholic cannabis-infused beverages for the Canadian cannabis market, which consultants estimate could be worth around $5 billion to $10 billion. The deal also comes ahead of the widely anticipated move by Canada to legalize cannabis for recreational use nationwide by July 2018. The following year, edible and drinkable products are expected to become legal. Canopy Growth is the biggest licensed producer of medical marijuana in Canada and is traded on the Toronto Stock exchange with a market capitalization of C$2.2 billion. Constellation said the deal also gives it the option to purchase an additional ownership interest in Canopy in the future. $1 = 1.2823 Canadian dollars Additional reporting by Siddharth Cavale in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canopy-growth-stake-constellation/update-1-constellation-jumps-into-pot-with-canopy-growth-stake-idUSL4N1N5484'|'2017-10-30T14:57:00.000+02:00'
'113c4c150125ec6d1a9fb9ec5cea28acb9c18ab5'|'Apple touches record as brokerages bullish on iPhone X demand'|'October 30, 2017 / 4:35 PM / in 16 minutes Apple touches record as brokerages bullish on iPhone X demand Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Several analysts downplayed concerns about Apple Inc<6E>s iPhone X production issues and were bullish on demand and sales, pushing the company<6E>s shares to a record on Monday. FILE PHOTO: An attendee checks out a new iPhone X during an Apple launch event in Cupertino, California, U.S. September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam The Cupertino-based company does not provide pre-order figures on iPhones, leaving investors and analysts in the dark in trying to track output through research with its suppliers, consumer surveys and other industry indicators. But positive commentary from analysts on Monday signaled strong demand for the pricey device with pre-orders starting this past Friday. Apple is scheduled to report quarterly results this Thursday. The company provides sales figures in its results. Since the launch of new iPhones on Sept.12, the stock had fallen 2.5 percent until last Thursday<61>s close. They rebounded on Friday after Apple said pre-orders for the 10th anniversary phone were <20>off the charts<74>. The stock climbed to $168.07 earlier in the session, adding nearly $26 billion to its market cap and inching it closer to becoming the first company with a trillion dollar valuation. Shares pared gains and were up 1.9 percent at $166.15 mid-day. Daniel Ives, a well-known sector analyst, raised his forecast on Monday for pre-orders by 10 million, and several other analysts talked up sales over the next year. In a note, Ives of research house GBH Insights, raised his pre-order demand expectations for the iPhone X to 50 million units from 40 million, calling the first stage of the iPhone X release a <20>stellar success<73>. <20>With the official launch of iPhone X in Apple retail stores slated for this Friday, Nov. 3, we anticipate very high demand globally with limited supply of iPhone X on hand,<2C> Ives said. Jeffrey Kvaal from brokerage Nomura Instinet, said Apple and U.S. wireless carriers<72> pushing out of delivery times for iPhone X orders to 5-6 weeks was longer than for previous phones and pointed to strong demand. Asked by Reuters whether production bottlenecks are causing shipment delays, Tigress Financial Partners analyst Ivan Feinseth responded: <20>No, there<72>s no bottlenecks. This is a company that manages the supply chain well.<2E> However, Drexel Hamilton analyst Brian White, cautioned that the longer wait times for consumers ordering phones may be as much due to the component supply issues, which led Apple to delay the launch of the premium phone until November. <20>Although we believe Apple is benefiting from strong demand from the iPhone X, the company is also struggling with supply constraints,<2C> White, who has a buy rating on Apple, said. <20>A sound debate around the key driver for the surging shipping lead times can be made by reasonable people. Thus we believe it was important for Apple to highlight the demand side of the equation for the iPhone X.<2E> Wall Street is bullish on Apple with 31 of 38 brokerages rating the stock <20>buy<75> or higher. Their median price target of $180 projects a market cap of nearly $930 billion for the iPhone maker. Reporting by Arjun Panchadar and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphone/apple-touches-record-as-brokerages-bullish-on-iphone-x-demand-idUKKBN1CZ21H'|'2017-10-30T18:32:00.000+02:00'
'bec93c5cd28e0f65a7401b4325a4f484aa7d690f'|'South Korea prosecutors seek 10-year jail term for Lotte chairman'|'October 30, 2017 / 7:35 AM / in 5 hours South Korea prosecutors seek 10-year jail term for Lotte chairman Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean prosecutors are seeking a 10-year jail term for Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin after bringing corruption charges against him last year, a Lotte spokeswoman said. FILE PHOTO: Lotte Group chairman Shin Dong-bin speaks during a news conference in Seoul, South Korea, October 25, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo Shin was charged with embezzlement and breach of trust in October 2016 after a high-profile prosecution probe into South Korea<65>s fifth-largest conglomerate. A prosecution spokesman declined comment. Reporting by Joyce Lee and Haejin Choi; Editing by Edwina Gibbs'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lotte-group-probe-prosecution/south-korea-prosecutors-seek-10-year-jail-term-for-lotte-chairman-idUSKBN1CZ0M6'|'2017-10-30T09:33:00.000+02:00'
'5072baef8f8ea9165b016ae62f630872278c1f57'|'Munich Re''s Ergo starts sale of run-off life portfolios: Handelsblatt'|'MUNICH/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Britain<69>s Resolution Group, Swiss Re ( SRENH.S ) and private equity firm Cinven [CINV.UL] have expressed an interest in acquiring two large German life insurance portfolios owned by Ergo ( MUVGn.DE ) and Generali ( GASI.MI ), sources familiar with the matter said on Monday.The headquarters of insurer ERGO Group, a branch of Reinsurer Munich Re, is pictured in Duesseldorf, Germany April 19, 2016. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski Munich Re<52>s primary insurance affiliate Ergo and the German subsidiary of Italy<6C>s Generali are considering the sale of their respective portfolios of 6 million and 4 million policies in run-off.A spokeswoman for Ergo said the company had yet to decide whether to sell the portfolio but would do so soon.Swiss Re and Cinven declined to comment, while Resolution was not immediately available to comment.Cinven has indicated that it is willing to inject money into its life insurance and pensions group Viridium - owned by Cinven and Hannover Re ( HNRGn.DE ) - to acquire the German portfolios.Ergo and fellow insurers are struggling to pay guaranteed returns to clients because of record-low interest rates. Combined with more stringent European capital rules, these have prompted some to offload some life insurance operations.Financial services groups specializing in the run-off of life insurance policies are vying for these portfolios. They acquire policies until their expiry and aim to turn a profit by measures such as cutting administrative costs.Ergo<67>s run-off life portfolio has assets of 56 billion euros ($65 billion), while Generali<6C>s is around 40 billion euros.The sales of the Ergo and the Generali portfolios would mark the largest ever sale of closed books. Dutch insurer Aegon sold a 9 billion pounds ($12 billion) book of closed UK life business last year and Britain<69>s Standard Life ( SLA.L ) has said it is open to the sale of its 16 billion-pound closed annuity portfolio.In Germany, only a handful of smaller portfolios of the roughly 90 life insurers have changed hands, including those of Arag Leben, Delta Lloyd, Basler Leben, Heidelberger Leben and Skandia. Cinven bought Heidelberger Leben and Skandia Leben, which are now rebranded as Viridium.The German financial watchdog will have to approve any sale, which would depend on the solvency of the future owner.<2E>The hurdle will continue to be very high,<2C> said a person in the industry. <20>It is unlikely that anything will happen quickly.<2E>Additional reporting by Paul Arnold in Z<>rich and Simon Jessop in London; Writing by Tom Sims; Editing by Ludwig Burger, Greg Mahlich '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-munich-re-group-ergo-divestiture/munich-res-ergo-starts-sale-of-run-off-life-portfolios-handelsblatt-idINKBN1CZ0HO'|'2017-10-30T03:45:00.000+02:00'
'6698887fd91bc2a2a172a437688b38742ffcf53d'|'EU says concerned over Italy''s 2018 budget, adding to government''s woes'|'Place your bets for the Brexit rate hike Special Report Me and my robotic suit - how I stood up and walked after 21 years Catalonia declares independence from Spain Reuters TV United States October 27, 2017 / 4:58 PM / a few seconds ago EU says concerned over Italy''s 2018 budget, adding to government''s woes Francesco Guarascio 4 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission sent a letter on Friday to Italy<6C>s finance minister urging clarifications over the country<72>s planned budget for 2018, adding to Rome<6D>s headaches ahead of elections due by next May. Italy''s Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan attends an European Union finance ministers meeting in Brussels, Belgium, July 11, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir The move could force Rome to cut expenditures or raise taxes to comply with EU fiscal rules. Both are unpalatable measures before elections planned by May and amid deepening political divisions within the ruling Partito Democratico (PD). The EU executive, which has the power to reject a euro zone country<72>s budget if it deems it in serious breach of EU fiscal rules, said Italy<6C>s draft budgetary plans created risks of <20>a significant deviation from the required effort in 2017 and 2018 together<65>. A source from Italy<6C>s Finance Ministry said Rome will soon reply to the commission<6F>s letter and expressed confidence that the clarifications that will be provided will be sufficient to resolve the matter. The unexpected rift with Brussels adds to the woes of Italy<6C>s Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni who has recently faced strong criticism from PD leader, Matteo Renzi, on his confirmation of Bank of Italy<6C>s Governor Ignazio Visco. The Italian parliament, which has to approve the budget, is deeply divided and many lawmakers have already showed little enthusiasm for the low-key budget presented by the outgoing executive. Under EU fiscal rules, Italy was required to have a structural adjustment, which excludes the economic cycle and one-off measures, of 0.6 percent of its gross domestic product in 2018. The government pledged to reach an adjustment of only 0.3 percent when it presented its budget in mid October, a move meant to please political forces which oppose new austerity measures and weaken the appeal of growing populist parties. The commission had let Rome understand that it would have approved this smaller effort. However, it has now estimated that the actual structural effort would only be 0.2 percent, it said in a letter sent to Italy<6C>s Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan. Structural corrections are meant to reduce a country<72>s public debts, an objective that is particularly important for Italy which has a debt above 130 percent of GDP, which is the second highest in the EU after bailed-out Greece. The commission said its preliminary assessment indicated that Italy would breach the EU targets for the gradual reduction of its huge debt. The letter, dated October 27, was sent one week after Italy submitted an updated version of its draft budget. Italy has to provide clarifications by October 31 and could even risk the rejection by the commission of the budget. Brussels also estimated a lower-than-required reduction of the country<72>s primary expenditure, which excludes interests on the debt. Euro zone countries<65> primary expenditures are set to be scrutinized more closely by markets as the European Central Bank reduces its monthly purchases of government bonds, a move that is expected to gradually increase interest payments for states with less solid public finances, like Italy. The commission also asked Rome to clarify its forecast expenditures for migrants, whose arrivals from Africa have substantially dropped in recent weeks. To sweeten the pill, the commission said its assessment of Italy<6C>s budget <20>will take due account of the goal of achieving a fiscal stance that contributes to both strengthening the ongoing recovery and ensuring the sustainability of Italy<6C>s public finances.<2E> The commission also req
'30e57f23aedb40234c65613efbe7c441fb517706'|'business schools dominate our MBA ranking'|'American business schools dominate The Economist <20>s 2017 Which MBA? ranking, taking 16 of the top 20 places. Northwestern University<74>s Kellogg School of Management returns to the top spot for the first time since 2004. Kellogg students praise its facilities and collaborative culture. Their career opportunities are among the best, thanks in part to one of the largest alumni networks in the world; 97% of students find a job within three months of graduation, pocketing a 72% pay bump. All of the top ten slots in the ranking are now occupied by large, prestigious American schools, for which students are happy to pay extra. Their average tuition fee is $134,600, and has risen quickly in recent years. Employers, too, are willing to shell out for the best students. Their average basic salary was $127,300, a 70% increase on their pre-MBA pay cheques. But life, like rankings, isn<73>t just about money. So we weight data according to what students tell us is important. The four categories covered are: opening new career opportunities (35%), personal development and educational experience (35%), better salary (20%) and networking potential (10%).See the full ranking and methodology .    Business   "The best MBA courses"'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'https://www.economist.com/news/business/21730637-first-institution-outside-united-states-ranks-15th-american-business-schools-dominate?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-28T07:00:00.000+03:00'
'9458c87df3320169d87878434b6198ee390a24d7'|'At last, it<69>s payback time for BrightHouse'|'At last, it<69>s payback time for BrightHouse A <20>600 computer can cost <20>2,000. But now the rent-to-own retailer has to repay <20>14.8m to customers BrightHouse in Elephant & Castle, still popular with customers. Photograph: Mimi Mollica At last, it<69>s payback time for BrightHouse A <20>600 computer can cost <20>2,000. But now the rent-to-own retailer has to repay <20>14.8m to customers View more sharing options Julia Kollewe Saturday 28 October 2017 07.01 BST For hard-pressed families wanting household goods, the monthly payments at electricals store BrightHouse can be tempting. But extraordinary interest payments can mean a <20>600 computer at Currys costs more than <20>2,000 at BrightHouse, while an easy-looking <20>7.50-a-month TV spirals into a bill of <20>1,100. Lisa Brady, 30, who lives in Hamilton, Scotland, and has four children, is typical of the company<6E>s customers, often young single mums. She tells Guardian Money: <20>I<EFBFBD>m on benefits and it has been my lifeline, but the payments are just shocking.<2E> She went to BrightHouse to buy her autistic son a computer which, she said, would have cost about <20>600 at Currys. But with repayments, that turned into <20>2,287 over 26 months. <20>My advice to other mums is to look about first, avoid BrightHouse,<2C> she says. This week BrightHouse was ordered to repay <20>14.8m to nearly 250,000 customers after the Financial Conduct Authority found it had not been a <20>responsible lender<65>. The regulator said that, in many cases, BrightHouse had not properly assessed a customer<65>s ability to repay <20> and they would now be compensated. The weekly payments advertised in big letters throughout the stores appear affordable <20> <20>7.50 for a Beko steel cooker or a Baird 43-inch UHD smart TV. But the small print underneath reveals that the cooker costs <20>1,132.50 at an APR of 69.9% over 151 weeks, including a <20>95 delivery and installation fee; the TV <20>1,170 over three years. Laura Hutchison, who lives with her daughter Ellie in Galston, Scotland, and is on benefits, was paying off an L-shaped sofa from BrightHouse over several years but, she says, only managed <20>1,800 out of <20>2,500, so never ended up owning it. She reckons it would have cost <20>500-600 on the high street. <20>I<EFBFBD>d never buy anything from BrightHouse again,<2C> she says. She has since found Fair For You, a not-for-profit credit provider that funds household goods. Hutchison has bought a bunk bed, double bed and vacuum cleaner and says it took no more than six months to pay off an item. <20>They cost <20>20 or <20>30 more than a high street shop.<2E> BrightHouse is keen to stress that items in the store can be bought for less if they are paid off more quickly. Despite these sky-high costs, many say it can be the only way to get the sort of electrical goods they want. When we visited its Elephant & Castle shop in south London, several customers told us the weekly payments were affordable and convenient. Pauline and David Heat, a retired couple, come in every Thursday to make their weekly payment of <20>116.92, to pay off eight items, including a sofa, freezer, vacuum cleaner and two TVs. David gets monthly pension payments of <20>859 while his wife receives <20>578. Isata Sillah, who works in a nursing home, has paid off 23 items over 15 years, and is now paying <20>35 a week for a sofa and a Nintendo games console. <20>It<49>s easy to pay weekly,<2C> she says. But <20>rent to own<77> providers remain deeply controversial. An all-party parliamentary group on debt and personal finance, which conducted an inquiry two years ago, found customers easily pay three times as much as the high street, and many never even get to own the goods as they fall into arrears. Around 400,000 households use it and have amassed debts of <20>500m. They have an average annual income of <20>16,100 and are likely to have other high-cost debt. The typical rent-to-own customer is a young single mother who lives in social or private rented accommodation and is wholly or partly reliant on benefits, according to a 2016 report by the Financial Inclusion Centre thinktan
'45e3890977aebe180fffe814d2439ca65ba984be'|'Lennar to buy CalAtlantic Group in about $9.3 billion deal'|'(Reuters) - Lennar Corp ( LEN.N ) will buy smaller rival CalAtlantic Group Inc ( CAA.N ) for almost $6 billion, creating the largest homebuilder in the United States as it strives to deal with higher land acquisition costs and a tighter labor market.The deal announced by the companies on Monday is the first major merger in the U.S. housing sector in more than two years and will make the unified firm one of the top three homebuilders in 24 of the United States<65> 30 biggest markets.Valued at $5.66 billion in stock and shares, plus $3.6 billion in net debt, analysts said the buyout would give Lennar a better foothold in booming housing markets in California from which CalAtlantic drew a third of its revenue last year.But the move also reflects the pressure on builders due to a shortage of skilled labor that is constraining the supply of homes and pushing costs up even as U.S. house prices rise for a seventh straight year.CalAtlantic<69>s shares jumped 23 percent after the announcement of the deal, which valued its shares at $51.24 per share a premium of 27 percent to Friday<61>s close, but Lennar<61>s fell almost 3 percent.<2E>(It<49>s) go big or go home,<2C> Credit Suisse analyst Susan Maklari wrote in a note on the deal.<2E>Builders are increasingly seeking greater volume and cost controls in order to offset higher land and input costs and drive better profitability and returns. Size helps to better manage land and labor constraints.<2E>The deal turns up the heat on sector mergers after a pair of smaller moves by Lennar WCIC.N and its biggest rival, D.R. Horton ( DHI.N ). It valued the combined firm at $18 billion, compared to Horton<6F>s market cap of around $15.6 billion.The combined company sold 40,792 homes last fiscal year, according to the companies<65> separate SEC filings versus Horton<6F>s 40,309.Horton shares were broadly flat in morning trade in New York.Lennar said it would save $75 million in costs next year and $250 million in 2019 in efficiencies due to the merger of the two operations.<2E>LEN has an opportunity to apply a faster turning production homebuilding approach to CAA<41>s larger lot positions,<2C> BTIG analyst Carl Reichardt wrote in a note.Citi was financial adviser for Lennar while JP Morgan Securities LLC advised CalAtlantic.Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto, Bernard Orr '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-calatlantic-grp-m-a-lennar/lennar-to-buy-calatlantic-group-in-about-9-3-billion-deal-idINKBN1CZ10J'|'2017-10-30T07:20:00.000+02:00'
'1da3360e1c33f9569e2bee12fa2214aad5ec1894'|'Lightsource and Macquarie team up on Indian solar projects'|' 17 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago Lightsource and Macquarie team up on Indian solar projects Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British solar power projects developer Lightsource Renewable Energy and Australian bank Macquarie ( MQG.AX ) will jointly fund the development of large solar power projects in India, the bank said on Monday. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Australia''s biggest investment bank Macquarie Group Ltd adorns a desk in the reception area of their Sydney office headquarters in Australia, October 28, 2016. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo As part of the venture, Macquarie<69>s UK Climate Investments will provide 49 percent of the equity for the construction of the first project, which is Lightsource<63>s 60 megawatt (MW) solar project in India<69>s Maharashtra state. The deal reached financial close on Monday. UK Climate Investments will also provide up to 30 million pounds for a broader partnership to help Lightsource build a portfolio of up to 300 MW solar power projects. Reporting by Oleg Vukmanovic and Susanna Twidale; Editing by Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lightsource-macquarie-solar/lightsource-and-macquarie-team-up-on-indian-solar-projects-idUKKBN1CZ1WZ'|'2017-10-30T17:17:00.000+02:00'
'1468904ba4e4dac4958bcdf6d89792ef566a722a'|'Euro zone sentiment hits highest level since dot-com bubble burst'|'October 30, 2017 / 10:22 AM / Updated 24 minutes ago Euro zone sentiment hits highest level since dot-com bubble burst Francesco Guarascio 3 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Euro zone economic sentiment rose by more than expected in October and hit its highest level since the start of 2001, after the dot-com bubble had burst, data from the European Commission showed on Monday. A Galeries Lafayette shopping bag is seen hanging on a tourist''s travel bag in front of their their store in Paris, France August 2, 2017. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann The near 17-year high confirms the solid economic recovery of the 19-country currency bloc after a decade-long economic and financial crisis. The European Commission<6F>s monthly survey showed that sentiment in the euro zone rose to 114.0 in October from an upwardly revised 113.1 in September. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a more modest rise to 113.4. It was the highest reading since January 2001, when the burst of the dot-com bubble had begun to hit confidence in the euro zone. The index peaked at 119.0 points, its highest ever level, in May 2000. The Commission<6F>s overall business climate index, a separate indicator which points to the phase of the business cycle, also rose to 1.44 in October from 1.34 in September -- its highest reading since March 2011 when it was at 1.47. Optimism grew in all surveyed economic sectors, jumping to 16.2 points from 15.4 in September in services, the largest sector in the euro zone. Confidence in industry grew to 7.9 from 6.7 and the retail sector saw a rise of sentiment to 5.5 from 3.0. Consumers shared the positive mood, with optimism rising to -1.0 from -1.2 in September, reaching the highest level in 16 years, data released on Monday showed, confirming a preliminary estimate published last week. The euro zone<6E>s improving sentiment did not extend to Britain where confidence among consumers dropped to -5.5 from -5.2 in September. The positive reading for the 19-countries bloc sharing the euro was only partly clouded by a drop in inflation expectations among manufacturers to 8.6 from 10.5 in September. That could limit corporate earnings and potentially curb output. Manufacturing production expectations dipped slightly, while export order books rose only marginally. Inflation expectations among consumers continued instead to increase, to 14.7 from 14.2 in September. (The story was refiled as the Commission corrects when sentiment was at highest level since) Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; editing by Philip Blenkinsop'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-economy-sentiment/euro-zone-sentiment-hits-highest-level-since-dot-com-bubble-burst-idUKKBN1CZ113'|'2017-10-30T12:31:00.000+02:00'
'8062e66106ae327b720eb48796f11f1f329d5d90'|'Morgan Stanley quits brokerage industry pact on recruiting'|' 23 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago Morgan Stanley quits brokerage industry pact on recruiting Reuters Staff 1 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley ( MS.N ) said Monday that it would quit a pact it signed with rival securities brokerages 13 years ago that limited litigation among rival firms when brokers quit to join another company. FILE PHOTO: The headquarters of Morgan Stanley is pictured in New York, U.S., June 1, 2012. REUTERS/Eric Thayer/File Photo Quitting the pact, called the protocol for broker recruiting, would allow it <20>to invest more heavily in its world-class advisers and their teams,<2C> Morgan Stanley said in a statement. Reporting By Elizabeth Dilts; Editing by Steve Orlofsky'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-morgan-stanley-wealth-recruiting/morgan-stanley-quits-brokerage-industry-pact-on-recruiting-idUKKBN1CZ1XR'|'2017-10-30T17:22:00.000+02:00'
'6c4a76090b925500facf2fcba1533a05c1571283'|'Saudi Arabia ready to extend oil output cut deal - Crown Prince'|'October 28, 2017 / 1:21 PM / Updated 4 hours ago Saudi Arabia ready to extend oil output cut deal - Crown Prince Reuters Staff 2 Min Read KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Saturday reiterated Saudi Arabia<69>s readiness to support the extension of a global oil production cut agreement. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attends the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed <20>The Kingdom affirms its readiness to extend the production cut agreement, which proved its feasibility by rebalancing supply and demand,<2C> the crown prince said in a statement. <20>The high demand for oil has absorbed the increase in shale oil production,<2C> Prince Mohammad added. Prince Mohammad made similar comments to Reuters in an interview published on Thursday about the position of the kingdom towards the extension of the oil deal and condition of the market. <20>We will support anything to stabilise the oil demand and supply,<2C> he told Reuters when asked whether the kingdom would support extending the agreement until the end of 2018. <20>I think now the oil market swallowed the shale oil supply, now we are regaining things again,<2C> he told Reuters. His comments gave a boost to oil prices, with Brent crude on Friday trading above $60 a barrel for the first time since July 2015.[O/R] Saudi Arabia, OPEC<45>s biggest producer is leading OPEC and other oil producers such as Russia to restrict oil supplies under a global oil pact to drain global inventories and boost oil prices. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus Russia and nine other producers, have cut oil output by about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) since January. The pact runs to March 2018, but an extension is under consideration. OPEC and non-OPEC producers meet on Nov. 30 to set oil policy. Reporting by Reem Shamseddine; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-saudi-oil/saudi-arabia-ready-to-extend-oil-output-cut-deal-crown-prince-idUKKBN1CX0FB'|'2017-10-28T16:21:00.000+03:00'
'6556466123753f10a4b2e36b9db281bfaa204922'|'BRIEF-Ophthotech recieves termination notice from Novartis Pharma'|' 09 PM / in 6 minutes BRIEF-Ophthotech recieves termination notice from Novartis Pharma Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 27 (Reuters) - Ophthotech Corp * Ophthotech-On oct 24, co received from Novartis Pharma notice terminating Licensing & Commercialization Agreement between parties dated May 19, 2014 Source text : ( bit.ly/2gPty5O )  '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-ophthotech-recieves-termination-no/brief-ophthotech-recieves-termination-notice-from-novartis-pharma-idUSFWN1N223M'|'2017-10-28T01:08:00.000+03:00'
'19cbc4a2ae2cfef532d4232328c2f9225f75d7f5'|'Strayer Education, Capella to merge in $1.9 billion deal'|'(Reuters) - Strayer Education Inc ( STRA.O ) will merge with smaller peer Capella Education Co ( CPLA.O ) in a $1.9 billion all-stock deal that will offer doctoral, master<65>s and bachelor<6F>s programs, mainly for working adults across the United States.Strayer shareholders will own about 52 percent of the combined company, and Capella shareholders will own about 48 percent, the companies said on Monday.The combined for-profit education company will serve about 80,000 students.For-profit colleges such as Herndon, Virginia-based Strayer have struggled to grow student enrollments in recent years after tough U.S. rules on student debt forced them to tighten admission standards.Strayer, which had a market value of about $1.02 billion as of Friday, offers working adults programs in accounting, business administration, information technology and criminal justice. It had 45,509 students enrolled in its programs for the 2016 fall term.Minneapolis-based Capella Education had a market capitalization of about $764.5 million as of Friday. It provides doctoral, master<65>s and bachelor<6F>s programs, primarily for working adults.Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr and Sai Sachin Ravikumar '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-caplla-edctn-m-a-strayer-educ/strayer-education-capella-to-merge-in-1-9-billion-deal-idINKBN1CZ13H'|'2017-10-30T07:50:00.000+02:00'
'5d7d77b57f0a8cdf9b1fff78917cb4d2f0fd6ec9'|'Kenyan shares jump after repeat presidential election'|'October 27, 2017 / 12:55 PM / in 7 hours Kenyan shares jump after repeat presidential election Reuters Staff 1 Min Read NAIROBI, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Kenyan shares jumped higher on Friday after a repeat presidential election, with both the benchmark NSE20 index and the broader all share index up more than 1 percent. <20>We were expecting a bump once the election took place irrespective of whoever wins,<2C> said Raymond Kipchumba, a research analyst at ABC Capital. (Reporting by Duncan Miriri; editing by Peter Graff) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/kenya-election-stocks/kenyan-shares-jump-after-repeat-presidential-election-idUSL8N1N25N7'|'2017-10-27T15:55:00.000+03:00'
'dc9014536cc017b11355a6d6c6a69b0a7c9d7fc4'|'Euro zone needs to push on with banking, bailout reforms - Slovak finance minister'|'October 28, 2017 / 11:19 AM / Updated 11 hours ago Euro zone needs to push on with banking, bailout reforms - Slovak finance minister Reuters Staff 3 Min Read STRBSKE PLESO, Slovakia (Reuters) - Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kazimir said on Saturday the euro zone should speed up completion of a banking union and revamping a bailout fund as the window for reform is closing. FILE PHOTO: Slovakia''s Finance Minister Peter Kazimir attends the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) 2017 Annual Meeting and Business Forum in Nicosia, Cyprus May 10,2017. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou Kazimir has been mentioned as a potential candidate to replace Jeroen Dijsselbloem as head of the bloc<6F>s finance ministers<72> group. His remarks play into a larger debate about the future of the European Union<6F>s single currency area, now comprising 19 countries. French President Emmanuel Macron, elected in May, offered an ambitious vision last month for European renewal as a counterweight to the impact of Britain<69>s exit from the EU in 2019. Ideas that have been floated include a special euro zone budget, a treasury and a finance minister, turning the euro zone<6E>s ESM bailout fund into a European Monetary Fund and possibly some form of jointly issued debt. In a speech at the Globsec Tatra Summit conference on Saturday, Kazimir urged the euro zone to squeeze the maximum out of the current momentum while the bloc waits for a government to be formed in European powerhouse Germany. <20>We have created expectation and thanks to favourable political winds a window of opportunity has opened for us. This window, however, has started to close,<2C> he said, referring to the process of coalition-building in Germany. <20>My humble suggestion would be to ... harvest low-hanging fruits: complete the banking union tomorrow, transform the European Stability Mechanism and keep drawing Europe<70>s future architecture <20> institutions, rules, carrots and sticks.<2E> EU leaders agreed last week they would kick off the discussion on the reform of the euro zone and completing their banking union at a euro summit in the middle of December. To complete the banking union, leaders need to agree that the euro zone bailout fund is the financial backstop for the a single resolution fund for banks, in case it runs out of money. But the key element still missing - a pan-European scheme to protect deposits - is likely to be more difficult because Germany is strongly against it. Kazimir said his vision for a complete, prosperous and stable euro zone includes a complete banking union and a working capital markets union. He also suggested building a fiscal capacity, another word for euro zone budget, to compensate the loss of national monetary policy with a shield against asymmetric shocks, and introducing a no-bailout rule and sovereign debt restructuring. The euro zone needs to make its fiscal rules simpler and more predictable, he said. Reporting by Tatiana Jancarikova; Editing by Alison Williams'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-reform/euro-zone-needs-to-push-on-with-banking-bailout-reforms-slovak-finance-minister-idUKKBN1CX0CC'|'2017-10-28T14:19:00.000+03:00'
'ee1eff7b3a5c482e3edec20784376cbd3776f49d'|'Strayer Education, Capella to merge in $1.9 billion deal'|'(Reuters) - Strayer Education Inc will merge with smaller peer Capella Education Co in a $1.9 billion all-stock deal that will offer doctoral, master<65>s and bachelor<6F>s programs, mainly for working adults across the United States.Strayer shareholders will own about 52 percent of the combined company, and Capella shareholders will own about 48 percent, the companies said on Monday.The combined for-profit education company will serve about 80,000 students.For-profit colleges such as Herndon, Virginia-based Strayer have struggled to grow student enrollments in recent years after tough U.S. rules on student debt forced them to tighten admission standards.Strayer, which had a market value of about $1.02 billion as of Friday, offers working adults programs in accounting, business administration, information technology and criminal justice. It had 45,509 students enrolled in its programs for the 2016 fall term.Minneapolis-based Capella Education had a market capitalization of about $764.5 million as of Friday. It provides doctoral, master<65>s and bachelor<6F>s programs, primarily for working adults.Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr and Sai Sachin RavikumarOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/caplla-edctn-m-a-strayer-educ/strayer-education-capella-to-merge-in-1-9-billion-deal-idINKBN1CZ10B'|'2017-10-30T07:15:00.000+02:00'
'2615fc438c171f627ae95e474e9326e89726e294'|'Taiwan president arrives in Hawaii despite Chinese objections'|'HONOLULU, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen landed in Honolulu on Saturday en route to the island<6E>s diplomatic allies among Pacific nations and is expected to visit a Pearl Harbor memorial, despite strong objections to the visit from China.China regularly calls Taiwan the most sensitive and important issue between it and the United States, and Beijing complains to Washington about transit stops by Taiwanese presidents. China considers Taiwan to be a wayward province.Tsai left on Saturday on a week-long trip to three Pacific island allies - Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands and the Marshall Islands - via Honolulu and the U.S. territory of Guam.Earlier this week, the U.S. State Department said Tsai<61>s transits through U.S. soil would be <20>private and unofficial<61> and were based on long-standing U.S. practise consistent with <20>our unofficial relations with Taiwan.<2E>It noted there was <20>no change to the U.S. one-China policy.<2E>While in Hawaii, Tsai is expected to visit the USS Arizona Memorial, which is built over the remains of the battleship sunk in Pearl Harbor in the Second World War.The memorial now forms a centerpiece of the World War Two Valor in the Pacific National Monument, a historic site administered by the National Park Service.China suspects Tsai wants to push for the formal independence of Taiwan, a red line for Beijing. Tsai says she wants to maintain peace with China but will defend Taiwan<61>s democracy and security.U.S. President Donald Trump is due to visit China in less than two weeks. He angered Beijing last December by taking a telephone call from Tsai shortly after he won the presidential election.The trip to the United States is Tsai<61>s second this year. In January she stopped over in Houston and San Francisco on her way to and from Latin America, visiting the headquarters of Twitter , which is blocked in China. (Reporting by Marco Garcia; Editing by Alistair Bell) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/china-taiwan-usa/taiwan-president-arrives-in-hawaii-despite-chinese-objections-idUSL2N1N401A'|'2017-10-29T04:03:00.000+02:00'
'9b6022582335b9300b8350c3d2efa46bde72d823'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX cracks 16,000 to record as energy, Canopy Growth rally'|'(Updates throughout with stock, index moves)* TSX hits record, up 68.21 points, or 0.43 percent, to 16,021.72* Nine of the TSX<53>s 10 main groups were up* Canopy Growth soars as much as 23 pctTORONTO, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index touched a fresh record on Monday, breaking above 16,000 points for the first time in the process, as energy shares rallied and cannabis producer Canopy Growth soared.Canopy Growth was up 13.6 percent to C$14.53 after surging as much as 22.9 percent on news that Corona beer maker Constellation Brands Inc bought a nearly 10 percent stake in the company.The overall healthcare group was on track for its biggest gain since June, rising 3.6 percent.Canadian Natural resources gave the index its biggest lift, advancing 1.8 percent to C$44.17, while Crescent Point Energy Corp gained 6.3 percent to C$10.03.U.S. crude prices neared eight-month highs, and benchmark Brent crude held above $60 a barrel. The overall energy sector rallied 1.4 percent.Precision Drilling Corp jumped 10.1 percent to C$3.59, extended Friday<61>s gains fueled by a narrower-than-expected quarterly loss.At 10:35 a.m. ET (1435 GMT), the Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index rose 70.62 points, or 0.44 percent, to 16,024.13, touching a fresh record.The benchmark index broke the last intraday record set in February on Friday and also closed that day at a record high.Of the index<65>s 10 main groups, nine were in positive territory.The financials group added 0.3 percent. Element Fleet Management Corp jumped 7.9 percent to C$10.2.The materials group, home to mining and other resource companies, advanced 1.0 percent. Goldcorp Inc rose 1.8 percent to C$17.12.On the downside, Saputo Inc, which gained on Friday after announcing it was buying Australian diary company Murray Goulburn, gave back some of those advances, falling 3.2 percent to C$45.98 as some analysts cut their ratings on the Canadian dairy producer.Consumer staples was the only sector that retreated, sliding 0.5 percent.Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the TSX by 197 to 47, for a 4.19-to-1 ratio on the upside. (Reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks/canada-stocks-tsx-cracks-16000-to-record-as-energy-canopy-growth-rally-idINL2N1N50UF'|'2017-10-30T12:01:00.000+02:00'
'81fde1e967893e0225fac2d5c0d9a41d7d71a316'|'ECB''s bond buys will be reduced gradually - Liikanen'|' 16 AM / Updated 13 minutes ago ECB''s bond buys will be reduced gradually - Liikanen Reuters Staff 1 Min Read HELSINKI (Reuters) - The European Central Bank should maintain the option to extend its 2.55 trillion euro (<28>2.25 trillion) bond purchase scheme but the buys will be wound down gradually over time, Governing Council member Erkki Liikanen said on Monday. A logo plate is seen at the entrance to the European Central Bank (ECB) headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach <20>Once inflation is consistent with the price stability target in a sustainable way ... we can gradually and carefully go lower,<2C> Liikanen told Finnish public radio YLE when asked if he expected the buys to continue indefinitely. Reporting by Jussi Rosendahl; Writing by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Robin Pomeroy'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ecb-policy-liikanen/ecbs-bond-buys-will-be-reduced-gradually-liikanen-idUKKBN1CZ177'|'2017-10-30T13:15:00.000+02:00'
'58286ab586af5d239dd29adbfdbae21f59b6a659'|'European shares open sideways as earning roll in, Spain rebounds'|'October 30, 2017 / 8:47 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago European shares open sideways as earning roll in, Spain rebounds Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Spanish equities opened 1.4 percent higher on Monday, reassured by weekend demonstrations for a unified Spain and a poll showing a lead for parties opposed to Catalan independence. FILE PHOTO - The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote Broader European shares traded sideways. The pan-European STOXX 600 index was down 0.1 percent but Spain''s IBEX .IBEX benchmark rose, led by Caixabank ( CABK.MC ) and Banco de Sabadell ( SABE.MC ), shares in which rose 4.2 percent and 3.6 percent respectively. Spain<69>s state-owned lender Bankia ( BKIA.MC ), which posted a 10 percent fall in third-quarter net profit as lending income remained pressured by low interest rates gained 1.1 percent. In London, shares in HSBC ( HSBA.L ) fell 0.6 percent despite reporting a five-fold jump in its quarterly profits. Glencore ( GLEN.L ) retreated 1.5 percent after raising its earnings guidance and a report saying it would cancel its secondary listing in Hong Kong due to lack of interest from investors. The FTSE 100 .FTSE slipped 0.2 percent at the start of a week that could see the Bank of England raise interest rates for first time since 2007. On the mergers and acquisitions front, Swiss drugmaker Novartis ( NOVN.S ) slipped 0.7 percent after offering to buy France<63>s Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA) ( AAAP.O ) in a $3.9 billion cash deal.'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-stocks/european-shares-open-sideways-as-earning-roll-in-spain-rebounds-idUKKBN1CZ0QR'|'2017-10-30T10:46:00.000+02:00'
'429238133926454706983afc3fc4443ca51c93ac'|'Apple touches record as brokerages bullish on iPhone X demand'|'October 30, 2017 / 4:33 PM / in 5 hours Apple touches record as brokerages bullish on iPhone X demand Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Several analysts downplayed concerns about Apple Inc<6E>s iPhone X production issues and were bullish on demand and sales, pushing the company<6E>s shares to a record on Monday. FILE PHOTO: An attendee checks out a new iPhone X during an Apple launch event in Cupertino, California, U.S. September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam The Cupertino-based company does not provide pre-order figures on iPhones, leaving investors and analysts in the dark in trying to track output through research with its suppliers, consumer surveys and other industry indicators. But positive commentary from analysts on Monday signaled strong demand for the pricey device with pre-orders starting this past Friday. Apple is scheduled to report quarterly results this Thursday. The company provides sales figures in its results. Since the launch of new iPhones on Sept.12, the stock had fallen 2.5 percent until last Thursday<61>s close. They rebounded on Friday after Apple said pre-orders for the 10th anniversary phone were <20>off the charts<74>. The stock climbed to $168.07 earlier in the session, adding nearly $26 billion to its market cap and inching it closer to becoming the first company with a trillion dollar valuation. Shares pared gains and were up 1.9 percent at $166.15 mid-day. Daniel Ives, a well-known sector analyst, raised his forecast on Monday for pre-orders by 10 million, and several other analysts talked up sales over the next year. In a note, Ives of research house GBH Insights, raised his pre-order demand expectations for the iPhone X to 50 million units from 40 million, calling the first stage of the iPhone X release a <20>stellar success<73>. <20>With the official launch of iPhone X in Apple retail stores slated for this Friday, Nov. 3, we anticipate very high demand globally with limited supply of iPhone X on hand,<2C> Ives said. Jeffrey Kvaal from brokerage Nomura Instinet, said Apple and U.S. wireless carriers<72> pushing out of delivery times for iPhone X orders to 5-6 weeks was longer than for previous phones and pointed to strong demand. Asked by Reuters whether production bottlenecks are causing shipment delays, Tigress Financial Partners analyst Ivan Feinseth responded: <20>No, there<72>s no bottlenecks. This is a company that manages the supply chain well.<2E> However, Drexel Hamilton analyst Brian White, cautioned that the longer wait times for consumers ordering phones may be as much due to the component supply issues, which led Apple to delay the launch of the premium phone until November. <20>Although we believe Apple is benefiting from strong demand from the iPhone X, the company is also struggling with supply constraints,<2C> White, who has a buy rating on Apple, said. <20>A sound debate around the key driver for the surging shipping lead times can be made by reasonable people. Thus we believe it was important for Apple to highlight the demand side of the equation for the iPhone X.<2E> Wall Street is bullish on Apple with 31 of 38 brokerages rating the stock <20>buy<75> or higher. Their median price target of $180 projects a market cap of nearly $930 billion for the iPhone maker. Reporting by Arjun Panchadar and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphone/apple-touches-record-as-brokerages-bullish-on-iphone-x-demand-idUSKBN1CZ21H'|'2017-10-30T18:33:00.000+02:00'
'47631a84ce4b928e62c41d807718fb186545a795'|'LyondellBasell approaches Brazil''s Braskem for takeover: WSJ'|'(Reuters) - LyondellBasell Industries NV ( LYB.N ) has approached Brazil<69>s Braskem SA ( BRKM5.SA ) ( BAK.N ) for a potential takeover, valuing the petrochemicals company at more than $10 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.General view of the refinery of U.S. chemicals group LyondellBasell in Berre, near Marseille, France, October 19, 2015. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier The talks are at an early stage and there is no guarantee of a deal, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. on.wsj.com/2zRqhHjLyondellBasell did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.Its shares rose 6 percent to $105.03 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.Reporting by Ahmed Farhatha in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-braskem-m-a-lyondell/lyondellbasell-approaches-brazils-braskem-for-takeover-wsj-idINKBN1CZ289'|'2017-10-30T14:51:00.000+02:00'
'9b31ffcc46dcbc270e9a70b319de6c9075fde12c'|'Nintendo lifts annual profit outlook on strong Switch console sales'|'October 30, 2017 / 7:13 AM / a few seconds ago Nintendo lifts annual profit outlook on strong Switch console sales Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese videogames maker Nintendo Co Ltd on Monday raised its full-year operating profit forecast as supply shortages on the Switch console began to ease. FILE PHOTO: A Nintendo Switch game console is displayed at an electronics store in Tokyo, Japan March 3, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo It forecast profit of 120 billion yen ($1.06 billion) for the year ending March, up from 65 billion yen estimated three months ago. That compared with a Thomson Reuters Starmine SmartEstimate of 133.60 billion yen drawn from the forecasts of 22 analysts. SmartEstimates give greater weight to recent estimates by the more consistently accurate analysts. Nintendo raised its Switch sales forecast for the financial year through March to 14 million units from 10 million units. Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Christopher Cushing'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-nintendo-results/nintendo-lifts-annual-profit-outlook-on-strong-switch-console-sales-idUKKBN1CZ0JK'|'2017-10-30T09:09:00.000+02:00'
'880c7f6cdd3c2ad4a73770b5319211d5360fffc5'|'Brazil''s Odebrecht says wants to keep Braskem as part of the group''s investments'|'SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil<69>s construction conglomerate Odebrecht SA said in a statement on Monday the company intends to <20>maintain Braskem as part of the group<75>s investments<74>.The corporate logo of the Odebrecht SA construction conglomerate is pictured at its headquarters in Sao Paulo, Brazil, April 17, 2017. REUTERS/Nacho Doce Odebrecht is the controlling shareholder of Braskem, with a 38.1 percent stake. <20>Odebrecht keeps working on alternatives to create value to Braskem and all its shareholders<72>, Odebrecht said. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Monday LyondellBasell Industries NV ( LYB.N ) has approached Brazil<69>s Braskem SA ( BRKM5.SA ) for a potential takeover.Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-braskem-m-a/brazils-odebrecht-says-wants-to-keep-braskem-as-part-of-the-groups-investments-idINKBN1CZ2JS'|'2017-10-30T17:56:00.000+02:00'
'd791c021a925e88687c44eb4c0d09db96faa71a9'|'India''s Lupin Q2 profit down 31 pct, but slightly above consensus'|'Oct 30 (Reuters) - Indian drugmaker Lupin Ltd on Monday said its second-quarter profit fell about 31 percent, but the results were slightly above estimates.The company''s profit came in at 4.55 billion rupees ($70.14 million) for the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with 6.62 billion rupees a year earlier. ( bit.ly/2A0RvvN )Analysts on average had expected a profit of 4.33 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters data. ($1 = 64.8700 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Jessica Kuruthukulangara in Bengaluru; Editing by Himani Sarkar) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/lupin-results/indias-lupin-q2-profit-down-31-pct-but-slightly-above-consensus-idINL4N1N53HC'|'2017-10-30T05:55:00.000+02:00'
'7a625a4de0f487ddacfeaa63e91686ddece2e62e'|'UK mortgage approvals edge lower, consumer lending robust'|'October 30, 2017 / 9:35 AM / Updated 7 hours ago UK mortgage approvals edge lower, consumer lending robust Reuters Staff 3 Min Read LONDON, (Reuters) - Britain<69>s housing market and consumer economy kept most of their momentum last month, lending figures from the Bank of England showed on Monday, leaving the central bank on track to raise interest rates for the first time in more than a decade on Thursday. A crane is seen above some high rise building construction works at Lewisham, in London, Britain October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde The number of mortgages approved for house purchase fell to a three-month low in September at 66,232 from an upwardly revised 67,232 in August, slightly above economists<74> average forecast for it to slip to 66,050 in a Reuters poll. The growth rate in unsecured consumer lending nudged down to 9.9 percent on a year-on-year basis in September from 10.0 percent in August, matching July<6C>s growth. In cash terms, net consumer lending rose by 1.606 billion pounds last month, a fraction above the highest forecast in a Reuters poll. Last month the BoE said British lenders needed to hold an extra 10 billion pounds of capital to guard against consumer loans going sour, as it was concerned that banks had overestimated the creditworthiness of their borrowers. Government data on Friday showed that personal insolvencies rose to a five-year high in the third quarter. Official data last week showed an unexpected pick-up in gross domestic product growth to a quarterly rate of 0.4 percent in the third quarter - still well below its long-run trend, but an improvement after the weakest first half since 2012. Moreover, with inflation at a five-year high of 3.0 percent and unemployment at its lowest in more than 40 years, the BoE looks on track to raise interest rates on Thursday for the first time since 2007, reversing a rate cut made in August 2016. The initial impact of raising rates back to 0.5 percent - their level for seven years until August 2016<31>s rate cut - may be muted for most Britons. Less than 30 percent of households have mortgages, and 60 percent of these are fixed-rate, compared with just 30 percent 15 years ago. For the average borrower with a variable rate mortgage, interest payments will rise by 180 pounds ($237) a year if rates return to 0.5 percent, according to mortgage lender Nationwide. Mortgage lending, which lags behind approvals, rose by 3.848 billion pounds in September and is 3.2 percent higher on the year. Mortgage and consumer lending combined is up 4.0 percent. Britain<69>s housing market has slowed since June 2016<31>s vote to leave the European Union, especially in London and neighbouring parts of England. Reporting by David Milliken and Andrew MacAskill'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-lending/uk-mortgage-approvals-edge-lower-consumer-lending-robust-idUKKBN1CZ0V1'|'2017-10-30T11:43:00.000+02:00'
'72b1bc363ded6cabf019d7a9911108ce3d0bed6d'|'Bank of England set for step into unknown with first rate hike since 2007'|'October 30, 2017 / 3:21 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Bank of England set for step into unknown with first rate hike since 2007 David Milliken 5 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England looks set to step into the unknown on Thursday, when it is expected to raise interest rates for the first time since 2007 at a time when growth appears weaker than before any other rate rise of the past 20 years. People walk past the Bank of England in London, Britain, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay Having cut rates to a record low 0.25 percent in August 2016 after Britons voted to leave the European Union, the Bank is now correcting course and falling in line with the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, which are either raising rates or scaling back stimulus. Whereas the United States and the euro zone are enjoying robust growth, however, Britain<69>s economy has grown at its slowest pace in more than four years over the past 12 months. Quarterly growth of 0.4 percent offers the weakest backdrop to any rate rise since the Bank became independent in 1997. True, inflation is at a five-year high of 3.0 percent, a full percentage point above the Bank<6E>s target, but that is mainly because the pound is an average 11 percent weaker against the currencies of Britain<69>s main trading partners since the Brexit vote. The Bank has often overlooked past spikes in inflation if they were caused by currency fluctuations that were deemed to be temporary. Inflation is set to fall this time too, but only slowly, as the Bank judges domestic inflation pressures are pending. Partly due to stagnant productivity since the 2008 financial crisis - and partly due to concerns about the effect of Brexit on immigration, trade and investment - BoE Governor Mark Carney thinks the economy cannot grow as fast as it has in the past without generating excess inflation. <20>We<57>re in a new paradigm,<2C> says George Buckley, an economist at Nomura who was one of the first to sense a change at the central bank earlier this year, when most economists were saying they did not expect rates to rise until 2019. Raising rates now would be the biggest call on monetary policy Carney has made as governor, and may shape his legacy. Carney has faced criticism from economists who say his past guidance on monetary policy has been unhelpful, and from Brexit supporters who say he is too focused on the risks of leaving the EU. But until recently his broad approach to interest rates has been fairly uncontroversial. For most BoE watchers, the likelihood of a rate rise only became clear in September, when minutes of the nine-member Monetary Policy Committee<65>s meeting that month showed underlying price pressures were no longer a minority concern. Two policymakers voted for a rate rise, and a majority of the others said they expected to do so <20>over the coming months<68>. RAISING RATES <20>MAD<41> Almost all economists polled by Reuters last week expect the Bank to raise interest rates to 0.5 percent from 0.25 percent on Thursday. Most do not expect another one next year and 70 percent said even one rate rise would be a mistake. The latter view is common in markets, too. <20>Personally, I think it would be mad,<2C> Jim McCaughan, chief executive of Principal Global Investors, which manages $430 billion of assets, told Reuters earlier this month. <20>You<6F>d be tightening at a time of economic softness to defend against a weakness in sterling that you need (to boost exports).<2E> The Bank says its policy decisions are not driven by exchange rates. When Carney gives his news conference at 1230 GMT on Thursday, he is likely to focus on a 42-year low in unemployment and how it heralds more upward pressure on wages and inflation. The Bank has been here before, however. Unemployment has repeatedly fallen further than the BoE forecast in recent years, while wage growth has remained stubbornly around 2 percent, half the 4 percent rate associated with pre-crisis rate rises. Investors will be keen 
'b5b9a3f63c4d418cd9b57cd86619320a7faaca36'|'U.S. Fed approves bid by First Horizon to buy Capital Bank'|'WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve announced on Monday it had approved a bid by First Horizon National Corporation ( FHN.N ) to acquire Capital Bank Financial Corp ( CBF.O ) of Charlotte, as the regional bank looks to expand its presence in the U.S. southeast.The $2.2 billion deal, first announced in May, also allows First Horizon of Memphis to indirectly acquire Capital Bank<6E>s subsidiary, Capital Bank Corp of Raleigh.The Federal Reserve Board signed off on the acquisition in a unanimous 4-0 vote.Reporting by Pete Schroeder; Editing by Chris Reese '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-first-horizon/u-s-fed-approves-bid-by-first-horizon-to-buy-capital-bank-idINKBN1CZ2KF'|'2017-10-30T18:06:00.000+02:00'
'de5ab54d86ec4e60f6d26285ed176a02456900c6'|'Obamacare benchmark premiums up 37 pct in 2018 after subsidy cut-off'|'NEW YORK, Oct 30 (Reuters) - The average monthly premium for benchmark Obamacare insurance plans will surge around 37 percent in 2018, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said on Monday, fueled by the Trump administration<6F>s suspension of billions of dollars in subsidy payments to health insurers.The average monthly premium for the second-lowest cost <20>silver<65> plan for a 27-year-old will rise to $411 a month in 2018 from $300 a month this year, before tax credits are applied.Federal tax credits that help individuals buy coverage will also rise sharply, according to a report from the health department<6E>s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.As a result, people eligible for tax credits based on their income may end up paying less per month for insurance, while middle-class Americans who do not qualify for the credits will face much higher prices.<2E>This data demonstrates just how rapidly Obamacare<72>s exchanges are deteriorating with sky-rocketing premiums year after year, more than half of Americans with no more than two insurers to choose from, and the taxpayer burden exploding,<2C> HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley said.The agency said the average advance premium tax credit paid to current enrollees in 2018 will be $555, up 45 percent from 2017, when it paid $382. That is more than double the $259 in tax credits the average enrollee received in 2014.But those ineligible for the tax credits will face sharply higher costs.Earlier this month the Trump administration cut off subsidies that insurers use to reduce copays and other out-of-pocket costs for low-income Americans under former President Barack Obama<6D>s signature healthcare law.President Donald Trump has vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare, though fellow Republicans in Congress have so far failed to agree on a replacement. The administration has since taken steps to undermine the law, moves that are expected to cut into enrollment for 2018.Insurers must still provide discounts on out-of-pocket costs to eligible consumers enrolled in the most popular <20>silver<65> plans, even without the government subsidies. To recoup those costs, insurers raised premiums on those plans.Premiums for the benchmark plans rose more modestly after the plans first went on sale in 2013. But they jumped 24 percent on average for 2017 after insurers found they were covering patients who were sicker than anticipated.The <20>silver<65> plan is in the bottom half in terms of how much of an individual<61>s health costs are covered, between <20>bronze<7A> and <20>gold.<2E> There are also <20>platinum<75> plans on the federal Healthcare.gov website.In addition, the percentage of enrollees who could choose a plan costing less than $75 per month in premiums rose to 80 percent for 2018, compared with 71 percent this year, HHS said.Health insurers such as UnitedHealth Group Inc, Aetna Inc and Humana Inc exited most of the states where they sold Obamacare plans earlier this year, citing issues including uncertainty due to repeal efforts and the subsidy payments. National players remaining in the market include Anthem Inc, Molina Healthcare and Cigna Inc.As a result, 51 percent of U.S. counties have only one insurer selling Obamacare plans in 2018. Enrollment in the individual insurance markets begins on Nov. 1 (Reporting by Michael Erman; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Dan Grebler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-obamacare-premiums/obamacare-benchmark-premiums-up-37-pct-in-2018-after-subsidy-cut-off-idINL2N1N50WS'|'2017-10-30T15:26:00.000+02:00'
'2b32535c7a85f8d135eb51e12705d6ad92de8228'|'Euro zone banks can cope with low rates for years, ECB paper says'|'Reuters TV United States October 30, 2017 / 12:09 PM / in a few seconds Euro zone banks can cope with low rates for years, ECB paper says Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Bank profits should be able to withstand ultra low euro zone interest rates for up to a decade, a research paper published by the European Central Bank said on Monday, just days after policymakers put off any rate rise. Some banks have said that maintaining their profitability while interest rates are so low is impossible, making the ECB<43>s efforts to stimulate economic activity self defeating as weaker banks will not to transmit cheap money to the real economy. <20>Although keeping interest rates low-for-long might have negative consequences on bank profitability, substantial adverse effects only materialize after a relatively long period of time and tend to be counterbalanced by improvements in macroeconomic conditions associated with low interest rates,<2C> the paper said. The euro zone economy is expanding for the 18th straight quarter, its best run since the global financial crisis, with much of the growth fueled by the ECB<43>s cheap cash, including a deposit rate which has been negative since 2014. If the macroeconomic outlook remained unchanged, the negative impact on bank profitability could be significant within five years, but economic expansion pushes out this impact, the researchers said in a paper that does not necessarily represent the ECB<43>s opinion. <20>For the first five years the change in expected GDP more than offsets the negative impact on profitability linked to the low-for-long,<2C> the researchers said about the more optimistic scenario. <20>It would then take about ten years to reduce the profitability of the median bank by 25 percent.<2E> Return on equity at Europe<70>s biggest banks supervised by the ECB rose to 7.10 percent in the second quarter, from 5.36 percent a year earlier, ECB data showed earlier. The ECB has promised to keep rates at their current level until well after it concludes asset buys and markets now see the first rate hike in late 2019, at the earliest. Supporting its argument, the paper noted that bank equity prices have increased after all major ECB easing announcements, suggesting improved expectations and a positive impact on their credit risk. For more on the research, click on: here Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-policy-research/euro-zone-banks-can-cope-with-low-rates-for-years-ecb-paper-says-idUKKBN1CZ1D4'|'2017-10-30T14:04:00.000+02:00'
'165090eafebbfad9c748fc5c7150887e2245414c'|'Israeli flavour firm Frutarom to buy remaining 81 pct of Enzymotec'|'TEL AVIV, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Israeli flavour and fine ingredients company Frutarom Industries said on Sunday it agreed to acquire the 81 percent of special nutrition firm Enzymotec it doesn<73>t already own for $11.9 a share, or about $168 million.Frutarom had acquired in prior transactions 19 percent of Enzymotec for $42 million, reflecting an average share price of $9.6 and announced its intention to make a tender offer for Enzymotec shares.Following negotiations with Enzymotec<65>s board of directors the sides agreed upon a full merger. Enzymotec will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Frutarom and be delisted from trading.Frutarom expects the deal, be financed through bank debt and/or debt from a financial institution, to close by early in the first quarter of 2018.Enzymotec develops nutritional ingredients and medical foods and its technologies enable extraction of lipids from natural sources. It has 235 employees, mainly in Israel and the United States, and its sales in the year to June 2017 were $47 million.Enzymotec<65>s nutrition segment will contribute to the expansion of Frutarom<6F>s portfolio of products in the areas of pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements, foods for infants and elderly clinical nutrition, Frutarom chief executive Ori Yehudai said. (Reporting by Tova Cohen)Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/enzymotec-frutarom-inds-ma/israeli-flavour-firm-frutarom-to-buy-remaining-81-pct-of-enzymotec-idINL8N1N405I'|'2017-10-29T05:13:00.000+02:00'
'67499a83207f7d1e040fa9c1cbffeeaeecdf7e7a'|'Italian bank inquiry points to improper behaviour, commission''s chairman tells paper'|'October 29, 2017 / 2:10 PM / Updated 10 hours ago Italian bank inquiry points to improper behaviour, commission''s chairman tells paper Reuters Staff 3 Min Read MILAN (Reuters) - A new investigation of Italian banking scandals by a parliamentary commission has already revealed some improper behaviour, the commission<6F>s chairman, Pier Ferdinando Casini, told the newspaper La Repubblica in an interview. FILE PHOTO: Pier Ferdinando Casini speaks during a debate in the upper house of parliament in Rome September 14, 2011. REUTERS/Max Rossi The cross-party commission, comprising 40 parliamentarians, was set up to look into the scandals and crises that have rocked Italian banks in recent years. <20>Only the commission as a whole will be able to make a final judgement, but indications of improper behaviour have certainly been found,<2C> Casini said in the interview published on Sunday. Casini said the initial findings pointed to a <20>network of complicity<74> that resulted in offers of employment and consultancy jobs. <20>It<49>s certainly not a good thing seeing Bank of Italy directors quickly take up top positions at the banks that were the target of inquiries,<2C> Casini said. <20>If this had happened to a politician, it would certainly have triggered a chorus of deserved criticism.<2E> The cross-party commission has the same investigative powers as the magistrature, although it has little time to reach conclusions before the legislature ends. The role of the Bank of Italy and market watchdog Consob, which share supervision of the sector, is expected to come under scrutiny. The government has had to spend more than 20 billion euros ($23.22 billion) this year to prop up the sector, injecting 5.4 billion euros to salvage Italy<6C>s fourth-biggest bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena ( BMPS.MI ), and offering billions of euros in guarantees as it wound down two major banks in the Veneto region. Four other, smaller banks were wound down in 2015, hitting thousands of small savers. Critics have accused both the Bank of Italy and Consob of failing in their oversight duties - allegations both bodies have rejected. Casini said, however, that the initial findings also showed how many of the judiciary investigations had been triggered by inspections launched by the Bank of Italy itself. <20>It<49>s a mix bag of positives and negatives. We need to understand which had dominated,<2C> he said. Asked about a risk that the inquiry could serve only as electoral propaganda before a forthcoming election, Casini said he had voiced the same concerns when the commission was set up but now would seek to guarantee that it does not become <20>political battleground<6E>. Reporting by Agnieszka Flak'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-banks-italy-inquiry/italian-bank-inquiry-points-to-improper-behaviour-commissions-chairman-tells-paper-idUKKBN1CY0J7'|'2017-10-29T16:09:00.000+02:00'
'7ad43988d093dde0de528b11b022b4cfb0853dc9'|'China automaker BYD sees 2017 profit down as much as 20 pct'|'October 29, 2017 / 11:45 AM / Updated 10 hours ago China automaker BYD sees 2017 profit down as much as 20 pct Reuters Staff 2 Min Read SHANGHAI, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Chinese automaker BYD Co Ltd , backed by Warren Buffett<74>s Berkshire Hathaway Inc, said on Sunday that its annual profit would likely fall by as much as a fifth amid rising competition in the hybrid and electric car markets. China has set strict targets for carmakers to shift to so-called new-energy vehicles (NEVs), triggering a rush of companies looking to tap into potential demand for less-polluting cars in the world<6C>s biggest auto market. BYD, which has invested heavily in hybrid and electric vehicles, forecast full-year net profit would fall by between 15.1 percent to 20 percent to a range of 4.04 billion yuan ($607.54 million) to 4.29 billion yuan, it said in filings on the Hong Kong and Shenzhen stock exchanges. Net profit in 2016 rose 80 percent to 5 billion yuan. China has signalled a long-term aim to shift towards new-energy vehicles, but has also been phasing out subsidies for the market, raising concerns from some automakers that consumer demand alone will not be enough to drive sales. China<6E>s overall car market has also slowed this year after a tax break for smaller cars was cut back. BYD said January-September net profit fell 23.8 percent to 2.79 billion yuan. In August it had forecast a drop of roughly 20 percent to 25 percent. Third-quarter net profit fell 23.9 percent from a year earlier to 1.07 billion yuan. Sales of new-energy vehicles in the wider China market in January-September totalled 398,000, up 37.7 percent from 2016, industry data showed. The country is on track to meet a sales target of 700,000 NEVs this year. $1 = 6.6498 Chinese yuan renminbi Reporting by Adam Jourdan in SHANGHAI and Zhang Min in BEIJING; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/byd-results/china-automaker-byd-sees-2017-profit-down-as-much-as-20-pct-idUSL4N1N21P5'|'2017-10-29T13:41:00.000+02:00'
'72bf2e88db0ace6d0e3436b5b4ad1093eb36b9b4'|'MIDEAST STOCKS - Factors to watch - October 29'|'DUBAI, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Here are some factors that may affect Middle East stock markets on Sunday. Reuters has not verified the press reports and does not vouch for their accuracy.INTERNATIONAL/REGIONAL * GLOBAL MARKETS-Wall Street higher on earnings results; euro down after Catalonia vote, ECB news* MIDEAST STOCKS-Gulf markets flat on steady oil, banks weigh on Abu Dhabi* Oil up 2 pct, Brent hits $60/bbl on support for extending curbs* PRECIOUS-Gold rises on safe-haven appeal after Catalonia declares independence* OPEC<45>s head says Saudi, Russia statements <20>clear fog<6F> before Nov. 30 meeting* Islamic State shores up last stronghold on Syria-Iraq border* Syrian government to blame for April sarin attack -UN report* No role for Assad in Syria<69>s future - Tillerson* Iraqi Kurdistan leader Barzani will hand over presidential powers on Nov. 1* Iraq orders truce with Kurds to allow peaceful deployment at border crossings* Iraq<61>s SOMO receives oil in tank at Turkey<65>s Ceyhan port* Iraqi leader visits Iran as Tehran seeks to drive wedge with Washington* MEDIA-Iran expects to sign more than $20 bln of energy contracts in 2018 - FT* Israel willing to resort to military action to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons -minister* Hamas says its security chief wounded in Israeli attack in Gaza* Jordan<61>s Arab Bank Group 9-month net profit drops 2.8 percent* Lebanon<6F>s Bank Audi says net profit to end-Q3 up 8 pct* Tunisia will ask U.S. for a $500 million loan guarantee -senior government officialEGYPT * Egypt announces reshuffle in top security ranks* Egypt kills 13 militants in raid on western desert farm* Egypt election in view, Sisi supporters fire up campaign for mandateSAUDI ARABIA * Q&A/TEXT-Crown Prince announces Saudi mega-city listing, discusses Qatar rift, Yemen war* Saudi Arabia ready to extend oil output cut deal -Crown Prince* NYSE not given up on Aramco IPO, as Saudi bourse eyes exclusive role* BlackRock, Blackstone to open offices in Saudi Arabia-Crown Prince* New Saudi mega-city is prince<63>s desert dream* Saudi may issue bonds more frequently as investor base grows* Saudi miner Ma<4D>aden eyes foreign assets in bid to be global player* EXCLUSIVE-New Saudi mega-city will be listed publicly, crown prince says* Saudi fund agrees plan to invest in Virgin space ventures* MEDIA-Saudi finmin says international Aramco listing only one option for privatisation - FT* EXCLUSIVE-Saudi Aramco IPO on track for 2018 - Saudi crown prince* TPG in talks to bring Cirque du Soleil to Saudi-Bonderman* Virgin<69>s Branson says he accepts Saudi city board role* Saudi Telecom Co third profit rises 18 percent* UBS wants more bankers to serve the wealthy in Middle East, Saudi Arabia* Saudi investment ambitions impress but foreign money may be slow to come* Saudi exchange rate must be stable until economy diversified - cenbank* Saudi private sector to grow, crypto-currencies need watching* ABB aims to win Saudi projects after Q3 orders rise strongly* Saudi Arabia to give foreign investors full access to parallel stock market* Russia<69>s RDIF to participate in new Saudi city project-fundUNITED ARAB EMIRATES * UAE<41>s ADNOC sets December oil allocations in line with global deal* Emirates and flydubai could operate from single terminal at Dubai airportQATAR * Qatar pledges on migrant workers<72> rights must be backed by action - rights groups* INTERVIEW-Qatar bourse aims for futures trading, short-selling by end-2018* Qatar, Russia sign agreements on air defence, suppliesBAHRAIN * Bomb attack kills one Bahraini policeman, wounds eight* MEDIA-Mumtalakat eyes investment in Masayoshi Son<6F>s $100 billion SoftBank Vision Fund - The National* Bahrain central bank says banks need breathing space over global regulations (Compiled by Dubai newsroom) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mideast-factors/mideast-stocks-factors-to-watch-october-29-idINL8N1N401F'|'2017-10-29T01:53:00.000+03:00'
'651266283c4b13b7919bc8e9c842089092379eba'|'Chevron drops decision to leave Bangladesh'|'DHAKA (Reuters) - The U.S. oil company Chevron ( CVX.N ) will not sell three subsidiaries and leave Bangladesh as planned, Chevron said on Sunday.FILE PHOTO: A Chevron gas station sign is shown in Cardiff, California, in this January 25, 2016 photo. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo Chevron had said in April it would sell to China<6E>s Himalaya Energy Co. the wholly owned subsidiaries that operate three gas fields, which together account for 58 percent of Bangladesh<73>s gas production.Chevron <20>will not be proceeding with an agreement to sell the shares of its wholly owned indirect subsidiaries,<2C> Cameron Van Ast, Chevron<6F>s external affairs advisor for Asia and the Pacific, said in a statement sent to Reuters on Sunday.<2E>Chevron has decided to retain these assets and will continue to work with our partners Petrobangla and the government of Bangladesh to provide reliable and affordable energy to the nation,<2C> the statement said.Chevron did not give a reason for reversing its decision.Rather than leaving, Chevron will invest $400 million at Bibiyana, the country<72>s largest gas field, said Nasrul Hamid, Bangladesh<73>s junior minister for power, energy and mineral resources. Bibiyana produces 1,250 million cubic feet of gas a day.Chevron formally conveyed its intention to stay in Bangladesh in a letter last week, Hamid said.Reporting By Serajul Quadir, editing by Larry King '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-bangladesh-chevron/chevron-drops-decision-to-leave-bangladesh-idINKBN1CY0FX'|'2017-10-30T15:06:00.000+02:00'
'eb88968d93389c468bdaff0b94db95400792eb9b'|'Chile''s Antofagasta moves to renewable energy - CEO'|'October 30, 2017 / 6:09 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago Chile''s Antofagasta moves to renewable energy - CEO Dave Sherwood , Fabian Cambero 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Chilean mining company Antofagasta ( ANTO.L ) is renegotiating its long-term energy contracts in a shift toward renewables as prices for wind and solar plummet in the world<6C>s top copper producer, the company<6E>s chief executive told Reuters. In an interview marking the start of the London Metal Exchange Week, an annual event for the mining and metals industry, Ivan Arriagada said some of Antofagasta<74>s energy contracts will not expire for another three to five years but allow for renegotiation if market conditions change. Until 2014, mines in Chile had been largely reliant on coal and gas. But a flurry of new renewable energy projects that have taken advantage of the country<72>s abundant wind and sunshine have brought down prices and could mean major cost savings for the copper industry. Arriagada said the company is seeking to duplicate its success at Antofagasta<74>s top-producing Los Pelambres mine in northern Chile, which relies on non-conventional renewable sources for nearly 45 percent of its energy. The company<6E>s remaining mines in northern Chile - Centinela, Antucoya and Zaldivar - use energy from coal-fired plants, but Arriagada said they were negotiating a move towards renewables. <20>Going forward, we will prefer non-conventional renewable sources, and it wouldn<64>t surprise me if we surpassed 50 percent, though we don<6F>t have a specific goal,<2C> he said. Arriagada said rising copper prices would likely smooth labour contract negotiations in Chile in 2018, despite fears that reforms that strengthened the hand of labour under center-left President Michelle Bachelet would lead to more strikes. <20>The legislation adds complexity, but with market conditions a bit more favourable, I don<6F>t see a systematic risk in the next year, and I think it will depend more on labour relations at each individual company,<2C> he said. Chile<6C>s National Mining Society (Sonami) last week warned that some 30 pending negotiations over expiring workers<72> contracts could hurt output if strikes hit the sector. Outside Chile, Arriagada said its Twin Metals unit in the United States was preparing an environmental impact assessment for a proposed underground copper-nickel mine in Minnesota. But the project hinges on resolution of a legal dispute with the government, which under former U.S. President Barack Obama refused to renew the company<6E>s mineral leases in 2016 to protect a wilderness area from possible pollution. Arriagada said U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s election has created a <20>more favourable climate for the development of the project.<2E> But the dispute would still need to be settled in court, he said, adding: <20>We<57>ll keep defending our right to develop the mine.<2E> Reporting by Dave Sherwood and Fabian Cambero; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-antofagasta-chile/chiles-antofagasta-moves-to-renewable-energy-ceo-idUKKBN1CZ0FD'|'2017-10-30T08:08:00.000+02:00'
'873d2f51d9bd0570c331b83de22a02781de8956b'|'How Deliveroo''s ''dark kitchens'' are catering from car parks - Business - The Guardian'|'A tatty car park under a railway line is squeezed between a busy road, an industrial site and a semi-derelict pub covered in graffiti. It<49>s one of the grittiest parts of east London and probably the last place you would imagine some of the trendiest eateries in the country to be preparing meals.But the grimy spot is just a short moped ride from the gleaming office towers of Canary Wharf and upmarket docklands apartments, and is therefore the perfect location for the latest idea from Deliveroo , the food courier service. It is setting up dozens of <20>dark kitchens<6E> in prefabricated structures for restaurants that want to expand their businesses without opening expensive high street premises.Ten metal boxes of a similar size to a shipping container are on this site in Blackwall. They are fitted with industrial kitchen equipment, and two or three chefs and kitchen porters are at work in each, preparing food for restaurants including the Thai chain Busaba Eathai, the US-style MeatLiquor diners, the Franco Manca pizza parlours and Motu, an Indian food specialist set up by the family behind Mayfair<69>s Michelin-starred Gymkhana .The boxes have no windows and many of the chefs work with the doors open, through which they can be seen stirring huge pans or flipping burgers. Outside there are piles of spare equipment, mops in buckets, gas cylinders for the stoves and large cans of cooking oil.Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Deliveroo rider sets off from a Roobox dark kitchen in Hove, Sussex. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty ImagesThis is one of the biggest of 11 sites currently operated by Deliveroo that are home to 66 dark kitchens. Five sites use the metal structures, known as Rooboxes or Deliveroo Editions, while others are in adapted buildings. The majority are in London, but there are others in Leeds, Reading and Hove, tucked away in car parks or on industrial estates. All are close to residential and office areas filled with customers hungry for upmarket takeaways.The locations may be unglamorous, but one dark kitchen in Southwark, south London, is turning out rotisserie chicken for the pricey Notting Hill-based specialist Cocotte. There are also outposts for Gourmet Burger Kitchen, the trendy pizza joint Crust Bros and the Soho sushi bar Yoobi.Deliveroo has big ambitions for its Rooboxes, with plans to open more in London<6F>s Swiss Cottage, Nottingham and Cambridge soon, and Manchester and Birmingham lined up for more boxes next year. Deliveroo finds and equips the locations, then rents them out to the restaurants, which employ and train the kitchen staff.Two chefs tell the Guardian that working in the metal boxes is either hot or cold, depending on the weather and whether they are cooking or prepping. In one kitchen, there is only a small fan heater for cold days. Another houses a pizza oven that takes up more than a third of the space and makes it extremely hot.Javed Akhtar, the operations director of Franco Manca, says the company is testing out a Roobox at the Blackwall site so diners and chefs at its busy nearby restaurant can avoid being troubled by takeaway delivery drivers. Franco Manca chefs get extra money for working in the box, he says, because <20>there is no interaction with front-of-house staff<66>. It also encourages chefs who may not be keen to work in a metal box in a car park.But more chefs are likely to soon be swapping central locations for less salubrious surroundings.Facebook Twitter Pinterest Deliveroo couriers pick up meals for delivery from a restaurant. Photograph: Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty ImagesDeliveroo<6F>s sales soared sevenfold to <20>128.6m last year as it expanded its operations in the UK and overseas, to 25,000 restaurants in more than 140 cities and 12 countries. The food delivery market, which includes the Deliveroo rivals JustEat and UberEats as well as traditional takeaways, is expected to increase by 10% a year to <20>53bn by 2020, according to the market analyst NPD.But it i
'1929bda5fdc3b4d6abaf2306cc5fb7a6176160fb'|'UPDATE 1-Mexico miner Penoles'' profit jumps on lower tax bill'|'October 27, 2017 / 9:11 PM / Updated 7 hours ago UPDATE 1-Mexico miner Penoles'' profit jumps on lower tax bill Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (New throughout, adds details on miner<65>s performance, share price) MEXICO CITY, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Mexican miner Penoles on Friday reported a third-quarter profit of 2.78 billion pesos ($153 million), up nearly 50 percent from the same quarter last year, though revenue fell on mixed prices for metals. Penoles said revenue for the quarter fell about 3 percent to 20.06 billion pesos. The company, which runs the world<6C>s largest primary silver producer, Fresnillo, attributed the drop in revenue to the appreciation of the peso and lower prices for precious metals. That was partially offset by a spike in sales of silver and better prices for industrial metals. The company said it faced a lower tax bill during the quarter, helping its profitability. Shares in the company closed up 1.52 percent at 441.65 pesos per share before Penoles reported. $1 = 18.1785 at end-September Reporting by Mexico City Newsroom; Editing by David Gregorio '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/penoles-results/update-1-mexico-miner-penoles-profit-jumps-on-lower-tax-bill-idUSL2N1N223F'|'2017-10-28T00:09:00.000+03:00'
'b8d7971a9252c8f437d02e2abf4d0d52b02bfa22'|'Former Ford Germany chief likely to head VDA auto lobby - report'|'October 29, 2017 / 5:55 PM / Updated 6 hours ago Former Ford Germany chief likely to head VDA auto lobby - report Reuters Staff 1 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The former chief of Ford-Werke GmbH, Bernhard Mattes, is the favourite to head Germany<6E>s VDA auto industry lobby when the current chief<65>s contract expires next year, a newspaper reported on Sunday. FILE PHOTO - Head of Ford Germany Bernhard Mattes (R) gestures as German Chancellor Angela Merkel makes an opening tour of the Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt, Germany September 17, 2015. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski Mattes, currently president of AmCham Germany, is regarded highly because he is viewed as independent of the big three German automakers - Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ), BMW ( BMWG.DE ), and Daimler ( DAIGn.DE ), the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung reported. VDA<44>s current president Matthias Wissmann, 68, has said he would leave the association when his contract expires in early summer 2018, a spokesman confirmed. He wouldn<64>t comment on a possible successor. AmCham Germany wasn<73>t immediately available for comment when contacted by phone and email after business hours. Reporting by Tom Sims; Editing by Adrian Croft'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-german-autos-vda/former-ford-germany-chief-likely-to-head-vda-auto-lobby-report-idUKKBN1CY0QQ'|'2017-10-29T19:55:00.000+02:00'
'2b57ab612c3c878d39b7b2e64be3823758f96f82'|'Japan''s SoftBank calling off talks to merge Sprint, T-Mobile - Nikkei'|'October 30, 2017 / 5:30 PM / Updated 8 minutes ago Japan''s SoftBank doubts merger of Sprint with T-Mobile: source Greg Roumeliotis 4 Min Read (Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp<72>s ( 9984.T ) board of directors is having doubts about the merger it has been negotiating between its U.S. wireless subsidiary Sprint Corp ( S.N ) and T-Mobile US Inc ( TMUS.O ), due to fears of losing control of a combined entity,   matter told Reuters on Monday. Smartphones with the logos of T-Mobile and Sprint are seen in front of a Soft Bank logo in this illustration taken September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustrations The doubts could derail SoftBank<6E>s plan, discussed on and off for more than six months, to reshape the U.S. wireless sector by merging the two companies into a single carrier with more than 130 million U.S. subscribers, behind Verizon Communications Inc ( VZ.N ) and AT&T Inc ( T.N ). It would be the second time such a deal has failed. Sprint and T-Mobile came close to announcing a merger in 2014 but called it off at the last minute due to regulatory concerns. Sprint shares fell as much as 13 percent on Monday, but pared losses and were down 7 percent in late-afternoon trading. T-Mobile shares were down 4.5 percent. Several SoftBank directors urged the Japanese company<6E>s Chief Executive Masayoshi Son on Friday to reconsider the merger of Sprint and T-Mobile because the terms being discussed would result in SoftBank losing control of one of its largest assets, the source told Reuters. Sprint, T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom and SoftBank declined to comment. While Son has negotiated with T-Mobile<6C>s majority owner, Germany<6E>s Deutsche Telekom AG ( DTEGn.DE ), on the basis that SoftBank and other Sprint shareholders would own around 40 percent of the combined company, he now shares the concerns of the SoftBank directors questioning the benefits of such an ownership arrangement, the source said. As of Monday, T-Mobile was trying to keep talks alive, according to separate sources familiar with the matter. Its parent Deutsche Telekom would like to reach an agreement with Sprint on a deal, but it insists on governance control and the right to consolidate the combined company, the sources said. Earlier on Monday, Nikkei reported that SoftBank was expected to approach Deutsche Telekom as early as Tuesday to propose ending the merger negotiations. The Reuters source could not confirm this, and sources close to T-Mobile said they were unaware of any such decision by SoftBank. The Wall Street Journal also reported on Monday that Sprint had called the merger talks off and would make a significant investment in its network instead. The due diligence between T-Mobile and Sprint was almost complete and the focus had shifted to working out a business plan for the combined company as well as an integration strategy, sources had told Reuters last week. Even so, it was not clear that U.S. regulators would clear a deal between the two carriers. Sprint<6E>s junk bonds were among the hardest hit in Monday afternoon trading after the Nikkei reported the deal was on shaky ground, IFR reported. Analysts have expected consolidation in the U.S. wireless industry to ease pricing pressure in the market, which could benefit AT&T and Verizon, who have lost share to their smaller rivals. Cable companies Comcast Corp ( CMCSA.O ) and Charter Communications Inc ( CHTR.O ) are also entering the market with wireless service on Verizon<6F>s airwaves. <20>With no merger of Sprint and T-Mobile, as well as the entrance of Comcast and Charter into wireless, we expect Verizon to have a difficult run going forward,<2C> said Philip Cusick, an analyst at JPMorgan, in a research note. <20>Sprint as well could struggle to maintain positive subscriber momentum as cable enters, making its balance sheet look unsustainable.<2E> Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Additional reporting by Liana B. Baker in San Francisco, Pamela Barbaglia in London and Anjali Athavaley in New York; 
'289b685774d4b67ab77476c51ec1011e76f1c04c'|'Two banks drop McKinsey in fallout from South Africa scandal'|'Reuters TV United States October 30, 2017 / 11:34 AM / a few seconds ago Two banks drop McKinsey in fallout from South Africa scandal TJ Strydom 2 Min Read JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Barclays Africa ( BGAJ.J ) and Standard Bank ( SBKJ.J ) said on Monday they would stop working with McKinsey, a further blow to the global consultancy as it faces allegations of bribery for work done with friends of South African President Jacob Zuma. FILE PHOTO - A Barclays logo is pictured outside the Barclays towers in Johannesburg, South Africa, December 16, 2015. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko/File Photo Privately-held McKinsey, the world<6C>s largest management consultancy, has denied doing anything illegal but said this month that it was embarrassed by mistakes it made while working with South African state utility Eskom last year. McKinsey said it regretted working on a 1.6 billion rand ($113 million) contract at Eskom alongside a company controlled by the Gupta family, wealthy friends of President Zuma who are accused of unduly influencing government contracts. Zuma and the Guptas deny wrongdoing. Barclays Africa and Standard Bank told Reuters in separate emailed responses to questions that they would terminate their relationships with McKinsey without giving reasons. McKinsey declined to comment. The Gupta brothers, who work with Zuma<6D>s son, Duduzane, were accused by South Africa<63>s anti-corruption watchdog last year of using control over state agencies to siphon public funds. South Africa<63>s parliamentary committee on public enterprises is investigating whether McKinsey knowingly let funds from Eskom be diverted to Gupta-controlled firm, Trillian, as a way of securing the deal. Corruption Watch, a South African anti-graft NGO, is preparing a submission to the U.S. Department of Justice asking it to investigate McKinsey<65>s dealings with Trillian. Reporting by TJ Strydom; Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Louise Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-mckinsey-safrica-barclays-group/two-banks-drop-mckinsey-in-fallout-from-south-africa-scandal-idUKKBN1CZ198'|'2017-10-30T13:31:00.000+02:00'
'2c83b313949bd7b003dc170b6b42326961f5cd6f'|'Gold edges down on caution ahead of key cenbank meetings'|'October 30, 2017 / 4:40 AM / in 21 minutes Gold steadies ahead of bumper week for central bank news Jan Harvey 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Gold steadied on Monday ahead of a series of central bank meetings and President Donald Trump<6D>s expected announcement of the next Federal Reserve chair. A jeweler shows a finished gold necklace at a jewelry workshop in Peshawar, Pakistan July 13, 2017. REUTERS/Fayaz Aziz/Files The U.S. central bank kicks off a two-day policy meeting on Tuesday, while the Bank of Japan and Bank of England also meet this week over interest rate policy. Gold is highly sensitive to rising rates, which increase the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion. Tighter U.S. policy also boosts the dollar, in which the metal is priced. Spot gold was at $1,272.30 an ounce at 1430 GMT, little changed from its late Friday level but well off that session<6F>s three-week low of $1,263.35. U.S. gold futures for December delivery were up 0.1 percent at $1,273.10 an ounce. The metal is facing a slew of potential risks this week, including the U.S. monetary policy meeting and Fed chair announcement, closely watched payrolls data on Friday and ongoing unrest over Spain<69>s Catalonia region. While the dollar index has taken a step lower on Monday, it remains close to its highest since mid July. [FRX/] <20>It<49>s tough to short this market with the current geo-political situation,<2C> Afshin Nabavi, head of trading at MKS, said. <20>This week apart from the non-farm payrolls, we also should hear from Trump about the Fed head.<2E> FILE PHOTO - A salesman shows gold bangles to a customer at a jewellery showroom during Dhanteras, a Hindu festival associated with Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, in Kolkata, India October 28, 2016. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri/File photo <20>The stronger U.S. dollar keeps gold under pressure, and the geopolitical situation keeps gold bid so (it will be at) $1,270-1,280 until some news comes out this week.<2E> Fed governor Jerome Powell, considered a moderate, is widely tipped to take over from Janet Yellen when she steps down as Fed chair in February. Trump has said he has been considering both Powell and Stanford University economist John Taylor for the post and has also not ruled out re-nominating Yellen. <20>The front end of the U.S. rates curve doesn<73>t seem to have priced in a Taylor Rule Fed ... which means that a surprise would send yields and the dollar higher, and risk assets down,<2C> SG Forex said in a note on Monday. <20>The market thinks Jerome Powell, more neutral in the market<65>s mind, is more likely.<2E> Speculators cut their bullish COMEX gold bets by 1,968 contracts to 173,043 contracts, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data showed on Friday, taking them to their lowest since early August. Among other precious metals, silver was down 0.6 percent at $16.61 an ounce. Platinum was 0.2 percent lower at $912.75 an ounce, while palladium was up 0.2 percent at $967.70. Additional reporting by Vijaykumar Vedala in Bengaluru; Editing by Louise Heavens/Edmund Blair/Alexander Smith '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-precious/gold-edges-down-on-caution-ahead-of-key-cenbank-meetings-idINKBN1CZ0BE'|'2017-10-30T06:39:00.000+02:00'
'f45c9b5178f884c503d5442e78327f19e3a37976'|'Lennar to buy CalAtlantic Group in about $9.3 billion deal'|'October 30, 2017 / 10:18 AM / in 32 minutes Lennar buys CalAtlantic to become largest U.S. homebuilder Arunima Banerjee 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Lennar Corp ( LEN.N ) will buy smaller rival CalAtlantic Group Inc ( CAA.N ) for $5.7 billion (<28>4.3 billion), creating the largest homebuilder in the United States as it strives to deal with higher land acquisition costs and a tighter labour market. FILE PHOTO: Newly constructed houses built by Lennar Corp are pictured in Leucadia, California March 18, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo The deal announced by the companies on Monday is the first major merger in the U.S. housing sector in more than two years and will make the unified firm one of the top three homebuilders in 24 of the United States<65> 30 biggest markets. Valued at $5.66 billion in stock and shares, plus $3.6 billion in net debt, analysts said the buyout would give Lennar a better foothold in booming housing markets in California from which CalAtlantic drew a third of its revenue last year. But the move also reflects the pressure on builders due to a shortage of skilled labour that is constraining the supply of homes and pushing costs up even as U.S. house prices rise for a seventh straight year. CalAtlantic<69>s shares jumped 23 percent after the announcement of the deal, which valued its shares at $51.24 per share a premium of 27 percent to Friday<61>s close, but Lennar<61>s fell almost 3 percent. <20>(It<49>s) go big or go home,<2C> Credit Suisse analyst Susan Maklari wrote in a note on the deal. <20>Builders are increasingly seeking greater volume and cost controls in order to offset higher land and input costs and drive better profitability and returns. Size helps to better manage land and labour constraints.<2E> The deal turns up the heat on sector mergers after a pair of smaller moves by Lennar WCIC.N and its biggest rival, D.R. Horton ( DHI.N ). It valued the combined firm at $18 billion, compared to Horton<6F>s market cap of around $15.6 billion. The combined company sold 40,792 homes last fiscal year, according to the companies<65> separate SEC filings versus Horton<6F>s 40,309. Horton shares were broadly flat in morning trade in New York. Lennar said it would save $75 million in costs next year and $250 million in 2019 in efficiencies due to the merger of the two operations. <20>LEN has an opportunity to apply a faster turning production homebuilding approach to CAA<41>s larger lot positions,<2C> BTIG analyst Carl Reichardt wrote in a note. Citi was financial adviser for Lennar while JP Morgan Securities LLC advised CalAtlantic. Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto, Bernard Orr'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-calatlantic-grp-m-a-lennar/lennar-to-buy-calatlantic-group-in-about-9-3-billion-deal-idUKKBN1CZ10S'|'2017-10-30T12:17:00.000+02:00'
'5d2f920c46244a29766ea331f9459b5ee5213a96'|'Asia shares, crude oil buoyant; euro near 3-month lows'|'October 30, 2017 / 12:53 AM / in 4 minutes Asia shares get technology boost, crude near two-year top Swati Pandey 4 Min Read SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian shares climbed on Monday, as technology stocks were bolstered by solid earnings from U.S. tech stalwarts and on strong pre-orders for Apple<6C>s iPhone X, while oil hovered around a 2-year peak on supply fears. A man looks at a stock quotation board outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Toru Hanai Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) said pre-orders for the 10th anniversary iPhone X, which started on Friday, were <20>off the charts<74>, a blessing for Asian suppliers such as South Korea<65>s LG Display ( 034220.KS ) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company ( 2330.TW ). Indeed, technology stocks were the top gainers in MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS, which was up 0.5 percent. Samsung Electronics ( 005930.KS ) led the charts. Energy stocks did well too, with Brent crude LCOc1 at its highest since July 2015 after Saudi Arabia agreed to support the extension of a global oil production cut agreement. [O/R] Seoul shares .KS11 edged up 0.2 percent while Australia''s benchmark index climbed 0.3 percent. Japan''s Nikkei .N225 steadied around the highest since mid-1996, having soared 8 percent in October so far. Global share markets have been on an uptrend since the start of the year, helped by solid corporate earnings and positive economic data across major countries. The world share index .MIWD PUS has surged 17.6 percent so far in 2017, on track for its best showing since 2013. <20>The continuation of quantitative easing (QE) in Europe at a time when Japan remains locked on QE and the U.S. is only tightening gradually highlights that global monetary conditions will remain easy for a long while yet,<2C> said Shane Oliver, head of investment strategy at AMP Capital. <20>This, along with strong economic growth and earnings, largely explains why global share markets are so strong.<2E> In the United States, Alphabet ( GOOGL.O ) GOOG.L, Amazon ( AMZN.O ) and Microsoft ( MSFT.O ) all jumped last week after solid quarterly performances, sending U.S. indexes higher. Amazon ( AMZN.O ), up 13.2 percent, was responsible for the biggest boost to the S&P 500 on Friday after reporting a quarterly sales surge. [L2N1N221K] Apple is due to report on Thursday. CURRENCIES The dollar index .DXY was a touch softer, with investors focused on the impending appointment of the Federal Reserve chair, with speculation rife that Fed governor Jerome Powell is the favoured suitor. Wagers that Powell - who markets see as a less hawkish candidate - will be the chosen one, tempered the dollar<61>s advances and dragged 2-year Treasury yields off a nine-year top US2TY=RR. An announcement is expected this week. In Europe, political uncertainty and the European Central Bank<6E>s decision to extend its stimulus further weighed on the common currency, marking its biggest weekly loss of the year. The euro EUR= steadied at $1.1613, not far from $1.1573 which was the lowest since July 20. Spain sacked Catalonia<69>s regional government on Friday, dissolved the Catalan parliament and called a snap election after Catalonia declared independence from Spain. The ECB<43>s decision last week to extend its bond purchases into September 2018 also hurt the euro, driving yields on two-year German bunds lower DE2YT=RR. The premium that 2-year U.S. debt pays over 2-year German yields is now the widest since mid-1999, making it more attractive to borrow in euros to buy dollars. In commodities, copper was near a two-week low CMCU3. Spot gold XAU= was trading 0.1 percent lower at $1,270.74 per ounce. [GOL/] U.S. crude CLc1 ticked up 4 cents to $53.94 a barrel. Editing by Eric Meijer and Jacqueline Wong'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asia-shares-crude-oil-buoyant-euro-near-3-month-lows-idUKKBN1CZ01Z'|'2017-10-30T02:52:00.000+02:00'
'271db68af9551d2da038a0f5a5017c94e34a87a7'|'AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile win $994 million U.S. defense contract: Pentagon'|'October 30, 2017 / 9:22 PM / in 15 minutes AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile win $994 million U.S. defense contract: Pentagon Reuters Staff 1 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - AT&T Inc ( T.N ), Verizon Communications Inc ( VZ.N ) and T-Mobile US Inc ( TMUS.O ) are being awarded a U.S. defense contract worth $199 million for wireless services and devices, the Pentagon said on Monday. The AT&T logo is pictured during the Forbes Forum 2017 in Mexico City, Mexico, September 18, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido The contract will include a one-year base period and four one-year option periods which, if exercised, the total value of this contract will be $993.5 million, the Pentagon said. Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Eric Walsh'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-telecoms-pentagon/att-verizon-t-mobile-win-994-million-u-s-defense-contract-pentagon-idUSKBN1CZ2LO'|'2017-10-30T23:22:00.000+02:00'
'2d7315f24525df95805145f29713a8948cadc6bc'|'Oil prices firm on expected extension of output cuts'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - Brent oil closed on Monday at its highest level since July 2015 and U.S. crude closed at a peak not seen since February on expectations OPEC-led production cuts would be extended beyond March, although such gains are likely to spur more U.S. production.An oil field technician walks past installations of Ecuador''s state oil company Petroamazonas, in Tiputini, Ecuador October 19, 2017. Picture taken October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Tapia Brent crude futures LCOc1 settled at $60.90 a barrel, up 46 cents. Brent has gained 9.5 percent in the last 16 trading days.U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 settled up 25 cents at $54.15 a barrel, highest since Feb. 23, 2017. The U.S. contract has been strong of late as well, gaining 10 percent in the last 16 trading days.<2E>The market has now held over $49/bbl for over a month, establishing that as the low end of the new range,<2C> wrote analysts at Drillinginfo.com.The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries plus Russia and nine other producers agreed to cut 1.8 million barrels per day from January 2016 to clear a supply glut.The pact, already renewed once, runs to March 2018. But Saudi Arabia and Russia, which are leading the effort, have voiced support for a further extension.OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo said Russian-Saudi backing for an extension cleared the fog before the group<75>s meeting in Vienna on Nov. 30.Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman over the weekend repeated the kingdom<6F>s support for extending the deal.<2E>The market has rallied pretty significantly and I think it<69>s predicated on the fact that the Saudis and Russians are continuing the cut agreement,<2C> said Gene McGillian, manager of research at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Conn.Monday<61>s rally pushed Brent<6E>s December 2017 contract LCOZ7 to a premium of $2.60 a barrel over the December 2018 contract LCOZ8.This structure, known as backwardation, was at the top of OPEC<45>s <20>to do<64> list, along with targeting record-high global inventories. Such a premium gives holders of physical oil an incentive to sell their stored barrels for a higher price, thus tightening markets.<2E>A lot of the investment firms are raising their price targets so there<72>s a bit of a change in sentiment,<2C> said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital LLC in New York.J.P. Morgan raised its 2018 Brent and WTI forecasts by $11 and $11.40 to $58 and $54.63 per barrel, respectively. The bank said the revision reflects OPEC and non-OPEC cuts and higher- than-expected demand growth tightening the oil market.However, traders said a 900,000 bpd export capacity increase from Iraq<61>s southern ports, to 4.6 million bpd, had prevented Brent rising further.Iraq has increased exports from its southern oilfields to 3.45 million bpd to make up for a shortfall from the northern Kirkuk fields, Basra Oil Company Director General Ihsan Abdul Jabbar said.Additional reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar in London, Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Dan Grebler '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/economy'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-oil/oil-prices-firm-on-expected-extension-of-output-cuts-idINKBN1CZ0IC'|'2017-10-30T04:00:00.000+02:00'
'199ba1a9a1a5c723ceb7cac43dc555eced4bb386'|'FTSE weighed down by housebuilders'|'October 30, 2017 / 10:05 AM / Updated an hour ago FTSE weighed down by housebuilders and strong pound Danilo Masoni 4 Min Read MILAN (Reuters) - The UK<55>s top share index fell on Monday, hit by a stronger pound and losses among housebuilders after a downgrade from Barclays on the grounds that the market might be overestimating the impact of possible budget measures to help the sector. A man walks past the London Stock Exchange in the City of London October 11, 2013. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth Berkeley ( BKGH.L ), down 1.4 percent, was among the top fallers after Barclays downgraded the stock to underweight, saying its 40 percent year-to-date rally was at odds with the challenging conditions in the higher-end London market. The broker also downgraded Persimmon ( PSN.L ), Redrow ( RDW.L ), Bellway ( BWY.L ) and Taylor Wimpey ( TW.L ) and trimmed its price target on Barratt Developments ( BDEV.L ), sending the shares of housebuilders down between 0.5 and 1.1 percent, although Redrow recovered to end up 1 percent. <20>Although measures could be impactful, history suggests that they can lack teeth (solving our <20>broken<65> housing market is not easy) and we believe expectations may have run ahead of themselves,<2C> Barclays analyst Jon Bell said in a note. The autumn Budget is due to be delivered on Nov. 22. The FTSE 100 .FTSE ended down 0.2 percent at 7,487.81 points, as the pound strengthened against the dollar ahead of Thursday''s Bank of England meeting where the central bank is expected to raise interest rates for the first time in more than a decade. [nL8N1N520A] <20>There is little doubt about the BoE<6F>s decision to raise rates at this week<65>s meeting,<2C> Ipek Ozkardeskaya, analyst at London Capital Group, said in a note. <20>The pound recovery dents the appetite, except for the energy stocks<6B>. HSBC Holdings ( HSBA.L ), which like other big international companies on the FTSE benefits from a weaker pound, fell 1.5 percent following its trading update. HSBC reported rising costs, taking the shine off a better-than-expected quarterly profit driven by the Asian business that the bank has put at the heart of its growth plans. <20>We were disappointed there was no operating leverage as costs rose 7 percent on increased discretionary spend,<2C> said Jefferies analyst Joseph Dickerson. The analyst however affirmed his buy rating on the stock saying the results confirmed an expected rise in revenues. Among other stocks that benefit from pound weakness, consumer companies British American Tobacco ( BATS.L ) and Diageo ( DGE.L ) fell 2.1 percent and 0.8 percent respectively. Johnson Matthey ( JMAT.L ) fell as much as 8.4 percent before paring most of its losses with some traders blaming the drop on a possible <20>fat finger<65> error. On the upside, home improvement retailer Kingfisher ( KGF.L ) rose 2 percent following an upgrade to buy from Goldman Sachs, which said the market was too cautious on its <20>One Kingfisher<65> efficiency program. BP ( BP.L ) rose 0.7 percent as the oil major found support in higher crude prices, which rose on expectations that an OPEC-led output cut due to expire next March would be extended. BP releases its quarterly results on Tuesday. Elsewhere among commodity stocks, Glencore ( GLEN.L ) inched up 0.8 percent. The miner increased its full-year marketing guidance for earnings before interest and tax to between $2.6-2.8 billion from $2.4-2.7 billion. Among mid-caps, top gainer was Genus ( GNS.L ), which shot up 8.7 percent to a record high after an upgrade to buy from UK broker N+1 Singer. The mid-caps index .FTMC added up 0.3 percent. (This version of the story refiles to remove HOLD from headline). Reporting by Danilo Masoni; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Ken Ferris'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-stocks/ftse-weighed-down-by-housebuilders-idUKKBN1CZ0YN'|'2017-10-30T12:05:00.000+02:00'
'c08526f8aa0bc1e44cb763afee5e8b90b67ca2eb'|'For China''s top lenders, third-quarter profits grow, bad loans ease'|'October 30, 2017 / 2:29 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago For China''s top lenders, third-quarter profits grow, bad loans ease Shu Zhang , Engen Tham 4 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - Four of China<6E>s <20>Big Five<76> state-owned banks reported higher quarterly profits and slower growth in bad loans, helped by a resilient economy and checks on the shadow banking sector. A logo of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC) is seen on a foggy day in Jinan, Shandong province, China, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer The improved results from top lenders in the world<6C>s second-largest economy come after successive interest rate cuts dented their interest margins - a key gauge of profitability - while loan defaults rose sharply among struggling borrowers. The improvement has been aided by a cocktail of policy measures, such as debt-for-equity swaps for struggling state borrowers. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) ( 601398.SS ), the country<72>s top lender by assets, posted a 3.3 percent rise in third-quarter net profit, versus flat growth a year-ago. Agricultural Bank of China (AgBank) ( 601288.SS ), China Construction Bank (CCB) ( 601939.SS ) and Bank of Communications (BoCom) ( 601328.SS ) also reported faster quarterly profit growth than a year ago. ICBC, CCB and AgBank also reported declines in their non-performing loan (NPL) ratios, as they dispose of more of their bad debt. A crackdown on unregulated shadow banking, has also helped. <20>The market has been talking about a potential Chinese banking crisis caused by NPLs since 2011,<2C> said Jiahe Chen, chief strategist at Cinda Securities. <20>But after seven years and banks<6B> net assets increasing by over 100 percent, it<69>s now one of the most worthwhile investable industries.<2E> Non-performing loan ratios fell slightly at CCB, ICBC, BoCom and AgBank, but rose at fourth-ranked Bank of China Ltd (BoC) ( 3988.HK )( 601988.SS ), where third-quarter net profit was flat. MARGINS EXPAND China posted relatively solid economic growth in the third quarter, driven by a stronger services industry, though there were signs of weakness in real estate and construction as property cooling measures start to bite. The banks<6B> quarterly results were <20>no big surprise,<2C> said Hao Hong, head of research at BOCOM International, who said profit growth would probably slow in the fourth quarter as Beijing<6E>s deleveraging campaign weighs on loan growth and off-balance sheet business, squeezing profitability. Deleveraging is the policy signal from this month<74>s Communist Party Congress, he said. Beijing has been clamping down on risk in the financial markets, from reprimanding corrupt financiers to tightening regulation over lending practices. China<6E>s biggest banks have also managed to sidestep some of the pitfalls faced by their mid-sized peers, which are more vulnerable to a tighter liquidity environment and which earn more of their profits from shadow banking. For 16 listed Chinese banks, average net interest margins - the difference between interest paid and earned - shrank in the first half by 17 basis points to 2.03 percent, according to an analysis by ratings agency Moody<64>s. But net interest margins rose slightly at CCB, BoCom, ICBC and BoC. <20>The big four banks have a strong funding profile and low reliance on market funding, and are thus more resilient to system liquidity tightening,<2C> said Nicholas Zhu, Beijing-based analyst at Moody<64>s Investors Service. ($1 = 6.6466 Chinese yuan) Reporting by Shu Zhang in Beijing and Engen Tham in Shanghai; Additional reporting by Matthew Miller in Beijing; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Ian Geoghegan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-banks-results/for-chinas-top-lenders-third-quarter-profits-grow-bad-loans-ease-idUKKBN1CZ1R9'|'2017-10-30T16:27:00.000+02:00'
'4d281a7c912b0053fd067b872d6a19273dc30ee4'|'Take Five - World markets themes for the week ahead'|'October 30, 2017 / 12:02 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago Take Five - World markets themes for the week ahead Marc Jones 6 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Following are five big themes likely to dominate the thinking of investors and traders in the coming week and the Reuters stories related to them. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, New York, U.S., October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid 1/APPLE EYED Time for another slice of Apple. Amazon, Google and Twitter may have helped put to bed worries of a mass tech roll-over, but investors will be nervously awaiting results from Apple due on Thursday after reports of tepid demand for its new iPhones. Just by its size it will have a strong impact on market sentiment. But for all the focus on the gains made by the U.S. FAANGs as they have come to be known (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google), there are other stocks that are roaring. Europe<70>s tech sector, for example, hit its highest in nearly 16 years this week after stellar results from the likes of ST Micro and AMS - which is up 190 percent this year - and the STOXX 600 tech sector is far outperforming the Nasdaq in dollar terms. Parts of the new iPhone, and features including face recognition technology and motion sensors, are made or designed in Europe, so Apple<6C>s results could have a far-reaching impact. Tech surge drives European sector to beat the Nasdaq - reut.rs/2gP8a0C 2/GOING UP To hear some economists talk, the Bank of England (BoE) is about to make a big mistake - raise interest rates just as the UK economy heads into what could be a major storm. If all goes as scripted, the bank will hike borrowing costs on Thursday for the first time in more than 10 years, with the consensus for a rise to 0.5 percent from 0.25 percent. It may be little more than a few basis points, but for markets and sterling in particular it matters. The currency is up more than 6 percent this year against the dollar but is down over 3 percent on the euro and whether or not this turns out to be a one-and-done move on rates - or the start of something more - could be crucial. The BoE is not the only central bank in Europe expected to be going for a hike that day. The Czech Republic looks set to raise its interest rates for the second time this year. The Czech crown is the world<6C>s top performing currency, so investors will be watching Prague<75>s moves closely too. Global FX in 2017 - reut.rs/2yRnBfW 3/THAT<41>S WHAT XI SAID At a key, twice-a-decade Communist Party Congress, Chinese President Xi Jinping set broad <20>new era<72> goals for a modern socialist <20>strong power<65> with leading influence on the world stage by 2050. Crucially, while keeping near-term growth targets, China will not set numerical goals to double GDP from 2021, breaking with past practice. In a bid to move from high-speed to high-quality growth, Xi said China would deepen economic and financial reforms and further open its markets to foreign investors. Its <20>belt and road<61> development strategy suggests a vision for China to be more integrated into the world economy. There<72>s a high degree of synchronisation already. Its manufacturing cycle has been moving in tandem with benchmark U.S. 10-year T-note yields in recent years. There are many obstacles along the road, high corporate leveraging being the most obvious one, but if Xi<58>s Chinese dream is to be achieved, it may be that a few decades from now global markets will respond to the Chinese economy and not the other way around. Official Chinese PMI and U.S. yields move in tandem - reut.rs/2gMxmET 4/EMERGING STRAINS 2017 has so far been one of the best years ever for emerging markets investors with stellar gains on everything from Chinese stocks to local currency sovereign debt. So this week<65>s beating for South Africa<63>s rand after dire budget forecasts, and pain for other high-yielders like the Turkish lira, have triggered some understandable profit taking. The wider worry, though, is if the dol
'b2650e7d5e750664b87b91b080e47459ade1e07a'|'German stocks - Factors to watch on October 30'|'FRANKFURT, Oct 30 (Reuters) - The following are some of the factors that may move German stocks on Monday:GERMAN ECONOMY S&P late Friday affirmed Germany<6E>s AAA/A-1+ ratings and said the outlook was stable.AUTOS The former chief of Ford-Werke GmbH, Bernhard Mattes, is the favourite to head Germany<6E>s VDA auto industry lobby when the current chief<65>s contract expires next year, a newspaper reported on Sunday.Separately, premium unit Audi due to publish Q3 results.BASF Two of BASF<53>s largest rivals in coatings are in talks over a merger. Dutch paints and coatings giant Akzo Nobel has approached U.S. rival Axalta Coating Systems Ltd to discuss a possible merger that would create a global coatings giant, according to sources familiar with the matter.DEUTSCHE BANK Investors will reward Deutsche Bank for its cost cutting, a member of the German lender<65>s management board said in a newspaper interview published on Sunday.DEUTSCHE BOERSE The board has a shortlist of potential candidates for chief executive and hopes to make a final decision before the end of the year, the German exchange operator<6F>s chairman said in an interview with a German newspaper published on Sunday.DEUTSCHE TELEKOM A strong No. 3 player in the U.S. wireless market would enhance competition, the company<6E>s chief told a German newspaper, as T-Mobile US Inc seeks to merge with Sprint Corp. CEO Timotheus Hoettges also urged the new German government to think twice before selling down its large stake in Deutsche Telekom, according to an interview in Welt am Sonntag.FRESENIUS MEDICAL CARE Shareholders of NxStage Medical approved the previously announced merger agreement with Fresenius Medical Care, the companies said on Friday.LUFTHANSA The carrier<65>s chief foresees stable ticket prices after taking over part of the insolvent rival Air Berlin, according to an interview the Bild am Sonntag.Separately, Britain<69>s easyJet has strengthened its position in Germany by agreeing to buy part of Air Berlin<69>s operations at Berlin Tegel airport, ending uncertainty over the fate of the failed airline<6E>s remaining assets.Air Berlin<69>s last flight landed in its home city on Friday night, greeted by a traditional water cannon salute and bringing to an end almost four decades of flying.MUNICH RE Munich Re<52>s primary insurance arm Ergo aims to gather non-binding offers for around 6 million life insurance policies in mid-November, Handelsblatt reported on Monday.SIEMENS Germany<6E>s economy minister urged Siemens on Friday to rethink planned job cuts and said job losses, particularly in economically weaker areas of the former East Germany, could spur an increase in right-wing populism.Separately, Handelsblatt daily reported that Siemens aims to cut its annual costs for corporate travel by around 500 million euros to about 1.3 billion euros by using more digital communications technology for internal meetings.RIB SOFTWARE Q3 results due.RATIONAL The group said it now expects to post 2017 revenue growth of around 13 percent, compared with a previous forecast for 11 to 13 percent, but said its EBIT margin would come only to the bottom end of its forecast range due to currency effects and investments.HYPOPORT Q3 results due.MYNARIC Shares due to start trading on Frankfurt stock exchange. Issue price has been set at 54 euros per share.HSH NORDBANK The owners of Germany<6E>s HSH Nordbank received binding offers from private equity groups Apollo, Cerberus and J.C. Flowers by a deadline on Friday as part of its EU-enforced privatisation, people close to the matter said.OVERSEAS STOCK MARKETS Dow Jones +0.1 pct, S&P 500 +0.8 pct, Nasdaq +2.2 pct at close.Nikkei unchanged, Shanghai stocks -0.9 pct.Time: 6.11 GMT.GERMAN ECONOMIC DATA German September retail sales due at 0600 GMT. Seen +0.5 pct m/m, +3.5 pct y/y.German preliminary October inflation data due at 1200 GMT. CPI and HICP both seen +0.1 pct m/m, +1.7 pct y/y.EUROPEAN FACTORS TO WATCH DIARIES REUTERS TOP NEWS ($1 = 0.8613 euros) (Reporting by Tom Sims and M
'3b4d1eb41564a50f1cc0adc481c8bb8632a7108f'|'South Korea''s Lotte Corp soars in debut on investor hopes for better returns'|'SEOUL (Reuters) - Shares in Lotte Corp, the new holding company for South Korea<65>s No. 5 conglomerate, soared some 45 percent on their debut above their issue price, bolstered by hopes for better corporate governance and shareholder returns.FILE PHOTO: Lotte Group chairman Shin Dong-bin speaks during a news conference in Seoul, South Korea, October 25, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji Although the debut comes at a difficult time for the conglomerate, which has been hit by political tensions between Beijing and Seoul, combined valuations for the group<75>s main listed firms on Monday were some 17 percent above levels for comparable entities in late September.In early afternoon trade, Lotte Corp<72>s stock was trading at 68,400 won per share, above its issue price of 47,100 won.Korea<65>s stock exchange, however, calculates moves on the first day of trade by comparing with an opening price which it works out from an average of orders before trade. On that basis, it was up about 7 percent on the day.The holding company was created to simplify the group<75>s complex ownership structure and enhance the control of Chairman Shin Dong-bin, who survived a power struggle with his elder brother.Under the restructuring, four key group firms - Lotte Shopping, Lotte Confectionery, Lotte Chilsung Beverage and Lotte Food were each split into two companies, with half of the resulting eight firms combined into one holding company.The remaining four companies resumed trading on Monday after having been suspended since Sept. 28.Lotte Confectionery, which has previously served as a proxy for the whole Lotte group for many investors, tumbled 13.5 percent as they switched out of the firm and into Lotte Corp.Lotte Shopping, the group<75>s flagship retail unit, was down 6.6 percent. One of the South Korean firms<6D> most hurt by the political tensions between Beijing and Seoul, it has had to close most of its stores in China and last week posted a 58 percent drop in third-quarter operating profit.The Lotte group agreed to hand over land to the South Korean government for a U.S.-made missile defense system in late February - a plan that has angered Beijing, which argues the radar can penetrate far into its territory.Lotte Corp currently controls 42 of the group<75>s 91 units, a spokeswoman said, and plans to add others like Lotte Chemical and Hotel Lotte in the longer term.Reporting by Joyce Lee and Dahee Kim; Additional reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Edwina Gibbs '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-lotte-corporation-listing/south-koreas-lotte-corp-soars-in-debut-on-investor-hopes-for-better-returns-idINKBN1CZ0AC'|'2017-10-30T01:25:00.000+02:00'
'f8a451012fd23498969ff070d07920d1f3f089af'|'U.S. oil exports boom, putting infrastructure to the test'|'NEW YORK/HOUSTON (Reuters) - Tankers carrying record levels of crude are leaving in droves from Texas and Louisiana ports, and more growth in the fledgling U.S. oil export market may before long test the limits of infrastructure like pipelines, dock space and ship traffic.FILE PHOTO: Used oil barrels are stacked at a storage facility in Seattle, Washington February 12, 2015. REUTERS/Jason Redmond U.S. crude exports have boomed since the decades-old ban was lifted less than two years ago, with shipments recently hitting a record of 2 million barrels a day. But shippers and traders fear the rising trend is not sustainable, and if limits are hit, it could pressure the price of U.S. oil.How much crude the United States can export is a mystery. Most terminal operators and companies will not disclose capacity, and federal agencies like the U.S. Energy Department do not track it. Still, oil export infrastructure will probably need further investment in coming years. Bottlenecks would hit not only storage and loading capacity, but also factors such as pipeline connectivity and shipping traffic.Analysts believe operators will start to run into bottlenecks if exports rise to 3.5 million to 4 million barrels a day. RBC Capital analysts put the figure lower, around 3.2 million bpd.The United States has not come close to that yet. A total of the highest loading days across Houston, Port Arthur, Corpus Christi and St. James/New Orleans - the primary places where crude can be exported - comes to about 3.2 million bpd, according to Kpler, a cargo tracking service.But with total U.S. crude production currently at 9.5 million barrels a day and expected to add 800,000 to 1 million bpd annually, export capacity could be tested before long. Over the past four weeks, exports averaged 1.7 million bpd, more than triple a year earlier.<2E>Right now, there seems to be a little more wiggle room for export levels,<2C> said Michael Cohen, head of energy markets research at Barclays.<2E>Two to three years down the road, if U.S. production continues to grow like current levels, the market will eventually signal that more infrastructure is needed. But I don<6F>t think a lot of those plans are in place right now.<2E>If exports do hit a bottleneck, it would put a ceiling on how much oil shippers get out of the country. Growing domestic oil production and limited export avenues could sink U.S. crude prices.Shippers have booked vessels to go overseas in recent weeks because the premium for global benchmark Brent crude widened to as much as $7 a barrel over U.S. crude, making exports more profitable for domestic producers.EXPORT PLANS Exports could hit 4 million bpd by 2022, an Enterprise Products Partners LP executive told an industry event in Singapore recently.Though some operators are already eyeing expansion plans, there are limitations, said Carlin Conner, chief executive at SemGroup Corp, which owns the Houston Fuel Oil Terminal. SemGroup has three docks for exporting crude and is building additional ones.<2E>There aren<65>t very many terminals with the needed pipeline capabilities, tank farm capacity and proper docks to load the ships ... Adding this is expensive and not done easily. So there are limitations to unfettered export access,<2C> he said.For instance, exports are expected to start from the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) in early 2018 at around one supertanker a month, according to two sources. The LOOP is potentially a key locale for exports. Its location 18 miles (29 km) offshore means it can handle larger vessels than other, shallower ship channels.While LOOP can load around 40,000 barrels per hour, operating at that capacity is not likely because that same pipe is used to offload imports, the sources added. LOOP did not respond to a request for comment.In Houston, when looking at the top 30 loading days, crude exports averaged 700,000 bpd, Kpler added. That includes Enterprise<73>s Houston terminal, among the largest of the export facilities, that had 615
'1f35751c7e5bea0fb8e881a4a5debb47b934a931'|'LME plays long game on China warehousing, Li a ''patient'' player'|'October 30, 2017 / 5:02 PM / in 31 minutes LME plays long game on China warehousing, Li a ''patient'' player Veronica Brown , Peter Hobson 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The London Metal Exchange still wants to have LME-registered warehousing in mainland China but has not recently pushed the long-held ambition, HKEx Chief Executive Charles Li said. Head of the Hong Kong Exchange Group Charles Li takes parts in a Q & A discussion at the London Metal Exchange Seminar 2017 at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London, Britain October 30, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner Prospects for LME warehousing in China, the world<6C>s biggest metals consumer, had been a key plank of HKEx<45>s plans when it paid $2.2 billion for the London institution in 2012. But the path to achieving that aim has not been smooth. <20>We<57>re playing a big chess game with China. The LME ... is one of the key moves. Sometimes you have to balance where other moves get you more yield now and that<61>s when you want to trade,<2C> said the CEO of HKEx. <20>LME warehousing is one of those things where I want to wait until the right moment ... Right now we are not pushing that. I<>m a very patient player,<2C> he said. About a year ago, the LME launched an electronic tracking system for warehouses with non-LME-registered metal called LMEshield. This followed a $3 billion fraud three years ago at China<6E>s Qingdao port in which a trading firm allegedly duplicated warehouse certificates to pledge a cargo multiple times as collateral for bank loans. Another warehouse fraud this year has sparked some new interest in LMEshield. LMEshield aims to provide similar security as the LME<4D>s existing LMEsword system, which provides the origin and title of metal delivered against LME futures or stored in LME-certified depots. Li said other initiatives had taken precedence recently. <20>Equity connect, bond connect and building the spot (market) are better trades that have cost me a lot less and yield a lot more,<2C> he said. <20>Nothing in China can be pushed through. It<49>s all a trade ... For the last six months the right move is no move. I think starting next year is probably the time to move quite a few big pieces again.<2E> Reporting by Peter Hobson and Veronica Brown; Editing by Edmund Blair '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-metals-lmeweek-lme-warehousing/lme-plays-long-game-on-china-warehousing-li-a-patient-player-idUKKBN1CZ23M'|'2017-10-30T19:01:00.000+02:00'
'ef600bb736cdd2a11cc32ea40bb8661257c1bcce'|'Changes in chaebol governance culture could diminish the ''Korea discount'''|'October 30, 2017 / 9:55 AM / in 11 hours Changes in chaebol governance culture could diminish the ''Korea discount'' Dahee Kim 5 Min Read SEOUL (Reuters) - Global demand for tech products has helped Samsung Electronics<63> shares surge about 50 percent this year, outpacing gains in the wider market, but the Korean conglomerate<74>s rally has another, more esoteric driver: its new focus on minor shareholders. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at its office building in Seoul, South Korea, August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo Analysts say Samsung is among a handful of firms tackling the so-called <20>Korea discount<6E> in stock markets, a consequence of some of the lowest dividend payouts in major equity markets and the dominance of opaque conglomerates known as chaebols. In addition to favourable cyclical drivers, a push for a <20>stewardship code<64> could give the market a structural boost by encouraging big investors to agitate for better governance and shareholder returns. <20>Governance concerns have historically resulted in a cheap market remaining cheap,<2C> said Matthew Vaight, a global emerging markets portfolio manager in London<6F>s M&G Investment. <20>The chaebols have a history of being run primarily in the interests of the controlling shareholders, be that evidenced by low dividend payouts or the circular shareholder structures and resultant intra-group transactions.<2E> A stewardship code adopted in the United Kingdom in 2010 aimed to improve the relationship between investors and firms by lifting long-term risk-adjusted returns to shareholders. New President Moon Jae-in has signalled support for a stewardship code in South Korea, which, though not legally binding, would encourage institutional investors to more actively engage in corporate governance issues on behalf of smaller shareholders. A possible move by Korean<61>s National Pension Service, the world<6C>s third-biggest pension fund, to implement it would help convince other companies to get on board. About 40 investment companies in South Korea are set to join this year, according to Korea Corporate Governance Service, the organisation that introduced the code to the country. From the corporate side, the Korea Stock Exchange adopted a governance code this year and about 70 listed firms are on board, including majors Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor Co, POSCO, Kia Motors Corp and LG Chem. <20>Such actions from large conglomerates will all improve the stockholder value, which is the goal of the stewardship code, and the movement is likely to spread widely,<2C> said Park Jung-hoon, a fund manager at HDC Asset Management. In its bid to boost its governance profile, particularly in relation to shareholder returns, Samsung says it has increased its dividend and reduced treasury stocks. Wider moves to give investors a greater voice and improve corporate governance, if they materialise, could promote a sustained structural shift higher in the Seoul market in coming years. The Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) has risen 22.5 percent so far this year, hitting record highs and breaking out of long-held ranges, despite risks with North Korea. Yet the market<65>s return on equity (ROE) of 8.17 is still one of the lowest among the countries covered by MSCI. The average ROE is 11.85, while the United States stands at 16.66, according to data compiled by Reuters as of mid-October. The country<72>s dividend payout ratio is also very low at 16.43, less than half the MSCI average of 38.95. <20>If South Korea<65>s dividend payout ratio is pulled up to Japan<61>s 27.6 percent, which is currently at the bottom 25 percent of those included in MSCI, the KOSPI is very likely to have another big leap,<2C> said Cho Byung-hyun, a stock analyst at Yuanta Securities in Seoul. BIG PLAYERS NEED TO LEAD While initiatives to bolster Korea Inc<6E>s governance profile are progressing, the shift is modest in a country dominated by chaebols and when compared with similar moves in Japan. <20>It<49>s 
'216f5f5d01c4b003889ece4df749ddf09d92a842'|'Glencore increases full-year marketing guidance again'|'October 30, 2017 / 7:27 AM / Updated 26 minutes ago Glencore raises marketing guidance, lowers output Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Glencore ( GLEN.L ) on Monday cut its output forecast for core commodities including zinc, but raised its marketing division<6F>s full-year earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to between $2.6 billion (1.98 billion pounds) and $2.8 billion, reflecting higher raw materials prices. FILE PHOTO - The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company''s headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo Its previous 2017 marketing, or trading, EBIT guidance was $2.4 billion to $2.7 billion, which was already an upward revision from $2.1 billion to $2.4 billion at the start of the year. In its third-quarter production report on Monday, Glencore lowered its output guidance for copper, zinc and coal, citing operational difficulties, maintenance and end-of-mine-life declines, but it said full-year earnings would not suffer. Analysts said it had been a weak quarter, but marketing conditions were favourable. The share price rose 0.43 percent by 0912 GMT, slightly more than the broader market. .FTNMX1770 <20>Overall, we see today<61>s results as slightly negative, though the marketing EBIT guidance upgrade is a clear positive,<2C> analysts at Bernstein said in a note. They reiterated their <20>outperform<72> rating, saying Glencore<72>s commodity mix makes it well-placed for an increase in demand from electric vehicles. For zinc output, Glencore cut its 2017 guidance to 1.1 million tonnes (+/- 15,000 tonnes) from 1.13 million tonnes (+/- 25,000 tonnes) seen in August. Glencore<72>s zinc production has been in focus as a doubling in the market since the start of last year CMZN3 has raised questions over whether Glencore would bring back the production it shut in when the market was much weaker. CEO Ivan Glasenberg has said he will only raise zinc output once he is confident any increase will not drag the market lower. Reporting by Barbara Lewis in London and Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely and Louise Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-glencore-outlook/glencore-increases-full-year-marketing-guidance-again-idUKKBN1CZ0LE'|'2017-10-30T09:26:00.000+02:00'
'fe8ca94d81ac8cc4f57ae3e90502c24bdf2da500'|'German inflation weaker than expected in October'|'Reuters TV United States October 30, 2017 / 1:24 PM / in a few seconds German inflation weaker than expected in October Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - German annual inflation slowed in October and remained below the European Central Bank<6E>s target, data showed on Monday, supporting the central bank<6E>s decision to start withdrawing stimulus only slowly. FILE PHOTO: People walk on a shopping street in the southern German town of Konstanz January 17, 2015. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann Consumer prices, harmonized to compare with other European countries (HICP), increased by 1.5 percent on the year after a rise of 1.8 percent in September, the Federal Statistics Office said. On the month, prices fell by 0.1 percent. Both figures undershot expectations. A Reuters poll had pointed to an increase of 1.7 percent on the year and a rise of 0.1 percent on the month. A breakdown of non-harmonized data showed that only food inflation picked up from September. The prices of energy, services and rents grew by less in October than in the previous month. Reporting by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Paul Carrel'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-germany-economy-inflation/german-inflation-weaker-than-expected-in-october-idUKKBN1CZ1L5'|'2017-10-30T15:02:00.000+02:00'
'7181340f23f50931fd5b0709c04580f47b06587f'|'Exclusive - Chad wants to cut off Glencore''s oil supplies in debt row'|' 39 PM / Updated 23 minutes ago Exclusive - Chad wants to cut off Glencore''s oil supplies in debt row Madjiasra Nako , Julia Payne 4 Min Read N<>DJAMENA/LONDON (Reuters) - Chad is on a collision course with top creditor Glencore ( GLEN.L ) as it wants to divert oil from the Swiss trading house to U.S. energy company ExxonMobil ( XOM.N ) from the new year amid a dispute over debt restructuring. FILE PHOTO: The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company''s headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo A government document showed that Chad wants to hand over crude oil marketing rights currently held by Glencore under a $1.4 billion (<28>1.06 billion) loan agreement to Exxon, the biggest oil producer in the Central African country. Three government and industry sources confirmed the details. Sources close to Glencore say they believe the contract does not allow such a change. Under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, Chad is renegotiating its hefty external commercial debt, namely to Glencore, which eats up nearly all of its oil profits - the country<72>s main source of revenue. The near $1.4 billion debt to Glencore is being restructured for a second time since the 2014 oil price crash, in a move expected to be completed by the year-end or early next year. Weighed down by drought, a refugee crisis and militant group Boko Haram, the government has become frustrated with Glencore and its handling of the debt restructuring, sources in the administration say. Since 2014, Exxon has been paying royalties to the government in physical crude cargoes that were subsequently allocated by state firm SHT to Glencore. But this process will end in early January as the government has asked Exxon to pay royalties in cash instead, according to a letter from the company dating from mid-October. <20>In this context, we wish to levy in cash, and not in kind, the royalties due by the Consortium on January 2, 2018,<2C> the letter stated. The change will see Exxon replace Glencore as the marketer of the royalty oil. Spokesmen for ExxonMobil and Glencore declined to comment. Chad<61>s finance ministry did not respond immediately to requests for comment. Exxon operates the Doba consortium, the biggest producing group in the country at around 63,000 barrels per day (bpd) out of Chad<61>s 131,000 bpd in 2017, government data showed. Cash-strapped Chad has received loans from the IMF, World Bank and African Development Bank among other entities, with another $12.9 billion of pledged funding as of September from public and private donors for its 2017-2021 national development plan. A sticking point, a banking source said, was a request from Chad for another grace period on principal repayment that Glencore had so far refused. Chad previously had a grace period in 2016, after Brent oil futures LCOc1 hit their lowest level since the end of 2003. <20>Glencore does not want to hear about a restructuring,<2C> a government source said. <20>This is why we have decided to take the marketing of our oil away from them.<2E> A source close to Glencore said the development would represent a <20>clear and serious breach of the agreement<6E>. <20>Glencore is in the middle of negotiations and is optimistic about a restructuring,<2C> the source said. Additional reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov in London, Ernest Scheyder in Houston and Aaron Ross in Dakar; Editing by Dale Hudson'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-glencore-chad-oil/exclusive-chad-wants-to-cut-off-glencores-oil-supplies-in-debt-row-idUKKBN1CZ1T1'|'2017-10-30T16:38:00.000+02:00'
'16034f1aebe3cc2fe6f3fd7201174e3284fae869'|'Trump likely to pick Jerome Powell as next Fed chair - source'|'October 30, 2017 / 3:11 PM / Updated an hour ago Trump likely to pick Fed''s Powell to lead central bank - source Reuters Staff 2 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is likely to pick Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell to replace Janet Yellen as head of the U.S. central bank, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. FILE PHOTO: Jerome H. Powell, a governor on the board of the Federal Reserve System, prepares to testify to the Senate Banking Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 22, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo Trump is expected to announce his choice on Thursday, a White House official said separately. Powell, Yellen and Stanford University economist John Taylor are among those on the Republican president<6E>s short list. By picking Powell, a Fed governor since 2012, Trump would get a combination of a change in leadership with the continuity offered by somebody who has been a part of the Yellen-run Fed that has kept the economy and markets steady in recent years. Powell, 64, has supported Yellen<65>s general direction in setting monetary policy, and in recent years has shared her concerns that weak inflation justified a continued cautious approach to raising rates. The main challenger is Taylor, a favourite of conservative Republicans who want the central bank to rely more on rules when setting interest rates. Critics say that a Taylor-run Fed would run the risk of tightening policy too fast and choking off the recovery from the 2007-2009 financial crisis and recession. The Fed is expected to leave rates unchanged at the conclusion of its latest two-day policy meeting on Wednesday. Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by David Chance and Paul Simao'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trump-fed-powell/trump-likely-to-pick-jerome-powell-as-next-fed-chair-source-idUKKBN1CZ1WH'|'2017-10-30T17:11:00.000+02:00'
'81b1de48b3760794c04a42c0c4d4c8a7639b4554'|'PRESS DIGEST- Canada- Oct 30'|'Oct 30 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories from selected Canadian newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.THE GLOBE AND MAIL Canada Jetlines Ltd will begin operations with four planes next year instead of six as originally planned and has scaled back plans to start flying out of two airports in Southern Ontario. tgam.ca/2xxRg9LHunter Harrison, owner of CSX Corp, says there''s no truth to market speculation that his ill health is behind the arrival of a new operating chief and the departure of three executives. tgam.ca/2xymbTHOne of Vancouver''s tech entrepreneurs, Jeff Booth, abruptly resigned from BuildDirect.com Technologies Inc, the e-commerce company he co-founded 18 years ago and hoped would become the Amazon of heavy-duty home-improvement supplies. tgam.ca/2xyNP2C (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/press-digest-canada/press-digest-canada-oct-30-idUSL4N1N54B1'|'2017-10-30T13:28:00.000+02:00'
'4f4b9e34cbc6bf5d30d5eb309f3fc3a689246ce9'|'New Akzo Nobel boss pursues $30 billion deal with Axalta'|'AMSTERDAM/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Dutch paints maker Akzo Nobel, seeking to recover after rejecting a takeover offer and issuing two profit warnings, is discussing a merger with smaller U.S. rival Axalta Coating Systems Ltd to create a $30 billion company.FILE PHOTO: General view of the outside of AkzoNobel''s new paint factory in Ashington, Britain September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble Akzo, the maker of Dulux paint, said on Monday it was in <20>constructive talks<6B> about a <20>merger of equals<6C> in what would be the first major deal by Chief Executive Thierry Vanlancker, who took over in July after Akzo spurned a 26 billion euro ($30.2 billion) offer from U.S. rival PPG Industries.Reuters reported on Friday that Akzo had approached Axalta about a possible merger, sending Axalta<74>s shares 17 percent higher. Warren Buffett<74>s Berkshire Hathaway is the largest Axalta investor with a stake of just under 10 percent.<2E>This seems a classic attack-is-the-best-defense strategy,<2C> said a fund manager at one of Akzo<7A>s top-10 investors who asked not to be named.<2E>Akzo overpromised after defending their own company and started to fail to deliver in Q3, so (they) need to do something transformational,<2C> he added.At 19.5 billion euros ($22.7 billion), Akzo<7A>s market value is close to three times that of Axalta at $8.1 billion at Friday<61>s closing price of $33.15.Even after the planned sale of its chemicals divisions, valued at 8-10 billion euros, the Dutch group would tower over its prospective partner, suggesting a lead role that typically results in a premium being offered to the junior partner.Akzo said plans to divest the chemicals unit remained on track and a <20>vast majority<74> of net proceeds from the deal would be returned to shareholders.Axalta<74>s coatings for new vehicles could fill a gap in Akzo<7A>s portfolio, which caters to various other industries including manufacturing, marine and construction, analysts have said.STIRRING THE POT The relatively fragmented global paints and coatings industry has seen a frenzy of deal activity, as buyers seek scale to squeeze their raw materials bill to further bolster already attractive margins.PPG<50>s aborted move for Akzo followed BASF deals last year, selling its industrial coatings business to Akzo and buying Albemarle<6C>s surface-treatment unit Chemetall for $3.2 billion to focus on automotive coatings.Before that, Sherwin-Williams snatched up rival U.S. paint company Valspar in an all-cash deal valued at about $9.3 billion.The mooted combination would make Akzo the second-largest coatings player with a 12 percent market share, ahead of PPG but trailing an enlarged Sherwin Williams, analysts at brokerage Raymond James said.Vanlancker has been forced to cut targets made in the heat of the takeover battle twice in the space of six weeks, blaming disruption caused by hurricane Harvey, rising raw materials costs and <20>headwinds<64> at its marine coatings business.Akzo shares were 0.5 percent higher at 77.89 euros at 1120 GMT, well below a figure of around 96 euros proposed by PPG.PRESSURE TO DELIVER Analyst Joost van Beek of Theodoor Gilissen said that in negotiations over financial terms, Axalta would seek to take advantage of Akzo being under pressure to bulk up.Analysts at Bernstein, in turn, stressed the strategic rationale, saying in a note the Akzo-Axalta merger <20>would improve scale and density in segments and countries where needed while taking out costs, most likely in the fragmented general industrial segment and in Europe<70>.They forecast savings of around 250 million euros from combining operations.Akzo would not comment on how the deal could be structured, though describing it as a merger suggests it would pay mostly with shares.Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday that talks were at an early stage and there was no guarantee the companies would come to an agreement.Akzo has gone through tumultuous times of late.After PPG<50>s approach was fended off, a group of shareholders launched a cou
'4d6005fc268bbaaa672fd40a06cf6ec70138eba2'|'Asia shares get tech boost from Apple, crude near two-year high'|'October 30, 2017 / 12:52 AM / in 13 minutes Europe lift sends world stock gauge to record; Wall Street dips Chuck Mikolajczak 4 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - A gauge of global equities hit an intraday record on Monday as a bounce in Spain helped lift European stocks, while Wall Street declined following a technology-led rally last week and a report that the U.S. House of Representatives was discussing a gradual tax cut. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Bloomberg reported that the corporate tax rate may be reduced gradually, by 3 percentage points a year, to 20 percent. <20>Clearly tax policy is important to corporations,<2C> said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas. <20>However far-fetched this idea is or whether it has any legs or not <20> we don<6F>t know yet, but markets always react to the very first sense of anything.<2E> The Dow and S&P 500 retreated on the heels of seven straight weeks of gains that left both indexes at record levels. The Nasdaq was slightly below the unchanged mark after scoring its best weekly gain in nearly a year last week. Stocks pared gains late in the session after the New York Times reported Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell is expected to be named the next head of the U.S. central bank, replacing Janet Yellen. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 85.45 points, or 0.36 percent, to 23,348.74, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 8.24 points, or 0.32 percent, to 2,572.83 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 2.30 points, or 0.03 percent, to 6,698.96. MSCI<43>s world equity index .MIWD PUS, which tracks shares in 47 countries, gained 0.05 percent after hitting a record of 496.77, its highest level in a week. The index has surged nearly 18 percent for the year, and is on pace to notch its best annual performance since 2013. Spanish markets supported European shares after an opinion poll showing waning support for independence soothed investors'' concerns over Catalan secession. Spanish stocks .IBEX were up 2.44 percent and set for their best day since Oct 5. Spain<69>s benchmark 10-year bond yield ES10YT=RR last yielded 1.49 percent, down from 1.502 percent late on Friday. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 rose 0.16 percent. European stocks have rallied this year on a healthier economy, coupled with convincing growth in corporate earnings and a reduction in political risk. U.S. Treasury yields fell at the start of a week of policy meetings by three major central banks, a steady stream of economic data and the expected announcement on a new Federal Reserve chair, extending declines after the Times report. The Bank of England is widely expected to raise rates on Thursday, reversing its monetary easing following Britain<69>s June 2016 vote to leave the European Union, while the U.S. Federal Reserve is expected to hold rates steady. The Bank of Japan will also issue a rate decision this week. Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes US10YT=RR last rose 17/32 in price to yield 2.3684 percent, down from 2.428 percent late on Friday. The dollar index .DXY fell 0.48 percent, with the euro EUR= up 0.39 percent to $1.1653. Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Dan Grebler and Nick Zieminski'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-markets/asia-shares-crude-oil-buoyant-euro-near-3-month-lows-idUKKBN1CZ024'|'2017-10-30T08:44:00.000+02:00'
'03c11a424dfc663f870600abbfeefa0dd53e5831'|'Italian bank inquiry points to improper behaviour, commission''s chairman tells paper'|'MILAN, Oct 29 (Reuters) - A new investigation of Italian banking scandals by a parliamentary commission has already revealed some improper behaviour, the commission<6F>s chairman, Pier Ferdinando Casini, told the newspaper La Repubblica in an interview.The cross-party commission, comprising 40 parliamentarians, was set up to look into the scandals and crises that have rocked Italian banks in recent years.<2E>Only the commission as a whole will be able to make a final judgment, but indications of improper behaviour have certainly been found,<2C> Casini said in the interview published on Sunday.Casini said the initial findings pointed to a <20>network of complicity<74> that resulted in offers of employment and consultancy jobs.<2E>It<49>s certainly not a good thing seeing Bank of Italy directors quickly take up top positions at the banks that were the target of inquiries,<2C> Casini said. <20>If this had happened to a politician, it would certainly have triggered a chorus of deserved criticism.<2E>The cross-party commission has the same investigative powers as the magistrature, although it has little time to reach conclusions before the legislature ends. The role of the Bank of Italy and market watchdog Consob, which share supervision of the sector, is expected to come under scrutiny.The government has had to spend more than 20 billion euros ($23.22 billion) this year to prop up the sector, injecting 5.4 billion euros to salvage Italy<6C>s fourth-biggest bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, and offering billions of euros in guarantees as it wound down two major banks in the Veneto region.Four other, smaller banks were wound down in 2015, hitting thousands of small savers.Critics have accused both the Bank of Italy and Consob of failing in their oversight duties - allegations both bodies have rejected.Casini said, however, that the initial findings also showed how many of the judiciary investigations had been triggered by inspections launched by the Bank of Italy itself.<2E>It<49>s a mix bag of positives and negatives. We need to understand which had dominated,<2C> he said.Asked about a risk that the inquiry could serve only as electoral propaganda before a forthcoming election, Casini said he had voiced the same concerns when the commission was set up but now would seek to guarantee that it does not become <20>political battleground<6E>.$1 = 0.8615 euros Reporting by Agnieszka FlakOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/eurozone-banks-italy-inquiry/italian-bank-inquiry-points-to-improper-behaviour-commissions-chairman-tells-paper-idINL8N1N40G3'|'2017-10-29T10:49:00.000+02:00'
'668bc8cee9c65f27167173b1ee06c64e055d935c'|'As profitability sags, Mizuho considers 30 percent cut to workforce - source'|'October 28, 2017 / 8:46 AM / Updated 7 hours ago As profitability sags, Mizuho considers 30 percent cut to workforce - source Reuters Staff 2 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Mizuho Financial Group Inc ( 8411.T ) is considering cutting its global workforce by a third in the next decade to stem a decline in profitability due to prolonged low interest rates in Japan, a person with knowledge of the issue told Reuters on Saturday. FILE PHOTO: A pedestrian is reflected in a sign showing the logo of the Mizuho Financial Group Inc. outside its headquarters in Tokyo, Japan May 15, 2015. REUTERS/Yuya Shino/File Photo Japan<61>s second largest banking group by holdings plans to cut around 19,000 jobs from 60,000 at the moment by increasing its use of information technology to streamline operations at its core units - Mizuho Bank, Mizuho Trust and Banking Co. and Mizuho Securities Co., while also consolidating branches. Mizuho aims to flesh out the plan from next week, and announce details when it releases its latest earnings next month, according to the source, who was not authorised to comment on the issue. The mega bank, formed in 2000 by the merger of three smaller banks, has struggled to increase profits since the global financial crisis, as rock-bottom interest rates in Japan have stymied growth in its investments. Net profit slumped 10 percent last year. Mizuho is looking to cut staff through means including attrition, the source said, as tellers and permanent employees who joined during a hiring spree in the 1980s approach retirement age. Reporting by Taro Fuse; Editing by Nick Macfie'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mizuho-workforce/as-profitability-sags-mizuho-considers-30-percent-cut-to-workforce-source-idUKKBN1CX07P'|'2017-10-28T11:45:00.000+03:00'
'4cbb13cdd634ca8317e1e0f6a761cfc8e6f90d41'|'Twist or stick: two sides of vital interest rate decision facing UK - Business'|'M arkets have a tendency to panic when central banks threaten to raise interest rates. In 2014, the US Federal Reserve and its then boss, Ben Bernanke, sent traders across the world into a spin when he merely hinted that the era of almost zero rates might be ending.It<49>s been a decade since the Bank of England last increased the cost of borrowing, so it is no surprise that this week<65>s vote by the monetary policy committee, which Threadneedle Street has sketched out as a good moment for a rise, is being closely watched.Nine committee members hold the key to unlocking 10 years of ultra-low rates <20> with five drawn from the Bank<6E>s payroll and four external members from industry and the City. The latter serve a three-year stint, which is often extended to six years.Bank of England governor Mark Carney is among many on the MPC to have hinted that 2 November will be the day the Bank should at least reverse its emergency 0.25% set in August 2016, which was designed to ensure that the economy did not take a dive in the wake of the Brexit vote. And having listened to one carefully coded hint after another in recent months from what is clearly a majority of members, markets have judged that an increase is now almost nailed on <20> with a 90% probability.However, the case for a rate rise, as Carney and his colleagues always stress, is finely balanced and could go either way once they have sieved through all the economic data. Here we consider the arguments for raising them versus the reasons to hold steady.The case for higher rates The Bank of England was set two targets when it was reconstituted by Gordon Brown in the late 1990s and granted the power to set interest rates independently: to maintain inflation at around 2% and to make sure that monetary policy kept the economy<6D>s wheels turning.Keeping the economy expanding has won out over the imperative to maintain inflation steady at 2%In the past 10 years these have proved to be conflicting aims, because to raise rates has been seen as an almost certain way to kill off growth. That wouldn<64>t be the case in more normal times, but in the aftermath of the banking crash, with lenders initially strapped for funds and regulators concerned to keep the financial sector on a tight rein, low interest rates were seen as the only way to keep money flowing around the economy. And that is especially true when so much household spending is based on borrowed money.So the second concern <20> to keep GDP expanding <20> has won out over the imperative to maintain inflation steady at 2%, and inflation has been allowed to soar to 5% <20> as it did in 2012, when the Bank sat firmly on its hands and did nothing.Forecasts for inflation don<6F>t show it going back to 2012 levels, but with a rate of 3% recorded in September and predictions of rises for at least the next couple of months, the Bank must consider increasing the cost of borrowing to reduce the demand for goods and services, and calm price rises.Further price increases could already be in the pipeline, according to some MPC members, following the fall in unemployment to 4.3% in the three months to August. As Howard Archer, chief economic adviser to the EY Item Club, says, the joblessness rate is at its lowest since 1975 and well below the 4.5% equilibrium rate the Bank believes determines full employment and is the trigger for higher wages. With more money in their pockets, workers could be tempted to borrow and spend even more, adding to the pressure on prices.It<49>s not just jobs: the economy has held up much better than most forecasters, including the Bank, predicted following the Brexit vote. It has grown throughout the year <20> when many thought it could fall into recession <20> after three previous years of growth. If the Bank won<6F>t raise rates against this backdrop, then when?Some economists also believe the bank should take the opportunity to raise rates now because it may need to cut them again the future. At 0.25%, the bank has no rea
'b50ce45b1f8e0f69a1ba72271540c50c44a024b1'|'Brazil''s Temer sees $30 billion pre-salt investments, $130 billion in royalties'|'October 28, 2017 / 4:25 AM / in 8 hours Brazil''s Temer sees $30 billion pre-salt investments, $130 billion in royalties Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian President Michel Temer said Friday<61>s auction of pre-salt offshore oil blocks will generate investments of more than 100 billion reais ($30.8 billion) in Brazil by the winning oil companies. Brazil''s President Michel Temer and Brazil''s Lower House''s President Rodrigo Maia arrive to a ceremony at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Adriano Machado <20>We had an excellent result,<2C> Temer said in a statement. He said the exploration of the pre-salt reserves should bring in about $130 billion in royalties and other revenues, and the investments will create 500,000 new jobs for Brazil. ($1 = 3.2462 reais) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/brazil-oil-auction-temer/brazils-temer-sees-30-billion-pre-salt-investments-130-billion-in-royalties-idINKBN1CX03I'|'2017-10-28T07:24:00.000+03:00'
'005fce50400c798d4fa66bd153bf515e916bb7cc'|'CANADA STOCKS-Energy shares boost TSX to record peak despite weak earnings'|'* TSX hits new intraday, closing record levels* TSX up 61.88 points, or 0.39 percent, at 15,953.51* Four of TSX<53>s 10 major sectors were higher (Recasts with record close; adds Quote: , updates prices)Oct 27 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s benchmark stock index closed at a record high on Friday as energy shares surged alongside oil prices and as investors bet the central bank will be less aggressive in raising interest rates than previously anticipated.The Toronto stock market, which also set an intraday record high, has climbed sharply since early September as traders have also been buoyed by strong economic growth and the relative value of Canadian shares compared to the United States.The energy sector fueled Friday<61>s gain, jumping 2.6 percent as oil prices were lifted by support among the world<6C>s top producers for extending a deal to cut output. U.S. crude prices rose 2.4 percent to settle at $53.90 a barrel.Canadian Natural Resources Ltd provided the biggest lift on the index, up 2.8 percent at C$43.39, while Encana Corp climbed 4.9 percent to C$14.43.A more dovish tone from the Bank of Canada earlier this week has pushed rate hike expectations further into the future, potentially boding well for Canadian corporate earnings, said Bryden Teich, portfolio manager at Avenue Investment Management.<2E>It means the economy is given a longer runway to continue to grow,<2C> said Teich. <20>The longer the economy has to continue to grow and build momentum and they<65>re on the sidelines, the better it is for the market.<2E>The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index ended up 61.88 points, or 0.39 percent, at 15,953.51.The index climbed as high as 15,963.60 during the session, topping the last intraday record set in February. It was the seventh consecutive week of gains for the Toronto stock market.While the market may see a pullback from here, it could ultimately have more room to run, said Teich, who sees the index getting to 16,200 or 16,300 by year-end if corporate earnings are good and the economy continues to grow.Dairy producer Saputo Inc jumped 5.7 percent to C$47.48 after it agreed to pay up to $490 million for Murray Goulburn Co-operative, making it Australia<69>s top milk producer.Still, market gains were capped by a batch of earnings that largely fell short of expectations.Among them, Cameco Corp tumbled 6.3 percent to C$10.64 after the uranium producer posted a surprise third-quarter loss and cut its full-year production outlook.Celestica Inc shares slumped 9.7 percent to C$13.8 following guidance and results that missed expectations, while First Quantum Minerals Ltd shed 1.9 percent to C$14.21 after it posted a quarterly loss. (Reporting by Leah Schnurr in Ottawa, editing by G Crosse) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks/canada-stocks-energy-shares-boost-tsx-to-record-peak-despite-weak-earnings-idINL2N1N21V4'|'2017-10-27T19:25:00.000+03:00'
'd45185a625cce357df08a630f2311020658cbfa0'|'Continental in talks to buy Israel''s Argus Cyber Security: media'|'TEL AVIV/BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany<6E>s Continental AG ( CONG.DE ) is in advanced talks to buy Israel<65>s Argus Cyber Security, whose technology guards connected cars from hacking, for about $400 million, Israeli media reported on Monday.The logo of Continental AG, a German automotive manufacturing company specialized in tyres, brakes and car safety products is pictured on a rim at the company''s stand during the Hannover Fair in Hanover, Germany, April 25, 2016. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay Cybersecurity experts have criticized the automotive industry for failing to do more to secure internal communications of vehicles with network-connected features.The danger, they say, is that once external security is breached, hackers can have free rein to access onboard vehicle computer systems which manage everything from engines and brakes to air conditioning and infotainment.Continental, the world<6C>s second-biggest supplier to carmakers by sales, makes telematics control devices used to transfer data and enable communication between a vehicle and remote management tools such as web panels and mobile apps.Carmakers say that any vulnerabilities in this area do not directly affect the critical safety features of a vehicle.Founded in 2013, Argus has raised $30 million, including $26 million two years ago from Magna International ( MG.TO ), Allianz ( ALVG.DE ), SBI Group and Israeli venture capital funds Magma and Vertex.<2E>This is not the first time such rumors have circulated and Argus does not comment on rumors or speculation,<2C> a spokeswoman for Argus said on Monday.Officials at Continental declined to comment on what they called <20>speculation<6F>.Argus already collaborates with Continental - this month it jointly launched a technology for delivering over-the-air vehicle software updates with Continental subsidiary Elektrobit.MOBILEYE TRIGGER Earlier this year Intel Corp ( INTC.O ) bought autonomous vehicle firm Mobileye - one of Israel<65>s biggest tech companies - for $15.3 billion. With more than 200 start-ups, Israel is a growing center for automotive technology.Argus CEO Ofer Ben-Noon told Reuters in March the Mobileye deal could accelerate his company<6E>s growth. <20>There is no doubt there will be more investments in Israel for automotive, and a lot more M&A,<2C> he said at the time.Continental said in June it was joining a self-driving platform developed by BMW ( BMWG.DE ), Intel ( INTC.O ) and Mobileye with the German auto parts and tire maker handling integration of components and software.The costs of integrating hardware, software and data and the accelerating pace of development of self-driving vehicles has sparked a growing number of alliances between automakers and suppliers.Continental said it would play a role in commercializing the new platform, which is to be sold to other auto manufacturers.Traditionally, many of Israel<65>s tech start-ups have sold out at an early stage to global companies, keen to tap into the skills of workers trained in the military and intelligence sectors. This was the case with Waze, the Israeli map app, which Google bought in 2013 for $1.15 billion.Only a few - such as cyber security leader Check Point Software ( CHKP.O ) and software provider Amdocs DOX.N - have stayed independent long enough to reach a significant size.Editing by Louise Heavens and Alexander Smith '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-argus-m-a-continental/continental-in-talks-to-buy-israels-argus-cyber-security-media-idINKBN1CZ0NO'|'2017-10-30T05:05:00.000+02:00'
'e33637f44e8bb23326660cefd67866ba0a82c6b6'|'LyondellBasell approaches Brazil''s Braskem for takeover-WSJ'|' 53 PM / a minute ago LyondellBasell approaches Brazil''s Braskem for takeover: WSJ Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - LyondellBasell Industries NV ( LYB.N ) has approached Brazil<69>s Braskem SA ( BRKM5.SA ) ( BAK.N ) for a potential takeover, valuing the petrochemicals company at more than $10 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. General view of the refinery of U.S. chemicals group LyondellBasell in Berre, near Marseille, France, October 19, 2015. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier The talks are at an early stage and there is no guarantee of a deal, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. on.wsj.com/2zRqhHj LyondellBasell did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Its shares rose 6 percent to $105.03 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Reporting by Ahmed Farhatha in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-braskem-m-a-lyondell/lyondellbasell-approaches-brazils-braskem-for-takeover-wsj-idUSKBN1CZ289'|'2017-10-30T19:39:00.000+02:00'
'1cf9eed62b84a5476dfe88f7b2871b0700e930cc'|'Apple''s Cook, Facebook''s Zuckerberg meet China''s Xi in Beijing'|'Reuters TV United States October 30, 2017 / 1:55 PM / a few seconds ago Apple''s Cook, Facebook''s Zuckerberg meet China''s Xi in Beijing Reuters Staff 2 Min Read SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Apple Inc chief executive Tim Cook and Facebook Inc<6E>s Mark Zuckerberg met Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday at an annual gathering of advisers to Beijing<6E>s Tsinghua University business school. FILE PHOTO: Apple CEO Tim Cook attends the China Development Forum in Beijing, China March 18, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo Xi was speaking to business leaders and officials at the meeting, state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) reported. Cook and Zuckerberg are on the advisory board of the Tsinghua School of Economics and Management. The meeting comes at a particularly key time for Apple as it prepares to launch its much-anticipated iPhone X on Friday, amid hopes the anniversary smartphone can revive the firm<72>s sales in the world<6C>s number two economy. Tsinghua<75>s business school, founded in 1984, has seen scores of top Chinese and foreign industry leaders sit on its board, including Chinese central banker Zhou Xiaochuan and Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein. Facebook<6F>s Zuckerberg has also been very active in China, eager to get his popular social network unblocked in the world<6C>s most populous nation, where it has been banned since 2009 and held behind the country<72>s so-called Great Firewall. An Apple spokeswoman said the firm couldn<64>t <20>comment on Tim<69>s schedule and or meetings<67>. Facebook confirmed Zuckerberg was in Beijng, but declined to comment on details of his visit. In a post on his Facebook page on Saturday, Zuckerberg wrote he was in Beijing for the annual meeting. <20>Every year this trip is a great way to keep up with the pace of innovation and entrepreneurship in China,<2C> he said. Reporting by Adam Jourdan; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-china-tech/apples-cook-facebooks-zuckerberg-meet-chinas-xi-in-beijing-idUKKBN1CZ1NP'|'2017-10-30T15:50:00.000+02:00'
'20ef225687f68fcfe069e252cf96cf6744164711'|'Goldman CEO has high hopes for London HQ post-Brexit, much outside his control'|'October 30, 2017 / 12:40 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Goldman CEO has high hopes for London HQ post-Brexit, much outside his control Anjuli Davies 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ) chief executive Lloyd Blankfein expects to fill the firm<72>s new European headquarters which is currently under construction in London, but said Britain<69>s exit from the European Union left much outside the bank<6E>s control. FILE PHOTO: Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein speaks at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York, U.S., September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid <20>In London. GS still investing in our big new Euro headquarters here. Expecting/hoping to fill it up, but so much outside our control. #Brexit,<2C> Blankfein tweeted on Monday, alongside a bird<72>s eye picture of the new building. The Wall Street bank is building a 1.1 million square foot office in London with initial occupancy slated for 2019 to house its 6,000 UK employees, but the firm needs to ensure it can still service its EU clients after Brexit and may have limited access to the EU<45>s single market from Britain. Goldman also has flexibility to adjust the number of floors it takes in the new building, according to a source familiar with the situation, so it is not committed to occupying the entire office. That option was put in place prior to the Brexit vote. Earlier this month, Goldman said it had agreed to lease office space at a new building in Frankfurt, giving it space for up to 1,000 staff. That would be five times the current staff of 200 and see it bolstering activities including trading, investment banking and asset management. Blankfein sparked a wave of speculation earlier this month when he tweeted he was planning to spend a lot more time in Frankfurt. <20>Just left Frankfurt. Great meetings, great weather, really enjoyed it. Good, because I<>ll be spending a lot more time there. #Brexit,<2C> he tweeted on Oct. 19. Frankfurt is so far seen as the biggest beneficiary from Wall Street banks moving jobs out of London as a result of Brexit, with JPMorgan, Citi and Morgan Stanley all setting out plans to expand operations there. Reporting by Anjuli Davies; Editing Rachel Armstrong and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-goldman-sachs/goldman-ceo-has-high-hopes-for-london-hq-post-brexit-much-outside-his-control-idUSKBN1CZ1HH'|'2017-10-30T14:39:00.000+02:00'
'60b9b8f4db8ac9696e56c82242590692a81ddbc6'|'Oil markets firm on expected extension of production cuts'|'October 30, 2017 / 12:37 AM / Updated an hour ago Oil markets firm on expected extension of output cuts Henning Gloystein 2 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil markets were firm on Monday, with Brent crude opening above $60 per barrel on expectations an OPEC-led production cut due to expire next March would be extended. An oil pump jack is seen at sunset in a field outside Scheibenhard, near Strasbourg, France, October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann Brent crude oil futures LCOc1, the international benchmark for oil prices, were at $60.53 per barrel at 0054 GMT, up 9 cents or 0.15 percent from their last settlement. That<61>s still close to their highest level since July 2015 and up more than 36 percent since their 2017 lows last June. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were up by 13 cents, or 0.24 percent, at $54.03 a barrel. <20>With strong compliance to OPEC<45>s production curbs already supporting prices, comments from the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince that suggested the production cut agreement should be extended added to gains,<2C> ANZ bank said on Monday. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) plus Russia and nine other producers have agreed to hold back about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) to get rid of a supply glut. The pact runs to March 2018, but Saudi Arabia and Russia, who are leading the effort, have both voiced their support to extend the agreement. OPEC is scheduled to meet officially at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 30. While OPEC and its partners are withholding supply, U.S. production C-OUT-T-EIA has risen almost 13 percent since mid-2016. As a result WTI is trading at a steep discount of around $6.50 per barrel against Brent CL-LCO1=R, which has made U.S. crude exports to the world attractive. Confidence in the oil market is evident in the way financial traders have positioned themselves. Hedge funds and other money managers raised their bullish wagers on U.S. crude futures and options in the week to October 24, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said on Friday. The speculator group raised its combined futures and options position in New York and London by 15,041 contracts to 280,634 during the period. Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Sonali Paul'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-oil/oil-markets-firm-on-expected-extension-of-production-cuts-idUKKBN1CZ01C'|'2017-10-30T02:37:00.000+02:00'
'1244ee72546c26c241431008f894aaa51c122ca6'|'RPT-U.S. oil exports boom, putting infrastructure to the test'|' 02 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago RPT-U.S. oil exports boom, putting infrastructure to the test Reuters Staff (Repeats with no changes to text.) By Catherine Ngai and Bryan Sims NEW YORK/HOUSTON, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Tankers carrying record levels of crude are leaving in droves from Texas and Louisiana ports, and more growth in the fledgling U.S. oil export market may before long test the limits of infrastructure like pipelines, dock space and ship traffic. U.S. crude exports have boomed since the decades-old ban was lifted less than two years ago, with shipments recently hitting a record of 2 million barrels a day. But shippers and traders fear the rising trend is not sustainable, and if limits are hit, it could pressure the price of U.S. oil. How much crude the United States can export is a mystery. Most terminal operators and companies will not disclose capacity, and federal agencies like the U.S. Energy Department do not track it. Still, oil export infrastructure will probably need further investment in coming years. Bottlenecks would hit not only storage and loading capacity, but also factors such as pipeline connectivity and shipping traffic. Analysts believe operators will start to run into bottlenecks if exports rise to 3.5 million to 4 million barrels a day. RBC Capital analysts put the figure lower, around 3.2 million bpd. The United States has not come close to that yet. A total of the highest loading days across Houston, Port Arthur, Corpus Christi and St. James/New Orleans - the primary places where crude can be exported - comes to about 3.2 million bpd, according to Kpler, a cargo tracking service. But with total U.S. crude production currently at 9.5 million barrels a day and expected to add 800,000 to 1 million bpd annually, export capacity could be tested before long. Over the past four weeks, exports averaged 1.7 million bpd, more than triple a year earlier. <20>Right now, there seems to be a little more wiggle room for export levels,<2C> said Michael Cohen, head of energy markets research at Barclays. <20>Two to three years down the road, if U.S. production continues to grow like current levels, the market will eventually signal that more infrastructure is needed. But I don<6F>t think a lot of those plans are in place right now.<2E> If exports do hit a bottleneck, it would put a ceiling on how much oil shippers get out of the country. Growing domestic oil production and limited export avenues could sink U.S. crude prices. Shippers have booked vessels to go overseas in recent weeks because the premium for global benchmark Brent crude widened to as much as $7 a barrel over U.S. crude WTCLc1-LCOc1, making exports more profitable for domestic producers. EXPORT PLANS Exports could hit 4 million bpd by 2022, an Enterprise Products Partners LP executive told an industry event in Singapore recently. Though some operators are already eyeing expansion plans, there are limitations, said Carlin Conner, chief executive at SemGroup Corp, which owns the Houston Fuel Oil Terminal. SemGroup has three docks for exporting crude and is building additional ones. <20>There aren<65>t very many terminals with the needed pipeline capabilities, tank farm capacity and proper docks to load the ships ... Adding this is expensive and not done easily. So there are limitations to unfettered export access,<2C> he said. For instance, exports are expected to start from the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) in early 2018 at around one supertanker a month, according to two sources. The LOOP is potentially a key locale for exports. Its location 18 miles (29 km) offshore means it can handle larger vessels than other, shallower ship channels. While LOOP can load around 40,000 barrels per hour, operating at that capacity is not likely because that same pipe is used to offload imports, the sources added. LOOP did not respond to a request for comment. In Houston, when looking at the top 30 loading days, crude exports averaged 700,000 bpd, Kpler added. That includes
'0635d8e095e2195ef1001b1a8f13a83d6e0447a6'|'Flood of Chinese capital seen shaking up aviation finance'|'HONG KONG/PARIS (Reuters) - A flood of low-cost Chinese funding is shaking up the global aircraft leasing market, with Chinese capital now accounting for 28 percent of the $261 billion deployed by leasing firms worldwide, a study suggested on Monday.A model of China''s ARJ21 aircraft by Commercial Aircraft Corp of China Ltd (COMAC) is displayed at Aviation Expo China 2017 in Beijing, China September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer That is up from 5 percent nine years ago.The influx of more than $70 billion to the leasing industry from Chinese banks and other investors over the past decade is helping airlines expand their fleets. But it is also curbing returns to be made by traditional players in a sector fast emerging as a significant new asset class.<2E>In the last cycle (2003-2008), lease rates went up significantly whereas in this cycle they haven<65>t. That<61>s partly because there are more people looking for the same deals,<2C> said Rob Morris, global head of consultancy at Flightglobal Ascend.Record interest from China, the world<6C>s fastest-growing aviation market, will be evident in meetings of 1,500 financiers in Hong Kong at two major conferences this week.For years, some experts have warned that record production by Airbus and Boeing and over-ordering by some airlines would burst a demand <20>bubble<6C> for jetliners.But Morris sees a greater long-term threat from the supply side as new investors pour money into aviation. He predicts much of that capital is in the industry to stay, pressuring rivals.In a study coinciding with the Airline Economics conference, Flightglobal Ascend said Chinese capital will account for over a third of the aircraft leasing industry within five years.Many such investors are willing to accept lower returns and that is a warning sign for other players, Morris said.<2E>If this money is resetting the rules, you have to learn to play by the new rules or you lose the game.<2E>Some market veterans disagree, saying new money will retreat as quickly as it arrived when the market turns lower, making it hard for inexperienced players to redeploy unwanted jets.So far signs are that the market is holding up, although there has been turbulence in the market for some long-haul jets.Recent bankruptcies of Air Berlin and Monarch Airlines in Europe angered passengers but the aircraft were absorbed relatively quickly due to high demand, bankers say.Another key test will be expected interest rate rises and a rollback in stimulus from central banks who have pumped money into the economy, a chunk of which found its way into aviation.Historically, aircraft investors sought double-digit returns and many now have to settle for mid-to-high single figures, Morris told Reuters.<2E>Those figures may be acceptable in a low-interest-rate environment, but as interest rates start to increase can people start to increase their returns? That may not be possible<6C>.The U.S. Federal Reserve has raised rates twice this year and is widely expected to do so again in December.Editing by Susan Fenton '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/aviation-finance/flood-of-chinese-capital-seen-shaking-up-aviation-finance-idINKBN1CZ0D4'|'2017-10-30T07:22:00.000+02:00'
'8886a2b5c8bd88f048564e41962ac578969f3204'|'U.S. regulator wants to loosen leash on Wells Fargo - sources'|'WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A leading U.S. regulator wants to make it easier for Wells Fargo to pay employees when they leave, loosening a restriction in place since a phony accounts scandal hit the bank last year, according to people familiar with the matter.The initiative comes as President Donald Trump is trying to lighten rules on Wall Street and the bank regulator, Keith Noreika, acting Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), must weigh whether to vet new Wells Fargo executives.If Noreika<6B>s approach prevails, the OCC could go easier on Wells Fargo and any other large banks sanctioned in the future.Since Noreika took control of the OCC in May, he has advocated easing up on sanctions imposed on Wells Fargo in the wake of the scandal over abusive sales practices, according to current and former officials.Wells Fargo reached a $190 million settlement in September 2016 after admitting that its sales staff opened as many as 2.1 million accounts without customers<72> consent. Since then the estimate has climbed to as many as 3.5 million.As part of the deal with regulators, incoming Wells Fargo executives can face a vetting from the OCC while severance payouts must be cleared by the OCC and a sister agency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.But Noreika wants officials to work faster when they review severance pay and the agency can choose to waive its check on incoming executives.Wells Fargo declined comment on the reviews.Hundreds of Wells Fargo employees have had their severance payouts frozen when they left as regulators tried to determine what role those employees might have had in the scandal.Under one proposal floated by the OCC, departing employees would collect severance automatically if regulators could not finish their review within weeks, according to one current and two former officials who were not authorized to discuss an internal debate.Under another scenario, the OCC could push for payouts to a Wells Fargo employee without waiting for the FDIC to concur. The FDIC has the final say on severance and until now the decisions have always been made jointly.The FDIC has resisted hurrying its severance reviews, according to those familiar with the discussions.But the current FDIC chief, Martin Gruenberg, could be replaced within weeks by a President Trump nominee.FILE PHOTO: A Wells Fargo branch is seen in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, U.S. February 10, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo If that happens and Noreika prevails, it could provide relief for Wells Fargo as it faces fresh scrutiny for wrongly charging customers for car insurance and mortgages.Noreika is expected to leave the OCC in coming weeks, but the matter could be settled by Joseph Otting, the former banker who is Trump<6D>s permanent pick for the OCC. Otting is expected to favor a similar, light touch approach to financial rules.PAYOUTS The <20>golden parachute<74> rule is meant to halt payouts to employees who played a role in a bank<6E>s problems, but Noreika has said too many innocent Wells Fargo employees are caught up in the reviews.In a June 5 letter to a former Wells Fargo employee made public by the OCC, Noreika said that he had personally called Gruenberg to expedite a payment.In the weeks after that letter was sent, sources said, the OCC has proposed speeding up the reviews, but the FDIC pushed back against setting <20>artificial<61> deadlines, according to one official.<2E>The OCC has sought ways to make regulatory reviews more efficient (and) complete in weeks not months,<2C> OCC spokesman Bryan Hubbard said, while declining to discuss inter-agency deliberations.The FDIC defended the pace of its severance audits, which in some cases have taken months to finish.<2E>When delays occur, it is generally because the applying institution provided incomplete or inconsistent information,<2C> said Barbara Hagenbaugh, spokeswoman for the FDIC.Severance payouts are simple to calculate for rank-and-file Wells Fargo employees who can get two weeks<6B> pay for each year o
'd115ff32f70bd830d88392dc6d88ee375ac917e9'|'Japan''s SoftBank calling off talks to merge Sprint, T-Mobile: Nikkei'|'(Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp<72>s ( 9984.T ) board of directors is having doubts about the merger it has been negotiating between its U.S. wireless subsidiary Sprint Corp ( S.N ) and T-Mobile US Inc ( TMUS.O ), due to fears of losing control of a combined entity, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday.The doubts could derail SoftBank<6E>s plan, discussed on and off for more than six months, to reshape the U.S. wireless sector by merging the two companies into a single carrier with more than 130 million U.S. subscribers, behind Verizon Communications Inc ( VZ.N ) and AT&T Inc ( T.N ).It would be the second time such a deal has failed. Sprint and T-Mobile came close to announcing a merger in 2014 but called it off at the last minute due to regulatory concerns.Sprint shares fell as much as 13 percent on Monday, but pared losses and were down 7 percent in late-afternoon trading. T-Mobile shares were down 4.5 percent.Several SoftBank directors urged the Japanese company<6E>s Chief Executive Masayoshi Son on Friday to reconsider the merger of Sprint and T-Mobile because the terms being discussed would result in SoftBank losing control of one of its largest assets, the source told Reuters.Sprint, T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom and SoftBank declined to comment.While Son has negotiated with T-Mobile<6C>s majority owner, Germany<6E>s Deutsche Telekom AG ( DTEGn.DE ), on the basis that SoftBank and other Sprint shareholders would own around 40 percent of the combined company, he now shares the concerns of the SoftBank directors questioning the benefits of such an ownership arrangement, the source said.As of Monday, T-Mobile was trying to keep talks alive, according to separate sources familiar with the matter.Smartphones with the logos of T-Mobile and Sprint are seen in front of a Soft Bank logo in this illustration taken September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustrations Its parent Deutsche Telekom would like to reach an agreement with Sprint on a deal, but it insists on governance control and the right to consolidate the combined company, the sources said.Earlier on Monday, Nikkei reported that SoftBank was expected to approach Deutsche Telekom as early as Tuesday to propose ending the merger negotiations. The Reuters source could not confirm this, and sources close to T-Mobile said they were unaware of any such decision by SoftBank.The Wall Street Journal also reported on Monday that Sprint had called the merger talks off and would make a significant investment in its network instead.The due diligence between T-Mobile and Sprint was almost complete and the focus had shifted to working out a business plan for the combined company as well as an integration strategy, sources had told Reuters last week.Even so, it was not clear that U.S. regulators would clear a deal between the two carriers.Sprint<6E>s junk bonds were among the hardest hit in Monday afternoon trading after the Nikkei reported the deal was on shaky ground, IFR reported.Analysts have expected consolidation in the U.S. wireless industry to ease pricing pressure in the market, which could benefit AT&T and Verizon, who have lost share to their smaller rivals. Cable companies Comcast Corp ( CMCSA.O ) and Charter Communications Inc ( CHTR.O ) are also entering the market with wireless service on Verizon<6F>s airwaves.<2E>With no merger of Sprint and T-Mobile, as well as the entrance of Comcast and Charter into wireless, we expect Verizon to have a difficult run going forward,<2C> said Philip Cusick, an analyst at JPMorgan, in a research note.<2E>Sprint as well could struggle to maintain positive subscriber momentum as cable enters, making its balance sheet look unsustainable.<2E>Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Additional reporting by Liana B. Baker in San Francisco, Pamela Barbaglia in London and Anjali Athavaley in New York; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Bill Rigby '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-sprint-co
'9b261bfc1d8ca38da120d0c0a49ac8f0ad7bb8bf'|'MIDEAST STOCKS-Saudi soft despite SABIC beat, Emaar drags down Dubai'|'October 30, 2017 / 2:17 PM / Updated 2 hours ago MIDEAST STOCKS-Saudi soft despite SABIC beat, Emaar drags down Dubai Reuters Staff * Saudi<64>s SABIC gains 0.6 percent on quarterly earnings * But this fails to lift petrochemical sector as a whole * Dubai<61>s GFH Financial rises as it may list in Saudi * Ooredoo rises 3.0 percent in Qatar despite earnings miss * Orascom Telecom pulls Egypt higher By Aziz El Yaakoubi DUBAI, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia<69>s stock market was soft on Monday despite strong earnings at Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC), while Emaar Properties dragged down Dubai<61>s index. The Saudi index edged down 0.2 percent. SABIC, the biggest petrochemical producer, gained 0.6 percent after reporting a 10.7 percent rise in third-quarter net profit to 5.79 billion riyals ($1.54 billion); analysts had on average forecast 4.27 billion riyals. SABIC cited higher average selling prices and higher sales quantities, but this - and Brent crude oil<69>s rise above $60 a barrel at the end of last week for the first time since 2015 - failed to boost the petrochemical sector as a whole. PetroRabigh fell 0.5 percent, Petrochem lost 1.3 percent and Saudi Kayan dropped 2.2 percent in unusually heavy trade. But Arabian Pipes, a supplier to the oil and refining industries, jumped 6.4 percent. Most Saudi cement makers fell in heavy trade with Northern Cement losing 2.9 percent and Najran Cement falling 2.0 percent. Insurers and banks were the most active stocks in Riyadh. Alinmaa Bank lost 1.1 percent while National Commercial Bank, the kingdom<6F>s largest lender, was almost flat. Malath Cooperative insurance jumped 5.7 percent after reporting third-quarter earnings rose from a low base. The Dubai index edged down 0.3 percent as real estate giant Emaar Properties lost 1.4 percent. This offset gains by several other stocks such as GFH Financial, which rose 1.2 percent after saying it may list its shares in Saudi Arabia. Emirates NBD also gained 1.2 percent. The bank, Dubai<61>s largest lender, posted a 2.28 billion dirham ($620.8 million) net profit for its third quarter, up from 1.66 billion dirhams a year ago; EFG Hermes had predicted 1.85 billion dirhams and SICO Bahrain 1.89 billion. Qatar<61>s index rose 0.8 percent as Qatar Islamic Bank gained 1.6 percent and telecommunications firm Ooredoo jumped 3.0 percent despite missing analysts<74> estimates. The company reported a net profit attributable to shareholders of 462 million riyals ($127 million) in the third quarter, below SICO Bahrain<69>s projection of 517.7 million riyals and EFG Hermes at 533.7 million. But Qatar First Bank rebounded 0.2 percent after losing 3.3 percent on Sunday in response to a big nine-month net loss. In Kuwait, telecommunications firm Zain fell a further 2.6 percent on Monday. On Sunday, it had lost 3.3 percent after reporting net income fell 7 percent in the third quarter, in line with analysts<74> forecasts. The Kuwaiti stock index slipped 0.7 percent. After the close, Kuwait<69>s ruling emir accepted the resignation of the prime minister and his cabinet, asking them to continue important duties until a new cabinet could be sworn in. Lawmakers were preparing to discuss a no-confidence vote in Information Minister Sheikh Mohammed al-Sabah after he was questioned over violations of budgetary and legislative rules, Kuwait Times said. The cabinet<65>s resignation may have been related to this, but the stock market was not expected to be affected much; such episodes are common in Kuwaiti politics. In Egypt, the index surged 1.2 percent as Orascom Telecom jumped 7.6 percent in heavy trade. Egyptian Chemical Industries surged 6.2 percent after its quarterly net profit more than doubled from a year earlier. HIGHLIGHTS * The index fell 0.2 percent to 6,945 points. DUBAI * The index fell 0.3 percent to 3,630 points. ABU DHABI * The index edged down 0.1 percent to 4,457 points. QATAR * The index rose 0.8 percent to 8,197 points. EGYPT * The index gained 1.2 percent to
'de73bd28bd168b790aa0f56436d5a110f6a37914'|'British Airways owner says Brexit unlikely to ground UK-EU flights'|'October 30, 2017 / 5:22 PM / in 33 minutes BA boss Walsh expects EU flights to weather Brexit Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Flights between Britain and the European Union are unlikely to be grounded when it leaves the bloc, Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways owner IAG ( ICAG.L ), said on Monday. Willie Walsh, CEO of International Airlines Group speaks during the closing press briefing at the 2016 International Air Transport Association (IATA) Annual General Meeting (AGM) and World Air Transport Summit in Dublin, Ireland June 3, 2016. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne British finance minister Philip Hammond said this month that if Britain left without a deal, this could lead to flights being grounded, adding it was in the interests of all to avoid this. <20>The prospect of there being no flying between the UK and Europe, I don<6F>t agree with at all,<2C> Walsh told a parliamentary committee. <20>This would bring all of Europe to a standstill.<2E> Flying rights to, from and within the EU, as well as between the United States and Britain are covered by EU-wide <20>Open Skies<65> agreements. But unlike with trade, where Britain would revert to WTO rules in the event of a <20>no deal<61>, there is no default fallback option for the aviation sector. Walsh said though that the industry is used to dealing with new regulations at short notice, such as when a ban on liquids on board aircraft came into place. He added that he would like more clarity about Britain<69>s role in the European Aviation Safety Agency after it leaves the EU and what rules it will follow, because that has implications for the way airlines maintain and operate their aircraft. One option would be for Britain to be an associate member of the European Aviation Safety Agency, Walsh, who said he had voted to <20>remain<69> in Britain in the referendum last year, added. Walsh told the committee that he had no concerns about flying rights between Britain and the United States, adding that <20>one second<6E> after Britain leaves the EU there will be an Open Skies treaty with the United States. Heathrow Chief Executive John Holland-Kaye told lawmakers he was encouraged because of talks going on <20>behind the scenes with U.S. and other markets.<2E> Reporting by Andrew MacAskill and Victoria Bryan; editing by David Milliken and Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-airlines/british-airways-owner-says-brexit-unlikely-to-ground-uk-eu-flights-idUKKBN1CZ25C'|'2017-10-30T19:23:00.000+02:00'
'149d5f5fc376c3afd6f106575af7c50e3703c1fd'|'VW lifts profit target as delivers on cost cuts'|'October 27, 2017 / 8:38 AM / in 6 hours Volkswagen lifts profit target as cost cuts pay off, shares at eight-month high Andreas Cremer 5 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ) lifted its profit target for the year on Friday after cost cuts at its core autos division helped it outstrip third-quarter earnings forecasts. FILE PHOTO - A Volkswagen logo is seen at Serramonte Volkswagen in Colma, California, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam/File Photo Shares in the world<6C>s largest carmaker rose 1.9 percent to an eight-month high at 148.20 euros by 0756 GMT, making them the biggest risers on the STOXX Europe 600 automobiles index .SXAP, which was up 1 percent. VW is spending billions of euros to reposition itself two years after a diesel emissions scandal, focussing on electrification of its mass-market and luxury brands while developing what it calls <20>digital mobility services<65> for those who do not want to own a vehicle. Higher earnings at mass-market divisions such as VW<56>s namesake brand and Czech unit Skoda as well as the trucks business lifted group results, while premium brands Audi ( NSUG.DE ) and Porsche posted flat and lower profit. <20>Earnings in the first nine months make us quite optimistic about the year as a whole,<2C> Volkswagen finance chief Frank Witter said. <20>This is a strong foundation we can build on.<2E> Quarterly group earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) and before special items jumped 15 percent to 4.31 billion euros (<28>3.83 billion). That beat even the highest estimate of 4.17 billion in a Reuters poll of banks and brokerages. VW said it booked 2.6 billion euros in the three months ended Sept. 30 to fix diesel engines in the United States, confirming an announcement last month that will raise total provisions for its <20>Dieselgate<74> scandal to 25.1 billion euros. Wolfsburg-based VW said it expected the group operating margin to moderately exceed a target of between 6.0 and 7.0 percent, having previously said the margin would hit that range. VW said its results benefited from cost cuts, agreed a year ago with labour unions, and growing vehicle sales. <20>The results show that customers at least abroad are ready to forgive VW the diesel scandal,<2C> NordLB analyst Frank Schwope who has a <20>buy<75> rating on the stock, said. <20>The strength is enormous.<2E> Quarterly VW brand deliveries rose 7.3 percent on strong demand from China, the United States and South America, almost triple the 2.7 percent gain in year-to-date sales and offsetting declines in Germany, helped by orders for the new Tiguan SUV. COST CUTS VW<56>s core brand is in the midst of cutting thousands of jobs through natural attrition, has ceased unprofitable models, reduced parts complexities and streamlined model development to lift the core division<6F>s margins. Restructuring helped more than double its quarterly return on sales to 3.8 percent from 1.5 percent a year ago, nearing VW<56>s target of at least 4 percent by 2020. <20>This is a strong result,<2C> said M.M. Warburg analyst Marc-Rene Tonn, who rates the stock <20>hold<6C>. <20>There is growing evidence of cost savings and benefits from modular production.<2E> Quarterly profitability at Porsche fell to 17.2 percent from 19.3 percent, weighed down by spending on new facilities at its Zuffenhausen headquarters to build the all-electric Mission E sportscar and falling demand for the expiring Cayenne SUV, the brand<6E>s second-best selling model. Margins in VW<56>s truck operations nearly doubled to 5.2 percent, benefiting from the deepening cooperation between the MAN and Scania brands which have been sharing purchasing and developing of gearboxes, axles and engines. Although group revenue was up 6.8 percent after nine months compared with year-ago levels, VW kept its guidance for an increase by more than 4 percent from last year<61>s 217.3 billion euros, citing risks from protectionist tendencies, financial market turbulence and structural deficits in countries. While VW is producing a strong operating performance, the carma
'0fd63f31f142f91c97447c438042d07f3d8bedb9'|'UK personal insolvencies hit five-year high in gloomy sign for economy'|'October 27, 2017 / 1:33 PM / Updated 7 hours ago UK personal insolvencies hit five-year high in gloomy sign for economy Andy Bruce 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The number of people registering as insolvent in England and Wales hit a five-year high in the third quarter, according to figures on Friday that hinted at trouble brewing in Britain<69>s consumer economy. FILE PHOTO: People walk across Westminster Bridge in London, Britain, June 22, 2017. REUTERS/Marko Djurica The government<6E>s Insolvency Service said 27,807 people in England and Wales registered as insolvent between July and September, up from 22,389 in the three months to June and marking the biggest total since the third quarter of 2012. On a seasonally adjusted basis, the figure was just short of a three-year high struck in the first quarter of 2017. Personal insolvencies have been rising over the past couple of years, largely due to changes in regulation that have made debt relief for consumers easier to obtain, according to experts in the field. But debt charities and the Institute of Chartered Accounts in England and Wales (ICAEW) warned that the latest sharp increase indicated wider problems in Britain<69>s consumer-led economy. Household budgets have been strained by rising prices caused by the pound<6E>s drop after last year<61>s Brexit vote, and wage growth has failed to keep pace. The insolvency figures are likely to bolster the view of economists who worry that even a small rise in Bank of England interest rates could have an outsized impact on consumers. A clear majority of economists in a Reuters poll published on Tuesday expect the BoE will raise interest rates next Thursday to 0.5 percent from 0.25 percent - although most also said it would be a mistake to act now. [BOE/INT] <20>With household debt levels continuing to rise, we are concerned that more families will be pushed into difficulty if circumstances change,<2C> said Jane Tully, director of external affairs at the Money Advice Trust charity. The figures showed the increase in personal insolvency was down to a rise in individual voluntary arrangements - a debt relief measure short of bankruptcy. The ICAEW said the insolvency figures boded poorly for the wider economy. <20>Consumer insolvencies are a reliable marker of business challenges ahead,<2C> said Clive Lewis, head of enterprise at the ICAEW. <20>We anticipate a worsening scene for businesses in the forthcoming quarter and would urge all owner-managers to look out for early signs of trouble and act fast to address them.<2E> Lewis said he thought even a small increase in interest rates could persuade consumers that they were not able to afford contracts that they had entered into, citing loans for car purchase as a particular area of concern. The BoE has said there is no overall debt bubble in Britain but it has expressed concern about consumer debt, which had been growing at about 10 percent a year. Earlier this month a BoE survey showed lenders are planning the biggest cutback in new consumer lending in nearly 10 years. Reporting by Andy Bruce; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-insolvency/uk-personal-insolvencies-hit-five-year-high-in-gloomy-sign-for-economy-idUKKBN1CW1W2'|'2017-10-27T16:32:00.000+03:00'
'ed27ef4ec92835b3181d15a4ade5cdc9ea68e8cb'|'Exclusive: Hospital operator Tenet Healthcare scraps sale plans - sources'|'(Reuters) - Tenet Healthcare Corp ( THC.N ), one of the largest U.S. hospital operators, has ended efforts to sell itself, following the departure of Chief Executive Officer Trevor Fetter earlier this week, two people familiar with the matter said.Medical equipment is pictured on the wall of an examination room inside a health clinic in San Diego, California November 17, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Blake The decision will allow Tenet to focus on selecting a permanent CEO who can determine the company<6E>s long-term strategies, said the sources, who requested anonymity because the deliberations are confidential.Tenet has called off its sale process, the sources said. However, the company is still exploring a variety of options to tackle its $15 billion debt pile and boost shareholder value, according to one of the sources.Tenet declined to comment.Shares of Tenet dropped 10 percent to $12.75, giving the company a market capitalization of $1.3 billion.<2E>We never really thought there would be a buyer for the whole company,<2C> Mizuho analysts wrote in a note, stating that Tenet could look at divesting its ambulatory surgery or managed healthcare services businesses.The Dallas-based company operates 77 general acute care hospitals, 20 short-stay surgical hospitals and more than 460 outpatient centers in the United States, as well as nine facilities in Britain.Hedge fund Glenview Capital Management, which removed two of its representatives from Tenet<65>s board in August, had encouraged the company to consider various strategic and financial alternatives.Tenet said on Monday that Executive Chairman Ronald Rittenmeyer would be CEO until it chooses a permanent replacement.Other hospital companies are facing similar struggles with their debt. Community Health Systems ( CYH.N ), for example, has been selling assets to raise cash following its acquisition of Health Management Associates for $3.6 billion in 2013.Reporting by Carl O''Donnell in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tenet-m-a-exclusive/exclusive-hospital-operator-tenet-healthcare-scraps-sale-plans-sources-idUSKBN1CV2UB'|'2017-10-27T00:39:00.000+03:00'
'cfd76a6254b035e0617a783395e0f7545d754d98'|'Exclusive: OPEC''s head says Saudi, Russia statements ''clear fog'' before November 30 meeting'|'LONDON (Reuters) - The fog has been cleared ahead of OPEC<45>s next policy meeting by Saudi Arabia and Russia declaring their support for extending a global deal to cut oil supplies for another nine months, OPEC<45>s secretary general told Reuters on Friday.FILE PHOTO: OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo attends a meeting of the 4th OPEC-Non-OPEC Ministerial Monitoring Committee in St. Petersburg, Russia July 24, 2017. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus Russia and nine other producers, have cut output by about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) to get rid of a supply glut. The pact runs to March 2018 and they are considering extending it.Saudi Arabia<69>s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman said this week he was in favor of extending the term of the agreement for nine months, following on from similar remarks by Russian made by President Vladimir Putin on Oct 4.<2E>OPEC welcomes the clear guidance from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia on the need to achieve stable oil markets and sustain it beyond the first quarter of 2018,<2C> OPEC<45>s Mohammad Barkindo told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference.<2E>Together with the statement expressed by President Putin this clears the fog on the way to Vienna on Nov. 30.<2E><>It<49>s always good to have this high-level feedback and guidance,<2C> Barkindo added, when asked if the crown prince<63>s comments suggested a nine-month extension of the pact looked more likely.Reuters reported on Oct. 18, citing OPEC sources, that producers were leaning towards extending the deal for nine months, though the decision could be postponed until early next year depending on the market.Discussions are continuing in the run-up to the Nov. 30 meeting, which oil ministers from OPEC and the participating non-OPEC countries will attend.The deal has supported the oil price, which on Friday reached $59.91 a barrel, the highest level since July 2015, but a backlog of stored oil has yet to be run down and prices are still at half the level of mid-2014.The supply pact is aimed at reducing oil stocks in OECD industrialized countries to their five-year average, and the latest figures suggest producers are just over half way there.Stock levels in September stood at about 160 million barrels above that average, according to OPEC data, down from January<72>s 340 million barrels above the five-year average.Editing by Dmitry Zhdannikov, Greg Mahlich '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-opec-oil-exclusive/exclusive-opecs-head-says-saudi-russia-statements-clear-fog-before-november-30-meeting-idUSKBN1CW22Y'|'2017-10-27T17:34:00.000+03:00'
'de5c20b7fda511054d70b701f454b2c08e6a8a48'|'Russian ''pocket banks'' must merge to survive'|' 25 PM / Updated 35 minutes ago Russian ''pocket banks'' must merge to survive Katya Golubkova 3 Min Read MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia risks having to bail out more banks owned by large industrial groups unless there is rapid consolidation, VTB ( VTBR.MM ) First Deputy Chief Executive Yuri Solovyov said. Two of Russia<69>s biggest banks, Otkritie and B&N, have had to be taken over by the central bank in the past two months after a liquidity squeeze. Such <20>pocket banks<6B>, a post-Soviet phenomenon which involved industrial groups needing their own banking wings to finance business, are still common in Russia, but some are struggling. <20>There should be less banks (than now) - we said this many times. Banks should be well-capitalised,<2C> Solovyov told Reuters. State controlled VTB is the second biggest bank by assets in Russia, which now has some 500 lenders, down from almost 900 in 2013 when central bank chief Elvira Nabiullina took the helm. <20>We are now moving towards (a situation) when some of the <20>pocket banks<6B> will be sold off or risk repeating the fate of those bailed out,<2C> Solovyov said. Asked if VTB would buy bailed out lenders Otkritie or B&N after the central bank finishes cleaning them up, Solovyov said the state bank is growing quite fast organically. <20>There should be a logic behind any purchase. There is no task to buy (something) just because of the loan book... It<49>s hard to see how Otkritie will look after the bailout.<2E> VTB holds a minority stake in the Otkritie group which controlled the bank which will be written down and cost VTB around 7 billion rubles (<28>91.4 million). A VTB loan to Otkritie to buy Lukoil<69>s ( LKOH.MM ) diamond business has been serviced, Solovyev said. EXPOSURE TO SAFMAR Loans to mid-sized Russian oil producer Russneft and Russia<69>s largest home electronics retailer M.Video ( MVID.MM ), both part of the Safmar business group behind B&N, are being serviced and VTB has no plans to take equity stakes in either. Mikhail Gutseriyev, whose family controls Safmar, said in August that Russneft owed VTB $1.26 billion. <20>Russneft<66>s debt to VTB is being serviced, the company is in good shape.. We don<6F>t have any issues,<2C> Solovyov said. B&N<>s co-owners are transferring some Safmar assets to B&N, but it was not clear whether Russneft or another oil company, Neftisa, were part of that process. Solovyov, whose bank also holds a stake in M.Video as collateral, said that debt was being <20>stably serviced<65>. VTB was ready to provide a loan of $500-550 million to transport company Fesco ( FESH.MM ) if it succeeded in restructuring its debt with bondholders, he added. Reporting by Katya Golubkova; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-russia-banks-vtb/russian-pocket-banks-must-merge-to-survive-idUKKBN1CZ25K'|'2017-10-30T19:24:00.000+02:00'
'284661175081d05c38ff69d06f6cfd85954adc7c'|'Activist White Tale wants three seats on Clariant board'|'October 30, 2017 / 6:18 AM / in 31 minutes Activist White Tale turns up pressure on Clariant John Miller , Michael Shields 4 Min Read ZURICH (Reuters) - The fight over chemicals company Clariant<6E>s ( CLN.S ) future turned bitter on Monday as activists who thwarted a $20 billion merger with Huntsman ( HUN.N ) threatened to call a shareholder meeting if they do not get three board seats and a strategy review. The logo of Swiss specialty chemicals company Clariant is seen at the company''s headquarters in Pratteln, Switzerland October 29, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann Clariant and Huntsman ( HUN.N ) dropped tie-up plans on Friday after White Tale, an investment vehicle backed by hedge fund manager Keith Meister and New York-based fund 40 North, raised its Clariant stake to more than 20 percent. Meister and 40 North<74>s David Winter and David Millstone took Clariant executives including Chief Executive Hariolf Kottmann to task, accusing them of ignoring their demands. <20>Unfortunately, Clariant management<6E>s comments since Friday betray a desire to go back in time and pretend this episode did not occur,<2C> White Tale said. <20>Should we be unable to come to agreement with the current board of directors shortly, we will have no choice but to move to call an extraordinary general meeting so that all shareholders can have a voice in Clariant<6E>s future.<2E> Clariant shares slipped 2 percent by 1540 GMT. BOARD MEETING White Tale has argued the merger plan undervalued Clariant, which should instead sell its plastics and coatings business and reinvest the proceeds in higher-margin areas, but on Monday pledged to keep an open mind about the findings of any review. Clariant said it would take up White Tale<6C>s demands at its next board meeting. <20>Management has offered to White Tale its readiness to present its existing growth strategy, listen to White Tale<6C>s plans and discuss appropriate concrete ways forward, including White Tale<6C>s wish for seats on the board of directors,<2C> Clariant said in a statement. Clariant will continue dialogue with its other shareholders, it added, including Bavarian families whose nearly 13 percent combined stake make them the company<6E>s second-biggest investor. In particular, White Tale took issue with Kottmann<6E>s insistence that the merger<65>s collapse put Clariant back in the same position it found itself in October 2016, before discussions over a tie-up with Huntsman. White Tale, whose stake is worth some $1.68 billion, countered on Monday that <20>it is not October 2016.<2E> JUST BEGINNING <20>While the termination of the ill-conceived Huntsman merger is a positive first step in executing on this strategy, by no means is this a cause for celebration,<2C> White Tale said. <20>The work is just beginning.<2E> This new, more strident tone shows White Tale is <20>upping the ante<74> to get Kottmann to consider alternatives, Bernstein analysts said. They noted Clariant<6E>s board of directors now consists of nine people, including Kottmann. <20>Three board seats would give White Tale a representation similar to their shareholding,<2C> the Bernstein analysts said. <20>However, we note that they would require 50 percent of share capital to remove management, which could be difficult, even though their support is increasing among the shareholder base.<2E> Editing by Jason Neely/Keith Weir'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-clariant-activist/activist-white-tale-wants-three-seats-on-clariant-board-idUSKBN1CZ0FW'|'2017-10-30T08:17:00.000+02:00'
'885b51aec047d9feefc665e345fc35e89b676b61'|'Hexagon''s CEO pleads not guilty at Norway insider trading trial'|'October 30, 2017 / 8:54 AM / Updated 4 minutes ago Hexagon''s CEO pleads not guilty at Norway insider trading trial Reuters Staff 2 Min Read OSLO (Reuters) - Hexagon AB HEXb.ST Chief Executive Ola Rollen, one of Sweden<65>s best known business leaders, pleaded not guilty on Monday at the start of a trial for suspected insider share trading in Norway. FILE PHOTO: Ola Rollen, chief executive of the Swedish engineering group Hexagon AB at a news conference in Zurich, Switzerland, June 13, 2005. REUTERS/Siggi Bucher/File Photo If convicted, Rollen faces up to six years in prison for an investment in Next Biometrics ( NEXT.OL ) made in 2015. The transaction did not involve Hexagon itself. <20>I have a strong desire to testify,<2C> he told the Oslo District Court. Asked by the judge whether he was guilty as charged, a stern-looking Rollen answered <20>No<4E>. In charge of Hexagon since 2000, Rollen discarded its old businesses and turned the company into a force in measurement technology and related software, making it one of Sweden<65>s biggest firms worth $17 billion. In 2016, shortly before his initial detention by police, he was ranked among the world<6C>s 100 best-performing CEOs by the Harvard Business Review. A purchase of shares in Next Biometrics on Oct. 6 and 7, 2015, made by Rollen<65>s investment firm, amounted to illegal insider trading, police said, as the firm was also involved in negotiations with Next to take a larger stake at a higher price. When a cash infusion was announced a few days later, Next<78>s shares surged. A verdict in the case will most likely come some time after the turn of the year, the Oslo court said on Monday. Hexagon<6F>s shares, which have risen by 32 percent this year, traded 1.6 percent lower for the day at 0930 GMT. Reporting by Ole Petter Skonnord and Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, writing by Terje Solsvik; editing by Jason Neely/Keith Weir'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-hexagon-ab-ceo-trial/hexagon-ceo-pleads-not-guilty-as-norway-insider-trading-trial-begins-idUKKBN1CZ0R7'|'2017-10-30T11:44:00.000+02:00'
'f0e633745b2700512d4b94046b944673607149cd'|'VW brand expects growth in fourth quarter after third quarter earnings double'|'October 30, 2017 / 8:15 AM / Updated 23 minutes ago VW brand eyes fourth quarter profit, sales growth on cost cuts, new models Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Volkswagen ( VOWG_p.DE ) said fourth-quarter profit and sales at its largest division may keep growing on cost cuts and demand for new models, after core earnings doubled in the July-to-September period. FILE PHOTO - Volkswagen''s logos are pictured at the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo Operating profit at VW<56>s namesake brand in the three months ended Sept. 30 doubled to 728 million euros (643.60 million pounds) as the unit pushes cost reductions and trims headcount as part of a turnaround plan agreed with labour unions last year. The world<6C>s largest automaker said on Monday it expects the positive business development of the first nine months at its core division to continue over the remainder of the year, without being more specific. By contrast, Volkswagen<65>s luxury division Audi ( NSUG.DE ) said on Monday is expects a challenging final quarter as costs for upcoming model launches weigh on results. The VW brand now expects the operating margin to moderately exceed a 2.5-to-3.5 percent target range, Volkswagen said, after previously guiding for the profitability benchmark to come in at the upper end of that corridor. That is in line with the more upbeat profit outlook announced by parent Volkswagen on Friday. <20>Our model offensive is increasingly paying off, the turnaround programmes in the markets are having an effect,<2C> VW brand Chief Executive Herbert Diess said in a statement. <20>By and large, the strategic repositioning of the brand is showing good results.<2E> Fixed costs at the VW brand were flat in the July-to-September period despite growing model launches, the carmaker said, without being more specific. New models by VW brand launched this year include the top-of-the-line Arteon fastback and the redesigned Polo subcompact. Reporting by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Maria Sheahan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-volkswagen-results-brand/vw-brand-expects-growth-in-fourth-quarter-after-third-quarter-earnings-double-idUKKBN1CZ0OC'|'2017-10-30T10:14:00.000+02:00'
'b35b27fee8453530317d2cfcd674097d78b6a57d'|'European shares open sideways as earning roll in, Spain rebounds'|'(ADVISORY- Follow European and UK stock markets in real time on the Reuters Live Markets blog on Eikon - see cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarkets)LONDON, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Spanish equities opened 1.4 percent higher on Monday, reassured by weekend demonstrations for a unified Spain and a poll showing a lead for parties opposed to Catalan independence.Broader European shares traded sideways.The pan-European STOXX 600 index was down 0.1 percent but Spain<69>s IBEX benchmark rose, led by Caixabank and Banco de Sabadell, shares in which rose 4.2 percent and 3.6 percent respectively.Spain<69>s state-owned lender Bankia, which posted a 10 percent fall in third-quarter net profit as lending income remained pressured by low interest rates gained 1.1 percent.In London, shares in HSBC fell 0.6 percent despite reporting a five-fold jump in its quarterly profits.Glencore retreated 1.5 percent after raising its earnings guidance and a report saying it would cancel its secondary listing in Hong Kong due to lack of interest from investors.The FTSE 100 slipped 0.2 percent at the start of a week that could see the Bank of England raise interest rates for first time since 2007.On the mergers and acquisitions front, Swiss drugmaker Novartis slipped 0.7 percent after offering to buy France<63>s Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA) in a $3.9 billion cash deal. '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/europe-stocks/european-shares-open-sideways-as-earning-roll-in-spain-rebounds-idUSL8N1N51HQ'|'2017-10-30T10:40:00.000+02:00'
'363b2cf4be59bb828f256b3f766d502894b16a38'|'GM settles California county recall case for $13.9 mln'|'WASHINGTON Oct 29 (Reuters) - General Motors Co agreed to a $13.9 million settlement with Orange County, California after prosecutors accused the Detroit automaker of intentionally concealing serious safety defects including those involving faulty ignition switches tied to nearly 400 deaths and injuries, the company said on Sunday.An Orange County superior court judge late Friday approved the settlement for alleged violations of unfair competition and false advertising laws for some vehicles recalled in 2014, including the ignition switch recall. Earlier this month, GM agreed to a separate $120 million settlement with 49 states and the District of Columbia over faulty ignition switches and its auto safety practices.Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said in a statement that GM failed to disclose defects in power steering, airbag and braking systems.The largest U.S. automaker had previously paid about $2.5 billion in penalties and settlements over faulty ignition switches that could cause engines to stall and prevent airbags from deploying in crashes. The defect has been linked to 124 deaths and 275 injuries, and prompted a recall that began in February 2014 of 2.6 million vehicles.GM spokesman David Caldwell said in a statement that since 2014, GM had taken important steps to help ensure vehicle safety, including a new organizational structure and a new program to encourage employees to report potential issues.GM still faces more than 100 lawsuits in connection with the ignition switch recall, including economic loss and personal injury claims. The only remaining governmental lawsuit is from the state of Arizona.In 2015, GM paid $900 million to settle a U.S. Justice Department criminal investigation and agreed to three years of oversight by an independent monitor after being charged with wire fraud.No individuals were charged, but Chief Executive Mary Barra fired 15 people, including eight executives, over the issue. The ignition switch probe prompted an industrywide jump in recalls in 2014 to an all-time high and cast a spotlight on GM<47>s safety record as Barra testified before the U.S. Congress. (Editing by Richard Chang)Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/gm-ignition/gm-settles-california-county-recall-case-for-13-9-mln-idINL2N1N40FY'|'2017-10-29T16:09:00.000+02:00'
'021d4ba3feaa343d7701153999421533b2da9ef5'|'Wheels come off my travel policy as Amex refuses to pay for bicycle damage - Money'|'I was wondering if you could help me with my American Express/Axa travel insurance policy.Before going on a recent cycling trip to Spain I took out a policy advertised on the Amex website as <20>automatically providing comprehensive cover while cycling<6E>. The website could not have been clearer. To cut a long story short, I had a serious accident and my bike was damaged. When I got back to the UK I made a claim for the damage to my bicycle and clothing.At this point, despite the advertised <20>comprehensive<76> nature of the policy, Axa, which underwrites the policy on Amex<65>s behalf, has refused to pay out, leaving me with a <20>1,500 loss. The policy<63>s terms and conditions are contradictory and I have since discovered the policy excludes damage to bikes.I believe the advertising on the Amex website and wording in the policy document is grossly misleading, and that the policy has been mis-sold. Can you help?OR, LeedsI agree that the website could not have been any clearer. Small wonder people have little faith in insurance companies, and we would expect better of American Express. After agreeing to take a second look at the case, Axa has decided it will now pay up. A spokesman told Guardian Money: <20>We have reviewed the case again and we can see why OR might have misunderstood what was covered under his travel insurance policy. With that in mind we have decided to pay the claim as a gesture of goodwill and American Express has updated the wording on its website.<2E>In general, prominently displayed marketing claims will always trump terms hidden in the small print, so the financial ombudsman would most likely have found in your favour had it come to that. You are saved a lot of form filling and a considerable wait.We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@theguardian.com or write to Consumer Champions, Money, the Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone numberTopics Insurance Consumer champions Consumer affairs Consumer rights features'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/oct/29/american-express-travel-insurance-policy-axa-bicycle-damage'|'2017-10-29T13:00:00.000+02:00'
'd49bac69d73082bd9588233325ae68aaee880a20'|'Westpac says will defend itself in regulator rate-rigging lawsuit'|'SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia<69>s Westpac Banking Corp said on Monday it plans to defend itself in a lawsuit brought by the nation<6F>s corporate regulator accusing it of rigging a key interest rate - unlike two rivals who have agreed to settle similar cases.A woman walks past an illuminated logo for Australia''s Westpac Bank in Sydney, Australia, September 6, 2017. REUTERS/Steven Saphore/Files Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ) and National Australia Bank (NAB) reached settlements with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) last week.Westpac, the country<72>s No. 2 lender, has not changed its position and will defend itself against the allegations, a bank spokesman told Reuters on Monday.At a short court hearing on Monday, ASIC lawyer Philip Crutchfield said in relation to Westpac, <20>that matter is proceeding<6E>, according to a transcript of the hearing.The hearing will continue on Tuesday.ASIC filed a civil lawsuit against the three lenders last year, alleging they had rigged Australia<69>s primary interest rate benchmark, the bank bill swap rate, for profit between 2010 and 2012. The rate is used in Australian markets to price home loans, credit cards and other financial products.ANZ and NAB<41>s settlements save them a lengthy, expensive and potentially embarrassing hearing, although analysts have said that admitting wrongdoing could open them to possible class action lawsuits from shareholders.The rate-rigging allegations, which have already drawn lawsuits from U.S. funds, are but one of several scandals engulfing Australia<69>s highly-concentrated banking sector.NAB said on Friday that as part of the settlement it has agreed to a A$10 million ($7.7 million) penalty, A$20 million in costs to ASIC and a A$20 million donation to a financial consumer protection fund. ANZ has said it will release details of its settlement soon.Westpac shares were up 0.6 percent in mid-session trade, in line with the broader market and other banks.($1 = 1.3028 Australian dollars)Reporting by Byron Kaye; Additional reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Edwina Gibbs '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/australia-banks-court/westpac-says-will-defend-itself-in-regulator-rate-rigging-lawsuit-idINKBN1CZ09Y'|'2017-10-30T06:07:00.000+02:00'
'82165b84b07fcaa752d6d197779db72c1bb734ec'|'CORRECTED-RPT-U.S. farmers tighten belts to compete with cheap LatAm grain - Reuters'|'(Corrects first paragraph to read <20>punctured a tire on his combine<6E> instead of <20>on his tractor<6F>)By Mark Weinraub and P.J. HuffstutterCHICAGO, Oct 26 (Reuters) - When Kansas farmer Tom Giessel drove over a deer carcass and punctured a tire on his combine during harvest this fall, he did not have the time or cash to fix it. He borrowed his neighbor<6F>s combine to finish.U.S. farmers are cutting costs any way they can to compete against cheaper producers in Argentina and Brazil. Four years of global oversupply have pushed down grain prices, reduced agricultural revenues and put more expensive producers under financial pressure.In response, U.S. farmers have bought cheaper seeds, spent less on fertilizers and delayed equipment purchases as they seek to ride out the downturn. But more bumper harvest forecasts and rising energy prices herald another tough year for farmers in 2018.<2E>The logical thing to do is stop farming,<2C> said Giessel, 64, who farms about 5,000 acres and has worked on the land all of his adult life.Giessel has cut spending on what he can control - seeds, chemicals, fertilizer, rented land - and chewed through his farm<72>s savings. He stands to lose $93 an acre, or nearly $15,000, on one corn field alone this year.<2E>My burn rate is a raging fire. And I am no different than anyone else out here,<2C> Giessel said.Some farmers have had to sell assets to keep afloat. Others have gone into bankruptcy.U.S. farmers have taken another hit this year because of rising prices of labor, fuel and electricity. Those costs together account for about 14.5 percent of total expenses and are largely out of farmers<72> control. Interest expenses have also risen as banks have tightened credit to the agricultural sector.These items were expected to push overall costs up 1.3 percent in 2017, which would mark the first year since 2014 that farmers have failed to reduce total costs.Farmers cut $40.20 billion to bring total costs down to $350.49 billion between 2014 and 2016, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department<6E>s Economic Research Service.The downturn in spending has hurt farm equipment manufacturers.Sales in the agriculture division at Deere & Co and CNH Industrial fell sharply during 2015 and 2016. Deere expects farm equipment sales in the United States and Canada to be down another 5 percent this year, and CNH said in July that sales in North America were down.CROP PRICES, YIELD Falls in crop prices have outpaced the cuts farmers have made in spending.Corn futures have dropped about 12 percent during 2017 from 2014 averages while soybean prices are 17 percent lower and wheat has tumbled 24 percent.Farmers are looking for bigger yields through better seed and pesticide technology to improve their ability to compete with their counterparts in Latin America and elsewhere. But they are struggling to afford the expensive latest varieties as they tighten their belts.Hardier seed breeds and rising yields have for years boosted U.S. farm productivity. But they have also contributed to the massive oversupply in global grains markets.Saving money on capital purchases is one thing. But cuts to farm inputs <20> from reducing how many seeds are planted to cutting back on fertilizer use <20> will eventually hurt productivity, say farmers.<2E>You find yourself in a Catch-22,<2C> said Jeff Fisher, who grows corn and soybeans on 1,600 acres in Illinois.<2E>You just hope the yield won<6F>t be hit too bad next year.<2E>David Miller, who grows corn and soybeans on 500 acres in southern Iowa, saved about $8 per acre for beans and some $20 per acre for corn by using cheaper seeds.The risk is that they will produce a smaller harvest. Adding to that concern: After a dry summer, he expects his poorest soybean field to yield around 20 bushels per acre, 65 percent off the state average.Even with the cuts, U.S. farmers are still spending more per acre than their competitors in Latin America.In Argentina, corn was expected to cost just under $200 per acre
'24a62690244d36f4ba24596d56fb2d6ffbeff75e'|'Is now really the time for massive tax cuts? - Oct. 27, 2017'|'Details of GOP tax plan released America''s economy and jobs market look quite healthy right now. But President Trump is demanding very expensive surgery anyway. New numbers released Friday show that the U.S. has grown at 3% for back-to-back quarters for the first time in three years . Unemployment is sitting at just 4.2%, the lowest in 16 years . And consumer sentiment rose in October to levels unseen since early 2004. Despite the obvious strength in the economy, Trump recently promised on Twitter the "biggest TAX CUT" ever, adding "we need it!" Trump says he wants to push through both tax reform, which would modernize the outdated tax code, and to provide tax cuts to individuals and businesses. Given how healthy the economy is, some economists are mystified over Trump''s urgent push for tax cuts that are likely to be paid for by adding to America''s mountain of debt. Related: Economy posts impressive growth despite hurricanes "No other president in modern economic history has tried to do this," said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank. "It just seems completely unnecessary. With unemployment at 4.2%, why on earth would we try to stimulate the economy?" Normally, presidents ask Congress for deficit-financed tax cuts when the economy is weak. That''s what President Obama did in 2009 during the Great Recession, and President George W. Bush did the same after the 2001 downturn. "This is kind of an odd time to get fiscal stimulus. It''s not like we''re in a recession, or coming out of one," said Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC. Here''s the problem: There will be another recession, eventually. And spending heavily to slash the corporate tax rate to 20% from 35% today could leave Congress with fewer options to tackle the next downturn. The current economic expansion is already the second-longest ever. Related: Will Trump''s tax plan really give you a $4,000 pay raise? The Tax Policy Center estimates that Trump''s tax overhaul would slash federal revenue by $2.4 trillion over 10 years, and by $3.2 trillion over the second decade. And the national debt is already 77% of GDP , and slated to keep growing. "The risk is we don''t have the money for a rainy day. It''s borderline irresponsible," said Rupkey. It''s true that the U.S. economy is not perfect. Businesses remain reluctant to spend, and Americans aren''t getting the raises they deserve. Wage growth has been sluggish, although that improved in September. It''s also true that tax reform is an admirable goal, no matter how fast the economy is growing. Tax reform, which is aimed at making the sprawling and outdated system more efficient, is different and much less costly than tax cuts. "Tax reform that is paid for is much better for the economy than a plan that adds to the debt," Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, wrote recently . Some experts believe that efforts to reform the tax code will fail once details of the bill are finally unveiled on November 1, leaving the GOP to push simple tax cuts instead. "We continue to expect deficit-increasing tax cuts, not...deficit-neutral tax reform," Barclays economist Michael Gapen wrote in a recent report. Given that the U.S. economy is "at full employment," Gapen believes that tax cuts will provide a "temporary boost" to GDP of just 0.5 percentage points. That would leave 2018 growth near 2.8%. The White House was asked on Friday by reporters about the need for tax cuts given solid GDP growth. Related: How Trump''s tax plan could backfire on Wall Street Kevin Hassett, chair of Trump''s Council of Economic Advisers, argued that the U.S. economy has accelerated because businesses are excited about tax and regulatory reform. Hassett also predicted that lowering the corporate tax rate and allowing businesses to immediately write off investments could increase GDP by 3% to 5%, as well as boost wages. Without tax cuts and tax relief, the U.S. will be stuck
'b4b6295ea6fcfc970eda0af97aacbc10f4786113'|'GE Board did not know about CEO''s extra plane -WSJ'|'Oct 29 (Reuters) - General Electric Co executives did not tell the multinational conglomerate<74>s board until October about a spare business jet that routinely flew for its now-retired chief executive, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.Executives also did not tell directors that the maker of aircraft engines, locomotives, power plants and other industrial equipment had received an internal complaint about the jet several years ago, the publication said, also citing people familiar with the matter.The Wall Street Journal reported on Oct. 18 that former Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt had an extra aircraft follow his corporate jet on some overseas trips during much of his 16 years in the role. GE executives first informed the board about the practice after the report, the publication said.GE told its directors the company had scaled back the practice in mid-2014 and would continue to use the backup plane only in limited situations, such as going to risky locations, the Journal reported.Immelt told the Journal on Thursday that he did not know the spare plane was flying.Immelt, 61, stepped down as CEO on Aug. 1 and planned to continue as chairman through Dec. 31. But John Flannery was named chairman on Oct. 2.Flannery has grounded GE<47>s corporate aircraft fleet to cut costs and initiated a new policy under which executives will fly on commercial or charter flights, the Journal said. (Reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; Editing by Richard Chang) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/ge-airplane/ge-board-did-not-know-about-ceos-extra-plane-wsj-idINL2N1N40EO'|'2017-10-29T15:09:00.000+02:00'
'0f564aa2de4bdae0982612f3a753f9d69fed14f7'|'Failed carrier Monarch investor Greybull would repay rescue bill'|'October 29, 2017 / 5:57 PM / Updated 6 minutes ago Failed carrier Monarch investor Greybull would repay rescue bill Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The former owner of failed British airline Monarch said on Sunday it had a moral obligation to repay some of the bill to bring passengers home if it profits from the administration of the carrier. FILE PHOTO: Monarch airplanes are seen parked on the runway at Newquay airport, Newquay, Britain, October 26, 2017, REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo Monarch collapsed on Oct. 2, causing the cancellation of hundreds of thousands of holidays and marooning more than 100,000 tourists abroad. A repatriation programme was estimated to have cost the British government about 60 million pounds ($79 million). Transport Minister Chris Grayling had said that Greybull Capital should contribute to the cost of bringing the holiday-makers home, although there was no formal mechanism to demand the investment company did so. Greybull, which bailed out Monarch a year ago, pledged to defray some of the costs in a letter to lawmakers. <20>We concur wholeheartedly with the Secretary of State<74>s recent statement that any stakeholder who finds themselves in-pocket at the end of the administration process would be under a moral obligation to contribute to other stakeholders,<2C> the company said in a statement about its letter. <20>This would include helping to defray the costs incurred by the Department for Transport in repatriating Monarch customers.<2E> Greybull said it agreed with the minister that it was too early to judge the outcome of the administration. Monarch<63>s administrators at accountancy firm KPMG are seeking court guidance about whether they can sell take-off and landing slots at airports such as London<6F>s Gatwick, which reports say could be worth up to 60 million pounds. Greybull also said in the letter it remained <20>deeply sorry and saddened that circumstances beyond its control led to the failure of Monarch<63> despite its efforts turn around the company and the significant capital it had provided since it first invested in 2014. Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Catherine Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-monarch-airlines-administration-greyb/failed-carrier-monarch-investor-greybull-would-repay-rescue-bill-idUKKBN1CY0QW'|'2017-10-29T19:56:00.000+02:00'
'd9254582b7f17618258e2d325bcc2397b4505877'|'Investors will reward Deutsche Bank for cost cuts, manager tells newspaper'|'October 29, 2017 / 10:33 AM / Updated 14 hours ago Investors will reward Deutsche Bank for cost cuts, manager tells newspaper Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Investors will reward Deutsche Bank ( DBKGn.DE ) for its cost cutting, a member of the German lender<65>s management board said in a newspaper interview published on Sunday. The logo of Deutsche Bank is seen at its headquarters ahead of the bank''s annual general meeting in Frankfurt, Germany May 18, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski Asked by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung whether investors would be willing to give the bank much more time to execute a turnaround, board member Christian Sewing said: <20>My impression is that our discipline in reducing costs will go rewarded.<2E> Some investors have criticised the bank<6E>s slow return to health. Last week, the bank posted a 10 percent drop in revenue in the third quarter, reflecting a weak market and the effects of a major restructuring. <20>You see that earnings in some divisions are rising again,<2C> Sewing said. <20>If we continue this quarter after quarter, I<>m very optimistic.<2E> Frank Strauss, another board member interviewed by the paper, noted the bank<6E>s restructuring plan was a medium-term one. When asked about the bank<6E>s share price hovering below 15 euros, he said: <20>Investors justifiably expect further details and execution by us, and they will get this.<2E> Reporting by Tom Sims; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-deutsche-bank-costs/investors-will-reward-deutsche-bank-for-cost-cuts-manager-tells-newspaper-idUKKBN1CY0AZ'|'2017-10-29T12:31:00.000+02:00'
'b05612537a859d3ddd1a85ecc6dfe3fe06c2ad4f'|'Homebuilder Lennar to buy CalAtlantic Group in $9.3 billion deal'|'(Reuters) - Lennar Corp will buy smaller rival CalAtlantic Group Inc for $5.7 billion, creating the largest homebuilder in the United States as it strives to deal with higher land acquisition costs and a tighter labor market.FILE PHOTO: Newly constructed houses built by Lennar Corp are pictured in Leucadia, California March 18, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo The deal announced by the companies on Monday is the first major merger in the U.S. housing sector in more than two years and will make the unified firm one of the top three homebuilders in 24 of the United States<65> 30 biggest markets.Valued at $5.66 billion in stock and shares, plus $3.6 billion in net debt, analysts said the buyout would give Lennar a better foothold in booming housing markets in California from which CalAtlantic drew a third of its revenue last year.But the move also reflects the pressure on builders due to a shortage of skilled labor that is constraining the supply of homes and pushing costs up even as U.S. house prices rise for a seventh straight year.CalAtlantic<69>s shares jumped 23 percent after the announcement of the deal, which valued its shares at $51.24 per share a premium of 27 percent to Friday<61>s close, but Lennar<61>s fell almost 3 percent.<2E>(It<49>s) go big or go home,<2C> Credit Suisse analyst Susan Maklari wrote in a note on the deal.<2E>Builders are increasingly seeking greater volume and cost controls in order to offset higher land and input costs and drive better profitability and returns. Size helps to better manage land and labor constraints.<2E>The deal turns up the heat on sector mergers after a pair of smaller moves by Lennar and its biggest rival, D.R. Horton. It valued the combined firm at $18 billion, compared to Horton<6F>s market cap of around $15.6 billion.The combined company sold 40,792 homes last fiscal year, according to the companies<65> separate SEC filings versus Horton<6F>s 40,309.Horton shares were broadly flat in morning trade in New York.Lennar said it would save $75 million in costs next year and $250 million in 2019 in efficiencies due to the merger of the two operations.<2E>LEN has an opportunity to apply a faster turning production homebuilding approach to CAA<41>s larger lot positions,<2C> BTIG analyst Carl Reichardt wrote in a note.Citi was financial adviser for Lennar while JP Morgan Securities LLC advised CalAtlantic.Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Martina D''Couto, Bernard Orr '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/calatlantic-grp-m-a-lennar/homebuilder-lennar-to-buy-calatlantic-group-in-9-3-billion-deal-idINKBN1CZ1GE'|'2017-10-30T09:35:00.000+02:00'
'19799b8960bf051a5468915650cf92685d5d4fab'|'Nippon Steel president says to support Kobe Steel if any request comes'|'October 30, 2017 / 5:15 AM / in 3 hours Nippon Steel president says to support Kobe Steel if any request comes Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp, Japan<61>s biggest steelmaker and a shareholder of Kobe Steel Ltd, is willing to provide support to Kobe if it receives any request, the president of Nippon Steel said on Monday. FILE PHOTO - A logo of Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp is pictured outside its headquarters in Tokyo November 9, 2012. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao/File Photo Kobe Steel, which sell steel products to manufacturers of cars, planes, trains and other equipment around the world, said earlier this month that about 500 of its customers had received products with falsified specifications, in one of Japan<61>s biggest industrial scandals. <20>We will consider and respond if we receive any requests from Kobe Steel for help,<2C> Nippon Steel President Kosei Shindo told a news conference, adding that his company has not received any concrete request so far. Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Tom Hogue '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/kobe-steel-scandal-nippon-steel/nippon-steel-president-says-to-support-kobe-steel-if-any-request-comes-idINKBN1CZ0CG'|'2017-10-30T07:05:00.000+02:00'
'1be084025f126eb4691fe2dae45d0d6b334fa796'|'Mediobanca CEO hopes for accord on Vivendi-Mediaset dispute'|'MILAN (Reuters) - Mediobanca Chief Executive Alberto Nagel said on Saturday he hoped Italian broadcaster Mediaset ( MS.MI ) and French media group Vivendi ( VIV.PA ) will find a satisfactory solution to resolve their pay-TV dispute.FILE PHOTO: The Mediaset tower in Cologno Monzese, near Milan, Italy, April 8, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini/File Photo Speaking at the Italian investment bank<6E>s shareholder meeting, Nagel added he was close to both parties.French business tycoon Vincent Bollore, who serves as Vivendi chairman, is a key shareholder in Mediobanca, along with Fininvest, the holding company of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, which is the biggest shareholder in Mediaset.Nagel also said there were no grounds to criticize Vivendi<64>s stake-building at Telecom Italia ( TLIT.MI ), saying <20>there<72>s never been a queue<75> to invest in the Italian phone group.Reporting by Gianluca Semeraro; writing by Agnieszka Flak; editing by Alexander Smith '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-mediobanca-ceo/mediobanca-ceo-hopes-for-accord-on-vivendi-mediaset-dispute-idINKBN1CX0F3'|'2017-10-28T11:21:00.000+03:00'
'56e190ec2f57ea2b1b77e3927282debee4891f40'|'This Week in Sports: A new stakeholder for the Nets - Reuters'|'Listen to this week<65>s Keeping Score podcast:Atlanta Hawks guard Isaiah Taylor (17) is fouled by Brooklyn Nets guard D''Angelo Russell (1) during second half at Barclays Center. The Brooklyn Nets defeated the Atlanta Hawks 116-104. Mandatory Credit: Noah K. Murray-USA TODAY Sports A wrap-up of the week in sports news: Netting a piece of the NBA: Joseph Tsai, vice chairman of Chinese internet conglomerate Alibaba, has struck a deal to buy a 49 percent stake in the Brooklyn Nets NBA team.Texans owner walks back remarks: The owner of Houston<6F>s NFL team apologized for comparing players to <20>inmates<65> as he discussed protests staged during the national anthem ahead of games. An article in ESPN The Magazine, posted online on Friday, Quote: d Bob McNair as saying in a meeting, <20>We can<61>t have the inmates running the prison.<2E>Passing the torch: The Olympic torch was ignited this week in Greece, kicking off the countdown to the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games, which begin February 9. The torch is due to arrive in South Korea on November 1 for the start of the domestic torch relay.Columbus Crew forward Ola Kamara (11) is stopped by Atlanta United goalkeeper Brad Guzan (1) behind defender Leandro Gonzalez (5) during the second half during a Eastern Conference knockout round soccer game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports Click here for more of Reuters top sports photography.Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-weekinsports-27oct2017/this-week-in-sports-a-new-stakeholder-for-the-nets-idUSKBN1CW30I'|'2017-10-28T06:03:00.000+03:00'
'290c5c19783a21a4e5d68d24caf93c70fa4fee0d'|'Kobe Steel seeks loan, shareholder offers support after data scandal'|'October 30, 2017 / 8:27 AM / Updated 20 minutes ago Kobe Steel seeks loan, shareholder offers support after data scandal Taro Fuse , Yuka Obayashi 4 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Embattled Kobe Steel Ltd ( 5406.T ) is seeking 50 billion yen (334.86 million pounds) in loans from banks, a banking source said on Monday, while a shareholder said it was ready to offer assistance as the company grapples with a scandal over falsified product specifications. Kobe Steel Executive Vice President Naoto Umehara attends a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 30, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon Japan<61>s third-largest steelmaker also pulled its forecast for a first annual profit in three years while it deals with the financial impact of one of Japan<61>s biggest corporate scandals. Kobe Steel is losing customers and said on Friday it had the government-sanctioned seal of quality revoked on some of its products. The steelmaker<65>s admission earlier this month that it had found widespread tampering in specifications has sent companies in global supply chains scrambling to check whether the safety or performance of their products has been compromised. While no safety issues have been identified, Kobe Steel<65>s parts and materials are used across the world in cars, trains, airplanes and other equipment. The company, which has said it cannot fully quantify the impact on its finances from the scandal, is seeking loans from Mizuho Bank and other lenders, a banker with direct knowledge of the situation told Reuters, requesting anonymity because the discussions are not public. The Nikkei business daily reported earlier that Mizuho Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ are considering loans to the steelmaker. Kobe Steel Managing Executive Officer Kazuaki Kawahara confirmed at an earnings briefing later on Monday that the company was in loan talks with banks but did not provide details. Executive Vice President Naoto Umehara said that Kobe Steel will continue generating cash on its own to cover expenses from the data falsification as well as for capital investment. He said the misconduct would likely reduce its recurring profit by 10 billion yen in the full 2017/18 financial year. The company however cut its forecast for recurring profit in the year by 5 billion yen to 50 billion yen because of better than expected earnings in the first half. Kobe Steel Executive Vice President Naoto Umehara attends a news conference in Tokyo, Japan October 30, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon Japan<61>s biggest steelmaker, Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp ( 5401.T ) said on Monday it will provide support to its smaller rival if requested. Nippon Steel has a 2.95 percent stake in Kobe Steel. <20>We will consider and respond if we receive any requests from Kobe Steel for help,<2C> Nippon Steel President Kosei Shindo told a news conference, adding that his company has not received any request. The companies have an alliance that involves cooperating on steel supplies during shortages or maintenance of factories, while Kobe Steel has a 0.71 percent stake in Nippon Steel. Slideshow (3 Images) However, Kobe Steel<65>s Umehara said there were no plans to seek support from Nippon Steel. Kobe Steel repaid a 20 billion yen bond that came due on Friday, a spokesman said on Monday. But it cancelled plans to pay a dividend on its first-half results. The company said it had net profit of nearly 40 billion yen in the April to September period. The results do not include any financial impact from the cheating. Kobe Steel forecast in July that it would earn net profit of 35 billion yen in the year through March 2018 after two years of losses. Kobe Steel shares rose 2.2 percent on Monday, while the Nikkei 225 .225 fell 0.1 percent. Kobe Steel<65>s market value has slumped by about $1.5 billion since it said in early October it had found widespread tampering of product specifications in its aluminium and copper business. The cheating has since been found across its busi
'25d52d4f8eca060e08986da7422a753a8632fac9'|'Fosun Pharma to buy France''s Tridem for $73 million'|'HONG KONG (Reuters) - Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical (Group) Co Ltd ( 600196.SS ) ( 2196.HK ) said it would buy French drug distributor Tridem Pharma S.A.S. for 63 million euros ($73 million), in a move to expand its market share in Europe and Africa.A company logo is pictured at the headquarters of Shanghai Fosun Pharma Group in Shanghai, China September 13, 2016. REUTERS/Aly Song The Chinese drug maker said in a statement that it will buy shares in Tridem from major shareholders including Financi<63>re des Lices, Multicroissance, and a French fund FCPR PMC II.Tridem has a sales network covering 21 French-speaking African countries and regions.This month, Fosun Pharma bought 74 percent of India<69>s Gland Pharma for around $1.1 billion.Reporting by Donny Kwok; Editing by Edwina Gibbs '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-fosun-pharma-m-a-tridem/fosun-pharma-to-buy-frances-tridem-for-73-million-idINKBN1CZ02D'|'2017-10-29T22:05:00.000+02:00'
'4d5d7ae15315f6e643b5cba04246a2f249b10fdd'|'Asia shares, crude oil buoyant; euro near 3-month lows'|'October 30, 2017 / 12:51 AM / in 6 minutes Asia shares get technology boost, crude near two-year top Swati Pandey 4 Min Read SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian shares climbed on Monday, as technology stocks were bolstered by solid earnings from U.S. tech stalwarts and on strong pre-orders for Apple<6C>s iPhone X, while oil hovered around a 2-year peak on supply fears. A man looks at a stock quotation board outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Toru Hanai Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) said pre-orders for the 10th anniversary iPhone X, which started on Friday, were <20>off the charts<74>, a blessing for Asian suppliers such as South Korea<65>s LG Display ( 034220.KS ) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company ( 2330.TW ). Indeed, technology stocks were the top gainers in MSCI<43>s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS, which was up 0.5 percent. Samsung Electronics ( 005930.KS ) led the charts. Energy stocks did well too, with Brent crude LCOc1 at its highest since July 2015 after Saudi Arabia agreed to support the extension of a global oil production cut agreement. [O/R] Seoul shares .KS11 edged up 0.2 percent while Australia''s benchmark index climbed 0.3 percent. Japan''s Nikkei .N225 steadied around the highest since mid-1996, having soared 8 percent in October so far. Global share markets have been on an uptrend since the start of the year, helped by solid corporate earnings and positive economic data across major countries. The world share index .MIWD PUS has surged 17.6 percent so far in 2017, on track for its best showing since 2013. <20>The continuation of quantitative easing (QE) in Europe at a time when Japan remains locked on QE and the U.S. is only tightening gradually highlights that global monetary conditions will remain easy for a long while yet,<2C> said Shane Oliver, head of investment strategy at AMP Capital. <20>This, along with strong economic growth and earnings, largely explains why global share markets are so strong.<2E> In the United States, Alphabet ( GOOGL.O ) GOOG.L, Amazon ( AMZN.O ) and Microsoft ( MSFT.O ) all jumped last week after solid quarterly performances, sending U.S. indexes higher. Amazon ( AMZN.O ), up 13.2 percent, was responsible for the biggest boost to the S&P 500 on Friday after reporting a quarterly sales surge. [L2N1N221K] Apple is due to report on Thursday. CURRENCIES The dollar index .DXY was a touch softer, with investors focused on the impending appointment of the Federal Reserve chair, with speculation rife that Fed governor Jerome Powell is the favoured suitor. Wagers that Powell - who markets see as a less hawkish candidate - will be the chosen one, tempered the dollar<61>s advances and dragged 2-year Treasury yields off a nine-year top US2TY=RR. An announcement is expected this week. In Europe, political uncertainty and the European Central Bank<6E>s decision to extend its stimulus further weighed on the common currency, marking its biggest weekly loss of the year. The euro EUR= steadied at $1.1613, not far from $1.1573 which was the lowest since July 20. Spain sacked Catalonia<69>s regional government on Friday, dissolved the Catalan parliament and called a snap election after Catalonia declared independence from Spain. The ECB<43>s decision last week to extend its bond purchases into September 2018 also hurt the euro, driving yields on two-year German bunds lower DE2YT=RR. The premium that 2-year U.S. debt pays over 2-year German yields is now the widest since mid-1999, making it more attractive to borrow in euros to buy dollars. In commodities, copper was near a two-week low CMCU3. Spot gold XAU= was trading 0.1 percent lower at $1,270.74 per ounce. [GOL/] U.S. crude CLc1 ticked up 4 cents to $53.94 a barrel. Editing by Eric Meijer and Jacqueline Wong'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asia-shares-crude-oil-buoyant-euro-near-3-month-lows-idUSKBN1CZ01Z'|'2017-10-30T02:55:00.000+02:00'
'590031dc0070b6b2252ba225b592d979b32154db'|'CVS bid for Aetna: A $66 billion bet on cutting drug costs'|'October 29, 2017 / 12:54 PM / in 15 hours CVS bid for Aetna: A $66 billion bet on cutting drug costs Caroline Humer , Carl O''Donnell 5 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - The proposed merger between U.S. pharmacy operator CVS Health Corp and No. 3 health insurer Aetna Inc represents a $66 billion bet that insurers can drive down high U.S. drug prices by cutting out the middleman. A person walks by a CVS Pharmacy store in Pasadena, U.S., May 2, 2016. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/Files The move is the most expensive effort to date that would enable a national health insurer to take back full control of prescription medicines for their customers by negotiating prices with pharmaceutical manufacturers and setting customer out-of-pocket costs for each drug. CVS, one of the largest U.S. pharmacy benefits managers, has offered to buy No. 3 health insurer Aetna for more than $200 per share, sources said on Thursday. It could take at least several weeks for any deal to materialize. If the deal happens, it would likely pressure rival insurers, drugmakers, pharmaceutical benefits managers, and retail pharmacies to also consider mergers or switching partners to try to keep up with the potential healthcare cost savings or increase in profit margins. <20>It<49>s an alternate model at this point. It<49>s not clear that it<69>s definitely a better one,<2C> BMO Capital Markets analyst Matt Borsch said. <20>More consolidation could lead to pressure on some of the brand-name drug prices and a better counterweight to the big pharma companies.<2E> For years, insurers paid drug benefits managers like CVS and Express Scripts Holdings Co to negotiate down drug prices, with both parties taking a share of any discount by the time a medicine was paid for by consumers. But outrage over the high costs of drugs has grown as consumers have picked up a larger portion of the tab for drug costs and it is threatening profit margins all along the drug supply chain, from manufacturers to distributors, insurers and pharmacies. UnitedHealth Group Inc and Humana Inc currently have in-house pharmacy benefits businesses, and say that it has helped them keep medical costs down. Anthem Inc recently decided to go down that same path. It cut ties with Express Scripts during a $3 billion legal fight, and said it would use CVS to build its own pharmacy benefits business in the next few years. That tie-up could now be at risk if CVS reaches a deal to buy Aetna, Leerink analyst Ana Gupta said. CVS also provides management services for Aetna rival Cigna Corp. If CVS buys Aetna, that could revive Cigna<6E>s interest in buying Humana, analyst Christine Arnold of investment bank Cowen & Co said in a research note. Aetna earlier this year closed the door on a deal with rival insurer Humana Inc after antitrust regulators said that combination and a rival deal between Anthem Inc and Cigna Corp were anti-competitive. The pharmacy chain Walgreens Boots Alliance could need to match its business model closer to CVS to attempt to stay competitive, Arnold said in a note, and may look at buying Express Scripts. Jefferies analyst Brian Tanquilut said that Express Scripts could also be a target for Amazon Inc which is reported to be looking to get into the pharmacy business. SWINGING PENDULUM Over the past decade, health insurers have diverged on the value of the pharmacy benefits business. Anthem sold its pharmacy benefit manager to Express Scripts and outsourced almost all of the business in 2010. UnitedHealth took the opposite approach when it decided in 2011 to bring its pharmacy benefits management in house, then bought an even bigger standalone benefits manager, Catamaran, in 2015. Humana operates its own pharmacy benefit manager and Cigna and Aetna have hybrid approaches where they manage some parts in house and outsource others. Until recently, insurers sought to expand their profit margins by reducing their spending on hospital services, using their size to negotiate down what they pay to healthcare provider
'61107813663d9593478d3067cab489e3c871e9ab'|'Boeing says it is catching up on 777 aircraft production snags'|'October 30, 2017 / 4:57 PM / Updated 5 minutes ago Boeing says it is catching up on 777 aircraft production snags Alwyn Scott 2 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Boeing Co ( BA.N ) is fixing production problems with its 777 wide-body jetliner but has not stopped production and does not expect the snags to delay deliveries to airlines, it said on Monday. FILE PHOTO - The logo of Dow Jones Industrial Average stock market index listed company Boeing (BA) is seen in Los Angeles, California, United States, April 22, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo The Chicago-based aerospace and defence company said it had given workers more time to catch up on <20>behind-work<72> on the 777 assembly line in its massive factory in Everett, Washington. <20>Boeing is using extra time in the production schedule to focus on out-of-position work and catch up on jobs that are behind,<2C> spokesman Paul Bergman said. The shifts only affect portions of the production line. <20>It<49>s not a line stoppage because the entire line never stopped,<2C> Bergman said. Boeing said it expected the problem to exist for a <20>relatively short<72> period but would not say how long it would take to catch up. The comments follow a report on Thursday on Aviation International News website AINonline that said Boeing had stopped loading fuselage sections for the 777 line and was trying to finish behind-schedule work that had increased in recent months as it installed robotic systems in the factory. Boeing said the additional time it was using had been built into its production schedule for the 777 and successor jet, the 777X, which adds longer wings and new engines to the top-selling wide-body aircraft that the company introduced in 1995. Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-boeing-plant/boeing-says-it-is-catching-up-on-777-aircraft-production-snags-idUKKBN1CZ23E'|'2017-10-30T18:56:00.000+02:00'
'ba88d201b5b2c2bb67586cc53a32ddf490f4ee13'|'Global assets under management hit all-time high above $80 trillion'|'October 30, 2017 / 10:26 AM / Updated 28 minutes ago Global assets under management hit all-time high above $80 trillion Jemima Kelly 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The total assets managed by the world<6C>s 500 biggest fund houses hit an all-time high of $81.2 trillion (<28>61.7 trillion) in 2016, research showed on Monday, a 5.8-percent increase on the previous year. Traders work on the floor of the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, New York, U.S., October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Although a comfortable majority of funds are still actively managed, the research from advisory firm Willis Towers Watson showed, the proportion of passively managed funds climbed to 21.6 percent. That was up from 20.3 percent the previous year, and from 16.5 percent five years ago. <20>We expect that this trend will continue to put downward pressure on traditional fee structures, particularly amongst active managers seeking to remain competitive and to maximise value to investors,<2C> said Willis Towers Watson<6F>s global head of manager research, Luba Nikulina. U.S. fund managers saw their assets increase 7.7 percent to $47.4 trillion, while European managers saw a 2.8-percent increase, to $25.8 trillion. UK-based fund management firms saw their assets fall for a second straight year, however, by 4.5 percent to $6.3 trillion. BlackRock remained the top fund manager, with $5.1 trillion under management, followed by fellow U.S. firm Vanguard, with just under $4 trillion. Reporting by Jemima Kelly; Editing by Andrew Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-funds-aum/global-assets-under-management-hit-all-time-high-above-80-trillion-idUKKBN1CZ11L'|'2017-10-30T12:25:00.000+02:00'
'b6ba5a8b48f70cbb2b4d61d55e5f93828440ae47'|'AstraZeneca licenses genetic disease drug to Mereo BioPharma'|'October 30, 2017 / 9:09 AM / Updated 9 hours ago AstraZeneca licenses genetic disease drug to Mereo BioPharma Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Mereo BioPharma has agreed a licensing deal and acquisition option for a rare disease drug from AstraZeneca as the big drugmaker continues to divest non-core assets. FILE PHOTO: The logo of AstraZeneca is seen on medication packages in a pharmacy in London, Britain April 28, 2014. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth /File Photo Mereo shares gained 6.5 percent on Monday on the news. Mereo has secured access to the experimental drug for alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency - a rare and potentially life-threatening genetic disease - via an initial cash payment of $3 million and 490,798 shares, making AstraZeneca a shareholder in the biotech group. The two companies said Mereo had the right to exercise its option to acquire the drug, known as AZD9668, after the initiation of pivotal clinical studies. Mereo will make further payments as the drug advances in development. AstraZeneca has sold rights to a number of peripheral drugs in recent years as it concentrates resources on developing medicines in cancer and other core therapy areas such as respiratory and cardiovascular medicine. Reporting by Ben Hirschler, editing by Louise Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-astrazeneca-mereo-biopharma/astrazeneca-licenses-genetic-disease-drug-to-mereo-biopharma-idUKKBN1CZ0SB'|'2017-10-30T11:04:00.000+02:00'
'd7626458e3e95710f694014b1492044fd5335ca2'|'Novartis to buy France''s Advanced Accelerator for $3.9 billion'|'October 30, 2017 / 7:18 AM / Updated an hour ago Novartis to buy France''s Advanced Accelerator for $3.9 billion John Miller 3 Min Read ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss drugmaker Novartis ( NOVN.S ) on Monday offered to buy France<63>s Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA) ( AAAP.O ) in a $3.9 billion (2.97 billion pounds) cash deal to strengthen the oncology portfolio at the world<6C>s biggest maker of prescription medicines. FILE PHOTO - Swiss drugmaker Novartis'' logo is seen at the company''s plant in the northern Swiss town of Stein, Switzerland October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann Basel-based Novartis<69>s offer of $41 per ordinary share and $82 per American depositary share represents a 47 percent premium to AAA<41>s price before media reports on Sept. 27 that Novartis was interested. It said it would finance the deal with debt. Novartis is seeking to add AAA<41>s radiopharmaceuticals that use trace amounts of radioactive compounds to not only create functional images of organs and lesions but also to treat diseases like cancer. AAA<41>s flagship product, Lutathera, won European Union backing in late September for use against gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumours, the kind of cancer that killed Apple founder Steve Jobs. <20>Novartis has a strong legacy in the development and commercialisation of medicines for neuroendocrine tumours where significant unmet need remains for patients,<2C> Bruno Strigini, head of Novartis Oncology, said in a statement. <20>With Lutathera we can build on this legacy by expanding the global reach of this novel, differentiated treatment approach.<2E> Lutathera, which has also been submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approval, harnesses a molecule not only to diagnose cancer but also to deliver treatment by hitting cancer cells with high-energy electrons. In a separate statement, AAA Chief Executive Stefano Buono said his company backed the deal, not only to support Lutathera<72>s expanding launch but also to speed up development of its other therapies. <20>We believe that the combination of our expertise... together with the global oncology experience and infrastructure of Novartis provide the best prospects for our patients, physicians and employees, as well as the broader nuclear medicine community,<2C> Buono said. AAA, which was spun off from Europe<70>s physics research centre CERN 15 years ago and listed on Nasdaq, had sales of $78 million in the first half of 2017, with a net loss from continuing operations of $24.2 million. Editing by Michael Shields '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-novartis-advanced-accelerator/novartis-to-buy-frances-advanced-accelerator-for-3-9-billion-idUKKBN1CZ0KM'|'2017-10-30T09:17:00.000+02:00'
'24ffed728c642051bf4f73e6f12e4c2c2d3d45a9'|'Air Berlin administrator sees easyJet, Condor talks concluding soon'|'BERLIN (Reuters) - After almost four decades, Air Berlin<69>s ( AB1.DE ) last flight is due to land in its home city on Friday night while its administrators push to split its remaining assets among buyers.A boarding pass for the AB6210, the last flight, operated by insolvent carrier Air Berlin is seen in Munich''s international airport, southern Germany, October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Michael Dalder Air Berlin, beloved among Germans for its flights to holiday island Mallorca and the chocolate hearts it gives out after each flight, filed for administration in August. A government loan kept its planes in the air during negotiations on its carve-up.The company has already agreed to sell a large part of its airline assets to domestic rival Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ), and talks on other operations are ongoing with Britain<69>s easyJet ( EZJ.L ) and with Thomas Cook<6F>s ( TCG.L ) German airline Condor.<2E>I expect that we can hopefully reach a deal in the coming days, so that we can possibly save a thousand more jobs,<2C> administrator Frank Kebekus said on Friday on German TV program Morgenmagazin.Others are eyeing the gap left by Air Berlin. IAG ( ICAG.L ), which owns British Airways, said it saw opportunities for its Vueling budget brand in Germany.Air Berlin was founded nearly 40 years ago by U.S. pilot Kim Lundgren, taking advantage of the fact that at that time only carriers based in Britain, France or the United States were permitted to fly to Berlin. The first flight took off from Berlin<69>s Tegel airport for Palma de Mallorca on April 28, 1979.After German reunification, entrepreneur Joachim Hunold bought a majority stake in the carrier and in the mid 2000s grew Air Berlin via acquisitions.But the airline never fully integrated those purchases and the expansion left it laden with debt. The rise of low-cost carriers in Europe, and Lufthansa<73>s strength in Germany, added to pressure and meant it struggled to turn a profit.A woman shows a cake made for the crew of the AB6210, the last flight, operated by insolvent carrier Air Berlin before departing Munich''s international airport, southern Germany, October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Michael Dalder Since listing on the stock market in 2006, it has racked up losses of around 3 billion euros ($3.48 billion), equivalent to an average of around 25 million euros a month.Financial support from major shareholder Etihad kept it afloat over the last few years, but the Abu Dhabi-based carrier pulled the plug in August, leaving the fate of around 8,000 staff and thousands of customers in the balance.Captain David McCaleb, who will pilot the final flight after 27 years with Air Berlin, said he wanted to keep flying but that, at the age of 60, job offers could be hard to find.Slideshow (8 Images) <20>It<49>s bittersweet. It<49>s strange to experience an ending like this,<2C> he told Reuters.With around 30 million passengers a year, Air Berlin was much larger than Britain<69>s Monarch, which collapsed at the start of this month and had carried 5.7 million in 2015.Air Berlin<69>s last flight is AB6210, departing Munich at 19.35 GMT and due to land in Berlin Tegel at 20.45. The airport is keeping its viewing platform open until midnight and offering free entry to all those interested in watching the arrival.Unlike the pilots of Air Berlin<69>s final long-haul flight, which performed a low pass at Duesseldorf airport, American McCaleb said he was not planning a similar maneuver.<2E>Safety comes first at Air Berlin,<2C> he said.($1 = 0.8618 euros)Reporting by Klaus Lauer and Victoria Bryan; Editing by Maria Sheahan, David Holmes and Pritha Sarkar '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-lufthansa/air-berlin-administrator-sees-easyjet-condor-talks-concluding-soon-idINKBN1CW0MB'|'2017-10-27T04:44:00.000+03:00'
'34c38814ba9b5abef00778c8407ce549e08f1f47'|'Activist investors torpedo Clariant, Huntsman $20 billion merger'|'October 27, 2017 / 5:18 AM / Updated an hour ago Activist investors torpedo $20 billion Clariant, Huntsman merger John Miller , Oliver Hirt 5 Min Read ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss specialty chemicals maker Clariant and U.S. group Huntsman abandoned their $20 billion merger on Friday, notching a win for activist investors who fought the deal for months on the grounds it would destroy shareholder value. The logo of Swiss specialty chemicals company Clariant is seen at the company''s headquarters in Pratteln, Switzerland August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann White Tale, the investment vehicle of hedge fund manager Keith Meister and New York-based fund 40 North, had raised its Clariant stake to above 20 percent, Reuters reported on Thursday ahead of the announcement the tie-up was dead. White Tale<6C>s rising stake, coupled with other Clariant shareholders who came out against the deal, left the Swiss company doubtful of mustering the two-thirds support necessary for the merger to go through. The successful revolt comes amid a wave of investor activism in Switzerland, where Credit Suisse is under attack and Nestle faces demands for change. Chief Executive Hariolf Kottmann said Clariant still has options to explore after further talks with White Tale. <20>To do a merger of equals ... is one option, to make a large transformational transaction is another option, to continue to stand alone is a third option,<2C> Kottmann told reporters on a call where he vowed to remain CEO. <20>There are four or five of these options, and they have all pros and cons.<2E> Clariant shares had risen about 38 percent this year before Friday<61>s announcement but were still more cheaply rated than rivals, trading at a multiple of 18.7 times forecast earnings against an average 21.3 ratio of peers in the chemicals industry, according to Starmine data. The stock was down 6.3 percent by 0840 GMT on Friday. Scepticism that the deal would succeed had been mounting as even supporters sold down their stakes. <20>I thought it was a fantastic deal,<2C> said one investor who built up a stake before selling it on fear White Tale was gaining the upper hand. <20>I think White Tale want something more short term.<2E> Some analysts say Clariant will likely re-emerge as prey for other chemicals companies eager to beef up their portfolios. <20>Clariant is again the No. 1 takeover target,<2C> said Markus Mayer, a Baader Helvea analyst who said potential buyers may wait to make an approach until Clariant<6E>s share price falls even further, or until White Tale is able to install management that is more favorable to a takeover. POTENTIAL INTEREST A source familiar with the acquisition strategy of Germany<6E>s Evonik said it would potentially be interested in acquiring portions of Clariant should the Swiss company be broken up. Evonik declined comment. Two years ago, Evonik held talks with buyout group CVC over a potential joint offer for Clariant, although Kottmann has said he never received a formal bid. <20>There were never serious discussions with another peer, where we were asked if we would divest ourselves, shop the company and be taken over,<2C> Kottmann said. Huntsman CEO Peter Huntsman said separately he was disappointed the transaction did not go through. Clariant and Huntsman, which said its third-quarter costs linked to the merger were $18 million, agreed to forego breakup fees. Clariant had faced a potential $210 million hit from walking away from the deal, and a $60 million fee if Clariant shareholders failed to approved the transaction. Clariant, which had hired Goldman Sachs to rescue the merger, makes aircraft de-icer, retardant for wildfires, plastics colorings, chemicals to help oil drillers separate oil from water and ingredients for shampoos. Clariant and Huntsman in May struck the pact that would have given Clariant 52 percent of the combined entity, saying the combination would produce around $400 million in annual cost synergies and create the world<6C>s second-biggest specialty chemicals
'cdbad7dd2289258c2969556f1c11cf6c1669c041'|'China central bank boosting oversight of loans offered on the internet - media'|'Place your bets for the Brexit rate hike Special Report Me and my robotic suit - how I stood up and walked after 21 years Catalan police call for neutrality Reuters TV United States October 28, 2017 / 5:24 AM / Updated 9 hours ago China central bank boosting oversight of loans offered on the internet - media Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BEIJING (Reuters) - China is stepping up its oversight of cash loans offered through the internet amid growing concerns over rapid growth in the lightly regulated industry, a business media report said on Saturday. FILE PHOTO: A staff member walks in front of the headquarters of the People''s Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, in Beijing, June 25, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo Caixin, in a report on its website, quoted Ji Zhihong of the central bank<6E>s financial markets department as saying it has developed with other authorities a special regulation for controlling online financial risk. According to Caixin, Ji told a seminar the regulation has already achieved some success. Caixin also quoted Ji as saying China will improve regulations for all online financing businesses, and all financing activity should be subject to a basic level of oversight. China<6E>s fast-growing online micro-credit firms have been accused of taking advantage of regulatory loopholes to charge excessively high interest rates. Securities Times, a state-backed media, earlier this month said new rules could emerge within six months to tighten controls on online microcredit firms. This year, the People<6C>s Bank of China has added wealth management products to its regulatory oversight as it seeks to contain risks to the financial system. Reporting by Dominique Patton and Muyu Xu; Editing by Richard Borsuk'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-china-internet-loans/china-central-bank-boosting-oversight-of-loans-offered-on-the-internet-media-idUKKBN1CX04J'|'2017-10-28T08:22:00.000+03:00'
'b1e723f66cb8c0a56100efa723e801cb1c2b2682'|'U.S. regulator wants to loosen leash on Wells Fargo: sources'|'October 30, 2017 / 5:28 AM / in 3 hours U.S. regulator wants to loosen leash on Wells Fargo: sources Patrick Rucker 5 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A leading U.S. regulator wants to make it easier for Wells Fargo to pay employees when they leave, loosening a restriction in place since a phony accounts scandal hit the bank last year, according to people familiar with the matter. The initiative comes as President Donald Trump is trying to lighten rules on Wall Street and the bank regulator, Keith Noreika, acting Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), must weigh whether to vet new Wells Fargo executives. If Noreika<6B>s approach prevails, the OCC could go easier on Wells Fargo and any other large banks sanctioned in the future. Since Noreika took control of the OCC in May, he has advocated easing up on sanctions imposed on Wells Fargo in the wake of the scandal over abusive sales practices, according to current and former officials. Wells Fargo reached a $190 million settlement in September 2016 after admitting that its sales staff opened as many as 2.1 million accounts without customers<72> consent. Since then the estimate has climbed to as many as 3.5 million. As part of the deal with regulators, incoming Wells Fargo executives can face a vetting from the OCC while severance payouts must be cleared by the OCC and a sister agency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. But Noreika wants officials to work faster when they review severance pay and the agency can choose to waive its check on incoming executives. Wells Fargo declined comment on the reviews. Hundreds of Wells Fargo employees have had their severance payouts frozen when they left as regulators tried to determine what role those employees might have had in the scandal. Under one proposal floated by the OCC, departing employees would collect severance automatically if regulators could not finish their review within weeks, according to one current and two former officials who were not authorized to discuss an internal debate. Under another scenario, the OCC could push for payouts to a Wells Fargo employee without waiting for the FDIC to concur. The FDIC has the final say on severance and until now the decisions have always been made jointly. The FDIC has resisted hurrying its severance reviews, according to those familiar with the discussions. But the current FDIC chief, Martin Gruenberg, could be replaced within weeks by a President Trump nominee. FILE PHOTO: A Wells Fargo branch is seen in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, U.S. February 10, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo If that happens and Noreika prevails, it could provide relief for Wells Fargo as it faces fresh scrutiny for wrongly charging customers for car insurance and mortgages. Noreika is expected to leave the OCC in coming weeks, but the matter could be settled by Joseph Otting, the former banker who is Trump<6D>s permanent pick for the OCC. Otting is expected to favor a similar, light touch approach to financial rules. PAYOUTS The <20>golden parachute<74> rule is meant to halt payouts to employees who played a role in a bank<6E>s problems, but Noreika has said too many innocent Wells Fargo employees are caught up in the reviews. In a June 5 letter to a former Wells Fargo employee made public by the OCC, Noreika said that he had personally called Gruenberg to expedite a payment. In the weeks after that letter was sent, sources said, the OCC has proposed speeding up the reviews, but the FDIC pushed back against setting <20>artificial<61> deadlines, according to one official. <20>The OCC has sought ways to make regulatory reviews more efficient (and) complete in weeks not months,<2C> OCC spokesman Bryan Hubbard said, while declining to discuss inter-agency deliberations. The FDIC defended the pace of its severance audits, which in some cases have taken months to finish. <20>When delays occur, it is generally because the applying institution provided incomplete or inconsistent information,<2C> said Barbara Hagenbaugh, spo
'fdcef5d1bbb2402b374bbac43aaf6d6c8152e9ce'|'HSBC hit by second online banking outage in four days'|'October 30, 2017 / 12:12 PM / Updated 10 hours ago HSBC hit by second online banking outage in four days Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC suffered its second online banking outage in four days in Britain on Monday, as customers complained on social media that they could not log in. FILE PHOTO: The HSBC bank logo is seen at their offices in the Canary Wharf financial district in London, Britain, March 3, 2016. REUTERS/Reinhard Krause/File Photo HSBC said it had resolved the problem, which lasted around 30 minutes and was due to a temporary technical issue. HSBC customers had also said on Friday they were unable to access online accounts, when many were expecting pay cheques. The bank said that disruption was caused by a scheduled upgrade which failed to complete properly. Disruption to online and mobile services has become more of a problem for banks in recent years, as lenders cut branch networks and steer customers towards those digital platforms. Reporting by Lawrence White; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hsbc-internet/hsbc-hit-by-second-online-banking-outage-in-four-days-idUKKBN1CZ1E2'|'2017-10-30T14:14:00.000+02:00'
'77f661db131cd3f702fdca0deaa8210977ee1644'|'German federal budget surplus could reach 14 billion euros: magazine'|'October 28, 2017 / 10:06 AM / in 18 hours German federal budget surplus could reach 14 billion euros: magazine Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany could post a budget surplus of 14 billion euros in 2017, a magazine reported Saturday, providing more negotiating room for Chancellor Angela Merkel<65>s conservative bloc as it tries to forge a new coalition with the Free Democrats and Greens. FILE PHOTO: The German Central Bank (Bundesbank) presents the new 50 euro banknote at its headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, March 16, 2017. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo Solid economic growth and growing tax revenues fuelled the new projection, Der Spiegel reported. The Finance Ministry had previously projected a flat budget, although economic institutes last month already forecast record overall government budget surpluses - which also include state governments - for coming years. The new projection is good news for Merkel<65>s conservatives, the pro-business Free Democrats and the environmental Greens, whose combined proposals would add up to some 100 billion euros in new spending over the next four years. The three groups resigned themselves to further talks next week after making little headway on immigration and climate policy during 11 hours of talks on Thursday. Top officials from all parties traded barbs in a series of media interviews, but Manfred Weber, a senior member of the Bavarian conservative CSU, on Friday said his party still aimed to reach agreement by the end of the year. No comment was immediately available from the Finance Ministry, which is due to publish its next tax revenue projections in mid-November. The surplus would allow the government to cover 7 billion in projected costs associated with a landmark nuclear waste deal and 6.7 billion euros in costs for migrants without dipping into a 20-billion-euro reserve account set up during the height of the migrant crisis in 2015. Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Alison Williams'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/germany-budget/german-federal-budget-surplus-could-reach-14-billion-euros-magazine-idINKBN1CX0AH'|'2017-10-28T13:06:00.000+03:00'
'8a8a0b6bb04ff07a2ec0c22043aa10d8e0ac7770'|'S&P and Fitch leave UK credit rating on hold but warn on Brexit'|'October 27, 2017 / 8:55 PM / in 13 hours S&P, Fitch leave UK credit rating on hold but warn on Brexit Andy Bruce 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Standard and Poor<6F>s and Fitch held their credit ratings for Britain unchanged on Friday, but both remained gloomy about the outlook due to the likelihood of the country reaching a bad deal in its divorce talks with the European Union. FILE PHOTO - A view shows the Standard & Poor''s building in New York''s financial district February 5, 2013. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Having already stripped Britain of its top-notch <20>AAA<41> rating, both agencies stuck with their <20>AA<41> rating with a negative outlook, warning they were likely to downgrade again. <20>The negative outlook reflects the continued institutional and economic uncertainty surrounding the Brexit negotiations and the UK<55>s future relationship with its largest market for goods and services, the EU,<2C> S&P said in a statement. A further downgrade could come if S&P views the risk of a disorderly Brexit as increasingly certain or if overseas investors start to withdraw the capital that finances Britain<69>s large current account deficit. Fitch said the lack of a clear British position and the EU<45>s negotiating stance - not to mention a lack of time before the March 2019 departure date - would make it hard for Britain to emerge with a favourable deal. In response, Britain<69>s government said Prime Minister Theresa May<61>s speech in Florence last month had injected a new dynamic into Brexit negotiations, with the EU now beginning internal preparations on an implementation period and the future relationship. <20>We are not complacent about the challenges ahead, but we are optimistic about the future as a good deal is in the interest of both sides,<2C> a government spokesperson said in a statement. Both ratings agencies pointed to the weakened state of May<61>s government, after she gambled her majority in parliament away in an election earlier this year that she did not need to call. <20>The election result is likely to weaken policy cohesion and creates uncertainty over the longevity of the UK government,<2C> Fitch said. <20>We believe that no single post-Brexit relationship with the EU commands either majority parliamentary or popular support.<2E> Reporting by Andy Bruce; editing by Hugh Lawson and G Crosse'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-rating/sp-and-fitch-leave-uk-credit-rating-on-hold-but-warn-on-brexit-idUKKBN1CW2WZ'|'2017-10-27T23:54:00.000+03:00'
'516550445e38dc78d6b5ae693a9850d0b1a51d1a'|'Do not be taken in by UBS<42>s new-found Brexit optimism'|'Do not be taken in by UBS<42>s new-found Brexit optimism Back-to-back trading will be allowed in the City, at least for an initial period Spain<69>s crisis is the next challenge for the EU Monday, 30 October, 2017 UBS has said that it its previous warning that it could move about 1,000 jobs from London was now becoming <20>more and more unlikely<6C> <20> Bloomberg Play audio for this article Pause This is an experimental feature. Give us your feedback. Thank you for your feedback. What do you think? I<>ll use it in the future I don<6F>t think I<>ll use it Please tell us why (optional) Send Feedback On Friday, as he presented upbeat third-quarter results, UBS<42>s chief executive Sergio Ermotti also sounded cheery about Brexit. It was now becoming <20>more and more unlikely<6C> , he said, that the Swiss group <20> one of the biggest investment banks in the City of London <20> would put into practice its original Brexit plan to move 1,000 of its 5,000 UK staff to the EU27. Over the weekend it emerged that barely 250 of those jobs are set to go. Brexiters have always rubbished doomsday predictions that more than 70,000 of the City<74>s half a million roles in financial and related roles could leave as a result of the UK exiting the EU. So is UBS<42>s changed stance an admission that original estimates were overblown? Or does the bank<6E>s new-found optimism, and its explanation of <20>regulatory and political clarifications<6E>, reflect a genuinely brighter outlook? The truth is that despite the apparent stalemate in UK-EU talks, there have been two crucial developments in recent weeks. First, thanks to prime minister Theresa May<61>s conciliatory Florence speech last month, it is now a common assumption in the City and elsewhere that there will be a <20>standstill transition period<6F> of at least two years beyond the formal Brexit enactment date. This removes the March 2019 <20>cliff-edge<67> <20> and with it the need for swift and dramatic restructurings. Second, it seems that UBS , like other City peers, has been reassured by EU regulators that they will not take a hard line on requiring traders and risk managers to be located on the ground in EU markets. The reason? <20>Back-to-back trading<6E> will be allowed, at least for an initial period. This practice might sound like something schoolchildren would do with their sweets at playtime. But back-to-back is a serious, if abstruse, business practice. It has long been a crucial mechanism for the build-up of the City<74>s status as a global financial centre. It is why big US banks such as Citigroup and Goldman Sachs have been able to book vast chunks of their global operations (business actually done in Africa, Asia and Latin America) via UK subsidiaries. In simple terms, back-to-back means that transactions done on the ground for a client in Thailand or Tobago, for example, can be replicated through a matching trade in the UK unit. The draw for the banks is efficiency. By shifting the risk to a single UK balance sheet, they centralise the bulk of capital needs, risk management and staffing in one location. Until now, the back-to-back tactic has not been necessary for European business, given the UK<55>s membership in the EU. But post-Brexit, it could become a key way of preserving something like the current set-up, without requiring the duplication of capital and roles, or shifting staff unnecessarily. The question, though, is how permanent such a set-up would be. And that, of course, will depend on political negotiations. The widespread hope in the City is that its blueprint for a financial services free trade deal with the EU <20> floated by former City minister Mark Hoban a few months ago <20> will first be adopted as UK policy, and then agreed by the EU27. If that were to happen, it would create a system of mutual market access and mutual recognition of regulation, which could all but preserve the status quo, potentially making back-to-back transactions unnecessary. A less perfect alternative would call for mutual regulatory recognition and a long-term 
'ee1a5907261fff11f3db70b594c0b4a41b00f928'|'London Metal Exchange in talks with online platforms'|' 19 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago London Metal Exchange in talks with online platforms Eric Onstad 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The London Metal Exchange (LME), which has lost volumes to over-the-counter trading, is looking at forging alliances with online platforms for industrial metals to recoup profits from the growing OTC business, its CEO said. Men walk past the London Metal Exchange (LME) in London, July 22, 2011. REUTERS/Paul Hackett/File Photo Large numbers of new electronic metals trading sites have recently popped up or are preparing to launch, while industry sources say established online venues Trayport and EBS are poised to expand into base metals. One of the sources said the LME had made contact with Trayport and EBS, which are currently focused largely on energy and foreign exchange, respectively. Trayport declined to comment, while EBS did not reply to a request for comment. EBS is owned by NEX Group Plc. Trayport is being divested by Intercontinental Exchange Inc on the orders of Britain<69>s competition watchdog. The LME, the world<6C>s biggest market for industrial metals, has seen volumes decline in recent years, including by 7.7 percent last year, after its fee boost in 2015 prompted some people to switch to the OTC market. <20>We<57>re open to partnerships. If there<72>s an opportunity to work together ... and it<69>s what our members want us to do, we<77>d be happy to do that,<2C> LME Chief Executive Matt Chamberlain told Reuters. <20>We<57>re talking to many of those (online) platforms ... but I can confirm that we haven<65>t partnered in any way with anyone yet,<2C> he added. A decision would not be taken before the end of the year and would require further consultation with members, Chamberlain said. <20>Clearly it would have to be something that had member and user backing ... If you are a member, there are a lot of implications of this. It could change your business model.<2E> DEALER-CLIENT MARKET He declined to say with which platforms the LME had held talks, but industry sources said they included EBS and Trayport. In May, Trayport hired Stuart Sloan, a former chief operating officer at the LME, as a strategy consultant. He declined to comment. <20>Trayport is quite far ahead with their base metals offering,<2C> an industry source said. The LME, owned by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, was looking at working only with platforms targeting the dealer-client market, because those in the dealer-dealer area could siphon liquidity from the exchange, Chamberlain said. The LME could licence its pricing to a platform, for example, that allows clients to request quotes from multiple dealers for a deal that requires an average price for a bespoke period not listed on the LME. AIRBNB OF METALS The LME is the favourite to clear trades for the new base metals platform NFEx Markets, sources have told Reuters. NFEx, which is due to launch early next year, will offer trading in base metals such as copper and aluminium with contracts that mimic those of the LME. The new platform, however, is not interested in partnering with the LME, a source with direct knowledge of the situation said. <20>NFEx is looking at further investment at the moment, not looking to partner,<2C> the source said. Martin Abbott, a former chief executive at the LME, is a senior adviser at NFEx while Jim Coupland, a former LME board member, is a non-executive director. TradeCloud, a metals platform in the process of launching, is focused on the physical market and aims to be the Airbnb of base metals trading. Privately held Airbnb is an online rental marketplace which was valued at $31 billion during its latest round of funding in March. <20>We<57>re a technology company,<2C> said chief executive Simon Collins, the ex-head of metals and minerals for trade house Trafigura. <20>We<57>re not an exchange, we<77>re like Airbnb. What we<77>re trying to do is allow people to communicate in a very structured way with people they want to reach out to,<2C> Collins told Reuters. Other platforms include MetalProdex, a German pl
'ec11abe1db181a420b58a3fb274a78e6961d6927'|'Place your bets for the Brexit rate hike'|'October 27, 2017 / 12:58 PM / Updated 16 minutes ago Place your bets for the Brexit rate hike Jeremy Gaunt 5 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - To hear some economists talk, the Bank of England is about to make a big mistake - raise interest rates just as the economy heads into what could be a major storm. People walk past the Bank of England in London, Britain, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay If all goes as scripted, the bank will hike borrowing costs in the coming week for the first time in more than 10 years. But is the country really ready? The consensus is for rise to 0.5 percent from 0.25 percent. That 0.25 percent was where the BoE put Bank Rate just over a year ago, shortly after British voters elected to leave the European Union. And there<72>s the rub: the uncertainty the vote triggered is still there. A Reuters poll published in the past week showed more than 70 percent of economists believe now is not the time to raise rates -- though slightly more than that said it would happen anyway. [BOE/INT] BoE Governor Mark Carney has made it clear a hike is in the offing, if not specifically saying at this coming meeting. His concern is that low unemployment means Britain<69>s economy has little spare capacity and, accordingly, faces upward inflation pressure. Added to that are moves by other major central banks to rein in loose monetary policy, which could also push inflation higher by weakening the pound further. The U.S. Federal Reserve has raised rates four times since late 2015 and is expected to do so again. The European Central Bank is cutting back on its bond buying, albeit gently. So the BoE needs to concern itself with a pressured pound and high employment driving up inflation that, at 3 percent, is already well above target and the highest in the Group of Seven industrialized nations. But ranged against that is huge political and economic uncertainty over how Britain<69>s withdrawal from the EU will play out. Companies are unclear about what to plan for, ranging from little short-term change to a complete revolution in how they do business. Consumers too are wary as, while Britain<69>s economy has by no means not gone over a cliff, it has had some wobbles. Retail sales, for example, contracted on a monthly basis in September and were up 1.2 percent year-on-year versus 4.1 percent a year earlier. Preliminary third-quarter growth figures in the past week, meanwhile, were slightly better than expected. But at 1.5 percent year-on-year they are well below pre-Brexit vote levels and significantly lag both the United States and the euro zone. This had prompted some economists to suggest Carney and the BoE are about to <20>do a Trichet<65> -- mirroring then-ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet<65>s raising of rates in 2008 just as the financial crisis was hitting. Former BoE policymaker Danny Blanchflower - who voted against the BoE<6F>s last hike in 2007, and has been regularly critical of suggestions to tighten policy since - has been scathing about the idea of a UK hike now. <20>Nothing in data whatsoever says there should be a rate rise,<2C> he tweeted. (NOT) RISING SUN The BoE is not the only central bank discussing policy. The Bank of Japan will announce its decisions on Tuesday. Deflation -- Japan<61>s biggest economic problem for much of the past 20 years -- is over, but inflation is far from entrenched, limping along at just 0.7 percent year-on-year. The economy too is somewhat off the pace, with the International Monetary Fund predicting 1.5 percent growth this year, though that is an improvement from 2016. The biggest issue among economists with regard to the BoJ is whether it should reveal its plans to exit its ultra-loose monetary policy. <20>We are anticipating few major changes in monetary policy,<2C> Katsunori Kitakura, lead strategist at SuMi TRUST, wrote in a note. <20>The medium-term outlook for the Japanese economy is largely unchanged since the last policy meeting so the BoJ is likely to maintain the status quo.<2E> Underlining this, Reuters polls suggest
'7853da54dfcb1ad3db3e87ca38df777ad6b1371e'|'Catalan declaration of independence hits stock markets, bonds, euro'|'October 27, 2017 / 2:03 PM / Updated an hour ago Catalan crisis hits Spanish bonds, stocks and CDS Abhinav Ramnarayan 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Spanish stocks and government bonds sold off on Friday after Catalonia<69>s parliament declared independence and the Spanish government moved to impose direct rule, deepening a political crisis. People celebrate after the Catalan regional parliament passes the vote of the independence from Spain in Barcelona, Spain October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Yves Herman <20>Tensions are likely to rise significantly over the coming days,<2C> Antonio Barroso of Teneo Intelligence said in a note. <20>Demonstrators might try to prevent the police from removing Catalan ministers from their offices if the central government decides to do so. This increases the risk of violent clashes with the police.<2E> The yield on Spain<69>s 10-year government bonds -- which move inversely to price -- was up 2 basis points at 1.58 percent on a day when most other euro zone yields were sharply lower following Thursday<61>s ECB meeting. ES10YT=TWEB The gap between Spanish and German 10-year government bond yields widened 8 bps to 120 bps. DE10YT=TWEB The cost of insuring exposure to Spanish sovereign and bank debt through credit default swaps (CDS) also rose. People celebrate after the Catalan regional parliament declares the independence from Spain in Barcelona, Spain, October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Juan Medina Spain''s IBEX .IBEX share index fell as much 2.1 percent to a four-day low and euro zone banking shares .SX7E as much as 1.8 percent. <20>So far the political risk in Spain has played out predominantly in the IBEX, showing that investors consider it to be a domestic issue. However today, I think we are starting to see the negative sentiment also hit the euro,<2C> said Fiona Cincotta, an analyst at City Index. The euro hit the day<61>s low at $1.1574 and was down 0.6 percent on the day. The European Central Bank<6E>s announcement on Thursday that it will extend its monetary stimulus programme until at least next September fuelled a broadly positive mood on euro zone markets. Apart from Spain, most euro zone government bond yields were lower 5-7 bps, extending Thursday<61>s falls. The yield on Germany<6E>s 10-year government bonds DE10YT=TWEB, the benchmark for the region, fell 6 bps to 0.38 percent. For a graphic on Euro zone periphery government bond yields, click - tmsnrt.rs/2ii2Bqr Reporting by Abhinav Ramnarayan, editing by John Stonestreet'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-spain-politics-catalonia-markets/catalan-declaration-of-independence-hits-stock-markets-bonds-euro-idUKKBN1CW1ZZ'|'2017-10-27T17:02:00.000+03:00'
'2a2e0f3a693b3652f3c4731f2272797467c783d2'|'EU Parliament pushes for greater scrutiny of airline working practices'|'October 27, 2017 / 3:47 PM / Updated 28 minutes ago EU Parliament pushes for greater scrutiny of airline working practices Julia Fioretti 4 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Low-cost airlines<65> employment models could come under greater European Union scrutiny under a provision pushed by EU lawmakers concerned about their effect on aviation safety. FILE PHOTO: An aircraft prepares for landing in Cointrin airport during sunrise over the Mont Blanc in Geneva December 1, 2011. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse The practise of employing pilots on zero hours or pay-to-fly contracts, or via temporary third-party agencies, has drawn criticism from labour unions who say it encourages them to have a lower perception of risk or fly even when are ill or tired. The European Parliament and representatives from EU member states are working on a compromise to a reform of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) which will give it a new mandate to probe any links between <20>socio-economic<69> factors and safety. The provision was pushed by the group of Socialists in the Parliament, concerned that some low-cost airlines put too much pressure on their pilots to fly, thereby risking passenger safety. The measure has been provisionally agreed, but will not be final until the two sides reach a deal on the full text. However, airlines and several member states, notably Ireland, were opposed to the measure as they see no link between different employment models and safety. <20>There is no proven link between safety and social matters. Current aviation safety regulations in Europe provide for comprehensive regulatory measures that ensure a very high level of safety,<2C> said Thomas Reynaert, managing director of Airlines for Europe, which represents Ryanair ( RYA.I ), easyJet ( EZJ.L ), Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ) and Air France KLM ( AIRF.PA ) among others. <20>There is no need for additional requirements on the basis of social aspects or employment conditions,<2C> Reynaert said. NO EVIDENCE One airline lobbyist said it was an attempt by trade unions to suggest that flexible employment models are less safe. EASA has already started looking into the matter and has not found evidence that employment models have an impact on safety. The employment models of low-cost airlines, which underpin their low fares, have been a bone of contention with unions who take issue with the practise of employing staff across Europe under the less generous terms of Irish law. Some lawmakers are concerned that pilots without regular work contracts may not have the autonomy to make safety decisions which could go against the commercial interests of the airline. <20>We need to make sure that the continuing decay of prices and social standards in aviation do not lead to the situation where pilots and crew cannot make independent safety decisions,<2C> said Socialist MEP Gabriele Preuss, who pushed the amendment. Under the new provision, EASA will publish a report every three years detailing any actions it has taken and the agency will also be able to issue regulations if it finds that business models have a negative impact on safety. <20>They (EASA) can also address any potential hazards and safety risks through legislation in the future. So that is also an opportunity,<2C> said Philip von Schoeppenthau, secretary general of the European Cockpit Association, which represents pilots. Reporting by Julia Fioretti; Editing by David Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-aviation-safety/eu-parliament-pushes-for-greater-scrutiny-of-airline-working-practices-idUKKBN1CW2BC'|'2017-10-27T18:46:00.000+03:00'
'44b3f170a64d4b6adc668403f4eea5e7c3a89270'|'Canara Bank posts worse-than-expected fall in second-quarter profit'|'(Reuters) - Canara Bank Ltd reported a 27 percent fall in second-quarter profit on lower interest income.A rickshaw puller passes the Canara Bank branch in the old quarters of Delhi, September 6, 2017. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/Files Net profit fell to 2.60 billion rupees ($40.00 million) in the quarter ended Sept. 30 from 3.57 billion rupees a year earlier, the country''s eighth-biggest state-run lender by assets said on Friday. ( bit.ly/2yRzd03 )Analysts, on average, had expected a net profit of 3.31 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters data.Gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans stood at 10.51 percent at end-September, compared with 10.56 percent a quarter earlier and 9.81 percent a year ago.Interest earned in the quarter fell 3 percent to 100.58 billion rupees.($1 = 65.0000 Indian rupees)Reporting by Samantha Kareen Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair and Vyas Mohan '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/canara-bank-results/canara-bank-posts-worse-than-expected-fall-in-second-quarter-profit-idINKBN1CW1CS'|'2017-10-27T13:44:00.000+03:00'
'a8beedb96074790e002dc843cd4623fe4babb69a'|'Uber appoints banking executive as first UK chairman'|'October 27, 2017 / 9:03 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Uber appoints banking executive as first UK chairman Costas Pitas 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Uber appointed Laurel Powers-Freeling, who has held a series of banking roles, as its first UK chairman just as it battles to retain its operating license in London, its most important European market. FILE PHOTO: A photo illustration shows the Uber app on a mobile telephone, as it is held up for a posed photograph in central London, Britain September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo Powers-Freeling, who has previously been chief executive of retailer Marks & Spencer<65>s ( MKS.L ) banking arm M&S Money and a senior adviser at the Bank of England, will take on the newly created role from Nov. 1. <20>Uber is transforming how people get around and as a business it is also undergoing an important period of change,<2C> she said in a statement. <20>I look forward to working with the UK business to help them manage and implement that change,<2C> she said. Uber is battling to keep its 40,000 London drivers on the road after the British capital stripped it of its license, deeming it unfit to run a taxi service. It cited its approach to reporting serious criminal offences and background checks on drivers. The Silicon Valley firm can continue to take passengers until an appeals process is exhausted, which could take years. The first hearing in the case is due on Dec. 11. But next week, the southern English city of Brighton will decide on the firm<72>s application to renew its license in the area which is due to expire on Nov. 4, in what would be a further blow to the company if it were rejected. Uber<65>s British management has been criticized by London Mayor Sadiq Khan for employing an <20>an army of PR experts and an army of lawyers<72> and not engaging well enough with the authorities. Uber, valued at around $70 billion with backers including Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ) and BlackRock ( BLK.N ), hopes the newly created UK independent non-executive role will help provide knowledge and experience to its British team. <20>With this new position Laurel will help us with the next phase of changes we want to make to our UK business,<2C> said Uber<65>s UK interim general manager, Tom Elvidge. <20>We<57>re determined to learn from the mistakes of the past and make things right,<2C> he said. Elvidge has led the day-to-day running of Uber<65>s British operations since predecessor Jo Bertram said she was quitting the role earlier this month, according to emails seen by Reuters. Uber is still recruiting for a permanent replacement. Reporting by Costas Pitas; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-uber-britain/uber-appoints-banking-executive-as-first-uk-chairman-idUKKBN1CW127'|'2017-10-27T12:02:00.000+03:00'
'878956a604ba63dc9f1da2d4da3c31f9345ed92c'|'Brokerages bullish on iPhone X demand after Apple hint'|'October 30, 2017 / 1:16 PM / in 10 minutes Apple touches record as brokerages bullish on iPhone X demand Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Several analysts downplayed concerns about Apple Inc<6E>s iPhone X production issues and were bullish on demand and sales, pushing the company<6E>s shares to a record on Monday. Apple iPhone X samples are displayed during a product launch event in Cupertino, California, U.S. September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam The Cupertino-based company does not provide pre-order figures on iPhones, leaving investors and analysts in the dark in trying to track output through research with its suppliers, consumer surveys and other industry indicators. But positive commentary from analysts on Monday signalled strong demand for the pricey device with pre-orders starting this past Friday. Apple is scheduled to report quarterly results this Thursday. The company provides sales figures in its results. Since the launch of new iPhones on Sept.12, the stock had fallen 2.5 percent until last Thursday<61>s close. They rebounded on Friday after Apple said pre-orders for the 10th anniversary phone were <20>off the charts<74>. The stock climbed to $168.07 (<28>127.2) earlier in the session, adding nearly $26 billion to its market cap and inching it closer to becoming the first company with a trillion dollar valuation. Shares pared gains and were up 1.9 percent at $166.15 mid-day. Daniel Ives, a well-known sector analyst, raised his forecast on Monday for pre-orders by 10 million, and several other analysts talked up sales over the next year. In a note, Ives of research house GBH Insights, raised his pre-order demand expectations for the iPhone X to 50 million units from 40 million, calling the first stage of the iPhone X release a <20>stellar success<73>. <20>With the official launch of iPhone X in Apple retail stores slated for this Friday, Nov. 3, we anticipate very high demand globally with limited supply of iPhone X on hand,<2C> Ives said. Jeffrey Kvaal from brokerage Nomura Instinet, said Apple and U.S. wireless carriers<72> pushing out of delivery times for iPhone X orders to 5-6 weeks was longer than for previous phones and pointed to strong demand. Asked by Reuters whether production bottlenecks are causing shipment delays, Tigress Financial Partners analyst Ivan Feinseth responded: <20>No, there<72>s no bottlenecks. This is a company that manages the supply chain well.<2E> However, Drexel Hamilton analyst Brian White, cautioned that the longer wait times for consumers ordering phones may be as much due to the component supply issues, which led Apple to delay the launch of the premium phone until November. <20>Although we believe Apple is benefiting from strong demand from the iPhone X, the company is also struggling with supply constraints,<2C> White, who has a buy rating on Apple, said. <20>A sound debate around the key driver for the surging shipping lead times can be made by reasonable people. Thus we believe it was important for Apple to highlight the demand side of the equation for the iPhone X.<2E> Wall Street is bullish on Apple with 31 of 38 brokerages rating the stock <20>buy<75> or higher. Their median price target of $180 projects a market cap of nearly $930 billion for the iPhone maker. Reporting by Arjun Panchadar and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-apple-iphone/brokerages-bullish-on-iphone-x-demand-after-apple-hint-idUKKBN1CZ1KN'|'2017-10-30T15:15:00.000+02:00'
'33407b6123f62d37c2de6412566d4417a49d5cf9'|'U.S. economy grows 3.0 percent in third quarter on inventories, trade'|'October 27, 2017 / 5:02 AM / Updated 18 minutes ago U.S. economy grows 3 percent in third quarter on inventories, trade Lucia Mutikani 4 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy unexpectedly maintained a brisk pace of growth in the third quarter as an increase in inventory investment and a smaller trade deficit offset a hurricane-related slowdown in consumer spending and a decline in construction. A construction worker works on the side of a hill along a highway construction project in Encinitas, California, U.S., October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake Gross domestic product increased at a 3.0 percent annual rate in the July-September period after expanding at a 3.1 percent pace in the second quarter, the Commerce Department said on Friday. The department said while it was impossible to estimate the overall impact of hurricanes Harvey and Irma on third-quarter GDP, preliminary estimates showed that the back-to-back storms had caused losses of $121.0 billion in privately owned fixed assets and $10.4 billion in government-owned fixed assets. Harvey and Irma struck parts of Texas and Florida in late August and early September. Hurricane Maria, which destroyed infrastructure in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, had no impact on third-quarter GDP growth as the islands are not included in the United State<74>s national accounts. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the economy growing at a 2.5 percent pace in the third quarter. Excluding inventory investment, the economy grew at a 2.3 percent rate, slowing from the second quarter<65>s 2.9 percent pace. With post-hurricane labor market, retail sales and industrial production data already showing an acceleration in underlying economic activity, Friday<61>s report will probably have no impact on monetary policy in the near term. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen cautioned last month that economic growth in the third quarter <20>will be held down<77> by the severe disruptions caused by the hurricanes. The U.S. central bank is expected to increase interest rates for a third time this year in December. The economic recovery since the 2007-2009 recession is now in its eighth year and showing little signs of fatigue. The economy is being powered by a tightening labor market, which has largely maintained a strong performance that started during former President Barack Obama<6D>s first term. Though U.S. stocks have risen in anticipation of President Donald Trump<6D>s tax reform, the administration has yet to enact any significant new economic policies. Trump wants big tax cuts and fewer regulations to boost annual GDP growth to 3 percent. INVENTORY BOOST Businesses accumulated inventories at a $35.8 billion pace in the third quarter in anticipation of strong demand. As a result, inventory investment contributed 0.73 percentage point to third-quarter GDP growth, after adding just over a tenth of a percentage point to growth in the prior period. Exports increased at a 2.3 percent rate in the third quarter, while imports fell at a 0.8 percent pace. That left a smaller trade deficit, leading to trade adding 0.41 percentage point to GDP growth. Trade has contributed to output for three quarters in a row. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which hurt incomes and undercut retail sales in August, crimped consumer spending in the third quarter. Growth in consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the U.S. economy, slowed to a 2.4 percent rate following a robust 3.3 percent pace in the second quarter. The storms also weighed on investment in nonresidential structures like oil and gas wells. Spending on mining exploration, wells and shafts grew at a 21.7 percent rate, decelerating from the second-quarter<65>s 116.3 percent pace. As result, spending on residential structures fell at a 5.2 percent pace in the third quarter after rising at a 7.0 percent rate in the second quarter. Investment in homebuilding, which was already undermined by land and labor shortages, also took a hit fr
'4bc9465c33312fcf75eb1f416fc2d566d23bf7fd'|'Telekom CEO argues for strong No. 3 player in U.S. wireless market: newspaper'|'October 28, 2017 / 10:26 PM / Updated 9 hours ago Telekom CEO argues for strong No. 3 player in U.S. wireless market: newspaper Reuters Staff 3 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A strong No. 3 player in the U.S. wireless market would enhance competition, the chief of Deutsche Telekom ( DTEGn.DE ) told a German newspaper, as T-Mobile US Inc ( TMUS.O ) seeks to merge with Sprint Corp ( S.N ). Timotheus Hoettges, Chief Executive Officer of Germany''s telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom AG poses for a picture at the Cyber Defense and Security Operation Center (SOC) of Telekom Security in Bonn October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay Chief executive officer Timotheus Hoettges also urged the new German government to think twice before selling down its large stake in Deutsche Telekom, according to an interview in Welt am Sonntag. T-Mobile US, majority-owned by Deutsche Telekom, is close to agreeing tentative terms on a deal to merge with Sprint Corp, people familiar with the matter have said, a breakthrough in efforts to merge the third and fourth largest U.S. wireless carriers. Hoettges, in the interview published on Sunday, declined to comment directly on talks between the companies. <20>In the U.S. there is a duopoly between two very big players, and then there are two smaller players well behind,<2C> he said. <20>A third strong player would be good for competition.<2E> Verizon Communications Inc ( VZ.N ) and AT&T Inc ( T.N ) are the two largest wireless carriers. Competition regulators have in the past quashed consolidation efforts by T-Mobile, but Hoettges said chances are now better under U.S. President Donald Trump. <20>History has taught us that governments led by Republicans are more hands-off than Democratic administrations,<2C> he said. On the German state<74>s nearly 32 percent stake in Deutsche Telekom, Hoettges acknowledged it would be the new government<6E>s decision whether to sell or keep. But he said those who argued for a sale <20>should perhaps ask themselves who will buy the stake<6B>. <20>What interest would the owner have in infrastructure security? Would the owner want to invest in Germany, and if so, where and in particular, how much?<3F> The FDP and Green parties, which are in talks to form a coalition government with Chancellor Angela Merkel<65>s conservatives, have both advocated a sale or partial sale of the stake. Reporting by Tom Sims and Douglas Busvine; editing by John Stonestreet'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-deutsche-telekom-m-a-sprint-t-mobile/telekom-ceo-argues-for-strong-no-3-player-in-u-s-wireless-market-newspaper-idUKKBN1CX0Q2'|'2017-10-29T01:25:00.000+03:00'
'f8da86590765c47c3010be36b37b585d0cbec16a'|'PRESS DIGEST- British Business - Oct 30'|'Oct 30 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.The TimesBritish Treasury ministers were left in the dark about plans to alter UK listings rules in an effort to attract the potential 1 trillion-pounds-plus listing of Saudi Aramco to London amid intense competition to win the float, according to emails disclosed to the Times. bit.ly/2z30K0zPay for British-based partners at one of the world''s biggest accountancy firms, Ernst & Young, has swelled to nearly 680,000 pounds ($892,704.00) as the professional services industry enjoyed bumper revenues in spite of Brexit and political upheaval around the world. bit.ly/2z1xszbThe GuardianThe Bank of England is poised to raise interest rates this Thursday for the first time in more than a decade, raising the cost of borrowing for British households already hurt by an earnings squeeze. bit.ly/2z1k9PrBritain is on track for a budget deficit <20> the gap between government spending and tax receipts <20> to reach 36 billion pounds by 2021-22, more than twice the initial official forecast of 17 billion, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. bit.ly/2z3bhJ5The TelegraphOntario Graphite, a Canadian graphite producer, is drawing up plans to capitalise on the electric car boom and raise 40 million pounds by listing in London later this week. bit.ly/2yVWkGNThe government''s triennial review of the UK''s betting industry is expected to act over fixed-odds betting terminals, known as the "crack cocaine" of gambling because they allow punters to stake as much as 100 pounds in a single 20-second flutter. bit.ly/2z310g3Sky NewsThe former owner of Monarch Airlines has pledged to use part of any profit it makes from the collapsed airline to compensate taxpayers saddled with a 60-million-pound bill for flying holidaymakers back to UK. bit.ly/2z1koKlThe IndependentA rising number of British restaurants are at risk of going bust due to Brexit, according to new research from accountancy firm Moore Stephens that says 20 percent of restaurants, or 14,800 outlets, are threatened with closure.$1 = 0.7617 pounds Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Sandra Maler '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-press-business/press-digest-british-business-oct-30-idINL4N1N507I'|'2017-10-29T22:00:00.000+02:00'
'8f7379c515c3582c5cc0bc48cf03add7e2f92d63'|'Israeli flavour firm Frutarom to buy remaining 81 pct of Enzymotec'|'TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Israeli flavor and fine ingredients company Frutarom Industries said on Sunday it agreed to acquire the 81 percent of special nutrition firm Enzymotec it doesn<73>t already own for $11.9 a share, or about $168 million.Frutarom had acquired in prior transactions 19 percent of Enzymotec for $42 million, reflecting an average share price of $9.6 and announced its intention to make a tender offer for Enzymotec shares.Following negotiations with Enzymotec<65>s board of directors the sides agreed upon a full merger. Enzymotec will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Frutarom and be delisted from trading.Frutarom expects the deal, be financed through bank debt and/or debt from a financial institution, to close by early in the first quarter of 2018.Enzymotec develops nutritional ingredients and medical foods and its technologies enable extraction of lipids from natural sources. It has 235 employees, mainly in Israel and the United States, and its sales in the year to June 2017 were $47 million.Enzymotec<65>s nutrition segment will contribute to the expansion of Frutarom<6F>s portfolio of products in the areas of pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements, foods for infants and elderly clinical nutrition, Frutarom chief executive Ori Yehudai said.Reporting by Tova Cohen '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-enzymotec-frutarom-inds-m-a/israeli-flavor-firm-frutarom-to-buy-remaining-81-pct-of-enzymotec-idUSKBN1CY08A'|'2017-10-29T10:10:00.000+02:00'
'6eeb88e8f033626c2eabf38f8d596bc01fb2a14c'|'After CSeries deal, Bombardier aero unit faces uncertain future'|'Place your bets for the Brexit rate hike Special Report Me and my robotic suit - how I stood up and walked after 21 years Spain sacks Catalan government Reuters TV United States October 27, 2017 / 6:54 PM / Updated 2 hours ago After CSeries deal, Bombardier aero unit faces uncertain future Allison Lampert 4 Min Read MONTREAL (Reuters) - Bombardier Inc ( BBDb.TO ) secured the future of its struggling CSeries jet but still needs to find ways to spur growth in other units that have aging products or face larger rivals, industry players and analysts said. A Bombardier CSeries aircraft is pictured during a news conference to announce a partnership between Airbus and Bombardier on the C Series aircraft programme, in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau A blockbuster deal with Airbus SE ( AIR.PA ) that saw the European company take control of the CSeries for $1 leaves Bombardier<65>s commercial aviation division with the soft-selling turboprop and regional jets lines. Meanwhile, on the rail side, Bombardier recently lost out on a merger with Germany<6E>s Siemens AG ( SIEGn.DE ) and now faces off against China<6E>s merged rail company CRRC Corp ( 601766.SS ) and a soon-to-be-formed European giant in Siemens-Alstom. Macquarie on Friday said it would tweak 2019 company valuations to focus on corporate jets and rail, in the wake of the Airbus deal and media speculation on further commercial aircraft sales. While the Airbus partnership boosts the CSeries and potentially Bombardier<65>s small aerostructures and engineering division, which produces aircraft components, the remaining lines in its commercial aerospace arm are <20>mature and stay stable at best as the industry changes around them,<2C> according to AltaCorp analyst Chris Murray. Removal of the CSeries headache means the company can focus on its more profitable rail and business jet divisions. Yet even there, concerns remain with Moody<64>s this week downgrading Bombardier partly on <20>longer-term concerns<6E> about the competitiveness of its rail business and concerns about its <20>future in the commercial aircraft space.<2E> Bombardier said Moody<64>s action was <20>ill-founded.<2E> Bombardier<65>s CEO Alain Bellemare said recently the firm continues to weigh options for the rail unit. Asked about the future of the commercial aerospace unit on Oct. 20, he told reporters, <20>Right now the focus is to keep on selling these aircraft.<2E> <20>I think they will be forced to take a decision (to) either fix, coast or sell,<2C> U.S. analyst Richard Aboulafia said of the commercial plane unit. <20>But fix means putting some serious money into product upgrades.<2E> Upgrading a regional jet with a new engine and wings would cost upwards of $1 billion, an amount likely to be prohibitive for the company as it spends on ramping up its CSeries and bringing its strong-selling Global 7000 to market, analysts say. Bombardier has long weighed a sale or partnership venture to boost orders for its Q400 prop planes, which trail European rival ATR, owned by Airbus and Leonardo SpA ( LDOF.MI ). Such a deal, however, would be complicated by the need to ensure Canadian job security because the aircraft are assembled in Canada, government and union sources said. Bombardier tried unsuccessfully in 2013 to sell 100 Q400 turboprops in Russia and set up a joint-venture assembly line there. <20>I<EFBFBD>m sure they<65>d love to sell the Q400 if they could get a serious buyer,<2C> said an industry source specializing in the prop market. Reporting By Allison Lampert; Editing by Cynthia Osterman'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-canada-bombardier/after-cseries-deal-bombardier-aero-unit-faces-uncertain-future-idUKKBN1CW2P4'|'2017-10-27T21:55:00.000+03:00'
'ca803ab417d9defba1a0a5b99ae37080d3bcabac'|'Argentina to sell euro-denominated bonds on Nov. 2 -ministry official'|'BUENOS AIRES, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Argentina plans to sell euro-denominated bonds next Thursday, a Finance Ministry spokeswoman told Reuters on Friday.Earlier on Friday, Thomson Reuters publication IFR had reported that South America<63>s No. 2 economy had hired BBVA, Citigroup and Santander to arrange road shows for the bond sale in London on Oct. 31 and Frankfurt on Nov. 1.Argentina is considering selling one set of bonds that would mature in four to five years and another maturing in seven to 10 years, along with the possibility of a long-dated bond, IFR reported.The spokeswoman did not respond to a request for additional details about the bond sale.Finance Minister Luis Caputo told reporters earlier this month that Argentina expected to issue $2.6 billion in bonds <20>most likely<6C> denominated in euros in late October or early November. (Reporting by Buenos Aires newsroom; Writing by Luc Cohen; Editing by Paul Simao) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/argentina-bonds/argentina-to-sell-euro-denominated-bonds-on-nov-2-ministry-official-idINL2N1N21TT'|'2017-10-27T17:45:00.000+03:00'
'e038bda55fe022bc80d8abd92962a58b2c6bafbe'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX turns positive after open, Canopy Growth surges'|'TORONTO, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index turned positive shortly after the open on Monday as energy and material stocks lift, while Canopy Growth Corp surged more than 16 percent on Constellation Brands Inc stake.The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index rose 23.03 points, or 0.14 percent, to 15,976.54.Eight of the index<65>s 10 primary sectors advanced. (Reporting by Solarina Ho) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks-open/canada-stocks-tsx-turns-positive-after-open-canopy-growth-surges-idUSL2N1N50PF'|'2017-10-30T15:50:00.000+02:00'
'9f36c8f533072e203cc46352e5116f7ffee8e4d8'|'The looming interest rate rise: how it will affect you'|'T he longest period in living memory without a Bank of England rate rise is expected to end on Thursday, when the base rate is likely to increase by 0.25% to 0.5%. The percentage rise is small, but the worry for homebuyers with jumbo mortgages is that it could be the start of a number of increases that could make their loans unaffordable. However, for people with savings who have suffered near-invisible returns on their money, is this the light at the end of the tunnel?This week<65>s GDP figures, showing a slightly better performance by the economy than anticipated, has made the likelihood of an interest rate rise on 2 November almost a slam dunk, according to City experts. About 80% of market watchers are saying an increase is inevitable, although there are voices calling for the Bank to maintain rates at their historic low.Bank of England base rate since 1975 Azad Zangana, an economist at Schroders, says: <20>Despite the ongoing weakness in growth, it is hard to see why the Bank would change its policy bias now and not raise interest rates in November. The Bank argues that inflationary pressures could rise sharply if not checked by higher interest rates, and that the current low unemployment rate could lead to faster wage growth.<2E>So what will be the impact on households of a small, but momentous, change in interest rates?First-time buyersThe average mortgage taken out by a first-time buyer is <20>136,000, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. But the majority have taken out two-, three- or five-year fixed-rate deals, so their payments will remain the same no matter what Bank governor Mark Carney says next Thursday. Even those who have a tracker loan linked to the Bank base rate will see their monthly costs rise by little more than <20>15-<2D>20 a month <20> unhelpful but hardly catastrophic. As a guide, the table (below) shows the impact of a 0.25% rise on a 2% tracker mortgage with a term of 30 years.Facebook Twitter PinterestWhat is more of a worry for new buyers is the withdrawal of existing best-buy deals and their replacement by higher priced ones, as well as a big jump in the <20>revert to<74> rate at the end of two-year deals. Already, banks such as NatWest have repriced their deals upwards by as much as 0.9% , and expect more to follow once the rate hike is announced. The price of the average fixed-rate deal has started to step upwards for the first time in many years, although by only a tiny amount so far .The <20>revert to<74> rate is the shock that awaits most first-time buyers. For example, HSBC<42>s two-year fix will revert to 3.69% at the end of the term. But once the base rate rises, that <20>revert to<74> rate will go up to 3.94%. So someone with a <20>136,000 mortgage will see their monthly payments jump from <20>503 today to <20>644. They will have to cross their fingers that there are cheaper loans available when they remortgage at the end of the deal.Existing homeownersThe average mortgage of a home mover, say, a family trading up from a flat to a house, is <20>175,000, according to the CML. Many will have taken their loans out before the financial crisis and, if on a tracker deal, will see their monthly bill rise in line with the base rate hike. For example, Nationwide building society has just under 500,000 borrowers on its <20>base mortgage rate<74> of 2.25%, which will rise to 2.5%. Assuming the homeowner has a 25-year term, the monthly cost of a typical <20>175,000 Nationwide mortgage will rise by <20>22 a month, to <20>785 (see table).Facebook Twitter PinterestNationally, 57% of homeowners are on fixed-rate deals, so only 43% are immediately affected by a rate rise. But if the Bank eventually increases rates to what many say will be the new normal of 3%, the average Nationwide <20>175,000 borrower is likely to be landed with a monthly bill of <20>1,023 <20> or <20>260 more every month than what they are paying now.Should the base rate return to the pre-financial crisis levels of 5%, that borrower will have to find an extra <20>474 a month, although they are likely 
'2249efe4587f22715f5229278395261f1ee596a8'|'MIDEAST STOCKS - Factors to watch - October 30'|'DUBAI, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Here are some factors that may affect Middle East stock markets on Monday. Reuters has not verified the press reports and does not vouch for their accuracy.INTERNATIONAL/REGIONAL * GLOBAL MARKETS-Asia shares, crude oil buoyant; euro near 3-mth lows* MIDEAST STOCKS-Petchems, Saudi Telecom beat lift Riyadh; rest of Gulf sluggish* 30 Oct - 01:43:07 PM (LCOc1 CLc1) {urn:newsml:reuters.com:20171030:nL4N1N505F:8} - UPDATE 2-Oil markets stable on expected extension of output cuts* PRECIOUS-Gold edges down on caution over next Fed chair* Kurdish leader Barzani resigns after independence vote backfires* Rouhani says Iran will keep producing missiles, state TV reports* Turkey<65>s Q3 growth seen at 9.6 pct, may be double-digit -minister* Iraq boosts southern ports oil export capacity to 4.6 mln bpd -statementEGYPT * Average yields fall on Egypt<70>s three- and nine-month T-bills* IFC and banks close $653 mln in funding for Egypt solar plantsSAUDI ARABIA * Saudi foreign reserves continue slide, lowest since April 2011* Saudi<64>s SABIC Q3 net profit up 10.7 pct on higher prices, sales* TABLE-Saudi money supply increase in SeptemberUNITED ARAB EMIRATES * MEDIA-Warburg Pincus in talks with DP World to sell stake in Gangavaram Port - Mint* Abu Dhabi<62>s new airport terminal to open by Q4 2019, construction 86 pct complete* TABLE-UAE September inflation rebounds to 1.1 pct on food, transportQATAR * Qatar emir says open to Trump-hosted talks over Gulf crisis - CBS* Qatar says oil moving towards fair price -KUNA news agencyKUWAIT * TABLE-Kuwait August bank lending growth slows but money supply picks up* Zain Group third quarter net income falls 7 percentBAHRAIN * Bahrain foreign minister calls for freezing Qatar out of GCCOMAN * Moody<64>s places Omantel<65>s Baa2 rating on review for downgrade (Compiled by Dubai newsroom) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mideast-factors/mideast-stocks-factors-to-watch-october-30-idINL8N1N501Q'|'2017-10-29T23:55:00.000+02:00'
'35926df8807400304ebb56534138080d1a3dd1c7'|'Flood of Chinese capital seen shaking up aviation finance'|'October 29, 2017 / 11:23 PM / Updated an hour ago Flood of Chinese capital seen shaking up aviation finance Anshuman Daga , Tim Hepher 3 Min Read HONG KONG/PARIS (Reuters) - A flood of low-cost Chinese funding is shaking up the global aircraft leasing market, with Chinese capital now accounting for 28 percent of the $261 billion deployed by leasing firms worldwide, a study suggested on Monday. People visit the Asian Business Aviation Conference and Exhibition (ABACE) at Hongqiao International Airport in Shanghai, China April 10, 2017. Picture taken April 10, 2017. REUTERS/Aly Song That is up from 5 percent nine years ago. The influx of more than $70 billion to the leasing industry from Chinese banks and other investors over the past decade is helping airlines expand their fleets. But it is also curbing returns to be made by traditional players in a sector fast emerging as a significant new asset class. <20>In the last cycle (2003-2008), lease rates went up significantly whereas in this cycle they haven<65>t. That<61>s partly because there are more people looking for the same deals,<2C> said Rob Morris, global head of consultancy at Flightglobal Ascend. Record interest from China, the world<6C>s fastest-growing aviation market, will be evident in meetings of 1,500 financiers in Hong Kong at two major conferences this week. For years, some experts have warned that record production by Airbus ( AIR.PA ) and Boeing ( BA.N ) and over-ordering by some airlines would burst a demand <20>bubble<6C> for jetliners. But Morris sees a greater long-term threat from the supply side as new investors pour money into aviation. He predicts much of that capital is in the industry to stay, pressuring rivals. In a study coinciding with the Airline Economics conference, Flightglobal Ascend said Chinese capital will account for over a third of the aircraft leasing industry within five years. Many such investors are willing to accept lower returns and that is a warning sign for other players, Morris said. <20>If this money is resetting the rules, you have to learn to play by the new rules or you lose the game.<2E> Some market veterans disagree, saying new money will retreat as quickly as it arrived when the market turns lower, making it hard for inexperienced players to redeploy unwanted jets. So far signs are that the market is holding up, although there has been turbulence in the market for some long-haul jets. Recent bankruptcies of Air Berlin and Monarch Airlines in Europe angered passengers but the aircraft were absorbed relatively quickly due to high demand, bankers say. Another key test will be expected interest rate rises and a rollback in stimulus from central banks who have pumped money into the economy, a chunk of which found its way into aviation. Historically, aircraft investors sought double-digit returns and many now have to settle for mid-to-high single figures, Morris told Reuters. <20>Those figures may be acceptable in a low-interest-rate environment, but as interest rates start to increase can people start to increase their returns? That may not be possible<6C>. The U.S. Federal Reserve has raised rates twice this year and is widely expected to do so again in December. Editing by Susan Fenton'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-aviation-finance/flood-of-chinese-capital-seen-shaking-up-aviation-finance-idUKKBN1CY0X4'|'2017-10-30T01:23:00.000+02:00'
'6a508896e48e4b3af1a9b3e5689a31496166e4e3'|'Russia''s Rosneft interested in taking stake in Croatia''s INA: paper'|'ZAGREB (Reuters) - Russian energy company Rosneft ( ROSN.MM ) is interested in acquiring a stake in Croatian oil and gas company INA INA.ZA, Rosneft<66>s CEO Igor Sechin said in an interview with a Croatian daily.FILE PHOTO: A logo of Russian state oil firm Rosneft is seen at its office in Moscow, October 18, 2012. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo <20>We<57>re certainly interested in investments in this region and we<77>re considering the possibility of entering INA<4E>s ownership structure,<2C> Sechin said in an online edition of the Jutarnji List daily late on Friday.Hungary<72>s MOL ( MOLB.BU ) is currently the biggest shareholder in INA with a bit less than 50 percent. The Croatian government holds almost 45 percent.The two have been at odds in the last few years over management rights and investment policy. Croatia said last December that it wanted to buy back INA shares held by MOL, and in August it began seeking an adviser for that move.MOL and Zagreb have also been in disagreement over the future of INA<4E>s loss-making smaller refinery in the central town of Sisak.<2E>If Rosneft enters INA<4E>s ownership structure, its facilities would be modernized and able to deliver oil products on the market in a sustainable manner,<2C> Sechin said.Reporting by Igor Ilic; Editing by Hugh Lawson '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-croatia-ina-rosneft/russias-rosneft-interested-in-taking-stake-in-croatias-ina-paper-idINKBN1CW2X9'|'2017-10-27T19:00:00.000+03:00'
'b4a8416a9b0bef6317c5812016b3bbb898f684b0'|'Chevron drops decision to leave Bangladesh'|'October 29, 2017 / 12:55 PM / Updated 15 hours ago Chevron drops decision to leave Bangladesh Reuters Staff 2 Min Read DHAKA (Reuters) - The U.S. oil company Chevron ( CVX.N ) will not sell three subsidiaries and leave Bangladesh as planned, Chevron said on Sunday. FILE PHOTO: A Chevron gas station sign is shown in Cardiff, California, in this January 25, 2016 photo. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo Chevron had said in April it would sell to China<6E>s Himalaya Energy Co. the wholly owned subsidiaries that operate three gas fields, which together account for 58 percent of Bangladesh<73>s gas production. Chevron <20>will not be proceeding with an agreement to sell the shares of its wholly owned indirect subsidiaries,<2C> Cameron Van Ast, Chevron<6F>s external affairs advisor for Asia and the Pacific, said in a statement sent to Reuters on Sunday. <20>Chevron has decided to retain these assets and will continue to work with our partners Petrobangla and the government of Bangladesh to provide reliable and affordable energy to the nation,<2C> the statement said. Chevron did not give a reason for reversing its decision. Rather than leaving, Chevron will invest $400 million at Bibiyana, the country<72>s largest gas field, said Nasrul Hamid, Bangladesh<73>s junior minister for power, energy and mineral resources. Bibiyana produces 1,250 million cubic feet of gas a day. Chevron formally conveyed its intention to stay in Bangladesh in a letter last week, Hamid said. Reporting By Serajul Quadir, editing by Larry King'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bangladesh-chevron/chevron-drops-decision-to-leave-bangladesh-idUSKBN1CY0FX'|'2017-10-29T14:53:00.000+02:00'
'5b5fb1d9ff1845c2d62345609679f64bf26fc311'|'Brazil has no plan to intervene in Oi telecom group -govt lawyer'|'BRASILIA, Oct 26 (Reuters) - The Brazilian government is working to avoid having to intervene in bankrupt telecom group Oi SA, the top government lawyer said on Thursday.Brazil<69>s attorney general, Grace Mendon<6F>a, said intervention of the telephone carrier was the last thing on the government<6E>s mind. She said a list of proposals for saving the company is being drawn up by a government task force.Brazilian telcoms regulator Anatel said it has received a message from Oi shareholders saying they would not remove current managers. (Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Leslie Adler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/oi-sa-restructuring/brazil-has-no-plan-to-intervene-in-oi-telecom-group-govt-lawyer-idUSS0N1IB02N'|'2017-10-27T00:38:00.000+03:00'
'0cbcff48bd8264c221bc8406186fa3cb3c76ab08'|'Reliance Nippon Life $237 million IPO subscribed 81 times'|'(Reuters) - Indian mutual fund manager Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management Ltd<74>s initial public offering to raise up to 15.42 billion Indian rupees ($237 million) was subscribed more than 81 times on the last day of the sale on Friday, stock exchange data showed.Investors bid for about 3.49 billion shares, or 81.4 times the 42.8 million shares on offer, data as of 1300 GMT showed. bit.ly/2llo84aThe mutual fund manager is selling 24.5 million new shares with a price band of 247-252 rupees per share, while its two main shareholders - Nippon Life and Reliance Capital Ltd - will offload 25.5 million and 11.2 million shares, respectively.Anchor investors have agreed to subscribe to shares worth 4.63 billion rupees in the IPO.The sale, which is the first by a mutual fund manager in the country, adds to nearly $8 billion already raised from the primary market in 2017 so far.($1 = 65.0550 Indian rupees)Reporting by Vishal Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Devidutta Tripathy and Vyas Mohan '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/reliance-nippon-ipo/reliance-nippon-life-237-million-ipo-subscribed-81-times-idINKBN1CW1XR'|'2017-10-27T11:49:00.000+03:00'
'dc69224bdab10934437946bdb881d80db66f0c59'|'ECB survey sees higher euro zone inflation in 2022'|' 23 AM / Updated 27 minutes ago ECB survey sees higher euro zone inflation in 2022 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Euro zone inflation could be higher than earlier expected in five years<72> time, the European Central Bank<6E>s survey of professional forecasters showed on Friday, partly underpinning the ECB<43>s decision to curb stimulus a day earlier. European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi adddresses the European Banking Congress at the Old Opera house in Frankfurt, Germany November 20, 2015. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski Price growth is seen rising to 1.9 percent by 2022, in line with the ECB<43>s target and above the 1.8 percent predicted three months ago, according to the survey of 58 forecasters, an important input in the ECB<43>s policy deliberations. The ECB decided on Thursday to halve asset buys from next year but extend them by 9 months, arguing that the improved outlook allows for reduced stimulus, even if lengthy central bank support is still needed. Inflation projections for the coming years were left unchanged, though both 2018 and 2019 forecasts remained above projections by the ECB<43>s staff, suggesting these may be revised up when they are updated in December. Indeed, the euro is trading weaker than the ECB expected and oil prices are sharply higher, indicating that the September projections may be too pessimistic. Economic growth is also likely to be faster than earlier expected, with forecasts raised for both 2018 and 2019. The survey now sees growth at 1.9 percent in 2018 and 1.7 percent in 2019, both 0.1 percentage point higher than three months ago. But longer term growth, defined as expansion in 2022, is still seen at 1.6 percent. Unemployment is now seen falling faster than earlier thought with 2018, 2019 and longer term forecasts all cut by 0.2 percentage point. Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Francesco Canepa'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ecb-policy-survey/ecb-survey-sees-higher-euro-zone-inflation-in-2022-idUKKBN1CW0XL'|'2017-10-27T11:22:00.000+03:00'
'025f7cb7190fcb6daf2d7ae2938c46a529701255'|'CVS-Aetna deal gets Wall Street thumbs up amid Amazon entry fears'|'(Reuters) - U.S. pharmacy operator CVS Health Corp<72>s move to buy health insurer Aetna Inc will broaden their reach in the industry and could spark another round of dealmaking in a sector dreading Amazon<6F>s arrival, analysts said. FILE PHOTO: The CVS logo is seen at one of their stores in Manhattan, New York, U.S., August 1, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo Shares of Aetna, the third-largest U.S. health insurer, were marginally up in early trading on Friday, after closing 12 percent higher on Thursday following reports of the deal. CVS Health was down about 1 percent. CVS Health has made an offer to acquire No. 3 U.S. health insurer Aetna for more than $200 per share, or over $66 billion, making it the biggest deal of the year, Reuters reported on Thursday. <20>A potential combination would diversify CVS profit streams ahead of an Amazon entry and set the stage for a new healthcare-retail delivery model,<2C> Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note. Amazon.com Inc<6E>s speculated entry has hit shares of most drugstore operators on fears that the online retailer would leverage its vast ecommerce platform to take market share from traditional pharmacies. <20>We believe CVS does need to respond to the potential threat and strike a different path,<2C> Cowen & Co analyst Charles Rhyee said in a note. A deal would make CVS-Aetna a one-stop shop for customers<72> health care needs - ranging from employer healthcare and government plans to managing benefits and running drug stores. The vertical integration of retail pharmacy, PBM, and insurers fits with broader healthcare themes of expanded access, consumerism and cost reduction, Jefferies analysts said, adding that the deal chatter was not a complete surprise. <20>It would address each company<6E>s need for a fresh script.<2E> Some analysts said the deal could also trigger a wave of consolidation across the industry. It could be a possible catalyst for higher health insurance sector valuation, BMO Capital Markets analyst Matt Bosch said, adding that WellCare Health Plans, Humana and Centene could be possible acquisition targets. Aetna earlier this year closed the door on a deal with rival insurer Humana Inc after antitrust regulators said that the combination and a rival deal between Anthem Inc and Cigna Corp were anti-competitive. Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aetna-m-a-cvs-health-research/cvs-aetna-deal-gets-wall-street-thumbs-up-amid-amazon-entry-fears-idUSKBN1CW1YC'|'2017-10-27T16:47:00.000+03:00'
'222983811f0dd3be6c154bac9bf95c8e8868b5fe'|'Linde beats profit expectations, misses on sales'|'October 27, 2017 / 5:39 AM / in 24 minutes Linde trims costs, lifts margins as Praxair row brews Georgina Prodhan , Alexander H<>bner 4 Min Read LONDON/MUNICH (Reuters) - German industrial gases maker Linde ( LING.DE ) reported a 3 percent rise in third-quarter core profit, the high-end of forecasts, as a row brewed over the future of its engineering and healthcare units after a planned merger with Praxair ( PX.N ). FILE PHOTO: Linde Group logo is seen at company''s plant in Munich-Pullach, Germany, August 16, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo Linde and U.S. peer Praxair plan an $80 billion(<28>61.1 billion) all-share merger of equals to overtake France<63>s Air Liquide ( AIRP.PA ) as global leader, but Praxair<69>s higher profit margins have caused concern in Germany that Linde may be the weaker partner. Linde<64>s profits were lifted by cost savings but organic growth at its main gases division was just 2.6 percent, dragged down by its U.S. medical gases division, Lincare, and below Air Liquide<64>s 4 percent and Praxair<69>s 6 percent. The profit margin at its gases division was 28.3 percent, compared with 32 percent for Praxair. The plant-engineering unit<69>s margin was 9.2 percent. Linde Chief Executive Aldo Belloni has said the engineering unit may be legally carved out after the merger but that Linde would still retain a majority. Praxair<69>s finance chief appeared to go further in remarks to investors last month reported by Deutsche Bank, when he said U.S. healthcare and parts of plant engineering might not belong in the new group and there were <20>no sacred cows<77>. Praxair, outside of normal U.S. business hours, had no immediate comment on Deutsche Bank<6E>s account of CFO Matthew White<74>s meeting with investors. White is set to become CFO of the combined group. Linde said on Friday the two businesses would remain part of the group for the time being, and expressed irritation with White<74>s reported comments, adding that White and Linde CFO Sven Schneider would soon meet to thrash out the matter. <20>We haven<65>t talked to Mr White but... Schneider is going to meet Mr White soon and surely we are going to challenge him about this statement in order to give him a chance to build up trust again,<2C> Belloni told a news conference. GOOD NUMBERS Linde<64>s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose to 1.03 billion euros ($1.2 billion), versus the 1.02 billion expected on average by analysts in a Reuters poll. Its shares rose 2.9 percent to the top of the German blue-chip DAX index .GDAXI which was up 0.7 percent. <20>Linde presented good Q3 numbers. We hope to get an update on the running (prolonged) tendering process in today<61>s CC at 2:00 pm CET,<2C> Baader analyst Markus Mayer wrote in a note, keeping his <20>buy<75> recommendation on the stock. Linde this week extended the acceptance period for conversion of its shares into shares of the new merged company by two weeks until Nov. 7, and lowered the minimum acceptance level to 60 percent from 75 percent. It aims to reach 74 percent acceptance by Nov. 24, otherwise benefits for the tax inversion following the merger will not happen and the deal is likely to be called off. Belloni said on Friday 67.9 percent of shares had now been tendered. Linde said it had secured anti-trust approval for the Praxair merger from four of the 24 necessary authorities: in Pakistan, Paraguay, Russia and Turkey, and was cooperating closely with all the other competition authorities. Reuters reported this week that the companies were preparing to sell assets with core earnings of 650 million-750 million euros and an enterprise value of about 6.5 million-7.5 billion. The assets up for sale have combined sales of more than 2.7 billion euros, the bulk of which are in the United States. Reporting by Alexander Huebner; Writing by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Edmund Blair; editing by Maria Sheahan and Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/arti
'68b9d45de2f36fa4169a00e300c86c259cbff532'|'UBS cautions gains from wealthy client activity may not last'|'Reuters TV United States October 27, 2017 / 7:23 AM / in 3 minutes UBS cautions gains from wealthy client activity may not last Joshua Franklin 4 Min Read ZURICH (Reuters) - A pick-up at UBS<42>s ( UBSG.S ) core wealth management business is likely to weaken in the final months of 2017 as clients withdraw money to take part in tax amnesty programs, the world<6C>s biggest private bank said. FILE PHOTO - The logo of Swiss bank UBS is seen on a branch office in Zurich, Switzerland November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo UBS, which manages more than more than $2 trillion of the world<6C>s wealth, saw continued improvement in the third quarter at its flagship business after a sluggish 2016 in which trading activity by rich clients hit a record low. But finance chief Kirt Gardner said the fourth quarter, traditionally a seasonally slow three months, would be hit by an estimated 8 billion Swiss francs ($8 billion) in withdrawals as wealthy customers participate in government programs to declare offshore assets. <20>We would expect that after the outflows in the fourth quarter you will see a drop-off in recurring revenue as a consequence and also reduction in margin,<2C> he said in a call with analysts on Friday. Gardner added UBS expected to see a recovery by the second quarter of 2018. The bank, which also has investment banking, asset management, and Swiss retail and corporate divisions, said political and monetary policy uncertainty made it cautious too. Third-quarter group net profit came in at 946 million francs, lagging the average forecast in a Reuters survey of six analysts but ahead of the Swiss bank<6E>s own poll. UBS shares were down 1.1 percent at 1120 GMT, a steeper drop than the European banking sector index .SX7P. <20>EXPECTING A LOT<4F> Net new money inflows - a closely watched indicator of future earnings in money management - totaled 4.6 billion francs at UBS<42>s international wealth management unit in the third quarter. A bright spot for the unit was the contribution from Asia Pacific, a priority growth region for UBS which has seen its best ever year-to-date performance. UBS<42>s North America brokerage business, which handles just over half the bank<6E>s wealth management assets, saw net outflows of $2.3 billion, a blow to a business investors hope is on an upward curve. <20>The market is expecting a lot from wealth management Americas because of the good economy and the rate increases,<2C> said Mirabaud Securities Limited analyst Andreas Brun, who rates UBS<42>s stock <20>buy<75>. The investment bank, which UBS has scaled back in recent years to free up resources for wealth management, saw adjusted pretax operating profit rise 2.9 percent to 352 million francs. UBS<42>s common equity tier 1 (CET1) capital ratio, an important measure of balance sheet strength which UBS uses to help decide its dividend, rose to 13.7 percent from 13.5 percent in the second quarter. A drop in the second quarter CET1 ratio had been a source of concern for some investors. However, Brun said pending legal cases and the uncertainty over future capital rules under Basel IV regulations meant it was too soon to draw conclusions for the dividend. <20>That ratio is clearly good for all those who want to make a dividend story out of UBS,<2C> said Brun. <20>For me it<69>s still too early to call it a dividend story.<2E> Additional reporting by Angelika Gruber; Editing by Michael Shields, Alexander Smith and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ubs-group-ag-results/ubs-profits-from-wealthy-client-activity-but-warns-may-not-last-idUKKBN1CW0QC'|'2017-10-27T14:43:00.000+03:00'
'882514c0e8af98bfec1d57acf47bcd78ff13d9e6'|'CORRECTED-UPDATE 1-Canada''s Saputo to buy Aussie dairy firm Murray Goulburn for $488 mln'|'(Corrects equity value of the deal in headline and paragraph 1)Oct 27 (Reuters) - Murray Goulburn Co-operative, Australia<69>s largest milk processor, on Friday said it agreed to a buyout from Canadian dairy company Saputo Inc worth up to A$637.8 million ($488 million).Murray Goulburn (MG) said Saputo would pay between A$1.10 and A$1.15 per share, compared to its A$2.10 issue price when it listed in 2015.A total buyout value of A$1.3 billion would include the company<6E>s debts and liabilities.Murray Goulburn, reeling from an ill-fated Asian expansion, said in August it was considering approaches from suitors who were interested in buying the cooperative as a whole or some of its assets.Rival Bega Cheese Ltd on Thursday said it had pulled out of the race to buy Murray Goublurn, leaving the dairy processor to choose from a string of international investors, including Fonterra and Saputo.<2E>MG has reached a position where, as an independent company, its debt was simply too high given the significant milk loss,<2C> Chairman John Spark said in Friday<61>s statement.Saputo, which already owns Australia<69>s Warrnambool Cheese Butter, said in a statement the buyout will complement its existing Australian portfolio. It will fund the deal with a new bank loan.$1 = 1.3057 Australian dollars Reporting by Christina Martin in Bengaluru; Editing by G Crosse and Grant McCool '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/mg-unit-tr-ma-saputo/corrected-update-1-canadas-saputo-to-buy-aussie-dairy-firm-murray-goulburn-for-488-mln-idINL4N1N217Q'|'2017-10-26T23:23:00.000+03:00'
'7a67932a5d9a1e6cb393e29bc756d028ef87ded3'|'INEOS to buy British fashion brand Belstaff'|'October 30, 2017 / 2:59 PM / Updated 33 minutes ago Petrochemicals group Ineos to buy British fashion brand Belstaff Martinne Geller 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British petrochemicals company Ineos [INEOSE.UL] is buying fashion brand Belstaff, best known for its waxed cotton motorcycle jackets once worn by Steve McQueen, in the latest off-beat project by Ineos<6F>s billionaire founder Jim Ratcliffe. A close up picture shows the label of Italian clothes manufacturer Belstaff inside a leather jacket at a fashion shop in Frankfurt, Germany, March 15, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach Ineos, which claims to be Britain<69>s largest private company, announced the acquisition on Monday, without disclosing its price or strategic plans. Last month Ratcliffe said he was seeking government support for production of a new 4x4 vehicle modelled on Land Rover<65>s classic Defender, which was discontinued in 2016 after 68 years. Founded in 1924 in England, Belstaff claims an illustrious line of customers for its motorcycle jackets, including pioneer British aviator Amy Johnson, Lawrence of Arabia and Che Guevara, as well as Steve McQueen. More recently, football star David Beckham has been a promoter of the brand. <20>This very British heritage brand, with links to automotive, returns back to British ownership,<2C> Ineos said in a statement. Details on its plans for Belstaff will be announced in due course, it said. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter. Belstaff<66>s current owner is JAB Holding, a consumer goods-focused investment firm backed by the billionaire Reimann family. JAB has been selling off its luxury brands to concentrate on its coffee, restaurants and beauty products with a portfolio of brands that includes Panera, Krispy Kreme and Keurig, as well as a large stake in Coty ( COTY.N ). In July, JAB announced the sale of designer shoes company Jimmy Choo to Michael Kors ( KORS.N ) and is also in the process of selling fashion brand Bally. Additional reporting by Susanna Twidale; Editing by Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-belstaff-m-a/ineos-to-buy-british-fashion-brand-belstaff-idUKKBN1CZ1VN'|'2017-10-30T16:58:00.000+02:00'
'5e01063ebc3dd1aea9eed90364f3f177abcb53cc'|'Puerto Rico governor calls for cancellation of Whitefish contract'|'WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossell<6C> wants to cancel a tiny Montana company<6E>s $300 million contract to restore power to the storm-hit U.S. territory and expects help from the governors of Florida and New York, his office said on Sunday.Whitefish Energy Holdings<67> contract with Puerto Rico<63>s bankrupt power utility has come under fire after it was revealed that the terms were obtained without a competitive public bidding process.Criticism increased after a copy of the contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority surfaced online on Thursday night and raised more questions, particularly over language blocking oversight of costs and profits.Whitefish officials have said they secured the deal legitimately and would not oppose an audit of the company<6E>s work. A Whitefish spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment after Sunday<61>s announcement.Whitefish, which has a full-time staff of two people, says it has now more than 325 people on the island working to restore power.The Puerto Rico Energy Commission is reviewing all of PREPA<50>s actions, including its contracts, but has not spoken with the governor, interim head Jose Roman said in an interview on Sunday.Several weeks after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, about 75 percent of homes and businesses still lack electricity. Rossell<6C> said he hoped that 30 percent of power would be restored to the island by the end of October.<2E>Following the information that has emerged, and with the goal of protecting public interest, as governor I am asking government and energy authorities to immediately activate the clause to cancel the contract to Whitefish Energy,<2C> Rossell<6C> said in a statement to reporters.He said he had reached out to Florida Governor Rick Scott and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to seek help in replacing Whitefish and that they were prepared to assist in restoring power.<2E>I have given instructions to immediately proceed with the necessary coordination with the states of Florida and New York, in order for brigades and equipment to arrive on the island,<2C> Rossell<6C><6C>s statement said.Governor of Puerto Rico Ricardo Rossello attends a news conference days after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, in San Juan, Puerto Rico September 30, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria Scott and Cuomo<6D>s offices did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The Puerto Rican government is bracing for the possibility that Whitefish would sue for breach of contract if the cancellation is approved, according to sources familiar with discussions. The government already paid Whitefish $8 million and does not expect the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency to reimburse that sum, the sources said.Rossell<6C> said he had requested an investigation into how the contract between PREPA and 2-year-old Whitefish was decided upon so quickly.The contract and the slow restoration of power on the island have raised questions about the management of PREPA<50>s response to Maria.It took about a week for PREPA to complete a damage assessment while residents were relying on diesel generators and most of the island remained in darkness.Whitefish spokesman Ken Luce had said the deal was secured when the company<6E>s chief executive officer and co-owner, Andy Techmanski, flew to Puerto Rico on Sept. 26, six days after Maria tore into the island.PREPA had been in contact with Whitefish following Hurricane Irma, which did less damage to the island, in a formal bidding process that was not completed because Maria had hit. There was no formal bidding process after Maria, Luce said, but he termed the contract in <20>good faith<74> and <20>fair<69> to PREPA.Whitefish, named after the Montana town where it is located, briefly got into a fight on Twitter last week with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who criticized the lack of transparency in the deal. The company threatened to leave the island before apologizing.Puerto Rico<63>s financial oversight board earlier this week said it would appoint
'6b0eb19cca3774ce732909bca65c533ec49e2c69'|'UK supermarket Asda names Roger Burnley as CEO from January 2018'|'October 30, 2017 / 10:24 AM / Updated an hour ago Asda promotes lieutenant as CEO steps down after 18 months James Davey 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Walmart<72>s ( WMT.N ) British supermarket arm Asda has promoted head of operations Roger Burnley to become CEO, replacing Sean Clarke after just 18 months and tasking him with building on the firm<72>s nascent recovery in the face of brutal competition. U.S. group Walmart, the world<6C>s largest retailer, said on Monday that Burnley, a 51 year old Yorkshireman, would succeed Sean Clarke as Asda president and chief executive on Jan. 1. Burnley is currently chief operating officer and deputy CEO. FILE PHOTO: An ASDA employee walks beneath a company logo outside a store in Manchester, northern England, July 8 , 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo Analysts had expected Burnley to succeed Clarke as Walmart had identified him as<61>a future CEO<45> when he re-joined Asda last year. However, some were surprised by the speed of his elevation to the top job. <20>A good deal earlier than we thought ... but not a surprise that Roger is the man,<2C> said Shore Capital analyst Clive Black. Of Britain<69>s big four supermarket players - market leader Tesco ( TSCO.L ), Sainsbury<72>s ( SBRY.L ), Asda and Morrisons ( MRW.L ) - Asda has been hurt the most by the rise of German discounters Aldi [ALDIEI.UL] and Lidl [LIDUK.UL], as its traditional price advantage has been eroded. Walmart has said Asda was too slow in responding to that competition and brought in Clarke to speed up change. In August, Asda reported its first quarter of underlying sales growth in three years and said the back-to-basics turnaround plan devised by Clarke and Burnley was working. They have re-established Asda<64>s price competitiveness in key areas such as fresh meat and vegetables, have improved the quality and availability of product ranges and have made its stores more attractive to shoppers. <20>Turning what seems to be tentative stabilisation into a genuine recovery and actually regain some of the ground they<65>ve lost over the last few years is going to be a big challenge,<2C> said Bryan Roberts, global insights director at TCC Global. He said Burnley was likely to evolve Asda<64>s strategy. <20>Longer term they need to work out what they are going to stand for in the market - is it around fun, is it around service, is it around being a family destination?<3F> Black expects productivity, cash conservation, improved marketing, staff engagement, store merchandising and product ranging to be the key areas of focus for Burnley<65>s regime. SUCCESSION Burnley, a former Sainsbury<72>s executive, re-joined Asda in October 2016, three months after Clarke moved from Walmart China to lead the UK business. Asda said it was always intended that Clarke, a 21-year Walmart troubleshooter who has also worked in Japan and Canada, would step aside after around 18 months in the top job. <20>Roger was purposefully brought back to Asda to partner with Sean ahead of the transition to Roger taking up the position of CEO,<2C> said Dave Cheesewright, CEO of Walmart International. <20>He and Sean have worked as a great team and I<>m really confident in Roger<65>s ability to continue building upon our returning momentum,<2C> he said. Clarke will steer Asda through the key Christmas period before stepping down. After taking some time out he will remain with Walmart serving as an advisor. Burnley, who first worked for Asda between 1996 and 2002, said the business was starting to realise its potential again. <20>Sean<61>s focus on serving customers and simplifying the business has established a firm foundation on which we can build,<2C> he said. Editing by Mark Potter, Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-moves-asda/uk-supermarket-asda-names-roger-burnley-as-ceo-from-january-2018-idUKKBN1CZ11D'|'2017-10-30T12:23:00.000+02:00'
'5bb58519fac7347f9052003736d2a341b97b87a8'|'Akzo Nobel confirms merger talks with Axalta'|'AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch paints maker Akzo Nobel, under pressure after rejecting a lucrative takeover offer and two profit warnings, has confirmed merger talks with smaller U.S. rival Axalta Coating Systems Ltd to create a $30 billion company.General view of the outside of AkzoNobel''s new paint factory in Ashington, Britain September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble Akzo, the maker of Dulux paint, announced it was in <20>constructive talks<6B> about a <20>merger of equals<6C> in what would be the first major deal by Chief Executive Thierry Vanlancker, who took over in July after Akzo spurned a 26 billion euro ($30.2 billion) takeover offer from U.S. rival PPG Industries.Reuters reported on Friday that Akzo had approached Axalta about a possible merger, sending Axalta<74>s shares 17 percent higher.Akzo underlined in a brief statement that the talks will not affect its decision to sell its Chemicals Divisions, valued at 8-10 billion euros. It reiterated promises to return the <20>vast majority<74> of proceeds to shareholders.Akzo has a market capitalization of 19.5 billion euros ($22.7 billion), while Axalta is worth $8.1 billion at Friday<61>s closing price of $33.15.Akzo said merging with Axalta, whose truck coatings business fills a hole in its portfolio, would <20>create a leading global paints and coatings company.<2E>Vanlancker has been forced to cut targets made in the heat of the takeover battle twice in the space of six weeks, blaming disruption caused by hurricane Harvey, rising raw materials costs and <20>headwinds<64> at its marine coatings business.Akzo also faced lawsuits earlier this year from shareholders angry over its decision to reject PPG.Akzo shares were 0.7 percent lower at 76.93 euros at 0900 GMT, well below a figure of around 96 euros proposed by PPG.PRESSURE TO DELIVER Analysts from Bernstein said in a note the deal is a <20>sensible<6C> idea, combining the number 3 and 4 players. The new company would trail the Sherwin-Williams/Valspar combination and PPG globally.An Akzo-Axalta merger <20>would improve scale and density in segments and countries where needed while taking out costs, most likely in the fragmented general industrial segment and in Europe,<2C> they said.They forecast savings of around 250 million euros from combining operations.Analyst Joost van Beek of Theodoor Gilissen said the timing of the Axalta deal will be difficult, and Akzo<7A>s management is under pressure to pull it off.<2E>There is a large risk that Akzo will pay too much, as it is clear that they want to stay out of the hands of PPG, and Axalta knows that.<2E>Akzo did not disclose how it is considering structuring the deal, though promises to return proceeds from the chemicals division sale to shareholder and describing the deal as a merger suggests Akzo may pay mostly with shares. A spokesman declined comment beyond the statement confirming talks.Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday that talks were at an early stage and there was no guarantee the companies would come to an agreement.Akzo said it would sell the Specialty Chemicals division, which represents a third of its sales and profits, as it attempted to avoid a takeover by PPG.Akzo has also committed to return at least 1 billion euros extra to investors this year via a special dividend, in advance of the division sale.After the PPG deal fell through, a group of shareholders launched a court case seeking a vote to have Chairman Antony Burgmans removed, but lost.Akzo<7A>s CEO and CFO then resigned, citing health reasons, while Burgmans is due to retire next year.PPG, which faced opposition from Dutch nationalist politicians, business leaders, labor unions, and the company<6E>s boards, has indicated is no longer interested in trying to buy Akzo.After walking away from the deal on June 1, PPG is barred from rebidding for Akzo until Dec. 1.Private equity firm Carlyle Group LP , Axalta<74>s former owner, had considered selling the company to Akzo in 2014 before taking it public.Additional reporting by Ludwig Burger in Frankfur
'72840d9352fdd343c29dadbce50dd50ee4179c26'|'UK government should drop budget surplus promise, says IFS'|'October 30, 2017 / 12:06 AM / in 3 hours UK government should drop budget surplus promise, says IFS David Milliken 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Chancellor Philip Hammond<6E>s aim to run a budget surplus by the mid-2020s risks being thrown off track next month if official forecasters rein in rosy assumptions about long-run growth, a leading think tank warned on Monday. FILE PHOTO: Finance Secretary Philip Hammond looks on during his visit to The Francis Crick Institute in London, Britain October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Chris J Ratcliffe/pool Despite borrowing falling to a 10-year low last month, Hammond could need to find more than 50 billion pounds a year in extra savings by 2021 if he wants to stick to plans he set out in March to cut the budget deficit, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said. <20>It is perhaps time to admit that a firm commitment to running a budget surplus from the mid 2020s onwards is no longer sensible,<2C> said Carl Emmerson, deputy director of the IFS, adding that Brexit created further economic uncertainty. The British government agency which makes budget forecasts, the Office for Budget Responsibility, said earlier this month that it expects to revise down its long-run productivity growth assumptions when it produces fresh forecasts for Hammond<6E>s next budget on Nov. 22. British economic productivity - the amount produced per hour of work - has stagnated since the financial crisis, and has repeatedly failed to pick up as the OBR has forecast since 2010. If the OBR assumes that productivity continues to flat-line, then so-called <20>structural<61> borrowing - public borrowing adjusted for the economic cycle - would be 69.9 billion pounds in the 2021-22 tax year, up by 53.1 billion pounds from the 16.8 billion pounds forecast in March. In the more likely scenario that the OBR assumes productivity growth of one percent a year - half its pre-crisis average - then structural borrowing would rise to 35.8 billion pounds by 2021-22, the IFS said. This would keep Britain<69>s government on course to meet a medium-term goal of ensuring structural borrowing is below two percent in 2020-21, but would make it hard to reach a longer-term target of a budget surplus by the mid-2020s, the IFS said. Last week Hammond told parliament he planned to continue with a <20>measured and balanced<65> approach to reducing public borrowing in next month<74>s budget, and officials issued a similar statement on Monday in response to the IFS. Britain<69>s overall budget deficit has fallen to 2.4 percent of GDP from 10 percent when the Conservative Party entered government in 2010. This has mostly been achieved by real-terms cuts in day-to-day government spending on a per-capita basis. Spending on this basis has fallen by 13 percent since 2010, and is forecast to drop by almost five percent more by 2021. As a result, the IFS said there were <20>real strains<6E> on public healthcare, where waiting times have risen, and in less visible areas such as prisons, where a shortage of guards has led to increased violence. Hammond is also under pressure to finance an end to an effective one percent cap on public-sector pay rises and a freeze in benefits for low-paid, unemployed and disabled Britons. Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Stephen Powell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-ifs/uk-government-should-drop-budget-surplus-promise-says-ifs-idUKKBN1CZ003'|'2017-10-30T12:34:00.000+02:00'
'8879543970182f499451719a07ebc28006df71e1'|'Former Ford Germany chief likely to head VDA auto lobby - report'|'FRANKFURT, Oct 29 (Reuters) - The former chief of Ford-Werke GmbH, Bernhard Mattes, is the favourite to head Germany<6E>s VDA auto industry lobby when the current chief<65>s contract expires next year, a newspaper reported on Sunday.Mattes, currently president of AmCham Germany, is regarded highly because he is viewed as independent of the big three German automakers - Volkswagen, BMW, and Daimler, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung reported.VDA<44>s current president Matthias Wissmann, 68, has said he would leave the association when his contract expires in early summer 2018, a spokesman confirmed. He wouldn<64>t comment on a possible successor.AmCham Germany wasn<73>t immediately available for comment when contacted by phone and email after business hours. (Reporting by Tom Sims; Editing by Adrian Croft) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/german-autos-vda/former-ford-germany-chief-likely-to-head-vda-auto-lobby-report-idINL8N1N40QA'|'2017-10-29T14:49:00.000+02:00'
'fad31d7d5d0ccc336199340ba9b264e7406a8f0c'|'Taiwan president arrives in Hawaii despite Chinese objections - Reuters'|'HONOLULU, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen landed in Honolulu on Saturday en route to the island<6E>s diplomatic allies among Pacific nations and is expected to visit a Pearl Harbor memorial, despite strong objections to the visit from China.China regularly calls Taiwan the most sensitive and important issue between it and the United States, and Beijing complains to Washington about transit stops by Taiwanese presidents. China considers Taiwan to be a wayward province.Tsai left on Saturday on a week-long trip to three Pacific island allies - Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands and the Marshall Islands - via Honolulu and the U.S. territory of Guam.Earlier this week, the U.S. State Department said Tsai<61>s transits through U.S. soil would be <20>private and unofficial<61> and were based on long-standing U.S. practise consistent with <20>our unofficial relations with Taiwan.<2E>It noted there was <20>no change to the U.S. one-China policy.<2E>While in Hawaii, Tsai is expected to visit the USS Arizona Memorial, which is built over the remains of the battleship sunk in Pearl Harbor in the Second World War.The memorial now forms a centerpiece of the World War Two Valor in the Pacific National Monument, a historic site administered by the National Park Service.China suspects Tsai wants to push for the formal independence of Taiwan, a red line for Beijing. Tsai says she wants to maintain peace with China but will defend Taiwan<61>s democracy and security.U.S. President Donald Trump is due to visit China in less than two weeks. He angered Beijing last December by taking a telephone call from Tsai shortly after he won the presidential election.The trip to the United States is Tsai<61>s second this year. In January she stopped over in Houston and San Francisco on her way to and from Latin America, visiting the headquarters of Twitter , which is blocked in China. (Reporting by Marco Garcia; Editing by Alistair Bell)Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/china-taiwan-usa/taiwan-president-arrives-in-hawaii-despite-chinese-objections-idINL2N1N401A'|'2017-10-29T00:08:00.000+03:00'
'd7ef272b8b3dc48ef91b80852a2ce322c3254346'|'Brazil government appeals against oil auction suspension- minister'|'October 27, 2017 / 9:35 AM / Updated 34 minutes ago Brazil government appeals against oil auction suspension- minister Reuters Staff 1 Min Read RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Brazil<69>s government has appealed against an injunction suspending a pre-salt oil auction on Friday, the Mining and Energy minister Fernando Coelho Filho said. A federal judge in the Brazilian state of Amazonas issued an injunction sought by the leftist Workers Party on Thursday ordering the suspension of the billion-dollar auctions of pre-salt oil and gas rights. (Reporting by Rodrigo Viga Gaier<65> Writing by Silvio Cascione. Editing by Jane Merriman)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brazil-oilrounds-judge/brazil-government-appeals-against-oil-auction-suspension-minister-idUSE4N1IY02E'|'2017-10-27T12:32:00.000+03:00'
'6078ac641755cbd89965eed2e298e48f0e4455d3'|'Femsa sees Mexico inflation hitting consumption in Q4, 2018'|'October 27, 2017 / 9:13 PM / in a few seconds Femsa sees Mexico inflation hitting consumption in fourth quarter, 2018 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican bottler and retailer Fomento Economico Mexicano (Femsa) ( FMSAUBD.MX ) said on Friday it could see a slowdown in sales in the fourth quarter and in 2018 as high inflation, concerns over trade talks and an upcoming election dampen consumer appetite. The Monterrey-based company reported on Thursday that third quarter profit jumped 385 percent from a year earlier to 32.4 billion pesos ($1.70 billion). That was boosted in part by a 14.3 percent increase in sales to 114.65 billion pesos. In a Friday conference call with analysts, Eduardo Padilla, Femsa<73>s corporate and finance director, said consumption could take a hit thanks to inflation, which at close to 6 percent on an annualized basis, is already well above the central bank<6E>s 3 percent target. <20>Inflation has hurt real wage increases and consumer sentiment. So after three years of strong growth we are lowering our expectations ... for the fourth quarter and next year,<2C> said Padilla, who is scheduled to take over from outgoing Chief Executive Carlos Salazar on Jan. 1, 2018. Concerns surrounding Mexico<63>s 2018 presidential election and ongoing talks to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a lynchpin of Mexico<63>s economy are also factors to consider, he added. Femsa controls the world<6C>s biggest Coke bottler, Coca-Cola Femsa ( KOFL.MX ), and also owns the Oxxo convenience store chain and a stake in Dutch beer company Heineken NV ( HEIN.AS ). Reporting by Sheky Espejo, writing by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Andrew Hay'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-femsa-consumersentiment/femsa-sees-mexico-inflation-hitting-consumption-in-fourth-quarter-2018-idUSKBN1CW2XX'|'2017-10-28T00:07:00.000+03:00'
'812500f59f46b512ec9c303658b239c4e9cc3798'|'Why we don<6F>t need an interest rate rise (yet)'|'I t has been a grim week for economic news. High street stores reported rapidly falling sales <20> the worst since 2009. Output from Britain<69>s car factories tumbled, shrinking by 4.1% in September, with demand from UK car buyers plummeting by 14.2%. Meanwhile, official figures revealed the average pay for full-time workers crept up to <20>550 a week, but in real terms have fallen as they have been outstripped by prices. Even the one mildly positive bit of economic news <20> that GDP growth was slightly higher than expected <20> came with a warning that construction activity contracted for the second quarter in a row.In normal times we might expect a chancellor to be finding ways to stimulate the economy, with the Bank of England loosening the purse strings to lift activity. But precisely the opposite is about to happen. We are told there is an 80% certainty that the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, will make the momentous announcement on Thursday that UK interest rates are to rise for the first time in 10 years.Maybe Mark Carney wants us to wake up and smell the coffee after years of bingeing on debtIn some ways Carney<65>s posturing over interest rates <20> in 2013 he intimated that rates may have to rise if unemployment dropped below 7% <20> has boxed him into a corner. Such is the scale of anticipation in financial markets that if a rate rise doesn<73>t flash up on screens midday on Thursday, sterling will crash. And what happens when sterling falls steeply? Inflation rises as the cost of imported goods increases <20> the very thing Carney is trying to avoid by raising rates.We should not have got to this position. Inflation is 3%, its highest since 2012 and a fair bit ahead of the 2% level the Bank is supposed to maintain. But it<69>s far from catastrophic; inflation peaked at 5.2% in 2011 but it did not prompt a rate rise. Then, it was regarded as largely the result of the decline in sterling, which fell from $2 to $1.40 in 2008-09, a bigger drop than even sterling<6E>s decline after the EU referendum. Back then, the Bank took the view that inflation would subside when sterling settled, which is precisely what happened. Why panic now and raise rates, just when the currency effects are about to fade and when desperate retailers will be discounting massively as they battle to survive?In any case, it<69>s arguable what impact a 0.25% rise will have on consumer behaviour. Only 43% of households now have mortgages that track or are linked to the Bank base rate. The rest are on fixed rates, which means half the country can justifiably yawn on Thursday and say: <20>Rate rise? What rate rise?<3F> Even for those who will see their mortgage repayments go up <20> the average will be around <20>20 a month, or two lattes a week.Maybe Carney wants us to wake up and smell the coffee after years of bingeing on debt, and believes a rate rise will send a powerful psychological signal that the easy money years are over. But why use interest rates when other tools <20> such as straightforward regulatory intervention <20> could work instead. In any case, our overheated housing market is already beginning to cool, one of the few economic benefits to have emerged so far out of Brexit.How should households prepare for rising interest rates? It<49>s staggering how many buyers are on two-year fixed-rate deals. These will have high <20>revert to<74> rates that could prove painful for some buyers if their properties get caught in negative equity and they are unable to remortgage to better deals. My suspicion is that some brokers encourage two-year deals because they earn a <20>procuration<6F> fee on each one and know they will pick up another in just 24 months<68> time.Anyone with a large mortgage not tied to big exit fees should be considering a five-year fixed rate. They start at just 1.69% <20> a screamingly brilliant rate even if Carney<65>s rise fails to materialise. You would have queued round the block for such deals five years ago, which shows how blas<61> we have become about low rates. Grab these deals while 
'942f8f9eb4ad571461fd1a45fb19a33b86b9d0ea'|'Trump economic adviser sees U.S. Q4 GDP growth in 3 percent range'|'October 27, 2017 / 3:39 PM / Updated an hour ago Trump economic adviser sees U.S. Q4 GDP growth in 3 percent range Reuters Staff 1 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Friday that he expects the pace of U.S. economic expansion to remain in the range of a 3 percent annual rate, as a result of high expectations for deregulation and tax cuts. <20>Firms are optimistic both because of regulatory reform but also because they expect corporate tax reform and overall tax reform,<2C> Hassett, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters in a conference call. <20>There has been a recent uptick in growth. The last quarter was 3 percent and now the most recent quarter<65>s 3 percent,<2C> he said. <20>It seems likely that the fourth quarter is going to be in that range as well.<2E> Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-economy-hassett/trump-economic-adviser-sees-u-s-q4-gdp-growth-in-3-percent-range-idINKBN1CW2AG'|'2017-10-27T13:39:00.000+03:00'
'197a6b669f9cb627ad8f99f3793efdf912c6d2fe'|'Canada''s Saputo to buy Aussie dairy firm Murray Goulburn for $488 million'|'October 27, 2017 / 1:09 AM / in 4 hours Canada''s Saputo to buy Aussie dairy firm Murray Goulburn for $488 million Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Murray Goulburn Co-operative ( MGC.AX ), Australia<69>s largest milk processor, on Friday said it agreed to a buyout from Canadian dairy company Saputo Inc ( SAP.TO ) worth up to A$637.8 million ($488 million). FILE PHOTO - Dairy cows eat grass in a paddock on the New South Wales south coast near the town of Nowra September 5, 2014. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo Murray Goulburn (MG) said Saputo would pay between A$1.10 and A$1.15 per share, compared to its A$2.10 issue price when it listed in 2015. A total buyout value of A$1.3 billion would include the company<6E>s debts and liabilities. Murray Goulburn, reeling from an ill-fated Asian expansion, said in August it was considering approaches from suitors who were interested in buying the cooperative as a whole or some of its assets. Rival Bega Cheese Ltd ( BGA.AX ) on Thursday said it had pulled out of the race to buy Murray Goublurn, leaving the dairy processor to choose from a string of international investors, including Fonterra ( FCG.NZ ) and Saputo. <20>MG has reached a position where, as an independent company, its debt was simply too high given the significant milk loss,<2C> Chairman John Spark said in Friday<61>s statement. Saputo, which already owns Australia<69>s Warrnambool Cheese Butter, said in a statement the buyout will complement its existing Australian portfolio. It will fund the deal with a new bank loan. (The story corrects equity value of the deal in headline and paragraph 1) Reporting by Christina Martin in Bengaluru; Editing by G Crosse and Grant McCool '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-mg-unit-tr-m-a-saputo/canadas-saputo-to-buy-aussie-dairy-firm-murray-goulburn-for-488-million-idINKBN1CV3K3'|'2017-10-26T23:09:00.000+03:00'
'a21907afc80ca62aff9a0ebc915ef4eecdbdaa3b'|'Air Berlin set for final farewell as carve-up talks continue'|'October 27, 2017 / 6:38 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago Air Berlin set for final farewell as carve-up talks continue Klaus Lauer , Victoria Bryan 3 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - After almost four decades of flying, Air Berlin<69>s ( AB1.DE ) last flight is due to land in its home city on Friday night while its administrators push to split its remaining assets among buyers. Empty Air Berlin check-in counters at Berlin Tegel airport, Germany, October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke Air Berlin, beloved among Germans for its flights to holiday island Mallorca and the chocolate hearts it gives out after each flight, filed for administration in August. A government loan kept its planes in the air during negotiations on its carve-up. The company has already agreed to sell a large part of its airline assets to domestic rival Lufthansa ( LHAG.DE ), and talks on other operations are taking place with Britain<69>s easyJet ( EZJ.L ) and with Thomas Cook<6F>s ( TCG.L ) German airline Condor . <20>I expect that we can hopefully reach a deal in the coming days, so that we can possibly save a thousand more jobs,<2C> administrator Frank Kebekus said on Friday on German TV programme Morgenmagazin. Others are eyeing the gap left by Air Berlin. IAG ( ICAG.L ), which owns British Airways, said it saw opportunities for its Vueling budget brand in Germany. [L8N1N21KD] Air Berlin was founded nearly 40 years ago by U.S. pilot Kim Lundgren, taking advantage of the fact that at that time only carriers based in Britain, France or the United States were permitted to fly to Berlin. The first flight took off from Berlin<69>s Tegel airport for Palma de Mallorca on April 28, 1979. After German reunification, entrepreneur Joachim Hunold acquired a majority stake in the carrier and quickly grew Air Berlin via acquisitions. But the airline never fully integrated those purchases and the expansion left it laden with debt. The rise of low-cost carriers in Europe, and Lufthansa<73>s strength in Germany, added to pressure and meant it struggled to turn a profit. Financial support from major shareholder Etihad kept it afloat over the last few years, but the Abu Dhabi-based carrier pulled the plug in August, leaving the fate of around 8,000 staff and thousands of customers in the balance. With around 30 million passengers a year, Air Berlin was much larger than Britain<69>s Monarch, which collapsed at the start of this month and had carried 5.7 million in 2015. Air Berlin<69>s last flight is AB6210, departing Munich at 19.35 GMT and due to land in Berlin Tegel at 20.45. The airport is keeping its viewing platform open until midnight and offering free entry to all those interested in watching the arrival. Reporting by Klaus Lauer and Victoria Bryan; Editing by Maria Sheahan and David Holmes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-air-berlin-lufthansa/air-berlin-administrator-sees-easyjet-condor-talks-concluding-soon-idUKKBN1CW0MD'|'2017-10-27T11:16:00.000+03:00'
'8faffb1c48f237252a29746b9234d60033a3cf28'|'UK insurers face bigger compensation pot contribution'|'October 30, 2017 / 1:07 PM / in 6 hours UK insurers face bigger compensation pot contribution Huw Jones 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s markets watchdog flagged a shift on Monday towards a <20>polluter pays<79> model of compensation by forcing insurers to pay more into a pot for consumers out of pocket. A general view of the Canary Wharf financial district in London, Britain October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Coombs The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) opened a public consultation on proposals that would force firms that design risky products to put more cash into the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). The scheme is funded by a levy on financial firms, with the size of the levy generally corresponding to the size of the firm rather than actual risks it poses. This year<61>s levy totals 353 million pounds. Much of the recent pressure on the FSCS has come from claims in the life insurance, pensions and investment advice sectors. The FCA is proposing to force firms that design financial products to contribute more towards compensation costs stemming from sales through <20>intermediaries<65> like financial advisors. The aim is to put pressure on product providers to make sure they scrutinise outside advisors who sell their products. This and other proposed changes will affect which parts of the financial sector pay into the pot. <20>This proposal makes general insurance providers potentially liable for more of the compensation bill than before,<2C> the FCA said. Huw Evans, director general of the Association of British Insurers, said the FCA<43>s proposal <20>gets the balance wrong<6E>. <20>Expecting providers to foot the bill for intermediaries they have no control over is entirely misplaced and will continue to be widely opposed by providers,<2C> Evans said. The watchdog also proposes raising the compensation limit for advisors and debt management claims to 85,000 pounds from 50,000 pounds. This has been prompted by new <20>pension freedoms<6D> that allow people to cash in their pension pots and seek advice on putting the money into potentially riskier products, the FCA said. The FCA issued final rules that come into force in April 2018 following a public consultation launched last December. New reporting requirements will allow the watchdog to tailor levies to the level of risk from a product or company, if it decided to take this step as part of a <20>polluter pays<79> push. The scheme<6D>s coverage will be extended to some aspects of fund management, and to certain debt management activities for the first time. The Lloyd<79>s of London insurance market is also forced to contribute to the scheme<6D>s retail pot. The FCA said it won<6F>t intervene to change professional indemnity insurance coverage terms for advisors, saying the markets is working well. Instead it is consulting on whether to force advisors to hold capital in trust or obtain a surety bond to cover possible compensation claims. The watchdog also ditched the idea of bringing the loan-based crowdfunding sector under the FSCS as it was impractical. Reporting by Huw Jones, editing by David Evans and Louise Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-markets-regulator/uk-insurers-face-bigger-compensation-pot-contribution-idUKKBN1CZ1JI'|'2017-10-30T15:06:00.000+02:00'
'ee63747d85002c6e812bb2a71a764e3dc757d748'|'Square unveils cash register of the future - Oct. 30, 2017'|'Jack Dorsey: Twitter shows best and worst of democracy Square is known for turning tablets and smartphones into cash registers. But now it wants to reinvent the actual payments register. The payment processing company on Monday unveiled Square Register, which has its software and payments technology built inside. The standalone register ($999) doesn''t need an app or a third-party tablet, unlike the company''s existing products. Its current hardware for small businesses include chip and contactless card readers that plug into a smartphone or Square Stand, which turns iPads into a point-of-sale system. Square launched in 2009 with the goal of letting anyone with a mobile device process credit card payments. The payments method has become especially popular among small businesses like food trucks and boutique coffee shops. About 2 million merchants currently use Square. Now it wants to do the same for bigger businesses with Register. Square ( SQ ) said the new product helps larger sellers with tasks like managing big inventories and employees. "The strategy is to bring [all] business needs to one place," Jesse Dorogusker, Square''s head of hardware, told CNN Tech. "The hardware, the software with no additional third-party tablets ... it''s all from Square, it''s all out of the box [and] as integrated as possible." Related: Twitter CEO says new rules coming to curb harassment One advantage he pointed to is privacy. "You''re not necessarily going to give all [your employees] your iTunes ID [on your iPad]. So this is a way to build a dedicated business tool with a little less of the consumer access that other devices have," said Dorogusker. The company also believes the new hardware will help attract bigger businesses to its platform. Brick-and-mortar chains like Ben & Jerry''s Ice Cream have been testing the hardware at select locations through a beta program. A Square spokesman said over 50 businesses are currently using Square Register, including Goa Taco, Cafe Grumpy and Best Beverage Catering. CNNMoney (New York) First published October 30, 2017: 4:32 PM ET'|'cnn.com'|'http://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_technology.rss'|'http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/30/technology/square-register/index.html'|'2017-10-30T23:32:00.000+02:00'
'6ebc4d906b2aa53f258d0a662e14d3fb08eac2ee'|'Touts to UK''s <20>4.5bn music industry, survey reveals'|'Music industry Touts threaten UK''s <20>4.5bn music industry, survey reveals Mass online touting causing long-term damage and ripping off fans as poll finds strong support for limiting resale prices at face value Adele at Wembley in June. Touts frequently target her concerts, reselling tickets that cost <20>85 at face value for a price in hundreds or even thousands. Photograph: Samir Hussein Music industry Touts threaten UK''s <20>4.5bn music industry, survey reveals Mass online touting causing long-term damage and ripping off fans as poll finds strong support for limiting resale prices at face value View more sharing options Monday 30 October 2017 15.50 GMT Last modified on Monday 30 October 2017 18.10 GMT The UK<55>s <20>4.5bn music industry is under threat because fans<6E> cash is being diverted from their favourite acts, as they fork out for tickets sold by touts at vast mark-ups , according to a survey. The survey, released by anti-tout campaign group FanFair Alliance on Monday, found that two-thirds of respondents who had paid more than face value for a ticket on a resale site said they would attend fewer concerts in future, while half would spend less on recorded music. Adam Webb, a FanFair Alliance campaigner, said the survey supported fears that touting was doing <20>considerable long-term damage<67> to the music industry, which supports 142,000 jobs, according to UK Music. About 80% of more than 1,000 surveyed said secondary ticketing was a <20>rip off<66>, while 58% said they would support limiting resale prices to face value. <20>The message from this research appears to be pretty clear: UK audiences are fed up,<2C> said Webb. He said fans were not against all resale but that <20>the majority would like the option to resell a ticket for the price they paid for it, and they<65>re in favour of measures to curb mass-scale online ticket touting<6E>. The <20>1bn-a-year secondary ticketing industry, where websites offer a platform to resell music, theatre and sports tickets, is already being investigated by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) amid concern about the impact on fans and artists. The government has brought forward legislation to ban the use of automated software known as <20>bots<74> to harvest tickets but has shied away from broader restrictions. Evidence of fans<6E> growing frustration came as analysis of more than 20 gigs showed that resale was dominated by touts, rather than genuine fans who suddenly found they could not go to an event. For a Jack Savoretti gig at Indigo at the O2 in London, 94% of tickets on the Ticketmaster-owned GetMeIn site were listed by professional ticket traders, as were 80% sold on eBay-owned StubHub. How the ticket touts get away with bleeding fans dry Read more Many of the tickets are listed at significant mark-ups, despite the fact that the gig is not sold out and face-value tickets were still available as of Thursday. Both sites hosted listings by well-known professional traders, including Scotland-based Andrew Newman, identified by the Guardian last year as one of Britain<69>s most successful touts. A gig by rock act Queens of the Stone Age at Wembley attracted similar attention, with 81% of StubHub<75>s listings attributed to professional ticket traders and 64% of GetMeIn<49>s. A StubHub spokesperson said it had less than 1% of capacity at these venues, adding that some of its tickets were sold for less than the original price and that 40% of tickets sold via the site in the UK were at face value or below. <20>The real problem is the lack of transparency in the primary market with the distinct lack of tickets made available to the general public,<2C> said StubHub. <20>We would like to see government bring forward rules that would mean that primary sellers have to list how many tickets they are actually listing for primary sale.<2E> While StubHub and GetMeIn publish information about who is selling tickets, Switzerland-based Viagogo does not. The website has been criticised for selling tickets that resulted in fans being denied entry , pr
'132c9bab275432e1eed2291952eae9a3aaac9b75'|'Apple''s Cook, Facebook''s Zuckerberg meet China''s Xi in Beijing'|'October 30, 2017 / 1:54 PM / Updated 8 hours ago Apple''s Cook, Facebook''s Zuckerberg meet China''s Xi in Beijing Reuters Staff 2 Min Read SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Apple Inc chief executive Tim Cook and Facebook Inc<6E>s Mark Zuckerberg met Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday at an annual gathering of advisers to Beijing<6E>s Tsinghua University business school. FILE PHOTO: Apple CEO Tim Cook attends the China Development Forum in Beijing, China March 18, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo Xi was speaking to business leaders and officials at the meeting, state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) reported. Cook and Zuckerberg are on the advisory board of the Tsinghua School of Economics and Management. The meeting comes at a particularly key time for Apple as it prepares to launch its much-anticipated iPhone X on Friday, amid hopes the anniversary smartphone can revive the firm<72>s sales in the world<6C>s number two economy. Tsinghua<75>s business school, founded in 1984, has seen scores of top Chinese and foreign industry leaders sit on its board, including Chinese central banker Zhou Xiaochuan and Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein. Facebook<6F>s Zuckerberg has also been very active in China, eager to get his popular social network unblocked in the world<6C>s most populous nation, where it has been banned since 2009 and held behind the country<72>s so-called Great Firewall. An Apple spokeswoman said the firm couldn<64>t <20>comment on Tim<69>s schedule and or meetings<67>. Facebook confirmed Zuckerberg was in Beijng, but declined to comment on details of his visit. In a post on his Facebook page on Saturday, Zuckerberg wrote he was in Beijing for the annual meeting. <20>Every year this trip is a great way to keep up with the pace of innovation and entrepreneurship in China,<2C> he said. Reporting by Adam Jourdan; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-tech/apples-cook-facebooks-zuckerberg-meet-chinas-xi-in-beijing-idUSKBN1CZ1NP'|'2017-10-30T15:48:00.000+02:00'
'6344ec03c9cb2418b44fe86ccc66f6f0b8a35f43'|'TREASURIES-Yields fall before busy week; Fed chair nomination awaited'|'* Data, Fed meeting, Fed chair announcement in focus * Treasury refunding watched for signs of new maturity By Karen Brettell NEW YORK, Oct 30 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury prices gained on Monday as investors readied for a busy week that includes a heavy slate of data, the Treasury Department<6E>s refunding plans, a Federal Reserve meeting and the expected announcement of a new Fed chair. Yields fell after data showed that U.S. consumer spending recorded its biggest increase in more than eight years in September, probably as households in Texas and Florida replaced flood-damaged motor vehicles, but underlying inflation remained muted. Many investors are seen as reluctant to trade before this week<65>s numerous catalysts, however. <20>At the moment, people are cautious; there<72>s not a real great reason to be taking a lot of big positions today,<2C> said Thomas Simons, a money market economist at Jefferies in New York. <20>It is a very busy week, (with) a lot of potentially market-moving events already on the calendar.<2E> Benchmark 10-year notes were last up 12/32 in price to yield 2.39 percent, down from 2.43 percent on Friday. Other economic releases due this week include manufacturing data on Wednesday and Friday<61>s jobs report for October. Investors are also waiting to find out who U.S. President Donald Trump will nominate as head of the Federal Reserve. Trump is leaning toward Fed Governor Jerome Powell, two sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. Politico reported on Monday that the Fed chair announcement is likely to come on Thursday. The U.S. central bank is expected to leave interest rates unchanged when it concludes its two-day policy meeting on Wednesday, but investors will be watching for any new indications that a rate hike is likely in December. The Treasury Department is also due to announce its funding needs for the next two quarters on Wednesday. Traders will be watching for any new indications that the government may introduce a new long or ultra-long debt maturity as it faces higher funding needs over the coming years. (Editing by Lisa Von Ahn) ) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-bonds/treasuries-yields-fall-before-busy-week-fed-chair-nomination-awaited-idINL2N1N50N7'|'2017-10-30T10:36:00.000+02:00'
'6a166d22d174994b90f941fe9260104c78214cfb'|'LPC-Investors sounded on jumbo Paysafe buyout loan before sell down'|'LONDON, Oct 30 (Reuters) - A select group of investors have been sounded out on a jumbo US$2.59bn-equivalent loan backing the buyout of UK payment processing company Paysafe, banking sources said.Paysafe, formerly Optimal Payments, which offers pre-paid cashcards and online wallets, announced in August that it had backed a <20>3bn takeover offer from a consortium of funds managed by Blackstone and CVC.Credit Suisse, Jefferies and Morgan Stanley are leading the multi-currency leveraged loan financing, which was shown in a pre-marketing process to friend and family investors in mid-October ahead of a general syndication process, the sources said.General syndication is expected to launch in November, the sources added.The financing has been eagerly anticipated by investors, desperate to put large amounts of cash to work in new paper, after significant fund-raising from new and warehousing CLOs and managed accounts.The financing includes US$2.09bn-equivalent of first-lien loans comprising a US$505m seven-year term loan B1; a US$505m-equivalent seven-year euro-denominated term loan B2; a <20>342.5m seven-year term loan B3; a <20>342.5m seven-year term loan B4; and a US$175m six-year multicurrency revolving credit facility.The TLBs pay an initial margin of 300bp over Libor/Euribor. Between 4.5-5.0 times they pay 325bp and over 5.0 times, 350bp.The TLB1 and TLB3 have 1% Libor floors, while the TLB2, TLB4 and RCF have 0% Euribor/Libor floors. The TLBs have a 50bp OID.There are also US$500m-equivalent of eight-year second-lien facilities, comprising a US$250m facility and a US$250m-equivalent euro-denominated facility.The second-lien facilities pay 750bp over Libor/Euribor and have a 0% Libor/Euribor floors, with a 275bp OID.Blackstone and CVC initially approached Paysafe in early May and made four separate bids before the fifth offer was agreed.Editing by Christopher Mangham '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/paysafe-leveraged-loans/lpc-investors-sounded-on-jumbo-paysafe-buyout-loan-before-sell-down-idINL8N1N54MM'|'2017-10-30T10:46:00.000+02:00'
'13df471edf39d607548a7c917ef904fcf2be961f'|'New Akzo Nobel boss pursues $30 billion deal with Axalta'|'October 30, 2017 / 11:48 AM / Updated 5 hours ago New Akzo Nobel boss pursues $30 billion deal with Axalta Toby Sterling , Ludwig Burger 5 Min Read AMSTERDAM/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Dutch paints maker Akzo Nobel, seeking to recover after rejecting a takeover offer and issuing two profit warnings, is discussing a merger with smaller U.S. rival Axalta Coating Systems Ltd to create a $30 billion company. Akzo, the maker of Dulux paint, said on Monday it was in <20>constructive talks<6B> about a <20>merger of equals<6C> in what would be the first major deal by Chief Executive Thierry Vanlancker, who took over in July after Akzo spurned a 26 billion euro ($30.2 billion) offer from U.S. rival PPG Industries. Reuters reported on Friday that Akzo had approached Axalta about a possible merger, sending Axalta<74>s shares 17 percent higher. Warren Buffett<74>s Berkshire Hathaway is the largest Axalta investor with a stake of just under 10 percent. <20>This seems a classic attack-is-the-best-defense strategy,<2C> said a fund manager at one of Akzo<7A>s top-10 investors who asked not to be named. <20>Akzo overpromised after defending their own company and started to fail to deliver in Q3, so (they) need to do something transformational,<2C> he added. At 19.5 billion euros ($22.7 billion), Akzo<7A>s market value is close to three times that of Axalta at $8.1 billion at Friday<61>s closing price of $33.15. Even after the planned sale of its chemicals divisions, valued at 8-10 billion euros, the Dutch group would tower over its prospective partner, suggesting a lead role that typically results in a premium being offered to the junior partner. Akzo said plans to divest the chemicals unit remained on track and a <20>vast majority<74> of net proceeds from the deal would be returned to shareholders. Axalta<74>s coatings for new vehicles could fill a gap in Akzo<7A>s portfolio, which caters to various other industries including manufacturing, marine and construction, analysts have said. STIRRING THE POT The relatively fragmented global paints and coatings industry has seen a frenzy of deal activity, as buyers seek scale to squeeze their raw materials bill to further bolster already attractive margins. PPG<50>s aborted move for Akzo followed BASF deals last year, selling its industrial coatings business to Akzo and buying Albemarle<6C>s surface-treatment unit Chemetall for $3.2 billion to focus on automotive coatings. Before that, Sherwin-Williams snatched up rival U.S. paint company Valspar in an all-cash deal valued at about $9.3 billion. FILE PHOTO: General view of the outside of AkzoNobel''s new paint factory in Ashington, Britain September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble The mooted combination would make Akzo the second-largest coatings player with a 12 percent market share, ahead of PPG but trailing an enlarged Sherwin Williams, analysts at brokerage Raymond James said. Vanlancker has been forced to cut targets made in the heat of the takeover battle twice in the space of six weeks, blaming disruption caused by hurricane Harvey, rising raw materials costs and <20>headwinds<64> at its marine coatings business. Akzo shares were 0.5 percent higher at 77.89 euros at 1120 GMT, well below a figure of around 96 euros proposed by PPG. PRESSURE TO DELIVER Analyst Joost van Beek of Theodoor Gilissen said that in negotiations over financial terms, Axalta would seek to take advantage of Akzo being under pressure to bulk up. Analysts at Bernstein, in turn, stressed the strategic rationale, saying in a note the Akzo-Axalta merger <20>would improve scale and density in segments and countries where needed while taking out costs, most likely in the fragmented general industrial segment and in Europe<70>. They forecast savings of around 250 million euros from combining operations. Akzo would not comment on how the deal could be structured, though describing it as a merger suggests it would pay mostly with shares. Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday that talks were at an early stage and there was no guaran
'183069d9d099bbadf6042727b7f9fc7a464856c1'|'Oil major Total''s Q3 net profit jumps on strong output and cost savings'|'PARIS (Reuters) - French oil and gas major Total reported a 29 percent jump in third-quarter net profit as project ramp-ups and new investments lifted production, joining a list of energy companies benefiting from higher crude prices.The logo of Total oil company is pictured in Abuja, Nigeria October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde/Files Total<61>s oil production rose 6 percent while adjusted net operating income from its upstream exploration and production branch soared 84 percent from a year ago. High demand for petroleum products led to a sharp increase in refining margin.<2E>The group took full advantage of the favourable environment thanks to the performance of its integrated model and its strategy to reduce its breakeven point,<2C> Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanne said in a statement.Total, which has emerged from the prolonged oil downturn with a stronger balance sheet compared with peers, said its return on equity was close to 10 percent.Jefferies analysts, who have a <20>hold<6C> rating on Total, said the results were solid. The stock rose 1 percent in early trade, hitting its highest in nearly five months.Also on Friday Eni said it swung to a profit in the quarter, while Statoil on Thursday posted a sharp rise in operating profit.Total<61>s net adjusted profit for the quarter hit $2.7 billion, in line with the average of forecasts from analysts polled by Reuters.Production increases in projects such as Kashagan in Kazakhstan, Moho Nord in Republic of Congo and Angola LNG, as well as new concessions such as Al-Shaheen in Qatar, contributed to the 2.58 million barrels of oil equivalent output per day.GROWTH TARGET Total maintained its annual production growth target of around 5 percent in 2017, expected to remain steady at that level until 2022.In the downstream segment, Total said its European refining margin indicator rose sharply to $48.2 per tonne compared with $41.4 a year before, due to strong demand for products after Hurricane Harvey led to numerous shutdowns of refining capacity.<2E>The downstream benefited from favourable refining margins and increased its results by 18 percent compared to the second quarter, despite the impact of Hurricane Harvey on American operations,<2C> Pouyanne said.Total said cost reductions for 2017 will be more than $3.6 billion, above a $3.5 billion target, as it continued to drive down costs by measures such as reducing the number of expensive contractors in places like Nigeria and Angola.The company said its cost of production dropped below $5 per barrel during the past three months, ahead of the target of $5.5 per barrel for the year.It has said it would take advantage of the low cost environment to launch high-return projects.It reiterated a target of $5 billion in savings by 2020 while pursuing efforts to reduce its breakeven point.Total<61>s pre-dividend organic breakeven point, excluding acquisitions and divestments, is expected below $30 per barrel this year and should continue to fall to $20 in 2019.Reporting by Bate Felix; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and David Holmes '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/companyOutlooksNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/total-results/oil-major-totals-q3-net-profit-jumps-on-strong-output-and-cost-savings-idINKBN1CW0MZ'|'2017-10-27T04:44:00.000+03:00'
'374841f338cef8d75445f5f9e53d0b3b3e97cdc7'|'Strong tech earnings, GDP data set to lift Wall Street'|'October 27, 2017 / 1:04 PM / in 14 minutes Tech, Amazon earnings power Wall Street higher Chuck Mikolajczak 4 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street climbed on Friday, including a 2 percent jump in the Nasdaq, powered by strong earnings from tech heavyweights and Amazon, along with an upbeat statement from Apple on demand for its iPhone X. The S&P technology index led the way higher, up 3.14 percent. The index was on track for its best day since March 1, 2016 and is up nearly 35 percent on the year versus the 15.2 percent gain in the S&P 500. Google-parent Alphabet ( GOOGL.O ) gained 5.30 percent as its revenue got a boost from advertising sales. Microsoft ( MSFT.O ) jumped 7.16 percent after the world<6C>s largest software company reported further gains from its cloud computing services. Further lifting the sector were shares of Apple ( AAPL.O ), which rose 3.83 percent after the company allayed concerns of muted demand for its 10th anniversary phone. Intel ( INTC.O ) soared 8.10 percent after its quarterly results topped estimates and the chipmaker raised its full-year forecasts. Amazon ( AMZN.O ), up 13.15 percent, was responsible for the biggest boost to the S&P 500 after reporting a quarterly sales surge. Its gains helped lift the consumer discretionary sector 1.53 percent to put the index on pace for its best daily performance since Dec. 7. <20>People are concerned about overvaluation, people are concerned about what is the catalyst for those guys to attract too much attention from regulators,<2C> said Thomas Martin, senior portfolio manager at Globalt Investments in Atlanta. <20>They are the ones that everyone wants to own, has to own because they are the ones reporting the best earnings. They definitely came through, that is very positive.<2E> Traders react while working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., September 15, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/Files Adding to the positive sentiment was the third-quarter GDP data that showed the U.S. economy unexpectedly maintained a brisk pace of growth, at a 3-percent annual rate, despite a hurricane-led drop in consumer spending and construction activities. A report about President Donald Trump favouring Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell as the head of the U.S. central bank provided support for stocks. In Powell<6C>s potential appointment, investors see a continuation of the current monetary policy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 36 points, or 0.15 percent, to 23,436.86, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 21.22 points, or 0.83 percent, to 2,581.62 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 147.33 points, or 2.25 percent, to 6,704.10. Earnings growth for the third quarter is now 6.7 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data. Of the 273 companies that have posted earnings, 74 percent have topped expectations, compared with the 72 percent beat rate over the past four quarters. Not all earnings were positive, however. Chevron<6F>s ( CVX.N ) 4.53 percent fall weighed on the S&P and the Dow after the oil company<6E>s profit missed estimates. Merck ( MRK.N ) dropped 6.58 percent after the company reported a revenue drop due to a cyber attack and loss of market share for many of its older drugs. Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.53-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.50-to-1 ratio favoured advancers. Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Nick Zieminski '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-stocks/strong-tech-earnings-gdp-data-set-to-lift-wall-street-idINKBN1CW1SX'|'2017-10-27T16:04:00.000+03:00'
'59f62d6c29ef234153735df2922eefe42c8b1ef8'|'Iran''s hacking ability improving: Israeli general - Reuters'|'TEL AVIV (Reuters) - The Israeli military faces thousands of cyber attacks a day and many are orchestrated by Iran whose hacking capabilities are improving, the Israeli general in charge of network security said.Major General Nadav Padan gestures as he speaks at the Reuters Cyber Security Summit in Tel Aviv, Israel, October 31, 2017. REUTERS/Nir Elias Cyber Risk SummitTop executives and government officials from around the world are convening in Toronto, Washington, Moscow and Tel Aviv from October 23 to November 2 for the Reuters Cyber Security Summit. Click here to follow the action Major General Nadav Padan, who heads the military<72>s command, control, computer, communications and intelligence (C4I) plus cyber division, told a Reuters Summit that Iran has mounted attacks on Israel with the help of proxies like Lebanese Shi<68>ite group Hezbollah.<2E>They are not the state of the art, they are not the strongest superpower in the cyber dimension, but they are getting better and better,<2C> Padan said.Israel and Iran, enemies in the open, have taken to the cyber world to engage in secretive battles.Israel for its part is widely believed to have collaborated with U.S. intelligence in creating the Stuxnet malware that disrupted Iranian networks in 2010.Padan said his responsibilities did not include offensive cyber tactics.Iran has been carrying out thousands of daily cyber attacks on Israel, Padan said.Major General Nadav Padan gestures as he speaks at the Reuters Cyber Security Summit in Tel Aviv, Israel, October 31, 2017. REUTERS/Nir Elias <20>As far as we know, nobody has been able to penetrate our operational systems,<2C> he said at the Summit, held at the Reuters office in Tel Aviv.Iran rarely responds to accusations from Israel and in the past has not commented on recent Western allegations about its cyber-hacking.A report published last month by security firm FireEye said that hackers likely linked to Iran<61>s government are behind attacks on Saudi and other Western aerospace and petrochemical firms, signaling a rise in Iranian cyber-spying prowess.And earlier this month, President Donald Trump accused Iran of cyberattacks against U.S. <20>critical infrastructure, financial system, and military<72>, according to an NPR-provided transcript of a his speech.Israel<65>s goal, Padan said, was to maintain <20>superiority<74> in the field, which provides flexibility.<2E>Sometimes when I see an Iranian tool, for example, I can just observe it, control it and try to figure out its meaning. And other times I act very aggressively to block it,<2C> he said.For more Reuters cyber news, go to www.reuters.com/cyberriskFollow Reuters Summits on Twitter @Reuters_SummitsAdditional reporting by Steven Scheer, Ori Lewis and Dan Williams and Eric Auchard in Frankfurt; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/summits'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-summit-padan/irans-hacking-ability-improving-israeli-general-idUSKBN1D02O0'|'2017-11-01T02:01:00.000+02:00'
'981648302c41020d299975e0e0aa4374f7c4c908'|'The secret Brexit files contain our future <20> they must be released - Abi Wilkinson'|'Brexit , we<77>re regularly reminded, is the will of the people. We had a referendum and the result was clear. Question the wisdom of the decision and you show yourself to be anti-democratic and out of touch, a member of a cosseted, globalist elite that fails to understand the concerns of ordinary folk.Never mind that 48% of voters represents rather a large <20>elite<74> by any normal measure. Nor that the people most enthusiastically pushing this line <20> among them Nigel Farage, Rupert Murdoch and several senior politicians <20> are themselves both privileged and powerful. The attack lands, in part, because it contains a kernel of truth. Prominent remainers sometimes have spoken about leave voters in sneering, snobbish terms. There really is an unwillingness among some affluent, metropolitan Europhiles to acknowledge that material factors contributed to the result. It doesn<73>t seem to occur to them that showing contempt for mass democracy could have lasting social and political repercussions <20> potentially fuelling more extreme rightwing populism.Government refuses to release details of studies into economic impact of Brexit Read moreAs time goes on, though, it<69>s becoming harder for the leave camp to maintain its <20>voice of the people<6C> posture. The current struggle over 58 secret studies into the economic impact of leaving the EU <20> which the government is refusing to release to the public despite repeated requests <20> seems to demonstrate the shallowness of its pro-democracy stance. True democracy requires the electorate to have access to relevant information. If you<6F>re handed a piece of paper and told to tick a box without knowledge of what each option represented, can you be said to have cast a meaningful vote?The EU referendum wasn<73>t quite this ludicrous. Both campaigns have been accused of lying or exaggerating on certain points, but they did offer voters some sort of argument. Information was also available from numerous independent sources with varying focuses and biases. Still, the sheer complexity of the issue meant it was always going to be something of a shot in the dark. No country has ever actually tried to leave the EU before. Even the experts were uncertain about the likely consequences of such a move.That<61>s why the government commissioned those 58 studies: to try to understand the journey we<77>re embarking on. To plan ahead and mitigate damage as much as possible, and to guide negotiations about the precise nature of the exit deal. It correctly recognises that a referendum based on limited information was simply the start of a long and complicated process. The leave vote was a signal to begin that process, but didn<64>t provide much information about what should happen after that.Q&A What is a hard Brexit? Show HideA hard Brexit would take Britain out of the EU<45>s single market and customs union and ends its obligations to respect the four freedoms, make big EU budget payments and accept the jurisdiction of the ECJ: what Brexiters mean by <20>taking back control<6F> of Britain<69>s borders, laws and money. It would mean a return of trade tariffs, depending on what (if any) FTA was agreed. See our full Brexit phrasebook.Was this helpful? Thank you for your feedback.It<49>s a funny notion of democracy, then, that says that public involvement in Brexit should already be over and done with. That one binary vote is the only say we should be allowed. Most of us are familiar with the terms <20>hard Brexit<69> and <20>soft Brexit<69>. Those following more closely will also have working knowledge of what <20>EEA-minus<75>, <20>EEA-plus<75> and <20>WTO rules<65> involve. Even these sorts of categories are something of a simplification. The real options are myriad. Fifty-two per cent of people might have voted to leave the EU, but none of us were offered the chance to specify our preferred version of the deal.If democracy is genuinely to be respected, there needs to be a public debate. Every one of us has a stake in the future of this country. Every one
'09f77985ac2ca9bf187c14f37f8f6b6a2629c62e'|'Just Eat raises 2017 revenue guidance after strong quarter'|' 27 AM / in 16 minutes Just Eat raises 2017 revenue guidance after strong quarter Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - British takeaway ordering website Just Eat ( JE.L ) on Tuesday raised its full-year revenue guidance for the second time in four months after reporting a 47 percent increase in its latest quarter on the back of strong order growth. Founded in 2001, Just Eat has grown rapidly, listing its shares in London in 2014. It said revenue for the three months to Sept. 30 was 138.6 million pounds, up from 94.5 million pounds in the same period last year. Total orders rose 29 percent to 43.1 million, with the UK up 22 percent and international up 43 percent. <20>It is great to see the UK business in good health and positive momentum across our international markets,<2C> said Chief Executive Peter Plumb, the former boss of Moneysupermarket.com, who took the top job last month. Just Eat forecast revenue for the full 2017 year of 515-530 million pounds, up from previous guidance of 500-515 million pounds. The group retained its forecast for core earnings -- underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation -- of 157-163 million pounds. It made 115.3 million pounds in 2016. Shares in Just Eat, up 38 percent over the last year, closed Monday at 740 pence, valuing the business at 5 billion pounds. Reporting by James Davey; editing by Kate Holton and Paul Sandle'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-just-eat-outlook/just-eat-raises-2017-revenue-guidance-after-strong-quarter-idUKKBN1D00PF'|'2017-10-31T09:26:00.000+02:00'
'968ae1ed5ed2a57f62bc746c16e6f08ebe71c8f2'|'RBS told to get act together on compensating small businesses'|'October 31, 2017 / 11:00 AM / Updated 16 minutes ago RBS told to get act together on compensating small businesses Huw Jones , Emma Rumney 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The head of Britain<69>s financial watchdog told Royal Bank of Scotland ( RBS.L ) to speed up its handling of compensation claims related to its treatment of struggling businesses during the financial crisis. FILE PHOTO: A woman shelters under an umbrella as she walks past a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland in the City of London, Britain, September 17, 2013. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth/File Photo RBS<42>s Global Restructuring Group (GRG) has been accused by customers of driving them to bankruptcy in order to pick up their assets on the cheap. State-owned RBS has set aside 400 million pounds to cover the bill for claims against it. Andrew Bailey, chief executive of Britain<69>s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that he had asked RBS CEO Ross McEwan <20>to get his act together<65> on claims processing. In a letter to the Treasury Select Committee, McEwan said <20>we deeply regret the mistakes we have made in the past<73> regarding some GRG customers. <20>We fully accept that that we did not, in all cases, fully comply with our own policies or always meet the standards of service that we set ourselves,<2C> the letter said. Committee chair Nicky Morgan emphasised the toll on many GRG customers who had lost their business, their homes and suffered mental health issues and family breakdown. <20>I do believe we are now in the process of getting money back to the victims,<2C> FCA Chairman John Griffith-Jones told the lawmakers. <20>We have to establish facts before we get into the blame process,<2C> Griffith-Jones said. The FCA last week published a detailed summary of consultant Promontory<72>s report into GRG but it has refused to publish the report in full. The summary outlined numerous failings but RBS said last week the most serious allegations against it had not been upheld. <20>What matters at this stage is that those unfairly treated by GRG receive the redress they<65>re due,<2C> said Mike Cherry, national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses. INVESTIGATION GOES ON RBS had to be bailed out by the British taxpayer during the financial crisis and remains 70 percent owned by the state. Bailey said he believed RBS should have reacted differently to the conclusions of the report. <20>The report is strongly critical of RBS, and I think it is frankly unfortunate that RBS has not in a sense accepted that more readily,<2C> he told the committee. Bailey was repeatedly asked by Morgan about why the watchdog has taken so long to report back on GRG. Bailey said this was partly due to there being <20>no meeting of minds<64> between RBS and Promontory, the external consultant hired by the watchdog to write the report. This meant that the FCA had to spend time checking the report, Bailey said. The TSC hired lawyers to check if the FCA<43>s summary of the was accurate, and in a statement on Tuesday the lawyers said it was <20>fair and balanced<65>, with no material omissions. The FCA<43>s investigation into GRG and its staff was continuing, Bailey said, without saying when it would be concluded. Reporting by Emma Rumney and Huw Jones; editing by Jason Neely and Keith Weir'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-rbs-report/rbs-should-accept-criticisms-in-report-more-readily-fca-chief-idUKKBN1D01AW'|'2017-10-31T17:19:00.000+02:00'
'4e78cf0c968cb3440943c3726de4e31f0ddcd444'|'Agri trader ADM''s profit slumps 44 percent on weaker margins'|'(Reuters) - Archer Daniels Midland Co<43>s quarterly earnings tumbled 44 percent on severance and restructuring costs and weaker trading profits due to a global grain glut, and the agricultural trader offered a gloomy 2018 forecast, sending its shares dropping as much as 6.7 percent on Tuesday.The logo of global grain company Archer Daniels Midland is pictured in Decatur, Illinois March 16, 2015.REUTERS/Karl Plume The company widely missed profit and revenue estimates.Four years of bumper grain and oilseeds harvests have squeezed profits for ADM and main rivals Bunge Ltd, Cargill Inc [CARG.UL] and Louis Dreyfus Co [LOUDR.UL]. Traders expect more of the same next year, prompting cost cuts and talk of consolidation.To become more competitive, ADM reconfigured an Illinois ethanol facility and cut its global workforce, bringing total charges to earnings of more than $100 million in the third quarter.ADM will reduce capital spending next year by about 20 percent to $800 million and reallocate funds to its high-value business from oilseed crushing, Chief Executive Officer Juan Luciano told analysts on a conference call.<2E>We are not counting on a significant change in conditions for 2018,<2C> Luciano said.ADM shares were down 5 percent at $40.67 and fell as low as $39.95.Profit in ADM<44>s agricultural services unit, its biggest, fell more than half to $87 million in the third quarter as large global supplies slowed U.S. exports and low crop prices discouraged farmers from selling crops.ADM handled 20 percent less grain than executives expected and average margins in the United States were 50 percent below expectations, Chief Financial Officer Ray Young told analysts.<2E>Medium-term risks remain weighted to the downside, especially in ag services, which continues to face structural headwinds,<2C> JP Morgan analyst Ann Duignan said.ADM and its rivals have been investing in higher-margin businesses such as food ingredients to make up for the slump in their core grain trading and processing operations.In August, ADM said it would reconfigure its Peoria, Illinois, ethanol dry mill to produce higher-margin industrial and beverage alcohol and fuel for the export market. The facility is one of several plants ADM offered up for sale last year, but still has not found a buyer.In 2014, the company bought Wild Flavors, a natural ingredients company, for $3 billion, its biggest deal ever.The payoff from the diversification has been slow to emerge.Bunge, which lags its peers in terms of returns to shareholders, fended off a bid from Glencore earlier this year and promised extensive cost-cutting in a sweeping restructuring announced in July.The pain extends across the U.S. agricultural economy. Farm incomes have fallen for three straight years with little recovery forecast this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.Net profit attributable to ADM slid to $192 million, or 34 cents a share, in the quarter from $341 million, or 58 cents a share, a year earlier.Excluding items, ADM earned 45 cents per share, missing the average analyst estimate of 55 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Revenue for the Chicago-based company fell 6.3 percent to $14.83 billion, missing expectations for $16 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Additional reporting by Ahmed Farhatha in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D''Silva and Jeffrey Benkoe '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-adm-results/agri-trader-adms-profit-slumps-44-percent-on-weaker-margins-idUSKBN1D01EV'|'2017-10-31T13:25:00.000+02:00'
'86c4c3a84b02b53fea7c7d5b36e8767e782f00b4'|'Rent-A-Center to explore strategic options; chairman to resign'|'October 30, 2017 / 10:03 PM / Updated 7 minutes ago Rent-A-Center to explore strategic options; chairman to resign Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 30 (Reuters) - Rent-to-own furniture retailer Rent-A-Center Inc said on Monday its board would explore strategic and financial options, three months after the hedge fund Marcato Capital Management urged the company to sell itself. The company also said its Chairman Steven Pepper would resign, effective immediately, due to his disagreement with the board<72>s decision. Marcato Capital had earlier threatened to remove board members up for re-election at next year<61>s annual meeting, if it failed to sell itself. Rent-A-Center said it would not disclose developments related to the process till the board has approved a course of action or once the process has concluded. Shares of the company, which posted a bigger-than-expected loss on Monday, were down about 2 percent in extended trading. (Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/rent-a-center-strategic-alternatives/rent-a-center-to-explore-strategic-options-chairman-to-resign-idUSL4N1N56LI'|'2017-10-31T00:02:00.000+02:00'
'319a924dcd3f116919f8737fa678bc52bbb9e96c'|'Weir Group expects FY operating profit to be lower than estimates'|'October 31, 2017 / 8:09 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago Weir Group expects FY operating profit to be lower than estimates Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Weir Group Plc ( WEIR.L ), a maker of pipes and valves for mining and energy industries, said full-year operating profit was expected to be slightly lower than previously anticipated due to higher costs and investments in its mining business. The company expects full-year operating margins in the mining business, its biggest, to be only slightly ahead of the first half due to additional investment, costs associated with reconfiguring operational capacity and some project phasing delays. Weir said orders in the unit were up 12 percent in the third quarter and it expected higher full-year revenue. Total orders surged 21 percent in the third quarter as more oil and gas drilling in North America helped improve equipment pricing. The company said orders in the oil and gas business rose 59 percent and it expected a <20>material<61> increase in full-year constant currency divisional revenues and low double-digit operating margins. The company also said it expected to report higher full-year revenue and profit on a constant currency basis. Reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-weir-group-results/weir-group-expects-fy-operating-profit-to-be-lower-than-estimates-idUKKBN1D00U4'|'2017-10-31T10:08:00.000+02:00'
'4afee4cd1e3566eee686edc2eb45eff11fb9dd35'|'PRESS DIGEST- Financial Times - Oct 31'|'Oct 31 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Financial Times. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.HeadlinesHammond vows not to break fiscal rules to fund new spending on.ft.com/2z4UFABUK''s Ineos buys motorcycle fashion group Belstaff on.ft.com/2z5d8NwKey details of Brexit impact reports on 58 industries to stay secret on.ft.com/2yZkdgwOverviewUK finance minister Philip Hammond will not break his fiscal rules to increase public spending in the autumn budget and fears investors, already worried by Brexit, will be spooked if he abandons the fiscal framework adopted only a year ago, the chancellor<6F>s allies said.British petrochemicals company Ineos on Monday agreed to buy fashion brand Belstaff, best known for its waxed cotton motorcycle jackets, in the latest off-beat project by Ineos<6F>s billionaire founder Jim Ratcliffe.Key details about reports outlining the economic impact of Britain leaving the EU on 58 industries will not be released by the Brexit ministry which said it needs to carry out policymaking in a <20>safe space<63>. (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Sandra Maler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-press-ft/press-digest-financial-times-oct-31-idINL4N1N61C7'|'2017-10-30T22:31:00.000+02:00'
'a1ea0420c81683a41ab6c2c3589ff236221910d4'|'Owens Corning to buy European mineral wool maker Paroc Group'|'October 30, 2017 / 1:35 AM / Updated an hour ago Owens Corning to buy European mineral wool maker Paroc Group Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Insulation and roofing company Owens Corning said on Sunday it would buy European mineral wool maker Paroc Group from private equity firm CVC Capital Partners for about 900 million euros ($1.04 billion). Owens expects to finance the deal through a combination of long-term debt and pre-payable bank financing. Owens said the deal would help grow its presence in the European insulation market. Excluding transaction and integration costs, the deal is expected to immediately add to its 2018 earnings per share, Owens said. The transaction is expected to generate an operational synergy run rate of 15 million euros by 2019 end, Owens added. Paroc Group<75>s 2017 sales are expected to be about 410 million euros. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) margins would be slightly above 20 percent, Owens said. Paroc operates facilities in Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Sweden, and has over 1,800 employees across 13 countries. Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler and Gopakumar Warrier '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-paroc-group-m-a-owens-corning/owens-corning-to-buy-european-mineral-wool-maker-paroc-group-idINKBN1CZ02U'|'2017-10-29T22:35:00.000+02:00'
'07921e2b91589dd9c2ec10e7975091b3e323ae01'|'Deutsche Boerse chairman says board has CEO shortlist - newspaper'|'October 29, 2017 / 9:30 AM / in 15 hours Deutsche Boerse chairman says board has CEO shortlist - newspaper Reuters Staff 2 Min Read FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Boerse<73>s ( DB1Gn.DE ) board has a shortlist of potential candidates for chief executive and hopes to make a final decision before the end of the year, the board<72>s chairman said in an interview with a German newspaper published on Sunday. FILE PHOTO: A guard secures the entrance of Germany''s stock exchange Deutsche Boerse Group in Frankfurt, Germany January 14, 2005. REUTERS/Kao Pfaffenbach/File Photo <20>Our goal is to have someone by Jan. 1. We definitely want to agree on a successor this year,<2C> Joachim Faber, chairman of the German exchange operator<6F>s supervisory board, said in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. <20>We have a shortlist with a handful of potentially qualified candidates that we are now going through quickly,<2C> he said. The paper said that Faber<65>s ideal candidate would have the following: German as a native language, experience as an entrepreneur, not necessarily exchange experience, good contacts with politicians, and a high degree of knowledge about regulation. Faber himself ruled out stepping down. The search for a new chief comes after the current CEO, Carsten Kengeter, last week tendered his resignation amid an ongoing insider trading investigation. He has denied any wrongdoing. Reporting by Tom Sims; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-deutsche-boerse-ceo/deutsche-boerse-chairman-says-board-has-ceo-shortlist-newspaper-idUKKBN1CY08C'|'2017-10-29T11:29:00.000+02:00'
'34afe09d7fa81225565b85005daeb56ce0a40e94'|'Asia helps HSBC post jump in third quarter pretax profit'|'Place your bets for the Brexit rate hike Special Report Me and my robotic suit - how I stood up and walked after 21 years Thousands march for unified Spain Reuters TV United States October 30, 2017 / 4:19 AM / in 5 minutes Asia pivot helps HSBC post jump in third quarter pretax profit Reuters Staff 3 Min Read HONG KONG (Reuters) - HSBC Holdings PLC posted a five-fold rise in its pretax profit for the third quarter, as the bank expanded its market share in its key businesses in Asia, and helped by a lower comparative base in the year-ago quarter. FILE PHOTO: HSBC headquarters is seen at the financial Central district in Hong Kong, China September 6, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo HSBC earlier this month chose veteran John Flint as its next chief executive, with its newly arrived chairman promoting an insider to drive revenue growth. Flint will take over as CEO in February next year. The bank<6E>s reported pretax profit was $4.6 billion in the September quarter, up from $843 million in the same period a year ago, HSBC said in a stock exchange filing. The profit was roughly in-line with analyst estimates of $4.7 billion. The year-ago profit was significantly impacted by a one-off loss of $1.7 billion from the sale of its Brazilian unit, and adverse foreign currency movements. HSBC has been able to grow its revenue again following a period of wider restructuring after the 2008 global financial crisis, that included scaling back its empire and shifting its focus eastwards. Reported pretax profit for Asia rose 10 percent during the quarter to $4 billion. <20>Our international network continued to deliver strong growth ... and our pivot to Asia is driving higher returns and lending growth, particularly in Hong Kong,<2C> HSBC Group Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver said in the statement. HSBC has been able to boost its capital buffer despite rolling out share buybacks, the latest of up to $2 billion in July, and sustaining dividends, showing it is ahead on its turnaround strategy that includes expanding in Asia. The bank makes more than half of its profits in Asia, and its regional pivot is centered around China<6E>s Pearl River Delta region with billions in investment commitments and plans to bolster its retail and wealth management business. HSBC<42>s common equity tier 1 ratio - a measure of financial strength - was 14.6 percent at the end of September, slightly lower than 14.7 percent at end-June this year, but in-line with analyst expectations. The ratio is set to increase in the medium term, as the bank repatriates about $8 billion stuck at its U.S. subsidiary, following approval last year from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee and Lawrence White; Editing by Stephen Coates'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-results/asia-helps-hsbc-post-jump-in-third-quarter-pretax-profit-idUKKBN1CZ0AA'|'2017-10-30T06:12:00.000+02:00'
'7ab72ad6804ed7419e1051aacbd724f06c816f82'|'German September retail sales rise, supporting consumption-led growth'|'October 30, 2017 / 7:11 AM / Updated 6 minutes ago German September retail sales rise, supporting consumption-led growth Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - German retail sales rose slightly less than expected on the month in September and posted a big increase on the year, data showed on Monday, adding to signs that consumption will continue to support growth this year. The volatile indicator, which is often subject to revision, showed retail sales in Europe<70>s largest economy rose by 0.5 percent on the month in real terms, the Federal Statistics Office said. That compared with the Reuters consensus forecast for a 0.7 percent rise. On the year, retail sales jumped by 4.1 percent, overshooting a Reuters consensus forecast for an increase of 3.0 percent. Traditionally thrifty Germans have helped private consumption displace exports as the main driver of growth thanks to record-high employment, increased job security, rising real wages and ultra-low borrowing costs. The retail sales data came after a GfK survey published on Thursday showed the cheerful mood among German shoppers clouding unexpectedly heading into November. But the outlook for the economy remains bright overall, with leading economic institutes last month hiking their growth forecasts for this year and next to 1.9 percent and 2 percent respectively. Reporting by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Paul Carrel'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-economy-retail/german-september-retail-sales-rise-supporting-consumption-led-growth-idUKKBN1CZ0K3'|'2017-10-30T09:11:00.000+02:00'
'f8acd343c78535da3a1d0a24bd213b640c795e44'|'UPDATE 3-Oi creditors offer more capital for restructuring -sources'|'(Adds company response, Oi no comment)By Tatiana Bautzer and Gram SlatterySAO PAULO, Oct 27 (Reuters) - The two largest groups of Oi SA bondholders have agreed to inject more cash into a proposed restructuring of the Brazilian telecom<6F>s debt, two people familiar with the matter said on Friday, in the latest twist in Latin America<63>s biggest-ever bankruptcy.The International Bondholders Committee and the Ad Hoc Group of Oi Bondholders said in a Friday statement that proposed changes, which it did not specify, could draw support from other creditors and provide enough new capital to make the restructuring plan <20>viable.<2E>A third source with knowledge of the situation said Oi was analyzing the proposal.The sources requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. Oi declined to comment.The additional funding could help the groups fend off a rival restructuring plan by influential shareholder Nelson Tanur<75> and a smaller group of bondholders known as the G6.The two main credit groups had previously committed to injecting 3 billion reais ($920 million) the restructuring in court of Oi<4F>s 65 billion reais of debt. Both groups and export credit agencies are owed a combined 22.6 billion reais by Oi.The bankruptcy<63>s resolution has been stalled by growing tensions between the board, management, shareholders, bondholders and the government.Brazilian telecom watchdog Anatel on Thursday urged Oi shareholders and board members to keep Chief Executive Marco Schroeder at the helm of the carrier. The regulator had threatened to intervene in the company, after news reports said management was being threatened with dismissal from investors linked to Tanur<75>, sources told Reuters.A working group in Brazil<69>s government has been preparing suggestions for the restructuring of the carrier, which filed for bankruptcy protection in June 2016.Creditors are scheduled to vote on the revised restructuring proposal at a Nov. 10 meeting. If they cannot reach a consensus, the company would be liquidated, wiping out much of their investments.One source said private equity fund TPG Capital Management LP and China Telecom Corp Ltd were looking at Oi<4F>s business for a possible takeover bid but have not drafted any concrete proposal.TPG declined to comment.$1 = 3.26 reais Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer and Gram Slattery in Sao Paulo; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn; Additional reporting by Leonardo Goy and Silvio Cascione in Brasilia; editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Richard Chang '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/oi-sa-restructuring/update-1-oi-creditors-negotiate-restructuring-plan-with-management-idINL2N1N20JH'|'2017-10-27T10:49:00.000+03:00'
'3ec74d7ae3fe77538772a2cee9f85a2d651122c4'|'easyJet expands in Germany with Air Berlin deal'|'October 27, 2017 / 10:54 PM / Updated 15 hours ago easyJet clinches parts of Air Berlin for German expansion Victoria Bryan 3 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - EasyJet has strengthened its position in Germany by agreeing to buy part of Air Berlin<69>s operations at Berlin Tegel airport, ending uncertainty over the fate of the failed airline<6E>s remaining assets. EasyJet Commercial passenger aircraft takes off in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau EasyJet said late on Friday it would enter into leases for up to 25 A320 aircraft, acquire take-off and landing slots, and offer jobs to staff, making the announcement shortly after Air Berlin<69>s final flight landed at Tegel. [nL8N1N21Y9]] The purchase price is 40 million euros ($46.43 million), but this does not include any transition costs and because Air Berlin planes are leased, those will have to be funded separately. Air Berlin said on Saturday that the deal meant it had successfully closed all negotiations for its carve-up. It added sale talks with easyJet had been held since the early summer. The British carrier declined to comment on the timeline. The deal will make easyJet, which currently operates only out of Berlin Schoenefeld airport, the leading carrier in the German capital, it said. <20>This will enable easyJet to operate the leading short haul network at Tegel connecting passengers to and from destinations across Germany and the rest of Europe,<2C> easyJet said in a statement. In comparison, Lufthansa, which is taking on Air Berlin operations with about 81 aircraft, expects to invest around 1.5 billion euros in total. That includes a purchase price of 210 million euros and fleet investments of around 1 billion. The deal with easyJet, subject to regulatory approval, could help to ease some of the worries with the Lufthansa deal, because it gives Lufthansa a competitor in the domestic German market. Air Berlin had been the main rival for inner-Germany routes, while others like easyJet and Ryanair had focused on routes to and from Germany. Air Berlin was founded nearly 40 years ago and carried around 30 million passengers a year. It was beloved by Germans for its flights to holiday island Mallorca and also for the chocolate hearts it gives out after each flight, but filed for administration in August after years of losses. Thomas Cook<6F>s German airline Condor, which had also been interested in some of Air Berlin, declined to comment on Saturday. The grounding of Air Berlin from Saturday means passengers in Germany could struggle to find plane tickets this winter. Lufthansa is using bigger planes meant for intercontinental routes on some short trips but says it cannot make up the gap on its own. EasyJet said it would run a reduced timetable at Tegel during the winter, but would aim for a complete summer schedule in 2018. The airline will look to recruit around 1,000 Air Berlin pilots and cabin crew, on local contracts and has also written to crew at its Hamburg base, which it is closing, to say there is a place for them in Tegel if they want. [nL9N1FH01R] Reporting by Victoria Bryan in Berlin, Alistair Smout in London and Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Nadine Schimroszik in Berlin and Tom Sims in Frankfurt; Editing by Alison Williams'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-air-berlin-m-a-easyjet/easyjet-to-buy-air-berlins-tegel-operations-for-40-million-euros-idUKKBN1CW31C'|'2017-10-28T09:40:00.000+03:00'
'8fc5553c49ee45cac64e3006077e15b0411281f4'|'Crude oil output from Mexico''s Pemex falls 18 pct in September'|'October 28, 2017 / 3:19 AM / in a day Crude oil output from Mexico''s Pemex falls 18 percent in September Reuters Staff 2 Min Read MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican national oil company Pemex reported on Friday that September crude production fell 18 percent from the same month last year, marking three consecutive months with oil output coming in below 2 million barrels per day. Tanks holding fuel of state-owned company Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) are seen at a storage facility, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez September output averaged 1.73 million bpd, down from 1.93 million bpd in August. Natural gas production also slipped in September for Pemex, officially known as Petroleos Mexicanos. The company averaged 4.302 billion cubic feet per day, down more than 23 percent from September 2016. Crude exports followed the downward trend in September, sinking nearly 19 percent to reach 1.159 million bpd. Pemex<65>s crude production has fallen steadily since its peak of 3.4 million bpd in 2004. Seeking to reverse the stubborn output slump, a sweeping oil opening finalized in 2014 ended the company<6E>s decades-long monopoly and allowed private producers to operate their own fields for the first time. Through the first nine months of this year, average crude production stands at 1.97 million bpd. Reporting by Julia Love; Editing by Nick Macfie'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-pemex/crude-oil-output-from-mexicos-pemex-falls-18-percent-in-september-idUSKBN1CX02U'|'2017-10-28T06:03:00.000+03:00'
'53dcde0064909dcc63ff388f0dcf226f2f0f84f1'|'CVS bid for Aetna: A $66 billion bet on cutting drug costs'|'October 29, 2017 / 12:09 PM / Updated 18 minutes ago CVS bid for Aetna: A $66 billion bet on cutting drug costs Caroline Humer , Carl O''Donnell 5 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - The proposed merger between U.S. pharmacy operator CVS Health Corp and No. 3 health insurer Aetna Inc represents a $66 billion bet that insurers can drive down high U.S. drug prices by cutting out the middleman. FILE PHOTO: The CVS logo is seen at one of their stores in Manhattan, New York, U.S., August 1, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo The move is the most expensive effort to date that would enable a national health insurer to take back full control of prescription medicines for their customers by negotiating prices with pharmaceutical manufacturers and setting customer out-of-pocket costs for each drug. CVS, one of the largest U.S. pharmacy benefits managers, has offered to buy No. 3 health insurer Aetna for more than $200 per share, sources said on Thursday. It could take at least several weeks for any deal to materialize. If the deal happens, it would likely pressure rival insurers, drugmakers, pharmaceutical benefits managers, and retail pharmacies to also consider mergers or switching partners to try to keep up with the potential healthcare cost savings or increase in profit margins. <20>It<49>s an alternate model at this point. It<49>s not clear that it<69>s definitely a better one,<2C> BMO Capital Markets analyst Matt Borsch said. <20>More consolidation could lead to pressure on some of the brand-name drug prices and a better counterweight to the big pharma companies.<2E> For years, insurers paid drug benefits managers like CVS and Express Scripts Holdings Co to negotiate down drug prices, with both parties taking a share of any discount by the time a medicine was paid for by consumers. But outrage over the high costs of drugs has grown as consumers have picked up a larger portion of the tab for drug costs and it is threatening profit margins all along the drug supply chain, from manufacturers to distributors, insurers and pharmacies. UnitedHealth Group Inc and Humana Inc currently have in-house pharmacy benefits businesses, and say that it has helped them keep medical costs down. Anthem Inc recently decided to go down that same path. It cut ties with Express Scripts during a $3 billion legal fight, and said it would use CVS to build its own pharmacy benefits business in the next few years. That tie-up could now be at risk if CVS reaches a deal to buy Aetna, Leerink analyst Ana Gupta said. CVS also provides management services for Aetna rival Cigna Corp. If CVS buys Aetna, that could revive Cigna<6E>s interest in buying Humana, analyst Christine Arnold of investment bank Cowen & Co said in a research note. Aetna earlier this year closed the door on a deal with rival insurer Humana Inc after antitrust regulators said that combination and a rival deal between Anthem Inc and Cigna Corp were anti-competitive. The pharmacy chain Walgreens Boots Alliance could need to match its business model closer to CVS to attempt to stay competitive, Arnold said in a note, and may look at buying Express Scripts. Jefferies analyst Brian Tanquilut said that Express Scripts could also be a target for Amazon Inc which is reported to be looking to get into the pharmacy business. SWINGING PENDULUM Over the past decade, health insurers have diverged on the value of the pharmacy benefits business. Anthem sold its pharmacy benefit manager to Express Scripts and outsourced almost all of the business in 2010. UnitedHealth took the opposite approach when it decided in 2011 to bring its pharmacy benefits management in house, then bought an even bigger standalone benefits manager, Catamaran, in 2015. Humana operates its own pharmacy benefit manager and Cigna and Aetna have hybrid approaches where they manage some parts in house and outsource others. Until recently, insurers sought to expand their profit margins by reducing their spending on hospital services, using their size to negot
'08a5bd6a361c7b345da50c221c980120da1747d2'|'Canadian review of China bid for Aecon to look at security: PM'|'October 27, 2017 / 7:55 PM / in 9 hours Canadian review of China bid for Aecon to look at security: PM Reuters Staff 2 Min Read OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada will look very closely at security issues when it decides whether to allow a Chinese firm to buy construction company Aecon Group Inc ( ARE.TO ), Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday. Canada''s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Wattie China<6E>s CCCC International Holding Ltd said on Thursday it intended to buy Aecon for C$1.51 billion ($1.18 billion), a deal that requires Ottawa<77>s approval under the Investment Canada Act. Trudeau told a news conference in Quebec that Ottawa would examine the implications for intellectual property protections. <20>In the case of this proposed Aecon purchase, certainly the Investment Canada Act will be applied in full and we will look very, very carefully at security issues, at economic impacts, at whether or not this is truly in the national interest,<2C> he said. Canada, citing national security needs, places strict restrictions on the Canadian assets that China and other nations can buy. Canada recently encouraged plane maker Bombardier to sell control of its CSeries jet to European rival Airbus SE rather strike a deal with a Chinese firm. Ottawa sources said one reason was what some officials see as inadequate Chinese safeguards against intellectual property theft. CCCC is a publicly traded company in Hong Kong ( 1800.HK ) and in Shanghai ( 601800.SH ). ($1=$1.2840 Canadian dollars) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-aecon-group-m-a-canada/canadian-review-of-china-bid-for-aecon-to-look-at-security-pm-idINKBN1CW2S4'|'2017-10-27T17:55:00.000+03:00'
'93ff62957731f4c8116f1bc851191530291e3391'|'After CSeries deal, Bombardier aero unit faces uncertain future'|'MONTREAL, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Bombardier Inc secured the future of its struggling CSeries jet but still needs to find ways to spur growth in other units that have aging products or face larger rivals, industry players and analysts said. A blockbuster deal with Airbus SE that saw the European company take control of the CSeries for $1 leaves Bombardier<65>s commercial aviation division with the soft-selling turboprop and regional jets lines.Meanwhile, on the rail side, Bombardier recently lost out on a merger with Germany<6E>s Siemens AG and now faces off against China<6E>s merged rail company CRRC Corp and a soon-to-be-formed European giant in Siemens-Alstom.Macquarie on Friday said it would tweak 2019 company valuations to focus on corporate jets and rail, in the wake of the Airbus deal and media speculation on further commercial aircraft sales.While the Airbus partnership boosts the CSeries and potentially Bombardier<65>s small aerostructures and engineering division, which produces aircraft components, the remaining lines in its commercial aerospace arm are <20>mature and stay stable at best as the industry changes around them,<2C> according to AltaCorp analyst Chris Murray.Removal of the CSeries headache means the company can focus on its more profitable rail and business jet divisions.Yet even there, concerns remain with Moody<64>s this week downgrading Bombardier partly on <20>longer-term concerns<6E> about the competitiveness of its rail business and concerns about its <20>future in the commercial aircraft space.<2E> Bombardier said Moody<64>s action was <20>ill-founded.<2E>Bombardier<65>s CEO Alain Bellemare said recently the firm continues to weigh options for the rail unit. Asked about the future of the commercial aerospace unit on Oct. 20, he told reporters, <20>Right now the focus is to keep on selling these aircraft.<2E><>I think they will be forced to take a decision (to) either fix, coast or sell,<2C> U.S. analyst Richard Aboulafia said of the commercial plane unit. <20>But fix means putting some serious money into product upgrades.<2E>Upgrading a regional jet with a new engine and wings would cost upwards of $1 billion, an amount likely to be prohibitive for the company as it spends on ramping up its CSeries and bringing its strong-selling Global 7000 to market, analysts say.Bombardier has long weighed a sale or partnership venture to boost orders for its Q400 prop planes, which trail European rival ATR, owned by Airbus and Leonardo SpA. Such a deal, however, would be complicated by the need to ensure Canadian job security because the aircraft are assembled in Canada, government and union sources said.Bombardier tried unsuccessfully in 2013 to sell 100 Q400 turboprops in Russia and set up a joint-venture assembly line there.<2E>I<EFBFBD>m sure they<65>d love to sell the Q400 if they could get a serious buyer,<2C> said an industry source specializing in the prop market. (Reporting By Allison Lampert; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/canada-bombardier/after-cseries-deal-bombardier-aero-unit-faces-uncertain-future-idINL2N1MY164'|'2017-10-27T16:50:00.000+03:00'
'53e8656e5f2c4e7ebf93f2f0ae5f536c13323635'|'''Stranger Things 2'' gets darker in aftermath of death and Demogorgon'|'LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A year has passed since a supernatural demon terrorized the town of Hawkins, Indiana, but as Netflix<69>s hit 1980s science fiction series <20>Stranger Things<67> returns for a second season on Friday, life has not returned to normal for the unlikely heroes.The adults and teenagers of <20>Stranger Things 2<> wrestle emotionally with the events of the first season: a town boy<6F>s disappearance, a death, a mysterious girl with superpowers and a decaying parallel universe called the Upside Down.<2E>We wanted that trauma to really run through the entire season so it<69>s about these characters confronting the horrors,<2C> said Matt Duffer, one half of the Duffer Brothers, the twins who created the show.All nine episodes of <20>Stranger Things 2<> will be released on Friday.At the center of the show are its young teenage breakout stars. Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) suffers worsening visions of the Upside Down after being rescued, forcing his friends to try to find a way to defeat the demon known as Demogorgon.Eleven, the innocent, tormented young girl with superpowers played by Emmy-nominated 13-year-old Millie Bobby Brown, is believed dead and is in hiding, staying with the town<77>s police chief, Jim Hopper. Frustrated at being kept away from her friends, Eleven clashes with Hopper (David Harbour) and embarks on a mission to find her mother and finally find a home.Cast members (L-R) Caleb McLaughlin, Finn Wolfhard, Noah Schnapp and Gaten Matarazzo pose at the premiere for the second season of the television series "Stranger Things" in Los Angeles, California, U.S., October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni <20>We wanted (Eleven) to go through her own journey in a way that was much more personal to her and wasn<73>t tied to the boys,<2C> Matt Duffer said. <20>We wanted her to go through a journey of self-discovery without the help of anyone else.<2E><>Stranger Things<67> has become a phenomenon for Netflix Inc, landing Emmy wins and drawing a cadre of obsessed fans who launched a viral online campaign, #JusticeForBarb, sparked by the gruesome demise of supporting character Barb Holland.Slideshow (14 Images) The second season ramps up the quest to bring closure to her death while introducing new characters and expanding the story geographically.The Duffers said they anticipate five seasons to bring <20>Stranger Things<67> to a conclusion.<2E>It was important to us this season to start to move out of Hawkins and to introduce this world,<2C> said Ross Duffer.<2E>It<49>s such a fine line and it<69>s difficult and obviously sequels always feel this way because people want some of the same - that<61>s why they liked it in the first place - but you don<6F>t want to just go in circles,<2C> he added.Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jonathan Oatis '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-television-strangerthings/stranger-things-2-gets-darker-in-aftermath-of-death-and-demogorgon-idUSKBN1CV3M3'|'2017-10-27T01:43:00.000+03:00'
'34ea9b8010cbb68046958666d7736f001deedbe6'|'Global oil markets stable on expected extension of output cuts'|'October 30, 2017 / 12:38 AM / in an hour Oil markets stable on expected extension of output cuts Henning Gloystein 3 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil markets were stable on Monday, with Brent remaining above $60 per barrel supported by expectations that an OPEC-led production cut due to expire next March would be extended. An oil pump jack is seen at sunset in a field outside Scheibenhard, near Strasbourg, France, October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann Brent crude oil futures, the international benchmark for oil prices, were at $60.40 per barrel at 0236 GMT, 4 cents above their last settlement but still close to their highest level since July 2015 and up more than 36 percent since their 2017 lows last June. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were up by 5 cents, or 0.1 percent, at $53.95 a barrel. <20>With strong compliance to OPEC<45>s production curbs already supporting prices, comments from the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince that suggested the production cut agreement should be extended added to gains,<2C> ANZ bank said. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) plus Russia and nine other producers have agreed to hold back about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) to get rid of a supply glut. The pact runs to March 2018, but Saudi Arabia and Russia, who are leading the effort, have both voiced their support to extend the agreement. OPEC is scheduled to meet officially at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 30. While OPEC and its partners are withholding supply, U.S. production has risen almost 13 percent since mid-2016. As a result WTI is trading at a steep discount of around $6.50 per barrel against Brent, which has made U.S. crude exports to the world attractive. Confidence in the oil market is evident in the way financial traders have positioned themselves. Hedge funds and other money managers raised their bullish wagers on U.S. crude futures and options in the week to October 24, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said on Friday. The speculator group raised its combined futures and options position in New York and London by 15,041 contracts to 280,634 during the period. Despite this, some analysts were cautious, pointing to technical chart indicators. <20>We note that both contracts<74> (Brent and WTI) relative strength indices (RSI) are both approaching over-bought levels. This may imply that crude has risen enough in the short term and some consolidation is required,<2C> said Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at futures brokerage OANDA in Singapore. Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Sonali Paul and Kenneth Maxwell '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil/oil-markets-firm-on-expected-extension-of-production-cuts-idUKKBN1CZ014'|'2017-10-30T04:45:00.000+02:00'
'2547b508db863798238ae85d81bd2b0cea7024b7'|'Asian funds in talks to buy Pearson''s English language unit - sources'|'October 30, 2017 / 2:10 PM / Updated 27 minutes ago Asian funds in talks to buy Pearson''s English language unit - sources Kane Wu , Pamela Barbaglia , Carol Zhong 3 Min Read HONG KONG/LONDON (Reuters) - Two Asian funds are nearing a deal to buy Pearson<6F>s ( PSON.L ) English-language school business after trumping a rival bid from private equity firm MBK Partners, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Baring Private Equity Asia and Citic Capital Holdings, which made a joint bid to purchase Pearson<6F>s network of 400 language-training centres, have entered exclusive talks for the unit, known as Wall Street English (WSE), the sources said. The sale is expected to be inked in mid November, valuing WSE at between $350 and $400 million (<28>265.4 million and <20>303.3 million), one of them said. It comes as the world<6C>s largest education firm is trying to plug record losses and raise cash from shedding non-core units, having previously sold off assets including the Financial Times newspaper and the Economist magazine. Pearson and Baring declined to comment, while Citic was not immediately available. Pearson, which provides textbooks, school testing, college courses and online degrees around the world, wants to wrap up the WSE sale to focus on its next deal, the source said. Earlier this year, the 173-year old group announced a strategic review of its U.S. textbook business which supplies pupils from kindergarten through to 12th grade and is known as K12 courseware. A sale, which has yet to kick off, is expected to raise another few hundred million dollars for Pearson, which has spent several years trying to restructure to adapt to the growth of digital services. In August, it announced plans to cut 3,000 jobs, its latest round of redundancies, and slashed the dividend. The WSE auction, led by boutique bank Moelis, has drawn strong interest from Asian funds including North Asia private equity firm MBK which made it to the final stages of the process but lost out to Baring and Citic, the source said. Pearson acquired Wall Street English China in 2010, and the rest of the network in 2011. The business provides spoken English training for adults in 27 countries. Additional reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-pearson-m-a-wallstreetenglish/asian-funds-in-talks-to-buy-pearsons-english-language-unit-sources-idUKKBN1CZ1PC'|'2017-10-30T16:09:00.000+02:00'
'4271bd52976a66b5caecfb658310afe5fd87a277'|'VW brand eyes fourth quarter profit, sales growth on cost cuts, new models'|'Reuters TV United States October 30, 2017 / 8:19 AM / a few seconds ago VW brand upbeat as cost cuts, new models boost earnings Andreas Cremer 3 Min Read BERLIN (Reuters) - Cost cutting and new models such as the Arteon fastback should continue to boost Volkswagen<65>s ( VOWG_p.DE ) main car brand in the fourth quarter after it doubled core earnings in July-September, it said on Monday. FILE PHOTO: Volkswagen''s logos are pictured at the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Japan October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo Analysts see reviving the VW brand, which has long suffered from high staff and development costs, as crucial to the group<75>s ability to recover from its diesel emissions scandal. The brand said on Monday it expected sales and profits to keep growing in October-December, despite the hit across the industry to demand for diesel vehicles and their resale value in the wake of the German carmaker<65>s 2015 scandal. <20>Our model offensive is increasingly paying off, the turnaround programs in the markets are having an effect,<2C> VW brand chief Herbert Diess said in a statement. Operating profit at the brand doubled to 728 million euros ($847 million) in the three months to Sept. 30, helped by cost cuts and staff reductions agreed with labor unions last year. Volkswagen shares were up 2.9 percent to 156.40 euros at 1150 GMT. By contrast, the group<75>s premium Audi division ( NSUG.DE ) said it was bracing for a <20>demanding quarter<65> with costs for vehicle overhauls including the high-end A6, A7 and A8 as well as the Q3 and A1 compacts weighing on results. Audi<64>s quarterly profit and sales were broadly flat, held back by spending on foreign capacity and electrification of its model fleet. The VW brand now expects its operating margin to moderately exceed a 2.5-3.5 percent target range this year, it said. That is in line with the more upbeat profit outlook announced by parent Volkswagen on Friday. The VW brand is aiming to raise the margin to at least 4 percent by 2020 and 6 percent by 2025 - still lagging some major competitors such as Japan<61>s Toyota ( 7203.T ) and PSA Group ( PEUP.PA ). Brand revenue could increase around 10 percent this year on 2016 levels, VW said, keeping previous guidance and citing demand in markets such as the United States, Brazil and Russia after reporting an 8.3 percent gain in year-to-date revenue. Fixed costs at the brand were flat in July-September, despite a growing number of model launches which have included the top-of-the-line Arteon and the redesigned Polo subcompact, it said, without being more specific. Analysts expect VW brand earnings to keep growing next year on the back of more higher-margin sport-utility vehicles such as the all-new T-Roc and redesigned Touareg, as well as the ongoing restructuring efforts. VW<56>s upbeat comments echo recent announcements by peers. Last week, PSA and Renault ( RENA.PA ) revised up their market outlooks after quarterly revenue increases. Reporting by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Maria Sheahan and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-results-brand/vw-brand-expects-growth-in-fourth-quarter-after-third-quarter-earnings-double-idUKKBN1CZ0OJ'|'2017-10-30T11:19:00.000+02:00'
'a3695b2e279e5bfd69f7318f2b27837f68ba7963'|'Wall Street 2017 profits set to surpass last year''s - report'|' 45 PM / in 16 minutes Wall Street 2017 profits set to surpass last year''s: report Olivia Oran 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Wall Street profits for 2017 are set to exceed that of 2016, according to a report on Monday from New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. FILE PHOTO: A Wall Street sign is pictured outside the New York Stock Exchange in New York, October 28, 2013. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo Profits from the securities industry topped $12.3 billion in the first half of this year, a third higher than the same period a year earlier. Bonuses could also be higher this year, with 4 percent more set aside by the securities industry for compensation than a year earlier. The average bonus paid in 2016 was around $138,210, the report estimated. Wall Street employment has strengthened slightly this year. As of September, there were 178,000 jobs in the securities industry in New York City. While the securities industry has shrunk since the 2008 financial crisis, it still remains critical to New York City<74>s economy. The sector represents 4.8 percent of private sector jobs, but was responsible for 20.1 percent of all private sector wages paid in the city. Reporting by Olivia Oran; editing by Susan Thomas'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks-profits/wall-street-2017-profits-set-to-surpass-last-years-report-idUKKBN1CZ1TR'|'2017-10-30T16:40:00.000+02:00'
'6d8eebcf973746e2071dcfa0acd8be481e3122a0'|'Resolution, Swiss Re interested in acquiring German life run-off policies'|'October 30, 2017 / 3:34 PM / in 10 minutes Resolution, Swiss Re interested in acquiring German life run-off policies Alexander H<>bner , Arno Schuetze 3 Min Read MUNICH/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Britain<69>s Resolution Group, Swiss Re ( SRENH.S ) and private equity firm Cinven [CINV.UL] have expressed an interest in acquiring two large German life insurance portfolios owned by Ergo ( MUVGn.DE ) and Generali ( GASI.MI ), sources familiar with the matter said on Monday. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Swiss insurer Swiss Re is seen in front of its headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, September 23, 2015. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo Munich Re<52>s primary insurance affiliate Ergo and the German subsidiary of Italy<6C>s Generali are considering the sale of their respective portfolios of 6 million and 4 million policies in run-off. A spokeswoman for Ergo said the company had yet to decide whether to sell the portfolio but would do so soon. Swiss Re and Cinven declined to comment, while Resolution was not immediately available to comment. Cinven has indicated that it is willing to inject money into its life insurance and pensions group Viridium - owned by Cinven and Hannover Re ( HNRGn.DE ) - to acquire the German portfolios. Ergo and fellow insurers are struggling to pay guaranteed returns to clients because of record-low interest rates. Combined with more stringent European capital rules, these have prompted some to offload some life insurance operations. Financial services groups specialising in the run-off of life insurance policies are vying for these portfolios. They acquire policies until their expiry and aim to turn a profit by measures such as cutting administrative costs. Ergo<67>s run-off life portfolio has assets of 56 billion euros (<28>49.3 billion), while Generali<6C>s is around 40 billion euros. The sales of the Ergo and the Generali portfolios would mark the largest ever sale of closed books. Dutch insurer Aegon sold a 9 billion pounds book of closed UK life business last year and Britain<69>s Standard Life ( SLA.L ) has said it is open to the sale of its 16 billion-pound closed annuity portfolio. In Germany, only a handful of smaller portfolios of the roughly 90 life insurers have changed hands, including those of Arag Leben, Delta Lloyd, Basler Leben, Heidelberger Leben and Skandia. Cinven bought Heidelberger Leben and Skandia Leben, which are now rebranded as Viridium. The German financial watchdog will have to approve any sale, which would depend on the solvency of the future owner. <20>The hurdle will continue to be very high,<2C> said a person in the industry. <20>It is unlikely that anything will happen quickly.<2E> Additional reporting by Paul Arnold in Z<>rich and Simon Jessop in London; Writing by Tom Sims; Editing by Ludwig Burger, Greg Mahlich'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-munich-re-group-ergo-divestiture/resolution-swiss-re-interested-in-acquiring-german-life-run-off-policies-idUKKBN1CZ1YE'|'2017-10-30T17:34:00.000+02:00'
'fb3c18b162502de61e20813dd23809edf04d2e90'|'Noble Energy 3rd qtr loss beats Wall Street''s expectations'|'HOUSTON (Reuters) - U.S. oil and natural gas producer Noble Energy Inc ( NBL.N ) posted a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss on Monday, helped by cost cuts and rising commodity prices.The company also raised its fourth-quarter U.S. shale oil production forecast, now seeing it rising 15 percent sequentially.Noble reported a third quarter net loss of $136 million, or 28 cents per share, compared to a net loss of $144 million, or 33 cents per share, in the year-ago period.Excluding one-time items, Noble lost 2 cents per share. By that measure, analysts were expecting a loss of 13 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Production fell about 17 percent to 355,000 barrel of oil equivalent per day due in part to asset sales.Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Sandra Maler '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-noble-energy-results/noble-energy-third-quarter-loss-beats-wall-streets-expectations-idUSKBN1CZ2R4'|'2017-10-31T00:35:00.000+02:00'
'fb28913144a76d2bc997dfd20323d2302afc3d7e'|'Spreadbetting firm Plus500 reports higher third-quarter revenue'|' 30 AM / Updated 31 minutes ago Spreadbetting firm Plus500 reports higher third-quarter revenue Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Spreadbetting firm Plus500 Ltd ( PLUSP.L ) reported higher third-quarter revenue, as rising customer numbers helped offset challenges from a sector-wide regulatory clampdown and said its full-year results would be ahead of market expectations. The company, which provides an online trading platform for retail customers to trade contracts for differences (CFDs), said revenue rose 50 percent to $116.5 million in the quarter ended Sept.30. Plus500 added a record 42,492 new customers in the third quarter, up 69 percent from a year earlier. The number of active customers was 35 percent higher at 94,610. <20>Plus500 is well positioned to take advantage of growth opportunities such as new licences and new instruments, whilst retaining its competitive advantage derived from its lean cost structure... these factors are expected to assist in mitigating the impact of any regulatory changes,<2C> the company said on Tuesday. CFDs allow people to bet on moves in share prices without having to buy the underlying stock. However, regulators have been tightening controls on the fast-growing 3.5 billion pound spreadbetting industry. Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Rachel Armstrong'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-plus500-outlook/spreadbetting-firm-plus500-reports-higher-third-quarter-revenue-idUKKBN1D00PL'|'2017-10-31T09:30:00.000+02:00'
'436307a3fe1bf217f1dfced8828c6546b2320fa8'|'Samsung Electronics third-quarter profit nearly triples to new record'|'October 30, 2017 / 11:58 PM / in 3 hours Samsung Electronics names new-generation leaders as profit soars Joyce Lee 5 Min Read SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd ( 005930.KS ) named a new generation of top managers on Tuesday and promised to reward shareholders with $26 billion in payouts to 2020, as it reported record third-quarter profit. The world<6C>s biggest maker of semiconductors, televisions and smartphones replaced the leaders of its three main businesses, named CFO Lee Sang-hoon as the likely new board chairman, and said veteran co-CEOs J.K. Shin and Yoon Boo-keun would resign. The shake-up at South Korea<65>s biggest company is designed to ease investors<72> concerns about a leadership vacuum following the arrest and conviction of group scion Jay Y. Lee on bribery charges earlier this year. <20>It<49>s a younger generation of leaders, but the divisional structure has not fundamentally changed,<2C> said Park Ju-gun, head of research firm CEO Score. The new appointees are all long-serving Samsung insiders whose elevations suggest continuity rather than any new direction at the $348 billion company. Kim Ki-nam, 59, was appointed to lead the Device Solutions division which makes components including memory chips, the major driver of the firm<72>s record third-quarter profit of 14.5 trillion won ($12.91 billion). Park Jung-hoon, a fund manager at HDC Asset Management which holds Samsung Electronics shares, said there had been <20>some concerns<6E> that Kim would move to expand chip capacity and upset the currently favourable supply-demand balance. <20>However, today<61>s (post-earnings call with analysts) said the chips business will focus on profitability, not market share - suggesting they will continue the current course without deviation, which put our minds to rest,<2C> he told Reuters. In other appointments, Samsung said Koh Dong-jin, 56, would head IT and Mobile Communications, and Kim Hyun-suk, 56, would lead Consumer Electronics. The changes were effective immediately. DOUBLING DOWN FILE PHOTO: The Samsung booth is shown on the exhibit hall floor during the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. on October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Steve Marcus/File Photo Samsung said it would double dividends next year to 9.6 trillion won and keep them at that level until 2020, as it responds to investor pressure to share its vast cash reserves and catch up with some of its more generous peers. It also said 2017 capital expenditure would be its biggest ever, climbing 81 percent to 46.2 trillion won ($41 billion) as it builds new chip factories and clean-rooms to stay ahead of demand for servers and devices with ever greater memory. Third-quarter operating profit nearly tripled from the same period a year earlier, matching Samsung<6E>s earlier estimate. Revenue jumped 29.8 percent to 62 trillion won, also in line with its earlier estimate. The shareholder return policy for the next three years ramped up guidance to a level higher than its current range of 30-50 percent of free cash flow to 50 percent over three years. Slideshow (2 Images) Samsung<6E>s holdings of cash and cash equivalent stood at 76 trillion won at the end of September, eight percent higher than the previous quarter. While the dividend policy builds on the investor-friendly trend Samsung started in 2015, it was not as generous as some investors had hoped, analysts said. Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) has paid nearly 22 cents for every dollar it earned over the past five years, while Microsoft Corp ( MSFT.O ) has shared 53 cents. Meanwhile Samsung has paid just 11 cents, according to Reuters data. South Korean family-run business empires like Samsung Group have a reputation for low dividend payouts and other governance practices that favor controlling shareholders at the expense of ordinary investors. Samsung shares closed up 1.9 percent, while the Kospi benchmark share price index .KS11 rose 0.9 percent. The stock has risen 71 percent over the past 1
'72b0a31d2baa7dd9ee6bf3dba08d619deffe813d'|'U.S. Army Corps boosts size of Fluor''s Puerto Rico power restoration contract'|' 23 PM / Updated 14 minutes ago U.S. Army Corps boosts size of Fluor''s Puerto Rico power restoration contract Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it intended to increase the size of a key power restoration contract in Puerto Rico with a unit of Fluor Inc by $600 million to a new ceiling of $840 million. The notice was included in a so-called <20>sole-source modification<6F> posted late Sunday of Fluor<6F>s original $240 million contract to restore power in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria knocked out all of the electric service on the island on Sept. 20. (Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Chris Reese)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-puertorico-power-fluor/u-s-army-corps-boosts-size-of-fluors-puerto-rico-power-restoration-contract-idUSL2N1N525E'|'2017-10-31T00:22:00.000+02:00'
'e29295a40b5ee6fcbe867f5549160a639e3b4544'|'Brazil government still working on Oi SA restructuring proposal'|'BRASILIA, Oct 30 (Reuters) - A government working group drafting proposals to help bring debt-laden Brazilian phone carrier Oi SA out of bankruptcy protection has not reached an agreement yet, and the group will meet again on Wednesday, Solicitor-General Grace Mendon<6F>a said on Monday.Mendon<6F>a said a presidential decree is a possible solution to resolving Oi<4F>s debts, but no agreement has yet been made. She added that it should not be necessary to postpone a creditors meeting scheduled for Nov. 10 in Rio de Janeiro. (Reporting by Leonardo Goy; Writing by Gram Slattery) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/oi-sa-restructuring-government/brazil-government-still-working-on-oi-sa-restructuring-proposal-idINL2N1N524F'|'2017-10-30T19:11:00.000+02:00'
'1f91e76b8d9ddf0e040e735b5780e1edff553e60'|'Oil rally looks set to run into 2018 if OPEC extends output deal - Reuters poll'|'October 31, 2017 / 11:24 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago Oil rally looks set to run into 2018 if OPEC extends output deal - Reuters poll Koustav Samanta , Karen Rodrigues 4 Min Read (Reuters) - Oil will likely rally into 2018 with periods of volatility as an anticipated extension of OPEC-led output restrictions offsets higher U.S. production, a Reuters poll showed on Tuesday. A worker checks an oil pipe at the Lukoil-owned Imilorskoye oil field outside the West Siberian city of Kogalym, Russia, in this January 25, 2016 file photo. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin Analysts raised their crude price projections, the survey showed, as expectations of an output cut extension were buoyed by comments from officials in Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. <20>Rumours of extension, expansion or erosion (of the OPEC supply deal) could all impact prices and markets will be closely watching any statements from the upcoming meeting,<2C> said Ashley Petersen of Stratas Advisors. <20>Assuming, as we do, that the deal is extended through 2018, then actual levels of compliance will be a big factor in rebalancing through next year,<2C> she said. OPEC compliance stands above a high 80 percent currently. OPEC<45>s next meeting is in November, where the group and other producers including Russia are expected to prolong the output cuts of about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) beyond the current deadline at the end of March 2018. The survey of 35 analysts predicted Brent LCOc1 would average $53.25 per barrel in 2017, up from last month<74>s $52.60 forecast. Brent crude futures have gained about 17 percent over the past two months and has averaged $53 this year. Brent was forecast to average $55.71 in 2018, the poll showed. The prospect of U.S. sanctions being reimposed on Iran and tensions in Iraq where the northern Kurdish region has been pushing for independence helped push up prices, analysts said. <20>There is a real risk of some sanctions being (re)imposed on Iran,<2C> said Abhishek Kumar, energy analyst at Interfax Energy<67>s Global Gas Analytics in London. But some analysts said new sanctions would not lead to a substantial curbing of Iranian exports because Europe and Russia were unlikely to back them. The poll forecast U.S. light crude CLc1 would average $50.21 barrel in 2017 and $52.50 in 2018. SOLID DEMAND GROWTH Analysts expect oil demand growth for the remainder of 2017 and in 2018 to average about 1.5 million to 1.7 million barrels per day, mainly driven by Asian nations such as China and India. A rise in oil prices could encourage higher U.S. shale output, which has widened the gap between WTI and Brent futures. The premium of Brent to U.S. light crude CLc1 has grown to its widest since August 2015, at about $7 a barrel. CL-LCO1=R, so U.S. crude can compete more effectively in Europe and Asia. U.S. exports have hit record highs this year and this trend is expected to continue. <20>U.S. crude exports will likely continue to grow over the next years and Asia is the hottest battleground for market share. We expect U.S. crude flows toward Asia will expand,<2C> said Daniela Corsini, commodity market economist at Intesa Sanpaolo in Milan. <20>Middle Eastern producers, especially Saudi Arabia, will respond by strengthening economic and political ties with the main Asian consumers,<2C> she said. Reporting by Karen Rodrigues in Bengaluru; Editing by Edmund Blair'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-oil-prices-poll/oil-rally-looks-set-to-run-into-2018-if-opec-extends-output-deal-reuters-poll-idUKKBN1D01EW'|'2017-10-31T13:24:00.000+02:00'
'5cdd2211107be406df157655aa919c2cfae3d8aa'|'UPDATE 2-Brazil''s Mato Grosso lures UAE investors for road projects'|'October 31, 2017 / 3:40 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago UPDATE 2-Brazil''s Mato Grosso lures UAE investors for road projects Reuters Staff (adds ambassadors<72> quote, names of potential bidders, byline) By Ana Mano SAO PAULO, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Brazil<69>s Mato Grosso state hopes to persuade funds and companies from the United Arab Emirates to invest in infrastructure projects, Governor Pedro Taques said on Tuesday at the launch of a program to grant licenses to build and operate roads there. Taques was addressing potential investors in S<>o Paulo, including executives at trading firms such as Cargill Inc, as the state launched a road show to promote the projects. United Arab Emirates firms could participate in the ventures, in partnership with local companies, and bid with them in upcoming license auctions, said Marcelo Duarte, the state<74>s infrastructure secretary. Representatives for UAE investors recently spent days in Mato Grosso looking at investment opportunities, he said. <20>UAE is very interested in building a strategic partnership with Brazil, especially in the agriculture sector,<2C> Ambassador to Brazil Hafsa Al Ulama told Reuters. UAE is a large consumer of agricultural products and a global hub of trade, she said. Mato Grosso hopes to attract around $458 million in private investments in the first phase of the road development program. Initially three contracts will be awarded to operate stretches totaling 525 kilometers (326 miles). The first licenses will have a duration of 30 years. Mato Grosso believes mid-sized Brazilian construction firms and local funds will also seek to take stakes in the consortia that will bid to operate roads in the state, where some 60 million tonnes of grains are produced every year. In prior bidding processes, only large Brazilian construction companies were inclined to engage, using funding from development bank BNDES, Duarte said. With the Lava Jato corruption probe ensnaring most of the big players, the profile of the investors within the bidding groups is likely to change, he added. <20>We are offering rates of return above the Selic base rate so that the projects can be funded at market rates. These projects do not need subsidized interest rates to be carried out,<2C> the secretary said. The estimated internal rate of return of the projects is 9.8 percent, Mato Grosso said. Bidding rules for the first phase of the road program will be published next month while the auction of the initial three contracts should be in December. Mato Grosso officials were scheduled to meet with 12 potential bidders on Tuesday, including Odebrecht SA, Investimentos e Participa<70><61>es em Infraestrutura SA (Invepar), P<>tria Investimentos, and Systra Vetec, according to a roster seen by Reuters. None immediately responded to a comment request. (Reporting by Ana Mano; Editing by Phil Berlowitz and David Gregorio)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brazil-infrastructure/update-1-brazils-mato-grosso-lures-uae-investors-for-road-projects-idUSL2N1N60SA'|'2017-10-31T21:30:00.000+02:00'
'857d0a584a78838602730333121d9d60b41621c5'|'RPT-Low-protein U.S. soy crop dents meal quality, may lift feed costs'|' 02 AM / in 9 minutes RPT-Low-protein U.S. soy crop dents meal quality, may lift feed costs Reuters Staff (Repeats for wider distribution.) By Karl Plume CHICAGO, Oct 30 (Reuters) - A protein shortfall in this year<61>s U.S. soybean crop has forced processors like Bunge Ltd to cut the amount of the nutrient they can guarantee in soymeal, prompting concerns that animal feed costs and meat prices could rise. Adverse crop weather this summer likely dragged down the protein content of soybeans, prompting concern that the soymeal produced at crushing facilities will be light on protein and other key nutrients, traders and agriculture experts said. Soy plants can tweak processing steps to maximize protein yields and animal feeders can alter rations to include other feeds and supplements. But consumers may ultimately feel the pinch in higher poultry and pork prices as the steeper production costs are passed along. <20>The pig doesn<73>t care if it<69>s a low-protein crop or not,<2C> said Charles Hurburgh, professor of agricultural engineering at Iowa State University. <20>The pig just wants the protein so the nutritionist has to adjust rations. They will probably end up with a little bit more expensive rations.<2E> Hurburgh is gathering samples for the United Soybean Board<72>s annual soy quality survey. Early data suggests the U.S. crop would average about 34 to 34.5 percent protein, down from 35 percent normally, he said. That may translate to lower-protein soymeal. High-protein soymeal that typically is sold with 47.5 to 48 percent protein is being offered at 46.5 or 47 percent instead, traders said. <20>In general, the industry is seeing lower protein content in new crop soybeans,<2C> said Deb Seidel, spokeswoman for Bunge North America. <20>Bunge, along with most other operators, have adjusted protein specs (in soymeal) to ensure we are accurately reflecting the product we sell to our customers.<2E> She did not elaborate on the size of those adjustments or the plants at which they have occurred. <20>With a few exceptions, pretty much everyone is going to 47 (percent) in the East and 46.5 in the West. And to be honest, some can<61>t even make that at this time,<2C> said a rail soymeal broker who declined to be named. Livestock and poultry will feel the impact later this year or in early 2018 after more newly harvested beans are processed and mixed into feed rations. <20>A diet manufactured at a feed mill where lower crude protein bean meal is being used, that<61>s going to be more expensive,<2C> said Omarh Mendoza, associate director of nutrition at The Maschhoffs, the fourth-largest U.S. hog producer. Additional reporting by Julie Ingwersen in Chicago; Editing by Matthew Lewis'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-soybeans-protein/rpt-low-protein-u-s-soy-crop-dents-meal-quality-may-lift-feed-costs-idUSL2N1N22EE'|'2017-10-30T13:01:00.000+02:00'
'611714d82332e2d0510716e471aac2a317d74dc4'|'Confident Americans rushing to book vacations'|'Confident Americans rushing to book vacations by Matt Egan @mattmegan5 October 31, 2017: 1:05 PM ET This flying hotel can be yours for $74,000 an hour Let the vacation countdowns begin. The percentage of Americans planning to take a vacation in the next six months jumped in October to the highest level since at least 1978, according to a report published Tuesday by the Conference Board. The splurge in planned vacation spending reflects soaring optimism about the healthy jobs market and booming stock market . The unemployment rate of 4.2% is the lowest in 16 years and the Dow has zoomed to record highs. Consumer confidence, as measured by the Conference Board, climbed in October to 125.9 -- the best level of the recovery from the Great Recession. Confidence hasn''t been this high since December 2000. "Consumer confidence is going straight up along with the stock market," Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank, wrote in a report on Tuesday. Spending intentions were a bit mixed, with one glaring exception: travel plans. The percentage of Americans plotting vacations spiked by more than 11 percentage points to 63.5%. To put that in context, in April 2009 just one-third of consumers said they planned to take a vacation. That was during the Great Recession and the U.S. unemployment rate was sitting at nearly 9%. Almost half of those surveyed this month said they plan to travel in the U.S, while another 14.5% said they would go abroad. All this travel talk is terrific news for travel companies like Expedia ( EXPE ) and TripAdvisor ( TRIP ) as well as hotel chains and cruise operators. Other winners include airlines and car rental services: Just over one-quarter of Americans plan to fly, while almost one-third will drive. Related: Is now really the time for massive tax cuts? Of course, not all Americans feel good enough to travel right now. Those making $25,000 to $34,999 have a confidence score of 105.9, which is down from September and roughly even with after the election. Compare that with the increasingly euphoric confidence levels of 160.9 for those with household income of $125,000 or more. "The advancing tide is not lifting all the boats," Rupkey said, adding that it''s a "tale of two Americas." Millennials (under 35) also registered the lowest confidence since February and remain less upbeat than those 35-54. The key for the economy is whether soaring consumer sentiment translates to actual spending this fall. Sometimes consumers say they feel good, but don''t open their wallets more. For instance, consumer spending slowed during the third quarter despite strong confidence. However, Andrew Hunter, U.S. economist at Capital Economics, predicted in a report that confident Americans are likely to accelerate their spending during the final three months of the year. If anything, Hunter argued that consumer sentiment is "starting to look increasingly overdone." While extremely high confidence may sound like a good thing, in the past it has signaled the economy and stock market had reached a peak. CNNMoney (New York) First published October 31, 2017: 1:05 PM ET'|'cnn.com'|'http://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_news_economy.rss'|'http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/31/news/economy/vacations-consumer-confidence/index.html'|'2017-10-31T20:05:00.000+02:00'
'2176583dfa06e9ca2130b5280f65d65c6e279a51'|'Wary of central banks, share prices, UK funds ease off on equities - Reuters poll'|'October 31, 2017 / 12:06 PM / Updated 23 minutes ago Wary of central banks, share prices, UK funds ease off on equities - Reuters poll Sujata Rao   British fund managers have taken equity allocations down from two-year highs, having grown especially wary of pricier U.S. shares as Western central banks prepare to wind down their super-easy credit policies. A general view of the Canary Wharf financial district in London, Britain October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Coombs Reuters<72> latest monthly asset allocation poll was carried out between Oct. 16-27, a time when world stocks surged to new record highs against a background of robust economic data. But with economic growth accelerating or inflation rising, hawkish central bank action is becoming more likely. This week, the Bank of England (BoE) is seen delivering its first interest rate rise in over a decade while the European Central Bank (ECB) pledged at its Oct. 26 meeting to halve bond purchases from early 2018. The survey of 15 money managers found equity exposure had been cut by 3.5 percentage points to 49.9 percent, the lowest since July, with U.S. allocations slashed by 4.3 percentage points to a 14-month low of 28.5 percent. Mark Robinson,   wealth manager Bordier & Cie (UK), said global growth - still fragile - could take a hit should central banks mishandle the transition to a tighter monetary policy. So far, world stocks are unruffled, scoring successive all-time highs, and heading for a record 12-month long winning streak .MIWD PUS. The U.S. S&P 500 index is up 15 percent and tech stocks have soared 24 percent this year .SPX .IXIC . But Robinson said that at current elevated levels, markets faced barriers in the form of <20>tighter monetary conditions, squeezed consumers, stretched equity valuations, compressed bond yields, escalating debt levels and geopolitical tensions<6E>. While markets could ignore these issues for the rest of the year, <20>the outlook beyond this does look much more uncertain,<2C> he added. Around 40 percent of the poll     predicted the U.S. Federal Reserve, the BoE and the ECB would be in policy-tightening mode by end-2017, albeit in different ways. Some of the responses were received before the ECB meeting. <20>Barring a crisis, it is very unlikely that any of the three central banks will miss an opportunity to act with a seemingly docile and acquiescent market,<2C> said   Investments. While euro zone stock holdings stayed at 17 percent - about 5 percentage points above end-2016 levels - many investors saw the market as better value than Wall Street. Investment bank UBS said this week it had revised up European earnings estimates for the first time in a decade, while cutting U.S. forecasts. Larry Hatheway, head of GAM Investment Solutions, noted ECB policy tightening would commence only next year. He saw a sudden unexpected rise in inflation as the biggest risk, simultaneously hitting both bond and equity prices. <20>Barring that outcome, the best opportunities are in European and emerging equities, where earnings growth rates are best supported by the cyclical improvement in the world economy,<2C> he said. European shares could also benefit from a new German finance minister to replace Wolfgang Schaeuble, a leading advocate of austerity programmes for Greece and the rest of the euro zone. The 75-year old Schaeuble has been elected speaker of the German parliament<6E>s lower house, while the Greens, potential coalition allies of Germany<6E>s Christian Democrats, will demand higher budget spending. About 40 percent of those who replied to a special question on whether a new   German fiscal policy, replied in the affirmative. <20>Fiscal policy stances are being loosened in many regions and Germany looks set to follow suit. Likely coalition partners for Merkel will push for looser policy and this is aided by the removal of Schaeuble as finance minister,<2C> Hatheway added. The allocation to UK shares rose one percentage point to 24.7 percent, the high
'7ccc02192ddb0bf41e226bf0b042bc4355932beb'|'UK interest rate rise would not hit house prices, says Moody''s - Business'|'UK interest rate rise would not hit house prices, says Moody''s Ratings agency says property market is resilient despite Brexit uncertainty <20> but outlook for buy-to-let has got worse Moody<64>s said the UK property market is <20>holding up OK<4F> despite the impact of the Brexit vote. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images UK interest rate rise would not hit house prices, says Moody''s Ratings agency says property market is resilient despite Brexit uncertainty <20> but outlook for buy-to-let has got worse View more sharing options Tuesday 31 October 2017 17.59 GMT First published on Tuesday 31 October 2017 17.17 GMT The UK<55>s property market will take this week<65>s expected rise in interest rates in its stride, according to ratings agency Moody<64>s, but it warned that the outlook for the buy-to-let market has worsened significantly. The agency, which along with Standard & Poor<6F>s was widely condemned for awarding triple-A ratings to sub-prime mortgage books before the 2008 financial crisis, said the British property market is more resilient than is widely believed. Moody<64>s economist Colin Ellis said: <20>We haven<65>t seen quite the negative impact from the Brexit referendum that some had forecast, but then we weren<65>t as bearish as the OECD [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development] or the NIESR [National Institute of Economic and Social Research]. Confidence in UK housing market falls to five-year low Read more <20>The [property] market is holding up OK. There is an underlying resilience in prices even if transaction activity has been affected. If you look at the balance between the cost of renting or buying, then UK house prices are not overexposed. <20>Shocks are being dealt with, and even in the event of a Brexit no-deal, then it<69>s not looking like the UK economy falling off a sharp cliff.<2E> On Thursday the Bank of England is expected to raise interest rates for the first time in 10 years from 0.25% to 0.5% . But Moody<64>s said it was relaxed about the impact on households and their ability to continue paying mortgages. <20>We have expected a rate rise for some time. This is about taking away emergency stimulus introduced after the referendum vote. A rise of 25 basis points [0.25%] is not going to move the dial. A rise of 0.25% pales into insignificance compared to the 8%-10% decline in the currency.<2E> Estate agents, faced with the first rate hike for a decade, have been keenly talking up the housing market. Russell Quirk of eMoov said: <20>Any increase in monthly payments, like interest rates themselves, will be marginal and manageable for those impacted. On the typical <20>150,000 loan, homeowners will be out of pocket around <20>15 to <20>30 a month, certainly no grounds to shout <20>financial meltdown<77>. <20>House price growth and the market<65>s overall stability have been incredibly resilient despite the EU vote and a snap general election. A few quid added to the average mortgage repayment will not deter this growth in the medium to long term.<2E> Buy-to-let UK property sales fall by almost 50% in a year Read more However, Moody<64>s warned that buy to let is the weak link in the property market. It said it expected a rise in arrears and defaults within packages of buy-to-let mortgage loans, particularly on borrowing in recent years. It warned landlords to expect falling rental income, particularly in London and the south-east, while rising taxes will also make it more difficult for landlords to cover their mortgage payments. <20>Landlords will have much less wiggle room,<2C> said Moody<64>s analyst Annabel Schaafsma. <20>Arrears will go up, although the increases will not be astronomical and they are increasing from a low base.<2E> Most books of UK mortgages which have been packaged up as instruments to be traded on markets remain triple-A-rated, said Moody<64>s. But the agency insisted that it has tightened up standards since the financial crash exposed some triple-A mortgage books as sub-prime junk loans. Topics '|'theguardian.com'|'https://www.theguardian.co
'cea2fbe8a193ec9b452882a549686ac1a03012a8'|'UPDATE 1-Odebrecht says it wants to keep Braskem stake, following takeover report'|'(Adds information about Braskem shareholders)SAO PAULO, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht SA said on Monday that it wants to keep Braskem SA in its investment portfolio, after a report that LyondellBasell Industries NV had approached the petrochemicals producer about a potential takeover.Odebrecht, which has been targeted by corruption investigations in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America, also said that it is <20>working on alternatives to create value for Braskem and all its shareholders.<2E>The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that the LyondellBasell approach valued Braskem, in which Odebrecht has a 38.1 percent stake, at more than $10 billion.Since getting implicated in the corruption probes, Odebrecht has sold assets in Brazil and Latin America, including a waste and water company, a stake in Rio de Janeiro<72>s airport and a hydroelectric dam in Peru to repay debt. But it has said it considers Braskem a <20>core asset.<2E>Odebrecht is Braskem<65>s controlling shareholder with a 38 percent stake and the majority of voting stock. Brazilian state-controlled oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA holds a 36 percent stake.Petrobras, as the oil company is known, tried to sell its stake last year, but sources told Reuters that investors were not interested in becoming minority investors in an Odebrecht-controlled company.Both companies have declared publicly they are revising their shareholders<72> agreement. A committee within Braskem is considering whether to convert its different classes of stock into a single, common one.Braskem preferred shares soared following the report about a possible takeover, closing up 12 percent at an all-time high of 53.25 reais per share.Petrobras declined to comment on The Wall Street Journal report, as did Braskem itself. (Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Christian Plumb and Leslie Adler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/braskem-ma/update-1-odebrecht-says-it-wants-to-keep-braskem-stake-following-takeover-report-idINL2N1N523E'|'2017-10-30T20:11:00.000+02:00'
'3ade16f647eafe4661d6f542d985805ff038e4ae'|'Kuroda looks favoured to get second term as Bank of Japan chief - Nikkei'|'October 28, 2017 / 4:49 AM / Updated 12 hours ago Kuroda looks favored to get second term as Bank of Japan chief: Nikkei Reuters Staff 2 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda looks favored to get a second five-year term when his current one ends in April, the Nikkei business paper reported on Saturday. Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda poses for IMF Governors family photo during the IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Washington, U.S., October 14, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas Following last week<65>s landside election win for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe<62>s ruling bloc, top advisers will discuss candidates for central bank chief, with Kuroda the <20>leading candidate<74>, the newspaper reported, citing an unnamed adviser. The Nikkei quoted the adviser as saying that the next governor must be someone with <20>an appreciation for the present system<65>. Abe is seen maintaining his economic agenda, which focuses on using loose fiscal and monetary policies to maintain the country<72>s economic recovery. In Japan, board members of the central bank, including the governor and deputy governor, are appointed by the cabinet. The Nikkei said the government will propose a list of possible candidates for governor and deputy governors for parliamentary approval at a regular Diet session in January. Age <20>will not be a problem<65> for the government if the 73-year-old Kuroda serves another term, the newspaper quoted Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga as saying. The Bank of Japan was not immediately available for comment. Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Richard Borsuk'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-boj/kuroda-looks-favored-to-get-second-term-as-bank-of-japan-chief-nikkei-idUKKBN1CX040'|'2017-10-28T07:31:00.000+03:00'
'61e0c200fa4f902126f28aa09537af0d4a4bbaf4'|'All hail British banks: self-absorbed, short-termist and spivvy - Business'|'W hen everyone around you sits on their hands, it<69>s tempting to take control. While companies refuse to invest and Whitehall is paralysed by Brexit, why not legislate and nationalise to get something done?Britain is in the midst of an investment crisis, a productivity crisis, an income crisis and an inequality crisis <20> and all are so entrenched that they are beyond policies that tinker or No 10<31>s <20>nudge unit<69>.Nudge economics, despite the award this year of a Nobel prize to its main proponent, the American Richard Thaler, is a pathetically weak tool given the scale of the problem.What<61>s more, so many of the government<6E>s current policies, nudge or otherwise, are just plain bad. A case in point is the <20>10bn allocated to the help to buy programme, which is a rare example of big money being thrown at a situation, in this case the one affecting housebuilding.Help to buy works by giving homebuyers an interest-free government loan worth up to 20% of the value of a new-build property. It was designed by the Treasury and backed by the Bank of England as a way to spur housebuilding across the country.But a report by Morgan Stanley has found that almost all of the <20>10bn has gone into the pockets of housebuildding firms, with little evidence that the rate of housebuilding has increased.Shares in the big building companies have soared, as you might imagine, and the promise of <20>10bn more from Philip Hammond in next month<74>s budget has of sent their market values even higher. A year ago, the price of a share in Persimmon, the UK<55>s second-largest housebuilder, stood at <20>16. Now it stands just below <20>29, a 55% rise.And this obsession with private property goes deeper, as the IPPR Commission on Social Justice found in its report <20> Financing investment: Reforming Finance Markets for the Long Term . The commission is a cross-party group that includes business people <20> who run airports, departments stores and investment funds <20> alongside figures from civil society such as Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, members of charity Citizens UK and a smattering of academics.It<49>s not only the government that is obsessed with lending to prop up property owners and developers <20> the banking sector is keen, too. The report sets out the way UK banks mostly lend abroad, with loans to UK businesses accounting for just 5% of total UK bank assets, compared with 11% in France, 12% in Germany and 14% on average across the rest of the eurozone.Property loans to businesses and individuals in the UK account for more than 78% of all loans to individuals and non-financial businesses <20> which means those outside the Square Mile. After stripping out real estate, loans to UK businesses account for just 3% of all banking assets.As a transmission mechanism for diverting the nation<6F>s savings into worthwhile, productive businesses, the banks fail miserably.And the rest of the financial sector is just as bad. The IPPR report accused hedge funds, proprietary traders (which use investment bank cash) and high-frequency traders <20> a group that collectively makes up 72% of trades in on the London market <20> of paying themselves depending on performance against rivals and over short timescales, <20>not long-term value creation<6F>.This spivvy trading arena has the knock-on effect of making short-term demands on the boards of listed companies. Such is the pressure to avoid being caught in traders<72> headlights that in a survey of more than 400 executives, some 75% said they <20>would sacrifice positive economic outcomes<65> if it helped smooth their profit figures from one quarter to the next.The report argues that this self-absorbed world of stock market trading needs to support longer-term investment in a way that also benefits savers and business owners.Some of the solutions it puts forward are all well worth pursuing, including a move to scrap the little-known <20>market maker<65> relief on stamp duty reserve tax. This would effectively be a first step towards a financial transa
'7f0a81f91e34b67a393fc447098a09413a0a29e1'|'Alex Mahon must hit ground running at Channel 4 - Media'|'I f timing is everything, then Alex Mahon<6F>s arrival in her new job as chief executive of Channel 4 on the eve of the final of The Great British Bake Off could not have been planned better. The new-look show<6F>s critical and commercial success has more than justified the <20>75m spent taking it from the BBC .Mahon, who turns 44 this weekend, joins Channel 4 from the special effects company behind the films Gravity and Guardians of the Galaxy . Her inbox includes pressure from the government for a move out of London , arresting a decline in TV viewing (especially among youth audiences), a volatile ad market and hiring a new chief creative officer to spearhead Channel 4<>s <20>700m programming budget.Bake Off is a showstopper Before the summer launch of Bake Off , the audience figures for Channel 4<>s eponymous flagship network this year had been abysmal. Among 16- to 34-year-olds <20> the broadcaster<65>s core audience, highly prized by advertisers <20> viewing was down 15% year-on-year. Viewing among all adults was down 5%. Since the new Bake Off debuted on 29 August, Channel 4<>s youth audience has rebounded, with almost 14% growth year-on-year. Adults are up 2%.Bake Off can lay claim to being the most popular series on UK TV among 16- to 34-year-olds, ahead of Britain<69>s Got Talent , Love Island , The X Factor and Saturday Night Takeaway .<2E>This is an incredible turnaround in fortunes,<2C> said Phil Hall, associate director at media buying agency MediaCom. <20>While Channel 4<>s schedule has had plenty of good shows that have helped, the biggest factor has been the one with a great big tent in the middle of a field. It makes the <20>25m-a-year they paid look very good value.<2E>Channel 4 says that the show has exceeded all targets, and that the six million average live audience is about double what it needed to break even, making for its biggest commercial franchise since Big Brother departed for Channel 5 in 2010.Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alex Mahon Photograph: Adam Lawrence/Channel 4 Location, location, location Mahon<6F>s tenure as chief executive will ultimately be judged on the outcome of the fractious battle with government over the proposed relocation of Channel 4 outside the capital. Its former chief executive David Abraham and current chairman, Charles Gurassa, have argued that a full-scale relocation would be catastrophic.Giving up a base in the capital would, they say, cause 60% to 80% of staff to leave. They point out that almost all Channel 4<>s advertisers are based in London, as well as rivals and partners such as Netflix. The broadcaster is willing to spend more money with producers that make TV shows based outside London, and move a small proportion of its 800 staff.Last week, the culture secretary, Karen Bradley, raised the temperature when she publishing a report that said a full move, combined with increased spending on programme-making outside of London, could create nearly 7,500 jobs and <20>600m in economic benefits annually .London-born, Edinburgh-raised Mahon, who has already worked closely with the culture department as a member of the advisory panel on the renewal of the BBC<42>s royal charter, is likely to agree with the strategic assessment of her predecessor and the board. Both sides have said they are keen to reach an agreement by Christmas <20> against a backdrop of furious lobbying from cities such as Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester <20> and Mahon will have to hit the ground running.Hiring the A-team Her biggest immediate task is to fill the post of chief creative officer vacated by Jay Hunt, who abruptly resigned in June after missing out on the top job . Hunt<6E>s credits included the big Bake Off bet, delivering the London 2012 Paralympics, commissioning shows such as Humans , Gogglebox and Black Mirror and importing Homeland and The Handmaid<69>s Tale .Candidates linked with the role include Ralph Lee, Hunt<6E>s well-regarded deputy, and the BBC3 controller Damian Kavanagh, who has impressed with commissions including teen drama Thirteen a
'1c26b08bb67df8760cc3cb72a7dea0e09e5c73c6'|'Israeli flavor firm Frutarom to buy remaining 81 pct of Enzymotec'|'TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Israeli flavor and fine ingredients company Frutarom Industries said on Sunday it agreed to acquire the 81 percent of special nutrition firm Enzymotec it doesn<73>t already own for $11.9 a share, or about $168 million.Frutarom had acquired in prior transactions 19 percent of Enzymotec for $42 million, reflecting an average share price of $9.6 and announced its intention to make a tender offer for Enzymotec shares.Following negotiations with Enzymotec<65>s board of directors the sides agreed upon a full merger. Enzymotec will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Frutarom and be delisted from trading.Frutarom expects the deal, be financed through bank debt and/or debt from a financial institution, to close by early in the first quarter of 2018.Enzymotec develops nutritional ingredients and medical foods and its technologies enable extraction of lipids from natural sources. It has 235 employees, mainly in Israel and the United States, and its sales in the year to June 2017 were $47 million.Enzymotec<65>s nutrition segment will contribute to the expansion of Frutarom<6F>s portfolio of products in the areas of pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements, foods for infants and elderly clinical nutrition, Frutarom chief executive Ori Yehudai said.Reporting by Tova Cohen '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-enzymotec-frutarom-inds-m-a/israeli-flavor-firm-frutarom-to-buy-remaining-81-pct-of-enzymotec-idINKBN1CY08A'|'2017-10-29T06:38:00.000+02:00'
'f275cb5cc2dd8eb9cfdfb56a7f0c83e99ec41e5a'|'PRESS DIGEST- Financial Times - Oct 31'|'October 31, 2017 / 1:28 AM / in 5 hours PRESS DIGEST- Financial Times - Oct 31 Reuters Staff 2 Min Read Oct 31 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Financial Times. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Headlines Hammond vows not to break fiscal rules to fund new spending on.ft.com/2z4UFAB UK''s Ineos buys motorcycle fashion group Belstaff on.ft.com/2z5d8Nw Key details of Brexit impact reports on 58 industries to stay secret on.ft.com/2yZkdgw Overview UK finance minister Philip Hammond will not break his fiscal rules to increase public spending in the autumn budget and fears investors, already worried by Brexit, will be spooked if he abandons the fiscal framework adopted only a year ago, the chancellor<6F>s allies said. British petrochemicals company Ineos on Monday agreed to buy fashion brand Belstaff, best known for its waxed cotton motorcycle jackets, in the latest off-beat project by Ineos<6F>s billionaire founder Jim Ratcliffe. Key details about reports outlining the economic impact of Britain leaving the EU on 58 industries will not be released by the Brexit ministry which said it needs to carry out policymaking in a <20>safe space<63>. (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Sandra Maler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-press-ft/press-digest-financial-times-oct-31-idUSL4N1N61C7'|'2017-10-31T03:27:00.000+02:00'
'1f2e5b14c786c2c1d142d8b756d714374ab48246'|'Bitcoin hits all-time high after CME Group says to launch futures'|'October 31, 2017 / 2:12 PM / Updated 7 minutes ago Bitcoin hits all-time high after CME Group says to launch futures Jemima Kelly 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin jumped to an all-time high above $6,300 (<28>4,754) on Tuesday, after the world<6C>s largest futures market operator CME Group ( CME.O ) said it would launch a regulated trading venue for cryptocurrencies in the fourth quarter of 2017. A copy of bitcoin standing on PC motherboard is seen in this illustration picture, October 26, 2017. Picture taken October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic The new futures contracts will be settled in cash, based on the CME <20>CF Bitcoin Reference Rate<74>, a once-a-day reference rate of the U.S. dollar price of bitcoin, the company said. The price of bitcoin jumped to as high as $6338.60 according to trade website Coindesk<73>s price index, which aggregates the prices quoted across several exchanges. That was up from around $6,215 before the news. On the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange, bitcoin jumped to as high as $6,351 BTC=BTSP , up almost 4 percent on the day. Bitcoin has surged in value by around 555 percent so far this year. Reporting by Jemima Kelly; Editing by John Geddie'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-markets-bitcoin-cme/bitcoin-hits-all-time-high-after-cme-group-says-to-launch-futures-idUKKBN1D01WZ'|'2017-10-31T16:11:00.000+02:00'
'5be523f165dbdc9f348eca1852333f094a3dc164'|'HMD Global launches $115 Nokia smartphone'|'October 31, 2017 / 1:25 PM / Updated an hour ago HMD Global launches $115 Nokia smartphone Reuters Staff 1 Min Read HELSINKI, Oct 31 (Reuters) - HMD Global, the Finnish company that owns the rights to use Nokia<69>s brand for mobile phones, launched a new smartphone with a global average retail price of 99 euros ($115). Nokia 2, which runs on Google<6C>s Android platform, has a two-day battery life, 5-inch display and it comes in black or white, HMD said on Tuesday. The phone, due to be delivered in 2018, will be the fifth Nokia smartphone launched after HMD last year struck a brand licensing deal with Nokia Oyj, which now focuses on telecom network equipment. HMD has not provided any sales figures for its products. HMD also runs Nokia<69>s feature phones business and all of its products are built by Foxconn. $1 = 0.8595 euros Reporting by Jussi Rosendahl'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/nokia-phones/hmd-global-launches-115-nokia-smartphone-idUSL8N1N65DW'|'2017-10-31T15:24:00.000+02:00'
'511417fcc2f8df4dd1d6cf737150abe7ed6dd17e'|'Gasoline flows away from New York Harbor as Midwest prices soar'|' 46 PM / in a few seconds Gasoline flows away from New York Harbor as Midwest prices soar Devika Krishna Kumar , Jarrett Renshaw 4 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. East Coast refiners are sending gasoline barrels to western Pennsylvania instead of the New York Harbor market, compounding an unusual tightness in an area that helps set prices for the nation. The diversion comes as gasoline imports from Europe to the U.S. and Gulf Coast shipments abroad are weakening deliveries to New York Harbor, three market sources said. Meanwhile, prices in the Chicago area have soared to a five-year high seasonally amid heavy refinery maintenance and a pipeline outage. The dwindling flows to New York suggest a further decline in inventories in the region through November, setting up a potential bullish run for the fuel. New York is supplied largely by U.S. Gulf Coast refineries via the Colonial Pipeline, along with local refineries and transatlantic imports. New York Harbor is the delivery point for NYMEX benchmark gasoline futures and is the only exchange-traded gasoline market in the world. <20>It<49>s bone dry (in the New York Harbor),<2C> said Robert Campbell, head of oil products markets at consultancy Energy Aspects. Demand for European barrels to Asia and the Middle East has been strong in recent weeks, Campbell said, adding that Mexico<63>s draw on Gulf Coast barrels is running about 50,000 barrels per day higher than last year heading into the seasonally strong months of November and December. <20>There<72>s massive refinery maintenance in the Midwest and that is pulling a lot of barrels away from Colonial system and the harbor into western PADD 1 and eastern PADD 2,<2C> Campbell said. Gasoline inventories in the Mid-Atlantic region, which includes New York Harbor, fell to 25.8 million barrels, the lowest seasonally since 2014, according to the latest weekly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. East Coast gasoline imports hit the lowest in nearly eight months and the second lowest figure in five years, the EIA data showed. The tightness in the U.S. gasoline and distillates markets puts refiners on their best footing in three years heading into the winter months, Marathon Petroleum CEO Gary Heminger said in an earnings call last week. Gasoline and distillate days of supply are at the low end of the five-year average, Heminger noted. [EIA/S] MIDWEST SURGE Gasoline prices in the Chicago area have risen as inventories fell to their lowest in two years. Supplies dwindled as post-hurricane shortages were compounded by Midwest refinery maintenance and reduced volumes on the Explorer pipeline from the Gulf Coast. [PRO/U] U.S. mid-continent total motor gasoline inventories fell for the fifth week in a row to 46.6 million barrels in the week ending Oct. 20, according to the EIA. The Midwest price surge has made Philadelphia barrels more attractive and increased flows along the Laurel Pipeline, which connects the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh markets, the sources said. <20>There has been a lot more volume on Laurel recently when Chicago gasoline shot up and everyone started replacing Pittsburgh barrels with harbor pricing,<2C> a source said. A spokesman for Buckeye Partners, which owns the 350-mile Laurel Pipeline, did not respond to requests for comment. RBOB gasoline differentials in the New York Harbor traded on Monday about 6.50 cents per gallon above benchmark futures for delivery in December. Chicago CBOB differentials were about 14 cents a gallon above futures for December. Reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar and Jarrett Renshaw in New York; Editing by Frances Kerry'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-gasoline-new-york/gasoline-flows-away-from-new-york-harbor-as-midwest-prices-soar-idUSKBN1D02V3'|'2017-10-31T22:40:00.000+02:00'
'c11a9d44f8273e9e9d4b53994a0ffdba5d112323'|'Investors sounded on jumbo Paysafe buyout loan before sell down'|'October 30, 2017 / 1:47 PM / in 6 minutes Investors sounded on jumbo Paysafe buyout loan before sell down Claire Ruckin 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - A select group of investors have been sounded out on a jumbo $2.59 billion-equivalent loan backing the buyout of UK payment processing company Paysafe ( PAYS.L ), banking sources said. A Paysafe booth is shown on the exhibit hall floor during the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. on October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Steve Marcus Paysafe, formerly Optimal Payments, which offers pre-paid cashcards and online wallets, announced in August that it had backed a <20>3bn takeover offer from a consortium of funds managed by Blackstone and CVC. Credit Suisse, Jefferies and Morgan Stanley are leading the multi-currency leveraged loan financing, which was shown in a pre-marketing process to friend and family investors in mid-October ahead of a general syndication process, the sources said. General syndication is expected to launch in November, the sources added. The financing has been eagerly anticipated by investors, desperate to put large amounts of cash to work in new paper, after significant fund-raising from new and warehousing CLOs and managed accounts. The financing includes $2.09 billion-equivalent of first-lien loans comprising a $505 million seven-year term loan B1; a $505 million-equivalent seven-year euro-denominated term loan B2; a <20>342.5 million seven-year term loan B3; a <20>342.5 million seven-year term loan B4; and a US$175m six-year multicurrency revolving credit facility. The TLBs pay an initial margin of 300bp over Libor/Euribor. Between 4.5-5.0 times they pay 325bp and over 5.0 times, 350bp. The TLB1 and TLB3 have 1% Libor floors, while the TLB2, TLB4 and RCF have 0% Euribor/Libor floors. The TLBs have a 50bp OID. There are also $ 500million-equivalent of eight-year second-lien facilities, comprising a US$250m facility and a US$250m-equivalent euro-denominated facility. The second-lien facilities pay 750bp over Libor/Euribor and have a 0% Libor/Euribor floors, with a 275bp OID. Blackstone and CVC initially approached Paysafe in early May and made four separate bids before the fifth offer was agreed. Editing by Christopher Mangham'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-paysafe-leveraged-loans/investors-sounded-on-jumbo-paysafe-buyout-loan-before-sell-down-idUKKBN1CZ1NA'|'2017-10-30T15:47:00.000+02:00'
'75dfd36876c52acb65b7e62753707dde3cb9dda1'|'Goldman CEO has high hopes for London HQ post-Brexit, much outside his control'|'Reuters TV United States October 30, 2017 / 12:44 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Goldman CEO has high hopes for London HQ post-Brexit, much outside his control Anjuli Davies 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ) chief executive Lloyd Blankfein expects to fill the firm<72>s new European headquarters which is currently under construction in London, but said Britain<69>s exit from the European Union left much outside the bank<6E>s control. FILE PHOTO: Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein speaks at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York, U.S., September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid <20>In London. GS still investing in our big new Euro headquarters here. Expecting/hoping to fill it up, but so much outside our control. #Brexit,<2C> Blankfein tweeted on Monday, alongside a bird<72>s eye picture of the new building. The Wall Street bank is building a 1.1 million square foot office in London with initial occupancy slated for 2019 to house its 6,000 UK employees, but the firm needs to ensure it can still service its EU clients after Brexit and may have limited access to the EU<45>s single market from Britain. Goldman also has flexibility to adjust the number of floors it takes in the new building, according to a source familiar with the situation, so it is not committed to occupying the entire office. That option was put in place prior to the Brexit vote. Earlier this month, Goldman said it had agreed to lease office space at a new building in Frankfurt, giving it space for up to 1,000 staff. That would be five times the current staff of 200 and see it bolstering activities including trading, investment banking and asset management. Blankfein sparked a wave of speculation earlier this month when he tweeted he was planning to spend a lot more time in Frankfurt. <20>Just left Frankfurt. Great meetings, great weather, really enjoyed it. Good, because I<>ll be spending a lot more time there. #Brexit,<2C> he tweeted on Oct. 19. Frankfurt is so far seen as the biggest beneficiary from Wall Street banks moving jobs out of London as a result of Brexit, with JPMorgan, Citi and Morgan Stanley all setting out plans to expand operations there. Reporting by Anjuli Davies; Editing Rachel Armstrong and Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-goldman-sachs/goldman-ceo-has-high-hopes-for-london-hq-post-brexit-much-outside-his-control-idUKKBN1CZ1HH'|'2017-10-30T15:06:00.000+02:00'
'65f537c6802f71a21760eef3f7c237a139b538f0'|'Exclusive: Swiss prosecutors seek widening of secrecy law to bankers abroad'|'October 31, 2017 / 12:07 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Exclusive: Swiss prosecutors seek widening of secrecy law to bankers abroad Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi , Anjuli Davies 8 Min Read ZURICH/LONDON (Reuters) - Swiss prosecutors are seeking a court ruling that would make it easier to convict whistleblowers for breaking the country<72>s bank secrecy law wherever they are in the world, legal documents show. Former Swiss private banker Rudolf Elmer poses in front of a branch of Swiss Bank Julius Baer in Zurich, Switzerland October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann The Swiss Banking Act requires employees of Swiss-regulated banks to keep client information confidential, but a number of staff have leaked account details to foreign authorities in the past decade as Western governments crack down on tax evasion. In the unpublished documents reviewed by Reuters, Zurich prosecutors have asked the country<72>s highest court to interpret the law so that the secrecy obligation is widened to include people with looser working relationships to Swiss banks and their subsidiaries abroad. The documents, dated Nov. 21 2016, form the basis for an appeal by the prosecutors to the Swiss Federal Supreme Court against the acquittal last year of former private banker Rudolf Elmer on charges brought under the secrecy law. Elmer, who headed the Cayman Islands office of Swiss private bank Julius Baer until he was dismissed in 2002, later sent documents revealing alleged tax evasion to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks and to tax authorities across the globe. Zurich<63>s upper court ruled last year that the bank secrecy law did not apply to him as an employee of the Caribbean subsidiary, rather than of the parent bank in Zurich. In their appeal, the prosecutors argue that if they cannot apply the law to people connected to Swiss banks outside the country, this deprives banking secrecy of its substance <20>with far-reaching consequences that cannot be accepted<65>. Under Swiss law, no public hearing will be held but the documents show the Federal Supreme Court is considering the written appeal. On June 9, 2017, it invited Elmer<65>s side to make a written response, which his lawyer has since submitted. The court is expected to issue a written judgment next year. A spokeswoman for Zurich<63>s senior prosecutors declined to comment beyond noting: <20>It<49>s up to the supreme court to decide on open questions.<2E> Julius Baer also declined to comment. <20>DEFAMED, CRIMINALISED AND ISOLATED<45> Elmer was arrested twice in Switzerland, in 2005 and in 2011, and spent over seven months in investigative custody. <20>I was defamed, criminalised and isolated,<2C> he told Reuters, adding that the prosecutors were trying to set an example of what could happen to people who speak out and to their families. <20>The law in this case has been bent, stretched and, most importantly, abused by the judicial system of Zurich in order to protect its money-making machine.<2E> Switzerland is the world<6C>s largest centre for overseas wealth management and in recent years has responded to international pressure, especially from the European Union and United States, for greater transparency. This includes participation in the Automatic Exchange of Information programme, an agreement among developed economies which aims to ensure that offshore accounts are known to tax authorities in the account holders<72> country of residence. If the appeal is successful, the ruling would have no legal basis in most countries as they have no bank secrecy rules, so Switzerland could not extradite people from the likes of Britain or the United States on such charges. However, accused people would be vulnerable to arrest if they entered Switzerland or could face the stigma of being charged with a crime in their absence. JAIL TERM Former Swiss private banker Rudolf Elmer poses in front of a branch of Swiss Bank Julius Baer in Zurich, Switzerland October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann Some lawmakers in the EU are worried that the prosecu
'470cf251dda6cbdf69d461bc7824ef77d9944ec5'|'Apple could drop Qualcomm components in next year''s iPhones, iPads - sources'|'October 31, 2017 / 2:56 AM / in 37 minutes Apple could drop Qualcomm components in next year''s iPhones, iPads: sources Liana B. Baker , Stephen Nellis 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) has designed iPhones and iPads that would drop chips supplied by Qualcomm Inc ( QCOM.O ), according to two people familiar with the matter. FILE PHOTO: A man is reflected in a Apple store logo in San Francisco, California, U.S., August 21, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Coombs/File Photo The change would affect iPhones released in the fall of 2018, but Apple could still change course before then, these people said. They declined to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media. The dispute stems from a change in supply arrangements under which Qualcomm has stopped providing some software for Apple to test its chips in its iPhone designs, one of the people told Reuters. The two companies are locked in a multinational legal dispute over the Qualcomm<6D>s licensing terms to Apple. Qualcomm told Reuters it is providing fully tested chips to Apple for iPhones. <20>We are committed to supporting Apple<6C>s new devices consistent with our support of all others in the industry,<2C> Qualcomm said in a statement. FILE PHOTO: One of many Qualcomm buildings is shown in San Diego, California, U.S. on November 3, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo The Wall Street Journal first reported that Apple could drop Qualcomm chips Monday. Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon said Apple<6C>s move is not totally unexpected. Though Qualcomm has for several years supplied Apple<6C>s modems - which help Apple<6C>s phones connect to wireless data networks - Intel Corp ( INTC.O ) has provided upward of half of Apple<6C>s modem chips for iPhones in recent years, Rasgon said. Intel recently acquired a firm that would let it replace more of Qualcomm<6D>s chips in iPhones, Rasgon said. Rasgon said it<69>s too early to say definitively whether Apple fully intends to drop Qualcomm next year because Apple can likely make multiple contingency plans for different supplier scenarios. <20>Apple is big enough that they want to support multiple paths, they can do that,<2C> Rasgon said. <20>Samsung (Electronics Co ( 005930.KS )) did this too. A couple of years ago, Samsung designed Qualcomm out, but Qualcomm didn<64>t even know until it was close to time to ship<69> Samsung<6E>s phones, Rasgon said. Reporting by Stephen Nellis in Bengaluru and Liana B. Baker in San Francisco; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-apple-qualcomm-iphone/apple-could-drop-qualcomm-components-in-next-years-iphones-ipads-sources-idUKKBN1D0099'|'2017-10-31T04:56:00.000+02:00'
'7a6c02e930f89c5d6dda83ab17985d392b2d0c4f'|'Airbus third-quarter operating profit down four percent'|'October 31, 2017 / 7:22 AM / Updated 3 hours ago Airbus''s legal troubles grow as admits inaccurate U.S. arms filings Tim Hepher , Cyril Altmeyer 4 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus said on Tuesday it had uncovered inaccuracies in its filings to U.S. regulators over arms technology sales, drawing the United States for the first time into a scandal over alleged misconduct at Europe<70>s largest aerospace firm. The logo of Airbus is pictured on a scale model during the annual Airbus Commercial Press Briefing in Blagnac, Southwestern France, January 11, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/Files Airbus also warned about potentially significant fines resulting from existing bribery investigations in Britain and France over the use of middlemen in civil airplane sales, which have triggered a sweeping internal investigation. But it said it was too early to guess the size or timing of any European penalties, or the outcome of the new U.S. findings. Shares in the defence and civil aviation group rose more than four percent after it posted a smaller than expected drop in third-quarter profits despite jetliner delivery delays. However the gains were overshadowed by news that Airbus had itself unearthed inaccuracies in past filings to the State Department on defence technology exports. These involved inaccurate statements made by Airbus under a section of the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which governs the use of commissions and agents. Airbus said the flaws were first discovered during an audit at the end of 2016 and were confirmed in an internal follow-up review completed in the third quarter. Finance Director Harald Wilhelm said the European company had not disclosed any secrets about U.S. technology and that the issue was restricted to the use of sales agents and commissions, governed under part 130 of the ITAR rules. It is separate from investigations into the use of agents in commercial airplane sales, which are not subject to the same U.S. controls as weapons exports, but do have some U.S. restrictions over the use of advanced navigation technology. <20>This is about defence equipment and services related to it,<2C> Wilhelm told reporters. CO-OPERATION Wilhelm declined to say whether the latest disclosure could lead to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, which has so far stayed out of the European bribery probes. The logo of Airbus Group is seen on the company''s headquarters building in Toulouse, Southwestern France, April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/Files The DOJ shares jurisdiction for ITAR rules with the State Dept where criminal activity is suspected. A person familiar with the latest case said it involved inaccuracies over both names of agents and amounts paid. That echoes inaccuracies in applications for UK export aid which triggered the separate UK and French probes, but the now-disbanded headquarters team at the centre of those accusations was not involved in the U.S. ITAR process, sources said. Airbus hopes that by self-reporting and co-operating fully with the European probes it can qualify for a deal similar to a $680 million settlement granted to Rolls-Royce this year. Legal experts estimate Airbus faces fines in the billions because of the scale of suspect paperwork dating back years. The cost of legal advice and running its own investigations pushed up headquarters cost sharply in the third quarter. The world<6C>s second largest planemaker after Boeing, posted third-quarter core operating earnings of 697 million euros ($811 million), down 4 percent on lower plane deliveries. It took a further small charge for the troubled A400M military project and warned of further costs later this year. It reaffirmed its 2017 guidance but acknowledged it would miss an informal goal of 720 jet deliveries that was higher than the official target of 700. Airbus has given different written and verbal delivery targets for several quarters in a row. The shortfall is chiefly the result of engine delays fo
'46e17eea839b4177d5bbf77fbf482b8f4b2210b3'|'U.S. labour costs accelerate in third quarter as wages rise'|'October 31, 2017 / 12:40 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago U.S. labor costs accelerate in third quarter as wages rise Lucia Mutikani 3 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. labor costs accelerated in the third quarter, leading to the biggest year-on-year increase in 2-1/2 years and offering hope that wage growth was finally gaining momentum amid a tightening labor market. The Statue of Liberty in New York''s Harbor as seen from the Brooklyn borough of New York February 21, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid The Employment Cost Index, the broadest measure of labor costs, increased 0.7 percent amid gains in wages and benefits after an unrevised 0.5 percent rise in the second quarter, the Labor Department said on Tuesday. That lifted the year-on-year rate of increase to 2.5 percent, the largest gain since the first quarter of 2015. The dollar rose to a session high against a basket of currencies on the data. The third-quarter increase in the ECI was in line with economists<74> expectations. Wage growth has remained stubbornly modest even as the labor market is near full employment, with the jobless rate at a 16-1/2-year low of 4.2 percent. Economists say labor costs need to rise by at least 3 percent to push inflation closer to the U.S. central bank<6E>s 2 percent inflation target. Labor costs increased 2.4 percent in the year to June. Signs of a pickup in wage growth are likely to be welcomed by Federal Reserve officials, who are scheduled to begin a two-day policy meeting later on Tuesday. The U.S. central bank is unlikely to raise interest rates this week, but is expected to do so in December. It has raised rates twice this year. Steadily increasing wages offer hope that inflation could soon trend higher. A government report on Monday showed the Fed<65>s preferred inflation measure, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index excluding food and energy, increasing 1.3 percent in the 12 months through September. The core PCE has undershot the Fed<65>s 2 percent target for nearly 5-1/2 years. The ECI is widely viewed by policymakers and economists as one of the better measures of labor market slack. It is also considered a better predictor of core inflation. Wages and salaries, which account for 70 percent of employment costs, rose 0.7 percent in the third quarter. They increased 0.5 percent in the second quarter. Wages and salaries were up 2.5 percent in the 12 months through September. That followed a 2.3 percent gain in the year to June. Private industry wages rose 0.7 percent in the third quarter. They increased 2.6 percent in the 12 months through September. Wages in the manufacturing sector rose 0.8 percent in the third quarter, while construction wages increased 0.6 percent. Benefits for all workers increased 0.8 percent in the July-September quarter after rising 0.6 percent in the second quarter. They were up 2.4 percent in the 12 months through September. Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-costs/labor-costs-increase-0-7-percent-in-third-quarter-idUKKBN1D01O5'|'2017-10-31T15:24:00.000+02:00'
'373045eca8a4b7faff3200413f3cd57c64df933f'|'Munich Re''s Ergo starts sale of run-off life portfolios: Handelsblatt'|'FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Munich Re<52>s primary insurance arm Ergo is forging ahead with plans to sell the life insurance books of units Ergo Leben and Victoria Leben, Handelsblatt daily reported on Monday, citing two people familiar with the matter.The headquarters of insurer ERGO Group, a branch of Reinsurer Munich Re, is pictured in Duesseldorf, Germany April 19, 2016. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski <20>Management wants to collect non-binding bids in mid-November,<2C> the paper Quote: d the sources as saying.Ergo will decide based on those indicative offers whether to start negotiations to sell the roughly 6 million insurance policies, it said.A spokeswoman for Ergo declined to comment on the report.Ergo had said in September that it was considering options for the two life insurance units, which have ceased underwriting new business.Ergo and fellow insurers are struggling to pay guaranteed returns to clients because of record-low interest rates. Combined with more stringent European capital rules, these have prompted some to offload life insurance operations.Financial services groups specializing in the run-off of life insurance are vying for these portfolios. They acquire policies until their expiry and aim to turn a profit by measures such as cutting administrative costs.Reporting by Kathrin Jones; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-munich-re-group-ergo-divestiture/munich-res-ergo-starts-sale-of-run-off-life-portfolios-handelsblatt-idUSKBN1CZ0HO'|'2017-10-30T13:46:00.000+02:00'
'788906d860308929f09131a15d8113abd338d3d6'|'Novartis to buy cancer specialist AAA for $3.9 billion'|' 16 AM / in 7 minutes Novartis to buy cancer specialist AAA for $3.9 billion John Miller 4 Min Read ZURICH (Reuters) - Novartis ( NOVN.S ) is buying French-based Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA) ( AAAP.O ) for $3.9 billion (<28>2.96 billion), giving the Swiss drugmaker a platform in radiopharmaceuticals and access to a new therapy for the kind of cancer that killed Steve Jobs. Swiss drugmaker Novartis'' logo is seen at the company''s plant in the northern Swiss town of Stein, Switzerland October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann The cash offer of $41 per ordinary share and $82 per American depositary share represents a 47 percent premium to AAA<41>s price before media reports on Sept. 27 that Novartis was interested. The ADS closed on Friday at $72.91 and were priced at only $16 when they listed two years ago. Novartis said on Monday it would use debt to finance the deal, which would reap AAA founder and 11 percent owner Stefano Buono more than $420 million. The transaction fits Novartis Chief Executive Joe Jimenez<65>s strategy of pursuing bolt-on deals worth up to around $5 billion rather than seeking out larger targets. With AAA, Novartis gets technology that deploys trace amounts of radioactive compounds to not only create images of organs and lesions to diagnose diseases but which can also be used to fight cancer. AAA<41>s flagship product, Lutathera, won European Union backing in late September against rare gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumours, the likes of which killed Jobs, Apple<6C>s founder, in 2011. <20>Novartis has a strong legacy in the development and commercialisation of medicines for neuroendocrine tumours,<2C> said Bruno Strigini, head of Novartis Oncology. <20>With Lutathera we can build on this legacy.<2E> PEAK SALES Lutathera, which has also been submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, harnesses a molecule not only to diagnose cancer but also to deliver treatment by hitting tumours with high-energy electrons. In trials, it demonstrated a 79 percent risk reduction versus Novartis<69>s $1.6 billion-per-year drug Sandostatin against neuroendocrine tumours. Now, Novartis will likely replace patent-expired Sandostatin with its new drug, said Baader Helvea analyst Bruno Bulic. <20>We see the more sophisticated technology to Lutathera commanding a premium price to Sandostatin and estimate peak sales potential at $2 billion,<2C> Bulic wrote in a research note. Analysts from Vontobel said the $3.9 billion price <20>appears expensive<76> given AAA -- spun off from Europe<70>s physics research centre CERN 15 years ago and listed on Nasdaq -- had sales of just $78 million in the first half of 2017. Novartis shares were little changed at 0915 GMT. AAA founder Buono said the deal with the world<6C>s biggest maker of prescription drugs would not only support Lutathera<72>s launch but also accelerate development of its other therapies. The Italian-born former CERN physicist steadily took on investors and built up manufacturing capacity while making small acquisitions. AAA went public in a 2015 IPO. Its other biggest shareholders are Fidelity with 9.1 percent and HBM Healthcare Investments ( HBMN.S ) run by former Roche ( ROG.S ) finance chief Henri B. Meier. PJT Partners served as financial adviser and Shearman & Sterling as legal adviser for Novartis. Jefferies LLC was financial adviser to AAA, with Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP serving as legal counsel. Editing by Michael Shields and Keith Weir'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-novartis-advanced-accelerator/novartis-to-buy-cancer-specialist-aaa-for-3-9-billion-idUKKBN1CZ10F'|'2017-10-30T12:16:00.000+02:00'
'4a2dee2dac67234a2d01dc601b609f582dad33b1'|'A black-rights group warns would-be passengers about American Airlines - Discrimination in the skies?'|'TRAVEL advisory notices, which alert passengers to the risks of going to certain places, are standard business for frequent flyers. But last week brought an unusual one. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), America<63>s oldest civil-rights organisation, warned black flyers about the dangers of travelling with American Airlines.The NAACP says that <20>a pattern of disturbing incidents<74> has been reported by black passengers specifically about American Airlines. Such incidents <20>suggest a corporate culture of racial insensitivity and possible racial bias<61>. Of the four incidents that the NAACP cite, two involved prominent black activists, PR Lockhart notes at Vox , a news site. Although the NAACP does not mention them by name, one is thought to be Rev William Barber, a former NAACP leader in North Carolina. He was removed from a flight from Washington, DC, after he responded to rude comments from two white passengers. The other is Tamika Mallory, a co-chair of the Women<65>s March movement, who was taken off a flight because of a seat assignment dispute.  an hour   13   17   American Airlines are remaining tight-lipped on the issue. When asked to comment, the carrier<65>s press office referred Gulliver to a statement from Doug Parker, the chief executive. Mr Parker notes his disappointment with the issuance of the warning but said that they have contacted the NAACP about it. Both parties have said they were looking forward to meeting and discussing the issue.This is the second recent advisory notice from the NAACP. This summer the group issued one such warning about the state of Missouri<72>the first time it had done so for an entire state<74>due to suspected racial bias during traffic stops and other evidence of discrimination. In 2014, the shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked national protests and helped launch the Black Lives Matter movement. (The Department of Justice later concluded that the officer acted in self-defence.) The explosion of black activism that followed somewhat marginalised the NAACP, which for decades was the most-prominent group advocating for African-Americans. Ms Lockhart argues that the advisory notices may be part of the organisation<6F>s attempts to regain relevance.But for black travellers, the advisory notice serves a different purpose. Like in any industry, passengers are inclined to shy away from companies with a poor reputations. And if American fails to respond to these incidents and the advisory notice in a way that black people find satisfactory, it could easily lose customers. Moreover, airlines will not want to alienate African-Americans, if not for reasons of basic morality, then for economic ones. Spending by that group has been growing faster than that of the overall population and is expected to continue to do so.Nevertheless, the carrier should hardly need that type of justification. If, as Mr Parker says, American truly does not tolerate any sort of discrimination, then it should be able to stamp out these kinds of incidents. Discrimination will not be going away anytime soon. But airlines can do their part to ensure that the issue is treated the seriously, and to reassure flyers, by acting decisively to redress any wrongdoing.Next Military and civil-aviation bosses are stepping up their efforts to recruit new pilots'|'economist.com'|'http://www.economist.com/sections/business-finance/rss.xml'|'https://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/10/discrimination-skies?fsrc=rss'|'2017-10-30T23:11:00.000+02:00'
'924b0c14a0f54d1e890825d47ed8ba3dcdec2ac8'|'Japan''s Kirin cashes out of Amgen drug joint venture'|'October 31, 2017 / 9:02 AM / in 6 hours Japan''s Kirin cashes out of Amgen drug joint venture Reuters Staff 2 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Kirin Holdings Co Ltd ( 2503.T ) said on Tuesday it would sell its share in a pharmaceutical research joint venture with California-based drugmaker Amgen Inc ( AMGN.O ) for $780 million. FILE PHOTO: An Amgen sign is seen at the company''s office in South San Francisco, California October 21, 2013. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith/File Photo The joint venture, Kirin-Amgen, will buy the Japanese firm<72>s 50 percent stake and will make further payments to Kirin for certain sales, the Japanese firm said in a statement, adding that the companies saw their collaboration as complete. Established in 1984 to fund the development of the kidney disease drug Epogen, the joint venture<72>s scope grew to include, among others, the white blood cell-boosting drugs Neupogen and Neulasta, used during chemotherapy treatment, Amgen said in a separate statement. Amgen will own product rights and the remaining cash held by the joint venture as the sole shareholder of the joint venture, the companies said. The venture<72>s licensing agreements in certain Asian countries with Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co Ltd ( 4151.T ), Kirin<69>s pharmaceutical unit, will remain in place. Kirin, known primarily as a brewer, said its pharmaceuticals and bio-chemicals business would remain core to the company and would not be affected by the termination of the joint venture agreement. It said the financial impact would be insignificant. The transaction is expected to close during either the fourth quarter of 2017 or the first quarter of 2018, Amgen said. Goldman Sachs & Co LLC is acting as the exclusive financial advisor to Amgen on the deal. Reporting by Thomas Wilson; Editing by Christopher Cushing '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-amgen-kirin-m-a/japans-kirin-cashes-out-of-amgen-drug-joint-venture-idINKBN1D00YP'|'2017-10-31T06:02:00.000+02:00'
'eda15905c46572c8c47ccb56a3471be29546f07e'|'Ad giant WPP lowers full-year expectations again'|'Mo Farah splits with coach Salazar, moving back to London Lifestyle From trick to treat - Britain finally embraces Halloween Ryanair says on target for record annual profit Reuters TV United States  11 AM / in 2 minutes Ad giant WPP lowers full-year expectations again Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - WPP ( WPP.L ), the world<6C>s biggest advertising company battling a slowdown in client spending, lowered expectations for full-year organic net sales and profit margin on Tuesday, two months after an earlier downgrade sent shockwaves through the industry. Sir Martin Sorrell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of advertising company WPP, attends a conference at the Cannes Lions Festival in Cannes, France, June 23, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard Led by the high-profile British businessman Martin Sorrell, WPP said it had suffered in North America from the loss of two big accounts, VW and AT&T, and from the fall in spending from consumer goods groups such as Unilever and Procter & Gamble. WPP sent shares sliding through the industry in August when it cut its full-year net sales forecast. Since then rivals Publicis ( PUBP.PA ) and Interpublic ( IPG.N ) have reported weak results and warned about the challenges in the industry. The multiple pressures mean WPP is facing its weakest underlying revenue growth since the financial crash in 2009, and its shares were down almost 30 percent this year, before Tuesday<61>s update. The group said it now expected like-for-like net sales growth to come in flat, compared with a previous forecast range of 0 to 1 percent. The headline net sales operating margin was also now expected to be flat, compared with a previous forecast of a 0.3 margin point improvement. <20>Geographically, like-for-like revenue growth in the third quarter was stronger in the United Kingdom, with all other regions, particularly North America, slipping back,<2C> it said. WPP said its main trading measurement, like-for-like net sales, fell by 1.1 percent in the third quarter, an improvement on the 1.7 percent drop recorded in the second-quarter and a market expectation of a 1.4 percent fall. Net sales fell by 4.9 percent in North America. Reporting by Kate Holton, Editing by Paul Sandle, editing by Louise Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-wpp-results/ad-giant-wpp-lowers-full-year-expectations-again-idUKKBN1D00N9'|'2017-10-31T09:23:00.000+02:00'
'd4512798d4abad78ff0153b24590b201a5617dfb'|'Australia''s Woolworths says first quarter sales up 3.7 percent'|'October 30, 2017 / 10:07 PM / in 12 minutes Australia''s Woolworths says first quarter sales up 3.7 percent Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Australian grocery giant Woolworths Ltd ( WOW.AX ) said on Tuesday first quarter sales rose 3.7 percent, helped by a sharp rise in Australian food sales. FILE PHOTO - Shoppers walk into a Woolworths supermarket in Sydney, Australia August 22, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Reed Total sales from continuing operations came in at A$14.52 billion (8.45 billion pounds) for the 14 weeks to Oct. 1, up from A$14.01 billion a year ago. Australian food sales rose 4.9 percent on a comparable store basis, the company said in statement. Reporting By Rushil Dutta in Bengaluru; Editing by Byron Kaye and Chris Reese'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-woolworths-results/australias-woolworths-says-first-quarter-sales-up-3-7-percent-idUKKBN1CZ2OS'|'2017-10-31T00:06:00.000+02:00'
'bd011defaadd89a3bf73e69e5af5fea048e81268'|'Buy signal blares for cell-tower stocks in 2017'|'October 31, 2017 / 8:45 PM / Updated 8 minutes ago Buy signal blares for cell-tower stocks in 2017 Lewis Krauskopf 3 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - A hitch in a proposed merger of U.S. wireless carriers Sprint Corp ( S.N ) and T-Mobile US ( TMUS.O ) has further boosted buoyant shares of cell tower stocks, which could benefit if there is no combined company to cut costs by reducing tower usage. Smartphones with the logos of T-Mobile and Sprint are seen in front of a Soft Bank logo in this illustration taken September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustrations Shares of American Tower Corp ( AMT.N ), Crown Castle International Corp ( CCI.N ) and SBA Communications Corp ( SBAC.O ) all closed up more than 2 percent on Monday. Reuters on Monday reported that SoftBank Group Corp ( 9984.T ) and Deutsche Telekom AG ( DTEGn.DE ) have reached an impasse in their talks to merge Sprint and T-Mobile. Shares climbed further Tuesday after earnings reports from SBA and American Tower. Investors had bid up shares of cell-tower stocks on news of the deal<61>s chances dwindling because the combined wireless company would have been expected to cut costs by reducing the number of cell-tower sites, said Nick Del Deo, analyst at MoffettNathanson Research. <20>The market interpreted the lower odds of a deal as being positive for towers because of lower risk of cell site decommissionings,<2C> Del Deo said. <20>They would decommission tens of thousands of cell sites if they were to get together.<2E> Cell-tower stocks already were surging in 2017: Crown Castle shares have climbed 23 percent, American Tower has soared 36 percent, while SBA Communications has minted a gain of more than 50 percent. This contrasts sharply with the dour performance of telecommunications shares such as Verizon ( VZ.N ), down 10 percent, and AT&T ( T.N ), which has fallen 20 percent this year, amid concerns about fierce competition. Cell-tower growth prospects have improved as carriers seek to deploy more spectrum bands to improve their networks, which would require more hardware to be built on the towers, says RBC Capital Markets analyst Jonathan Atkin. <20>Towers are more a play on wireless network spending, they<65>re not a play on carriers themselves,<2C> Atkin said. The cell-tower stocks struggled in the wake of the U.S. election of President Donald Trump last November. For example, expectations that Trump<6D>s agenda would lead to higher inflation weighed because the cell-tower companies operate under long-term contracts, Del Deo said, but such concerns have faded somewhat. The fear was <20>if inflation went up a whole bunch they wouldn<64>t be able to reprice their contracts for a long period of time,<2C> Del Deo said. The stocks continued their runs on Tuesday following results from SBA and American Tower. SBA shares gained 4.7 percent, while American Tower and Crown Castle both rose less than 1 percent apiece. Editing by David Gregorio'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-telecoms-stocks/buy-signal-blares-for-cell-tower-stocks-in-2017-idUSKBN1D02VD'|'2017-10-31T22:44:00.000+02:00'
'f0061f921bc51371673af10109d8a010fb223f3b'|'Nationwide to pass on interest rate rise to mortgage customers - Money - The Guardian'|'Nationwide has paved the way for an across-the-board increase in mortgage costs by announcing that a 0.25% interest rate rise would be passed on in full to its 600,000-plus variable-rate home loan customers.The building society said that if, as is widely expected , the Bank of England lifts the base rate by 0.25% to 0.5% on Thursday, it would increase both of its variable rates by 0.25%.That would add <20>22 a month to the monthly mortgage bill for someone with a <20>175,000 mortgage, or <20>51 a month for a customer with a <20>400,000 home loan, assuming they are on Nationwide<64>s <20>base mortgage rate<74> and have a 25-year term.There are as many as 5 million people on variable-rate mortgages in the UK. Responding to the announcement, Peter Gettins, product manager at mortgage broker London & Country, said: <20>The prospect of variable rates increasing from here is now looking more and more likely.<2E>However, some mortgage customers may end up escaping a rate rise. Several mortgage experts said it was possible some lenders may decide to absorb some or all of any base rate rise rather than pass it on to their variable-rate customers, in order to encourage these people to stay.Nationwide<64>s decision to outline in advance its response to any decision by the Bank of England is likely to add to the sense of inevitability that many people feel about Thursday<61>s monetary policy committee meeting. An upwards move would draw to a close the longest period in living memory without an interest rate rise, with the last in July 2007, when rates increased to 5.75%.Gettins said: <20>Anyone who is sat on a variable rate really ought to have a look around and see what else is available.<2E>Ray Boulger, senior mortgage technical manager at broker firm John Charcol, said the majority of lenders cut their variable mortgage rates by 0.25% following the August 2016 quarter-point base rate reduction . <20>I would expect most lenders to put their standard variable rates up by a quarter-point this time [assuming there is a 0.25% increase this week],<2C> he added.Across the country, more than half of all homeowners are on fixed-rate mortgage deals. Around 40% to 45% would be immediately affected by a rate rise.Brian Murphy, head of lending at the broker Mortgage Advice Bureau, said: <20>The announcement by Nationwide today, who are one of the UK<55>s biggest mortgage lenders, isn<73>t a surprise and is highly likely to be the route that other banks and building societies will follow when it comes to repricing their products in the event that a rate rise does occur.<2E>Some banks and building societies that have standard variable rates significantly higher than average may absorb the rate increase themselves, rather than pass on the additional cost to customers, said Murphy. That is because an increase in monthly payments will prompt some customers to quit in search of a more competitive deal elsewhere.Boulger said Santander would be <20>an interesting one to watch<63> because, at 4.49%, its standard variable rate was higher than that of many of its peers. Meanwhile, some of the smaller building societies have standard rates above 5% and may not feel the need to increase these in the event of an upwards move this week, he added.Nationwide said it had decided to provide advance notice of its intentions in order to <20>give clarity<74> to its members. It said both its variable rates would remain competitive at 2.5% and 3.99%, assuming a 0.25% rise. It has also taken the opportunity to cut some of its new fixed rates by up to 0.5% - putting it at odds with many rivals which have hiked the cost of their fixed-rate home loans in recent weeks.The society added that if the base rate were to rise to 0.5% on Thursday, it would pass on the full benefit of this increase to the majority of its savers.Topics Mortgage rates Mortgages Property Banks and building societies Nationwide Interest rates news'|'theguardian.com'|'http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/business/uk-edition/rss'|'http
'a31eef8e586f631d66eb77444b96f230c5577cf6'|'Good news for overburdened small banks if Powell picked for Fed chair'|'October 31, 2017 / 6:05 PM / Updated 3 hours ago Good news for overburdened small banks if Powell picked for Fed chair Michelle Price , Pete Schroeder 5 Min Read WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jerome Powell<6C>s nomination by President Donald Trump to serve as the next head of the U.S. Federal Reserve, if announced later this week, could be a boon for smaller lenders given his desire as a current Fed board governor to focus on bank size when reviewing rules introduced after the 2008 crisis. FILE PHOTO: Jerome H. Powell, a governor on the board of the Federal Reserve System, prepares to testify to the Senate Banking Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 22, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo Powell is seen as the favourite among five candidates with current Fed chair Janet Yellen<65>s term due to expire in February 2018, and an announcement is possible on Thursday this week. Trump is choosing from a slate of candidates ranging from Yellen, an economist who is seen as the most cautious on changing the so-called Dodd Frank banking reforms of 2010, to economist John Taylor, a proponent of deregulation. Trump has pledged to deregulate the financial sector to boost economic growth, but the industry has had to wait for several key federal agency appointments. The chairmanship of the Fed is widely seen as one of the most important of these positions, due to the central bank<6E>s extensive banking oversight role. If picked, Powell, who is a lawyer and former investment banker, rather than an economist, will bring to the job both knowledge of the financial industry and a stated desire to lighten the regulatory load, especially on smaller banks. Powell, who has been a Federal Reserve board governor since 2012, played a key role in drafting new bank regulations after the 2008 crisis and will likely offer more continuity for Wall Street than other candidates, analysts said. However, as Fed chair he would be freer to pursue his stated agenda of adjusting or eliminating some rules that he sees as redundant or inefficient. John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo, said Powell<6C>s experience at the Fed equipped him to manoeuvre the institution through a difficult period, adding: <20>As an attorney, he can probably look critically at a lot of regulations that have emerged.<2E> Handed broad new powers by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, the Fed plays a leading role in the oversight of the biggest financial institutions in the world, including overseeing annual bank <20>stress tests<74> and monitoring any non-banks deemed critical to the financial system. The Fed has recently begun to review how it wields its newly-acquired powers to potentially offer some regulatory relief, given the crisis is now ten years ago. Powell has been at the heart of this debate. <20>There was always going to be a time when we would look back and say all this innovative new regulation..is it done right?<3F> Powell, 64, said at a Reuters event this month. <20>Can we achieve this safety and soundness objective, this stability objective, at a lower cost to consumers and financial institutions, can we do it more efficiently, what parts of it are essential, what parts of it are redundant?<3F> Speaking during the same Reuters event, Powell said higher capital and liquidity requirements, and stress tests to show how a bank could handle market shocks, along with so-called <20>living wills<6C> outlining how a bank can be unwound, have made the financial system safer and must be preserved. But his top priority, he continued, is to ensure the rules are better <20>tailored<65> to the institution concerned, and that smaller banks should enjoy a lighter touch. In particular, Powell has said that the so-called <20>Volcker Rule<6C> banning banks from proprietary trading is not appropriate for smaller banks who pose less systemic risk and should be re-written to include a narrower range of institutions. The Fed governor is also open to improving the transparency of the stress-testing process an
'7ace2b7fdcac05e316bd747299be739d6dacd8ca'|'Futures higher with earnings, Fed in focus'|'October 31, 2017 / 11:31 AM / Updated an hour ago Wall St. ends strong October higher as tech, staples lead Lewis Krauskopf 5 Min Read (Reuters) - A jump in shares of consumer companies Mondelez and Kellogg after their quarterly reports on Tuesday, along with further gains for tech stocks, helped Wall Street end October on a positive note. FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., August 16, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo The three major indexes tallied their best monthly gains since February. Mondelez ( MDLZ.O ) jumped 5.4 percent after the Oreo cookie maker reported better-than-expected profit and revenue, while Kellogg ( K.N ) surged 6.2 percent following its first sales increase in more than two years. Those stocks boosted the S&P consumer staples sector .SPLRCS, which rose 0.8 percent to lead all major groups. Apple ( AAPL.O ) rose 1.4 percent to a record high after positive reviews of its much-anticipated iPhone X. The stock provided the biggest boost to all the three major indexes. The tech sector .SPLRCT climbed 0.4 percent, building on gains following a batch of strong quarterly reports last week. <20>You look at the earnings out of these big players and they continue to impress,<2C> said Steve Chiavarone, portfolio manager with Federated Investors in New York. <20>It strikes me that that leads you to a much more bullish outlook for the fourth quarter.<2E> The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 28.5 points, or 0.12 percent, to 23,377.24, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 2.43 points, or 0.09 percent, to 2,575.26 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 28.71 points, or 0.43 percent, to 6,727.67. Investors are also awaiting an announcement on the next Federal Reserve chair, which could come this week. President Donald Trump is likely to pick Fed Governor Jerome Powell, who is seen as more dovish on interest rates and thus relatively stock market friendly, sources have told Reuters. The Fed started its two-day meeting in Washington on Tuesday, although the central bank is widely expected to leave interest rates unchanged in its statement on Wednesday. <20>The macro data is getting better, the market is prepared for Jerome Powell, the market is also prepared for Friday<61>s payrolls. I also think the market is ready for what the (Fed) says tomorrow,<2C> said Ken Polcari, director of the NYSE floor division at O<>Neil Securities in New York. <20>I don<6F>t think there is anything out there that could derail the market from a point of view it doesn<73>t already expect.<2E> Market-watchers are also tracking developments of the tax-cut plan being developed by Trump and fellow Republicans. Third-quarter earnings in general have come in modestly above expectations. With more than half the S&P 500 components reported, earnings are estimated to have climbed 7 percent in the quarter, up from an expectation of 5.9 percent growth at the start of October, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. <20>We continue to see better-than-expected economic numbers and corporate earnings,<2C> said Peter Jankovskis, co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments in Lisle, Illinois. <20>I think fundamentally investors are really focused on those numbers more than the political noise, if you will, in the background.<2E> But not all reports have earned a positive stock reaction. Pfizer ( PFE.N ) shares slipped 0.3 percent after the drugmaker<65>s results. Under Armour ( UAA.N ) slumped 23.7 percent after the sportswear company slashed 2017 forecasts. Qualcomm ( QCOM.O ) shares plunged 6.7 percent and were the biggest drag on the S&P and the Nasdaq on news that Apple has designed iPhones and iPads that would drop its chips, according to two people familiar with the matter. Shares of chipmaker Intel ( INTC.O ) rose 2.5 percent. Rockwell Automation ( ROK.N ) shares jumped 7.4 percent. The automation equipment maker said it had rejected an unsolicited acquisition bid from rival Emerson Electric ( EMR.N ) for more than $27 billion. Emerson shares fel
'1ecebf416615f819669b6e76972b6741f43bcc81'|'CANADA STOCKS-TSX higher shortly after open; Shopify falls sharply'|'October 31, 2017 / 1:50 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago CANADA STOCKS-TSX higher shortly after open; Shopify falls sharply Reuters Staff 1 Min Read TORONTO, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Canada<64>s main stock index rose on Tuesday as financial stocks kept the index in positive territory despite a hefty decline in Shopify Inc shares and weaker resource stocks. The Toronto Stock Exchange<67>s S&P/TSX composite index was up 13.09 points, or 0.08 percent, at 16,015.87 shortly after the open. Six of the index<65>s 10 key sectors rose, but information technology fell 0.9 percent on Shopify, which was down 7.8 percent. (Reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/canada-stocks-open/canada-stocks-tsx-higher-shortly-after-open-shopify-falls-sharply-idUSL2N1N60W6'|'2017-10-31T15:47:00.000+02:00'
'a43f98be0c60351909ed89e4358d06721da3b9c6'|'Mastercard''s quarterly profit rises 21 percent'|'October 31, 2017 / 12:09 PM / Updated 38 minutes ago Mastercard''s profit rises on higher consumer spending Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Mastercard Inc ( MA.N ) posted a quarterly profit on Tuesday that was higher than Wall Street<65>s expectations, fuelled by increased consumer spending globally and maintaining market share over other payment channels. A Mastercard logo is seen on a credit card in this picture illustration August 30, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration The total value of transactions processed world wide, known as <20>gross dollar volume<6D>, rose 11 percent to $1.35 trillion (<28>1.02 trillion). Mastercard, which has a large international business, got a big boost from consumer spending outside the United States, with its cross-border volumes <20> the value of transactions made by overseas card-holders <20> rising 15.1 percent on a local currency basis. Total operating expenses rose 20.4 percent to $1.46 billion on costs partly related to buying digital payments company Vocalink. Shares rose 1.4 percent to $151 in premarket trading. Net income rose to $1.43 billion or $1.34 per share in the third quarter ended Sept 30, from $1.18 billion or $1.08 per share. mstr.cd/2gYxlhy Analysts on average were looking for $1.23 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Net revenue rose 18 percent to $3.40 billion. Mastercard<72>s bigger rival Visa Inc ( V.N ) posted a rise in quarterly profit that beat estimates, fuelled by higher spending. Reporting By Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mastercard-results/mastercards-quarterly-profit-rises-21-percent-idUKKBN1D01KA'|'2017-10-31T14:16:00.000+02:00'
'2c2c7a702c6348bdbf1ebe5d7b7ece48ef297a96'|'Buy signal blares for cell-tower stocks in 2017'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - A hitch in a proposed merger of U.S. wireless carriers Sprint Corp ( S.N ) and T-Mobile US ( TMUS.O ) has further boosted buoyant shares of cell tower stocks, which could benefit if there is no combined company to cut costs by reducing tower usage.A Sprint sign is seen on top of a Sprint retail store in Manhattan, New York, U.S., September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky Shares of American Tower Corp ( AMT.N ), Crown Castle International Corp ( CCI.N ) and SBA Communications Corp ( SBAC.O ) all closed up more than 2 percent on Monday. Reuters on Monday reported that SoftBank Group Corp ( 9984.T ) and Deutsche Telekom AG ( DTEGn.DE ) have reached an impasse in their talks to merge Sprint and T-Mobile.Shares climbed further Tuesday after earnings reports from SBA and American Tower.Investors had bid up shares of cell-tower stocks on news of the deal<61>s chances dwindling because the combined wireless company would have been expected to cut costs by reducing the number of cell-tower sites, said Nick Del Deo, analyst at MoffettNathanson Research.<2E>The market interpreted the lower odds of a deal as being positive for towers because of lower risk of cell site decommissionings,<2C> Del Deo said. <20>They would decommission tens of thousands of cell sites if they were to get together.<2E>Cell-tower stocks already were surging in 2017: Crown Castle shares have climbed 23 percent, American Tower has soared 36 percent, while SBA Communications has minted a gain of more than 50 percent.This contrasts sharply with the dour performance of telecommunications shares such as Verizon ( VZ.N ), down 10 percent, and AT&T ( T.N ), which has fallen 20 percent this year, amid concerns about fierce competition.Cell-tower growth prospects have improved as carriers seek to deploy more spectrum bands to improve their networks, which would require more hardware to be built on the towers, says RBC Capital Markets analyst Jonathan Atkin.<2E>Towers are more a play on wireless network spending, they<65>re not a play on carriers themselves,<2C> Atkin said.The cell-tower stocks struggled in the wake of the U.S. election of President Donald Trump last November. For example, expectations that Trump<6D>s agenda would lead to higher inflation weighed because the cell-tower companies operate under long-term contracts, Del Deo said, but such concerns have faded somewhat.The fear was <20>if inflation went up a whole bunch they wouldn<64>t be able to reprice their contracts for a long period of time,<2C> Del Deo said.The stocks continued their runs on Tuesday following results from SBA and American Tower. SBA shares gained 4.7 percent, while American Tower and Crown Castle both rose less than 1 percent apiece.Editing by David Gregorio '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-usa-telecoms-stocks/buy-signal-blares-for-cell-tower-stocks-in-2017-idINKBN1D02VD'|'2017-10-31T17:47:00.000+02:00'
'278fe25cdc2c0a7f5378cc1ec981b77a3f2ec0ff'|'CEE MARKETS-Zloty firms as inflation data leaves rate hike expectations intact'|'* Polish Oct annual CPI drops to 2.1 pct as expected * Polish FRAs price in interest rate hike in 12 months * Hungarian central bank launches quoting for six-month BUBOR * Figures show foreigners further boosted Czech bond holdings (Recasts with Polish inflation figures, rise of Czech stock index) By Sandor Peto and Anna Wlodarczak BUDAPEST/WARSAW, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Poland''s zloty firmed on Tuesday after figures showing annual inflation dropped slightly in October from a five-year high as forecast left expectations the central bank will raise interest rates next year intact. Inflation dropped to 2.1 percent from September''s 2.2 percent, the highest reading since 2012. The zloty firmed 0.1 percent to 4.244 against the euro. Forward rate agreements show investors are pricing in a 25 basis point hike in the Polish central bank''s key rate -- currently 1.5 percent -- within 12 months. Tuesday''s inflation figures did not change those expectations, said Grzegorz Maliszewski, senior economist at Bank Millennium. "In (the) mid term, inflation will accelerate due to demand factors and base effects, so we maintain the scenario of rate hike in the second half of next year," he said. The Czech crown also firmed slightly, to 25.657 against the euro. A Reuters poll showed analysts expect the Czech central bank, which began raising interest rates in August, to lift its 0.25 percent two-week repo rate again on Thursday. All but one of 16 analysts said they expected a 25 basis point hike, and one forecast 50 basis points. Government figures on Tuesday showed foreign investors nearly doubled their Czech domestic government bond holdings in September compared to a year earlier, increasing the risk of a sell-off if investors no longer expect the crown to strengthen. Analysts at Raiffeisen turned their "sell" recommendation for Czech bonds into a "hold", saying the rise in Czech yields had created a decent premium over yields on German Bunds. Recent comments from the European Central Bank signalled Bund yields -- the benchmark for the euro zone -- could stay "at depressed levels for longer", they said. In contrast to the Polish and Czech central banks, Hungary''s loosening of its monetary policy was further underpinned by its announcement on Tuesday to extend mandatory quotation to the six-month BUBOR interbank rates <BUBOR). "It can push the rate lower by a few basis points (from 0.07 percent)," one Budapest-based trader said, adding that the bank would need further measures to meet its goal to push long-term yields lower. The forint eased 0.1 percent to 311.55 against the euro. In equities markets, Prague''s main index reached its highest level in more than six years, mainly driven by a 2 percent rise in the shares of CEZ to a two-year high. The state-controlled electricity producer said it sold its power plant in Varna to Bulgaria''s SIGDA OOD. CEE MARKETS SNAPSH AT 1455 CET OT CURRENCIES Latest Previo Daily Change us bid close change in 2017 Czech crown 25.657 25.666 +0.04 5.26% 0 0 % Hungary 311.55 311.28 -0.09% -0.88% forint 00 00 Polish zloty 4.2440 4.2473 +0.08 3.77% % Romanian leu 4.6010 4.5983 -0.06% -1.43% Croatian 7.5230 7.5225 -0.01% 0.43% kuna Serbian 119.15 119.32 +0.14 3.52% dinar 00 00 % Note: daily calculated previo close 1800 change from us at CET STOCKS Latest Previo Daily Change us close change in 2017 Prague 1065.5 1064.0 +0.15 +15.6 8 0 % 2% Budapest 39821. 39881. -0.15% +24.4 47 22 3% Warsaw 2518.5 2517.0 +0.06 +29.2 5 3 % 9% Bucharest 7818.1 7845.5 -0.35% +10.3 8 1 5% Ljubljana 796.92 796.53 +0.05 +11.0 % 6% Zagreb 1881.0 1881.0 +0.00 -5.71% 1 1 % Belgrade 730.72 726.16 +0.63 +1.86 % % Sofia 670.66 669.99 +0.10 +14.3 % 6% BONDS Yield Yield Spread Daily (bid) change vs change Bund in Czech spread Republic 2-year 0.404 0.108 +115b +10bp ps s 5-year 0.723 -0.036 +106b -6bps ps 10-year 1.568 -0.045 +119b -6bps ps Poland 2-year 1.611 -0.004 +236b -2bps ps 5-year 2.662 -0.009 +300b -3bps ps 10-y
'a2db9999d36c817c26e2f26241ff734db329dc33'|'Clariant CEO calls independent review ''premature'' amid shareholder row'|'October 31, 2017 / 11:27 AM / Updated 8 hours ago Clariant CEO calls independent review ''premature'' amid shareholder row John Miller , Oliver Hirt 4 Min Read ZURICH (Reuters) - Clariant ( CLN.S ) Chief Executive Hariolf Kottmann said it would be <20>premature<72> to do an outside strategy review, a key demand of activist shareholders who derailed the Swiss chemical maker<65>s planned $20 billion merger with U.S.-based Huntsman HUN.S. FILE PHOTO: CEO Hariolf Kottmann of Swiss chemical company Clariant addresses a news conference in Zurich, Switzerland May 22, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann The combination was abandoned on Friday after White Tale, the investment vehicle of hedge fund manager Keith Meister and New York-based fund 40 North, raised its Clariant stake above 20 percent. White Tale upped the ante on Monday, demanding three Clariant board seats and an independent strategy review. Kottmann told Reuters in an interview he does not <20>exclude anything<6E>, but said Meister and 40 North<74>s David Winter and David Millstone should first participate in a workshop to learn what led Clariant to propose its Huntsman marriage before demanding a second opinion. <20>Not knowing the company, not knowing the business of the company, not knowing the strategy of the company, and everything that has happened in the last years, and then making the proposal that we need an independent investment bank for the credibility of the management, I think that<61>s a bit premature,<2C> Kottmann said, adding White Tale<6C>s principals have, so far, declined offers for workshops. Clariant<6E>s board will meet <20>in the next days<79> via teleconference to discuss White Tale<6C>s proposals, he said, including demands for three board seats. Clariant currently has ten members on its board, which can be increased to 12. <20>Let me talk to my board of directors. I do not want to make a pre-decision<6F> about director posts, said Kottmann, a board member. White Tale has suggested Clariant consider selling its lower-growth, lower-margin plastics and coatings business to reinvest elsewhere, although it pledged on Monday to reserve final judgment pending an independent review. On Tuesday, Clariant reported third-quarter sales and operating profit that beat expectations, a result Chief Financial Officer Patrick Jany said re-affirms the company<6E>s portfolio choices. <20>This is the best Q3 in more than 10 years,<2C> Jany told Reuters. <20>We look forward to a continuation of our performance in 2018.<2E> White Tale declined to comment. The results, however robust, are overshadowed by uncertainty about Clariant<6E>s fate, analysts said. <20>There will be no quick solution,<2C> said Markus Mayer, a Baader Helvea analyst, adding <20>there might be further upside mid-term in a takeover scenario.<2E> Two years ago, German peer Evonik ( EVKn.DE ) held talks with buyout group CVC CVC.UL over a potential joint offer for Clariant. Nothing materialized, and Kottmann said a rising share price -- Clariant is up 80 percent from less than 14 francs per share in 2015 -- makes such a deal less likely. The shares were 0.2 percent higher at 24.72 Swiss francs at 1000 GMT. <20>Where is the logic now to wait until we are at 27, 29 or 30 francs per share?<3F> Kottmann said. Clariant was sticking with Goldman Sachs ( GS.N ), hired amid its merger fight, as it seeks to anticipate White Tale<6C>s next move. <20>The hiring of Goldman Sachs was really to help us understand the thinking of activist shareholders,<2C> Jany said. <20>That is going on still.<2E> Editing by Michael Shields '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-clariant-white-tale/clariant-ceo-calls-independent-review-premature-amid-shareholder-row-idUSKBN1D01F2'|'2017-10-31T13:26:00.000+02:00'
'ba1413266bdc25b4006d5d70fe766729ae583ea3'|'Milan judge expected to decide on Eni, Shell indictment over Nigeria on December 20 - source'|'October 31, 2017 / 2:39 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago Milan judge expected to decide on Eni, Shell indictment over Nigeria on December 20 - source Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MILAN (Reuters) - A Milan judge is expected to decide on whether to send oil majors Eni ( ENI.MI ) and Shell ( RDSa.L ) to trial over alleged corruption in Nigeria on December 20, two legal sources said on Tuesday. FILE PHOTO: Eni''s logo is seen in front of its headquarters in San Donato Milanese, near Milan, Italy, April 27, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini/File Photo Milan prosecutors have asked for the two companies and some of their managers, including current Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi, to be indicted in a case that revolves around the purchase of a Nigerian oilfield for about $1.3 billion (<28>981.3 million). The Italian inquiry is one of several under way into the acquisition by the two companies of the OPL-245 field, including current cases in Holland and Nigeria. Reporting by Emilio Parodi, writing by Stephen Jewkes'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eni-shell-nigeria-probe/milan-judge-expected-to-decide-on-eni-shell-indictment-over-nigeria-on-december-20-source-idUKKBN1D01Z8'|'2017-10-31T16:38:00.000+02:00'
'a7ef2515865e9cdf7ea07b2c6d89b46448ee734f'|'Under Armour profit hit by restructuring charge'|'October 31, 2017 / 11:23 AM / in 2 hours Under Armour chops forecasts as North America slide worsens Gayathree Ganesan 4 Min Read (Reuters) - Under Armour Inc ( UAA.N ) slashed 2017 forecasts and reported its first quarterly fall in revenue since going public on Tuesday, as the sportswear firm struggled to make inroads against global rivals Nike ( NKE.N ) and Adidas ( ADSGn.DE ). Shares of the maker of Stephen Curry basketball sneakers, already among the worst performing stocks on the S&P 500 .SPX this year, sank 17 percent in morning trade in New York, hitting a four-and-a-half year low. The results also worsened sentiment in other sportswear firms, pulling Nike shares 1.5 percent lower and weakening retail chains including Dick<63>s Sporting ( DKS.N ), Finish Line ( FINL.O ) and Hibbet ( HIBB.O ), which all sell Under Armour gear. Chief Executive Kevin Plank on a call with analysts blamed sporting good retailer bankruptcies and store closures, declining traffic to brick-and-mortar chains and shifting fashion preferences in North America for its underperformance. <20>We are incredibly disappointed with our 2017 performance,<2C> Plank said on a post-earnings call. The pressure that drove the Baltimore-based firm to announce a restructuring program in August - for which it took an $85 million charge in the quarter - was written large across the results, with North American wholesale revenue down 12 percent. One big headache is declining demand and a waning trend for athleisure fashion, where customers wear exercise clothing in day-to-day life, in which Under Armour has been trying to specialize. A growing retail price war and Adidas<61>s resurgence in North America, where it has won back customers by bringing back and remarketing its retro line of shoes, has exacerbated the company<6E>s problems. <20>This is now about more than external factors,<2C> Neil Saunders, managing director of research house GlobalData Retail, wrote in a note on the company<6E>s results. FILE PHOTO: A display for Under Armour merchandise is seen inside an athletic store in New York, U.S., August 1, 2017. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo <20>It demonstrates issues with the (Under Armour) brand and its proposition. Especially so since other brands and retailers... have not posted such calamitous figures.<2E> Its restructuring plan sought to cut white-collar jobs, close some stores and reduce its focus on lower revenue sports including tennis and fishing, while focusing more on women<65>s sportswear apparel. FURTHER WEAKNESS On the call with analysts, Plank said he expected weakness in its North American wholesale business to continue <20>well into the next year.<2E> The company cut its forecast for a percentage rise in full-year revenue to the low single-digits from 9-11 percent earlier. It also cut its full-year adjusted earnings forecast to 18 to 20 cents per share, compared to a previous 37 to 40 cents. Revenue overall fell 4.5 percent year-on-year in the quarter ended Sept. 30, its first such decline since going public in 2005. The company also blamed the upgrading of its IT systems to SAP for the drop in sales, saying it led to shipment delays. <20>This is a key factor impacting our fourth quarter and full year outlook,<2C> President Patrik Frisk told the earnings call. Under Armour<75>s shares still carry the highest valuation of the big global sportswear companies with its stock trading at 39.1 times forward earnings. Nike in contrast trades at 22.4 times, and Adidas at 24.7 times. Net income more than halved in the quarter to $54.2 million, or 12 cents per Class C share, mainly due to the restructuring charge. Excluding items, the company earned 22 cents per share, topping an already downbeat analysts<74> consensus by three cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Reporting by Gayathree Ganesan in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Patrick Graham'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-under-armour-results/un
'982f1e7ae905505f3c6e1a9854eaf17c41db55a2'|'Samsung Electronics third quarter profit nearly triples to new record'|'October 31, 2017 / 12:00 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Samsung Electronics to boost returns after record third-quarter profit Joyce Lee 4 Min Read SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd ( 005930.KS ) promised to return $26 billion to shareholders over the next three years as it reported record third-quarter profit on the back of the global boom in memory chips. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at its office building in Seoul, South Korea, August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo The world<6C>s biggest maker of semiconductors, televisions and smartphones said it would double dividends next year to 9.6 trillion won and keep them at that level until 2020, as it responds to investor pressure to share its vast cash reserves and catch up with some of its more generous peers. It also said 2017 capital expenditure would be its biggest ever, climbing 81 percent to 46.2 trillion won ($41 billion) as it builds new chip factories and clean-rooms to stay ahead of demand for servers and devices with ever greater memory. <20>The current record earnings are born out of such massive investments in the past, and the outsized capex is a sign that Samsung will continue investing for future results,<2C> said Greg Roh, analyst at HMC Investment & Securities. <20>Next year<61>s capex could be similar for Samsung to keep this momentum.<2E> Operating profit nearly tripled in the third quarter from the same period a year earlier, to 14.5 trillion won ($12.91 billion), Samsung said in a regulatory filing, matching its earlier estimate. Revenue jumped 29.8 percent to 62 trillion won, also in line with its earlier estimate. The shareholder return policy for the next three years ramped up guidance to a level higher than its current range of 30-50 percent of free cash flow to 50 percent over three years. Samsung<6E>s holdings of cash and cash equivalent stood at 76 trillion won at the end of September, eight percent higher than the previous quarter thanks largely to strong earnings that have more than paid for massive capital expenditure. While the dividend policy builds on the investor-friendly trend Samsung started in 2015, it was not as generous as some investors had hoped, analysts said. Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) has paid nearly 22 cents for every dollar it earned over the past five years, while Microsoft Corp ( MSFT.O ) has shared 53 cents. Meanwhile Samsung has paid just 11 cents, according to Reuters data. South Korean family-run business empires like Samsung Group have a reputation for low dividend payouts and other governance practices that favor controlling shareholders at the expense of ordinary investors. In a bid to change that perception, Samsung Electronics is one of about 70 listed firms that has promised to adhere to a governance code adopted by the Korea Stock Exchange this year. Its shares were up 1.3 percent, while the Kospi benchmark share price index .KS11 rose 0.4 percent. The stock has risen 67 percent over the past 12 months. MOBILE REBOUNDS Samsung said the earnings outlook was positive thanks mainly to the chip business, with conditions in that market likely to <20>remain favourable<6C> in 2018. It also forecast greater sales of flexible OLED screens used in smartphones. The chip business was Samsung<6E>s top earner in the third quarter as it booked a record 10 trillion won operating profit, from 3.4 trillion won from the previous corresponding period. Profits from mobile devices jumped to 3.3 trillion won compared with just 100 billion won at the same time last year, when the company booked the costs of the withdrawal of its fire-prone Note 7 gadget. The record earnings come amid ongoing management upheaval at the company following the arrest of group heir apparent Jay Y. Lee on bribery charges. CEO and Vice Chairman Kwon Oh-hyun announced on Oct. 13 that he planned to step down from management, leaving several key roles vacant including head of the components business. Reporting by Joyc
'0ec7b6907a84e89710fca4c1a4b844d1a8073d7d'|'LPC: Office Depot considers sweeteners to M&A loan'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - Publicly-traded US office supplies retailer Office Depot is considering making revisions to the US$750m leveraged loan backing its roughly US$1bn acquisition of CompuCom, amid a syndication process fraught with investors<72> wariness with retailers, according to three sources familiar with the matter.An Office Depot Inc store is shown in Encinitas, California, U.S., May 8, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake To attract lenders into the deal, Goldman Sachs, the lead underwriter, is likely to boost the loan<61>s yield and shorten the repayment period, among potential other changes, the sources said.The bank is expected to bump pricing on the loan to 700bp over Libor with a 1% floor, versus opening guidance in the 500bp-525bp over Libor range with a 1% floor, two of the sources said. The loan could be offered at a steeper discount of 96% of face value, compared to 98.5% at launch, as another way to entice buyers.The company is also mulling an accelerated amortization schedule, currently set at 1% annually, to tighten investors<72> leash on cash, and making other changes to the credit agreement. During syndication, investors took issue over flexibility to take cash out of the company and raise additional debt, the sources said.Goldman has not yet circulated any official revisions to the deal. Commitments are due on Tuesday. JP Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo are also in the bank group.Investors have pointed to weak earnings at both Office Depot and CompuCom and challenges forecasting further declines as justification for holding out for better terms. Office Depot<6F>s sales fell 9.6% from 2015 to the last 12 months ending in June. The company expects sales in 2017 to be lower year-over-year due to store closures and the difficult retail environment, according to a company presentation. CompuCom<6F>s sales have also declined 9.6% since 2015.Meanwhile, Amazon<6F>s threat to Office Depot intensified last week when the online juggernaut announced its Business Prime Shipping service for users with Amazon Business accounts.The news that Amazon is aggressively pursuing corporate customers sent rival Staples<65> loans and bonds lower by three and five points, respectively, to 96 and 90, for yields of 6.75% and more than 10%, eroding relative value for the Office Depot loan.Still, the Office Depot deal carries low leverage at 1.3x last 12-months<68> Ebitda of US$790m, and at close touts US$1.537bn of liquidity, split between an undrawn US$1.2bn asset-based revolving credit facility and US$537m of cash on hand.The combined company could throw off US$234m of free cash flow, or roughly 23% of debt, before interest expense and projected synergies of US$40m are included, assuming Ebitda and capital expenditures remain stable.Goldman Sachs did not respond to requests for comment. Office Depot declined to comment.Reporting by Andrew Berlin; Editing By Michelle Sierra and Lynn Adler '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-office-depot-m-a-loan/lpc-office-depot-considers-sweeteners-to-ma-loan-idINKBN1D02QA'|'2017-10-31T16:32:00.000+02:00'
'0f566c1a3352bcd457fc3b3ecb5921803fa1152f'|'Investors hope for details in Shopify''s response to short seller'|'October 30, 2017 / 11:06 AM / Updated 7 hours ago Investors hope for details in Shopify''s response to short seller Alastair Sharp 4 Min Read TORONTO (Reuters) - Retail software company Shopify Inc ( SHOP.TO ) may not be willing to release as many operational details as some investors are hoping for in response to a short seller<65>s criticism, a shareholder and several analysts said. FILE PHOTO: Canadian e-commerce company Shopify Inc logo is shown on a computer screen in the illustration photo in Encinitas, California May 3, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo The Ottawa-based company, which provides software and back-end services to retailers, is expected to notch further sharp sales growth of roughly 67 percent versus a year ago but still no profit when it reports third-quarter earnings on Tuesday. Shopify<66>s founder and CEO Tobi Lutke has said he would use the company<6E>s earnings call to respond to complaints from short-seller Andrew Left of Citron Research, which included criticism of payments to bloggers and others who get merchants to sign up to Shopify<66>s commerce platform. Left also called for the company to disclose the rate at which customers leave. A spokeswoman declined to say what Shopify plans to disclose. One investor, who asked not to be named, said Lutke should not reveal <20>state secrets<74> just to squash Left<66>s criticism. Left<66>s report earlier this month hit Shopify<66>s share price, but it has recovered somewhat, and not all investors agree with his analysis. The Shopify shareholder, who declined to be identified discussing a holding, said the company could create a short squeeze by disclosing the average amount its roughly 2,500 high-end Shopify Plus members pay per month. The minimum amount is $2,000, with additional charges due for those processing higher sales volumes. But <20>they don<6F>t need to give away state secrets just because of a self-interested short seller,<2C> the shareholder added. The company could also neutralize Left by, for example, telling investors how many of its more than 500,000 customers sell goods worth more than $100,000 a year, said Thomas Forte, a D.A. Davidson & Co analyst who has a neutral rating on the stock. The company likely sees a high rate of merchants on its cheaper plans dropping off in their first year on the platform, several analysts said. But that number, known as churn, likely improves over time as successful businesses stick around. <20>I<EFBFBD>d love to have churn, I just don<6F>t think we<77>ll get it,<2C> said RBC Capital Markets analyst Ross MacMillan, who downgraded the stock to sector perform earlier this year on the basis of its red-hot valuation and a more subdued view on the likely timeline for new services to boost earnings. Shopify<66>s U.S. shares trading on the New York Stock Exchange ( SHOP.N ) had roughly tripled in value this year, hitting a peak near $124 in September. But they fell below $90 in the wake of Left<66>s report and have partially recovered since, last trading at $107. Despite Left<66>s attentions, the percentage of Shopify shares on loan to investors betting its price will fall has slipped since his report, to 3.66 percent of shares outstanding as of Oct. 12 versus 3.83 percent as of Sept. 28. Since Left<66>s report, the company has made several announcements that boosted its image as a fast-growing tech darling, including plans to triple its headcount in Waterloo in the next couple of years - adding between 300 and 500 jobs to support Shopify Plus - and teaming up with DHL to provide international shipping for its small business customers. Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by David Gregorio'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-shopify-disclosure/investors-hope-for-details-in-shopifys-response-to-short-seller-idUSKBN1CZ15E'|'2017-10-30T13:00:00.000+02:00'
'ecebd57ed579198870647d87c60384e37b081df1'|'As China''s home prices cool, some property companies seek to reduce risks'|'October 29, 2017 / 11:18 PM / Updated an hour ago As China''s home prices cool, some property companies seek to reduce risks Umesh Desai , Clare Jim 7 Min Read HONG KONG (Reuters) - As the froth comes off China<6E>s home prices, there are increasing signs that some property developers, particularly those with a heavy debt load, are becoming less aggressive. A man walks past a wall at a construction site for a new residential compound at the Binhai new district in Tianjin, China, October 18, 2015. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon They are reducing balance sheet leverage, buying land through joint ventures with other property companies to reduce risk, or diversifying into other businesses. Their concern is that they can no longer bank on paying ever richer prices for land if the value of the apartments they build on that land isn<73>t also still surging. The risk is that if apartment prices drop the developers will be left with expensive unsold properties and suffer losses at a time when their debt levels are already dangerously high. A minority, such as Tianjin-based Sunac Holdings ( 1918.HK ), are planning to reduce their land purchases and focus instead on selling more of the apartments they have already built. The nation<6F>s sixth-largest real estate developer, based on sales, won<6F>t grow as fast as before but it may be in a position to cut its debt ratio. <20>We have been developing too fast in the past,<2C> said Gao Xi, vice president at Sunac, which in July bought 91 percent of 13 tourism projects from conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group for $6.5 billion. <20>Our next step is to slow down the land bank and increase sales. We will unlock profitability and then the gearing will come down,<2C> Gao said at an earnings conference. The company aims to cut net gearing <20> total borrowings less cash divided by shareholders<72> equity - to 70 percent by the end of 2019 from 260 percent at the end of June. Evergrande ( 3333.HK ), which has China<6E>s second biggest pile of corporate debt on its books behind energy giant CNPC Capital ( 000617.SZ ), said it aimed to cut the ratio to 70 percent by the end of the decade from 240 percent at the end of June. <20>China<6E>s property market has moved from a golden era to a stable one, so we need to transform,<2C> said Evergrande Vice Chairman and CEO Xia Haijun at an earnings conference. SHARE PRICES CLIMB China<6E>s new home prices registered a second straight month of weak growth in September, with prices in the biggest markets slipping and gains in smaller cities slowing as government measures to cool a long property boom take hold. Over the last year, more than 45 major cities have imposed restrictive policies of varying severity to curb fast-rising prices, with some forced into several rounds of tightening measures. Investors have applauded the more conservative approach of Sunac and Evergrande, sending their share prices to record highs this month. Credit markets also gave a thumbs up. Evergrande<64>s $4.7 billion bonds due 2025 VG162759965= which had been trading below offer price since their June issuance rallied to trade at a premium. The bond, carrying an 8.75 percent coupon, is trading at its highest level in price terms which has sent its yield to 8 percent. <20>We like the sector on expectations of high contracted sales after a phase of negative cashflows when they were in their growth phase,<2C> said Dhiraj Bajaj, fund manager at Lombard Odier<65>s asset management business. <20>Developers have been accumulating assets in the form of land banks and now it is time for these assets to bear fruit.<2E> People look at a model of a new residential compound at a showroom of a real estate company, in Yichang, Hubei province, China, July 5, 2015. REUTERS/China Daily His fund has stepped up purchases of bonds issued by Sunac and Evergrande since their last earnings announcements. <20>This cycle is different as developers have taken advantage of the strong demand and are destocking,<2C> said Alexander Wolf, Standard Life Aberdeen senior e
'7f10a9e34f23b13a0cd1e1f690fba28330bd172b'|'France to decide by end 2018 how many nuclear plants to shut - minister'|'October 28, 2017 / 4:46 PM / in 20 hours France to decide by end 2018 how many nuclear plants to shut - minister Reuters Staff 2 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - France will detail at the end of 2018 how many nuclear reactors will close to meet a target on reducing atomic energy, Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot told French daily Le Monde on Saturday. French Minister for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition Nicolas Hulot leaves after the weekly cabinet meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier France aims to cut the share of atomic energy in power generation to 50 percent by 2025 from 75 percent now. Nuclear plant closures represent a touchy topic, as the sector employs thousands of people and renewable energy alternatives struggle to grow fast enough to ensure energy needs are fulfilled. According to France<63>s National Council of Industry, the nuclear sector supports about 220,000 jobs, directly and indirectly. Hulot will lay out his so-called <20>green deal<61> on energy transition in the first half of 2018, he told Le Monde in an interview. <20>In order to reduce to 50 percent the share of nuclear power, we will have to close a number of reactors,<2C> he said, adding that he would detail the exact figure under a multi-year plan to be presented at end of 2018. Hulot said in July that as many as 17 of France<63>s 58 reactors may need to close to meet the target, but he did not stick to that forecast in later comments on the subject. The minister said he would take into account the need to avoid any electricity shortage during that transition, given the country<72>s dependence on nuclear power. France briefly faced the prospect of power cuts last winter, as power supply had then been hit by the closure of a third of country<72>s ageing nuclear reactors for security checks. Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain; Editing by Stephen Powell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-france-nuclearpower/france-to-decide-by-end-2018-how-many-nuclear-plants-to-shut-minister-idUKKBN1CX0KV'|'2017-10-28T19:45:00.000+03:00'
'079301bb7bc14d556027755110a41e01804f86de'|'UPDATE 1-UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Oct 31'|'(Adds company news items, futures)Oct 31 (Reuters) - Britain<69>s FTSE 100 index is seen opening flat at 7,487 points on Tuesday according to Financial spreadbetters, with futures up 0.05 percent ahead of the cash market open.* BP: BP said on Tuesday it will resume share buybacks after reporting a doubling in third-quarter profit in the clearest sign yet that the oil company is confident about a turnaround in a week when oil prices hit a two-year high above $60 a barrel.* JUST EAT: British takeaway ordering website Just Eat on Tuesday raised its full-year revenue guidance for the second time in four months after reporting a 47 percent increase in its latest quarter on the back of strong order growth.* WPP: WPP, the world<6C>s biggest advertising company battling a slowdown in client spending, lowered expectations for full-year organic net sales and profit margin on Tuesday, two months after an earlier downgrade sent shockwaves through the industry.* PLUS500: Spreadbetting firm Plus500 Ltd reported higher third-quarter revenue, as rising customer numbers helped offset challenges from a sector-wide regulatory clampdown and said its full-year results would be ahead of market expectations.* MAIL.RU: Dmitry Grishin, the chairman of Russian internet company Mail.ru Group, has sold around 4.7 million Global Depositary Receipts (GDRs) in Mail.ru at $31.80 apiece, the bookrunner on the deal said on Tuesday.* IAG: The chief executive of the company that owns British Airways, IAG , Willie Walsh, said on Monday that European flights to and from Britain are unlikely to be grounded when Britain leaves the European Union.* UK GAMING: The maximum stake allowed on gambling machines found in British betting shops could be cut from 100 pounds ($132) to as little as 2 pounds, the government said on Tuesday, dealing a blow to bookmakers.* OIL: Brent crude futures, the international benchmark for oil prices, were at $60.78 per barrel at 0343 GMT. That was 12 cents below their last settlement, but still not far off the highest level since July 2015 reached earlier this week and up some 37 percent since their 2017-lows last June.* The FTSE 100 ended down 0.2 percent at 7,487.81 points, as the pound strengthened against the dollar ahead of Thursday<61>s Bank of England meeting where the central bank is expected to raise interest rates for the first time in more than a decade.* For more on the factors affecting European stocks, please click on: cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarketsTODAY<41>S UK PAPERS> Financial Times> Other business headlines Multimedia versions of Reuters Top News are now available for: * 3000 Xtra : visit topnews.session.rservices.com * For Top News : topnews.reuters.com (Reporting by Sanjeeban Sarkar in Bengaluru) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-stocks-factors/update-1-uk-stocks-factors-to-watch-on-oct-31-idUSL4N1N63H4'|'2017-10-31T09:48:00.000+02:00'
'9a00f29f5f0a77fbbbdfbe360220d8f44adca224'|'Top banks and R3 build blockchain-based payments system'|'October 31, 2017 / 9:12 AM / Updated 5 minutes ago Top banks and R3 build blockchain-based payments system Jemima Kelly 3 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Fintech firm R3 and 22 of the world<6C>s biggest banks have together developed an international payments system that would allow existing central bank currencies and any new digital ones to be transacted via the blockchain, R3 said on Tuesday. A copy of bitcoin standing on PC motherboard is seen in this illustration picture, October 26, 2017. Picture taken October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic The blockchain, which first emerged as the architecture underpinning cryptocurrency bitcoin, is a shared database that updates itself in real-time and can process and settle transactions in minutes using computer algorithms, with no need for third-party verification. Because it does not require manual processing, nor authentication through intermediaries, banks - both commercial ones and central banks - reckon the technology has the potential to make payments faster, more reliable and easier to audit. <20>Natixis believes in the potential of distributed ledger technology for cross-border payments and is exploring several initiatives in that space,<2C> said Frederic Dalibard, head of Digital for Corporate & Investment Banking at Natixis, one of the banks involved in the project. Other banks that worked on the project - the prototype for which will be released by the end of the year, they said - include Barclays, HBSC and Commerzbank. There have been other efforts to develop blockchain-based systems for cross-border payments - one of the areas most commonly identified as ripe for blockchain-based innovation, such as a UBS-led initiative to create a <20>utility settlement coin<69> that would represent each major currency. Dalibard said Natixis believed in the particular promise of the R3 project because of the fact that the system<65>s architecture - which runs on R3<52>s <20>Corda<64> platform - could be adapted when new central bank-issued digital currencies appear. Although many central banks are looking into issuing digital currencies, the conclusion of many of the biggest - including the European Central Bank, the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan - has so far been that blockchain technology is not yet mature enough to power the world<6C>s biggest payment systems. German bank Berenberg last week wrote in a report that blockchain was an <20>overhyped technology<67> that faced important challenges, pointing out that there had so far been very few success stories, despite a huge number of pilots and <20>proofs of concept<70> of the technology. But many continue to believe in its promise. UBS Wealth Management said in a research note this month that blockchain could add as much as $400 billion of annual global economic value by 2027, and that investing in the technology was akin to investing in the internet in the mid-nineties. Reporting by Jemima Kelly; Editing by Alison Williams'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-banks-blockchain-r3/top-banks-and-r3-build-blockchain-based-payments-system-idUKKBN1D00ZV'|'2017-10-31T11:12:00.000+02:00'
'96383f97060b92bbb9d54a4652aa4f003e0980bf'|'UPDATE 1-Brazil''s Ita<74> reduces loan provisions, posts higher profit'|'(Updates with details, context)SAO PAULO, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Brazil<69>s largest bank, Itau Unibanco Holding SA, posted a 6.25 billion reais ($1.9 billion) profit on the third quarter as it managed to improve loan book quality, offsetting the reduction of net interest income.Net profit rose 1.4 percent from the prior three months when adjusted for one-off items, and was slightly above a consensus estimate of 6.23 billion reais compiled by Thomson Reuters.Ita<74> reduced its loan book by 2.4 percent from three months earlier, to 539 billion reais. Net interest income fell 2.2 percent, reflecting lower interest rates and new restrictive regulations on credit card lending.Even so, Ita<74> posted a higher profit with a 4 percent growth in fee income, mainly due to rising volumes managed by the asset management division and credit card fees.Provisions for loan losses fell 13 percent to 4.28 billion reais, well below a consensus estimate of 4.83 billion reais.Recurring return on equity (ROE), a gauge of profitability, totaled 21.6 percent for the quarter, above a consensus estimate of 20.86 percent. ($1 = 3.2888 reais) (Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer and Aluisio Alves; Additional reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Sandra Maler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/itau-unibco-hldg-results/update-1-brazils-ita-reduces-loan-provisions-posts-higher-profit-idUSL2N1N52A4'|'2017-10-31T02:27:00.000+02:00'
'7c338fb190885fd49447f7cbcee5d9530aaf5d25'|'RBS sells leasing unit Lombard assets to meet ring-fencing rules'|'LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s Royal Bank of Scotland ( RBS.L ) has put around 200 million pounds ($265 million) worth of offshore assets from its asset financing group Lombard up for sale, a source close to the matter said on Tuesday.FILE PHOTO - A logo at a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland is seen reflected in a window in the City of London December 16, 2014. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo The state-backed bank is selling them as they are currently held in the Channel Islands but new ring-fencing rules that come into force in 2019 mean the lender<65>s UK retail business can not own assets outside of the European Economic Area (EEA). The bank has decided that the unit would only fit in its ring-fenced business.Ring-fencing rules require banks to put all of their retail operations into a unit that is separately capitalized from their riskier businesses such as investment banking.Lombard provides financing to help businesses buy assets such as machinery, ships or aircraft.The sale was first reported by Sky News.($1 = 0.7548 pounds)Reporting by Emma Rumney; writing by Rachel Armstrong; Editing by Greg Mahlich '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-rbs-divestiture-lombard/rbs-sells-leasing-unit-lombard-assets-to-meet-ring-fencing-rules-idINKBN1D02AY'|'2017-10-31T13:22:00.000+02:00'
'ee5726df795db1fa294ca05b9b857d5647c7c65b'|'Russia''s TMK reviews options for U.S. assets'|'MOSCOW, Oct 31 (Reuters) - TMK, Russia<69>s largest maker of steel pipes for the oil and gas industry, is considering different options for its U.S. subsidiary IPSCO but intends to keep a controlling stake in the firm, it said on Tuesday.On Monday, TMK IPSCO told Reuters that it did not plan to sell any assets and would be ready to consider alliances with the <20>global metal market players<72> in future.<2E>While no decision regarding any specific action related to TMK IPSCO has been made, our previously disclosed exploration of strategic alternatives remains ongoing,<2C> TMK, controlled by Russian businessman Dmitry Pumpyansky, told Reuters on Tuesday.Asked whether TMK was considering an initial public share offering of IPSCO or selling the stake in IPSCO, a TMK representative said: <20>While the company considers different options, it is not currently planning to sell either production assets or a controlling stake in TMK IPSCO.<2E>On Oct. 25, TMK asked holders of its Eurobond to approve the release of the IPSCO division from obligations under a guarantee as it would <20>allow TMK the flexibility to pursue the optimal strategy for the Group to maximise the value of its holding in IPSCO Tubulars Inc.<2E>According to VTB Capital, TMK paid around $1.7 billion for the IPSCO assets in 2008-2009. (Reporting by Natalia Shurmina and Polina Devitt; writing by Polina Devitt; editing by Keith Weir) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/russia-tmk-ipsco/russias-tmk-reviews-options-for-u-s-assets-idINL8N1N6445'|'2017-10-31T08:52:00.000+02:00'
'becaa6c8f23ae38d1edc57b66752a54e40b82dd9'|'UPDATE 1-Brazil''s CSN tries to refinance debt, waits to sell assets'|' 56 PM / in 29 minutes UPDATE 1-Brazil''s CSN tries to refinance debt, waits to sell assets Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Updates with CEO comments on debt refinancing and results, details on capital spending) SAO PAULO, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Brazilian steelmaker Companhia Sider<65>rgica Nacional will wait for better prices to sell assets as the company tries to stretch out debt maturities with banks and bets on the country<72>s economic recovery to improve results, its chief executive officer told analysts on Tuesday. CSN, as the company is known, has a current debt level equivalent to 5 times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, a common gauge of operational profit known as EBITDA, and has to pay 5.6 billion reais ($1.7 billion) in debt next year and 7.3 billion reais in 2019. Chief Executive Officer Benjamin Steinbruch said he<68>s <20>confident<6E> that two of the company<6E>s largest lenders will agree by next month to extend CSN<53>s debt maturities. Steinbruch declined to say which are the banks, but said the company has been discussing a debt refinancing with the lenders for nine months. Steinbruch also said he intends to start talks with the company<6E>s bondholders in the first half of 2018, but declined to elaborate. CSN previously extended debt maturities with state-owned banks in 2016. To reach its target of reducing its debt to 3.5 times EBITDA by the end of next year, CSN would have to sell assets. <20>We had many concrete proposals for many assets, but we think we should wait for the right moment to sell<6C>, Steinbruch said. CSN<53>s CEO, which is also a major shareholder, said the steelmaker expects to grow its EBITDA this year by 25 percent, to 5 billion reais. The steelmaker is raising capital expenses to increase iron ore and steel production. The company will spend 370 million reais to raise production in its Casa de Pedra iron ore mine and 205 million reais to expand steel production capacity by 15 percent. ($1 = 3.2731 reais) (Reporting by Alberto Alerigi Jr.; Writing by Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Chris Reese and Sandra Maler)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/siderurgica-naci-earnings/update-1-brazils-csn-tries-to-refinance-debt-waits-to-sell-assets-idUSL2N1N61RX'|'2017-10-31T22:56:00.000+02:00'
'b3eb2edbfb9e2f770cf92d18596e13551bc8e0d7'|'BRIEF-Electronic Arts reports qtrly loss per share of $0.07'|' 45 PM / in 9 minutes BRIEF-Electronic Arts reports qtrly loss per share of $0.07 Reuters Staff Oct 31 (Reuters) - Electronic Arts Inc: * Qtrly loss per share $0.07; Qtrly total net revenue $959 million versus $898 million * Sees FY 2018 net revenue of about $5.08 billion; Sees FY 2018 earnings per share of about $3.63 * Sees FY 2018 operating cash flow of about $1.6 billion; Sees FY 2018 net bookings of about $5.15 billion * Sees Q3 net revenue of about $1.14 billion; Sees Q3 loss per share of about $0.21; Sees Q3 net bookings of about $2 billion Source text for Eikon:  '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-electronic-arts-reports-qtrly-loss/brief-electronic-arts-reports-qtrly-loss-per-share-of-0-07-idUSB8N1LI030'|'2017-10-31T23:44:00.000+02:00'
'53e7f9b4beeb17e6d4d03f027db12569f93ebb41'|'METALS-London copper gains as dollar slips'|'October 31, 2017 / 7:44 AM / Updated 3 hours ago METALS-London copper gains as dollar slips Reuters Staff (Releads to show LME copper up) By James Regan SYDNEY, Oct 31 (Reuters) - London copper turned positive in late Asian trading on Tuesday as the U.S. dollar weakened. Copper started the week by pulling away from the previous session<6F>s two-week low as a retreat in the dollar tempted buyers back to the metal. However, a start to Tuesday<61>s market activity saw the dollar strengthen against a basket of currencies, which encouraged enough profit-taking in less-active Asian trading to drive the metal into negative territory. A stronger dollar can prompt speculators to sell dollar-denominated copper positions and book profits on the currency spread, while a weaker currency attracts buyers. FUNDAMENTALS * Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange was up 0.3 percent to $6,892.75 tonne by 0727 GMT, building on Monday<61>s gains. * The most-traded copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange closed 0.58 percent higher at 53,820 yuan ($8,118.26) a tonne. * CODELCO: The world<6C>s biggest copper miner, Codelco [RIC:RIC:COBRE.UL], has raised its 2018 physical copper premium to European buyers to $88 a tonne from the $80 to $85 a tonne range this year, copper industry sources said. * GLENCORE CUTS: Glencore cut its output forecast for core commodities including zinc, but raised its marketing division<6F>s full-year earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to between $2.6 billion and $2.8 billion, reflecting higher raw materials prices. * CHINA STRUGGLES: Factories in China<6E>s industrial heartland making everything from steel sheet to tofu and ceramics are struggling with soaring costs or facing closure as they wait for authorities to approve new gas-powered boilers, five industry executives told Reuters. * DOLLAR WEAKER: the dollar index, which tracks the currency against a basket of six major rivals, was down 0.01 percent . * OTHER METALS: ShFE nickel and zinc saw the greatest advances among Chinese metals futures, up 2.8 percent and 1.8 percent respectively in step with firmer domestic steel prices. PRICES '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/global-metals/metals-london-copper-gains-as-dollar-slips-idUSL4N1N63B4'|'2017-10-31T09:41:00.000+02:00'
'95976b21608f6826c86b021d36c78ba8df77b457'|'China''s CDH, SenseTime raising about $450 million AI fund: sources'|'HONG KONG (Reuters) - China<6E>s CDH Investments and Hong Kong-based start-up SenseTime Group are raising about 3 billion yuan ($453 million) to invest in firms working on artificial intelligence (AI) technology, said two sources with knowledge of the matter.The companies<65> plan for the fund, which according to the sources will be mainly used to invest in growth-stage AI start-ups worldwide, comes amid Beijing<6E>s drive to be a leader in the technology that is increasingly becoming key to various sectors.Once the preserve of researchers, AI has grabbed the attention of businesses from healthcare to financial services looking to use algorithms to comb through large troves of data to recognize patterns and solve problems. The technology is set to spread to driverless cars and service robots in the future.Beijing-based investment firm CDH and SenseTime, which provides technology-based applications like facial recognition, video analyzing and autonomous driving, will act as co-managers of the fund, known as general partners, one of the sources said.It was not immediately clear when the fundraising would be completed or who would be the potential investors.The sources declined to be named as the capital raising plans were not public. CDH and SenseTime declined to comment.In July, SenseTime had raised $410 million, led by CDH and China<6E>s state-backed fund Sailing Capital, in a deal that marked one of the largest fundraising rounds by an AI firm and valued it at over $1.5 billion.Last October, the state think-tank Chinese Academy of Sciences and investment firm Hillhouse Capital Group launched one of the country<72>s first AI-focused funds, with an initial fundraising target of 1 billion yuan ($150 million).Chinese search engine giant Baidu Inc ( BIDU.O ), which is making a big push into AI, opened the first national AI lab in March in partnership with the powerful state planner - the National Development and Reform Commission.The hectic fundraising activity linked to the technology comes after Beijing in July unveiled an AI development plan to grow the country<72>s core AI industries<65> value to more than 150 billion yuan by 2020 and 400 billion yuan by 2025.With this major push into AI, China is looking to rival U.S. market leaders such as Alphabet Inc<6E>s ( GOOGL.O ) Google and Microsoft ( MSFT.O ).SenseTime, a three-year-old AI firm, counts China<6E>s Ministry of Public Security and domestic heavyweights including China Mobile ( 0941.HK ), HNA Group and Huawei Technologies [HWT.UL] as its major clients.CDH, backed by Singapore<72>s sovereign wealth fund GIC [GIC.UL] and International Finance Corporation, has about $18 billion worth of assets under management and its portfolio firms include the world<6C>s largest pork supplier WH Group ( 0288.HK ).(This story corrects typo in second paragraph)Reporting by Julie Zhu, additional reporting by Sijia Jiang; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Himani Sarkar '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-china-privateequity-fundraising/chinas-cdh-sensetime-raising-about-450-million-ai-fund-sources-idINKBN1D00CY'|'2017-10-31T02:02:00.000+02:00'
'5908d5a91ef44487bd496be7046ddbdefeb9eceb'|'Mediobanca CEO hopes for accord on Vivendi-Mediaset dispute'|'October 28, 2017 / 1:20 PM / in 3 hours Mediobanca CEO hopes for accord on Vivendi-Mediaset dispute Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MILAN (Reuters) - Mediobanca Chief Executive Alberto Nagel said on Saturday he hoped Italian broadcaster Mediaset ( MS.MI ) and French media group Vivendi ( VIV.PA ) will find a satisfactory solution to resolve their pay-TV dispute. FILE PHOTO: The Mediaset tower in Cologno Monzese, near Milan, Italy, April 8, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini/File Photo Speaking at the Italian investment bank<6E>s shareholder meeting, Nagel added he was close to both parties. French business tycoon Vincent Bollore, who serves as Vivendi chairman, is a key shareholder in Mediobanca, along with Fininvest, the holding company of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, which is the biggest shareholder in Mediaset. Nagel also said there were no grounds to criticize Vivendi<64>s stake-building at Telecom Italia ( TLIT.MI ), saying <20>there<72>s never been a queue<75> to invest in the Italian phone group. Reporting by Gianluca Semeraro; writing by Agnieszka Flak; editing by Alexander Smith'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-mediobanca-ceo/mediobanca-ceo-hopes-for-accord-on-vivendi-mediaset-dispute-idUKKBN1CX0F3'|'2017-10-28T16:13:00.000+03:00'
'dd5b9f863a82135cf2594e2b9ddac9212b6ac061'|'Under Armour slashes forecasts as N.America slide worsens'|'(Reuters) - Under Armour Inc slashed 2017 forecasts and reported its first quarterly fall in revenue since going public on Tuesday, as the sportswear firm struggled to make inroads against global rivals Nike and Adidas.An Under Armour sign is seen outside a store in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., October 25, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young Shares of the maker of Stephen Curry basketball sneakers, already among the worst performing stocks on the S&P 500 this year, sank 17 percent in morning trade in New York, hitting a four-and-a-half year low.The results also worsened sentiment in other sportswear firms, pulling Nike shares 1.5 percent lower and weakening retail chains including Dick<63>s Sporting, Finish Line and Hibbet, which all sell Under Armour gear.Chief Executive Kevin Plank on a call with analysts blamed sporting good retailer bankruptcies and store closures, declining traffic to brick-and-mortar chains and shifting fashion preferences in North America for its underperformance.<2E>We are incredibly disappointed with our 2017 performance,<2C> Plank said on a post-earnings call.The pressure that drove the Baltimore-based firm to announce a restructuring program in August - for which it took an $85 million charge in the quarter - was written large across the results, with North American wholesale revenue down 12 percent.One big headache is declining demand and a waning trend for athleisure fashion, where customers wear exercise clothing in day-to-day life, in which Under Armour has been trying to specialize.A growing retail price war and Adidas<61>s resurgence in North America, where it has won back customers by bringing back and remarketing its retro line of shoes, has exacerbated the company<6E>s problems.<2E>This is now about more than external factors,<2C> Neil Saunders, managing director of research house GlobalData Retail, wrote in a note on the company<6E>s results.<2E>It demonstrates issues with the (Under Armour) brand and its proposition. Especially so since other brands and retailers... have not posted such calamitous figures.<2E>Its restructuring plan sought to cut white-collar jobs, close some stores and reduce its focus on lower revenue sports including tennis and fishing, while focusing more on women<65>s sportswear apparel.FURTHER WEAKNESS On the call with analysts, Plank said he expected weakness in its North American wholesale business to continue <20>well into the next year.<2E>The company cut its forecast for a percentage rise in full-year revenue to the low single-digits from 9-11 percent earlier. It also cut its full-year adjusted earnings forecast to 18 to 20 cents per share, compared to a previous 37 to 40 cents.Revenue overall fell 4.5 percent year-on-year in the quarter ended Sept. 30, its first such decline since going public in 2005. The company also blamed the upgrading of its IT systems to SAP for the drop in sales, saying it led to shipment delays.<2E>This is a key factor impacting our fourth quarter and full year outlook,<2C> President Patrik Frisk told the earnings call.Under Armour<75>s shares still carry the highest valuation of the big global sportswear companies with its stock trading at 39.1 times forward earnings. Nike in contrast trades at 22.4 times, and Adidas at 24.7 times.Net income more than halved in the quarter to $54.2 million, or 12 cents per Class C share, mainly due to the restructuring charge. Excluding items, the company earned 22 cents per share, topping an already downbeat analysts<74> consensus by three cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Reporting by Gayathree Ganesan in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Patrick Graham '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/under-armour-results/under-armour-slashes-forecasts-as-n-america-slide-worsens-idINKBN1D022O'|'2017-10-31T17:06:00.000+02:00'
'9516259c5eb6a8230f352e2c95e7212723b1bfae'|'Customers call for crackdown on Green Motion after repairs dispute'|'A businessman who spent his career promoting American business investment into Scotland has called on the authorities to take action against the car hire firm Green Motion. He was charged <20>366 for damage to a vehicle he rented at Glasgow airport <20> damage he claims he did not do, and that was levied because the company knew he would struggle to fight it from the other side of the Atlantic.David Christie <20> originally from Scotland but who now lives near Manchester, New Hampshire <20> says he has complained to Action Fraud and trading standards at Renfrewshire Council over the damage he is adamant he did not cause.He says staff <20>instantly located<65> the hidden damage on his Peugeot hire car after he returned the vehicle earlier this month, which, he claims, <20>gave the game away<61>.Guardian Money has received numerous complaints in recent years, mostly from outside the UK, from Green Motion hirers who claim that either they did not cause the damage found by the company, or that the price for repairs has been inflated.Green Motion says complaints it receives <20>genuine or otherwise<73> make up less than 0.1% of total customers in the past five years.It says it handles 2,500 customers a day and enjoys <20>excellent customer satisfaction<6F> ratings, and strongly disputes the allegations by Christie.Christie, 79, a former executive director of Locate in Scotland, and a member of Unesco<63>s Scotland committee <20> and a Freeman of the City of Glasgow <20> claims when he refused to sign the credit card slip demanded for the alleged damage, Green Motion staff threatened to have his and his wife<66>s bags taken out of the courtesy van and to make them walk to the airport terminal.Only the fact that he had a flight to catch prevented him calling the police, he says.He has since complained to contacts within the Scottish government about what his says is the poor treatment of tourists by the firm which will have a negative effect on visits unless it is challenged.The report sent by Christie to Renfrewshire trading standards says that when he returned the car to the depot, rather than circling the car in a normal way to check it over, the Green Motion employee almost immediately looked under the front right bumper where he found scratches.<2E>We had only driven 145 miles in six days and I had been particularly careful and was positive that we were not responsible for the scratches. The manner in which he inspected the car pretty much gave away the fact that he already knew they were there.<2E>When we complained, he became very belligerent, telling us it was not the car rental firm<72>s responsibility, and accusing us of lying.<2E>I have hired cars all over the world and never had an experience like this. It is nothing short of taking money by deception,<2C> he claims.We put Christie<69>s complaint to Green Motion. In a statement, it said: <20>While the vehicle was in his custody, an accident occurred which resulted in damage to the front bumper.<2E>It alleges that Christie did not challenge the damage charge at the time, which Christie says is untrue as he argued with the employee extensively before leaving for his flight .In the same week as Christie<69>s complaint, Money was also contacted by a Portuguese tourist, Luis Mira, who described a similar experience after hiring a car from Green Motion<6F>s Edinburgh branch.He has been charged <20>1,265 after the company claimed he had damaged the BMW 116 that the company had <20>upgraded<65> him to at a extra cost of <20>120 because the smaller car he booked was not available. <20>When it arrived it was covered in scratches and bumps, with a broken fog light. The employee went round the car and noted the damage and promptly asked me to sign. I identified a few more, which he added, and I signed the form.<2E>He says when he returned the car, rather than walking around it as he would have expected, the employee immediately went to the left rear door and theatrically pointed to a tiny scratch and shouted <20>here<72>.Although Mira says the mark was only visible 
'c7c48ac8da8fd149f5c5ca6af354252eba99650c'|'Exclusive - Engie, P<>tria among groups vying for Petrobras Brazil gas pipeline'|'October 31, 2017 / 9:06 AM / Updated 11 minutes ago Exclusive - Engie, P<>tria among groups vying for Petrobras Brazil gas pipeline Tatiana Bautzer 3 Min Read SAO PAULO (Reuters) - French energy company Engie SA ( ENGIE.PA ) and Brazilian investment firm P<>tria Investimentos Ltda are among 20 groups interested in a controlling stake in a gas pipeline network owned by Petroleo Brasileiro SA, four people with knowledge of the matter said. The logo of Engie SA is seen on the company tower at the financial and business district of La Defense near Paris, France, September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier Petrobras ( PETR4.SA ), as Brazil<69>s state-controlled oil company is known, will receive a first round of non-binding proposals for a 90 percent stake in Transportadora Associada de G<>s SA, known as TAG, by the end of November, the people said. Other contenders for TAG, which owns 4,500 kilometers (2,796 miles) of natural gas pipelines in northeastern region of Brazil, include Abu Dhabi state-owned holding Mubadala Development Co., Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, known as CPPIB, and private equity group EIG Global Energy Partners LLC, the sources added. Singapore<72>s sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte Ltd., which bought a minority stake in another gas pipeline network from Petrobras last year, is also analysing the investment, according to the sources, who asked for anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Petrobras, EIG, Engie, GIC and Mubadala did not immediately comment on the matter. CPPIB and P<>tria declined to comment. The sale of TAG is part of a programme of asset sales with a $21 billion target in 2017-2018, as Petrobras seeks to reduce its $95 billion debt pile - the largest in the global oil industry.[nL2N1N102P] TAG<41>s sale is expected to be one of the largest Petrobras divestments this year. The state oil company expects strong interest from investors as Brazil<69>s economy slowly emerges from its worst recession in a century. The sales this year include a planned stock market IPO of fuel distribution unit BR Distribuidora and partnerships with oil majors in oil fields. Some of them ruffled feathers with oil workers unions and have been targeted by court injunctions trying to block them. Petrobras has been able to overturn most of the injunctions in appeals courts. [nL2N1MM0PN] One of the sources said Petrobras aimed to fetch a price above the $5.2 billion paid last year by a group led by Brookfield Asset Management for another gas pipeline company, Nova Transportadora do Sudeste SA, which owns a larger natural network covering southeastern Brazil. Although TAG has a smaller network and serves an area responsible for a lower share in natural gas consumption, better perspectives for economic growth and investments could justify a higher price, the sources added. Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Andrew Hay'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-petrobras-divestment-tag-exclusive/exclusive-engie-ptria-among-groups-vying-for-petrobras-brazil-gas-pipeline-idUKKBN1D00Z7'|'2017-10-31T11:06:00.000+02:00'
'ba1239123bf0156a1e5318f21c09f9fe76036e24'|'Fixed income trading slump sends BNP Paribas shares lower'|'October 31, 2017 / 9:00 AM / in 11 minutes Fixed income trading slump sends BNP Paribas shares lower Maya Nikolaeva 3 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - A 36 percent slump in pretax income at BNP Paribas<61>s ( BNPP.PA ) global markets business overshadowed a rise in its third-quarter profit on Tuesday, knocking the shares of France<63>s biggest bank. FILE PHOTO: The logo of BNP Paribas bank is pictured on an office building in Nantes, France, July 21, 2017. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe/File Photo Revenues from fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) fell 26 percent, worse than the average 22 percent decline at U.S. rivals, though better than the 30 percent-plus drops at European peers such as UBS, Deutsche Bank and Barclays. Major declines in bond trading revenue have hit investment banks due to reduced client activity and low market volatility compared with a year ago, when Britain<69>s vote to leave the European Union and the U.S. election led to market turbulence. Cost cuts and the sale of a stake in Indian insurance company SBI Life helped BNP to post an overall 8 percent rise in quarterly net profit to 2.04 billion euros ($2.38 billion), above the 1.9 billion euros expected by analysts. <20>BNP Paribas reported in the third quarter good business development in an improved economic environment in Europe,<2C> the bank said in a statement. <20>However, the market context this quarter was unfavourable for the market activities<65>. Overall revenues fell 1.8 percent to 10.39 billion euros in the quarter, below the 10.6 billion expected by analysts. Revenues were also hit by adverse foreign exchange movements. <20>Revenue miss driven by poor CIB likely to trigger profit taking,<2C> said a Paris-based trader, referring to BNP<4E>s investment banking business. BNP shares were down 3 percent in early trading, among the worst performers on France''s benchmark CAC-40 index .FCHI and underperforming a 0.4 percent decline on the STOXX Europe 600 banking index .SX7P. The stock remains up around 10 percent since the start of 2017. BNP, which had outperformed many of its rivals in recent quarters in bonds and equity trading, said its FICC business had maintained its leading position in bond issuances since the start of the year. The bank cut operating expenses at its corporate and institutional bank by 6.2 percent in the quarter, part of a savings drive launched at the start of 2016. It also identified 200 processes that would be automated by the end of 2018. ($1 = 0.8595 euros)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bnp-paribas-results/fixed-income-trading-slump-sends-bnp-paribas-shares-lower-idUKKBN1D00YT'|'2017-10-31T10:59:00.000+02:00'
'3a19f4411c79fc4c7e97113d1e2acdb4349b51b7'|'Brazil''s Ita<74> reduces loss provisions, slightly beats estimates'|'October 30, 2017 / 10:03 PM / Updated 34 minutes ago Brazil''s Ita<74> reduces loss provisions, slightly beats estimates Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SAO PAULO, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Itau Unibanco Holding SA , Brazil<69>s largest private bank, posted a 6.25 billion reais ($1.9 billion) profit in the third quarter, slightly beating analyst expectations as Brazil<69>s economic recovery allowed the reduction of provisions for credit losses. Net profit rose 1.4 percent from the prior three months when adjusted for one-off items, slightly above a consensus estimate of 6.23 billion reais compiled by Thomson Reuters. Provisions for loan losses were 4.28 billion reais, below a consensus estimate of 4.83 billion reais. Recurring return on equity (ROE), a gauge of profitability, totaled 21.6 percent for the quarter, above a consensus estimate of 20.86 percent. ($1 = 3.2888 reais) (Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Sandra Maler)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/itau-unibco-hldg-results/brazils-ita-reduces-loss-provisions-slightly-beats-estimates-idUSE6N1ML00T'|'2017-10-31T00:02:00.000+02:00'
'643ad810ac3e03f395d2881e6910a0ce9c87b920'|'Oil pain continues: IMF slashes growth forecast for Gulf states - Oct. 31, 2017'|'Oil price collapse was a ''wake-up call'' for Gulf states Oil markets have stabilized but Middle East economies are still feeling the pain of the price collapse that began more than three years ago. The Gulf states will barely grow this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. It has slashed its forecast for GDP growth across the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council to just 0.5%, down from 0.9% it forecast in May. "Oil exporters are continuing to adjust to these low prices, which have dampened growth and contributed to large fiscal and external deficits," the IMF said on Tuesday its regional economic outlook. Oil output in the region has dropped after OPEC and non-OPEC members agreed to cut supply to boost prices. The agreement runs through March 2018, and some countries have talked about extending it further. The IMF based its projections on an average oil price of $50 a barrel. U.S. crude futures are currently trading at around $54 a barrel, and Brent crude prices are even higher at $60. Related: Quest: It''s the IMF vs. Donald Trump Jihad Azour, director for the Middle East and Central Asia at the IMF, said regional governments should not view higher oil prices as a substitute for economic reforms. "It''s important from a policy standpoint to be on the conservative side and to make sure we are not dependent on the oil cycle," he told CNNMoney Emerging Markets editor John Defterios. He urged the Gulf nations to push ahead with plans to diversify their economies. "Oil is still an important factor to the macro-economics of situation in the GCC," Azour said. "But the good news is that those countries are progressively reducing the weight and the importance of oil in the function of the economy as well as the financing of the state." Low oil prices have forced Gulf countries to rethink their economic strategies. Saudi Arabia, the biggest economy in the region, last year launched Vision 2030 , a blueprint for what the economy should look like in the next decade. Related: Saudi Arabia wants foreign help in its massive economic overhaul The government has cut some subsidies, announced new taxes and lifted a controversial ban on women driving. It also tapped global bond markets three times in less than a year, borrowing billions to balance its books. The Gulf countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, also plan to introduce sales taxes next year. "The key reforms that are currently contemplated [such as] the value added tax and the continuous removal of subsidies are [going] in the right direction," said Azour. "Those are the right types of reforms that allow you to increase your fiscal flexibility with limited impact on economy." The IMF expects Middle East oil exporting countries beyond the Gulf, including Iraq, Libya, Algeria and Iran, will grow at an average annual rate of just 2.8% over the next five years, half the rate achieved in 2016. CNNMoney (Dubai)   9:47 AM ET'|'cnn.com'|'http://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_news_economy.rss'|'http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/31/news/economy/imf-cuts-gulf-growth-forecast/index.html'|'2017-10-31T16:47:00.000+02:00'
'1755c23353197eed6bc9bd89cc27f06ba56a250e'|'UPDATE 1-Novartis asks FDA to expand Kymriah''s use against blood cancer'|'October 31, 2017 / 7:39 AM / in 14 hours Novartis asks FDA to expand Kymriah''s use against blood cancer Reuters Staff 2 Min Read ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss drugmaker Novartis is seeking U.S. regulators<72> blessing for its Kymriah cell therapy to be used against a second form of blood cancer after winning initial approval for the treatment earlier this year. Swiss drugmaker Novartis'' logo is seen at the company''s plant in the northern Swiss town of Stein, Switzerland October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann Novartis said on Tuesday it requested Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for Kymriah for adult patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) who do not qualify for a stem cell transplant. Kymriah, a chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapy, in August won FDA approval against acute lymphoblastic leukemia in patients up to 25 years old. As it adds indications, Novartis expects Kymriah to eventually top annual sales of $1 billion, but the drug has rivals in the DLBCL setting. Earlier this month, the FDA approved Gilead<61>s Yescarta for patients with the disease who had failed other treatments. <20>Kymriah represents a historic breakthrough in the evolution of individualized immunotherapy and we are committed to bringing this innovation to as many patients who may benefit as possible,<2C> Vas Narasimhan, Novartis<69>s chief medical officer and designated CEO, said in a statement. With CAR-T therapies, patients<74> immune cells are taken from their bodies, genetically re-engineered to fight their cancer and then reinfused. Novartis has set the price for Kymriah at $475,000 for young patients with ALL, but the Basel-based company has pushed back announcing the price for adult DLBCL patients until it wins FDA approval. Novartis also plans to submit an application for Kymriah with European authorities this year, it said. Reporting by Silke Koltrowitz and John Miller; Editing by Michael Shields'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-novartis-kymriah/novartis-asks-fda-to-expand-kymriahs-use-against-blood-cancer-idUSKBN1D00QR'|'2017-10-31T09:34:00.000+02:00'
'ba2c59b1ace20af15cfe1fd32bc46dafc56a7e20'|'Panasonic''s Q2 profit rises 6 pct on automotive demand, beats estimates'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - Panasonic Corp ( 6752.T ) on Tuesday said output at the $5 billion battery <20>Gigafactory<72> it runs with electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ) could soon increase as the causes of bottlenecks that have hobbled production are now understood.FILE PHOTO: A logo of Panasonic Corp is pictured at the CEATEC JAPAN 2017 (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies) at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo Panasonic, the world<6C>s largest automotive lithium-ion battery manufacturer, makes battery cells to which Tesla adds electronics to make battery packs for its cars.Tesla earlier this month blamed manufacturing bottlenecks for limiting quarterly production of its mass-market Model 3 sedan to 260 vehicles rather than its 1,500 goal.Panasonic Chief Executive Kazuhiro Tsuga said at an earnings briefing that delays to the automation of the battery pack production line meant some stages had to be completed manually.<2E>This process (for battery packs) will be soon automated, and then the number of vehicles to be produced will rise sharply,<2C> Tsuga said. He declined to comment to what extent Model 3 production would be behind its targeted schedule.The comments came as Panasonic on Tuesday said automotive demand helped July-September operating profit rise 6 percent, beating analyst estimates. It maintained its 335 billion yen ($2.96 billion) forecast for the year ending March.Analysts have said Panasonic<69>s massive Gigafactory bet makes the firm highly sensitive to Tesla<6C>s strategy. On Tuesday, Tsuga acknowledged the bottlenecks could impact earnings, but said the contract with Tesla was designed to hedge various risks. He also said battery businesses with other clients are profitable.Panasonic sees batteries as central to its plan to nearly double automotive business revenue to 2.5 trillion yen by the year through March 2022. To that end, it has been aggressively expanding battery production capacity globally.It plans to start production this financial year ending March at a new plant in Dalian, China, and is adding production lines in Japan - steps that could allow it to reduce dependence on Tesla.Noboru Sato, a former battery engineer at Honda Motor Co Ltd ( 7267.T ) and former vice president of South Korean rechargeable battery maker Samsung SDI Co Ltd ( 006400.KS ), said Panasonic <20>decided to build the plant in China on requests from Honda and Toyota Motor Corp ( 7203.T ).<2E>Toyota and Honda, already customers of Panasonic batteries, were seeking ways of procuring batteries in China, Sato said, as the government in the world<6C>s largest automobile market promotes electric vehicles as a means of combating pollution.<2E>Panasonic<69>s decision to produce batteries in China has solved their problems,<2C> Sato said.Panasonic, Honda and Toyota declined to comment.Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Additional reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Christopher Cushing '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-panasonic-results/panasonics-second-quarter-profit-rises-6-percent-on-automotive-demand-beats-estimates-idUSKBN1D00S7'|'2017-10-31T09:48:00.000+02:00'
'e16e0c9496135740cdf52d437f998e244fbb3279'|'What to watch for in House GOP''s tax reform bill'|'What to watch for in House GOP''s tax reform bill by Jeanne Sahadi @CNNMoney October 31, 2017: 2:26 PM ET Trump''s chief economics adviser defends tax math The fight over tax reform is about to get very real. On Wednesday, House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady is due to unveil the House GOP''s draft rewrite of the country''s tax code. It''s likely to hew closely to a tax reform framework negotiated between the White House and leading Republicans. That framework called for fewer tax brackets for individuals, an expanded standard deduction and child tax credit, a repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax and estate tax, and a repeal of most itemized deductions. It also called on lawmakers to preserve tax breaks for mortgage interest, charitable contributions and retirement savings, although it didn''t say those breaks couldn''t be altered. On the business side, the framework proposed lower tax rates on corporations and all other businesses, which are known as pass-throughs. It also proposed a low, one-time tax rate on existing overseas profits to entice companies to bring that money home. Who gets helped, when, and at what cost The fight over each detail will come down to a few central questions: Who''s helped, who''s hurt, and at what cost? The middle class or the rich? Businesses or workers? One industry versus another? Certain states over others? Based on some of the fireworks so far, it will be interesting to see how the House bill handles: Real estate tax breaks: Brady said this weekend that his bill would still let people claim a deduction for their property taxes . That was a concession to colleagues from high-tax states who wanted to keep the deduction for state and local taxes, which Republicans have proposed repealing in full. But the opponents of repeal weren''t entirely appeased. Brady told reporters on Monday that there could be further tweaks. The real estate industry is also worried that the Republican tax framework reduces tax incentives for homeownership. For instance, doubling the standard deduction would drastically reduce the number of filers who itemize. That means the mortgage interest deduction would be taken by far fewer people. A big player in the housing industry, the National Association of Home Builders , has already come out against the House bill, before it''s even been released. The group is displeased that lawmakers haven''t adopted its proposed homeownership credit to cover both mortgage interest and property taxes. The 401(k) tax break: Another big player -- President Trump -- expressed displeasure last week at a provision House Republicans were said to be considering: lowering the cap on how much pretax money workers may contribute to a 401(k). From CNN: GOP vow Mueller investigation won''t derail tax reform Brady suggested publicly the idea might still be on the table . And on Monday, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy seemed to indicate on Fox Business that House Republicans will consider "Rothifying" 401(k) contributions above a lower cap. That is, your contributions above the new cap would be made after-tax, as they are in a Roth IRA, but your gains and withdrawals would be tax-free. In other words, if lawmakers opt to "Rothify" 401(k)s, you wouldget no immediate tax break for saving money above the cap. The corporate tax rate cut: The GOP framework calls for a permanent reduction in the corporate rate to 20% from 35%. But that would be expensive, reducing revenue to the government by up to $2 trillion in the first decade and up to $3 trillion in the second, according to Tax Policy Center estimates. So it''s not clear whetherHouse Republicans might propose something higher than a 20% rate or propose a 20% rate but make it temporary. The costs: The House and Senate budget resolution allows for a tax bill that reduces overall federal revenue by $1.5 trillion over 10 years. But the tax cuts Republicans want cost far more than that. So they need to find plenty of so-called offsets to pay for
'63e6a71eff39ca8e2b62c51067ba0d981b89124a'|'Shopify posts strong revenue growth, adjusted profit'|'TORONTO, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Shopify Inc posted a 72 percent increase in third-quarter revenue as the fast-growing Canadian retail software company reported an adjusted profit for the first time as a public company and increased its fourth quarter forecasts.The Ottawa-based company<6E>s net loss on an unadjusted basis was $9.4 million, or 9 cents per share in the quarter, compared to a loss of $9.1 million, or 11 cents per share, a year earlier.On an adjusted basis it made 5 cents a share.Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/shopify-results/shopify-posts-strong-revenue-growth-adjusted-profit-idINL2N1N0268'|'2017-10-31T09:02:00.000+02:00'
'46a0cf4b99c59b31bc111856d2897a29d1065ffa'|'Mastercard''s quarterly profit rises 21 percent'|'(Reuters) - Mastercard Inc ( MA.N ) on Tuesday posted a record profit and trounced Wall Street expectations, as it battled for consumers and global market share over other payment channels including its bigger rival Visa Inc ( V.N ). A Mastercard logo is seen on a credit card in this picture illustration August 30, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration More people used credit, debit and commercial prepaid cards across Mastercard<72>s global network - pushing the value of transactions processed - known as <20>gross dollar volume<6D>, up 11 percent to $1.35 trillion. <20>In the U.S., we continue to see steady economic growth, low unemployment and inflation,<2C> said Ajay Banga, chief executive officer of Mastercard, on a post-earnings call. <20>Consumer sentiment is favourable.<2E> Last month, consumer spending in the United States had its largest increase in eight years, aiding payment processors such as Mastercard and Visa, which generate revenue by facilitating credit- and debit-card transactions. Visa also beat market expectations last week, posting an 11 percent rise in quarterly profit on healthy consumer spending. Mastercard shares hit a record earlier but lost ground and were down 1.3 percent at $147.02 mid-day. The drop was attributed to profit taking after a 20 percent rise from the previous quarter, according to Thomas McCrohan, managing director of Americas Research at Mizuho. Mastercard has risen nearly 44 percent this year, as of Monday<61>s close, outpacing Visa, which was up 41 percent over the same period. Mastercard''s net income rose 21 percent to $1.43 billion or $1.34 per share in the third quarter ended Sept 30. Analysts on average were looking for $1.23, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. mstr.cd/2gYxlhy Cowen analyst George Mihalos called the results <20>very strong<6E> and said the company has <20>exceeded our expectations every quarter this year.<2E> Mastercard is taking measures to bolster security on its network and said safety remains a key priority. Many American companies are investing heavily in securing their systems against hackers. <20>Our investments in technologies like biometrics, tokens, encryption and artificial intelligence are redefining the way both consumers and transactions are protected,<2C> Banga said. Mastercard has already started the process when it announced this month it would forgo signatures after purchases. Total operating expenses rose 20.4 percent to $1.46 billion in the quarter, partly from costs related to buying digital payments company Vocalink. Net revenue rose 18 percent to $3.40 billion and topped estimates of $3.28 billion. Reporting By Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mastercard-results/mastercards-quarterly-profit-rises-21-percent-idUSKBN1D01KG'|'2017-10-31T14:08:00.000+02:00'
'90b32d4cc102e2cd5464d4ad6e57e149c9cb864e'|'TREASURIES-Yields fall as Powell seen likely Fed chair pick'|'(Recasts with Powell, adds Quote: , updates prices) * Data, Fed meeting, Fed chair announcement in focus * Treasury refunding watched for signs of new maturity By Karen Brettell NEW YORK, Oct 30 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury yields fell on Monday as news reports indicated that U.S. President Donald Trump is likely to appoint Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell, who is viewed as more dovish than other contenders, as head of the Federal Reserve. A source familiar with the matter said on Monday that Powell is likely to replace Janet Yellen. Trump is expected to announce his choice on Thursday, a White House official said separately. <20>You are getting a bull steepener, which suggests that the market is pricing in slightly fewer rate hikes, which would be consistent with Powell,<2C> said Gennadiy Goldberg, an interest rate strategist at TD Securities in New York. So-called bull steepening is when shorter-term rates, which are more sensitive to interest rate hikes, fall at a faster pace than longer-term bond yields. The yield curve between five-year notes and 30-year bonds steepened to 90.50 basis points, up from 88.8 basis points on Friday. Benchmark 10-year notes were last up 15/32 in price to yield 2.37 percent, down from 2.43 percent on Friday. Bloomberg reported on Monday that lawmakers are considering a five-year plan to gradually phase in corporate tax cuts, which would have the rate reach 20 percent in 2022. Investors have hoped that near-term tax cuts would boost economic growth. Bonds are expected to be volatile this week with numerous catalysts driving activity including a heavy slate of economic data, the Treasury Department<6E>s refunding plans, a Fed meeting and the expected Fed chair announcement. <20>It is a very busy week, (with) a lot of potentially market-moving events already on the calendar,<2C> said Thomas Simons, a money market economist at Jefferies in New York. The main economic focus this week is Friday<61>s U.S. jobs report for October. The Fed is expected to leave interest rates unchanged when it concludes its two-day policy meeting on Wednesday, but investors will be watching for any new indications that a rate hike is likely in December. The Treasury Department is also due to announce its funding needs for the next two quarters on Wednesday. Traders will be watching for any new indications that the government may introduce a new long or ultra-long debt maturity as it faces higher funding needs over the coming years. (Editing by Meredith Mazzilli) ) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-bonds/treasuries-yields-fall-as-powell-seen-likely-fed-chair-pick-idINL2N1N514M'|'2017-10-30T13:31:00.000+02:00'
'1d1c606530320931050bbd62c7e239fce81c2835'|'Takeover target M&C Hotels reports higher rooms revenue'|' 38 AM / Updated 7 minutes ago Takeover target M&C Hotels reports higher rooms revenue Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Millennium & Copthorne Hotels ( MLC.L ) (M&C), which has received a takeover proposal that values it at 1.8 billion pounds from shareholder City Developments (CDL), reported higher nine-month rooms revenue boosted by strong growth in New York. Reported revenue per available room (RevPAR) rose 11.5 percent to 82.41 million pounds for the nine months to Sept. 30, the operator of the Millennium, Grand Millennium, Copthorne and Kingsgate hotels said. Excluding deals, closures and currency movements, RevPAR was up 1.4 percent. Several shareholders have criticised Singapore-based CDL<44>s 552.5 pence per share cash proposal to buy the 34.8 percent stake it does not own, but M&C<>s board has said it will back a formal bid at that level. Reporting by Esha Vaish in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mill-cop-hotels-results/takeover-target-mc-hotels-reports-higher-rooms-revenue-idUKKBN1CZ0MI'|'2017-10-30T09:38:00.000+02:00'
'366e3d5189e79c1c1381940ffd4ef5c6f27e5f12'|'CenturyLink says U.S. regulator approves its $24 billion Level 3 deal'|'WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Telecommunications provider CenturyLink Inc ( CTL.N ) said on Monday that it had won anti-trust approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission for its purchase of Level 3 Communications Inc ( LVLT.N ).CenturyLink said last year it would buy Level 3 in a deal valued at about $24 billion. It is seeking to expand its reach in the business communications market and compete with rivals such as AT&T Inc ( T.N ) and Verizon Communications Inc ( VZ.N ). CenturyLink said in a statement it had received all needed approvals and planned to close the deal on Wednesday.The deal, three people briefed on the matter said, could effectively make it easier for other large transactions to win approval.The U.S. Justice Department approved the tie-up this month with some conditions, including some divestitures. It was not immediately clear what conditions the FCC imposed, but it does include some divestitures.The three people said the Republican majority decision could rewrite the standard by which the FCC reviews future mergers -- a shift that could make it easier for other large media and telecommunications mergers to win approval.The FCC is currently considering whether to approve Sinclair Broadcast Group<75>s ( SBGI.O ) proposed $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media Co RCO.N that has drawn fire from across the political spectrum. Critics say the FCC has taken a number of regulatory actions to boost Sinclair.<2E>It has reached a point where all our media policy decisions seem to be custom built for this one company,<2C> FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, said of the Sinclair deal at a congressional hearing last week.The FCC has traditionally employed a balancing test weighing potential public interest harms against any potential public interest benefits and applicants bear the burden of proof.The three people briefed on the matter said the FCC approval of CenturyLink<6E>s Level 3 deal offered a more limited standard of review that would use <20>narrowly tailored transaction-specific conditions to remedy<64> harms.FCC spokesman Neil Grace declined to comment.FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn dissented and said the Republican majority <20>radically alters the commission<6F>s long-standing merger review standards,<2C> her office said.Commission Republicans have pushed to halt the practice of demanding conditions or concessions from companies seeking to merge that are not directly related to the transaction.FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who was in the minority during the Obama administration, last year criticized <20>how badly broken the current merger review process has become at the FCC <20> how rife it is with fact-free, dilatory, politically motivated, non-transparent decision-making.<2E>Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Susan Thomas '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-level-3-communi-m-a-centurylink/u-s-fcc-approves-centurylink-acquisition-of-level-3-source-idINKBN1CZ25V'|'2017-10-30T14:31:00.000+02:00'
'c5eeb2a3ab629ea51b7617a95e41cf05141165d7'|'BP expects oil prices of $50-$55/bbl next year - CFO'|' 35 AM / in 23 minutes BP expects oil prices of $50-$55/bbl next year - CFO Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - BP ( BP.L ) is working on an assumption oil prices will average $50 (37.84 pounds) to $55 a barrel next year as global inventories gradually return to normal levels, Chief Financial Officer Brian Gilvary said on Tuesday. FILE PHOTO: An aircraft of Korean Airlines is seen above a BP petrol station approaching to land at Zurich Airport in Kloten, Switzerland October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo An agreement reached between OPEC and other major oil producing nations to limit output in order to reduce a glut is having an impact, Gilvary said, but he did not expect oil prices to remain at their current levels above $60 a barrel. <20>By the end of next year we will be back at a more normal stock level. It will continue to be bumpy into next year and I wouldn<64>t be assuming those levels of prices for next year,<2C> Gilvary told Reuters in an interview after BP report a doubling of profits in the third quarter. <20>I think $50-$55 is a pretty good working assumption for next year,<2C> he said. BP<42>s operations will be able to generate profit next year at $50 a barrel and perhaps $45 a barrel, he added. In the longer term the company is working to reduce its breakeven level to $35 a barrel, he said. Reporting by Ron Bousso; editing by Jason Neely'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bp-oil/bp-expects-oil-prices-of-50-55-bbl-next-year-cfo-idUKKBN1D00WB'|'2017-10-31T10:34:00.000+02:00'
'ab8e67477c92405693d85e25c907dd8301329ef9'|'Chemed to pay $75 mln over false claims lawsuit -Justice Dept'|'WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chemed Corp and subsidiaries including Vitas Hospice Services LLC and Vitas Healthcare Corp have agreed to pay $75 million to resolve a federal lawsuit alleging false claims for hospice services to Medicare, the U.S. Justice Department said on Monday.The allegations relate to billing for ineligible patients and inflated levels of care, the department said in a statement. Vitas Hospice Services is the largest U.S. for-profit hospice chain, it said.Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by Mohammad Zargham '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chemed-lawsuit/chemed-to-pay-75-million-over-false-claims-lawsuit-justice-dept-idUSKBN1CZ2OA'|'2017-10-30T23:49:00.000+02:00'
'5c427a57e66eb2b2700fb0e5f43d5d6d26f7a1d1'|'Global funds raise U.S. equity exposure to seven-month high - Reuters poll'|'October 31, 2017 / 12:04 PM / Updated 22 minutes ago Global funds raise U.S. equity exposure to seven-month high - Reuters poll Claire Milhench   With U.S. stock markets climbing to new highs in October, global investors raised U.S. equity holdings to seven-month highs, a Reuters poll showed on Tuesday, encouraged by strong corporate earnings and the revival of U.S. tax-cut plans. Trader Greg Rowe reacts after the closing bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, New York, U.S., October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid The monthly asset allocation survey of 51 wealth managers and chief investment officers in Europe, the United States, Britain and Japan was conducted between Oct. 16-27. During this period, U.S. tax-cut plans passed a key legislative hurdle, reviving hopes that corporate America would reap the benefits. That helped U.S. stocks scale new highs in October, boosted also by better-than-expected company earnings and upbeat third- quarter U.S. growth numbers. The Nasdaq tech index looks set to end the month over 3 percent higher .IXIC , and the Dow Jones is up 4.5 percent .DJI . Not surprisingly, global investors<72> exposure to U.S. stocks rose 2.1 percentage points in October to 40.8 percent of their global equity portfolios, the highest level since March. While overall equity exposure dipped a touch to 47.5 percent of global balanced portfolios, investors remained upbeat. <20>It has been more than eight years since the March 2009 low and yet we still see few signs of the imbalances that usually signal the end of a bull market in equities,<2C> said Trevor Greetham, head of multi-asset at Royal London Asset Management (RLAM). <20>At some point, a sustained rise in inflation will trigger a concerted effort by central banks to tighten monetary policy, but we<77>re not there yet.<2E> Only 38 percent of poll   a question on the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of England thought all three would tighten monetary policy by the end of the year. Although the Fed was widely expected to raise rates again in December, respondents disagreed about the path the ECB and BoE would take. In late October - after most participants had filled in the poll - the ECB said it would cut its bond purchases in half from January. But it did extend the scheme until the end of next September. <20>Tapering is not tightening,<2C> Greetham said. As for the BoE, Sandra Crowl, a member of the investment committee at Carmignac, noted the bank had a juggling act to perform - inflation is rising while weaker investment and consumer spending are cutting into growth. EURO ZONE CUT Within global bond portfolios, investors cut holdings of euro zone debt by one percentage point to 28.9 percent - the lowest since June - while trimming UK gilts to 9.9 percent. Emerging market debt remained in favour, its share in portfolios up 1.2 percentage points to 12.1 percent. Poll participants were split 50/50 on whether a new German   the country<72>s fiscal policy, after Wolfgang Schaeuble agreed to step aside. <20>The Germans are (somewhat rightly) terrified that the current policy of the ECB is way too loose for them,<2C> said Mouhammed Choukeir,   Kleinwort Hambros. Their only way to offset that loose monetary policy is with a prudent fiscal policy, he said. However, Peter van der Welle, a strategist at Robeco, said that Germany<6E>s current budget surplus and sturdy economy provided a benign backdrop for a new governing coalition to pursue a less restrictive fiscal policy. There was little consensus on whether the impasse in Brexit negotiations made a hard Brexit - one without a trade deal - more likely. Half of those who answered   thought it would.   Investments, said that after a disastrous election result for the Conservatives, the general view was that Brexit would only get softer. <20>We view the impasse as transitory as the UK government will likely be more conciliatory in negotiations and be willing to make concession
'35a6e82a458e42579d6d4bf02d906428e3a7b23e'|'RPT-Canyon Bridge says aims to complete Imagination deal despite insider trading case'|'(Repeats to add reference keywords used by some subscribers)LONDON, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Private equity firm Canyon Bridge said on Tuesday it remained focused on completing its proposed 550 million-pound ($730 million) acquisition of British chipmaker Imagination Technologies and the deal would not be jeopardised by insider trading charges against Canyon<6F>s founder Benjamin Chow.A spokeswoman for the Chinese-backed firm said Chow denies wrongdoing and intends to defend the case in court.The Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Oct. 30 that Chow had conspired to commit securities fraud by sending material nonpublic information regarding the attempted acquisition of Lattice Semiconductor Corp to an unnamed friend and former colleague. ($1 = 0.7553 pounds)Reporting by Ben Martin and Pamela Barbaglia; Editing by Greg MahlichOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/imagination-tech-ma-canyon-bridge/canyon-bridge-says-aims-to-complete-imagination-deal-despite-insider-trading-case-idINL8N1N668E'|'2017-10-31T12:21:00.000+02:00'
'fc9d351998af1854ca9f1c5e3a4b052490c91723'|'CME to launch bitcoin futures in fourth quarter subject to approvals'|'October 31, 2017 / 3:29 PM / Updated 6 minutes ago CME to launch bitcoin futures in fourth quarter subject to approvals Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss , Anna Irrera 3 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - CME Group Inc ( CME.O ), the world<6C>s largest futures market operator, said on Tuesday it intends to launch bitcoin futures in the fourth quarter, pending regulatory approvals. Men enter the CME Group offices in New York, U.S., October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid The new contract will be settled in cash, based on the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate (BRR), a once-a-day reference rate of the U.S. dollar price of Bitcoin. Bitcoin futures will be listed on and subject to the rules of CME. Since November last year, CME Group and UK-based bitcoin futures exchange Crypto Facilities Ltd have calculated and published the BRR, which consolidates the trade flow of major bitcoin spot exchanges during a calculation window into the U.S. dollar price of one bitcoin as of 4:00 p.m. London time. Cryptocurrency exchanges Bitstamp, GDAX, itBit and Kraken currently contribute prices for calculating the BRR. <20>Given increasing client interest in the evolving cryptocurrency markets, we have decided to introduce a bitcoin futures contract,<2C> said Terry Duffy, CME group chairman and chief executive officer. The launch of a bitcoin product by a large regulated exchange institution could help cryptocurrencies gain legitimacy in mainstream finance. Some cryptocurrency exchanges have been hit by fraud and deception, a Reuters special report showed last month. ( reut.rs/2xLhbNZ ) Bitcoin jumped to an all-time high above $6,400 (<28>4,832) on Tuesday on the BitStamp exchange after the CME news. It was last at $6,352.07 BTC=BTSP , up nearly 4 percent. This year<61>s bitcoin rally has created a divide on Wall Street. Many large institutions support the use of blockchain, the technology underlying cryptocurrencies, to improve back office processes. Yet some bankers oppose doing business with actual cryptocurrencies that are not backed by national governments and have been involved in scandals. Other like CME see crypto-currencies as a business opportunity. Rival exchange group CBOE Holdings Inc has applied with U.S. regulators to launch a bitcoin futures contract and a bitcoin exchange traded fund on its venues. <20>There are lot of people who want to participate in bitcoins and the blockchain technology so it should be well-received,<2C> said Greg Adamsick, director of global futures and options at RCM Alternatives in Chicago. <20>This should legitimize bitcoin with the move by the CME. It should make it more comfortable for people to hold.<2E> he added. CME and Crypto Facilities also publish the CME CF Bitcoin Real Time Index (BRTI) to provide price transparency. The index provides a spot price that reflects instantaneous U.S. dollar price of bitcoin. Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss and Anna Irrera; Additional reporting by Richard Leong in New York and Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and David Gregorio'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-cme-group-bitcoin/cme-to-launch-bitcoin-futures-in-fourth-quarter-subject-to-approvals-idUKKBN1D025C'|'2017-10-31T17:28:00.000+02:00'
'95a739e63eff120b7b7b7ebcd4f1a5d6809d7412'|'Neos Therapeutics to consider other offers after PDL snub: sources'|'(Reuters) - U.S. drugmaker Neos Therapeutics Inc, which this week rejected a fourth takeover offer by PDL Biopharma Inc, will consider offers from other potential buyers, according to people familiar with the matter.Neos, a developer of attention deficit disorder treatments, rejected, as inadequate, a nearly $300 million all-cash bid from PDL that was more than a 40 percent premium to its market value.Neos will work with investment bank Jefferies LLC to explore its options and discuss a deal with other potential acquirers, the sources said. PDL could clinch a deal if it were to offer a higher price, the sources added, cautioning that there was no certainty of any transaction.The sources asked not to be identified because the deliberations are confidential. Neos and PDL each declined to comment.PDL BioPharma, based in Incline Village, Nevada, owns a portfolio of companies, products, royalty agreements and debt facilities across the biotech, pharmaceutical and medical devices sectors.Neos currently markets two attention deficit disorder treatments, Adzenys XR-ODT and Cotempla XR-ODT. The latter was launched in September and is still ramping up sales.It has another compound, also for ADHD, that is in the late stages of clinical research and is expected to launch in the U.S. early next year, assuming regulatory approval.The compounds come in so-called alternative dosage forms, such as disintegrating tablets and liquids, that target a relatively small patient population that does not react well to mainstream dosages.Cowen and Co estimates that Neos will eventually gain a roughly 30 percent share of the alternative dosage market for ADHD medicines, garnering sales of around $300 million per year.Jason Butler, an equity researcher at JP Morgan, has argued that Neos<6F> fair value is around $30 per share. In late afternoon trading on the Nasdaq on Monday, Neos shares were down 6.3 percent at $9.60. Over the past year, the shares traded between $10.90 and $4.85.Reporting by Carl O''Donnell in New York; Editing by Steve Orlofsky '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-neos-m-a-pdl-biopharma/neos-therapeutics-to-consider-other-offers-after-pdl-snub-sources-idUSKBN1D02P0'|'2017-11-01T02:15:00.000+02:00'
'4fea59df0a35ef05df9a34046718f94691027379'|'Rio Tinto adds alumina refineries to aluminium smelters sale -sources'|'October 31, 2017 / 7:19 AM / in 2 minutes Rio Tinto adds alumina refineries to aluminum smelters sale: sources James Regan 3 Min Read SYDNEY (Reuters) - Rio Tinto is attracting renewed interest in selling its Pacific Aluminium smelting unit by adding two alumina refineries in Australia to the portfolio, according to three sources familiar with the matter. FILE PHOTO - A sign adorns the building where mining company Rio Tinto has their office in Perth, Western Australia, November 19, 2015. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo Rio Tinto had tried to sell the division minus the refineries in 2011 and again in 2015 without success. Switzerland-headquartered Glencore, Liberty House of Britain, and Russia<69>s Rusal have all expressed interest, according to the sources, who declined to be named because they are not authorized to speak to media. By including the refineries, Rio could potentially double the original $1 billion price tag for Pacific Aluminium, the sources said. Pacific Aluminium originally included Rio Tinto<74>s Bell Bay, Boyne Island and Tomago smelters in Australia, and the Tiwai Point smelter in New Zealand. Glencore, Liberty House and Rio Tinto declined to comment on a potential sale or any discussions on the matter. Rusal could not be reached. Glencore, a global trader of aluminum, already ships copper, and other commodities from ports near the refineries. Liberty House purchased Rio<69>s Lochaber aluminum smelter in Scotland a year ago for $412 million. More recently it acquired Australian steel group Arrium. By including its QAL and Yarwun alumina refineries in the sale, Rio stands to lift the odds of ridding its books of the holdings, after the failure of the most recent attempt under former chief executive Sam Walsh, the sources said. <20>We view inclusion of the refineries into the mix as a stamp of the new leadership at Rio, increasing the chances of a sale,<2C> a fund manager with exposure to Rio Tinto said. Current chief executive, Jean-Sebastien Jacques, who took over in July 2016, is acting rapidly to divest all but Rio Tinto<74>s best-performing units. Rio sold its coal & Allied thermal coal division in June for $2.7 billion. It is also in the process of selling two Australian coking coal mines. Adding the refineries to the sale comes amid a strong market for alumina, which is derived from bauxite and used to make aluminum. Alumina prices have gained 50 percent since August to $450 a ton on expectations that China will boost imports to compensate for production cuts at home to fight pollution. <20>If ever there was a time to have a supply source for alumina outside of China, it<69>s now,<2C> said Argonaut analyst James Wilson. <20>For Rio, it make sense. For a buyer, such as a Glencore or a Rusal, it makes sense.<2E> Rusal already controls 6 percent of the global alumina market and is a 20 percent partner with Rio in the QAL refinery. Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Tom Hogue'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-metals-lmeweek-rio-tinto/rio-tinto-adds-alumina-refineries-to-aluminum-smelters-sale-sources-idUSKBN1D00NW'|'2017-10-31T09:10:00.000+02:00'
'cf37604cbe264a3f5688902fa36807a571136bef'|'AirAsia to sell more stakes in non-flying businesses to fund dividends'|'SINGAPORE (Reuters) - AirAsia Bhd ( AIRA.KL ) on Tuesday said it plans to sell more stakes in non-flying businesses to fund special dividends to shareholders, after announcing a new ground handling joint venture (JV) with Singapore<72>s SATS Ltd ( SATS.SI ).Tail of AirAsia X plane as seen at the Garuda Maintenance Facility AeroAsia in Tangerang, Indonesia, September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Beawiharta The low-cost carrier, which expects S$119.3 million ($87.7 million) in proceeds from the SATS deal, is close to selling some or all of its aircraft leasing arm and its remaining 25 percent stake in a travel booking joint venture with Expedia Inc ( EXPE.O ), its founder and Group CEO Tony Fernandes said.The airline will also consider the sale of stakes in its food, engineering and duty free businesses in the future, although no talks on those have begun, Fernandes said.<2E>We are going to special dividend those things out,<2C> he told Reuters after a media briefing on the SATS deal.<2E>There is a whole pipeline of those assets. We do joint ventures and eventually we will dispose of those joint ventures. They are not core. But the relationship will always stay.<2E>Earlier this year, AirAsia got $100 million from the sale of a 50 percent stake in aviation academy Asian Aviation Center of Excellence to CAE International Holding Ltd.While Fernandes did not give details on the special dividend, analysts at Malaysia<69>s Kenanga Investment Bank said it could be up to 0.11 ringgit a share after the SATS deal.The optimism drove up the airline<6E>s shares by 5 percent, or 0.16 ringgit, to a close of 3.34 ringgit ($0.7893) on Tuesday, their biggest daily percentage rise since May.FILE PHOTO: A security guard rides a bicycle past an AirAsia plane at the Garuda Maintenance Facility AeroAsia in Tangerang, Indonesia, September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Beawiharta/File Photo FUTURE PLANS Fernandes said he hoped to complete the sale of the leasing business, which two sources in March valued at $900 million, by the end of the year.He said talks with potential buyers had dragged on because AirAsia wanted to ensure it had the right balance between receiving a high upfront price and ensuring its leasing costs were reasonable in the future.<2E>I think now we have got a very good deal which is a win-win situation,<2C> he said, without identifying the buyer.Fernandes said he would prefer for AirAsia to keep a stake in the business rather than sell it entirely as it was doing with the SATS JV, but it was a decision for the board.As part of the SATS deal, AirAsia will receive a 40 percent stake in ground handling at the new Terminal 4 at Singapore<72>s Changi Airport, while SATS will get a 49 percent stake in AirAsia<69>s Malaysian ground handling unit.The pair will be targeting third-party ground handling contracts in Malaysia, and possibly in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines at a later date, SATS CEO Alex Hungate said.<2E>We get to use those assets for a broader base of customers and we get a better return on assets,<2C> he said.AirAsia has ground handling operations at 15 airports in Malaysia but no third-party contracts at present.Reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by Himani Sarkar '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-airasia-strategy/airasia-to-sell-more-stakes-in-non-flying-businesses-to-fund-dividends-idUSKBN1D00H2'|'2017-10-31T07:56:00.000+02:00'
'bd5809ad0f4f2de3693cb109e2379fcd4210df6c'|'Rockwell Automation rejects Emerson''s $27 billion offer'|'October 31, 2017 / 3:25 PM / Updated 13 minutes ago Rockwell Automation rejects Emerson''s $27 billion offer Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Automation equipment maker Rockwell Automation Inc ( ROK.N ) said on Tuesday it had rejected another unsolicited acquisition bid from bigger rival Emerson Electric Co ( EMR.N ) for more than $27 billion (<28>20.4 billion) as the offer undervalued the company. FILE PHOTO: Emerson Electric Company Canadian headquarters is shown in Markham February 7, 2012. REUTERS/Mike Cassese/File Photo Rockwell<6C>s shares rose as much as 12.7 percent while Emerson<6F>s shares fell as much as 4.1 percent. Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based Rockwell said it had previously rejected Emerson<6F>s first buyout offer made on Aug.2 worth $200 per share, with about half of the consideration in cash and the rest in Emerson stock. On Oct.10, St. Louis, Missouri-based Emerson raised its cash and stock offer to $215 per share. But Rockwell<6C>s board, after a careful review, rejected it, Rockwell said. Up to Monday<61>s close Rockwell<6C>s shares had risen 13.2 percent, helped by improving sales in the United States and emerging markets. <20>A combination would provide increased scale and help expand industrial product and service offerings,<2C> CFRA Research analyst Joe Agnese said. CNBC television on Tuesday was the first to report that Rockwell had rejected the multiple offers from Emerson. ( cnb.cx/2zVEeUm ) Emerson said it made a private offer to Rockwell, proposing a combination of the companies, adding that currently no discussions were ongoing between the two entities. Emerson is looking to expand in areas such as industrial automation amid increasing competition from European rivals such as Siemens ( SIEGn.DE ), ABB Automation Group and Schneider Electric. Shares of Rockwell were up 5.3 percent at $197 while Emerson<6F>s shares were down 3 percent at $65.35 in early trading on Tuesday. Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Arun Koyyur'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-rockwell-automat-m-a-emerson-electric/rockwell-automation-rejects-emersons-27-billion-offer-idUKKBN1D024W'|'2017-10-31T17:24:00.000+02:00'
'5469fd254389f285c8fb9fe908adba61572273df'|'Ontario Teachers'' to sell stake in Bristol, Birmingham airports'|' 55 PM / Updated 15 minutes ago Ontario Teachers'' to sell stake in Bristol, Birmingham airports Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Ontario Teachers<72> Pension Plan said on Tuesday it would sell its 30 percent stake each in Bristol and Birmingham airports to Australia<69>s New South Wales Treasury Corp and investment firm Sunsuper Superannuation Fund. Following the stake sale, Ontario Teachers<72> will hold a 70 percent stake in Bristol airport and a 33.8 percent stake in Birmingham airport. Ontario Teachers<72> is the largest private investor in airports in Europe, with holdings in Copenhagen airports, Brussels airport and London City airport. Reporting by Anirban Paul in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D''Silva'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ontarioteachers-divestiture/ontario-teachers-to-sell-stake-in-bristol-birmingham-airports-idUKKBN1D02E4'|'2017-10-31T18:54:00.000+02:00'
'400dfe4894099ea4b0d758be31a2113c97fd37c7'|'China''s Sinopec mulls U.S. oil projects ahead of Trump''s visit: sources'|'October 31, 2017 / 5:37 AM / Updated 12 minutes ago China''s Sinopec mulls U.S. oil projects ahead of Trump''s visit: sources Florence Tan 3 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - China<6E>s state oil major Sinopec is evaluating two projects in the United States that could boost Gulf Coast crude oil exports and also expand storage facilities in the Caribbean, two people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, with U.S. President Donald Trump set to visit Beijing next week. FILE PHOTO - A Sinopec sign displayed at its gas station is seen behind a Chinese New Year lantern installation in Hong Kong February 5, 2013. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo With U.S.-China energy trade likely to feature prominently during Trump<6D>s visit, the people said one of the projects could see Sinopec ( 600028.SS ) ( 0386.HK ) partnering with U.S. commodities trader Freepoint Commodities LLC and U.S. private equity firm ArcLight Capital Partners LLC. The trio is mulling building a pipeline to move shale oil from the Permian basin in Texas to the U.S. Gulf Coast for export, the people said. This project also includes the construction of a terminal that can load 2 million barrels of crude onboard a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC), they said. This will reduce a big chunk of logistics costs incurred for U.S. crude exports, making the oil more competitive in Asia, the sources said. ArcLight and Freepoint are among the U.S. energy and commodities firms that will make up a major part of a business delegation visiting Beijing when Trump goes to China next week. Sinopec and the U.S. firms have also been exploring an expansion of oil storage at Limetree Bay (LB) Terminals in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, and restarting an idled refinery at the same site, the people said. They declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to media. The Chinese company, which is Asia<69>s largest oil refiner, ArcLight and all Freepoint declined to comment. The investments could reduce China<6E>s trade deficit with the United States, a source of tension between the world<6C>s two largest economies, while allowing Beijing to tap growing U.S. crude supplies as the top global oil importer seeks to diversify its import sources. Taking stakes in oil infrastructure is also part of Sinopec<65>s ambition to expand its global trading profile. Sinopec already owns part of a Saudi refinery at the Red Sea, although a recent attempt to buy a Chevron refinery in South Africa<63>s Cape Town was thwarted by Glencore PLC ( GLEN.L ). <20>There is room for energy cooperation between China and the United States, but the projects will have to be commercially viable before the companies reach any agreement,<2C> one of the people familiar with the matter said. LB Terminals, a joint venture between ArcLight and Freepoint Commodities, said on its website that it planned to double its oil storage capacity and restart the 650,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) refinery at the site. In a 10-year strategic deal, Sinopec already leased 75 percent of existing crude oil storage capacity at LB Terminals. ( reut.rs/2lsMHfm ) Reporting by Florence Tan; Additional reporting by Chen Aizhu in BEIJING; Editing by Josephine Mason and Kenneth Maxwell'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-trump-asia-china-sinopec-corp/chinas-sinopec-mulls-u-s-oil-projects-ahead-of-trumps-visit-sources-idUKKBN1D00G1'|'2017-10-31T07:36:00.000+02:00'
'482ec83ae26418ef253fe0677893c95acddcf6ca'|'UPDATE 1-U.S. lobbyist Tony Podesta leaves firm amid Manafort probe'|'October 30, 2017 / 10:53 PM / in 3 hours UPDATE 1-U.S. lobbyist Tony Podesta leaves firm amid Manafort probe Reuters Staff (Adds details throughout, background) By Mark Hosenball and Ginger Gibson WASHINGTON, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Prominent Washington lobbyist Tony Podesta has stepped down from his lobbying firm Podesta Group as investigators<72> examine his company<6E>s ties to U.S. President Donald Trump<6D>s indicted former campaign manager, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. Podesta stepped down on the same day federal investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election campaign charged former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and a business associate, Rick Gates, with money laundering. Manafort, a longtime Republican operative, and Gates pleaded not guilty to a 12-count indictment with charges ranging from money laundering to acting as unregistered agents of Ukraine<6E>s former pro-Russian government. The indictment against Manafort and Gates listed two unnamed firms as <20>Company A<> and <20>Company B<> that lobbied several lawmakers on behalf of Ukraine at Manafort<72>s request. The indictment did not name Podesta Group. A spokesperson for the Podesta Group said after Podesta stepped down on Monday that it had been in contact with investigators on special counsel Robert Mueller<65>s team and was fully cooperating with the probe. The spokesperson also said the Podesta Group fully complied with the law in disclosing its lobbying on behalf of the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a group linked to Manafort and named in the indictment. Podesta Group filed lobbying disclosures with the Department of Justice in April and August saying it did work in 2012 for the same pro-Russian Ukrainian group for which Manafort had worked. Podesta Group work alongside another Washington lobbying firm, Mercury LLC, which also said on Monday that it was cooperating with Mueller<65>s team. No charges were filed against anyone with Podesta Group or Mercury. Tony Podesta did not respond to requests for comment on Monday. Podesta was the head of the firm that bore his name. It did $10.7 million in lobbying in the first nine months of 2017, according to disclosures the firm filed with the U.S. Congress. He is the brother of John Podesta, who served as chairman of the presidential campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and as a senior White House adviser to Democratic former President Barack Obama. Mueller<65>s team has been investigating alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign, but neither Trump nor the campaign were mentioned in the indictment against Manafort and Gates. While Podesta Group is seen as a mainly Democratic lobbying firm, Mercury is viewed as mainly a Republican shop. Mercury is a subsidiary of Omnicom Group and does public relations work in addition to lobbying. Omnicom did not reply to a request for comment. Podesta is listed as a lobbyist on several of the firm<72>s largest accounts including Wells Fargo, Lockheed Martin , Oracle, Wal-Mart, Textron and General Dynamics. Wells Fargo, Wal-Mart, Oracle, General Dynamic and Lockheed Martin all declined to comment. Textron did not respond to a request for comment. Reporting by Mark Hosenball and Ginger Gibson; Additional reporting by Nathan Layne; Writing by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Richard Chang '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-trump-russia-podesta/update-1-u-s-lobbyist-tony-podesta-leaves-firm-amid-manafort-probe-idUSL2N1N51CU'|'2017-10-31T00:53:00.000+02:00'
'd376c0fe580364570b2a466d2a48a5e55316ad69'|'Top 250 firms emit third of CO2; few have strong goals to cut-study'|'October 31, 2017 / 9:10 AM / in 4 hours Top 250 firms emit third of CO2; few have strong goals to cut: study Reuters Staff 3 Min Read OSLO (Reuters) - The world<6C>s 250 biggest listed companies account for a third of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions yet few have strong goals to limit rising temperatures, a study showed on Tuesday. A view shows the company logo of Gazprom company installed on the roof of its office building in Moscow, August 10, 2015. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov Coal India, Gazprom and Exxon Mobil topped the list when measuring carbon dioxide emitted by companies and by consumers using their products, it said. <20>Without continual reduction in emissions from this group of companies, effectively mitigating the long-term risks of climate change is not possible,<2C> according to the study, a Thomson Reuters Financial & Risk white paper. In the past three years, emissions from the group of 250 had been flat <20>when they should have been going down by roughly three percent per year<61> to limit temperatures in line with goals set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement, it said. The report, written in collaboration with Constellation Research & Technology, emissions tracking group CDP and BSD Consulting, found the group emitted a third of world carbon emissions and that only about 30 percent of the 250 firms had set strong goals to curb them. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, almost 200 nations promised to curb emissions to limit more heat waves, downpours and rising sea levels and said they would work to involve the private sector. U.S. President Donald Trump, who doubts human activities are the main driver of climate change, plans to pull out. David Lubin, a co-author of the report at Constellation Research & Technology, told Reuters: <20>250 CEOs - that<61>s a relatively small auditorium if you can bring together the leaders who really have a significant impact on the fate of the planet.<2E> Tim Nixon, a co-author at Thomson Reuters, said the study found <20>no evidence<63> that companies adopting stronger policies to reduce their carbon emissions paid a penalty in terms of shareholder returns, profits or employment. And case studies of companies including Xcel Energy, Ingersoll Rand and Total, which have acted strongly to curb emissions, showed there may even be a significant benefit to action, he said. Almost 200 nations will meet in Bonn, Germany, next week to work on a detailed <20>rule book<6F> for the Paris Agreement and ways to bolster the pact after Trump<6D>s planned withdrawal. Reporting by Alister Doyle; Editing by Mark Potter '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-companies/top-250-firms-emit-third-of-co2-few-have-strong-goals-to-cut-study-idUSKBN1D00ZJ'|'2017-10-31T11:05:00.000+02:00'
'3376dc27c43c07eecf8643f30797305cb8d805b3'|'British Airways cabin crew vote to accept pay deal - Unite'|'October 31, 2017 / 5:16 PM / Updated 3 hours ago British Airways cabin crew vote to accept pay deal - Unite Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Britain<69>s biggest trade union Unite said on Tuesday British Airways<79> cabin crew had voted to accept a pay deal that brings their long running dispute to an end. FILE PHOTO: British Airways planes are parked at Heathrow Terminal 5 in London, Britain May 27, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall/File Photo Unite said 84 percent of mixed fleet cabin crew represented by it supported the deal with the airline, which is owned by IAG ( ICAG.L ). Mixed fleet crew - who fly long and short-haul destinations and make up around 15 percent of the total BA cabin staff - have gone on strike several times in 2017 over their pay. As a result of the pay deal, mixed fleet cabin crew are expected to receive pay increases of at least 1,404 pounds to 2,908 pounds by March 2018 depending on experience and subject to inflation. ( bit.ly/2z83KJ9 ) <20>We are pleased the dispute has been resolved,<2C> British Airways said in a statement. BA previously said it was able to fly all customers to their destinations during strike action by members of the mixed fleet crew. Reporting by Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru; editing by Mark Heinrich '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-strikes-british-airways/british-airways-cabin-crew-vote-to-accept-pay-deal-unite-idUKKBN1D02FK'|'2017-10-31T19:18:00.000+02:00'
'd62ee1d2fe91407adf7d6cf7a9563be7a2654503'|'Ryanair says on target for record annual profit despite cancellation mess'|'October 31, 2017 / 6:08 AM / Updated 7 hours ago Ryanair says cancellation fiasco won''t stop record profit Conor Humphries 5 Min Read DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ryanair ( RYA.I ) is on course to post record annual profits despite a rostering mess-up that forced it to cancel 20,000 flights, and does not expect problems hiring the pilots to expand by 50 percent in the next six years, it said on Tuesday. Europe<70>s biggest airline by passenger numbers saw 2 billion euros (<28>1.76 billion) knocked off its market value in the weeks after it announced the cancellations, an emergency measure to free up standby pilots to ensure the smooth operation of its 400 planes. But it recovered around half of that loss on Tuesday when the shares climbed over 6 percent, after it told investors that forward bookings were better than last year and it would not need to change the profit forecast to pay the 70-million-euro cost of compensating passengers and increasing pilots<74> pay. Analysts said this gave them greater confidence the Irish airline will be able to cope with the longer term fallout from fiasco, which Ryanair reiterated would be lower passenger growth next year and 100 million euros per year in pay increases. <20>Ryanair<69>s attractive long-term fundamentals, underpinned by its low cost base, remain intact,<2C> Liberum analyst Gerald Khoo said in a note, reiterating a <20>buy<75> rating on the stock. The airline<6E>s decision to make a rare cut in its passenger growth target - to 129 million for the year to the end of March from 131 million - is likely to help lift average ticket prices above previous forecasts in the coming months, chief executive Michael O<>Leary said. Meanwhile the fall of Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ), Britain<69>s Monarch [MONA.UL] and Alitalia [CAITLA.UL] into administration is set to help Ryanair by cutting capacity and freeing up pilots, he said. <20>Is the underlying business model continuing to deliver? Yes it is,<2C> O<>Leary told investors on a conference call. <20>Can it cope with the occasional fuck-up? Yes it can and I think that is what we are demonstrating with these numbers.<2E> Ryanair shares were up 6.9 percent to 16.84 euros at 1240 GMT, but still down around 7 percent from 18.03 euros before the cancellations were announced on Sept. 15. PILOT PROBLEMS FILE PHOTO: Ryanair commercial passenger jet takes off in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo In the wake of the cancellations, Ryanair has replaced its rostering team and hired back its former director of flight operations from Malaysia Airlines, Peter Bellew, as chief operations officer to spearhead an effort to better retain and attract pilots. O<>Leary said the airline was hiring around 40-50 pilots per week and it was seeing a <20>flood of applications<6E> from pilots who worked for Monarch Airlines and Air Berlin. He said Ryanair was beginning to see a reversal of a loss of pilots to Norwegian Air Shuttle ( NWC.OL ). Pay increases would not threaten the company<6E>s cost advantage over rivals, O<>Leary said. The bill for this year will be 45 million euros if all 87 bases accept it, he added. He said more than 15 bases had approved a new pay deal. While pilots say a majority of the bases have rejected the deal, O<>Leary would only say <20>a number of bases<65> had. Chief Financial Officer Neil Sorahan said <20>the door remains open<65> to talks with bases who have rejected the offer, but warned it would not be improved. While existing pilots at England<6E>s Stansted airport have rejected the pay increase, it is being given to new recruits, he said. There will be consequences for any pilot bases where industrial action occurs, including the possible withdrawal of planes, O<>Leary said. Ryanair said it had cut fares by 5 percent in the six months to months to Sept. 30, the first half of its financial year, in line with its guidance six months ago, due to growth in capacity in Europe<70>s short-haul market. But it said fares for the six months to March 31 woul
'7700c626a7b76277305d58c35f48cf10f7b041a0'|'Brexit job moves, Deutsche Bank and Barclays'' disappointing Q3s and Gordon Brown''s book.'|'Banks Brexit job moves, Deutsche Bank and Barclays'' disappointing Q3s and Gordon Brown''s book. Patrick Jenkins and guests discuss how "back-to-back" trading mechanisms could help keep more jobs in the City post-Brexit, why Deutsche Bank and Barclays had such bad investment banking results in the third quarter and the hottest banking revelations from the new memoir by former UK prime minister Gordon Brown. With special guest Jacqueline Mills of European bank trade association AFME. Save to myFT Presented by Patrick Jenkins and produced by David Blood Editor<6F>s Choice'|'ft.com'|'http://rss.ft.com/rss/companies/banks'|'https://www.ft.com/video/1d3a0734-ceb8-4abc-a32a-3e66f25e0606'|'2017-10-31T21:06:00.000+02:00'
'f4de9149ca9648d8a2f8dca0cd0cc188d5dbe6cf'|'Australia''s Westpac was a lead actor in rates rigging, regulator tells court'|'October 31, 2017 / 4:53 AM / in 5 hours Australia''s Westpac was a lead actor in rates rigging, regulator tells court Sonali Paul 3 Min Read MELBOURNE (Reuters) - The Australian corporate regulator accused Westpac Banking Corp ( WBC.AX ) of playing a leading role in the widespread manipulation of an important financial trading rate as it took the country<72>s No. 2 lender to court on Tuesday. Pedestrians walk past a logo of the Westpac Bank Corp on display in a window of a branch located in central Sydney, Australia, July 2, 2016. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo In an opening address to the Federal Court, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) laid out its case against Westpac, saying the bank was motivated to influence the Bank Bill Swap Rate, a crucial rate for the Australian finance system usually referred to as BBSW, because billions of dollars worth of its products were affected it. ASIC has accused Westpac and rivals National Australia Bank Ltd ( NAB.AX ) (NAB) and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd ( ANZ.AX ) (ANZ) of rigging the BBSW to inflate profits from 2010 to 2012. All three banks have denied wrongdoing but NAB and ANZ agreed to settle soon before hearings began, leaving Westpac to defend itself alone in a civil hearing. Westpac has been accused of 16 counts of unconscionable conduct, fewer than the others. A Westpac spokesman said it could not comment on the case as it was before the court. ASIC<49>s lawyer, Philip Crutchfield, said Westpac was a major contributor to BBSW rigging, on some days dominating 100 percent of bank bill purchases at a time when a growing range of its products were priced with reference to the benchmark rate. <20>The temptation to manipulate the rate became greater because much more of Westpac<61>s book was riding on these derivative products,<2C> Crutchfield told the court. Crutchfield said that rather than hedge its position, Westpac actively sought to manipulate the sensitive rate-setting processes, playing the court what he said were recordings of Westpac traders discussing their bill purchases. In one recording, a man Crutchfield identified as a Westpac trader could be heard saying, <20>I<EFBFBD>m going to fuck the rate set.<2E> In another recording, a woman Crutchfield identified as a Westpac trader could be heard saying, <20>In our team here we manage BBSW and the rate set so we actually... we kind of manage and monitor where BBSW gets set<65>. Whether Westpac ever succeeded in manipulating a BBSW was immaterial, Crutchfield told the court, adding that ASIC would only seek to prove that Westpac planned to manipulate it. The rate-rigging allegations, which have already drawn lawsuits from U.S. funds, are but one of several scandals engulfing Australia<69>s highly-concentrated banking sector. Like the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), a global interest rate benchmark used to price financial contracts worth $350 trillion, BBSW sets the base pricing for a broad range products such as bonds, home loans and credit cards. Banks have been fined billions of dollars for trying to manipulate the Libor benchmark, with U.K. regulators now considering an alternative for the index. The Australian hearing continues. '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-australia-banks-court/australias-westpac-was-a-lead-actor-in-rates-rigging-regulator-tells-court-idUKKBN1D00EH'|'2017-10-31T06:53:00.000+02:00'
'44d0e1f7c61868d45b61208cf210f168565371cd'|'Portugal planning free zones for drones, self-driving cars'|'LISBON, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Aiming to spur development of drones and self-driving vehicles, Portugal is planning to launch <20>free zones<65> with special regulations to allow testing of such technologies and attract investment in them, the industry secretary said.Portugal has seen a sharp rise in technology start-ups in the past few years, helped by cheap property, well educated engineers and low wages following its 2011-14 debt crisis.Hosting the Web Summit technology conference has helped. It opens next week in Lisbon for the second time.Foreign investment in the sector helped propel economic growth in 2017 to its highest level in more than a decade and the government hopes new regulation can draw more companies.<2E>We are working a lot on the regulatory and legal aspects because this is really totally fundamental for opportunities in this area,<2C> Industry Secretary Ana Lehmann told Reuters in an interview.<2E>One of the areas we are working on has to do with technological free zones and drones is one of the areas we want to promote...another is autonomous vehicles.<2E>Many countries are looking at how to allow companies to test new technologies.In Britain, Amazon is carrying out special parcel delivery testing while Alphabet<65>s Google has tested drone delivery technology in Australia under its <20>Project Wing<6E>.The U.S. government last week approved a plan for expanded drone testing.Lehmann said the Portuguese government was working carefully on the laws needed for such zones. The country restricted the use of drones this year to raise public security.<2E>We are studying some locations and what is needed...within a legal framework that is very careful because these technologies have an impact,<2C> she said. <20>This is a delicate topic and we want to do it properly.<2E>Portuguese law currently does not allow the testing of self-driving cars on public roads.Veniam is one of Portugal<61>s leading technology companies. It has developed wireless networks for public transport and hopes to use that know-how for autonomous vehicles. Veniam first developed its system in the city of Porto, which Lehmann said was a <20>very interesting test case<73>.Mercedes-Benz this year opened a digital centre in Lisbon, which includes development of autonomous vehicle technology while Volkswagen has a big assembly plant in Portugal.Portugal is also angling for a potential European factory under consideration at Tesla Motors. The country has one of Europe<70>s biggest reserves of lithium.<2E>Lots of people are fighting, we are fighting (for a Tesla factory),<2C> Lehmann said when asked about the possibility.Reporting by Axel Bugge; editing by Jason Neely '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/portugal-tech/portugal-planning-free-zones-for-drones-self-driving-cars-idUSL8N1N65FO'|'2017-10-31T16:02:00.000+02:00'
'275f3dd2cac24ccec994c5de60b295a98c82c998'|'Standard Chartered appoints Ben Hung as retail banking chief'|'October 31, 2017 / 8:45 AM / Updated 17 minutes ago StanChart names Ben Hung as retail bank chief Reuters Staff 1 Min Read London (Reuters) - Standard Chartered Plc ( STAN.L ) named its top China banker as its new global retail banking chief, in a reshuffle of several senior roles at the bank one day before it reports third-quarter earnings. FILE PHOTO - People pass by the logo of Standard Chartered plc at the SIBOS banking and financial conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo Ben Hung, chief executive for the Greater China and North Asia regions, will take over as retail banking CEO from Karen Fawcett on Nov. 30, the bank said. Fawcett joined the bank in 2001 and will retire at the end of the year. Among other changes, the bank<6E>s Singapore Chief Executive Judy Hsu will take on oversight of the ASEAN and South Asia regions from Anna Marrs. Marrs will continue to head the commercial and private banking businesses. Former acting head of Britain<69>s financial watchdog, Tracey McDermott, will take over responsibility for brand and marketing. StanChart reports its third-quarter earnings on Wednesday, with investors expected to focus on its revenue after two years of restructuring under Chief Executive Bill Winters. Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru and Lawrence White in London'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-stanchart-ceo-retail-banking/standard-chartered-appoints-ben-hung-as-retail-banking-chief-idUKKBN1D00WR'|'2017-10-31T10:45:00.000+02:00'
'780f7419641f3d4ad7219ee8917bfb73748ec03a'|'Post-Brexit financial regulation cannot be left to negotiators'|'Add to myFT Post-Brexit financial regulation cannot be left to negotiators A group of Wise People is needed to find a solution to the City of London<6F>s problem LSE admits EU supervisory case on repo market Tuesday, 31 October, 2017 The City of London. The Wise People''s conclusions would need approval by the political negotiating team, but those negotiations are not well equipped to handle these highly technical questions Play audio for this article Pause This is an experimental feature. Give us your feedback. Thank you for your feedback. What do you think? I<>ll use it in the future I don<6F>t think I<>ll use it Please tell us why (optional) Send Feedback The delay in starting serious negotiations on the terms of the UK<55>s post-Brexit relationship with the EU27 is frustrating and worrying for all companies that trade with the EU. It generates particularly acute anxiety in the City of London. Negotiations on free trade in goods are hard enough, but at least there is the World Trade Organization to fall back on. Trade in services raises even more complex issues and there is no treaty-based international organisation to act as referee. Countries have not been willing to cede any control over their financial sectors to a supranational body. Informal organisations such as the Financial Stability Board and the Basel Committee have no legal authority. The European single market in financial services is an unusual creation, and has worked remarkably well. It has brought particular benefits to London <20> not a foregone conclusion when the euro was created. In London the lion really does roar , for now. Brexit will alter the picture, whatever the outcome of the negotiations. Foreign-owned firms have concluded that keeping all their eggs in a British basket being shaken vigorously by changeable political winds is risky. Other European cities have not been slow to seize their chance of attracting business. Office space, and international school places , are being snapped up in Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Dublin and Amsterdam. But there remains a lot to play for. The huge clearing systems in London cannot easily move in short order. EU banks have centred their trading operations here and are reluctant to dismantle them. And it is not clear that regulators elsewhere can quickly be equipped to cope with complex businesses they have not supervised before. The reality is that London will remain core to the European capital markets for a long time to come, even if with reduced dominance. Suspicion of UK intentions is evident in Berlin and Paris. References to eating cake are frequent whenever two or three regulators or central bankers are gathered together. Nonetheless, they recognise the need for a prompt and creative solution That means new, bespoke arrangements to supervise those markets. Unless a different decision is made, British regulators will leave their positions on the boards of the European Supervision Authorities: the EBA (banking), Esma (securities markets) and EIOPA (insurance and pensions). The governor of the Bank of England will no longer sit on the European Systemic Risk Board at the European Central Bank <20> he is currently vice-chairman. That would not be a sensible outcome. Because of the importance of London<6F>s markets, UK regulators have had a lead role in the development of EU regulation. The notion that they should in future only meet European counterparts in Basel corridors is absurd. There must be structured co-operation, and almost certainly shared supervision of entities in London which will remain systemically important in the EU. Since negotiations on future market access have not yet begun, no progress has been made on those structures. They are of the highest importance to market participants and their customers, and the debate has been impaled on the horns of a false dilemma. The choice is presented as being between continued market access, as a rule taker from Europe, or taking back control of our own regulatio
'8e8dee14d10521ee5f6976b71aa6676068ee7634'|'Japan''s Kirin cashes out of Amgen drug joint venture'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Kirin Holdings Co Ltd ( 2503.T ) said on Tuesday it would sell its share in a pharmaceutical research joint venture with California-based drugmaker Amgen Inc ( AMGN.O ) for $780 million.FILE PHOTO: An Amgen sign is seen at the company''s office in South San Francisco, California October 21, 2013. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith/File Photo The joint venture, Kirin-Amgen, will buy the Japanese firm<72>s 50 percent stake and will make further payments to Kirin for certain sales, the Japanese firm said in a statement, adding that the companies saw their collaboration as complete.Established in 1984 to fund the development of the kidney disease drug Epogen, the joint venture<72>s scope grew to include, among others, the white blood cell-boosting drugs Neupogen and Neulasta, used during chemotherapy treatment, Amgen said in a separate statement.Amgen will own product rights and the remaining cash held by the joint venture as the sole shareholder of the joint venture, the companies said. The venture<72>s licensing agreements in certain Asian countries with Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co Ltd ( 4151.T ), Kirin<69>s pharmaceutical unit, will remain in place.Kirin, known primarily as a brewer, said its pharmaceuticals and bio-chemicals business would remain core to the company and would not be affected by the termination of the joint venture agreement. It said the financial impact would be insignificant.The transaction is expected to close during either the fourth quarter of 2017 or the first quarter of 2018, Amgen said.Goldman Sachs & Co LLC is acting as the exclusive financial advisor to Amgen on the deal.Reporting by Thomas Wilson; Editing by Christopher Cushing '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amgen-kirin-m-a/japans-kirin-cashes-out-of-amgen-drug-joint-venture-idUSKBN1D00YP'|'2017-10-31T10:59:00.000+02:00'
'47de5e3f7223b0722a6b803fe66942e16d1401eb'|'LPC: Office Depot considers sweeteners to M&A loan'|'October 31, 2017 / 7:31 PM / in a few seconds LPC: Office Depot considers sweeteners to M&A loan Andrew Berlin   Publicly-traded US office supplies retailer Office Depot is considering making revisions to the US$750m leveraged loan backing its roughly US$1bn acquisition of CompuCom, amid a syndication process fraught with investors<72> wariness with retailers, according to three sources familiar with the matter. An Office Depot Inc store is shown in Encinitas, California, U.S., May 8, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake To attract lenders into the deal, Goldman Sachs, the lead underwriter, is likely to boost the loan<61>s yield and shorten the repayment period, among potential other changes, the sources said. The bank is expected to bump pricing on the loan to 700bp over Libor with a 1% floor, versus opening guidance in the 500bp-525bp over Libor range with a 1% floor, two of the sources said. The loan could be offered at a steeper discount of 96% of face value, compared to 98.5% at launch, as another way to entice buyers. The company is also mulling an accelerated amortization schedule, currently set at 1% annually, to tighten investors<72> leash on cash, and making other changes to the credit agreement. During syndication, investors took issue over flexibility to take cash out of the company and raise additional debt, the sources said. Goldman has not yet circulated any official revisions to the deal. Commitments are due on Tuesday. JP Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo are also in the bank group. Investors have pointed to weak earnings at both Office Depot and CompuCom and challenges forecasting further declines as justification for holding out for better terms. Office Depot<6F>s sales fell 9.6% from 2015 to the last 12 months ending in June. The company expects sales in 2017 to be lower year-over-year due to store closures and the difficult retail environment, according to a company presentation. CompuCom<6F>s sales have also declined 9.6% since 2015. Meanwhile, Amazon<6F>s threat to Office Depot intensified last week when the online juggernaut announced its Business Prime Shipping service for users with Amazon Business accounts. The news that Amazon is aggressively pursuing corporate customers sent rival Staples<65> loans and bonds lower by three and five points, respectively, to 96 and 90, for yields of 6.75% and more than 10%, eroding relative value for the Office Depot loan. Still, the Office Depot deal carries low leverage at 1.3x last 12-months<68> Ebitda of US$790m, and at close touts US$1.537bn of liquidity, split between an undrawn US$1.2bn asset-based revolving credit facility and US$537m of cash on hand. The combined company could throw off US$234m of free cash flow, or roughly 23% of debt, before interest expense and projected synergies of US$40m are included, assuming Ebitda and capital expenditures remain stable. Goldman Sachs did not respond to requests for comment. Office Depot declined to comment. Reporting by Andrew Berlin; Editing By Michelle Sierra and Lynn Adler'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-office-depot-m-a-loan/lpc-office-depot-considers-sweeteners-to-ma-loan-idUSKBN1D02QA'|'2017-10-31T21:24:00.000+02:00'
'e8eef782b4a8390e3e06a6ae35c6f19914a2671e'|'India jumps to 100th spot on World Bank''s Ease of Doing Business list'|'NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India jumped into 100th place on the World Bank<6E>s ranking of countries by Ease of Doing Business for the first time in its report for 2018, up about 30 places, driven by reforms in access to credit, power supplies and protection of minority investors.Shoppers walk past stores at a mall in Mumbai, India, July 10, 2017. Picture taken July 10, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui The report, based on data from the capital New Delhi and the financial hub of Mumbai, ranked India among the top 10 <20>improvers<72> globally, having done better in eight out of 10 business indicators.<2E>Today<61>s result is a very clear signal from India to the rest of the world that not only has the country been ready and open for business, as it has been for many decades, it is now competing as the preferred place to do business globally,<2C> Annette Dixon, World Bank<6E>s vice president for South Asia, told reporters in New Delhi.<2E>Starting a business is now faster,<2C> Dixon said, adding that India had strengthened access to credit system and made it easier to secure to procure construction permits.However, the agency noted that India lags in areas such as <20>starting a business<73>, <20>enforcing contracts<74> and <20>dealing with construction permits.<2E>Construction workers are pictured on a crane at a construction site in Mumbai, India, October 31, 2016. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade The report excluded the impact of Prime Minister Narendra Modi<64>s shock withdrawal of high-value banknotes last year and the implementation of a nationwide multi-rate goods and services tax (GST), steps that affected businesses and dragged the economy to a three-year-low in the April-June quarter.Under construction high-rise residential towers are seen in Mumbai''s central financial district, India May 25, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui <20>In the case of GST, we know that this is a very complicated reform,<2C> Dixon said, adding that the agency would observe the GST for the next two or three years to see its full implementation.This month Modi eased tax rules for small and medium-sized companies in a bid to address growing criticism of his stewardship of Asia<69>s third-largest economy.The World Bank report, covering the period from June 2 last year to June 1 this year, ranked India top among the South Asian nations.<2E>This year<61>s remarkable results are the culmination of efforts that have taken place over the past three years, so you can extrapolate forward and see that steps that are taken this year may take 2-3 years to show up in the results,<2C> Dixon said.Reporting by Neha Dasgupta; Edited by Krishna N. Das and Hugh Lawson '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/worldbank-doingbusiness-india/india-jumps-to-100th-spot-on-world-banks-ease-of-doing-business-list-idINKBN1D01VS'|'2017-10-31T16:07:00.000+02:00'
'8793b2329cb1dd41919c17d9ab12d3972692a456'|'UK watchdog said financial firms reaching Brexit point of no return'|'October 31, 2017 / 12:01 PM / in 8 hours FCA said financial firms reaching Brexit point of no return Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Financial firms in Britain will begin taking <20>irreversible<6C> decisions about staff and operations by Christmas or early 2018 if there is no transition deal ahead of Brexit, Britain<69>s top markets watchdog said on Tuesday. Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, speaks at his office in London, Britain, September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority said financial firms in Britain were already renting new buildings in the European Union, but such decisions could be reversed. More <20>irreversible<6C> contingency plans, namely putting staff in new operations in the EU to ensure continuity of operations after Britain leaves the bloc in 2019, are also more difficult to fulfil, Bailey told parliament<6E>s Treasury Select Committee. <20>That is why they and we tend to take the view that the end of this year, beginning of next year is the point at which these things start happening,<2C> Bailey said. A strong commitment by Britain and the EU to a transition deal after Brexit would ease pressure on firms to take irreversible decisions, he added. Reporting by Huw Jones and Emma Rumney'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-regulations/uk-watchdog-said-financial-firms-reaching-brexit-point-of-no-return-idUKKBN1D01J4'|'2017-10-31T14:00:00.000+02:00'
'3e930f5f290491bcad4e311202d1f86dabf0aab0'|'UPDATE 2-Shopify posts strong earnings, responds to short seller; shares dive'|'(Adds executive and analyst comment, share reaction)By Alastair SharpTORONTO, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Canadian retail software company Shopify Inc posted a better-than-expected jump in revenue and improved outlook on Tuesday, but its shares fell as investors digested its response to a short-seller<65>s attack.The fast-growing company<6E>s third-quarter revenue jumped 72 percent as it reported adjusted profit for the first time as a public company and raised its fourth-quarter forecasts.Still, its shares fell in early trading as the company sought to fend off criticism from short-seller Andrew Left of Citron Research. Left has complained about payments to bloggers and others who get merchants to sign up to Shopify<66>s commerce platform and suggested the U.S. Federal Trade Commission should investigate the company.Founder and Chief Executive Officer Tobi Lutke said Shopify<66>s external legal counsel had dismissed Left<66>s claims as <20>preposterous.<2E> He said Shopify had not been in contact with the U.S. consumer watchdog since Left<66>s report hit its share price in early October.<2E>While the company went out of its way to address the short thesis that<61>s out there, the initial reaction from investors seems to suggest that they didn<64>t go far enough in their explanation,<2C> Tom Forte, an analyst with D.A Davidson, said in a phone interview.Shopify<66>s shares tumbled as much as 13.6 percent, then pared losses, with its U.S.-listed shares last down 6.4 percent at $102.40.Shopify mostly serves small and medium-sized businesses with services including payment processing, inventory management and shipping solutions. It also is building a higher-end service for larger customers.Shopify said it signed up another record batch of new merchants in the three months to Sept. 30, adding to the more than half a million customers who use its commerce software.The company<6E>s prior record net merchant adds was likely around 60,000, said Credit Suisse analyst Michael Nemeroff, who said the earnings beat expectations across a string of metrics.The Ottawa-based company<6E>s net loss on an unadjusted basis was $9.4 million, or 9 cents per share in the quarter, compared to a loss of $9.1 million, or 11 cents per share, a year earlier.On an adjusted basis, it made 5 cents a share, handily beating the average analyst estimate for a loss of 2 cents a share. It is the first adjusted operating profit the company has reported since going public in May 2015.Revenue was $171.5 million, above expectations for sales of $166.4 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Subscriptions services made up $82.4 million of that, while merchant solutions added $89 million.Shopify expects revenue of between $206 million and $208 million this quarter, an operating loss of between $12.5 million and $14.5 million, and adjusted income of between $2 million and $4 million. (Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Bill Trott and David Gregorio) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/shopify-results/update-1-shopify-posts-strong-revenue-growth-adjusted-profit-idINL2N1N60KI'|'2017-10-31T09:34:00.000+02:00'
'33989b47faf7e1380ed5c308f570325041d3be64'|'Morning News Call - India, October 31'|'To access the newsletter, click on the link: here If you would like to receive this newsletter via email, please register at: here FACTORS TO WATCH 5:00 pm: Government to release September Infrastructure output data in New Delhi. GMF: LIVECHAT - JAPAN FOCUS Takuji Okubo, managing director and chief economist at Japan Macro Advisors, will discuss market and economic impacts from the election victory by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and preview the potential agenda in upcoming meeting between Abe and Trump, at 11:00 am IST. To join the conversation, click on the link: here INDIA TOP NEWS <20> India''s RCom says has agreed new loan repayment plan Debt-laden Indian telecoms company Reliance Communications Ltd has agreed a new debt repayment plan with lenders, including a pledge to raise up to 170 billion rupees by selling assets such as mobile towers, it said on Monday. <20> Tata Steel posts Q2 profit, misses estimates India''s Tata Steel Ltd posted a Sept-quarter profit, boosted by strong volume growth following the ramp-up of its Kalinganagar plant in India. <20> India''s Bharti Infratel considers buying rest of Indus Towers Indian mobile masts operator Bharti Infratel Ltd will consider buying the rest of Indus Towers, it said on Monday, as its two partners in the joint venture look to sell their stakes as part of their merger deal. <20> India''s Lupin Q2 profit falls on lower U.S. sales, but beats estimates Indian drugmaker Lupin Ltd said on Monday second-quarter net profit fell more than 30 percent, as regulatory scrutiny and pricing pressure in the United States, its biggest market, dampened sales. <20> Lightsource and Macquarie team up on Indian solar projects British solar power projects developer Lightsource Renewable Energy and Australian bank Macquarie will jointly fund the development of large solar power projects in India, the bank said on Monday. <20> State Bank of India to lend $357 mln to solar projects State Bank of India, the nation''s biggest lender by assets, said it will lend 23.17 billion rupees to six companies for 575 megawatts of grid-connected rooftop solar projects under a World Bank programme. <20> Aster DM Healthcare to raise $150 million in minority listing on India''s BSE United Arab Emirates-based Aster DM Healthcare expects to raise around $150 million from listing a 10 percent stake on the Bombay Stock Exchange by March 2018, its managing director said on Monday. <20> IDFC, Shriram call off merger talks India''s IDFC Group said on Monday that talks to acquire some of Shriram Group''s financial services businesses have been called off. <20> India''s 76 percent LED bulbs found to be spurious - survey Three-fourths of light emitting diode (LED) bulbs sold in India''s $1 billion market were found non-compliant with government''s consumer safety standards, market research firm Nielsen said in a survey on Monday. GLOBAL TOP NEWS <20> Two ex-Trump aides charged in Russia probe, 3rd pleads guilty Federal investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election charged President Donald Trump''s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and another aide, Rick Gates, with money laundering on Monday. <20> Samsung Elec Q3 profit nearly triples to new record Samsung Electronics said it will pay dividends of about 29 trillion won in the 2018-2020 period as it reported record operating profit for the three months through September, lifted by its largest-ever memory chip earnings. <20> BOJ set to hold fire; focus on dissenter''s stimulus preference The Bank of Japan is set to keep monetary policy steady and roughly maintain its ambitious price forecasts, pointing to signs of growing strength in the economy that policymakers hope will accelerate inflation towards its elusive 2 percent target. LOCAL MARKETS OUTLOOK (As reported by NewsRise) <20> The SGX Nifty Futures were at 10,379.00, trading down 0.19 percent from its previous close. <20> Indian government bonds are likely to edge lower in early session ahead of a state supply of notes. Rising crude oil prices th
'58bb9e986af2bb0a62c03f89568fde944bac91fd'|'Electric cars set world''s nickel miners on new course'|'October 31, 2017 / 9:53 AM / in 25 minutes Electric cars set world''s nickel miners on new course James Regan , Melanie Burton 6 Min Read SYDNEY/MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Battery makers are increasingly turning to nickel to help power growing global electric car sales, but only half of the world<6C>s producers of the metal are likely to benefit, mining analysts and executives say. FILE PHOTO: Panasonic Corp''s lithium-ion batteries, which are part of Tesla Motor Inc''s Model S and Model X battery packs, are displayed in front of a poster of a Tesla Model S during a news conference at the Panasonic Center in Tokyo, Japan, November 19, 2013. REUTERS/Yuya Shino/File Photo Lithium batteries containing nickel, which helps keep a charge over longer distances, are being installed in electric cars from Tesla<6C>s ( TSLA.O ) top-of-the-line Model X to General Motors Co ( GM.N ) modestly-priced Chevy Bolt. The battery boom promises a new and growing market for miners producing high-grade nickel products. However, half the world<6C>s supply of the metal, comprised of so-called ferronickel and nickel pig iron grades, is unsuitable for battery production, according to analysts at UBS. Some of the biggest producers of the higher-grade ores, including BHP BHP.L ( BLT.AX ) Norilsk Nickel ( GMKN.MM ), Vale ( VALE5.SA ) and Sumitomo Corp ( 8053.T ), are moving quickly to take advantage and seal long-term supply deals with battery producers. Smaller producers with ores suitable for batteries, such as Australia<69>s Independence Group ( IGO.AX ) and Western Areas ( WSA.AX ) also stand to win. These producers are building plants to convert the metal into a powder-like sulphate that is particularly suited for use in batteries. Sulphate nickel regularly fetches a price premium over London Metal Exchange-traded nickel. <20>Not everyone will be a winner,<2C> said Dan Lougher, chief executive of Western Areas. <20>We<57>ve met with quite a number of battery manufacturers, and they are quite specific on their requirements. Nickel is an important component of these batteries.<2E> Among those losing out would be lower-grade nickel mines like Cerro Matoso in Columbia, owned by South32 Ltd ( S32.AX ) and Glencore<72>s Koniambo in New Caledonia, as well as Anglo American<61>s ( AAL.L ) mines in Brazil producing ferronickel. <20>The market dynamics will change in the coming years as a result of electric vehicles,<2C> said Peter Bradford, chief executive of Independence Group Ltd ( IGO.AX ), which is aiming to produce around 25,0000 tonnes of high-purity nickel this year from a new mine. "Battery growth is going to disrupt the market," he said. The big companies are already moving. Norilsk, the world<6C>s biggest nickel miner, in June announced a tie-up with the German battery maker BASF ( BASFn.DE ). Within a few weeks, BHP unveiled plans to retool its Nickel West division to start shipping nickel to battery manufacturers beginning in April 2019. The announcement marked a turnaround for Nickel West, which two years ago was in its death throes, with its workforce of 2,000 told that their jobs would end in 2019. Eduard Haegel, division chief of Nickel West, expects demand for electric vehicle batteries to account for about 90 percent of the division<6F>s annual output of 100,000 tonnes within the next six years. Meanwhile, Vale is looking for a partner in its loss-making New Caledonia nickel complex. It has been in talks with the Chinese battery maker GEM Co ( 002340.SZ ), the Financial Times reported. <20>If we are not successful, we<77>ll have to face the reality, which is this operation is holding the company back,<2C> Luciano Siani Pires, Vale<6C>s chief financial officer, said, referring to the New Caledonian business. Plants already shut may get a second chance, too. Two with shots at restarting are Brazil<69>s Votorantim Metais, and First Quantum Minerals<6C>s ( FM.TO ) Ravensthorpe in Australia, which at today<61>s nickel prices cannot compete but could be profitable if the market continues to climb. NICKEL GROWTH S
'27798b9c8751a6bc9df1b510308aafa4476e09b4'|'Uber scrambles to head off Brazil bill regulating ride software'|'October 30, 2017 / 10:23 PM / Updated 15 hours ago Uber scrambles to head off Brazil bill regulating ride software Reuters Staff 3 Min Read BRASILIA (Reuters) - Hundreds of drivers for the internet based ride-hailing firm Uber drove through Brazil<69>s largest cities on Monday to protest legislation that would turn them into regular taxi drivers subject to the same local licensing and taxation rules. Uber drivers protest against a legislation threatening the company''s business model that is to be voted in Brazil''s national congress, in Sao Paulo, Brazil October 30, 2017. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker The chief executive of Uber Technologies Inc, Dara Khosrowshahi, arrived in Brazil to lobby against the bill that is due to be voted on by the Senate on Tuesday and which threatens the company<6E>s business in a fast-growing foreign market. Brazil is Uber<65>s third-largest market, with 17 million users, and the city of Sao Paulo sees more trips on the ride-hailing service than any other city in the world, ahead of New York and Mexico City, according to the company. A spokesman for the company said the application as it exists could not operate under the new rules, including the use of a taxi license plate on cars owned by Uber drivers. <20>The business model we have today would not longer be viable,<2C> Uber<65>s executive spokesman in Brazil Fabio Sabba told Reuters. Uber is already battling to keep operating in London after the city<74>s transport regulator deemed it unfit to run a taxi service and refused to renew its license. Uber drivers protest against a legislation threatening the company''s business model that is to be voted in Brazil''s national congress, in Sao Paulo, Brazil October 30, 2017. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker Police said 800 Uber drivers drove through the center of Brazil<69>s capital Brasilia to protest the bill that many say will put them out of business. Similar protests in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro snarled downtown traffic. Uber did not organize the drivers<72> protests but alerted authorities that they would happen. Slideshow (5 Images) <20>The bill will create so much bureaucracy that it prevents the 500,000 drivers in Brazil from earning income for their families,<2C> Uber said in a statement. Uber said it has paid 495 million reais ($150 million) in federal and municipal taxes so far this year. The bill, which has already been approved by the lower house of Congress, would define ride hailing applications as public transport instead of private services and require drivers to get a special permit from city authorities. It would also establish additional regulations and taxes. If the Senate votes to approve the bill, it will be up to President Michel Temer to sign or veto the legislation or parts of it. ($1 = 3.2887 reais) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-brazil/uber-scrambles-to-head-off-brazil-bill-regulating-ride-software-idUSKBN1CZ2Q3'|'2017-10-31T00:22:00.000+02:00'
'76af022fd49baa8b03b7efe4fbd748038da0f733'|'PRESS DIGEST- British Business - Oct 31'|'Oct 31 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.The Times- Stuart Gulliver, outgoing chief executive of HSBC Holding Plc, and Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group Inc, on Monday called for clarity over Britain''s future relationship with the European Union, warning that jobs and investment depend on a prompt decision. bit.ly/2z0IbIe- Chancellor Philip Hammond said Monday that Steffan Ball, chief economist at Citadel, a $26 billion hedge fund based in Chicago, was his new economic adviser. bit.ly/2z0dliZ- Pearson Plc is understood to be nearing a sale of its English-language teaching business to Asian private equity funds Baring Private Equity Asia and Citic Capital Holdings for up to $400 million. bit.ly/2z1hFPaThe Guardian- Nationwide Building Society has paved the way for an across-the-board increase in mortgage costs by announcing that a 0.25 pct interest rate rise would be passed on in full to its 600,000-plus variable-rate home loan customers. bit.ly/2yZtuVO- Hundreds of free-to-use cash machines are at risk of being closed down on high streets across the UK as a result of proposals being published this week to overhaul the 70,000-strong Link network. bit.ly/2z0nXOVThe Telegraph- Chemicals giant Ineos has bought Belstaff, the British heritage fashion brand, in the latest off-centre move by its founder and chairman, billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, a month after he unveiled plans to start making cars. bit.ly/2z0ltA5- Ten Lifestyle, the London-based concierge service is eyeing a listing on the junior Aim market in a bid to raise 40 million pounds and help it continue its domestic growth as well as increase its overseas footprint. bit.ly/2yZdmDOSky News- Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways'' parent company IAG, has dismissed claims - including from Chancellor Philip Hammond - that flights could be grounded if Britain leaves the EU without a divorce deal. bit.ly/2z1MyD7- A pack of hedge funds is closing in on a takeover of BrightHouse, Britain''s biggest rent-to-own retailer, just days after it was slapped with a 15 million pound ($19.81 million)compensation bill by the City watchdog. bit.ly/2z1MyD7The Independent- Walmart''s British supermarket arm Asda announced that Chief Executive Sean Clarke will be stepping down at the end of the year, to be replaced by the company''s current deputy Chief Executive and Chief Operating Officer Roger Burnley. ind.pn/2yZblYg- Alphabet Inc''s Google attacked the European Union for basing its record-breaking 2.4 billion euro ($2.80 billion) penalty in June against the search-engine giant on untested antitrust theories and ignoring the competitive pressure exerted by the likes of Amazon and eBay. ind.pn/2z1L77t$1 = 0.8587 euros $1 = 0.7573 pounds Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Peter Cooney '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/britain-press-business/press-digest-british-business-oct-31-idINL4N1N604Y'|'2017-10-30T21:36:00.000+02:00'
'63f31aad7778a50bbfcdab169ce691fed037c2b4'|'Reliance Communications shares jump after new debt repayment plan'|'October 31, 2017 / 4:01 AM / in 7 hours Reliance Communications shares jump after new debt repayment plan Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MUMBAI (Reuters) - Shares in embattled wireless carrier Reliance Communications Ltd ( RLCM.NS ) rose more than 10 percent in early trade on Tuesday after the company presented a new debt repayment plan to its lenders. FILE PHOTO: A man opens the shutter of a shop painted with an advertisement of Reliance Communications in Mumbai, India, November 3, 2015. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade/File Photo The company, with $6.8 billion of net debt as of last March, said it will look to repay 170 billion rupees ($2.62 billion) of loans by selling assets such as mobile towers. It also pledged to repay another 100 billion rupees from sale or commercial development of its real estate assets. Under a central bank debt restructuring plan, its lenders will also swap 70 billion rupees of the loans to take a 51 percent stake in the company commonly called as Rcom. The stock was up 13 percent at 0352 GMT, compared with a 0.2 percent fall in the broader NSE Nifty. The stock has tumbled this year, hitting a series of record lows on worries about whether it can pay back its debt. ($1 = 64.7900 Indian rupees) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/rcom-debt/reliance-communications-shares-jump-after-new-debt-repayment-plan-idINKBN1D00CF'|'2017-10-31T06:00:00.000+02:00'
'5d8656c470520b62366bc92946ae5b582a6aa781'|'ADP says Ackman''s claims it misled ISS are false'|'October 31, 2017 / 1:39 PM / in 4 hours ADP, ISS reject Ackman''s claims they exchanged non-public data Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - Automatic Data Processing Inc rejected as <20>false and misleading<6E> on Tuesday the accusation by billionaire investor William Ackman that the company gave proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services non-publicly disclosed information. FILE PHOTO: William ''Bill'' Ackman, CEO and Portfolio Manager of Pershing Square Capital Management, speaks during the Sohn Investment Conference in New York City, U.S., May 8, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Ackman, who is aiming to win three seats on ADP<44>s board in a vote next week, on Monday said the company had given ISS misleading and incorrect claims and asked ISS to reconsider its recommendation that shareholders largely vote for ADP<44>s slate. <20>ADP has not disclosed any material non-public information in its meetings with ISS or any other party,<2C> the company said, adding that it would file a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). ISS, which has supported Ackman<61>s election, said its policy was to not elicit, receive or use non-public information in its research. <20>ISS has carefully reviewed the arguments made by Pershing Square in their October 30 letter to ISS and continues to stand by the analysis and conclusions set forth in our October 25 report issued to clients,<2C> ISS said in a emailed statement. Ackman unveiled his stake of 8.3 percent, including 2 percent in common shares, in the human resources outsourcing company in August. He has since criticized the company for what he calls sluggish earnings and inefficient operations. ISS had recommended that shareholders withhold votes for one incumbent director, <20>thereby facilitating the election of a single dissident nominee.<2E> <20>The election of one dissident candidate <20> particularly a significantly vested shareholder like nominee Ackman, whose skill set is considered most additive <20> would appear sufficient to prompt the board to address the valid questions raised over the course of this contest,<2C> ISS had said. Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru and Svea Herbst in Boston; Editing by Savio D''Souza '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hedgefunds-ackman-iss/adp-says-ackmans-claims-it-misled-iss-are-false-idUSKBN1D01TI'|'2017-10-31T15:37:00.000+02:00'
'19a1a19f3c701abc0df4d074ca66d313dd3268bc'|'Apple could drop Qualcomm components in next year''s iPhones, iPads - sources'|'October 31, 2017 / 2:55 AM / Updated 6 hours ago Apple could drop Qualcomm components in next year''s iPhones, iPads - sources Liana B. Baker , Stephen Nellis 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Apple Inc ( AAPL.O ) has designed iPhones and iPads that would drop chips supplied by Qualcomm Inc ( QCOM.O ), according to two people familiar with the matter. FILE PHOTO: A man is reflected in a Apple store logo in San Francisco, California, U.S., August 21, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Coombs/File Photo GLOBAL BUSINESS WEEK AHEAD SEARCH GLOBAL BUSINESS 30 OCT FOR ALL IMAGES The change would affect iPhones released in the fall of 2018, but Apple could still change course before then, these people said. They declined to be identified because they were not authorised to discuss the matter with the media. The dispute stems from a change in supply arrangements under which Qualcomm has stopped providing some software for Apple to test its chips in its iPhone designs, one of the people told Reuters. The two companies are locked in a multinational legal dispute over the Qualcomm<6D>s licensing terms to Apple. Qualcomm told Reuters it is providing fully tested chips to Apple for iPhones. <20>We are committed to supporting Apple<6C>s new devices consistent with our support of all others in the industry,<2C> Qualcomm said in a statement. One of many Qualcomm buildings is shown in San Diego, California November 3, 2015.REUTERS/Mike Blake The Wall Street Journal first reported that Apple could drop Qualcomm chips Monday. Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon said Apple<6C>s move is not totally unexpected. Though Qualcomm has for several years supplied Apple<6C>s modems - which help Apple<6C>s phones connect to wireless data networks - Intel Corp ( INTC.O ) has provided upward of half of Apple<6C>s modem chips for iPhones in recent years, Rasgon said. Intel recently acquired a firm that would let it replace more of Qualcomm<6D>s chips in iPhones, Rasgon said. Rasgon said it<69>s too early to say definitively whether Apple fully intends to drop Qualcomm next year because Apple can likely make multiple contingency plans for different supplier scenarios. <20>Apple is big enough that they want to support multiple paths, they can do that,<2C> Rasgon said. <20>Samsung (Electronics Co ( 005930.KS )) did this too. A couple of years ago, Samsung designed Qualcomm out, but Qualcomm didn<64>t even know until it was close to time to ship<69> Samsung<6E>s phones, Rasgon said. Reporting by Stephen Nellis in Bengaluru and Liana B. Baker in San Francisco; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-apple-qualcomm-iphone/apple-could-drop-qualcomm-components-in-next-years-iphones-ipads-sources-idUKKBN1D0098'|'2017-10-31T04:56:00.000+02:00'
'f2650bf1b339dfa7a5efabec3552e096f8b30375'|'Nikkei flat as BOJ decision shows optimism but SoftBank''s drop weighs'|'(Corrects word in first bullet to relieves, from relives)* BOJ<4F>s decision to keep ETF purchase unchanged relieves market - analyst* Nikkei posts biggest monthly gain in 2 years* SoftBank skids, while upbeat forecast lifts NintendoBy Lisa Twaronite and Ayai TomisawaTOKYO, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Japan<61>s Nikkei share average ended flat on Tuesday as losses in SoftBank offset optimism fuelled by the Bank Of Japan<61>s decision to leave its purchase of exchange traded funds unchanged.The Nikkei closed at 22,011.61 after trading in negative territory most of the day. For the month, the index jumped 8.1 percent, the biggest monthly gain in two years.Index-heavyweight SoftBank Group Corp stumbled 4.6 percent and was the second most traded stock by turnover, contributing a hefty negative 53.76 points to the Nikkei after sources said that SoftBank and Deutsche Telekom AG have reached an impasse in their talks to merge Sprint Corp and T-Mobile US Inc.The Nikkei would have ended positive if not for the negative impact of SoftBank<6E>s fall.The Bank of Japan kept its monetary policy steady and roughly maintained its ambitious price forecasts.It also left J-Reit and ETF purchases unchanged at 90 billion yen ($795.9 million) and 6 trillion yen, respectively.With the Nikkei benchmark index hovering near its 21-year highs, the BOJ did not buy ETFs for almost a month as it tends to buy them when the market falls. That left the market wondering how the bank would be able to maintain its pledged pace of increasing holdings by about 6 trillion yen a year.The central bank bought ETFs on Monday for the first time this month for 70.9 billion yen, down from 73.9 billion yen it bought in September and 73.3 billion yen in August.<2E>Investors were watching whether the BOJ would make a change in its ETF purchasing amount, so when they learned that there was no change, they were relieved,<2C> said Yutaka Miura, a senior technical analyst at Mizuho Securities.<2E>The Nikkei was supported somewhat amid a strong yen environment because the BOJ maintained the purchase.<2E>The dollar dropped 0.1 percent to 113.07 yen, after touching 112.97 yen earlier, its lowest level since Oct. 20, following news that investigators probing Russian interference in the U.S. election had charged President Donald Trump<6D>s former campaign manager.Financial stocks were losers after U.S. yields fell, with the banking subindex shedding 1.6 percent and the securities subindex falling 1.3 percent.Shares of Nintendo jumped 2.2 percent, a day after the Japanese videogames maker almost doubled its full-year operating profit forecast as supply shortages for its new Switch games console began to ease.The broader Topix fell 0.3 percent to 1,765.96. ($1 = 113.0800 yen) (Reporting by Lisa Twaronite and Ayai Tomisawa; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/japan-stocks-close/nikkei-flat-as-boj-decision-shows-optimism-but-softbanks-drop-weighs-idUSL4N1N6350'|'2017-10-31T09:21:00.000+02:00'
'bc7ec4f41efe0884f5a59fea278dca6da0752819'|'Banks stagger Brexodus as EU regulators consider grace period'|'October 31, 2017 / 3:26 PM / in 16 minutes Banks stagger Brexodus as EU regulators consider grace period Anjuli Davies , John O''Donnell 5 Min Read LONDON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - European regulators are considering making it easier, at least temporarily, for banks to handle some EU-related business in Britain immediately after Brexit, industry sources told Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Buildings in the City of London are seen behind Waterloo Bridge in London, Britain October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls/File Photo They say it may be possible come March 2019 when Britain leaves the European Union to book trades done in centers such as Frankfurt out of London for some time. This has eased pressure on banks to rush staff out of London and is one reason that some banks have reduced estimates for the number of jobs they expect to move. Britain<69>s EU departure is expected to force banks to move thousands of jobs into the bloc so that they can continue processing EU-related trades. However, some banks have recently scaled back estimates of how many jobs will have to shift, with UBS ( UBSG.S ) saying on Friday it is likely to move fewer jobs than the 1000 it had previously projected. JPMorgan ( JPM.N ) boss Jamie Dimon said before the Brexit vote that up to 4,000 of its 16,000 jobs in Britain might be at risk, but has since said it is not planning to move many jobs out of Britain in the next two years. A spokesman for UBS declined to comment about whether the lower estimates were connected with a regulatory reprieve. A JPMorgan spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment. The length of any grace period, designed to avoid any market shock when Britain leaves the bloc, will likely be determined by the future trading terms with the EU. Bankers say German bank regulator Bafin, the agency overseeing Frankfurt, where many banks are moving staff, has said there is leeway. <20>Bafin has told several banks that there would be a tolerance period,<2C> said Oliver Wagner of Germany<6E>s Association of Foreign Banks, adding that he expected it to last one year. A spokesman for Bafin was not immediately available for comment but President Felix Hufeld said on Oct 24 that <20>banks must be in a position to sensibly manage the associated risks comprehensively <20> in particular if a back-to-back model should suddenly no longer be possible or would have to be revised.<2E> At the center of discussions among regulators are <20>back-to-back<63> arrangements - where a deal done on the continent could be processed and risk-managed at the bank<6E>s base in London. The practice is already commonly used, with banks often booking trades executed on Asian markets in London or New York. Bankers, who asked not to be named, said they were encouraged by signals that could allow them, for the near term, to keep the bulk of operations in the British capital rather than dividing them across the region. <20>Regulators are trying to be helpful and pragmatic,<2C> said one bank executive. SHORT-TERM SOLUTION Financial watchdogs, including the European Central Bank, have warned banks from the outset that they will need more than just a <20>letterbox<6F> in Europe, demanding a critical mass of capital and senior local staff. A spokesman for the European Central Bank, which supervises banks, said its <20>priority is that banks should not operate as empty shells<6C> within the euro zone. But on its website, it also signals willingness to be temporarily flexible with back-to-back trades as long as risks are managed. The European Banking Authority has also said banks could continue booking trades from Europe in London, so long as they did not rely on <20>empty shells<6C> in European countries and took safeguards. <20>We<57>ve come quite a long way from a year ago and now it<69>s sort of a quid pro quo,<2C> said Wagner. The gentler stance is welcome news for some investment banks, who have complained about the length of time it is taking to get clarity on how they should structure their operations after Brexit. Writing on Twi
'134fbbcc2695bad7b2d6a44d8ee64381ea70b85d'|'UPDATE 1-Hudson''s Bay, RioCan exploring sale of downtown Vancouver store'|'October 30, 2017 / 9:50 PM / in an hour UPDATE 1-Hudson''s Bay, RioCan exploring sale of downtown Vancouver store Reuters Staff (Adds sale of Lord & Taylor building, background on company<6E>s real estate) By Nichola Saminather TORONTO, Oct 30 (Reuters) - A joint venture between Hudson<6F>s Bay Co and RioCan REIT is exploring the sale of HBC<42>s flagship store in downtown Vancouver, the companies said Monday, stepping up efforts to extract value from the department store owner<65>s substantial real estate holdings. Hudson<6F>s Bay, which owns Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor, would lease back space in the property if it is sold, and continue to operate the store, according to a statement from both companies. The announcement follows HBC<42>s agreement last week to sell its Lord & Taylor building on New York<72>s Fifth Avenue to WeWork Companies Inc for $850 million, a 30 percent premium to its last appraised value. HBC is battling an industry-wide slump for department store operators and has announced job cuts as it struggles to turn around sales. RioCan is unlikely to buy HBC<42>s share of the building, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters, as the property is too big and would leave the Canadian real estate trust too exposed to a single tenant. Sales of other properties in the joint venture could follow if the Vancouver store divestment is successful, said the person, who was not authorized to publicly talk about the deal. RioCan did not immediately respond to Reuters<72> request for comment. The companies did not disclose the value of the property, but the Globe and Mail newspaper on Friday reported the store was valued at as much as C$900 million. HBC Executive Chairman Richard Baker and activist investor Jonathan Litt have butted heads on the future of North America<63>s oldest company. Litt, founder of hedge fund Land & Buildings, has valued HBC<42>s real estate at C$35 a share, and has called for the company to sell some stores, convert them to alternate uses or go private. He called for a special shareholder meeting to potentially remove some directors earlier this month. HBC shares closed up 1.3 percent at C$11.18. RioCan shares fell 1.3 percent to C$24.42, while the benchmark Toronto stock benchmark rose 0.3 percent. The companies are also taking out a C$200 million ($156 million), four-year mortgage on the Vancouver property, the proceeds of which would be distributed to the joint venture partners. The loan has no prepayment penalty if the property is sold, according to the statement. CBRE and Brookfield Financial Real Estate Group have been engaged to explore the possible sale, according to the statement. ($1 = 1.2822 Canadian dollars) Reporting by Nichola Saminather; Editing by Lisa Shumaker'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/hudsons-bay-riocan-reit-divestiture/update-1-hudsons-bay-riocan-exploring-sale-of-downtown-vancouver-store-idUSL2N1N51VJ'|'2017-10-30T23:49:00.000+02:00'
'18ba512c43ddbbb7ab3c6bf138f45a173acb2075'|'Kellogg posts higher quarterly sales'|'October 31, 2017 / 12:15 PM / Updated 7 hours ago Kellogg''s surprise sales increase cheers investors Reuters Staff 3 Min Read (Reuters) - Kellogg Co ( K.N ) surprised investors on Tuesday with its first quarterly sales increase in more than two years, showing it was turning a corner after massive cost cuts and a shift to healthier products, sending its shares up 7 percent. FILE PHOTO: Kellogg''s products of U.S. Kellogg Company are offered at a supermarket of Swiss retail group Coop in Zumikon, Switzerland December 13, 2016. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo The stock, which has declined 16 percent in the past year, was set for its best day since the 2009 financial crisis. Kellogg<67>s legacy cereals business has suffered for several years as people reach for healthier breakfasts items, prompting the company to reduce sugar and artificial ingredients and come out with newer products. Revenue from Kellogg<67>s U.S. morning foods unit, which includes cereals, fell 3 percent. Sales at Kellogg<67>s snack business, which encompasses Cheez-It crackers and Pringles chips, were down 4.5 percent in the latest quarter, partly due a change in its distribution model. The company has stopped distributing products directly to stores and switched to its more widely used warehouse model to lower expenses. Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Lavery said the drop in the snack business was not as drastic as he had expected. <20>US snacks weathered price cuts and disruptions from its (direct-store delivery) transition better than we had expected,<2C> wrote Lavery, who had estimated a 14 percent drop in snack sales. The quarter benefited from a 4.5 percent increase in sales in the unit that includes its Kashi whole grain cereals and snack bars as well as frozen foods such as Eggo waffles and Morningstar Farms burger patties. Kellogg<67>s net sales rose 0.6 percent to $3.27 billion, while analysts on average had expected it to drop 1.4 percent to $3.21 billion. Kellogg has also kept a tight lid on costs, through jobcuts and production optimization. Selling and general costs dropped 10 percent in the third quarter. Net income rose to $297 million, or 85 cents per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, from $292 million, or 82 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, earning were $1.05 per share, beating the average analyst estimate of 94 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Kellogg also raised its full-year adjusted profit forecast to $4.00-4.06 per share, up from its previous forecast of $3.97-4.03, citing a smaller impact from currency translation than previously anticipated. Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kellogg-results/kellogg-posts-higher-quarterly-sales-idUSKBN1D01L5'|'2017-10-31T14:15:00.000+02:00'
'c5d8a0f9899fe4f5edded350313aae2ca8db2591'|'BRIEF-Tredegar Corp reports Q3 earnings per share $0.25'|' 15 PM / in a minute BRIEF-Tredegar Corp reports Q3 earnings per share $0.25 Reuters Staff Oct 31 (Reuters) - Tredegar Corp * Tredegar reports third-quarter 2017 results * Q3 earnings per share $0.28 from continuing operations excluding items * Q3 earnings per share $0.25 * Tredegar Corp - qtrly total net sales $238.5 million versus $200.5 million  '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-tredegar-corp-reports-q3-earnings/brief-tredegar-corp-reports-q3-earnings-per-share-0-25-idUSASB0BQ2D'|'2017-10-31T23:13:00.000+02:00'
'f0bc277c8e7e4d884d696dab58e82f5f233bda33'|'Aetna CEO declines to discuss CVS bid reports on conference call'|'October 31, 2017 / 1:05 PM / in 22 minutes Aetna CEO declines to discuss CVS bid reports on conference call Reuters Staff 1 Min Read NEW YORK, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Aetna Inc Chief Executive Mark Bertolini on Tuesday said during an analyst conference call to discuss third-quarter results that the company would not discuss rumor or speculation, referencing recent source-based reports that it was in merger talks with CVS Health Corp. Reuters and other outlets reported that talks had been underway for at least a few months and that CVS had offered more than $200 per share. (Reporting by Caroline Humer; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/aetna-results-ceo/aetna-ceo-declines-to-discuss-cvs-bid-reports-on-conference-call-idUSL2N1N60NS'|'2017-10-31T15:04:00.000+02:00'
'097a03c56c566a672c9d47b1d2cc9a6afc9b57af'|'Samsung Elec third quarter profit nearly triples to new record'|'October 30, 2017 / 11:58 PM / Updated 14 minutes ago Samsung Elec third quarter profit nearly triples to new record Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd ( 005930.KS ) on Tuesday said income from memory chips helped it book record quarterly profit for the three months through September, as the South Korean tech firm reported earnings that matched its earlier guidance. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at its office building in Seoul, South Korea, August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo Operating profit nearly tripled in the third quarter from the same period a year earlier to 14.5 trillion won (9.77 billion pounds), Samsung said in a regulatory filing. That compared with 14.5 trillion won estimated earlier in October. Revenue jumped 29.8 percent to 62 trillion won, also in line with its earlier estimate. Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Stephen Coates'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-samsung-elec-results/samsung-elec-third-quarter-profit-nearly-triples-to-new-record-idUKKBN1CZ2UG'|'2017-10-31T01:58:00.000+02:00'
'12e5c367ed667ffb7029106e5bc1b886029b854f'|'Rookies and robots brace for first UK rate rise since 2007'|'October 31, 2017 / 4:58 PM / Updated 7 minutes ago Rookies and robots brace for first UK rate rise since 2007 Fanny Potkin , Polina Ivanova 8 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Financial markets braced this week for what could be the Bank of England<6E>s first rate rise in a decade - a step into the unknown for a generation of young traders who started work after 2007 but also for the state-of-the-art technology they use. FILE PHOTO: Office lights are on at dusk in the Canary Wharf financial district, London, Britain, January 9, 2017. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez/File Photo After a decade that included a global financial crash, numerous investigations into market collusion and relentless automation, trading floors at banks in London have been transformed in ways not obvious at first glance. The newest kid on the block is not necessarily the rookie trader with a PhD in physics but the latest computer model or algorithm. How these models will perform under the almost novel circumstances of tightening monetary policy is as much a question as how the human neophytes will react. Using past market data, assessments of demand, valuation models and even measures of how upbeat news headlines are, computers crunch the numbers, game the scenarios and buy or sell in the blink of an eye. But shocks such as Brexit have shown that computer-driven trading can end in stampedes, or so-called flash crashes. <20>You<6F>ve got to weigh up the strength of the traders and the strength of the algorithms that have been developed and whether they can manage this kind of a process when the rate hike does come in,<2C> said Benjamin Quinlan, CEO of financial services strategy consultancy Quinlan & Associates. At Citibank<6E>s ( C.N ) expansive trading floor in London, the dealing room doesn<73>t look much different from a decade ago with traders hunched in front of banks of screens, the odd national flag perched on top, and television screens on mute. But beneath the outward appearance, foreign exchange trading has undergone a seismic shift: more than 90 percent of cash transactions and a growing proportion of derivatives trades in the global $5 trillion a day FX market are done electronically. So-called smart algos, or fully automated algorithmic trading programmes that react to market movements with no human involvement, were virtually non-existent in 2007. Now, almost a third of foreign exchange trades are driven solely by algorithms, according to research firm Aite Group. <20>Most of these algorithms haven<65>t really been tested in a rising interest rate scenario so the next few months will be crucial,<2C> said a portfolio manager at a hedge fund in London. To be sure, the U.S. Federal Reserve<76>s first rate rise in a decade in 2015 provided a dry run for this week<65>s UK decision - but the two economies are in very different positions and the knock-on effects on the wider financial markets of a Bank of England move are hard to predict. ROOKIES AND ROBOTS Much has changed since the Bank of England raised rates by 0.25 percent on July 5, 2007 to 5.75 percent. The first iPhone had yet to reach British shores, the country<72>s TVs ran on analogue signals and Northern Rock bank was alive and well. Where once lightning decision-making and a calm head in a crisis were at a premium, the bulk of trading today is done by machines and the job of a foreign exchange sales trader is often little more than minding software and fielding client queries. Itay Tuchman, head of global FX trading at Citi and a 20-year market veteran, said while the bank employs roughly the same number of people in currency trading as over the last few years, fewer are dedicated to business over the phone. <20>We have an extensive electronic trading business, powered by our algorithmic market making platform, which is staffed by many people that have maths and science PhDs from various backgrounds,<2C> said Tuchman, who heads trading for Citi<74>s global developed and emerging currency businesses. London is the epicentre of those ch
'019254efab07884d9523446177d6265a7674aa7c'|'Asia sluggish after Wall St. slips, dollar sags on White House woes'|'October 31, 2017 / 12:43 AM / Updated 42 minutes ago World stocks mark 12th month of gains, dollar flat Chuck Mikolajczak 4 Min Read NEW YORK (Reuters) - World stocks advanced on Tuesday and set a record twelfth straight month of gains as Europe outpaced the advance on Wall Street, while the dollar was flat but saw its best month since February. FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the floor of the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, New York, U.S., October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Wall Street ended the session in positive territory, with the Nasdaq scoring the best day of the three major indexes. Apple ( AAPL.O ) shares, up 1.39 percent, and strong earnings from Oreo cookie maker Mondelez ( MDLZ.O ), up 5.42 percent, boosted the S&P 500. Qualcomm ( QCOM.O ) shares weighed, down 6.68, on reports Apple would not use its modem chips in iPhones and iPads from next year. European stocks closed with a 5 1/2-month high and a 1.8-percent gain for October, buoyed by data that showed euro zone growth of 2.5 percent year-on-year and unemployment at its lowest since early 2009. Economic data in the United States was also positive as consumer confidence jumped to a near 17-year high in October, with households upbeat about the labor market and business conditions. Apple shares gained after the first reviews of its iPhone X gave it mostly positive marks. The phone is scheduled for release on Friday, a day after the company is set to report earnings. Also on the tech front, Facebook FB.O. was scheduled to post results on Wednesday. The Dow and S&P scored their seventh straight month of gains while the Nasdaq gained for a fourth straight month. For October, the Dow gained 4.3 percent, the S&P rose 2.2 percent and the Nasdaq gained 3.6 percent - the best monthly performance for each index since February. However, investors also exercised caution ahead of announcements from the Bank of England and U.S. Federal Reserve, as well as the expected nomination of a new Fed chair on Thursday and Friday<61>s U.S. jobs report. The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, October 30, 2017. REUTERS/Staff/Remote <20>The macro data is getting better, the market is prepared for Jerome Powell, the market is also prepared for Friday<61>s payrolls. I also think the market is ready for what the (Fed) says tomorrow,<2C> said Ken Polcari, Director of the NYSE floor division at O<>Neil Securities in New York. <20>I don<6F>t think there is anything out there that could derail the market from a point of view it doesn<73>t already expect.<2E> The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 28.5 points, or 0.12 percent, to 23,377.24, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 2.43 points, or 0.09 percent, to 2,575.26 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 28.71 points, or 0.43 percent, to 6,727.67. The dollar index .DXY, which measures the greenback against major currencies, was flat, with the euro EUR= unchanged at $1.1649. U.S. Treasury prices were steady. Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR last fell 2/32 in price to yield 2.3775 percent, from 2.37 percent late on Monday. RECORD RUN The MSCI''s 47-country ''All World'' index .MIWD PUS topped its 2003 run of 11 straight months of gains. It gained 0.13 percent Tuesday. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 rose 0.24 percent. Oil prices advanced modestly as the prospect of increasing U.S. exports dampened bullish sentiment that has driven Brent to more than two-year highs above $60 per barrel. U.S. crude CLcv1 settled up 0.42 percent at $54.38 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $61.37, 0.77 percent on the day. Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Nick Zieminski'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asia-sluggish-after-wall-st-slips-dollar-sags-on-white-house-woes-idUSKBN1D001Y'|'2017-10-31T02:43:00.000+02:00'
'760067ad9b6c582417eb4c30a490370eb196cf02'|'Emerson Electric made multiple offers for Rockwell Automation - CNBC'|'(Reuters) - Automation equipment maker Rockwell Automation Inc ( ROK.N ) said on Tuesday it had rejected another unsolicited acquisition bid from bigger rival Emerson Electric Co ( EMR.N ) for more than $27 billion as the offer undervalued the company.The Emerson Electric Company logo. REUTERS/Mike Cassese Rockwell<6C>s shares rose as much as 12.7 percent before paring gains to 7.6 percent at $201.09 in late-afternoon trading, and Emerson<6F>s shares fell about 4.4 percent to $64.35.Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based Rockwell said it had previously rejected Emerson<6F>s first buyout offer made on Aug. 2 worth $200 per share, with about half of the consideration in cash and the rest in Emerson stock.On Oct. 10, St. Louis, Missouri-based Emerson raised its cash and stock offer to $215 per share. But Rockwell<6C>s board, after a careful review, rejected it, Rockwell said.FactoryTalk Analytics from Rockwell Automation. REUTERS/Courtesy Rockwell Automation Up to Monday<61>s close Rockwell<6C>s shares had risen 13.2 percent, helped by improving sales in the United States and emerging markets.<2E>A combination would provide increased scale and help expand industrial product and service offerings,<2C> CFRA Research analyst Joe Agnese said.CNBC television on Tuesday was the first to report that Rockwell had rejected the multiple offers from Emerson. ( cnb.cx/2zVEeUm )Emerson said it made a private offer to Rockwell, proposing a combination of the companies, adding that currently no discussions were ongoing between the two entities.Emerson is looking to expand in areas such as industrial automation amid increasing competition from European rivals such as Siemens ( SIEGn.DE ), ABB Automation Group and Schneider Electric.Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Arun Koyyur '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rockwell-automat-m-a-emerson-electric/emerson-electric-made-multiple-offers-for-rockwell-automation-cnbc-idUSKBN1D01SM'|'2017-10-31T15:22:00.000+02:00'
'9d94d1f8553ad43baa4eeecd2a539ff4d3a98c9d'|'Exclusive: Engie, P<>tria among groups vying for Petrobras Brazil gas pipeline'|'SAO PAULO (Reuters) - French energy company Engie SA ( ENGIE.PA ) and Brazilian investment firm P<>tria Investimentos Ltda are among 20 groups interested in a controlling stake in a gas pipeline network owned by Petroleo Brasileiro SA, four people with knowledge of the matter said.FILE PHOTO: The logo of French gas and power group Engie is seen at the CRIGEN, the Engie Group research and operational expertise center, in Saint-Denis near Paris, France, Saint-Denis, France, February 29, 2016. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen/File Photo Petrobras ( PETR4.SA ), as Brazil<69>s state-controlled oil company is known, will receive a first round of non-binding proposals for a 90 percent stake in Transportadora Associada de G<>s SA, known as TAG, by the end of November, the people said.Other contenders for TAG, which owns 4,500 kilometers (2,796 miles) of natural gas pipelines in the northeastern region of Brazil, include Abu Dhabi state-owned holding Mubadala Development Co., Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), and private equity group EIG Global Energy Partners LLC, the sources added.Singapore<72>s sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte Ltd., which bought a minority stake in another gas pipeline network from Petrobras last year, is also analyzing the investment, according to the sources, who asked for anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.Petrobras, EIG, Engie and GIC did not immediately comment on the matter. CPPIB, Mubadala and P<>tria declined to comment.The sale of TAG is part of a program of asset sales with a $21 billion target in 2017-2018, as Petrobras seeks to reduce its $95 billion debt pile - the largest in the global oil industry.TAG<41>s sale is expected to be one of the largest Petrobras divestments this year. The state oil company expects strong interest from investors as Brazil<69>s economy slowly emerges from its worst recession in a century.Petrobras preferred shares rose 0.66 percent to 16.88 reais on Tuesday, extending this year<61>s gains to 13.6 percent.The sales this year include a planned stock market IPO of fuel distribution unit BR Distribuidora and partnerships with oil majors in oil fields. Some of them ruffled feathers with oil workers unions and have been targeted by court injunctions trying to block them. Petrobras has been able to overturn most of the injunctions in appeals courts.One of the sources said Petrobras aimed to fetch a price above the $5.2 billion paid last year by a group led by Brookfield Asset Management for another gas pipeline company, Nova Transportadora do Sudeste SA, which owns a larger natural network covering southeastern Brazil.Although TAG has a smaller network and serves an area responsible for a lower share in natural gas consumption, better perspectives for economic growth and investments could justify a higher price, the sources added.Additional reporting by Stanley Carvalho in Abu Dhabi; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Andrew Hay '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-petrobras-divestment-tag-exclusive/exclusive-engie-ptria-among-groups-vying-for-petrobras-brazil-gas-pipeline-idINKBN1D00Z3'|'2017-10-31T06:07:00.000+02:00'
'24ecc63c6150b6bbbbfe973289d80627dc1b18b8'|'Uber scrambles to head off Brazil bill regulating ride software'|'October 30, 2017 / 10:26 PM / Updated 14 minutes ago Uber scrambles to head off Brazil bill regulating ride software Reuters Staff 3 Min Read BRASILIA (Reuters) - Hundreds of drivers for the internet based ride-hailing firm Uber drove through Brazil<69>s largest cities on Monday to protest legislation that would turn them into regular taxi drivers subject to the same local licensing and taxation rules. Uber drivers protest against a legislation threatening the company''s business model that is to be voted in Brazil''s national congress, in Sao Paulo, Brazil October 30, 2017. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker The chief executive of Uber Technologies Inc, Dara Khosrowshahi, arrived in Brazil to lobby against the bill that is due to be voted on by the Senate on Tuesday and which threatens the company<6E>s business in a fast-growing foreign market. Brazil is Uber<65>s third-largest market, with 17 million users, and the city of Sao Paulo sees more trips on the ride-hailing service than any other city in the world, ahead of New York and Mexico City, according to the company. A spokesman for the company said the application as it exists could not operate under the new rules, including the use of a taxi license plate on cars owned by Uber drivers. <20>The business model we have today would not longer be viable,<2C> Uber<65>s executive spokesman in Brazil Fabio Sabba told Reuters. Uber is already battling to keep operating in London after the city<74>s transport regulator deemed it unfit to run a taxi service and refused to renew its license. Uber drivers protest against a legislation threatening the company''s business model that is to be voted in Brazil''s national congress, in Sao Paulo, Brazil October 30, 2017. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker Police said 800 Uber drivers drove through the centre of Brazil<69>s capital Brasilia to protest the bill that many say will put them out of business. Similar protests in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro snarled downtown traffic. Uber did not organise the drivers<72> protests but alerted authorities that they would happen. Slideshow (8 Images) <20>The bill will create so much bureaucracy that it prevents the 500,000 drivers in Brazil from earning income for their families,<2C> Uber said in a statement. Uber said it has paid 495 million reais (113.99 million pounds)in federal and municipal taxes so far this year. The bill, which has already been approved by the lower house of Congress, would define ride hailing applications as public transport instead of private services and require drivers to get a special permit from city authorities. It would also establish additional regulations and taxes. If the Senate votes to approve the bill, it will be up to President Michel Temer to sign or veto the legislation or parts of it. Reporting by Anthony Boadle'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-uber-brazil/uber-scrambles-to-head-off-brazil-bill-regulating-ride-software-idUKKBN1CZ2Q7'|'2017-10-31T00:25:00.000+02:00'
'4620835da0edaab582689b3c0e1880dcfaa806d4'|'Check Point Software profit jumps about 14 pct'|'Reuters TV United States  26 PM / a few seconds ago Check Point Software profit jumps about 14 percent Reuters Staff 1 Min Read (Reuters) - Network and cloud security provider Check Point Software Technologies Ltd ( CHKP.O ) reported a 13.6 percent rise in quarterly profit on growth in demand for mobile security products. The company<6E>s net income rose to $192.7 million, or $1.16 per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, from $169.7 million, or 99 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue grew 6.3 percent to $454.6 million. Reporting by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chk-pnt-sftwre-results/check-point-software-profit-jumps-about-14-percent-idUSKBN1D02U7'|'2017-10-31T22:21:00.000+02:00'
'1b8c99d57e42e8e09bb9ac2b77920d52de243a93'|'Euro zone economy grows faster than expected in third-quarter, inflation slows in October'|'Reuters TV United States October 31, 2017 / 10:56 AM / a few seconds ago Euro zone economy grows faster than expected in Q3, inflation slows in Oct Reuters Staff 2 Min Read BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The euro zone economy grew faster than expected in the third quarter and unemployment fell to an almost nine-year low, but consumer inflation slowed again in October after two months of faster rises, first estimates and data showed on Tuesday. FILE PHOTO: A woman visits the floating flower market in Amsterdam, April 26, 2013. REUTERS/Cris Toala Olivares The European Union<6F>s statistics office Eurostat estimated that the gross domestic product of the 19 countries sharing the euro grew 0.6 percent in July-September from the previous three months and was 2.5 percent higher than in the same period of 2016. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a 0.5 percent quarterly rise and a 2.4 percent year-on-year gain. The economic growth helped bring down euro zone unemployment to the lowest level since January 2009, beating market expectations. The unemployment rate fell to 8.9 percent of the workforce or 14.513 million people in September from a downwardly revised 9.0 percent, or 14.609 million, in August. Economists polled by Reuters had expected an unemployment rate of 9.0 percent. But consumer price growth in October eased to 1.4 percent year-on-year, a Eurostat estimate showed, from 1.5 percent in the previous two months. This was mainly because of slower growth of energy prices, which rose 3.0 percent year-on-year in October, slowing from 3.9 percent in September, offsetting equally volatile unprocessed food prices which rose 2.8 percent after 1.5 percent in September. Measured without these two most volatile components, inflation slowed to 1.1 percent in October from 1.3 percent in September. The European Central Bank wants to keep the headline inflation number below, but close to 2 percent over a two-year horizon and last week decided to extend its government bond buying program that pumps cash into the banking sector, although to reduce it in size. Reporting By Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Catherine Evans'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eurozone-economy/euro-zone-economy-grows-faster-than-expected-in-q3-inflation-slows-in-oct-idUKKBN1D01A4'|'2017-10-31T12:40:00.000+02:00'
'84207edf2ec4e86ea71a99031ddbfb7549cafa51'|'Puerto Rico oversight panel to work on new fiscal plan for island'|'Oct 31 (Reuters) - The federally appointed board overseeing Puerto Rico<63>s finances will issue parameters for revising the bankrupt U.S. territory<72>s fiscal turnaround plan in the wake of Hurricane Maria, the board<72>s executive director Natalie Jaresko said on Tuesday.Speaking at a public meeting held by the board in San Juan, Jaresko said the board is committed to collaborating with Puerto Rico<63>s government to produce a new plan. Hurricane Maria made landfall in September, decimating much of Puerto Rico<63>s infrastructure. (Reporting by Nick Brown; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-puertorico-oversightboard/puerto-rico-oversight-panel-to-work-on-new-fiscal-plan-for-island-idINL2N1N60OO'|'2017-10-31T09:56:00.000+02:00'
'2d880820fd51c07828450de1884d71cddc598323'|'UPDATE 2-US insurer WellCare tops earnings estimates on lower Medicaid costs'|'(Adds details on Medicare memberships, analyst comment)By Manas MishraOct 31 (Reuters) - WellCare Health Plans Inc handily beat analysts<74> estimates for third-quarter profit on Tuesday, as it kept costs under control in its Medicaid business and added thousands of new members to its Medicare plans.The bulk of WellCare<72>s revenue is driven by serving low-income beneficiaries through the Medicaid business, in which the Florida-based insurer reined in expenses and reported a lower medical benefits ratio (MBR) for the quarter ended Sept. 30.MBR, a key measure of costs, is the amount WellCare spends on insurance claims out of the premiums it earns. The lower the MBR, the better for the insurer.WellCare<72>s third-quarter Medicaid MBR improved to 86 percent from 87.4 percent a year ago, while memberships rose by about 290,000, boosted by new businesses in Arizona and Nebraska.The company also benefited from higher memberships in its Medicare business, with enrollments rising 45 percent, or by 154,000 members, helped by WellCare<72>s acquisition of Universal America Corp.Analysts have said the acquisition, which closed in April, will help WellCare expand in the higher-margin Medicare Advantage business.Medicare Advantage, an alternative to the standard fee-for-service government-backed plans for senior citizens in which private insurers manage health benefits, is the fastest growing form of government healthcare, with a total enrollment of 18 million people last year.WellCare<72>s net income more than doubled to $171.6 million in the third quarter from $68.6 million a year ago. Excluding one-time items, it earned $4.08 per share, topping analysts<74> average estimate of $1.91, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Revenue climbed nearly 23 percent to $4.40 billion.The company also raised its earnings forecast for 2017. It now expects adjusted earnings of $8.25 to $8.40 per share, up from an earlier forecast of $6.75 to $6.95.WellCare also said it expects to record a premium deficiency reserve (PDR) related to its contract with the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services in the fourth quarter, that will dent earnings by 56 to 65 cents per share.Piper Jaffray analyst Sarah James said she was <20>surprised<65> at the scale of the PDR. <20>It gives us concern over the long term margin of the contract,<2C> she added. (Reporting by Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Sai Sachin Ravikumar) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/wellcare-results/update-1-insurer-wellcare-doubles-quarterly-profit-hikes-forecast-idINL4N1N649L'|'2017-10-31T07:32:00.000+02:00'
'7c076c0558f1f560e95b6a52c78151439d4fafa3'|'Airbus legal risks spread to U.S., eclipsing third-quarter profit'|'October 31, 2017 / 7:34 AM / Updated 4 minutes ago Airbus''s legal troubles grow as admits inaccurate U.S. arms filings Tim Hepher , Cyril Altmeyer 5 Min Read PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus ( AIR.PA ) said on Tuesday it had uncovered inaccuracies in its filings to U.S. regulators over arms technology sales, drawing the United States for the first time into a scandal over alleged misconduct at Europe<70>s largest aerospace firm. An Airbus A330neo aircraft takes off during its maiden flight event in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau Airbus also warned about potentially significant fines resulting from existing bribery investigations in Britain and France over the use of middlemen in civil airplane sales, which have triggered a sweeping internal investigation. But it said it was too early to guess the size or timing of any European penalties, or the outcome of the new U.S. findings. Shares in the defence and civil aviation group rose more than four percent after it posted a smaller than expected drop in third-quarter profits despite jetliner delivery delays. However the gains were overshadowed by news that Airbus had itself unearthed inaccuracies in past filings to the State Department on defence technology exports. These involved inaccurate statements made by Airbus under a section of the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which governs the use of commissions and agents. Airbus said the flaws were first discovered during an audit at the end of 2016 and were confirmed in an internal follow-up review completed in the third quarter. Finance Director Harald Wilhelm said the European company had not disclosed any secrets about U.S. technology and that the issue was restricted to the use of sales agents and commissions, governed under part 130 of the ITAR rules. It is separate from investigations into the use of agents in commercial airplane sales, which are not subject to the same U.S. controls as weapons exports, but do have some U.S. restrictions over the use of advanced navigation technology. <20>This is about defence equipment and services related to it,<2C> Wilhelm told reporters. CO-OPERATION Wilhelm declined to say whether the latest disclosure could lead to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, which has so far stayed out of the European bribery probes. The DOJ shares jurisdiction for ITAR rules with the State Dept where criminal activity is suspected. A person familiar with the latest case said it involved inaccuracies over both names of agents and amounts paid. That echoes inaccuracies in applications for UK export aid which triggered the separate UK and French probes, but the now-disbanded headquarters team at the centre of those accusations was not involved in the U.S. ITAR process, sources said. Airbus hopes that by self-reporting and co-operating fully with the European probes it can qualify for a deal similar to a $680 million (<28>514.6 million) settlement granted to Rolls-Royce ( RR.L ) this year. Legal experts estimate Airbus faces fines in the billions because of the scale of suspect paperwork dating back years. The cost of legal advice and running its own investigations pushed up headquarters cost sharply in the third quarter. The world<6C>s second largest planemaker after Boeing ( BA.N ), posted third-quarter core operating earnings of 697 million euros (<28>613.6 million), down 4 percent on lower plane deliveries. It took a further small charge for the troubled A400M military project and warned of further costs later this year. It reaffirmed its 2017 guidance but acknowledged it would miss an informal goal of 720 jet deliveries that was higher than the official target of 700. Airbus has given different written and verbal delivery targets for several quarters in a row. The shortfall is chiefly the result of engine delays for the A320neo. Airbus now expects to deliver fewer than 200 of the aircraft this year, compared with a target of <20>around 200<30>.
'35834c25ea0575cd189c3aee075f4261cfb49540'|'Devon Energy 3rd-qtr profit falls 77 pct'|'October 31, 2017 / 8:10 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago Devon Energy 3rd-qtr profit falls 77 pct Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 31 (Reuters) - U.S. oil producer Devon Energy Corp reported a 77 percent fall in quarterly profit, hurt by lower production. Net income attributable to the company fell to $228 million, or $0.43 per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, from $993 million, or $1.89 per share, a year earlier. Total revenue fell to $3.16 billion from $4.23 billion. (Reporting by Karan Nagarkatti in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/devon-energy-results/devon-energy-3rd-qtr-profit-falls-77-pct-idUSL4N1N66JR'|'2017-10-31T22:08:00.000+02:00'
'ba17afe8f87433eec73329fc43280b6140073ad8'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Emerging stocks set for monthly gain, tech near record high'|'LONDON, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Emerging markets broadly firmed on Tuesday after a scintillating performance from U.S. giant Apple put emerging tech shares on track for a tenth straight month of gains, with South Korean markets surging to record highs.Most emerging currencies seesawed around flat to the dollar, which has lost some steam on reports that U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing to appoint the dovish Jerome Powell as U.S. Federal Reserve governor.Focus however remains on the tech sector, after iPhone maker Apple gained 6 percent in the past two days, lifting suppliers and allied sectors across Asia and boosting MSCI<43>s index of emerging tech stocks towards record highs.The sector accounts for a quarter of MSCI<43>s emerging equity index and helped push the benchmark 0.3 percent higher and on track for a monthly gain. It had fallen in September, snapping an eight-month winning streak.The Seoul bourse benefited from a 2 percent jump in Samsung which announced shareholder-friendly policies and also from an agreement between South Korea and China to repair strained relations. The index is set for its biggest monthly gain since May.Analysts at Societe Generale saw Asian stocks as a <20>bright spot<6F> in global markets, citing <20>the onset of a new earnings cycle, better growth prospects and undemanding valuations.<2E>After six years of disappointment, consensus earnings estimates for 2017 have been raised 10 percent year-to-date. We see this momentum continuing, with most Asian countries widely forecast to grow above long-term trend earnings growth,<2C> the bank added.Neil MacKinnon at VTB Capital also noted robust growth data across most of the advanced and developing world. Taiwan<61>s third quarter growth was the strongest in over 2 years, data on Tuesday showed<65>Financial markets, and especially equities, remain encouraged by most of these economic developments, even though the ultra-easy monetary policies of the major central banks have contributed to financial asset price inflation,<2C> MacKinnon said.France<63>s economy too grew at the fastest pace since 2011 in the third quarter, data showed, while Russia, in recession for two years is also steadily recovering, with 2.4 percent growth in September.On currency markets, the Korean won strengthened 0.6 percent to a three-month high against the dollar and the won firmed to two-week highs. But most non-Asian currencies were flat to firmer.The lira was flat to the dollar after Turkish data showed a 37 percent year-year rise in tourism revenues. This was undermined, however, by an 85 percent widening in the country<72>s trade deficit.For GRAPHIC on emerging market FX performance 2017, see tmsnrt.rs/2e7eoml For GRAPHIC on MSCI emerging index performance 2017, see tmsnrt.rs/2dZbdP5For CENTRAL EUROPE market report, seeFor TURKISH market report, seeFor RUSSIAN market report, see) Morgan Stanley Emrg Mkt Indx 1118.05 +2.52 +0.23 +29.66Czech Rep 1067.17 +3.17 +0.30 +15.79Poland 2510.57 -6.46 -0.26 +28.88Hungary 39840.20 -41.02 -0.10 +24.49Romania 7818.14 -27.37 -0.35 +10.35Greece 747.74 +4.17 +0.56 +16.17Russia 1121.84 -2.21 -0.20 -2.65South Africa 52472.96 -6.22 -0.01 +19.52Turkey 09384.82 +918.04 +0.85 +39.99China 3394.50 +4.17 +0.12 +9.37India 33213.13 -53.03 -0.16 +24.74Currencies Latest Prev Local Localclose currency currency% change % changein 2017Czech Rep 25.65 25.65 +0.01 +5.29Poland 4.25 4.25 +0.02 +3.67Hungary 311.41 310.94 -0.15 -0.83Romania 4.60 4.60 +0.01 -1.33Serbia 119.18 119.25 +0.06 +3.50Russia 58.32 57.97 -0.60 +5.04Kazakhstan 334.82 333.61 -0.36 -0.35Ukraine 26.85 26.83 -0.07 +0.56South Africa 14.11 14.04 -0.46 -2.66Kenya 103.60 103.70 +0.10 -1.19Israel 3.52 3.52 +0.03 +9.34Turkey 3.78 3.78 -0.03 -6.70China 6.63 6.64 +0.21 +4.72India 64.74 64.85 +0.18 +4.96Brazil 3.29 3.29 +0.00 -1.08Mexico 19.25 19.23 -0.11 +7.61Reporting by Sujata Rao '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/emerging-markets/emerging-markets-emerg
'6aa5c03099c07af6aa4c06b42df0db5d30ccd787'|'Anglo American investors demand clarity as dealmaker chairman arrives'|'October 31, 2017 / 1:47 PM / in 29 minutes Anglo American investors demand clarity as dealmaker chairman arrives Barbara Lewis , Clara Denina 5 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Anglo American<61>s ( AAL.L ) new chairman, who arrives on Wednesday, faces investor calls for clear direction at the miner, long seen as a potential takeover target. FILE PHOTO: The AngloAmerican logo is seen in Rusternburg, South Africa, October 5, 2015. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko/File Photo The smallest of the world<6C>s four big miners, Anglo is viewed as the most vulnerable to being bought, and incoming chairman Stuart Chambers has a strong record in securing buyers for the companies he leads. The mining majors have accrued cash as commodity markets recover, but their share prices are below all-time highs as investors shy away from a sector known for reckless deals in the past. Anglo is viewed as particularly undervalued because of its focus on South Africa, where unions are restive; mines are old, deep and difficult to access; and the industry is in dispute with the government over its mining code. Top 20 investors in the company who asked not to be named said Anglo<6C>s CEO Mark Cutifani had sorted out operational issues, but a vision for what happens next in South Africa and elsewhere is needed. <20>What investors want to see is clarity on exactly what Anglo<6C>s strategy is,<2C> one shareholder, who asked not to be named, said. <20>The longer-term investment case is that Anglo becomes a takeover target.<2E> Some industry sources, however, say that as Anglo American is no longer a forced seller since it has recovered from the 2015-16 crash, it could be a buyer if the right assets are available. LONG DEBATE Selling Anglo has been discussed by industry sources for years - and Chambers comes with good experience. When chairman of ARM, Britain<69>s most successful technology company, he helped to sell it to Japan<61>s SoftBank for 24.3 billion pounds. Before that, he was CEO of Pilkington glass, which was sold to Japan<61>s Nippon Sheet Glass in June 2006. But any move to sell Anglo would be complicated by its two biggest shareholders: Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, who has built up a nearly 20 percent stake since March this year, and the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), South Africa<63>s government pension fund, which has just over 13 percent. Agarwal is chairman of diversified miner Vedanta ( VED.L ) and he discussed a potential merger between Anglo and Vedanta unit Hindustan Zinc last year, although the idea never gained traction. He has said his stake in Anglo is for his private family fund and he is not seeking a takeover. He declined requests for comment. South Africa<63>s PIC would like to see a break-up whereby Anglo creates an Africa-focused local company, owned and run by South Africans, and keeps its overseas operations, a source said, asking not to be named. The PIC did not respond to requests for comment. If Agarwal manages to get a 30 percent stake, he would have to launch a takeover bid, but that too is complicated because of the structure of the specially designed convertible bond he has used to acquire shares. Bankers and industry sources say they do not know his intentions, but at the very least he is acquiring influence and if Anglo American<61>s share price rises above 18 pounds, up from around 14 pounds now, he<68>ll be in the money. <20>Anglo American is providing a sizeable platform for him that could merge with his business at some point,<2C> one banking source said, asking not to be named. Ian Woodley, portfolio manager at Old Mutual Investment Group, which has a small stake in Anglo American, said Agarwal<61>s interest had encouraged investment. He also said a South African break-up would be beneficial. As the big miners<72> cash reserves are rising again and debt levels have shrunk, industry sources say Chambers has ample time to meet Anglo shareholders and listen to their demands. The company<6E>s share price is up by around a fifth this year on top of gains of n
'f10703756b4a223008fa06cb46188a663787fa3b'|'iPhone X is best yet and FaceID works, mostly - reviewers'|'October 31, 2017 / 2:07 PM / in 4 hours iPhone X is best yet and FaceID works, mostly - reviewers Arjun Panchadar 3 Min Read (Reuters) - The first reviews of Apple Inc<6E>s ( AAPL.O ) eagerly awaited iPhone X unanimously judged it the best iPhone yet, although some reviewers pointed out potential glitches in FaceID, the company<6E>s new face recognition system. An attendee uses the Face ID function on the new iPhone X during a presentation for the media in Beijing, China October 31, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter The run-up to the Nov. 3 release of the redesigned glass and stainless steel device has been dominated by concerns over the supply and accuracy of the new system, which aims to improve on Samsung<6E>s ( 005930.KS ) face unlock feature. At $999 (<28>752.6), the iPhone X is the most expensive phone the company has ever launched, but demand is already far outstripping supply, according to analysts. <20>It<49>s thin, it<69>s powerful, it has ambitious ideas about what cameras on phones can be used for, and it pushes the design language of phones into a strange new place,<2C> Verge reviewer Nilay Patel said. Apple shares rose as much as 1.4 percent to a record high of $169.09 on Tuesday. There is no home button on the iPhone X, a key feature in previous phones. The fingerprint sensor is gone as well, replaced by FaceID, which unlocks the phone by recognising a face with the help of a front-facing <20>TrueDepth<74> infrared camera. So does the FaceID work? Reviewers had reservations. While the feature works even if the user changes their appearance, wearing sunglasses for instance, it may not work as well if some key facial features are obscured. A attendee uses a new iPhone X during a presentation for the media in Beijing, China October 31, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter <20>I tried the phone with at least five of my coworkers. None of their faces unlocked it - although none of them look remotely like me,<2C> CNET reviewer Scott Stein said. Reviewers said Apple had given guidance that the system works best at a distance of 25 to 50 centimetres away from your face. WORTH IT OR NOT? Apple touted the iPhone X as a completely reimagined device. It has a display that covers the entire screen but for a notch at the top that houses sensors, lenses, microphones and speakers. But many reviewers agreed that while some customers may be willing to pay the steep premium, as they usually do for new Apple devices, others may find the price unnecessary. <20>For a lot of people, it<69>ll be worth it. For a lot of people, it<69>ll seem ridiculous,<2C> Verge<67>s Patel said. <20>But fundamentally, it<69>s a new iPhone, and that means you probably already know if you want to spend a thousand dollars on one.<2E> The iPhone X has three cameras, one in front and two at the back, which reviewers said were <20>top notch<63> and the best so far in an iPhone. The device<63>s battery seemed to last up to a day, even after running heavy-duty apps, reviewers said. This is the first time Apple has used an OLED display, which CNBC<42>s Todd Haselton said was the best display he had ever seen on a smartphone. Additional reporting by Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru; Writing by Sayantani Ghosh; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-apple-iphone/iphone-x-is-best-yet-and-faceid-works-mostly-reviewers-idUKKBN1D01WH'|'2017-10-31T16:06:00.000+02:00'
'8e72d0f5622627686bd46879488027cac8ebea25'|'Videogame publisher EA''s holiday-quarter sales forecast misses estimates'|'(Reuters) - Electronic Arts Inc<6E>s ( EA.O ) revenue forecast for the holiday quarter narrowly missed estimates on Tuesday as the game developer gears to face tough competition from rivals such as Activision. FILE PHOTO: The Electronic Arts Inc., logo is displayed on a screen during a PlayStation 4 Pro launch event in New York City, U.S., September 7, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo Shares of the videogame publisher that closed up nearly 2 percent were down 3.4 percent at $115.60 in after-market trading. The company forecast third-quarter adjusted revenue of $2 billion, a tad lower than the analysts<74> average estimate of $2.01 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. <20>We always try to be conservative... Christmas is always the toughest time to predict how business is going to be,<2C> Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen told Reuters. EA<45>s holiday quarter launches include <20>Star Wars Battlefront II<49> on Nov. 17 and <20>Need for Speed Payback<63> on Nov. 10. The company expects <20>Star Wars Battlefront II<49> to replicate the success of the previous version that sold over 14 million units in the fiscal year 2016. <20>They had two big games last year in Q3 - <20>Titanfall<6C> and <20>Battlefield<6C> and have <20>Star Wars Battlefront<6E> and <20>Need for Speed<65> in this year<61>s Q3 that should result in roughly flat year-over-year performance, but they are being exceedingly conservative,<2C> Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said. Bigger rival Activision Blizzard Inc<6E>s ( ATVI.O ) slate for the holiday season includes <20>Call of Duty: WWII.<2E> Its personal computer version of the smash hit <20>Destiny 2<>, which was launched on Oct. 24, will also drive competition in the December quarter. On Tuesday, EA raised its full-year adjusted revenue forecast to $5.15 billion from previously stated $5.10 billion. <20>The analysts from the very start of the year have not really adjusted their numbers correctly... they tend to get ahead of themselves,<2C> Jorgensen said. <20>Our fourth quarter is larger than they (analysts) believe and the third quarter may be slightly under where they are.<2E> Sales at EA<45>s high-margin digital business rose 21.7 percent to $689 million in the second quarter ending Sept. 30 as more gamers bought their titles online instead of purchasing physical copies from retail stores. The game company<6E>s net loss narrowed to $22 million, or 7 cents per share, from $38 million, or 13 cents per share, a year earlier. EA<45>s revenue rose nearly 7 percent to $959 million in the quarter, driven by higher sales of its latest editions of popular sports titles such as <20>Madden NFL<46> and <20>FIFA<46>. On an adjusted basis, the company reported a revenue of $1.18 billion. Videogame companies are required to defer some revenue from certain online-enabled games following a tweak to the U.S. accounting rules. Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-electronic-arts-results/videogame-publisher-eas-holiday-quarter-sales-forecast-misses-estimates-idUSKBN1D02SO'|'2017-10-31T22:09:00.000+02:00'
'df43d4167416018f55d6f4deede9cfddfe9c7dca'|'Telia sells remaining Megafon stake to Gazprombank for $1 billion'|'STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Nordic telecom operator Telia Company ( TELIA.ST ) is selling its remaining 19 percent stake in Russia<69>s Megafon ( MFON.MM ) to Gazprombank ( GZPRI.MM ) for around 8.6 billion Swedish crowns ($1.03 billion), it said on Tuesday.A flag flutters at the Telia telecommunication company headquarters in Helsinki, Finland, May 5, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins Telia said it was selling at a price of 514 rubles ($8.86)er share, implying a discount of almost 10 percent to Monday<61>s closing price.<2E>The transaction is in line with the company<6E>s strategy to focus on the Nordics and Baltics,<2C> Telia said in a statement.Earlier in October, Telia sold a 6.2 percent stake in Megafon, Russia<69>s second-biggest mobile phone operator, at a price of 585 rubles per share.The investment had been classified as a financial holding.Telia said although Gazprombank was one of the banks under U.S. and European capital market sanctions, the deal did not violate those sanctions.Gazprombank, which is partly-owned by Russian gas giant Gazprom ( GAZP.MM ), said it had <20>a positive view of Megafon<6F>s value growth potential as one of the fastest-developing companies in the telecommunications sector and expects it to strengthen its market position further.<2E>USM Holding, which owns 56.3 percent of Megafon shares, said it was confident that it could work with Gazprombank to develop Megafon<6F>s strategic goals and future.Megafon, which is trying to reinvent itself as an internet player, earlier forecast flat revenues for this year as rivals have been forced to cut prices to retain customers in a mature market.Gazprombank, Russia<69>s third-largest bank, has agreed to a lock-up of six months from the date of the sale, subject to certain exceptions, Telia said. The bank did not immediately respond to Reuters questions regarding its plans for the stake.Telia expanded rapidly into central Asia and other parts of the world from the 1990s but has been reversing that process to focus on core markets.Earlier this year, Telia agreed to pay $965.8 million to settle U.S. and European criminal and civil charges that it paid bribes to win business in Uzbekistan.Telia<69>s former chief executive and two other former high-ranking Telia officials have been charged with bribery by Swedish prosecutors.In its third-quarter report, Telia said it hoped to sell its businesses in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Moldova by the end of the year.Reporting by Helena Soderpalm; Additional reporting by Katya Golubkova and Maria Kiselyova in Moscow; Editing by Louise Heavens '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-telia-megafon/telia-sells-remaining-megafon-stake-to-gazprombank-for-1-billion-idINKBN1D00OW'|'2017-10-31T04:27:00.000+02:00'
'73927f6cd21f86388e8457425ed31598dd3e8452'|'UK net payments to EU fall to four-year low in 2016 - ONS'|'October 31, 2017 / 12:54 PM / Updated 12 minutes ago UK net payments to EU fall to four-year low in 2016 - ONS Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s net annual payment to the European Union budget fell to a four-year low last year of 9.4 billion pounds, down from 10.5 billion pounds in 2015, the Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday. Flags are arranged at the EU Commission headquarters ahead of a first full round of talks on Brexit, Britain''s divorce terms from the European Union, in Brussels, Belgium July 17, 2017. REUTERS/Yves Herman The figure works out to 1.2 percent of government spending, or 181 million pounds per week, slightly more than half the amount pro-Brexit campaigners said Britain sent to the EU during the run-up to last year<61>s referendum to exit the bloc. Last month the head of Britain<69>s government statistics watchdog told Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, a leading campaigner for Brexit, that he had committed <20>a clear misuse of official statistics<63> by repeating the 350 million figure. Johnson, who mentioned the 350 million pound figure in a newspaper article last month, says he was referring to gross, not net, payments. Britain<69>s theoretical gross contribution to the EU in 2016 was 18.9 billion pounds -- more than 360 million per week -- but this was automatically lowered to 13.9 billion pounds due to a rebate arrangement that has been in place since 1984. Britain<69>s government received a further 4.4 billion pounds back from the EU to spend mostly on farm subsidies and infrastructure in poorer regions. That figure does not include EU funds given directly to other British bodies such as universities. Taking this into account, the ONS said Britain<69>s total payment to the EU averaged 8.1 billion pounds a year over the past five years. Britain is currently negotiating to leave the EU, and talks are stalled over how much Britain will pay to settle outstanding liabilities. May has offered around 20 billion euros ($23.3 billion), while EU officials estimate Britain owes around 60 billion euros. Tuesday<61>s international payments data also confirmed earlier figures that Britain<69>s current account deficit last year rose to 5.9 percent of GDP, its highest since records began in 1946 and the largest among major advanced economies. Reporting by David Milliken'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-payments/uk-net-payments-to-eu-fall-to-four-year-low-in-2016-ons-idUKKBN1D01PS'|'2017-10-31T14:53:00.000+02:00'
'50b765e0893a8d9349fd170823cb4120c1cf2659'|'iPhone X is best yet and FaceID works, mostly -reviewers'|'October 31, 2017 / 2:05 PM / Updated 7 minutes ago iPhone X is best yet and FaceID works, mostly -reviewers Arjun Panchadar 3 Min Read Oct 31 (Reuters) - The first reviews of Apple Inc<6E>s eagerly awaited iPhone X are out and the verdict is clear: it is the best iPhone yet. The run-in to the Nov. 3 release of the redesigned glass and stainless steel device has been dominated by concerns over the supply and functionality of its new FaceID access system. At $999, it is also the most expensive phone the company has ever launched, but going by channel checks run by market analysts, demand is already far outstripping supply. <20>It<49>s thin, it<69>s powerful, it has ambitious ideas about what cameras on phones can be used for, and it pushes the design language of phones into a strange new place,<2C> Verge reviewer Nilay Patel said in a lengthy review, which he promised to keep updated as he explored more features. There is no home button in the iPhone X, a key feature on previous phones, and users instead tap the device to wake it up. The fingerprint sensor is gone as well, replaced by the much-talked about FaceID, which unlocks the phone by recognizing your face with the help of a front-facing <20>TrueDepth<74> infrared camera. So does the FaceID work? Reviewers had reservations. While the feature works even if the user changes their appearance, wearing sunglasses for instance, it may not work as well if some key facial features are obscured. CNET reviewer Scott Stein posted pictures of himself with various props, giving FaceID a thumbs up under most circumstances. <20>I tried the phone with at least five of my coworkers. None of their faces unlocked it - although none of them look remotely like me,<2C> he said, adding that all the tests worked far better than Samsung<6E>s face unlock feature on the Galaxy Note 8. Reviewers said FaceID, as well as the lack of a home button, would take some getting used to. Reviewers said Apple had given guidance that the system works best at a distance of 25 to 50 centimeters away from your face, or about 10 to 20 inches. The iPhone X also has wireless charging and is the first time Apple has used an OLED display. <20>The iPhone X display is the best display I<>ve ever seen on a smartphone,<2C> said CNBC<42>s Todd Haselton. <20>I had my doubts before going into the review because Samsung<6E>s Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8 smartphones were at the top of my list. But Apple took screens from Samsung and had its engineers fine tune them.<2E> Apple shares were up almost 1 percent in early trading in New York. (Reporting by Arjun Panchadar; Additional reporting by Subrat Patnaik; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/apple-iphone/iphone-x-is-best-yet-and-faceid-works-mostly-reviewers-idUSL4N1N659Z'|'2017-10-31T16:05:00.000+02:00'
'dbc358b6bba72c05406969911c68d8259c62e87c'|'Burberry could face shock change as Christopher Bailey bows out - Nils Pratley - Business - The Guardian'|'  17.06 GMT First published   16.43 GMT B urberry<72>s well-paid bosses never quit their jobs, they <20>transition<6F> out of them. Under the long chairmanship of Sir John Peace, the word has been obligatory at the fashion house and is designed to encourage the impression of smooth corporate progress towards greater conquests. The exit of design guru Christopher Bailey , alongside glowing (and deserved) personal tributes, was given the usual treatment. Burberry is embarking on the next <20>chapter<65> in its <20>journey<65> and is ready for <20>the next exciting stage of our evolution<6F>, blah blah. Maybe it is, but shareholders could fairly expect Peace to explain why his carefully-laid plan to retain Bailey<65>s services has come apart at the seams after only a few months. It was as recently as July that Bailey, after a tricky three years as chief executive, was installed as Burberry<72>s president and chief creative officer. The man himself seemed pleased with his return to pure design work. He would have <20>a wonderfully collaborative partnership<69> with new chief executive Marco Gobbetti and his own <20>passion for making Burberry the most compelling brand<6E> had <20>never been stronger<65>, he said. Christopher Bailey: how Burberry''s creative force transformed the brand Read more Now the passion has cooled for reasons that have not been adequately explained. Bailey wants to pursue unspecified <20>new creative projects,<2C> a decision that will cost him <20>16m in lost incentive payments. He<48>s been spectacularly rewarded over the years but that<61>s still a princely sum to surrender. The suspicion will be that the double act with Gobbetti proved unworkable in practice, just as sceptical outsiders suggested it would. Bailey is staying on the board until March, so there is time to hire or promote new design chiefs, but this cannot be the script Peace anticipated. For years, the chairman presented Bailey as Mr Indispensable, even going to war with shareholders in 2014 to defend a <20>15m long-term pay package that he argued was essential to deter approaches from rivals. Now Bailey is off and Gobbetti is the new star. That<61>s a transition of sorts, but it<69>s not the one Burberry thought it was getting for all those retention millions. It may be a jolt. Topics'|'theguardian.com'|'http://www.theguardian.com/business/rss'|'https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/31/burberry-christopher-bailey'|'2017-10-31T23:50:00.000+02:00'
'77b75a80b35c2630698feec4f737743dc0daec1a'|'Anadarko Petroleum Q3 loss shrinks on rising oil prices, cost cuts'|' 20 PM / in 9 minutes Anadarko Petroleum Q3 loss shrinks on rising oil prices, cost cuts Reuters Staff 1 Min Read HOUSTON, Oct 31 (Reuters) - U.S. oil and gas producer Anadarko Petroleum Corp said on Tuesday its quarterly loss shrank due in part to rising commodity prices and cost cuts. The company posted a third-quarter net loss of $699 million, or $1.27 per share, compared with a net loss of $830 million, or $1.61 per share, in the year-ago period. Anadarko<6B>s average daily sales volumes fell 20 percent to 626,000 barrels of oil equivalent. (Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/anadarko-petrol-results/anadarko-petroleum-q3-loss-shrinks-on-rising-oil-prices-cost-cuts-idUSASB0BQ02'|'2017-10-31T22:19:00.000+02:00'
'3f193ec706685e9913921e6005da9a1038df5b19'|'Glencore plans to withdraw shares from HK, citing lack of trading'|'HONG KONG (Reuters) - Commodities trader and miner Glencore said on Tuesday it plans to withdraw its listing from Hong Kong, a blow to the Asian financial hub that has had a hard time luring international companies to go public in the city.FILE PHOTO: The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company''s headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo Glencore, which listed in London and Hong Kong in 2011 in a $10 billion deal, decided to cease trading in Asia because of the lack of appetite for its shares in the region. Since the May 2011 listing, only 0.3 percent of its share register were for Hong Kong-listed shares, the company said in a filing to the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong.Glencore said its board thought the decision was in the best interest of the company, shareholders and holders of other Glencore securities, without giving further explanation.Withdrawal is expected to become effective on Jan. 31, 2018, the filing said. It won<6F>t affect trading of Glencore<72>s stock in London and Johannesburg.Glencore<72>s listing followed a record year for initial public offerings in the city in 2010 and into 2011, including international names such as skin care products retailer L<>Occitane International, Italian fashion house Prada SpA and luggage maker Samsonite International SA.Since then, the number of international listings have declined.Reporting by Elzio Barreto; Editing by Christian Schmollinger '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-glencore-hongkong/glencore-plans-to-withdraw-shares-from-hk-citing-lack-of-trading-idUSKBN1D00ES'|'2017-10-31T12:03:00.000+02:00'
'587679be4cde96e2fde192cf7854365434f44711'|'Airbus Q3 operating profit down 4 percent'|'PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus ( AIR.PA ) said on Tuesday it had uncovered inaccuracies in its filings to U.S. regulators over arms technology sales, drawing the United States for the first time into a scandal over alleged misconduct at Europe<70>s largest aerospace firm.FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A380 aircraft takes off in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo Airbus also warned about potentially significant fines resulting from existing bribery investigations in Britain and France over the use of middlemen in jetliner sales, which have triggered a sweeping internal investigation.But it said it was too early to guess the size or timing of any European penalties, or the outcome of the new U.S. findings.Airbus shares rose 3.6 percent after a smaller than expected drop in third-quarter profits despite delays in some aircraft deliveries.However, the gains were overshadowed by news that Airbus had itself unearthed inaccuracies in past filings to the State Department on defence technology exports.These involved inaccurate statements under a section of the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) that governs the use of commissions and agents.Airbus said the flaws were first discovered in November 2016 and confirmed in an internal review completed in late July.Finance Director Harald Wilhelm said the European company had not disclosed any secrets about U.S. technology and that the issue was restricted to the use of sales agents and commissions, governed under part of the ITAR rules.It is separate from investigations into the use of agents in commercial airplane sales, which are not subject to the same U.S. controls as weapons exports, but do have some U.S. restrictions over the use of advanced navigation technology.<2E>This is about defence equipment and services related to it,<2C> Wilhelm told reporters.CO-OPERATION Airbus has been badly shaken by the existing corruption probes, which have already clipped aircraft sales.Chief Executive Tom Enders is under increasing pressure over the conduct of the internal investigation, which sources familiar with the matter say has angered staff and alarmed French networks of influence abroad.Le Canard Enchaine said in an advance copy of its Wednesday edition that French President Emmanuel Macron hoped to find a French replacement for Enders with German Chancellor Angela Merkel<65>s support. France and Germany each hold 11 percent of Airbus.FILE PHOTO: An Airbus employee works in a fuselage section of an A320 Airbus airplane at the Airbus facility in Montoir-de-Bretagne near Saint-Nazaire January 20, 2011. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe/File Photo However supporters of German-born Enders say such a move may set up a struggle with the Airbus board, which won independence from state interference in a 2013 governance shake-up backed by Macron, as adviser to former president Francois Hollande.<2E>We don<6F>t comment on speculation,<2C> an Airbus spokesman said.Wilhelm declined to say whether the latest disclosure could lead to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, which has so far stayed out of the European bribery probes.The DOJ shares jurisdiction for ITAR rules with the State Department where criminal activity is suspected. The DOJ and the State Department declined comment.A person familiar with the latest case said it involved inaccuracies over both names of agents and amounts paid.That echoes inaccuracies in applications for UK export aid which triggered the separate UK and French probes, but the now-disbanded headquarters team at the centre of those accusations was not involved in the U.S. ITAR process, sources familiar with the matter said.Airbus hopes that by self-reporting and co-operating fully with the European probes it can qualify for a deal similar to a $680 million settlement granted to Rolls-Royce ( RR.L ) this year.Legal experts estimate Airbus faces fines in the billions because of the scale of suspect paperwork dating back years.The cost of legal advice a
'6ec60168a382ebb174bb3443cc70869964b95071'|'FCA denies government pressure over Aramco IPO'|'October 31, 2017 / 3:45 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago FCA denies government pressure over Aramco IPO Emma Rumney 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The head of Britain<69>s financial watchdog has rejected suggestions its proposed changes to listing rules for sovereign-controlled companies were influenced by the government to try to persuade oil giant Saudi Aramco to list in London. FILE PHOTO: Visitors are seen at the Saudi Aramco stand at the Middle East Process Engineering Conference & Exhibition in Manama, Bahrain, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/File photo Saudi Arabia is considering floating a 5 percent stake in Aramco in London or New York. It is expected to be the biggest IPO ever and boost the reputation of its chosen venue. But the possible listing has been met with resistance from British fund managers concerned about governance. It would require the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to relax certain rules, including that companies float at least 25 percent of their shares - a power not used in the FCA<43>s four-year history. The FCA proposed in July a new category of sovereign-controlled firms seeking a so-called premium listing that would allow them to circumvent that requirement, among others. That raised questions around whether the government, keen to promote Britain<69>s financial sector as the country leaves the European Union, had influenced it to try to secure Aramco<63>s IPO. Parliament<6E>s Treasury Select Committee wrote to FCA chief executive Andrew Bailey in September, asking if ministers had been consulted on the plans. Speaking before the committee on Tuesday, Bailey said he had not had conversations with the chancellor about making London more attractive to companies such as Aramco. The only talks with government officials on the proposals had been on the timing of their announcement, Bailey said. Asked if Prime Minister Theresa May had been involved in trying to encourage Aramco to list in London, Bailey said: <20>Not to my knowledge<67>. FILE PHOTO: Logo of Saudi Aramco is seen at the 20th Middle East Oil & Gas Show and Conference (MOES 2017) in Manama, Bahrain, March 7, 2017. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/File Photo NOT ABOUT ONE COMPANY Bailey said the 25 percent requirement was not a <20>hard and fast<73> rule and that he was open to all views on the issue. The test would be to show that floating a 5 percent stake would create a market in the company<6E>s shares that was liquid enough, he said. <20>We are talking about a very large entity in this case. I want to be clear this policy is not about one company,<2C> Bailey said. <20>We<57>re open now to taking it forward, we<77>re not closed minded about this,<2C> he said, adding a consultation on the proposals had received many responses on both sides of the argument. Bailey also said he had met with the chief financial officer of Aramco in January. In the following month, the FCA first aired the possibility of a new <20>international<61> listings category that would be attractive to founding families or governments that want to retain control rights over the company being listed. <20>We should be prepared to turn away anybody that doesn<73>t meet the standards that we want. This is all about what standards we want, and then we make the judgements accordingly,<2C> Bailey told MPs. Some investors have said the changes could harm minority shareholders. At present, companies that do not meet Britain<69>s premium listing requirements must take a standard listing which is seen as second best as it has lower corporate governance requirements and does not qualify for entry into most stock indices. Additional reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Mark Potter'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-regulation/fca-denies-government-pressure-over-aramco-ipo-idUKKBN1D026X'|'2017-10-31T17:44:00.000+02:00'
'f94fc9437343b8e26c66d4cb56de144464ad9ad1'|'Burberry''s chief designer Christopher Bailey to leave'|'October 31, 2017 / 9:50 AM / Updated 8 minutes ago Burberry parts ways with Bailey as new CEO refashions brand Paul Sandle , Sarah White 4 Min Read LONDON/PARIS (Reuters) - Christopher Bailey, who fashioned trench coat maker Burberry into a global label, will part ways with the British company next year, leaving its new chief executive to revitalise the brand. FILE PHOTO: Christopher Bailey walks on the catwalk following the presentation of the Burberry Prorsum 2012 Spring/Summer collection during London Fashion Week, Britain September 19, 2011. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett/File Photo Bailey joined Burberry from Gucci, where he was senior womenswear designer, in 2001. Working with former CEOs Rose Marie Bravo and Angela Ahrendts, he made Burberry<72>s camel, red and black check designs must-have items for fashion buyers. While sales rose in the early 2000s, helped by ad campaigns fronted by model Kate Moss, Burberry became a victim of its own success when its check pattern was widely counterfeited, but Bailey successfully re-established its upmarket credentials. Although Bailey also became CEO when Ahrendts left for Apple in 2014, Burberry<72>s growth faltered, first as demand in Asia slowed, and then as it struggled to ride a rebound. Bailey, who was paid 3.5 million pounds in the year to end-March, will surrender share awards worth more than 16 million pounds when he leaves, Burberry said on Tuesday, adding he had decided it was time to pursue new projects. In 2014, shareholders voted against a near 20 million pound share award to the 46-year-old designer which was not linked to performance. Some are these are included in those surrendered. Burberry said Bailey would step down from his board positions of president and chief creative officer at the end of March, but would support Marco Gobbetti, who took over from him as CEO, until 31 December 2018. Bailey<65>s exit will enable Gobbetti to revamp Burberry<72>s creative direction as well as its operations, analysts said. <20>Burberry ... has become somewhat predictable and deja vu,<2C> Exane BNP Paribas said. In a notoriously fickle fashion world, younger consumers are increasingly influential and favour new products or twists on classic designs, weighing on Burberry<72>s appeal and its shares. The company, which still manufactures in Yorkshire, northern England, poached Gobbetti from Celine to overhaul the business earlier this year, leaving Bailey with creative control. Gobbetti has already made changes to the company founded in 1856 by Thomas Burberry, cutting costs and striking a licensing deal for make-up and perfumes after they were bought in house. TRANSITION RISK Under Bailey Burberry moved upmarket, emphasised its British heritage and launched new leather goods like the Bridle bag. He also used social media and shook up traditional fashion production cycles by enabling people to buy designs as soon as they were shown on the catwalk. The Burberry check baseball cap, a symbol of its earlier ubiquity, was resurrected in Bailey<65>s recent collection, priced at 195 pounds. Analyst Jelena Sokolova at Morningstar said Burberry<72>s new products were doing well, but staples like coats had lagged and a creative overhaul was never a sure-fire winner for a brand. <20>A transition is always a risk,<2C> Sokolova said. Kering<6E>s Gucci has been reinvented by Alessandro Michele over the past two years, with colourful, rococo designs that have fired up sales at a far faster rate than competitors. Finding a new designer can be a long process <20> France<63>s Christian Dior took around eight months before appointing a new creative head last year and new designers don<6F>t always spell commercial success. France<63>s Lanvin is on its third designer in two years after parting ways with its one-time star Alber Elbaz in 2015, while French luxury powerhouse LVMH recently denied a report that Celine designer Phoebe Philo was set to leave the label. But the report by industry news site Business of Fashion prompted fresh speculation by 
'd20795216a86a27b12d129a4c9833dbeaba56af3'|'China''s CDH, SenseTime raising about $450 mln AI fund -sources'|'(Corrects typo in 2nd paragraph)* Fund to make investments in growth-stage AI start-ups* China plans to become global sector leader in AI tech* CDH, SenseTime to act as co-managers of new fundBy Julie ZhuHONG KONG, Oct 31 (Reuters) - China<6E>s CDH Investments and Hong Kong-based start-up SenseTime Group are raising about 3 billion yuan ($453 million) to invest in firms working on artificial intelligence (AI) technology, said two sources with knowledge of the matter.The companies<65> plan for the fund, which according to the sources will be mainly used to invest in growth-stage AI start-ups worldwide, comes amid Beijing<6E>s drive to be a leader in the technology that is increasingly becoming key to various sectors.Once the preserve of researchers, AI has grabbed the attention of businesses from healthcare to financial services looking to use algorithms to comb through large troves of data to recognise patterns and solve problems. The technology is set to spread to driverless cars and service robots in the future.Beijing-based investment firm CDH and SenseTime, which provides technology-based applications like facial recognition, video analysing and autonomous driving, will act as co-managers of the fund, known as general partners, one of the sources said.It was not immediately clear when the fundraising would be completed or who would be the potential investors.The sources declined to be named as the capital raising plans were not public. CDH and SenseTime declined to comment.In July, SenseTime had raised $410 million, led by CDH and China<6E>s state-backed fund Sailing Capital, in a deal that marked one of the largest fundraising rounds by an AI firm and valued it at over $1.5 billion.Last October, the state think-tank Chinese Academy of Sciences and investment firm Hillhouse Capital Group launched one of the country<72>s first AI-focused funds, with an initial fundraising target of 1 billion yuan ($150 million).Chinese search engine giant Baidu Inc, which is making a big push into AI, opened the first national AI lab in March in partnership with the powerful state planner - the National Development and Reform Commission.The hectic fundraising activity linked to the technology comes after Beijing in July unveiled an AI development plan to grow the country<72>s core AI industries<65> value to more than 150 billion yuan by 2020 and 400 billion yuan by 2025.With this major push into AI, China is looking to rival U.S. market leaders such as Alphabet Inc<6E>s Google and Microsoft.SenseTime, a three-year-old AI firm, counts China<6E>s Ministry of Public Security and domestic heavyweights including China Mobile, HNA Group and Huawei Technologies as its major clients.CDH, backed by Singapore<72>s sovereign wealth fund GIC and International Finance Corporation, has about $18 billion worth of assets under management and its portfolio firms include the world<6C>s largest pork supplier WH Group. ($1 = 6.6255 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Julie Zhu, additional reporting by Sijia Jiang; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Himani Sarkar) '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/china-privateequity-fundraising/chinas-cdh-sensetime-raising-about-450-mln-ai-fund-sources-idINL8N1N508Y'|'2017-10-31T01:06:00.000+02:00'
'51dec53d5c6a996ea38ce3fec9bc301236ac88b4'|'PRESS DIGEST- British Business - Oct 31'|'(Corrects first item to say HSBC Holdings Plc from HSBC Holding Plc; removes a Bloomberg item incorrectly attributed to the Independent)Oct 31 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.The Times- Stuart Gulliver, outgoing chief executive of HSBC Holdings Plc, and Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group Inc, on Monday called for clarity over Britain''s future relationship with the European Union, warning that jobs and investment depend on a prompt decision. bit.ly/2z0IbIe- Chancellor Philip Hammond said Monday that Steffan Ball, chief economist at Citadel, a $26 billion hedge fund based in Chicago, was his new economic adviser. bit.ly/2z0dliZ- Pearson Plc is understood to be nearing a sale of its English-language teaching business to Asian private equity funds Baring Private Equity Asia and Citic Capital Holdings for up to $400 million. bit.ly/2z1hFPaThe Guardian- Nationwide Building Society has paved the way for an across-the-board increase in mortgage costs by announcing that a 0.25 pct interest rate rise would be passed on in full to its 600,000-plus variable-rate home loan customers. bit.ly/2yZtuVO- Hundreds of free-to-use cash machines are at risk of being closed down on high streets across the UK as a result of proposals being published this week to overhaul the 70,000-strong Link network. bit.ly/2z0nXOVThe Telegraph- Chemicals giant Ineos has bought Belstaff, the British heritage fashion brand, in the latest off-centre move by its founder and chairman, billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, a month after he unveiled plans to start making cars. bit.ly/2z0ltA5- Ten Lifestyle, the London-based concierge service is eyeing a listing on the junior Aim market in a bid to raise 40 million pounds and help it continue its domestic growth as well as increase its overseas footprint. bit.ly/2yZdmDOSky News- Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways'' parent company IAG, has dismissed claims - including from Chancellor Philip Hammond - that flights could be grounded if Britain leaves the EU without a divorce deal. bit.ly/2z1MyD7- A pack of hedge funds is closing in on a takeover of BrightHouse, Britain''s biggest rent-to-own retailer, just days after it was slapped with a 15 million pound ($19.81 million)compensation bill by the City watchdog. bit.ly/2z1MyD7The Independent- Walmart''s British supermarket arm Asda announced that Chief Executive Sean Clarke will be stepping down at the end of the year, to be replaced by the company''s current deputy Chief Executive and Chief Operating Officer Roger Burnley. ind.pn/2yZblYg$1 = 0.7573 pounds Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Peter Cooney '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-press-business/press-digest-british-business-oct-31-idUSL4N1N604Y'|'2017-10-31T02:34:00.000+02:00'
'047f6bb66ad1b0f7f4083da1759705067a49f6bc'|'UPDATE 1-Samsung Elec names new business heads in changing of guard'|'October 31, 2017 / 6:00 AM / Updated 9 minutes ago UPDATE 1-Samsung Elec names new business heads in changing of guard Reuters Staff * Samsung names new heads of 3 divisions * Co-CEOs J.K. Shin, Yoon Boo-keun to step down * Firm says to keep 3 co-CEO management structure (Adds details on appointees, background) By Joyce Lee SEOUL, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd named a new generation of leaders at its three main businesses on Tuesday as it seeks to steady the ship following the arrest of group scion Jay Y. Lee earlier this year on charges including bribery. The South Korean technology firm also announced that CFO Lee Sang-hoon had been recommended as the new chairman of the board, and that long-time co-CEOs J.K. Shin and Yoon Boo-keun would step down. Kim Ki-nam, 59, was appointed to lead the Device Solutions division which makes components including memory chips; Koh Dong-jin, 56, would head up IT and Mobile Communications; and Kim Hyun-suk, 56, would lead Consumer Electronics, Samsung said in a statement. The changes were effective immediately. The current three co-CEO management structure would be maintained, it added, without elaborating. Samsung is expected to recommend the three new heads of divisions as co-CEOs after the next shareholder meeting in March. A Samsung spokeswoman declined to comment. Current Chief Financial Officer Lee Sang-hoon would resign from his CFO role, effective immediately, and had been recommended as chairman of the board. The moves come after Samsung Electronics CEO and Vice Chairman Kwon Oh-hyun announced on Oct. 13 that he planned to step down from management. Samsung said Yoon and Shin decided to follow Kwon<6F>s earlier announcement to resign, making way for new leaders. Jay Y. Lee was convicted in August and jailed for five years for bribing the country<72>s former president, raising concerns of a leadership vacuum at Samsung Electronics. He has appealed against his conviction and hearings are ongoing. (Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Stephen Coates)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/samsung-elec-results-moves/update-1-samsung-elec-names-new-business-heads-in-changing-of-guard-idUSL4N1N62KQ'|'2017-10-31T07:59:00.000+02:00'
'5b578b01e342de471117a4a81a9b505c2eaef306'|'REFILE-LPC-Banks close to selling down <20>375m Alvest buyout loan'|'(Amends day in first para.)By Claire RuckinLONDON, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Bankers are wrapping up a <20>375m-equivalent leveraged loan financing backing a buyout of French airport ground support firm Alvest, banking sources said on Tuesday.Canadian pension fund Caisse de depot et Placement du Quebec and private equity firm Ardian entered into exclusive talks to acquire a significant stake in Alvest from French Sagard Private Equity Partners, the companies said in September.Bank of Ireland, BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole, CIC, ING and Societe Generale are leading the debt financing, which is close to being sold down via a limited syndication process to friend and family investors, the sources said.The financing comprises a <20>100m term loan B, a <20>200m-equivalent dollar denominated term loan B and <20>75m of undrawn facilities.Pricing on the euro TLB is 350bp over Euribor, while pricing on the dollar TLB is 390bp over Libor. Both are offered at 99.5 OID, the sources said.Alvest designs, manufactures and distributes technical products for the aviation industry and has more than 1,800 employees. It operates 10 factories in the US, Canada, France and China.Editing by Christopher Mangham '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/alvest-leveraged-loan/lpc-banks-close-to-selling-down-375m-alvest-buyout-loan-idINL8N1N66YT'|'2017-10-31T13:47:00.000+02:00'
'e9cea5a9d78e73790aff4435be85bd35909c2b2d'|'Ryanair says cancellation fiasco won''t stop record profit'|'Ryanair cancellation fiasco won''t stop record profit Special Report Reuters Investigates - The Body Trade In warehouse of horrors, body broker stacked human heads Finance firms reaching Brexit point of no return - FCA Reuters TV United States October 31, 2017 / 1:01 PM / Updated 21 minutes ago Ryanair says cancellation fiasco won''t stop record profit Conor Humphries 5 Min Read DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ryanair ( RYA.I ) is on course to post record annual profits despite a rostering mess-up that forced it to cancel 20,000 flights, and does not expect problems hiring the pilots to expand by 50 percent in the next six years, it said on Tuesday. Europe<70>s biggest airline by passenger numbers saw 2 billion euros knocked off its market value in the weeks after it announced the cancellations, an emergency measure to free up standby pilots to ensure the smooth operation of its 400 planes. But it recovered around half of that loss on Tuesday when the shares climbed over 6 percent, after it told investors that forward bookings were better than last year and it would not need to change the profit forecast to pay the 70-million-euro cost of compensating passengers and increasing pilots<74> pay. Analysts said this gave them greater confidence the Irish airline will be able to cope with the longer term fallout from fiasco, which Ryanair reiterated would be lower passenger growth next year and 100 million euros per year in pay increases. <20>Ryanair<69>s attractive long-term fundamentals, underpinned by its low cost base, remain intact,<2C> Liberum analyst Gerald Khoo said in a note, reiterating a <20>buy<75> rating on the stock. The airline<6E>s decision to make a rare cut in its passenger growth target - to 129 million for the year to the end of March from 131 million - is likely to help lift average ticket prices above previous forecasts in the coming months, chief executive Michael O<>Leary said. Meanwhile the fall of Air Berlin ( AB1.DE ), Britain<69>s Monarch [MONA.UL] and Alitalia [CAITLA.UL] into administration is set to help Ryanair by cutting capacity and freeing up pilots, he said. <20>Is the underlying business model continuing to deliver? Yes it is,<2C> O<>Leary told investors on a conference call. <20>Can it cope with the occasional fuck-up? Yes it can and I think that is what we are demonstrating with these numbers.<2E> Ryanair shares were up 6.9 percent to 16.84 euros at 1240 GMT, but still down around 7 percent from 18.03 euros before the cancellations were announced on Sept. 15. PILOT PROBLEMS FILE PHOTO: Ryanair commercial passenger jet takes off in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo In the wake of the cancellations, Ryanair has replaced its rostering team and hired back its former director of flight operations from Malaysia Airlines, Peter Bellew, as chief operations officer to spearhead an effort to better retain and attract pilots. O<>Leary said the airline was hiring around 40-50 pilots per week and it was seeing a <20>flood of applications<6E> from pilots who worked for Monarch Airlines and Air Berlin. He said Ryanair was beginning to see a reversal of a loss of pilots to Norwegian Air Shuttle ( NWC.OL ). Pay increases would not threaten the company<6E>s cost advantage over rivals, O<>Leary said. The bill for this year will be 45 million euros if all 87 bases accept it, he added. He said more than 15 bases had approved a new pay deal. While pilots say a majority of the bases have rejected the deal, O<>Leary would only say <20>a number of bases<65> had. Chief Financial Officer Neil Sorahan said <20>the door remains open<65> to talks with bases who have rejected the offer, but warned it would not be improved. While existing pilots at England<6E>s Stansted airport have rejected the pay increase, it is being given to new recruits, he said. There will be consequences for any pilot bases where industrial action occurs, including the possible withdrawal of planes, O<>Leary said. Ryanair said it had cut fares by 5 percent in the six mont
'b92cdcded533c16c041502dec1f909d0654a5e40'|'Some Kobe Steel products facing China customs delays - Shinsho president'|' 57 AM / in 8 minutes Some Kobe Steel products facing China customs delays - Shinsho president Yuka Obayashi 2 Min Read TOKYO (Reuters) - Kobe Steel Ltd<74>s ( 5406.T ) trading unit said on Tuesday it has experienced delays getting products from the embattled Japanese steelmaker through Chinese customs because of a data fabrication scandal that has rocked global supply chains. The Kobe Steel (KOBELCO) headquarters are seen in Kobe, western Japan October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White Shinsho Corp ( 8075.T ), which sold some Kobe Steel products with tampered specifications, has been hit with delays on some shipments as Chinese custom officials sought more information, President Takafumi Morichi told an earnings news conference. While Morichi said products were cleared after delays, the move by Chinese customs is another hitch for Kobe Steel as it tries get to the bottom of widespread data tampering on products used globally in cars, trains, aircraft and nuclear plants. The company has not received any cancellations from its customers, but it sees some risk of an impact on its business, including having some customers switching suppliers, Morichi said. Kobe Steel is the subject of a U.S. Justice Department inquiry and has lost customers as a result of the scandal. Its shares have fallen more than 30 percent since it revealed the fabrication earlier this month. They rose 3.3 percent on Tuesday, while the Nikkei 225 .225 ended unchanged. The revelations have sent companies in global supply chains scrambling to check whether the safety or performance of their products has been compromised. Japan<61>s third-largest steelmaker on Monday pulled its forecast for a first annual profit in three years as it tries to deal with the financial impact of one of Japan<61>s biggest corporate scandals. On Friday it had a government-sanctioned seal of quality revoked on some of its products. While no safety issues have been identified, Kobe Steel<65>s parts and materials are used across the world. Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; Writing by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Jacqueline Wong'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-kobe-steel-scandal-shinsho/some-kobe-steel-products-facing-china-customs-delays-shinsho-president-idUKKBN1D00SO'|'2017-10-31T09:57:00.000+02:00'
'adf433ad64cbd178db44328e89e249d1adcbf90b'|'RBS should accept criticisms in report ''more readily'' - FCA chief'|'October 31, 2017 / 11:12 AM / Updated 3 hours ago RBS should accept criticisms in report "more readily": Britain''s FCA chief Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - The head of Britain<69>s financial watchdog said it was unfortunate that the Royal Bank of Scotland ( RBS.L ) did not more readily accept strong criticisms made in a report on its treatment of struggling businesses during and after the financial crisis. FILE PHOTO: A woman shelters under an umbrella as she walks past a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland in the City of London, Britain, September 17, 2013. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth/File Photo RBS<42>s Global Restructuring Group (GRG) has been accused by customers of driving them to bankruptcy in order to pick up their assets on the cheap. Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), said on Tuesday he believes RBS should have reacted differently to the conclusions of the report. <20>The report is strongly critical of RBS, and I think it is frankly unfortunate that RBS has not in a sense accepted that more readily,<2C> he told parliament<6E>s Treasury Select Committee . The FCA published a detailed summary of consultant Promontory<72>s report into GRG last week, but it has refused to publish the report in full. The summary outlined numerous failings, and RBS said last week the most serious allegations against it had not be upheld. Bailey was repeatedly asked by the committee<65>s chair Nicky Morgan about why the watchdog has taken so long to report back on GRG. Bailey said this was partly due to there being <20>no meeting of minds<64> between RBS and Promontory, the external consultant hired by the watchdog to write the report. This meant that the FCA had to spend time checking the report, Bailey said. A redress scheme has been set up to compensate customers of GRG and Bailey said he has asked RBS CEO Ross McEwan <20>to get his act together<65> regarding claims. <20>I do believe we are now in the process of getting money back to the victims,<2C> FCA Chairman John Griffith-Jones told the lawmakers. The FCA<43>s investigation into GRG and its staff was continuing, Bailey said, without elaborating on when it would be concluded. <20>It depends where it leads to, frankly. It could lead to enforcement action.<2E> Reporting by Emma Rumney and Huw Jones; editing by Jason Neely and Keith Weir'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-rbs-report/rbs-should-accept-criticisms-in-report-more-readily-fca-chief-idUKKBN1D01CC'|'2017-10-31T13:00:00.000+02:00'
'1afe1fb42998c0dc861d6897338cb3f36d685b24'|'Asian imports of Iranian oil hit highest in six months'|'TOKYO (Reuters) - Imports of Iranian crude by major buyers in Asia rose in September for a third straight month to their highest since March, boosted by a surge in purchases in China and South Korea.China, India, South Korea and Japan imported slightly more than 1.9 million barrels per day (bpd) last month, up 5.1 percent from a year earlier, government and ship-tracking data showed. Their imports rose nearly 20 percent from August.Still, purchases from the Asian buyers remain below highs that were hit earlier this year and last year as Tehran ramped up exports following the lifting of economic sanctions, after it had agreed to constraints on its disputed nuclear programme.Imports by the Asian buyers, which take the bulk of Iran<61>s oil exports, are likely to fall in coming weeks as shipments bound for the region have dropped below 1.5 million bpd for October, a person with knowledge of the Middle Eastern nation<6F>s tanker loading schedules told Reuters.Chinese imports from Iran in September rose nearly 60 percent from a year ago to about 784,000 bpd, down from August when China imported the highest monthly amount since 2006, according to data on Reuters Eikon.South Korea<65>s imports rose by nearly a quarter to just over 504,000 bpd, a five-month high. India<69>s imports fell by a third to 415,400 bpd.Imports to Japan, which announced official figures on Tuesday, were down by more than 30 percent at a bit less than 216,000 bpd.Reporting by Aaron Sheldrick and Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Tom Hogue '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/asia-iran-crude/asian-imports-of-iranian-oil-hit-highest-in-six-months-idINKBN1D00IC'|'2017-10-31T08:13:00.000+02:00'
'22c5b9a0083788d9949c12b5291ce85474939cd5'|'Emerson Electric made multiple offers for Rockwell Automation: CNBC'|'(Reuters) - Automation equipment maker Rockwell Automation Inc ( ROK.N ) said on Tuesday it had rejected another unsolicited acquisition bid from bigger rival Emerson Electric Co ( EMR.N ) for more than $27 billion as the offer undervalued the company.Rockwell<6C>s shares rose as much as 12.7 percent while Emerson<6F>s shares fell as much as 4.1 percent.Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based Rockwell said it had previously rejected Emerson<6F>s first buyout offer made on Aug.2 worth $200 per share, with about half of the consideration in cash and the rest in Emerson stock.On Oct.10, St. Louis, Missouri-based Emerson raised its cash and stock offer to $215 per share. But Rockwell<6C>s board, after a careful review, rejected it, Rockwell said.Up to Monday<61>s close Rockwell<6C>s shares had risen 13.2 percent, helped by improving sales in the United States and emerging markets.<2E>A combination would provide increased scale and help expand industrial product and service offerings,<2C> CFRA Research analyst Joe Agnese said.CNBC television on Tuesday was the first to report that Rockwell had rejected the multiple offers from Emerson. ( cnb.cx/2zVEeUm )Emerson said it made a private offer to Rockwell, proposing a combination of the companies, adding that currently no discussions were ongoing between the two entities.Emerson is looking to expand in areas such as industrial automation amid increasing competition from European rivals such as Siemens ( SIEGn.DE ), ABB Automation Group and Schneider Electric.Shares of Rockwell were up 5.3 percent at $197 while Emerson<6F>s shares were down 3 percent at $65.35 in early trading on Tuesday.Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Arun Koyyur '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-rockwell-automat-m-a-emerson-electric/emerson-electric-made-multiple-offers-for-rockwell-automation-cnbc-idINKBN1D01SM'|'2017-10-31T10:26:00.000+02:00'
'0db092ba3296070ee061759aa0fddf89aa07a2b1'|'BRIEF-Sturm Ruger & Company reports Q3 earnings per share $0.53'|'October 31, 2017 / 9:25 PM / Updated 18 minutes ago BRIEF-Sturm Ruger & Company reports Q3 earnings per share $0.53 Reuters Staff 1 Min Read Oct 31 (Reuters) - Sturm Ruger & Company Inc * Sturm Ruger & Company Inc reports third quarter diluted earnings of 53<35> per share and declares dividend of 21<32> per share * Q3 sales $104.8 million'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-sturm-ruger-company-reports-q3-ear/brief-sturm-ruger-company-reports-q3-earnings-per-share-0-53-idUSASB0BQ2C'|'2017-10-31T23:25:00.000+02:00'
'980b0307b300ca28d7de422c1470d406e39ec2c9'|'Brazil''s Ita<74> may further cut provisions as economy picks up -CEO'|'October 31, 2017 / 1:20 PM / Updated 10 minutes ago Brazil''s Ita<74> may further cut provisions as economy picks up -CEO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read SAO PAULO, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Brazilian lender Ita<74> Unibanco Holding SA may further cut loan-loss provisions as the economy recovers, potentially offseting the effect of lower interest rates on its loan book, the bank<6E>s chief executive officer said on Tuesday. Ita<74><61>s coverage ratio, a gauge of its ability to absorb potential loan-losses, rose to the highest level in at least two years in the third quarter. (Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/itau-unibco-hldg-outlook/brazils-ita-may-further-cut-provisions-as-economy-picks-up-ceo-idUSL2N1N60PJ'|'2017-10-31T15:19:00.000+02:00'
'38c64e2065f00b0431cffe5397984f8b59b7e6b1'|'European stocks at 5 1/2-month high ahead of growth data'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - World stocks headed for a record twelfth month of gains as Europe outshone Wall Street on Tuesday while the dollar edged up and U.S. Treasury yields were steady.FILE PHOTO: A trader walks past the German DAX Index board on the trading floor at the Frankfurt stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany February 15, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo Wall Street had a choppy morning while European stocks hit a 5 1/2-month high as data showed euro zone growth of 2.5 percent year-on-year and unemployment at its lowest since early 2009.Strong earnings from Oreo cookie maker Mondelezboosted the S&P, while Pfizer<65>s report weighed.<2E>We<57>re still in the thick of earnings and have seen some high-profile companies driving the market a lot,<2C> said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin.The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 21.54 points, or 0.09 percent, to 23,370.28, the S&P 500 gained 2.72 points, or 0.11 percent, to 2,575.55 and the Nasdaq Composite added 22.76 points, or 0.34 percent, to 6,721.72.The dollar index, which measures the greenback against major currencies, was set for its biggest monthly rise since November 2016.It rebounded slightly from its Monday decline after Federal investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election charged President Donald Trump<6D>s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and aide Rick Gates, with money laundering.<2E>There<72>s a lot of moving parts to the market this week,<2C> said Shaun Osborne, currency strategist at Scotia Bank in Toronto, citing central bank meetings, data and expectations Trump would announce his Federal Reserve chairperson choice.Market participants were watching for <20>another shoe to drop<6F> in the Russia probe, he said.The dollar index rose 0.08 percent, with the euro down 0.13 percent to $1.1634.U.S. Treasury prices were steady as investors braced for events that could prompt volatility. Wednesday<61>s potential catalysts include the Treasury Department<6E>s refunding plans, the conclusion of the Federal Reserve<76>s two-day policy meeting, and a possible tax bill introduction.Benchmark 10-year notes last fell 1/32 in price to yield 2.3739 percent, from 2.37 percent late on Monday.The 30-year bond last rose 4/32 in price to yield 2.8746 percent, from 2.88 percent late on Monday.RECORD RUN The MSCI<43>s 47-country <20>All World<6C> index was set to top its 2003 run of 11 straight months of gains. It gained 0.09 percent Tuesday.MSCI<43>s index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan ended up 0.4 percent. Strong gains in South Korea helped offset weakness in China and Hong Kong after disappointing industrial data from China.South Korea<65>s KOSPI ended up 1 percent at a record high after Seoul and Beijing agreed to normalize relations that have been strained by a year-long standoff over the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea.Oil prices steadied after a week of gains as the prospect of increasing U.S. exports dampened bullish sentiment that has driven Brent to more than two-year highs above $60 per barrel.[nL4N1N6256]U.S. crude fell 0.18 percent to $54.05 per barrel and Brent was last at $60.46, down 0.21 percent on the day.Spot gold dropped 0.5 percent to $1,270.02 an ounce. It was on track for its second straight monthly decline.Additional reporting by Dion Rabouin in New York, Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru, Marc Jones in London, Shinichi Saoshiro in Tokyo; Editing by Peter Graff and Nick Zieminski '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/global-markets/european-stocks-at-5-1-2-month-high-ahead-of-growth-data-idINKBN1D011J'|'2017-10-31T11:29:00.000+02:00'
'31ac3d984b99e1d7beea746362b8c4f57fa532f7'|'BRIEF-Kirin says terminating shareholders'' agreement of JV with Amgen'|' 44 AM / Updated 12 minutes ago BRIEF-Kirin says terminating shareholders'' agreement of JV with Amgen   Kirin Holdings: * Says terminating shareholders<72> agreement of joint venture with Amgen * Says termination to be completed when the JV, Kirin-Amgen, pays $780 million to redeem Kirin''s 50 percent ownership stake Source text: here   (Reporting By Chris Gallagher)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-kirin-says-terminating-shareholder/brief-kirin-says-terminating-shareholders-agreement-of-jv-with-amgen-idUSL4N1N62ZH'|'2017-10-31T08:43:00.000+02:00'
'b31e8f370e9dcbc158687c31497e23ad7bdc7fe7'|'Grupo Mexico expects to raise $1.23 bln in rail unit IPO'|'October 31, 2017 / 7:35 PM / a few seconds ago Grupo Mexico expects to raise $1.23 billion in rail unit IPO Reuters Staff 1 Min Read MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican miner and infrastructure company Grupo Mexico expects to generate more than 23.5 billion pesos ($1.23 billion) in an initial public offering of its rail unit, GMexico Transportes, now set to price on Nov. 9, according to an investor presentation. FILE PHOTO: The logo of mining and infrastructure firm Grupo Mexico is pictured at its headquarters in Mexico City, Mexico, August 8, 2017. REUTERS/Ginnette Riquelme/File Photo Grupo Mexico ( GMEXICOB.MX ) had previously said the long-delayed IPO would price on Oct. 31. The company expects the shares to price at between 31.5 and 39 pesos each. The IPO will help to fund the purchase of Florida East Coast Railway, an asset it snapped up in March for $2.1 billion, according to the document seen by Reuters late on Monday. In 2016, the firm<72>s rail unit had sales of $1.77 billion. Grupo Mexico shares were up 0.37 percent at 62.59 pesos per share on Tuesday. ($1 = 19.1430 Mexican pesos)'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-grupo-mexico-ipo/grupo-mexico-expects-to-raise-1-23-billion-in-rail-unit-ipo-idUSKBN1D02QG'|'2017-10-31T21:31:00.000+02:00'
'090b33a9c12b0d17c795dfb35f05e92dd05646e3'|'Glencore plans to withdraw shares from HK, citing lack of trading'|'HONG KONG (Reuters) - Commodities trader and miner Glencore said on Tuesday it plans to withdraw its listing from Hong Kong, a blow to the Asian financial hub that has had a hard time luring international companies to go public in the city.FILE PHOTO: The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company''s headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo Glencore, which listed in London and Hong Kong in 2011 in a $10 billion deal, decided to cease trading in Asia because of the lack of appetite for its shares in the region. Since the May 2011 listing, only 0.3 percent of its share register were for Hong Kong-listed shares, the company said in a filing to the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong.Glencore said its board thought the decision was in the best interest of the company, shareholders and holders of other Glencore securities, without giving further explanation.Withdrawal is expected to become effective on Jan. 31, 2018, the filing said. It won<6F>t affect trading of Glencore<72>s stock in London and Johannesburg.Glencore<72>s listing followed a record year for initial public offerings in the city in 2010 and into 2011, including international names such as skin care products retailer L<>Occitane International, Italian fashion house Prada SpA and luggage maker Samsonite International SA.Since then, the number of international listings have declined.Reporting by Elzio Barreto; Editing by Christian Schmollinger '|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-glencore-hongkong/glencore-plans-to-withdraw-shares-from-hk-citing-lack-of-trading-idINKBN1D00ES'|'2017-10-31T02:02:00.000+02:00'
'd89e7a289638be84f439f67db2aef0fc9c3fbfe7'|'SoftBank, Deutsche Telekom hit wall in Sprint, T-Mobile talks - sources'|'October 30, 2017 / 5:17 PM / Updated 4 hours ago SoftBank, Deutsche Telekom hit wall in Sprint, T-Mobile talks - sources Greg Roumeliotis , Liana B. Baker 5 Min Read (Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp and Deutsche Telekom AG have reached an impasse in their talks to merge Sprint Corp and T-Mobile US Inc over how many shares each would hold in the combined company, people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday. In a board meeting at Japan<61>s SoftBank on Friday, several directors expressed doubts about giving up control of Sprint in any deal, the sources said, the latest twist in on-and-off talks to unite the two U.S. wireless carriers that began earlier this summer. According to tentative deal terms that Reuters was first to report last month, SoftBank and other Sprint shareholders would have received close to 40 percent or a little more of the combined company. The holdup in negotiations could torpedo plans to merge Sprint and T-Mobile, controlled by Deutsche Telekom, into a single carrier with more than 130 million U.S. subscribers, behind Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc. It could also damage the dealmaking credentials of SoftBank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son, who has raised close to $100 billion (75.73 billion pounds) for his Vision Fund to invest in technology companies, and uses his image as a reliable counterparty to clinch deals. If talks fall apart, it would be the second time an attempted merger of Sprint and T-Mobile has failed. The two companies came close to announcing a merger in 2014, but called it off at the last minute due to regulatory concerns. EXPLORING OPTIONS Industry watchers had long expected Sprint and T-Mobile to attempt another deal, especially after a quiet period associated with a U.S. government auction of wireless airwaves concluded in April, freeing up companies in the telecom industry to discuss mergers and acquisitions. But no deal was announced immediately following the conclusion of the restriction on merger talks, and both Sprint and T-Mobile said they were open to exploring other options. A source told Reuters in July that SoftBank was considering an acquisition offer for Charter Communications Inc in a deal where it would combine the cable company with Sprint. Sprint is in the middle of a turnaround plan and has sought to strengthen its balance sheet by cutting costs. But industry analysts have expressed concern that the company, weighed down with total debt of $38 billion, has few financial options. Even though its customer base has expanded under CEO Marcelo Claure, growth has been driven by heavy discounting. Sprint<6E>s junk bonds were among the hardest hit in Monday afternoon trading, according to IFR, a Thomson Reuters capital markets news service. Smartphones with the logos of T-Mobile and Sprint are seen in front of a Soft Bank logo in this illustration taken September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustrations Claure said in August that while Sprint could sustain itself, cost savings from a transaction were significantly better than remaining a standalone entity. Analysts have estimated a deal could result in more than $30 billion in savings. Sprint shares fell as much as 13 percent on Monday after Nikkei first reported that SoftBank was doubting the deal, and ended down 9.3 percent. T-Mobile shares ended down 5.4 percent. Nikkei also reported that SoftBank would inform Germany<6E>s Deutsche Telekom that it was calling off the deal talks, but sources who spoke to Reuters could not confirm this. As of late Monday, T-Mobile still considered the negotiations with Sprint to be active, according to the sources. Sprint, T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom and SoftBank declined to comment. DUE DILIGENCE ALMOST COMPLETE The due diligence between T-Mobile and Sprint was almost complete as of last week, and the focus had shifted to working out a business plan for the combined company as well as an integration strategy, sources had told Reuters. Even so, it was not clear
'205c3233ddf53ef7187bb87c0d05569b49f4402e'|'Rio Tinto adds alumina refineries to aluminium smelters sale - sources'|' 17 AM / in an hour Rio Tinto adds alumina refineries to aluminium smelters sale - sources James Regan 3 Min Read SYDNEY (Reuters) - Rio Tinto ( RIO.AX ) ( RIO.L ) is attracting renewed interest in selling its Pacific Aluminium smelting unit by adding two alumina refineries in Australia to the portfolio, according to three sources familiar with the matter. FILE PHOTO - A sign adorns the building where mining company Rio Tinto has their office in Perth, Western Australia, November 19, 2015. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo Rio Tinto had tried to sell the division minus the refineries in 2011 and again in 2015 without success. Switzerland-headquartered Glencore ( GLEN.L ), Liberty House of Britain, and Russia<69>s Rusal ( 0486.HK ) have all expressed interest, according to the sources, who declined to be named because they are not authorised to speak to media. By including the refineries, Rio could potentially double the original $1 billion price tag for Pacific Aluminium, the sources said. Pacific Aluminium originally included Rio Tinto<74>s Bell Bay, Boyne Island and Tomago smelters in Australia, and the Tiwai Point smelter in New Zealand. Glencore, Liberty House and Rio Tinto declined to comment on a potential sale or any discussions on the matter. Rusal could not be reached. Glencore, a global trader of aluminium, already ships copper, and other commodities from ports near the refineries. Liberty House purchased Rio<69>s Lochaber aluminium smelter in Scotland a year ago for $412 million. More recently it acquired Australian steel group Arrium. By including its QAL and Yarwun alumina refineries in the sale, Rio stands to lift the odds of ridding its books of the holdings, after the failure of the most recent attempt under former chief executive Sam Walsh, the sources said. <20>We view inclusion of the refineries into the mix as a stamp of the new leadership at Rio, increasing the chances of a sale,<2C> a fund manager with exposure to Rio Tinto said. Current chief executive, Jean-Sebastien Jacques, who took over in July 2016, is acting rapidly to divest all but Rio Tinto<74>s best-performing units. Rio sold its coal & Allied thermal coal division in June for $2.7 billion. It is also in the process of selling two Australian coking coal mines. Adding the refineries to the sale comes amid a strong market for alumina, which is derived from bauxite and used to make aluminium. Alumina prices have gained 50 percent since August to $450 a tonne on expectations that China will boost imports to compensate for production cuts at home to fight pollution. <20>If ever there was a time to have a supply source for alumina outside of China, it<69>s now,<2C> said Argonaut analyst James Wilson. <20>For Rio, it make sense. For a buyer, such as a Glencore or a Rusal, it makes sense.<2E> Rusal already controls 6 percent of the global alumina market and is a 20 percent partner with Rio in the QAL refinery. Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Tom Hogue'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-metals-lmeweek-rio-tinto/rio-tinto-adds-alumina-refineries-to-aluminium-smelters-sale-sources-idUKKBN1D00NT'|'2017-10-31T09:16:00.000+02:00'
'ef86bb28687a5038ce55b987c7e481b368d10400'|'India leaps up World Bank''s ease of doing business index'|'Meet the man behind India''s WeChat It''s getting easier to do business in India. But there''s still a long way to go. The country leaped 30 spots to 100 in the World Bank''s latest global ranking published Tuesday. That''s welcome news for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has come under fire for his handling of a series of big economic reforms that have slowed growth sharply . Modi''s government took advantage of the World Bank announcement to defend its policies. "I remember in the very first year, the prime minister had said our target should be to take India into the [top] 50, I believe this is doable," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said at a press conference Tuesday. "There''s huge scope for us to now jump from this position of 100." Sadanand Dhume, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C., said the World Bank''s ranking tells only part of the story but the improvement in India''s position was "undeniably positive news." "This is the first time that India has climbed so dramatically in the ease of doing business rankings and it sends a message to international investors that the government is committed to slashing India''s notorious red tape and rolling out the red carpet for them," Dhume said. The World Bank also named India as one of the top 10 countries in reforming its business environment, recognizing its strengthened protections for minority investors and progress in digitization. "Today''s result is a very clear signal from India to the rest of the world, not only is the country open and ready for business, it''s now competing as a preferred place to do business," said Annette Dixon, the World Bank''s vice president, South Asia Region. A slowing economy But the Ease of Doing Business index presents only a partial snapshot of what''s happening on the ground. In the last 12 months, Modi''s government carried out two huge reforms which political rivals have described as torpedoes: The first, a cash ban that replaced India''s highest denomination notes; the second, a national tax system that replaced more than a dozen state and central taxes. Following the changes, India''s growth slowed to 5.7% in the first half of 2017, its weakest rate in three years. India''s central bank has slashed its growth forecast for the current fiscal year to 6.7% from 7.3%. And researchers estimate that the economy lost two million jobs between January and August this year. A tale of two cities The survey is conducted across major cities in 190 countries around the world. In most countries, it focuses on only one city per country. In larger countries, it looks at two. In India''s case, it covers Delhi, the capital, and Mumbai, the leading financial center. That leaves out vast swathes of the country of 1.3 billion people, and some major business locations such as Bangalore and Hyderabad. Another criticism is that countries get credit for passing laws, even if they haven''t been widely implemented yet. A new law mandating speedier resolution of bankruptcy cases, for example, has "really not been tested in the courts," said Pratik Dattani, managing director at Economic Policy Group. "On paper this is exactly the right direction to travel." Moving further ahead in the rankings will require changes in business culture, he said "Getting from 100 to 90 or 80 or 70, that''s much, much harder." CNNMoney (New Delhi)   12:57 PM ET'|'cnn.com'|'http://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_news_economy.rss'|'http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/31/news/economy/india-ease-of-doing-business/index.html'|'2017-10-31T19:57:00.000+02:00'
'3bb607da1d25ea1dcc7cfa1a8da99f4e10d44ee7'|'Uber CEO says company''s future in Brazil in the balance'|'October 31, 2017 / 6:51 PM / Updated an hour ago Uber CEO says company''s future in Brazil in the balance Reuters Staff 1 Min Read BRASILIA (Reuters) - The chief executive of Uber Technologies Inc, Dara Khosrowshahi, said on Tuesday that his company<6E>s future in Brazil depends on government decisions, as the Brazilian Senate prepared to vote on regulating car hailing apps. The chief executive of Uber Technologies Inc, Dara Khosrowshahi attends a meeting with Brazilian Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles (not pictured) in Brasilia, Brazil October 31, 2017. REUTERS/Adriano Machado <20>It depends on the decisions of the government,<2C> Khosrowshahi told reporters when asked whether Uber would leave Brazil if the bill with tough regulations was enacted. He spoke after meeting with Brazil<69>s Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles. Reporting by Anthony Boadle; editing by Diane Craft'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-brazil-ceo/uber-ceo-says-companys-future-in-brazil-in-the-balance-idUSKBN1D02NF'|'2017-10-31T20:48:00.000+02:00'
'f6fcfe8acef3c8c594ddda0df9925c008a008d98'|'Visco defends Bank of Italy''s supervision of banking system'|'Reuters TV United States October 31, 2017 / 11:02 AM / in a few seconds Visco defends Bank of Italy''s supervision of banking system Reuters Staff 2 Min Read ROME (Reuters) - Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco on Tuesday defended the central bank<6E>s supervision of the financial system, which has seen 10 lenders collapse in the last two years, saying the bank was ready to explain all its actions. Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco attends the session ''Recharging Europe'' in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos January 23, 2015. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich In a keynote speech days after he was appointed to a second six-year mandate despite widespread political opposition, Visco said the Bank of Italy had helped to resolve banks<6B> difficulties <20>in the great majority of cases<65>. However, he added that when bank directors acted quickly to avoid checks and bend the rules it was not always possible for the supervisor to intervene in time to avoid a crisis. <20>We do not hesitate to justify our actions before the <20>political) institutions and the country,<2C> Visco said. Politicians of all stripes attacked Visco before his reappointment last week, and former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, leader of the ruling Democratic Party, tried to ambush his candidacy by tabling a critical motion in parliament. However, Visco, who has blamed a prolonged economic downturn for the banking crisis, maintained the crucial backing of Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and President Sergio Mattarella. In Tuesday<61>s speech Visco acknowledged that the repeated crises among Italy<6C>s banks had taken a long time to resolve, and said it was <20>necessary to look more deeply at the causes of the delays<79>. Reporting by Giuseppe Fonte, writing by Gavin Jones'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-italy-cenbank-visco/visco-defends-bank-of-italys-supervision-of-banking-system-idUKKBN1D01B3'|'2017-10-31T12:53:00.000+02:00'
'ea319e0b4574df54821d40dee7ab0fbcc9303fc7'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Chile stocks at six-month high on earnings'|'By Bruno Federowski and Anthony Esposito SAO PAULO/MEXICO CITY, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Chilean stocks climbed to a six-month high on Monday, boosted by local earnings, in contrast to most Latin American markets which dropped as traders avoided making risky bets ahead of the nomination of the next U.S. Federal Reserve chair later this week. The Santiago stock exchange''s blue-chip IPSA index, which was closed on Friday for trading due to a local holiday, rose 1.67 percent above 5,600 points for the first time as strong quarterly earnings by bank Santander Chile lifted the financial sector. Additionally, a poll last week showed center-right front-runner Sebastian Pinera, a business-friendly former president, with stronger-than-anticipated lead over leftist candidates for the Nov. 19 presidential election. Across most of Latin America, shares and currencies were down as traders awaited the nomination of the next Fed chair, which should provide further guidance on the pace of U.S. interest rate hikes in coming months. Higher U.S. rates could dampen demand for high-yielding assets, reducing the value of emerging market currencies. In Brazil, the real weakened as investors fretted over President Michel Temer''s ability to pass belt-tightening measures. Concerns over his platform of structural reforms, seen as key to curb growth of public debt and boost long-term economic growth, had driven the biggest weekly decline in the Brazilian currency since mid-May. Lawmakers cleared Temer of corruption charges last week, but a smaller show of support than a similar vote earlier this year cast doubt over his plans to streamline the social security system. The Brazilian real slipped 0.23 percent. For its part, the Mexican peso slipped 0.64 percent, on ongoing concerns about the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which underpins $1.3 trillion in annual trade between Canada, the United States and Mexico. Fitch Ratings said on Monday that if the United States withdrew from NAFTA, as President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened, Mexico''s economy would face significant uncertainty, likely leading to an immediate confidence shock and short-term market volatility. Key Latin American stock indexes and currencies at 20:43 GMT: Stock indexes daily % YTD % Latest change change MSCI Emerging Markets 1115.53 0.48 29.37 MSCI LatAm 2829.49 -0.78 20.88 Brazil Bovespa 74800.33 -1.55 24.20 Mexico IPC 48855.27 -0.72 7.04 Chile IPSA 5608.67 1.67 35.10 Chile IGPA 28099.38 1.6 35.52 Argentina MerVal 27428.71 -0.18 62.13 Colombia IGBC 10691.96 -0.64 5.57 Venezuela IBC 682.72 -3.7 -97.85 Currencies daily % YTD % change change Latest Brazil real 3.2888 -0.23 -1.20 Mexico peso 19.2430 -0.64 7.80 Chile peso 638.7 -0.77 5.01 Colombia peso 3022 -0.40 -0.68 Peru sol 3.249 -0.09 5.08 Argentina peso 17.6900 -0.37 -10.26 (interbank) Argentina peso (parallel) 18.1 0.11 -7.07 (Reporting by Bruno Federowski and Anthony Esposito; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/emerging-markets-latam/emerging-markets-chile-stocks-at-six-month-high-on-earnings-idUSL2N1N524E'|'2017-10-31T00:14:00.000+02:00'
'0bbc71e964ed038be4c451b1c3027b5af30a6c42'|'Ahead of iPhone X launch, China vendors cut prices of iPhone 8 models'|'October 31, 2017 / 10:36 AM / Updated 25 minutes ago Ahead of iPhone X launch, China vendors cut prices of iPhone 8 models Reuters Staff 3 Min Read HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese vendors have slashed the price of Apple<6C>s ( AAPL.O ) iPhone 8 by up to a fifth in a bid to lure customers amid sluggish demand ahead of the launch of the tech giant<6E>s much-anticipated iPhone X on Friday. A attendee uses a new iPhone X during a presentation for the media in Beijing, China October 31, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter Buyers can now snap up Apple<6C>s new iPhone 8 Plus and the more basic iPhone 8 models at discounts of between nearly 14 percent and 20 percent in mainland China, where iPhones have been known to change hands for as much as four times the price in Hong Kong. The move comes as data from research firm Canalys shows Apple<6C>s China smartphone shipments grew 40 percent in the third quarter from a year ago to 11 million units, marking the U.S. company<6E>s best performance in China in eight quarters. Some analysts, however, cautioned whether that could be sustained. <20>Apple<6C>s growth this quarter is only temporary. The high sell-in caters to the pent-up demand of iPhone upgraders in the absence of the iPhone X,<2C> said Canalys analyst Mo Jia. <20>Price cuts on earlier models after announcing the iPhone 8 have also helped. However, Apple is unlikely to sustain this growth in Q4.<2E> Apple in China didn<64>t immediately respond to request for comment. An attendee uses the Face ID function on the new iPhone X during a presentation for the media in Beijing, China October 31, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter Customers can now order a basic model of a 64GB iPhone 8 for 4,788 yuan (<28>546.5) from China<6E>s top home appliance retailer Suning Commerce Group Co Ltd ( 002024.SZ ), via its online shopping platform. A more expensive iPhone 8 Plus 256GB model costs 6,888 yuan. That<61>s a significant reduction from the original price tags in China of 5,888 yuan and 7,988 yuan, respectively. Slideshow (8 Images) The basic iPhone 8 is available through e-commerce player JD.com ( JD.O ) for 4,875 yuan, with the expensive model costing 7,098 yuan. In Hong Kong, the basic iPhone 8 costs HK$5,988 (<28>581) from the Apple store, while the more expensive version sells for HK$8,188. In recent years, hundreds of thousands of Apple devices were smuggled across the border into mainland China, where they could fetch as much as four times the price in Hong Kong. But much of that trade has been wiped out as Apple has opened more stores in China, recent launches have been simultaneous in China and Hong Kong rather than staggered, and domestic Chinese phone brands have increased their share of the world<6C>s biggest smartphone market. Apple last week countered concerns of muted demand for its iPhone X, saying pre-orders for the 10th anniversary phone were <20>off the charts<74>. Reporting by Donny Kwok; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Ian Geoghegan'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-apple-iphone-china/ahead-of-iphone-x-launch-china-vendors-cut-prices-of-iphone-8-models-idUKKBN1D0183'|'2017-10-31T12:39:00.000+02:00'
'55abd94cec6de695334a1e7595f1676cde7fbe40'|'BP beats third-quarter expectations, announces share buyback programme'|'October 31, 2017 / 7:12 AM / Updated an hour ago BP revives share buybacks as years of austerity pay off Karolin Schaps , Ron Bousso 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - BP will become the first major European oil and gas company to resume share buybacks since the 2014 price slump, a sign years of austerity have paid off. Tuesday<61>s surprise announcement came as the British oil company reported a doubling in third-quarter profit, and in a week crude prices hit two year highs above $60 a barrel. Coupled with strong growth in its oil and gas production and cash flow, the resumption of buybacks in the fourth quarter lifted BP<42>s shares to their highest in over three years, when oil prices were still around $100 a barrel. The move comes as BP gradually shakes off the impact of the deadly 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, known as Macondo, that cost it over $63 billion (<28>47.7 billion) in clean-up costs and penalties. <20>After three years of oil price correction and seven years after Macondo we are now back into more normal state of growing the business in current environment and we can deal with prices that go lower,<2C> BP Chief Financial Officer Brian Gilvary told Reuters. BP is the first among Europe<70>s top oil and gas companies to reintroduce buybacks, although some are making other moves to woo shareholders. Norway<61>s Statoil, for example, has said it will stop offering a <20>scrip<69> dividend - paid in shares rather than cash - in the fourth quarter, while France<63>s Total plans to do so next year. Royal Dutch Shell reports results on Thursday. <20>Today<61>s announcement is a very positive surprise, emphasising the progress made in the reset of the BP in the aftermath of Macondo and in the context of lower oil prices,<2C> UBS analysts said. In one of the clearest signs yet that the oil company has turned a corner, BP said it was able to balance its books so far this year at $49 a barrel, excluding Macondo payments, as years of cost cuts pay off. Four months ago, BP<42>s breakeven level was still at around $60 a barrel. BP will be able to balance its books at $50 or even $45 a barrel next year, Gilvary said. The London-based firm is working on an assumption Brent crude will average $50-55 a barrel next year as global inventories gradually return to normal, he added. FILE PHOTO: An aircraft of Korean Airlines is seen above a BP petrol station approaching to land at Zurich Airport in Kloten, Switzerland October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo SHARES SURGE The fortunes of Europe<70>s other top oil and gas companies diverged in the third quarter, with Italy<6C>s ENI and Statoil missing profit expectations, while Total benefited from higher production and an increase in earnings at its huge downstream business. BP also got a boost from growing production after it started six major projects so far this year, as well as lower payments for the Macondo spill. BP<42>s oil and gas production in the first nine months of the year rose by more than 9.6 percent from a year earlier to 2.427 million barrels of oil equivalent. It also saw improved earnings in its downstream business where refinery profit margins rose sharply after Hurricane Harvey knocked out around a quarter of U.S. refining capacity for several weeks. At 0915 GMT, BP shares were up 3.6 percent at 519.71 pence, after trading as high as 522.2 pence. The oil major reported third-quarter underlying replacement cost profit, the company<6E>s definition of net income, of $1.87 billion, exceeding analysts<74> forecast of $1.58 billion. The company generated $1.8 billion in surplus cash over the first nine months of the year, compared with $1.4 billion in shares issued as part of the scrip dividend. As of the current quarter, BP will buy back the equivalent number of shares it is issuing as part of its scrip dividend scheme through which investors can opt to receive dividend payouts in shares rather than cash. It will buy back around $1.6 billion worth of shares a year in order to offset the dilutive effe
'804daf72b8f49ae08139e9a31095b3e3831733a6'|'Aster DM Healthcare to raise $150 million in minority listing on India''s BSE'|'DUBAI (Reuters) - United Arab Emirates-based Aster DM Healthcare ( ATRD.NS ) expects to raise around $150 million from listing a 10 percent stake on the Bombay Stock Exchange by March 2018, its managing director said on Monday.The company filed a prospectus for an initial public offer (IPO) of shares in India in June last year.Managing Director Azad Moopen told Reuters in Dubai that the company would list the minority stake on Asia<69>s oldest exchange before the end of the current financial year in March.<2E>We are planning to do the roadshows in November and December,<2C> he said.The company, which operates hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies in the Gulf and India, will use the proceeds to pay off some of its debt, and also finance business development.<2E>We have strategically decided we will have more focus on India,<2C> Moopen said.He also said the company had received between 60 percent and 70 percent of payments owed to it by Saudi Arabia<69>s ministry of health, and that all outstanding payments could be received in the next three to four months.Moopen told Reuters in June it was owed $150 million in delayed payments from the Saudi ministry.Reporting by Alexander Cornwell, editing by Louise Heavens '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aster-ipo/aster-dm-healthcare-to-raise-150-million-in-minority-listing-on-indias-bse-idUSKBN1CZ1OH'|'2017-10-30T21:02:00.000+02:00'
'5c8e09f8e661d2f3903839faeb6d2ea188ea8369'|'Sony raises earnings outlook, expects best-ever annual profit'|'October 31, 2017 / 6:33 AM / Updated 10 minutes ago Sony raises earnings outlook, expects best-ever annual profit Reuters Staff 1   Japan<61>s Sony Corp ( 6758.T ) lifted its full-year operating income forecast on Tuesday, expecting to book its highest-ever profit due to strong sales of image sensors used in smartphones and other devices. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Sony PlayStation VR is seen at Tokyo Game Show 2017 in Chiba, east of Tokyo, Japan, September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo The electronics firm forecast profit of 630 billion yen ($5.57 billion) for the year ending March, from 500 billion yen estimated three months ago. Meeting the new forecast would mean Sony exceeding its previous record of 526 billion yen set in the year ended March 1998, when strong sales of consumer electronics including its first PlayStation games console coincided with its box-office hit <20>Men in Black<63>. The new outlook compared with a Thomson Reuters Starmine SmartEstimate of 585.81 billion yen drawn from the views of 26 analysts. Sony also said profit for July-September jumped to 204.2 billion yen from 45.7 billion yen a year earlier. The result is higher than the 140.49 billion yen average estimate of 11 analysts. Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Christopher Cushing'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-sony-results/sony-raises-earnings-outlook-expects-best-ever-annual-profit-idUKKBN1D00KK'|'2017-10-31T08:32:00.000+02:00'
'c7f70488d17b9711beae8a84fe60dedcad9c0bee'|'EMERGING MARKETS-Brazil, Mexico currencies head for large October losses'|'By Bruno Federowski SAO PAULO, Oct 31 (Reuters) - The Brazilian and Mexican currencies seesawed on Tuesday but still headed for their worst monthly declines in around one year on politically-driven losses. The Mexican peso was set to lose the most in the region in October, weighed down by concerns over future trade ties between Mexico and the United States. Increasingly strict demands from U.S. President Donald Trump have fostered concerns that Trump may follow through on his threats to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). That could have dire consequences for Mexico, which sells over three-quarters of its exports to the United States. Nevertheless, some are still hopeful that the negotiations will reach an agreement. In a client note, strategists at Societe Generale said the peso offered "good value" and is around 13 percent below fair price. "Our base case scenario is that a compromise on NAFTA will ultimately be reached and even if the pendulum of trade competitiveness shifts in the favour of the US, the peso would recover sharply," they said. The peso firmed 0.39 percent on Tuesday, briefly paring gains after data showed the Mexican economy likely shrank for the first time in more than four years in the third quarter due to the effects of earthquakes and hurricanes in September. Economists minimized the contraction due to the influence of one-off items. Economists at Continuum Economics highlighted, however, that upward revisions to past figures could limit the space for the central bank to cut interest rates going forward. "Banxico may need to remain in its current contraction stance for much longer and even add some tightening if inflation fails to fall fast enough," they wrote. The Brazilian real looked set to post its worst monthly loss since November, battered by concerns that President Michel Temer could fail to implement belt-tightening reforms needed to curb growth of public debt. Temer saw his support among lawmakers decline after facing corruption charges and is now struggling to pass a bill streamlining the social security system. The nation''s benchmark Bovespa stock index slipped xx percent, but a rally in shares of payment processor Cielo SA helped to curb losses. Stronger-than-expected quarterly results caught many traders by surprise. Many had bet against Cielo due to growing competition from traditional banks like Banco Bradesco SA and fintech start-ups like Nubank. Key Latin American stock indexes and currencies at 1720 GMT: Stock indexes daily % YTD % Latest change change MSCI Emerging Markets 1119.61 0.37 29.37 MSCI LatAm 2818.35 -0.39 20.88 Brazil Bovespa 74757.90 -0.06 24.13 Mexico S&P/BVM IPC 48816.63 -0.08 6.95 Chile IPSA 5584.68 -0.43 34.53 Chile IGPA 27988.35 -0.4 34.99 Argentina MerVal 27437.48 0.12 62.18 Colombia IGBC 10655.68 -0.34 5.21 Venezuela IBC 685.73 0.44 -97.84 Currencies daily % YTD % change change Latest Brazil real 3.2746 0.20 -0.78 Mexico peso 19.1610 0.39 8.26 Chile peso 636.2 0.39 5.42 Colombia peso 3040.27 -0.60 -1.28 Peru sol 3.247 0.06 5.14 Argentina peso (interbank) 17.6650 0.20 -10.13 Argentina peso (parallel) 18.07 0.44 -6.92 (Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Nick Zieminski)Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/emerging-markets-latam/emerging-markets-brazil-mexico-currencies-head-for-large-october-losses-idINL2N1N6192'|'2017-10-31T12:36:00.000+02:00'
'cf649d4968e3c0aac76029d91cc99d7f9858157c'|'Ad giant WPP lowers full-year expectations again'|'October 31, 2017 / 7:13 AM / Updated 2 hours ago Global advertising giant WPP faces stagnant sales this year Kate Holton 4 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - WPP ( WPP.L ) cut its sales expectations for the third time this year on Tuesday and said net sales would not grow in 2017, with weak client spending and technological disruption putting it on course for its lowest growth since the financial crisis. Sir Martin Sorrell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of WPP, the world''s largest advertising company, attends an interview with Reuters during the Cannes Lions Festival in Cannes, France, June 24, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard The bleak outlook from the world<6C>s largest advertising company and similar forecasts from peers have prompted fears of structural change as consumer goods giants like Unilever cut spending and Google and Facebook transform the industry. Competition among the big four of WPP, Omnicom ( OMC.N ), Publicis ( PUBP.PA ) and Interpublic ( IPG.N ) has become fierce as clients review the effectiveness of their marketing budgets. WPP has felt this acutely in the U.S., where it has lost two big accounts to Omnicom, and investors were braced for bad news. WPP said net sales would not grow this year, initially knocking its shares on Tuesday, before they recovered to rise 2.5 percent to 1327 pence at 1235 GMT. The British group has been hit more than most by the pressures in the packaged goods sector, where its clients such as Unilever ( ULVR.L ), Nestle ( NESN.S ) and Procter and Gamble ( PG.N ) are cutting spending as consumers turn to more niche brands and its shares are down 30 percent so far in 2017. <20>The biggest pressure is coming on the packaged goods companies in particular, which are around 30 percent of our revenue, and they<65>re under colossal pressure,<2C> Martin Sorrell, chief executive and founder of WPP, told Reuters. WPP said the focus on cost had also helped new competitors in the field, with consultancies including Accenture, Cap Gemini and Deloitte offering data, analytics and reviews on the effectiveness of marketing spend. <20>Very few CEOs will resist the suggestion that they may be overspending,<2C> WPP said, adding that the focus on costs was likely to continue although perhaps at lower levels after one-time reductions this year, which are tougher to repeat. Some other clients are making adverts in-house to place on Facebook and Google, cutting out the middlemen. However, WPP said the two platforms remain crucial destinations for their ad spend, calling them <20>friendlier frienemies<65>. PANIC BUTTONS WPP<50>s outlook highlights a difficult year for the British firm and the wider industry. After organic net sales growth of 3.1 percent in 2016, WPP rattled investors in March when it set a 2017 target of 2 percent before cutting it in August to between 0 and 1 percent. The group said it now expected like-for-like net sales growth to be flat. The headline net sales operating margin was also now expected to be flat, compared with a previous forecast of a 0.3 margin point improvement. But WPP<50>s third-quarter trading holding up reasonably well, with like-for-like net sales down by 1.1 percent, an improvement on the 1.7 percent drop recorded in the second-quarter and a market expectation of -1.4 percent. Some analysts said they had expected weak results and noted the group will have to perform well in the fourth quarter, while others said recent declines had left the stock fairly priced. <20>While it<69>s not time to hit the panic button, one has to worry whether things might get worse before they get better,<2C> George Salmon, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said. Analysts at Barclays said it was difficult to call and this made WPP a <20>risky investment<6E>. <20>If you cut agency fees in 2017 and get the same service, why not do it again in 2018,<2C> they said. <20>And if consumer goods companies were successful in doing so, why would that pressure not extend to other sectors in 2018. Reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Louise Heavens/Ke
'8db4416d9363fc394c5d54ecaf2eed35a03d335f'|'Oil eases on profit-taking but sentiment remains strong as OPEC-led supply cuts bite'|'October 31, 2017 / 12:50 AM / Updated 17 minutes ago Oil eases on profit-taking but sentiment remains strong as OPEC-led supply cuts bite Henning Gloystein 3 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices eased on Tuesday as traders took profits following days of gains and as the prospect of increasing U.S. exports dampened overall bullish sentiment that has driven Brent above $60 per barrel. FILE PHOTO - A pump jack is seen at sunrise near Bakersfield, California October 14, 2014. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson Traders said that Iraq<61>s move to increase oil exports from its southern ports by 220,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 3.45 million bpd to make up for supply disruptions from its northern Kirkuk fields had also weighed on Brent. Brent crude futures LCOc1, the international benchmark for oil prices, were at $60.76 per barrel at 0540 GMT. That was 14 cents, or 0.2 percent, below their last settlement, but still not far off July 2015-highs reached earlier this week, and up some 37 percent since their 2017-lows last June. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were at $54.04 a barrel, 11 cents below their last close. But that was still near their highest level since February and up around 28 percent since 2017-lows marked in June. Traders said there was profit-taking after crude prices rose by around 5 percent in October. Amid generally upbeat market sentiment, analysts were cautious after several days dominated by strong price rises. <20>U.S. shale output could keep a lid on prices over the medium to long-term,<2C> said Shane Chanel, equities and derivatives adviser at ASR Wealth Advisers. WTI<54>s $6.7 per barrel discount to Brent CL-LCO1=R is a result of rising American crude production C-OUT-T-EIA, which is up almost 13 percent since mid-2016 to 9.5 million barrels per day (bpd), making U.S. crude exports highly profitable. Despite Tuesday<61>s price dips, market sentiment remained confident, fuelled by an effort led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia to hold back about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) in oil production to tighten markets and prop up prices. The pact runs to March 2018, but Saudi Arabia and Russia have voiced support to extend the agreement. OPEC is scheduled to meet officially at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 30. <20>The fear of oversupply could easily turn to a fear of undersupply if inventories keep declining like they have been and demand continues to grow,<2C> said William O<>Loughlin, investment analyst at Rivkin Securities. Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Editing by Joseph Radford'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?format=xml'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-oil/oil-prices-stable-as-opec-led-supply-cuts-tighten-market-idUKKBN1D0028'|'2017-10-31T08:09:00.000+02:00'
'e9451d7f734d162880821345a317b8c70467f7c1'|'Exclusive: Orange is the new bank? Telecoms giant ventures into lending'|'PARIS/LONDON (Reuters) - Telecoms giant Orange ( ORAN.PA ) launches its own bank on Thursday, aiming to win 25 percent of France<63>s online banking market by capitalizing on the rising use of smartphones to steal share from established lenders with inferior technology.An illustration photo shows an employee of Orange Bank pretending to withdraw money with nfc system without contact at a cash machine outside the Orange Bank headquarters in Montreuil near Paris, France, October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau The launch is part of a push by the French firm to find alternative revenue streams and retain clients in the face of a price war in the telecommunications sector.It is also a test for the telecoms and banking industry, marking the first attempt in a major developed market by a telecoms company to launch a standalone bank.<2E>We are targeting 2 million clients in ten years. That would represent 25 percent of the (online banking) market, but I hope we will not stop there ... and we will be the market leader in several years,<2C> Andre Coisne, chief executive of Orange Bank, told Reuters in an interview.Coisne has previously launched online banks in France for ING Direct and Credit Agricole<6C>s BforBank.Orange is starting from a small base - Coisne says it has 25,000 customers have expressed interest ahead of the launch, a tiny fraction of the company<6E>s 21 million mobile clients. But the timing of its entry gives some room for optimism.In France, 793.4 million online banking e-payments were made last year according to the European Central Bank, up from 586.2 million in 2014.Consultancy Ernst & Young predicts the number of customers going online to open an account in France will surge nearly six-fold to 17 million in the next ten years.The regulatory environment is also becoming more favorable - next year new European Union rules will start to force banks to allow customer data to be made available to other companies, if the customers agree. That will help the likes of Orange to identify potential customers and offer them better deals than their current lenders.<2E>This is a good start,<2C> said Coisne, who will also face competition from telecoms rival Altice, which launches its bank in 2019.ORANGE IS THE NEW BANK Orange has beefed up financial services across its networks over the past ten years under several brands, such as Orange Money and Orange Cash, and Orange Finanse in Poland, which uses a platform created by Polish lender mBank.It targets 400 million euros in revenues for its financial services unit by 2018, out of which half would come from Africa.Africa is the world leader in mobile banking. Around 12 percent of adults there have a mobile money account against 2 percent globally, according to a 2014 World Bank survey.Telecoms operators have long hoped to repeat their banking success in Africa and other developing markets in advanced economies, but until now have only done so by relying on partnerships with existing banks, with little success.So far most telecoms operators have sought to retain customers by offering media content such as free access to music streaming apps like Spotify or movie streaming platform Netflix, as well as exclusive sports broadcasts.The logo of Orange Bank is seen on the facade of the Bank headquarters in Montreuil near Paris, France, October 27, 2017. Picture taken October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau But a minority investor in Orange told Reuters that diversification through banking could prove smarter because these services are essential and sticky.<2E>To me, it is smarter than spending millions on sport rights that expire every two or three years<72>, the investor said.There is no clearly successful precedent in major Western markets, which makes Orange<67>s move so brave, said Tom Levine, global head of telecoms practice at Allen & Overy.<2E>I hope their ambition goes beyond retaining customers through bundles because there is a real opportunity for telcos in banking to be a platfo
'4cc23076915e571cfc510be5076076035e546a2c'|'IMF endorses Saudi plan for $500-billion business zone'|'Reuters TV United States  06 AM / a few seconds ago IMF endorses Saudi plan for $500-billion business zone Andrew Torchia 3 Min Read DUBAI (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund has endorsed an ambitious Saudi Arabian plan to build a $500-billion business and industrial zone extending into Jordan and Egypt, saying the project could benefit the whole region. FILE PHOTO: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, attends the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/File Photo Jihad Azour, head of the IMF<4D>s Middle East department, said Riyadh would need to balance the huge cost of the zone and other economic projects with its drive to cut a big state budget deficit caused by low oil prices. But the plan to develop the zone, known as NEOM, could stimulate trade and allow the Middle East to capitalize on its location as a bridge between Asia and Europe, Azour said in an interview. <20>It is a signal that greater regional cooperation is back on the table,<2C> he said. <20>We see value and necessity in regional cooperation.<2E> The NEOM scheme, unveiled by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at an international conference in Riyadh last week, would develop industries such as energy and water, biotechnology, food, advanced manufacturing and entertainment in a 26,500-sq-km (10,230-sq-mile) zone with its own laws and judicial system. The project has been welcomed by Jordanian officials but so far there has been little public response from the Egyptian government, a diplomatic ally of Saudi Arabia. Riyadh has indicated that much of the huge cost of the zone will be borne by the Saudi government, but a large, though undisclosed, portion would come from domestic and international private investors. Azour said major private sector participation would be important for NEOM<4F>s success, with the Saudi government providing land and regulation rather than trying to be closely involved in most investment decisions. Governments in the region are starting to look outwards again after having spent the past five or six years focused on coping with political instability and a plunge in oil prices, he added. <20>Authorities in various countries are now reassessing more and more the need to do reforms and projects to grow faster and to address the issue of job creation.<2E> NEOM could fit in with two other international economic schemes, Azour said: the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing<6E>s drive to win trade and investment deals along routes linking China to Europe, and the G20 Compact with Africa that aims to promote private investment across the continent. An IMF study published on Tuesday suggested the Middle East and North African region could add 1 percentage point to its average economic growth over five years by participating more actively in international trade and removing barriers to cross-border commerce. Reporting by Andrew Torchia; Editing by Clarence Fernandez'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-imf/imf-endorses-saudi-plan-for-500-billion-business-zone-idUKKBN1D00HE'|'2017-10-31T08:01:00.000+02:00'
'0120a7649eff57fe97d0ac603c71d77a63419f36'|'Tata Steel elevates Narendran as global CEO & MD'|'REUTERS - Tata Steel Ltd ( TISC.NS ) has promoted T.V. Narendran as chief executive officer and managing director globally, the company said on Tuesday.FILE PHOTO: A Tata Steel sign is seen outside the Tata steelworks near Rotherham, Britain, March 30, 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo Narendran, 52, a company veteran who joined the Tata ranks in 1988, was serving as managing director (India and South East Asia) for the past four years.Tata Steel executed and commissioned the Kalinganagar steel plant during Narendran<61>s tenure as managing director and also enhanced the plant<6E>s ability to serve higher value segments like steel for automobiles, the company said in an exchange filing.The steel maker''s board also re-appointed Koushik Chatterjee as executive director and chief financial officer for five years with effect from Nov. 9. bit.ly/2yZ1lRnOn Monday, Tata Steel posted a September-quarter profit, spurred by strong volume growth following the ramp-up of its Kalinganagar plant in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.Tata Steel and German major Thyssenkrupp AG ( TKAG.DE ) had last month announced a preliminary agreement to merge their European steel operations, creating the continent<6E>s second-largest steelmaker after ArcelorMittal SA ( MT.AS ).Reporting by Aby Jose Koilparambil in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/INbusinessNews'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/tatasteel-ceo/tata-steel-elevates-narendran-as-global-ceo-md-idINKBN1D00ZF'|'2017-10-31T11:09:00.000+02:00'
'f83945504d59bec8ae086f3124f0071542b564c1'|'Banks stagger Brexodus as EU regulators consider grace period'|'LONDON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - European regulators are considering making it easier, at least temporarily, for banks to handle some EU-related business in Britain immediately after Brexit, industry sources told Reuters.FILE PHOTO: Buildings in the City of London are seen behind Waterloo Bridge in London, Britain October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls/File Photo They say it may be possible come March 2019 when Britain leaves the European Union to book trades done in centres such as Frankfurt out of London for some time.This has eased pressure on banks to rush staff out of London and is one reason that some banks have reduced estimates for the number of jobs they expect to move.Britain<69>s EU departure is expected to force banks to move thousands of jobs into the bloc so that they can continue processing EU-related trades.However, some banks have recently scaled back estimates of how many jobs will have to shift, with UBS saying on Friday it is likely to move fewer jobs than the 1000 it had previously projected.JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon said before the Brexit vote that up to 4,000 of its 16,000 jobs in Britain might be at risk, but has since said it is not planning to move many jobs out of Britain in the next two years.A spokesman for UBS declined to comment about whether the lower estimates were connected with a regulatory reprieve. A JPMorgan spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment.The length of any grace period, designed to avoid any market shock when Britain leaves the bloc, will likely be determined by the future trading terms with the EU.Bankers say German bank regulator Bafin, the agency overseeing Frankfurt, where many banks are moving staff, has said there is leeway.<2E>Bafin has told several banks that there would be a tolerance period,<2C> said Oliver Wagner of Germany<6E>s Association of Foreign Banks, adding that he expected it to last one year.A spokesman for Bafin was not immediately available for comment but President Felix Hufeld said on Oct 24 that <20>banks must be in a position to sensibly manage the associated risks comprehensively <20> in particular if a back-to-back model should suddenly no longer be possible or would have to be revised.<2E>At the centre of discussions among regulators are <20>back-to-back<63> arrangements - where a deal done on the continent could be processed and risk-managed at the bank<6E>s base in London. The practice is already commonly used, with banks often booking trades executed on Asian markets in London or New York.Bankers, who asked not to be named, said they were encouraged by signals that could allow them, for the near term, to keep the bulk of operations in the British capital rather than dividing them across the region.<2E>Regulators are trying to be helpful and pragmatic,<2C> said one bank executive.SHORT-TERM SOLUTION Financial watchdogs, including the European Central Bank, have warned banks from the outset that they will need more than just a <20>letterbox<6F> in Europe, demanding a critical mass of capital and senior local staff.A spokesman for the European Central Bank, which supervises banks, said its <20>priority is that banks should not operate as empty shells<6C> within the euro zone.But on its website, it also signals willingness to be temporarily flexible with back-to-back trades as long as risks are managed.The European Banking Authority has also said banks could continue booking trades from Europe in London, so long as they did not rely on <20>empty shells<6C> in European countries and took safeguards.<2E>We<57>ve come quite a long way from a year ago and now it<69>s sort of a quid pro quo,<2C> said Wagner.The gentler stance is welcome news for some investment banks, who have complained about the length of time it is taking to get clarity on how they should structure their operations after Brexit.Writing on Twitter on Monday, Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein expressed confidence in London. <20>Still investing in our big new Euro headquarters here. Expecting/hoping to fill it up,<2C> he sai
'6ac452208341d793cbfa783300f130254aa8f5f8'|'China-backed buyout fund founder charged in U.S. insider trading case'|'SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The founder of a private equity firm with Chinese state backing has been charged with insider trading related to the attempted acquisition of Lattice Semiconductor Corp ( LSCC.O ), U.S. authorities said on Monday.The Lattice Semiconductor logo is seen in this illustration photo September 14, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration The charges against Benjamin Chow represent a major blow to the buyout firm he created just last year, Canyon Bridge Capital Partners, with capital from China Reform Holdings, a Chinese state-back fund. Chow denies wrongdoing, his attorney said.The indictment comes as Chow<6F>s fund Canyon Bridge seeks to close its 550 million pound ($737 million) acquisition of British chipmaker Imagination Technologies Group Plc ( IMG.L ), after its $1.3 billion takeover of Lattice was blocked by U.S. President Donald Trump last month over national security concerns.The Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Monday that Chow had conspired to commit securities fraud by sending material nonpublic information regarding the Lattice deal to an unnamed friend and former colleague.A separate indictment by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in February against that former colleague of Chow identified him as Michael Yin, a former Hong Kong-based private equity executive who had become a hedge fund manager.Chow, a U.S. citizen born in China, is accused in the new indictment of tipping off Yin, who allegedly reaped $5 million of profit thanks to knowledge that the deal was in the works. Yin and China Reform Holdings could not be reached for comment.The prosecutors say that Chow, 46, passed along information to Yin at in-person coffee meetings in Beijing, voice messages and text exchanges ahead of the announcement of CanyonBridge<67>s deal to buy Lattice.<2E>Benjamin Chow is a true American success story, and the charges against him are baseless and unprecedented. He is not alleged to have made a dime from the scheme, and he had no possible motive to enrich those who traded. He stood to lose enormous amounts if traders purchased the stock and drove up the company<6E>s share price in the midst of his own negotiations,<2C> Chow<6F>s attorney George Canellos, a partner at law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, said in a statement.A Canyon Bridge spokesman said in a statement that it was aware of the indictment and that it is focused on completing its planned acquisition of Imagination. The fund added that it is not itself subject to any investigation.Imagination did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Lattice declined to comment.The indictment also said that Chow lied to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in response to inquiries in April about possible insider trading.The charges against Chow carry a potential prison sentence and maximum fines of $5 million.Canyon Bridge''s funding can be traced back to China''s State Council, the top decision-making body of the government, Reuters has previously reported. For a graphic, click tmsnrt.rs/2gegSQcCanyon Bridge has been trying this year to attract investors from outside China. The indictment against its founder could represent a hurdle to these efforts.Another Canyon Bridge partner, Ray Bingham, has also faced problems. The tech veteran joined Canyon Bridge last year but had to leave the boards of several tech companies, including Oracle Corp ORCL.O, due to concerns about his involvement with a firm with links to the Chinese state. Bingham could not be reached for comment Monday.Reporting by Liana B. Baker in San Francisco; Editing by Christopher Cushing '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/businessNews?format=xml'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canyonbridge-chow-insider-trading/china-backed-buyout-fund-founder-charged-in-u-s-insider-trading-case-idUSKBN1D00AB'|'2017-10-31T05:26:00.000+02:00'
'589e1e260874405b7f61befc6cda357196707a4e'|'AirAsia to sell more stakes in non-flying businesses to fund dividends'|'SINGAPORE (Reuters) - AirAsia Bhd ( AIRA.KL ) on Tuesday said it plans to sell more stakes in non-flying businesses to fund special dividends to shareholders, after announcing a new ground handling joint venture (JV) with Singapore<72>s SATS Ltd ( SATS.SI ).Tail of AirAsia X plane as seen at the Garuda Maintenance Facility AeroAsia in Tangerang, Indonesia, September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Beawiharta The low-cost carrier, which expects S$119.3 million ($87.7 million) in proceeds from the SATS deal, is close to selling some or all of its aircraft leasing arm and its remaining 25 percent stake in a travel booking joint venture with Expedia Inc ( EXPE.O ), its founder and Group CEO Tony Fernandes said.The airline will also consider the sale of stakes in its food, engineering and duty free businesses in the future, although no talks on those have begun, Fernandes said.<2E>We are going to special dividend those things out,<2C> he told Reuters after a media briefing on the SATS deal.<2E>There is a whole pipeline of those assets. We do joint ventures and eventually we will dispose of those joint ventures. They are not core. But the relationship will always stay.<2E>Earlier this year, AirAsia got $100 million from the sale of a 50 percent stake in aviation academy Asian Aviation Center of Excellence to CAE International Holding Ltd.While Fernandes did not give details on the special dividend, analysts at Malaysia<69>s Kenanga Investment Bank said it could be up to 0.11 ringgit a share after the SATS deal.The optimism drove up the airline<6E>s shares by 5 percent, or 0.16 ringgit, to a close of 3.34 ringgit ($0.7893) on Tuesday, their biggest daily percentage rise since May.FILE PHOTO: A security guard rides a bicycle past an AirAsia plane at the Garuda Maintenance Facility AeroAsia in Tangerang, Indonesia, September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Beawiharta/File Photo FUTURE PLANS Fernandes said he hoped to complete the sale of the leasing business, which two sources in March valued at $900 million, by the end of the year.He said talks with potential buyers had dragged on because AirAsia wanted to ensure it had the right balance between receiving a high upfront price and ensuring its leasing costs were reasonable in the future.<2E>I think now we have got a very good deal which is a win-win situation,<2C> he said, without identifying the buyer.Fernandes said he would prefer for AirAsia to keep a stake in the business rather than sell it entirely as it was doing with the SATS JV, but it was a decision for the board.As part of the SATS deal, AirAsia will receive a 40 percent stake in ground handling at the new Terminal 4 at Singapore<72>s Changi Airport, while SATS will get a 49 percent stake in AirAsia<69>s Malaysian ground handling unit.The pair will be targeting third-party ground handling contracts in Malaysia, and possibly in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines at a later date, SATS CEO Alex Hungate said.<2E>We get to use those assets for a broader base of customers and we get a better return on assets,<2C> he said.AirAsia has ground handling operations at 15 airports in Malaysia but no third-party contracts at present.Reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by Himani SarkarOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.'|'reuters.com'|'http://in.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://in.reuters.com/article/us-airasia-strategy/airasia-to-sell-more-stakes-in-non-flying-businesses-to-fund-dividends-idINKBN1D00H2'|'2017-10-31T03:02:00.000+02:00'
'81796148dcdb8ed22b210707baec52b76591cfdf'|'AstraZeneca plans new pivotal lung cancer trial with Incyte'|'October 31, 2017 / 8:39 AM / Updated 7 hours ago AstraZeneca plans new pivotal lung cancer trial with Incyte Reuters Staff 2 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - AstraZeneca ( AZN.L ) is stepping up its bet on immunotherapy combination treatments to fight lung cancer by signing a deal with Incyte ( INCY.O ) under which the two companies will start a final-stage Phase III clinical trial next year. FILE PHOTO - The logo of AstraZeneca is seen on medication packages in a pharmacy in London, Britain April 28, 2014. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth The study will test AstraZeneca<63>s Imfinzi alongside Incyte<74>s second-generation immunotherapy drug epacadostat, a so-called IDO inhibitor that also helps the immune system fight cancer. Excitement has been building about epacadostat on the back of recent promising clinical data, and U.S.-based Incyte already has agreements with Merck & Co ( MRK.N ) and Bristol-Myers Squibb ( BMY.N ) for separate Phase III trials. Incyte<74>s decision to partner with multiple big drugmakers in this way has led Bernstein analyst Tim Anderson to describe it as a <20>promiscuous<75> company. In the case of the deal with AstraZeneca, the combination of Imfinzi and epacadostat will be tested in patients with relatively early, or stage III, lung cancer. As such, it builds on the success of Imfinzi alone in this setting. The Phase III trial will be co-funded by the two companies and conducted by AstraZeneca. It is expected to begin enrolling patients in the first half of 2018, the two groups said on Tuesday. Epacadostat works by blocking an enzyme that protects tumours from the immune system, while Imfinzi is one of five approved drugs known as PD-L1 or PD-1 inhibitors that block a different mechanism that cancer cells use to evade detection. Experts think the two could work well together without the added toxicity seen with other combinations because Imfinzi is systemic, while epacadostat works specifically at the tumour site. Reporting by Ben Hirschler, editing by Louise Heavens'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/UKBusinessNews/'|'https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-astrazeneca-incyte/astrazeneca-plans-new-pivotal-lung-cancer-trial-with-incyte-idUKKBN1D00WV'|'2017-10-31T10:44:00.000+02:00'
'58f61db05bc388f7772d2b74aaaad4097af89021'|'Exclusive - Orange is the new bank? Telecoms giant ventures into lending'|'October 31, 2017 / 4:06 PM / Updated 9 minutes ago Exclusive - Orange is the new bank? Telecoms giant ventures into lending Maya Nikolaeva , Sophie Sassard , Gw<47>na<6E>lle Barzic 6 Min Read PARIS/LONDON (Reuters) - Telecoms giant Orange ( ORAN.PA ) launches its own bank on Thursday, aiming to win 25 percent of France<63>s online banking market by capitalising on the rising use of smartphones to steal share from established lenders with inferior technology. Andre Coisne, chief executive of Orange Bank, poses at the Bank headquarters in Montreuil, near Paris, France, October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau The launch is part of a push by the French firm to find alternative revenue streams and retain clients in the face of a price war in the telecommunications sector. It is also a test for the telecoms and banking industry, marking the first attempt in a major developed market by a telecoms company to launch a standalone bank. <20>We are targeting 2 million clients in ten years. That would represent 25 percent of the (online banking) market, but I hope we will not stop there ... and we will be the market leader in several years,<2C> Andre Coisne, chief executive of Orange Bank, told Reuters in an interview. Coisne has previously launched online banks in France for ING Direct and Credit Agricole<6C>s BforBank. Orange is starting from a small base - Coisne says it has 25,000 customers have expressed interest ahead of the launch, a tiny fraction of the company<6E>s 21 million mobile clients. But the timing of its entry gives some room for optimism. In France, 793.4 million online banking e-payments were made last year according to the European Central Bank, up from 586.2 million in 2014. Consultancy Ernst & Young predicts the number of customers going online to open an account in France will surge nearly six-fold to 17 million in the next ten years. The regulatory environment is also becoming more favourable - next year new European Union rules will start to force banks to allow customer data to be made available to other companies, if the customers agree. That will help the likes of Orange to identify potential customers and offer them better deals than their current lenders. <20>This is a good start,<2C> said Coisne, who will also face competition from telecoms rival Altice, which launches its bank in 2019. ORANGE IS THE NEW BANK Orange has beefed up financial services across its networks over the past ten years under several brands, such as Orange Money and Orange Cash, and Orange Finanse in Poland, which uses a platform created by Polish lender mBank. It targets 400 million euros in revenues for its financial services unit by 2018, out of which half would come from Africa. Africa is the world leader in mobile banking. Around 12 percent of adults there have a mobile money account against 2 percent globally, according to a 2014 World Bank survey. Telecoms operators have long hoped to repeat their banking success in Africa and other developing markets in advanced economies, but until now have only done so by relying on partnerships with existing banks, with little success. So far most telecoms operators have sought to retain customers by offering media content such as free access to music streaming apps like Spotify or movie streaming platform Netflix, as well as exclusive sports broadcasts. Andre Coisne, chief executive of Orange Bank, poses at the Bank headquarters in Montreuil, near Paris, France, October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau But a minority investor in Orange told Reuters that diversification through banking could prove smarter because these services are essential and sticky. <20>To me, it is smarter than spending millions on sport rights that expire every two or three years<72>, the investor said. There is no clearly successful precedent in major Western markets, which makes Orange<67>s move so brave, said Tom Levine, global head of telecoms practise at Allen & Overy. <20>I hope their ambition goes beyond retaining customers 
'84d8655a7568e918e2683a5f1875f8eb8672460d'|'Dynegy drew bullish options trades ahead of deal news'|'NEW YORK (Reuters) - Traders who took unusually bullish positions in Dynegy Inc<6E>s ( DYN.N ) options, weeks before the company<6E>s shares soared on word of a deal with Vistra Energy Corp ( VST.N ), stand to make outsized profits, Reuters data showed.Dynegy shares jumped as much as 14 percent to a one-year high of $12.84 on Monday after Vistra offered to buy Dynegy in an all-stock deal worth $1.74 billion.Dynegy shares have gained as much as 39 percent over the last four trading sessions, boosted by a Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday that Vistra Energy was in talks to buy Dynegy.But Dynegy options drew bullish activity weeks before the report of the merger talks.<2E>Players in the options market were aggressively positioning for a move higher ahead of the merger news. I think it will raise eyebrows,<2C> said Fred Ruffy, analyst at New York-based options analytics firm Trade Alert.On October 5, Dynegy options volume jumped to 38,000 contracts or about twenty times its average daily volume, making it the busiest day for the options in at least two years, according to Trade Alert data.The bump in trading volume was driven by aggressive trades in December and January contracts.In one transaction a trader paid roughly $555,000 to buy 6,000 of Dynegy January call spreads. The trade involved selling Dynegy calls with a $14 strike price and buying $10 strike calls.Buying call options gives the buyer the right to purchase the underlying security at a fixed price in the future, while selling calls creates the obligation to sell the underlying security at the fixed price.The spreads in question had the potential for maximum gains if Dynegy shares were to rally 47.5 percent or more, to $14 or higher, through the January 19 expiration, according to Trade Alert data.With the shares rising in recent days, the value of the spread has more than doubled. On paper, the trader stands to make a $675,000 profit, going by the last trading price of the relevant contracts, according to Thomson Reuters data.Utilities companies have been on traders<72> radar for merger and acquisition activity, with a number of companies, including Calpine Corp ( CPN.N ) and Sempra Energy ( SRE.N ) involved in deals.Options activity has been known to spike before the public announcement of deals, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has in the past announced enforcement action for alleged insider trading violations involving options.The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed; Editing by Daniel Bases and Andrew Hay '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dynegy-m-a-vistra-energy-options/dynegy-drew-bullish-options-trades-ahead-of-deal-news-idUSKBN1CZ2EG'|'2017-10-31T02:34:00.000+02:00'
'261d34806c5e03f5e662c59e1d23a1b939bc739c'|'China''s Sinopec mulls U.S. oil projects ahead of Trump''s visit - sources'|'October 31, 2017 / 5:03 AM / Updated 4 hours ago China''s Sinopec mulls U.S. oil projects ahead of Trump''s visit - sources Florence Tan 2 Min Read SINGAPORE, Oct 31 (Reuters) - China<6E>s state oil major Sinopec is evaluating two projects in the United States that could boost Gulf Coast crude oil exports and also expand storage facilities in the Caribbean, two people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, with U.S. President Donald Trump set to visit Beijing next week. With U.S.-China energy trade likely to feature prominently during Trump<6D>s visit, the people said one of the projects could see Sinopec partnering with U.S. commodities trader Freepoint Commodities LLC and U.S. private equity firm ArcLight Capital Partners LLC. The trio is mulling building a pipeline to move shale oil from the Permian basin in Texas to the U.S. Gulf Coast for export, the people said. This project also includes the construction of a terminal that can load 2 million barrels of crude onboard a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC), they said. This will reduce a big chunk of logistics costs incurred for U.S. crude exports, making the oil more competitive in Asia, the sources said. They declined to be identified because they were not authorised to speak to media. The three companies have also been exploring an expansion of oil storage at Limetree Bay (LB) Terminals in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, and restarting an idled refinery at the same site, they said. Sinopec, which is Asia<69>s largest oil refiner, ArcLight and all Freepoint declined to comment. (Reporting by Florence Tan; Additional reporting by Chen Aizhu in BEIJING; Editing by Josephine Mason and Kenneth Maxwell) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/trump-asia-china-sinopec-corp/chinas-sinopec-mulls-u-s-oil-projects-ahead-of-trumps-visit-sources-idUSB9N1LU03B'|'2017-10-31T07:00:00.000+02:00'
'909a15ee27158419ae30b7b8d99beb80db64c9a6'|'UPDATE 1-Devon Energy 3rd-qtr profit beats estimates'|'Reuters TV United States  41 PM / a few seconds ago Devon Energy third-quarter profit beats estimates Reuters Staff 2 Min Read (Reuters) - U.S. oil producer Devon Energy Corp ( DVN.N ) reported a bigger-than-expected quarterly profit, helped by higher realized prices for oil. Hurricane Harvey, which tore through southern Texas, forced Devon to temporarily suspended its Eagle Ford operations due to which the company<6E>s U.S. production reduced by 15,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d). Total production, net of royalties, fell to 527,000 boe/d from 577,000 boe/d. However, production was higher than the midpoint of the company<6E>s Harvey-adjusted guidance by 6,000 boe/d. Realized prices, including cash settlements, rose to $26.19 per boe in the reported quarter from $21.30. Net income attributable to the company fell to $228 million, or $0.43 per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, from $993 million, or $1.89 per share, a year earlier. Excluding items the company earned 46 cents per share beating the average analysts<74> estimate of 38 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Total revenue fell 25.4 percent to $3.16 billion. Reporting by Karan Nagarkatti and Anirban Paul in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta'|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-devon-energy-results/devon-energy-third-quarter-profit-beats-estimates-idUSKBN1D02UN'|'2017-10-31T22:34:00.000+02:00'
'23d8ece038f59dbb1cf7b2fe7bd309c5804a5632'|'RBS sells leasing unit Lombard assets to meet ring-fencing rules'|'October 31, 2017 / 4:25 PM / in 5 hours RBS sells leasing unit Lombard assets to meet ring-fencing rules Reuters Staff 1 Min Read LONDON (Reuters) - Britain<69>s Royal Bank of Scotland ( RBS.L ) has put around 200 million pounds ($265 million) worth of offshore assets from its asset financing group Lombard up for sale, a source close to the matter said on Tuesday. FILE PHOTO - A logo at a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland is seen reflected in a window in the City of London December 16, 2014. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo The state-backed bank is selling them as they are currently held in the Channel Islands but new ring-fencing rules that come into force in 2019 mean the lender<65>s UK retail business can not own assets outside of the European Economic Area (EEA). The bank has decided that the unit would only fit in its ring-fenced business. Ring-fencing rules require banks to put all of their retail operations into a unit that is separately capitalized from their riskier businesses such as investment banking. Lombard provides financing to help businesses buy assets such as machinery, ships or aircraft. The sale was first reported by Sky News. ($1 = 0.7548 pounds) '|'reuters.com'|'http://www.reuters.com/finance/deals'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rbs-divestiture-lombard/rbs-sells-leasing-unit-lombard-assets-to-meet-ring-fencing-rules-idUSKBN1D02AY'|'2017-10-31T23:25:00.000+02:00'
'c691c7f07d5adc4273083337c5bc3e7c0315f18d'|'Aerolineas Argentinas cancels 50 flights ahead of strike'|'BUENOS AIRES, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Argentina<6E>s flagship carrier Aerolineas Argentinas canceled 50 national and international flights on Monday ahead of a 24-hour strike over salary concerns starting at midnight.The company canceled the flights to avoid planes being stranded during the strike, a spokesperson said.<2E>You have to control all the planes before a new flight with the necessary maintenance checks before they leave again, so the impact of the strike is almost 48 hours,<2C> the spokesperson added.Five unions representing pilots and aeronautical personnel called the strike to demand higher salaries to offset inflation. (Reporting by Eliana Raszewski; Writing by Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Sandra Maler) '|'reuters.com'|'http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/companyNews'|'https://www.reuters.com/article/aerolineas-argen-strike/aerolineas-argentinas-cancels-50-flights-ahead-of-strike-idUSL2N1N5262'|'2017-10-31T00:19:00.000+02:00'